Chapter Text
“You think you’re so high and mighty, everyone’s idol, huh?” the villain shouts at him.
Their fight had begun in a crowded covered street. Katsuki had chased him through stalls and past tourists and around the tightest corners. He hadn’t used his quirk much either, so he was raring to go.
Now, they had found themselves in an abandoned alley off-shoot from the shopping street. There was no one around.
From one of the windows, Katsuki could hear the tinny sound of an old All Might anime song. It was nostalgic. He hadn’t watched those shows in a long time.
“Of course, I do. I’m Number One for a reason, you asshat!” Katsuki says, propelling himself forward with a large, controlled blast.
The villain grins wickedly, “And that will be your undoing,” he says, dodging narrowly away from Katsuki’s reach, “Against me, the more popular you are, the weaker you are,” he says from below Katsuki.
He spins around while staying low to the ground and wraps a hand around Katsuki’s ankle, “Time to meet your fan,” he says.
It’s the last thing he hears before the world goes black.
When he wakes up, the world is shaking.
His body feels light but he isn’t able to move at all. And he’s in the middle of what must be the most severe earthquake that Japan has ever faced. Not only are his surroundings moving up and down, they’re moving from side to side.
He’s back in the street market and the stalls are shaking and waving around him. People’s faces jump wildly in his vision. Every now and then, the entire world flips itself upside down.
Katsuki’s aware that he’s moving through all this, but he’s unsure how. There’s a gentle pressure on the top of his head pulling him along. He tries to look away or close his eyes, getting an awful feeling of vertigo from all his moving, but it’s as if his eyes won’t respond to him.
Somehow worse than all this visual stimulation is that his mask no longer seems to truly fit as it used to. It’s lifted away from his face and casts a black outline around his vision. It’s annoying as all hell.
He tries to distract himself with thoughts of what that guy’s quirk could have been. For all Katsuki knows, it could have been anything. But it has put him into this motionless predicament.
It’s only when he seems to have entered the familiar subway station does the shaking come to a stop.
But that’s when something grabs him.
An incredibly large hand puts itself over his entire body and he’s moved around. Into his ear someone whispers, “Sorry about that, Dynamight. But we made it to the train station on time!”
So, this person knows who he is? Was Katsuki somehow shrunk and paralyzed? What was holding him up? Is this some sort of accomplice to the original villain?
He hears the click and scratch of metal. It sounds something like a carabiner – a sound he’s more than used to from all his hero work. Then he’s being fully supported in the person’s hand. He goes through the motions with them of tapping onto the train and walking through the station.
They get on the subway fairly quickly and that’s when Katsuki finally gets to see his captor’s face. Katsuki is being held down in the guy’s lap next to his phone. He smiles down on Katsuki and looks genuinely happy to see him.
The guy certainly isn’t bad looking. He’s got wild curls that frame his face and are pulled into a short pony in the back. They’re a green that reminds Katsuki of his childhood – running through the forests, getting scrapes and going on adventures.
Back in those days, he always had ‘Deku’ around with him.
Under his bangs is a pair of beaten-up glasses – thick framed and battered to hell. It’s like if the nerd stereotype came to live and was immediately beaten to an inch of its life leaving only the glasses behind.
Katsuki has no idea why this guy is wearing such an unattractive pair of glasses. His face certainly isn’t bad. His jaw is soft and curved along with his mouth, following the nice line his smile makes. Splattering his face is a nice assortment of freckles giving him a youthful charm of sorts.
However, the guy isn’t really paying too much attention to him. Katsuki wants nothing more than for him to explain himself.
He wants this guy to explain his connection with the villain, or Katsuki’s situation, or really anything. But he just keeps scrolling away on his phone.
That might partly be because they’re on the train, but Katsuki still feels indignant at this treatment.
Their journey finally ends when they arrive at a college campus of sorts. Katsuki isn’t familiar with this place. When people talk about colleges to him, it mostly goes in one ear and out the others.
Of course, he knows the major ones – Toudai, Waseda, and the likes – but since he didn’t go to college himself, it’s all gibberish of sorts.
The guy lifts his body and puts him up to his face, pulling out his phone in the meantime. Katsuki is shocked when the camera comes on.
He’s certainly there, right next to the guy in the photo. But he hasn’t been shrunk or anything of the like. Instead, it seems he’s become a piece of merch, a plush keychain version of himself in his hero costume.
It takes a bit for the guy to get a shot he’s happy with but even when he does, the photoshoot doesn’t seem to end. Katsuki is turned to and away from and to the side as the guy takes photo after photo of him in front of the college sign.
It’s at that moment does Katsuki finally accept that he has no choice but to live as this random guy’s keychain.
One good thing comes from their visit to the college. Katsuki gets to learn the guy’s name, ‘Midoriya Izuku.’
He’s a new grad student coming straight from America where he lived for most of his life. At first his Japanese was kind of drawling and casual, with lots of filler words mixed in but as the conversation carried on everything became more concise and natural.
Katsuki can already tell he’s a huge freaking nerd and probably – as much as he hates to admit it – smarter than Katsuki.
He met with his professor and they talked about getting started with research (a little over a week from now) then proceeded to talk about a lot of stuff Katsuki didn’t understand.
Katsuki was strapped onto Midoriya’s bag the whole time, sent back to the carabiner.
Midoriya stops at a café on the campus and buys some snacks and a coffee. He doesn’t touch them until he’s properly snapped Katsuki’s photo next to them. Then they make the hectic trip back to where Midoriya is living.
His apartment is pretty sad.
It’s all blank walls and there’s hardly any furniture. In the bedroom, there are a few boxes and two large suitcases. He seems to be living out of them with nowhere else to put his clothes. He already has a nice-looking futon laid out though, so he at least has that going for him.
Midoriya takes off his crappy glasses and collapses into it with Katsuki in his arms. He takes a few seconds to crawl into it.
Katsuki balks at his actions. Midoriya is still wearing his street clothes and hasn’t eaten anything at all.
He holds out Katsuki so that the two of them are face to face, “Is it weird that it’s only sinking in now? I’m seriously back after all of these years. Ah but I’m seriously so tired,” and he really does look it. Katsuki watches as his eyes flutter closed. He sets Katsuki down on the floor next to the futon, “Dynamight, I hope,” he starts off in a sleepy voice, his words barely making it out, “that I can meet you soon.”
And just like that, he leaves Katsuki alone to deal with the never-ending consciousness that comes with being trapped in a keychain.