Author's Note: If you're sensitive to depictions of stalking and assault, violence against women specifically, you might want to skip Katsuki's POV this time around, because there's a very real aspect to how he behaves in this chapter. I'll provide a summary in the end note for anyone that does.
Every muscle in Izuku's body hurt. He dodged an attack from Starsinger, whose Quirk could turn the sound of her voice into explosive solar energy that was projected outward as an area-of-effect attack. Izuku would hazard a guess after training with her the last two days that the higher the pitch the more energy she could fire off, and he'd learned that the hard way. This training had had an element of novelty at the start, because Starsinger literally fought by singing, but when her operatic high notes could give him a killer sunburn at best, Izuku's amusement at the mechanics of her Quirk had been short-lived. He'd manage to dodge all her attacks that day, though, and his new costume was unblemished.
That first day at the agency, Izuku had gone to change into his costume only to get a big shock. He found a note from one Mei Hatsume explaining that she'd taken some creative liberties in light of recent events and redesigned his whole costume. The black cargo pants and reinforced top had been combined into an identically black bodysuit. He could've gone without the skin-tightness of it, but whatever. The hooded jacket was still fireproof, insulated, and stab-resistant, and the zipper was still non-ferrous so magnetism Quirks, fire Quirks, electrical Quirks and bladed weapons would have a slightly harder time hurting him once he had it on. According to the note, the bodysuit now shared these properties, too, so everything but his face was protected. Izuku's problem with the jacket was that this Hatsume person must have once again taken the chance to match up the colour with his hair, the same as the last costume's designer, so now the jacket was whiter than white, which was not what he had ever asked for. The mouth guard was, fortunately, unchanged, with the black device helping him breathe in dusty, smoky, and—for a very brief period—underwater environments, in addition to being a functional mouth guard. The black, steel-toed boots were also unchanged, only now they had white highlights.
That was all incidental, though. Useful, but not nearly as important as the one support item he needed. The new gloves that came with his costume were where his focus was pulled. They were the same black as before, now with white stripes going up the fingers which merged into a thicker stripe on his palm, and the instructions within showed that it worked completely differently than the previous version. Apparently, UA had ordered some kind of special material from abroad, from I-Island, in fact. It was apparently a shape-memory metal that could be compressed to almost nothing and then expanded again, and it would retain the shape it was made in. The compressed form of the gloves was stored in two little bracelets, back with a white button at the top of the wrist, and when that button was pressed, it would expand into the gloves as described. The note explained that they were made from a series of partially interlocking plates, so Decimation wouldn't register it as a single object that was touching all his fingers at once, so the new gloves made sure all his fingers could be protected while also navigating a loophole in his Quirk to stay intact. The right glove even came with a prosthetic finger where he was missing one, which didn't need to be connected and read his nervous system to follow his wishes for that finger. It was a serious upgrade in Izuku's opinion, and he was more than happy with it, even if he wished it would be made in darker colours.
Izuku dodged another beam of light and heat from Starsinger. He wondered if his classmates' internships were so combat-oriented. That was his problem, though. He'd asked for them to train him so he could do things with his Quirk other than just destroy something, and that took trial and error and experimentation. So, sparring. The thing was, Izuku had no clue what his Quirk could possibly do other than destroy. Thirteen had assured him that there had to be an application of Decimation that wasn't simply destruction. Even Thirteen's own Quirk, Black Hole, had some applications that weren't geared toward obliterating the target, but even then, those techniques were simply using the destruction aspect of her Quirk to achieve another effect. Like how the suction aspect of Black Hole could keep enemies from moving away from her, and in that way, she had the ability to control the battlefield. As well, Thirteen could rip up the ground and destabilise a villain's footing. There were so many things that Thirteen could do that Izuku just couldn't, precisely because of the differences in which their Quirks worked. How could he transform destruction into a useful move?
He figured he should counterattack so that Thirteen, who was standing off to the side and watching, wouldn't get suspicious that he was lost in thought about a dozen things other than the competent pro hero he was supposed to be fighting. He dismissed the left glove which turned into glittery white light and retreated into the wristband. Izuku crouched down and pressed three of his fingers in a triangle shape onto the ground a few centimetres apart, and then immediately took them away. Lines and cracks tore up a patch of the floor and created a few rocks and pebbles around the size of table tennis balls. He spun around, digging the chunks out with his right hand and hiding them in his clenched fist, which he used to tap the wristband on his left and summon the glove again. He used the momentum from the twist to do a sideflip over another ray of light that Starsinger sent his way.
Running up to Starsinger, Izuku took the debris he'd held onto and flung it at her face, the dust, dirt and small rocks forcing her to cover her face, and her eyes specifically, if she wanted to avoid getting bruised and blinded. Izuku took that moment to attempt a real attack, but Starsinger simply belted out a piercing note and vaporised the smokescreen that would've been his opening. The chunks of flooring blew away pathetically, reduced to ash by Starsinger's power. Izuku had crouched down to sweep her legs out from under her, but had to turn it into a low tackle to keep the momentum going, which she dodged by leaping over him and coming back down on his back as he tried to roll away. She pinned him under her foot, which dug into the small of Izuku's back painfully.
"I think that's enough for now. Go to lunch, Star," Thirteen said from the sidelines, where she had been watching Izuku's training for the past two days.
Getting to his feet, Izuku took one last look at Starsinger, just to see how close he'd gotten to beating her. Her costume, which was a black bodysuit like his with a lot of space and musical note motifs on it, had a few blemishes on it, but he remembered that he hadn't put any of those on her. Those had been from dodging his attacks. Starsinger was far more acrobatic than Izuku was. He thought she might've been a gymnast if not a hero. Izuku looked over at Thirteen, who approached him with a bottle of water, which he took and drank quickly.
"So, where do you think you went wrong there?" Thirteen asked. She had her helmet back on, since they'd just come back from a morning patrol, so Izuku couldn't read any kind of facial expression to tell him what her tone meant.
"I assumed I'd won, so I overextended," Izuku said. He was well aware of how he'd messed up.
"Good. Keep in mind that when you're fighting, you and your enemy aren't just fighting each other. You're also fighting against the limits of your own Quirks, and the technicalities of those limits. For example, what should you have done against Starsinger just now?" Thirteen asked.
"Stay back and make a different kind of opening? If she can just atomise projectiles, then—" Izuku said. He'd thought it was a good answer, but Thirteen put a finger up to silence him.
"Wrong. Starsinger can't just do that. If I'm right, she's going to the locker room to get her throat medicine right now. Star's Quirk works by converting the vibrations of her vocal cords into energy she can fire off as an attack. The higher the pitch of her voice, the more powerful these attacks can be," Thirteen said. So, Izuku was right. "Do you think that puts zero strain on her? She's trained since she was young to make as high a pitch as she can, but she's not an expert singer. Vaporising something takes a lot out of her, even small things like your little trick there. You pushed her to her limit. If you'd have stayed back and tried that same trick again, or even just gone in for a punch, you would've won. She's got the edge in ranged combat, but I think you're better than her in close-quarters. You see what I mean? You've gotta think about your own Quirk and its limit, and your opponent's Quirk, and its limit. But you were distracted, and weren't thinking about it. Why is that?"
Izuku froze. It was true that he'd been distracted, but had Thirteen really been able to tell just by watching him fight? He supposed he wasn't exactly trying to keep it a secret, but it still was embarrassing to be found out so easily. He didn't know if he could tell Thirteen the truth, though. She was a teacher at UA, too, and he didn't know if she'd believe him. The truth was that Izuku was still hung up on Iida. He really thought that Iida might end up making a bad choice and hurt himself if left alone. He'd failed, though, and hadn't been able to convince Iida to talk to any of his friends before the internships had started. Now, Iida was in Hosu, alone with his thoughts, and without the normal structure of a classroom that Izuku knew kept Iida ordered. If something happened, and Iida did get himself hurt, Izuku knew that he'd blame himself first and foremost, even if it had been Iida's choice to go out there and do whatever it was he hoped to do in Hosu. Izuku's theory was still that Iida wanted to get revenge for his brother. If he got killed, Izuku would never be able to forgive himself for not stopping it.
"Have you ever had to save a friend?" Izuku asked.
"What do you mean?" Thirteen asked back.
"Has a friend of yours ever gotten into a situation where they needed to be saved? And were you the one to save them, or did you think that would just make things go sour between you two?" Izuku said.
"No, I've never needed to save a friend. I wouldn't hesitate to do so if I needed to, though. What is this about, Midoriya? Is one of your friends in trouble?" Thirteen said. There was a steady, professional tone to her voice that told Izuku she was going into hero mode, rather than teacher mode.
"Maybe. I don't know for sure. I want to help him no matter what, but I don't think he wants my help. He's so determined to get himself into trouble, and he might get himself hurt or killed, but helping him might make it worse. This friend is so set on going through this hard time in his life completely alone, but I know how that feels and it's suffocating me thinking he's feeling the same things I used to feel. Nobody should feel that way," Izuku said.
"Then let's help him. Who is this friend of yours?" Thirteen asked.
"Wait, really?" Izuku asked back, giving Thirteen a puzzled look. "Just like that?"
"Yep. We're heroes, Midoriya. It's what we do," Thirteen said. He could just imagine she had the widest grin on her face while she said it. "When we put these costumes on, we save everyone, no matter if they want our help or not. So, where are we going?"
"Hosu," he said, smiling back at Thirteen. Izuku swore that he was going to save his friend. "We're going to save Tenya Iida."
Ochako trembled as she held the weights steady. Her arms felt like putty that would be ripped off her body at any moment. She was well aware of her little habit of holding her breath any time she did something strenuous, since she usually did big stuff with her Quirk, and the breath holding was to keep herself from vomiting. That habit was proving to be a bad one, as All Might kept having to remind her to breathe as she performed these heavy workouts. So, Ochako tried her best to keep her breathing steady as she brought the bar—twenty five kilograms on each side—down to the ground, and then pulled it back up again with a groan of effort. She'd been doing deadlifts like this for an hour, and her arms felt like they would never work again, but All Might had insisted that it was important. He stood behind her in his muscular form, ready to act if something happened. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of just lifting weights, All Might took it and set it on the rack, freeing Ochako from the nightmare.
"Are you alright, Young Uraraka?" All Might asked as he shrank back down to his real form.
"Yeah, totally fine!" Ochako said. She knew he didn't buy it.
"It's normal if your muscles hurt. They're supposed to," he said with a laugh under his breath.
"Okay. Yeah, I'm pretty sore, but I can do whatever else is planned for today! No sweat!" Ochako said, getting to her feet and then immediately sitting down when a wave of light-headedness pushed her back down.
"Well, that's good, because we're done. I can see you're pushing yourself, and that's good, but be careful not to push yourself too far. That'll have the opposite effect we want and halt—maybe even reverse your progress. Remember, the key to getting stronger is to consistently push on your limit. Not enough that it shatters and you break down, but just enough that it's forced to grow a little bit each time you come knocking. This—" All Might pointed to the barbell. "—is how you'll do that. You don't want to lift weights you can't, just ones that you barely can, so that your body acclimates to that kind of output, and then once you're comfortable with that, you increase it a little until you're comfortable with that, and so on. Do you understand?"
"I get it," Ochako said with a smile. "I could use a break, though."
"Right. In addition to constant escalation, taking breaks is important, too. Muscles get more powerful when you tear them and they regrow stronger than they were before. You do need to give them that time to regrow, though, so taking breaks is vital to the process as well," All Might said as he passed Ochako a bottle of water that he'd had on standby.
Ochako felt the cool water refresh her mind and cool down her body as she thought about that. All Might was a surprisingly good teacher when it was time for one-on-one training. She wondered if it was the classroom setting that held him back, or if it was the amount of students that had him a little bit scattered, but he was definitely out of his depth teaching at UA, and was noticeably more comfortable and skilled when focusing all his energy on one person. Ochako felt a little bit out of her league and flattered at the same time that that person was herself, but she didn't think she'd change any of her decisions if she had the chance. She liked the feeling of getting stronger, of pushing herself to her limit and beyond to someday become the person she envisioned in her head when she went to sleep at night. That didn't mean she liked the constant aches that she didn't have enough time to fully recover from after two whole days at Might Tower. She could do without those, but it looked like the training and the soreness was a package deal, so she'd grit her teeth and bare it. At least the beds were fancy.
Training had taken up the majority of the day again. With the deadlifts, the time she spent hammering on the punching bag—that one had been tough, as it was made for someone with the power of All Might—and the endurance training—which was just running, which seemed tame after the other two torture methods—she had been training for a total of six hours, starting at ten in the morning and lasting until the afternoon. That was how it had been for the past two days Ochako had spent at Might Tower. It was way harder than the workouts she'd done to prepare for UA, and even the training she did at UA was only in hour-long sessions. She'd never worked out for so long in one sitting before—it made Ochako kind of queasy when she finally slowed down and caught her breath after operating at full speed for so long.
Finally, she got to shower and sit down for a meal. All Might's personal chef had been ecstatic meeting someone with the ability to eat food after working with the stomachless hero for so long, so he'd cooked her something that was surely so expensive that she'd felt guilty eating it at first. It had tasted so good that she'd forgotten about that quickly, though. As well, it was apparently the solid equivalent of what All Might ate in the little smoothies the chef—whose name she'd learned was Oishi Kenko—prepared for him, so it was perfect food for someone looking to bulk up and gain a lot of muscle in their near future. She'd been happily eating the delicious, healthy meals that Kenko had been making for her the past few days, and she'd never had a better experience with food. If this was what she had to look forward to in her future, then Ochako thought that inheriting One for All would be able to help her achieve her goals in two ways. She could tell her parents to start keeping the money they sent her every week for food. It wasn't a massive change in the short term, but over time, not losing ten thousand yen every time they got paid would be massive for her parents' ability to actually make money and keep it. Ochako ate with a big smile on her face that afternoon as she thought about how bright her future was looking.
The next morning was not as peaceful as she would've liked. Ochako woke up to her alarm and got dressed in her workout clothes, a tracksuit she'd been able to find in her hero costume's colours—rather, since she'd already known what colours she'd wanted her hero costume to be before entering UA, she'd already had the tracksuit for a while. She got a little bit annoyed when people assumed she was a girly girl because she liked to smile and loved sweet candies and blushed easily around people she liked. That being said, Ochako did adore pink, and she was not going to apologise for that. It just went well with her whole vibe, and it worked with any other colour if you used the right shade. Ochako pulled herself away from that train of thought, and hoped nobody had caught her spacing out while putting her shoes on. She walked out to the training area she'd been occupying and noticed that All Might was not there. That was odd, but he'd had to duck out over the last few days to solve incidents every now and then, so Ochako didn't think much of it.
Just as she was about to enter the gym from the hallway, something small and hard rammed into Ochako's back, sending her flying. Reflexively, she slapped a hand to her shoulder and a pink flash washed over her, and suddenly she was stalling in the air. Her momentum dissipated in her zero-gravity state, and Ochako floated in the air for a few seconds as she tried to regain balance. She spun around and looked back at where she'd been sent flying from, and a little old guy in a white and yellow jumpsuit was standing where she'd been just seconds ago, a cane holding him up and a lost expression on his face, which was partially covered with a domino mask. He looked like a hero, but Ochako didn't recognise him, which didn't say much. She could recognise most of the top fifty, and she was pretty hit or miss on the top one hundred, but she had no ability to put names to costumes after that. Thus, it wasn't a shock that Ohako didn't recognise him. What was a shock was the man's age. He was clearly old, maybe older than All Might, and other than Yoroi Musha, Ochako didn't know of any heroes older than All Might. All Might had been around forever, and heroes tended to retire around forty as their bodies got weaker, so it shook Ochako to see a hero that looked to be about seventy-five.
The moment of confusion was ended by Ochako's stomach doing a flip and bile stinging the back of her throat. She tapped her fingers together and ended her Quirk with a weak, "Release!" She fell to the ground and stumbled, but kept herself on her feet. She realised something with a gasp, and she looked down at her hands with wide eyes. Ochako had floated just then for way longer than she'd been able to previously. It seemed like All Might's idea of stressing a muscle just enough to make it grow was right, and the thing everyone always said was that Quirks were like muscles in the way that they can do the same thing. The way she had used her Zero Gravity during the sports festival was new and mostly improvised, the way she was enhancing her own speed with brief applications of her Quirk and confusing her enemies by messing with their sense of gravity and balance. It hadn't been a way she'd thought to use her Quirk before, but it had been necessary due to the lack of projectiles and obstacles in the tournament arena. Stressing her Zero Gravity like that must have pushed it in just the right way to make it stronger and not burn Ochako out. She realised this with much less enthusiasm than she would've thought, but was distracted from examining that by the old hero in front of her starting to ramble.
"How old are you, newbie?" the guy asked.
"Why?" Ochako asked, her heart skipping a beat. Older men asking her age was never a good sign.
"Toshinori said you're a first year at UA, but you have the reflexes of an infant just learning to walk," the man said with a laugh. "I suppose you're not hopeless, though. Just from that, I can see your Quirk has improved from back at the sports fest. More control, more endurance."
"Yeah," Ochako said, sighing as she reluctantly gave up on figuring that out for now. "Sorry, but who are you, sir?"
"So Toshinori really hasn't told you anything, has he?" the old guy asked. He seemed amused and annoyed by that at the same time.
"Who is that?" Ochako asked. She'd never met a Toshinori.
"Nothing at all," the old man said. He almost seemed like he was talking to himself more than he was talking to Ochako. "Very well. I can work with a newbie like you, for old time's sake."
"Sir?" Ochako asked again. She had a feeling something was about to happen, so she planted her feet and brought her hands up.
"Ha!" The old man seemed to like that by how his face lit up. "At least he picked a fighter. Toshinori—you'd know him as All Might. He says you've got bad habits. He asked me to break them. And by that, of course, I mean he asked me to break you. Are you ready for a whole other level of hurt, newbie?"
The old man suddenly disappeared, vanishing in a blur of speed. The air pressure in the room changed, and Ochako's hair flew around her head, obscuring her vision somewhat. She spun around, sweeping her gaze across the room, and found the elderly hero perching up in the top corner of the hallway. He'd shot off the ground in an instant and appeared all the way down the hall in the blink of an eye. This guy had to be some famous pro if his Quirk made him faster than her eyes could track! She refused to believe he was some nobody. Ochako crouched down and held one hand close to her body, and one hand out in front of her, both hands' fingers splayed out wide so that she had the best chance of catching him as she could ensure. Her heart hammered in her chest, and Ochako couldn't help but grin as she felt adrenaline flood her body.
"Bring it on!"
The area was quiet. He'd expected it, since he'd waited until the middle of the night to carry out the plan. That was both good and bad. Good, in that it meant there weren't a lot of people awake to witness them. Bad, in that it meant if she screamed, it would be heard by any and everyone in the adjacent apartments. The balcony was charred and chipped in places, from the last time he'd been there, less than two weeks ago. The hole he'd made to the floor below them was still there, which either meant the people who owned this apartment complex were useless or didn't care, or both. That was fine by him. That just made it that much more fulfilling to look at, knowing that the work he'd done on this place would stick around. Katsuki breathed in the fresh air for the first time since he'd been in this precise location, and turned back to the amorphous black and purple circle swirling behind him. Nosy stepped out after a moment, and looked around to note the damage to the surroundings. He seemed satisfied with what he saw, if a little curious, and didn't look at Katsuki as he spoke.
"You did this?" At a nod from Katsuki, Nosy grunted some kind of acknowledgement. "That Quirk of yours should be useful for culling the fake hero you seek."
"Of course it will, idiot. It's the best. Now let's stop talking and do this thing," Katsuki said.
Nosy inclined his head toward the door, and Katsuki took that as his cue. He approached the door, which still bore the damage from when he'd slammed Deku into it with his Quirk. Splinters stuck out around the hinges, and it made Katsuki smile as he remembered how good it had felt to finally give Deku what he really deserved. He put his hand on the doorknob, and let off a series of small, high-intensity explosions that heated the metal doorknob up so much that it turned soft in Katsuki's hand. He ripped it out of the door like it was nothing. The door swung open as he pushed it softly, the creaking louder than it should've been due to the damage. Katsuki grinned as he gained entry to the apartment. He looked back at Nosy and gestured for him to follow.
Katsuki stepped through the hall, the floor under him creaking slightly. Interestingly, Nosy made no noise whatsoever when he walked, even though his boots had metal parts to them. Katsuki wondered how he did that, but he sure as hell wasn't going to ask Nosy to teach him. He was done with teachers. None of them understood. Katsuki squinted at the family photos as he pushed further into the apartment, and scowled as he recognised Deku in most of them. How the bitch could even pretend to care about the little villain was beyond Katsuki, but that wasn't what he was there for. He tiptoed past the living room, and looked back to make sure Nosy was still there. He was so silent that Katsuki suddenly wasn't sure. There he was, though, his dark coloured outfit blending into the shadows. He wasn't moving, though, standing still and looking back the way they'd come in.
"What the hell are you doing?" Katsuki asked in a hushed tone that still felt too loud.
"I can fight silently. You can't. Get the information while I keep watch," Nosy said.
It made sense, annoyingly. Katsuki huffed and turned back around to keep pushing further into the apartment. He walked past Deku's room, snapping the nameplate in half with his bare hands, and pressed on. He was here for something very specific. He couldn't let the righteous anger that set his veins on fire compel him to do anything to spook his real target before he got to her. He went to the other bedroom, the one without a nameplate, and silently opened the door. He stepped inside and took in the room.
Moonlight filtered in through the curtains, painting the room in a faint, pale glow. The television directly across from the bed, the desk with a computer on it, the dresser—it all registered at once in Katsuki's mind. It was a painfully boring room, but again, he wasn't here to sightsee. He crossed the distance between the door and the bed in a few strides and stared down at the peacefully sleeping woman before him. To call her a woman would've been generous. Katsuki thought she might've been beautiful once, but her flabby, fat body ruined her chances of being considered even pretty. Then there was the fact that she still slept on one side of the bed only, as if the husband she got killed with her weakness would ever come back. Even if he did, Katsuki thought that choosing to stay with her as she was now would be a laughable decision. Who'd choose this sack of folds and wrinkles? He glared at her, keeping his hands from sparking as hate churned in his guts. How could she sleep at night when she knew what her spawn had done, not just to Katsuki, but to all the innocent people— children —that her pathetic son had murdered, slaughtered with a smile? She was just as bad as he was, if not more so, because what kind of stupid, ugly hag put up with a son like that? Katsuki thought all that time ago that she might've given Deku to the foster system, or just put him out of his misery right then and there, like his deadbeat—Ha! Dead-beat!—father had tried to. At least there had been one decent Midoriya.
Katsuki didn't know how long he stood there, staring at the vile Inko Midoriya and keeping himself calm enough that his Quirk didn't ache to be released, but he eventually decided that he'd done enough waiting for this. No matter how much hate and disgust rolled around in his chest and his guts, he was never going to get anywhere if he waited for the perfect moment. He put one of his hands near her ear—turned away, of course. He didn't want to deafen her. She had to hear his questions to answer them—and set off a few of the firecracker explosions that always made Deku flinch like the pathetic loser he was. The hag's dull, unfocused eyes snapped open, and she looked around as Katsuki withdrew his hand. Her sleepy eyes landed on him, and they sharpened as she processed what she was seeing. She clawed her way away from him and over to the other side of the bed, where she fell to the floor and climbed to her feet as the blanket fell off her. She wore a fluffy pink robe that had to be an attempt to disguise the rotten, withered soul he'd glimpse when he met her eyes. She stood on shaking legs, gaping at him in the darkness, and wringing her hands like it would do anything to save her.
She took a deep breath, as if to yell, but Katsuki was quicker than her. "Scream and I'll kill you."
This stunned her, and she took a few moments to collect herself. It didn't really work, because she started sobbing and crying quietly to herself as she shook even more.
"Katsuki!" she said, her voice trembling. "Why are you here?"
Katsuki laughed. "No hello? No good to see you? You really are like him."
"Like—? What do you want?" she asked. So, she had a brain in there? Katsuki wouldn't have been surprised if it was just maggots that filled her head.
"You're gonna tell me where your pathetic spawn went for his stupid internship," Katsuki asked, unable to help letting off a few firecrackers.
"Katsuki, what is this about?" she asked. Her eyes suddenly widened, like she had a thought that wasn't about her vile offspring for once. "No, you can't. You've got to stop this, Katsuki! It's unreasonable!"
"What's unreasonable? This is justice!" Katsuki snarled.
He lunged at her from across the bed. She stumbled out of the way, making Katsuki hit the ground, but he rushed to his feet and scrambled after her. She made it out into the hallway outside her room before she froze where she stood. She must've spotted Nosy. It allowed Katsuki to catch up from behind and take her by the shoulders, pushing her into the wall harshly. The slam reverberated through every bone in Katsuki's body, and he figured that the downstairs neighbours would definitely hear that. He could deal with that. Katsuki pressed her head sideways against the wall so that she could still look at him, and held it there with one hand. He put his face right up next to hers and met her eyes, which were still leaking rivers of tears, grinning all the while. Katsuki laughed as he took in her fear, and he got a little bit lightheaded as he relished in his power over such a monstrous evil.
"Do you wanna tell me where your scum son is now?" Katsuki asked. His heart beat hard in his chest, all his fingers tingled. Ecstasy surged through him as he felt her struggling against him in a futile attempt to escape. He had completely overpowered her.
"Tell me or die," Katsuki said, his free hand sparking as he brought it up to the bitch's face. When that didn't work, he grinned, though she might've seen it as a scowl. "Y'know, if you make me wait, I might get antsy and kill him on the spot when we meet. If you tell me now, I might not get so pumped up. He might live when I break him. How does that sound?"
"I—" She was shaking and crying so badly now that she was nearly incomprehensible. "I don't believe you!"
Katsuki saw red. He took the cow to the ground, slowly so that he didn't make nearly as much noise. He knelt over her, almost straddling the bitch—which was probably the most action she'd seen in a decade—but kept one foot pressed against her shin instead of using it to balance, like his other leg. He leaned over her and pressed one of his hands to her mouth, which caused her eyes to widen as she seemingly realised what he was about to do. He grinned as a rush started from his chest and spread to the rest of his body, all the atoms in his body vibrating in excitement as he prepared for the kicker—ha! Kicker. Katsuki pressed his forehead to the bitch's, and met her eyes with a joyous smile on his face as his heart hammered in his chest.
"Remember. This is justice. You let that demon be born. You're responsible for those kids' deaths. And you're responsible for what's about to happen," Katsuki said with a giddy tremble in his voice. The cow shook her head as much as she could with Katsuki gripping it by the jaw. "While you're still relatively calm, I'll tell you this now. Say you fell to explain the leg."
Katsuki then brought his foot—which had been pressed against her shin—up and back down again with as much force as he could muster. He'd been training for years to become a pro hero, so her leg broke easily. She cried into his hand, but he just pressed it tighter against her lips. A rush of endorphins, an athlete's high, flooded Katsuki as he crushed her leg under his foot. She flailed under him, but she couldn't escape. He only regretted that he hadn't used his Quirk on her a little bit as she fainted. But that would conflict with the story he'd told her to tell, the one about falling. If she had burns, too, Deku would figure it out easily. He had an annoying knack for figuring that stuff out. Katsuki was smarter than that bastard, though. He was smarter than everyone.
Katsuki stood up and examined his work laid before him. He looked up at Nosy, and the two of them stared at each other with similarly vicious expressions on their faces. The Hero Killer looked down at Katsuki's prey and smiled like an animal would as it trapped its meal. He chuckled, and brought his blood red eyes back up to Katsuki.
"Well done. Quick, quiet, and smart. All the things a kill should be. Now you just need to finish her off for enabling the false hero who's got All Might under his spell," Nosy said with a reverence in his voice, as if it were a religious ritual or something.
"Nah, we'll leave her alive for now. It'll just make Deku that much more likely to not run away when I finally get to him. He'll pretend to be all noble and righteous 'cause he's avenging his useless mother or whatever," Katsuki said.
"You do understand," Nosy said with shock in his eyes. "You impress me with how intimately you understand the art of culling, Katsuki Bakugo."
"Yeah, I know," Katsuki said as he basked in the praise. "Now I just need to find out where that bastard is."
Katsuki returned to the hag's room. He searched for her phone and found it on the bedside table. He tried a few different passcodes. It was Deku's damn birth date, the stupid bitch. He scrolled through her texts with Deku and found a text from him from a couple of days ago:
I got to Thirteen's agency just fine! I'll talk to you later, Mom. Love you!
He was with the Space Hero. Katsuki should have predicted that—he'd gone on and on during one of his unhinged rants when they were in middle-school, about how Thirteen had a Quirk just like his and how they used it to be a hero. Of course he'd try them first. They were more susceptible to his brainwashing because of their Quirks' similarities. He had to act fast if he wanted to prevent Deku's web of manipulation from spreading. Thirteen wouldn't be the last hero he'd bend to his will. He told Nosy what he'd found, and they began to leave just when the pathetic hag was beginning to wake up. He crouched over her and felt the urge to spit in her face, but didn't want to leave DNA behind.
"Remember the story. You fell." Katsuki kicked her broken leg just to rub it in. She was so out of it that she didn't even scream, just flinched away from him and sobbed.
Katsuki joined Nosy in walking back out of the apartment to where a warp gate was still waiting for them outside. When he passed Deku's room with the broken nameplate, an idea formed in his head, and he paused where he stood. He remembered Deku always writing in those creepy stalker notebooks when they were younger, cataloguing details about peoples' Quirks and how they could be used in heroics. He'd stopped writing in them a month or so into their final year of middle-school, and wondered why he'd stopped. An up to date written guide on all the different heroes Deku had brainwashed would be helpful in breaking the spell. A grin spread on his face as he thought about it, and he went into Deku's room to retrieve the books. As expected, Deku's room was a shrine to heroes, but in a shallow, performative way. He only had the most popular hero merch, and none of All Might, despite his so-called admiration of the Symbol of Peace when they were kids. He'd known Deku had just been a faker this whole time.
He walked over to the desk and ripped the drawers open, finding all thirteen of the dusty old notebooks sitting there as if they wanted him to take them. He laughed so hard when he thought about how pissed Deku would be if he found out that he had to catch his breath. He took them all and left the apartment, closing the door behind him and leaving that old hag to her own devices. He and Nosy left through the warp gate, the inky darkness washing over him as a sense of calm bloomed within Katsuki. Tonight had been an incredibly important night in the war he was fighting against Deku's evil. This was the start of the real fight. It all started then and there. He wouldn't lose again. Deku was going to die tomorrow.
Author's Note: Hey! So, the summary of Katsuki's POV, he breaks into the Midoriyas' apartment in the dead of night. He stalks and hurts Inko in a pretty real way. He breaks her leg when she doesn't give him the information he wants, and threatens her with death if she tells anyone how it really happened. He goes through her phone and finds Izuku's place of internship, and then steals Izuku's notebooks to use the knowledge contained within them to beat Izuku once and for all.
Anyway, thanks for reading! Doubly so if you got through all the fucked up villainy Katsuki is doing now! See ya next time!
