Important author's note at the end of the chapter
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Age: 12
Aldera Junior High was a brutal ecosystem. If elementary school was a daycare where Quirks were toys, junior high was the savanna. It was a place full of teenagers with raging hormones and unstable superpowers trying to assert their dominance.
I had been held up in the teachers' lounge. The career counselor wanted to "discuss my brilliant future at U.A.," a chat plagued with cheap flattery toward my explosive Quirk that left me disgusted. When I finally managed to break free from his condescending bureaucracy, the hallways were mostly empty. Izuku and I had agreed to meet in the gym locker rooms before leaving.
I was walking with my hands in my pockets, enjoying the rare silence of the building, when I heard it.
It wasn't the roar of a spectacular Quirk. It was a dull thud against the metal lockers, immediately followed by a scream.
But it wasn't a battle cry or the typical groan of a school fight to prove who the alpha male was. It was a high-pitched, pathetic, and raw shriek. The unmistakable sound of real, sudden physical pain.
Adrenaline flooded my endocrine system instantly. My palms began to sweat nitroglycerin as I closed the distance to the locker rooms with long, silent strides. If some third-year idiot thought they could use my friend as a punching bag, I was going to melt their face until they couldn't recognize themselves in a mirror.
I kicked the locker room door open, ready to unleash hell.
The scene in front of me froze the spark in my hands.
There were three people in the room. None of them were me, but violence hung in the air with a thick, heavy stench.
Two third-year boys with disheveled uniforms were there. One of them, a heavyset guy with pale scales on his arms, was backed against the wall, his eyes wide with disbelief and panic. The other, clearly the leader, was writhing on the floor. He clutched his right hand to his chest, sobbing and cursing through gritted teeth. His index finger was bent backward at a gruesome, unnatural angle. He also kept his left leg pulled up toward his stomach, not even daring to let the tip of his shoe graze the floor.
And standing three feet away from them was Izuku.
His uniform was a bit wrinkled around the shoulders, a sign that he had been grabbed and shoved. He held his yellow backpack in front of his chest like a makeshift shield, but his base stance... his stance was something I had never taught him. His center of gravity was incredibly low, his knees bent in a strange way ready to escape in any direction, and his eyes, normally bright and kind, were dark, dilated to the max by the biological "fight or flight" response.
He was shaking.
But it wasn't the trembling of a coward about to cry for mercy. It was the spasmodic shaking of someone who had just experienced a massive adrenaline dump after crossing a physical and moral line. The trembling of someone who had just caused real, ugly, and lasting damage for the first time in his life.
The two bullies noticed my presence at the door. The scaled kid paled even more, grabbed his friend on the floor by his good arm, and dragged him stumbling toward the back emergency exit of the locker room. As they fled, I heard him mutter in panic that we were crazy, that the Quirkless kid was a sick psychopath.
I did nothing to stop them. I let them run away like the scared rats they were.
The emergency door slammed shut, leaving us alone in the metallic echo of the locker room.
I approached slowly. Izuku didn't lower his backpack right away. His breathing was shallow, fast, and erratic.
"Izuku," I called out to him, keeping my voice low, completely stripped of the raspy, grumpy tone I usually used as a facade.
He blinked a couple of times, as if the sound of his name pulled him out of a survival trance, and dropped his backpack to the floor with a dull thud. He looked down at his hands. They were pale and trembling violently.
"Katsuki..." his voice cracked immediately. "I... they cornered me. They shoved me against the lockers. They wanted... they wanted to see if someone Quirkless bled the same color they did."
I didn't move. I just listened, letting him process the shock.
"I remembered... I remembered something," he continued, the words tumbling out, fueled by residual terror. "That I don't have the strength for a clean throw. That a fair fight isn't for me. He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt to lift me up... and I grabbed his index finger. And I pulled back with all my body weight while I stomped on his instep with my heel."
Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, a lone tear of pure tension and guilt sliding down his freckled cheek.
"It was horrible. It sounded... it sounded like when you step on a dry, hollow branch in the woods. And he screamed so loud. I thought I was going to throw up right then and there."
I stared at him. The revelation hit me with the subtlety of a freight train, fitting all the loose pieces from the last few months together. Ogawa. The old cop had been teaching him pure, hardcore survival tactics behind my back. Dirty, cruel, and efficient street tricks. Things I couldn't teach him because my baseline of strength and endurance was so distorted by my Quirk that I couldn't conceive of that level of physical vulnerability.
And he had hidden it from me this whole time. He had kept it as an ace up his sleeve, exactly like a born survivor would in hostile territory.
Any trace of my old ego, of the pride that once made me believe I was his only indispensable savior, vanished. It was replaced by a cold, solemn respect. The steel world we lived in demanded he be as sharp as a piece of broken glass so as not to be trampled, and he was more than delivering.
I took a step forward, closing the distance between us, and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. The weight of my grip and the warmth of my palm seemed to anchor him to reality, because his trembling subsided a fraction.
"You survived," I said, my voice unwavering, cutting through his spiral of guilt and self-loathing.
He looked at me, his green eyes filled with unbearable moral conflict.
"But it was... it was disgusting, Katsuki. It wasn't heroic. It was dirty. I really hurt him, it wasn't training. I felt the bone give way in my hand."
"Listen to me carefully," I interrupted, squeezing his shoulder slightly to force him to look me in the eyes. "The real villains we're going to face out there in a couple of years aren't going to give you points for style, and they aren't going to care if your judo technique was clean or sportsmanlike. They're going to want to kill you. What you did today wasn't cheap comic-book heroism; it was pure, damn survival. And there is no dishonor in coming home in one piece."
I let go of his shoulder, crouched down to pick up his backpack from the floor, and handed it to him.
"Whoever taught you that, taught you well. And you were smart and fast enough not to hesitate when theory had to turn into blood and practice."
Izuku took the backpack, gripping the straps with white knuckles. The guilt on his face didn't completely disappear; that was his nature, his chronic empathy that defined him. But rational understanding began to settle on his features. He was realizing that real violence didn't have epic background music or grand speeches. It was ugly, fast, smelled of sweat, and left a metallic taste in the mouth.
"I hope I never have to do that again," he muttered, wiping the tear away with the back of his hand and forcing himself to straighten his back, slowly regaining his composure.
"That's the right attitude. But if you have to do it, don't hesitate," I warned him, turning toward the exit to give him space. "But the next time they corner you and I'm not around... make sure you break their dominant finger. That idiot grabbed you with his left; you should have broken his right to neutralize him better. You still need to sharpen your analysis in the middle of chaos."
I heard Izuku let out a shaky laugh, short but finally genuine, behind me. The sound bounced off the metal lockers, dissipating the last cloud of tension.
"I'll write that down in the notebook, Katsuki."
We walked out of the locker room and into the harsh afternoon light. Aldera Junior High was still a savanna, there was no doubt about that. But the local predators had just learned the hard way that the prey they so deeply despised had developed venomous fangs.
And I, walking right beside him, couldn't be prouder of the monster he was becoming.
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Author's Notes
Hey everyone, to be honest, this was more of a transitional chapter. I wanted to slow things down a bit and focus on a raw demonstration of Izuku, showing his vulnerable side after hurting someone, even if it was in self-defense.
The main reason for this author's note is to open up a debate with you guys regarding two major points for the future of the story:
1. The One For All (OFA) Dilemma: Should Izuku get OFA? Should he betray his ideal ("I can be a hero without a Quirk") to fulfill his dream of saving everyone? As the author, my honest answer is that without OFA, Izuku could never reach the heights of his canon self. Remember the biological detail I added earlier: Quirkless people have a strict human physical ceiling. They can't pull off the physical feats Aizawa does, because Aizawa actually has the evolved gene.
I am fascinated by the idea of exploring symbolic messages clashing with harsh reality. When the world crashes down on you, can you maintain your principles above all else? Or do you change and accept being a bit of a "hypocrite" to achieve a greater good? Are you still the person you took pride in being? I really want to read your theories on which path we should take.
2. Bakugo's Love Interest(s):
Alright, I've been reading several comments, and I have a question for you guys: Do you prefer one single partner for the future, or multiple?
Before you come at me with pitchforks, let me clarify: I absolutely despise the classic anime "harem" trope. However, I have a different view on a well-written polyamorous relationship. For a multi-person relationship to happen in this story, I am not going to use that—pardon my language—bullshit anime excuse of "I love X so much, so I guess I have to share him." Seriously, wtf, that's just garbage. It feels like tolerating disguised infidelity.
For a real polyamorous relationship to work here, there has to be genuine chemistry and development between all the participants. It has to be reciprocal on all sides, not just everyone blindly orbiting the protagonist. I don't know if I'm explaining myself well on this topic, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and who you could picture in this kind of dynamic.
Let me know in the comments!