Published: June 14th 2021, 4:00:00 pm
So those of y'all who follow me on Twitter know I've been cooking up a bnha daemon au and I've finally got the 'Pilot' chapter done! I don't have a ton of time for fic writing so I'm trying to write sth that I can pick up and put down without killing people with cliffhangers--this series doesn't have a strict storyline, it's more world building fun, character studies, and shenanigans held together loosely by an overarching plot.... plus animals!
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Intro to Daemonology 2nd Ed. ; What We Know and What We Think We Know
Introduction:
Not much is fully understood about daemons. The first documented daemon appearance occurred in the same approximate time period as the first quirk manifestations, however information from that time is incomplete and it is unsure if the two phenomena are connected. Quirkless individuals are capable of daemon manifestation, so while it can’t be said for certain if the rise of quirks and the rise of daemons as phenomena are interconnected, they certainly aren’t dependent upon each other on an individual basis.
It is not fully agreed upon what daemons are. The most widely accepted theory is that they are a human's soul in living form. This is of course impossible to scientifically prove and thus cannot be officially recognized by the scientific community. Nevertheless, they exist and seem to be here to stay just as much as quirks are.
Daemons typically manifest 1-4 hours before or after a child is born, with some outliers appearing up to 24 hours before or after birth, appearing seemingly from thin air. They age alongside their human partner, however their forms reflect their partner’s life stage more so than their literal age in years. Throughout childhood, daemons can change shape, flitting between various forms of animals, though eventually they lose this ability.
Some people thought Bakugou Katsuki really liked animals. They’d see him leaving the library with a pile of animal books in his tiny arms and ask stupid shit like ‘are you going to be a zoologist when you grow up?’ The answer, of course, was ‘Hell no!’
The truth was, Bakugou saw on TV once that the more a kid knew about different kinds of animals, the more likely it was their daemon would settle on something unique. Most people wound up with domestic animals or local animal species, but like hell was Bakugou going to get some soft-pawed puppy like his father's Pomeranian daemon, or Auntie Inko’s boring old Sika deer. He was going to be the number one pro hero, so he needed to have the best daemon.
So he did research, eventually coming up with a list of his top 10 preferred daemon forms:
As part of his research, Bakugou found that some shrinks thought that you could tell things about a person’s personality based on their daemon’s shape. This only interested him because it was useful for law enforcement and heroics--there were multiple studies happening around the world, trying to find ways to use daemon forms in criminal profiling. Like if a villain had a chihuahua daemon it meant they were fearless, but also not a real threat. A poison dart frog daemon could mean the opposite--that the villain was more dangerous than they seemed.
Bakugou wasn't sure if he believed this entirely, but then again, his daemon always leaned toward big predators while stupid Deku was always walking around with some tiny, meek creature trailing after him so it couldn’t be complete bullshit.
Around puberty, a daemon will start to linger in its forms, changing shape less and less often until they finally ‘settle’. This typically takes place anywhere between the ages of 8 and 16 years of age, although it can occur earlier or (more likely) later.
Interestingly enough, it seems daemons are more likely to settle after moments of high euphoria which can vary from the birth of a new sibling to a first kiss to admittance to a desirable high school.
Bakugou’s daemon, Hanabi, settled when he first used his quirk to fly.
He hadn’t actually flown really, he was only eight and his quirk wasn’t that strong, so he was just lifted off the ground for a moment. But it meant it was possible. Some day he would fly through the sky, kicking ass and taking names like All Might… and his daemon settled.
It would be years before he stopped to wonder at the fact that when he learned he could fly, his daemon settled on something that couldn’t.
When Bakugou turned up to school, the first in his year to have his daemon settle, no one was surprised. They were even less surprised that she settled on a lion. He hadn't been so insufferably pleased with himself since his quirk manifested.
The last few years of elementary school and then all of middle school were highlighted by settling. One by one his classmate’s daemons settled… and proved themselves to be the extras they were.
There were so many dogs. Every time somebody came to school with a dog at their heel Bakugou would snicker. Basic bitches.
Some of them wound up with bird daemons; sparrows, finches, plain and flighty; snacks for bigger, better birds to gobble up.
Most of the rest of them were lame herd animals. Antelope, deer, goats and sheep--sheep! Every time someone with a sheep daemon tried to say they were going into the hero course Bakugou thought his eyes would roll out of his skull.
By the time they reached the last year of middle school everyone’s daemon had settled. Everyone’s except Deku’s. Long after his classmates had grown the fuck up, his still flitted between forms; a sparrow, a marten, a deer, a pheasant, a rabbit. Lots of rabbits. Bakugou was sure she’d settle on a bunny.
Then came the sludge villain incident.
It was hard for Bakugou to remember it. Not because he was traumatized or some pansy bullshit like that, but because he couldn't breathe. A lot had happened at once, and--in a frenzied panic--Hanabi had swiped at the villain. Slime or not, it was still another person's body and feeling his living soul contact such a thing nearly made him black out.
What he remembered most after that was Deku rushing in, his daemon, Yuuki, leaping from his shoulder, shifting from mouse to mockingbird. She swooped and fluttered around the villain’s eyes, never touching him but distracting him enough that the little nerd could try to pull Bakugou free.
Of course, in the end, it was All Might who freed Bakugou. Which fucking sucked because now their first meeting was fucking tainted. Years of private fantasies--meeting All Might as a pro-hero out on the battlefield, sometimes fighting side by side as equals but mostly swooping in and saving the Symbol of Peace’s neck while looking as badass as possible--all erased in what had already been the worst moment of Bakugou’s life.
Bakugou offered Deku as much a thanks as he was willing to extend before stomping home. Hanabi trailed along at his side, both of them wishing to wash the bitter taste of helplessness from their mouths and smooth out the wrinkles in their crumpled pride.
When Bakugou entered the classroom the next morning, he was grumpy and sleep-deprived. The night before he’d had the longest shower in his life, trying to scrub the feeling of slime off his skin… He may have thrown up too but no one would ever know that but Hanabi… who also got a thorough scrubbing because the slime had touched her too and that had been ten times as violating. Unfortunately washing her meant after his lengthy shower, he spent a long-ass time drying her off. He went to bed late (and not just by his own standards) only to be plagued by nightmares the whole fucking night.
On a well-rested day he didn't have the patience to deal with people when they were being inoffensive. On a day when he was exhausted by nightmares and everyone was staring at him, whispering about him... It wasn't a good time. And to cap it off, Deku's daemon had settled. This meant that at least Bakugou wasn't the only source of gossip. Or the only one getting laughed at.
“What a cute little birdie!” They cooed mockingly, totally ignored the songbirds perched on their own stupid shoulders.
Said ‘cute little birdie’ kept her head high even as Deku shrunk under their words. To Bakugou it seemed he was only playing meek. He must've been proud of her on some level or she couldn't have held her head so high. It also seemed that Deku's ‘cute little birdie’ wasn't quite what she seemed.
She was just larger than hand-sized with blue-gray feathers on her wings and head, a brown back, a black barred tail with black spotted flight feathers, and fluffy white feathers on her face and chest. She wasn't the boring-looking bird Bakugou would have expected from Deku. Plus she had claws and a curved beak. Over their lunch hour, Bakugou thoroughly ignored his useless old lackeys and took to the roof, checking a daemon identifying app on this phone until he found it: African Pygmy Falcon.
Bakugou locked his phone and shoved it in his pocket. What did he care? He stroked Hanabi’s golden head. So what if Deku’s daemon had settled? So what if she could fly? So what if her form was more similar to All Might’s (a bald eagle) than Hanabi’s? Hanabi tipped her head back, her skull heavy on his lap as her golden eyes met his.
Screw Deku, he thought to himself. Bakugou’s daemon was a lioness. Powerful, fast, big, loud, terrifying, the fucking Queen of the Jungle. Bakugou was after all, the future number one hero. He needed to have a perfect daemon and he did.
While settling is a well-known phenomena that all daemons experience, some daemons also experience an extremely rare phenomena called ‘resettling’ or ‘unsettling’. Both terms describe a phenomenon in which a daemon that has already settled changes its shape. Knowledge surrounding this occurrence is scarce but one thing daemonologists do know is that the likelihood of resettling or unsettling decreases with age.
While ultimately describing the same experience, ‘resettling’ and ‘unsettling’ are used in different contexts. ‘Resettling’ is most often used to describe a change in a settled daemon’s shape after a significant period of personal growth, with the new shape being one that the human partner often finds more satisfying than the daemon’s previous form. In contrast, ‘unsettling’ is most often used to describe a change in form after traumatic events, with the new form often less satisfactory to the human partner.
The psychological implications of this are beyond the scope of this text.