Chapter Text
Everything was static, and she enjoyed every second of it.
A wave crashed again, though Izuku's mind was barely present enough to process the sound. It echoed off the mountains of trash that lay on Dagobah Beach. The place was a mess, and it had been for a while. It's why she had always liked it. The piles of trash littered the land in an almost artistic way. When she had both the sea and a rainy day, the place became perfect.
The raindrops hit every spot of the beach, creating small indents in the sand while being absorbed into the ground. Water rushed underneath the earth, soaked into the sea and sediment. Small streams flowed down from the peaks of rubbish, stopping in places where the water could begin to pool, long since overflowing and creating more streams. Waves collided with the sand, moving the small particles up and pulling them back into the sea. The water hit Izuku's skin, and she warmed it a few degrees to find comfort in it. She felt the rain bouncing off her clothes where she didn't allow it to soak for too long, and small drops falling off the almost dry cloth. The water kicked up as a foot landed in a puddle. The boy's blood flow was erratic and familiar.
Izuku enjoyed the last few moments of true relaxation.
On days like today, Izuku enjoyed lying where the sand was cleanest and just feeling everything—never having to worry about interruptions or catching a cold. Static. Static. As long as she didn't focus on anything, it was only white noise and peace.
"Izuku!" He's the only other person besides her mom who knows she enjoys it here.
Izuku straightened her laying position and turned her head to the noise, not quite ready to remove herself from the ground. "Over here!"
The footsteps in puddles, along with the heartbeat, alerted her to his approach. A worn umbrella peeked out from around a broken television, which sat on the side of a meter-tall pile of trash. His hand rested on it as a red glare met her eyes.
"You skipped school."
"Pfft, what are you talking about?"
"Deku." He straight-up growled. Weirdo.
"Yessss?—Ah!"
The television and trash heap exploded. Izuku startled upwards, now sitting, but still took that moment to enjoy the movement of water from the force of his quirk before slowly looking back to him. "You have anger issues."
He huffed, collapsing the umbrella as he entered her range. "We had career day today."
He sat down next to her, trusting her quirk to keep him safe from the pool he was about to sit in.
"Let me guess, everyone wants to be a hero?"
"Yes, those hero wannabes have nothing else on their mind."
"You're the 'wannabe' that everyone knows is shooting for U.A."
That earned a glare from him. He pushed her shoulder, and Izuku allowed her head to softly hit the sand again. "I'm glad I'm not going around about it, way too much attention if you ask me."
"Actually," he said, and Izuku was already cringing, "Sensei called you out when he saw the application—that I handed in for you, by the way. He's mad you didn't show up today."
"Rude. How is he even still surprised?" she said. Kacchan squinted at her. "I'm serious, Katsuki! Did you not look out your window when you woke up, see that it was pouring today, and think: 'Welp, Izuku isn't coming to school today,' then scream 'Die die die!'? It's not like I would have been able to focus anyway—it was raining terribly during those first periods."
"It's ruining your record, and I actually want you to get into U.A. I know you could block out the input of your quirk if you actually trained hard enough."
Izuku finally fixed him with a look of her own. He stared unflinching, and she forced herself to sympathize despite the heat in her lungs. She could understand why he was pushing her now of all times, but why now, when the rain muffled her thoughts and she wanted to be nowhere? She hated the thought of breaking away from the quiet her quirk provided, and he knew she was afraid of what training would do to the balance of it all. Anytime else and she had to deal with pipes in the wall, sewers, and the feeling of distant toilets flushing waste. It was because she knew he understood and cared that she didn't allow the downpour to soak him to the bone. He hated rain, and if it was anyone else who forced her mind so out of it, she wouldn't be so kind.
"Fine." She took a handful of water and squeezed it in her fist. "Next time, I'll show up."
Pieces of the television set settled into the sand as she felt movement around her float over it. "I got a glimpse of that new hero today. Mt. Lady? I should do some more research on her."
Kacchan rolled his eyes and turned his head toward the sea. Another wave moved onto the land as she followed his gaze, already knowing what he was going to ask.
"Have you trained your quirk at all recently?" He said it, tired from the school day. She looked over to him with a calm stare and tossed the water pebble at a rusted stop sign, denting it.
"That's what the hero course is for."
They both knew she had the strength to reach it.
The slime villain exploded toward them from a grate, screaming about a new flesh puppet, and Izuku immediately turned on her heel to face it. The wall of sludge stopped in the air like a frozen explosion, which contrasted with the very real explosion that followed. The blast was concentrated, and the living liquid eked backward with a screech from where its teeth were. Izuku allowed the force to carry it back, but when the sludge villain slowed sooner rather than later, she took control once again.
"Why the hell do you always choose this way? This damn overpass always gave me the creeps."
"While I'm surprised you're actually admitting that, can you please not?" she frowned upward at the floating facial features, the liquid bubbling and twitching in her grasp. "This thing is fighting for control, and I'm pretty sure I'm losing."
Quirks were like a muscle, and this arm wrestling wasn't in her favor. She should have warned Bakugo and started running as soon as she sensed the movement underneath them, but she always tried to turn her attention away from groundwater. Bakugo walked forward with his hand popping.
"No." Izuku said, and Bakugo's head turned to her with that squinty look he got when it started to storm and she took the direction toward Dagobah. "That first explosion was just reflex, and that's easy enough to explain."
"And only a big one will blast this one away. With him frozen like this, yeah, I'd rather not worry about it either." He paused and lightly tapped his teeth together. "Alright, slowly back up with me. Don't trip, dumbass."
"Just watch them, please."
"That's your job," he laughed, holding his phone.
She allowed herself the courtesy of blinking, visualizing the liquid form on the back of her eyelids for that split second. The villain twitched forward in response. At least she didn't have to worry about a living shape falling apart when she stopped looking.
Her focus began to center on the mass in front of her, and the precious white noise faded away.
A camera flash lit up the shadows, and Izuku huffed hearing the sound behind her that Bakugo failed to mute. "I know you didn't just—"
"Auntie's going to freak."
"I'll kill you."
"Kidding—"
A non-Kacchan explosion rang out, and the slime launched toward them. They both screamed in ways they silently agreed to never speak of again, and failing to take Bakugo's previous advice, Izuku fell on her ass. He reacted immediately by grabbing her by the scruff, his other hand positioned toward the threat. Expecting the powerful noise, Izuku covered her ears and braced for him to blast them both away. "Don't rip my shirt—"
"Have no fear!" The voice boomed through her palms in a way that headphones or computer speakers could never match. Her hand curled slightly to hear. "For I am here!"
Holy shit. All Might in casual T-shirt and cargo pants. Defeating a villain in a single blow for the umpteenth time. Quick, take in the image. How the hell did he even squeeze into those clothes?
"A family secret, young lady." He posed, tilting to the side and flexing his arms above his head. Izuku's fingers fluttered away from her ears.
Incredible. Peak human. She and Katsuki could never reach such a level of perfection—
"Oi, don't bring me into this."
"Kacchan~!" She swung her body around so he could see the stars in her eyes. "Don't be so embarrassed."
"Definitely don't bring me into—hey!" He shook her hand out of his pocket while off balance, failing to protect his property. Izuku jumped up and practically skipped forward, skidding to a stop and bowing with two hands outreached.
"The stick up there gives him mutism. Please sign these for us! Oh, oh, and my phone case! And Katsuki's face! Kacchan, take a photo!"
"Of course! Of course!" All Might zigzagged around the overpass, traces of the villain disappearing. "Hahahaa!"
Two soda bottles stopped their blurring motions as their lids spun onto them. Appearing by her side, All Might held them up victorious next to Izuku. Bakugo snapped a selfie of all three of them like a true connoisseur. Then, equally as fast, All Might sped out from under the overpass, falling into a stretch.
"Sorry for the rush, but I'm afraid I must be going! Plenty of villains where this rapscallion came from! I'm glad you two are unharmed! Thank you for your support!"
He soared, and Izuku was giggling.
"Don't look at me like that, I'm sure he's used to fangirls." She waved the cards in his face with a grin. "I know we barely got a word in, but what's up with the dark and mysterious act, fanboy?"
A gentle snatching later, and their two All Might cards were back in his pocket where they belonged.
Katsuki flexed his fingers against the weight of sweat, his hand itching for release.
The daylong rainfall had cooled the air, but the walk followed by the excitement of villainy had triggered the reactionary aspect of his quirk. He'd gotten a handle on the daily buildup in his palms, but on the days he couldn't help but be pissed off, you'd catch Explosion popping off wildly. He thanked his younger self, who did nothing but shoot sparkles just for fun, unknowingly training his hands early to create a constant stream of sweat and nitro. That feral kid who'd shout to the world about how he had increased the time limit of those small lights, little by little. Spending so much time outside because God help him if Mom caught him creating fire hazards in her home.
He'd always wondered if that played a part in the growth of quirks—the way he'd accepted it immediately and did nothing but play with it. A young cultivation born out of pure childhood enjoyment. Would he have been as strong as he was now if his quirk so heavily impacted the mind as it did Izuku?
The plan was to follow up with his friends at the arcade, who'd snickered when he said he was finding her first.
Izuku, who never showed off her quirk unless she wanted to prove she had one. Izuku, who never mindlessly rolled drops around her fingers anymore or made little water figures dance. As far as he knew, she only used her quirk to dry laundry—and she's still powerful as all hell.
Deku, whose name went from "useless" to "lazy"—which was more hilarious than insulting when she could rip the pipes out of the wall and drown you. But he'd find that wooden puppet lying on that beach, and Explosion tingling at his fingers would beg to turn the waves of trash into smoking ash. His own worry turned into a constant annoyance.
Deku, who blatantly says her dream school—the best school—is just one of many options. She wanted to be a hero, sure, but the path to get there was as blurry and changeable as everything else was to her, besides the constant of Dagobah. Katsuki had only ever had one path that he'd feel his best in, where he'd be his strongest while reaching that spot at the top, and he wanted that dumbass to stick as close as possible to it, even if she'd never thank him for it.
Izuku, who turned away from the sidewalk just a block away from the arcade—who he was going to chide again to hurry on before he found an expression on her face he had only seen once before, when she was seven and clutching what was now a fading scar on her shoulder.
He cracked his mouth shut, trusted her gaze, looked over, and saw a skeleton of a man, passable for your average mutant quirk, trudging down the street away from a nearby police station. The man openly cleared his throat into his fist, looking straight forward where he was walking in a direction they had no business in.
When Izuku started following, Katsuki matched her steps. Her eyes darted around toward the people who marched past, like she was looking to get away, but still kept the trail of the tall blonde man.
"Izuku."
"What?"
Katsuki clenched his jaw, tightening his fist around the budding sweat and rubbing away the heat there with his thumb. The question of what aren't you telling me already on his tongue, but he knew from the one-word response her silence was purposeful—the possibility that her quirk was just being a distraction now dead in his mind.
Then she stopped... stopped and turned right around back toward the arcade, a wide-eyed and blank look on her face. Katsuki snapped his hand to her wrist and glared at the retreating figure of the man. Izuku pulled on him harder than she probably meant to.
"Hey, no, sorry," the words were fast and erratic, "It's just my quirk aga—"
"Oi!"
He shouted as soon as the lie left Izuku's mouth, and Katsuki looked—really looked—at the thin man who turned his head toward the pair of students. A practiced face of calm in those sunken blue eyes made Katsuki's blood boil below the wrist. Izuku bumped in front of him and strained a smile out.
"Sorry, sir! I confused you with someone else and scared my friend!"
Katsuki's opposite hand from Izuku sizzled. "Don't bullshit me, Deku! Who the hell do you know that looks like that?"
"Katsuki, please. Let's talk about this later, I want to go to the arcade!" She hated the arcade.
"I suppose," the man spoke at the perfect volume where Izuku and Katsuki could just barely hear, "we all should go someplace quiet."
"We're not going anywhere with you." Katsuki willed his eyes to scream stay the fuck away at the man, but Izuku tugged at his sleeve.
"Kacchan..."
"My quirk can sense blood flow and other liquid bodily functions—only the major ones unless I focus on a single person. And I really wasn't trying at first—I swear on my mom. I just thought, with all the strength you have, it was fine if your body was different. I thought it must've had something to do with your quirk, and I was going to fangirl later and come up with a hundred theories like: 'All forms of energy and sustenance he intakes must go straight to his muscles and become pure, pure power.' Sunlight, food, or the molecules in the air as you breathe. It made sense when I thought about it—there's a terrifying amount of energy in the mass of just a slice of bread, right? Knowing you and everything you are, I always thought your quirk had to be something absolutely crazy like that.
"But then I saw you again and... when I noticed the same anatomy—the same organs that were missing in someone who looked nothing like you. This time I actually focused and... I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine."
Izuku bowed to All Might for the second time today, her chair forgotten behind her. The detective in the room side-eyed the pro hero with a single nod.
"You two understand the seriousness of the situation?"
"Of course!" Izuku waved her hands upwards, "Why did you think I tried to leave? I thought I had just run headfirst into a government conspiracy and I could be killed for knowing this!"
"We get it, yeah." Katsuki shook his head at her. "We won't say a damn thing to anyone."
"That's an interesting way of looking at it," All Might smiled and breathed out, "but I would never allow anyone to die to keep this secret."
The strongest were never perfect, a young Katsuki had already learned that lesson. So when All Might had shown the two of them the twisted scar where his health used to be, it only hammered the nail deeper into that corner of Katsuki's brain. He had forced a calm acceptance of new knowledge that his childhood hero was carrying so much more weight than he'd thought.
Izuku tapped away at the desktop in her room, his borrowed school notebook almost forgotten next to the computer. Katsuki could hear her hands typing rhythmically while he stared at his own studies strewn across an outer corner of her bed. She, on the other hand, despite the exaggerated fangirling—which was purposeful for his displeasure, he suspected—had taken the news in stride. Asking a barrage of questions that took up far too much of the old hero's time. Katsuki didn't know where she got the energy when she acted tired the other three-quarters of the day.
"His record barely shifts at all," Today Izuku had scrolled through several forums, mumbling every step of the way, "He's not the type to fudge numbers, so just how efficiently is he using his time limit? Shouldn't he try to save it in case of a grander emergency, or is that a weakness that can be exploited by distracting him with smaller threats and villain activities without alerting him to the actual scheme? Keeping a reputation that allows civilians and other heroes to rest easy must be almost impossible with his current situation, but he's also seen as an impossible force of nature, and with the way he can force that frail body back into peak perfor—"
He threw an eraser at her head. It bounced and landed somewhere near the keyboard's F key.
"Copy the notes, Deku."
It was clear she had to get the questions out of her system—ones that were far too dark to say to the Number One's face.
"Sorry, sorry."
Katsuki was satisfied by her just opening the damn thing, and turned back to stare at the pencil in his hand. Its lead accidentally snapped, leaving a small dark trail on the paper. If only she put that much time into U.A.
His hand rose in temperature.
An impossible force of nature, huh?
"What's the closest a hero can come to perfection?"
Katsuki leaned against the wall of the police station with his foot up against it and his fingers circling the two All Might cards in his pocket. The calm his hand experienced when he touched the paper reminded him of his ability to be gentle with his Quirk, to lay off the power building in his fingers. It was this, in life, one of the few things that Katsuki considered both fragile and sacred, where the heat in his hands would subconsciously hold steady. Izuku was not fragile, but he'd still never again let Explosion lose control when in contact with her. She had made her way to the bathroom, and for a few short minutes, Katsuki had caught—and was left alone with—that imperfect, impossible force. If anyone was actually perfect, they'd be Buddha or Jesus or something.
All Might had finished gathering his things and looked around the room at those distantly distracted with desk work and phone calls. "Looking to become a hero, young man?"
"We both are." Katsuki squeezed the hand opposite of the cards. "U.A."
All Might smiled with something far beyond the hollowness in his eyes. "It's a difficult question. What you see here is the closest I've gotten."
A bony hand gestured toward the hero's body, and Katsuki's eyes turned to where the women's restroom was.
"Can anyone be better than what you are?" Katsuki fought the word were off like it was a starving lion, mentally blowing it into chunks of flesh, fur, and bone.
"I'm certain of that. I'm only the first prototype, if you will," All Might coughed out a chuckle while saying the word in English, "The next Symbol... they'll undoubtedly learn from my mistakes. And then the next."
"Any big ones?"
"Mistakes?" All Might said, the 'besides the obvious' going unspoken. His hand came up to his chin and wiped the corner of his mouth. "While I failed in keeping some friends and allies closer—or safe—I can't regret anything as the Symbol itself now. Though my connections—my inability to separate my two lives and emotions—led to this."
His hand rubbed the white T-shirt at the left ribcage, "I had lived as though I was one with the Symbol, and I was wrong. Now it's more separate than ever."
Katsuki hummed as he watched Izuku walk through the women's door, "You thought you were perfect?"
"No, I haven't thought that for decades." All Might looked over at Izuku as well. "Though I still have my ideals and pride, and I won't allow the former to be looked down on as anything less than perfect."
Katsuki reset his face to neutral at her approach.
"Talking to him without me?" She smirked and leaned forward knowingly. "I knew that fanboy in you would come out eventually."
"Don't mind Young Bakugo," All Might greeted her with another warm smile. "He's just asking for some heroic advice—it's what I'm still good for."
"We should hurry on, Auntie's definitely worried by now." Katsuki looked at Izuku, ready to go home and process all of this.
"Oh, once we show her that All Might selfie you took, she'll understand big time." She grinned a devilish grin, already getting her master manipulation in order.
"You two," All Might said, and they both looked over quickly, "I'll be watching. When you do reach U.A., I have a strong belief the entire next generation of heroes will be this bright."
The tip of Izuku's pencil fell out of pace, her other hand reached over to her now autographed All Might-themed phone, lighting up its screen.
Katsuki looked over as she frowned, "Auntie turned the water back on?"
"She texted me a warning, but I didn't see it," Izuku said, "but she's making dinner, so no complaints here."
She'd had only ever complained about the pipes once before, and the ever-diligent Inko had always made her daughter's comfort a mission. She'd even talked to the neighbors under the guise of water conservation.
Izuku went back to writing, and Katsuki noted he'd soon have to go home for his dinner, if Inko didn't invite him to stay. He checked his messages for his own mother.
Ten months till U.A.
All Might first, then the whole world would be watching.