Chapter Text
The story of Bakugou Katsuki had been so viral at the time, there wasn’t a newspaper, magazine, TV, or radio that didn’t mention it for the next few years.
He had only turned ten that year, in the latter half of April.
And yet, on May 1st, he was found between his parents’ bloody and mutilated corpses, laid sprawled in the ground zero of their ransacked living room.
No furniture was intact— everything was torn to pieces by something resembling a large blade, and the other half were charred, clear signs of the boy’s Explosion quirk in the works.
CCTV evidence and witness accounts, as well as noise reports from neighbours who had heard the parents and their child arguing just moments before the incident allegedly occurred—
—they were all too glaringly incriminating, and there was nothing the hero association could do once the press got ahold of the scandal.
Bakugou Mitsuki was a very well renowned model. She had a strong personality that appealed to young women and men alike. She had a temper, but that brought her closer to her fans. She had a niche and enthusiastic fanbase of her own, so the news took her fandom with such devastating grievance, no one in the media were quiet about it.
Bakugou Masaru had been similarly famous in the fashion world, where he had a very pleasant reputation and name among the people he worked with. There wasn’t a soul in the industry that didn’t speak of his enduring work ethic with fondness. Needless to say, the world mourned his loss greatly.
Bakugou Katsuki was arrested for the murder of his parents when he was just ten.
Although the law states he may not be held accountable for his actions as someone underage, both jury and public defence had demanded the unstable, villainous child be sentenced to a penance facility with guarantees he would never get out again.
No one came to his defense.
And thus, Katsuki was sentenced to the death penalty, and sent to Deadman Wonderland, Japan’s only privatized prison.
“Stop it! Kacchan didn’t do it!”
How miserable was his life, that the only person on his side now was the childhood friend he’d pushed away so many years ago after finding out he was quirkless?
How fucking miserable is this existence?
“Kacchan!”
Midoriya Izuku wasn’t allowed to get anywhere near him. He’d wrestled through the guards to get here— what an idiot. He’s so tiny, he’s so weak, what the hell is he doing?
Katsuki is weighed down by quirk-suppressing cuffs so thick, he can’t even lift his arms. His fingers are numb from the bare minimum of blood flor allowed through them. He’s surrounded by people spitting out his curses and little by little, Deku’s voice is fading off into the cacophony.
He can’t even cover his ears.
Two armed guards stand behind him. They reach for their tasers the second Katsuki even twitches. They’ve already decided he’s guilty.
He’s already shouted his own voice hoarse yesterday, but still, no one gives him the time of day.
I didn’t do it.
I really didn’t.
Does anything really matter anymore, at this point?
“Kacchan! Look at me!”
Katsuki deigns him with a glance.
Izuku’s eyes are red and clearly filled with tears. He’s getting dragged away, but he’s bitten his lips raw. He’s still fighting.
“You didn’t do it! Tell me you didn’t do it. I don’t know why everyone’s saying this about you, but I know you would never do it!”
(Just tell me you didn’t do it.)
(Even if the world’s against you, I’d believe you.)
Because Midoriya Izuku is just that much of an absolute idiot.
Katsuki’s breath comes out in a resigned heave. Ah, he’s so annoying. He’s so stupid. He’s so headstrong and pointlessly kind, that’s exactly why Katsuki hates him so fucking much.
“Just,”
The guards whipped out their tasers so fast, but they don’t shoot just yet. How ridiculous. They’re acting like Katsuki can still do anything by just speaking.
Katsuki laughed.
It’s all so pathetic. He’s such a miserable existence.
“Just get the fuck out of my sight, Deku.”
Izuku’s eyes had widened then. Whether in shock, or surprise— Katsuki wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t know why Izuku had looked so heartbroken that day.
(He would never know what Izuku was seeing.)
(He would never know that it had been the first time Izuku had seen such a crestfallen, shattered smile on Katsuki’s face. He would never know the seething anger that rose and boiled and bubbled over when Izuku saw that expression on Katsuki's face.)
(Bakugou Katsuki had always been proud, and strong, and a hero, even to little Izuku.)
(At that moment, all Izuku had seen was a helpless boy, who no hero tried to save.)
Honestly, Katsuki had no idea when he’d noticed it. His quirk— the sweat he secretes is nitroglycerin, and he has the ability to make them spark. As he grew older, it got more lethal, but his control also improved.
It was only supposed to be sweat.
And yet, at some point, he realized that his blood, too, sparked. And it sparked, so much worse. It pierced, each particle of water flying apart like a firecracker and shredding through all it touched, leaving a dark aftermath of soot.
He wasn’t sure when it started.
Maybe it was after the Great Tokyo Earthquake.
His blood came to life, and when he willed it— it pierced, and sparked, and exploded. He was so proud of his quirk that he used it any chance he got. Everyone was proud of him, his parents included.
But on that day, he had cut himself while helping to make dinner.
And his blood had exploded on the chopping board, and one of the shards had split his mother’s face down the cheek, blown a gash through his own arm, and nearly took out his father’s eye.
The explosion caused by his sweat was nothing compared to this. They realized, much too immediately, just how dangerous it was. And Mitsuki had been so terrified, so upset about the implications— that her composure frayed with worry because oh my god Katsuki. Katsuki, did the explosion hit you? What did you do? How —
—and Katsuki, so terrified he’d done something wrong, argued back loudly. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything. Why are you so mad at me, I didn’t do anything wrong—
Maybe everyone’s right.
Maybe he did kill his parents.
He can’t quite remember the exact events all that well. All he knew was that he was the only one that survived, and it was obvious who in the family had powers to do that amount of damage in an instant.
But he didn’t do it.
He loved his parents.
He loved what he had.
Why did it have to all come crumbling down?
He’s inmate No.2859.
Deadman Wonderland is a prison in its epicentre, but an amusement park to the general public.
He’s made to play games to amuse a crowd. He runs the obstacle courses where real blades swing down and real fire burns under his feet. He is made to run on his feet like a monkey as people pile up behind him, crash into each other, and scream in desperation as they struggle their hardest to live.
Each time someone dies, the crowd—
—ah, the crowd.
There’s such a big crowd, of people, children, adults, field trip students, tourists, anyone. It’s even streamed on Live TV.
“Hey, that’s the child that murdered his parents! Bakugou Katsuki!”
“For real?!”
“Kill him! Shove him in the pit! Come on, what are you all doing?!”
“Kill that tiny monster! Squish him under!!”
“Do it, do it! Kick him and send him flying! No one will blame you!”
People are cheering. It’s uproarious here, everyone hooting at the sight of a man getting speared in half. Everyone hollers for the next one to fall off the platforms into the pit of spikes beneath. Everyone anticipates the moment someone is blown to shreds by the cannons.
They think it’s just bizarre special effects. Doesn't everyone love a little gore, every now and then? Even if it’s real, who cares? These are all heinous criminals on death row. They’re all in prison for a reason.
Katsuki ignores it all and runs.
He has to win this.
He has to earn points and survive here. The collar around his neck injects a poison in his veins that’ll kill him in three days. The Candy antidote is overpriced in the damn store, and every dose of it suppresses his quirk, too.
How laughable.
He’d made fun of Izuku so much for being quirkless, and now, here he is, making himself one, just to live another three days.
Every once in a while, there are a few in a crowd that don’t like it as much. Some are just queasy for blood, others are disgusted by human anatomy.
But a few are sincerely horrified, because they had no idea that this was what they had signed up for. It’s usually students on field trips. Katsuki wonders, sometimes, if he’d have been on a school trip here, too, if everything hadn’t happened.
He gets a good look at them when he’s declared first place, bound to the podium with shackles, muzzles, and weighted chains as the world marvels .
There’s a girl in there with pink skin. She’s beside a similarly mortified black-haired boy as their friends blindly cheered on. Their eyes never leave Katsuki’s even when Katsuki meets them dead in the eye. They only grow wide with surprise, and then, Katsuki looks away.
Someone with purple hair. With a glare like that Katsuki just knows he’s had his fair share of villain accusations, just like Katsuki used to have before he was incriminated. He’s young, too, and he’s looking at Katsuki with a sort of vitriol-filled resolve. Like he’s determined not to end up the same way.
Maybe Katsuki’s projecting, but good luck, buddy.
And then, he finds him.
Katsuki sees, in the crest of the crowd, unmoving, still, and with a face streaked with tears— Midoriya Izuku watches him, frighteningly still. Katsuki knows that stupid crying face but right now— it’s nothing miserable or ugly or silly.
His crying face isn’t scrunched up with sadness or pain.
It’s set firmly on his features with pure, raw, unadulterated anger .
And Katsuki nearly loses his shit right then and there. He wanted to screech at the crowd, he tugs against his restraints and a wave of electricity blows his senses haywire with ten thousand joules of agony.
He can’t shout when his mouth is bolted shut.
What the fuck are you doing here, Deku?
What the fuck are you doing here?
“Our youngest inmate and newest CHAMPION of the DOG RACE! BAKUGOU KATSUKI!”
He’s presented to the crowd.
And they roar, cheering out loudly. It’s joyful.
Joyful demands that that’s fucking awesome ! And someone dethrone him quickly! Make him earn his damn death, make that kid suffer as much as he can before he dies!
Because, surely, this murderer must suffer proportionately as his parents when he killed them. Let him be paraded around as a wild mutt that bites the hand that feeds him, just as he’s proven himself to be.
Work him to the bone in this amusement park, for the entertainment of the world.
And may his death be glorious.
“You’re what we call a Deadman, you see.”
Tied down to the operating table, something lodged in his chest to monitor his heart— he’s introduced to the Carnival of Corpses.
“You were hiding it well, kid. Your quirk made us unsure for a bit, and because of your age and notoriety, it took me a while to find an excuse to send you down here,” the director of the prison cackled. “Well, don’t worry about it anymore, kid. From now on, you’ll be with others just like you.”
Up there, people fight in sick obstacle courses and perform in death-defying park attractions. They risk their lives for the amusement of the media and the crowd, just for some measly points, just to live another day.
Down here, with others whose blood has a life of their own— Katsuki will be fighting like a dog in a ring. There will be gamblers, and earnings will be tremendous. Candy will be per victory, and he’ll never have to look away from kids his age in the crowd anymore.
“Bakugou Katsuki. This is what the world will hear of him: Before the execution could even take place, he was caught up in a brutal disagreement with adult inmates in the cafeteria. The altercation lasted several hours before any guards could find him, but by then, he was already dead.”
They’re going to fake his death. People will talk about this for a very long time, and ultimately, they will forget about him. Some may even celebrate the justice that was served. They may praise the people who supposedly enacted the deed.
And then, he’ll never see the light of the outside world again, because he’ll become a plaything in the underground, existing only to entertain.
Maybe this is better. Viewers of this underground carnival are anonymous. He’ll never have to look at the despicable faces of people enjoying suffering ever again. He’ll never have to accidentally find Deku’s face in the crowd again.
He’ll never have to look at the blue sky, only to be disappointed when All Might fails to descend and save him from this place.
“You’ll be down there, in Ward G underneath the general cells, and the outside world will never know you exist ever again.”
Katsuki’s normality was ripped away from him when he was ten. Plunged into ‘absurdity’— he simply survived in this irrational reality he found himself in.
He was only barely twelve, when he was transferred to Ward G.
And, as the Shrike, he continued fighting.
Candy suppresses quirks, but it doesn’t affect his ability to control and burst his blood— down here, they call it the Branch of Sin.
“Sin, huh,” Katsuki murmured to himself, unrolling the wrapper and slotting the bitter, bitter candy into his mouth. “Fits, I guess.”
Everyone down here uses their blood— their sin — differently.
Condor’s blood is flammable. Crow has claws, sharp as a scythe. Game Fowl’s blood hardens like armor around her fists, and with them, she can even break steel. Owl gathers them into orbs, and when they explode, it leaves nothing behind.
Katsuki’s blood can’t explode as strongly. His quirk’s still gone, after all.
But what it can do is burst, spurt out sharply, like an exploding spike. Like a hedgehog. Even if the blood’s cold on the ground, a snap of his finger reawakens its instincts to explode. Instincts suppressed by Candy, yet never forgotten.
Even if it’s cold on the ground, on his clothes, on his opponents’ face—
—a snap of his fingers, and his blood rips everything apart.
This is his Sin.
“Do you know what the Shrike is also called?”
It is down in that hellhole that Katsuki meets the Bluejay.
With hair a shock of white, and skin burned into a permanent yet hollow patchwork smile, the inmate named Dabi was amiable to him.
It was after Katsuki’s first Carnival win. He’d been throwing up in the toilet after witnessing the punishment his opponent had to go through and—
—and, well, someone’s broken into his room with a bottle of chilled water.
“The Butcherbird!” Dabi helpfully enlightens him. “Saw your fight. Honestly, you should’ve broken his neck a little more to the right. Then he wouldn’t have had to go through the punishment. The doctor’s pretty mean.”
‘Pretty mean’ is a weird way to phrase ‘that bitch will tear out your tongue while you’re awake without anaesthetic strapped to a surgical table and she will orgasm to your screams of agony’, but Katsuki will digress. Did they have to play it live? Did they have to strap mics to that chair so everyone gets a full frontal of every gasp and heave and wail? Maybe.
(He couldn’t look away, and now it just won’t leave his mind.)
“I don’t care,” he croaks.
At least Dabi is being a distraction, and the water is nice, but Katsuki’s crying from how much vomiting hurts and maybe that’s childish. Someone just had their tongue ripped out because of him, does he really have the right to cry about acid reflux?
The Bluejay’s branch of sin forms like the circular blade of a chainsaw, sprouting from every single one of those patchwork-like scarpoints on his body. Including his face.
It’s vile, to keep opening such tender wounds, over and over.
How is he still alive?
(But then again, who here isn’t at least a little absurd?)
“Awwwh, he’s so cute! We’ve not had someone so young before! How old are you?”
“Don’t touch me, Silky.”
In Ward G, you have to fight in the Carnival of Corpses every once in a while. But, otherwise, anything goes. The points you earn from fighting in the ring can be used to buy anything you want from the store.
You’re allowed to do anything here, except escape. (Because it’s not like that’s possible, anyways.) You can buy anything, knives, tobacco, drugs, even— The only thing Ward G cannot buy? Time off your sentence.
They’re all dead to the world, so there’s no time to buy, anyways.
Hence: Chaplin, token drag queen of the Ward. Most personable inmate you’ll find around. She seizes Katsuki within two days of his arrival and promptly invites him for the big Ward G welcoming party.
“Oh, twelve! I remember it said you were twelve. So you’re a teenager now! Oh my god you’re a teenager! That’s cause for celebration!”
Right.
Fucking weirdos.
“Here! You’re a big boy now, so you can have alcohol.”
What the fuck? But then again, this is prison. Who lets prisoners have as much alcohol as their Cast Points can buy? Right, Ward G, where all the sinners gather.
Well.
Katsuki’s life is absurd enough.
Nothing can surprise him anymore.
“You’ve been staring at that a while. You want it, or something?”
He’s the youngest, so it stands to reason no one can leave him alone. Katsuki doesn’t want to stay holed up in his room— he does morning runs through the block, he’s already at enough of a disadvantage just being younger and smaller than everyone— so he goes to the store, even though everything is insanely expensive.
Dabi the Bluejay, however, is just a menace.
Katsuki bristles and shoves him off. “Piss off, Patchwork!” he snarls, “stop fucking stalking me, all of you are so damn annoying!”
Dabi chuckles. “Nothing’s embarrassing about liking All Might. Honestly, they set the price for that poster waayyy too damn high. I can get it for you though, I just won against Condor the other day and they bet like crazy against me just because my body’s in three hundred pieces, so I’m loaded.”
Nothing embarrassing?
What silly boy in this situation still likes heroes? They’ve never come to save him in his life and he isn’t expecting it to start now. It’s almost stupid how he still wants to look up to All Might. To the idea of All Might. How he still wants to be a hero, just like All Might.
Right now, Katsuki is all of a juxtaposition to a grand hero.
He’s never wanted to be a villain. And yet, he’ll go down in history as a young, horrible child that killed his parents over some silly disagreement in their own home.
(Katsuki can’t be a hero anymore. So why is he still coveting the light they stand under?)
“Shut the fuck up, I don’t want no shit and no fucking charity from any of you loons!”
Dabi doesn’t seem impressed by the yelling.
Instead, he pauses for just a moment.
Then, he starts again, “so do you want it, or not?”
Yeah. Blame Katsuki for the explosion in the store. He shredded through half the products and chased Dabi right out in a trail of spiked gungnirs, but god damn it if Dabi would stop fucking laughing and sauntering across the ward floors—!!!
How is he dodging so damn well?!
He finds the All Might poster on his bed afterward, but since he was too anemic to throw it out, he decided to pin it on the wall instead.
He swears it’s only because he was too fucking anemic, okay?
The only information they get from the outside world is limited to the live TV that only broadcasts old cable and prime time news. They don’t have the internet. They are, in the end, prisoners.
But even then, new posters show up all the time. New heroes, villains, merchandise—
—Katsuki’s taken to filling his room with them. Every once in a while there will be a new one in his collection he doesn’t remember buying, but he figured Dabi and Chaplin have colluded to get him things.
“Look, Katsuki-kun! This one’s cute!”
For fuck’s sa— he needs to invest in locks that Chaplin can’t break. This is getting ridiculous.
—”what even is that?”
He doesn’t recognize this hero. It’s a plushie. The hood with lopped bunny ears hangs lowly over their face, the cut of a spiked, flamboyant masquerade mask sewn over where his eyes were meant to be. The rest of the costume was basically a green full-bodied trench coat, and then bright red sneakers.
His sleeves were long, but at his wrist they burst upward with a poofy, red and orange fabric, beginning as spikes and trailing up the sleeve as flame patterns.
And most of all, this plushie— a sitting plushie, by the way— had an oversized grenade sewn into its lap . A very familiar grenade Katsuki once spent days and weeks scribbling when he was a child.
“Apparently, this cutie’s a new vigilante that came up recently,” Chaplin tells him. “I saw him in a magazine the other day.”
Katsuki perks right up at that.
A magazine?
“They’re called Havoc Hare.”
“What,” Katsuki is utterly impressed by how villainous that sounds. He didn’t think Deku had it in him. “He’s a villain?”
“A vigilante!”
“What vigilante uses a name as creepy as that?”
Because yeah, this is definitely him. This is definitely that idiot, down to the cringey rabbit theme to the totting around a giant grenade replica of what Katsuki planned to have for his hero costume. What the fuck is he doing?
Also, how did he get popular enough to have merchandise?
“He’s pretty cool, you know?” Chaplin’s very fascinated as she tells him all she’s learned. “Apparently, he makes his own weapons, and no one’s seen him use a quirk yet. His main weapons are bombs, and that big bomb is his favourite. It’s usually either smoke or glitter, though, because he’s not trying to kill people here. He leaves one behind each time he shows up, it’s how people know he did things!”
What the hell. What a menace.
But—
—but Havoc Hare is making itself known out there.
Even though Katsuki’s stuck in here.
What a cheesy fucking bastard.
Just when Katsuki thinks he’s getting used to this place, it comes back to bite.
“Nice to finally fight you, Shrike,” his official codename is Crow, but this guy is a Weasel if Katsuki has anything to say about it, “no hard feelings, yeah?”
Katsuki had no winning chance. The matchup just wasn’t to him.
Katsuki ran for the first hit, but Crow sliced through him first, scythes of blood preening forth from his arms. It ripped gashes through Katsuki’s body just how he wanted it to, and Katsuki had spun around hand outstretched—
—snap!
The blood had exploded right on Crow’s face, arm, and size. And yet, he only flinched back from the impact before laughing. The burst had burned the blood away, searing through a wound on his cheek, but didn’t quite do much else.
“Pretty weak explosion, honestly,” Crow had mocked him. “Pretty wasteful of your blood, though. You gotta learn how to budget, or you’ll die of anemia first.”
Oh, shut the fuck up.
If Katsuki could use his damn quirk—
—agh, that doesn’t matter, does it?
Katsuki roars, lunging ahead, and Crow laughed invitingly.
He willed the blood coating ahis fist into a spear, but the punch doesn’t land. He slides his bare feet through some blood on the ground and willed it to sharpen just as he swung it through Crow’s jaw. That one landed. Split his lower jaw right in two along with his tongue.
But Crow’s arms are outstretched, crossed over each other.
Katsuki, unbalanced on one leg, has no time to dodge the blades of blood that spread from Crow’s arms, extending into javelins toward the ground on either sides of him.
Ah. He’s been boxed in.
“Branch of Sin: Crow’s Claw.”
Katsuki saw the whips of blood sever his leg before he felt it.
“I want the Ultra-Hot-Regret-Your-Life Laksa. With extra chilli peppers.”
“And I want extra-extra-extra large Tonkotsu Ramen with extra toppings! You can put both of these on my tab, by the way.”
Katsuki yelps when someone puts an elbow on his head. The robot simply beeps out an affirmation before heading toward the kitchen, and Katsuki is feeling very fucking homicidal today.
Unfortunately, he’s on a crutch, (thankfully, they managed to sew his leg back together,) has a hole in his gut, and he’s trying his fucking best ot forget about the awake dissection he just fucking went through.
“You sure you should be eatin’ that, though? You just lost a stomach, right?” Crow is apparently here to just rub his victory in. What an utter asshole.
“I lost my fucking gall bladder. I can live without it.”
“For real?” Crow then turns around, “ah, is everyone here? I won, so tonight’s first round of beer’s on me!”
There’s a round of cheers.
“Coward, take the whole night’s tab!”
“Absolutely not!” Crow snaps back, “Masu will eat the damn bar I’m not paying for that!”
Katsuki sighs, He reaches for his food once it’s ready, but Crow picks it up for him on one arm. It’s fortunate, because Katsuki’s already struggling with the crutch, but he can’t help but feel like this is mockery.
They sit beside Chaplin and Dabi, and they chat it up like nothing’s wrong.
It feels sick in the stomach to know they were all probably watching the Penalty Game he went through just moments ago. And yet now, they were all hanging out together, like nothing was wrong.
But then again, Katsuki also gathered to watch their Penalty games, so it’s fair.
This was just the kind of place Deadman Wonderland was.
If you win, you get to live as comfortably as you want. You can have loads of hero merchandise, a complete anime CD collection, musical instruments tuned for a professional band, a garden of flowers or even luxurious makeup products—
—but if you lose, you donate a body part to human experimentation.
Joy.
Katsuki doesn’t win easily at all. He’s smaller than everyone, but he’s not any more nimble than them. And they’ve all got years upon him in these fights when it comes to using their blood to fight.
Owl’s abilities are similar to his. Explosions.
He gathers them into an orb— and once you’re surrounded, it’s over. They blow up, one after another.
Katsuki is just a little explosion resistant, because of the nature of his quirk even though it’s deactivated. That did nothing to alleviate the sheer magnitude of this Branch of Sin— Owl’s Eyeballs. Those things were like miniature atomic bombs.
“I’m really sorry,” Owl had told him, as Katsuki lay on the ground with a hole in his gut, unable to stand up. He takes Katsuki’s hands in his, as some form of comfort, as the match is called. “I can’t afford to lose any more organs, either. I promise you’ll be okay.”
He seemed genuinely regretful to have won.
So regretful, Katsuki couldn’t even get mad. Owl was wholeheartedly apologetic, and his promise was sincere, from the bottom of his heart, and full of prayers. Even as Katsuki later lost his right hand to the Penalty Game, he thought mildly, it could be worse.
Katsuki wonders if this is what a fatherly person feels like.
He’d forgotten how that felt, already.
(That was also the first, and last time Katsuki heard Owl’s voice.)
(The mechanical voice box that replaced his functions after the Penalty Game took his vocal chords— it just didn’t have the same warmth.)
(Kind of a shame that the undertakers had to set him up against his wife like that. One kind man in this place and they broke him anyways.)
Owl’s been very doting recently.
“I’m really so sorry, Katsuki-kun,” the mechanical voice is so damn weird, but it’s a wonder this man is still so cheerful after his wife died. “If there’s anything you’re struggling with because of your hand, I can help.”
Not really. He was gone for a while, he ran fucking wild. And then, he came to his senses, his mind broke, and here he was again.
Owl’s sitting by his bedside, peeling an apple for him.
Katsuki is buried in hero plushies. Some of them are duplicates but he thinks Owl just scooped a whole shelf off and called it a haul.
Katsuki just wants to relearn how to write with his left hand in peace, but apparently, Owl likes him now.
“Both our Branch of Sins explode. So, in a way, you’re like me,” he insists.
And when Owl pats him on the head, Katsuki wonders if his father used to do this for him, too.
He can’t remember anymore.
“Katsuki there’s a newbie, do you want to meet her or— oh my god that is the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
Katsuki rises woozily to Chaplin having broken into his room again.
He realizes belatedly, but he’d exchanged his pillow last night for the super XL sized Havoc Hare NESOBERI that Owl had gotten for him. And the bedframe lining the wall had just enough space for him to line up the many Sitting Cuties of Havoc Hare that he’d been collecting.
In his defense, Havoc Hare did not need to come up with so many versions of his costume that people started making plushies of every single one. That’s so fucking annoying. Now Katsuki had to get all of them, he wasn’t a coward.
“You really love the guy, huh?” Chaplin looks a moment from absolutely squealing.
Katsuki is going to kill everyone in this place and then himself.
There’s a newbie. She’s the Hummingbird, and she’s just a few years older than Katsuki.
Katsuki’s fourteen, at this point. She’s sixteen. It’s the youngest that Ward G has had in a while, and just like Katsuki, she’s here under the charge of killing her father.
“I killed them both. People just don’t know I killed my mother because I did it back then when the earthquake happened.”
She says, as they gather for her welcome party and watch her opponent lose the roulette too badly and get his heart gouged out.
“Oh, mood ,” someone calls out with a laugh.
“How nice, I wish I could get away with murdering people that piss me off too,” Chaplin sighs drearily. “Have I told you who I killed yet? So, there was this homophobic bitch, right? And then my cheating ex-boyfriend apparently was only dating me for my money. Walked in on them together! So, what else was I supposed to do?”
“Oh damnnn,” Crow says, “rough one, buddy.”
Rough one, buddy, indeed.
“At least you’re not like Dabi,” Hitara says. “He turned himself in.”
“What?”
“ What?”
To which Dabi simply shrugs, “hey, they said they’d keep me alive with their freaky tech.”
“Wait, that story about you burning alive to your own quirk was true? That wasn’t just a horror story you made up to freak us out?”
“Oh, absolutely, it was true,” Dabi says, “down to the part where some mysterious freako picked me up and tried to weaponize me as his successor or some shit. Nuh-uh, I’d rather be an untouchable test tube baby down here with my fellow freaks in the birdcage, thank you.”
“Dabi dear, I am so worried for you. What the fuck.”
Everyone here lives a life of concocted indulgence. This very thing that’s keeping them alive right now is the very same thing that threw their life into utter miserable absurdity. For some, the Branch of Sin threw their lives off the rails. For others, their lives were disastrous to begin with, and their powers gave them an escape in an even worser direction. They still went for it anyway, because anything was better than then.
Absurdity is their new reality.
Katsuki hates how he’s gotten used to it.