On a seemingly ordinary day, a traveler from the future crashes into the lives of All Might and Melissa Shield, altering the course of events and setting Izuku, Ochako, and Melissa on a collision course. Now, the three must learn how to navigate the new future ahead of them.
Constants and Variables is a My Hero Academia Peggy Sue fic written by Aliandris
, author of Back to the Beginning. Together, the two fics and the prototypes to Constants and Variables, To Save the Future and Aegis Unrivaled, form My Time Travel Academia.
Constants and Variables can be found on FanFiction.Net here and on Archive of Our Own here.
Constants and Variables provides examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: Melissa Shield was Quirkless in canon. Here, she's a Torchbearer of One For All.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Melissa Shield, Eri, and Toshinori Yagi appear in chapter 1, which is set two years before Izuku Midoriya started attending U.A.
- Adaptational Villainy: The Archive Of Our Own page uses the "Villain Bakugo Katsuki" tag, meaning Bakugo will not become a hero in this story. The story reveals that this is due to the Meta Liberation Army recruiting him.
- An Arm and a Leg: Melissa's Vestige of Izuku apparently got into a battle so tough he destroyed his right arm. Somewhat mitigated, as he seems to have learned how to shape the Quirk's energy into a replacement.
- Ascended Extra: Melissa Shield's only main role in canon was inMy Hero Academia: Two Heroes. Here, she's a member of the U.A. Hero Course, as well as a Torchbearer of One For All.
- Big Damn Heroes: Melissa's future counterpart, heretofore referred to by her alias Risa Sword, kicks things off by breaking into the Shie Hassaikai Compound alone and rescuing Eri (soon renamed Erin Sword).
- Cliffhanger: Chapter 36 ends with All for One deciding the current Nomu attacks aren't causing enough chaos and that it's time to make a bigger statement.
- Disabled in the Adaptation: Ochako needs glasses to see properly in this fic.
- Expy: For her internship, Melissa visits a heroine named Celica. Her Quirk allows her to absorb energy from enemy attacks and turn it against them, she's a martial artist, and she lost her right arm to a villain, but got a yellow prosthetic to replace the limb, making Celica an expy of Yang Xiao Long. Even her hero name comes from Yang's weapon.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: After Aizawa forces Melissa to use more of One For All than she can handle for the ball throw, which ends in breaking her arm, Nezu gives him a What the Hell, Hero? for what he did. When Kayama explains that Aizawa is as harsh as he is because of what happened to Oboro, Nezu says that while he does agree with Aizawa's goals, projecting his own trauma onto his students like that is crossing the line and mandates that Aizawa take some time off to get therapy for the incident. Meanwhile, Nezu will teach 1-A instead.
- Future Badass: Risa Sword, Melissa's future self, casually rescued Eri from the Shie Hassaikai all on her own, a feat that canonically took a large group of heroes at the cost of Sir Nighteye's life and Mirio Togata suffering a De-power.
- My Future Self and Me: Risa Sword, after rescuing Eri, visits I-Island to pass on her copy of One For All to her past self before dropping off the radar.
- Original Character: Melissa's class has a girl named Rika Akari, a girl who has a Playing with Fire Spontaneous Weapon Creation Quirk, acting as Melissa's rival in the class.
- Point of Divergence:
- Melissa travels to Japan to attend UA and meet Izuku while Izuku transfers schools where he meets Ochako (who moves to Mustafu because of it becoming the new base of operations for her parents' construction company). This allows all three to become closer earlier than in canon.
- The investigation into Aldera prompts the Meta Liberation Army to make a move and they send Slidin Go to recruit Bakugou.
- Villains making moves earlier than canon prompts Gran Torino to come out of retirement earlier.
- Something Only They Would Say: In order to prove her identity to her past self, Melissa claims her name is "Risa Sword", which is the name of the main character of fanfic that Melissa writes about.
- Tempting Fate: While on her Internship after the Sports Festival of the second year, Melissa thinks everything will be just fine. Unfortunately, the League of Villains makes an attack during the week.
