—1—
MAY 30TH, 2020 / IRUSU, JAPAN
Bakugo Katsuki propped his feet up on one of the flimsy poker tables and laced his fingers together behind his head (already the gesture felt perfectly natural) and thought with some amazement that the atmosphere had changed in the room when Kaminari recalleded the incident with the bird out at the Ironworks and reminded them about his mother's photograph album and the picture that had moved.
Bakugo had felt a mad, exhilarating kind of energy growing in the room. He had tried cocaine nine or ten times over the last couple of years- at parties, mostly; coke wasn't something you wanted just lying around your house if you were a decently popular radio show host- and the feel was something like that, but not exactly. This feeling was purer, more of a mainline high. He thought he recognized the feeling from his childhood, when he had felt it every day and had come to take it merely as a matter of course. He supposed that, if he had ever thought about that deep-running aquifer of energy as a kid (he could not recall that he ever had), he would have simply dismissed it as a fact of life, something that would always be there, like his sexuality or the color of his eyes.
Well, that hadn't turned out to be true. The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself- that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as BS as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever "feel-good" phrases those TV life coaches wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. 'And maybe,' Bakugo thought, 'that's the fucking scary part. How you don't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that bastard clowns trick balloons with shitty slogans on the side. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you. You could go on wearing blue-jeans, you could keep going to rock and heavy metal concerts, you could dye your hair, but that was a grownup's face in the mirror just the same. It all happened while you were asleep- like a visit from the goddamn Tooth Fairy.'
'No,' he thought. 'Not the Tooth Fairy. The Age Fairy.'
He scoffed aloud at the stupid extravagance of this image, and when Todoroki looked over at him questioningly, he waved his hand at him. "Nothing, half-and half," he said, the old nickname rolling nicely off his tongue. "Just thinking."
But now that energy was back. No, not all the way back- not yet, anyway- but coming back. And it wasn't just him; he could feel it filling the room, prickling his skin, causing his hair to stand on end. Kaminari looked okay to Bakugo for the first time since they all got together for that hideous lunch. When Bakugo had walked into the lobby and saw Kaminari sitting there with Sero Hanta and Kirishima Ejirou, he had thought, shocked: 'Well, shit. Legally blondes going crazy... getting ready to blow his brains out, maybe.' And that... that had terrified him (not that he'd ever say that aloud, of course) because, well... if Kaminari Denki was gearing up to do himself in, then... shit... they really were fucked, now weren't they?...
...But that look was gone now. Not just diverted; gone. Bakugo had sat right there and watched the last of it slip out of Kaminari's face while he relived the experience of the bird and the album. He'd been energised. And it was the same with all of them. It was in their faces, their voices, their gestures.
Kirishima poured himself another Yorsh (one part vodka, two parts beer). Deku knocked back another glass of bourbon, and Kaminari took a long swig of cherry schnapps right from the bottle. Todoroki glanced up at the balloons Deku had tethered to one of the poker tables legs and finished his third gin and tonic in a hurry. They had all been drinking pretty enthusiastically, but none of them were drunk. Bakugo didn't have any idea where that energy he felt was coming from, but it wasn't out of a liquor bottle.
IRUSU FAGGOTS GET THE BIRD: White.
THE LOSERS ARE STILL LOSING, BUT IIDA TENYA'S FINALLY AHEAD: Black.
Bakugo thought, pouring himself another rum and coke, 'Fuck this. None of us should have come back here... ole four-eyes really was the smartest one out of all of us... that's for damn sure.'
It was Kirishima who broke the silence. "How much do you think It knows about what we're doing now?" he asked.
"It was here, wasn't It?" Sero said, squeezing lemon into the the top of the large whiskey bottle, and knocking back an impressively large gulp.
"I'm not sure that means much," Kirishima replied.
Deku nodded. "Those are just images," he said. "I'm not sure that means It can see us, or know what we're up to. You can see a news commentator on TV, but he can't see you."
"Those balloons aren't just images," Todoroki said, and looked at the black and white bouquet floating lazily above their heads. "They're real."
"That's not true, though," Bakugo said, and they all looked at him. "Images are real. They-"
-And suddenly something else clicked into place, something new: it clicked into place with such firm force that he actually put his hands to his ears. His eyes widened exponentially.
"Oh my fucking God!" he cried suddenly. He groped for the table, half-stood, then fell back onto the love seat with a boneless thud. He knocked his glass over reaching for it, picked it up, and drank what was left. He looked at Kaminari while the others looked at him, startled and concerned.
"The burning!" he almost shouted. "The fucking burning in my eyes! Shortstack! The goddamn burning in my eyes-"
Kaminari nodded, smiling a little-
"Kah-Kacchan?" Deku asked. "What i-is it?"
But Bakugo could barely hear him. The force of the memory swept through him like a tide, turning him alternately hot and cold, and he suddenly understood why these memories had come back one at a time. If he had remembered everything at once, the force would have been like a psychological shotgun blasted off an inch from his temple- quite possibly the same model Kaminari Denki would have used to splatter his brain matter around his office- It would have torn off the whole top of his head.
"We saw It come!" he said to Kaminari. "We saw It come, didn't we? You and me... or was it just me?" He stood, and grabbed Kaminari's shoulders, and shook him so hard he heard the shorter blondes teeth click together. "did you see it too, Denki, or was it just me? Did you see it? The forest fire? The crater?"
"I... saw... it..." Kaminari half laughed, finding it hard to talk through the shakes. Bakugo closed his eyes for a moment, thinking he had never felt such a warm and powerful wave of relief in his life, not even when the plane he had taken from Tokyo to Los Angeles skidded off the runway and just stopped there- nobody killed, nobody even hurt. Some luggage had fallen out of the overhead bins and that was all. He had jumped onto the yellow emergency slide and helped a woman away from the plane. The woman had turned her ankle on a hummock concealed in the high grass. She was laughing and saying, "I can't believe I'm not dead, I can't believe it, I just can't believe it." So Bakugo, who was half-carrying the woman with one arm and waving with the other to the firemen who were making frantic come-on gestures to the deplaning passengers, said: "Okay, you're dead, you're dead, you feel better now?" and they both laughed crazily. That had been relief-laughter... but this relief was greater.
"What are you guys talking about?" Kirishima asked, looking from one to the other.
Bakugo looked at Kaminari, but Kaminari shook his head. "You go ahead, Kats. It's more your story than mine... beside, I doubt you guys wanna hear me ramble some more."
"The rest of you don't know or maybe don't remember, because you're pussies," Bakugo told them. "Me and Denki, we were the last two in the smoke-hole."
"...The smoke-hole," Deku mused. His eyes were far and shiny.
"The burning sensation in my eyes," Bakugo said, "under my contact lenses. I felt it for the first time right after Blondie called me in Osaka. I didn't know what it was then, but I do now. It was smoke. Smoke that was fifteen years old." He looks at Kaminari. "Psychological, would you say? Psychosomatic? Something from the subconscious?"
"Nope," Kaminari answered, shaking his head exaggeratedly. "I would say that what you felt was as real as those balloons, or the head I saw in the icebox, or the corpse of Monoma Neito that Ejirou saw. Tell them, Kats."
Bakugo said: "It was four or five days after Denki brought his mom's album down to the Barrens. Sometime just after the middle of July, I guess. The clubhouse was done. But... the smoke-hole thing, that was your idea, skelly. You got it out of one of Tenya's books."
Smiling a little, Sero nodded.
Bakugo thought: 'It was overcast that day. No breeze. Thunder in the air. Like the day a month or so later when we stood in the stream and made a circle and Tenya cut our hands with that chunk of Coke bottle. The air was just sitting there, waiting for something to happen, and later Four-eyes said that was why it got so bad in there so quick, because there was no draft.'
'July 17th. Yes, that was it, that had been the day of the smoke-hole. July 17th, 2005,' over a month after summer vacation began and the nucleus of the Losers- Deku, Kirishima, and Sero- had formed down in the Barrens. 'Let me look up the weather forecast for that day almost fifteen years ago,' Bakugo thought, 'and I'll tell you what it said before I even read it: "Hot, humid, chance of thundershowers. And watch out for the visions that may come while you're down in the smoke-hole..."
It had been a few days after the body of Izumi Kota was discovered, the day after Mr. Torino had come down to the Barrens again and sat right on the clubhouse without knowing it was there, because by then they had capped it off and Sero himself had carefully overseen the replacement of the sods. Unless you got right down on your hands and knees and crawled around, you'd have no idea anything was there. Like the dam, Sero's clubhouse had been a roaring success, but this time Mr. Torino hadn't known anything about it.
He had questioned them carefully, officially, taking down their answers in his black notebook, but there had been little they could tell him- at least about Izumi Kota- and Mr. Torino had gone away again, after reminding them once more that they were not to play in the Barrens alone... ever. Bakugo guessed that Mr. Torino would have told them simply to get out if anyone in the Irusu Police Department had really believed that the Kota boy (or any of the others) had actually been killed in the Barrens... But they knew better; because of the sewer and stormdrain system, that was simply where the remains tended to finish up.
Mr. Torino had come on the 16th, yes, a hot and humid day also, but sunny. The 17th had been overcast.
"Are you going to talk to us or not, Katsuki?" Todoroki asked. He was smiling a little, "It's not like you to be so quiet."
"I'm just thinking about where to start, half and half." Bakugo said. He leant a little into Kirishima's side, not entirely knowing why, and suddenly he knew where: with the ground opening up at his and Deku's feet. Of course he knew about the clubhouse- so did Deku and the rest of them, but it still freaked him out, seeing the ground suddenly open on a slit of darkness like that.
He remembered Deku riding him double on the back of Silver to the usual place on Kanazaki Drive and then stowing his bike under the little bridge. He remembered the two of them walking along the path toward the clearing, sometimes having to turn sideways because the brush was so thick- it was midsummer now, and the Barrens was at that year's apogee oflushness. He remembered swatting at the mosquitoes that hummed maddeningly close to their ears; he even remembered Deku saying (oh how clearly it all came back, not as if it happened yesterday, but as if it was happening now), "H-H-Hold on a s-s-s-
—2—
JULY 17TH, 2005 / IRUSU, JAPAN
-econd, Kah-Kacchan. There's a-a buh-big one on the b-back of your neh-neck."
"Oh Shit," Bakugo hissed. He hated mosquitoes. Fucking flying vampires, that's all they were when you got right down to the facts. "Kill it, Deku."
Deku swatted the back of Bakugo's neck.
"Ouch!"
"Suh-suh-see?"
Deku held his hand in front of Bakugo's face. There was a broken mosquito body in the center of an irregular patch of blood. 'My blood,' Bakugo thought, "Ugh... stupid little blood sucking freak." he said.
Deku laughed a little, and wiped his hand on his shorts. "S-suh-some of thuh-things y-you say a-are so struh-struh- strange."
They walked on, slapping at mosquitoes, waving at the clouds of noseeums attracted by something in the smell of their sweat- "pheromones" or something like that.
"Oi, Deku, when're you gonna tell the rest of 'em about the silver bullets?" Bakugo asked as they approached the clearing. In this case 'the rest of them' meant Half and Half, shark-teeth, Shortstack, and four-eyes- although Bakugo guessed Iida already had a good idea of what they were studying up on down at the Public Library. Iida was sharp- too sharp for his own good, Bakugo sometimes thought. The day Kaminari brought his mother's album down to the Barrens Iida had almost flipped out. Bakugo had, in fact, been nearly convinced that they wouldn't see Iida again and the Losers Club would become a sextet- But ole, reliable, Four-eyes had been back the next day, and Bakugo had actually managed to uncover a tiny, minimal, ounce of respect for the tallest member of their club. "You going to tell them today?"
"Nuh-not t-today," Deku said.
"You don't think they'll work, do you, freckles?"
Deku shrugged, and Bakugo, who might possibly be the person who understood Midoriya Izuku best (well, until Uraraka Ochako came into the picture), suspected all the things Deku might have said if not for the roadblock of his speech impediment: that kids making silver bullets was movie stuff... manga stuff... In other words, it was shit. Dangerous shit. They could try it, yeah. Sero Hanta might even be able to pull it off, yeah. In a movie it would work, yeah. But...
"So?"
"I got an i-i-i-idea," Deku said. "simpler. But only if Shuh-Shuh-Shouto-"
"-If half and half what?"
"Neh-hever mind."
And Deku would say no more on the subject.
They came into the clearing. If you looked closely, you might have thought that the grass there had a slightly matted look- a slightly used look. You might even have thought that there was something a bit artificial -almost arranged- about the scatter of leaves and twigs on top of the sods.
Deku picked up a mini water bottle -Sero's, almost certainly- and put it absently in his pocket.
The boys crossed to the center of the clearing... and a piece of ground about ten inches long by three inches wide swung up with a dirty squall of hinges, revealing a black eyelid. Eyes looked out of that blackness, giving Bakugo a momentary chill. But they were only Kirishima Ejirou's eyes, and it was Kirishima, his almost-sort-of-boyfriend who he would visit in the hospital a week later, who intoned hollowly: "Who's that trip-trapping on my bridge?"
Giggles from below, and a flashlight flicker.
"It's the police. Open up." Bakugo said, squatting down so he could get a better look.
"Yeah?" Todoroki asked from below. "Let's see your badges. And a warrant."
"Badges and a warrant?" Bakugo asked, "We don't need that shit. Open up, assholes."
"Go to hell, Suki," Kirishima replied, and slammed the big eyelid closed. There were more muffled giggles from below.
"Come out with your hands up." Deku said in a low, commanding adult voice, trying his best to stifle his own laughter. He began to tramp back and forth across the sod-covered cap of the clubhouse. He could see the ground springing up and down with his back-and-forth passage, but just barely; they had built it well. "You haven't got a chance!" he bellowed. "Come on out of there! Or we'll come in guns blazing!"
He jumped up and down once to emphasize his point. Screams and giggles from below. Deku was smiling, unaware that Bakugo was looking at him wisely- looking at him not as one child looks at another but, in that brief moment, as an adult looks at a child.
'Dumbass doesn't know that he doesn't always,' Bakugo thought.
"Let them in, Hanta, before they destroy all your hard work." Todoroki said. A moment later a trapdoor flopped open like the hatch of a submarine. Both Sero and Kaminari looked out, the two having quickly formed back into an inseparable duo once Kaminari became the seventh member of the losers club. Kaminari was flushed. Bakugo knew at once that the smaller boy had been sitting next to Todoroki Shouto.
Deku and Bakugo dropped down through the hatch and Sero closed it again. Then there they all were, sitting snug against board walls with their legs drawn up, their faces dimly revealed in the beam of Sero's flashlight.
"S-S-So wh-what's g-g-going o-on?" Deku asked.
"Not too much," Kaminari said. He was indeed sitting next to Todoroki, and his face looked happy as well as red. "We were just-"
"-Let Hanta tell them," Kirishima interrupted. "Let Hanta tell them the story! See what they think."
"Wouldn't do much for your asthma," Iida told Kirishima in his best someone-has-to-be-practical-here tone of voice.
Bakugo sat between Kaminari and Kirishima, holding his knees in his linked hands. It was delightfully cool down here, delightfully secret. Following the gleam of the flashlight as it moved from face to face, he temporarily forgot what had so astounded him outside only a minute ago. "What the hell are you talking about, shark-teeth?"
"Oh, Sero was telling us a story about this Native American ceremony," Todoroki said. "But Tenya's right, it wouldn't be very good for your asthma, Ejirou."
"It might not bother it," Kirishima said, sounding- to his credit, Bakugo thought- only a little uneasy. "Usually it's only when I get upset. Anyway, I'd like to try it."
"Try w-w-what?" Deku asked him.
"The Smoke-Hole Ceremony," Kirishima said.
"W-W-What's th-that?"
The beam of Sero's flashlight drifted upward and Bakugo followed it with his eyes. It tracked aimlessly across the wooden roof of their clubhouse as Sero explained. It crossed the gouged and splintered panels of the mahogany door the seven of them had carried back here from the dump three days ago-the day before the body of Izumi Kota was discovered. The thing Bakugo remembered about Izumi Kota, a quiet little boy who also had a bit of a temper, was that he liked to play Scrabble on rainy days. 'Not going to be playing Scrabble anymore,' Bakugo thought, and shivered a little. In the dimness no one saw the shiver, but Kaminari Denki, sitting shoulder to shoulder with him with still-flushed cheeks, glanced at him curiously.
"Well, Tenya brought a bunch of books down here the other day," Sero was saying. "and one of the titles caught my eye... 'Ghosts of the Great Plains,' and it's all about the Indian tribes that lived in the America's eons ago. The Paiutes and the Pawnees and the Kiowas and the Otoes and the Comanches. It was actually an okay read... I would of preferred pictures but- it's whatever..."
"Just tell them about the Smoke-Hole Ceremony," Todoroki said, elbowing him.
"Sure," he said. "Right."
"So like- almost all those Indians had a special ceremony, and our clubhouse made me think of it. Whenever they had to make a big decision- whether to move on after the buffalo herds, or to find fresh water, or whether or not to fight their enemies- they'd dig a big hole in the ground and cover it up with branches, except for a little vent in the top."
"The smuh-smuh-smoke-hole," Deku said.
"Your quick mind never ceases to amaze me, Deku," Bakugo said gravely. "You ought to go on that trivia game show... bet you'd blow the competition out of the fucking water."
Deku made as if to hit him and Bakugo recoiled, bumping his head pretty good on a piece of shoring.
"Ouch! Shit!"
"You d-deserved it," Deku said.
"Are you alright, Suki?" Kirishima asked, his face a mixture of concern and amusement.
"I'm fine, shitty hair."
"Didn't I tell you not to-"
"-Will you guys stop it?" Todoroki asked. "This is interesting." And he favored Sero with such a warm look that Bakugo believed the love triangle might very well become a love square.
"Okay, Han-Han-Hanta," Deku said. "Go o-o-on."
"Sure," Sero said, seeming to not even notice Todoroki's intense gaze, or the jealousy shining in Kaminari's eyes (and maybe, just maybe, in Deku's too- but if it really was there, it was nearly subtle enough to go unnoticed) "When the smoke-hole was finished, they'd start a fire down there. They'd use green wood so it would be a really smoky fire. Then all the braves would go down there and sit around the fire. The place would fill up with smoke. The book said this was a religious ceremony, but it was also kind of a contest, you know? After half a day or so most of the braves would bail because they couldn't stand the smoke anymore, and only two or three would be left. And they were supposed to have visions."
"Yeah, if I breathed smoke for five or six hours, I'd probably have some visions," Kaminari said, voice only the tiniest bit strained, and six of them laughed.
"The visions were supposed to tell the tribe what to do, I think," Sero said. "And I don't know if this part is true or not, but the book said that most times the visions were right."
A silence fell and Bakugo looked at Deku. He was aware that they were all looking at Deku, and he had the feeling- again- that Sero's story of the smoke-hole was more than a thing you read about in a book and then had to try for yourself, like a chemistry experiment or a magic trick. He knew it, they all knew it. Perhaps Sero knew it most of all. This was something they were supposed to do.
They were supposed to have visions... Most times the visions were right.
Bakugo thought: 'I'll bet if we asked them, Four-eyes would say when he went down to the library last week the book practically jumped into his hands. I bet if we asked them, string bean would say that that book practically screamed at him to open it. Like something wanted him to read that one particular book and then tell us about the smoke-hole ceremony. Because there's a tribe right here, isn't there? Yeah. Us. And, yeah, I guess we do need to know what happens next.'
This thought led to another: 'Was this supposed to happen? From the time Sero got the idea for an underground clubhouse instead of a treehouse, was this supposed to happen? How much of this shit are we thinking up ourselves, and how much is being thought up for us?'
In a way, he supposed such an idea should have been almost comforting. It was nice to imagine that something bigger than you, smarter than you, was doing your thinking for you, like the adults that planned your meals, bought your clothes, and managed your time- and Bakugo was convinced that the force that had brought them together, the force that had used Sero and Iida as its messengers to bring them the idea of the smoke-hole- that force wasn't the same as the one killing the children. This was some kind of counterforce to that other... to-
('oh well you might as well say it')
-It. But all the same, he didn't like this feeling of not being in control of his own actions, of being managed, of being run.
They all looked at Deku; they all waited to see what Deku would say.
"Y-You nuh-nuh-know," he said, "that sounds rih-really n-neat."
Todoroki sighed and Iida stirred uncomfortably... that was all.
"Rih-rih-really nuh-neat," Deku repeated, looking down at his hands, and perhaps it was only the uneasy flashlight beam in Sero's hands or his own imagination, but Bakugo thought Deku looked a little pale and a lot scared, although he was smiling. "Maybe we could u-use a vih-hision to tell us what to d-d-do about o-our pruh-pruh-hob-lem."
'And if anyone has a vision,' Bakugo thought, 'it'll be fucking Deku.' But about that he was wrong.
"Wuh-Well," Deku said, "it pruh-probably only works for native A-Americans, but it muh-might b-be cuh-cool to try it."
"Yeah, we'll probably all pass out from the smoke and die in here," Iida said gloomily. "That'd be really cool, alright."
"You don't want to, Tenya?" Kirishima asked.
"Well, I sort of do," Iida said. He sighed, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. "I think you guys are making me crazy, you know it?" He looked at Deku. "When?"
Deku said, "W-Well, nun-no t-time like the puh-puh-puh-hresent, i-is there?"
There was a startled, thoughtful silence. Then Bakugo Katsuki got to his feet, straight-arming the trapdoor open and letting in the muted light of that still summer day.
"Denki brought a hatchet," Sero said, following him out. "Who wants to help me cut some green wood?"
In the end they all helped.
—3—
It took them about an hour to get ready. They cut four or five armloads of small green branches, from which Sero had stripped the twigs and leaves. "They'll smoke, alright," he said. "I don't even know if we'll be able to get them going."
Todoroki and Bakugo went down to the bank of the Shibui and brought back a collection of good-sized stones, using Kirishima's jacket (his mother always made him take a jacket, even if it was eighty degrees- "it might rain," Kirishima Akemi said, 'and if you have a jacket to put on, your skin won't get soaked if it does") as a makeshift sling. Carrying the rocks back to the clubhouse, Bakugo said: "You can't do this, Sho. Your dumbass dad beats you enough, and you've already destroyed your lungs with cigarettes- no need to add fuel to the fire."
Todoroki paused, looking at Bakugo with mixed amusement and irritation. His fringe had fallen into his eyes; he pushed out his lower lip and blew the colorful locks out of the way.
"Yeah? Well Hanta's mom might not beat him, but she's real bad too- and he smokes cigarettes just like me. You gonna tell him he can't participate too?"
"It's different." Bakugo said, not really knowing why it was different just that it was. "And you fucking know it is, so just-"
"-Shut it, Trashmouth. If you don't want me in that smoke-hole you'll have to fight me." Todoroki said pointedly. "Now are we going to take these rocks back to the clubhouse or am I going to bounce a few of them off your asshole skull?"
Although Bakugo had quickly relented from excluding Todoroki from the smoke-hole on the basis of- well, he really didn't know- Deku apparently wasn't going to give up as easily.
Todoroki stood facing him, his hands on his hips, his cheeks flushed with anger, looking almost as if his hair would light itself on fire. "You can just take that and shove it, Midoriya Izuku! I'm in on this too, or aren't I a member of your lousy club anymore?"
Patiently, Deku said: "I-It's not l-like that, Shuh-Shuh-Sho, and y-you nun-know i-it. Somebody has to stay u-uh-up here."
"Why? Why do you all act as if I couldn't kick all of your asses? Huh? Why are you all treating me like- like- like how idiots treat girls?"
Deku tried, but the roadblock was in again. He looked at Kirishima for help.
"We're not- It's- It's just- what Tenya said," Kirishima told him quietly. "About the smoke. Deku says that might really happen- we could pass out down there. Then we'd die. Deku says that's what happens to most people in housefires. They don't burn up. They choke to death on the smoke. They-"
Now Todoroki rounded on Kirishima. "Well, okay. He wants somebody to stay up on top in case there's trouble?"
Miserably, Kirishima nodded.
"Well, what about you? You're the one with the asthma."
Kirishima said nothing. Todoroki turned back to Deku. The others stood around, hands in their pockets, looking at their sneakers.
"Doesn't that make the most since to you? Aren't you supposed to be smart, Izuku?"
"Shuh-Shuh-Shuh-shuh-"
"You don't have to talk," Todoroki snapped. "Just nod your head or shake it. Your head doesn't stutter, does it? Doesn't Ejirou make more since than me due to his asthma?"
Reluctantly, Deku nodded his head, looking quite scared.
"Now. Is the reason you want me to be the one that stays above because of my father? Because he beats me? Because you think you need to protect me?"
Deku nodded again.
Todoroki looked at him for a moment, his bottom lip trembling, and Bakugo thought Todoroki would cry. Instead, Todoroki exploded.
"Well, fuck you!" He whirled around to look at the others, and they flinched from his gaze, so hot it was nearly radioactive. "Fuck all of you if you think the same thing!" He turned back to Deku and began to talk fast, rapping him with words, and dimly Bakugo noted that this was the loudest he'd ever heard Todoroki Shouto in his entire life. "This is something more than some stupid fucking kid's game like tag or guns or hide-and-go-seek, and you know it, Izuku! We're supposed to do this! That's part of it! And you're not going to cut me out just because my dad's a piece of shit! Do you understand?! You better, or I'm leaving right now! And if I go, I'm gone! For good! You understand!?"
Todoroki stopped. Deku looked at him. Deku seemed to have regained his calm, but Bakugo felt afraid. He felt that any chance they had of winning, of finding a way to get to the thing that had killed Toshinori Eri and the other kids, getting to It and killing It, was now in jeopardy. 'Seven,' Bakugo thought. 'That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.'
A bird sang somewhere; stopped; sang again.
"A-All r-right, Sho." Deku said, and Bakugo let his breath out.
Deku opened his mouth to continue, but Todoroki cut him off again:
"Actually- you know what? I'm not done." He started, and Bakugo didn't bother to stifle his groan. "I'm sick and fucking tired of the double standard here! Like I was telling Trashmouth earlier, I'm not the only one here with a shitty parent! Hanta and Ejirou's mom's are just as bad as my dad! So why the hell don't you treat the two of them like you treat me?! Answer me that! One of you, answer!"
"...Because you're our light, Roki." It was Kaminari who spoke into the sudden silence, not Deku. "I don't... I don't exactly know what that means... just that... that's just what you are: our light. It's your role... and... we want to protect our light... because we love you..."
Todoroki whirled on him, but Bakugo realized now that he looked more flustered than angry- though his eyes still burned. "...yeah... well- while I appreciate the sentiment, I don't need any of your protection. I have three older siblings for fucks sake- I have enough."
A tense silence fell over the group, and Bakugo found himself contemplating what Kaminari had said, and found that he agreed with him. Todoroki was their light... and though none of them would know what that truly meant until that august of 2005, they all just... accepted it as fact, and moved on.
"suh-suh-somebody d-does have to s-stay tuh-hopside, thuh-though. Who w-w-wants to d-do it?"
Bakugo thought Kirishima or Iida would surely volunteer for this duty, but Kirishima said nothing. Iida stood pale and thoughtful and silent. Kaminari had his thumbs hooked into his belt like Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive, nothing moving but his eyes, his cheeks as red as the cherries in his family's Orchard.
"Cuh-cuh-come o-on," Deku said, and Bakugo realized that all reluctance had gone out the window; Sho's impassioned speech and Deku's grave, too-old face had seen to that. This was a part of it, perhaps as dangerous as the expedition he and Deku had made to the house at 29 Neibolt Street. They knew it... and no one was backing down. Suddenly he was very proud of them, very proud to be with them. After all the years of being counted out, he was counted in. Finally counted in. He didn't know if they were still losers or not, but he knew they were together. They were friends. Damn good friends. (Even though he wouldn't admit that out loud for quite a long time)
"I know how to do it," Todoroki said, and took a book of matches from his pocket. On the front, the Nippon-Ham Fighters logo. Todoroki lit a match and then blew it out. He tore out six more and added the burned match. He turned away from them, and when he turned back the white ends of the seven matches poked out of his closed fist. "Pick," he said, holding the matches out to Deku. "The one who picks the match with the burned head stays up here and pulls the rest out if they pass out."
Deku looked at him levelly. "Th-This is h-h-how you w-want i-it?"
Todoroki smiled softly at Deku then, and his smile made his face radiant. "Yeah, you freckled idiot, this is how I want it. What about you?"
"I luh-luh-love you, Shuh-Shuh-Shouto," he said, grinning, and color rose in Todoroki's cheeks like hasty flames.
Deku did not appear to notice. He studied the match-tails sticking out of Todoroki's fist, and at last he picked one. Its head was blue and unburned. Todoroki turned to Kaminari and offered the remaining six.
"I love you too," Kaminari said hoarsely, having to look up to meet his gaze. His face was plum-colored; he looked like he was on the verge of a stroke. But no one laughed. "...w-we all do... like I said... earlier... haha..."
Somewhere deeper in the Barrens, the bird sang again. 'Tenya would know what it was,' Bakugo thought randomly.
"Thank you," Todoroki said, smiling, and Kaminari picked a match. Its head was unburned.
He offered them to Kirishima next. Kirishima smiled, a shy smile that was incredibly sweet and almost heartbreakingly vulnerable. "I guess I love you, too, Sho," he said, and then picked a match blindly. Its head was blue.
Todoroki now offered the four match-tails in his hand to Bakugo.
"Well, I for one hate your guts." Bakugo said. Todoroki only looked at him, smiling a little, and Bakugo suddenly felt incredibly ashamed- almost blasphemous. "But... just like with you nickname-sake.. I love you, too," he said, and coughed into his arm. "You're okay."
"Thank you," Todoroki said.
He picked a match and looked at it, positive he'd picked the burned one. But he hadn't.
Todoroki offered them to Iida.
"I love you," Iida said, almost like a parent tucking their child in at night, and plucked one of the matches from his fist. Unburned.
"You and me, Hanta," Todoroki said, and offered him his pick of the two left.
Sero stepped forward. "I love you too, of course- and not just because of the abused kids solidarity or the fact that we'll probably see each other in the chemo treatment center in a few years time." he joked.
Six laughed while Todoroki smiled and shook his head. Sero took a match. Its head was also unburned.
"I guess it's y-y-you a-after all, Sho," Deku said, not bothering to hide his relief.
Looking disgusted- all that flash and fire for nothing- Todoroki opened his hand.
The head of the remaining match was also blue and unburned.
"You rigged them," Bakugo accused, narrowing his eyes. "And to think I let you trick me into being nice to you. Asshole."
"No... I didn't..." Todoroki's tone was not one of angry protest- which would have been suspect- but flabbergasted surprise. "Honest."
Then Todoroki showed them his palm. They all saw the faint mark of soot from the burned match-head there.
"Deku, I swear on my mother's name."
Deku looked at him for a moment and then nodded. By common unspoken consent, they all handed the matches back to Deku. Seven of them, their heads intact. Iida and Kirishima began to crawl around on the ground, but there was no burned match there.
"I didn't," Todoroki breathed again, to no one in particular.
"So what the hell do we do now?" Bakugo asked.
"We a-a-all go down," Deku said quite matter-of-factly. "Because that's w-what w-w-we're suh-supposed to do."
"And if we all pass out?" Kirishima asked.
Deku looked at Todoroki again. "I-If Shuh-Sho's t-telling the truh-truth, and h-he i-i-is, w-we won't."
"How do you know?" Iida asked.
"I-I j-just d-d-do."
The bird sang again.
—4—
Sero and Bakugo went down first and the others handed the rocks down one by one. Bakugo passed them on to Sero, who made a small stone circle in the middle of the dirt clubhouse floor. "Okay," he said. "I think that's enough."
The others came down, each with a handful of the green twigs they'd cut with Kaminari's hatchet. Deku came last. He closed the trapdoor and opened the narrow hinged window. "Th-Th-There," he said. "Th-there's our smuh-smoke-hole. Do we h-have any kih-kih-kin-dling?"
"You can use this, if you want," Kaminari said, and took a battered volume of 'Worst' out of his hip pocket. "I read it already."
Deku (with some reluctance) tore the pages out of the volume one by one, working slowly and gravely. The others sat around the walls, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, watching, not speaking. The tension was thick and still.
Deku laid small twigs and branches over the paper and then looked at Todoroki. "Y-Y-You g-got the muh-matches?" he asked.
Todoroki nodded, and lit one, a tiny yellow flare in the gloom. "It probably won't catch anyway," he said in a slightly uneven voice, and touched a light to the paper in several places. When the matchflame got close to his fingers, Todoroki tossed it into the center.
The flames blazed up yellow, crackling, throwing their faces into sharp relief, and in that moment Bakugo had no trouble believing Sero's story, and he thought it must have been like this back in those old days when the idea of men outside the America's was still no more than a rumor or a tall tale to those Natives who followed buffalo herds so big they could cover the earth from horizon to horizon, herds so big that their passing shook the ground like an earthquake. In that moment Bakugo could picture those Natives, Kiowas or Pawnees or whatever they were, down in their smoke-hole, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, watching as the flames guttered and sank into the green wood like hot sores, listening to the faint and steady 'ssssss' of sap oozing out of the damp wood, waiting for the vision to descend.
Yeah. Sitting here now he could believe it all... and looking at their somber faces as they studied the flames and the charring pages of Kaminari's volume of 'Worst", he could see that they believed it, too.
The branches were catching. The clubhouse began to fill up with smoke. Some of it, white as cotton, escaped from the smoke-hole. But with no moving air outside to create a draft, most of it stayed below. It had an acrid bite that made eyes sting and throats throb. Bakugo heard Kirishima cough twice- a flat sound like dry boards being whacked together- and then fall silent again. 'Dumbass... he shouldn't be down here... ' he thought... but something else apparently felt otherwise. 'I'll kill that idiot if he dies on me.'
Deku tossed another handful of green twigs on the smoldering fire and asked in a thin voice that was not much like his usual speaking voice: "Anyone having a-any vih-vih-visions?"
"Visions of getting out of here," Iida Tenya said. Kaminari laughed at this, but his laughter turned into a fit of coughing and choking.
Bakugo leaned his head back against the wall and looked up at the smoke-hole- a thin rectangle of mellow white light. He thought about the Kitsune statue that day in March... but that had only been a mirage, a hallucination, a
(vision)
"Smoke's killin me," Sero said. "Whoo!"
"So leave, string bean." Bakugo murmured, not taking his eyes off the smoke-hole. He felt as if he was getting a handle on this. He felt as if he had lost ten pounds. And he sure as shit felt as if the clubhouse had gotten bigger. Damn straight on that last one. He had been sitting with Sero Hanta's bony right leg squashed against his left one and Deku's sharp left shoulder socked into his right arm. Now he was touching neither of them. He glanced lazily to his right and left to verify that his perception was true, and it was. Sero was a foot or so to his left. On his right, Deku was even farther away.
"Place is bigger," he said. He took a deeper breath and coughed hard. It hurt, hurt deep in his chest, the way a cough hurt when you had the flu or the grippe or something. For awhile he thought it would never pass; that he would just go on coughing until they had to pull him out. 'If they still can,' he thought, but the thought was really too dim to be frightening.
Then Deku was pounding him on the back, and the coughing fit passed.
"...You don't know you don't always," Bakugo said. He was looking at the smoke-hole again instead of at Deku. How bright it seemed! When he closed his eyes he could still see the rectangle, floating there in the dark, but bright green instead of bright white.
"Whuh-whuh-what do you m-mean?" Deku asked.
"Stutter." He paused, aware that someone else was coughing but not sure who it was. "It's rare, but it happens-"
The coughing got louder. Suddenly the clubhouse was flooded with daylight, so sudden and so bright Bakugo had to squint against it. He could just make out Iida Tenya with a very dirty pair of glasses, climbing and clawing his way out.
"Sorry," Iida managed sincerely, through his spasmodic coughing. "sorry, I can't-"
"It's alright," Bakugo heard himself say, his voice sounding dreamy and far away in his own ears. "You tried... that's all that matters..." His voice sounded as if it were coming from a different body.
The trapdoor slammed shut a moment later, but enough fresh air had come in to clear his head a little. Before Sero moved over a little to fill the space Iida had vacated, Bakugo became aware of Sero's leg again, pressing his. How had he gotten the idea that the clubhouse had gotten bigger?
Kaminari Denki threw more sticks on the smoky fire. Bakugo resumed taking shallow breaths and looking up at the smoke-hole. He had no sense of real time passing, but he was vaguely aware that, in addition to the smoke, the clubhouse was getting really hot.
He looked around, looked at his friends. They were hard to see, half-swallowed in shadowsmoke and still white summerlight. Todoroki's head was tilted back against a piece of shoring, his hands on his knees, his eyes closed, looking as calm as ever. Deku was sitting cross-legged, his chin on his chest. Sero was-
But suddenly Sero was getting to his feet, pushing the trapdoor open again.
"There goes Hanta," Kaminari said. He was sitting Indian-fashion directly across from Bakugo, his eyes as red as a weasel's. "Honestly, I thought he and Roki would be the last ones here..."
"Different kind of smoke." Todoroki muttered. "At least... it feels that way..."
Comparative coolness struck them again. The air freshened as smoke swirled up through the trap. Sero was coughing and dry-retching. He pulled himself out with Iida's help, and before either of them could close the trapdoor, Kirishima was staggering to his feet, his face a deadly pale except for the bruised-looking patches under his eyes and traced just below his cheekbones. His thin chest was hitching up and down in quick, shallow spasms. He groped weakly for the edge of the escape hatch and would have fallen if Sero had not grabbed his left hand and Iida the right.
"Sorry," Kirishima managed in a squeaky little whisper, and then they hauled him up. The trapdoor banged down again. Bakugo was honestly relieved that Kirishima was gone... it allowed his mind to clear completely.
There was a long, quiet period. The smoke built up until it was a thick still fog in the clubhouse. 'Looks like a pea-souper to me, Watson,' Bakugo thought, and for a moment he imagined himself as Sherlock Holmes, moving purposefully along Baker Street; Moriarty was somewhere near, a handsom cab awaited, and the game was afoot.
The thought was amazingly clear, amazingly solid. It seemed almost to have weight, as if it were not a little pocket-daydream of the sort he had all the time (batting cleanup for the Fighter's, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and there it goes, it's up... ITS GONE! Home run, Bakugo Katsuki... and that breaks the record!), but something that was almost real...
There was still enough of the wiseacre in him to think that if all he was getting out of this was a vision of himself as Sherlock Holmes, then the whole idea of visions was pretty overrated.
Then the trapdoor opened again and Todoroki was struggling his way out, coughing dryly, one hand cupped over his mouth. Sero got one hand and Iida grabbed him around the waist. Half-pulled, half-scrambling under his own power, Todoroki was up and gone.
"Ih-Ih-It i-is bi-higger," Deku said.
Bakugo looked around. He saw the circle of stones with the fire smoldering within, fuming out clouds of smoke. Across the way he saw Kaminari sitting cross-legged, staring at him through the fire with his smoke-reddened eyes. Except Kaminari was better than twenty yards away, and Deku was even farther away, on Bakugo's right. The underground clubhouse was now at least the size of a ballroom.
"Doesn't matter," Kaminari said, that same dreamy and far away tone taking over his own voice. "It's gonna come pretty quick. Something is... I can feel it..."
"Y-Y-Yeah," Deku said. "But I... I... I-"
He began to cough. He tried to control it, but the cough worsened, a dry rattling. Dimly Bakugo saw Deku stumble to his feet, lunge for the trapdoor, and shove it open.
"Guh-Guh-Good luh-luh-luh-"
And then he was gone, dragged up by Todoroki and Iida.
"Looks like it's you and me, fun size," Bakugo said, and then he began to cough himself. "I thought for sure that it would be Deku-"
The cough worsened. He doubled over, hacking dryly, unable to get his breath. His head was thudding-whacking-like a turnip filled with blood. His eyes teared and burned.
From far away, he heard Kaminari saying: "Go on up if you have to, Kats. Don't let pride get to you. Don't kill yourself."
He raised a hand toward Kaminari and flapped it at him-
(I'm supposed to see this, not Deku- this is my thing.)
-in a negative gesture. Little by little he began to get the coughing under control again. Kaminari was right; something was going to happen, and soon. He wanted to still be here when it did.
He tilted his head back and looked up at the smoke-hole again. The coughing fit had left him feeling light-headed, and now he seemed to be floating on a cushion of air. It was a pleasant feeling. He took shallow breaths and thought: 'Someday I'm going to be a rock-and-roll star. That's it, yes. I'll be famous. I'll make records and albums and movies. I'll have a black sportcoat and white shoes and a yellow Cadillac. And when I come back to Irusu, they'll all eat their goddamn hearts out, even Tomura. I have a temper, but what the fuck? Lot's of stars do. I'll be the first rock-and-roll star to ever come from Irusu. I'll...'
...The thought drifted away. It didn't matter. He found that now he didn't need to take shallow breaths. His lungs had adapted. He could breathe as much smoke as he wanted. Maybe he was from Venus.
Kaminari threw more sticks on the fire. Not to be outdone, Bakugo tossed on another handful himself.
"How you feeling, Kats?" Kaminari asked.
Bakugo smiled. "Better. Good, almost. You?"
Kaminari nodded and smiled back, almost drunkenly. "I feel fantastic. Have you been having some funny thoughts?"
"Yeah. Thought I was Sherlock Holmes for a minute there. Your eyes are so red you wouldn't believe it, you know it?"
"Yours too. Just a coupla weasels in the pen, that's what we are." Kaminari giggled shallowly, Bakugo found himself laughing too.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"You alright?"
"I'm alright, how about you? Do you have this, Kats?"
"I've got it, Blondie."
"Yeah, okay."
They grinned at each other and then Bakugo let his head tilt back against the wall again and looked up at the smoke-hole. Shortly he began to drift away. No... not away. Up. He was drifting up. Like-
(float down here we all)
-a balloon.
"Yuh-yuh-you g-g-guys alri-right?"
Deku's voice, coming down through the smoke-hole. Coming from Venus. Worried. Bakugo felt himself thud back down inside himself.
"Alright," he heard his voice, distant, irritated. "Alright, we said alright, be quiet you... you fucking dumbass... let us get the visions, we wanna say we got the-
(world)
-visions."
The clubhouse was bigger than ever, floored now with some sort of polished wood. The smoke was fog-thick and it was hard to see the fire. That floor! Holy fucking shit! It was as big as an arena! Kaminari looked at him from the other side, a shape almost lost in the fog.
"Denki? Are you still there?"
"I'm right here with you, Kats- grab my hand- I'm right here."
Bakugo thrust his hand out, and although Kaminari was on the far side of this enormous room he felt those strong, work-calloused, fingers close over his wrist. Oh and that was good, that was a good touch-good to find desire in comfort, to find comfort in desire, to find substance in smoke and smoke in substance -
He tilted his head back and looked at the smoke-hole, so white and small. It was farther up now. Miles up. Venusian skylight.
It was happening. He began to float. 'Come the fuck on then,' he thought, and began to rise faster through the smoke, the fog, the mist, whatever it was.
—5—
They weren't inside anymore.
The two of them were standing together in the middle of the Barrens, and it was nearly dusk.
It was the Barrens, he knew that, but everything was different. The foliage was lusher, deeper, savagely fragrant. There were plants he had never seen before, and Bakugo realized some of the things he had first taken for trees were really giant ferns. There was the sound of running water, but it was much louder than it should have been- this water sounded not like the leisurely flow of the Shibui Stream but more the way he imagined the Shinano River must sound flowing through the Japanese alps.
It was hot, too. Not that it didn't get hot in Irusu during the summer, and humid enough so that sometimes you felt sticky just lying in your bed at night, but this was more heat and more humidity than he had ever felt in his whole life. A low mist, smoky and thick, lay in the hollows of the land and crept around their legs. It had a thin acrid smell like burning green wood.
He and Kaminari began to move toward the sound of the running water without speaking, pushing their way through the strange foliage. Thick ropy lianas lay between some of the trees like spidery hammocks, and once Bakugo heard something go crashing off through the underbrush. It sounded bigger than a deer.
He stopped long enough to look around, turning in a circle, studying the horizon. He knew where the Standpipe's thick white cylinder should have been, but it wasn't there. Neither was the railroad trestle going over to the trainyards at the end of Neibolt Street or the housing development- low bluffs and red sandstone outcroppings of rock bulged out of thick stands of giant fern and pine trees where the housing-development should have been.
There was a flapping noise overhead. The boys ducked as a squadron of bats flapped by. They were the biggest bats Bakugo had ever seen, and for a moment he was more terrified than he had been even when Deku was trying to get Silver rolling and he had heard the werewolf closing in on them from behind. The stillness and the alienness of this land were both terrible, but its awful familiarity was somehow worse.
'Stop acting like a baby, dammit,' he told himself. 'Remember that this is just a dream, or a vision, or whatever you want to call it. Me and blondie are really back in the clubhouse, fucked up on smoke. Pretty soon Deku's gonna puss out because we're not answering anymore, and he and four-eyes will come down and haul us the hell out of here.'
But he could see how one of the bats wings was so ragged the hazy sun shone through it, and when they passed beneath one of the giant ferns he could see a fat yellow caterpillar trundling across a wide green frond, leaving its shadow behind it. There were tiny black mites jumping and sizzling on the caterpillar's body. If this was a dream, it was the clearest one he had ever had.
They went on toward the sound of the water, and in the thick knee-high groundmist, Bakugo was unable to tell if his boots were touching the ground or not. They came to a place where both the mist and the ground stopped. Bakugo looked, unbelieving. This was not the Shibui- and yet it was. The stream boiled and roiled through a narrow watercourse cut through that same crumbly rock-looking across to the far side, he could see ages cut into those stacked layers of stone, red and then orange and then red again. You couldn't walk across this stream on stepping-stones; you'd need a rope bridge, and if you fell in you would be swept away at once. The sound of the water was the sound of bitter foolish anger, and as Bakugo watched, slack-jawed, he saw a pinkish-silver fish jump in an impossibly high arc, snapping at the bugs that made shifting clouds just above the surface of the water. It splashed down again, giving Bakugo just time enough to register its presence, and to realize he had never seen a fish exactly like that in his whole life, not even in a book.
Birds flocked across the sky, squalling harshly. Not a dozen or two dozen; for a moment the sky was so dark with birds that they blotted out the sun. Something else crashed through the bushes, and then more things. Bakugo wheeled, his heart thudding painfully in his chest, and saw something that looked like a fluffy cross between a goat and a deer flash by, heading southeast.
'Something's going to happen. And they know it. Shit.'
The birds passed, presumably alighting somewhere en masse farther south. More animals, these looked like a pack of wolves with extremely thin snouts, and for a moment, Bakugo found himself thinking of the werewolf- crashed by them... and then another animal, this one some sort of ginormous deer looking thing. Then there was silence except for the steady rumble of the Shibui. The silence had a waiting quality about it, a pregnant quality Bakugo didn't like. He felt the hairs shifting and trying to stand up on the back of his neck and he pulled Kaminari closer to him, almost protectively.
"Do you know where we are?!" he shouted at Kaminari.
"I-I... think-" Kaminari shouted back, swallowing down his own fright. "I think I've got it! This is ago, Kats! Ago!"
Bakugo nodded. 'Ago, as in once upon a time, long long ago, when we all lived in the forest and nobody lived anywhere else.' They were in the Barrens as they had been who knew how many thousands of years ago. They were in some unimaginable past before the ice age, when northern Japan had been as tropical as the south was today... if there still was a today. He looked around again, nervously, almost expecting to see a bellusaurus raise its cranelike neck against the sky and stare down at them, its mouth full of mud and dripping uprooted plants, or a Siberian lion to come stalking out of the undergrowth.
...But there was only that silence, as in the five or ten minutes before a vicious thundersquall strikes, when the purple heads stack up and up in the sky overhead and the light turns a queer, bruised purple-yellow and the wind dies completely and you can smell a thick aroma like overcharged car batteries in the air.
'We're in the ago, a million years back, maybe, or ten million, or eighty million, but here we are and something's going to happen, I don't know what but something and I'm fucking scared. I want it to end I want to be back and Deku- I'm willing to throw away all my goddamn pride and forget our stupid rivalry if you'd just- please Deku please pull us out it's like we fell into the picture some picture please please help-'
Kaminari grabbed his hand, and squeezed, and it was only now that Bakugo realized that the silence had been broken. There was a steady low vibration- he could feel it more than hear it, working against the tight flesh of his eardrums, buzzing the tiny bones that conducted the sound. It grew steadily. It had no tone; it simply was:
(the word in the beginning was the word the world the)
-a tuneless, soulless sound. He groped for the tree they stood near and as his hand touched it, cupped the curve of the bole, he could feel the vibration caught inside. At the same moment he realized he could feel it in his feet, a steady tingling that went up his ankles and calves to his knees, turning his tendons into tuning forks.
It grew. And grew.
It was coming out of the sky. Not wanting to but unable to help himself, Bakugo turned his face up. The sun was a molten coin burning a circle in the low-hanging overcast, surrounded by a fairy-ring of moisture. Below it, the verdant green slash that was the Barrens lay utterly still. Bakugo thought he understood what this vision was: they were about to see the coming of It.
The vibration took on a voice- a rumbling roar that built to a shattering crescendo of sound. He clapped his hands to his ears and screamed and could not hear himself scream. Beside him, Kaminari Denki was doing the same, and Bakugo saw that Kaminari's nose was bleeding.
The clouds in the west lit with a bloom of red fire. It traced its way toward them, widening from an artery to a stream to a river of ominous color; and then, as a burning, falling object broke through the cloud cover, the wind came. It was hot and searing, smoky and suffocating. The thing in the sky was gigantic, a flaming match-head that was nearly too bright to look at. Arcs of electricity bolted from it, blue bullwhips that flashed out from it and left thunder in their wake.
"It's a goddamn spaceship!" Bakugo screamed, falling to his knees as the noise became to much. "Oh my fucking God it's a spaceship!" But he believed-and would tell the others later, as best he could- that it was not a spaceship, although it might have come through space to get here. Whatever came down on that long-ago day had come from a place much farther away than another star or another galaxy, and if spaceship was the first word to come into his mind, perhaps that was only because his mind had no other way of grasping what his eyes were seeing.
There was an explosion then- a roar of sound followed by a rolling concussion that knocked them both down. This time it was Bakugo who groped for Kaminari's hand. There was another explosion. Bakugo opened his eyes and saw a glare of fire and a pillar of smoke rising into the sky.
"It!" He screamed at Kaminari, in an ecstasy of terror now-never in his life- never in a million lifetimes- would he feel any emotion so deeply, be so overwhelmed by feeling. "It! It! It!"
Kaminari dragged him to his feet and they ran along the high bank of the young Shibui, never noticing how close they were to the drop. Once Kaminari stumbled and went skidding to his knees. Then it was Bakugo's turn to go down, bruising his shin and tearing his pants. The wind had come up and it was pushing the smell of the burning forest toward them. The smoke grew thicker, and Bakugo became dimly aware that he and Kaminari were not running alone. The animals were on the move again, fleeing from the smoke, the fire, the death in the fire. Running from It, perhaps. The new arrival in their world.
Bakugo began to cough. He could hear Kaminari beside him, also coughing. The smoke was thicker, washing out the greens and grays and reds of the day. Kaminari fell again and Bakugo lost his hand. He groped for it and could not find it.
"Denki!" He screamed, panicked, coughing. "Denki! where are you?! Denki?! DENKI!?"
But Kaminari was gone; Kaminari was nowhere.
"Kat- Katsu- Ugh... KATSUKI!?" He heard Kaminari call from somewhere in the distance.
Dimly, Bakugo felt something slam against his cheek- and he fell backwards- seeing stars.
"Katsuki! Katsuki! Katsuki, are you-
—6—
-alright?!"
His eyes fluttered open and he saw Kirishima kneeling beside him, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. The others- Deku, Todoroki, Iida, and Sero- stood behind him, their faces solemn and scared. The side of Bakugo's face hurt like hell. He tried to speak to Kirishima and could only croak. He tried to clear his throat and almost vomited. His throat and lungs felt as if they had somehow been lined with smoke.
At last he managed, "...did you slap me, shitty hair?..."
Kirishima, near tears, wiped at his eyes as he shook his head violently. "No- that was- that was Shouto."
"It was all I could think of to do," Todoroki said.
"Fuck you..." Bakugo muttered.
"I didn't think you were going to be alright, is all," Todoroki said, sounding quite worried. It wasn't long after that when Kirishima suddenly burst into tears, and pulled Bakugo into a fierce hug.
Bakugo patted him clumsily on the back, feeling quite awkward. Kirishima reached around at once, took it, squeezed it. There were a few eyebrow raises from the other members of the losers club, but no one commented.
Kirishima pulled him into a tighter, almost protective, hug- forcing Bakugo's face to almost nuzzle into the crook of his neck. The world began to swim in waves. When it steadied down he saw Kaminari leaning against a tree nearby, his face dazed and pale, a smear of blood from his nose to his chin.
"Did I puke?" Bakugo asked Kirishima.
He nodded, still crying, refusing to let him go.
In a croaking voice, "Didn't get any one you, did I?... that'd be pretty shitty of me to do..."
Kirishima laughed through his tears and shook his head. "I turned you on your side. I was afraid... a-a-afraid you'd ch-ch-choke on it." He began to cry hard again.
"Nuh-Nuh-No f-fair," Deku said, kneeling down to rub Kirishima's back, taking over Bakugo's comforting duty- for which he was extremely grateful. "I-I-I'm the one who stuh-huh-hutters a-around h-here."
"Okay... okay... I'm alive, shitty hair... let me go..." Bakugo said. He tried to get to his feet and sat down again heavily. The world was still swimming. He began to cough and turned his head away, aware that he was going to retch again only a moment before it happened. He threw up a mess of green foam and thick saliva that mostly came out in ropes. He closed his eyes tight and croaked, "Ugh... fuck me..."
Kaminari's eyes lit up for the first time since he'd been yanked out of the smoke-hole, his lips quirking into a teasing grin: "I think Ejirou-"
Todoroki kicked him gently in the shin, shutting him up. Kirishima's cheeks colored as he shot a weak, teary, glare in Kaminari's direction.
"Oh fuck off..." Bakugo said, his own cheeks tingeing red. When he opened his eyes at last, he saw the clubhouse about twenty yards away. Both the window and the big trapdoor were thrown open. Smoke, thinning now, puffed from both.
This time Bakugo was able to get to his feet. For a moment he was quite sure he was going to retch again, or faint, or both. "Ugh, everything hurts..." he murmured, watching the world waver and warp in front of his eyes. When the feeling passed, he made his way over to where Kaminari was. Kaminari's eyes were still weasel-red, his grin still playful and teasing- though tired- and from the dampness on his pants cuffs, Bakugo thought that maybe fun size had taken a ride on the stomach-elevator, too.
"You did pretty good for a queer." Kaminari croaked jokingly, and punched Bakugo weakly on the shoulder.
Bakugo was at a loss for words- a condition of exquisite rarity. He settled for punching Kaminari lightly back.
Deku came over. The others came with him.
"You pulled us out?" Bakugo asked.
"M-Me and Shuh-Shouto. Y-You were scuh-scuh-rheaming. B-Both of y-y-you. B-B-But-" He looked over at Todoroki.
Todoroki said, "It was the smoke, Deku." But there was no conviction in the taller boys voice at all.
Flatly, Bakugo said: "You mean what I think you mean?"
Deku shrugged. "W-W-What's th-that, Kah-Kacchan?"
Kaminari answered. "We weren't there at first, were we? You went down because you heard us screaming, but at first we weren't there."
"It was really smoky," Sero said. "Hearing you both screaming that way, that was scary enough. But the screaming... it sounded... well..."
"It s-s-sounded very f-f-f-far a-away," Deku said. Stuttering badly, he told them that when he and Todoroki had gone down, they hadn't been able to see either Bakugo or Kaminari. They had gone plunging around in the smoky clubhouse, panicked, scared that if they didn't act quickly the two boys might die of smoke poisoning. At last Deku had gripped a hand- Bakugo's. He had given "a huh-huh-hell of a yuh-yank" and Bakugo had come flying out of the gloom, only about one-quarter conscious. When Deku turned around he had seen Todoroki with Kaminari hanging limply over his shoulder- similar to a sack of potatoes. Todoroki had carried Kaminari up and out through the trapdoor.
Todoroki listened to all this, nodding.
"I kept grabbing. Really not doing anything except shooting my hand out like I wanted to shake hands. You grabbed it, Denki. Damn good thing you grabbed it when you did. I think you were just about gone."
"You guys make the clubhouse sound a lot bigger than it is," Bakugo said. "Talking about stumbling around in it and all. It's only five feet on every side."
There was a moment's silence while they all looked at Deku, who stood in frowning concentration.
"It w-w-was b-bigger," he said at last. "W-W-Wasn't it, Sho?"
Todoroki shrugged. "It sure seemed like it. Unless it was the smoke."
"It wasn't the smoke," Bakugo said. "Just before it happened- before we went out- I remember thinking it was at least as big as an arena. I could barely see fun size against the other wall..."
"Before you went out?" Todoroki asked.
"Well... what I mean... like..."
Kirishima grabbed Bakugo's arm. "It happened, didn't it? It really happened! You had a vision, just like in Hanta's book!" His face was glowing, the tear tracks gleaming in the summer sun. "It really happened?"
Bakugo looked down at himself, and then at Kaminari. One of the knees of Kaminari's corduroy pants was out, and both the knees of his own jeans were torn. He could look through the holes and see bleeding scrapes on both his knees.
"If it was a vision, I never want to have another one," he said. "I don't know about blondie over there, but when I went down there, I didn't have any holes in my pants. They're practically new, for fuck's sakes. My mom's gonna give me hell."
"What happened?" Sero and Kirishima asked together.
Bakugo and Kaminari exchanged a glance and then Bakugo said, "Sho, Hanta, either of you got a smoke?"
Todoroki had two, wrapped in a piece of tissue. Bakugo put one of them in his mouth and when Todoroki lit it the first drag made him cough so badly that he handed it back to him. "Can't," he said. "sorry."
"It was the past," Kaminari said.
"Shit on that," Bakugo said. "It wasn't just the past. It was ago."
"Yeah, right. We were in the Barrens, but the Shibui was going a mile a minute. It was deep. It was fuckin wild. Sorry, Roki, but it was. And there were fish in it. Salmon, I think."
"M-My d-d-dad s-says th-there haven't been a-a-any fuh-fish in the Shuh-Shuh-Shibui for a l-l-long tuh-hime. B-Because of the suh-sewage."
"This was a long time, alright," Bakugo said. He looked around at them uncertainly. "I think it was a million years ago, at least."
A thunderstruck silence greeted this. Todoroki broke it at last. "But what happened?"
Bakugo felt the words in his throat, but he had to struggle to bring them out. It felt almost like vomiting again. "We saw It come," he said at last. "I think that was it."
"Geez," Iida muttered, rubbing at his eyes underneath his glasses. "Just- Geez..."
There was a sharp hiss-gasp as Kirishima used his aspirator. Pretty soon afterwards, Bakugo was pulled into another hug. He was to tired to feel embarrassed and fight it, so he just let Kirishima hold him.
"It came out of the sky," Kaminari said. "I never want to see anything like that again in my whole life. It was burning so hot you couldn't really look at it. And it was crackling with electricity and making thunder. The noise... " He shook his head and looked at Bakugo. "It sounded like the end of the world. And when it hit, it started a forest fire. That was at the end of it."
"Was it a spaceship?" Sero asked.
"Yes," Bakugo said. "No," Kaminari said.
They looked at each other.
"Well, I guess it was," Kaminari said, and at the same time Bakugo said: "No, it really wasn't a spaceship, you know, but-"
They paused again while the others looked at them, perplexed.
"You tell," Bakugo said to Kaminari, unconsciously nuzzling into Kirishima's warm chest. "We mean the same thing, I think, but they're not getting it... and my chest hurts... just wanna lay here... take a nap... so you tell it... you're- you're more theatrical than me anyways..."
Kaminari coughed into his fist and then looked up at the others, almost apologetically. "I don't know just how to tell you," he said, "my brain's to dumb, I think."
"T-T-Try," Deku said urgently.
"It... It came out of the sky," Kaminari repeated, "but... it wasn't a spaceship, exactly... It wasn't a meteor, either. It was more like... well... like nothin' I've ever seen before... Just feeling It, watching It come, you knew It meant bad, that It was bad."
He looked at them.
Bakugo nodded. "It came from... outside. I got that feeling. From outside."
"Outside where, Suki?" Kirishima asked.
"Outside everything," Bakugo shrugged. "And when It came down... It made the biggest damn hole you ever saw in your life. It turned this big hill into a doughnut, just about. It landed right where the downtown part of Irusu is now."
He looked at them. "do you get it?"
Todoroki dropped the cigarette half-smoked and crushed it out under one shoe.
Kaminari said. "It's always been here, since the beginning of time... since before there were people anywhere, unless maybe there were just a few of them in Africa somewhere- The crater's gone now, and the ice age probably scraped the valley deeper and changed some stuff around and filled the crater in... but It was here then, sleeping, maybe, waiting for the ice to melt, waiting for the people to come."
That's why It uses the sewers and the drains," Bakugo put in. "They must be like damn freeways for It."
"You didn't see what It looked like?" Iida asked abruptly and a little hoarsely.
They shook their heads.
"Can we beat It?" Kirishima said in the silence. "A thing like that?... can we beat it?"
No one answered.