Zap.
The mountaintop lodge -- or what was left of it -- vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Izuku Midoriya’s body was already collapsing before he’d even begun to teleport, but instead of crashing into the snow, he plopped into the swampy grossness back where he and, mostly, Kacchan had decided to go for the gold one more time. He landed with a squish, greenish-brown mud splashing up onto the t-shirt and shorts he’d been wearing for the majority of his time here, not even able to lift his head up to see the turtle Princess looking down at him.
Princess Bakugo gazed at him for a few moments, still bewildered by her own preemptive teleportation. When she’d been ejected from the high-altitude rumble, she hadn’t yet managed to find Deku amidst the chaos of the demolished ski lodge. To be quite honest, she’d spent the last few minutes assuming he was dead… and why wouldn’t she? He’d been broken, battered, and torn apart in less than two days, doing his usual Deku business and pushing himself too hard, putting himself out there, risking everything for some misplaced sense of duty and honor. As she looked down her nose at him, the thought crossed her mind -- as it probably had a multitude of times before, being in the unfortunately constant company of someone like this nerd -- that it was possible for someone to just be too good.
Face submerged in the mud, Deku disagreed. He could feel the last gasps of life oozing out of him, one of his arms completely shattered and the other pretty goddamn broken. His energy was completely sapped, and he felt weaker than he’d ever felt before, in his entire life. But his lips curled around the handle of an unlikely prize, a silver briefcase that no less than a whole squad of people had battered each other in pursuit of. He didn’t know what the hell was in it, but he knew one thing for certain: it was his. He’d won. Even almost completely destroyed from the bottom up, he could die happy knowing that he’d given his all, he’d done his best, and he’d managed to walk away the greatest -- the greatest… the great --
...the greatest what?
“Get up, you damn nerd,” the Princess scowled. Deku didn’t move. He couldn’t. If he could’ve seen Bakugo’s eyes, he might’ve seen just a hint of awe and surprise as it sank in that he had the briefcase with him. That somehow, even in his weakest of times, he’d still managed to be the strongest person on that entire battlefield. Stronger, even… than her?
Now, though, he was down for the count. “Deku,” Bakugo growled, stomping over and kneeling down to him. “Get the fuck up.” She reached down and flipped him over; he released the briefcase from his teeth and it fell into the swampy mud.
“I… I can’t,” he admitted, surprisingly sporting a smile.
“What the hell are you grinning about, you stupid fuck?!” she shouted, lifting his head up onto her lap. Deku idly wondered if the gesture was meant to be comforting, or if she was just further pushing him to get up; he didn’t know why, but the ambiguity pleased him. He and Kacchan had been friends for so long. They’d been through so much together, and not once had the explosive boy ever intentionally shown a lick of concern or genuine feeling for his green-haired rival. But he had to have some, right? They’d been together for so many years now, always at each other’s throats, always nipping at each other’s heels… and Kacchan hadn’t ever left. Certainly he’d thought about it -- Izuku had no doubt -- but he hadn’t left him. Kacchan had been the most constant thing in his life, since he was a little boy… aside from his dream, of course.
His biggest dream. Yeah,
that one.
To be the greatest --
Slap!
“Get up or you’ll never be the best gyro chef this island’s ever seen, you little bitch,” Princess Bakugo’s hand flew across the boy’s face, as if he wasn’t already in enough pain. Despite the violence, though, Deku’s smile never abated; he felt his breaths slowing, and he knew the last beats of his heart were coming very soon, but… surprisingly, he didn’t care.
“I’m going to die a hero,” he smiled, tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m going to die the greatest hero this island has ever seen. And I’m gonna be… I’m gonna be smiling when I do it.”
“First of all,” Princess Bakugo scowled, “you aren’t going to fucking die. I still -- you just aren’t.” She bit her lip, and Deku wondered for a few moments if she was actually
sad that his lights were about to go out? He got no small measure of satisfaction from that, too. “Secondly, I thought you’d decided you wanted to be a fucking chef?!”
He closed his eyes. “I… think,” the boy started, “I think I just didn’t think I had it in me.”
“What?” the Princess asked.
“I think when I lost my memories… I was just so low,” he felt his cheeks tensing up, more tears spilling forth. “I think I just doubted that I was meant to be the Crossroads’ greatest hero. I didn’t think I was good enough anymore, Kacchan. Just… the expulsion. And Kenji. I’ve failed so many people, right? I’ve fallen down so many times.” The images started to fly back into his brain, his memory jolted by the prospect of death. He used whatever strength he had left to turn his head to look at the briefcase, half-buried in the swampy muck. He felt his cheek plop onto Bakugo’s leg, and he couldn’t deny that even in death it sent a warmth through him he couldn’t deny.
“But I didn’t fail you,” he continued, nodding towards the Easter Egg. “I got it, Kacchan. Even though I didn’t think I could. Even though nobody did. I got the fucking prize for you. I didn’t fail you. You’ve always been there, Kacchan. You’ve always been with me, and I’ve never lived up to what you wanted from me, but… I didn’t fail this time. Right?”
The girl who’d once been Katsuki Bakugo scowled deeply and didn’t respond. Deku thought he might’ve heard a grunt, but there was no way to decipher what it meant.
After a moment, she finally spoke up. “You fucking idiot,” she said, “this is so goddamn needlessly dramatic. Have you even fucking checked the briefcase to see if it’s something that might get you off your melodramatic deathbed?”
Izuku blinked. He, uh, hadn’t. “No,” he said sheepishly.
Bakugo reached over and grabbed the case, slamming it down on Izuku’s face. His broken nose lit up with pain, and he would’ve screamed if the metal of the Easter Egg’s canister hadn’t literally been blocking any sound from exiting his mouth, exactly as Bakugo had intended it. She reached inside and pulled out the weird looking book, holding it up and shoving the briefcase off of Deku’s face and back into the depths of the swamp. She grunted again, and tried her best to explain it. “It’s, uh… a fucking book. Or something,” she shrugged, “it’s got pictures. And, it’s, like, backwards. And the words are in Japanese.”
Deku’s face scrunched quizzically again. What in the name of the Arbiter was ‘
Japanese’?
Above him, Princess Bakugo skimmed. She’d never been much of a reader, truly, and at this point, she was willing to try anything to get Deku to stop fucking whining, so she shoved him off her and then did her best to help him to his feet, against his many protestations that she ‘shouldn’t worry about him’ and ‘he was a lost cause, he was sorry, Kacchan’.
Deku watched, shakily standing on his two pretty exhausted legs, as Kacchan looked at the book, then looked at him, then looked back at the book. “So I’m not exactly sure what this shit does,” she shrugged, “but whatever it is, it looks like we have to get in these positions.” She turned the book towards him, and he squinted to try and see the pictures, and decipher them since they seemed to be going from right to left instead of left to right. Suddenly, something horrific -- or scarily exciting, he couldn’t quite tell -- dawned on him, and he went pale and red in the cheeks at the same time.
“What the hell?!” he screeched. “Is this a…” he paused for a moment, and then lowered his voice to a whisper, even though ostensibly no one was around. “...is this a book of sex positions?! Like the
Kama Sutra?!”
Bakugo’s talons exploded spontaneously, singing the edges of the book. “What the fuck?!” she shouted, having no regard for trying to keep their position a secret. “
NO, Deku. This is not a book of
sex positions. If this book was telling me I had to fuck you, I would let your ass die.”
Deku nodded, strangely disappointed. “Then what does it do?”
“I have no fucking clue,” the Princess replied, “but let’s just get it over with.”
And with that, they -- very slowly, to compensate for young Midoriya being, uh, totally rekt -- walked themselves through something called ‘the Fusion Dance.’ It was intricate, and took them several tries to get right, but finally, they managed to make it to the last move, which had them bending over sideways and touching their index fingers while saying the word ‘HA!’ as loud as they could manage. Deku’s eyes flitted to Princess Bakugo at the end, in the split second after they’d finished. For just a second, he saw a vision of himself grabbing her hands, pulling himself to her, and kissing her on the lips, acting on the tension that had been between them since she’d transformed near the beginning of this competition.
The tension that had been between them… their whole life? He blinked slowly, thinking back on their experiences together, how he’d always found himself following at Katsuki Bakugo’s heels, no matter what shit they went through together. He’d never really considered that the draw was anything other than heroic admiration, because… well, because Kacchan was a boy.
Did that… did that matter?
Images flashed in his brain. His anxiety when he’d woken up in Kenji’s bed. The way he’d felt when Todoroki’s hand brushed his shoulder. The thrill he got when he and Kacchan fought, when he could feel the spitfire boy’s skin touching his own.
Hm. He supposed, maybe, it didn’t actually matter at all.
Neat.
Just as that thought entered his head, a great, blinding light filled the swampy clearing, and Izuku Midoriya and Princess Bakugo ceased to exist. When the sunset-drenched grove finally reappeared, someone wholly new stood in their place.
Princess Dekugo was majestic. Neither boy nor girl, neither princess nor would-be hero, neither bright-eyed wonder or explosive sass-master. They existed simply, a perfect mesh of Midoriya and Bakugo, with emerald green, blonde-highlighted hair, hard features but soft, round, cheeks, toned for days. Princess Bakugo’s animal implementations remained -- the turtle shell, the tail, the talons -- as well as her, uh… explosive personality, but combined with the moral piety and unmatched super strength of young Izuku.
They were a hero who would would strive to bring smiles to everyone they met, and say a big ol’ fuck you to anyone who tried to stop them.
And fuck, they felt
brand new.
Princess Dekugo appearance coming soon but they're an androgynous smashing beast!
Princess Dekugo (they/them) has arrived. Smile, bitches!
