Untouchable

by thotsukibakuhoe69 (cloudbouncing11)

Summary:

Katsuki is at the top of his game. In the seven-odd years since graduating UA, he's broken into the Top Five and opened his own agency. Sure, there have been some headaches at work- between a series of mysterious vigilante killings and a top-secret conspiracy investigation, he's definitely got his hands full. But Katsuki likes it that way, and he has everything he's ever wanted. Why does he still feel like something's missing?

Reader is struggling to find her footing. The last year and a half ripped away both her dreams and her best friend- who's doing just fine without her, by the way- and she's trying to figure out how to start rebuilding.

And then she's shoved 150 years into the future, falling headfirst through the space-time continuum and landing in Katsuki's apartment.

(Slowburn Pro Hero Katsuki x Reader Time-travel AU)

Notes:

TIME CONTEXT:
There's no explicit year I can find for when the events of MHA took place, so I took some time liberties.

This story takes place primarily in 2171, and Katsuki is 25. Based on this, the events of MHA season one took place in 2161 and the glowing baby was born in 2037. Reader was born in 1998 and is 23 in September 2021, which is when she gets shucked into the future like freshly-slurped oyster shell.

But there are time stamps all over the place, so don't feel pressured to remember any of that.

Chapter 1: A Prologue Of Sorts

Chapter One: A Prologue Of Sorts

 

Bakugou Katsuki is not a kid anymore, but when he was, he used to always look out for the most dangerous person in the room. It was the kid who was the loudest, the funniest, the smartest- it wasn’t usually hard to pick them out,

After identifying them, he would immediately start planning how to bring them down. A lot of times it was with physical violence, sure. But that wasn’t the only way. He would be louder than the loudest (not that it was much of a stretch for him anyway). He would study his ass off even if he already knew the material jsust to make sure he got a better grade than the smartest. The funny kids were harder to outdo because no one ever seemed to get his jokes, so that was when he’d typically go straight to punching. But no matter where it was- at school, the playground, or even at home- he could never quell that need to be better than the best.

As an adult, he wonders if that’s part of why he was so drawn to the idea of being a pro hero. Being the best hero isn’t subjective- it’s quantified. You don’t have to guess who’s the best or wonder where you stand. Some statistical analyst runs the numbers and they tell you exactly how much you suck and who sucks more than you.

Obviously, that wasn’t the whole reason he was drawn into it. He never would’ve lasted this long if it were. But considering everything else he’d learned about himself over the last ten-odd years, Bakugou Katsuki had come to the conclusion that his ego was definitely a driving factor at some point.

Even when he did his best to assure he was the loudest, smartest, strongest kid, for whatever reason, some other snot-nosed brat was always everyone else’s favorite. He may have been technically the best, but no one gave a shit about that because no one gave a shit about him . The only people who did were either afraid of him or thought he could give them something they couldn’t get from someone more pleasant to be around. Or whatever. 

Heroes, though- heroes weren’t like that. Part of the ranking system takes public opinion into account. Sure, you can’t make everyone happy, but there’s never been a Number One who wasn’t surrounded by loyal fans. 

All Might, for example. He was the strongest. Maybe not the smartest, and definitely not the loudest once Present Mic came on the scene, but he was the best. And anywhere he went, there was someone who loved him.

Things have changed for Katsuki since he first started at UA ten years ago. He made some friends- not just cronies, but real, honest-to-god friends, ones he would give anything for (even though they piss him off endlessly). He turned some enemies into allies. He got a better handle on his temper. He even stopped wearing his pants to baggy.

More than anything, though, he grew up. He learned what it actually means to be a man, to be a hero. As it turns out, numbers don’t have shit to do with it.

Most of the time, Bakugou Katsuki is still the strongest, smartest, and loudest person in the room. These days, he usually doesn’t even bother to check, which is nice. He’s in the top five. That’s nice too. He’s got fans out the ass. He will never forget the first time a stranger came up to him, just the way people used to come up to All Might, and told him they loved him. They said, “I love you. You’re my favorite hero.”

It hurt. He was not expecting it to. It was painful and empty and shallow, and he realized, right then and there under the fluorescent lamplight of a 7/11 sign, that being loved for being a hero does not feel like being loved. It feels like nothing.

Some days it feels that it’s all that anyone can see him as. It’s become more and more clear to him as the years have clunked on, as he’s collected accolades and risen the ranks, as he’s saved countless lives at the risk of his own: Bakugou Katsuki does not want someone to love him because he’s a hero. He wants someone to love him in spite of it.

He knows 25 isn’t that old, but it’s the oldest he’s ever been. It somehow feels like he’s been alive and withering for hundreds of years and simultaneously just took his first screaming breath. He’s spent 25 years feeling like he was waiting for something to happen. He never knew what it was going to be until this exact fucking moment.

Ultimately, it happens in his apartment. Kirishima, Dunce Face, Sero, Mina, IcyHot, and Cheeks are there, too. They’re scattered around his living room- he dragged them over to loop them in on a case. He’s been working on it for months in secret, and it’s too risky to work on it in an HPSC-affiliated building like his agency, and unfortunately, that means working from home.

But that’s beside the point really, because a portal just opened up on his fucking ceiling.

While he’s jumping up on his couch getting ready to blast some villain to hell and subsequently blast his rent deposit out the window, everything stills for a moment. 

A villain doesn’t come out of the portal- at least not the type he’s used to. 

You do.

In a cacophony of groaning and swearing and bleeding, you fall out of who the fuck knows where and land directly in front of his coffee table. 

And as strange and terrifying as it is, he can’t help but look at you and wonder if, in some way, somehow, this is the thing he’s spent all that time waiting for.

 

Chapter 2: The Girl Caked In Blood

Chapter Two: The Girl Caked in Blood

Thursday March 7 2171: Reader POV

It’s dark right now. In a strange way, it almost feels like floating. For a second, you wonder if this is what astronauts feel like, floating like this. You don’t think you’re in outer space, though, but you suppose you could be wrong- you’ve never been to outer space before, so you don’t have much of a basis for comparison.

Then again, you’ve never been stabbed until now either, so you guess there’s a first time for everything.

All at once and much too abruptly, the dark and the silence and the floating end,s and you land. The stab wound doesn’t go away though.

Lucky you.

“Motherfucker,” you grumble, orienting yourself without really getting up. “Who made the goddamn floor so hard.” Seriously. You’re already bleeding profusely; you’d rather not add any broken bones to the list. 

Wait- fuck. That’s right. You’re bleeding profusely. That’s something to address.

You need to find your bag. You had it with you just a second ago. Was it stolen? You don’t remember the jackass taking anything, but- oh. There it is. It landed a few feet in front of you. You just need to reach over-

“Owwwww oww ow fuck oh shit oh ouch goddamn fucking- got it- ahhhh motherfucker that doesn’t feel good at all,” you groan. 

You’re usually more eloquent than that.

After rolling up your shirt a bit to expose the wound on your torso, you realize how lucky you are. If they were trying to kill you, then the person who stabbed you had terrible aim. Jackass didn’t manage to hit an artery or an organ or anything. Still, someone should probably stitch this up. Oh. Right. You’re someone. Like you said, first time for everything.

Your hands, despite their trembling, manage to dig the first aid kit out of your bag- you’d picked it up at a konbini a few months ago after watching an elementary schooler with a skateboard take a particularly nasty fall near your bus stop. You’d patched him up on the ride home, waved as he got off a few stops ahead of yours, and stuffed the kit into the bottom of your giant work purse, left forgotten alongside emergency protein bars and a MUJI store’s worth of ballpoint pens.

Also forgotten at the bottom of your bag- until now, that is- was the tiny fashion repair kit Kenji had gifted you sophomore year. You’d used it exactly once in the last three years. 

Okay. You can do this. Needle- check. Thread- check. Disinfectant- well, you’ve got one alcohol wipe. That’s not gonna cut it. You root around your bag for another few seconds and come up with a small bottle of hand sanitizer.

It’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker, but good enough. Check.

You glance up at your surroundings for the first time.

Group of strangers staring at you as if you just punted a toddler through a goalpost? Check. Apparently.

“Who the fuck are you?” you ask.

“Who the fuck are you?” One of them responds. 

You don’t bother looking back up to see who it was. You’re about to stitch up your own stab wound, for christs’ sake. Kind of need your eyes for this. You get to work sanitizing yourself.

“What do you mean who the fuck am I? You’re the ones who brought me here. If y’all are just snatching up random people off the street, you should think about doing a bit of research first. I don’t have any family and there’s like, a hundred bucks max in my bank account right now. Kidnap a richer target next time,” you tell them.

The hand sanitizer stings like hell. You grit your teeth as you smear it over your abdomen, using the hem of your shirt to wipe off the bloody excess before coating it again.

“And speaking of stabbing people-” 

“We weren’t speaking of stabbing people???”

“ Speaking of stabbing people ,” you continue, “Next time, you could at least have the courtesy to hit an artery and make it quick. Germ-X in an open wound hurts like hell. It’s probably more pleasant just to bleed out.”

“I’m sorry, what are you talking about?” It’s a different voice this time, a woman. 

“Look, I sure as hell didn’t stab and kidnap myself, but we can debate the semantics when I’m not actively dying. Got any vodka?” 

There’s a moment of silence. Then someone hands you a bottle. 

“Here. But I’m sure the hand sanitizer already did the trick.” Whoever he is, his voice is deep. Gruff. He could probably do voiceovers for beef jerky commercials or something if he hadn’t dedicated his life to crime. 

You screw the top off with your teeth, fillings be damned. 

“Not for disinfecting”. Cue a long swig, and for a moment, you almost feel like a badass, but then the burn of the cheap liquor kicks in, and you can feel yourself pulling a face and gagging a bit. “Thing hurts like a bitch.”

Alright, enough procrastinating. Time to get to work. It’s not like you’re gonna make it any worse.

Probably.

The peanut gallery stays pretty quiet while you start stitching. They whisper among themselves a bit, but for the most part, they stand there and let you focus. You’re not sure if they’re curious to see how it goes or just wondering if they nabbed the wrong person, but either way, you’re grateful for the silence.

In, through, out, pull. Repeat. It’s just like fixing a hem, except not at all. 

You get a few stitches down, maybe halfway done, when one of your spectators decides you’ve been given enough time to concentrate.

“Tell us now. Who are you and why are you here?” This is a new voice, calm and devoid of inflection. 

“First of all, I’m not gonna tell you things you should’ve had the initiative to find out for yourself. Let’s get that straight.” 

You continue stitching, and you’re only a little lightheaded. Your irritation at the fucking idiots who kidnapped you seems to be keeping your blood pressure high enough to compensate for the blood loss. The giant gash along your side is still bright red and angry, and it’s still bleeding, but the wound is halfway closed. 

“Second of all, you’re the ones who brought me here. I don’t entirely understand how- people usually just use vans for this sort of thing and the transport felt a lot more like falling through a black hole- but I was a little preoccupied with the whole ‘just-got-stabbed’ thing. Didn’t exactly have time to ponder the ins and outs of your master plan.” With a small grunt and a bit more quiet swearing, you tie off the final stitch. There. It may look like the handiwork of a surgeon lacking opposable thumbs, but it gets the job done.

Now that you have the chance, you take a good look at your captors. You were hoping a visual would help you piece together what’s going on, but the second you lay eyes on the woman painted bubblegum fucking pink, you’re just left with a thousand more questions.

“Okay, my turn. What do you want with me and why are you all dressed like you’re going to Comic-Con?” 

They look at each other, back at me, and back at each other.

“What do you mean?” The redhead says. Jesus Christ. It’s one thing to attack and kidnap me, but they could at least laugh at my jokes , you think . 

“The costumes, moron. Criminals usually dress in all black or whatever, right?” 

“…Criminals?” Pinkie asks.

“Oh, sorry. Is there a more politically correct term you’d prefer me to use? How about People Who Do Crime? Kindhearted Citizens Who Enjoy Stabbing For Fun?” 

There’s a moment of silence now, and the Criminal Cosplay Club are all standing around staring at each other again.

You figure they do that a lot.

 

The adrenaline has worn off a bit. Something deep inside you is still fluttering, frantic- but you can breathe through it enough to take in a bit more of your surroundings. You still have no idea where the hell you are, but it’s a lot nicer than what one would expect when being violently kidnapped. 

It looks like some rich bastard’s living room. Tall vaulted ceilings, sleek and streamlined furniture, all dark gray textiles accented by a thick, clear acrylic coffee table. Dark wood floors are laid out in a herringbone pattern with matching bookshelves built into one of the walls- the others are painted a deep, forest green. The whole place would come across as dark and moody if not offset by the brilliance of daylight shining through an expansive window that takes up nearly the entirety of the wall to your left. A long sliding door lets out onto a balcony where the rooftops of office buildings peek out through a clear half-wall acting as a railing- more acrylic, you think. 

It had already gotten dark out when you left work. How long were you out? Your head is starting to swim a bit more- partially from the blood loss and partially from the alcohol- so your math could be off, but the sky outside the window looks like the afternoon.

That just doesn’t add up. If that much time had really passed since being stabbed, you should’ve lost a whole lot more blood. At the very least, some of it would be dried up and browning around the wound- everything you saw was fresh. 

Wherever you are, it’s high up. Very high up. It’s obvious that you’ve been moved at least a few cities away- you don’t get views like this where you come from. Maybe you’ve been moved into a different time zone? That could account for a few of the hours that seem to have passed. Judging by the room around you- and the quality of their cosplay, these people definitely have money. They could probably rent a private plane if they really wanted to, so another time zone wasn’t impossible.

You scooch yourself back a few feet so you can lean your back against the feet of an armchair. Your captors are still just standing around looking at each other, communicating wordlessly through a series of odd gestures and facial expressions. It’s clear they know each other well. You should start asking questions again, gather some clues, try to piece together more of the puzzle. But goddamn, it’s been a long day. 

Should you have another swig of the vodka?

Probably not. 

Definitely not. 

You take a drink anyway.

The grumpy blond one- their leader, you think- turns to you, alerting to your motion like the Jurassic Park T-Rex. You find yourself stilling involuntarily, the bottle stilling midair. He glares at you for a minute.

“What’s your quirk?” He finally asks.

What? 

“..Huh?” You say, eloquently.

“Your quirk. What is it?” 

You raise an eyebrow at him. He huffs in indignation.

“You won’t tell us who you are or why you’re here. Just tell us your quirk. At least give us that much to work with.”

Your… quirk. Weird start, but okay. You scratch your head for a moment.

“I mean, I guess I’ve got a few,” you say. His eyes widen. He looks back at his equally surprised friends.

“Like what?” It’s a different blond speaking up this time. Shaggier hair, dressed less like a Party City superhero and more like Disney Channel’s idea of a rockstar. 

“…I talk to myself sometimes. When I’m thinking really hard. Organize my thoughts out loud or whatever, you know?” There. You’re cooperating. 

The room lags into an awkward pause. They don’t seem excited about this development as you had anticipated.

“I’m sorry?” Shirtless Redhead questions. 

“I also have this weird thing where I don’t like the way normal spoons feel in my hand. Don’t know why, but I can’t stand it. You know those long skinny ones- the kind for stirring iced tea? I use those instead.”

There’s another awkward pause for a few seconds. Or maybe time is just moving a bit weird for you right now. Yeah, maybe that’s it.

The angry blond t-rex straight up growls. 

“Is that some kind of fucking joke? ”

“Uh, no- that’d be a pretty shitty joke if you ask me, but I don’t know what kind of answer you were expecting-”

He slowly walks up to you, glowering, like a predator closing in on its prey while making a deliberate effort not to startle it. Something sharp digs in at your spine, and you realize you’ve pressed yourself further against the chair. The sleek, sharp edge of the leg is pressing into your back.

You’re looking everywhere except at Blondie, feeling smaller than you actually are, feeling smaller than you usually would in the face of danger. You’ve rarely been one to cower away from anything, but you’re also acutely aware of the fact that you’re tipsy and hypovolemic and have recently been stabbed. 

You try to school your face into something blank and expressionless as you study the floor.

A pair of hulking boots comes into view, rudely interrupting your staring contest with the herringbone. A rough hand grabs your chin and you find yourself forced to look up at him, to look at his face, to look at his eyes. They’re red. 

Suddenly, you think of a nature documentary you watched just a few days ago while folding laundry. It was a National Geographic piece on the reptiles of Europe. You remember when the camera cut from a stuffy herpetologist with an unplaceable accent to a shot of Vipera berus , the common European adder. You remember being entranced, setting a half-folded pair of jeans back into the basket to watch as the slow-motion berus sank its fangs into a field mouse. The red of its slitted eyes had glinted like fire in the sunlight as the snake unhinged its jaw to swallow the mouse whole.

The blonde viper stares at you. All your bravado has fallen out of you and pooled on the floor along with the blood. You’re feeling entirely too mouse-like.

“I’m done fucking around,” he says. His voice is even and quiet now, which seems worse. “You’re gonna tell us what your name is, where you came from, why and how you came here, and what your quirk is. Now.”

You try to rummage up the last ounce of bravery that hasn’t seeped between the cracks in the herringbone. You squint at him and twist your mouth into a smirk.

“Or what? Gonna stab me again?”

His eyes widen for half a second before he scoffs. He lifts up the hand that isn’t gripping your chin and flexes it in the air, wiggling his fingers a bit.

“Don’t you know who I am? I don’t need to stab anyone.”

You don’t know exactly how to articulate what happens immediately following that. You’ve never seen anything like it, and once again, the blood loss and alcohol combo is probably warping your perception a bit. It sounds crazy. Even as you’re sitting there watching it, you’re thinking, “ this is crazy” . 

In this man’s hand- this man’s bare hand, open and empty and palm facing towards you, is what you can only describe as a tiny bouquet of fireworks. Bright red and orange and yellow and bursting and jumping- you’d write it off as a visual hallucination if you couldn’t hear the little explosions, smell the smoke. 

You find yourself still for a moment, watching the little bursts. And then, slowly, as if operating on a will of its own, you see your hand lift up into your peripheral vision and reach out towards the magic.

And just as quickly as they appeared, the little explosions are gone, just out of reach. The man pulls his hand back and stares at you in horror.

“Are you fucking crazy?” He yells.

“How… How did you do that?” You lunge- well, it’s more of an intentional tilt, really-  to grab his arm and pull it back towards you. He doesn’t resist, just stares on in confusion. He lets you maneuver his arm as you turn his hand over, looking for… you don’t know what. A little projector maybe. Some nifty magic store-gadget. Part of the cosplay, maybe. Anything to explain the illusion.

But his arm is bare. Just skin and scars.

“What do you mean, how did I do that ? It’s my quirk, jackass. And you just about blew your damn finger off trying to grab it.” 

It’s clear by his tone of voice that you’re not the only one in a bit of shock here. Something about your reaction has thrown him off. Like he thought you wouldn’t be in awe over his fireworks, like you should see shit like this all the time. 

His… quirk.

“Is that what you wanted me to say?” You ask. His brows furrow. “When you asked what my quirk was- were you asking if I could make fireworks too?” Someone in the back- the redhead, you think- giggles under his breath when you call them fireworks. Blondie’s eyes widen momentarily, and he looks at me for a second with a facial expression you can’t place. Then, slowly, he turns around to his friends and says-

“Am I missing something, or does this bitch not know what a quirk is?”

 

 

2171: Katsuki POV

 

“Maybe she was just startled by the explosions up close?” Cheeks offers.

“Nah, that wasn’t it. She looked like she had never seen a damn quirk before.” 

Katsuki knows the look of someone seeing his quirk up close for the first time. If it’s someone he’s on good terms with, someone who asked for a demonstration- be it another pro or a group of kids that find him in the street- they’re impressed. If it’s an enemy, someone he’s threatening, they’re afraid. That look you gave him- that wasn’t a kid being impressed, and that sure as hell wasn’t a villain fearing for their life. That was pure, unadulterated wonder. And the way you grabbed his arm after- you was looking for an explanation.

He glances over to check on the intruder. You still haven’t given them your name. You’re curled up on the ground next to the armchair, one of the throw pillows from the couch tucked under your head and another tucked under your arm. You’re squeezing it up against yourself like a shield, unconsciously doing your best to protect the wound. The blood that ended up smeared on your arms and torso looks to be mostly dried at this point, but Katsuki’s still glad Dunce Face had enough foresight to give you the black pillows instead of the green ones. 

You’ve been slumped out for a few hours now. When you first collapsed into him right after showing you his quirk, Katsuki panicked for a second, thinking you had up and died on top of him. But your heart was beating, he could see the rise and fall of your chest with her lungs expanding. Didn’t take long to figure out that you just fell asleep. Between the black hole, the stab wound, and his quirk, he guessed it was just a bit too much excitement. 

Normally he’d be pissed to hell if someone fell asleep during an interrogation, but Kirishima saw it coming- pulled him back a bit, told him to “give the lady some space, she clearly needs rest”. Katsuki’s instincts still tell him to throw a fit whenever he knows someone else is right, but he’s gotten better at pushing that back down. So he bit his tongue, left Dunce Face in charge of watching the little visitor, and wrangled the rest of the group into the kitchen. 

It’s the most space he can give you without taking you out of his sight. Thank you, open concept.

“Hello? Earth to Blasty?” Mina’s got him by the shoulders now, shaking him in a way that resembles a frustrated babysitter shaking a disobedient toddler.

“What?” he spits.

“I’ve been talking to you for five minutes! Did you even hear me?”

“Give the man a break, Mina,” Sero chimes in. “That was the first time he’s felt the touch of a woman in years. Let him daydream.”

Katsuki tries grumbling out some nonsense threat at him, but Sero just chuckles. Bastard’s been hanging around him too long, knows that it’s just meaningless vitriol. Katsuki’s eyes roll up towards the ceiling out of pure muscle memory. Leeches, all of them.

“Anyway, as I was saying,” Mina continues. “I don’t think she’s a villain. She seemed so confused! I don’t think she’s the one who opened up that portal. I think she just got pushed through it for some reason.”

“Okay, that’s plausible enough, but it still doesn’t explain the stab wound. And why did the portal open up here, of all places? What would anyone have to gain from stabbing some random woman and dropping her into Bakugou’s apartment?” Cheeks asks.

“I agree with Uraraka. If she isn’t a villain, that leaves us with more questions than answers. And neither scenario explains her reaction to seeing Bakugou’s quirk. Perhaps she’s on drugs?” Todoroki says.

“Jackass ain’t on drugs. Don’t forget that less than 10 minutes before that we watched her stitch up her torso with a dollar store sewing kit.”

“Yeah, who does that? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was manly as hell. But after she landed, she took ten seconds to get her bearings and went right to work. Wouldn’t most people, like, call an ambulance? Ask to go to the hospital?”

“Not if she thought we wouldn’t let her go to one.”

“What? We’re heroes, why wouldn’t we take her to a hospital?” Cheeks asks, looking at Katsuki like he has two heads. Christ. Ten damn years working together and he still has to explain everything to these people. 

“Remember all that nonsense she was saying earlier? She thought we were the ones who stabbed her and brought her here. If she thought she’d just been kidnapped, of course she’d assume we wouldn’t take her to a hospital.”

It’s quiet for a minute- a contemplative form of silence, only broken by a small sniffle in the living room.

The guest of honor awakens. 

 

Kaminari hands you a bottle of water, which you accept. It looks like you’ve calmed down a bit after your nap. Katsuki hopes you stay that way.

“So uh,” Kaminari starts. This oughta be good. 

“Got any big plans this weekend?” 

Sero snorts. You don’t say anything, looking even more confused than before, if that’s possible. Kaminari fails to notice.

“There’s this big ‘best-of-the-decades’ night at my favorite bar. They’ve done it every Friday the last few weeks, but I’ve had patrol. Tomorrow’s supposed to be 1990’s alternative rock. It’s so vintage. I’m super pumped.” He whisper-sings into his fist, mimicking a harsh wail. You scrunch up your face in confusion.

“It’s Monday,” you say.

“What?”

“You said they do it every Friday, right? And you’re going tomorrow night. But today is Monday.”

“No... Today is Thursday.”

You and Kaminari look at each other for a second, neither quite knowing what to say. 

“Let me see your phone,” you say slowly. Before any of the others can stop him, Dick For Brains whips it out and hands it to you. You look at it strangely and then start pressing each of the buttons. On the third button you try, the screen wakes up, and you look down at it for a minute.

“Is- Is this the date? Is that accurate?” 

“Uh, yeah.”

Another moment of silence. 

“And... The year?”

“Huh?”

“What year is it?” you ask. Kaminari finally looks over at the group huddled around the kitchen island, eyes wide and silently asking for help. 

“2171,” he says slowly.

Without a word, you hand the phone back to him and push yourself upright, using the armchair for support as you stand. Then, while grunting and swearing under your breath, you make your way into the kitchen. 

Bakugou and the others instinctively back up as you get closer and closer, and by the time you reach the refrigerator, they’re all standing back against the wall. Watching. Waiting.

With a heaving breath, you open the fridge, look at it for a second, and pull out a carton of milk. 

Okay, what the fuck. Katsuki isn’t sure where this is going. He isn’t sure you’re sure where this is going, either.

You read something on the label, turn around, and set the milk on the counter behind you. Next is a bag of shredded cheese. You read the label, put it on the counter, and reach back in. 

“Uhh, guys?” Kirishima asks, eyeing you curiously. He’s looking for an explanation as if anyone has the slightest idea what you're doing. Katsuki just shrugs and keeps watching.

You gradually speed up as you keep going through the process, seeming to grow more and more frantic. It’s clear you’re hellbent on reading the label of every damn thing in Katsuki’s fridge. 

After inspecting a package of deli turkey, you turn around and face the group, the fridge still wide open and empty behind you.

“Is this your apartment?” You ask the grumpy blond one. Katsuki nods in confirmation. “Your food. All of the expiration dates are between March and April of 2171.”

“How is that relevant?” Cheeks asks.

You look toward Kaminari and motion toward the armchair.

“Can you bring my purse over here?” You ask.

Like a lovesick puppy, he goes back and fetches it for you. You set your purse on the counter next to the quickly warming food, which Katsuki realizes you have no intention of putting back in the fridge any time soon. You dig through it until you find what you were looking for- a protein bar. You cup it in both hands like some kind of treasure and hold it out to Bakugou like an offering. He hesitantly takes it from you, not sure exactly what he’s supposed to do. It’s some brand he’s never seen before, which is weird, since he used to live off these things.

 “Check the expiration date,” you say. It takes him a second to find it, but his eyes widen when he does. 

“The fuck?” he rasps.

“When I left work earlier,” you say slowly, your throat dry, “When I clocked out- right before getting stabbed and dropped here- it was September 13th.” You take a deep breath, as if you yourself can’t believe what you’re about to say. “Of 2021.”

Chapter 3: Sarah Connor Vibes

Notes:

I just remembered how frustrating it is to find a story right after it starts, so here's chapter three. Enjoy!

Chapter Three: Sarah Connor Vibes

Thursday March 7 2171: 

 

“Okay, so you’re saying you’re a time traveler from 150 years ago, and right before you showed up here, you were stabbed for no apparent reason, and then you basically blinked and fell into Bakubro’s apartment?”

“Yeah. Apparently, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“And since you’re from a time before quirks, you know nothing about them.”

“Correct again,” you say. 

You’d all moved back into the living room, with most of the others standing. You chose to sit, ignoring the couch entirely and plopping yourself on the floor next to the coffee table. The pink one- Mina, you learned- sat a few feet away from you. The stoic one with the duotone hair had claimed a spot in the armchair across the room- the one you’d pushed yourself up against while closing the stab wound. He doesn't seem particularly fazed by the blood.

The redhead, Kirishima, takes a deep breath and turns to Bakugou. Katsuki doesn’t turn to him, keeping his eyes locked on you, but he can feel Eiji’s beady little eyes digging into his skin.

“I think we should call Mr. Aizawa,” Kirishima says, as if that’s a good idea.

“We’re not calling Aizawa. We’re grown ass adults. We don’t need to bring our old teacher into the loop.”

 

The others keep talking to each other- Eiji and IcyHot trying to come up with a game plan while Dunce Face and Sero giggle about Christ knows what- but Katsuki tunes them out again. Not like they’re saying anything important anyway.

 

You’re just sitting there, hands pressed up against your side. Probably still hurts. Katsuki wonders if he should offer you some painkillers or something. Part of him still wants to think that you’re a villain-  that you’re some devious little criminal, or maybe just a crazed fan, using an unbelievable backstory and a few well-thought-out props to worm your way into his life. But he’s been in this game a good while now. Stories like yours, stories this unbelievable- they almost always end up being the truth. 

 

He’s still tuning them out, zeroed in on you, when your eyes go wide. 

“Holy shit. It’s all real,” you whisper.

“What was that, sugar?” Kaminari says. You ignore him entirely and start quietly rooting around in your bag instead. Good girl , Katsuki thinks. Then you have to go and open your mouth again.

 

 

“If I’m actually in the future, then that means I was brought here for a reason, right? Or maybe I wasn’t, I suppose it could just be some sort of anomaly, but I don’t really know enough about theoretical physics to say if that’s possible. Maybe it’s like a tiny hole in the fabric of time, and I walked through the hole somehow? But I’ve taken that route home a thousand times, so that wouldn’t make sense…Maybe I died when I got stabbed, but instead of crossing into an afterlife there was some misstep and I ended up just plummeting into the future? But that wouldn’t make sense either, right? My injuries weren’t immediately life-threatening enough to just kill me on the spot, and falling through time wouldn’t put the blood back in- so how was I awake when I landed?” 

“Fucking hell,” Katsuki mumbles. You’re just like Deku.

You’re still muttering out theories, but it’s gotten so fast and so quiet that Katsuki can’t decipher one word from the next. You’re still digging through your purse, too. Frustrated. Frantic. Katsuki guesses this is what you meant earlier when you said you talk to yourself sometimes.

Cheeks crouches down in front of you. She’s slow, gentle, deliberate- Katsuki recognizes it as the way they’re trained to treat victims and bystanders at risk of going into shock.

“Hey,” she says softly. “I know this is all very confusing for you. It’s confusing for us too. Trust me. So, how about we just take a deep breath and start from the top? And.. a bit louder? And slower, maybe?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just need to- I need to get my thoughts out. There are a thousand possibilities running through my head right now, and I don’t think I can afford to forget any of them. If I could just find my motherfucking notebook… A hundred and fifty goddamn years-”

Kaminari starts to say something to Sero. Katsuki takes his eyes off you for a minute so he can shoot Dunce Face a glare, which effectively shuts him up. When he turns back, he’s startled to see you staring directly at him. 

“Look, just- do you have a notebook I can borrow?” You ask.

His eyebrows push together. He’s tempted to say something snarky, but he grabs one from the bookshelf behind him anyway.

It’s almost entirely blank, save for one page buried around the halfway point. He flips through to find it, rips it out, and tosses the notebook at you.

You don’t have the energy to try to catch it, so you just tilt yourself to the side and dodge. It flops onto the floor behind you with a resounding thwack . You shoot Blondie a look and grab it before you start writing.

Katsuki and the others wordlessly decide to give you some quiet, to let you scribble out whatever it was you were so desperate to write. Your hand is flying down the page, scrawling out a bullet-point list so long that after a minute or two, you’re down to scribbling in the bottom margin. 

Katsuki had torn out his own bullet-point list before handing over the notebook, but his heart still jumped into his throat when you flipped the sheet over. The page that follows his blank (although not for long). He doesn’t know why he panicked, he knew it would be- the list was the only thing in the damn notebook, anyway. He’s folded it up and stuffed it into his pocket.

He had almost forgotten about it, hadn’t touched the notebook in years. But now, in his back pocket, even years after writing it, the list burns him in a way.

After another few minutes of scribbling, you come to a stopping point. 

“Okay,” you say.

“Okay?” Sero asks.

“I have some theories. Sit.”

 

2171: Reader POV

 

“So before we get started, let’s review the main questions we need to answer. First things first: who the fuck stabbed me? I don’t live an exciting life. I work at a hospital, but I don’t even do direct patient care. I just watch heart monitors and interpret arrhythmias. I go to work, I go home, I go back to work the next day. I don’t have any enemies, at least not any that would go to the effort to put a knife in my side. So for now, there are no suspects. Then there’s the matter of figuring out a motive. If this were just some random stabbing with no time travel involved, I’d say the perpetrator was likely the disgruntled family member of a patient.”

“Wait, why?” Kaminari asks.

“Thousands of hospital workers are assaulted every year because some people can’t cope with losing a loved one, and I was an easy target wearing scrubs.” 

“But this wasn’t just some random stabbing,” Kirishima says.

“Exactly. The whole time-travel thing basically throws any theory I would have about the stabbing out the window.”

“So get to the point,” Bakugou, who apparently isn’t their leader, grunts.

“I am! Christ, keep your pants on. Anyway, there are a thousand possible explanations for what’s going on. But most of them fall into three main theory categories. The first is that I’ve somehow ended up in the future via a natural anomaly. I ended up here purely by accident. Whether it be because of something I did that day, or something someone else did that day, doesn’t matter- something triggered a change in the space-time continuum, and I was the lucky idiot that got blasted ass-first into the future. It sounds unrealistic, but so do quirks, so we can’t rule it out,” you say.

 You look around at the group to see if any of them have input. You give them a minute to pipe up before you continue.

“The second theory is that I haven’t time-traveled at all. Maybe I’m from this time, but for whatever reason, someone’s altered my memory and dropped me off here. But to what end? And I don’t feel like my memories are false, but I also have no basis for comparison, and it would be stupid not to consider it a possibility.”

“I can take down your information when I leave,” Todoroki says. “I have to head back to my agency tonight anyway, I can run it through some databases.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m sure if someone went to the lengths of creating a lifetime of false memories, they’d change my name too. It’ll probably be harder than running my name through a database to figure out if I am who I think I am,” you reason. 

“Oh, no. I meant biological information. I’ll take your fingerprints and a picture of your face that I can run through the global system for matches. I suppose in your time, they only had resources like that for cataloging criminals, so it makes sense that you would be confused. Japan’s biological information database was established about 75 years ago, and everyone who’s been born since then has been entered into the system. The global database is the same; it was just established about a decade after ours.”

“I’m not sure if that’s terrifying or fascinating,” you say. The future, or whatever this was, was incredible and bizarre. Biometric databases, superpowers… It was a far cry from the version of the world you knew. Then again, the tech you’d seen so far didn’t seem that different than what you were used to in your own time. You peek out through the window wall, hoping to spot a flying car, but all you see is a massive red bird flying by.

Hold up, is that a dude with wings?

“Both, I suppose,” Todoroki responds, interrupting your confusion. “If I run it tonight, I’ll have the results by lunchtime tomorrow. If that doesn’t work, we can take a DNA sample to look for any relatives.”

“Thank you. That should help us narrow things down substantially.”

“Alright, Stitches, enough with the chitchat. What’s your third theory?” Blondie chimes in.

“Oh, c’mon, Blasty, don’t be a buzzkill!” Mina says. She turns to you with a knowing look. “Don’t mind him, he’s just cranky because it’s past his bedtime.”

“Ah, well, I wouldn’t want to keep Blasty up past-” you glance at her watch- “Nine PM.” He growls, like literally growls. Absolutely feral, this man. “Anyway, my third main theory- and there are a lot of possible branches following this one- is that I’ve been brought into the future via human intervention.”

“Why would anyone bring your annoying ass here on purpose?” Bakugou huffs. You’re too amped up to bother snapping back at him.

“I’m gonna ignore the insult and just answer the question: I have no fucking clue. Like I said earlier, I don’t live an exciting life. I don’t have any special talents, especially not compared to quirks. There’s nothing I could do here that someone else couldn’t. My best guess is that it isn’t really anything I do at all. Sort of a Terminator scenario,” you explain.

Everyone is quiet for a second.

“..Terminator?” Kirishima asks. The others look equally confused.

Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.

“Terminator? The 1984 blockbuster that spawned a six-film franchise? Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton? You know, Terminator.”

“You’re asking us if we know the plot of a movie that came out nearly two hundred years ago?” Uraraka says. You guess it’s a fair point. That doesn’t mean you’re happy about it.

“Okay, Christ. Here we go. In the future, the world is ruled by an AI called Skynet, and most of humanity is dead. This guy named John is running a resistance movement, though, so they send a robot assassin back in time to kill his mom, Sarah Connor, before John is even born. No John, no resistance,” you explain. They seem to be following. “But the humans know about the plan and send this other guy back to protect her, who ends up being- well, that doesn’t matter. The point is, Sarah Connor didn’t personally do anything to offend the robots, but-”

“But her son did,” Bakugou finishes. 

“So you think some robots brought you here?” Kaminari asks. You take a long, deep, exasperated breath and try to will yourself to be patient.

Turns out, you don’t have to. 

“No, dipshit. It’s a metaphor,” Bakugou says. Your thoughts exactly. Maybe the two of you will get along after all. “If someone brought her here on purpose, it isn’t because she’s anything special, but her kid is.” 

Nevermind.

“Okay, technically yes, but you definitely could’ve phrased that nicer,” you say.

“Tch. And you could’ve kept your blood inside instead of spewing it out all over my hardwood floors.”

“That’s definitely not how bleeding works. You’re one of those guys who thinks women can just hold their periods in like piss, aren’t you?”

“What’d you say, you little shit?” 

“Enough, you two,” Mina says, tone resembling that which a mother would use when scolding her bickering children. Blasty just crosses his arms and looks out the window, shifting uncomfortably.

“Back to the whole time travel movie thing. I’m getting really into this,” Sero says.

“Alright, where was I… Oh, yeah. So as I was saying, if we’re looking at a Terminator theory, it could explain both the stabbing and the time travel. Someone comes to the past to kill me, gets all knifey. As to why I ended up here, either something went wrong and I managed to hitch a ride with the killer into the future, or they figured they’d bring me with them to make sure that even if I survived, it would still change the timeline like they wanted.”

“But why my apartment? Couldn’t they just drop you at a fucking Outback Steakhouse and be done with it?” 

You pause.

“Outback Steakhouse is still in business? Really?”

“Not the point,” he huffs.

“I don’t know why your apartment. Time travel could be… I don’t know, finicky? Imprecise? It doesn’t seem like technology’s come all that far, so it could still be in early development, I guess. You tell me, you’re the one with all the future knowledge.”

“No time travel tech that I know of. It’s gotta be a quirk. I’ll look through the registry tomorrow, see what sort of time quirks I can dig up. Could lead us to the perp,” he concedes.

“Speaking of tomorrow,” Kirishima starts, “What are we gonna do with her tonight?” …Tonight? You wonder.

Oh. Fuck. Tonight.

“I’d offer up my couch, but I’ve already got someone crashing,” Mina says. 

“Tsu is still recovering from her tongue injury, I don’t wanna bring anyone new into the apartment while she’s still feeling vulnerable,” Uraraka sighs. Surely you heard that wrong. Did she say tongue injury?

“Sero and I just sold our couch, but there’s more than enough room in my bed,” Kaminari says, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Absolutely fucking not.” His face falls, and Bakugou huffs under his breath- his version of a laugh, you think. 

“As you all know, I recently moved back into my parents’ house so I can help my mother during her treatments. We have a spare room, but it might be hard to avoid Endeavor asking questions.”

“Yeah, if we’re trying to keep her under the radar, it’s probably best she and your dad don’t share a roof,” Sero replies.

“That leaves you, Shitty Hair,” Blasty says.

“Actually, it doesn’t. Akari just moved in and I’ve gotta keep her as safe as possible. That means no time-traveling houseguests. Sorry,” he sighs.

Everyone turns to look at Bakugou. Your stomach drops.

“What?” he grunts.

They keep staring until his eyes widen in understanding.

“Oh, hell no.” 

“C’mon, bro, we’ve gotta keep her somewhere. You’ve got a spare room and live alone!”

“Just cause you fuckers can’t think ahead doesn’t mean I gotta suffer for it.”

“Think ahead for this? Are you serious?”

“Think of it this way, Blasty: if someone comes after her or if she ends up being a villain- sorry- then you’re the best equipped to handle it! You’re the highest-ranked pro here,” Mina says excitedly. That seems to get him. 

Wow, the trick to manipulating the self-righteous asshole is feeding his ego? Who could’ve seen that one coming?

“Fine,” he sighs. “Just until we find someone else to pawn her off on.”

 

Todoroki takes a picture of you and collects your fingerprints as promised, and the rest head out shortly after. Bakugou steps out the door with them for a few minutes, and when he returns, he passes through the living room without sparing a glance your way. You watch from the corner of your eye as he wanders down the hall and into a room. 

Left to your own devices, you curl up on the freshly empty couch. You focus on the white noise in the background- the churning of the dishwasher, the clunk of the ice maker in the freezer, the steady thrum of traffic in the city below. The fabric of the couch is still warm from the heroes’ body heat. 

Heroes. It still seems so unreal.

They had worked as a group to explain the basics of quirks and heroes after your big reveal, before you got into the theories of time travel. Quirks were pretty common- the majority of people had them, Kirishima explained- so your first thought had been “alternate dimension”. But they had only been around for a hundred and thirty years or so, it's possible you were still in the same timeline, the same dimension, or whatever. You couldn't rule anything out yet.

Superpowers. The world would have w idespread superpowers, and they were less than 20 years away.

No one your age would have developed quirks, but your kids or grandkids might go to school with kids who had them. Hell, your kids or grandkids might have quirks themselves. Kagami’s, too. 

Here, in 2171, Kagami would be long dead, along with everyone else you knew. Her great-great-grandkids might be roaming around, though.

Bakugou reappears from the hall carrying a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt, both black and neatly folded. He hands them to you with a grunt, which seems to be his preferred method of communication.

“Thanks,” you say, surprised by the kindness.

“Don’t want your bloody scrubs on my sheets.” 

Self-serving kindness, but a form of kindness all the same. You stand up to meet his eyes.

“Still,” you murmur. “Thanks.”

Neither of you says anything for a minute, standing awkwardly, analyzing each other. Then he starts moving and motions for you to follow. You trail behind him down a hallway until he pauses in front of a door.

“Guest room. Bathroom’s attached, towels in the closet. I gotta get up early for work, so try not to make any noise. And if you need anything, don’t.”

“Gotcha.” Another silent moment, except this time, you’re looking at everything except each other. “Thank you. For letting me stay here even though you didn’t want me to. It’s.. better than being tossed into a Holiday Inn or something.”

“What’s that?”

“Seriously? Outback Steakhouse made it into the future, but Holiday Inn didn’t?”

“Oi. Don’t knock the Aussie-tizers.” He says, completely straight-faced.

“…Okay. This is more than I can emotionally handle right now. Goodnight, Bakugou,” you sigh.

“Whatever, Stitches.”

Chapter 4: Lessons in Futurism

 

Chapter Four: Lessons in Futurism

Friday March 8 2171: Reader POV

In every book you’ve ever read, every film you’ve ever watched, there’s a certain trope that occurs whenever a protagonist wakes up the morning after a drastic life change. They yawn, rub their eyes, and have a nice, lazy minute relaxing in their bed. They mumble something along the lines of “Thank god that was all a dream”. And then the haze of dawn lifts and they look around at an unfamiliar space and realize “Oh fuck, that wasn’t a dream after all”.

You’re remiss to discover it’s all bullshit. The immediate gnawing and itching of your stomach and the stiff, angry knocks at the door that startle you awake make the reality of your circumstances very fucking apparent. 

“I’m coming in,” Bakugou says, and it’s clear that the knocks were more of a courtesy than a request.

“Go away. I’m sleeping.” You don’t bother sitting up. You don’t even bother rolling over, honestly. It’s too early to make eye contact with that howling rat of a man. You push your face further into the soft, cool pillow, hoping you can will him not to enter. 

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m coming in, shithead.” Ignoring your mumbled swears of protest, the bastard flings the door open and stomps over to the bed.

He unceremoniously plops a grocery bag down on the back of your head.

You crane your neck back to glare at him. The grocery bag slides off your head in the process. He rolls his eyes, because of course he does. He’s wearing the same costume he was wearing last night, the one with the stupid cargo pants and little metal accessories. You wonder if he slept in it.

“You gotta be kidding me,” you grumble. “I just got stabbed, asshole. The last thing I need is a traumatic brain injury.” 

“Jeez, you’re really gonna milk that for all it’s worth, aren’t ya?” 

You reluctantly drag yourself upright, propping yourself against the headboard. You turn the grocery bag upside down to investigate. A few neon orange medication bottles tumble out onto the comforter.

“Uh, yeah. It’s been less than 24 hours. You bet your ass I’m gonna milk it,” you say. You motion to the bottles. “What’s all this, you rob a pharmacy or something?” He scoffs.

“They’re mine, dumbass. Figured you probably need ‘em after your little sewing project.” You pick up the bottles and read the labels.

Amoxicillin/clavulanate 250mg tablet. Take 1 tablet every 8 hours for 7 days. 21ct.

Bakugou Katsuki. 20-4-2145. One refill before 15-7-2171.

Azithromycin 250mg tablet. First day: Take two tablets at once with food and water. Take one tablet each day following. 6ct.

Bakugou Katsuki. 20-4-2145. Three refills before 6-8-2172.

  Acetaminophen 325mg/Tramadol 37.5mg. Take 2 tablets every 4-6 hours as needed for pain. Do not take more than 8 tablets in a 24 hour period. Do not use for more than 5 consecutive days without talking to your doctor. 50ct.

Bakugou Katsuki. 20-4-2145. No refills.

 

“That’s.. actually nice of you. But don’t you need these? Why are they all still full?” If this idiot is cutting his antibiotic courses short just because he “feels better”, you swear you’re going to fight him right here and now, stab wound be damned.

“I’m the number four pro-hero. Injuries come with the territory. A few years ago, the doc at the agency finally got sick of me calling him after hours, wrote a few basic scripts for me to keep on deck,” he explains.

Ah, giving the rich and famous a personal stock of antibiotics and painkillers with limited supervision. That’s ethical.

Wait.

“Number four?”

“Yeah. In Japan, at least. But I’m still in the top 10 on the continental list, top 50 globally. Should be moving up when the next update comes out, though.”

“Well, how many pro heroes are there? I need more context to figure out how impressive that is.”

“Few thousand in Japan, I guess. Most of them are just extras working as sidekicks, though,” he shrugs.

“Jesus Christ. That’s a lot of spandex.” Bakugou grunts and his face twitches for a second like he's suppressing a laugh.

“Okay, that’s enough questions. If you wanna learn more about pros, read a damn book. I’ve gotta head out for patrol. Two rules: don’t leave the apartment, don’t snoop around. My bedroom and office are off-limits. I’ve got cameras all over, so don’t try shit.”

“You’re leaving me here alone?” You ask in disbelief. “You have cameras? Were you watching me sleep?”

“What? No- don't flatter yourself, idiot. Bedrooms and bathrooms are camera-free, I’m not a fucking pervert. And yeah, I can’t put my whole life on hold to babysit you.”

“But what if someone comes for me?”

“What, like a robot assassin?” He snorts, raising an eyebrow at you.

“…It’s a valid concern.”

“As I said, I got cameras. I’ll get a notification if anything weird happens. But it won’t. Now go back to sleep, you look like you got hit by a train.”

 

You do go back to sleep- but not for long. Less than an hour later, you’re woken up again; the pain in your side being the culprit this time, as opposed to the pain in your ass. 

The rest of the early hours pass in a blur. You trudge into the kitchen, pour a glass of water, take two of the ultracet and one of the amox-clav. You don’t have much of an appetite, but you can’t remember how long it’s been since you’ve put anything in your stomach. You dig around in Blasty’s fridge again- albeit much less frantically than the last time- and force feed yourself some yogurt and an apple.

By the time you finish eating, meds have started to kick in, and the ache subsides a bit. You wander back into the guest room, deciding to finally take a shower.

You had intended to get one in last night, but you’d been too damn exhausted. Bakugou’s probably going to have a screaming fit when he realizes his nice guestroom bedding has been sullied with flakes of dried blood, but what’s he gonna do, sue you? Good fucking luck, it’s not like you legally exist anymore.

You take a long, hard look in the mirror. Bakugou was right. You look like you got hit by a train. Not even just that- you look like the conductor really had it out for you and took another lap around the tracks for the sole purpose of running over your corpse.

The bathroom closet he mentioned last night is meticulously organized. Towels neatly folded, various toiletries organized into clear acrylic bins- it’s all very reminiscent of those psychotically-organized TikTok videos that you regularly find yourself binge-watching as a method of stress relief. He has a surprisingly diverse selection of trial-size shampoos, conditioners, and body washes- all unopened. Little disposable razors and tiny cans of shaving cream, all still wrapped up in their packaging. The closet paints the picture of a well-to-do stay-at-home mom with too much time on her hands; it’s hard to reconcile the image with the constant scowling and swearing of the superhero you’re staying with. You can’t help but wonder if he did all this himself or if he just hired some organization company. Everything is deliberate, considerate. You suppose people can be multi-faceted, but Blasty having some Marie Kondo-style double life seems like a stretch. You turn on the shower.

Okay, me, you think. Enough speculation. It’s my first real day in the future, I have better things to think about.

But the water is purifying, and you fight against the urge to lose yourself in the heat. The metallic bite of the previously dried blood is brought back to life, and it takes longer to scrub off than you would have guessed. The little body wash you selected- coconut water and mimosa flower- gradually covers the stench. You’ve never taken a shower in your life that left you feeling so clean, so new.

You’ve also never been coated in your own blood, so you figure you shouldn’t be too surprised at how good it feels to be, you know, not coated in your own blood. 

Once you’re thoroughly cleaned and thoroughly pruned, you step out into the steamy bathroom and wrap yourself in a large plush robe from the closet. It’s much too large and entirely too soft. The urge to crawl back into bed is nearly overpowering, but you fight it just the same. You’re a woman on a mission; you have no more time for sleep.

You find first aid supplies in a cabinet under the sink. Fortunately, Bakugou stocks much larger bandages than the ones that came in your little travel kit. You coat the wound in actual medical-grade antiseptic, which doesn’t sting nearly as bad as the hand sanitizer you’d poured all over yourself last night (although you may have the Ultracet to thank for that), and dress it. 

You look at yourself in the mirror. You look significantly less dead than you did pre-shower. You’d been in the future for what, maybe sixteen hours now? It was around 9 AM and you’d landed sometime yesterday afternoon. You wondered what was going on back in 2021, sixteen-odd hours after your disappearance. How long did it take for someone to realize you were missing? Did anyone even know you were gone yet?

You feel overcome with the urge to tether yourself to something, to make your presence here known, however brief it may be. Something tangible, external. A handprint pressed into concrete would be ideal. 

You settle for writing your name in the condensation on the mirror. You study it for a minute, satisfied, then tear yourself away from your mild existential time crisis in order to do chores.

It doesn’t take long to figure out where Bakugou hides his washer and dryer, but it does require wandering around and opening several doors.

“Don’t freak out, I’m not snooping. Just doing laundry,” you announce loudly. You aren’t sure if Bakugou’s cameras have audio capabilities or not, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

The apartment is large, large enough for him to have a small dedicated laundry room near the front door. The room is pretty standard, unremarkable for the most part. Washer, dryer, a basic white laundry basket- nothing out of the ordinary there. There’s a garment rack pushed up against the back wall. The garment rack itself is also unremarkable- chrome, simple, streamlined- it’s what’s on the garment rack that intrigues you. Three uniforms, all identical to the one he wore this morning. Further investigation reveals an additional uniform, wet and crumpled up in the washing machine.

Okay, so at least he didn’t sleep in it. You check the garment for a care tag. You don’t find one, and you immediately decide it was probably stupid for you to look for one in the first place. No way he bought this thing off the rack. You hope it’s dryer-friendly.

You load your scrubs and the borrowed pajamas into the washer. It only takes a little guesswork to get it started. You watch the machines clink side by side, your scrubs and his borrowed clothes and his hero suit, and you feel very grateful for how little technology seems to have changed in the last century and a half.

Laundry started. On to the next task.

As much as you hate to say it, Bakugou’s book collection is impressive. That beautiful dark wood shelving unit you spotted yesterday sprawls the length of the wall, the bottom half comprised of cabinetry and the top half comprised of open shelving, and it’s almost entirely full. You only recognize about a third of the titles, but it’s enough for you to piece together his organization system. It’s much like a library- first by category, then by author’s last name.

He seems proud of his collection. You can’t blame him. You expect the cabinets running along the lower half to be storage for other things. Blankets, maybe, or board games (you’re involuntarily subjected to a vision of Bakugou, playing a rousing game of Candy Land with friends, screaming and exploding things after getting stuck on a piece of licorice and losing a turn). There’s a brief moment of surprise when you open the cabinet to find that it’s just more books, which is immediately followed by a moment of hysterical understanding when you figure out why he’s hidden these particular books away. After all, an expansive collection of romance manga doesn’t exactly fit with the roughed-up image he seems so desperate to portray.

Honestly, who the hell is this guy?

You shake your head and shut the doors, resolving to tease him about it later.

You find the section you’re looking for in the rightmost corner of the top shelf. Unfortunately, you have to climb up on a damn chair to reach it.

“You couldn’t have put these closer to the ground? I’m gonna tear my fucking stitches,” you grumble. Once you’re steady, you shoot a bird at the living room behind you- you’d spotted it earlier, hidden in plain sight under a television. You hope the camera sends him a notification about the disturbance. 

In your current state, ascending the chair feels less like ascending a chair and more like ascending Kilimanjaro, but the summit bears great fruit. You return to the safety of solid ground with four titles:

Meta-Abilities and Society: A Comprehensive History

Quirk Esoterica Vol. 1: Emitter-Types

Quirk Esoterica Vol. 2: Transformation-Types

Quirk Esoterica Vol. 3: Mutant-Types

You settle into the couch with your treasures, a pen, and the orange spiral-bound notebook Bakugou lent you last night.

Future or not, you’re back in your element. It’s time to do what you do best.

 

Summer 2019: Reader POV. 

“Psst! Over here!” Kagami stage-whispers while motioning wildly. You grip your textbooks closer against your chest as you awkwardly trot over to meet her.

“You’re gonna get us kicked out, you noisy bitch,” you hiss.

“Oh, don’t be a drama queen. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re like the only ones here. Besides, if we did get kicked out, we could just sneak back in wearing wigs or something,” she giggles.

“…Kagami, this library is full. There’s literally someone studying on the floor right next to you because there are no tables left.” You dump my books on the table- much louder than you intended- and scoot your chair up to get situated across from her.

She looks around, looks at that poor man on the floor, and looks back at you.

“I swear this place was dead a few minutes ago. They must have come in behind you.”

“They definitely didn’t come in behind me. I hope you pay better attention to evidence than you do your surroundings.”

“Do you criticize your patients this much? I hope one of them reports you to the medical board.”

“I don’t have patients yet, so no, dumbass.”

“What happened to do no harm?”

“That’s during practice. I’m not your doctor, so I could probably punch you in the face and Hippocrates would have no qualms.”

“Overruled.” Kagami pulls two thermoses from her backpack; she hands you one. You roll your eyes at her while you screw off the lid. 

“Cheers, bitch.” You clink the thermoses together and sip.

 

You don’t remember which one of you came up with the idea of spiked boba study dates, but it’s been a tradition since your last year of high school. 

“What’s your combination today?” you ask. Kagami always goes for some bizarre new concoction, mostly using fruity liqueurs. You switch yours up occasionally, but lately you’ve been going for a classic coffee or milk latte- with tapioca pearls, obviously- and original Bailey’s.

“Strawberry, lychee pearls, peach schnapps.” 

“Sounds better than the watermelon and Malibu you tried last week.”

“Only marginally. I forgot that peach schnapps is kinda vile.”

The conversation lulls as you fade into the ‘study’ part of your weekly tipsy study dates. There was a time in your earlier years of college when you got very little studying done, especially when you were taking more general education classes and could study the same subjects together. Armed with the best intentions, you would spend five minutes quizzing each other on ancient Greek literature or 19th-century art, and the following ninety minutes quizzing each other on the latest rumors involving mutual acquaintances.

Education has gotten much more intense this year for both of you. Kagami finished her bachelor's degree and has moved into her first year of law school, and you’ve entered the fifth year of your MD program- the year where you move on from undergraduate-level preparatory classes and begin studying actual medicine. So you don’t gossip much anymore, at least not under the guise of studying as you used to. Kagami reads over precedent cases (today she’s looking at something from a few decades ago, dealing with a murder and international tourist, apparently) while you flood my brain with some obscure group of diseases and their differentials (the urea cycle and affiliated disorders, treatment of hyperammonemia; distinguishing between the organic acidemias, how the cases may present in adulthood versus infancy).

“Hey, quick question- if someone killed and dismembered you, but they lived overseas, would you rather they be tried here in Japan and receive a life imprisonment, or be extradited and tried in their home country, where the standard punishment for murder and desecration of a corpse is public beheading but there’s a higher chance some of the evidence could be lost in translation and they’d get off scot-free?” Kagami asks, abruptly interrupting the silence. You think about it for a minute.

“Tried here,” you say. “I don’t wanna send my killer back out into civilization where they could potentially kill again.”

“Really? I think I’d take the risk and let their own country deal with them.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, first, life imprisonment can get expensive. Food, medical care, staffing- unless our government could hypothetically arrange something with their government, it would all presumably fall on our taxpayers. Second, and more importantly, I want vengeance.”

“Ah. That’s… fair, I guess.” The two of you go quiet again as you resume your sipping and studying. You’re used to running hypotheticals like this. A few paragraphs later, you come up with your own.

“If you had a disorder that causes your body to build up ammonia whenever you eat more than a minimum daily amount of protein, would you rather it be a severe case and get diagnosed as an infant, but never know the joy of a cheeseburger, or a milder case that only really acts up when you’re sick, and thus not figure it out until you’re an adult?”

“That depends, what happens when ammonia builds up in your body?”

“Confusion, lethargy, tremors, seizures. Coma and death if it’s high enough.”

“You’re telling me there are people out there who can die from eating meat.”

“I mean, it’s a lot more complex than that, but I guess so.”

“But the milder cases probably won’t die from eating a cheeseburger?”

“If they get sick or eat a lot of them in one sitting, maybe. But probably not from just one or two every now and then.” Kagami contemplates for a minute, then resolutely closes her laptop. She looks at you, determined and serious.

“The mild one. I want a burger.”

“But if you're eating them regularly, you could end up with all kinds of annoying symptoms from mild hyperammonemia. And by the time it's bad enough that you finally get a diagnosis, you could have permanent brain damage,” you tell her.

“I don’t care. I’m basically brain-damaged anyway. Next question, motherfucker.”

 

 

2171: Reader POV

As you find yourself nearing the end of Meta-Abilities and Society, you realize that you are absolutely fucking furious.

You were dragged headfirst out of the comfort of your mother’s womb and into the terrible reality of life in 1998. In 2037- less than forty years later- a luminescent baby was born with no clear cause. In the years that followed, more and more children were born with meta-abilities. 

If you had been born not even fifty damn years later, you could’ve had superpowers.

This is bullshit.

But as bitter as you are, you can’t help but marvel (pun intended) at everything that’s happened in the last 150 years. It doesn’t surprise you that those wielding quirks are feared and discriminated against at first. It’s depressingly consistent with the version of the world you’ve spent the last 23 years of your life in. The existence of supervillains and power-wielding terrorist organizations doesn’t surprise you either- some use power for good, others use power for evil. It’s the way things have always been, and likely always will be.

What does surprise you is a page missing from the penultimate chapter. The narrative jumps from the spring of 2161, when the public is shocked to learn that Japan’s biggest hero has begun teaching at a school dedicated to heroics, to the middle of some quirk-related war in 2162.  At first, you think it’s some sort of printing defect, but as you look closer at the seam between the pages, you can see a thin strip of paper that’s been trimmed down as short as it can be, barely extending past the binding. It’s not a defect- this page was removed intentionally.

You pull your eyes from the book and glance around the apartment, as if you’re going to find some sort of explanation hidden within Bakugou’s home decor.

You look back down at the book and scan the page following the absent one. It covers the Paranormal Liberation War, the involvement of students in the hero course at the school All Might was teaching at, and debates the ethics of dragging young teenagers into the violence. But the hero himself is strangely absent from the battle. You flip through the rest of the pages. He’s only mentioned once more in the whole chapter, after the next war ends. Following the defeat of All For One (some big evil guy), the already suspicious public demanded that Deku reveal the true nature of his quirk. A press conference was held where Deku, accompanied by homeroom teacher Aizawa Shota and childhood friend Bakugou Katsuki, explained how his quirk One For All originated with AFO’s brother and was passed down through several generations of heroes, and eventually transferred to Deku from All Might himself. 

You reread the passage. His childhood friend… Bakugou Katsuki. 

Alright, didn’t see that one coming.

You close the book and take a deep breath. 

Now’s probably a good time for a sandwich.

 

Chapter 5: Let's Get This Bread

Notes:

I made it a whopping four chapters before going AWOL for a month lmao. I had a really bad pain week and then I went to Alaska for like 18 days and I drastically overestimated how much I would be able to write on the plane.
Anyway, here's chapter five. Should be back to our regular weekly-ish schedule now.

Chapter Five: Let's Get This Bread

Friday March 8 2171: Katsuki POV

Katsuki can’t fucking focus.

Normally when he’s on patrol, he’s just hoping some bastard tries something stupid. Today though? It’s a damn good thing the streets were quiet. Yeah, he was there physically, but he certainly wasn’t there mentally. He hardly slept last night either.

It’s all your fault. Shitty little time traveler.

He never got a great look at your face last night. It was kinda scrunched up the whole time, your eye makeup was all smeared, and there was a bit of blood you somehow accidentally transferred from your stomach to your forehead. You were was a goddamn mess.

He knew you didn’t shower- he would’ve heard it running- but he figures you found some makeup wipes or something. Your face was a little puffy this morning, a little red around the eyes, a few indents on your cheek from where it had been pressed against the pillow. You were all twisted up in the sheets, wearing that dumb skull shirt that he hadn’t fit in since high school. 

It startled him, seeing you like that. He didn’t think you were gonna be fucking pretty.

In a way, it startled him to see you at all. When he woke up this morning, he’d half-convinced himself the whole thing had been some stress-induced fever dream. But then he opened the guest room door, and there you were, arms caked in dried blood and snoring like a demon. Like an angel.

He hates it. He hates you. He can’t fucking focus.

He’s reaching for the handle to open the door to the agency when it abruptly swings inward.

“Hiya, boss! How was patrol?”

“Jesus, kid. Were you standing at the door waiting for me to come back?”

“Yes.”

The doorman services are provided by Nameless Intern #1, despite the many times Katsuki’s told him that it isn’t part of the job description. He’s a good kid, eager to please, does what he’s told. Katsuki’s gotta drill that out of him somehow.

“Is there anything we can do to make your day easier, Mr. Ground Zero?” He says.

“There’s no we . Don’t volunteer me for shit without my consent, asshole,” Nameless Intern #2 says. This one’s been a bit easier for him to work with.

Technically, they’re Ei’s interns. They go on patrol with him, and he does most of their general coaching. But they’ve both got emitter quirks, so Katsuki gives them a fair amount of tips, helps them with workouts and whatnot. In return, #1 offers to help with anything he can, and #2 insults #1 for Katsuki’s entertainment. He normally doesn’t take them up on their offers to help, but-

“Actually, yeah. Has Ei shown you how to use the databases yet?” They nod, eyes wide. It’s clear that neither of them expected him to take them up on the offer.

“Good. I want everything you can find about people with time quirks. Names, physical descriptions, and any limitations. It’s for a case that involves someone being sent 150 years into the future, so bring me a few theories on how that could happen. I’ve gotta take a shower and go to a meeting. I want a detailed report by the time I’m done.” 

Katsuki doesn’t stick around to see if they agree to it or not. He’s a man on a mission; he’s got things to do.

The agency locker room is basically like that of a gym, with one major difference. Instead of curtains or half-walls or those latching doors with giant gaps at the hinges, their showers have real ass doors. They’re individual stalls with shiny black floor-to-ceiling doors, so you don’t have to worry about some random dickwad looking through the gaps to try and catch you scrubbing your ass. If you know how to close the ceiling vents- which Katsuki does, obviously- you can trap the steam. It’s like a tiny private sauna, and it’s also part of why Katsuki’s skin is so clear despite finding himself covered in dirt and ash on a near-daily basis. 

This was supposed to be a quick shower, but after his skin is scrubbed clean, face washed, hair shampooed and leave-in conditioner is applied, he finds himself reaching up to close off that vent.

It doesn’t take long for the steam to build up. He’s gonna be late for that meeting, but Gunhead can kiss his ass. He needs a minute to relax. He needs a minute to think. 

This is your fault. 

 

ততততত

 

Katsuki was ultimately late for the meeting, and when Gunhead complained, he did indeed tell the hero to kiss his ass. It wasn’t anything important anyway; cross-agency PR stunts or some bullshit like that. He wasn’t really paying attention. He was too busy thinking about something else. 

Someone else.

 Still.

He left a few minutes before the meeting ended and stomped back to his office. This is when he logs any incidents from his daily patrol.

Nothing to report. There. Done.

No use starting anything yet, those little brats should be barging in any minute now-

“We’ve got it, boss!” Intern #1 announces, entering his office without even a knock. 

Hah. Called it.

“He isn’t our boss,” #2 murmurs as she trails behind him.

“He’s my boss!” #1 says, always eager to please.

“Everyone’s your boss. You’re pretty easy to manipulate,” she says.

The ever-chipper Intern #1 ignores her entirely and approaches Katsuki’s desk with a stack of papers. 

“So what’d you find?” He asks them.

“There are a few time-related quirks in Japan, about a dozen or so worldwide. However, none of them are strong enough to jump 150 years into the past, much less bring someone that far forward,” the kid says.

“According to the registry, at least,” Intern #2 chimes in. “It would be foolish to ignore the possibility that someone hid the extent of their capabilities.”

“Now you’re thinking like a pro. Tell me more about these quirks.”

Intern #1 peels a sheet out of the stack and hands it to him. 

“Here’s our most capable subject. Nakano Susumu, age 32. His quirk allows him to travel up to 75 years into the past or future, and he can transport up to two and a half people with him as long as they maintain skin-to-skin contact.”

“Two and a half?”

“He can successfully travel with two adults and one child under the age of 12. A witness once recounted Nakano attempting to travel with three adults. The third adult came back bisected.”

“Jesus.”

“Nakano wouldn’t be able to travel 150 years on his own, but I was thinking he could possibly have traveled as far as he could and recruited another time traveler from that era to finish the second leg of the trip. Like a relay race.”

Like a relay race, huh?

“Did you look into his family?”

“His mother has the ability to freeze time. His father’s identity is unknown. Maternal grandparents were quirkless.”

“Look into past generations of time quirk users. See if you can find someone that would help flesh out your theory. Who are the other candidates?”

“Lisa Thomas-Hampton, age 55. American. Her quirk gives her the ability to bring specific objects from the past into the present. It doesn’t appear to work on recently created objects- mostly antiques and artifacts. She works as a museum curator.”

“Can she use it on people?”

“Kind of? There’s record of her attempting to bring a few historical figures into the present, but they were deceased when they arrived. It’s unknown whether they died as a result of the time travel or if she simply brought the corpse into the future instead of the living person.”

Katsuki sighs. Why are all these quirks so violent?

“Those are the only two that seem plausible,” Intern #1 says, picking up where his counterpart left off.  “All of the other quirks are in this file, but they’re mostly related to altering the speed of time rather than moving through it.”

“Leave it on the desk. Good work, dweebs. Now get lost and go find your real boss.”

“Yessir!”

“Whatever.”

 

ততততত

 

He gets maybe half an hour of peace before another intruder comes barging into his office. 

Shoto. He shouldn’t be surprised that he didn’t knock. Bastard never learned any manners.

“I have news about our… new friend,” Shoto says carefully.

“And?”

“Well, I suppose it isn’t news, exactly. More so a lack of news.”

“Spit it out, IcyHot.”

“Nothing came up in the databases. Fingerprints and facial recognition were both completely negative. I also cross-referenced with the Japanese Missing Persons Database, and there isn’t anyone on there that even remotely matches her description.”

Fucking great. 

“So she really is a damn time traveler,” Katsuki groans, running a hand through his hair in frustration. 

“It seems so. We should check the registry to look for relevant quirks.”

“Already did,” Katsuki says, tossing the report at Shoto. He catches it and gives him what might have been a glare if his face were a bit more expressive. Shoto cards through the report and frowns.

“There’s nothing here that could explain this. At least not without some fairly wild assumptions.”

“Yeah. Nakano looks good for it, but our main theory is contingent on finding another time traveler from the past that he could’ve teamed up with.”

“Our theory?” He asks, clearly amused.

“Ei’s shitty interns aren’t so shitty after all. They don’t know any specifics; I just sent them looking for time quirks. Said to keep an eye out for ways a quirk could move someone 150 years. Hence the book report.”

“And one of them came up with this conspiring time travelers theory?”

“Yeah, the girl. Good kid.”

“She’s incredibly rude.”

“Like I said. Good kid.”

“Still, even if she’s right and Nakano did team up with someone to bring our, ahem, guest forward in time, that doesn’t give us a motive.”

“I don’t think we’re gonna figure out the why until we figure out the how.”

“Identify the means, identify the miscreant, identify the motive?” Shoto asks, straight-faced as always.

“Was the alliteration really necessary?” Katsuki runs a hand down his face. “Fucking hell. Sure. Means, miscreant, motive.”

Shoto nods solemnly and without a word the fucker turns around and paces back out of the office.

Jesus.

 

 

2171: Reader POV

 

You pace around Bakugou’s kitchen.

“Okay, cool,” you say to yourself. “As if this whole thing wasn’t overwhelming enough, my new roommate is besties with the top pro hero.” You open the refrigerator and pull out a tomato. “And based on that missing page, he’s probably involved with whatever took that All Might guy out of the game.” You pull out a head of lettuce. “That’s great.” Turkey, cheese. “Real great.” Mayonnaise. “Super neat.” Mustard.

The dryer chirps at you. You’re tempted to just make the sandwich and eat it in your bathrobe, but Bakugou’s got cameras all over and you’ve nearly flashed them like four times now. A bitch needs some underwear.

You leave the ingredients on the counter and hobble into the laundry room, grab the clothes, and hobble back into the bedroom. You’re still achey as shit, but the trek is much easier than it was this morning. Robe off, panties on, black scrub pants pulled up and tied- ready to party. You forgo the scrub top and put the loaner tee back on. The baggy t-shirt was much more comfortable than your form-fitting scrub top, and you justify it by reasoning that the loose fabric won’t irritate the wound as much.

Okay, side-quest complete. Back to the sandwich.

Another wobbly journey down and you’re back in the kitchen, digging through Bakugou’s fridge. You’ve got everything else you need, all that’s missing is the bread. But it just… isn’t there.

Maybe he keeps it with the dry goods? You rifle through the cabinets, but it isn’t hiding there, either. You give the kitchen another once-over in case you missed a bread box or a pantry somehow, but you’re shit out of luck.

There’s absolutely no bread. You glance back at that big window. 

This is a big city. There’s gotta be a konbini you can hobble to, right?

 

 

2171: Katsuki POV

 

Katsuki’s phone chirps. It’s a specific tone, and his stomach drops the moment he recognizes it. He pulls it out and checks the notification.

Possible Security Breach: Camera 4 Obstructed.

Fuuuuuuuuck.

He opens the app and opens the feed for Camera 4.

You-

You devious fucking bitch. You conniving little asshole.

Instead of the usual view of his living room, all he can see is a handwritten sign. It’s written on a piece of lined notebook paper, folded in half and propped up in front of the lens, far enough that he can read it but still close enough for it to obscure everything else and trigger the alarm.

 

Ur out of bread. Going to store. Be back in 10 min. P.S don’t piss yourself.

 

 

2171: Reader POV

You slide a bag of white bread across the counter.

 “Just this?” the cashier asks. 

“Yes please.” You give a polite smile as you fish your wallet out of your bottomless purse. You realize belatedly that you probably should’ve left the bag at home and just brought the wallet. It was a lot to lug around in your condition.

“That’ll be 4,000 yen. Cash or card?” 

Four thousand yen? What the fuck?

Oh. Right. Inflation is a thing.

“Um-” You definitely don’t have 4,000 yen in cash on you right now- “Card, I guess.” You pull your credit card out and tap it to the machine. It gives a devastating honk . 

“Uh, can you try that again?” The cashier mumbles. You tap it again. Honk , it mocks. The little screen flashes red. Card Declined. The cashier taps a few things and frowns. “Do you have another form of payment you can try? The machine must be broken. It says your card expired like 150 years ago. That’s so weird, it’s been working perfectly all day.”

Shit. You definitely should’ve seen that one coming.

“Yeah, that’s very, um, weird. Definitely no idea why it would say that.” Great response. Solid. Inconspicuous.

You wonder if it's too late to try and stuff the bread in your purse and make a run for it.

“Here, I gotcha.” The man in line behind me snakes his arm around you to hand the cashier a 5,000 yen bill. You blanche.

“Oh, you don’t have to-” you start, but he doesn’t let you finish. 

“I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have some sense of obligation guilting me into buying you shit, got it? It’s a loaf of bread. Besides, you’re holding up the line.” The man’s face is obscured by a black fabric mask- very retro of him, you think- but you’ve gotten good at reading facial expressions based on eyes alone. His eyes are blue, almost abrasively so, and they seem to say just shut up and don’t fight me on this.

“I- Thanks?” you offer.

The man in the mask scoffs and takes the bag and the receipt from the cashier. He drops the receipt inside- as if you’ll find yourself needing to return a loaf of fucking bread- and passes it to you.

“Don’t mention it,” he mutters, and he turns back to the register to begin his own transaction. 

You stand there awkwardly for a second, unsure of the etiquette for leaving a store after a stranger buys your food. Should you wait? Hold the door? Give him a smooch? Your brain flies with possible methods of repayment, but he doesn’t spare you another glance, so you figure that’s your cue to leave.

 You’ve barely managed to hobble more than a few yards back into the daylight when Bakugou comes jogging around the corner, looking significantly more disgruntled than usual.

“HOW THE FUCK DARE YOU!!” He shouts. A few passersby turn to see what all the racket is about. You look around, acting as if you’re not the one he’s yelling at. Probably best not to draw extra attention to yourself. The man who paid for your bread slinks out of the store behind you and walks off in the other direction, paying no attention to Bakugou’s outburst. 

He reaches you in a huff and stands in front of you, glowering. He folds his arms and takes a wide stance that you figure is supposed to be intimidating.  God, what a drama queen.

“I said I’d be back in ten. You could’ve at least taken my word and waited that long before coming to fetch me,” you tell him. His scowl deepens, which you previously would not have thought possible.

“I told you not to leave the apartment. You agreed not to leave the apartment.” He speaks through gritted teeth. You shrug.

“Yeah, but then I found out you didn’t have bread.” You lift the bag in the air like a showgirl as if to prove your innocence. 

“I can’t believe you just risked your life for…” He frowns. “ What are you making anyway? A fucking sandwich or something?” You nod. He runs his hand down his face and takes a deep breath. “Come on. I’m taking you back to the apartment.”

“Fine by me. I got what I came for.” You jiggle the bag at him. Bakugou scoffs and wraps a gloved hand around your upper arm, pulling you behind him like you’re a child on the way to time-out.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” you ask him. 

“I am. Was.” He leads you further down the street toward the apartment.

“And you left on my account? Jeez, I hope there isn’t some innocent person out getting villained right now.”

“Cram it, Stitches,” he warns.

“What’s your hero name again? Ground Zero, right?”

He grunts something akin to ‘yes’, and you put on your best damsel-in-distress voice.

“Oh no, I’m being robbed at quirk-point! If only there were a big, strong, angry hero here to save me!” He glares over as you clear your throat and switch to your best gruff, masculine Bakugou voice. “Sorry, innocent lady, I’m too busy escorting a sandwich enjoyer from one side of the street to the other. Looks like you’re gonna have to handle this one on your own!”

He frowns at you. You giggle at your own antics.

“…I could kill you in your sleep, you know that?” He says. He clearly doesn’t mean it.

“And to think, I was this close to playing nice and making you a sandwich. More for me, I guess.”

“I don’t want your damn sandwich,” he grumbles, ushering you through the door to his apartment building. He nods to the security guard and drags you behind the small group shuffling into the elevator.

“Well my damn sandwich doesn’t want you either,” you say as you hobble in to join the crowd.

He doesn’t respond to that one. Instead he focuses on twisting and turning to fit his big ass arm grenades in the cramped space without blowing anybody up in the process. An old man carrying a small cat eyes the grenade gauntlets wearily.

“How are you today, Mr. Ground Zero?” He asks.

“Peachy.” 

The old man does not make a further attempt at conversation.

The crowd thins as the building’s other residents step off onto their respective floors, and before you know it, you and Blondie are alone. Again.

“I’m serious,” he says, breaking the silence. “Don’t go out by yourself.” You roll your eyes.

“I hardly went out at all. It was across the street and in broad daylight,” you reason. He groans.

“Look, I know it seems innocuous, but there are bad guys lurking everywhere. Trust me on this. I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you are,” he insists. You sigh.

“Fine. Just until we figure out if anyone’s actually after me.”

“Alright. Deal.”

The elevator chimes and sets you free at the top floor. It’s a long hallway, but there’s only one door.

The door has two locks that can be accessed from the outside, in addition to an interior deadbolt. One of the outside locks is opened with a key. The other is opened with a fingerprint scan. It’s a very high-tech security system.

You had the foresight to bypass it with a roll of duct tape.

Bakugou looks at his door, looks at the key in his hand, and looks at the door again. 

The latches were heavy. You had to use a lot of layers to keep them in place; otherwise, they just kept popping back out through the tape. The latches were determined little things. Strong springs.

The end result was not very subtle.

He nudges the door with his toe and it swings inward. He follows it, stopping to peel off the layers of duct tape as he goes. Some of the paint peels off with it. He glares at you. You decide to play nice.

“If you do actually want a sandwich, I can make an extra,” you offer.

A stray chip of paint audibly flakes off the door, eager for freedom. The two of you watch it flutter to the ground. 

You kick it back into the hallway.

“I think I’m good,” he says. “I’ve gotta head back anyway. Just… stay out of trouble while I’m gone, will you?”

You’re tempted to ask if that means you can resume your trouble once he returns, but you think better of it.

With that, Blondie walks back out into the hallway. The door closes. The locks click. The latches sigh in relief.

Well, looks like it’s just you and your bread.

You never bothered putting away the ingredients from your initial attempt, so you get right to work.

As you’re pulling the loaf out of the gray plastic shopping bag, the receipt flutters down and lands in your lettuce. 

Excellent. 

You pick it out and go to throw it away when something about it catches your eye. On the receipt, stuck on top of the watermark print bearing the name of the konbini, is a sticker. It’s rectangular, roughly the size of a return address label. It’s got a phone number followed by a little note, all typed out.

Find me again when you’re ready.

-T. 

Chapter 6: Prison for One, Dinner for Two

Summary:

Whoops! Went like 4 months without updating. I don't have any fun crazy "ao3 writer lives insane life" excuses, I just suck a little and I had some writer's block that I didn't wanna deal with.
Enjoy the chap! Hopefully the next one will be out sooner than 4 months from now.

Chapter Six: Prison for One, Dinner for Two

November 2164 (Eight months after UA graduation): Katsuki POV

 

The road to Tartarus is a long one. Five kilometers, to be exact. It’s surrounded by an ocean- one that somehow seems to know who it’s keeping in and what it’s keeping out. The waves never rest. From the bridge’s entrance on the mainland, you can’t even see the prison itself. It’s obscured by a permanent cloud of fog. It’s a warning in its own right; the type of ominous phenomenon that no sane person would willingly approach.

And once the guards have checked his ID and his car has been examined for contraband, Bakugou Katsuki accelerates towards it.

It’s a desolate drive. Five kilometers of blue and gray and black; the utilitarian bridge and the sea that caresses it. It’s a drive that Katsuki spends in silence. 

He hasn’t seen her since the final battle. As he gets closer to Tartarus, the scar on his chest feels tighter. A bolt of pain shoots down his arm, the partially-dead nerves lighting up to tell him this is a bad, bad, bad idea. 

“Fuck off,” he tells them. 

He parks his car, pulling into one of the four spots designated for pro-heroes, and it takes him a minute to convince his shitty arm to open the door.

“Ground Zero,” the warden calls. “Glad you finally made it.” He’s with a woman Katsuki hasn’t seen before. Her hair’s slicked back, glasses perched on the tip of her nose. White coat, pantsuit, practical heels. Pen tucked behind her ear, clipboard in hand. Katsuki may not have seen this specific woman before, but he’s seen enough like her to know exactly who she is: a goddamned psychiatrist.

“Yeah, yeah, save the pleasantries for someone who cares. Let’s get on with it,” He grumbles. The warden’s brow furrows, used to the utmost respect, but the psychiatrist is unfazed. He wouldn’t expect her to be; not with her clientele. She glances at him, nods, and turns to lead the way. She doesn’t bother turning around to make sure he’s following her.

“You'll be the first of your former classmates to see the new wing. I’m a bit disappointed it’s taken this long for one of you to visit,” she says.

“Yeah, well, I prefer to spend my time dealing with the criminals that haven’t been caught yet.” The warden stiffens; the psych chuckles. 

“As you should. Even though it’s a bit belated, I’m honored to finally meet one of you. If it weren’t for your classmates’ role in the wars and the activism that followed, the criminal rehabilitation wing would never have been built.”

“Hate to break it to ya, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. I didn’t activate shit.” He walks along behind her, studying the ground. He can’t figure out what to do with his hands. He cracks a few knuckles. He curls them into fists and uncurls them, then repeats it. He settles for sticking them in his pockets.

“Ground Zero, sir, I’m well aware that you opposed the project during its conception,” the psychiatrist says. “But none of the students who lobbied so heavily for the reform have come by to see the fruit of their efforts. Not Deku, not Uravity, not even Tailman. I find it quite telling that you’re the first.” 

Katsuki’s jaw tightens. He feels his palms heating up against his will.

“It’s not a social visit, and I’m not here for you to psychoanalyze me.” He says. He tries, as subtly as possible, to wipe the sweat off on the inside of his pockets. 

“Oh, trust me, I’m aware of that too,” she says. For the first time since the conversation began, she stops walking and turns around. She smiles gently,  tilting her chin down so that she can peek up at him over the rim of her glasses. “She’s very excited to see you.”

ততততত

 

The Tartarus Criminal Rehabilitation Unit was designed for (you guessed it) criminals who can be rehabilitated. 

Not everyone can. Most people who end up in Tartarus are too far gone to be saved. But, as Deku vehemently argued, not all criminals end up criminals because they want to be bad. Some people are just misunderstood, easy to manipulate, willing to sprint down the wrong path as long as it leads them to a sense of belonging. 

Those are the criminals that, theoretically, can be rehabilitated.

Toga Himiko is one of them.

The shrink leads the group to her, winding through a maze of hallways and pointing out various aspects of the new wing. They pass by a fitness center, a library, a music therapy room- even a small courtyard that she refers to as a ‘meditation garden’. Katsuki is about to voice concern over the potential for escape, but he can only get a syllable out before The Shrink interrupts him.

“There’s actually a glass roof over the courtyard. Quirk-proof and bullet-proof.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “We take security just as seriously as you do, Ground Zero. Just because it’s a rehabilitation wing doesn’t mean we ignore the potential threat our patients pose to the general public.”

She goes into detail about the daily programming- group and individual therapy every morning with a rotating lineup of purposeful activities, classes in the afternoons. Breakfast is served buffet-style. For lunch and dinner, the patients take turns cooking well-balanced meals for the rest of the group as part of a life skills development class; all under the strict supervision of a registered dietitian, of course. 

“In addition to life skills development, another key aspect of our programming is career skills development. One of the strongest predictors of parolees reoffending is whether or not they are gainfully employed. Our Career Skills Lab allows our patients to hone preexisting skills as well as gain new ones.”

“What type of skills do they learn?” Katsuki asks.

“There are general skills such as English for Business, resume and job interview techniques, basic computing, and time management strategies. We also have more career-specific skill training available. We’ve found that most of our patients thrive in somewhat ‘left-brained’ career paths such as IT, mechanical repair, plumbing, and HVAC. We have several designated computers available with programming courses and practice projects as well as a simulation area where they can learn how to repair car engines, fix a broken sink, or install an air conditioner.” She opens the door to a room and gestures for Katsuki to peek inside. A variety of appliances are scattered inside in various states of disassembly. A bookshelf of thick manufacturer’s manuals runs along the wall. There’s a whiteboard with half a lesson on it, as if someone had started erasing it but decided against it.

Katsuki feels compelled to ask why they do well in those paths specifically, and the psychiatrist smiles, as if she already knew it was coming. She removes her glasses, folds them up, and hangs them from the collar of her blouse.

“Almost all of our patients’ criminal backgrounds involved working under a leader who gave them instructions. We don’t have many masterminds that make it into the rehabilitation ward.  The majority of our patients come from similar psychological backgrounds as well.  They tend to be of average or above-average intelligence, but often lack the ability to self-direct or act on long-term goals. They thrive in environments where they have a clear-cut task with a clear-cut goal, such as fixing a broken refrigerator or installing new operating systems on a company’s computers. They are given a specific task to complete by their supervisors, one where they understand where they are beginning and can easily visualize what the end result will look like. Fields such as management, communications, or sales tend to be more difficult- there may be long-term goals or open-ended projects that require an individual to develop their own course of action and determine what needs to be done each day to meet said goal. This is much more difficult and frustrating for most of our patients.”

Huh. It makes sense, but Katsuki finds it hard to imagine Toga getting a sense of fulfillment from installing an air conditioner.

“Is that what she’s been learning? Computers and cars and stuff?” He asks. The shrink chuckles.

“Miss Himiko is one of our exceptions, actually. She’s taken great advantage of our continuing education program so far. She’s earned a high school equivalency diploma and recently began university. She hasn’t selected a specific major yet, but she reads quite a bit and enjoys interacting with others. I imagine she’ll go into a field involving literature or customer service,” she says.

“Putting her in a job where she’s around a lot of civilians seems like a bad idea.”

“Perhaps previously that would’ve been the case, but I think you’ll find she’s made great progress in her time with us. In fact, this is nearly the end of the tour anyway. Shall we skip the rest and go on to see her?”

ততততত

Katsuki stops in the doorway. Toga is curled up at the corner of a dark brown couch in the visitation room. A laptop is precariously balanced atop her knees to get it near eye level, and she has a spiral-bound notebook resting on the wide arm of the couch. She scribbles at it furiously.

The Shrink nudges at his back, urging him into the visitation room. His stumble, however brief, draws Toga’s attention. 

“Katsuki,” she says softly.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine, then. Bakugou.”

“I’m here on business. It’s Ground Zero.”

“Ugh. Fine. How have you been, Ground Zero?” She teases, closing her laptop and setting her schoolwork atop a nearby table. “Come sit.”

He eyes the shrink in question. The last time he saw Toga Himiko, she was a pretty dangerous fucker to let within arm’s reach. The shrink gives him a soft smile and nods him forward.

“Don’t worry, I won’t bite,” Toga says. She opens her mouth and points at her teeth. “See? I got my fangs filed down.”

“Sounds painful.” Katsuki hazards a few steps toward her.

“It was. But I wanted them gone. They served their purpose when I was younger, but I have no use for them anymore.”

“They teach you that in therapy?” 

“Something like that,” she giggles. It’s harmless, but a shiver runs through him nonetheless.

“Alright, enough small talk. What do you know about Dabi’s escape?”

Like he said, he was here on business.

Two weeks ago, sometime between the serving of breakfast and lunch, Todoroki Touya disappeared from a solitary confinement cell in the most heavily guarded block of Tartarus. He had been in solitary for four days after threatening a guard. There are no cameras in the confinement cell- some bullshit about privacy and human rights- and none of the hallway cameras caught anything either. The only potential exit is a single air duct, but it’s too high for him to reach and too narrow for him to fit through.

It was like the fucker disappeared into thin air. Katsuki and the other heroes assigned to the case have almost zero leads, save for one cryptic piece of mail intercepted on its way into the Tartarus Criminal Rehabilitation Center. Addressed to one Toga Himiko, the letter was a rambling mess of nonsensical fluff. Anyone with half a brain cell could recognize it as some sort of code, especially given the context. There was no return address. The author, upon signing off, referred to themselves as Big Brother.

“Next to nothing,” Toga says. “I’ve heard rumors, but no one’s been willing to answer my questions. You’re actually the first person to confirm it for me.”

“Bullshit. He wrote you a letter,” he says. She raises her eyebrows at him.

“One I didn’t receive, apparently. I’m in a rehabilitative prison, Bakugou. My only contact with the outside world is through this,” she holds up her laptop, “and it’s for school. I’m not even allowed to submit assignments or email my professors without someone checking them for hidden messages first.”

It’s a valid point, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t find a way around it.

“I don’t-” Katsuki starts, but she cuts him off.

“If I did know something, I would have reported it as soon as I could. I know this might be hard for you to believe, but I’m getting better. I like getting better, I like who I am now. For the first time in my life, I care about things other than violence! I can see a future for myself outside of just… blood! I wouldn’t jeopardize that progress for anything, much less someone I committed crimes with for like a year back when I was a teenager.”

Katsuki stays quiet. It’s a pretty basic interrogation tactic- sometimes silence will make a perp feel uneasy. They feel compelled to fill it. Toga smiles softly to herself. 

“Enough about that. How is everyone? How’s Izuku?” She asks softly. Katsuki grits his teeth.

“He’s fine."

“And Ochaco?” 

“She’s fine too.”

There’s another minute of silence. Toga stares at him, eyes narrowing as she studies him. He stares at the wall behind her. 

“You’re not, though,” she says quietly. 

“Hah?”

“Everyone else is fine. But you’re not fine, are you, Bakugou?” He looks down at her. Her eyes are wide and gentle, her face is open. It almost looks like pity.

“That’s bullshit,” he scoffs. “I’m great. More than great. I’m fucking fantastic, actually. I graduated less than a year ago and I’m already in the Top 20.”

Toga narrows her eyes.

“So? Your stats are fantastic. But you’re not your stats, and you don’t seem fantastic. There are dark circles under your eyes. Your skin looks dull and your hair looks flat, at least relatively speaking. You’ve been in this room for less than ten minutes and you’ve wiped your hands on your pants three times,” she says. His chest feels tighter. The nerves on his arm fire up again. “I don’t think you’re fine.” 

“You’re wrong,” he says.

“Maybe I am.”

“You are.” It’s a period, a finality. Toga looks at him again but doesn’t argue it further. She just picks up her pen and goes back to her schoolwork. At that point, it’s clear to Katsuki that he won’t be getting any more information out of her. He turns to leave.

“I’ll see you next time, Ground Zero,” she calls.

He pauses in the doorway. He doesn’t turn back.

“There won’t be a next time, Toga.”

 

Friday March 8 2171: Reader POV

You’re curled up on Bakugou’s couch and almost halfway through the first volume of Quirk Esoterica when something grabs your shoulder.

It’s happening. Whoever it was that sent you here is back to finish the job. 

But you’re not going down without a fight. 

Blinded by adrenaline, blinded by instinct, you jump up, spin towards the intruder, and immediately start whacking them with the textbook. 

“TRY IT, MOTHERFUCKER,” you shout, emphasizing the words with extra whacks.

“What the- ow- stop it, jackass!” The intruder grunts, shielding their face with their arms. 

“You can’t!” whack “Kill me!” whack “ If I!” whack “Kill you first!” whackwhackwhack

The attacker, however, takes advantage of your weakened state, sneakily jabbing at your abdomen. They manage to poke you right next to the stab wound. You drop the book and double over. 

Your face twists up in agony. You close your eyes, trying to breathe through the pain.

“I’m not gonna kill you, fucking idiot,” the intruder says. “That being said, I’m kinda tempted now. You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?” Still doubled over, you slowly open your eyes and realize you’re face to face (face to toe?) with a pair of black and orange combat boots. 

You recognize those boots.

Those belong to-

Oh.

Oops.

“…Sorry?” You offer, looking up at him. Bakugou scoffs and rolls his eyes, but reaches a hand down and helps you right yourself anyway. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Blondie looks significantly grimier than the last time you saw him. One of the sleeves of his turtleneck has been ripped off at the elbow, and there’s a small angry gash on his left cheekbone- it's not quite deep enough to require stitches, but still deep enough that it’ll probably scar. He’s coated in a fine layer of dirt and ash. The man must’ve had a hell of an afternoon.

And you, a guest in his home, just beat the poor guy up with his own textbook.

“Yeah, I figured. I called your name like four times,” he sighs. He picks the book up and looks at it. Bakugou raises a soot-smudged eyebrow at you. “You studying or something?” 

“It’s a new world for me. I’ve got a lot to learn,” you reason.

“Damn straight you do. And it is. A new world, I mean. Half-and-half ran your data. Came up empty, so the altered-memory theory is out,” he says. Half-and-half . You only need one guess to figure out which of his friends he’s referring to. 

“So what’s our next move?” You ask, settling back into the couch.

He opens his mouth to answer but is interrupted by the growl of his stomach. Like the immature brat you are, you burst out laughing. 

Bakugou, the big bad pro who’s blushing like a schoolgirl, storms off to his bedroom. 

To your surprise, he quickly returns with a laptop in hand. 

“My next move is a shower. Your next move is ordering delivery,” he says. “Do you know how to use one of these?” 

“What, a computer?” He grunts, and you loathe to realize that you can already tell his ‘yes’ and ‘no’ grunts apart. “Yeah. I mean, yours is probably a bit different than the ones I’m used to, but I’m sure I can figure it out.”

 He opens the laptop and types in an address, then sets it in your lap.

“This is a company that delivers food. There are a bunch of local restaurants on here to choose from, but there’s a section at the top that has all the places I get food from the most. If you go to the individual menus, it highlights the meals I’ve favorited. Pick something out from one of those and just get me whatever’s highlighted.”

“So it’s like Doordash,” you say. He gives you a blank look. Okay, no DoorDash in the future. 

“…So it’s like Uber Eats,” you try. Still nothing.

 “So it’s like Postmates? Grubhub? Waitr?” He glares at you.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are those old-fashioned food delivery companies or something?” He asks. Your jaw drops.

“You rat bastard. Old-fashioned? Old-fashioned? They’re not fucking old-fashioned just because they predate whatever futuristic bullshit you’re using!” He smirks at you. “Back in my day,” you huff, because apparently you’re old enough to refer to the 2020s as your day now, “We knew the value of human service! This company probably delivers with drones or robots or some shit like that.” 

You aren’t even sure why you’re arguing about it at this point, but you’re past the point of caring about the reason. Bakugou coughs out a laugh, and a little cloud of dirt poofs out of his mouth. 

“Why would they use a drone? Teleportation quirks are so much faster.”

You take a deep, long, exasperated inhale and wait for a counterargument to come to you. You settle on surrender.

“Go take your damn shower,” you grumble.

As it turns out, the delivery company he uses doesn’t function much differently than the ones of 2020 (which had apparently all gone out of business). One of his most frequented restaurants is a Mexican-Japanese fusion deal. His most ordered meal is the, direct quote, “Sh*t Yourself Spicy!” curry with a side of mini chiles rellenos. A quick look through the rest of the menu brings you to their top-selling dish, gyoza con queso, which appears to be regular cheese dip, except instead of tortilla chips, it comes with a bunch of thin triangular dumplings. 

God, you as much as you hate it, you fucking love the future.

After the addition of a chalupa and a few “mochi churros”, you manage to find Bakugou’s wallet on the counter and check out. You resist the temptation to copy down his credit card information for later use.

What you don’t manage, however, is resisting the urge to google yourself.

You’re not even sure why- you’re sure he’s already tried it. 

You’re sure if Todoroki went through the trouble to run your biological information through a database, then surely he’d have the good sense to google you. And you’re sure if either of them had any notable findings, they’d have mentioned it by now.

But that doesn’t stop you from trying. You type your first and last name into the browser. No relevant results. The first page is just people with similar names doing things in the future.

Okay, that’s fair. It’s been a while. You decide to get more specific.

First name. Middle name. Last name. 2021.

And wouldn’t you fucking know? There you are. Less than a minute on the internet and you have all the proof you need. Your memories weren’t altered, and you’re not from a different timeline, either.  You scroll through the headlines.

Local Woman Disappears into Thin Air- Blood Left Behind at Scene

Two Months Since Disappearance, And There Are More Questions Than Answers

Friend or Foe? Secret Lover? Fake Death? Our Top 10 Theories in Baffling Disappearance

It’s all there. It's all real. Aside from the secret lover, obviously. You haven’t gotten any in a while.

You skim the first few articles, then grab the notebook and flip to a blank page.

A quick summary of the facts: You clocked out of work at 19:12 and began your walk home. At 19:18, an ATM security camera caught you walking by. No one seemed to be following you. Around 19:19, you should’ve reappeared on the next security camera outside the convenience store. It was 102 feet away. There were no turns you could’ve taken, no alleys you could’ve wandered down. A small puddle of blood was found on the sidewalk, just 18 feet short of the next camera.

A lot of people were interviewed in the first few months of the investigation. There were a lot of tips. But in the end, nobody truly saw anything. Nobody truly heard anything.

And then, nearing the end of the first page of results, it hits you like a freight train. For all the articles about your disappearance and the investigation that followed, there hasn’t been a single mention of your return.

Ten Years Later: The Unsolved Disappearance that Shook Town

The case is cold.

Unsolved.

You’re not gonna make it home.

Chapter 7: Screaming, Crying, Throwing Up

Chapter Seven: Screaming, Crying, Throwing Up

Friday March 8 2171: Katsuki POV

Katsuki had expected to come out of the shower to find you waiting for him in the living room with a hot meal freshly delivered. Instead, he finds you having a breakdown and and stress-eating his food.

“I was gone for twenty minutes! What the fuck happened?”

“I- it- I’m basically dead,” you wail, stuffing another mini chile into your mouth.

“Well you’re clearly alive enough to get your tears all over my goddamn dinner,” he says. He snatches his food back. “Now stop crying and tell me what happened.” You look up at him in shock and horror.

“If you tell a girl to stop crying, she’s only gonna cry ha-arder,” you sob.

“Well, that’s fucking stupid,” he tells you, and almost as if to spite him, you do indeed manage to cry harder.

Fuck.

Okay, Katsuki , he thinks. You see victims cry all the time at work. How do you comfort them?

Ah, right. He doesn’t.

However, he and Kaminari did have to wrangle a feral dog last month, and that strategy seemed like it might work well enough.

He grabs a blanket from the basket in the corner.

“Alright, I got this,” he says. “Hold still.” Getting the blanket over your head is easy enough. You probably can’t see much through your tears anyway. You sit under the blanket, still sobbing like a sad trick-or-treater in a homemade ghost costume. He adjusts the blanket a little, wraps his arms around your shoulders, and he squeezes.

You panic and wiggle a little (just like the dog did), but your breathing starts to even out soon enough. Katsuki loosens his grip after a few minutes, feeling very accomplished.

You hiccup under the blanket.

“No wonder you live alone,” you say, voice still trembling a little. “Even if you could convince a woman to overlook your personality, you’d never be able to support her emotionally.” Katsuki decides to let you have this one, which is very mature of him.

“Ha ha. You sure got me. Now tell me what happened,” he says. You shuffle around under the blanket.

“After I ordered the food, I decided to, um, google myself,” you sniffles.

Katsuki wonders why he didn’t think of that and decides it’s probably your fault for distracting him in the first place.

“And? What’d you find?”

“There were, uh, a lot of articles. About my disappearance.”

“Okay, so that proves that you didn’t come from some parallel dimension version of the past. Why does it have you so upset?”

You pull the blanket back, leaving it wrapped around your head and shoulders but exposing your face, which is red and blotchy. You look at him, then look down at your lap.

“There weren’t any articles about me reappearing. I don’t think I’m gonna make it home,” you say.

Oh. Well, shit, he thinks.

“Oh. Well, shit,” he decides to say aloud. It gets a small, sad chuckle out of you. You lean back into the couch, wrapping the blanket around yourself. You rest your head back and look at the ceiling.

“I mean- I don’t know all the time travel mechanics, so I could be wrong,” you say. “But it’s the past. Even though I’m in 2171 now, if I were to make it back eventually, I should be able to find evidence of that, right? Because my return would’ve been documented in 20-whatever.” You’ve got good logic, he decides. 

“Probably. But it’s not guaranteed,” he says. He isn’t sure if he’s saying it more for your comfort or your own.

“I’m never gonna see any of them again. My mom’s gonna die alone and wondering what happened to me. And Kagami…” You trail off, and seem to decide it’d be easier just to show him. You pick up the laptop and switch to one of several open tabs before handing it to him. “Just… read this,” you say.

 

Fourteenth Annual Remembrance Run for Missing Woman

Sept. 10th, 2035 by Uchita K., associate reporter

… vanished without a trace on September 13th of 2021 on her way home from work. There have been no lasting suspects and her disappearance remains unsolved. Every year on the anniversary of this tragic mystery, her former best friend Genji Kagami, who now works as a criminal prosecutor, has hosted a 7km walk to retain public awareness of the case. 

Genji gave an interview before the first walk:

“It’s her lucky number. That’s why it’s 7 kilometers… I just hope that, wherever she is, she sees how many people are coming out to walk in her memory. She’s alive somewhere, I can feel it- but I think she’s far away. I hope that if she can see this and know how badly we want her to come home, she’ll be able to fight a little harder to get back to us.”

This year’s walk will begin at 7 AM outside of Shiatoru Gurēsu Hospital, her former place of work. The walk will cover the route she often took home and will continue on to Heiwa Park, where refreshments will be available.

Anyone with potential information about the disappearance is implored to report them to authorities. Anonymous tips can be submitted at:

-

Katsuki sets the laptop down on the coffee table, his throat feeling a little tighter than it did earlier.

“Kagami- she and I got in a fight a little over a year ago,” you explain. “I’ll never get to tell her I’m sorry. She organized this walk for me for at least fourteen fucking years. And I’ll never get to tell her I’m sorry.”

Christ, that’s rough. Katsuki sighs.

“Look, I can’t do anything that’s gonna help with that. At least not right now. And you’re right, I don’t really know how to be comforting. So how about we just… put it aside and eat. Just for now,” Katsuki reasons. “Food helps with feelings, right?”

“Right”. You sniffle and reach into the takeout bag, pulling out the gyoza with queso and some of those little cinnamon mochi log things.

“We can get back to figuring out all this time travel shit tomorrow. Do you wanna just… watch a movie or something?”

 

2171: Reader POV

“You know, this ain’t exactly what I had in mind when I said we could get back to figuring things out tomorrow,” he says.

“If you’re not gonna be helpful, then just shut up and eat your popcorn,” you tell him.

Bakugou grumbles something under his breath. You’re almost certain he’s cussing you out, but he goes back to his notes nonetheless. You keep your eyes locked on the television.

“Marty!” Doc shouts as he frantically leaps out of the DeLorean and grabs Michael J. Fox by the shoulders. “You’ve gotta come back with me!”

“Where?” Michael asks.

“Back to the future!” Doc exclaims as he begins rooting through the garbage.

The final scene of the movie plays through- not much left to gain from this one- and you pause it at the credits, turning to Bakugou. 

“Alright, first one down. What do you have so far?” You ask. You try to peek at his notes. His list of points looks substantially shorter than yours, but he pulls it out of your sightline before you can read any of them. He shoots you a glare. You stick your tongue out at him. He ignores this.

“My main issue is with the family picture. If Marty’s actions in the past changed the future, he wouldn’t just gradually see the siblings fade out of it, right? It shouldn’t be gradual because the change has already happened. At that point in the film, his parents don’t get together. The children are never born. So the future timeline should be instantly changed- no time to correct the mistakes. Marty should have just disappeared entirely the second his mom got the hots for him,” he explains. This is good. You had that point on your own list. You can work with this. 

“So if we keep with that theory, then whatever I was brought here to prevent from Happening has probably Not-Happened already. It’s not like something is gradually fading away. Whatever or whoever it is just… doesn’t exist anymore."

“Exactly, if-” Bakugou grumbles, interrupted by a melodic knock on his front door.

“Honey, I’m home!” A deep and muffled voice calls from the hallway.

“Shit. Forgot about that.” He gets up to open the door, leaving his notes on the couch (which you promptly read over). 

-fading picture is bullshit

-tearing the note apart is semi-bullshit

-everyone’s lives being great now is ultra bullshit

“How’s our favorite time traveler doing?” Kirishima asks, smiling at you as he makes his way in. He’s got a manila folder tucked under one arm and he’s toting a 12-pack of beer atop his opposite shoulder.

“I’m about as good as an involuntary time traveler could be. Which is, uh, not great,” you say, “But it’s nice to see you again.” He gives you a sad smile, sets the beer on the coffee table, and plops down into an armchair. Bakugou piddles around in the kitchen for a moment before returning to the sofa.

“Jeez. I wish I could say I came bearing good news, but…”

“Spit it out, shitty hair,” Bakugou groans. Kirishima rolls his eyes and gives you a sympathetic look, but hands the file to Bakugou nonetheless.

“Ikeda and Kurosawa gave me this,” he explains. Bakugou’s brow furrows.

“Who the hell are Ikeda and Kurosawa?” You were wondering the same thing.

“Dude. My interns?”

“Oh. Yeah, that’d make sense,” Bakugou mutters as he flips a page. You peer over his shoulder to scan the information. 

Goda Harumi, 2059-2104. Capable of traveling both backward and forward in time, but only within the years of her lifespan. Involvement unlikely- could not jump far back enough. Would require a 3rd traveler.

Rurik Morozov. 2101-2132. Extent of abilities unknown, but in 2129 he reportedly traveled to 1991 where he attempted (and failed) to assassinate Boris Yeltsin before the signing of the Belovezh Accords. Upon his return to 2129, he was imprisoned for time treason and died by suicide three years later. Involvement possible.

Ujana Awolowo. 2092-2167. Registered with time traveling quirk that allowed her to jump into the past and return to the present but could not jump into the future. Reportedly did not use quirk beyond childhood due to religious beliefs. Technically capable of involvement, but appears unlikely.

“Am I misreading things, or is this a list of dead time travelers?” you ask.

“I had Ei’s interns look through a quirk registry for possible suspects. Only one guy seemed like he could’ve done it, but he couldn’t jump far enough. Would’ve needed help. That’s where these guys come in.” You take a second to process.

“So you’re saying the best working theory is that multiple time travelers teamed up to kidnap me?”

“Pretty much,” Bakugou grimly replies. He scans over the file again before closing it and setting it down on the table next to your notebook.

“Still no motive?” Kirishima asks, popping open a beer. You hold out your hand and he passes you the can without question, then shrugs and opens another for himself. 

“Nope,” you tell him. “But we did narrow it down a little bit. If I was brought to the future because the bad guys wanted to prevent something from happening in the past, then whatever it is wouldn’t currently exist in this version of the future.” 

“Ah, makes sense. I think.” You and Kirishima tap our cans together with a clunk and down your first sips.

“It makes sense,” Bakugou confirms. 

“So if I was supposed to set off some chain reaction that prevented something bad from happening, but I wasn’t able to set it off because I’m here, then the bad thing wouldn’t have been stopped. That means that if we make a list of bad things that have happened since 2021, maybe we could figure out which one of them I was supposed to prevent.” Kirishima nods. Good. He’s still following.

“But if you were supposed to do something rather than prevent something- like birth someone who makes some important scientific discovery or whatever, then that’s a little trickier. We can’t exactly make a list of things that never happened,” Bakugou adds. You groan.

“Okay, I know I brought it upon myself by giving the Sarah Connor example, but why do we keep giving my nonexistent child all the credit? Maybe I was the one who made the big discovery! I was supposed to be a doctor, you know.”

You take a swig of beer and try to convince yourself you didn’t just tell them that.

“You were supposed to be a doctor?” Kirishima asks through a mouth full of beer. He steals Bakugou’s bowl of popcorn off the table and tosses back a mouthful. “This is getting interesting.” Bakugou watches you. He didn’t know that, either. You shift in your seat, clearly uncomfortable.

“Yeah, I was. I, uh, had to drop out of medical school,” you admit. “It’s a long story, but I was planning to go back eventually.”

“That’s so manly,” Kirshima says. “I assumed you were a nurse.” You’ve heard it so many times that you barely feel frustrated anymore. Everyone sees a woman in scrubs and assumes she’s a nurse.

“Don’t knock the nurses. They do more than everyone thinks they do,” you tell him. He shrugs and raises his hands in surrender. You ignore the pang in your chest at what you could have been. Bakugou reaches over and finally grabs a beer for himself.

“Either way, the point stands,” He says as he pops the tab. “We can’t narrow down the good things that haven’t been done, so for now we’ll focus on the bad things that haven’t been prevented.” You and Kirishima nod in agreement. “And another thing. Why are we assuming you would’ve prevented something bad? Who’s to say you wouldn’t have caused it?”

“What, like the good guys brought her forward to prevent a disaster?” Kirishima asks. “ Very interesting.”

“It could explain why she was left alive. Hell, it could even explain why she was dropped in a hero’s apartment.” Bakugou raises his eyebrows at you over the top of his beer as if to say, gotcha!

“Yeah, I don't think that's it. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say the good guys wouldn’t have fucking punctured me.”

“She’s got a point, bro.” Kirishima takes a long drink. “So, we look at bad things from 2021 and on. But why are we going that far back?” 

You Bakugou look at each other, then back at Kirishima, urging him to go on. 

“If it were something that happened a long time ago, why bother bringing you this far into the future? If our one living guy couldn’t do it alone and had to recruit somebody, then why not just leave you with the other perp? The goal would be accomplished either way, right?” 

You flop over sideways and groan. Shit.

“Shit. You’re right. Originally, I thought it could have been unintentional or an effort to make sure I actually died, but if it’s a team, they’d have to trade me off at some point. It would be impossible to bring me this far forward on accident, and they could’ve left me to die at the tradeoff point. There’s no good reason to bring me to 2171.” The room goes quiet as you all think for a minute.

“Unless whatever you’re supposed to prevent hasn’t happened yet, and they to keep wanted you within reach just in case. Like a failsafe," Bakugou theorizes.

"Yeah. That, or they still need you around for something."

The three of you sit in contemplative silence for a moment, nursing your drinks. A pit opens up in your stomach. 

“So, uh… Either of you know about any big bad thing that might possibly happen in the near future?” you ask.

Kirishima looks at Bakugou with a knowing glance. 

“What?” you ask, sitting up suddenly. “What is it?”

Bakugou takes a long sip and sighs.

“I think I might have a theory or two.”

Chapter 8: Birthright

Chapter Eight: Birthright

LATE DECEMBER 2170: Katsuki POV (Three Months Ago)

It’s been a few weeks since the first tip came in. It was a single photograph of two men sharing a meal. 

One of them was yakuza- Tagawa Yuu, an absolute dinosaur of a man who’s been running the Tagawa-gumi for damn near 60 years. 

Katsuki gets a lot of tips on yakuza business. Extortion, money laundering, arms dealership, and the like. But there’s honestly not much to do about it, especially in Tagawa’s case. Dirty money can buy a damn good lawyer, and every time they do lock the guy up, Tagawa gets let out on good behavior within a few years tops. It’s the same way with most of the big yakuza guys. Wasting the resources to get them behind bars is basically useless anyway, since they all find ways to keep running the show from the inside.

The picture that came in wasn’t even evidence. Just two men sharing a meal. Katsuki probably would’ve tossed it in the garbage if it weren’t Tagawa’s dinner company.

The other man in the picture was Daguchi Shinji, a businessman less known for his own accomplishments and more known for the accomplishments of his father, Daguchi Katashi; otherwise known as the current president of the Hero Public Safety Commission. 

It was a bold move, going out and fraternizing with the enemy over lobster and chardonnay, but it was one dinner. There’s no crime there. They could’ve been talking about anything, trying to come to a peaceful resolution about gang violence or some shit. But still. Something about the picture felt off, so he held on to it. Some would call it hero instincts, others would call it cynicism. 

Katsuki doesn’t give a shit what you call it, because he was right.

A few days later, a second picture came in. And then a third. And so on and so on until he had half a damn photo album filled up with pictures of Daguchi wining and dining wanted criminals all over Japan. It wasn’t just yakuza. He met with higher-ups from the Japanese branches of international mafias. Independent gangs and a few minor villain groups, too. 

The pictures didn’t give him much to go on about what exactly the meetings were for, but it was enough to tell him that Daguchi Shinji is in some deep shit. The guy always gave Katsuki the creeps, but he figured that was just cause he’s an uppity douchebag that has a different pocket square for every day of the week. Turns out Katsuki was wrong- Daguchi’s not just a douchebag in designer. He’s a goddamn traitor. And Katsuki is about to go tattling to his daddy.

ততততত

 

The HPSC building is massive, to say the least; forty-three stories right in the center of downtown Musutafu. They oversee everything relating to quirk use; not just heroics. After the war, a lot of policies changed, and quirk regulation changed more than anything else.

The Hero Public Safety Commission was combined with a few other governing bodies. The majority of Japan’s quirk-related legislation was rewritten. They’re the ones that maintain the registries, test kids who haven’t developed their quirks yet, and regulate licensure for non-heroic commercial quirk use, along with about a billion other things. 

Given their expanded scope of power and the massive amounts of confidential information they have access to, corruption within the HPSC might be the most dangerous form of corruption there is. They have the strongest security systems in the nation and an incredibly rigorous hiring process, even for coffee runners and janitors. The background checks for high-clearance officials are even more thorough than the ones given to heroes, and a single slip-up results in immediate termination. It should be impossible for anyone with remotely nefarious intentions to make it past the lobby. Unfortunately, there’s a key out there that can unlock any door- and that key is called nepotism.

Automatic bulletproof glass doors slide out of the way as Katsuki stomps into the building, photo album in tow. The steel-toed clang of his boots hitting tile reverberates through the lobby and the secretary’s eyes widen as he approaches the desk.

“Oh! Um, hello Mr. Ground Zero! What can I do for you today, sir?” She squeaks. She’s young, probably younger than he is. A new hire, if he had to guess.  Easily intimidated. 

“I need to see Daguchi. Now.” She averts her eyes and begins clicking away on the desktop. She’s got a pair of glasses on. There’s a slight yellow tint; anti-blue light, probably nonprescription. Katsuki can see the screen reflecting off them. She minimizes the tabloid article she was reading when he came in and opens a virtual calendar. The cursor hovers over a little red square in the day’s timeline, and it expands to show more detail, but it’s too small for him to read in the tiny reflection.

“Oh, well- Mr. Daguchi’s in a meeting right now, and you need to make an appointment… I could schedule you for tomorrow at 2 PM?” She tries to sound assertive, but her voice is wavering.

“Don’t care. This is important. Critical.” Okay, so it’s not critical critical, but she doesn’t need to know that and he doesn’t feel like waiting. She sighs and opens a drawer, pulling out an old-school pager and firing off a quick message.

“He should be down shortly. Feel free to have a seat while you wait,” she says.

“Thanks, but I’ll just stand here,” he tells her. He stands there. She looks at him as if she’s expecting him to move. He doesn’t. When she realizes he was being completely literal and is just gonna keep hovering by the desk, she dejectedly resumes reading the tabloid article in her browser. Katsuki looks at the reflection in her glasses again. It’s something about IcyHot, given the little picture of him next to the headline.

He’s not just standing there to be an asshole (although most peoople wouldn’t put that past him). This gives him the best view of the elevators. An artificial bell chimes as the doors open, letting off the first wave of suits. No Daguchi. A few minutes later, a second group of workers steps into the lobby, once again sans Daguchi. The third time the chime sounds, the man of the hour strolls out while glancing down at his watch, bumping into an intern without offering so much as a half-hearted apology. He looks up and spots Katsuki, fully suited up, mask on. His face falls.

“Ah, I should’ve guessed. Pray tell, Mr. Bakugou, what could possibly be so urgent as to pull me from my meeting with the Quirk Regulatory Agency of Taiwan?”

“It’s about your kid,” Katsuki says. Daguchi nods to himself as if he already knows where this is going, then motions for the hero to follow him back onto the elevator. The doors slide shut behind them.

Daguchi tips his head down and to the side, gesturing toward the album tucked under Katsuki’s arm. “Family memories?” He asks.

“Not exactly.”

Neither of them attempts to further the conversation, and they ascend the next forty-two floors in silence.

They step out onto the top floor, and Daguchi types in a code next to his office door, hunching himself around the keypad to obscure it from view. He does it politely, subtly, as if he wants to make sure Katsuki doesn’t notice. And if Katsuki were a lesser man, a lesser hero, he probably wouldn’t have.

The keypad chirps in approval, and the lock mechanisms whir to life; the deep thunks of two deadbolts followed by the lighter click of a spring lock. Daguchi swings the door open and ushers Katsuki inside.

The layout of Daguchi’s office is similar to his, just bigger. There’s a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the Musutafu skyline. It's perfect for watching the city- and perfect for looking down on everyone else. His desk is positioned at the farthest wall opposite the door and perpendicular to the windows, facing forward. He’s got a few cushy chairs across from it, ideal for smaller meetings, and it’s the type of desk that can be raised so the user can work while standing.  At the other end of the room, near the door, there’s a stainless steel mini-fridge tucked under a hallway table covered in a spread of prepackaged refreshments. The only decor in the office is a framed family photo and a tall snake plant in a matte black pot on the floor.

“Alright, you’ve got my attention. Now tell me whatever it is you think you know about my boy,” he says bluntly.

Katsuki lays the album down on the desk, flips the cover open, and points.

“Within the last month, your son has met with yakuza higher-ups from every region in Japan, and that’s only the beginning. He’s also met with leaders of independent gangs and small-time villain groups from all around the Chubu region, not to mention members of the Russian, Italian, and Corsican mafias. These are some of the most wanted people in the country, and he’s brazenly taking them out for goddamn caviar.”

“Hm. I see. Do you know what those meetings were about?” Daguchi asks, casually flipping through the album. Katsuki frowns.

“Not exactly, but I have my suspicions. Whatever he’s up to, it ain’t good,” he says. Daguchi chuckles.

“Over the last few years, Shinji has expressed a desire to follow in my footsteps and pursue a career in hero politics. As you know, here at the Commission, we’re always looking for ways to reduce crime rates, particularly in the case of organized crime.” Daguchi flips the album closed and slides it back towards Katsuki. “As it happens, I arranged a majority of these meetings myself. Shinji is spearheading a new treaty initiative, attempting to make deals with these criminal organizations and placate them. There’s nothing nefarious happening here, Mr. Bakugou. It’s all for the good of Japan,” he says.

Katsuki frowns. He doesn’t buy it.

“What exactly are these deals he’s making? What’s he offering them?” He presses. Daguchi strolls over to the mini-fridge, opens it, and takes out a bottle of water. He twists open the top and takes a long, slow sip before answering.

“I’m afraid that’s confidential."

“Confidential.”

“Yes. Confidential,” Daguchi smiles. “But as I said, it’s all for the good of Japan.”

 

THURSDAY MARCH 7 2171: Bakugou POV (Yesterday afternoon)

Eiji, Dunce Face, Sero, Mina, IcyHot, and Cheeks. 

For most heroes, shift change is at 3:30, so he told them to come over at 4. There are a few others he would’ve looped in, but Yaoyorozu’s on maternity leave, and Deku’s still off galavanting around America. Ears and Mindfuck couldn’t make it either- got called away on some last-minute surveillance gig- but he can fill them in on the details later.

It’s been a few months since he confronted Big Daguchi. The whole thing only made him more suspicious, so he’s been doing his best to keep a closer eye on Little Daguchi and tracking the movements of a few of the organizations whose leaders he’s met with. Katsuki is mostly focusing on the Nakata-Kai, a yakuza group that pretty much runs the criminal underworld of Shizuoka. They’re 1500-strong, and an average of 15-20% of the prefecture’s monthly arrests can be directly tied to their lower-ranking members. It’s usually stuff like shootings, blackmail, racketeering. You know, general yakuza activities. But ever since their leader, Nakatani Masayuki, met with Little Daguchi, that number has dropped significantly. 

On paper, the Nakata-Kai are slowing down. Katsuki knows they’re not. He isn’t sure exactly how they’re evading capture, how they’re masquerading the crimes heroes normally link them to, but Daguchi undoubtedly has something to do with it. He just needs more evidence and more information. He needs to listen in on one of those little dinner dates. Unfortunately, every time he gets a tip about one of his meetings, some other emergency comes up and he’s pulled away for more pressing matters. It’s real convenient for him. Too convenient. Almost as if a certain someone warned Little Daguchi that he was on to him. 

If this were his only case, he could handle it alone. But it isn’t his only case- it’s technically not even a case at all. He doesn’t have the time or the resources. So as much as he hates to admit it, Bakugou Katsuki needs help. 

That’s where these fuckers come in.

The first knock comes exactly at 4:00. It’s Todoroki.

“Jesus, you’re punctual,” Katsuki says, opening the door for him.

“Thank you. I accidentally arrived six minutes early, so I waited in the hallway.” 

The others trickle in not long after him. 

“So what’s this about? Why are we meeting here instead of at the agency?” Sero asks. He settles back into the sofa and tucks an arm behind his head, casual as ever.

“This case… it involves the Hero Public Safety Commission, so it isn’t safe to talk about in any buildings they have authorized access to. There could be bugs, or there could be eavesdroppers,” Katsuki explains.

“Wait, what? What’s the Commission doing?” Uraraka asks.

He takes a deep breath. He wonders if this is what conspiracy theorists feel like all the time.

“It’s not the Commission itself,” he says. “At least I hope it isn’t. It’s Daguchi Shinji.”

The others look around at each other, clearly confused and waiting for him to continue.

“The first picture showed up in my agency mailbox at the beginning of December.” He hands it to Shoto, who takes a close look before passing it to Mina.

“Is that who I think it is?” Shoto asks.

“If you’re thinking it’s Tagawa Yuu, then yes.” He passes out the other pictures in sequence. “First, he had dinner with Tagawa. Then Hiriyama, then Hase, and so on. He added in some internationals, too- Matteo Marchetti, Anzhelina Nikolaev, Celine Toussaint.”

“There has to be a logical explanation for this,” Mina says, staring down at the picture of Daguchi schmoozing with Toussaint, a high-ranking and highly dangerous young member of the New Unione Corse. 

“The only logical explanation is that Daguchi’s a traitor,” Katsuki tells her.

“We should ask Big Daguchi about it, maybe he could clear this whole thing up,” Kirishima says.

“I already did.”

“And?”

“He tried to sell me some shit about it being a peace mission, said Little Daguchi’s trying to compromise with them in order to reduce violence. Blatant lies.”

“Well, he may not have been lying,” Cheeks offers. “You said the pictures started coming in December, right? Organized crime rates have gone down since then.”

“Have they?” Sero asks. “I haven’t checked this quarter’s report yet.”

“Yeah! All the statistics across the board have shown an improvement since last quarter. Gun deaths and organized homicides in particular. Customs even saw a significant decrease in drug trafficking. So maybe whatever Daguchi’s doing is working!” She exclaims.

“Don’t be a goddamn idiot,” Katsuki spits. “Those stats don’t show the full story. You should know that.”

“Bro, don’t be mean,” Kiri pouts. “Ochaco’s just trying to be optimistic.”

“There’s nothing to be optimistic about. Sure, direct gun deaths are down, but have you checked the comprehensive hospitalization reports? Non-fatal shootings with fatal or disabling complications , however, went up by 13%. The number of people getting shot hasn’t gone down at all. The people doing the shooting are just getting sneakier with their aim. Overdoses are sky-high, too. If drug imports were actually down, we wouldn’t be seeing that. Customs only saw less trafficking because the dealers found a new way to get shit in.”

“So what are you getting at?” Mina asks.

“There’s no peace treaty shit going on. Crime isn’t going down- it’s going up. We’re just not catching it, not making the connections. So why are these gangs suddenly getting so much more evasive? What unifying thing do they all have in common that could explain why everything is changing at once?” 

“…Daguchi Shinji,” Uraraka says solemnly.

“Exactly. I don’t know how, but I think he’s taking them over. He’s changing their usual MOs, getting sworn enemies to work together.” Katsuki pulls out another file, passing it around. “And that’s not all. Last week, I had a talk with the guys in Financial Crimes. Apparently, they’ve flagged multiple ‘suspiciously large’ bank transfers within the last few weeks. Most of them can be traced back to the guys Daguchi met with. They were directed into a variety of national and offshore accounts, all opened within the last year under the name Parker Sunset.”

“Who the hell is Parker Sunset?” Kaminari asks, reading over the bank statements that describe the massive influx of cash. “And why are people sending him all their money?”

“That’s gotta be an alias,” Sero says.

“Definitely an alias. Presumably Daguchi’s. I don’t know what he’s planning on using it for, but it can’t be good.” 

The fact that he’s somehow conned the greediest bastards in the country into giving him so much money is a bad, bad, bad sign.

It means he’s smart, cunning, and plotting something.

“Why would he use an English name as an alias? It doesn’t seem like a good way to fly under the radar,” Todoroki ponders.

“Haven’t gotten that far yet. I’ve been more focused on trying to figure out his next move.”

“And?”

“I’m meeting with a few informants next week to see what I can dig up. Other than that, I got a tip that there’s some sketchy business convention happening in Okinawa in two weeks. He’s supposed to be there, so I’m going undercover.”

“What do we do until then?” Sero asks. 

“Until then, we-” Katsuki starts, but he’s interrupted by the onset of a high-pitched, howling whine. He reaches up to adjust his hearing aids, assuming his tinnitus is acting up again. But the sound gets louder, deeper, angrier.

“Uhh, guys, what’s that?” Kaminari asks, nearly shouting over the eolian roar as he points up at the ceiling. A dark tendril of smog slowly descends through the plaster, and as the howling gets louder, it begins to twist around itself. Katsuki can feel his eyes widening, pupils dilating as he leaps into defense mode, readying himself to fire into the smog. The others scatter themselves around the room and prepare for a fight.

The tendril continues to twist, looping tightly around itself in an Archimedean spiral. The edges defining the tendril blur, fusing together until the spiral is just a black, round void pressed against his ceiling.

Then, without warning, the howling stops.

And a woman falls through it.

Chapter 9: Rumspringa

Chapter Nine: Rumspringa

MONDAY, MARCH 11 2171: Reader POV

Bakugou worked all this weekend, leaving you to dig through the second and third volumes of Quirk Esoterica. He still won’t let you go outside.

Ever since your conversation with Kirishima on Friday, you’ve been mad at him. Furious. He dropped the bomb that he might know about a big terrible thing coming that up you were possibly supposed to prevent, after which he and Red had a sidebar that resulted in them deciding not to tell you shit. They told you it was some sort of corruption, that they’d let you know more if they had to. 

It’s one thing to be stabbed and dropped off with a bunch of superpowered strangers. It’s another thing entirely to be stabbed and dropped off with a bunch of superpowered strangers who are keeping secrets.

You want to get it. You really do. You understand, logically at least, that it’s probably top secret and they’ve only known you for a few days so they have no good reason to trust you. Understanding it doesn’t make it suck less.

Even though Bakugou didn’t have a problem with it on Friday, he’s decided you’re not allowed to use his computer. You barely managed to convince him to print off a few journal articles about time travel and theoretical physics for you to study in the meantime. Just because you’re focusing on the Terminator theory doesn’t mean you can ignore other possibilities, so you’re trying your hardest to learn what you can about other ways you may have ended up in the future.

You’re curled up on the couch, drinking a cup of coffee and furiously highlighting one of the articles when Blondie walks in. He’s clearly post-workout, all sweaty and smelly and drinking a thick green glass of what you can only assume are pureed vegetables. 

“Get dressed,” he says. You look down at yourself.

“I am dressed,” you say, gesturing down to the scrub pants and skull t-shirt you’ve been wearing every day since you got here. His face scrunches up.

“Aren’t those the pants you got stabbed in?”

“Not like I have anything else to wear. If this is some ploy to get me to walk around naked, you’re gonna have to try a lot harder than that.” His face scrunches up further somehow, practically curling in on itself.

“Gross. Well, you can get some new clothes while you’re out, I guess,” he says casually.

“Wait- out? I’m going out?” Standing up excitedly, you toss the article aside and it flutters to the floor, loose papers scattering across the herringbone. Fuck that spacetime shit. You’re going outside.

“I’ve got a mission today that’s gonna take me a bit farther out of the city than normal. I don’t trust you enough to leave you unsupervised. I would leave you with another pro, but all of the good ones are gonna be with me, so Kirishima’s girlfriend is gonna babysit. Y’all can go to the mall or something. Do girl shit.” He polishes off the glass and sets it down in the sink.

“…I know I should be offended by that, but I’m too excited to care. When do we leave?”

“Ten,” he says.

You were no more vain than any other woman your age (which is to say, you were kind of vain). A ten-minute warning would usually piss you off, but it wasn’t like you had any makeup to put on or clothes to change in to. You would know. You’d emptied your purse three times in the last two days hoping to find a mascara, a lip gloss, concealer, or even a stray pair of panties. Anything . But you’d come up empty each time. Of course, you had an ample supply of 150-year-old protein bars. So with nothing to ready aside from your spirit, you decide to give him a pass this time. You smile up at him, genuinely happy for the first time in days.

“Make it five.”

 

Before you know it, Bakugou is dressed in his silly hero outfit again, you’ve been properly wrangled into the passenger seat of his sports car, and you’re off to Kirishima’s place.

The one potential flaw in this plan hits you while you’re looking out the window and eagerly taking in the city streets of Musutafu.

“Does his girlfriend know that I’m a time traveler?”

“No,” he mutters as he checks the rear view mirror. 

“So what’s my cover story? Why does she think you’re randomly shacking up with some stranger that she needs to entertain?” You ask.

Bakugou gulps. Audibly.

“...It wasn’t my idea,” he says hesitantly. You turn to stare at him.

“What wasn’t your idea?” He keeps his eyes locked on the road and his mouth locked in a grimace.

You press onward. “Bakugou. What wasn’t your idea?”

ততততত

“It’s so nice to meet you!” Ishizaki Akari exclaims. “I hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way, but this is so exciting to me. I’ve never met an Amish person before!” 

She wraps you in a friendly hug, during which you glare at the redhead behind her.  “Sorry,” he mouths sheepishly. Ishizaki lets you go and takes a look at your clothing.

“Your outfit doesn’t look very Amish. Are you borrowing it from your cousin?” She asks.

“Oh, yes! It wouldn’t be much of a Rumspringa if I went around wearing the same clothes I always do, no?” You say, trying to sound as upbeat and uncorrupted as possible. She nods enthusiastically. “I haven’t had an opportunity to shop for modern clothing yet, but my dear cousin Katsuki has been very generous in the meantime.” You smile brightly. Kirishima snorts and Bakugou frowns at him.

“Alright, well, we better get going. Wouldn’t wanna miss out on the mission,” Bakugou grunts, tugging Kirishima with him by the collar. Ishizaki salutes her boyfriend as a means of farewell, then turns to you with a sly grin.

“Ready to go to the mall?” She asks, dangling her car keys at me. “I’ve got their company credit card.” 

 

It’s a short drive to Musutafu Mall from Kirishima and Ishizaki’s apartment. She spends most of it talking, pointing out the local sights and whatnot. She doesn’t ask much about your Amish background, which you couldn’t be more grateful for. She jerkily turns her little sedan into a crowded parking lot.

“Score!” She exclaims, pulling into a spot near the mall entrance. “I can’t wait,  it feels like I haven’t been here in forever.”

“I’m excited too. Thanks for helping me get out and about, Ishizaki.”

“Oh! Call me Akari,” she smiles. “And it’s no trouble at all! Any friend of Ei’s is a friend of mine.”

Back in 2021, articles would pop up every now and then about the death of the shopping mall. Brick-and-mortar stores were giving way to online shopping, the traditional shopping mall would soon be extinct, so on and so forth. Well, you can officially confirm that whatever journalists were writing said articles were full of horseshit because been 150 damn years and Musutafu Mall is absolutely massive. The directory boasts 173 stores and an additional 86 kiosks packed into four stories, as well as a movie theater, indoor ice rink, and a small bowling alley. Death of the shopping mall, your ass.

Immediately upon entering, Akari drags you to a kiosk to buy snacks. She pays with the company card and hands you a fat pretzel on a stick. 

“Gotta say, stellar call,” you tell her as you bite into the warm dough. “Where to next?”

She hums contemplatively. “I think we should get you some clothes. Do you know what kind of style you want to try? I think you’d look really good with a cyber-chef aesthetic. Or maybe microplastic-core.”

Microplastic-core, she says. 

Fucking microplastic-core? 

Really?

You hope your reaction looks like a more benevolent form of confusion than whatever it is you’re feeling. You think for a second before responding.

“You’re gonna have to give me some examples. I’m not really sure what the trends are these days.”

 

After a crash course in modern fashion and trying on a few…eclectic outfits, you ended up deciding just to stick to the basics. A few black and white v-necks, a few black leggings, two pairs of jeans, bras, underwear, that kind of stuff. Your one exciting purchase was a smooth black “animal-free real leather” jacket, which the saleswoman explained as being produced via bovine stem cells, allowing for mass production of animal skin without requiring one to skin any animals. Holy shit, you cannot believe that stem cells are being used in textile manufacturing.

Akari convinces you to change into some of your new clothes, so you take a brief intermission to locate a bathroom and swap the skull tee and scrub pants for one of the v-necks, jeans, and the fancy cow stem cell jacket.

Once your new wardrobe has been acquired and you’ve changed into something more socially acceptable, Akari guides you into a makeup store. You look for your foundation. You look for your powder. You look for your eyeliner. The saleswoman is completely unhelpful, acting like she’d never even heard of the brands you mentioned. You’re devastated to learn that all of your holy grail products were discontinued about a century ago. Akari takes it all in stride. You give her some half-assed explanation that you only played with makeup in the dark of your attic by candlelight, that you find the products in memorabilia boxes from your grandmother’s rumspringa, and she just smiles and sympathizes and helps you pick out a new routine.

You’re excited to try new makeup. Even if some of the products don’t work out, who are you trying to impress here? Bakugou? Absofuckinglutely not.

As promised, Akari charged every last cent to their company credit card.

The two of you eventually settle at a table on the outskirts of the food court. Surrounded by your spoils and feasting on burgers and fries, Akari tells you about how she and Kirishima met (indoor rock climbing) and gives you the down low on modern slang (no one says down low anymore, apparently).

You steer the conversation towards their friend group.

“Don’t get me started on Midoriya,” she tells you, eagerly dipping a fry into a small lake of ketchup she’d created on her plate.

“The name’s familiar,” You say in between bites of your double cheeseburger, feigning ignorance.

“Full name is Midoriya Izuku, but he’s better known as Deku,” she says. 

“Is he a hero?”

“Mmhmm,” she nods. “He’s the biggest hero in Japan. Probably the world, honestly, but I don’t look at the global stats. Anyway, he and Bakugou had some weird childhood friendship-rivalry thing going on, but you didn’t hear that from me. It’s mostly resolved now anyway, I think. He’s been doing hero work overseas for a few months now. Eiji says it’s supposed to be a year-long stint in the States.” 

“Interesting.” You take another bite from the burger. “So what does the country do without its top hero?”

“I mean, the other top heroes can mostly keep things in check. It’s not like we’re lost without him. Numbers two and three- Hawks and Miriko- have been around for a while. They were big pros even before the war. And Bakugou’s number four, you know how scary he can be. So the bad guys know not to try any funny business just because our top muscle’s overseas.” Akari shoves a few more fries in her mouth. She swallows them and chases it with a sip of her cherry cola, and looks like she’s about to say something else, but she stops when someone lets out a scream in the center of the food court. 

“KOTARO!!!!” 

You turn towards the scream to see a woman backing away from a child- her son, probably, a small boy no more than five or six years old. He’s holding an actively-on-fire stuffed animal. He drops it in a panic and it splits open, exposing the stuffing as it burns faster. The boy looks at the toy for a moment before he starts sobbing, and the fire that had been confined to his palms begins to extend up his arms, flames wicking at the skin and creeping toward his shoulders.

“Holy shit,” you breathe.

“I bet he just got his quirk,” Akari says.

The boy- Kotaro, you assume- wails and flaps his arms wildly, inadvertently fanning the flames as tears fly down his cheeks. The fire rapidly spreads until it completely engulfs his legs and torso. Thick black smoke begins to rise from his core in plumes. His mother is kneeling, pleading with him to calm down while attempting to block her face from the onslaught of heat.

“Oh, shit. There’s gotta be a hero nearby, right?” You say to Akari. The food court is full of people, but none of them are moving. Everyone just sits and watches.

Just like Akari. Just like you.

“Fuck, I think the hero that normally patrols here is on the mission with Bakugou and Eiji,” she whispers.

“Is there anyone here with a water quirk?” An older man shouts. The bystanders all look around at each other, wide-eyed but silent. Someone shouts that they’re about to call 119.

The blaze sets off the fire alarm, and the automated sprinkler system activates.  There’s a collective breath of relief. Crisis averted.

But the fire doesn’t stop. Steam rises up off the boy’s body in addition to the smoke, but despite the sprinklers, the flames only grow taller.

“Why isn’t the water putting it out?” Akari asks, a nervous rise to her voice. “The water should be putting it out, right?”

Kotaro continues to scream, and his mother reaches her arm out to grab his hand, but she collapses to the ground before she can make contact. His cries grow louder, panicked, as he looks at his mother. She doesn’t move again.

The smoke, you realize. Dear god, it’s the smoke- it’s too much for her. And Kotaro, he’s not backing away, he’s just getting closer, he doesn’t understand that she passed out from the smoke inhalation.

The fire is so big, the flames are so tall, and he just keeps getting closer to her-

 Holy shit. She’s going to die. 

This woman is going to die, all because her son manifested his quirk in the wrong place at the wrong time, she is going to die and there’s no one here to stop it, she is going to die she is going to die she is going to die she is going to 

“Wait, what are you doing!” Akari yells, but you can barely hear her over the thundering of your own pulse, over the slap of your sneakers as they hit the wet linoleum. You can barely feel yourself sprinting, can barely register the water from the sprinklers as it continues to rain down on the food court.

You see everything at once. 

You see Kotaro, reaching out for his mother’s hand, trying to comfort himself by intertwining their fingers. 

You see her flesh, reddening and then darkening as it chars after finally making contact with the flames. 

You see yourself, three days ago, taking your notes, summarizing a passage from one of Bakugou’s textbooks:

Most emitter quirks will deactivate automatically if the user is rendered unconscious. 

Well, shit. This is gonna suck for both of you.

You skid to a stop in the water, slipping to the ground and scrambling for Kotaro, who startles at your presence. 

“I've gotta do something that might be scary, but I’ve gotta do it to save your mom,” you tell him while catching your breath. “Just let me do it to save your mom, okay?” His eyes widen, frazzled, but he doesn’t fight it when you hook your right arm around his neck, brace the back of his head with your left, and squeeze.

The heat is nearly unbearable. You turn your head the other way immediately, doing your best to protect yourself from the still-roaring flames. They lap at you, wicking around from Kotaro’s back and pressing against your abdomen. You can feel your t-shirt melting at your stomach, feel the jacket melting and breaking apart at your elbow. It almost smells like barbecue. His little legs kick against you as his reflexes kick in.

It shouldn’t be long now, just a few more seconds-

Kotaro slumps against you, and the flames immediately die out. You release your chokehold and lower both of you to the ground.

The carotid arteries are funny, in a way. They’re so important, so vital, but so poorly protected. All it takes is a bit of bilateral pressure to cut off that circulation. It’s not the safest thing in the world, blood choking, but as long as you don’t hold too long, the person you’re choking should wake up with little to no permanent damage.

You take a second to catch my breath before pressing a few fingers to his neck so you can check his pulse and count out his respiration rate. You don’t remember the pediatric vital range quite as well as you remember it for adults, but they’re both good enough. He should be fine. 

You crawl over to his mom and check hers too- she’s a bit tachy, and her breathing is shallow. But there’s nothing you can do for her right now. She needs an ambulance. You look around. The food court stares at you in awe. The sprinklers shut off. 

You take another deep breath and flop back against the ground, lying in a puddle.

ততততত

“What the hell were you thinking?” Bakugou growls. “You should’ve waited for a hero.” He glares at you like a disappointed father, arms crossed tight across his chest. A paramedic has a blood pressure cuff wrapped around your bare upper arm (you don’t even remember taking the jacket off, and at this point, you can’t find it). He’s aggressively squeezing the pump and giving Bakugou a nasty side-eye.

Emergency responders got there shortly after the incident, and thanks to Akari, Bakugou and Kirishima weren’t far behind. Kotaro and his mother were transported to a nearby hospital. His mom was still unconscious, but she should be okay.

“Look, I wasn’t thinking. My body moved before my brain could get a word in,” you explain.

The paramedic clicks a penlight, shines it in each of your pupils, and puts it away, concluding his exam.

“Congratulations, you’re unscathed,” he says flatly. “Your heart rate’s a little high, but that’s probably just the adrenaline still wearing off.” He zips up his kit and tosses it over his shoulder. “That was a dangerous thing you did, but it’s a damn good thing you did it. Coulda been a lot worse for ‘em both if you hadn’t stepped in.” He shakes your hand and gives a hostile nod to Bakugou before walking away.

“See? The paramedic is proud of me. Why can’t you be proud of me?” you groan.

“I’m not gonna be proud of you for choking out a toddler. I never should’ve let you out of the damn house.”

“Cut her some slack, man,” a familiar voice calls. Kirishima wanders up, double-fisting a pair of cheeseburgers while Akari trails a few feet behind him, struggling with the shopping bags.

“Yeah, be nice to your cousin, she saved the day!” She scolds. Bakugou grumbles something, dejected, then swipes the less-eaten cheeseburger from his partner. He plops down in the chair next to you and takes an angry bite.

“How’d your little checkup go? Everything okay?” Kiri asks mid-chew. He pulls a soda can out of god knows where and sets it on the table. Bakugou pops it open and takes an angry sip.

“No burns, no signs of smoke inhalation,” you tell him. “I’m a lucky one, that’s for sure. Can’t say the same for my damn jacket.”

Blondie snorts. You kick at his shin under the table in retaliation.

“Oh! About that,” Akari mumbles as she digs through one of the shopping bags. “I brought the ruined one back to the store and explained what happened.” You try and think back to figure out when she grabbed it.

“I didn’t even- when did you take the old one?”

“Eh, you were distracted. Anyway, turns out the manager saw the whole thing on the CCTV, so she let me swap it out for a fresh one. Even threw in a store gift card as a thank you for the public service.” She pulls the card and the new jacket from the bag and hands them to you.

“Akari, I love you. You’re my favorite,” you smile at her, pulling the new jacket on.

“Merry Rumspringa!” She nearly shouts. You take Bakugou’s soda from the table and hoist it in the air as a toast. 

“Fuck it. Merry Rumspringa.”

Notes:

(alicia keys voice) this boy is on fireeee

Chapter 10: Take-Your-Time-Traveler-To-Work Day

Notes:

(If you're reading this fic after June 2025, you can skip this note).

Shady's back, back, back, tell a friend!

It's been about two and a half years since I've updated this fic. I've been wanting to return to it, but I just couldn't get in the right headspace for first-person POV. I finally decided to just go in and edit everything to make it a traditional second-person reader-insert. I've also added about 4,000 extra words to the first nine chapters, so for those of you coming straight to this chapter, you might want to go back and read from the beginning. It's nothing major, just better descriptions and extra snark.

Happy reading!

Chapter Ten: Take-Your-Time-Traveler-To-Work Day

Tuesday, March 12, 2171: Reader

The morning after the publicly-choking-out-a-fiery-preschooler incident, Bakugou barges into the guest room.

“Get up.”

You respond by rolling over to be face down and pulling the comforter over your head.

“I’m sleeping,” you mumble.

“You’re talking."

“It’s called sleep-talking. It doesn’t count.” 

“C’mon, lazy. Get up.” 

You try to throw a pillow at him, but he sidesteps. You both watch it flop against the floorboards with a muffled thud. 

“You’re coming to work with me today. I’m no longer comfortable leaving you unsupervised.” 

You sit up, swinging your legs over the side of the bed and planting your feet on the floor. He hands you a fresh glass of water. You nod in thanks and take out your medication from the side table.

“Technically, I was supervised yesterday,” you say. 

“Yeah, by a civilian. I want you under hero supervision in a controlled environment. You know, where you can’t strangle the general public.”

Now that wakes you up. 

“What? Dude, you’re making me sound like a psychopath. I saved that woman’s life and you damn well know it.” 

“You don’t have a hero license. You don’t even have a quirk. Hell, until a few days ago, quirks didn’t even exist in your world. What you did was ridiculous and dangerous. Any one of those other bystanders grew up around quirks. And any damn one of them would have had better preparation to handle it than you did.” He glares at you. You stare at your feet. Your hand tightens around the glass. Part of you hopes it shatters.

“Yeah,” you finally say. “Maybe they were more qualified to handle it. But they didn’t. They didn’t handle it.” You look up at him, staring straight into those red viper eyes. “I handled it. Because no one else fucking moved, Bakugou, and somebody had to do something. It was reckless, I get it. But if you’re gonna be pissed about it, be pissed at the dozens of people who stood by and watched instead of getting pissed at the one person who actually fucking did something.”

He sighs in resignation and sits on the edge of the bed next to you. You stare at your feet. He stares at his feet. You take an uncomfortably loud sip of water. 

“I guess I can’t be that mad. You were only trying to help. And I guess you did save a life, even if it involved you choking some kid.”

“I got the idea from your book,” you tell him. It's a peace offering of sorts. 

“I don’t remember anything about choking in Quirk Esoterica.”

“Not the choke itself, stupid. The logic behind it. Most emitter quirks deactivate if the user is rendered unconscious,” you recite with a shrug. “So I rendered him unconscious.” 

Bakugou snorts. 

“I got the logic from your book. I got the chokehold from SmackDown.”

He looks at you curiously. It’s a look you’ve come to identify as the “you’re referencing things from the past that don’t exist anymore” face. You groan in exasperation. 

“SmackDown. WWE.”

He raises an eyebrow. “It’s pro wrestling,” you explain, but he still just looks at you.

“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me that professional wrestling just doesn’t exist anymore.”

Bakugou cracks into a smirk, then a quiet cackle, if a cackle be quiet. 

“ Gotcha ,” he says, still laughing as he stands up and walks to the door. You lob another pillow at him.

This time, you don’t miss. 

 

The rest of the morning passes in relative normalcy. Bakugou drinks one of his gross vegetable blends while you fix yourself a coffee. He’s got the TV on a local news station, but it’s muted. Closed captions run across the bottom of the screen, although they’re painfully lagging.

The camera switches to the grainy CCTV footage of you at the mall yesterday. It’s strange to see it from an outside view. The fire looks larger than life, completely engulfing you and Kotaro. You both seem so impossibly small compared to the magnitude of flames. You were shocked yesterday when you realized you had no burns, but it seems even more impossible today. It’s a miracle you made it out alive.

“Turns out your little SmackDown incident is getting a lot of coverage,” he says. “I’ve seen a few of the others this morning. The kid’s face is censored because of child privacy laws, and he’s what most of the news reports are focusing on, so in most of the videos, your face is at least partially censored from the proximity. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a few internet sleuths try to track you down.”

“You said my face is censored in most of them?” you ask. He takes a sip of his juice and nods.

“There are a few still frames floating around of before and after. None of them are very high quality. But if you know who you’re looking at, you know who you’re looking at,” he says thoughtfully. “Luckily, most people don’t know you exist, so there isn’t really anyone around who could leak your identity to the public.”

“Gee, thanks,” you say. “What about facial recognition?” He takes a bite of a protein bar. You belatedly recognize it as one of the ones from the bottom of your purse.

“I don’t think it’ll be an issue. The camera quality’s shit. Even if it does turn something up, the worst-case scenario is that it matches you with a missing woman from 2021 and they peg it as a false match. You’re so old that you predate quirks. Any reasonable person would assume you’re long dead by now,” he says with a shrug. You have half a mind to steal back the rest of your protein bar.

“I’m only twenty-three,” you whine. “I mean, sure, from a strictly chronological perspective I’m like 173, but who’s counting?”

Bakugou barks out a laugh before polishing off the rest of your protein bar and dusting off his hands.

“Okay, enough messing around. We’re leaving in ten, so get dressed. Wear something you can move in.”

 

ততততত

 

“Stitches, these are Kirishima’s interns. Interns, this is Stitches. She’s marginally smarter than she looks and significantly more of a pain in the ass. You’re gonna babysit her today,” Bakugou tells them. 

You smile at the interns and give Bakugou a sharp elbow to the ribcage. 

“Do they have names?” you ask him. He shrugs.

“Kurosawa,” the girl says. She’s lounged across the couch in the reception area, unprofessional as you’ve ever seen an intern be. “The goofy bellhop over there is Ikeda,” she adds, motioning to the nice boy who opened the door for you. Ikedea nods in excited confirmation.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both. I look forward to learning from you.”

“Learning?” Ikeda asks. Bakugou interrupts you before you can clarify.

“She’s Amish, so she doesn’t know much about hero work outside of a few textbooks. She doesn’t have a quirk either. Take her to the training room, show her the ropes, how to defend herself, all that jazz,” he grumbles. You make jazz hands at them for good measure.

Bakugou pats you on the head. It’s less like the way you would pat a puppy and more like the way you would pat a blister to see if it’s ready to be popped.

“I’ll be back,” he says, his voice deep and raspy as ever.

You bite your tongue.

You haven’t gotten around to watching Terminator with him yet.

 

 

Bakugou had given you a basic rundown of his agency structure on the way over. He and Kirishima were the sole owners, but a few dozen smaller heroes and sidekicks were contracted with them. Their agency, like all hero agencies, was overseen by the Hero Public Safety Commission. 

Kirishima had two interns as part of a work-study program. Bakugou hadn’t taken any on this semester, but he borrowed Kirishima’s frequently enough that it was really more of a joint mentorship. They both had provisional hero licenses, so he felt comfortable leaving you under their watch for the next few hours while he went on patrol and had a short meeting. 

You were hoping the kids could give you a tour of the agency or something.

In light of recent events, he’d booked out the training room instead.

"So, you're Amish?" Kurosawa asks, leading the way. You and Ikeda follow her like ducklings.

"Yup. I'm out on rumspringa." 

The agency is large and buzzing. You find it hard to believe someone with Bakugou's temperament had the patience to build a business from the ground up.

You figure he probably made Kirishima do most of the heavy lifting.

"You don't look Amish."

"I get that a lot," you say, because it's technically true at this point.

"May I ask why you're interested in combat training?" Ikeda asks. His eyes are wide and bright with the excitement and innocence of youth.

Well, now's a good a time to kill it as any!

“I got stabbed," you say with a shrug.

Kurosawa stops walking. Ikeda stops walking. You also stop walking, partly to be polite but mostly because you don't know how to get to the gym otherwise.

They stare at you, clearly expecting you to elaborate.

You do not.

 

 

The agency's gym is smaller than you expect, and as Ikeda informs you, one of several.

There's an exercise gym, with treadmills and weight machines and anything else you'd find at a standard Planet Fitness, minus the Lunk Alarm. Probably.

There's a simulation gym, which is built to withstand heavy quirk use and can simulate a multitude of rescue and battle scenarios.

And then there's this gym, which has a whole lot of nothing. 

There are a few cubbies pressed against one of the walls, which you stash your fat purse in. There are mats on the floor. And that's about it. 

 

“Okay, before we do any real training, we need to see your baseline," Kurosawa says as she pulls her hair into a ponytail. 

"It's unimpressive," you say helpfully. 

"I’m gonna attack you. Fight me off.” And before you can suggest otherwise, she cracks her knuckles and rushes you. 

 

You've taken a self-defense class before. Kagami had organized it as part of a student safety committee she was on. They’d given you the run down on staying out of dangerous situations; for example, don’t walk home alone at night after a 12-hour shift, don’t listen to music on the walk to try and drown out the chaos you’d endured at work, and don’t let yourself get distracted by a cute cartoon advertisement playing in a shop window, otherwise someone may sneak up next to you, stab you in the stomach, and drop you through a black hole into the future. 

After safety precautions, the instructor got to the good stuff.

Self-defense was all about targeted, strategic moves to inflict maximum pain and damage so you could make a quick break and run away.

Throat chop. 

Poke the eyes. Hard. If you can, brace your hands on the side of their head and gouge with your thumbs. 

Cup your hand and swing it against the attacker’s ear- it’ll throw off their balance. Do it on both sides, if possible- it can rupture the eardrum. Then grab the ear with your cupped hand and rip it towards you. It’ll tear the lobe. The injury can’t heal on its own, so authorities can notify local emergency rooms what to look out for. 

Bite. Vomit on them. Play dirty. 

A good ball shot is always on the table. 

You and the other women in your class had mimicked the scenarios, pretending to rip off the instructor’s ears and kicking a rubber practice dummy in the nuts (it was naked, save for a ski mask). 

Here, under the harsh fluorescent lights of Bakugou’s training gym, you don’t feel particularly compelled to do any of those things to Kirishima’s interns. 

Consequently, Kurosawa has you on your ass in two seconds flat.

You make a halfhearted attempt to push her off of you, which is unsuccessful. You try to grab her and roll sideways, hoping to turn the tables, but she checks you in the chin with her shoulder and your head snaps backward. She rights herself on top of you and pins your arms in place.

You cough and tap the mat.

“How’d I do?” You wheeze.

“Terrible,” she says.

You spare a pleading glance at Ikeda. He rocks back and forth on his heels, suddenly very interested in the motivational poster hanging on the wall beside him.

The motivational cat dangling from a tree branch mocks you.

“Hang in there, baby!” 

“I know some basic self-defense, but I didn’t want to actually hurt you,” you explain. Kurosawa gives you a once-over.

 “I don’t think you need to worry about hurting me,” she says slowly. You're only slightly offended by this.

“All I know is ear rips and eye gouges and stuff.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s fair. Okay, how about we run that back, and instead of ears and eyes, we just stick to pushes and punches for now?” 

That, you think you can handle.

She offers you a hand. You take it. 

“Pushes and punches. Blunt force only,” you nod.

Kurosawa smiles. It’s all teeth.

 

2171: Katsuki POV

-

Katsuki rubs his hands together, hoping the friction will generate some heat. 

He traded his winter gear in for his usual stuff only yesterday, and he was already wishing he had it back. 

On the street, his normal gear was fine. In a fight, his normal gear was fine.

Here, on a rooftop 80 stories off the ground, exposed to the elements? 

Very, very not fine.

He wonders if the bastard chose this place just to be a pain in the ass. Katsuki ought to blow him up.

“Purple-haired fuck," he mutters to himself.

As if waiting for a cue, Shinsou Hitoshi swings himself up from a ledge below. 

“Took ya long enough.”

“Sorry, had to take care of something,” Shinsou says. 

“Does that something have anything to do with the cat hair on your sweater?”

He glances down and brushes the hair off. He does not acknowledge it further. 

“Nobody had anything," he says instead. Katsuki groans.

"Nobody? Not even that little freak with the termite quirk?"

"Not even him," Shinsou says solemnly.

 

After graduating from UA, Shinsou Hitoshi had elected to follow in their teacher's footsteps and work as an underground hero. As a result, he didn't have the brand recognition that Katsuki had- Shinsou didn't have a brand at all, which was kind of the point- but he did have a lot of underground connections that Katsuki himself was far too attention-grabbing to make.

That was the whole reason Katsuki brought him on; he figured that if anyone would have a source that could unveil some corruption, it would be Shinsou. 

Katsuki runs a gloved hand through his hair and sits down on the building's ledge.

"Don't do it, Ground Zero," Shinsou says flatly. "You have so much to live for." 

"Fuck off," Katsuki says. Shinsou does not fuck off, instead opting to sit on the ledge next to him.

They're both quiet for a minute.

"I don't get it," Katsuki finally says. "How possible that he's having all these meetings out in the open and yet no one knows anything?"

“It's Daguchi Shinji," Shinsou says, as if that's a sufficient explanation. (It is). He picks at his capture weapon for a minute before adding, "He's untouchable."

Katsuki stands back up, staring out into the streets of Musutafu.

“Nobody’s untouchable," he says. "I’m gonna figure out what he’s up to, and when I do, I’m gonna touch that fucker.”

“You’re gonna touch him,” Shinsou says, monotone and straight-faced. 

“Yeah. I’m gonna nail his ass.”

“You’re gonna touch Daguchi Shinji. And then you’re gonna nail his ass.” Katsuki pauses, realizing his mistake. 

"I obviously didn't mean it like that."

“Yeah, yeah. Keep it in your pants. No one’s touching anybody until we figure out what he's scheming, and I’m all out of sources.” 

Katsuki thinks for a minute. Most of his regular informants were currently incarcerated or out on bail awaiting trial- ie, highly surveilled. Not exactly the type of low-profile sources he needed for this investigation. He needed someone who flew so far under the radar that the HPSC wouldn’t have eyes- or more importantly, ears- on him. 

Unfortunately, he could only think of one informant who met the criteria. 

“I think I know a guy,” he sighs, pulling out his personal cellphone.

He almost hopes the slimy bastard won't pick up.

He picks up on the second ring. 

“We need to meet,” Katsuki says.

“What’s in it for me?”

“The usual. You give me what I want and I don’t throw your ass in jail for obstruction of justice,” he mutters. The voice at the other end of the line hums quietly. 

“Tonight. Six o’clock. I’ll text you the details.” He hums again. “I have but one request.”

This fucking guy. Always something.

“And what might that be?” Katsuki huffs through gritted teeth. 

“Oh, the usual,” he says, and Katsuki can practically hear him smirking over the phone. “Bring me something pretty to look at.”

 

 

When Katsuki arrives at the gym, you and the interns have broken into an all-out brawl. You land a right hook on Ikeda and manage to squat down to the ground just in time to dodge the jab he sends back. He hits Kurosawa instead, who had been behind you, hanging off your shoulders like a koala.

“Fucker!” She screams, and she pulls your hair; not hard, just enough to hurt a little. 

You flop backwards in retaliation, using her body to soften your landing. 

Katsuki hangs back by the doorway and studies you for a minute. None of you seem to notice he even came inside.

You’re not bad, for a civilian. Your form is shit. The punches are sloppy. Your shoulders and elbows are bending out at awkward angles that are incompatible with full force and leave them vulnerable to dislocation. Your instincts are good, though- your reaction time is quick, so you’re able to dodge attacks instead of just blocking them. Getting Kurosawa on her back with that roll was a smart move- it threw her off balance without you taking any impact damage. 

You wouldn’t make it in a real fight against seasoned professionals.  Katsuki could snap you in half like it was nothing. But here with the interns, you seem to be holding your own. 

You and Kurosawa roll around on the mat, hitting each other and slinging playful insults. Ikeda stands awkwardly next to the pair of you, contributing to the fight with an occasional half-hearted kick. It doesn’t look like he’s particularly aiming it at anyone. He just wants to be involved. 

He looks up at Katsuki and startles before breaking into a wide grin. 

“Hi, boss!” He waves. 

At that, you break, taking your eyes off Kurosawa to see who Ikeda is talking to. She lands a final backhanded slap across your cheek, her wrist loose and floppy. You chuckle and stand up, reaching out a hand and pulling her with you. 

You amble over to him. 

“How’d I do?” You ask, feeling much more confident than when you asked Kurosawa the same question this morning. 

“You need to work on your form. But your instincts ain’t bad.”

You smile at him, gleaming with sweat and satisfaction.  Bakugou ignores this and nods behind you to the interns. 

“You two go hose off and head up to Riot’s office.” 

“Does he have a project for us?”

“Hell if I know,” he murmurs. He looks back down at you. “Walk with me.” You wave a goodbye to Kurosawa and Ikdea and follow him out of the gym. 

He wordlessly leads you out of the gym, through a hall, and into the elevator. He pushes a button for the 21st floor. 

“They’re nice, “ you say. It's more to yourself than to him, really. 

“Yeah. They’ll be good heroes someday. Probably.”

“Do all hero students do internships?”

“Yeah, work-study is part of the standard curriculum. It’d be pretty fucked to set them loose after graduation without any field experience.”

You chuckle to yourself, remembering your med school days. You were younger then, optimistic and eager to change the world.

Like any other medical student, you did a handful of rotations through different specialties, rounding with grumpy attendings and overworked residents who quizzed you on medications and differential diagnoses. Emergency Medicine was your favorite rotation by far. You hadn’t been allowed to touch anyone yet- the facilities your school partnered with only allowed med students to do procedures in their final year of education- but you stood by in rapt fascination as you watched the residents set dislocations, stabilize GSWs before surgery, and conduct stroke rule-outs.

You weren't technically allowed to touch anyone, but there was one night when you did.

The ER was already overwhelmed that night. It was a full moon weekend, so by nature, the department was already slammed.

You had arrived at 6AM and by 8 you had already dodged two bedpans used as projectiles, one of which was full, and had been bitten on the forearm by a patient who, fortunately for you, had no teeth. You were attempting to get a history on a confused elderly woman whose chief complaint was “toe pain, 4 months” when the survivors of a multi-vehicle accident began flooding the ambulance bay. 

You had politely excused yourself from the woman to slide into one of the trauma rooms where EMTs and nurses were transferring a patient from a stretcher to a flat bed.

The patient was a late 20s male. He hadn’t been wearing his seat belt. The firefighters and paramedics on scene had worked for nearly an hour to extract him from underneath a flipped Honda Civic.

Lacerations to the face, neck, and shoulders. Open crush injuries to both legs where the car had settled. Three sets of trauma shears quickly stripped him of his clothes. His chest was badly bruised- likely blunt force impact from hitting the steering wheel before flying through the windshield. 

A CNA hooked him up to the monitor while you slid on a BP cuff. You studied the rhythm while it cycled. Sinus tach with frequent PVCs. 146 BPM, wide QRS complex, peaked T waves. You knew what that meant: he was hyperkalemic. It was an expected but dreaded complication of a crush injury. After the crushing force of the car had been relieved, cell contents from the damaged leg muscles had flooded into his bloodstream, one of them being potassium. Based on that EKG, you knew the excessive levels were already affecting his cardiac muscle, and if the team didn't get it down soon, it could send him into a lethal arrhythmia.

The alarm on the monitor started wailing to notify you that his BP had finally processed.

50 over dead. You wish you were surprised. 

Attendings and residents barked orders in the background while nurses drew up medications. 

The lethal arrhythmia came sooner than you had anticipated. You were helping strip the last of his clothing when the monitor beeped again.

“VFib!” someone shouted.

The defibrillator pads were already attached. 

“Charging,” someone said. Everyone stepped back.

“Clear-“

The shock was administered. You watched the rhythm on the monitor jolt off screen as the shock was delivered, and it was still that faint, fatal squiggly line. One of the nurses in front of you immediately began compressions. A respiratory therapist stood at the head of the bed, pumping a bag-valve mask. Someone near the crash cart drew up sodium bicarbonate. 

“Hold compressions,” your attending said. The nurse stopped the compressions and stepped out of the way, sweaty and panting, and you looked at the monitor.

“Still VFib,” you say. Another shock was charged and administered. No dice. 

You hopped in for your turn on compressions, hospital administration be damned. You had your ACLS certification even if you weren’t technically supposed to use it yet. 

You could never forget it- that first time giving CPR- your heartbeat in your ears, the give of his chest as you pumped his heart for him, the feel of his ribs fracturing underneath your palm as the force of your compressions cracked them apart from his sternum. 

You heard a faint electric buzz as someone drilled into the top of his femur to place an IO line. He came in with a peripheral IV that the paramedics placed. You glanced at his arm- someone must have stepped on the tubing and inadvertently ripped it out. 

Your two minutes took a lifetime and went by in an instant.

Someone ordered to hold. You stepped back and tried to catch your breath as the team checked his rhythm.

He was still in VFib. A third shock was administered.

“Sinus brady,” someone called. Your system floods with relief. You held your pointer and middle fingers to his neck.

“Got a pulse,” you confirm. 

You spent the next hour helping stabilize him for an emergent fasciotomy. When the surgical team came by to pick him up, your attending sent you back to finish up with Toe Pain. 

You returned to the room sweaty, hair unkempt, and hoped she wouldn't notice the blood spatter on your scrubs. 

You knocked politely before entering. “Sorry for the wait,” you said sheepishly. 

“Took you long enough. Christ, I’ve been waiting for ages. Don’t you care about your patients at all? I’m in pain here!”

 

You never found out if he survived.

 

You come back to the present with a jolt as the elevator stops. You follow Bakugou around a corner and he leads you to what you can only assume is his office. 

“Did you get any fancy clothes at the mall the other day?” He asks. 

…What? 

“Uh, not really. Just casual stuff,” you say, assuming your bovine stem cell jacket does not count.

He thinks for a minute. 

“What size are you?”

You tell him, and he picks up the landline on his desk and hits a button. Nice to know those are still around, you guess. 

“I need you to check storage for dresses,” he says. “I don’t know, semi-formal, I guess? Just bring up whatever you can find.” He rattles off your size and hangs up without a goodbye. 

“What, are you taking me a date?” you joke. He glares at you.

“Yes,” he says, still glaring. You blanche.

“I.. You.. What?” 

“Not a real date, idiot. A fake date. It’s for an investigation,” he sighs. 

“You’re taking me on a fake date for an investigation.”

“Look, if I had any other option, I’d use someone else. This guy is a sleaze bag and a pain in the ass, but I need information and I need it fast. He hates meeting with me alone, won’t say shit unless I have some pretty thing hanging off my arm for him to gawk at. No one else is available on such short notice. So here you are.”

“Here I am,” you say, starting to understand the situation. The indirect compliment breezes right past you.  “And when exactly is this fake date rendezvous?”

He checks his watch. 

“In about eighty-seven minutes.”

“Yikes. That is short notice.”

“Go shower and make it quick. There’s a locker room down the hall to the left. The dresses should be up here by the time you get back.”

You make quick work of finding the locker room and showering. You speed through a routine of scrubbing off the sweat and grime from training. You wash your hair, delighted to find the showers stocked with actual shampoo and conditioner instead of that 3-in-1 garbage that your old gym back home used to have. 

You towel off your hair until it’s damp, leaving it to air-dry the rest of the way. It’s not ideal, but time is of the essence, right?

You realize you’ll have to change back into the clothes you just spent four hours fighting in. They’re still damp with sweat. You run your undergarments under the hand dryer for a minute and awkwardly put them back on. You decide to forgo the leggings and t-shirt- they’re beyond saving- and so, modesty be damned, you wander back to Bakugou’s office wrapped in your towel. 

You enter without knocking. He stands in front of his couch with a woman next to him- the back of her head looks vaguely familiar. You think you passed her in the lobby earlier. There’s a small assortment of dresses laid out on the couch. They’re arguing about it. She scrounged up a few pairs of heels, too.

“Ready for my close-up,” you say. 

They turn around toward you. Bakugou's eyes go wide. The assistant appears unbothered.

“Hell’s the matter with you? Put some clothes on!”

“They were all sweaty. Kinda defeats the purpose of the shower,” you reason.  He grumbles something under his breath. The assistant chuckles. 

“Well, fortunately for you, we had a few dresses in your size in our storage closet,” she says. She motions to the couch in a Vanna White impression that you realize was probably unintentional.

You survey the options.

There’s a black cocktail dress, a short light blue number with long sleeves, and a red satin sleeveless dress that looks less like eveningwear and more like a sexy nightgown. 

“You said this guy’s a sleazebag?” you ask. 

“One of the grimiest perverts I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing,” Bakugou confirms. 

You smile to yourself. It’s been a long time since you’ve had a reason to get dressed up.

“Red it is, then.”

Chapter 11: Snitches Get Stitches

Chapter Eleven: Snitches Get Stitches

Tuesday, March 12, 2171

 

“So who exactly are we meeting with?” you ask. You’re leaning forward in the passenger seat, dabbing on concealer in the flip-down mirror.

“An informant of mine,” Bakugou says, never one to spare the details. You shoot him a look, and he sighs. “Name’s Nilssen. Alexander Nilsson. He’s a Swedish party boy who came to Japan on foreign exchange and never left. He’s mostly harmless, aside from being a massive douchebag.”

“And what information does this massive douchebag have that you can’t get anywhere else?” you ask. He sighs.

“The guy’s got this quirk. Calls it The Veil. Basically, he can cast a big circle around himself that no sounds or sights can pass through. It distorts audiovisual transmissions, too, so even if someone within the veil is mic’d up, the will recording just come out as garbled sound.”

“That’s pretty nifty.”

“Yeah, you’re not the only one who thinks so. Nilsson himself is a neutral party- he doesn’t have strong ties to any particular criminal organization- but they’ve all used him for his quirk at least once or twice. As a result, he’s got a lot more information about their business than most.”

You think about it while swiping on your blush.

“Isn’t that risky, to use a neutral party for a clandestine conversation?”

“Yeah, but not as risky as having the conversation out in the open without his veil. From what I can tell, they mostly use him for situations when someone is under surveillance or a meeting needs to be held in public.”

You frown at this. 

“You’d think a giant dark veil would make the situation more suspicious, though.” Bakugou’s forehead crinkles up before his eyes widen in realization.

“Oh! Shit. No, it’s not like a big dark cloud or anything. The veil itself is invisible. People outside the veil just see an illusion. They don’t even realize the veil is there.”

“Oh.” Your brain churns with further questions, and Bakugou can tell.

“Tell you what, when we get there, you can ask him exactly two questions about his quirk. It’ll butter him up. He probably won’t be willing to talk to me without giving you some attention first, anyway.”

You root around in your giant purse for the little eyeshadow palette Akari helped you pick out yesterday. You should probably clean it out sometime- you’ve still got receipts floating around in there from 2021 (and honestly, you’ve probably still got receipts floating around in there from 2019).

It’s funny how quickly things can change. 

One week ago, you were at a hospital in your hometown, overworked and underpaid (like almost everyone else in healthcare), bickering with nurses about false alarms and filling out redundant paperwork.

Today, your grumpy superhero roommate is using you as a honey trap.

“This guy, Nilsson,” you say. “Isn’t he afraid of being spotted with you? I mean, it wouldn’t take a far stretch of the imagination for someone to figure out he was snitching.”

“I doubt Nilsson is afraid of anything. He’s probably too stupid for that,” Bakugou huffs. “Well, that, and he has the veil thing.”

Seemingly tired of talking, he mashes a few buttons on the center console- you’re happy to see that the trend of equipping cars with touch screens seems to have died down- and the radio comes to life. It’s some rock station. You don’t recognize any of the songs, but then again, your music taste is about 150 years out of style. 

His phone is perched on a stand next to the main display. The map indicates that the Italian restaurant you’re meeting Nilsson at, L’Aragosta Sensuale, is seven minutes away. It seems like it’s going to be a pretty fancy place. Even Bakugou, who you’ve only ever seen dressed in his little hero outfit or athleisure, changed into a dark suit and tie.

You decide you’ll give him three full minutes of silence before you accost him again.

You adjust the angle of the air vents, hoping it’ll inspire your hair to dry a little faster.

You play around with your new eyeshadow.

You look watch the city flicker to life as the sun fades out behind the skyscrapers.

You make it through two minutes and thirty-four seconds before your curiosity gets the best of you.

“Will you do me a favor and at least tell me what you’re investigating so I’m not going in blind?”

He looks over at you, still teetering forward in the seat to be closer to the little mirror. Your face is stoic with concentration as you trace a thin line along the edge of your lashes, flicking it out into a catlike wing. 

“It’s highly confidential,” he says. You resist the urge to roll your eyes for fear of fucking up the other wing. Eyeliner in a moving vehicle is hard enough as it is. 

“It’d be better for us both if I had some context, though,” you say slowly. “You say Nilsson’s a horny scumbag, right? So he’ll probably be looking at me.” You glance down at the slinky red mini dress you’ve borrowed, at your bare legs and strappy heeled sandals. “In this dress? He’ll probably be looking a lot. And if I look shocked and confused at every other thing the two of you say, he’ll realize you don’t trust me. And if he realizes you don’t trust me, your date, then he probably won’t trust either of us. He might hold information back. If I have enough context to at least pretend I know what’s going on, then he’ll be more likely to speak freely.”

You try to appear calm and detached as you root around in your purse and move on to your mascara; try to appear as if you’re not dying for intel. 

You can’t help it. Your desire to be in the loop, to understand, is as integral a part of you as anything else. You choose not to acknowledge the way you still feel slighted after he and Kirishima refused to tell you about what they suspect could be the whole reason for you ending up here in the first place. 

Bakugou doesn’t say anything at first. You watch him for a minute. His brow is furrowed and his hands are clenched so hard around the steering wheel that his knuckles are turning white. 

“It’s a matter of corruption,” he says eventually. 

“Private company or governmental?” you ask. He grimaces. 

“Governmental.”

You want to ask a thousand more questions, but Bakugou is looking tense enough as it is, so you decide it’s better not to push your luck. 

You imagine he’s already revealing a lot more information about the case than he’d prefer just by bringing you out to meet with the informant. You resolve to listen closely and piece together what details you can from the conversation. 

Knowing it’s a case of government corruption is enough for you to start with.

You’d studied plenty of corrupt governments in history classes

and seen more of it than you’d prefer unfold in the news. 

The world is a bit different now, and quirks are a new factor, but human greed will never change. 

Money, sex, power. Drugs, sometimes. 

It’s always the same. 

You swear at Bakuou as he takes a harsh turn and narrowly avoid poking yourself in the eye with your mascara. He offers you a quick cringe, which is about the closest thing to an apology as you could expect him to give, and pulls into the lot.

“Arrived.” The GPS announces.

He gets out of the car and hands the keys to the valet.

You swear again, quickly finishing your mascara and twisting the applicator back into the bottle.

You look at your purse for a second. You can’t very well bring it into the restaurant; it’s massive, dirty, and definitely does not go with your outfit. You settle for haphazardly shoving it into the space behind your seat. 

You toss your hair once- honey trap time , you think- and fling the door open.

It swings directly into an unsuspecting Bakugou, who had regrettably paused midway through opening the door for you to consider whether a gentlemanly act of this caliber would cause you to be more annoying or less annoying.

“ Oof” , he oofs.

“Whoops,” you say.

The two-and-a-half of you (the half, of course, being the knot slowly forming on Bakugou’s temple) approach the hostess stand. 

“Reservation for…” He checks his phone before continuing. “...Nutty B. Sack,” he says, deflated. You snort and try to pass it off as a sneeze.

“Ah, here you are!” The hostess smiles. “Right this way, Mr. Sack.”.

 

Bakugou leans into your ear as you follow the hostess through a maze of tables. 

“Bastard always puts me down under some ridiculous alias,” he whispers. You suddenly realize that giving out your actual identity to man known to associate with criminals probably isn’t the best move.
“What should I tell him my name is?” you whisper back. “Other than Mrs. Sack, of course.” Bakugou shrugs.

“He won’t care what your name is. Just bat your eyelashes at him or something.”

The table you arrive at is set for two. 

Bakugou hesitantly pulls out your chair for you; probably to ensure you won’t manage to maim him again.You sit, smoothing your skirt and crossing your ankles.

He takes the seat across from you. He orders a glass of water. You order a glass of merlot.

“So what now?” you ask.

“We wait. He’ll come to us soon enough.”

 

As it happens, your drinks arrive shortly before Nilsson does. 

Bakugou takes a sip of his water and shivers. 

“He’ll be over soon. He just put the veil down,” he says. 

“How can you tell?” you ask.

“You didn’t feel it?” You shake your head.

“Weird. Well, you only feel it for a second anyway. Maybe you just didn’t notice.”

A blonde man sitting a few tables over turns toward you and offers you a little wave.

“That’s him,” Bakugou says helpfully as the man pushes his chair out and makes a beeline for you, carrying a glass of wine that swishes around precariously.

“Gee, thanks,” you say. The man slinks up beside the table and rests his hand on the back of your chair. He offers a cheshire smile to Bakugou before setting his glass on the table.

“Ground Zero,” he says smoothly. “Always a pleasure. And you brought a friend,” he says, eyes raking over your figure. “Lucky me.”

Bakugou grumbles some half-assed greeting as Nilsson holds out his other hand towards you. You offer him a handshake. He brings it to his mouth instead and presses his lips against the back of your hand. You’re almost certain you feel teeth graze your flesh.

“Alexander Nilsson,” he smiles.

“Charmed,” you say flatly. Nilsson laughs once- more of a huff, really. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

Ah, right, shit. You’re supposed to be buttering him up. You flash him a coquetteish smile and take a sip of your wine.

Get your head in the game, bitch , you tell yourself. Honey trap, honey trap, honey trap.

“Your quirk,” you say coyly. “Will you tell me about it?” He grins at you, and this time it appears genuine. 

“For you? Happily.” Nilsson steals a chair from an empty table nearby and drags it over, technically sitting himself between you and Bakugou but angling the chair slightly in your direction.

“I can cast a veil around an area so that sight and sound cannot travel outside of it. It also obscures electromagnetic transmissions- they cannot cross into or out of the veil, and recordings within it tend to fail.”

“That sounds incredibly useful,” you say. 

“I make it work for me,” he says coolly.

“What does it look like from the outside?” 

“For the most part, things appear as they did before. For example, you and your hero are sitting across from each other, but I am seated at my table over there.”

“So it’s a still image?”

“Not exactly. It changes subtly, like an automation of sorts. Those outside may see you drink from your glass or play with your hair- small, predictable movements. The veil does not generate new illusions; it merely reinterprets what was already there.”

“Fascinating,” you say, so soft it’s merely a whisper. 

 

You wonder if you’ll ever grow used to this- a world where superpowers are not only real, but common.

You wonder if you’ll ever stop wishing that you could have a superpower, too. 

 

“Alright, enough about that. What do you know about Daguchi?” Bakugou asks bluntly. Nilsson raises an eyebrow. 

“Which one?”

You can’t help but feel like you’ve seen that name before. 

Okay, you think to yourself. There are two Daguchis, and at least one of them is tied to a governing body.

“The son,” Bakugou says. “Shinji.”

Nilsson takes a long sip of his own wine. His eyes dart back to you, flicking up and down quickly, before settling back on Bakugou. 

“He’s certainly become quite the socialite lately, hasn’t he? The Italians, the Russians, the New Unione Corse. Little Shinji is making a lot of interesting new friends.”

The New Unione Corse?

Kagami had taken a criminal justice elective on international drug trade in your freshman year, back when the two of you were rooming together. 

You’d been studying for an exam you had the next morning- you can’t remember what subject, some gen ed class you didn’t really care about- but she had *insisted* that she couldn’t *possibly* keep on reading, that her eyeballs were going to fall out of her head if she spent one more second with her nose in her textbook. She dug up a youtube documentary on the French Connection heroin trade, cast it to your “shared” television, and you spent all of five minutes trying to tune it out before you gave up on your own homework and resigned to watch hers instead. 

The Unione Corse was the primary crime syndicate responsible for the whole thing. The French and the Corsican mafias that it referred to were still active to some extent, albeit less prominent than the Italian and Russian mafias, but by the time you and Kagami were learning about it, the Unione Corse had been essentially defunct for nearly 50 years. 

Apparently, they’re back operating under the old name and have expanded their reach into Japan. You wonder if this means they’re running The French Connection 2.0. 

If so… are they still pushing heroin this time? Or is it something else?

“Why?” Bakugou presses. You take a sip of your wine and look around the restaurant, trying to feign disinterest. 

“Couldn’t say. I haven’t attended any of his meetings myself.” Nilsson picks up the menu and opens it, lips pursing as he surveys the options. His gaze jumps to you. “I think I’ll order the lobster. What are you interested in trying, love?”

You follow suit, opening the menu and skimming it while you decide how to play this. You close the menu, set it back down on the pristine white tablecloth, and lock your eyes on Nilsson, cool and half-lidded. You pick up your glass, swirl it once, and bring it to your mouth. You take a slow, soft sip and lick a stray drop from your bottom lip as you place the glass back on the table. 

“There’s only one thing in this restaurant I’m interested in,” you say, your voice smooth and low. Nilsson leans forward slowly as you hold his gaze. The edge of your mouth tilts up into a subtle smirk. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be on the menu.”

There’s a quiet thump under the table and a sharp pain reverberates through your shin. You struggle not to wince. 

You glare across the table at Bakugou, who stoically stares at his own menu with all the subtlety of a brick wall. 

Did that bastard really just kick you?

At a Michelin-star restaurant ?

You kick him back.

Alexander Nilsson looks at you curiously before downing the rest of his glass in one long gulp.

“Alright,” he says. “I need to go back to my own table while we order. I’ll have to drop the veil while I do so the waitresses can come by. I’ll return in a few minutes.” He drags the chair he borrowed back to the empty table and takes his menu and glass with him to his original spot, leaving you and Bakugou alone. 

“The fuck was that for?” you whisper. He shoots you a look so vile that you wonder if glaring may actually be a secondary quirk of his.

“Don’t play stupid, you know what it was for,” he whispers back. 

“You’re the one who told me to flirt with him.”

“I told you to bat your eyelashes, not talk him into bed.”

“What, you think I laid it on too thick?” you ask. 

“I think if I wasn’t here, he would’ve bent you over the table right then and there,” he says before furrowing his eyebrows. “Actually, scratch that. That sick bastard would probably get off on having an audience.”

You blush furiously into your menu and try not to picture it. 

The waitresses make their rounds. Before long, Nilsson casts the veil again and ambles back over to your table, a bottle of wine in tow. 

“Now that that’s settled, where were we?” He asks you.

“You were getting ready to tell me everything you know about Daguchi,” Bakugou answers. Nilsson clicks his teeth. 

“Funny, I could’ve sworn we were talking about something significantly more interesting.”

“Daguchi’s plenty interesting,” Bakugou huffs. Nilsson sighs and motions to your near-empty glass. You smile politely and nod, and he tops it off for you. Bakugou swipes the bottle from him and takes a swig straight from the neck, his Adam’s apple bobbing once as he swallows. Nilsson crinkles his nose in distaste but doesn’t comment. 

“As I said, I haven’t been to any of his meetings myself. But based on the meetings I have attended, it seems he’s trying to convince all the major players to work in harmony instead of competing with each other. From what I can tell, he’s been surprisingly persuasive.”

“How? What’s he giving them?” Bakugou asks. You take another bite of your salad. 

“Not money, although he could certainly afford to.”

“Is it protection?”

“I’m sure that’s part of it, but I don’t believe that’s his main bargaining chip,” Nilsson says. 

Beyond the veil, you see a server approaching Nilsson’s table with his food. Christ, that was fast. You grab Nilsson’s attention and gesture to her. 

“Whoops! I’ll be back shortly.” He scampers off to his own table, quickly reseating himself and dropping the veil before the waitress accidentally crosses into it. You wonder if anyone notices that your table suddenly has an entire place setting that wasn’t there before. 

 

As a waiter brings over your entrees- lobster pasta for you, wagyu steak for Bakugou- you think over what he said. 

On some level, Daguchi is offering them protection. The guy must be pretty high up in the ranks to offer protection to the most dangerous criminals in the country. And what is he protecting them from? If only you could figure out what governing body he was tied to…

You rack your brain in the hopes of remembering. You’re positive you’ve seen the name before. But where?

You don’t think it was in one of Bakugou’s books. It wasn’t in any of the articles you read before getting the computer confiscated- those were mostly about you. 

Okay, when did you see it?

It wasn’t today. It wasn’t yesterday…

It hits you abruptly. 

You saw it last week, when you made your little trip to the konbini. You had skimmed the covers of a few tabloids while waiting in line to check out. 

It wasn’t the main cover story, but the little picture at the bottom of the magazine had briefly captured your attention. It was a close-up shot of older man’s face, stoic and unbothered as his sagging skin flapped in the wind. 

Daguchi — Says Age Is Just a Number?? HPSC President Spotted On Rollercoaster!!!

You don’t remember what his first name was- you’re certain it wasn’t Shinji. But you can put two and two together. 

If Daguchi Shinji is the son, that old man must be his father. And he was the president of the Hero Public Safety Commission. 

Well, shit. That explains why Bakugou wanted to keep the investigation under wraps. 

 

You contemplatively twist a fork in your pasta. 

 

Bakugou shivers slightly as Nilsson casts the veil again. He returns to your table with a plate full of whole lobsters, claws and all. You swear you see one of them blink at you. 

“As I was saying, I don’t believe protection is the only thing Daguchi is offering them. From what I can tell, the various groups are expending significant resources to maintain this alliance. Protection alone does not seem worth the price they are paying.” Nilsson cracks a claw and eagerly plucks a bit of meat out of it.

“What kind of resources?” you ask curiously. Bakugou glares at you and opens his mouth in a sneer as if to say something, 

but he seems to decide against it at the last second. His jaw snaps shut and he gets to work cutting into his steak with enough force that you worry he’ll saw right through the plate. He shovels a large piece into his mouth and begins chewing it aggressively. You watch him in sick fascination. You’ve never seen someone eat such an expensive meal so angrily.  

“Oh, you know. Money, weapons, people. The usual,” Nilsson says. 

You’re tempted to ask what anyone could possibly need weapons for when everybody's already got superpowers. Then you remember a hero you read about who had literal guns in his fucking arms, and figure that yeah, some of these people might need external weapons to level the playing field. 

“So you don’t know what he’s offering?” Bakugou asks. Nilsson grumbles out a no through a mouth full of lobster meat. 

“Okay, fine,” Bakugou says through gritted teeth. You can see his grip tightening around his fork and knife. You’ve known him for less than a week, but you can tell he’s on the precipice of losing his temper. “Do you know why he’s making these deals?” 

Nilsson has another bite of lobster and washes it down with a slow sip of sauvignon.

“Sadly, I’m not sure of that either,” he says. 

The table rattles as Bakugou slams down his utensils.

“Stop dancing around and give me something I can fucking work with,” he growls. 

Your glass teeters forebodingly. You swoop in to rescue it, but a small drop ricochets over the rim and lands on the back of your hand. You take a nervous sip and try to shoot Bakugou a look that says COOL THE FUCK DOWN PLEASE, but he’s too zeroed in on his infomant to notice. 

“Oh, but that wouldn’t be any fun for me,” Nilsson says with a sigh. He leans back in his chair and pulls a cigar out of the interior chest pocket of his blazer. “I’ll give you a hint: you’re asking the wrong questions.”

“The fuck you mean by that?” Bakugou grits. You inch your glass toward him and try and will him to drink some more wine. 

“Think about it,” Nilsson says. He lights the cigar and puffs on it, seemingly not in the mood to hand out any more clues.

Bakugou just glares at him, visibly fuming. You can tell he’s working hard to keep his lid on, but there’s no doubt in your mind that Bakugou Katsuki is actively suppressing a rolling boil. You can practically hear the whistle of steam leaking out through his ears. 

 

You trace over the information you’ve gathered so far. 

-There are a bunch of organizations coming together under Daguchi’s persuasion. 

-Daguchi isn’t afraid to be seen meeting with them, at least not initially. 

-Statistics are showing a decrease in organized criminal activity. 

At first glance, it almost seems like Daguchi’s negotiating for peace, but if that were really the case, Bakugou wouldn’t be investigating it, right? 

So what is Daguchi really up to? By the sound of it, he’s already got plenty of clean money, and if he’s that important, embezzlement wouldn’t be too hard to manage. You doubt he’d jump straight into organized crime to make a quick buck, although you can’t rule it out. 

Money. Power. Sex. Drugs. 

Daguchi Shinji was born into the former two, which are more than enough to supply him with the latter. 

Could he be trying to make it look like the Hero Public Safety Commission are doing a better job than they really are?

It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem quite right. 

Money.

Power.

Sex.

Drugs.

... 

and Fear.

 

“Who’s he doing it for?” you blurt out.  Bakugou stares at you, jaw locked and eyes wide. Nilsson watches you, satisfied. 

“Ah, she’s got beauty and brains,” he says with a sharp smile. He raises his glass towards you with a nod. 

“What can I say? Some of us just have it all.” You lift your glass and clink it against his. 

“Skål,” he says. You echo his cheers and take a sip.

“Okay, Nilsson, you’ve had your fun. She beat your little guessing game. Tell us what you know.” The man of the hour raises his hands in a mock surrender. 

“From what I’ve gathered, Daguchi is merely the face of this operation. He meets with everyone and orchestrates the deals, but he is not the one pulling the strings,” he says. He pauses for a few seconds before he continues. 

“I don’t know much about the man who’s truly in charge, other than the fact that he is highly dangerous. He doesn’t meet with outsiders often, but when he does, they do not appear to leave alive.” He takes a puff of his cigar. 

“The first few groups Daguchi recruited were unsatisfied with the conditions of their alliance. They attempted to visit the Big Guy to talk things over.”Another puff. “News of the carnage spread quite quickly. I do not believe anyone else has tried to renegotiate.”

You and Bakugou both stiffen. 

“What’s his quirk?” 

“That is uncertain. I’ve heard whispers that he can kill a person instantly without even looking at them, but you know how these things are.”

No, you don’t know how these things are, actually!

You hope Nilsson means that the “whispers” might be an exaggeration.  

“Do you know of anyone else working for him?” you ask before you can stop yourself. Bakugou looks at you strangely. 

You know you’re only here so Nilsson will be distracted. You should just be sitting pretty- it’s not your investigation. These aren’t your questions to ask. But you’ve already gotten more involved than any of you intended, so what’s the harm in one more, right?

“Not many. There seem to be at least a few underlings in the picture, and I know that two of them were poached from Hirayama some time last year. As for the others, I could not say who they are or how they came to work for him.”

“Who are the two he poached?” Bakugou asks. Nilsson gives him their names. 

“There is one other higher-up in their group, it seems. A woman, if you’ll believe it. She’s his right-hand man, of sorts.” You decide not to comment.

“What can you tell us about her?” 

“She is as cunning and mysterious as your friend here,” Nilsson says, “Though I have not seen her face- she usually wears a mask. But I have watched her fight once. She is highly skilled. It would serve you well not to underestimate her.”

“Does this chick have a name?”

“Eh,” Nilsson shrugs. “I’ve heard some call her Night Rain, I’ve heard others call her That Tricky Bitch. I just call her The Body.”

You roll your eyes so hard that you narrowly avoid severing your optic nerves. 

“Oh, baby, don’t be like that,” Nilsson coos. “It is a perfectly sensible name. If big guy is The Brain, and Daguchi is The Face, then it only makes sense that she is The Body.”

After Nilsson makes it clear that he’s given you all the information he has, he politely excuses himself to finish his meal alone. The veil dissapates one final time, and you and Bakugou are left staring at each other, both dying to talk about it but unwilling to do so out in the open. The two of you finish your meal in silence. The server comes by two more times- the first to see if you’d like dessert, which you would (tirimasu in a to-go box, please), and a second to inform Bakugou that the meal has been paid for. 

You both glance over at Nilsson, who has somehow manifested a new date out of thin air. He sends you another wave. 

The server brings your dessert. Mr. Nutty B. Sack stands to leave, and you follow him. 

The two of you are standing an arm’s length apart by the hostess stand, waiting for the valet to pull the car around, when Bakugou shivers again.

A body pops up between you. You shriek.

“Sorry! I forgot something,” Nilsson says. You frown. 

“What, your manners?” You ask. Nilsson frowns. Bakugou frowns. You all frown as a collective whole.

“I… No. Don’t be mean,” Nilsson says. “I’ve heard a strange phrase a few times in the last few months. I don’t know what it refers to, so I’m not sure if it’s connected to Daguchi’s business or not.”

“And? What is it?” 

Nilsson pauses, presumably for dramatic effect.

 

“Pressure tank.”

 

The valet driving Bakugou’s car honks at you, stealing your attention for a moment.  When you look back, Nilsson is gone.

Chapter 12: Conditional Release

Chapter Twelve: Conditional Release

Tuesday August 4 2009: Reader POV

 

You turn back to look at your house, holding up a hand to shield your eyes from the overbearing sunlight. 

You’ve only been walking for a few minutes, so you haven’t made it very far down the road, but you’re just far enough that the little home you grew up in looks warped and distorted from the heat waves. 

You turn back around and walk forth. 

You are eleven years old, and you are on a mission. 

 

The midday sun blazes above you as you trudge forth. The straps of your heavy backpack dig into your shoulders. You realize belatedly that you probably should’ve worn sunscreen. 

A group of kids around your age races past you on bikes and a skateboard. You think you recognize them from school, but they zip by so fast that it’s hard to tell. You watch them ride off into the distance anyway. Only one of them is wearing a helmet. The rest probably think it’s too hot for it. Someone should tell them that traumatic brain injuries don’t care about the heat. 

You look at the houses while you walk; the carports, the doormats, the front doors. You like looking at the mailboxes, in particular. Some of them are painted fun colors; most of them aren’t. A few of them have the addresses in fancy bronze numbers that screw on to the side. Others just have regular old stickers. Your favorite mailbox, painted a bright, crisp white, has the family’s surname hand-painted on the side in a melodious vortex of colors. The couple who live there had a baby a few months ago; they recently stamped little blue handprints on the white wooden post. 

You think that a person could probably tell a lot about someone based on their mailbox, but you haven’t lived long enough to make any meaningful interpretations yet. 

There are more people outside than usual. It’s summer break, so you figure that’s why. You listen to the sound of people laughing, playing, and bickering as you walk along. 

You don’t know it yet, but come Christmas, your parents will finally give you that MP3 player you’ve been wanting. You’ll eat through a $25 iTunes gift card and immediately make the switch to pirating songs from suspicious links under YouTube videos. The MP3 player will accompany you everywhere. A few years after that, you’ll get your very first smartphone, capable of sending texts and playing music- at the same time, no less! 

You will take very few walks like this again for a very long time. But for now, you have the world for white noise, and you are alone with your thoughts.

The quaint residential street slowly turns more commercial the farther down you walk. You pass by a consignment shop, a hair salon, and an independent pharmacy that’s you’re pretty sure is older than your grandmother. You stop in front of the window of your favorite store- the bookstore.

You don’t let yourself go inside all that often. You rarely have the money to buy brand new books, and you’ve found that’s it’s hard to look around for very long without feeling sad, knowing you’ll have to leave empty-handed. 

There’s a poster in the window announcing that an author is coming to town and will be doing a lecture and a signing at the store. You don’t know who he is, but the poster says he writes bestselling detective novels. It’s free to attend, which is your only criterion for entertainment, so you pull your little notepad out of your backpack’s side pocket and scribble down the date and time. 

You take one last look in the window and push yourself forward.

 

The cool air of the library hits you as soon as you open the door, and you shiver as the sweat on your forehead turns icy. 

The library clerk at the front looks up when she hears the door open. She smiles instantly, recognizing you. 

Her name is Suzuki Chiyo. You’re not sure how old she is. You think it’s somewhere between 30 and 50, probably; you haven’t gotten too good at guessing how old grownups are yet. You see her so often that she’s asked you to call her Chiyo. You’ve never called an adult by their first name before. You’re nervous to say it, but you’re also nervous to offend her by not saying it, so you usually avoid using either of her names entirely.

You meet her at the front desk and take off your backpack, lowering it to the tile floor with a small thud . 

“Back already?” she asks. You smile brightly at her as you begin unloading the small assortment of books you borrowed on Thursday. 

“I finished them,” you say. You don’t need to explain that you read the books so quickly because you were out on summer break and had no friends to play with. She just nods. You know she understands. 

Chiyo scans in your returns as you hand them to her. 

“I have a question,” you say.

“Shoot.”

You show her the crumpled piece of paper from your notepad. 

“Have you read any books by this author?” She reads it and her eyes light up. 

“Yes! A few of them, actually. Do you want a recommendation?” You nod. “I think I’ve got one of them back here.” Chiyo walks over to the rolling cart behind the desk for books that were placed on hold but not picked up in time, skimming over the titles and stopping on one. She touts it in the air victoriously and slides it to you across the desk. You read at the title: The Body In The Watch Room.

“It’s about a lighthouse keeper who dies under mysterious circumstances. The police say it was an accident, but an investigative reporter covering the story thinks he was murdered, even though the lighthouse is very difficult to access.”

“That’s so cool!” You say. “I can’t wait to read it!”

“Want me to hold it up here while you look around?” Chiyo asks. She knows you could never leave with just one book.

“Yes, please.”

“Is there anything else I can help with today?”

“Hmmm. Yes, actually,” you say, hesistant. You have to think about it for a minute. You know there was something you’d wanted to read about earlier this week…

You flip back through your little notepad. You’ve got scraps of ideas, interesting facts, anything you want to jot down on short notice without dedicating a full composition book page to.

Ha! You find it. 

“Do you have any books about diseases?” You ask, still smiling brightly. Chiyo’s brow furrows a bit. 

“Do you want a story about a disease or a nonfiction book about a disease?”

“Nonfiction.”

“Alright then. Are you looking for information about a specific condition?”

“Nope. Just diseases,” you say with a shrug.

You had watched a few episodes of a medical drama with your mother earlier in the week. It was called House , and you were utterly transfixed. The conditions they treated on the show were so interesting, and the process of figuring out the cause of someone’s symptoms was fascinating. 

You realize that Dr. House was kind of like the reporter in the book Chiyo picked out, when you think about it. Even when all the other doctors said a sickness was caused by one thing, Dr. House always picked up on all the little inconsistencies and realized it was actually something else. 

You wanted to learn more about diseases like the ones they diagnose on House . You wanted to be the one to notice the inconsistencies and solve the mystery one day.

Chiyo chuckles and motions for you to follow her. You’re astonished when you realize she leads you through a sturdy wooden door to a section of the library you’ve never noticed before.

“Most of our nonfiction books about diseases are part of our Reference collection. That means they always stay here; you can’t check them out, unfortunately,” she says. You frown, a bit dejected. “However, you can stay here and read them for as long as you like.” 

“In that case, I guess I’ll be here all day,” you say, looking around at the arcane Reference Room. The two of you are the only people inside. It’s got two long tables and plenty of big, comfy chairs. “I didn’t even know this was back here,” you admit.

“I wouldn’t expect you to. Most people your age aren’t interested in this section. Most adults aren’t interested in the section, honestly. But you… Well, you’ve always been our special little reader, haven’t you?” You blush. You never know how to accept compliments like these, especially from people like Chiyo who hand them out so freely. She pulls a few of the large, thick books out and sets them on the table for you.

“I’ll warn you, some of these books are very advanced. Several of them are part of medical school curriculum. There’s a dictionary of medical terminology here, which should help with some of the words you may not know.” She places the dictionary on the table next to the others. “I wish I had something a little lighter to recommend, but most of our other nonfiction medical books are memoirs or self-help books for people battling with specific conditions. When it comes to general information about diseases, there’s a bit of a gap in our collection. These texts are the best I can offer,” she says. 

“This is perfect,” you say, and you mean it. 

Monday March 18 2171: Reader POV

 

The days after your meeting with Alexander Nilsson pass by in a blur. Bakugou got on to you a little about what he referred to as your “excessive participation” in the conversation, but it wasn’t as harsh as you expected. It was his investigation, after all. 

True to his word, he’s dragged you along to his agency every morning so far. You quickly fall into a routine of training with Kurosawa and Ikeda during the first half of his shift while he’s on patrol. 

You enjoy training more than you would have anticipated. Once Kurosawa decides you’ve mastered the basic protective moves of self-defense, she doesn’t bother asking you if you want to keep learning. She just sends Ikeda to retrieve a few punching bags and gets right to work on critiquing your abilities, taking the liberty of manually adjusting the angle of your elbows and giving you tips for a smoother follow-through. 

On the third morning, you realize you can place the feeling it stirs in you; there’s something almost meditative about it. 

A tremendous amount of frenetic energy has welled up inside you. You suspect it’s been building for some time now- at least a year and a half if you really stop to think about it, though you try not to- but being sent to the future was a catalyst. A divine agitator. You were like a soda can, already full to the brim and idly carbonated; the universe then saw fit to shake you with all the violent ferocity of a middle-schooler playing a prank on an unsuspecting classmate. 

You’ve been primed and pressurized. You hadn’t realized until now just how close you were to bursting. 

As it turns out, the rigor of fight training is the best release you could ask for, save for a good old-fashioned Bacchanalia. By noon each day, you find yourself coated in a hard-earned layer of sweat.  The stab wound, not entirely done healing but at least scabbed over, has withstood far harsher beatings than you would have expected. Your knuckles are scraped. Your shins are bruised. Your muscles are sore and loose. You couldn’t be happier about it. 

You spend the second half of Bakugou’s shift camped out in his office, reading. 

The agency had a small resource room with a few books on quirks. They mostly covered battle strategy, which wasn’t exactly relevant to you, but it was interesting to read through nonetheless. To your delight, they also had The Hero’s Field Guide to First Aid , a book that not only gave standard emergency first-aid techniques but also discussed ways to manage injuries from common quirks. A section in the back gave real-life examples of strategies various heroes had taken to save civilians, friends, and even themselves on the battlefield. (You read in rapt fascination of Aizawa Shota, teacher of the infamous class 1-A- Bakugou’s class- who amputated his own leg mid-battle to keep a quirk-erasing serum from spreading through his body).

Sometimes Bakugou is in his office with you while you read, coexisting with you in a mostly peaceful manner as he grumbles at his paperwork after returning home from patrol. Other times, he’s out for most of his shift, though you rarely know why . Hero business, you figure. He sends people to check on you when he’s gone for more than an hour or two. Kurosawa and Ikeda patrol with Kirishima in the afternoons- Red Riot , you should really call him- so he usually sends one of his main assistants. They poke their head in, ask if you need anything, and make sure you haven’t caused any property damage, or whatever it is Bakugou is so worried you’ll get into without supervision.

Kaminari even made an appearance at one point, but he’d poked his little head through the door an hour after the designated check-in time, and Bakugou had already returned from wherever he’d gone off to. 

 

On the sixth day of your new routine, Kurosawa and Ikeda stage a coup as you wind down your training. They corner you by the punching bag.

“What year were you born?” Kurosawa presses suddenly, voice stern and eyes narrowed. Your mind races to calculate.

“2148,” you say, trying to sound confident. She glares at you. “That would make you 22. You said you’re 23.” Your brow furrows.

“No it wouldn’t.”

“The other day you mentioned that you were born in the summer,” Ikeda says grimly. “It’s only March.”

 

Your mind goes still, and there’s only one thought you can muster: F UUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

 

You quickly excuse yourself to go find Bakguou. How did they figure it out? What gave you away? You had been making a conscious effort to cut down on using slang and pop culture references, and when something did slip through the cracks, you played it off as being an Amish thing. 

But despite your best efforts, the jig was up. You’d been had .

 

“They know,” you pant, slamming his office door behind you. He looks up from his computer, clacking away at his keyboard, a little pair of blue light glasses perched on his nose. 

“Who’s ‘they’? What do they know?” He asks, still typing. His nose scrunches up. “And why do you sound like that? Are you having an asthma attack or something?”

You flop down on the couch in sweaty defeat. 

“Ikeda and Kurosawa,” you explain. You lean back and fling an arm over your eyes. “I don’t know how, but they figured out I’m a time traveler.”

The clacking stops. 

“Oh.” You hear him scratch his head for a moment. “Yeah, guess I should’ve seen that one coming.” 

You lift your arm to look at him quizzically. “They were the ones who did that research on time quirks,” he explains. 

You sigh in a combination of relief and exasperation. No matter what you do, it feels like everything always leads back to the fucking time quirks .

 

You’ve been racking your brain trying to figure out how you and your presence here could be linked to Daguchi’s business. Bakugou hadn’t confirmed that it was the case he and Kirishima suspected you were connected to, but when you pressed him for answers after the meeting with Nilsson, he hadn’t exactly denied it, either. 

From what you could tell, he hadn’t made any further progress on the case. He hadn’t given you any details that you hadn’t already pieced together for yourself. You weren’t sure if it was because he was keeping information from you or if he just didn’t have any more information, period. The two of you occasionally made guesses at what pressure tank might mean, if it was even connected at all.

You would sit next to each other at his kitchen island in the mornings; you would say something stupid to cut through the silence like “maybe Big Bad Guy is just a nerd for hydraulics,” and Bakugou would roll his eyes and say something like “yeah, or maybe he’s got a fucking nuclear reactor.” The two of you would lapse into silence again and repeat some variation of it later on while making dinner.

 

You hadn’t made any further progress on your case, either.

The books from the resource room were not to be removed from the agency, so you instead spent late nights and early mornings curled up on Bakugou’s couch digging through articles about time and space (you were still barred from using his laptop unsupervised for the time being, so you scrolled through the surprisingly extant Google Scholar under his watchful eye and bookmarked all the titles you wanted him to print out for you. You were costing his agency an arm and a leg in ink cartridges, but it was hard to feel guilty when he imposed the restriction that necessitated paper copies in the first place). You cursed your past self as you pored over theoretical calculations in special relativity and discoveries in quantum mechanics, wishing you’d had the foresight to take more physics classes in undergrad. 

While there was an abundance of material for you to cover, it was still far less than you had expected. A significant portion of your articles were authored prior to 2037; many of them were published while you were still tromping about in the early 2000s. 

It seemed that the onset of quirks had shifted the focus of development in all fields, not just technology.

That said, there was one discovery that seemed promising- a team of Icelandic 

geophysicists had accidentally opened up a possible wormhole on a research expedition gone awry. 

The team had etched the date and their contact information into the lens of a pair of ski goggles and dropped it through the small wormhole, which collapsed in on itself almost immediately after. At the time of the article’s publication six years ago, no one had contacted them. 

You sit up suddenly. 

“Speaking of time, can I use your computer real quick?”

Bakugou raises an eyebrow at you from behind his desk.

“What for?” he asks, but he’s already rolling his chair to the side to make room for you. 

“I want to follow up on one of those articles you printed for me.”

You stand next to him in front of his computer, hunching over a bit to type. You pull up the Icelandic team’s research page, hosted on the website of the University they worked under.  “These guys accidentally opened up a wormhole a few years back,” you explain to Bakugou as you wait for the translation to load. You scroll through their latest posts. “It was really small and it collapsed quickly, but they managed to drop their contact info into it. I want to see if anyone’s reached out to them yet.”

“How’d they do it?” he asks. 

“They were doing this field experiment at the North Pole to try and artificially manipulate the Northern Lights. They built this machine to, like, shoot radio waves into the sky and change the ionization of the plasma or something. But one of the guys lost control of his quirk and blew it up.” You pause for dramatic effect. “They think the force of the explosion mixed with the already-heightened geomagnetic activity basically tore open the fabric of space somehow.”

“An explosion, huh?” Bakugou says, a curious lilt in his voice. You shoot him a look. 

“Don’t go getting any ideas, Blasty. They weren’t able to replicate it.”

You keep scrolling through their posts until you reach the initial article from six years ago. You sigh.

“No dice, huh?” he asks.

“No dice.”

You go quiet, the disappointment radiating out of you in thick waves. 

Even if their wormhole was small, even if you definitely didn’t remember any kind of explosion happening before you were stabbed, you’d been so hopeful of finding something, anything that could even partially explain how you might have ended up here. Sure, the initial article means that wormholes can technically be opened, but there’s still no evidence that they can actually be used to cross through time.

Bakugou watches you for a minute before letting out a long sigh and standing from his chair.

“Look, I gotta go to the bookstore,” he says. “Wanna come with?”

ততততত

 

The bookstore is on the other side of town. The towering skyscrapers of downtown Musutafu grow fewer, making way for two and three-story row buildings. It’s a sunny day. People are walking their dogs. Young couples push strollers down the sidewalks; the strollers are less high-tech than the ones you’ve seen near the agency and more closely resemble the models you saw back home. There are small vendors set up on the street corners, selling fresh fruit, ice cream, and hotdogs to the small groups. You watch one of the transactions, the customer growing more and more impatient as he turns back to watch the light flashing at the crosswalk. He manages to scamper across the street, hotdog in tow, just before the countdown ends. 

Bakugou parks his car down a side street. The bookstore he leads you to is quaint, nestled between a smoothie bar and an antique shop. The name is hand-painted on the window, off-white and chipping at the edges.

A bell dings overhead as he pushes in the door, and the chaos of Ryo’s Used Books hits you all at once. 

“Welcome to Ryo’s!” A girlish voice calls from somewhere in the stacks. “I’ll be -umph- with you shortly!”

“It’s just me,” Bakugou shouts back. “Take your time, we’ll have a look around.”

It’s nothing like the neat, orderly bookstore you admired as a child, or the big-box chain store near campus you frequented as a college student.   

The shelves nearly touch the ceiling and are arranged in such a convoluted labyrinth that there are arrow-shaped decals on the floor, guiding wayward customers down a narrow path to the checkout counter. 

You almost feel claustrophobic. 

“Who’s with you?” The disembodied voice asks, sounding farther away. “Anyone I know?”

Your overwhelm subsides enough for you to take in the details. The shelves are packed with mismatched titles; paperbacks with cracked spines, hardbacks missing their dust jackets. The stock overflows more often than it doesn’t; there are extra books packed in balanced on top of the rows within the shelves, and more books in horizontal piles in front of the rows. You’d have to do some rearranging to even read all the titles. There are a few places where it seems the staff has given up hope of shelving them at all, stacks balanced precariously on the floor like Jenga blocks. 

“Friend of mine. You haven’t met her.”

Bakugou’s conversation with the bookshop spirit fades into the distance as you wander, tracing your way down a path of shelves and curling around to another aisle. You crane your head to the side in hopes of skimming over the titles faster, though you know it’s a lost cause; it would take you days, if not weeks, to process the full inventory. 

Thankfully, it’s at least a little organized. Each shelf bears a genre label, but you quickly realize they aren’t all grouped together; FICTION- PULP ROMANCE is placed directly below NONFICTION- COOKBOOKS and above NONFICTION- SELF HELP. A few rows down, you find another FICTION- PULP ROMANCE tucked away next to NONFICTION- MARITIME DISASTER. 

A few of the labels are sturdy metal placards, drilled into the shelves with level precision. Most of them are decidedly un-level black stickers, slapped on in apparent haste, bearing the telltale white embossed lettering of an old-school labelmaker. 

You’re so thoroughly entrenched in the stacks that you fail to notice the bookshop spirit flitting around a corner, her vision obscured by a tall pile of books cradled in her arms, and the two of you bump into each other with a start. 

Paperbacks go flying as the impact sends you hurtling backwards to the ground. You land hard on your ass, and the shelf next to you rattles with a threatening creak before settling back into place. 

“Fuck!” you both say, equally startled. You look up at her as she squats down to eye level. As you take in her form, which you’re strangely disappointed to find utterly corporeal, the bookshop spirit becomes less of a fantastical apparition and more of a standard-issue human. Brown bangs fall just past her eyebrows, blunt and slightly overgrown, and the rest of her hair is piled atop her head in a chaotic knot, held in place by a ballpoint pen. Whispers of blonde roots peek out from her scalp. 

“Are you okay?” she asks, peering at you over the edge of horn-rimmed glasses, which have slipped halfway down her nose. You nod, dusting off your hands, and lean forward on your knees to begin collecting the scattered books. 

“I’m good. Sorry about that,” you say sheepishly.

“It’s my fault,” she assures you. “I should know better than to go running around with books in my eyes.”

You smile to yourself as you add a worn detective novel to the stack in your arms, thinking back to all the times you were scolded as a child for walking around with your nose in a book.

“Happens to the best of us.” 

Clunking, heavy footsteps settle a few feet behind you. Bakugou lets out a scoff. 

“Yeesh. Can’t take you anywhere.”

You roll your eyes, tempted to turn around and chuck a paperback at him, but decide you’ve afflicted the novels with enough unjust cruelty for one afternoon. 

She picks up the last book and stands, offering you her free hand. You accept it, rising to meet her with your stack of books tucked against your chest with your other arm. She adjusts her own stack, mirroring yours, and gestures for you to hand her the rest. 

You shake your head. 

“Where were you taking these?” you ask. “Probably best if I carry them. To avoid any more collisions.”

She hesitates for a second before letting out a soft chuckle. “This way,” she says. She steps around you, staring down Bakugou, who is inadvertently blocking the aisle with his big stupid muscles. He lags for a moment before getting the hint and pressing himself up against a shelf to clear the path. 

You trail behind her, and Bakugou trails behind you, emitting a tangible distaste at taking up the caboose. 

She leads you through the stacks to a checkout counter, weaving around it and through a curtained doorway marked “Employees Only”. 

It’s a modest space, small but open, that appears to be part office, part break room. Tawny metal filing cabinets run across a wall; a little kitchenette along another. 

She brushes what look to be muffin crumbs off a white plastic card table set up in the middle of the room and sets her stack down on top of it. You follow suit. 

“These are for online orders,” she explains, gesturing to the books. 

“You sell them online, too?” You can’t imagine what their inventory system must look like to keep track of it all. She shrugs.

“Have to, these days.” These days , it seems, has been a sentiment echoed across the last century and a half.  “Oh, where are my manners? I’m Kano Himiko!” she says, whirling around to give you a polite bow. You offer your own name, ignoring the way Bakugou’s eye twitches in your peripheral vision, and bow back at her.

“So, I know what brings you here today,” she says, dusting off her hands on her jeans as she shoots Bakugou a look that you can’t quite decipher. “But what about you, new friend?”

You pause. Why were you here? You couldn’t exactly tell her that Bakugou dragged you along on his errand to cheer you up after your fruitless search for an update on a time travel research paper. 

“I’m looking for a book on quirk physiology,” you settle on saying, because technically, you are. 

It’s crossed your mind more than a few times in the last week and a half: how quirks might work on a molecular level, how they integrated with the human body, how a virus carried by rodents could alter the human genome enough to trigger the development of widespread superpowers. The books you found at the agency and at Bakugou’s apartment occasionally touched on it in passing, but they were much more geared toward the practicalities of quirks rather than the hard science behind them.

Put simply, it just wasn’t enough for you. 

(You were starting to wonder if anything ever would be.) 

Kano scrunches up her nose in contemplation. 

“I think we’ve got a few in stock. Here, I’ll show you.” She turns to Bakugou. “Just wait here. I’ll be right back.”

You follow her back through the curtain that cordons off the employees-only area, weaving between the towering stacks to a section tucked away in a back corner. She points at a shelf labeled NONFICTION- QUIRK SCIENCE.

“Here’s some of them. There’s another section this way.” You make careful note of the path you take to the next section, hoping you can retrace your steps without too much effort. She points at another shelf, this one labeled NONFICTION- QUIRK MEDICINE. Your little almost-doctor heart thumps in your chest with glee (or possibly an excitement-induced arrhythmia). You find yourself rubbing your hands together like a cartoon villain, although you suspect that from the outside, you look more like a fruit fly. 

“I’m gonna go chat with Katsuki for a bit. We’ll find you when we’re done,” she says with a soft smile before wandering off back out of sight. 

You briefly wonder what Kano Himiko is to him, to call him by his first name. Probably not a girlfriend- if she was, Bakugou certainly wasn’t very forthcoming with her, given the fact that you were living with him. You’d heard Kaminari and Sero make enough jokes about his chronic singlehood, anyway. But she didn’t look like a relative, either. Another childhood friend, maybe?Regardless of their relationship, you can’t be bothered to wonder for long. Not with an entire section of books on Quirk Medicine in front of you. 

You wonder how mad Bakugo would be if you bought out the entire shelf. Well, if he bought out the entire shelf, technically, seeing as you still hadn’t figured out a way to access your bank account without raising serious alarm. 

You investigate the contents. There are a few memoirs and a few more books on first aid for quirk-related injuries. You count exactly five books that might give you the information you’re looking for and settle on buying three of them: The Anatomy of Quirks, Quirk Use in Modern Medicine, and Healing Quirks: A Comprehensive Guide for Medical Professionals.

You find your way back to the little Quirk Science section, running your finger along the spines. Based on the titles, it seems that most of them are about how quirks have integrated with technology; interesting, but not what you’re after. 

One of the books in your arm slips, and when you lean down to grab it, something in the corner of your eye catches your attention. 

In a section running along the bottom shelf titled NONFICTION- GRIEF, floating alone in a sea of gentle and reassuring pastel covers, is a thick and shiny black book with aggressively neon green lettering. The title runs down the side in a “futuristic” font you usually only see on the posters for cyberpunk thriller movies.

The Final Factor.

Curiosity gets the best of you, as it usually does. 

You rest your other finds on the floor and pull out the misshelved book. You settle into a squat to examine it. The front cover is even worse. It features an old-school computer-generated version of Leonardo DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man , also in violent techno green. You think back to your childhood, watching Animal Planet’s The Most Extreme before school while you slurped up your Cheerios. The book cover is nothing short of a crime against the graphic design gods.

The background bears more green lettering, albeit a bit less neon, running along the full expanse of the cover. It’s just the same four letters- A, C, G, and T- repeating in various sequences. 

You know what those letters mean—adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine; the four nucleotide bases that make up DNA and RNA. You read over the subtitle, your heartbeat picking up in your ears, your mind racing. 

The Final Factor: Decoding the Genetic Science of Quirks.

You can’t believe your luck. 

You found your holy grail by pure fucking chance. 

 

When Bakugou and Kano find their way back to you, you’re still squatting on the floor, skimming through your treasure.

“Oh, good! You found something!” She says excitedly. Bakugou eyes the little pile next to you.

“Several somethings,” he mumbles. “You done?”

You nod, collecting your haul and rising to meet them.

“I found what I came for,” you tell them. The three of you make your way back to the checkout counter. Kano rings you up and slips the books into a paper bag while Bakugou taps his credit card against the machine. She presses the bag into your arms with a smile.

“Thank you for visiting,” she tells you. “Please, come back any time!” You smile back at her.

“I will,” you say, and you mean it.

Notes:

Lots of fun early-2000s media references in this one. Does anyone else remember The Most Extreme or am I dating myself here??? Little me thought the intro was so cool. Absolute peak design.

Anyway I hope yall enjoyed this chapter!!!