Of Dragons and Second Chances

Chapter 1: Because We're Too Lazy for Chapter Titles

A part of his mind still hovered high above the battle even after he'd been reborn. While his sucktastic baby body in the next life sucked milk and cried against his will, he hung there in his memories, watching Izuku roar and tear after the Dead Hands Bastard in flashes of green light. He could see his body too. Dead. Laying in rubble.

"It's time for you to be processed," he remembered a voice saying.

A being of light and cloud, but human shaped, had hung next to him. They had seemed familiar, although he knew he had never met them.

"Not in this life," they had said.

"Whatever, you can freaking wait, I got to see this to the end."

"You already know how it ends."

"Like hell!"

But even as he cussed and swore at the being of light and his eyes followed the spark-green path of Izuku, trading blows, decimating buildings, changing the entire landscape like a god, he found he did know.

Izuku would win. Like in every story of good and evil, the hero always won.

Katsuki clacked his teeth in irritation, only to find his, uh, ghost teeth(?) made no such satisfying sound.

"This is fucked up."

"How so?" asked the heavenly beurocrat, for that's what they must be, come to process his soul for the afterlife, god damn.

"I just got started," he said. "I had plans, damnit, and I worked like shit--have you seen my body? When it's not all bloody and crap, I mean at its prime, I'm fucking stacked! And I'd just had--screw it, this shit is fucked up. I'm still a kid!"

The titans below moved the earth. Katsuki felt his core move with them.

He was suppose to be there. It had been his destiny to be one of them. To be great. God-like.

"And then what?" asked Mr. Glows-Too-Much.

"What do you mean what? I'd be awesome! The definition of awesome! I'd be history itself!"

"And you aren't now? You know, in your heart, what Izuku Midoriya will become, and he will have only become that because of your sacrifice. You share his legacy."

"And that's messed up!" he shrieked. "My body just...moved! I didn't even think about it!"

"So you would have let him die?"

"Shit no, but that's not the point! God, are angels really this dense?"

Glowy Robes smiled at him, and it made his hackles rise. It was that knowing smile he hated the most that said they found him funny.

"I in no way find your distress funny," they said. "I just like you, and I've come to offer you a deal."

"..." He wanted to ask how they were reading his mind, but come on, why couldn't Death be able to read his mind?

Another twist in the cataclysmic battle below caught his attention. Somehow, even from way up there, he could see Izuku's tears even as he bled.

Idiot had always been a cry baby...

No...not an idiot. His friend.

"We'd just got started..." he said. "It's no fair."

"Thus the deal." The angel swept its arm and somehow scooped Katsuki whole like a great wall, taking him to somewhere ephemeral and light and out of sight of the battle.

"Where'd you take me?"

"Somewhere you won't be distracted," they said, and he could see that smile again, except this time it was kind. "Great acts of righteousness deserve a great reward, and there is no greater love than a man who puts down his life for his friend."