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“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
Katsuki Bakugou had always been a rather gullible child. Mitsuki had stopped playing "Get Help" because little Katsuki would cry, thinking his mom really was in trouble. He'd listen wide-eyed when his father told him bedtime stories about supernatural villains, who would come to steal away children who would stay up past 9. (A habit he has still not managed to entirely break) He'd even believe his teachers when they told him he was the best in the world, despite only having a sample size of 30 students to judge him by.
Suffice to say, Katsuki Bakugou truly was an easily duped child. Some charitable people might call him 'overly trusting' , or 'innocent'...but they'd be wrong.
His naivety was truly what endeared him to Izuku. Izuku still remembered their first meeting, when they were little more than toddlers, and little Katsuki had believed that the Limited Edition Mighty Mug was signed by All Might himself. The fact that Izuku had believed that too has no bearing. After all, Izuku stopped believing in serendipity before he had even turned five.
Perhaps the reason Kacchan had been so upset after he discovered Izuku’s inherited quirk, was the feeling of being lied to by one’s oldest friend.
That was in the past.
Katsuki’s gullibility however, was not.
“Two Pairs! Read ‘em and weep, suckers!” Denki crowed, slamming the cards down on the rickety table that wobbled under the onslaught.
They were at the summer camp, thankfully uninterrupted this year by megalomaniacal villains, psychopathic long lost brothers and other assorted baddies. It was a quiet, laidback time, if punctuated by extreme exhaustion from quirk use and training drills. Being teenage boys, their common sense was severely corroded and uncommon, so naturally they were playing card games late at night, instead of sleeping. Shouto, Eijirou, Denki and Tenya had all agreed to join, with the others declining, or already passed out from extra remedial training.
Unexpectedly, Izuku had persuaded Katsuki to stay up for this one. Something that the explosive boy was steadily regretting. Dressed in his comfortable black sleeping shirt, he was halfway to bed already, as it was, and without Hitoshi around, he unexpectedly felt like walking up to his slaughter.
“Fucking hell.” Katsuki loudly swore and tossed his cards carelessly down. “You have the most unreal luck.”
Shouto yawned, pushing his cards on the table. “We really should have expected this. It’s through sheer luck that he’s passing his classes.”
“Hey!” Denki squawked, but any further argument was quelled by a quiet voice speaking up firmly.
“Straight.” Izuku declared and they all turned to stare at him.
“No chance in hell.” Eijirou snorted, and a few chuckles followed suit.
The green-haired boy slightly pinked, adjusting the collar of his tee, proudly emblazoned with the rainbow. “No, the Hand. Here…” Three of hearts. Four of spades. Five of hearts. Six of clubs. Seven of diamonds. A straight indeed.
As Izuku collected his wins, Katsuki felt the all too familiar urge of competition once again.
“One last round, Deku.” he yelled, the old insult now free of any heat or baggage, “I’m gonna best you this time.”
Izuku raised an eyebrow, politely curious, even as he exchanged an amused glance with Shouto. “I am sure you will, Kacchan. Ninth time’s the charm after all.”
Katsuki growled, not having a suitable rejoinder for facts. “Just…shut up and deal.”
Izuku dealt.
Shouto took one look at his cards, and slumped over, blanketing himself in the tattered remains of his loss. “I fold. My cards are horrible.”
“I ain’t quittin’ here! Call!” Denki whooped, sliding a few chips towards the middle.
“Check.” Eijirou followed suit, a frown on the normally cheery face.
“Raise.” Katsuki said, eyes locked with Izuku’s, who appeared nonplussed by the staredown.
“Audacious!” Tenya lauded the move with gravitas (?), before answering back with, “I can do no less than match such bright confidence! I’ll Call.”
Izuku took one look at his cards before smiling widely. “Raise.” he said, and answered Katsuki’s stare with his own.
Raise. Eijirou folded. Raise. Tenya’s common sense finally outfought his enthusiasm. Raise. Denki surrendered with a grimace.
In the end, it was down to the two, Izuku and Katsuki, as it had always been. The two loomed over the flimsy table looking down at each other. Sparks flew, literally and metaphorically as the two brought their cards to bear.
“Give it up nerd.” Katuski grinned maniacally. “There’s no way you can win.”
Izuku had an infuriating little smile on his face, as he nodded his head, “Show of hands then, if you are that confident.”
“Ha! Four of a kind! Aces!” the explosive boy exulted, the wind in his sails rapidly deflating when he noticed Izuku’s smile remaining steady.
“So close. Sadly for you, Kacchan, I have a Royal Flush.” Izuku said, still holding on to his cards.
The Aces went sky high as Katsuki’s explosions ripped them apart, and with a thunderous glare, he turned his back to the assembled group and stalked off.
Silence greeted his explosive departure, but no one was really surprised. Katsuki Bakugou had ever been a sore loser.
But this was the first time members of 2A were a witness to his credulity.
“How…how can you have a Royal Flush, when Bakugou had four Aces in his hand?” Tenya asked the question in everyone’s mind.
“And how did Bakubro miss that? It’s not like him to miss these kinds of things.” Eijirou demanded, rubbing at his spiky hair in confusion.
Izuku just smiled knowingly.
The news spread quickly, like softened butter on crunchy toast. As rumours often do, it started with whispers. Denki was naturally the leak, and he swiftly spilled the beans to a disbelieving Kyoka. She blabbed to Momo, who in turn told Ochako. The gleeful girl then in turn told it to Mina.
After that, it naturally became common knowledge.
The next few days, till summer ended, were idyllic and deceitful.
‘Oi Bakugou, did you know that I was born dark red until my acid bleached my skin?’ Sure, whatever Pinky.
‘Hey man, did you hear? Todoroki’s psycho older brother is madly in love with Hawks, and they meet every week in Tartarus.’ I knew it. Shitty Blue fire was pulling his punches whenever Hawks was around.
‘Kacch-’ Don’t you fucking use that nickname, Round-face. ‘Okay fine, I heard you time-travelled from the future and saved Izuku as a kid from villains?’ It’s not the future yet so how would I know? Makes sense though. The fact that the nerd survived middle school is a miracle. Now I know it's thanks to me.
And so it went. Each stretching the bounds of credulity and logic more than Mount Lady’s bodysuit. Yet Katsuki Bakugou never once blinked. Never once questioned the truth of it all.
If someone said it, it must be true, right? Who goes around spouting brazen lies, after all.
It was Shouto who kickstarted the pandemonium.
It had been a few months since the reveal at the summer camp, and more or less, the hype had died down, so to speak. When your mark is as easy as Bakugou, even taking candy from babies felt like more of a challenge. The latter becoming a bit more dangerous in recent years, with more and more babies born with mutated quirk physiologies. Try taking candy from a twenty pound rhinoceros horned baby. You’ll regret it.
Regardless, beyond a few in-jokes and chuckles, Katsuki Bakugou’s life had continued as expected. There were work studies, there were internships, school festivals and sports festivals to focus on, and a myriad of other distractions that occupy a teenager’s mind.
So it was a bit of a surprise when Shouto coughed pointedly till he got Katsuki’s attention and asked, “Have you ever known Izuku’s dad?”
The question gave him pause. He had grown up around Izuku and Auntie Inko since he could remember, but the very existence of Hisashi Midoriya was a question mark. When Izuku had gotten lost at the supermarket, it had been Auntie Inko who had come in, frantically searching for the little boy. When Izuku and Katsuki had scuffled one sidedly, where Izuku had scraped his knee, it had been Auntie Inko who had looked at him in disappointment and put an All-Might All-Tight band-aid on her son’s injury.
Hisashi Midoriya really was as rare as the steak that Yaoyorozu and Aoyama liked to eat.
“I haven’t. It’s always been my mom and dad, and his mom.” He shrugged, wondering what the boy was getting at.
Shouto nodded, as if that made complete sense. “Then it is as I feared. Izuku was born out of wedlock.” He said and returned to his desk.
What.
Katsuki followed him post-haste. "Cut the crap, Half and half. I was not born yesterday!" He gritted out, explosions punctuating his punctuations as he stared Todoroki down.
"Happy Belated Birthday Kacchan-" Izuku chirped from behind, eeping and hiding playfully behind his bag when the boy growled.
“Not. The. Time.” Katsuki sometimes felt like the only sane voice in a sea of idiots. “Your boyfriend’s accusing you of being a Bastard.”
Izuku’s expression froze, and he slowly creaked his neck towards an unruffled Todoroki, who had the audacity to shrug.
“I’m sorry, but them’s the facts. Lol.”
“You don’t say ‘lol’ , you just type it-” Izuku corrected on auto-pilot, even as his brain rebooted from the intense shock to the system. “-but coming back, what facts?”
“The person you know as Hisashi Midoriya never existed.” Shouto began, as he brought out sheafs upon sheafs of papers from his backpack. “Let’s see…the date of your so-called parents’ marriage is left empty-”
“Bureaucratic mistakes happen!”
“-then the Clerk whose signature is on the marriage licence was arrested for fraud shortly after their marriage, and was found mysteriously dead in his cell after you were born-”
“Surely that’s a coincidence!”
“-the church that the two married in, quote unquote, burned down too. And the priest who officiated the ceremony vanished without a trace. I can go on.”
“Please don’t.” Izuku pleaded, but Bakugou’s curiosity was piqued.
“What are you suggesting? If this is one of them secret All Might parentage theories, I swear I will hit something. Probably you.”
“Of course not!” Todoroki looked affronted. “All Might would never do something like murder for a cover up.”
Izuku breathed a sigh of relief, that some semblance of sense remained in his better half.
“It was that villain, All For One.”
And just like that, that illusion shattered.
“P-Putting that aside…why were you looking into my family anyway?” Izuku demanded of his worse half, even as Katsuki looked thoughtful.
Shouto rubbed at his chin thoughtfully, “You know, it started out as trying to find your father, so you could reconcile or hit him really hard for your birthday present, as the case may be. I may have gotten carried away a little.”
As Izuku was spluttering a rebuttal, he was stabbed in the back by the very first person he would have suspected.
“For once, you are speaking sense, Half and Half.” Katsuki nodded. “This explains everything!”
It really didn’t. But this wasn’t the first time Katsuki was denying reality.
“It explains the multifaceted Quirk of his too. All Might had it for years and nothing, and suddenly it manifests extra quirks in Izuku?”
“That was because of the Quirk reaching a critical point-” Izuku’s meagre defence went unheard. What value is truth in the face of a delicious lie?
“It makes sense that One for All awakened some sort of latent quirk potential in the nerd. Even the crusty-faced bastard needed a whole-ass surgery to become compatible with multiple quirks. This guy didn’t.”
Shouto brightened, happy to find a willing ear for his creativity. Good sounding boards really are tough to find.
As the two built El Dorado from pyrite, Izuku slumped in exasperation. While it was nice that his former bully turned friend and his boyfriend were getting along... but not like this. Gathering up his remaining patience, he took a deep breath in and waded back in the quagmire. This whole thing was his Frankenstein's monster, and it was upto him to resolve it.
He refused to be hoisted by his own petard.
For Hitoshi Shinsou, the day had been pretty quiet and routine, something that was a luxury in 3A unfortunately. His classmates and soon-to-be-heroes evidently considered the very sound of silence to be an enemy, and battled it at every opportunity possible.
For now, there was just him, a tall cup of banana caramel smoothie, and nothing to ruin it.
Truly a paradise.
He forgot that Paradise is known for being Lost.
The doors slamming open and Katsuki stalking in, with loud thumping steps, was a sign clear enough. The loud voices that echoed down the hallway just cinched his suspicions.
“You did something, didn’t you?” He asked the explosive boy, who glowered and sat heavily on the chair next to him.
“I didn’t do shit!” Katsuki grumbled, “It’s not my fault that he refuses to see sense.”
“YOU ARE MAKING NO SENSE WHATSOEVER!” Izuku’s yell begged to differ, and Hitoshi could only marvel at the boy’s ability of being heard from a hundred feet away. Soon however, the cafeteria doors slammed open again, and he was treated to a strange sight.
Todoroki had his quirk active, with two plumes of ice and fire cresting his mismatched hair, eerily reminiscent of All Might. With the quirk and the look, he looked like a bastard son of Endeavor and All Might and…
…He suddenly had a sinking suspicion of what was going on.
“You cannot be All Might’s secret son… you still have your actual Father’s quirk, Shouto!” Izuku kept insisting, but Todoroki’s tinfoil defence was absolute.
“I don’t blame my mother for straying. With how much of a dick Endeavor used to be, I’d cheat too.”
“How do you explain your fire aspect then? It’s not your quirk, it’s his.” Despite the absurdity playing out, over plates of sushi and tempura, a small dark part of Hitoshi’s mind remembered the first sports festival and purred in contentment. Oh how the turn tables.
“Inconsequential.” Todoroki defied common sense and genetics alike. “I can do the plumes of hair, like All Might. Unlike you, my colour theme is red, white and blue. American, like All Might. Which leaves you free to be All For One’s secret son! What don’t you get here?”
“You can’t just make me the son of the biggest villain of this century and expect me to not react!!!”
“Is this about me denying you the Ultimate All Might collectible? Because this is sounding like a possessive argument, Izuku.”
“All Might is NOT the Ultimate All Might Collectible. Besides, I have All Might’s quirk! And I ate his hair! There can’t be more than five hundred of those at any given time, right?-”
With that gross revelation, Hitoshi tuned the two idiots out and turned to face a sulking Katsuki, who was drumming his fingers on the table, trying not to let his eavesdrop attempts show.
“You somehow caused this, and don’t deny it-” he preemptively defused the explosive teenager down. “Sometimes, I really really hate you.” he said, and to his own surprise, found himself smiling. It was not a bright grin like Midoriya's, nor was it the wide eyed, happy smiles of Uraraka. It was an exasperated, yet fond smile, that had warred with the constant frown on the face and came away victorious.
Katsuki held his glower a second longer, then chuckled.
“Oh come on! You, and hate me? Even I am not that gullible.”