2 Growth

-----Time Skip-----

*Beep... Beep... Beep...*

A digital alarm clock blared out from a wooden nightstand pushed against the corner of a wall. Light streamed in from the half uncovered window at the side of the bed, illuminating the otherwise dark room.

At the ever annoying sound of an alarm clock going off, a young boy with skin so pale it was nearly sheer peaked his head out of his covers, his pitch black hair dangling in front of his face, and reaches a hand out to slap the top of the machine.

"Guess it's time to get up.." The youth complains as he throws his covers off of him, stepping out of bed, unveiling a fairly tall 5'11" stature. He reaches above him, stretching his body and showing off lean but well developed muscles from underneath his shirt, and walks over to the door at the opposite side of the room. He's unable to open the door, however, due to the odd, rusted padlock stopping the door from opening and allowing him to enter the hallway that lies beyond. As odd as such a situation may seem, the boy seems unfazed, only reaching his hand above the padlock, palm facing upwards, as a black blob started to materialize above it. This black blob slowly started to take shape, forming into a flattened rod with two spikes at the end of it -- a key. He inserts it into the padlock, twists, and the door opens, showing a modern apartment hallway with four other doors, leading into an averagely sized room with a clean table in the middle, and a small kitchen bar past it. Sitting at this table were three older kids and a much older lady, with a red haired boy behind the kitchen bar making some food. As he walks into the room, the girl notices him, and a smile quickly comes across her face.

"Hey, Kuro, late as usual. Good morning." Eiko gestures for him to take the fourth seat at the table, as the others notice him too, all waving at him with a smile on their face.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I shouldn't have stayed up that late last night." Kuro grumbles as he sits down in his chair. "Good morning grandma."

"I know everybody else is working, but you don't need to catch up with them, you're only 14 you know. There's no reason for you to be out working so late." Yukio caringly says. It was true that he didn't have to work as hard as he did, but the benefits outweigh the consequences, just losing a little bit of sleep while earning money to help support the woman who took him off the street.

"It's fine, I don't need much sleep anyways. Besides, I like working physical jobs since it helps me work out. And I need to be as strong as possible so I can protect you." Kuro replies with determination in his eyes. "I'll make sure to do well in school too, so I can get into U.A and help even more people."

"I hope you do well in school, you're starting your last year of middle school today, and it would be a shame for you to fail at the last minute." Hayato butts in, making his presence known. "And what do you mean 'even more people', the most you help with is taking out the trash." He smirks, lifting his left eyebrow up in a slant.

"You know what I mean. I want to help people in the same situation as us. Those so called heroes only care about fame, they don't actually care about helping people. I'll go pack my bag while breakfast is being made." Kuro replies as he gets up, making his way back into his bedroom, leaving the other kids to talk to each other.

The living conditions of the orphanage, although it's no longer called that, has been improved immensely with the help of the odd jobs the four older kids take and the numerous jobs Kuro overworks himself with. The makeshift family no longer lives in a worn down orphanage building, instead, Yukio took the kids with her and moved to a small apartment as soon as she could, renovating one of the rooms into five separate ones to give the kids privacy. Although they couldn't live a particularly well off life, they still lived happily. Kuro was a big factor in being able to move houses, with him taking as many jobs as he could since the time Yukio taught him to talk, trying to repay his debt to Yukio for saving him and homeschooling him until they had enough money to enroll him into middle school. It's a sad reality that even children have to work to earn enough money to live well in the slums.

'Mmm... I hope this year is better than the last.' Kuro thinks to himself as he idly packs his bag to get ready for school. Not all was good for him at school, since he often showed up dirty or ragged due to work and the lack of new clothes. This, along with his quirk that he likes to call "Abyss" after he saw some edgy show on a TV at the front of a store along his walk to school, makes him a very easy target for bullies, or rather, one bully in particular. 'All he does is make fun of me and take advantage of me not wanting to hurt anyone, it's not my fault my quirk is seen as evil. I haven't even done anything wrong with it...' Kuro thinks as he stands up and looks at his dirty black button up shirt and scratched black jeans, which is the uniform for the middle school he went to, Aldera Junior High.

'I hope Bakugo isn't in my class again...'

-----Outside of the school-----

Kuro could be seen walking up the white stone stairs to the school alone, seemingly excluded from all of the other groups of people walking up those same steps, some groups even going as far to back away from Kuro. Kuro had feared this would happen, as he's always been mostly alone ever since the first year of going to Aldera, due to Bakugo singling him out and many of the students fearing his quirk. As he paces up the stairs, a small figure with glaring green hair crashes into his back, falling on his butt with an exclamation of shock. Kuro glances down, wondering what hit him, and saw his one and only friend at the school -- Izuku.

"How do you always manage to be so clumsy? You somehow always bump into me and nobody else." Kuro asked as he stuck his arm out to help Izuku up. Izuku took the hand and stood up, with a flustered look on his face.

"Sorry.. I'm just always trying to rush around, y'know, and you're the biggest kid around so..." Izuku stammered, clearly panicking but trying to play it off. Kuro shakes his head and turns back around, walking up the remaining steps and heading inside the school. Izuku quickly runs after him, trying to keep up with Kuro's speed walking. As they approach the classroom they're going to be attending for the year, they're forced to stop walking as a loud explosion booms out of it, along with a chair being thrown out of the window above one of the doors. Along with the explosion, a loud yell could be heard emanating from behind the door.

"What does that brat Deku think he's doing, being in my class!?" As the pair outside hears this, both of their faces blanch as they think, 'Oh no...' Just then, the teacher for the class walks behind the two and bring them forwards to the door, much to their dismay.

"Class is nearly starting already, stop standing around and join your classmates." The teacher says, prodding them along. As the two are forced into the classroom, a rather malevolent looking youth with blonde spiky hair and a disturbed scowl on his face notices them enter.

"DEKUUU!!!" The blonde boy shouted as he stormed over to Deku, getting in his face and yelling more. "You better leave this class, right now. I don't want to see your face ever again, you hear me? And if you don't..." he stops ominously, bringing his right arm up to next to Izuku's head, where suddenly a loud explosion blasts out from his palm, filling the air with the sharp smell of nitroglycerin. Izuku immediately falls down in fright, staring up at the blonde boy with terrified eyes, while Kuro steps closer and stands in between Izuku and the boy, placing his hands on the blonde and pushing him away.

"Stop it, Bakugo. He's going to be in our class, and you're gonna have to deal with that." Kuro says, looking Bakugo in the eyes with a challenging glare.

"Let the twerp protect himself, he doesn't even have a quirk, why are you standing up for him? Get out of my way, or I'll have to put you in your place too." Bakugo replied, getting closer and keeping his palms to his side, ready to shoot out more explosions at a moments notice. It was at this point that the teacher steps in, breaking up the fight by herding Bakugo back in the classroom, and gesturing for Kuro and Izuku to come in.

"Come now, it's time for class to start. Bakugo, go back to your seat." The teacher says, walking into the room. Bakugo huffs and glares at Izuku one more time before walking in, and Kuro helps Izuku up much like he did just a few minutes prior on the stairs. They both walk in, take their seats next to each other in the middle of the class, and give each other a dreadful look over having Bakugo in their class again.

'This year is gonna be crap again, huh... I can't wait until I'm out of here and I can apply to U.A' Kuro thinks to himself as the teacher starts talking about typical school things. Izuku, on the other hands, is cleaning char off of his shoulders, while hoping he lives long enough to make it through the year, scared of Bakugo as usual.

Soon enough, class ends and the pair get up to go get lunch. Kuro looks at Bakugo and his thugs talking to one another as they get up, and decides to get out of there before he gets to them first. As Izuku is putting the last notebook in his bag, Kuro grabs him by the scruff of the neck and hightails it out of the room, running to the cafeteria while Izuku yells in fear. They arrive to the cafeteria in record time, and Kuro drops Izuku while catching a book that falls out of his bag.

"You need to stop doing that, man. It's not healthy for me to fear for my life that often." Izuku complains as they walk over to the lunch lady to grab their food.

"You'll be fine, air resistance does less damage than Bakugo does at least." Kuro responds, giving Izuku a knowing stare as a slight shiver goes up his spine. "He really goes overboard sometimes, and yet everyone's too scared to stop him. Guess that leaves it up to me, huh." He jokes.

"Both of us know that you don't like violence, Kuro. I don't blame you though, facing off against Kacchan is a death wish." Izuku responds, shivering as well. They both grab their food and find a table in the corner of the cafeteria to sit at, hoping that they're obscured from Bakugo's goons. They were, thankfully, so lunch passed without a hitch. They joked around a bit, Izuku did his iconic muttering over some obscure hero Kuro knew nothing about, and then they went back to class to finish the school day. As they go back to class, they take a separate route in hopes that Bakugo doesn't find them, which has become second nature to the duo as they've done it since the first year there. Right before they enter, though, disaster finds them, as it tends to do. They hear a loud yell of "DEKU!!" and hard pattering of feet against the ground, and they look behind them to see Bakugo and the usual two goons that follow his heels behind him. Izuku nearly drops to the ground in fear as Kuro is forced to drag him by the scruff of his neck, once again, into the classroom, where they run to the corner of the room as darkness surrounds them, thanks to Kuro using his quirk and hiding the both of them in the shadows. Bakugo runs in after them, only a few seconds after they hide, and looks around with narrowed eyes trying to find them.

"You cowards! Come out!" Bakugo yells as he starts prepping his palms to blast them, if he found them of course. Kuro and Izuku stayed still, not moving in fear of the shadow somehow dissipating and showing their forms to Bakugo, even though Kuro was confident it would stay hidden. Thankfully, after a few seconds of Bakugo looking around angrily, the bell rang and the teacher came in. That was the cue for Kuro to let the shadow fall, so he walked back to his seat with Izuku following right behind him, albeit still a bit scared of Bakugo. Class passed normally, with Bakugo screaming randomly and insulting other students, but no physical harm came. After class ended, Kuro pulled the same stunt for the third time that day and took Izuku and ran out of the building, putting him down when he was sure that Bakugo wasn't following them.

"You should probably come earlier tomorrow, hopefully that way you won't catch Bakugo raging in the classroom as you come in. I'll see you tomorrow, get home safe." Kuro said. He would've walked with his friend, but their homes were in different areas as he lived in the poorer part of the city.

"You too." Izuku replied shortly, as he felt bad for his friend having to live in worse conditions than him. He didn't say anything as he didn't want Kuro to feel uncomfortable, but Kuro could feel his care for him. He smiled at him, and then turned and went on his way to his house, as Izuku did the same.

Kuro arrived home safely, picking up some hotpot on the way back for dinner that night. The day progressed as it usually did, with the four kids throwing jokes at each other over the dinner table while Yukio added in her own every once in a while. After dinner, Kuro went outside to train until it was dark as he couldn't work during school days, and went to bed soon after that.

'I just want school to end. I'm too impatient to get into U.A, and the hours at school learning materials I doubt I'll ever use is wasting my time to train. I need to get stronger, but I feel like I've been hitting a wall recently... How could I increase my powers..." Kuro thought sleepily as he drifted off into unconscious, only staying awake long enough to set his alarm clock to wake him up in the morning.