2Summary: In which when Bakugou Katsuki was a kid, a certain blond-haired Yamanaka lives inside his head. A Naruto and Boku no Hero Academia crossover. Oneshot. AU.
According to Midoriya Izuku, Bakugou Katsuki was like the sun. He was bright, brilliant - a natural in everything he put his mind to and so so brave.
And he was.
Like the sun, that was.
(That never changed even when they started growing up, faced more obstacles as they tried their best to be the hero they dreamed to be, and realize that no, the world wasn't so clear cut after all with heroes not being as good as Izuku thought they were and villains with pasts that made his chest ache for what could have been.)
Bakugou's smile shone like the brightest of stars when everyone left - eclipsing the loneliness and hurt Izuku was feeling once he discovered he was special in a way that he shouldn't be.
He was quirkless.
(Imagine- 20% of the global population and he was one of the lucky ones-)
Izuku thought there was something wrong with him the first time he discovered that he had the affliction. After all, the people around him all treat him as if there was something wrong with him.
As if he was something abnormal, deserving of pity, and overall inferior just because he didn't have a quirk.
Izuku let them.
He was a kid after all, and when everyone was against him-
When even his mother looked at him with faint sorrow and pity-
Izuku couldn't help but believe what they say - curling in on himself as he tried to hide from judging eyes and wagging tongues from people who put him down to bring themselves up.
Kacchan's presence made the ordeal easier to handle.
Izuku knew that with Kacchan's genius, his childhood friend could have disdained him more than anyone.
Bakugou was prodigious - talented in a way that set him apart from the rest with a quirk that would guarantee him a solid hero career in the future.
Izuku once thought that with Kacchan's immense pride, his childhood friend would be the first one to cut ties with him.
Yet-
The blond didn't.
Surprisingly, Kacchan became Izuku's support. The usually irate Katsuki stood by him, Izuku - "Deku" the quirkless, nerdy boy wonder, because Kacchan never leaves his friends behind and you're more than what you don't have, you idiot.
The blond was kind and gruff and nice in a way that wasn't but was.
Izuku thought he was perfect.
According to Yamanaka Ino, Bakugou Katsuki was a brat.
A cute brat, she grudgingly admits, but still-
He was a brat who liked to talk back to everyone (even to strange adults living inside his head) - filled with brash candor and haughty self-assurance that he was right, the other party was wrong and everyone should just kneel before him.
Ino shouldn't find that endearing but-
She did.
She really really did.
(It reminded her of her son actually - painfully blunt like Sai was and it kept her going as she tirelessly tried to separate her consciousness from the kid and chip a part of herself bit by bit in order not to take up space and overtake the precocious child's consciousness.)
Not that it stopped her from tempering his rage and scolding him to deflate the big head he got from the adults who praised him to the high heavens just because of his quirk and Ino-
Ino would like to think that with her interference-
Katsuki was all the better for it.
Ino wasn't disregarding Katsuki's parents' efforts since his mother did try her best in dissuading the kid from having a superiority complex, but with Ino living in Katsuki's head, she naturally understood him in a more fundamental level.
Ino once thought to herself that without her good, hard virtual smack in the noggin - hitting where it particularly hurts-
Katsuki would most likely be an asshole in his teenage years with an ego larger than the countries combined as he tried to nurse the chip off his shoulder.
(Not that she would be around to see it of course, since by that time, her consciousness would be nothing more than dust - the fruit of her work throughout the years as she tried to destroy herself bit by bit just so she wouldn't overtake a body that wasn't hers, to begin with.)
...
..
.
When Yamanaka Ino died, it was with fire, screams, and Inojin wrapped in her arms as she futilely - desperately tried to protect him from a disaster she couldn't quite remember.
Not like it did anything since-
Well-
They both died.
..
.
Contrary to what she expected however, she didn't see her family waiting for her in the Pure World. Instead, Ino woke up to a body that wasn't hers, with a kid asking who she was in a childish unpolished tone-
("Who are you?" A boy's high-pitched voice asked, curious instead of fearful like he should be.)
-that made her instinctively stop herself from lashing out - her mind arts adeptly making itself smaller and more compact so it wouldn't spill against the other person.
It was difficult.
Ino shamefully acknowledged that some of her tamer memories did get mixed in with the kid's own since she was too shaken from the abrupt change.
It took a lot out of her to make sure that the bloody ones that could irreparably damage the kid she was sharing consciousness with were well-hidden and far beneath the surface.
(Once she got herself under control, Ino replied, "I'm Yamanaka Ino.")
.
("I'm Kat'ski," the child said.)
(Oh.)
According to Bakugou Katsuki, being a hero meant protecting people as best as he could.
He was training himself to be strong, to be a better person every day so that if his loved ones were ever threatened by people who used their quirks to hurt instead of help, he would be powerful enough to combat them and defend the people he called his.
He would be powerful enough to save people who couldn't save themselves.
Katsuki couldn't exactly pinpoint when he became this noble and heroic because he knew, better than anyone, what kind of person he was.
He wasn't like Deku with all his lofty ideals and eagerness to please other people and help.
Katsuki was selfish, disdainful, and fiercely competitive.
One would have thought that with these character traits, he would've wanted to be a hero because he wanted to prove his superiority to everyone and how he naturally was the greatest out of the lot but-
It wasn't.
Katsuki, when it came to hero work, functioned on the principle of doing the best he can to shield and protect.
It didn't matter if he was best just as long as he did the job well enough that the person he was saving didn't incur any long-lasting trauma.
He worked well by himself and even better when he was in a team, supporting everyone and making use of their skills as best as he could to get the job well-done without anyone sacrificing themselves or getting hurt needlessly just because they wanted to show off a particularly ostentatious move when a simple one could do things more efficiently and incur fewer losses.
Don't get him wrong.
Katsuki knew he was an asshole most of the time, cruel, insensitive and blunt, but-
He took being a hero seriously.
It was a responsibility he chose to undertake and he felt that if he didn't do it well enough, he would disappoint someone he couldn't quite remember but valued very much.
It was illogical of him to do so for a person he couldn't even remember completely but-
Katsuki had some of their memories you see.
It was unclear, with the figures in those so-called memories nothing more than blurs, but the emotions tied to these recollections were always so raw and pure that it made his heart hurt a bit.
The person he forgot cherished their precious people very much.
They cherished their team, the village they lived in and the ones they called family.
They love people they called theirs very deeply, and did everything they could to heal, to defend, to support each and everyone they called dear.
The person he forgot lost a lot of people yet they didn't flag because they knew that if they did, no one would be able to pick up other people's pieces as they'd always done and were willing to do.
These memories kept Katsuki thinking as he grew up, motivating him from keeping people out for reasons that didn't even matter much in the long run.
It kept Katsuki from abandoning Deku when everyone turned their backs on his friend.
It kept Katsuki from shutting out his parents when they tried to understand him, busy as they were with their own lives.
It kept Katsuki from belittling the people who he more or less would be working within the career path he chose to be in and it kept Katsuki from ruining his development as a hero and as a person as he made the effort to work with a team and not against it.
The thing was-
Katsuki didn't regret treasuring these memories even if he couldn't share them with anyone - lest he gets judged as a madman or worse, as a sentimental fool by the people around him.
(Even if he could admit to himself that it was true to some extent.)
A/N: Started this before and tried to complete it today but it turned to more of an abrupt character study orz. If anyone's interested in continuing or expanding this further, feel free to do so. I'm writing this just to get back to feel out my writing style before and eh, I feel kind of dissatisfied. Still, thanks for reading.
