Chapter Text
The street was cold as Katsuki stumbled towards his apartment. Blood dripped-dropped onto the cold concrete as the wounds on his leg from his last battle reopened. The cold glow of the streetlamps emphasized the quiet of the moonless night, and just how alone he was on the street. He grit his teeth against the winter cold, bundling himself a little closer into the coat his mother gave him last winter.
“Listen brat… you can’t keep going around working and fighting all winter just because you only have branded gear or workout stuff at your house! Take it and be grateful!”
The memory played in his head and he rolled his eyes a little bit. He wouldn’t admit it, but it was nice to have a fashion designer mother sometimes.
Katsuki took a glance at the ground as he reached his building, a complex of different sized apartments meant for people in all stages of life. The blood seemed to be dripping faster.
Dammit.
Limping inside, he nodded at Yori, the receptionist, who gazed at the thin yet steady trail of blood with mild concern, and hammered the button for the elevator. The flickering fluorescent light was really giving him a headache. Dammit. This stupid ancient elevator needed to be replaced faster. He didn’t feel like taking the stairs tonight.
The grimy doors creaked open and Katsuki shuffled inside, the pain in his calf increasing as he hit the button for the top floor. He forgot when he asked Denki and Jirou for help finding a good apartment near his agency to put him on a floor lower to the ground- more opportunities to get out and catch everyday criminals and help people.
The elevator groaned as its doors opened. Katsuki stumbled down the hall towards the last apartment.
The wound was dirty. It ached and burned as ash and dirt from the bank robbery earlier that day rubbed itself in under Katsuki’s uniform. The duo responsible for the heist worked in tandem across the city- one burrowing into the bank with a digging Quirk, the other rending the safes apart with a metal manipulation Quirk. They had been on a rampage for weeks, their boldness and aggression growing with each attack. Blood dripped on the tiles as he stopped at his door.
Katsuki shoved his key into the lock and shimmied it until the door cracked open. Slamming the door behind him and stripping his coat off, he slumped to his bathroom. He grabbed his first aid kit out of the cabinet beneath his sink and sat over the ledge of his bathtub.
The wound was irritated. Rolling up his pant leg above his knee, he could see a nasty scrape curling around his calf.
As Katsuki cleaned and dressed his wound, he recalled the fight. He had been patrolling the area, sticking close to the largest banks in his area after his agency debriefed him on areas of citywide concern. Maybe it was luck that he was just outside the banks when the rumbling and screaming began. Or, it was all thanks to his insatiable need to be the best- the most prepared. Whatever it was, he acted.
Civilians were streaming out of the building in droves, the screams piercing his ears as rubble flew over his head. It almost reminded him of working as a newbie hero as he blasted his way over civilians and through stone and dirt.
It took a second for the dust to clear in the foyer of the bank. The marble floors were shattered and stones were flying every which way from a growing pit behind the teller counters. Katsuki could see a huge set of claws widening the pit from the tunnel below, sending boulders through the air and dirt scattering into the atmosphere. He flew through the air towards the hole in half a breath.
“Alright you shitty villain, surrender now before I decide to blow your head off.”
The villain's ugly mug decided to burst out of the ground and leer at him in an analytic and nigh-perverse way. Katsuki didn’t let himself shudder.
“Hnnnngg… Riku, do you think this hero is worth grabbing too…?” The mole-faced villain questioned aloud.
Some lady popped up right next to the dirt guy, her shiny metallic hair glinting in the dusty light. “I’m not sure Kenta… but you know, when shopping, if you aren’t sure about something, you never put it in your cart!” Katsuki rolled his eyes at the cheesy villain. What a shitty job they did at trying intimidation.
Done with banter, Dynamite launched at the duo just as mole-man launched a chunk of marble flooring at his face. He blasted through the stone only to be hit full in the chest by a smaller boulder directly behind the first one. As Katsuki wheeled through the air he could barely see the vague outline of the bank’s safe being hauled out by the shiny haired lady. What a bitch. Glass shattered as his body smashed into the wall of the bank, police sirens wailing outside and adding to his growing headache. Katsuki forced himself up and flew back at the duo.
Mole-man had taken to scooping up shrapnel in his oversized claws and launching it in his general direction, pummelling him with stone faster than he could blast it away. It reminded him of a simpler time. It reminded him of Ochako.
It caught him off guard, to remember her. All of a sudden he wasn’t in a particularly annoying fight with some c-tier villains of the week, but competing against each other, growing stronger, sharing time together after All-For-Ones defeat. Katsuki lost himself in that daydream. In the years after graduation, he thought maybe, just maybe, they could grow closer… but she seemed to float ever-further away from him and further towards Midoriya. Running after her stung.
Or maybe that was the stone that just barely managed to shoot across his calf. He HAD to get his head in the game.
The room was too dusty to see. Katsuki could feel dust in his suit and lungs, and rock flew around him. The barrage seemed to be slowing… he shot towards where he last saw the villains.
He closed in on their location.
The dust, in a glorious moment, cleared.
Katsuki prepared himself for the battle-ending blast-
But it never came.
The hole was gone. They had escaped.
Fuck.
Yes, it had been his most frustrating battle in recent memory. Visibility was his biggest pet peeve in enclosed battles like the one that had happened today. He winced as he wrapped the bandage a little tighter. He’d go to the clinic at his agency tomorrow on his day off and get that healed.
He stripped the rest of his uniform off as he trod out of the restroom to his bed. Crashing on his pillow, his mind wandered to the last time he’d really seen Ochako all those years ago…