"The fox changes his fur but not his habits." – Anonymous

Midoriya Izumi is born wailing. A crying waif of a girl with a riot of green curls, eyes the colour of copper-sulfate flames and magic bubbling hot and bright beneath her skin.

Inko stares, exhausted and flushed with the new glow of motherhood, down at her beautiful baby girl cradled in her arms. The family is gathered in close, all jostling for a glimpse at their newest addition. Cries of happiness and yips of celebration ring out through the forest around them.

Inko runs her pinkie finger down her daughter's short stub of a nose, sweeping it under her fragile eye and over the bright apple of her chubby cheek all in one smooth motion. She quiets almost immediately, and her big, green eyes stare up at Inko with far too much intelligence for a freshly born babe to have.

But, well. Izumi is no normal infant.

"Welcome to the world," Inko whispers over the shouts around her. "It will shake beneath your feet, my sha'alabbin."

Izumi is bundled into a cozy nursery decorated with forest greens and soft golds nestled in the center of a large manor at the edge of a small, sleepy town. She's the first child born to the Midoriya skulk in over twenty years, is the first of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter. A legacy of batsheva.

There's not a moment in her young life where Izumi does not know she's loved, that she's cherished.

She is a fox, and foxes are clever. Even she, still tender with infancy and still so ignorant to the world and how it works-but learning, oh, how quickly she learns-she knows this. Foxes are clever and she is a fox and so she knows because it is obvious.

That doesn't stop her from crying when she thinks she's alone of course. Object permanence takes longer to grasp than the love she shares with her skulk.

No one in town can agree on exactly how many Midoriyas there are. Because no matter how friendly they are or how long they've lived on the edge of town, they're still deeply private people, keeping to themselves when there aren't town meetings or gatherings to attend. Not to mention that there always seems to be some strange relative visiting from one place or another, family friends staying for this reason or that.

But the townspeople, whenever asked, always seem to agree that there can't be more than twelve at the house full time.

(There's more than double that living within the manor. None of the family ever corrects them.)

Izumi's first word is momma.

Her second is why?

Her third is how?

Such a curious child, with questions spinning and whirling behind her eyes too fast to keep up with. She babbles non-stop, not quite words falling from her lips quicker than anyone can keep up with, including herself.

She cries when the skulk can't understand her. Cries when her thoughts move too quickly for her to keep up with. Cries when she's frustrated, hungry, sad, happy- Cries, cries, cries.

All children cry when they're young, but Midoriya Izumi never gets the memo to stop. Instead, she turns it into her most sophisticated form of communication. Living in a house full of foxes is useful when they can smell the chemicals in your tears and hear the stuttering of your heartbeat.

Most communication between foxes is non-verbal anyway. So she does just fine, all things considered.

For the first few years, foxes are normal for the most part. Human, except for perhaps the ears and tail.

It's not until they're older that the strength comes in, or the strange affinity for words and Promises. It's not until they're older that magic begins pressing down on them with a suffocatingly affectionate weight, possessive in all things it deems to own.

At least, it shouldn't. But as with so many things, the fledgeling curse the Midoriyas are under complicates everything it touches.

It's a good thing Inko had already been planning to be a stay at home mother, because Izumi is barely a year old and dances with magic like they are old friends. It clings to her in a way it hasn't touched any of the skulk in years. Not since the curse that was meant to kill them bound them to their own land instead.

It worries Inko because her daughter is bright and clever and beloved. But magic and fate cling to her soul and no matter how much they may love their avatars, those great heroes of myth and legend, it does not stop them from breaking under the weight of destiny and consequences.

But for now, Izumi is allowed to just be her daughter and there is nowhere else Inko would rather be. So she stays at the family home even when the skulk could take care of her daughter as she worked, and she watches with pride and affection as her little Izumi grows and grows and grows.

Sat on Auntie Umi's lap, Izumi hums without a care in the world.

Her aunt's long riot of black curls is pulled up on top of her head, safely out of reach and so Izumi twists her tiny hands in the strings of beads hanging around her neck instead.

There are dozens of them carefully beaded onto the strings. As Izumi touches them, she knows, not sure how or why, but she knows that they are not normal beads. Electricity jolts up her arms as she touches them and they shine with a light that no normal glass bead has.

Everyone in the family has some, prettily coloured not-beads hanging from necks and wrists and ears. Nona has the most of them all, her entire right arm jangling and clinking with all the jewellery she has.

She asks then, because she's never been good at keeping her words or questions to herself, has never been good at being silent. The ideas and thoughts are too big and too many to keep neatly tucked away inside her head. Uncle Kyo says that's going to get her into trouble someday. Uncle Kyo says that a silent fox is a clever fox, but Izumi doesn't think that sounds quite right.

Her thoughts are too loud to keep them all inside. But then, she thinks, maybe she's just a bad fox.

"They're Promises, little kit." Auntie Umi carefully untangles her fingers from the strings before playfully nipping at them and making her laugh. "Favors and debts and prizes I've won fair and square."

"Like in a game?"

Auntie Umi smiles in that way that tells her she got it only kind of right. "Yes. I suppose it is quite like a game."

Once she's old enough to go walking about the town and actually interact with the people in it, Izumi easily steals the hearts of everyone she meets. The townspeople quickly grow used to having her underfoot, always running about and asking questions and seemingly unintentionally causing mischief wherever she turns.

She's such a curious and bright child. Spends hours upon hours reading any book she can get her hands on. Her eyes are a constant flicker of green, taking in everything around her with a sharpness no toddler should have. Watching, learning, remembering. Gorging herself on knowledge of any kind.

The librarians start to recognize and dot on her, so ardent in her pursuit of knowledge. They regularly give her treats and gifts, things Izumi takes and then repays as quickly as possible by helping to reshelve books or run errands or speak to the pixies living in the shelves to give back what they took when someone loses something valuable.

("You are not fae," her Nona says, "You are Shual Nephesh but debts are power just the same and you'll do well to remember to never let another hold power over you, sha'alabbin.")

She's the darling of the town and Inko gets many offers for babysitting if she ever needs it and playdates with the few other kids around his age.

Izumi always comes back home with more beads on her arms when she plays with the other kids.

Inko watches as she puts every one on her left wrist, never looking at them again, and finds herself smiling for no reason she can discern.

Izumi has two names: the one she's allowed to tell people and the real one.

Well, they're both real, she supposes. Just in distinctly different ways.

The secret one though-the one she's never told anyone because it's the one written on her soul-that one has power.

All names have power, of course. It's why foxes have two and why The Good Neighbors are so careful to never speak their own and why demons have none, their angelic names burned and lost in the Fall.

But the secret name Izumi holds close to her heart, always so careful to protect, that one has power all on its own. Only her mother and Nona know it. Her mother, because she gave it to her, and Nona because she is Matriarch, leader and protector of them all. It's her right to know it, just as it's Izumi's to do with as she pleases.

It's an Olde Name. One that is written only in the hearts of storytellers and hidden quietly in the wishes of victims yet to be saved.

Anyone can understand what it means. Somewhere in the back of their minds where instinct and history live, they know this name. The translation, should one know the path they must walk for this truth, would be easy.

Savior.

Izumi is three and the weight of names, so ignorantly given, press behind her teeth like acidic bile. Bitter on her tongue and making her ache with holding them all in. She has dozens of beads on her left wrist, pretty and light and filled and jangling with names she doesn't want. Promises she didn't earn.

Her mother tells her the humans don't know what it is they give away, that they cannot begin to understand the Promises they make. She tells her that humans can't feel the weight of Magic on their skin like she can.

Izumi thinks that's very sad. These poor mortals, deaf even to the magic floating around them when they are already clueless to so much.

It makes her want to protect them. Keep them safe from those that would use their ignorance without thought. Those who would play malicious tricks and spit cruel taunts of their superiority.

She tells her mother this childish wish and watches her smile, even as it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"How tiny you are for such large ambitions," she tells her and playfully taps her nose, causing it to wrinkle.

"I'll grow!" she insists, chest puffing out and tail fluffing to twice its normal size. "I'll grow big and strong and I'll be able to save everyone."

"Yes," she says, with that same sad smile. "Just like All Might, right?"

Izumi giggles and cheers at being compared to her hero, her idol, and in her chest, Inko's heart remains steady, does not pause for even a moment. Because Inko has known this since Izumi was born. From that first moment her beautiful daughter had drawn breath, Inko had known. For all that Izumi seems too fragile and small now, one day…

One day Midoriya Izumi will be mighty.

There's something strange about Izumi's family.

She's always known they aren't quite normal, of course. Not by any human standard at least.

Half her family walks around with ears and tails most of the time and as brightly colored foxes for the rest. Lessons on illusions and glamours replace her bedtime stories and family time is always a mess of riddles and puzzles and languages that have never touched mortal lips.

So, no. Not normal, but there's something else. Something no one ever speaks to her about.

She asks why she can't go outside without hiding her tail and ears under the heady magics of a glamour, asks why she can't speak about Nona and the outings they all have in the forest. Asks and asks and asks about why they must keep so many secrets. Why she always has to lie.

The only answer she ever really gets is: "So we can stay safe, sha'alabbin."

Nobody ever tells her what they're supposed to be staying safe from.

Tricksters-masters of illusion and rule-bending, beings who are as clever as they are troublesome-are rarely ever held in place by bindings. Their magic is too slippery for it. Nothing like the proud dragons who hold magic in their throats or the rigid Nephilim, so solid in their convictions.

The magic of Shaalim Nephashoth twists and reshapes around harmful magic. A natural defence for creatures that regularly make enemies, who so often play pranks and tricks on important people. It takes a powerful magic user to bind a fox, and even then, they can normally find some way to wiggle their way out of it.

To subdue an entire skulk of foxes, well… The Takanashi clan may have been powerful hunters in their own rights, backed by sheer numbers if not skill, but they were no Grand Coven. While the foxes were indeed bound to the land they used to reign over proudly, they were in no way trapped as the hunters would've liked to believe.

The forest was not their tomb, and they did not run scared.

No. The Midoriya skulk sought the penance for that failed life debt and they sought it to be repaid in flesh and blood and pain.

You do not wrong the Yōkai. Not if you're smart. Not if you wish to live happily.

(Not if you wish to live.)

It happened like this.

Izumi is born quirkless but not powerless. Power runs through her veins, floats around her in the air she breathes. Power is her birthright, is hers to control and do with as she pleases even through the hunters' irritating magical barrier.

(She is the daughter of batsheva. She is Shual Nephesh. There is little she could not do if she wished it.)

But she is quirkless and the power she wields is not one easily passed off as a quirk. Not with how the skulk is still hiding in shadows, not when there are still Takanshis lurking around for them to make a mistake, to reveal themselves.

A quirkless child is just as noticeable as a powerful one in this age of petty beliefs and false demi-gods.

So a few days after Izumi turns four, the skulk tells anyone who asks that she has enhanced senses. Can smell a baking cake a mile away or hear you humming over the roar of a lawnmower. Perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary, perfect for underestimating her.

Perfect for hiding in plain sight.

It is not perfect for being a hero. Not perfect for saving everyone as Izumi longs to, as she will.

Now, when Izumi is excitedly and happily babbling about being the best hero ever and saving everyone in Japan (because Inko hasn't told her yet, hasn't yet dared to crush her dream with the unbearable truth) she's met only with pitying looks.

Oh, they whisper behind their hands, that poor girl will never make it. That poor girl with the world in her heart will get herself killed because she's not strong enough, not big enough, not powerful enough.

Izumi hears them, because her enhanced senses are not a lie even if everything else is. She can hear the way their heartbeats stutter in their chest when they tell her how much they believe in her, how they'll be cheering her on all the way.

And Izumi doesn't understand. She is clever and smart and powerful but she's still too young. She hears all of this and doesn't understand. She wants to yell at them. Wants to scream that she can, that she's enough.

The truth burns on her tongue and Izumi wants to tell them everything so they'll just stop.

She doesn't. Instead, she swallows her words and bears the weight of it all. Every lie and pitiful look and useless piece of advice. Izumi will be a hero, whether anybody believes in her or not.

The townspeople are not mean and they are not cruel.

In fact, they're very kind and Izumi loves them all in that way she so adores the best bits of humanity. She thinks it would be easier to bear the disappointment of their lack of belief if they were hard-hearted and terrible.

But they aren't.

And Izumi's not sure how to feel about it.

She starts kindergarten with the ten other kids her age and finds she learns much faster than anybody can keep up with. Her small-town school can't keep up with her.

They don't let her skip kindergarten, because she's meant to learn to socialize, but when she's meant to be starting first grade, she's sitting in a second-grade classroom instead, a spinning dervish of thoughts and ideas and questions half everyone's size.

The second graders all call her Imouto-san and Izumi grins as she swings her feet beneath her too-big desk. No one else can see it, but Izumi's tail wags fast enough to cause the wind to knock all of Hiro-san's papers off his desk.

She apologizes, but can't quite stop herself from doing it again.

Time moves on, and Izumi grows, but she does not change. Not really. Not in the ways that matter.

Magic still sings in her blood and sometimes, if she asks nicely and pays its price, it will do things for her. Not just glamours and charms but impossible things that not even her Nona can do anymore.

(She is a batsheva legacy, is the first Shual Nephesh born to the Midoriya Skulk in decades, and she is fit to bursting with power. Sometimes, her Skulk wonders what she'd be like if not for the cage she'd been born into. Those wonderings never get far.)

She's still the town darling, sweet and kind enough to soften even Old Man Watanabe's heart. She still cries and laughs often, and is still a bleeding heart.

It's after school one day, when Izumi is walking home that she passes by the park. She normally likes to take the path through the forest to get home, that way she can run as fast as she wants with no one asking questions. But today was sunny and she wanted to enjoy it a little.

But as she walks in front of the gate, she hears the pained cry of someone being pushed over.

Her ears swivel towards the sound automatically, her head following a second later. When the scene registers, Izumi is jumping over the fence, uncaring of the questions that might arise.

"Hey!" she yells, running full-tilt at the pair of third graders standing above Yashiro, one of her classmates. He was a soft-spoken kind of boy, shy but always nice to her.

The two older kids, twins she thinks, though she doesn't know their names, turn to look at her. Their matching, glimmering insect wings buzz behind them in shock at her sudden arrival as she plants herself in front of Yashiro.

She puts her hands on her hips and tries to make the same face Nana Naoki makes when she's particularly cross. "It's not nice to push people," she says scoldingly. "You should apologize."

The twins look hesitant now that she's standing there despite the fact she's half their size and weighs about thirty-eight pounds soaking wet.

Everyone in town knows who she is. And if, by some strange circumstance they don't, they know her family. The green hair and eyes can only mean one thing after all, and while no one is quite sure why, everyone knows better than to cross the Midoriyas.

(There's just something about them, the air they carry, that makes one very careful to not provoke them.)

When neither twin makes any move to either leave or do as she says, Izumi hums meaningfully, the air around her turning stifling. The girl grumbles, glaring behind Izumi.

"He should've stayed out of our way," is all she says before grabbing her brother and walking out of the park.

Izumi's mouth twists, because that was not an apology, but she brushes it off to turn around. Yashiro has pulled himself to his knees and is gathering the things that fell from his book bag. Izumi kneels to help.

"Are you okay?" she asks. She doesn't smell any blood and his heartbeat sounds normal, but she thinks it's polite to ask anyway.

Yashiro looks at her, cheeks pink and shoulders up to his ears. "Yes, I- Thank you, Midoriya."

She grins, handing him his pencil bag, newly refilled with his pencils. "Anytime!"

It becomes a thing. The whole, 'Izumi stepping in between schoolyard squabbles' thing.

She's not really sure how or why, but after that first time, it's almost like she's tuned into the sound of distress. It gets to the point that other kids almost expect her to step in, even if she's nowhere to be found or anywhere near where it's happening.

(Sometimes, she can even hear kids using the threat of her name to ward off bullies rather than saying they'll tell a teacher. It makes something warm bloom in her chest every time.)

The arguments are never anything serious, and cases of bullying like with Yashiro and the twins are few and far between. The townspeople are good and so are all the kids. But, children get rowdy or into stupid fights over toys or someone accidentally fires off their quirk.

It doesn't quite matter how or why a situation pops up, because, for no real discernible reason, Izumi always finds herself stepping in the middle of it to play mediator.

Which is okay. She wouldn't do it if she minded or anything, and it's not like she can really stop herself from doing it either. She just… moves when she hears voices raised. Like some strange sort of pavlovian response.

It's not a problem. In fact, it's great because Izumi is saving people, even if it's only in small ways (but that's okay for now, she'll work her way up to bigger ones) and the other townspeople have started to stop looking at her so pitifully, so distressingly.

And, well. It's not quite what she wanted, and it's not the reason she's doing any of this anyway, but it feels… nice. Like a weight lifted from her shoulders she didn't know was there.

Four months after it all becomes a Thing, Izumi gets into a fight.

Not on purpose, because she never seems to do these things on purpose, but she steps in the middle of an argument she probably shouldn't have. The bigger boy, Daiki, has some impressive anger issues and a quirk that makes people around him just as angry as he is.

She's interrupted many altercations between him and some poor kid who'd set off his quirk accidentally, using soothing words to calm down both kids.

But now, it seems her luck with Daiki has run out, because the moment she opens her mouth he's already screaming at her. The anger is just there, suddenly. Burning and acidic at the base of her throat but she swallows it. It's not the first time she's been near him and she knows how to handle it.

Or she does until he throws a punch at her. The control snaps and for the first time in her young life, Izumi is furious.

The blow to her cheek had snapped her head to the side and when she turns back to look at him, her eyes are all burning flames and rage. There's the taste of copper and iron on her tongue and she bares her teeth in a ferocious snarl that has Daiki stepping back.

Later, she'll feel unbearably sorry and embarrassed enough to spend an entire day making cookies with her mom to give to Daiki as an apology. But right now? Right now, Izumi looks over this boy and finds him lacking.

She looks at him through the haze of red, can hear the rabbit-quick beating of his heart over the whispers of magic twinning at her fingertips, and Izumi leaps.

She gets in trouble. Obviously.

But everyone knows her and they know Daiki's quirk. They aren't really mad at her for fighting, but they are mad at her for biting and scratching Daiki enough to draw blood and send him to the nurse.

(She had fought dirty. Fought the only way she knew how, with her teeth and claws and her wicked sharp mind.)

Izumi cries after the haze of Daiki's quirk falls away. Babbles apology after apology through the hot burn and hiccups of her tears. She didn't want that to happen, didn't want to hurt anyone like that.

When her mom comes to pick her up from the principal's office she looks disapproving. When they get home, Nona calls to see her and she looks disappointed.

Izumi wants to burrow into the ground and never come back up.

When Nona asks why she had gotten into a fight like that, Izumi has to explain it all. Daiki's quirk and the interrupting situations and stopping big kids from picking on little ones. She can't tell what Nona's thinking when she finishes but she doesn't ask.

A good fox, her Nona says after a long moment, is a smart fox.

A smart fox avoids fights. A smart fox does not seek them out. A smart fox does not fight for everyone. A smart fox, when they absolutely must, only fights for themselves and what is theirs and nothing else.

Izumi, for all that she tries to be, is not a good fox. But she knew that. The whole skulk knew that.

She's too loyal. Too stubborn. Cares too much about innocents, about the humans. She wants to be a hero. Wants to save everyone she meets and even the people she hasn't. That want, that need, burns in her chest even now. It's only grown hotter and wilder as she grew up, as she watched all her heroes swooping in to save the day on the news.

In her heart of hearts, she knows one day she'll be on that screen too. No matter how un-fox-like it is.

So when her Nona tells her to only fight for what is hers, all Izumi says is okay.

She does not argue. She does not barter. She knows it will get her nowhere.

Instead, she takes every person she meets, every innocent she can reach, and makes them hers.

She Promises to fight for them, Promises to win for them, promises everything she has to all those strangers that are now hers. And, at the tender age of six, a shackle twines itself around her right wrist with all the vicious intensity of her vow, all the heartfelt affection she holds for the world and people in it.

Izumi binds herself to the world and the world binds itself back.

Her Nona sets her mouth in a firm line, but behind her, Izumi sees her mom's proud smile. And for Izumi… for Izumi that is enough.

Izumi is seven when she meets a boy with fireflies in his palms and caramel buried in his skin.

He moves into the house next door, almost half a mile down the road, and Izumi can hear him and his mother scream at each other for an hour before it suddenly stops, the sound of a door slamming echoing into the air.

The next day, the mom and boy show up on their porch. Izumi answers the door.

Katsuki stares up at the looming, old house, the unsettlingly murderous glare on his child-like face all but set in stone by his seething rage.

He didn't want to be here in this nowhere-town with a bunch of useless nobodies. He wanted to be back at his old school, where everyone told him how great he was and always did what he said. Here, in this stupid small town, there were barely even any kids to order around.

It made Katsuki angry.

But the Old Hag and his Pops didn't seem to care, no matter how much he yelled and cried and demanded to stay. They just packed him up and moved out to this stupid house that's apparently been in his mom's family for generations.

It looked old and smelled like mothballs.

Katsuki hated it and he hated his stupid weirdo grandfather for dying and all but demanding in his Will that they come here to live instead. What did it matter to him? He was dead!

Katsuki is alive and almost eight years old and it's the end of the world.

"Oh," the Old Hag says in surprise when the door opens. "Hello there, cutie."

Standing at the open door is, instead of some adult, a fluffy green-haired girl almost an entire head shorter than himself and absolutely covered in freckles. She's half-hidden behind the door and keeps looking between him and his mom rapidly.

Katsuki glares at her, baring his teeth in the hopes she'll run away scared like all the other girls from his school did.

Instead, she just blinks at him and beams, sunshine bright and delighted.

It doesn't get better from there.

Izumi stares at the boy with fireflies in his palms and can't help but think this. This is what she's been waiting for. This boy with power bursting from skin too small to hold it all and Fate clinging at his heels.

This boy who's like me in all the ways no one else has ever been.

The boy, Bakugou Katsuki, does not think so. In fact, he doesn't seem to like Izumi at all.

Izumi tries not to take the yelling and insults personally. Katsuki is upset and angry and sad. On unfamiliar land with people he doesn't know. Izumi would be scared too.

When she says that to Katsuki, she only gets shoved to the ground by blisteringly hot palms.

"I'm not scared, idiot!" His heartbeat stutters in his chest. "Stay away from me!"

So Izumi does. For a little while, at least.

She gives him a week.

For all his screamed insults and crude personality, Izumi finds there's much more hiding beneath the surface of one volatile Bakugou Katsuki.

Her first glimpse is when he walks into her third-grade classroom despite him being her age. Izumi grins at him when he enters, eyes bright as he takes the seat in front of her. He's smart, apparently. Smart enough to skip a grade like her, or perhaps just hard-working enough to overcompensate.

Izumi watches him throughout class, sees the way he takes notes and asks questions, and thinks that perhaps, it's a combination of the two.

He wants to be a hero like her.

Wants to fight and win and beat back the darkness with his fists and teeth and sheer tenacity.

It's different from what she thought a hero should be, different from the kind of hero she wants to be. Battle versus rescue, an image of unyielding victory versus the quiet kind of hope she wants to plant in people's hearts.

This new side of heroics fascinates her and she can't help asking about it. She wants to know everything, always has, always will. Though… perhaps she should have realized her non-stop questions would set off the short-tempered blond.

"Holy fuck," he exclaims, causing Izumi's eyes to go wide. "Do you ever shut up?"

She opens her mouth and closes it. Then, "No. Not really."

His scowl is the kind that curdles milk and perhaps Izumi should be offended or scared or any type of normal reaction, but instead, she just grins and offers to share some of her sour gummies. He takes them all, snapping his teeth at her like he expects her to protest but she only laughs.

Katsuki is sharp and feral like the cats in the forest and Izumi thinks perhaps it's just that he's never been shown the right kind of kindness. She knows better than anyone how an environment shapes a person.

There's a whisper in the air when Izumi looks at him. A voice just at the edge of her hearing. It tells her to pay attention. Pay attention to this half molded boy standing at the crossroads of destiny. Pay attention to him because he's going to be important.

And, well. If that's true then Izumi is hardly going to let his bad mood chase her away.

Katsuki holds out for an entire month before Izumi's constant giggling laughs and habit of following him around town wears him down. The other kids are stupid and don't like how he yells. They don't do as he says and that pisses him off so he yells more and the cycle starts all over again.

So, Katsuki decides that even practically useless, annoying, Izumi is better than no friends at all.

"Why do you do that?" he asks her angrily one day. She's climbing down from a tree, kitten held in her arms and she stares at him in confusion, head tilted to the side.

"Do what?"

"That!" he says as she happily passes the kitten to the preschooler he belonged to. She waves the toddler off with a grin while Katsuki fumes at her side. "You're always sticking your nose where it doesn't belong, doing stupid things for everybody and running around town like a chicken with its damn head cut off. Why?"

She's always running off. Always so busy because she's agreed to help this person or do that thing. Doesn't she ever just stop?

Izumi blinks, before thinking over the question carefully.

"Why do you want to be a hero?" Katsuki glares, mouth already opening to demand a real answer, not a stupid question to his question, but Izumi speaks over him. "No. Really think, Katsuki. You say it's because you want to win, to prove you're the best, but you could do that in dozens of other jobs. You could be an MMA fighter, or a bounty hunter, or even join the armed forces. Become a colonel or something. So, why do you want to be a pro hero?"

She- He doesn't- That isn't-

Katsuki glares at her when he can't come up with an answer. Saying he wants to be better than All Might sounds childish, and… it's not really what Izumi's asking anyway. But, he doesn't know the answer to the question she asked. He's just… always known that's what he'd do, from the very first moment he'd learned what a hero was. He never bothered with anything else, never bothered to question why.

Izumi just stares at him, her gaze digging into him with burning intensity like none of his secrets or thoughts are safe from her.

"The answer isn't in your head or your fists, you know," she says, looking away to pick up her bright yellow bag covered in hero stickers and pins. When she turns back, her eyes are filled with a secretive light. She pokes his chest lightly. "It's in there."

Katsuki's unusually quiet for the next three days and Izumi starts to worry she's messed up. Worries that she might have pushed too far too fast.

But then, she catches him climbing a tree, just to pick the brightest apple to give to a little girl, watches him immediately grab the rest of Old Man Watanabe's groceries she couldn't carry herself. He grumbles and shouts and rages the entire time, but then, he wouldn't be Katsuki if he wasn't acting like he was pissed at something.

Izumi can tell he's pleased though when Old Man Watanabe thanks them. Hears his heart trip over the lie when he says he doesn't give a damn what he thinks, causing the two temperamental blonds to begin squabbling like a couple of old fishwives.

(Izumi tried hiding her giggles behind her hand, but she doesn't think she succeeded since Katsuki started yelling at her too.)

It's not long after that when Katsuki becomes Kacchan and Izumi becomes Izu or nerd or crybaby or a thousand other throw away, half-insulting nicknames.

Katsuki bears his name with as much elegance he can muster-which isn't a lot-but Izumi, on the other hand, is absolutely delighted by the nicknames, even the insulting ones.

Katsuki never quite understands her obsession with nicknames, with being so very careful about introducing herself. The third time Izumi tries explaining the power of names without giving away magic and skulks and the world hidden in the stars that she'll never get to share with her best friend-and the fourth time she'd cried over it-she gets a determined look in her eye.

The next moment, both her hands are on Katsuki's chest, right above that soft place where your ribs begin to fall away. The pressure is firm and ungentle, because there is no room for gentleness in what Izumi is about to do. Not anymore.

Katsuki doesn't have a second name, not like Izumi does. He wears his soul on his sleeve and that terrifies Izumi so she's going to fix it.

The thing about a name, is that it's not just what someone calls you.

A name is a brand upon your soul. A name is the story that your entire being is dedicated to writing. A name is the culmination of everything that you were, that you are, that you will ever be.

It is the key that unlocks you, that most easily makes you vulnerable.

Izumi places her hand over that key, tenderly grabs that thing inside Katsuki that makes him all that he is, was, will ever be, and then she rips it from its lock. Izumi takes her first true friend and reforges him into something else, something better, something he was always meant to be.

Katsuki screams for only a moment. And then…

The fireflies in his palms turn to stars.

Bakugou Katsuki has two names.

The first one, is the one he was born with, the one he's told everyone his entire life was his name.

The other is the one his strange, otherworldly best friend burns into him at the tender age of seven years old.

It's an Olde Name. One that is painted across cave walls in human blood and tucked neatly behind the teeth of every battlefield corpse.

Anyone can understand what it means. Somewhere in the back of their minds where instinct and history live, they know this name. The translation, if one was willing to pay the price for such knowledge, would be easy.

Warrior.

After, Izumi whispers her name in his ear. Her other name, the one she should never tell unless she's absolutely sure she can trust them (because it is an Olde name, because she is batsheva legacy, because she holds too much power in her chest to be so careless with it even if she can do with it as she pleases).

But Izumi knows she can trust Kacchan because he's Kacchan. If she could've, she might've waited longer to tell him. Until her birthday maybe or after she convinced him to stop handing his name out to anyone who asks.

But things changed. She knows his name, she chose his name. It's only fair he knows hers.

Katsuki doesn't quite know what it means to be given this gift, just like he doesn't quite know what it is Izumi did to him, but he promises to guard it all the same.

Katsuki and Izumi become practically attached at the hip after that, something nobody saw coming. Everyone in town half believed their pair would end up killing each other-or, more likely, that Katsuki would eventually kill Izumi.

By all accounts, the two should have crumbled under the weight of their volatile differences. Blown up under the strength of Katsuki's anger or fallen apart at the seams through Izumi's strange and skittish ways.

But it's the most miraculous thing. Those two opposites that never should have mixed coming together and working in a way no one can quite explain. They use their differences to build each other up rather than knocking them down, compensating naturally for what the other lacks.

Where Izumi-strange, selfless, little Izumi-prefers to use her mind and heart to solve the problems she's always running at without a seconds thought, Katsuki, her ever-present shadow, uses his fists and sharp tongue as his opening move. A bleeding heart paired next to a human explosion of passion and brutality.

For every insult Katsuki sees fit to fling, Izumi is right behind him with an apology and kind words as if she was created to temper the blond.

For all the times Izumi is too caught up in her own mind, thoughts too loud and emotions too high and all the variables too much, Katsuki is there to snap her out of it with easy decisions and barked orders.

They ebb and flow around one another. An ever-present push and pull between the two that sparks up into stubborn drive and exuberant competition. For all their differences, there are some places where they're just too similar. But it's those that allow them to function as a unit at all.

A yin and yang, balanced and opposing and complimentary all rolled into one relationship.

Izumi becomes the filter through which Katsuki can interact with the world. She understands him in a way few can, can read him and speaks his language and know when he's just posturing to save face. And in turn, Katsuki becomes the flame and gasoline made to keep Izumi running, keep moving forward, keep reaching and growing and building.

The townspeople grow used to the two of them running around and causing havoc. Rarely a day goes by without hearing of a new situation the pair have somehow roped themselves into.

But if asked, they can all agree. One day…

One day those kids will be extraordinary.

Time passes. Katsuki turns eight with little fanfare while the whole town pitches in for Izumi's celebration.

When they both turn nine, Izumi ignores the months between their birthdays and celebrates them together so Katsuki can have a big party too. (She still gets another one on her actual birthday, but it was the thought that counted.)

At nine years old, Katsuki refuses to admit that Izumi is the best friend he's ever had. Everyone can see it, but he never says it out loud.

At nine years old, Izumi knows it anyway so it doesn't really matter. His heart tells her it every time it stutters around the words 'I hate you.'

At nine years old, both Izumi and Katsuki are looking towards the stars, eager and excited for what the future has in store.

At nine years old, All Might disappears from the public eye, and Izumi feels something hollow settle in her stomach.