Chapter 2: Cold Equations
The sterile smell of antiseptic in the Kamino Memorial Hospital’s trauma ward was a sharp, jarring contrast to the wet ruin outside. Izuku sat on the edge of an examination bed, a bandage wrapped around his left palm, the sting a welcome anchor. A young doctor shone a light in his eyes, checking for concussion.
“You’re lucky,” the doctor said, not for the first time. “Strained ligament in the ankle, mild sprain in the wrist, contusions, abrasions… but given the location and the reported quirk activity, it’s essentially superficial.”
Superficial. Izuku nodded, his mind miles away, back in the dust.
Across the curtained-off bay, he could hear Bakugou’s low, aggravated voice talking to a police lieutenant. Kirishima’s hearty, reassuring tones mixed in. They’d given their preliminary statements already. The woman, whose alias was ‘Lumina’, and the man, ‘Sketch’, were in custody, both under heavy quirk-suppressant regimens. Sketch had a broken arm and three cracked ribs from the scaffolding collapse. Lumina had a severe concussion and would be singing soprano for a month.
“Your friends are real pieces of work, you know that?” the doctor muttered, jotting notes on a tablet. “Dynamight threatened to blow up the imaging machine when it beeped too much.”
“That sounds like him,” Izuku said, a faint, tired smile touching his lips.
The curtain yanked back. Bakugou stood there, still in his torn and dusty gear, his face like a thundercloud. “They’re releasing you. Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Izuku asked, sliding off the bed. His ankle protested, a dull throb.
“The scene. My scene. You contaminated it with your stupid scaffolding stunt, but the forensics team found something.” Bakugou’s eyes held a grim intensity. “A trail. And you’re going to help follow it.”
“He needs rest, Dynamight,” the doctor started.
“He needs to do his damn job,” Bakugou shot back, then seemed to catch himself. He scowled. “He’ll sit in the van. He won’t move. But he’s coming.”
Kirishima appeared behind Bakugou, offering Izuku an apologetic grin. “He’s got that look, Midoriya. The ‘I’ve-connected-the-dots-and-no-one-else-has’ look. It’s easier to just go with it.”
Twenty minutes later, Izuku found himself in the passenger seat of a sleek, unmarked agency van, Bakugou driving with a controlled fury through the sparse post-midnight traffic. Kirishima filled the back, a reassuring mountain of muscle. The dashboard scanner hummed with low police chatter.
“They weren’t just random thugs,” Bakugou said, breaking the tense silence. His knuckles were white on the wheel. “Lumina’s gear was custom. Military-grade composite. Sketch’s destabilization quirk has a known registry—he was a demolitions expert for a construction firm before he went missing six months ago. This was a pickup.”
“A pickup of what?” Izuku asked, staring out at the skeletal ruins flashing by.
“Me,” Kirishima said from the back, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “She kept talking about a ‘sample’. About my hardening being ‘unique’.”
Bakugou nodded tightly. “The trail forensics found… it was a chemical marker. Invisible to the eye, UV-reactive. Lumina had a capsule of it sewn into her collar. It started leaking when I clocked her. They were planning to tag him, track him to a secondary location for a full ambush. The fight in the ruins was Plan B.”
Izuku felt a cold knot form in his stomach. “This was professional. This was planned.”
“No shit.” Bakugou slammed a hand on the steering wheel. “And they knew he’d be in Kamino. On my patrol route. Which means they’ve been watching. Which means we’re not done.”
The van slowed near the outskirts of the ruined ward, where the devastation gave way to derelict industrial yards. Bakugou killed the lights and rolled to a stop behind a gutted textile factory. Ahead, lit by the ghastly glow of a single security lamp, stood an old warehouse. Its corrugated metal walls were bleeding rust.
“Marker trail leads here,” Bakugou whispered, all business now. He handed Izuku a compact UV flashlight. “You’re on light duty. Kirishima, you’re with me. Hardened up, but quiet. If this is a nest, we flush it.”
The warehouse door was ajar, a sliver of darkness yawning open. The smell hit them first—old motor oil, damp concrete, and underneath, a sharp, acrid scent like ozone and chemicals. Bakugou led, a small, ready spark dancing in his cupped palm, providing a flickering, infernal light.
Inside was a cavern of shadows, the high ceiling lost in gloom. Crates were stacked haphazardly. But this wasn’t storage.
“What is this place?” Kirishima breathed, his hardened skin scraping faintly as he moved.
Izuku flicked on the UV light. The beam cut through the dark, illuminating swirling, glowing paths on the floor—the chemical trail. It led to the far wall. But it was the wall itself that made Izuku’s breath catch.
It was covered. Not in graffiti, but in meticulously organized data. Printed charts, surveillance photos, lines of red string connecting points in a chaotic web. It was a command center. A lab.
And the subject of the analysis was Quirks.
High-resolution images of heroes in action were pinned up: Lemillion phasing through debris, Uravity floating a collapsed bridge, Cellophane binding a villain. There were chemical formulas, spectrographic readings, stress-test diagrams.
“They’re not just targeting you, Kirishima,” Izuku said, his voice hollow. He swung the light.
The beam swept over another section. Class photos from U.A.—not just from their year, but more recent ones. Detailed dossiers were tacked beneath each familiar face: Shoto Todoroki, Quirk: Half-Cold Half-Hot, Maximum Output Analysis, Thermal Fluctuation Limits. Tenya Iida, Quirk: Engine, Top Speed Logs, Recipro Burst Coolant Composition.
A cold, detailed dissection of their friends, their classmates. Their weaknesses.
“Bastards,” Bakugou snarled, stepping closer to the wall. His eyes scanned the data, the clinical brutality of it. Then he stopped. His shoulders tensed.
Izuku moved the light, following his gaze.
There was a dedicated, larger subsection. At the top, a printed label: Subject Cohort: Alpha. Designation: 1-A. Primary Focus: Evolutionary Offshoots / Quirk Singularity Theory.
And there, among the detailed files, was a recent photograph. It was taken from a distance, with a long lens. It showed Izuku, dressed in casual clothes, standing on the U.A. training field. He was smiling, pointing at something in the distance, while a group of first-year students around him laughed. The photo was circled. A note was scribbled in red marker beside it: Primary Source? Quirk Attenuation Confirmed. Psychological Profile Ongoing. Access: Unrestricted.
The air left the room.
Izuku’s UV light trembled, the beam shaking over the damning image. Access: Unrestricted.
Bakugou moved faster than thought. He crossed the space in two strides, his hand shooting out. He didn’t grab Izuku’s shirt. He shoved him, hard, backwards. Izuku’s injured ankle gave way and he slammed against a thick steel support beam, the impact jarring his teeth.
The UV flashlight clattered to the floor, casting crazy, spinning shadows.
Bakugou’s left palm slammed into the beam beside Izuku’s head, not exploding, but heating until the metal sizzled and the air wavered with dangerous, blistering heat. His other hand fisted in the front of Izuku’s jacket, pinning him.
The fury on Bakugou’s face wasn’t the hot, explosive kind. It was frozen, deep, and utterly terrifying.
Kirishima took a step forward. “Bakugou, man—”
“Shut up,” Bakugou’s voice was a wire about to snap. He never took his eyes off Izuku, whose own were wide, reflecting the orange glow from Bakugou’s searing palm.
Izuku could smell the heating paint on the beam, feel the intense radiation of the quirk so close to his face. He couldn’t move.
Bakugou leaned in, his nose inches from Izuku’s. His voice dropped to a venomous, fractured whisper.
“You knew.”
Izuku shook his head, a minute movement. “Knew what? I didn’t—”
“You knew this was coming.” Bakugou’s grip tightened, the fabric of the jacket straining. “All of it. The targeting. The analysis. This… this nest. You stand in front of a class every day. My classmates. Your students. You talk about the old days. You point out their weaknesses to make them stronger. You’re a goddamn living archive.”
He breathed hard, the heat from his palm making sweat trickle down Izuku’s temple.
“That photo,” Bakugou hissed, jerking his head toward the wall. “Unrestricted access. They’re not just watching heroes on patrol. They’re inside the school. They’re using you. Your teaching gig… it’s not a retirement plan, Deku. It’s a trap. And you walked right into it. You led them straight to the next generation.”
The words landed like physical blows, each one a hammer on the cold, hard truth Izuku had been too afraid to shape in his own mind. The sudden, intense interest from certain educational foundations in his curriculum. The anonymous donor who’d funded the new Quirk Theory lab. The feeling, always dismissed as paranoia, of being watched not with admiration, but with a cold, academic curiosity.
He’d thought he was building a shield. He’d been providing a blueprint.
The sizzle of the metal filled the silence. Kirishima stood rigid, conflicted, his hardened fists clenched.
Izuku met Bakugou’s incandescent glare. There was no fear in his eyes now. Just a devastating, crushing weight of realization. His voice, when it came, was flat. Broken.
“You’re right.”
The admission seemed to shock Bakugou as much as the accusation had shocked Izuku. The fury stuttered. The heat from his palm dialed back a fraction.
Before either could speak, the scanner on Bakugou’s belt, set to silent, began to vibrate violently. A pre-programmed alert. At the same moment, from deep within the warehouse, from behind a stack of crates the UV trail had not reached, came a distinct, digital beep.
Then a soft, mechanical whir.
All three of them froze.
The whirring intensified, followed by the sound of footsteps. Not human. Precise, hydraulic steps. One set. Then two. Then three.
From the darkness behind the crates, a single, red photoreceptor lit up, swiveling to lock onto them.
Then another.
And another.
The red lights swiveled in unison, a chilling mechanical synchrony. From the gloom, three figures resolved, their forms sleek and humanoid but moving with a weight that made the concrete floor vibrate. Their carapaces were matte black, absorbing the scant light, and the single photoreceptor on each faceplate painted the dust in hellish red streaks.
They didn’t speak. They just advanced.
Bakugou released Izuku, shoving him sideways towards Kirishima. “Eyes on! They’re not here to chat!”
The lead machine’s arm reconfigured with a series of sharp clicks. A barrel the size of a soup can telescoped out from its forearm. It didn’t fire bullets. It emitted a dense, concussive pulse of air that hit the steel beam beside them with a deafoning THWOMP, denting it inwards.
“Suppression fire,” Izuku yelled, hitting the floor as shredded rust rained down. His mind, reeling seconds before, locked onto the new threat. “They’re herding us!”
“No shit!” Bakugou ducked behind a crate, returning fire with a precisely aimed blast that rocked the lead machine back a step but barely scorched its plating. “Armor’s hardened. Kirishima!”
“On it!” Kirishima roared, launching himself forward, a crimson bullet. He didn’t punch. He used his body as a battering ram, aiming to tackle the closest machine off its feet.
Its photoreceptor flashed. It sidestepped with unsettling grace, and its other arm snapped out, not to strike, but to eject a net of crackling, filament-thin wires. The net enveloped Kirishima’s hardened form, and a jolt of visible electricity coursed through it.
Kirishima grunted, his charge faltering as the current raced over his impenetrable skin. It didn’t pierce, but it distracted, the energy seeking grounding. The other two machines moved to flank him.
Bakugou unleashed a wider blast to cover him, the explosion filling the warehouse with thunder and blinding light. “They know his specs! They’re using non-penetrative restraint!”
Izuku scrambled behind a pallet of decaying boxes, his heart hammering against his ribs. He fumbled for his phone. The screen showed a single, flickering bar. Useless. The machines were communicating with short-range, high-frequency bursts he could feel in his molars. They were jamming everything.
One machine broke from the engagement, its photoreceptor sweeping past Bakugou’s suppressing fire and locking directly onto Izuku. It had a different priority. It strode forward, an arm transforming into a long, needle-tipped proboscis.
Primary Source. Quirk Attenuation Confirmed.
Bakugou’s accusation echoed in the chaos. They didn’t want to kill Izuku. They wanted to extract him.
“WE NEED TO GET AHOLD OF AIZAWA SENSEI!” Izuku shouted, even after all these years of working with him he found it hard to drop the sensei title. He ducked as the probing needle lashed out, spearing through the pallet where his head had been. “OH HE’S GONNA BE PISSED AT ME,” he muttered as he pulled his phone out again, staring desperately at the searching signal icon. It was his day off after all. Well… it was the weekend. And he was a teacher so… fuck. Izuku was so fucked.
“UH DUDES?” Kirishima bellowed, heaving against the crackling net as another machine moved in to apply a viscous, foam-like substance to his feet. “THE HELL IS HAPPENING?”
“JUST- WATCH MY BACK I NEED SIGNAL!” Izuku yelled back, darting from cover to cover, the machine with the needle arm mirroring his movements with pitiless efficiency.
Bakugou saw the play. He cursed, unleashing a sustained torrent of explosions at the two machines containing Kirishima, forcing them to raise shield-like arms. “Stop fucking running and think! You’re the analyst! What’s their weakness?”
The words cut through the panic. Izuku’s eyes darted, not at the machines, but at the warehouse itself. The UV light was on the floor, still shining. It illuminated the chemical trail, the charts, the high ceiling with its rusted gantry crane.
The machines were sophisticated. They had countermeasures for explosive and hardening-type quirks. They were designed for hero apprehension.
But this was an old warehouse. And the lab was full of volatile chemicals.
The needle arm shot forward again. Izuku didn’t dge. He sidestepped at the last second, letting it punch into a metal drum behind him. A clear, pungent fluid began to hiss out onto the floor.
“Bakugou! The blue drums by the wall! Your left!” Izuku shouted, his voice raw. “The markings! Flammable chemical solvent!”
Bakugou didn’t question. He pivoted, ignoring the machine in front of him, and aimed a single, searingly precise AP shot. The small, concentrated blast punched a hole straight through the drum’s side.
A waterfall of clear solvent gushed out, pooling rapidly across the concrete.
The machine stalking Izuku paused, its photoreceptor analyzing the new variable. It calculated the spill, the proximity of its own unit to the pool.
It took a step back.
“They’re programmed for operational safety,” Izuku panted, a desperate plan forming. “They won’t risk a chain reaction that destroys the lab data. They’ll try to contain the hazard!”
“So give them a hazard to contain!” Bakugou roared, sprinting now, not away, but along the edge of the spreading solvent pool. He dragged his sparking hand low, skimming it across the surface.
The solvent caught with a soft whump, not an explosion, but a fast-spreading carpet of low, intense flame that raced across the floor, cutting the warehouse in half. A wall of fire erupted between the machines and their primary exit.
Klaxons blared from the robots, a shrill, internal alarm. Their unified strategy fragmented. The two with Kirishima turned, deploying nozzle-like appendages that sprayed a fire-retardant foam at the base of the flames. The one with the needle arm recoiled from the heat, recalculating.
It gave Izuku one second. One bar flickered to life on his phone.
He hit the speed dial, shoved the phone to his ear, and prayed. It rang once. Twice.
Aizawa’s voice, bleary and deeply annoyed, answered. “Midoriya. It’s 2:17 AM. This better be a building falling on you.”
“Sensei!” Izuku gasped, crouching low as smoke began to fill the space. “Kamino Industrial Sector Seven! Warehouse! They have files on everyone! Robots! They’re after quirk data and sources! We need back-up and a total comms blackout on U.A., now!”
There was a beat of silence on the line, the kind of silence that was heavier than any shout. When Aizawa spoke again, all sleep was gone, replaced by a voice like chilled steel.
“Understood. Hold your position. Do not let those machines transmit. I’m mobilizing everyone.”
The line went dead.
Izuku lowered the phone. Across the wall of fire, the machine with the needle arm looked at him. Its photoreceptor pulsed. It seemed to make a decision. It turned and sprinted, not toward him, but toward a shadowed rear corridor of the warehouse, moving with a sudden, single-minded purpose.
It was fleeing. And it was taking something—a compact drive module ejected from its chest, gripped in a pincer claw.
“It’s running with the data!” Izuku shouted.
Bakugou was already in the air, using two quick, successive blasts to vault over the flames. “Kirishima! You good?!”
The foam around Kirishima’s feet had hardened, but he was already shredding through it with his sharpened fingers. “Go! I’ll handle these two tin cans! Just stop that one!”
Bakugou hit the ground running, Izuku limping after him as fast as his injured ankle would allow, chasing the last red light into the consuming dark of the warehouse’s depths. The air grew colder, the corridor narrowing into what looked like an old loading tunnel.
At the end, a sliver of night sky was visible. An escape route.
The machine was almost there.
Bakugou braced, planting his feet for a massive, barrier-shattering blast.
Izuku saw it first. “Don’t! The roof! It’s unstable!”
But the machine did something else. It stopped. It turned. And facing them, it raised the hand not holding the data drive. Its palm opened. Not a weapon emerged, but a small, holographic projector.
The flickering image of a man materialized in the dusty air between them. He wore a tailored lab coat, his hair silver, his face obscured by a simple, smooth blank mask. The image was recorded, his voice synthesized and calm.
“Hello, Izuku Midoriya. My apologies for the abrupt introduction.” The voice hummed. “This data is a mere copy. The original analysis continues. Thank you for your invaluable, ongoing contribution to the work. We are so very close to understanding the Gift now. We’ll be in touch.”
The hologram winked out. The machine’s photoreceptor dimmed. With a final, deliberate motion, it crushed the data drive in its pincer, destroying it, then turned and sprinted for the exit.
Bakugou’s final, rage-fueled explosion blew a hole in the corrugated wall where the machine had been a half-second before, lighting up the alley beyond. But the machine was gone, vanished into the labyrinth of ruins, its trail cold.
The only sound was the distant scream of approaching sirens, and their own ragged breathing in the sudden, hollow quiet.
Izuku sank against the tunnel wall, sliding down to the filthy floor. He stared at the spot where the hologram had been. The man’s words coiled in his gut, cold and heavy.
Ongoing contribution.
Bakugou stood silhouetted in the ragged hole he’d made, his shoulders rising and falling with each breath. He didn’t look at Izuku. He stared out into the dark where the machine had fled.
“It’s not over,” Bakugou said, his voice quiet now, all the earlier fury burned away into something colder and more determined.
He finally turned, his red eyes finding Izuku’s in the gloom. The accusation was still there, but it had mutated. It was now a shared burden. A shared problem.
“They know you. They’re using you.” He took a step closer, his boots crunching on debris. “So you’re coming off the sidelines, Deku. You’re gonna help me burn this whole fucking operation to the ground.”
From the main warehouse, Kirishima’s triumphant roar echoed, followed by the crunch of metal. “Yeah! That’s what you get! Who’s manly now?!”
Izuku looked from Bakugou’s hardened face back to the empty tunnel. The vulnerability was gone, sealed away under a layer of grim resolve. He gave a single, sharp nod.
“Where do we start?”