They say childhood is the happiest time of life, a blank canvas full of innocence and dreams. Whoever invented that cheap greeting card slogan clearly never had to go through it twice, and certainly never did it with the intact consciousness of a bitter adult and a mental agenda filled with the history of the next twenty years.
"Look! Look what I can do!"
I sighed, a silent sound of pure cosmic frustration. I rested my head on my crossed arms on the small wooden table. The worn varnish, probably applied by an overworked janitor, smelled of cheap disinfectant and the sticky hands of the thirty little barbarians who called this their classroom.
A few meters away, a snotty kid named Hiro was making a precarious castle of wooden blocks float inches from the floor. All around him, the Orudera preschool class erupted in a cacophony of exclamations that struck me deeply—not out of wonder, but because of the deafening noise.
"That's amazing, Hiro-kun!" someone yelled, their voice tinged with the uncritical adoration that only a child can offer.
I rolled my eyes, hiding the gesture behind my elbow. It's basic telekinesis. You can barely lift a hundred grams. You have to focus on the lift vector, brat, not just the upward momentum. If it were a real weight, you would have crushed it. Sharpen your focus.
The technical critique surfaced automatically in my mind, a residue of the strategist mind I used to be. Immediately after, I was hit by a wave of exhaustion that had nothing to do with my supposed four years of age.
I had been there for months. Months trapped in the body of a four-year-old boy, forced to learn colors again, to sing animal songs again, and worst of all, to take mandatory naps. To any exhausted adult, naps might sound like paradise, but when your mind is racing a mile a minute thinking about the impending future wars, the immortal villains about to be born, and the gradual collapse of society as I knew it, lying on a mat staring at a cracked plaster ceiling while a bunch of kids snore and drool is a true test of patience. It was the purgatory of the hyperactive mind.
I raised my right hand and stared at it. It was small, chubby, soft, lacking the calluses and scars of my previous life. It was a child's hand, but it contained a power that could pulverize the building. Almost on instinct, I let a small spark dance in my palm. Pop, pop! Little explosions, tiny, controlled, like silenced firecrackers. The smell of burnt sugar—nitroglycerin—reached my nose. It was a familiar scent, comforting and terrifying all at once.
Everyone said I was a child prodigy. My teachers, women with strained smiles who clearly found my intensity unsettling, praised me as if I were the second coming of Albert Einstein. The other kids looked at me with a palpable mix of fear and adoration. And my adoptive parents—Mitsuki and Masaru, two people far too good and simple for the ticking time bomb they were raising—brimmed with blind pride.
It's not my achievement, I thought, clenching my fist and snuffing out the sparks. The power dissolved with a soft pop of compressed air. It's the body. It's Katsuki Bakugo's genetics. I'm just the pilot who hijacked the plane. I'm an intruder who took control of a high-performance biological vehicle.
The doubt was a constant background noise, a low and persistent frequency, like the hum of an old refrigerator in an empty house. Every time someone praised my "natural talent" or my "cool explosions," I felt the weight of living a life that didn't belong to me. Where was the real Katsuki? Had that primitive child consciousness vanished? Had it merged with me into an unstable hybrid? The question had no answer, and the uncertainty was annoying, but I had to keep moving forward.
"Kacchan!" A high-pitched, squeaky voice interrupted my thoughts. The voice that destiny had marked to be my rival, and, eventually, my most exasperating comrade-in-arms.
I didn't need to look up to know who it was. The only kid in all of Japan who could sound so stupidly happy and genuinely amazed by something so trivial.
Izuku Midoriya appeared in my line of sight, moving with the nervous energy of a puppy. His green eyes, big and innocent, shone like two beacons of inexhaustible hope—the kind of hope I knew would soon crash into reality.
"Kacchan, did you see that?" he pointed enthusiastically at the kid with the floating blocks. "Hiro-kun awakened his Quirk! It's amazing! Now we're a class full of future heroes!"
I glared at him, my scowl an innate reflex from my original host. "It's telekinesis, Izuku. Half the population has some variant of telekinesis or pyrokinesis. It's no big deal. It's a common rarity."
Izuku wasn't deterred by my harsh tone, nor by the implicit insult to his classmate's euphoria. On the contrary, he pulled out an exercise notebook and a wax crayon (a prehistoric, poorly executed version of his future hero analysis notebooks).
"But it means everyone is awakening their powers!" he said, vibrating with excitement right down to the tips of his green curls. He scribbled something in the notebook, probably the phrase 'Telekinesis - Hiro-kun - Low level'. "Soon it will be my turn! And then we can be a hero team, like All Might and his sidekicks, and save people with a big smile!"
I felt a pang in my stomach. A cold, unpleasant sting. I knew the date. I knew what was coming. The doctor's appointment for his four-year checkup was only weeks away. The diagnosis—the dreaded news that he was Quirkless—would strip the shine from those eyes for the first time, but not the last.
I looked at the green-haired boy, so fragile, so naive in his faith in the system and his own potential. In the canon I knew, the original Katsuki would have used this moment to inflate his ego and trample Izuku's.
But I wasn't him. Or at least, I wasn't going to act like him. I couldn't replicate the casual cruelty of the original child prodigy.
"Yeah, sure," I muttered, resting my chin on the table, suddenly feeling much older than my supposed four years. I felt the weight of a life I had already lived and another that I already knew how it would unfold. "A team. The loudest team in history."
The irony was so palpable I could almost chew it. There I was, holding the latent power of a god of destruction in the hands of a kid who couldn't even tie his shoes yet, surrounded by future heroes, villains, and victims, playing with crayons while the clock of destiny ticked inexorably above our heads.
"Hey, Kacchan." Izuku leaned in a little closer, dropping his voice as if he were telling me a state secret or the plan to steal the moon. "Do you think my Quirk will be as cool as your explosions? Do you think it'll be strong?"
I snorted, a mix of laughter and resignation. I felt the urge to pat him on the head, but I suppressed the gesture. It was too affectionate, too out of character. I had to keep my distance.
"Nothing is cooler than my explosions, nerd," I said, letting a sliver of Katsuki's original sass filter into my voice. At least that part of the character was fun to play. It was a mask that fit well. "But if flying is your thing, make sure you're fast. I don't like waiting."
Izuku smiled, a smile so wide and sincere it almost made me feel worse. He was already dreaming of a future he would never have, and I was the only one who knew it. The only one who had the choice to change it. The task was overwhelming. Save Izuku? Try to prevent All Might's fall? Stop the impending war?
It all started at this table, smelling of disinfectant, with a crayon in hand. And for now, I could only be Kacchan. The world would end later.
Author's note: While writing this, I realized I have trouble spelling pronouns correctly; I hope it's better now.