Irusu (A BNHA x IT AU)

by Seroyonin

It started in the winter of 2004, after the death of Midoriya Izuku's little sister Eri, and it would end almost 16 years later, after Kaminari Denki made his six phone calls. After all, they had all promised that they'd come back. (An "IT" AU with *that* part removed) (Cross posted from Ao3) (Every trigger warning imaginable applies- seriously, proceed with caution)

22. Bakugo Katsuki Makes Tracks

—1—

MAY 30TH, 2020 / IRUSU, JAPAN

'Well... there was the day chappie and his friends chased me... right before the end of school...'

Bakugo had been walking along Ukiyo Park road, the aforementioned park stretching a decent length along the street to his right. Now he stopped, hands stuffed deep his pockets, looking toward the Kissing Bridge but not really seeing it.

'I got away from them in the toy department of Aizawa's shop...'

Since the mad conclusion of the reunion lunch, he had been walking aimlessly, trying to make his peace with the awful things which had been in the manju buns... or the things which had seemed to be in the steamed desserts... (memories of the eye popping in his mouth like a gusher made his skin crawl and bile rise in the back of his throat) He thought that most likely nothing at all had come out of them. It had been a group hallucination brought on by all the spooky shit they had been talking about. The best proof of the hypothesis was that Natsumi had seen nothing at all. Of course, Todoroki's brother had never seen any of the blood that came out of the bathroom drain either, but this wasn't the same.

'No? Why not?'

"Because we're grownups now," he muttered, and discovered the thought had absolutely no power or logic at all; it might as well have been a nonsense line from a kid's skip-rope chant.

He started to walk again.

'I crossed the back alley onto Ukiyo Park road... and sat down on a park bench for awhile and I thought I saw...'

He stopped again, frowning.

(Saw what?)

'... but that was just something I dreamed.'

(Was it? Was it really?)

He looked to his left and saw the hulking stone and concrete building that had once housed The Center Street Drug, and was now a mini mall. His stomach flipped nervously.

'And here I am,' he thought. 'Right fucking here. Scene of that other hallucination... Or dream... Or whatever it was.'

The others saw him as the short fuse, the fiery egomaniac in desperate need of an anger management course, and he had fallen neatly and easily into that role again. 'Ah, we all fell neatly and easily back into our old roles again, didn't you notice? But was there anything very unusual about that?' He thought you would probably see much the same thing at any tenth or twentieth high school reunion- the juvenile delinquent who had discovered a vocation for the priesthood in college would, after two drinks, revert almost automatically to the wisecracker he had been; the Genius who had wound up with a GM truck dealership would suddenly begin spouting off about philosophy, the guy who had played with the high school band on Saturday nights and who had gone on to become a mathematics professor at Kyoto University would suddenly find himself on stage with the band, a Fender guitar strapped over his shoulder, whopping out the old classics with gleeful drunken ferocity... all it took was a glimpse of what things used to be- a window back to the past- and everyone fell into their place.

But, Bakugo believed, it was the reversion that was the hallucination, not the present life. Maybe the child was the father of the man, but fathers and sons often shared very different interests and only a passing resemblance. They-

('-But you say grownups and now it sounds like nonsense; it sounds like so much bibble-babble. Why is that, Katsuki? Why?')

'-Because Irusu is as shitty as ever. Why don't we just leave it at that?'

('Because things aren't that simple, that's why.')

As a kid he had been a feisty spirit, a sometimes vulgar, sometimes worryingly confrontational piece of work, because it was one way to get by without getting killed by kids like Shigaraki Tomura or going absolutely batshit with boredom and loneliness. He realized now that a lot of the problem had been his own mind, which was filled to brim with personal expectations almost impossible to accomplish in one lifetime. They had thought him strange, scary, or even suicidal, depending on the escapade in question, but maybe it had been a simple case of over-working himself, never quite satisfied when he reached a goal, always immediately climbing towards the next one in line...

...Anyway, it was the sort of thing you had to get under control after a while... and he had discovered how to do just that in the months after he had wandered into his colleges radio station, pretty much on a whim, and had discovered everything he had ever wanted during his first week behind the microphone. He hadn't been very good at first; he had been too excited to be good. But he had understood his potential not to be just good at the job but great at it, and just that knowledge had been enough to put him over the moon on a cloud of euphoria. At the same time he had begun to understand the great principle that moved the universe, at least that part of the universe which had to do with careers and success: you found the crazy guy who was running around inside of you, fucking up your life. You chased him into a corner and grabbed him. But you didn't kill him. Oh no. Killing was too good for the likes of that little bastard. You put a harness over his head and then started plowing. The crazy guy worked like a demon once you had him in the traces. And he supplied you with a laugh or two. That was really all there was. And that was enough.

He had been good, alright... he had started with luring the school administration in with lies about how he wanted to interview them on the behind the scenes of the inter-workings of the university... but once they were live, he'd grill into them so hard they'd barely have a chance to respond... he was kicked out of the campus's radio station, of course, but on his last day he managed to slip in a promotional about his podcast before they shut the whole thing down and in a weeks time, his ratings were soaring. A year later he was approached by Yamada Hizashi in a coffee bar and signing a two-year work contract a month later...

Yes, with the radio show as an outlet for his own self-induced frustrations, he became a much calmer person overall. Sure, he still had a bit of temper, but it wasn't nearly as hair trigger as it had been in his youth... and he had even started cussing a lot less, which (apparently) made him more approachable and less intimidating. With this newfound sense of calm, he was able to outgrow the nightmares of his past...

...Or he thought he had. Until today, when the word grownup suddenly stopped making sense to his own ears. And now here was something else to cope with, or at least think about; here was the huge and totally idiotic statue of the Kitsune lady in the middle of Ukiyo Park.

"I must be the exception that proves the rule, Freckles."

"Are you sure there was nothing before that, Kacchan? Nothing at all?"

"I went up to Ukiyo and... I thought I saw..."

...Sharp pain needled at his eyes for the second time that day and the ten thousandth since Kaminari had called him on the 28th. He clutched at them, a startled moan leaping from his throat. Then it was gone again, as quickly as it had come... But he had also smelled something, hadn't he? Something that wasn't really there, but something that had been there, something that made him think of-

("I'm right here with you, Kats- grab my hand- I'm right here.")

-Kaminari Denki. It was smoke that had made his eyes sting and water. Fifteen years ago they had breathed that smoke; in the end there had just been Kaminari and himself left and they had seen-

-But it was gone.

He took a step closer to the Kitsune statue, as amazed by its surprisingly powerful aura as he had been overwhelmed by its size as a child. The mythical woman stood twenty feet high, and the base added another six feet. She stood looking down on the koi fish and picnickers by her base. She had been erected in the eighties in memoriam of one of the cities leaders. The Irusu City Council had voted money for the statue a year earlier, in 1981. It had been hotly debated, both in the council's public meetings and in the letters-to-the-editor columns of the Irusu Weekly News. Many thought it would be a perfectly lovely statue, certain to become a tourist attraction of note. There were others who found the idea of a ginormous stone lady and her Fox form, garish, and unbelievably gauche. Bakugo's own mother, fourteen in 1981, had written a letter to the News saying that if such a monstrosity were actually to be erected in Irusu, she would blow it up.

The controversy- which Bakugo recognized now as an utterly typical big-town/small-city tempest in a teapot- had raged for six months, and of course it had been entirely meaningless; the statue had been purchased, and even if the City Council had done something as unthinkable as deciding not to use an item for which money had been paid, where in hells name could it have been stored? Then the statue had been set in place, still shrouded in a whack of canvas big enough to serve as a clippership sail. It had been unveiled on May 13th, 1982, which was the incorporated township's one-hundred-and-seventy-fourth birthday. One faction gave voice to predictable moans of outrage; the other to equally predictable moans of rapture.

When the stone behemoth was revealed that day, his then teenaged mother had dragged a thirteen year-old Inko down to the unveiling to protest. The two of them had been decked in "tear it down" T-shirts, khaki-shorts, and two prettily lettered signs calling for its removal. A photo of this event had been immortalized in the Bakugo's home for as long as he could remember... but It wasn't until recently that the tiny green-haired girl with the timid smile, kind eyes, and "I'm overwhelmed but am trying to be supportive of you" vibe meant anything more to him then "my mom's childhood best friend"

He remembered when he was younger, his father had stopped and looked at the photo one day, turned to his wife, and said "I still don't get why you were so against that statue... it's ugly, sure, but it isn't any worst then the ruins of the Kanazaki ironworks."

His mother had frowned, then. Her eyebrows furrowing, and she had set the dishes she was washing down in the sink. "I don't know... it just- something about it always felt... off? Like- it shouldn't of been there... I dunno. Inko felt it too."

"...you know..." his father had also paused, turning back towards the photo, and focusing in on the statue. "...now that you mention it... there is something really off putting about that thing..."

It had been in the March of 2005, nearly two years after that strange conversation, when Bakugo would finally feel inclined to agree with his parents sentiments. Bakugo, irritated and exhausted, had finished up on one of the benches in front of the statue after eluding- by the barest of margins- Shigaraki, Kurogiri, and Twice in a chase that had led from Irusu Elementary School across most of the downtown area. He had finally ditched them in the toy department of The Center Street Drug.

It wasn't really much of a toy department, really, only housing a handful of barely passable art sets and toy cars that the major companies had rejected for one reason or another, but Bakugo had been far past caring about such things- by then it was a case of any port in a storm. Shigaraki Tomura had been right behind him and by then Bakugo had been flagging badly. He had dodged into the mouth of the department store's revolving door as a last resort. Shigaraki, who apparently didn't understand the physics of such devices, had nearly lost the tips of his fingers trying to grab him as Bakugo trundled around and into the store.

Pelting deeper into the cool shop, shirttail flying out behind him, he had heard the revolving door give off a series of reports almost as loud as TV gunfire and understood that Chappie and the fuckwits were still after him. He was laughing as he ducked past one of the isles towards the freezers but that was only a front; he was as full of terror as a rabbit caught in a wire snare. They really meant to beat him good this time (he had no idea that in another ten weeks or so he would believe the three of them, Shigaraki in particular, capable of anything short of murder, and he surely would have whitened with shock if he had known of the apocalyptic rockfight in July, when even that last qualification would disappear from his mind). And the whole thing had been so utterly, typically stupid.

Bakugo and the other boys in his grade-five class had been filing into the gym. A grade-seven class, Shigaraki hulking among them like an ox among cows, had been coming out. Although he was still in grade five, Shigaraki went to gym with the older boys due to his size. The overhead pipes had been dripping again and Mr. Tajima hadn't yet gotten around to putting up his CAUTION! WET FLOOR! sign on its little easel. Shigaraki had slipped in a puddle and had landed flat on his ass.

Before he could stop it Bakugo's traitor mouth had opened: "Way to go, banana-heels!"

There had been an explosion of laughter from both Shigaraki's classmates and Bakugo's, but there had been no laughter on Shigaraki's face as he picked himself up-only a dull flush the color of cherries.

"I'll catch you later, Trashmouth," he said, and walked on.

The laughter died at once. The boys in the hall looked at Bakugo as one already dead. Shigaraki did not pause to check reactions; he simply walked off, head down, elbows red from catching the fall, a large wet place on the seat of his pants. Looking at that wet spot, Bakugo felt his suicidally witty mouth drop open again... but this time he snapped it shut again, so fast he almost amputated the tip of his tongue with the falling gate of his teeth.

"Why'd you say that, Katsuki?" Kirishima Ejirou whispered anxiously from behind him. "He's gonna kill you."

Bakugo opened his mouth to retort, but was cut off by Deku and Iida, both having similar sentiments.

"K-Kuh-Kacchan... y-you know huh-how Tuh-Tuh-Tuh-Tomura is..."

"Maybe you should tell an adult about what happened..."

Bakugo 'tched' and turned from them and walked into the boys locker room, crossing his arms, not bothering to reply to their concerns.

'Well, I'll just punch his teeth in, then.' he told himself uneasily as he changed for gym. 'Sure I will- as if I'd even need to prepare for that, though- Ole desert-dry just hasn't got that many memory circuits working. Every time he takes a shit he probably has to look up the directions in the instruction booklet, ha-ha.'

Ha-ha.

"You're dead, Trashmouth," Mineta told him snottily, grinning a bit. "don't worry, though. I'll bring flowers."

"As if I'd let you within a thousand miles of my funeral, creep. I don't trust you around my corpse." Bakugo had shot back smartly, and everyone laughed, (well, except for Iida Tenya, who had scolded him like the mother hen he was) why not, they could all afford to laugh. What, me worry? They would all be home watching Takeshi's castle, whatever anime was popular right now, and who knows what else as Bakugo went shagging ass through the freezer and chips isle on his way to the toy department with sweat pouring down his back and sticking his hair to his forehead. Sure, they could laugh. Har-de-har-har-har.

Shigaraki hadn't forgotten. Bakugo had left by the door at the pre-k end of the school building just in case, but Shigaraki had stuck Twice and Kurogiri there, also just in case. Har-de-har-har-har.

Thank everything up above that Bakugo saw Twice first or there would have been no contest at all. Twice was looking out toward the soccer field, holding an unlit cigarette in one hand and dreamily watching the high school girls team practice. Heart pounding hard, Bakugo had walked quietly across the playground and was most of the way down Taiko before Twice turned his head and saw him. He yelled for Shigaraki and Kurogiri, and since then the chase had been on.

When Bakugo reached the toy department it had been utterly, horribly deserted. Aizawa wasn't even at the counter- a welcome adult to put a stop to things before they got entirely out of hand. He could hear the three dinosaurs of the apocalypse closing in now. And he simply couldn't run anymore. Each breath produced a deep hurting stitch in his left side.

His eye fixed on a door which read EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY \ ALARM WILL SOUND! Hope kindled in his chest.

Bakugo ran down an aisle crammed with jack-in-the-boxes, cheaply made toy rifles, tamagotchi pets, and little robo dogs. He reached the door and slammed the push-bar as hard as he could. The door opened, letting in cool mid-March air. The alarm went off with a strident bray. Bakugo immediately doubled back and dropped to his hands and knees in the next aisle over. He was down before the door could settle closed again.

Shigaraki, Twice, and Kurogiri thundered into the toy department just as the door clicked shut and the alarm cut off. They raced for it, Shigaraki in the lead, his face set and intent.

Aizawa finally appeared, rounding the corner. His long pharmaceutical coat flapping out behind him, looking even more exhausted and annoyed then Bakugo felt- something the blonde hadn't thought was possible.

"Ugh. You three..." Aizawa said, giving them the stare down of the century. "That's an emergency exit... didn't you ever learn to read?" his eyes shifted towards Shigaraki specifically.

Kurogiri glanced at him a little nervously, but Shigiraki and Twice never turned from their course and Kurogiri eventually followed them. The alarm brayed again, longer this time as they charged into the alley. Before it stopped clanging Bakugo was on his feet and trotting back toward the chip isle.

Aizawa gave Bakugo a side-long glance, and sighed: "Ah... should've known you were involved, Katsuki..." however, he didn't do anything more then return to his post behind the pharmacy counter.

...And so he had escaped. And so he had ended up in Ukiyo park... he devoutly hoped, out of harm's way. At least for the time being. He was spent. He sat down on a bench just to the left of the Kitsune statue, wanting only a little peace while he got himself back together. In a bit he would get up and head home, but for now it felt too good to just sit here in the afternoon sun. The day had opened in a cold drizzly gloom, but now you could believe spring might actually be on the way.

Farther up the lawn he could see the Ukiyo Park marquee, set in front of the red gazebo, which on that March day bore this message in large blue translucent letters:

HEY TEENS!

COMING MARCH 28TH

ROCK-A-PALOOZA IS COMING TO IRUSU

SUPERCAR

ACID MOTHER'S TEMPLE

BERRY ROLL

CHILD'S VIEW

COCOBAT

AN EVENING OF WHOLESOME ENTERTAINMENT!

That was a show Bakugo really wanted to see, but he knew there wasn't a chance. He'd had way to many notes written and phone call's made about his "attitude" for his mother to ever agree to let him go.

Rock music did much more than make him happy. It made him feel bigger, stronger, more there. There was power in that music, a power which seemed to most rightfully belong to all the skinny kids, fat kids, ugly kids, shy kids- the world's losers, in short. In it he felt a mad hilarious voltage which had the power to both kill and exalt.

He would have his rock and roll someday if he wanted it- he was confident it would still be there for him when his mother finally gave in and let him have it- but that would not be on March 28th, 2005... or in 2006... or...

His eyes had drifted away from the marquee and then... well... then he must have fallen asleep. It was the only explanation that made sense. What had happened next could only happen in dreams.

And now here he was again, a Bakugo Katsuki who had finally gotten all the rock and roll he had ever wanted... and who had found, happily, that it still wasn't enough. His eyes went to the marquee in front of City Center and saw that, with a hideous kind of serendipity, those same blue letters spelled out:

JUNE 14TH

HEAVY METAL MANIA!

LOUDNESS

BLOOD STAIN CHILD

SIGH

BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE OR ONLINE

'Somewhere along the way they dropped the wholesome entertainment line,' thought Bakugo, 'but as far as I can tell that's just about the only difference,'

...And suddenly he heard Danny and the Juniors, (one of many western rock bands he admired) dim and distant, like voices heard down a long corridor coming out of a cheap radio: "Rock and roll will never die, I'll dig it to the end... It'll go down in history, just you watch my friend..."

Bakugo looked back at the stone woman, patron saint of Irusu- Irusu, which had come into being, according to the stories, because this was where the logs fetched up when they came downriver. There had been a time when, in the spring, the Shibui would have been a solid log from one side to the other, its black bark hides glistening in the spring sun. A fellow who was fast on his feet could walk from Todoroki's apartments in Hell's Half-Acre over to Ramper's in Shinri (Ramper's was a tavern of such horrible repute that it was commonly called the Bucket of Blood) without getting his boots wet over the third crossing of his rawhide laces. Or so it had been storied in Bakugo's youth, and he supposed there was a bit of truth in all such stories.

'Ole Kitsune lady,' he thought, looking up at the large statue. 'What you been doing since I've been gone? Sparked up any new protests? Scared any more little kids the way you scared me that day?'

Ah, and suddenly he remembered it all, the way you will sometimes suddenly remember a word which has been dancing on the tip of your tongue.

There he had been, sitting in that mellow March sunshine, drowsing a little, thinking about going home and catching the last half of whatever was on Animax, and suddenly there had been a low, creaking sound. He'd looked up, and saw that the Kitsune woman, who usually stared across the koi pond towards the tree line that blocked the road from view, was now staring directly at him... although she did not precisely look like the poised and proper woman she had always been.. The forehead was now low and beetling; tufts of wiry hair poked from a nose as red as the nose of a long-time drunkard; her eyes were bloodshot and one had a slight dullness to it.

The fox was no longer by her ankles, sipping the water. Instead, it was looking at him too, it's head cocked a little to the left, eyes just as red and blood shot as it's human form. After a moment, it grinned- and the horrifically human-like look of that grin made Bakugo's insides twist. From between gigantic yellow teeth there drifted a smell like small animals rotting in hot underbrush.

"I'm going to eat you up," the giantess had said in a low rumbling voice. It was the sound of boulders rocking against each other during an earthquake. "Unless you stop being so rude to your mother I'm going to eat you right the fuck up!"

The breath of these words made Bakugo's shirt flutter and flap like a sail in a hurricane. He shrank back against the bench, eyes bugging, hair standing out to all sides like quills, wrapped in a pocket of carrion-stink.

The giantess began to laugh. The hulking woman produced a giant stone katana from somewhere in her kimono, and raised it into the air. It made a low lethal rushing sound. Bakugo suddenly understood that the giantess meant to split him right down the middle.

But he felt that he could not move; a logy sort of apathy had stolen over him. What did it matter? He was dozing, having a dream. Any moment now some driver would blow his horn at a kid running across the street and he would wake up.

"That's right," the giantess had rumbled, "you'll wake up in hell!" And at the last instant, as the katana slowed to its apogee and balanced there, Bakugo understood that this wasn't a dream at all... and if it was, it was a dream that could kill.

Trying to scream but making no sound at all, he rolled off the bench and onto the raked gravel plot which surrounded what had been a statue and was now only a base with two huge steel bolts sticking out of it where the feet had been. The sound of the descending sword filled the world with its pressing insistent whisper; the giant's grin had become a murderer's grimace. Its lips had pulled back so far from its teeth that its stone gums hideously gleamed in the sunlight.

The blade of the sword struck the bench where Bakugo had been only an instant before. The blade was so sharp that there was almost no sound at all, but the bench was sheared instantly in two. The halves sagged away from each other, metal hitting the concrete sidewalk with a loud 'clang!'

Bakugo was on his back. Still trying to scream, he pushed himself with his heels. Gravel went down the collar of his shirt. And there was the woman, towering above him, looking down at him with eyes the size of manhole covers; there was the fox, looking down at one small boy cowering on the gravel.

The giantess took a step toward him. Bakugo felt the ground shudder when the sandaled foot came down. Gravel spumed up in a cloud. Water from the pond sloshed and fish were uprooted from their homes, floundering on the ground as they suffocated.

Bakugo rolled over onto his stomach and staggered to his feet. His legs were already trying to run before he was balanced, and as a result he fell flat on his belly again. He heard the wind whoof out of his lungs. His hair fell in his eyes. He could see the traffic going back and forth on Ukiyo park road as it did every day, as if nothing was happening, as if no one in any of those cars could see or care that this giant stone woman and her fox counterpart had come to life and stepped down from their pedestal in order to commit murder with a katana roughly the size of a deluxe motor home.

The sunshine was blotted out. Bakugo lay in a patch of shade that looked like a woman.

He scrambled to his knees, almost fell over sideways, managed to get to his feet, and ran as fast as he could- he ran with his knees popping almost all the way up to his chest and his elbows pistoning. Behind him he could hear that awful persistent whisper building again, a sound that seemed to be not really sound at all but pressure on the skin and eardrums: Swiiipppppp!-

The earth shook. Bakugo's upper and lower teeth rattled against each other like china plates in an earthquake. He did not have to look to know that the Kitsune lady's katana had buried itself half-deep in the sidewalk inches behind his feet.

Madly, in his mind, he heard the Dovells: "Oh the kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol When they do the Bristol Stomp..."

He passed out of the giantesses shadow into sunlight again, and as he did he began to laugh- the same exhausted laughter that had come from him when he bolted down the freezer isle in Aizawa's store. Panting, that hot stitch in his side again, he had at last risked a glance back over his shoulder.

There was the stone statue, standing on its pedestal where it always stood, hands clasped in front of her without a katana in sight, looking towards the tree-line. The fox was once again hunched down to drink from the pond, the water and fish from earlier had been returned to their rightful place. The bench which had been sheared in two was whole and intact, thank you very much. The gravel where the stone woman had planted her huge foot was raked and immaculate except for the scuffed spot where Bakugo had fallen off while he was-

(getting away from the giantess)

-dreaming. There was no footprint, no blade-slash in the concrete. There was nothing here but a boy who had been chased by other boys, bigger boys, and so had had himself a very small (but very potent) dream about a homicidal Colossus... the Giant Economy-Size Shigaraki Tomura, if you pleased.

"Shit," Bakugo said in a tiny wavering voice, and then uttered an uncertain laugh.

He stood there awhile longer, waiting to see if the statue would move again-perhaps wink, perhaps show him a glimpse of the swords handle, perhaps come down and have at him again. But of course none of those things happened.

'Of course.'

'What, me worry? Har-de-har-har-har.'

'A doze. A dream. No more than that.'

But, now it was time to go home.

...And although it would have been quicker to cut back through the alley and onto Main Street, he decided not to. He didn't want to get close to that statue again. So he had gone the long way around and by that evening he had nearly forgotten the incident.

Until now.

'Here sits a man,' he thought, 'here sits a man dressed in a leather jacket tailored at one of the best shops in Harajuku; here sits a man with converse signed by the lead singer of Child's View on his feet; here sits a man with soft contact lenses resting easily on his eyes; here sits a man remembering the dream of a boy who thought a faux leather black and red jacket with Supercar's logo on the back and a pair of baggy pants was the height of fashion; here sits a grownup looking at the same old statue, and hey, Lady, I'm here to say you're the same in every way, you ain't aged a motherfucking day.'

The old explanation still rang true in his mind: a dream.

He supposed he could believe in monsters if he had to; monsters were no big deal. Hadn't he sat in the radio studio at one time or another reading news copies about such things as Yakuza murders and that guy who had blown away all those folks in a McDonald's just down the road? Shitfire and save matches, monsters were cheap! Who needed a five-buck movie ticket when you could watch them on TV or hear about them on the radio for free? And he supposed if he could believe in the Yakuza variety, he could believe in Kaminari Denki's version, at least for awhile; It even had Its own sorry charm, because It came from Outside and no one had to claim responsibility for It. He could believe in a monster that had as many faces as there are rubber masks in a novelty shop ('if you're gonna have one, you might as well have a pack of em,' he thought, 'cheaper by the dozen, right, gang?'), at least for the sake of argument... but a thirty-foot-high stone statue that stepped off its pedestal and then tried to carve you up with a giant katana? That was just a little too ripe. As Abraham Lincoln or Socrates or someone had said, I'll eat fish and I'll eat meat, but there is some shit I will not eat. It just wasn't -

-That sharp needling pain struck his eyes again, without warning jerking a dismayed cry from him. This was the worst yet, going deeper and lasting longer, scaring the ever living fuck out of him. He clapped his hands to his eyes and then groped instinctively for the bottom lids with his forefingers, meaning to pop his contacts out. 'It's maybe some kind of infection,' he thought dimly. 'But fucking shit it hurts!'

He pulled the lids down and was ready to give the single practiced blink that would send them tumbling out (and he would spend the next fifteen minutes grovelling myopically for them in the gravel surrounding the bench but- seriously- who gave a shit? right now it felt like there were nails in his eyes), when the pain disappeared. It did not dwindle; it just went. One moment there, the next moment gone. His eyes teared briefly and then stopped.

He lowered his hands slowly, his heart running fast in his chest, ready to blink them out the instant the pain started again. It didn't. And suddenly he found himself thinking about the only nightmare he had ever had that had truly and utterly terrified him. In 2003, after another half-off international movie showing at the Aladdin where he had seen the so-bad-it's funny horror film "The crawling eye", he had dreamed of looking at himself in a mirror and bringing a large thumbtack up and sticking it slowly into the red iris of his eye and feeling a numb, watery springiness as the bottom of his eye filled up with blood. He remembered- now he remembered- waking up and discovering that he had sweat through his clothing and bed sheets. The best indicator of how gruesome that dream had been was that his primary feeling had been not shame at his physical proof of weakness but relief; he had embraced the damp wet cloth with his body and blessed the reality of his sight.

"Fuck this," Bakugo Katsuki said in a low voice that was not quite steady, and started to get up.

He would go back to the Shijima and take a nap. If this was Memory Lane, he preferred the the freeway at rush-hour. The pain in his eyes was probably no more than a signal of exhaustion and jet-lag, plus the stress of meeting the past all at once, in one afternoon. Enough shocks; enough exploring. He didn't like the way his mind was skittering from one subject to the next. What was that Peter Gabriel tune? "shock the Monkey." Well, this monkey had been shocked enough. It was time to catch some z's and maybe gain a little perspective.

As he rose his eyes went to the marquee in front of the gazebo again. All at once the strength ran out of his legs and he sat down again. Hard.

BAKUGO KATSUKI MAN OF 1000 INSULTS RETURNS TO IRUSU LAND OF 1000 DANCES

IN HONOUR OF TRASHMOUTH'S RETURN CITY CENTER PROUDLY PRESENTS

THE BAKUGO KATSUKI "ALL-DEAD" ROCK BAND

EDDIE VAN HALEN - LEAD GUITAR

JOHN LENNON - RHYTHM GUITAR

SAWADA TAIJI - BASS GUITAR

HIGUCHI MUNETAKA - DRUMS

SPECIAL GUEST VOCLAIST: MATSUMOTO HIDETO

WELCOME HOME KATSUKI!

YOU'RE DEAD TOO!

He felt as if someone had whopped all the breath out of him... and then he heard that sound again, that sound that was half pressure on the skin and eardrums, that low homicidal creak- He rolled off the bench onto the gravel, thinking 'So this is what they mean by deja vu, now you know, you'll never have to ask anybody again-'

-He hit on his shoulder and rolled, looking up at the Kitsune statue- only it was no longer a woman draped in a kimono with her hair piled on top of her head. The clown stood there instead, resplendent and evident, fantastic in twenty feet of stone. Pompon buttons, each as big as a volleyball, ran down the front of the silvery suit. Instead of keeping its huge hands clasped in front of it or pulling out that katana, it held a huge bunch of heavy balloons. Engraved on each were two legends: IT'S STILL ROCK AND ROLL TO ME and BAKUGO KATSUKI'S "ALL-DEAD" ROCK SHOW.

He scrambled backward, using his heels and his palms. Gravel went down the back of his collar. He heard a seam tear loose in the underarm of his custom leather coat. He rolled over, gamed his feet, staggered, looked back. The clown looked down at him. Its eyes rolled wetly in their sockets.

"Did I give you a scare, trashmouth?" it rumbled.

And Bakugo heard his mouth say, quite independently of his frozen brain: "Cheap thrills in the back of my car, Bozo. That's all."

The clown grinned and nodded as if it had expected no more. Red paint-bleeding lips parted to show teeth like fangs, each one coming to a razor point. "I could have you now if I wanted you now," it said. "But this is going to be too much fun."

"Fun for me too," Bakugo heard his mouth say. "The most fun of all when we come to take your goddamn head off, fucker."

The clown's grin spread wider and wider. It raised one hand, clad in a white glove, and Bakugo felt the wind of the movement blow the hair off his forehead as it had on that day fifteen years ago. The clown's index finger popped out at him. It was as big as a beam.

'Big as a bea-,' Bakugo thought, and then the pain struck again. It drove nasty spikes into the soft jelly of his eyes. He screamed and clutched at his face.

"Before removing the mote from thy neighbor's eye, attend the beam in thine own," the clown intoned, its words rumbling and vibrating, and Bakugo was again enveloped in the sweet stink of its carrion breath.

He looked up, and took half a dozen hurried steps backward. The clown was bending down, its gloved hands on its gaily pantalooned knees.

"Want to play some more, Katsuki? How about if I point at your belly and give you stomach cancer? Or I could point at your head and give you a good old brain tumor- although I'm sure some people would say that would only be adding to what was already there. Maybe I'll give you Aids, that's what your kind likes to drop dead from, right? I can point at your mouth and your stupid flapping tongue will turn into globs of running puss. I can do it, Katsuki. Want to see?"

Its eyes were widening, widening, and in those black pupils, each as big as a softball, Bakugo saw the mad darkness that must exist over the rim of the universe; he saw a shitty happiness that he felt would drive him insane. In that moment he understood It could do any of these things and more.

And yet again he heard his own voice come rocketing out of his opening mouth just as the tether's of his sanity were beginning to snap: "Why don't you just fuck off before I jam my fist down your throat and unclasp it in your shit-eating tube?"

Bakugo thought the clown recoiled, but he did not stick around to find out for sure. He ran, elbows pumping, coat flying out in wings behind him, not caring that a father who had stopped so his toddler could admire the Kitsune statue was now staring warily at him, as if he had gone crazy.

'As a matter of fact,' Bakugo thought, 'I feel like I have gone crazy. Oh Shit do I ever. And that had to of been one of my weakest threats in the history of ever but somehow it did the trick, somehow-'

-And then the clown's voice thundered after him. The father of the little boy did not hear it, but the toddler's face suddenly pinched in upon itself and he began to wail. The dad picked his son up and hugged him, bewildered. Even through his own terror, Bakugo observed this little sideshow closely. The voice of the clown was perhaps angrily gleeful, perhaps just angry: "We've got the eye down here, Katsuki... you hear me? The one that crawls. If you don't want to fly, don't wanna say goodbye, you come on down under this here town and give a great big hi to one great big eye! You come down and see it anytime. Just any old time you like. You hear me, Katsuki? Bring your yo-yo. Have Shouto wear some tight, thigh-length, shorts. Have him wear his husband's ring around his neck! Get Ejirou to wear his old beat up tennis-shoes! Have Deku bring Yagi's gun! We'll play some music, Katsuki! We'll play AAALLLL THE HITS!"

Reaching the sidewalk, Bakugo dared to look back over his shoulder, and what he saw was in no way comforting. The Kitsune statue was still gone, and now the clown was gone, too. Where they had stood there was now a twenty-foot-high statue of Matsumoto Hideto. He was wearing a button collar on his own leather coat. BAKUGO KATSUKI'S "ALL-DEAD" ROCK SHOW, the button read.

The little boy was still crying hysterically; his father was walking rapidly back toward downtown with the weeping child in his arms. He gave Bakugo a wide berth.

Bakugo got walking-

(Legs don't fail me now)

-trying not to think about-

("we'll play AAALLLL THE HITS!")

-what had just happened. All he wanted to think about was the monster jolt of Scotch he was going to have in the Shijima's bar before he went up to take that nap.

The thought of a drink- just your ordinary garden-variety drink- made him feel a little better. He looked over his shoulder one more time and the fact that the stone woman was back, looking across to the park, without a weapon in sight, made him feel better still. Bakugo began to walk faster, making tracks, putting distance between himself and that statue. He had even begun to think about the possibility of hallucinations when the pain struck his eyes again, deep and agonizing, causing him to cry out hoarsely. A pretty young girl who had been walking ahead of him, looking dreamily up at the breaking clouds, looked back at him, hesitated, then hurried over.

"Mister, are you all right?"

"It's my contacts," he said in a strained voice. "My damned contact le- Fuck that hurts!"

This time he got his forefingers up so quickly he almost jabbed them into his eyes. He pulled down the lower lids and thought, 'I won't be able to blink them out, that's what's going to happen, I won't be able to blink them out and it's just going to go on hurting and hurting and hurting until I go blind go blind go bl-'

-But one blink did it as one blink always had. The sharp and denned world, where colors stayed inside the lines and where faces that you saw were clear and obvious, became slightly blurrier. And although he and the college girl, who was both helpful and concerned, searched the paving of the sidewalk for almost fifteen minutes, neither could find even a single lens.

In the back of his head Bakugo seemed to hear the clown laughing.