Chapter Text
All men are not created equal.
It’s a painful lesson to learn, but one I was forced to at a young age.
I was just a little kid when the first Kaiju emerged from the Pacific Ocean.
A giant beast, tearing its way through San Francisco.
It took the full might of the US military 6 days to bring it down. Three cities were reduced to ash and rubble. Tens of thousands were dead.
And life moved on like normal. As it always does after a calamity or a celebration.
Until it happened again.
The second attack leveled Shanghai.
The third crushed Singapore.
That’s when it became a part of life.
The countries bordering the Pacific banded together rather than dying alone. They pooled resources, setting aside past rivalries and slights for the sake of survival.
It turned out the best solution to fighting monsters was creating monsters of our own.
There were many names for the towering metal creations, Gundamns, Jagers, Mechs. The pinnacle of human engineering at the time. The main setback was the pilots, many brave men and women died or were permanently scarred from the sheer neural load the machines demanded.
The solution was as simple as it was frustrating. Two pilots would split the hemispheres of the mech, and divide the workload between them.
I remember the first time I saw one of the steel monsters on television, as the One for All’s fist punched through the Kaiju rampaging through Osaka, moments before it could destroy the famous castle there. I used to watch that video with my mother every day.
Then it was my turn, I was standing in the same shoes as my idol along with a good friend of mine, Katsuki Bakugou. Now me and Katsuki weren’t typical heroes, we weren’t the most popular or the top of the class or anything like that, hell for most of our lives we could barely stand each other.
But we had two things going for us as pilots. We both knew how to fight, and we were drift compatible.
“Wake up ya damn nerd!” Katsuki’s voice echoed in the small bunkroom.
“I’m up Kacchan.” replied Izuku.
“Well get dressed, Colonel Yagi needs us in the command room now. New Kaiju has been spotted off the coast and we drew the short straw.”
“You love drawing the short straw Kacchan.” Izuku quipped back.
Katsuki flipped him off and then marched off down towards the command room. Izuku rapidly showered and dressed before charging off after him.
Entering the command room, the two were greeted by the imposing figure of Colonel Toshinori Yagi, call sign All Might, along with a collection of the Pacific Defense Corps controlling officers for Japan.
“Greetings gentlemen. We’ve had a breach, a category 3 Kaiju, codenamed Moonfish. It’s charted to make landfall in 6 hours, you’re being tasked to intercept and destroy it before that happens.”
“Yes sir!” Both reply in unison.
The following hour or so is spent going through the launch prep for the Jaeger, dozens of technicians and specialists pouring over every inch of the mech to make sure it’s fit to fight.
Speaking of that mech, codename Green Dynamight, 2,000 tons of pure destructive power. Armed with a pair of explosive gauntlet’s, essentially massive tanks of nitroglycerin which poured out of the reinforced fists of the mech allowed it to unleash devastating explosive attacks on rampaging Kaiju.
Katsuki and Izuku had used that power to its fullest racking up 4 Kaiju kills, two of them solo, the current record for active mech teams and second only to Colonel Yagi’s all time record, which stood at 8, all solo.
The two didn’t have much time to think about their slow march to surpass their idol however, as the technicians signalled that it was time for them to enter the Jaeger and begin the final sequence for launch
The Drift.
A literal melding of the two pilots' minds into one, required to keep the massive neural load of piloting the Jaegers from burning out a pilot.
It had a side effect of leaving absolutely no secrets between the pilots, which was especially poignant for a pair with Izuku and Katsuki’s history.
Katsuki was forced to experience the pain and fear of every blow he inflicted on Izuku when the two were kids, and Izuku in turn was put through Katsuki’s own stressful home life and crippling inferiority complex that pushed him to act out and target anyone he felt looked down on him, namely Izuku.
Luckily for both men, they had somehow reconciled by the time they had gotten to high school, with Katsuki apologizing to Izuku and Izuku accepting it allowing the two to move forward as friends and occasional rivals.
This memory bled into more recent ones, Izuku and Katsuki were used to it enough by now to not get hung up on any in particular.
Then the two snapped back to the present.
Katsuki’s face split into his trademarked psychotic grin.
“Ready to go ya damn nerd?”
“You’re in my head Kacchan, you know the answer.” Izuku shot back.
All around them came the whirring of Green Dynamight’s reactor engaging, feeding the massive amounts of power required by the Jaeger, then with a slight jolt, the two felt themselves lifted upwards and the Jaeger was carried off by a team of heavy lift helicopters to its designated launch point in Tokyo Bay.
Two hours later, the Jaeger dropped into the mouth of the bay and began moving towards the intercept point. Shortly after leaving they made radar contact with a signature matching a small fishing vessel, the SS Tantive.
“Green Dynamight to command, we’re picking up a civilian vessel in the Kaiju’s path, please advise.” Katsuki broadcast over the radio.
“Leave it alone, Dynamight. It’s illogical to risk the thousands of lives at stake if that thing lands for a single fishing boat that ignored the storm warnings out today.” drawled Major Shota Aizawa, Colonel Toshinori’s executive officer and the officer directly in charge of connecting Katsuki and Izuku with the command center.
Kota Izumi was having the worst day of his life so far.
He knew he never should have taken the job on the Tantive, but with his parents dead in a Kaiju attack and aunt fallen sick somebody had to be out working for the family and he was the only one who was capable of that. Plus the Tantive’s captain was offering a full share for deckhand’s, he’d have to be a fool to pass it up!
Turns out, that old saying on something being too good to be true was well … true. Since Kota was now stuck in the middle of Tokyo Bay in the worst storm of his life, AND to top it all off, the Kaiju warning alarm went off hours ago.
“HOW FAR TO THE HARBOR!” Another hand roared over to the captain.
“15 KILOMETERS! WAIT … THERE'S AN ISLAND IN 5 WHERE WE CAN GET SOME SHELTER THOUGH SO HOLD … WAIT IT’S 4, 3 … HOW THE HELL IS IT GETTING CLOSER!”
Then, before Kota or any of the other fishermen could speak or even think, the monstrosity breached the waves. A large jet black body leading to a mouth full of gleaming silvery teeth, like the blades of a blender.
The beast let out a guttural moan as it surveyed the hapless vessel and its crew, but before it could make an appetizer out of them, a second monster appeared from the depths. This one was green and orange, a bright pulsing yellow light from a fusion generator glowing in the center of its chest.
Kota ducked in fear as one of the monster’s giant metal hands reached for the boat. He felt his stomach drop as the craft was plucked from the waves.
Was this what mom and dad felt like when the attack years ago came crashing down on their boat?
Kota closed his eyes and waited, but rather than feeling himself being smashed into a million pieces, he felt the boat being placed into the water beside the green and orange giant.
“Izumi, get your ass in gear, let’s get the hell away!” the captain roared.
Izuku let out a sigh of relief as the fishing boat steamed off towards safety before feeling Katsuki’s rage at seeing the Kaiju through their neural link.
Flicking his attention to the Kaiju, Izuku saw it as a long spindly creature, with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth.
“It looks like an angry garbage disposal.” Katsuki observed.
“Let’s hope it breaks as easily as the one in our apartment.” Izuku replied.
“That was one time ya damn nerd!”
Moonfish lunged for them, but Green Dynamight was one step ahead, its pilots bringing the right fist back and launching a massive punch into the Kaiju’s gut.
Moonfish was thrown back by the building crushing assault, which Green Dynamight followed up by raising both fists above its head and slamming them down onto the beast, driving it down into the water.
It didn’t stay down for long though, launching itself for Green Dynamight’s head, looking to slice through it and the pilots held inside.
The shriek of metal being rent apart tore through the cockpit.
“Dammit Kacchan shoot it!”
“I’m trying nerd now DIE YOU BASTARD!”
Green Dynamight rocked back at the recoil from its right Nitro Gauntlet, which sent a wave of fire and concussive force that could level cities directly into the Kaiju, which crashed down into the waves and sank, never to rise again.
“Bakugou, Midoriya, why the hell are you two firing so far out of position.” Aizawa’s tired voice came over the radio.
“Finished the damn job and got one kill closer to the Colonel’s record.” Katsuki bragged.
“And saved that fishing boat!” Izuku added.
“You two disobeyed a direct order.” Aizawa said.
“All do respect sir, isn’t killing these things our primary order?” Katsuki challenged.
Then another voice came over the comms.
“Kaiju signature rising!”
“THAT THING IS STILL ALIVE, GRAB THE BOAT AND GET OUT OF THERE NOW!” Aizawa shouted.
Too late.
Moonfish sprang back out of the depths, slashing through the right side of Green Dynamight’s face with long sickle-like claws.
Green Dynamight’s right hand grabbed onto the beast’s throat, preventing its fangs from finishing the job its claws started.
“Your turn to kill it Deku!” Katsuki roared.
“I’ve got it!” Izuku replied, charging the left gauntlet.
Then Moonfish twisted and slipped from Green Dynamight's grasp, its jaws shearing clean through the Mech’s left arm.
Izuku wailed in pain as the neural connection forced him to feel the left arm as if it was his own, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t even breathe.
Moonfish let out a sickening roar and continued its assault, slicing into the gash on the side of Green Dynamight’s head.
“DAMMIT, IT’S THROUGH THE FUCKING HULL. GODDAMMIT DEKU LISTEN TO …”
Katsuki never finished that thought. At least not out loud.
Though Izuku felt every bit of his childhood friend’s last moments, the pain, the anger, the fear.
Then nothing.
Izuku was all alone. All of the pain, anger and fear was his, he had no one else to share the burden with.
What would his mother think? Or Katsuki’s parents? He still remembered how Katsuki pretended to be annoyed with his mother at the after graduation party. How his own mother cried and that made him cry and they weren't sure whose tears got on the diploma.
They’d be crushed to find out that Katsuki had died, and Izuku along with him. Not even a body to cremate, just names on a long wall of fallen pilots who tried and failed to protect the world from monsters.
A jolt shot through Izuku’s body, the malfunctioning electronics in the ruined cockpit going haywire and shocking him.
It also brought clarity.
Izuku Midoriya would not die today.
He couldn’t, if he gave up and died now he might as well spit on the memory of his dead friend.
Desperately, Izuku ripped the hemispheric control from his left hand to his right, Green Dynamight’s right gauntlet levelled at the Kaiju tearing into its body, and with a defiant roar, fired.
Then everything went black.