A part of his mind still hovered high above the battle even after he'd been reborn. While his sucktastic baby body in the next life sucked milk and cried against his will, he hung there in his memories, watching Izuku roar and tear after the Dead Hands Bastard in flashes of green light. He could see his body too. Dead. Laying in rubble.

"It's time for you to be processed," he remembered a voice saying.

A being of light and cloud, but human shaped, had hung next to him. They had seemed familiar, although he knew he had never met them.

"Not in this life," they had said.

"Whatever, you can freaking wait, I got to see this to the end."

"You already know how it ends."

"Like hell!"

But even as he cussed and swore at the being of light and his eyes followed the spark-green path of Izuku, trading blows, decimating buildings, changing the entire landscape like a god, he found he did know.

Izuku would win. Like in every story of good and evil, the hero always won.

Katsuki clacked his teeth in irritation, only to find his, uh, ghost teeth(?) made no such satisfying sound.

"This is fucked up."

"How so?" asked the heavenly beurocrat, for that's what they must be, come to process his soul for the afterlife, god damn.

"I just got started," he said. "I had plans, damnit, and I worked like shit-have you seen my body? When it's not all bloody and crap, I mean at its prime, I'm fucking stacked! And I'd just had-screw it, this shit is fucked up. I'm still a kid!"

The titans below moved the earth. Katsuki felt his core move with them.

He was suppose to be there. It had been his destiny to be one of them. To be great. God-like.

"And then what?" asked Mr. Glows-Too-Much.

"What do you mean what? I'd be awesome! The definition of awesome! I'd be history itself!"

"And you aren't now? You know, in your heart, what Izuku Midoriya will become, and he will have only become that because of your sacrifice. You share his legacy."

"And that's messed up!" he shrieked. "My body just…moved! I didn't even think about it!"

"So you would have let him die?"

"Shit no, but that's not the point! God, are angels really this dense?"

Glowy Robes smiled at him, and it made his hackles rise. It was that knowing smile he hated the most that said they found him funny.

"I in no way find your distress funny," they said. "I just like you, and I've come to offer you a deal."

"..." He wanted to ask how they were reading his mind, but come on, why couldn't Death be able to read his mind?

Another twist in the cataclysmic battle below caught his attention. Somehow, even from way up there, he could see Izuku's tears even as he bled.

Idiot had always been a cry baby…

No…not an idiot. His friend.

"We'd just got started…" he said. "It's no fair."

"Thus the deal." The angel swept its arm and somehow scooped Katsuki whole like a great wall, taking him to somewhere ephemeral and light and out of sight of the battle.

"Where'd you take me?"

"Somewhere you won't be distracted," they said, and he could see that smile again, except this time it was kind. "Great acts of righteousness deserve a great reward, and there is no greater love than a man who puts down his life for his friend."

Katsuki wrinkled up to the top of his head. " Gag, do you have to make it sound so gay?"

"Would you like another chance?"

Now that got his attention. "Like, put me back in time or something?"

"Oh no. What's done is done, there are no do-overs. That would defeat the purpose."

He scowled at that. "I don't see why not."

"And you don't have to. What I'm offering is a chance at reincarnation in another world."

Katsuki almost face-palmed. So that was it. He was going to become a cliche rerun.

"You don't have to. You could always just go on, like most who die do."

"On? On where?"

The angel made a vague gesture. Katsuki couldn't even make out the direction. This spirit stuff was weird as crud.

"On to the next stage of your development."

Katsuku fidgeted a bit. Not that he had a body to fidget with. Yeah he could see himself, dressed in his battle gear as though the fight had never happened, but he also couldn't feel himself breathe, or the air, or even the taste of his own mouth.

It was maddening.

"What's this reincarnation thing involve?" he asked.

And that's how he found himself back as a baby, unable to move how he wanted to, unable to see clearly, unable to communicate, and suddenly understanding one billion percent why babies cried all the time. He actually had to give credit to those who didn't. Because, without someone around to care, he'd just die, and he'd already tried out that shit.

"Be aware that, whichever you choose, there will be some who will follow after you ," he remembered the angel saying.

"What, like my own personal haunting? Are their devils or guardian angels stalking me?"

"No. Like your mother."

Sure enough, the first thing his blurry, developing vision made out was the old hag's face.

"She's not…she's not going to do something dumb like off herself, is she? Just because I died?"

"That's her own business."

He couldn't remember the last time his mom had smiled at him like that, all tender and soft. Most of the time she was hell incarnate. It was no mystery where he got it from.

"Hello, sweet Katsuki." Her voice was soft too, alienly so. "Did you sleep well?"

He stared into her scarlet eyes, just like his, and tried not to think about how she got to be there, holding him again.

Please don't have killed yourself, he wanted to say. A crappy son like him wouldn't have been worth that. Everyone, including himself, would have agreed.

But there she was, holding him close, looking back at him with way too much warmth.

And, of course, because his young body was more instinct than anything, he started to cry.

"Oh no, sweetie, what's wrong? That doesn't sound like your hungry cry."

"Everything all right?"

His eyes may not have worked yet, but his ears worked perfectly fine.

His crying increased.

Because his dad was there too.

" The point is, they will want to follow where you've gone after they die. How they die, or even the life they had before, they most likely won't remember of their own choice. Too many people remembering might hurt the world, or hurt themselves."

"If you're going to wipe my memories-"

"You will remember. That is your special gift for the sacrifice you've made. It is unlikely they will have died the same way. We don't get the opportunity to die for someone else every day."

"Whatever. Just make sure I get to keep my quirk."

"Oh, you will. And you'll look the same, of course. The spiritual and the physical body often look the same."

His dad's image was even more blurry than his mother's. The brown of his hair and eyes seemed to blend into the background, unlike the blond and red of his mother.

He tried to calm himself down. Even as a baby, to bawl at the drop of a dime was demeaning. He was made of tougher stuff than this.

The pads of his mother's thumbs wiping away his tears was softer than he remembered. Surely, she had never been so soft.

"He sounds hurt," she said. "I've never heard him cry like this before."

"Well, it won't hurt to try feeding him. Have you checked his diaper?"

"I just changed it."

" Just remember, as you live this next life, it would do you good to reevaluate what it means to be great," the angel had said. " And what the rewards of true greatness are."

"I didn't die to get unsolicited advice. Just give me back my life and let me do what I want."

The glowy ass's smile had turned all stupid knowing again, as though they found Katsuki funny.

Then they'd dropped him into the birth canal, where he was born and drifted among memories of thunder and green lightning.