Chapter Text
It’s astounding how abrupt it is.
One moment Katsuki’s sailing towards the villain, and the next... the villain is gone. The momentum behind him enthusiastically carries him forward, into nothing, and he stumbles and nearly trips when he tries to stop himself because the ground is now wet.
He skids to a halt, the explosion that had been building dying abruptly in his hand.
He whips back around so fast that his neck cracks but the alley he’s still standing in is completely empty. No sight of the villains nor his allies, just an empty alleyway, silent but but for the quiet sound of the wind blowing by, ruffling the strewn and abandoned sheets of paper and plastic bags in the grubby street. It’s dark, too. A middle-of-the-night kind of darkness. Thick, bleary clouds float overhead, lit up by the light pollution from the city. Errant droplets of rain land on his upturned face.
“What the fuck,” he breathes. It’s two in the afternoon and sunny. Or it had been a second ago, anyway.
It’s some sort of quirk. That much is blatantly obvious. There are a few options for the specifics of it, though. Illusion quirk. Displacement quirk. Maybe he’s asleep and dreaming. Maybe he’d jumped forward through time to that evening and everyone else had gone home. Maybe he’s standing there in full view of a bunch of extras, looking up at the sky like a crazy person because it's all in his mind.
Carefully he reaches out his hands, trying to feel if there’s anyone standing near him. Nothing. He hadn’t rammed into the villain either at first, so he’s not standing in the middle of an illusion. Not moving around in the real world while seeing something else, unless it’s somehow good enough to make him think he’s still moving even after running into someone.
He drops his arms, feeling foolish.
Honestly, he’s probably lying on the ground, passed out, seeing all of this in his brain. The real horror will be later when he wakes up with his head in Deku’s lap.
Deciding it’s worth waiting for a bit to see if the quirk has a time limit wherein it will expire, he drops to a squatting position next to one of the walls, absentmindedly fishing in his pocket for his phone. It’s not his smartphone, bringing one of those on duty would just be asking to get it broken. It’s a rugged flip phone. He can call, text and email painfully slowly, but that’s about it.
He clicks it open. All of his data is still there, but there’s no service.
He flips it closed.
He drums his fingers on his kneecap.
He stands again, paces.
Time drags by.
How long should he wait?
It feels like it’s been hours. He’s freezing, soaked through to the bone from hours in the light drizzle. His hair droops from the weight of it, his skin shiny and running rivulets of cold water down his spine. He desperately rubs hands up and down his upper arms in an attempt to warm his exposed skin.
What the fuck should he do here? Wait?
If it is an illusion it’s always a concern that if he interacts with something in the wrong way, he could screw things up for himself. He’s heard of quirks that will kill you if you fuck up - kind of a die in an illusion, die in real life kind of situation. But...if he stays here forever… he’ll just die of hypothermia. Or boredom.
He pokes his head out of the alleyway. Though his phone says it’s seven in the evening, it’s dark as it gets. The fresh feeling of the air seems like the wee hours of the morning.
There’s no one around. He’s in the same place as he’d been before, the same block, the same alleyway, though the… the cars parked along the street look kind of weird. Strangely shaped. Not like… UFOs or something, just a different style. Like someone took a buffer to a car’s edges, smoothed out the top of the chassis. But it’s all of them. Consistently. Weird.
He drags his hand back over his forehead, clearing his sopping hair out of his eyes, water running down his face as it's squeezed from the strands. He decides to walk back to school, although it’s a little far, to avoid drawing attention to himself any more than his hero outfit already will. With each step his gauntlets brush against the outsides of his thighs. It’s uncomfortable walking long distances with these (although he’d never admit it to anyone) because they don't let his arms hang down straight. They’re more for style than convenience - he’s been thinking about replacing them with something a bit more streamlined to allow himself more range of movement, but the first prototype from the support unit hadn’t been able to store enough nitro.
As he walks, the strangeness of his surroundings doesn’t let up. The world seems kind of odd, but not in a way he can really put his finger on. He’d thought he’d known the area pretty well, but things look slightly different: a different billboard here, a repainted front door there. He wonders if it’s an inconsistency in the quirk. Maybe if the user doesn’t know the area well, it isn’t perfectly recreated? Or maybe it’s just a limit of how deeply detailed the quirk can get, regardless of their familiarity.
One thing that certainly is realistic is how cold he is; his limbs feel like ice right down into the bone. It had been midsummer a few minutes ago. Even in the rain and at seven or eight in the evening, he wouldn’t be this cold.
“What the fuck,” he mumbles, to no-one, through chattering teeth. What a shitty quirk.
There’s the sound of quiet birdsong, as the grey begins to lighten and the world begins to wake. It’s still raining, maybe even a little harder now, as he trudges back to UA. Finally he’s climbing the hill, up to the gate and --
It’s closed.
No surprise that the gate is shut if it is somehow the middle of the night, but the security system is dead too. He taps at it and jabs his fingers into the intercom buttons. It should recognize him as a student and let him in, even if it then also pings Aizawa to let him know Katsuki’s out after curfew.
Nothing. He steps back. The gate looks weathered. The paint is peeling.
Katsuki frowns and reaches out to it. Little bits of it flake off under the rough material of his gloves. Huh. He steps back further. The whole wall looks similarly tired. Dirty. It obviously hadn’t been like this the last time he was here and he debates blasting over it. UA has a pretty beefy security system to stop people from getting in but it looks and sounds completely inactive. Plus...if it is actually turned on, they’ll have Katsuki listed as safe and it should let him enter.
He’s starting to worry about his physical temperature as his fingers begin to go numb. Katsuki glances around. There’s no one in sight nor earshot, so he lights up a little blast, just enough to hop him to the top of the wall, and pauses there, ready to shoot himself back if the security systems do materialize.
They don’t.
Everything stays silent, so he drops over the other side of the wall and onto grass that is overgrown. The pathways have weeds growing through the cracks. Every building is dark and the campus is absolutely silent. Like...okay, it might be four or five am in this scenario but even then, there would be lights on somewhere. There are all kinds of people at UA, including those that are practically nocturnal.
Again, everything looks slightly different. Things are in the wrong place. Outside Gamma Gym, there are stacks of boxes and junk. The trees seem larger, unruly and untrimmed. There are dead flowers in planter boxes that hadn’t existed before. The color of one of the buildings is just totally wrong.
Katsuki jogs to the 2-A building, relieved to get under the overhang and out of the rain. He digs in his pocket for his keycard, and taps it against the lock. Nothing happens. The light isn’t even on.
He tries again. Nothing. No beep to confirm it had even read the presence of the card. Katsuki peers in through the front door. It’s dark inside, no ambient light, not from the light over the stove nor the nightlights Glasses had insisted they install so that no one trips coming down the stairs. The door is locked but that’s no trouble for Bakugo Katuski, so he blasts the door off its hinges. At this point he’s so far onto campus that no random passer-by is going to hear it and if he sets off the security system somehow, well, that’ll be a good thing, since it’ll bring the teachers and anyone else in the vicinity right to him.
But no, nothing. Silence.
The building is cold. He pops off tiny explosions in the palm of his hand to provide some light as he slowly enters. He’s not sneaking, not exactly, just moving carefully into the building. It’s quickly clear however that the inside is empty. No furniture, just an empty common room, the floor covered in a layer of dust. He looks back. His own wet footprints in the dirt are the only ones visible.
He digs his phone out again. Still no service, which is impossible unless his line had been cut off.
What the fuck is happening? If this is an illusion, it’s a pretty good one, to have the inside of 2-A’s apartment building layout correct. Could it be playing off his own memories? If so, then why would it be empty and dirty and dilapidated?
He heads upstairs - the elevators aren’t working - and to his room. It's closed, locked. There’s a different name on the placard beside the door.
Kobayashi Akio.
Who the fuck is that? Kirishima’s door is another name as well. Shoji's too.
Frowning, he blasts his own door open too, using little targeted pops of power to the hinges, and moves the whole door to the side, resting it against the wall of the hallway. The room inside is barren. The furniture is still there: a bedframe, a desk, a night stand, an old, sad-looking mattress. No blankets. No posters. None of his stuff. He swallows down against the lump in his throat. Fuck. Well. That’s not unexpected considering the state of downstairs, but… it’s hard to see it with his own two eyes.
“Fuck,” he sighs again, drooping a little. Nothing of his is here. No clothes, no phone. No nothing. He unclips his grenadiers, putting them carefully on the ground before stripping off his wet compression sleeves and gloves and hanging them over the back of the desk chair. He tears down one of the faded, sad looking curtains, and wraps it around his shoulders, sinking down to sit beneath the window.
He’s so cold. Miserable.
“What the fuck kinda quirk is this,” he sighs to himself. Whatever it is is clearly not on a short time limit. It’s not one of those five or ten minute or even hour long quirks. So it’s probably permanent, or permanent until someone does something to break it.
Okay. Next step… warm up. Then…
He bites his lip. Maybe he should try heading back to his parents’ place? Or he could try to find a phone that works and see if calling something does something?
He waits until he’s dry. Dry-ish, anyway. It’s still raining outside, so as the rain slowly evaporates from him he takes the time to explore the building. It smells stale, the air heavy and still and musty. The dust hangs in the air, illuminated as the sun begins to shine in through the windows. Every bedroom is the same as his had been - the minimum of furniture, covered in dust. Every name outside every room is different. The water in the bathrooms doesn’t run hot. In short: the place has been abandoned, and by the look of it, for quite some time.
The rain finally starts to calm by what looks like mid-morning, but at this point, Katsuki is starting to get tired. It feels to him like it's midnight. It occurs to him that perhaps going to sleep might actually help him wake up from this alternate reality, so he decides to take a nap, heading back to “his” room and flipping the mattress over before curling up on it under the thin coverage of a threadbare curtain.
He’s disappointed when he wakes up in the same place.
By now, the sun is fully out, and he decides it’s time to go, leaving the building and walking the school grounds for a little while in search of someone, anyone, to ask what the fuck is going on.
No one is around. No one. Not a student, teacher, or maintenance worker. Not even one of the annoying paparazzi who try to get in every so often. So he puts his bracers behind all the junk at Gamma gym, and heads back out into the world.
In contrast, there are lots of people on the streets. They’re all dressed...weirdly. In different fashions. The hemlines and necklines and cuts and fits are all wrong. The patterns on people look like they’re from 20 years ago.
And they all look at him out of the corners of their eyes, even without the gigantic grenades on each arm.
A hero outfit is not good for blending in. He has grenades strapped to his waist, and gloves and compression sleeves pulled up his arms, and although Katsuki isn’t exactly the type known for blending in, in this situation? It makes sense to be a bit more careful. He might be on an alien planet. A fucking mirror universe where everyone has goatees and is evil. He has no idea where he is and what he’s doing, and until he finds the bastard who put him here, he’s going to have to remain calm (as impossible as that seems for him, most days).
He stops at the first clothing store he sees and buys a cheap bomber jacket. His card is declined, so he has to use almost all of the cash in his wallet. He puts the grenades that hang from his waist into the pockets of the jacket. Then he removes his garters and the straps going from belt to thigh and he looks like a totally normal guy, dressed in all black with combat boots on.
Katsuki walks slowly to the train station, and when he gets there, he finds the singular pay phone that still stands in the corner of the terminal. He’s able to scroll through his hero phone for numbers. Calls Aizawa.
The number is not in service.
He frowns, hangs up, calls home.
Some other random person answers and he hangs up immediately.
“Fuck,” he hisses through gritted teeth. He calls Kirishima.
Bingo. Kirishima picks up, cheerful as always, “Kirishima here.”
“Kiri,” Katsuki half-shouts into the phone in relief, “Thank fuck.”
“Hello?” says Kirishima, sounding… weird.
“It’s Katsuki,” he says, because obviously the caller ID won’t have his name. He leans against the wall, grubby payphone in hand. “Where are you?”
“This isn’t funny,” says Kirishima. The cheeriness is gone from his voice. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Look,” says Katsuki, “You might not know anything about this because I’m not sure how it works, but yesterday afternoon when we were fighting some villains, someone hit me with a quirk, and now I’m in some weird...alternate universe…or something. You’re the only one I’ve been able to reach so far. If you tell me where you are I can come find you.”
Kirishima’s voice is hard and cold, like Katsuki has never heard it before, “I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re going to get out of this, but whatever it is, you can go to hell.”
Then he hangs up.
Katsuki stands there, slowly pulling the phone away from his ear. What the fuck?
He calls back. Kirishima answers again, but this time it’s with, “I told you to leave me alone.”
“Kiri,” blurts Katsuki, quickly, “You’re the only person I’ve been able to reach -- I need your fucking help.”
“What’s your quirk?” says Kirishima.
“Hah?” says Katsuki, caught off guard, “Explosions.”
“Some sort of voice changer? You’ve really got him down pat. Great job.”
“What?”
Kirishima’s voice goes low, into a kind of a growl, “If you ever call me again, I’ll find you and I’ll rip your head off.”
“Good! I want you to fucking find me!” shouts Katsuki, then realizes everyone in the vicinity is staring at him, and quiets down, hissing into the phone, “Kiri, it’s really me, I swear. I have no idea what’s fucking going on. You know I wouldn’t ask you to help me if I didn’t actually need it. You’re my best friend.”
“That’s low, man,” says Kirishima, sounding sad, and he hangs up again.
When Katsuki calls back, he doesn’t answer.
“Shit!” he shouts, slamming the phone back into its dock. It chimes as he does.
He doesn’t have much money left, so he stalks upstairs to catch the train.
The ride home feels long and off-putting. The route, once so familiar, seems changed in subtle ways. New buildings he hasn’t seen before, different street signs. There are billboards for a movie, “Rise of the Heroes 3,” absolutely everywhere. He hasn’t even heard of Rise of the Heroes 1 or 2.
When he finally reaches it, his house looks more or less the same, but his key doesn’t fit in the lock.
Heart squeezing, he knocks.
Someone he’s never met before answers.
“Hello,” she says, a woman in her forties, pretty, with dark hair tied back in a bun. She doesn’t look too alarmed to have a delinquent teenager standing on her doorstep in baggy black clothes.
“Uh,” he says.
She peers up at him, “Can I… do something for you?”
He swallows, “Does… do the Bakugos not live here?”
“No,” she says.
“Ah,” he sighs. Dammit. What should he do now? Where does he go from here on?
Her expression softens, “Are you okay? Are you looking for someone?”
He tries not to crumple, but he’s exhausted, and the reality of the situation is finally starting to sink in. He’s in some other place, and nothing is quite the same. And worse, he has no idea how to get back or even where to start. He’d inspected the alleyway thoroughly last night. He’d gone back to school. He’d tried calling people. He’d gone home. Tears start to gather in his eyes and he blinks furiously to try to hold them back, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw joints pop out. Maybe he needs help. “Yeah,” he croaks. “I’m, uh, looking for Bakugo Masaru and Bakugo Mitsuki.”
“Okay,” she says, “Wait here. Let me get my phone, we’ll see if we can look them up for you.”
“Alright.”
She disappears inside for a minute, then returns, sitting down on her front step and patting the spot beside her. He sits too. She googles his parents’ names.
They come up immediately. There’s a lot of photos of his mom and a link to her agency. “That’s her,” he says.
“You look just like her,” remarks the woman. “Are you related?”
“Yeah,” he says.
The photo of her in her main profile is… older, though. A version of his mother, twenty years older. The stats next to her name read the right birth year though.
Suddenly, it occurs to him. A simple explanation for why everything looks the same but different. Why UA looks like it’s been untouched for so long. Why Kirishima had reacted so strangely to him.
His voice almost - but doesn't - break when he asks, “What year is it?”
The woman answers, with a year twenty-two years later than it should be.
He stands, suddenly, feeling sick. Is that what’s happened? He’s not just in some kind of illusionary trap, but he’s actually traveled through time? More than twenty years into the future?
“Are you alright?” the woman asks him, sounding alarmed.
“I --” he says.
“Do you need me to call someone? The police? A doctor?”
“No,” he says, and brings both hands up to cover his face. He’s about to have a panic attack. About to break down in front of this perfect stranger. “Just… give me a sec.”
She does. Sits there and waits while he collects himself. Fuck, it’s lucky the person who’d happened to live in the house was a nice person, otherwise he’d still be wandering the streets with no idea what’s going on.
“Can you google someone else?” he asks her, eventually, once he feels like he can talk. He doesn’t look at her.
“Sure,” she says.
“Bakugo Katsuki?”
She obviously does. Starts reading, “Bakugo Katsuki, also known by his hero name Great Explosion Murder God Dynamite was a student in Class 2-A at U.A. High School, training to become a Pro Hero.”
Was.
She continues, “His excellent track record in studies and at the Sports festival in 20XX was marred by repeated incidents involving villain activity, until his death in 20XY.”
That was the year he’d just come from. “Stop,” he blurts. She stops reading aloud.
There’s a singular moment of silence. Then she says, “You’re Bakugo Katsuki.”
“Yeah,” he says. There must be a picture of him in the google results. There’s no way one didn’t pop up with his profile.
“What happened?” she asks.
“I guess I got… I got pulled through time. From 20XY to now.”
He can hardly say it, the words tight in his throat. He’s missed two decades. A hand lands on his back, suddenly. A small one. She’s tiny.
“Do you want to come in?” she asks, “I’ll get you some tea. Something to eat?”
“Yeah,” he agrees, feeling too raw and rough to disagree.
The house has been redecorated, of course, different furniture in different spots, but the kitchen looks more or less the same. He wonders if she considers it dated. He sits in a chair at the small table in the corner of the kitchen and she brings him a cup of tea and a sandwich.
He’s struggling not to cry. The food helps. Gives him something to focus on, and he realizes only as he begins eating that he’s ravenous. He’d missed dinner. Maybe breakfast. It’s hard to tell what time it is or what time it’s supposed to be.
“Let me call my husband,” she says, “He might know if we have any contact information for the Bakugos, okay?”
She and her husband weren’t the first people to live here after the Bakugos. His family moved out nineteen years ago. Another family had lived here for fifteen. She, Hasegawa Sara, has been here for four. It’s a nice neighborhood, she tells him, quiet but not too far from the city center. The place is a little on the big side though, since their son moved out six months ago.
He tries to listen politely but he’s still trying desperately not to melt down, so not much of the information actually makes it into his brain.
Once he’s done eating, she brings him her tablet and lets him use the internet. First thing he does is google Kirishima. He’s a hero, no surprise. Still called Red Riot. He works at an agency in Osaka. Fuck. Too far away.
So, with no small amount of trepidation, he googles Deku.
Deku. #1 Hero. The Pillar of Peace. There's about a billion search results.
Katsuki can’t help but snort even through the barely contained emotion. Of course. Deku had achieved everything he’d ever wanted.
“Do you know him?” asks Hasegawa, from where she stands behind his shoulder, looking down at the tablet.
“Yeah,” says Katsuki, “We went to school together.”
“Oh yes, Deku went to UA, of course,” she smiles. “Gosh, what was it like knowing him when he was younger?”
“Annoying,” says Katsuki.
She laughs in surprise, “That’s funny. You know, I heard he was doing a signing downtown today.”
Katsuki whips around to look up at her. “A signing?”
“Yes, uh, autographs, photos with fans, that sort of thing. My son was talking about some new merch coming out for the twentieth anniversary of him going pro.”
Katsuki stands. “Thanks for the food. Can you tell me where Deku is going to be?”
“You don’t want to wait and see if I can get your parents’ information?”
“No,” he says, “Deku will have that for sure. I just need to get in front of him.”
“Okay,” she says, “Let me ask my son.”
Katsuki uses the washroom and washes his face while she calls her son, and when he emerges she gives him an address. It’s close to the area Katsuki had half-destroyed when fighting the sludge villain three -- uh -- twenty-five years ago.
“Thanks,” he says gruffly.
“Don’t mention it,” she says. She smiles encouragingly, “Listen, Bakugo-san, if you need anything, you can come back. If you can’t find Deku.”
“Thanks,” he says, and turns to leave. Then he pauses, “What are the rules about Quirk Usage in public now?”
“Heroes… or provisional heroes can without restriction.”
He has a copy of his provisional license sewn into his clothes. There’s no expiry date on that sucker.
“Perfect,” he says.
This time he doesn’t fucking walk. He jogs out into the center of the road to spare Hasegawa’s flowers, and he ignites a huge blast, propelling himself up into the air, turning as he splits through the clouds. He feels better now, having had something to eat and drink. The jacket is pretty good quality too, and he’s warm, even up in the sky.
The news had been bad, that he’s in the future, but at least he knows that now. Knowing what a quirk is or does is always half the battle. Now they can look for a way to fix it. Someone with a quirk that can send him back. Problem solved. As much as he hates to even think about it, Deku will be able to help.
Katsuki lands with a bang in the middle of the street outside Hero Central and the entire crowd turns to look at him. Many of their mouths fall open as he shakes his hands out and emerges from the smoke onto the sidewalk.
Hero Central, the biggest Hero Merch store in the city. Figures Deku’s signing would be here. God, he remembers coming here with Deku when they’d been little, looking for All Might rares.
“Hey,” says someone, “That’s a good cosplay, but Deku won’t like that.”
“Yeah,” says someone else, “Bad taste.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Katsuki snaps, and elbows his way past the lineup and into the building.
There are throngs of people here, neatly standing in lines designated by slender velvet ropes. Many of them clutch green things, ranging from Deku plushies to action figures to posters. A good chunk of them are dressed in Deku merch or cosplays, either of Deku or friends. There are a lot of what... looks like Todoroki. Maybe.
“Hey,” says someone in a bright yellow shirt that reads VOLUNTEER, and they get in his way, “You need to join the back of the line.”
“Fuck off,” says Katsuki and shoves past them.
People in the line begin to clamor at him too, shouting “Wait your turn,” or “no cutting!”
The room is tightly packed, but the line obviously leads to wherever Deku is, so, ignoring everyone’s protests, Katsuki pushes around the edges of the cattle pen, moving forward until he can see the table where Deku sits. He’s smiling, looking up at a young fan who holds out an autograph book in shaking hands.
And he’s forty.