Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. SHIT!

Izuku ran across the busy streets of Musutafu, narrowly dodging oncoming traffic and stumbling over the following curb. Though his hands were scraped and his pants were ripped at the knees, he scrambled to his feet in seconds— just in time to avoid the telson of a giant scorpion stinger, which cracked the pavement where he once stood.

Izuku shoved people left and right, not even bothering to apologize as he did so. He didn’t have time to wait for crossing guards or red lights; he had to go now , because, if he didn’t, that thing would catch him.

People shouted from the sidewalks— they even rolled down their car windows to curse at him— but all Izuku could hear was the cacophonous roar of the manticore steadily catching up to him. 

His feet thudded heavily against the sidewalk’s pavement, and his faded yellow knapsack beat against his back with every stride. He didn’t know how long he had been running, but he knew that he was running out of steam. He needed help.

But he also knew that no matter how many times or how urgently he told people that he was being chased by a monster that nobody would believe him. He figured out a long time ago that people didn’t see what he did: when he was four years old, his mother had taken him to a park and he strangled what she called only a small albeit venomous snake— now he knew that it had been a serpent. Age seven: two middle school girls attacked him and his neighbor while they were playing out on the lawn— they were empousai. Age twelve: Izuku had attended Aldera Junior HIgh for all of six days before a large man began stalking him at school— a goddamn cyclops.

And now, at age sixteen, facing off against a manticore and running for his life, everyone’s ‘ selective sight ’, or whatever the hell that it was, was biting him in the ass.

Izuku hopped a short black gate, landing in the dew-laden grass. He was in a park now— private, he would guess. If he could get to a police station, maybe. If he could hide out somewhere until it couldn’t smell him anymore, maybe he could get away.

“Is it a stray?” some people cried out in surprise as he passed. They held their children back from him as he and the manticore passed them by.

He took a quick look over his shoulder, which was a mistake, as it only continued to gain on him. People thought that thing was a stray dog? 

“It’s the size of a fucking horse!” he gasped out incredulously, stumbling off of the path and onto his knees. Now, Izuku didn’t normally curse. As a child, he even forbade himself from saying the word ‘stupid’. But this was an extenuating circumstance, and he figured that his mother would forgive him just this once— rest her soul.

His shoulders and elbows burned as he pushed himself up off of the ground to try, once more, to put some distance between himself and the manticore. But just as things were starting to look up— just as he had gotten a secure foothold on the ground to push himself off into another sprint— the fact that the grass was wet finally decided to catch up to him. His shoes slipped out from underneath him before he could even stand all the way up, and the top of his chest hit the ground with a hard ‘thud’ and his bag flew off of his back. 

For a moment, it was like he forgot what he was doing: the wind had been knocked out of him so the burning in his lungs kept his thoughts hazy as he struggled to catch a breath. He could also feel a bruise blossoming on the bottom of his chin, the thought of which slightly irritated him.

But the low, guttural growl behind him quickly snapped Izuku back to reality. Kicking at the ground, Izuku scrambled to pick himself back up, but it was fruitless. Fear inched its way into his heart and mind as the slickness of the ground made his limbs continuously slip and collapse underneath him as if conforming him to the butt of some twisted joke the universe was playing on him: ‘You thought you were gonna survive this time? Think again lol.’

“Dammit!” he bit out desperately, whipping his gaze back and forth to try and find someone— anyone — who could help him, but there was no one. The park had been completely deserted, and Izuku was going to die.

His breathing picked up as sweat began to drip down his face and behind his ears, tickling his neck and dampening his shirt even further. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t, under zero circumstances, be happening— not after everything he’s been through to survive: being orphaned, the homelessness, late night library studies in which he tried to find out just what the hell was after him and why. After everything, he just wasn’t ready yet. 

Izuku wheezed, breath once again catching in his throat, as the weight of ten men pressed itself onto his back with a single giant paw. The manticore’s talons dug into his shoulder blades, snagging at his t-shirt and pricking against his skin. Biting back the tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks, he glanced back over his shoulder and peaked through his dark hair, but the manticore’s deep roar in his ears and spittle against his face made him shudder into the ground. 

This was it. Izuku let his forehead rest against the ground as sobs began to rack his body, though he tried to keep his shaking to a minimum so as to not agitate the manticore any further. He was so pathetic, he could almost laugh. Even on his deathbed, Izuku could only think about not getting on the bad side of others— even if said person was actually a man-eating monster. 

The manticore pressed its wet, human nose against Izuku’s hair, brushing its fangs, which could very well rip through Izuku’s flesh like it was nothing, against the back of his neck. 

“ Goddammit ,” Izuku whimpered, completely giving up on remaining still as he felt all of the hair on his skin raise. He dug his face into the dirt as he cried, his body heaving as he wept upon feeling the manticore press him further into the ground so that it could raise its other dangerous paw into the air.

This was it. This was it. This was it.

Izuku screamed when he heard the manticore roar, signaling the bringing down of his claws, and then suddenly, all of the weight was yanked off of his body and he was thrown onto his side, having been partially dragged by the monster’s talons. 

For a moment, nothing registered like he was stuck in some sort of trance, not having caught up with the fact that his near-death reality had been flipped on its head— that he had been freed. 

With a gasp, he sat upright and scrambled to his feet, furiously wiping at the wetness that wouldn’t stop rolling down his cheeks no matter how much he tried to quit crying. He looked in every direction, craning his neck with fervor, until he found what he was looking for: a hulking figure in an American letterman wrestling the manticore into the same helpless position that it had once held Izuku. 

Then, with a small flash of bronze that Izuku wasn’t even sure that he actually saw, the manticore let out a short, agonized cry and disintegrated into a fine golden dust. 

Izuku’s entire body shook as he staggered toward the man, whom he could barely make out through the tears that stubbornly remained in his eyes. The man barely had time to turn around before Izuku lunged at him, fisting his shirt as he sank to the grass and wept. “Oh my fucking god, I thought I was going to die ,” Izuku choked, ducking his head in shame despite continuing to cling the to man. “ Thank you .”

Faintly, he heard the man sigh before he crouched down to Izuku’s line of sight. With a heavy pat to Izuku’s head, which made him flinch a little— not that he wasn’t receptive to it, because he’d take what comfort he could get— the man handed him his dirtied knapsack and flashed him a blindingly optimistic smile, and Izuku could suddenly make out the man’s rage of blond hair. “I’m just glad I got to you in time, my boy.”

“Holy shit, you’re Toshinori Yagi.” Immediately, Izuku shoved himself away from the man— Toshinori Yagi , world famous boxer and Izuku’s idol since goddamn birth — like he had been burned. “Oh goodness, I’m so sorry,” he apologized, mouth running a mile a minute as all of his tears dried in an instant, the dusty remains of the manticore left completely forgotten. “I don’t normally curse— my mother would be so disappointed in me, but on second thought could you even blame me because it’s you . I’ve been dreaming of this moment since I was in diapers, but knowing my luck it’s kind of fitting that I’d almost kick the bucket on the same day that I met you. Oh no, am I rambling? Because I feel like I’m just spewing word vomit-”

“Calm down,” Yagi chuckled, placing a hand on Izuku’s shoulder as if to ground him back to reality. Taking the hint, Izuku took a deep breath in through his nose and out of his mouth, heaving his shoulders for emphasis. 

He couldn’t help looking to Yagi for approval, which in retrospect was kind of embarrassing, but Yagi only nodded, his smile never leaving his face. “Very good,” he said shortly with a clap on Izuku’s shoulder. “Now onto the nitty gritty. This is new to me since I’ve never had to explain this before, so bear with me,” he gave his disclaimer with another good natured chuckle. But this time there seemed to be some bitterness edged into it as well.

Izuku was intrigued— hell, he’d been interested from the moment he was chased through the neighborhood by a manticore , of all things— but now he was worried. 

Er, more worried than before.

What did all of this mean for him? He’d been doing research into all of the phenomena that had occurred around him and had come up with jack squat. But Yagi showed up and took that monster off of him in less than a second of appearing, which was more than Izuku had ever been able to do and he’d been dealing with these monsters for years! Not only that, but Yagi had killed it. And he’d known how to kill it.

It was obvious that Yagi was connected to all of this in some way, but Izuku didn’t know whether that should excite him even more or cause him dread.

At the very least, maybe Yagi could explain why monsters were after him.

“What’s your name, my boy?” Yagi asked after a heavy sigh. 

Izuku’s mind blanked. He totally forgot to introduce himself. To his idol . 

Oh good gracious, could this day get any worse. 

“Oh, umm-” honestly, he was just a failure at this point— a stutter? Really? “I’m Izuku Midoriya.”

Nailed it.

“A pleasure to meet you, Young Midoriya,” Yagi took it in stride. “I am Toshinori Yagi, but you… already knew that…” he trailed off somewhat awkwardly, making Izuku cringe. “As I was saying,” he recovered not-so-swiftly, “I haven’t had to explain this to anyone before, but I’ll do my best.

“Okay,” he spoke mostly to himself, as if in preparation to say something damning. “Have you ever heard of a demigod?”

Well this threw Izuku for a loop. So, naturally, he responded dumbly with, “Uhh…”

Then Yagi shook his head, interrupting both Izuku’s train of thought and himself. “Hold on, let me try again.” And with another deep breath, he spoke again, “Do you know what attacked you earlier?”

“Yeah,” Izuku frowned. “It was a manticore: human face, lion body, scorpion tail. Do you know where it came from?”

Yagi somewhat startled at the question, like he wasn’t expecting it. “Oh, umm- I’ll get to that bit later. Now how did Mr. D put it?” he asked himself quietly, causing Izuku's brow to raise in question. “Well, you’ve seen the manticore, and I’m guessing that you’ve seen other creatures as well?”

Izuku nodded, still somewhat miffed that Yagi didn’t answer his question.

“Have you noticed anything particular about them? Anything they have in common?” Yagi pressed.

“Other than them being man-eating monsters?” Izuku asked sarcastically, before immediately clamping his mouth shut and cringing at how awful he sounded. He usually had a firm handle on his more negative emotions, but stress must have caused him to slip.

Once again, Yagi laughed, completely unperturbed by Izuku’s small bout of rudeness— thank god. “You seem like a smart one, my boy. You knew what the manticore was and you ask questions, so surely you’ve done some research.”

Absently, Izuku lifted a hand to his chin as he rummaged through his thoughts. What was something that all of the serpents— because there had been a weirdly large number of those that had attacked him— cyclops, empousai, and the manticore had in common? If it had something to do with the dust the manticore had turned into, Izuku wouldn’t know anything since he’d never been able to kill any of the other monsters before. Now that he thought about it, did all of them turn to dust like that, or was it specific to the manticore? If so, and even if it wasn’t, why?

No, quit it. Stop getting distracted.

None of them had the same unnatural abilities— the serpent was venomous, the empousai used fire, the cyclops had its strength, and the manticore had a bit of everything— and none of them looked remotely similar, so Izuku could mentally check those off of the list. 

Ugh , he thought to himself. This was hopeless. The only thing that any of them had in common was the fact that they were all featured in old myths.

Hold up.

“They’re Greek,” Izuku replied somewhat hesitantly.

Yagi beamed, relieving the one-sided tension that Izuku felt. “Exactly, my boy. They are Greek monsters,” he said, sounding a little too excited for Izuku’s taste. But Yagi continued his explanation, becoming more comfortable as words flowed out of his mouth like he was reciting text from a book: “And like these monsters are real, many other great forces are real. Take the Greek gods, for example. They too are very much alive.”

“Earlier,” Izuku said after a beat of silence, having let what Yagi was implying sink in, “you asked if I knew what a ‘demigod’ was. That’s someone who’s half god, right? Are you like that?”

Yagi’s shoulders sagged and he looked relieved. “ We are like that,” he affirmed with a nod.

But Izuku shook his head. “No. Nuh-uh, nope. You -” he pointed to Yagi, whose eyes widened at the address, “- that makes sense. I mean, you’ve remained undefeated ever since your boxing debut, like thirty years ago. You’re ranked number one internationally! ” Izuku cried out incredulously, accidentally releasing some of his inner-fanboy, which he quickly reigned back in. “But I’m just me,” he muttered with a sigh, casting his eyes to the ground. “I’m a homeless middle school dropout. I’m not like you.”

“Wait,” Yagi murmured, oddly sounding somewhat amused. “You’re having trouble believing that you’re like me, not because of how ridiculous it sounds but because of your background?”

Izuku felt his eyes narrow. “What?” he said, a defensive edge creeping into his voice before he could stop it. “Is that weird?”

“Just… unexpected,” Yagi shrugged. “But I get it. I didn’t believe it the first time I was told either, you know.” Then he stood up, pulling Izuku up with him by the arms, and suddenly Izuku, who had to crane his neck to look up to Yagi, realized just how tall he really was. Of course, he knew all of Yagi’s stats by heart because, come on, what kind of fan would he be if he didn’t, but 7’2 from a computer screen was a lot different than 7’2 in person— especially when you’re only 5’1. 

Quietly, Yagi chuckled at him— probably because of the stupid dumbfounded expression he couldn't quite wipe off of his face— and said, “Walk with me, Young Midoriya.”

And Izuku did, because it was gosh dang Toshinori Yagi . 

“And take this to cover up,” Yagi offered as they left the park, dropping his giant letterman onto Izuku’s shoulders, the surprise of which almost made him eat the sidewalk. To be honest, he hadn’t noticed that his t-shirt had been pretty much ripped to shreds until Yagi had even mentioned it. “It looks like it gave you a couple of scratches and bruises, nothing too major, but we should still get it checked out if only to prevent infection,” Yagi prattled mostly to himself.

It all felt so surreal. 

This was the first time that anybody had ever been able to help Izuku with the whole monsters-nobody-but-he-could-see issue, and that someone who helped him just so happened to be the Toshinori Yagi. And then Yagi proceeded to tell him that he was a demigod? Like him? It was almost too much for Izuku’s brain to handle. On the one hand, it sort of made sense: who were the heroes in all of those old myths? Demigods. And who were the villains? Monsters. But on the flipside, how was someone as plain and ordinary as Izuku similar to someone like Yagi?

That , for whatever reason, was what refused to compute.

Though Izuku tried very hard to hide it, Yagi seemed to sense his distress, if the small worried glances were anything to go by. “I found out I was part god when I was fourteen,” Yagi decided to fill the silence after they crossed the street. “My parents had been killed by monsters, and I had been on the run for days.”

Now this caught Izuku’s attention. His eyes flitted up toward Yagi’s, but the man kept his gaze glued straight in front of him. However, a soft albeit pained smile remained on his face. “And, believe it or not, I was found by a satyr who explained what was happening. He did a better job than I did, that’s for sure,” he chuckled quietly. “And then he took me to camp.”

Izuku took a moment to ponder the information presented to him. Maybe, just maybe , the two of them weren’t so different after all. Or, at the very least, they had similar beginnings.  

“This camp,” Izuku thought aloud, “Is that where we’re going?”

Yagi nodded as they turned off of a bustling street and onto a calmer back road that was littered with the fallen leaves of trees that surrounded the area. 

“What if I told you that I didn’t want to go?” Izuku asked before thinking. 

Yagi only raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to?”

Izuku shook his head, having made himself flustered like a total fool. “No. Sorry, I was just wondering what you’d do, was all…”

Yagi shrugged. “I’d just do my best to convince you that it would be worth it. I mean, it’s not like I could force you to go.” 

“I mean…” Izuku found himself saying with a small smile, “you really could.”

At this, Yagi let out a loud gale of booming laughter. “It’s all about impressions, Young Midoriya. But yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said, laughter dying down. “But on a serious note, I really do think that it’s for the best. It’s a place where people like us can live in peace while we train to fight against the monsters waiting for us out here.” 

In the end, Izuku guessed it was his curiosity that won him out. He didn’t really have any good reason to trust Yagi, despite him saving his life. Because, though Izuku may have memorized all of Yagi’s boxing mannerisms and everything else about him down to the exact brand and shade of self-tanner he knew that Yagi secretly used, truth be told, Izuku didn’t know him. For all he knew, Yagi could be trying to kidnap him and sell his organs.

But at this point, what more did Izuku even have to lose? His mom was dead. He got evicted from their apartment. With every passing day he was becoming more familiar with the idea of death, whether it be physically chasing him down the street or mentally poking into his psyche when he sat still for a little too long.

Deep down, Izuku knew that, by following Yagi, he was resigning himself to whatever fate had in store for him— good or bad. 

However, the optimistic outlook that Yagi kept trying to share with him made Izuku want to believe in it— that he was like Yagi, and that there was a better life waiting for him. 

So yeah, Izuku’s curiosity and hope did win out, so much so that he didn’t react when he faintly noticed that the feeling of pavement under his red hightops changed to the crunch of leaves and grass. “What kind of camp is it, exactly? How long did you stay?”

And Yagi indulged him, answering every question thrown in his direction without so much as a drop of sweat. 

It was called Camp UA. It was like some western summer camp that most demigods— good night , that still sounded so weird— attended during the school breaks, but there tended to be a lot of kids that stayed year-round too. Those kids in particular usually participated in the at-camp school program though, since most of the camp administration had their teaching licenses. Or, at least, the ones that taught traditional classes like math and science. Izuku wasn’t so sure what the qualifications were for teaching battle strategy or supervising war simulations, but apparently that was a thing, sooo.

According to Yagi, he started attending camp right after he was found at fourteen, and he stayed year-round until he left for an American university when he turned twenty, only returning to the camp once after his older cousin had died. Yagi wasn’t sure who was at camp anymore— students, teachers, or other mythical creatures— but he assured Izuku that Mr. D, whoever the heck that was supposed to be, was definitely still the camp director and wouldn’t hire anyone that wasn’t reliable. 

“You see that tree up there?” Yagi asked, nodding his head in the direction that they were walking. The grass they strode through grew thicker as they strayed from the woodland trail that Izuku absently noticed that they had been following up till then. 

Izuku squinted his eyes to look ahead but quickly found that he didn’t need to. At the crest of one of the hills in front of them stood a massive pine tree that might as well have been a Tokyo Tower among tiny buildings. It was so huge that Izuku briefly wondered how he’d never noticed it before, even if he didn’t regularly travel out to this more boonies-half of Musutafu. 

“Woah,” he breathed as they continued trudging through the woods. 

“Cool, isn’t it?” Yagi asked proudly. “That’s the property line.”

Then they began the trek uphill.

Izuku had to refrain from gasping for air throughout the entirety of the hike because, please, he’d already embarrassed himself enough as it was. But when the ground began to even out and they finally reached the top, Izuku couldn’t stop the strangled noise that escaped his throat as he ignored his feelings of ‘fight or flight’ and instead opted for the unspoken third option: freeze.

Before them, curled around the base of the giant pine tree like some sort of cat, was a very, very large snake-headed dragon (and its head was easily the size of Yagi’s full stature— crap ) with glittering copper scales. 

But Yagi didn’t seem to notice, or rather, he didn’t care.

“Peleus!” he cried joyously to the dragon, startling it from its slumber. It shook its head back and forth as if coming back to its senses, and when it laid its eerie yellow eyes upon Yagi— who just kept gliding up to it like it wasn’t a whole dragon— its tail began thumping loudly against the ground like an excited puppy’s, effectively smashing all of the grass and flowers in the general vicinity.

It sniffed at Yagi’s clothes as he casually ran his fingers over its snout and scratched it under its scaly chin. “Midoriya, my boy!” he called out to him suddenly. This redirected the dragon’s attention as well. Its gaze was piercing, almost like it was looking into Izuku’s very soul, but more than anything, it seemed almost… curious? “This is Peleus. He’s been guarding the barrier tree since before even I arrived at camp. Come introduce yourself.”

Okay, Izuku. Get a hold of yourself. 

This isn’t the weirdest shit that’s happened to you and it probably won’t be the last, if this entire day is anything to go by.

Izuku willed his knees to stop trembling as he took an unsure step forward. “Come on, Izuku, you got this,” he encouraged himself in a whisper, making a point to look away from the dragon and focus on Yagi’s bright smile as he staggered forward. “Don’t even worry about it,” he muttered, silently cursing himself as he sneaked a peek and immediately regretted it. “It’s just a dragon — I mean, it’s not like it could totally bite your face off or set you on fire or anything.”

“There you go, Young Midoriya,” Yagi clapped him on the back encouragingly… aaand simultaneously shoving him closer to the dragon. Izuku flushed in embarrassment as a high pitched squeak escaped from his mouth, but Yagi kept a firm hand on his shoulder, making it impossible for Izuku to escape. 

“Peleus,” Yagi addressed calmly, and Izuku stiffened as the dragon inched its ginormous face closer to him, eyes darting back and forth like it was trying to see all of him inside and out. “This is Izuku Midoriya.” Then, out of the corner of his eye, Izuku saw Yagi peer over his shoulder to look at him. “Say hi, my boy.”

Izuku forced a smile onto his face— one that he was a hundred percent certain wasn’t at all convincing— and he felt sweat drip down his neck and back. It took a herculean amount of effort to keep from screaming and/or crying, but Izuku raised a hand about eye-level and gave the dragon— its name was Peleus— a small and dreadfully awkward wave. “Hi?”

The reaction was instantaneous: Peleus’ once narrowed eyes dilated, becoming innocently round and somehow the most adorable thing Izuku had ever seen in his life. Its tongue fell out of its mouth like a dog’s, and steam spilled out of its mouth and nose in small smokey spirals that dissipated into the tree tops the more excited it became. Once again, its tail began thumping against the ground, and now that Izuku was significantly closer, he could actually feel the rumble of the ground beneath his shoes. 

Izuku couldn’t stop the laugh that pushed past his lips when Peleus suddenly began sniffing at his clothes inside of Yagi’s letterman, brushing its warm snout against his sides and ruffling his t-shirt and tickling his face and hair with every breath it took. Carefully, and once he was absolutely sure that Peleus wouldn’t mind, he set a hand over the dragon’s snout and gawked at the unexpectedly smooth texture of the actual dragon scales underneath his fingertips. 

Holy crap he was petting a dragon .

Yagi chuckled behind him, as if he knew exactly how excited Izuku was and found it endearing. “Come along, Young Midoriya,” he beckoned for Izuku at the mouth of the woods that directed them down the other side of the hill. “It’s his job to guard the tree, so he won’t be going anywhere soon.”

For only a second, Izuku was hesitant to follow Yagi back into the woods— because, let’s be honest, how often do you get to meet a damn dragon— but did so when Peleus nudged him in Yagi’s direction, as if it perfectly understood the situation. And who knew? Maybe it did. Izuku was half-tempted to grab one of the many notebooks he carried— each page filled front and back with information about the monsters he’d faced and what it potentially meant for him— out of the knapsack on his back. But he was able to relent and, with a delighted promise to come back and visit Peleus the dragon, Izuku once again began following Yagi down from the crest of the hill.

“That’s easily the most awesome thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life,” Izuku couldn’t stop himself from looking at Yagi like he held the stars in the sky. Well, he was part god, so for all Izuku knew, maybe he did. 

Yagi only boomed a laugh and flashed Izuku that contagious and charismatic smile. “Good,” he nodded. “I was hoping Peleus would lift your spirits. He’s always been a good boy.”

Izuku ducked his head to hide his own ugly giggles within his shirt but obviously seemed to fail since Yagi lifted an eyebrow, clearly amused. “Sorry,” he apologized, though he didn’t really mean it. “It’s just, you treat Peleus like a little puppy. I just think it’s funny is all.”

Yagi only chuckled in response before focusing on stepping over a particularly large root that ran along the ground as he trudged carefully downhill. 

“Huh,” Izuku said after a moment as he peered down the hill. “I know you said it was like a western summer camp, but I still didn’t expect it to be so… western .”

About half a mile away, near the base of the hill’s clear and grassy valley, stood an old farmhouse that long ago had been painted baby-blue with white trim and looked to be about three or four storeys tall. 

Huffing a small snort, Yagi shrugged before going on to say, “Yeah, I wasn’t expecting it my first time either. But Mr. D said that he didn’t feel like reorganizing the camp when he moved it out here, so he decided to just reuse the American model.”

“Wait, the camp moves? ”

“Well…” Yagi looked up in thought, like he was trying to find the right words to explain it. “It’s more like it follows the gods.”

Izuku must have looked as lost as his brain felt because Yagi went on to supply with a gesture of his hands, “You see, the gods move with the heart of the people, or that’s what Mr. D said, at least. I always just took it to mean that they traveled where civilization advanced.”

“That makes sense,” Izuku found himself nodding along. Because really, it did make sense. There were stories upon stories of the gods performing miracles and doing magical things in order to be praised and worshiped. Take the competition between Poseidon and Athena for control of Athens and Attica, for example. While their base desire might have been the territory, the gods performed services to the people so that their proclamations of adoration would decide the victor of the land.

But what would the gods do with no praise to fight over? What would they be with no one to worship them?

So, in Izuku’s head at least, it made sense for them to move.

“And just like the gods and Mount Olympus moves,” Yagi continued, holding a low-hanging branch away from Izuku’s head, “so does the camp that trains their children. Camp UA’s been here for about… two hundred years now?” he asked no one in particular. “But before that, it was in the US for a couple of hundred years, and before that it traveled across Europe.”

“So when you said that Mr. D reused the American model…” Izuku muttered to himself, connecting the dots. “Okay, yeah, I think I get it. Wait. How old would that make this ‘Mr. D’ guy?”

This time, Yagi smirked a little. “He’s older than any of us, that’s for sure. But you’ll understand when you get there.”

And by— er, the gods, he guessed now— that answer was so unsatisfying that Izuku kind of wanted to rip his hair out. But he didn’t. He kept on, replaying all of the information presented to him in his head while he trudged silently beside Yagi, who occasionally nudged him out of the way of branches and roots.

And before Izuku even knew it, both he and Yagi were standing on the farmhouse’s wooden porch in front of the entrance: a pair of rickety and worn screened double doors. 

“After you,” Yagi offered, pulling and holding open one of the doors to the farmhouse. 

With a curt nod in thanks— but also because he was a little afraid of what would come out of his mouth— Izuku stepped inside, and boy was it a sight to behold. 

Izuku was thoroughly impressed. This room itself— it looked like a common living area— was bigger than any apartment he or his mom could have ever afforded and the appliances seemed to be in pretty good shape, if not a little used. Rugs covered the hardwood floors and there were several couches and small coffee and chairside tables all in different corners of the large room. There was even a fireplace and some bookshelves. But despite the crowd of furniture, it seemed homey and comfortable. 

Or, it would be.

If everything weren’t leopard print.

“Sooo,” Izuku looked up to Yagi, awkwardly rocking back and forth on his heels and ringing his hands. “What’s with…” he gestured to the room, “all of that? ”

“Mr. D’s always had a thing for leopards,” Yagi shrugged, as if that in itself explained everything that Izuku needed to know. But before Izuku could get another word in, Yagi cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a bellowing shout that might as well have shook the entire house: “ Mr. D! ” 

Yagi’s volume rattled Izuku in surprise and goosebumps trailed along his arms and legs. Honestly, he was so startled that he’d almost fallen completely over, but Yagi grabbed onto one of his arms and held him upright right after he was able to completely trip over his feet. Yagi shot him an apologetic look as he let go of his arm. 

Izuku opened his mouth to thank him but was interrupted by a loud sniff. Both he and Yagi turned toward the noise and Izuku saw a new face standing at the mouth of the common room’s hall. He was a short and baby-faced man, wearing the most outrageous leopard-patterned Hawaiian shirt that Izuku had ever seen. 

Was this supposed to be Mr. D?

The man gestured toward Yagi casually with his soda can and put a hand on one of his hips without a care— like he hadn’t just addressed the Toshinori Yagi, number one boxer in all of the world, like he was nothing more than some kid he was forced to babysit. “I’m guessing you’re back for the tournament?” the man drawled with a roll of his eyes. “Wonderful.”

Tournament?

Then the man’s tired eyes shifted over to Izuku, whose back straightened upon being noticed. Izuku could already tell that this guy was someone who didn’t give a single crap— probably about anything— but there was something heavy about his gaze, like some sort of stressful pressure had laid itself upon his shoulders, as soon as it fell upon him. He felt like a cornered animal. It was that same fight-or-flight feeling that he had when he’d first met Peleus. 

All of the hair on his body stood straight up and goosebumps jumped along his arms and legs, even as the man dragged his eyes away from him with another sniff and back toward Yagi. “And you brought back a stray,” the man said to Yagi in a way that almost sounded condescending. 

If he wasn’t so scared, it would have taken all of Izuku’s might not to snap right back— because really, how dare this guy— but his offense must have shown on his face because the man scoffed at him and turned back to Yagi with another gesture of his drink. “Undetermined?”

And what the heck was that supposed to mean?

But Yagi only nodded, seemingly unperturbed by the man’s presence or the weird question. “Yes, his name is Izuku Midoriya.”

This time, the man only raised an eyebrow, but the message he was sending them was clear: ‘And why was this his concern?’

Awkwardly, Yagi cleared his throat and clapped Izuku on the back, sending him stumbling forward— this back slapping thing that Yagi had was becoming a common theme. Izuku caught himself before he could tumble to the floor and could feel himself shooting a worried glance back up to the porky man in front of him. 

“Well,” Yagi laughed nervously, as if trying to clear the tension, “we fell victim to a monster attack before we arrived so I will be taking Young Midoriya to the infirmary. I’ll help him get settled in.”

The man sighed tiredly— though, for some reason, Izuku doubted that he was actually tired— and took a sip of his soda before half-heartedly waving a hand at them and turning to head back into the hall from whence he came. “Do as you wish.”

Izuku had a lot of questions that he wanted answers to effective freakin’ immediately, but something about that guy— that had to be Mr. D, right? Maybe?— made Izuku’s tongue go numb in his mouth. The man was frightening, but Izuku didn’t have a single clue as to why he was so afraid. The man was almost as short as Izuku and had a very punchable face, and he had one of those ‘I’m better than you’ attitudes despite looking so clumsy that even Izuku could probably beat him in a fight. 

But something behind the man’s stoney violet eyes told Izuku that maybe he wasn’t as weak as he seemed— that he wasn’t just some random bloated old guy. The man didn’t really care about anything, but Izuku could tell that he wasn’t being like that just because he was thoughtless and stupid. He was like that because he was powerful enough to get away with it. Either that, or everyone was too scared to try— if they saw the same thing Izuku did, that is.

“So that’s Mr. D?” Izuku winced as his voice cracked. “He’s…”

“Terrifying?” Yagi supplied good naturedly.

“Oh my heck, yes, ” Izuku released a full-body shudder, finally letting the guard he’d built in Mr. D’s presence dwindle. “I didn’t think someone like you could feel it. I mean, you’re Toshinori Yagi.”

Yagi pat Izuku lightly on the back, ushering him forward and across the room. “So you keep reminding me,” he smiled. “And yes, I feel it too. The more you’re around him, the less threatened you’ll feel, but it just comes with the territory of having an Olympian as camp director.”

Izuku stopped dead in his tracks, mouth all but dropping to the floor. 

Hold the phone, what.

“Mr. D is an Olympian? Like one of the twelve Olympians? Those Olympains?” he blurted, absently making sure to keep his hands gripped onto the straps of his knapsack— he had a tendency to flail. “Which one? Wait, I feel like that’s blasphemous. Can I even ask that?”

“He’s Dionysus, God of wine,” Yagi answered him smoothly, once again ushering him toward the hall. “And not at all, my boy. If you didn’t ask, you would’ve found out in the orientation film, so no harm done. But names are a powerful thing,” Yagi chided lightly, like he was warning a child against something dangerous. “So be careful, and do not use them lightly.”

Izuku wasn’t quite sure what that was supposed to mean, but he nodded nonetheless and let himself be led into another room as he still tried to wrap his head around short chubby baby-man Mr. D being a god— and an Olympian . 

This new room wasn’t quite as large as the leopard printed common area, but it was still a fairly giant hospital room. Or that’s what it looked like, at least. Shelves fully stocked with medical supplies and what looked to be herbs were set up against the far wall, and both of the left and right walls were lined with hospital cots, each having thoroughly used white sheets, wooden trunks at the foots of the beds, and little tables next to them. 

In one of the far cots near the supply shelves sat a boy that looked about Izuku’s age— maybe older. He was facing away from them so Izuku couldn’t see his face, but his hair was sun bleached blond and he had dirt tracking up his arms, orange t-shirt, and ratty blue jeans. Honestly, he looked like he’d just lost a brawl in a mud pit. 

That wasn’t the only thing that drew Izuku’s attention, however. The old woman in front of the boy looked furious and worked like it too. In fact, Izuku could hear the two of them squabbling back and forth all the way from the door. 

This probably wasn’t a good time. 

Then Yagi knocked on the open door, alerting everyone of their presence— the blond boy, the old nurse, and another little boy that Izuku hadn’t noticed earlier. 

Or not.

“Holy shit, you’re Toshinori Yagi,” the blond boy in the cot blurted loudly— and Izuku had to physically stop himself from letting out a laugh at the absurdity of the two of them reacting the exact same way— his eyes widening in what Izuku immediately recognized as awe. What else could it have been? The Toshinori Yagi, world renowned boxing champion, was in the same room as them— blessing them all with his stupid awesome presence. So yeah, Izuku could understand the dumbfoundedness. Heck, he was still feeling it. 

He tried to give the blond boy a knowing smile, but when the starstruck boy’s eyes landed on Izuku, his face dropped into an unpleasant scowl. “Who the fuck are you?”

Well dang, okay.

“O-Oh, uhh—”

Yagi placed a hand on Izuku’s shoulder before addressing the nurse. “We were attacked by a manticore before we arrived, and he sustained some injuries. They’re pretty shallow but better safe than sorry.”

The nurse sighed tiredly and finished wrapping up the blond boy’s hands with bandages. The blond boy made to get up, but the nurse snapped her fingers and pointed at the cot where he was once sitting. “You’re not done yet, Bakugou, so you better sit down or I will fetch Aizawa and make you.” 

The blond boy, Bakugou— and gods did that name sound familiar— crossed his arms like a pouting child and let out a drawn-out groan before plopping back down onto the cot and grumbling angrily to himself. 

The nurse huffed at him and Bakugou rolled his eyes back at her, but she wasn’t baited. Instead, she turned to look at Izuku, who was still awkwardly standing in the doorway with Yagi hovering behind him. 

“Come on over,” she said simply, and Izuku followed her to the cot next to Bakugou’s. “Let’s get you fixed up. And Katsuma,” she called.

The other little boy, no older than seven or eight years old and with sandy-brown hair, looked back at her expectantly from Bakugou’s side. 

“Can you grab my clipboard for me?” the nurse asked him. “The one with the new medical registrations? Thank you, dear. And back to you,” she said to Izuku, who was rocking back and forth in the cot. “You can just call me Chiyo, and I am our head healer— pleasure to meet you. Now it sounded like you got some cuts?”

“Oh, yes ma’am,” Izuku floundered a bit by her quick and down-to-business talking before removing Yagi’s humongous letterman from his shoulders. “It pinned me down, so it got my back a little but I can hardly feel it now,” Izuku replied smoothly, somewhat surprised by how calm and collected he managed to sound. At the time, the manticore had been terrifying— he’d almost died , for heaven’s sake— but now the whole experience felt like a lifetime ago.

Healer Chiyo nodded and made her way around to the other side of the cot to get a better look at Izuku’s back. Her cold gloved hands fiddled with what was left of the back of his t-shirt and her fingers traced along his cuts, prodding some areas more than others, as she mumbled to herself. 

“Good news,” she said with a huff, drawing her hands away from his skin. She rounded the cot as she peeled the latex gloves off of her hands. “The cuts were, in fact, shallow.”

Izuku couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the statement, and felt his gaze flit between Yagi and Healer Chiyo. Was that not what they'd already said?

Healer Chiyo must have noticed the look on Izuku’s face because she only huffed as she tossed her gloves into the trash bin near the shelves and smoothed her scrubs. “Toshinori is a fool that has a reputation for downplaying injuries, so I was skeptical. But nevermind that. You’ll be all healed up with some disinfectant and ambrosia, and then once you fill out your medical registration Bakugou can show you around camp.”

“Fucking what? ” 

Izuku flinched away from Bakugou’s yelling, but Healer Chiyo looked like she was all too used to this sort of behavior. “Just do as you’re told. My threat from earlier still stands.”

Bakugou scoffed, sneering at Healer Chiyo in what Izuku guessed was a challenge. “Oh yeah? And what the hell is Mr. Aizawa gonna do? Put me to sleep?” he laughed haughtily.

“I don’t have time for this,” Healer Chiyo shook her head and redirected her focus back to Izuku. “Katsuma will be back with the forms in a moment. Tell him that you need some disinfectant— he’ll apply it for you— and a teaspoon of nectar. Understood?”

Izuku nodded.

“And Bakugou,” she said sternly, eyes narrowing in that scary, angry grandma sort of way that made Izuku shift a little in his seat. “If Katsuma tells me that you didn’t listen, you’ll be grounded from the next game of capture the flag.”

Almost comically, Bakugou’s eyes immediately widened into saucers. “You old hag, you can’t do that!”

As Healer Chiyo and Bakugou once again began arguing back and forth, Izuku noticed Yagi begin to approach him. Yagi flashed him yet another smile when he reached the foot of the bed and said, “I have to meet with the new staff and get settled. I trust that you’ll be okay with…” His eyes flickered behind Izuku and to whom he could safely assume was Bakugou, who was still bickering with Healer Chiyo.

“Yeah,” he spoke quietly. Then he saw the concern marring Yagi’s face, and a wave of determination hit him and he said more assuredly, “Yeah, I’ll be okay.” While Izuku was able to appreciate his life being saved— because come on, who wouldn’t— he wasn’t one for pity.

Yagi’s spirit seemed to lift upon Izuku’s small declaration. And with another curt pat on Izuku’s shoulder, Yagi gave a hearty “See you around, Young Midoriya, Young Bakugou,” and turned to leave the room after Healer Chiyo, who’d stormed out only a moment earlier.

“Wait, before you leave…” Izuku felt his face heat up as he reached over the side of the cot to rummage through his bag, which had been placed near his feet. “Can I have your autograph?”

At this, Yagi laughed, taking the notebook from his outstretched hands and signing his name in giant English letters that scrawled across an entire page with a marker that Izuku wasn’t aware that he even had. And when he handed the book back to Izuku, he could only stare in awe. 

He really did it. He had the Toshinori Yagi’s autograph, and he could finally die in peace. 

He could sell this.

Yagi deterred Izuku’s thoughts with a casual ruffle of his hair and once again turned to leave after flashing him his pearly white smile. 

“Thank you,” Izuku breathed and Yagi hesitated, tilting his head back in Izuku’s direction. “For signing my notebook,” Izuku continued, “but also… just for all of this. Thank you for everything, Mr. Yagi.”

And then with an appreciative and genuine nod of his head, Yagi was gone, and it was just Izuku and Bakugou and the weird and tense emptiness that followed. Well, this was awkward. Izuku took a risk and turned himself around to face Bakugou who was still sitting in the other cot— though he looked like he wanted nothing more than to leave Izuku in the dust.

“Do you like boxing?” Izuku decided was safe to ask. 

Bakugou glanced from where he was fiddling with a bronze colored cuff bracelet that Izuku hadn’t noticed before. 

Then Bakugou grunted, but Izuku took that as a noise of question. “Well you know Toshinori Yagi, right? And anyone who knows him can’t not be into boxing, you know? Not that people can’t like him and not like boxing. I’m not trying to gate-keep Yagi, because that’d just be seriously weird and kind of gross. Wait, so do you like boxing? Or am I just being—”

“Gods, do you ever shut up?” Bakugou groaned, rolling his eyes so hard that it must have hurt.

At first, Izuku was startled by the sudden outburst, but that soon transformed into a prick of irritation. But he quickly shoved that feeling down before it could grow into anything more. “Fine,” he bit out, trying to calm his nerves and let his frustration settle. “It’s whatever.”

Bakugou was a character. But something about him irked Izuku, and he hadn’t really noticed it until Bakugou opened his big stupid mouth and made Izuku feel kind of like dirt at every opportunity. Because, first of all, who in their right mind introduces themselves with a ‘who the fuck are you?’ And secondly, was it really so hard to pretend to be okay with showing Izuku around— especially considering, you know, he’d never freakin’ been here before.

But also why , for the love of all things holy, did Bakugou seem so familiar? Maybe it was the hair?

Thank the gods above, little Katsuma came back into the infirmary not long after and handed Izuku a clipboard and pen. After iterating what Healer Chiyo had told Izuku, Katsuma promptly got to work, retreating to the back shelves and grabbing a bottle that looked a lot like cough syrup, but instead of the pinkish-purple color that Izuku usually associated it with, the liquid inside was golden like honey.

Then Katsuma began pouring the tiniest bit into a measuring cap he’d also grabbed, and Izuku couldn’t help but lean forward in anticipation. 

“Here,” the little boy murmured, handing Izuku the half-filled cap. “This will help with the scratches.”

With a small “thank you”, Izuku brought the cap of nectar to his nose and gave it a couple of sniffs. Well that was odd. There was no odor. Shrugging— because what can you do— he downed the cap in one go.

“This tastes just like my mom’s katsudon!”

Katsuma took the measuring cap from Izuku’s hands with a giggle. “My dad used to make oatmeal cookies a lot. That’s what it tastes like for me.”

Izuku’s eyebrows raised into his hairline. “Wait, so it’s different for each person?”

Katsuma stuttered a small nod, setting the cap aside to rummage through the worn white satchel that crossed over his overalls. Rounding the corner of the cot, Izuku felt a dip behind him as Katsuma climbed up onto the bed and settled back on his knees. “I’m sorry if this stings.”

Then Katsuma began tracing his back with alcohol wipes, and an awkward silence instantly enveloped the room. Especially since Bakugou was stubbornly remaining quiet as well, probably stewing in his own discontent at almost being punished like a little kid. So Izuku decided to do what he did best: fill the room with his own useless and incoherent babble. “Sooo…” he kicked his feet back and forth, “Your name is Katsuma? That’s a cool name.”

The kid took a moment to respond, almost like he wasn’t expecting Izuku to continue talking to him. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “My name is Katsuma Shimano, but everyone just uses my first name.”

Izuku nodded along. “How old are you, by the way?”

“Seven.”

“And you’re already working in here?” Izuku asked incredulously, doing his best to keep from whipping his entire body around to gawk. “Katsuma, that’s amazing!”

As little Katsuma dressed his wounds— lathering them with a light paste and covering them with waterproof bandages— Izuku did his best to fill out the registration form while the two of them maintained a pleasant exchange. That is, until Katsuma mentioned his sister.

“So you’ve got an older sister?” Izuku inquired as Katsuma smoothed down another bandage across his back.

“Yeah!” Katsuma perked up. “Her name is Mahoro and she’s ten. She beats up a lot of the big kids in the war games to help me practice my healing,” Katsuma added excitedly, and Izuku could feel him bouncing up and down on his knees as he talked. From the tidbits that Katsuma quashed about her, Mahoro sounded like a doting older sister, but Izuku had a feeling that she perhaps enjoyed sending kids to the infirmary a little more than Katsuma realized.

Then Bakugou snorted, thus ending the silence that Izuku had actually come to prefer. Both he and Katsuma turned around to look at the blond, who leaned back on his hands with a smirk that honestly looked more like a sneer etched into his face. “You talking about that fucking pig-tailed brat? Yeah, she’s pretty damn feisty for a runt, that’s for sure.”

“Hey,” Izuku chastised him, once again feeling that tiny flare of anger swell back up in his chest. “That’s not very nice, Bakugou. Don’t call people that.”

Bakugou only raised an eyebrow, as if surprised that Izuku had the balls to have said anything about his attitude at all. “Yeah?” he scoffed. “And what the hell are you gonna do about it? Fight me? You whine like a bitch and you’re built like a fucking spaghetti noodle.”

Normally when faced with this kind of situation, Izuku would duck his head, murmur an apology, and back down. That was how it had always been— ever since grade school. So Izuku didn’t know what it was— his pent up anger from over the years, the agitation from the new environment, the downright weird but aggressive familiarity he felt for Bakugou, or maybe he was still riding the high of meeting the famed Toshinori gosh-dang Yagi— but Izuku immediately rose to the bait, practically snapping at it like a starved dog. 

“What?” Izuku retorted. “Scared you’ll lose?”

“Yeah right! In your fucking dreams, you ugly shithead!”

And back and forth they went, trading insult after insult and curse after curse so much that Izuku was getting dizzy. It seemed he’d made his cursing quota for the year in just under fifteen minutes of being in Bakugou’s vulgar-contagious presence. 

“That’s it. I’m out of this bitch,” Bakugou growled suddenly, throwing himself off of his cot and stomping toward the door. 

But just before he made it to the exit, much to Izuku’s surprise, little Katsuma darted out in front of him and held his arms up as if to block Bakugou inside. 

Bakugou’s frown only deepened. “Move it, runt.”

“If you don’t take him…” Katsuma’s eyes darted every which way— the kid was clearly uncomfortable with confrontation, but who knew? Maybe it was just that it was Bakugou, because if that were the case Izuku couldn’t blame him— but then he leveled Bakugou with a look of determination that made Izuku proud. “If you don’t take him with you, I’m gonna tell.”

Bakugou’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and for a moment Izuku was scared Bakugou might actually hit Katsuma. But as soon as Izuku made to get up and cause interference, Bakugou whipped back around and sauntered over to where Izuku sat, all the while grunting that it was “only for capture the flag”.

Was capture the flag really all that worth it? Or did Bakugou just have a soft spot for kids? While Izuku figured that Bakugou was just in it for the game, he hoped for his own sake that it was because Bakugou secretly liked kids. 

But also because Izuku looked like he was twelve. So maybe he could get some brownie points or something.

Izuku noticed Katsuma heave a relieved sigh, and gave him a thankful smile. At that, Katsuma seemed to light up, which made Izuku glad.

“I have to go back to Ms. Chiyo now,” Katsuma told him as he checked his medicine bag by the door. “Thank you for being nice to me, and I hope you’ll stay here.”

Hearing that, Izuku wanted to clench his chest because dagnabit, if that wasn’t the cutest thing he’s ever been told. 

But instead of allowing his face to pinch into an ugly heart-squeeze, Izuku replied with a delighted “I hope I do too.”

And then, just like Yagi and Healer Chiyo had left, so had Katsuma— leaving Bakugou and Izuku, who were both itching to get away from each other, in solitude.

Then wordlessly, Bakugou snatched Healer Chiyo’s clipboard off of the wooden table near Izuku’s bedside and began flipping through and squinting at the pages. He must have gotten to the one that he was looking for, because his eyebrows relaxed from his concentration and he let out an amused huff. Then, just when Izuku thought his life couldn’t get any weirder, Bakugou asked, “What kind of sick bastard would name their kid Deku? ”

Okay, pause. 

What?

 “Umm,” Izuku hummed awkwardly, catching the blond’s attention. He looked angry for some reason, but Izuku was starting to think that maybe it was just his default emotion and expression. From the comfort of his cot, Izuku twiddled his thumbs and, for a brief moment, considered shutting the heck up and not saying anything at all. But Izuku didn’t know how long he could take going by Deku , of all things, so he bit the bullet and opened his mouth. “Actually, it’s Izuku Midoriya.”

Bakugou's eyes widened ever so slightly, but then his lip curled up into a sneer and he let out a loud and aggressive scoff. “For someone as useless as you,” he said, looking Izuku up and down like he was nothing more than an insect, “Deku suits you much better.”

This, for whatever reason, irritated him much more than it should have. Izuku didn’t normally get mad, or it took him a lot to get there, at least. It was one of the things people tended to hate most about him, actually. Because of how often he got kicked out of school, he was pegged as a troublemaker from the get go, despite never causing any trouble. But Izuku, knowing how many problems his reputation had begun to cause his mother, eventually learned how to shut his mouth and take it instead of throwing punches. 

But there something about Bakugou— maybe it was the snarl permanently etched into his face, or the condescending tilt in his voice, or the proud way that he relaxed into his somehow perfect posture, or the vulgarity that Izuku always worked so hard to avoid, or maybe it was simply his stupid oh so familiar face — that just pissed Izuku the hell off.

Screw brownie points.

“ Excuse me?” Izuku snapped back at him, bristling under Bakugou’s scrutinizing glare as he sat up straighter in his cot. 

“You heard me,” Bakugou sniffed. Then he gestured at Izuku with the clipboard, a menacing as well as taunting growl overcoming his features. “I mean, fucking look at you: you look like you just came crawling out from under a bridge, you shitty nerd.”

Shitty… nerd?

Wait. He knew that nickname.

And then, like an old, dusty lightbulb had flickered to life inside of Izuku’s abandoned shack of a brain, everything suddenly came together: the way Izuku seemed to rise to the bait, the unwelcome anger he hadn’t felt since he was a child, that unsettling feeling of familiarity. This was the kid he had been with on the day of the empousai attack. They had been neighbors, elementary classmates, and— dare he say it— friends?

Katsuki Bakugou.

Katsuki.

Ka—

Oh my gods .

“Kacchan?” Izuku decided to throw caution to the wind and test the waters, wincing at how dumb the nickname sounded with his prepubescent voice. But with the shocked and somehow still agitated look thrown his way, Izuku could tell he was right on the money. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

Kacchan was completely frozen, his entire body gone rigid. His eyes widened in what looked to be a suspicious wonder as his gaze once again racked Izuku up and down. “You’re that fucking kid,” Kacchan said simply, still leaned away from Izuku. “The one from the empousai attack.”

And suddenly, it was like a veil had been lifted from Izuku’s mind and he remembered: all of the time Izuku and the other explosive child had spent sharing a classroom, spending most afternoons in each other’s rooms or down by the creek, giggling at the reactions of their parents when they learned another curse word, Kacchan’s unruly blond contrasting Izuku’s dark ebony, the terror that overwhelmed them both when faced with the stark white skin, flaming hair, and red eyes of their attackers, Kacchan doing his best to protect them both despite the fear that Izuku knew plagued him, and Izuku and his mother’s move to a safer neighborhood afterward.

And now they were both here.

Izuku felt a wide and delighted smile stretch across his face upon being recognized. In a new world full of crazy and unpredictable, Kacchan’s familiarity— no matter how frustrating— was like one of those annoyingly bright LED flashlights casting a beam through a muddled fog. Kacchan might’ve been a lot more rude than Izuku remembered, but he was growing kind of desperate at this point. 

Izuku lurched across the bed, excitement overcoming all other thoughts. “Kacchan! It’s really you—”

“Don’t ever call me that again or I’ll ring your scrawny goddamn neck, you hear?”

Yep. 

Definitely the same competitive, foul-mouthed kid he’d been friends with during his less-than-decent childhood.

Izuku sat back down in his cot.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Izuku reeled back in half-surprise half-offense. Well so much for falling back into the whole ‘childhood friend’ routine. Honestly, just what was this guy’s problem? “Umm…”

“Get up,” Kacchan demanded simply. “You’re annoying as hell and I don’t like playing ‘tour guide’, so we’re getting this over with.” 

Did he really have to say it like that?

As Izuku hopped out of bed, heaving a tired and frustrated sigh as he reached down to grab his bag, Kacchan walked away, opting to wait by the door instead. “And,” Kacchan added as an afterthought, sending Izuku a piercing glare as he sidled up next to him, “if you start doing that shitty mumbling thing you did when we were kids, honest to gods I will set you on fucking fire.”

“Noted.”

So without another word, which Izuku was begrudgingly thankful for— because while he was relieved to have someone he could use as a crutch, that person happened to be an older and more abrasive Kacchan who Izuku was willing to admit was able to beat and thoroughly destroy all of his buttons— Kacchan led them out of the blue farmhouse, which Izuku learned was just called the Big House.

They passed a sandpit, to which Kacchan said dully, “that’s the fucking volleyball pit,” where about a dozen kids around their age were, you guessed it, playing volleyball.

Kacchan would gesture vaguely to other parts of the campgrounds as he seemed to make a beeline in a certain direction. Izuku occasionally had to break into a jog to keep up— curse his short legs— and after passing the forge, where Izuku saw a bunch of sweaty campers with their sleeves rolled up running in and out of the smokestack of a building, white marble columns lining walls stained with soot, the armory, which just looked like a large metal shed, and the amphitheater, an open-air venue with tons of bleacher-esque seats and situated around the a huge firepit, Kacchan finally slowed to a stop. 

In front of Izuku were upwards of twenty cabins all arranged in a square-ish potato shape, like they had tried to keep all of them in a tight U-shape or circle but kept on adding more cabins. But that wasn’t what shocked Izuku most. These cabins, without a doubt, had to be the most bizarre collection of buildings he’d ever seen.

“What the heck is with the decor of this place?” Izuku found himself blurting before he could stop himself.

Kacchan sent him a withering look that Izuku, who still flinched ever so slightly, was starting to grow immune to. In fact, it actually spurred his more… colorful side, which he preferred to keep locked in the deepest darkest little corner of the storm cellar in his soul. 

But back to the positively atrocious looking cabins. 

None of them were anything alike, except for the large brass number plaques above the doors. That, and about half of the cabins were larger than the other half, which looked like they’d just been upgraded from those teeny tiny foldable homes to still-kind-of-small portable buildings. Okay, so twelve big cabins— scratch that— two ginormous cabins, ten big cabins, and nine of the small cabins. 

The two cabins, numbers one and two respectfully, at the head of the field were situated right next to each other, both giant white boxes with heavy columns in front. They were sort of imposing, despite just being buildings, so Izuku tore his gaze away as he continued to follow Kacchan to who-knew-where.

The other cabins weren’t as royal-looking, but Izuku couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad thing. Cabin nine had smokestacks poking out of the top, like a miniature factory, cabin four was covered top-to-bottom in tomato vines and had grass growing out of the roof, and cabin five… Well, Izuku didn’t know what to make of cabin five.

Kacchan made a point to sneer at the other campers, all decked out in the same bright orange that he was, hanging around the cabin as they passed. And they snarled right back at him. One girl in particular— had to be in her twenties and easily the most muscular woman Izuku had ever seen— looked especially vicious. The only reason Izuku noticed the cabin at all was because of the attention, albeit negative, that Kacchan gave it. The red on its exterior was chipping horribly, like it had been given a real nasty paint job thirty years ago. The roof was lined with barbed wire, which was kind of scary, and to make matters worse, a stuffed boar’s head had been hung over the entrance like a trophy. 

Izuku shuddered and once again trotted to where Kacchan was not-so-patiently waiting for him, tapping his foot quickly on the ground outside of cabin eleven. Out of all of the other cabins, this one seemed the most normal, which Izuku was thankful for. The threshold was especially worn down, the brown paint peeling similarly to cabin five’s.

When Kacchan opened the door, Izuku briefly noticed a caduceus hanging over the doorway before stepping inside behind him. It was packed with people of all ages, boys and girls, and they were all wearing their muddy tennis shoes indoors. There weren’t enough beds that Izuku could see to hold all of them, so they made up for it with sleeping bags, it seemed. Stepping over an empty mat, Izuku followed Kacchan further into the cabin. 

“ Oi! ” Kacchan suddenly shouted over all of the hustle and bustle, and then the entire cabin was looking at them owlishly. Before Izuku could even think to be uncomfortable— he might be going full circle at this point: stressed to the point of calm; is that even a thing?— Kacchan directed his fury to the person closest to him, a young girl no older than twelve or thirteen years old. “I’ve got an unclaimed newbie. Where’s the dunce?”

“I’m in here, dude!” another voice called out over the crowd, and Kacchan wasted no time in shoving his way through the other campers, to which Izuku apologized incessantly which only got him stares and/or laughs for some reason, to get to whoever was in the back. 

They entered a small bedroom that held two twin beds, a wooden nightstand in between the two beds with tons of little trinkets on it, and similarly to what Izuku guessed could be called the foyer the floor was also laden with a couple of sleeping bags. Sitting comfortably on one of the beds was a yellow-blond guy, probably close to Izuku and Kacchan’s age, and he glanced up from where he was picking at his nails when they entered.

“What’s up?” the boy asked casually, standing up from the bed to saunter toward them. “I think I heard you say ‘unclaimed’, right?” he asked, gesturing lightly to Izuku.

“Uh, yeah,” Izuku interrupted, which earned him yet another hard glare from Kacchan. He glared right back. “What’s that mean, anyway?” Izuku asked the boy, after deciding to be the bigger person and looking away from Kacchan first. “Mr. D said I was ‘undetermined’, and I’ve been called ‘unclaimed’ twice now. It sounds like an insult, and I don’t like it.”

Kacchan snorted, but there didn’t sound to be any amusement in the noise. “I don’t remember you being this ballsy.”

“And I don’t remember you being this much of an asshole.”

“The fuck did you just say to me?”

“ Wow , okay.” The boy stepped between Izuku and Kacchan before their argument could become anything more, and Izuku found himself slightly disappointed. 

Wait. Had Izuku actually wanted to get into a fight? Since when did he ever?

Gods , it was like every interaction he had with Kacchan made his angry-meter go up by ten percent.

Kacchan’s narrowed eyes darted between Izuku and the other boy, but he eventually let out a huff and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Whatever. I just came to get the shitty deku off my back.”

“Hey!”

“No way!” the boy gasped, but Kacchan had already ducked out of the room. Then the boy snapped his head to look back at Izuku, whose confusion was steadily overriding his pissed-off-ness. “You’ve already got a ‘Bakugou original’ nickname? I had to wait an entire month for mine, and it ended up being ‘Dunce Face’.”

Izuku shifted awkwardly. “And that’s a good thing, why?”

The boy only shrugged. “It’s like his stamp of acknowledgement. Like, if he calls you an ‘extra’, it means he doesn’t give a single crap about you. But if he gives you a nickname, it means he either likes you in his own emotionally constipated sort of way, or he seriously hates your guts— no in between. The name’s Denki Kaminari, by the way.”

Well then. That was kind of an earful.

“Izuku Midoriya,” he responded in kind. 

“Cool. So where do you want your sleeping bag?”

Izuku’s brow furrowed. “Wait, now I’m confused. What’s happening? And why do I need a sleeping bag?”

Kaminari just looked at him like he was the biggest idiot on planet Earth, which didn’t make Izuku feel any better. But before Izuku could properly defend his honor, Kaminari’s eyes blew wide, as if struck with a revelation. “That jerk! Bakugou didn’t explain anything to you, did he,” Kaminari asked, but it sounded more like an accusation than anything.

Izuku bit his lip. “No?”

Kaminari groaned, dragging a hand down his face, and muttered, “That guy can be such an asshole. But forget about that!” And if that sudden change in attitude didn’t give Izuku whiplash. “Nothing we can do about it now. I’m guessing he completely skimped out on a tour just to bring you here, right?”

“I mean, he showed me a couple of things,” Izuku thought aloud, putting a hand to his chin. “Like the volleyball pit, and the forge, the armory, and the amphitheater, but that was about it. Why did he drop me off here, anyway?”

Kaminari made a strangled noise and pulled a face that Izuku had no other words to describe but absolutely appalled . Then he apologized, wiping the look away with a rake through his hair. “Okay, so we’re basically starting from square one then,” he said to Izuku. “Come on, I’ll show you around the camp properly .”

And with that, Izuku and Kaminari shuffled around campers and sleeping bags and burst through cabin eleven’s door with vigor. “Welcome to Camp UA, where everyone you meet is a different alternative to Grecian Jesus!” Kaminari proclaimed, gesturing to all of the land around them as they stepped back into the dirt.

“Right,” Izuku found himself nodding. “The whole demigod thing.”

Kaminari nodded as well. “As you can see,” he pointed to the number plate above them, “this is cabin eleven, home to the kids of Hermes, hence the whatever hanging on the door.” 

Izuku pursed his lips before asking tentatively, “Are you talking about the caduceus?”

“Yeah, that.”

And from there, Kaminari showed Izuku all of the spots that Kacchan had neglected to take him through. At the moment, Izuku’s personal favorite place was either Strawberry Fields, where the unicorns roamed— and Izuku had learned that Mr. D actually sold the strawberries they collected to help maintain the camp, which is kind of funny since the whole place was supposed to run on godly magic, or whatever— or UA’s border tree because Peleus. 

Because Peleus. In all honesty, what other reason did Izuku need?

He learned that each cabin was home to the children of a specific god, which cleared up why so many kids were crammed into cabin eleven when cabins two and eight, placed for the goddesses Hera and Artemis, were completely empty. Kaminari also told him that the children who haven’t been claimed by their godly parent, much like Izuku hadn’t, stayed in the Hermes cabin as well— “god of travelers and all that jazz,” Kaminari had said.

Talking with Kaminari was pleasant, Izuku found. And maybe that was just because the only other person he had to compare it to was Kacchan, but Izuku was still thankful for Kaminari’s laid back nature. He was a tad hyperactive, but after an entire day of crazy, he still really helped in calming Izuku down.

“So you knew Bakugou before he came to camp?” Kaminari asked, sprawled out on the ratty quilted comforter covering his bed. They had just returned from Kaminari’s personal, ‘better-than-Bakugou’ tour and were waiting for dinner time to be announced within the hour. “That must have been forever ago.”

Izuku lay on his new designated sleeping bag situated on the floor beside it. “Kind of,” he agreed hesitantly. “I didn’t even recognize him until he started calling me names,” to which Kaminari snorted. “We were really close when we were little, but my mom and I moved after we were attacked by some monsters that looked like middle schoolers. Not that anyone else could see them— you know, because of that weird selective-sight thing everyone’s got going on.”

Kaminari threw him a weird look. “Selective-sight? Oh, you mean the mist?”

“Mist?”

Apparently, the mist , as Kaminari called it, was a supernatural force that was controlled by the goddess Hecate that kept people from seeing monsters and other weird occurrences by replacing them with things a normal mind would be able to comprehend— and gods that explained so freakin’ much.

“You know,” Izuku crossed his arms where he lay on his back, “I’ve gone my entire life thinking I was crazy because I could see all of those monsters, and it turns out I was right the whole time.”

“Felt that,” Kaminari hummed. “Do you know how many times I was gaslighted as a kid into thinking I was schizophrenic? Don’t get me wrong: my mom’s super chill and I love her and all, but she really thought I was nuts for a while. I think I had more therapists than I do friends.”

“I got kicked out of school a lot,” Izuku revealed after a beat of silence. He wasn’t exactly sure why but it seemed appropriate to share, given the atmosphere. “The monsters that followed me on campus looked like super shady old guys, so administration thought I was ‘involved in suspicious activity’— that’s a quote, by the way.”

Izuku then heard the mattress’ springs creak as Kaminari’s head peeked over the edge of the bed to peer down at him. “I was thinking about this earlier, but it’s kind of weird that you didn’t have a Keeper, don’t you think? Especially if you’ve been seeing monsters since you were a little kid. Like, I’m willing to bet real money that you’re the kid of an Olympian just based off of that.”

“Keepers are satyrs, right?” Izuku looked up at Kaminari. 

“Yeah,” Kaminari nodded his head. “They’re usually assigned to whichever demigods they’re able to sense at the time, and they’re really only there to look after you and then talk to your parents once it’s time to collect you,” he explained. “For me, I was taken to camp when I was twelve with my friend Ashido— she’s cool, you’d like her. But we were collected so early because we’ve been able to see weird crap since we were practically babies, and that somehow translates into how we smell to monsters. That’s how Amajiki put it, at least. I don’t really know.”

“Amajiki,” Izuku murmured to himself. “Is that your Keeper’s name?”

Kaminari replied with a loud “Yep! He’s kind of a scaredy-cat, but he always comes in clutch and can be a total badass. Geez ,” he groaned suddenly with a shake of his head. “I keep getting distracted. Back to the point:  what I’m trying to say is, you should’ve had a Keeper if you’ve been seeing monsters as long as I have. Honestly, the only way you didn’t have a Keeper was if Mr. D and the council just straight up decided to ignore you, and Mr. D can’t do that because one of the other gods might vaporize his throne or something— depending on the kid, of course. Not gonna lie, my dad would probably let it slide—”

“Wait, what? ”

“— but what can you do?” Kaminari shrugged as if he hadn’t just suggested what he had. “He’s got like twenty-three of us here already, and that doesn’t even account for the ones still waiting to be claimed, which would put us up to almost forty kids. So in the grand scheme of things, I’m just one more child of Hermes to add to the list.”

Izuku didn’t know how to feel about this new bit of information. Were the gods really like that, or did Kaminari just convince himself of the belief on his own? But, then again, the fact that Kaminari was even able to come to the conclusion that he was nothing more than chopped liver at all wasn’t helping the gods’ case. Now that he was thinking about it, have any of the kids at camp actually met their godly parent? Kaminari had mentioned their form of claiming earlier but all he said about it was that it was “kind of shitty” and “impersonal”. That made Izuku figure a tentative no, that none of them had met their parents. 

Well that was a huge bummer. Now he was stressed.

Then all of a sudden, a loud, high pitched whistle rang in Izuku’s ears, abruptly breaking him from his thoughts. He jumped to his feet with a start, head whipping back and forth to find out where the noise was coming from but it was so loud that he couldn’t pinpoint what direction it originated. 

“Chillax, dude,” Kaminari snickered, rolling out of bed as the whistling came to an end. “It just Mr. Yamada telling us to go to the pavilion.”

Izuku whipped toward Kaminari, mouth falling open in shock. “Wait, that’s how you get called for dinner? That sounded like nails on a chalkboard,” Izuku sputtered incredulously. “I thought something was dying! How does someone even make that kind of noise?”

“Ehh,” Kaminari waved off the question with his hand, “just one of the perks of being a son of Apollo, I guess. He’s been doing it for years, so we’ve all gotten used to it.”

Izuku wasn’t quite sure how this ‘Mr. Yamada’ being a child of Apollo really correlated to the whole screeching whistle thing— he had a few guesses, sure, but still— but let Kaminari lead him out of the cabin and toward the dining pavilion.

The pavilion was definitely one of the cooler aspects of Camp UA. It sat comfortably atop a hill that overlooked the Suruga Bay and was framed handsomely in white stone Greek columns, each having its own torch lit and hung upon them. There was no roof or walls, but Izuku was assured that the weather never acted up. He would have loved it even so, just because of how open and relaxing it was.

There were twenty one tables— one for each cabin, Izuku had been told— all covered in white tablecloths with dark purple trim and, in the center of it all, was a central fire burning inside a bronze brazier roughly the size of a bathtub. 

It was incredible the first time Izuku had seen it, but now that it was night, he couldn’t help but be even more amazed by the architecture, the openness and fresh air, how the sunset burned into his skin, the smell of ocean salt— by everything .

Kaminari must have been aware of Izuku’s lack of brain function, because he dragged Izuku behind him and inside of the mess hall where everyone was finding seats at their respective tables. He even noticed Kacchan sitting at table six next to a spiky red-haired satyr.

Athena, huh?

Izuku wasn’t really sure why, but he thought that it suited him.

“That’s Mr. Yamada, over there,” Kaminari said to him after a moment, and Izuku followed his finger to where he was pointing to a tall and lanky guy with long blond hair pulled into a low bun standing by the pavilion fire. Next to him was another tall man with scraggly black hair, who honestly looked completely out of it as he scraped some of his meal off of his plate and into the fire as he listened to Mr. Yamada talk his ear off. “And beside him is our activities director, Mr. Aizawa. He’s pretty cool too, but slightly more terrifying.”

“Good to know,” Izuku replied before, yet again, being tugged behind Kaminari to the table where all of his half-siblings and the rest of the unclaimed demigods sat. Immediately, Izuku noticed just how overcrowded cabin eleven’s table was— they’d borrowed every bench from cabin two’s table to try and squeeze into the corners— not that he should have been surprised. 

“Hey Tenya,” Kaminari caught the attention of someone sitting down. He had a wide build and, even though he was seated, Izuku could tell that he was tall. “Do you mind if we squeeze in next to you?”

The boy, whom Izuku could safely assume was one of Kaminari’s half-brothers, let out a heavy sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose, shifting his rectangular glasses up his face. “I shouldn’t because you are late. You know the rules, Denki: first come, first serve.” But when Kaminari pulled a pretty convincing puppy-dog face, the boy let out a huff and relented. “Only this once.”

“Bet, thanks!” Kaminari whooped, plopping down on the bench beside the boy and elbowing another to make room for Izuku, to which he apologized like the complete pushover he was. “Uraraka, what are you doing here?” Kaminari asked someone on the other side of the boy.

Izuku couldn’t really see whom he was speaking to, but he was able to make out a bob of short brown hair and a feminine voice reply, “defying the gods” with a charming laugh.

Confused, as always, Izuku sent Kaminari a questioning look as he laughed along with the girl. Once Kaminari caught Izuku’s eye, he cried out “Oh, right!” like he’d just forgotten something— but if any of their previous conversations were anything to go by, Izuku was willing to bet that was most definitely the case. 

From where he was sitting on the wooden bench, Kaminari leaned back and suddenly Izuku was able to see the entirety of the boy and the girl he was sitting next to as they peered at him curiously. The girl was on the shorter side, like Izuku, and— Izuku wasn’t sure if this was offensive or not— she had a face like a precious little baby cow with how large her eyes were. “Midoriya, this is one of my brothers Tenya Iida,” Kaminari introduced them, “and the girl is Ochako Uraraka from cabin twenty. She’s not supposed to be sitting here since it’s technically ‘forbidden’,” he mocked with a roll of his eyes, “but no one actually gives a shit.”

The girl, Uraraka, snorted at that. “It hasn’t thundered yet, so I’m not moving.”

And like a scene from a movie, heavy thunder rumbled in the sky despite it being clear out.

Izuku choked on air. 

“I’ll just leave him an offering,” she said like a compromise, and she remained seated.

Iida looked somewhat distressed but didn’t say anything, and Kaminari let out an ugly cackle. When he finally came about his wits, which took a while, Kaminari leaned back in the bench once again and gestured to Izuku. “Guys, this is Izuku Midoriya, but Bakugou calls him Deku.”

Izuku, who’d just managed to decently hype himself up to meet two new people because that’s just what it took sometimes, reeled in utter shock. “Why would you tell them that?” he hissed, unable to hide his embarrassment as he folded his little twig arms around himself to hide his burning face.

Kaminari shrugged another chortle and Uraraka giggled good naturedly. “Bakugou’s been here for so long that it’s become a part of the ‘camp culture’, I guess,” she explained, using finger quotes. “Besides, yours is actually kind of cute. It’s better than mine, at least, and yours sounds like an actual name which is a major step-up for him.”

Slowly, Izuku unwound his arms from his head as he tried and failed to get over the fact that a girl called his name— albeit a vulgar alternative of his name— cute. Come on, Izuku. Settle down. Don’t be weird. “Well now I’m scared,” he let out a hesitant laugh. “What’s yours?”

“Round Face.”

Well then.

“And I am called Four Eyes.”

Why is that somehow worse?

Izuku let out a sigh. “This is probably the twenty-seventh time I’ve apologized for him today and, by the looks of it, it definitely won’t be the last. I thought he would have grown up by now but that, apparently , wasn’t the case,” he grit his teeth at the end of his disclaimer, cutting his eyes to where Kacchan sat at his table, blissfully unaware of Izuku’s simmering annoyance.

Once Izuku realized that Uraraka and Iida had followed his gaze, he quickly averted his eyes and calmed himself back down.

“Kacchan’s been like this ever since we were kids.”

There was a beat of silence. And then the entire table— not just Kaminari, Iida, and Uraraka— no, the entire table erupted into chaos.

“Wait—”

“I’m sorry—”

“You call Bakugou WHAT? ”

And thus marked the beginning of Izuku Midoriya’s demigod academia.