Reset and Rewind

Chapter 2 - You can be a Hero

Something was burning. Of course there was, they just got fucking obliterated! Tch, Katsuki hated it when villains knew they were going to lose so they'd try to take as many people down with them. Fucking hell, that blast was huge! Katsuki would be surprised if he didn't have several burns covering his body. But no, it wasn't the surrounding rubble that was burning right now. It was paper. And it smelled suspiciously like caramel...

Katsuki frowned, lowering his hand to find he was holding a beat up notebook. It was Deku's, he recognized this stupid thing anywhere. It was the notebook he blew up, the one he tossed out of the window before he... Before he said some shit he wasn't proud of. But what was it doing here..? How had it survived? Wait, was that crying? Katsuki looked down, tensing up at the sight in front of him.

Oh hell no.

Deku was trembling in front of him, wearing their middle school uniform, sitting against the wall of their old classroom. Memories came rushing back to him, but they clashed and merged. When did Deku gain his muscles again? Was it at the start or at the end of middle school? Katsuki should know at least that much, right? But he wasn't sure anymore... There was no way this nerd ever beat him at dodgeball, where the hell did that memory come from?!

Their eyes locked and for a moment his mind went quiet, as if everything suddenly clicked. An alternate universe, maybe? But he was in the past, too. How the hell did he even get here in the first place?! Was this some kind of quirk induced dream? Was that what the blast was? Some knock-out quirk that sent you back to the crappiest part of your life? He scoffed, dropping the notebook on the ground. Well fuck whatever this shit is! He wasn't going to say it, not this time around!

With one quick glance at the date on his phone, he knew he was right about the day. This was the day of the whole swan dive thing, but it was also the day that the sludge villain attacked him from behind. The day he almost got choked to death, the fucking reason he can't wear shit around his neck or he'll get a fucking panic attack.

"K-Kacchan..?"

"Oh shut up," Katsuki hissed. He didn't have the time to deal with this right now. He had to figure out how to break this illusion and get the fuck out of here. With that goal in mind, he pushed past extra number one and extra number two. This time he'll be ready for that pile of mud. And if defeating that villain was part of getting out of here, then that was an added bonus.

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Izuku hated that he had to do this, that he had to go through this again, that Kacchan had to go through this again. But here he was, standing on top of a building while All Might explained his injury to him. Izuku had thought about catching the sludge villain before he fell onto the ground during All Might's jump, but changing things seemed harder than he thought at first. So now he was here, having to hear his idol, his mentor, tell him he couldn't be a hero without a quirk. Guess he technically didn't become a quirkless hero, so there was some truth in what All Might told him that day... It still wasn't something he liked to hear, though.

"Can I be a hero, even without a quirk?"

He knew what the answer would be, but it still hurt to hear him say it. To say no, to tell him he should look into more realistic options. After that he jumped away, leaving Izuku alone on the roof. Looking back at it, he really shouldn't have left him there. I mean, he was a quirkless kid, who are known to have psychological issues, and he just smashed his dream of becoming a hero to pieces. Even without Kacchan's comment earlier that day, this wouldn't be a great place for All Might to just leave him. But then again, his mentor had never been the most responsible person in the world, certainly not compared to Eraserhead.

Hell, he basically picked him to be his successor because of his recklessness! That was a big red flag, now that Izuku looked back on it, but it did give him the life he wanted to return to. And in order to get that life back, he'll have to get down from here and make his way over to the alleyway where Kacchan will be attacked. The sludge villain wouldn't attack for a while, but Izuku wanted to be ready to save him. He didn't want Kacchan to suffer any longer than he needed to. So hopefully All Might also got the memo and would arrive in time to see him run headfirst into danger.