Chapter Text
Tim Drake groaned as he sat up on the unfamiliar rooftop. His suit was making all kinds of warning sounds that were making his headache worse. “Let’s never do that again,” he muttered to himself, still unsure what ‘that’ was. He did a quick once over, and fortunately, he seemed uninjured, though his head was ringing and he was sore from apparently sleeping on a rooftop. His suit seemed fine too; he went through the multiple warnings of “GPS signal lost,” “Watchtower signal lost,” “Bat comm signal lost,” “Network signal lost” and a more general “Signal lost,” and turned them all off.
Okay, so the alarms were worrying. His suit linked with the Wayne global satellite network and could piggyback off of many others, so he should stay connected anywhere on Earth unless something was blocking the signal, which was unlikely on an exposed rooftop. There were two possible conclusions; either his suit was facing a catastrophic communications failure, or he was no longer on Earth.
Tim ran diagnostics, and cursed when no errors were found. He wasn’t on Earth, and whatever had brought him here wasn’t around to send him back.
Tim eyes scanned the area to assess his situation. The rooftop itself was fairly empty, and he was obviously in a city environment. The nearby buildings had similar architecture to Earth, and he recognized the language on a few signs and billboards as Japanese, so either he was on another Earth, or a planet weirdly similar to Earth, like Myrg. He wasn’t sure which option he would prefer. A quick glance over the edge of the roof revealed that well, most of the people appeared human? There was a lot of variation, but he should be able to blend in with the populace without a problem.
Next he reconfigured his suit so it would connect to a network on this world. It took a bit of basic hacking, but he quickly got access to the internet. First things first: A quick check on information about the Solar System confirmed that he was indeed on an alternate Earth, rather than another planet. Next, he looked up Batman. Most of the information that came up was about the personal servants in British armed forces, so probably no help there. He couldn’t find mention of a hero named Superman, and there was no Metropolis or Gotham City. No Justice League either, but this Earth had plenty of superheroes. And by plenty, he meant a truly ridiculous number. Seriously, how were there possibly this many?
Hopefully one of them could help. "Make contact with local heroes" was step 3b in the Bat contingency plan for being flung into an alternate Earth. Bruce hadn't figured out how to miniaturize multiversal travel to fit on a utility belt yet, so Tim couldn't exactly get home by himself.
He looked up “heroes near me” and was a bit surprised when a list of addresses popped up. Apparently, heroes had agencies with public addresses. At least that made them easier to find.
He used his grappling gun and started swinging toward the nearest one.
Still in his suit, he walked into the agency as casually as possible. The lobby was empty other than a receptionist behind the front desk.
“May I help you?” she asked, frowning at him. Maybe it was the suit, maybe he had interrupted whatever she was working on, but she definitely did not seem to want to help him.
Tim approached with a smile anyway. Hopefully, his Japanese lessons would hold up. "Hello! I need some help. Is there a hero I can talk to?"
She smiled patronizingly. It was probably the accent. "I’m sorry, that's not how it works. If you need help, go to the police. If the police bring our agency in, then we'll help you," the receptionist said.
Yeah, this wasn't going to go anywhere fast. "This isn't really a police matter, ma'am… Do you know anyone with experience in…” he stumbled over the word, “...multiversal travel?”
She clearly didn’t understand the question. "I'm sorry, this city only has a bus system. But if you need a ride home, or to school, I'm sure the police would be happy to provide you with one."
Tim's smile became pained. "I believe there's a misunderstanding here ma'am. I'm a hero."
She laughed a little. "Yeah right. Do you have a license?"
Tim was confused. "You want to see my driver's license?"
She rolled her eyes. "A hero license."
Tim frowned. This Earth had hero licenses? "Would you believe I left it at home?"
"No. You have a nice costume, but you shouldn’t be impersonating a hero. Go back to school."
"Well, thank you for your time, anyway," Tim said, leaving before she decided to call the police.
Tim visited three more hero agencies with similar results (though Backdraft's agency had given him a free t-shirt) before retreating to a rooftop to do more research. Almost desperately, he tried to find incidences where heroes encountered heroes of unknown origins, or alternate versions of heroes, with no promising results. There were no heroes that used magic like Dr. Fate or Zatanna either, all of them had powers based on their ‘quirks’. Try as he might, he could find no indication that this Earth had any contact with any other Earths, which was... Bad. People would be far less likely to believe him, and even if they did, they likely wouldn’t be able to help.
Just his luck to find himself on a backwater Earth with no backup. Unless he could somehow work out how to traverse the multiverse from scratch, he was trapped.
Two days later, Tim sat contemplating his existence in a barely furnished apartment. He had thoroughly exhausted the Bat contingency plan for traveling to an alternate dimension until he was left with step 12 c, "wait for rescue." Tim did not find that step encouraging. He was one tiny human in a very big multiverse, and he got the sense that he was less “sent” from his Earth to this one, and more “violently catapulted” from his Earth and happened to land in this one. Tim was trying not to calculate the odds, but it was safe to say that it'd be easier to find one particular needle in a haystack sized stack of needles.
Of course that also assumed his friends and family noticed his disappearance, figured out he was no longer on the planet and no longer in that universe, and figured out that he was sent to another universe, rather than presuming he was dead.
Technically, it wasn’t impossible?
Tim sighed. Rescue could take awhile.
But at least the Earth he was on was interesting. Turns out, superpowers were so common, it was unusual not to have one. Sure, there were laws that prohibited a lot of quirk usage by civilians, but the prevalence of such power had interesting societal ramifications.
Apparently, people had the unfortunate tendency to judge others based on their quirks, with a preference toward people with “flashy” and “heroic” quirks, and a disdain towards those with “useless” and “villainous” quirks, but even that was apparently considered better than being “quirkless.” Tim almost laughed aloud at that. No one on his Earth held that attitude for long, in part because it was common knowledge among heroes that it didn’t matter how powerful you thought you were because of your powers, Batman didn’t need powers to take you down.
Heroes worked differently on this Earth too. Rather than being powerful volunteers of sketchy legality, being a hero here was a highly competitive paid profession.
The training in particular interested Tim. There were SCHOOLS for heroes. Currently in his home universe, heroes were either self taught, learned as sidekicks to more senior heroes, and/or learned as part of teams like Young Justice or the Titans. Honestly, it was a highly risky and largely ineffective model. Tim, a teenager in his own right, had basically trained two teams worth of heroes himself, and that hadn't exactly turned out great. Besides, the rising metahuman population made this model of making heroes highly unsustainable. Tim had already started considering setting up a system to protect and train teenage metahumans before his… departure.
This Earth had already set up a working system for generating new heroes, and Tim was fascinated by it. It was hardly perfect, but it was effective. He had to know more, to see it in action.
The top hero school in Japan was nearby. If he wanted to, he could send in an application using the identity he set up for himself. He could become an officially licensed hero, the first "quirkless" one on this Earth. Maybe in the process he could help save lives and improve this society. He might make contacts that could help him get home eventually.
Tim shrugged to himself and started preparing the application. It wasn't like he had anything better to do while finishing step 12c.