i love this ice boy ❄️

MLA May AUs (Part 5 + 6/31)

Intro Post

5/5: sorry, you’re not a winner

+

5/6: okay, time for plan b

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Content Notes: Language; Sports Festival violence but they’re even younger; Bakugou Mitsuki’s A+ Parenting.

sorry, you’re not a winner

“Why do I still have to fight in the baby brackets?”  The question from the backseat is a sharp, annoyed complaint.  Mitsuki rolls her eyes.

“Katsuki, you’re eleven.  You still area—”

“Now, now,” Masaru breaks in hurriedly as he eases the car into the drop-off lane for the front gate.  “I’m sure—”

“It’s stupid!” Katsuki insists.  “I’ve won them three years in a row!  Destro even wrote that kids are stronger than grown-ups.”

“That’s not quitewhat—”

“Heused to have kids fight their parents,” comes the rebellious mutter, and a kick to the back of Mitsuki’s seat.  “We should bring thatback.”

“Time for all brats to get out of the car now!” Mitsuki says with a nitroglycerine brightness as Masaru pulls up to the curb.  She all but shoves Katsuki out of the door; he goes, complaining the whole time, bursts and flares sparking around his hands.

They both sigh once the kid vanishes up the ramp towards the turnstiles, joining a flood of other children under the eyes of badged event staff.  Masaru slides the car back into the flow of traffic, heading for the reserved parking.

“…You didn’t tell him about Geten?” he asks at length.

Mitsuki flips down the passenger side vanity mirror and pats at her hair.  “Life’s full of surprises, dear.”  She tweaks a few strands back into place and smiles firmly at her reflection.  “He’s overdue for a few.”

-

Katsuki blows through the first four rounds just like he blew through his local qualifiers.  Older kids, younger kids, none of them give him a fight worth a damn.  He’s soover this.  Almost ninety years, the Liberation Army’s been around, and they still won’t bend for letting kids betterthan everyone else get where they deserve to be.  He might as well have stayed at home and watched the U.A. Sports Festival, for all the surprises the children’s tourney’s got to offer. 

At least the TVs in the breakroom are playing the adult brackets, too.  Bakugou spends his recovery time between rounds glued to the screen and comparing himself to what will, in five years, be his competition—finally, actualwarriors, people who’ve seen real fights.

He still isn’t impressed with most of them, but at least it’ll be a new crowd.

Round Five is exactly who he figured it’d be, exactly who it always is, and Katsuki sneers at the white-haired figure pacing out onto the field.

“You again.  Why can’t you lose a round early for once, you shitty yuki-onna?  Don’t you think everyone’s getting bored of watching me hand you your ass every year?”  He trash-talks because you gotta, and because even if Geten does put up a good fight before he goes down, he still doesgo down.  Goes practically feral every year, and every year, goes down.  It serves him right for being so close with the Grand Commander when he can’t even win the kiddy brackets, but still, Katsuki’s in a bad mood and ready to get this over with so they can get on to watching the realbrackets, and he can watch Dad put in the order for the sneakers he picked out as his victory prize last week.

Geten—three years older, and he still loses every time; Katsuki doesn’t know how he even keeps showing his face at this thing—sneers back.  “Just as overconfident as always.  You’re disgraceful.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Daddy’s Boy.”

“Hero apologist.”

The starter pistol fires, and they’re already moving.

It takes him too long to notice what’s wrong.

Just like every year, the first thing Geten’s gotta do is keep distance long enough to pull in ice from the cups of the audience and the concession stand machines.  Just like every year, he does.  His flying’s steadier than ever this year, and Katsuki’s still working on his—if this were a realfight, Geten could draw this out a lot longer by keeping more distance, but a vertical ring-out is still a ring-out, and he can’t keep farther away than Katsuki can launch himself.

Rattle his dumb ice dragons apart with blasts of hot concussive force, dodge any ice that he can’t get a hand on or burst before it reaches him, and just keep doing that until every cube is just so much water seeping into the ground.  Geten might be a better flier, but Katsuki’s getting bigger and stronger every year, so every year, he can push himself more, go longer and longer without starting to stagger from muscle burn and dehydration.

This year, the ice doesn’t stop coming.  The sculptures get blasted apart, but they don’t get any smaller when they put themselves back together.

It makes sense that Geten’s getting stronger too, but they’re in the same venue as always, the stadium in Re-Destro’s Mount Nowhere hometown.  Did the Grand Commander have more ice machines put in?  Is this favoritism?  Or is Geten’s range getting better?  Is he pulling from outside the stadium now?

The ice keeps coming.

Katsuki blasts and ducks and leaps and blasts and rolls and blasts some more.  He throws a glance at the jumbotron counter—almost ten minutes and it’s still going up; what the hell—then snaps his head back around just in time to intercept a long, serpent-shaped volley.

“You’re slowing down.”

It keeps coming.  The next one catches him from behind, and he tries to flip out of it, somersault back into standing, but his arm folds beneath him, leaving him flat on his back with an iceberg falling out of the sky aimed right at him.

He gets his hands up just in time, unleashing a full force blast to blow it away.  Ice shatters and goes everywhere, trailing melting water.  Gaze darting from one tumbling shard to the next, looking for the angle the next attack will come from, Katsuki’s eye catches on one liquid streamer.

It’s almost all water.  Geten can’t control water; that’s not what his meta-ability is and meta-abilities don’t just change.

And then a cloudy fragment of ice hits it from the side, goes solid white, and everything around it freezes.  This close to his face, Katsuki can feelthe temperature drop.

What the fuck.  What the fuck?!  Katsuki scrambles back to his feet just as the huge hand of ice snatches for him.

“What the fuck?!” he howls.  “You’re cheating!”

“No one’s cheating.  I just changed.” Above him, Geten’s got the hood up, so all Katsuki can see is those glowing eyes, but he can hearthe shit grinning as he answers, “It’s my win, Explosion.”

-

Masaru covers his face with one hand.  Even from the stands, he can hear the profanity.

“I am going to kick that kid’s ass for talking like that in front of everyone,” Mitsuki says beside him.

“Well, some frustration is understandable.”  The voice cuts in smoothly from the side, and both of them snap to attention.  “But he’s putting up an amazing fight, as always.”

Re-Destro waves aside their salutes and looks down towards the event, where Katsuki dangles in the air, arms pinned to his sides by the block of ice that at this point only barely resembles a fist.  He thrashes and yells, but the only sparks from his hands are sputtering and erratic, and the match counter stopped several seconds ago.

“You didn’t warn him about Geten’s evolution?” the Grand Commander asks lightly, and Mitsuki squares her shoulders.

“Our Katsuki was getting too proud,” she answers.  “Losing sight of the bigger picture.  He was overdue for something like this, and in the long run, it’ll be good for him.”  She pauses, a rare hesitation during which Re-Destro nods understanding, then continues.  “If I can ask, Grand Commander—what actually caused it?  The rumor mill’s been going crazy.”

“Ah.”  Re-Destro looks briefly abashed, rubbing at his nose with one knuckle.  “Well…  We had a small accident back in November.  A burn that needed attention.  There wasn’t enough ice to make a proper icepack, so Geten…  Changed the circumstances.”

“His burn, or someone else’s?”

“The latter.”

Mitsuki nodded.  “That’s why. Katsuki needs to learn who he’s fighting for.”

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Content Notes: Paranoid anti-government conspiracy theorists aren’t much fun to have as parents.

This fill features the PLF Advisor I affectionately refer to as Taser Face, this guy:

ok, time for plan b

The government tracked lightning users, that was the problem.  They were in high demand, not for being heroes, but for civil work, infrastructure stuff that looked boring as hell but paid like crazy.  Being even semi-good at grounding charges—much less being able to conduct them—meant you had pamphlets showing up in the mailbox practically the day you turned fourteen, incentive offers encouraging you to think about your future, your education, your “civic duty.”

Denki knew what his duty was, and it wasn’t to keep the gears of an oppressive society turning for a few more years before the Meta Liberation Army revolutionized it.  Not that the MLA didn’t want people in infrastructure, too, but…

“They use wiretaps,” Denki’s father used to mutter conspiratorially.  “They read your mail.  They’d chain you to the generators if they could get away with it, and seducing people with money is how they got as close as they can.”

The whole “become a lightning-themed hero instead” idea hadn’t gone over much better, obviously.  If Denki’s father had his way, the whole family would just live in the woods with no mailbox and train all day long.

His uncle—Mom’s older brother—had come to the rescue half a year later.

-

“Hey, throw it here!”

Galvanize pounded a fist into his open palm, then spread his hands out in front of him.  One of Denki’s cousins—they’d all been not-unsympathetically chucking handfuls of electricity and insults at him to recapture his attention every time it had strayed to  the town hall building—caught the lightning ball they’d been playing catch with and hurled it at his father like he was trying for a speed record.

The man caught it bare-handed then shook it out, sparks crawling down the backs of his hands and dispersing through his fingers.

“Got it,” he announced, and aimed a sharp grin at Denki that said, Like there was ever any doubt.  “If you think you’re up for it.”

Denki dropped all pretenses of caring about the game and dashed over.

“False identity,” turned out to be the answer.  “It’d mean moving in with some people we got up in Saitama.  They’ve got a space they need filled with a lightning meta; we got you.”

“I’ll do it.”  Denki didn’t hesitate; didn’t look for more than a second at his dad pushing his way out the door and stalking off towards the parking lot without a backward glance.

Cable TV.  Internet access.  Video games developed after 2145.  Trendy stores.  Modernity. How was a guy supposed to help bring liberation and the future to a backwards world when he didn’t even know what the present looked like?  The world was opening up in front of him, and no way was he gonna miss it.

“S’gonna mean not much chance to call home,” Galvanize warned.  “Your dad doesn’t want—”

“I’ll do it.”

-

Two years later, the world collapsed back into itself.  His friends were behind him.  Midnight-sensei ran alongside him.  And his uncle was striding out to the front of the crowd spilling out of the Villa, eyes locked on Denki’s, Amplivolt in hand.  He grinned—his old sharp grin, which hadn’t changed a bit, though his eyes weren’t unsympathetic.

Denki swallowed down the hard knob of fear in his throat; he blinked back stinging tears of panic and denial. He pounded a fist into his open palm, then spread his hands out in front of him.

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Notes for Bakugou:

• Destro Classic would like to stress that the mock battles he staged between parents and children featured adultchildren and he does not endorse staging live combat between grade-schoolers.
• Yuki-onna:Snow woman, among the better known Japanese youkai. Classically a killer in wintery times and high altitudes, but has a softer side in some stories, especially more modern ones.
• KatsukiwantedAll Might sneakers. He’s still an All Might fan, which is a complicated thing for him to navigate here, as you might imagine–hence Geten calling him a hero apologist. Masaru said he wasn’t allowed to pick hero merch as a reward for winning a Meta Liberation Army event, however.
• I suspect the tourneys (child and adult) have some intentional overlap with the U.A. Sports Festival. The U.A. Sports Festival has been said to have taken the place of the Olympics in HeroAca!Japan, and the MLA thinks that’s elitist garbage. They also don’t want too many of their own getting emotionally invested in hero students. For both reasons, they “counterprogram” with their own quirk-on-quirk showdowns.
• I have RD’s hometown as being somewhere up in the mountains in Nara, which is only something like 27% inhabitable land. Lots of room in that remaining 73% to build a village that the government mostly leaves alone because it seems to get on okay and it’s too much of a pain in the ass to get people up there anyway.
• Izuku is probably not in Katsuki’s life anymore in this AU. Is Geten a good replacement…? Well, they certainly push each other to br stronger, anyway! Just don’t ask about their moral development.

Notes for Kaminari:

• If Horikoshi doesn’t want to tell me about the alleged lucrative non-Hero jobs that account for there being so few lightning-powered heroes, I guess I’ll just have to make it up myself.
• Galvanize in my headcanon is a father of three and consequently resolutely unimpressed with Teenage Drama. He’s from the same hometown as Re-Destro and Trumpet.
• I also like the idea of Kaminari getting tangled with the MLA because he likes war novels with romantic elements+faddish cool things, and the wild popularity of the Destro memoir fits both of those criteria. This idea fit the prompt better, however.