Archive of Our Own ^beta

This is how it goes.

There are those who have quirks, and there are those who are Other. 

Quirks are known, but the Other is felt. In the little curl of dread in your gut, in the song of your bones, in the scream of the sun. There is no science. It is instinct, and thus far more powerful.

(Monsters, the Otherless might call them. But that is because they are ignorant. What are gods and the things that they make, but monsters themselves?)

Some have both. Sir Nighteye sees more than just futures and fates. Sometimes, sometimes, his golden eyes turned to slits and his teeth are perhaps just a touch sharper than they should be. Sometimes he has scales on his cheek and fire in his eyes, and people are scared. Perhaps Aizawa’s shadow flickers just slightly, and maybe the air around him is colder than it normally is. Maybe his breath clouds on summer nights, and he unnerves his fellow teachers.

(Like recognizes like, and-)

Toshinori Yagi is born at noon exactly, screaming to the gods and sun above and perfectly healthy. 

But he doesn’t have a quirk, and that black mark will follow him for the rest of his life.

Toshinori Yagi grows up quick and hard and kind, shuttled from home to home because even though being quirkless isn’t exactly rare (yet), no one wants someone deemed “defective.” He gets into fights and scrapes and situations that he shouldn’t be in, and the only reason why he isn’t dead before middle school is because Toshinori is blessed with Other. 

(When he stands and smiles, blood in his mouth from a bitten tongue, his eyes flash like a supernova and his hair glows with solar fire. Toshinori blazes like a sun, and if anyone was smart at that moment, they would run before he burned them to ashes.)

Toshinori knows that he cannot be a hero, because it is carved into this desk with pen knives and carved into his mind and heart with every dismissive word. He stares down at questions like “How does your quirk affect the way you live your life” and doesn’t know what to write that won’t make someone angry. 

But there comes a point when he is icing his black eye that he wasn’t quick enough to protect (it was worth it, the girl had been crying and the man had a knife, someone had to do something-) that he realizes that change will always make people angry.

Toshinori wants to change the world.

He writes in stuttering kanji:

I am afraid.

Toshinori burns as he writes that the world is no longer built for people like him, and he is afraid, because some people look at him and see something less than human, a life worth less than others. He writes that he does not care what people think, and that he will be a hero. 

He fails this assignment. Write about your quirk Yagi, or don’t write at all, his teacher says, and she goes a little pale when his lion’s mane of hair looks like it has fire running through it and his eyes flash with plasma. 

Monster, she calls him for the rest of the week, in the little quiet spaces where only he can hear.

Monsters can’t be heroes.

(Toshinori doesn’t want to be a monster.)

He has dreams, wild things with teeth, that wake him up with blazing fire or howling screams. They scare him for reasons he can’t explain, but in every single one, there is a keen sense of loss, like a key part of Toshinori he didn’t even knew existed is missing. He looks in the mirror some days and doesn’t recognize who looks back at him. 

In those dreams that he doesn’t remember, Toshinori blinks his twenty-seven and three and fourteen other eyes and bares multiple sets of teeth in snarls. Eight sets of wings bristle upon his back, his mane crackles with lightning, and while Toshinori may be a lion cub sharpening his claws in the waking world, here? Here, he is Celestial. 

An unknown and achingly familiar power runs through his veins there, and he sees flashes of pure white and vibrant yellow and he thinks family.

(Flashes of green show themselves, rare and treasured, and it hurts in the best kind of way when he sees.) 

For a precious, fleeting moment he feels like he could eat the hearts of the gods themselves with how brilliant he shines.

But then he wakes, and instead of wild and bright and beautiful, he is merely a monster, something unnatural, something hated. 

Toshinori is not a monster. 

Toshinori is Sunborn, and he will either light up the world or burn it to ash.

Nana Shimura isn’t Other, but she may as well be with the six ghosts living in her head.

The past users of her Quirk often bicker with one another, mostly out of boredom. However, they all agree that she should find a successor, and soon, because All For One is moving swiftly. But every student at UA that she looks over, every young hero, even just kids passing on the street, all of them are dim and dark to her.

Those ones with the Otherness about them have sparks flaring around them, but they are merely fireflies, lighting up and disappearing. It has been explained to her after she first fought All For One, the creeping darkness that made her want to curl up and die. It wasn’t a quirk, but a gift from something much older and much more ancient than anyone wanted to know.

All For One is a Darkwalker and a Quirkstealer, and the next time Nana meets him in battle she will send him to Hell where he belongs.

(Nana doesn’t want to tell the other users, but she’s been having nightmares. She can see her heart beating in her chest and her limbs are heavy and unfamiliar, and yet she somehow knows that there’s not enough of them. She sees searing red and blazing gold and a roaring scream tears her throat to shreds. Something is gone, and she’s almost afraid to find out what it is.)

She is on patrol, gliding above the city with her Quirk, when a beacon lights up. The brilliant glow (like a sun, like a supernova) is blazing from an alleyway. The whispers of the previous holders fill her mind like an excited audience, and she shoots downward.

There are three people in the alleyway.

(Two, and something else.)

A girl, with a torn shirt and broken heels, antlers growing from her head and spots on her shoulders. Tears pour down her cheeks and she is staring in horror.

A man, with the smell of alcohol on his breath and anger in his eyes. He is holding a knife and his veins are glowing green. But that faint, sickly glow is far outshined by the third person.

(Sunborn, Sunborn, they whisper, and Nana thinks What?)

There is a boy, no older than thirteen. The air around smells of ash and his lion mane of hair glows with heat and fire. His eyes are alight with brilliant plasma, and he is standing between the girl and the man, and a sense of sheer power runs from him.

(Eight sets of wings that don’t exist, twenty-four sets of claws ready to strike, and eighty eyes blazing with the wrath of a newborn sun.)

He is at once wild and monstrous and beautiful, in the way that natural disasters are, and One For All purrs in her chest like a contented cat.

(Searing red, blazing gold, and some things are inevitable. Fate slots in, and Toshinori is doomed to burn bright and fast.)

This is not a Quirk, Nana knows. This is Other.

Sunborn. Of course.

And then the boy opens his mouth and roars, with light pouring from him and teeth sharpened to fangs, and the rich scent of fearawewonderterror permeates the alley.

The man runs, and as fascinating (terrifying, beautiful, beastly- )as the boy is, Nana has a duty to her profession. She gives chase and with the power of One For All behind her, she catches him quickly. When she returns, the man unconscious and slung over her shoulder, the boy is gone and the girl is standing. Her eyes are dry and wide.

“Are you a hero?” she asks shakily, and oh, this girl was far too young to be out this late.

Nana smiles reassuringly. “Of course,” she says. “Are you alright?”

She walks the girl back home after dropping, as it turns out, the girl’s ex off at the police station. When they are near her home, she suddenly grabs her wrist.

“He’s not going to get in trouble, right?” she asks her, her eyes pleading and wide. “The boy, I mean. He was helping me.”

And Nana knows that she should probably hunt the lion boy down, because being a vigilante was dangerous and also illegal. But he shines like a beacon, bright as All For One is dark, and something small and primal in her brain thinks don’t search for predators.

“No, not if you don’t want him to,” she says, and she ruffles the girl’s hair. 

When she goes home that night, she calls Gran Torino.

“I found a successor,” she says immediately.

“Fuckin’ finally,” he growls. “Who is it?”

“About that…”

Gran Torino groans.

Toshinori’s heart is jackrabbiting in his chest, because the Hero from last night is standing in his shitty middle school’s office and his social worker is there too.

Sunbeams crackle in his fingertips and he wants to flee as he did last night. But he pastes a confident smile on his face because if you show fear they’ll tear you apart, remember that, Toshi, and he slides confidently into the seat across from them.

(Eight sets of wings on his back flare and five mouths snapped and slashed. Forty-three eyes blink in a world lurking under Toshinori’s skin and he needs them to understand that he could flay them alive with a single thought.)

(He is scared.)

“So,” he says conversationally, like this woman didn’t catch him committing a felony last night. “What’d they get you for?”

Before the hero could answer (and his social worker, bless her heart, to tell him to be quiet), the principal walks in, looking the polite version of disdainful.

Ah, so he wasn’t being expelled. If he was, he’d have a bottle of champagne with him. Maybe a piñata in the shape of his head.

“And you’re sure you have the right student?” the principal asked, doing his very best to not sound dismayed. “We have many other more promising students, and certainly more… capable.”

(Ten mouths want to rip his throat out, and twenty more want to scream. Lightbulbs shatter in random apartments miles away. Eyes upon eyes glare, and Toshinori sometimes wishes that his principal could see more than what was directly in front of him.)

Oh, he didn’t.

The hero blinked at him, opened her mouth, closed it. Toshinori’s social worker sucked in a breath.

“Y’know, the passive-aggressiveness does get old, believe it or not,” Toshinori drawled, smile sharp and eyes sharper. “Just say that you hate me and would prefer that she chose any other student.”

The principal made a sound like he was swallowing a frog.

The hero smiled at him, and something in his chest felt that this was right.

Ignoring the furiously flushing principal, she turned to him fully and reached out a strong, weathered hand, clad in gloves such a familiar shade of yellow that it could only be Fate Herself pulling the strings. “My name is Nana Shimura,” she said. “How’d you like to be my apprentice?”

Toshinori grinned, with too many, too sharp teeth and flashfire hair and hundreds of plasma eyes. The world turned quietly while Fate held Her breath and the sun burned.

He reaches out and clasps her hand. For the first time, another person’s hand is warm to him.

“I’d love to,” he says, and that little flame of Otherness in him roars into a bonfire.

Toshinori Yagi was always meant to be a hero.

(Who says monsters can’t be heroes?)

And then Toshinori is fourteen and entering UA with a borrowed (gifted, he was chosen, incredible-) quirk, with earth-shattering blows and sunfire smiles.

And he’s getting A’s in his classes and his teachers like him and no one wants to pick on him because he isn’t like them. One For All blazes in his chest and his eyes crackle and flash and he burns like the star that he is.

This might be the happiest Toshinori has ever been, actually.

He places on the podium at the Sports festival and is called Sunborn by the announcer (who might be Other himself, Toshinori was never sure), and he swells with pride.

When it comes time to pick a Hero Name, most people expect something like Solarflare or Supernova, something to match the corona of light within him. But something in the back of Toshinori’s mind whispers otherwise, and his board reads All Might as he stands, waiting for judgment. A weight leaves his shoulders when it is approved.

He interns with Gran Torino, who in the two years between accepting Nana’s apprenticeship and UA, had gotten at least five inches shorter. He is curmudgeonly and irritable and he always smacks Toshinori upside the head when he does something stupid (which is upsettingly often). And he also might be the second closest person that counts as a family to Toshinori.

“I see you haven’t been slacking off,” Gran Torino mutters ill-temperedly. “You did… adequate.”

Toshinori did a damn sight more than adequate, but translated from Gran Torino, it meant “I am grudgingly impressed but I would never tell you. Can't have you thinking you're good, now can we?"

It isn't exact, but Toshinori is getting better.

When they spar, Toshinori drapes One For All over himself like a cloak, allowing his muscles to grow and his hair to stand on end. He roars, eyes crackling and body streaming with sunfire. And Gran Torino chuckles, because that only worked the first time they sparred.

Sometimes, sometimes, Gran Torino thinks the kid has more eyes than he should, or he’ll see a golden wing in the reflection of a window. It doesn’t matter to him. Toshinori Yagi may be Other, but the sun will burn out before Gran Torino admits that he has ever been caught off guard.

Toshinori is riding high, and the only thing that seems to be missing is the flash of green that he still sometimes sees in his dreams.

Toshinori Yagi doesn’t tempt Fate.

Fate goes for the throat anyways.

Three days into his internship, All For One Appears.

And Nana is fighting him.

Nana had been smart about the kid, okay?

She had taken him out of that shitshow school, had legally adopted him, sent the social worker off to a lovely vacation in Tahiti, and elsewhere had systematically destroyed any connection “Toshinori Yagi” had with the outside world.

She got attached to the lion boy, in the little things he did, tugging on his bangs or the way he flicked his fingers when he got anxious. She wanted to keep him safe, for as long as she could, despite the fact that something deep in her bones whispers that Toshinori Yagi could crush throats with a single thought.

After he took One For All, they were both in danger. For him, because of the chaotic nature of One For All sparking to life, and for her, because it would be slowly dying in her blood and bones until that fire that lit her up from the inside would be extinguished.

But it would be okay. Because to see Toshinori Yagi, the little lion cub fully grown, teeth bared and lit up from the inside with the righteous fury of a sun, would be more than worth it.

(Why does she sometimes think he should have wings sprouting from his back and twenty mouths smiling triumphantly?)

All For One didn’t know that a Sun-blessed boy named Toshinori Yagi had his former brother’s Quirk. All For One thought that she was at the peak of her strength.

All For One was going to kill her.

Nana Shimura didn’t want to die. But she wanted to protect her kid - oh, and the world - more.

She is bloody and bruised and that bastard is still there, smug as shit. The embers of One For All flicker weakly in her chest, and she thinks I don’t want his face to be the last thing I see.

And it isn’t.

Because her Sun-blessed boy, her little lion cub, comes streaking in at the last moment, claws bared and eyes alight. And that fool boy yeets the Darkwalker into what is probably the stratosphere.

He has only bought himself a few precious seconds as he races over to Nana.

“No,” he is saying, over and over. “No, no, no, no, no no n o -”

(Toshinori may be a star, but death does not yield to stars. He'll try anyway, and Nana loves him for it.)

She smiles weakly, and it is a macabre thing, full of blood as it is. She has not, and probably will never master the way of the bloody smile like Toshinori has. But Toshi’s lips quirk upward, even as he kneels by her side.

She reaches out, broken ribs screaming in pain, and cradles his too-young face in her hands. He is trying desperately not to cry, to smile, to say that he’s here for her, but he knows it’s too late.

But she already knows that he was always there. He lived in her heart and bones and breath, and she wonders if it will hurt him just as much as it will her when she has gone down the one path he cannot follow.

She presses her lips to his forehead, the last benediction to her protege. He grips her arms tightly, like with his sheer force of will, he would make her stay.

“Kick his ass, little lion,” she says, and her hands are cold and her arms are weak. Toshinori, always warm, is now blazing hot, plasma under his skin and tears in his burning blue eyes.

Her eyesight dims as All For One crashes back to earth, and the last thing that Nana Shimura sees is her little lion wheeling to face him with a snarl on his lips and fire wreathing his hair. He is ablaze as he reaches for the Darkwalker’s throat to tear it out with his teeth, and it is beautiful.

Her last thought?

Worth it.

This is the first time that All For One runs.

Toshinori screams as he leaps over piles of rubble, burning like a newborn star, burning blue and exploding from nothing. He doesn’t know what All For One sees that makes him turn tail, this extraordinary, ancient enemy who took the closest thing he had to family away from him.

(All For One sees a burning sun, too bright to look at directly. All For One sees the child of stars and rage, burning his darkness away like morning fog. All For One sees a lion mane and fangs and claws that are all too ready to tear him to shreds. All For one sees too many eyes and too many mouths and something that is willing to bite out the hearts of gods. All For One sees something that is more deadly than him.)

(All For One sees his downfall.)

This is not the last time that All For One runs from Toshinori Yagi.

But it is the last time that he doesn’t land a single blow against the Sunborn.

Entrails are hanging out of him and All For One’s face isn’t much of a face anymore but that doesn’t matter because Toshinori thinks he can see his heart beating -

oh, little Sunborn, whispers One For All. it always happens this way, doesn’t it?

He might hear Nana’s voice but that's impossible because she's dead and he can’t be dead because he needs to be alive for - for -

(Eight freckles, verdant hair, eyes with creation in them. When he sees him, Toshinori thinks family.)

And then he is gone, and the piercing sense of gone where is he my wild starling boy where are you - is worse than anything his destroyed body could ever conjure.

Toshinori’s skin is blazing and his hands are shaking. He feels like a supernova, brilliant but fleeting, a dying star putting on one last show.

(Toshinori doesn’t turn into a black hole. He becomes a neutron star, still burning, but fading, dying.)

(That might be even worse.)

Inko Midoriya always knew that Izuku was special.

Her son was born still and quiet and premature, at midnight exactly. He was sickly and small and the first warmth he knew was not of his mother’s skin but in an incubator.

(He was born with the blessing of eight, the blessing of prophecy, and the blessing of the stars. Not that she knew of course, but the eight freckles that didn’t come from either she or Hisashi catch her eye for some reason, every time she looks at his face.)

He was born quiet and weak, and the doctors had warned her that she should be prepared for the worst if it should come to pass. Hisashi had squeezed her hand and smiled down at her exhausted face.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “He’ll have fire in him.”

And several weeks later, when Baby Izuku is out of the hospital, sleeping contentedly in her arms, Inko thinks that this child doesn’t have Hisashi’s fire. Izuku has something much more powerful in him. The wind sighs through the trees, and Inko thinks that she can just barely hear a voice.

little nine, little nine, it croons, how we’ve waited for you.

(Miles away, Toshinori wakes from a dream he can’t remember. He had wings and eyes and claws, and there was something small and bright and lovely near him, and since that cursed day with Nana, he feels like he won’t shatter apart at the slightest touch. But then he wakes up, and it all rushes back into his worn body. He spits blood into the trashcan next to him, and pretends that he doesn’t feel the sting of tears behind his eyes.)

But even though Inko Midoriya sees the stardust under Izuku’s freckles, Hisashi does not. When Izuku is told that he is quirkless, the lightbulb shatters above them, showering Dr. Tsubasa with glass. Inko and Izuku are untouched, however, and Inko nearly cries out with how much pain she can see hiding in her son’s wild green eyes behind that blank facade.

Hisashi Midoryia may have helped Izuku Midoriya come into existence, but he was never really a father. He flees to America because he thinks he can see the boy who is not his son become something monstrous and beautiful.

Izuku Midoriya held the power of the gods and all their monsters in his blood, and that scared him.

Hisashi Midoriya is a coward.

(Toshinori Yagi is not.)

Later that night, Inko can hear the echo of All Might’s recorded voice booming from the computer, over and over, I am here, I am here, I am -

Not for Izuku, she thinks, an unnamed emotion solid and ugly in her gut as she hugs Izuku as tears finally, finally drip down his cheeks. Not for my boy.

(Miles away, Toshinori bolts upright, blood on his tongue and tears in his eyes, and he feels like his battered heart is being crushed in his chest. It is the purest kind of grief, but he doesn’t know what he is grieving for. Something is incredibly wrong, the world knocked off its axis but he can’t quite figure out what - )

Inko Midoriya saw the universe being born in her little boy’s eyes, and no matter what anyone else says, she knows in her blood and bones that he is destined for something great and bigger than her. Bigger than the world, perhaps.

But maybe that’s how all mothers feel, she thinks and carries an exhausted Izuku to his All Might-themed room. She looks up at the grinning hero’s face and wonders if anyone ever tried to crush his dreams.

(Oh, Inko, the silence whispers, you have no idea.)

Izuku Midoriya grew up slowly and then all at once when he realized the truth of the world when his former best friend lit him on fire. His teachers treat him like he’s made of glass, something to be pitied rather than something to nurture, to grow. This is the best treatment he’ll get from them before high school. It will soon turn from pity to disinterest and then to malice.

Izuku Midoriya is ten when he realizes that he is Other.

He is staring down Kacchan, fire swirling around his hands and something sharp and mean in his friend’s eyes. And Izuku is so, so tired. Tired of the looks his mom gets in the street, tired of the burns that don’t ever seem to completely heal before new ones take their place, and tired of the way teachers smile at him when he tells them that he’s going to be a hero.

(Something is rising in Izuku, something monstrous and bright and beautiful.)

And when Izuku says “Enough,” the earth moves.

Izuku feels it, shifting under his feet, and suddenly everything is a million times clearer and more colorful. Izuku thought he’d feel this way when he got his quirk. But this is not a quirk. This is something far more significant, something far more special.

He glares at Kacchan, far more terrifying and powerful than any ten-year-old has a right to be. And Kacchan, for the first time, falters when he sees the look in Deku’s eyes.

(Are there more than two? He can’t remember-)

It is wild and big and scary, and Kacchan, for all his fire, is still only ten.

His hands are shaking and Kacchan backs away. You don’t turn your back onto predators, he thinks, and he doesn’t know why, because Deku would never hurt anyone. For god’s sake, Deku cried when he saw a squirrel flattened on the road.

But Deku is staring at him as if he would quite like to eat him alive, so Kacchan leaves.

Kacchan doesn’t bully Izuku anymore. He goes from “Deku” back to “Izuku” and Izuku thinks that maybe, just maybe, they are friends again.

He doesn’t see the tinge of old fear in Kacchan’s eyes every time he approaches with a sunny smile.

But one of his classmates does. And then they see the wild thing that hides behind Izuku’s emerald eyes, the shine of something powerful underneath freckles. And that classmate points at him and shrieks -

“m o n s t e r”

Izuku goes numb when he hears that word, and he doesn’t quite know why. Lord knows Kacchan had called him worse things over the years, and one time someone looked at him and called Izuku an “it” (the first and only time he ever saw his mother deck a full-grown man), but monster shocks him to his core. He doesn’t even register Kacchan standing up, fury in his face and fire in his palms, shouting that “He’s not a monster, you dumbass, he’s my friend -”

And that’s what shocks Izuku out of his stupor because Kacchan admitted it, hah -

But Kacchan is too angry to realize what he said, and when Izuku meets him after their detentions (Izuku was late to one of his classes, it was fine, that teacher just didn’t really like him all that much-), eyes wide with cautious hope, Kacchan sighs, glances at the concrete, and grounds out a half-choked “Sorry.”

And Izuku, always with his heart open wide for anyone to walk in, too forgiving of the world to see what it truly was but still knowing in his bones, smiles and engulfs Kacchan in a bear hug.

The blonde boy spit and shrieks in protest, but it’s all bark and no burning bite of explosions.

The sun shines bright around them as they walk home together for the first time in years. And Kacchan looks at Izuku and doesn’t see the same person who told him to stop. Kacchan, who isn’t Other, but might have a touch of the Sight, sees Izuku wreathed in sunlight and wildness and gilded wings, and Kacchan thinks I am looking at fledging greatness.

But ten-year-olds are never easily impressed, and Kacchan especially, so Kacchan simply resolves to protect Izuku from those who would snuff out whatever was burning inside his friend.

For Izuku, he simply has his friend back, and that is enough for him.

But even with the burning fires and brash compassion from Kacchan restored, Izuku feels something gaping in his chest, a core piece missing. He wakes at night from nightmares with blood-spattered gold and shuddering breaths, and the sense of pure devastation tears out keening whimpers in the dead of night.

In those dreams, there is something ancient and warm and comforting, and it feels like family. It is safe and quiet in those spaces, and the shining being that is Izuku chirrs in his throats and flicks his tails. That massive something (someone? Maybe, maybe -) around him rumbles contentedly, the purr shaking Izuku to his core. It is good and nothing hurts, but, but -

Then Izuku wakes up, and it feels like his heart rends in two from the loss.

(oh, precious starborn, something whispers, drowned out by Izuku’s secret tears, you’ll find him soon.)

(Miles away, Toshinori mourns for something he never had and yet dreams of every night.)

Aldera Middle School is a bleeding, rotten mess on the best of days, but with Kacchan at his side, Izuku feels like he will survive. For every fight (targeted, never random, he was weak and they were right to - ) that Izuku gets swept into, that he can’t bluff his way out with sharp words and quick feet, Kacchan fishes him out. Then he walks him back to their classes because star-student Katsuki Bakugou is never late, and if Izuku arrives at the same time as him, well then that can’t be helped, can it?

Kacchan’s mood is just as foul and his mouth even fouler, but he treats Izuku with a grudging sort of respect. When teachers ask him a question he doesn’t know, he says, “Why not call on Midoriya? He knows.” And when a few upperclassmen stole Izuku’s lunch money, he A) stole it back, B) beat them to a pulp, and C) covered for Izuku when the wrath of the student’s parents emerged.

(Kacchan has always had strange ideas about what it meant to be strong. Strong meant that you could hold your own when the fire flared. Strong meant being able to withstand those you loved hurting you. Strong meant looking at the world and saying “Fuck you, I’ll do it anyway.”

Kacchan, at age five, six, seven, eight, nine, had never seen that Izuku was the strongest of them all. Kacchan, at age ten, had seen stars die and universes be born in Izuku’s eyes. Kacchan, at age fourteen, promised that no one would ever hurt Izuku again. Especially him.

He knows the statistics. Izuku is not going to be one of them.)

And Izuku braves Aldera’s troubled waters, from teachers who shouldn’t really be teachers to classmates that see the Wild in Izuku and are scared by it, with Kacchan right by his side, until the day comes where they’re finally talking about high school applications. Izuku shares an exasperated look with Kacchan as the teacher does nothing to quell the rapidly rising chaos in the room at the mere mention of U.A.

“Bakugou, you were thinking about applying, weren’t you?” asks the teacher, and Bakugou, who in another world may have snapped that of course he was, no one else would get in, merely nods.

“And of course, Midoriya,” says the teacher, safe behind his wooden desk, where he thinks that Izuku’s wonderterror glare cannot reach him.

(He is wrong. It is not Izuku’s green eyes that he should fear, but a crimson pair with eternal anger sparking in them.)

(It is Bakugou, the Firestarter, the Protector, the Ash-Laid, that he should be wary of. Izuku’s fangs and claws are filed down, the lion cub in lamb’s clothing. Bakugou, however, is always ready to  b i t e.)

The class laughs at him, the sound echoing like the shrieks of birds on the wharf. Izuku shrinks in his seat, for once feeling very small.

(The power of ancients flows through his veins and the Celestials scream in the sky above him. Izuku is powerful, but he is also only a boy, with fragile self-worth and a shaking sense of courage.)

Until a crackling, popping explosion erupts from the corner of the room, and Bakugou is searing his desk into embers, standing tall with teeth bared.

“As of now, he stands a better chance than any of us in getting into U.A.,” he says, and for all that heat is radiating off of him, his voice is like glacier ice. Deadly cold and terrifyingly unstoppable. “And you extras better get down on fucking bended knee to beg him for help before the U.A. entrance exam.”

Silence. Izuku is beaming, and around him, the air doesn’t feel stifling.

In another world, another crueler, different world, Izuku is told to jump and pray.

In this world, Izuku walks home with his best friend as they debate which pre-Quirk comic book hero could take down Endeavor.

And then Kacchan shoves Izuku to the ground as he is ripped away from the little starling child, and nothing short of a monster lifts Kacchan high into the air.

(Monster, is whispered into the Sunborn’s ear, and One For All shrieks in outrage and warning.)

Bakugou is choking on thick green sludge. He can’t breathe, and fire ignites in his palms and he shoves them down, hoping to find some part to burn and rip and tear. But he has been muzzled, and his fire only seems to irritate the villain. Some flames flicker close to Izuku, and he flinches.

Bakugou sees red, and with a wildfire of rage, head pounding and blood sizzling, he grasps the writhing sludge around his mouth and sucks in a dizzy breath of air.

(Katsuki Bakugou isn’t Other. His eyes will never flash with a hint of something monstrously wonderful and his bones do not scream the song of Celestials. But Katsuki Bakugou has always, always defied the gods, and it takes a special kind of person to make them y i e l d.)

He can’t see Izuku, but that doesn’t matter. The starborn has always been surprisingly stubborn when it comes to Kacchan, so he uses that precious air wisely.

“R U N,” he howls, and as his vision goes dark as the villain closes in once more, he thinks, He better have fucking run.

Bakugou has never felt so useless.

Toshinori is already sprinting. He is so, so close to the looming time limit, but he doesn’t care, because the only other time his Quirk screamed like this was when Nana fought and bled and lost against All For One.

He is a blazing star, heat radiating off his form, and he only runs faster when he hears the scream, rough and desperate in the only way that death cries can be.

‘Kick his ass, little lion,’ and then horrifying, unfeeling emptiness-

Toshinori has never felt so useless.

Kacchan screams for Izuku to run, the sound cutting straight through him, making him vibrate like an exposed nerve. He is swallowed back up in the sludge, the precious air cut off once more. Izuku stands, frozen with something that feels a little like rage and a lot like panic.

(Power is building in his veins, One For All reaching from Toshinori to brush against Izuku. In another world just under Izuku’s skin, bones shudder and crack and reform to make something breathtakingly lethal.)

Izuku has never felt so useless. Here he is, watching his best friend die before his eyes, and Izuku can’t fucking do anything -

(little nine, something whispers, and Izuku always listens, the Sunborn is coming.)

But Izuku wants to do more than listen, and years of analysis have brought him here. Kacchan had screamed for him to run, and so he does. Directly at the villain, bag in hand, that is. He throws it, and perhaps something makes it fly true, or maybe Izuku is just lucky, but it nails the bastard in the eye, and he reels back with a screech of rage.

He seizes Kacchan’s hands and pulls, sneakers digging into the dirt. He refuses to give ground, because that’s his best friend, and he just got him back. Izuku has the blessing of many, Izuku can make the earth shake under his feet, and Izuku has universes contained in his frame.

(Claws dig into the ground and ten thousand teeth glisten with blood. Tails and wings lash at the air, and had Bakugou seen Izuku now, he would fall to his knees and beg for mercy.)

Izuku will win this fight.

But then a second (and terribly familiar, like a song he’d thought he’d forgotten but still knew all the words to, like a missing piece that slotted into place, like home) sun appears, and Izuku temporarily forgets all about Kacchan.

He sees a lion’s mane and brilliant eyes and astonishingly gentle teeth and claws, and he thinks, Toshi.

And then he is yanked back into cool muck as he desperately tries to reach out to the supernova in the alley. He has one last sweet gasp of air before the world goes dark and still.

(Hundreds of eyes are shut tight. This embrace is not warm or safe. But that something is here, ancient and powerful and angry. Starborn, it screams, I am h e r e.)

When the green-eyed boy locks eyes with him, all Toshinori can think is Izuku.

Toshinori sees worlds being born in the boy’s eyes, and the wildness hiding underneath pale skin. Two and two hundred more eyes blink in stunning discovery, and oh, this is so familiar it aches. He is lovely and terrifying all at once, and One For All leaps in his chest.

But just as he is about to reach out to this star-fire boy, this nebula runner, who shines just as bright with Other as him, the villain who had already taken a hostage reaches out a shapeless limb and sucks the boy in.

Toshinori roars, roars like he hasn’t in years, because he cannot lose anyone else. His scar aches and groans under his exertion and steam rises off of his form. Toshinori’s throat tears and his eyes sear, and he must look truly wretched now, he thinks, his own blood burning on his skin.

(Tattered wings flare and tears of plasma drip down his cheeks. Teeth sharpen to needle-point savagery and claws rend concrete to little more than dust. A thousand screams from a thousand throats vibrate in the air, and everyone with even just a drop of Other in them in a fifty-mile radius freezes in sudden, mortal fear. All For One would run if he saw him now, even weakened as he was, because Toshinori is terrifying at that moment.

It is not often that one is ready to kill, but Toshinori Yagi is always ready to burn the world to ash for his boy.)

It is a simple matter of incapacitating the villain. Gathered into a soda bottle, he is left with two slowly stirring teenage boys on the ground. One hacking and spitting, sparks coming off of his arms and blonde hair sodden with gunk.

The other, lying deathly still.

No. Not again.

(The world spins, Toshinori burns, and Fate holds Her breath. There are certain things that always happen, and Izuku Midoriya surviving the impossible is one of them.)

And then the boy moves, and Toshinori breathes a sigh of relief.

The blonde kid stops his spitting for a moment and glares up at Toshinori. If he is at all surprised to see the #1 hero, he isn’t. Crimson eyes bore through him, and Toshinori has the feeling that he is being evaluated. He feels like a butterfly pinned to a corkboard.

“The fuck are you waiting for?” the boy snaps, and Toshinori doesn’t even know how -

But he gingerly moves forward, where the boy (Izuku? Is that -) is slowly coming back to the land of the living. And just as he kneels, green eyes flash open, and One For All sparks.

Oh, thinks Toshinori, the Sunborn, who has been missing a piece of himself for nearly a decade and a half. That’s what I was missing.

Okay, so Bakugou hadn’t expected fucking All Might to show up. And yet, and yet, he somehow did. Seeing him in that alley, it felt right, even as he was dying.

And then he was free, coughing up little chunks of green, while the hero just stood there, staring at Izuku. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen, maybe it was stress, but Bakugou sees a flickering halo of sorts around the man, his hair crackling with fire and his shadowed eyes burning bright. Bakugou sees sun and fire and lion mane and ten thousand eyes, and something that’s kith and kin with Izuku.

(He is hiding something, a voice whispers in his ear, and Bakugou agrees.)

But he’s still fucking standing there.

So to get his ass in gear, Bakugou snaps out a short question that would make his mother snarl and smack him upside the head. But All Might’s finally moving forward. When he kneels next to Izuku, he is impossibly gentle, not like Izuku is made of glass (because Izuku is made of steel and fire and stardust,) but like Izuku is something infinitely precious.

Bakugou looks away. Something tells him that this is not for him, that he was by chance here to witness this. He glares at the churning soda bottle.

(Katsuki Bakugou isn’t Other, but he is more than he looks.)

Izuku doesn’t even register that it’s All Might staring down at him, because the missing something has been slotted into place.

(Warm and gentle and massively ancient, sun-bright fur and scattered feathers. Plasma eyes and solar flare claws and everything that Izuku had desperately missed.)

“Found you,” he croaks, voice incredibly hoarse, and then his eyes are welling with tears as some unnameable emotion wells in his chest. “Found you,” he says again, and then the dam breaks and he is sobbing into the man’s (not a stranger, Toshinori, from the Sun as Izuku is from the Stars, never a stranger) chest.

Seven throats are singing joyously, three chests rumbling with earthquakes for purrs. Hundreds of plasma eyes and nine tails and wings wrapped tight around one another and suddenly it is very difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.

Hands that are not tipped with impossibly gentle talons card through his hair, and Izuku clings tighter. Steam swirls around them, and thinner arms hug him no less strongly than before.

He looks up and sees brilliant blue eyes that are burning with energy and a lion's mane of disheveled hair, and Izuku lets out a wet laugh, because this form is far more familiar, even though he has never seen this man in his life.

"There you are, Toshi," he mumbles into his chest, a space that he slots perfectly into, and yes, this is right, just like Izuku knows he has eight freckles exactly and that Kacchan is his friend.

"Little prince, little star, gods, how I've missed you," Toshinori murmurs, a constant stream of reassurances falling out, like he still can't believe that Izuku is here, like he is afraid that Izuku will crumble into dust right before his eyes.

little nine, little lion, murmurs a very familiar voice. you found each other.

(Nana Shimura isn’t Other, but she is another one of those special people whom the gods dare not defy. She will watch over her little sun lion until the day where he joins them all in One For All.)

"Very touching, but what the actual fuck?" interjects Kacchan.

Two heads whip around to stare at him. One with a pair of electrifying blue eyes, burning plasma flickering on the edges, and the other with vivid green, stardust and steel in the depths.

(Wings and tails and teeth and claws, lurking just underneath the surface. They are beautiful and terrible in their heritage.)

Katsuki Bakugou knows.

He sighs.

"Auntie Inko's gonna kill us," he mutters, and then shakes his head like a dog, splattering green against the walls.

Inko Midoriya does not kill the incredibly tall man that looks like a stiff wind could knock him over. However, she does put the fear of God in him.

(It takes a special kind of person, to scare someone who in another life, another world, has devoured gods whole. Inko Midoriya may not be Other, but for Izuku, she will sharpen her teeth in warning and promise.

Hearts, after all, aren’t much bigger than a coffee mug.)

And she then insists that he at least stays for dinner, because the man looks half-starved.

Inko doesn’t think about how perfectly Toshinori Yagi slides over the gaping hole that Hisashi left. Her son is happy and shining bright, and she has a feeling that perhaps in another world, they’ve met before.

(oh Inko, laughs the wind, of course they have.)

The walk to Dagobah Beach is a familiar and untrodden path. Mountains of refuse are piled high, rusted metal and plastic half-swallowed by the dunes. And Izuku can see it in his ancestral memory, sand washed smooth and flat by the waves, no sign of trash anywhere.

They only have ten months before the entrance exam. They must use their time wisely.

Toshinori smiles down at him, hands ruffling his hair. Izuku leans into the touch, the thread connected between them humming with contentment.

“Ready, little star?” he murmurs into the pre-dawn air.

“Always,” Izuku says, and when he smiles, Toshinori can see savage determination and compassion in his eyes. There is Wild in every inch of him, and this boy, his boy, is all the more incredible for it.

(A thousand eyes close in contentment, while eight pairs of wings stretch in the morning sun. Toshinori has found what was so achingly missing and he will protect him with his every breath.)

The seagulls scream overhead, the blazing sun rises in the sky, and the stars may be fading but Izuku feels like he is ready to fight the world and win.

They begin, and within ten months, One For All will be burning bright in Izuku’s chest, the embers still lighting up Toshinori from the inside. And at the end, the day before the entrance exam, Izuku is burning brighter than Toshinori ever could.

(Nine tails and a hundred mouths singing a song of hope for the world. Toshinori may have wanted to change the world, but it is Izuku Midoriya who will shake it to the core.)

He doesn’t resent Izuku for that. Toshinori may be a star, but all stars burn out eventually. Izuku will be born from what is left, new nebulas forming from ashen stardust. Izuku contains galaxies, and Toshinori loves him for it.

Nana probably would’ve chosen Izuku over him, Toshinori thinks. Izuku held the sleeping potential of galaxies in his frame, and Toshinori fully believes that Izuku will surpass him in every way.

And as he watches his little lion cub sharpen his claws for the first time as the blazing sun rises in front of them, he is perfectly content with that.