Chapter 9

Fucking fake brothers...

Bakugo sulked angrily as he waited for class to begin; the events of the previous day were a humiliation he'd never experienced before. But that wasn't the problem.

The problem was that clearly, it was intended to be far more humiliating than that.

He was gonna tell everyone what I said... and Deku stopped him.

His pride was definitely hurting; he didn't need help from anyone, let alone a formerly-quirkless loser like Deku. He didn't need saving. Everyone always said he was going to be a great hero one day, and he knew he had to be the best because... because everyone said so? No, that couldn't be it, he didn't care what people thought of him. He repeated it like a mantra in his head, only to run into a traitorous part of his mind he had been unable to quash since the day before.

I don't care what people think of me.

Then why did the thought of not being the best when everyone said he would be burn him so much?

I don't care what people think of me.

Then why was he afraid of what the Fake Midoriya was definitely about to tell the others before Deku stopped him?

The internal exchange continued, threatening to drive him insane. He finally managed to escape it by turning his thoughts toward another feeling: the fact that Deku, of all people, had saved him. Again. It didn't help that the weakling had beaten his score—his quirk, that he had possessed all his life and was experienced in its use—with a quirk that had only popped up less than a year ago, one that the worthless bastard had yet to control.

That bastard...

Deku had saved him. No, more than that, Deku pitied him.

That bastard! I don't need pity! Not from a weakling like him! I don't! Not from him...

"Awww... I wish I kept the mask..."

"It's not that big a deal, bro. You look cool enough without it!"

After All-Might's little introductory speech and announcement of the battle training, we went immediately to the dressing room with our costumes; with regards to Izuku's costume, I had not long ago talked him into ditching the utterly ridiculous and completely awkward-looking "bunny ears" mask, though he did keep the faceguard.

He looked at me with an uncertain expression. "You really think so?"

"Absolutely," I responded with a smile; "Besides, why would you want to hide your face? The world ought to see you and know that you, Izuku Midoriya, are a hero! No mask, no disguise, just your face; 'never fear, Izuku Midoriya is here!'"

My brother paused, looking at his hand for a bit. "'I am here...'" He clenched his fist and looked at me with a smile.

With that, we finished dressing and made our way to the training grounds, ready to make our in-costume debut.

Aside from the lack of a mask, Izuku's costume was identical to canon. As for mine, my costume was actually very similar to his; same red belt, same black kneepads, but with a different white-striped pattern on the green outfit. The gloves were a bit longer as well, and featured two vibro-rigs built into each of them disguised as a large decorative metal stud on the back of the fist. The faceguard was slightly different as well; instead of a "fake smile", there were a series of three thin horizontal white lines, but the shape was mostly the same. The intended message was clear: separately, we were formidable heroes, but together, we were the Midoriya Brothers.

Unfortunately, fate determined that we were not to be paired together for the simulation; Izuku received the same match-up as in canon, having been paired with Uraraka against Iida and Bakugo. My inclusion in Class 1-A did have an effect on other pairings, though; for instance, rather than being paired with Sero on the villain team, Kirishima ended up paired with me on the hero side of things, with Momo and Aoyama as our opponents. I was pleasantly surprised with Kirishima as my partner, considering how well we hit it off during the practical exam—not to mention his quirk could work well with mine if he hit me hard enough. As for our opponents, I wasn't exactly worried, but I wasn't completely cocky about it, either; I couldn't think of anything Momo could make up that would work against my quirk, but at the same time I knew how smart she was and that she could probably think of something. Aoyama was another unknown factor; I hadn't been on the receiving end of an energy-based attack before and wasn't sure whether or not my quirk would be able to get anything out if it, even though his navel laser clearly had a concussive effect on its targets. At the same time, though, I knew he was overconfident and obsessed with flashiness, which were both highly exploitable qualities.

As per canon, Izuku's match came first; I had a hard time watching it now that I saw Izuku as a brother and not just a fictional character, but he definitely did better than in canon. For some reason, Bakugo seemed slightly less bonkers, though he still went way overboard in his offense, and while Izuku didn't need to blow his arm to win this time he was still pretty messed up by the end of it. All in all, it went a little smoother than in canon, but it was still an incredibly uphill battle for him and Uraraka.

As Izuku got bandaged up by the medical robots and Bakugo got a talking-to from All Might, I breathed a sigh of genuine relief back in the viewing area.

"Dude, that fight was insane," Kaminari said with amazement. "Midori packs a real punch!"

I looked over at the electric boy. "'Midori?'"

He shrugged in response. "Well, your last name is Midoriya too, so I figured chopping off the last bit would make it easier to tell the difference. Besides, his hair's green, so it fits..."

"That's actually pretty clever," I responded, "But he's already decided on 'Deku' as a hero name."

Kaminari nodded in understanding. "Interesting. You figured out your name yet?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. Just call me Casey-kun for now."

There was a brief period of silence before a sudden shout broke it.

"KEIKKUN AND IZUKKUN!"

All eyes turned to the ever-excitable Ashido, who had a big grin on her face as she announced the nicknames. "See, 'kei' is the first half of your name, and—"

"So noisy..." Tokoyami interrupted with his usual terse demeanor.

Jiro rolled her eyes at Ashido, her hands behind her head. "Yeah, I think we get it," she said before turning to me. "What do you think about it, though?"

I considered the nicknames that the class Genki Girl had forced on my brother and me. "Hmm... they're kinda weird, but also kinda catchy. I guess they could be useful enough, until I figure out a hero name for myself."

Before the discussion could continue, the buzzer announcing the next match sounded; this time, it was Ashido and Sero as the villain team against Sato and Koda; the former team managed to eke out a decent-enough victory. After that, canon struck again as Shoji and Todoroki were paired against Ojiro and Hagakure, with the same chilling conclusion. Once that was over and everything cleaned up, it was finally our turn; as we made our way to the test building, Kirishima decided to engage in a little small talk.

"So, dude, what do you know about Bakugo? Why was he so worked up over your brother back there?"

I started to say 'because he's a jerk and a bully', but Izuku's words yesterday gave me pause.

"...I guess it's because his pride's a little wounded. He always thought pretty highly of himself, then my brother and I come along and one-up him after years of him thinking we were weaker."

He stopped to think for a moment before looking at me and giving his trademark toothy grin. "So what you're saying is, he could use a friend, right?"

No, that has absolutely nothing to do with what I just said, I thought to myself. Why Kirishima was so determined to make friends with Lord Explosion Murder was beyond me, but I figured it was none of my business. Besides, I was trying not to think about the asshole too much; Izuku's little speech about him still had me a bit shaken over the whole thing, and when you add the nail-biting experience of watching their match it added up to a lot of stress that I didn't need on my mind as we planned our assault.

Our plan was straightforward; go in, sneak around as best we could until we made our way to the bomb room, then charge the device before either Momo or Aoyama could stop us. It wasn't a terribly complicated plan, but I figured between his hardening and my ability to absorb kinetic energy we were durable enough to take on any countermeasures or ambushes well enough.

We peered carefully through a ground-floor window; the coast looked clear enough, and it was fairly close to a stairwell, so we decided that would make a good entry point. I stepped through first, giving a careful look around before turning to see Kirishima climbing through... only to see that I had barely missed a tripwire just under the window.

"Kirishima, wait!"

"Huh? What for—"

Oblivious to the danger, he stepped on the tripwire, breaking it... and triggering a small explosion that caused the ceiling near the stairwell to collapse, blocking it off.

Kirishima sulked slightly, with a twinge of embarrassment in his voice. "Well, that stairwell is definitely out of the question..."

"It's fine, there's bound to be another one somewhere around here. Though maybe we should take it a little more slowly from now on; if they blocked this one out, there will definitely be more traps waiting for us on the other stairwells, too."

It took us about five minutes to locate another stairwell, and thankfully this one didn't have explosives blocking it off. It did, however, have a rather nasty surprise in the form of Home Alone-style swinging bucket traps—neither of which did much to us, since Kirishima could harden himself and I just absorbed the impact of them—but they did slow us down a bit. The stairwell stopped a few floors down from the bomb room, though, and it took roughly five more minutes to find the next one; by the time we finally reached the door to the bomb room, we had about three minutes remaining, so there was no room for caution.

"Okay, I'll use my quirk to knock the door off its hinges, then we rush the bomb as fast as we can," I whispered.

Kirishima nodded with a grin before whispering back. "A dynamic entry, huh? Sounds pretty manly. Okay, I'll follow your lead; make your move whenever you're ready!"

Focusing a bit of my power into my fist—just enough to send the door flying a few feet, but hopefully not enough to potentially send it flying into the bomb—I punched the door; it buckled a bit, but obviously there was something behind it that braced it slightly, so I gave it another punch. This time, it flew off as intended, and as it landed with a thud we charged through it, the bomb just ahead of us...

SPLORTCH!

Suddenly, we stopped in our tracks as we both stepped in a puddle of something; looking down, we saw what had trapped us: a large puddle of a glue-like substance.

"AOYAMA, NOW!"

We had just enough time to look to the side to see Momo and Mr. Sparkles smirking at us as the latter fired his navel laser; the impact jarred us loose from the glue, but to my dismay I didn't feel any kinetic charge from it as Kirishima and I were sent flying... right into a steel net that quickly entangled us. Momo had figured out the perfect answer to our quirks; tangled up as we were, neither of us could actually punch or tear our way through the net, and there seemed to be a little glue on the net as well, which only made matters worse. Suffice to say, we were unable to get out of the net before time ran out.

"Don't worry," Momo said with a sly grin. "The glue dissolves quickly, so it shouldn't be too difficult to untangle you without ripping out some hairs."

As I grumbled at the loss, I did my best to look on the bright side. Well, at least I know a couple more weaknesses to my quirk...

Okay! With that out of the way, I'd like to ask you guys to participate a little bit with some feedback: Should I ship the SI with anyone? If so, who should the SI get shipped with (keep in mind that I'm straight as an arrow—not that there's anything wrong with LGBTQ+, that's just not me)? Make sure to leave a comment, and I'll pick whatever seems to make the most sense. See you next chapter!