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Hitoshi found himself waking up to a pounding headache.
His first thought when waking up was that the ground was wrong. It wasn’t smooth pavement from the city streets they were on, nor was it his bed or a hospital’s, but instead uneven rock digging painfully into his shoulder blades. His second thought was that the air was damp and cold enough to make every breath sting, the scent of wet stone and dust filling his lungs every time he breathed in. Where the hell was he?
He finally pushed himself up on trembling elbows, only to be greeted with darkness. Not complete darkness, he could see thin rays of daylight filtering through cracks above them.
He frowned. A cave? What was he doing in a cave?
God, you’d think that after the war, things would go back to normal, especially for the heroes. With a war completely over and society rebuilding itself, some people would think crime would immediately lessen and civilization would become peaceful again. But that assumption was dead wrong. It wasn’t peaceful before All For One’s return, and it wouldn’t be now.
Even though there were no evacuation orders, harsh rain, abandoned buildings or war meetings between whoever was left in the stand against All for One, things seemed even more hopeless. People were moving on, some returning to their homes and most heroes had already recovered from their long-term injuries. Even before the war, villains existed, and it didn’t mean they would disappear. The aftermath had created an entirely new kind of danger, where society felt fragile; as if it could be easily shattered.
But that all would feel okay, that all wouldn’t feel entirely hopeless if not for the absence of one U.A. student.
He didn’t know Izuku Midoriya well. He fought him in the Sports’ Festival, they did training drills against each other, they fought in the same war and eventually, Hitoshi joined the hero course in his place. But even though he didn’t know him well, he still knew that Midoriya was a good person.
As Hitoshi got to know Class 1-A, being an honorary member even before he enrolled in the hero course, he was able to remember them all by noticeable physical or personality traits. Kaminari had the lightning quirk, yellow hair with a black stripe, was sociable and gave off a goofy impression. Yaoyorozu was intelligent and Hitoshi’s first impression of her was that she was a little snooty, but he eventually changed his mind on that. Monoma was loud and a little weird, Kendo was the orange-haired girl who constantly put Monoma in his place. Bakugo had the explosion quirk, the bad temper and the blonde hair. Midoriya had freckles, the quirk that made his life easy and was a good person. That’s what Hitoshi was sure of.
Even before he joined the hero course, he already knew the members of Class 1-A pretty well enough to be acquaintances at the very least, but it seemed like once they joined their second year, the classroom was filled with completely different people. That was because Midoriya’s death changed everyone.
Kaminari’s goofiness had completely died down, along with Kirishima’s optimism, whose hair became completely black. Uraraka always give Hitoshi a small smile whenever they made eye contact, but it never really reached her eyes. All Might stopped teaching at U.A., and Mr. Aizawa seemed to unknowingly become cold to him, similar to how Todoroki just shut everyone out. Hitoshi hasn’t heard a jab at their class from Monoma for almost a year now, about the same time since he last heard a real shout from Bakugo.
But as sad as Midoriya’s sacrifice was, he couldn’t let the past stop him from his future. He hoped his classmates and teachers would see this as an opportunity to be a great hero— he knows it’s what Midoriya would have wanted, and it’s what he sacrificed himself for. So he continued studying hard, joining more missions and working on making Japan better than it was.
Hitoshi tried to remember the current mission they were working on, but only fragments entered his mind. Okay, he was definitely concussed. He grunted in effort, sitting up a little more as he tried to remember how the hell he got here. The mission took a decent chunk out of Class 2-A— him, Bakugo, Todoroki, Uraraka, Yaoyorozu, and some other pro-heroes. They’d been tracking a villain for nearly three weeks now, very little known about him, just that his quirk would leave people’s quirks going haywire. Ironically enough, the villain’s name was Haywire.
At first they all believed Haywire’s quirk had something to do with smoke. The first two incidents were quirks going out of control after inhaling some type of smoke— a construction hero who had an earth-based quirk continued on and destroyed half a city block, and a sidekick from Miriko’s agency who had a snake-based quirk began shooting venom everywhere uncontrollably. It was almost like Trigger, except the victim wasn’t there to witness it or have any control over it at all.
But then forensics results had shown that the gas inhaled was just a regular type to knock someone unconscious, and had no affect or relation to the uncontrollable-quirk use at all. And to disprove their theory even more, the next incident happened where a police officer got knocked out without inhaling any smoke, and his slight strength-boosting quirk destroyed the lobby of an apartment building.
No one had connected the dots until Todoroki noticed the pattern, that the villain’s quirk only had effect on people once they became unconscious. With this discovery, one of the detectives Hitoshi recognized from the war meetings was able to track down and figure out the villain’s identity. He had multiple identities, but his original one had his quirk documented. To summarize, if Haywire hits someone with their quirk, the victim’s own quirk malfunctions uncontrollably, but only if they fall unconscious within the next hour they were hit.
So they had cornered him, only to find even more villains that outnumbered them. To prevent damage to the buildings that had just been rebuilt, they decided to slowly move the fight to a more remote area. He fought beside Uraraka near a mountain, and that was what he last remembers.
“—sou. Shinsou.”
Hitoshi blinked at the familiar voice coming from across the cave.
Todoroki sat against the wall, and even though Hitoshi could really only see the blue hue of his hero costume and split-colored hair, he looked exhausted. His brows were furrowed and he seemed to be watching someone beside him.
Hitoshi squinted, opening his mouth to ask where everyone else was before another figure beside him slowly came into focus.
Bakugo was slumped against a stone wall beside Todoroki, who was pressing a block of ice against his forearm. His knee was bent awkwardly and as Hitoshi’s vision became more clear, he saw blood running down his head.
“What happened?” Hitoshi rasped. “Where’s everyone else?”
“After you got knocked out, me and Bakugo got hit by Haywire,” Todoroki explained. “The other villains we didn’t expect had quirks that specially helped Haywire, which were quirks that knocked people out.”
They must have seen them coming. Either that, or the villain had much more allies to call on than they expected. Hiroshi glanced around, trying to look for any signs of damage or his classmates’ quirks.
“None of our quirks have gone out of control yet,” he clarified. “Someone else caused this avalanche while Uraraka and the others chased after the villain. Our signal’s lost, but I’m sure help is on the way. We just can’t lose consciousness."
Hitoshi was about to reply when Todoroki glanced at Bakugo, whose eyes were hazy and unfocused. He moved the block of ice from his arm to the back of his neck.
Bakugo’s eyes snapped back into focus before his face morphed into an annoyed grimace.
“Quit icing me,” he murmured. “‘M not a damn fish.”
“You were falling asleep.”
“Was not.”
Todoroki sighed. “It’s easy for me to stay awake, but Bakugo got hit with another quirk that makes him extremely exhausted. His injuries don’t help.”
“I can handle myself. I don’t need your— your…” His ever-so confident sentence dissolved into silence.
His eyes drifted shut and his head tipped forward slightly for barely two seconds before Todoroki shoved the ice harder against his skin. It clearly wasn’t the first time this had happened in the past thirty minutes, considering the look of calmness Todoroki had and considering the common knowledge that if Bakugo fell asleep right now, they all could die.
He inhaled sharply, his face contorting in shock. That was the most emotion Hitoshi had seen out of him in months, “What the hell!?”
“You fell asleep,” Todoroki simply explained, turning towards Hitoshi. Bakugo didn’t argue back, which was probably a bad sign for all of them. “If only Kaminari were here to shock him lightly every few minutes. He’d have an easier time staying awake.”
“I don’t need Dunce Face, or you, Icyhot, or you, Mindfuck. I can—“
This time there was no slow trail off, just an abrupt stop to his sentence.
“Bakugo.” Todoroki shoved him again to be greeted with another sharp inhale.
Bakugo blinked briefly before glaring at Todoroki. With a lot less conviction than before, he noticed.
Hitoshi frowned. “Is it just me, or—“
“The intervals are getting shorter,” Todoroki finished for him. His voice was calm, but Hitoshi could hear the concern rising up now. “He was staying awake for several minutes before you woke up. Now…”
He glanced down at his watch. “Thirty-two seconds.”
Bakugo’s movements grew even more sluggish as he rubbed a hand over his face, scoffing. “M’fine…”
“I think resisting the other quirk becomes harder the longer it stays active.” Todoroki looked toward Hitoshi. As if to prove his point, Bakugo’s shoulders slumped and his head fell to the side now.
“Bakugo.” Todoroki changed the placement of the ice to his face now, only to get no response. As quick as he moved it, he threw it to the side to grab him by both shoulders, shaking him. “Bakugo.”
“I’m tired, Icyhot,” he muttered weakly.
“Bakugo!”
Hitoshi got up, ignoring the sudden, stabbing pain through his leg as he ran closer to the two. He could brainwash him to stay awake. He doesn’t know why he took so long to think of the idea. He felt his vision beginning to blacken around the edges and a migraine that made him feel like his eyes hurt, but he’s been through worse and could push through long enough to keep Bakugo awake.
“Just…” Bakugo mumbled, barely coherent. “Five minutes…”
“No,” Todoroki hissed. “Bakugo, stay awake.”
“I’ll brainwash him,” Hitoshi said, leaning forward. Todoroki nodded, hands still gripping Bakugo’s shoulders.
“Bakugo,” he yelled. Small rocks above them began to fall at the sudden noise, but Hitoshi couldn’t think about those risks if all three of them were to die right now. “Bakugo, answer me.”
No response.
“Shit. Bakugo!”
His pulse quickened. This wouldn’t work. He grit his teeth, the dread leaking from his voice. “Katsuki Bakugo, if you want us to survive, you’re gonna wake up and respond to me.”
Silence followed. Not even a single twitch. Hitoshi’s mind went blank as he waited for some indication he’d heard him. A shift in his shoulders, his eyes snapping open or a twitch of his fingers. Absolutely anything but the silence he was recieving.
No, no no. They couldn’t go— not like this. Not at seventeen, not when he had just finally entered the hero course, not after everything they’d endured and especially not at the hands of his friend. Bakugo had already gone through and lost enough, what would happen to him if he found out he accidentally killed two of his classmates?
Hitoshi’s chest tightened as panic began to creep up his throat. His quirk just needed a single response. Even just a single word, that would be all that’s needed to activate it. They should have done this earlier.
Todoroki’s grip tightened around Bakugo’s shoulders as he shook him harder. As each shake grew more desperate, so did his expression, which was usually calm, but this time was beginning to crack. His brows pulled together as the realization dawned on them that in any second now, Bakugo’s quirk could kill them all.
Hitoshi forced himself to take a deep breath in. Panicking wouldn’t help. He had to think. His mind raced through every interaction he’d witnessed or had with Bakugo over the years, searching through their memories as he tried to find anything that could get through to him.
What did he know about Bakugo?
He was loud. Arrogant. He hated losing, he was stubborn, and hated admitting when he needed help even if everyone else was offering it. No matter what anyone said, whether it be Mr. Aizawa, his friends or anyone else, Hitoshi saw him ignore all of them.
Everyone except—
“You know, Bakugo,” Jiro had pondered out loud. “That nickname’s kind of like a dog whistle for you, isn’t it?”
Bakugo glared at her, raising an eyebrow as he set his gauntlets down. “Huh!?”
”That’s actually a good point,” Asui said bluntly, shrugging at Uraraka, who tried to stop the both of them.
”What the hell is that supposed to mean!?”
Sero dramatically pretended to faint, bringing his hand to his head. “Girls, you’re gonna make Bakugo mad!”
”No, no,” Kaminari corrected him, snickering. “You’re gonna make Kacchan mad!”
”Okay, okay, seriously though,” Jiro said, her grin all the way up to her ears. “It’s like, when Midoriya calls it, you just drop anything.”
Uraraka snapped her fingers, letting out a giggle she’d been suppressing for the longest time now. “Maybe that should be your hero name! Like Deku’s!”
Of course.
Hitoshi barely even remembers it. The days before he hypnotized Aoyama and his parents to talk to All for One, he spent it training and preparing with 1-A. They all blurred together, and his routine eventually became a loop of training, eating, sleeping and dread as they waited for the battle to come — but occasionally some chatter with the class. The topics usually changed too quickly for Hitoshi to even process whatever they were talking about, but this one he remembered pretty well. During that moment, as Bakugo attacked their classmates, he couldn’t help but make a mental note for the future.
A mental note telling himself that there was only one person Bakugo had ever listened to. One person whose voice could cut through any amount of pride Bakugo had. The same went the other way. Hitoshi heard stories from others, and he even witnessed just how much those two cared for each other. He never wanted to get involved in whatever tension was going on between those two— he didn’t want to end up like Monoma and awaken a whole new quirk from Midoriya just because of an insult to Bakugo, nor did he want to end up like anyone who dared to insult ‘Deku,’ who apparently became Izuku at some point.
“God, those two are crazy,” Monoma had said once when the topic came up, setting his fork down. It wasn’t long after Hitoshi joined the joint training between 1-A and 1-B that he was invited to sit at lunch with some of them. “Say one word about his precious Kacchan, you awaken a whole new quirk.”
Awase turned to one of Class 1-A’s tables where Midoriya and Bakugo sat. “Bakugo’s kind of the same with Midoriya, isn’t he?”
”They’re really close, I guess,” Kendo commented, shrugging lightly as Bakugo grabbed Midoriya’s tie, screaming something no one at that table wanted to or could hear as Todoroki sat with a blank stare. She turned her head to Monoma. “Maybe it taught you a good lesson to not be so rude to them.”
Before Midoriya’s death, Hitoshi thought maybe he would have to use this idea during training or something as big as the Sports’ Festival. Now, obviously, the memory was buried in the back of his head and deemed useless. In any other scenario, Hitoshi would dismiss that idea right away, telling himself that he wasn’t heartless.
Hitoshi swallowed. “Sorry, Bakugo,” he murmured, more to himself than to the boy.
He didn’t think he would have to use it ever. Not like this, at least. To use something like this against Bakugo was morally wrong and almost cruel. It was manipulative and personal, a horrible thing to do to a classmate, much less a friend. But this wasn’t any other scenario. If he didn’t do this, they’d all probably get killed.
He reached up to the side of his face, his thumb clicking the settings or his voice modulator. He didn’t even waste half a second selecting a voice, one the world hadn’t heard in about a year.
“Kacchan,” he called, a perfect imitation of Midoriya’s voice. Even though he was the one speaking, just hearing it Hitoshi could feel the familiar warmth that had filled a void in multiple of his classmates’ hearts. Todoroki looked over, his eyes wide. Hitoshi didn’t dare face him, knowing he was also one of Midoriya’s best friends, so he kept his eyes fixed on Bakugo instead. “Wake up!”
Bakugo’s eyes flew open at the sound of Midoriya. Hitoshi saw the glint of recognition in his eyes before they filled with panic and confusion. His pupils widened as his eyes darted around the cave, frantic and disoriented, searching for someone who wasn’t there.
Hitoshi’s stomach twisted in a sense of guilt he had never felt before.
“Izuku—?”
The word was laced with such raw emotion, such relief and desperation and something anyone, even someone even as emotionally stuck up as Hitoshi could recognize.
He could feel his heart sink, but he wouldn’t let himself dwell on it. He couldn’t let another second be wasted nor could he let Bakugo stay in this state. He activated his quirk instantly, Bakugo’s eyes going dull as he went still.
“Stay awake.”
Bakugo’s breathing evened out and Todoroki sighed a short breath of relief, letting go of his shoulders. Hitoshi glanced away, unable to look at either of them.