Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prelude

It goes like this.

At five years old, Izuku Midoriya had the worst night of his life. Or his early life, if you want to get technical, but no one would ever claim that getting technical about Izuku Midoriya ever resulted in anything good.

On that night, Izuku developed his quirk. 

Of course, it wasn’t really a quirk, not in the way Kacchan had a quirk and not in the way that quirk-suppressing cuffs could stop you from using your quirk. No, Izuku had an extra toe joint, so according to the doctor, it was impossible for him to develop a quirk. It didn't matter how much Izuku wanted one, the many nights he lay in bed dreaming, the way he would watch his peers with wide eyes and catalog how they'd first discovered their new ability and try the same gestures for himself once he got home. 

It didn't matter how prepared he was, or hopeful, or kind, or good. Izuku Midoriya would never have a quirk, and that was that. 

So no, he didn’t actually develop a quirk, but he did develop something rather like a quirk, that if you were willing to lie subtly enough to the right people with the right forms signed by the relevant authorities could be construed as a quirk. But that was an issue for later.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. In this case, in the detail about how exactly Izuku developed his quirk. Because that is what changed his story.

It goes like this.

There was once a boy with wild blonde hair and red eyes who knew everything. He was strong and fast and clever and Izuku’s very best friend. Although, just because he was Izuku’s best friend, didn’t always mean he was a good friend. “Kacchan,” Izuku called him, because “Katsuki” was a mouthful that the other boy’s mother used as a reprimand. 

Kacchan didn’t have a name for Izuku. Mostly he called him “Come here” or “Come on” or “Where were you.” Sometimes, he grabbed his hand rather than calling Izuku a name, and Izuku preferred that most of all. It meant they were going to walk side-by-side together, and that always made Izuku break out into a grin. Other times, they didn’t call each other by a name at all; they just snuck off into the woods a couple blocks from the park, skittered their way up the well-marked trail to the edge of the mountain, and settled down at the base of their tree. 

(It was their tree, because it was where their pact was made. To become heroes together. To fight side by side forever.)

One day when they were four, Kacchan picked up a pail. They were with a group of friends, and Izuku had done something stupid, maybe tripped, and everyone was laughing at him because he didn’t have very good coordination. 

He said, “Izuku... you really can't do anything, can you?” And Izuku had been happy that he’d used his name, but sad that he used it to ask something mean. Then Kacchan said, “You can read the characters for 'Izuku' as 'Deku', and 'Deku' means someone who can't do anything!” 

Their friends had cheered along with mocking grins and jeers, “Deku! Deku!,” and Izuku hadn’t wanted to be thought of by that name at all.

So he had done the only logical thing he could do. He turned around and ran home, where he spent the next few hours before dinner huddled underneath a comforter, wiping at his tears and swearing to a poster of All Might with a determined expression on his face that he was going to do whatever it took to get a quirk—and fast. 

Before the end of the night, he would get his wish. 

Before the moon reached its zenith, his world—carefully constructed around blond-haired boys with crimson eyes and promises etched into trees—would end.

(A trickster spirit would laugh from the shadows at all it had wrought. “Fair’s fair,” it would coo, but Izuku wouldn’t know how to hear it yet.)

It goes like this. 

There was once a young boy with curly green hair, equally green eyes, and a wide smile. His freckles made his face constantly look dirty and his hair unkempt, but anyone with a heart would take his hand in a second because something about him was trustworthy. Something about him drew you in, made you want to tuck yourself against his side and ruffle his curls and whisper secrets to him at night. 

Even grumpy, arrogant Katsuki Bakugou never thought twice about the fact that he wanted this useless, bumbling green-haired tag-along by his side. All he knew was that holding the other boy’s hand felt good, and having his bright smile and devoted gaze focused on him made Bakugou feel like he could take on the world.

Everyone ignored the weird things that seemed to happen when the green-haired boy was around. Even though the wind would pick up when he was afraid and a strange flock of black birds always hung around on the fences of the playground watching him, no one could tie those occurrences to him. There was a dancing shadow, which vaguely resembled the boy, that always followed him around like an afterthought even in the absence of any source of light, yet no one could swear they saw anything strange with it. If a person were to focus on it harder, the shadow would disappear from view or suddenly begin to behave—just to prove them wrong.

No, nobody questioned the weird things that happened around Izuku Midoriya; and even if they had, recalling anything about them after the fact felt like pressing together sticky candy-coated fingers and trying to remember what you’d just eaten. There was evidence in front of you, but you couldn’t quite grasp what it was.

Maybe the way that memories seemed to slide off him was a gift. Maybe the way people were drawn to him was a curse. Maybe those things were just symptoms of a larger cause, which tangled up together into that moment, that night in the attic after he ran away from a pail and a blond-haired boy who could sometimes be sweet, with the word “Deku” echoing in his ears. After he spent the rest of the night doing everything he could in order to force a quirk to appear, pushing everything he had, everything he was, into the world around him.

But nothing he tried was enough—no quirk appeared, no special ability came to light.

(A smile shifted in the bark of the large tree whose limbs curled up to his bedroom window. If the boy had known what he was doing—would he have stopped?)  

It was ironic, really. Izuku had wanted to shine brightly, to become powerful and important enough for Kacchan to pay attention. 

And shine brightly, he had. 

Unknowingly, he had poured young, untamed, unhindered magical energy into the attic around him, breaking through the wards near the ceiling and lighting the attic up like a beacon. That kind of power could be tracked by those sensitive to it, and with the wards now dissolved, there was nothing to stop interested parties from crawling their way through the other plane. Nothing to stop them from manifesting into solid form in the attic. 

The green-haired boy would look up as shadows appeared in the rafters—the edges of the attic closing in as he stood alone with darkness breathing down his neck—and he wouldn’t understand what he had done. 

It goes like this.

A young boy, scared, calling for his mother. His voice echoed through the rafters and bounced off the walls, but the sound was muted before it could exit the room—the shadows absorbing it like greedy leeches and preventing it from reaching downstairs. Near the large window, darkness began seeping out of the corner and spreading out along the floor and wall, its tendrils like long-rotten roots that decayed whatever they touched. The young boy was too scared to turn around, even as a dark figure began to strain itself out of the inky blackness, its head streaked with webbing that glistened in the fading sunlight. His green eyes widened as a hand with spindly twigs for fingers lengthened into claws and reached toward him. 

A mother, frantic, sensing her son’s distress and bolting up to the stairs to the other side of the attic door. A look of recognition passed through her eyes as she stared at the figure, its inky black claws inches away from her son’s neck. She took one step forward and said, You can’t have him, like a whisper across steel, and let a plate full of cinnamon cookies crash to the ground. Cookies floated up into mid-air and began swirling together, faster and faster, picking up momentum until they resembled a miniaturized tornado of crumbling cinnamon sugar and sea salt that flung itself into the figure’s eyes. A screeching curse drowned out the mother’s words as she ordered her son to go downstairs.

A young boy, whose joints were locked in place from a mixture of fear and uncertainty. The strange darkness crawled ever forward, stretching its roots across the walls and floorboards until it overtook the window and began blocking out the last rays of dusk, suffusing the whole room with its dark aura. The creature’s spectral form strained joy like a sieve, leaving only remnants, wispy tendrils of hope, that evaporated on contact with the air. In the boy’s soul, something whispered forgotten words of honey and rot, and his feet began ambling slowly toward the darkness. 

A mother shouting, You can’t have him, as she scrambled toward her son and grabbed him by the shoulders, who pulled her son to her and insisted that he Go, now, shoving him toward the door and interposing herself between her son and the darkness. Her son barely recognized her rigid back and the firm expression on her face—too used to her timid nature, the days she spent asking to play the innocent bystander that was saved by the hero, who didn’t even like to watch hero fights on the news because they were too violent, who didn’t have a strong quirk that could be used to save anyone. And yet there she was, flinging cinnamon sugar into the eyes of a revenant and yelling at her son to Go, go, run. 

A young boy, whose feet skittered across creaking floorboards as he flung himself around the attic door and hurled himself down the stairs, tripping on every third step as he rushed to obey. A haunting screeching sound echoed behind him. A dull roar. Crashing glass. Before he had even managed to reach the final step, the downstairs lights flickered out and plunged him into darkness. The words that had whispered in his ears suddenly dissipated into nothingness—leaving him completely and utterly alone.

It was easier to think about this way.

It was easier to separate himself.

It was easier to think of it as some other boy who barricaded himself in his closet. Who put a hand over his mouth and tried to listen over a frantic heartbeat for what was happening outside the door. Who couldn’t stop thinking about that figure in the attic and wishing his mother wasn’t facing it alone. Who was too scared to disobey a direct order and too useless to help. Who was weak and incapable of saving anyone. 

The silence echoing and making everything seem still. His desire to protect warring against his duty to obey, his body trembling as he covered tearful eyes with useless hands, small and dirty and covered in snot, not knowing what to do.

It was another boy, another body, another time.

… it was him. It was always him.

It goes like this.

At five years old, Izuku Midoriya had the worst night of his life. His mom had been upstairs facing an intruder while Izuku hid in his bedroom closet behind an old worn All Might onesie that he’d refused to let his mom throw away. She had told him to run, and he thought he would be safe if he hid, but when the lights flickered back on, he wasn’t alone.

Another intruder had come into his bedroom. They had called out to him, called him “sweetie”, and he’d known the voice didn’t sound right, that it wasn’t familiar, so he crawled his way further out of view, away from the slats of his closet door and the shadow that blocked out the light.

At five years old, Izuku Midoriya had prayed for someone to come save him. 

The person had gotten closer. They had gotten close enough to say his name even though they shouldn’t know it. Close enough to muddle the sound of the All Might theme song playing on a loop in the background. Close enough that he reached for something to hide behind or protect himself with, but his small hands floundered on empty air and tubberware, nothing low enough for him to grab, nothing light enough for him to lift. The person threatened to burn the house down if he didn’t come out, cooed about burning flesh smelling pretty. Izuku didn't come out. He kept his lips pressed firmly shut, hoping that silence would protect him. 

But silence didn’t protect him. And heroes didn’t come for him.

No one came.

Instead, when the door to his closet rushed open with danger looming tall on the other side, little five-year-old Izuku Midoriya had to save himself. 

He lifted his hands up to defend himself, his mind focused on the singular thought of wanting, more than anything, for the world to stop. For him to be able to get away from the person hunting him. For him to escape his room, to make it out of the house with both him and his mother safe. 

And all that want manifested, as magical powers are wont to do, into an effect. Into stillness. Into silence. Into everything in his room hovering on the edge of a restart as he peered around the edge of the closet door, not understanding what he had done— 

Every sound and movement in his room had stopped. The All Might song was silent, the woman frozen in place, dust particles suspended in mid-air. Billowing curtains stood solid and unmoving, paused in time like everything else around him. 

—but there was no time to worry about it. No time to figure out what had happened or why everything stopped moving. Instead, he scrambled to his feet and rushed past the woman, running out of his bedroom and toward the front door, out of the house, down the path, throwing open the front gate and rushing onto the street. His feet kept following instinct, leading him directly to where his mother stood at the place where they usually got on the bus together, searching frantically for him. Her eyes were wild and filled with tears, hair frazzled out of her bun. Tear tracks had made streaks through a swath of crimson on her cheek. 

When Izuku reached her side, he asked what was wrong, what happened. 

She hushed him, told him they needed to leave, that everything would be okay, she promised, they just needed to get on the bus first. 

Izuku had asked her if she called for hero backup. He wanted to know what was happening, who was that creepy lady, where were they going. 

His mom said, Once we’re safe, and Izuku had understood that, whatever was happening, they just needed to get out of there first, and then everything would be fine.

Although “Fine”, as they say, is relative.

That night, Izuku and his mother may have managed to escape the danger that broke into their home; but no heroes arrived at the scene, and the house would lay abandoned for years. Vegetation would crawl up its walls while leaves blew in through Izuku’s open bedroom window. Spider webs would form on the curtains, and mildew would settle into their bedspreads. All the while, an All Might theme song would play in the background on a loop, up until the electricity went out, his computer died, and the house lay in silence once more.

It goes like this.

A young boy and his mother took a bus out of town and never returned. When they did return, they weren’t the same young boy or the same mother.

Because the boy who left town was quirkless, an uncoordinated useless nobody with small grubby hands whose best friend called him “Deku”. And the mother was a kind woman, open and welcoming, who always had time to play games with the boys and bake cinnamon cookies.

The boy who returned had demons on his tail and shadows in his eyes. He kept stones in his pocket, pre-blessed, to cast a quick warding circle that would hide all magic done in the area, and a raven familiar on his shoulder cawing a prophecy of doom. His body was slim yet corded with muscle, riddled with obscure scars and strange marks. He was the type of boy who would sniff the air before entering the room, who ignored custom in search of meaning, and who had been alone for a very long time. 

The woman was different, too. Less open, more guarded, scuttling around corners and ready to bolt. She still had the same kind smile on her face, but her eyes were sharp, her tone firm, not willing to give an inch to save a mile. Her steady hand said she’d run into trouble and gotten her son out of it. It was difficult to tell the cost. 

Her hand laid a heavy warning against her son’s back as they walked into a shabby apartment on the outskirts of town with two suitcases in tow and no other belongings besides.

The wind swept across the streets, the sting of it almost blinding, to herald their return.

Because, as all tales of Izuku Midoriya’s lives begin, Izuku was born quirkless. But in this specific world and this specific life, Izuku had something about him that was special. 

Izuku had magic. 

The downside of magic-users, of course, was that their morality wasn’t like normal mortals. While they were still young, magic-users could be turned evil by selfish desires, by using their powers for personal gain. There were supernatural elements at the edges of society who could sense them, who would stop at nothing to turn that power to their side or otherwise claim it for their own. Too many entities to name, some of them knowing of a young boy with green hair, whose power was heady and whose savior complex couldn’t be quelled.

It goes like this.

Izuku Midoriya was cursed from the start. 

But that comes later.

First Day at U.A.

It was thirty minutes until his first homeroom in ten years was supposed to start. 

Thirty minutes, and Izuku was only now stepping out of the train station. The street in front of him was loud, cars passing along the street, adults rushing forward on their morning commute, teenagers interweaving amongst the crowd with bright grins and bouncing backpacks. Izuku watched as a mother dragged her daughter by the hand, chastising her to hurry. 

His gut clenched, and he looked away.

He wasn’t looking forward to this. He didn’t like crowds. 

Or rather, he didn’t like being surrounded, and he didn’t like the feeling of not being able to escape. Both of which happened with crowds.

Izuku gripped his backpack tight in his hands, knowing he had to push through and hoping to time the moment right. His eyes scanned the spaces between bodies, trying to figure out when to step forward and join the current that was pressing forward toward the next light. His eyes flitted over the river of strangers, instinct driving him to look for anything out of place—hooded figures, anyone walking too slow or standing too still. 

It was easier to do this when Popsicle was with him. His familiar could fly above the noise and distraction, focus on anything unnatural.

Without Popsicle, Izuku felt blind. Dual-minded, as he tried to balance keeping an eye out for danger with actually getting to school on time. 

Thirty minutes left, and ten of that was needed to make it to the school itself, never mind finding the correct classroom.

Izuku took a stabilizing breath, closed his eyes, and took a step forward to join the fray, quickly getting pushed toward the side as he was dragged in the direction he needed to go. He clenched his fists, his eyes darting about from face to face, looking for any signs of danger. He was short, and it was hard to see; but even so, he didn’t find any strange figures. 

No strange anything. 

He was just one more kid in this school of fish ushering toward its destination. 

Izuku kept his hoodie zipped tight over his school uniform, the hood covering his green curls as he kept his eyes peeled. He swam with the current, his elbows jostling into arms and torsos, as he focused on keeping his breath slow, calm, focused. One hand was shoved into his pocket, grasped tight around warding stones. 

He didn’t think they would be necessary. This was Izuku’s first day at U.A.. He hadn’t walked this route before, so there should be no one who could find him. 

He was safe. He was fine.

The surge seemed never-ending, bodies jostling him back and forth as his feet guided him to cross the street at the light, two more blocks, a left, a right, two more blocks. It had been an easy route to memorize, but he wasn’t even paying attention now. His feet guided him forward to the last light, where there was one more crossing and then the gates beyond.

Izuku waited at the curb, his palms sweating, as he stared at the gates ahead. His heart fluttered in his chest. The day in front of him was beginning to seem even more real. He was trying to act braver than he felt, but that wouldn’t change the facts. This was his first day of school in ten years. His first interactions with a group of teens that weren’t werewolves since… who knew when. His first day of lying and saying that he had a quirk.

Which meant there was no way to prepare for this. Not really.

His gut curdled, and the light changed.

He felt like something was guiding him forward, laying out a clear path ahead. If he thought about it logically, he could probably chalk the feeling up to having memorized a map of the route from the train station to the campus. But no memorization could account for how he found his homeroom on the first try, the door for Class 1-A looming in front of him in no time at all. 

He hadn’t seen an image of the interior school layout before. 

They hadn’t been provided a map. 

So how had he found his homeroom on the first try?

Izuku shook his head. It wasn’t worth thinking too hard about. This sort of thing had been happening to him a lot lately—him finding his way to places he intended to go. He hadn’t decided whether to be concerned about it. For all he knew, his mother might have slipped a charm into his backpack that helped him find his way, or the moon was at a certain position for successful journeys, or Izuku was correct in hoping that whatever had started following them a week ago was a good thing, this time, rather than the usual bad.

A buzzing tension filled him as he stood outside his homeroom, shuffling his feet. He slipped off his hoodie and folded it into his backpack before pulling on his blazer.

He tried to remind himself that he was looking forward to this. That he had been excited to meet his new classmates ever since he got his acceptance letter. 

Once Izuku had received his acceptance letter, with Principal Nezu’s voice congratulating him on his high score during the Entrance Exam Practical and informing him that he would be joining Class 1-A, Izuku had promised himself he would form a new pack with his classmates-to-be. Not to replace the wolves, but to fill in the hollow parts where they once resided. To honor them. Or maybe to help him sleep at night. 

It didn’t matter.

There were raised voices from beyond the door. Izuku hesitantly braced his hand against the doorknob, taking one last deep breath before the inevitable. Then he pushed the door to see what lay behind.

His first thought? Was that there were a lot of chairs. 

The room was a four-by-five grid of large desks, each with a chair behind them. Most chairs had school blazers draped over the backs of them, and various desks were dotted with small cylinder cases that held pencils and erasers. 

Izuku took a step in, his eyes fluttering. The first wave that hit him was the smell of metal and glass, vaguely musty, with the lingering odor of some sort of chemicals. The room was more notable for its absence of smell, for the lack of any traces of people who lived here and called it home. It smelled transient, like it had been abandoned and then refurbished mere days before to allow the sun in. The scent of stillness lingered underneath a varnish of cleaner, suggesting no one had been here for weeks.

Izuku couldn’t intuit more than that. Leader had trained him along with the rest of the pups, but there were some olfactory notes that could only be deciphered by a wolf’s nose, and at the end of the day, Izuku was only human. A witch, but human. He would never be able to smell emotions or track a specific person’s scent from this room to another, but he was at least able to get a sense of the place.

Izuku opened his eyes to glance over the numerous bodies of his soon-to-be-classmates, some of whom were chatting with each other, others sitting down. As he walked further in the room, his gaze focused on the sight of a tall dark-haired boy with glasses chopping his arm at someone who was snarling right back. Someone who—even though he could only see the back of his head—Izuku immediately recognized.

Kacchan.

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat, his heart swooping upward as if he was about to go into freefall. He walked forward, drawn by that same pull in his gut, until he was even with the front row of desks, his gaze zeroing in on the blonde’s scowling form.

Kacchan Kacchan Kacchan. 

He was here.

Izuku hadn’t even dared hope that they would share the same class. He was aiming to be fortunate enough to go to the same school. He supposed they had both shared the same dream—to attend U.A. and become pro-heroes that fought side-by-side—so maybe he didn’t have the right to feel so surprised? But they were in the same class. What were the chances?

Izuku wondered if his luck was finally turning around.

“Don’t put your legs on the desk! Think of how disrespectful that is to your classmates. And to the school!  This is school property! These hallowed halls have had famous pro-heroes—”  

Bakugou scoffed. “Disrespectful to my classmates? Tch. Why the hell would they care? You’re the only one makin’ noise, four eyes.”

“I—what—how dare—”

“Go back to your seat already.”

Izuku forgot what he was supposed to be doing. He could feel his heartbeat quickening, its pace thrumming in his chest and strumming out to his fingertips like chords of a string being plucked. Izuku wondered if the whole world was moving in slow motion or if it was just him. A buzzing feeling settled over his skin as he got closer to the pair, eventually side-stepping out from behind the tall glasses boy so that he could see Kacchan’s figure in full.

Bakugou caught sight of him immediately, his expression falling from one of annoyance to… blankness. 

Izuku shivered. Upon realizing that Kacchan’s first reaction to seeing him again wasn’t to swoop forward and engulf Izuku in the hug that he had been wanting (craving? expecting?), Izuku’s heart plummeted. A large part of him wanted to hide. Another part didn’t understand how Kacchan was just sitting there, when Izuku was barely holding himself back from jumping on him and tackling him to the ground.

Instead, Bakugou stared at Izuku with glazed-over eyes as though he wasn’t certain whether or not he was real. Bakugou’s eyebrows twitched, and he leaned back in his chair. His intense gaze didn’t let up, and Izuku was grateful. It felt like the only thing keeping Izuku rooted to the ground.

“You…”

Even if the greeting wasn’t what he hoped for, Izuku couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face, hesitant but bright. It was nice to hear his voice again. 

Izuku said, “Hey, Kacchan,” and if it came out softer and more familiar than it probably should be in front of several other strangers, well… Izuku was never one to notice that sort of thing.

The boy who had been speaking with Bakugou turned around to greet Izuku. He stretched his hand out. “Greetings! My name is Iida Tenya. I look forward to having you as a classmate.”

Izuku flinched at the attention, his smile falling. This Iida kid had a very… forceful personality. Loud and overwhelmingly emphatic. And Izuku wasn’t really used to people, anymore. Especially not normal people. Mortals. Thoughts fizzled in his brain, memories zipping across his synapses as he tried to remember what a proffered hand meant, what the customs for accepting it were.

Maybe it was like a werewolf greeting?

Izuku reached out to take Iida’s hand and raised the wrist to his nose. He dragged the tip of his nose down the length of Iida’s forearm before pressing his lips against the pulse point. He offered a small grin to the other teen. “Uh, hi, I’m… I’m Midoriya.” 

He hesitated around his name, barely remembering at the last second that they weren’t hiding their names here. They were using their legal ones, since that’s what Izuku had registered with the school as. His mom typically didn’t allow him to use his real name when they entered a new town.

To cover up his slip, Izuku offered his own arm out to Iida, but the other teen had already begun wrenching his arm back from Izuku and taking a step away from him. 

“Ah.” Iida paused. “Right! Yes.” His hands fell to his side, stiff, and his mouth opened once more—only for no sound to come out. Then he turned tail and walked away, booking it toward the opposite side of the room.

Izuku’s grin soured, and he shrunk backwards against the long desk at the front of the room. 

That didn’t go so well. Did he offend him by only offering up his family name? Or did Iida not want to join a pack?

A voice could be heard from one of the other seats saying 'What just happened?' while two people laughed. Another person asked if that new kid sniffed Iida.

Izuku ignored them, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he looked away from Iida. He straightened his back, trying to appear more confident about that confrontation than he actually felt. 

Iida must have not wanted to reciprocate the greeting… but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be packmates. It just meant he’d have to try and approach him again, later.  

Izuku lifted his gaze to Bakugou, who was still staring at him with the same expression as before. Izuku bit his lip and approached him slowly. 

Bakugou squinted his eyes the closer Izuku came. “Better not do that to me, Deku.”

Izuku snorted and gave Bakugou a look that suggested his childhood friend was being deliberately obtuse. He chided, “I already know you,” as though that was an explanation, and then walked over to sit down at the desk right behind Bakugou. 

He didn’t even check whether the desk was labeled with his name, so he had no idea that he actually was supposed to be sitting there. He was just tired of standing alone at the front of a room full of strangers, and he wanted to sit by the only figure in this sea of unknown, so he sat where he wanted.

If Bakugou had realized this, he might have said something. Instead, he spent the next few moments eyeing Izuku as though he still wasn’t 100% certain that the other boy wasn’t about to try to nuzzle him in some way.

Izuku’s shoulders relaxed, and he grinned in an effort to stifle the snicker that threatened to burst forth. Kacchan’s expression was funny. 

Since Bakugou wasn’t speaking, Izuku took the opportunity to study him, cataloging all the differences since they last saw each other five years ago. Bakugou’s face was a bit longer, his cheekbones more prominent. His shoulders also seemed to have become broader and more muscled, but it was hard to tell if he was still the same height as Izuku or if he’d gotten taller. 

Izuku was hoping he was taller. He liked the idea of having to look up at Kacchan.

A guy with weird elbows leaned over, breaking Izuku’s musings. “Hey, my name’s Sero. Quick question—is that, uh, part of your quirk? The whole nose thing?”

Izuku blinked at him, confused. He took a quick measure of the other teen—wide smile, friendly eyes, a strange cylindrical protuberance coming out of each elbow, big hands. Nice hands, Izuku mused, before dashing the thought just as quickly. He looked down at Sero’s arm, wondering if his second attempt at a greeting was going to end as disastrously as his first. He decided to be patient and wait for Sero to offer his arm first. 

Hesitantly, Sero did. 

Izuku reached out and lifted Sero’s arm to his nose, slow enough that the other teen could pull away at any time. Then, when no reaction was forthcoming, he repeated the same nuzzling motion, running his nose slowly down the arm before ending at the wrist, lips pressed against his pulse.

Sero laughed, ticklish, a tinge of pink staining his cheeks. “Ah, right, that’s a yes, then?”

Something in Izuku’s gut cooed, and Izuku grinned back at him.

Luckily, Sero took Izuku’s grin to mean ‘Yes, nuzzling you is part of my quirk’. Otherwise, the next part wouldn’t have happened.

Izuku offered his own arm forth toward Sero, and the other boy took it tentatively. Izuku lifted his eyebrows, indicating that Sero should go ahead with it, and Sero… well, he copied Izuku’s motions—because he was a sweet and honest boy who didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with his new classmate. His lips brushed against Izuku’s wrist, the flush on his cheeks widening, before he placed Izuku’s hand back on his desk.

Bakugou’s head swiveled around in slow motion, his eyes wide as he opened his mouth to gape at the other boy, incredulous. “What the fuck are you doing?” 

Sero blinked. 

“Don’t encourage him.”

Sero glanced between Bakugou and Izuku. “Encourage…?”

Bakugou shut his mouth, his teeth grinding together. He gestured at Izuku with his eyes. “That’s not his quirk.”

Sero looked back and forth between Izuku and Bakugou, blinking multiple times. “It’s… not?”

“No.”

Sero’s mouth opened, then closed. “So I just…?”

Bakugou scowled. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” Sero’s mouth bobbed open and shut, a bit like a fish.

Izuku continued smiling at him, content. “I’m Midoriya.”

Sero nodded back. “Right.” He sounded strangled, as though several different words wanted to come out at once, but none did. Instead, Sero pressed his lips shut and offered Izuku a strained grin.

A kid with purple balls on his head and a nasal voice leaned forward, his eyebrows wagging lasciviously. “You gonna do that to the girls, too?” 

Behind them both, a girl with a long dark ponytail paled. She leaned back in her seat, putting as much distance between them and her as possible.

Izuku turned to look at the kid behind him but didn’t say anything. A slew of instincts warred inside him. Half of him felt like he should offer his arm, but the other half refused to budge, not wanting to get any closer. Izuku frowned, debating whether or not to extend a greeting, then turned around to face the front. He didn’t respond to the boy’s question, too focused on the feeling that rolled through him, recoiling, turning itself over inside his gut. 

It wasn’t pleasant.

He scrunched his nose and leaned closer to Bakugou, whispering, “I don’t like him,” under his breath.

Bakugou started laughing his ass off.

Sero searched around for someone else to be paying attention to whatever weirdness was going on, but he couldn’t catch anyone’s eye because everyone who was watching had a hand up in front of their face trying to pretend as though they weren’t actually, you know, watching. 

Which was… just great. Really.

Izuku turned away from Bakugou and scanned the room for more people to greet. The purple-haired kid was a no-go, the girl behind him seemed perturbed by either that kid or Izuku’s method of greeting, and the girl in front of Sero had her earlobes plugged into her phone. Because that was a thing. 

Izuku turned to the seat behind Sero, where a kid with a black feathered bird’s head was studiously ignoring his new classmates as he wrote in a notebook in front of him. He looked nice, quiet. Like he would be fun to curl up beside if they were out in the woods camping, a fire warming their legs.

Izuku stood up and wiped his palms on his pants, nervous. He was one for two, so far. 

He walked up to the boy’s desk, but the boy made no motion of sensing his presence. However, Izuku managed to catch the eye (did it have eyes?) of the dark shadow that was hovering over the boy’s shoulder. Izuku had to blink a couple times to ensure that yes, this was an actual being, and no, it was not some supernatural entity or spirit. Other people in the classroom seemed to recognize its existence. 

Izuku tilted his head at the shadow, in a sort of Can I? gesture, and the shadow nodded, its head a dark static against a background of white. Izuku grinned and offered his arm forward.

The dark shadow looked at his hand curiously, then reached out its own hand, clawed and indistinct, in turn.

Izuku stepped forward to better offer his arm, happy for the reciprocation—

Only to be pulled backward by an arm around his waist and wrestled away from the living shadow. 

Izuku flailed. He turned around to object, but he floundered around the words in his throat as he realized that Kacchan was the one touching him.

Kacchan, who had been giving him a strange look all morning that warned Izuku not to touch him, was now instigating physical contact. Izuku’s smile returned, brightening his face. He opened his mouth to say “Hey, Kacchan” or “I missed you” or maybe even “I missed this,” but any semblance of thought or conversation left his head when he felt Bakugou’s hand pressing on his chest, forcing Izuku’s back into Bakugou’s chest, a firm line of strength, a gods-damned mountain— 

“What the fuck, Deku?! You don’t reach for people’s quirks. You don’t know what could happen!”

Warmth flared from Izuku’s back to hip as Bakugou pulled Izuku flush to his chest, dragging him back to their desks. Then Bakugou made a fist of Izuku’s shirt and used it to fling Izuku around and shove him into his chair. 

Stark crimson eyes glared at him. “You can’t touch people without their permission!” 

Izuku floundered. He shouldn’t… touch people? He tried to think back to when they were kids, but in every memory he recalled, Kacchan was touching him—grabbing his hand, pushing him away, drawing him up alongside, curling up next to him beneath a tree. What was the difference between that and this? 

“But he was offering his arm…”

Bakugou flopped into his chair, not taking his eyes off Izuku. “No, his quirk was offering its arm. There’s a difference.” He stared at Izuku with an incredulous expression, then huffed, seeming to decide that he was just going to deal with this. He shoved a finger in Izuku’s face and ordered, “Ask first.”

Izuku’s mouth opened, then shut. He didn’t know whether to argue that he had asked, technically, by tilting his head in a questioning manner. And then the shadow static bird seemed to nod back, indicating permission. Was there a more formal method of asking that Izuku was supposed to do?

He supposed he could try asking with actual words, next time?

Izuku nodded his head to show that he understood. “Okay…” 

Bakugou pulled back, clearly not expecting Izuku to acquiesce so easily. Then he huffed again and turned around to face the front. 

Izuku waited for a few more seconds for Bakugou to continue talking, but he didn’t turn back around. Izuku tapped his fingers nervously on his desk, but Bakugou showed no more signs of planning to rejoin the conversation.

Eventually, Izuku’s shoulders relaxed, and he hunched over on his desk. If Kacchan didn’t want to talk and Izuku wasn’t allowed to bother that bird kid, then there was no one else in his immediate vicinity to greet. He crossed his arms and rested his head against them, staring out across the sea of students in neatly ordered rows of smiling faces and averted eyes. 

A feeling of loneliness and otherness swept through him. 

There were so many people, and he didn’t know how he was going to get to know them all. It seemed like a daunting task.

A couple seconds passed before an idea passed through his head, causing a grin to break out over his face. 

He leaned toward Bakugou. “Hey Kacchan,” he said, curling his hand around Bakugou’s arm. Bakugou stiffened in response. “Can we have lunch together?”

Bakugou shoved Izuku’s hand off and glared over his shoulder at him. “Seriously?! I just told you to ask permission, didn’t I?”

Izuku crumpled as though his strings had been cut.

Bakugou turned back toward the front and swung his legs up on his desk in a studious effort to completely ignore Izuku, who was now sporting what some would call a puppy dog expression. A moment passed. And another. Then he sighed, looking over his shoulder. “There’s no lunch period today. Didn’t you read the schedule?”

Izuku blinked at him, trying to figure out if he missed something. “There… was a schedule?”

“In your email.”

Izuku blinked again, his gaze sliding over to Sero who nodded his head as though Bakugou was talking sense. The sound of Bakugou’s teeth grinding together made Izuku wince.

“The school gave you a new email address,” Bakugou continued.

Izuku’s eyes flickered back toward him. “Uh, that’s nice of them?”

Bakugou growled, deep in his throat. “You’re supposed to use it to get important information from them. Like your handbook. And your schedule. Seriously, Deku?” 

Izuku flushed. “Oh. I, uh, don’t have a computer?”

Bakugou squinted at him. His gaze flitted down to Izuku’s backpack, then back up. “You need a computer to do homework, idiot.”

Izuku shrugged, the flush making its way down his neck and past his shirt collar. “Yeah, well… we don’t really have money for a computer. And you don’t get electricity in the middle of the woods, so we’ve never really had one before…?”

Bakugou looked like he was about to offer something but stopped. He rolled his eyes and muttered, “Figure it out,” before turning to face the front.

Izuku wasn’t sure what he was supposed to figure out. He supposed he could check his phone every morning for emails on his new email address. That wouldn’t take up too much data, right? The bigger issue would be how he was supposed to do homework without a computer. That might become a problem, especially if they had to do a lot of research. He only had so much data on his phone. But surely the school had a library? Or Izuku might be able to find a library, either near the train station or the apartment? Izuku liked libraries. Although he was more used to abandoned ones.

After a couple seconds of silence, Bakugou growled to himself and turned around. “Alright. Fine. You can use my old laptop, it’s just gathering dust. But the screen flickers, alright? So you’re gonna have to put up with that.”

Izuku smiled. Warmth curled in his chest and swooped down to his stomach, making him feel like he was floating. “You’re letting me borrow your laptop?”

“I’ll bring it tomorrow. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

Izuku leaned forward on his desk, humming, smiling wide as his skin buzzed at the attention. “Thanks, Kacchan.”

“Tch. Whatever.”

Sero stared between the two of them, still trying to figure out their dynamic. He gestured between the two of them. “So I’m taking it you two… know each other?”

Bakugou sneered and didn’t even deign to turn back around. “None of your business, extra.”

Izuku winced at the nickname. He turned toward Sero. “Extra nice,” Izuku reoriented, smiling at Sero as he tried to turn Bakugou’s insult into a compliment. 

Sero flushed.

Bakugou whipped around to glare at Izuku. “Fuck you! I said what I meant. If I wanted to say he was nice, I woulda said it.” He scowled, his chest heaving as though he couldn’t seem to catch a breath. He slammed his hand on Izuku’s desk, a small explosion blackening the surface as he leaned in to growl, “Don’t ever speak for me. My words are mine.”  

Izuku flinched. He hadn’t meant it like that. He’d just… Sero had been nice. He wasn’t something ‘extra’. Kacchan shouldn’t call him that.

“You can’t change people, Deku.”

Izuku stared back at him, trying to parse out what he meant. He felt like he was stumbling around landmines. Izuku wasn’t trying to change Kacchan. He was just… he knew Kacchan didn’t intend to be mean, but calling someone ‘extra’ sounded like something mean, so Izuku was trying to let Sero know that Bakugou didn’t mean it that way.

Sero held out a hand. “Whoa, man, I don’t think he meant it like that—”

Bakugou shifted his glare to him. “He can speak for himself!”

Sero’s eyebrows flew upward.

And Izuku… settled. The scales rebalancing, Izuku’s thoughts realigning. A feeling of wonder lightened Izuku’s chest as he considered the fact that Kacchan was standing up for him. For Izuku. And he was also standing up for himself. In his own, somewhat mean, way… Bakugou was defending them both. Defending who both of them were. 

Bakugou had never been defensive of other people before, much less been defensive of their rights to selfhood or anything like that. 

Izuku wondered what he had missed. 

Kacchan was different. 

Izuku reached out a hand and placed it on his arm. “Kacchan, it’s alright.” Bakugou stared back at him. Izuku felt like there was something in his gaze, trying to warn Izuku or pass some sort of information along, it was hard to figure out which. “It’s alright,” he repeated, and this time, Bakugou relaxed.

“Whatever.”

The urge to hug Bakugou, to crawl into his lap and nestle his face in the crook of Bakugou’s neck, was so palpable that Izuku barely managed to shove it down. Instead, he did the next best thing and leaned forward to slide his arms around Bakugou from behind.

He said, “I missed you, Kacchan,” even though he would have been hard pressed to state exactly what it was he had missed. Kacchan’s everything, he supposed. Even the parts that were new.

Bakugou’s face went through several shades of pale to red, before deciding on a strangely blotchy amalgamation of the two. His arms flailed as he struggled to shove Izuku off him. Once free, he turned around to drag Izuku forward by his tie, forcing Izuku to brace himself on top of his desk in order to avoid falling over. 

“I said, ask first. If you can’t follow simple directions, then you’ve lost your touching privileges for the day.” He shoved Izuku back into his chair, hard enough that Izuku almost tipped backward. 

Izuku hadn’t even known he could get touching privileges. Were those a currency?

Izuku looked up at Bakugou, dismayed. “What? Nooo, Kacchan!” 

He definitely didn’t want to lose touching privileges. How did he get them back? He had to get them back.

Bakugou’s eyes narrowed. “And don’t touch anyone else, either! Got it?”

Izuku slumped in his seat, feeling properly chastised, and pouted. “Yes, Kacchan.” Bakugou threw his hands up at the ceiling and started muttering underneath his breath. 

And just like that… they were okay. 

Things were normal again, or back to a new normal that they were still figuring out. Their familiarity grated and pulled at each other, hesitant glances passed back and forth as they tried to verify that this, whatever it was, was still good.

Sero, meanwhile, continued shifting his gaze between them. He looked around, but no one else was focused on their corner of the room, and the girl in front of Bakugou seemed to be literally invisible, so Sero had no clue what she was looking at. He asked, “Am I the only one watching this?”, but the question may as well have been aimed at the unhearing universe for all the answers it earned him.

Which was about the point that the door to the classroom made the very obvious noise of hitting a wall, without anyone having heard it open in the first place. 

The class turned to face the newcomer in unison and paled at the sight of an adult.

“While I am glad to see you policing yourselves, to some extent, it’s time for class to begin.” The person speaking was covered from head to toe in black and had just unzipped themselves from a sleeping bag. “And I don’t like having my time wasted, which means…” There was a metaphorical drumroll in the ensuing silence. The man glared over them all, and they shuddered in their seats, the weight of a pro-hero’s glare washing over them with a heavy tide. “Be quiet.”

Izuku nervously raised his eyes to meet the teacher’s. The guy seemed older with black shaggy hair down to his shoulders and suspiciously sparse facial hair. He had weird white wraps around his neck in the shape of a scarf and looked familiar, although Izuku couldn’t place how. He didn’t know anyone in the city, other than his mom and Kacchan.

“It took you all eight seconds to quiet down, which means you’re not off to a good start.” The teacher finished dragging his sleeping bag behind his desk and cast a glance over the room. “My name is Aizawa Shouta, and I will be your homeroom teacher this year. I want you all to leave your stuff here. There are gym clothes in the lockers at the back. Grab them, get dressed in the nearest locker rooms, and meet me out on the Training Fields. If you don’t know where that is, try reading your handbook. I expect you there in fifteen minutes, or you’re expelled.”

Wait. What?

Izuku felt frozen in his seat, on the verge of a heart attack.

Silence met their teacher’s proclamation as everyone sat around in unison, dumbfounded. Three full seconds passed before everyone began rushing out of their seats and toward their lockers in a mad, chaotic scramble to the death. 

Thankfully, the lockers were labeled by their seat number and keyed to their student IDs, so they weren’t too difficult to navigate. Trying not to get in anyone’s way (but still having trouble because he seemed to be smaller than at least half of his peers), Izuku managed to unlock his locker, grab his assigned clothes, and stumble out of the mob quickly enough to beeline toward Bakugou, who had begun storming down the hallway with purpose. 

Izuku would bet all of Popsicle’s hidden candy stash that Bakugou had already memorized the school layout and knew exactly where the locker rooms were.

Although Popsicle would probably kill him if he stole his candy stash. So maybe that wasn’t a smart bet.

As Izuku feared, locker rooms were soon to become his nemesis. Not because of the ‘changing in front of other people’ thing. No, he had that part down pat; he didn’t even think twice before dropping trowel and slinging his shirt above his head in one single motion.

No, the issue was the clothes. Their gym uniforms had short sleeves. Short sleeves meant that the length from Izuku’s fingertips to his elbows was on full display. 

Izuku was one of the first guys dressed, and he fidgeted in place as he waited for Bakugou to be ready. His hand gripped his left forearm in an attempt to cover up the iridescent turquoise scales that stretched from his wrist to the middle of his forearm. The scales kept shimmering, unaffected by the light, tiny muddled mirrors reflecting the world around them in stark turquoise. If someone looked closely enough, they would realize the pattern of the scales resembled a handprint—a sickening reminder of when he was twelve and almost got kidnapped by mermaids. 

The scales couldn’t be covered up with magic or make-up or any sort of concealer. They were just… there. And very obvious. And Izuku did not appreciate having no way to cover them up. 

Maybe he could ask Kacchan for an arm band? He probably had one at home… 

In the meantime, Izuku cursed the fact that their gym clothes didn’t have long sleeves. Their typical school uniform had a long-sleeved blazer that had sufficiently covered his forearm all morning, and without it, he felt exposed. 

Luckily, none of the boys knew each other’s abilities yet, so when he thought about it… the iridescent scales on his forearm were technically lower on the list of interesting body features than, say, mask face’s multiple arms or bird guy’s head or red-and-white guy’s burn scar. 

So there was that.

That was… good.

The second Bakugou finished changing and began heading toward the locker room door, Izuku made another beeline to follow him. He stayed in Bakugou’s shadow as they trailed forward toward the training grounds, his fingers instinctually beginning to burrow small holes into the pockets of his gym shorts, large enough to force his warding stones through.

Walking behind Bakugou felt like having a promise floating out of reach, calling for him to grasp it. A bond etched into a tree by a far-off mountain, its bark riddled with scorch marks from little boys who wanted their dreams too hard.

“Kacchan, we’re going to be heroes together, right? The best heroes ever, we promised.”

Izuku wondered whether it could ever be that easy.

At the end of the day, the supernatural world had a law of secrecy to it. No one was supposed to reveal that the supernatural existed to mortals. That was how the different races and peoples managed to stay isolated and safe for so long—by sequestering themselves and keeping their identity secret. And Izuku belonged to the supernatural world more than the mortal one. 

He wanted to be a hero. He wanted to live in this world of quirks and fight against villains and become a hero duo by Bakugou’s side. He wanted that childhood dream to be realized. Even if it didn’t make sense any more, even if the dream had to be warped to ever come to fruition, Izuku was still going to try.

He had convinced his mom to let him attend U.A. by swearing to disguise his witch abilities as a quirk, to only use his primary ability in public and to reserve all his spellwork for the four walls of their own home. That way, no one would question what he could do… although he still balked at the idea of calling his magic a ‘quirk’ when it very obviously wasn’t. All someone had to do was check Izuku’s feet, and they would be forced to conclude the same thing as Izuku’s childhood doctor.

Izuku couldn’t have a quirk. It was physically impossible.

He glanced at Bakugou, debating. 

From what Izuku had been able to figure out, his active ability allowed him to control the velocity and vibration of molecules. If he sped them up, it caused an explosion in a radius that he had learned to control. If he slowed the molecules down—well, he never got to practice that part of his powers since it affected a whole city block every time he tried—but by slowing down the molecules, he could effectively pause time in a certain area. 

He had thought about claiming both sides of his primary ability as a quirk, but since he was only able to pause time on a large scale, he could never use it safely on campus. Anytime he used active magic that affected the environment around it rather than just sensing the environment, it was like a magical beacon being sent off that any supernatural entity near enough could sense. Which meant that—unless he was able to ward the entire area he paused time in—demons would appear, drawn to the spike in magical power. The danger of demonic activity was rarely worth using his ability to pause time. Especially not on a campus with mortals who didn’t even know demons existed.

And Izuku definitely wasn’t going to mention his skills at warding or binding or off-the-cuff runic spells or blessing enchantments. Those skills were to be kept far away from U.A.. 

Most likely. 

Probably. 

That was the intention, at least.

Izuku had promised his mom that, if anyone found out that he was a witch, if they were in danger of breaking the statute of secrecy demanded of all supernatural society… then he and his mom would leave. He would drop out of U.A. and never go back. 

Obviously, that wasn’t the first plan. It wasn’t even a good backup plan. But it had been the only way his mom would agree to allowing him to attend a well-known high school for future pro-heroes whose students were often in the spotlight. The closer you were to the spotlight, the fewer shadows there were to hide in, and the more secrets stood out.

… it was going to be fine. 

He would find a way to keep their secrets hidden. He had to.

He had already chosen the one person he would tell all his secrets to, and he couldn’t chance another. His mom had gotten mad enough at him for the first. It was too dangerous, the threat hanging over their heads never dissipating. Speak about it, and you’ll be forgotten. Speak about it, and they’ll erase the memories of everyone involved. 

Izuku had told Kacchan not to speak about it, over and over in the letters he sent after he left town—right alongside details about his new power, his time with the werewolves, or new run-ins with spirits and demons. He trusted Kacchan to abide by the warnings he sent. He trusted him, and he couldn’t trust anyone else.

Well… alright, to be fair—he might have been willing to trust someone else, because trusting other people was kind of a personal flaw of his; but he’d been cursed to be unable to speak about the supernatural several years back, and that was a big dampener on his truth-telling abilities, nowadays.

Izuku hesitated a glance up at Bakugou’s back. His eyes lingered familiarly on the back of his head, the way each strand of hair acted like it was mid-explosion, trying to get away from his head. 

Izuku couldn’t help but smile, his worries about quirks and witches and powers and forbidden knowledge fading away. Unable to suppress the urge, he rushed forward and hugged Bakugou from behind, ‘forsaken touching privileges’ all but forgotten.

“Kacchan, have I mentioned yet that I missed you?”

Bakugou stiffened. He reached his arm over his shoulder to grab Izuku’s shirt and pull him off, frowning down at Izuku like he was being a particularly troublesome pup and Bakugou didn’t know what to do with him. But Bakugou didn’t mention anything about touching privileges, either. All he said was— 

“Shut up, nerd. You’re gonna make us late.”

Then stomped away with Izuku’s shirt remaining firm in his grasp. 

Izuku allowed himself to be dragged along for the ride, happy with the outcome of continued close contact. Bakugou’s grip on his shirt didn’t let up, and the way he pulled them both in the same direction, never parting… Izuku knew what that meant.

In his own way, Kacchan had missed Izuku, too.

Soon enough, and within the time limit set by the teacher, all the students were outside at the Training Fields, most of them shuffling around nervously while others struggled to keep their composure.

Izuku walked over to try to introduce himself to as many of the students as possible, but Bakugou kept dragging him away or yelling at him every time he tried to nuzzle someone’s arm. Izuku tried to get better about asking first, but apparently saying ‘Hey, can I greet you?’ wasn’t a clear enough request, and ‘Do you wanna exchange arms?’ was met with looks of trepidation, and ‘Can I run my nose against your wrist?’ was always met with a negative. And apparently, when someone said ‘No’, Bakugou took that to mean that Izuku wasn’t allowed to greet them in that manner ever again. And if they were a girl in general, then Bakugou didn’t want Izuku to greet them for some weird reason that he wouldn’t name but involved a lot of growling.

It was frustrating. 

Izuku didn’t understand what the deal was. The werewolves had been much more open about this. And vampires liked wrists, so they were cool with it. And spirits were incorporeal, so they didn’t really complain. And mermaids liked to drag you into the ocean by your wrist because they were evil, so they hadn’t really had an issue with it, either.

Why were mortals so strange?

Once everyone had arrived at the training area, their homeroom teacher stepped up to the middle of the field near a circle on the ground. “Alright, now that we’re all here, we are going to be doing a quirk apprehension test.” He paused, nonplussed, as a hand rose in the air. He stared at the attached student. “Yes?”

It was the nice brown haired girl from the Entrance Exams. Izuku hadn’t realized she was in the same class as him, too. 

“Excuse me, Aizawa-sensei…? Aren’t we supposed to have orientation at 8:40?”

Aizawa’s expression remained flat. “You’ll soon find there are very few events at this school that are absolutely necessary for you to attend, and I’m not going to waste either of our schedules on the sentimental drivel the orientation offers. Everything you could learn there is in your handbook. Or do you want us to babysit you?” 

There was a pause as he attempted to both insult his new students and challenge them… or maybe he was just contemplating which of them would actually need babysitting. 

Izuku had gotten to babysit a few times for people he and his mom were staying with. It never ended well. He blamed the demons. His mom blamed Izuku’s hero complex. So it was 50/50, really.

Once all the students were sufficiently mollified, Aizawa continued. “Now, this quirk apprehension test will give me a good idea about how well you know how to use your quirks, your creativity in how you could use them, and how useful you may be as a hero in general.” He paused to look at a list in his hand. “Midoriya, let’s start with you. You scored first in the Entrance Exam Practical. Enter this circle and use your quirk to throw this ball as far as you can, no holding back.”

Bakugou bristled and glanced over at Izuku. “You’re the one who beat me?!”

Izuku didn’t respond, his mind caught in the midst of a dissociation issue around the words ‘use’ and ‘your’ and ‘quirk’, all placed alongside each other and referring to him. 

Logically, he knew that he had promised his mom that he would use his primary ability like a quirk. But actually hearing his abilities referred to for the first time as a ‘quirk’ rather than what they were… it felt wrong. Disjointed. And Izuku flinched, unable to stifle the physical, visceral reaction he had to the word.  

Something in his mind wouldn’t stop screaming It’s not a quirk! as though the word itself diminished his past somehow, everything he had done and been through to get to here—none of it involving quirks. Agreeing to use ‘his quirk’ felt wrong, because it was lying and acting like he had a quirk, which he didn’t. That’s why he had to leave home when he was a kid—his Entrance Forms clearly stated that he didn’t have a quirk, so why was the teacher telling him to use— 

Izuku’s body stilled, goosebumps raising all over his arms. 

He had actually forgotten about that. His Entrance Forms clearly stated he was quirkless. But then during the Entrance Exam, he also remembered exploding robots more than once. So they both knew he was quirkless and that he had an explosion-related power. Which were conflicting claims, if you went by the typical mortal theory that the only superhuman abilities that existed were necessarily quirks.

Oh spirits. He hadn’t made it past first period, and everything was falling apart already.

The conflicting facts kept warring in Izuku’s mind, causing him to straight-up blank, his brain-to-mouth filter tripping down a ravine and splattering on the ground with all the grace of a spider on rollerblades. “Uh, um, sir… I… don’t have a quirk?”

Bakugou groaned like a dying animal beside him, his rage all but forgotten in the face of Izuku’s utter stupidity.

Aizawa, meanwhile, was about as impressed as you could be when a child with its hands in the cookie jar and crumbs around its mouth was swearing to your face that they hadn’t eaten any cookies. “Of course.  And I’m sure I saw the zero-pointer get its foot ripped up just by you standing there.” His no-bullshit stare deepened, and Izuku shivered. He had the strongest ability to make someone feel the size of a marble that Izuku had ever met, and that was a fairly large order because Leader had been terrifying—

“Circle. Now.”

Izuku gulped around a dry throat, which made his throat tickle, which made his eyes water, and soon enough he was coughing into his fist.

First day at a new school, and he was already managing to piss off his homeroom teacher while looking like he had the plague. Great. 

Izuku had expected for his homeroom teacher to become the students’ support structure in school. From what he understood, it was the job of a homeroom teacher to keep an eye on them, to ask about their day, and to make sure their home life was okay. And if Izuku’s new classmates were supposed to be his pack… then that meant Aizawa was supposed to be his new pack leader. Which meant— 

Ohhh no. He was lying to his new pack leader. Well… he wasn’t technically lying? He didn’t have a quirk, but he couldn’t tell him what power he did have or what he could do, either. He was trying to tell the truth!

His homeroom teacher, of course, had no way of knowing that. 

Which meant that, no matter what he said or did, Izuku was screwed.

Aizawa pulled out a phone from one of his many pockets. Looking down at the phone, he announced, “If you’re not willing to take this test, your score will be zero. And just so the class is aware, as an extra incentive to do your best, whoever earns the lowest cumulative score across all these tests will be immediately expelled.”

The class tensed up in a collective panic reminiscent of earlier, and the nice girl opened her mouth to protest. 

Izuku felt frozen, a wave of denial flooding his mind. 

He didn’t want to be expelled. If he was expelled, his mom would take that a sign that they should leave town, and then he’d never see Kacchan again, and he’d never become a hero, and they would keep on wandering from place to place, and he’d never— 

“I can throw it!” Izuku blurted out, his feet walking forward before he had even decided what he was going to do. His brain frazzled, refusing to think about what he was being forced to reveal as he struggled to just stay above water, to stay here, to be allowed to stay. 

Stay stay stay— 

Izuku took a deep breath around a shaky chest, shoving his hands in his pockets as he quickly rustled around for the five stones he always carried around with him. 

In order to use an active ability, he needed to disguise its presence so that no supernatural entities would be able to sense him. He always kept five pre-blessed stones in his pockets that, when placed in a circle, could be used to cast a notice-me-not ward.

However, people tended to ask questions when he pulled out stones and ran around in an obvious circle  placing them on the ground. Since he wouldn’t be able to answer said questions, his plan had been to drop the stones through the holes in his pockets while walking in a circle. Because that seemed… less questionable. At the time. Not that he knew that his powers would be tested on the first day, but it was his general plan for dealing with using his powers at the school, in public, in front of questioning eyes and ohhhh spirits, this was terrifying. 

Izuku walked toward the spot where Aizawa had indicated he should throw the ball. He felt a bit ridiculous walking around the circumference of the circle, casually slipping stones through the holes in his pants at five equal points—but eh, needs must. Once they were all placed, he stopped, pivoting inside the circle with a flourish (Astra would be proud), and stared at the line on the horizon he needed to aim for.

In the background, the class had already begun murmuring between themselves. 

The redheaded boy was saying to some blonde kid, “He’s definitely got some sort of dog quirk, right?”

“I mean, he did just walk in a circle before settling down, and dogs do that, right?” 

A pink-skinned girl piped up, “Cats do that, too…”

The redhead nodded. “Yeah, but do cats sniff people’s arms when saying hello?”

The blonde shrugged. “I thought that angry kid said that wasn’t part of his quirk?”

“Wait, really? So he just sniffs people?” The redheaded boy laughed. “Awesome.”

A kid with a long tail shushed them.

Izuku tuned them out. Using the stones’ placement on the ground, he imagined the five corners of the pentacle he needed to cast the notice-me-not ward that would fully encase the area he intended to use his abilities inside. Breathing in deep, he imagined an invisible line being traced in the dirt that connected the stones. Then he activated those lines to summon forth the ward of protection they would offer him.

He breathed out, his body settling. He figured that should be a safe enough radius to do this.

Izuku tossed the ball in his hand for a moment, managing to briefly meet gazes with Bakugou, who was glaring at him. Whether because of the ‘I don’t have a quirk’ fiasco or the ‘I beat you in the Practical,’ Izuku wasn’t sure, but his glare seemed to be saying, Prove it. I dare you to prove you’re better than me. We’ll see who wins.

Izuku dropped his gaze. 

He thought of the bridge, back when they were nine. Bakugou holding his own arm, wincing from overuse of his quirk, eyes still wide and afraid as Izuku tried to soothe him with a smile. “ Kacchan, we're going to be heroes together, right? The best heroes ever, we promised. And I can do it, see? I can—”

He shoved the memory away.

Izuku reared back his hand for the throw, focusing on slowing his breath, narrowing his thoughts down to this single moment. 

Throw distance was obtained by object speed. Object speed was created by force. Izuku couldn’t make the ball faster just by looking at it or throwing it. That would only make it combust. But, if he focused hard enough on the point of air directly behind the ball, right as he threw it… then he should be able to cause the force of the explosion to hit the ball at the exact time he threw it. And then the force would apply to the ball, rocketing it further into the distance than Izuku would be able to throw on his own.

Well, either that or the ball would explode. An explosion should only happen if he wasn’t careful, though. 

Theoretically. 

And he was going to try being very careful because Popsicle wasn’t here to heal him if he made a mistake like accidentally blowing his own finger up.

Izuku rolled his shoulder to put more force behind the throw, then swung his arm forward. At the last point of contact, right after the ball left his fingertips but before it had lost any of its velocity, he focused on creating an explosion in the air directly behind the ball. The sound of the explosion was loud enough and sudden enough to make several members of Class 1-A cover their ears, the ball rocketing away from Izuku at an accelerated pace. It sailed off into the distance, far enough that no one saw it land. 

Izuku winced, realizing he should have aimed higher in order to get a better trajectory.

Oh well.

“Whoa… way to go! Now, I’m gettin’ excited!” The redheaded boy nudged the blonde guy next to him, who laughed in agreement. Pink-skinned girl cheered.

A girl with a long tongue sticking out of her mouth tilted her head, a finger at her lips. “So he doesn’t have an animal-based quirk?”

Aizawa told the class to quiet down and held up his phone, which displayed the distance the ball had traveled. 402 meters.

“This is an example of one of the tests I will be putting each of you through. You will have no idea what your quirks are capable of if you always limit yourselves to what your previous schools allowed you to do. No more. Here at U.A., our motto is ‘Plus Ultra!’ We expect you to be able to do more with your abilities each and every day, both with quirks and physical training.” He paused for effect. “Now, show me what you are capable of.”

The class shared a round of smiles as Aizawa stared out over them one final time. He then led them over to what seemed to be the primary running area.

“First up, the 40-m sprint.”

What followed was pure insanity. 

After discretely picking up his stones, Izuku tried to watch everything at once, cataloging the strengths and weaknesses of everyone’s quirks. He was hoping to gauge what level of strength and control of one’s abilities was considered normal for people their age.

From the outset, Bakugou was obviously one of the strongest and most used to his quirk, able to creatively apply it to nearly every situation. Out of the eight tests, he only failed to use his quirk for three of them, since they were based on stretching or hand strength. For everything else—the 50-m dash, distance run, standing long jump, repeated side steps, and ball throw—he used his explosions to propel himself or any object he touched forward. 

That short kid with purple balls on his head, on the other hand, came in last in nearly every test, except when he managed to quickly bounce back and forth between his balls during the side-step exercise. The nice brown-haired girl excelled in anything she could float or fly through, and Iida, Mr. Stickler-for-rules Glasses Boy, beat everyone in the speed-related activities.

One kid had a laser that shot out of his stomach, of all places, and he used it to propel himself during any speed or jump tests. Sero could apparently shoot tape out of his elbow protuberances, and he used that to overextend himself during toe-touches, swing around the softball for a throw, and increase the speed of his sit-ups.

The bird kid had a familiar-type quirk that he used to creatively solve most of the trials, never quite first but nowhere near last. Izuku’s favorite was when he used his shadow familiar to do pull-ups—because there was something hilarious about a shadow bird doing pull-ups. 

The girl who sat two seats behind him in class kept creating stuff out of her body to help her solve each task. She somehow managed to remain toe-to-toe with the red-and-white haired kid for each test. He didn’t use his quirk much except during speed and jump based tests—where he revealed that he had an ice quirk, which he could use to propel or slide himself forward through various exercises.

By the end of it all, Izuku’s mind was buzzing with potential power combos between the various members of his class. He loved working with other people and couldn’t wait to see what they could do together. It was just like practicing with the pups, except better because everyone here had different abilities whereas all the werewolves had shared the same power set.

He hoped every student made it past this test. He was itching to train with them.

On his turns, Izuku was limited to using his abilities to times where he could set up a stone circle, which ruled out the 50-m dash and the distance run. Thankfully, Izuku had practically been raised by werewolves, so tests of pure athletic ability didn’t require much use of his powers. The 50-m dash, distance run, grip strength, repeated side steps, and seated toe-touch were all similar to physical training that Leader used to put all the pups through and Izuku had kept up with.

Izuku was able to reach farther during his toe-touches than 90% of the class and finished sit-ups faster than 70% of them. His grip test wasn’t the strongest, but he had been practicing judo for almost two years, ever since the tengu, so his hand strength in general and gripping ability in particular were definitely stronger than other students.

Honestly, the only time that Izuku ended up even needing to use his ability was during the standing long jump (he went last, so he had enough time to set up the circle of stones) and ball throw. During the ball throw, he exploded the air behind the ball to give it more force forward, just like his demonstration before the tests began. Then, during the standing long jump, he exploded the ground beneath him to give his body more force forward, which he combined with a diving motion and a forward flip that nearly ended with him falling on his butt. 

(Izuku had actually used that move before when he was younger; although at the time, it was during a race across a wide creek, and Izuku had a couple more standing stones to propel off of. Astra had tackled him in the water for being a cheeky show-off, but she had ended up smelling like wet dog, so fair was fair.)

In the end, Aizawa put up a scoreboard reflecting the students’ cumulative scores.

Izuku tried to steady his breathing as he searched up from the bottom. Some kid named “Mineta” came in last, then Hagakure, then… the list rolled backward before his eyes until he found his face and name. “Izuku, 8th,” right behind the boy with the squirrel-like tail that seemed incredibly acrobatic during most of the exercises and could use his tail to augment his strength. 

Eighth place. Not too much in the spotlight, not enough to be kicked out. Izuku smiled. Perfect. He had panicked slightly when Aizawa said he had the highest score in the Entrance Exam Practical. Izuku didn’t want the attention; he was trying to blend in, not stand out. Standing out always got him in trouble, got another demon at their door or eyes following him from the dark. 

Being called forward to do a demonstration because he’d placed first in something… wasn’t ideal. But eighth? Eighth was perfect. Eighth was hidden.

“Mineta, go back to the classroom and pack your bag. If you want, you can go to the central office and see if there is a place in General Studies available. Otherwise, head home.”

Silence met Aizawa’s proclamation. 

He turned his flat gaze upon his students’ faces once more. “We have no place in the Hero Course for students who can only find one way to excel. The life of a hero is dangerous, and failing to perform your best for even a moment could cost a civilian their life.”

Izuku froze, an icy hand seeming to clench around his heart. Aizawa’s next words sounded garbled to his ears.

“Think me cruel if you want, but I will not promote inadequacy.” 

Izuku dug his fingernails into his palm. Cost someone… their life?

Aizawa passed one last glance over the students, making sure they understood, then nodded his head. “Now, you only have ten minutes to change clothes and return to the classroom. Good luck.” He smirked, then began walking toward the school.

There were more shouts of surprise, followed by a mad stampede to rush toward the locker rooms.

Izuku barely noticed. He wouldn’t have moved at all if it weren’t for that redhead kid pulling at his arm and telling him he had to hurry. His mind was stuck on the image of his teacher, his new pack leader, a pro-hero, telling him that not doing his best would get innocents killed. Trying to blend in would get people killed. 

Izuku followed the hand pulling him toward the school, Bakugou’s concerned frown barely processing. He was too caught up in his thoughts.

How was he supposed to do his best while also keeping his secret? Technically, ‘doing his best’ meant using all of his powers, not just his active one. It meant incorporating all those other spells and enchantments and runes that he had promised to leave at home. It meant dragging Popsicle with him to school and enhancing his senses with Popsicle’s wolf form. It meant using Popsicle’s snake form to heal him whenever he got hurt, or using him for reconnaissance if he flew overhead. It meant removing the claws embedded in his shoulder and learning how to control the uncontrollable.

If Izuku ‘did his best’… there would be no doubt he was a witch. He would be found out. Kicked out. Made to leave.

Izuku’s free hand clenched around the stones left in his pocket. 

No. He couldn’t leave. He had to stay.

And the only way for him to avoid having to leave was to not take Aizawa’s warning literally. Izuku had to assume that ‘his best’, for now, was his best with his active ability and physical prowess alone. He would try his hardest with those—not slack off, not hide. And then, when he was older, when he was in less danger, then he could give it his all. He could drag his familiar to the front lines and take out the claws and find a way to hold nothing back. But it was too dangerous, right now.

… wasn’t it?

Aizawa’s words wouldn’t stop haunting him. 

Izuku swallowed, his throat dry with the taste of ash. 

“Failing to perform your best for even a moment could cost a civilian their life.”

But he knew that already, didn’t he? He’d learned that lesson before. 

He shut his eyes and stumbled blindly forward, keeping the memories at bay. He reached out mentally for the void where his familiar’s mental presence usually resided if he was nearby.

Popsicle, where are you? I need you…

By the time he slid into the locker room, Izuku had managed to compartmentalize his thoughts enough that he was back to functioning. He still wished Popsicle were here, but he would just have to wait until he got home. Kacchan said they wouldn’t have lunch today, right? So school probably wouldn’t last much longer. When he got home, Popsicle would help him think it through. They’d figure it out together. Like always.

He wasn’t alone in this.

Izuku made a beeline for his locker, hoping to put on a long-sleeve shirt before anyone caught sight of the weird turquoise scales on his arm. He kept one ear out for conversations around him, but he was more focused on getting dressed quickly and making it back to the classroom on time since that was apparently the only way to avoid expulsion.

Their new pack leader was scary.

The redhead, who had let go of his arm at the door, passed behind him with a whine. “Man, that was rather harsh, don’t you think?” He didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular as he stopped a couple lockers down and began shrugging out of his gym shirt.

In the background, the boy with purple balls on his head was crying in a corner. He was stroking his locker and softly whispering to it, caressing it. Anyone who looked over to watch immediately shivered at the creepiness of the gesture, then felt bad because he was just expelled, then shivered again.

Looking away from the cornerside disaster, the blond-haired kid nodded as he walked up to the locker alongside the redhead. “Yeah, I’ve never seen someone expelled on their first day of class. Think this is our life, now?”

Bakugou shoved past them and practically ripped his locker door open. He scowled over in their direction. “If you can’t keep up, you don’t deserve to be pros.”

Izuku wriggled one hand then the other through his long-sleeve shirt, fingers shaking as he fumbled with the buttons. His heart started racing again as the memory of their teacher’s warning returned, backed up by Kacchan’s new claim. 

Have to try your best. 

Have to keep up. 

Have to be strong, or you’ll be forced to leave.

The redhead shrugged. “Hey, I’m not saying I don’t understand where he’s coming from—keeping us on our toes and trying our best is totally manly. I just wanna still have classmates at the end of it all, you know?”

“Yeah, but maybe it’s just a first day thing, to get us all in line?” The blond grinned. “Either way, we’ll look out for each other,” he said, lightly punching the redhead’s shoulder. The redhead grinned back, his mouth full of sharp fangs. 

“Yeah, Plus Ultra!” 

Izuku’s breath hitched as he stared at the vision the redheaded boy made, fist in the air, calling them all to go beyond and live up to the expectations being thrust upon them. 

Izuku swallowed, watching a moment too long and accidentally skipping a button on his shirt. The pressure on his chest seemed to abate, his heart calming the longer he watched him, this redhead kid who casually shrugged off the need to try their hardest—as though it was possible to give it their all and not be destroyed in the process. 

Izuku wondered if it was.

Maybe there was a way. Maybe he just had to find it.

Several more moments passed while everyone focused on changing clothes as quickly as possible, but eventually, the blond spoke up again. “Speaking of, anyone memorize the way back to class yet? I got confused getting here.”

Sero snickered. “Oh yeah, this is gonna work out great—”

“It’s not that far…” 

Bakugou slammed his locker, and everyone nearby flinched. He glared out over each of them. “Seriously? Get it in line!” 

By ignoring the top few buttons of his shirt and not even having a tie, Bakugou had become the first one dressed, and now he was scowling at everyone else, deriding them for being so slow.

The group of boys around him hurried to catch up, switching it into a race that had one of them tripping over their pants and another accidentally mixing up his shoelaces.

Iida took issue with Bakugou’s tone of voice and began saying stuff like, “You should not be raising your voice in such a manner—” while everyone else ignored the way Bakugou stood imperiously over them all, because… priorities. Notably, not getting expelled.

When Izuku crouched down to finish tying his shoes, he felt a hand curl around the back of his neck. “Come on, nerd.”

Izuku’s heart jolted. 

The hand was like a lightning rod, the touch grounding him and making all the anxious energy buzzing in his limbs sink down into the ground. Izuku shook his head, trying to clear it, and stood up. His legs felt a bit like jelly. 

“Sure, uh, let’s go.”

He raised his eyes to meet Bakugou’s. And if he felt a bit like he was drowning while looking into them, well, that wasn’t anything new.

Bakugou rolled his eyes and turned to leave. 

Izuku followed, the lingering warmth on the back of his neck dissipating too soon.

The red haired kid stumbled along behind them, saying “Hey, wait up—”, but Bakugou didn’t turn around to acknowledge him. The redhead finished shrugging on his blazer and rushed forward to nudge Izuku’s arm, a conspiratorial grin lighting up his face. “Jeez, he’s so manly, isn’t he?” 

Izuku flushed at the contact, not certain how to respond to the flash of fang and the general camaraderie. He decided to nod his head and continue to follow Bakugou back to class.

Sero grumbled from behind them, “That’s sure one word for it,” and the door to the locker room fell shut.

A muffled “Hey, wait for me!” could be heard through the door, as well as a sarcastic “Well, he was nice,” but Izuku didn’t wait around to hear any more. 

He had an expulsion to avoid.

Back in the classroom, Aizawa sighed as he settled himself into his chair for the minimum of five minutes that it would take for the students to return. He had started using this test a few years back as a way to motivate the students to work hard from day one. Without a kick in the butt, they often dithered around during the first few weeks and ended up unprepared for the Sports Festival.

It was a logical test, meant to weed out the lazy and uninventive and to spark some competitiveness in those that remained. A couple years before, he had even expelled two students on their first day.

If they proved themselves, he let the expelled students try out for the program again. But most of the time, they never proved themselves. They tucked tail and ran. 

Heroes didn’t run. Heroes wouldn’t settle for being told they couldn’t do something. Heroes worked hard to prove the world wrong, to do the impossible day after day. So if the student never argued against their expulsion and never tried to prove themselves stronger in other ways, well… 

Good riddance. 

Aizawa rolled his chair back toward the wall, leaning his head against the chalkboard as he closed his eyes. He thought back over his new batch of students, which ones showed promising quirks or inventive ways of using what they had. Todoroki, Bakugou, and Yaoyorozu all stood out in particular.

His mind stuttered to a stop, thinking about that Midoriya kid. For all the boy’s talk of not having a quirk in the beginning, he definitely showcased being able to use it. Only in two of the tests, though—which was surprising considering he placed eighth out of the class. Although, since Todoroki placed second while only using his quirk twice, it was difficult to judge.

Aizawa rubbed the back of his neck, mind flashing to that moment when Midoriya said he didn’t have a quirk and Bakugou groaned. 

Aizawa tapped his fingers on the arms of the chair. The more he thought about it, the more it nagged at him.  

Not having a quirk… 

Aizawa vaguely remembered reading something like that, in the student bios. He opened the desk drawer and pulled out his pad. The facial recognition software greeted him and allowed him access. He opened up his class roster, navigating his way to a folder marked “Class 1A - Midoriya” in the database. The same information the boy spouted earlier was there— 

Midoriya Izuku, Quirk: (None listed)

And yet he had showcased having a quirk both during the Entrance Exam and during Aizawa’s test earlier. It didn’t add up.

Aizawa frowned. He didn’t appreciate liars. Not unless there was a logical reason behind the lie.

Aizawa scrolled lower on the page, searching for Midoriya’s parents. Sure enough, each of his parents were listed, and they were both filed as having a quirk. His mother, Inko, had the quirk ‘Attraction of small objects’, and his father had the quirk ‘Fire breath’. Perhaps the ‘small radius’ of his mother’s quirk plus the ‘fire’ of his father’s quirk had created Midoriya’s explosion quirk? If the boy’s quirk wasn’t registered, then he may have been a late bloomer. 

But even then, quirk registry was required of all students. Aizawa would need to speak with him sometime this week about getting his quirk registered.

Aizawa thought back to the explosions the boy had made. They were similar in form to Bakugou’s explosions except, while Bakugou’s explosions always centered above his palms, Midoriya’s seemed to appear wherever he wished them to. They also appeared less powerful. Or more controlled?

From his scores and progress during the other tests, the boy seemed like someone who focused more on his physical training than his quirk. Aizawa would need to teach him to balance both, equally.

Aizawa tapped his fingers on the side of the pad. He kept scrolling through Midoriya’s record, searching for an explanation, for something that would defend the fact that the boy was very obviously lying about not having a quirk. He hadn’t seemed forgetful from the few interactions they’d had.

Why, if the boy thought he was quirkless and then gained a power late in his life, would he continue to purport that he didn’t have a quirk during Aizawa’s exam? He should be gladly revealing that he had a quirk, rather than lying and pretending he didn’t. 

It was irksome. It seemed like he was trying to hide his ability, although Aizawa couldn’t ascertain a specific purpose behind that.

He tried to shake off thoughts of government plots and potential secrecy clearances as he moved to exit out of the database, but before he could successfully navigate away, one more line caught his eye. 

Former education: None recorded.

Which left the sickening, nebulous realization that this boy, who claimed to not have a quirk and showcased extremely underdeveloped social, cultural, and educational awareness in the mere hour and a half that Aizawa had seen him, was going to be his student. As in, student that he had to teach.

And then there was only one question left to ask: How on earth was Aizawa going to teach a boy who’d never been taught?

That wasn’t in the teacher’s handbook, anywhere.

Aizawa slumped forward on the desk and groaned. He needed another nap.

Izuku was surprised when they were sent home right after returning to the classroom. Aizawa looked like he was sleeping in his chair and had a sign on the board that said GO HOME, looking for all the world as though he’d passed out after having to deal with kids for an hour and a half. But despite the teacher’s closed eyes, Izuku felt like someone from the front of the room was watching him as he packed his bag and followed the other students out. The feeling continued, up until Izuku exited the door and he was out of Aizawa’s presence.

Of course, then he was met once again with the clustered, suffocating notion of walking through the crowded U.A. halls, students milling about and getting in each other’s way as he tried to make it off campus while staying as far away from unknown people as he could.

He wasn’t that successful.

He wasn’t sure that it was possible to be successful.

He hated being surrounded.

Approaching the front gates of U.A.’s campus, Izuku caught sight of Bakugou leaning against the interior wall. Izuku hadn’t expected Bakugou to wait for him. Sure, when they were kids, they used to wait for each other after school… but it had been a long time since then. 

Izuku stifled a grin, peering up at Bakugou with a fond expression as he headed toward him. 

Bakugou rolled his eyes and gestured with his head toward the gates, as though to say Come on, follow me.

Izuku followed gladly, happy to walk alongside Bakugou rather than behind him.

They walked side-by-side for a couple of blocks, neither of them speaking as their footsteps fell into sync. Bakugou would slow down every now and then, as though testing to see whether Izuku would match his rhythm again. And Izuku did. Every time.

It was strange, how time can both pass and not pass. How young little Izuku had followed behind an equally-young Bakugou in a similar manner, trying to match his footprints as Bakugou blazed forward. Walking side-by-side when no one else was around, hands brushing whenever Bakugou wasn’t gesturing at a new concept he wanted Izuku to learn. 

And now here they were.

As they were waiting to cross at a light, Bakugou broke the silence. “So…” Bakugou started, looking sidelong at Izuku. “You’re back.”

It was the first time either of them had mentioned that Izuku had been gone in the first place.

Izuku glanced up at him, uncertain whether he was expecting a response. “Yes…?”

There was a pause, Bakugou casting another slow look. “For good?” he asked, and Izuku’s shoulders melted, warm and content.

Kacchan wanted him to stay. 

A smile bloomed on his face, shy and soft. “We made a promise, didn’t we?”

Bakugou’s eyes pierced through Izuku, making him feel judged. The intense look didn’t let up, even as he added a scowl to ease its edges. “Better not back out.” 

Bakugou’s eyes shifted away to stare at the light across the street, waiting for it to change. 

Izuku nodded back at him. “Never.”

Other words balled up in his throat, iterations of I’m sorry I had to leave. I’m sorry I never came back. But even the thoughts themselves were contradicting—because he had come back, come back to a bridge and a revelation, come back to show Kacchan that he wasn’t lying, that he did have a special ability now, that what he was writing in his letters was real. 

The sour taste of sorrow filled Izuku’s mouth as he kept his lips pressed together, not allowing his grin to fade. I’m sorry I bring danger with me. I’m sorry you got hurt. I’m trying. I’m going to protect you. The words felt like ashes in his throat, his hands clenched into fists. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

But what did it matter, really? Bakugou wasn’t the sort of boy to care about apologies, much less regrets. You fixed things by taking action. You couldn’t fix anything by apologizing for the past.

The light changed, and they walked forward. 

Izuku shook his head and shoved his guilt away for later, putting it back on the shelf alongside all the other things he could spend his days wallowing in if he allowed it. There were shadows enough to hide in, things that haunted him, people that were gone, fears he harbored about how much of it was his fault. 

But he had a new week at school ahead of him, days where he would begin training to become a hero, the potential to form a new pack and have Kacchan by his side. The need to do his best and show that he was strong, so he would be allowed to stay.

He followed along behind Bakugou as they crossed the street, letting him guide them toward whatever they would become. 

Eventually, they made their way to the train station, scanned their cards, and boarded their train moments before it was about to leave. Bakugou glanced back at Izuku as they weaved their way to a clearing in the train car where they could both stand together. There was a spot small enough for both of them, but Izuku had to huddle close to Bakugou in an effort to avoid all the strangers surrounding them. 

Bakugou’s eyes glanced from Izuku to the strangers and back to Izuku. His brows furrowed, but he didn’t say anything. Whenever other people around them moved to get off at their stop, Bakugou inserted himself between Izuku and them, a barrier to the outside world.

Izuku barely stifled his grin.

Bakugou caught the expression and scowled. He shoved Izuku into the wall of the train and growled, “Shut up.” But he didn’t stop doing it.

In the end, the moment of separation had to come. Bakugou pushed off the wall and began heading toward the closest exit of the train. A few steps away, Bakugou turned back to look at him and gestured with his head, saying, “Come on, it’s our stop.”

And Izuku had to shake his head, his heart flopping uselessly in his chest as he admitted, “I have a different stop now.” 

It went unsaid that he hadn’t moved back into his old house.

Bakugou frowned back at him, his feet beginning to move toward the door even as he slowed. “But the house is still yours. It wasn’t sold…”

Izuku offered up a weak grin and a shrug. “Bad memories,” he said, and left it at that.

Bakugou nodded his head, seeming to understand or at least not willing to argue the point further. 

Izuku had written about what happened in that house in one of his many letters, but he wasn’t sure how much Bakugou remembered. Did he memorize the letters before burning them as Izuku had requested? Was it all hazy jumbles of words, things forgotten over time…? 

Bakugou turned around and offered a brief wave over his shoulder with a curt, “See ya,” before walking off the train, just in time for the doors to shut behind him. 

The train began dragging Izuku far away from where Bakugou stood, shoulders hunched, unmoving on the platform. Izuku watched him for as long as he could, his breath fogging up the glass.

Even after Bakugou’s form faded from view, Izuku continued to stare after him through the window. Even as the world blurred around him, scenery passing by in streaks as the train trudged ever on, Izuku’s gaze was fixed, his mind wondering. 

Two more stops and a mile of walking later, Izuku arrived home, with half a day left in front of him and nothing else to do. 

He wasn’t ready to think about Aizawa’s warning just yet. Panic rose in his chest at the mere thought, and he shoved the sensations away. He needed more time. Something else to focus on.

So he did what he did best. 

He pulled out a map from the suitcase at the foot of his bed, spread it on the floor, and found some quartz to scry with. Popsicle flapped down from where he had been sleeping in the window, the red eyes of his raven form peering up at Izuku with curiosity.

Izuku grinned back at him, shoving down all his concerns and worries in favor of focusing on something more important. 

“Wanna see if anyone’s in trouble nearby?”

Popsicle’s red eyes gleamed like rubies in the dark, a feeling of excitement and togetherness passing through their bond with a direct connection to Izuku’s heart. Then another wave hit him, this one full of concern, followed by a final wave of love-loyalty-I’m here.

Izuku smiled wider and sent the same feelings back across the bond. “I love you, too, Popsicle.” Then he picked up the quartz with a conspiratorial laugh. “Now, let’s make sure no one’s in trouble.”

At some point or another, he was going to need to learn that, even if a danger was supernatural, it still counted as vigilantism to deal with it.

But today was not that day. And to be fair, there was a nightmare demon preying on an old widow two blocks away while she was napping. Which was just bad manners.