Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Something was wrong.

He remembers going to sleep.

It had been a weird day.

Their class had run into a group of villains during their walk to the training grounds, low-level thugs that didn't stand a chance against UA's 2A. They had rounded the idiots up within minutes until the teachers showed up.

Things felt a little fuzzy after that. He remembers fighting someone. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of anger... fear... guilt?

He couldn't place a name, face on this person but the dull ache in his heart was a reminder that it had been real.

He tried to clutch his head as it throbbed painfully, but his limbs felt like they were restrained.

Restrained? Was he tied down somewhere?

Bakugo?

Wait…

No, he distinctly remembers marching up to his room after the fight and climbing into bed right on the dot (he had a schedule). He had trouble drifting to sleep, his mind was a mess. He couldn’t recall all the details (stupid brain!), but he remembers clearly how he had felt.

We need help, he’s not waking up!

Was it morning already? He still felt so tired…

Bakugo!

What? Leave me alone…

Bakugo, you need to wake up!

That’s it… he’s dead.

Shut it Monoma, that’s not funny.

We’ll have to carry him to Recovery Girl.

Ahhh hell no!

He commanded his eyelids to lift, jaw clenching at the effort. He was so lost in the attempt that he didn’t realise the pain was from the sudden blare of light and his eyes trying to adjust to it.

“He’s back!”

The mosaic of colours above him cleared into the concerned faces of his classmates, peering down at him.

“Bakugo, how are you feeling?” came a deep, gruff voice right by his head.

He grunted at Aizawa, who seemed… relieved?

Shit… he felt like shit. Even worse, as his shitty situation began to dawn on him, he realised he was sprawled on the ground of their training area, with students from 2A and B crowded around him, their murmuring sounding more and more like a hyperactive beehive.

Did he… pass out?

“Dude, you freaked us out!” Kirishima was saying, exchanging a weird look with Uraraka. She shrugged at him in return, some secret exchange that was irking Katsuki out by the minute. Denki hushed at something Mineta mumbled.

He tried to push himself up, but even a little bit of movement made the room spin. Every working muscle on every bone ached. Except for his hands, they were completely fine.

He protested, aggressively (his mouth making up for his currently useless body) as he felt Aizawa grab him from one side and Iida from the other.

“All of you continue, I’m taking Bakugo to Recovery Girl,”

Kirishima gave him a manly thumbs up, face still scrunched up in worry, as he was hoisted away.

He turned away furiously from the sight of the students watching him being pathetically escorted out and struggled uselessly, his body feeling extremely drained.

“Why is there blood on my uniform?”

                                                                       *

“His body is showing signs of extreme heat exhaustion, almost like he’s been running a marathon for days on end in the middle of July,”

“So the nosebleed…,”

“I don’t know what to tell you Aizawa, from my experience it could be quirk-related although such an extreme reaction is rare for someone who's had their whole childhood to get their body adjusted to a quick. Also, his hands are completely fine. Now I’m not ruling out side-effects from a growth in his quirk just yet but I have to monitor him for a day or two to be sure,”

“It’s not my quirk, I’m in great shape and I can handle anything!”

Recovery Girl gave him a look.

“Of course, since you were in the training grounds, sparring I believe, you could have just gotten hurt by your partner’s quirk,”

Bakugo frowned. No extra could take him down, but who was he sparring with again? His head hurt just trying to bring the memory forward.

“He was sparring with Mineta, the kid is okay but he can’t do this to Bakugo,”

Wait, that prune? No way in hell would he collapse in a fight against him!

Bakugo clutched his head as flashes of smoke and green lightning crossed his mind, along with a massive headache.

Oh.

“Where the hell is Deku, I’ll kill that bastard!”

When he was met with silence, he looked up to both adults regarding him with concern.

“I’m sorry Bakugo, but… who?”

Chapter Text

Katsuki was pissed.

Mineta was in the seat behind him, nursing mild burns. Katsuki had blasted him for even suggesting that he had somehow caused Katsuki’s trip to recovery girl.

That prune bastard.

He was also hating the constant looks of concerns being thrown his way.

Shitty extras.

“Psst…Bakugo,”

He turned from glaring at Aizawa’s back to Uraraka who was looking at him meaningfully, cheeks puffed up and little jabs of her nose pointing at a floating piece of paper in urgency.

He rolled his eyes before snatching it with an annoyed ‘tch’.

He hid the note under his desk as Aizawa stopped writing and started talking about some clean-up operation.

“So, it is simple, accident in a high-security prison, villains escaped, caused a lot of destruction, pros and police rounded them up and now are doing clean up duty. 2A and 2B are going to help in the clean-up.”

“Sensei, we all have provisional licenses, they should have called us sooner,”

A chorus of voices chimed in agreement with Yaoyarozu but Katsuki blocked them out, focusing on Uraraka’s note. There were multiple messages in it, all in different handwritings.

𝘉𝘢𝘬𝘶𝘨𝘰,

𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘵. 𝘞𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘥. 𝘞𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘢, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘪𝘻𝘶𝘳𝘦. 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧. 𝘞𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶.

𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦,

𝘐𝘪𝘥𝘢 𝘛𝘦𝘯𝘺𝘢

Ｄｕｄｅ，

Ｓｅｒｉｏｕｓｌｙ， ｙｏｕ ｏｋ？ Ｔｈａｔ ｇｕｙ ｙｏｕ’ｖｅ ｂｅｅｎ ａｓｋｉｎｇ ａｂｏｕｔ． Ｏｌｄ ｆｒｉｅｎｄ? Ｔｈｅｒｅ ｈａｓ ｎｅｖｅｒ ｂｅｅｎ ａ ‘Ｄｅｋｕ’ ｅｖｅｎ ｉｎ ｏｕｒ ｆｉｒｓｔ ｙｅａｒ． Ａｎｙｗａｙ， ｗｅ’ｒｅ ａｌｌ ｈｅｒｅ ｆｏｒ ｙｏｕ ａｌｒｉｇｈｔ．

Ｋｉｒｉｓｈｉｍａ

ℳ𝒾𝓃ℯ𝓉𝒶'𝓈 𝒮ℴ𝓇𝓇𝓎! 

𝒟ℯ𝓃𝓀𝒾 ( •︠ ͜ʖ ︡•)✌

He sighed, crumpling the note and stuffing it into his pocket.

“Bakugo,”

He snapped up to find Aizawa by his desk, staring at him with his stupid face.

Okay, Aizawa could be a little intimidating.

“Are you up for this?” his teacher drawled, but his eyes were sharp, piercing.

“Of course I am!” he snapped, gritting his teeth. His teacher stared at him a little longer before turning on his heels.

“Iida, Yaoyorozu, take over… I’m going to nap in the teacher’s lounge,”

Bakugo stared as the door shut behind his departed teacher before turning around and staring at Mineta in the seat behind him.

Grape boy squeaked as Bakugo made a highly enthusiastic throat-slitting gesture.

*

So apparently, hero student Deku did not exist.

There was no record of a ‘Izuku Midoriya’ ever attending U.A.

All Might did not teach at UA, instead, they had Yagi Toshinori, a scrawny Combat Analysis instructor who looked beyond baffled when Bakugo cornered him about his real identity, One for All, or his heir.

Bakugo felt sick.

He wanted to scream and blast everyone into f*cking oblivion for playing with him like this. There was no way all his memories were a giant trip down the rabbit hole. No head injury could make up everything that had happened in his first year at U.A.

He had still won the sports festival, still got kidnapped by the league of villains, had been severely injured in the Pro’s attempts to retrieve him and apparently All Might had died?

Makes sense why everyone seemed so flippin concerned. Probably thought he was going crazy.

After All Might’s passing, despite the society’s collective grief, everything had gone back to a kind of normal. Endeavor was the new number one and other than the police, new fractions of the law had been established to assist heroes in keeping the peace.

1A had had an uneventful rest of the year and after clearing their finals, they had moved on to Year 2.

All sunshine and daisies except for mother freaking Deku. Nobody at U.A. seemed to know him.

Was this all a sick prank? Was Deku in on this? Getting him back for being a…

Nah, the idiot couldn’t be this twisted, could he? This was probably some supervillain’s quirk.

Like Obito’s Limited Tsukoyomi Sero had been going on about with Todoroki the other day.

An illusion of an alternate reality…

He wasn’t too sure he was okay with this version of reality, no matter how normal and peaceful the streets looked, almost as if they had been cleansed of great evil.

Whoever was behind this hadn’t gotten to him and that only meant one thing.

He was not going to screw this up.

He was going to figure this out and fix it, whatever it was. Because he knew deep in his gut, something was terribly wrong.

Nobody messes with Katsuki Bakugo and gets away with it.

First things first, he had to find the shitty nerd and blow the answer out of him.

“More tea Katsuki?”

Bakugo’s bravado shrivelled to non-existent at Inko’s gentle hand on his shoulder. Behind them, Hisashi Midoriya was sitting on the couch, a beautiful gurgling baby girl in his arms. Her eyes were big and bright and green… so painfully familiar, but not the ones he knew.

Because the ones he was looking for, were staring right back at him, in a frame on a pedestal with incense and offerings.

There is no way any of this was real.

*

Chapter Text

He had gone home for dinner and spent the whole time staring at his steak. His parents were in full freak-out mode, having gotten a call from Aizawa earlier on.

He had all but choked out the nonsense that was going through his mind.

That this was all a controversy.

Pieces of his memory were missing.

His childhood friend had not somehow been suffocated to death by the sludge villain and had lived through an even crazier series of events alongside other hero hopefuls.

When he stopped talking, he was breathing was too harsh, too fast.

"I just... need to know, If all I know is wrong... why do I remember things this way?"

His parents, conflicted for mere seconds before they settled on believing him.

“We’ve got your back brat, trust your gut... cautiously,” his mom had said, handing him all his childhood albums on request.

"If trying to figure this out will give you closure... then go for it," his father added.

Flipping through the pages of the albums did little. It was only the first step to his investigation but the pictures told no new story.

Deku was slowly moving to the back, further and further away until the only picture they both shared was the official class one.

Meeting Deku’s parents, seeing them move on like Deku hadn't been around for a while... it had made him lose focus a little.

So much had happened between him and his childhood friend… could he still call him that though… friend? It’s impossible he could have imagined all that up. Was he really ill? Why hadn’t anyone done anything about it till now? Now it was affecting him physically... and he can't have that.

*

I'm no longer the useless Deku who can't do anything right... I'm the Deku who gives it his all!!

“This doesn’t make any sense,”

Bakugo stared out at the ocean. Eyes unfocused at where the velvety stretch of water met the peachy pink horizon. Beachgoers were sparse, thinned out to the occasional runners or couples walking in the shallows.

He sat cross-legged, sand between his toes and hands deep in the pockets of his red puffer jacket.

“Young Bakugo?”

Bakugo almost jumped out of his skin as he felt a cold, bony hand on his shoulder. He scowled at an apologetic Toshinori.

“I didn’t mean to startle you!”

“You didn’t, I just wasn’t expecting it,” he grunted, feeling his ears heat up.

Toshinori chuckled, settling down next to him.

“I haven’t seen you here before,”

“The nerd used to train here, such a shitty place, there’s too much sand,”

Bakugo rolled his eyes at the confused look on Toshinori’s face.

“Ah, you mean the boy who was All Might’s successor?”

“Cut the crap,”

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

Bakugo fell on his back, arms folded under his head. Toshinori gazed at him, an almost defeated look on his face.

“You look like you’re in pain,”

“I hate being messed with,”

“Hmm,”

Bakugo closed his eyes. Maybe he would wake up tomorrow and the prospect of him imagining Deku’s life at U.A. as some form of coping mechanism would all be a stupid nightmare.

“All for One has all kinds of quirks,”

“Yeah, so?”

Bakugo sat bolt upright, eyes hardening at the older man.

“What are you implying?”

“Well,” Toshinori began clearing his throat.

“I think it’s best to do your research before you fall back onto the most possible explanation,”

“Didn’t All Might “die” in his fight against All for One?”

“From his injuries, at the hospital surrounded by his beloved friends, All for One was captured and is now locked up in the deepest level of Tartarus,”

Bakugo frowned. It didn’t make sense, why would All for One do something this specific? Even if he wanted to make Deku disappear, why leave Bakugo’s memories of him, well most memories intact?

“So, how do I get a visitor’s pass to Tartarus?”

Toshinori shook his head.

“I have friends in the police, but no one will let a teenager just walk into a high-security prison and talk to the most dangerous criminal in the world,”

“Right,”

Bakugo got to his feet.

“Thanks for the talk,” he said, slipping into his sneakers. He started shuffling away, a million and one things running through his brain.

“Bakugo my boy,”

He stopped with a huff, fists curling in his pockets.

“What?” he growled without looking back.

“Whatever you do, keep your emotions under control,”

Bakugo scoffed.

“Don’t underestimate me teach,”

*

“What’s up bro?”

Bakugo stared at his hands, aware of the curious eyes of his classmates.

Denki was closest to him, annoyingly all up in his space, charging two phones at once. Todoroki had settled between Kirishima and Sero, hands folded and looking all distant as usual.

The girls had occupied the last sofa, Aoyama perched on the armrest and Iida standing with purpose behind them. The rest of the boys were scattered around the coffee table, their attention serious and undivided.

Bakugo sighed.

“I’m going to Tartarus,”

It took the rest of the class a good five minutes to burst into chatter, their voices echoing off the walls of their shared common room.

“Oii! Calm the frick down and let me explain,” he snapped, successfully shutting them down.

“Something is wrong, and All for One is behind it, you can believe me or not, I don’t care but I’m letting you all know in case something goes wrong,”

“Bakugo, what is your motive?” asked Iida, staring him down.

Bakugo sorted through the jumble of thoughts and the clutter of emotions in his brain. Maybe he had gotten so used to Deku’s annoying self that him not being around pissed him off even more. The image of the shrine and Deku’s middle school picture on it sent a chill down his spine.

‘Why don’t you take a swan dive off the roof…,’

He took a deep breath.

Pull yourself together Katsuki.

"I have reasons to believe All for One has used a quirk, a mass-illusion type over all of us, maybe while he was getting arrested after fighting All Might, I also believe the quirk has been mostly ineffective against me,"

"Why... you?" asked Uraraka, eyes wide, mouth stretched into a thin line. Bakugo shrugged.

"The person from my memories, the one you don't remember had something AFO wanted,"

"You think All for One hid your friend and erased our memories of him-ribbit?" 

“It sounds crazy I get it... but if it's true we are vulnerable to AFO's plans. One of our teachers has some connections, and he can get a small group of UA students to the first level of the prison under the guise of a school trip,”

“That sounds highly suspicious, how did the authorities even approve of this?” asked Yaoyorozu.

“As I said, the man’s got connections, how he achieved it is none of my business,” Bakugo snapped in response, getting to his feet.

"You think AFO will speak with you?"

"Look... it's...,"

''Very unlike you to do something this stupid,"

Bakugo stared at Todoroki with an intensity that made the other boys flinch. 

“It can be arranged Saturday morning if any of you are interested… hit me up,”

Bakugo turned to stalk away, trying to ignore the murmurs erupting in his wake.

He knew this wasn't his most brilliant plan, dangerous to a fault but he needed answers and he needed it right from the source.

He knew exactly what he sounded like.

A desperate madman stubbornly trying to keep his cool.

As he shut the door behind him, he only hoped his madness was just a little bit contagious.