Chapter Text
Bakugou moved through the city like a ghost.
No explosions. No aerial routes. No unnecessary noise.
That alone would’ve shocked anyone who knew him from a distance.
He stayed low, hood up, hands buried in his pockets as he cut through alleys and side streets, keeping to the edges of the evacuation zones. The city still hadn’t fully settled after USJ. Some areas were half-empty, others overcrowded with people who didn’t trust their own neighbourhoods anymore. Patrols moved in predictable loops. Heroes high, police low, drones cutting lazy arcs through the sky.
Bakugou avoided all of them.
He wasn’t hunting blind. He wasn’t chasing headlines or sightings or tip lines like the idiots flooding the hero network right now. He was reading the city instead.
Because Deku didn’t move randomly.
He never had.
Bakugou paused at the corner of a collapsed convenience store, pretending to adjust his shoe while his eyes tracked the street ahead. Two police officers stood near a barricade, talking quietly. A family waited nearby, arguing in hushed tones. A flickering screen overhead repeated the same warning it had been playing for two days straight.
Do not approach. These individuals are dangerous.
Bakugou clicked his tongue softly and turned away.
If Deku had passed through here, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere near that barricade. Too many eyes. Too many variables. Too many people who might panic if they recognized him.
Which meant he would’ve doubled back.
Bakugou followed that thought instead of the road.
He cut through a narrow passage between buildings, boots crunching softly over broken glass and debris. He kept his breathing slow, controlled. His body still felt off. Painful in places it shouldn’t be, weak in others. But if his training had helped him with anything, it was resistance. This pain was workable. Annoying, but manageable.
He’d been through worse. He just couldnt remember when.
He moved through three blocks like that, following nothing but instinct and habit and memory. The city blurred into fragments of graffiti-splashed walls, emergency supply crates, abandoned bikes, handwritten notices taped to lampposts.
Missing people. Evacuation instructions. Half-torn propaganda flyers with heroes’ faces smiling confidently beside words like Safety and Order.
Bakugou scoffed under his breath.
Order.
If Deku had any say in it, there wouldn’t be order right now. There’d be damage. Calculated damage. Directed damage. Damage meant to keep other people from getting hurt.
That was the thing everyone always missed.
That damn nerd didn’t avoid destruction because he was afraid of it.
He avoided it because he understood the cost it would do to others, even if he knew it was the most efficient choice.
Bakugou stopped at the edge of an underpass and crouched, fingers brushing the ground. Dust. Footprints layered over footprints. Old. New. Too many to isolate anything useful.
He straightened slowly, eyes scanning the pillars.
If he were Deku…
No. That was the wrong way to think.
Bakugou didn’t think like Deku.
He thought around him.
What would Deku assume others would do?
He’d assume heroes would flood main roads. He’d assume drones would cover open areas. He’d assume civilians would report anything suspicious because they were scared.
So he’d avoid all of that.
But he wouldn’t disappear completely.
Deku never vanished unless he wanted to scare someone.
And right now? He didn’t want fear.
He wanted distance.
Bakugou moved again.
He passed through a relief centre without entering it, skirting the perimeter where volunteers stacked crates of bottled water and blankets. He watched how people clustered, how they flinched at sudden noises, how their eyes darted to every passing hero.
Fear travelled fast.
If Deku had been here, he would’ve noticed the same thing. He would’ve adjusted accordingly. He would've changed paths.
Bakugou followed the path of least fear.
It took him another hour before he found something worth stopping for.
Not a clue. Not evidence.
An absence.
He stood on the edge of a pedestrian bridge overlooking a narrow canal. The area was quiet. Not abandoned, but ignored. No cameras on the lampposts. No patrols. No screens blaring warnings. Just a few oldd buildings, shuttered and forgotten.
Bakugou rested his forearms on the railing and stared down at the water.
If he were running with someone else… someone like Shinsou…
He’d need places where no one could overhear them.
No voices. No accidental triggers. No strangers shouting names or questions.
Bakugou’s fingers tightened around the metal.
That explained Shinsou.
Deku wouldn’t drag him into crowds. Wouldn’t risk someone answering a question by accident. Wouldn’t risk him.
Which meant every place they stopped had been chosen deliberately.
Bakugou turned and walked down toward the canal path.
He kept his pace steady, eyes scanning doorways and rooftops. His mind kept circling the same thoughts no matter how hard he tried to shove them aside.
USJ...
USJ replayed behind his eyes in flashes. Green lightning, smoke, shouting, the split-second calculation that hadn’t even felt like a decision.
He hadn’t thought.
He’d just moved.
The blast had come after. The pain. The ground rushing up. Nothingness.
And while he’d been out, Deku had kept going.
Bakugou grit his teeth.
He hated that part of it. Hated that even unconscious, even broken, he’d still been left behind.
Not abandoned.
Just… not there. Like Midoriya didn't care.
The path narrowed, forcing him to slow. He passed a maintenance shed with a broken lock, the door hanging open just enough to peek inside. Empty. Dusty. Nothing recent.
He moved on.
Heroes were idiots when it came to tracking. They followed reports, heat signatures, quirk usage. They looked for explosions or collapsed buildings or people screaming.
Deku didn’t leave that kind of trail.
If anything, he erased it.
Bakugou ducked under a low overhang and came up onto a side street. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He ignored it.
He didn’t need updates. He didn’t need orders. Whatever the hero network thought it knew was already two days old and wrong.
Instead, he watched the street.
Someone had passed through recently. Not enough to be obvious but enough that the dust along the curb was disturbed in a way that didn’t match foot traffic alone No sane person would backtrack that many times, unless they were trying to be caught.
Bakugou crouched, examining it.
Two sets.
One heavier. One lighter.
He straightened slowly.
“Found you,” he muttered, barely audible.
He followed the disturbance for another block before it vanished entirely.
That would’ve stopped most people.
Bakugou smirked.
Deku always overcorrected.
If he thought he was being tracked, he’d change patterns completely. Go from subtle to non-existent in an instant.
Which meant the real trail wasn’t here.
It was where he wanted someone to think it ended.
Bakugou doubled back.
He crossed the street, slipped into a narrow alley, and climbed a rusted fire escape without hesitation. His arms protested, but he ignored it. At the top, he crouched and scanned the rooftops.
There.
A route that didn’t make sense.
A jump that was slightly too long. A landing spot that required confidence, not desperation.
Deku always trusted his legs.
Bakugou hopped across without slowing.
The city stretched out below him. Somewhere out there, heroes were combing streets and running drills and congratulating themselves on how quickly they’d turned two kids into public enemies.
Damn Idiots.
Bakugou moved from roof to roof, following nothing visible. Just logic. Just memory.
He remembered Deku as a kid, muttering strategies under his breath. Remembered how he always left himself options. Remembered how he planned for failure before success.
Bakugou clicked his tongue, annoyed at the tightness in his throat, and kept moving.
The route led him away from evacuation zones and toward older parts of the city. Places that didn’t get updated infrastructure or regular hero patrols. Places people forgot.
He dropped down into a narrow courtyard and froze.
Something was off.
Not wrong.
Just… intentional.
Bakugou scanned the area slowly. No movement. No sound. No obvious signs of recent presence.
And yet..
On the cracked pavement, a single unsigned book lay open. "Hero Analysis for the Future – 14."
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then he let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“That nerd…” he muttered.
“That nerd knew I’d do this,” he said quietly.
He turned in the direction the book pointed. Not for the heroes, not for the cameras, not for the world.
Just for him.
“He never abandoned me.”