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Bakugo Katsuki had his world flipped upside down when De- Izuku left. Apparently his old man had died and left things to Aunt Inko and the nerd, so they moved away and were never heard from again. This was two years ago now, and Katsuki was in the hero course at UA, his dream. Something about it felt empty, though, and he didn’t know how he felt about it.
He knew now that he had been a massive piece of shit. He literally walked up on some loser getting attacked by other members of their school, based on the uniform, and he, of course, beat them the fuck back. They were being shitstains, and Katsuki was going to be a hero!
But after the victim shied away from his angry expression and crackling palms, he didn’t see the stranger.
He saw Deku.
And suddenly he realized that, ah, shit, he had been a shitstain for… why? Because the kid he grew up with still hung around? Because he didn’t have a quirk? He was still the same stupid kid who Katsuki used to want to hang out with. The only one who had changed was Katsuki, and…
And he didn’t like it.
So he yelled at the hag to put him in some fucking therapy and anger management classes. She thought it was such a good idea, she enrolled in them too, and now there was slightly less yelling in the Bakugo household. Oh, sure, they were still abrasive, blunt, and sarcastic as fuck, but…
But he started to realize he didn’t want to be a shitstain, a bully.
After all, Bakugo Katsuki was going to be the greatest hero.
Even if Round Cheeks and Frog Face were better than him in the rescue training. Fuck them, he’d beat their asses in combat hands down.
And then Icy Hot fucking… blew up the goddamn stadium, who the fuck does that, and Katsuki was once again in second place. What had gone wrong? What had made the kid who used to only half ass everything suddenly care and put his all into it?
…And what the fuck got Endeavor kicked out of the stadium? He only found out after the fact from the memes Pikachu showed him, but he noticed Icy Hot give a small smile…
Whatever, not the point, he was going to be the best, no matter what it took!
(Even if the winner’s stand felt a little empty without a certain menace beside him.
He was ignoring that.)
Togata Mirio was a little stressed for various reasons. He had a really good excuse now, not just an “oh, it’s actually my quirk,” no, he had science associated with it, and he hadn’t even needed Sir’s help coming up with it! He knew his quirk, and he knew how to spin this sudden… “mutation.”
“It’s pretty neat,” he’d grin, “making myself permeable was really just moving my atoms around and stuff. It made me not dense, but I figured that if I could make myself not dense, could I make myself more dense? So I did! Makes me hit harder, but I’m still working out the recoil issue that breaks my bones a little. No biggie, I’ll work hard! Plus Ultra!”
Perfectly reasonable and it had a little tidbit for training for the future, because surely it wasn’t going to break his bones forever? Actually, this was probably a good way to think about it, he’d have to practice later…
But he was relatively stressed. He had been entrusted with a national secret! And broken his bones on live TV! Granted, it was better than last year where he flashed everyone on live TV, but still. Thankfully he was still working with Sir, who brought in this funny old man who was super fast and sure to be a good teacher. Even All Might came around occasionally! It was awkward, but he was pretty cool!
Sir was investigating this… this big bad dude. Apparently he’d been defeated by All Might years ago, but it looked like someone was picking up the pieces and starting to send whispers throughout the underground, using those old resources. Sir wanted to use this clear amateur to find all of this guy’s old bases and connections and get rid of them. Super cool and important, and Mirio got to help!
…The only problem was that apparently the first years had been attacked and three of them had been kidnapped, supposedly by this old doctor dude who was making monsters? One of them had been at the scene of the kidnapping, a hulking beast with, get this, multiple quirks. Terrifying and hard to combat, but definitely the handy work of that old villain and the doctor.
(Mirio was trying to ignore that Sir Nighteye and All Might refused to name the villain. It was fine, he was dead, but seriously? If they’re too afraid to even say the name, then how bad was this dude?)
But they had a lead.
And he was going to follow it, since he’s not as recognizable as Sir or the other heroes on the case. Eraserhead, the teacher of the students, was counting on him! He wouldn’t let them down.
He was Lemillion, after all, and he was going to save at least a million people. This would add at least three to that number.
He could do this.
He could uphold All Might’s legacy.
He spotted him. How could he not, he would recognize those green curls anywhere. After all this time, he had finally found the nerd, looking suspicious as fuck.
Three of his classmates had been kidnapped, and from what Ponytail could figure out based on the stupid fucking tracker thing she managed to pass off to Jacks before they were forcibly removed from the area by the fucking huge ass monster, she was somewhere in this area, at least at some point. It was a lead, ok, even if something had scrambled the tracker! And lo and behold, Izuku was here? Doing… what, exactly? This area was sketchy as hell, and usually when people die they leave you money, hence why the Midoriya’s had moved, so he definitely didn’t live here.
So he decided to follow the nerd; it wasn’t like he had a real lead and was sort of just wandering around the area on the weekend to see if he could find anything.
Izuku turned down an empty street and someone in the crowd, this random older blond dude, peeled off after him, keeping a careful distance and looking casual. Ok, they were either going to the same place in this… frankly abandoned part of town, or the dude was clearly following the nerd. Izuku either didn’t notice or wasn’t distressed by this.
Then the fucker charged Izuku.
Izuku freaked out as soon as he heard the scuffing feet and whirled around, only to punch out with a shriek and send the guy’s head careening back, followed by the rest of him. Damn, he got a mean right hook in the two, almost three years since he’s fucked off, even if he’s shaking out his hand in clear pain. Dude’s still knocked out completely from one hit. Probably a combination of momentum and luck, if Katsuki is being honest.
“Shit,” he swore, since when does he do that, “oh no. This is… Fuck,” that has to be illegal, “ok, no, I can work with this, I just…”
He took a deep breath and pulled out his phone, sending out a short text before the unconscious dude fell into dark mist and the mist disappeared, leaving a clean street.
Katsuki knew that fucking mist, he had seen it when the creature came out of it for his fucking classmates, and presumably it had taken them away too, since they lost the trail quickly.
What the fuck was Izuku involved in?
Well, he had to get to the bottom of this, so he followed Izuku, even as his childhood friend ducked into a warehouse, leaving the door open just enough for him to slip in several seconds after.
He was getting his answers, and maybe his classmates. And that random dude too, he wasn’t heartless.
Mirio blinked awake, wincing at the stinging of his jaw. His hands were bound behind his back with a new… bracelet. Ah, a quirk canceling brace, so he wasn’t going to be able to just get out. He looked around to take in his bearings and made eye contact with another person.
He jumped. “You’re… Shouji Mezou!”
He shrugged. “I am.”
Jirou Kyouka chuckled and peaked around the larger first year. “Glad to see you awake. He was panicking when he came in, but looks like he didn’t hit you too hard if you’re already up.”
Mirio straightened as much as he could. “He? Green haired kid, right?”
She nodded. “He’ll be back in a sec, he was just taking Kouda to the bathroom.”
Mirio breathed a sigh of relief. “Good, you’re all safe. We’ve been worried about you, you know.”
Shouji narrowed his eyes. “And who are you?”
“I’m-”
“Lemillion!” He barely noticed the last kid join the other three, sitting pretty calmly, because his target and the lead was suddenly upon him, wringing his hands nervously and biting his lip, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to punch you, I just reacted! Gosh, and now you’re wrapped up in this too, it wasn’t my plan but I guess I can work with it, since you’re number nine, and he knows that-”
“What,” he said lightly, trying not to give off how on edge he was, “are you talking about?”
Midoriya blinked and opened his mouth to respond, but before he could there was the crackle of explosions and a blond, the second place winner of the first year sports festival, was in the room looking honestly pissed. Which, well, seemed normal for him.
Midoriya beamed.
“Oh good, you’re here! I was worried something had happened when Lemillion came after me, but you made it here alright after all, Kacchan!”
Jirou choked on laughter. “Kacchan? Bakugo, you know Midoriya?”
“Why the fuck are my classmates here, Izuku?”
He winced sheepishly. “Sorry, sorry, I know, not the best way to say hi, but I’ve been… really busy. But Garaki is going to be back soon so you really should sit down and pretend to be tied up. Oh,” he turned back to Mirio, “sorry for the quirk bracelet, really needed you to not mess this up for me but once the story is told if you agree to my plan I’ll totally let you out.”
“You’re a villain,” Mirio sputtered, “why would you let me out? I know I’m not a pro hero yet, but I’m top of my class!”
He beamed again, almost bouncing with excitement. “I know! Any other time I’d be asking for your autograph but I can’t do that yet or my two year plan will go up in flames! Kacchan, seriously, sit down, I promise I’ll explain.”
Bakugo looked torn between murder and compliance, but eventually his curiosity won out, because he plopped himself next to his classmates, eyeing them.
“Wait, you fuckers aren’t even tied up!”
Shouji shrugged and gave jazz hands under the, now clearly, loose ropes. “We’re putting on a performance. Live a little.”
Midoriya tensed and turned to face the doorway, everyone doing the same as a man in a lab coat walked in, brush mustache twitching as he muttered, looking at a tablet.
“Ah,” he looked up, sounding pleased, “you’re back! And I see you picked up some more experiments.”
“T-Tsubasa?!”
The man turned and cocked his head. “Ah, Katsuki. Nice to see you again, I was always interested in your quirk, you’ll be a fine addition. A bit risky to grab another of the first year hero students, sir, if I might add.”
Midoriya shrugged. “When an opportunity presents itself, I’d be a fool not to take it. Three is having issues again, and I want them fixed before we proceed.”
The doctor blustered. “Of course, of course. I’m the best, you know, that’s why your father kept me around. You made a good choice keeping me on.”
Midoriya smiled lightly. “I know.”
With a short nod, the Doctor Garaki ambled off to deeper in the warehouse, and Midoriya relaxed minutely before turning to them.
“How’d I do?”
“9/10,” Jirou said with a smirk, “your language is still really stilted. Also that dismissal looked borderline uncomfortable. If he wasn’t a fanatic, he’d notice.”
He rolled his eyes. “The dismissal was uncomfortable because I was uncomfortable. Right, story time, he’ll be busy for a while, we made this issue hard to find and harder to fix.”
Shouji nudged his fourth classmate. “It’s a doozy, you’ll want to hear this.”
“He even gets more context since we knew each other before,” Midoriya hummed, “and Lemillion will be at least slightly invested too…”
He sighed and leaned back against the wall to have easy eyes on the place the doctor had went, shoving his hands into his pockets, and then his eyes slid to them.
“Two years ago, my dad died. I wasn’t expecting to get anything, honestly, since he pretty much disappeared when I was six, but I got a journal that was basically just a whole note to me. He told me not to show mom, which, once I read it, I understood. She got a good chunk of money from his “business,” but not all of it. That he left to me, if I could find it.”
He looked up at the ceiling. “What followed was the worst scavenger hunt I’ve ever had the pleasure of going on, but it was going to be worth it if I could tear down everything he built.”
He looked at Bakugo, and then stared at Mirio. “I knew him as Midoriya Hisashi, but the underground knew him as All for One.”
Something pinged in his mind and he started connecting some dots, but he didn’t have the full picture yet.
“The emperor of villains,” he said with a grimace, “my dad. And he wanted me to follow in his footsteps, for some reason. He knew he was dying of complications, so he set this all up to… prove me worthy, or whatever. He even promised that at the end of it I would get a quirk, but I figured out pretty quick that that was a scam at best and a death sentence at worst.”
“So what,” Bakugo scoffed, “you decided to follow in his footsteps and kidnap a bunch of hero students?”
He shrugged. “I needed to for the plan to work. As you can see, they’re fine. It’s only gonna be a week, all told, they can make up that much school.”
Jirou snorted. “Still break.”
He ignored her. “I needed to cover all of my bases, or, well, not cover them. I needed this all to come toppling down, but I couldn’t let anyone on the inside know. Mostly Garaki, at this point, but I needed to fix things or he’d just… destroy us all before I could make a true move.”
“How?” Mirio narrowed his eyes, “He’s just an old doctor, right?”
Midoriya grimaced. “Not quite, Lemillion. He’s the creator of the nomu, also known as the creature that kidnapped Jirou, Shouji, and Kouda here, with no one able to combat the thing. Granted, that one is the All Might killer he made, so it’s pretty souped up compared to the other ones, but he still has basically a small army stuffed with a lot of useful quirks.”
“Go on,” Jirou grinned, “tell them your batshit plan and why you needed to capture us.”
Midoriya huffed. “It’s not batshit, it’s well thought out and, so far, executed.”
“Also incredibly complicated.”
He shrugged. “No plan survives contact with the enemy, so I made contingencies for what I could. Anyway, the plan was to find all of my dad’s old stuff, contacts, whatever, and then dismantle it from the inside. That meant following his stupid clues, first, to lead to his other notes on all the things he did, and second it meant figuring out exactly what he left me so I could figure out how to get rid of or rehabilitate it. Some people needed to be arrested or sent into a fight that had been tipped off and people probably died but also they were all working for my dad, so. Evil. Now, all that’s really left is Doctor Garaki and the nomu. Everything else has been taken care of, and is just playing the part before I topple the whole house of cards.”
“And kidnapping kids?”
Midoriya grinned bashfully at Mirio. “We’re the same age, but really I needed to give the heroes a lead. And Nedzu a notebook with all the locations and a time to strike. I guess he didn’t tell Sir Nighteye, or maybe they wanted someone on the inside? Or wanted… I don’t know. Honestly, you’re about four hours too early.”
Jirou shrugged. “We’re chill with it, at this point. Once he explained and offered quirk tips it was just mostly boring. There’s only so much ISpy you can play when you stay in the same room most of the time.”
“Ideally,” Midoriya sighed, “I would have had this done by the time entrance exams happened, but I’m a couple months too late. Shame, but maybe I’ll be able to find some late admissions, I dunno. Hope so.”
Bakugo was staring. “So let me get this straight.”
“Go ahead.”
“Your dad was a supervillain.”
“Yeah.”
“But now he’s dead.”
“Thank god, yes.”
“He left you his… criminal empire.”
“Yep.”
“You’re trying to get rid of it.”
“Correct.”
“You kidnapped my classmates for your plan to lead the heroes to all his old bases.”
“Mhm.”
“And you’re hoping to go to school after all this shit?”
Midoriya pouted, even if Mirio secretly agreed that seemed like an odd thing to want after all of this.
“Kacchan! Education is important, and there’s only so much Giri could smuggle for me and Tenko!”
“Who the hell are they?!”
He waved his hand. “Some of the old man’s projects. They fell under the rehabilitation category. Giri is our taxi, but he grumbles about it. I’m trying to figure out how to get his memories back since I’m relatively certain he’s a nomu but I can’t figure out for sure who he was. They helped with the deprogramming that’s going to make it so I have more control than Garaki when the final confrontation happens.”
Jirou cocked her head. “Footsteps.”
Kouda immediately hunched in on himself and Midoriya crouched down, slipping him something before looking menacing. If Mirio hadn’t seen it happen, he would have assumed that the sneering boy was saying nasty things to the rock boy, because that’s certainly the impression they gave off.
“Midoriya?”
He fluidly stood and turned with a smooth face to the doctor. “Done so soon?”
Garaki shook his head. “I’ve encountered a quirk anomaly.”
Midoriya sighed. “I’ll come look at it. You,” he turned back with a wicked grin, “don’t do anything rash,” he sang, “or we might move up the project!”
He swept out of the room, the doctor on his heels, and it was like he was a completely different person.
“I know,” Shouji said quietly, “he’s good. You don’t know which one to believe.”
“How can you trust him,” Mirio whispered furiously, “he can clearly act!”
“I trust him.”
They all looked at Bakugo, who was still looking at where they had gone, before he turned back to Mirio with a serious face.
“I trust him. I’ve known the nerd since… since we were born, really. He’s always wanted to be a hero, even without a quirk. No fucking way he’d go villain.” He huffed, lips tugging upwards.
“He sure got better at acting and way more confident, though; he used to stutter like crazy. He wore his heart on his sleeve. So yeah.”
He grinned. “I trust him.”
“Hell yeah,” Jirou chuckled, “now, who’s up for a round of ISpy to pass the time?”
Shouji and Kouda groaned, but Mirio sighed.
Just until the heroes came.
Midoriya Izuku was running at 110% at all times, hyper aware of everything always. He liked being able to keep an eye on Garaki, for sure, but that meant Garaki had eyes on him.
The quirk anomaly on Three was an easy fix, since he was the one who had put it there, but he wasn’t about to tell the good doctor that, so he futzed with it for a while while Garaki ran maintenance on the other five still in the warehouse.
He had managed to convince the doctor to go for quality over quantity, so nomu production had ceased at a nice, even seven as soon as he was settled into the role of “Master’s successor,” with no one the wiser. Oh, sure, Tenko had thrown a fit at being replaced by a twelve year old, but Izuku had been quick to slam down artist gloves and the notebook detailing the boy’s past and conditioning and suddenly everything was peachy keen. Kurogiri was slightly harder to deal with, since he was programmed, but he was also programmed to obey Izuku’s orders, so some carefully worded suggestions and they had a warper on their side against his father’s old empire. He was 80% certain he knew who Kurogiri had been, but he wasn’t going to deal with that without proper medical equipment and therapists on standby.
The All Might Killer, also known as One, was honestly a very large dog at this point. Gigantomachia had fun with it up in the mountains, very pleased that “Little Lord” had gifted him with an indestructible playmate/chew toy/friend. One seemed relatively pleased as well, as much as it could. Really, it had only brought down the IQ of the forest by a little bit.
He hummed as he checked the time and grinned a little.
He pushed back from the desk and stretched. “Right, that’s enough of that.”
Garaki looked up, eyebrows furrowed. “I’m sorry?”
He smiled as the time ticked down. “You will be.”
Then he snapped his fingers.
As soon as there was noise, Kouda leapt to his feet and surged to Mirio, deftly slipping something towards his hands. The bracelet beeped and fell off, and he felt his quirk rush back to him. He quickly phased out of the remainder of the bindings and looked up to see the other four already ready.
“You should run,” he said sternly, “this could get ugly.”
Jirou shrugged. “This is actually the place that needs heroes the least. Midoriya has the nomu.”
A rumble came from down the hall and some loud, panicked yelling that sounded suspiciously like the doctor and a hero burst into the room.
Eraserhead breathed a sigh of relief at seeing his free students.
“So the info was correct… Bakugo, what are you doing here?”
“He’s my childhood friend. The villain, or whatever. He’s… down that way.”
“That doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here or how you got here,” Eraserhead pinched the bridge of his nose, “so you’re getting detention once we’re back in school.”
“What?!”
Midoriya walked down the hall on his phone, an honestly horrifying creature dragging the unconscious body of the doctor, and he looked up, then brightened.
“Oh my gosh, Eraserhead! I knew you were 1-A’s homeroom teacher from the sports festival but I didn’t think you’d come in person! Is this a bad time to ask for your autograph? Also why does your hair float when you activate your quirk? Is it-”
“Zuku,” Bakugo cut off, “what. The actual fuck.”
Midoriya blinked. “I know him. He’s cool, fights basically quirkless. Looked up to him a lot. Still do, kind of.”
Bakugo raised an eyebrow. “You’ve gotten surprisingly concise. What the hell happened to the mutter storms?”
“Oh they’re still there, but they give away too much information so i figured out how to summarize effectively to not tell my enemies more than I need to.”
“Kid,” Eraserhead sighed, “you’re the one who kidnapped my students?”
“Yep!”
“You’re their age. You’re a villain at your age?”
“Nah,” he giggled, “I’m like a vigilante. I’ve been dismantling this whole thing. This is the last piece.”
The nomu obligingly lifted the doctor’s leg slightly higher into the air.
Midoriya patted the creature with a beaming smile. “Thanks Four, you can drop him now, Eraserhead is probably going to arrest him now.”
The thud of the leg on the floor almost made Mirio wince. Almost, this was still a villain after all.
“Anyway,” he turned to them, “thanks for playing along, have fun in school, see you… I dunno, probably never.”
“Nerd,” Bakugo bit out rapidly, “if you disappear again I will fucking destroy you. They’ll be finding pieces of you for months.”
He snickered. “Kacchan, I’m not going to your school, or anything, sure I can give you my address now, mom’s been missing you guys, but, ya know, safety and all that. We live in a completely different area.”
“Just-” he sighed. “Just don’t disappear again, dumbass.”
Midoriya beamed. “Ok, I won’t! Bye now!”
He was then blinking rapidly as he was wrapped up in a capture scarf, before he looked at Eraserhead with wide eyes.
The hero raised an eyebrow. “We’re bringing you in, you know that, right?”
His mouth made an ‘o’ and Mirio couldn’t help but laugh.
Katsuki was honestly tired of this shit at this point. He was barely kidnapped; in fact, no, he wasn’t kidnapped! At all! He walked in and hung around! He was never bound or forced anywhere, so why the hell did they feel the need to question him!
The detective, the truth telling one, had looked a little pale at the story he told, the one that Izuku had told him about his dad. He still couldn’t believe the old fucker had been a supervillain, but apparently Izuku had left parts of the story out, because he was asked about having his quirk stolen. How the fuck could that happen? Was that Hisashi’s quirk? I mean, sure, he supposed that fire breath wasn’t exactly an “emperor of Japan’s underground” kind of quirk, but still. This was bullshit, they were on break and he wanted to enjoy it before the second semester started. No doubt they’d have some stupid shit to do after the torturous summer camp hell they had been put through. Jacks, Arms, and Snow White had been taken immediately after the summer camp, so they probably hadn’t gotten any actual break either!
Oh, and now he finds out they’re going to be moving into fucking dorms? What was the point, the only threat to UA had been taken out by a quirkless kid dismantling it from the inside like a fucking tapeworm, they’d be fine.
And of course all the stupid classmates of his wanted to know all about his childhood friend. The three idiots who had been with him for a week and probably knew more about what he was like now were no help at that either.
He hated his fucking class.
(He loved his fucking class.)
Mirio was honestly reeling. All for One, he had been right, was the counterpoint to One for All. He hadn’t misheard when Midoriya called him number nine. He knew all about his national secret, the legacy of his foretold enemy.
In another world, he mused, they would have been diametrically opposed, forced to come to blows for who they were taking over for. All Might had killed his dad; slowly, only with several years of agony before he finally succumbed, and left Midoriya to pick up the pieces.
The quirk he had been promised, the one he had turned down, was All for One. He claimed there was evidence it would supplant his personality with that of his father’s, but he still turned down what would be considered by most to be the ultimate power when he had none.
Mirio respected him immensely for that. When Sir said he should go to Tartarus, that he was too dangerous, Mirio called him out for judging the child on the sins of the parent. He went against his mentor of actual years, who had given him everything.
He would stand in Midoriya’s camp.
He was a hero, and he was going to defend what was right.
And what Midoriya had pulled off?
That was definitely right.
One might even say it was heroic…
And that’s exactly what he told anyone who would listen.
The second term started and Katsuki was almost relieved. He hadn’t been able to see Izuku and Auntie Inko more than once, but it had been a good visit with a lot of tears (good to know that at least hadn’t changed), and he and his parents were planning to go back this weekend.
Aizawa stepped to the front of the classroom and they instantly quieted down, getting a rare nod of approval.
“Welcome back. The raids were successful and the underground is currently crippled. But that’s not an excuse to get complacent. You might have noticed Shinsou Hitoshi from General Studies is joining us, he passed the application process and is now a fully fledged member of the Hero Course.”
There was some light chatter, cheers, and congratulations as the boy sighed, btu gave a small wave.
Aizawa checked his watch. “I would have thought they’d be done by now, since the rat needs to prep for the welcome back speech. Where…”
The door to the classroom opened.
“I’m so sorry, we got caught up in a discussion, I hope I’m not too late!”
“Midoriya,” Aizawa sighed as four people in the room perked up, “it’s fine. We couldn’t stop Nedzu if we tried.”
Green eyes blinked and Katsuki was convinced he was seeing things. “Oh, no, it was my fault, I went off on a tangent. It was a really nice conversation, though!”
Aizawa turned back to the class.
“This is Midoriya Izuku, our other new student.”
He beamed and bowed. “Please take care of me!”
And Bakugo Katsuki had his world flipped upside down once more.
(The empty feeling slowly disappeared, and he knew that this was a good flipping. After all, flip once, you’re upside down, but flip twice?
Well, then everything is alright.)