Chapter Text

Chapter 80

Time had an ethereal quality, and not just because Junko had slowly developed spells to screw with it, or how Eri’s control over her quirk resonated with her Aspect. Time usually passes whether you want it or not.

December passed, Christmas was spent with family, exchanging a few gifts with some people she had come to call friends in the year that had passed. Things like her anti-aging pills for Recovery Girl, a set of weights that would actually work for All Might, a trip around the solar system for Nezu, a complete library on how to be a teacher for All Might, among others.

New year came and went, January not changing much in terms of plans. Things kept moving ahead. She did have to move sneakily after she found some of the pre-reprogram Dust had escaped at sometime and had started to reproduce on Earth. Thankfully it was pretty easy to counteract by having her new version of Dust extend a sort of patch to the old pico-machines and make sure there was nothing left anywhere.

It was still quite a scare for Junko, but cooler minds prevailed and a possible apocalypse was averted. On another planet, Mars’s core didn’t take more than a couple of weeks before it was hot and spinning again.

This kind of energy brought an event long lost in the history of Mars, and that was volcanic activity, as energy was pumped into the center and things started moving, some decided that staying underground wasn’t for them and came out in large, and very explosive, ways.

As the global magnetic field developed, the planet’s surface gained a shield against the solar winds and other types of space radiation. It still took nearly till February before the planet was active enough for Junk to order the activation of the Atmosphere plants.

One of the first things they had to do was balance the different gases that actually existed on the planet, what little was there was mostly Carbon Dioxide and barely any Oxygen or Nitrogen, meaning they had to introduce large amounts of said elements. While also balancing things as the increasing temperature on the planet given the developing atmosphere melt the ice on the poles releasing Oxygen and Hydrogen.

In Junk’s opinion, having access and total control over Dust made this quite easy. Breaking what little was CO2 down and use the carbon to start to create more complex materials that would later be part of the soil.

There was much celebration once the first clouds formed and it started raining. It was also not missed on Earth as the red planet was usually visible on the night sky outside, especially as Junko’s cleaning of the planet had reduced the pollution enough that away from the city lights the planet didn’t look as red anymore.

The already working telescopes quickly pointed at the planet and everyone got a surprise at the recognizable cloud formations covering most of the planet. Given the high content of iron in the planet, the clouds carried enough to gain a red tinge.

Once again, conspiracies ran wild, but given the grand ritual, most people blamed the change on the planet on the previous unexplained event. Junko simply shrugged when asked and continued with her work.

On another paw, Mila and Nezu conspired to feed the crazies, not actually disproving any of the theories, but instead proving why some of them weren’t actually impossible. Junko was glad the series were a bit much too busy to learn of it till much later.

On other type of news, her mother had finally convinced Junko to have Eri attend school, while she was still a bit young, she had turned six a bit before Christmas, meaning the child had elementary school.

To say the young girl’s birthday party was a world-wide celebration was falling short… It was a two world-wide celebration as it went to Mars and Venus. Twenty first of December was the day that little Eri was finally, and legally, adopted by Junko, adopting the name of Eri Tetsu and the first time the girl called her mother.

She was practically glowing, to the point Mila got sunglasses as a joke. The rest of the party was quite memorable too. Junko had also checked and rechecked the school they had chosen multiple times, setting up a few, very eager, series E to look over her child.

She didn’t feel interested in giving any two-bit villain who thought of using Eri against her a chance. She happily paid a fine after the series E made a show on the poor bastard who tried.

Carinho had also gotten quite a bit of an upgrade. With all the gained knowledge and new perspective as a god, Junko had improved his soul, refining it in many ways, releasing some of the blocks of growth it had due to her poorer skills when she made it. The body also got a few upgrades, mostly in the material department, the little bear could easily serve as training partner for All Might once she was done with him.

And once again time passed, soon it was March and then April. And the entrance exam for UA came and went. She was glad to learn that Midoriya had passed. There apparently had been a bit of a problem when the media had learned that All Might was teaching at the school, but the school security had impeded them to do more than bother students coming in for a few minutes till one of the pro heroes working there had come out and forced them to disperse.

A couple months later, Nezu invited her to watch the Sports Festival. Junko happily accepted, enjoying the show put on by the aspiring heroes. Especially as a couple of young heroines caught her eye. She decided to send them offers for internships and hoped they accepted.

Her experience mentoring the two of them, the week after, was quite fun in her opinion, she hoped she changed things for the better for both of them. At least Power Loader thanked her for stopping his student from blowing things… so much.

It was about August when a certain fact was noticed and made it to the news. She was impressed it had taken it this far, but apparently people could be quite blind. Some scientists had discovered, not only, there was a lack of general trash and other objects on orbit that weren’t artificial satellites, but also the fact that Earth was cleaner than never before.

Of course no one could find out why, Junko had already moved her drones by then, she had water, earth and air off pollutants. She had forcefully lowered the planet’s general temperature a bit. Controlled rain patterns, reseeded large parts of Africa and the Amazons, restored oxygen producing algae colonies on the oceans, and a few others.

She wasn’t sure if to feel offended that people hadn’t noticed it, or gratitude she hadn’t had to react to someone finding out.

A month after she watched the first manned mission to space in more than a century. She wanted to say she had done it before, but she had technically skipped the mission to space and jumped directly to teleporting to orbit. Just in case she had removed the space station on Earth’s orbit, At least she didn’t need to hide the moon station yet .

Just in case, she modified the moon station to hide underground, it would hopefully hide things long enough for future Junko to deal.

And so time once again passed. The year coming to an end and another starting. New plans formed as others completed.

By now she was pretty sure the Solar System would be safe against any kind of intrusion. That's because she had started to construct an Ark ship on one of the stations on the system’s outer ring.

Based on the Protoss’ ship of the same category, her version was about twenty kilometers long, a downgrade from the nearly eighty of the original, shaped more like an egg rather than the cone shape of the original ship. Made with shiny gold metal, warm red light and black lines. Trying to put an image of exploration rather than war.

Not like there was much that could actually damage it, it was tough enough to fly through most stars with no problem. Any point of the surface was designed to channel and launch magical attacks up to moon crackers, plus a set of twin planet bursters she hoped she would never need to use.

The inside held a small city with artificial gravity, and a similarly artificial sun that doubled as the ship’s core. Plus multiple construction, and de-construction, bays for smaller ships. Scan systems capable of scanning whole systems in-depth. And a few other things.

Basically a one-ship civilization, and thanks to the network, distance didn’t mean much once she had a step on each side. The ship would be leaving soon for Alpha Centauri, a month after a second ship would be leaving for Barnard’s star and so on, once a month a new ship with about fifty series E would depart to the closest star systems.

She wasn’t expecting to find much, truly, but it was a good idea to check out the neighbors. It would also keep the series busy, as she was pretty sure they had kept growing in number even when she didn’t create more clones. It was just hard to witness creation ex nihilio when she had no idea where to look for it.

She still had two whole planets to fill with annoying, yet very useful, offshoots of her. But she would prefer to have more control over that.

And another year ended, and another started. Life went on, her reach on the world kept spreading, pushing very silently into other countries, helping heroes and leading the disarming of some of the largest villain groups. Improving the life quality for the people. Slowly starting to build a workforce of people to improve society in fields she wasn’t that useful with.

Helping some people fix their problems or escape bad situations, be it to other countries or other planets. By now Mars and Venus were both completely habitable, not that she had removed the shield domes over the cities she had constructed before, or forgot to add to those she constructed later.

And time passed, and things developed, her moon station had buried deep into the natural satellite by the time humanity reached the silver sphere once more. They didn’t find much, and it would take some time before they pushed for a more permanent station.

And another year, and another year, soon Eri was a preteen and she insisted that she wanted to be a hero, but a hero like her mama. Once more Junko fell into the dichotomy between having her heart melt or go out and reduce all villains to atoms so they wouldn’t hurt her daughter.

She still helped her daughter train. She ignited her Aura on her fourteen birthday and helped her design her variable weapons. Minutes and Hours were a pair of rapier and parrying dagger respectively. Minutes could change into a revolver and a lance, while Hours could change into a buckle shield and a boomerang. They could also channel her daughter’s time energy without a problem.

Junko had to make sure her daughter only trained with an adult in the room and didn’t convince the series to play said adult. Thankfully, most series had the same opinion as her and only let her train under their watch as long as she didn’t overdid it.

And time passed, things happened, people grew, developed, changed. Some, like Oboro, took a minor career as hero, but others, like Tomura Shigaraki never rejoined society, even after multiple years of therapy. The young man decided to simply stay away from the planet, finally taking a small house on Venus.

He later told Junko that he had made peace with his past and decided that Earth had nothing for him anymore. She had no problem granting the wish, neither did those who knew of the young man on Earth.

In all that time, All for One also died, his passing not even being a note on the margin, it took a few months for Junko to find out that, but at the end, it changed nothing for her, yes the man had been one of humanity’s greatest modern evils. But she had never really developed an opinion on him.

Soon it became time for Eri to start at UA and Junko felt the need to update her knowledge on heroes. Much had changed in the decade past.

All Might, the number one hero, had taken about four more years before deciding to retire. Thanks to Aura and having his injury healed, passing his quirk wasn’t an extreme change, instead slowly moving to a full time teacher in his alma mater.

The number two, Endeavor, never surpassed him, finding his estranged son turned to villainy, while never truly public knowledge, slowly marked the start of his fall on the rankings, and while never going past the ninth spot, he never truly recovered, retiring close to a decade after finding Toya Todoroki, aka Dabi.

Soon even UA’s principal decided to announce his retirement, the small chimera deciding he wasn’t sure how long his life expectancy actually was. He finally took a young quirkless student that had graduated from his school. When the young man had been asked what led him to try and be a hero he only replied that once he had been told by someone they believed he could, and for him that was enough to try.

Other heroes from the ranking slowly moved around before some retiring and new heroes replaced them. A decade where the world slowly changed. Mostly for the better.

The world slowly turned safer, technology started to advance again, dreams of heroes and nightmares of villains slowly changed. Space was interesting once more. Mars was quite green, people had noticed a change on Venus. The mystery called to people.

And the world turned, and time passed, and things changed. And Junko noticed her charges had started to come slower, there were no low cost perks, just longer times between new abilities. Some options even disappeared after she denied them long enough.

It was during an experiment with portals when she got her last two charge perk. A perk that improved her ability to make technology work with magic, especially in magic-rich environments.

She also got a lovely magic wand that connected to her. And because life had been quite boring in the last time, the event also reacted with the portal, breaking through reality and swallowing her. Throwing her somewhere, somewhen.

Beware multiverse, here comes Junk.