Chapter Text
In the back of his mind, Katsuki could tell something was wrong.
Everything was fuzzy. It was hard to think. His eyelids were heavy like lead, and he couldn’t even feel the rest of his body. The last thing he could remember was being carted off for surgery on his arm. He’d woken up from anesthesia before, and it never felt like this.
For a horrifying moment, he wondered if he was waking up mid-surgery.
Shit, he’s moving.
Dose him again, then.
Are you trying to kill him?
Katsuki groaned. His whole body hurt. He’d just taken down one of the worst villains on the planet, for god’s sake. Was it too much to let him take a goddamn decent nap?
Whoa, he’s actually waking up.
Wait, you’re kidding, right?
Heavy eyes blinked open. Katsuki wasn’t at all where he expected to be. Above him, was the metal roof of a vehicle. The cabinets and wires hanging around him told him it was an ambulance. He’d already gotten out of the ambulance. He was headed into surgery. So why was he in another one?
“Hey, kid, you’re not supposed to be up yet,” a woman spoke to his right. Katsuki slowly turned his head to look at her. She wasn’t dressed in the uniform of a paramedic. She was wearing a set of salmon-colored scrubs. Strange. “I’m going to give you something that will make you a little sleepy, okay?”
Where are we going? Katsuki wanted to ask, but his mouth wasn’t cooperating. He felt heavily sedated. Something was really wrong. This was all too confusing.
Katsuki watched the lady pull out a vial and a syringe. He couldn’t move. He was helpless to her whims. She plunged the syringe into his iv and he felt something ice his veins.
“He’ll be out again in no time,” she spoke to someone behind him.
“Are you sure he wont overdose? We can’t have him die before we even get there,” A man spoke in a sort of irritated tone.
“He’ll be fine,” the woman said with a displeased look.
Katsuki’s eyelids were becoming heavier.
This was bad. If he went to sleep he wouldn’t be able to ask them where they were going. He never found out if everyone was okay. They didn’t even tell him how the surgery went.
Despite his internal struggle, his eyes drifted shut. He tried to ask them his burning questions, but all that came out was a tiny hum. He was out before he knew it.
The world was fuzzy for a long time after that.
He could gather bits and pieces. He saw glimpses of doctors in lab coats. Sterile rooms. He became aware at one point when he was lifted from his bed and placed on a much less comfortable table. Another time, he opened his eyes to darkness and realized he was alone in an empty room, lying on the floor.
Nothing made sense. He couldn’t put the pieces together. He was far too tired.
“When the prongs aren’t against your skin, it does nothing, see?” a voice filtered into Katsuki’s brain. This was the most awake he’d been in… who knew how long.
“Oh, gotcha,” another voice spoke.
Something leather was then clipped around his neck. His eyes were still closed, but he felt his brow furrow. There were two cold spikes prodding him on the left side of his neck. The prongs, he guessed.
“It has, uh, nine levels, I think?” the first voice said in an unsure tone. “It goes based on decibels, or something.”
The other voice snorted. “You realize who this is, right? Isn’t that too cruel?”
“Hey, it wasn’t my call.”
The room was cold, but Katsuki didn’t mind. His body felt hot, too hot. Almost like he was running a fever. That probably wasn’t good, considering he’d just gotten out of surgery… how long ago? He couldn’t remember.
The thought was alarming enough to pull him into full consciousness.
At first, he was almost shocked. He hadn’t expected to actually wake up. His eyes blinked open to a regular hospital room. The two who had been speaking beside him were wearing uniforms like police officers, but they were notably lacking any identifying symbols. Security guards, maybe.
“Oh! There he is,” one of them said, and he pushed a big red call button on the wall.
Katsuki stared at them with a confused frown. A moment later, the lady in salmon scrubs was back. “Katsuki, you’re finally awake!” She smiled softly at him. “Don’t try to talk, okay? I’m going to give you another dose of medicine, and we have some things to discuss.”
Frankly, he was offended at her suggestion. Don’t talk? He had so many questions. “Wh’t the fu—” His hoarse voice was interrupted by a shock of electricity that seemed to travel through his whole body. It was weak. He’d gotten worse just bumping into Kaminari, but it was enough to startle him.
“I know,” the lady cooed, petting his hair. “It’s just a precaution. You understand?”
“No,” Katsuki said incredulously. This time, the shock felt a little more like what he’d get from Kaminari. His face scrunched into something displeased.
“You’re safe, I promise,” the lady assured him. He wished he could believe her. All the strange memories and the literal shock collar around his throat told another story. “We’re with the hero commission,” she explained.
That raised a whole lot more questions than answers, none of which Katsuki could ask without being interrupted via electrocution.
“So, I am going to shut off the decibel setting for a few minutes because I have a few questions. Is that okay?” the lady asked him pleasantly. Katsuki couldn’t reply, so he just nodded. “Be careful,” she warned him. “I can still shock you manually if you speak out of turn, and you may find I’m not quite as nice.”
Translation: Only answer the questions she was going to ask him. Got it.
The lady clicked a button on the remote in her hand. She smiled kindly. “My name is Michelle,” she finally introduced herself. “We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other from now on. How do you feel about that?”
Katsuki swallowed. “Uh… confused?” he answered honestly.
Michelle laughed lightly. “Good answer. Now, here’s how this is going to work. I have questions. You have answers. If I don’t get the answer I’m looking for, you get a little zap. If you speak out of turn, you get a little zap. If you so much as breathe aggressively towards me, you get a little zap. Understood? Say yes.”
She smiled at him patiently, waiting for his reply. He was starting to seriously doubt that she was with the commission. What she was describing sounded eerily like torture. “Yes,” Katsuki replied instead of asking his burning questions.
The last thing he wanted was to find out what she meant by ‘not as nice.’
Michelle nodded in approval. Then, she got right into it. “What is your name?”
Katsuki frowned at her. He’d heard stories about interrogations like this, where they start with the easy questions and eventually wear the person down into answering questions that they didn’t want to. He didn’t have any information worth interrogating for, however. At least not anything that mattered anymore. The villains were defeated. What more could they want from him?
“Bakugou Katsuki…” he mumbled hesitantly.
Suddenly, his vision whited out and all he knew was pain. It felt like he was vibrating down to his atoms, like each and every one was being torn apart. Then it stopped. His muscles continued to twitch involuntarily.
“We’ve got a screamer,” Michelle said, amused, but he couldn’t even recall screaming. All he knew was that it hurt. “What is your quirk?”
Katsuki swallowed. He didn’t know how she wanted him to answer. He couldn’t go through that again. “Explosions,” he finally replied.
Michelle nodded. “Where should you be right now?”
Okay… maybe he was getting somewhere. “I was getting surgery for my arm,” he said a little more confidently.
White, hot, pain. Katsuki could almost hear himself screaming this time.
When it stopped, Michelle didn’t give him a chance to recover. “How many days have you been here?”
Katsuki’s head rolled. He blinked his heavy eyelids. “Uh… maybe one or two…” he said thickly.
He was burning alive. He could see flashes of colors that don’t exist while his entire body shattered.
When it ended again, he breathed heavily. He couldn’t open his eyes. He felt utterly exhausted.
“Hm,” Michelle hummed in disapproval. “Maybe next time.” She stood and pushed a button on the machine beside him. Something entered his iv, he could feel it, but he was too weak to do anything about it. Not like he could argue with her, either. She walked over to the door and leaned against the frame as she talked to someone outside. “He needs another treatment, maybe two before he sees the doctor. Wouldn’t want him to have a fucking conniption…”
Katsuki was out before he realized it.
The next time he woke, Michelle was already sitting on the chair beside him. She wasn’t wearing scrubs. She was wearing a black t-shirt and dark green cargo pants. “Good morning,” She said, though she didn’t even look up from the magazine she was reading.
He… had no idea what was going on. He felt lost. His brain had holes in it.
Michelle put her magazine down and clicked the button on her remote. “You know the drill, don’t you?”
He did. He remembered the pain from the collar. The way his muscles seized and twitched. He remembered that, and not much else.
“What’s your name?” she asked calmly, and with a reassuring smile.
“I… don’t know,” he mumbled. Surely, that was unacceptable. Everyone remembered their name.
No pain came. “What’s your quirk?” she asked next.
“Explosions,” he remembered. That was the only question he got right before.
“Where should you be right now?” was her next question.
He wracked his brain. There was something… something he should be doing. Someone he needed to see. Something he needed to get fixed. “I don’t… know…” he mumbled, unsure.
“Alright,” she smiled kindly. “And lastly, how long have you been here?”
That was easy. “I don’t know.” He’d been sleeping far too much to keep track.
Michelle smiled widely. “Good boy,” she praised him, and he felt proud of himself. Though, he hadn’t actually had any answers for her. “One more treatment, and you’ll be ready to meet the doctor. How’s that sound?”
“Uh… okay,” he agreed with a nod, even though he wasn’t quite sure what she was referring to.
She snickered at his response and hit the button on the machine again. Something cold entered his veins. “One more little nap, then you’ll be ready for the big one. We just have to be sure that...”
When he opened his eyes, he wasn’t confused.
“What’s your name?” Michelle asked him with no preamble. She was wearing a blue t-shirt and gray cargo pants this time. The bitch liked her pockets, he supposed.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“What’s your quirk?” She continued seriously. Her hand was on the remote.
He wiggled his fingers in a mock threat. “Explosions,” he said with raised eyebrows.
Michelle smacked the side of his head. “Motherfucker gave you your attitude problems back,” she complained, almost petulant. “Where are you supposed to be right now.”
He squinted at her. “I don’t know.”
“And last but not least,” she said with a grin. “How many days have you been here?”
“I don’t know.”
Michelle hummed, considering his answers. “I quite like you with a little personality,” she decided. “Makes it more fun this way. Alright. You’ve completed your treatments. Congratulations.”
“Uh, thanks?” he said with a confused scrunch to his face. If it meant he would finally get out of this hospital bed, he would take it.
“I’m going to introduce you to the doctor now,” Michelle informed him seriously.
Damnit.
“I had to do treatments before meeting the doctor?” he complained.
Searing. White. Hot. Pain.
Once the electrocution stopped, and his muscles were left twitching, Michelle dignified his question with an answer. “Yes,” she said. “Don’t worry. This next part will go by quick for you.”
She stood and walked to the door to wave someone in, and then leaned against the wall and waited, staring at him. A short fat man hobbled in beside her. “Ah, it's nice to finally see you in the flesh,” the doctor smiled widely. “We’re going to be getting to know each other really well. Or rather, I will be getting to know you.”
Well, that wasn’t ominous at all. He said nothing. He learned at this point that talking out of turn was not worth it.
The doctor gave him an almost impressed look. “Well behaved,” he commented, then he hobbled over to the iv. “I have a couple things to prepare your body for what’s to come. Then I have something to keep you calm while we go through the next steps. Alright?”
Not like he had much of a choice. He nodded in agreement.
“Good, good,” the doctor hummed, and he pulled over a table with… frankly, a lot of fucking vials on it. Still, he said nothing. Only watched as the old man injected vial after vial into his bloodstream. After the last one, his head became fuzzy almost immediately. “Alright, let’s get our transport boys in here,” the doctor grinned, turning towards Michelle. “It’s time to take him downstairs.”
Two men appeared to maneuver his bed into the hallway. He let his eyes drift closed. It wasn’t like he was going to fall asleep, but he was so tired. The wheels of his bed went over a bump. He heard doors hiss shut, and felt the telltale whoosh of a sudden change in elevation. Doors hissed, and they went over another bump.
“And I’m trusting that you aren’t going to add anything unnecessary,” Michelle was saying. He hadn’t been paying attention, but she and the doctor were chatting the entire time.
“Oh, yes, of course,” the doctor said quickly. “Nothing unnecessary.”
“Only what we’ve discussed,” she clarified firmly.
“Yes, yes,” the doctor said quickly, and he imagined he was nodding his ugly little head. The image gave him the urge to giggle, but he was far too tired. “Invulnerability, healing factor, the works. His body will be much stronger than the average human, I can tell you that.”
“That’s all I can ask for,” Michelle said, sounding satisfied.
The bed came to a rolling stop, and he opened his eyes. For the most part, his surroundings appeared the same as any other hospital he’d been to. Directly in front of him, however, was a giant glass tube filled with purple liquid. Something about it was… familiar. He felt like he should be very alarmed at this situation, but he couldn’t find it in him to care all that much. He wished he could just go to sleep.
The doctor approached. He fixed an oxygen mask over his face, and attached the iv to a much longer tube that trailed somewhere in the room. Then, one of the men who’d been pushing the bed lifted him gently, bridal style. His head rolled against the man's chest.
“The mask is a temporary comfort for while he’s conscious, but it won’t be necessary for the entire duration of his, ah, processing,” the doctor explained to Michelle.
He stared at them blankly. Michelle was standing there with her arms crossed, looking quite serious. The doctor seemed… giddy. He watched as they got further away, as the man carrying him climbed the steps beside the tube. Before he knew it, before he was ready, he was being lowered into the mystery liquid.
A pleading noise escaped from his throat, and he grabbed onto the man’s shirt weakly. The man didn’t seem to mind. He shushed him and continued to kneel down further. His feet were completely submerged. The liquid was warm.
It wasn’t until that moment that he realized what he was wearing, only because he was worried about his clothes getting wet. He had on compression wear, a long-sleeved shirt and pants. He had no socks or shoes.
He was submerged up to his hips. His weak struggles were for nothing. The man continued to lower him despite them, and suddenly he was dropped. He drifted slowly downwards, but never quite reached the bottom. He floated somewhere in the middle, but he couldn’t tell with his eyes closed.
There were muffled voices outside the tube. He felt the now familiar feeling of something cold entering his iv. His last thought before the world faded away was to wonder why the hell he couldn’t just sleep in his bed.
The next time he woke up, his arm didn’t hurt anymore. His heart beat was steady and strong. He didn’t realize that these were problems he had until they were apparently fixed.
He blinked his eyes open and stared groggily at the ceiling. Other than those pains that were gone, he felt like he got hit by a truck, or ran a marathon. Maybe two marathons. His entire body was sore, and he was really struggling to wake up.
There was an oxygen mask taped on his face. He reached up to pick at the tape, and his hand was swatted away. “Quit that,” Michelle spoke. Right, he almost forgot about the bitch. He turned to her with a glare. “Yeesh, grump, much?” she complained.
He huffed in response. The heavy leather collar was still around his throat. He knew better than to reply.
“Well I have some good news for you, buddy,” she grinned. “I got you a name. How about that?”
Again, he blinked. He was starting to wake up a little more. He sat up stiffly with a groan, and felt a low-level shock despite his efforts not to talk. Michelle waited patiently while he recovered and turned to look at her.
“It’s not a real name,” she admitted with a guilty smile. Then, she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms behind her head. “Your code name is Ground Zero. We have some fitness tests for you to do today.”
He let out another soft groan despite the threat of electrocution. His body was so sore. The name was sort of fitting, he supposed, with his explosive quirk. He didn’t know how he felt about going around introducing himself as Ground Zero, though.
“I know, your body’s been through so much,” she said sympathetically, petting his hair. “I promise you’ll do better than you expect, though. The pain should fade in the next few hours, so we’ll start with the little things after we get some food in you.”
The kitchen served him steak, potatoes, and green beans, straight to his bed. He had a feeling that the choice in meal was significant. Maybe he did good, somehow, while he was asleep. The fork and knife felt foreign in his hands, and he wondered if it was just because he hadn’t eaten solid food in a while.
Michelle was right about his pain. By the time he was finished he was significantly less sore, but he still didn’t know about doing fitness tests like that. He didn’t have a say in it, though. Michelle was going to put him through this whether he liked it or not.
Walking out of the hospital was a strange experience. He had a feeling that he hadn’t walked in a long time, though his muscles weren’t atrophied or anything. Michelle led him to a jeep outside, and they were off. The jeep was open on the top and sides, so the wind was blowing through his hair as they drove. He closed his eyes and enjoyed it. Michelle called him cute for this, and he glared at her wordlessly.
They were driving for a long time. It had to be an hour or two. They were in the middle of the desert when the driver pulled off the road and went in a seemingly random direction. Maybe thirty minutes later, they were pulling into what looked like a military base.
“Alright, Zero, let’s get this over with,” Michelle said as she hopped out of the vehicle.
Zero. He could live with that nickname.
There were soldiers all around them. They stared as he passed, but he ignored them. Michelle brought him to a track field, much like he would imagine would be found at a school, minus the grass. Not like he would really know, though. He’d never gone to school before.
“First thing’s first,” Michelle said brightly. She grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked it upwards, then slashed at his front with a fucking kitchen knife.
There was no wound. Zero pat his stomach in shock, searching for the wound that should have been there, but he found nothing. His abs were crazy. It was no secret that he spent a lot of time training, but they seemed even more defined than usual.
“Good,” she nodded approvingly. Then, she pulled out a bigger, scarier looking pocket knife. “Now this one.”
Zero wanted to scream. How the hell was this a fitness test? Instead, he said nothing, and she slashed him across the stomach with force. This time, he felt the cold metal bite into his skin. He let out an involuntary yelp, and the collar shocked him a little harder than usual for that. He fell to his knees.
“Fantastic,” Michelle said, quite pleased. “This is a special alloy. I hoped it would be enough to cut you, but I didn’t honestly think it would,” she explained brightly.
Zero hovered his hands over the cut. It was a thin line across his abdomen, and it honestly wasn’t even bleeding that much. It hurt like a bitch, though.
“Alrighty,” Michelle said with a wide grin. She flipped the knife closed and stuffed it in one of her many pockets. “Let’s get on to it.”
The rest of the fitness tests were pretty normal. He did a free throw, sit ups, pushups, sprints, and some other stuff. The last test was a mile run, which he was sure he would ace, just like everything else. Again, he trained a lot, but everything just felt a little easier than it used to. He barely broke a sweat so far.
While he was stretching, Michelle was off to the side chatting with someone. She waved him over, and he stood up with a sigh. The first thing he noticed about the man was his giant red wings, and the second thing he noticed was his carefully blank face.
“You found him,” the man said, though he didn’t sound like he believed that.
Michelle laughed. “No, Hawks, I took him,” she said, amused. “He would never agree to take this job, and you know it. He was too valuable to waste in your field.”
“Right,” Hawks laughed humorlessly. “So you just took the choice away from him, got it. You realize he’s just a kid?”
Zero squinted at the man. He felt offended, somehow. Something about this man instinctually irritated him.
“A kid with bombs for hands,” Michelle said, as though her point should be obvious. Then, she seemed to notice his expression. “You know this guy, Zero?” she asked cautiously, clicking the button in her pocket so that he could speak. He wondered if he was going to be pavlov'd by that damn button.
“Just met ‘im,” he said, still squinting at him. “He irritates me, for some reason.”
The button clicked again. Michelle barked a laugh. “What are you doing defending him, huh? He hates you so much it’s stuck after four rounds of hypnosis.”
Hawks rolled his eyes. “He hates everyone that much,” he said, and he didn’t seem all that bothered by it. “His parents are looking for him. I told them I would find him.”
“Heroes,” Michelle sighed, annoyed. “Come on. Let’s just see how this goes, huh?”
Hawks stared at him for a long time, unblinking. “Fine,” he sighed. “Just don’t get him killed, alright? I want to bring him home eventually.”
Michelle wrapped her arm around Zero’s shoulders. “By the time I’m done with him, the little shit won't want to go home.” She pat his back roughly. “Go finish your stretches. We’re losing daylight.”
Zero made a dramatic effort to roll his eyes as he turned away to follow her orders.
“You better watch that attitude!” Michelle called after him, and Hawks just laughed.
Just as he predicted, he aced the mile run with flying colors. That marked the end of his fitness testing, so he walked over to Michelle to await further orders. She was busy writing down his scores.
“Well, you did perfectly, Zero,” she grinned. “Are you ready for your first mission?”
Zero had a feeling that his life was about to get a lot more complicated than it had been on that damn hospital bed.