And she was far away.
What she was standing on, was what looked like a small plateau of cobbled stone beside some massive structure built into a mountain.
It was far, far up in the world.
...
The view was so striking and all-encompassing, that she at first missed who had been talking. A small, teenage girl with golden eyes and pink hair.
She had completely missed her, mesmerized by the world around her.
She looked… Completely normal. Like any other girl, Rei might once have passed on the street. The only thing unusual about her was some form of a strange, metal gauntlet.
The girl was holding up… A plaque with writing?
"Wh-who are you?"
"Hatsume Mei." She held up the plaque.
"Now, as you can clearly hear… You can in fact read this right?"
Rei frowned, taken completely aback.
"Yes… I can."
"Sweet. Then you know this is NOT a dream. Human beings can't read in their sleep after all."
She… She vaguely recalled having heard that somewhere.
The girl, Mei, nonchalantly discarded the plaque sideways to the ground, uncaring of it, now that it had served its purpose.
"You…"
She began to understand, her baffled mind was starting to make sense of it all.
"You pulled me here with a quirk… This is some… World you created. To talk to me."
The girl threw back her head and laughed.
It echoed and… She felt her skin shake, and. What? What the hell was this horrible, horrible noise?
Mei turned and motioned with her arm towards the bizarre city so far away.
"Made? Nah. THIS place LONG predates me, Rei. It predates Earth and the Human race too, by some… Billions of years."
"I… I see."
Mei turned back and… There was something in her eyes then. Or… In one eye?
"You feel it don't you? The pressure… The connection… The Link between you and here?"
She nodded slowly.
"What you're feeling… Is the bond between you and this place. The bond between all those of us who have been through true Madness."
She had actually been thinking about madness.
She felt her body shake as the pressure seemed to grow way, way stronger.
By comparison, Mei was completely unfaced.
"You… You feel this too?"
"I did once. But… I ventured into the city."
She did not elaborate on what that was supposed to mean.
"I see you've recovered well from the time you poured boiling water over Shoto's face."
She flinched.
"You… Know about that?"
"Sure do. And if you were as broken now as you were then, you would have reacted WAY worse than you are now. That's good. That means this wasn't a gigantic waste of time."
Rei felt nothing but absolute confusion, and that fear in her soul that would not go away.
"What is this place?"
"An excellent question!"
Mei suddenly became way more cheerful, as she clapped her hands together.
"When sentient beings feel anything, happiness, rage, lust, joy, or whatever other feelings they might have, it creates enormous amounts of energy. And that energy does not simply vanish. It all goes… somewhere . That somewhere is here. This place was fashioned by that enormous energy, at the beginning of this universe, by a God who used it as his base for his crusade against all living things. It has had many names throughout history. Knowhere, R'lyeh, Jotunheim, and many more… But the original name is Carcosa."
Rei did not know any of those… Except for one.
"...Jotunheim? From… Norse Mythology?"
"Yes, that Jotunheim. It was Thor who killed the God who made this place after all. The real Thor I mean, not the sanitized version from the Marvel universe."
Rei had… Many thoughts. The first was that this all sounded absolutely insane. Maybe fittingly, this girl had pretty much admitted to being insane. Just like she was.
Another thought was that she was having an episode… She'd completely lost it.
But… Somehow… She knew that was not the case.
Some deeper, more primal instinct told her that she was neither dreaming nor seeing things that were not there… But then again… That was probably how most insane people felt.
Maybe she was just insane.
For the moment she decided to treat it as if it was real.
"So… This is Jotunheim… So… Where is Asgard then?"
Mei's smile, which had been energetic, faded.
Then she pointed towards… The mountains Rei had seen when she first came here?
She turned back towards them.
Her eyes widened as she began to truly see what it was.
Not mountains.
Stones stacked atop one another… Stones so large they were as tall as skyscrapers and just as wide.
It was a castle wall.
One broken and ruined… But still titanic in size, dwarfing anything she had ever seen… Save the black city opposite it.
"Nothing lasts forever. Not even Gods. Ragnarok took this place a thousand years ago… And that was that. No rebirth, no resurrection of Balder that Christianity added later… just "The End" and that was that."
She felt numb.
Had she been a practicing religious person, these revelations probably would have completely shattered her entire worldview.
As it was, it was just… Overwhelming.
"So… The Norse Gods… Existed…?"
"Yes. Ironic isn't It? All those countless religions and their afterlives, but as far as I can tell, every single human warrior who ever died in battle ended up here."
"Why… Why did you bring me here?"
What possible reason could anyone have to bring HER to this kind of place?
"I needed to talk to you. And knowing you went Insane, I knew I could simply pull your consciousness here."
That… Just raised even more questions.
"You… Needed to talk to me...? Couldn't you just have… Arranged a meeting at my psychiatric ward?"
"You go to war with the army you have. I don't have the actual connections with your family to get such a meeting approved. Nor do I have the cash to bribe the facility, or the political connections to have such a meeting happen regardless of other factors. I do however have a deep, deep understanding of the underlying fabric of the universe, and the means I need to make use of that knowledge."
She walked up to her, and stopped right in front of Rei, looking the taller woman in the eyes.
"No one other than us knows this meeting is taking place. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you are still sleeping safely and soundly in bed. Even Quirks that are capable of sensing souls will not be able to tell something unusual is going on. Either way, it was as good a means of communication as any."
"You… Did this… Just so we could talk… In private?"
"Yep."
She was insane after all. A different kind of Insanity than Rei's, but insane nonetheless.
"About… About what?"
"Your son Shoto."
Shoto. Her baby boy. Her pride and joy… The sweetest of her children…
She heard cries... A scream… A boy who was marred forever by… By… Her hand…
A brief flash of the purest blue lit up the world right in front of her face.
Rei blinked, as the screams were immediately silenced. Her heart suddenly became way, way lighter.
Mei pulled back the gauntlet, now looking like it was made of glowing, frozen, flayed skin.
Then, like nothing had happened, she continued.
"Shoto is an acquaintance of mine."
That brought some semblance of curiosity back to Rei, who for the moment was able to completely ignore the insane and bizarre circumstances that had led her here.
"How… How is he?"
"Sullen, moody, and on an eternal search for people who will listen to his life's story. Also, he doesn't really think things through."
Rei felt a strong pang of guilt at that.
"He is still trying to be a Hero though… Even if he is stupidly inept at planning things through. Speaking of which."
The pink-haired girl tapped Rei on the chest.
"The actual reason I wanted to talk to you, is that Shoto desperately wants to talk to you again."
"He… He does?"
Her voice suddenly was infused with an emotion she hadn't felt in so, so long, that she had practically forgotten how it felt.
Hope.
"Yes. However, he has not reached out to you, nor does he plan to do so, because he has it in his head that you despise him, and never want to see him again."
The whiplash in emotion as self-loathing and guilt came back to her, was so strong, that once again the voices returned in full.
Mei, nonplussed, simply lifted her gauntlet up to Rei's face, and once more unleashed a massive burst of brilliant white light.
"Focus lady! FOCUS! Don't think about that stuff, put it away, you can wallow in self-pity on Earth. You do that here, and you're absolutely fucked."
She blinked. Then focused on Mei's face.
Strange… for a moment, it looked like she only had one… Then reality reasserted itself, and she was struck by how determined this girl looked.
"Now listen closely, this is important. Shoto wants to talk to you, and reconcile and reconnect… But he is only going to do that if YOU reach out to him first. Do you get it?"
She nodded.
"You… You really care about this… Don't you?"
"Yeah? If I didn't care, I wouldn't be here, now would I?"
"...A sweetie, aren't you? I'm glad… Glad Shoto found someone who cares."
Her eyes wandered to the side. Towards the city that still made her spine freeze cold.
"Even if… By bizarre means…"