Chapter 1: A Note in the Rain and a Hero's Breaking Point
The rain wasn’t falling so much as it was being driven sideways, a cold, relentless spray that soaked through his hero costume and found every seam. Katsuki Bakugou stood on the rooftop’s edge, the city’s glow blurring into streaks of acid green and sickly purple through the downpour. His hands weren’t in his pockets. They were clenched at his sides, the right one a white-knuckled fist around a crumpled slip of paper.
Eijiro Kirishima found him like that, a statue of tension outlined against the storm. “Bakugou? Hell, man, we’ve been looking for you. The comms are–”
He stopped. He saw the tremors. Not the usual fine, aggressive vibration that signaled Katsuki was about to blow something sky-high. This was different. A low, constant shake running through the man’s forearms, up into his shoulders. Kirishima took a cautious step closer, the rain on the rooftop sounding like static. “What is it?”
Katsuki didn’t turn. His voice, when it came, was scraped raw and low, barely winning against the wind. “He doesn’t get to do this.”
“Who doesn’t?” Kirishima moved alongside him, following his sightless gaze out over the slick, shining city. The sirens were constant tonight, a faint, wavering harmony beneath the rain. He glanced down at Katsuki’s fist. A corner of the paper was visible, the cheap stock already dissolving into pulp from the rain and his grip. There was writing on it. Messy, familiar script.
His blood went cold.
“Is that…?”
Katsuki’s arm jerked, not to throw the note, but to crush it completely. The tremors got worse. “That bastard doesn’t get to crawl back now.” It was a snarl, but it cracked in the middle. There was no heat behind it, just a hollow, ragged friction. “Not like this. Not with a goddamn sticky note on a crime scene.”
Kirishira’s mind raced, piecing together the dispatch he’d just heard. A high-tech theft over in the Minato ward. Clean, professional. No violence, just bypassed security systems that shouldn’t have been bypassable. The only thing out of place was a single note left on the central console, addressed to the investigating team.
To him.
“What did it say, Bakugou?”
For a long moment, there was only the hammering rain. Katsuki’s jaw worked. He finally unclenched his fingers, staring at the ruined paper as if it were a live wire. The ink had bled, but the two words were still brutally, unmistakably clear.
`Prove it. -Deku`
The sound Katsuki made was halfway between a laugh and a choke. “Prove it. Prove what? That he’s a ghost? That he’s still out there? That I–” He cut himself off, his breath hissing through his teeth. He looked suddenly, terribly young under the neon glare, all the usual arrogance stripped away by the weather and the handwriting.
Kirishima put a solid hand on his shoulder. The muscle beneath was corded steel. “It’s a message. It’s a taunt. It doesn’t mean he left it.”
“Who else would?” Katsuki snapped, finally tearing his eyes from the note to glare at Kirishima. His eyes were too bright. “Who else knows that name would get under my skin like this? Who else knows it’s the one thing I can’t just… blow up?” He flicked his wrist, a tiny, suppressed explosion sparking and dying in his wet palm. A gesture of pure frustration.
“A copycat. A fan. A villain who did their homework.” Kirishima’s voice was steady, an anchor in the swirling wet. “Midoriya’s been off-grid for years, man. No sightings. No chatter. If he was going to come back, he wouldn’t start by stealing experimental processor blueprints.”
“You don’t know what he’d do!” Katsuki’s composure fractured, just for a second. The words burst out of him. “You don’t know what any of it did to him! What I did to him!” He shook off Kirishima’s hand and turned away, pacing two sharp, agitated steps on the slippery concrete. “This is his handwriting. The stupid little curl on the ‘k’. The way he dashes his shit. This is him.”
Kirishima let him pace. He picked his words carefully. “Okay. Say it is. Why? Why this? Why now?”
“How the hell should I know?” Katsuki stopped, his back to Kirishima, shoulders rising and falling with heavy breaths. The sirens below swelled, then faded. When he spoke again, it was quieter, almost lost. “He’s not asking me to find him. He’s asking me to prove something. To figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“The theft.” Katsuki turned around. The vulnerable look was gone, burned away, replaced by a furious, focused intensity. The tremor was still there in his hands, but it was being harnessed now, converted into fuel. “This wasn’t random. The note wasn’t for the cops. It was for me. The job itself is the message. So we look at the job. We tear it apart.”
“The commission will want the evidence. That note.”
Katsuki looked at the pulpy wad in his hand. A slow, dangerous smirk touched his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “What note? It was raining. It fell apart. I must’ve… misplaced it.”
Kirishima stared at him for a long beat, then grinned, sharp and determined. “Never saw a thing. But you realize this means diving back into it. All of it. The stuff you hate talking about.”
“I know.” Katsuki’s smirk vanished. He looked out at the city again, his reflection fractured in a million rain-pocked puddles. “But if that nerd is finally making a move, I’ll be there. I’ll prove whatever the hell he wants me to prove. And then I’m going to knock his teeth out for making me wait.”
He opened his fist and let the last shreds of the paper fall. The wind caught them, a few dark specks whipping away into the neon-streaked darkness over the city. The proof was gone. The challenge remained.
Kirishima nodded, rolling his shoulders. “Where do we start?”
Katsuki’s phone buzzed, a harsh vibration against the quiet drum of the rain. He pulled it out, screen casting a cold blue light on his face. Another alert. His eyes scanned it, and the grim set of his mouth tightened.
“We start at the beginning,” he said, voice flat. “Another one. Just hit. Same MO. High-tech lab, no casualties, security blind spots exploited. Left the guards asleep at their posts.”
“A second note?”
Katsuki shoved the phone back into his belt, meeting Kirishima’s gaze. The rain dripped from his spiky hair, tracing paths down his temple.
“No. This time they left a calling card. A single, small explosion. Precise. Just enough to slag the data backup terminal. Clean.” He took a step toward the rooftop access door, his movements deliberate, charged. “The report says the burn pattern is… distinctive. Matches my older, less-controlled signatures. From school.”
He looked back, once, at the empty sky where the note had disappeared.
“He’s not just talking, Ei. He’s building a case. And he’s building it against me.”
“And he’s building it against me.”
Kirishima stared, the rain plastering his crimson hair flat to his forehead. He blinked away a droplet. “So… what? He’s trying to frame you? Why?”
Bakugou grumbled, a low, frustrated sound in his chest. He kicked at a rivulet of water streaming across the rooftop. “I don’t know, man… I don’t know any of it. Is he trying to frame me… or get my attention? Or just make my life hell like he–” He cut himself off, clamping his jaw shut so hard Kirishima heard his teeth grind. The unspoken used to hung in the wet air between them, thick as the ozone scent before a lightning strike.
“Okay,” Kirishima said, his voice shifting into something solid and practical. It was the tone he used on collapsing buildings and panicking civilians. “Let’s break it down like a mission. He, or someone, leaves a note only you’d fully understand. Then, they pull a job and mimic your blast pattern. That’s not framing. That’s… signaling. If they wanted to frame you, they’d be less cute about it. They’d plant your hairs at the scene. They’d get seen. This is…”
“A goddamn puzzle.” Bakugou finished, venom lacing the words.He hated puzzles. He preferred direct assaults. Clear villains. This felt like fingers probing the seams of his old scars.
“Exactly. So we solve it.” Kirishima’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, his eyes narrowing. “Dispatch. They want a statement.Your location. The whole song and dance.”
“Tell them I’m in pursuit of a lead. Alone.”
“Bakugou–”
“I’m not dragging the Commission’s bureaucratic sludge into this!” Bakugou snapped, finally turning to face him fully. The neon from a distant hotel sign washed his face in a sickly pink. “They’ll see the word ‘Deku’ and they’ll either panic or bury it. They don’t get it. You do. So are you in, or are you gonna go file a report?”
Kirishima didn’t hesitate. He thumbed a quick, vague response into his phone and silenced it. “You’re such a pain. Where’s the second hit?”
“Roppongi. Bio-quirk research lab.” Bakugou was already moving, his boots splashing through the rooftop puddles toward the access door. “Security feed cut for exactly ninety seconds. Guards found with specialized tranquilizers in their systems—military grade, untraceable. And my signature charcoal artwork on a five-million-yen computer core.”
“Showy.”
“It’s personal.” Bakugou shoved the metal door open, the screech of rusted hinges swallowed by the storm. The stairwell inside was dim, smelling of damp concrete and stale air. “The first hit was tech. The second is bio-quirk. They’re not stealing money or weapons. They’re harvesting specific intel. And painting a picture while they do it.”
They took the stairs two at a time, the echoes of their footsteps a frantic percussion in the enclosed space. “What’s the link between processor blueprints and quirk-factor research?” Kirishima asked, his voice bouncing off the walls.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Bakugou shouldered through a door into an alleyway behind the club, the sudden shift from stairwell silence to the roaring city night jarring. Rain channeled down the brick walls in sheets. “We need to see the blast pattern myself. The report’s photos won’t cut it.”
A black sedan with tinted windows slid to a halt at the mouth of the alley, its engine purring. The passenger window slid down.
Kirishima stiffened, instantly shifting his posture, one hand subtly hardening. Bakugou just scowled.
“Get in,” a calm, female voice said from the driver’s seat. “I’ll bypass the police cordon at the Roppongi site. They’ve just established it.”
Bakugou leaned down, peering into the car. “Momo?”
Yaoyorozu Momo gave a tight, professional smile. Her hair was up, her attire sleek and dark. “Kirishima’s ‘in pursuit’ text was patently unconvincing. I cross-referenced the alert feeds. The blast signature analysis flagged a Dynamight priority alert on my system. I put the rest together. Now, before a real satellite picks us up arguing in an alley, please get in.”
Bakugou shot a look at Kirishima, who shrugged. “She’s got a point.”
They slid into the backseat, the car smelling of leather and Yaoyorozu’s subtle jasmine perfume. The car pulled smoothly into the streaming traffic.
“You shouldn’t be involved,” Bakugou said, not ungratefully, but as a statement of fact.
“He was my friend, too,” she said, her eyes fixed on the road. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “And if this is really him… or even someone using his memory like this… it involves all of us. But especially you. The mimicry is too precise. The tranquilizers are a specialty item. I’ve already run a preliminary material synthesis. The compounds are…”
“Familiar?” Kirishima ventured.
“A refinement on formulas we studied in our third year. In Modern Heroic Support Chemistry.” She glanced at Bakugou in the rearview mirror. “Your notes, if I recall, were predominantly destructive. Midoriya’s, however, were exhaustive on chemical stability and non-lethal applications.”
The car was silent except for the swish of the wipers. The past was in the vehicle with them, a fourth passenger, breathing down their necks.
“So we’ve got my explosions and his textbook morals,” Bakugou muttered, watching the neon blur past. “A greatest hits compilation. What’s the track list for? What’s he building?”
Yaoyorozu didn’t have an answer. She turned a corner, navigating toward the glowing, restricted-access lights of the Roppongi district. “We’re about to find out. I’ve fabricated us agency-grade forensic IDs. We have twelve minutes before the lead investigator on scene realizes I’m not currently assigned to this prefecture.”
She brought the car to a stop a block away, in the shadow of a towering condo complex. The rain had softened to a drizzle. Ahead, the flashing red and blue lights of official vehicles painted the wet streets in erratic pulses.
Bakugou pushed the door open, the humid night air clinging to him. He didn’t look back at his friends. His eyes were on the cordon tape, on the lab’s darkened windows. Somewhere in there was a message scorched into metal and silicon, in a language only he could truly read.
He started walking, the others falling in step beside him. Not towards the past. Towards a confrontation the past had been slowly, carefully constructing for years. The first note had been a question.
This blast site was an answer he was terrified to understand.