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“Give it back to me!”
Abandoning his usual complaining tone, only shyly dissatisfied, Deku had learned to express himself out loud; even the movements with which he tried to get his magazine back were less clumsy and pathetic than usual – this didn't mean that he had managed to snatch it from his hand, after all he was still much shorter than him and quirkless.
It was a shame Katsuki wasn't there.
Since the incident with the sludge villain, even though more than a month had passed, Katsuki had stopped seeing him, ignoring him as if he didn't exist. Kariage frowned at the thought as she took a step back to dodge Deku; he knew he had been a coward by abandoning him as soon as the villain had captured him, Kariage was man enough to admit it, but Katsuki should have understood that it was childish to expect a courageous, touching and useless help from a friend.
Screw it, Kariage decided as he threw the magazine on the ground: after all, it wasn't as if he and Katsuki were real friends; it had been clear from the beginning that, even without a villain among them, after middle school they would have lost sight of each other.
Deku's Heroic Monthly landed in a puddle. Kariage had already turned his back to him, not interested in the pathetic scene of Deku picking up his shit with a hurt look, so he gasped when the loser grabbed his arm.
“You… you should buy it back for me.” Despite the initial stammer, going from an imperative to a request, Deku had taken on a determined look.
Kariage couldn't help but laugh. "What?" he asked incredulously.
Deku was rubbing the toe of his shoe on the asphalt. “You heard me,” he muttered.
"Okay. Are you serious?"
"I just bought it and you ruined it. You should buy it back for me." Deku insisted.
It was an impasse for both of them.
Kariage was acutely aware that he was neither bully enough to beat him nor kind enough to play the redeemed friend and comply with his request. Katsuki would have snatched that damned magazine from his hands at the right moment, just enough time for a tease, to hand it back intact to Deku; but Katsuki hadn't been there and Deku had suddenly remembered that he had been gifted with a pair of testicles at birth; therefore Katsuki was stuck in that unpleasant situation.
Kariage thought he would be fine with any diversion to escape.
With hindsight, while he would have reflected on the madness that occurred that afternoon, he would have instead promised himself never to give carte blanche to destiny again - ever - given that it chose to save him with the whirlwind that suddenly hit the street; as he was lifted from the ground, Kariage saw that Deku had had the readiness to cling to a light pole, while he had been sucked into the vortex like a rag doll.
From the moment Kariage thought he was about to die to the moment he hit the ground again and fell to his knees to vomit, just a handful of seconds passed: one moment he was screaming at the top of his lungs, the next his lunch and breakfast were moving up his throat.
“Damned brat, don't puke on the poor bastard who saved you!"
That voice... confusingly, Kariage thought he knew it; although not with that adult timbre.
“Kacchan, don't be mean!”
"De..."
“Dynamight! Sorry, I'll get used to it sooner or later, I promise. It's just so weird that I can't call you Kacchan."
“Should I have chosen Kacchan as a hero name to make you happy, nerd?”
“The children would have liked it and... no, no, I was joking! I was joking, I swear!"
As soon as his stomach stopped gurgling, Kariage raised his head. He saw two men in their early twenties; heroes, considering their costumes, not very famous or in their debut since Kariage didn't remember having ever seen them before. Although... they were disturbingly familiar.
The taller one was blond and with spiky hair like Katsuki's; furthermore his eyes were red and small hand grenades were hanging from the belt of his costume. His face was that of a man who, Kariage imagined, could climb the ranks just by appearing in front of the cameras. Their classmates always secretly talked about how handsome Katsuki was, how he could have been a model if he stopped frowning all the time.
The other man was slightly shorter and equally well built. With a mop of green hair. Freckles on a face that had never stopped being round. His eyes big and green. And he called out Kacchan's name as if it were the first word he had learned as a child.
Oh shit.
"What the fuck..."
The blond man, Kacchan, who in turn had turned to look at him, spoke what Kariage had only thought.
“Deku!” he barked, startling Kariage.
Deku.
Oh shit.
“Ka… Dynamight, what?”
A much taller and more muscular Deku than the one Kariage left behind looked at him, then widened his eyes comically. "This kid looks like…” he said hesitantly. "I mean, the uniform isn't important, after all it's not as if the Aldera school had closed, but it's strange that the villain we were fighting against disappeared and his whirlwind evaporated, almost as if it could no longer exist. Furthermore..."
"Izuku, shut up." Deku – Izuku; damn it - obeyed. So Kacchan turned to Kariage. “What year is it?" he asked point blank.
Kariage didn't consider it absurd to answer at all. And he wasn't scared by their reaction: a frustrated shout from Kacchan and a groan from Deku – I hate time travel quirks, he complained, putting the final nail in the coffin of Kariage' sanity.
Kacchan.
Deku.
Two heroes fighting villains together.
Oh shit.
Kariage dropped to the ground as he put his head in his hands. Deku, the adult version of the pathetic boy whose magazine he had thrown in the mud, looked at him worriedly. "Do you feel okay?" he asked. “It must have been shocking to understand who we are. But don’t worry!" he exclaimed, "no temporal quirk escapes this rule: as soon as we return to our future, anyone we met in the past will forget everything within a short time."
Kariage supposed this news was reassuring, especially since he otherwise doubted he would ever be able to interact with Katsuki and Deku in a normal way again. However, this didn't free him from his current thoughts: did Deku really have a quirk? When did he get it? How? And above all, why did Katsuki work as a hero together with him? Katsuki hated Deku! Kariage had known him for years and for years had seen him react in an exaggerated way when it came to Deku; always, always ready to get angry at his nerdy ass.
None of this made the slightest sense.
Maybe Kariage had actually died in the tornado and was experiencing a bizarre post-mortem dream. Even though it was not an attractive prospect to be led towards the light by the delirious birth of his sick unconscious.
That brooding was interrupted by the question that Katsuki dryly asked Deku.
“Nerd, what do you know about time travel quirks?”
His green eyes shone excitedly, at least until Kacchan's dirty look made him lower his shoulders guiltily. Afterwards he spoke in a serious voice. "Two types of temporal quirks have been confirmed so far," Deku said, numbering them on his fingers. "The first leaves the victim permanently in the period in which he was sent, but, for it to work, the user must also "travel" alongside him; the second instead allows the user to send anyone he wants into the past without getting involved, however the duration is limited and, after a certain period of time, the victim returns to his time. Given the disappearance of the whirlwind due to the absence of its user, it's very likely that it is the latter that concerns us. But," Deku added with a renewed twinkle in his eyes, "it's always possible to stumble upon completely new quirks!"
“Really, damn it, let's hope that's our case!” Kacchan replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Deku had the decency to blush. "I mean, usually anomalous quirks don't suddenly appear during a normal patrol" he said.
"We're talking about the two of us, Izuku. When have we ever gotten along with normality?"
"Of course, put like this..."
“KARIAGE-KUN!”
Kariage just had time to gasp when he noticed Deku, the Deku he knew, who ran at breakneck speed towards him. Just a fraction of a second, but that Deku and Kacchan had disappeared. Although Kariage suspected they hadn't gone very far.
Meanwhile, Deku had reached him. "Luckily you're fine," he panted. “I saw you fly away and…” a long, breathless breath, “and I feared the worst.”
“I was saved,” Kariage replied cautiously.
In an instant his face lit up, and hell, he looked so like his muscular counterpart that it bothered Kariage. "I saw him!" Deku exclaimed. “Well, actually I saw very little, mostly a flash of green grabbing you. Did you talk to him? Was he a hero? What was his quirk?”
Apparently it was you. And I'll be damned if I know what the hell quirk have you obtained at this age.
Kariage didn't say it, instead shaking his head in denial. "I don't know who he was. He left me here and ran away."
"Oh" disappointment was painted on Deku's face. He perked up quickly, once again excited and happy by the appearance of a new hero. He started talking about wanting to document what happened once he got home, as if he had forgotten that they weren't friends.
Deku remembered it suddenly, when he fell silent and lowered his shoulders. Another gesture that he would carry with him into adulthood. Without thinking much about it, acting above all to distract himself and, well, because he felt observed by red and penetrating eyes, Kariage told Deku to follow him. "Let's go to the library. I'll buy you that magazine."
He looked at him hesitantly. "Really?"
"Don't make me say it again..." Kariage almost blurted out, but a small, very audible explosion around the corner of the street convinced him to measure his words. "Yes," he replied stiffly. "After all, it's right."
Kariage bit his tongue so as not to add out loud that, in his opinion, those who completely changed their opinions and attitude had serious psychological problems. Or, if he really wanted to die prematurely, Kariage could have implied that children and repressed homosexuals pulled the hair of their loved ones.
Kariage didn't say it mainly because that thought would have led him to imagine things he didn't want to imagine. Deku luckily just nodded. He even risked a smile that Kariage was unable to return in any way, screw the other explosion that threatened him from a distance and also the following "Kacchan!"
"Did you hear anything...?" Deku said, looking around.
"It must have been the traffic," Kariage replied impassively.
They walked awkwardly, Kariage purposely a few steps behind Deku. Katsuki would have looked at him in disgust for this, while Kacchan had nothing to say against it judging by the lack of further explosions.
As he crossed the street, Kariage risked a furtive glance behind him.
He watched them walk away, relaxed enough to let him know that they weren't really worried about the time travel quirk. In fact, Kariage suspected they were deciding what to eat while waiting for the effects to wear off.
They walked close together, their shoulders almost touching. Their figures from behind sharpened the feeling of disbelief that had never left Kariage – they were broad backs, heroes backs, and also backs that went so well together that it was difficult for him to remember that in his present Katsuki and Deku were like two planets on a collision course.
In a way, Kariage thought as he moved forward again, he would hate to forget everything and thus lose the motivation to stay in their lives long enough to see the change from Deku vs. Kacchan to Deku and Kacchan.