Chapter Text
Himiko jumped up and down in the living room of one of Giran’s hideouts.
“Come on, come on, he’s about to go on!” she was saying, staring at her phone where she was watching the live feed for UA’s first-year’s sports festival.
The broker had promised to let her watch the matches on the TV after she’d done some cleaning for him, but he was taking his sweet time setting it up.
“Just give me a second, Toga, this TV is ancient”.
“Come on, come on, come onnn!!!” she groaned, flopping down on the deteriorating couch with her face still glued to her phone.
“There, fixed it.” Giran said as the TV flickered to life, and Himiko squealed.
“Yes, yes, finally!”
Giran found the channel that was broadcasting the sports festival and turned up the volume.
Himiko settled down on the couch, a massive grin on her face.
“I can’t wait to see him all bloody and beat up.” She whispered under her breath, and Giran gave her a semi-concerned look, then shrugged.
On the TV, Present Mic was announcing the next match; Bakugo Katsuki vs Uraraka Ochako.
Himiko grinned wide.
“Let’s see how much you’ve grown, little brother” she muttered, eyes wide with interest.
She hadn’t spoken to Katsuki ever since she’d ran away from home after that incident in middle school, but she’d always watched over him through the shadows. She’d been there when that sludge villain had attacked him, and she’d watched intently as he’d struggled against the villain’s quirk.
She’d also been there when he’d gotten his acceptance letter from UA, watching through his window as his smile grew after reading the contents of the letter and seeing All Might himself (ugh) congratulate him on his computer screen.
So now, she wanted to see if all that fuss about UA had been worth it. She wanted to see him win, like he’d always preached, and she wanted to see him hurt. His blood had always been her favorite, after all. It looked and tasted just like hers; no bitter aftertaste, just the pure, metallic flavor she always craved.
Explosions were echoing in the room as Katsuki fought against some brunette girl that kept going after him with her arms outstretched.
Ah, probably a touch-activated quirk.
Smoke was everywhere, obscuring the camera’s vision, but Himiko could tell that Katsuki was being cautious. He wasn’t recklessly using full-blown attacks, he was targeting specific parts of the girl’s body to wear her down and knock her unconscious. The girl was looking rough, soot and dirt covered her face and arms and she had burns and bruises from Katsuki’s explosions and being thrown against the concrete.
Katsuki was also dirtied up, but he was looking fine, if not mildly pissed off.
Suddenly, some hero from the stands started booing, being followed by more people.
“Shouldn’t you stop the match? This is getting painful to watch!”
“That’s not how a future hero should act! You’re obviously stronger than her, so stop toying with the poor girl and throw her out of the rink already!”
Himiko scoffed.
“Typical” she muttered under her breath.
She knew her brother’s fierce and not-giving-a-fuck attitude would get him in trouble with all those stuck-up, popularity-chasing heroes who only cared about smiling at a camera and looking pretty, but she didn’t expect him to be shunned for doing his best in a school competition. He wasn’t toying with the girl; he was clearly giving it his all because he recognized her as a worthy opponent and it would have been just straight-up disrespectful to hold anything back.
She smiled wide when she heard Katsuki’s teacher through the speakers, saying more or less the same things. At least there was one competent teacher in that school.
Then, while Eraserhead was still analyzing both the students’ tactics, the girl touched her hands together with a wicked smile on her face.
“Thank you, Bakugo, for keeping your eyes on me.” she said as the camera panned to the sky, where a huge amount of rubble and broken pieces of concrete created from Katsuki’s attacks were floating just above the arena.
“Release!” the girl shouted and the rubble fell fast towards the ground.
Himiko saw Katsuki raise his left arm at the falling debris, grabbing onto it with his right hand to stabilize it before firing off a huge explosion, blowing the rubble up to dust.
The stadium fell into a deafening silence, but Katsuki shook his throbbing arm and braced his stance, ready for the girl’s next attack.
However, the girl appeared drained, face pale and eyes heavy as she fell to the ground, clearly having long passed her limit.
“Uraraka is unable to continue. Bakugo moves on to the second round!” Midnight announced then, but few cheers were heard from the stands.
Himiko grinned wide.
“He did it, the stupid brat. Let’s see how he does later on…”
Katsuki walked up the stairs to the stands after his first match, his hands in his pockets and his usual scowl on his face. Stupid Deku, pissing him off right after his win; his dumb, freckled face was the last he’d wanted to see after his match.
“Hey, rough match, huh villain-face?” Soy-sauce-face teased as soon as he spotted him walking towards where 1-A was sitting.
“Awkward matchups aside, you do great at playing the bad guy, Bakugo, kero.” Frog-face added, and Katsuki’s scowl deepened.
“Shut the hell up, all of you extras!”
“No, really, nice job blowing up that frail girl, Bakugo.” Dunce-face said, as Katsuki passed by him to go sit next to Shitty-hair’s empty seat.
Katsuki rolled his eyes.
“Nothing fucking frail about her.” he said, not as loud as he would’ve otherwise.
He didn’t care what these assholes thought of him or how he’d handled that match, but it did feel weird defending someone he didn’t even know the name of a few minutes ago.
Uraraka was a nobody to him before their fight. At first, he’d thought that annoying strategy of hers was stupid Deku’s idea, seeing as those two were always together, but the nerd’s words still echoed in Katsuki’s head.
“Uraraka came up with all of that on her own, just to beat you.”
She’d really taken him by surprise; he’d almost injured his arm in order to dodge her final attack. His muscles still throbbed and pain shot through his left arm periodically. He kept replaying their fight in his head, analyzing her moves over and over.
In the arena, Shitty-hair and Metal-face were finishing their rematch.
Katsuki scoffed as Shitty-hair finally pinned Metal-face’s arm to the table, winning the match.
“We now have our full lineup for the second round!” Present Mic’s voice boomed through the speakers and Katsuki leaned forward, narrowing his eyes.
It was Deku’s match against Icy-hot coming up next.
“Oh, he’s gonna be so pissed about this!” Himiko squealed as Kastuki’s final match played on the screen. He was desperately trying to get the other boy to use his fire quirk, like Izuku had done in the previous round, but the guy wasn’t having it. Even after lighting up his flames for a moment, in the end he ended up hesitating, taking Katsuki’s massive attack head on and being thrown out of bounds.
“H-Hey! Stop messing around!” Katsuki was yelling, grabbing the unconscious boy by the front of his shirt and shaking him.
“Not like this! Not like-” Katsuki said as Midnight used her quirk on him to put him to sleep.
“Todoroki is out of bounds! Bakugo is the winner!” she announced and this time, the cheering was a bit louder.
“That concludes our contest! The first-year winner of UA’s sports festival is Katsuki Bakugo of class 1-A!” present Mic announced through the speakers and the feed was cut for commercials.
Himiko couldn’t stop smiling. Her little brother had won the sports festival, even if in his mind it was a half-assed win.
“He won!” she giggled, standing up from the couch to jump around again.
“Indeed, he did.” Giran nodded, lighter in hand to light his cigarette.
“And Izuku was amazing, all bruised and bloodied up in that fight…” her voice trailed off as her eyes dilated, mouth agape and almost drooling.
“Ah, there she goes” Giran muttered, smoking cigarette between his teeth as he stalked out of the living room and into the kitchen.
He opened the fridge and took out a bag filled with blood. He poured some in a mug and brought it out into the living room where Toga was still staring off into space, drool running down the side of her mouth.
“Here, crazy girl” he said, passing her the mug.
Her head snapped towards the mug as the smell of blood hit her nose and she immediately started gulping it down.
In the meantime, it was time for the awards ceremony. The podium had risen up through the ground and the top 3 students were standing in the center of the arena, while Midnight announced them.
Himiko turned back to the TV, only to start laughing, a loud, ugly sound.
“I can’t believe- Oh my god, they tied him up!”
Her brother was struggling against his restraints, chains around his wrists and a muzzle over his mouth.
Even though her first reaction was to laugh at his struggling, that muzzle brought back some unwanted memories.
As Katsuki thrashed and yelled at All Might, Himiko’s eyes were glued on the muzzle.
Her parents had always been afraid of her, of her quirk. They’d tried to contain her, to control her, but their efforts had always been in vain. After that middle school incident, she’d gone straight home. No one had seen her, no one had had any proof of what she’d done. But her parents had known. When they’d heard about the student who was found dead from blood loss after being stabbed, they’d known. They’d locked her in her room and she’d heard them fighting in the living room, right under her bedroom.
“She’s so young, she’s our daughter, Mitsuki we can’t report her!” her father was saying.
“What are we supposed to do, then, Masaru? Let her roam free? Let her kill more innocent kids? That quirk of hers is cursed, what do you want me to do, put a muzzle on her and lock her in the basement?”
Himiko could hear her mother’s silent, angry tears in the tremble of her voice. Looking back, she knew her parents loved her and they’d tried their best to keep her safe. But at 14, hearing her mother say that out loud, it had been terrifying. She couldn’t understand why she was being judged for using her quirk just like everyone else. It was at that moment that she had decided to run.
She’d packed a bag, had picked the lock of her bedroom door and had tiptoed to Katsuki’s room. Her brother had still been out at drums practice, having recently picked up the instrument as a new extracurricular activity. She’d quickly grabbed a pen from his desk and had left him a note, saying she’d ran away and wishing him luck with his hero dream, even if she’d never been a huge fan of her brother’s career choice.
And now, after almost three years of being on the run and living on the streets, she’d met Giran, who had sort of taken her in and had promised her a new job opportunity at some underground villain group said to associate with the hero killer, Stain. She was a fully-fledged villain now, she’d taken a code-name and she even picked up clean-up jobs here and there, but mostly she was doing whatever she pleased. She’d never once thought about her parents, so seeing that muzzle over Katsuki’s mouth had been like someone had shoved her face in an ice-cold pool of water, her lungs freezing up.
“You okay, kid?” Giran muttered in the background, shaking her out of her trance.
“Huh?” she turned toward the sound of his voice.
“The broadcast is done, but you kept staring at the screen” he shrugged and Himiko saw that on the TV there was indeed a random commercial playing.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Glad he won” she shrugged it off and walked back to the couch, flopping down on it, blood mug drained, but still in her hands.
“I’ll show those bastards, how dare they chain up my little brother…” she muttered under her breath as she snuggled into the torn pillows of the couch.