Chapter Text
Katsuki and Izuku are outside when Katsuki's phone rings with a call from an unknown number.
"Who the fuck is calling me now?" he grumbles. "Shitty Hair and Dunce Face are working and they're the only ones with my number."
"Aw, Kacchan, you do pay attention to what your friends are doing," Izuku teases.
"They're not my friends, shut the fuck up," replies Katsuki as he goes to answer the phone.
"Bakugou!" Kaminari's voice crackles in the tinny speakers. He's breathing heavily, and his voice is laced with panic. "They have Ei, you gotta-"
"Woah, slow the fuck down, Dunce Face. What happened?"
"We were on a mission," Kaminari explains, barely getting slower, "infiltrating some building in the middle of nowhere, and they ambushed us, and I managed to get away but they have Eijirou in there and it's some freaky human experimentation shit, I have no idea what they're gonna do to him-"
"It'll be okay, Kaminari," Izuku says into Katsuki's phone. "Are you injured? Have you called your handler?"
"My ankle is broken and I think I've got a concussion," Kaminari replies weakly. "And I'm calling from a payphone. I don't know my handler's number. I only remembered this one from that time Bakugou wrote it on my hand in permanent marker so I wouldn't be able to lose it."
Katsuki runs a hand down his face in exasperation. "You fucking idiot. Tell us where you are and then go take yourself to a hospital. We're coming."
Kaminari gives them the most specific location he can. They hang up on him with a promise to find him the second they get there.
When Izuku gets his own phone out, Katsuki frowns. "What are you doing?"
"Calling Aizawa," Izuku responds with a frown of his own. "We can't just go running off somewhere dangerous without telling anyone."
"Deku, he'll tell us not to go!"
Izuku's face sets in determination. "I don't care what he tells us. But we need to at least let him know."
Katsuki growls in frustration, but relents and lets Izuku dial Aizawa's number. When they've finished hurriedly explaining the situation to him, Aizawa sighs. "You're going to go either way, aren't you?"
Izuku splutters, and Katsuki takes his phone from him. "Damn right we are."
"Then go. I don't like it, but you're probably the least likely to get yourselves killed. I'll do my best to scramble some people to clean up after you."
When Aizawa hangs up on them, Katsuki falters, turning to Izuku. "How the fuck are we supposed to get there?"
Izuku grins at him. "We fly."
Since their discovery four months earlier that Katsuki could finally use Izuku's shapeshifting ability, Izuku has been putting Katsuki through the wringer training him on how to use it properly. It still doesn't come naturally to him, and certainly nowhere near as easily as it does to Izuku, but he reckons he can probably let that slide, given Izuku has quite a few centuries' worth of time on him. He can at least control it now, and he no longer feels like someone just spun him around a hundred times in a fairground ride every time he shifts, so some progress has been made.
His favourite part is the flying. It was incredible when Izuku showed him before what it was like for him, but doing it himself is on a completely different level of insane. He's never even that angry when Izuku makes him fly laps around the buildings in their city to strengthen his muscles and reaction time, because it just feels so amazing. Izuku just laughs when he tells him he doesn't know how he managed to live his whole life so far without it.
So, even though he's really worried now about Kirishima - which he will never tell anyone, although he's sure Izuku already knows - he's secretly a little happy that he's been given a valid reason to fly at top speed with Izuku by his side.
As swifts, they cover ground impressively fast, crossing the eastern border into their neighbouring country and putting the mess of cities behind them to head deeper into more forested land. Katsuki follows Izuku as he dips down over a large town nestled at the base of a cliff. They land behind a hospital building, four hours after setting off.
They find Kaminari in the emergency ward, getting his ankle treated. He's covered in smaller cuts and bruises, and his clothes are dirty and slightly torn. His eyes widen when he sees them. "You came," he says, sounding painfully relieved. "How'd you get here so fast?"
Katsuki glances at Izuku uncertainly, but Izuku just smiles brightly. "We told you we'd hurry, didn't we?"
Kaminari gives Izuku a weak smile back. "Ei would do the same for you, I guess."
His smile falters as he thinks about his best friend. Then he tries to stand up, and Izuku jumps forward to catch him as he stumbles.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Katsuki asks, his eyebrows raised.
"I'm coming with you, dude," Kaminari insists. "I left him behind there, I have to get him out."
"Uh, I don't fucking think so," replies Katsuki. "You can hardly stand, let alone fight."
"I promise we'll get him out," Izuku adds. "But you need to stay here, Kaminari. Imagine what Kirishima would say if you got even more injured trying to rescue him."
"He'd kill me," Kaminari murmurs. "But-"
"We said no, fuckface," Katsuki says, forcefully pushing Kaminari back down on his hospital bed. "You don't trust us or something?"
Kaminari bites his lip, still unsure. "Please bring him back," he says quietly.
"We will," Izuku promises.
Kaminari's eyes follow them right up until the door closes behind them.
It takes them another half an hour to fly to the building Kaminari and Kirishima had been trying to get into. Kaminari must have walked this whole way, concussed and with a broken ankle, Izuku realises with horror. No wonder he seemed so out of it on the phone.
The building is shrouded in trees and has no roads leading to it. It's completely isolated, but even from the outside, Izuku can see that it's full of people and vehicles. When he and Katsuki slip inside through an open side-door, they find it crawling with scientists in lab coats, all rushing around like ants.
Izuku leads them to Kirishima, easily picking his trail out from the waves of saline and disinfectant. He's behind a locked door, but he's alone in the room on the other side.
Please tell me you can pick locks, Katsuki thinks at Izuku.
What kind of second-rate spy do you take me for, Kacchan? Izuku replies, wiggling a tiny metal pin around in the lock for a few seconds and winking at him cheekily when it clicks open.
The room is white and sterile, with a metal tray holding a variety of medical instruments resting next to a cold stone slab. Kirishima is shackled to it with metal cuffs, looking battered and bruised but otherwise unharmed. At the sound of the door opening, he turns his head as much as he's able, his mouth falling open at the sight of Izuku and Katsuki standing in the doorway.
"What are you two doing here?" he whispers, a grin spreading across his face.
"Rescuing your dumb ass," Katsuki replies, rolling his eyes.
Kirishima looks about ready to cry tears of joy. "You guys..."
As Izuku gets to work on picking the locks on his cuffs, Kirishima suddenly frowns. "Is Denki okay? Have you found him? Last I saw him-"
"Relax, Shitty Hair," says Katsuki. "He's fine. He's the one who called us and practically begged us to come rescue you."
Kirishima's eyes glisten with tears. "That's so manly..."
The last of his cuffs snaps open with a satisfying click, and Izuku steps back as Kirishima rolls ungracefully off the stone slab. "What happened here? Kaminari didn't tell us how you managed to get caught."
"We were just trying to find out who their boss is," Kirishima explains, "but they seemed to know we were coming, because they jumped out at us like hyenas. Next thing I knew I was handcuffed to a table and some crazy dude was hovering above me with a scalpel and telling me he was looking forward to carving up my lungs."
Katsuki winces. Izuku looks concerned. "Are you hurt anywhere? Did they do anything to you?"
"Not yet, thank God. I think you turned up just in time."
Izuku smiles at him reassuringly, and Kirishima grins back. Katsuki rolls his eyes at the two dorks in front of him.
Izuku leads them out down a convoluted path of corridors, turning them down a side passage or pushing them into an empty room to hide any time he senses someone approaching. Kirishima looks more than a little confused at Izuku's seemingly impeccable sixth sense for danger, but thankfully, he doesn't question it.
Just as Izuku is thinking that it's looking like they might make it out without a fight, the lights suddenly start to flash red, and an obnoxious alarm begins to wail overhead. Izuku flinches at the noise, amplified painfully with his sensitive hearing, and he whimpers, his hands coming up to cover his ears. Katsuki shoots him a concerned glance and slows down.
At that moment, five scientists round the corner behind them into the corridor they're currently standing in and shout in alarm as they notice them. Izuku shakes himself, grabs Katsuki's hand, and drags him down the corridor, Kirishima following close behind them. They hurtle through a flimsy-looking door, and Izuku slams it shut behind them, pressing his back against it when it starts to shake with the force of the people on the other side trying to get it open.
"The exit is just down that way," Izuku says through gritted teeth, pointing to the end of the corridor they now stand in. "I'll hold them here."
Katsuki gives him a look. "No fucking way. I'm not leaving you here."
"Someone needs to finish what Kirishima and Kaminari came here to do," Izuku argues. "Out of all of us, I'm the one most likely to be able to get out again once I get the information they need. So take Kirishima and get out of here!"
Katsuki growls in frustration. "Damn it, Izuku!"
Izuku gives him a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I'll be okay, Kacchan."
"We'll be waiting for you in the forest," Katsuki says, not bothering to hide the concern written on his face. "So you better hurry the fuck up."
"I'll see you in a bit," Izuku replies, wincing when the door shakes against him again.
Katsuki stares at him for a long time before clenching his fists and ushering Kirishima down the corridor. They disappear around the corner.
Izuku keeps his hold on the door for another 30 seconds to give them time to get away before he steps back. It swings open and hits the wall with a bang, people pouring through. He fights the instinct to run as they circle him, one of them - not a scientist, by the lack of a white coat and the sheath that hangs from his belt - wrestling his arms behind his back and snapping a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.
The man puts his mouth close enough to Izuku's ear that he can feel his disgusting breath. "You're in luck," he murmurs, his voice low and slimy. "The boss is here in person today."
Izuku's blood runs cold, but he lets the man march him along, telling himself that if he's going to meet the boss of this place, it'll be all the quicker finding out who he is and getting the hell out.
He's pushed into a stone-walled, windowless interrogation room, similar to where they found Kirishima. A single chair sits in the centre of the space. Izuku is shoved into it and his hands are re-handcuffed behind his back.
He squirms uncomfortably in his seat as a new man steps through the door. He's short and goggled, with a thick moustache and a pristine white lab coat that hangs just above his knees. His mouth twitches in a grotesque imitation of a smile.
"Hello, Izuku," he croons, the glint of the light in the glass of his goggles giving him a crazed look. "My name is Doctor Tsubasa. I've been waiting a very long time to meet you."
His heart racing, Izuku takes a deep breath, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible. "Who are you? How do you know my name?"
The man smiles again, baring his crooked teeth. Izuku's skin crawls, his entire body screaming at him that something is very, very wrong. He hasn't felt anything remotely like this since-
"Shigaraki told me all about you, and I must say, I've been very curious."
Izuku's stomach drops, that age-old, primal fear reawakening in a moment at the sound of that name coming from someone's mouth. There's no way he knows. He can't know. He can't know.
But he does, he has to, from the way he curls his lips and cracks his knuckles and rasps, "I've got all sorts of trinkets I can't wait to try out on that special power of yours."
He leans forward, shoving himself into Izuku's personal space and placing a thick hand on Izuku's knee. He has to go, he has to get out, but the hand slides further up his leg in an awful, violating way and the handcuffs are painfully tight around his wrists and he's so scared that if he shifts now he'll be giving this man exactly what he wants and god, he wishes he'd just left when he had the chance and thank God he sent Katsuki away because who knows what this man would do to him and-
He doesn't realise he's thrashing in his restraints until the chain connecting his handcuffs snaps and he shoots out of his chair, nothing registering except the way his brain screams out, out, out. But faster than he can blink, Tsubasa raises a hand, and the door slams shut, trapping Izuku in the room.
Tsubasa grins again. "I have just the thing for this, I think."
He raises his knuckles to the door and raps sharply on it once. A few seconds later, the shutter on a small peep-hole in the door slides open, and a fresh pair of handcuffs are pushed through. They're thicker than the last ones, and the metal has an uncanny sheen to it, but what really sets Izuku on edge is the smell, pungent and toxic, like someone's brewed a cocktail of poisonous chemicals and mixed it in with the metal.
Tsubasa brandishes the handcuffs in front of him and approaches Izuku calmly. He backs into a corner, his teeth bared in a snarl. Blind panic freezes him in place, unable to move as Tsubasa gets closer and closer and snaps them in place around his wrists and-
Emptiness.
For the first time in his memory, everything is quiet.
Not a nice quiet. Not calm, or comforting, or peaceful. It's painful. It's terrifying, dull and dark, like someone has just plunged the world into midnight. The colour has been leached out of everything, sounds and smells and feelings barely tangible. He fumbles blindly for the switch in his mind that lets him shift, but it's gone, vanished. His bond with Katsuki, a constant golden thread running at the base of his thoughts, is grey and unmoving, like the life has been drained out of it.
"What did you do?" he chokes out.
Tsubasa's smile remains plastered on his face, monstrous and taunting. "It's just a little something I designed with you in mind. Just a simple power suppressor. Do you like it?"
Finally jolting into action, Izuku grabs the knife strapped to his ankle - one of the only ones they didn't remove - and launches himself at Tsubasa. He shouts in alarm, but he's slow, and the blade goes straight into his throat. He makes an awful gurgling sound, and falls to his knees.
His hands catch Izuku's in an iron grip before he can bolt, his face contorted in an animalistic snarl as he forces his two hands together and fumbles with a lighter from his pocket. Izuku fights with all his energy as he holds the flame to the keyholes on the handcuffs, but Tsubasa's fingers are completely locked around his wrists.
"Try getting those off now," Tsubasa chokes out, watching with predatory glee as the metal starts to deform until the keyholes are completely melted shut. The expression doesn't leave his face as his head droops and his grip goes limp.
Izuku scrambles backwards, stumbling as he tries to stand on trembling legs. He doesn't even feel the man die, which alarms him more than he has time to process right now. He uses the bloody knife to saw through the chain linking his hands together. He tries desperately to get the metal off his wrists, clawing at it manically as the silence closes in on him, but they're on too tight.
Just as he's considering breaking his fingers to get them off, the door swings open and a couple of goons come charging in. He sidesteps the first, and as he trips, the second goes stumbling into him. Izuku doesn't bother to stop and fight them, necking it out the door. Without his usual senses telling him which way to go, he makes an educated guess as to the direction of the nearest exit and runs in it, knocking past a number of people that are so surprised to see him they don't try and apprehend him.
Like some kind of miracle, he ends up at the same place where he parted with Katsuki and Kirishima. He follows the corridor down to the end and bursts through the door.
He doesn't wince or squint at the flash of natural daylight. It seems so much darker than it should be. His wrists are bloody where the handcuffs still cut into his skin, but the pain is so dull, he may as well not be able to feel it at all.
He lurches towards the forest, distress growing in his mind as he tries very hard not to think about how grey and lifeless it all feels with the suppressors on. Unable to find Katsuki or track his trail or follow their bond, he stumbles around aimlessly while yelling his name, hoping he and Kirishima didn't stray too far.
Finally, after more than half an hour of fumbling around and screaming himself hoarse and desperately choking back tears-
"Deku!"
Izuku nearly passes out from relief. "Kacchan!"
Katsuki appears from behind the trees and runs towards him at full speed, Kirishima hanging back behind him as he barrels straight into Izuku and pulls him into a desperate hug. "What the fuck happened? Why can't I feel-"
He cuts himself off as Izuku starts sobbing uncontrollably, barely managing to force distraught breaths in and out of his lungs. He tightens his arms around Izuku, meeting Kirishima's eyes helplessly as he hovers awkwardly a few metres away.
It takes a long time for Izuku to stop hyperventilating and go limp in Katsuki's hold. Katsuki tries to pull back slightly, but Izuku pushes his face into the crook of his neck, whimpering quietly. He whispers something very faintly, but the words are muffled unintelligibly.
"I can't hear you, 'Zuku," Katsuki murmurs, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
Izuku makes a choked noise and lifts his head a tiny bit, enough for Katsuki to hear him as he rasps, "Power suppressors."
Katsuki's stomach drops, and it's then that he notices the metal rings around Izuku's wrists, the skin underneath them bloody and torn as if he'd been hurting himself trying to get them off. He moves Izuku's hands up to where he can better see them, his words sticking painfully in his throat as he realises the extent of what they must be doing to him.
Izuku makes another choked noise as his own eyes land on his wrists, and his breathing starts to pick up again. "Get them off," he whispers. "Get them off."
Katsuki can tell just by looking that they're far too tight to come off. They'll have to be removed properly. It'll take at least a few days for them to get home and find someone who can have them taken off safely.
"Get them off," Izuku says, louder and more desperate. "Get them off!"
He starts to claw at his own arms, his thumbs bending dangerously as he tries to pull his hands through. His breaths come in a fast, erratic rhythm again, his eyes wild and dangerous even though they stay their natural green colour.
Katsuki grabs Izuku's hands as firmly as he can and holds them away from each other. "Stop it, you're going to dislocate your thumbs-"
Izuku thrashes and screams, tears pouring from his eyes as he fights against Katsuki's grip, but he's too weak from everything that's happened to escape. As Katsuki tentatively loosens his hold, Izuku's knees give out and he collapses into awful sobs, curled up on the floor like a tiny kid. It's all Katsuki can do to hold him as still as possible as he cries into his shirt, his knees hugged tightly to himself as he struggles to get in air.
Eventually, Izuku passes out from exhaustion, his breathing slowing into a quiet pattern as he sinks into sleep. Katsuki picks him up in his arms, careful not to jostle him around too much.
"Dude, is he okay?" Kirishima asks with a frown, and Katsuki suppresses a flinch as he's reminded that Kirishima just watched that entire thing. Katsuki snarls wordlessly as him, and he smiles ruefully. "Never mind, stupid question."
"He'll be okay once we get these fucking handcuffs off him," Katsuki says, walking off with Izuku still in his arms. "But we need a professional for that, which means we need to get home, so can you hurry the fuck up and show me the route out of this shitty forest?"
Kirishima shakes himself and jumps into action. Katsuki knows he's going to ask about it later, but he's glad that for now at least, Kirishima seems capable of choking down his questions so that they can hurry up and get out of here.
He carries Izuku the whole way through the forest, even when his arms start to scream with pain and Kirishima offers to take him instead. His heart clenches at the way Izuku turns his head into his chest in his sleep, his fists tightening subconsciously around the fabric of Katsuki's shirt.
Kaminari is waiting for them on a bench outside the hospital when they finally make it back after hours of walking. He throws himself at Kirishima, and the two of them hug each other with relief written on their faces. Then Kaminari pulls away, his face immediately dropping when he sees Izuku in Katsuki's arms. Katsuki sits down on the bench, manoeuvring Izuku's sleeping form into a more comfortable position and nearly sighing in relief as the pressure is lifted from his muscles.
"What happened to him?" Kaminari asks. "Is he okay?"
Katsuki grimaces, running a hand absently through Izuku's hair as he shifts in his sleep.
"Get Aizawa on the phone," he says grimly. "I need to talk to him right the fuck now."