Archive of Our Own

Charity balls, as far as Katsuki’s concerned, were created with death by boredom in mind.

He understands the necessity of them just fine—hero fights got messy, especially when the villain didn’t have the presence of mind to surrender quietly, and the funding had to come from somewhere to keep them all from starving. He even understands the need to rope in complacent politicians and rich do-gooders so that the heroes could keep themselves off the streets, even if he doesn’t much care for the principle behind it. Someone has to ensure everyone keeps fighting the good fight, or whatever it is.

But getting his cheeks pinched by some handsy old lady? All for a few hundred bucks to All Might’s agency, when she could be—who the hell knows, pinching Deku’s instead?!

“Oh my!” the old lady gasps, hands flinching back when the plate in Katsuki’s hand cracks and ceramic shards fall to the floor. “Are you quite alright, young man?”

“Never better,” Katsuki grits through clenched teeth, and rearranges his face into an approximation of a smile before he adds, “I’m gonna go get someone to clean this up, alright?”

“What a lovely young man,” the delusional old bat sighs as Katsuki walks away, hands rhythmically clenching and unclenching by his sides. Just a few more moments, and he might’ve well blasted her off her feet—literally, at that.

Nobody else seems to be having trouble with the rich cronies they’ve snagged—Kirishima looks happy enough to wave his arms about, and he’s fairly certain he can hear Mina’s delighted laughter soaring above the crowd.

At least someone’s enjoying themselves, Katsuki thinks, flagging down a waiter and relaying the incident with the broken dish in short, snappy words.

God, what he’d give to have a live fighting demonstration—maybe he could construe it as another way to raise more funds. People liked betting, right? And seeing how strong their sponsored heroes were, right?

Katsuki’s just about to look for Aizawa in the crowd, plan half-formed and bloody scenarios racing through his mind, when he catches a flash of white in the crowd. Which isn’t really unusual, in and of itself—there’s a lot of people dressed in white, and he’s fairly certain half of them have crumbs or other stains on their fancy suits and dresses now—but it’d looked like a…

Tail, Katsuki’s mind supplies. A fluffy, bouncy rabbit tail.

Which—what?

Later on, Katsuki will say it’d been irritation spurring him on. He’s no Iida, all fussy and uptight about the dress code, but nobody should be wearing fluffy, bouncy rabbit tails at some boring ball.

But it’s curiosity and maybe—just maybe—a touch of amusement coursing through his veins as he heads for the exit, where that tail had bobbed out of…

And instead of a luxuriously-decorated corridor, all pale creams and muted golds with chandeliers hanging from the ceilings and plush carpet underfoot, Katsuki walks right into a garden.

It makes no sense. There’s only meant to be one entrance-exit from the ballroom, unless one happens to enjoy jumping down from three-storey-high balconies, and they’re in the middle of Musutafu. How a garden—and a fairly luscious garden at that—happened to replace a perfectly serviceable corridor is quite possibly going to sprain his mind if he thinks about it for too long—

So it’s probably for the best that Katsuki spots another flash of white. It lingers for long enough that he catches sight of—yep, that’s definitely a rabbit tail—and quite a fair bit of green. There’s so much green, in fact, that it almost blends in with the foliage in this unusually green garden.

But it’s the clunky red sneakers that almost make Katsuki cough up blood, because he only knows of one person who wears sneakers that stupid and attention-seeking.

If this is all Deku’s fault…

“You get back here right this second, Deku!” Katsuki roars, hands crackling with small but potent explosions as he breaks into a dead run. It’s hard to move in a restrictive suit, and there’s a distant thought for his Pro Hero outfit in the cloakroom—wherever the cloakroom happens to be now—but Deku jumps with a squeak and races off into the undergrowth.

Katsuki almost thinks he hears Deku muttering something like I’m late, which makes no sense when he should be hamming it up at the charity ball, but the undergrowth is getting denser and Katsuki has to fight through clinging branches and leaves. They rip into his suit and drag across his face, leaving scratches and even a shallowly bleeding wound while depositing leaves and twigs in his hair, and he probably looks like some sort of deranged person when he bursts from the undergrowth.

“You’re dead when I get my hands on you!” Katsuki screams, eyes darting around as his fingers twitch and spark with crackle-pops of his Quirk—

But then there’s a sudden shove, a whispered I’m so sorry Kacchan and a yawning hole, welcoming Katsuki into its pitch-black embrace.

In the moment before he gets swallowed whole, Katsuki twists in time to see Deku peering down at him. Oh, there’s a little regret in his dumb doe eyes, and he’s definitely wringing his hands like the apologetic ass he is—but there’s also a strange little smile on his face and he’s wearing something almost archaic in its style. Almost Victorian, even, beyond the rabbit ears flopped over his hair, and there are even honest-to-goodness gloves on his hands when he twinkles them at Katsuki.

“It might help if you close your eyes!” is the last thing Katsuki hears out of Deku’s smarmy, grinning lips.

And before Katsuki can hurl abuse back at him—the outside world falls away, and the hole closes in on him.

Falling, Katsuki quickly discovers, is incredibly boring. Without his Quirk to propel him upwards—he’d tried igniting his palms, but that’d resulted in a faceful of sweat and nothing else to show from it—it’s taking every bit of willpower to stay awake in this never-ending hole, let alone keep his eyes open.

Because, honestly, screw Deku and his advice. Like he was going to turn into paste while he was closing his eyes like a brainless extra.

There’s nothing but darkness above and below him, which is both weird and concerning. The shelves lining the walls had been interesting at first, if only because he’s fairly certain he’d spotted All Might memorabilia among all the random trash crammed behind their doors, but after a while…

The hell is this all gonna end? Katsuki thinks some minutes later, glaring at a particularly blinding grin from a floating All Might bobblehead, and almost misses the ground hurtling towards him.

Almost, because the story would come to an end if he ended up splattering against the ground.

As it is, his palms almost don’t ignite in time to save him from a stick up the ass. It takes a backflip, some wild cursing and the incineration of quite a few twigs—because someone had decided to set up a pile of twigs atop a goddamn boulder at the bottom of a hole, what the hell—but Katsuki manages to land on his feet in a flutter of lace.

A flutter of lace.

A flutter… of… what?

Katsuki’s gaze snaps to his legs, but it’s not dress pants that greet his sight—blue and white lace caress the creamy skin halfway up his thighs instead, and mismatched stockings clinch the skin just above his knees. They trail down to heeled boots in red and black, white rabbit ears peeking out the top and what looks like a miniature version of Deku’s fluffy tail stuck to the back when he raises a foot to inspect his boots a little better, but they’re not the polished shoes he had on to begin with.

None of his current attire—from the pristine white apron to the frilly cuffs clinging to his wrists—was what he’d been wearing to begin with, and it’s enough to make Katsuki’s face contort when he forces out a strangled, “Hah?! Where the hell did my clothes go?”

Nobody’s voice emerges from the cavernous gloom he’s fallen into, but Katsuki’s stance remains firm and undaunted as his palms crackle and his eyes narrow.

“You damn Deku—” Because it’d been his fault he’d fallen in, so who was to say that this wasn’t his fault too? “—give me back my clothes right now or I swear—”

“Swearing is quite unbecoming, you know!”

Katsuki’s jaw snaps shut at the loud, booming voice—but no bright yellow hair or gaunt body emerges from the shadows. It’s not until he’s made a visual sweep of the place that he notices a well-lit corridor framed by doors, but there’s no sign of All Might there. Oh, there are paintings of him during his different ages and every door is well and truly locked, but…

“Auditory hallucinations,” Katsuki mutters to himself when he reaches the end of the corridor and almost bumps into a little glass table. “First Deku and now All Might—the ball’s driven me insane.”

“Not so!” that all-too-familiar voice booms out again, and Katsuki blasts away part of the table before he can get himself under control.

But where is he? There are only locked doors behind him and this stupid little glass table—but just as Katsuki’s ready to blast the walls apart, he notices a curtain that barely reached his knees.

And as he moves towards it, hand stretching out to pull the curtain aside, it twitches open on its own.

“I am here,” All Might yells from behind the curtain, “offering advice like a normal person!

“Young Bakugou!” he continues, grinning up from where his face is… embedded in a door. Well, alright then, Katsuki thinks to himself, even as All Might’s grin widens and he adds, “You have too much youthful passion in you to pass through! I would suggest drinking the concoction on the table!”

Katsuki turns to see a small glass bottle on the warped, smoking table, but there’s only irritation in his tone when he mutters, “I’m not deaf, you know—I can hear you just fine.”

“Do not worry, for it is quite nutritious and tasty!” All Might exclaims, as though Katsuki hadn’t spoken at all. “The springtime of your youth will not diminish, my boy, mark my words!”

He’s not sure what face he pulls in response to that, but All Might’s beaming grin falters a little. Good, Katsuki thinks vindictively, and sneers down at him before asking, “What if I don’t want to drink it, hah? What’re you gonna do, yell me into submission?”

“That would be rather unheroic of me, wouldn’t it?” All Might replies. “But then the story wouldn’t progress if you didn’t follow the script, you know!”

“The what now?”

“The script!” All Might’s obnoxiously cheery grin is back in full force—so bright, in fact, that Katsuki has to shield his eyes from all his sparkling white teeth. “You see, Young Bakugou, once you have drunk from the concoction and failed to open me up—”

“Could you say that without making it sound weird?”

“—you will then partake of a cake, expand to gigantic proportions, drown half this corridor and myself in a pool of tears, and then proceed onwards with young Midoriya’s help!” All Might says right over the top of Katsuki’s complaint. “Isn’t that right, young Midoriya?”

“That’s exactly right, All Might!” a chipper voice exclaims, and Bakugou whips around to see Deku in his Victorian rabbit getup. “You might want to hurry him along though—Kacchan took far too much time arriving here as is.”

“I’m right here, you damn extras,” Katsuki growls, palms crackling with barely-restrained explosions.

“So,” he snarls as Deku’s face pales, “you wanna repeat that bit about me crying or being a little slow again?”

“I, uh, wouldn’t need to if you drink from that bottle, Kacchan?” Deku tries with a weak little smile.

A gullible idiot might’ve happily turned around and followed his suggestion—but because Katsuki possesses a brain, and a functional one at that, he gives Deku the dirty look that deserves before he takes a single step towards him. “You have exactly three seconds to run before I smash your face into the ground,” he tells Deku—

But he’s already flying towards Deku by the last word, dress whipping around his legs from the explosions and something tugging at his hair too. Deku, for his part, manages a single eep before he’s racing down the corridor in a crackle of green lightning.

“Get back here!” Katsuki howls, and follows Deku through a previously-locked door.

“Ah, the springtime of youth!” All Might sighs behind him, and twitches his curtain shut.

The room Katsuki bursts into isn’t so much a room as it is a forest—like an overgrown version of that godawful garden, he thinks irritably to himself, even as he deftly manoeuvres around a tree trunk and chases after Deku’s fleeing form. As much as Katsuki hates to admit it, they’re evenly matched in speed when they’re both using their Quirks…

So why the hell is Deku disappearing into the distance?

Katsuki cranks up his Quirk until he can barely feel his palms through the crackling, teeth gritted so tightly that he almost cracks a tooth, but it’s no use—Deku’s gone. First-year Katsuki might’ve blown up the entire forest in his attempt to find Deku… but in his present state, all he does is snarl and clench his numb hands.

“I’m gonna wring his neck when I get my hands on him,” Katsuki grumbles under his breath, eyes darting around for any sign of white or red—

Only to catch a glimpse of yellow in his periphery.

It’s instinctive to whirl on his heels and bring his hands up, palms facing outwards for a strong blast—but the spot of yellow doesn’t hurtle towards him. It doesn’t even move until Katsuki stomps a little closer, hands still raised in preparation for a potential attack, but then Katsuki’s brain registers more than just a blob of bright yellow.

“Aizawa?” he asks, hands flopping down to his sides—

But Aizawa only blinks before he slurps loudly on his juice box.

His teacher—who he’d just talked to before he’d chased rabbit-Deku and fallen down that hole, what the hell—is lying on a mushroom that barely manages to fit him, sleeping bag obscuring all but his face and a few lanky strands of hair. There’s a moment when Katsuki almost smooths down his skirt and stands a little straighter, well aware of his teacher’s strict standards, but then he catches himself with a shake of his head.

He’s in a skirt, for goodness’ sake, and Aizawa’s staring at him from his goddamn sleeping bag.

“You gonna just slurp that all day or what?” Katsuki barks, and Aizawa blinks again before the juice box falls from his lips.

“Is that how you’d normally speak to me?” Aizawa asks languidly, propping his body up with a few ungainly wriggles. “Looks like your clothes aren’t the only thing that’s changed about you.”

Katsuki promptly flushes red.

Aizawa doesn’t say anything more, though—and for all that he’s got far too many questions in his head, Katsuki finds himself opening and closing his hands instead. After all, what’s the point of asking Aizawa where Deku is? Or, for that matter, why they’re in the middle of a forest when they should be in a ballroom?!

“If you need to go to the toilet,” Aizawa dryly says, when Katsuki begins shifting from foot to foot, “there are trees all around us.”

Whose bladder is full, you stupid old man, Katsuki barely manages to swallow back, and breathes shallowly through his nose before he snaps, “What I need is to get away from all of this!”

Katsuki doesn’t bother gesturing at the forest, but Aizawa only blinks and slurps at his juice box as though he really doesn’t know what Katsuki’s talking about. He stares at his teacher—or whatever’s pretending to be his teacher, since there’s nothing logical about him right now—but Aizawa continues slurping with hollowed cheeks and lazy blinks.

Just when Katsuki’s about to snatch his juice box and toss it into the forest, though—

“Where do you want to be?” Aizawa asks around the straw in his mouth.

Katsuki’s jaw sags open.

“You said you wanted to get away,” Aizawa continues, as if he’s not asking a completely illogical question. “So, logically speaking, you want to be somewhere particular.”

“I,” Katsuki says in a choked voice, “want to get out of whatever fever dream this is!”

“Then wake up,” Aizawa replies, and…

Is he wriggling away? Does he actually have a fever? Katsuki scrubs a hand over his face and almost knocks the bow off his head—but it’s not long before Aizawa’s crawled off into the distance.

“If I could’ve woken up,” Katsuki mutters under his breath, kicking at the mushroom’s fleshy stem, “then I would’ve done that already, goddammit.”

Unfortunately, the mushroom doesn’t respond—and after a few minutes of waiting, with Aizawa nowhere in sight and nothing but trees as far as the eye can see, Katsuki sighs loudly before he picks a random direction and trudges off.

It’s not like he could possibly get more lost in this godforsaken forest, right?

“You look a little lost there, Kacchan!” Katsuki hears in between one heavy footstep and the next. If he had any less self-restraint, he would’ve thrown himself into Kaminari’s arms—

Except Kaminari’s dressed in the most eye-searing ensemble Katsuki’s ever seen him wear, seemingly unbothered by his bright yellow shirt, inflated red overalls and oversized blue bow. Are you actually colourblind? Katsuki thinks about asking Kaminari, but then he spots Sero standing behind Kaminari.

Sero, who’s wearing clothing identical to Kaminari’s, and…

“I think I’m good, thanks,” Katsuki tells Kaminari and Sero, and marches away from them.

“But you’re not following the script!” Sero calls after him. “You really should be—”

“Anywhere but here?” Katsuki snaps yet again, upping his pace when he hears Kaminari and Sero rushing after him. Honestly, how many times does he have to repeat himself? “I don’t care about your goddamn script—I’d rather get my cheek pinched by some handsy old lady than stay in this hellish hallucination!”

“Lovely alliteration!” Sero cheerfully compliments. Katsuki only scoffs and starts jogging when he feels a hand swipe—unsuccessfully, thank god—at the lace tying his apron to his waist.

“C’mon, Kacchan—”

“Call me that again and die.”

“—the tea’s getting cold!” Kaminari whines right over his snarled protest. “Her tarts will all get gobbled up too, and then we’ll all have to figure out a new script for you!”

“Then tell whoever the hell’s responsible for this ‘script’ of yours to bugger off and leave me alone!” Katsuki yells, stopping in pace so suddenly that Kaminari and Sero almost collide into him.

“Goddamn Deku shoved me down a hole,” he snarls as he spins around, yanking their bowties and half-strangling them in the process, “I’ve been forced to wear a dress since I fell into this weird place, got told I wasn’t youthful enough by All Might as a doorknob, chased Deku into this godforsaken forest and—”

“Have you gone mad?”

Katsuki’s head swivels around, eyes wide and bloodshot with the sheer fervour of his rage, but then his expression freezes and falters into something less manic. Todoroki doesn’t seem to care, from the way he’s swinging his legs and peering down at Katsuki without a single shift in his expression, but…

“Are you cosplaying,” Katsuki asks in a choked voice, “as a cat?”

“I’m a Cheshire cat,” Todoroki corrects him without batting a lash.

Katsuki arches a single brow at him. The alternative would be throwing Kaminari and Sero at his inexplicably furry classmate—but even they don’t deserve such treatment.

Kaminari and Sero are suspiciously silent and unmoving, for all that his attention’s on Todoroki now—but there’s no time for him to question their attempts at playing dead. There’s only Todoroki in his eyes right now, Todoroki tilting his head while his cat ears stay jauntily perked and a hand crooks into something akin to a paw, and Katsuki’s just about to yell at him when Todoroki opens his mouth.

“Nyan.”

A moment of silence, a single blink, and then—

“You have issues,” Katsuki solemnly tells him.

“Says you,” Todoroki replies with the faintest of smiles.

“I’m not the one trying to strangle two piles of clothing,” he adds with a nod, smile widening even as Katsuki narrows his eyes at him, but then Katsuki turns back around.

Kaminari’s and Sero’s clothing are just as blinding as ever—but there aren’t any yelling idiots in them. Their shirts and overalls and bowties are still in his hands but Kaminari and Sero aren’t wearing them, and it’s not until a fluffy tail curls over his left forearm that he snaps out of his shock.

(a small part of Katsuki can’t help imagining Kaminari and Sero creeping away in their underwear while he’d been baffled by Todoroki’s everything, but it doesn’t take him long to purge the thought from his mind)

“Get your tail off me,” Katsuki barks, dropping Kaminari’s and Sero’s clothing to swat at the offending appendage. “What kind of warped cat are you, you bi-coloured weirdo.”

“I’m a Cheshire cat—”

“And you think that matters to me?”

The tip of Todoroki’s tail flicks Katsuki’s nose, even as his ears flatten atop his head and his smile dims, but Katsuki’s too busy sneezing from his long fur to pay Todoroki any heed. “Do you mind?” he snarls when his nose finally stops itching, but Todoroki only gives him a half-shrug in response.

Useless as always, Katsuki scoffs to himself, and shoves Todoroki’s tail off again when it tries to drape itself across his shoulders. The damn thing is far too touchy when its owner rarely engages in physical contact—that, Katsuki thinks with a narrow-eyed glare, when he notices Todoroki’s smile widen out of the corner of his eye, or he’s enjoying all this.

Just the thought is enough to make chills race down his spine.

But as much as Katsuki wants to break into a run and leave Todoroki behind… what were the odds that he’d continue to wander in the forest? With no discernible differences between each unnaturally straight tree-trunk and with his palms aching lightly from his earlier attempt to catch Deku, there was only so much he could do to mark a path in the forest.

Todoroki, for all his flaws and his annoyingly clingy tail, was at least of some use in leading him towards two clearly-defined roads.

…Wait a minute…

Katsuki’s gaze snaps from one path to the next—but apart from their inexplicable appearance in the middle of an otherwise-uniform forest, there’s nothing special about them. They’re neatly swept of leaves, pebbles lining the sides and blackish-brown dirt paving the two straight roads, and Katsuki almost bends down to pinch a bit of dirt when Todoroki’s tail pins his arms to his sides.

“One road leads to a Hatter,” Todoroki informs him in a mild voice, uncaring of Katsuki’s swearing and irritated attempts to wriggle free of his hold, “and the other leads to a March Hare. They’re both mad, but not in the way you are.”

“Screw you, Candy Cane!”

“But maybe I’m wronging them by sending you to them,” Todoroki continues thoughtfully, as though Katsuki hadn’t cursed him at all. “Maybe…”

“What?” Katsuki snarls. “Don’t tell me you want me to stay with you in this godforsaken forest.”

“I don’t want to baby you for much longer anyway,” Todoroki agrees with apparent relief, eyes curving up in an incredibly creepy smile—

And just as Katsuki opens his mouth to curse Todoroki again, the blasted cat disappears into thin air.

There’s no birdsong, no light breeze rustling the leaves by his feet or on the trees—it’s utterly silent beyond his breathing, and Katsuki clenches his fists as he glares at the spot Todoroki had just been occupying. Cosplaying rabbits, cosplaying cats… Katsuki grinds his teeth, swears under his breath, and puts a single foot down on the path to the Hatter’s place.

“I wouldn’t go there, if I were you,” an all-too-familiar voice says right behind him. “That’s not what the script says.”

Katsuki squeezes his eyes shut, breathes deeply through his nose and ekes out a growled, “Don’t tell me what to do, Half n’ Half.”

“I’m just giving you a suggestion,” Todoroki replies.

“And I don’t need it!” Katsuki snaps, throwing an elbow behind himself and biting back a snarl when Todoroki smoothly dodges it.

He whips around, palms crackling—but there’s no Todoroki in sight.

“Come out here and let me hit you, you goddamn coward!” Katsuki yells, but Todoroki’s soft laughter seems to come from all around him.

“Maybe I will,” Todoroki says without bothering to make himself visible, “if you can catch me.

“I’ll stand still and close my eyes when you finally catch up to me,” Todoroki adds as he appears down the March Hare’s path, wriggling his fingers at Katsuki in a mocking wave—and when Katsuki roars, charging down the path towards him, Todoroki laughs before vanishing again.

Chasing Deku had been infuriating, both because the stupid nerd wasn’t supposed to be faster than him and because they were meant to be at a stuffy ball instead—but chasing Todoroki is somehow, incredibly, worse. In between his uncharacteristic smiles, all the fur he sheds as he swishes his tail and his penchant for vanishing as soon as Katsuki’s about to catch him…

“Well, well, look who decided to grace my humble tea-table!” an obnoxious voice calls out, but Katsuki only flips Monoma off as he desperately keeps himself from collapsing.

The ears on Monoma’s head are larger than Deku’s, soft cream where Deku’s were forest-green, but it’s the oversized teacup he’s cradling in his hands that captures most of Katsuki’s attention. He’d ignored the drink All Might had pointed out to him and had barely touched a glass throughout the ball, too busy trying not to blow his top from all the puerile small talk he’d been forced to engage in—and after all that running, it’s all he can do to keep from snatching Monoma’s cup right out of his hands.

It’s not just Monoma at the table, though. Katsuki can hear whistling snores coming from somewhere near the table—which is so laden with teacups, teapots and dirty plates that Katsuki’s eyes start twitching at the mess—and there’s a shock of familiar purple hair crammed beneath the gaudiest top hat Katsuki’s ever had the misfortune to see.

“I’d tell you to sit,” Monoma says while Shinsou blinks at Katsuki, “but there’s simply no room left, so you’ll just have to run along.”

Katsuki eyes the thirty or so empty chairs at the table, sneers at Monoma’s bland smile, and sits down in a squashy armchair.

“Hard of hearing and idiotic, I see,” Katsuki thinks he hears Monoma mutter under his breath, but he’s all smiles and dainty sips when Katsuki glares at him.

“Want some coffee?” Shinsou offers around a yawn, waving vaguely at a kettle by Katsuki’s elbow.

Katsuki nods, picking out the cleanest-looking teacup amidst the chaos—but what comes out is very clearly tea.

“Oh my god, he actually thought there’d be coffee at a tea-table!” Monoma howls, almost falling out of his chair with the sheer force of his laughter, and Shinsou smacks him upside the head before tossing back an entire steaming cup of tea.

“Why’d you offer coffee if you didn’t have any then?” Katsuki asks over Monoma’s cackling.

“Why’d you sit without being invited to the tea party?” Shinsou asks him right back, and Monoma takes one look at Katsuki’s expression before he slaps the table with renewed howls of laughter.

Katsuki pitches his half-filled teacup at Monoma’s head, but he only tilts his head to the side and lets it crash against a distant tree-trunk. Two plates shatter against other tree-trunks as Katsuki pelts them at Monoma, followed by a dainty sugar-jar—

But just as Katsuki’s about to pick up a chair and break it across Monoma’s tear-streaked face, the whistling snores stop and red feathers pin his wrist cuffs to the table.

“Haven’t you been taught not to fight at the dinner table?” Hawks asks from… beneath Shinsou. How Shinsou’s capable of drinking tea while he’s sitting on a Pro Hero’s lap is completely beyond Katsuki, as is the bored expression on Hawks’ face when he peers around Shinsou and adds, “Nice ruffles you got there, kid.”

Shinsou sets down his teacup, eyes Katsuki’s outfit and says with a little smirk, “I don’t know, I think pink lace would suit him better.”

“Pink lace with sparkles,” Monoma chimes in, toasting nobody in particular with his empty teacup before he pulls a scone out of nowhere, and the tablecloth catches on fire beneath Katsuki’s palms.

Nobody bats a lash at the acrid stench of burning tablecloth or charred crumbs.

“Well, that’ll save on electricity costs,” Shinsou muses seconds later, and Monoma nods before placing a full teapot directly on Katsuki’s right hand.

The cold tea that spills from the teapot rather conveniently douses the flames, though the teapot joins the first cup as shards at the base of a tree.

“So anyway,” Hawks says when Katsuki falls back into his seat, mouse ears flicking back and forth restlessly on his head, “pass the butter, will you?”

Katsuki opens his mouth, stares at the ears wiggling atop Hawks’ head, and shuts his mouth.

“Any time now,” Hawks adds, and wiggles his fingers when Katsuki’s teeth grind audibly.

I knew I should’ve gone down the other path, Katsuki thinks with no small amount of regret, but passes the butter without anything more than a mutinous glare.

Monoma’s brows almost shoot off his forehead at the sight, but Hawks smiles before dumping the entire slab of butter into a teacup with… a pocket-watch, of all things.

“You must be wondering about the ears, right?” Hawks asks as he greases the pocket-watch. Katsuki rolls his eyes without bothering to make it subtle, earning a muffled snort from Monoma and another tired blink from Shinsou, but Hawks cheerfully continues his nonsensical greasing as he says, “It’s because I’m a Dormouse.”

“And you’re just as barmy as the Hatter and the Hare?”

“It’s short for condor-mouse, you know,” Hawks tells him in a carrying whisper, and mimes zipping his lips before adding rather seriously, “but don’t tell these two—they just think I’m an ordinary door-loving mouse.”

Katsuki stares at Hawks before he looks at Shinsou and Monoma, but Monoma’s too busy having a one-sided conversation with Shinsou about ravens and writing-desks to pay Katsuki any mind. Hawks only shrugs, gives him an exaggerated wink when Katsuki’s gaze returns to him—and pours an entire pot of tea on the buttery pocket-watch.

“This is absolute crap,” Katsuki grumbles to himself, getting up from the armchair and stalking away from the tea-table. “Mad doesn’t even begin to describe these morons.”

“And don’t come back if you know what’s good for you, you ugly coffee-loving heathen!” Monoma shouts after him as Katsuki steps foot into the forest again—but when he looks back, there’s nothing but trees, and the tea-table is nowhere in sight.

Katsuki doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’d left Monoma, Shinsou and Hawks behind, but it’s long enough for him to all but sprint towards the door when one magically appears on a tree-trunk. It doesn’t even matter that he’s back in the hallway he’d started off in, where All Might’s snoring behind his curtain and the other doors are all still locked—but after a careful search, Katsuki realizes that All Might’s door is set into a larger door, and it’s not long before he forces it open enough to slip through.

All Might awakens with an ungainly snort at the jostling, but who cares? The room beyond All Might’s door isn’t a forest—though it’s still filled with too much greenery and not enough ballroom for his liking—and Katsuki slams the door shut on All Might’s hearty, “Congratulations on following the script, Young Bakugou!”

If he’d known the damn script would’ve bypassed that entire dreaded forest earlier, he would’ve squeezed all the tears out from Deku and followed it!

“Stupid fever dream,” Katsuki mutters irritably, and aims a kick at a peculiar-looking tree.

It’s not peculiar in that it’s perfectly straight—it’s barely taller than Katsuki, more like a tall bush than a sapling or dwarf-tree, and its branches are densely packed with leaves and flowers. What’s peculiar about it are the colour of the flowers, white with splashes of red that almost look like someone had shed blood onto them—

But before Katsuki can pluck a flower from the tree and observe it more closely, an ear-splitting shriek cuts through the air.

If Katsuki had been expecting to find a damsel in distress, though…

“Toga-chan’s going to have our heads!” Twice bawls at the top of his lungs, and Katsuki almost face-plants from how fast he stops in place.

There’s a moment, when Twice locks eyes with him, that Katsuki thinks he’ll have to battle it out with him—but another Twice dashes out from between two trees and stomps on the first Twice’s foot.

“This wouldn’t have been an issue if you’d just listened to me!” the second Twice yells, and the first Twice leaves off staring at Katsuki to howl and hop in place.

“Didn’t you hear Toga-chan the first time?!” the second Twice continues yelling over the first’s infernal racket. “These are meant to be red roses, Twice Seven!”

“Who wants tacky red roses except for you, Twice Five?” Twice Seven immediately leaves off howling to retort, whipping around and almost smashing Twice Five in the crotch with his paint bucket. “Toga-chan would prefer white roses!”

“I’m telling you, the roses should be red!” Twice Seven yells, splattering everything in a ten-metre radius with red paint from his still-wet brush—including an incredibly unimpressed Katsuki.

“And I’m telling you,” Twice Five yells right back, flicking white paint all over Twice Seven’s face, “that the roses should be white!”

Most people might take the opportunity to sneak away while the two Twices were busy flinging paint at each other—but Katsuki isn’t most people, and both Twices fall silent when he marches up to them.

“If you two don’t stop yelling,” Katsuki says in a voice that definitely isn’t .5 seconds away from a scream, “you’re both going to be painted red. In your blood.”

“I-I still have a bucket of red paint you could use,” Twice Five tries to tell him, but he shrinks back at the manic light in Katsuki’s eyes.

Distantly, Katsuki finds it in himself to muster up amusement at the identical looks of terror on Twices’ faces—but then there’s a hoarse scream and a third Twice falls out of a nearby tree.

“Too late!” the new Twice exclaims over the sound of many footsteps. “Toga-chan’s here!”

“Toga-chan!” the other Twices shriek, and all three fall flat on their faces.

What Katsuki sees next is, somehow, the strangest thing he’s seen since he’d fallen down that hole—and that’s saying something, a small voice in the back of Katsuki’s mind tells him.

It’s not the thirty Twice clones cavorting about that make it weird, though goodness knows why they’re holding club-shaped spears or gleaming from diamond-shaped stickers or snatching heart-shaped candy from each other. It’s not even Deku’s blasé appearance while being surrounded by so many Twice clones, or the distracted smile he’s giving Nedzu, of all people.

It’s the two girls skipping arm-in-arm that almost make Katsuki’s eyes bug out of his head, because Twice clones are one thing but Hatsume and Toga together are something else, and he barely notices the entire procession stopping before him in his utter confusion.

“You should’ve come earlier, minion!” Hatsume huffs, but Katsuki only snaps out of his thoughts when she shoves her face into his. “We were missing a croquet player because of you, you know.

“But you’re just in time for a trial, so come along now!” Hatsume adds, linking her arm with his—

Only for Katsuki to shake his arm free and shove Hatsume back.

“Who the hell wants to go with you lot?” Katsuki snaps, scrubbing furiously at the spittle flecking his face. “You’re all mad! Just throw yourselves into jail and be done with it!”

He doesn’t see Toga’s smile widen while her eyes light up with manic cheer—but Katsuki does hear the pitter-patter of rapidly approaching footsteps. “Are you deaf?!” Katsuki yells without pausing in his scrubbing, taking a few hurried steps back as well—

But without his vision guiding him, Katsuki almost trips—only for someone to tug on his skirt and yank him upright again.

Any thought of thanking his saviour dies when Katsuki’s gaze meets bright button eyes.

He hadn’t seen much of Nedzu, not when he’d been a full half-body shorter than practically anyone in the crowd, but there’s no mistaking the black-and-red finery he’s decked out in. There’s even a delicate ruby-encrusted crown on his head, ears peeking out from the silver circlet, and it’s just so weird that Katsuki doesn’t notice Nedzu speaking.

Not until Nedzu jumps to wave a soft-looking paw in his face, anyway, and then…

“Come now, young Bakugou,” Nedzu says. “Will you keep avoiding the script like a coward?”

“What did you just call me?”

“A coward!” Nedzu repeats happily, unaware of the way Deku’s choking and Toga’s giggling behind him. “If even I, the most adorable mammalian king, can cosy up with a known villain without batting a lash—then what are you, pray tell?”

Katsuki splutters before he can help himself, hands clenching tightly into fists and eyes narrowing dangerously at Nedzu, but the rat-bear-mouse-something continues to beam up at him. “Someone should’ve provided you with a wig to complete the Alice cosplay—”

“Who’s cosplaying—”

“But no matter!” Nedzu exclaims, and raises his paws in a clear demand.

“Oh my god, I’d love to cuddle King Nedzu,” someone whispers in the crowd.

His first instinct is to ignore Nedzu and walk off, insult be damned—but with so many eyes watching him and coward fresh in everyone’s mind, Katsuki grits his teeth and picks Nedzu up.

“Ah, how wonderful it is to be almost six feet tall!” Nedzu sighs, and pats Katsuki’s head in thanks.

It hasn’t escaped Katsuki’s notice that Toga hasn’t said a word yet, for all that she’s the only other person who has a crown on their head. It also hasn’t escaped his notice that everyone subconsciously gravitates towards her, either—but before he can figure out why, Toga finally opens her mouth.

“You’ve all been ignoring me for our new guest,” she laments in a far-too-cheery tone. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you all want to make Katsuki queen!”

“Do I look like a girl to you?” Katsuki snarls, but Toga only flushes and pats his head with a flutter of her lashes.

“You look positively adorable in that dress!” Toga hums. “If I didn’t have to follow the script, I’d chop off your head so I don’t have any competition!

“But we have a trial to attend,” Toga sighs, wiping imaginary tears from the corners of her eyes, “so I guess we’ll have to chop your head off later.”

“I’ll lend you one of my super cute babies to preserve his body parts afterwards,” Hatsume earnestly promises Toga as the entire procession begins moving again—

And with nothing better to do than follow along, Katsuki readjusts Nedzu in his arms and follows after Hatsume and Toga. It’s not as though this stupid hallucination could get any worse, right?

The stupid hallucination got worse, Katsuki grudgingly admits to himself, narrowly resisting the urge to shove his face into his hands as Toga and Dabi pull increasingly childish faces at each other. That the idiots comprising the jury are drawing their expressions only makes it worse—especially when Deku leans over and gives Kaminari art pointers in a polite, if vaguely strained, whisper.

What the hell is Kaminari doing here, anyway? Half the jury are filled with Twice clones, two of which are still arguing about the colour of those goddamn flowers, and the other half make those buffoons look smart in comparison. Sero’s drawings are passably human—unlike the blobs on Kaminari’s slate—and Monoma’s are surprisingly decent, if Katsuki looks past his penchant for exaggeration.

If he didn’t know any better, Katsuki would think he’d crashed in on an amateur still life course… minus the stillness. The speed at which Toga goes from waggling her tongue to squishing her cheeks is almost as fast as Nedzu’s consumption of cheese—which is saying something when he’s stuffing entire blocks into his mouth.

“So what’s the trial about, anyway?” Hawks asks from beside him, and Katsuki rolls his eyes without looking away from the spectacle before them.

Thankfully—or not, depending on how he sees things—Nedzu hears Hawks’ asinine question.

“Have we started? I thought it was still tea-time!” Nedzu exclaims, dabbing gently at his lips even as he glances longingly at his crumb-infested tea. Monoma pauses in his drawing to raise his brows at Nedzu, affront stark in his expression at the very thought of tea-time being over—but then Nedzu smacks the table with a heavy paw and announces, “Silence in the court!”

Instantly, the jury leaves off drawing Toga and Dabi to write Nedzu’s words.

“Let’s finish this trial before my tea goes cold, then,” Nedzu sighs over jury’s furious scribbling, and imperiously waves in Deku’s direction.

What follows is enough to make Katsuki shove his face into his hands.

There’s a poem about the Queen of Hearts—which explains a lot about the crown on Toga’s head, Katsuki supposes—and her tarts, though the table in between Toga and Dabi is filled with what looks like bits of raw flesh.

“I’m short a tart!” Toga exclaims before Deku’s done reading the first stanza, pointing mournfully at the lumps. “And it’s all your fault, stupid Dabi!”

“Oh, I thought we were talking about edible tarts,” Hawks mutters, even as Katsuki swallows back a scream. He did not need to know those were bits of Toga’s former love interests, what the hell?

“You think I care about your victims?” Dabi retorts in the midst of Katsuki’s mini-breakdown, curling his lips and shoving his hands into his ratty coat pockets. “At least I actually uphold Stain’s ideology—unlike you and your obsession with tarts.”

“It’s not my fault they hit on me first!” Toga protests airily. “Though why one of them would go to you to get killed is beyond me.”

“If you’d just done your job instead of luring random tarts off the street—”

“Go pick your own victims instead of taking mine, ugly—”

“Excuse me, please—we’re here for theft, not serial murder!” Nedzu interjects, and slaps a paw over Toga’s mouth. “Call the first witness!”

Katsuki raises his head long enough to see Shinsou slouching into the court, a teacup in one hand and a buttered scone in the other.

“If I’m not allowed to have tea-time, then you shouldn’t either!” Nedzu declares before Shinsou can open his mouth—and a pair of Twices promptly toss Shinsou right out again.

Katsuki breathes in slowly, politely refrains from screaming, and shoves his face back into his hands.

“Call the next witness!” Nedzu informs Deku, and Katsuki hears the nerd stomping in the court before silence falls over it.

Is it too much to hope for the entire thing to end? Katsuki keeps his face shoved firmly into his hands, ears pricked for any sign of movement—but then there’s a light cough right in front of him and a heavy hand pats his shoulder.

“Come on, Kacchan,” Deku informs him in a too-sweet voice, and the stupid nerd has to audacity to smile at him when Katsuki raises his face from his hands again.

Deku’s face should be above his when Katsuki looks up—as much as it galls him to admit it, it’s only natural when he’s sitting and the nerd’s standing. When he looks up and finds that he’s looking down on Deku’s head, though…

“Kacchan?” Deku asks, bunny ears flopping back on his head when he looks up at Katsuki.

“Shaddup, Deku,” Katsuki mutters, and shoves at Deku’s face before vaulting over the stands.

That his palm is bigger than Deku’s entire stupid face is a thought Katsuki will ponder later—after whatever stupid evidence he has to give at the entire tart-stealing affair.

“What do you know about this business?” Nedzu asks over Toga’s quiet giggling, steepling his paws beneath his chin.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing whatsoever?”

“You found me a few minutes ago and asked me to carry you around,” Katsuki elaborates in a dust-dry voice. “You really think I could’ve gone and stolen her tart in that time?”

“Well-said, minion!” Hatsume yells before Nedzu or Toga can open their mouths. When Katsuki glares back at the jury, though, Hatsume’s busy… sweet-talking her slate.

Barking mad, the lot of them, Katsuki tells himself after a few moments, and turns his gaze back to the front when Toga noisily clears her throat.

Except he can’t see Toga or Nedzu in front of him.

“You’re giving me an awful ache in my neck, young Bakugou!” Nedzu complains from somewhere near his waist, and Katsuki looks down to see the entire court straining to look up at him.

Never-ending holes, never-ending forests and now never-ending growth—this stupid hallucination, Katsuki snarls internally, and looks down in time for Toga to chirp, “I think we should just chop off his head—then he’ll stop growing and we can chop off Dabi’s head next!”

“But what about the verdict?” Deku asks with a scratch of his head.

“Sentence first, verdict later!” Toga cheerfully retorts.

“The hell’re you looking for a verdict when all you’ve done is nothing?” Katsuki asks waspishly.

“Chop off his head anyway!” Toga yells up at him, abruptly standing in place.

“You can damn well try,” Katsuki sneers down at her, “but you’re nothing but a bunch of idiots from my godawful fever dream!”

Toga stomps her foot and screams, while every Twice in the room screams with her and surges up to swarm over his head—

“…c’mon, this is Bakugou we’re talking about. You really think he’ll stay knocked out from a brick to the—and speak of the devil!”

Katsuki groans, cracking an eye open and immediately closing it again—but it’s not the pristine blue of that farcical court’s sky seared in his vision. There’s a moment, in between a cool cloth wiping at his forehead and low murmurs too soft to make out, that Katsuki almost hopes…

But when he cracks both eyes open, it’s to the sight of a cream-coloured ceiling and Sero’s wide eyes.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Kaminari asks, but he’s only waved his middle finger in Katsuki’s face once before it’s seized in a crackling palm. “Okay, I was kidding, he’s perfectly fine!” Kaminari squeaks, but Katsuki sits up and shoves his other palm in Kaminari’s face.

It should be crackling… but it’s not.

The lack of explosions becomes evident when thick cloth wraps around his wrist.

“I leave you three for five seconds,” Aizawa sighs. “Just five, and you’re already proving why you can’t be left in a room together.”

“Bakugou’s alright, at least?” Sero weakly offers, but Katsuki doesn’t need to see Aizawa’s face to know he’s shaking his head at Sero.

“Try not to make this night any worse than it already is,” Aizawa continues in a world-weary voice, as Katsuki reluctantly lets go of Kaminari and the idiot skips out of his range. “We’re still waiting for back-up to arrive—”

“Back-up?”

“You missed the Front crashing the party,” Sero explains with a shrug, patting Katsuki’s shoulder with a wry little grin, “but we dealt with them before you woke up from your beauty sleep.”

“So you’re telling me,” Katsuki asks slowly, “that I got knocked out by those idiots?”

“Nah, one of them blew the building in,” Kaminari cheerfully informs him. “I think you were the only one that got knocked out with a brick to the face, though.”

“Kaminari,” Aizawa sighs sharply, but Katsuki’s already launching himself from the floor and lunging at Kaminari’s shrieking form. “Bakugou,” he tries next, except Kaminari’s already darting out the door with Katsuki in hot pursuit.

“Shut up and die!” rings out across the mostly-deserted floor, and as Sero rushes out to intervene somehow…

“Problem children, honestly,” Aizawa mutters to himself, and fishes out a juice box from an inner pocket before lamenting, “I’d rather be a butterfly.”