#kacchan would have had that mentality of bein stronger then Izu long before the quirklessness played into it

[meeko-mar]

(spoilers for recent manga chapters)Thought:

While ShigAFO is bearing down on Bakugou again, wanting to get rid of BK before his control over Tenko slips again (and assuming he does so even after the Big 3's interruption and amajiki's current play)

We have Bakugou clearly seeing him in that one panel of 361(and he is still sparking)

We get Bakugou's perspective once again. He flashes back to the very first time he'd ever met Izuku with his mom and Inko. The two moms introduce and want their kids to play together. Izuku is of course smaller and much more sensitive than Katsuki, Mitsuki brings this up and tells Katsuki,

"Hey, watch out for Inko's kid, okay? Protect him!" Or something to that effect.

And little Katsuki looks over at this tiny, nervous, freckled boy with enormous green eyes, who's being encouraged out of his initial shyness by Inko, looks back at his mom with a huffy little "Fine..."

Of course, as we all know, Katsuki doesn't live up to this much beyond this point, but that's kind of how they're introduced. Izuku quickly slips into "kacchan sugoi" mode and continues to live there for eternity, meanwhile Kacchan takes this as his first inclination, one of the formative notes of him being special, that "YEAH, I'm the powerful one. I'm the HERO and IZUKU is the one who needs protecting." and so it shapes their relationship. Until Izuku starts showing HIS heroic side that Kacchan takes as a threat to HIS OWN power and heroics and resorts to his bully tactics for the rest of their childhood--- thus their entire relationship from there on out getting fucked up.

Flash back to Katsuki in the battle, recalling all this, and remembering his original, very distant promise of protecting Izuku, looking out for him.

And it has just been sinking in about how AFO just told him in so many words that HE was going to be brutally killed and shown to Izuku as a means to HURT Izuku.

And that being the final motivation he needs to get up and start moving again.

Because even though it was just such a little thing that his mom said to him when he was just a tiny, Quirkless little kid, he knows he made a promise and he should have kept it all these years...But he didn't. But he's going to keep living and KEEPING that promise. Like hell is AFO going to hurt Izuku while he's around. He knows now that Izuku is more than capable of protecting and saving, but he also knows, intimately well, that Izuku NEVER PROTECTS HIMSELF.

Thus his Quirk evolves, Izuku shows back up and we get a team up we've been waiting for, etc etc

(once again I state I just really want to see how exactly these two first met)