Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/8904418. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Underage Category: M/M Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア_|_Boku_no_Hero_Academia_|_My_Hero_Academia Relationship: Bakugou_Katsuki/Midoriya_Izuku Character: Bakugou_Katsuki, Midoriya_Izuku, Uraraka_Ochako, Kirishima_Eijirou, Aizawa_Shouta_|_Eraserhead, OC:_Gomiko_Freecs, Ashido_Mina, OC:_Thom, OC: Shirogiri, Bakugou_Haruka_|_Katsuki's_Mother, Bakugou_Tetsuma_|_Katsuki's Father, Midoriya_Inko, Midoriya_Hisashi, Todoroki_Shouto Additional Tags: ajin_au, canon-typical_vulgarity, Minor_Character_Death, Temporary Character_Death, POV_shift, Violence, Death, Surivior's_Guilt, Original Character(s), Angst, Implied_Relationships, dangerously_codependent relationship, Suspense, Domestic_Violence, Mild_Horror, Gore Series: Part 14 of standing_in_awe_of_death Stats: Published: 2016-12-19 Completed: 2017-01-16 Chapters: 16/16 Words: 60073 ****** laceration ****** by Ramabear_(RyMagnatar) Summary Collapsing metal and concrete turns the competitor's arena into one of grief and pain. Maimed and buried, bleeding and burned, there are survivors trapped all throughout the rubble. Some are in large groups, shielded by other's quirks. Some are in small groups, isolated and trapped, unable to move on their own. Some, alone, teeter between barely living and barely injured- saved only by an instinctive reaction and the skill of their quirk. It isn't just the physical injuries that leave jagged, open wounds behind. No one walks away from this unscathed; not even those who know no death. ---- Katsuki refuses to believe Izuku is really gone. He will find him. He will find him. Izuku isn't dead. He is not dead. He can't be. At least, so Katsuki believes. Notes EDIT: so this, of course, got Longer Than I Anticipated. I'm gonna cut it off at 16 chapters, cut in a few intermissions to answer some questions that crop up during all of this, and we'll get started again in a new section. I was debating changing the name but things have been tagged and linked via this name on my tumblr so we're gonna stick with laceration for this one. Thank you for your understanding, my lovelies. FORE WARNING: Izuku is not the only one who dies in this fic. That means that that "character death tag" is applicable. For real characters. Who may already be dead and now you're going to find out about it. a little clarification. the MAJOR character death applies to Izuku. all other characters who may or may not possibly die are MINOR characters; for which my definition is "we have not seen anything via their POV". Anyone who has shared their POV is safe. Please keep that in mind as you read. Don't get in over your heads, loves, I want you to enjoy reading this, ok? See the end of the work for more notes ***** Schrodinger's Collapse ***** From inside of the announcer’s box, Shouta watched helplessly as the entrances to the rooms and hallways below the stadium turned into flaming channels. The whole room shook violently, the lights above flickering and then going out as power was lost. As the jets of flame receded, the sunlight above was partially obscured by the plume of dust and smoke that rose from the flame. The glass window in front of him cracked, first only a little in the corners, and then it spiderwebbed across the front. Shouta slid from his chair and under the desk mere moments before the glass shattered. He wasn’t alone down there. Hizashi did the same, both of them avoiding the glass that flew everywhere as the room shook and began to pitch forward. “What the hell was that?” Hizashi hissed, “An attack? A bomb?” Shouta grit his teeth. The floor of the room began to tip unevenly. He could hear the cracking of concrete and, with the window gone, people screaming outside. “I don’t know. Possibly.” The memory of the attack on USJ, only a few weeks old, flashed in his mind. This kind of terroristic attack on civilians wasn’t altogether unheard of, especially with so many Pro Heroes present, but it had been a long time since Shouta had witnessed such a thing. In fact, the USJ attack had been such a shock because it was the first time in a long time that villains had coordinated such an attack. “We have to get out of here,” Hizashi said. He crawled out from under the desk. Shouta followed, stumbling when the room lurched to the side. He could hear more crunching, as though something chewed on the concrete supports to the room. They both made their way to the door. Hizashi yanked it open, gripping the doorframe to pull himself through. As Shouta did the same, he glanced over his shoulder to see that the front end of the announcing box had tipped far enough down that he could see more of the stadium seats than of the shattered arena. A crack split the room in half across the middle. It grew wider by the second. To his relief, the stands below were quickly draining of audience members. They streamed down the pathways, clearly panicked, but evacuating nonetheless. Shouta followed Hizashi out into the hallway beyond the announcer’s box. There were no immediate signs of the fire that had ravaged the rest of the internal structure, but considering they were on the opposite side and much higher up than where the fire must have originated, Shouta wasn’t all that surprised. “We need to get down there and help with the evacuation,” Shouta said. The hall to the right of the door was collapsed inwards. Large chunks of concrete kept falling inwards and so did other pieces of the building’s structure. He could see sunlight from where the roof had opened up. They had to go left to escape the inside. “I know,” Hizashi said. “I got this. You get the hell out of here, Shouta. You’re already injured and your quirk isn’t much use for this kind of thing.” He gave a gentle shove to Shouta’s shoulder, ushering him further down the hallway even as he turned to the door to the stands. “Tch,” Shouta shrugged off the push. “Don’t fall down a hole.” Hizashi gave him a thumbs up and ducked out the door. Almost immediately, Shouta could hear him calling out with his quirk, directing people towards exits and warning of pitfalls he could see. Shouta thought his voice was comforting, if loud, and hoped that the same was true for the civilians below. Hurrying down the hallway, Shouta discovered that the farther he went, there were scorched walls to go with the crumbling interior of the building. In fact, he soon left the only undamaged area and had to exit the inside halls completely when he came across one where the section of the building had completely collapsed inwards. The stadium seats he walked out onto weren’t in much better condition. There were trenches all along the stands where the supports inside had failed and the surface had fallen inwards. Shouta carefully picked his way across the stands. It seemed as though the collapsing had mostly finished, but the stone was still settling in many areas. He came to a stop when he saw something brightly colored jutting out from under a rock. It wasn’t the first time Shouta had seen a body, nor would he bet that it was his last. He managed to get close enough to reach the person’s wrist and pulled back the cloth to check for a pulse. Their skin was still warm, but he felt nothing. “Aizawa!” The familiar voice made Shouta look up. He retracted his hand from the body and, carefully, got back to his feet. He wasn’t surprised to see Gomiko making his way up the stands towards him. Shouta lifted a hand in greeting to the man. “Did you make it out uninjured?” Gomiko asked once he was close enough. He looked a little scraped up himself, missing both his suit coat and tie, and sporting a scrape along the side of his face that was dripping blood down his cheek. “No more injured than I already was,” Shouta replied. He gestured to Gomiko’s injury, “Need help taking care of that?” Gomiko touched the spot Shouta gestured too and looked at his hand. He grimaced but shook his head. “It’s not that bad. It’s just a scratch. There are others that are worse off.” Thinking about the warm wrist with no pulse, Shouta nodded absently. “You should evacuate,” he said, “This place isn’t safe for civilians.” “And leave this for you and Hizashi to do?” Gomiko shook his head. “I don’t see any of the rest of the security staff out and you need someone trained to help the evacuation.” He turned away, shadowing his gaze with one hand as he looked over the stadium. When he saw whatever he was looking for, he took a step away. “Freecs,” Shouta said, laying iron in his voice. “You’re no longer registered as a hero-” “But I am a doctor.” Gomiko retorted, turning back. If Shouta had a steely tone, Gomiko’s was ice. “I have a responsibility to help and I will do so. Now, if I recall correctly,  your class is that way.” He gestured down and to the right. “They’ve got a lot of initiative and some good instincts, but they probably shouldn’t be left alone too much longer.” Shouta’s gaze followed the line of Gomiko’s arm. A few of them were recognizable even from this distance with their bright heads of hair or the use of their quirk. He could pick out Ashido’s pink hair and Uraraka’s quirk being activated from where he stood. “The hell is she doing?” He asked, mostly himself, as he saw slabs of concrete being lifted up. “She hasn’t got the energy for that.” “That’s heroes for you,” Gomiko said, “Pushing on past their limits.” He paused and gave Shouta an unreadable glance, “At least, the proper heroes anyway.” Before Shouta could ask, Gomiko started walking away. It was practically a run, actually, with the way he hustled down the crumbling stairs. Shouta watched him worryingly for a moment or two, to make sure that Gomiko didn’t slip into one of the many pitfalls that had opened up. He didn’t, of course. The psychiatrist was a bit too spry to fall victim to rough terrain. Shaking his head to dismiss the man from his thoughts, Shouta turned to head towards his class. He took it a little slower than Gomiko, combing the area for survivors. It seemed most people in this area had moved out, following Hizashi’s booming voice. Though there was some trouble with the ground, there wasn’t enough to make it impossible to evacuate. Looking up from finding his footing, Shouta searched ahead of himself for the best route to reach his students. That was when he saw the small cluster of a few students floating above a pit. There were three of them there, all carefully kneeling on something invisible while a few other students, off to the side, were trying to get them free. He knew they were students from their clothes, and recognized them to be from Class B. “Aizawa Sensei!” said one of the girls. She brushed her hair away from her face where it had gotten stuck with some dirt and sweat. “Kendou,” Shouta said, “What happened?” “The ground gave out under the boys but Tsuburaba kept them from falling too far with his air quirk,” Kendou said. She gestured to another one of her classmates, the tall and oddly headed Bondo. “We’re trying to close the distance so I can grab them up in my hands.” Shouta nodded. It seemed his kids weren’t the only ones with good heads on their shoulders. “This area looks pretty secure. Do you know where to go from here?” Kendou nodded, “We heard Present Mic earlier. When we were evacuating, that’s when the ground gave out.” Bondo stepped back from the edge where the cement was drying. “Kendou, can you reach them from here?” “Excuse me, sensei,” Kendou ducked her head. Shouta kept back, watching as she went to the new edge of the pit and enlarged her hands. Two of her classmates held onto her as she reached across the gap and scooped up the stranded ones one at a time. Shouta gave a little smile, pleased at their efficiency and teamwork. They would make Sekijirou proud with that kind of behavior. He lingered long enough to see all three stranded students get rescued and to usher off the others through a safe route down before going on his way. “Go safely,” Shouta said, “Don’t stop unless you need to. We don’t know how much longer everything is going to stay standing.” They hurried to obey him as he continued on.   He wasn’t far from his own students after that. However, as he approached, he grew more and more uneasy. Clearly, it wasn’t his full class that remained in that area, but it was a hefty chunk of them. He didn’t expect to see Midoriya or Bakugou since both students had been inside the building when the fire went up, but he also couldn’t pick out Todoroki’s head, who was certainly one of the most recognizable ones. It looked as though some had evacuated, but others remained there. He could see Uraraka still floating large pieces of rock, one at a time, that were being pushed out of the way by other classmates- Shouji and Satou in particular. A few of them even seemed to be arguing with each other. Ashido’s voice carried surprisingly well as she argued with Iida, of all her classmates. “Then just go if you want!” She shouted at him. Her hands were balled up into fists at her sides and she leaned forward as she did it, her whole body a line of tension. “If that’s what you think is best for yourself, then go! But I’m not going until we can all go! We have to get them out from there!” “It isn’t that I want to go,” Iida’s voice was lower but he seemed just as tense with his shoulders squared and his expression set, “It is that we are unequipped and inexperienced in such delicate rescue tactics. Look at Uraraka!” He gestured to their third classmate, who had her back to both of them, “She is too exhausted to lift the rocks completely! If she continues to press herself, she will become injured, and then where will we be?” “At least she’s trying to help. That’s what heroes do, glasses face!” Ashido shouted. “Both of you stop this at once,” Shouta said. Both Ashido and Iida jerked and turned to look at him with surprise on their face. “What is going on here?” “Sensei,” Kirishima stepped up. He looked uncharacteristically serious. “Some of the others are trapped beneath the rock. The ground just opened up beneath them and they fell in, with some of the seats and stuff falling in after them. Uraraka is trying to remove the rocks that we can with the help of the others.” Shouta glanced to Uraraka. She looked pale and her hands shook slightly as she reached for another rock. She was balanced precariously on the lip of another rock with the heel of her shoes stuck to the rock with one of Mineta’s grape balls. Mineta himself was sweating bullets behind her, holding two more in his hands. Uraraka wiped her face with the back of one hand, nodding to Satou who stepped forward on shifting rubble and gripped the slab. “Ready?” He called. Shouji, on the other hand, crouched down and reached several hands under the stone with a few more up along the edge for balance. “Ready.” They lifted together and, carefully, raised the stone up and pushed it out of the way. “Who is trapped below?” Shouta asked, peering down. “Denki’s down there!” Ashido exclaimed. “Kaminari, Jirou, Yaoyorozu and Sero,” Kirishima said a little more calmly. Shouta looked at him and saw that he was holding his hands tight as fists at his sides and looked as pale as Uraraka did. “Jirou was the one who confirmed it. She said Yaoyoruzu and Sero haven’t been responding and Kaminari is trapped in a slightly different pocket.” “He pushed me out of the way,” Ashido said, her voice finally lowered. “Denki pushed me out of the way as the hole began to form…” There was a tremor in her voice. “He’s so stupid. Why did he do that? Now he’s stuck alone and…” She rubbed her eyes furiously with one hand. “We have to get him out. We have to get them all out!” “We’re not equipped to do this kind of rescue,” Iida insisted from a few steps away. “Uraraka doesn’t have the strength to remove all the rocks at once and so she has to go one at a time right now. She could move one the wrong way and crush one of them-” “Don’t you say that!” Ashido shouted, rounding on him. “Don’t you dare! Ochako would never hurt any of them! Not even one!” “Accidents happe-” Iida’s voice cut off when there came the sound of a concrete grinding against itself and metal groaning. Shouta felt the ground tremble and turned back to the hole in time to see Satou lifting himself up out one side and Shouji doing the same while the rocks they had been standing on shifted and slid farther down. Uraraka let out a frustrated cry as she rocked forward but didn’t lose her footing because of Mineta’s quirk. “No! NO!” Kirishima reached down to steady her, his hand gripping her shoulder. Beside him, on the edge of the hole, Mineta bounced from one foot to the other. “Don’t fall in, don’t let her fall in, do we need more balls? Oh my god!” Mineta panicked. “Kirishima, get Uraraka out of there,” Shouta said. “Everyone I want you to pull back. Iida,” he turned to the tall student who went ramrod straight when his teacher looked at him. “Get to Present Mic and tell him we need an excavation team. There should be one on the way. Go. Now.” Iida saluted and turned. He ran, vaulting over anything in his way, with the speed gifted to him by his quirk. Kirishima pulled Ochako up out of the hole, leaving behind her shoes as they were stuck to the rock from Mineta’s balls. He hefted her up with his hands under her arms. Setting her back on her feet, he let her go only to grab her again to keep her from falling. Ochako’s knees gave out at the same moment as she bent over and vomited on the ground. Kirishima kept her from falling into it, though he did let her slide down to her knees in a careful descent. “You can’t stop! You can’t just stop!” Ashido cried. “They need us! They’re stuck down there! We can’t leave them there!” “I’m not going anywhere,” Shouta said. “But you and the others need to evacuate. You’re still students, you’re my students. There’s nothing more you can do here.” “Yes, there is,” Ashido said. “I could- I could melt the rock or- or-” “You don’t know how far down there they are. You don’t know how much rock is in the way or the best place to start. Ashido, listen to me,” Shouta turned to look at her directly. She visibly shook, her arms wrapped around herself and her hands holding tightly onto her arms. From the side, Asui cautiously approached her. “You need to calm down and you need to evacuate. This is a job left for the Pros.” Ashido shook off Asui’s hand as it touched her arm. “Oh yeah?” She demanded, “If this is their job, then where the hell are they?” She gestured around them, “Aren’t they supposed to be helping with security? Where did they go, sensei? Where are the heroes?” Shouta clenched his jaw shut. He didn’t have an answer for that. ===============================================================================     The room was stiflingly hot. Katsuki couldn’t catch his breath. Every time he tried, he could feel the heat drying out his mouth, filling up his lungs. It was worse than a summer haze because there was no moisture, only dryness. The air was thin as though he stood on the side of a mountain, not in an enclosed room underground. His wounds were a dull agony; his feet torn up and filthy, his hands raw from his match, and his ribs aching inside of his chest. Katsuki sat against the wall with his knees drawn up and his hand cradled in his lap. A hero was at his side, checking his pulse, their fingers cool against his neck. Katsuki held still and kept quiet. He wasn’t the only one struggling to breathe. The hero beside him took in careful but raspy breaths. Katsuki could hear the others breathing as well, some of them coughing, as they spoke, trying to figure out if it was safe to get out yet or what, exactly, they should do. The fire had sealed off the door, melting around the edges and blackening the window. From where he sat, Katsuki could see the flicker of firelight from the other side of the room. He didn’t think it was another door, so it had to be a vent of some kind. He wasn’t sure where it was, though, or what was between it and himself because the power had gone out moments after the collapse. The last thing he’d seen with the electrical light was a crack opening up above him and Mt. Lady growing suddenly, hands pressed against the ceiling. She had been on her knees, one eye shut as she caught the falling bits of building with her back and hands, holding the rubble off of everyone inside. Still, dirt and dust streamed into the room around her, filling the air with tiny particles. Then the lights had popped and gone out. Now he sat in the darkness next to a hero who quietly told him to remain calm, take deep breaths, that they, the heroes, would take care of everything. Katsuki bit his tongue to keep from bickering, to keep from telling them to shut up and leave him the hell alone. He was busy. He was trying to keep count. He kept fumbling after every minute or so, though, so he held out a finger for each minute that had passed.   Katsuki held up eight fingers.   He was halfway to his ninth.   Izuku had never taken longer than seven minutes to recover.   One half-melted door wouldn’t be enough to keep Izuku locked outside. But if the hallway was still a fatal fire zone, he might not be willing to come back in just yet. Izuku would die a hundred times to protect Katsuki’s single life, Katsuki knew that through and through. But if he hit fifteen minutes and Izuku still hadn’t shown up… Well, a half-melted door wouldn’t keep Katsuki locked inside either. ***** gathered and broken ***** Chapter Summary Hitoshi finds the remnants of Class A and that's when things go from Bad to Worse. Toshinori's conversation is cut short. Chapter Notes i promise, there is light at the end of this tunnel. it's just going to be quite a ride to get there Hitoshi was hesitant to join the throng of people as they moved towards the evacuation point. He and his class descended down a series of half-destroyed steps in order to join the greater mass of audience members who moved towards the one clear exit. He could see a few officials, Pros in uniform, steering the stream carefully around piles of rubble and sunken sections of the stadium. Above them all, Present Mic had gotten a vantage point and called out directions like a traffic cop. The initial panic had ebbed away with the presence of the Pros, but Hitoshi couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that sank like a stone in his gut. He lingered higher up on the steps, far enough away from the others that he could see just how vulnerable a target they were. Hitoshi had no idea if the fire was an accident or if was intentional, but it did strike him as suspicious that only one emergency exit had remained relatively clear in spite of the fire and the other collapsing parts of the stadium. Perhaps that explosion had only been the first, to corral all the survivors into one location where another explosion, or some other attack, could finish them off. “Shinsou, you’re lagging behind!” Hitoshi glanced down a few steps to see his homeroom teacher waving to him. Once Imari caught his eye, she gestured for him to come towards her. “Come on, everyone means everyone.” Hesitantly, Hitoshi nodded. He stepped into the stream with his fellow classmates and carefully made his way back down. As he approached where his teacher stood, he stepped back out of line and asked her quietly, “Are you sure this is safe, sensei?” “What do you mean?” She asked with a little frown. With his hand, Hitoshi indicated the people moving towards the exit. Imari followed the movement with her eyes and looked out over the crowd. “Everyone in the entire stadium is leaving from this one exit,” Hitoshi said, “Are there really no other emergency routes left? What if another explosion happens? What if the first one wasn’t an accident?” Imari folded her arms over her chest. “That’s why everyone needs to evacuate promptly. The faster we get out of here, the faster that the excavation teams can get in and figure out what happened and why.” Hitoshi pressed his lips in a thin line at this response. Eagerness to abandon a dangerous area did not nullify the danger inherent to the area. Imari sighed and shook her head, “Look, Shinsou. I understand your concern.” She put up her hand, to keep him from speaking, although he hadn’t moved at all. “But you’re not seeing the full picture.” With that same upraised hand, she brushed a loose brown lock behind her ear. “How many Pros do you see out right now?” Obediently, Hitoshi turned to look. He could see Present Mic, standing far above and chattering away with one hand gesticulating and his other hand shadowing his gaze. Further down the line, he picked out two more familiar faces- both teachers from Yuuei. There was another adult that had to be a hero far off to one side, though Hitoshi didn’t recognize the white and black of his Hero Suit. That made four. With that, Hitoshi had his answer. “Including you and the other teachers? Five. No. Six. I can see Aizawa-sensei of class A.” Hitoshi narrowed his eyes to try and see the farthest teacher. He added, “He doesn’t seem to be leaving where he is, though I see his class headed this way.” They were of an equal height, so when Imari leaned in, Hitoshi could very clearly see the serious look in her brown eyes. She pitched her voice lower as well, trying to keep others from overhearing. “That’s about ten fewer Pros then there should be. An event like this warrants at least eight Pros- not including the teachers that perform both functions. I know how smart you are, Shinsou. If you had a crowd this big to protect with only six people to do it and a choice between treacherous ground that could continue to collapse at any second or releasing some of these civilians out into a wider area where there are undoubtedly reinforcements arriving to help protect and process them after such an event… Which would you choose?” Hitoshi winced. “Yeah. There you go.” Imari said. She clapped him on the shoulder with her hand. “You can be the last one to go if it makes you feel better, but everyone is evacuating. That includes you. Now go.” Nodding, Hitoshi turned. He again caught sight of some of Class A’s students. Only a day ago he would have dismissed them- They were the top of all the students, after all. They were the ones training to be Heroes. They could take care of themselves. Except now that he knew a couple of them, their faces, their names, his gaze lingered long enough that he could tell that something was wrong. Ochako was the first one he picked out of the crowd of them, though that was difficult since he only had her hair to identify her by. Her face was hidden, pressed against the back shoulder of one of her taller classmates. Her hair spilled around it, and, worryingly, one of her arms was draped limply over the other shoulder. Hitoshi saw the pink haired girl that Ochako had fought in a match walking with her arms wrapped around herself. One of the other girls walked on her side and the red-haired boy walked on her other side, looking anxiously at her. There were only a handful of other ones, all withdrawn expressions and moving in a stilted, stiff manner. Hitoshi broke away from his group and walked towards them. He could feel his teacher’s exasperation at his actions, but she didn’t call after him so he pretended not to notice. “Ochako?” Shinsou called out, looking to the girl. She stirred but didn’t lift her head up. The guy who was carrying her glanced back with a surprisingly gentle expression. “Is she all right?” “She’s just exhausted,” the student said. He shifted his grip a little bit and gave Shinsou a once-over. “You’re her friend, right? Weren't you in the cavalry match with her? What was your name again?” “Shinsou,” Hitoshi said with a little nod. “I’m Satou.” Satou gave a returning nod. “Uraraka overused her quirk. She’s just nauseated from it and is trying to rest.” “She’s not hurt?” Hitoshi asked. He couldn’t see anything but that wasn’t a guarantee. “She’s not hurt,” Satou confirmed. Hitoshi sighed a little in relief. “Everyone is headed this way out to evacuate,” he said, pointing to the exit. “The ground is pretty stable.” As soon as the words left his mouth, there was a second explosion from under the stadium. The shockwave was strong enough that Hitoshi, who had been standing, stumbled and had to catch himself on a piece of broken railing. A plume of dust rose into the air as the explosion broke apart the larger pieces of rubble and made the smaller ones slide downwards in a mock landslide. Screaming broke out from the survivors as ones nearer to the back panicked and began to push forwards. Hitoshi flinched, lifting up a hand instinctively, but there was no flame that came with this explosion. Only dust and enough force to shatter stone and concrete. Even still, his heart clenched tight in his chest and fear turned his blood cold. In the students near him, it was the pink haired one, Ashido, if Hitoshi recalled correctly, who screamed. But what she screamed wasn’t what Hitoshi expected. “Oh god,” Ashido cried, turning around, “We have to go back for them! They’re going to get killed if this keeps happening!” She was held back by her two classmates, who held her tightly by the arms. “Mina, you can’t,” said the girl, “Sensei said we have to go. It’s not safe for us.” “They’re our friends!” Ashido cried. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she looked at the dark haired girl. “We can’t abandon them!” “We didn’t abandon them,” the redhead, Kirishima, Hitoshi remembered his fight against Bakugou, “Sensei is still there. He’s with them.” Hitoshi could see tears welling up in the corners of Kirishima’s eyes, but he held onto his classmate tightly, preventing her from pulling away. “We promised him we would go and get help. We’ve gotta go!” “Come on,” Tokoyami said, speaking firmly. “We must go now while it’s-” Another explosion, not as large as the second one, rocked the ground. Ashido let out a wretched sob that made Hitoshi flinch. Her knees gave out enough that Kirishima and his classmate, between the two of them, had to help lift her back up and lead her away. Hitoshi swallowed dryly. He wasn’t sure how many of them noticed the location of the third explosion. The second one had been quite some distance away, but the third had moved closer to them, not farther away. He gave a worried glance to Satou, but the tall student was unperturbed. He hiked Ochako up a little higher on his shoulder, revealing part of her pale face, and began to walk forward again. Hitoshi stepped back, giving him and the others space. He instinctively did a headcount of them as they went past.  Satou and Ochako walked next to two more tall ones, one with a strange pointed head and another with multiple arms. Tokoyami was leading the group, testing the ground carefully before nodding to the others, and following right behind him was the trio with Ashido and Kirishima. Besides them, there was the small and weeping grape one who was clinging to the side of another pale-faced student. Hitoshi didn’t really recognize either one of them. What Hitoshi did know was that Class A should have twenty kids in it. He had seen Midoriya and Bakugou enter the tunnels just before the blast- and Hitoshi refused to think much harder about that than he had to- but that only accounted for two more. There were still eight missing students. Couple that with Ashido’s weeping words and the way Hitoshi could still see Aizawa off in the distance, unmoving even with the second and third explosion, and Hitoshi came to unfortunate conclusions. He ran his hand through his hair, scratching his fingers over his scalp and the back of his neck. “Fuck,” he whispered, his eyes on Aizawa’s dark silhouette. “This is bad. This is really bad.” Not wanting to stick around long enough to see if there would be yet another explosion, Hitoshi hurried to catch up with the others. He kept pace with what remained of Class A until they all made it out of the stadium together. ===============================================================================     Dust and small stone particles drifted down from the cracks in the newly lowered ceiling. Smoke also filled the air, gathering in pockets near head height when it couldn’t escape upwards. The door to the infirmary burned still, slowly turning black with char around the edges. Its small window was shattered and blackened with soot already, from the fire that had ravaged the hallway. Toshinori supported a small portion of the ceiling above his and Chiyo’s head. His arms trembled slightly with the use of his quirk. He’d already used it for almost three hours that day, in between all of the events and including some before he’d come to the festival entirely. Still, he found the strength to hold up the weight of an unknown amount of the building’s weight on his shoulders. Grunting, he shifted his weight to one foot. “Chiyo,” he said through gritted teeth, “Are you all right?” The elderly woman pushed herself up from the ground with a groan. “Just took a bit of a tumble,” she said. Toshinori glanced down and saw her slowly gather herself up to her feet. She limped slightly with her right leg as she drew closer to him, as though her side were sore from her fall. “I’ll be all right. What about you? Don’t exert yourself too much!” Toshinori felt the urge to cough building in his lungs. He swallowed and clenched his jaw. Still, the attack came as his body betrayed him. It was all he could do to push back the rocks he held as the coughing fit overwhelmed him and reduced him to a skeletal state. Blood spurted from behind his lips as he ducked his head. The stones around them shifted and settled, forming a small pocket of space where they were sheltered from the broken parts of the ceiling. There was a few feet of the wall and of the floor, plus an almost clear path to the burning door. Toshinori coughed for several minutes while Chiyo stood helplessly by. There was nothing she could do to help him and they both knew it well. She offered up a cloth when he finished. He wiped his mouth with it and folded it back up. Before he could even offer it back, Chiyo clicked her tongue and shook her head. “You know you’re going to need it again. Just hold onto it.” With a sigh, Toshinori put it in his pocket. With his lungs calmed down somewhat, he looked around for an exit. He probably could have punched his way out, if he really wanted to, but he had no idea what was going on up above them. Still, a smaller punch could easily break through the door and- “How fortunate I am,” Chiyo said. Her words interrupted his thoughts, “That you came down so promptly, Toshinori.” Toshinori sighed. He rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I had hoped to intercept the boys down here and give them a little warning. Midoriya can handle far more of One for All than I anticipated by this stage and there seems to be no limit to the inventive ways he can think of to use it.” “I was watching on my monitor,” Chiyo said. “It takes a great deal of force to turn the ground to liquid like that. I doubt he had enough control to not shatter his bones doing so.” She moved over towards the wall. Her stool had been knocked over, but she carefully picked it back up and sat down. “I also expected them both to show up, though I doubt I would need to heal Midoriya. He seems to have that completely handled. In his own… violent way.” Toshinori flinched. He gave one more glance to the door but decided it could wait. Better to have the proper excavation teams pull them out than to cause more damage trying to escape. After all, the smoke was rising out above their heads, not gathering in the room, and the fire on the door had nowhere to spread. “It isn’t a typical healing factor, true,” Toshinori admitted. “It also isn’t a derivative of One for All,” Chiyo said. “I thought you said that the boy was quirkless, Toshinori. Like you once were.” Again Toshinori flinched, “Is this… really the appropriate place and time to have this conversation?” “Tell me,” said the little old woman with a glint in her eye and a frown pressed on her mouth, “When else will you sit down with me and discuss the particulars of your chosen apprentice? I respect your decision, after all, it is your quirk to give and your legacy to pass on, however,-” “Chiyo, please-” Toshinori attempted to interrupt her but she just spoke right over him. “There is something wrong with that boy. I don’t know if the source is from inside of him or because of outside influences, but I know that you heard as plainly as I did what they did behind that curtain.” Chiyo drummed her fingers on her own knee. “I might not be out in the field anymore, Toshinori, but I know what it sounds like when bones are broken. Those boys are not fucking around.” “Chiyo,” Toshinori tried again. “There’s no secret healing factor. He was quirkless. He told me so.” “Oh yes,” came the scathing reply, “And teenagers don’t lie about anything.” “He’s a good kid.” “He’s a dangerous one.” “I’m doing my best to teach him.” “You need to do better.” “You have to trust me.” “All I have to do,” Chiyo said, “Is have him tested. Properly this time. And not by some hack primary care physician who is in charge of a whole district of little kids and doesn’t worry too much if he doesn’t do the full battery of tests. That boy had a quirk, Toshinori, and whatever it is it has destroyed his self-preservation. Did you not see the same fight that I did? Did you not see how he tore up his own body for a competition?” Chiyo leaned forward, shaking with emotion. “Imagine what he will do in an all out fight? Imagine if someone dared to do something to his little friend? That boy would kill himself in order to save Bakugou and you know it. And you’re doing nothing to stop it.” Silently, Toshinori closed his eyes and turned his head away. His chest heaved, his breath was ragged and wet. The crackling of the door finally subsided. Now it only glowed with smoldering embers. “You chose this boy,” Chiyo said quietly, “So you must have seen something good in him. If it is still there, find it and cultivate it. Because I promise you, Toshinori. He will not do it on his own.” “I know,” Toshinori admitted quietly. “I know.” He turned his back on her, rubbing his hand over his face. He did not regret choosing Midoriya as his replacement for there was so much good in him, but there were pitfalls as well. “I’m going to -” A sudden explosion went off from somewhere else in the tunnels. Toshinori felt the shock wave only moments before the door blew off its damaged hinges. He flung his hand up, protecting his face from the splinters of glass and wood, and was knocked off his feet from the force. Toshinori hit the ground in a tumble that knocked the wind out of his already weak lungs. The walls, precarious already, shook and he heard some of the concrete give out. Chiyo gave a surprised shout and Toshinori heard her fall from the stool. There was an audible sharp snap- the painfully familiar sound of a bone snapping- and a pain filled moan that followed it. Toshinori instinctively tried to push himself up, to reach out for Chiyo, but the moment he drew in a deep breath, a wave of bloody coughs racked through his body. Consumed with the urge to cough so badly he nearly vomited, Toshinori could do nothing when he heard the rubble around him shift and crunch together. He curled up on his side, coughing up blood and struggling to pull in a clear breath. When he finally finished, he was lightheaded and woozy. Toshinori pushed himself up on one elbow. He turned towards the woman, struggling to make his body obey him. If he could just grab her, he could shield her with his own body. Weak as he was, Toshinori still believed that he could save one person. Yet, as he got somewhat upright, what he saw gave him pause. Chiyo’s stool had toppled over again. The woman had clearly landed on her side and had used her hand to catch herself. That arm was the one that was bent awkwardly beneath her, clearly broken. She was still conscious, though breathing shallowly, and made a weak grasp towards Toshinori. “Chiyo,” he gasped out. Toshinori pushed himself up to his knees. If he could just get his feet underneath himself- Another explosion rocked the room. Though this one was not nearly as strong as the first, the first one had done the damage necessary to put everything in a precarious place. As the second shock wave rocked through the room, Toshinori lurched forward, pushing off the ground in an effort to grab Chiyo. His hand closed around her arm at the same moment that Toshinori heard the scraping grind of concrete against itself. A slab that had once made up part of the wall or ceiling was falling in towards them. With great effort, Toshinori lurched up, balanced on a knee and his toes. His free hand went up to meet the concrete, a flash of his quirk giving it enough strength to brace him against the impact. However, the force was not evenly distributed. The top of the concrete slab smacked against his arm and almost immediately cracked and separated off from the rest of the slab. Mute with horror, Toshinori pulled on Chiyo’s arm, the unbroken one, in a vain attempt to move her out of the way of the falling concrete. The slab hit with a crash and a crack that made Toshinori sick to his stomach. Throwing off the small portion of concrete that had caught on his arm, Toshinori grabbed for the slab with both hands. His grip was white knuckled. He didn’t dare use his quirk, lest he break the stone up even more. With a grunt of exertion, Toshinori lifted the concrete up. Fear and nausea crawled their way up his throat at what he saw beneath. ***** if you want it done right, do it yourself ***** Chapter Summary Katsuki goes looking for Izuku. Iida makes some headway on saving his classmates. Chapter Notes we're getting back into the swing of things, look at all these regular updates! as always, your comments feed my heart and soul and make me happy, so please deposit them below! thank you all so much for suffering with me Katsuki opened his eyes.   He sat alone next to the wall. The pro who had been checking him had left somewhere around minute eleven. They had joined the others in carefully examining the edges of the room in what little light was available. With Mount Lady above them holding up the ceiling, there was plenty of room to work with. Katsuki dusted off his pants and pushed himself up to his feet. He winced, biting the inside of his cheek. His feet ached horribly. The small scratches he’d gotten from the fight opened up again. There were two heroes by the door, one putting out the flames that still licked at the wood and the other examining the wall around it. There was no visible fire, but with all the smoke in the air, there had to be something somewhere.   Katsuki didn’t care.   He approached the door with a slight limp. Since he came up quietly, they didn’t notice him until he reached for the handle. “Whoa, hey kid,” said the taller hero. He intercepted Katsuki’s hand with his own arm. “You need to step back and let us handle this.” “Deku is on the other side of that door,” Katsuki said. “I need to open it so he can get in here and be safe.” The heroes exchanged a Look over Katsuki’s head. He caught the expression and it made his lip curl. It was pity that showed in their face, pity for him. “Kid,” the one began but Katsuki interrupted him. “Look, Deku isn’t fucking dead. He’s probably just waiting until it’s safe to come in. So fucking let me open the goddamn door already.” Katsuki tried to knock the man’s hand away and reach for the door again, but he was weakened and no match for the Pro Hero’s strength. He was easily held back. “You need to stand back and let the professionals take care of this,” the hero insisted. Katsuki wished Izuku was here already since the nerd would have recognized all of the heroes in the room and not just a few of the most popular ones that Katsuki also knew. Well, that and if Izuku was there, Katsuki could have just sat back and rested his busted body without any worry at all. “Then youopen up the damn door and let him in already,” Katsuki said. “I don’t give a fuck who does it, just so long as it fucking happens.” The other hero slid into view, bending over slightly so she was more of a height with Katsuki, “We understand that you’re anxious to get out of here, but it really isn’t safe quite yet. If your friend is injured on the other side and can’t move on the other side of the door, we don’t want to accidentally make that worse. I promise, taking this slowly is the best route.” Katsuki opened his mouth to insist, but the look on her face, the look on both of their faces, was serious. Neither one was willing to budge. So he closed his mouth, teeth gritting together, and looked down and away. He took a step back, stifling the wince as the nerves in his feet jangled in pain. Backing away, Katsuki put some distance between himself and the two at the door. He took the time to run his hands over his sides, probing his ribs to see just how hurt they were, and then checking his other injuries. It was during this self-check patdown that he found a lump of something in his pocket. It was the rock. Small enough to be held in the palm of his hand, the rock wasn’t altogether that heavy. The top of it was smooth and flat, and as Katsuki ran his fingers over the rough edges, he realized it was less a natural rock and more a chunk of concrete. Which, in retrospect, made sense. It had come from the arena, after all. The time it had spent in Katsuki’s pocket had worn away some of the blood that had been on its surface, however, he could still see little pockets of red on two of the rough edges. One might think that the blood was the most notable thing about the rock but, looking carefully at it, Katsuki was more disturbed by something else. One of the edges had a perfectly smooth semi-circle cut out of it. It was more smooth than the actual surface of the concrete chunk. Katsuki ran his finger over it, searching for some sort of defect or answer. The concrete didn’t crumble or even change with his touch. It felt as solid as the rest of it. Katsuki held it up, turning it over in what little light there was. If he held it so that the smooth circle was at the top, the stone rested on a rough, but the somewhat flat bottom. In that direction, the blood was concentrated on either side of the smooth part, without actually being on the smooth part at all. Going off a hunch, Katsuki ducked his chin and put the rock behind his head. He placed the smooth part of the chunk against the back of his neck, at about the same place he’d seen it rest against Izuku. It was a near perfect fit. After all, he and Izuku both had similar sizes in their necks. Slowly, Katsuki lowered the rock. He tossed it up and down in his hand, no longer focused on it.  His attention was back on the door. The door that opened outwards. To the hallway that they couldn’t see. What if the hallway had suffered a collapse, the same way this room almost had? What if Izuku was pinned? If the rock was any indication, yes, Izuku could still regenerate if there was something in the way of his body, but then he’d be trapped, wouldn’t he? He’d be stuck wherever he regenerated. He could be trapped under the weight of the building, pinned down and unable to work himself free. The image of Izuku, pinned under stone pressed so tightly to his chest that he couldn’t catch his breath, with his arms and legs held down, unable to swing, unable to push, unable to move. Even his stupid enhancement quirk wouldn’t work to free him if there was no room to use it. Katsuki tossed the rock one more time and caught it with a decisive snap of the wrist. His whole body ached, but he could still move. He could free Izuku. He was the only one who would care to free Izuku first. He shoved the rock into his pocket and turned back towards the door. His suspicions about the hallway were confirmed with what he saw. The heroes had finally put out that fire and had gotten the door open. Or rather, they had taken the door off its hinges and revealed that the hallway at that point was completely collapsed. They had obviously abandoned that route as an exit because of how thickly packed the rubble was. The area was clear. Katsuki rubbed his hands together. They were dry, chapped almost, but his quirk had never failed him yet. He ran his hands through his hair and down the back of his neck, picking up the residue of sweat from his match. While it was true he couldn’t spark an explosion anywhere but in his hands, it was also true that the sweat of his hands was the same as the sweat of the rest of his body. All it needed was the proper ignition and bam. He was a bomb. Or as Izuku had once put it, Katsuki was the sweatiest human firework alive. With that sweat on his hands and determination burning in Katsuki’s chest, he headed for the blocked off doorway. A wild grin split his face as he prepared himself for the powerful, concentrated blast. If he hit Izuku, it didn’t matter. He’d come back again. And this time he’d be free to move around. “Don’t worry, Deku,” Katsuki muttered as he reached the blocked off doorway. “I’m coming for you.” Katsuki swung his hand back. He heard someone shout something behind himself but it was far too late. Seconds before his palm connected with the slab in front of him, Katsuki ignited his quirk in an incredible explosion of fire, dust and building fragments. ===============================================================================     By chance, Tsukauchi ended up in part of the first group of responders to what was quickly becoming the most shocking event of the season. He had been having a chat with a couple of medics about a separate case when their ambulance was dispatched to the stadium. Shortly afterward, a call had gone out to all police task forces to make their way to help with the evacuation. Tsukauchi had already been on his way. He was following the lead of another officer, one more specifically trained in this sort of thing, with creating a perimeter for the evacuees to get to.  Wearing a bright vest and standing at a good height, he guided people to safety, weeding out the injured from the unharmed, so that those with medical needs could be taken care of. It was while he was doing this that he was approached by a familiar student. Tsukauchi did not know Iida Tenya personally, but he had met his brother on more than one occasion. The resemblance was very true to the family name and so, even if he’d never met Iida before, Tsukauchi would have guessed accurately who he was in any case. As it was, they had met at least once before, and so Iida recognized Tsukauchi as well. “Officer Naomasa!” Iida shouted. He broke away from the crowd and headed straight for him. His eyes were wide behind his glasses. “Please, can you help me?” “What is it?” Tsukauchi asked. “My teacher, Aizawa-sensei, sent me to find Present Mic to get an evacuation team and Present Mic said to come out here to where the police response is set up and find someone to tell because he had to stay where he was and direct people out.” Iida spoke quickly, but efficiently, delivering the report as though he were trained to do so, “Please, sir, several of my classmates are trapped and cannot escape. They need help!” Tsukauchi pointed to a temporary tented pavilion behind himself. “Go there to the blue tent. Officer Komata is in charge of sending out the extraction teams. Tell him that Officer Naomasa sent you to him and that you need someone right away.” “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” Iida gave a short, sharp bow, and then all but bolted away to the tent. Tsukauchi glanced after him, saw him head to the right place, and nodded to himself. He was able to turn back to his own work after that, which, with the unexpected second and third explosions, was about to get a lot more hectic.     ===============================================================================     Katsuki coughed, waving his hand in front of his face to block the dust. The once blocked hallway was torn wide open. His explosion had cleared out a significant portion of it, however, there was more above that was beginning to slide down. Chunks of the building slipped and crashed to the ground, threatening to collapse the tunnel anew. “The hell do you think you’re doing, kid? Are you trying to get us killed?” Someone shouted at Katsuki. He glanced over his shoulder to see more than one of the pros headed his way. Bitterness filled Katsuki’s mouth. He wasn’t an idiot. The room they were in was protected by Mount Lady. Sure, shit was shifting around now that there was a void space on one side, but that was more likely to remove weight from her back than add to it. Not that that was his intention at all, but it was a good side effect. No, what mattered was that Katsuki couldn’t find a trace of Izuku. Not a limb. Not a scrap of cloth. Not even a blood splatter. Nothing. There was nothing there. Nothing anywhere. How hot was that fire? Katsuki wondered, entering the blasted hallway. There was a worried shout. He ignored it. How long did you burn, Deku? He had screamed only for a short time, but the fire would have eaten up the oxygen he would have needed to breathe. That and the heat of the air itself would have cooked Izuku first. There was no telling just how quickly he had died without asking him directly. Katsuki wasn’t even sure if he’d burned to death or if it had been something else. Katsuki wished Izuku had had Good Luck with him. That bit of metal would have at least told Katsuki where Izuku’s body had last been. “Kid, watch out!” Katsuki glanced back and then up. A huge slab of concrete was falling towards him. He reacted instinctively and put his hand up. It was like his fight with Uraraka, except he was a lot more tired and it was a lot more stone falling on his head. Still, Katsuki managed to let off an explosion that burst through the air with enough force to shatter the rock and blast a hole behind it. Sunlight suddenly streamed into the hallway, the rays of light catching the dust swirling in the air. Katsuki flinched from the sudden light and put up his arm to shadow his eyes. Nothing else was threatening to fall on him, though, so he went back to searching the ground. He only had a few more seconds before a hero grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around. It was the tall one from before, which, upon exposure to full light, Katsuki still failed to recognize. He did more easily notice the banded black and yellow bandana and belt, which was enough to find out from Izuku later who the Pro was. “What the hell is wrong with you, kid? Do you have some sort of death wish? You could have died!” Katsuki couldn’t shrug off his hand, no matter how hard he tried. This guy was really starting to piss him off. “What, from a few fucking rocks falling on my head? Are you kidding me? I’d have to be dead already to fall for that shit. Now let me go, I’ve got to find Deku.” “Absolutely not. You’re getting the hell out of here with the rest of us. This whole landscape is dangerous.” “I don’t care. I’m not leaving without Deku.” “Kid,” The man crouched down to his level. That gave Katsuki pause. That, and the other heavy hand that rested on his shoulder. He bit the inside of his cheek, wincing at the pain the weight cause hid hurt ribs. “Your friend is gone. You need to come with us to safety-” “He’s going to come back,” Katsuki said. “No. He isn’t.” The man shook him slightly, “You need to listen to me. Really listen to me. Okay? Your friend is gone.He is not coming back. Ever.” “You don’t know Deku like I do,” Katsuki countered. “He always comes back. Always.” “Oh for god’s sake,” someone else said. Katsuki instinctively glanced over to see one of the other heroes, practically nameless to him, rub their forehead. “Kid, your friend is a smear on the other side of that damn door. He died in the fire and his body was burned up. He’s not coming back and you need to come with us to safety.” The woman from before elbowed him sharply in the side. “Kobe, what the hell is wrong with you?” Katsuki’s heart caught in his throat. The back of the door. He hadn’t looked at the back of the door. He ducked down, escaping the grip of the first hero, and headed for the door. Someone else tried to stop him, but he neatly dodged them and sprinted for it.    In the back of Katsuki’s mind, he kept thinking about how they never really tested burning to death. Yes, they had done explosions. They had done dismemberment. They had taken Izuku apart again and again, but there had always been somethingleft of him. They’d never burnt him away to nothing but ash and grease. What if he couldn't come back from nothing?   Katsuki grabbed the edge of the door and flipped it over. It fell to the ground with a loud clatter. On the backside, the side that had been facing the hallway, there was a black, greasy smear. It was, if Katsuki’s eyes didn’t lie to him, about the same size and shape of Izuku, had Izuku curled up in front of the door, acting like a stone that refused to budge and let the door open. It had been over twenty-one minutes. If Izuku was coming back, he should have done it three times over by now.   Katsuki bit his tongue until it bled to keep from letting out the scream that filled his lungs. ***** helping hands make the work light ***** Chapter Summary The excavation team arrives. Shouto is rescued. Chapter Notes 1: there's some Headcanon schmukery going on in this chapter; the Aizawa thing will be explained as we go along. the Shouto thing too. I promise. 2: im gonna cry guys. your comments are so good and pure and i love them. please, please, i cant wait to see what you think of this one too <3 See the end of the chapter for more notes The sound of footsteps approaching made Shouta turn and look up. He was hoping for Hizashi but expected nearly anyone else. After all, he could still hear the man at the farthest end of the stadium, helping people leave. It wasn’t much of a surprise to see Gomiko approaching. The only change since the last time he’d seen him was a bandage applied to his face and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows. As he approached, reaching out for some rubble to stabilize himself, Shouta saw for the first time a tattoo on the inside of the man’s arm. It took him back a bit, partially because of the image and partially because he had not expected such a thing from the man. The tattoo looked to be a horn of some kind, not a modern brass instrument, but an ancient one made of an animal’s horn. “Aizawa,” Gomiko said once he was within earshot. “What’s going on over here?” “Some of my students were trapped in the rubble,” Shouta said. He turned back to look into the hole once Gomiko reached his side. His eye caught, again, on Uraraka’s abandoned shoes. They were one of the few bright spots of color in the area. They brought no cheer, though, only reminding Shouta of how he had had to force the students to leave. “Damn,” Gomiko said. “The extraction teams are finally out, though. They shouldn’t be here much longer.” Shouta nodded. He worried about the kids that had left- Ashido and Uraraka specifically- as well as the ones beneath the rubble. Counting the ones he knew about, he still had five students missing. Possibly only four if those two follow-up explosions had come from the person he’d expected. At least he could be assured that wherever Bakugou was, Midoriya wouldn’t be far from it. The trouble was that he had no idea where Ojiro, Hagakure and Todoroki were. Kirishima had told him that Todoroki left before the end of the match, but that only put him in more danger. None of the students had known where Hagakure or Ojiro were. Shouta feared the worst.   “Oi!” Shouta glanced over his shoulder at that shout. It was a woman, trotting up towards them with another person on her heels. She wore a neon colored vest and strange goggles. Her brown hair, pulled back into a high ponytail, swung back and forth as she nimbly climbed up the rubble to their position. “Gomi!” She shouted, clearly not addressing Shouta, “There you are! Why the hell haven’t you evacuated?” Gomiko, for his part, gave an exasperated sigh and shook his head, “Xan-” he began, but she interrupted him. “Ah, ah,” She plucked her vest, “I’m on duty, boy. Excavation Team G, Angua at your service.” She gave a broad grin, showing off a wide array of sharp teeth. She turned back and gestured for her companion to follow, “This is my companion, Cheery. Cheers, say hi to the good doctor and, well who is this?” Angua looked Shouta over. Her goggles flashed with the dip of her head. Cheery’s greeting was a silent little wave. Wearing heavy gloves, boots and a bulky suit, Cheery’s androgynous appearance extended even to the coils of metallic looking strands of hair that were bundled up into an attempt at a ponytail that looked more like a bundle wire than anything else. “Aizawa,” Shouta introduced himself. He was a little uncertain about the woman’s familiarity with Gomiko. After all, given the man’s profession, she could be anyone from a patient to a coworker to a simple family friend. Gomiko certainly didn’t mind the way she came right up to him, hand patting his shoulder despite how much taller he was to her, and even smiled fondly at her as she walked a tight circle around him. “You look alive, which is good,” Angua said, “But this whole running around helping people evacuate, which I know you’ve been doing, don’t bother lying to me I can smell it on you, anyway, knock it the hell off. That’s not your job and you know it. Do you know how many people are worried about you? Your boy probably thinks you’re crippled under a damn rock somewhere- not to mention Kagaya.” Here, Gomiko winced. “Angua, please, this isn’t the time.” She scoffed at him but dropped the subject. She turned towards Shouta and audibly sniffed him, “Aizawa, you said? As in Aizawa Tomiko?” Shouta took in a sharp breath. His whole body stiffened, fingers curling in without his conscious thought making the decision to do so. “You… knew her?” Angua shook her head. “No. Only of her. So you’re the uncle then.” She looked him over again, a little slower again. Shouta saw his reflection in her goggles, oddly colored and warped by the glass. “And you’re a teacher. Figures.” Shouta didn’t know what to say. He so rarely encountered people capable of bludgeoning him with their words alone that he just stared at her silently. The sudden remembrance of his sister, dead several years now, brought up the memory of her son and the path he had taken since her death. Now the possibility of this fire having a villainous source became even more frightening of a prospect for Shouta. Angua gave him no time to really process anything before she asked, “Anyway, run me through the situation here. Your student told me as best as he could, but the boy was practically hysterical by the time he got to me.” She beckoned with one hand to Shouta. When she had his attention, she pointed down into the whole. “Who do we have and what do we know?” “I have four students trapped down there, two male, two female. We couldn’t quite make out what was being said, but one of the ones trapped has better hearing capabilities. She should be able to hear us,” Shouta explained quickly. “When I arrived here, the other students had communicated enough to know that she was able to respond and move but two others with here were trapped and not coherent and another one was trapped a little farther off, coherent but only barely.” Angua sniffed the air. She walked the edge of the hole as she did so, leaning so far over that Shouta had to resist the urge to grab her back. “Four are trapped, you say?” She asked to confirm. “Yes.” “Then why do I smell ten people here?” She lifted her nose up. “Yeah. S’definitely ten. Cheery!” She turned on her heel. “I need three flags.” Cheery, a squat person wearing a similar type of goggles as Angua, reached up into their hair and plucked out three strands. Shouta blinked as they somehow stiffened the hair like a metal wire, running their hand along the length of it, and molding the end into a brightly colored flag. All three were brought to Angua, who took them and then dropped down into the hole. She placed the first flag at the front of the large mound of stone that Shouta knew to hold Jirou, Sero, and Yaoyorozu. The second flag was placed four feet to the left. That had to be Kaminari, leaving the last two people she ‘smelled’ a mystery. Angua circled around to the back of the hole. She stepped lightly, picking her way across with slow, measured steps. They looked somewhat exaggerated, the way she would step, press down her weight and then pull back in order to test the ground, but Angua did it in complete seriousness. The third flag was placed at the back, near the farthest end of the hole. She crouched down, sniffing, looking around in the rubble, and then gestured for Cheery. “We need to start with this one. This is where most of the blood is coming from.” Shouta closed his eyes. Ojiro and Hagakure. It had to be them. Which one was injured? Which one bleeding? Why hadn’t they called out? How badly were they hurt? How long had he left them there to suffer? A warm, solid hand on Shouta’s shoulder made him open his eyes and look up. Gomiko’s expression was soft with his sympathy. “Angua is good at her work. She’ll get your kids out without any further injury.” Shouta said nothing. He only looked down into the hole. His fingers were curled so tightly into fists that they ached. Gomiko’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “This isn’t your fault, Shouta,” Gomiko whispered, leaning in, “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent this.” Somehow, Shouta really doubted that. He reached up with a mind to push Gomiko’s hand from his shoulder when Angua gave a shout that distracted him. His fingers rested on top of Gomiko’s as Cheery, short but apparently strong with the way they carried a slab of rock of their head, stepped back and out of the way. He saw the woman duck out of sight, heard the slide of rock and nearly took a step forward to go after her. Gomiko’s hand held him back, though, which was for the best since he already stood on the precipice. Cheery, after dumping the slab of rock, looked over to them and adjusted their goggles. Clearing their throat, they said, “Dr. Freecs, if you would be so kind as to flag down the medics? Thank you.” Gomiko squeezed Shouta’s shoulder once more before he pulled away. He turned and left, going back down a bit before calling out to someone. Shouta shivered at the loss of contact. He glanced up at the sky, at the sun that moved so slowly through the sky, and then back down to the mess in front of him. Cheery was giving more of that wiry hair to Angua, turning the strands into a thick braided cord before feeding it down and out of sight. Shouta watched in silence, waiting for the medics to arrive, waiting for this long, terrible day to finally, finally end.           ===============================================================================           There was a crack in the ice.   At first, the ice had been thin, so thin that Shouto could feel the heat of the raging inferno on the other side as it tore through the room and exploded out the other side. The heat had burned his ice into steam almost as fast as he could create it, but eventually that thin shell thickened and hardened and the heat receded. That was when the ceiling caved in. First small pieces had clattered along the back of the ice, then larger and larger ones until Shouto was convinced the whole building had fallen on his head. Now there was a crack, several cracks in fact, in the ice. Right above his face. Right where he could stare up into them and see them slowly spread or grow. Because the room was still warm. The ice was beginning to melt on its own. It was weakening and the stones were slowly moving farther and farther down. The cocoon of ice that Shouto had made for himself was only a little larger than he was and was several inches of thick ice. He had made it unthinkingly, absorbing up all the moisture in the room until he had his icy coffin. Shouto shook his head. “Not a coffin. I’m not going to die here. I won’t.”   He couldn’t. He still had so much he had to do, promises made and goals and if he died, what would be the point of anything that he had worked for? Shouto smoothed his hand over the ice, gathering up some of the liquid of it as it tried to melt, and used that to plug the cracks above his face. If the room had fallen in here, then it only made sense that there was damage elsewhere. He just had to wait for someone to find him. Shouto closed his eyes and folded his hands together on his chest. All he had to do was maintain his ice and keep calm. He wouldn’t run out of air if he didn’t panic. There was a small gap near the wall that fed in a trickling of air for him. He would be fine. He just had to wait. And wait. And- The flicker of something made Shouto open his eyes. A familiar black mist opened up in that incredibly small space between Shouto and the ice. A pair of eyes, glowing and white opened up in the swirling black of the portal. Shouto watched in silence as the portal extended down to his feet and up towards his head. “You seem to have gotten yourself into a tight situation,” Kurogiri said, speaking softly. “Perhaps we could provide you a way out?” Shouto held still, nearly frozen to the floor. He swallowed dryly at first and then again, trying to work moisture into his mouth. Kurogiri, polite as he was, waited. Licking his lips, Shouto said, “If I show up outside of the stadium, people are going to wonder how I got there. Someone saw me in his room and if the recording equipment didn’t get destroyed, they’ll know I never left it.” “There is another section of the stadium, still collapsed, yet safe. I would not worry about the memory of one person.” Kurogiri said, “Very rarely do people remember anything perfectly. The cameras are another matter, but, again, they’ll be searching for the source of the ignition, not for you.” Shouto couldn’t help it, he let out a little laugh, almost a giggle. Immediately, he slapped his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. Kurogiri’s eyes widened slightly. “No,” Kurogiri murmured, “It couldn’t be.” He hesitated, his eyes shifting a little, moving farther up so that he was at eye level with Shouto. “It was you?” Lifting his hand a bare inch, Shouto whispered, “It was an accident. I think there was a gas leak.” The glowing eyes closed for a moment and Shouto swallowed again. He pressed his hand back over his mouth. His breath came fast through his nose. Anxious, nervous energy ran through him. He couldn’t see the ice behind the black portal, but he could hear it crack. Kurogiri’s eyes opened back up again. “We can make it work. Come through the portal and I will deposit you somewhere nearby that is safer than this. We can’t have you be crushed to death now.” Shouto nodded. He slid his hands back and pushed off the ground. For a moment, he worried he’d sit up and hit the ice with his face, but no. He slid into the portal instead, eyes closed tightly, and back out the other side. Shouto stumbled as he landed in the hallway. There was plenty of rubble all around him, but nothing threatened to fall in on his head. Looking around, he could see some sunlight streaming through some of the broken slabs. Listening close, he could hear voices shouting in the distance. “Be careful,” Kurogiri murmured as his portal closed up, “We will speak later.” Shouto nodded to him. He recognized one of those distant voices. It was his classmate, Bakugou. Where there was Bakugou, there was Midoriya. And where there was Midoriya, there was a way out of this damn mess. Chapter End Notes 3: Angua and Cheery are a reference to Pratchett's Watch characters, Angua_the_werewolf and Cheery_the_dwarf. 4: Angua = Xanna. Angua is Xanna's Pro Hero Name. 5: im srsly gonna cry ***** the walking wounded ***** There was a small opening in the rubble. Through it, he could hear shouting and see sunlight. Shouto picked his way over to it, carefully balancing himself on pieces that wanted to slip and slide out from under his feet. With a few stubborn pieces, he had to reach down and freeze the side of them so that they would stay stuck to what they rested on. At the hole, he peered through to see an area that had been opened up and inside of which several people stood. To his surprise, most of them were adults. In fact, most of them looked to be Pros, climbing their way out of the hole while one or two stayed behind. The source of the shouting was one that Shouto knew well. Bakugou. “No! Fuck you!” his angry voice carried even all the way through the rubble to where Shouto was. Shouto ducked his head a little, trying to see what Bakugou was doing, but only saw him crouched near the ground. “I’m not going fucking anywhere!” Whoever he was shouting at was talking quietly to him, though. It was a woman with one hand on her hip and the other waving backward towards the dark hole in the wall behind her. Shouto figured it was a room of some kind, but he couldn’t be sure. He started looking at the hole that he was next to, trying to find a way open it up when there was an audible cracking sound behind him. Shouto turned, slipped, stumbled, caught himself on a piece of concrete that scuffed his palms, and looked up just in time to see a different section of the wall get torn down. It was like an entrance in a movie: the dust settled slowly, drifting through the air as a silhouette stepped into view. Broad shouldered, with distinctive hair, Shouto recognized All Might before he saw him properly. His gaze skittered downwards, away from the man’s face instinctively, and because of that, he saw the small figure cradled in one arm. Shouto’s eyes widened as he saw Recovery Girl, bleeding and wrapped up in a blanket- a familiar blanket, from the infirmary beds- being held by All Might. His heart jumped in his chest with the realization that people had gotten hurt in that fiery explosion. Possibly people Shouto had known like his classmates or other teachers. Recovery Girl looked small and near death. Shouto could barely tell she was breathing at all. Who else had that fire hurt? Who else had it taken? Shouto swallowed with some difficulty. “Ah, Todoroki!” All Might’s cheer was strained. Shouto could hear it. It was the same sort of sound that his sister’s voice got when things became difficult at home. “You are looking well! I’m glad.” Shouto nodded. He couldn’t meet All Might’s gaze. He had done this. He had hurt Recovery Girl. He had gotten them all trapped. He had done it. It had been him. With a shaking hand, he pointed to the lit side of the rubble. “On the other side of this is the way out, All Might,” Shouto said. He stepped back, out of the way, “I don’t think I should use my quirk to get out. The ice won’t help and the fire…” He licked his lips and shook his head, unable to say the words. All Might walked over to him. Shouto swallowed his shame and glanced up, briefly. Even All Might was injured, a cut above his eye making him bleed. “I have an important request for you, then. Hold her gently, but securely. She is alive but critically injured and we must get her to a medic promptly.” Very carefully, All Might put Recovery Girl into Shouto’s arms. Shouto’s knees locked up as he took on the weight of the small woman. She was a light burden, physically, but her whispering, paper-thin breath struck Shouto to the quick. He shifted his arms around her, terrified of injuring her further, but even more afraid of dropping her. He looked to All Might, who gave him a smile, a thumbs up, and didn’t seem to notice the blood on his own lips. Shouto swallowed as All Might turned and peered into the hole. The Pro Hero opened up the hole with a solid punch, knocking away the chunks of rubble that didn’t turn to dust. He led the way through the new pathway, Shouto following in his footsteps, and made it to the cluster of others. Shouto finally saw what Bakugou was crouched by. He had no idea why such a charred door would be important to him, but Shouto had a feeling he was going to find out. The argument paused when All Might appeared. A few of the heroes came to him quickly and a discussion on getting out of the pit was started almost immediately. Someone came and took Recovery Girl from Shouto’s trembling fingers. They held her, looking over her, while Shouto stepped back. The woman who had been fighting with Bakugou abandoned her argument and went to join the adults, leaving the way clear for Shouto to creep up to his classmate. Bakugou sat on the ground, knees drawn up and arms over them. Beside him was a door that had been blackened on one side as though exposed to a huge fire. Shouto was beginning to get a very clear picture of how badly the fireball had damaged the stadium. He hadn’t come in contact with a single portion that was still fully intact. “The fuck do you want, half-face,” Bakugou snarled. He looked bristly; red eyes glaring, upper lip pulled back in a sneer, black soot on his hands and arms and even a little on his cheek and still visibly battered from his fight with Midoriya. Shouto considered this question for a moment. The area was emptying out. He recognized Kamui and Mount Lady and a few other Pros making their way out. Kamui was the one lifting Recovery Girl out of the hole, his branch fingers holding her small body like a piece of cloth stuck in a tree. Slowly, Shouto sat down beside Bakugou. “I want to take a nap,” he said. “What about you?” Bakugou stared at him. The anger was curbed slightly by Shouto’s honest answer. Lowering his head a little, resting a cheek on his forearm, Bakugou looked off to the side. He was silent for a long minute, not that Shouto much cared. It was easier to sit silently beside Bakugou than to get up, than to talk, than to face the reality of what his fire had done. “I just want Deku.” The answer wasn’t surprising, but it did cause Shouto to realize something. He couldn’t see or here Midoriya anywhere. “Where is he?” He looked around, but upon not seeing their fellow classmate, Shouto looked to Bakugou for an answer. What he got was Bakugou hiding his face against his knees while he reached out, with one hand. His fingers rested on the charred lump of something stuck to the door. Shouto stared at it. He stared at Bakugou’s fingers on it. He couldn’t breathe. Bakugou’s hand shook as he took it off the grisly thing. He covered his own head with his arm, fingers digging into the short blond hair and staying there. He said nothing, but Shouto understood anyway. Shouto’s stomach flipped and then flipped again. He couldn’t stop staring at the thing that had once been Midoriya. Putting his hand over his mouth, Shouto drew his arms and legs closer to himself as well. He had done that. He had done that. His fire had burned Midoriya into an unrecognizable lump. If Bakugou ever found out- Scrambling to his knees, Shouto crawled desperately for a pocket of rubble nearby that he could throw up in. The grisly horror was nothing to the utter fear that swelled inside of him like the bile from his gut. He knew, without a doubt, that Bakugou would kill him if he found out the truth. He could almost feel those hands wrapped around his throat, choking the life out of - Shouto coughed and spat the last of his vomit from his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Lifting his head up, he twisted around to stare at Bakugou. He could almost remember something. It was right there, on the edge of his thoughts, like a book just out of reach high on a library shelf, or a word that you could remember the meaning of, but not what it actually was. There was something he could almost remember about Bakugou’s hands around a throat- The shadows behind a curtain. Midoriya wheezing. Bakugou’s ragged breath. The slick slap of their bodies coming together. How faint Midoriya’s voice became. Almost as if it were choked out of him. Bakugou’s grip had to have been so tight, bruisingly tight. How Midoriya’s throat hadn’t shown a single mark of that grip; no bruising, no fingerprints, not even a little reddening. Choking someone like that left something behind. Shouto knew that choking someone left marks behind. He had seen it before. Midoriya’s bizarre healing. No one had ever seen him use it. No one but Bakugou. How did it work? How was it triggered? Just how much could he heal from? Broken limbs, for sure. Lost body parts if Uraraka’s story about the entrance exam was to be believed. What about blood loss? Lack of oxygen? From being burned alive?   Shouto’s gaze slid off of Bakugou and landed again on what was once Midoriya.   What if the reason that Bakugou wouldn’t leave Midoriya’s body’s side wasn’t because he couldn’t move on, but because he expected him to come back? Impossible, Shouto immediately thought, there’s no way there’s a quirk that powerful and no one has heard about it. That’s the kind of quirk people would kill to have, would kill to steal. Shouto absently formed an ice cube and put it in his mouth to melt so he could wash out some of the taste of his vomit. He looked away from Bakugou, from Midoriya, and tried to keep a calm appearance. He knew that if he asked Bakugou, he’d get a denial. Fortunately, Shouto had other people he could ask. When he met up again with them later, he’d get his chance. Until then he just had to keep his cool and not draw anyone’s attention. Sliding the ice cube along the side of his mouth, Shouto knew he could, at the very least, do that.     ===============================================================================     There were people everywhere outside of the stadium. The streets and sidewalks were filled with them. Eijirou held onto Mina’s arm, helping lead her through the crowd so he didn’t lose her. They were both following Satou, who carried a passed out Ochako on his back. When they’d finally left the stadium, moving slowly near the back of the crowd, they’d been directed toward one of the many medical tents being set up. There were more Pros on the outside of the stadium, directing the flow of people, guiding others, keeping the wounded safe and ushering people farther from the building. Mina was walking on her own, but she clung to Eijirou’s arm, weeping uncontrollably. He had to keep blinking away his own tears so he could pay attention to where they were going. The tent they were sent to was one of the most recently set up ones, or so they had been told. It was near the farthest edge of the activity, the southernmost part of the border. The tent was smaller than some of the other medical ones that Eijirou had seen, but had the same red and white awning. Shouji opened the flap for Satou and the others and the remnants of Class A, plus Shinsou, filed into the area. The area inside had about a dozen beds, with one occupied. Eijirou recognized the girl in the bed as Hatsume, the girl that Midoriya had ‘fought’ in the first battle of the tournament. He wasn’t the only one to notice or recognize her, though, and he heard Shinsou behind him make a little, surprised sound. Hatsume was preoccupied with her leg. Looking at it as well, Eijirou saw that a long gash had been made from her knee to her ankle, twisting from her kneecap to the side of her leg and then dropping off at her ankle. It was a grisly sight to see, as the laceration cut through skin to the fat and muscle below. It looked as though someone had lazily sewn a zigzagging line along the wound with black cord. And yet, Hatsume was neither acting like she was in pain nor complaining about the lack of care given to her leg. She was simply staring at the wound, watching for something Eijirou couldn’t see. “All those with injuries, please take a bed, the doctor will be with you shortly,” a female voice distracted Eijirou from Hatsume’s leg. He looked over and recoiled a little bit instinctively at the sight. Where he’d been expecting a woman to be standing, perhaps in the pale clothes of a nurse, a strange being made of mist stood instead. She still wore a nurse’s clothing, but the cloth was buttoned up around a body made entirely of mist. Her dark eyes looked over the group of students as she gestured with one misty hand towards the beds. The USJ event wasn’t so long ago that Eijirou forgot about the man made of black mist. This woman looked like an inversion of him, with the white mist and black eyes, although she was somewhat smaller in appearance. Eijirou hesitated in listening to her because of that, wondering if, by chance, she was related to that man. After all, quirks were genetic. What were the chances of two people entirely made of mist who weren’t related to each other? Shinsou, however, didn’t have that same hesitancy. He stepped forward and helped Satou put Ochako down on a bed. That managed to break Eijirou out of his stupor and he helped Tsuyu get Mina on a bed. The woman of mist went to Ochako’s bed first. Eijirou listened in, but she only asked for Ochako’s name and age before moving over to Mina’s bed. Mina wiped her eyes and answered the woman’s two questions. Tsuyu gently pat Mina’s hand while giving fretful glances over to Ochako. The flaps at the back of the tent parted. Eijirou looked up to see a man walk in. He met with the misty woman, nodding to her and talking quietly. He had red hair, shaggy and loose, and glasses that slipped on his nose. Waving the woman away, the man approached. He looked less like a doctor and more like a librarian or Eijirou’s uncle who was a shopkeeper, in his navy colored sweater vest over a simple white button down shirt. He was tugging on some plastic gloves as he walked over. He first went to Hatsume and spoke with her. “Let me see that, yes there we go.” He slid his hand under her leg. “That’s closing up nicely. Stil no pain?” “Nothing,” she said, “Say, what do you make this fiber out of? It isn’t nylon or anything. I don’t recognize the texture.” “Trade secret,” the doctor said, “Don’t pick at it too much. Lie back if you get tired and if you begin to feel dizzy or shaky in any way, let the nurse know. Thank you.” He turned away before she could say another word. He reached Ochako’s bed first. Without saying a thing, he looked down at her. He rubbed his chin with his hand. Satou nervously cleared his throat. Shinsou stood silently. Without looking up from Ochako, the man said, “Her best course of action will be to sleep until she’s recovered. All her injuries are superficial and if I were to instigate the healing process, she’d slip into a coma.” The doctor began to turn away. “I’ll have Shiro change the bandages, but nothing else can be done.” “Excuse me,” Shinsou said. He looked surprised that he’d even spoken, but the doctor did stop and looked back. He pinned Shinsou with an intense gaze. “Yes?” Eijirou saw Shinsou’s hands at his side. They clenched together and then he tucked them into his pockets to hide the tight fists. “That’s it? That’s your diagnosis?” “It is,” the doctor said. “Look, young man, your concern is nice but there is nothing I can do for her but reapply the bandages that were damaged on her face. She is suffering from exhaustion due to overuse of her quirk. The body will recharge on its own. If I were to interfere with my own quirk, the diversion of energy and nutrients would be more harmful than helpful. So yes. That’s my diagnosis. Nothing can be done except to monitor her.” The doctor lifted his hand, “Shiro!” “Coming Doctor,” the misty woman approached, carrying a small case with her. He stepped back so she could take his place and remove the damaged bandages that Ochako had on her face. Shinsou didn’t say anything more as the doctor approached Mina’s bed. He gave a little smile to her, saying, “My name is Doctor Thom. Where are you hurt, Mina?” “M-my ankle,” she said quietly, “And my wrist.” Mina sniffled and rubbed at her face with one hand. “I was pushed out of the way of the collapse.” “That must have been incredibly frightening,” Thom said as he took her injured arm in hand. “Can you move your fingers for me? Good, that’s good. And I’ll need to take off your shoe to check your foot.” His hands moved quickly as he examined her, tapping her joints and running along the length of her fingers first and then her foot. He was still giving that vague little smile as he pulled off his gloves. He tucked them into the pocket of his pants and then wrapped one hand around her ankle and the other around her wrist. “Ouch,” Mina winced. Her free hand flapped as if she were shaking of an electric discharge. “What was that?” “That,” Thom said as he let go of her and brushed his hands together, “Was my quirk. You’ll feel a little fatigued and your blood sugar will drop somewhat, but Shiro will provide you something to eat and drink shortly.” “That’s your quirk?” Mina grimaced. “It felt like I was being shocked!” “Well yes,” Thom said, “How else would I stimulate your nerve endings? The whole body is an electrical map.” He held up a finger, “If you apply the right kind pressure at the right point, you can make it do anything.” He lowered his hand, calling out, “Shiro, juice and crackers for the girl, please.” “Yes Doctor,” Shiro said. Eijirou took a step back as a small white portal opened up in the air beside Thom. He held out his hand underneath it, neatly catching the juice box and plastic bag that dropped down. Thom placed those in Mina’s surprised hands. “Eat and drink then wait fifteen minutes. You’ll be good to go after that.” Thom gave Mina the simple instructions and then went to the next bed over. While all this had been going on, other injured people from the stadium had been making their way into the tent. They began to fill up the other beds. Eijirou watched as Thom dealt with them, one after another, as promptly as he did Mina and Ochako. When the nurse, Shiro, finished bandaging up Ochako, she began to shoo the rest of them out of the tent. “We need to make room for actual patients. Please leave if you are not injured.” “We can’t just leave Ochako and Mina,” Eijirou said, not budging from Mina’s side. “They’re our classmates.” “You may stay outside of the tent to wait. In fact, you must. There is not space in here for everyone and their friend. Please leave.” Shiro responded. She spoke quickly, almost sharply, but Eijirou couldn’t tell if that was just how she was or if she was genuinely annoyed by them being there. “If I sit on Ochako’s bed,” Tsuyu said, “Can I stay here with her? We don’t want her to wake up in a strange place.” Shiro seemed to consider this. “That is acceptable. But the rest of you must go.” As she ushered them out, Hatsume joined them. Eijirou couldn’t help but glance down to her leg as she walked out with them. She saw him looking and turned her leg to show it off. “Pretty incredible, isn’t it? All that’s left is a little pink scar, and he said that that should fade with time.” She was right, it was incredible. Eijirou had been certain that her leg was torn open too badly to walk on, especially with the terrible stitching, but now he couldn’t even see where the stitches had been. “What kind of quirk can do that?” he asked. Hatsume grinned, “He won’t say what it was, but that he and his whole family have had healing quirks. In fact,” she added with a wave of her finger, “he said that two close relatives of his are Pros, one a retired recovery expert and the other vital to emergency situations like these. No names, though. He’s a secretive one!” “He is pretty unusual,” Eijirou said, “He’s not like any other recovery hero I’ve ever met before.” There was a girl outside the tent who perked up at the sight of them. Hatsume said a quick goodbye to Eijirou and the others before joining up with the girl. She slung her arm around the other girl’s shoulder and showed off her now uninjured leg. Eijirou smiled a little, glad to see that. He and the remaining members of Class A stood off to the side of the tent. Shinsou stood nearby but turned towards the stadium with a frown on his lips. “Should we try to find Iida?” Eijirou asked. “Or sensei?” “It would probably be best to remain in one central location,” Tokoyami said. “That way, Asui still knows where we are when Uraraka wakes up and, together, we’ll be more readily recognizable because of our uniforms.” He plucked at his shirt a little bit. “I hope the extraction team got everyone else safe,” Satou said quietly. Eijirou looked to him and saw he, too, was staring at the stadium. Eijirou grimaced. The once impressive building was now smoldering and smoking.  It hadn’t fully collapsed, but it wasn’t hard to see how there were sections that had fallen apart. That almost half of their class was still inside, including their homeroom teacher, bothered him. But what could he do about it? What was he supposed to do about it? Uneasily, Eijirou turned away and he decided to look over the crowd for Iida instead. At least that was something he could reasonably do. Iida had to be around here somewhere. ===============================================================================     Never before had Tenya felt so incredibly alone. He was surrounded by people on all sides; they talked, they walked, they stood in little clusters or sat on the ground. Some of them openly cried and grieved. Others were clearly still in shock. Tenya could barely hear them over the sound of his mother’s voice on the phone. She was weeping, just as badly as some woman not ten feet away from Tenya, and her tears, too, were a mixture of grief and joy. Grief for her loss. Joy that her loss was not total. “Are they sure it was him?” Tenya asked, his voice cracking. He had already asked this question before but the answer- the answer- His mother sobbed harder. Tenya’s vision blurred. “Mom, are they sure?” “Oh Tenya, they are. They checked. They’re sure.” She cried on the other end of the phone. “Please. You must stay safe for me. Please. I cannot lose you too.” Tenya closed his eyes. He felt hot tears run down his cheeks. His mother, at home, was so far away. Everyone around him suffered their own loss, their own grief. Yet he was alone. They all suffered because of the stadium’s collapse. Tenya’s grief came at the hands of the Hero Killer Stain. ***** trespassing *****   It was cold. Cold and dark. There was a strange smell in the air. Like harsh chemicals for cleaning and preserving. Something else, too, something more familiar beneath that. Izuku held perfectly still in the darkness; eyes wide open as he waited for his body to fully adjust. It didn’t smell like gas anymore, nor did it smell like the aftermath of a fiery explosion. No matter how wide he kept his eyes, not a single glimmer of light broke the darkness. Cautiously, Izuku reached out with his hand. He expected jagged rubble, wires or dust, but his fingers encountered smooth metal only a few inches above himself. Feeling around with both hands and then, carefully, with his feet as well, Izuku realized abruptly that he was in a box. A smooth metal box. He let out his breath with a shudder. It didn’t make sense for the building to fall down in such a way as to make something like this. No. No, this was manmade. Had he really been out so long that his body had been taken? But how? And by whom? And if he was really taken, where was Katsuki? Izuku ran his fingers around the limits of his container one more time, slower and more cautiously than before. The box was, he knew for sure, horizontal on whatever surface it rested on. He couldn’t feel any vibrations through it, nor could he hear any sounds from the other side. Izuku at first pressed both palms to the panel above him and pressed with his base strength. There was nothing, not even the creak of supposed movement. The back panel was closest after that, so Izuku braced his hands on either side of himself and pushed down with his feet. Still no reaction. Neither one of the sides budged either. Finally feeling a little frantic, Izuku squirmed his way to the front panel. As his fingers pressed against the metal, he encountered some flat shape sticking out. He had no idea what it was, but when he pushed on this one, there was a sudden, although minor, crack of light that blinded him. Izuku found it a little strange that the box he was in had such a small opening, but what mattered most was that it hadan opening. Izuku inched along the small space until he was bunched near the front panel. The box was too small for him to turn around and kick the thing open, but he could brace himself along the sides of the box with his legs. Izuku examined the back of the panel more closely with his fingers, searching for the weakest point. The light had only come from three angles, meaning that the fourth had the hinges. He found the side farthest from the hinges and that was where the weird shape was sticking out. The back of a handle? He thought, trying to figure out what it was by touch alone. Is there a handle on my box for some reason? Using just a little bit of his strength quirk, Izuku punched a neat hole in the panel. Bright, fluorescent light poured in around his fist. Izuku tested out his handle theory by reaching around with his hand on the outside for one. He found it about where he expected it and grabbed it. Turning the handle made a latch unlocking sound and then the panel swung open. That chemical smell, of preservatives and cleaning agents, was stronger out in the room. Izuku coughed and wished he had something to cover his mouth and nose with. He had nothing, though, as he had regenerated completely naked inside of his box. The box, he realized upon pulling himself out of, which turned out to be a drawer. Just one of many, in fact. Izuku tumbled out, catching himself on the floor with his hands, and rolled up to his feet, wary and curious about his location. The first thing he properly saw was a wall of drawers, each one labeled with a number, each one the same size as his own. One look around the room, at the stainless steel tables and equipment, at the deep sinks and the trashcans that said Biohazard Wasteon them and Izuku knew that he was in the place of Katsuki’s nightmares. He was in some laboratory or some morgue or, worst of all, some combination of the two. It was cold there too, his skin prickling and beginning to shiver. Izuku rubbed his hands over his arms and tried to think of what he should do next. There were questions he needed to answer: how long was he out? How long had he been here? How had they gotten him here? Did Katsuki know where he was? Was Katsuki being held somewhere else? If Katsuki wasn’t caught as well, and Izuku had no idea why they’d want to take him other than the fact that he’d not rest until Izuku was found, then Izuku could freely escape. First, though, Izuku needed to figure out what kind of place he was in for sure. He went to one of the drawers just right of his own and levered it open. The latch clicked easily as he turned the handle and when he pulled the door open, the drawer inside pulled out smoothly. Izuku swallowed as he encountered pale, bare feet. There was a tag around the toe and on it was listed three lines of text. One was a date, one was a name and one was an identification number. The name is what froze Izuku in place. Bakugou, H. He pulled out the rest of the drawer, expecting, well, the remains of Katsuki’s mother- as she was the only ‘Bakugou, H’ that he knew of. But the body was a middle-aged man, older than Haruka and, well, definitely not her. Confused,  Izuku pushed the man back inside and shut the door. He went to the next one and pulled it open. There was another tag with three more lines. This one had a different date, a different identification number, but the same name. Bakugou, H. Slowly, as Izuku checked a third body, a third drawer, just to be sure, it dawned on Izuku that, perhaps, the laboratory he had found himself in was Haruka’s.She was, after all, a scientist much like his own father. Izuku didn’t have a very clear idea of what she did, but after seeing this, he knew it had something to do with the dead. Izuku heard a noise, like something being dropped, and turned around. The sound was somewhat muffled, though, and must have come from the hallway outside. There were footsteps, rushed ones, that followed the noise and Izuku saw a shadow run past the window on the door. He stood there, frozen, heart hammering in his chest until he was sure that the people had passed. With a shaking hand, he pushed shut the most recent door. He needed to get out of- His gaze fell on his own open door. There was a hole in the middle of it. No one was going to overlook that. And if he had an identification number, just like these others, they would know that it was him that was missing. Izuku returned to the broken door and pushed it open. He pulled out the drawer that he had woken up on only to find a scrap of blue cloth, much like those that had covered the other bodies, and a tag. The string on the tag was broken, but the tag itself was still intact. Izuku recognized the date as nearly two years ago, long before he’d ever gotten into Yuuei. The identification number was a simple one; A0204. The name listed was one Izuku didn’t recognize: Hamilton, T. He curled his hand around the tag. He pulled out the cloth that was in the drawer and wrapped that around his waist as a temporary cover. Then he closed the drawer back up and shut the door. The rest of the room had little to offer. There were a few empty tables, ones that, presumably, were large enough for bodies to be laid out upon. He could see a few tools positioned carefully on a nearby counter, looking like the instruments of a mortician or a doctor. Izuku skimmed over those with his eyes, not taking any of them. There was no reason to when his punch could get him through anything and any injury would leave him- Wait. He didn’t have Good Luck on him. Izuku turned back to the instruments. The ones out on the counter were large ones like bone saws or hammers, but the drawers below held other tools. He found some scalpels with plastic caps and took one out. He didn’t need it to hurt anyone- he had no intention of hurting anyone even in his escape- but if he got badly hurt he was going to need a quick way to reset himself. Izuku’s rifling through the drawers landed him in a larger one that was filled with files instead of just tools. He almost shut it without checking it before his eye caught on the label of one of the first folders. It read as A0204. That was his number. As he reached for the file folder, he heard footsteps running down the hallway again. It spooked him, so he snatched the folder, didn’t bother to open it, and hurriedly shut the file drawer. Armed with the scalpel, wearing only a scrap of cloth and holding the manila folder tightly to his chest, Izuku crept over to the door. He reached it and stood on tiptoe to peer out the small window. He saw a hallway beyond, unremarkable looking and empty as far as he could tell. Cautiously, he opened the door and poked his head out. He could hear voices down one end, and nothing down the other. Izuku slipped out and went left, the opposite of where people were talking. He walked quickly down the hallway, trying every door he found. Several of them were locked, but one, an office door, swung open under his touch. Izuku hesitated a moment, listening, but heard nothing. He poked his head inside. The room was set up like a small office, with a desk piled with paper and several shelves filled with books. It looked as though someone had just been there, though, because there was a cup of tea still steaming on the desk. In the corner, Izuku saw what he was looking for. There was a coat rack with a couple of articles of clothing on it. There was a weatherproof jacket and a sweater, but the one that Izuku unhooked from the rest was a burgundy duster. It was longer than the rest of the other outerwear and perfect for what Izuku needed. He put it on, quickly fastening the buttons up, and upon discovering the large pockets on the side, bent the folder in half and shoved it into one of them. He dropped the tag in there as well, so he didn’t lose it. With only the scalpel in hand, Izuku escaped out of the office room. He walked quickly down the hallway, searching now for an exit. He managed to find an elevator, but when he pushed the button to go down, a small screen lit up, blinking. Please provide secondary identification, a rolling script said on the screen, or hold your finger on the scanner. Izuku grimaced and stepped back. What kind of high-security place was this, asking for a fingerprint to use the elevator? “There’s gotta be an emergency escape,” Izuku muttered, looking around. His eye caught on a plaque on the wall near the elevator sign. He stepped up to it when he recognized it to be a map of the floor that he was on. Reading over it, he saw that he was on the far end while the large lab room that he had been in, labeled as Room 315. The symbol for stairs, however, was the opposite direction. The same direction the voices were coming from. The same direction as a room labeled Common Room 301. Izuku licked his lips but decided to chance it anyway. His only other option was to find a window and jump out, but knowing that would leave behind a blood splatter and possibly damage the folder he was stealing, Izuku really didn’t want to have to do that. Especially since he didn’t have Katsuki to watch his back. Izuku walked briskly down the long hallway, his heart pounding in his chest. He had to resist running, had to resist stopping and avoiding the windows. He passed the laboratory door quickly and entered the area he hadn’t been yet. There was a door open ahead of him. Izuku shoved his shaking hands into his pockets and walked quickly, not stopping, not hesitating. As he approached the open doorway, he heard a voice talking. “...right there, do you hear me? That area is going to be absolutely chaotic for hours. You keep track of each other and don’t get lost. As soon as you’re able to leave the area, I want you to go home, understand me? Go right home and stay there where it’s safe.” It was a man talking, Izuku was able to tell, and as he walked past the door, he glanced out of the corner of his eye to see him sitting behind his desk, on the phone, while he stared at his computer screen. “Don’t argue with me and do notgo to your friend's house. Go home, Nina. Can you please do this for me?” Izuku hurried past. He felt the hair on the back of his neck standing on end the farther down the hallway he went. There was the turn for the stairs just ahead. They were to the right, while that common room was to the left. Izuku reached the turn without coming to another open door. Just before turning to go, he glanced to the other side, to make sure no one was coming the other way. The wall to the common room was mostly a glass window. He could look in and see a few tables, some counters and a small kitchen like area set up. There was a crowd of people standing there, a group of adults that he’d never seen before. Wait. No. That wasn’t true. Standing at the back of the group, with her arms folded tightly across her chest, was Haruka. Izuku could recognize her profile easily, having seen her in her home plenty of times. Her short hair was a lot like Katsuki’s too, making it easy to tell they were related. She stood, silent and still, watching the television that was hooked up to the upper corner of the room. Most of the others were looking at it too, some of them also glancing to their phones or talking to each other. Izuku had to duck down so he could see the TV better. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. The screen was an aerial view of the stadium- or what was left of the stadium. In the corner, a newscaster was superimposed, but whatever they were saying Izuku couldn’t hear. What he could see was the throng of people still pouring out of the southern edge of the stadium. The view turned slowly, following the slow circling of the blimp that orbited the stadium. Izuku was tempted to go closer, to try and listen in on what was going on, but he was frozen to his spot. The images themselves were jarring, true, but what stuck out to Izuku was how shocked everyone was. Clearly, this was news to them still. If that phone call he had overheard was accurate, then this was still currently happening. That meant only minutes had passed between when the fire had swept up the hallway and Izuku woke up. Izuku didn’t know where he was, but he could be reasonably sure that he wasn’t in the stadium anymore. How could anyone have found his body and gotten it out of there so quickly that he woke up here, who knows how far away? They would have had to get to the stadium, go against the crowd that was evacuating, dig down and find him beneath the rubble, put him in the box and carry him back in the space of only a few minutes. It was impossible. And yet, here he stood, in the hallway of a laboratory, without clothes and with an identification number. “Possibly a quirk to move at supersonic speed? Or to slow time?” Izuku wondered quietly, turning away from the common room. He stood with his back against the wall, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Or possibly a warp quirk? There is that one villain who has that quirk. Surely something like that could have happened. But why would they have pulled out me alone? If Kacchan’s mom works here, wouldn’t they have taken Kacchan too?” Then again, they had put him in a drawer, shelved along with rows of other dead bodies. If they had just found his body, they would have figured he was dead. Still, it begged the question: Why him? No one knew about his quirk besides Katsuki and his mother. And neither one of them would have told anyone. Katsuki was scared of losing Izuku and his mother would have done anything to protect him. It didn’t make sense. “Sorry, go ahead. I can hear you now.” Izuku froze, fingers pressed against his mouth, at that familiar voice. It was Haruka, and she was coming closer. “No, I haven’t heard anything from him either. He was just in a match, though, so he probably didn’t have his phone on him. No. I didn’t-” A long pause. Her footsteps stopped as well. Izuku heard her take in several deep breaths and then say, voice strained, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Izuku inched closer to the corner’s edge. He turned his head, just enough, so that he could look around the corner. “What is wrong with them? Where the hell did they pick up this fucking behavior? Neither one of them knows the meaning of the word restraint!” Haruka stood with her side turned towards Izuku. She had her phone held up to her ear and was gesturing with her other hand. “Tetsu, we have to do something about this. Now.” She went quiet for a while but with that quietness, she began to pace. Back and forth across the hallway as she listened to Tetsuma on the other side of the line. She stopped again, standing in the middle of the hallway, but this time with her back to Izuku. “You are?” She asked, her voice quieter. “Are they sure about that?” Izuku couldn’t stay there anymore. She could walk around the corner at any second and see him. She’d recognize him, too. Dressed in weird clothes or not, Izuku wasn’t disguised enough to fool someone who knew him as well as Haruka did. His only hope was to move quickly. He was silent on his bare feet as he ducked down and raced to the other side of the hallway. He gave one last glance to Haruka, who was listening intently to the phone, before turning the corner and hurrying down the opposite way. The door he found to the stairwell wasn’tlocked. He almost hesitated in pushing it open, worried that the alarm would go off, but when he went through the only thing that made a sound was the grinding of the door’s hinges. Izuku heaved a sigh of relief as he escaped into the stairwell. His bare feet slapped the concrete steps as he took them two at a time, racing down to the bottom. He was on the bottom floor in seconds, where he found two doors, one locked with a keypad and one without. The locked door was for B1. The unlocked door was F1. F1 opened when Izuku pushed on the bar. He poked his head through the gap and peered out. He saw a short entrance that led to another, wider one. Slipping out, feet silent on tiled floor, Izuku crept along the wall. The wider hallway opened up to a lobby area. There were televisions in this area, too, and they were showing the same footage as the one upstairs. There, a woman and a man stood behind the front desk, watching the screen in silence. A few other people stood, watching, shock on their faces. It was enough of a distraction that Izuku was able to make it to the doorway without being noticed. However, at the door, there was a guard in uniform. The man noticed Izuku and looked him over. A slight frown deepened as he noticed Izuku’s bare feet and the bulging pocket of the duster. “Hey, kid,” the man took a step towards him. “Let me see some ID.” This man was the only thing between Izuku and the glass doors to his freedom. He inched closer, feeling cornered, eyeing the handle on the doors. The guard narrowed his eyes. He reached one hand for the radio on his shoulder and said, “I need the front doors locked. I got some sort of situation here.” “Please let me go,” Izuku said, “I’m not supposed to be here.” He glanced over his shoulder. The commotion at the door had caught the attention of the people at the desk. He flinched, hunching his shoulders and pulling up his coat collar. “No one gets in or out without some verification,” the guard said. His other hand was reaching for something at his hip. It didn’t look like a gun and was more likely a taser. Izuku inched backward but in a circuitous route, still trying to get to the doors. As he took a step closer, he heard an audible lock engage on the doors. “You’re going to have to come with me, kid. There’s nowhere else you can go.” Izuku glanced to the doors again. There were two sets of them and both the interior and exterior sets were completely made of glass, except for the metal frames that held them in place and the metal handles across the middle of them. Izuku had punched through more difficult things than glass. “I just want to go,” he said, “Just let me go. I’m not supposed to be here.” “All right, all right, I get it kid. You’re not supposed to be here, but I’m supposed to know who goes in and out, okay? So you’re going to have to-” “Oh my god!” Exclaimed a woman from another part of the lobby. “Another bomb went off!” She pointed to the television, where the camera had zoomed in on the interior of the stadium. Another plume of smoke rose into the air, though there was no fire to go with it. Izuku glanced at it, then back to the guard. The guard was a little slower in looking away from the screen. Izuku took off, racing right for the doors and reached them just as the guard turned back, shouting at him. Ducking his head, Izuku went through the glass shoulder first. He felt the glass rip right through his skin, tearing the jacket he wore as well. Warm blood ran down his limbs. Izuku held tighter onto the scalpel, his whole fist tucked into the pocket. The guard shouted at him, but Izuku didn’t listen. He kept running, headed for the second set of doors. He hit these ones with the same shoulder. They were thicker, though, and only cracked with a spider web pattern from where his shoulder struck. Slightly stunned, Izuku staggered back. He heard someone shout, figured it was the guard, but didn’t look behind himself. He had to get out of there. He had to escape. He hadto. Katsuki was still in the stadium. Katsuki, wounded, bloodied, alone in some room, as the place burned and exploded around him- Katsuki was in danger. Izuku hadto save him. Izuku punched the broken glass, making it shatter. He ducked through the rain of glass shards and ran onwards. His feet were cut by glass, leaving bloody footprints behind, but he only limped a little bit. Izuku ran down the steps of the building, pushing past people who stared at their phones or at the cloud of dust in the air. He heard a shout behind him, for someone to catch him, to stop him, but no one moved in time. Izuku made it halfway down the block before the glass in his feet was too much to bear. Ducking into an alleyway, Izuku brushed glass out of his hair, off his shoulders, and tried to pick out the worst pieces out of his skin. He was bleeding all over the place, leaving smudges on everything. Izuku pulled out the scalpel from his pocket. He braced himself against the wall, leaning forward so that his throat was bare and so the blood wouldn’t run down the front of him. The knife was even sharper than Good Luck, lost somewhere in the rubble of the stadium, and slid through his skin, his muscle, to his artery without any noticeable resistance. The sudden rush of blood was warm on his skin and blocked out the smell of the alleyway, making everything smell like blood. Izuku slid down a little on the wall, but he was recovered before he fully hit the ground. Stumbling back upright, he shoved the scalpel back into the pocket and took off again. The pain of the glass was gone and without that cutting into his feet, he no longer left bloody footprints that could be tracked. Adding just enough of One for All to his legs to boost his running speed, Izuku began to run towards the stadium with the plume of smoke as his north star. I’m coming for you, Kacchan, Izuku promised, stay safe. I’ll be right there. ***** it is a slow process ***** Chapter Notes this chapter confirms the death of one of the minor characters, as well as some injuries. By the time the Pros came up out of the crater caused by the second and third explosion, Cheery and Angua had uncovered all but one of Shouta’s students. Shouta himself moved from one teen to the next, speaking quietly to them, checking them for serious injury. Gomiko had left to find a medic, leaving Shouta to do this alone. Ojiro was monosyllabic when Shouta crouched down beside him. He was covered with a liberal amount of blood, but a quick examination proved it to belong to someone else. He sat, cross-legged, holding the end of his tail in an act of self-comfort, not looking up from his bloodied hands. Sero was barely conscious, but breathing, and bleed weakly from a severely damaged right arm. His head was also bleeding and Cheery had provided a gauze patch from a pouch to help stave off the blood flow. Jirou, beside him, was the one who was conscious enough to apply pressure. The only injury she had suffered as to her left ear. Blood was drying on her neck and shoulder from where she had bled and she, too, was barely speaking from the shock. She had one hand holding the patch to Sero’s forehead and the other pressing another patch to her own ear. Yaoyorozu was much in the same condition as Sero, suffering from a head wound and from shock. When Shouta crouched down beside her, she turned slowly to look at him and offered a weak smile. “Sensei?” “Yaoyorozu,” he nodded, “How are you feeling? Dizzy? Cold?” “I’m fine, sensei,” she replied. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” She sat with her hands in her lap, fingers curled around each other. There was a glassy look to her eyes, a distance that came from the shock she was suffering from. “I’m fine,” she repeated even though Shouta hadn’t said anything else yet. “Can I check for sure?” Shouta asked. “I’m fine,” she murmured. But she didn’t resist when Shouta carefully checked for open wounds on her heads or arms or legs. He almost missed it, but when he moved her arm, Yaoyorozu winced. At first thinking her arm was injured, like Sero’s, he checked them again. Only when he reached for her hands did he notice where her injury came from. He had thought it was blood on her hands that had discolored them, but upon closer inspection, he saw that they were swollen and bruised. Her hands, both of them, were broken; fingers, knuckles, palms- all the way down to her wrists. They were just a mess of blood, swollen tissue, and broken bone. “I’m fine,” Yaoyorozu whispered. “I’ll be fine. Everything is fine.” Shouta didn’t know where to start. He had been a teacher for several years and a Pro Hero for longer, but he wasn’t trained for this- he wasn’t supposed to be involved in disaster relief. He could find and treat small wounds, but this? This was something else. Shouta didn’t know what to do. “Cheery!” Angua barked, “Lift on three! One. Two. Three!” There were two simultaneous grunts and the sound of rock shifting. Shouta looked down from where he was beside Yaoyorozu and saw them lift up the last of the rock. His heart clenched when he saw a flash of yellow hair and red, red blood. Shouta had seen too much blood from his students today. The sight of it haunted him. The smell of it made him sick to his stomach. The excavation team removed the last stone with a heft and a shout. Shouta leaned forward, bracing himself with one hand on the ground. He needed to see Kaminari move, or speak, or something. He couldn’t- He couldn’t lose two students- Angua climbed down to where Kaminari was, checking his pulse at his neck before reaching a hand up to Cheery. Cheery handed down a chord that Angua used to tie around Kaminari’s leg, just above the knee. Shouta looked to see why and paled. Kaminari was missing his leg from just below the knee down. There was blood. There were open flesh and bare bone. He lay face down, but with his head to the side. He was pale, from lack of blood, and not conscious. “He’s alive,” Angua called up, one hand cupping her mouth. There was blood on her fingers, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. “Just barely, but he’s alive. He’ll need some blood and a good doctor.” Shouta breathed out a sigh of relief. He sank back on his ankles, rubbing his eyes with one hand. That was all of them that were buried, then. Everyone was accounted for- at least, everyone that had been here. There were still three missing students. Just thinking about looking for Midoriya, Bakugou and Todoroki exhausted Shouta to the core. It didn’t matter, though. He wouldn’t be able to rest until he found them and knew if they were safe or not. Unwillingly, Shouta’s gaze fell on the only one of his students that were separate from the others and covered with a blanket from head to toe. Hagakure had been easy to find, despite the fact that she was still invisible. Her blood had saturated her clothes, had covered her skin like a mask of paint. Shouta had never seen what she looked like before, but from the blood that had soaked her hair and had outlined parts of her face, she had been a pretty girl. Shouta glanced to Ojiro, who had laid buried in the rubble with Hagakure bleeding out on him, and grimaced. None of them were going to get out unscathed from this. Angua climbed out of the hole. She got to her feet, brushed herself off, and then helped Cheery up with a hand. Cheery grunted and steadied themselves on their feet after a moment. Shouta stood as well, turning towards them. “We’ll leave him down there for now,” Angua said, “The way up and down is secure, but I don’t want to move him in case there’s something worse going on with his spine. We’ve stopped the bleeding on the leg but there’s nothing else we can do.” Shouta nodded. “Thank you.” Angua waved off his words, “It’s my job. I just wish we could have found them faster, or in better condition.” She looked over the group, frowning. Her goggles flashed as she turned her head. “They’ll definitely need medical attention,” she said. Gesturing towards Jirou and Sero, she added, “I’d suggest Thom if you can get him. He’s good at forced regeneration, though it hurts like hell to get it done.” Cheery snorted, shaking their head. Angua rounded on her companion, “You got something to say, Cheers?” “Thom’s kind of a hack, Ang, and you know it. His sister’s better. More reliable, more professional.” Cheery looked to Shouta, “Her hero name is Vitality Girl. She’s likely to be here as well.” “Vitality girl is a bitch,” Angua said. “That is barely an insult at all, coming from you,” Cheery replied. “Tch,” Angua scoffed. “Anyway, we have to get going. There’s other buried people out there and the rest of the teams are lazy ingrates.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and headed down and away, “C’mon Cheers.” Cheery muttered a “That one’s true” under their breath and then followed her down the steps, leaving Shouta there alone. He wasn’t alone for very long, though. The thing about Pros was that they didn’t just escape and call it a day. The ones that came out of the crater fanned out over the stadium, prepared to help the excavation teams where they could or making their way out to assist with the crowd. A Pro headed toward Shouta, lifting her hand and waving. Shouta nodded in greeting. “Midnight,” he called to her. “Aizawa,” Nemuri replied. She had two people in tow, both students. Both Shouta’s students, actually. “I got two of yours,” She said. “And some… news about a third.” She walked over, carefully picking her way across. Shouta saw her look over the circle of students he had around him and grimace. Behind her, Todoroki edged up to the very limit of the circle and Bakugou didn’t even bother to do that. He stood higher up, on the edge of a rock that had gotten some height because of the way it landed. He gave Shouta and the other students the barest look before turning to look back from where they came. Nemuri dropped her voice low. “When the explosion happened, or rather, just before it, the door opened and Midoriya tossed that one into the room.” She gestured with a tilt of her head back to Bakugou. “Then he held the door. From the outside.” Shouta stared at her. “What?” “Yeah, that’s pretty much we all thought, too. But he held the door, preventing a blowout. Bakugou handled it for a while but he seemed to be running on some weird timer. Twenty minutes after the fire, he lost his mind and blew the hallway open.” Nemuri said. “So those two explosions…” Shouta asked, eyebrows lifting. Nemuri nodded. “He was shouting with Yoko about how Midoriya should be coming back. I had to threaten to put him to sleep and haul him off over my shoulder to get him to leave and still he’s not willing to leave the damn hole behind.” Shouta ran his hand down his face. Midoriya was dead. Midoriya was dead. And from the sound of it, Bakugou wasn’t willing to accept it. “Fuck.” He said, quietly and with feeling. “Yeah,” Nemuri muttered. “Todoroki’s less of a mental case, though. No injuries, either. He said he made a frozen wall and survived behind that while the fire raged. He showed up with All Might.” Here, she paused, then inched closer and lowered her voice even more, “Recovery Girl’s badly injured and All Might doesn’t look much better himself. From the sound of it, there was a nearly complete collapse of the infirmary.” “Oh hell,” Shouta said. “Fucking hell. Where are they now?” “Turns out Recovery Girl’s grandkid is a Pro Hero Healer too, so they took her to them and All Might went with her. He’s worried she won’t make it through, even with a good healer. After all, there’s no one like her.” Nemuri said. She leaned back again, putting her hands on her hips. “And one little old lady isn’t going to take precedence over a bunch of kids or young adults. But she’s strong, and she’s been around a while, and we don’t know how much she can use her own quirk to help heal herself. So… who knows, you know?” “That’s hardly comforting,” Shouta said. “It’s not really a comfortable situation,” Nemuri retorted. Shouta gave her a flat look. Nemuri flushed and looked away. “Sorry,” she said, “I’ve just been- It’s just-” She gestured over her shoulder towards Bakugou, “I know I teach the kid some of the time, but his stubborn blindness just grates on a person. And in this kind of situation, his attitude just makes things worse.” She shook her head, clearly agitated, “Can you believe what he did? He just blew a hole open in the hallway. What if the whole thing had caved in? What if his little friend had been alive out there? He put all of us in danger. The only thing he could think of was Midoriya.” “Yeah, that’s… Actually not surprising,” Shouta admitted. “You’ve seen them interact. The level of their codependency isn’t just abnormal for a romantic teenaged couple. It’s downright dangerous.” “How has no one seen this and done something about it?” Nemuri demanded. “I mean, they didn’t start this two weeks ago or something. This has had to been going on for a while. Where are their parents?” Shouta put up a hand to try and quiet her, “This really isn’t the time for this discussion. Later, when everyone’s safe and we’re all out of here, we’ll figure out something later. Besides, we’re just their teachers, the worst we can do is punish them for wrongdoing in regards to hero behavior.” Nemuri scoffed again but went quiet about the disaster couple. She turned away, looking grimly over the barely conscious students around them and then out towards the medics that were on their way. Shouta turned to follow her gaze and saw a familiar face. Gomiko was headed back up the broken steps to them. There were medics with him, carrying a few stretchers. They seemed to take forever to arrive, but once they did it was a flurry of activity. Kaminari was brought up from the hole and carried out first since he was in the worst condition. Another medic helped walk Jirou and Yaoyorozu, who had fallen silent at last. Sero was carried on a stretcher as well. Ojiro only got up to go when Hagakure’s body was put on a stretcher. He walked silently, trailing after those two medics. Nemuri had left with the girls, helping Yaoyorozu specifically, and that left Shouta and Gomiko behind. “Most of your students are gathered together,” Gomiko said, “They found their way to a medical tent and are waiting for one of them to recover. Uraraka, I think, was her name.” “I’ll get Bakugou and Todoroki and bring them all together,” Shouta said, “It’ll be easier to keep track of them that way.” “Who?” Gomiko asked. “Bakugou and Todoroki,” Shouta said. He turned. He had seen Todoroki lingering, on the edge, out of the way just a few minutes ago. Where he had been standing, though, there was nothing but empty air. Immediately, Shouta looked up to where Bakugou had been, perched up above, watching the hole. He, too, was gone. “Dammit,” Shouta said, “Dammit!” Why were teenagers so stubborn? Where was their sense? “C’mon, we’ll look around and see if we can find where they went to.” Shouta shook his head. “No need to look. If Todoroki followed Bakugou then they both went to the same place.” He turned and started heading towards the hole. After a moment of silence, he could hear Gomiko following him. It didn’t make sense- Well, actually, it made perfect sense why Bakugou would leave. But Todoroki? What the hell had gotten into him? ===============================================================================   Katsuki slid down the side of the hole. Dust, loose rocks, and dirt followed his descent, tumbling down to the bottom of the crater he had made. The injuries of his feet made him wince as he slid and when he landed, but Katsuki bit the inside of his cheek and ignored them. He could still move. He wasn’t as injured as his other classmates. He could still do what needed to be done. The problem was, Katsuki realized as he walked over to the busted door, was that he didn’t know exactly what needed to be done. Hearing someone else come down the rubble, Katsuki looked up and saw Todoroki following in his footsteps. Todoroki stumbled as he reached the bottom, but he recovered quickly. He took a moment to brush himself off before straightening up and looking at Katsuki. “What do you want?” Katsuki demanded, “Why the fuck did you follow me?” Todoroki glanced to the door that was behind Katsuki. Instinctively, Katsuki shifted to try and block his view. He knew that Izuku, when he came back from that charred mess, wouldn’t be wearing anything. He didn’t want Todoroki to see that. Izuku was most vulnerable after a regeneration when his body was perfectly undamaged, fresh and smooth again. Katsuki didn’t want to share that with anyone. “Well?” Katsuki shouted. “What is it?” “I wanted to know why you did it,” Todoroki said. He looked straight at Katsuki, and though his chin was lifted, Katsuki could see the way his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Did you do it knowing how it would affect me?” “What the fuck are you talking about?” Katsuki snapped, “I didn’t do anything to you.” A flush colored Todoroki’s cheeks. He walked closer, lowering his voice as if afraid they would be overheard. “Did you forget it already? It was only a few hours ago. We were in the infirmary. All three of us,” Todoroki made a vague gesture to the charred lump behind Katsuki. “You and Midoriya on one bed. I was on the other. Did you really forget what you did?” Katsuki licked his lips. That moment in the infirmary seemed to have happened days ago, not just hours, but he could remember it well. There were so few times that Izuku had died, but not in order to heal, and never had he wanted to crush the breath out of Izuku like he had in that moment. He’d lost himself to that, thinking only that the tighter his grip, the tighter Izuku became. But before that, before he’d ever gotten Izuku’s skin under his hands, Katsuki remembered looking Todoroki dead in the eyes and pulling the curtain. Those heterochromatic eyes had stared back at him, unknowing just what the hell was about to happen. A shiver ran through Katsuki as he remembered that. Todoroki hadn’t left. He had stayed there the whole time. Katsuki had fucked Izuku just on the other side of the curtain. Hell, Katsuki didn’t even know if Todoroki had closed the curtain around his bed or not. It could have just been the one on his own. That thin fabric had been all there was between them. Katsuki rubbed his hands together. He wanted to know, had to know- “So what?” He asked, “It’s not like I forced you to watch. You could have left. You chose to stay.” “If I had left, the teachers would have come in,” Todoroki said. “They would have caught you to doing that. They would know, for sure, that you two are more than just a romantic couple.” Todoroki took a step towards Katsuki. “Did you know that they think you two are a disaster together? Imagine if they knew that you two were doing that, too.” “Doing that?” Katsuki said. He lifted his lip with a sneer. “It’s called fucking. If you’re going to fucking harangue me about this shit, at least have the balls to address it with the right fucking words. I fucked Deku. What you overheard was me fucking him . You sat there and you listened to us fuck, didn’t you? That’s what you’re bitching to me about right now, isn’t it? You’re mad that I didn’t kick you out? Or are you mad that I pulled the curtain so all you could do was listen?” “I didn’t want to hear that,” Todoroki said. His face was turning red, but it was doing so in an odd way. Katsuki hadn’t ever really spent much time thinking about how Todoroki was half cold, half hot beyond noticing that half of his hair was a different color than the other half and how he had a scar on one side. Yet, as Todoroki got upset and his face flushed from his anger or his embarrassment, the blush was unevenly distributed and Katsuki couldn’t help but notice. “I didn’t want to hear you two f-fucking like that. What makes you think that kind of thing is okay? How broken do you have to be to be so- so- messed up like this?” “Are you even listening to yourself?” Katsuki rolled his eyes. “How broken do I have to be to be so messed up? Says the kid who refuses to use half of his own quirk unless under duress. Says the kid with half his face fucking melted off.” “Shut up,” Todoroki said. “Look, asshole,” Katsuki said, “You’re the one who followed me down into this pit. If you don’t want to hear me say shit, then climb right the fuck back out.” He pointed to the wall. “There’s your exit. Take it, shitstain.” “I followed you because someone has to tell you that what you’re doing is crazy,” Todoroki said. Instead of turning around to go, he took a few steps closer. Katsuki narrowed his eyes, watching him, but he didn’t seem like he was going to throw a punch. “That stunt in the infirmary is crazy. You- You can mess people up, doing things like that in front of them.” Katsuki snorted. “I mean it! You go way too far, Bakugou. You push people past their comfort levels. You cause so much reckless damage. You’re the one who changes people.” Todoroki pointed at Katsuki, “You’re the one who breaks people and then you expect them to pick themselves back up and either prove themselves good enough for your self-centered little world or you toss them aside like, what is it you call us, pebbles?” Katsuki opened his mouth to dispute it. He didn’t break people. He hardly interacted with them at all. All of Todoroki’s claims were totally bogus. Just before he could speak, though, one of the more precariously balanced rocks from higher up fell down to the bottom of the crater. It landed solidly, but even stone bounces a little bit and this boulder was no different. It hit, tumbled back into the air a few inches and then hit again. Katsuki stared at it. He thought of Izuku, falling that first time, not knowing his quirk. Not knowing that he could come back from death. Going head first, headed for pavement and the way he bounced. Shaking his head aggressively, Katsuki banished the thought from his mind. His anger flared. Who the fuck did Todoroki think he was, trying to mess with his mind that way? Katsuki had gotten Izuku’s forgiveness for that already. Katsuki had Izuku’s love. If it hadn’t been for that, they wouldn’t be together at all- and the world without Izuku by his side was- was- Lonely. Unbearable. Uninhabitable. “It was just fucking,” Katsuki said, taking a step towards Todoroki. “If you were so deeply affected by it, that’s your own damn fault for being so fucking sensitive. Don’t blame me for your own fucked up brain.” “It’s your brain that’s fucked up,” Todoroki said. “And I can prove it, too.” He lifted his hand. Small crystals of ice were gathered along the side of his arm. Katsuki flexed his fingers. “Yeah? Fucking do it then.” Todoroki stepped forward with his right foot, his hand dropping down and then swinging up again, a telltale movement of covering the ground in front of him with ice spikes. Katsuki braced himself, prepared to attack, but the ice swung wide around him. As it arched behind Katsuki, he turned, wary of being enclosed. Then he saw what the ice was headed for. With a shout, Katsuki lunged for it, but he was too slow and realized too late. Todoroki’s ice sprang up the center of the charred chunk still stuck to the door. The blackened lump burst open into nothing but ash. Katsuki’s shout turned into a scream as what was left of Izuku was turned to nothing. “You really thought-” Todoroki said from behind him. “You really thought that that was Midoriya, didn’t you. You thought he would be able to come back from that fire. That’s not normal, Bakugou. People can’t come back from the dead.” Katsuki watched as the ash fluttered and settled on the ice. In the warm air, the ice had already begun to melt. He stared at it, watched the char snap and fall. On numb legs, he staggered forward. He dropped to his knees in front of the ice. Todoroki was saying something more, but he couldn’t hear it. Seeing something pale in the ash, Katsuki reached in. He gingerly pulled out a slender piece of bone. Turning it over in his hand, Katsuki tried to determine which one it was. It was small and oddly shaped. He saw another similar shape in the char and pulled it out. The two pieces fit almost seamlessly on top of each other. They were pieces of Izuku’s spine. “He’s not coming back,” Katsuki whispered, staring at the pieces in his palms. “He’s really not coming back.” Without Deku, Katsuki wondered, cradling those fragments of a spine like priceless artifacts, what am I supposed to do? ===============================================================================     Shouto’s chest heaved with breath. His arm was wet and chilled as the ice on it melted slowly. He let it fall to his side. He hadn’t meant to- He had gone so far- He had only wanted- He just wanted Bakugou to know that it had done something to him. Hearing that. Seeing it. It had done something to Shouto. Something that had driven him into a corner in his own mind. Something that he couldn’t stop thinking about, wanting to see more of. Hearing Bakugou spit out the words- I fucked Deku- made it worse. He wanted to smother the fire in his gut, to drown it, to starve it, but instead Bakugou had tossed in another match and gave it another log. Shouto didn’t want to think about this, was so angry that Bakugou could do this to him. Angry enough to lash out. Angry enough to hurt Bakugou by lashing out at the only thing he seemed to care about. But seeing Bakugou, not raging but weeping, drained that anger out of Shouto and he sagged, sinking down to his knees.  He hadn’t meant to- He had only wanted- That was where Aizawa found him, curled up with his head between his knees, fighting off his tears, as he struggled to come to terms with his own anger, his own lust, and his own violent, conflicting emotions. ***** one way in ***** Chapter Notes bit of a heads up: this chapter probably pushes katsuki as close to suicide ideation that he's gonna get to (as a result of izuku being dead). its not super descriptive, but he's...not coping very well on his own right now (kind of a downside of that codependency there) see u all next year/monday for chapter 9 Izuku was forced to come to a walk and then a stop as he approached something unusual in his way. There was a barricade set up to block the street with a pair of policemen at the only opening through. He was now close enough to the stadium that he could see, just beyond the police, the large crowd of people who had been inside of the building only a short while ago. Smoke still rose into the air from the stadium itself, but since he’d been running, that had only gotten weaker, not stronger. Whatever had caused the fire, it was going out now. There were other people gathered near the barricade, hands shadowing their eyes as they tried to get a better look. Izuku kept off to the side, aware that he was conspicuous looking in his bare feet and bloodied jacket. He swept his gaze back and forth, trying to see a way past the police without them seeing. The fewer people that noticed him right now, the better. He wasn’t supposed to be out here. He was supposed to be in there, in the stadium. He had to get back. “C’mon, Officer,” Izuku overheard a man say loud enough to get his attention. “My daughter is there with her kid. You’ve got let me through!” The man speaking was a tall gentleman in a suit and tie. His narrow glasses were almost comically small for his large face and features, but, upon second look, it was only that his nose was large that made them look odd. The rest of his facial features were of average size. “I’m sorry sir, but this is an evacuation point only. If your daughter has been cleared to leave, then she can do so from this location, but you may not enter here to go to her.” The officer said with a shake of her head. “You must stay here.” “You mean no one can get in there?” Someone else called from farther back in the group. “But what if we have children there? What about them?” “I’m sorry,” the officer repeated, “But you can only leave from this point, not enter. The area is being evacuated by Pro Heroes and Police officers. It isn’t safe for anyone. That’s why they’re trying to get everyone out, including your friends and family members.” Izuku frowned. He could easily vault the barricade. He could even duck under it if he wanted to. It wasn’t very impressive. But he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. And he didn’t want to set a bad example. After all, he was supposed to be a hero. Heroes weren’t above the law. They worked within it to get done what they needed. So if this pointwasn’t somewhere that Izuku could enter then all he needed to do was find a different place to enter. Again, his gaze was drawn to the stadium. It wasn’t likely he’d be able to convince a police officer at this point or at any point along the perimeter to let him in. It didn’t matter to them if he was supposed to be there. The fact was that he wasn’t and so he shouldn’t be allowed back in. So he had to get himself there, as unobtrusively as possible. Turning away from the group, Izuku headed back the way he came a little. He had seen a fire escape on the side of a building just a half a block up. That would get him roof access. That, along with the use of his One for All quirk, would get him to the stadium. Certainly, if a Pro saw him, there were a few that could stop him, but he figured they were all pretty busy right about now. Izuku found the fire escape quickly. He jumped up to the first section, grabbed on and pulled himself up. After that it was only a short climb up to the roof. The air up above was cooler than he expected. There was more of a breeze, as well. Izuku shivered as he picked his way across the roof, peering at the edge. Unlike the other few times he’d been to the top of a building, this time he wasn’t looking for the best place to fall from. He was looking for the best place to jump to. Seeing another building not far away, Izuku rubbed his hands together and backed up to get a running start. He poured more of his quirk into his legs than before, when he was just running, so that when he hit the edge and jumped, he sailed through the air. The coat he had taken flapped around his legs, keeping him aware of just how little he actually wore. Izuku tried not to think about that, tried to focus on his landing. He reached out for the edge of the building with both hands. There was an audible crack as Izuku hit the top lip of the building, fingers curling into the concrete as his ribcage smacked into it. Winded, he still managed to pull himself up and over. His chest immediately ached as he rolled across the roof, but Izuku only coughed and climbed back to his feet. A few broken ribs were tolerable for now. He needed to increase his speed, increase his jumping distance. If he got some momentum, he’d be able to make it there in no time. The stadium loomed up ahead of Izuku, silent and listing like an enormous ship slowly taking on water. Izuku brushed off his knees, took another wheezing breath, and took off. This time, when he jumped from the first building, there was a slight crunch as his toes dug into the concrete. He cleared the street below and landed, feet skidding, on the roof of the second. Stumbling, he managed to keep running enough that he didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, only ran to the edge and jumped again. Soon there was only one building left, one building before the stadium itself, and Izuku jumped onto it. This rooftop was not empty, he discovered immediately. There was a small gathering of people who crowded around one edge, watching the chaos below. Perhaps they worked or they lived in that building below, but Izuku couldn’t waste time to find out. One turned towards him as he landed, but Izuku didn’t slow down. He yanked up the collar of the coat to cover what little he could of his face and just kept running. He added extra force to his jump this time. There was further to go, more air to clear. There was a shout behind him. There was more noise below him. Izuku didn’t listen, didn’t look. He stared straight ahead at the stadium. He could see the roof fast approaching, could see part of it where it had collapsed. He could see where he was going to land, or at least the first place he’d touch down.   The piece of roof that Izuku landed on was far less stable than it had originally appeared. The material instantly crumbled under his weight, sending him and the rubble he made crashing down. He tucked his arms in around his head to protect himself, but didn't manage to do the same for his feet before he hit the ground. Izuku landed with bent knees, aiming to roll forward and use his momentum that way to get out from the falling concrete, but his plan was thwarted. His right foot jammed into a crack in the stone with the force of his land. Izuku hissed in the sudden pain as his flesh was rent by the ragged stone and his bones crunched.  This, too, wasn't a stable area. As the concrete from above hit the area around Izuku, sending up dust and dirt into the air, the floor crumbled. The pieces of stone holding Izuku's foot tightened together as other cracks around them opened up.  Suddenly, he was pitched forward. He flailed for something to grab and hold onto, but couldn't manage it.  Instead, he was hit from behind as a wall collapsed in. Most of his body went forward under that sudden weight, sending him falling down a dark hole that became only darker as the slab that had knocked him in landed on it and covered it up. Izuku's breath was ragged as he held back from shouting. His right leg was a bloody horror from the knee down, where the muscle had ripped and the bone had been crudely broken. He landed flat on his side, gasping for breath, eyes straining in the dark, as his wounded leg bled continuously.  Izuku rolled over, putting one arm over his head, one underneath to pillow it, and waited for death.   ===============================================================================   Katsuki walked silently. Sounds washed over him. They were inaudible. Fuzzy. Like words spoken around a mouthful of caramel. Or whispers too soft to be overheard the dull, constant rush of the ocean’s waves. Izuku had done that once. Had sat close to his side on the beach. Had whispered against his neck with lips chilled from the ocean’s water. His words had been lost. At the time, Katsuki hadn’t really cared because it was evening. They were cold except for where they touched each other. The ocean had been dark blue. The part of the beach they were on was secluded. Katsuki had known what Izuku was saying anyway, even if he couldn’t hear it. I love you, Kacchan, I’ll love you forever. But now the sound that blocked out the world was the rushing of blood in Katsuki’s ears. It was his own brain, his own body, that just kept everything else away. It didn’t matter if anyone spoke to him or around him. He couldn’t hear them. He didn’t care what they had to say. Katsuki walked in silence, unable to hear, unwilling to try.   ===============================================================================   Izuku woke with a soft groan. Wait. No. He woke quietly. He usually did. This time was no different. Someone else was groaning. Lifting his arm from his head, Izuku sat up slowly. It appeared his body had landed in a collapsed interior of the stadium. He wasn’t alone, obviously there was someone nearby who was injured, but he couldn’t see anything quite yet. There were only the faintest cracks of light from amid the rubble around him. There was a strange mixture to the rubble in the room, some of it blackened with fire, some of it fresh as though it had just fallen. Clearly, his fall had brought in the new pieces. He hoped that that hadn't been what had caught the other person, but he'd have to find them first to be sure. Izuku sat still, listening. He heard the groan again, off to the side. Slowly, he slid up to his knees. He wiggled the toes on his right foot for good measure. There was blood on his skin, but he ignored it. He had to rebutton the jacket a little, and tie the sash back tight around himself, but the clothing was still mostly intact. The folder in the pocket was more bent and beat up than he was at this point, but it didn’t look like he’d lost anything. In his other pocket, he found the scalpel had also survived the fall. “Hello?” Izuku called out. “Who’s there?” The groan came again, louder. Izuku made his way towards the direction of it. He quickly found a hand, pinned under the rubble. Peering through it, he could see the body of a man. There was too much dust and dirt to be able to tell who it was, though. Their face and hair was coated in the grey dust. Cautiously, Izuku tried to shift some of the rubble. He heard metal groan and concrete creak and the man, whoever he was, made a wet, almost sobbing sound of pain. Izuku immediately stopped and stepped back. He didn’t have the training to do this right, but he couldn’t just leave the man. But he had to hurry, had to get back to Katsuki. He didn’t have time for this. But Katsuki would understand. This was hero work, after all. He’d understand. Izuku more carefully examined the rubble piled on top of the man. He worked his way backward, starting from where the weight of it rested on him and up to the top, where the first pieces lay. “I’m gonna get you out of here,” Izuku said to the man, “I promise.  You’ll get out of here.” The man simply groaned again. Climbing up a different point, Izuku reached where the light was brightest along the semi-collapsed ceiling. His death had healed his ribs and any other minute fractures he had experienced, making it easy to climb and move again. He positioned himself under a large slab, toes curled around some framework to keep his balance and pushed. Sunlight poured into the area as he lifted the slab up. He grunted, pushing harder, and then shifting it to the side. The slab creaked, but moved where he wanted it to go. When he let it go, it clattered to the side and slid down on the outside of the hole. Dust flew up and Izuku waved his hand in front of his face to get rid of it. With the sunlight came sound and visibility. He could look down into the bowl of the stadium and see people working their way around. A few people had seen what he’d done and were headed in his direction. Izuku waved to one of them and cupped a hand around his mouth. “Hurry up!” He called, “There’s someone trapped down here and he’s hurt!” It was a woman wearing goggles and another, shorter person with wiry hair- literally hair that looked like wires- who showed up. “Hey kid,” said the woman with an audible sniff, “Are you injured?” She looked him over briefly, her goggles flashing in the light as she looked down at his blood covered leg. Of course, it was his left leg which was covered in the most blood because his right had been the one to regenerate.  Izuku shook his head. “I heal. But down there is a man,” he pointed into the hole. “He’s buried under a lot of stuff, though. Can you get him out?” “Yeah,” the woman grinned. Her smile showed teeth that look more like wolf’s fangs than human ones, but Izuku didn’t feel alarmed by them. She didn’t give him a bad sort of vibe. “My name is Angua and this is my associate, Cheery. Do you know who the man is, kid?” Izuku shook his head again. “I don’t. I can’t see him very well. Do you need my help?” The woman laughed. She ruffled Izuku’s head gently, which made him blink in surprise. “If you want to help, flag down a medic on your way out of here. But you better not stay. Injured or not,  you look like a bloody mess and I don’t mean that figuratively.” Sheepishly, Izuku looked down at himself. There were still plenty of little holes in his jacket from where he’d gone through the glass doors. From that, his leg, and from where he’d had to cut his throat, there was blood splatter all over. “Yeah. I guess. My healing quirk isn’t uh, very clean.” “They rarely are,” she replied. “Now scoot on out of here.” She ushered him away with one hand. Half turning to her companion, she said, “Wires and flags, Cheers, if you’d please.” “Mhm,” Cheery said. They reached up and pulled free some cords of hair. Izuku watched in fascination, moving slowly to get out of the way, as Cheery transformed one hair into a metal stand with a colorful flag on one end and wedged it near the entrance to the hole. The other strand they began to work into a rope of some sort. “You have a creation quirk?” Izuku asked, helplessly curious. “I’ve got a classmate who has that, but it works with all of her skin.” Cheery paused in their work. They gave a glance to Angua, or at least Izuku figured since they also wore strangely reflective goggles,  but then turned their head back to Izuku and said, “Yes. It’s not as universal as a creation quirk, but it gets the job done.” Izuku nodded. “That’s awesome.” “Kid,” Angua began but Izuku ducked his head. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll go. Thank you!” Izuku slid away at last. He found easy footing, trotting down the way that they had climbed up. As he headed down, he looked out over the whole stadium. There were others working in pairs or clusters, other places where there flags going up. He passed someone with bright red hair, bound tight in a braid around her head like a crown, wearing an impressively spotless white suit with a red cross on either shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said to the woman. She had a bag slung over her shoulder and was accompanied by two others wearing similar clothes and carrying a stretcher between them. “Are you a medic?” “Yes.” She said, “Are you injured?” Izuku shook his head. He pointed up the way he came, “Two heroes, by the name of Angua and Cheery asked me to direct a medic up their way. They have a man trapped under some rubble.” He hazarded that the man probably wouldn’t remember him being nearby or not and added, “I was trapped in the same place but wasn’t able to get out until just now.” “Thank you,” She said. “The evacuation point is down that way.” She pointed down towards the functioning exit. “They’re taking record of everyone coming out, so give them your name and any ID you have. We want to have as clear an idea of who made it out alive as possible. After that, you can make your way out of the area and rejoin your family.” “Thank you!” Izuku smiled. The woman gave him a sharp nod and then began to walk again. The medics followed her a few steps behind. Izuku stepped out of the way so they could make their way up. He began heading back down again and joined the stream of medics and straggling survivors as they exited the stadium. Even though he wanted to dash ahead, Izuku kept a steady, slow pace. Katsuki was around here somewhere. He’d find him. If he wasn’t out in the crowd, he’d come back in and search the whole stadium if he had to. One way or another, Izuku wasn’t going to leave the stadium until he had found Katsuki and made sure he was whole again.   ===============================================================================   Katsuki was no longer walking. He sat. What he sat on was soft, cushioned, like a bed. There was someone in front of him, or maybe there wasn’t, because there was just a white haze where their head should be. He wasn’t sure if they were trying to talk to him, this person made out of smoke, but when they touched his hand he became afraid that they were going to take the bones from him. Katsuki snapped his teeth and jerked his hands away. He couldn’t tighten them as much as he wanted to, the bones were too fragile, but he cradled them in his hands as carefully as he could. Someone said his name in a voice that was familiar. Katsuki refused to look up. He hurt. He hurt from his head to his toes. He thought maybe some of his toes might be broken. He knew that some of his ribs were definitely fractured. He hurt. He hurt in his chest. Each heartbeat thudded under his lungs, against his ribs, like a painful drumbeat. He was alone. Izuku was deaddead. His quirk had a limit after all. There was more discussion around him. Low and heated, a quick back and forth between a familiar voice and one that was newer. Katsuki, panting, lifted his head just enough to see his teacher, Aizawa, arguing with the tall man, the doctor, the one that had helped Katsuki get up, had made him walk away from Izuku’s remains. The person of smoke turned out to be real. She was on Katsuki’s other side. She said something quietly to him. Her words were inaudible- they all were- but Katsuki didn’t need to hear her speak to understand what she wanted. She held out a glass of water to him. In her other hand, there were two small, almost yellow pills. Katsuki shifted both bones to one hand. He took the pills, shivering as he touched her cool skin. She looked as solid as smoke, but she was like that other mist quirk user he had met- had fought. It seemed her body was solid as well, at least right now. How else would she be able to wear that nurse outfit? Katsuki took the pills and drank them down with some water. He didn’t care what they did, exactly. They could put him to sleep or kill him. It didn’t matter. He just wanted to go away until Izuku came back. And if he didn’t- And if he didn’t-   ===============================================================================   “Both of you, leave.” Shouta stopped, mid-sentence, at that chilly tone. It was the woman, the nurse, with the ephemeral white smoke body and the narrowed eyes. Gomiko, for his part, also went quiet. She stood taller than before, her smoky edges roiling with agitation as her body expanded to give her height over both Shouta andGomiko. “Shirogiri, we-” Gomiko began. Shirogiri pointed to the tent flap. “You will leave. Right now. You are nothing but a disturbance to the patients here and an annoyance to the doctor and I. Go. Out. Now.” Her eyes seemed to darken, somehow, as if there was a way for their blackness to become deeper. A chill swept over Shouta. In the back of his mind, he remembered that these people knew Kei. They associated with him. Heroes they may be right nowbut at other times of the day or night… “Come on, Aizawa,” Gomiko said. “It looks like she took the discussion out of our hands anyway.” Shouta blinked. He glanced past the woman to Bakugou’s bed. They had been arguing the best way to get him out of his trauma induced stupor but it seemed Shirogiri had navigated a way around that, somehow. Bakugou now lay on the bed, clearly asleep or at least unconscious. His left hand was still curled tightly around the things that he had refused to let go of, refused to even show either one of them, but the rest of his body was relaxed. Shouta knew there was no point to their argument anymore. He took a step away. Bakugou would be safe, here, in their care. After all, they had several of his other students, too. If he couldn’t trust them with Bakugou, he wouldn’t be able to trust them with the others. “All right,” He said quietly. “I apologize for making a disturbance. I’ll go.” Gomiko apologized as well and they both filed out, one after the other. Shouta looked around for his students, the rest of the uninjured ones, and headed towards them. Gomiko followed for a bit but stopped to take a phone call. He quickly said goodbye and went to take the phone call somewhere more private. Shouta put the man out of his mind for the time being. He had students to look after and with Toshinori out of commission, most likely for the rest of the day, there was only him to tend this particular. This was proving to be the longest day Shouta had experienced in months, if not years, with two deaths, and several major injuries just to his own class. And yet, wth the sun still looming high in the sky, the crowd of people that had yet to properly disperse, and the fifteen or so students that relied on him to keep an eye out until their parents came to fetch them home, it looked like there was no end in sight. ***** foundations ***** Chapter Notes ya'll all gonna ship todokiri by the end of this fic or so help me ALSO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS. i hope u enjoyed ur eveses and festiveses an all that good stuff “All injured parties must be cleared by a medic before leaving,” Izuku was told within moments of exiting the stadium. It was a somewhat harried police officer that said this to him, taking one look at his bloody clothing and turning to point towards, presumably, the medical tents. “If you need assistance getting to a tent, someone will be here soon to direct you to one with vacancies.” Izuku opened his mouth to say, yet again, that he wasn’t injured but before he could, the officer was turning to address someone else. They indicated for Izuku to keep moving and so he did. Ducking his head, he moved past the officer and into the crowd. He was very quickly absorbed into the chaos of people still trying to find missing friends, family members or to get to medical attention. Just a few hours ago, these people had filed in and filled the stadium seats in order to watch Izuku and his classmates compete against each other. Now, though, they were a stagnant mass of life with nowhere to go, like alege bunched up at the edges of a pond. Izuku drifted through the crowd, trying to find someone familiar, hoping to find Katsuki, and ultimately lost. Despite where he’d woken up, returning to the stadium had been easy. Of course actually finding Katsuki was proving much harder than he had anticipated. The crowd itself was stifling, as well. People jostled and clustered in inconvenient ways. Izuku got stuck behind a group of eight that were talking and crying, unmoving at the side of one of the pathways. He squeezed around them, reaching the outer edge of one particular crowd, and kept walking on, searching. At last, he found a familiar face. Standing taller than many others around, Iida was off to the side, leaning against a wall, hand over his mouth as he stared out at the crowd. Izuku perked up when he saw his classmate. Waving his hand he called out, “Iida! Iida, over here!” Iida jerked, obviously shocked out of his thoughts, and looked around. He blinked when he saw Izuku. Straightening up, he lifted his hand off his mouth and waved as well. Izuku hurried over to him. “I’m glad I found you,” Izuku said, “Are you all right? Where are the others? Do you know where Kacchan is?” Iida licked his lips. “I’m- I’m well.” He said. “I don’t know where Bakugou is. I think the others found their way to a medical tent, however. Some of our classmates- There were some injuries, I’m sure.” “Oh. You don’t know where they are,” Izuku’s smile fell a little bit. He dragged his hand through his hair. It was good to know Iida was safe, but, well. Izuku wanted Katsuki. “Are- are you okay?” Iida asked, looking Izuku over. Izuku self-consciously looked down at himself. He fidgeted, tightening the jacket closed a little harder. It was a little cold under it, but it was still way better than nothing. Somewhere between the laboratory and the stadium, he had lost the little bit of blue cloth that he had woken up with and put around his waist for protection. “Um, yes?” “...What happened to your clothes?” “They got burnt off,” Izuku said. He pat his chest with his hands, “I’m not hurt anymore. I healed. But, yeah… my clothes didn’t make it.” “And that is what you found?” Iida asked. He glanced up, “Why not go to one of the supply tents and get something more fitting? ...Though I suppose what they really have is food and water and blankets, not clothing.” “It’s not a big deal. I’ll get clothes later,” Izuku waved it off, “What really matters is-” “Bakugou. I know.” Iida’s lips pressed into a thin line. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Right. Okay. Uh. If he’s hurt, he’s probably in one of the medical tents. I know that they’ve been trying to keep classes together and such, so the rest of our class is probably close by wherever he is. If you find them, you can find him, most likely.” “Thanks, Iida,” Izuku said. “I should find him easily now.” He turned to take a step away but stopped. Something Iida had said gave him pause. He frowned and asked, “If they’re trying to keep our classes together, why are you by yourself?” Iida flushed, embarrassed and flustered. “I left alone- I mean- Aizawa-sensei sent me out of the stadium. To call in medics for the others. And then I-” Here he stopped and closed his mouth, lips pressed into a thin line. He shook his head. “I just haven’t been able to regroup with the others.” Izuku gestured for him to come with him, “Let’s go together then. That way the others will know that you’re safe too. C’mon.” Without waiting for a reply, Izuku turned to go. After a few steps, Iida caught up with him and the two walked together through the crowd. Izuku, though anxious to find Katsuki, didn’t duck and weave through the people like he had before. Iida was taller and broader than he was. He couldn’t squeeze through the same small gaps that Izuku had used instinctively, looking for the least obtrusive way through. As they walked, Iida kept quiet. Izuku anticipated a half-dozen questions or more; about why he was separated from Katsuki in the first place, how he had survived the fire and the subsequent collapse, what he thought caused it- but Iida was silent. Pensive, even. Of course, the situation was tense and stressful. Alone, Iida would have had nothing to do but watch the crowd and grow increasingly concerned. Izuku frowned. At least he had found Iida and could bring him back. That would help with Aizawa-sensei, he figured. Iida lookedtroubled. Izuku just looked dirty. A wash up, new clothes and some time with Katsuki and Izuku would be fine again. “Oh,” Iida said suddenly. Izuku jerked to a stop and looked up at him. He was pointing ahead. “I can see Shouji from here.” Izuku did a short vertical jump to look over the crowd. There was a medical tent in the direction that Iida was pointing. Their classmates were gathered off to the side, an obvious sight in their track suit uniforms. “It looks like most of them are there. C’mon, let’s go!” Izuku grinned. He hadn’t seen Katsuki in his jump, but that was fine. Katsuki had been hurt before the cave in, after all. He was most likely inside the tent, getting his battle wounds tended. Izuku would greet his classmates and then go to Katsuki. Simple.     ===============================================================================     Eijirou turned when he got prodded in the shoulder by one of Shouji’s arms. He caught sight of Iida, walking through the crowd and felt a little knot of tension ease up in his chest. That was one less classmate to wonder about. Iida hadn’t had any visible injury when he’d left, but then he hadn’t shown up again, which lead to questions on whether or not he was really all right. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he took in a breath to shout greeting to Iida but the words never came. He just about choked on the air instead, coughing and thumping his fist against his chest when Iida stepped out of the crowd, not alone, but with Midoriyaat his side. He wasn’t the only one who gasped at the sight of their smaller classmate. Todoroki had told them how Bakugou had to be persuaded and then ultimately dragged away from a charred smear that had been Midoriya. But there he walked, in the flesh. Barefoot in a weird long, reddish jacket with a bulging pocket and splattered with blood, but alive. Eijirou felt tears well up in his eyes. If Ochako could see that he was alive- When Bakugou found out- He stumbled as he hurried over. Midoriya stopped and gave a slight, somewhat awkward smile. Eijirou didn’t care. He threw his arms around Midoriya in a tight hug, tears blurring his vision. “You’re alive,”he gasped out. “You’re really alive!” Midoriya stood there stiffly for a longer time than most would. Eijirou didn’t care. No one really touched Midoriya except for Bakugou and even if they were a Thing, it was Bakugou.There was always an element of violence to his affection. Eijirou got that. He had a brother who was kind of like that. But he needed to hug Midoriya, to feel the warmth of his body, the solidness of it. Eventually, Midoriya returned the hug. His chin rested on Eijirou’s arm. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “Shit happened.” Eijirou tightened his hug. He heard someone cough a little awkwardly behind him. Sniffling, Eijirou pulled back. He glanced over his shoulder to see Shinsou standing there, fingers plucking at the sleeve of his jump suit. Stepping out of the way, Eijirou wiped at his eyes as Shinsou stepped forward. He took one look at Midoriya, covered in blood and in his weird clothes, and frowned. “You look like shit. What happened to you?” Midoriya laughed, “I woke up with all my clothing burnt off and trapped in the dark. I busted out of there, found this to wear and then had to figure out where I was. There was this other man who was trapped and I had to move some rubble to get him out, but after that the excavation team said I was good to go.” “...you’re completely uninjured?” Shinsou asked, brows lifting. Midoriya nodded. “Not a scratch on me.” “So all that blood isn’t yours.” “Ah. Well.” Midoriya scratched at the back of his neck. He glanced away. “It is. I’ve just healed a couple of times so it’s old blood now.” Shinsou opened his mouth but then thought better of what he was going to say and shut it, shaking his head slightly. Midoriya blinked at him and then asked, glancing to Eijirou as well, “Is Kacchan here?” “He’s in the tent. They said he was badly injured,” Eijirou said, stepping forward. “His feet and his ribs and some other things too. He was trapped with some Pros in a room! Todoroki found him with them on his way out.” He gestured towards Todoroki as he said it. Todoroki had yet to come forward and say anything himself. He just stared at Izuku from back in the cluster of their classmates, eyes a little wider than usual and skin a little more pale. Eijirou clapped his hand on Midoriya’s shoulder. “We totally get it if  you want to go right to him. He seemed really out of it earlier.” Midoriya gave Eijirou a grateful smile. Briefly, he touched Eijirou’s hand with his own, his calloused fingers surprisingly cold against Eijirou’s knuckles. “Thanks. Excuse me.” He turned and slipped away, coat flapping around his legs. Shinsou watched him leave and then, quietly, stepped closer to Eijirou and murmured, “Todoroki was absolutely certainthat Izuku was dead. And based on Bakugou’s reactions, I’m kind of inclined to agree.” “Well,” Eijirou shrugged, “I guess he was wrong. They both were.” An idea struck and Eijirou brightened, “You know what I bet happened? He said all his clothes burnt off, yeah? So he probably was in the fire? What if the explosion knocked him far away from the others, like a fireball cannon? It went Fwhoom! And he went sailing like,” Eijirou whistled, trailing his hand through the air and then smacking it into his other palm. “And splat.He hit a wall or something on the other side. That would explain the blood.” “His healing ability is strong enough to survive that fire anda sailing body slam into concrete?” Shinsou asked. Eijirou shrugged again. “I guess so. It has to be pretty strong. I mean, not to sound too much like Bakugou but Midoriya was fucked upafter his fight with Todoroki. And then, like five minutes later, he comes walking out all gung ho and ready for his next fight- not a scratch on him. Enhancement quirks don’t usually work with a healing factor but it would explain why he can’t help anyone else heal. His quirk is super strong, but really limited.” Shinsou blinked at him. He rubbed the back of his neck, letting out a thoughtful, “Hmmm. That makes some sense.” Todoroki approached, nearly silent. Shinsou glanced to him and Eijirou gave him a smile. “Was that him,” Todoroki asked, his voice low, “Was that really him? He’s alive?” Eijirou nodded. “As far as I can tell it’s him. I mean, he probably wasn’t replaced with a robot or something.” Pale Todoroki was nearly as strange and fascinating to look at as a flushed Todoroki, Eijirou realized. His ice side could blanche fairly well, while his fire side always kept a bit more color. Conversely, when he had been blushing and fumbling and desperate to leave in that moment they had interacted in the stands, his pale side had blushed only half as much as his fire side. He looked more like one of those cats that had a color split down the middle of their face. It was bizarre and weirdly pretty. It also told Eijirou that Todoroki was really upset. He’d never seen his face turn those shades before at school. In fact, he’d never seen much expression from Todoroki at all. He’d always gotten the impression that Todoroki would have rather been anywhere else than in class. Eijirou stepped closer to Todoroki, concerned about him. He cautiously put his hand on Todoroki’s shoulder- his right one with the ice- and said, “Hey, are you okay, Todoroki? Do you want to sit down or do you need something to drink?” Todoroki, Eijirou realized, was a bit like Midoriya. He froze up when he got touched, and there was a frantic moment where he stood there, clearly trying to figure out how to react. A shiver ran through him, one that Eijirou felt because of his hand on his shoulder. “I should- I should sit.” Todoroki whispered, almost to himself. “That- That’s-” He shook his head. Eijirou felt the wispy edges of Todoroki’s hair on the back of his hand and almost instinctively let go. Instead, he swallowed back his own sudden and strange nervousness at the contact. Pushing through that, Eijirou put his arm around Todoroki’s shoulder and guided him off to the side to find somewhere to sit. “Let’s get you sitting and resting,” Eijirou said, “Sensei said that even if we’re not hurt we could go into a little bit of shock, you know? There you go, right here.” He helped Todoroki sit on the curb of the street. It was little things like that, like sitting on the curb next to a street lamp, that reminded Eijirou, almost jarringly, that they were all just out in the middle of the streets surrounding the stadium. They hadn’t left the city, even though it felt like they were in a bizarre landscape. It was just the tents and the inordinate amount of people all flocked to one place that gave it that feeling. Eijirou sat down beside Todoroki, a little closer than he normally would have because he had his hand still across Todoroki’s back. To his credit, Todoroki didn’t seem to notice it much anymore. He had his knees drawn up near to his chest and his arms crossed on top of them. Eijirou gently rubbed his back, doing his best to silently comfort his classmate. As he did, Todoroki’s head drooped until his chin and cheek were resting near the crook of his arm. Just as he opened his mouth to ask if Todoroki was feeling better, Eijirou heard him speak. “...it has to be something else. Because if it was that, then Bakugou would have known. He would have known and he didn’t-” Todoroki rubbed his face with one hand, “No he did. But he didn’t act like he believed. He knew but didn’t believe.” “Todoroki?” Mismatched eyes glanced to Eijirou. His skin was looking a little less split in half but his eyes were unchanging in their colors. Eijirou realized, abruptly, that he’d never been this close to Todoroki before. Sure, he knew that one eye was darker than the other, but couldn’t reliably have said which was which and only knew it because he’d overheard the girls talking about it but- One eye was black and dark, framed with lighter lashes and under the fringe of white hair. One eye was pale and green, framed with red tinged lashes and under the fringe of red hair. Both were clear. Both were pretty. Eijirou felt his face heat up abruptly. God, how long had he been staring into Todoroki’s eyes? He pulled his arm back and cleared his throat, forgetting that he was just about to ask what Todoroki was mumblin. Instead, he said, “I’m going to get you something to drink, okay? Just relax right here for me?” Eijirou winced, “Well not for me, for yourself. I mean- I’m just- I’ll be right back.” He got to his feet. He took one step away before Todoroki had enough time to respond. When he did, Eijirou’s heart nearly gave out. Todoroki said, quietly, “Thank you, Kirishima,” and insntinctively, Eijirou had turned to offer a ‘no problem’ thumbs up. Todoroki had the smallest of smiles, there and then faded away again, but Eijirou saw it. He saw it and it made his palms sweat. He still gave his thumbs up but then hurried off again, determined to find a water bottle for Todoroki.   ===============================================================================   The inside of the tent was well lit. This lead Izuku to quickly find exactly who he was searching for despite the many occupied beds and the people tending to them. The track uniform was a dead giveaway, and the blond hair that went with it only confirmed Izuku’s discovery. Without a word, he walked right for Katsuki’s bed, maneuvering around all the others to get there. He paused for a second at the end of Ochako’s bed, just long enough to tell that she was completely out of it. Reaching Katsuki’s bed, Izuku stood there, silently, and watched him sleep. Katsuki was on his side, his track suit jacket opened and his shirt ruffled slightly. Izuku looked down at Katsuki’s feet, remembering that they were badly injured and saw that they had been washed clean and tended to. There weren’t any bandages, and what few visible cuts there were were thin and pink. Freshly healed. Izuku sighed in relief. He had worried about that. Putting his hands on the bed, he was about to hop up onto it when a man approached from the side. “Young man, you’re covered in blood, are you injured?” The man looked him over, violet colored eyes flashing behind his glasses and a thin frown pressed into his lips. “I have a self-healing quirk,” Izuku replied, “I’m fine. My clothes are just, uh, not self-cleaning.” The man stared at him for a moment before cracking a smile. “Ah, would that we all had self-cleaning clothing. It sure would save me some time. Now, if you’re not injured, I must ask  you to go.” “Please,” Izuku shook his head, “Don’t make me leave. I came all this way for Kacchan-” Izuku reached out and put a hand on Katsuki’s chest. “At least let me stay until he wakes up.” “That boy won’t be up for several hours,” the man, presumably the doctor of the tent, said, “He was suffering from severe emotional distress and we had to sedate him.” He eyed Katsuki for a moment before pushing his glasses up and adding, “A fortunate thing, too. His injuries were rather severe. The human body does better healing when it’s sleeping. I always try to perform on the sleeping, but that does not always work out.” “I’d like to stay anyway,” Izuku said. “Kacchan is my best friend. We were separated just before the blast and I don’t want him to have to worry about me any more than he has to. Please, doctor. Would you let me stay? I’ll sit on the bed and be quiet. You won’t even notice I’m here.” The doctor stared at him. His eyes moved up, then down, and then he half turned. “Shiro.” In a moment, a woman, or at least a woman shaped mist dressed in nurse’s garb, appeared. She gave a little nod of the head. “Doctor?” “Get him cleaned up with some fresh clothes,” the doctor turned back to Izuku when he was done speaking to the woman. “You’re the one who liquefied the ground,” he said, “I was watching the matches from home before all of this nonsense.” He gestured vaguely towards Katsuki. “You two fought just before the explosion.” Izuku nodded, “My name is Midoriya Izuku, sir.” “Thom,” was the reply. He gave another smile, laughing a little, “What a coincidence. I think you’re the one that my associate was here to watch and to be introduced to! Yes, Midoriya, you can stay here with Bakugou. Shiro!” “I’ve just gotten something appropriate, sir.” Shiro replied. She drifted up behind Izuku and, to his surprise, opened up a small circular portal in front of her. From that portal, some clean clothing fell through. “If you go out through the back of the tent, young man, there is a hose and a bucket and a cloth. Clean yourself up, get dressed, and then you may return to your vigil over your boyfriend.” “Best friend,” Thom corrected. “Shiro, pay attention.” He shook his finger at her. Izuku glanced from him to her in time to see her black eyes roll slightly. “I always pay attention, doctor,” Shiro replied. She looked down at Izuku and then winked. “Go. Scoot.” Izuku ducked his head down in thanks and hurried off to the back of the tent as instructed. Their voices faded behind him as they went back to their work of tending the injured survivors of the explosion. ***** convictions of the mind ***** Chapter Notes See the end of the chapter for notes Indistinct shouting roused Katsuki from his sleep. One ear was covered by something that blocked out about half of the sound, muffled by some sort of steady, rhythmic thumping. Something warm was pressed against his other cheek, smooshing part of his face into the chest he rested on. A similar warm thing was on his shoulder and back, keeping him close to the slowly rising and falling chest of his adapted pillow. Katsuki became aware of all of this in about the same moment. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know who he was curled around. He had slept with his cheek pressed hard enough on Izuku’s shirt to get the imprint of the cloth on his skin so many times that he had learned not only the smell of Izuku’s skin and clothing, but the sound of his heartbeat. Izuku was warm and comfortable to sleep against and, when Katsuki was recovering from a particularly nasty session of sparring or training or experimenting with Usagi, Katsuki didn’t mind the protective way that Izuku wrapped his arms around him. Sometimes, when his ribs ached from their slow healing like they did now, Katsuki wanted to feel protected that way. There was no other time that he felt as safe as he did in Izuku’s arms. Less familiar was the ache in his own hand. Katsuki grimaced as he flexed his fingers. His hand was tucked tight between his stomach and Izuku’s side, making it difficult to open. Something sharp was pressed into his skin and his muscles ached with the effort of holding tightly shut for hours. Considering his other hand was also curled up underneath himself, pressed between his chest and Izuku’s body, Katsuki had no idea what he could be holding onto that was so damn important. Katsuki pushed his head down, ducking it under Izuku’s arm, so he could look down at his hand. Stiffly, his fingers unclenched around two small objects. They were greyish, or rather white with blackened edges, and the shape was odd but recognizable. Katsuki had studied the human skeletal structure in science in middle school. He could still remember tracing the bones in Izuku’s fingers and thin wrists, naming the cluster of bones there before reciting the much more well known bones of the arm and shoulder. These ones, however, were from the spinal column. They were chipped and cracked as though they had been flash fired at a high heat and knocked around a little bit, but they were bones from a spine. Katsuki stared at them.  His throat closed up. His breath stagnated in his lungs. His stomach turned and flipped, twisting in his gut. He was going to be sick. Izuku was dead. How had he forgotten- How had he mistaken someone else’s heart, their scent, the warmth of their arms, that safety- “Mmnng, Kacch’n?” There was no mistaking Izuku’s groggy voice. Katsuki pushed himself up, shedding the arms from around his head and neck in the process. He knelt up on a thin mattress of a small, narrow bed. The metal frame of it creaked slightly as he shifted his weight on the top. Katsuki looked down at Izuku, blearily rubbing his eyes with one hand before yawning. He covered that with his palm, fingers splayed against his cheek, and smacked his lips together. He dropped the bones and grabbed Izuku by the face. Izuku gave out a surprised yelp as Katsuki brought their mouths together in a sloppy, desperate kiss. For a few seconds, Izuku tried to talk instead, to say something, but Katsuki mashed their lips together and prevented him from getting out a single intelligible word. He gave in willingly, though, and just kissed Katsuki back. Izuku wrapped his arm around Katsuki’s shoulder, tugging on him insistently. Katsuki shoved Izuku back down onto the bed, pinning him there with his mouth and hands and knees. He could feel Izuku’s fingers dig into his back, his shoulder blades, and though they were strong enough to hurt, they only made Katsuki moan. In return, he shoved his hands up under Izuku’s thin shirt. He didn’t know where Izuku had gotten such a filmy little thing, but it was as thin as the sheets they were on and just as soft. Katsuki’s fingers readily found what they were looking for. As he pinched Izuku’s nipples, he lifted his mouth so he could hear Izuku gasp and whimper audibly. Yes, there was no doubt about it, this was his Izuku. And he was going to make Izuku sing. Katsuki shifted on his knees, nudging Izuku’s legs apart with one and setting himself between them as soon as there was space. He bent in for another one of those desperate, breathless kisses when something whapped the back of his head. “Don’t make me dump a bucket of cold water on you, young man. I will do it.” Panting, Katsuki looked up. His hands were still under Izuku’s shirt, but he only had one knee between Izuku’s legs. He met the dark gaze of a woman in a nursing outfit who held a tightly rolled up magazine in one hand. For the first time, Katsuki realized that he and Izuku were in a room full of patients. There were plenty of beds- most of them filled- all around them. He even recognized a few faces from his class, though when he saw them, they glanced away without meeting his gaze. Typical. “Kacchan?” Beneath him, Izuku blinked up with sleep sticking his lashes together and his lips pink from their kissing. He rubbed at his face with one hand, looking disheveled and sleepy. Katsuki’s annoyance from being struck melted at his expression. He pulled his hands out from under Izuku’s shirt and smoothed the fabric with long strokes of his fingers. “Hey Deku.” The bones sat conspicuously on the bed beside Katsuki’s knee. He tried not to look at them, tried not to think about them. Izuku was back. Izuku was real and solid and alive. Why had he doubted? Of course Izuku would come back. He always came back. “How are you feeling, Bakugou?” The woman asked, folding her arms across her chest. The magazine was gone as though it had never been there. “The doctor administered treatment while you were asleep. You should have full range of motion in your feet and hands and your ribcage should be whole again.” Katsuki dutifully pat his chest with his hands. Then he rolled his wrists and flexed his fingers. Doing the same with his feet, he nodded to the nurse. There was that sore muscle feeling and some itching that was familiar with a healing wound, but he didn’t feel any strange numbness or pain. “I’m fine,” he said. He glanced around again and asked, “Where is the doctor anyway? There’s a fuckton of people in here that look hurt still.” “That’s normal,” Izuku and the nurse said simultaneously. Izuku flushed and laughed nervously at the action, the nurse just smiled slightly, her entirely black eyes creasing creasing in amusement. “Your friend asked the same thing earlier,” she said in explanation. “Doctor Thom’s healing quirk is stimulus based. All wounds are carefully cleaned and, if need be, guiding sutures are applied to help stabilize the area while it regenerates.” “No one wants to have their leg heal with half a gauze bandage mixed in with the muscle and there’s a risk of that happening if the cut is bandaged before the quirk stimulus is applied,” Izuku said, “At least, that’s what Shirogiri- san said.” Shirogiri’s eyes crinkled again, “How attentive you are, young Midoriya. Yes, that is what I said.” “Yeah, that doesn’t actually answer my question, though,” Katsuki said. He shifted a little so he sat more comfortably on Izuku’s leg. “Where’s the doctor.” “The doctor is engaging in part of the discussion outside,” Shirogiri said with a little gesture of her hand towards the entrance to the tent. As Katsuki’s attention shifted to follow her motion, he became aware of the shouting again. It was what had woken him up in the first place. The muffled shouting sounded like his parents talking to each other on the other side of his bedroom door, or just around the corner and down the hall in his house. His body had reacted to it while still caught in Izuku’s embrace. After all, Izuku wasn’t allowed at his home anymore. Even if all they were doing was sleeping together in the same bed, his mother would throw a fit and toss Izuku out. Katsuki ran a hand through his hair, muttering, “That’s probably it. I woke up because I thought she was here…” “Who, Kacchan?” “My mom,” Katsuki said. “The yelling reminded me of her.” “Oh.” Izuku blinked, “I don’t think she’d be here. But your dad is around somewhere.” Katsuki turned back to him, surprised. “My dad? What the fuck would he be doing here? He wasn’t in the stadium. He said they’d watch the clips later because they had to work.” Izuku opened his mouth but quickly shut it, biting his lower lip. There was a flick of a green eye towards Shirogiri and Katsuki sighed. “Eh. Doesn’t matter anyway,” Katsuki muttered. Izuku would tell him later, when they were alone. The problem was, Katsuki wasn’t sure when they’d get to be alone again. Unless… “Hey nurse lady,” He asked, “If we’re all fucking healed up, can we just get our shit and go?” Shirogiri looked away from the door, blinking a few times. “Hm? Oh. Certainly. Though, to avoid the scene that is undoubtedly occurring outside, you’ll want to leave through the back.” Her easy acquiescence, and even helpfulness struck Katsuki as a little odd. He was more used to adults trying to command or corral him, or in the case of Inko, guide him to whatever alternative they considered best. Shirogiri, on the other hand, fed him small bits of information and left the choices up to him and Izuku. “Should we go?” Izuku asked, taking Katsuki’s attention back from Shirogiri. The nurse had turned away again herself and now was walking down the rows to one of the patients waving her down. “Yeah,” Katsuki said. “Let’s beat it.” He slid off of Izuku and off of the bed, scooping up the waylaid bones on the way. He still wore his tracksuit so he slipped the bones into a pocket. Izuku climbed down after him. He smoothed out his thin clothing, which looked both out of place and incredibly fitting for Izuku. The cloth itself was a sort of faded sky blue color and it was patterned with yellow ducklings about the size of Katsuki’s thumb. He snorted in amusement, finally noticing the damn things were wearing tiny little black shades, and reached out to ruffle Izuku’s hair. “Don’t laugh, Kacchan,” Izuku said. His cheeks turned red as he ducked his chin down a little. He didn’t go far enough to miss Katsuki’s touch, though. “This is what they gave me to wear.” “What happened to your clothes?” Katsuki asked. Izuku did that shifty little glance again and Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. Let’s go.” Izuku nodded, but before he actually went anywhere, he lifted up a corner of the mattress and pulled out something odd. Hidden under the bedding was a thin manilla folder, creased down the middle like it had been bent in half for a long time. Izuku tucked that into the waistband of his pants, putting his shirt over it to hide it, and then smiled to Katsuki. Katsuki lifted his eyebrow. Izuku shrugged a little. Katsuki rolled his eyes again and reached out. He took Izuku’s hand in his own and headed for the front of the tent. “We’re not going out the back,” Izuku asked. “Stupid Deku,” Katsuki replied, “No one is going to notice us with all that shouting going on out there.” “You just want to see who it is,” Izuku said. “And find out what’s going on.” “Yeah. So what? Is there a problem with that?” Izuku fiddled nervously with the hem of his shirt. Katsuki frowned and stepped closer until they were almost toe to toe. He put his arm around Izuku’s shoulders and bumped their foreheads together. “You little shit,” he muttered, “What the hell is this about?” “Kacchan, we don’t have time to get swept up into another crazy round of bullshit,” Izuku muttered back. His eyes were downcast, and from the little bit of height Katsuki had on him, it looked like they were closed. His dark lashes beat against his cheekbones with each involuntary blink. “I have some stuff I really, really need to tell you. It’s really important.” Katsuki didn’t question it. He only nodded and lifted his head. He pressed a kiss to Izuku’s forehead and felt the tension pour out of Izuku’s shoulders under his arm. That assured Katsuki that he’d made the right choice. Turning away, he navigated through the beds towards the back. On the way, they passed by one of their classmates. Yaoyorozu sat upright on her bed, staring down at her hands which lay cradled in her lap. Her eyes were wide and she didn’t seem to even notice them going past. Katsuki glanced at her hands, to see what was so fascinating and nearly stopped dead in his tracks. Her fingers, mangled and mashed horribly, were reforming themselves, bit by bit. They didn’t look exactly like Izuku’s type of regeneration, where things snapped back into place like a stretched rubber band, but moved slowly. It was like watching a plant grow over a time lapse video. Her fingers trembled and shook and slowly straightened out. Yaoyorozu just stared at them, like she couldn’t believe it, like she’d never seen anything like it before in her life. Izuku prodded Katsuki when he lagged. Spurred on by that, Katsuki shook his head and moved faster. Shirogiri looked up and watched them leave as they ducked out the back flap, but she didn’t say or do anything to stop them. ===============================================================================     For such a thin, narrow man, Thom very effectively prevented anyone from coming into our out of the tent. He stood with his arms folded over his chest and his chin lifted slightly, defiant not only of his sister’s demands but of Gomiko’s advice and the instruction of military personnel. Shouta watched with the fascination one gave to an unavoidable collision of a train headed right for a brick wall at sixty miles an hour. It was hard to tell which would survive the impact; the wall or the train, but Shouta hazarded on the side of the metaphorical train. Perhaps if it was only his sister Thom had to butt heads against, there wouldn’t be any give on his side of the argument. Even if the sister’s cause was taken up by Gomiko, the larger man’s support apparently controversial in itself, Thom would be able to resist and deny, in spite of his relationships with them both. But standing in front of him were two military personnel; a dead giveaway with their dark uniforms and polished boots and similar haircuts. One stood a half step back and to the side of the other, hands behind his back as he let his cohort do the talking. The shouting had finally been cut away. Gomiko and the sister, an unfamiliar Pro that Shouta knew only as Vitality Girl, both were off to the side, listening to the much quieter exchange. Shouta heard a shuffling step and his back stiffened somewhat. That was right. He had most of his class with him. They were watching, had been since the first moment Vitality Girl had dropped Recovery Girl’s name as a patient. They clustered close together, bunching up like month-old kittens seeking warmth and comfort from littermates. He glanced down to see Asui watching, wide-eyed, hands clasped close together. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Ashido, who bit her lip and watched with her gaze flicking from the two in uniform and back to the tent. “Momo is in there,” Ashido whispered, “She did mention her parents were pretty important. Maybe they’re here about her?” She glanced first to Shouta, but he didn’t respond. Asui, however, shook her head. “They want Midoriya,” she said with absolute confidence. “But why?” Ashido asked. Her voice climbed a little bit in volume. “His healing power is only good for himself. He can’t heal anyone else and- and Recovery Girl…” She bit her bottom lip. “Midoriya’s quirk is… special,” Asui said thoughtfully. “It makes sense that they’d want to see him. Maybe not the woman or that other man, but the officers?” She gave a soft ribbit and turned her head, looking up at Shouta. “Right, sensei? They probably want to question Midoriya.” “We don’t know for certain,” Shouta said. He was worn thin after hours of waiting; for excavators, for students to be treated, for someone to come and collect them. Nedzu had sent a message that, until the students were picked up by parents, they were under his direct responsibility. There wasn’t anyone else who could take his spot. There was no relief until the end of this. Stuck in the middle of it all, Shouta clung to the hope that soon it would be over. That is what gave him the strength to look down at Asui, to look into the faces of his other students and admit the truth, as he knew it. “There are more than a dozen patients in there. Those personnel could very easily be here to speak with or collect any one of them. Certainly, we shouldn’t assume that what Vitality Girl has brought up to discuss with the doctor has anything to do with the military.” “I don’t think it matters to him in either case,” Shouji said quietly from a little behind and to the side of Shouta. “He’s not letting in anyone.” As if to prove the point, Thom’s voice was heard, loud and abrupt. “I said you may not enter. Your commander isn’t my commander and cannot demand anything out of me. What makes you think I’m going to bend over and let you fuck about with my patients?” He leaned forward, folded arms unfolding so he could gesture back towards the tent while looking at the officers. “Every single body inside this tent is my personal and professional responsibility. I have an ethical and moral obligation to do my utmost to tend them, to heal them. You may not traipse in and demand any of my patients to be transferred to your care.” “Doctor, this boy is-” The first officer spoke, but was sharply cut off. “My patient,” Thom spoke over her. “You can’t-” She tried again. “Let him go with you anywhere.” “Will you stop for one second,” the second one said, “There will be repercussions to this. You can’t just- just stonewall us like-” He stopped when the first officer put her hand on his shoulder and then shook her head. His voice dropped back down again to an inaudible range from where they were standing. At least, inaudible to Shouta. He heard Shouji take in a sharp breath, shifting on his feet as he tried to eavesdrop, as unobtrusively as a six foot multi-armed teenager possibly could be. Shouta had a sharp pang for Jirou, who would have been perfect for this sort of thing if not for the injury to her ear removing one of her jacks entirely. Shouta glanced at him, brow lifting. “What is it? He asked. Shouji paled visibly- which was in itself a feat considering how much of his face was typically covered. “They suspect one of the patients inside to be in coalition with those who conspired to explode the stadium,” he whispered, leaning in towards Shouta. “They didn’t say who, though.” There was a murmur of surprised whispers that ran through the students. Shouta winced. That was… not what he was hoping to hear. Again, Thom raised his voice to reply. Not shouting, but loud and declaring. “I. Don’t. Care.” He spoke slowly, enunciating every word. “That doesn’t matter to me.” “Are you even listening to yourself anymore?” Vitality Girl asked, taking a step towards him. Her white clothing was marred with soot and dust, speckled with blood and gritty bits of stone. Color rose in her cheeks, in proportion to her visible anger at the situation. “I don’t give a shit what they’ve done. I’m not their moral compass. I’m their doctor. They could have set the ignition and brought down the stadium on everyone but that doesn’t prevent me from tending to them. I’m a healer. It’s what I do.” Thom rounded on his sister. “Some of us heal everyone, deserving or not, Lanna.” “Oh yeah? Then what about Recovery Girl? You say she’s not deserving? You won’t heal her!” Vitality Girl took another step towards him, edging the military pair off to the side. “What happens to your naive little motto when it comes to her?” “I can’t take any more patients without putting the ones I have already in jeopardy,” Thom said, shaking his head. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up as he did so. “The benefits outweigh the costs, we have been over this.” “She’s our grandmother, Thom.” Vitality Girl snapped. “And you’re weighing the cost of saving her life against what, some sprained wrists and lacerations? They can heal fine the traditional way but if you don’t help Chiyo she’ll die.” There was a beat of silence. Even the two in uniform seemed startled by her outburst. They looked from Vitality Girl, whose hands shook visibly at her side, to Thom, who had his arms folded across his chest again. This is where Gomiko stepped in. Shouta winced instinctively. It hadn’t gone well when Gomiko intervened the first time, and with tempers only rising, he doubted that it would be any better the second time. Yet, Gomiko was as determined as everyone else in this tense argument. He stepped in, one hand raised and the other coming to rest on Thom’s shoulder. “Now if we all step back a bit and take a breath, I’m sure we can come up with a solution that we’re all satisfied with. It’s been a long day for everyone but that doesn’t mean we should go after each others metaphorical throats right now.” He gave his disarming smile. Shouta saw the shoulders relax ever so slightly on the military officials. Vitality Girl had the opposite reaction. Her back straightened, her shoulders rose sharply. “You need to stay out of this discussion,” she said, “It has nothing to do with you.” “Lanna,” Gomiko started, his voice pitched to be soothing but Vitality Girl would have none of it, apparently. Her face twisted in visible disgust. “Don’t even begin with me, you- you hustler. This has nothing to do with you.” She took another step forward, reaching Thom’s other shoulder. “This is between Thom and I. This is a family matter.” Before that part of the conversation could escalate again, the military woman said sharply. “Fine. We’ll leave you your possibly traitorous patients and go. But we will be back and you will be forced to comply.” She turned, without waiting for any parting words and walked off with her companion at her side. Shouta spared them one long glance, to see which direction they were headed in before he looked back at the slightly less horrible train wreck in front of him. Thom was saying nothing, simply looking at his sister with his lips pressed together in a line and his arms folded. He hadn’t moved a step yet. “Thom, this is Chiyo. She- she taught us everything. If you could do anything to help her…” Vitality Girl began. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Thom said. “There’s nothing I can do for her or your other patient,” he gave a glance to Gomiko. “Absolutely. Nothing. So you need to go and do what you can to make her comfortable if you think that this is the end for her. And the other one?” The shook his head. “Don’t you think Chiyo asked me herself if I could help him when she found out about how extensive his injuries are? I did what I could for him already. If I do anymore you know what will happen.” The color drained slowly from Vitality Girl’s cheeks. She shook her head, hand going up to smooth the braid she wore her hair in as a way to try and sooth herself. She turned away, still visibly shaken. “She taught us everything,” she whispered, “Chiyo…” Thom put his hand on his sister’s shoulder in silent comfort. “She’s not dead yet. Go back to her and do what you can.” His sister nodded and turned away. Her face, though pale, was determined as she walked off. While he watched her go, Thom said to Gomiko, “Gomi, stay out here. I have work I need to do.” He, too, turned and left, quickly disappearing beneath the tent flap. Gomiko turned towards it, moving as though he were going to go in after him, but saw something that made him jerk his hand back. With the argument over, for now, Shouta had a pressing problem to address. His students, undoubtedly, had questions.   ===============================================================================     The back of the tent opened up to an alleyway. There was a water source off to one side, and a bucket with a bloody rag draped over the side next to it. A reddish coat was hung up on the wall from a small pipe or outcropping of brick, Katsuki wasn’t sure which. Besides those things, the alleyway was empty. Almost suspiciously so. He could see a few dark spots on the ground from places where things like boxes or bags must have rested and left residue behind. There wasn’t even something like bits of newspaper or a crushed can or anything. It was unusual, but not that important. What was important was the way that Izuku went over to the red coat, whispering, “It’s still here.” “Is that yours?” Katsuki asked. He’d never seen such a thing before in Izuku’s closet. In fact, it looked like it belonged from Katsuki’s mother’s closet. “Where’s it from?” Izuku’s hand hesitated over the back of the coat as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to pick it up after all. Katsuki frowned. What had happened? What was Izuku keeping from him? “Hey,” he snapped, “What the fuck is going on, Deku? When are you going to tell me? Or are we keeping secrets now?” Izuku immediately whipped around, eyes wide, “I- I- I’m not keeping a secret! I just- I don’t know how to explain.” “Start from the beginning,” Katsuki said with a roll of his eyes. “You tossed me into that room, shut the door and held it. Then what?” Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, fingers twisting together in front of himself. “There was fire. A whole wave of it. It was hot, incredibly hot and it burned me. I think it burned me to death.” “Yeah,” Katsuki said, a little quieter. He crossed the space between them and went up to Izuku’s side. Gesturing to the wall, they both went and sat down next to it, in a spot that was a little cleaner than the others. Izuku pulled the folder out from under his clothes to be more comfortable and let it sit on his lap. Sitting side by side, knees touching, Katsuki took Izuku’s hand and put the bones into it. “You did. These are from your remains. There… wasn’t much left.” “Oh,” Izuku breathed. He held the bones, turning them slowly over in his hands. “Hey, um, Kacchan. We’ve always been careful about my bits, right? Like, we’ve always done our best to dispose of them and leave nothing behind.” Katsuki grimaced. A brief, grisly memory flashed before his eyes. Izuku’s head always had a solid weight to it, heavy and yet soft because of his hair. He could still remember carrying it to a safe location to dispose of it. He could still remember the thick splatter of blood and tiny bits of bone that had hit him in the face the first time he exploded the head. “Yeah,” he muttered. “But do you remember that time behind the shrine when we got chased away by a Pro?” Katsuki nodded. Izuku opened the folder. He pulled out a large, glossy picture that had been bent and handled and creased. That didn’t make what was on it any harder to see, though. Izuku handed over the picture. “We left behind an arm and a leg. They found them and kept them. They preserved them so they didn’t decay. They didn’t burn them or bury them. They kept them in a drawer in a room full of other drawers of bodies.” Katsuki’s breath came short and fast. “A morgue? They have your body parts in a morgue?” Izuku shook his head. “They had my limbs, Kacchan. Had them. And it wasn’t a morgue.” He took one of Katsuki’s hands in his own and held onto it tightly. “Kacchan, they were keeping them in a laboratory. “They kept them in your mother’s laboratory.” Katsuki stared at him. There was someone screaming, but he didn’t hear it with his ears. It was in his head. He was screaming, or rather, his thoughts were. Screaming over and over. This is it. This is it. This is it. They’re going to take him away from me. They’re going to take him away from me. They’re going to take him away from me! Katsuki grabbed Izuku roughly and pulled him closer. “Tell me everything, Deku. Step by step, like you’d put it in a notebook. Tell me everything and don’t you dare leave a fucking thing out. Okay?” Izuku nodded and began to tell Katsuki what he’d woken up to, in the darkness, only earlier that day. I won’t let them have you, Deku. I won’t let them take you from me. Chapter End Notes and now katsuki is back up to speed. hoo boy. exciting ***** family ties ***** Chapter Notes a fun todo-centric little chapter for us all :D one of these days i'll stop doing chapters that are shouto's and then shouta's pov. but apparently thats not this day As the afternoon wore on, Shouto’s classmates began to disappear. The shadows of the buildings stretched slowly across the pavement, bringing twilight’s chill with it. One by one, parents or guardians came for their kid, to take them home and to safety. Shouto watched as Asui’s parents swept her up in a hug, her mother weeping in gratitude that she was uninjured and talking so quickly that Shouto couldn’t quite understand her. He saw as Jirou’s parents come looking for her, only to be directed off to a different medical tent, their faces drawn with worry. Even Shinsou’s father came, which Shouto saw despite the fact that Shinsou wasn’t one of their classmates. Shinsou had been hanging around since the beginning, since before he had returned to the main body. None of the others seemed particularly bothered by the fact that he was there, and in truth, neither was Shouto. They had fought in a match, Shinsou had nearly won in fact, but Shouto was above holding any sort of stupid grudge from that. It was just a competition. Shouto and Shinsou had both don their best and it wasn’t Shinsou’s fault that Shouto’s quirk was the edge he needed to win the encounter. No, Shinsou stayed on Shouto’s radar because he had begun to associate the tired looking teen with Midoriya and Katsuki. Sure, Shinsou might have spent equal time with those two as he did with Uraraka, but Uraraka was already earmarked as associated with Midoriya. That had never been a problem before today. He had never had any problem with either boy before today, despite the way that all three of them vied for the top positions in class. They hadn’t mattered before today. They hadn’t done anything to him that had actually changed him before today. And though he finally had been able to clear his mind of what he had seen, Shouto was left with another, deeper, more nagging sensation in the pit of his stomach. He refused to admit to that feeling, even to himself, even in the privacy of his own mind. If he didn’t acknowledge it, didn’t believe in it, it would die. It had to die. He wasn’t really like that. He wasn’t.     Sitting on the curb, with the few remaining classmates, Shouto’s hands were wrapped tight into fists that he kept pressed close to his stomach. He wasn’t curled up, like Ashido was, alone now that Asui and Kirishima had both been taken home, but he was tense. Who would come and fetch him? He hadn’t seen his father at all since before the explosion. There couldn’t be all that much that a fire quirk could help with. It was an aggressive quirk, one meant for fighting, for winning, if one were to believe his father. In a situation like his, fire was useless. It was almost as dangerous as ice, which, theoretically could be useful if used to stabilize things but would melt and create places where water would gather or slick surfaces that caused more harm than good. His mother was out of the question. Shouto simply hoped that she hadn’t been near a television when this happened. He didn’t want to think about her, either. So that left two people who could possibly come get him. Fuyumi was perhaps the most likely of the two if she could get away from work and her boyfriend. The sight of his quiet, somewhat nervous sister would be a balm in this stressful situation. She had become like a second mother to him, though the older he’d become the less frequent she was seen around the house. Shouto could already imagine the tight hug she’d give him, the whisper of a sigh as she told him she was worried sick and she was just glad he was in one piece. He wanted that hug. He needed it. Shouto unclenched his hands. His fingers ached a little, but he still rubbed his face with them. He didn’t entirely believe he deserved that hug, though. Sure, he hadn’t asked for what had happened, but he was not a bystander the way the others were. There was metaphorical blood on his hands. He lay his hands in his lap, looking down at his palms. He could see clearly the difference between the two of them. His left hand had more callouses than his right. His left hand was a little more tanned than the right. But today, there were far more similarities than usual. He had used both of his quirks that day, not once, but twice, and in an attack as well. His nails were chipped on either hand and there were some scrapes on it from something, either the matches or the running around prior to it or the escape after. They didn’t give away what he’d done, though. A shadow crossed over Shouto’s lap. He jerked his head upright, eyes widening, hands tightening into fists. If his sister wasn’t the one to pick him up, that left only one other person. Takeshi. His brother. Takeshi wore his usual dark jacket but neglected to carry with him the bat that Shouto was so used to him seeing him with. There was concern on his face, beneath the cheeky smile he gave Shouto and that perfectly vaguely happy expression he wore. Takeshi held out one hand, which Shouto took and used to pull himself to his feet. Aizawa, lingering behind the remnants of Shouto’s classmates, stepped forward. “Todoroki?” Takeshi’s smile broadened. He let go of Shouto and reached out his hand to Aizawa to shake, “You must be Aizawa-sensei. My brother has said a lot about you. Hello. My name is Takeshi. Thank you for taking such good care of Shouto for me.” The tension eased out of Aizawa’s shoulders, but Shouto knew he wasn’t stupid. He was going to remember that- “A brother, hm? I thought Shouto only had a sister.” Takeshi shook his head. When he did so, the little bits of white flecks flashed. His hair was the inverse of Fuyumi’s- short, spiky, and red, except for the small streaks of white. “There are four of us, actually. I’m the second youngest, here to fetch my baby brother on the eldest’s behalf.”  After shaking Aizawa’s hand in greeting, he looped his arm around Shouto’s shoulders and hugged him close to his side. Shouto couldn’t help but respond to the display of comfort. His eyes closed for a moment and he leaned against his brother’s side. He had only thought of Fuyumi’s hug, but of course, Takeshi would be willing to do the same. He was helpful that way. “So you’re here to take him home?” “That I am. Again, thank you so much for looking after him. We were all incredibly worried when we saw what had happened to the stadium on the screen.” Takeshi glanced down to Shouto, “I would’ve been here a little sooner, brother, but there is an incredible amount of people here and I spent quite a while searching for you.” “It’s okay,” Shouto said, “You made it. That’s what matters.” Takeshi grinned, ruffling Shouto’s hair. Shouto only made a show of protest, reaching up to stop his hand but not really trying to succeed. This made Takeshi laugh. Aizawa gave a little smile. The exhaustion on his face was deeper this afternoon than Shouto had ever seen it before, so he tried to smile back to his teacher. He gave a polite bow, “Thank you, sensei. I’ll go with my brother now. Um, do you know if we have any more class this week?” “Not tomorrow,” Aizawa said, “But things should resume the day after. I advise going straight home.” Takeshi motioned as though this were obvious, and began to tug Shouto away. Shouto gave one more goodbye before turning to walk with his brother.   As soon as they were out of eyesight of the medic tent and the few classmates left, Takeshi dragged Shouto out of the main walking area. There was a small, partially obscured doorway there, belonging to a business that wasn’t currently open. “Here,” he said, “Take off that stupid suit, kid. You stick out like a sore thumb.” He reached under his jacket and pulled out a small bag. Shouto shed the jacket down to the sleeveless undershirt below and hesitated only a moment before reaching for his pants. Takeshi had already turned away, standing so his body was more of a wall to provide cover for him. Shouto changed into the clothes that were brought for him and shoved the old, scratched up clothes into the bag. “I’m done.” Takeshi turned back around, phone in hand. He flashed Shouto a quick smile as he addressed someone on the other side of the line. “Yeah, we’re ready for evac. Thanks, Kuro, you’re the best.” A pause. Takeshi rolled his eyes. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t have to go into the tent. My bad. Next time? Promise.” Shouto saw a flicker of movement and turned his head to look. A black mist began to swirl, slowly growing to human sized. Takeshi finished up his call, pocketed his phone, and hooked his arm around Shouto’s shoulders again. “Off we go. We’ll make a stop or two but then we’ll get you home safe and sound, okay?” Shouto nodded. He stepped through the portal with his brother and vanished out of sight.     ===============================================================================     It wasn’t long after Todoroki left with his brother that a man came walking up. Shouta noticed him, not only because he was walking directly towards the tent without even a cursory glance at the few kids that were left, but because he was accompanied by the woman in the dark military uniform from before. The man himself, at first glance, seemed normal, but then Shouta realized he was in a similar outfit as she was, just without half the protection. She wore bulletproof gear and he just wore the dark blue uniform from beneath the stamp maker. Shouta didn’t move quickly enough to intercept, but he did manage to slip into the tent immediately after them, taking a chance that the kids outside would be fine alone for a few minutes. There were only two of them left, after all, none of the formerly trapped or injured ones, just ones with family far away or with difficult schedules to break to come get them. Inside of the tent, Shouta immediately looked to pick out which of his students were there. Yaoyorozu sat up in her bed, examining her hands before herself. Uraraka sat at the foot of Yaoyorozu’s bed, looking groggy but no worse for wear. In another bed, he could see Kaminari, skin shining with sweat and his fingers twisting the sheets that covered him. He had his head turned away but Shouta could see the flex of his jaw as he clenched his teeth. Sero and Jirou had been taken to a different tent, as this one had filled up quickly. Ojiro had been taken by his parents long ago. Hagakure had never made it to a tent. He couldn’t see Bakugou or Midoriya, which, knowing them, meant they were Up To Something. That something could be anything from making out to making trouble and Shouta was not sure exactly which one he would prefer them to be found doing at this moment. Thom immediately stepped up to intercept the man, who had stopped to look around as well. The other conscious patients and there were a few, looked up and over, curious about what was going to happen. “I said I wasn’t going to release any of my patients to the military,” Thom began with, cutting past any sort of introduction. The man gave a little smile. He looked oddly benign in his uniform. “Congratulations, you were able to recognize that I’m affiliated with the military by my clothing, but I’m not here in a military capacity.” He reached for his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “My name is Bakugou Tetsuma. I’m here for my son, Bakugou Katsuki. He was last seen going into this tent for treatment, but I don’t see him here. Has he been released?” Thom peered at the man’s wallet for a long minute. A wrinkle creased deeper and deeper between his brows before he finally waved his hand and indicated for Tetsuma to put it away. “The young Bakugou stepped out for some air,” Thom said, “His injuries have healed.” “Stepped out for some air?” Tetsuma repeated. He half-turned, saw Shouta and opened his mouth. Shouta shook his head before he could even ask the question, “He didn’t come out the front of the tent.” Tetsuma shut his mouth. His lips pressed into a thin line and he looked back to Thom. “Well?” At that moment, the nurse stepped in from the back of the tent. She held the flap open and ducked her head a little bit, “Doctor, Bakugou-san can find his son out back. He hasn’t gone very far at all.” There was a flicker of annoyance that crossed Thom’s expression but he waved his hand to dismiss it and stepped aside, “Go ahead and get your boy. Then please leave, as your presence adds unneeded stress to my patients.” “Thank you,” Tetsuma said with a smile. He walked past Thom, nodding to Shirogiri as he stepped past. The woman he was with gave a little smile, sharp and superior, to Thom as she went past. Shouta shifted, trying to peer out the back flap to see the boys beyond, but couldn’t. His presence immediately drew Thom’s attention, who approached with a little frown. “Your students are healing nicely,” Thom said. “The two girls are ready to be taken home. The young man, Kaminari, is progressing slowly but isprogressing. He won’t be ready to travel home for several hours yet. In truth, I’d like to transfer him to my clinic if at all possible. Have his guardians arrived?” Shouta shook his head. “Shall I send them in when they do get here?” Thom nodded. “Yes. Thank you.” He paused before turning away, visibly considering something. He hesitated before speaking, but ultimately decided to ask, quietly, “Has anyone given you information about your nephew?” Shouta tensed. “My nephew.” Thom rolled his eyes, “No need to be so coy, Aizawa. Gomiko’s clinic is attached to mine and he is a good friend. We know each other’s business, as well as it can be shared in accordance to patient-client confidentiality. I simply wanted to alleviate any stress you might be having because of the uncertainty of your family’s welfare.” Here, he paused, giving an odd, almost sad smile. “I do so understand how uncertainty can affect one’s health.” Shouta was incredibly grateful that none of his students was within earshot, but at the same time, was also glad that Thom had brought up his nephew. Shouta hadn’t really considered the fact that he could be in the stadium. But given the excitement and the fights that would be sure to happen and the fact that Shouta’s class was there, why wouldn’t he have gone? “How is he?” “Well,” Thom said, “Very well. He’s in a safe location and was far from the blast when it did occur.” Shouta nodded, “And is he still…?” “He is,” Thom said. He did grimace here, “It’s distasteful and things are shifting minutely in different directions but, well, the change is occuring, if only in small measurements.” “I understand,” Shouta said. Thom sighed and shook his head. “Family. It is quite a bit of trouble,” he murmured as he turned away, “But I suppose it can be worth the effort, from time to time. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Shouta watched as Thom left, walking down the aisle and tending to his patients. He lingered a little before making his way over to the two female students. They smiled on his approach, but the tent flap opened up before he made it. Satou stood in the doorway and looked uneasily towards Shouta. “Sensei?” “What is it Satou?” Shouta asked, walking over to him instead. Satou scratched uneasily at the back of his neck. “Sensei, didn’t Todoroki’s brother already come and get him?” Shouta nodded. Takeshi had been… odd, but Todoroki had responded well to him. Plus, they looked alike both in hair and eye color and the shape of their faces. “He did.” “Then why is his sister here to come pick him up again?” Satou asked. He swept the doorway open and gestured towards the woman with the nearly all white hair that stood outside with the other remaining student, Mineta, who looked a little frantic as he spoke to her. “What?” Shouta stiffened. What? He hurried past Satou, fear of the worst, fear that he’d let Todoroki get kidnapped right under his nose swelling within him like a rush of rainwater filling a too-small creak. He had touched that Takeshi’s hand, so had Todoroki- What if he’d fallen victim to a compelling quirk- Why hadn’t he demanded some sort of ID? What was wrong with him? “Ah,” the woman said as Shouta arrived, “Aizawa-sensei. Thank you. I came to pick up my brother? Shouto?” “I’m sorry,” Shouta said. The words tasted like ash on his tongue. Fitting, considering his father’s quirk, Shouta thought. Enji will likely murder me and everyone in his way if that boy goes missing. “But he- He already left.” “He- What? But we were told that the students would remain until an adult relative or guardian would come get them,” she said, “I’m his sister, Fuyumi. Who could you have let him go with?” “A man named Takeshi, who said that he was Todoroki’s brother,” Shouta said. Immediately, Fuyumi’s mouth snapped shut and her eyes widened. After a second she asked, voice shaking slightly, “Did you say Takeshi? What did he look like? Short hair? Red with a bit of white? Dark eyes?” Shouta nodded. His memory was pretty good when it came to faces so he was able to gesture to his own and say, “He had a scar that ran right here on his chin,” he touched his chin with the side of his thumb. Fuyumi let out a soft sigh. “Oh. Ok. Ok. This- um-” “I want to apologize,” Shouta began but stopped when she held up her hand. “No, no. I should apologize.” She bowed her head slightly, “There was a little bit of miscommunication, that’s all. I had already been here for our father so I thought that I’d pick up Shouto, as well, but it seems that that was unnecessary.” She straightened up, “You see, Takeshi is my brother. He’s just been away for a while, so I wasn’t aware he was around to do this for us. I’m so sorry, I must have caused you such worry.” The knot that had formed in Shouta’s gut wasn’t completely eased by her words. “I understand. You’re sure that he’s all right?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. “I’m going to call and double check, but yes, I’m sure that he’s safe with Takeshi. Thank you, Aizawa- sensei. My little brother speaks well of you. I’m happy to have met you, however briefly.” Shouta nodded, still a little stunned as she went away. True to her words, he could see her talking on the phone as she vanished back into the thinning crowd. At his side, Mineta muttered, “She was really pretty. Todoroki is so lucky to have such an attractive sister. That’s so not fair.” Shouta closed his eyes and wished that he could just sleep the rest of the day away. ***** priorities ***** Chapter Notes starting off the week strong. thank you all for your lovely comments, im sorry i dont get to all of them (but i swear i read them all like,,, constantly) you're all very wonderful and kind and i hope only to repay your kindness with more words for you to read. thank you <3 Katsuki stared for a long, long time at the glossy photograph of Izuku’s lost limbs in absolute silence. The page trembled slightly, in time with the shaking of Katsuki’s own hand. Izuku didn’t speak, didn’t interrupt his train of thought. He wanted to give Katsuki all the time he needed to process the image. The first time he had seen it had been jarring as well. He hadn’t ever really paid attention to missing limbs before; what they would look like, what they could mean to other people who found them, or what it was like to discover them later, well preserved and with a history that Izuku had to uncover. The preservation, perhaps, was the oddest part to Izuku. Why had they kept the entire limb? Surely, a scientific facility didn’t need to waste resources on something like that when they could take all the samples they needed and dispose of it. He almost wished he could ask that Hamilton, T. person, but there was no more information about them in the folder beyond their name or initial on some of the paperwork. The rest of the folder sat open on his lap as he sat next to Katsuki. There were several more pictures and pages and pages of test results that Izuku had puzzled over with little hope of actually figuring them out, at least on his own. “You came back from these?” Katsuki whispered, “Do you have any idea how fast the regeneration occurred after your death?” Izuku shook his head, “Not precisely. I didn’t really think about finding a clock on my way out.” Katsuki lowered the picture, “About that.” He turned his head to glare at Izuku, “Deku, you broke headlong through two doors of fucking glass. What the hell were you thinking? You don’t think that they got you on camera?” He dropped the picture back into Izuku’s lap, in favor grabbing him by the shoulders to shake. “If the elevator door was locked with a thumb pad, don’t you think that the whole place had  cameras?” “I wasn’t thinking about that,” Izuku admitted. His head bounced around as Katsuki shook him, but he didn’t mind it. Katsuki was practically vibrating with worry and his bruising grip and rising voice was just one more aspect of that. Izuku put his hand on Katsuki’s arms, running up and down them soothingly, “I’m sorry, Kacchan, I just was worried about getting out of there as fast as I could and getting back to you. I didn’t know for sure that you were safe, you know?” “I was fine,” Katsuki said. He stopped shaking Izuku, but was still glaring. “You shoved me into a room full of Pros. What the fuck did you think was going to fucking happen to me?” “I didn’t see them,” Izuku admitted, “I thought you were alone in there,” Katsuki’s hand moved up his shoulder a little and Izuku rested his cheek on the back of Katsuki’s hand. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe, Kacchan. If anything were to happen to you…” “Shut up,” Katsuki muttered. He pulled his hands away, which Izuku didn’t expect, and grabbed for the folder instead. “Let me see the rest of this shit.” He immediately pulled the pictures out and put them to the back of the folder, looking over the papers instead. Izuku scooted closer to Katsuki, though there really wasn’t any closer he could get. He put his cheek on Katsuki’s shoulder, putting his arm around behind his back and holding onto him. Katsuki smelled faintly of blood and that bitter nitroglycerin that permeated his sweat. Under his lowered lashes, Izuku was able to look down and see Katsuki’s bare feet out in front of him. They were lashed with little lines that looked like fresh pink scars but he could tell they didn’t hurt Katsuki from the way he ignored his feet. Izuku could still remember the doctor checking Katsuki while he’d slept and when Izuku had been awake. The idea that Katsuki had lain there, unprotected, injured and resting, one among many, with no one there to look out for him, to protect him-- Izuku pressed closer to Katsuki’s side, rubbing his cheek harder against Katsuki’s shoulder. He hated the very idea of it. Katsuki didn’t deserve to be left alone and vulnerable. Katsuki deserved protection. Izuku knew how dangerous even common things like walking down the street could be. He had to be better about protecting Katsuki. He had to find a way to always be there for him. Always. “These are blood tests,” Katsuki said suddenly. “Like, not just blood tests, but tests for other things. Tissue tests- for marrow, for muscle, for blood. Though blood isn’t really a tissue. And some of these tests are over a year old. What the fuck is this? Who the fuck took this?” With a lazy hand, Izuku pulled out the little tag that he’d put into the folder. “It’s got the same name on all of them, Hamilton, T.” “And these were all in my mom’s lab?” Katsuki asked. “Mhm,” Izuku replied. He’d told Katsuki of the labelled feet, of the phone call he had overheard. Katsuki stared down at the folder some more, silent, and then said, “You have this shit memorized, yeah?” Izuku nodded, “The most recent data,  yeah. If not, we know a doctor now who could recreate these tests.” “We do?” Katsuki asked, turning his head towards Izuku. “Who? Do you mean that Thom guy?” “He’s a good doctor.” “You trust him?” “I just get a good feeling from him,” Izuku said, “Like, maybe if he’d been my doctor when I was a kid, he’d’ve noticed that I do have a quirk. He pays attention to little things, notices them. He was the one who let me stay with you because he could tell it would be beneficial to your healing.” Katsuki frowned a little but nodded. “Fine, if we need professional help, we can talk to him. I mean, it’s not like my mom is going to fucking help us.” He took in a deep breath and exhaled it sharply. “Right. Okay. And you’re sure they don’t have your arm or leg anymore?” “The drawer was empty after I got out,” Izuku said. “My theory is that I regenerated from them. You know, like that one time on the mountain when I came back from my lower half and not my head despite it being right there? This is like, like a more extreme version of that. The fire burned my body so much that I came back from the biggest part of me out there, which happened to be these two limbs.” “And that effectively teleported you across the fucking city,” Katsuki muttered, “Fuck. What the fuck. That’s… That’s…” “I know,” Izuku grinned. “It’s incredible.” “Hell yeah. Like, fucking hell, Deku. All you have to do is smuggle a part of your body into a place and then get rid of the rest of it and it’s like, fucking instant teleportation or some shit.” Katsuki grinned, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” “I’m trying to figure out a reliable way to disintegrate the rest of my body so we can test it,” Izuku said, “What are you thinking?” “Here,” Katsuki shifted where he was sitting so he could reach into his pocket. He pulled out a rock and effectively answering the question of ‘what does Kacchan have in his pocket that looks weird and is hard’ that Izuku had wondered about when they were both in the bed but had put out of his mind afterward. “Look at this while I get rid of the folder.” “Are you going to destroy all of it?” Izuku asked as he dutifully took the rock from Katsuki. It didn’t look like anything special, just a chunk of light gray concrete, like it came from the arena, with a few rough edges and one oddly smooth semi-circle cut out of a side. “Yeah. Fuck this Hamilton person. If they work with my mom, they’re probably going to be just as fucking awful about us being together as she is.” Katsuki got to his feet, taking the folder with him. “I’m not about to fucking help someone like that.” Izuku ran the pad of his thumb over the smooth part of the stone, “Okay.” He, too, got to his feet. “Here, I’ll get this so you don’t cause any fires.” He walked over to the bucket that he’d washed from and filled it halfway with water from a spigot nearby. While he did that, Katsuki used his quirk to blast and burn the file and its contents. Pieces of paper scattered with each pop and crackle, littering the ground with charred paper and faintly glowing embers. Izuku brought over the bucket and began to pick up the paper scraps and toss them in. If there were any larger than an inch squared, he handed them back up to Katsuki to turn to more dust. It was while they were doing this that the tent flap opened up and the nurse, the woman named Shirogiri, stepped out. Katsuki didn’t stop what he was doing but Izuku did look up and hesitate as he reached for more paper to douse. “Um, yes?” “I heard the cracks,” she said, “I came to make sure there wasn’t anything deciding to explode or cause trouble back here.” “Well, I don’t think there’s any trouble here, do you, Kacchan?” Izuku asked, getting to his feet. The rock was a heavy weight in his hand. He didn’t want to have to fight her- he didn’t understand her portal quirk well enough to be sure that he could fight her. “We’re just taking care of some fucking trash,” Katsuki said, “Deku, bring me the jacket, too. Yeah?” Here, Shirogiri balked, “I’m sorry, but are you going to destroy that jacket? Don’t you have any idea how expensive it is?” “No,” Katsuki said, “And I don’t give a shit, either.” “It’s not in good condition,” Izuku said as he dutifully went to go pick it up. “It’s all cut up by glass shards. It’s not any good anymore.” Before he reached it, though, a small white portal opened up beneath the jacket and it slipped inside. The portal vanished a second later. Izuku licked his lips. How was one to fight a portal user? She could just send him anywhere she wanted to. She could just teleport his punches, or any rocks thrown at her. Izuku didn’t know the limits of her quirk well enough to take advantage of them. Katsuki rounded on the woman, eyes narrowed, “Bring that back, you bitch. That’s not fucking yours.” “I doubt it belongs to either one of you,” Shirogiri said, “It’s a woman’s jacket. I can tell just by looking at it, after all, it’s a design by one of my favorite designers. It’s a pricey thing and it doesn’t matter what sort of shady shit you kids are into, there’s no way you’d be able to afford one and no reason for you to want one.” Uneasily, Izuku inched closer to Katsuki. He glanced at his friend to the woman and back. Were they going to try and fight her? Over a jacket? “So what?” Katsuki said. “We still want it back.” “Even if you were to use your quirk on it, you wouldn’t be able to destroy it in time and it will just make you look more guilty,” Shirogiri said. “It’s bad enough that you have all that paper around you. Here,” she lifted a hand, “I’ll do you boys a favor, in exchange for the jacket.” Izuku held still as dozens of small white portals opened up. Not one of them was bigger than the palm of his hand, but he still didn’t trust them. They opened up on the ground, mostly, and just under the burnt pieces of paper. The largest of the portals, one Izuku didn’t notice at first, opened beneath the bucket, swallowing it up along with the paper and water inside. The portals shut again, leaving the two of them standing alone, file destroyed and jacket vanished. “We’re even,” she said. Her eyes crinkled in her smile, “Thanks for the jacket.” She turned, headed back into the tent. Izuku took a step towards her, “Hey, wait-” She didn’t stop, though, just vanished inside with a little flourish of the tent flap. Izuku and Katsuki were left there, staring at the tent and then each other. Katsuki was the one who broke the silence. He licked his lips and said, “There’s something fucked up about that lady. Like, really fucked up. Have you noticed?” Izuku rolled his eyes at him. Katsuki stepped over just so he could punch him in the shoulder. “Fuck you. I was just wondering if you saw it too, idiot.” Izuku rubbed his shoulder. “What’s the deal with this rock, Kacchan? Where did you get it?” He held it up, offering it back to Katsuki. “It’s from when you regenerated-” Katsuki began, but abruptly cut himself off as the tent flap opened up. They both stared at the man who stepped through. “Dad,” Katsuki breathed out. Izuku immediately moved to Katsuki’s side, lowering his hand with the rock in it to his side. “What are you doing here?” Izuku had seen Tetsuma on many occasions but never wearing the clothes he was in currently. The dark clothing was uniform from the high collar of his shirt to the black, heavy boots he wore. The faint smile that he gave did nothing to obscure the fact that he had a military patch on either shoulder and bars on to show his ranking. Izuku’s eye immediately went to the man’s hands, which rested loosely at his sides, and the holstered taser at his hip. He was a little more comfortable knowing that Tetsuma didn’t carry a loaded weapon, but when the woman in a similar uniform followed him through the tent flap wearing a dark colored vest on top of her uniform, Izuku didn’t have to guess that the slightly larger holster on her hip wasn’t for a taser. “The students have to be released to their parent or guardian,” Tetsuma said. “Your mother has an incident at work that she had to deal with and the area there is gridlocked for the time being. I haven’t quite finished my work, but I think it would be best if you were with me instead of out in the wind. This isn’t a time to run around untended.” Izuku glanced to Katsuki. He had a pretty good idea what Haruka was having to deal with and knew that Katsuki knew too. It didn’t sound like Tetsuma did, but Izuku couldn’t ever quite tell what was going on with Katsuki’s parents, especially his father. Haruka wasn’t especially good at keeping quiet about what was bothering her, but in all the years that Izuku had known Katsuki and his parents, he had only seen Tetsuma frustrated enough to lose his temper once. Katsuki gripped Izuku’s wrist. “Fine, but what about Deku?” “Izuku will have to wait for his mother to come and get him. In fact, she might be out in the crowd looking for him right now,” Tetsuma said, gesturing towards the tent and indicating the people beyond. “There’s still a large number of people gathered out there and it makes it difficult to locate just one individual if you don’t know where to look.” Katsuki’s fingers tightened on Izuku’s arm. Izuku shifted the rock to his other hand as the hand of the arm Katsuki held onto began to go numb. “Deku is coming with me.” The smile fell from Tetsuma’s face, “Son, this isn’t a time to be stubborn or childish. The city is in the middle of an emergency situation. People need to follow the protocols for their own safety and for the safety of others. You will obey these orders not simply because you should but because you must.” Katsuki opened his mouth to argue but Tetsuma spoke over him, his calm, firm voice steady like the gradual approach of a steam roller. “If you cannot display even the modicum of self-restraint and control that it takes to obey an authority higher than yourself, an authority, mind you, that is larger than you and has more than one meddling teenage boy to deal with I will have you removed from Yuuei’s Heroics Division. A Hero doesn’t fuck around and put other people at risk, Katsuki. His goal is to maximize the safety of the citizens of the city or province he is responsible for. Sometimes, that requires listening and obeying laws and ordinances that make you unhappy but are for the good of everyone. “If you cannot even understand that, at this age, then you have no potential to performing as a decent hero, let alone a good one. Am I understood?” Izuku couldn’t feel the fingers of his right hand. Katsuki’s grip was hard and surprisingly cold. Katsuki himself was silent; his mouth pressed into a line so thin and tight that his lips were white. He held himself absolutely rigid, obviously restraining himself. Izuku dropped the rock he was holding, wincing slightly at the clatter it gave and the way it drew the attention of the adults. That didn’t matter as much as what he did with his now-free hand, though. He turned fully towards Katsuki, reaching up and cupping his cheek. Katsuki’s lashes fluttered and he took in a sharp breath, as if Izuku’s touch not only grounded him, but brought him back to life. Izuku forwent any speech- telling Katsuki he just wanted him safe would be redundant at this point- and instead leaned in. He kissed Katsuki’s other cheek gently. With his lips against Katsuki’s cheek, he murmured, “Please get home safely. We’ll meet up again later, okay?” Katsuki turned to meet Izuku’s mouth with his own. The kiss he gave was quick, sharp almost. Izuku could feel the press of Katsuki’s teeth behind the lips that pushed against his own. There was that edge of desperation to it that told Izuku that Katsuki wasn’t quite over the whole burnt-alive-and-regenerated- half-a-city-block-away, but that was fine. They were both alive. They were both safe. There would be time for comforting each other later. Katsuki unwillingly drew back. He licked his lips and let go of Izuku’s wrist at last. “We’ll meet again tomorrow at the usual place for our morning run.” It wasn’t a question or a demand. It was just a fact. Izuku nodded. Katsuki gave him a brief, lingering smile, and then walked away. Izuku watched him, comforted by the gentle way that Tetsuma put his hand on Katsuki’s shoulder, the expression on his face like he was sincerely glad to see his son all in one piece. He ignored the narrowed look that the other officer gave him. Soon, Izuku stood alone in the alleyway. He massaged feeling back into his hand while he made a decision on what to do next. With Katsuki informed and safe, with the evidence burnt or vanished and with all injuries tended to, Izuku had only one priority left to deal with. Find Inko and let her know that Katsuki was alive and that he was okay. Everything else could be dealt with after that. ***** the man behind the door ***** Chapter Notes special shout out to those of you who kept asking about who it was that showed up at Inko's door at the end of conflagration. This chapter is for you. By the time that Inko could bring herself to answer the door, whoever was there had rattled the knob, knocked several times and seemed incredibly impatient to get inside. She typically didn’t check through the peephole, but the agitation of the person on the other side and her own distraught thoughts made her afraid it was some violent stranger. Peering through the hole, she found it was neither one of those things and something or rather, someone, wholly unexpected. Pulling out a handkerchief, Inko wiped at her face and eyes. She pulled turned the lock and opened the door, saying, in almost complete disbelief, “Hisashi?” Her husband of almost sixteen years stood on the doorstep. He carried with him a suitcase and a backpack and wore a plaid, long-sleeved shirt. Hisashi’s frown faded when he saw Inko’s face, and the annoyed expression was quickly replaced with one of concern. “Inko,” he said, “What’s wrong? What happened?” “Hisashi what are you doing here?” Inko asked, utterly shocked. “You’re- You’re supposed to be working- Weren’t you out in America?” “I was called back by something important,” he said, “But it can wait. Inko. What. Happened.” He held her by the shoulders; his hands were solid and warm. Inko’s tears started afresh. Here, before her, was her husband of over a decade, in the flesh. She could barely remember the last time he’d been home and within arms reach. Sobbing, Inko embraced him, her arms going around his chest as she cried into his shirt. The fabric was softer than she expected and smelled faintly like pine. She felt his chest rise and fall with a heaving sigh as he put his arms around her. His hands moved slowly over the back of her head and her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “I meant to come back more regularly than I have… I just get so caught up with the work and by the time things slow down it’s winter again and I’m snowed in.” “It’s okay,” she said, “Your research is important. I don’t want to keep you from your dreams, Hisashi. I never wanted that.” “Oh Inko,” Hisashi pulled back so he could press a kiss to her forehead. “You are far too good for me.” Inko laughed. The sound was bubbly and wet from her tears, sounding funny and making her laugh more. Hisashi gently steered her backward back into the apartment and then untangled himself from her arms. “Let me get my things inside and then we can talk, okay? I got like three of your letters all at once so I have a lot of questions.” Inko nodded. She stepped back. Wiping her face again with her handkerchief, she watched as Hisashi went back for his luggage and brought it inside. He shut the door, locking it, and gave her a little, lopsided smile, “You changed the lock on me since I was gone.” “There were vandals in the area,” Inko murmured, “I got worried when there was a burglary up the street and you know how the bolt lock and the handle were different keys.” She waved her hand, “That was at least a year ago, though, so it’s no wonder. I never got around to mailing you the other key.” Hisashi left his things by the door and went back to her. “Now, you were crying when I got here. What happened? Is Izuku okay?” “Izuku-” Inko blinked for a second and then her eyes grew wide. She automatically turned towards the television screen, where she had last laid eyes on her young son. The technical difficulties screen had been swapped out for a series of commercials. Across the bottom of the screen, though, was a streaming message about thanking viewers for their patience while they get people on location to find out what happened. Inko took in a shuddering breath. “Izuku was at a Yuuei event,” she said, “The sport festival.” She gestured towards the television, “They were broadcasting it, up until the explosion.” “What?” Inko closed her eyes. Despite the relief that filled her bones like warmed honey at the fact that her husband was home again, there was a level of exhaustion that hovered just behind her eyes. She had been so reticent about Izuku and what had been going on with him over the last few years. There was so much information that Hisashi just didn’t know. He still thinks Izuku is quirkless, doesn’t he, Inko realized, opening her eyes. She reached out and took her husband’s hand. “Come and sit with me for a moment,” she said tugging on his hand to lead him to the couch, “Let me explain some things that I just, I just couldn’t put into the letters.” To his credit, Hisashi shut up and he let her lead him to the couch. He sat down, half turned towards her. Inko sat facing him, holding one of his hands in both of hers. She took in a deep breath and then, slowly let it out. Where should she begin? “Everything started to change the school year after Izuku turned twelve,” Inko began. She looked down at her husband’s hands as she spoke, absently noticing how his nails were cut short and how his palms and fingers featured callouses that she wasn’t used to touching. It was easier to explain things this way, not looking at his face but at his hands. She told him about how Katsuki suddenly started being Izuku’s friend again, how the bullying seemed to stop overnight and how he started coming over all the time. She told him about how Izuku got more confident, how they both ran around the neighborhood, down to the beach, spent whole weekends hiking up and down the mountainside within a short bus ride of Katsuki’s home. She told him about the near daily sleepovers, the studying, the teasing, the way they would watch movies bundled up together in one blanket, or the time that one would get sick and inevitably give their illness to the other. She told him about Haruka’s continued chilliness and Tetsuma’s polite but distant communications whenever there came up some discussion about where the boys were or who they were going to be staying with. In halting, hesitant words, she told him about how they both signed up for Yuuei. How they both trained morning and night, jogging, weight training, nutrition training, gaining muscle and working themselves to exhaustion in preparation. She worried her lip, fingers squeezing Hisashi’s hands, when she told him that Izuku got it in his head he was going to go into the heroics department and that Katsuki was too, that they would both be heroes. She told him about the day they came back from the test, elated, successful, and their victory in their hands not a week later with their acceptance letters. However, there were things that Inko left out, too. Words that even she couldn’t bring herself to say to Hisashi. She didn’t tell him about the bloody clothes- about the dark stains around the throat or arms, or how Izuku would leave in one set of clothes and come back in others. She didn’t talk about the times that he came home with damp hair, as though he’d been swimming, but it was the middle of winter and so cold outside that hypothermia was a real danger. She didn’t talk about the dirt under Izuku’s and Katsuki’s nails. She didn’t mention that when they came back and they were injured it was only Katsuki who needed to be bandaged, only Katsuki who sat at the kitchen table with his leg stretched out to the other table while Izuku cleaned and bandaged a scrape up the side of his shin. Not one word was spoken about the switchblade that Inko found, time and again, tucked into the pocket of Izuku’s pants to be washed. A small metal blade that had crusted bits of blood dried in its hinge. A blade that when she cleaned and gave it back to Izuku, he had a name for it. It was his Good Luck charm. It was a gift from Katsuki. She didn’t tell Hisashi that she was the one who bought the wrist strap for it, and taught him how to clean it. She didn’t tell Hisashi, that she had had a feeling that something was going on long before they had told her, but that when they finally did it still was an incredible shock. Hisashi listened to everything she told him in silence. His thumbs rubbed against her knuckles and, on occasion, he would squeeze her hand in return. But he didn’t speak. He just listened, until she started stumbling over the words to properly describe the boys’ current relationship. “They’re- They’re very-” Inko winced. “They’re very close. More so than they used to be.” Hisashi waited for her to continue, but as she mulled the words over for a few seconds, he prompted with a, “More than sleepovers and training together?” “Well they’re,” Inko tried to pull her hands away, to fidget with them, but Hisashi held firm. “They’re dating, I suppose.” She looked off to the side. They were careful about it, at least to some extent, in the house, but she still saw things. She saw the way they leaned against each other, the looks they gave, the way they would kiss at the door when Katsuki had to go home to his family. “You suppose?” Hisashi let go of one of her hands so he could cup her cheek and turn her head back. “Inko, what’s going on with them? Are they dating? Or is it just,” he took his hand away to gesture with it, “teenage experimentation?” Inko felt the blood drain out of her face at that word. That was the word that they used for testing Izuku’s death quirk. She knew that one well, very well. All the times they had whispered about their tests or their experiments had taken a whole new context when she’d seen those notebooks filled with notes. Filled with data from their experiments. Inko pulled her hands away from Hisashi. “He’s just like you, that way.” She didn’t mean to sound accusing, but the words came out dripping with the hurt that Inko carried deep in her gut. Her hands formed tight fists and she pressed them down against her legs. “He’s just like you and Katsuki- Katsuki’s just like his mother. The two of them are so involved in their own little world, in their little tests and experiments. None of them have any idea of what is going on around them- how people see things or see them or what they will say-” “Inko-” “And I’m trying my best, Hisashi. I’m doing the very best I can because he want’s to be a hero so badly and you know what? I think he can do it. I believe that he can! But the things that they’ve done- All those- Those experiments-” She closed her mouth tightly, swallowing back the bile. It was one thing to wash the dried blood out of his clothing, to buy him darker shirt so it didn’t show as much, to take care of the aftermath, but to imagine it- To think of what they had done- To read their notebooks and know- How many times Izuku had gone headless. How many times he had slit his throat, an artery, a vein. How many times that little knife had ended his life. How many minutes Katsuki had sat and watched Izuku, his best friend, his boyfriend, come back to life. How many times he had died- He had drowned in their own bathtub! Multiple times! Inko had scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed it until her fingers were raw after that. She still wasn’t certain that the tub would ever be ‘clean’ again. (She tried not to think about Izuku’s bed or his bedroom, where the notebooks were kept, where Izuku had been choked to death- just to see if he would come back to life again.) “It’s my own fault,” Inko whispered, “I shouldn’t have snooped in his things like that.” “Inko,” Hisashi said, “I know about the blood splatters. I know about the police investigation. It’s part of why I’m here, actually. I got a visit out in Wyoming, to my home in the woods. This is serious, Inko. We have to talk about it, even if it’s difficult.” Inko’s breath caught in her throat. Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “They visited you? How- How did they find you?” She looked up to Hisashi, leaning forward. “When did they come?” “Probably through my work,” Hisashi said. “And it was a few days ago. I read your letters right after the visit and that’s when I knew we had to talk face to face. I don’t know how Izuku got into Yuuei, but you and I both know he doesn’t have a quirk. He can’t be a hero.” Inko opened her mouth. Our son can come back from the dead. Our son will never die. Our son is immortal. She thought these things, but no words came out. “We can’t let them get to him,” is what she said, “He’s too- If they catch him- If they figure it out- Figure out the truth-” “All we need to do is prove that Izuku has nothing to do with these blood splatter incidents, or, at worst, he was coerced into being there by that Bakugou brat,” Hisashi said. A giggle escaped Inko. She clapped her hand over her mouth, flushing in embarrassment. Confused, and slightly affronted, Hisashi paused. “What?” he asked, “Am I missing something?” She got up from the couch. Hisashi made a move to follow her, but she shook her head, “I can’t- I can’t tell you this, Hisashi, but you have to know. I have- I have proof. You won’t believe me without the data, I know, and I have plenty of data. Stay here, just stay here.” Inko hurried out of the room, moving quickly down the hall to Izuku’s bedroom. She lingered at the door, hesitant even now to go in without him there. She kept expecting… something. Every time she stepped in, she expected something. But the door opened and there was nothing unusual inside- at first glance. There were some clothes on the floor. There was his bed which was made. There was his organized desk. There was his bookshelf. There was all his heroic paraphernalia, arranged just so all around the room. She knelt in front of his bookshelf and picked through them. He had them all organized, of course, but it comforted her to run her fingers down the spines of notebooks she knew held only the details of heroes. The ones that listed their experiments were the same style as the hero ones but instead of being listed by number on the spine, they were listed by date. Inko took the first two books, the earliest ones available, and got back to her feet. Turning, she jumped a little at the sight of Hisashi in the doorway. He stood there, looking at Izuku’s room, with that sort of wistfulness that she knew well. The last time he had come to visit, he had looked at Izuku the same way. It was part sadness, part regret, and part fondness. Hisashi loved Izuku, loved Inko too, but was consumed with his work. He never stayed long, which had resulted in Izuku never really knowing his father despite their similarities. Inko gave him a little smile. She regretted what she had to show him, but if she didn’t- “Here,” she said quietly. She held out the notebooks. “The explanation for the blood splatters that the police ask about. It’s here. What they did- Why they did it-” Inko shivered a little as Hisashi took the book from her. She felt cold. There was a weight in her gut, a feeling that made her uneasy. “It’s all written out and very detailed. He really… He really takes after you that way. Except instead of studying the geological formations that you do he- he studies death.” Hisashi frowned at her words but flipped open the notebook. He read in silence, eyes moving back and forth across the page. Hisashi read quickly, turning the pages only after a minute or so spent on them and he read until he was a good fifteen or twenty pages in. Inko stood and watched him, silent, holding the second book. After he read those pages, Hisashi shut the book with a snap. His gaze was accusatory as he looked to Inko. “How could you let this happen, Inko? You told me you would look after him. That you would protect him. We talked about this.” “We didn’t,” Inko said, “Not about this.” She waved the second book, “There was no predicting this. What we talked about was trying to protect him from the bullying and getting him help for that. I did what I could about that, Hisashi, but as you can tell, once they discovered Izuku’s quirk, it no longer was a problem. There’s no bullying, there’s no violence between them-” Hisashi opened the book and began to read out loud, “ ‘This afternoon, we went to our regular clearing in the woods and searched for some sizable rocks. I didn’t want to waste the clean clothes we had right away, so I stripped down to my underwear while Kacchan gathered and cleaned up the rocks that we found. Figure B is a drawing of the rocks at a one-twentieth scale to show the size and dimension of them. Over the course of the afternoon, I lay on the ground while Kacchan used the rocks to inflict blunt force trauma to my skull. Estimated time to recovery is between thirty seconds to two minutes, depending on the wound. Estimated deaths will be fifteen. Five direct strikes to the skull. Five direct strikes to the ribcage. And five varied strikes in an attempt to emulate flying rubble.’ ” Hisashi snapped the book shut again and said, his tone freezing, “And you say there is no violence between them.” “Out-Outside their experiments-” “Just because they think they’re doing this- this so-called science. Just because they’re writing it down and calling it a test, Inko, doesn’t make it real science.” Hisashi threw the notebook onto the ground. His fury burn in his eyes and a curl of smoke left his mouth as he said harshly, “Admit it. Bakugou Katsuki has murdered our son, Izuku countless times. Would we be so fucking forgiving if Izuku had one life and that brat had taken it from him? No! He’s a murderer, Inko.” “He’s- They-” “I’m going to take this to the police,” Hisashi said, bending and reaching for the notebook again. “We’ll close this ridiculous blood splatter case that’s sucking up manpower and wasting people’s time and we’re going to get that monstrous little creature away from our son once and for all.” “No!” Inko shouted. She reached out with her hand, activating her quirk without a second thought. The notebook slid off to the side and up into the air, out of Hisashi’s reach. She grabbed it quickly and cradled both of them to her chest. “No. You don’t understand their relationship, Hisashi. If you take them apart from each other-” “We’ll get some professional help for Izuku. He clearly needs it.” Hisashi took a step towards Inko. “Give me the notebook, Inko. This nonsense has gone on long enough.” “We can’t take them apart from each other,” Inko said. “It will break them both.” “Inko, they’re teenagers. They’ll recover. They have the rest of their lives ahead of them to move past this insanity.” Inko took a step back. “You can’t do this to them. I won’t let you. You have no idea what they’ve been through.” “You’re being ridiculous about this,” Hisashi took a step towards her. “This has to stop.” Suddenly, Inko was incredibly aware of how much of her son’s future was cradled in her hands. Not just the two notebooks she held, but the other ones on the shelf that Hisashi would surely find if he were to spend even twenty seconds alone in the room. She had to clear out the evidence. She had to find those stained clothes, the knife cleaning equipment, the notebooks, everything that Izuku used to do his experiments and keep a record of them. But Hisashi was there, between her and the door, between her and any chance of saving her baby. Hisashi, who didn’t see how much good Katsuki had done for Izuku, despite the bullying. Who didn’t know how Izuku had blossomed. Who thought the only solution to problems was to tear them open and expose them. Who hadn’t been there, for years, had left everything in Inko’s hands, for years, who now came back and tried to command her like he knew anything about his son. “I won’t let you hurt Izuku,” Inko said, lifting her hand. “I don’t care what you think about what he’s done. He’s my son and I will protect him, even from you.” Hisashi saw the twitch of her hand and ducked, looking over his shoulder. He saw clearly the statute that Inko had pulled towards him and moved out of the way of it flying at his head. “Inko, this is craziness!” Hisashi shouted, turning back on her. Hisashi was smart, he had seen her eyes, her hand. Inko had always loved that intelligence of his, even though it had put hundreds of miles of land and sea between them in the end. She had been happy that Izuku had had that intelligence, that Izuku shared that aspect with his father, even if Hisashi wasn’t around to appreciate it. But Inko was no idiot herself and out of the three of them, she was the most observant. The statue that she had floated first was a cover. It was plastic, too light to do anything to Hisashi at all. However, the plaque on the shelf behind it, the wood and metal one that contained an incredibly rare piece of All Might merchandise, wasn’t light at all. Inko leaned back with her whole body, instead of just her hand, using the full force of her quirk to drag the plaque off the wall. It struck Hisashi in the back of the head, making him stagger forward. Inko lifted her hand, stopping the motion of the memorabilia turned weapon. “Inko?” Hisashi gasped out. His hand flew to the back of his head and came away bloody. “What the fuck has gotten into you?” Wordlessly, she flicked her wrist, sending the piece flying at him again. He attempted to dodge again, but Inko had already seen how he moved the first time and she had the plaque follow him. This time, it struck the side of his head, opening another gash and then she flipped her fingers down, sending it crashing to the top. Hisashi staggered backward, hitting the wall. Smoke came from his mouth as he grunted in wordless anger. Blood poured down his face, but Inko had a strong stomach against blood these days. She kept her distance, ignoring the shaking in her arms as she lifted up the plaque one more time. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Hisashi.” Hisashi looked up at her, a flicker of flame escaping his mouth as he spoke. One eye drooped, the other was steady. His glasses were askew. “No. You aren’t.” Inko licked her lips. Her tongue was dry. She could feel her heart beating in her throat. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I guess I’m not.” She made a fist in the air above him and brought it down as fast as she could. Warm blood splattered on Inko’s face, but she barely felt it. Already there was a list forming in her head. How to detain Hisashi until she could figure out what to do with him. What bag to put all of Izuku’s secret things into. Where to bury said bag so that no one could find them but her. Which second bag to bring with her. What clothing to put in there, some for Izuku, obviously, but also some for Katsuki. Food, as well, something light and portable. Water, of course. Something to clean up with, in case he had blood on him. Izuku always had blood on him. Inko floated the plaque back up to her, but instead of taking it out of the air, she took off the sweater she was wearing over her simple shirt and wrapped it around the item. That, too, would have to go. For a moment, Inko closed her eyes. She allowed herself a moment to shudder, to feel the way her guts twisted up inside of her at what she had just done, but then she opened her eyes and got to work. Even if no one else was willing to protect her son, Inko would fight alone to save him. Against the school. Against the Bakugous. Against her husband. Inko would protect Izuku until she could do no more. ***** parental guidance ***** Chapter Notes oh man last chapter was CRAZY wasn't it. :D i LOVED all of your reviews!!! they were fantastic!! i still have to go back and reply to some of them @.@ thank you all v much <3 Izuku was the last one. He sat on the curb next to Aizawa, who sat with his hands in his lap and his shoulders slumped, and waited in silence. For once, he had no questions. He had no observations. He had nothing. Izuku was tired. Probably not as tired as his sensei, who was half asleep as he leaned against a stop sign pole, but still he was definitely exhausted. He had revived at least three times that day, had run halfway across the city, had gone through all the exercises, all the obstacles, all of the matches and still he had to wait. All there was to do was wait. Wait and watch the people. The crowds were thinning. Fewer people went in and out of the medical tent that Doctor Thom was in charge of. The last people that Izuku had seen that he recognized was Yaoyorozu. His classmate had been accompanied by an older woman and the two had walked together away from all of this minutes ago. Izuku rested his elbow on his knee and his chin in his palm. With a sigh, he closed his eyes. If he could figure out how to fall asleep sitting up like sensei could, without the danger of falling over- “Izuku?” His eyes popped open. A woman walked towards them and Izuku immediately recognized her. How could he not? He knew his own mother well- even when she was pale with worry. Izuku leaped to his feet, “Mom!” Inko picked up the pace, opening her arms. Izuku ran to meet her and threw his arms around her middle. She smelled like home and like pine trees and she held him much tighter than he held her so he tightened his grip to reassure her. Izuku could feel her body shake with her tears as she cried while she held him, “Izuku, oh Izuku, I was so worried.” “I’m okay, mom,” Izuku replied. “My quirk protected me.” She pulled back, running her hands over his hair, his face and his shoulders. “I know, I know. There’s just- There’s just so much I need to talk to you about. You and Katsuki in fact. Where is Katsuki? Is he- Is he okay?” Izuku nodded. “His dad came and got him a little while ago. We were just waiting for you.” “We?” She looked up and seemed to see Aizawa for the first time. Aizawa stood with a sigh. He came over, asking, “You’re Midoriya’s mother?” “MIdoriya Inko,” she said. “You must be the boys’ homeroom teacher, Aizawa- sensei.” He nodded. “You’re here to take your son home?” “Of course. There’s nothing else he’s needed for here, right?” Inko put a protective hand on Izuku as she asked that as if she’d dispute anything Izuku was “needed” for if Aizawa said yes. “He’s good to go,” Aizawa said, “Your son has no injuries aside from his burnt clothes.” “Thank you,” Inko said, “Thank you so much for looking after my son and Bakugou, Aizawa.” She gave him a little bow, one hand clasped tightly at her chest. Aizawa looked somewhat uncomfortable in the face of Inko’s overwhelming tears and gratitude. His eyes were askance as he spoke, “I hardly did anything for your son. He managed to fend for himself fairly well.” “Still, thank you so much, for all you’ve done for the boys,” Inko said. She put her hand on Izuku’s shoulder, drawing him close to her side again. “Come on, Izuku, we need to get you home.” Izuku said a quick goodbye to his sensei and turned, going with his mother to reenter the crowd. Inko’s grip on his shoulder was still tight, her expression still strained, and so Izuku did his best to comfort her by putting his arm around her and hugging close to her side. Inko stopped, caught off guard by the gesture, and smiled down at him. “Is Katsuki really okay?” She asked. Izuku nodded. “His dad really came to get him. I figure he’s safe with his dad but, um,” he hesitated, “There is some stuff that I need to tell you about what happened today.” Inko let out a little laugh. “Oh Izuku, I think there’s a lot to talk about, but we need to hurry home and do it there, okay?” She wiped at her eyes with one hand again. When she lowered her hand, it brushed against the top of the bag she wore over her shoulder and Inko gasped. “I almost forgot. You must be starving!” She let go of Izuku long enough to open the bag and pull out a bag of steamed buns. The smell of them alone made Izuku’s mouth water and he gratefully took the bag from her and dug into one as fast as he could. “I picked these up on my way out here. There are enough for Katsuki too but-” “I don’t think it’s safe to see him right now,” Izuku mumbled around a mouthful. “Tha’s part of what I have to tell you, Mom.” Inko frowned, “I brought you both a change of clothes as well. Is there any way you could summon Usagi-chan, maybe? I saw you brought her out for the calvary event this morning and it takes you some time to regenerate her but that would be the safest way, wouldn’t it?” “Yeah,” Izuku said, “In all the rush, I kinda forgot about her. I guess it’s a good thing.” He looked around a little bit, for a safe place to bring her out, and pointed to a corner where there was a gap in the slowly decreasing crowd. “There?” Inko nodded. With one hand on his back, as if she didn’t quite want to let go of him, she steered her way through the crowd and to the place Izuku had pointed out. Once there, she pulled out the things she had brought for Katsuki, the clothing, and the food. Izuku swallowed down the last of a second bun and, while licking his fingers, shuffled the bag to the crux of his arm. He concentrated for a moment, searching for that feeling of Usagi in his head. He could tell she was tired. He usually couldn’t summon her twice in a day, especially if she’d been out for longer than fifteen minutes, but for a short trip like this, and for Katsuki, he would try. Black mist coalesced at his side, first amorphous and then shifting into the familiar long armed, lithe-bodied Usagi. She crouched down low, a shrunken figure, with the knuckles of her clawed fingers resting on the ground between her feet. She formed with her head turned towards Inko. “Mama,” Usagi said. Inko smiled. She reached out her hand and held still, letting Usagi lean forward and bump her head against Inko’s palm. “Hello babygirl,” Inko said, “It’s good to see you. You did such a good job earlier today.” Usagi rubbed the top of her head against Inko’s palm. Izuku gestured to his mother, “Go ahead and give her the stuff, Mom. It looks like she’s got enough strength to make a delivery.” Inko withdrew her hand and held out the bag of food and the bundle of clothing. “Usagi-chan, these things belong to Katsuki. Please find him and deliver these things to him.” Usagi’s large hands very gingerly took the items from Inko. It wasn’t the first time that Inko had given Usagi something to carry and do and the ghostly rabbit treated the whole affair with great reverence. Izuku smiled and said, “Thank you, Usagi. If you’re tired after that, you can go, but please don’t leave until Kacchan has those things, okay?” “Deliver to Kacchan,” Usagi intoned. She bobbed her head up and down and cradled the bag and clothing to her narrow chest. “Usagi can.” “Thank you,” Inko said. Usagi turned and hopped away, moving silently through the people with her precious cargo. Izuku smiled after her and then looked to his mother. “Thank you, for bringing things for Kacchan.” Inko brushed the hair back from his forehead with one hand, “Katsuki is important to our family,” she said, “He’s especially important to you, Izuku, and you’re my son. If I can help you, you know that I want to.” She bent down and kissed his forehead. Izuku shuffled closer and gave her another hug, though this time with only one arm since he carried his food in the other. While in the embrace, his mother whispered softly to him, “We need to hurry home, though. Something came up that Mama needs to take care of quickly.” “What?” Izuku tilted his head back. Inko glanced to the side, “Your father is back in town and he- he’s being stubborn about Katsuki. We need to go. Now.” Izuku, wide-eyed with surprise, nodded to her. He pulled back and let her lead the way again. He kept eating the buns that she’d brought and not minding the way she protectively held onto his shoulder. If dad was home, then he understood why she was being so protective. If dad was home, things were definitely going to get a whole lot more complicated.     ===============================================================================     Katsuki sat on a hard plastic chair in the corner of a tent with his legs folded and his hands in his lap. He didn’t touch anything. He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t allowed to. It was a military run tent, though he could tell from some of the uniforms that there were Pro Heroes stepping in and out from time to time, lingering as discussions were held, agreed on and re-held over a whole list of problems that Katsuki hadn’t considered for the day’s events. Not only was there the initial explosion- the source of which was either a detonated bomb or a gas leak- but there were the tremors leading up to the explosion and the subsequent explosions. There was unknown damage underground, it seemed, or at least, the maps that were being poured over included subterranean access points. There seemed to be plenty to talk about, from what to do about the collapsed building to what to do about the parts of the building that hadn’t caved in, and every time someone came into the tent, the conversation shifted accordingly. Katsuki’s father was off to the side for most of it. He was a bomb specialist and he worked at the desk directly next to Katsuki. These were the specs that Katsuki had the easiest time seeing, though he couldn’t read them very well. His father poured over different locations of the map, frowning, circling things, making notes. He didn’t talk to Katsuki, didn’t really look at him, either. It was tempting to just slide out of the chair and see if he could walk out of the tent without anyone noticing him. His father periodically stopped to rub his eyes. The others usually had their back to him. He could do it. If he was quick enough- The sound of tearing cloth right behind Katsuki made his heart jump into his throat. He twisted around, to see who had the guts to try such a thing but saw nothing. No. To be more accurate, he saw the hole in the canvas grow, but there was nothing there making the cut. “Kid, move out of the way!” Someone shouted. Katsuki turned back but someone- his father- grabbed him by the arm and pulled him off his chair. He barely got his feet under him in time to keep from falling. “Show yourself, villain!” came another shout. Katsuki’s father dragged him away from the hole. Katsuki looked back, curious, and saw nothing still. Nothing but a small bundle being carried, floating in mid-air. Nothing but an invisible hand grabbing the cloth, three pointed claws putting a hole in it as it did so. Katsuki stared. His voice caught in his throat. “Found Kacchan!” The sound of Usagi’s voice broke Katsuki’s shock like a rock through a glass window. He twisted out of his father’s grip and flung himself forward, in the way of Usagi. “Usagi, you idiot!” He couldn’t see her, but he pictured her ducking, chagrined. Katsuki was the only one to ever really scold her, the only one to ever get angry, but she listened and she obeyed when he told her to do things. Katsuki pushed the chair out of the way, giving her some space to step in. “You’re supposed to use doorways when you can, remember?” “Katsuki?” Tetsuma’s voice was uncertain behind him. Katsuki licked his lips and looked over his shoulder. “What?” “Who are you talking to?” Katsuki rolled his eyes. But he didn’t scoff at his father. Behind Tetsuma, wary and with their hands on weaponry, half a dozen other adult stood, watching, staring. “Her name is Usagi,” Katsuki said, “She’s invisible.” He saw them look at each other. Someone, in the back, made a murmur of “the only recorded invisible quirk user in the stadium died earlier and that wasn’t her name.” They shifted uncertainly. Usagi didn’t seem to really register the danger she was in. Katsuki heard her take a step and then felt her bump her head against his shoulder. “From Mama and Deku.” She pushed the package into his arms. Dutifully, Katsuki took the bag and the cloth. He blinked down at it, pulled open the bag and smelled the buns at once. His mouth began to water. Some of them look crushed, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t eaten since lunch. He was absolutely ravenous. Katsuki shuffled the things to one arm and lifted his hand up. He held it out, palm down and said, “Good girl Usagi. But next time, remember to use doors.” Usagi bumped her head against his palm, nuzzling him. “Pretty Kacchan,” she said, which was about the same thing as saying she understood something, “She won’t hurt anyone,” Katsuki said, “She just came to deliver this for me.” He gestured to the gifts. The adults look warily at the invisible space that Usagi inhabited and then to Tetsuma. Katsuki’s father stepped forward, “Katsuki, did I hear right? That thing came from your mother?” Katsuki shook his head. “No. Not mine. Deku’s. These are clothes of mine from Deku’s place and she sent this food, too. You know, because I haven’t eaten in several hours and I underwent some brief hospitalization and I’m barefoot.” Katsuki unwound the cloth bundle to reveal shoes in the center of it, “She takes care of me like I’m her kid.” “Katsuki,” Tetsuma approached. There was a brief moment where Katsuki debated reaching out to Usagi. He had ridden her back before. He knew she could carry him. He didn’t want to be here, with his father. He wanted to go home with Deku and sleep. But if he stayed with Tetsuma, he would eventually meet up with his own mother, Haruka, again. He needed to find out what she knew. He needed to talk to her, to figure out what she had seen. He needed to ask her why her lab had Izuku’s limbs. How they had preserved them. Why they had and who was Hamilton. “Usagi,” Katsuki murmured, “You should go now. You’re spooking people.” She bumped against his shoulder again but did leave. The hole in the tent fluttered as she stepped out. Tetsuma, looking at Katsuki, rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Katsuki, I wanted to wait until your mother was here so we could all talk together, but it… seems we don’t have that luxury anymore.” His lips pressed into a thin line after he spoke and his brows were furrowed together. He glanced to one of the other adults, the one that Katsuki had pegged as their commanding officer, and got a brief nod. Tetsuma came forward. Katsuki held still. His grip tightened on the goods Usagi had brought him, but Tetsuma only put his hand on Katsuki’s shoulder, “Come on, son, this is important.” Katsuki chose not to resist as Tetsuma led him out of the tent, via the actual entrance and not the hole in the wall, and back outside. There were only a few tents in this area, with the one that they had been in the largest of them. Tetsuma took Katsuki to a spot several feet from all the tents, where they could speak alone. “Have a seat,” Tetsuma said, gesturing to the curb. Katsuki sat. He piled the clothing in his lap and put the bag of food on top of them. He didn’t wait for permission to dig in. He was so hungry that his throat hurt and his mouth was watering still. Katsuki wolfed down two buns in the space of time it took for his father to ease himself down onto the curb, favoring his left knee a little bit. “You’re a smart kid,” Tetsuma said, “You get that from your mother. So I’m sure you’ve figured out that a lot of what happened today was easily preventable.” Katsuki shrugged. He didn’t often have one-on-one conversations with his father. Tetsuma was somewhat like a benign mass in Katsuki’s life. All his energy at home was spent on dealing with his mother and his father never made any sort of waves that he had to deal with. Katsuki wasn’t ever sure if that was because she was the only one rocking the boat or if they had decided that was the way they wanted to present their concerns, while leaving Tetsuma there to keep them sailing straight. Metaphorically speaking anyway. “The destruction of the field wasn’t wholly unexpected or really that unusual. You’ve seen some of the matches for older classes before. Things can get pretty wild. However, the amount of force that your… friend, Izuku, delivered to the ground-” Katsuki swallowed a large mouthful of food. His eyes watered at the brief pain of it but he had to clear his mouth so he could speak. “Are you fucking blaming Deku for that explosion? He didn’t set it off. Neither did I. We only barely escaped the flames alive.” “No one thinks that you started the fire,” Tetsuma said, “But there is a strong suggestion that the gas leak was a direct result of that force applied to the ground. Someone else started that fire, but there wouldn’t have been one at all if Izuku hadn’t punched the ground with enough force to cause liquefaction.” Katsuki opened his mouth and then, slowly, shut it again. Tetsuma was right. Katsuki was smart. He had already figured that that was the case. He just wasn’t sure if Izuku had had a moment long enough to stop and think it through either. “What we do know for sure,” Tetsuma said. He turned his head away as if he couldn’t bare to look Katsuki in the face, “Was that the two following explosions, the ones caught on overhead tape and the ones that multiple witnesses saw, were yours. Things had just barely settled and you blew a hole out of the space you were in. That was incredibly dangerous, Katsuki.” “I had to find Deku,” Katsuki said without really thinking about it. The words just fell out of his mouth. “He had been gone for almost half an hour. I counted. He shouldn’t have been gone so long. He was supposed to be there but he wasn’t. I had to find him.” “You were trapped in a room with dozens of Pro Heroes. You had a way out. You just had to be patient.” “Dad, he was supposed to be back. I thought he was dead- really dead-” Katsuki started, his voice rising. Tetsuma put his hand up. He met Katsuki’s gaze and his eyes were hard, cold, even. “Those explosions dislodged delicate rubble all over the stadium. Multiple people went from a difficult situation to a dangerous one. At least one person was fatally injured as a result of your actions. Katsuki, I want you to think about that. I want you to really think about what you did today. Izuku wasn’t dead. Izuku survived. But in your haste to find him, others were injured. “Now, answer me this. Are those the actions of a hero in training or those of an aspiring villain?” Katsuki stared at his father. The food he had eaten sat like a lead weight in his gut. How could he, his own father, doubt him… Who got hurt? Katsuki wondered, Who did I kill? His hands tightened on the bag of food. He’d never killed anyone but Izuku before. He didn’t know how to feel about this. Fatally injured? Did that mean that they were already dead? Did that mean that someone could try and help heal them? Did that mean they tried and gave up? Did that mean they had died before they had been rescued? Katsuki had seen Izuku like that, a few times, when a jump didn’t finish the job. When something didn’t crush enough of him to kill him. When Katsuki had to go in and finish the job and mercy kill him. Licking his lips with a tongue that felt too dry now, Katsuki dropped his gaze down. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t- I didn’t think it through…” Tetsuma sighed. He rested his hand on Katsuki’s shoulder. It felt heavy, more like the weight of a shackle than the comfort that Tetsuma probably intended. Katsuki wanted, now more than ever, to curl up in Izuku’s arms and sleep until everyone had moved on. He rubbed at his face with one hand, scrubbing his eyes and his blurring vision. “Everything will get figured out soon,” Tetsuma said. “Don’t worry. I’ve already heard that your school will be closed tomorrow, while things settle down, but I don’t think you’ll get expelled for something like this. You made a mistake, people got hurt, but it wasn’t intentional.” He squeezed Katsuki’s shoulder and added, “You’re young. The young make mistakes. And I know that you’re a good person, son. You want to be a hero, after all. I know you’ll accept the consequences of what happens and you’ll learn from this. “It isn’t the end of the world, Katsuki. I promise. Your mother and I will be here for you during this.” Katsuki closed his eyes. He didn’t want his parents. He didn’t even want other parents. He just wanted Izuku. He just wanted to make sure Izuku was all right. To hold him. To hear his heartbeat. He wanted Izuku to tell him it would be all right because only Izuku could guarantee that it would be. “I want to go home,” Katsuki whispered, meaning home to Izuku. “We’ll go home soon,” Tetsuma replied, meaning back to the Bakugou residence. “My work here is almost done. I promise.” ***** bound and gagged ***** Chapter Notes this one gets grisly. whoop. Inko hesitated outside of the bathroom door. She couldn’t hear any movement inside and that made her worry. Her hand rested on the handle and stayed there, unmoving, for long, silent seconds. She jumped when Izuku touched her hand with his own. Glancing down at him, she was flooded with relief at his smile. “Mom,” he said, “let me go first.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he patiently pulled her hand off of the handle and said, “He can’t do anything to me. Let me go first.” “Your father would never,” Inko said automatically, even as she stepped back and to the side. Izuku gave her this peculiar little look, as though he couldn’t quite believe she would say those words and then he gave his full attention to the door. Izuku opened it an inch at first and then, after listening for a moment, head cocked to the side, he opened it further. The light was still on, as Inko had left it, and there was a faint smell of blood in the room. After some time away, Inko was able to pick out the smears of blood she had missed in her first cleaning. She’d have to come back with those, scrubbing the whole place down with a good disinfectant to get rid of the blood smell. Not that the bathroom didn’t often smell like blood, but there was a difference this time. Izuku was never injured when he came home to wash the blood off; Hisashi’s face was a swollen mess from the cuts he bore. Inko followed Izuku into the bathroom but found herself unable to look away from Hisashi after her eyes settled on him that first time. She had done a small patch job on him before she’d left. Head wounds bled and bled and bled. She had known that even before she’d read about Izuku discovering the same. There was a sick feeling in her gut, a coldness that filled her arms and legs as she stood there, looking at the barely conscious man in the bath tub. His face had practically doubled in size from puffiness alone. There was a nasty bruise on one eye that kept it closed. She had taken his glasses off of him, had put them to the side in a strange gesture of preventative damage- to the glasses, not Hisashi- that made Inko wonder just what had been going through her mind when she had brought Hisashi in. On top of the bandages on his head, to stem the bleeding there, Inko had put a gag in his mouth. Now, seeing how shallowly his chest moved, Inko worried that that had been more detrimental than anything else. Izuku moved towards the tub. He knelt down beside it. “Hey Dad,” he said gently, “I’m going to take the gag out, okay? It’s all right- You’re all right- ” Izuku reached in and removed the cloth that had been over Hisashi’s mouth. When all the cloth was gone, it revealed the small item that Inko had put in Hisashi’s mouth to keep him from using his quirk to escape. Izuku made a curious noise. Inko winced. Her husband breathed fire. A simple cloth would have gone up in a few embers and she had no idea if he was delirious enough or not to set fire to a gag that would surely burn up his hair and clothes. Of course, there was the chance that he heated it just enough to burn but not quite let it spread- He was smart and capable of many things. That was why when Izuku opened Hisashi’s mouth, he found steel wool inside. There was blood on it, but Izuku didn’t seem any more perturbed by finding it than he would have been finding a ball of cloth. Hisashi gasped for clear breath. The lashes on his eyes fluttered, but only the unswollen eye, his left, was clear. “I- Izuku?” He panted out, shifting in the tub. He was tied hand and foot from a ripped up pillow case that Inko had sacrificed for this very situation. If he couldn’t get his mouth free, she hadn’t worried about his hands or feet too much. “Son?” “Hey Dad,” Izuku said. He pulled his hands back, folding them on the edge of the tub, “Welcome home.” Hisashi let out a bark of laughter, “Some welcome. Your mother beat me nearly to death earlier.” “Mom was upset,” Izuku said, “She’s sorry, though. She shouldn’t have hurt you like that. Right, Mom?” Inko stared at Izuku. He was so calm. She couldn’t stop staring at the way little flecks of blood dripped down from Hisashi’s lips, cuts from the steel wool bleeding slowly. She’d done this to him. She’d done this to him and then left him. How had she stomached the blood, the violence, the first time? Feeling faint, Inko found the stool tucked off to one side and moved it a little closer. She sat down on it, hands folded in her lap. “Sorry,” She said, but it sounded robotic even to her own ears, “I- I don’t know what came over me.” “Damn mother bear bullshit,” Hisashi muttered. He coughed. Inko watched, wide- eyed, as his whole body shook with a cough. She wondered, not for the first time, if he could die from his injuries. “Like I said, Mom is sorry for hurting you,” Izuku said, “But Dad, I’m going to have to warn you that if you try to take me away from Kacchan again-” “Izuku-” Hisashi began warningly. “-then you should expect something like this to happen again. You have to learn, Dad, that I don’t want to be separated from Kacchan. I promised I wouldn’t ever leave him. We will be together forever.” Izuku finished as if Hiashi hadn’t intercepted a single word. Hisashi panted for a few moments, staring at Izuku, before addressing Inko. “What the hell has happened since I left? He’s- He’s brainwashed. Inko, can’t you see how dangerous this is? Izuku can’t be left alone with Katsuki, he’ll-” “Mom told me she showed you the experiment data notebooks,” Izuku said. “Did you even read them?” Hisashi’s expression twisted up into disgust. “Those horrid things? That’s not data, Izuku. Those are violent fantasies written out on paper. You can’t do that to people and expect it to be okay. The police are investigating those crime scenes. They already think you did it. They think you murdered people there. I saw some of the pictures- Those splashes of blood- It won’t be long until they know that Bakugou was involved in destroying the bodies.” Inko sat forward suddenly, “Wait,” her voice was a croak. She cleared it and started again, “Wait, you don’t think those notebooks were real? That Izuku didn’t do those things?” “I do believe they’re real,” Hisashi said, “They’re proof of our son’s injured mind. Inko, he can’t do this to other people and write about it this way. It doesn’t matter if it’s written in first person. Everyone will know it isn’t him.” “But it is,” Izuku said. “But it was.” Inko nodded. “Bullshit,” Hisashi rasped out. “I saw the list of deaths. You can’t have both that list of deaths be accurate and have Izuku and Bakugou still alive without involving anyone else.” “You just need to see it,” Izuku said, “You just need proof.” He sat up straight. “Well, I can show you.” He started to look around as if searching for something to help prove his immortal nature. Inko froze. She had seen and cleaned up the blood. She had read the books. She had heard them talk about terminal velocity and decapitations but she had yet to see Izuku die. “No,” she whispered. Izuku stopped looking and turned to her. “No,” she repeated, “I don’t- Izuku you can’t make me see that. I believe you but I can’t see that.” Izuku gave her a gentle smile. “It’s okay, Mom. You don’t have to watch anything. You can step out for a moment, though, and I’ll show Dad.” Getting to her feet, Inko looked from Hisashi to her son and back. Hisashi looked pale, where he wasn’t purpled from the bruising, but he looked cognizant. Hopefully, he’d remember what he saw Izuku do. It made sense to her, that Hisashi would need more obvious proof than just being told that Izuku could come back to life. He had always been a concrete kind of person. It was why he did so well in his work. It was part of the reason why he was so terrible dealing with her in their marriage. True to stereotype, she was more emotional than he was. But Izuku- Izuku was their child. A blend of the good and the bad of both of them. She stepped over and hugged him briefly, even though he was still sitting. Izuku laughed a bit in surprise but just beamed when Inko kissed his temple. “Do you need anything?” He shook his head again. His hair tickled her cheek. She pats the top of his head gently and said, “I’ll leave you to it, then.”   ===============================================================================     Seeing someone else beaten and bruised was kind of a new experience for Izuku. Even Katsuki, when he did get injured, tended to scrape up his arms and legs, leading to minor abrasions at best. Izuku told himself to get some ice for his father after this was done so that the swelling wouldn’t be quite so bad. He waited until the door fully shut behind him before he got up. “I want to make a bargain. Is that okay? Will you agree to one?” Hisashi only had one good eye, but it was focused on Izuku. “What is it?” “If I can prove that those experiments were all me, that no one else was involved in getting hurt or dying but me, then you have to promise to not try and separate me and Katsuki. He didn’t come up with any of this, Dad. He only helped me. He only did what I told him to do.” Hisashi snorted. It made him wince in pain, but that didn’t stop him from saying, “Bakugou listen to you? I remember how you two used to interact. There was no friendship between you two, there was nothing. He was a monster to you and everyone here let it happen until you, apparently, broke.” Izuku braced his hands on the side of the tub. “So you think it’s impossible? That there’s no way he and I are good for each other? Just like you think it’s impossible for me to come back to life?” “Of course it’s impossible. Do you have any idea what kind of thing could break a kid out of the trajectory he was headed? Trauma, Izuku. He would have had to been traumatized, brought face to face with the consequences of his actions. Teenagers are notorious for making bad choices. Your brains aren’t fully developed, everyone knows this. Sure, maybe in ten years he’ll be able to look back and see what a monster he was to you-” “Dad, that’s enough,” Izuku said, leaning forward, resting his weight on his arms. He stared down at his father. “I’m going to prove my quirk to you. Then you’ll know the truth and you’ll have to admit it.” “Izuku- This isn’t worth- Bakugou isn’t worth- Izuku! IZUKU!” Izuku wasn’t listening, though. He ignored his father’s shouting and the way he thrashed in the tub. He didn’t have good luck on him and knew that self- suffocation was difficult without the addition of a tie or belt or rope. So he used what he had on hand. His fingers. Strengthening his fingers with his One for All quirk, Izuku dug his fingers into the side of his own throat. He locked his other elbow straight, leaning forward so his head hung over the inside of the tub. Almost instantly, his nails broke the skin and blood began to rush down his skin. His shirt was instantly soaked with blood. He heard Hisashi screaming, flailing, but only distantly. The pain was enough to make Izuku haze in and out of conscious thought, which was surprising. Usually, he didn’t feel much pain anymore. But as he dragged his fingers through his throat, finding the lump of his voice box, the slick trachea and esophagus, and the throbbing veins and arteries in his neck, he was wracked with a shivering so bad that he nearly collapsed. His last conscious thought was to strengthen his arm that held him up with his second quirk, so that he didn’t topple over onto his father.     ===============================================================================     Inko paused in bringing Hisashi’s suitcase into the bedroom when she heard him go from screaming to vomiting. It sounded horrendous and violent. She left his things on the bed and crept down the hall to the bathroom. She wasn’t sure how much the neighbors could hear, but there was very little that happened in the apartment that she couldn’t hear when everything was quiet and the ones making noise weren’t trying to be quiet. She leaned toward the door, hand resting on the wood, listening to her husband. He sounded like he was begging, though it was hard to tell what for between the sobbing. The wretching had stopped, though, and so she wasn’t quite so worried. They were in the bathroom; he was in the tub. The clean up would be easy, even if it wasn’t pleasant. Inko didn’t blame him for vomiting, though. If she had had to see Izuku die in front of her, even just once, she probably wouldn’t stop crying for days. She drew back, anxious. Not for Izuku, or Hisashi, but Katsuki. “That poor boy,” she murmured. She turned and walked away from the bathroom, feet nearly silent on the floor, as she went in search of her phone. She wanted to make sure Katsuki was all right, that he was fed and tended to, that he was praised for surviving and that he knew he could come over anytime, even with Hisashi there. Considering the number of times that Katsuki had seen Izuku die, had been there for him before and afterwards, Inko thought there was no amount of kindness great enough. ***** knowledge and understanding ***** Chapter Notes for those of you who know ajin characters, ya gonna get the two cameos we've got this time :D Haruka stood in the dimly lit security office, staring at the wall of display screens with a slowly growing horror in her gut and a weight of sheer impossibility resting on her shoulders. She had her arms folded across her chest, her fingers of one hand tucked into her elbow with her other hand resting curled against her throat, halted there on its way up to her mouth. There were more than a dozen screens arranged carefully on the wall in a slight curve, giving the security guards the ability to watch several cameras at once. In fact, about one-half of the room was functioning normally, with the other half, and about six screens, playing back their records from earlier that afternoon. She knew every angle that those six screens held. She walked all but one of them on a daily basis and even that last one, showing the one-way stair route down to the first floor, she used at least once a week. There was a screen for the morgue area of the laboratory. There was another for the west end of the hallway outside the morgue, towards the elevator. There was another for the east side, nearer to the common room. There was one for the door at the bottom of the stairs, where the stairwell opened up to the lobby and the final one was of the lobby itself. They were on their third watch through of the escape event. Tessa had demanded it. She stood much closer to the screens, hands on the desks in front of them, leaning in, watching avidly. It wasn’t as though she couldn’t see just as well as the rest of them what the hell had happened, it was, Haruka knew, because she wanted to memorize it, to notice every detail, to add this data to her theories. Tessa saw an incredible quirk in use. Tessa saw something that hinted at the possibilities of what the human body was capable of. Tessa saw answers to her questions, left ignored or rebuked or unasked. Haruka saw a fifteen-year-old boy escaping out of a containment he should not have been inside of and escaping from a high-security facility with nothing but a little good luck and a stolen coat. Not just a stolen coat. Haruka’s stolen coat. She kept things in the pockets of that coat. He didn’t even search the pockets, she thought to herself as she watched, not for the first time, the teenager pluck the jacket from the hook and shrug into it. The sight of it made her sick to her stomach. Haruka’s hand finally made its trip up to her mouth. She pressed her fingers to her lips, silent and horrified and confused. There was too much conflicting data. There was too much information and yet, not enough. How did he get there? Was he attempting to escape the stadium collapse? Why just him and not Katsuki? Did he know where he was? Did he know how he got there? Why had he gone there? Did he know about the file before he’d taken it? Did he know about Tessa’s searching? Did he know this was Haruka’s workplace? Did he know that was Haruka’s office? Why was he naked? Why steal her jacket? And why, for god’s sake, did he run headlong into the glass doors? The sheer audacity of it- The insanity of it- All that goddamn blood- What the hell is going on with Izuku? Haruka thought, fingers tightening in place, What the hell is that boy capable of? I thought he was- “Incredible,” Tessa said. Her words interrupted Haruka’s train of thought.  She reached out a hand towards one of the screens. It was the morgue one, that was looped so every time Izuku stepped through the doorway, it switched back to the beginning of the video. Tessa’s unnatural eyes glinted oddly in the glow of the screens as she looked back over her shoulder, “This is him, isn’t it? This is that boy.” Tessa wasn’t the only one who turned towards Haruka then. They weren’t alone in the room. There were two guards keeping their head down at their desk on the other side of the room but Haruka stood next to her boss and his assistant. The two of them glanced at her. The assistant’s expression was muted confusion, her dark eyes flicking from Haruka to Tessa to the screen and then to her boss, where they lingered the longest. Tosaki simply looked grim and attentive. He adjusted his glasses with one hand, a small frown on his lips. “That boy?” Tessa turned fully around. She leaned back against the desk with her hip. Though her head was tipped slightly down, with her chin tucked to make her look more submissive, her gaze was knowing and vicious. Haruka bit the inside of her cheek. She lowered her hand and spoke quickly. “Tessa’s been indulging in a pet project for a while, sir. I gave her permission to use one of the drawers and the use of our preservation techniques so she could keep her samples in peak condition, but I forbid her from going directly at her target.” Silently, Tosaki arched one eyebrow. Haruka began to speak faster. “She had some questions about the quirk of a specific child, who she believed to be involved in some shady activities. However, the child she wanted to interrogate is a registered non-quirk citizen. He has no quirk. I wouldn’t give her the permission to do it-” “Tsukauchi specifically requested-” Tessa interjected. Reaching into his pockets, the rattle of the container of mints in his hand made Tessa snap her mouth shut, cutting herself off. Tosaki’s eyes narrowed, “Tsukauchi? The detective?” “Yes. He-” “Does he realize that your license is suspended while you’re in the service of my company? You haven’t been a registered Pro Hero for over a year, Hamilton,” Tosaki said, “Just what kind of investigation has he been involving you in?” Tessa winced. She shifted where she stood, eyes dropping down and to the side. Still, she spoke her answer, though she sounded like a sullen child. “It was a case I was on before I got this job. It went cold without any good explanation, even with those discovered limbs. I was keeping tabs on it on my own when he asked me to help. It’s not such a big deal.” “I let her keep her things here and do the tests, so long as she didn’t waste anyone’s time. She had access to the machines here, but only when her project wouldn’t interrupt anyone else,” Haruka jumped in, “But I refused to let her go and harass some civilians for nothing.” Tessa lifted her head. She jabbed her finger towards the screens, “Is this nothing, Bakugou? Is it? He punched through the metal cabinet door. He stole sensitive files. He snuck past you. He ran through the glass doors. All that is nothing?” Haruka licked her lips. The lobby security camera played the clip of Izuku running headlong into the glass doors, shoulder leading the way. Glass rained down but he didn’t even stop. Bloody footprints followed him down the steps before he was out of sight of the camera. “He’s still a civilian- He and his mother-” Tessa took two steps towards Haruka. “There’s the real problem, right there.” She moved her pointing hand from the screen to Haruka, accusing with her gestures and her tone, “This isn’t just some family. It isn’t just some woman and her unique kid. You know this family. You know this kid. You know his mother. What was it, Haruka. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out, the way you kept preventing me from contacting them directly? Who do you take me for?” “You’re obsessed with this blood splatter case, Tessa,” Haruka said around the lump rising in her throat. She could feel Tosaki watching with growing interest, happy to let them argue it out until he had to step in. Every word was just more information for him to use later. Haruka grit her teeth and hated herself for fighting with Tessa, but the stupid woman wouldn’t listen to reason. “It doesn’t mean anything. No one has gone missing and turned up in that blood. You know that it matches that arm you had. There’s no mystery. There’s nothing to figure out. You’re just obsessed with the blood and you probably have been ever since you tasted it.” She heard the young assistant take in a sharp breath. Tessa, however, didn’t flinch. She only curled her hands into fists at her side. “There’s something wrong with the blood. Something is in it. And I’m going. To. Figure. It. Out. With or without your help.” Her eyes flicked to Tosaki, “With or without your permission.” “Is Hamilton’s accusation accurate?” Tosaki asked Haruka, “Do you know this young man and his family?” Haruka bit her bottom lip. Did she admit it? That she knew who Izuku was? Wouldn’t they think she knew he was there, however he got there? No, no, they couldn’t. He avoided her on his escape out. But she had kept Tessa away from the Midoriya’s. She had prevented her from finding out, as much as she could. She had given Inko warning to not talk to ‘reporters’ about the boys. She hated what whirlwind of chaos and ill-conceived romance Izuku had brought her son into, but she could read the writing on the wall. If Tessa got Izuku in her hands, she’d never let him go until he was stretched so thin there was nothing left. With how desperately Katsuki clung to Izuku, troubling and infuriating as that was, the loss of Izuku would break him. Haruka couldn’t let that happen to him. She couldn’t let Tessa get to him. She swallowed with difficulty, psyching herself up to bluff and discuss and protect Izuku on Katsuki’s behalf, when Tessa said with a nasty little sneer, “There are papers that she worked on with the boy’s father, Midoriya Hisashi. The two of them were in the same field until they had a falling out.” Tessa gestured as she spoke; her hands moved sharply through the air like small knives. “That falling out was followed by something more personal. I’m not sure what, but it was enough to send Hisashi across the world to work in isolation in America, leaving behind his wife and son. That son. Right there.” She jerked her hand towards the screen again, looking to Tosaki. “That’s Midoriya Izuku. He goes to school with Haruka’s son. He’s labeled quirkless. There are x-rays from when he was four to prove it.” “If he’s quirkless,” Tosaki asked, “How did he manage to get out of the drawer the way he did? For that matter, how was he able to do the destruction and damage to the stadium that was broadcasted earlier?” “I don’t know!” Tessa cried. She whirled around, facing the screens. “I have to know. I have to find out. There’s something with his blood. I have to know.” “Tessa,” Haruka whispered, “You need to calm down.” “I’m going to find him,” Tessa said. “I’m going to get the answers to this.” “Tessa!” Haruka snapped. Her tenuous grasp on her temper was beginning to fray. If she had to stop Tessa herself- “Bakugou,” Tosaki said, getting her attention. She stiffened and looked at him warily. He met her gaze. “You’re absolutely certain that that young man is listed as quirkless?” “Yes,” Haruka said. “I- He- There’s nothing unique about him beyond that fact. He’s quirkless. There’s nothing peculiar about him.” Tosaki gave her a strange look, not quite disbelieving, but not quite believing either. He tapped his mints into his palm and then popped them into his mouth. “He’s a completely normal child, except for the fact that he’s quirkless?” Despite the way her neck felt like marble, Haruka nodded. “He can’t be!” Tessa shrieked, whirling back around. “Look at that strength! He’s- He’s enhanced or- or something-” “Bakugou,” Tosaki said, not even turning to regard Tessa’s shouting. “Next time that your subordinates want to use company equipment to safeguard and monitor their pet projects, I need a full report of the uses and permissions before any are granted. With regards to this fiasco, I’ll want a retroactive report on everything Hamilton has been doing under your management.” Haruka nodded again. She held still otherwise, waiting for the other shoe to drop and hoping that it came falling on Tessa, not on her. “Hamilton,” Tosaki said, “You’re on suspension until I have time to personally read over this performance review. I’ll be kind and give you half pay for the suspension. The official reason for this is that you are suspected of performing inhumane tests and you were working below the table as an unregistered Hero.” “Inhumane? How? All I ever took were blood samples,” Tessa complained. “Was that drawer that that young man came out of assigned to you?” “Yes, but-” “Is that storage room listed for dead or inanimate subjects only?” “Yes, but-!” “Did you put him in there?” “No!” “Then how did he get there?” “That’s what I need to find out!?” Tessa said. She dragged her hand through her hair. Her voice was high enough now that both of the security guards were looking over from their work. One looked about ready to get out of his chair. Haruka had never seen Tessa so wild, so frayed. The hand pulled her hair free from the pins holding it back and her eyes were wide. She was shaking slightly, though from anger or something else, Haruka wasn’t entirely sure. It was a little terrifying, to see those yellowed eyes wide and staring as her mouth hung open, her breath a heavy pant. “Izumi,” Tosaki said, “Please escort Hamilton from the building.” Izumi hesitated only a moment. That was long enough for Tessa to take two steps forward and make a grab for Tosaki’s lapels. Her hands never reached their destination, though, Izumi stretched her hand out and shouted for “Kuro!” Something invisible gripped Tessa around the wrist and around the waist. It hefted her up as she struggled visibly. Haruka stepped back as Izumi guided the thrashing Tessa and the invisible ‘Kuro’ out of the room. One of the guards got up to get the door and followed Izumi out, presumably to help the escort. Haruka let out a shaky breath. Tosaki’s gaze lingered on the door for a while, his eyes half open and expression thoughtful. Shaking off his thoughts, he offered the mint container to Haruka. “Mint?” She shook her head. Her hands were shaking, so she put them in the pockets of her lab coat. It was then that she noticed her phone was buzzing. She pulled it out and asked quietly, “May I take this, sir? Or is there something else-” “The boy,” Tosaki said with a nod to the screens, “What was his name?” Haruka felt her mouth open and heard herself say, “Midoriya Izuku.” He nodded and then slid his mints back into his pocket. “Thank you. I look forward to the report.” He got halfway to the door before stopping and looking back, “Bakugou, your phone is still ringing.” Haruka snapped back to activity in time to swipe the acceptance on the phone call without really seeing who was calling. She put it to her ear and said, “Hello?” Expecting her husband’s voice, she took in a sharp breath when she heard Inko’s instead. “Haruka?” Inko said, speaking so soft and kind. She was happy, Haruka could tell. There wasn’t any real nervousness on her side of the line, just that calmness that meant Inko was happy. Haruka closed her eyes. She did not need this right now. “Speaking,” she said curtly. “What is it?” “I was just calling to check up on you and Tetsuma and Katsuki,” Inko said. Haruka could hear the sounds of cookware being moved in the background. She closed her eyes, rubbing them with her free hand. She walked away from the center of the security room and out into the hall. Tosaki was long gone, trailing after Izumi or off on his own, she wasn’t sure which. With the memory of how Izuku had lurked in the hallway just hours before without her knowing it, undoubtedly listening to her conversation, Haruka walked to a portion of the hallway far from any corners or doors and spoke quietly. “We’re fine,” Haruka said to Inko. “Thanks for the concern, but we can take care of things.” “Are you sure? I know Izuku’s still a little shaken up from the whole thing at the stadium. The school said that they’re going to be closed tomorrow and the day after so that the students can get the treatment they need and the teachers can-” “Inko, I am incredibly busy right now. Get to the point of this phone call already,” Haruka snapped. There was the sound of something being set down sharply, like a glass or a bowl on a counter, and an indrawn breath. “We need to talk,” Inko said, “Face to face. You and I, Hisashi and Tetsuma, Izuku, and Katsuki. It’s important.” “That is a terrible idea,” Haruka said. “Do you remember the last time that the six of us were under one roof?” “Things are different now,” Inko said. “Katsuki and Izuku aren’t fighting anymore. You and Hisashi still have your differences, sure, but I think you should both look past that so that we can see what’s best for our families.” “Inko,” Haruka said, “This is nuts.” She rubbed at her eyes again. “How are you going to even get Hisashi into the country again?” “He’s already here,” Inko replied. “He got here earlier today. He’s here for only a little while and we have to figure out what we’re going to do before he goes back. Haruka, please,” the pleading in her tone made her sound breathless and near tears. Knowing Inko, it was likely she was near tears. “People are after our sons. Remember how you told me to be careful of people posing as reporters? Well someone found Hisashi and what they told him convinced him to come home.” Haruka turned and leaned her forehead against the wall. She should not have allowed Tessa to take those days off the week before. She should have made her stay in the laboratory. She should have- I should have done a lot of things differently. Okay. Focus Haruka, focus. What is the problem and how do we solve it? “Fine,” Haruka said, speaking quietly. “You said the school is out tomorrow? We’ll meet up tomorrow night.” “That’s too late,” Inko said, “What about tomorrow morning? For breakfast.” “Inko, that’s ridiculous-” “I’ll make plenty,” Inko said, “I’ll even make those omelets that you and Tetsuma like so much. Haruka, please, we have to-” “Fine, fine,” Haruka sighed. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll bring the boys over.” She glanced over her shoulder to the door to the security room and added, almost as an afterthought, “I have something to share with you and Hisashi, anyway.” “Oh thank you,” Inko said. Her voice was definitely wet with her tears. “Thank you! I knew you’d listen to reason, oh Haruka.” “I need to go,” Haruka said, “Text me the time you want us there and we’ll be there. Goodbye, Inko.” She listened to Inko’s farewell and then hung up the phone. Haruka took in a breath and let it out, slowly. She squared her shoulders, put her phone into her pocket and then stepped back into the security room. The guard looked up at her, but then shifted his attention back to the screens he was monitoring. Haruka approached the computer, a slight frown on her lips. She didn’t have any sort of portable data stick on her, that was at her desk at her office, but she was able to copy the video files of the security feed and drop them into a folder that she could reach from her computer on the other floor. Though her stomach was a coil of nerves, she kept a steady hand and didn’t shift about nervously. The false confidence was enough that when she straightened up, the guard glanced to her and didn’t ask what she was doing, but asked instead, “Any word from Tosaki about what to do with those files?” “Store them,” she said, “But encrypt them. The standard procedure for potentially sensitive laboratory video.” He nodded in agreement and got up to do that. Haruka walked out of the security room and, quickly, back to her office. She had a lot to cover and only a few hours to do it in.     ===============================================================================     Katsuki leaned his shoulder against the door of the car. His head rested on the glass of the window as he sat in the back, watching the city moving around him. Traffic seemed to be worse than usual, putting the two of them, for his father was the one driving the car, at a stand still more often than not. He was tired. The day’s events had drained him almost completely of any energy to do anything, and so all Katsuki was capable of doing, in that moment, was stare at the lights of the buildings they passed by. There were still plenty of people out on the streets, but he couldn’t tell if this was normal or if it was because of the stadium anymore. Katsuki wasn’t entirely sure where he was even when his dad parked the car and turned back to talk to him, “We’re here. Did you want to get out and stretch your legs?” Katsuki shook his head. Peering out the window again, he looked up. He’d only been to his mother’s office building once or twice, but in the dark and from behind it wasn’t terribly easy to recognize. For a second he wondered why they weren’t parked by the front before he remembered. Izuku had been here. Izuku had left behind shattered glass doors to the building’s front lobby. The whole area was probably still crawling with security. He almost didn’t see his mother as she came up to the car. His dad unbuckled his seat and slid out, closing the door behind himself. Katsuki watched as they greeted each other, his mother already talking about something and Tetsuma leaning in to kiss her cheek. After a moment, Haruka did go quiet and stand there, hands on Tetsuma’s arms. He spoke to her, quietly, and with his back to Katsuki. He could see how his mother reacted, though, with a rise of the brow and a roll of her eyes. She said something more and then shook her head. Stepping past Tetsuma, Haruka went to the car. Katsuki straightened up in his seat as she came to his side and opened the door. “Katsuki,” Haruka said. There was a shininess to her eyes that Katsuki was surprised to see. His mother really wasn’t the crying sort, unless it was out of frustration or anger. She reached out and gently ran her hand over his hair. Katsuki held still, too tired to put up a front of annoyance. “You’ve had quite the day. Are you feeling okay?” Katsuki shrugged. “Tired,” he said, “Can we go home already?” “Yes of course. Thank you for coming with your father to come pick me up,” Haruka said, “My train pass got stolen today.” Katsuki was too tired to even sass back. Her train pass got stolen? Well, he had had a stadium fall on his head, but whatever. He could pretend everything was a normal day; he didn’t really have the energy to do otherwise. Haruka leaned in and kissed his forehead, which made Katsuki hold still. Two gentle gestures were Haruka’s max when it came to displays of affection. He expected her to pull away at any second but instead she was making a little motion for him to scoot over. He unbuckled himself and did so, surprised that she was sitting in the back with him. As the three of them got into the car, his father in the driver’s seat, his mother in the window one that he’d had and Katsuki at her side, Katsuki belatedly noticed a heavy atmosphere. His father pulled the car out of the parking spot and merged back into traffic. All the while, his mother sat beside him, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder. “There’s a lot that needs to be discussed,” Haruka said, “Not just between the three of us, but with the Midoriyas as well. Inko invited us over for breakfast, tomorrow, so we could have a little meeting- just the six of us.” “Six?” Katsuki asked. “Hisashi is back again.” Katsuki’s memory of Izuku’s father was almost nonexistent. He vaguely remembered a dark haired man being at Izuku’s house a few times when he’d been there as a child, but he didn’t know anything about the man. “When did he get here?” “Today,” Haruka said, “Talk about timing, hm?” She gave a crooked little smile to him. Katsuki snorted. “Yeah, he showed up on probably the worst fucking day of the year,” Katsuki said. “Now don’t say that,” Haruka said, “You haven’t had to deal with tomorrow’s meeting yet.” “Mom,” Katsuki said, “A stadium fell on my best friend today. It was a pretty shitty fucking day.” “I know that,” she quipped, “and I’m still telling you that meeting with Hisashi will be worse than that. What does that tell you?” Katsuki shrugged. That didn’t dislodge his mother’s resting hand, though. That hand was beginning to worry him, though. Was she worried he would run off? Was it something else? “That you don’t like Hisashi and that you don’t know what it was like being trapped in a room that was on fire beneath a building that was collapsed.” “Speaking of that little room, I heard you were the one to bust all those heroes out of there!” Haruka said. “Good job!” “Haruka,” Tetsuma interjected from the front seat. “The force of his explosion was incredibly dangerous for the situation. Don’t praise him for being reckless and endangering people.” “Did anyone get hurt as a result of Katsuki’s explosions?” Haruka asked, leaning forward to meet Tetsuma’s eye in the mirror. “Or did they all escape unscathed because he got them the hell out of there instead of waiting around with his thumb up his ass?” “There are excavation teams for a reason,” Tetsuma said. “It’s safer for everyone that way.” Haruka put her arm around Katsuki’s shoulder and pulled him against her side. Katsuki stiffened first but then relaxed into the warmth of his mother’s embrace. “Don’t listen to him,” Haruka said, “Your father gets testy when he gets called in for a bomb survey and they don’t have any actual bombs there.” “It’s just a waste of everyone’s time to jump to conclusions and assume it’s some sort of attack when it was obviously some sort of pipe burst and caught on fire.” Tetsuma complained from the front seat, “At least have a couple of arson investigators check it out before you call for me or my people. I don’t have the time to deal with stuff that turns out the be all poor building design because some people think it’s more impressive to have a building built in a week rather than built to code.” “Honey,” Haruka said much too cheerfully, “Your construction worker side is coming out.” “I’ll show you construction worker,” Tetsuma grumbled, but he didn’t shout again. Katsuki glanced up at his mother, who was smiling good-naturedly. Being under her arm was comforting, somewhat. He had to sort of lean against her because of it, but that wasn’t so bad. He was tired and she was warm and there was a faint feeling of safety when she tightened her arm around him and rested her cheek on top of his head. “I’m really glad you’re safe, Katsuki,” his mother said, whispering to him in the back of the otherwise quiet car. “That’s what matters to me, that you got out of that alive and well.” “Mostly,” Katsuki mumbled, feeling sleepy in the warmth and comfort, rocked by the slow movement of the car. His blinking became slower and slower as he just left his eyes closed for a few seconds at a time. “The doctor said I’ll probably have some numbness in my feet for a while, and if it persists, to come visit him at his clinic so he can see where he fucked up.” “All right, honey,” Haruka said. “Why don’t you rest for now? You must be exhausted.” Katsuki muttered in agreement and let his eyes slide shut. Within a few moments, his breathing deepened and he slipped into a doze.     ===============================================================================     Haruka smiled slightly as Tetsuma guided her half asleep son up the steps to their home. She unlocked the door for them both and opened it as quietly as she could. Katsuki stumbled into the house, barely coherent in his exhaustion, and easy to direct. Tetsuma took charge in leading him to his room and getting him settled there while Haruka went to the kitchen to heat something up for the two of them. Tetsuma came back with a little smile and changed into some more comfortable clothes. Haruka looked up at him from where she stood with her hip against the kitchen counter. While the food had warmed up, she had found her laptop and opened it up. She gave Tetsuma a smile back, accepted his kiss, and gestured to the screen. “This,” she said, “is what would have made the news if not for the stadium attack. Take a look.” She pushed the computer so that Tetsuma could see the video easily. It was comprised of all the security images taken of Izuku, strung together to map his progression out of the lab and down the stairs to the lobby, where he proceeded to bust his way out. She sipped from her glass of wine while Tetsuma stared, eyes wide, mouth half open, clearly shocked. “Holy shit,” he said, “Is that really Izuku?” Setting down her cup, Haruka nodded. “That’s really Izuku. Remember Tessa’s pet project I’ve talked about a few times?” Tetsuma nodded. “Izuku is the one she was looking for. Now she knows it, for sure, and has seen this. She wants to get her hands on the boy and, I don’t know, test him or eat his blood or something fucked up like that,” Haruka waved her hand. She moved away from the computer, going to the stove and tending the food as she spoke. “She’s gotten suspended from work today. I’m concerned that with all that free time, she’s going to go after the boy.” Tetsuma drummed his fingers on the counter top. “So you’re trying to figure out what to do? Do we tell the Midoriyas? Do we show them this video?” “I don’t know,” Haruka said, “But we have to do something. If we just let this happen to us, who knows how bad it could get. I…” she hesitated and then, with a wince, said, “I hate to admit it, but I think that Katsuki is so wrapped up in that boy that he would do something even more stupid than that explosion to protect him.” “Like what,” Tetsuma asked, “Murder? You think he’d murder Tessa because she was a threat to Izuku?” Haruka shook her head, “I don’t want to think that but, with the way he’s been recently-” “Anything is possible when it comes to Izuku,” Tetsuma muttered, finishing her train of thought. Haruka nodded to him. Her eyes fell to the laptop screen, where she watched, not for the first time, as Izuku ran fearlessly into glass doors. The camera had a perfect shot of his face when he decided upon that, shifting from wary and confused into one of determination. Just as frightening as what Katsuki would do to protect Izuku, Haruka worried about what Izuku would do for Katsuki- not just protect, but make him happy, to assuage his fears, to calm his anger. Haruka shuddered. Anything. She figured he would do anything. It was a terrifying prospect. End Notes AGAIN: i've cut it here to make space for a few intermissions and to dedicate a bit more in depth attention to the Fam Drama thats about to be laid forth for us to read. I'm gonna do some minor edits to laceration and get the next one up and going in, eh, a few weeks maybe? at least by the end of february. don't worry, i'll be writing, i just wanna get caught up on my posting. thank you for your patience, thank you for your comments, follow me on tumblr @Ramabear for updates and BTS stuff. thanks! See you soon! 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