This one is based on a dream I had last year while I was really sick, a legitimate Fever Dream. Enjoy!
Hey there! My name is [REDACTED] , but you can just call me Logar.
Now, I’m an insomniac. A major one. A veteran Insomniac with over 5 years of experience touring the midnight hours. I am well and truly a night owl, to the point where I spend more time awake at night than I do at day nowadays.
I do actually try my best to go to sleep at a reasonable time, but no matter what I do or how hard I try, I always seem to find myself up at 3-4 am, reading fanfiction, or writing fanfiction, or talking to my discord friends about fanfiction… you get the point.
And while it was rare, I have had a few times where I’ve woken up from my 30-minute nap and had to get ready for school again, and my brain has decided to send some visual/auditory hallucinations my way.
Why is this important? Well, because I sincerely hope that's what's fucking happening right now.
When I opened my eyes I was greeted with an odd sight.
I was lying on a stone floor with a blank stone roof above me. The smell of something very old was in the air, as well as grunting, and the sound of metal clashing against itself. I bolted upright as quickly as possible.
Only to wince as the pain I usually felt in my back flared up with a vengeance. God my shoulder fucking hurt. How long had I been lying here? I looked over to my right and froze, before rubbing my eyes, hoping to fuck that I was still asleep.
No luck there. Shit.
There were 3 other figures in the room with me, and I recognised every single one of them. Which was why this was so crazy. The closest was a figure slightly shorter than me, with bushy green hair and a green jumpsuit on.
And seeing as he was basically the source and focus of my most recent hyperfixation, it was impossible for me to not recognise Izuku Midoriya. In the flesh. Which was weird. This whole fucking situation was weird.
Next to him was another figure in green, but this one filled me with a combination of fear and excitement. The Doom Slayer himself. Uh, actually I don’t think he has a real name, at least not a canon one. But the Doom Slayer himself! Standing in front of me… Jojo posing?
Yep, that was a Jojo pose. Ceaser's, to be exact. What the actual fuck was going on here?
And next to the literal embodiment of Christianity was another person I was familiar with. Wider than I was tall, and about a foot taller as well, the Heavy from Team Fortress 2 cut an imposing figure. Especially since he had his minigun propped up next to him as he watched the Doom Slayer flex and pose.
“What the fuck is going on?”
I didn’t even realise that I had said it out loud until I saw all 3 of them turn to me, various expressions, or lack thereof, in the Doom Slayer's case, on their faces. I leaned back a little bit at the sudden attention, leaning further as Midoriya approached me.
“Hi there! We didn’t realise you had woken up yet. What’s your name?”
I took his hand slowly and he pulled me up with ease. Not surprising, seeing as the boy could lift fucking All Might and carry the behemoth. But I did notice something. “How are you speaking English?”
Then I shook my head. “Nevermind, there’s probably some fucking magic McGuffin translating for us. Moving on from that, where the fuck are we?”
Midoriya frowned. “I’m not entirely sure? I’ve been awake for about 3 hours now, but those two were already awake and flexing at each other. I.. I’m not really sure what's going on either. I was just in class, and then boom, I'm here…”
We were interrupted when a shadow loomed over the both of us. I turned to see both the Heavy and the Doom Slayer standing over us. The heavy was smiling, but the Doom Slayer was… T-posing? What the fuck?
The heavy pointed at me. “You. Do you know where we are? I am beginning to feel hungry, and I do not have a sandvich to eat.”
I was about to answer when there was a crackling sound in the air, like an intercom starting. “Oi, can you all hear me now?”
Yep, intercom.
“Look. I have no clue where the hell I am, but there are a bunch of controls here, and a microphone, and like the cameras looking third person over each of you.”
The voice rang bells in my head, but I couldn’t place where I had heard it. Midoriya looked around and put his hand to his chin. “Are there any instructions near you?
The intercom crackled again. “I guess? But they’re kinda weird. Says that I have to input creature names and click on the rooms they will be in? What am I, the dungeon master of this fucking place?”
There was a pause in the man's voice before he groaned. “Ah fuck, I’m gonna be the dungeon master of this place aren’t I? What is this, bad fanfiction about a crazy fucking crossover scenario?”
I froze at that. Surely not. Surely I wasn’t my own first attempt at a Self Insert! I was me! But then, if I was writing this, I would have made me think that I was me. Fuck! Was I a self-insert?
“That's more likely than you think. Seeing as these three are fictional characters that I have either played as or watched anime about before in my world, I’m going to assume that this is all just some sub-reality and we are actually in a fanfic. I write those. A lot. Probably too much, but hey, I enjoy it.”
The voice was silent, and the other three just stared at me. “Are you saying that we’re fictional characters? And that this is a bit of fanfiction?”
I nodded. Midoriya just stared at me, and I could almost see his view on reality breaking. I was about to talk to the voice on the intercom again when the Heavy spoke up.
“What is fanfiction? Also, what is anime?”
Turns out, Midoriya was even cooler to watch fight in person.
I had watched him fight so many times in MHA, especially his fight against Wolfram on I-Island (I had replayed that video at least 20 times), but seeing Full Cowling in the flesh was something else.
Why was I watching Izuku fight you may ask? Well, that was because we figured out what the fuck we were meant to be doing. Apparently, the voice on the controls, who I still hadn’t placed, was meant to write down the names of some fictional creatures and place them in rooms for us to fight.
Now, I used to do judo, some boxing, and I’m pretty fit, but I am in no way ready to go toe to toe with a literal fucking horde of zombies. Luckily, I was in a party(?) with some of the strongest people I’d ever known, fictional or not.
The closest to me in strength was the Heavy, who was still leagues ahead of me. The man could lift and fire a fucking minigun with minimal effort. I had trouble lifting up other people sometimes, and this man was carrying around a minigun and enough ammo to fire it near continuously with ease.
Next was Midoriya, who was using his Full Cowling to basically rapid-fire blasts of air at the zombies on his side, tearing them to shreds. The fact that he had his Air Force gloves clued me in to the fact that he had at least fought Gentle Criminal. That meant he was up to about 20% for his Full Cowling.
And then, the unmistakably strongest in our little group was the big daddy demon killer himself, the Doom Slayer. The man wasn’t even using his guns. He was just ripping and tearing his way through his section of zombies with his bare hands. Not surprising, seeing as those bare hands had ripped apart a demon the size of a skyscraper before.
And then there I was. In the middle of a battle that would have made John Wick contemplate his odds, surrounded by absolute titans of fighters… sitting on the floor waiting for them to finish.
I was nowhere near their ability, or their strength, or anything like that. In fact, I was just a slightly-fitter-than-normal 18-year-old kid with a metal pipe in case they missed any Zombies.
I had only had to even stand up once or twice, and my total kill count for Zombies was around 4. A paltry amount in comparison to the literal hundreds of thousands that the Doom Slayer had already gone through, and the thousands that the other two had beaten.
This fight went on for around 30 minutes before we all heard a loud “DING” , and the zombies just… stopped appearing. I stood up and rolled my shoulders as the other three took a moment to check that there was no-one else there, before they all calmed down.
The Doom Slayer didn’t really change much, but the bloodlust that was flowing off of him in waves calmed down to a slow river. The Heavy put his minigun down, and did some stretches. Midoriya’s Full Cowling faded away, the green lightning dissipating from existence.
I yelped as a door appeared to my right out of thin air, just like… wait a fucking minute this was the door from the Infinity Train! What the fuck kind of weird-ass crossover fanfic was this? Was I drunk or something?
The intercom buzzed. “Alright guys, the screen thingy is saying that you guys can move onto room 2. Ah shit, heads up guys, it says 2/20. We could be here for a while.”
The Heavy just smiled. “I do not mind! That was a good fight! I just vish that my Doctor could be here to see it… He vould have loved to study the ‘zombies.”
The Doom Slayer nodded, flexing like a Bodybuilder. Guess he agreed. I looked away as the Doom Slayer started thrusting his hips towards the Heavy, swirling them around in a circle. Did not need that image in my head.
Midoriya clapped me on the shoulder. “I saw you fight those zombies that we missed! You did really well! What's your Quirk?”
I just laughed at that. “Actually, people from my world don't have superpowers. I guess you could say that I’m Quirkless. Isn’t that Ironic, Midoriya?”
He laughed too, but I could see the worried look in his eyes. He cocked his head to the side and was about to open his mouth when I interrupted him. “Yes, I do know about OFA. I’ve watched you use it a lot on my TV before. You get really strong, trust me”
Unfortunately, I was an anime-only, so I didn’t really know any spoilers about MHA to warn Izuku about. Damn, that was kinda the biggest advantage of being a self-insert, wasn’t it? Having knowledge that others wouldn’t? Stupid real me, not wanting to read the manga…
I stepped through the glowing golden doorway, into the next room of this bizarre adventure.
Room 2/20 - The Deathclaw Car
The second I saw the nameplate over the cave entrance, I turned around and tried to go back through the doorway, but walked right into The Heavy’s chest, knocking me over and trapping me here.
As soon as the other three got into the room, I pointed at the cave and told them everything I knew about Deathclaws. Then I moved as far away from the cave entrance as possible. Fuck that. I’m not fighting a fucking deathclaw with a metal pipe.
Weirdly, this room went much quicker, with the screams of deathclaws being a constant sound for around 10 minutes, before the yellow door appeared again.
I walked through it as quickly as I could. Not wanting to be near anywhere that Deathclaws lived for longer than I had to.
Room 7/20 - The Zero Gravity Room
This car was actually quite pleasant.
It was a puzzle in zero gravity, meaning it was the equivalent of a weightless escape room. First thing I tried was getting the Doom Slayer to just punch the door down, but I guess writer-me was trying to get some extra words out of this section, because it didn't work.
We split up to search the room, me with Midoriya and the Doom Slayer with the Heavy. I had originally wanted to go with the Doom Slayer, but after I saw how much the Doom Slayer seemed to be flirting with the Heavy, I made sure to not get in either of their ways.
Especially when I saw the Heavy reciprocating.
Midoriya was moving incredibly well in Zero Gravity, which honestly wasn’t surprising. “Did Uraraka teach you how to move in Zero-grav? You look like you have a lot of practice.”
Izuku raised his eyebrow. “You know Uraraka-san?”
I nodded. “Yeah man, your whole class, as well as the villains, and some pro heroes, have shown up in the show that you’re from in my world. Also Eri and Mei Hatsume and some kids from Shiketsu and stuff.”
His eyes were wide. “Really? That's incredible! So do you like, get to see what we’re thinking sometimes? What's the show like?”
I smiled. “It’s honestly one of my favourite shows out there right now! The animation is really good and I love the story that Horikoshi, that's the guy who writes it, is making! You’re my favourite character by the way.”
Izuku’s smile was blinding. “Really? I’m your favourite? Kachan is in the show too right? How is he not your favourite?”
I shrugged. “Cause he abused you man. He was a bully for the entirety of your life, and he told you to kill yourself? I like to think I have good morals, and his actions are one of my least favourite things about the show.”
I continued. “Look dude, you were chosen by All Might to receive One for All for a reason. There’s a reason that I, and many others, write a bunch of fanfics where you’re the main character. You’re really cool.”
At this point, I looked back over to Izuku and froze as I saw him crying. But he had a smile on his face, so I assumed that they were happy tears. He rushed forward and wrapped me up in a hug. I was glad he wasn’t using Full Cowling, or I’d probably have a broken bone.
“Thank you so much!”
Still, he was an incredibly buff person, and I coughed as I tapped him on the back. He released me quickly and I sucked in a deep breath. “No problem man.”
I felt good for the rest of the search for clues, which we found a lot of, because Midoriya seemed really happy after that, to a level that I had only really seen him when he was a little kid and after All Might chose him.
As we met up with the other two, who had figured out how we could get out of the room, I nudged Izuku and smirked. “Hey, when you get back to your world, you should spend some more time with Mei Hatsume. She’s pretty cool.”
Izuku looked confused, but nodded anyway, shrugging, “If you say so, Logar.”
I nodded, and walked into the golden doorway as it appeared, moving onto the next room.
Room 15 - The Shoot me in the Face Room
“Shoot me in the face! C'mon do it!”
I sighed as I saw the bandit dude. Really? This was one of the challenges this damn thing was going to throw at us?
It was even worse seeing as Midoriya was currently pleading with both the Doom Slayer and the Heavy to not shoot the man in the face. I turned away from them and looked into the sky.
“You’re fucking lazy, writer me! You ripped this from fucking Borderlands!”
I grumbled when there was no response, and yelled again. “Fine! But if you want me to shoot him in the face, I want a cool gun to do it with!”
There was silence for a moment, before suddenly there was a flash of blue light on the ground in front of me, a box appearing before me. I opened it and found a pulse pistol from Farscape , with a post-it note on it that just said; ‘Winona’
I looked up at the sky. “Did you really just give me John Crichton’s personal pistol? I’m such a fucking nerd!”
There was only the rumble of thunder in response. I smirked at that, because there were clear skies, which meant that was writer-me being grumpy.
Yellow word appeared in front of my face, spelling out: Mission Passed - Respect+
I picked up Winona and clipped the holster onto my belt and leg, before turning to the bandit and shooting him the in the face, his body instantly dissipating into green pixels. The other three stopped and looked at me in shock, probably not expecting that from me.
“What? He’s a character in a game I used to play. He did this before and you completed a quest if you shot him. I knew it would open the door for us.” Almost on cue, the door opened in front of us, and we moved to the next room.
I purposefully ignored the fact that the Doom Slayer smacked the Heavy’s ass on his way through.
The rooms were actually pretty fun for me now that I was armed.
I wasn’t the best with Winona, but for someone who had only fired a gun twice before today, I was doing pretty well. Getting some shooting tips from the Heavy and The Doom Slayer helped too.
I had currently killed more fictional creatures than I could count, ranging from Creepers from Minecraft, to the Hive from Destiny, even a few Manticores. And if I had accidentally shot a unicorn and accidentally pocketed its horn, then that was no one’s business than my own.
There were a few more rooms that contained various puzzles, but I guess writer-me wasn’t in the mood to make some, because I honestly couldn’t think of the words needed to describe them, other than difficult.
And finally, we reached Room number 20. This time, the golden door dropped us off in what looked like the most stereotypical boss fight prep room I had ever seen. There were health packs lining the walls, which actually made me feel a lot better just touching them, and a bunch of ammo packs for all our different weapons.
There was a whole fucking wall dedicated to the Doom Slayer’s equipment, but I didn’t mind, he had like, four times as many weapons as the rest of us did. The Heavy’s section was just a few drums for his Minigun, and then a fridge filled to the brim with Sandwiches.
Midoriya’s zone had a fully fixed up version of his most recent hero suit, Air Force gloves and all. He had to go over his limit of 20% a few times during this weird-ass experience, so his suit was a little mangled.
We all made sure to give him privacy as he changed.
My section was actually pretty cool. Guess writer-me decided to kit out his self insert with stuff he wished he owned in real life. What a fucking nerd.
First off was one of the jumpsuits that the pilots wore from the game TItanfall 2, just booster packs included. And while that was pretty cool, I wasn’t going to be attempting any crazy jumps or parkour anytime soon.
There were a few other weapons, ranging from lightsabers to rocket launchers, but unlike the Doom Slayer, I didn’t have a Hammerspace to store things. Which meant I was limited to what I could carry.
I decided on only taking Winona, a lightsaber, and the pilot jumpsuit. Whatever this fight was, I probably wouldn’t be doing much fighting, as my party members were stupid strong.
The jumpsuit actually made me feel really powerful, even without the helmet that usually went with it. I clipped Winona onto my right hip and the Lightsaber on my left. I nodded to the others, who were waiting for me at the doorway into the room, and followed them over.
Getting ready to at least help out where I could.
Yep. This was a boss fight room alright.
It was massive, easily 3-4 basketball courts wide, and just as long. The big square room had pillars lining the walls, and a massive door on the other side of the room that was open, allowing us to see a pitch-black hallway.
And in the middle of the room stood a small platform, with a sword stuck in the middle of it. And while I hadn’t played it much, I could recognise the Master Sword from the Legend of Zelda series.
I gulped. Hopefully we wouldn’t have to fight Ganon or something. I didn’t really know anything about him except for the fact that he’s evil. Which meant I couldn’t really help much against him.
I took a step towards the sword, before stopping. What did the wiki say about the Master Sword again? That it could only be wielded by someone ‘brave, honest, and strong?’
Well, I wasn’t exceptionally brave, or strong, but I was pretty honest… Still, I don't think the sword was meant for me. Even writer-me probably knew that he wasn’t the right person for the Master Sword.
Midoriya, on the other hand…
“Izuku! Go grab that sword! Doom Slayer, Heavy, cover him! I’m gonna go scout out the hallway! If I recognise the thing we’re fighting I’ll tell you!”
They looked at me for a moment, before the room rumbled with the growl of a creature. At the noise, Izuku nodded to me, Full Cowling coming to life as he sprinted off towards the sword, the Doom Slayer picking up the Heavy and jumping to it to get in position to cover Izuku as he pulled the sword out.
I sprinted towards the hallway at full tilt, yelping in surprise as the suit I was wearing made me like, four times faster than normal. I zoomed past the doorway so quick it took me a few moments to register that fact, and stop myself.
Unfortunately for me, my yelling attracted attention. I froze as I saw the black and green light appear in front of me, and paled as I realised who we were going to be fighting. I jumped backwards and back into the light of the boss fight room as a huge sword made out of bone landed where I was. “I know who this is!”
The other three looked towards me as I yelled and froze as the behemoth behind me came into view.
“It’s fucking Crota!”
Crota was a pain in the ass. Always had been.
His fucking invulnerability made the Doom Slayers attacks meaningless, which seemed to confuse the man, until I explained the boss fight mechanics to them all.
Which was difficult, seeing as I had to run around trying my best not to get squashed like a bug by an alien creature 7 times my size. Which I was doing a surprisingly good job of, seeing as I wasn’t already dead.
I was waiting for the sword bearers to appear so that I could grab a cleaver and break Crota’s shield, but there didn’t seem to be any appearing. Maybe I should get Izuku to try and use the Master Sword on him?
As I dodged another slam attack from Crota, honestly thank god for this fucking suit, I yelled out. “Izuku! Try and slam down on his head with the Master Sword! As hard as you can without breaking yourself!”
Izuku nodded, his Full Cowling sparking up again as he jumped, easily clearing Crota’s head and hitting the roof, before pushing off of that and slamming the sword down onto the monster’s head.
I cheered as I saw the bright green light of Crota’s shield fade slightly. “Keep doing that! When the light fades completely, Pump as much as damage as you can into him!”
I got nods/yells of acknowledgement from the other three, which was good enough for me. I shot at Crota’s face again with Winona, getting his attention back on me as I sprinted around the arena, jumping out of the way of his sword whenever he swung.
It took 4 more hits for Midoriya to break Crota’s shield at 20% full cowling, and the second he did, the Doom Slayer practically vanished from sight, and a loud boom erupted through the air as Crota’s chest caved in.
I watched in awe as the Doom Slayer pulled apart Crota with his bare hands, green goop flying in every direction as he ripped and tore his way through the creature. Midoriya seemed pretty shaken as well, and the Heavy was just cheering for the man.
I made sure to sidestep the giant chunk of hive meat that landed next to me, and tried (and unfortunately failed) to not throw up from the smell.
As I emptied my stomach, the Heavy cheered for the Doom Slayer, his yells in Russian reverberating in my head.
And then, all of a sudden, everything stopped. There was no movement, no sound, nothing. Until the footsteps appeared.
It was kinda weird, being frozen in place like this, like my body was frozen in a block of cement. Then, suddenly, a small burst of light went off in front of us.
“Hello!”
I groaned as the voice of One-One from Infinity Train filled the room. For some reason I wasn’t really surprised. This whole thing was weird enough to be on the infinity train. The door that kept appearing definitely fit.
“Actually no! This isn’t my train! A friend of mine in dimension #372983637386268 wanted to create a sort of battle sub dimension, and needed some volunteers for testing!”
He chuckled. “So I entered the real you’s brain while he was sleeping and made him dream about all this, which inspired him to then write this for us!”
The othet three people all vanished with a small crack it light. “Real you actually gave us some of the best combatants we could have used for testing! All different levels of skill and power, including yourself.”
Suddenly, I found myself back in my bedroom, sitting in front of my laptop. Was I now back into writer-me? What the fuck was going on?
A voice came out of the speaker. “But now that we have all the data we need, you aren’t needed! So you can just go on about your life as you usually would. Enjoy! You tell people that this actually happened they’ll probably think you’re crazy!”
The speaker cut off and I found myself with a google doc filled with words describing my adventure.
With a sigh, I added some finishing touches to the document before getting it ready for Irmadbro to beta read. Hopefully, the people on AO3 and FF.net and Scribblehub would enjoy this absolute shit show.
I certainly did.
