Chapter Text
It wasn’t that this day was particularly special for the students of Class 1-A at U.A. Academy. Everyone was so used to Bakugo yelling at Midoriya that they simply didn’t consider it a notable event anymore — not even Midoriya himself. Especially with the semester exams approaching; they had to pass those first if they wanted to get into the training camp, and far from everyone was confident in their abilities.
Classes were over for the day, and the students were breaking off into groups, some intending to continue their preparations. Class 1-A hadn’t yet fully dispersed by the time they reached the gates, even though Bakugo had tried to leave early. Kirishima managed to stop him — after all, Bakugo had promised to tutor him, so there was a good reason to latch onto him. In the end, Katsuki was growling in annoyance, involuntarily listening to Eijiro’s irritating chatter while shooting hateful glances toward Midoriya, surrounded by his usual companions, Uraraka and Iida. They were chatting about something too, but Bakugo couldn’t hear them from this distance: Kirishima was too loud. Maybe that was for the best; otherwise, he would’ve screamed at that nerd again.
Right in the middle of some utterly insignificant, pointless story from Eijiro, an explosion went off near the academy gates. Grinning, Bakugo rushed toward it. Maybe, just maybe, if he got into a fight with some villains, this day would get better? Unfortunately, Kirishima stuck with him, but whatever, he might prove useful.
The explosion had come from the square where academy students often hung out. In a small, far-off section, the trees were now splintered into pieces, and some had even been uprooted entirely.
“Why the fuck would anyone mess with this square?!” Bakugo snarled as he reached the damaged area.
“I don’t know! Is anyone hurt?” Kirishima looked around.
Out of the corner of his eye, Katsuki noticed Midoriya and his friends approaching. What the hell did they want?!
Bakugo opened his mouth to tell these amateur rescuers to fuck off, but in the next second, he forgot how to speak because he heard his own voice nearby:
“God damn it, that was a nice fucking square! Why’d you have to throw us here?!”
Katsuki’s classmates also froze in confusion.
“I don’t know, but if you liked it so much, you shouldn’t have blown it up!” answered a second painfully familiar voice, triggering a red warning light in Bakugo’s brain that screamed “attack.” Except Midoriya, standing right in front of him with wide, shocked eyes, was completely silent.
One of the fallen trees was shoved aside, and Katsuki immediately turned to see where the voices were coming from. Hidden behind the tree, two guys — familiar and yet unfamiliar to the students of Class 1-A — were getting up and dusting themselves off.
They were Bakugo Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku.
Not the ones staring with wide eyes at these two. Different ones. Like clones or doppelgangers. Kirishima was whipping his head back and forth, looking at the Bakugo next to him, then at the one in the distance. Back and forth, back and forth.
“Will you fucking calm down or not?!” Katsuki barked at him.
The two clones immediately turned their heads toward them and froze with the exact same bewilderment on their faces as the “originals.” The Midoriya copy asked quietly:
“Kacchan, am I hallucinating?”
“Depends on what you’re hallucinating. If you’re seeing our doppelgangers, that’s not a fucking hallucination, because hallucinations aren’t shared,” the square-destroying Bakugo replied in a resigned tone. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“That wasn’t just a simple Teleportation Quirk, was it?” his companion muttered. “I should have realized that, I have…”
“Midoriya-kun?” Uraraka whispered, barely audible. This was unthinkable…
“Who the fuck are you?!” the “original” Bakugo roared. He was furious again — news to absolutely no one present. Sometimes it seemed like anger was his fuel, the thing that kept him moving through life.
“Bakugo Katsuki. I suspect you’ve got the same name, so asking that is pretty stupid on your part,” his copy snorted, then immediately turned to the second doppelganger. “Tanku, I have a theory, but it really sucks. They’re in the old school uniform.”
Bakugo Katsuki, Iida repeated to himself, horrified. He didn’t want to believe either his eyes or his ears.
Uraraka, meanwhile, was staring transfixed at Midoriya’s doppelganger, completely zoned out.
“Huh?” Izuku’s copy snapped out of his muttering and took a closer look at the students staring at him in amazement. “Yeah, that’s right, we just changed ours recently. But I don’t think this is a time paradox; we’d probably remember that, and… Um, guys, could you tell me what day it is?”
“Tuesday,” Kirishima offered. Izuku’s doppelganger sighed:
“Month and date, Kirishima-kun. The day of the week doesn’t tell me much.”
“June tenth,” the “original” Midoriya answered in a trembling voice. “And you…”
“Fuck!” his doppelganger suddenly shouted, clutching his head.
“Wow, haven’t heard you swear in a while,” the second Bakugo snorted with laughter.
“Well, I haven’t fallen into another world since I was three! I’ve been lucky until now!” his companion snapped. “And it’s not funny! We need to get out of here! Right now!”
“Another world?” Kirishima looked blankly at “his” Bakugo. The latter growled.
Midoriya was still trying to figure out if his own imagination was playing tricks on him. He stared at the other version of himself and couldn’t understand what could possibly have led to what he was seeing. His copy didn’t just not fear Bakugo — the other Izuku even shouted at him, while Katsuki’s doppelganger simply replied in kind and didn’t get excessively angry, almost foaming at the mouth. He simply couldn’t believe something like that could ever happen. Maybe if their relationship hadn’t deteriorated so much…
But even so, the other Katsuki’s reaction seemed excessively calm.
“Wait, please, are you saying you’re from another… world?” Midoriya clarified.
“Considering five minutes ago we were raiding the League of Villains’ headquarters, then yeah,” Bakugo’s doppelganger replied sarcastically. “It was June tenth, time about 4:15,” he glanced at the other Izuku standing next to him. “And now we’re a hundred kilometers away from there, around the same time, and we’re looking at ourselves. Yeah, there are doubts. Most likely, it’s another world. But not a completely different one,” he clicked his tongue in annoyance.
“Parallel? As a variation? Because a ‘completely different’ world, we know, we wouldn’t exist there. But here we do,” Izuku’s doppelganger picked up, voicing his reasoning. “And I don’t understand how that’s possible myself…”
“We’re in some shit again. Not surprising at all.”
“‘We.’ The fuck do you mean ‘we’?” the “original” Bakugo growled.
He’d been running through possibilities in his head the whole time. They could be villains disguised as him and Deku, but then they wouldn’t have slipped up by having such a different relationship. Everyone knows those two don’t get along. It could also be a Quirk affecting his mind, but then he’d have to question absolutely everything around him, which was too much; he’d go insane. The third option… Maybe they really were versions of them from another world.
Too many details that would usually be missed in an attempt to deceive. They mentioned the changed school uniform, that they’d been to another world before (or knew of its existence), the villain’s Quirk — they initially thought it was just teleportation. And their clothes… The watch on the newcomer’s right wrist, the one with his face, was somehow pissing him off on an instinctual level.
“I’m not alone here, so ‘we.’ What the fuck is your problem?” His own copy asked with that familiar irritation Bakugo often saw in the mirror. Kirishima was watching the unfolding action with almost gleeful excitement; he just needed some popcorn.
“What the hell do you mean ‘we’ when you’re talking about that freak?!” the “original” pointed at the other Izuku.
His doppelganger narrowed his eyes angrily and clenched his fists:
“I’ll fucking…”
“Kacchan,” Izuku’s doppelganger lightly patted his companion’s shoulder. The latter growled and reluctantly fell silent. “I can handle this myself. And you,” the newcomer shifted his gaze to the “original” Bakugo and smirked, “you’d better hold your tongue. Maybe I am a freak, but I can’t stand being insulted. One more time, and I’ll throw you from here straight into the Pacific Ocean, way past the shoreline. Got it?”
Midoriya wanted to squeeze his eyes shut in fear. Oh, no, no, no, you can’t talk to Kacchan like that, no! Where did he even get that much courage?!
Probably more than the words themselves, what enraged Katsuki in that moment was the expression on the other Deku’s face. Arrogant and self-confident — that was simply impossible to tolerate!
“What the fuck makes you think you can order me around?!” Katsuki charged toward the newcomer. The “alien” Izuku didn’t even flinch, but the air around him began to tremble. The anticipation of a fight boiled up in Bakugo, but at the last second, the Quirk deactivated, and his body was wrapped in a familiar capture scarf, just like the first day of school. He roared, trying to break free, but couldn’t. Damn Aizawa!
“What’s going on here?” asked the homeroom teacher, approaching the noisy group. His hair was floating due to an active Erasure.
Iida, finally snapped out of his shock by the need to answer the teacher, took the lead:
“Two people suspiciously resembling our classmates appeared here by unknown means! Their theory is a parallel world, but…”
Eraserhead swore under his breath. Yeah, he wasn’t blind; he’d immediately spotted the two blond heads. One Bakugo wasn’t enough for him; life decided to throw him a second!? And if it were just Bakugo! If Aizawa ended up with not one but two pairs of Bakugo and Midoriya at each other’s throats, he’d genuinely lose his mind!
“Aizawa-sensei, we’re so glad to see you in good health!” Izuku’s copy looked at him with puppy-like affection in his eyes, instantly shedding the last of his gloomy mood. “You haven’t had a nervous breakdown yet, how wonderful!”
“Don’t rush to congratulate him on his intact psyche; we’re already here,” Bakugo’s doppelganger remarked sarcastically. Shota’s head began to hurt. “We can make sure he suffers the same fate.”
“We won’t,” Midoriya’s copy replied quickly, frowning.
“We could!” his companion kept needling him.
“We won’t!”
“Enough!” Aizawa shouted at the newcomers. “Fine. Your names?”
“Having memory problems? Bakugo Katsuki,” the more subdued version of his explosive student snorted.
“And the second one is Midoriya Izuku?”
“Um,” the other Izuku smiled awkwardly. “Izuku, yes, but the last name is wrong. Funny enough, I was given a different name at birth, but even then, I wasn’t a Midoriya. I was adopted by the Bakugo family, so I share their last name.”
“What? How is that possible?” Midoriya murmured. “That would mean… That means…”
Adopted. What happened to his parents?! Well, his other version’s parents. Did they die? Disappear?!
Honestly, Midoriya wasn’t all that surprised that Mitsuki-san and Masaru-san would take him in; the mothers of the Bakugo and Midoriya families had always had a good relationship. Mitsuki-san, by the way, was sometimes just as wrathful as her son, but she was much better at controlling herself. She was strict but not cruel, and when Izuku stayed over, she treated him very well. She scared him sometimes, but honestly, he understood that she was capable of taking in a child who’d lost their parents. The question was: what happened to his biological family in the parallel reality?!
“What the fuck?!” the “original” Katsuki nearly exploded again. “My last name?!”
“Later, Midoriya-kun,” the second Izuku smiled awkwardly, demonstratively ignoring Bakugo. “We can discuss that privately. Maybe. Right now… I think if you want proof that we’re telling the truth, Principal Nezu knows the right person, doesn’t he?” he turned to Aizawa.
“And how do you know that?” Class 1-A’s homeroom teacher was very tense.
“Well, we were on the other side not long ago. The situation isn’t exactly the same, but it’s similar,” Bakugo Izuku sighed.
“Why don’t you just fuck off back where you came from?!” the Bakugo bound by Aizawa’s weapon snarled.
“I’d love to!” his doppelganger burst out. “Because I can give you a hundred percent guarantee that if we don’t leave this world within a few hours, someone’s going to have another breakdown!”
“Oh, go ahead and blame me for that! This is the second time in my life I’ve been thrown god knows where, separated from my family!” the Not-Midoriya Izuku exclaimed indignantly, flaring up like a match in a second.
Bakugo Izuku. Bakugo Izuku… Midoriya found that combination of first and last name deeply disturbing. And he wasn’t the only one; Katsuki nearby was ready to tear everything apart, but Aizawa-sensei had simply deprived him of that option with his capture weapon. Bakugo Izuku — just the thought made him shudder!
Class 1-A’s homeroom teacher decided his nerves were worth more than bickering between aliens from another world and was now monotonously, tiredly explaining the situation to the principal on the phone.
“I’m not blaming you, it’s a fact!” Katsuki’s doppelganger spread his hands. “Another fact: if you have another breakdown, it’s worse for you. I’m a shitty comforter!”
“You did fine last time,” Bakugo Izuku muttered, crossing his arms.
“Yeah, sure. Under the guidance of our resident psychologist, who isn’t here!”
“Right, Shinsou-kun,” the other Izuku started looking around. “Damn. His Quirk could help.”
“Are you stupid? How?” his stepbrother frowned.
“When you’re under mind control, it’s really relaxing.”
“Oh, no, it won’t relax you. Did you forget about the needle?”
“Damn!”
“No, if you don’t care about anyone here, you could ask Shinsou…”
“No, thanks, that option is out,” the newcomer grumbled. “Aizawa-sensei, are you done yet?”
Eraserhead sighed, releasing his student from the capture.
“Yes. You two — follow me.”
“Excuse me, but why?” Uraraka timidly raised her hand. “Where are you taking them?”
All this time, she’d been straining her brain, trying to process the fact that there were two Izukus in front of her. Two Bakugos weren’t as impressive — maybe a little scary, and she was worried for the academy’s structural integrity — but two Izukus… That thought was damn appealing, which was why she’d been stuck in her head for so long.
Maybe especially because the Izuku from the other world was… well, different — different enough that you’d never mistake him for her friend — almost as emotional, more confident, calmer, but also as changeable as the sea in a storm.
“For a talk with the principal. There’s a way to check if they’re telling the truth.”
“Let them into the academy?!” Bakugo was furious. “Are you crazy?!”
“There are more professional heroes per square meter here than in some agencies. Why not?” Izuku’s doppelganger shrugged.
“And thanks to me, they won’t be able to use their Quirks,” Eraserhead added tiredly. “You, as witnesses, are coming with us. If another fight breaks out, I’ll restrain everyone.”
“Awesome!” Kirishima admired. “This is so cool!”
He was probably the only person genuinely interested in watching two Katsukis and truly excited by what was happening.
After the motley crowd had returned to the academy grounds, Ochako, driven by curiosity, moved closer to Izuku’s doppelganger. But suddenly, as she approached, he flinched back sharply.
“Uraraka-san, please don’t come that close to me, especially not suddenly. I might react badly,” the newcomer apologized awkwardly.
“Why?” the girl asked, surprised, stepping back in confusion.
“If you were trained the way he was, I’d like to see how you react to strangers,” his stepbrother grumbled.
“Only a handful of people can approach me without consequences, and you’re not on that list, Uraraka-san,” Bakugo Izuku added with a polite smile.
“We… You’re not friends with my version?” Ochako asked, disappointed.
“No. My friends include Todoroki-kun, Shinsou-kun, Kaminari-kun… Recently, Kirishima-kun joined the list,” the guy glanced at the ever-enthusiastic Eijiro. — “Mm, yeah. Something like that.”
Midoriya was puzzled. Todoroki — maybe the doppelganger Izuku had also tried to help him, he could understand that. Shinsou… That last name rang a bell. Who, who, who… Right, the guy from the Sports Festival who could brainwash people. How did he end up as a friend? Kaminari and Kirishima were nice guys, sure, but they ran in different circles. How did it happen that his double ended up connected to them but ignored Iida and Uraraka? Or had he ignored them?
“Yeah, friends,” Bakugo’s doppelganger snorted mockingly.
“Kacchan, shut up.”
“How did I get in there?” Kirishima asked, interested.
“Through me,” the “alien” Bakugo answered in passing, then abruptly changed the subject, addressing his brother. — “Actually, I wanted to ask you: why the hell are you so dressed up for a brawl?”
Yes, Uraraka had noticed. Both newcomers were dressed casually, but Izuku… A white shirt with a couple of top buttons undone and sleeves rolled up to his forearms, several bracelets on his wrist, black pants — loose but form-fitting where it mattered. And it seemed his hair was even styled a little neater than usual.
And now that Kacchan had pointed it out, Midoriya realized what had been bothering him about the double’s appearance. He’d truly never dressed like that.
“Because I had a date afterwards!” the other Izuku protested. “And you know that!”
“You’ve really taken to the professional hero lifestyle early. 4:00 PM — raid on the League of Villains, 4:30 PM — date,” his brother drawled sarcastically. “And you decided you were too good to take the time to change. Weren’t you afraid of getting your shirt dirty?”
“No, I’m very good at dodging blood,” Izuku grunted in reply. “Besides, what’s with the hypocrisy?! You have a date scheduled for 5:00 PM yourself, and you have the nerve to lecture me about time management?!”
Everyone was watching this exchange, holding their breath. Except Aizawa, who suspected he was better off not listening too closely; he’d learned to trust his intuition.
“How do you know that?” the other-world Bakugo narrowed his eyes. His stepbrother looked at him like he was an idiot:
“We share an online calendar. And I’m begging you, next time, either don’t add descriptions or hide them!” he snapped. Katsuki rolled his eyes:
“Don’t like it, don’t read it.”
“Unfortunately, I involuntarily read it before hitting ‘Hide.’ Can you write that smut directly to the recipient?!”
“I do. I also say it,” Bakugo shrugged. “I just needed to write down where exactly we were meeting, I started typing that, and then it was just a stream of consciousness. Don’t read it, that’s all. Why do you even have notifications on for my entries? I turned yours off ages ago.”
“And I haven’t turned yours off. We still need to coordinate schedules from time to time,” Izuku sighed.
“Then that’s not my problem!”
Midoriya was trying to piece all the puzzle bits together, but it wasn’t working very well because the situation unfolding before him was absurd of the highest order. The other Kacchan and Izuku were stepbrothers, they allowed themselves dates between battles with the League of Villains, they shared an online calendar… This was top-tier surrealistic nonsense!
And before he could ask about the last point, Aizawa-sensei interjected:
“I feel like I’m going to regret this, but I’ll ask. Were you allowed to participate in a fight against the League of Villains?”
“No one forbade us,” Not-Midoriya smiled politely.
“Oh, they could’ve tried,” the newcomer Bakugo muttered.
“Seriously?!” Kirishima was surprised.
“But you can’t do that!” Iida protested. “You shouldn’t have gone alone, you should have reported…”
“We weren’t alone, so shut the hell up already!” Katsuki’s double rolled his eyes. “I forgot how annoying he was at the beginning…”
“Yes, we weren’t alone; we had friends and…” Izuku’s doppelganger glanced at his “original,” then quickly back to Iida. “…and a couple of teachers.”
“And you expect us to believe that’s enough?” Tenya frowned.
“We also came on a personal matter,” the other Izuku coughed awkwardly and hurried after Aizawa.
“What personal matter?!” the “original” Bakugo snarled.
“They decided they could screw with our lives without consequences,” his copy snorted defiantly.
“You couldn’t have done that! You should have informed the professional heroes and!..” Iida was still trying to lecture, but the “alien” Katsuki cut him off.
“Guess what? Our teachers are professional heroes. And they were with us. That’s enough. Shut your mouth and don’t piss me off!”
“Oh, now I recognize you better,” Kirishima commented. “If you’d hit him, it’d be one-to-one.”
For that, he got a cuff on the head from the nearby “original”:
“Are you out of your fucking mind?!”
“Um, Izuku… Bakugo Izuku-kun?” Uraraka asked hesitantly. He nodded, allowing her to continue. “Who are you dating?”
“Hm, Uraraka-san, I’m not going to answer that,” the other Izuku drawled, studying his own version from this world. “You see, since you’re friends with Midoriya-kun, you would know if he was dating someone and who. And if that were the case, you would have asked directly if I was dating that person. But your question suggests that… Midoriya-kun, you're single?”
The doppelganger’s intense gaze was a little frightening. Maybe more than a little.
“I’ am,” Midoriya confirmed in a trembling voice.
“That’s why I don’t see the point in talking about it.”
“But I could tell…” his brother began, but was immediately stopped.
“No, you can’t.”
“Why not?!”
“We don’t need to cause more damage with your influence than we already have just by showing up here!”
“Why, I don’t mind…”
“Kacchan, I can arrange a free, fast, and eco-friendly flight to the Pacific Ocean for you too,” Izuku narrowed his eyes. “Shut up.”
“You’re so boring,” the other-world Bakugo clicked his tongue.
“I am what I am, and you know it. And you never stop complaining about it.”
“Tanku, how do you simultaneously manage to be a bore, a tyrant, and a bully, all seasoned with despotism?”
“Innate talent. Stop making me angry!”
“Bore,” “tyrant,” “bully.” Hearing such characteristics applied to his own second version made Midoriya’s eyes pop out of his head. Kacchan complaining about such things — that was a non sequitur in itself. Well, except for the first one; Kacchan had always thought he was a bore. But the last two points were something unimaginable. Or was there something about himself he didn’t know?..
“Why ‘Tanku’?” Bakugo asked darkly, drilling his doppelganger with a stare. The surrealism of the situation threatened to finish him off.
“Because stopping him,” Katsuki nodded toward his stepbrother, “is as futile as trying to stop a tank with your bare hands and no Quirks. And the fact that I’m saying that says a lot. When I’m not the craziest person in the room, it really fucking sucks.”
“Are you trying to say you’re normal?!” the second other-worlder protested genuinely.
“No, I’m trying to say I’m not that crazy. Those are different things. And it’s true!”
“Well,” Not-Midoriya hesitated. “Yeah, okay, fine. I won’t argue with that.”
“You couldn’t if you tried!”
“No, I don’t engage in self-deception,” he sighed. “Violence — yes. Self-deception — no.”
While the native inhabitants of this world tried to reconcile what they’d just heard with the personality of the Midoriya they knew (unsuccessfully), the other Katsuki burst out laughing:
“Fuck, print that out and hang it over your bed. I don’t think there’s a better life motto than that!”
“I will not!”
“Then I will,” Bakugo muttered enthusiastically, pulling out his smartphone.
“What are you doing?”
“Setting a reminder to hang a poster with those words in your room when we get home. Maybe I’ll update my own interior too…”
“Violence and self-deception, violence and self-deception,” rattled through Midoriya’s head insistently. He didn’t like violence. Or, well, for almost his entire conscious life, he’d been too weak to really think about it seriously. Self-deception? Possibly. Was his dream of becoming a hero without a Quirk a self-deception? In the end, he’d received a Quirk from All Might. New, self-flagellating thoughts kept arriving, and he couldn’t stop the flow.
And so, in this manner, they finally reached the principal’s office.