Chapter Text
The air in the alley tasted of rust and copper. Katsuki’s lungs burned, each breath scraping his throat raw. Ahead of him, the green-haired kid ran like a wounded animal—feet slapping against the cracked concrete, leaving smears of crimson behind him.
“Your damn feet!” Katsuki snarled, the words tearing out of him.
The kid didn’t look back. He was covered in grime and old, dried blood, but his bare soles were freshly torn, wet and glistening. Every step painted another betraying mark on the ground. Even from here, Katsuki could hear the heavy, synchronized boots of the Enforcers gaining, echoing off the close walls of the narrow passage.
The boy glanced over his shoulder mid-stride, eyes wide and green as shattered glass. He looked down, seemed like the idea had only just occurred to him, and in a panic, swiped at his own foot with his hand while still running. He stumbled, arms wheeling.
“Idiot!” Katsuki hissed.
Katsuki surged forward and closed the distance in two brutal strides. Before the kid could fall, Katsuki ducked, hooked an arm around his waist, and hauled him up and over his shoulder in a clumsy fireman’s carry. The boy yelped—a sound of pure, startled shock—before his body went rigid.
Katsuki staggered, adjusting to the sudden weight. His arms locked like vices around the kid’s legs, fingers digging into the filthy fabric of his pants. He found his balance and pushed forward, legs pumping.
“They’re—” the boy gasped, voice trembling, muffled against Katsuki’s back. “They’re right behind us—”
“No shit!” Katsuki barked, louder than he meant to. He veered sharply left into a tighter alley, garbage cans blurring past.
The kid’s hands fisted in the back of his shirt, holding on for dear life. “Run faster!” the boy pleaded, voice cracking.
“You can’t outrun this!” A shout rang out behind them, “Drop the outsider and get on the ground!”
“Halt!” Another voice followed, amplified by helmets and authority. “By order of the kingdom enforcement! Halt or we will open fire!”
The threat wasn’t empty. Katsuki had seen the shock-prods, the nets. His heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted to escape. He cursed, a raw, filthy word that got lost in the wind of his own sprint.
“The roofs!” the boy suddenly blurted, his panic pitching the words into a near-shriek. It bounced off the brick walls. “The roofs—!”
Katsuki flinched, his shoulders tightening. “Stop yelling! You’re giving me a headache and telling them exactly where the fuck we are!”
“I’m helping!”
“You’re navigating! I’m running!”
“I said the roofs!”
“I know!” Katsuki snapped, skidding around another corner. “You think I’m headed for a bar?! I was already heading for the damn roofs!” His eyes scanned the looming walls. The buildings here were old, stacked close like rotten teeth. Pipes, cracked ledges, boarded-up windows. There—a dumpster shoved against a wall, just beneath a ladder that was rusted and pulled up six feet off the ground.
He didn’t break stride. He skidded to a stop by the dumpster, the kid jolting on his shoulder. “Up! Now!” Katsuki ordered, heaving the boy off his shoulder and onto the dumpster’s lid.
The kid scrambled, hands slipping on the wet metal. Katsuki placed his hands on the edge of the dumpster and vaulted up, boots scraping for purchase. He stood, balancing precariously, and reached for the bottom rung of the ladder. It was just beyond his fingertips.
“Boost me!” the kid said, already trying to climb Katsuki like a tree.
“What do you think I’m—ugh, fine!” Katsuki interlaced his fingers, creating a step. The boy planted a bloody foot in his hands, and Katsuki heaved with a grunt. The kid caught the ladder, his weight pulling it down with a screech of protesting metal.
Katsuki glanced back down the alley. A shadow filled the far end, bulky and armored. An Enforcer. The visored helmet turned, spotting them.
“Hurry up!” Katsuki yelled, leaping to grab the now-lowered ladder.
The kid was climbing, slow and terrified. Katsuki hauled himself up after him, rung by rung. Just as Katsuki’s waist cleared the top of the dumpster, a gloved hand shot out and clamped around his ankle like a steel trap.
Katsuki snarled, panic flaring white-hot as he kicked hard, desperately, heel connecting with armor. “Let go!”
The Enforcer’s grip was inhumanly strong. He started to pull, slowly, relentlessly. The amplified voice was calm, sinister from so close. “Cease resistance. It’s easier if you cease. The longer you struggle, the worse it will be for you. We have the area surrounded. There is no ‘roof’ to run to, Bakugou Katsuki.”
Katsuki thrashed, the fear was a physical thing now, choking him. “Get—OFF—!” He kicked again, his free heel connecting with the armored shoulder, but it was like kicking a wall. The Enforcer’s other hand came up, reaching for his leg.
Then, from above, a shadow fell. A heavy, clay flowerpot—dirt, dried roots, and all—sailed down from the roof’s edge. It didn’t hit the Enforcer’s head squarely, but it exploded against the top of his helmet. Dirt and ceramic shards showered the visor. The Enforcer yelped in surprise and pain, his grip instinctively loosening as he brought his hand up to his helmet, trying to clear his vision.
It was all the opening Katsuki needed. He ripped his foot free, scrambled up the last few rungs, and tumbled over the parapet onto the gravel-covered roof. He lay there for half a second, gasping, before rolling onto his knees.
The green-haired kid stood a few feet away, panting, hands empty. He stared at the edge where the pot had gone over, then back at Katsuki, his expression a mix of shock and dawning horror at what he’d just done.
Below, they could hear the Enforcer cursing, shouting to his colleagues. “Targets have ascended to the rooftop! Sector Gamma-4! Move to intercept!”
Katsuki pushed himself to his feet, his legs shaky. He looked at the kid—pale, bleeding, eyes wide with the same adrenaline crash that was making Katsuki’s hands tremble.
“Come on,” Katsuki said, his voice rough but quieter now. The roofscape stretched before them, a jagged, uneven path of tiles and gaps leading toward unknown distant. “We’re not off yet.”
He turned and started running again, a slower, more careful jog across the uneven terrain. After a heartbeat’s hesitation, the sound of bare, bloody feet followed him.
…
The air in Ironhold was a thick, tangible thing. Even here, on the rooftops that scraped against the belly of the mountain, it was not free. It was air that had been breathed a thousand times before, heavy with the smell of damp stone, forge-smoke, and the close-pressed scent of too many bodies living in a stone gullet.
Ironhold wasn’t built on the mountain; it was carved from its heart. The city was a colossal, vertical chasm, its tiers and walkways etched into the rock face, its roof the unforgiving mountain itself. True moonlight was a myth here, a story told to children. Only slender, artificial shafts—ventilation channels carved through miles of solid rock—allowed spears of cold, silver-blue light to pierce the perpetual twilight. They cut through the gloom like celestial blades, illuminating swirling motes of dust and steam, creating pools of stark light in an ocean of shadow.
And somewhere on those suffocating rooftops, under tons of unyielding rock and law and fear, Midoriya Izuku was losing a silent, desperate race.
The rooftops were not flat plains. They were a chaotic, treacherous maze of uneven stone slabs, steeply pitched shale, sudden drops into chimney stacks, and narrow bridges spanning abyssal gaps between buildings. Rooftops merged into terraces, which dropped into gutters wide enough to swallow a man, which led to other, lower roofs. It was a jagged, three-dimensional labyrinth where a single misstep meant a long, silent fall into a dark alley far below.
Ahead of him, a figure moved through this insanity with a fluid, terrifying grace. Cloaked in deep, non-descript grey, the blonde boy was a ghost. He was a ripple of motion against the static stone. He’d plant a foot on a sloping tile, use the momentum to pivot, his cloak whipping around him as he leapt a two-meter gap without breaking stride. He’d slide down a rain-slicked gargoyle, land in a roll on a lower ledge, and be sprinting again before Izuku had even decided how to navigate the drop. The cloak hid his form, his face, everything but the fleeting glimpses of pale, spiky hair. He was an idea of motion, unstoppable and alien.
Izuku, by contrast, was a symphony of panic. His breaths came in ragged, burning gasps of the thick air. He scrambled, slipped, caught himself on rough stone, his palms scraping raw. He calculated every jump with a frantic, mental delay the blonde clearly didn’t possess. The distance between them wasn’t just growing; it was becoming a verdict. He was going to lose him in this stone maze, and then he’d be alone, lost on the roofs, with the guards undoubtedly sealing the ground below.
“Careful here.” The voice, slightly muffled by the distance and the cloth, was unexpectedly sharp, a crack of command in the gloom.
Izuku’s foot, searching for purchase on what looked like solid roofing, found only loose scree. He yelped, his balance evaporating. The world tilted, the dark alleyway yawning up to meet him. Then, a vice-like grip clamped around his forearm, yanking him back onto the relative safety of a wider ledge. The blonde had doubled back, impossibly fast, his grip firm and hot even through Izuku’s sleeve.
For a second, they were close. Izuku could see the shadowed hollows of a hood, the sharp line of a jaw, the faint gleam of narrowed eyes assessing him with impatience, not concern.
“Aren’t… aren’t we supposed to be moving faster?” Izuku panted, his heart hammering against his ribs. The question slipped out before he could stop it—dragged loose by burning lungs and legs that felt two seconds from giving out. Saying it felt almost rude, like challenging gravity itself. He was already struggling just to keep up with what the blonde apparently considered walking.
The blonde released his arm as if burned. “Sure. If you wanna decorate the cobbles down there, be my guest. Go faster.”
“The guards,” Izuku wheezed, gesturing vaguely behind them. “They’ll follow.”
The laugh that came from the hood was short, dry, and brimming with a confidence so potent Izuku could feel it across the foot of space between them. “They won’t.”
“But—”
“They won’t,” he repeated, the finality like a slamming door. “Unless some suicidal moron with a death wish wants to break every bone in his body. Or worse. The one who got a good look at me? He guessed who I was the second I aimed for the roofs. They don’t sacrifice pawns chasing a ghost into his own territory. Not when they know the score.” He turned his head, and Izuku imagined a fierce, feral grin under the shadow. “This is my territory. No one with a shred of sense dares to come up here.”
Then he began to move again, but differently now. Slower. Deliberate. It wasn’t a concession; it was a recalibration, a predator adjusting to the pace of its clumsy cub. He chose clearer paths, waited a half-beat at jumps.
“This place is a maze they don’t bother to memorize,” he continued, his voice a low commentary as they navigated a spine of stone between two buildings. “Enforcers patrol routes where people are. On the ground. In the tunnels. You ever see a copper walking a beat on a rooftop?”
Izuku swallowed, the sound loud in his ears. To be fair, no. He hadn’t. Not even back in Musutafu, where the roofs were gentle, tiled things, meant for laundry lines and stray cats. Guards walked the clean, well-lit streets. The idea of patrolling these insane, vertiginous cliffs of stone and tile was ludicrous. Only someone insane, or desperate, or both, would be up here. Which, he thought with a sinking feeling, described him and his enigmatic savior perfectly.
A wave of homesickness, sharp and sudden, hit him then. He missed the open sky of Musutafu, the smell of the sea on the wind, the way dusk painted everything in warm oranges and purples, not this eternal, vent-sliced twilight.
The silence stretched, filled only by the scuff of Katsuki’s boots and the distant, metallic hum of the city below.
“My name is Izuku, by the way,” Izuku offered, the politeness a fragile raft in the strangeness. “Midoriya Izuku.”
A grunt from ahead. “Hell like I’ll use it.”
“You could,” Izuku insisted, a flicker of his old, stubborn self breaking through the fear. “I mean—if you wanted to. It’s polite.”
“Polite,” the blonde echoed, the word dripping with sarcasm. He leapt a narrow gap, landing silently. “You want polite? Fine. Oh, noble and polite stranger, what might your heroic savior’s name be?” The mockery was so thick it was almost tangible.
“I didn’t mean it like that!” Izuku scrambled after him, flustered.
“Sure you didn’t.” Another pause as they descended a tricky, stair-like series of ledges. “Forget it. Names are tags. Useless up here.”
As they moved, Izuku’s eyes were drawn away from his savior’s back to the city sprawling below and around them. From this terrifying vantage, Ironhold was breathtaking. A thousand lanterns and magical glows ignited the deep chasm, transforming it into a geode of living light. Bioluminescent fungi clung to rock faces in pulsating blue patterns. Windows glowed with warm, buttery light from hearths and forge-fires. And at the very heart of the city, piercing upward towards the sealed mountain roof, was a tower. It wasn’t stone; it seemed made of captured moonlight and crystal, radiating a soft, serene white-silver glow that pushed back the shadows for blocks around. It was beautiful.
“What… is that?” Izuku breathed, pointing at the glowing spire.
The blonde didn’t even glance. “That? That’s the Clockwork Tower. Seat of the Council. Biggest pile of shit in the biggest pile of shit city.”
Izuku blinked. “It’s amazing.”
“It’s a cage with better lighting. The people in it are shit, the laws they make are shit, the air is shit.” The venom was casual, practiced.
“You talk like you’re not from here.”
The hood shifted in what might have been a shrug. “I’m where I need to be. Today. Tomorrow?” Another dry, humorless sound. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll wake up and decide this whole rock can collapse for all I care.”
They reached a relatively broad, flat section of roof, a rare respite. The blonde stopped, finally turning to fully face Izuku. In the mixed light from a nearby vent-shaft and the distant glow of the Tower, Izuku could see more of him. The hood still shadowed his eyes, but the light caught on the sharp bridge of his nose, the severe line of his mouth. His gaze was intent, scanning Izuku not with fear, but with a cold, analytical curiosity. It landed on the dark, drying stains on Izuku’s tunic.
The blonde’s chin tilted toward it. “That yours?”
Izuku looked down, the memory of the sharp pain of a shallow slice across his ribs flashing back. “No. Well, yes. It’s… not deep. One of the enforcers had a knife.”
A scoff. “Amateurs. A real blade goes for the gut or the throat. Not a love tap.” He took a step closer, and Izuku fought the instinct to step back. This close, the predatory grace was even more unnerving. “You move like you’ve never been in a real fight. You talk like you’ve never breathed real air. And you stare at the Tower like it’s a goddamn star.” He paused, his head cocking slightly. “You’re the one, aren’t you? The outsider they were sealing the Warren Gate for.”
Izuku’s breath hitched. He gave a single, tight nod.
The blonde didn’t react with surprise. He just hummed, a low, considering sound. “Huh. Figured you’d be… taller. Or on fire. Or something worth the fucking lockdown. You’re just a rabbit.”
“Hey—”
“All wide eyes and twitchy nerves. Rabbit. Prey.” He leaned in, and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur, though there was no one to hear them but the wind whistling through the vents. “So, rabbit. How’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get in. Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t suit your terrified act.” Katsuki’s eyes narrowed, gleaming with a volatile mix of contempt and intense curiosity. “The Warren Gate hasn’t been breached in eight generations. The stories say it’s impossible. That the mountain itself rejects outsiders. Ironhold’s walls are supposed to be unbreakable. A legacy of stone and spite.” His gaze raked over Izuku, dismissive yet utterly focused. “And then here you are. A weak-ass, jumpy little pussy, who just… waltzed in. In the middle of a full security lockdown.” He leaned even closer, his whisper a physical pressure against Izuku’s ear. “So. How? Spit it out before I lose my patience.”
Izuku opened his mouth, then closed it. The truth was a tangled, confusing thing, especially right now—a sensation of falling upward, a sound like tearing silk, a green light he couldn’t explain. It sounded like madness. “We’re…I don’t—I don’t exactly know,” he admitted, the confession leaving him feeling foolish.
Instead of derision, the blonde’s severe mouth quirked, just at one corner. “You don’t know.” He repeated it slowly, as if tasting the words. “You fall out of the sky into the most fortified kingdom on earth, and you don’t know how.” A harsh, breathy sound escaped him—not quite a laugh. “Such a bullshit.”
He held the stare for a heartbeat longer, then dismissed Izuku entirely, turning his back again to walk toward the ledge. The dismissal was a physical blow. Izuku’s mind raced, scrambling over the interaction. Predatory grace. Contempt. Curiosity. He’s assessing Izuku like a problem, or a piece of malfunctioning gear. The observation was clear, detached, a sliver of calm in the storm of his panic. It was the same way he’d look at a broken mechanism, trying to see how it almost worked.
“Katsuki.” The name, thrown so carelessly, was an anchor. A piece of data in the overwhelming unknown. Izuku clutched at it.
“Katsuki?” he repeated, before scrambling to follow.
“Bakugou Katsuki. Since you’re so obsessed with politeness, use it or don’t.” Katsuki paused, but he didn’t look back. “You want to survive the night? Stop looking at the pretty lights.” He pointed not at the glowing Tower, but down, into the deep, dark chasm between their roof and the next, where no bioluminescence grew. “Start looking at the cracks.” A cold, knowing smile touched Katsuki’s lips as he glanced back. “Your move, rabbit.”
…
Izuku would lie if he said he knew where the hell he was going, because he definitely did not. He was a leaf caught in the whirlwind of Katsuki’s wake, his own breath a ragged, burning thing in his chest.
Once, twice, maybe three times, he was certain they passed the same shattered lantern, a frozen, silent scream he kept circling back to. But he followed. And somewhere in the blur of it—the dizzying leaps from one rusted gantry to another, the heart-stopping drops into darkness only to land on a shuddering pipe—a strange, giddy feeling uncurled in his chest.
It started when Katsuki, without breaking stride, had ripped off his own long, tattered cloak and shoved it into Izuku’s arms. “Put it on.” he’d barked. Izuku fumbled with the heavy fabric, still warm from Katsuki’s body, and managed to get it on as they ran.
But the real gift came when they reached a higher, open stretch of scaffolding. Katsuki glanced back, a quick, assessing flick of his eyes, and for the first time that night, Izuku saw his face clearly.
Freed from the shadow of his hood, Katsuki’s profile was a study in fierce concentration. The faint, otherworldly glow from the cavern’s high fungus forests—painted his sharp features in strokes of ghostly blue and green. It caught the determined set of his jaw, the focused gleam in his crimson eyes, the way his damp, spiky hair seemed to defy the very air around it.
For stolen minutes, they were dancers against a vast, starless ceiling. Two dark silhouettes tracing arcs of motion above the tiered city sleeping in the gloom below. Izuku, wrapped in Katsuki’s scent, matching his rhythm—felt a wild, impossible laughter bubble up in his throat.
The chase ended at a domed structure clinging to the cavern wall like a stubborn barnacle. It was a patchwork of salvaged metal plates and thick, warped glass panes, a stubby chimney puffing gentle, sweet-smelling smoke into the damp air. Katsuki didn’t pause. He hit the heavy, riveted door with his shoulder, the clang of metal on metal echoing sharply, and vanished inside.
He left Izuku stranded on the threshold, blinking in the sudden, shocking wash of sensation. Warmth, thick and welcoming, rolled over him, carrying a symphony of smells: hot engine oil, molten solder, the sharp tang of ozone, and beneath it all, the comforting note of spiced chai and baking bread. Golden lamplight spilled out, so rich and alive after the cavern’s cold hues it felt like stepping into a sun. And noise. Not the hollow drip-drip of the cavern or the distant groan of machinery, but the vibrant, clattering music of life.
Hesitant, Izuku stumbled over the threshold, his borrowed cloak swishing around his legs. His feet slapped on a floor made of interlocking metal plates, worn smooth in pathways between islands of glorious clutter.
The room was a beautiful catastrophe—a cluttered, chaotic sanctuary that seemed to breathe. To his right, a bank of mismatched gauges and wires snaking down to a humming generator that vibrated pleasantly underfoot. To his left, shelves crafted from repurposed piping and reinforced grating sagged under the weight of their treasures: gears the size of dinner plates, bundles of copper wire like metallic spaghetti, rows of delicate glass vials filled with liquids in improbable colors, and half-dismantled gadgets whose purposes Izuku couldn’t begin to guess. A mobile of tiny, polished cogs and springs turned lazily in the heat rising from a central stove, casting dancing, geometric shadows.
In the heart of it all, three figures were hunched around a barrel, its surface a topographical map of old stains, carved initials, and solder burns. They were locked in a card game, but it was like watching a three-act play.
A broad-shouldered woman with tools tucked into the band of her headscarf slammed a card down. “Read ‘em and weep, boys! Rust-rats! Full house, kings over jacks!”
“Ah, Jirou, you’re suckin’ the joy right outta the room,” groaned a lanky man with goggles pushed up on his forehead. He scratched his chin, his long fingers nervously tapping a pair of pliers on the barrel. “That’s my week’s solder scrap you’re takin’.”
“Your fault for betting it, Kaminari,” said the third player, their voice a calm, smooth baritone. Even sitting, they had a tall, still presence, back straight against a stack of crates. They fanned their own cards with a slow, deliberate wrist, their eyes—sharp and observant—flicking between their companions. “You folded on a pair of eights. The tell was in her eyebrows. They do this little twitch when she’s bluffing.”
Jirou’s head snapped up. “My eyebrows do not twitch!”
“They’re twitching right now,” the tall one said, a ghost of a smile playing on their lips.
Katsuki, having already shrugged off his boots by the door, stalked past the barrel towards a cluttered workbench. “They do twitch,” he grunted, not looking up as he began rifling through a tray of bolts. “It’s annoying. Shut up and deal the next hand. I need the quiet.”
Jirou shot a withering glance at Katsuki’s back, but her hands were already moving, scooping up the cards with a fluid, practiced shuffle. The cards whispered-thumped in her hands, a rhythmic sound that blended with the generator’s hum. Kaminari slumped back in his chair with a dramatic sigh that made his goggles slip, and he fumbled to catch them.
The tall player—their name still a mystery to Izuku—looked up from the game. Their eyes, a cool, assessing grey, met Izuku’s across the room. They didn’t smile, but they gave a slow, deliberate blink. A tiny, almost imperceptible nod, silent welcome to the madhouse.
Katsuki finally turned, holding a small, intricate component up to the light. He glanced at Izuku, who realized he was still hovering just inside the door, probably looking as wide-eyed and lost as he felt.
“You gonna stand there gawking all night?” Katsuki asked, his voice rough but lacking its earlier razor-edge. “Close the door. You’re letting the damp in.”
The words were an order, but the space around them… it felt like an invitation. Izuku pushed the heavy door shut with a soft, final thud, sealing them inside the golden, clattering, alive sanctuary. The whirlwind had stopped. Here, in this patchwork dome, for the first time since the chaos began, Izuku felt his frantic heart begin to slow its pounding rhythm, matching the steady, reliable hum of the generator. He was no longer a leaf in the wind. He was, for now, somewhere.
…
The water was too hot.
It always was, a scalding, impersonal torrent that left the skin pink and tingling. Izuku knelt beside the basin, teeth clenched as he tipped the bucket over himself. The water slammed down his shoulders and spine, stealing his breath, leaving his skin raw and tingling. He shut his eyes and let the sound of it—water striking stone, sloshing against the floor—fill his head. It almost drowned out the voices. Almost.
Steam rose in pale coils from the basin, thick with the sharp, clean scent of soap and the faint, stubborn iron tang of blood. The water at his feet swirled a diluted, rusty pink before vanishing down the drain, carrying the evidence of a violence that hadn’t touched him.
Beyond the door, the world was a tapestry of anger and fear, woven with voices he was beginning to recognize.
“Bakugou, are you serious?!” The voice was high, strained with disbelief. A girl’s voice. Jirou. “Are you really, actually serious right now?”
A scoff, sharp as a crack of splintering wood. “No, I’m joking! What do you think, dumbass?” Katsuki. The sound of his voice sent a different kind of heat through Izuku, one of sheer, bewildering panic. This was the boy who had grabbed his wrist, whose grip had been a brand, who had pulled him from the grinding wheels of a fate Izuku still didn’t understand.
Izuku set the bucket aside and let the last of the water drip from his fingers back into the basin. The sudden silence was a vacuum, instantly filled by the argument seeping through the wood.
“Let me get this straight,” Jirou’s voice was lower now, a blade of pure, slicing logic. “You accidentally went to Warren Gate—which is, what, a forty-minute walk from the scrap yards you were supposed to be at. You accidentally saw an outsider being dragged by a full Enforcer patrol. And then you accidentally decided to yank him out of their grip because they ‘looked too pleased with themselves’? Bakugou, I know you’re obsessed with the outside, but this isn’t a rebellion pamphlet, this is suicide! You’re going to get us all branded!”
Izuku reached for the thin, rough towel. The motion felt alien, like he was puppeteering someone else’s body. He dried himself methodically, each pass of the fabric a reminder that he was here, in this small, tiled room, while his existence was being debated like a contested piece of scrap.
“Man,” a new voice, lighter, wavering with nervous energy—Kaminari. “I thought he was just some drunk guy you took pity on. Not that you’d… kidnap an outsider. From the Enforcers. Kirishima’s gonna actually murder you when he finds out. He’s on gate duty tonight, you know he’ll hear about it.”
“Tch. Fuck all of you,” Katsuki snarled, but the bravado was stretched thin, a drumskin about to snap. “Fine. I’ll take Deku to my place then.”
A disbelieving laugh. “Oh, I’m coming with you. I gotta see this. I need to witness the legendary Bakugou Mitsuki beat some sense into you with her own two hands. Your mom hates the outside, you know that. She hasn’t even looked at the walls since your dad… you really think bringing a living, breathing reminder of it into her house is a good idea?”
“Then do me a fucking favor and take him!” Katsuki’s voice rose, frustration boiling over. “Just for tonight! They’ll look here first, you know they will! Who do you think the ‘most notorious troublemakers in the kingdom’ are, huh? And I went over the roofs. Who else uses the rooftop maze? It’s a fucking calling card!”
Izuku’s fingers fumbled with the fastenings of the clean, borrowed clothes—soft, worn fabrics that smelled of dust and sun, so different from the stiff, utilitarian cloth he was used to. He felt like a ghost wearing a living boy’s skin. Every rustle of the fabric was too loud.
“Hell no!” Kaminari’s refusal was immediate, visceral, almost panicked. “Did you see him? Covered in blood, head to toe. And not a scratch on him! That’s not his blood, dude. That’s someone else’s. And don’t act like this is nothing. I’m sure as hell the whole damn kingdom’s already buzzing about a missing outsider. My parents see him, they report it. Instantly. No hesitation. Half the district would. You… brought in a problem, man.”
The words landed in the steamy silence of the bathroom with a finality that squeezed the air from Izuku’s lungs. ‘A problem.’ He leaned his forehead against the cool, damp wood of the door. The voices were right there, just on the other side. Young people. Arguing about him with a terrifying, casual urgency. He was a stone thrown into the still pond of their lives, and he could see the ripples of fear and anger he’d caused.
He felt it then, a yawning chasm of displacement so vast it made him dizzy. He was a splinter from another world, lodged in the flesh of theirs. He didn’t know their rules, their fears, their history. The looming, omnipresent threat of the Enforcers. The delicate, dangerous balance of their lives here, inside these walls. He understood none of it. He was a stark, bloody silhouette against the familiar backdrop of their world, and he could feel their eyes on him even through the door, picking him apart.
Taking a shuddering breath that did nothing to steady him, Midoriya Izuku reached for the handle. The metal was cold. His own reflection in a small, clouded mirror was a pale, wide-eyed stranger. He had to move. To step out. To become real to them, more than just a voice in an argument, a concept of danger.
He turned the handle. The door opened with a soft sigh of steam, revealing the three figures frozen in a tableau of conflict in the small, cluttered antechamber.
Katsuki stood with his back partly to him, shoulders rigid, fists clenched at his sides. Jirou was facing him, arms crossed, one foot tapping a relentless, anxious rhythm on the stone floor. Kaminari was perched on the edge of a low table, running a hand through his long blond hair, his expression caught between dread and fascination.
All three heads turned. The argument died, severed by the sight of him. The air, thick with tension, now held a new, electric charge of pure, unvarnished scrutiny.
Izuku stood in the doorway, clean, dressed in their clothes, with the water from his hair dripping a slow, cold trail down his neck. He met Katsuki’s fierce, crimson gaze, then Jirou’s sharp, assessing one, then Kaminari’s openly wary stare.
He was in their world now. And the terrifying, silent question hanging in the space between them was the same one screaming in his own skull:
What happens next?
Katsuki was the first to move. He let out a slow, controlled breath, a visible effort to bank the fire inside him. He turned, his eyes sweeping over Izuku— dressed in borrowed clothes that were slightly too big.
“Where’s your cloak?” Katsuki’s voice was low, stripped of its earlier rage, leaving only a gritty impatience.
Izuku blinked. The question was so mundane, so utterly disconnected from the life-and-death argument he’d just overheard, that it took him a moment to parse it. “My cloak?”
“The one I gave you,” Katsuki said.
Understanding dawned, followed by a flush of awkwardness. “That’s… your cloak,” Izuku muttered, then louder, his voice still rough from disuse and steam. “It’s stained. With blood. I put it with the other clothes. I’m sorry, I’ll wash it for—”
“Go put it on. We’re leaving.” Katsuki cut him off, turning to grab a worn leather satchel from a hook on the wall.
Jirou’s sharp inhale was audible. She threw her hands up, the motion explosive. “Oh, for the love of—! You didn’t hear a single word we said, did you? Not one!”
Katsuki, slinging the satchel over his shoulder, didn’t even look at Jirou. “I did. I just don’t give enough fucks to what you said.”
Izuku, watching the exchange, feeling like a spectator at his own trial. The borrowed shirt—Kaminari’s, he guessed—smelled of unfamiliar sweat. The pants pooled slightly over his feet. He was a patchwork of them, an intrusion stitched together from their world. ‘A problem.’ He saw it in their eyes: the fear, the calculation, the disruption he represented. He was the proof of Katsuki’s recklessness, a walking consequence. To go with Katsuki now would be to compound that mistake, to drag this volatile, defiant boy deeper into the trouble Izuku himself embodied.
“I’m not going with you.”
The words left Izuku’s mouth softly, but they landed in the small room with the force of a slamming door.
Everything stopped. Kaminari’s fidgeting ceased. Jirou’s furious tapping foot stilled. Katsuki’s hand, adjusting the strap of his bag, froze mid-motion.
Slowly, very slowly, Katsuki turned his head to look at Izuku. “What?”
Izuku forced himself to stand straighter, to meet that piercing gaze. He could feel the cold trail of a water droplet tracing a path down his spine under the shirt. “I said I’m not going with you. To your house.”
A beat of pure, stunned silence.
Then Katsuki barked a short, humorless laugh. He fully turned now, facing Izuku square-on, his expression shifting from disbelief to a kind of affronted irritation. “Huh? The fuck do you mean, you’re ‘not going’? You think this is a damn invitation? A choice?”
“It has to be,” Izuku said, his voice gaining a sliver of strength. He gestured vaguely, a small, helpless motion that took in Jirou’s worried glare, Kaminari’s anxious posture. “They’re right, you pulling me out of there… it was… I don’t know what it was. But bringing me here, to your friends, was already too much. Going to your home? Where your family is?” He shook his head, damp curls swaying. “I’m the problem. I shouldn’t be here.”
“No shit you’re a problem,” Katsuki shot back, taking a step forward. The space between them shrank, charged. “You were a problem the second I saw you surrounded by those smug Enforcer bastards. You know what happens to ‘problems’ out there? They get disappeared into the Citadel and nobody ever sees them again, not even a stain on the ground. I made you my problem. So you don’t get to stand there in my clothes, in my friend’s hideout, and suddenly grow a conscience.”
“It’s not about conscience!” Izuku’s own frustration sparked, hot and sudden, cutting through the numb panic. He took a half-step forward himself, closing the distance Katsuki had invaded. “It’s about not making it worse!”
The air in the cramped hideout grew thick enough to choke on. Izuku’s declaration hung between them, a fragile, defiant line drawn in the dust.
Kaminari let out a low whistle, breaking the tension like a snapped string. “Whoa. Okay. So the outsider has a death wish. That tracks, I guess.”
Jirou uncrossed her arms, her analytical eyes softening a fraction. “He’s not wrong, Bakugou. On a tactical level. You brought a live grenade into the clubhouse and now you want to take it home to mom. It’s a terrible plan.”
“I didn’t ask for a tactical analysis!” Katsuki snarled, though his fury seemed to bank, shifting from white-hot to a dangerous, controlled burn. He was still staring at Izuku as if he’d sprouted a second head.
“Then what did you ask for?” Jirou pressed, her voice dropping to that blade-like quiet. “A pat on the back? A ‘good job, hero’? You dragged him out of the fire, fine. A stupid, suicidal impulse. But now he’s a liability with a pulse. He stays here, they find him here, it traces back to us. He goes with you, they find him there, it traces back to your family. There’s no clean exit.”
Kaminari hopped off the table, pacing a short, anxious line. “Look, man… Midoriya, right? What Jirou’s trying to say, in her super cheerful way, is that you’re kinda screwed. We’re kinda screwed. Bakugou screwed us all. But… she’s also got a point. You can’t just walk out that door. You’ve got ‘outsider’ written all over you, even in Bakugou’s stupid clothes. The second someone sees your face… game over.”
“So what’s the alternative?” Izuku asked, the spark of frustration giving way to a cold, clear dread. “I turn myself in? At least then it ends with me.”
“The hell it does!” Katsuki exploded, closing the final step between them. He didn’t grab Izuku, but he loomed, a wall of simmering intensity. “You think they’ll just pat you on the head and send you back outside? They saw someone take you. That’s an act of defiance. They’ll tear this district apart looking for the ‘accomplice.’ Turning yourself in doesn’t save anyone; it just gives them a starting point for the interrogation.”
The truth of it was a physical blow. Izuku’s shoulders slumped. He was trapped. A problem with no solution.
Seeing his resolve waver, Jirou sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “There is… one other option. My aunt’s old storage loft. Above the tannery. It’s empty, hasn’t been used in years. It stinks of old leather and piss, and it’s freezing, but it’s a hole no one looks into. He could stay there. For a night or two. Until…” she waved a hand vaguely. ”we figure something else out.” She said it like she was admitting a weakness, offering a compromise she hated.
Kaminari grinned, that infuriating, lopsided smile. “Since when do you volunteer for treason, Jirou?”
She turned on him. “Since the alternative is watching Bakugou march a bleeding stranger into his mother’s kitchen and lighting the match for a district-wide purge.” She jerked her chin toward Izuku. “It’s not for him. It’s for us. For Kirishima, who’s on that gate right now, smiling at every passerby, completely unaware that his idiot best friend is painting a target on his back the size of a wagon.”
She looked back at Katsuki, her gaze unflinching. “We stash him in the loft. We keep our heads down. And we don’t get us all killed for a guy we don’t know. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
Katsuki scoffed, turning back to his satchel. “A tannery loft. Brilliant. He might as well wear a sign. The Enforcers sweep those outer-industry blocks first when they’re hunting for stowaways. They know all the rotten little holes.”
“It’s better than your house.” Jirou shot back.
“It’s a death trap with a slightly better view,” Katsuki corrected, his voice dropping into a final, grim register. He finished buckling the satchel and looked at Izuku, not with anger now, but with a terrifying, absolute certainty. “You’re coming with me. Because I made a decision on that street, and I don’t take shit back. You don’t want to make it worse? Then stop arguing and do exactly what I say.” He moved toward the door, expecting compliance. “The longer we stand here debating, the closer they get.”
Izuku’s mind raced, a whirlwind of fear and stubborn, desperate pride. He opened his mouth, another refusal on his lips.
And then the world outside the hideout’s single, grimy window erupted in a wave of sound.
It was the deep, resonant clang of the district alarm bell, followed by the sharp, metallic shriek of Enforcer whistles, cutting through the night air. Not distant. Close. Too close. A coordinated sweep was starting, and it was moving in their direction.
Kaminari paled, his eyes wide. “They’re doing a block-by-block… already?”
Jirou was at the window in an instant, peering through a crack in the shutter. “Two patrols. Converging on the west end of the alley. They’ll be at this building in five minutes.”
All the fight drained out of Izuku. The theoretical danger was now a hammer, about to fall. His insistence, his noble sacrifice—it would doom them all in the next three hundred seconds.
Katsuki didn’t say ‘I told you so.’ He didn’t look triumphant either. He just stared at Izuku, his hand on the door latch. “Clock’s ticking, rabbit. You can stay here and be their prize. Or you can come with me and have a fighting chance to be a pain in my ass a little longer. Choose.”
There was no choice. The alarms were the only argument that mattered. Izuku’s shoulders fell. He gave one, sharp nod.
Without another word, Katsuki yanked the door open. “Jirou, Kaminari—scatter. Normal routes. Don’t look back.” He glanced at Izuku. “The cloak. Now.”
Izuku moved on pure instinct, grabbing the blood-stained cloak from the pile and swinging it over his shoulders, the heavy fabric settling like a shroud.
Katsuki was already a shadow in the corridor outside. Izuku took one last look at the room—at Jirou’s grim face, at Kaminari’s terrified but resolute nod—and then he followed, stepping out of the fragile sanctuary and into the screaming, searching night.
The door shut behind them with a soft, final click, leaving only the fading echo of the alarms and the weight of a terrible, shared secret.
…
The heavy, rhythmic clang of the alarm bells chased them through the twisting backstreets, a metallic heartbeat that seemed to sync with Katsuki’s pounding pulse. He didn’t run; he moved with a predatory, ground-eating stride, dragging Izuku along by the elbow. The oversized, borrowed cloak—billowed around Izuku, swallowing his slight frame.
Izuku’s breath came in ragged, shallow hitches. It wasn’t just the pace. It was the crushing weight of it all—the whistles, the shouts echoing off the damp brick, the sheer, terrifying reality of being hunted. He was a pollutant in this clean, ordered district, and every shadow felt like it hid eyes.
Finally, they skidded to a halt in a narrow, dead-end alley. Before them stood a modest, two-story row house, indistinguishable from its neighbors save for the slightly more polished brass number on its dark green door. This was it. The Bakugou residence.
Katsuki dropped Izuku’s arm as if burned. He stared at the door like it was a live grenade. The confident, snarling facade from the hideout was gone, replaced by a stiff-jawed tension. His mother, Mitsuki, was behind that door. A woman whose legendary temper was only matched by her fierce, smothering grief since his father’s death—a death tied directly to the world outside the walls Izuku represented.
“Just… stay behind me and don’t say anything,” Katsuki muttered, more to himself than to Izuku.
He reached for the door handle. His hand hovered. He pulled it back. He cracked his knuckles. He reached again. His fingers brushed the cold metal… and retreated once more.
Izuku, hunched under the cloak, watched this bizarre, silent dance of avoidance. With each aborted attempt, his own guilt curdled in his stomach. He was the reason for this panic. He was the living reminder this man was trying to hide from his own mother. The wheezing in his chest tightened.
“Hey,” Izuku whispered. “Maybe… maybe I should just go. You can say you never found me. This is… I can’t let you—”
“Shut up,” Katsuki hissed, but there was no real heat in it. He was still locked in a staring contest with the door, losing spectacularly. “I’m… thinking.”
“You’re not thinking, you’re having a silent breakdown at your own front door,” Izuku wheezed, a sliver of his old, analytical self breaking through the fear. “You’re scared of your mom.”
Katsuki’s head whipped around, a blush of furious embarrassment staining his cheeks. “I am NOT scared! I’m being… tactical! You think waltzing in there with you in tow is simple? She’s gonna use my own skull as a fucking soup bowl!”
“Then why are we here?!” Izuku’s voice rose to a reedy squeak.
“Because the other option is the fucking Citadel!” Katsuki roared back, then immediately clapped a hand over his own mouth, eyes darting to the door in terror. He lowered his voice to a frantic whisper. “See what you made me do?!”
They stood there, two fugitives frozen in a farcical standoff with a piece of painted wood. The distant alarms felt like they were getting closer.
Suddenly, Katsuki’s gaze shot upward, past the door, to the second floor. A window, slightly ajar, hinted at a dark room. A plan, born of pure desperation and a complete inability to face his mother, solidified in his head.
“Okay. New plan,” Katsuki announced, his voice regaining a shred of its usual arrogant command. He pointed a decisive finger at the wall. “You’re going up there.”
Izuku followed his finger. Up the sheer brick wall. To the window. His brain short-circuited. “Up…there?
“No, up the chimney, Santa. Yes, there.”
“Bakugou, I’m not a cat. Or a spider. I’m a person. With a distinct lack of climbing skills and a currently compromised respiratory system!”
“There’s a drain pipe. And footholds. Probably.” Katsuki said it with the confidence of someone who had clearly never inspected the ‘footholds’ in his life. “It’s my room. Window’s open. You’ll fit.”
“I’ll die!”
“You’ll die faster if an Enforcer patrol turns into this alley! Now move!” Katsuki’s patience, always a thin veneer, had evaporated. He manhandled Izuku towards the wall, pointing out a rusted, questionable-looking drainpipe and some uneven bricks.
Izuku looked at the pipe. It groaned ominously in the breeze. He looked at the ‘footholds,’ which were more like ‘slightly less flat bits of brick.’ He looked back at Katsuki’s wild, desperate eyes. The alarms gave another synchronized. With a whimper of pure resignation, Izuku grabbed the pipe. It shifted, he yelped and let go.
“Oh for the love of—Here.” Katsuki crouched, lacing his fingers together to make a step. “Just… don’t put your full weight on anything. Think… light thoughts.”
“Light thoughts,” Izuku repeated hollowly, placing a sodden boot into Katsuki’s hands. “I’m currently thinking very heavy, plummeting-to-my-doom thoughts.”
With a grunt, Katsuki boosted him. Izuku scrambled, his fingers finding a chipped brick edge. The cloak snagged on something. He kicked feebly, his feet skating against the smooth wall. He was a mess of flapping fabric and panicked limbs, about three feet off the ground, looking less like a stealthy intruder and more like a startled, cloaked beetle stuck on its back.
Katsuki watched, his earlier fury now completely replaced by utter, exasperated disbelief. “How are you this bad at existing? Just… grab the damn sill!”
“I’m trying!” Izuku hissed back, one hand flailing wildly before finally slapping onto the window ledge. It was unlocked, as Katsuki had promised. He pushed it open, a wave of marginally different air—washing over him. In his exhausted, oxygen-deprived state, misjudging the interior drop, he tumbled through headfirst.
The landing was a symphony of clumsy impacts. A muffled thump as his shoulder hit the floorboards, a sharper crack as his knee connected with something solid, and a final, expelled oof as the breath was driven from his already struggling lungs. He lay there for a moment, stunned, seeing stars that had nothing to do with the sky.
From downstairs, chaos erupted.
The front door slammed open with a violence that shook the house. “I’m fine!” Katsuki’s voice roared, a perfect blend of panic and manufactured irritation. “Tripped on the damn threshold! Stupid boot!”
Thundering footsteps—Katsuki’s, heavy and fast—were met by lighter, quicker ones rushing from the back of the house.
“Katsuki! What in the blessed storms are you doing, trying to bring the whole wall down?” A woman’s voice, sharp as a knife but laced with an underlying warmth. His mother.
“Told you, I tripped! It’s nothing!”
“Your ‘nothing’ sounds like a cart hitting a wall! Let me see—”
Their voices, arguing and overlapping, faded into a muffled rumble from the kitchen below. Izuku, still sprawled on the floor, finally dragged in a shuddering, deep breath. The air in here, while dusty, was at least still. Slowly, he pushed himself up onto his elbows.
Katsuki’s room.
It wasn’t what he’d expected. There were no posters of airship racers or enforcer cadets, no shelves of trophies. The room was sparse, almost severe. The single window, the bed neatly made with a rough wool blanket, a small, scarred desk.
But the floor… the floor around him was another world.
He was lying in a nest of wood shavings, fine and golden as pollen. They clung to his clothes and hair. Scattered around him were the artifacts of this secret world: a half-formed block of pine that was becoming a snarling wolf’s head, the details of the fur painstakingly etched with a small, sharp tool. A smooth, finished fox, its tail curled around its feet, sat sentinel on the windowsill. A cluster of delicate, interlocking leaves, carved from a pale, almost translucent wood, rested near the bed.
And by his hand, where his knee had struck it, was a bird.
It was larger than the others, carved from a rich, dark wood that gleamed even in the low light. The craftsmanship was breathtaking. Every feather on the powerful, swept-back wings was individually defined, the body sleek and poised for a journey of impossible distance. The beak was strong, slightly hooked, and the eyes, though mere indentations, held a profound, weary wisdom. It was a bird of epic scale and lonely oceans, a creature from stories of the far, uncharted edges of the map. An albatross. A weight of solitude, a majesty born from endless wind.
He picked it up, his fingers tracing the silken grooves of the feathers. The contrast between the boy downstairs, all explosive anger and sharp edges, and this silent, patient poetry in wood was so profound it left him breathless all over again.
From below, the heated conversation had settled into a lower murmur. A cupboard door closed. The distinct, angry sizzle of something hitting a hot pan echoed up.
Izuku carefully placed the albatross back among its wooden kin, as if setting a sacred relic on an altar. He sat back in the nest of shavings, the last of the adrenaline leaching away, replaced by a deep, aching curiosity. The climb, the fall, the fear—it had all led him here, to this quiet, carved truth at the heart of Bakugou Katsuki’s storm.
…
The air in Katsuki’s room was thick with the scent of pine resin and unspoken fear. He hadn’t left much, a ghost in his own home, moving only to sneak scraps of food and a canteen of water to the shadow on the edge of his bed. Izuku devoured it with a gratitude that tasted like ash; he was starving, but the hollow pit in his stomach was nothing compared to the yawning chasm of ‘what now?’ Patience was a virtue he’d never mastered, and this suspended animation, this hiding, felt like a slow death.
Katsuki, for his part, was methodically sweeping wood shavings from the floor. The soft swish-swish of the broom was the only sound until Izuku’s voice, thin and strained, cut through it. “What’s next?”
Katsuki didn’t look up. “Next? Next, I’m thinking of painting this guy neon pink.” He nudged the unfinished wolf with his foot. “Give the Enforcers a real fucking light show when they finally bust in here. Make it worth their trip.”
“I’m serious,” Izuku insisted, his hands curling into fists on his knees. “How do I… go out again? I can’t stay here forever. I’m not… wanted here.”
That made Katsuki stop. He straightened, leaning on the broom, and fixed Izuku with a look that was equal parts exasperation and grim reality. “You think it’s that simple? I don’t want this shit either, you know. Being stuck in this room, hiding a walking violation of the law. But the system… when it decides it doesn’t want you, it doesn’t just open the door and wave goodbye. Releasing you means admitting you exist. Admitting you exist means admitting outside exists ‘Releasing’ you means there’s a chance, however tiny, that you could get beyond the walls. And if people get a whiff of that chance—even the idiots who kiss Endeavour’s boots—they start getting ideas. Curiosity is a fucking disease. ‘Going outside’ is a bedtime story. You’ll dream about it tonight. And then you’ll wake up”—he gestured vaguely at himself with a derisive snort—“and you’ll be staring at a tragically handsome blond genius, wondering how a Deku like you got stuck sharing air with him. That’s your reality. Get used to it.”
The argument that followed was hushed but heated, a tense volley of fears and frustrations. It was abruptly silenced by the heavy, familiar creak of footsteps on the stairs—his mother. Katsuki’s head snapped toward the door, his expression closing off. He pointed a sharp finger at Izuku.
“Shut up.” he breathed, his voice dropping to a barely-audible command. “Go to sleep. We’re not doing this now. Tomorrow. We’re having a real talk tomorrow.”
Tomorrow arrived with the grey dawn and the sound of the front door slamming shut as Bakugou Mitsuki left for her shift at the textile mill. The moment the silence settled, Katsuki was moving.
Now, in the cold morning light, they moved like shadows through the underbelly of the Lower District. The air here smelled of boiled cabbage, and forge-smoke. Yesterday’s Enforcer sweep had left the sector feeling skinned raw, every nervous glance a potential accusation.
As they walked, Katsuki provided a terse, bitter tour guide commentary.
“They swept this sector yesterday,” Katsuki said, his voice low as they ducked under a low-hanging shop sign. “Stupid, inefficient.”
“This place… it’s so big,” Izuku murmured, his head on a swivel.
“It’s a fucking layered cake of misery,” Katsuki scoffed, not breaking pace. “Three tiers. We’re in the Lower. That’s for the normal folks and the poor bastards. The workers, the shopkeeps, the ones who keep the wheels turning and get shit on for it.” His lip curled. “The Ground. Is for the shit,” he said flatly, offering no further poetry.
“And the third?” Izuku asked curiously, keeping pace.
“The Upper.” Katsuki’s voice took on a different, almost mocking lilt. “For the highly, almighty, and disgustingly rich. It’s the largest tier, sprawling. Fancy stonework, stupidly complex architecture—towers, bridges, inner walls—all designed to make the Lower District rats get lost, give up, and go the fuck home. Most down here never even see the gates, let alone pass them.”
Izuku’s mind, always racing, connected the dots. “But… yesterday, when we were running from the enforcers, we were in the Upper District, right?” His brow creased. “I mean it was, technically, a maze.”
“Yeah,” Katsuki responded, too fast.
Izuku hesitated, then pushed. “But you moved through it like you knew every street. If you’re from the Lower… how?”
Katsuki stopped short, turning to face him. A bitter, humorless smirk played on his lips. “Because I was from the Upper, you dumbass. Born and bred. Before.”
Before?
The revelation hit Izuku like a physical blow, unlocking a torrent of new questions. Before what? How did you fall? Why? What happened? The story behind those words felt immense, a chasm between the boy carving wolves in a tiny room and the prince of a stone citadel.
But the time for questions evaporated as Katsuki nudged him forward, around a final corner. The immediate, tangible reality of survival pressed in once more, and Izuku hurried along the explosive, enigmatic boy who was, for reasons utterly incomprehensible, risking everything to keep him hidden.