Chapter Text
Katsuki Bakugou did not like kids.
Earlier that day was the perfect example of this.
The tower that he had just evacuated was crumbling, and his fellow heroes were scrambling to clear the impact zone. Bakugou scanned the area, dust obscuring every direction, and managed to catch the sight of a bright green backpack.
He’d recognize it anywhere, even though he’d deny it. It was a Deku backpack: special edition with All Might gold and red embellishment.
What? He was a collector. That shit’s worth a lot of money!
He launched himself at the backpack, his eyes smarting as the particulates that hung in the air blinded him. He kept pushing forward, and managed to see a group of three kids. They were barely old enough to be in school, maybe five or six. This luckily meant that they were light, so he scooped them up and screamed, “Hang on tight!” before launching himself out of the line of danger.
The screams in his ears made him curse out loud, and that only spurned the children to scream louder. Once he reached a safe area where the police were gathering rescued civilians, Bakugou did his best to land gracefully. However, one of the kids grabbed onto his gauntlet, sending them into a spiral. It was more of a crash landing at that point, while he was shielding them from the impact. He scraped up his left shoulder raw, and the kids said “thank you” but didn’t seem to care that the blood was soaking the pavement when they ran off to find their parents.
When Kirishima appeared above him, grimacing at the damage, he muttered, “Go get medical attention, dude. You aren’t usually this careless.”
“Fucking brats,” Bakugou growled and sat up, but at the intimation of ‘kids’ Kirishima gasped and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Wait, Bakubro, you saved kids? That’s seriously manly! Protecting the next generation is, like, our whole job!”
Katsuki twitched and grumbled, “Not if they mess with my equipment,” while trying his best not to look at the amount of skin that had been scraped off. “Get me a damn medic.”
Kirishima nodded and dashed off, leaving Bakugou to stare around at the devastation. He actually saw the kid that messed with his gauntlet and caused the crash landing launch into his two mothers’ arms, babbling incoherently and sobbing. The parents actually were able to decipher the gibberish and made eye contact with Bakugou, who immediately looked away and prayed that they didn’t notice him.
“Have your stupid mushy moment without me,” he whispered to the heavens, but apparently the heavens had other plans.
He heard, “Hello, Mr. Dynamight, sir?”
Grimacing, Katsuki looked at the two women, one with cat eyes and the other with a mohawk. The son, the one that caused the damage to his shoulder, was staring up at Katsuki in awe between them.
“You saved our son,” Mohawk babbled, covered in dirt and some of her own smears of blood. “How can we ever thank you?”
“Don’t,” Katsuki said bluntly, looking towards where Kirishima went to try to make eye contact with a medic.
Cat eyes moved forward, looking at the damage to his shoulder. “I’m a nurse, why don’t I take a look at that?”
“Fucking fine,” Katsuki grumbled, and the little kid seemed to take it as permission to rush to the site of the injury.
“You’re really hurt!”
“Yeah. Nobody thought to teach you not to mess with someone else’s stuff,” he snapped as the cat-eyed mom felt around the shoulder to see if it was dislocated.
The little kid looked completely stunned, whispering, “I was always taught to share.”
“Do you see this, kid?” Katsuki held up his good arm with the gauntlet still on, “This is an explosive device and the way I was flying around to save you. You threw one of them off, so that was why I fucking crash landed!”
Mohawk gasped, scandalized, as the little boy started to wail. Katsuki felt a blinding burst of pain as his shoulder was cracked back into his socket by cat-eyes. She called for gauze and bandages, and one of the medics came over to help her dress the wound.
When she finished, she slapped the last of the tape on, making Katsuki growl.
“Thanks for saving my son,” she said acerbically, flashing her reflective eyes at him. “Hope that doesn’t scar.”
***
A few weeks later, Bakugou Katuski was looking up at the sky in downtown Manhattan, following a small pinprick of green and white. “What the fuck am I looking at?”
Iida, who was (apparently) temporarily consulting in America, said calmly, “That is Mae Midoriya.”
“Fuck,” Katsuki grumbled, narrowing his eyes at the retreating blip. “Why did she have to inherit Round Face’s quirk?”
Iida glanced sharply at Katsuki, serious eyes flashing in fury. “Please honor the dead by using her name, Dynamight.”
“Uravity was a great hero,” the blonde stated, this time with a softer tone, “She saved thousands of people with that rescue. I call everyone stupid nicknames. Didn’t mean anything by it.”
Relaxing infinitesimally, Iida let out a sigh. “She has a mix, like Todoroki, though they’re still figuring it out. Mostly, if she holds her breath and has intent, she can float.”
“Any particular reason she wants to be in space?”
One of the American heroes (he thinks their name is Revelation) said in English, “She refused to go anywhere with Ingenium.”
Katsuki snorted. “Of course not, he’s a loser.”
Iida looked over at Bakugou carefully. “Well, you see, when the agency looked at Deku’s files, they realized that the emergency contact listed locally changed, but Deku’s primary emergency contact is you, Dynamight.”
“Yeah, and?” Katsuki asked, watching the girl make a figure eight as a dot in the sky, like a sky-writer plane.
“Meaning, that you are the only person internationally that we can contact if Deku has an emergency while on the job.”
“Yeah, of course. Deku is mine, too. The dumbass is the only one I trust to help if it’s something even I can’t handle.”
There was a ‘but’ or something that he was missing, but the little dot in the sky was distracting enough that he eventually huffed.
“Is no one going to get her?”
“No one’s quirks can get them that high, and helicopters might hurt her.”
“Fucking posers,” Katsuki grumbled, getting into position with his gauntlets aimed towards the ground.
Revelation shouted, “Wait, Dynamight, we need to talk about…”
However, Katsuki didn’t care. He was already flying.
It was clear that Mae wasn’t in any immediate danger. She wasn’t high enough to experience altitude sickness or get in the way of planes, and apparently it was almost impossible for her to fall. So when Katsuki got close to her, he yelled, “Hey, brat, you have to come down now!”
When he got closer, he was struck again by how clearly this was Uraraka and Deku’s kid. Her wild, curly green hair was braided in pigtails, and her wide heterochromatic green and brown eyes were narrowed suspiciously at him. Her cheeks had the same oval-shaped blush that his old classmate used to have, and were puffed out adorably in the same way Uraraka would when she was holding too much up in the air.
Katsuki wasn’t sentimental, but when he saw those chubby cheeks his chest ached for a lost comrade.
“Hey, brat, are you listening?”
She eyed him for a few more minutes before her mouth opened in a delighted gasp.
Of course, this made her start plunging downwards toward the earth.
She didn’t seem concerned, watching Katsuki with interest as he launched himself down after her. She made grabby hands at him as Katsuki scooped her up, then said excitedly in the hero’s ear: “Kacchan!”
Wincing at the sound, he cradled her in one arm and used the other one to start to lower them towards the earth. “Yeah, it’s me. It’s been a while.”
“Daddy said you were the best hero, so I need your help!”
Raising an eyebrow, he muttered, “What about, kid?”
“Daddy told me you’d protect me if I was in danger,” she said matter-of-factly, making eye contact as she stated bluntly, “You need to take care of me until daddy gets back!”
She asserted this fact as he lowered them to the ground, mouth wide open in shock as Iida and the American heroes surrounded him.
“Yeah,” Revelation muttered, pinching the bridge of their nose, “Like I said, we need to talk.”
***
At first, Mae refused to leave Katsuki’s side. She stubbornly refused to be taken to a waiting room, and even held her breath and floated to the ceiling in defiance until Katsuki hopped up to pull her back down.
“Listen here, kid, I need to talk to the other adults. I’m not going anywhere, just going to be behind that door,” he pointed towards the meeting room. “If you wait and behave, I’ll be right back.”
Her eyes darted between the door and Kacchan, then her grip on his arm lessened. “You better come back!”
Her conviction was terrifying for a five-year-old, and Katsuki thoughtlessly ran his gloved hand over the crown of her head. “I will, pipsqueak.”
Finally she went with the secretary, and the blonde was able to go into the meeting room and slam the door, finally allowing himself to be frantic. “What. The. Fuck?!”
“I can explain,” Iida said matter-of-factly, “Deku designated you as his emergency contact, and when he went missing…”
Suddenly there was a rushing sound in his ears, making his whole body lurch in panic. “Deku is what?!”
“He was on a mission a few days ago that should have taken 24 hours. His comms never came back on.” Revelation stated, their face grim. “He is missing, presumed captured.”
“No fucking way. Deku has more quirks than there are people in this room, he’s not going down easy.”
Iida adjusted his glasses, looking at the blonde with pity. “You know Deku, perhaps better than anyone. Would he be away from his daughter longer than he had to be unless he didn’t have a choice?”
That struck Katsuki like a bullet to the gut. He remembers Deku cooing over the ultrasound, waiting on Uraraka hand and foot like a maid, and holding Mae like she was the most precious thing in the world. Katsuki has a collection of photos from each and every stage of life, including “Mae’s first scowl!” and “Mae contemplating her hero name” which were NOT stages of life but were, in fact, Deku just being extra.
No, Katsuki didn’t have them saved in his phone in a special file.
No, he won’t show you his photo library.
Shut up.
“So because Deku is still on mission,” Iida broke Katsuki’s train of thought that was going nowhere good, “We can’t call in anyone except his emergency contacts. I’m his local contact because I’ve been in the US for a few weeks, but you’re his primary. The only people that can know he’s missing are in this room.”
“Plus the kid,” Katsuki grunted, seeing where this was going and not liking his conclusion one bit.
“If we could call her grandparents, or Todoroki, we would, but we can’t. We tried to get her to let me watch her, but she threw tantrum after tantrum. She kept insisting that she would only go with ‘Kacchan’. By the time you got here, that was when she was halfway to the stratosphere.”
Katsuki balked, looking around the table for someone to laugh. “You’re serious? I’m the person you’re giving a five-year-old hot air balloon to?”
A familiar voice in his mind said playfully, At least you’re both full of hot air .
Green eyes flashed then he shook his head to clear it. “No way. I’m not good with kids, and I can’t stay in New York indefinitely.”
“Technically, Mae and Izuku are still Japanese citizens. You can take her to either country to wait.”
Katsuki thought about his apartment, full of sharp edges and no warmth. He thought of Mae being alone, of not being able to tell anyone that she was there. His heart clenched.
“No way, this is a fucking terrible idea. She’ll hate me in a few days,” Katsuki grumbled.
In response Iida smiled wanly.
“Hopefully we’ll find him before it gets to that point.”
When Katsuki came back outside the room, Mae was in the middle of a rambling conversation. When he got closer, he smirked proudly.
“So then Dynamight’s signature move, the How-zer, broke through the barrier and saved,” Mae screwed up her face, thinking about it, “fifty-three people! Daddy says that his angle of project-ry made it so that no one was injured. It was like glass and he didn’t shatter it! I thought it was cool, and he needed a lot of maths and I don’t think I can do maths so high in the air! I’d get dizzy. The coolest part about the How-zer is that it makes a big boom but most of the people fall down because the ‘splosion is so loud, not because it hurts them! There’s another hero my daddy was showing me that had a sim-lar move but he uses the air for the fire to eat…”
Iida nudged Katsuki, who realized he’d been staring smugly at the little girl. He straightened and cleared his throat, making Mae look over. Her eyes sparkled, and she hopped up almost to the ceiling with excitement. The secretary had to grab onto her overalls, but was still smiling at the little ball of energy.
“I think you two will be fine,” Iida said with a smirk, and Katsuki crossed his arms and watched as Mae floated down to the ground.
When she bounded over to Katsuki, she smiled widely. “Are you going to be taking me home?”
Sighing, Katsuki kneeled in front of her, trying not to snicker at her determined expression. “I can’t stay here in the US, so I’m taking you back to Japan with me until your dad gets back. How does that sound?”
Mae blinked, biting her lip thoughtfully all of a sudden. “Can I go see my Jiji and Baba?”
“I think you know the answer. You’re not like the other idiots your age. You know why I’m the one taking care of you instead of them.”
Nodding dutifully, she suddenly went from enthusiastic to nervous. The shine of seeing Katsuki had worn off, and suddenly the reality of the situation hit both of them.
“My daddy is coming back. He promises every day ‘fore he leaves for work.”
Katsuki nodded, patting her on the head like he used to do to Deku. “Your daddy is a great hero. He can take care of himself. We just have to wait until he pulls his head out of his ass and fights back, right?”
There were a few gasps at the curses, including Iida hissing, “Dynamight!” but Mae smiled a gap-tooth grin.
The smile flashed in front of Katsuki like a picture, switching suddenly to a smiling Deku showing a younger blonde his new All-Might figurine. Back then, Katsuki didn’t protect him.
He scooped Mae up, throwing her over his shoulder amidst giggles. “Come on, brat, let’s go get your stuff and head to the airport.”