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When Katsuki wakes, the city is on fire.
His apartment is dark, but behind the closed blinds the outside world glows orange. The floor shakes with muffled explosions, rattling the dishes in the kitchen cabinets and threatening to send the picture frames hanging in the hall crashing to the hardwood.
Despite the chaos that seemed to have erupted outside within moments, the apartment is unnaturally quiet. He’s in the living room. It takes him a moment to recall the reason, to remember coming home to an empty home with a note on the table, leftovers in the fridge, and no parents for a few hours. He’d eaten dinner, and promptly decided to make the most of having the place to himself by taking a nap on the couch.
Only to be shaken awake barely an hour later with his fucking neighborhood under attack.
Cursing whatever villains had decided to interrupt what should have been a quiet evening—and, not to mention, the break UA had promised their students after a harrowing year of repeated villainous attacks—Katsuki props himself up on his elbows, blinking the sleep from his eyes as the windows shake from apparent blasts outside.
He stares at the trembling blinds, daring the glass panes hidden behind to shatter. ‘Let those fuckers break in,’ he snarls mentally, to anyone and everyone who’d decided to drag him from his sleep. ‘I’ll show them an explosion.’
Then the entire apartment quakes like a bomb had been set off on the floor below. The room rocks and Katsuki tumbles off the couch, head cracking against the side table. “Fuck,” he groans, shifting to sit up before stilling as a bolt of pain shoots through his head in protest. He’s already so beyond done with whatever the fuck is going on outside, but the explosions don’t stop and damn them all somebody has to be the hero.
He cradles the back of his head with one hand as he pushes himself up with the other. He can feel the tremors pulsing through the floorboards beneath his palm and something sticky matting down his hair beneath the other, but the floor is steady, so he ignores them both and staggers to his feet.
The room sways for a moment and Katsuki blames it on the blasts outside, choosing to disregard the way his head throbs in sync with the blasts and settles for stomping (he was not stumbling) down the hall to find his hero gear.
‘Gotta look legit if I’m gonna kick some ass,’ he thinks, albeit bitterly, tearing open the door to his room. It takes a moment to pull on his costume, and as he’s lugging the grenade braces out from the closet, he has half a mind to find his phone and call for backup (not help, just backup). He has no idea what he’s about to be blasting his way into (absolutely no pun intended), and for all he knows the pros might already be on the scene.
But… it’s the responsible thing to do. Also, he’s absolutely not in the mood to receive a lecture from Aizawa on the ways an over-inflated sense of ability and pride will be his downfall as a hero. Nope. He’s heard it all before.
He tosses the braces on the bed as he scans the room for his phone. It’d been charging on the nightstand, he’s sure, but the tabletop is clear so where the fuck—?
There. It must have fallen during the earlier blast, now wedged in the crevice beneath the stand and his bed. Grumbling under his breath—curse having to be the responsible one—he drops to his knees and twists his arm into the frustratingly tight space, fingers barely brushing the damn thing—
There’s a knock at the door.
He sits upright too abruptly, fowl words spilling from his mouth as his head pounds and his shoulder yanks uncomfortably, his arm still trapped behind the nightstand. He gives up on the phone, curling his arm out and away from the bed as he climbs to his feet. Another knock sounds from behind the front door, loud enough to resonate all the way to his bedroom.
Despite the chaos—the villains—outside, Katsuki’s first thought goes to his parents. ‘A villain wouldn’t knock,’ he reasons.
Then again, neither would his parents.
Someone’s pounding on the door now, he realizes. Whoever it is, is relentless, frantic. There’s a voice, too, but it’s far too muffled, far too masked by the explosions that continuously shake the apartment with their force for Katsuki to make out any words, let alone recognize the owner.
His grenade braces are left behind on his bed, but he doesn’t need them. His palms crackle with power as he crosses the apartment and storms to the front door. The explosions continue, the knocks continue, his head continues to pound. Snarling, he yanks open the door, mini blasts exploding in threat as he prepares to fight off whatever villain had—quite literally—come knocking. “What the fuck—?”
He freezes at the sight that greets him.
“Deku?!”
The younger boy is slumped against the doorway, hero costume in tatters, dark red staining where there should be green. There’s blood dripping down the side of his face, blood pooling underneath his hand where it’s clamped over his shoulder, and yet the damn nerd somehow still has the nerve to smile.
“Hey, Kacchan,” he greets, as though he isn’t bleeding all over the ground while the building shakes beneath them. His tone is so casual it throws Katsuki for a second.
It takes him another to come to his senses, growl something distasteful in Izuku’s direction, and drag the kid with absolutely no self-preservation into his apartment. He slams the door behind them, tugging a protesting Izuku across the room before dropping him none too gracefully on the floor, propped against the wall.
Izuku grunts at the impact, scowling up at his childhood friend—a look that he would never have given Katsuki had they still been in middle school (a sentiment Katsuki can feel guilty about later; right now, he reserves the right to be pissed).
“The fuck did you do to yourself?”
Izuku stutters over an attempt to defend himself. He starts to peel his hand away from his bloody shoulder, stopping only when Katsuki kicks at his leg, barks out a, “don’t move that,” and promptly leaves to find the first aid kit.
When he returns, Izuku is glaring at the wound in his arm like it had personally offended him. His palm is stained red, something Katsuki notes with a disturbing amount of indifference as he smack’s Izuku’s hand away and drops to his knees beside him.
“Thought I said not to move your hand,” he growls out.
Izuku watches him dig through the contents in the kit. “You kicked my leg,” he says simply. “How was I supposed to know?”
Katsuki glares at him, unimpressed. “If you wanna be a smartass, mind telling me what the fuck is going on outside?”
He doesn’t bother waiting for a response before reaching for Izuku’s shoulder, pulling the torn fabric away from the bloody wound. It’s small, but—from the amount of blood seeping into the surrounding material—relatively deep. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what kind of weapon Izuku had been fighting against. The only question is how Izuku—with fighting reflexes that absolutely did not rival his own—managed to get shot.
“Villains,” Izuku finally supplies, ignoring the “no shit” look sent his way. “A group of them decided to team up, it looks like. I don’t think it’s the League, though. Too chaotic, and there’s no obvious leader, or even an obvious plan. The villains aren’t even monologuing, which is a first, honestly, but that just makes it all the harder to come up with a decent plan to stop them all. There are a few pros down there. Minor ones, though. My guess is they happened to live in the area, too. We tried calling for backup, but nothing’s going through—signal jammer, probably—so we’re seriously outnumbered out there just trying to keep the property damage to a minimum let alone—agh!”
He cuts himself off with a gasp as Katsuki presses an antiseptic wipe against his shoulder.
“You were mumbling again,” Katsuki says in lieu of an apology as Izuku grits his teeth. “What was that about a signal jammer?”
Izuku blinks. “Oh, uh—I think the villains are blocking the signals with something. Calls aren’t going through. Again, not sure what their plan is. So far, they just seem to want to create chaos…”
He trails off, and Katsuki tries not to lament over the fact that the one time he tries to play it smart and call for backup would have been pointless.
(Granted, he never ended up actually getting to use his phone, but “A for effort” and whatever, right?)
“Hold still,” he instructs, grabbing the roll of gauze from the kit. “Looks like whatever you were shot with is still in your arm, but there’s no way I’m dealing with that shit now. Tough it out until help gets here. In the meantime,” he finishes wrapping Izuku’s shoulder, then gets to his feet. “Let’s kick some ass.”
Izuku shoots him what’s probably supposed to be a sheepish smile but honestly looks more like a grimace. “Hah, about that…”
As if in response to Katsuki’s eager attitude, another explosion rocks the entire apartment. He throws a hand out, catching himself on the wall, letting a few choice words slip out as his frustration with this entire shitty situation builds up. The floor settles a moment later, but Katsuki’s already stomping towards the windows, fully ready to return fire and give these villains a taste of their own medicine.
He shoves aside the blinds. Fiery smoke is billowing up from the street, basking the entire neighborhood in a horrible hazy orange. Visibility is shit—Katsuki can’t see anything beyond a fuzzy outline of another apartment complex and vague silhouettes at war with each other in the streets below.
Behind him, Izuku mutters, “Kacchan, your head.”
Instinctively, Katsuki presses a hand to the back of his head. The blood had long since dried, but had no doubt turned his blonde hair an ugly shade of red. The small wound smarts at the touch, and his head throbs in response. He drops his hand and ignores it.
Izuku doesn’t.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, nerd.”
“Kacchan, you’re bleeding.”
‘So the fuck are you,’ he wants to say. The concern in Izuku’s voice is as annoying as always. The damn nerd is covered in blood, slumped against the wall, and yet he still has the nerve to worry about someone else.
What comes out instead is just as pleasant.
“Leave it, Deku,” he says, and apparently the edge in his voice is enough to shut Izuku up, for now, though Katsuki can still feel the narrowed eyes trained on the back of his head. He tears his gaze away from the window. “C’mon. Let’s get out there before they invite themselves in.”
He doesn’t wait for Izuku to respond before marching down the hallway to retrieve the rest of his costume. By the time he returns, however, the other boy hasn’t moved.
“What’s the hold up, nerd? Let’s go!”
“Kacchan…”
Izuku’s not meeting his gaze. Rather he’s glaring down at his bandaged wound, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth in a display of uncertainty Katsuki hasn’t seen on the other in a long time.
The look on Izuku’s face is disconcerting. Which is fitting, considering the cherry-on-top he drops on top of the chaotic mess the afternoon had turned into.
“I can’t fight.”
“Why the fuck not?”
Izuku grimaces—blatantly frustrated. “Whatever they shot me with—I think it’s blocking my quirk, somehow. I can’t feel it.” His voice takes on a nervous tone. “I mean, it’s probably temporary. Definitely temporary. I’ll get it back, once the drug or whatever wears off, I’m sure. But for now—?”
“Dammit.”
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
Something explodes. The apartment rocks. Katsuki exhales and rolls his shoulders.
“Fine. That’s fine.” He fastens his braces and heads for the door, ignoring Izuku’s rapid-fire stream of protests behind him. “Stay here, nerd. I’m not gonna be responsible for your quirkless ass if you get yourself killed by pulling something stupid again.”
“Wha—Kacchan!”
“Deku, I mean it—!”
Another explosion rips through the air, the shock wave nearly sending Katsuki toppling to the side. There’s a deafening crash as the far window shatters and shards of glass go flying across the room. Katsuki drops to a crouch with a curse, shielding his head. At the wall, Izuku’s scrambling backwards, away from the transparent projectiles and the smoke rapidly slinking into the now-opened window and—
“Oh, shit,” Katsuki mutters.
There’s a villain in his apartment. There’s a villain in his apartment.
Oh, this is gonna go great.
He shifts, arms up and braces primed to attack. “Hope you like scorched walls, Mom,” he mutters to himself, a half-apology for the state his family’s place is about to be in in a few seconds.
Izuku’s at his side. There’s a tug at his arm. Katsuki shakes him off.
“Kacchan—”
“Stay down, Deku,” he hisses. The villain is only just now stumbling to his feet, staggering with what is hopefully disorientation and exhaustion. Katsuki’s already got the odds stacked against him going into this fight blind—and solo, apparently.
His palm crackles with sparks.
“Alright, fucker,” he mutters, slowly rising. “I think you’ve extended your stay.”
He steps carefully, hoping the smoke has gotten thick enough to keep him concealed for a bit longer. He can practically feel Izuku’s anger behind him, but the other boy’s smart enough not to jeopardize Katsuki’s attack. He stays quiet.
The villain doesn’t.
“I know you’re here, hero,” the guy crows. His voice is raspy, hoarse, and it grates on Katsuki’s ears in a way that sends a shiver down his spine out of disgust (not unease). There’s a mask on his face, black metal stretched over his eyes and nose, bottom half broken off to expose the awful sneer that just about screams psychopath. Something’s strapped to his back—it’s long, probably a weapon of some sort, but with the smoke cloud, it’s hard to make out.
“Let’s not drag this out, little hero,” the villain drawls, and Katsuki wants to blast the sneer off the guy’s face. “I know I hit you. Come on out. Let’s finish this.”
So he wants Deku.
Someone’s about to be disappointed. And probably a bit surprised, if the very satisfying image of the guy getting a face full of fire playing through Katsuki’s mind says anything.
His palms spark like he’s lighting a fuse, and Katsuki growls, controlled blasts lighting up the room as he leaps over the couch and charges the villain. Power courses through his body, pulsing like a ticking bomb, and he lets it loose in an explosion that rivals the ones outside. The room shakes with the blast. The villain rocks backward and barely has time to pull himself together before another explosion nearly knocks him off his feet.
A fist swings blindly. Katsuki ducks, arms up at the ready as the villain coughs and makes a visible effort to collect himself.
This won’t take long.
Except—Katsuki’s ready to blow the guy out the window, catch him while he’s unsteady and off-guard—an easy win—when the villain straightens and an unhinged grin stretches across his face.
“Ah, a new player. Shall we fight fire with fire?”
That’s all the warning he gets before a bomb is dropped between them. Or, at least—Katsuki swears it was a bomb. His vision goes white with fire and he’s weightless for what feels like an eternity before he slams into the wall. His back explodes with pain. Something cracks, and Katsuki hopes to any god listening that it isn’t anything important. He hits the ground like a stone, and his already aching head smacks into the wood floor hard enough to set off another bomb inside his skull.
Everything’s fuzzy. There’s smoke in his lungs. His vision’s dark—oh, his eyes are closed. He should probably open them. He’s still conscious, even though his body is screaming ‘fuck this’ and sleep is really sounding like the better option here.
“—gun! Kacchan, move!”
Someone’s yelling. He should probably listen—no, he knows that voice. Stupid Deku. Of course he’s involved. Why else would everything be going to shit?
Wait. Gun?
He peels his eyes open in time to see the scuffle taking place a few feet away. A tall guy decked in black is snarling and spitting foul words while the smaller guy in green is wrapped around him like a koala, arms tight around tall dude’s neck in a chokehold.
Tall dude doesn’t like that very much. He roars and tears his attacker off with impressive (not at all intimidating) strength, slamming the guy in green into the ground and sending him skidding across the floor.
He hits the wall with a low moan.
Katsuki’s whole body aches in sympathy.
Then the guy in black turns his gaze back on Katsuki, and the manic look in his eyes sends a shock through the young hero’s system. The gun in the villain’s hand is obvious, now. “Oh, shit,” Katsuki slurs, scrambling up and away as the weapon fires and the wall above his head splinters under the shot.
Pain laces up his spine and shoots through his chest. His head is pounding on beat with his heart, but the gun clicks behind him and Katsuki tears around the corner in time to avoid taking a bullet to the back. A slurred stream of foul words spew out of his mouth, each clumsy step sending pain stabbing through his brain.
The room is spinning.
His chest is aching.
The fucking villain is laughing.
Katsuki’s too concussed for this shit.
Something explodes to his left, and instinctively he snaps his head to the side to see, a movement that nearly sends him toppling to the floor as his vision twists and his brain flips upside down. His stomach isn’t far behind. He spins around, palms out, and fires blindly, small blasts that hopefully send the villain reeling long enough for Katsuki to get the fuck out of the small room he’d cornered himself in.
It works. The guy swears up a storm, coughing and swatting at the air as he stumbles back a step. Katsuki shoves him aside, staggering out of the room. The air is heavy with smoke and it hurts to breathe, and he’s so out of it he doesn’t see the blur of green until it crashes into him.
“Hey—whoa!”
The impact has him reeling. His ribs are screaming. Hands grip his arms to steady him, and he has half a mind to brush them off because he knows those hands, but the concussed half of his brain is ready to call it quits and let him sag to the floor like a puppet with cut strings. So he lets the hands stay.
His head pounds. Something drips down the side of his face. He wipes it aside and his fingertips come away red.
“Kacchan. You okay?”
He opens his mouth to respond, but the familiar click of a weapon primed for firing answers for him. Katsuki’s eyes widen. “Deku, get down!” He shoves the other to the floor.
The gun goes off.
His arm jerks like his shoulder is tearing out of its socket. A wave of pain stabs through the back of his arm, pulsing and taking over his entire body, turning his vision white like another bomb had gone off. His knees buckle beneath him, and he throws a hand out to catch himself clumsily on the wall, palm slick with blood as it drips down from his shoulder.
The wall shifts. Katsuki frowns.
The floor is a lot closer than it should be.
There’s another green blur. A yell. Something crashes behind him and a door slams shut, angry shouting and fists pounding digging a spike into his brain. Then the hands are back—they’re on his biceps, hauling him up and away from the floor where he’d apparently collapsed. He’s dragged to the kitchen and dropped unceremoniously to the ground, drawer handles digging uncomfortably into his spine.
He shifts with a groan, grimacing at the taste of blood. His vision takes a second to right itself. There’s something green and red a foot from his face.
“Deku?”
His eyesight clears. Izuku is crouched in front of him, emerald hair a mess, hero costume in tatters, dried blood streaked across the side of his face like a disturbing attempt at war paint. His eyes are trained on Katsuki’s right shoulder, where his hands are doing something that sends a shooting pain down his arm.
He jerks, shoving the other boy away with a curse.
“Kacchan—”
“Get the fuck off me, Deku,” he growls, ignoring the way his entire body aches as he goes to push himself up. “That guy’s got a face full of grenade blast with his name on it.”
“Kacchan, he shot you—”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“Kacchan—”
“‘M’gonna kick his ass.”
“With what quirk?!”
He freezes at the other boy’s words, and Izuku takes his momentary hesitation as the chance to tug him back down to the floor. The green-haired hero is poking at Katsuki’s wound again, but Katsuki’s too distracted by the meaning behind the boy’s words as they sink in.
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” Izuku agrees. “I pinned the bedroom door shut. He’s locked in there for now, but if you try to fight him without your quirk, as injured as you are, it’s not going to end well for you.”
Katsuki lets out a frustrated groan. “Shit.”
“You said that already.”
“Yeah, well, this hell of a situation more than calls for it.” He flinches at the sudden stinging in his shoulder, shaking Izuku’s hands off. “Will you quit it?”
Izuku relents. “I can’t get to the bandages, but I don’t think it’s bleeding too bad.”
“Great. What’s the plan?”
“…”
“Deku.”
“I’m thinking—”
A bomb goes off in the bedroom. The entire apartment shakes as the door flies off it’s hinges and slams into the opposite wall. Framed pictures hit the floor with a crash as smoke fills the hallway. Angry shouting follows as the villain calls for them.
“Times up.”
“Kacchan, don’t you dare—”
Katsuki ignores him. “Think up a plan,” he mutters as he gets to his feet. “I’ll distract the fucker.” Izuku makes a grab for his leg to get him to wait, but he shakes him off. “Hey, asshole! Over here!”
The villain roars and comes charging down the hallway. Katsuki uses the smoke as cover and meets him halfway, miming a punch before dropping and swiping a leg to knock the villain’s feet out from under him. The guy falls back with a shout of rage, scrambling to grab onto Katsuki and take the hero down with him. The two hit the ground hard and roll towards the open space of the living room, fists flying.
The guy lands a decent hit to Katsuki’s ribs, and he groans as he feels them give. The impact knocks the wind from his lungs, and ragged coughs tear through his chest. He struggles against the villain, inhaling more smoke than oxygen as he tries to get his breath back.
Then there’s a hand in front of his face. The palm sparks and a jolt of adrenaline shoots through Katsuki’s body. He knows what that means.
He twists, grabs the guy’s wrist and slams it into the floor hard enough to hear a crack come from the bone. The villain lets out a cry and Katsuki rolls away, scrabbling for a hard-backed book lying discarded on the floor. He grabs hold of it just in time. Fingers brush against his shoulder and Katsuki reacts, whirling around to slam the brick of a book against the guy’s head.
The villain goes down with a shout.
“Kacchan!”
Katsuki’s head snaps up. Across the room, Izuku is standing beside the bookshelf. It’s somehow survived the extensive damage the rest of the apartment had taken, and judging by the look on Izuku’s face, it’s a good thing it’s still standing. There’s at least fifty brick-like books with all the potential to be weapons just collecting dust.
Izuku quickly nods to the villain, then mimes tugging at the bookshelf.
Katsuki grins.
He moves across the room as Izuku ducks out of sight. Behind him, the villain growls out a stream of ugly words and stumbles to his feet.
“C’mon, hothead,” Katsuki snarls. His head pounds and his chest aches and his arm burns, and that damned villain is the only thing standing in his way of a moment to breathe. The smoke is heavy, but he can just make out the black figure of the villain staggering towards him, hands crackling with warning sparks, anger giving way to that deranged smile stretched across his face.
“I’ve got you,” the villain sneers, as though Katsuki is regrettably pinned with the wall to his back, and not as though he’s the bait in a last-second, hit-or-miss plan that better fucking work.
Then the guy steps perfectly into place, and Katsuki moves. “Deku, now!”
Izuku doesn’t hesitate. He shoves against the bookshelf, and the clumsy piece of furniture moves, teetering forward. The villain’s head snaps to the side, catching the movement, and with a roar of rage he holds his hands out, palms turned inward facing each other.
There’s a spark, and Katsuki has just enough time to think, for what has to be the twentieth time, “Oh, shit,” before there’s a loud boom and an explosion of heat sends him flying backward the short distance to the wall. He slumps to the floor with a groan, Izuku landing next to him.
It’s silent for a while.
“I think it worked,” Izuku finally mutters, breathless.
The smoke, while still heavy, had cleared up enough for the two heroes to see the wreckage before them: bookshelf in pieces, books scattered in a cloud of dust, and a black-sleeved arm stretched out from beneath the broken wood.
“Huh.”
The air feels like it’s nothing but heat and smoke, filled only with ragged breathing and what hopefully is the sound of the fighting in the streets outside dying down.
Beside him, Izuku shifts and lets out a groan. Katsuki silently agrees.
“We should probably tie him up,” Izuku says.
“Yeah.”
“Nice job holding him off.”
A huff. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“But… you realize the irony of calling him a hothead, right?”
“Fuck off.”
Izuku snickers, and Katsuki shoves him. If he hadn’t been absolutely spent, he might’ve found the urge to punch him, too.
“We’re not too bad of a team, huh, Kacchan?”
Scratch that.
“Ow—Kacchan!”