She'd stepped through the rift expecting void, maybe cold.
Instead, everything had texture — like space had been turned inside out and painted with memory. Each breath tasted faintly of metal and memory foam, and gravity pulsed somewhere behind her heart.
Uraraka floated a little higher than comfortable, trying to find a surface. The ground wasn't ground. It shimmered with mathematics, shifting algebra written in light, looping intro equations that resembled arteries. At the center, a human shape waited, half luminous, half shadow. Midoriya, but drawn with impossible precision.
"You finally crossed," he said. His voice folded the distance.
"Where—"
"In between worlds. You've been bending reality like fabric; now you're standing in the crease."
Every sound carried a heartbeat beneath it—hers or his, she couldn't tell. The air itself seemed to inhale when he did. He looked older here, calm in a way that suggested exhaustion, hair falling across his forehead, glove replaced by silver lines running up his veins like constellations.
"You brought me here," she whispered.
His smile was patient. "Gravity only invites. You stepped."
The words irritated and thrilled her in equal measure. She was always the one being lifted or pulled; never the axis. Here she wasn't sure which role she played.
When she moved closer, the equations responded to her steps, blooming in pink‑gold spirals. Heat built under her skin, the same warmth that had scared her in Hall C.
Midoriya watched, eyes narrowing. "See? Space reacts to you now."
Her throat tightened. "And if it reacts too strongly?"
"Then everything collapses toward you."
He gestured, and fragments of parallel U.A.s rotated around them — infinite mirrors, each showing a slightly different her. Versions laughing, crying, commanding armies. One stood with Bakugo's tattered cape around her shoulders. Another knelt in a ruined city, eyes like stars.
The sight was intoxicating and terrifying. She felt heat rise again, not shame, something darker: curiosity mixed with want.
"What happens if all the versions meet?" she asked.
He approached until the field between them hummed. "That's the equation—what every force wants: unity."
She should have stepped back. Instead she waited. When he raised a hand, his fingers passed through strands of light and energy, inches from her cheek. Her gravity quirk shivered instinctively; instead of pushing him away, it drew him nearer. Space obeyed her secret craving before she even admitted it.
"You're not supposed to be this calm," he murmured.
"I'm not calm," she said. "I'm orbiting."
He laughed softly. The sound was quiet thunder.
Equations rearranged themselves around them: *mass × desire = collapse.*
Somewhere in the distance, another world cracked open—a flash of orange, the sound of Bakugo shouting her name—but the noise was muffled. This space only recognized them.
Midoriya leaned in until their foreheads almost met. "Every law of motion hides hunger," he said. "Even yours."
Her breath caught; the field warped. For an instant she was weightless, floating inches away, drawn toward the center that was him. It wasn't affection she felt—it was gravity in lust's disguise, the universe trying to taste itself.
She forced herself to exhale, steadying the implosion.
"Stop analyzing me."
"I can't," he said, "you're rewriting the math."
Reality blinked. The other Urarakas vanished into streaks of light. Heat dissolved. They stood in a corridor of cosmic quiet, surrounded by a constant sound like an enormous heartbeat.
"If I stay here," she said, "what becomes of the rest?"
He shrugged. "They realign around the strongest center."
"And who decides that?"
"Mass does."
She laughed once—a nervous, hungry sound. Midoriya smiled faintly, as if he'd expected that answer long ago.
---
Hours—or lifetimes—passed. She studied the energy vibrating on her palms; each flicker corresponded to another version dying, merging, or mutating out of existence. Power always demanded a tax.
A ripple behind her: another arrival. Bakugo—real Bakugo this time—stumbled through the rift, fire trailing from his boots. His presence was loud, chaotic, mortal enough to slice through the elegance of the void.
"So this is where you ran off to," he spat.
He took one look at Midoriya and cracked his knuckles. "Figures. Nerd builds you a cage and calls it paradise."
Uraraka could sense the cosmic field bending, three bodies re‑entering a single formula. Bakugo's anger had mass; her desire, velocity; Midoriya, gravity. Together they formed something dangerously stable.
She didn't want a fight. She wanted understanding—or maybe the thrill of being the one both of them revolved around. That thought frightened her almost as much as it excited her.
Bakugo turned to her, the hardness in his expression softening for the briefest moment. "You miss the ground, Round Face?"
"I don't know where ground is anymore."
"Then I'll make one," he said, and slammed his palms together.
The explosion cracked the field. Light flared, dimmed, then rearranged itself into shards of possible worlds. The air burned—sweet ozone mixing with sweat and fear.
Between the bursts she saw both of them—Bakugo blazing, Midoriya radiant—and felt that pull again, twin gravities twisting inside her pulse.
She realized too late that she liked the struggle. The tension between control and surrender. The way danger tasted.
When silence returned, she stood at the center again, both of them watching her with the same question: *Which way will you fall?*
"I think," she said slowly, "I want to choose."
The void trembled, equations flickering into alignment.
In that instant, all three of them knew—choice wasn't escape; it was acceleration.