Chapter Two: He's My Sidekick
"Alright, now it's time for us to take a moment and have a very important discussion."
Normally, when a teacher says something like that, half of the class immediately zones out. Normally, it's some by-the-numbers monologue about responsibility, respect, or not shoving Billy's head in the toilet anymore. Indeed, this particular teacher was usually the one who would have those talks with his students, whether because he enjoyed it or just because the other faculty members kept passing the buck was anyone's guess.
This made the atmosphere in the room all the more unusual, because every single student was sitting up straight, eyes forward, mouths closed. They knew what this was about; their teacher had been hinting at it for the past week. How could they not know?
"It's time for us to discuss your career paths. Some of you might want to go into the work force straight away, while some of you might want to go onto high school and maybe even university afterwards, so I'm going to pass out these survey sheets for each of you to fill out and then – oh, who am I kidding? You all want to follow the Hero track anyway, right?"
An explosion of noise and activity was his answer as the entire classroom was suddenly filled with more energy than was ever present during his lessons. Students were smiling, laughing, talking about their ambitions and dreams with all he innocence and vigor of youth. It was enough to make their sensei smile and remember why he took this job in the first place.
But there was one thing he had to clamp down on straight away.
"Now, now, no usage of your Quirks in public without express permission, you know that. Wonderful as they all may be, Heroes more than anyone should be aware and respectful of the law."
"Oi, Sensei," a brash voice full of confidence emanated from the middle of the room, "don't go lumping my awesome Quirk in with the rest of these rejects. They're Sidekick material at best."
Bakugo Katsuki was lounging back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, eyes half-lidded beneath his wild ashen hair as though he was just waking up from a nap, though his grin was far too sharp for this to be the case.
"Ah, Bakugo. You must be aiming for U.A. High School with grades like yours."
"Damn straight!" the confident boy kipped up straight onto his desk from his chair, displaying his phenomenal physical prowess for one so young, "I'm headed straight for the top! I'm top of this class, and I aced the mock exam too! I'll become the number one Hero and surpass even All Might!"
"Yes…" the teacher tapped his chin thoughtfully, "I believe our number two student was considering U.A. as well, weren't you, Midoriya?"
There was a moment where all eyes turned to the green haired boy sitting just behind the boastful Bakugo. He was sitting rigidly in his chair, eyes darting from face to face until they landed on his confident classmate. For a moment, it looked as though Katsuki was about to say something until the rest of the class beat him to the punch by breaking out into raucous laughter.
"Huh?! Midoriya?! No way! Isn't he Quirkless or something?"
"Yeah, good grades alone can't get you into the Hero program dude."
"You got a death wish or somethin'?"
"Oi."
With that single syllable, Bakugo had brought silence to the entire room. He hopped down from his desk and scanned the room until he found the student who had made the Quirkless comment.
"Let's get one thing straight here, Deku ain't Quirkless. His Quirk just sucks, that's all." Katsuki began to walk towards Izuku's desk, "But then again, everyone's Quirk sucks compared to mine. Some are worse than others though." Bakugo had reached Midoriya's desk at this point and began moving to stand behind him, "For instance, I can tell you with complete fucking certainty that his Quirk is loads better than swivel neck, anteater, or sharkbait over there." He indicated a student with an extended neck, a student with an elongated face, and a student with an oversized mouth full of sharp teeth.
"It's like I said before," Bakugo continued, now standing behind Izuku on his left, "the most any of you could ever be is a Sidekick." He clapped a hand on Izuku's shoulder, "That's what Deku is. He's my sidekick and I'm taking him to U.A. with me. The rest of you rejects are gonna have to deal with the leftover scraps since I don't feel like babysitting more than one of you though. Sorry about that."
The other students stared at the intimidating figure of Bakugo for a few seconds before turning back around and facing front, pretending that nothing had ever happened. They may have been together throughout middle school but damned if that was one relationship any of them had ever understood. From the outside looking in it seemed like most of the time the Explosion Quirk user was little more than a bully to Midoriya, but then he would do something like this. He would tell off someone who was giving the other boy crap or ask, in his own demanding way, if the two of them were still hanging out that afternoon.
Izuku, for his part, gave a long-suffering sigh as a small smile made its way to his face. Kacchan was always like this, but what he had just said really sent him down memory lane. It had been the day, in his mind, that they had become best friends.
"What? What do you mean that's all it does?"
"I mean that's all I can do. I can attract fire like a magnet."
"Can't you push it away too? Or are you immune to burns or something?"
"No…it actually kind of hurts when it touches me. See, on my hand?"
It was the day after the young Midoriya had discovered his Quirk. Of course, the very first thing he had done was ask his mother to light the candle again so he could experiment with it. In the hour that he had been able to convince her to let him spend practicing, he had discovered that, indeed, his Quirk was just like his mother's. She could attract small objects, but nothing else, and he could attract flames, but nothing else.
Of course, when he got to school he had immediately wanted to tell everyone about his Quirk, especially Kacchan, who had expressed his impatience with Izuku "dragging his butt" when it came to manifesting his special power. Being a good boy though, he waited until recess to tell him.
"Wow," Bakugo had said after he was done examining the small burn on Midoriya's palm as proof of his story, "your Quirk's kinda useless huh? Maybe I should start calling you 'Deku'. You know you can read the kanji in your name that way?"
Tears immediately started forming in Izuku's eyes, but Katsuki was not done yet, turning to gesture at the other children some distance away.
"At least it's still better than some of these other setups we've got here. I mean, one of our classmates is a fat kid with wings, and another is a skinny kid with long fingers. How the heck does that make any sense? At least if those were switched they might get some use out of them. Fatso wouldn't have any trouble getting food, and skinny would actually be able to get more than a foot off the ground!"
Izuku's eyes were still shining a bit when Kacchan turned back to him and gave him a smile.
"Don't worry about it, Deku. You can just be my Sidekick. That way you won't have to worry about not being able to fight villains or whatever. You can just help me out!"
Ever since then, Bakugo had started interacting with Izuku more, and the world's biggest All Might fan eventually realized that he was the only one the temperamental boy actually saw as a friend, even if he would never use that word. He hung around with other kids, sure, or maybe it was more accurate to say that other kids hung around him, but they were just hangers-on. Lackeys. An entourage more than anything. It had always been clear that Katsuki was going places in life, and his peers instinctively understood that and flocked to him.
If it hadn't been for the fact that he was so determined to have an impeccable record, Izuku mused, Kacchan would probably have blown some of them up by now just on principle. He hated it when people tried to leech off of him or schmooze their way into his "good" graces. Once they were partway through middle school, it had gotten so bad (along with his newfound supply of testosterone), that Kacchan had finally had enough and decided to lay down the law. Instead of a storm of violence that ended with a group of students in the infirmary, he had used his popularity to call an informal meeting of sorts after class one day.
"Alright shitheads, listen up! I've had it with all the bullshit, the cozying up and the idol worship! I can't even say a word or scratch my sack without someone trying to suck my dick! It's fucking pathetic! So, from now on my new policy is this: Fuck. You. If any of you losers want my respect, then you're gonna have to earn it, and it's really that fucking simple. So, to reiterate: Fuck you, go home. Come on, Deku."
Needless to say, the explosive teen had lost a lot of popularity after that, even if nobody in their right mind would ever mess with him. This suited him just fine though, and he went from looking like he was about to straight-up murder somebody in the halls to just looking like he was considering the possibility.
It was always baby steps when it came to Bakugo. Izuku felt though, in his own humble opinion, that he had managed to curb his friend's more antisocial tendencies somewhat over the years, or at least stop them from developing as far as they otherwise might have. He shuddered to think what Kacchan might have been like if he had nobody who would ever try to reign him in.
Of course, that was part of the problem. Bakugo "Lord Explosion Murder" Katsuki was nobody's tool, and he took exception to anyone trying to tell him what to do, even if it was nothing more than a passing suggestion. Deku had learned to deal with his friend's temper as time went on, and always knew to pick his battles. There were some things that he would just have to overlook or he would drive himself up the wall thinking about them. Cursing at his classmates, being disrespectful to their teachers (though none of them cared since his grades were impeccable), and routine threats of violence were the norm with his chosen companion, and he would just have to deal with that.
A sudden flash of light and sound far nearer to his face than he was comfortable with jolted Izuku out of his thoughts. He saw Kacchan standing in front of him with his hand about a foot away from his face and smoking slightly.
"Oi. Earth to Dumbass. You started sleeping with your eyes open or something? If so cut that shit out. It's fucking weird."
"Ah! S-sorry about that Kacchan. I was just thinking about something."
"Whatever. I was trying to ask if you knew anything about this new Hero debut that happened earlier. That giant that keeps sticking her ass out everywhere. That was the route you usually take to get here, right?"
"Oh, you mean Mount Lady? Yeah, I was there actually! Kamui Woods was fighting this huge villain who was holding up the rail system, and right when he was about to use his Super Move, she showed up out of nowhere and kicked the villain in the face! Knocked him right out. After that, yeah. She struck a pose and introduced herself. Everyone started taking pictures. Then she shrunk down to normal size and started doing an interview."
Izuku would be lying if he said he hadn't appreciated the view, but seriously, a whole group of guys whipping out their phones and snapping pictures like that? Have some shame.
"Huh. Alright then. I'm guessing you've already got her in your weird notebooks, right? How many does that make now? Twelve?"
"T-thirteen, actually."
"Nerd. Well, I guess note-taking is a good skill for a Sidekick to have, so you're off the hook."
His Hero Notebooks were Izuku's pride and joy. Every Quirk he knew about, every Hero or Villain he had ever seen in action, every tidbit of information he thought was worth writing down went into these notes. He re-read them every so often when he needed something to do, so the information was always fresh in his mind. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that he knew more than any other kid his age about how to deal with different Quirk matchups.
Bakugo knew this. He knew full well that the walking compendium of Hero info would be damned useful when the time came to actually start fighting, and while he was a tactical genius when it came to his own Quirk, Deku was a tactical genius when it came to any Quirk. He had to be. Flame Magnet was a hell of a curveball to deal with when it came to making it viable in live scenarios. It was made all the worse because the poor bastard didn't even have any resistance to the flames he summoned unless he freaking ate them.
What the hell was that all about? A flame user that didn't have any protection against fire on the outside, but on the inside he was built like a brick shithouse? That was messed up as far as Katsuki was concerned. At least that little feature wasn't completely useless though; Deku never had to worry about any of his food or drink being too hot to handle. Bastard hadn't burnt his mouth on anything since he was in freaking kindergarten! Might not have been too useful in actual Hero work but that shit was annoying damnit!
The boy who literally sweated explosives snapped out of his reverie and realized that he must have been standing there scowling at Deku's notebook in silence for the better part of a minute. He probably thought he was thinking about blowing it up or something. Couldn't blame him really, he was always talking about doing stuff like that.
"I gotta get out of here anyway. I promised I'd hang out with those other two losers today. I swear to god though if they start smoking around me again I'm gonna let 'em have it. I'm not getting in trouble because their dumb asses have a death wish."
"Okay, Kacchan. See you Monday."
"Don't call me Kacchan."
"Don't call me Deku."
"Fuck off I'll call you what I want."
"Same here then."
"Tch. Later." The blonde bomber stalked off with his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face that didn't reach his eyes. This particular exchange had become something of a ritual between the two. Every now and then Katsuki would get annoyed that Izuku still insisted on calling him by his Kindergarten nickname, but Izuku would rebuff him by pointing out he still did the same thing, making him a hypocrite.
It was one of the few things he could count on Deku giving him backsass for, and it always seemed to give the other boy a small confidence boost when he let him get away with it, so he endured it.
…Not that he would ever in a million years admit to his Sidekick that that was the reason.