Chapter Text
Rain patters on the roof of the building, pooling in patches where the concrete is uneven. Katsuki, crouching behind the railings of the intricate metal banister, low enough to hide while also being able to gaze at the square below, can feel drops beading on his neck. His suit is, as luck would have it, waterproof, among other things, but anything above the clavicles is fair game for the rain. Suppressing the urge to sneeze, he squints at the figures ruminating about below and waits for orders.
Ashido and Kaminari are arguing over the comm. “No, that’s not how you squat, idiot—” Katsuki’s ears register before he mentally shuts that avenue of conversation off. Pink dreadlock weirdo from support worked her ass off to build them a proper communications system, and here it is being wasted in the hands of his dumbass friends.
“Can you fuckers zip it,” he grits out, offhand. The other end of the line explodes with muttered complaints, but Katsuki doesn’t have time to reply, because his target has begun to move. “Chicken is moving south.” Immediately, the two cease bickering, and he can hear the hushed alarm spread across the communication line.
The target in question, Chicken, is a plain-looking thirty-ish-year-old man, who’d be unassuming if it weren’t for the giant gem-encrusted tail jutting out of his ass, and the empty cell in Tartarus with his name scribbled on the nameplate. He’s a middle-ranked goon part of a crime ring operating right in the buildings flanking the square below, and he and his squad have been holding hit and runs to loot supplies or just be bitches on the local shelters for weeks now. They fancy themselves the new League, and after catching and imprisoning over six small fries from their ranks, Aizawa-sensei said enough was enough and handed them police-issued orders to stage a hit on the organization’s main base.
As it turns out, getting rid of All For One and the League won’t magically teleport all the criminals they freed back into jail, or restore social order overnight, or even fix the trillions of yen in structural damage spread across the country, and especially Musutafu. No, no, all that has to be remade from scratch, or well, rubble. Three months of anarchy is all it takes to wreck decades worth of developments, and since the HPSC is a shadow of its former self and the regional governments are nowhere near stable enough, big chunks of the population have deemed it fit to stop following the law, make their own law, or look for “help” from the Yakuza organizations that have spawned like spores in keeping them safe. What’s amazing is that this mess is still the best-case scenario. Katsuki is ninety percent sure they were a hair’s breadth away from the US straight up invading Japan in the name of "restoring stability" after Shigaraki murdered their number one. How they dodged that bullet, he’s not sure he wants to know.
Regardless, since the foreigners (luckily) ain’t gonna handle it for them, Katsuki is one of the unlucky bastards who will. And this organization is thought to be big enough that it ain’t just him, Spark Plugs and Raccoon Eyes on the case today, oh no, it’s half the fucking class.
Underneath him, Chicken hands off a box to a questionable hoodie-clad figure, before making a full one-eighty turn and a beeline back to the glass-doored ex shopping district where he came from (and where intel says the base is located). The voice of Glasses, armor covered by frankly ridiculous baggy clothes in an attempt to be inconspicuous, rings through Katsuki’s earpiece.
Glasses pretends to be a stray passerby and makes conversation with Chicken, asking about nearest shelters and places to find food. This ward of Musutafu is still too wrecked to be repopulated, so saturated in cement powder and dust as it is, it feels akin to a ghost town. To think that a few blocks down is the arcade Deku and Katsuki used to buy their hero trading cards from, now a pathetic husk of a store with barely two broken slot machines left.
“Careful with your words, class Prez,” Katsuki mutters, prompted by the shady figures growing like weeds across the square as Iida’s conversation with Chicken goes on a little too long. “Deku, for fuck’s sake, tell me we’re all clear on your end so we can put Four Eyes out of his misery.”
The nerd doesn’t offer so much as an exasperated Kacchan. “Copy, Dynamight,” Round Face replies for him, “We’re almost through. They’ve got security on the windows and Deku decided to pick the locks instead of breaking them.”
“I can hear a full bar right behind the window,” Jirou, who’s also part of that team fills in. “Brute force would be too obvious.”
Katsuki doesn’t think it matters, but Izuku has been extra fragile and paranoid as of late, courtesy of his quirk taking a big hit and becoming a lot weaker following the fight that ended the League, so he keeps his complaints to a minimum, because he’s honestly happy that Izuku is at the very least back, and Katsuki doesn’t have to go back to the dorms every night to see the nerd with that look on his face that screams “I wanted to be out there busting my ass too”.
“I don’t care. Hurry the fuck up.” A little grumbling will have to do.
Seconds tick by, Chicken’s suspicions continue to rise, and it’s as if Katsuki can feel the dino-tailed dickhead weighing the risk of murdering a seeming civilian with only his bitch buddies as witnesses. His hands ache to crackle despite the dampness in the air, and fuck, he wants to get moving if only for the sake of warming the fuck up.
Then, Deku’s voice is saying, “Green,” into the mic, and the entire world is exploding into motion. Katsuki and the rest of his team leap from the rooftops into the square below, and there’s a muffled bang from inside the building followed by a plume of pink smoke Katsuki knows is not supposed to be there.
“One of the sedative grenades was blocked,” says Round Face, and that’s the last thing Katsuki gets to properly hear before the “sneak attack” devolves into an all-out melee.
He’s not sure how it happened, or why it’s always him who gets stuck in these situations. He was fighting some lady with slingshots for fingers and their scuffle ended up bringing them indoors, into a six-story or so building cracking at the seems and smelling heavily of gunpowder. Most of the windows are blown out, and in the very corner there’s a yellow-painted trapdoor that must lead to the basement. The woman is easy enough to defeat, she’s a normal lady with little to no training who thought it would be a good idea to become a gangster instead of head to the shelters like the rest. Cuffed and tied up, Katsuki leaves her propped up against one of the building’s exposed loadbearing columns. He’s supposed to head back outside again, but there’s an unsettling feeling prickling under his skin, and the scent of gunpowder only seems to grow stronger and stronger.
“Oi, what’s with the smell?” he demands of the woman, who’s a bit beat up and swollen but otherwise fine. “Fuck you,” she says and tries to spit at him.
“Bitch,” Katsuki says back and spits back too.
Her face contorts in disgust. “What sort of hero are you?”
“What’s with the smell?” Katsuki repeats.
“Zero manners…” She squints. “Ain’t you that little prissy boy who got kidnapped a while back?”
Hairs on his neck stand up, and the way his heartbeat changes has nothing to do with adrenaline. The world rumbles and tremors. Outside a few of the weaker buildings topple over. They’ve got someone with a giantification quirk, maybe a lot of someones. Paperwork’s going to be a fucking nightmare, Katsuki thinks, as another flimsy kiosk gives under the weight of a giant arm.
“Goddamn, bitch, tell me why it smells like fucking gunpowder—”
“I’d hope you’re smart enough to know that. Or do you need All Might to hold your hand again?”
They keep actual fucking gunpowder in here, don’t they?
Motherfuckers.
Stomping over to where the woman is collapsed, Katsuki grabs her by the ashy collar of her shirt. “What are you—” She gets no chance to finish her sentence because Katsuki has blasted her outside and into the waiting arms of his team with a gentle explosion. If this basement is their firearms storehouse and Katsuki the walking bomb hazard is the one taking care of it, the building might not make it, and he doesn’t want to deal with having to rescue the villains on top of whatever else is down there.
The yellow trapdoor proves difficult to pry open, but the lack of dust and rubble is a good sign because it indicates it’s been in recent use. Upon pushing up the board a hair, Katsuki is forced to recoil to avoid a spray of bullets coming straight through the trapdoor. Definitely firearms storehouse. That’s a fucking machine gun. It goes on and on, poking holes in the painted wood until there’s that click of the bullet cartridge running out. Katsuki seizes the chance, breaks through the abused trapdoor with ease, and sets his sights on the two motherfuckers “guarding” the guns and explosives.
“I found their supply room,” he lets the comms know. More bullet spray forces him behind a hard brick wall.
“You got it handled?” Icyhot says, out of breath. “It’s messy out here, we’re a little short-handed, can’t send backup.”
“Yeah.” Another click. Another empty cartridge. “I got it.”
He does not have it. Or he does until the building decides to fucking collapse. While he’s inside. In a massive crash of concrete and steel and broken tile, the basement’s ceiling (and the first floor’s floor) gives and takes Katsuki with it. He’d seen the giant’s hand coming, felt what was about to happen, but he’d stupidly tried to check the last of the rooms instead of deciding to jump the fuck out.
For a moment, his vision goes black and there’s nothing but silence. Katsuki is floating, can’t feel a single thing.
“Shit, was anyone in that big six-story?! One of the giants toppled over and knocked a couple columns clean off—” Kaminari says frantically, his voice all static. “Shit—”
“I’m okay. Was on the other side of the square,” Todoroki replies, still audibly panting.
“Seconded,” says Yaoyorozu.
“Bakugou?”
It filters in one ear and out the other as the pain hits. And fuck does it hit hard. His every nerve end burns with agonizing flame, and there’s this sharp, jutting pain blooming in his lower left abdomen that feels an awful lot like Shigaraki’s spikes way back in Jakku. His waterproof costume seems to be backfiring because whatever liquid is pouring out of him, part of it is making a warm and sticky mess on the inside of his clothes. It’s not blood. It’s not blood. It’s not blood… Please don't be blood. Worst of all, he can’t actually see what’s happening below his sternum, because there’s a huge slab of concrete pinning him down, torso and hands and all. The scent of gunpowder is heavy in the air, reminding him that he can’t risk getting himself out with an explosion, lest he ignite all the explosives scattered down here and cause even more massive a disaster.
He coughs and is relieved to taste no blood.
“Bakugou?!”
“Shut up,” he manages with surprising stability and gets a sigh of relief in response.
“Bakugou-san, please respond as fast as you can. The situation is very dire—”
Sucking in a deep breath, he explains: “Bad news is that six-story crash got me and I can’t risk blasting myself out because there’s a lot of residual explosives everywhere from their storehouse. Good news is it’s just me. I got the three villains out before—”
“I have em—” Ashido cuts in.
“—and I found no civillians.” That’s the whole reason he’d come back inside after disposing of the villains in the first place.
“You sound out of breath,” says Deku, who is really not one to talk. From his end of the line, there’s a crash and a thud of flesh. “I’m okay!” he’s quick to assure them. “Just… a little… busy. Kacchan?”
“I’m stuck.” As much as he hates to admit it, “Someone needs to come get me.” He turns off his mic to cough so they don’t get up his ass with worry, and his heart drops as he tastes iron and sickly sweet nitroglycerin. Katsuki might be more resistant to NG’s effects than most, but it makes him lightheaded regardless.
“How—” A grunt. “—urgent is it? Our hands are sorta full up here— ouch!”
“Are you stable?”
“I’m sure he’s fine.”
“This is Bakugou we’re talking about.”
The debris aren’t moving at all despite the earthquake-like tremors shaking the ground every couple seconds. Does that count as stable?
“I’m fucking stuck,” he repeats, unable to coherently elaborate further.
“But like… safe stuck?” asks Round Face, whose voice screams two minutes away from vomiting. Damn. It must be brutal up there.
Katsuki considers her question. Sure, he might be bleeding out and caught under a bunch of rocks, but even if someone did try to get him out, they wouldn’t be able to do much in the heat of battle without risking the gunpowder igniting, or losing heaps of time. The wound on his abdomen doesn’t feel that bad, and the air pocket he’s in is stable. Weighing the importance of himself versus the win here, he decides on the latter.
“Yeah,” he says, the words thick and foreboding on his tongue. “Yeah. Won’t be able to contribute much anymore though.”
“You’re always so reckless, Kacchan,” Kaminari teases. Katsuki knows humor is Spark Plugs’ way to cope, and that his friend is worried as shit, but the comment still grates on him. There’re shuffling noises and a big spike of interference.
“Chargebolt, forget about Dynamight for two seconds and guard your own ass! Bakugou can handle it—”
Yeah. He can handle it. He’s used to having to handle it. He’s expected to handle it. Always, he’s had to save himself and rely on his own abilities. People trust him to be strong. Plus, until Deku builds himself back up a little more, Katsuki is by technical terms the strongest of them. No use looking like a whiner now. It’s his own fault for not clearing out of the building sooner anyway. He’s got this. He’s fine.
He doesn’t want to be a burden.
But there’s sweat beading on his forehead, and the feeling of claustrophobia pricking at his skin begs to differ.
“Kacchan, hold on while we wrap things up? There’s more of them than we expected, and the two with the giantification quirks are big problems. Is a quarter-hour okay?”
“M’kay, nerd,” he says, not quite processing what he’s agreeing to, fighting the tendrils of panic, and turns off his microphone.
For the next twenty minutes, he stares at the pitch black of the wrecked ceiling, vision fuzzing in and out, swirling with thoughts and memories. He’s more thankful than ever for pink dreadlock support girl. The speaker in his ear does double duty, the sounds of his friends, alive and fighting, keep his sanity, while the turned-off microphone prevents them from having to hear the odd embarrassing moan of pain or whimper. His entire lower body is on pins and needles, and the slab on his chest restricts his breathing enough that it’s like being on the constant verge of a panic attack.
“Fuckers, how long exactly will I need to wait?” he gathers the strength to say after the space has begun to smell a nausea-inducing mix of sweat and copper and burnt sugar.
“Relax, Kacchan,” Kaminari drawls.
“Not long now, Bakugou-san. Please continue to rest.”
“Rest in peace at this rate—”
“Be serious, Bakugou-kun!” Iida scolds, scandalized, and a little alarmed. Katsuki is serious, yet he still feels bad for saying it.
“Yeah yeah, dad. Come get me now, pretty please?” he mocks.
“Deku, watch your left!”
“Thanks Shouto-kun!”
“Bitches? You coming or not?”
“Bakugou! Settle down. A little longer, we promise—”
He wants to vomit.
Twenty more minutes and the blood has climbed up his top, soaking the fabric and mixing with all the concrete powder into a stinky, sticky mess. Katsuki knows he’s starting to lose hope because his head keeps playing highlight reels. The truth is that ever since Jakku, and the hospital, and Deku’s brief stint as an Eldritch horror, and the apology in the rain, there’s been this feeling nagging at him. Self-hate dates back to the Sludge Villain, further back even, but recently, it’s climbed up a few notches. He needs to be better. He needs to be useful. He needs to make up for everything. He has to. He can’t be dead weight or an annoyance. Not like before, not like that asshole. Not the villain. He…
Katsuki doesn’t do well with small spaces, and impalement wounds, and restricted breathing. It’s as if he can feel gunk in his mouth, spikes in his shoulder, charred hands around his neck. It’s as if he can taste slime and fire and death.
“Bakugou?”
Will he ever really be able to make up for it? Will he ever really become a good person? It’s the sort of question that thrives in this kind of damp darkness, ugly and mushy and vulnerable in a way he hates. Will he ever amount to anything, or will he fall back into old habits again? Fifteen years of bad surely can’t be reversed, can they?
“Riot, two of them went south—” Kaminari says, then asks, “Who’s an annoyance?”
Did Katsuki say that out loud? Is his mic on? What else have they heard? He’s losing it.
“Shut up,” is the autopilot reply that immediately has him feeling like a dick. “…Sorry. Din’n mean it.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, it seems, because there’s a noticeable pause in the line.
“No, I’m sorry. Did he just apologize to me, god, has he been replaced by a clone or— ow shit!”
“Chargebolt? Copy? Are you okay?”
“I’m—”
“Not okay—” says Jirou, her voice crisp. “He got stabbed. The enemy is dealt with but I’m moving him out of the square to do some first aid—Kami, stop squirming—”
“How grave is it?” Iida questions.
“They got his arm, big vein, lots of bleeding, his quirk’s being difficult. I’m heading to Creati now, but it’d be best to get him some proper medical.” True to word, Kaminari’s earpiece appears to have short-circuited, and Jirou sounds out of breath. She’s probably exhausted, and Dunce Face is heavier than he seems.
“Alright. Deku, all done inside?”
“We’ve got the last of them tied up.”
“Good. Someone get Dynamight and we can report to Sensei.”
Thank fuck, Katsuki thinks (because he’s too spent to say it aloud) and a weight lifting off his chest (though only metaphorically).
“I can get you,” says Round Face, who’s well suited to rescue courtesy of her quirk. Katsuki feels stupid for not having considered her before. He feels stupid about a lot of things, but at that moment, all that feeling is overshadowed by bone-deep relief. “Where’s your exact location?”
“The six—” His head lolls to the side in a flash of whitening vision, and he pukes laying down. It’s disgusting, and half of it is blood.
“Bakugou?!” Oh, now she sounds alarmed.
Spitting a couple times in a pathetic attempt to get rid of residual bile, he picks up where he left off, “The six-story that fell over. ‘M in the basement.”
“Like… near the basement?” There are some nervous and awkward chuckles from the rest of the team.
“Like in it, Angel Face.”
Dead silence. Katsuki starts feeling self-conscious. Maybe they need more info?
“There’s guns and gunpowder, and a big slab of column right over me? No light so it’s kinda hard to see? That help at all?”
More silence. His heartbeat is so loud it’s deafening. Has the earpiece broken—
“Kacchan,” Izuku breathes, and he sounds every antonym of pleased.
“Izuku,” he parrots flatly. “You coming or not?”
The comm lines are wracked with disbelief. “It’s been ages since it crashed! You’re not seriously under there are you?”
“I mean, yeah?” This is getting annoying. Fatigue alone is preventing him from losing it outright.
“The building fucking fell on you and you didn’t say anything?!” Kirishima sounds pissed.
“I did say. Told you to come get me.”
“You didn’t say you were—” The sentence breaks off into angry sputters and protests.
“Building’s unstable, too much of a pain to get me mid-battle, can handle myself, getting the villains 's more important,” he counts off, slurring, though no one seems to be in agreement with his very rational arguments. “Now come fucking get me before I puke again. I’m sitting in my own sick. Whatever’s lodged in my abdomen’s starting to hurt again too—”
“Lodged in your abdomen—”
“What the fuck?!”
“Mmn, m’like swiss cheese.”
He passes out after that.
“You’re definitely something, kid,” is the first thing Katsuki hears when he wakes up, tucked into a hospital bed and connected to a dozen tubes and wires. Typical of a hospital, everything is a sterile white, and the beep of the heart rate monitor fills the air.
Sensei is sitting on a chair at the foot of his bed, arms crossed and lips twisted into an unreadable expression. One of his arms is in a cast, the rough feel of bandages marks his lower belly, and any pain is dulled by what he knows must be a shit ton of painkillers.
“No restrains this time?” he says, words coming out like slurry from his very dry mouth. Sensei has the decency to look guilty.
“That has happened a few times too many now, huh?” Katsuki stares. “I should apologize.”
“Ya weren’t even there,” he finds himself saying, because vulnerable Sensei is weird, and Katsuki wants none of these icky feelings this situation is stirring.
Aizawa sighs, then levels him a tired, one-eyed stare. “You almost died, Bakugou.”
So? It’s part of being a hero. “Mhm.”
Sensei’s frowning. Was that the wrong thing to say?
“You never struck me as a hypocrite”
Now it’s Katsuki’s turn to frown. He isn’t a hypocrite.
Sensei keeps going. “You did all that work to convince Midoriya that he was included in that ”everyone“ heroes need to save, but… you’re just as reckless as Midoriya. All Might tried to warn me about it since way back, but I didn’t believe it until I saw it myself.” That is not what he was expecting. Katsuki isn’t like Deku in that way. He’s not that kind of hero. He spent a decade envying Deku for it. “Because unlike him, you don’t look it. You’re too reliable. You make it seem like you’ve got everything handled, so no one even thinks to worry.”
“S’not… no. If I couldn’t blast myself out, it would take even longer to get help. We didn’t have that kind of time. Judged the risk and thought I’d be fine. The mission was more important. I’m fine.” He wants to hold out his hands in a sort of, see, it worked out, gesture, but doesn’t have the strength to.
“You almost died,” Sensei stresses as if Katsuki is a toddler who can’t understand the word.
“Comes with the job…”
“Did you honestly think they would have left you down there for an hour if you’d said you’d been crushed by the building?”
“The mission takes precedence over the heroes.” Sensei knows this. He’s the one who taught them this.
“When the mission includes civilian lives at risk, which this one didn’t. Bakugou, you should have communicated how bad your situation was right away, you know that.” There’s this unstable wobble in Sensei's voice, and Katsuki can feel how much this whole thing’s affecting him.
“I didn’t know there weren’t any civilians. I couldn’t have known— I wasn’t worth it—”
“If Kaminari, or Kirishima, or Midoriya, or whoever, had been under that building and lied—”
“Neglected to mention—”
“—lied about it, you’d have been okay with that?”
“Fuck no.”
“So why is it any different when it’s you?”
“I—” Katsuki blinks, unable to come up with an answer that doesn’t sound like psychiatrist fuel.
“I thought you’d learned to be vulnerable and accept help from your teammates, but you still prioritize the win over yourself. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes, it needlessly puts you in danger. There’s a place for self-sacrifice, and this wasn’t it.”
Those words linger for a while, in silence. Feeling thoroughly embarrassed and scolded, Katsuki doesn’t know what to do but mumble out an apology.
“Don’t,” Sensei says, so soft it feels out of character. “Just never do it again. And say sorry to them. Kaminari short-circuited half the hospital twice while we waited for you to wake. ”
He gets out of his chair, opens the door, and lets in the flood in the form of a worried class.