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Chapter Text

wisdom comes to us (when it can no longer do any good)

Katsuki Bakugo’s world ended not with a bang, but with the whisper of expulsion papers being put in front of him.

No, back it up. Things went to shit way before that.

Ironically, it all started when Katsuki told Deku to jump off a roof. What a joke. Deku should be used to trash-talking by now. But alright, Katsuki could admit it; he had crossed a line there. Even if Deku was just a pebble. If he thought about it, Katsuki could maybe even regret it. Just a little! Of course, he wouldn’t care if Deku died, but that didn’t mean the nerd deserved to die. He was just fucking annoying. But, whatever. Katsuki didn’t waste time thinking about extras, so he just ignored them. Like all minor inconveniences, it was supposed to go away on its own.

But all the extras at school had been talking about that shit. It was the newest gossip after all. And it went on for weeks, months even. It was excruciating.

“Bakugo, did you tell Deku to kill himself?” They asked with excitement. “So cool!” They exclaimed. Or sometimes, with morbid fascination: “pretty sick, yeah, I wonder if he’s gonna do it?” And they couldn’t shut up about it. Like, “Hah, he’s too much of a coward…” or “But he must know nobody would care, useless Deku! What do you think Bakugo?”

What did he think? He thought it was a waste of time. It annoyed him that they kept bringing it up. He didn’t want to talk about it, it made him feel uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable pissed him off!

Usually, when he was pissed, it was Deku’s fault, so he just went and vented his rage at him. A few yelled insults, a few punches, and explosions later the nerd scampered back to the shadows while the public laughed. It never failed to make Katsuki feel better. There was righteousness in kicking Deku’s ass. That was how things were supposed to be; someone crushed under his heel and Katsuki at the top. But now… well, now Katsuki was keeping away from Deku, so he couldn’t very well make the source of his frustration pay.

The rage just bottled up, the pressure climbing steadily. Katsuki yelled at the extras, even crackling explosions at a few of them that got too close and familiar with the Great Katsuki Bakugo, but it didn’t feel right. The source of his annoyance, fucking Deku, was still right there. All meek, timid, and useless, staring at him with his big watering eyes, fucking crybaby; weak and insignificant, and still fucking looking down on him.

Katsuki hated him. Hated him, hated him, hated him. Shitty Deku who thought himself better. Katsuki had never met someone so infuriating. Deku, who always wanted to extend a helping hand. Why would he offer help if he didn’t sense weakness? It drove Katsuki insane. Deku was the weak one. But he treated Katsuki as if he was even more useless than himself.

And it was constant. Katsuki could never be strong enough to make him back off, could never be strong enough to escape it! He hated that feeling. It made Katsuki’s throat feel tight with anxiety and frustration each time… and in a heartbeat, anxiety and frustration turned into outraged fury. No wonder Katsuki felt like he was going to detonate like a shaken-up vial of nitroglycerine, sometimes. Just thinking about the nerd raised his blood pressure, like a fucking Pavlovian response. How dare he?!

Because Deku was just a Deku, weak, pathetic, and useless, but ever since that fucking Sports Festival… the one last year, won by that Goldie Locks chick with the support items… fucking Deku had actually started believing his delusions of being a hero.

It wasn’t just empty words tossed at Katsuki to provoke him, oh no; it was a legit threat now. If a Quirkless girl could be a hero, then… then maybe Deku could be a hero. A shitty one, sure, but a hero, nonetheless. He would steal the spotlight from Katsuki, sabotage him, ruin his origin story…and worse, he would keep doing it all their lives. Katsuki wouldn’t even be free of his creepy muttering and his stalking tendencies after graduating, no! Deku would always be there, whining and ruining everything. He would demand to be treated like an equal, even, because he would have a fucking Hero License too!

It made Katsuki sick. Sick to the point his stomach turned, bile climbed up his throat, and blood pounded in his ears. He wanted to tear down that fucker from limb to limb because what right did he have?! He was nobody. He had nothing. Katsuki was the Best. How could Deku dare to pretend they were the same?!

Ever since that Sports Festival last year, Deku had gained confidence. All because of that girl, Goldie Locks, with her long blond hair and her fucking ruthless boxing moves. She packed a punch, Katsuki had to admit. He respected that. What he didn’t respect was fucking Deku thinking that her existence was proof that he was superior to Katsuki! Deku really thought he could be a hero now!

Deku had started tinkering with gadgets. He had put on muscles (and oh, when he had tried to join the same gym as Katsuki, what a fucking thrashing he had gotten!). No matter how much Katsuki tore him down, Deku just smiled like he knew something Katsuki didn’t, and it… it pissed him off and it… it made him scared. Scared of not being the Best. Him, scared of fucking Deku! Ah!

So of course, the simple thought of it was enough to make him furious. Because… if he feared something, then he wasn’t the Best, and if he wasn’t the best then he was worthless. The same level as pathetic Deku.

But Katsuki wasn’t worthless. He couldn’t be. He had an awesome Quirk, wealthy parents, the best grades, and he was also working his ass off even when he’d been given such an advantage. Of course, Katsuki was the best. But there was shitty Deku, declaring to everyone who would listen that he too could be a hero just like Kacchan even though he had every disadvantage and wasn’t even doing anything to mitigate it! A fucking hairspray as a weapon, really? As if that could make up for his constant daydreaming and laziness!

Deku was looking down on him. He was looking at all the effort Katsuki was putting into becoming a hero and saying: “I can be better without even trying.”

Katsuki hated him.

Even though they had known each other all their lives, even though their mothers were friends… or maybe because of it. Because Deku had always been there. Annoying, weak, infuriating, and familiar. Always smiling sickly-sweet, always whining, always trailing behind Katsuki. People came and went, a bunch of extras that didn’t matter; but Deku stuck to Katsuki’s life like glue. Deku would always be there, just like the sky was blue and the Earth was round. He was a nuisance but at least he was reliable in his predictability. Always muttering, always weak.

They had been friends once, when Katsuki had been very small. He didn’t really remember it. It must have been long ago before the nerd had somehow managed to ruin everything, but… Yeah, he had always been there. Familiar. Exasperating. And the more time passed, the more his annoyingness grew.

So yeah, Katsuki hated him. Not all the time. But it was like a constant itch. Deku always managed to press his buttons. It only took him a few stuttered words for Katsuki to feel like he would explode if he didn’t fucking destroy something, preferably the nerd’s stupid face.

There were days when Katsuki tried to steel himself and ignore the creepy fucker. It was no use. He could feel his eyes on the back of his neck, watching, mocking. It was like an itch. Yeah… an itch he couldn’t scratch. It made him feel jittery, anxious, cornered, and furious. It didn’t take long for his patience to erode. Even when he managed to contain himself for days, inevitably, he blew up in Deku’s face.

Back off, he wanted to yell. Back off, stop fucking hovering, you creep me out, I hate it, I hate you! But saying that would have made him sound scared. Of course, Katsuki Bakugo wasn’t scared.

Anyway, the point was that… at the beginning of their last year of middle school, it escalated. Katsuki told him to jump off a roof. Afterward, he felt like it had been a shit move and tried to stay away for a while.

All Might wouldn’t have done that shit. That was low. Even if it was Deku. So Katsuki told himself that this time he would manage to ignore the nerd. This time he would stop caring about Deku, because he didn’t matter. But apparently, it did matter. The creepy stalker continued watching him. He continued training, putting on muscles, smiling with confidence, and carrying slingshots and hairspray around like support items. He looked happier than ever.

Katsuki wanted to murder him. He had no right to be this happy, not when Katsuki felt bad.

The anger kept climbing. Katsuki felt like a pressure cooker whose lid had been taped shut. And that fucking creep couldn’t just stop… muttering… smiling… prattling about heroics… just existing, like he was good like he had the right like he fucking mattered, and Katsuki couldn’t handle him! It made him so fucking mad.

So of course one day he fucking snapped.

After the thing about the roof, Katsuki hadn’t escalated. Oh, sure, he had yelled at him a few times to shut up. And maybe blew up his notebooks. And shoved his tray on the floor at the cafeteria, upended his drink all over his head, and pushed his head in the trash where Deku belonged. And shoved him every time they passed each other in class. And destroyed his fucking slingshot, because why the fuck did Deku think he was allowed to have weapons as if he could fight?! But whatever. Katsuki had kept control. He hadn’t told him to kill himself again, although sometimes he had been damn tempted to. That basically made him a fucking Saint.

But then in the middle of July, a few days before the summer holidays, he ran into the nerd on his afternoon run. Katsuki jogged there at least once a week, and there was no way this creepy stalker didn’t know it, so of course it had to be a fucking ambush. Asshole was here to spy on him, again. And he was walking with another guy, too! A purple-haired freak with massive eyebags, sporting a huge, toothy grin like they were friends or some shit. As if Deku could have friends. He couldn’t, he was worthless!

Katsuki didn’t think. He saw that asshole right on his path, happily chatting with a friend, dressed in workout clothes like he had been training, just there, taking Katsuki’s space, intruding on his free time, and… he blew up.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE, DEKU?!”

“K-K-Kacchan?!” The nerd had the gall to pretend he was horrified. “What are… oh no, I forgot you run there in the summer, for…”

“STOP FUCKING STALKING ME!” Katsuki roared, feeling crazed, explosions already going off in his hands.

“I wasn’t! I swear! I was just passing through! I’m sorry!”

The purple-haired guy frowned and tried to interpose himself:

“Dude, lay off. We’re just passing through.”

Katsuki barred his teeth and noted with a vicious satisfaction that it made Deku curl up a little on himself, as if readying himself for a beating. Good. He should be afraid. He was nothing.

“What the hell, Deku, you found yourself an extra to leech off? Fucking parasite. Get the fuck out of my sight and NEVER come back here, or I’ll teach you both what it costs to piss me off!”

“Kacchan…” Deku tried.

What the hell, was he going to fucking protest now?! How full of himself could shitty Deku get? Katsuki barred his teeth, and his hands exploded threateningly. He couldn’t let that stand.

“Are you fucking talking back to me?! Did you forget how it feels to be blasted, Deku?! Uh?! I’ll fucking rip out your eyes this time around! FUCK OFF!”

His hands exploded again. Deku shrunk even more on himself. But Eyebags didn’t budge. His face was turning stony and cold, his eyes narrowed in distrust. Katsuki snarled in anticipation.

Maybe this one would put up a fight. Oh, he would crumble, they all did, and he would learn better than to stick up for fucking Deku. But in the meantime, Katsuki wanted to kick his ass. He had been itching for something to hit for days.

“Midoriya, do you know this wannabe villain?” Eyebags said flatly.

Deku let out a terrified squeak and immediately started protesting that Kacchan wasn’t a villain, but Katsuki didn’t hear him over the sound of his own outrage.

“What the FUCK did you just say, you extra?!”

“I’m calling you a villain,” Eyebags answered flatly. “More exactly a wannabe, because calling someone a real villain isn’t something to throw around lightly, but still. An explosive asshole who plows through out of the blue to threaten bystanders… that sounds like something a villain would do. Especially when you make it sound like you have a bad history with Midoriya here. I’ll have you know that both him and myself are training to be heroes.”

That was it, he had no words. He was going to smoke that bastard and ground his bones to powder. With a roar of sheer, unaltered fury, Katsuki exploded him.

Deku cried out in distress and Katsuki rounded on him, crazed with rage, jaw clenched so hard it felt like it was going to pop. That fucker…! How dare he?! HOW DARE HE?! It was his fault again, just fucking ruining everything!

“You’re going to FUCKING GET IT THIS TIME, Deku!” Katsuki yelled, throwing himself at the fucking stalker who was just stupidly watching him with wide eyes, basically begging to be trashed like a cheap-punching bag.

The explosion went right in Deku’s face. He fell down with a whimper, curling himself in a ball and waiting for the storm to pass. Like a piece of trash, where he belonged. Katsuki felt a rush of fucking satisfaction because yes, he was winning, that that was the right order of things, finally the world was right again!

“You fucking WASTE OF SPACE,” he spat, a new explosion throwing Deku away. “WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT BEING A HERO?! Uh?! UH?! You can’t be a hero, you Quirkless piece of shit! And if you even try to take Yuhei’s Entrance Exam and ruin my origin story, I’ll make you regret it so bad you won’t be able to fucking crawl back home! You hear me?!”

“I think that’s enough, Kacchan,” said a very cold voice behind him.

Eyebags was slightly singed around the edges, but he had apparently dodged most of his explosion. Snarling, Katsuki faced him, ready to trash him good.

“WHAT D-!”

Blank.

Then, an undetermined amount of time later, he woke up.

Katsuki blinked, feeling faintly disoriented. As if he had fallen asleep standing. What the hell? He was elsewhere, standing in the shadows of an alley between two dumpsters. It fucking smelled horrible here. How the fuck had he…?! What the…?! It was darker now. Deku and Eyebags weren’t there. A quick glance at his watch told Katsuki it had been four hours. He had to make a double-take, feeling cold dread settle in his stomach. What the fuck?!

Deku. It was his fault. It had to be. He and Eyebags were probably on it together, laughing at him while they made him forget four hours of time. Had they fought?! Fuck, had he lost? How had he ended up there?! He didn’t know. It wasn’t normal. How the hell had they done that? They had fucking mind-wiped him!

He had lost. LOST! It was a foreign feeling. He hated it. Rage, fear, and humiliation burned Katsuki’s throat like acid.

He went home fuming. He didn’t tell anyone about what happened, stewing in his rage and shame. The sick feeling in his stomach didn’t disappear.

(Maybe that’s when things started to go wrong.)

Deku avoided him like the plague the rest of the week, which cemented Katsuki’s certitude that he was laughing behind his back. That scumbag! Katsuki was really going to kill him.

The nerd had tricked him! Humiliated him! Fuck, what if he told others? Katsuki had a horrible vision of all the extras at school learning he had lost. Lost to Deku. They would whisper behind his back. They would laugh at him. Tear him apart. Spit on him. When you were at the top of the food chain, you couldn’t let anyone smell blood in the water or you turned to shark food. You were the Best or you were scum, there was no in-between, and if people learned that Katsuki had lost a fight… then they would know. They would know and it would make it real. Katsuki would no longer be the Best, he would just be a worthless piece of shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

It made him feel panicky and sick in a way he had never felt before. Cold sweat, his stomach rolling in disgust, paranoia, and frustration keeping him awake at night. Fear. That was fear. For the first time Katsuki’s superiority, his inherent supremacy, was threatened. He had been blindsided, he hadn’t seen how dangerous that fucking Deku was, and now he had… now he could…

Fuck.

Katsuki needed to nip that in the bud as soon as possible. Deku was nothing without his purple-haired buddy, so if Katsuki made Deku back off…. If Katsuki put Deku in his place and made everyone realize how insignificant he was… then everything would get back to normal. The purple freak would drop Deku like a hot potato. Deku would go back to being nothing. Still a slimy, creepy, scheming little stalker, but ultimately useless. Worthless.

Yes, Katsuki had to make things right before Deku could push any further before he could get the idea that his senseless victory could be repeated. If it happened just once, and Katsuki didn’t even remember, then it could be chalked up to temporary insanity. But it couldn’t be allowed to repeat.

If it did repeat… if it did… if Deku could beat him… fuck, Katsuki couldn’t even imagine it. It felt like being slowly crushed by a horrible sense of dread, pressing on his ribs, rubbing his nerves raw. He would kill fucking Deku before letting him steal his place from him.

Once the decision had been made, Katsuki went Deku-hunting. He couldn’t postpone that decision. The summer holidays were just around the corner, and… Somehow it seemed important to resolve this before the holidays before Deku could be allowed to relax and delude himself into thinking Katsuki wasn’t going to put him in his place.

It had been a while since he had been Deku-hunting. Chasing the nerd like a scared little rabbit had lost its fun in elementary school. He never posed a challenge. Besides, that damn nerd was already clingy enough on his own without Katsuki actively chasing him, so Deku-hunting had been a quickly forgotten hobby. As a middle schooler, Katsuki had better things to do.

It took him longer than he would have thought to corner his target. The creep must have smelled the shitstorm heading his way and he made himself scarce. He managed to disappear the entire day. The more time passed, the madder Katsuki became. Deku was probably stalking some poor guy, or maybe hanging out with Eyebags to laugh behind Katsuki’s back. Just thinking about it made Katsuki’s blood boil. Fucking coward! Deku had basically run away from class as soon as the bell rang. He had once jumped from the window (and no, Katsuki’s heart hadn’t skipped a beat, even though they were only on the first floor) to parkour away.

Where the hell had he learned these moves?! And some extras had even laughed and say it was cool. As if! Katsuki had blasted their fucking smiles away, fuming.

Deku was going to fucking get it this time.

Finding where Deku disappeared all day was a lost cause, but finally, Katsuki cornered him as the nerd came back home from whatever hole he had crawled into. He waited in a narrow alley, with high walls to block the view and any possible exits. The ground was littered with trash. Fitting, for teaching Deku his place. The look on the nerd’s face when he saw Katsuki stomp towards him, grinning savagely, was just as he had imagined it. Terrified.

“Kacchan,” he pleaded softly. “Please turn around.”

That whipped the grin right off Katsuki’s face.

“Are you fucking giving me orders now, Deku?!”

“We don’t need to fight,” the asshole had the fucking gall to say pleadingly. “I’m sorry about last time, I asked Shinsō-kun not to do it, but nothing really happened, he only made you walk away and…”

“I don’t fucking care,” Katsuki spat. “You’re looking down on me again, just because you had a pal to hide behind that one time. That shit stops RIGHT NOW.”

“I’m not looking down on you, I swear! Please!”

Deku looked like he was begging. That was better. Katsuki felt a rush of satisfaction, and righteousness, finally, the lesson was being learned…! And then of course the nerd had to open his mouth and ruin it.

“Why would you think that I’m looking down on you?” Deku sniveled. “I’ve never done that! I would never…”

“Why?” Katsuki couldn’t believe his ears. “You’re a worthless piece of shit, and you think you have a fucking right to be a hero? You think you can compare yourself to ME?! I’ll be the next Number One hero! You’re nothing. A pebble in my path. What the fuck is it so hard to learn your place?!”

Deku shook his head frantically. His eyes were already huge and wet with distress, because of course the big crybaby was just a second away from bursting into tears. Katsuki snarled, disgusted by his weakness, and pounced.

And then the nerd did something completely unexpected: he fought back.

He never fought back against Katsuki, usually. Why would he? He had no hope of winning, no more than an ant had a chance against a boot. When they fought, Deku just whined and cried and took it, like the pathetic waste of air he was. But then, now, looking on the verge of throwing up with terror, Deku stood his ground.

Deku stood his fucking ground and predicted his opening move, grasping his right wrist just as his palm detonated, redirecting the explosion aimed at his face and then throwing Katsuki above his shoulder and.

Onto.

The.

Ground.

Katsuki saw red.

With a yell, he sprang back to his feet. He felt both elated and horrified because on one hand, YES, it was a real fight now, FINALLY; and on the other hand, holy shit Deku had managed to get one punch in. That wasn’t possible, that was a freak accident, that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Things had to be set right, now, RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Panic, rage, and wordless fury gripped him by the throat, and when Katsuki let out a second slew of explosions at Deku’s face, the strength of it blew the damn nerd off his feet. Deku flew back almost five feet, singed and smoking, his sweatshirt almost completely burned through… and still, he rolled back on his feet, swaying, and took a fighting pose.

He looked like he was going to piss himself, trembling all over, but he took a fighting pose. As if he had the fucking right to stand up to Katsuki Bakugo!

Katsuki felt his hands spasm, his lips pull back into a snarl. Blood was roaring in his ears. Deku was looking down on him again. That couldn’t fucking stand. He was done pulling his punches, he didn’t care if he put the freak in a hospital: that defiance ended now.

“DIE, YOU USELESS WASTE OF SPACE!” he screeched.

He launched himself at Deku again. This time, he didn’t hold back the strength of his explosions. The noise was deafening, and the alley filled with smoke. People would be worried, and they would have to cut the fight short to not attract noisy bystanders, but Katsuki didn’t care. He had never wanted to hurt Deku more than this instant.

Deku tried to put up a fight. He had gotten faster, stronger, quicker on his feet, that asshole had been training…! But still, not enough to fight Katsuki’s explosions at close range. Nothing would be enough for Deku to best Katsuki, of course. Quirkless, useless Deku. Within seconds, he took a blast to the chest and was blown back with a gasp of pain. The explosion was so strong that he fell on his back.

Of course, the nerd tried to get back up. He was bleeding from a cut on his head and his whole right sleeve was black and burned, the arm may be broken, but he still tried to get back up. Katsuki didn’t let him. Another explosion put Deku back where he belonged: on the ground, at Katsuki’s feet.

“YOU WANT MORE?” Bang! Another explosion. “You are NOTHING. You will always be nothing, useless Deku!” Bang! “STAY DOWN!” Bang! Again. “If you fucking move, I will kill you!”

Deku tried to roll away. How could he still try to fight?! Terror and rage made Katsuki’s chest size. What would it take to teach him to stay fucking down?! What would he take for making him acknowledge Katsuki’s victory?! He had to stop, he had to fucking stop!

Katsuki let out a growl and kicked him as hard as he could. The nerd collapsed into a ball with a wheeze like a popped balloon. This time, he didn’t get up.

Katsuki barred his teeth savagely, feeling crazed and triumphant.

He opened his mouth to spat something else, he didn’t know why, maybe something like, ‘if you want to die that badly, you should have flung yourself off that roof.’ He just wanted to spit something hurtful. He needed to hurt him just as badly as Deku’s defiance had threatened him. He had to, he needed to…! At that moment, he wasn’t even thinking clearly about what he needed to. He just knew that Deku couldn’t be allowed to get back up after that. Katsuki had won, and Deku couldn’t rob him of that victory! So yeah, he wanted to hammer his point home.

Finally, the fight had left Deku, and Katsuki was the uncontested victor. The world was right again.

Thinking back, he would remember it with stark clarity. This sweet, nigh-intoxicating high, the euphoria that came with the sense of complete command, absolute control, unchecked power, the drive to win, achieve victory, triumph. That was what he had been aiming for all his life. That was what he was made for.

Then a massive hand caught his shoulder in a painful grip, and Katsuki was brought face to face with the towering figure of All Might.

(In retrospect, it was actually there that things went irreparably wrong).

oOoOoOo

There is something in being seen by your childhood hero and found wanting that made you feel ridiculously small.

Katsuki would always remember it. The cold glare of All Might, his unsmiling face, the crushing grip on his shoulder. The way his own indignant yell had died on his tongue when he had seen the face of the Symbol of Peace. His elated feeling of victory had turned to nauseating dread so fast it had left him dizzy. For an agonizing, ever-lasting second, Katsuki had realized what it looked like. How he looked like. What he said, what All Might may have heard. That wasn’t… he shouldn’t have… it wasn’t supposed to be…!

All Might (the Symbol of Peace, Katsuki’s hero, the man he had always admired and emulated since he knew what heroes were) didn’t say a word to him. He slammed Katsuki down on the ground and in less than a second, he was handcuffed to a trash container.

All Might didn’t spare him a glance afterward. He touched the coms in his costume’s collar, coldly asked for a police car and an ambulance to meet him, then cradled Deku in his arms with brick efficiency and just… took off.

Katsuki stayed there. He felt strangely numb.

Things spiraled out of control after that. He lost several seconds petrified, not really understanding what the hell had happened. Then he lost even more time struggling against the cuffs. He could have destroyed them, but he felt strangely afraid at the thought of forcing them with his Quirk. Somehow, a distant corner of his mind was persuaded that if he could slip away, All Might would forget, everyone would forget, and nobody would ever know. But if he broke the cuffs, then… then there would be proof that he had been cuffed in the first place, that he had deserved to be arrested. Arrested by All Might like a villain.

The very idea made him want to throw up. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

He didn’t manage to slip out of the cuffs, of course. A police car stopped next to the alley a few minutes later and two police officers brought him to the station. They asked him his name, his Quirk, and how to call his parents. Katsuki answered almost on autopilot. He felt like he was dissociating. It couldn’t be happening. He had fucked up. He had fucked up.

When they asked him what had happened back there, he clammed up and refused to speak another word.

An undetermined amount of time later, the Hag and the Old Man picked him up. They didn’t ask him what he had done. He had a sick feeling they knew. Katsuki’s brain felt like a hamster in a wheel, fruitlessly running in circles, completely blank. He had been arrested by All Might. Oh, gods, he had been arrested by All Might.

“Mrs. Midoriya had decided not to press charges,” the detective said calmly.

Katsuki’s stomach lurched. He hadn’t even thought it was a possibility. In his horror about his arrest, he had completely forgotten Deku. But All Might had brought him to an ambulance, right? Because All Might had seen him as some sort of… victim, and… and he didn’t know the whole story! But if he did…

Katsuki realized with mounting dread that it would actually make things worse. Deku was a creepy stalker who deserved to be taught a lesson, sure, but from an outsider’s point of view, he was a victim. And with context and everything, what Katsuki did was… bad. Especially if Deku opened his stupid mouth and told them about his comment about the roof.

Shit. Katsuki was absurdly lucky All Might hadn’t arrived two seconds later, or Katsuki would have dug his own grave even deeper.

It was crazy how, with dread dousing all the anger and annoyance that usually plagued every Deku-related thought, looking back on their relationship made Katsuki’s actions suddenly… not good. Not good at all. Particularly for a future hero.

Even Katsuki knew that trashing someone weaker than yourself for shit and giggles was fucked-up. Especially if you used your Quirk. Suddenly it was like his view had shifted a few degrees to the left, putting the scene in a whole different light, and it- and it didn’t look good. It didn’t look heroic.

It looked violent and disturbing and frightening, and Katsuki, for the very first time, suddenly felt really scared.

“Your son’s file is exemplary, so he’ll only get a warning,” the detective continued, “but it will be the first and last time. What happened wasn’t a simple case of roughhousing. The victim was sporting a broken arm and second-degree burns on about thirty percent of the torso. Nothing life-threatening, but… as those wounds were inflicted with Quirk use, and the victim is also Quirkless… this is classified as a hate-motivated, Quirk-related assault.”

The detective turned to Katsuki, looking bored. Katsuki wanted to snarl at him, but his face felt strangely frozen. If he bared his teeth, if he opened his mouth, he was going to puke.

“It will be marked down in your file,” the detective informed him. “The next time this happens, you can expect to meet a judge and be sentenced to a fine, community service, or even jail time.”

Katsuki’s ears were ringing. He gripped the edge of his seat to ground himself. Jail time? Oh shit. He was really going to throw up.

“Thank you, detective,” the Hag said in a steady voice, gripping Katsuki by the arm so hard it hurt. “We’ll take care that it won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t. You should also see either a Quirk counselor or a therapist for anger management. Kids like him are usually at risk of becoming villains.”

They left. It was nearly dark outside. In the police station, everyone was going on about their day, but Katsuki felt like they were all watching him. He could hear his own heartbeat, so loud. Could the others sense his shock? His fear? He felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. That was fucked up. Everything was fucked up.

He had fucked up.

He didn’t let the fear show. He bit his tongue and kept his eyes in front of him until he got into the car. Everything seemed to happen so slowly as if the air had condensed to syrup.

It couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be walking from a police station after being arrested by All Might, with a black mark on his file, all because of Deku. All because Katsuki had fucked up.

Right?

The car’s doors slammed shut. His father started driving. Nobody talked. The silence was deafening.

Katsuki’s head was still spinning. He felt sick. Distantly, he wondered if he would wake up if he tried to close his eyes and wish that it was all a nightmare.

“You fucking piece of shit,” Mitsuki Bakugo said, voice low.

She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were on the windshield. But they caught Katsuki’s in the reflection, and he twitched when he saw the sheer venom in his mother’s glare.

The Hag and Katsuki had never seen eye to eye. They were too alike; they pissed each other off. They yelled. They broke stuff. They held grudges. The Hag constantly berated Katsuki about what he wore, how he spoke, who he hung out with. She had refused let him practice a combat sport like boxing or martial arts for years. She hated that he had a fucking spine and spoke his mind. All his life she had signed him up for music classes or dancing lessons and plenty of boring shit like that, probably hoping to turn Katsuki into some docile, decorative weakling. Katsuki would never give her the satisfaction. He had aced all the lessons and always left with the best grades (and a teacher very relieved to see him go), and never changed one bit. The Hag could seethe all she wanted

 She wanted him to be like Deku, cute, soft, and useless, some doll to dress and parade around. Bitch. He wasn’t a fucking poodle. She could go fuck off and die.

“So this is why Inko isn’t fucking talking to me anymore,” she spat. “This is what you were going up to, instead of preparing for Yuhei. You were beating up her boy until a fucking hero had to intervene.”

“Deku was…!”

“I DON’T FUCKING WANT TO HEAR IT!” the Hag slammed her hand against the glove compartment so hard he heard something rattle inside. “Do you know I didn’t believe the cops when they called me? I thought, surely Katsuki isn’t stupid enough to do something like that. Surely he knows better. He wants to be a hero. He wouldn’t beat up a defenseless kid in an alley and send him to the hospital. But no! You are that stupid, apparently. All that training to be a hero was just posturing. Turns out you’re just like every other bully in the world; an insecure, angry little shithead who needs to assuage his superiority over someone to feel good about himself because there sure is nothing else to be proud of.”

Her words felt like fucking knives in his chest. He was used to the yelling and the arguments. But never before did his mother’s accusations agreed with the scared little voice in the back of his mind, wondering, “What if it’s true? All Might saw something disgusting when he looked at me. What if there’s something wrong with me?”

“I’m the fucking best there is!” Katsuki snarled defensively.

“ARE YOU?!” his mother turned around in her seat, eyes blazing with rage. “Did ANYTHING that happened tonight scream ‘heroism’ to you?! Are you PROUD?!”

Katsuki ground his teeth, his face burning with humiliation. No. He wasn’t. He felt small, angry, scared, and nauseous. He brutally turned away so she couldn’t see the tears pricking the corner of his eyes. Fuck, he couldn’t let her see him cry.

He almost hoped that the Old Man would speak up. He usually did. He tried to temperate their arguments as much as he could, always stuck in the middle. But Masaru Bakugo didn’t say a fucking word. When Katsuki caught his eyes in the review mirror, his father only looked ashamed and disappointed. Somehow, that was worse than the Hag’s yelling.

Katsuki didn’t see Deku again.

First, there were the summer holidays. The school closed. Katsuki spent the summer training away from home. He hid in the most recused, deserted places he could find. He didn’t want to have a heart-to-heart with his father, who tried to get him fucking therapy of all things. He didn’t want to speak with the Hag, who either ignored him or yelled at him about how he was taking the wrong path, how he didn’t deserve shit, and how he was no fucking hero. He didn’t want to see any of those extras who hung out with him at school. He didn’t want to see fucking Deku, especially. And no matter what his parents or the cop had said, he didn’t fucking want to see a therapist.

He wasn’t broken. He was great, the greatest there was. He just… needed to blast something until he felt better.

So yeah, Katsuki spent the whole summer completely isolated. Deku didn’t seek him out to apologize, which was both surprising and… maybe not. Maybe he had learned his lesson about leaving Katsuki alone. Finally.

Katsuki couldn’t help but feel selfishly and cowardly relieved. Fuck, that would have been the last straw. He couldn’t bear to think about seeing Deku again. Deku, who had defied him and been rescued by All Might. Deku, who had seen him humiliated. Deku, who knew. He would forever hold that knowledge over Katsuki now, like a fucking chain around his neck. Just thinking about it made Katsuki sick.

Then the school reopened in September, and Deku wasn’t here. For a second, Katsuki had a moment of horrified panic. Had something happened? The nerd’s injuries weren’t that bad. Why wasn’t he here? What had he told?

Turn out, nothing. Apparently, Deku had been pulled out of school by his mother and went to another school now. Katsuki didn’t know where. Not that he even cared. The further away the nerd was, the better. If he was gone, maybe… maybe Katsuki could still fix things. He was still the top dog here. If he crushed all concurrence to dust, then who the fuck would care about one tiny mistake in his file, in the face of his awesomeness, his power, his strength?

Everything was going to get back to normal. Katsuki just had to push through. It would be fine. It had to be fine.

But it wasn’t, and things didn’t get back to normal. Somehow, in the summer, the teachers had gotten weird. Tense and paranoid. And as soon as school started, they started treating Katsuki like a delinquent.

On the third day of school, he blew up in class at an extra that was boring him with his presentation. It was something he had done a hundred times. He hadn’t even destroyed anything this time. And still, the teacher jumped ramrod straight in her chair, eyes wide, and spat shrilly:

“Bakugo! Detention!”

A stunned silence fell in the class. Katsuki was sure he had misheard.

“AH?!”

“You heard me,” the bitch said. Her eyes flickered briefly behind Katsuki. Her voice didn’t waver. She sounded like she was reading from a script. “Detention. No Quirk use indoors, no bullying, no foul language. Clearly, we haven’t been strict enough with you, but this school has standards, and you will respect them.”

“You never had a problem with my explosions before!” Katsuki spat, furious.

The bitch straightened. “And you had never been arrested for assault before. Now, sit down, Bakugo.”

He stood there, frozen, feeling as if the floor had opened under his feet. There was a shrill ringing in his ears. Everyone was watching him with stupefaction, delighted horror, and morbid curiosity. Already people were whispering excitingly. Katsuki Bakugo had been arrested. And now everyone knew.

He sat. It felt like defeat, but he sat. He didn’t know what else to do.

Later, he would remember to turn his head, trying to see what the teacher had looked at so worriedly. It turned out to be a surveillance camera. Aldera was a shitty middle school with no budget, so only half the cameras usually worked. But today, Katsuki noticed they were all on.

Things didn’t get better afterward. The teachers were all jumpy and pissed. They blew up at the slightest explosion (ah!). In a week Katsuki ended up with more detention than he had had in his whole life. It was insane. Surreal, even. The axis of power had shifted, his pedestal had been ripped out from under him, and Katsuki was left crashing to the ground.

What the fuck. It was like the implicit rules of the games had been changed behind his back. Now every fucking person in this shitty school had turned on him. The teachers had usually been background characters, staying out of his way, as they should; smiling indulgently when he blew up something, congratulating him when he got first in class, all the normal stuff teachers were supposed to do with an awesome student destined to heroism!

But now they were against him. They yelled if he let out the smallest crackle of nitroglycerine. Even the tiny ones he used to fucking stop his sweat from building up! They didn’t let him pick his topic for class presentation, they nitpicked at his homework, they chastised him when he swore, what the fuck?! His grades stayed perfect, because of course they were. Katsuki didn’t work his ass off for nothing. But good grades didn’t matter if they were surrounded by negative comments about his attitude.

What the hell was wrong with his fucking attitude?! It had never been a problem before!

Then after the teachers, it was the students. They felt the wind changing. Katsuki wasn’t on top of the food chain anymore. Slowly, one after another, those assholes started pushing their luck.

They let out snarky remarks. They laughed when a teacher reprimanded him. They mocked him. Oh, Katsuki didn’t let that stand. Each time, the perpetrator faced immediate and violent retribution. But now, when Katsuki taught those fucking extras to stay in their place, there was always a teacher descending on him like a fucking vulture, prattling about ‘delinquent behavior!’ And then it was more detention, and even, once, a fucking suspension. They warned Katsuki that he would even face expulsion if he continued to act ‘like a feral animal.’

Katsuki wasn’t a fucking feral animal. But he felt like one, these days. A cornered beast, teeth barred, heart in his throat, surrounded by a pack of hungry rats. Vermin trying to drown him. They were pressing down on all sides, always looking down on him, caging him, trapping him. Fucking parasites he could crush under his heel. But they were so many, crawling everywhere, laughing, eyes gleaming with malice, thirsty for blood. The weight of their eyes, whispers, and their expectations… it made him feel claustrophobic.

No matter how strong he was, how fucking awesome he was, they all wanted him to fail. It wasn’t even a fight because they didn’t let him fight! They fucked with the rules, they cheated, and then they called him a loser for it!

Sometimes Katsuki got a rush of hatred so bright and red he could barely see straight. But most of the time, it was just a knot of anxiety and rage in his stomach, getting heavier every day. The prospect of going to school filled him with dread in the morning. Nobody was afraid of him anymore, which meant nobody respected him anymore, which mean nowhere was safe. It made him feel defensive, angry and pissed off. Cornered, insecure. He hated it.

Fuck, he almost missed Deku. At least when it was that fucker being blown up to pieces, no one came whining to the teachers.

But well, if Deku had been here, maybe now the teachers would defend him like they defended the other extras. Because Katsuki always trashed Deku worst, and it… it hadn’t been very heroic. When he looked back on it, now, he felt like… he probably wouldn’t do it again.

It was different when he wasn’t mad at Deku. It didn’t feel as righteous. It felt wrong, it felt cruel. He remembered the look in All Might’s eyes. It made Katsuki die a little inside every time he thought about it, something curling up in his stomach like a hot flash of shame.

Rumors of Katsuki’s arrest had spread. It hadn’t taken long for people to connect Katsuki’s fall from grace with Deku’s disappearance. Some said Katsuki had been arrested for beating the nerd, some said he had been arrested for killing him. At least nobody knew he had been arrested by a hero… by All Might, of all people. If it got out, Katsuki would fucking kill them. He knew they would call him a villain. He wasn’t fucking villain, he was a hero because villains were weaklings who got their asses beat and Katsuki wasn’t like that. He was the fucking Best!

Except apparently, that didn’t protect him anymore. The situation with the teachers grew worse and worse. Katsuki learned the school was actually under investigation, and everyone blamed him. Some heroes had ‘reported a concern about bullying’ and now there was a bunch of inspectors and heroes sniffing around the school, waiting for anyone to make waves so they could shoot them down.

It was so fucking unfair. But it was his fault, in a way, because that hero… that hero, even though nobody wanted to tell him who it was… that was All Might, wasn’t it? That was why everyone was panicking. Because the Symbol of Peace, the strongest hero of Japan, had turned his eyes to this school and made the administrative equivalent of asking, ‘do we have a problem there?’ And now everyone was falling ass over kettle in their haste to assure him that no, everything was fine, everything was peaceful and there was no bullying.

Except apparently their definition of bullying included roughing up some extras. Katsuki didn’t see what their fucking deal was. It was just bruises and burns. He got worse when he trained with his Quirk. Okay, Deku’s broken arm was the worst he had ever done but come on! Kids broke bones all the time. Katsuki had broken his leg once when he was little. One extra had cracked a wrist in some sports competition last year. And now they were crying because fucking Deku had gotten himself hurt?! It was nothing.

It should be nothing.

But it wasn’t. Because All Might had said so. Or well, All Might had said to the police to look into this school, and now the police were sniffing around like fucking puppies eager to get a treat. And since Katsuki was the brightest, the loudest, the most remarkable student here… and he was the source of the school’s scrutiny… well, the nail that stick up was hammered down.

One suspension turned into two, into three. Since nobody bothered to give him notes for the missed lessons, his grades started being affected. The fucking extras grew bolder, sensing weakness. Katsuki got even more pissed, blew up more often, and got detention again. At one point he almost blew up at a teacher.

Something had to fucking give.

And it did.

One day, some fucking extra loudly said that Katsuki had told Deku to jump off a roof that one time.

They were talking about his ‘villainous behavior’ and taking bets about how long it would be before he ended up in jail, not bothering to lower their voice. Katsuki was seething in his seat. The teacher was five seats down, pretending to not listen. She didn’t do anything to stop them from pissing him off…! But if Katsuki exploded and made them shut the fuck up, she would suddenly notice his troublemaking behavior and give him another detention, or maybe a fucking suspension. Katsuki couldn’t take another one of those. He was on thin ice. He had already been suspended three times and it was only December.

So he was grinding his teeth and keeping a lid on his temper… and then Fingers said that.

Katsuki’s heart jumped in his mouth. He didn’t miss the way the teacher’s eyes jumped to the surveillance camera, wide-eyed like a trapped rabbit, before turning to him.

“Bakugo, is that true?”

He didn’t deny it. Lying was for cowards who fucked up and then tried to cover their asses. Katsuki Bakugo was the Best, and the Best didn’t cower. (The Best didn’t fuck up, either, but it was too late for that).

He raised his chin with defiance and made his palms crackle with small explosions. Hopefully, they would see it as a mark of rebelliousness, not as a sign that his hands had started sweating in terror.

“What if I did? It’s just Deku. And he didn’t fucking jump.”

She pinched her lips and for a crazy, heart-stopping moment he was afraid that Deku had. Maybe the nerd had killed himself at his new school and nobody had told him. With all the fucked-up shit Deku put up with because he was too much of a weakling to fight, it wouldn’t be a stretch.

“Go to the principal’s office, Bakugo.”

He went. Some extras booed at him, one even jeered singsongingly, ‘Bakugo is in trouuuuble!’ like it was fucking funny. Katsuki should have blown up his face. Instead, fuming, he just slammed the door behind him. Disrespectful extras. Now he couldn’t even put them in their pace without the teachers being all up his ass about his behavior.

The principal made him wait for two. full. hours. Katsuki’s sanity was hanging by a thread.

Then his mother showed up, fuming. The principal hadn’t had the balls to confront him on his own, man to man: no, he had to ring the old Hag so he could embarrass Katsuki in front of her! Fuck it. Even before entering the principal’s office, Katsuki was seething. His stomach was twisting into knots of anger and anxiety both. He was in position of weakness here, and he hated it, hated it, hated it.

When the principal made them enter, the Hag threw Katsuki such a poisonous look he had to bite his tongue to stop himself for blowing up at her. He could see the accusation in her eyes. What the fuck did you do?!

Even before the Incident, the Hag had always found flaws in everything he did or said, but now it was worse. It was like she expected him to fail at everything, the way she sneered with contempt every time he entered her field of vision. It made Katsuki’s blood boil. She was wrong about him. They were all wrong about him.

“I will be honest with you Bakugo-san,” the principal said in a dignified tone. “Even since your son’s arrest, our school has been under investigation. Our… permissive attitude towards promising students… has been called into question. The police think our leniency encouraged Katsuki’s bad traits.”

The Hag snorted. “You’re not wrong. You did encourage him, but then, so did everyone else. Katsuki is reckless, effortlessly good at everything, and he has a good Quirk. People have been fawning over him for years. It is partly our fault for not stopping it.”

Effortlessly good. As if he wasn’t working his ass off in class or training. As if it all had been handled to him on a silver platter, and all his hard work was worthless. Katsuki sneered. Typical.

“Quite right, quite right,” the principal nodded. “Now, we changed our policy, and we are now much stricter. We are also collaborating with the investigation to the best of our abilities. Which is why, when a new element came to light this afternoon, we had to convoke you.” He paused, meaningfully. “You understand, if your policies had remained unchanged, we would have been happy to only give Katsuki a light sanction. Boys will be boys, and we all know some children invite a lot of teasing. But now… Well. We don’t have that option. Hence this meeting. We have to settle things now, or the investigation will conclude that we are still encouraging our students’ bad attitude, you understand.”

“I don’t, actually,” said the Hag with a pleasant smile that had just a little too many teeth in it to be friendly. “What happened?”

The principal looked uncomfortable.

“At the beginning of the school year, Katsuki encouraged another student to commit suicide. We’ve only just found out.”

The Hag gripped Katsuki’s wrist under the desk, her nails digging into his flesh. He looked straight ahead, biting his tongue to stay silent. He didn’t want to see the look on her face. He wouldn’t give her the pleasure of seeing the anger, the shame, the powerlessness in his eyes. He knew what she would look like, pissed off and disgusted and with a hint of triumph, as if saying ‘gotcha, I knew you were going to slip.’

As if she had never expected him to be any better than that.

“Nothing came of it,” the principal hastily continued, “so it should have been the end of it. But it was apparently caught on the security camera. It is only a matter of time before the investigators happen upon this particular footage. You understand why we must take action now. It would look bad if they were the ones to bring it to our attention. And of course, they may be even harsher to Katsuki than we are.”

“Of course,” the Hag said evenly. “And I suppose throwing Katsuki under the bus would be a wonderful way for you to wash your hands of him. Pretend all the problems came from him and not you, and hope you get off scot-free in this mess.”

The principal reddened but didn’t say anything. The Hag snorted, disdainful, then her eyes narrowed. Katsuki’s guts dropped like the Hag had tossed them from the window.

“The student he suicide-baited, was it Izuku Midoriya?”

“… Yes.”

“And it was at the beginning of the year. Before the incident.”

Katsuki flinched and cursed himself for it. He shouldn’t show weakness, he knew that, but he didn’t have it in him to just… not care. Not about that, not now, listening to his mother ask those questions dispassionately, seeing the memories flash before his eyes. What had happened, telling Deku to jump from the roof, was fucked up. He had known since the moment the words had left his lips. But to think back on it and realize it… and to add that to the incident, with the burns and everything, and the look on All Might’s face…

He felt sick. Like a great wave of helpless anger and self-disgust was rolling in his guts. It made him almost dizzy with it, it was so powerful.

He wanted his mom to shut up, the principal to shut up, everyone to shut up and forget; but even that wouldn’t be enough, because he would still remember, and it… it fucking mattered. It had been wrong, to do that. He had been wrong, and he was so fucking ashamed.

But shame didn’t help him.

Shame didn’t mean anything except that he had fucked up, that he had no right to complain, and that when everything would fall into pieces around him, no one would think he didn’t deserve it, not even himself.

“I see,” the Hag spat. “What sanction do you propose, then?”

“Immediate expulsion. It is very harsh, but there is no way around it.”

“It’s nearly Christmas! There are only three months of school left! Can it not wait?”

“I’m afraid not,” the man said, apologetic. “If we wait until the investigation finds out, Katsuki will be expulsed anyway… and he will have a black mark on his judicial file. Suicide-baiting is a serious accusation. For Katsuki who is already on thin ice following his assault on Midoriya, it would be even worse.”

Katsuki’s throat tightened and his eyes stung, but he didn’t say anything. If he unclenched his jaw, he was afraid that he would yell, roar, explode, or throw up. And then he would cry. Like a weakling. Like Deku. Pathetic.

So he didn’t say anything. Some part of him couldn’t believe that this was happening. But the time for denial was way past.

He had fucked up. He had fucked up.

The Hag argued and yelled some more, but not for long. The threat had taken the wind out of her sails. In the end, it was done. His mother signed papers, berating the principal all the while. Then she asked pointed questions about his attitude and what exactly had been discovered about his relationship with Deku. The principal hummed and hemmed for a while, but in the end, he spilled his guts, the spineless coward that he was.

Katsuki realized with shock that he had actually expected the principal to cover for him. Another sign of weakness, then. Fucking up and thinking others would take care of it for you. Fucking up and thinking the sharks wouldn’t descend as soon as they smelled blood.

He had known, though, that nobody could be trusted. He had known for as long as he could remember that the only way to be safe was to be the best and to be perfect, to never commit a single misstep, and not ever let anyone sense any hint of weakness.

He hadn’t realized how miserably he had failed at that.

Katsuki could see in the tightening of his mother’s grip, in the coldness in her eyes, how furious she was. As soon as they were home, he would be in for a serious walloping. Neither his mother nor his father had really hit him before… well, except for the usual smack on his head when he mouthed off to the Hag, but really, that was just the natural pecking order at work; he would slap a little brother the same way after all. Now she looked so pissed he almost expected a punch. More realistically, he would go to bed without dinner. And of course, all his privileges would get revoked. No video games, no cooking, no hiking, nothing. The Hag seemed ready to breathe fire, and Katsuki could even understand why, a little. After that stunt, he would be lucky if she didn’t make him spend the night in the shed.

So. That’s how it happened. And Katsuki Bakugo’s words ended not with a bang, but with the whisper of expulsion papers being put in front of him.

oOoOoOo

After the gloomiest Christmas of his life, Katsuki was homeschooled. Well, the Hag and the Old Man managed to get their hands on some lessons and told him to study on his own, so he was his own homeschooling, really.

Since he had been cut off from all his usual outings, he had all the time he needed. He had one hour of freedom in the morning and one hour in the afternoon to blast off some sweat, but it wasn’t really training. It was more akin to letting the dog out, so it didn’t shit on the carpet. The Hag was willing to put him on house arrest but not willing to risk having a hole blown into her couch. 

It was pretty terrible.

They had had an awful row. Even his father had yelled. And they had all said horrible things, the kind of things that made Katsuki want to bite them back, like when he had said to Deku to jump from the roof. Except in a way, he didn’t want to take them back: he wanted his words to cut as deeply as what the old Hag said. And she had said plenty. Like how he was a villain, not a hero. How she wished he had never been born. How he sought to be a pro-hero only because he wanted a permit to hurt people with impunity. How a little sociopath like him has no place in Yuhei, or in any hero school.

It wasn’t fucking true. It wasn’t fucking true, but he didn’t have the words to make them understand, and he wanted to scream at how powerless and enraged it made him feel. Because what if his lack of arguments meant it was true? He was a person capable of telling someone to kill themselves, he was the kind of person All Might arrested. Could he be a hero, really? Really?

The question had wormed its way into his brain, now. Katsuki had always been strong, and unwavering, but these days he felt as if his core was made of glass. He presented a strong front. But he felt so hollow. If a blow landed at the right angle, he may shatter entirely.

What was the difference between a hero and a villain? What was he aiming to be, really?

It was a dumb question, and Katsuki hated it. There wasn’t anything wrong with him! Sure, he didn’t act like Deku, but that was because he was a realist, not like that daydreaming little shit. Everything was Deku’s fault. Even the parts that were Katsuki’s fault could be tied to Deku because Deku had pissed him off, so shouldn’t that mean there was something wrong with the nerd?!

But it was him who had to deal with that shit. He was in trouble. And no matter how much Katsuki told himself that it was Deku’s fault, no matter how angry he made himself be, it didn’t make him feel better. There was still this disgusting weight on his stomach, a ball of shame, anxiety, and self-hatred rolling around his guts.

It was so unfair. It shouldn’t be happening to him. He had a great Quirk. He was born destined for success. He was smart and willing to work, too. He was going to surpass All Might as the number one hero. To be everything he was and more, to finally have control over his life. Be strong, be free, and be utterly and completely victorious.

What was the difference between heroes and villains? Obviously, the villains were the bad guys, and the heroes were the good guys. But that apparently wasn’t good enough. Because All Might was good, and All Might had arrested him. So if goodness and badness were all there was to this problem, then it meant that Katsuki was bad, and… it wasn’t true. The Hag was wrong about that.

He had to come up with a better answer. Even saying villains hurt people wasn’t enough, because, tch’… of course, heroes hurt villains right back. That was the whole point of hero fights. Pulling your punches was for pussies.

What was the difference between heroes and villains? He had the feeling that Deku would’ve understood the question. He might even have the answer. And that pissed him off. But he tried not to think about Deku these days. It always made him think about his expulsion, about how All Might had looked at him that day watching him, as an idol seeing an ant, and finding him wanting. Katsuki never wanted to feel that small again.

All because of Deku. Typical. That asshole had always been where he shouldn’t be, doing things he shouldn’t need to. Katsuki didn’t even want to think about Deku anymore. Thinking about him made him sick. It always had, and he’s never been able to get away from it. Every single fucking day of his fucking life, Deku has been there, right behind him, staring with those big, too-green, deceptively innocent-looking eyes of his. The way that made his gaze feel like a physical thing, like a judgement. Like he had any right to judge Katsuki.

But then, what right had Katsuki to not be judged?

He should have seen it as a warning sign. He should have been better. He should have… He should have… Fuck.

Katsuki paced the house like a caged beast. He spent as much time as he could studying, looking for online tests to take, going back and doing them again and again until he got a perfect score every single time. He cleaned his room twice a day. He did push-ups and sit-ups and all the exercises he could bear. Days passed, then weeks, and nothing really helped.

He would never be able to join Yuhei with an expulsion in his file. If you added his arrest to the equation, then any hero school became out of his reach. Oh, there were maybe three or four schools in Japan that admitted people with a black mark like this… but they had a very low rate of success, and they only admitted ‘delinquents’ against a huge amount of money. You had to bribe the teachers, basically. It made Katsuki want to gag. No way he was going to roll over like that. It would be like accepting that he didn’t really deserve a place there, that he had to pay people so they could sneak him amongst the worthier students. Fuck them.

Shiketsu High School had a rehabilitation program, so they could accept him. But their whole program was designed to rehabilitate vigilantes, so in order to qualify, you had to be arrested on charges of vigilantism.

Katsuki could swing it, sure.  He just had to look for villains and beat them up illegally. But it felt- unworthy, you know, to set something up so he could pretend to be a vigilante, then pretend to be willing to grovel at Shiketsu because he was grateful for this second chance. He wasn’t a fucking vigilante. He wasn’t a fucking criminal, period! He was going to be a hero.

… was he?

Katsuki didn’t care what people thought of him, usually. He believed in himself and that was enough. But… but… when people’s adoration turned to scorn and distrust- even if it was because they were jealous because they were just fucking extras- after a while, you had to wonder. What are they seeing that I’m not?

It ate at Katsuki, day after day. He had fucked up. He had missed something. There was something wrong and he didn’t know what had caused it, or how to fix it.

It shouldn’t have mattered, what other people thought. But then the Hag had started looking at him like that, too. And she wasn’t a fucking extra like the other. She was a bitch, but she was his mother, she knew him, and she knew he was great. His old man, too. They had both been so proud before. And now his mom looked at him with fury and his dad looked at him with disappointment, and-

They should have seen the true Katsuki, behind other’s people lies. They shouldn’t look at him like that. Katsuki didn’t care about those extras’ opinions, but his parents knew him, and their opinions weren’t stupid, and… and it struck home, somehow. It scared him, that he could care. It pissed him off, too.

But of course, Katsuki fucking cared, that was why he had been so hurt and angry when they had their row after his expulsion. The walls had trembled with their yells and their accusations. Each word cut deep, and Katsuki returned it a thousandfold, incensed and out of control, lashing out. Hateful bitch, jealous hag, stupid old man; cowards, too scared to stand up to some prissy teacher, good-for-nothing sperm donor. Why the fuck did they care about Deku?!

So what if Katsuki had told him to kill himself, NOBODY HAD CARED BEFORE! Nobody had cared about ANY OF THIS! Why the fuck did it matter now? Why the hell was his own parents backstabbing him, agreeing with all those pussies who whined because Katsuki wasn’t a docile little poodle?! He was a HERO. He was GREAT. They should know that and side with him! Why did they think he deserved to be punished?! He didn’t, he had done nothing wrong because he was the Best!

It still hurt to think about the dismayed look on his father’s face. Masaru Bakugo was a wet blanket, always compromising, trying to find the middle ground, and never raising his voice. But he had yelled, that time, in anger and despair and helplessness, and then he had sat down and cried.

It had freaked out Katsuki. It had probably freaked out his mother, too, because her yelling had reached another pitch and her barbs had become even more vicious. She had really gone for the throat, then. About how unheroic he was, about how he was just a little bully thinking himself better than others just because he was capable of greater cruelty, how she had never wanted him, how she wished she had gotten rid of him when she could. Just thinking about it made Katsuki’s heart beat faster, and his fists clench almost painfully.

He remembered the way she had looked so much like him, red eyes blazing, and teeth bared, when she had spat that hurting people was the only thing he was good at. And he had wondered, then: is that what you really think of me?

Is that what I really am?

He wanted her to have never said those hurtful things. He wondered if she regretted it. Some part of him was sorry for all the hateful words he had spat back at her. But of course, once it was said, it couldn’t be taken back. Only idiots like Deku actually believed that if you said sorry, it changed anything.

Apologies made things worse, everybody knew that. It reminded everyone of their mistake instead of allowing it to fade from reality, rekindling the hurt and shame anew. And it made you look weak. An admittance that not only you had fucked up, but you were too pathetic to bear it with dignity. What was the point of saying sorry?

When you did something wrong, you sucked it up. You used it to learn and never misstep again. That was how life worked.

The weeks turned into months. Soon it would be March with final exams… and then the end of middle school. Katsuki still didn’t see how he could join a hero course. For the first time in his life, he actually wondered what would become of him if he couldn’t join a heroic high school. If he couldn’t become a hero. He had never entertained any plan B. There had been no need to: he was the Best, so the idea of failing plan A was laughable. But now… now…

Katsuki tried to envision a future where he wasn’t a hero, and the misery of it made his throat close up and his eyes sting. He couldn’t.

He couldn’t imagine being anyone else, he couldn’t imagine living any other kind of future. He would die. He would want to die.

Maybe he should turn to vigilantism. He needed… he needed to be a hero, but if that path was closed to him, then… then what was left? He couldn’t very well kill himself. He didn’t hate himself enough for that.

In a moment of crystal clear, horrified clarity, he wondered if that was how Deku had felt. If that was what crossed his mind every time people said he should be realistic. Every time people sneered that he couldn’t be a hero, not someone like him. Because people said those things, and they meant them. They saw nothing wrong with them. But- now Deku and Katsuki’s positions were reversed.

And when Katsuki remembered how Deku had looked when he had told him to jump from the roof…. the wave of self-loathing was so intense he felt like he was going to physically throw up.

The only thing you’re good at is hurting people.

No, that wasn’t true. That couldn’t be true. He knew it. But- he had hurt Deku. He knew that, too. He had hurt Deku, and- it hadn’t mattered to him. But things had changed and now there was a reckoning. Katsuki he had hurt Deku because it didn’t matter, because he was strong and Deku weak; but now, it mattered, because Katsuki wasn’t strong anymore.

It made sense. Katsuki had hurt people it was all right for him to be hurt back. He hadn’t had to fear that when he was the top pf the food chain, but every hurt he dished out had just been waiting for payback. And yeah, he saw the logic in it!

But it was fucked up. He should never have hurt Deku in the first place, he got it now.

Or well, maybe he did. Sure, Katsuki regretted it, but he still hated that stupid Deku who looked down on him. He wanted everything to never have happened. He wanted the sick weight in his gut to go away, fucking damn it.

His parents were starting to exchange worried glances when they thought he wasn’t watching. Katsuki could hear them whispering in the living room, and he could hear his name in those hushed conversations. He didn’t pay it any mind. They have been whispering about him since this fucking mess started. They barely talked to him, now.

Well, his father had tried a few times, but Katsuki had always been on the defensive, bracing himself for accusations and manipulations, so it hadn’t gone far. His mother had stayed away.

The Hag was like him, in that sense. When there was something fucked in a relationship, there was no point trying to act nice and pretend they could all be friends again. You kept out of that shit, and that was it. Like Deku should have stayed away from him if he had some fucking common sense.

Then, one afternoon, the Hag made him sit at the table to have a serious talk. Katsuki braced himself for another confrontation. The Old Man was here, too, but when he caught Katsuki’s eyes, he only gave him an encouraging smile.

“You still wanna be a hero, brat?!” the Hag barked at him.

He bristled. “So what?!”

“With your arrest and your expulsion, you won’t be able to get into any hero school worth the name,” the Hag said bluntly. “Maybe you changed your mind and decided to be realistic.”

Be realistic. How many times had Katsuki heard people say that to Deku? Usually with a sneer. Or with some pointed jab at how delusional he was, to still cling to his dream when he couldn’t do it when nobody wanted him to do it.

But you can’t help the things you long for.

“I will be hero,” Katsuki spat. “I’ll be Number One. That’s just a setback, that’s all. I’m not letting that stop me.”

His mother nodded once, sharply. She had her arms crossed, and Katsuki suddenly realized she was defensive, not aggressive.

“The Commission has a sponsorship program for powerful kids with black marks on their files. It’s only one kid at a time and they don’t have a pupil next year, so the spot is still free. You won’t get into a hero course, sure, but you can get training, pass your License and all that crap. Think you could manage to impress them enough for them to give you a chance?”

For a second he just gaped at her, stunned.

He knew his parents had ties to heroics. They both worked in fashion, with close ties to Support and Design companies. But the Hag had always been rather disinterested in the practical side of heroics. For her to know something like this… better, to give this information to Katsuki… it was like a fucking Christmas miracle.

Shit, a sponsorship?! A way to become a hero despite what had happened?!

“Yes! Of course, I can!” For the first time in a month, a bright, luminous hope was blooming in his chest. “I’m going to blow their motherfucking minds!”

“Watch your fucking language, brat!”

“Bite me, you hag!”

The Hag snorted. It was like everything had gone back to normal. Still, Katsuki felt a little wrongfooted, and defensive. It couldn’t be as simple as that, could it?

“They will be in touch in the next week or so. I don’t know what they will want or even if they’ll take you, but whatever. That’s your last chance.”

“I won’t fuck up,” he growled.

She snorted again, but it was fond rather than dismissive.

“Well, I’ve got stuff to do,” she said abruptly, getting up. “Have fun or whatever. Your cooking privileges are restored by the way, ‘cause I don’t feel like making curry tonight. But you’re still grounded as fuck.”

She walked away before Katsuki could guess how he was supposed to respond to that. For a few seconds, there was silence. Then Katsuki turned to his father and asked, almost accusingly:

“What the hell is that program? That’s the first I heard about it! Does it suck?”

Even if it had, he would have still joined anyway. But the Old Man shook his head:

“I don’t think so. Apparently, Hawks was trained in that sponsorship program.”

Everyone knew Hawks wasn’t a Yuhei graduate, and that he had had private training. Katsuki couldn’t help but be slightly impressed. Private training was different from being hand-picked by the HPSC.

“And there had been quite a few other heroes,” his father added. “It’s just not very well-known. It’s for kids at risk of becoming villains, usually because they have a criminal record.”

Wait, did that mean that Hawks had a criminal record? That was kind of comforting if true. If someone like Hawks had started as low as Katsuki, then… it meant that Katsuki could rise as high as him. Higher, even, ‘cause he was the fucking best.

“Then how did the Hag know about it?”

His father looked at him very sadly.

“What do you think, Katsuki? It’s because she researched and looked into it. She asked Quirk councilors and people within the HPSC what they have heard, and what they could do. She called every single person we know in the hero industry, even Best Jeanist. She asked and asked until she found someone who knew someone else who had heard about something, and then she followed the trail until she got a solution to your problem.”

Katsuki sat there, stunned, feeling wrongfooted, offended, and humbled at once. It was… it was as close to an apology as his mother could give. No… it was better. It was as close to an apology as he could accept.

Because that’s what you did when you fucked up. You fixed it. You didn’t expect other people to cover your ass. You suck it up and force yourself to be better. Katsuki clenched his jaw, feeling once again small and stupid.

“I would have figured it out,” he grunted. “I didn’t need her help.”

“I know you’re strong, son, but everyone needs other people. Even heroes get help, just like they help people. Do you think All Might doesn’t get help from the police to find villains? That he doesn’t get help from informants to plan his fights? Hell, the last time he was on TV he had to ask directions from some bystander. Does it make him weak?”

“I don’t want to think about All Might,” Katsuki grumbled, looking down at the table. “And I’m not weak, so I don’t need the Hag to look down on me.”

There was a long, hesitant pause.

“Do you think heroes look down on people they protect? Is that what you think of them?”

It’s different, Katsuki wanted to say. The people they protect don’t matter. They’re weak, they don’t count.

But he didn’t dare to utter it out loud. It would have felt wrong to say it. It sounded like the kind of thing the Hag would have expected him to say: something cruel just for the sake of hurting people.

Was it even true? Did weak people not matter? He couldn’t help but think of Deku, broken and bleeding on the ground. About All Might looking at him with that cold fury. It had mattered, then. Deku had been weak, but he had mattered anyway, and All Might had protected him. That was what heroes did, after all: protect people.

Heroes protected people.

Oh. That was the difference between heroes and villains.

It felt… a little anticlimactic, to be honest. Katsuki would have expected a great revelation, blinding lights, and a new sense of purpose. Instead, he just felt like an idiot. A bitter idiot. Yeah, heroes protected people. That was why Deku foolishly tried to extend to hand to everyone with a scraped knee. That was why All Might had helped Deku, that day. That was why the Hag had called every person she knew to find a way to get her stupid son out of the grave he had dug for himself.

That was why they all thought Katsuki would be a shitty hero, too.

He didn’t say anything. He just hunched his shoulders and kept looking at the table, because the words were stuck in his throat. He didn’t know how to say them without sounding like a bad person, and he was so tired of being considered like one.

“Oh, Katsuki,” his father sighed. “What is wrong with you? You’re like a wild animal sometimes. Not everything has to hurt, you know.”

He waited for a beat, but Katsuki didn’t speak. He just waited in silence, hoping his father would drop it. Masaru sighed, then got up, and softly patted his son’s shoulder before leaving. Katsuki let him go.

He didn’t know what was wrong with him, either.

oOoOoOo

The people from the Commission called the Hag a few days later (three days. Not that Katsuki had been counting them or anything). They wanted to meet them at some official-looking building with a training ground. Katsuki tried not to be nervous. Of course, he shouldn’t be nervous, he was the Best and he was confident in his abilities! But after the last few months, he couldn’t help but be wary.

Anyway. They met him. They made him put on some workout clothes and told him to impress them. He gleefully exploded targets on the training ground, did some parkour to chase a drone, then did some endurance training to see how resistant he was.

It felt so fucking good to let out some steam. He exploded all their targets, grinning from ear to ear, jumping and running and plummeting the shit out of their drones. His blood sang in his veins, he felt lighter and stronger than he had in months. Finally, he was back to normal; finally, he felt alive!

He didn’t fucking know how he had survived being on a leash for weeks. He was made for this shit, the fight, the adrenaline rush, the challenge, the action. He couldn’t live otherwise. Without it, the world seemed gray and lifeless, the inertia and dread a crushing weight on his chest. If he had to give up training, give up heroism, then he would be better off dead. It would be like living without ever taking a full breath of air, without being ever able to run and jump, without being free. He loved using his Quirk, he loved fighting, and he loved the thrill and the elation of it. He felt so alive.

That was who he was. That was the core of his being, the heart of Katsuki Bakugo. He couldn’t give it up. He would never give it up.

The Quirk assessment test seemed to pass in a blink, but when he checked his watch, it had been a full hour. Meanwhile, the people in charge were apparently talking with his mother. It made Katsuki anxious because, well, even if the Hag had done a good thing here, he knew she was still pissed at him. She still thought he was some kind of wannabe villain only waiting for a chance to go down the wrong path.

He should have been granted the right to speak for himself! He didn’t need her to intervene on his behalf. He was Strong, he was Powerful, and he was the Best. He didn’t need any help! If he could just explain himself-

But well, even then, would it work? Katsuki didn’t have a good explanation for why he had done all those fucked-up things to Deku and to those other extras. He didn’t have a good explanation as to why those people hadn’t mattered, why he had never considered they could be hurt, or why he had realized they could be hurt but not thought it was bad to hurt them.

He still wasn’t sure if he did.

It felt so unfair. Like the rules of the game had been changed while he wasn’t looking, and he was punished for not knowing those new rules. He wanted the world to get back to when it was simple. But it never had been that simple, had it? Katsuki had just been too sheltered to understand it.

Whatever. After they had finished his Quirk assessment, he was brought back to the main building. His mom had just finished talking with the head honcho… or whoever that tired-looking blond guy was. Whatever. The blond guy made Katsuki enter his office to talk. The Hag looked ready to argue, but in the end, she bit her tongue.

So she was afraid he would fuck it up somehow. Great. Thank you for the vote of confidence. But hey, Katsuki had wanted a chance to plead his case himself. It looked like his wish had been granted at least.

“We weren’t introduced,” said the blond man, looking at him with a completely neutral gaze. His suit was hanging off his frame and his hair stuck up in every direction like a bird’s nest. He looked like a scarecrow in hill-fitting Armani. “I am Yokumiru Mera, manager of Human Resources at the Hero Safety Public Commission. Pleased to meet you.”

“Katsuki Bakugo.” Then, after a hesitation, he added grumpily, “Please take care of me.”

“That remains to be seen,” Scarecrow-guy said. “Basically, I’m the one who’ll have the final vote on whether you’ll be admitted to our sponsorship program or not. I haven’t made up my mind yet. Not because of your performance. Quite frankly, your Quirk is stunning. And not because of your file, either. We once sponsored a kid who burned down six houses, and one other who was guilty of involuntary manslaughter. You’re not the first hero hopeful to have been violent in the past, and you won’t be the last.”

Katsuki narrowed his eyes. “So what’s the problem?”

“It’s not a problem per see. It’s only that the sponsoring program operates with the assumption that kids will go to a heroic high school. If they can’t, it’s because their environment is sabotaging them. In these rare cases, the Commission gets custody of the child and provides training, in its capacity as a guardian. You would be the first of our sponsored students to be trained by the Commission without your parents relinquishing custody.” He paused a second and frowned. “Actually…Well, you’ll be the second. The father of the first one was in prison, and we’re still in trouble over it, so it’s not a particularly good precedent.”

What the fuck? Katsuki wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole.

 “Anyway,” Scarecrow-guy picked where he left off, shaking his head. “This program is being reorganized, so it has been decided that it could be extended to voluntary enrolment. It’s not its main purpose, mind you. It’s supposed to be a second chance for children who would be otherwise destined to villainy. I will admit that when your mother contacted us, no one was very thrilled at the idea of a privileged brat worming his way here because he had squandered the multiple chances that life gave him on a silver platter.”

Katsuki bristled at the insult. His palms detonated. Not loudly, more an involuntary reflex than anything, but Scarecrow still glanced at it. Not wary, not yet, but aware. Because Katsuki’s hands were a weapon, and people didn’t trust him with them.

Not that they were completely wrong. He had fucked up in the past. And now…

Katsuki swallowed back the outraged accusation he had on the tip of his tongue. No, he couldn’t blow up now, he couldn’t ruin his chance to get into this program.

“So can I get in or not?!” he bit out.

Scarecrow shrugged.

“It’s a recent change, but yes. We can accept you. Because to put it plainly: it’s not about you. Our role is to prevent children with powerful Quirks from becoming high-class villains. That’s it. You may have squandered your chances and dug yourself into a corner, but it’s not our role to say, ‘I told you so.’ And your mother says that, although you adamantly want to become a hero, you could easily become a villain. If only because of the volatile nature of your Quirk.”

All of Katsuki’s goodwill towards his mother evaporated. That fucking bitch. Of course, she had badmouthed him to the head honcho. She always thought the worst of him.

“I won’t become a fucking villain. I will be a hero, the Number One!”

Scarecrow didn’t look very impressed.

“Many villains didn’t end up on the path because they wanted it. They were too reckless, or too violent, and they got caught; afterward, they never managed to shake off their past.”

Sound familiar? Yeah, you could bet it fucking did. That’s exactly what happened to Katsuki. He had gotten caught doing something shitty, and now people acted like it was tattooed on his fucking face. He had fucked up and he could never escape it. Not unless he started over completely.

“Why do you want to be a hero, anyway?” suddenly asked Scarecrow.

That one was easy.

“Because I want to be the best.”

“The best what?”

Katsuki blinked at him. “You know, the best! I’m gonna be Number One, even better than All Might!”

“That still doesn’t answer the question,” Scarecrow said patiently. “If what matters to you is excellence, then why not be the best piano player, or the best wrestler, or the best chef?”

“Because none of those things MATTER!”

Shit, he had blown up again. With his hands, and with his temper. Katsuki snapped his mouth shut, closed his eyes, and took several deep breaths. For almost a minute, no one talked. Katsuki felt like he was vibrating in his own skin with the need to blow up something.

“What is your plan, if you don’t get into the sponsorship program?” Scarecrow asked curiously.

Yeah, that question was doing nothing for his blood pressure.

“I don’t know! I’ll find a way!”

The man took a pensive expression.

“Hmm. I imagine you could graduate high school, train in your own time, and then pass the License Exam. But it will take a few years. You’ll have a huge disadvantage over hero students. And knowing your Quirk…” he glanced at Katsuki’s palms, and Katsuki closed his fists to stop another explosion, “and your drive… will you be able to contain yourself until then, be a model student, never look for a fight?”

He wouldn’t. It killed Katsuki to admit it, even in the secret of his own mind, but he wouldn’t. It wasn’t who he was. He didn’t know how to sit down and shut the fuck and just, not be himself, be quiet and meek like Deku, trying to make his existence smaller and unnoticeable. That wasn’t him. It felt like ants were crawling all over him if he tried to hold in his anger, his explosions, even his swearing. So, to bottle up everything for three years, until graduation? And even longer, maybe, while he trained and then passed the License Exam? Assuming that he didn’t need to find a job to support him because he wasn’t completely confident that the Hag wouldn’t toss him on the streets as soon as he hit eighteen?

Yeah, no way.

Scarecrow must have seen the answer on his face because he nodded, in agreement. Then he said flatly:

“If you join the sponsorship program, the training will be extremely rigorous. We strive to make the best heroes out there. Your problems don’t stem from a lack of power but, on the contrary, from a lack of restraint. You should be in control of your anger, not let it control you.”

That… didn’t sound like a refusal. Katsuki relaxed slightly. Then he frowned.

“So?”

“So, for you to be admitted in the program, you’ll have to pass a psych eval.”

Katsuki bristled, like every time his father had mentioned seeking a therapist. There was nothing fucking wrong with him!

“I have the results of your Quirk assessment right there,” Scarecrow said, tapping a finger on his tablet. “You aren’t without potential. But if you can’t start thinking about your actions beyond ‘attack,’ then you may as well give up any hope of being a hero. A lack of care for one’s surroundings is deadly in the field and not usually for the one who exercises that lack of care. It’s a recipe for civilian casualties, and I didn't want that on my or your conscience.”

Katsuki thought suddenly about Deku, battered and smoking, crumpled in that alley like trash, and the deadly focus in All Might’s eyes. If he had cared more about his surroundings, he wouldn’t have been caught by All Might.

But if he had cared about his surroundings, maybe he wouldn’t have attacked Deku in the first place.

There were a lot of things he wouldn’t have done if he had cared a little more about his surroundings. About how others saw him, about how they could be affected by his actions. About how it could be the difference between having a second chance or ending up completely alone. He still didn’t realize it most of the time, now, but at least he was aware that that outsider’s point of view existed, and the world wasn’t centered around him. Better late than never.

A fucking psych eval. As a matter of principle, he wanted to say no. But he refrained. Even if a shrink was useless, well, it didn’t have to mean anything. If it was a single evaluation- only this once- and if it was necessary- then maybe he could bear it. Worse came to worse, they told him to fuck off and he had nothing to lose by blowing their face off. One single eval was not a commitment.

“Fine,” he spat.

Scarecrow didn’t appear to notice his annoyance, or maybe he just didn’t care. He only raised an eyebrow.

“Good. Then, just as I told your mother, the conditions will be as follows: you will graduate middle school with top marks. We’ll arrange for your enrolment in a civilian high school next to our training facility. You will go to school and have exemplary behavior. You will live in our facility, where you will also train after school. Weekends will also be spent training. You may be sent on training trips with various heroes or with specialized teachers. All of it will be confidential. You will only be allowed to go home on holidays. At eighteen, you’ll pass your License, and you won’t be allowed to disclose the details of your training to anyone.”

That sounded pretty reasonable. And, not gonna lie, a little exciting. Being in a hero school was all well and good but apparently, with the HPSC, Katsuki would be directly involved with heroes. He would see and hear classified stuff. Hell, maybe he would be involved in real hero work before fucking graduation!

“That’s fine, too,” he said quickly.

“You’ll have to sign a lot of non-disclosure agreements,” Scarecrow warned. “Your parents, too, as your signature isn’t legally binding. It won’t be only about your training, too. It will also be about the people you will meet there.”

Katsuki grinned. He couldn’t help it.

“Heroes.”

“Yes, heroes. Your training will be handled by a retired pro-hero, with the intervention of several experts.” Then Scarecrow narrowed his eyes. “It will probably include anger management. You’re not allowed to ditch it.”

Fuck it. Katsuki glared but didn’t deign gratify him with an answer. Anger management, tch! We would see about that.

“Several alumni of the sponsorship program will also meet you,” Scarecrow added after a small hesitation. “All our graduates have an obligation of overseeing the care of our students. It’s fairly recent. I meant that if you become a hero, you will have to share this responsibility, too.”

Yeah, fat chance of that.

“Which heroes?” Katsuki asked instead.

“Hawks, Quantum. Inferno. Majestic. Snatch. Kesagiri Man. Recovery Girl. And Serpentine, who graduates this year. Anyway, you’ll see them from time to time. Everything they will say to you will be under the Heroic Identity Protection Act or HIPA. Same thing if, during your training, another pupil joins the sponsorship program. You won’t be allowed to tell anyone about them.”

Yeah, because it would be all classified shit. No kidding. Katsuki was more interested in all those names that Scarecrow-guy had dropped.

Majestic was a relatively new hero; he had opened his agency two years ago or something. Katsuki only knew about him because he had been one of Best Jeanist’s sidekicks, and he followed with attention all the Top Ten. Then there was Kesagiri Man, who was basically unknown. Was he even in the top fifty? No idea.

But Hawks, Quantum, Inferno, they were famous. Hawks was the Number Two! Quantum had been high-ranked too, before disappearing to fuck-knows-where and dropping to the twelfth spot. Inferno was ranked thirty or some shit, but he had one of the most powerful fire Quirk around. They were badass. Katsuki nodded, feeling a grin stretch his lips. Finally some good stuff.

It didn’t seem to satisfy Scarecrow. The man frowned, and says lowly:

“I want you to understand. This program is intense, not only because of its training level but also because it will completely isolate you from your peers and family. The kids we usually take on have nowhere else to go. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly.”

I have nowhere to go either, Katsuki bit his tongue, so he woudn’t lash out. I have nowhere to go if this doesn’t work out, don’t you fucking get it?! I will be a hero. I can’t stay here where they all think I’m a villain in the making. This fucking city is making me suffocate. I remember Deku everywhere. I’m pissing myself at the thought of meeting All Might again and it’s making me so fucking angry and so fucking disgusted with myself. I want the last year to have never happened, I want to go away and forget everything about it. I want a second chance. I can’t be anything if I can’t be a hero. I’ll do whatever it takes.

Honestly, if Scarecrow had requested that his parents sign over his custody to the HPSC, Katsuki would have been on board too. Maybe even more so. Actually, no scratch that; he would have signed up faster than you could blink.

Sure, it would suck to leave his father… a little, at least… but Masaru didn’t need him. And Katsuki had never really needed the Old Man, either. And he sure as hell didn’t need his mother. Frankly, the Hag would be happier once Katsuki moved out, and so would Katsuki.

“I’m not a fucking idiot,” he spat out. “I’m aware, and I still wanna do it.”

“All right. You should talk about it with your parents, still.”

“They’re the ones who reached out to you in the first place, they are fine with it!”

Scarecrow raised an eyebrow:

“I know, but you received additional information since then. Your mother reached out to us after talking with Majestic- who, by the way, is in serious trouble about telling her- with the assumption this program was similar to a simple hero course. It is not.” He paused. “She has also been warned, and you must be, too, that joining this program has consequences. The HPSC will train you to avoid you turning to villainy. So if you betray that trust and do commit a crime, even a minor one, there will be no third chances. While an ordinary hero or hero student may just lose their license, an HPSC-trained hero will lose their license and face additional sanctions. Sometimes it’s only a hefty fine. Sometimes it’s jail.”

It's your last chance, Katsuki heard loud and clear. If you fuck up that one, there’s no going back, you’ll be branded a villain for real. You’ll never be allowed to use your Quirk again.

You’ll have to be just as realistic as Deku.

“I won’t fuck up.”

“I hope you won’t. But speak with your parents. You have until the end of the month to decide.”

So Katsuki went.

He went back home with the Hag. They didn’t have to talk much about the program, anyway. The Hag was 100% on board. She didn’t know how to handle Katsuki, she was glad (and probably relieved) to make him somebody else’s problem.

The Old Man was more reluctant. He didn’t want Katsuki to leave yet. But hey, he would be back for the holidays, they should be grateful. That was basically a boarding school. Except it would be harsher, or at least Katsuki fucking expected so. He refused to be in some weak-ass school where they would coddle him like Aldera had done in the beginning. Making him believe he was untouchable. Making him careless. That was his own fault for trusting all those extras and their pandering.

The decision was made. The Hag called the HPSC to let them know. In the following days, they received a fuckton for papers to sign in the mail. Non-disclosure agreement the length of an arm, with plenty of clauses in extremely tiny letters. It took them a while to send it all back, because the Hag tried to check it all and ran out of patience, so she made Katsuki do it. He ran out of patience, too, but he was more determined than this bitch had ever been in her cushy life. He wasn’t top of his class because he was effortlessly good. He worked at it, even if it meant sitting down for hours reading, so focused that he ended up with a killer headache.

He sent back the documents. Life went on.

He was signed up for some high school in the middle of nowhere, a place named Tokushima. It was on Shikoku Island. Not the place where he would have pictured a secret training facility, to be honest; it was too removed. But whatever. He didn’t really care where the fuck this facility was. What mattered was that it existed and that it stood as far away from Musutafu as possible.

It would be a fresh, clean start. And finally, he could begin his path toward his dream. Towards becoming a hero.

He wanted to be tough. He wanted to be the Strongest, the Best. He wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way. If he had to sign up for solo training in a secret facility where they turned potential S-ranked villains into great heroes, then he had no problem with that. Who the fuck cared about having a normal high school experience?

Katsuki had always been on his own, anyway.

 He kept his part of the deal and worked twice as hard at his lessons. He found a way to pass his exams at a nearby middle school in March. As expected, he got the best marks in the prefecture.

In another life, maybe he wouldn’t have cared. It had always been a given. He would always have the best grades, the best place, and the best future. But now he had experienced what it was to be robbed of it. To be on the backfoot at every turn, to have people see your successes as unearned and your failures as expected, just because of who you were. What he had taken for granted could disappear in a blink. Nothing was ever sure. He had been stupid to believe in it.

He had never fought for his grades or his place at the top of the food chain, so of course he should have expected them to be taken. If you didn’t win something, if it was handled to you on a silver platter, then it could be taken at any time. You had to earn things if you wanted to keep them. You had to fight for it.

So this chance that the HPC was giving him? Katsuki would fight for it. He would never blindly trust the system again to raise him up. All his victories would be his, and his alone.

Three days after getting his results, he boarded the train to some place named Naruto where a Commission’s goon would pick him up. There were still almost two weeks of vacation to go, he could have spent them with his parents: but honestly, the thought almost made him gag. He was sick of them, sick of this place. Sick of watching over his shoulder for Deku, All Might, or even the purple-haired freak who had beaten him that one time. He wanted to leave and never come back.

So when the car of the Commission’s goon dropped him off on the steps of Naruto Labs, Katsuki held his head high and grinned to the sky. It wasn’t Yuhei but fuck Yuhei anyway. What he wanted was right here.

“Hello, Bakugo,” said Scarecrow with a lopsided smile. “Welcome to your new home.”

Yeah, what he wanted was right here: far away from Deku and all the ghosts from his past. A clean break, harsh training ahead, and the promise of a brilliant future that would have to be earned through blood, sweat, and tears. That was what made his heart beat faster, what made him really feel alive.

His own Hero Academia.