Chapter Text
The air inside the main briefing room of the Dynamight Agency was usually charged with the sharp, acrid scent of burnt ozone and localized high pressure. It was an environment Katsuki Bakugo cultivated with deliberate intent. At twenty-five years old, the Number Five Pro Hero didn't walk into rooms; he conquered them, leaving a trail of high-volume commands and terrified sidekicks in his wake. But today, the atmosphere wasn't dominated by his own explosive temperament.
Instead, it felt suffocatingly heavy, thick with the unyielding, meticulous authority of the two men standing directly between him and the exit.
"Move the hell out of my way, Jeanist," Katsuki growled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that spoke of far too many consecutive night shifts and a complete lack of sleep. His crimson eyes were bloodshot, narrowed into dangerous slits beneath his unruly blonde hair. "I've got an active tracking operation in the southern district. Some third-rate aggregate-quirk bastard thinks he can play hide-and-seek with my sidekicks. I don't have time for this administrative garbage."
Tsunagu Hakamada—Best Jeanist—didn't blink. He stood perfectly upright, his towering denim collar immaculate despite the late hour, his hands resting elegantly over his fabric-draped shoulders. "Your southern district operation was handed over to Sero and the local precinct three hours ago, Katsuki," Jeanist replied, his calm, measured tone acting like a damp blanket on Katsuki's rising fuse. "And it is not administrative garbage. It is a formal medical intervention."
"Like hell it is!" Katsuki roared, taking a threatening step forward. Tiny, warning sparks cracked against the palms of his hands, popping like miniature firecrackers in the confined space. "I'm perfectly fine! I didn't bust my ass for eight years after the war to sit behind a damn desk because some overpaid agency doctor thinks my blood pressure is too high! I am the Number Five Hero! I don't take breaks!"
"That is precisely the problem, Bakugo," a quiet, razor-sharp voice cut through the noise. From the shadows near the corner of the room, Shinya Kamihara—Edgeshot—folded his arms, his dark eyes fixed on the younger hero with an expression of profound, weary gravity. "You have operated at a hundred and twenty percent capacity for thirty-six consecutive months. Your agency's capture rate is exemplary, but your physical metrics are collapsing. A hero who burns himself to ashes cannot protect anyone."
"Shut up, paper-thin! I ain't burning out!" Katsuki snapped, turning his glare toward the veteran hero. "I can pull three more shifts without a hitch! I don't need you two fossils lecturing me about endurance!"
The heavy steel door to the briefing room suddenly hissed open, interrupting his tirade. Katsuki whipped his head around, fully prepared to blast whoever had dared to intrude, but the words died in his throat as a familiar, massive figure stepped into the light.
Eijiro Kirishima walked in first, his crimson hair as spiky as ever, his face uncharacteristically solemn. Behind him came Izuku Midoriya, wearing a specialized high-tier support armor suit that hissed faintly with every micro-adjustment of his posture. The suit's sleek, metallic green plating gleamed under the fluorescent lights, a testament to the years of technological development that kept the former symbol of peace firmly on the front lines.
"Kacchan," Izuku said softly, his green eyes filled with that familiar, infuriating brand of stubborn concern that always made Katsuki's blood boil. "Please. Just listen to them. We looked over the logs from your last three encounters. Your reaction time in the field was delayed by nearly point-four seconds during the dockyard raid. If that villain's quirk had been an emitter type instead of a physical enhancer..."
"Don't you start with your damn analysis, nerd!" Katsuki shouted, pointing an exploding finger directly at the green-armored hero. "Point-four seconds is nothing! I still pinned the bastard to the concrete before any of your shiny support gadgets could even boot up! I don't need a lecture from a guy who needs an iron suit to keep up with me!"
"Man, nobody's insulting your strength," Kirishima interrupted, stepping between the two childhood rivals, his own arms hardening instinctively into jagged stone as a precautionary measure against Katsuki's sparks. "But Deku's right, and so is Jeanist. Look at yourself in the mirror, Bakugo. You've got dark circles under your eyes that look like they were painted on with charcoal. You haven't eaten a proper meal in three days, and Denki said you nearly blew up the espresso machine in the break room yesterday because it took five seconds too long to brew."
"The machine was defective!" Katsuki spat, though his shoulders twitched slightly.
"It wasn't defective, Kacchan. You forgot to put water in it," Izuku sighed, the hydraulic joints of his support suit whirring softly as he lowered his hands. "We're all worried about you. Class A talked about it, and we went to the Hero Commission together with Best Jeanist. We filed a joint request."
Katsuki froze, the sparks in his palms instantly dying out as a terrible realization washed over him. "You did what?"
Best Jeanist stepped forward, pulling a crisp, officially sealed document from the interior pocket of his denim coat. "As of 0600 hours this morning, Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight has been placed on mandatory medical leave," Jeanist announced, his voice carrying the absolute finality of a judge passing sentence.
"Your hero license has been electronically suspended for exactly fourteen days. Your agency duties will be divided between Pinky, Chargebolt, and Cellophane under my direct supervision. If you attempt to log into the hero network, your access will be blocked. If you attempt to engage in vigilantism, I will personally lead the apprehension squad."
Katsuki's jaw dropped. For three full seconds, the loudest hero in Japan was completely speechless, his chest heaving with a mixture of profound betrayal and blinding rage. "Fourteen... days?" he whispered, before his voice exploded into a deafening roar. "Two damn weeks?! Are you out of your minds?! The country will fall apart! The crime rates in my sectors will skyrocket! You can't do this to me!"
"We already did, man," Kirishima said, offering a sympathetic, toothy grin that did absolutely nothing to soothe Katsuki's fury. "And honestly? We already called your mom. She's outside in the parking lot right now."
Katsuki's expression morphed from rage to absolute horror. "Fuck no..."
"Yes," Mitsuki Bakugo's voice boomed from the open doorway, cutting through the heavy atmosphere like a precision missile. She was dressed in practical traveling clothes, her short blonde hair perfectly framed by a terrifyingly familiar scowl. Behind her stood Masaru, looking incredibly apologetic as he nervously clutched a pair of car keys. "Get your miserable, over-caffeinated ass down to the garage right now, Katsuki! Your father and I didn't drive across three prefectures just to watch you throw a toddler tantrum in front of your coworkers!"
"Old hag!" Katsuki shrieked, spinning around to face her. "Don't get involved in hero business! I'm a grown-up! I'm twenty-five! I don't go on family trips!"
"I don't care if you're fifty and the King of the World!" Mitsuki marched straight into the room, entirely ignoring the presence of the country's top heroes, and smacked her son hard on the back of his head. "You look like a walking corpse! Your father and I are taking you to the countryside, and you are going to sit in a chair and look at a damn tree for two weeks if it kills you! Now pack your gear and get in the car!"
Katsuki clutched the back of his head, his teeth grinding so hard they threatened to shatter. He looked at Izuku, who offered an encouraging but cautious smile; he looked at Kirishima, who gave him a thumbs-up; he looked at Best Jeanist, whose unblinking gaze remained an absolute wall.
"Fine!" Katsuki screamed, a massive, localized shockwave of heat blasting from his palms into the reinforced floor tiles, leaving a pair of black scorch marks. "Fine! You want me to sit in a field and do nothing?! I'll do it! But if the city burns down while I'm gone, I'm blowing up every single one of your agencies when I get back! Do you hear me?! Every single one!"
The leather steering wheel of Masaru's standard sedan was sticky under the oppressive humidity of late July, but the man hummed a gentle, completely unbothered melody as the vehicle bumped along the gravel roads of rural Ibaraki. In the front passenger seat, Mitsuki was fanning herself with a glossy local tourism pamphlet, her sharp red eyes fixed on the unfolding greenery outside.
In the back seat sat the current Number 5 Pro Hero in Japan, Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight, looking less like a savior of humanity and more like a captured feral animal transit-bound to a higher-security facility.
"Stop grinding your teeth, Katsuki, you're going to crack a molar," Mitsuki barked over her shoulder, not looking back. "We are entering a peaceful farming municipality. If you start setting off sparks because the air smells like manure, I'm locking you out of the house without your shoes."
"Shut your old mouth!" Katsuki snarled, his voice a gravelly explosion that vibrated against the sedan's cheap upholstery. His thick, ash-blond hair was a jagged, spiky halo of sheer frustration, and his arms were locked tightly across his chest. "I shouldn't even be in this damn tin can! The agency has three high-tier raids scheduled in the western district next week! Jeanist has no strategic sense if he thinks leaving those rookies to handle a multi-Quirk smuggling ring counts as 'optimal resource distribution'!"
"Best Jeanist, Edgeshot, and your entire administrative board signed the mandatory medical lockout form, brat," Mitsuki countered, her voice rising to match his familiar pitch. "You worked yourself raw until you were vomiting blood during the mid-month patrol simulations! You haven't taken a single day off since the anniversary celebrations, and your father and I are sick of watching you treat your own body like a piece of disposable scrap metal!"
"It's called optimization, you old hag!"
"It's called being an obstinate pain in the ass!" Mitsuki slapped the dashboard for emphasis. "Look outside! Dirt! Rice paddies! Old people riding bicycles at three miles an hour! There are no villains here! There are no reporters! There is nothing for you to explode, compress, or conquer for the next fourteen days!"
Katsuki dropped his head back against the headrest with a hollow, furious thud, staring out the window with murderous intensity. The scenery was disgustingly rustic. Ibaraki's northern countryside flattened out into endless grids of tilled earth, low-slung traditional thatch roofs, and ancient concrete drainage ditches where clear water trickled without a single hint of industrial development.
The corporate reality of his Musutafu office—the constant hum of support-gear diagnostic computers, the white-noise chattering of police scanners, and the heavy weight of his streamlined Grenadier Bracers—felt thousands of miles away. He felt naked without his hero costume and the dark, segmented neck brace that usually kept his jaw locked in a battle-ready line. Instead, he was stuck in a plain, oversized black t-shirt and grey cargo shorts, his skin prickling with the sheer lack of high-stakes adrenaline.
The car finally ground to a halt in front of a low, weathered wooden structure hidden behind a thick perimeter of dark green cedar trees. The sign near the gravel driveway read Minami Rental Property in hand-painted, peeling characters.
"We're here," Masaru said softly, turning off the ignition with a tiny, relieved sigh. "The owner said the keys are in the lockbox near the well. Katsuki, please don't touch the sliding doors too hard; the paper panels are authentic showa-era work."
"Whatever," Katsuki muttered, kicking his door open before the vehicle had fully settled. He didn't wait for his parents to unload their luggage. He needed to move, needed to burn off the restless energy vibrating through his calves before he accidentally blew the sedan's rear bumper into the neighbor's radish plot.
He stormed down the gravel lane away from the farmhouse, his leather sandals scraping aggressively against the loose stones. The air was thick, smelling of wet mud, sweet summer grass, and the distant, pungent aroma of fertilizer. The sun beat down on his shoulders, immediately causing his palms to prickle with a light sheen of nitroglycerin sweat. He flexed his fingers, watching the transparent, oily moisture gather in the deep lines of his palms, but he forced himself to drop his hands into his pockets.
''Take a rest,' they said,' Katsuki thought, his jaw twitching. ''The Symbol of Peace didn't spend his twenties running on three hours of sleep a night, Dynamight.' Bastards. All of them. Izuku's probably out there right now using his fancy new armor plates to clear landslides while I'm tracking mud through some forgotten village.'
He was roughly half a mile down the narrow dirt path, surrounded on both sides by high walls of dense field corn, when the distinct, high-decibel screech of human misery cut through the lazy buzzing of the cicadas.
Katsuki stopped down short, his strategic instinct instantly locking his posture into a low combat stance despite his civilian clothing. His eyes narrowed. A public row? A villain ambush? An unauthorized Quirk manifestation?
"You absolute piece of rotten unwashed garlic!" a woman's voice wailed from around the bend, the pitch echoing perfectly off the corrugated metal wall of a nearby equipment shed. "Ten years! Ten years I mended your socks and tolerated your mother's hideous pickled plums, and you give the inheritance savings to some hussy from the western district?!"
Katsuki rounded the corner, his palms smoking lightly within his pockets, fully prepared to identify the threat, immobilize the combatants, and deliver a harsh lecture on public disturbance protocols.
Instead, he ran right into a wall of solid, unmoving country gossip.
Gathered at the edge of a gravel intersection near the local cooperative market was a small, dense knot of elderly village women. They were dressed in uniform blue aprons and wide-brimmed straw hats, their faces lined with age but their eyes bright with an unholy, razor-sharp focus. None of them were looking at Katsuki.
None of them cared that a top-tier Pro Hero with a physical prowess capable of cracking concrete was standing five feet away. Their collective attention was pinned entirely on a middle-aged man in a wrinkled business suit who was currently trying to climb into a small white pickup truck while an enraged woman in an apron hammered on the windshield with a massive wooden stir-fry ladle.
Standing directly in the center of this elderly vanguard was a younger girl.
She looked about his age, with fair skin and a casual, completely relaxed posture that looked entirely out of place next to the screeching marital meltdown unfolding twenty yards away. Her hair was a rich, dark red-wine color, gathered up into a loose, incredibly messy bun that looked like it had been secured during a minor earthquake without the help of a mirror. She wore a faded green linen shirt covered in dirt smudges, loose canvas work trousers, and white rubber farming boots caked in fresh Ibaraki mud.
In her left arm, she was cradling a large, translucent plastic tub filled to the brim with salted edamame pods. With her right hand, she was rhythmically shelling the beans into her mouth with the practiced precision of a factory machine, her light purple eyes darting back and forth between the weeping wife and the cowering husband.
"It was a business investment, Sumire! A regional distribution partnership!" a man's frantic, reedy voice shot back, followed by the heavy, metallic clatter of a plastic crate being thrown against dirt.
"Investment my ass!" the wife roared, her face turning a deep, dangerous shade of plum. With a sudden, massive swing of her right arm, she abandoned the crate entirely and delivered a massive, full-body slap directly across her husband's left cheek.
SLAP!
The sound echoed through the gravel courtyard like a small-caliber pistol shot, the sheer force of the impact physically spinning the man around until he tumbled over a low display of summer cabbages.
The entire crowd of village aunties let out a synchronized, collective gasp of pure, unhinged satisfaction.
Katsuki blinked, his internal tactical radar completely short-circuiting at the absolute absurdity of the context.
"What a crisp slap!" the red-haired woman exclaimed.
"The hell did you just say, extra!" Katsuki barked, his natural high-volume voice cutting through the local humidity. "Clear the road! If this is a domestic hazard, file a report with the municipal prefecture instead of blocking the transport lanes! Move it!"
The red-haired girl didn't turn her head. She merely reached into her tub, popped another bean into her mouth, and let out a low, sharp whistle as the wooden ladle made a hollow thwack against the truck's side mirror.
"Oof," she murmured, her voice smooth, blunt, and completely devoid of civilian panic. "What a satisfying sound. That's at least three weeks of bruising on his left forearm. Good torque on the shoulder, too. Auntie Sumire's been working the pickle barrels for too long; her forearm definition is terrifying."
"Are you deaf, you red-haired extra?!" Katsuki snarled, stepping shoulder-to-shoulder with her, his face twisting into his characteristic snarl as he glare down at her messy bun. "I said clear the damn area! The civilian crowd control index clearly states—"
"Shh! Shut up, city boy, you're ruining the acoustic balance," the girl interrupted directly, not even glancing at his face. She gestured casually with her edamame pod toward the white truck. "Look, look! He's reaching for the glove box. If he pulls out the land deed copies his brother forged last winter, Auntie Sumire is going to flip that vehicle over with her bare hands. Don't block the view; my Grandma paid fifty yen for these snacks."
Katsuki's mouth fell open slightly, a tiny spark of genuine, volatile disbelief popping from his right thumb. He looked at the girl. He looked at the old women next to her, who were nodding in synchronized, solemn agreement, one of them even pulling out a tiny notebook to record the license plate number.
"You've got to be kidding me," Katsuki muttered under his breath, his red eyes darting from the civilian spectacle to the red-haired girl's expression.
When watching the gossip unfold, her face was completely transformed—delightful, intensely excited, her eyes wide with a profound, almost academic satisfaction at the utter ruin of the local man's social life. As the husband finally managed to turn the key, gunning the small engine while his wife threw a crate of overripe tomatoes at his tailgate, the girl let out a loud, delighted cackle that rattled clear across the gravel pit.
"Classic!" she yelled after the retreating truck, completely unbothered by the spray of dirt it left behind. "He left his left shoe on the bumper! Auntie Maru, write that down—he's driving toward the highway with one loafer and a fractured dignity! That's a new record for the northern district!"
The village aunties began chatter at once, grouping around the girl like a flock of highly coordinated, sun-baked crows. Katsuki stood right beside them, his muscular frame completely ignored, his explosive identity entirely irrelevant in the face of Ibaraki's supreme neighborhood drama.
He had stood in front of the Symbol of Evil, he had shattered armored villains with his knees, and he had risen back to life with Edgeshot's thread inside his ribs—but as he stood in the dirt of the first day of his vacation, watching a civilian girl cackle over a missing shoe, Katsuki Bakugo experienced true rural country chaos for the first time. And for once in his life, he was completely out of his depth.