Chapter Text
“Hey, Izucchan, come on!” A spiky-haired blonde said.
“Kacchan, we’re gonna get lost!”
“Nuh-uh, I know where we are.” The two ran through a small forest near a park. The spiky-haired blonde was Katsuki Bakugo, a kid with an explosion quirk. The other kid was a fluffy, green-haired boy named Izuku Midoriya. He hadn’t gotten his quirk yet. The two four-year-olds were hopelessly lost, though Katsuki would never admit it. He was leading them after all.
“Kacchan, what’s that?” The two paused as they saw a strangely colored melon, laying on the ground. It was purple and had lines all over it in strange patterns.
“Whoa,” He said, stepping toward it, Izuku following suit. “It must be some rare fruit. Let’s eat it!”
“Kacchan, can I eat it first?” Izuku was naively going along with the whole thing. “You always get to go first.” Katsuki thought about it, before relenting.
“Okay.” Izuku stepped forward and picked up the melon. It was surprisingly light and squishy. Izuku slowly took a bite of it, before retching, but swallowing anyway. “Geez, Izucchan, if it tasted that bad, you should’ve spit it out.” He said, rubbing his friend’s back.
“Mom said it’s bad to spit out food,” Izuku said, looking a little green.
“Izuku! Katsuki!” yelled Inko Midoriya from the distance. The kids decided to go back to their parents. On the way, they came to a slow-moving river that could barely be called a river but was bigger than your average stream. The two had waded through it before, and it was time to do so again.
“Alright, come on,” Katsuki said, leading the way. He made it to the other side and turned back to see that Izuku had not made it with him. “Izucchan?” He saw bubbles in the water. Izuku was lying down in the water. Soon, the bubbles stopped. “Crap!” Katsuki panicked and waded back into the water and dragged Izuku to the other side. Izuku spit up water and coughed a bit. “What happened?” Katsuki asked after Izuku caught his breath.
“I don’t know! Once I started walking through the water, I felt weak!”
“Huh…Maybe we’ll ask Mom, she knows things.” Izuku was pulled by the arm but didn’t get up. However, his arm was taken with Katsuki. Izuku realized what was happening and screamed. “What?!” Katsuki asked. He turned back to see that Izuku’s arm was stretched as far as Katsuki took it, and Izuku was still sitting right where he left him. “Holy crap…you got your quirk!” Katsuki said, smiling.
“I…I did!” Katsuki let go of Izuku’s arm and it snapped back into place like a rubber band. “Let’s go and show our moms!” They practically sprinted back to where they heard Inko’s voice coming from and eventually made it out of the woods. “Mom! Mom!” Izuku yelled with a face-splitting grin on his face.
“What’s going on, Izuku?” She asked, his grin becoming contagious, causing her to smile as well.
“I got my quirk!” He said, jumping in place.
“Wow! Can you show me?” Inko asked, excited for her son. He then proceeded to stretch his arm further than humanly possible, and give it to Katsuki, who stretched it further.
“I’m stretchy! Like a rubber band!”
“Whoa, that’s great!” She said, a little weirded out, but still happy for him.
“We gotta test it some more!” Katsuki said. “Can you stretch anything else?” Izuku did what came to him first. He grabbed his cheek and tried to stretch it, to great success. As it snapped back, he and Katsuki were laughing. Mitsuki had caught it all on camera and gave a thumbs up to Inko.
The two Midoriyas were in the doctor’s office, waiting for the results they knew would be there. The doctor, however, came in with a confused look on his face.
“Well, Mrs. Midoriya, this is a strange case. Despite what you showed me, undeniably showing off a quirk in your son, he doesn’t seem to have a quirk factor at all. I suspected something was off when he showed two joints in his pinky toe, but that’s not a proven method, so I ran some blood tests. He doesn’t seem to have a quirk, but he does at the same time! What’s even weirder, is that his cells seem to be a bit dehydrated, so I ran some more tests, and his blood reacted strangely to water in general.”
“Ooh, ooh! I remember when we walked through the stream, I couldn’t move! Kacchan had to save me!” Izuku said.
“What?!” Inko asked.
“That may line up with the tests, when exactly did you start to feel weak?” Izuku put a hand on his torso, just below his chest.
“The water came up to here I couldn’t move anymore.”
“This is the strangest case I’ve seen in a while. Well, just observe his progress with his quirk and keep an eye on him in water and things should be fine. Call me if you have any problems or emergencies.” The doctor smiled. “Have a good day!” He said after a few minutes of him getting papers for them. The Midoriyas thanked the doctor and were on their way.
Over the next few months, Izuku figured out that he could shower, but not bathe, and that he could stretch nearly any part of his body. He didn’t try things like his eyeballs for obvious reasons. His bones, muscles, and skin all had a rubber-like quality. He couldn’t stretch on command like some elastic heroes, but he could force his arm one way and it would snap the other way. This is where his training to become a hero began.
One night, soon after he turned five, he had a dream. A man with a straw hat and a red vest who had the same powers as Izuku was fighting a clown-looking man who could separate parts of his body from each other and control them. The man with the hat and a girl with orange hair defeated the clown man, and then Izuku woke up. He didn’t pay it any mind and got ready for the day.
Over the next few months, he and Katsuki trained their quirks and sparred. Izuku was practicing his first special move, the rubber smash, named for his idol, All Might, and his moves which all had “smash” in their names. For the rubber smash, he swung his arm back as far as it could go and forced it forward along with the momentum of snapping forward like rubber. With this, he was able to punch trees so hard that he made a shallow hole in the wood. He got even stronger over time and pushed Katsuki to get stronger as well.
Katsuki soon began to have anger issues, which strained his relationship with everyone but Izuku and his own mother and father. He tried to control it for them, but he soon enough didn’t even control it in his own home, only barely controlling it for his best friend. He never meant to be hurtful, and he never said anything mean per se, he simply yelled and cursed a lot. Izuku never thought anything of it, as Mitsuki Bakugo was quite similar in that way. Izuku soon had another dream of the man in the straw hat fighting a man with an ax for a hand, and another where he fought a man with knives on his gloves’ fingertips. It was giving him many ideas for attacks. He soon began to take the Strawhat man’s names for said attacks as well.
“Rubber Smash!” Izuku yelled as he sent his arm forward toward Bakugo, who dodged it easily. He recalled his hand. “Not fast enough yet.” They were training in a gym that was almost closed down by the time they got there. Their membership was enough to keep it going. It was owned by the man they called Kendo-Sensei. His daughter, Itsuku Kendo was watching them spar with great interest.
“Hah!” Bakugo exclaimed as he propelled himself toward Izuku. Izuku propelled his leg high into the air, and brought it down, just too late. Bakugo punched him in the stomach and put him off balance and he fell. Izuku pulled his leg back to him.
“Still not fast enough.”
“You need to train your reflexes.” Itsuka pointed out as she walked over to them. “Bakugo has the best reflexes I’ve seen, but you have the reflexes of a sloth.” Over the past few months, they had gotten to know Itsuka quite well. She was like a big sister to the two, cleaning them up when they got bloody and scolding them for overdoing it. She participated in many a spar and was the most experienced fighter of the three.
“Yeah, I’ll have to work on that.” Izuku smiled despite himself and even chuckled a bit. She chopped him on the head like she usually did when either of the two did something stupid.
Years later, the three were fourteen years old and were rivals in strength. Whenever any one of them spiked in strength through a revelation in their quirk or fighting style or just in general got stronger, the others used them as a whetstone to ensure they were all on the same level most of the time. Katsuki had learned to create explosions from his elbows and feet. He wore special metal boots to take the impact of the explosions, with holes in the boot, so he effectively spewed fire from his feet.
Itsuka had been able to make her hands bigger, but other than that, her improvement was mainly in her fighting style and general strength. Izuku, who had been at the bottom for years, now showed the greatest improvement. His reflexes were incredible, on par with Katsuki’s, and his attacks were incredibly fast. Having people to work with made them all stronger.
However, Izuku was Katsuki’s main rival, despite Itsuka and Izuku each not really having a main rival. Katsuki always compared himself to Izuku, and he let everyone know it. Finally, before they turned fifteen, he finally challenged Izuku to a no holds barred, all-out fight. The only stipulation being ‘no lethal strikes.’
The previous night, Izuku had another dream. The straw hat man fought a man who called himself a god and had electric powers. They did nothing to straw hat, causing Izuku to realize he was more like rubber than he thought. Eventually, the battle ended with straw hat having a ball of solid electricity on his hand, and he used it to ring a bell and send the ‘god’ flying. He had a feeling he was about to encounter a change in his dreams.
“You sure you wanna do this, Kacchan?” Izuku asked, cracking his knuckles.
“Hell yeah, just don’t hold back.”
“Alright. Let’s get this dick measuring over with.” Itsuka deadpanned. Izuku chuckled and Katsuki smirked. “Three. Two. One.” With that, they charged. Izuku sent his arm back, twisting it as he could. Katsuki charged fast with his explosions propelling him. Izuku shot his fist forward, too fast for Katsuki to react.
“Rubber Pistol!” He hit Katsuki in the stomach, causing him to cough up blood. Izuku was smart enough to pull his arm back immediately, as Katsuki was smart enough to take advantage of his arm, had it still been there. He charged, preparing to throw a few regular punches, but Katsuki launched himself once more. Izuku punched in his direction, but Katsuki used his explosions to send himself above Izuku and his other hand’s explosions to bodyslam Izuku. He held Izuku down, but he knew this wasn't the end. Izuku grappled Katsuki to the ground with his rubber arms wrapping around him.
He let go and Katsuki was sent spinning into the air, and Izuku pulled back his arm for one more blow, but Katsuki used the spin to make himself into a corkscrew and propelled himself with explosions and headbutted Izuku in the stomach. He brought his hands forward and blasted him several times, but Izuku did not fall. He was scorched and smelled like a hot tire, but he still stood and grabbed Katsuki before slamming him to the ground, knocking him out. Izuku promptly fell to the ground to catch his breath.
“Alright, let’s get you two idiots cleaned up,” Itsuka said, approaching the boys. A while later, Katsuki woke up.
“Izuku…I’ll win. We’re gonna fight for real one more time before UA, and I’m gonna win.” He declared. Izuku chuckled and fist-bumped him.