Note: This story isn't intended for sensitive readers. Those on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Singlehandedly a pass.

When Katsuki opened the door to his room after his run Tuesday morning, the Hag was there, sitting on his bed, a slight frown on her face. Stunned, he let the plastic bag in his hand slip through his fingers and fall to the ground.

SHIT. SHIT. SHIT. At her side were the pieces of a broken doorknob.

The Hag found out.

Before leaving for his run that morning, Katsuki had gathered the tools and taken the doorknob out. Throwing the pieces were left in his room's trashcan, so as soon as he returned he could install the new one.

"How did this happen?" She began, her face neutral now and her voice flat.

It's way too early in the day for this shit. Let's try non-confrontational? He willed his face to stay calm as he spoke, "Happened last night. It's no big deal. I just bought another one on my run…" Katsuki picked the bag back up, not sure whether that was what she wanted to hear. The Hag raised an eyebrow.

Shit, she didn't like that. He needed to figure out exactly what he did that made her angry. He needed to think of it fast…except he didn't have a single hint to work with, so he kept talking, "and I used my own money and everything." He took a shaky breath, "I took the broken one out earlier so I could fix it right when I came back."

The Hag stood up, a small smile on her face now. Oh I fucked up. What set her off? What did I say? He took a step back. What did I say!?

"Let's try that again, how did it—" she reached down to pick up a piece of the disassembled knob to show him, "—break?"

Katsuki took a calm breath this time; it didn't slow his pounding heart. He shouldn't be showing signs of fear like this, he shouldn't be so stupid to act like this, "The Old Man broke it while I was taking a shower last night. I literally smelled like shit, so I was in there for a while, and I zoned out. Like I said—no big deal."

When the Hag didn't make any move in response, Katsuki took out the package for the new knob. Ready to begin installing it.

"Hmm." She played with the piece in her hand, "I heard a little differently from your father."

Katsuki shuddered, unable to stifle the gasp that escaped his mouth, turned his attention back to the Hag.

"You weren't responding to him banging on your bedroom door. He nearly BROKE the lock to your bathroom door as well to make sure you were alive! Does that sound like 'zoning out' to you Katsuki?"

"Oh you've got to be shitting me! I had the day from hell yesterday, I probably fell asleep in the shower! The fan was on, the shower was on, I WAS TIRED TO THE BONE AFTER FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE!"

The Hag stepped up into his face, when she gripped Katsuki's shoulders with her hands, his body moved to autopilot. Not moving at all. That was the best approach to minimizing injury. "Don't you dare throw a tantrum over this and take it out on ME because YOUR WEAK ASS got caught and had to be saved," her hands clenched over his shirt, stretching the fabric thin and making it easier for her nails to dig through and into his skin, "Of course," she mused, using her nails to cut deeper into his shoulders, "it's so like you to selfishly throw my concern back in my face in a pitiful attempt to preserve your pride…"

She finally let go, and Katsuki suppressed the instinct to shudder and to bite right back at her. But there was no winning against the Hag.

"Stay in your room for the rest of the day. You can't make me deal with you when you're like this."

That didn't make any sense, "The hell? I have school!"

"Didn't you see? School is canceled." The Hag wasn't amused.

Katsuki widened his eyes, waiting for further explanation.

"Because ALL MIGHT IS DEAD KATSUKI!" The Hag teared up, "maybe murdered. It's not safe to leave the house so your father and I are stuck here too." She left after that, calling out as she walked down the stairs, "And make sure to keep up on your homework! If you get behind you won't pass the entrance exams for the hero course!"

What. The. Fucking. Hell? All Might is dead? His phone and computer had been ruined by sludge, so Katsuki tripped over himself to check his old phone, still plugged in at his desk. The damn thing couldn't hold a charge. As always, the Hag was right.

All Might was dead.

Katsuki searched for more detailed information. Having to type and retype his searches because he was shaking, and his fingers weren't hitting the right keys. What could have killed All Might? I thought he was fine yesterday!

There was only speculation. This news explains the Hag's mood. It isn't like her to get that angry over a broken doorknob. She's stressed out over All Might's death like everyone else right now. Combine that with the anniversary of Auntie's death…the Hag's never been any good at expressing herself; she's struggling to cope with everything, being so weak that I was captured and held hostage? Surely that didn't help her out either.

School would stay closed until the heroes get crime back under control. Leaving him a prisoner in his own house until that point. Fuck me I guess. If he was going to be stuck in hell, he might as well restore some semblance of security. Katsuki got up and fished the replacement knob out of the bag, grabbing the same tools he used to take out the broken one.

Doing it quickly could help placate the Hag as well. He knew that she had to have been looking around his room to find the broken pieces in the trash. If he had anything, or rather if he needed anything, it would be his own space.

Once his door was locked again, Katsuki could finally able to take a deep breath. He still needed to shower after his run, staying sweaty like this wasn't safe…And I've been going around touching a bunch of shit in my room. He smacked himself in the forehead. I'll go and neutralize it all after I shower.

In the shower, Katsuki cataloged everything he'd touched since getting back from his run. It would be a pain to clean everything, but dried nitroglycerin sweat would build up if he didn't clean everything he touched routinely. Turning the house, his room especially, into a giant bomb.

Truly, the likelihood of that happening was low, but if he was somehow startled and accidentally sparked his hands off at the wrong place. Then—BOOM. The hassle of cleaning routinely was worth mitigating that risk. The longer he waited to clean ran the risk of forgetting something.

The perfect quirk for a hero. 'Powerful and flashy… you'll be a great hero with a quirk like that Katsuki.' Everyone thought that. And they weren't wrong, except his quirk would only be good for that. In any other profession, even demolition, he's a walking liability that wouldn't be worth the risk. He's done the research, and there was always more reliable technology, safer quirks.

The Hag enjoyed reminding him that if he couldn't be a hero, he wouldn't be able to find a job, and she sure as hell wouldn't help him then. Katsuki had blown up a lot of things when she first began saying that a couple of months after the accident that killed Aunty. No degree of violent backlash would twist the words in a way to stop him from coming to the mortifying conclusion that she was right. It was the truth, and he couldn't even hate her for it. How could he? She was right. But that nightmare would never come to pass because as soon as he had thoroughly cleaned his room, Katsuki did his schoolwork. Nothing has been assigned yet; surely the teachers were scrambling, and judging by the overnight explosion of crime, they wouldn't go back for a few days.

Katsuki fell into his routine for being trapped in his room. Dragging out his assignments as far as he could until there was nothing more to do. Working on them on his phone thankfully slowed the process, and he was excessively thorough in his work on top of that. To his surprise, one of his teachers had their shit together and posted assignments for the next few days. Katsuki burned through them all faster than he should have.

By mid-afternoon, he still hadn't been yelled at to go down and eat lunch, so he took that as a sign that he'd be safest staying in his room. No big deal; he had food to eat while he grabbed a book and read.

He'd recently taken UA's mock written exam. Obviously, he did well, but some essay questions had highly detailed hypothetical scenarios. The principal must have put in, Nedzu was an unsettling creature.

Katsuki could admit that the test was tough, but UA was always known to be clear in what would and wouldn't be covered. So questions concerning field analysis with quirk theory and hero law couldn't have been anticipated, even by him. Of course, that didn't even touch on the hero ethics questions Katsuki hadn't been able to decipher.

Being caught off guard again was unacceptable, and Katsuki had no reason to believe the surprise questions wouldn't be similar in ten months or even that they would be there at all. Moreover, the content of the questions wasn't even tangentially related to anything taught in middle school, which is why they were unexpected. To prepare, he was reading up on natural disaster rescues, hostage situations, fights centered around offense or defense, and what laws would limit his actions in every scenario.

With a destructive and dangerous quirk like his, all of it was very important for him to remember regardless. He littered each book he read with sticky notes and marks in the margins of each page. There was only so much information he could read and then retain in one day; it would be a waste to try and cram it and end up forgetting, so reading only killed a couple of hours.

Maybe I should also look into the significant differences in quirk law between countries. Japan works closely with America thanks to All Might. He scribbled down a note to do that on a piece of paper. Pinning it on a corkboard that hung above the head of his bed. Katsuki would be sure to investigate that after reviewing the notes he'd made in today's reading.

Now he had no schoolwork left. No friends to message. And the Hag has trapped him in his room until at least tomorrow. At least I got some exercise in for today.

Exercise in the house, his room especially, was strictly forbidden. The first time the Hag had stuck Katsuki in his room for multiple days, he had tried to do some weight training. Which he thought was obvious; keeping up his strength in his arms, shoulders, and back was critical.

Of course, the Hag found out. Exercise involves sweating, and since manifesting his quirk, he sweats significantly more than the average person.

Katsuki never made mistakes twice.

The best alternative would be stretching, but out of caution, he still positioned himself near the window he always kept open and directed one of his fans at himself. He was not going to turn the air conditioning up or get out more fans. That could give the Hag a hint that he might be doing something like this. As Katsuki moved from stretch to stretch, he held back from pushing his physical limits like normal. In this situation, all he needed to do was maintain his current level of flexibility. Working up a sweat inside was unacceptable.

His sweat and the neutralizing chemical had distinct smells; sparking off the sweat would create smoke, and for his safety, he could not risk the Hag smelling even a hint of smoke.

Training in his room was anxiety-inducing. Allocating 100% of his focus to stretching wasn't an option; he had to stay on the lookout for the Hag making an unexpected appearance.

Eventually, Katsuki moved on to something else; he could only do so much stretching. All these efforts to keep himself busy were done less to stave off boredom and more to try and keep his thoughts from circling back to the Midoriya's. He wasn't sure what had possessed him to believe that he'd find anything useful about their deaths, but last night he still spent hours scouring the internet for scraps of relevant information.

There was confirmation some bodies were never recovered, which was highly suspicious given in a train 'accident' that would have left them relatively intact. Katsuki wanted to know how the Hag found out that they never found Deku's body. Probably the same way she found out Auntie Inko was a victim.

He would need to ask her at some point…and that would have to wait until after the emotions of the anniversary began to fade. Maybe the Old Man knows…

Following his largely unsuccessful search from the night before, he had resolved to look into the Sludge Villain incident again. But only after he'd done absolutely everything else he could, to see if he could see whether the person who saved him really did look like Deku.

Katsuki's parents gave him a scrapbook filled with pictures of him and Deku. In the Midoriya's will, most of their stuff had been left to Izuku and, if not him, then to the Bakugo family.

Those were things he needed to look into…but only if the person who saved him was Deku. The search was slow on his old phone like it had been the night before, Katsuki watched every recording of the incident posted online, some frame-by-frame, and yet the kid who saved him had avoided getting his face caught by a single camera.

That shouldn't even be possible! Katsuki resisted the urge to throw the shitty phone. And while its poor video resolution wasn't doing him any favors, he still found glimpses of green from the person's covered head, and the kid wasn't tall either. Both fit with his memory of a short kid with green eyes. Leaving him more confident that what he saw was correct, that he wasn't projecting his childhood memories.

More convincing than the visuals were the audio clips. Every time Katsuki closed his eyes to listen, he could hear an awkward-sounding voice rising above the other commotion, shouting, "KACCHAN!" at that exact moment, the kid in the black hoodie shot beyond the crowd to save him.

Of course, the audio was terrible, but it was the only thing to say that would make sense.

The only person to ever call him Kacchan was Deku. Making that the most definitive piece of evidence he had, and Katsuki knew not being able to hear yourself made it difficult to speak. That would explain why the shout sounded unusual—kind of weird—like how Deku sounded after his hearing was ruined in the first accident.

"So what now?" Katsuki whispered to himself. Holding his hands in his head at his desk. Call the police with a tip? Tell them I think the kid who saved me is my dead childhood classmate? Just forget about it? He spoke even softer under his breath, "But that's no different than saying it was too hard. Weak cowards think like that. Think giving up is the right choice."

And that morning, he'd already gone over his daily limit of giving up, which was zero, by conceding defeat to the Hag. Not that there was ever any legitimate victory over her; so far, there hasn't even been an indication that there was a line she wouldn't cross.

Like anyone who wasn't a villain, he knew heroes should never lose. But he still found some form of morbid assurance knowing that even All Might lost. So, he would have to be even stronger.

Katsuki twisted his hands in his hair; his thoughts wrestled to see if doing something was justifiable. That kid did run away afterward. What harm would there be in leaving a tip? If none of the bastards cared, they could say so. And there is always the chance that it really was Izuku, that the police could find him, that he wasn't dead. Katsuki refused to miss that chance. I'm not going to back down now.

Then a realization rose from the depths of his thoughts, a place where the words screamed in his face by the Hag often resurfaced.

If—if that was Deku. Why the hell is he not dead? Where has he been for five years? And since he recognized me, why couldn't he have been bothered to stop by to tell us he's not dead! BECAUSE IF HE DID THAT, THEN MAYBE THE HAG COULD GET OVER EVEN A SLIVER OF HER GRIEF AND SHE WOULD STOP MAKING MY LIFE HELL.

But Katsuki could not imagine that Deku could stand being in his presence no matter how kind and forgiving he could be. No matter how much time had passed. However, on the off chance Deku got tied up in some shit. Maybe…maybe I could...save him?

He shut that thought down. Doing this wouldn't make him a hero. There would not and could not be any forgiveness. Which is what he selfishly craved. Because now the script had flipped because karma is a bitch, and he took years for him to begin to realize there were things people could do to you that were unforgivable. Especially when you were close once, and you looked up to them.

So if he wouldn't call to satiate his selfishness, he'd call because that is what a number one hero would do. He'd be the number one hero who wouldn't lose and leave everything crumbling behind. So Katsuki searched for and found a number to leave tips for the Musutafu City Police Department.

It was when he moved to call the number, that he remembered that the shitty old phone didn't have a SIM card, and he wouldn't have the cell service to make calls without one. He had transferred it to his now-broken phone when he'd first bought it, and it might be intact…intact all the way on the backyard porch, below his window.

He had forgotten to take it out that morning in his rush to get to the store. This would be good if not for the fact it made retrieving it more difficult.

Fuck my life.

Being confined to his room was only one factor that would make this a tricky retrieval. Katsuki looked out his window and glared down at the bag. A telekinesis quirk would be infinitely more helpful than explosions. Explosions were loud and created a bunch of smoke. Things that would get him caught.

After he'd tossed it out the window, the bag had fallen right where the glass sliding door, leading from the dining room to the backyard, was positioned. Highly visible from most of the downstairs. No doubt his parents saw it there yesterday evening and again this morning. The Hag wouldn't be caught dead taking out the trash, and the Old Man was too busy. He'd get in trouble for leaving it eventually. If he'd remembered to take it out to the larger trash bin on the side of the house, it would require going out of his window, onto the roof and lowering a hook of some sorts to lift open the lid, retrieve the bag, get out the phone and get the SIM card. Put everything else back and return to his room.

I'm such a dumbass.

Now he would play the waiting game. He could retrieve it once the Hag was asleep. Now my sleep schedule will be fucked.

After not being called down for dinner, Katsuki waited until nearly midnight to make a move for the bag. In his waiting, he'd gathered the necessary tools he'd need to retrieve it from the window.

Repelling gear, he used it often on hikes, would work. He'd only need the rope. The time he had to wait allowed him to think of the best method of retrieval, and he'd settled on going down, grabbing the card, and climbing back up. He could hold his breath the entire time and avoid the sewer stench that might make him throw up. This also involved moving the bag as little as possible; he couldn't leave any sign that he'd left his room.

So, once the house was dead silent and he had anchored the rope, Katsuki took a deep breath and climbed down. He landed on the wooden patio on the tips of his toes, barefoot to stay as quiet as possible.

He swallowed back the gag in his throat when the smell of sewage crawled into his nose courtesy of the nighttime breeze. I need to train to hold my breath properly. In the bag, he pulled out his phone, took it apart, and retrieved an intact SIM card.

If he hadn't been holding his breath, he would have let out a relieved sigh because, with this, he wouldn't have to buy a new phone anytime soon.

That isn't to say he couldn't ask his parents. It came with the price of handing more leverage to the Hag, yet another thing to hold over him. Once he was back in his room, he installed the SIM card, and Katsuki declared the retrieval a success. A good end to one of the shittiest days ever.

By this point, he'd had hours to consider what he'd say, but nothing he thought of sounded good.

To hell with it. He didn't hesitate a moment longer, punched in the numbers, and spoke, "Hello, this is Katsuki Bakugo. I was the person attacked by the sludge villain yesterday." Really you idiot, plenty of people were caught in the attack. "Specifically, I was—" It pained him to say it, "—the hostage. Anyways, I-I think I might have a tip…or at least some idea of who the kid was who saved me and ran off. I, uh, would like to find him and…thank him for what he did. So just call or text this number back if you give a shi—if you already know or something like that. So…have a good day or night or whatever."

He hung up.

And it must have sounded pathetic because he knew it was, but Katsuki was exhausted, and even so, as much as he felt like he didn't have the energy, he still disinfected and re-dressed his self-inflicted wounds. He even cleaned the room of his sweat. Of course, he hadn't done either of those things as thoroughly he should have, but there was plenty of time to do a better job tomorrow.

It turned out to be easier to adjust to throwing your sleep schedule out the window than he expected. Katsuki got up far before sunrise so he could sneak out and go on a run. The exercise failed to distract him from the gripping anticipation stemming from a possible response from the police. Neither did a cold shower, cleaning, reading, or cleaning again out of caution for slacking off the night before.

Then, the brain-dead idiots running his school reversed course and canceled classes; they gave some shit explanation in an email. Katsuki didn't read it, it was shit regardless because now he didn't even have schoolwork to do.

He couldn't even sit or move comfortably anywhere because the harm he'd done to his skin was itching like hell two days later. Although his thoughts often turned to the first-aid kit under his bed, Katsuki remained adamant about not taking anything to dull the pain. It wasn't only that he deserved it for being so weak; he did. Yet, the far more consuming realization was found in that remembering precisely the consequences of his actions, he could stop the panic next time. Learn to stop it altogether.

There was a quote from a book he's been reading that helped him rationalize it:

"It is said we will never hear about the perfect crime. But if that is true, then is it not reasonable that the opposite may exist? That question is one I've considered worth exploring as superpower-like abilities continue manifesting. It's such a peculiar development, a quirk in the flow of human history. The reality we face of a superhero society previously only imagined requires our immediate attention, which has left me here to ponder this question.

The most effective type of action a hero can make to protect cannot be measured numerically. It, by nature, cannot be quantified. To coin it in a phrase, it is the act of anticipatory prevention. All wrongdoing on all scales, especially mass villainy, such as the horror now encompassing Japan, must have had a few origin points. From that foundation, the present scale is attained.

That is not a butterfly effect or a slippery slope to tumble down, and many more points must also be met to add to the foundation to create what is there today. But such subsequent events are less likely to occur or become relevant without that origin.

Thus the most honorable act of a hero is the kind that will never be known. At most, the actual value will only ever be entertained in hypotheticals—if at all. Nevertheless, identifying these origin points and addressing them is the core of anticipatory prevention, and it is heroics in its purest form. So if we will never hear about the perfect crime, we'll never know of this perfect rescue. A rescue from a worse future we'll never know of."

That quote is an excerpt from 'The Collective Writings of Premier Queen Diana I of Eurys, Chapter One. The first time Katsuki read this part, he wrote it out and pinned it to his corkboard, adding to the organized layers of notes and reminders. Using the concept as a way to justify focusing on his pain to crush down his weaknesses may not have been the intended application, but it helped.

Quotes from this book were a new addition to his wall, which Katsuki had acquired through an unusual series of events.

He'd been as disappointed in the score of his mock exam for UA as his mother had been furious; everyone at school would have thought the opposite, which was his intention. It was a good score, but he had been confident he'd done better. Then, in a rare case of the Hag being helpful, she yelled at him to write a letter to Principal Nedzu and ask what had been so flawed in his answers to the essay questions.

The Hag knew her son had to be better than what the score reflected. Katsuki agreed.

The letter wouldn't be some basic email, but one written by hand. The Hag had insisted he send one the same day he'd gotten the score back. And all Katsuki received in return the next day, and only a week and a half ago, was this book. It was long as FUCK. Opening the package was a memory Katsuki wished to beat out of his head. He'd been furious to the point of stupidity, as he had thought, what the fucking fuck kind of shitty response was this? The principal thought to just pile on the mind games? The principal can shove this damned thing up his ass.

Before he sent it back, which he'd planned on doing, he looked up what it was. Doing this ruled that this was some automated response. This book was not well known, and Japanese editions weren't available for the average consumer. They could only be bought through auction or for absurd prices from someone who already had it.

How has it not been translated in the hundreds of years since it was published by Premier Queen Eurys? Katsuki had learned about her in school, she was the only world figure taught across three consecutive history units: Quirk Emergence, Age of Vigilantism, and then the Dawn of Heroes.

The book had stayed splayed out on the floor under the dent in his wall that he'd made with it the second he'd read the cover. With his interest piqued, he picked it back up. The curiosity to sit down and read the first page led him to read hundreds more and eventually pick up other books to compensate for what he'd gotten wrong on the mock exam.

The pages of this book numbered in the thousands; he read many to pass the hours of being stuck in his room.

Katsuki was left trapped. The Hag was an unrelenting bitch, and the Old Bastard was an ever-reliable coward.

Even now, a day and a half later, there wasn't a response from the police. It made sense, crime had gone out of control, and no one could keep up. Everyone was desperate for any information about All Might, the police, and heroes most of all, so it wasn't even late in the morning before Katsuki called the tipline again. It's because I'm sure my last call might be drowned out by everything else.

"This is Katsuki Bakugo, yes the kid captured by the Sludge Villain two days ago. Yes, I have an explosion quirk. I'm calling to find the kid who helped me, and I have an idea who they might be. Whoever hears this better call me back."

As the days passed, headline after headline broke with the unending stream of fuckups made as Japan devolved into chaos.

All Might was really quirkless all along? This leak threw him for a loop, but after a few hours of existential contemplation, Katsuki thought of the situation in a larger context. A world where I believe Deku is alive, and All Might lost his quirk after dying? Ya know what? Why the fuck not!

Katsuki made another call, then another, and another. Calling every police tipline he could find the number for; he spent his Friday evening staring at his phone whenever he wasn't calling.

Damn my sleep schedule. You are NOT going to ignore me!

"My name is Katsuki Bakugo, and I have a useful tip for you guys. I have a lead on the identity of the kid that intervened in the Sludge Villain's attack. If anyone can be bothered to, call or text me back…PLEASE."

By Saturday morning, he'd been calling and waiting all night. Then, early Saturday morning, a text finally came back.

Officer Sansa? The fucking furry policeman?

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