Chapter Text
Katsuki's eyes snap open when his alarm starts blaring in his ears, waking him out of a sound sleep. Groaning into his pillow he reaches his arm out to turn it off, putting an end to the god awful noise. The clock to his right reads 4:30 AM. Sitting up he swings his feet over the edge of his nook in the wall, he jumps out and his bare feet meet the cold floor. Still drowsy, he quickly props a hand against the wall to stop himself from swaying. He blinks the sleep away and turns to his left heading towards his kitchen to start making a cup of coffee. Looking through his pantry he finds a food packet labeled “breakfast” and rips it open, sprinkling the powder on a plate. He adds a few drops of water and puts it in the microwave. Ten seconds later it dings and he reaches for his plate containing two eggs sunny side up on toast. He adds seasoning from his special stash to give the artificial food some flavor and digs in.
It’s a sorry excuse for a meal. He would rather cook on a stove with fresh food, but much to Katsuki's dismay, actually cooking your own food was pretty much a thing of the past. Fresh produce was harder to come by these days, so he had to settle for the Instant Food™ packets that had become the norm. God knows what they put in those powders that magically turn into food after being in the microwave for a couple fucking seconds. Yeah, no way in hell he wanted to find out.
Downing the rest of his coffee in record time, he slams the cup on the counter and crosses the room to face his mirror. He goes about his morning routine of shaving his face and brushing his teeth, grumbling about germs and how they should all just die already. Once he’s cleaned up he moves to the left of his mirror and presses a square button with a glowing hanger symbol. A part of the wall slides open and a rack of clothes flies out from the opening. He looks through the clothes and grabs a pair of dark green cargo pants. As he’s putting them on, a shrill ringing fills his small apartment. Sighing, Katsuki grabs the phone off the wall and answers with a sharp, “What!”
“Hey now, that’s no way to greet your boss.” Mirio’s responds, his voice way too cheery at ass o’clock in the morning.
“Fuck you Cartoon Eyes. It’s too early for me to have to hear your annoying ass voice. What are you calling me for?” He has the phone wedge between his ear and his shoulder as he continues looking through the rack of clothes.
“Just making sure you’re up and at ‘em. I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t try to skip today’s shift after the… incident yesterday,” Mirio replies, not phased by Katsuki’s colorful language.
He halts his search so he can hold the phone closer to his mouth. “Listen Blondie! If by ‘incident’ you mean me throwing that good for nothing extra out of my cab for spilling his coffee all over my backseat-“ Katsuki says through gritted teeth.
“That’s exactly what I’m referring to!” Katsuki could practically hear the smile through the phone.
“Bakugou, we talked about this. You can’t just kick people out of your cab. It’s bad for business if I have customers calling every day with complaints. It’ll lower my ratings.”
“I’ll do what I want! I don’t care about your stupid business,” Bakugou grumbles as he takes an orange tank top off the hanger and throws in on, the fabric hugging him like a second skin. He hits the button with the hanger symbol again and the rack moves back into the wall and the door slides shut.
“My business is what pays your bills,” Mirio counters in a pointed tone.
“It barely pays for my gas! I’m not getting paid enough for the shit I have to put up with. Tell your emo boyfriend I want a raise,” Bakugou barks out, hitting another square button on the wall. A shelf lined with his shoes slides out from the bottom of the wall. He bends down to grab his black boots and sits down at his kitchen table to start putting them on.
“No can do Bakugou, no amount of sweet talking will get Amajiki involved in your problems. Tell me again how many points you have left on your license from your last speeding ticket? What was it, 20 points? Or is it already down to 10?” Mirio jokes.
“Shut up, I've got at least 50 points. Now leave me alone. I've got a cab that needs driving.” Katsuki hangs up the phone before Mirio can respond and slams it back into its place on the wall.
In actuality, he only has 5 points left on his license, but it’s not like he was gonna tell Mirio that. What his boss didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Katsuki would just have a nice, calm week driving boring extras from one side of the city to the other and he’d work his points back up in no time.
You see, Katsuki wasn’t built for the taxi driving industry—scratch that, he wasn’t built for anything that involved dealing with customers. Unfortunately, he wasn’t born with the gift of patience, which meant having to endure entitled assholes who liked to bark directions at the back of his head and treat his car like a dumping zone was his own personal hell.
He was more equipped for a physical, hands on job. Before becoming a taxi driver, he had been in the military’s special forces and was the highest ranking officer in his unit. In all his years of service, he hadn’t failed a single mission. That was until his last mission about 6 months ago, where he was given orders that he just couldn’t follow. Major Bakugou was known for a lot of things, and his stubbornness was at the top of the list. After finding a flaw in an operation that would most likely get him and his unit killed, he went straight to his superiors and refused the mission. Unsurprisingly, his “inability to obey orders” and “complete disregard for authority” didn’t sit well with the higher ups and he was forced to resign. Getting kicked out hurt his pride a bit, but he was sick of taking orders from “superiors” who didn’t know a good strategy if it bit them in the ass. Lucky for him, he called in a favor from his friend Amajiki and had a job a week later. Now instead of undergoing special operations and doing the dirty work for old men who sat on their asses all day, he got to be their personal chauffeur. Boy was he really moving his way up in the world.
Before leaving the apartment he gives his appearance a final check in the mirror. He doesn’t even bother trying to fix his hair, having given up on the stubborn strands a long time ago. After a quick once over he’s grabbing his keys and pressing the button that slides his door open with a pressurized whoosh sound.
He steps out—and is abruptly stopped by the end of a gun pointed at his face.
His hands fly up in surrender and he looks around the tip of the gun to see who’s holding it. Katsuki immediately recognizes the teenager that lives down the hall from him, his red hat with horns a dead giveaway.
“I’m not in the mood today kid,” Katsuki rolls his eyes, already fed up with how his day is starting. The kid, Kota he thinks his name is, doesn’t move. He’s got a look on his face that's a mix between determined and anxious, which makes Katsuki want to laugh, but he’s already running late and doesn’t have the time for the kid’s antics at the moment.
“Give me all you got! Money, weapons, all of it!” Katsuki makes a show of examining the gun with a tilt of his head and smirks.
“Kid, how am I supposed to feel threatened when you don’t even have the gun loaded properly?” Confusion washes over the kid's face as he tilts the gun to take a look for himself, unconsciously angling the gun away from Katsuki’s face. Before the boy can even react, Katsuki’s pulling out his own gun from where he always hides it in his belt, pointing it directly at Kota’s forehead making him go cross eyed.
“Ugh! No fair Mr. Bakugou! You tricked me!” The boy yells indignantly. Katsuki just motions for the boy’s gun with his right hand and watches Kota begrudgingly give it up. With his elbow he hits a bottom on the wall that drops down a shelf of weapons from the ceiling.
“What the hell are you doing trying to steal from me Kota? Does your aunt know you’re out here doing this? You could get in serious trouble if the wrong person catches you stealing their shit,” Katsuki lectures.
The boy hangs his head in disappointment, mumbling out a quiet, “I know. I’m sorry.”
“So what? Are you tight on money or something?” The boy shakes his head no. Katsuki’s got a feeling he knows what this is about so he takes a guess. “Trying to act cool for someone?”
Kota’s cheeks start to glow bright red. Bingo.
“You know, instead of trying to impress her you might want to ask Eri to teach you a thing or two about stealing,” he says pointing to the shelf. “That little kleptomaniac probably has a shit ton of tricks up her sleeve.”
“I’m not trying to impress her! She’s weird and annoying.” Kota shouts out quickly, his ears now turning red as well.
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that lover boy. Now scram, I got shit to do and you made me late dumbass.” The boy scurries off to his door down the hall and disappears inside the apartment he shares with his aunt. Shaking his head Bakugou makes his way down the stairs to his garage where he keeps his taxicab. Despite having points removed from his license for speeding and other road rage related incidents, his cab was actually in great condition. He might hate his job, but he doesn’t half ass his responsibilities, so you better believe his cab is gonna be the cleanest and best running car out there.
He hops into the driver's seat, inserting his license into the slot near the steering wheel. His car comes to life, lights flickering on and buttons glowing. The car starts to hover off the ground, emitting a low rumble that fills the silence of the garage. A robotic female voice sounds throughout the car, “It is 5:45 AM, on Saturday, the 18th of March. You currently have 5 points on your license.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Katsuki grumbles, opening the garage door with the push of a button, letting in the sunlight and the ruckus of the busy airways. He hits another button to put the car in drive and floats through the door into the open air and merges with oncoming traffic. The “roads” are filled with all types of hovering vehicles, cars above and below him, some even above and below those.
Decades ago the Earth’s pollution levels reached an all time high, resulting in a thick layer of fog to cover the Earth’s crust. With the demand for transportation exceedingly increasing, the government's solution was to switch to air travel instead. Now the skies are saturated with ridiculously tall buildings and flying cars coming from every direction.
The mind numbing ambiance of the morning traffic lulls Katsuki into a robotic state, going through the motions. Pick up, drop off, repeat. He mentally checks back in when he’s dropping off an old lady at a hair salon. He pulls up to the platform connected to the building, the words Curl Up and Dye glowing above the entrance. She takes her credit card out of the slot in the backseat and the numbers above his dash keeping track of his earnings changes to count her payment.
“Thank you young man,” she says as she slowly exits the car.
“Sure thing old lad-,” he cuts himself off, not wanting another phone call from Boy Wonder about bad business. “Uh not a problem Ma’am.” Gross. He hated using manners .
Once she’s fully out of the car and onto the platform, Bakugou gives her a curt nod and drives off, falling back into the monotony of midday traffic. To keep himself occupied before the next customer he turns on his radio.
“—elcome back listeners! You’re tuning into Put Your Hands Up Radio and I’m your host Present Mic. It’s a beautiful day today, so I thought I’d start us off with my fav—”
Katsuki changes the station.
“—now is your chance to win two tickets to Paradise! Not to mention you’ll be accompanied by world renowned talk show host Denki Kamin—”
He changes the station again, hoping to find music instead of news or hot gossip. He stops on a station that’s playing a song he recognizes and as he goes to turn up the volume—BOOM!
Out of nowhere something crashes through his roof, landing in the backseat of his cab with such force that the car does a nosedive into the level of traffic below him while also veering into the opposite side of the road heading for oncoming traffic.
“JESUS FUCKING-” Katsuki’s steering wheel is spinning out of control. He grabs for it and dodges a few cars, each one laying on the horn as he passes them. Expletives are flying from his mouth, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He manages to gain control of the wheel, jerking the car back to the correct side and immediately finds an opening on the edge of the road where he can pull over.
“What the actual FUCK-,” he shouts, swinging his body around to see what could have possibly hit his car with enough force to bust a hole through his roof—only to be met with wide emerald eyes peering back at him through the plexiglass divider.