Wow, this funny little AU got FAR more interest than I ever expected it to. Thank you so much for your outpouring of kind words. I'm very humbled and grateful and I hope you continue to enjoy the story.

The next morning, he ran through yesterday's hero analysis notes while things were still fresh in his mind. There had been a lot of heroes to record. Kamui Woods, Mt. Lady's debut, Backdraft, Death Arms, and...

He flipped the water-warped pages of his notebook to the big, blocky autograph splashed across both pages. All Might. He could still barely believe it. He never actually imagined he'd have notes to take on the hero that didn't come from news footage, or maybe a distant glimpse at a public event.

Although All Might leads the hero charts in civilian rescues per year, the overall chance of encountering the hero in the field is still astoundingly rare. "As it should be," he said in a press comment. "I want to help create a world where nobody has to meet me that way."

Out of all the heroes in the world, All Might came to save him.

His logical side knew it was All Might's job to save people. It wasn't anything personal. All Might didn't know or care who he was, and would quickly forget he ever existed.

All the other sides of him took his logical side and dumped it down a well. He was alive, breathing, looking over these scribbled notes, all because his hero took notice of his insignificant speck of a life and came to his rescue. As if his existence actually mattered.

He winced as he tried to turn the page and a brittle, blackened edge of paper crumbled in his hand. It was just his luck that the only place All Might had to sign this precious autograph was in the notebook that Kacchan decided to ruin.

Then again, maybe it was symbolic. This beat-up notebook was always going to remind him of the time he was told to go kill himself. But inside it was this... proof of an impossible chance meeting, the bold ink strokes as cheery and vibrant as the person who wrote them, like they openly defied the warped, charred paper and everything it meant. He had wondered whether his life really meant anything to anyone, and this was the answer he got.

God, that was corny. But still, he felt giddy, aflutter. He had been given a second chance. He wouldn't waste it.

He pulled out a fresh notebook from under his desk. There were still blank pages in the last one, but it would probably be best not to mess with the damaged book any more. He flipped open to the first page and stared at the clean white expanse, tapping his pencil on his nose idly. Where even to start.

His mind drifted off to the second rescue, to that conversation in the alleyway, the walk home. He idly started to sketch in a corner of the page. A narrow face, all harsh angles and sharp points, framed by disheveled hair and long messy bangs. Eyes that shone out with startling intensity from under shadowed brows. That thin, serious line of a mouth. Izuku couldn't capture the way the corner of it quirked up in a warm, conspiratorial little smile, just for a moment, as if he were letting slip that the whole severe look was just a front, that he didn't really mean any of it, and he was letting Izuku in on the ruse just for the fun of it.

The stranger probably didn't belong in his hero notes. Izuku knew pro heroes, and he didn't recognize the man at all. Besides, if he had actually been a hero, he would have stuck around for the police report instead of leaving right away.

But it was okay. He could have an honorary spot.

He tried to corral his thoughts together so he could jot down some more info on the techniques Backdraft had showcased during the fight. It was rare to see Backdraft actually use combat moves, and he hadn't detailed them as much as he should.

But his eyes kept drifting back over to the little sketch. Something about it felt incomplete. Like he overlooked something important. He frowned.

Heroes. Rescuers. A baggy shirt that had once been white—

"...Sweetie?" Mom's voice sounded from outside his door. He turned.

"Yeah?" She opened the door, peered in. She had her cell phone up to her ear.

"Are you still feeling okay?" she asked. "Is your elbow any worse?"

She had just asked this twenty minutes ago, after he woke up. Was she that worried? He flexed his arm. His elbow had a nasty purple bruise, but he could move it without a problem. And his throat was still sore, but it didn't feel as bad as before.

"No, I'm still fine..." he said. "Why?"

She tapped the phone with a smile. "It's the police; they wanted to make sure you were all right after yesterday."

He froze. The police were on the phone with Mom?

"Don't write for too long, breakfast is ready." She bowed out and shut the door. He heard her murmuring on the phone as she went down the hall.

His heart thumped. The police were on the phone with Mom. Yesterday, the stranger hadn't seemed concerned when Izuku told him what happened, said the authorities wouldn't care that he wandered off because he was a minor and he didn't cause any direct damage. But what if the stranger was wrong? What if they held him responsible? What if Kacchan fed the police some crazy twisted version of events that made Izuku look like the bad guy, the same way he always did whenever he had to explain himself to adults?

Pro heroes have specialized insurance policies that cover the potentially astronomical collateral damage that can occur during altercations. But even with these policies, the expense involved is one of the most common factors that pushes heroes out of the profession—

He shut the notebook, feeling numb, and went to go change into his school clothes. He really had been an idiot for wandering off. He should have stayed and at least tried to get ahead of whatever Kacchan was going to spin to punish him for this, even if his protests probably wouldn't have done any good (they never did). He wasn't even old enough to get a job, he couldn't pay off an entire block of property damage...

At the kitchen table, Mom was still on the phone, scribbling on a pad of paper. "Okay... yes. Yes, I will. Thank you so much." She glanced down at the phone, gave it a tap, then smiled at him as he slid into his chair. "Hi, sweetie!" she said. "Did you sleep all right?"

It took a second for the question to pierce through his wall of nerves. "I, uh, I guess..." he said. "What did the police say?"

"Oh, they just wanted to check in and give us a case number. They haven't caught the villain yet, but they said he probably won't appear in our neighborhood again. I still don't want you going off alone after school for a while, okay?"

He blinked. "Oh... that's it?"

"They said they'd call when they had more info," she said. "Honestly, you probably know more about how they do these things than I do!"

He gave a shaky smile, feeling somewhat lost. Were they still gathering information? Maybe the stranger had been right and they really didn't care. Maybe Kacchan had been too shaken up to say anything incriminating.

He doubted it, though. The smell of food in the air started to make him feel a little nauseous.

"Mom... would it be okay if I stayed home today?"

She frowned. "I thought you just said you were fine? Are you worried about the villain?"

"Um... yeah." He was worried, that much was true. Kacchan had been humiliated and nearly killed in front of a huge gawking crowd of strangers because of him. Death by slime monster would be a mercy compared to what he had coming the next time Kacchan crossed paths with him.

"Well, I can come with you on your way to school if you want. It might be better to distract yourself with schoolwork, you know? I don't want you worrying yourself sick all by yourself in your room."

Okay, fair... that was exactly what he'd do if he did stay home. He sighed. Whatever Kacchan had told people, whatever he was planning to do, it would be better to let it happen now than to give it days to fester and build on itself.

School was, predictably, a circus. He tried his best to become invisible, creeping into class seconds before the tardy bell, but it was no use. The moment class went on break, everyone in the room swarmed him with questions and jokes and attention.

It wasn't really positive attention. It didn't feel like they cared about him, more like he was a fun spectacle to gawk at, a novelty they could pry cool details out of to share with their real friends. He didn't mind, as long as the spotlight turned off sometime soon. He was a little too wary to feel flattered even when some of them acted genuinely impressed. He was pretty sure half his classmates never even bothered to learn his name before today, and would forget it tomorrow.

But it was strange. Even though people wouldn't shut up about the rescue part, they didn't talk about how Izuku set off the whole debacle in the first place. Izuku assumed that would be the first thing they would hone in on, but they didn't.

Even stranger, Kacchan didn't seem interested in reminding them. Izuku had been expecting a schoolwide headhunt. But instead, Kacchan pointedly ignored his existence and blew off (or threatened to blow up) anyone who brought up the event. Nayubi and Kanda shot him sidelong looks, but otherwise left him alone too. Nobody mentioned the soda bottle, or the alleyway.

His nerves frayed more and more as the day went on. Every time someone blathered on about him "rescuing Bakugo" within earshot of the other boy, he desperately wanted to shake them by their shoulders and ask them to please stop adding signatures to his death warrant. He could see the way Kacchan's expression darkened and how his hands curled into fists under his desk. The fact that he wasn't confronting Izuku right now was very, very bad. It meant he was waiting until after school let out, when there would be fewer adults around.

Izuku tried everything he could after classes were over. He dawdled, he offered to help clean the classroom, and when the teachers finally kicked him out, he snuck out a back door instead of the regular school entrance. But he still didn't even make it a block away before he got slammed up against the wall.

"What the hell was that yesterday!?" Kacchan snarled. There was a smoldering fury in his eyes that Izuku had never seen before. He'd upset Kacchan in the past, but not like this, not anywhere close to this.

Kacchan's bare hands dug into his shoulders and his mind immediately splintered into a hundred different images of all the times he'd watched Kacchan gleefully blow up various items trapped between his palms. One wrong word and he could be nursing third degree burns. Kacchan had never gone quite that far before, but he looked angry enough to do it now.

"I'm sorry—"

"Why were you running around with something like that? Huh? Answer me, Deku!" Kacchan's voice was so loud. Each word felt like a slap to the face.

His heartbeat rang in his ears, oddly slow. It was always a tossup whether answering would make things better, or worse. But when Kacchan directly demanded it, answering was usually better. He tried to swallow, did his best to force the words out. "I t-told you," he half-whispered, sounding hoarse. "I was taking it to the police. A hero caught him. But, the hero had to leave, suddenly, so, I was helping."

It was as close to the truth as he felt like he could say. Of course, it wasn't enough. "Are you shitting me?" Kacchan thumped him hard against the wall; it didn't actually hurt that much, the jolt of panic from it was worse. "Who? Who the hell was it? Who would ask you to do something like that?"

What was he supposed to say? That he met All Might in person and Kacchan didn't? That he stupidly made All Might screw up and stupidly tried to fix the mistake himself? Kacchan would blow him into the sun.

"Talk!" Kacchan shouted. "You think you're too good to explain yourself? You think you're that much better than me!?" His grip was so tight it was starting to hurt, now.

Izuku had a feeling that it didn't really matter what he said at this point, or if he said anything at all. Not answering was less effort, at least. He felt like his whole body was being squeezed by a vice. He wouldn't have been able to move even if he'd thought it would help.

Kacchan was so close, too close, close enough that Izuku could smell that very faint burned scent that Kacchan could only ever get rid of for about five minutes right after a shower. Izuku sometimes fell into mild anxiety spirals after walking down certain streets and for the longest time he had no idea why, until he realized it only happened near particular shops and restaurants, ones that made smoke drift out into the avenue.

It hadn't always been this way, right? He could remember back, way back when they were so little, just after Kacchan's Quirk appeared and some other kids noticed its odd side effect. Kacchan went into a huge insecure moping spell over the issue, for days, until Izuku finally told him that he thought it was actually really neat, it reminded him of a campfire, and camping was super cool, so didn't that make him cool too? And Kacchan huffed and pouted and said no, camping was stupid, and told Izuku to go away. But after that, he never moped about it again—he owned it, loudly boasting that everyone else was just jealous they didn't have a Quirk that made them smell badass like he did, and Izuku was so happy to see that triumphant grin back on his face.

They had been friends, hadn't they? A long time ago. They promised to take on the world together. And then something went wrong, something got horribly twisted out of shape and now they were here, like this.

More than anything, he just wished he could go back and fix whatever he did that broke things so badly. Even now, even like this, he was still glad that Kacchan made it out of that attack okay, that he was still alive to shout and rage and do whatever he was about to do.

Kacchan held him there for a moment longer, then a flash of fury contorted his face and he roughly shoved Izuku to the side—this was it—

Izuku let himself fall, hit the ground, immediately curled up and squeezed his eyes shut—

—And then... nothing.

He could hear the little popping, snapping noises Kacchan's palms made when he was literally bubbling with rage. But he didn't move, didn't close the gap between them. Izuku didn't dare to open his eyes, barely dared to breathe, afraid that any movement might set the other boy off.

"Fine," Kacchan finally spat. "Keep your secrets if you want them so bad. You almost got people killed with your little hero stunt, you dumbass. I hope you're happy."

And then... he stormed off. Izuku stayed down, frozen, disbelieving, until he couldn't hear the sound of footsteps anymore, then opened his eyes in shock. Half of him expected it to be a trick. But it wasn't. Kacchan was really gone.

That was it?

He'd been seriously worried he wouldn't physically be able to make it home after Kacchan was done with him. He'd earned much more for much less in the past. But this time, he escaped with... nothing. Maybe bruises on his shoulders.

What was going on?

Well, he wasn't going to stick around and wait for Kacchan to change his mind. As soon as he remembered how to make his limbs work again, he picked himself up and hurried towards home.

Like clockwork, the stress caught up to him a few minutes later: shaky legs, lightheadedness, tears blurring his vision. Stupid... nothing even happened. But before he could think anything more, the conversation from yesterday floated into his mind, as if that man was sitting next to him again, replying to the voice in his head. Violent situations always take a toll, even if you aren't harmed.

Right. This wasn't stupid. It was normal. A bunch of stress symptoms that any human being would have. Would the symptoms hit differently if he was harmed? Probably. It wasn't something he ever sat down and charted out before. He'd always been too busy berating himself to look at what was actually happening. Why had he never tried to understand it before?

It was somehow less distressing when he thought of it as a puzzle to solve, even while he was deep in the middle of it, leaning against a utility pole and hoping nobody would come by and see him crying his eyes out. After all, if he really wanted to be a hero, he would have to face this kind of stress a lot. If he figured out how it worked, what to expect, maybe he could learn how to tame it, too.

Later that evening, Mom called him into the living room when the news played a segment on the sludge villain event. He almost couldn't bring himself to watch; it was too horrible to imagine how pathetic he probably looked on film. But the only real footage was from a shaky cellphone camera, and his back was turned to it most of the time. If he pretended it was some other scrawny green-haired kid and not him, it almost looked cool... a boy dashing straight through the villain's attack and plunging his hands into the muck to rescue his friend.

Of course, any coolness points vanished a second later when he fell on his butt and had to get bailed out by the tall stranger, who looked even more skeletal on television than he did in person. The man was in and out in an instant, reaching forward and plucking the two of them from harm's reach in one fluid motion.

His actions looked calm and practiced. Maybe he really was a hero? Maybe retired? Maybe he had an amazing Quirk that just made him look like an ICU escapee. Roughly 30% of Quirks noticeably alter a person's physical appearance in some way...

Izuku still felt warm and fuzzy when he recalled their conversation. A fine hero.

The most interesting thing, though, was that according to the reporters, the villain just popped up and attacked out of nowhere. Whatever story Kacchan told them, it apparently did not contain any references to soda bottles or alleyway confrontations, and there was no mention of Izuku at all.

That was very interesting. So this was why none of his classmates—or the police—asked him about the start of the incident. They didn't even know what happened. Apparently, Kacchan couldn't find any positive way to spin "my bullying victim was trying to get a villain to the police before he hurt anyone, but I interfered like a petty asshole and wrecked a whole city block." So instead... he just glossed over the whole thing. He only ever tried to hide his actions like this when he thought they were indefensible.

Izuku learned a long time ago that trying to tattle on Kacchan was never smart. It took him maybe three tries back in elementary to figure out that things did not, in fact, improve for him if he went to the teachers like everyone blithely said to do, even if the incidents played out blow-for-blow exactly like the scenarios they talked about in school bullying seminars. Kacchan always managed to talk his way out and escape with nothing but a slap on the wrist, then turned around and made his life hell for trying to get him in trouble.

But this time was different, wasn't it? This time, Kacchan did much more than just make the histrionic nerd upset. His actions had serious consequences. This time, if Izuku spoke up, important people would listen.

Was this why Kacchan didn't blow him to pieces earlier? Was he worried that if he went too far, Izuku would retaliate by telling everyone the whole story? (Not that he would, he had just as much to hide, but Kacchan didn't need to know that.)

Did he have leverage now?

Apparently he did, because after that day, Kacchan never touched him again. Glared at him, sure, peppered him with snide remarks if they were forced into a group activity together... but that was as far as he went.

He knew the peace would only last as long as he kept his mouth shut. It didn't feel fair, or satisfying. It felt like weird reverse blackmail. But he'd take what he could get. He could be a weird reverse blackmailer if it meant the days of dreading his walk home from school were over.

1) I hope this doesn't need to be clarified, but I, the author, am NOT trying to say that Izuku is responsible for Katsuki's behavior, or that his bullying isn't serious, or that he's histrionic for being traumatized. These attitudes come through because this is written from Izuku's point of view and he is very hard on himself, not because I think any of it is true.

Tune in next time for plenty of Izuku and Toshinori hijinks.