The room was a sensory vacuum.
When Katsuki Bakugo's eyes snapped open, the first thing he felt was the unnatural, heavy chill of a subterranean bunker. The second was the bite of cold steel. He was strapped into a high-security restraint chair, his wrists and ankles locked into thick, reinforced cuffs that felt like they were leaching the very heat from his skin. His palms were dry, unnervingly dry, suggesting the presence of quirk-suppressant tech integrated into the restraints.
He tried to lunge forward, but his torso was pinned by a heavy nylon harness. His head throbbed with a rhythmic, sickening ache, a phantom memory of a finger flick that had felt like a falling skyscraper.
"What the hell is this?!" Katsuki's voice was a jagged rasp, tearing through the silence.
He looked up. He wasn't in a hospital. He was in an interrogation cell, separated from the rest of the world by a thick pane of soundproof, reinforced glass. On the other side of the glass, the door hissed open.
Shota Aizawa stepped in, his face looking more like a corpse than a teacher. Behind him was Detective Tsukauchi, his tan trench coat looking out of place in the high-tech bunker, followed by two stone-faced police officers.
"Untie me!" Katsuki screamed, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. He slammed his restrained fists against the chair's armrests, the metal clanging hollowly. "What is this, some kind of sick joke? I'll sue! I'll sue the school, I'll sue you, I'll sue the whole damn city! You let me out of this chair this second!"
Aizawa didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his eyes cold and hollow, staring at Katsuki as if he were a specimen under a microscope.
"Settle down, Cataclysm," Aizawa said. His voice was flat, devoid of the weary patience he usually held for his students.
Katsuki froze. His eyes narrowed, his chest heaving. "What... what did you just call me?"
"Cataclysm," Aizawa repeated. "It's the designation the registry has assigned to you. Heroes choose their names, Bakugo. Villains have their names chosen for them. It makes the paperwork for the public record more efficient."
"Villain?" Katsuki's voice broke into a hysterical, jagged laugh. "Are you senile, old man? I'm a student! We were in a test! A test you designed!"
"A test designed to measure readiness, not a sanctioned execution," Aizawa hissed, stepping closer to the glass. "You didn't just 'go too far.' You bypassed every safety protocol and deployed a lethal-grade explosive device against a teammate who was already incapacitated."
"He wouldn't listen!" Katsuki roared, his body straining against the harness. "The nerd was getting in my way, he was talking down to me! I was trying to finish the objective and he wouldn't listen to reason!"
"Reason?" Aizawa's lip curled in a rare show of open disgust. "Given your history, Bakugo, I find it incredibly difficult to believe you have any concept of the word. You've spent your entire life being told you were a prodigy, and you used that status to trample over anyone you deemed 'lesser.' You're pointing fingers at the one person who has lived in complete opposites."
"He'll get back up!" Katsuki spat, his breathing becoming shallow and frantic. "He always does! Deku is a roach, you can't kill him that easily! He'll be back in class tomorrow with some stupid bandage on his face, looking at me with those damn eyes, and you'll all see that I was right!"
Aizawa went silent. He looked at Detective Tsukauchi, who stepped forward, his hat pulled low.
"Katsuki Bakugo," Tsukauchi said, his voice ringing with a cold, legal finality. "I am here to formally place you under arrest for villainous behaviour and attempted murder during a sanctioned UA training event. Furthermore, we are adding charges of aggravated assault and systematic harassment based on evidence gathered from your pre-UA history."
Katsuki's heart skipped a beat. The anger in his chest suddenly felt like ice water. "What... what history?"
"In the wake of the incident, we reached out to Aldera Junior High," Tsukauchi explained, pulling a file from beneath his arm. "Several students and former faculty members have come forward. One student in particular provided a detailed witness account of what they described as a 'one-sided hatred.' They labelled your treatment of Izuku Midoriya as a catalyst for his current psychological state. They spoke about a boy who was ruthlessly bullied for being quirkless by a boy who thought his power gave him the right to be king of the mountain."
Katsuki began to hyperventilate. The world was tilting. The walls of the bunker felt like they were closing in, crushing the air out of his lungs.
"Shut up," Katsuki whispered, his eyes shaking. "Shut up! They're lying! They're all just jealous! I was... I was going to be a hero! I was going to be the Number One! You can't take that away from me! I'm the best one in this damn school!"
Aizawa scoffed, a short, sharp sound that felt like a slap. "A hero? Look at yourself, Bakugo. Look at where you are. You're in a hole in the ground, wearing quirk-suppressants, being read your rights for trying to murder a hero student. You never had the right to even consider calling yourself a hero. You were just a bully who found a way to weaponize his insecurity."
Katsuki's mind flashed back. He remembered the ruins of Ground Omega. He remembered the heat of the blast. But then... he remembered the moment after. He remembered the boy in black. He remembered the black eyes.
"What about him?" Katsuki asked, his voice suddenly small and trembling. "What about Deku? He... he hit me."
"Call him by his real name," Aizawa commanded.
Katsuki flustered, his face turning a blotchy red. "What...?"
"His name," Aizawa repeated, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm register. "Izuku Midoriya. You will not use that slur in this room. You will acknowledge the humanity of the person you tried to murder."
Katsuki's jaw worked, his teeth grinding together so hard he thought they might shatter. "Izuku..." he muttered, the name feeling like a mouthful of ash. "Izuku Midoriya. He... he knocked me out. He was too fast. How the hell did he do that?"
"There are special circumstances regarding his condition that you are not privy to," Aizawa said coldly.
Katsuki's rage flared one last time, the desperate, cornered anger of a king who had lost his crown. "You're going to regret this!" he screamed as Aizawa and Tsukauchi turned to the door. "All of you! You think you can lock me up? I'll make you regret it! I'll blow this whole damn school to hell! You can't keep me here!"
Aizawa paused at the door. He didn't turn around.
"The tragedy isn't that you're here, Bakugo," Aizawa said softly. "The tragedy is that you gave reason for us to drag you here."
___
The heavy steel door of the interrogation bunker hissed shut, sealing Bakugo's muffled, frantic rages behind feet of reinforced concrete. For a moment, the three men stood in the dimly lit corridor, the only sound the low, mechanical hum of the ventilation system.
Aizawa was the first to speak, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "The arrogance of that boy... it's a pathology. He's staring at the ruins of his own life and he's still looking for someone else to blame for the wreckage." He rubbed his eyes, his shoulders slumped under the weight of a dozen different failures. "Nezu, have we made contact with the parents?"
Nezu, standing small and unnervingly still on the cold floor, nodded. "Mitsuki and Masaru are currently in Milan for a design contract. I spoke with them an hour ago. They are... devastated. They are boarding a private charter as we speak, but it will be a long flight. They'll be arriving to a nightmare they never could have authored."
Aizawa let out a short, bitter breath. "Good. They need to be here to see what their 'prodigy' has become."
Nezu gestured toward a secondary door further down the hall, a room shielded with anti-signal mesh and soundproofing. "Come. We cannot speak of the next matter in an open corridor. Naomasa has information that requires a higher level of security."
Aizawa frowned. "I should be checking on the rest of the class. They're sitting in the common room like they're waiting for a funeral."
"This is about Midoriya, Shota," Tsukauchi said, his voice unusually somber.
Aizawa's eyes sharpened, and he followed them into the room. It was a sterile, cramped space filled with flickering monitors and filing cabinets. Once the door was locked, Tsukauchi pulled a thick, blue-tabbed folder from his coat. He didn't hand it over; he laid it on the table and opened it to a photograph of a young boy with dark hair and a Nigerian-Japanese heritage.
"Who is this?" Aizawa asked, leaning over the table.
"His name is Yoshi Abara," Tsukauchi said. "He was a ward of the state. He has officially been listed as deceased as of the end of last month. However, based on the evidence gathered during the USJ attack and the subsequent months of observation and conversation with Izuku Midoriya... we believe his consciousness has been inhabiting Izuku Midoriya for the last six months."
Aizawa stared at Tsukauchi, then at Nezu, his expression flat. "You're telling me my student is possessed? Naomasa, I'm tired. Don't tell me you expect me to believe in ghost stories."
"Do you believe the Izuku Midoriya you've trained for months is capable of dismantling All Might in a physical confrontation?" Tsukauchi countered. "Do you believe he has a hidden secondary quirk that allows him to fold space? Because what we saw was not One For All. It was the quirk called Ripple Effect, evolved to a catastrophic degree."
Aizawa went silent. He looked at Nezu, his eyes narrowing. "You knew. All Might knew. And neither of you thought to tell his homeroom teacher that his pupil was sharing a skull with a dead boy?"
He was unaware of the fact that Gran Torino was also privy to this information.
"It was a matter of extreme sensitivity, Shota," Nezu said, his voice soft but firm. "At first, it was an anomaly, a quirk remnant. We believed Midoriya was managing it. We believed he was still the one in control. Toshinori was adamant that we handle it internally to prevent the HPSC from seizing the boy for 'study.'"
Aizawa let out a sharp, disappointed sigh, turning away to pace the small room. "Sensitive. Right. And now All Might is in a coma and Midoriya has vanished into thin air. Brilliant work, Principal."
"I apologize, Aizawa," Tsukauchi said, his tone genuinely regretful. "The investigation was kept under a level ten seal. We were trying to piece together who Yoshi was and why he was there. Yoshi was a victim, he accused a high-ranking Pro Hero of murdering his sister. Specifically, Kenji Hoshino. Stinger."
Aizawa stopped pacing. "Stinger? He's a gold-standard hero. High approval ratings, clean record. What do we have on him?"
"Nothing," Tsukauchi admitted. "Every lead Yoshi gave while he was alive was dismissed as a psychotic break. After he died, we looked into it, but All Might intervened. He has a brief history with Hoshino, he believed the man was an exemplary hero and that Yoshi's accusations were the result of a fractured mind, perhaps even a quirk-induced delusion. All Might was convinced that Yoshi was being manipulated by an outside force to smear a hero's reputation."
"And you just took his word for it?" Aizawa's voice was like a whip-crack. "A detective of your caliber should have checked, Naomasa. You cover the bases. That's the job."
Tsukauchi looked down at the table. "I tried to follow up on the psych ward where Yoshi died. I went there to pull the medical logs and speak with the attending physician. But the director of the facility had been replaced. The entire staff was different. Every paper trail regarding Yoshi Abara's final weeks had been sanitized or 'lost' in a digital migration. Although All Might did receive a scan of his brain activity to corroborate his thoughts."
Aizawa nodded slowly, his eyes dark. "See? That's someone who knows how to cover bases. If the facility was scrubbed, it means the hero in question isn't just 'exemplary' he's connected. Or he's desperate." He looked at the photo of Yoshi. "Poor kid. If he's telling the truth, he's been through hell, and then he ends up in Midoriya's head."
"The problem," Nezu added, "is that Yoshi was never deemed a 'threat.' His quirk, as recorded in the registry, was a low-tier spatial ripple. It was barely enough to move a cup across a table. But after what we saw... he has bypassed any known limit. If he has fully submerged Midoriya's personality and taken the body, he is an S-rank variable with a personal vendetta."
"We need to move," Aizawa said, his voice regaining its tactical edge. "We reach out to Stinger. Now. I want him under 'protective' watch, ostensibly because of 'The Harvest,' but really to see if Yoshi shows up. And we need to get to Hoshino before Yoshi does."
Nezu stood up, his gaze distant. "I agree. But I fear the fallout. The Commission... they've been suspiciously quiet. They aren't demanding answers yet. That is a sign, Shota. They are waiting for me to admit I've lost control entirely so they can move in and dismantle UA."
"Principal," Aizawa said, his voice softening slightly as he saw the strain on the creature's face.
"Everything went wrong," Nezu whispered. "I wanted to forge them into something that could survive this era. Instead, I've lost my two most promising students and the Symbol of Peace. My position is failing. But first... we must get Midoriya back. Or whatever is left of him."
Aizawa turned toward the door. "Start with the hospital. Inko Midoriya is in the intensive care unit at Musutafu General. If Midoriya gains control again, he may end up there eventually. He won't be able to help himself. Station a covert team outside her room. Non-confrontational, just observation. If he shows up, we don't attack. We talk."
Tsukauchi nodded, pulling out his phone to coordinate. "I'll handle the hospital detail. Shota, what about you?"
"I'm going to find Stinger," Aizawa said, his eyes glowing a dull, dangerous red. "And I'm going to see if he's as 'exemplary' as All Might thinks he is. No more breaks. Not until the kid is home."