Chapter Text
Declaration of Intent from
The Society for the Advancement of Quirkless Humans (SAQH)
SAQH Exists for the purpose of representing the interest of the 20% of humans who exist in a world that is growing increasingly unsafe. Humans with quirks are given preferential jobs in leadership, careers, and academic settings. They are propped up as heroes or cast off as villains, and those without quirks or with quirks not deemed useful by society, are caught in the middle to suffer at the hands of both.
SAQH exists to advocate for humans without quirks in the private and the public sectors.
We will lobby for:
- Equal access to jobs and pay for quirkless individuals
- Greater accountability for heroes and quirked individuals
- More stringent regulations and safety precautions for highly destructive quirks
- Stricter fines and punishment for collateral damage resulting from hero work
We understand that times are different. We know that those without quirks are the minority. But we will not be bullied, or silenced, or called off.
We are here.
And we demand to be heard.
####
There were few places that Katsuki hated more than the mall. Not once in his life did he get the adolescent fixation. He never understood the desire to make a whole-ass social outing of going to a crowded building filled with stores, tweens sipping their coffee-free Frappuccinos, and over-worked, underpaid retail workers.
It sounded like hell on earth as far as Katsuki was concerned.
But it seemed his second-year growth spurt had left him in need of a few more clothes- especially since his third year meant interviews for jobs were incoming. Plus, most of his shirts were just one stretch away from becoming crop-tops, as Shitty Hair delighted in pointing out.
So, a week before his third and final year at UA — he found himself at the mall, and he had, so far, hated every minute of it, just like he had suspected. In just the last store alone, he had seen a kid wipe his snotty nose and touch every possible surface in the store. And he had to stop his forward trek at least three times just to move around groups trying to crowd five people into one selfie.
Assholes.
So, obviously, he was not being dramatic when he called this the worst day of his life, and yes, that included the day he was brutally impaled his first year.
His one hope — the only thing that he was clinging too — was the hope that he would not see a single person he knew in this place. But it seemed fate, seeing fit to gift him with a badass quirk, doting parents who loved him unconditionally, and an immaculate waist-to-shoulder ratio, had chosen to bid him farewell at this moment.
Because, suddenly, he was on his ass with bags strewn about and clothes flying into the air and onto the floor. There was also a familiar head of chestnut hair bobbing up and down as his attacker shuffled around on her knees, grabbing desperately to retrieve his merchandise.
“Gah…Bakugo…I’m so sorry!” She looked up for the first time, but he didn’t need to see her face to know who it was. “I didn’t see you there!”
“Tch…no fucking kidding!”
She laughed like she always did when he cursed in front of her. He was about to tell her to piss off when she suddenly froze and let out a squeak, the tip of her ears turning as pink as her cheeks, drawing attention to the fact that her hair was noticeably shorter than it was last year. For some reason (he had no idea why), he wondered if she had cut it into the pixie for aesthetic purposes or for function.
And then he noticed the cause of her abrupt pause and subsequent blush.
“OI!”
He snatched the freshly purchased boxers out of her hands.
“S-sorry,” she said, continuing to gather up the remaining clothes, shoving them into the bags haphazardly and without regard. He sneered at her before standing up and snatching the bags from her.
“I…sorry…” she said again.
He rolled his eyes and scoffed, crueler than he had intended in an attempt to cover up the frustrated, stupid emotions that this particular classmate consistently stirred inside of him.
“Who knew that touchin’ a dude's underwear for the first time in your life would get you so flustered?”
Her brow furrowed into a scowl, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Her…more than respectable chest…not that Katsuki noticed shit like that! He had no time to notice anyone’s ample chest except his own, dammit!
“We’re about to start our third year,” she said. “Would it kill you to use my name?”
“Why would I?” he snapped. “You ain’t special, Cheeks! Like you fucking said, we have one more year, and then I’m leaving all you extras in the dust. Why the hell would I bother learning your names now?”
She rolled her eyes — not a speck of sweetness in her expression. But that wasn’t surprising to him. He had never entirely bought into the whole sugar and sweetness thing when it came to Uraraka. She had never needed to convince him, but she had spent the better part of the last year proving that she was indeed competition — squashing any assumption about her being only a sweet, cute face. Her focus on close-combat and martial arts, when combined with her growing mastery of her quirk, left no illusions about whether or not she was a hero to be taken seriously.
And in all honesty, Katsuki had appreciated her as a unique peer — someone to learn from, someone that forced him to get stronger and faster and better.
But beyond that, there had never been any reason for him to notice or talk to her.
“Whatever,” she said, handing over the last bag. “I’ll see you in class, Bakugo.” She turned to walk away from him, and for some reason, that pissed Katsuki off. He hated not getting the last word. “Also,” she said, stopping and looking over her shoulder at him. “Definitely not my first time touching a guy's underwear.”
He glowered in place of his own fluttering and sputtering. But before he could say anything, before he could get a chance to actually get his last word in, he felt himself flying backward. An explosion loud enough to pierce his ears tearing through the mall.
And then he was falling.
###
When Katsuki came too, it was to the screeching and twisting of metal, the groans and sniffles and screams of civilians, and the faint voice of someone calling his name.
“Bakugo?”
Who was that?
“Bakugo, can you hear me?”
He groaned. “This is why I don’t go to the fucking mall…can’t go anywhere without some dumb fucking catastrophe!”
“Oh, thank god you’re okay!”
“Of course I’m okay, I…” he let out a yelp of protest when he felt the press of her fingers into his upper thigh. “OI!” He sat up probably too fast- and reached to push her away. “The fuck are you doing?”
“We took a fall,” said Uraraka- at least he thought it was Uraraka- his vision was still blurry, and he was pretty sure he was in a dark hole. “I just wanted to make sure nothing was….”
“I’m fucking fine!”
“Good,” said Uraraka, releasing him and standing up. He looked up at her. She was looking a little ruffled herself. Her hair askew, and the skin on her legs a little torn up from the fall, but she was in one piece. He moved to sit up as Uraraka backed away to create more space for him.
When he was on his feet, he took a moment to assess the space they were in.
A hole.
For sure, they were in a hole. A big hole.
He looked up and saw the sun roof of the mall. The ground had gone out from under them, from the explosion, maybe? A sinkhole? He wasn’t sure.
“Bakugo!”
He looked toward Ochako, who was lifting a huge sunglass kiosk off of a civilian before she went back down to her knees. “Broken leg and maybe a broken pelvis.”
He knelt beside her- moving out of his brat tendencies into hero mode. He had not grown out of his desire to be the best, but he did understand by now that he wasn’t the best at everything. Right now — unfortunately — there was no immediate villain whose ass he could kick, which meant that this was a rescue mission.
Which mean he was in Uraraka’s house.
“What can I do?”
Uraraka busied herself stabilizing the man’s injuries and assuring that she wouldn’t do any more damage by moving him. “Check the rest of the civilians,” she said. “If they are stable enough, then get them out. If they are too unstable for you to take them up, then wait for me.”
He did balk a little at that implication, but he didn’t argue with her. He knew she could transport them with more ease than he could by nature of his quirk- and they would need that for any severe injuries.
She didn’t wait for him to affirm that he had heard her, showing a level of trust in him that surprised Katsuki. She activated her quirk on the civilian and gently guided him into the air with practiced ease. Katsuki moved to the first civilian he could find — a kid with a broken wrist at worst.
He could take care of that one on his own.
Then a girl with a broken leg. It looked like it hurt like hell, a possible femur break. He would wait for Uraraka to get that one. He occasionally needed her to come activate her quirk on some of the wreckage, but other than that, they worked independently, fast, efficient, and alone.
Truth be told, they had always worked well together, relatively speaking, anyway. But she was easy to work with- and she had a pretty good strategic mind which he appreciated. Plus, she didn’t have an ego, which Katsuki had to begrudgingly admit made for a good hero because he didn’t have to waste time stroking said ego. Hypocritical, yes, given his own massive ego, but still, something he appreciated in her when push came to shove.
He was in the middle of checking over a teenage worker who was wearing a ridiculous striped uniform when he heard her calling his name.
“Bakugo!”
He looked up, but he didn’t see anything.
“Bakugo! We have villains on site!”
Katsuki couldn’t hold back the feral grin as he jumped to his feet.
“Thank God!” He blasted himself into the air out of the sinkhole and above Uraraka. She was flying through the air, using her own floating debris as a launch pad to kick off from, avoiding a mess of barbed wire whips flicking and stabbing through the air. Another villain was swinging from the roof on an invisible line of web, with eight spiky legs and clicking fangs.
“Eww! Ewww! Eww!” Ochako kicked off of a piece of debris, sending it soaring toward the spider. She returned its gravity as it collided with the spider villain, cutting through the web. But before the spider could fall, another web shot out from…somewhere, and he was in the air again.
“How many?” asked Bakugo blasting his way toward her, creating an explosion big enough to divert the barbed wire traps scissoring through the air.
“These two and there’s another villain at your 2 o'clock! I think he’s a kid and seems pretty harm- BAKUGO!” He bowed backward as the barbed wire jabbed past him, nearly grazing his forehead.
“Gonna need a damn tetanus shot after this,” he grumbled, annoyed. “Uraraka. There were at least 5 civilians still in that hole.”
“Bakugo,” she scolded, finding an opening and catapulting herself toward the spider guy- activating her quirk on him. But rather than sending him flying into the air, she sent him crashing into the ground, increasing his gravity.
A new and deadly move of hers.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said. “There could be more villains, and….”
“Like you said, Cheeks, we aren’t sure how stable that level is! So go get them out of there right-fucking-now; I can handle these fuckers!”
He could see the temporary conflict in her eyes as she looked down at the spider guy — not splattered on the ground but clearly disoriented from his hard fall.
“Fine,” she snapped, manipulating her own gravity, so she was falling at a steady, controlled pace, another manifestation of her growing control. Now she didn’t look like an awkward balloon when she used her quirk on herself. “I’ll be back to back you up!”
“Didn’t fucking ask,” he called back down as he hurdled toward the barbed wire girl- dodging and weaving through her crisscrossing vines of wire protruding from the ends of all ten of her fingers.
“Asshole,” he heard Uraraka mutter before she descended into the hole. He let out a bark of a laugh before letting off an explosion in the barbed villain’s face, sending her flailing backward and her barbed wires retracting.
Fucking amateurs.
Why waste his time if they weren’t going to give him an actually good fight!?
It was just plain rude! He was the future number-one hero after all, and he-
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!”
He took one step forward and was stuck. He writhed and tugged and kicked and found his limbs were being restrained by…something sticky and invisible. The light reflecting through the shattered sunroof caught the invisible trap, illuminating the web of sticky strings that Katsuki had walked right into.
“Damn fucking spider,” he growled; he shot off a controlled explosion, searing off the web above his head, allowing him to drop his arms, despite the sticky mess still clinging to him. “Stupid fucking quirk with….”
“Aww…” he heard a clicking sound behind him and the skittering of legs on the tiled floor. “Looks like I caught a little fly in my web!” Katsuki turned his torso, his legs still caught in the web, as the eight-legged freak pounced like something out of a fucking nightmare!
“Get the fuck out of here,” roared Katsuki, aiming another explosion at the descending predator, but with surprisingly fast reflexes for a creature that was all ass and eight legs, he swung out of the way, avoiding the blast. Katsuki knew he could get him with a bigger blast, but he also knew he was in a crowded mall. There were injured civilians all around him, and the explosion, wherever the fuck that had come from, had compromised the structural integrity of more than a few spots, not to mention where Uraraka was doing search and rescue.
So he couldn't be willy-nilly with his explosions right now.
And that moment of restraint was all his opponent needed as the spider guy landed on Katsuki, sinking fangs into his shoulder. The piercing of the fangs themselves wasn’t even the worst; it was the immediate rush of venom in his body, immobilizing every part of him. It was the sensation of all of his limbs seizing up, his fingers curling in on themselves, fisting and freezing.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck…
The spider clicked his fangs together excitedly. “Don’t struggle, little fly.” Katsuki tried to open his mouth to scream at the fucker not to call him that! But his jaw wouldn’t even open. “It won’t help!”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
He was not about to get eaten by some weirdo with a freaky spider quirk! Fuck this shit! This is exactly why he doesn’t go to malls — no time to strategize when you’re surrounded by fucking civilians. But the spider didn’t start spinning him on a roasting spit but rather backed away, a pleased smirk on his face as he surveyed his prey.
“Soul Eater will be very pleased with this addition.”
Katsuki couldn’t spout off the smart-ass insults he wanted to, so he focused all of his concentrated rage into his glare.
Which, he had been told, was highly communicative.
“What have you caught for me, Arachnia?”
The spider freaks eyes widened with glee as he moved out of the way, putting Katsuki on full display for some White Power Ranger-looking mother fucker who was approaching them.
“He has a powerful quirk, Soul Eater,” declared the spider gleefully.
“Good…” the voice was muffled behind a mask, but Katsuki was pretty sure it was a male. Soul Eater stopped in front of him and held out both of his hands, palms on either side of Katsuki’s head.
Katsuki raged inside of his skin- raged inside of his body- raged against the venom that was holding him helpless. Katsuki did not do helpless.
Katsuki was Katsuki-Fucking-Bakugo!
He wasn’t going to die like some pussy at the hands of this sci-fi character wannabe with his weird glowing chest…
Weird glowing chest?
That was new. It was a dull purple light, but as Katsuki felt the pressure of the man’s hands against the side of his head, it grew brighter, almost blinding in front of Katsuki. Katsuki growled behind his locked jaw and desperately fought against the prison of his paralysis as the panic started to override his senses.
“Don’t worry, son,” said the man, Soul Eater. “It will be over soon. And the world will be better for it.”
He couldn’t move.
He couldn’t breathe.
He was starting to feel sick.
Woozy.
Dizzy.
He wanted to throw up. But not with his mouth locked shut- that sounded hellish.
It didn’t hurt- whatever it was that was happening to him. It wasn’t pain that he was feeling, but an intense, mounting pressure inside of him. It was so much worse than pain. It was a vibration he felt, deep in his chest, like his insides were rubbing against each other, about to set him on fire. It was the sensation of being hallowed out, of something being cracked open and pried apart.
What was this guy doing to him? What the fuck was happening to his body?
And for a brief explosive moment, he felt pain. It was a relief for .5 seconds, but then it was excruciating- the sensation of every breath, every drop of blood and marrow and energy, every hair, every bone being ripped out of him.
No.
That wasn’t it.
More like he was being ripped away from them. Like he was being sucked out of the eye of a needle, like some part of him was desperately clawing and screaming and thrashing to stay put against a black hole that wouldn’t let go of him.
A black hole that was winning because whatever part of him that was holding on was getting weaker and weaker. He didn’t know where he was going- what would happen if he let go, but he didn’t want to know. Somehow, he felt like whatever this was- it wasn’t death.
He had never really been afraid of death. But he was afraid of whatever the fuck this was.
And then, just as the last bit of him was about to disappear into some abyss of darkness that he could all but see in his mind's eye, he came screeching to an abrupt stop. He heard a bark of protest from this Soul Eater asshole. He felt a sting of pain as something hard connected with his face.
He wondered why he could suddenly feel again?
Why could he feel physical pain when he was paralyzed?
He heard screaming.
His?
Hers?
Who was her?
He wasn’t sure, but before complete darkness took him, he was pretty sure that it was Uraraka.
But why would he hear her scream?
###
When Ochako woke up, she felt…different.
Like something had been inexorably changed inside of her. It didn’t particularly hurt or anything- but felt like she had walked into a room she had been into 100 times, and someone had clearly changed something. But she couldn't place what.
That was the only way to describe it. She felt jangly and disconnected from her body in a way that was entirely unfamiliar. Over the years, she had sustained several injuries- from broken bones to concussions that had her so loopy that she had mistakenly stumbled through what she thought was her door, got changed into what she thought was her pajamas, crawled into what she thought was her bed, and curled up onto what she thought was her pillow and not, in fact, Iida’s expansive pecs.
Poor boy had a rude awakening, torn between his deep respect for the rules and his reluctance to wake Ochako up from her much-needed slumber. He had settled for leaving her in his bed and spending the rest of the night on the couch and then insisted on a punishment from Aizawa, who could not have cared less about the situation, no matter how dramatically Iida prostrated himself.
All that to say- she had felt off before.
But this was different.
Whatever she was feeling now was far more disturbing. She sat up and immediately felt dizzy as she looked around. Everything was familiar enough- she had spent more than enough time in the infirmary of UA. They all had. But still…
She blinked furiously- trying to clear the haze that was blurring and doubling her vision all at once.
What the fuck is going on?
She let out a sharp inhale at her language and covered her mouth. That didn’t sound at all like her. She hadn’t spoken it out loud, at least, she didn’t think so, but all the same, the words felt off even in her internal monologue.
She attempted to take in a steadying breath as she turned off of the bed and placed her feet on the ground, struggling to remember what had happened.
She had been with Uraraka…no with Bakugo. She was Ochako. She had been with Bakugo when the damn mall imploded. They had been getting civilians out of the sinkhole, and then…
She closed her eyes tight, trying to summon up a clear, cogent memory. But none of it made linear sense.
She had stopped the rescue to fight some villains. There were villains- she remembered that clearly. And a web. When had there been a web? That she couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember getting from leaving Bakugo to fight the villains to being stuck in a web. She had gone to help the civilians; she had told herself to hurry so that she could offer back up as soon as possible.
She hadn’t wanted to leave Bakugo with the villains on his own. So why did she remember fighting the villains?
Everything was jumbled, his memories- no, no- her memories mixing with…with what?
She stood shakily onto her own two legs and looked down at her feet- feeling a deep sense of disconnect from the body she was looking at her. She felt her knees. Those were hers. Her toenails were painted the same pink color she had chosen when her aunt had taken her to get a pedicure before she had come back to school. She looked at her hands and squishy pads at the ends of her fingers.
Those were undoubtedly hers.
She must have hit her head hard at some point in that fight. She pulled back the curtain that had been drawn around her bed, ready to call out to Recovery Girl, or anyone else who may be able to tell her what had happened. Anyone who could help her put the pieces back together.
But the call caught in her throat- catching like a stray fishbone in her throat as a tidal wave of emotions that were not her own crashed into her in a solid wall of panic, pain, confusion, and rage.
“What the…”- “ Fuck !”
And for the second time in a day, even if she didn’t remember it, Ochako’s legs gave way beneath her, sending her crashing to the ground, next to the gurney holding the unconscious body of Katsuki Bakugo.
Except…he couldn't be unconscious.
He can’t be.
Because she was certain that was his voice screaming in her ear right now.
###
Ochako woke the second time much more quickly, this time the urging of soft hands patting her cheeks and the hum of voices above her head.
“Are you sure that’s the best way to wake her up?”
“Oh hush, Shota,” scolded Recovery Girl. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. Besides, I told you, physically, she’s fine. They both are. So I’m not sure what exactly is going on here.”
Ochako snapped awake, the frantic fear every bit as strong as it was when she had collapsed at the sight of Bakugo’s body.
“What’s going…” – “What the fuck is going on?!”
Ochako slammed her hands back over her mouth. She had never spoken to an adult like that in her life- let alone one as old and respectable as Recovery Girl or one as scary as Aizawa.
“Uraraka…”
“Yes…”- “URARAKA?!”
Ochako looked between the two adults- eyes wide and searching. “What is that sound?!”
“What?” asked Recovery Girl, helping Ochako up into a sitting position. “What is it you hear, Uraraka?”
Ochako turned over her shoulder to look, and then up at the ceiling, and then past the adults before shoving herself up onto her shaky feet. She stumbled toward the bed where Bakugo was sleeping; she doubled over and grasped the sheets.
“Wh- what’s going on?” she asked- out loud but not to anyone in particular. “I-I don’t understand…” that was her voice- she was sure of it- but it was ragged and desperate and confused, and she didn’t understand why.
Why was she panicking?
This wasn’t Bakugo’s first visit to the medical wing either.
He was fine. She had just heard Recovery Girl say that, so why was she…
“What the fuck is my body doing there!?”
Ochako whipped around to look at Aizawa. “Did you hear that?”
He was looking at her with wary concern as he stepped toward her. “Hear what, Uraraka?”
She let out a frustrated sigh and ran her hands through her hair before tugging mercilessly at the roots.
“Knock that off! That shit hurts!”
“That!” exclaimed Ochako, her eyes darting around the room. “That! I heard Bakugo just now! Didn’t you?”
Recovery Girl looked past Ochako at the unconscious blonde and then back to Ochako. “He’s unconscious, dear.” She stepped forward and reached toward Ochako, tugging her down so that she could look Ochako in the eye. “I checked you for head injuries when I brought you in, but did you hit your head at the mall?”
“No!” she all but shouted. But she honestly couldn’t remember. A huge part of her wished she had hit her head, but she was confident that wasn't what had happened. “I-I don’t think so,” she amended. “I don’t remember.”
Recovery Girl tried to pull her back toward the bed, but Ochako stood and backed into the bed where Bakugo slept. She turned again to look at him and immediately slammed her eyes shut as a wave of nausea hit her.
Everything inside of her was screaming- so loud and so hostile that she couldn’t even nail down the source. But it was there…along with that…that voice in her head.
That literal voice in her head- not the voice in her head telling her she needed to try harder, or that she was too plain, or that she wasn’t strong enough or…
“We do not have time for this!”
“What’s wrong with Bakugo?”- “ Me ?”
She clenched her teeth to keep from alerting Aizawa or Recovery Girl to the voice that chimed in. It was safe to assume that neither of them could hear it, and they were already both hovering over her like she was a second away from a mental break.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” said Aizawa. “By the time the pros got to you, you were both passed out. Bakugo was in a web, and you were on the ground. Bakugo did have some venom from one of the villains.”
“The spider villain.” – “Fuckin’ Arachnia .”
“Arachnia,” she said, echoing the voice in her head. The voice that was becoming increasingly more…clear as the initial hysteria lowered just a decimal or two. “He looked like a spider.”
“Yes, well, the venom should have worn off by now,” said Recovery Girl. “We aren’t sure why he won’t wake up.”
Dammit.
Dammit.
Dammit.
“Tell them I’m in here! Tell them I’m in here so they can put me back in my fucking body!”
“This isn’t happening- this isn’t happening.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head again. “Please go away, please go away.”
“I’m fucking trying!”
“I know what’s wrong with him,” she whispered, her voice weak and small. She turned to look at Aizawa and Recovery Girl, both waiting patiently for her to continue. Ochako swallowed, her throat suddenly dry and rough.
“I…he’s….”
What do I say?
Where do I even start?
“Just tell ‘em some asshole named Soul Eater with some fucked up, glowing-ass quirk did something, and now I’m trapped…" There was a pause and Ochako could feel confusion bubbling up inside of her as Katsuki groped for words. "Somewhere…and only you can fucking hear me, because my life is a fucking nightmare, and no one should ever go to malls ever!”
Ochako groaned and let her head fall back between her shoulders.
“…Bakugo is…” she reached up and tapped her temple. “He’s here….”
Aizawa and Recovery Girl traded another worried glance before looking at Ochako, neither certain how to proceed.
Ochako let out a little whimper of exhaustion.
“Yeah ,” the voice- his- voice said. “Yeah…they think you’re fucking crazy.”