Chapter Text
Momo Yaoyorozu should lose her fucking job, as far as Katsuki’s concerned.
Apparently, this whole thing is her fucking idea.
He is currently sitting in a meeting he’d rather not be participating in and trying his best to concentrate on the very important words coming out of his supervisor’s mouth. Which would be going well, if there wasn’t a group of fucking murderers strapped to the wall behind them. Wires, chains, leather straps; the whole nine yards.
Katsuki’s only slightly unnerved and very, very enraged.
He knows the crisis in the East is rapidly spiralling out of control and the police are steady running out of options. Japan’s entire population is at stake after all, yet they know far too little about the enemy. Desperate situations often call for desperate measures, Katsuki understands that. But this? This is is fucking ridiculous.
The idea that the higher ups are trying to pitch is outrageous and Katsuki can only stew in the knowledge that neither he, the other pro heroes, nor any of the highly qualified police officials that have been called in have any choice in what they’re about to do.
“It has taken some work, but I finally have them,”
Katsuki closes his eyes.
“—the worst of the worst.”
She takes out her folder and places it on the table. Katsuki can’t help but think the action rather unnecessary when its very contents are strapped to the wall.
They want them — the pro heroes — to form an allegiance with the five most notorious supervillains in Japan in order to execute an investigation towards the crisis in the Eastern country.
This can’t be real. However incompetent Katsuki may find them to be, the government surely wouldn’t take such gambles in the name of national security. Seconds pass with no one shooting the idea down and Katsuki begins to feel the set in his jaw harden. This isn’t the time or the fucking place to joke around, he thought Yao-Momo knew better.
He’s seconds from abandoning all of his carefully cultivated tact and tearing into every person responsible for this shitty, downright suicidal idea even reaching his ears, when Bald Guy at the head of the table (Ishida Shoichi, Kirishima always corrects, the head of foreign relations) speaks.
“With all due respect, Ms. Yaoyorozu, but I can’t help but think that this is far too risky.”
Finally, someone with an actual will to live.
“He said it.” Katsuki grunts, ignoring the warning look Kirishima sends him. “You’re playing with fire, Yao-momo.”
In response, Yao-Momo makes sure to shoot him with a piercing glare that clearly communicates that she appreciates neither the warning nor the nickname. Katsuki just huffs.
“I’m fighting fire with fire, Mr. Ground Zero.” She corrects, before turning back to the rest of the room.
“What if All Might had decided to break into the Kantei and murder the Prime Minister along with all of his Executives. Who would have stopped him?” Yao-Momo eyes are bold, accusatory, pleading. She’s desperate, Katsuki can tell. There are only so many times one can pitch such a contentious idea before people start plotting against their favour. The kinds of people with the power to destroy the lives that come with those ideas and get away with it.
Despite the odds, Yao-Momo’s words seem to hold sentiment in the room and the air becomes heavy with the admittance of a frightening truth.
She continues. ”We got lucky this time, All Might shared our values. The next All Might may not.”
The entire rooms shifts in discomfort. Her words still leave a bad taste in Katsuki’s mouth, even after all the years he’s had to come to terms with what happened. The world changed when All Might took reign over the streets. It then changed again when he didn’t. All Might died in grace, in power, and took the remnants of Katsuki’s inner child with him. His hope. His innocence. The nation’s hero cannot be replaced.
“I want to assemble an a team of very bad people who I think can do some good.” Yao-Momo finally confesses, breaking eye contact with the room.
Disbelief renders the room even more silent than it already is. Katsuki only stays quiet because he knows he runs a real risk of losing his job every time he opens his mouth, especially in meetings like these.
“You’re not letting supervillains roam free.” The head general - Katsuki can never remember his name to save his life even though he’s been working under him for almost six years - scoffs. “Certainly not in our name.”
Yao-Momo eyes shoot back up, steely and determined. She definitely looks nervous, but barely stutters as she makes her rebuttal. “I intend to run this task force covertly, General. In the case that they get caught, we will not be affiliated with them.”
Throw them under the bus, huh. Brutal. Fitting.
Disgruntled, the general reluctantly stands down as Yao-Momo begins flicking through her folders. She stops when she reaches what appear to be case files.
“Todoroki Shouto, better known simply as Shouto.”
The room stiffens at the mention of Endeavor’s son. It’s not very often that the number one hero also happens to parent the number two villain. Everyone in the room subconsciously turns to check if the supervillain reacts to the mention of his name and are promptly disappointed. The villain remains with his head hung low, hair falling into his eyes and obsuring his face. Katsuki raises an eyebrow.
Kirishima, noticing his piqued interest, nudges him. “They’re sedated. Wouldn’t wake up if a bomb detonated.”
“Quirk; dual-wielded, consisting of pyrokineses and cryokinesis. Serial arsonist.”
After that, Katsuki zones out. He can’t help it, he’s just not that interested in the rest of them. Anyway, he’s heard these stories before. The hitwoman with a zero-gravity quirk, the crazy psychiatrist who helped Toga Himiko escape a high-security mental hospital after falling in love with her, and the electricity guy who’s robbed every bank in Japan at least once.
(Kirishima stiffens during Dr. Ashido Mina’s briefing and a faded memory unlocks in Katsuki’s brain. There’s history there.)
As Katsuki’s said, he knows these tales. There’s nothing worth listening to. That is, until they get to the very last one. Midoriya Izuku, the most notorious supervillain in Japan.
“I’m sure you all know about Midoriya Izuku, or Deku.”
And that, they do. All Might’s alleged secret student, long since projected to become his greatest ally or his deadliest enemy. A true villain with a kill count to match, yet without the typical bloodthirst, the irrationality, the madness. An enigma. A killer.
“As a child, he was a bullied nobody, who somehow possessed a quirk fit to rival that of All Might. He’s the strongest quirk-wielder we’ve encountered since the great All Might, and we have him right here, in our hands.”
A cool chill settles in the atmosphere. Fear, as Katsuki’s come to recognise. A sense of unbridled danger permeates the meeting and Katsuki just wants to get out of here. This is not what he signed up for. This is more than a gamble. This is suicide.
“How did you even get them to agree?” Kirishima asks, voice steady though Katsuki can hear the way his words are clipped short. He’s uncomfortable. They all are.
Suddenly, Yao-Momo looks exceedingly proud of herself, like she’s been waiting a lifetime for this question. “Weaknesses.” She smiles. “The greatest leverage.”
She details how every villain was lured into this trap, whether it be by way of threatening family members or directly issuing threats to their own lives. No one in the room flinches and Katsuki wonders how these are the people in charge of their national security, before reminding himself that this is how things work in the big leagues. Gone are the days of justice and morality. In all honesty, Katsuki expected nothing else from Ponytail.
“We have Endeavour’s son, the most proficient hitwoman in Japan, the most infamous thief in the world, the acid queen, and the most notorious villain in Japan. This is a team more elite than anything we have on hand right now.”
On paper, her idea sounds great. No other black-ops team Katsuki can think of could ever compare to the amount of power amassed in this meeting room. Unfortunately, there’s just no way to control a bunch of murderers with criminal records longer than the non-disclosure agreement Katsuki had to sign in order to be here today.
Bald Guy speaks again and Katsuki’s starting to believe they’re more in tune than he’d originally thought. “You want to put our national security in the hands of assassins, thieves and crazy psychiatrists.”
Once Bald Guy voices his disapproval, they all start chiming in. Katsuki’s in a room with a bunch of fucking cowards. “These are villains, Yaoyorozu-san. There has to be another way.”
At the front of the room, Yao-Momo presses her lips together. She knows she’s winning. “You get any hero that isn’t in the top ten and they wouldn’t stand a chance against these guys. What makes you think they’d be able to stand in the same room as Venom?”
Venom. An unforeseen threat so powerful that the villain has singlehandedly managed to compromise the safety of Japan’s entire population. He’s the sole reason why they’re sitting in this meeting room and entertaining fallacies as ridiculous as these in the first place. They don’t have many options left.
Katsuki takes a deep breath and forces himself to change his perspective. He fucking hates it when people make sense.
Yao-Momo suddenly sighs, drawing undivided attention once again. “The world needed an All Might.”
No one speaks.
“Without one, it has begun to fall apart. Villains we have never seen before are starting to rise.”
No one breathes.
“All I want to do is restore balance to a nation that is suffering. Anything happens, we throw them under the bus.”
“We can’t control them!” Katsuki argues, voice tight so that he doesn’t begin yelling.
For the second time, Yao-Momo grins. It sends another shiver down Katsuki’s spine. “Oh, but we can.”
He doesn’t like the sound of this.
Turns out, the higher ups have actually planned ahead for the first time in their fucking lives. In Katsuki’s books, the precautions are hardly enough but he supposes the nanobombs will have to do. Reassurance comes in the form of “any funny business and you can blow their heads off”, end quote. Training starts on Monday, sharp.
He’s so fucked.
-
Bakugou Katsuki doesn’t feel fear.
(That’s a lie, he damn sure does, he’s just learnt to embrace it as it comes).
He’s familiar with it, sure, but he doesn’t allow if any power over him. Fear is weakness. Fear is leverage. Fear throws you off your game, alters your perception. A hero can’t afford to be anything less than the best. A hero can’t afford to feel fear, but that doesn’t stop Katsuki from worrying.
This is unlike anything that Katsuki’s ever dealt with before. He’s supposed to neutralise the monsters and the villains, not fight alongside them and the moral ambiguity doesn’t sit well with his young heart. High school Katsuki never would’ve entertained this. Unfortunately, integrity tends to stop being a top priority after becoming entangled with the government.
Kirishima’s just as freaked out, Katsuki can tell.
It’s the tightness in his voice, the cherry-picked words, the forced laughter when he says we’ve done this before, instead of his usual we’ll be back before you know it. Katsuki doesn’t dwell on it. Both experienced with suicide missions, they know not to fall victim to wishful thinking. All it does is get you killed quicker. They’ve never been those kinds of people, anyway.
“You knew Ashido Mina, right?” Katsuki blurts.
It was just after the meeting when he’d finally realised. Ashido Mina. Acid queen. Former psychiatrist. During her working days, she was assigned incarcerated villains and traumatised heroes alike. They tell tales of her methods, how she’d worked to rehabilitate even the most twisted of individuals. Then, Toga Himiko came along. The sickest of the sick. The worst of the worst.
Dr. Ashido Mina thought she was saving her. In reality, she was just falling in love.
Kirishima sighs, “it was a long time ago.”
So long ago that Katsuki had damn near forgotten that his best friend had once been treated by a supervillain. The aftermath of a rescue mission gone wrong had left him scarred so severely that he’d had to be referred. He stopped eating, stopped sleeping. Katsuki would meet him at the office in the mornings and leave him there in the evenings. Kirishima still refuses to talk about the incident, but Katsuki gets the sense that kids were involved.
Katsuki can’t help but think it’s rather weird that they would clear Kirishima for this mission, considering the fact that he has past relations with one of the villains. Nothing about any of this is normal, he reminds himself.
“It was a long time ago,” Kirishima repeats. “Y’know, before she…” Went crazy? Became a murderer?
They were close, if Katsuki remembers correctly. From the way Kirishima used to talk about her, Katsuki could tell that they were pushing the boundaries of a professional relationship to the very limits. When Kirishima falls, he falls hard. It’s a shame it had to be his murderous psychiatrist.
Katsuki hears some shuffling on the other side of the line before Kirishima’s speaking again, voice deadly serious.
“I don’t think they have any idea what they’re dealing with.”
Now, Katsuki has known the redhead since their first year of high school, so it’s safe to say that he’s pretty attuned to all of his quirks and habits. This is the same guy who had enough patience to be able to stick by Katsuki’s side as he grew out of his dangerous temper and annoying superiority complex after all. To hear him speaking without all of his optimism, all finality and warning instead, makes his blood run cold.
Katsuki doesn’t like any of this.
It feels like he’s just made the biggest mistake of his life.
-
-