Time seemed to slow to a crawl, Deku felt himself falling backwards as his eyelids grew heavy. His body was broken and exhausted every breath marred by pain. In spite of it all he was happy. He had done it, they had done it, All for One was defeated in the world was finally free of his evil. It had come at the ultimate cost for the young hero but what are heroes if not those willing to sacrifice for others.
In spite of it all as his vision faded to black and all went quiet Deku was at peace.
---
Deku woke up, at least it felt like waking up. He was confused, the last thing he remembered was, well dying. Now he was someplace else, and he felt fine, certainly much better than he felt after being lethally wounded in the most gruelling battle of his life.
Was this the afterlife? It was whiter than he expected, emptier to. There was a floor he could feel he was standing on something but other than that there just appeared to be a white void all around him. It was so uniformly white that is obscured any division between the floor, walls and ceiling, perhaps it was the ground and sky?
"Ahem."
Deku nearly jumped in surprise as he heard a voice from behind him catching him off guard in the unearthly quiet. He turned around to see a young woman with long blond hair and piercing red eyes She was dressed in a beautiful black dress and Crown. In her hands she held an elaborate weapon comprised of two large blades connected by a handle and a bladed wheel and something that looked like a bird cage containing a floating blue ball of light.
"Greetings mortal soul. I am Ereshkigal, Queen of Kur and goddess of the dead." She proclaimed her voice booming in the empty space.
"So I really am dead?!" Deku asked aloud. "What am I supposed to do? I mean I'm dead you don't think of dead people asdoinganythingImean..."
Ereshkigal stared at Deku as he trailed off into semi-coherent mumbling.
"Hey, hey, calm down!" She said dropping her weapon and shaking Deku by the shoulder looking a bit frazzled herself as she realized how much he was freaking out. "Yes you're dead but it's not all bad news?"
"It's not?" Deku asked wondering what the possible upside of being dead was.
"Yeah the good news is you get a second chance."
Deku's eyes widened.
"You're going to bring me back to life?"
Ereshkigal winced she realized she should have worded that differently.
"Not exactly. You see there's been a problem. You know how they say somebody died before their time? Well you really died before your time. That whole you biting it thing that happened five minutes ago, it wasn't supposed to happen." Ereshkigal explained. "We'd be here all day if I tried to explain how fate works, and since time doesn't move here that's forever but the part you need to be concerned with is you died when you shouldn't have and that's a problem and we need to fix it. Both for the greater stability of the universe and so that Ishtar doesn't make fun of me."
"But if I died when I wasn't supposed to doesn't resurrecting me fix things?" Deku asked hopefully.
"I'm sorry but I can't do that." Ereshkigal said. "It's complicated but the short version is that there just isn't a mechanism for putting you back where you were. At least there isn't one that wouldn't be a worse problem than were already dealing with."
Deku looked crestfallen at the realization he couldn't go back to his world.
"So since I can't put you back where you were the next best thing is to put you somewhere new, a new life, a new world. Once I do that and you live out a full life then things will be close enough to fixed that me and the other gods can basically paper over the cracks so to speak."
Deku was quiet for a moment. As sad as he was that he couldn't go back to his old life he accepted that it was something he couldn't change and that going forward into a new world would be for the greater good.
"Okay I'll do it." Deku said.
"Great to hear." Ereshkigal replied. "Especially since I was going to do this whether you wanted it or not but now I don't have to feel bad about forcing you."
There was silence between the two of them for a moment.
"So what do you want?" Ereshkigal asked.
"What do you mean?"
"What kind of universe do you want to be reincarnated into?"
"Wait, I get to choose!?" Deku exclaimed.
"Yes you get to choose!" Ereshkigal said. "What did you think I was just going to dump you in the middle of nowhere? You already died I'm not going to add insult to that kind of injury. I'm the Queen of Kur not hell. Now tell me what kind of world you want to live in and I'll find you a good fit. All the possibilities of the infinite universe are open to you."
Deku thought about his choices for a moment before he decided on...
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