Chapter 1: Kneeling in the Ashes
The rain had stopped, but the air in Kamino Ward still tasted like wet ash and rust. It’s like it seeped into your clothes, this chill, this memory of dust. Izuku Midoriya knelt in the rubble, the knees of his worn jeans dark with groundwater. This wasn’t a sanctioned visit. The area was cordoned off, unstable. But permits never mattered here.
His fingers, scarred and calloused, traced a fissure in a slab of concrete. It wasn’t special. Just another broken piece in a square mile of broken pieces. But somewhere beneath this specific debris, on this exact patch of cursed earth, the symbol of peace had fallen. Izuku’s breath fogged in the air. He didn’t come to mourn, not exactly. He came to feel the absence. It was quieter now, a hollowed-out silence where the ember of One For All used to glow in his chest. A banked fire, completely cold.
A boot crunched on gravel behind him. He didn’t startle. The steps were too deliberate.
“The hell are you doing in a ruin zone, Deku?”
The voice was rougher than he remembered, or maybe the setting sanded down its edges. Izuku looked over his shoulder.
Katsuki Bakugou stood ten feet away, hands shoved deep in his bomber jacket, the fur collar damp. Dynamight. The name was etched on billboards, but the man looked grounded here, smaller against the vast gray wreckage. His expression was unreadable, a scowl that had matured into something more permanent, more weary.
“Same as you, I guess,” Izuku said, his voice soft. He pushed himself to his feet, brushing grit from his palms. “Looking.”
“I’m on patrol. This is my sector. You’re trespassing.” Bakugou’s eyes swept over him—the simple jacket, the lack of gear, the civilian slouch. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks.” A faint, tired smile touched Izuku’s lips. “You look… loud.”
Bakugou snorted, a short, sharp sound. He took a few steps closer, his red gaze scanning the area, a professional habit. “Heard you’re teaching. At U.A.”
“Yeah. Foundational Heroics. Theory and history, mostly.”
“Theory.” Bakugou repeated the word like it was a foreign object. “You. Teaching kids to not break their arms.”
“Trying to teach them not to break their spirits,” Izuku corrected quietly. He met Bakugou’s eyes. The challenge wasn’t there anymore. Just a familiar, complicated intensity. “It’s good work.”
“Sounds boring as hell.”
“It is. Sometimes.” Izuku turned back to the fissure in the ground. “But it’s what I can do now.”
The silence between them wasn’t the old, electric kind. It was thicker, laden with years and unsaid things. The war, the fading light, the divergent paths. Bakugou shifted his weight.
“You could do more. You’re not dead. The quirk’s gone, not your brain.”
“Is that a compliment, Kacchan?”
“It’s an observation, idiot.”
Before Izuku could reply, a new voice cut through the gloom, warm and booming. “Bakugou! There you—whoa.”
Eijiro Kirishima jogged into the clearing, his red hair a shocking burst of color in the monochrome waste. His sharp-toothed grin faltered as he saw Izuku. “Midoriya? No way! Man, it’s been forever!” His enthusiasm was genuine, a wave of uncomplicated feeling that washed over the grim site. He moved to clap Izuku on the shoulder, then hesitated, his eyes flicking to Bakugou. “Uh. Good to see you.”
“You too, Kirishima,” Izuku said, the smile coming easier now.
Kirishima’s presence changed the chemistry. He was the buffer, the translator. He rocked on his heels. “Wild, seeing you here of all places. This dump gives me the creeps. Just reminding Bakugou his paperwork’s due, and then we spotted— hey, you okay, man?”
He was looking past Izuku, his cheerful face suddenly sharp, focused. His eyes were locked on a pile of twisted rebar and concrete thirty yards away.
Bakugou followed his gaze instantly, his posture coiling. “What.”
“That chunk of wall… it just shimmered. Like heat haze off asphalt.”
All three of them stared. For a second, nothing. Just dead rock.
Then the air above the rubble did waver, distorting like a faulty projection. A figure resolved, slumped and coughing, clad in patched tactical gear. A man, clutching his side. Blood dripped between his fingers, sizzling faintly as it hit a piece of exposed metal.
“A straggler?” Izuku muttered, his body automatically shifting into a lower stance, a ghost of a fighting form.
“In a sealed zone?” Bakugou’s palms popped, a single, muted crackle. “No way.”
The wounded man looked up, his eyes wide with panic. Not at them. At something behind his own shoulder, in the empty air. He scrambled backward, kicking up dust. “Stay back! I didn’t see anything, I swear!”
The shimmering field around him pulsed. And with a sound like grinding glass, the physics of the ruin site broke.
The ground beneath the man didn’t just collapse. It unmade itself. Concrete dissolved into powder, steel ligaments snapped and whiplashed outward. The effect wasn’t an explosion; it was a rapid, silent erosion, a bubble of disintegration expanding outwards, swallowing the wreckage.
And it was coming their way.
“Shit!” Kirishima’s skin hardened, crimson and jagged.
Bakugou’s mind calculated trajectories in a flash. The blast radius was wide, unstable. Evasion was possible—for him. His instincts screamed at him to launch skyward, to get clear.
His eyes locked with Izuku’s.
Izuku was still standing there, muscles tensed not for a superhuman leap, but for a futile, human sprint. He had no power to blow himself out of the path. Just legs that would fail against the spreading wave of annihilation.
A lifetime flashed between them. Childhood rivals. Bitter enemies. Reluctant allies. War comrades. And then… silence.
It took less than a heartbeat.
Bakugou didn’t roar. He didn’t yell a move name. He just moved, a controlled burst from his feet that wasn’t a flight, but a lateral rush. He slammed into Izuku, not to tackle him away, but to plant himself squarely beside him, his back to Izuku’s.
Kirishima, without a second’s hesitation or a single question, completed the triangle. His broad, hardened back pressed against Bakugou’s shoulder, forming a bulwark.
The disintegrating wave hit the outer edge of their makeshift perimeter. A spray of powdered stone and metal dust washed over them, stinging and blinding. The world screamed with the sound of matter coming apart.
But the core of the effect spent itself on a larger chunk of rubble just ahead, the bubble popping with a final shudder. The ground stabilized, leaving a fresh, raw scar in the earth.
The silence that followed was ringing, charged with adrenaline.
Chest heaving, Izuku stared at the new crater, then at the solid back pressed against his own. The heat from Bakugou’s quirk, the unyielding rock of Kirishima’s form. It was an old stance. A war stance. His heart hammered against his ribs, not from fear, but from a terrifying, forgotten sense of belonging.
Bakugou’s voice was a low growl, meant only for the two of them.
“Don’t you dare get sentimental. It’s not over.”
From the cloud of settling dust, two more figures emerged. They stepped calmly over the vanishing edge of the new crater. Their gear was clean, professional. Not scavengers. Hunters.
The one in front, a woman with her hair pulled back in a severe bun, clicked her tongue. She looked at the three of them, backs together in the ruins, and smiled.
“Well,” she said, her voice crisp. “This complicates the clean-up.”
“This complicates the clean-up.”
The woman’s companion, a lanky man with hollow cheeks, cracked his neck. “Just more debris,” he muttered, his hands flexing. The air around his fingertips warbled, the same as before. The Disintegration Quirk user.
Bakugou didn’t turn. His voice was a blade, low and sharp. “Kirishima. The skinny one’s the priority. His quirk unmakes matter. Contact is bad. The woman is unknown.”
“Got it,” Kirishima grunted, his form hardening further, becoming more jagged. “You take point.”
Izuku’s mind raced, analysing the spacing, the terrain, the quirk’s exhibited range. Old patterns fired, but his body was a dead socket. He shifted his weight, the rubble scraping under his shoe.
The woman’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Dynamight. Red Riot. And a civilian.” Her gaze slid to Izuku. “Or is it? That posture isn’t civilian.”
“Izuku go get help!” Bakugou yelled at him.
And he flinched. Not just at the volume, but at the name. Izuku. Not Deku. Somehow that cut deeper, a formal dismissal sharper than any insult. It shoved him into a box labeled ‘liability’. His throat tightened.
“I can’t leave? You guys are—“
“WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO?! HUH?” Bakugou roared back, still not looking at him, his entire focus on the two threats. A small explosion popped in his clenched palm, a warning flare. “YOU’RE QUIRKLESS AGAIN! GET OUT AND GET HELP! IT’S THE SMARTEST PLAN, USE YOUR HEAD!”
The words were a physical blow. They stole the air from his lungs. The truth of them was a cold, heavy stone in his gut.
“HE’S RIGHT MIDORIYA!” Kirishima cut in, his voice strained with the effort of maintaining his hardened form. “WE NEED BACKUP AND YOU’RE OUR BEST OPTION! SO PLEASE!”
The ‘please’ did it. Kirishima’s hardened face, the earnest fear in his eyes—not for himself, but for the situation. It was a tactical order wrapped in a plea. Izuku’s legs felt like stone. Leaving them here, in this deadly dead zone with two hostiles… it tasted like bile.
The lanky man moved. He slapped a palm against a leaning I-beam. A silent pulse shot out from his touch. A three-meter section of solid steel simply… ceased. It didn’t fall. It dissolved into greyish dust that bloomed outward in a cloud.
Bakugou reacted. A calculated blast from his left hand didn’t aim at the man, but at the ground beneath the dust cloud. The concussive force blew the particulate sideways, away from them, creating a screen.
“GO!” The scream was ripped from Bakugou’s throat.
Izuku ran.
It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t the lightning-fast flicker of Full Cowling. It was a desperate, human sprint over unstable ground. His ankle twisted on a piece of broken curb, a jolt of pain shooting up his leg. He stumbled, caught himself on a jagged wall, the concrete tearing the skin of his palm. He pushed off.
The sound of battle erupted behind him. Not the huge, building-shattering detonations of Bakugou’s youth, but sharp, controlled concussions—covering fire, repositioning blasts. He heard the distinctive clang of Kirishima’s hardened form deflecting something.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back.
But his mind painted the picture. Bakugou, fighting constrained, needing to protect Kirishima from a quirk that could erase his hardening. Kirishima, a close-range fighter, unable to close the distance. They were playing defense. Buying time. For him.
His breath sawed in his chest, raw and burning. The cordon fence was a kilometre away, through a labyrinth of shattered foundations and pitfalls. Every gasping breath was a prayer. Hold on. Just hold on.
He dodged around a crater, his mind screaming out paths he no longer had the power to take. A jump from that beam. A flicker to that rooftop. Too slow. I’m too slow.
A new sound split the air—a high-frequency whine. It felt like needles in his teeth. He risked a glance over his shoulder.
A neon-pink energy spear, crackling and malevolent, streaked through the dusty air toward Bakugou’s flank. The woman. Her quirk.
Bakugou saw it, was already moving, but the disintegration user chose that moment to swipe at Kirishima, forcing him to block.
They were split. Isolated.
Izuku’s feet skidded to a halt. The fence, the help, was straight ahead. His body was turned toward the fight.
The memory of his own back, pressed securely between theirs. The heat. The rock.
A lifetime ago, on a battlefield just like this, he would have flown toward that energy spear. He would have shattered it with a Detroit Smash. He would have been there.
He was just a man now.
A useless, quirkless man watching his friends fight for their lives.
He turned his back on the fence. On help.
He started running again—not toward the distant street, but back into the ruin. Not as Deku. Not as a hero. But as Izuku Midoriya, who had never, in his entire life, known how to leave someone behind.
The ground tried to trip him, every piece of debris a betrayal. His breath tore at his throat. Useless. The word pounded in time with his footsteps. Useless, useless, useless.
Ahead, the fight was a snapshot of chaos under the dirty sky. Bakugou was a blur of motion and precise, concussive blasts, keeping the disintegration user—Sketch—pinned behind the husk of an old truck. But he was distracted, his attention split. The woman—her quirk manifesting as those violent pink energy constructs—had Kirishima on the defensive. A spear had shattered against his chest, but a whip of light had wrapped around his ankle, and she was trying to pull him off-balance, into the open.
“Just hold still, precious,” she called, her voice singsong. “I just need a sample. Your hardening is so unique!”
Kirishima gritted his teeth, digging his heels in. “Not… a goddamn… specimen!”
Izuku’s mind, the part that was always running analysis, cut through the panic. Sketch’s quirk: touch-based, line-of-sight? Seemed to need a surface. Couldn’t disintegrate air. The woman: emitter-type, could manifest solid light, required focus to maintain complex forms.
He was running, but his eyes were scanning. The landscape wasn’t just a ruin; it was a toolkit. A memory flashed—Gran Torino, years ago: “You think a Quirk is a weapon? Your environment is a weapon. Your brain is a weapon. A hero uses everything.”
Bakugou saw him then. For a fraction of a second, his crimson eyes widened, not with relief, but with pure, incandescent fury. “DEKU! I TOLD YOU TO—“
A pink javelin streaked toward Bakugou’s side. He had to abort his rage, swatting it aside with a blast that knocked him off trajectory.
Izuku didn’t stop. He veered left, away from the direct line of fire, toward a skeletal framework of scaffolding clinging to a half-fallen building. It groaned in the wind.
He didn’t have strength. He had mass. And gravity.
“Kirishima!” Izuku yelled, his voice raw. “The left support! Now!”
Kirishima didn’t question. He saw Izuku’s trajectory, saw the shaky scaffold. With a roared “Haaaah!”, he stopped resisting the energy whip and instead charged toward the woman, yanking her forward a step, disrupting her balance. Then he pivoted, his hardened fist a crimson hammer, and smashed it into the base of the metal scaffold Izuku was approaching.
The blow was monstrous. The corroded bolts sheared. With a shriek of tortured metal, the entire twenty-foot section of scaffolding tipped forward, a giant web of pipes and plating.
Izuku was already leaping, not away, but onto the falling structure. He rode it down like a surfer on a wave of steel, steering it not with power, but with weight, shifting his body.
“Sketch!” the woman screamed, her focus broken, the energy whip dissolving.
The lanky man looked up from his cover just as the cascading shadow enveloped him. It wasn’t an attack he could disintegrate piecemeal; it was a tidal wave of solid matter. He flung out a hand, and the first beams turned to dust, but it was too much, too fast.
The scaffold crashed down, burying him in a cacophony of noise and dust.
Izuku hit the ground rolling, the impact slamming through his bones. He came up coughing, his palms scraped bloody.
The silence was abrupt, stunned.
Sketch was down, trapped under tons of metal, unconscious or worse. The woman stood isolated, her smug façade cracked, eyes darting between her buried partner and the three of them.
Bakugou stared at Izuku. He was breathing hard, sweat and grime streaking his face. His expression was unreadable, a storm of conflict. The fury was still there, but underneath it, something else—a raw, unwilling recalculation.
Izuku met his gaze, panting. He didn’t say see? He didn’t say anything. He just shook the ringing from his ears and got to his feet, his body a symphony of new aches.
The woman recovered quickly, a snarl twisting her features. “Fine. The hard way.” Her hands came together, and light began to coalesce into something larger, denser. A spear the size of a tree trunk, crackling with vicious energy. “I’ll just take all of you in.”
Before she could fully form it, Bakugou was in front of her. Not with a flashy explosion, but with a single, focused step. He didn’t yell. His voice was low, cold, and final.
“You talk too much.”
His hand snapped forward, not to blast, but to grip her face. A containment blast ignited in the closed space between his palm and her skin—a muffled, brutal thump of superheated air and concussive force. Her eyes rolled back. The light in her hands sputtered and died. She dropped like a sack.
Silence, again. Only the whisper of settling dust.
Kirishima let out a huge breath, his hardening receding with a rough, scraping sound. “Man… that was…”
Bakugou wasn’t listening. He was still looking at Izuku. He strode over, his boots crunching on debris. He stopped a foot away.
“You,” Bakugou said, his voice dangerously quiet. “What was that?”
Izuku wiped blood from his lip. “The scaffolding was unstable. It was the fastest way to create a large-area distraction and remove one quirk from play. You were getting cornered.”
“I had it handled.”
“You were split. She was focusing Kirishima to pull you out of position. Your next move would have been a risky strike on Sketch, leaving you open.成功率はたかだか六十二パーセント.” The analysis slipped out, the old habit. A sixty-two percent chance.
Bakugou’s eye twitched. He heard the unsaid part: a thirty-eight percent chance of you or Kirishima getting hit by that disintegration.
Kirishima walked over, clapping a heavy hand on Izuku’s shoulder, making him wince. “That was insane, Midoriya! And so manly! Using the whole environment like that!”
“It was reckless,” Bakugou spat, but the heat was leaching from his words. He was studying Izuku’s face, the determined set of his jaw, the eyes that were still scanning the area, assessing. He saw the ghost of the strategist he’d fought beside in a war. The ghost was breathing hard and covered in dirt, but it was here. “You’re supposed to be a teacher.”
“I am,” Izuku said, finally looking directly at him. “I was teaching right now. How to fight when you’re out of options.” He paused. “And I don’t leave my friends.”
The word ‘friends’ hung in the air between them, fragile and immense.
Bakugou looked away first, turning toward the trapped villain. “Tch. Whatever. Help me dig this scrub out before the whole pile shifts.”
As they moved toward the rubble, the communicator on Bakugou’s belt chimed. A dispatcher’s voice, filtered and static. “Dynamight, Red Riot. We got a alert from the Kamino perimeter. Report status.”
Bakugou keyed the mic. “Two hostiles neutralized. Clean-up and containment needed. Send a forensics team.” He paused, his glance cutting toward Izuku, who was helping Kirishima heft a beam. “And an ambulance. Possible civilian injury.”
“Roger. Cause of disturbance?”
Bakugou stared at the unconscious woman, at her high-tech gear, at the specific, hungry interest she’d shown in Kirishima’s quirk. This wasn’t random. This was a targeted extraction attempt. In the one place in Japan soaked in the symbolic blood of fallen heroes.
“Don’t know yet,” he said, his voice gravel. “But we’re gonna find out.”
In the distance, sirens began to wail.