Chapter 4

I sat on a chair in the principal's office, swinging my legs back and forth as I waited for my inevitable punishment for doing absolutely nothing wrong. One of the things I recall from my old world was that I was bullied a lot there, and while my mother and father were always understanding—as were the teachers—the teachers always seemed to care more about how the school looked for it, and often punished both the bully and the victim just for causing a scene. That never sat right with me; I thought for sure that things might be better here.

"That stupid foreign child nearly broke every bone in my baby's body! Expel him, now, or I'll sue your school for every yen you have!"

Turns out I was wrong, particularly when your bully has a super-rich spoiled heiress for a mom. The bully's mom screeched, pointing a finger at me again and again while the principal held his hands up and smiled defensively in an infuriatingly meek posture. God, grow a spine... I looked over at the bully in question, who I most decidedly did not injure in any way; he was sitting there crying fake tears, his right arm and left leg in casts.

The crazy bully-mom managed to stop ranting long enough for the principal to squeak in a response. "Look, I'm not saying your boy isn't telling the truth—"

"He isn't! He's lying! He tried to trip me while I was walking down the stairs and fell with me! Look, I fell and all I got was a scrape on my knee, how the heck did he fall that same distance and break an arm and a leg?"

Not to mention the little bastard just smirked at me in between fake cries while the adults were looking the other way... not that you idiots will realize that.

"HOW DARE YOU!" The nutty woman glared at me after hearing my comment; the way she puffed out her cheeks and turned red with anger made her look a bit like a cross between a puffer fish and a tomato. "You little foreigner brat! My baby boy is perfectly innocent!"

"What's going on here? Oh, honey, are you hurt?" Ms. Midoriya finally arrived, quickly running over to my side.

"No, I'm okay. And so is that liar there."

The spineless man-chicken masquerading as a principal barely managed to cut off the crazy lady. "Er, Ms. Midoriya, I'm afraid there was an altercation involving your son—"

"Hmph. 'Son'... foreign gutter-trash is more like it..."

A silence followed the lady's interjection, and I could have sworn the room chilled by five degrees as Ms. Midoriya glared at the lady. "What."

"Ah, please, let's not be too quick to—"

"What did you call him. Say it again."

"I don't have to repeat myself to the likes of you!"

"Yeah! You tell her, mom!"

A hush fell over the room again as the bully's performance slipped in the most hilarious way possible; the little brat, excited at the thought that he might get his way for like the billionth time, had leapt out of his chair onto both legs and hopped up and down.

"Wow," I said, unable to contain myself. "you have a cool quirk. Must be nice, healing so fast..."

This was the last straw, and the first time I had EVER seen Ms. Midoriya angry. Frankly, it's a pretty scary sight. "You b—awful woman!"

"Please, Ms. Midoriya, I know you must be angry—"

"Angry?!" Now it was the principal's turn to be the target of unbridled fury. "I got a call in the middle of work saying that something bad had happened, that Casey was involved, and that there were injuries! I was so terrified that he might have been hurt that I nearly had a heart attack! You could have at least given me more information than that, but then you went ahead and let this woman drag him in here like he was some sort of deviant in need of correcting! And as for you," she said, turning back to the rich lady, "don't you ever refer to him as trash ever again. He is not trash. He is my son and if you don't approve, you can take your boy to some other school."

I was just as stunned as everyone else in the room, particularly at that last part. The rich lady tried one last time to look tough, but it was clear she was scared stiff. "I... I'll sue. I'll sue you for... for..."

"For what? It doesn't take a lawyer to know you don't have a case here. Now I am leaving, and I am taking my son home, and I don't want to see your face ever again."

I looked over at the principal, who somehow looked both ashamed and a little less spineless; with a gulp and a deep bow, he spoke without a quiver in his voice for the first time that whole conversation. "My deepest apologies, Ms. Midoriya. Rest assured, I take full responsibility for this unfortunate incident, and will ensure that Ms. Bakura's son will face serious consequences for his actions."

The principal remained still, not even flinching when the screeching started up again as we left the room; waiting for us in the hall was none other than Izuku, who tackle-hugged me with tears in his eyes.

"Waaahhh! Brother, I was so scared that you were in trouble and that they'd make you leave and that you'd have to leave me here on my own or something and mom would be mad and—!"

"It's okay, sweetie, Casey isn't going anywhere. There was a misunderstanding, that's all, but it's over now." You would never have known that she was scaring a lady half to death less than a minute ago.

We all went out for ice cream before coming home; the whole incident had thrown me for a bit of a loop, and I stayed quiet for the most part, right up until it was time for bed. Once I was under the covers and the goodnight forehead kiss was done with, I found myself thinking about it all one last time. She got so angry on my behalf... and she called me...

I spoke up just as she was about to turn out the light. "Um..."

"Yes, honey?"

"I... could I maybe call you mom from now on?"

Six Years Later

I steadied the punching bag and walked over to my computer, picking up my research journal and a pen. Hm... before quirk, 50.8 kg... roughly my own weight. I'm doing good with technique, at least. We'd bought a bunch of force sensors, wired them together, glued them to a brick and placed it in a punching bag made for super-strength quirks; the force sensors had been hooked up to my computer, which would read the force of a punch in kilograms so I could add it to the journal. For "kinetic fuel" I just generally had Izuku hit me, but I knew that there had to be a better way to charge up without having to rely on someone else to hit me or throw something...

"CASEY! CASEY! You gotta come quick! There's a villain that popped up nearby!"

I looked up from the journal. "Really? Anyone famous?"

"No, but they're saying he's got a gigantification quirk of some kind. He's over at Tatooin Station right now!"

I sighed. "You know, you're lucky mom is out shopping right now or she'd bolt the house shut the way you're yelling about a villain in the area. Besides, weren't we gonna do quirk research today before class? I just punched in the base numbers..."

"Oh come on, bro! They say Death Arms and Kamui Woods are in the area too!"

Oh. Well, that was sooner than I expected... main plot time.

I had gained nearly all of my memories back over the last few years; I still didn't quite remember how old I was to begin with exactly—definitely high school age, though—but other than that I had pretty much everything back... including the knowledge that I was currently living in an anime, and that my very own brother was the star. Unfortunately, as that information only started coming back to me about a year before, I didn't have much time to prepare or plan—not that there was much I could do anyway, aside from continue our quirk research. "Heh, I always wanted to meet Death Arms myself... okay, let's go!"

As we reached the station, I recalled the fight as it happened in the anime; pretty impressive stuff. When it's in real life, though? Impressive doesn't remotely cut it. The craziest thing was watching guys like Kamui Woods move. As far as I know, the guy's quirk has zip effect on his base agility, and yet he's leaping and running around like Spider-man. It's crazy to think that acrobatics that would be superhuman in the other world are perfectly achievable with training alone in this one, even for a quirkless person. I have to learn how to move like that...

As per canon, the show was over very quickly after that when Mount Lady burst in and stole the spotlight; once Izuku was done with his motor-mouth analysis mode, we made our way to school for our regular classes. We managed to make it there just in time to beat the teacher... but not enough to avoid Lord Explosion Murder himself deliberately bumping into Izuku on the way into the classroom.

"Outta the way, Deku."

"Ah! Kacchan..."

Even before I remembered anything about him, I hated Bakugo from the very first day I attended the second grade with Izuku; the bully I had to deal with was bad enough, but at least that one was a pushover when you got right down to it. Bakugo, on the other hand? He was just plain petty—the no-reason-shoulder-bump a daily occurrence—and yet Izuku still looked up to the asshole. I never understood it, but once I got my quirk I at least figured I could take some of the heat off; one thing I had learned was that it was very easy to redirect Bakugo's temper away from Izuku, and all it ever took was a mild comment that hit one or more of his many, many pride buttons.

"You know, Kacchan," I said, making sure to put as much emphasis on the -chan as possible, "It's okay to say 'excuse me' when you stumble into someone."

"STUMBLE?! Shut up, you damn science nerd! I don't stumble!"

Yeah, I had just violated Bakugo Pride Button #5,702: indirectly accusing him of being a klutz, combined with #812, suffix abuse. And yes, I'd cataloged every little trigger I could find; the list was up to nearly six thousand and showed no signs of being close to the end. I closed the conversation with #214: turning and walking away with a chuckle while he's trying to insult me. Ordinarily, this last one would present a severe risk to life and limb, with an increased likelihood of explosive death, but I'd found that even Bakugo wasn't dumb enough to cause trouble when the teacher was about to enter the class. He seethed in silent rage as the teacher began talking, and as usual I couldn't help but glare at the back of his head.

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing you're good for is being pointed at things that need exploding. I don't care about canon, I don't care if Izuku won't stop pretending you're worth his admiration; as long as you treat my brother like this, I'm never going to acknowledge you as anything other than a bully.

Unfortunately, I could only do so much to shield Izuku from popular scorn. Even before my memories of the series returned to me, I supported Izuku and tried my best to keep him from being isolated from the rest of our peers; I managed to make some lasting friendships with a few classmates, and at first that seemed to alleviate the problem. Sadly, it ended up making things almost worse than before; true, when the teacher mentioned that Izuku had intentions of going to UA, only half the class laughed at him as opposed to the entire class in canon. The downside was that the other half, instead of defending my brother's dreams, simply responded with sorrowful, pitying shakes of the head. Much as he cried about it sometimes, Izuku could handle the outright scorn toward his dreams from people like Bakugo who treated him with hatred; at least then he could probably tell himself they were just being mean, they didn't know what they were talking about, that if they got to know him better they'd see he had what it took. But the sight of friends doubting him, of treasured companions clearly thinking there was no hope for him... that, I knew, was what genuinely hurt him. None of those people were going to UA. I knew there would be people there that he could easily bond with—I definitely looked forward to meeting a few of them myself—but from his perspective, the only people his age aside from me who were remotely nice to him were going elsewhere, and if he followed his dreams he'd have to leave them all behind.

And yet, he persisted; I'd always been amazed at how no matter what, he never truly loses all hope. Even in the darkest hour, there's always that little spark left that he somehow manages to hold onto and turn into more drive to succeed. That, above all else, is why I never doubted him even for a second, even long before I knew what he was destined to be.

In case you haven't guessed, this is the story of how my brother and I became two of the world's greatest heroes.

This marks the end of the prologue; the next chapter will begin the main story. See you then!