Chapter Text
Bakugou Katsuki sat in math class at Aldera Junior High, one year and 5 months before the UA Hero Course entrance exams. He was busy today: directly after class, he had his first shitty “hero course entrance exam prep program” to attend. He was signed up for three of them before the entrance exams.
Midoriya Izuku sat directly behind him in class. He may not have a powerful quirk like Katsuki, or any quirk at all, but…
Izuku kicked the back of his chair. “Pst, Kacchan!” Izuku hissed, passing forward a paper.
Izuku had scribbled down several problems from the college-level math workbook he was absolutely tearing through on his desk. Every so often, he would pick some concepts for Katsuki to practice, write them down, and pass them forward. They were lucky the teachers “liked ” Katsuki, or Izuku would have been yelled at for passing notes.
Katuski did three of them, even if he didn’t get them as fast as Izuku did. He stopped at the fourth.
What the hell does this even mean?
He wrote a question mark by it and passed the paper back.
5 minutes later, Izuku handed back a paper with step-by-step instructions on how to solve the originally presented problem and wrote another one like it down. Katsuki did it this time (along with registering the little note that he had gotten the other three right. Fuck yeah.) and grabbed his “regular” math worksheet from the class they were actually in to breeze through and hand in at the end.
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The sky was gray, but Katsuki was fairly certain that it wouldn’t rain; he'd be pissed if it did. He headed off to his first prep program, leaving Izuku to walk home. Katsuki was seething about these programs; he almost refused to attend them when he found out they had all rejected Izuku on account of him being quirkless. He would have just not gone, but Izuku said Katsuki could take notes on what they learned and share them with Izuku, and they could exercise together. (Izuku may have also given him a list of questions to ask any guest heroes, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Izuku was tiny and weak. Katsuki would change that in the next few months. They had been going on runs since they were little, so Izuku was fast and had endurance, but he had barely any muscle.
Izuku had been diagnosed as quirkless at age 5. Katsuki, at that point, already had a grudge against society. Izuku had cried and apologized the first few days, so Katsuki had ignored him at first. He needed to sort his own thoughts, and he didn’t know how to soothe Izuku when he was that upset.
Hisashi had left right after, too, even though Auntie Inko still talked about how much she loves him to this day. The man lost the title of “uncle”, even when he told Katsuki that he had so much potential as a hero the one time he had come to visit before leaving for America. Katsuki found out later that Hisashi had only been invited over so his parents could terrify the man into actually sending child support. They didn’t want Izuku to become a financial burden on their friend.
Anyhow: Katsuki had a grudge against society, so when it told him that one of the kindest, bravest, strongest people he knew, someone he considered a friend, was worthless, he was pissed. It couldn’t have been true, because Izuku’s diagnosis didn’t mean that he wasn’t quirkless before, they just didn’t know before. It changed nothing about him. So Izuku couldn’t be worthless. It just meant that society was dumb, and the two of them would have to change it. Their dreams to become the best hero duo ever didn’t get erased, it just… changed a little. Izuku stopped trying to figure out how he would use his quirk, what quirk he would get , and instead focused on analysis work. Katsuki stopped focusing on just his quirk, and figured out how to fight quirkless, because his quirk couldn’t do everything. They worked on ways Izuku could be valuable in a fight, more so than most of the current pro-heroes.
Their shared perception of All Might changed too, after the man was asked in an interview if someone quirkless could become a hero. He said it was simply too dangerous, and Katsuki exploded his parents’ TV at age 8. He didn’t get in any real trouble when his parents found out what made him that upset; they were happy he was protective over Izuku. They thought he was watching out for weak, quirkless Izuku’s feelings. Katsuki and Izuku were just protecting their dreams. They took all the merchandise down from their rooms together, and either sold or burned everything. And that brought them to trying to become their own kind of heroes. A hero that can be strong and aggressive but still kind, and a quirkless hero. The two of them wanted to inspire the next generation, to prove that anyone could become a hero.