Work Text:
Today was honestly so boring, Shadow Milk wanted to throw himself into a pond and crumble.
Why in the Witches' magic was every day in this damned dimension so fucking bland!? One would expect being in another dimension to have something more interesting than teenagers nearly dying every single day!
Which.. was eventful. But there had to be something else! Something dramatic!
But no!
Present Mic droned on and on in English, but nobody was having it. Somehow he had even managed to put Yaomomo to sleep, which was pretty impressive considering she was one of the only ones who partook in the class.
He was making his own brilliant discoveries in his corner though. He was the Fount of Knowledge, after all, of course he was.
Since Yaomomo was sleeping, and they were on friendly terms with him teaching her and all, she would probably be fine with him using her desk to stack some of his books on. Midoriya apparently wanted to be more ripped than Burning Spice, so he was being used to prop up several other large textbooks of Latin and Earth's chemistry and physics.
From his understanding, the way his spells worked here is some conglomeration of those three subjects as well as trigonometry and his own magical affinity, but those didn't change all that much from Earthbread.
Currently he was prototyping what might work as a small scale summoning spell, but could punch through back to Earthbread. Though this place had some riveting life or death experiences, he wanted to see his kids minions again.
If the summoning worked, he could reverse engineer the spell to send things to his home, then make it larger and go back.
But what to summon...
He had most of his things here, because of his wonderful Other Realm. The spell was also pretty small, so it would only be able to summon things like an eyecing or Pure Vanilla's integrity.
Wait...
It would probably be just large enough to summon the rest of his Soul Jam.
Then he wouldn't need to bother with that bastard thief at all, either!
He trailed a claw over the drafted circle. Normally he could conjure it from his mind, but since this was a newer variant.. then he should be a bit more careful.
"ossecra sinoitingoc maminA,"1 he muttered into the circle. It flashed a brilliant blue before burning away.
Todoroki and Sero sent him confused glances, while Tokoyami whipped his head towards him like he understood what he said.
At first, there was nothing. He was about to declare this first test a failure, but then, a tear into the Other Realm opened above the oblivious Pro Hero Present Mic.
He wasn't oblivious for long.
Though the alarms didn't sound, a cacophony of children yelling and pointing above anyone would make them turn to look at it as well.
He hardly had enough time to leap back before a body thudded out to the ground where he once was.
It rolled to break its fall.
The Realm slammed shut with a crash.
Everyone was well awake now.
And everyone saw how the figure had Miruku's face.
His face from several thousand years ago.
He might've fucked up.
"Ubi sumus?"2 The Fount of Knowledge snapped. "Quis es?"3 He brandished his staff, the one with the Soul Jam of Knowledge in it, at Present Mic, poised to attack.
Brilliantly blue.
Perfectly intact.
Shadow Milk's own hummed in a desire to reconnect with the rest of himself.
"ossecrA,"4 the Jester commanded in a moment of impulse.
A Soul Jam, unmarred, still complete and perfect, merged with his current one? With that, he could become as strong-- no... even more powerful than he had ever been.
Nobody would call him weak or unworthy or insane again.
As soon as his spell grabbed hold, the Emissary of the Witches visibly flinched before pulling the staff back, and turned his gaze upon Shadow Milk. Damn it.
Blueberry Milk Cookie was so horribly confused as to what was going on. He and his partners had been fighting a few cinnamon wyverns-- not much work, it really didn't need four of them (Powdered Sugar and Edelweiss Faerie had been delegated to babysitting duty for the day)-- when he got squeezed into some dark version of the Other Realm by his Soul Jam.
It pulled him through another tear, into some incredibly strange world. The first thing he noticed was that all his proportions seemed off. His head was much too small for the rest of his body, which was also elongated.
He didn't have much time to think on it though.
The room he was in was filled with what looked to be 20 freshly baked children and one adult. An academy, perhaps? Or a cult?
All the young were wearing similar outfits, and creating such a ruckus in a tongue unfamiliar to him. Was that how they summoned him to this world?
"Where are we? Who are you?" he asked. He held his staff aloft, just gripping it tightly enough that if the possible cult were to attack, he could easily defend himself.
The adult in front of him was dressed differently from the kids. He wore a tight, stuffy jacket that looked to be made of some sort of skin, as well as a ... brace? around his neck.
His attention was snatched away by a spell that tried to grasp at his Soul Jam again.
It felt an awful lot like his own magic, but snapped and broken and corrupted in ways that made it feel evil. It almost hurt to be grazed by, he couldn't imagine living with such horrible energies flowing through him.
He glanced out at the sea of children, trying to find the source. He locked eyes with one surrounded in books and papers. They were identical, down to the mark on their faces.
But what the fuck is up with that Soul Jam!?
His shock must've shown on his face, because the clone's..? accidental child's..? (Blueberry Milk was pretty sure he knew of all his children at the moment, and this wasn't even his world.) face twisted upwards in a forced smile.
Blueberry Milk ignored it. He was used to those sorts of expressions. Ones of barely disguised hatred. But he was curious to see what the child had drawn on the parchment.
...
A summoning array.
Not a crude thing like he was expecting, but a piece of art, something above the quality of even his own spells. He could make out the symbols and shapes that made the enchantment sharper. He bet it would be able to tear through the fabric of dimensions, time, and space.
The Fount of Knowledge did not know how a child could've made such a thing.
He had one theory.
It hardly made any sense, yet it had the most sense he could think of.
The appearance, for one, was too similar to be a child's. Even Blueberry Pie, the child who looked the most like him, did not have the same shape in her features nor the same beauty marks.
The way the spell felt was also too familiar to be a coincidence. Everyone had a slightly different magic signature, but aside from the malice that radiated off this kid's sorcery-- which was caused more by intent anyways-- it was identical.
To obtain the skill to create such a powerful summoning spell must have also taken far longer than this child had been alive.
"...Are you.. me?" he asked hesitantly.
The youth's face nearly split in half from the grin it gave him.
Blueberry Milk and the kid-- who preferred to be called Shadow Milk, he learned-- had worked together over several months to reverse the summoning spell that had brought him here.
Through great effort they had managed to convince the Headmaster of this school (not a cult) that Blueberry Milk was perfectly safe, and to let them use the yard so they could make the array a lot larger. In exchange he would assist with teaching a few lessons here and there.
Most common were the ones with the school's other new teacher: All Might.
He hated All Might.
That man was an obnoxious, self sacrificing idiot of the highest sort. He constantly yelled to try and hype up the students before sending them to fight each other with no rules.
He also had exactly zero experience teaching, and couldn't for the life of him plan out his lessons beyond more than: we're going to do this! Do it! There was no reflection, nothing to learn, no realistic applications to this world.
What an annoyance.
He was glad to be going.
"And this should be the final symbol!" Shadow Milk smiled. With this, he would finally be able to go back to Earthbread. And he could finally have his Soul Jam, good and whole again.
So long as everything went to his plan.
"So this would essentially be a banishing spell?" The Fount of Knowledge asked. Not really knowledgeable yet, though. He estimated the Cookie was only about an eighth of Shadow Milk's age. A baby compared to him.
"Not quite... banishing spells just send someone out of their world. Who knows where they end up. This would be more like a waypoint to drag yourself back into your homeland. At least... it should be."
"And what would determine the "homeworld"?"
"I'm sure you're able to feel the ambient magic here is much different to that in your dimension. I'd assume it would be like a signature of sorts. Or a tag."
Blueberry Milk hummed.
"Could I borrow your staff to cast the spell?" he asked coyly, trying not to eye the Soul Jam. "It would be best for only one of us to cast it; both of us doing so could manifest it wrong, and I've more experience than you."
The other cookie stiffened at the request. If the spell did work, he could lose the staff, leaving it here with the other him. But again, if it worked, it could just be sent through after.
It seemed like a gamble he was willing to take.
He handed the Soul Jam of Knowledge to the Beast of Deceit.
Shadow Milk danced over the circle, tracing each line with the wand carefully. Bright blue surrounded him.
"mumod em omuS,"5 he chanted, dropping the strings of gravity. He let himself float up, towards a tear that had formed in the sky.
"Te!? Weren't you supposed to send me home!?" Blueberry Milk shouted. He sounded betrayed.
Shadow Milk shed his teenage skin while the former Fount of Knowledge yapped. It fell away, leaving him dressed in an almost identical outfit to when he had arrived.
"Oops! Well, I'm sure you will fit right into the script here!" the jester grinned. How that worked so well was beyond him. "Magister, exit!"6
He fell back into sweetness.