Countdown to Reality

1. Hi! I just changed my plans a little for the rest of the story! I want the end to stick close to some parts of canon, and anyway, I had some plot-management to run (I love that!)

2. I hope you still like it! (I enjoy writing this a looot : )

Day 3. Later-later that morning. Countdown: 19: 13: 50

The sentences were like flies. Buzzing in his hears, flying before his eyes, and impossible to smash clean. Bakugo was trying to recall them, to match sound with lips movement, to weave some sense with the pieces he had, and the more he did, the faster, the louder the flies were.

He was not making any progress, so, after a while, he gave up. Well, not gave up. He hated giving up. A better choice of words would be "on hold". Like… putting memories, disappearing teachers and disappearing neighbors, on hold. He would come back to pajamas-topics, Not-saving-some-stuff shit and bugging lights later.

He also inwardly chose not to define "later" precisely. "Later" was a mix of "after lunch" (some shitty tasteless Vietnamese take-away food slowly getting colder), "after a good nap" (he was counting the hours he had truly slept lately and he seriously hoped he was wrong), and "when I fucking feel like it" (which was rather later than sooner).

He breathed in, and took another mouthful of rice, focusing back on his surroundings. They were in a public park, a small, unknown one, seating under the shade of some tree he was not able to name. The sun was high in the sky and his mother had a small fan blowing some cool air his way from time to time.

Deku was currently managing conversation.

So far, he had maintained a decent level of response each time his mother asked things like "So, how's school, Izuku?". The worst thing was that Deku was not lying with his half-truths. For example: "N-not so b-bad Mrs. Bakugo, we… I am in the first half of the c-class and we… I have lots of n-new friend this y-year. E-even girls".

Bakugo felt so tired he let Deku manage everything while his eyelids were almost closing. The park grass was actually the best idea his mother had in a while. He could close his eyes just one minute, right? No one would mind… just one short minute… with all the nightmares and Deku talking at night, he could use a nap… just one minute…

…Iida was looking for his student number within the stack of papers. Bakugo was growing impatient, but it was the usual: his name was at the end of the list. Beside him, Deku was waiting and so was the invisible one. Four eyes – finally, for fuck sake – found the correct paper and gave it to him…

He could not recall the words printed there, just the feeling growing inside his stomach as he read. Some mix of anger – a good damned lot of it – and denial.

He would have tried to understand more… but the scene changed in a flash, and suddenly, everything was black again.

… the sky was full of stars. The grass was covered in droplets of water; he could feel them under his fingertips. The entire world was spinning, flashing before his eyes, and images were overlapping at a speed he could not have imagined on his own…

There were people around, and there were voices, many of them. They were excited; he could tell some people were joking… and suddenly there was a short scream, not even very loud, and silence, complete absolute silence.

Deku screamed something. Words of hate and fear...

Bakugo half-choked on his food, and spit half of it on the ground, putting an end to Deku's babbling about school – the solid one, the real one, the not-dreamt-Deku. The other Deku's voice was still echoing, as if he had just screamed, and it was followed by a series of short flashes of light and…

"Kacchan?"

"Disgusting. There was a hair in my rice," he lied.

Bakugo put down his food, trying to look perfectly normal, while his heartbeat had not yet returned to normal at all.

He had heard Deku scream like that on very few occasions, and none of them were good and happy memories.

Kirishima's brain was drawing interrogative circles. He was barely breathing and he had both eyes rooted on Chisaki. The files in his hands bore Kirishima's name, and along with that, it probably included everything the doctor had discovered. He would have run away, but his legs were like complete jelly.

Did he understand? Did he understand? Did he?

On the good side of things, Chisaki was not exactly bothering about him. He sure held the files with a firm, I-am-not-happy-about-that-grip, but on his other arm was seated Eri, and she kept him busy.

Well… after second thoughts: When did he even start to think this was on the good side of things?! She was in Chisaki's arms!

The small girl was not exactly clingy and her smile had faded into something shadier, but she was chatting as the real Eri would never have.

Kirishima brain plugged back into working state, and he actually listened to what she was saying.

"…and I did not want to finish the Japanese homework, but my teacher said if I continue I will know all the hiragana soon. So I finished the homework even if I did not like it."

Chisaki also had some portion of his brain listening to Eri, as he answered coherently and immediately.

"Good." He praised. "You know we don't always do things we like, but sometimes, we still must."

"Yeah, sometimes we must." Eri said very seriously, and Kirishima shivered.

Had he brainwashed her? Kirishima wanted to take her away from him… but he did not. Obviously.

Chisaki had turned his attention back to him and said with his lifeless-psychopathic-freaky voice: "let's go."

Kirishima followed. Obviously again.

At first, he thought they would just go to the infirmary but they past the door without a second look, and Chisaki lead the path to stairs diving to some underground levels.

Kirishima was so stiff that he almost believed that his Quirk was back, but of course, it was not, and even if it had been back, he was not sure how it would have changed anything.

The corridor beneath the surface was as he remembered it: door-less, all concrete and cold looking. Eri, unbothered by the stressful environment, was babbling about her Japanese homework. Apparently, she was learning how to write the names of wild animals.

"I so want to go to the zoo!" She said at some point, and Chisaki sighted in response.

"One day maybe." He dissuaded her. "But for now, that's a forbidden place for people like us. That's why…"

"I know. That's why I'm working hard!"

"Yes. You are a good girl."

Eri's face beamed. Maybe Chisaki smiled as well, but with his surgical mask on his face, it was hard to tell.

Kirishima's worst presumptions were confirmed when he eventually put her down. They had stopped by a door, and another masked man was waiting there. Eri, instead of hesitating, reached for the knob by herself, and after a short hand-wave to them, entered the lab without anyone asking her.

She looked contented with going into the lab.

That was not okay. Like, super, super not okay.

He couldn't let her, and he tried to follow her, but Chisaki had now one free hand, and he put it on his shoulder.

"Follow me." He ordered, turning his back to Eri's door.

Kirishima hesitated, but the weight of Chisaki's hand alone was good enough persuasion. Obviously again, again, he did not have any better – any other – options.

He saw the first lab door getting further and further away, and all that time – all that very short time – useless plans ran through his head. When Chisaki opened another door, Kirishima felt like his capacity to solve problems had left his body entirely.

That new room was a little gloomier than the infirmary, but it was not a horror movie set up either. It looked very much like what he imagined university labs with restricted budget would look like, expect for some professional devices obviously too expensive for students.

Chisaki was making some money with his pills. He probably sold it to more people than just his own "family".

"You can sit here." Chisaki said - Ordered -, showing the examination table.

Kirishima wanted to faint, and to be oblivious of the rest, but he did not, so after having waited long enough to have an eyebrow raised at him, he sat exactly as ordered.

That was when he noticed the other man. He was standing patiently in the corner, looking very intensely at the two newcomers. Chisaki went to fumble with some tools, and gave the other one a discreet head sign.

The man stood, and coming closer, began asking a question.

"On your blood test, there is no trace of the anti-Quirk medication, for how long have you skipped it?"

"I don't know." Kirishima told him unnaturally super-fast. "I don't know. If it is real, and I so much hope it is not, I do not remember anything of it, not a single minute, pills included, but I might have not taken it, because several people said so. If it is not real, obviously, this is all in my head, and I don't take pills in my head."

Kirishima put a hand in front of his own mouth, unable to refrain from talking, while the man looked puzzled. Was he making him speak?!

"That's the less comprehensible truth of my carrier." The man said. "Surprising. Why would you keep your Quirk? Are you some sort of spy?"

"I like my Quirk, I don't want to lose it and I am not a spy." He said without even being able to stop the words. "In reality, I am a hero."

Kirishima was grateful that somehow his answering-tongue was making a distinction between himself and the other Kirishima, (who was a spy) but was still horrified at what he was saying.

"A hero?"

Kirishima wanted to stop talking but the words left his mouth again without his approval. "Yes, I am a hero, a provisional-licensed one, but not here, and I hope I am a hero for real, because if this is real, I am fucked. We all are, and I don't know how to continue being a hero from here."

There was an awkward pause.

"I don't get it." The man said, apparently to Chisaki, while Kirishima put a second hand on his mouth to try muffling the words. "Either there is something really wrong with the last batch of pills we shipped, either he is telling the truth, but… does it make sense to you?"

"Keep asking." Chisaki said, putting some plastic gloves on.

"Okay… what do you mean, by 'hero'?"

"Hero is my future job". Kirishima said, his voice speaking louder to be heard. " It's the most admired and most difficult job ever. It is what I want to become, but for now, I am just at school."

"At school?"

"Yes, in high school. I work hard every day, and even harder now that we live in the dorms."

"What do you mean in dorms? Don't you live at Yuchiko-san estate? Since when do you live at dorms?"

"No. I leave in the dorms. At my hero school. Since august. August of my first year."

Kirishima had no idea how to stop it. His heart was racing, and Chisaki was looking at him in such a poker-faced way that was even worse than if he had looked ready to commit a murder.

"And what are you now? Second year?"

"First year."

"You know we are in June, right?"

"No, we are mid-December."

The truth-question-quirked-guy stopped, for Kirishima true relief, and he turned back to Chisaki. The interrogator looked at loss for words, as if it was really the most surprising questioning of his villain-career.

"He believes it." The man felt the need to underline.

"That's interesting. There is something wrong with you." Chisaki said.

Relief was a short feeling.

"Let's first check if what's wrong with you comes from my pills or not. Then we can check other hypothesis." He said while mixing something into a glass. "The quality tests we already ran are all negatives for abnormalities. So, the issue is more on how you react to it."

Kirishima looked at the glass.

Whatever was inside, he was not drinking that.

He was never taking something again from a suspicious person without knowing exactly what it was.

As strong as his resolve was, it was a lot easier to think about it than to make it happen.

Chisaki asked him to get up, and he did, because what if he refused?

Chisaki showed him one of the expensive not-student-budget-lab-looking-machines, and ordered him to lay down on its flat surface, and he did, because, what if he said no?

"It's a highly reduced dose of the same batch of the anti-quirked pills you took. While you have it, I will have a little look at what happens in your brain."

He stared at the liquid for a while, almost shaking, and when it became unacceptable to wait longer, he just made a short prier and drank.

Chisaki would not take no as an answer.

Then, the villain clicked a few buttons and the machine began making all sorts of lights and noises. The surface on which he was laying down moved inside white curved-wall, and after ten seconds, his upper-body had disappeared within the high-tech device.

Nothing happened.

Kirishima felt about to get sick, ready to die, dead-scared, but nothing happened… the only thing was that light from the machine. It must be broken or something, because it was flashing in his eyes and…

He heard Chisaki swear, and then…

…Kirishima was exiting class. He was waving to Mina, Sero and Jiro. They were heading towards an impatient Eraser-head. Behind him, in the classroom, Bakugo was insulting Iida, asking how he could be slower than a god dammed snail and not find his fucking name in a stack of paper less thick than his robot-pinkies…

…

…He was in the gym changing room. Kaminari was complaining. He had bruises everywhere, delicacy of Bakugo and Kirishima, but his complains where not so loud that it was anything serious. But what he had just said…

"You did what?" Kirishima, said, whirling around.

Kaminari was looking smug – and half-dead but that was another story to tell – and not at all bothered by the fact that it was written on big red letters at the top of the paper he held "DO NOT SHARE, DO NOT COPY, DO NOT DISCUSS."

"Don't you want to know what it says?"

…

They were in the kitchen. He was between Bakugo and Kaminari, trying to stop the former from killing the later.

"YOU ARE SO FUCKING DEAD, SHITHEAD!"

Kaminari bumped into the microwave harder than on a normal friendly-fight. Maybe because it was not a friendly-fight. Kirishima just had the time to put a – hardened – arm in front of Bakugo.

"Man, chill, that was just a joke!"

"I AM KILLING YOU!"

There were two scents in the room. Something in the microwave burning and the sweet-scent of nitroglycerin at the ready. The lights shut down, with an electric arc from the microwave, interrupting…

…

… they were outside. It was chilly. Uraraka-san was standing next to him. Midoriya was the first to react. He screamed and jumped, letting a deep footprint onto the grass. In one leap, he was on the other side of the field, under the trees, next to the old lady. She looked unconscious, and two other people were down beside her. Kirishima was not sure who it was. It was dark, the lampposts had all gone out, and that flash of light…

…

… he was in a room, sometime later. A classroom. Some of his comrades were next to him. Uraraka was looking decided. Yaoyorozu had that I-am-going-to-be-responsible-for-half-everyone look on her face. Tsuyu-chan… looked like Tsuyu-chan: unreadable. Sato had both fists closed, set neatly on the table. Aoyama looked like he wanted to escape the room faster than light – or laser. Hagakure did not look like anything. Kaminari was looking… at his feet, and his eyes were very red. Midoriya was looking very angry, and yet, he was containing it fairly well.

"…remember. Lives are at stake. If you have some doubts…" Eraser-head insisted.

"I…I don't feel like I can." Someone said.

All heads turned as one. Midoriya almost fell off his chair, having turned too quickly…

…

Fuck!

…

Was this a lab?

Like Chisaki's?

Why was he there?

Ah.

Right. The light was not bugging at all. Everything happened in his head, expect for the swearing. That was from Chisaki. There was another flash, and Kirishima was back in the classroom, grabbing his paper from the stack in Iida's hands… and again… and again…

Hagakure, light on her feet, entered the room where Hana sat with her weird clique. Unfortunately, a fluffy carpet laid in the center, surrounding the sofa like an ocean she could not afford to cross. They would definitely see her footprints if she dared try. She stopped a few feet behind them.

"Where are the others?" Her boss asked, taking her phone out of her pocket and looking at the corridor.

"Bored somewhere." The blond girl lazily answered, getting closer to her boss. "Should I get them?"

"I don't have all day." Hana stopped her. "You will retell whoever tags along what I have told you. Look. This is the Endoa forest. It is big, so my advice is to start by the area near Shiromaru station. This area here is mainly on fire, and these three villages are being evacuated… so it's probably too dangerous for them to still be around. Also, police and armed forces are around here… and progressing to the west… towards Yaju forest area, and Mont Kumotori."

"How many can we expect?"

"Does it make a difference?" Hana asked, and the man shrugged.

"Not really. A bad surprise it always just more troublesome than a bad known fact."

"… I actually don't have the figures, but enough to have reasonable chances of stopping a kid popping icebergs out of nothing."

"That's a loooot" Purred the blond weirdo next to Hana's hear. Hagakure would have fled the sofa long ago if she had been sitting there. However, she was not, and even if she had the name of that forest (thanks every single god in that stupid parallel world for that, by the way), she had a very hard time seeing the phone's map, and all the details it may have in store.

"I was saying," Hana continued, "There are not that many routes you could take to enter the forest, and many places inside you better not be. So, the safer path is currently after the Shiromaru station. Himiko-san could afford to try taking the train and the bus, but you definitely can't, so you both better leave now."

That name, Hagakure had heard it before.

One second, she stopped thinking about Todoroki-kun and Ashido-chan and the forest name. Her mission, the danger she was in, she forgot it all, and she, suddenly…

Hagakure looked at the girl on the couch… then at the man's back. She felt an urge to sprint back to where she came from. Realllyyyyyyy fast.

Were they… ? Were they villains? The League Villains?

She (for obvious reasons) did not scream out loud, but an internal shriek sent all of her other thoughts awry.

Had she been so focused on Hana, on her mission, on her comrades that she had not recognized them?! She had been shown pictures! She had had nightmares! She had heard first-hand description from Ochako-chan and Tsuyu-chan! How could she be so blind?

She took a solid minute to recover from her shock, and then, only, took one good look at the girl's face.

She looked… weird. She had all the facial characteristics described by her friends, the blond hair, the smirk, the creepiness oozing from every single word she spat, but Hagakure was not recognizing her. She looked like the girl on the pictures, but not… well, not accurately. Like, a doppelganger. A skilled, well informed doppelganger, but a doppelganger nonetheless.

Hagakure almost smacked herself in the head.

She was a doppelganger in the first place! That was her Quirk!

But…why would she transform herself into a low-cost version of herself? That was not really making any sense… even if it kind of excused Hagakure for not having recognized her when she walked in.

Her eyes slowly switched target to end on the man's back. She had never heard of a white-haired man in the League. Who was that guy…?

She had to check his face.

Slowly, she circled the carpet, carefully trying not to bump into any piece of furniture. The room was a little cramped, and they were not the cleanest people, there were papers and old remains of snacks all around the floor.

One wrong step, and she would have to hope they all suck at hide and seek.

"Once it's done, should we come back here or to go your grandmother?" The man asked, and Hagakure stopped staring at her busy feet.

Now that she had a better point of view, she managed to put a name the face: that man's skin was a patchwork of burned skin, transforming doubts into certitudes. She stood between the carpet, the sofa and the TV set, her jaw opening wide.

That was Dabi… expect that it was not. The scars were… not in the right place? She tried to recall the pictures – bad quality ones, by the way, heroes lacked professional photographers, obviously – and the more she did, the more certain she became: some of his scars were not where they should have been. And the hair… why was it white?

"Grandma is an option only if you have no options." Hana agreed reluctantly, but Hagakure could not care less about the answer. She was somewhat busy processing that this woman worked with the League.

And that she, Hagakure, worked with that woman.

Was she working with the League?

God, she did not want to clarify that point. Not ever.

She refocused on her mission: she had to leave that tower faster than fast, and tell everyone about the forest name. She turned around and went back to the door.

"And if you get caught…" Hana said in a creepy-cute kind of way, "You've never met me, my stupid brother, my nice grandmother, nor anyone from this family, and you die quietly alone, okay?"

"Of courseeee… Hana-chaan."

"We are good, then."

Hagakure ran. Fast.

She ran to the next door, used the password to open it. Then she did not stop, found the stairs, and swore at how tall was the tower of Horrible-Hana. She continued running on the ground floor – thanks Aizawa-sensei for forcing them to do physical training every day, by the way – and then continued running at top speed on the street, until she reached the closest underground station, and its locker area.

Ignoring anyone who would have seen her locker open by itself, she grabbed her phone, hide it between her closed palms, and looked for a hidden corner from which she could safely spend time shaking in fear, and writing to her friends.

Deku obviously did not believe that Bakugo had choked on a hair while eating his food. (The bastard had experience on hair-gulping field). That was written in his eyes like a fucking advertisement panel.

Probably because of their proximity with Bakugo's mother, he still kept his questions for himself.

As most of their lunch had disappeared into their stomachs, she was edgy again. She was looking at the time, at Bakugo, and at the people in park three or four times a minute.

She eventually got up from the grass and told them it was time to go back (and time for Izuku to maybe think about the importance of attending class).

"I still don't have a phone." Bakugo instantly answered, "And no phone, no going home, that's the deal."

His dammed mother looked almost ready to come back on her words. No, not "almost". The looked ready to scrap the previous days commitments and rewrite them entirely. Fuck. Just his luck.

"Katsuki I am not sure…" She said, casting a worried look over her shoulder to check the buildings behind the park trees. "…what if the crowd is too much?"

"It's Not!"

"Kacchan, I also think it's a bad idea." Deku betrayed him. "Y-you don't h-handle crowds well y-y-y-et."

Bakugo jumped on his feet to have the height advantage, with in mind many graphic ideas on how he was going to have Deku regret ever having learnt how to speak. The nerd also stood up – but he was still a smaller shitty nerd – and he did not take any steps back.

Instead, he turned to Mitsuki, showing Bakugo his back.

Did he seriously have a death wish?

Bakugo felt his palms heat up.

"Mrs. Bakugo, you're right, I must go to school… but I think it's better if Kacchan does not go back to that shop… m-maybe for tonight I can lend him my cellphone, to solve the problem faster, and next time…"

There were stars, and sparkles of gratitude stuck on his mother disgusting sweet face. Bakugo grabbed the nerd collar and made him turn back.

"What the fuck are you playing at?!"

"Kacchan… I-I removed the password…you can use it…" Deku tried to say, while half-shoving the phone in his face.

On the screen, Bakugo read "Play along." He stared a few seconds, ignoring Mitsuki furious scolding – it was not a way to thank Izuku-kun! – and then stared back at Deku serious eyes. In silence, he took the phone and let his collar go.

Deku was hiding something.

"Ok." He reluctantly agreed.

The nerd looked relieved, and Mitsuki beamed.

"Thank you so much Izuku! Katsuki, I promise…"

"Don't fucking do promises you can't keep!" He snapped, pocketing Deku's phone. "Let's fucking go, and shut up!"

He took a few steps forward fast, to put some distance between himself and them. If Deku had not a solid reason for that shit… well the nerd knew what he was risking.

"Katsuki!" He heard his mother call, "Stay with us!"

He did not slow down. Deku, behind him, told Mitsuki maybe it was a better idea if he spoke with him first, and his dammed mother was so thankful that Izuku-kun was such a nice friend. How could she tell that amount of bullshit in one only sentence?

Deku sped up to reach Bakugo's pace, and Mitsuki stayed behind, watching them as she would have with two toddlers playing with dangerous kitchen instruments.

"I swear, Deku, you've better have a good explanation."

"Hagakure knows where Todoroki and Ashido-san are." The nerd said. "She just texted us, I have to hurry, sorry."

"Good. Where?"

Deku did not answer straight away. He stared at him from under his hair, warily.

"You can't come, Kacchan. You collapsed for no reason… and I don't want to point the obvious, but if that happens again during a fight…"

"YOU PLAN TO…"

"Don't shout!"

Fuck him.

"Don't you fucking dare to decide for me what I'm doing or not!" He said in a more reasonable tone. "I'll manage, I'm coming, end of the discussion. So, where the fuck is goddamned Icy Hot?"

Deku did not drop the subject. Bakugo took the phone from his pocket and... fuck. The nerd had not removed the password.

"I am not telling you what it is until we agree. Kacchan, you were almost falling asleep earlier. You half-fainted this morning. It's completely unsafe for you to come. What if you see another ghost-Aizawa while you are bombing yourself meters above the ground?"

The result would not be pleasant, for sure. Even though…

"Listen to me, shithead!" Bakugo whispered-screamed. "I'm fucking coming for two reasons: Number one, we don't have Recovery Girl."

Deku looked puzzled.

"What?"

"I am not stupid, I know seeing things is not good, I know I did not sleep enough, and I know that it is no fucking joke that you couldn't wake me up last night. But we're not at U.A.! I can't have an appointment with Recovery Girl, and sitting with my parents while they try to persuade me that I'm fucking crazy isn't exactly the best cure."

"That's true but…"

"Reason number two, Deku! We don't fucking have Recovery Girl!

"That was the first you…"

"If you go alone, you'll break half your shitty bones on fucking way or another, and Recovery Girl won't be there to patch you up! Now, get in your dammed head that I'm coming and tell me what invisible girl wrote, fuck."

"I'm not going alone. Kaminari and Yaoyorozu will come with me."

Deku was seriously getting on his nerves.

"Do you seriously think you can convince me to stay behind, shitty nerd?"

"Kacchan…" He started, but he stopped mid-sentence.

Bakugo read a wide range of arguments cross the mind of Deku. From "it's too dangerous." to "We probably can manage without you". None of them would work, and he knew it.

"What about your mother? You can't disappear on her. Not again."

Bakugo almost answered that he could. A short look above his shoulder told him otherwise. He did not like that version of her, but letting her believe he was lost again… Deku looked victorious, and Bakugo hated it.

"She has to think I'm somewhere else. Invite me again at your place, and then we bail out."

"Not possible. She would call my mother." Deku countered.

"Then I need a place where she can't call anyone."

"Since internet appeared, Kacchan, that world does not exist anymore."

He regretted very much that there were people in the street. Sending clever-Deku flying was really an appealing thought.

Bakugo was not giving up. He rummaged through his brain, looking for a way to disappear without disappearing for real… and then his eyes ended on the entrance to the place he needed. A wide grin came to his face.

"You want to fucking check who's the smartest? You play along now."

Deku looked worried, like fucking worried, but Bakugo whirled back to his mother side.

"I don't want to go back home, and I don't want to take his shitty phone." He said, and Mitsuki looked really, really, really tired. "Deku offered to pay for movie tickets. At this hour, it will be almost empty… and during that time, you go buy me a cellphone."

"A movie?" Mitsuki repeated as if movies were work of the devil himself.

"Kacchan…" Deku tried to butt in.

"That one." Bakugo insisted, showing the cinema, and specifically one of the action movies currently airing. He had not seen it, but he remembered Kirishima talking – being endlessly annoying – about it, and claiming it was the best 2 hours 35 minutes long movie of punches and manliness.

None of them seems to agree with his idea: his mother because letting him alone was not an option, and Deku because disappearing form the movie theater, saving Todoroki's ass and being back within 2 hours and 35 minutes was probably too difficult for him… and because he was thinking that somehow, the shit that happened in the morning made him weak.

As if lights, fucking lights could have any effect on him!

"Katsuki…"

"Fuck, you owe me ten years of freedom, stop being an ass when I ask for a few hours."

Her left eyebrow twitched as if he had hit just the right emotional button. For a few seconds, he almost saw the good old version of her, the one who would have reduced him to a sorry heap of ashes if he had dared to say something equivalently mean to her real self.

He almost so a "No." form on her lips.

If that happened, Bakugo knew he would have no other choice than to go be back home.

Again.

One fleeting second, in a small a very not destabilizing flash, he...

… it was night. He was in the living room, and there was just a single light lit up, next to the picture with the black frame. He was seating on the couch, his mother had a hand around his shoulders, and she was telling him it was okay, it was just another bad dream, he was back home now…

What was that? Bakugo felt shivers on his spin.

… and his father was telling him magic did not exist, nor were dragons, but he remembered and…

His mother was hesitating. For the movie tickets. He had to stay there. In reality. With her. With Deku. Fuck, was Deku… had Deku noticed?

…He remembered everything. The dragons in the sky, his friends, even Deku. He remembers the pain from the tattoos, the holes in his earlobes for the earrings, and... It was not just a nightmare, it was not just a movie played in his head, it existed, and he did not want to be back with that shitty people calling themselves parents, and it couldn't be just the reality, he did not want to be back to that home…

…AGAIN!...

He blinked back to reality, a hand reaching involuntary for his ear and finding no holes.

Of fucking course.

What was he thinking?!

Thankfully Deku was behind him, he couldn't have notice that… that nothing. This was just tiredness and the result of having to face too many obstacles.

That was nothing more.

That was fucking nothing more.

Fuck. Fuck!

… "There is only one magic word in this world, baby." She said. "and I'm sure it still works, this one you can still try to say it. Any time. I promise. It will work."…

Bakugo swallowed. Whatever the fuck were these images fusing through his mind like poison, they looked as real as the rest of –

No. They did. Not.

He looked at his mom.

"Please mom," He heard his mouth voice, the words burning his tongue like fire, but she had said it would always work.

Maybe there was a fucking reason it was called a magic word.

Because it did work.