MHA: Ground Zero

Kyouka Jirou was a little girl who loved music.

Her friends were annoying today. They wouldn't stop making fun of her ears! It made her soooo mad, so she pointed her jacks at them and made loud noises until they ran away.

But then she got in trouble and her mom had to come pick her up. Her friends never played with her again after that.

She was four years old, and she was alone. Her old friends never really got over that day and refused to stop making fun of her ears. so they weren't friends anymore. But today, they got a new student in her class! Maybe they want to be her friend…

And then the cute green haired girl walked in and everything was awesome. They spent the entire period talking about her quirk, and she didn't make fun of her ears once! And she wanted to know about her music!

She even got a nickname! She was Kyochan forever now!

Today was the best day ever!

And then she was introduced to Izumi's own friend that also started at the school today, who was tall and strong and kind of scary but pretty awesome too. And then the green haired girl had to get to her next class and they were stuck together for a good while.

So she showed him her favorite music.

He didn't care what her quirk was and he liked the louder music she listened to. He listened to a bit of it and said he was gonna learn how to do that, so she told him he'd need a guitar.

He'd held his hands out and started making firecrackers! He'd scoffed when she said as such and said they were explosions and carried on. It took a few minutes for the sound to change.

Another minute and it became a note.

Then it changed into a rhythm!

He was making firecrackers that sounded like the music she was showing him…

That was so flipping cool!

So she started to sing along, and they spent their homeroom period playing music together.

And then the green haired girl had dragged her to their house because the two lived together for some reason and she found out they wanted to be heroes when they grew up too! It's like they were made for each other!

She was six when she figured out why neither of her friends were normal.

Katsuki was obvious; he didn't care about anyone outside of friends and family. He didn't bat an eye when someone else was hurt. Or when he hurt someone else for trying to make fun of him or Izumi or even her.

He was smart and strong. He never asked for help. He never asked for anything really. He just threw himself at the problem until he figured it out. It was kinda scary when he got so focused on something other than his quirk.

They made music together. She talked and he listened. He pushed himself to be better in every way, every single day and she tried to keep up.

She never did.

She hated that.

And she hated that he slowed himself down so she could match more.

Izumi was a different beast altogether.

She was a hero nerd of the highest order.

That was her entire personality, though.

She wanted to be a hero. That was it.

It was all she wanted to be. All she talked about besides quirks. And all she tried to be.

Katsuki didn't want to become a hero, he didn't want anything. He just existed unless she or Izumi or his family was in front of him; and then he'd just kind of quietly sit in the background.

Her friends were weird, but she'd try her best to fix them. So they could be friends forever.

Kyo was eight and she was scared.

She and Izumi were playing in the sandbox while Katsuki was walking around. They were talking about quirks, especially about the lizard girl that just left.

Izumi was fake pouting, fighting with her about borrowing her jack for a minute; one of the games they'd play, their version of got your nose. It didn't matter how old they were, it was one of their favorite games.

And suddenly Izumi was laying there, bleeding on the sand, and there was a bloody rock next to them. She only had time to wrap her jacks around her friends body before they were dragged through the park and into an alley in seconds.

So she did the only thing she could do, she stuck her jack into whoever grabbed them and got loud.

They were falling to the ground not a moment sooner. And her jacks were numb, she couldn't hear anymore either.

The thing that grabbed Izumi was a large lizard man wearing nothing but rags. She was sure used to have a large jaw to go with his enormous build but it was nothing more than a bloody crater now. His body was smoking and had singes where black and green scales used to be.

They weren't the first kids this guy had grabbed.

He'd picked a fight with Katsuki!

Oh…

Oh thank god.

At least someone was on the way.

She managed to maneuver one jack between the two girls and the bloodied lizard man just as he'd regaine his movement. He towered over even her lanky giant of a father, standing at eye level to the second story stairs right beside them.

He only managed a single unsteady step towards them when his knee exploded, sending bits of reptile all over the wall she was huddling against with her best friend.

She watched with wide eyes as a snarling Katsuki blew chunk after chunk away from the kidnapper's monstrous form. Beams of bloody explosions tore holes through their aggressor even as he roared in pain.

Eventually, the man fell to his knees in front of the young blonde, his scowl not letting up for a moment as he walked right up to his defenseless opponent and placed his bloody palm against his chest.

He was going to kill him.

"Katsuki!"

His eyes snapped over to them, focusing on the blood still dripping from Izumi's head until his eyes met her own. They stood still for a moment, until she finally allowed herself to be scared again. Tears began to fall and mix with the blood pooling under Izumi's head.

"Please." It was all she could manage past the tears that clogged her lungs.

Her friend didn't hesitate to step away from the lizard man, making his way towards them.

He shouldn't have let his guard down.

She should have let him finish it.

With a screech, the kidnapper leapt at his open back, and all she could do was watch as Katsuki took a claw to his side. Only barely managing to propel himself to the side enough to not be skewered.

It was gleeful now, she knew by the happy sounds spilling like blood from its ruined face. Happy with the blood on his claws, and greedy for more.

The blonde was scowling again. He turned around and raised both bloody palms, and sent a concussive wave that almost knocked the grown man through the brick wall.

He stormed up to the broken lizard man, put his palms against its shoulder…

And blew it apart.

…

…

The arm fell to the ground alongside its owner. Blood pooled onto the ground, slowly. The world remained silent for her, and Katsuki stepped over the possible corpse without a care.

He came over and kneeled next to her checking them both over. She grabbed both of her friends in a hug and fell apart all over again.

He picked them both up and carried them back home to his parents.

She was twelve and she wanted to be strong.

Her parents finally let her learn how to use her quirk to fight.

So here they all were, all of their parents watching the two giddy girls and one bored blonde inside of a small rented quik training room. A few test dummies lay against the wall, weights were scattered on the floor, and a few treadmills laid in the corner.

Izumi took out the journal she kept specifically for her, and innocently written inside was all of the building blocks she'd need to become a strong hero.

She'd take great care to put them all together oh so very carefully.

Katsuki wandered over to the iron sand punching bag, knocking it back a few times with his bare fists before settling in to break it apart.

She was going to be the Musical Hero: HeartJack and no one was going to stop her.

An hour later she was sprawled across the floor, heaving her lungs out, one of her jacks numb and the other missing in action, stretched somewhere across the room. Her left hearing had dissolved for a good bit now, a side effect of pushing her quirk too far.

It would be a minute before she could hear herself talk, though it would never stay gone.

Izumi looked just as thrilled as she'd been at the start, positively vibrating as she took notes.

Katsuki had wandered back sometime during their little tests and plopped himself down right next to her exhausted form to stare at her.

It pissed her off that she was so tired after barely ruffling the training dummies with her "sonic" attacks when his hands were barely red from beating the hundred and forty pound punching bag into bits and pieces.

She knew this feeling, she wanted to start another petty argument that would result in a one sided screaming match on her end.

Ugh, what was wrong with her?

Why did she want to get into fights with her best friend.

Was she jealous?

She turned her eyes to the quiet blonde as he waited on her to collect her thoughts.

No, she was happy that all of the hard work he'd put into his body paid off so well.

Was she upset at her lack of progress?

No, nothing really worth doing took so little time to master. Just look at all the instruments she could play after years of hard work.

Then why was she always so ready to start a fight with him?

It didn't matter, not now at least. She needed to understand what she was doing wrong and figure it out now.

"What do you got for me?" She dragged herself up to a sitting position, glaring up into his impassive red eyes.

God what she would do to have a poker face like that.

"Do you want your reality check with a side of sugar or straight black?" She could hear her father choking on his own coffee with eight spoons of sugar and lots of creamer while her mother laughed and sipped her own espresso. They'd picked up coffee instead of tea due to their lives on the road before they'd had her, while the Bakugo's and Ms. Midoriya swore by the ever loving bitter tea.

There had been literal powerpoint presentations between the three families on why their drink was the optimal choice and it was starting to get on her nerves at this point.

"Straight."

"You and the nerd are overachieving. Trying to run before you can walk."

"How." It wasn't a question, there was no one in this room who knew how to push a quirk or body harder than the young man before her.

"You're trying to create a sonic vibration from your jack without giving it any other starting point than your will."

And?

"You could do that and fail, until you push your quirk to its theoretical limit." Not fun.

"Or…" Here we go, that first option sounded like it would take years.

"You could, you know, project the sounds your body makes as a starting point."

That…

Huh…

She looked into the frozen greenettes eyes, only receiving a nervous lip bite as she went over their notes in more detail. Their parents walked over to the small hero encyclopedia, and she was left alone with Katsuki on the other side of the gym.

Fuck it.

She slowly reeled in her extended jack and pointed it back towards the dummy, pressing the other to her wrist, she snapped.

The dummy was knocked over, rather than having its fake clothing ruffled this time.

She smirked, feeling proud of herself. She took it a step further and cracked her knuckles all at once.

It was knocked into the wall.

She palmed the jack from her wrist, and prepared to clap with all of her strength.

Only for both hands to be grabbed and stopped just before impact. She snapped her head towards the taller boy, about to snarl at him and ask what the hell he was doing when she felt something warm drip down her neck.

She slowly reached back, only now noticing how badly her hands were shaking when they came back red.

With blood.

Her blood.

She'd made her ears bleed?!

Before she could start screaming, both of her hands were pressed into Katsuki's chest. He made his breathing slow and exaggerated, obviously trying to get her to follow along.

She opened her mouth to ask why when she noticed how utterly silent the world had become. Her words didn't register in the void of silence she was in now.

So she closed her eyes and followed Katsuki's breathing. Until her ears stopped burning, and the world began to fade back in. And then she stayed that way because it was nice having glowing warm hands gently massage her jacks and around her ears.

"What happened?" Her voice was rough, even to her unstable ears.

"You keep trying to run when you just take your first step. It's like you want to fall."

"I don't." She wouldn't let him have the last word in. Never.

"Could've fooled me then." His eyes were narrowed. Finally, she knew what it was. It was everything she wanted out of their arguments. For him to react. To anything. To her.

"What the hell do you know?!" She was getting too caught up in his reactions, after so long of watching him just sit there and watch he was finally getting emotional about something. They were both standing now, practically in each other's faces.

He glared, actually glared for the first time since she and Izumi had almost been kidnapped.

And then it was gone, and she was just angry. Angry and unsatisfied.

He walked past her, and up to the biggest sand bag in the room. He clenched his fist and buried it elbow deep into the bag.

When he pulled it back, two of his fingers were twisted the wrong way and his forearm was red and raw.

"One."

She snapped back to reality in time to catch the angry blonde's fist before he could hurt himself worse.

"What the hell?!?!?" Her eyes roved back to their families, only to find them preoccupied with Izumi's notes, probably unable to read her chicken scratch handwriting. Thank god her best friend couldn't write neatly to save her life.

She looked down and bit her lip nervously. She had no idea how to fix him but she'd try.

He held still as she pushed his fingers back into place one by one. Only moving to correct her when she moved it too far, but mostly letting her do her own thing.

It was nice, being able to help him for once. Even if she was ultimately the reason he needed help to begin with. You know , other than the fact that he was a flippin sociopath with no regard for his body.

"I'm sorry." She managed to get another small reaction. A small twitch in his lips, but she saw it. Maybe she should lay off the arguments. If the reason she was so restless lately was because of how apathetic he was about everything but their families, then maybe all she had to do was surprise him. "I promise I'll be more careful if you stop hurting yourself."

His eyes narrowed again, but he allowed her to pry open his ruined hand. Countless crescents covered his rough palms, scars of all the times he'd tear into them with his fingernails to ground himself, leaving endless grooves.

She shakily reached for the other to compare the two, and found no difference.

This was the other reason she'd been so temperamental lately. Her friend wasn't okay, had never been okay, and she didn't know how to help him because he was happy with how he was. He didn't think he needed help, and he didn't want it anyways.

"Try not to die, allright?" He was temperamental at the best of times, and apathetic at the worst. But he was her friend, her friend who would do anything for her to be okay, so she'd do her best.

She was fifteen and she was moving into the UA dorms early with the Bakugo's to help care for Eri.

She had no idea what to do.

She was carrying all of the stuff her parents had packed for her and dropped off not ten minutes after their meeting with that thing their teachers called Principal Nezu, apparently having predicted just about every action they would have taken, which wasn't concerning at all.

And let's not forget that her best friend was still carrying the small unicorn girl that he'd resuced from the fucking yakuza! Oh and it got better; they were now pretty much in the witness protection program to keep her safe.

Yay.

So after she got her room settled, and made her way back towards the common room and settled in next to Katsuki and the adorable child, she booted up her old laptop, slipped in her jack and shuffled her playlists.

She lost herself in her music for a couple of hours, long enough for Eri to fall asleep between the two teens and fall on her shoulder.

Katsuki was just sitting there, quietly. No real difference there, but his eyes were different now. He wasn't looking around the room, or waiting in silence. He was watching her.

She decided he needed to be ignored and settled back in with Eri.

At least until the little girl woke up and crawled into Katsuki's lap, falling right back asleep.

And then she couldn't stop herself from meeting his stare head on. Glaring up at him while he just kept staring at her was not her idea of fun, so she took out her earbuds and offered him one. Neither stayed awake long under the pre quirk music, ahem legally downloaded from the internet of course.

That was how they spent their week. Listening to music together, teaching Eri about the world under the supervision of a teacher. Mostly Mr. Aizawa, Mr. Mic as he wanted to be referred to as, and the ever excited Ms. Midnight.

Needless to say, she was Eri's own paparazzi at this point. The poor girl was so confused by all of the flashing lights she almost cried. And then The r-18 hero almost cried so Katsuki took her phone and turned off the flash.

The pro hero absolutely refused to acknowledge the memory and quickly left whenever Aizawa or Present Mic brought it up.

These were the people she was supposed to learn how to be a hero from… well, she'd definitely seen worse.

Before she knew it, the week was up. And here she was yet again, laying next to Katsuki and Eri on the couch while the small child gently toyed with her jacks. And then, Izumi plowed into the room like a bull and threw herself onto Katsuki with a bone crushing hug.

Well, peace was nice while it lasted.