Chapter Text
The first part of Izuku's walk home used to be one of the highlights of his day. It had been his chance to chatter at Kacchan uninterrupted, the exception being for Kacchan's occasional interjections of verified boasts, authoritative judgment, and bitingly insightful disdain. Sometimes, he'd even manage all three in the span of a sentence. But whatever he had to say, even if it could be kind of mean, it was always still interesting.
They'd part where their routes home split. At the time, Izuku had often found himself wishing the way back with Kacchan was longer.
That had changed.
In a way, the deterioration of their friendship could be mapped by the regularity of those isolated handful of minutes. How each and every day Kacchan's disdain was a bit more evident, his judgments that much sharper, his boasts about being the best more and more focused on him being better than. It's maybe worse that so much of him stayed the same and now all it makes him is that much more mean.
They'd stopped walking back together a long time ago. Nowadays, what he wishes most is that their shared path was much, much shorter. Ideally, their paths wouldn't even cross at all.
But whichever one Izuku had wished over the years, the shared start of their way home had remained exactly the same. Kacchan and Izuku may not be walking home together anymore, but they still often end up walking home alone in each other's vicinity.
There's a new disquiet that hangs heavy between them ever since they started middle school. That was when Kacchan's malice suddenly spiked without apparent source. Ever since then, there was a cruelty to him past what Izuku had honestly thought Kacchan capable of, even as he used to be.
That included a new willingness to threaten his quirk and a sudden physicality to his increasingly-common intimidations. Such as now, as Kacchan pushes roughly past Izuku on the sidewalk and manages to clip him in the shoulder with his own far too hard as he stalks forward.
It's entirely intentional, given Izuku and Kacchan are the only two people on the block and so he has all the space he could possibly want. It's also entirely pointless as it always is. Kacchan still scrupulously abides by crossing laws, meaning even if Izuku drags his feet he usually catches up anyway.
Kacchan's waiting at the curb for the light when Izuku reaches him again, although there's not a car in sight. Izuku's honestly tempted to just walk on ahead. He doesn't. He'd learned early on that doing so translated into Kacchan logic as some sort of convoluted insult against him, much like everything else Izuku does has apparently become nowadays.
The light changes and Kacchan immediately starts to cross. Izuku manages to keep enough distance between them this time Kacchan can't pull a repeat of his blow, trailing behind at what he hopes is a safe enough distance.
Sometimes Kacchan doesn't even do anything and it still ends up making him almost more jittery and exhausted than dealing with Kacchan at school. It's a miserable combination of a layer of hyperawareness, underlying dread, and beneath it all the helpless hurt that never really goes away no matter how much deeper he buries it every time.
He honestly wonders to himself if he should start staying later after school just so he doesn't have to do this every day. That's why he doesn't notice the speeding truck that's barreling straight down the center of the street until the horn blares in an unending shriek that's getting louder far too fast.
It's too fast, and it's headed straight for Kacchan. He's right in its path on the crosswalk and he turns his head to face it and suddenly the saturation drains out of Izuku's vision to a world of stark black and gray and time goes syrupy like everything's underwater.
He can see each of Kacchan's movements almost even before they start, and all it comes to is disaster. Kacchan's reflexes have always been instinctual in a way that's frankly amazing. But there's one thing Kacchan always does in a crisis moment, and has right from the start.
When it comes to Kacchan and fight or flight, the question is redundant. It's been fight so long as Izuku's ever known him.
It isn't even conscious choice on his part, not when he's surprised. He's shocked now, and it flashes in front of Izuku's eyes like the frames of a stop motion scene. Kacchan turning full-body. Kacchan shifting his weight forward to brace. Kacchan raising his hands, palms already sparking to detonation.
Kacchan, who has one of the most powerful quirks Izuku knows, utterly unable to summon anywhere near the firepower he'd need to stop the speeding truck that will kill him.
And then everything's in color and speeds back up all at once and Izuku has to make a choice right now.
He doesn't. Even a split-second to consider is time he can't waste to save Kacchan.
Izuku dives towards Kacchan, shoves him forward with all his strength, hears Kacchan scream, and realizes he's going to die all in one moment. There's no time to even process it before everything stops and the world goes black.
"Legendary Hero," comes a voice. A young girl with jet black hair draped with pearls and a similarly bejeweled and ornate white gown swims into view from the gray haze Izuku had been floating in. "You have been called upon to fulfill your destiny."
Izuku blinks dumbly, groggy enough he can only really grasp one thing at a time. First that she looks to be about his age. Next that she's beautiful, her features classic and refined. Then the related and somewhat delirious thought that she's clearly one of those who have been blessed to glide effortlessly through puberty like Kacchan does.
Kacchan, he thinks, the jolt of it like lightning to his mind. Izuku urgently jerks himself up to sitting and then has to brace himself on the floor as a fresh wave of dizziness overtakes him.
As the blur recedes and the backs of his hands waver back into view, Izuku realizes it's not the floor he's on. He looks around him and finds he's in some sort of grand basilica. The actual floors are inlaid with marble and the ceilings are high and vaulted, spaced with vast scenes made in stained glass and leading to a towering golden statue as the centerpiece. Before it is a grand altar of seamless white stone that Izuku actually appears to be sitting on.
He realizes that wherever he is, it's both as sumptuous and distinctly foreign as the style the black-haired girl is dressed in. He also knows for sure that whatever the religion this place was built to honor, it's not one he recognizes. And he thinks he'd have at least heard of a religion apparently centered around the worship of a massive dragon.
"Where… …Kacchan?" he rasps out, then coughs. There's just too many questions vying to be asked at once, his mind skittering between the twin priorities of finding out what just happened and whether Kacchan is okay.
"Well met, Hero of the Ages. I am the Maiden Princess, Momo. I ask your pardon for summoning you from your world," the girl gives an elegant half-curtsy. "If we were not in the time of our most dire need-"
Before Izuku has time to properly confront the 'from your world' part of that, there's a low groan from the gap between the statue and the altar. The princess pops a gloved hand over her mouth and Izuku starts and then scrambles over to the edge to get a look.
Kacchan's been wedged down in there, looking both distinctly worse for wear and distinctly displeased about it. "Whuzzafuck…? D'ku…?" he says blearily and struggles to sit up.
Izuku tries to help him do so, which ends up helping not at all as Kacchan then prioritizes angrily rejecting Izuku's attempts to free him over being freed. Izuku draws back before Kacchan manages to make it worse for himself.
"Great Artemisia," the apparently-actually-a-princess? says breathlessly. "There's two of you!"
That helps to remind Izuku that there are many other things he really should turn his attention to. "I'm sorry?" he replies weakly, reverting to pure reflex. Kacchan manages to clamber up next to Izuku on the altar and then looks around. He's got that blankly nonplussed face he gets when he's overloaded and just sort of shuts down for a moment.
"There- the ritual was to summon the eternal successor to take the mantle of the Hero of the Ages and defeat the Unending Darkness once more," she explains, her hand now pressed to her heart. "Yet I had never imagined there might be two candidates."
"I'm sorry…?" is all Izuku can lamely repeat in the fading hope that maybe all of this will start to make sense if he stalls enough. Kacchan stays silent.
Then Kacchan closes his eyes and breathes through his nose before squaring his shoulders in a way that reminds Izuku a bit too uncomfortably of his fighting stance. He brusquely pushes off the altar to standing before he suddenly pitches to the side, staggering and clutching his forehead one-handedly while he braces on it.
"Kacchan!" Izuku calls out over the princess's gasp of alarm, hopping off the altar himself. Kacchan simply holds up a hand at Izuku, eyes still closed.
"I feel- within me," Kacchan sounds almost wondrous. "It must be the strength of our bond that brought me here. Yes- I can see my fate is but tied to the legendary hero." he concludes cryptically.
"You- you do!?" Izuku asks, possibly more dumbfounded by Kacchan saying that than he is all the rest of this. It's actually strangely reassuring when Kacchan turns away from the princess and opens his eyes just to shoot Izuku a covert but searing glare. At least that constant hasn't changed.
Kacchan then closes the distance, gripping Izuku's shoulder tight enough to dig his fingers in as he yanks him close. "Don't tell fucking anyone about my quirk," Kacchan hisses, no less threatening for it even quiet and under his breath.
Izuku hastily nods and Kacchan smoothly transitions his hold to pushing Izuku forward towards the princess. "Your destiny awaits, my hero," he declares with a sudden grave respect. Izuku almost wishes Kacchan was just directly threatening him again. It'd actually be a lot less threatening than whatever this is supposed to be.
The princess looks relieved to see the sudden conundrum solved. "Noble Hero of the Ages and your companion both, our world receives you as our savior with utmost gratitude," she says, resuming the formality. She sweeps into another short curtsy to Kacchan and then to Izuku again.
Kacchan bows deeply back, which again adds to the surreal nature of this general premise. Izuku wonders for a moment if he's actually not dead after all and has gotten stuck in some sort of bizarre coma-dream. It does seem more believable than Kacchan deigning to bow.
"Your highness- as much as time is of the essence and there is much to be done, we cannot dedicate ourselves in full without time first to recover," Kacchan asks, already synced up to the princess's antiquated language.
"Of course! My sincere apologies- this must all be terribly disorienting. I'll have another set of quarters arranged for you immediately-"
"No need," Kacchan interrupts curtly. "We may not know much of our granted roles, but I know well enough I must stay at my hero's side."
'You do!?' Izuku very much wants to again ask, but Kacchan is clearly up to something purposeful. He's always had a special talent for landing on his feet and crafting immediate plans on the spur of the moment, and he's definitely enacting one now.
So Kacchan has a plan, and Izuku doesn't have even the slightest idea what it is. Compounding the fact is that there's some sort of destined hero role here and Kacchan didn't literally blast him out of the way to take it. Kacchan didn't want to take it. Kacchan.
Izuku would possibly have expected that less than he'd ever expected he would wake up in another dimension, if he'd ever expected either.
It leaves him in a tangle of mounting confusion and dread that keeps being pushed into new and inexplicable directions. It's honestly more distressing than grappling with the fact he's been summoned to a whole other world and is (apparently? maybe? he guesses?) the legendary hero of it.
"Of course," the princess agrees graciously. "I shall send for someone to lead you to your quarters, Lord…?"
"Bakugou," Kacchan says, then gestures towards him with gravitas. "And the destined hero, Midoriya Izuku."
"Um. Hi," is all Izuku actually manages, because Kacchan is treating him respectfully and just said his actual name and called him a hero and also there's that destined savior of another world factor.
Izuku can see Kacchan barely manage to not roll his eyes in his peripheral. "He's tired," Kacchan says. "Lead us to our quarters right away."
"Of course," the princess repeats, giving one last and final curtsy. As they're led away, Kacchan keeps his too-tight grip on Izuku's shoulder and doesn't say another word.