Chapter Text
Katsuki awoke to a nasty headache and the sound of crying. And it wasn't just one person crying, but multiple.
Gods, he’d rather be unconscious again.
He sat up, blinking away the last remnants of sleep. When he looked around, he found himself in the center of a group of hostages, at least two dozen, all knelt on hard ground as they succumbed to panic and fear. None of them looked injured, but that didn’t mean much. Glancing past the hostages surrounding him, he spotted three villains within his line of sight, all holding automatic guns.
Beside him, a heavily pregnant woman leaned into his personal space to whisper, “Mr. Bakugou, are you alright? You’ve been out for a while…”
“Huh?” he asked, ever so intelligently.
Her brows scrunched. “Are you feeling okay? Did you hit your head when you fainted?”
“Fainted?” he questioned, much too loudly. His voice rang through the room, and all the whispers and hiccups around him silenced. He heard the click of a gun’s safety being switched, and glanced at one of the terrorists to make direct eye contact with him. His eyes held a warning.
Katsuki glared back. How the fuck had he gotten here? He didn’t remember passing out, especially at some fancy ass place like this. He didn't remember being invited to one of Ponytail's high-class parties. The last thing he could remember…
Huh. His memory was foggy. He remembered being with Kirishima… in the dorms? No. No way, that couldn’t be right. It was Christmas vacation. Still, he was definitely with Kirishima… somewhere.
He shook his head to clear it. The more he thought about it, the worse the pulsing of his headache grew. Whatever, it didn’t really matter right now anyway. Right now, what mattered was that Katsuki was stuck in the midst of a hostage situation and Kirishima was nowhere to be found.
“Get me up to speed,” he demanded of the woman, bringing his voice down to a hushed whisper. “What are the villains after?”
She blinked at him, taking a moment to process. She sniffled, “Th-they took Mr. Takagi. The leader said–said he’s dead, that they killed him. They’re going to kill us too if we don’t cooperate!”
“Hey, hey. Chill out, lady,” he attempted to calm her down as her voice reached too great a volume. He quickly swung his head up to see if any villains had noticed, only to be met with the barrel of a gun thunking him right between the eyes.
“I don’t usually give second chances, let alone a third,” the man said, looking down his nose at the blond, the hint of a smirk playing at his lips. Katsuki noticed he spoke with an accent… German, maybe? “Stand up, little pest.”
But who was he if not thirsty for action in the face of a challenge? He was Bakugou Katsuki, and he wasn’t planning on sitting around waiting for his fucking knight in shining armor to show up and save him like some damsel in distress.
But that’s just how his luck works in his world, isn’t it?
As soon as he stood, he thrust his palm right into the man’s face, summoning the biggest non-lethal explosion he could, but it was in that moment his quirk failed him. No explosion erupted from his hand, not even so much as a spark.
“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath.
The burst of gunfire echoed down the halls of the building, followed shortly after by screams.
Adrenaline took the reins as Katsuki moved as fast as his body could allow. He shoved the gun upward with his free hand while shoving the villain away by his face with the other. Bullets pelted the wall behind Katsuki, who then brought his knee up to knock the gun out of his grip. It skidded through the crowd, disappearing from the young hero’s line of sight.
He ended the fight by leaping onto the villain and forcing him down hard, bashing his head on solid ground and effectively knocking him out cold.
The click of another gun brought Katsuki back to his senses. He could feel the guns trained on him. Him, who was standing in the center of a group of hostages, any of which a stray bullet could easily kill. He couldn’t see the gun the villain had dropped, and diving deeper into the crowd to find it was about the shittiest idea he could come up with. The villains would just mow down the hostages until they got to him.
Katsuki straightened, his hands held up in surrender. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but he couldn’t think of anything else he could do to protect the innocent lives around him.
More gunfire filled the air and Katsuki was thrown back, surely landing on some unexpecting hostages. He wasn’t even sure what happened until he blinked up at a few faces, all of which were pale and terrified. He tried to wave them off, but someone had their hands clamped over his shoulder in a death grip.
“Fuck off,” he hissed at them, only to be wracked with a wave of pain that the attempt at sitting up brought. He nearly choked on a scream, it was bad, so fucking bad–oh shit, why did his whole chest hurt like that?
“Stay still! You were shot, you idiot,” the man clasping his shoulder demanded.
“’m fine,” Katsuki stated, shoving the man off with all the strength he could muster. The man held up bloody hands in defeat, giving up and letting Katsuki push himself up. Katsuki wobbled on unsteady legs for a moment, head spinning and shoulder screaming at him, but he couldn’t just lie back down and give up. He was a hero for fuck's sake.
Once Katsuki had gathered his bearings again, he glanced around to find two other villains dead, both shot, and one hostage with a bullet hole through the heart. The single deceased hostage was a man with shaggy brown hair and a short, scruffy beard, and he had the discarded gun still clutched in his hands.
The rest of the hostages were surprisingly silent. Maybe they were all in shock, or maybe they were too afraid to speak, to scream, to cry.
“He killed them?” Katsuki asked through clenched teeth, fighting back the pain trying to consume him.
“He was a dumbass, but I suppose he was brave,” answered the man with Katsuki’s blood on his hands.
“Oh, please,” said the pregnant woman, voice dripping with sarcasm even though the tears in her eyes were threatening to spill. “Ellis was hopped up on cocaine. We all saw him. That was just stupid. He thought he could be the hero, look where it got him.” She turned to Katsuki, her face scrunching up in anger as the tears finally slipped. “Look where it got you, Bakugou.”
Katsuki pursed his lips. When you’re a hero, you have to expect to get injured once in a while. It was a part of the job. But something was more pressing on his mind.
“How do you know my name?” he asked, finally opting to hold his own shoulder in a poor attempt to keep the blood inside of him where it should be, only to bite back a cry when holy fucking shitballs that hurt.
The woman was staring at him now, looking at him like something about his question was off. “How hard did you hit your head when you fainted?”
“Shut up, I’m fine, dammit. Just answer the question!”
Her eyes widened. “We’ve been coworkers for years, Bakugou. You brought your kids over for dinner just last week.”
Katsuki’s brain came to a screeching halt. Kids? Plural?! This woman was out of her mind. “I don’t have kids, I’m only eighteen!”
Everyone’s eyes were on him now. When he looked around, they all had the same looks of confusion and shock plastered on their faces. Were they all convinced they knew him?
“Bakugou, you really don’t rem—“ the woman croaked out, only to be cut off by a massive explosion that rocked the floor they stood on. The Christmas tree in the corner fell on an unexpecting man.
Katsuki growled as he steadied himself on his feet. In his fury, he yelled, “Bombs? Are you shitting me?!”
What the hell was going on around here?
As everything finally settled around them, Katsuki’s ears picked up on shouting, voices speaking frantically in German. More villains.
He ripped the gun from the dead man’s hands, quickly recalling Snipe’s teachings about gun safety and how to’s. He’d taught that, in the event it was a life or death situation, they may need the aid of a weapon such as a gun. It was possible they may never need the knowledge, but that didn’t stop him from ingraining it into their brains anyway. He’d shown them how to reload, to take apart different types of guns to learn the mechanisms inside and out, to quickly reassemble, the key to perfect aim, and how to count bullets. He and Kirishima got the highest scores in class when it came to counting their rounds, having practiced by watching the John Wick franchise. Those films were insanely accurate when it came to counting bullets.
It’s because of Snipe’s teachings that Katsuki recognized the gun in his hands. An MP5, a type of submachine gun. Katsuki never imagined he’d actually use one in the field. He certainly hoped he wouldn’t need to.
“I’ll hold them off, the rest of you get out,” Katsuki commanded the crowd.
“How?” one man deep in the crowd asked. “The bombs came from below us!”
Katsuki hadn’t realized. Fucking great. “Then get to the roof. It’s the next safest place. The villains are going to come back and they’re gonna be pissed. Staying here is suicide.”
Katsuki turned to the man, hands still stained with the young hero’s blood. “You. You’re in charge. I’ll hold these assholes off. Find the emergency stairs. I’m sure there’s one around here.”
“What about you?” the pregnant woman begged. “You’ll just get yourself killed. You’re already bleeding out!”
“I’ll be fine, just get to safety, fuck!”
The woman swallowed, then nodded. Katsuki watched as they ran for an emergency exit door, mentally willing them to move their asses as the German voices closed in.
The exit door slammed shut as the last of them left. The villains were almost on top of him now.
He cocked the gun and took cover behind a pillar, holding his breath as he waited. The voices grew closer. A bead of sweat snaked down his temple. His shoulder throbbed in tempo with the footsteps approaching.
There were some gunshots, more shouting. They must have been just down the hallway. Katsuki took aim, watching down the sight of his gun, when it wasn't that of a German terrorist rounding the corner but a familiar redhead.