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It started with his own mistake, so of course he was going to fix it.
Later on, the news reports stated that the Explosion Hero’s eyes had gone red, that the Symbol of Victory had lost himself in a rage when he realized that the victims of this latest villain attack were children. But they were wrong, all of them. Bakugou isn’t the type to lose himself to his anger, no matter what people think. He uses his anger, lets it fuel him. Were the villains fucking scum for targeting a school? Of course. But that didn’t change what he had to do.
He’d located the hostages first, coordinated efforts to get them out of the building unharmed. Then, he’d sent the other heroes to monitor the perimeter as he prepared to bring the building down on top of the assholes who’d thought they could get away with this.
But he’d missed something—someone. He saw her out of the corner of his eye, just after detonating the last of the explosions. She looked too shocked to be scared, frozen in place. Her eyes had met his, dark and defiant, and he’d cursed under his breath as he propelled himself towards her.
The next few moments passed by like images captured in rapid succession by a camera.
One, he was in the air, hand outstretched towards the kid.
Two, he grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, hoisting her towards him.
Three, he clutched her against his chest, setting off another explosion with his free hand.
Four, they cleared the boundaries of the building, spiraling through the air.
Five, they hit the ground, Bakugou landing on his back and shielding the kid with both arms.
When his ears stopped ringing, when the other heroes had rushed in to round up the villains, Bakugou had carried the kid over to the paramedic station. She grabbed hold of his black tank-top, tugging on it whenever he made a move to walk away. Her hair was dark and curling, an unruly mass around her too-pale face. The sight of her brought up uncomfortable memories that he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about, like rocking a loose tooth side to side with his tongue.
She didn’t thank him for saving her life. Of course, he’d been the one bringing the building down in the first place, so maybe she’d recognized that he was just fixing his own mistake.
That was all it was. And if the kid was fucking weird about it, staring at him and refusing to admit she’d been scared, well. That wasn’t his problem.
—
Mistake number two—picking up his phone when one of his old UA classmates calls. Deku he sends straight to voice mail, unless he specifically uses his hero line for emergencies. Iida and Uraraka get the same treatment, usually. Kirishima usually texts first, and Ashido, Sero and Kaminari are always blathering away in one of their stupid group chats. It’s out of the blue, when Yaoyorozu calls. He doesn’t know why he picks up, why he agrees to meet with her.
Because she’s your friend, an annoying voice says in the back of his mind. They’re all your friends.
He tells the voice to fuck off as he makes his way to the stupidly expensive café on the far side of town. After the incident with the child hostages, he’s only got time to shrug into a worn black hoodie and trade out his boots and combat pants for something passably more casual. He turns head when he enters the café, and one prissy old lady even wrinkles her nose at him before she realizes who he is.
He’s been famous since he was fourteen, but at least now it’s usually for something he’s actually proud of.
“Bakugou-san!” Yaoyorozu calls from a table in the back. She’s not in hero gear, either. “Over here!”
He shrugs into his seat, and Yaoyorozu orders a sweetly-fragranced tea for herself and a spiced chai for him. She offers to pay for him, and he almost lets her.
Yaoyorozu has too many goddamn manners for her own good, so it’s halfway through the tea that she finally gets to the fucking point.
“We’ve got a really promising group this year,” she says. “But you know how it’s been, ever since we were in school. Villains have learned that it’s not just the current generation of heroes they have to worry about. They’re constantly trying to find out more about our students, as well.”
Bakugou’s scowl deepens. Everyone knows he had been the most targeted student in UA’s history. That he was a tool for calling the school’s reputation into question, and that his own teachers had gone to bat to defend him and his future as a hero.
“It’s not the students’ fault,” Yaoyorozu says gently. She makes a move as though to take his hand, then shakes her head as she thinks better of it. “They deserve the chance to grow and change without the whole world scrutinizing them. They won’t have that chance if we don’t protect them as best we can.”
“And I care because?” Bakugou raps his fingers against the table.
Yaoyorozu lifts one brow, tilts her head to the side and does nothing to hide her knowing smile.
“Fuck off, Ponytail.” He doesn’t know why she bothered to take the UA job after she cracked the top ten in hero rankings. She doesn’t need the money. But she’d always been too eager to help, tutoring half their class throughout high school. Since she managed to get Ashido and Kaminari through to graduation, she was good at it, too.
She laughs, and Bakugou wishes he could remember when he stopped being intimidating to his class, when they started just tolerating his behavior and taking it in stride.
“The offer’s still open, Bakugou-san,” she says. “I wouldn’t be the hero I am today without UA.”
He knows what she’s getting at. And he’s not stupid enough to think that he would’ve made it this far without everything he’d gone through at UA, all the guidance he’d received and the people he’d met.
“I’m busy enough without being a fucking babysitter.”
—
The good thing about Aizawa-sensei is that he gets things, more easily than most people. It’d been only a few years after Bakugou went pro, that they’d had the opportunity to talk like adults. And so Bakugou had asked—
Why’d you want to be a teacher in the first place? You can’t stand stupid kids, and your whole deal is stealth. Being at UA puts you in the public eye. Why the hell would you do that? It makes you a worse hero!
Aizawa looked him square in the eye, always an unsettling experience. He didn’t need his Quirk to lay someone bare, to make them vulnerable and powerless. Bakugou has always gotten the impression that Aizawa sees right through him.
Do you honestly still believe that?
—
Growing up sucks ass, because it means achieving only half his dreams and renegotiating the rest. He’s the Symbol of Victory, but he’s not the Number One Hero. He can do a lot on his own, but he can do even more as part of a team. It’s not the future he’d always imagined for himself, and some days accepting it feels like a betrayal of that brash, arrogant fifteen-year-old he’d been. Most of the time, though, he feels like he’s fulfilling a promise.
The villain is as big as a house and twice as mean as his mother. Kirishima rushes him head on, Quirk activated. Kaminari takes point from on top of an adjacent building, shooting out bolts of lightning and attempting to neutralize the villain. Bakugou takes him on from the sky, landing on his shoulders and detonating a blast on either side of the monster’s head.
None of it works. He can’t pinpoint whether the villain’s Quirk is his size, his strength, his endurance or something else entirely.
The villain slams himself backwards into a building, crushing Bakugou between the two. Bakugou grunts in pain, loses his grip on the villain and slides down the wall with a pathetic squelch. When his vision clears and he looks up, Kaminari is on the ground and Kirishima is barely holding the monster off. Fuck, they’re really getting their asses kicked.
In the sky, brilliant green light flashes. Bakugou grits his teeth—of course he’d show up.
The Symbol of Peace hops from building to building like a rabbit, using all four of his limbs to propel himself through the air. When he gets close, he pulls back his arm and slams into the villain, sending him crashing down.
“Red Riot! Chargebolt!” Deku calls out, voice booming, “Clear the area of civilians, please!”
The two heroes rush to do as their bidden. Kirishima can carry something like six people in his arms, and Kaminari sets up a lighted path to get the able-bodied to safety. By the time Bakugou is back on his feet, the other two have it well underway.
“Kacchan!” Deku calls, because it’s been years but he’s never let go of that stupid, childish nickname.
Bakugou knows exactly what to do. He launches himself into the air, and he and Deku circle around each other in a double-helix pattern. Deku punches the villain into the path of Bakugou’s explosions, and they push him back and forth between them like a volleyball.
The bitter tang of iron fills Bakugou’s mouth. Will it always feel this way? Working with Deku is second nature, by this point. But he doesn’t need the Symbol of Peace to swoop in and save him. He doesn’t need to be rescued.
Deku punches the villain under the chin, sending him sprawling. He turns and flashes a grin in Bakugou’s direction, and it’s like they’re three years old, again. Deku looks at Bakugou like he’s the sun, like he’s unstoppable. He tilts his head towards the villain.
“You want to finish him off, Kacchan?”
Bakugou bares his teeth in a ferocious smile, lifts his hands and lets the orange burn of his Quirk spread slowly over his palms. “If you can’t beat me there, Deku.”
They both move at the same moment. Orange-gold light erupts from Bakugou’s palm, just as a bolt of deep green lightning flashes down Deku’s arm. They’re halfway towards the villain when Bakugou freezes, sees something beyond the deep shadow cast by the monster.
It’s a little boy, cowering in a corner. If they hit the villain back any further, he’ll crush the kid.
“God-fucking-damnit,” Bakugou mutters, shooting off a small explosion to change course mid-air. He sails over the villain’s head, landing beside the kid and scooping him up to get him out of the way.
The villain crashes behind him a second later. The civilians, ushered to one side by Kirishima and Kaminari, are chanting Deku’s name, praising their Number One Hero.
Bakugou sets the kid down with the rest of the gawking crowed. Deku comes up beside him, grin like Bakugou’s just told him a secret.
“Shut up, Deku,” Bakugou growls, shoving him to one side.
Deku doesn’t even teeter. He lifts his hands, acting guileless even though he could level the city block with the tip of his finger. “I didn’t say anything, Kacchan.”
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? He didn’t have to.
—
He should’ve gotten over it by now. Anyone else would’ve been crippled by the trauma, utterly undone by the horrors he’d faced as a student. But he’s different—he’s exceptional. Even if it’s not the kind of thing that anyone could just get over, he should’ve been able to blast through it as easily as he can take down a wall.
He was targeted once, as a child, and he still thinks about it. Thinks about being bound and chained, forced to listen to a villain’s ridiculous version of a recruitment speech. Forced to feel entirely, utterly hopeless as he’d been pulled through a void, away from anyone resembling an ally or friend. Of course, he still thinks about it.
What would have happened, if he hadn’t been saved? If the police hadn’t deployed an entire troop of pro-heroes to come to his rescue? If they hadn’t believed that he’d stay on the right side no matter what? If the Symbol of Peace himself hadn’t decided that Bakugou was worth even the ultimate sacrifice?
It was Aizawa’s defense of him that fueled his flames, against the villains. It was All Might’s confidence in him, and his forgiveness, that let Bakugou move forward.
If he’d deserved all that, what about everyone else?
—
It’s a couple weeks later, and Bakugou has been in bed only an hour. The alert tracker on his hero belt lights up, sets off an alarm at a pitch so high it’s sure to rouse him.
Deku must’ve given Hatsume permission to make these things as annoying as fucking possible. They’d been his idea, to start with, but she was the mastermind behind how irritating they ended up being.
The alert is coming from UA. Whoever’s on duty at the dorms should be able to handle it. Yaoyorozu, or Kendou, or even that fucker Monoma. They’re all teachers; it’s their job to keep the students safe.
But it’s a hero’s job to keep everyone safe.
He doesn’t wait for whoever’s on monitor duty to deploy him. He’s closest, and he’s dressed and out on the street before he even realizes his intent to go. Within a few minutes, he’s looking up at UA’s familiar gates.
He searches around for the source of the emergency, biting down on the inside of his cheek. Security is upgraded all the time, codes scrambled and sensors reset to keep any villains on their toes and out of the school. It doesn’t look like the perimeter’s been breached, but the Number One Hero’s personal alliance network doesn’t often pick up false alarms.
Finally, he finds the source—there are a number of teachers circling the grounds, Yaoyorozu at their center calling out orders. Kendou’s got her hands wrapped around something, and Monoma is using Yaoyorozu’s borrowed Quirk to make ropes and medicine. Shinsou, his black hero costume nearly fading into the night, kneels to tend to a group of students with burns and scrapes.
Bakugou’s stomach churns in a way that has nothing to do with squeamishness.
He drops down beside Yaoyorozu, growls out, “What the hell is going on?”
Her dark eyes shine with relief, though she doesn’t smile when she sees him. She delivers the sitrep with calm efficiency. They’d been awoken by an explosion in the first-year dorm. All the students have been evacuated, and most have only minor injuries.
“And the source of the explosion?” Bakugou has, voice low and gravelly.
“Tsutomu-kun,” Yaoyorozu says quietly.
Bakugou recognizes the name—he’d watched this year’s sports festival, had seen the over-eager but clumsy kid who made it to the first round of individual match-ups.
“Not a villain,” he mutters.
“No,” Yaoyorozu agrees. “He sees others’ dreams, and his Quirk manifests them in physical form. He hasn’t caught a nightmare this bad, before, and no one has been able to get close enough to incapacitate him. Kendou-san is keeping him contained, at least.”
A kid from the hero course, undone by his own nightmares. It’d make a funny joke, if it didn’t hit so close to home.
“Everyone back the hell up,” Bakugou orders. “I’ll get him.”
—
Kendou pulls her hands apart, giving Bakugou space to squeeze through. Kendou’s making a wall between Tsutomu and the other students, shielding them in case this goes south. Most of the students don’t look so scared now that he’s show up—if the Number Two Hero is here, they’re saved, surely. But that’s a weak attitude. If they’re going to be heroes themselves, they shouldn’t wait around for other people to rescue them.
Monoma had handed him the ropes that Yaoyorozu instructed him to make—Quirk-neutralizing. Bakugou pockets them, but the idea of tying the kid up in order to stop him sits heavily in Bakugou’s stomach. Tsutomu isn’t an animal—he’s a kid.
Walking into the dorm building, Bakugou smells smoke and ash. The kid is huddled in one corner, hair a shocking periwinkle amongst the gray dust and smoke. His eyes are open, but they’re glazed over, unseeing.
Why couldn’t any of the others have run in here and gotten the ropes around him?
Bakugou takes a step forward, but as he does a brick wall comes up between him and Tsutomu. Another dream apparition?
“Oi, kid!” Bakugou calls out, banging on the wall. “Cut this shit out!”
There’s no response.
Bakugou aims one gauntlet at the wall, controls the blast so that it won’t hurt anyone on the other side, and fires. The brick crumples, then fades away entirely. Bakugou frowns—so Tsutomu’s Quirk doesn’t last once the construction is confronted, maybe.
He clenches his teeth, but as he steps forward where the wall had been another takes its place. He blasts through it again, and the same thing happens. The wall goes up, he blasts it down, it goes up again. He can’t get close enough to Tsutomu to use the ropes, even if he wanted to.
“Wake up, brat!” Bakugou roars. “I’m not going to waste my whole night here!”
At first, there’s no response. The wall is still in front of Bakugou, silent and impenetrable. But then, a quiet voice says, “Scared.”
“You’re scared?” Bakugou scoffs. “You’re the one blowing shit up, kid.”
They’d had sensitivity training, back in third year at UA. One of the first lessons had been watching their language around victims and civilians. Bakugou hadn’t found that lesson particularly useful.
“They’re scared,” the whispering voice says. “Of me.”
Well, no shit, Bakugou thinks. They’d woken up to their dorm blowing up because of him. He grits his teeth.
“They’re hero candidates,” he snaps. “If they’re worth anything, they’ll get over it.”
“I don’t want them to be scared.”
Bakugou’s class at UA had been full of veritable monsters—stupidly-gifted Todoroki, Deku with his inherited Quirk, and all the others who’ve ended up in the top thirty. Bakugou himself had had power, arrogance, and attitude to spare. He’d wanted to be intimidating, superior, but his classmates and teachers hadn’t let him get away with that.
“It’s not your problem if they are,” Bakugou says. It’s not your fault. “If you become a hero, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Then, only the villains will be scared of you.”
Tsutomu sniffles noisily. “You think so?”
“Shit, kid, I’m the Symbol of Victory. I don’t think. I know.”
—
The sun is rising over the hills when Bakugou steps out of the ruined side of the dorm building. Tsutomu walks beside him, one hand fisted in Bakugou’s shirt. The teachers come racing towards them, and a handful of students are calling after Tsutomu with concern. Bakugou grimaces—this the hero course, after all. There’s always going to be a group of kids here who wants to befriend anyone and everyone.
Yaoyorozu and the others thank him, say they can handle things from here. But Bakugou lingers for a long while, watching the sunset dye the hills the orange-gold of an explosion. It reminds him of all the time he’d spent here.
—
It’s a day like any other. Bakugou wakes up before his alarm, gets dressed in his hero costume, grabs breakfast on his way to work. It’s the same routine he’s had ever since he graduated from UA, years ago now.
But today, Bakugou doesn’t head towards his hero office. Instead, he turns towards UA, his ID badge lighting up as he steps through the gates. He walks the familiar halls, opens one of the large, imposing doors. A chorus of voices greet him.
“Good morning, Bakugou-sensei!”