Chapter 3: A Lesson In Humility
The day Katsuki Bakugo, more affectionately known to Izuku as Kacchan, manifested his Quirk, everything regarding the boy seemed to change and Izuku instantly noticed.
"Wow, Bakugo can make Explosions!" At the first instance of praise, many of their peers were quick to add in…
"That's totally a Hero's Quirk!"
"So flashy! And awesome, too!"
But as the days went by and the praise, the reverence, the worship… When none of it ended, Katsuki inevitably ended up corrupted. After all, when everyone, including one's peers, friends, and even adults and seniors, agreed and backed a child — of all people — up on everything, it'd be hard to not let it get to said child's head.
Soon, Katsuki started to believe he was simply better than everyone else.
As a byproduct of having Explosion as his Quirk, he was naturally aggressive. So, when he started getting "pushy" with the other kids, when he started to verbally abuse everyone who questioned him and received no backlash — not from his classmates who couldn't hope to put up a fight against him and his awesome Quirk, nor his teachers who would simply look the other way — he started testing the limits of what he could get away with.
"Quit bugging me, Deku," Izuku remembered the first time Kacchan slighted him quite well.
"Yeah, dummy!" One of Katsuki's lackeys, too young to know a harsher insult, added, "We don't want any dead weight holding us back."
"Dead weight?" Izuku didn't need to think much to narrow his eyes as he asked, "You mean you don't want to play with me because of my Quirk?"
"Tsk," Katsuki clicked his tongue as he shoved a finger into Izuku's chest as he said, "I just don't want you to think you could ever hope to keep up with me and become a Hero."
Ignoring the finger still pressed harshly into his shirt, Izuku tilted his head curiously as he took a moment to look at Katsuki's lackeys before he asked, "So, you think I can't become a Hero, but they can?"
"Hmph," Katsuki withdrew his finger in exchange for getting right before Izuku's face as he barked, "As if! Chubby Wings and Long Fingers already know their place," he added darkly.
"Oh?" Izuku smiled, almost threateningly so, as he asked, "And where would that be?" Before Katsuki could respond, Izuku would add, "Where do you think my place is?"
For a second, Katsuki almost fell victim to the uncertainty predicated on Izuku's confidence. Unfortunately, he wouldn't heed his initial instinct and fell victim to the ego that told him that 'Deku was nothing' to him.
"Beneath me!" He looked at the three of them for at least a second each, "All of you!"
"Hmm..." Izuku's cheeky smile died as he tepidly said, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way."
From that point onward, Izuku literally walked away from being as close to Katsuki. He took the explosive blond's words to heart and stopped bugging him. Unfortunately, even as he stopped being involved in Katsuki's life, the opposite wasn't the case for Izuku as people started to take after Katsuki's stance on associating with Izuku because of his Quirk.
Most people looked down on him for having what appeared to be an even weaker version of his mother's Minor Telekinesis.
'If only they knew the truth,' Izuku would often shake his head as he practiced with his cover Quirk, Evolving Telekinesis.
His father had convinced him on initially taking the original duplicate of his mother's Quirk as his own. But, as he grew older and his Quirk matured, it'd show the evolving aspect of his real Quirk. They had planned to keep his Quirk listed as Minor Telekinesis for a couple months before Izuku would have a 'sudden breakthrough' and be capable of standard Telekinesis.
From Telekinesis, the flood gates would open to the possibility of Greater Telekinesis, Microkinesis, Macrokinesis, Tactile Telekinesis, and the countless variations of elemental 'kinesises' until eventually people wouldn't question him if he accidentally used a different Quirk by accident or out of necessity.
Unfortunately, before enough time passed for Izuku to have his first breakthrough, Katsuki would cross an unforgivable line.
"Move aside, Deku," Katsuki said with a grin as he made an explosion by catching his own fist.
"Don't you think you're going too far?" Izuku frowned as he looked at Katsuki with disappointment.
"You're the only one who thinks I'm wrong, so either move aside right now or you're next."
Izuku closed his eyes as he shook his head.
CQC Instinct, one of the many Quirks he had duplicated tracelessly activated as he heard one of Katsuki's two lackey's approach. It was Long Fingers, who tried to catch him by the head with his grotesquely elongated fingers.
Slapping the offending hand away after barely creaking open his eyes, Izuku used his Minor Telekinesis in conjunction with Quirk Control to instantly half the Quirk Factor produced in Katsuki's body; effectively reducing his Explosion Quirk to the potency of harmless and damp firecrackers.
What followed suit couldn't even be called a fight as Izuku effortlessly blocked, dodged, or countered any and all attempts made by Katsuki and his lackeys. As expected, Long Fingers and Chubby Wings all but immediately gave up and ran away, while Katsuki bitterly stayed to fight an unwinnable battle despite having had his Quirk tapered with.
"What the hell! My Quirk?!" The fact that he couldn't produce any decent sized explosions only served to enrage Katsuki as he wailed on Izuku with little tact.
His every punch landed exactly on the most stable parts of Izuku's guard. That, or after every six or seven attempts, Izuku would counter him with a light chop as if to non verbally convey how easily he could beat him up if he really wanted to.
Astonishingly — or… maybe not, considering it was Katsuki — it took Bakugo's mother, Mitsuki, arriving to get Katsuki to stop trying to fight Izuku; this despite him having been hit well over a dozen times while Izuku hadn't so much as suffered a scratch.
"This isn't over, Deku!" Katsuki would screech even as his mother dragged him away. But the next time Izuku saw him, he would be almost unrecognizable.
…
"Hey did you hear about what happened to Bakugo?" Izuku grew alert as he listened.
"Yeah, I don't really know what Quirk Factor Retrogenesis means, but his Quirk stopped being awesome."
"Heh, just look at him," a different kid cockily said, "he's given up and become a loser like Midoriya and the rest of the lame kids."
When Izuku found Katsuki, he was sitting alone in a corner with this dead look in his eyes as if his life was over. It must have been hard on him to suddenly go from the object of worship in pretty much everyone's eyes to a third-class plebeian with a defunct Quirk.
"What are you doing?" Izuku brazenly walked up to the depressed boy and directly asked.
"Tsk," Immediately, traces of the usual Katsuki were spurred on as the blond said, "'You come here to rub it in how I'm now like you?"
"Like what?" Izuku asked.
"Useless..." Katsuki said as he slumped into himself and broke eye contact.
"Do you really think that?" Izuku glared at the broken boy. "Hmph," Izuku snorted as he started, "The Kacchan I know wouldn't let something as small as a Quirk hold him back."
"But I'm practically Quirkless now!" Katsuki nearly cried.
"So?" Izuku shot him a look like he was a certain kind of special. "Didn't I single-handedly fight back against you and those other two guys the other day without using my Quirk at all?" Izuku lied through his teeth; seamlessly, like his father had taught him.
That seemed to light a bulb in Katsuki's head as he ruminated in thought until he blurted out, "That's right! If Deku can do it, I sure as hell can too! No… I can do it better!"
Thus, from that moment onward, Katsuki and Izuku's relationship changed once again. For better or for worse… Now it was Katsuki who started seeking Izuku out. For one, he still had to settle the loss he received on the day his Quirk was powered down, but beyond that, after he ran out of bullies to beat back — due to his newly nigh-Quirkless state — only Izuku remained who could so thoroughly outclass him in a fight.
…
As the years passed, Katsuki and Izuku became like brothers. They were inseparable, rivals, best friends, who could relate to each other; one as a person who's Quirk Factor Retrogenesis slowly faded with time and the other as a person with an "Evolving" Quirk.
To outsiders looking in, they were quite the irregular duo. Seemingly, ready to fight one another to the point of creating a spectacle; even without their Quirks. Doctors and Quirk Analysts alike looked at the two like treasures for their uniquely ground-breaking Quirk-related eccentricities. But only the two of them, and maybe their parents knew that they actually cared greatly for one another.
Izuku for one, was evidently much more pleased with Katsuki as he matured and mellowed out from having experienced being at the bottom of the societal hierarchy. He never really lost the fiery edge with which he carried himself, but now as his Quirk was slowly returning to it's projected original state and even surpassing it courtesy of Quirk Control, Katsuki was no longer as needlessly arrogant, brash, nor likely to act like a bully in any capacity.
In fact…
"Kacchan?" Izuku paused as he turned to see Katsuki, who he had previously been walking with, suddenly start approaching a group of students from some other school.
"The fuck are you clowns trying to do, eh?" He could hear Katsuki hiss in that specific way he did when he was extraordinarily annoyed.
"Huh? Who the hell do you think you are? You trying to play hero to these freaks?!" The leader, Izuku presumed, of the group of three guys and two girls surrounding two girls with Mutant Quirks, said.
"What if I am? What are you going to do about it, you fuck?"
"Motherf—" As the guy tried to punch Katsuki mid-insult, he was met with a ruthless nose-breaking jab. "Gah! Get him," the downed leader scrambled to pick himself up and join in as his cohorts tried to gang up on Katsuki.
Tried as they might, someone who had grown up regularly fighting Izuku to standstills when Quirks were off the table like Katsuki could mop the floor with even a group of ragtag no-name villains; nevermind, some middle school misfits. He might have taken a punch or two, but within seconds, the group of five were left scrambling to get away from Katsuki.
"Damn it, Kacchan… You didn't even hold back against those poor girls," Izuku said whilst shaking his head as he approached.
"What the fuck? They didn't hold back against me!" Katsuki snorted as he cracked his neck and began to follow Izuku, away from the site of his onslaught, without saying anything else to the two girls he had taken his time out to help.
"Still… I mean, in all honesty, you probably should have held back against all of them," Izuku said with a smile as he reflected on the actions of his childhood friend.
Where once, he might have been the one to start something like this, just because someone's Quirk led to them having a physical deformity, now Katsuki also actively sought to end that kind of behavior in the first place.
Author's Notes
So, as I've been hyped up to start writing again — unfortunately, not for this fanfiction, or fanfiction in general, really — I was looking at all my files in Google Docs and noticed that I'd finished this third Chapter and somehow forgotten to post it.
Oh well... maybe I'll start updating this again if I ever need to take a break from my current project. It's called The New God's Representative, which I'm posting on Royalroad and Webnovel, if anyone is wondering.