Chapter Text
Katsuki Bakugo’s penthouse is quiet.
Not the comfortable kind. Not the earned silence that comes after a long patrol or a city finally settling down for the night.
This is the wrong kind of quiet. Rare. Suspiciously peaceful.
Bakugo stands barefoot in his kitchen, arms crossed, glaring at the microwave like it has personally offended him. The timer blinks insistently, dull green numbers mocking him with the promise of lukewarm food. The city stretches below his floor-to-ceiling windows, a sprawl of lights and motion and noise, alive in the way only a city that never really sleeps can be.
For once, none of it needs him.
No sirens slicing through the air. No alerts crackling through his earpiece. No frantic calls from dispatch demanding he move now.
It’s just him. His kitchen. And leftovers he already knows are going to disappoint him.
He reaches out and jabs the button-
BOOM.
The sound hits before the thought does.
Bakugo freezes. Every muscle in his body locks up as his senses snap to attention, tension flaring sharp and immediate. Beneath it, rage coils hot and fast. Bullshit rage. Who the hell sets this up? Some random accident? Some villain trying a cute little “prank”? Or the universe itself screwing with him for fun?
That isn’t his explosion.
It’s not the crackling concussive force he knows like a second heartbeat. Not a villain’s signature either. It’s too contained, too muted, like something goes wrong instead of going big.
He scowls, teeth grinding. “Are you kidding me.”
Hero instincts kick in, riding right on the edge of anger.
The microwave is forgotten. Dinner abandoned. Bakugo snaps his gauntlets on as he moves, blasting his penthouse door open with a controlled burst that rattles the hinges without tearing them off.
He doesn’t even glance at the elevator.
Instead, he vaults straight into the stairwell and drops.
Floor to floor, he descends in sharp, controlled bursts. Bracing against railings and walls, detonating just enough to break his fall before pushing off again. Land. Drop. Blast. Repeat. Concrete cracks under his boots, the air rushing past him loud in his ears.
Faster than stairs. Cleaner than waiting.
Whatever it is, it isn’t on his floor.
He slows as he passes the higher levels, senses stretched tight. Then the smell hits him around the seventeenth floor. Burnt, chemical, sharp. Familiar, but wrong.
He catches himself on the landing, palm slamming against the wall as he comes to a dead stop.
Something about the air doesn’t sit right with him.
At the end of the hall, a door stands ajar, perfectly intact. No signs of forced entry. No damage. Just silence and smoke spilling out into the corridor.
Bakugo’s jaw tightens. “Shit.”
He shoves the door open fully, bare feet sliding slightly on the tile as he steps inside.
The apartment is silent. No alarms. No sprinklers. Nothing except the faint hum of electricity and the quiet ticking of something cooling down, counting time no one is paying attention to.
Then he sees the body.
A man lies sprawled across the living room floor, limbs twisted at odd angles, eyes open but unfocused, skin still warm.
Too warm.
Burn marks kiss the carpet beneath him- dark, precise, almost careful. But the damage stops there. Walls untouched. Ceiling unmarked. Furniture intact.
Bakugo’s stomach drops, anger surging right after it. Bullshit.
“No,” he mutters, already kneeling beside the body, fingers pressing to a neck he already knows will be unresponsive.
Nothing.
The realization hits hard and immediate.
The man is dead.
Bakugo’s eyes flick around the room, scanning. The scorch marks on the carpet don’t make sense. They’re too neat. Too contained. His explosions never do that. They always leave chaos, even when he tries to control them. And these? Almost deliberate. Not accidental. Not oops, miscalculated. Just… precise.
He frowns, brow furrowing deeper. Whatever causes this doesn’t belong here.
The man’s arm twists at an angle that feels… staged. Not natural for someone caught in a blast. And the way the body falls: torso barely touching the sofa, legs slightly splayed. Bakugo’s gut tells him that shouldn’t happen if this is a real accident. But maybe he’s missing something. Maybe he hasn’t accounted for every variable.
The thought makes his blood boil. Bullshit.
Smoke curls lazily along the ceiling, fading into nothing. Not the rising, scorching smoke his explosions leave. Not the kind that stings eyes or lingers thick. It’s like someone borrows his worst-case scenario and trims all the chaos out of it.
Bakugo’s gaze flicks to the walls. Clean. Pristine. Not a single mark from debris, furniture, or stray fire. Not even a scorch from flying sparks.
Bullshit.
A faint buzzing pulls his attention upward. The security drone. He shoots it a glare sharp enough to burn through steel; or at least he wishes it would. Its lens hovers over him, recording, cataloging. Not blinking. Not flinching. Just silently judging.
Then the hallway erupts.
Footsteps pound. Voices shout. Radios squawk. Keys jangle.
Security officers arrive first, radios barking into the chaos as they shove through the apartment door.
“Step back! Everyone, step back!”
Neighbors hover at the threshold, wide-eyed, phones out, whispering. Another tenant pushes forward, insisting he saw the whole thing.
“Dynamight?” someone yells. “What happened here?!”
Bakugo freezes, jaw tight, sparks fizzing faintly at his knuckles. He doesn’t even get a chance to explain. Doesn’t anyone see that this isn’t his explosion? That he hasn’t touched this?
From the hallway, the scene looks simple.
Katsuki Bakugo.
Explosion damage.
A dead body.
Someone gasps. Another whispers, “Isn’t that the hero-”
Lights snap on, harsh and sudden. A camera drone drifts into view, lens whirring softly as it focuses, frames him. Recording. Judging.
“This isn’t-” Bakugo barks, but the words drown under the noise.
Questions overlap. Orders bark. Someone tells him to step back, now, slowly, hands outstretched. Not hostile yet, but ready to decide whether he’s a suspect or not.
Bakugo clenches his fists, sparks flickering faintly along his palms before he forces them down. He’s fought villains. Monsters. People who want the world to burn.
This isn’t like that.
This is random. Pointless. Bullshit.
And standing there, barefoot in someone else’s ruined apartment, surrounded by chaos he doesn’t cause, Bakugo realizes he’s exactly where he doesn’t want to be: wrong place, wrong time, and everyone looking at him like he walks into a crime scene on purpose.
Anger, confusion, and adrenaline collide in his chest. He hates feeling helpless. But there’s no way to punch, blast, or explode his way out of this.
All he can do is stay on his toes, glare at every face, every camera, every flicker of movement, and wait.
Wait for the first mistake.
If anyone wants to be a private detective in hopes of solving unforgettable cases, high-profile murders, sprawling conspiracies, and all that glamorous nonsense, they’re a couple of centuries too late. The golden age of trench coats and cigarette smoke died the moment the first quirk lit up the news. Literally and figuratively.
Not that it matters now, anyway.
Especially not in a society of heroes.
These days, the flashy cases are claimed before anyone can blink. A villain sneezes and three heroes are already mid-air, capes billowing, cameras rolling. One for evacuation. One for combat. One for optics. A coordinated dance of destruction and damage control, choreographed down to the soundbite.
A hero swoops in, saves the day, poses for the press, and calls it a job well done.
And the public eats it up. Headlines. Livestreams. Slow-motion replays. Limited-edition merchandise released before the rubble finishes settling. Commemorative mugs for disasters that barely happened and T-shirts for ones that absolutely did.
And the real detective work?
Cats stuck in trees, sometimes the same cat, same tree, different week. Cheating spouses. Missing packages that turn out to be delivered to the wrong apartment three floors down. The occasional lost wallet. Insurance fraud, if you’re lucky. And more cheating spouses. Always more cheating spouses.
Glamorous? Hardly.
There’s no media frenzy for tailing a man from his office to a love hotel and back again, night after night, just to confirm what everyone already suspects. No applause for sitting in a parked car for six hours because the target might come out eventually, and if you blink, you miss it. No merchandise for filling out insurance paperwork or testifying in small-claims court to explain, for the third time, that yes, the photos are real, and no, you did not photoshop the lipstick stains onto his collar.
And yet here is June Shirabe, scraping by in a tiny office on the third floor of a building that smells faintly of cheap coffee and regret. The window sticks. The heater doesn’t work unless she threatens it. And her chair- that damned chair that threatens mutiny every time she shifts her weight, letting out long, dramatic creaks like it’s one bad day away from collapsing entirely.
She’s halfway through her second cup of coffee when her client clears her throat.
“You need to seduce my husband.”
June almost chokes.
Coffee goes down the wrong pipe. She coughs hard, slaps the desk, and glares over the rim of her mug, eyes watering.
“-Excuse me, what?”
The woman across from her doesn’t flinch.
Designer coat. Perfect posture. Hair immaculate. The kind of calm that comes from never being told no, from a lifetime of problems solved by throwing money at them until they stopped being inconvenient.
“I need more proof of his infidelity,” the client says calmly. “Something undeniable.”
June stares at her.
Just… stares.
Long enough that the silence starts to itch.
Then, slowly, deliberately, she reaches for the manila envelope sitting between them and spills its contents across the desk.
Photos.
A hotel lobby. A familiar man holding hands with a very unfamiliar woman.
Timestamped. Clear. Indisputable.
“Look, lady,” June says, sliding the photos back. “He’s cheating. Extensively. And frankly, creatively.”
“That could be anyone,” the client scoffs.
June taps one photo with her finger. “That’s your husband’s tattoo. Unless he has an identical twin with the same taste in bad decisions, I’d say this is pretty open-and-shut.”
The client narrows her eyes. “I need something more… intimate.”
“Nope.” June leans back, her chair emitting a long, tragic creeeeeak. “I don’t do undercover seduction. I barely do undercover. And I definitely don’t do adultery roleplay.”
The client frowns. “You’re a detective.”
“Exactly. I’m a private detective,” June corrects. “Not a girlfriend-for-hire. Also,” she taps the chair as it wobbles ominously.
“Unless you’re buying me a new chair, I’m not risking harassment charges.”
The chair lets out another pained sound, like it’s seconds away from filing a complaint of its own.
“…Make that two chairs,” June adds.
Silence stretches between them.
The client stands abruptly, offended, scoffing as she smooths her coat. “I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
“Fantastic,” June says pleasantly as the woman storms toward the door. “Try couples therapy.”
The door slams.
High-heeled footsteps fade down the hallway, each one echoing like a judgment.
June exhales and slumps back, the chair protesting but holding, for now.
Her gaze drifts to the eviction notice taped crookedly to the wall. Then to the chair. Then back to the notice.
“I need a miracle,” she mutters.
Her phone buzzes. A text from her brother:
‘MEET ME AT THE PARK LATER, I GOT YOU SOME FREE SKIN CARE STUFF.’
Her detective agency is going under, but at least her skin is thriving, June thinks.
She scrolls lazily.
Missing cats, hero merch ads, neighborhood gossip… until a headline stops her thumb.
PRO HERO DYNAMIGHT DETAINED FOLLOWING LUXURY HIGH-RISE EXPLOSION. ONE CONFIRMED FATALITY
June reads it once.
Then again.
Explosion.
Residential building.
Katsuki Bakugo found at the scene.
“Huh,” she murmurs. “That Dynamight.”
She knows him. Of course she does.
Loud. Hot-headed. Aggressively allergic to subtlety. Known for picking fights with villains, the media, and on particularly bad days, even the civilians he was supposedly saving.
June went to school with him once. Long enough to know that time hadn’t mellowed him out; it had just given him better aim and a legal license to explode things.
Her mind drifts, uninvited, back to their first year sports festival. The way he was tied up like a rabid dog while receiving his gold medal, snarling at the crowd like he’d rather detonate the stadium than accept applause.
Truly a sight to remember.
Calling in sick that day had been one of June’s smartest decision of her teenage life. Otherwise, she’s fairly certain she would’ve been blasted off the starting line and possibly lost her face before adulthood.
And June loves her face very much.
Right. The free skincare.
She locks her phone, grabs her denim jacket, and flicks the office light off. The room plunges into shadow, eviction notice glowing faintly white in the dark like an accusation.
The elevator is broken. Again.
June stares at the taped OUT OF ORDER sign for a long second before sighing and turning toward the stairwell. Each step echoes in the narrow concrete shaft as she descends, the sound of her boots bouncing back at her like the building itself is tired of her. Halfway down, someone’s left a Lemillion poster peeling off the wall. A smiling face. A slogan about hope. One corner has torn loose, curling away like it’s trying to escape.
Outside, the city hums.
Traffic crawls by in glowing lines of red and white. Neon signs flicker to life as the sun sinks lower. A pair of sidekicks argue loudly over street food at the corner stall, their costumes half-unzipped, masks dangling uselessly at their necks. A news drone floats overhead, projector flickering with reruns of the penthouse explosion, the footage blurred just enough to avoid showing anything too real.
June keeps her head down and walks.
The park is only a few blocks away, a thin stretch of green stubbornly surviving between concrete and glass. By the time she gets there, the sky is slipping into dusk, washed in muted purples and orange. The streetlights buzz to life one by one, their glow soft but insistent.
Ken Shirabe spots her first.
“June!” he calls, waving like she might somehow miss him.
He’s sitting on a bench surrounded by shopping bags and grinning like this is the best day he’s had all week.
“You look tired,” Ken says cheerfully as she approaches. “Did you sleep?”
“That’s a personal attack,” June replies, dropping onto the bench beside him. “What’s with the bags?”
“Perks of managing a hero-slash-model.” He nudges one toward her. “Take your pick. Serums, masks, moisturizer, stuff that costs more than your rent. Oh, and Toru says hi.”
June pauses. “You don’t know how much my rent is.”
Ken squints, recalculating. “Okay. Stuff that costs almost more than your rent.”
She snorts despite herself and peeks inside the bag. The labels are sleek, minimalist and expensive. The kind of products that promise miracles in fonts too thin to read.
“Wow,” she mutters. “Free shit from Invisible Girl. If my landlady sees this, she’s going to assume I’m lying about my finances.”
“You can give her some as a bribe,” her brother says easily.
They sit in companionable silence for a moment, watching a group of kids play hero a few yards away. One of them shouts an attack name far too loud, arms flailing with dramatic enthusiasm. Another kid lets out an exaggerated explosion noise and throws himself onto the grass, limbs splayed.
June huffs a quiet laugh. “I hate that I recognize which hero that’s supposed to be.”
Her brother grins. “Right. Dynamight.”
She freezes. Just for half a second.
“Yeah,” she says carefully. “Yeah, that one.”
“Crazy stuff, huh?” he continues, scrolling through his phone. “Explosion in his residential building? Fatality? Everyone’s freaking out about it.”
June hums. “What does your client say about all this?”
Ken glances up. “Her? She’s reeling. I mean- former classmates. Saved the world together and all that jazz.” He pauses. “But yeah. She believes he’s innocent.”
June nods slowly, eyes still on the kids. One of them is now loudly insisting that explosions absolutely count as a rescue method.
“Still,” Ken adds, more thoughtfully now, “detained’s a big word. You don’t usually hear that attached to a top hero. Sounds like a PR nightmare.”
“They’ll get over it,” June says. “They always do.” A beat. “You’re lucky you’re managing someone unproblematic.”
Ken snorts. “For now.”
Another pause settles between them, quieter this time.
“Hey,” her brother says, more gently now. “You okay? You look… tense.”
June looks down at her hands. At the faint ink stains she never quite manages to scrub off. At the crease in her jacket sleeve she keeps meaning to fix.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Just another weird client. Another almost-rent day.”
Ken hesitates. “You ever consider quitting all this and just joining Dad’s law firm?”
June exhales slowly, shoulders sagging just a little. “I have,” she admits. “But I think I’m already in too deep.”
He doesn’t push. He never does. Instead, he nudges the bag closer.
“Take more stuff,” he says. “If you’re going to be stressed, you might as well be moisturized.”
She smiles, small but real.
“Thanks,” she says. “I’m going to look so pretty when they drag my ass out of my office.”
He laughs. “Anytime.”
They part ways a few minutes later, her pockets heavier with tiny bottles and sample packs, her shoulders just a little less tight.
A former schoolmate getting himself into a messy situation isn’t her problem. Pro-heroes had teams whose entire job was to make problems go away.
She tells herself this as she reaches her front door.
She tells herself this as she washes her face with her new facial cleanser, briefly wondering if it really is “clinically proven.”
She tells herself this as she falls asleep.
Oh, how wrong she ends up being.
Because she doesn’t know it yet, but explosions don’t happen without witnesses. Evidence doesn’t disappear just because it’s inconvenient. And heroes don’t get detained unless something, somewhere, doesn’t quite add up.
And June Shirabe has always been very good at noticing the things that don’t.
Even when it blows up in her face.