Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The tape recorder is not clicked on.

[Sorry about the change in formatting. Yeah, it's weird, but our mini-Archivist isn't exactly the narrating type. I know you're used to the whole tape recorder aesthetic, but this won't be too bad, right?]

[...]

[Yeah. Thanks for understanding. And- sorry about not being able to narrate all of it. I can't be everywhere at once, you understand, right? Don't worry, there are still plenty of spiders to watch from.]

The tape recorder is clicked on.

- Good morning, radio audience! Nobody's listening to this, no one human, at least. If you are human and you're hearing this... I regret to inform you that you're not. Human, that is. Sorry!

- Honestly, I'm assuming that no one's there. I'm pretty much just talking into this thing for the sake of it, y'know? Not for long, though, I've got shit to do, but I'm going to make a guest appearance later! You'll see me in a little while, trust me. Or don't. Your opinion doesn't matter anymore, listener.

The tape recorder is clicked off.

Katsuki's been walking since reality broke. Since everything shit itself around him.

There's an eye in the sky instead of the sun. He knows, instinctively, that it has given him power, power that he's using to move freely between the nightmares that he's not quite paying attention to.

He also knows that's it's not paying attention to him.

It's looking, sure. It's looking at everything. But it is Watching London, which is... nowhere near here. Japan is still Japan, for the most part. Katsuki has quite a bit of freedom, comparatively, though he's not sure who he's being compared to in that. Knowledge is currently weird, with only shards of information coming through from Beholding, incomplete and confusing on their own, only pieces of a larger puzzle that he doesn't have the picture for.

That's fine. He's done more with less.

So for now, he's walking. He doesn't really know why, just that it seems like the most productive thing to do. Maybe it's a habit from the hallways, he doesn't know. When in doubt, just keep walking forward. Don't stop. Don't get stuck.

Maybe he's searching for something. Katsuki knows that there is something up ahead, something that might be important, but he has no idea who or what it is. He doesn't know what it will do to him.

He doesn't know what he will do to it.

But there's nothing that he can do to stop it from happening, whatever will happen, so he keeps walking to meet his possible fate.

He's moving through domain after domain, how many has he gone through already? Where did he start out- where was he when everything changed? He'd been at UA, of course, but what did it become? He hadn't exactly stuck around to find out. No one he knows was there anymore, everyone was moved around to the place that best suited the thing they feared most.

He doesn't think that he's passed anyone that he knows, not yet. Will he at all? Or is the world too big now, is everyone's fear too disparate to see it all?

Right now, Katsuki sees a whole hell of a lot of nothing. There's a cloying white fog around, but he doesn't know who or what it hides. This is probably a domain of the Lonely, but fear's gotten a lot more fluid since everything went to hell. It could be anything, really.

So he pays more attention to the dirt beneath his shoes than the fog around him. He doesn't know if it scares him. Maybe it would have, before, but all the world's a nightmare and there's only so much fear to go around. There's only so scared you can be before it becomes redundant, or worse, a total waste of time. Katsuki doesn't waste time, so he ignores the world around him. Maybe that makes him a coward. He prefers the word "pragmatic."

He doesn't disregard his surroundings, though, so he definitely notices when the last tendrils of fog dissipate into nothing, and all that is left is the dirt. The ground is tightly packed, and he sees, up ahead, what looks to be a field of holes.

There is something important in one of them, he can feel it. So he dances around them, avoiding coming close to any one of them that he shouldn't touch.

He knows, instinctively, that he should not touch the one that contains whatever he has been anticipating. He doesn't care. Beholding could go fuck itself, if it cares enough to pay attention to what he's about to do.

Katsuki knows exactly where he needs to reach in, he knows that the dirt contains someone, or something, that he needs to find. So he reaches his hand in, then his arm, up to his shoulder, and he waits.

Something has blocked out the sun.

Ochako has been stuck here for- she doesn't know how long. She's been stuck in this hole, surrounded by dirt so tightly packed that she can barely breathe, let alone move, and the only thing that kept her going was that vision of the sky, just out of reach. Always just out of reach.

But something has blotted it out. Should she keep going anyway? Maybe it was just stray dirt, maybe something small like that- yes. Yes. She still knows what direction "up" is, after all. She can keep going. So she moves, slowly, inexorably, going up to an almost imperceptible degree, like she has been this whole time. Wriggling her way out, millimeter by millimeter, like she is nothing more than a worm. Was she ever more than a worm? Is she even a person anymore, when all that she can do anymore is stay in this disgusting wreck of a hole?

Something tells her to try something different. Maybe she's just gotten tired of the method that she's had, but she decides to try getting an arm out from her side, like she tried long ago, once upon a time. How long ago was that? Days? Months? Years?

It didn't work, then. Something tells her that it might work now.

So she stops climbing, for however long this will take. It's not like it matters, anyway; it's not like this is a race. It's not like she's sinking. The pressure won't let gravity reclaim her, which is the one good thing that the dirt has offered at all. She stops, and she slowly, slowly, presses her right arm against the dirt away from her.

It feels like nothing is happening. It feels like she should give up and go back to crawling. But she doesn't, she doesn't because something has changed. Something has changed and maybe it's enough to set her free.

So Ochako keeps on. She keeps pushing, and pushing, and pushing, until she realizes that her arm isn't touching her body anymore. It's completely surrounded by dirt.

She doesn't know how long it takes to get her arm above her head, but she manages it. After what feels like weeks and weeks of steady pressure, she has finally managed to reach up towards the thing that has blocked the sky. Then, then, she resumes her climb at the exact same rate as before. The dirt is still just as tightly packed around her, the pressure is still just as unyielding. But millimeter by millimeter, she makes her way up, until she finally touches something that isn't soil.

She recoils, at first. The texture is strange. It's smooth, and soft, though those words just barely mean anything to her anymore. They're from the time before. Before- all of this. The texture isn't dirt, and that's... she doesn't quite know how to handle that anymore. Does she keep going up to grab hold of it? Should she go back? Is she even facing the sky at all? She can't even see it- she can't even see anything.

But this is new. Maybe this will finally be her ticket out.

So she keeps on, going up, and up, and up, until she can get a solid grip on whatever else is here. She doesn't use all five fingers- she knows that she might make it float away.

She doesn't remember floating.

She uses three fingers to hold on tight, and the thing does not disappoint. It grips back, and she thinks that this is a human hand. She'd almost forgotten the texture.

Ochako feels it trying to pull her up and out, and she has a sinking feeling that it won't work. She can feel it pulling, and all it does is hurt, but still- maybe it will help. Maybe she will go faster. Maybe it will keep her safe from the rain.

Almost like it was called by her thoughts, she can hear thunder rolling in the distance, and she tries to climb faster, though it doesn't do hardly anything. The rain begins to pour down, and the soil turns to mud, and somehow she does not sink. The hand above her is keeping her steady, and somehow it pulls impossibly harder. She can feel herself rising with it.

Ochako is closer to the sky than she has been in ages. The rain is pouring in earnest, now, and she is still getting closer and closer to freedom. She can almost taste the air, though she isn't sure what a full lungful of it feels like anymore. She doesn't really remember the taste of anything but dirt.

The hand pulling her up has changed the angle at which it is gripping hers. She can feel a slight breeze on her fingers. Is this it? Is this what it means to be free? She is almost out. She'd thought that was impossible.

Her whole hand is out now, and she feels the grip on her loosening. When her arm is free, she'll be able to pull herself the rest of the way. She hopes she will, at least.

She presses her arm, the arm above the surface, against the ground around it. She presses down, and pulls her head and shoulders above the ground. There is light all around her, but her eyes are not used to it. She closes them, partially in pain, partially to resist the temptation to touch them. There are two hands- do they belong to the same person as before?- that grip her beneath the arms, one freed and one with only half the bicep above ground, and they pull her out in one quick, efficient motion.

Uraraka Ochako is freed.

She falls to her knees on the solid, dry ground beneath her, the rain must have stopped as quickly as it started, and she's sitting on dirt and soil that are so, so familiar, and somehow- somehow it doesn't want to swallow her up. She vomits nothing but dirt for a long time, hacking up lungfuls of it in between choked gasps of air. Her eyes sting, from the light, she thinks, until water is running down her face and she realizes that she is crying.

She couldn't afford to cry, down there, because it might loosen the dirt, and she would start to sink. But now, she is sobbing so desperately that she thinks she is getting less oxygen now than she was when she was in the mud.

Her sobs and her coughs both taper off, and she's taking deep, greedy breaths of air like she'll never breathe again. It's a valid fear, considering everything. Finally, finally, she peers up through her bangs and thick chunks of dirt that still obscure her vision, she looks up to see her savior.

It's a blurry figure standing above her, but she recognizes him almost instantly. She doesn't know why Bakugou has come to save her, but she guesses she owes him. He probably wants something from her. They weren't exactly friends, before. More like rivals, maybe.

She used to enjoy sparring with him, actually. It was fun to let loose, a bit, especially before everything went to shit with Mineta and Tokoyami and Aoyama- it had been fun, once.

"Get up, we have to get out of here before the dirt decides to eat you again."

She doesn't even hesitate to take the hand that he offers to her.

Katsuki hadn't realized how lonely he'd been before he saved Pink Cheeks- Uraraka's ass. He'll use nicknames when she's not covered in dirt and occasionally spitting out mud, but right now, it kind of feels like kicking someone when they're down. At the moment, he's walking together with her, and it's nicer than it has any right to be. Neither of them are even talking, and it's still better than when it was just him, alone.

Maybe it's because they'd made it an unspoken contest to see who could crush the most cockroaches on their way out of this domain. Katsuki's in the lead, obviously, but Uraraka's got a fighting chance, at least, she would if she wasn't up against him.

Maybe it's cheating to just Know where the next roach will appear, and when, but Beholding's not offering anything else at the moment, and he won't risk getting its attention by asking for more. He gets the feeling that having a hitchhiker is somewhat discouraged nowadays.

Unfortunately, not being dependent on Beholding also means not knowing where they're going. He doesn't mind that, and he suspects Uraraka wouldn't, either, but long-term it would probably be better to figure out if there's anywhere marginally safe enough to clean off, if such a place exists anymore. He suspects that unless they stumble on one themselves, they're not going to find out if there is a place like that at all. The risk is too great to ask Beholding, not when it could see a human out of her place and drag her back, kicking and screaming. Not when it could keep him from potentially doing this same thing again.

So they keep making their way forward, with no clue about where that will lead. As the ground beneath them gives way to cement, as the last of the bugs skitters away, and as the sky goes from sky to circus tent, Katsuki knows that he's made the right choice. Uraraka's footsteps, slightly behind his, are as strong and sure as they ever were, tapping at the stone beneath them and doing far more than his own mind ever could to reassure him that this is real. The dancers are nothing more than mannequins, the torturers, and the tortured, though there is very little difference between them here. He sees faces change hands as easily as hats, nothing more than things to scrabble over and win, for a moment, before that victory is ripped away.

Maybe he should stop looking. He can't, though, he can't lose Uraraka in the mess of faces. He doesn't know how much the people in these domains can perceive him, perceive them, how vulnerable they are to attack. He doesn't know if he's some kind of resistant, or if he's just gotten lucky so far.

But looking around at this is going to get someone hurt. He's a vessel for Beholding; if it takes interest in what he sees, it will See someone who doesn't belong, and it will adjust accordingly, he's sure of it. So Katsuki doesn't stop; instead, he lags behind Uraraka, and tells her to keep going forward, while he closes his eyes, and takes a solid grip on her sleeve. Now, he won't lose her, but the Beholding won't see her. It's not a perfect solution, but it works.

Katsuki can still hear calliope music swirling around him, seeming louder than it is due to the oppressive heat of the circus tent, like they decided to stage the domain on a summers' day just to torture him more. He pays attention to the heat more than the screams, so he doesn't start to consume the fear around him. So he doesn't damn Uraraka once more.

So he notices when the cold breeze cuts through the heat and the sweat-stained humidity, when the music fades away to nothing but muffled footsteps and silence, back to the way that it had been. This is when he opens his eyes, to see Uraraka in front of him, having kept her face, and the both of them surrounded by fog.

It is only clear enough to see a narrow driveway ahead, leading up into a traditional Japanese style manor. There are no cars in front, and the fog is creeping up the sides; the only thing that cuts through the bleak surroundings is a singular cherry blossom tree in the front. Its branches are blackened and they cut through the air, completely bald of leaves or flowers or anything but sharp wood the color of char.

They have no choice but to go inside. Braving the fog doesn't seem a wise option, and there is something in there, Katsuki can sense it. It feels quite a bit like Uraraka did, actually; it feels important. It feels like he knows it, even, though they won't find out until they go inside.

Katsuki takes the lead again, and gets up to the gate, which creaks open without any input from him.

The front door is the same. Maybe he should be feeling some sort of anticipation, but there's nothing, just an empty house that the both of them are tracking dirt and insect remnants inside of. There are no guest shoes, but he and Uraraka take their shoes off anyway. It would be rude not to, and some creeping sense tells Katsuki that they need to play by the rules, in this one.

"It's been a long time since I've seen either of you."

Katsuki and Uraraka look up at the voice, as one, and see that IcyHot bastard standing in front of them, looking as unbothered as ever. The sight fills Katsuki with so much anger, because who gave him the right to just stand there while everyone else is suffering? Who the fuck gave him the right to ignore everything that's happening outside? Why the hell-

"Uraraka, if you want, there's a bathroom upstairs with a shower, connected to my sister's old bedroom. Some of her clothes will probably fit you. It's the first door on the left, though I advise you don't go exploring here."

Uraraka nods at him, and Katsuki knows that he has just lost an ally. As she troops upstairs, however, Half-n-Half stops her, and calls out an ominous warning:

"Whatever you do, don't get scared."

Then he turns to look Katsuki in the eye, and leads them both over to the kitchen.

"Don't get scared?" Ochako is not fond of that, thank you. What the hell is in this house? It's got to be another domain, but what power does Todoroki have to walk freely within it? He's not one of the Eye people, she knows that; he can't compel anything out of anyone, he can't just Know anything, unless he asks Deku about it.

She'd kind of figured that the only people that still had power here were the ones favored by the Eye, considering the only person that she'd seen resisting everything else had been Bakugou. Maybe other Powers have... different... powers? That sounds about right, probably.

Ochako stops her musings to go into the first door on the left, where she finds a painfully plain bedroom connected to a small en suite bathroom. Todoroki's sister must have cleaned it out when she left, or- hadn't she gone missing, actually? Todoroki didn't seem too concerned, but then again, he never seems concerned, so that might not be the best metric.

Either way, it's the only shower that she has access to, so she turns the water on and strips off her disgusting clothes. They all look like a pile of mud when she puts them down on the floor, and she decides that it would probably be a good idea to take Todoroki up on his offer of clothes, too.

Ochako looks down at her hands, then, and decides that maybe grabbing clothes would be better after the shower. Maybe she should wash her hands beforehand? In order to keep all of that mud from just spreading around when the water warms up? That seems like a good idea.

Most of the dirt washes away easily from her hands, except there is still some under her fingernails. She does her best to pick the dirt out, but it is still under her fingernails. She digs the nails of one hand under the nails of the other, but there is still dirt under her fingernails. She keeps doing this, until she can feel the steam from the shower running without her and there is blood staining her hands.

There is still dirt under her fingernails.

She's not- she's not scared. The dirt just won't come out of her fingernails. That's fine. That's fine. She turns to go to the shower and wash the rest of it off.

Ochako scrubs at her skin until it is red and raw, and then she continues scrubbing. She doesn't know if she will ever feel clean again, but she knows that she will try. She scrubs at her hair until her hands stop coming away brown, and then she keeps going. She scrapes at her scalp until her fingers come away red. Ochako doesn't stop relentlessly, meticulously scrubbing every inch of her skin until the water has long gone cold, and she's sure that the steam isn't steam anymore. If she's been crying in here, well; that's between her and the water.

When she steps out, she wraps a towel around herself and doesn't think about looking in the mirror to see her own dirt-streaked face all over again. She doesn't think about seeing a spot that she missed out of the corner of her eye. The mirror's too fogged up, anyway; she can barely see a cloudy figure that vaguely resembles her reflection.

In the dresser, Ochako finds a loose blue shirt, and some black sweatpants. She puts them on and relishes the way that she can feel the fabric fall away from her, hardly touching her skin at all. As she moves to exit the bedroom, she sees what she first thought was some dirt that she'd tracked in skitter away through a vent. Just a spider, then. Opening the bedroom door back into the hallway, she notices that the whole hall is full of fog that wasn't there when she walked up here. Someone must have opened a window, she decides. Someone must have opened a window.

She sees a single tendril of icy fog make its way towards her, and she repeats the mantra. Someone must have opened a window. This fog can't do anything to her. It's normal. It's only in here because someone opened a window. She can still feel it at her back as she walks downstairs to reunite with Todoroki and Bakugou, and even on the stairs, she can hear them shouting.

Well. She hears Bakugou shouting.

The words are clearer when she gets closer to the kitchen, but he's still muffled by the wall. As she opens the door to get inside, however, he stops, and Todoroki takes notice of her.

"Ah. Hello, Uraraka. Do you want some tea? I've only got earl grey, but it's not bad." Ochako takes a second to register some details of his appearance that she hadn't clocked when she'd come in earlier; his eyes are rimmed with red, and the one on his right is puffed up like he's been crying. His hair isn't parted neatly like it usually is, instead, strands are sticking out on either side of his head. He somehow looks like he hasn't slept in days, even though nobody even needs sleep anymore. She doesn't know if she should say anything about it, and anyway, what would she say- You look like shit? It's true, but she won't be rude.

So she glances around for a moment and notices a cup that she presumes was full of tea for Bakugou, but it must have gone cold. She nods and smiles at Todoroki's offer, doesn't say a word about how he looks, and privately she can't wait to taste something other than dirt.

Todoroki grabs a small, plain, white cup, and pours water into it from an electric kettle that she hadn't noticed by the stove. He pulls a bag of earl grey from a box on the counter, and hands it over to her, plain. She doesn't generally drink tea with anything in it, so she doesn't ask about it.

She thinks that it's the best thing that she's ever had, though maybe she's biased by the fact that she hasn't had anything in so long. Todoroki and Bakugou just stand there in awkward silence, for a moment, and Ochako thinks that she knows what they were arguing about.

"I could kick your ass in roach-stomping." She's looking at Todoroki when she says this, and she says it mostly to break the tension, but she almost chokes on her tea when Todoroki turns to Bakugou and instantly makes the biggest puppy eyes she's ever seen from him.

"Why are you looking at me? She's right." Somehow Todoroki turns the puppy eyes even bigger, and damn, she'd thought Deku was a menace with that!

"I don't care. I'm not supporting you. She can stomp more roaches than you ever could." Todoroki didn't even say anything! Ochako is trying not to laugh, really, she is, but she snorts loudly and the other two crack small smiles of their own.

"Why don't we go to the dining room?" Todoroki asks, and Ochako feels the atmosphere get heavy again. She takes her cup with her, while she sees Bakugou leave his behind. Todoroki leads the both of them over to a dining room table that is covered in papers. Todoroki grabs them and puts them into a small pile on the chair next to him before she can see what's on them.

They all take a seat around the table, and wait for someone else to break the silence. Finally, she decides to speak up.

"Where are we going next?" She doesn't mean to presume, but she's pretty sure that Todoroki isn't about to host them for the foreseeable future, and Bakugou doesn't seem like he'll be able to stand staying in a house with Todoroki without it ending in one or both of them beat to a pulp.

"We're going to look for the others and get them out too." He glares at Todoroki as he says this, and she looks over at him to see that he's got a look of wistfulness on his face. His eyes are downcast. This must be what their argument was about.

"You can't do it. It isn't possible."

"What the fuck is she, then, a hallucination?"

All of a sudden, they've both become oblivious to her presence, being sucked back into the argument that they must have been having when she was upstairs.

"No, no, Uraraka is here, but her presence is luck, not something that you can repeat."

"And how do you know that?"

"Because if those of us who are free had any kind of power, my mother wouldn't still be stuck in her own head!"

Todoroki's stood up, now, and she can see tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He must have been bursting to say this for the whole time of the previous argument, and this is certainly the most emotional that she's ever seen him. There are graphite marks and ink stains on his shaking, clenched fists. His shoulders are tight, like he's keeping himself from hunching up into a defensive curl. His cheat is heaving unevenly, like he's trying not to sob. Quite frankly, he looks like a wreck, but right now- he's standing strong. He is not backing down.

Bakugou, for his part, looks taken aback, before he responds not with an argument, but with a question.

"She's here, isn't she?"

Todoroki doesn't respond. He doesn't need to. He just sits back down, and stares absently at the pile of papers next to him.

Ochako feels like she's intruding. She's friends with Todoroki, but she's just not as close to him as Bakugou is, and this... this feels deeply personal. So she just stares into her teacup and doesn't say a word.

"How many times have you tried to get her out?"

It takes a long time for Todoroki to respond, and even then, it's quiet. He's looking down at his hands, twisting his fingers together.

"I've tried everything. I even tried to get Izuku to help, but he- he's gone radio silent. I know where he is, I know how to contact him, but he hasn't responded, not once, and he's my best hope of doing anything. He's more powerful than you, Bakugou, and if he's gone because he tried to do what you're doing now- "

"That's not it. The Beholding's paying more attention to me than it is him, and the only reason that it wouldn't have worked is if he got caught. There has to be another reason for it."

"... Even so. Go and try to save everyone, I'm not stopping you. I'll even keep Uraraka here instead of forcing her to be dragged back when you inevitably fail, if she doesn't mind it, but I'm not going to help you. I'm not going to support you, because all you're going to do is get yourself killed, or, in all likelihood, worse."

At this, Ochako stiffens in indignation, and almost immediately chimes in on her own.

"I don't appreciate being talked about like I'm not here. I'm sorry about your mom, Todoroki, but that doesn't mean you can talk about me like I'm just something that Bakugou picked up by happenstance. You and him are different, even I know that, so I don't see why you can say that he can't rescue anyone when you haven't even tried to see if he can do what you can't."

A hush falls over the table, and both boys look over at her like they'd forgotten that she was there. That's fine, as long as they know that she's here now. Besides, she can practically hear the gears turning in their heads as the both of them consider what she'd said.

"If you fail... "

"If I fail then I'm getting a new plan to save everyone's asses. I'll go to London if I have to, I'll find a way, but right now that seems like a pipe dream. Getting people out doesn't. I know that I can't get everyone out, I know that picking and choosing who to save is no real moral justice, but- "

"Nobody said anything about that. I don't care who you do or don't save, just get my mother out first. If you even can."

"Fine. I will. Where is she?" Everybody's stood up, now, and Ochako doesn't know if she should go with them. Todoroki starts leading Bakugou to the stairs, before they stop and her question is answered.

"Are you coming with or not?" Bakugou snaps it at her, and she rushes out to join them, abandoning her empty cup on the table. Todoroki doesn't look opposed, either, which is probably the closest thing she's going to get to an offer to come along. Privately, even though she'll probably be really awkward just standing there while Bakugou does his thing, she's glad that she isn't being left alone. This house gives her the creeps, though she doubts that anywhere else is better.

She trails behind Todoroki as he leads both of them up the stairs and through the hall that was full of fog earlier. They go farther down the hall than she thinks should be possible, but then again, what is and isn't possible aren't bound by physical laws anymore. There are more doors than there are people she knows; this must be a popular domain.

They don't stop until they get to the very end of the hallway, to what must be the master bedroom, with fog creeping out from underneath the door.

Todoroki knocks on the door, twice, before he goes in on his own. He looks over to where his mother is, and he does not seem surprised.

Todoroki Rei is sitting on the bed, her back against the headboard, her knees tucked up to her chest. Her eyes look distant, and every muscle is tight. Ochako really feels like she shouldn't be seeing this, but she doesn't want to brave the hallway again, not when she's powerless to stop the fog from taking her. Not when she knows that Todoroki can't get her out. Is this what he'd meant by his warning earlier? Don't get scared- that must have been the best advice that he could have offered, under the circumstances.

Either way, all that Ochako can do is stand in the doorway and watch as Bakugou walks over to Todoroki's mom. He waves a hand in front of her face, almost experimentally, and of course it does nothing.

Slowly, and so, so gently, Bakugou takes a soft grip of her forearms, and very quietly, he says, "Blink once if you can hear me."

For a long moment, Ochako thinks it isn't going to work. Mrs. Todoroki's eyes remain wide open, and Bakugou sags in momentary defeat until she blinks.

Todoroki himself has adopted a look of surprise, which for him is very slightly widened eyes, but clearly she must not have done this in his presence. Bakugou has straightened up, and already he's donned a small smirk of triumph. He knows that this is going to work. He has to be sure of it, because Ochako is sure of him.

Again, in that same, soft tone that is almost alien coming from someone like Bakugou, "Great. I need you to match my breathing. In for five. Hold for two. Out for seven. Again, come on, you can do this."

It repeats, for a while, Bakugou repeating the breathing exercises that she remembers being taught so long ago. In the back of her mind, she knows that Todoroki must have tried this. It's one of the first things they've been trained to do. Bakugou just has the power to make contact with people here, while Todoroki doesn't.

It takes a long time before Mrs. Todoroki actually relaxes, and seems to come out of her mental fog, but she does. Bakugou backs away, and she blinks and looks around. Her whole face lights up when she sees Todoroki, who immediately goes rushing to her bedside.

This is private. Ochako should not be witnessing this. She moves to leave, and Bakugou turns away to follow her, when Todoroki says, forcefully, "Wait."

"Hagakure and Asui are in Lonely domains too, though I don't know where. They aren't here. Izuku's physically close, you might not see anyone before you get to him. Dabi and Toushou might give you trouble, but they're pretty far, and if they do then tell them that I said you can pass through. Go out the back door to get through here. Good luck."

He says all of this without once looking away from his mother, like he's afraid that if he blinks, she'll go back to the way she was. Ochako and Bakugou really do leave, this time, and as they're speeding through the hall she can hear a faint, "Were those your friends from school?"

They both troop back to the front to grab their shoes, which are caked in dirt and grime, but it's not like clean shoes would stay that way out there. Bakugou leads her out of the back door like Todoroki had said, and of course, instead of a real garden there is something worse.

There are people twisted into the shape of plants here, and when she looks back at where the house should be, there are only more of those creations.

The only way to walk is forward, really, and Bakugou does the same thing he'd done in the circus tent; he'd let her take the lead, and lagged behind with a hold on her sleeve and his eyes shut tight. She won't question it when he does it again, especially considering that he'd been looking around with a detached sort of curiosity earlier. She doesn't think that he's scared, but she does think that there is a reason for his behavior.

With that, she troops forward, and brushes past the people near her. They can't see her, and she doesn't know them. She tries not to feel guilty about leaving them to rot.

In almost no time at all, they're in another domain, but Bakugou still doesn't open his eyes. She suspects that he will when he knows that the time is right, but for right now, the ground is soaked in blood and she tries not to think of it as rain again.

Is that fucked up? That she would rather be walking through blood-soaked muck than normal mud? She didn't choke on blood. She has the right to have a preference of things to walk through, things that tried to crush her and things that didn't.

The smell of blood and piss stings her eyes. She hopes that nobody she knows is here, because she doesn't want to stay here any longer than necessary and she's sure that this is even more of a hell to the people that she sees running by.

Of course, when it ends it's not a moment too soon. She and Bakugou track blood on the grass, and she sees him open his eyes behind her.

The both of them stop, for a moment. Someone is here, and if Todoroki is to be believed, it's probably Deku. It might not be, though, because Todoroki doesn't know everything.

Suddenly, someone bolts past her with wild eyes, running through the trees around them and diving into a bush nearby. A small drone comes trundling past soon after, from the same direction that the person came from. It's got something attached to the bottom, but it's too high up for her to get a good look.

The entire atmosphere is tense, like something is waiting just past this tree, or that bush, or that branch, like something is waiting to find them, and get them. She doesn't like it here, and she hopes that Deku isn't trapped here.

Bakugou takes that moment to shove the plants aside and plow past her, leaving her to follow in his wake. Clearly, he knows something that she doesn't; he must know who's trapped here.

She opens her mouth to voice it, to ask- "Where are we?"

Bakugou doesn't look back at her when he answers.

"We're in Deku's Domain."

Chapter Text

Katsuki plows ahead through the plants, with Pink Cheeks trailing along behind him. He doesn't like it here, and he can tell that she doesn't, either. He feels like he's being Watched, he feels like he's being hunted, and the only sounds that he can hear are those of desperate runners and the buzzing of those damned drones. Deku's still somewhere ahead, though, so forward is where they are going.

Maybe Deku isn't ahead, though, maybe it's just whoever rose up to replace him after he tried something stupid. IcyHot had said that he didn't respond to any attempts at contact, which is not at all like the Deku that he knows. He still feels a looming anticipation ahead, though, a feeling that's just like the ones that he had with Half-n-Half and Round Face.

The one thing that he knows for a fact is that Deku is not trapped here. More accurately- he's not being tortured here. He said it himself- he's had a near-death experience. Most people would define that as surviving a dangerous situation, but in Heroics, where almost every working day can be called a "near-death experience," it's become shorthand for something else. Many heroes wouldn't say they'd had a near-death experience unless they'd flatlined and come back after. Deku knew that when he'd said it, too, however long ago that was- he'd known because Aizawa had said something about it in his lecture on common codes in the field. Not only that, but he admitted to having gained new powers of a strange or uncertain origin when Aizawa asked, during that Section lecture in the dorms, and Katsuki knows damn well that he wasn't talking about his quirk.

All of this combined to say that there's no way in hell Deku wouldn't have power, especially since IcyHot has it too. There's no way that one of them has a domain and the other doesn't.

So this is, or was, without a doubt, Deku's Domain.

This whole place is outdoors, though, so finding him would be nigh-impossible if Katsuki didn't have the sneaking suspicion that whoever has control of this domain is the one controlling all the drones. Five of them have passed overhead since they've been walking, so it's not like he can just be standing around somewhere with a remote control; there has to be a base of operations.

After walking for some time, dodging the people barreling past with their eyes darting about in fear, they come across a small, wooden structure, and Katsuki feels vindicated. Whoever is in control of this domain is here, he's sure of it, so he doesn't hesitate to climb up the wooden stairs and pound on the door. He can feel Round Face behind him, too, and he'd heard her footsteps following him the whole way, which is good, considering that if it is Deku... something is probably wrong.

They wait a few moments more for an answer at the door, but there is none. Katsuki thinks, if he strains his ears, that he might hear sound coming from inside, but that could be his imagination. Either way, nobody's answered, so he pounds on the door again, before he tries the handle to find that it isn't even locked.

Katsuki pushes the door open to find a room that looks to be about as large on the inside as the structure is on the outside; there are doors leading off of it, though, when there was only one door leading to the inside from the outside. Do the laws of physics mean nothing anymore? Katsuki silently mourns in his head.

Somehow, the place must be getting some kind of access to electricity, considering the fact that there are multiple television-sized screens taking up half of the wall to their right. The screens are connected to each other with disorganized, brightly-colored cables, which are in turn connected to various buttons, keys, knobs, dials, and other electronic control devices that are sitting on a desk just below them. In the corner of the desk, close to the wall, there is a small, portable radio, while on the corner opposite, still almost flush to the wall, is a small wooden box with "Mail" written haphazardly on the front. In front of the desk, there is an empty black office chair, facing away from the desk and placed somewhat askew from it, as though whoever had vacated it decided to turn around before standing.

The screens themselves show nothing but static.

Next to the screens, and on the wall across from the door, are three short file cabinets, covered in papers that are scattered haphazardly across their tops. On the wall behind the file cabinets is a corkboard that is covered in typed out memos and papers, handwritten notes, blurry photographs, and sticky notes with nothing but strange drawings on them, all connected by red string. Next to the short file cabinets is a fourth, taller file cabinet, out of the way of the corkboard. On top of it is a styrofoam head, with a bedazzled paper crown precariously balanced on top of it. There is a piece of torn notebook paper taped to the front of the cabinet, just below the styrofoam head, with a handwritten message on it, but Katsuki can't tell what it says without getting closer.

On the wall to the left of the door, there are two plain wooden doors, identical to the one that they've just walked through. Both of them are closed.

Katsuki walks over to the styrofoam head to see what is written under it, and Pink Cheeks follows suit. The crown is lopsided, and covered in plastic green stick-on gems, the kind that come on sheets that cost ¥100, if that. The point in the front of it is the tallest of them; the point on its right, while smaller, has the letter "A" written below the green jewels, in what looks like green marker. The point on the left is in a similar state, though with fewer green jewels and the letter "B" written in orange. Katsuki decides that it's useless to walk over there, anyway, because as he gets closer, he realizes that the message below it is written in French, which he does not speak.

"Une couronne a beaucoup de pointes." The fuck does that even mean? He only knows that it's French because it says "beaucoup," which has come out of Aoyama's mouth enough that if he didn't remember it he'd have to have experienced some form of brain damage.

"A crown has many points." The voice comes from behind them, and Katsuki belatedly notices that a door has opened. Both he and Pink Cheeks have whipped around to face Deku, who looks at them with a vaguely neutral expression.

Deku's wearing his hero costume, that's the first thing that Katsuki notices. He's wearing his costume but it looks... different. The green is darker than it should be, closer to black than it normally is. The utility belt is different too; there's a sheath for a massive dagger on Deku's right hip, along with what appears to be a pistol on his left. The red of his shoes looks more like crimson than the traffic light tone that they usually are. He isn't wearing the full helmet, though, and his mouth guard rests in front of his throat, allowing for his full face to be visible.

"That's what it means. The reason for it's probably somewhere over there, you're welcome to look at those papers if you want. I have stuff to do, though, so I can't look with you." With that, Deku turns to the wall of screens and sits at the desk. His eyes are flicking between the screens, and he's pressing buttons and flipping switches like they're doing something or anything, really, to change the static overlay.

Katsuki turns to the papers on the file cabinets, while Round Face follows Deku, probably to bombard him with questions. He sifts through the papers, even looks through the file cabinets for good measure, but there is nothing comprehensible on them. There are pages and pages covered in scribbles; some pages are covered in random letters; others have handprints in what looks like blood. The corkboard is just as bad; nothing, as he looks closer, has been written in any kind of real language at all. There are no patterns. There is no consistency. Only the chaos of a madman.

He turns back to where Deku is sitting, to see Round Face trying to engage him in conversation, but she's just being ignored. It's like he can't even hear her; his focus is completely on the screens in front of him.

All that he needs is just one little push. Pink Cheeks can take it from there.

"What the fuck are you doing, nerd?" Just like that, Deku's turned towards them, and the look on his face shows that he can't wait to spit the answer out, but- there's an almost painful neutrality that doesn't quite cover it, like he's trying and failing to be serious.

"I was asked to help the heroes on a case. I'm in charge of the search for the lynchpin of it, we've been looking all over for it." Katsuki thinks that it's interesting how deluded he is, how something must have come up with a lie to tell him, but he nods at Pink Cheeks and she takes center stage. He figures that he probably can't pull Deku out, not alone, not when their relationship had been as tumultuous as it was, before everything fell apart.

"Who asked you?" It's a simple question, but it asks for specifics that Deku probably doesn't have.

"Endeavor." That's a lie. Endeavor died ages ago, and they never did find the culprit. Round Face picks up on it, too, uses it more gently than he would have.

"Endeavor's dead. Was it one of his sidekicks, is that what you meant?"

"No, it wasn't. It was... " He trails off as he gets distracted by one of the screens. He's standing, now, abandoned his chair to the wayside. He's not completely engrossed in the screens like he was, but it's close.

"How did you get here, Deku? Did you walk?" Deku's eyebrows furrow as he doubtlessly tries to remember something that never happened.

"I don't- "

"Do you know what's outside of these walls?" Pink Cheeks is getting steadily closer, and right now she's more behind him than next to him.

"I- " Deku looks more confused, now, more panicked, slightly shaky as his new world crumbles around his ears.

"Do you know what's happening right now?"

"Shut up!" Deku screams it and his voice cracks in the middle, and he punches the screen directly in front of him. The screen goes black, with white flickering on its edges, and on the edges of the cracks in the glass that reach out like spiderwebs from where Deku's fist is centered. He's looking at the screen, now, and Round Face is reflected in it, looking at his reflection's face that is covered in lines.

"What are you even looking for, Midoriya?"

Deku's crying now, and Katsuki dimly notes that he should feel a little bad about this. He doesn't, though. Not even for a second.

"I don't know."

Deku slowly pulls his fist away from the broken screen. He glances around at the others, where the static is slowly clearing to show grainy images of what looks to be the woods outside.

"Where is everyone?" Deku's the one asking, now, and somehow it isn't compulsion. Katsuki takes over to explain, so Uraraka doesn't have to think about where she had been. Where she had been pulled from. Katsuki knows exactly what it's like to be reminded of things that he never wanted to think about again, so he'll spare her the pain of trying to talk about it.

"Everyone is in their own personal hellscape, or managing someone else's. Like you are, right now." Just like that, the screens get brighter. Clearer.

"Do you remember how you got here, now?"

Deku isn't looking at him. He's looking at the screens, the feed from the drones, chasing people, hunting them down so they could be seen. He's looking at them with something akin to horror, but not quite.

"Kacchan... have I been hurting people?"

"Yes." He doesn't sugarcoat it. There's no point. It's in Deku's nature to hurt, now more than ever, and Katsuki's not going to lie and say that it isn't.

"You can't stop, either. It's not possible anymore. Hurt or be hurt, torture or be tortured, because death is too much of a mercy in this world." He spits it bitterly, venomously, because reality has never been kind but fuck he just wants it to be fair. This isn't fair. This is the furthest thing possible from fair.

"How are you here, then? Was I- ?"

"No, no you weren't, stop beating yourself up like you always do. I was allowed to walk freely, and I pulled Round Face out of where she got put. We stopped by your boyfriend's place, you've been ghosting him, apparently, so stop it, and now we're here."

Deku looks at the both of them, for a moment, before letting out a single, sad pity-laugh, like he's just realized something that isn't funny in the slightest.

"Beholding probably didn't like you going along, did it?" He's directed this comment to Pink Cheeks, and he really isn't wrong, either, and all of them know it. An answer isn't needed for this, because the question wasn't even really a question. They know.

"I didn't think so. I have spare beds here, if the two of you want to stay- "

"No." Katsuki barks it out, sharply, and he doesn't really mean to be as harsh as he must be because Deku flinches back, away from him.

"No, I can't stay. There are more people that I need to get out of wherever they are, and there's no one doing it but me."

"No one you know of, you mean." Is Deku seriously trying to convince him to stay? He knows damn well that there are more people that are out there, more people that need saving, was he a hero-in-training or not?

"That's true, but out of everyone I know, you're the most likely other candidate. No one's going around saving random people anymore. No one can afford that shit. Quit being naïve and let me help people we know." Deku turns away at this, and Katsuki sees that his hands are shaking again.

"I can't- I don't- what if I go back to that? What if I forget again? I can't do that, I won't, if you leave me alone it'll just happen again and I don't want it to happen again but I don't know how to stop it on my own- "

"There's an easy solution to this." Pink Cheeks pipes up for the first time since Deku snapped out of it, and Katsuki's inclined to listen to her. Deku turns to her, too, and she continues.

"Bakugou can go and keep doing what he's been doing, and I can stay here, if you need someone to keep you from going back to whatever delusion you were living in." It's not a bad idea, as long as she doesn't let him fall far enough that he can't hear her anymore. She can do that, though, she's dependable like that. It also handily solves the problem of her possibly getting caught later down the line because Katsuki fucked up, so he can't think of any objections to it at all. Deku turns to him, almost as if asking for permission, and Katsuki just rolls his eyes.

"I'll be fine going it alone, don't give yourself a heart attack over it. I might see you two eventually, so if I don't- " Katsuki's turned back towards the door, fully intending to leave, before Deku interrupts him.

"Wait!" Katsuki turns back to face him, sure that his face is reflecting how unimpressed he is right now.

"If you- if there's anyone else, I- I have more space for more people, so if you- " This is getting painful, so Katsuki cuts him off right there.

"If I see any of your loser friends, I'll bring them back here. Happy?" Deku looks like he wants to respond to the jab, but he just nods. Round Face has her work cut out for her.

"Cool. If that's all- "

"No! Wait! One more thing!" Katsuki tilts his head to the ceiling for a moment, that's how fucking hard he's rolling his eyes right now.

"What, nerd?"

"You were asking about the crown earlier, right?" Now Katsuki's interest is piqued. He raises a single eyebrow, and gestures for Deku to continue.

"I don't know what exactly it means, as a- as a whole, but I know the big point in front represents a guy named Jonah Magnus. I don't know who that is, unless he's whoever's in charge of the Magnus Institute? That seems like it'd be plausible, I'll have to think on it, but that's off-topic. The point next to it, the one with the "A," that represents The Archivist, the guy that was doing the interviews for the Statements. I have no idea who or what the last one represents, though, or what the label means by 'A crown has many points,' but, uh, yeah. That's all I know. About that."

That's not much information, but it's better than nothing, and anyway, it's not like he's sure that the crown actually means anything. It could just be decoration, for all he knows. He'll thank the nerd, though, because fuck if he doesn't need something so he can drop the kicked-puppy look that he's picked up.

"Thanks, Deku. See you at some point." He waves as he goes out the door, and that should be the end of that.

He hears Pink Cheeks' voice through the door, and it's slightly muffled, but still audible, "Hey, does this radio work?"

He decides to leave them to it, and walks down the stairs. When he gets to the bottom, though, he can hear vaguely familiar music playing through the wall. He turns, and bolts back up the stairs so he can burst back inside to ask-

"Is that fucking Panic! at the Disco?"

Both Deku and Round Face startle where they're standing, with the portable radio still in Pink Cheeks' hands and still blaring the unmistakable sound of pre-quirk alt rock.

"What- didn't you leave? Also, who?" He heard music he knew, so he came back, she doesn't need to be so rude about it, fucking hell.

"Pre-quirk band. Who's playing pre-quirk music?"

"Probably whoever's in control of the radio station, if I had to guess, I mean, I don't exactly have any kind of music player besides the radio here, so I can't play anything else. Who knew Kacchan liked pre-quirk music?" The last part of Deku's statement seems like it was meant to be muttered to himself, but Katsuki can hear it just fine.

"That's fucking weird. Something's off about that. I'll find out if I come across the station, though, so I'll see you later." With that, he turns back out the door and hopefully, he'll actually fucking leave.

He makes it all the way down the stairs with no interruption, so maybe he really will leave this time. He walks around to the back of the control-room-base-thing, and continues through in the direction that he and Pink Cheeks had been going before. Eventually, the trees thin, and the buzzing of drones fades away.

The dirt gives way to pavement, and all of a sudden, Katsuki's walking on a bridge. Cars zip past him, some with drivers, some with mannequins in their place. The drivers are all terrified, clutching their wheels with white-knuckled grips. Almost as if in slow motion, Katsuki sees a car in one lane careen into another, and he knows exactly what's going to happen.

At first, it's just a pileup. A thick clump of cars smashed together, only growing in size as more and more join, and Katsuki can smell the gasoline leaking from one of their tanks. Something unfortunate is about to happen. He wonders how many times it's happened already.

Almost as if on cue, something catches alight, and it's only a matter of time before the fire reaches the puddle of gasoline. What is this? Desolation, because of the loss of the car and everything in it? Vast, because of the inevitable fall? Buried, because of the swim below?

Not his problem. He doesn't know anyone here. Katsuki just needs to cross this bridge before it all goes up in flames. He's all the way to the end of the bridge when he hears the explosion behind him, and it's on to the next horror.

The ground is still solid beneath his feet, but now night has fallen and he's walking on a path that's made to be walked on. There are graves, here, an old burial ground from the Quirk Wars, when they refused to cremate anyone who had been "contaminated" by quirks. Bodies were buried to "contain the disease." This isn't what the cemetery represents now, though, and there are people walking slowly past him, towards the right, following the line of headstones towards an inevitable demise.

Katsuki doesn't need to be vigilant, here. There is no danger as long as he stays on the path. He doesn't need to close his eyes, either, Beholding can pay as much attention to him as it wants.

Katsuki can ask for whatever information he wants.

He looks up at the eye in the sky that is surrounded by darkness, he looks up almost as if in prayer, and he Asks.

"Where are they?" He knows exactly who he's asking for. The four people that he needs to pull out of their nightmares.

"Kirishima Eijirou, Ashido Mina, Kaminari Denki, and Sero Hanta, where are they?"

Katsuki doesn't get an answer, for a moment, and he thinks that Beholding really has given him power just to abandon him completely. Then, then, all of a sudden he gets a skull-splitting headache, one that feels like a pickaxe is being driven straight through his brain, and he Sees.

He Sees them. All four of them. All at once, none in the same place but all in one domain. Running through halls that change color to an imperceptible degree, passing by locked door after locked door, knowing that there is no escape. They all have hotel keys. Maybe these are not the hallways that they originally were trapped in, but it seems like this is the closest approximation.

This does not answer the question, but all of a sudden, he Knows.

The hotel is in London.

London is- fuck, London is oceans away and there's no way to get there anymore. There's no way to get there anymore.

Dimly, Katsuki notices that he's fallen on the ground, but he doesn't care. His chest is tight and he can't even breathe because there's no way to get there anymore. He can't- he can't see them, he can't get them out, he'll never- he'll never get to be there with them again. With any of them. He won't be able to hold Eijirou's hand anymore, and fuck that hurts more than it should because he was never the one who liked holding hands but Eijirou's never going to insist on it again and-

Stop. Breathe. They're not dead. No one's dead. Katsuki will claw his way there. He'll find a way. He always does. He's done the impossible before and he'll do it again if it kills him.

He'll find a way. He swears it to them, now, and even though there's no way for them to know he hopes that they can feel it. He hopes that they know that they will get out, one way or another.

Katsuki picks himself up from the ground that he'd fallen on, and he does what he does best. He keeps moving forward. If his face is wet, if his breathing's still not right, then so fucking be it.

Katsuki keeps walking, he doesn't know for how long. He just walks and waits for that feeling again, that anticipation, the knowledge that someone he knows is up ahead. Maybe then he'll be able to stop thinking about it. Maybe then he'll be able to focus on the present, instead of formulating half-baked plans that won't work, and throwing them away for five more increasingly hare-brained schemes to take their place.

He walks through a city, full of impossibly tall towers and people falling from impossible heights, and he doesn't get that feeling that he's looking for until he reaches the city's edge. It borders on what looks like a desert, but something tells him that it shouldn't look like that. He doesn't see anyone there.

He walks forward, and the city fades behind him. He still sees no one. There is no fear in this place, he's sure of it.

There is a radio tower ahead.

There is no choice but to go inside. Whoever or whatever is in there, they're important. When Katsuki gets to the door, bright red and just as thick as the concrete wall around it, he's sure that it is locked, but when he tries it, it opens easily.

The lobby is empty. There's a desk that might have presumably been for a receptionist, with an old rotary phone sitting on top of it and papers scattered across it. Whoever had been sitting here must have left in a hurry. Katsuki walks past, looking for any sign of life at all, and he ignores the way that his footsteps echo on the dusty linoleum.

The fluorescent lights flicker above him as he looks. One of them even pops as he walks below it. There are bland corporate posters on the walls, things that espouse a love for hard work and perseverance, but they all look brand-new and practically untouched. There are desks placed throughout the rooms that he passes through, all in perfectly neat rows, with absolutely nothing out of place. Each and every one is meticulously organized, and all of them are exactly the same. The most unique thing that he finds is that one of them has a pen that's slightly askew.

There is a calendar that is on a wall, somewhere. About half of the days are crossed out of the page that's being displayed, but he has no idea what month it's supposed to be. The numbers and letters are all in sequences of zeroes and ones, like some computer nerd was trying to learn binary code through immersion.

Eventually he finds that every part of this floor is empty of life. There is an out-of-order sign taped haphazardly to the elevator doors, so Katsuki has no choice but to go up the stairs. He looks up and guesses that the staircase goes up three stories, maybe four, but he's going to go to every floor until he can find someone else here.

When he reaches the next floor, he opens the door out of the stairwell and finds a much dimmer room, with a hot pink faux-leather couch sitting outside of a door with a tinted glass window, under a bright red light that screams "ON AIR." He sees someone inside, a silhouette of a person, and they are his only candidate for someone he may know. He decides not to interrupt, and instead sits on the eyesore of a couch.

It's hard and uncomfortable, but better than nothing. He looks around the room that he's in, painted black but for neon-colored lines and highlights in inane designs, similar to an arcade floor. He's idly looking at them, letting his eyes trace the lines, when the door opens. He glances over at it, and really, he shouldn't be surprised.

Ears, Jirou, she's standing in the doorframe but something about her looks wrong. Maybe it's the way her eyes look more like camera lenses than organs, maybe its the way that her skin reflects too much light to be anything but plastic, maybe it's the way that parts of her earlobes are peeling to reveal wiring instead of nerves inside of them. Maybe it's all of that.

"Hey, Bakugou. I was wondering when you'd get here." Katsuki jumps, because her voice-

"I know, I know, I sound like a fucking text-to-speech bot. Believe me, I hate it too, but it comes with the territory." Katsuki doesn't know of anything that would fuck up her voice like that, except for the Stranger, but this- this isn't that. The whole thing seems... off, actually, like a conglomeration of different fears all forming to do something different. He doesn't like it.

"What are you doing here?" He doesn't even know what this place is, if it's a real domain or just some kind of outpost, is it even really broadcasting anything? Or- no, wait, it must be, because there was music playing on Deku's radio and Ears' place is as good a candidate as any for a culprit.

"What does it look like? Playing radio host. I've got a vinyl going right now, so I can talk for a few minutes, but not long. Ask your burning questions now."

"What entity do you serve?" It's an important question. He'd never known what she was, even when everything was normal, only that she became something that isn't quite human. He's not even sure if she's finished Becoming, actually, but there's no real difference to it now.

"You probably haven't heard of it. The Extinction, I heard it's been called, new enough that it wasn't fully formed when the rules of reality went out for milk. That's why there's no one here but me. And you, now. This is kind of a freelance domain, you know? My signal reaches out, and sometimes people hear it when it's time to get scared." As succinct an explanation as he could have expected, considering the fact that there are apparently fifteen Fears and he didn't know about this last one.

"I'd explain more, but this record's short. I'll be on for a while, so make yourself comfortable. You can crash on the couch, if you want. You look like you could use it."

She really isn't wrong. She might have meant it as an insult or as a flippant observation, he can't tell due to the new flatness of her voice, but she's not wrong about him needing a rest. Even if it's just for his own sake, for his own peace of mind, because sleep isn't necessary anymore but he's still tired.

She goes back into the broadcasting room without waiting for a response, and Katsuki just shrugs and lies down on the couch. His legs hang over the armrest and the whole thing feels like a rock, but it's better than the floor.

He drapes his arm over his eyes, and he falls asleep for the first time in weeks.

A tape recorder clicks itself on.

- Thank you for the tea, Shouto.

- It wasn't any trouble. All we have is earl grey, and, well...

- I know. It was my favorite, back then. I know. I haven't had any since the incident. Thank you for making it.

- It's fine.

- It's been so long since I've been back here. I thought that your father sold this house and moved?

- He did, I... haven't seen this place in years. It's smaller than I remember it being.

- Well, how old were you the last time you were here?

- Five.

- Exactly. It felt bigger because you were smaller.

[There is a moment of silence as the Todorokis both drink their tea.]

- Shouto...

- Yes?

- Where are your siblings?

- Dabi- Touya, sorry, he told me that he and Fuyumi are both in charge of a domain. Like me, I'm in charge of this place. They're somewhere else, though, and Fuyumi isn't talking to me.

- Oh, she will, just give her time. It's good, though, at least they aren't in harm's way. What about Natsuo?

- ...

- What about Natsuo?

- ...

- Shouto? Where's... where's Natsuo?

- ...No one told you?

- No one- no one told me what, exactly? Where is your brother?

- He's not- he- they found him the same day they found Endeavor.

- You don't mean- you- he's not- nothing's happened to him, right?

- ...

- ...Right?

- He's- he's gone, Mom. He's been gone, since before- all of this. I thought they told you, they should have told you, I- I'm sorry.

- It's- it isn't your fault, don't- don't apologize. Are you- are you sure that he's gone? Is everybody- are they certain?

- Yes. There's a body, and- and everything. We didn't really get to have a funeral, it was just me and the twins saying prayers and things, we didn't- we didn't even get his ashes.

- They didn't give you his ashes?

- No, because- I was a ward of UA. They thought the twins were dead. They didn't give me the ashes because he was a "contamination risk- "

- Was he- was he sick? What-

- No, no, he wasn't, it's just- I- I don't know how to explain it.

- You know that I know that you and your siblings aren't quite human anymore, you can- you can tell me.

- He, um... his body was made of bees. He was just... a hive. Of them.

- That... that makes sense. That's why they were always visiting my flowers. Of course. That's why they- that's why they stopped. I- how could they not have told me- ?

- I don't know.

- What did- what did he do to deserve this?

- I don't know.

- I- he didn't. He didn't deserve that, he- he should be here-

[She tapers off into uncontrollable sobs. After a few moments, her son audibly joins her in mourning.]

The tape recorder clicks itself off.

Katsuki wakes up from a dreamless sleep to find that he's got a crick in his neck and an ache in his back, but those will likely go away with a little time. He sits up on the couch and looks over to the door, ignoring the popping sounds from his spine, only to see the "ON AIR" sign flaring a bright and angry red. He's groggy, still, and mentally debates the merits of going back to sleep when it flicks off, and the door creaks open.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty. You were out for a couple albums, I'm impressed. You sleep with your eyes open, by the way, which is some pretty freaky shit." Katsuki had not known about that, actually, so he's going to assume that it's a side effect of the apocalypse and leave it at that.

"You watched me sleep?" That's the only real thing that's coming to his mind right now, with the sleep still wearing off and the idea of just plopping his face right back into the couch cushions still tempting him quite a bit.

"Not intentionally, believe me. Anyway, I'm having a call-in segment right now, so I have time." Katsuki just raises an eyebrow at that, considering the fact that call-in segments generally have some kind of participation from the host.

"Don't look at me like that. Call-ins are a whole thing, if you hear the radio going and you pick up the phone you're already on air; all you can do is scream into the abyss, knowing that no one can hear you. Knowing that the only response you'll get is from a nameless, faceless host that sounds automated as hell, and is probably prerecorded to boot. Sometimes they beg for help. Sometimes they ask for people, give names that nobody knows. It's all whatever, lots of fear for me and I don't even have to listen, just leach off of people that are already afraid. Sounds a lot like you eye-types, actually."

"... Right. So are you... I don't know. Good? Need anyone pulled out of their own heads?"

"Nah. Not here, anyway. You come across anyone you think I would want here, though, you give me a call. I've got radios all over Japan, I'm sure I'll hear you from one of them. Why? Leaving already?"

"Probably. You know how it is, being a hero, people to save, shit to do, blah blah blah..."

"Oh, shut it, not everyone can wander around and keep their hero dreams alive. Got any music requests?" Katsuki thinks on it, for a moment, and he's already got a good pre-quirk album in his mind when an idea that's probably very stupid comes into his head, and he can't really help blurting out a question for that, instead of the music.

"Can I say something on air? It'll only take a second." Ears raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms, almost defensively.

"Depends on what you want to say."

"Tell people we know that I'm going to get them out." Ears cracks a little smirk, then, and reaches for the door handle.

"Sure. Go ahead. Just make sure to say who you are, and who you're going to save." Katsuki's suspicious, now. Things don't come this easily, usually, and Ears is being all too accommodating.

"It's that easy? You'll let me in, just like that?"

"Just like that. Wait for whoever's on air to shut up, and the floor is yours."

He walks over to the door slowly, like at any second, she's going to slam it shut and laugh in his face. It feels irrational, because he knows her; it feels completely justified, because he knows his luck when it comes to things that are no longer human. She doesn't, though, just lets him inside the booth.

He hesitantly puts the headphones on and waits, glancing over at Ears all the while. She's just standing there, though, just smirking over at him. He waits until whoever's talking is done, he can't get a word they're saying, anyway, they're stuttering too damn much, before he finally presses the button labeled "Microphone."

"Hey, if anyone can hear this, it's me. Bakugou Katsuki. If I know you, and you can hear me, then I'm going to get you out of there, wherever you are. Just- fuck- just keep doing whatever it is you're doing. Don't die before I get to you. That's it." He turns off the microphone and takes the headphones off as more people doubtlessly flood the phone line, and Ears is cackling loudly from her spot at the door. It's a weird kind of automated laugh, like a bot has been instructed to say "ha" on repeat, but at least it's fast enough that it's not ridiculous.

"The hell's your problem?"

"Oh, no, it's, ha, you have no idea what you just did, do you?" God fucking damn it, there's always a catch. Katsuki feels his stomach sink as Ears catches her breath enough to explain.

"For every person who knows you, there are at least a dozen who don't. All of them heard that message, and all of them know that someone else is getting out while they're still stuck in their own personal hellscapes. It's pathetically perfect, I haven't had such a massive burst of fear like that since the world ended."

That's... not the worst catch. Still, he puts the headphones back on, almost to confirm what she's saying, expecting to hear some stranger begging him to save them too, but instead, the caller that he hears has a voice that he knows.

"Bakugou, it's me, it's- it's Yaoyorozu. Momo. I don't- I don't know where you are, but all that I see is fire. That's all that I've seen in a long time, I don't- I don't know how much longer it's going to be before it burns me alive. If you get here too late, that's alright, just- just get Kyouka out of wherever she is, if she's in danger. Save her. That's all that I ask. Goodbye."

Katsuki pulls the headphones off with slightly shaky hands, and Ears must have seen the surprise on his face because she comes closer, her smile dropped in favor of something more serious. He hadn't been expecting a response.

"That was Ponytail. She's somewhere surrounded by fire- " Ears' eyes have gone wide, and she's pushing him out of the door before he even finishes his sentence.

"What are you waiting for? Go get her!"

"Wait, she- she wanted to ask me to save you. In case I was too late to get her." Ears stops, and backs up half a step. She looks down at her hands, for a moment, before looking back at him, staring him straight in the face.

"You find her, Bakugou Katsuki. You find her and you bring her back. If she dies I swear I'll hunt you down and kill you. I'll do it with my bare hands." Katsuki doesn't doubt her for a second. She'd find a way to kill him, he knows. He won't give her a reason. He nods, and turns to the door to the stairwell. Then, he stops, for just a moment.

"Hey, Ears."

"What."

"I want Hot Fuss by The Killers."

"I'll queue it when you come back."

Katsuki nods, exactly once, before going downstairs and leaving the tower. He's got someone to find.

He won't think about the four people that he can't.

Chapter Text

Katsuki's been walking for what amounts to about an hour, whatever an hour means anymore, and he hasn't seen anything yet. Anything important, to be clear. He's seen plenty of shit, a few domains full of strangers he can't afford to stick his neck out for, but nothing and no one that he recognizes.

He wonders if it's possible to die here. Outside of the End domains, this shitshow of a world isn't designed to kill anyone, instead, reusing them over and over for fear, milking them dry of every drop of adrenaline and anxiety and everything else that constitutes fear in this place. If something mixed in with End, though, something like Desolation... it's entirely plausible that Ponytail could die. He doesn't think she will, but it's possible.

It's entirely plausible that anyone else could die, depending on their fears and their experiences and whatever circumstances could have led them to thinking of death itself as their single greatest fear. Somehow, he doubts that it will be anyone that he knows; he doubts it, but he does not dismiss it. He's grown too paranoid for that.

There's a lot less to do than he had hoped. There's no fire anywhere near here, and all that he can do is walk forward in its absence; his mind is wandering more than he wants it to. Running won't get him through any faster, but he's halfway to doing it anyway, running not from the domains, but from his own head. Running towards something, anything, anyone that can distract him. He doesn't want to think about London, he doesn't want to think about the hallways- hotel, now- he doesn't want to think about the people trapped there.

He doesn't want to think about them because there's nothing he can do to fix it. Not now. Maybe not ever.

So he doesn't think about them. He just plows ahead, looking at the Domains around him more than he normally would, more than he wants to, but he thinks that the Beholding appreciates the view so he doesn't really care. At least something's benefitting from this.

Maybe that's why the almost-familiar feeling of anticipation creeps up on him, this time. The pricking of the hair on the back of his neck, the automatic tensing of his muscles, it doesn't quite register the moment that it begins, not like it has before. Katsuki also wasn't looking around as much, before. He wasn't paying as much attention to his surroundings then as he is now.

His surroundings currently consist of some kind of structure that is currently on fire. Is it some kind of mansion? An apartment complex? It seems like it's got some kind of underground component, and is that a bar visible inside?

The building shifts every time his eyes move. All that he's sure about is that it's on fire. It's on fire, and someone he knows is inside.

Maybe- as he stops and thinks about it- maybe more than one person he knows. Something doesn't feel right, this time, something is different. Something is off this time, compared to the others- it's not necessarily a stronger feeling, nor does it feel wrong or more dangerous, it's just that something isn't quite matching up.

The only way to figure it out is to go forward and investigate, so on Katsuki goes.

Whatever kind of building is in front of him, the door to it is hanging wide open. Through it is a clear view of a hallway, also ablaze, though the doors that split off of it are all intact, and Katsuki suspects that they are locked for good measure. There is no direct way into or out of an individual room, not for anyone that isn't him.

He suspects that, anyway. Maybe he won't be let in, either. He still goes inside, fighting the blistering heat by forging ahead, daring even a spark to touch him, but nothing does. His palms are growing sweaty in this heat, and he has to stop every few moments to burn the sweat off before the resulting explosion causes more problems than he can solve. Whoever's in charge of this domain might like it, though, might appreciate a bit of accelerant on the destruction that is wreaking such havoc here.

Almost as if on cue, he can hear a distant cackling, barely distinguishable from the crackling of the flames around him. That voice, though far away, sends a chill of recognition down Katsuki's spine.

"The fuck is Shigaraki doing here?" He thinks to himself, but really, he shouldn't be so surprised. He didn't get that burn scar on his wrist from himself, after all, and it sure as hell wasn't from Dabi, either. No, that dubious honor goes to Shigaraki, after he'd brushed Katsuki's wrist while he'd been in restraints at Kamino. He doesn't know if it was on accident or not, but either way the pink scar still sits there, almost exactly as it had when he returned from that fight.

The distant laughter is becoming less distant by the second, though, so Katsuki has to figure out what he's going to do, and fast. He doesn't know where Ponytail is in this mess, and he can't tell if taking the risk of searching for her with a quirk that's so easily set off would outweigh the benefits of avoiding Shigaraki. The domain itself might not kill its inhabitants, but an accelerant like nitroglycerin being brought in from outside- there's no telling what it could do. No, searching through this place won't do anyone any good, not when he's essentially a ticking time bomb in this heat.

Katsuki's decided, he knows that he's going to wrench Ponytail's location out of the fucking basement-dwelling villain even if he has to fight for it. He'll win, even if he has to use Beholding to do it. He finally decides it as the once-human thing in question comes approaching from behind a corner, grinning madly, with eyes darting wildly around, almost as if he can't believe that he now lives in a reality where he can freely torture anyone he wants, without having to worry about repercussions.

Disgusting. The quicker Katsuki can get this over with, the better. He stomps forward, over to the Handsy fucker, who somehow hasn't spotted him yet, or at least just hasn't noticed.

"Hey, asshole! Remember me?"

Shigaraki lurches to a stop, all at once. His eyes rove over Katsuki, seemingly looking for something, and eventually landing on his face. He just stares, for a strangely long time, before titling his head to one side.

"You're that kid we kidnapped, aren't you?"

His grin never left his face, and he says it with a creeping kind of excitement in his voice, like he's delivering the setup to an awful joke. Katsuki, for his part, isn't quite paying attention to Shigaraki's face anymore. He's looking instead at his trembling hands.

Shigaraki's hands didn't shake, before. They were always very steady, very deliberate. Katsuki's got a suspicion, in the back of his mind, nothing more than a whisper behind his thoughts, but... he's going to try something. He might even be right.

"I always wondered- why did you do that? Why me, specifically?"

Shigaraki doesn't say anything, for a long while, long enough that Katsuki has to spark off again- and Shigaraki's eyes dart to his hands, and he can practically see the gears turning in his head.

"Because of your quirk, of course. It's perfect for destruction, and we thought that you would appreciate it like the rest of us did."

False. Nothing in his face or voice gave it away, the voice was exactly what he would have expected, the grin was still as wide and unhinged as it was at USJ, but the words themselves just didn't match what he'd said when Katsuki had actually been at Kamino.

"You and I both know that you were the biggest pyromaniac in your merry band of idiots, including Dabi. You were the only one that quote, 'appreciated destruction.' Try again."

Shigaraki's eyes widen, almost imperceptibly, like he was just caught out on something. Right now, Katsuki's suspicion is growing louder, because he's being proven right.

Katsuki thinks that there is something wrong with the person in front of him, something different from what he'd seen before. He seems almost afraid, and certainly unstable, but in a way that seems more like he could implode at any moment, rather than being liable to attack.

"I- don't know what you're talking about, kid."

Something about this, this moment, this reaction- it reminds him of Deku. It reminds him of the way he and Round Face- who is he kidding, it was mostly her- the way that they'd had to pull him out of his delusion. Is this going to be the same, he wonders? Why would Shigaraki be like this, anyway? What purpose would it serve to keep him unaware of the world as it is?

It's not his problem. Shigaraki's crazy bullshit has nothing to do with him anymore, and he doesn't have any obligation to help the bastard. If he ends up doing something that snaps him out of whatever the hell's going on with him- sure, fine, cool, whatever. If he does or doesn't end up making shit work out, it doesn't make a difference. Getting Ponytail out of here is what matters at this point, nothing else in this domain does. He doesn't need to risk anything sticking his neck out for a villain that attacked him and his class, over and over again.

"Sure you don't. That doesn't matter right now, though. I'm looking for someone here, maybe you know where she is. Does Yaoyorozu Momo ring a bell to you?"

Shigaraki freezes in place, before his eyes narrow, his eyebrows furrow, and his head tilts just slightly to the left. His hands are shaking slightly harder, now, and Katsuki feels like he knows what that means.

"That's- that girl, at USJ, right? I could swear she looked like someone... " He trails off, with this, and Katsuki doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Shigaraki half looks like he's about to devolve into muttering, he's got the same look on his face as Deku did whenever he would start, and Katsuki opens his mouth to preemptively interrupt. Before he does, though, Shigaraki starts murmuring, loudly enough that Katsuki can hear it, and he promptly closes it.

"Yes, yes, I swear I recognized her face, but from where? She looked like- no one. I don't know why- did she look like- ? Yaoyorozu, I know the name, why do I know the name, have I met her before? The house- I was sixteen, I burned a lot, that's a name I know because I burned down that house, why did that one stick out- ? Did I kill someone? No- no, I didn't, I never- I would know immediately, that's not it, why- why do I know the name?"

At this point, Katsuki's just watching him talk to himself in circles, and he's too much of a decent fucking human being to leave the bastard hanging like this.

"You said she reminded you of someone?"

"Yes, she looked like someone else, that's why- I had the chance, I could have killed her, but I didn't, why didn't I- Hana." Shigaraki says this last word- a name?- with a gasp, before his knees buckle enough that he has to lean against the wall. His whole face scrunches up, in what looks to be some kind of pain, and he clutches his head with the hand that isn't bracing him against the wall. All five fingers on that hand are touching that wall, actually, and Katsuki idly wonders why his quirk isn't working.

"Who's- "

"No, I don't want to be here, why am I here, what the hell is happening? I don't- I don't want to keep burning everything. I don't want this." Shigaraki's sunk fully down to his knees, almost curling up on himself on the floor, where the flames around them avoid him just as much as they do Katsuki. He moves the hand on his head, just slightly, so that now he is holding the dead hand that covers most of his face.

In one fluid motion, he rips it off of himself and throws it into the fire.

"Where's Shuuichi?"

It takes a moment before Katsuki realizes that he's being directly addressed, but Shigaraki's glaring up at him, now, and there's a snarl forming on his lips. His fingers are pressed against the wall so hard that his knuckles are white, and unshed tears rim the bottom lashes of his newly sharpened glare.

"I don't know who that is."

"Spinner, smart-ass! Where the hell is he, huh? You're the one with the power now, so tell me!" Shigaraki punctuates this by pulling his hand off the wall and slamming it back into it, now in the shape of a fist.

"What makes you think I have any more of an idea than you?"

"Don't play dumb. You knew your little friend was here, didn't you? Why else would you be asking about her? Just tell me where Shuuichi is, and I'll lead you to her."

"... What makes you think I can't just rip the answer out of you?"

"Do it, then! Quit standing there and gloating like a fucking coward and do it! Just hurry up about it so I can- so I can forget everything again. That's what it wants, isn't it? People who are happy to serve it. I don't want to serve the Lightless Flame, so it... so it made sure I didn't remember anything better. If you're going to keep me like this, at least do it quick." Shigaraki had devolved from screaming to a low, mournful tone over the course of his rant, bowing his head so his hair hangs limply over his face. Katsuki finds himself hesitating in what he was going to do; he was going to just pull the answer out, but now... now it feels dirty.

He's not the only one that's being used, is he? No. Everyone is, everyone must be, in some way or another. Some are more content with it than others, and some were twisted up more than others in the process, but there is no real enemy for him anymore. Not here, anyway. Not unless whoever started this whole thing is somewhere in what's left of Japan, and he sincerely doubts that.

"I don't know where he is. If I find him, I might be able to send him here, but I can't promise anything. You're going to have to keep a handle on yourself until then, too, because I'm not going to be here to snap you out of it again."

"I can't promise anything, hero. Give me my answer and I'll give you yours. I'm not here to get strung along."

Katsuki nearly growls with frustration, because he doesn't know where Spinner is, fuck, he barely knows where Ponytail is! The only reason he knows where anyone is, even vaguely, is because either he's with them, he's seen them, or he's been explicitly told.

"I'll look for him, but if it doesn't turn anything up then you don't get to be surprised."

Katsuki doesn't want to use Beholding for this, but he needs to, if only to keep himself from adding to the shit that he's done. It's either find Spinner or accidentally blow up a domain full of innocents. It's not a real choice.

"Why do you even want me to find him?"

"He was the only human in the party, dumbass! Everyone else can fend for themselves here, but he could be dead for all anyone knows!"

... Fair enough. Katsuki sighs, and he Looks.

He doesn't know where to start, so he thinks about people he knows are ahead and has a vague idea of their locations.

Asui Tsuyu and Hagakure Tooru, both in Lonely Domains, both somewhere he hasn't reached yet. They're not together, but Hagakure's closer, apparently, so he'll start there. This form of Searching is strange, because he feels like he's thinking things through with things he already knows, things he's always known, but there's no way that he knew any of this already.

Hagakure. Surrounded by fog, overlooked by everyone else, though some of those people around her are real and some of them are not. Alone in a crowd, how ironic, is there anyone else he knows here? No, yes, maybe if he keeps Looking...

There. Right in the same Domain, too, there's the bastard.

"He's in a Domain with one of my classmates. Lonely. Lots of fog, lots of strangers. Not in any immediate danger, if I can send him to you, I will. Good enough for you, asshole?"

"Fine. Follow me." Shigaraki pulls himself up, with this, still braced against the wall for another moment before pushing off of it, turning around and walking further into the building. The fire around them parts to make way, and Katsuki realizes that only now is it loud enough to be realistic- earlier, it had been quiet, nothing more than a low crackle, just barely quiet enough that no words were drowned out by its noise.

It would be strange, if he didn't consider the way that the world has gone now.

He follows Shigaraki deeper inside, up a staircase that seems like it should have collapsed ages ago, before they end up at a dark wooden door at the end of a hallway.

"She's in there. You can leave the way you came, or through the fire escape across the hall. I don't care either way. Just bring Shuuichi here." With that, he turns back and leaves, his head up higher and his shoulders straighter than they had been before. His hands are no longer trembling at his sides, instead, they are steady and still.

Katsuki looks away from him, and turns back to the door. He ignites the sweat on his hands one more time before entering, so he doesn't risk an accident happening inside.

He doesn't know what he expected, going in. An apartment as plain as the hallway had suggested, perhaps, and certainly in the same state of chaotic destruction; but that is not what awaits him. Inside, there is still burning, but the actual interior is nothing like the hall outside. In the doorway, there are the crushed and scattered remains of more than a few expensive-looking glass decorations and vases, a pile of rotted and burning flowers, and a single polished beam that must have crashed to the floor from above. Further inside, there are more useless-looking decorations that are probably more to show off the wealth of the inhabitant than in any actual effort to decorate.

All in all, it looks almost exactly like the kind of place he would imagine Ponytail living in. Minus the fire, obviously, but this part of the domain is a clear facsimile of the destruction of her real home. He wonders, for a moment, if it has any basis in reality, before he dismisses it. It doesn't matter how real the situation is, or was, because it is real now, and pulling her to safety in this moment is what matters, not the possible influences that could have led to this.

He steps further inside, carefully, letting the door hang open behind him. Inside is more of the same: more crushed remnants of useless yet expensive trinkets, more obstacles made of once-beautifully crafted architecture, thickening smoke as he travels closer to the center of the flames inside. There is where he will find her, he's sure of it.

Katsuki doesn't find any hint of her for a short while, though, enough that he actually wonders if she's burned alive; the only part of this apartment- if that's what it can be called- that he hasn't checked is behind the door in front of him, and that door is more than a little bit ablaze. He doesn't doubt that she'll be able to come back, considering what he knows about this domain, now, but it would still be a hell of an inconvenience.

To minimize the risk of her dying, if for nothing else, he opens the door.

All that he sees is fire. It's eating the remnants of whatever things have been smashed on the floor, devouring the furniture and the very structure of the room, the smoke so thick that it chokes out the view of practically anything else in the room. Still, he presses on, steps inside; carefully, of course, every movement an intricate trapeze act so that he doesn't set himself on fire.

As he gets closer to the opposite wall, the smoke is thin enough that he can see the cramped clearing, where there is, somehow, no flame and no wreckage of anything; in it, there is a small end table, upon which sits a portable radio and a small landline phone, and sidled up next to that table is a dark lump. He can't see anything better about it, not unless he gets closer, which is a task that's getting harder by the minute. He tries, though, stepping and leaping through the obstacles on the floor like he's the star of a freaking ballet, while never taking his eyes off of the one spot that seems to be safe.

When the shadowy thing finally becomes clear, he isn't surprised to see her. Yaoyorozu is sitting there, curled up with her knees tucked into her chest, looking, for all intents and purposes, like she's just waiting to be saved. Or else- waiting to die. She's not going to be dying today, though, Katsuki's going to make sure of that, especially considering that if she were to die, then he wouldn't be far behind her- Ears can be scary when she wants to be. Besides, Ponytail's alright in his book, he's not going to just leave her. That would be a dick move if there ever was one.

It takes another moment or two to actually get to a point where he can reach her, when he crouches down at her side to see her flinch back at the feeling of something new nearby; she hasn't looked, though, she doesn't know that there's someone here to get her out. From where she's sitting, there probably is no way out, at least, that's what it must look like.

"Hey, you going to get up or are you just going to keep moping?" She stares over at him, almost in indignation, before she realizes where exactly she is. She looks around the room with a critical eye, one that he doubts she was able to use earlier, before she stands tall.

"Come on, I know this place looks like a lot of fun, but I can assure you that it's not." She turns back to him with a sly little grin, before she begins hopping through the destruction in the room with more practical precision than any kind of grace. Katsuki, for his part, just waits for a moment, and then he turns to the phone that sits on the table, still, abandoned. He picks it up, and instead of a dial tone, there is silence. Dead air. Perfect.

"Hey Ears, if you can hear me, I'm on my way back. Don't forget my album."

He hangs up the phone without waiting for a response, and turns to follow Ponytail out the door.

Yaoyorozu hadn't spoken much on the way, just seemed to be mentally parsing through the events that had gotten her to this point. She was willing to take the lead back to Ears' place, in the same way Round Cheeks had before, and she practically ran the whole way there when he'd told her where they were going.

Still, Katsuki's not exactly enthused about having to be an audience for her reunion and subsequent make out session with Ears. There's a time and a place for this kind of crap, and neither of those conditions involves him. He clears his throat, loudly, and they finally spring apart.

"Oh- I apologize for that, it was very rude of me to- "

"Save it, Ponytail. Ears! I'm not gonna begrudge you your sappy bullshit when the radio's going without you, but maybe plug an ear in sometimes? I'm going to call in at some point, whenever I find someone I think would be fine here. We wouldn't want you to be surprised when I walk in with 'em." Katsuki says it with a straight face, glancing between the two of them, and Ears stares him dead in the eye as Ponytail blushes brighter than a firetruck next to her.

"No, I guess we wouldn't. You wanna crash here for a bit before you go?"

Katsuki waves her off, and turns to the door.

"Nah, I'm fine. Don't forget my album!"

"I know, I know. Hot Fuss by The Killers, I'm using the version with Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll, unless you got a major problem with that."

"Go crazy! See you two later!"

"Goodbye, Bakugou!"

"Good riddance, fuckface!"

He makes a gesture that would normally get him detention without even looking back; he knows, but doesn't care to Know, that Ears is making a similar one right back at him. He snickers to himself as the door closes behind him and he hears a light smack and a hissed "What?" coming from Ears.

Katsuki finds himself alone and aimless again. He hasn't really focused on anything since he took the time to actively dodge Shigaraki's domain, and he passed it over an hour ago- at least, what feels like an hour ago. Time doesn't exactly work anymore, but he can still make rough estimates.

In that vague time, he's passed through more domains of more people that he doesn't know and can't afford to save. It's awful, to see them, to know that risking himself for a stranger just isn't worth it anymore, not when everybody needs to be saved and there are so few people able to do the saving. At the same time, he just can't seem to make himself look away from all of it, can't seem to stop himself from drinking in the horrors that surround him. Is this what it means to have power from Beholding? he wonders, the thought almost alien in his head but nonetheless it sits there, forcing him to ruminate over it. He wonders if this is all that he's going to do when his eyes aren't closed, just wander around and take in the fear that the Eye so desperately wants to see.

His thoughts are interrupted, though, when he moves from this current domain- a Corruption one, lovely- and gets to the door of a domelike building. Above the door, in faded and peeling letters, reads the simple word, "PLANETARIUM." As he reaches towards the handle, he can feel the familiar sense of almost-anticipation creeping in the back of his neck, along with the curious smell of ozone.

Someone's here, then. Fantastic, he'd been needing a distraction.

He opens the door and looks up to see massive galaxies, constellations, stars of all kinds; almost exactly what he remembers being able to see on a clear night while hiking when he was younger. It would almost be beautiful, if it wasn't for the distant screams of people floating out in the abyss above, unable to get down or even propel themselves properly.

He starts forward, but realizes that in front of him isn't clear space, like he'd initially thought. Instead, there's a ticket booth that bars him from going further in, occupied by a lone girl reading a magazine and blowing bubbles in her chewing gum. He pounds on the window and she glares up at him, putting the magazine down. She wrenches the microphone down towards her mouth, and smacks a button on her side of the glass barrier.

"The fuck do you want, pretty boy?"

"I want to get someone out of here."

"Entry's ¥1650."

Katsuki shoves his hands in his pockets, but they're empty, exactly as he'd expected them to be.

"No money, no entry, sweetheart. My manager'll have my ass if she finds out I let anyone in for free, so fuck off."

"The hell are you even going to spend the money on? It's the apocalypse, bitch! No one's selling shit!"

"Not my problem. You wanna whine about it, go ahead, as long as I get my money."

"Why are you even here? Shouldn't you be up there somewhere?"

"You like space, it likes you back enough not to force you to fly in it. It's called equivalent exchange, sugar bear, look it up." She pops the last p in her sentence and turns back to her magazine.

"Hey- fuck it, I'm a UA Hero Course student. Won the Sports Fest and shit. Bet an autograph'll be worth more than that ticket's worth if this whole apocalypse thing ever lets up."

The girl puts the magazine down and looks back up at him with a contemplating sort of smirk.

"Oh, baby, now you're speaking my language. You need a pen and paper?"

"Yeah."

"Sure thing, hotshot." After a moment, she slides a pen and paper through the slot on the counter, and as promised, Katsuki dutifully signs it and slides it back.

"Sweet. Who'd ya say you were looking for? Might be able to find 'em."

Katsuki takes a moment to think on it, try and figure out who he knows that would be most likely to be afraid of the Vast, and of space. He isn't using Beholding, he's not risking it so close to someone he knows, not when there are still too many unknowns involved in using it. The girl has sat up fully in her chair and is typing into a computer monitor at her station.

"Iida Tenya."

"Let's see... ah, yep, there he is. Right up by Sirius, too, so it shouldn't be too hard to find him. Good luck, baby doll!"

"... Thanks. I guess." Katsuki sidesteps the ticket booth and goes through the turnstile next to it. The turnstile is stiff and almost doesn't let him through, but eventually it does.

Katsuki looks back up at the ceiling- the sky?- with a critical eye, and he finds Sirius rather quickly, considering how bright it is. The attendant had been right that it shouldn't be too hard to find Glasses, because he can see him now, floating around and firing his engines, flailing around wildly, right up next to the star in question. He sighs, and starts running his hands together to generate enough sweat for the extended flight he's about to have.

He fires off, after a moment or two, right toward where Glasses is careening around with reckless, screaming abandon. He gets up there quickly enough, and from there he doesn't even have to say anything; Glasses hears his explosions and looks over on his own.

"Bakugou! How are you here, you- you have to get out, you can propel yourself, go- "

"Nope. I'm here for you, actually. Grab onto my jacket and don't be too weird about it." Glasses bumbles out a few more protests before eventually cottoning on and grabbing Katsuki's jacket as demanded. He's glad that Glasses decided to attach himself to his back, because if he'd decided to get unbalanced about it while having literal metal engines attached to his legs then they were going to have words. While Katsuki is many things, All Might in his prime is not one of them. He cannot fly with someone like Iida unbalancing his ass. One of the girls or Denki, maybe, but definitely not Iida.

Katsuki starts slowing his explosions down, so they begin to lower to the floor as steadily as he can make it, and Glasses is, strangely enough, still floating. He's still being dragged along as Katsuki experiences gravity, but he's the only one of them that is. He suspects that Glasses is going to continue to nearly float away until they leave the planetarium, but he's still got his jacket in a white-knuckled grip so he isn't particularly worried about that.

Soon enough, he touches down, and Glasses is still floating above him, so he just walks towards the exit with a whole-ass person imitating a backpack as he walks out. He waves over at the attendant, who does not look up from her magazine, and the moment the door closes behind them, Glasses falls out of the air and directly on his ass, though at least he has enough sense not to drag Katsuki down with him.

"I must thank you, Bakugou, for getting me out of there safely, and not leaving me to be forsaken by the sky." Glasses appears to be trying to scramble up into a standing position, no doubt so he can bow in gratitude like the prim and proper ass that he is.

"Save it. You're not out of the woods 'til you're back at Deku's domain, 'cause if Beholding catches wind of you being somewhere you're not supposed to be..."

"I'll be sent right back there, won't I?"

"You catch on quick. You could stand up quicker, we need to get a move on. C'mon." With that, Katsuki starts walking back in the direction that he came, mentally running over directions for a shortcut back to Deku's domain so he doesn't have to walk the long way back, while Glasses is still halfway on the ground behind him.

Glasses, unlike Ponytail, doesn't shut up for practically the entire trip. It's not as bad of a thing as Katsuki would've expected, not as annoying as he would've thought, but the barrage of questions is still getting on his last nerve. He's made it a point to start ignoring him, but he doesn't think he's noticed, because Glasses is still stuttering out questions at a pace that could rival Deku.

"You said that Midoriya has his own domain? What is it like? Is it- "

"You'll see in a minute, holy fuck, can you chill out?" Glasses promptly shuts up, and Katsuki feels a little bit bad, since he can very easily see how however long of total isolation could screw with a guy, but he doesn't feel bad enough to fill the silence that he's been craving for most of the way here.

Almost as if on cue, the pavement that they were walking on- Katsuki did find a shortcut- turns into grass, and the buildings around them fade away into familiar trees.

"This is Deku's domain." Katsuki turns back long enough to see that Glasses is looking around in unsubtle interest at the forest around them, and then continues on towards the building in the center.

Glasses had stuck behind him on the way, rather than taking the lead, which was only because Katsuki had to actively plan their route, since they were taking a shortcut instead of wandering along. He's sure that he'll go back to the old system with the next person he rescues, unless he plans on dumping them off with Ears or Deku.

It's not soon enough that they climb up the stairs and Katsuki raps on the old wooden door. He waits a moment before barging inside.

"I just don't know what I should say- Kacchan!" Deku exclaims from his spot at the desk, sitting up from where he'd been hunched over a sheet of paper. Pink Cheeks is hovering over the paper, too, and while Katsuki has a sneaking suspicion that it's probably the draft of a letter to a certain Half-n-Half bastard, it's not his place to pry.

"Special delivery." He says it in a deadpan voice, and steps aside to sarcastically show off Glasses, who is walking in behind him.

"Iida!" The nerds shout as one, running over and practically bowling Glasses over. The dramatic reunion is all well and good, but they're blocking the doorway and Katsuki's seen enough of these things to last a lifetime. He's still a little scarred from Ears and Ponytail.

"Alright, cool, you're all together now, if I see any more wild nerds I'll bring their asses here, see you fuckers later. ...That means get out of the doorway."

"Ah! Sorry Kacchan!" Deku pulls Glasses and Round Face out of the way, and he leaves the domain with nothing more than a two-fingered salute.

More aimless wandering. Hooray.

Katsuki chose a path that took him out of the way of the Planetarium, halfway in an effort to find someone else and halfway because he's bored. All he's doing is looking at fear, absorbing it, letting it sit in his head and letting Beholding feast on it through his eyes. He wonders if fear's becoming an addiction, in a way, because looking at the same domains all over again just seems so damn boring he's picking a different route simply because of it. He doesn't want to drink in the same fear, and this, this is the thought that convinces him that he's somehow still falling to Beholding. Even though it's got everything already, he's falling further into its grasp. Maybe this world isn't as binary as it seems, considering he's still somehow got space to fall.

Either way, it's a topic for later. He's just entered the perfect suburban hellscape, and that looming not-quite-anticipation is back again.

Most would think that a place like this, row after identical row of houses would be Spiral or Lonely, but all that it makes him think of is spiders. The Spider House from when he was a kid- it still gives him nightmares, on occasion. He still can't figure out if that one was supernatural or a kidnapper with a convenient quirk, but with the way that this domain seems to be leaning, it seems like it was the former. Fantastic.

His plan is to just keep walking forward until something catches his attention, or else the feeling grows stronger. It's not a bad plan, and that knowledge is supported by the way that exactly one house does not fit the rest of the street, because that one house has a front door that's been left slightly ajar. He walks up to it, and listens in.

"Repeat after me, Hitoshi: Camie was all my fault."

"Camie was all... your fault." The second voice struggles to say it, and the first voice hisses in displeasure. Katsuki peeks inside, and isn't surprised to see someone strung up by a bunch of webbing.

He is almost surprised to see that it's Shinsou, considering how easy it was to find him, but there's still the ordeal that actually getting him out's going to be. The Web usually isn't cooperative with anything, and Katsuki just kind of hopes that it'll give him a freebie before he charges inside.

It's not like he's going to be able to come up with a decent plan, anyway. The most he would do is psych himself out. Spiders have creeped him out ever since he was a kid, which is a damn shame, considering how cool they are, but either way he probably wouldn't have the balls to jump in if he'd waited.

He runs into the house and starts tugging at the webbing surrounding Shinsou, who, for his part, is doing his best to help out, to limited success. The webbing's coming off like silly string, in that it's certainly moving around, but mostly sticking to his hands and the person that they'd originally stuck to.

"Can you- can you walk at all?"

"If I could, would I have voluntarily chosen to stay here?"

"No need to be an asshole, fucking hell."

"Being an asshole's kind of my thing. Deal with it."

"Alright, well, there are webs between your legs and I'm gonna break 'em so you can walk. You have been warned."

"Don't touch anything fun."

"I'm not- the fuck kind of a perv do you think I am?"

"The boring kind, apparently. Hurry up, I want to get out of here."

The disembodied voice has been eerily silent since he walked in, and it's not until the webs around Shinsou's legs have been broken that he actually notices the skittering in the walls. He glances up to look at Shinsou in the eyes, and it seems like the other man has noticed the same thing.

"Do you think you can run like that?"

"No. Drag me like I'm Midoriya, we have to go, hurry up, I do not want to be spider chow!"

"Relax, it won't kill you. It can't feast on your fear if you're dead."

"That is not a relaxing thing for you to say!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry my attitude isn't up to your standards."

"I'm calling your fucking manager, just as soon as we get the hell out!"

"Alright, damn, you're going to give me a heart attack like that." Without further ado, Katsuki grabs Shinsou around the middle and drags him out of the house and onto the street. He runs, though, and keeps running until the houses give way to sterile walls, and the pavement turns into white tile. With that, he finally puts Shinsou down, and helps him get the rest of the webbing off.

"So, uh, thanks. For that. Really appreciate not being a puppet for a spider for all of eternity."

"No problem. What do you say we get out of here?"

"Yeah, sure, just... where's everybody else?"

"... Around. Various domains of fear. I've been able to rescue some people, but not everyone, yet. Any preferences on who you want me to dump you off with?"

"Yeah, actually. You're probably going to be pulling Aizawa out of some domain, right? Wherever he goes, that's where I want to go. He uh. Adopted me not too long ago, made it all official and everything. 'S been nice. Y'know, until the whole... "

"Apocalypse thing. Yeah, I get it. I haven't gotten to him yet, so you're coming with me for however long."

"Cool."

"Cool."

With that, the two of them actually get going down the hall of what seems to be a hospital of some kind. It isn't long, though, before Shinsou pipes up again.

"Where's Denki, by the way? He's one of your best friends, so you probably got him right at the beginning, right?"

"..."

"... Right?"

"Don't. Just- just don't."

"Why not? Where the hell is he, Bakugou?"

"None of your concern."

"Why is it none of my- "

"Because you're not going to see him in the foreseeable future, alright? We're not going to see him for the foreseeable future. Him, or- or any of them."

"Why the hell not? Wait- they're not- they aren't- "

"They're in London. Can't get there anymore. It's impossible."

"Bullshit."

"Do you see any functional airports, genius?"

"I've been two places: here and that Spider House. I honestly don't think I'm a very good sample size."

"Newsflash, then: there are none. There are no planes, there are no boats, there is no way to cross that ocean anymore."

"So, what, you're just giving up? Just leaving them to die there?"

"I can't exactly workshop a good solution while I still know people that need me to save their asses. Case in point."

"Touché. What's your plan after, then?"

"... It's a work in progress."

"So you don't have one."

"There's still no transport, so unless you've got some kind of brilliant idea- "

"They're in those hallways, right?"

Katsuki's lost for words, a bit, but Shinsou steams on.

"They're in those hallways, and according to you, the thing inside those hallways are the hallways. So if something kills it, then something kills the hallways, right?"

"... Yeah. How would I manufacture that, though? I don't even know if killing it would get them in the process."

"I don't know, but at least you've got something to work with."

That's... true. It's not much of a start, but it's better than the nothing that he'd had before.

"Come on. We've got hero work to do."

"Aye aye, captain."

Chapter Text

Hitoshi has been walking with Bakugou for... a while, now. It's mostly been him dragging Bakugou along, as he closes his eyes to the nightmare around them, but his point remains the same.

They've been at this for a long time, going through new realms of horror with new victims along the way. Bakugou told him to ignore them, ages ago; they can't see either of them walking through, and most of them can't be taken out for long enough to be kept safe.

He gave up on making conversation a while ago, too. At one point, Bakugou just stopped responding, and Hitoshi really isn't the kind of guy that can talk to himself for all that long without some kind of input from somebody else.

So now, they're just... walking. Hitoshi, for his part, is hoping that he's shaken all the spiders out of his hair, because he can still feel their phantom legs crawling all over him even though he's patted himself down more than a strictly sane amount of times. It's- fine. It's fine, because there are no spiders. He hopes.

This is pretty much his entire thought process, at this point. It always goes back to the spiders. He hates it.

He doesn't actually know where they're going, even though he's the one in the lead. Bakugou doesn't either, apparently, which is kind of unexpected to hear from the Eye guy in the Eye-pocalypse, but what does he know? He doesn't serve anything. He doesn't know how this works.

Almost as if on cue, the moment that he has this thought is when Bakugou unexpectedly stops in his tracks, nearly causing Hitoshi to crash to the ground. They've just entered a new Domain, what looks to be the outside of a western Gothic-style cathedral. It's cold, here, and the wind that carries the fog sinks its chill into his bones.

The stone is impersonal and unmoving, a uniform slate gray that just barely stands out from the fog surrounding it. Just looking at it makes Hitoshi shiver, not to mention the actual temperature that's steadily dropping with every step that both of them take.

Bakugou is in the lead now, and Hitoshi's following wordlessly behind. He doesn't know what's changed, whether it has anything to do with this Domain or with the world at large, but all he can do to find out is watch. It's not like Bakugou's been receptive to questions about all of this, so watching is his only real option for answers.

So he follows him through the huge doors at the entrance, between the pews that are full of things that look like people, with fog up to their waists, thick enough to obscure the ground completely. There are a few people here, he's sure, but most everyone in here is filler. He follows through another door, which should lead off to an annex or something, but is instead another room full of fog and pews and things that look human enough to fill in the gaps.

He follows through another door, into another near-identical room, and another, and another, all the while Bakugou's eyes are darting around like he's searching for something. Like he's darting through security camera feeds, looking in one direction for less than a fraction of a second before dismissing it, searching for something or someone- though who or what, Hitoshi has no idea.

Whatever it is, it looks like he's just found it. Instead of just glancing around this room like all the others, Bakugou stalks over to one of the pews, towards the back, where most of the people look like they've got some kind of mutation to their quirks. Most of them look some type of uniform, and Hitoshi suspects that those are the ones that aren't real, instead just props for the whole effect of the thing.

He can almost understand this sort of Domain. It's something about being alone in a crowd, right? He's not sure, of course, but the oppressive silence and the thousands of indifferent faces sort of lead him to that conclusion.

Either way, Bakugou's sidling past some prop-people in order to get to someone in the middle of a pew, though he isn't sure who. There's nobody there that he recognizes from class, or from any other place, except for maybe the vaguely familiar-looking guy with the lizard quirk. He doesn't remember where he knows him from, and dismisses the possibility, sure that Bakugou had actually seen someone that he knew from outside of UA or something, when to his surprise Bakugou actually stops right in front of him.

The man with the lizard quirk just keeps staring blankly ahead, looking for all the world like just another prop, but his hands are clenched into fists that rest on his knees, and Hitoshi can see the faint rattling of his chest that betrays forced steadiness to his breathing, like he's trying to keep himself from panicking. Hitoshi knows what that looks like, of course. He's seen it in the mirror often enough.

It's bothering him, now, where he knows this man from. There's got to be some kind of way of remembering him, but honestly, Hitoshi has nothing. Maybe he knows him better from some other context? Who knows. The only way to know is to listen to whatever Bakugou says to the guy, which so far has consisted of nothing but waving his hand in front of the guy's face.

"Oi! Spinner! Your fuckin' boyfriend told me to wake your ass up, so snap out of it already!"

Spinner? Spinner from the fucking League of Villains? There's no way that Bakugou's serious, is there? There's no way in hell that he's serious!

"Shuuichi!"

That... that does sound like it's the real name of the guy from the League, but Hitoshi just kind of can't believe it at this point. He doesn't know why Bakugou chose this guy, out of all the others, to pull out- he could've chosen any civilian, and instead he picks a mass murderer.

The freaking villain seems to be responding, now, though not quite at full awareness. He's murmuring something, but it's too quiet for Hitoshi to hear, because his words seem to be swallowed up by the fog. Bakugou seems to hear him, at least, because he responds with an annoyed sort of-

"This place ain't shit!"

Hitoshi doesn't think that the villain's completely out of it, but he doesn't seem to be fully aware, either. He keeps staring off, seemingly zoning out, which Hitoshi doesn't think that he had an issue with when Bakugou came to break him out of the worse version of the Spider House. Maybe it's because he's met Bakugou before? He isn't sure. There's not much use in overthinking it, anyway.

The villain might have responded, he can't really tell, what with this fog swallowing up any sound that isn't a shout. Either way, he can hear Bakugou continue, clear as day.

"No, no, this place isn't scary at all. You have nothing, you are nothing, all the time, every time. That would get boring, wouldn't it? It's always the same. Everybody's facing ahead, looking anywhere but you, still as statues and just as interesting, right? You figure if it's all always the same thing, over and over again, you'd stop getting scared, right? What's the point in that? Just sitting here, and sitting here, and sitting here, nothing happening at all? Seems more boring than anything."

Spinner slowly started nodding along, and Bakugou keeps going.

"What's there to be scared of, if you've always had nothing? Nothing is just your reality. There was never anything different. Wouldn't it be so much worse if all of it was taken from you? If you had what you needed, had what you wanted, but all of it burned away? Wouldn't it be so much worse if you could run, if you had to run, but you could feel the flames lapping at your heels, knowing that eventually they would consume you in a much more painful death than the one that awaited everything that you once owned? Isn't that worse than sitting on a cold chair all day?"

This time, Spinner's response carries just slightly on the biting draft, enough that Hitoshi can hear the murmured "Yes."

"Then what are you still doing here?"

With this, the villain sucks in a sharp gasp of breath, before Hitoshi's view is entirely obscured by fog. The only things that he can see are two faintly glowing lights, coming from about where Bakugou's eyes should be. They're a very dim green, a sharp contrast to the usual reddish-brown of his eyes, but honestly, at this point, Hitoshi doesn't really care about eye color changes anymore.

When what's in front of him clears away, Bakugou is standing in front of an empty space on the pew. He starts moving back the way he came, then stalking with that same sort of purpose that he'd had earlier, as though nothing has just happened at all.

Honestly, Hitoshi has no idea where to start asking about that. Most of his questions involve a particular word, though, so that's the one he asks- demands, really- the moment that Bakugou is by his side and leading him through the Domain again.

"Why?"

He doesn't really need much elaboration on that. It pretty much speaks for itself, and Bakugou must realize that, because there's only a moment of silence before he takes a breath to start explaining.

"I told Shigaraki I would, when he led me through his Domain to get Ponytail. I couldn't explore alone without risking an explosion, considering my quirk, and I'm not in the business of breaking my word. I said I'd do it, so I did it. I wasn't physically grabbing him and bringing him back, but I got him awake enough that the hand fucker can handle waking him up the rest of the way. I didn't do it because I gave a shit about him, I did it because I said that I would. That's it."

That... seems to make some kind of sense. Hitoshi would definitely appreciate a bit more context on the whole "meeting Shigaraki" thing, but that was also the Domain that Yaoyorozu was in, so he really doesn't think that it's any of his business unless she somehow tells him otherwise. If meeting some big villain was somehow a major component of freeing him, then he wouldn't want Bakugou going around telling other people about it, no matter who he was telling.

So he gets enough of it to see why Bakugou did that, but it still doesn't explain how. Hitoshi figures it's some kind of weird servant-of-fear thing, so he isn't asking, but still, that whole display was kind of creepy.

He hates using that word, in this new world, where everything and everyone are weird nightmare versions of what they should be, but it's the only real descriptor of this weird sort of deviation, this weird display of power, because Bakugou just... told a guy to get scared and it worked. It shouldn't have worked, there's no logical way, but Hitoshi doesn't have any better explanations for how these Eye-people function, so he's just leaving it be. It's not worth the headache, anyway.

So Hitoshi doesn't say anything more as he follows Bakugou through the Domain that isn't quite a maze, but feels close enough to one to qualify. He doesn't think that they're looking for an exit, or they'd have just turned around or something, wouldn't they? No, Bakugou's looking for something or someone else.

He hopes that it's not a villain, whoever they are. Unless artifacts are stored in Domains, but he has no idea why Bakugou would need anything in particular when his mission seems to be saving people that he knows? He isn't sure, but he won't ask.

Bakugou's probably already irritated with his questions. He's asked too many, not just now, but earlier, too. Why can't he ever learn to keep his mouth shut?

This has been drilled into him since he was a kid, how does he still have yet to learn to stop talking? He will always be a threat like that, no matter how weak or cold he was, he always was and always will be a threat.

He's so cold, he feels so weak, but if he even breathes with the intention of complaint then all of these people, these strangers, they will think him villainous. It doesn't matter if they know him or not, they will be afraid, not one of them will ever want to speak to him.

Why should they? He's nothing more than a villain in the making-

"Hey Eyebags, why are you lagging behind, huh? Did the fuckin' fog try to eat you?"

Hitoshi looks up- when did he sit down, and on the ground no less?- to see Bakugou crouching over him, snapping his fingers between their faces. Hitoshi's fingertips are numb, and his breath is coming out in white wisps, but he feels like he's been jolted out of... something.

"Yeah... guess it did."

"Son of a bitch."

Hitoshi gasps out a single, near-humorless and near-silent bark of laughter. It's sharp and almost desperate, but damn if it doesn't capture the sheer lunacy of all of this.

"Get up, asshole, we still have to grab Invisibitch and get out of here."

At least he knows who they're looking for. Bakugou stands, and offers a hand, which Hitoshi takes gratefully. He hauls himself up on his feet, and follows Bakugou through this strange place. He hopes that they'll find Hagakure soon, because he's hating this place more by the second, and he's pretty sure that Bakugou wouldn't argue on that front.

At last, they enter a room and Bakugou zeroes in on someone in the pews. He heads up closer to the front, and Hitoshi follows, not because he wants to watch, but because he has to. He has to be nearby if he doesn't want the fog to try to take him again.

The actual extraction is quicker this time. Hitoshi can't hear anything that Bakugou or Hagakure say, but he can pretty much guess the way the conversation's going. It's not long before she's up and moving, ahead of Bakugou and towards Hitoshi himself.

"Hi, Shinsou." It's quiet, much quieter than her usual speech, but Hitoshi can't really blame her. This place drained him of his will to do pretty much anything but hate himself, and he was only in its clutches for a few moments. He'd hate to know what Hagakure felt like, after however long- months, maybe?- of being trapped there. Since the beginning of the apocalypse, at least.

"Hi, Hagakure."

"Quit just standing there, let's get the fuck out of here!"

"You're just whining 'cause you're bored! I'm saying hello to Hagakure like a polite person, you can wait a few minutes, you freaking toddler!"

"Fuck yeah I'm bored! Bored and leaving! Haul your asses!"

Hagakure just giggles a bit at their antics, and all three of them follow Bakugou towards what seems to be the exit.

Katsuki has decided that he hates Lonely domains. He hates the way they remind him of everything he ever did wrong, that he doesn't deserve to have half the nice things he'd gotten, that he is deeply unnecessary to everything and everyone around him. Those kinds of thoughts spiraled in his head enough in middle school, in the beginning of UA, and now that he's gained some marginal sort of freedom from them he hates being forced back into a place that sets them swirling around again.

So he's being impatient when Eyebags and Invisibitch seem to just be standing there, keeping him from moving along unless he wants to abandon the both of them there- and he doesn't, he wouldn't wish this kind of place on pretty much anyone, not even a villain. He doesn't care if he's being annoying about it, he just wants out.

At least they both seem to agree with him, if their simultaneous sighs of relief upon their movement into the next domain is any indication.

Now, though, he has to figure out if he can reasonably keep going like this, with two people with him, liable to get taken back at any moment if the Eye decides to pay him any attention, no clue where he's going next or who he's going to meet there. Can he risk saving someone else, having three people with him at all times, having to constantly be checking over his shoulder to make sure everyone stays together? There is no safety in numbers anymore, numbers are what might get someone killed at best.

Should he turn back? Who would he even put these two with? He'd kind of figured he'd stick them with Emo Fuck #1 and #1 point 5, Tokoyami and Dark Shadow, respectively. He knows, or at least strongly suspects, that they have their own domain. He won't risk Looking, especially not with so many people with him, but it's a safe enough bet, considering what he knows about his classmates.

He's obviously not going to have them trade one Lonely domain for another, so IcyHot's out of the question, and besides, he really doesn't want to stick anyone in there. Deku might not be stable enough to handle so many people outside of his core group, especially considering that wherever Eyebags goes, his family has to follow. Ears, possibly? He could have them turn around and head that way, but the problem of Eyebags' family still persists, especially since Katsuki has a solid reason to believe that Tokoyami and Dark Shadow are the least stable of everyone, so would probably require more people that they know around them in order to stay in check.

Should he just dump them with Ears then pick them up when he finds Tokoyami's domain? No, not if Tokoyami's next and he's just wasted a bunch of time. Should he just risk Looking, then?

... Maybe. Right now, the domain that they're walking through is pretty loud, considering that it seems to be some weird mix of Stranger and Slaughter, featuring a particularly violent and uncanny band of what seem to be some variety of space pirates- so he's going to have to wait until he gets somewhere more quiet to dive in a closet or something. Maybe the next hospital-like domain? There seem to be plenty of those.

He'll know when he gets there if he's at an appropriate domain. For now, he's just walking ahead, pulling both of his rescued classmates along by their shirtsleeves.

Eventually, they do actually get to some domain that isn't a hospital, but is quiet enough that he can focus. It looks like something that used to be a house, before being taken over by mold? Mushrooms? Both? Some Corruption domain, at any rate.

He tells his two hitchhikers to stay in what might have once been a living room, before all of this, while he sneaks off to a closet just off of the room. He knows that they won't purposely leave, not when they know what his presence protects them from, but he still hopes that when he opens the door again they'll be where he left them. Having to get either of them back again is just going to be a massive waste of time, since he's already done it before, unless they get stuck in entirely new domains, which would suck for everyone involved.

He probably shouldn't be thinking about that now. If Invisibitch and Eyebags aren't where he left them when he finishes Looking, he'll deal with it then. Now is not the time to be drawing attention to them by using the Eye and thinking about the hitchhikers so closely together.

The most pertinent question, he thinks, is "Who's closest?" Not only because it may lead to him just pressing forward instead of backtracking to dump these two off, but also because it'll probably be nice to actually have a chance to prepare for whoever the next poor fuck he has to save is. Seeing the Spider House again wasn't exactly something that he'd wanted to do so suddenly, as well as that church thing- the unexpected had not been at all fun, so being prepared will hopefully make things easier.

He decides, now, to actually take a breath and Look, to stop focusing on the past and the outside and Look around to see what he should do in the immediate future.

There are many things nearby. The concert that they had left, the similar houses near here in similar states of colonization from the mushrooms and the mold, leading down a street in such a state of disrepair that it reminds him and all who walk it of life itself, always ending in the same place, and soon there is a lone grocery store which sells only rotting meats which seem suspiciously similar to human, just outside of a mall.

The mall is abandoned, the electricity long gone even before the Eye blinked open completely, darkness enveloping it in a chokehold. A few lights, battery-powered, cut through it just slightly, enough to cast grotesque shadows on the wall that move with every breath.

There is something living in the shadow.

No, no, that's not quite right, because that would imply that whatever it is is separate in nature. It isn't, it's all darkness on darkness on darkness, hiding sharpened teeth and bloodied walls and all that anyone knows of anyone else is the screaming.

The dark bleeds. Someone fought back with blunted nails and silent desperation and it bled. Almost like ink, but not, nothing like it, and it was only visible for a second before the victim's eyes were torn out by things that seem like claws, but aren't, not quite, not quite, almost like a bird's talons, but there are no birds here, right? Birds don't live in malls.

Neither do people, but look at everybody in there! All just trying to get out, of course, only hopping between stores when necessary because nobody knows what lurks in the dark, not even the things that do the lurking.

There are sparks of light, occasionally, from somebody's too-bright quirk firing off again, when will he understand that the monsters feed on the light? It gives them shape, it gives them form, it gives them fangs and talons and claws with which to tear the humans and their limbs all asunder. Only for a moment, hardly a second, but every spark of light hurts. It hurts him, too, so why won't he stop?

Of course, it's not like he actually gets hurt from this place. He cowers and cries like everybody else, but the two biggest and scariest monsters don't touch him. They know him. They protect him. They act like they're sorry to him.

It is disgusting.

The worst of them, the scariest, the most rabid, the most controlled by bloodlust, they only control themselves for him. There is no reason for it, considering that one of them is close to human himself, he's even got a name.

Tokoyami Fumikage is something that should no longer bear the title of human.

Him and the thing that is attached to him, the both of them, they- they lurk in the dark and make hardly a sound, when they creep and they crawl behind their unsuspecting prey, they-

They-

They are nearby.

Katsuki rips himself out of the trancelike state that Beholding put him in, taking only enough time to reorient himself before bursting out of the closet. The two hitchhikers are still there, thankfully, and he barks at them to get moving before they all start trooping out of the house.

He leads them down the road that he Saw, practically dragging them, before Invisibitch pipes up behind him with a "Bakugou, are you okay?"

He stops, abruptly.

"I'm fine," he snaps, and plows ahead, ignoring the slight burn in his lungs, the moisture on his lip combined with the sweet smell of blood, and the slight pain lancing through his head. It isn't a lot, and he'll survive it.

He figures that the hitchhikers are probably exchanging glances behind him. He doesn't care.

"We're going to the world's largest Hot Topic, run by the resident emos. Beholding says they don't fuck with us too much, but stay close anyway. It can't predict the future."

Behind him is a noise that sounds like choking, coming from Invisibitch, at the same time as a strange scoff-like sound coming from Eyebags.

"What?"

"You're- you're serious? A Hot Topic? Hey- hey Shinsou, if you were a nightmare-person, that would so be your domain!"

"I hate. That you're right."

"I am calling you out, emo boy! I can sense it!"

"How can you sense it- ?"

"Because in middle school I attracted more edgelords than an MCR concert!"

"That raises many questions, such as: what is MCR? Why did you attract edgelords in middle school? How did you attract edgelords in middle school?"

"I don't know the answers to any of your questions!"

Katsuki sighs, and resigns himself to getting involved in this nonsense. "MCR was a pre-quirk band, and it started the modern idea of 'emo.' You're cracking jokes about them without knowing anything about them, Invisibitch."

"Hey! It's an expression! And you didn't answer, so I'm assuming that we really are going to Hot Topic! Shinsou this is going to be so great for you!"

"Huzzah."

"It is not, technically, a Hot Topic."

"But it's close enough to one?"

Katsuki thinks about it for a moment, then makes a noncommittal hand motion to show that she's... about half-right.

"But it's close enough to one! This is going to be so great!"

"This is the apocalypse, how great can it be?"

"Don't be such a killjoy! Embrace the domain that should have been yours!"

"No."

"We're almost there, so you two can shut it." They are, actually, almost there, sneaking through the domain that was once a grocery store but now sells human meat exclusively, and any moment they're going to be in the mall and surrounded by murderous shadow.

It shouldn't be too murderous towards them, given what he'd Seen earlier, but he still isn't quite sure how evil the shadows are here in general. Is he throwing them from one hell to another, or is he giving the respite that he's intending?

Really, the question here is how much of Tokoyami is left in Tokoyami?

That isn't a question that he can answer until he gets to the domain. If worst comes to worst, he can go with the old plan of leaving them with Ears, but he's hoping that it doesn't have to come to that. Maybe it'll be a Deku situation, maybe it'll be worse, and maybe he's overreacting, though he doubts the last one.

They walk into a darker section of the store, and it gets darker and darker until they've clearly passed through some kind of barrier. The mall is exactly as he'd Seen it, almost completely void of light, the only things left being a couple of dimly glowing battery-powered flashlights and very few other sorts of sources, soft light cutting harshly through the darkness and creating grotesque shadows in turn. The only sounds here are muffled breathing and the pounding of shoes against tile, cut through by the occasional sharp scream that cuts itself off too quickly to be natural, all over muffled and distorted background music that sounds distantly familiar- probably pre-quirk.

The shadows, the monsters, are not separate and distinctive creatures. They blend and bleed into each other, so that where one ends and another begins is never quite clear. Katsuki isn't concerned about that, though, because he suspects that Tokoyami and Dark Shadow control them all anyway.

He walks further in, his hitchhikers in tow, half looking for Tokoyami and Dark Shadow or else another classmate, he knows that two students are in here; and he's also half looking behind him, making sure that his hitchhikers don't start getting too freaked out, because if he's going to leave them here, they can't start getting pulled under by the wave of fear in this place. This is one of the only domains that he's hesitant to leave anyone in, here and IcyHot's place, so any sign of anything like that and he's dumping them with Ears instead.

They walk, for a few minutes, in silence, before his fears of this domain being too unstable are muffled by his immediate annoyance with Invisibitch's inane question of, "So where's the Hot Topic?"

She's staring around in open curiosity, her eyes tracking the old storefronts while her pure white hair serves as something close to a beacon in what little light there still is here. Katsuki wonders if he should call her something different, but decides against it, because even though she really isn't invisible to him at all anymore, the nickname's stuck.

"We're standing in it. It's a dark mall, that's Hot Topic enough."

"There is a little bit of that goth aesthetic, I guess... not really the kind of thing you'd go for, though, Shinsou. I'm taking this domain away, you wouldn't have it if you were a monster-guy."

"I hate this fucking family. I've been robbed."

"Go cry about it. We're getting close to someone, shut up."

The hitchhikers dutifully shut up, and Katsuki can see ahead the occasional, sudden flash of light. He knows who it's coming from, and he doesn't need to use the Beholding for it.

Aoyama must be in hell right now, reliving the loss of his eye here. This place does look like that mall, and this darkness isn't unlike the one that they had been surrounded by for that couple of seconds.

Katsuki walks forward, towards him, suspecting that breaking him out of this place won't be easy. Even if the others have had experiences similar to their particular domains, he hasn't pulled out anyone as profoundly affected as Aoyama yet- not one of them had lost anything remotely close to an eye, or even an organ at all, to the fear that ran their domains, even before the world properly ended.

Plus, Aoyama had not been one of the people that told Aizawa that he hadn't given a Statement, so his fear of the Dark must have been powerful enough to override something else, unless, of course, he'd interacted with the Dark before. Either one is possible.

He gets close enough to see him right, as well as he can in the darkness, but probably still better than anyone else in here can, barring Tokoyami and Dark Shadow. Surprisingly, he looks no more out of it than anybody else has before, and Katsuki takes note of this before reaching out to try and jolt him, slightly, but before he makes contact a new voice rings out, interrupting him.

"It won't work. We've tried a thousand times to make him wake, yet he still remains trapped in his nightmare, even when our power ought to outweigh that of this place. He lives in the past, reliving it ad infinitum, deaf to any pleas to perceive the present moment. It would be kinder to leave, Watcher."

Katsuki turns toward the voice, to see nothing more than two sets of eyes reflecting back at him in the darkness, and nothing more definitive than that. Still, he knows exactly who they are, even without the luxury of seeing them in the flesh.

"I've been told it's hopeless by more people than the two of you. There's nothing malicious here that you two don't control, right?"

There's no hesitation before the response comes from Dark Shadow. "Yes, of course there aren't. This is our domain. We control all the shadows here."

"Can you control yourselves, then? You're not going to hurt someone here that hasn't been pulled in by the domain?"

"If you manage to wake him, the moment you leave him here he will become this again. A husk of the person he was, tormented by the past that I created. It doesn't matter how much we maintain control when his descent is inevitable."

"That's not what I'm asking. I've got two hitchhikers here, and we all know that with the way the world is, I can't risk making it three. You won't try to feed on them."

The seemingly disembodied eyes shift their focus to look back at Eyebags and Invisibitch, and hold still for a contemplative moment. The shadows muffle the sounds of the rest of the domain, leading to an eerie near-silence as the two of them consider.

"We won't try to feed on them." They say it in unison, like the beginning of a mantra. Katsuki trusts that they will try, but he does not trust that they will succeed. Still, this is his best option right now. The two of them can keep each other grounded, if necessary, and if push comes to shove, he can still hear the pre-quirk music playing in here, so Ears' radio station must be accessible, so they can call in if they're in danger and the message will get to Katsuki himself easily enough.

"Good. I'll take Glitterface off your hands and leave you with my hitchhikers. Expect more people, later on. They should keep you from going too crazy."

There's a moment where he thinks that someone's going to object, but nobody does. He knows that, however calm the two of them seem right now, Tokoyami and Dark Shadow haven't been permanently stable. He Knows about the gouges in the walls in the shapes of talon marks, the blood stains on the linoleum flooring, the scars on the victims of this place. He hopes that having more people they know here will help them; he's not stupid enough to put too much stock in that plan.

For now, though, he's giving them a tentative amount of trust. He'll be back, eventually, so either way he's going to know about the results of it.

Aoyama, for his part, is still surrounded by nothing but darkness. Everything in here is, technically, but the shadows around him are thicker than most, possibly to keep his laser from firing and hurting the power in here. He goes back to what he was doing before, trying to use physical contact to wake him up, and a hand on his shoulder is as good a place to start as any.

He doesn't react, and Katsuki isn't surprised. He uses his other hand to pop a few explosions in front of his single eye, trying to keep the light minimal so that Tokoyami doesn't freak out, but at the same time trying to get the light to spark something in Aoyama's blank head.

Still, hardly anything but a blink. It's better than nothing, but he's going to have to resort to more drastic measures, like shaking the shoulder that he still has in his grip.

"Hey, Glitterface, quit freaking out on me and pay attention. You're in an abandoned mall, there are no villains around. You're not going to lose an eye right now. Breathe."

Aoyama does, slowly, start breathing correctly, instead of the erratic bursts of it that he'd been doing earlier. He blinks slowly into awareness, not unlike IcyHot's mother had when he'd pulled her out of her old domain.

"Get up. We're going."

Aoyama does nothing but nod dumbly, before Katsuki hoists him up and the two of them make their way back the way that he'd come in.

Katsuki glances back at Shinsou and Hagakure once, and only once, to see the both of them waving at Tokoyami.

They'll be fine, he thinks, and turns back ahead, Glitterface in tow.

They're about halfway to Ears' radio tower when Glitterface starts talking, saying what are most likely his first words since the world ended in the first place.

"I do not know, and I will not pretend to know, why you are able to move between realms as you are. I can only thank you for it, for being quite possibly the last acting hero on the planet."

Katsuki hesitates, a moment, trying to find the words with which to respond.

"Any of our classmates would do the same."

"If they could, I have no doubt of that. But they cannot, and you can and are. You carry with you all of our hopes and our wills, to save who and what we can. That is the only victory that there is anymore, no? You have taken that victory with both hands, and I thank you for it. You contain some of the last dregs of goodness in this world. Accept that, Bakugou."

"... Thanks."

"Of course."

Glitterface doesn't say anything else for the rest of the trip to the radio tower. It's almost disconcerting, but this apocalypse has done things to everyone, it shouldn't be surprising that something like this has happened.

They walk inside and up the stairs in silence, and Katsuki is still turning that speech over in his head so intensely that it's only when he gets to the door that Ears and Ponytail are behind, the studio door, that it actually registers that Mr. Brightside is playing through the station.

When he walks through the door, the first thing he says is "You got my album!"

He waits a moment, then, for Ears and Ponytail to stop sucking face and pay attention to the new arrival he's dumping off, but soon enough they both resurface.

"Yes, I got your damn album. Who'd you bring us?"

Katsuki doesn't reply, just moves aside to show Glitterface behind him, who does nothing but wave at Ponytail.

"Cool. Any more music requests before you head out again?"

"Nah. I just like this one the best." It's true, his favorite album is a pre-quirk one, which probably makes him deeply weird by most people's standards. He doesn't care.

"Care to share why?"

"I like Somebody Told Me."

Ears and Ponytail share a glance, before Ears nods at him. "That's fair. You going to be back anytime soon?"

Katsuki just shrugs at this, and turns to leave. He's not interrupted as he goes, and he makes it all the way out the door before realizing that he doesn't know where he's going.

Automatically, he starts trying to calculate the risk for Looking, but then he realizes that he hasn't got anyone with him. He can use Beholding as he pleases.

He does, immediately after that little epiphany, specifically looking for a shortcut past Tokoyami's domain. He's given one easily enough, and he starts making his way there to resume his search.

He's aimless, right now, and he knows that deep in his heart of hearts. He hates it, more than anything, not having a direction to go in, because he knows that soon enough he's going to just go back to wallowing about everyone stuck in London.

He's trying to focus only on what's in front of him, who might be ahead of him, but it's no use- no classmates are between Tokoyami and some kind of dead spot, a zone where Beholding can't See- he'll know it when he gets there, he guesses. Before that point comes, he's unfocused, unable to concentrate on anything but plowing forward, keeping going, the same thing he's been doing since he was ten years old.

Just keep walking. Don't stop. Don't let yourself get scared. That mantra has been his lifeblood, practically etched into his very bones, and he's not disobeying it now.

He can't stop his mind from wandering back to London, though, and that leads to an unexpected question, out of nowhere. The man that had interviewed him and his classmates- he'd been from England, hadn't he? He's important, too, Deku said so earlier, so what is he doing now?

Asking Beholding probably won't yield anything useful, but Katsuki's willing to try it anyway. He's not risking anything by doing so, because for the first time in a while, it's just him out here. He has nobody to send back anywhere.

For a moment, when he Looks, all that he Sees is fire. It's difficult, to search through it, but eventually it happens, a look at the interviewer standing next to a man Katsuki doesn't recognize. The two of them are talking to someone, and it looks like it's about to be a shouting match between her and them.

He stops Looking, because it's no use wasting his time watching drama. He's found out that the Archivist- if that was what Deku called him- can likely travel freely between domains, just like he can, as well as have a companion alongside him. He isn't sure what that means for himself and his hitchhikers, but he doesn't want to risk anything, so he's going to keep it business as usual on that front.

He doesn't know what he was expecting, really. He's in the same boat as someone with the same powers as him- and who knows how many others? He won't Look for anyone else, for fear of sending possible rescued people back to where they were pulled from, but he wonders how many more are out there, if both he and this Archivist are both able to wander around like this.

That's all something to ruminate on later, though, when he doesn't have anyone else immediately obvious to rescue. He's got to make every train of thought last as long as he can in this place, lest he run out of things to think about that don't make him want to stop and let the world creep in. Now, the best way to do that is focusing on the current Domain, because it's somewhere new, past Tokoyami's mall and still ahead of the dead spot.

He seems to be standing in what could tentatively be described as a place belonging to the Stranger, considering the people running around with no clue of who they are, and the glut of mannequins that seem to have taken more than their fair share of beatings.

Many of those mannequins are missing extremities, mostly fingers and divots from their plastic, but occasionally entire limbs are completely gone. Those that aren't sans limbs or fingers or anything of the like are instead embedded with more staples than plastic, and the places clear of metal have been scuffed brown. They're all in rough shape, and should each be distinctive in their own rights, but differentiating them is somehow impossible, keeping track of any individual even more so.

They seem to be chasing people down, and instead of taking entire faces, as had occurred in most other Stranger domains, they seem to only be taking bits and pieces, and giving parts of themselves in return, so many people are half-human and half-mannequin, and vice versa. They've even taken to stealing quirks- and giving a hard plastic sheen in return.

The one thing about this place that Katsuki can appreciate is that its ringleaders are obvious. The villains Dabi and Toushou are running around with everybody else, but they're the ones screaming the loudest, shining the brightest, and altogether drawing more eyes than most.

Katsuki's planning on just passing through, considering that there's nobody he knows here and no particular reason to mess with them. He's still got a bit of a grudge against Dabi, but that's not the type of thing he wants to settle in an apocalypse like this- more like a fast-food parking lot kind of deal.

It becomes too late for passing through very quickly, though, as both villains catch sight of him and start making a beeline straight to him. He figures that it's obvious that he's an intruder here, so he just remains where he is- besides, IcyHot had been useful for one thing, and that thing is apparently having an in with these two villains. He's not sure what that particular deal is, but he's pretty sure there's no traitor business happening, considering that that would endanger Deku, so he's content with letting it be. It's not his business, and he's not particularly keen on getting up in Half n' Half's business either.

They approach him easily enough, with matching slimy grins that promise nothing but trouble. He decides to just head them off where they are, with a quick, "IcyHot said that I could pass through."

Interestingly, their reactions change between them so that they no longer match. Dabi looks put out, like a child who's had a toy stolen from his grasp, while Toushou does nothing but tilt her head slightly in what looks like it might be a mockery of confusion.

"I don't know anyone by that name."

Dabi turns to her, his head on a perfectly level swivel. He waits an unnaturally long beat, before piping up- "I think he's referring to- "

"I know who he's referring to. He's just dead to me."

"He didn't do anything to us, though? Last I recall, he was helping us, or did you think Endeavor just dropped dead of his own accord?"

That's very interesting information, actually, and Katsuki mentally files it away for later use. Not blackmail, because if anyone deserved to die at the hands of his own kid it was that Endeavor bastard, but he reserves the right to use it for... something. He doesn't know.

"It's just best not to get attached."

"The hell do you mean- "

"You know damn well what I mean. He died once and I wasn't even there, died again and I couldn't even stop him. It's going to happen to one of you, too. You've both already done the first step. I chose my side a long time ago, and I'm sticking to it. Shouto is dead to me, I've already made my peace with that."

Katsuki knows already that he only has half the story, maybe, but all of this is directly affecting him and his ability to move past, so he feels like he has to say something.

"Why are you so certain about that?"

Toushou turns back to him with a deadened, dispassionate stare. Her face, usually animated, is completely still and silent, and Katsuki suddenly gets a nagging feeling of familiarity.

"Everybody that I love dies. All of them. No matter how hard I cling to them, they all end up leaving me behind. I can't split my energy anymore, so I'm choosing to hold on to Dabi. You wouldn't understand."

Katsuki finds that he does, actually, understand that rationale. If he didn't, then what would he be doing like this? Clinging to the shards of the old world in trying to bring his classmates to some kind of safety is exactly the kind of thing she described.

"I think I get it more than you realize. So I'm doing something about it. The way I see it, IcyHot's not in much danger of dying- nobody is, except people in End domains. No use mourning when you won't need to for years to come."

Toushou appears to consider this, and file it away as she regards Katsuki again. He still can't place that nagging feeling of familiarity, except that she and Dabi remind him somehow of IcyHot. He tries to dismiss it, because of course he's reminded- they've been talking about the bastard this whole time, of course.

"Maybe. We still don't follow the words of heroes."

Dabi's expression finally shifts to match hers, a commiserating sort of hatred against a common enemy. Katsuki doesn't really know what heroes did to both of them, but they're villains anyway, so he guesses it doesn't really matter. Still, he's curious, and it's not like they're going to let him past anyway.

"What'd they do to you, anyway?"

"Endeavor was a piece of shit. Beat his wife and kids, we don't fuck with that." Dabi says his first words in a moment, and while he tries to seem impersonal, Katsuki can hear a tinge of emotion under there.

The nagging familiarity suddenly snaps into place- of course they hate Endeavor. They're just as invested in IcyHot's family life as he is, considering they must have gone through the same thing as kids.

Of course they did. They are- or were- the eldest Todorokis.

"So he was a dick to you. Doesn't explain your issue with the others. Hawks is cool, doesn't do anything- "

"Hawks," Dabi snarls, suddenly and loudly, "can take his tarantulas and fucking choke on them."

"Damn, emotional much? Bad breakup?" Katsuki's just needling at him, figuring on just poking at his anger, but Dabi unexpectedly curls his hands into fists and looks like he's about to rage.

"He never meant anything to me, that son of a bitch can go die for all I care, he can take his fucking 'Sword of Damocles' and shove it up his- "

"Dabi."

"What?"

"This isn't about him."

Katsuki expects Dabi to snarl again, bite back somehow, but instead he just sort of... deflates.

"Yeah. Spidery dick's probably smirking to himself right now."

"Probably."

"I hate him."

"No need to get worked up again. That's what he wants."

Katsuki watches this exchange with no small amount of surprise. Dabi and Hawks being a thing is one thing, but Hawks being something inhuman on top of that is definitely something unexpected.

Still, none of that involves him, or his classmates, or anyone he knows, so he honestly doesn't care. He's glad to have the information, obviously, but in and of itself he doesn't particularly care to do anything with it, except maybe spring it on unsuspecting people. Their reactions could be funny, if nothing else.

The two of them seem to be more concerned with their conversation than anything, so Katsuki makes to start sneaking around them. He almost gets by, too, before the both of them turn back to look at him again.

They exchange a glance between themselves, before Dabi waves a hand and says, "Just go, kid. I'm not keeping you."

Toushou simply nods in agreement, and they return to being absorbed in their own bullshit. Katsuki takes that as permission enough to go, and he powerwalks out of there and to the next domain.

He's still got some time before the dead spot, so he just amuses himself by looking around at whatever domain he's found himself in this time.

The tape recorder is clicked on.

- I'm not...

- I'm not smirking to myself or anything.

- ...

- I hate this. Even though it's the least painful way...

- ...

- ...I'm sorry.

The tape recorder is clicked off.

Chapter Text

Katsuki doesn't know if he's going insane or if the deadspot really is moving.

Three domains ago, it was only one domain ahead of him, and now it's still one domain ahead of where he is. It must not be a domain in its own right, probably not a piece of land or anything, something capable of motion- an artifact, perhaps? Somebody figured out how to hide themselves from the Beholding?

He doesn't know, obviously he doesn't know, because it's the only thing within a significant radius that he can't See and because it's constantly moving out of his reach.

He's trying to pick up the pace, but that's not as easy of a task as it sounds like. Time works differently now, he's known that, but that also means that catching up with whatever's hiding from him is damn near impossible. He's sure that somebody more powerful could probably See whatever the hell's in front of him, like Deku or that Archivist, but neither of them are here right now and he's stuck with his relatively subpar Sight.

Maybe not Deku, actually, now he thinks on it, considering how the Beholding in him has been contaminated by the Hunt, but he's getting off-track with that. The point is, the mechanism by which whatever is hidden from him remains unseen is probably not an all-powerful one.

It's been a while of walking, though. If somebody is there, then they're probably growing tired, if they've managed to keep the rules of this new world at bay. With this though, Katsuki keeps going, content that he's going to catch up eventually- and even if he doesn't, he'll find more people along the way. Something in him doubts that it'll come to that, though.

He passes out of this domain and could swear that this time, the deadspot hasn't moved. It's still in the center of this place, what looks to be a hospital. It isn't even a particularly large deadspot, if he hadn't been chasing it for so long that he doubts he'd have even noticed, but the single room on just the next floor up that remains invisible to him claws at the back of his mind, begging him to go upstairs and see what tries to hide itself from him.

He obeys that urge, and turns off his path straight through and instead goes towards the staircase nearby.

He has to dance around the rivers of blood flowing through the halls, but it isn't a difficult feat. Idly, he wonders what kind of hospital this once was- a children's one, most likely, given that its major theme seems to be needles and blood and various acts of medical violence, though he's relieved to Know that there are no children here.

The room in question is almost exactly like any other in outward appearance. It is plain and white, though there are a few drops of blood spattered upon its outside. It is closed, like all the others down this hall, and for all intents and purposes it appears just as locked, as well, but Katsuki is well aware that it isn't.

The door opens without resistance. He doesn't know what to expect, really- he kind of thinks that behind it will be someone he's never seen before, or else just an object that hid from the Beholding and got here, somehow- he didn't think that he would recognize the faces behind the door.

Toogata and Amajiki. Two of the third year Hero Course students. They share the single bed in the room, both of them seemingly asleep, and Katsuki feels like he's intruding on something private.

He turns to leave, to allow whatever they used to remain hidden to stay as secret as it has been, but before he does, he sees Toogata crack a single eye open and stare directly into his own. Toogata cracks half a smile and opens his eyes fully, before gesturing for Katsuki to come inside. He does so, shutting the door as silently as he can behind him.

"Hey, Bakugou- it is Bakugou, right?" Toogata whispers, and Katsuki doesn't blame him for being unsure of his name, just nods in confirmation.

"Thought so. How's your apocalypse going?"

"Not bad, how's yours?" Here they are, whispering in stupid small-talk in this tiny bubble of invisibility, for just a moment while everything else screams and withers and refuses to die around them.

"As well as it can, in all honesty. It took ages to find Tamaki, longer to pull him out of that place he was in- longer still to convince him he was himself. You know how it goes. We're taking a rest now, but soon enough we're going to look for Nejire."

"Sounds festive. I've been doing more of the same- didn't know you were of Beholding."

"I'm not. So far as I can tell, the Eye's kind of ignoring me, Tamaki by extension. Bet you're just full of Eyes, considering that question. Am I wrong?"

"No, you're not. If that's how you're hiding, just luck, I should probably go before it decides to look in."

Toogata sighs softly through his nose, before nodding over to the other unoccupied bed in the room. He doesn't do anything more than that, given how Amajiki's flopped over him, but Katsuki understands the intent.

"You look tired. I don't mind keeping watch for monsters for a bit, getting people out has got to be tiring."

"You're not scared I'll- "

Katsuki doesn't even finish his question before Toogata breathes an amused-sounding huff.

"You can't scare me, Bakugou. Nothing here can. I lost that particular ability a while ago, so I get to thrive in this new world. Lucky me."

"I can scare him, though." He nods over to where Amajiki is passed out with his face buried in Toogata's chest.

"You won't."

"What, you're just going to trust that everything's going to be fine?"

Toogata shrugs, just slightly, not enough to jostle Amajiki, and looks away.

"I mean, what else is there to do? I'm not going to turn you away because of something that probably won't happen. You look like hell, Bakugou. Take a minute. It's quiet here." With this, Toogata slides his eyes back shut.

Katsuki looks at the bed for a moment, wondering to himself if he should waste the time in trying to sleep. A while ago, he wouldn't have minded, but the Archivist is doing something in England- and that puts Katsuki on a time limit. He doesn't know when things will change again, he doesn't know if it'll be for the better, so he has to weight his options carefully, hurry when he can.

He turns his back on the seniors, and opens the door, stepping softly out. He closes it behind him.

Katsuki can't waste time on himself. He has work to do.

Mezou doesn't know how long he's been here. Not even a guess, not really, because there’s no way to tell time here. There is no consistency anymore, not even in things he once knew to be true, not even in the smallest increments of time.

There are no clocks. There are no windows. There aren’t even doors- merely the inconsistent and erratic screams, from himself, from those who he can hear but cannot see, along with the constant swing of the blade.

He remembers when it was only anticipation that curled itself into his heart, that wormed its way through his brain. When nothing had actually happened yet, just standing there, waiting his turn to go to the killing floor. “Killing floor,” as though anything could actually die here- that would be too much of a mercy.

Mezou knew what he was waiting for, at least. He doesn't know how, but he did. He does. He knows what the Factory is for; he feels like a part of him has always known.

He- everyone, in fact- they are all nothing more than meat. That’s all that anyone is, a collection of cells that happen to have arranged themselves in a particular order in accordance to a particular genetic code in order to make a particular part of a particular person. There is very little that separates people from any other type of animal- human cells have no fundamental chemical difference to any other type of cell, the arrangement isn’t all that different from that of any other primate, and the basic organ compositions and functions are similar enough to that of any other animal that any distinction between the two is mostly superficial. Cells are cells; meat is meat.

It stands to reason, then, that if meat can be harvested from livestock, so too can it be harvested from humans- humans can be livestock. Even better if they have some form of quirk that allows for faster or less limited generation of that same meat. Mezou’s own falls under that category- he can regenerate his arms, as many arms as he wants, with whatever organs he wants attached to the ends of them. So, therefore, it stands to reason that if anyone ever did decide to start harvesting human meat, he would be an ideal source of it.

It’s all very calculated, obviously, and maybe it’s callous of him to think that way- but it’s true, and it’s the situation that he’s in, so there’s no use trying to sugarcoat it.

He remembers when the concept of being nothing more than his quirk was something that upset him. Of course it did, it would upset anyone, but at least then he was unique. Now he is roughly equivalent to a pig.

Mezou waited for a very long time to get to where he is, and the knowledge of what was ahead permeated his thoughts almost absolutely. His imagination went wild with it, each prediction more painful and absurd than the last. None of them were accurate.

None of his thoughts accounted for just how cold it really is. The bite of the blade isn’t only a matter of pain, but the sharp sting of the ever present cold of the harvest. They also didn’t account for how routine it has become, for how easy it became to lose himself in the constant pain, the rhythmic screams from every time somebody else was harvested, the steady whoosh-thunk of every individual blade swinging down at times that must be calculated precisely by the second.

It has become routine. Wait, wait, listen to someone’s screaming far away, and wait for the next person to start, then the next, as they slowly get louder as their victims are closer to him- this place, though he only saw it for a moment or two, he knows is shaped like a massive steel drum, the harvester working through the livestock in a circular pattern- and then when the person next to him begins to cry out and he hears the distinctive whoosh-thunk of the industrial machine, he waits with bated breath as he knows that he is next.

Like clockwork, always the instant he lets himself hope that it’s decided to skip over him. Whoosh-thunk, it goes, cutting off anything he’s grown his arms to be. He always forgets how much it hurts until it’s gotten him again.

He’d tried to avoid it, once. Nobody can really move here, so he couldn’t wriggle his way out of his restraints, but for a round he just… didn’t grow his arms back. He’d just let the stumps bleed, just past the blades’ reach. It seemed like a good idea, at the time- but there was a reason that he only tried that once.

Now, he tries to figure out what will hurt the least when it comes time for it. Nothing’s had a consistent set of results, but all that he can do is keep testing it, hoping that there will be some magic way out of the pain for just a few moments, just a round or two, that’s all.

Making more limbs has, counterintuitively, made things a little easier, since it’s all distributed, and the blade always comes down with the same brutal efficiency no matter what’s in its way. The only really bad thing about this technique is how loud the resulting wet thump of his amputated limbs becomes. He’s not even sure if they fall on the ground or not, or if all of that meat has just been left to rot in piles on the ground.

He can hear the screams, even now. He’s got about five people between himself and whoever it is. He hates that he can calculate that, just by hearing it, and he hates that that is all that he’s put his efforts into anymore. He hates that he’s stopped trying, but what else is there to do? Count the drops of blood that have splattered on the walls? Search for a clock or a window or a weak point for the thousandth time, hoping that maybe he’ll find something that he missed the first nine hundred ninety nine times before?

He hates to say that it’s pointless, but that’s what it is, isn’t it? Nothing will change. It can’t. He wishes it could, but wishing doesn’t do any good but hurry the blade along.

Mezou wonders if the others are even real. There are three people between him and this new screamer, by his own estimate, but how many of them are really in the same situation, and how many have found a way out? How many sat where he is now, and either finally died by the blade by a convenient shift in their limbs- or inconvenient choice by whatever runs the Factory- or else managed to find what he missed, to get out, to be free?

Is there even freedom anymore? There must be, right? There must be something outside of the Factory. It must be harvesting them for those outside, right? If there are still people outside?

There was a time when the Factory wasn’t real, nothing more than a nightmare, but that seems so distant, now- nothing more than a whimsical daydream. Nothing more than delirium, or even so much as madness.

He tests his bonds, again for the ten thousandth time, hoping that this time, something will give- and it doesn’t snap, exactly, but something- something loosens. Just slightly, so slightly, not enough to be noticeable to anyone who hasn’t been here for the last- last- he doesn't know how long.

This is a trick, it must be, right? The same kind of trick that the blade always pulls, waiting, waiting, waiting for the instant that he starts to think maybe, maybe, maybe.

There is no “maybe.” The answer is always “no.”

Still, if it’s decided to toy with him then he may as well play along. That’s what it must want him to do, and if he doesn’t do what it wants, then the same thing as before will happen, when he’d tried to resist before, when he chose not to regrow any limbs- he’s got no scars to prove what it did, but he was wearing pants before they were chopped into shorts. He doesn't know how his legs regrew- that’s not his quirk, it was never his quirk, and that’s probably why it hurt so much more than it normally does with his arms, because that is what they were designed for. That is all that he is.

So he tugs and pulls at the bonds, and waits for the blade to come closer. Two away, now, but whoever’s next must be truly hopeless, because it’s been a while since the last screamer started.

He expects nothing to happen. He expects that the spark of hope was thrown at him just because it would amuse something, somewhere, whatever is watching him must have wanted a laugh- but the bonds give a little more, nothing much, an infinitesimal amount that makes no difference but to give a spark of hope that burns where it has taken root.

“Get up, Shouji.”

The words must be in his imagination. They must be, because there is no one in front of him, and if he were to be saved by anybody it sure as hell wouldn’t be Bakugou. It wouldn’t be anybody that he knows. There’s too much hope in that, too much potential in that, it would plant the idea that maybe there could be others getting out, too- and that kind of thinking is dangerous, it’s inadvisable, it’s something that he thought he’d stopped long ago.

Apparently not.

He’s almost tempted not to keep pulling, to just sit here and let it happen. Being stuck, completely immobile again, would hurt so much worse than anything physical ever has, ever could- better to just stop, hold still, because then reality can’t hurt him.

Then he can cling to his delusion of hope.

He doesn't know what possesses him to dismiss that thought, and try it again, just once more- the same idiocy that possessed him to try to be a Hero so long ago, he thinks, but it shouldn’t have worked Before, he should never have succeeded then, and he shouldn’t succeed now- but he does.

But he does.

Mezou stands up with such force that he’s flung out of the steel chair- he thinks of it as a chair, but it’s just a slab of metal- and almost to the wall before his arm, sacrificial lamb of a thing, is grabbed tight by a hand that isn’t his own.

It’s been so long since he felt anything other than the cold bite of metal.

He turns around slowly, disbelievingly, to see Bakugou in front of him- the voice must have been real, then. He knows, he knows that this is real because if it wasn’t then Bakugou wouldn’t have looked as pathetic as he does, like he’s crawled to hell and back and back again.

He looks Mezou over, just once, before turning and walking away. He follows behind like a lost puppy, because Bakugou holds his only hope of escape, and even if he only leads him deeper inside- even then, he’ll still have been away from it for a moment, and that is all that he needs.

Katsuki leads Shouji out of the weird flesh-domain that he'd been stuck in, looking him over to see no lasting damage except to his wardrobe- which isn't the worst consequence to have, all things considered. He isn't wearing his mask, so Katsuki looks away from his face out of politeness.

It doesn't change the fact that he's already seen the scars, and it doesn't change the fact that the story of how he got them is pressing insistently at the edges of Katsuki's mind. He isn't listening to it- he won't let it in. He won't allow himself to Know unless he's told. It's the decent thing to do.

He isn't sure of where to go, now- he could turn back, bring him to the Hot Topic residents, or press on and bring back a whole batch. It depends on who's ahead, honestly- it depends on where all of their destinations should be. Plus, if he can manage to grab a mask of some kind for Shouji, that would be ideal. He doesn't want him to have to deal with more questions than necessary, especially if anybody decides to assume things about the facial scars' origins, believing them to be due to the present instead of the past.

Katsuki hates to risk Looking ahead, but he also feels like maybe that risk is lower than he'd initially thought- that Archivist had someone traveling with him, after all, and he's all the way in England, where the Eye's power is the strongest and most focused. If anyone were to be in danger from having a plus-one, it would be that guy, but he seems to be doing fine.

... Just one little Look shouldn't hurt. Just enough to Know what's in the next couple of Domains, to see if they should head back or not. If there's nobody he recognizes for a while, he'll turn back, but if necessary he may forge ahead. It's all in the interest of efficiency, after all, since things are evidently going to be going down where the Eye holds power, he's been put on an indefinite time crunch. Not ideal, but doable.

So Katsuki Looks ahead, not too far, to find that the next Domain is something to do with the Hunt where everyone in it is starving and chasing each other down; next is something Slaughter-y, with everybody inside hacking at each other with knives, blood always flying everywhere and sticking to everything, under fingernails, in hair, inside of clothes, all the while the sources of it just getting up and at it again after a while; next seems to be some sort of Stranger/Corruption mix, where it's a mazelike hospital and all of the patients have some "sickness" or "curse" according to the doctors- who all don birdlike plague doctor masks to hide their mannequin faces- which must be "cured" with an unintelligible cacophony of pain.

That last one is the one that intrigues him- it sounds vaguely familiar, and not in a good way. He hasn't seen a Domain like this before, he knows, but there are specific elements of it that bring up the strangest form of déja vu- the bird masks, the use of "curse" as a descriptor, the inability to articulate what exactly is wrong with the so-called patients- it all rings a bell in the back of his mind, of something he was told about, something he was informed of, ages ago.

This is going to bother him, he can tell, but he also has no idea what it all reminds him of, what the dots all connect to form. He doesn't even remember the context, just a tip-of-the-tongue feeling that makes him think of Deku, but fuck if he knows why.

What does Deku have to do with this? He's been with him for everything, and never once has he experienced anything remotely similar to what he's being reminded of, except- except- there was one thing that Deku did that Katsuki did not share an experience in.

The work study, when Katsuki had had to take remedial classes with Gang Orca and Deku had been out fighting the Yakuza. They'd had bird masks like the ones in that Domain, and Deku had told him the story of what happened not long before everything Changed, in the hushed quiet of the night with the promise that he'd never say anything about it to anyone.

It had been after Deku had told him about their powers. Not the whole picture, but some of it. He'd Known what Katsuki was Becoming, a little later than his full Avatar-ship should have granted him, but before he'd truly done anything. He'd mostly told Katsuki to turn back while he still could- and of course he didn't listen at the time, and he probably wouldn't have listened even now. Deku had just sighed that annoying, pitying sigh that he used to do sometimes, when Katsuki had lost his temper or was being stubborn, and just asked if he'd wanted to go full-in on this.

Katsuki hadn't hesitated to say yes. He hadn't wanted to be lesser or behind in anything, even if it meant change. He'd already started changing, developing powers, so as far as he was concerned he was already long gone- a quirk cannot be taken back, un-developed, so by all logic, neither could this.

So the story of Aizawa Eri came out.

She'd been held captive since her quirk had come in, experimented on for her quirk that she had been told was a "curse," a "sickness." Her blood had been a major component of those quirk-erasing bullets that the Yakuza had developed and nobody else could replicate. She had never been told this, only that she was going to be "cured" by the "doctors," the Yakuza. Overhaul, mainly, bastard that he is- and Deku had been the one to call him that. Katsuki hadn't yet had the context to agree.

Now that he does, of course, he'd like to throw in extra epithets for good measure, but he agrees with the fundamental idea.

Considering how close that Domain is to what was Eri's entire reality, for years of her life, Katsuki's almost entirely certain that she's in there. He's met the kid a couple of times, and he thinks she thinks he's friendly enough, considering that she was willing to talk to him- and call him "Kacchan" because Deku does too, but she was Aizawa's kid so he allowed it- so hopefully, she'll trust him enough when he pulls her out of there.

The walk is a relatively short one, at least. There are only two Domains between the one they're in now and the one that they need to get to, and Shouji, for his part, remains quiet but keeps pace, so they're at their destination rather quickly.

The place is, for all intents and purposes, a hospital. It may have even been one, once, or else some other kind of doctor's office. It doesn't matter, anyway, the only thing that's going to actually matter is getting the kid out of here.

At least Katsuki can only detect the one in here. He'd hate to end up leaving more behind.

They pass by a receptionist's desk, and then what he could swear is the same desk a few more times as he tries to get through this maze of a place- definitely some Spiral in here, then. As they pass by again, the desk has suddenly acquired a box of disposable medical masks on top of it, so Shouji takes one and puts it on wordlessly.

There are rooms that they pass by as well, many of them empty, their usual "patients" in the surgical area of the place, but others are locked from the outside, housing people sitting quietly in anticipation of what comes next. They already know, of course- they all know. They've all been in surgery, and come out the other side even worse than the way they started.

Katsuki stops in front of one door in particular, and quietly thanks whatever power is in charge of timing- Web, probably, loathe as he is to admit it- that Eri is not in surgery.

He hesitates a moment, wondering if knocking first would scare her more or less, before deciding to just unlock the damn thing and go inside. Either way, she's going to be out soon, and he's going to do his best to calm her down, but efficiency is still a major concern. He doesn't want to wait in rescuing her and end up being too late, somehow, though he doesn't have the slightest idea in how that might work.

When he opens the door, she's just sitting on the bed of a barren-looking child's room. It was clearly made for a child, a bed fitted for her, a tiny and empty desk with a tiny and empty chair. She's curled up with her knees to her chest, staring blankly at the door. Katsuki doesn't think that she can see him.

He creeps forward, slowly, beckoning Shouji inside as well- she knows him, too, and he doesn't want to accidentally lose him out of an abundance of caution. Shouji stands in a corner away from Eri, clearly attempting to look as nonthreatening as possible.

Katsuki kneels next to Eri, not in front of her, so that she won't suddenly be surprised by seeing his face. He doesn't need her accidentally activating her quirk and Rewinding him to a time before he had any sort of favor from Beholding, though if that's even possible, he doesn't know. Beholding doesn't deal in hypotheticals, after all.

"Hey, Eri," he murmurs, in a voice he isn't used to using, quiet and as safe as he can manage to sound, "It's Kacchan. Remember me? Deku's friend."

He hopes that bringing out Deku's name will help, and it does, only a little. Katsuki takes a second to remember that he's not going to be putting her with Deku directly- he's her hero, but he's too unstable to have her with him, especially without an adult nearby, and there isn't one as of now- no, sticking her with the Hot Topic residents is still his best bet, especially considering that her adoptive brother is there already.

"I want to help you out of here, but you're going to have to help me, okay? You're going to have to look at me, do you think you can do that?" He remembers, from remedial training, that children love to be given small tasks and told that they're "helping" when they're being cooperative, so Katsuki employs this as well as he can.

It's a long, tense moment that passes, with her still staring off into space, before she slowly, inexorably, turns her head to face him. Her eyes are clearer, now, but she still looks so very afraid.

"Glad you're back with us. Let's get out of here, yeah? We're going to go find Aizawa." Eri visibly brightens upon hearing her dad's name, and she moves towards the edge of the bed, but takes great pains not to touch Katsuki at all- like she had right when she'd been rescued, refusing to touch anyone at all.

Katsuki doesn't directly chastise her for this, but at the same time, they need to be walking at a pace faster than one that Eri can keep up with- so Katsuki accepts a risk and says, "You know, with the way everything is right now, I think that it would be faster if I carried you. You can't hurt me, I promise." He tacks on the end sentence after she freezes up and clearly starts freaking out inside, hoping that she'll be able to calm down enough for her to allow him to pick her up and take her to the next Domain.

"... Do you pinky swear?"

"Yes, I pinky swear." He spits it out, full of the confidence he needs to pretend to have so that she won't get scared, won't back away more, won't freak out and fire off her quirk.

She believes it, thankfully, and holds out her pinky for the necessary swear. Katsuki hooks his around hers, shakes once, and picks her up without further ado. She's tucked up against his chest, at just the right height that it'll be easy to cover her eyes through everything.

He walks back towards the half-open door, nodding at Shouji to get ahead of the two of them, which he does easily and without delay. He stands in front of the door, blocking any view past the doorway, while Katsuki tries to convince Eri that it would be very fun to play a game where she closes her eyes and pretends that she can't hear anything.

It isn't hard to convince her, actually, but before she closes her eyes she sends him a sort of look as though she knows everything, she knows exactly why he really wants her to cover her eyes and she's only going along with it because he wants her to. Katsuki won't Look to find out if she really does know or just thinks she does, because he's going to allow her this mercy and privacy, to be experienced for once in her life.

He follows Shouji, this time, and since he knows that they'll get out the other side eventually no matter if he's paying attention or not, he risks Looking, just a little, only to the next Domain so that he doesn't risk anything. He can't risk the kid, she's been through enough shit already, this whole thing's probably fucked her up even more than before- getting lost again would probably break her.

The next one is of the Buried, an eternally collapsing building, crushing its victims inside ad infinitum, the moment they manage to extricate themselves is the moment that whatever they're standing on collapses and sticks them in more rubble. Katsuki normally wouldn't pay attention to it, except for what's likely to be too much noise, except it seems to have multiple people that he knows in there- he isn't sure who, exactly, given that nobody's told him of an experience like this and he's not going to use more of Beholding's power than absolutely necessary- but at least this seems to be efficient.

He's going to extricate whoever- the multiple whoevers- from the constant wreckage, then deposit his pack of people where they need to go. He's got his own personal hopes that the people in this next Domain are Aizawa and Yamada, but he can't be sure- plus, it would be too kind of the world to place Eri right next to her parents.

Or would it be cruel? The kid's right next to the two people who are supposed to protect her, who would if given the tiniest sliver of a chance, but they're almost permanently out of reach. He doesn't know, really, because the logic of everything is all kinds of twisted, it's best to just take things as they are and not think about it.

Don't think about it too hard. Just keep moving forward.

His old mantra served him well in the past, and it keeps serving him well now. The best he can do is move forward- that's better than most others can do. He's willing to do that, at least. For the others.

They do, eventually, make it out of the hospital-esque place without seeing anything too gruesome, but he suspects that keeping Eri's eyes covered was still the best course of action, especially considering that they passed the occasional bird-masked Stranger in the halls.

The falling building is much louder than he'd anticipated. The crashing is constant, and there are a few screams that punctuate the air, but most of the human sounds are inaudible from this distance- mostly muffled gasps, sharp cries, the occasional sob- most of the Buried are forcibly silenced, because even the luxury of a lungful of air shouldn't be wasted on making a fuss.

This place is, strangely enough, legitimately dangerous. He sets Eri gently on the ground, looks over at Shouji, and tells them both that he'll be back as quickly as possible- leaving them alone for a moment will be alright, as evidenced by Shinsou and Hagakure what feels like forever ago. If he doesn't find anyone familiar soon enough, he'll just turn back, take a breather, and jump back in.

It's alright. He'll be fine.

Shouta hasn't been able to breathe properly for a very long time.

He doesn't know what's going on, not quite, but he feels like he's being Watched, has since he got here. Not like Nedzu's cameras, not like teaching a class, but really Watched, like Midoriya or Bakugou are here. He doesn't know how aware of that feeling he's supposed to be.

This feels exactly like that day fifteen years ago- was it fifteen? Fifteen before he got stuck here, anyway- when that building had dropped on his second-year work study.

When he and Hizashi were trapped for hours and hours and hours, days it had felt like, before they had been pulled out of the rubble like earthworms from the dirt. When neither of them had been able to do anything. When Oboro-

When the Choke had taken a victim.

This feels exactly like that had, down to the shifting of the packed dirt, of the crushed concrete and sand and jagged steel as the rest of the building crumbles and shifts around him.

He doesn't know how he got here, but if he's being tortured with his worst memory- and he must be, because this, even after years on the field, was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, by far- then logically, Hizashi must be here too. He must be, because they share this common fear, this common nightmare, this common grief.

Besides, if he was caught up in something, Hizashi couldn't have been far. The last place he remembers being before this was UA, and if something happened there to bring him here, Hizashi must have gotten caught in it too.

He swears that he even heard him, once. There was a scream that he swears was quirk-powered, must have been, and though it was far away he could still recognize the voice. He's been trying, slowly, to make his way in that direction ever since. He thinks he's getting close, now, after what must have been months of steady crawling.

He wonders momentarily if either of his kids were caught up in this, too. He hopes not. If either Hitoshi or Eri is stuck reliving their worst memories, he'll kill whoever did this, consequences be damned. Hitoshi would be able to handle it alright, after enough time and therapy, but Eri? Eri... she'd be back at square one. After all this time in assuring her that she wouldn't go back, reliving it all over again would break her.

For his attacker's sake, she'd better not be trapped anywhere. Whoever's fault this is, he would tear them limb from limb if she were.

He's going to hope, for now, that they aren't here, for his own peace of mind. With this in mind, he decides to keep going, to keep trying to get to Hizashi.

He moves slightly, waits, then reaches ahead. That's how he's been making progress, one limb at a time, excruciating pauses between them. Every movement is painfully slow, and as he pushes his arm forward, he hopes that at some point, soon, he will touch something that isn't dirt.

The very tip of his finger brushes against something warm. It is strangely soft in a way that dirt isn't, in a way that he doesn't recognize from touching the other pieces of debris before. Is this something new, then? Has his attacker finally decided to get a little more creative?

Nobody had ever found the body, the first time this happened, in reality instead of this strange memory. Maybe whoever's in charge of this has decided that he ought to do that, ought to be the one who has to stare Oboro in his unmoving and lifeless face, exactly as young as he was back then. This thing that he can just barely feel on his fingertip seems consistent with the texture of human flesh, though it is warmer than he would expect of a corpse.

Maybe the thing that's torturing him has decided that Oboro must die in front of him again. Not an unreasonable idea for torture, and not unexpected given the nightmarish quality of all of this. He may as well get it over with, then.

He moves his legs to propel himself forward, while keeping his hand outstretched for what must be the body. He can't see it, not yet, he doesn't have space to turn his head, but he will soon enough.

When he presses forward, the thing that he'd thought of as what must be a facsimile of Oboro has become something that isn't that. He's close enough, now, to grasp someone else's hand, full of callouses that Oboro had never developed, instead echoing an achingly familiar other.

Shouta resolutely does not allow himself to hope. He knows, logically, that Hizashi being here is more likely than not, but that doesn't mean that he's actually managed to reach him. It can't. He's been bitten and burned too many times by hope that allowing it to fester now would be inadvisable and illogical.

Hope is one thing, though, and hard evidence is another. When Shouta manages to get to a place where he can turn his head just incrementally enough that he can catch a glimpse of the hand that he's hanging on to, he recognizes it instantly, and he knows that he could never mistake it for another's. There is a scar at the base of its pointer finger that Shouta can recite the story for almost unconsciously; there are callouses crawling all over its fingers both from fighting and perfecting guitar skills.

He manages to squeeze Hizashi's hand in quiet reassurance, certain that he will be recognized exactly as well as he recognizes Hizashi. It's a long stretch, but that's alright, he's willing to do that here. He can't imagine a world where he wouldn't.

He resolves to keep pressing forward, as quickly as possible, but it only lasts a moment before he feels a pulling on his arm in the wrong direction. He tugs back, away, towards his husband, he refuses to let anything pull him away now- but whatever is trying to take him away is too strong for that.

His grips slips too neatly for it to not have been influenced by something else, and he tries to cry out, tries to call out for his husband, but he only gets a mouthful of dirt for his trouble. He's being pulled faster now, in a direction he hasn't been, until all at once he's out of the rubble and fallen on top of somebody else.

He jumps up, half-instinctively and half-purposefully. He's standing before he can even blink, and he stares down at whatever pulled him out of his worst nightmare.

His student, Bakugou, of all people, is sitting on the ground, catching his breath, before he stands and meets Shouta's gaze. He hadn't expected anybody at UA to be able to get into this place, since logically, if it were an attack, they would all be trapped, same as he was. Shouta wonders where he must have been, what memory he must have been pulled from, and easily conjures up an image of Kamino- for Bakugou, that must have been it, right? He was probably priority because of it.

Something seems wrong, though, because he would expect more people here, more Heroes pulling people out of their nightmares, unless this wasn't some kind of targeted attack?

He doesn't know, and he can't be sure until he does something.

"Let me go, Bakugou."

"No."

His hand is still gripping Shouta's forearm, tightly, and he's begun walking the both of them over towards somewhere else, away from the crashing rubble of the building.

"Where are you taking me? I'm fine, kid, and I know where Present Mic is. Let me get him out of here, then you can brief me on this."

Bakugou stops in his tracks, and stares behind him at Shouta, shooting him a searching look.

"You mean you don't already know?"

"I assumed that it was an attack- "

Bakugou interrupts him by barking out a single, disbelieving laugh. "You're not wrong, but it's a bit more complicated than that. Should've figured you weren't like everybody else, especially since you just said you weren't alone that whole time- yeah, no wonder."

"You're muttering like Midoriya. A bit of context would be appreciated."

Bakugou just sighs, and replies, "Fine. I'll brief you when I get Yamada out. In the meantime, you've got a kid to calm down." He nods over to where two figures have just come into view a bit away from them, one very tall and the other very small.

He recognizes his student, Shouji, and supposes that it makes sense- but what doesn't make sense is the presence of his daughter, standing there with her fists clenched at her sides, bunching up her clothes.

Shouta activates his quirk, as he always does when she's scared so her quirk isn't another thing that worries her, and pulls out of Bakugou's grip, running towards her at a speed he hadn't known that he was capable of. He sees her hear him, and turn towards him with visible tear tracks on her face.

She smiles widely, and reaches out almost immediately, as soon as she sees his hair floating around his head. He reaches down and picks her up, hugging her close and promising to himself that he will never let her go again.

"I'll be back."

Shouta turns to see Bakugou turn back the way he came, shoulders squared and a grim set to his mouth, as though he's about to go off to war.

"Bakugou."

He turns and faces Shouta, who continues. "Come back safely. Thank you."

He only nods, and turns out of sight.

Pulling Yamada is easier than getting Aizawa out, now that he knows where to look. Katsuki drags his other teacher out of the Domain with little fuss, and fights his instinct to immediately cover his ears, half-expecting a quirk-powered scream of victory- but it never comes. Yamada looks confused, searching around for something- probably someone, probably Aizawa.

He, at least, looks more aware of what's going on.

"Aizawa's over here. He's got Eri, so don't be too loud."

Yamada just shoots him an empty smile, and a "Thanks, little listener," with a scratched and unused voice.

They make their way over in short order, Yamada shifting to a run when he catches sight of who's ahead. Katsuki watches as he collides with Aizawa and clings to him and Eri both for a moment or two, before pulling away.

Aizawa, for his part, levels Katsuki with an even, no-nonsense stare, exactly as though he were teaching an exercise and he's expecting some kind of response to a question. He supposes that he is, in a way- so Katsuki briefs him on what's happened.

The way that the world's changed, the way that everyone is reliving their worst memories or else living their worst nightmares, whichever they think is worse. It was no attack, nothing targeted, it's just that one moment everything was normal and the next it had all fallen to pieces. Yamada, Shouji, and even Eri are all nodding along, so the only person that seems not to have been on board is Aizawa, which Katsuki guesses makes a little sense, given the new, singular speck of unnatural green in Aizawa's eye.

Katsuki finishes his briefing, and leaves no room for questions, only stating their next destination.

"We're going to the world's largest Hot Topic, home of Tokoyami, Dark Shadow, Invisibitch and Eyebags."

The adults look ready to protest Katsuki's creative use of language when it must register who "Eyebags" is referring to, and they're immediately concerned with other things.

Katsuki, for his part, starts leading them all back the way that they came.

The tape recorder is not clicked on.

- It won't be long now. I think that I would say that I'm sorry- I'm sorry for failing. I had one job, and it wasn't even half-done by time the deadline rolled around. It's not like I was needed, anyway- a redundancy. That's all I've ever been, huh? Telling you things you already knew.

- ... Guess I'm always disappointing a Mother, one kind or another. The human kind, and yours.

- The Archivist and his companion are making their way to the Monument, full of scholars insisting that they're right and the others are all stupid. You probably already know, though, because of course you do. What's going to happen is already set in stone.

- Here we go. The final few loose threads, ready to be tied up. Ready to be cut. Ready to let the swords that they're holding fall where they will.

The tape recorder is put in a pocket.

Chapter Text

Katsuki doesn't stay in Tokoyami's domain for long.

He makes sure that his current pack of extras gets where they're going and that the Goth Squad hasn't done anything to anybody that he'd left here before. They haven't, everybody is currently as fine as they can be in these circumstances, so he drops off his teachers, their kid, and Four Arms, and leaves with little fanfare.

He doesn't have time to hang around, he doesn't have time to hesitate. The Archivist is going to do something, and he has no idea what that "something" is. Odds are even on whether or not it'll be something that'll actually be beneficial to him, here, in Japan, much less those who are still trapped.

Katsuki doesn't like to take chances. He can't waste time with the vain hope that things will turn out fine in the end.

So it's not long before he's alone again. It's not much different from bringing that whole pack of people along, he just doesn't have to keep glancing over his shoulder to make sure he hasn't lost anyone. The relative silence is exactly the same.

He's sure that there were attempts at speaking, but he didn't listen to any of them. No conversation lasted long enough for him to feel like participating, and he wasn't about to facilitate, either. He's too busy trying to focus on who else is left, where else he has to go, how feasible it would be to try and find the people he knows.

He hasn't caught even a glimpse of a hint about his parents. He halfway doesn't want to know; he wants them to be safe, but he doesn't want to see what scares them. That would feel like an invasion of privacy, more so than for anybody else he's seen. Especially- especially- for whatever domain his mother is in.

He won't think about that until he's got his classmates safe. He's going to leave that issue to wait until it's near-unavoidable, and maybe that's selfish of him, but fuck it. He's allowed to avoid his problems, he's allowed to choose not to think about things until they're practically forced into his face.

Things like his parents. Things like his friends.

Things like Eijirou.

Enough about that. He's got to get past the place where he picked up his teachers, and then he's got to start towards somewhere that's got a person in it. Somewhere that's got someone he knows, someone he can actually save.

He doesn't slow down when he walks, not even when he reaches the domains that seem like they could be pleasant to walk through for a little while. Places that seem almost normal, that try to taunt him with their reminders of the reality that's long gone. He doesn't look, he doesn't linger.

He can't. He can't think about that. He can't get distracted with petty little things like that, can't get distracted trying to remember what was while neglecting to take care of what is.

The old mantra serves him better now than it ever has before.

Don't stop. Don't think too much about it. Just keep walking.

Over and over again it rings through his head, over and over again he forces himself to listen to it. He can't afford not to, not anymore. This isn't some hallway anymore, this is everything. Lives are in his hands, and he cannot let them down.

It's not long before he passes through the crumbling building again. It seems like a much shorter trip than it was before, but that's probably because he hasn't been paying much attention, too lost in his own head.

Stupid. He has to keep both eyes wide open at all times, now that he's out of familiar territory. Now is when there could be more people he knows, more people that he can save, at least for a little while, at least until the Archivist does whatever he's set out to do.

Most of his class is already out of their domains, to be fair; all that are left are Tail, Rock Face, Satou, and Asui- the last of which, he still knows for a fact is in a Lonely domain, courtesy of IcyHot. He may run into others on the way, but those four are the last of those in his class that he knows he can access. After that, he might try to go and find his teachers, but it'll be a lot harder to search for them, considering how much less he knows them compared to his classmates. Aizawa and Mic had been accidents- they had been convenient, that was all.

He doesn't have much of a direction, after those final four. He might try to find more possible ways to get to London, or some way to remotely destroy or disable the thing that is the hallways in order to redistribute those inside, but that's all wishful thinking right now. He doesn't have any real way of doing anything like that, not yet.

All that he can do now is focus on what power he has, what influence he can use. For that, he's got to find those that he can actually reach, here.

He's wandering through a desert of some sort when he drifts through to the next domain. At first glance, it had looked like something straight out of a rinky-dink traveling fair, cheap old circus tent and all. This leads him to immediately assume that it's something of the Stranger- and then he immediately disregards it, because this feels far too wrong for that.

Colors are brighter here than they ever were on the outside, than they ever were in reality. It almost burns his eyes in the glare, and the reflections off of the mirrors inside don't help. The mirrors themselves are all wrong, too, moving and shifting even when everything in their view is remaining still. Swirls of color on the fabric of the tent curl in the corners of his vision, and he is reminded far too much of the day that he met Michael.

He doesn't like this place. It's clearly, painfully of the Spiral, and Katsuki wants no part of it. He would turn around if he could, but then he'll just be back in front of it, he'll just be stuck trying to gather his courage to come in or trying to will himself to leave it.

But he can't, he won't, because he already knows that there's someone here, lost in this mirror maze. That's what it is, a maze of mirrors that don't reflect anything right, all twisting and swirling around, while the people inside become more and more warped with time. He sees a girl with mutating, Medusa-esque swirls in her hair, writhing around and trying to catch unsuspecting others in its mesmerizing patterns; a pair of men with their arms twisting around each other's, like snakes instead of limbs; a boy with swirling eyes and a tongue long enough to swirl chasing a girl covering her ears and squeezing her eyes shut. There are more, countless more, curling in on themselves in corners, trying to stay out of sight of the mirrors, which must be the things that change everyone.

Before he starts preparing to brave it, however, he catches sight of someone unlike the others, someone who isn't on ground level; instead, he's dancing along the tops of the mirror-walls, alternating between panicking and relishing in the fear around him. He wears a familiar mask and costume, and Katsuki honestly didn't expect to see him again any time soon.

Twice of the League of Villains is running around and making a mess.

He should have figured that this would be the kind of place that Twice would be in charge of. He remembers the man being uncomfortably similar to Michael, after all, even with how little they actually interacted over the two days he was at their hideout. He had, funnily enough, seemed less malicious, but that's not very relevant now. No matter how he acted back then, he'll surely be different now.

Katsuki resolves to ignore the guy and hope to be ignored in return, and turns to begin moving through the maze.

It's not long before he sees the real power that the mirrors hold. They move and shift and do not reflect reality, of course, but when he stands in front of one, a distorted version of himself stares back. He's sure that he probably looks like a mess, as multiple people have told him so, but he's pretty damn sure he doesn't look like that.

Too-bright eyes stare into his in a lurid hue of candy apple red, with a bright smile twisting and curling around his reflection's cheeks. Its hands are long and its fingers are pointed like jagged knives, like shards of glass, like Michael, Michael, Michael. He hates it so much, and yet he can't look away. It's like a hypnotic technicolor nightmare, forcing him to stay, to make him remember, to make him afraid.

He's always been afraid of Michael. He's always been terrified of it. It, because he knows, he knows that it is not a "who." He knows it, he has always known it, even before Knowing things was a card in his hand. It is a fundamental truth.

Katsuki's so entranced, so mesmerized by the monster before him that he doesn't even notice the hand tapping at his shoulder, not until it fully grabs him and starts shaking slightly. He turns toward it, to see that it's attached to someone above him, sitting on the tops of the mirrors behind him. He knows who it belongs to.

Even then, when it lets go and instead hangs there, offering a hand, he sees the offer for what it is. The villain isn't planning on attacking him. He gets that, he does, but he still won't take the hand. Instead, he steps back slightly, and uses his quirk to jump up to meet that Two-faced bastard where he is.

He lands heavier than he'd intended, and he doesn't aim quite right, based on the way that Clone-Guy has to jump back to avoid getting landed on, but he gets up there with little fuss. He doesn't get to catch his breath for more than a moment before Clone-Guy starts chattering his ears off.

"Hey, kid, you shouldn't be in here, I don't recognize you! Sure I do, you're in here all the time!"

Katsuki doesn't respond to the unspoken question, instead staring up at the confused villain; he doesn't shut up and wait for long, instead, he keeps on yammering with very little care about whether or not his commentary might be necessary at all.

"Actually, come to think of it, I have seen you before, where do I know you from? You weren't a villain, right? Nah, he was totally a part of the PLF!"

"No. I'm in the UA Hero course." Katsuki bites out, not feeling like rehashing Kamino, and figuring that if this asshole was going to recognize him at all, this would probably be all that he would need.

"Oh- Oh! You're the brat that Tomura wanted to kidnap! He said he 'liked your fire,' whatever that meant... We kidnapped you because you were chill, duh!"

Katsuki snorts at that. Nobody could ever use the word "chill" to accurately describe him, especially not any of the villains he'd spent two days alternately screaming and growling at while he'd been kidnapped.

"So, kid, what 'cha doing here? Kinda figured you were elsewhere, considering I haven't seen you before now! You've been here this whole time, the big eye put you here, same as everyone else!"

The guy asks it, casual as anything, like they're just old friends catching up, not- not this. Not a villain and his ex-kidnap victim, not two avatars of the fears in the middle of the apocalypse. Katsuki wants to laugh at the absurdity of it, but more than that, he wants to just fucking hit this asshole. Maybe that'll fix something.

Clone-Guy seems to catch onto that, because he sits down, one leg crossed over another, and makes a motion that can only be interpreted as an invitation to sit as well. Momentarily confused, Katsuki decides to accept this invitation, and sits across from the villain in the same fashion.

"Look, kid. I saw you staring in that mirror and I thought... maybe I thought wrong. I don't know. But I thought- and don't get offended, you're the type who would- I thought that you saw something that reminded you of someone. I thought you were looking at Nikola! No, don't bring her up- "

"I did." Katsuki interrupts before he can get too far in his own head, because if someone can identify what he was seeing just by looking at him, plus the mention of a name... then he's probably not alone in this. Twice must have his own Michael, even if it's with a different name and face.

"Was it- it was Nikola, then? No, dumbass, that's the Stranger! Strangers aren't here! Oh, you're right, but who would he have seen then- ?"

"No, it wasn't Nikola. I don't even know who that is. She's Stranger, then? Like Dabi?"

"Yeah. Yeah, like that- No! She's the Distortion! Aw, don't go insulting Helen like that... hey kid? You alright? You kinda flinched a bit there. What's up with that? That's probably what he saw in the mirror! A Distortion! Yeah, that would make sense, but I'm not just going to assume anything! That's rude!"

Katsuki sighs, wondering if he should say anything, confirm or deny, but something in the back of his mind says, "Fuck it. Why not?"

"Yeah. Looked like that Michael bastard. Y'know, the one with all the knife-fingers?"

Twice just nods sagely in front of him, and replies, "Of course, the Distortion before Helen. Guess it's your Nikola, huh? No, there's no way! Michael's harmless!"

"... I guess. I still don't know who that is."

Twice shudders, and just murmurs, "You're lucky for that."

That's the first time that Katsuki's ever heard him refrain from starting an argument with himself, and he'd been in near-constant contact with him for two and a half days straight during Kamino. Maybe he doesn't know who Nikola is, but she's probably this guy's Michael equivalent, a monster that stalked him incessantly for years before trapping and nearly killing him- yeah, maybe he is lucky not to know her.

"So. That why you wanted me up here? 'Cause I looked scared? You're not a very good Avatar if you do this for everyone."

Twice waves a hand in the air like he's batting away the accusations, as though they're nothing more than flies in the air. "Not everyone. Just you, kid. I do this all the time! You looked like I did, back when I was looking at one of my clones just after I first met Nikola. You looked like everything possible had just gone wrong."

"I'm here for one of my classmates. That's what you asked, right? Why I was here? Someone in my homeroom is in this place, I can tell."

Clone-Guy reels back at the sudden subject change, but thankfully doesn't comment on it.

"Don't know what you want me to do about that. I'll kick the brat out for ya!"

"I don't know if you even know who they are. I haven't gotten a chance to Look, myself, but if I just... took 'em off your hands... we wouldn't have a problem, would we?"

"... You're not killing anyone in here, right? This isn't an End domain, I don't want that kind of stuff getting in here. Turn it into a bloodbath!"

Katsuki sputters, genuinely caught off-guard, before realizing that yeah, maybe he did kind of sound like he was threatening something with that.

"I meant that if I pulled someone out of here and brought them somewhere else, you wouldn't try and fight me on it, right?"

Twice's shoulders relax from where he'd hiked them up defensively a moment ago, and nods. "Fine by me! I didn't know you were capable of that, to be honest... "

"Don't worry about the specifics. Just lemme get down from here, and I'll be on my way."

"No, no! Wait! There is someone in here I think I remember from that Sports Fest, is there a kid in your class with just a tail for a quirk? What kind of lame quirk is that for an aspiring hero? Shut up, don't be quirkist! It's true! Just because it seems a little plain doesn't mean he can't use it well! He got into the UA Hero Course!"

"... Yeah, there is a guy like that. You know where he is?"

Twice stands, and gestures for Katsuki to follow.

"He's just over here!"

Mashirao doesn't know what day it is.

Has there ever been such a thing as a day? A night? Time that ticks in a consistent way, a second that measures the same as another? No. Probably not. He thinks it must have been his imagination, to believe that there could have ever been anything different.

All that there is, all that there will ever be, is the maze. It is made of mirrors, mirrors of monsters, things that show you-but-not-really-you. He's seen what's happened to people who stared into them too long- or worse, those who stepped inside.

The mirrors aren't solid. Step in one, walk out another, changed irreversibly, irrevocably, one step closer to the thing your reflection promises you to be. He saw a girl walk in normal- and walk out unable to do anything but spin in lazy circles, around and around and around.

He saw himself go in normal. He walked out with his tail splitting into fractals, branching off into perfectly symmetrical, perfectly nonsensical patterns.

And he was one of the lucky ones.

He only went in once, and he hadn't been staring too long before he did. The longer you look, the worse off you end up, that's the law in here. That's why he keeps his eyes closed, but it's not like he moves around anymore. His tail catches on too much, clings and pulls at people he doesn't want to touch, out of fear or out of caution.

He'd thought- he'd hoped. He thought that going through meant a way out, because the maze makes no sense, it leads nowhere, it isn't geometric, it isn't adherent to reality, obeying only dream-logic; so, he figured that dream-logic would dictate the only way out as through.

Obviously, that didn't work out too well.

So now here he is, waiting for his tail to calm down, he's seen it happen to others, their fingers got less crooked or their eyes less crossed- he thinks, but he doesn't hope. He can't do that. He can't afford to do that again, because hope leads to fallacy, hope leads to mistakes, hope leads to danger.

He is a danger. He will not make that mistake again.

He found a corner, not a safe corner, because dictating anything as safe is a hope, a fallacy, a mistake, a lie- but it is quiet. And the mirrors cannot see him from here.

Mashirao doesn't know what day it is. He doesn't know how long he's been here, waiting, not hoping, never, because hope is what got him here instead of going through the maze and getting out, somehow, there has to be a way out, because there was a way in, right? Just going around the edge of the tent didn't work, either, because the flap that leads outside was surrounded by mirrors, was surrounded by the maze.

The only way out is through, and the only way through is by going on the path. The right path. There must be a right path.

He waits. He waits, with his head tucked between his knees to try and drown out the noise, the screaming that could be small children as easily as it could be grown adults, could be joy as easily as it could be terror- maybe he's the only one not having fun here. Maybe it's just a normal mirror maze, and he came here with his classmates to have a good time and now he's just ruining it for everyone.

Maybe he's just imagining things. Maybe the spirals that have grown into the people around him, maybe they're just quirks, maybe they were there the whole time, maybe they were never real at all.

He feels like a coward, still, for sitting like this. For being like this. He doesn't make a move to change it, though, because he doesn't want to catch sight of a mirror, what if they actually can reflect him from here and he's just been fooling himself this whole time- ?

There's a thump. Right in front of him. It sounds like someone jumping in front of him, but not up and down, like jumping down from a high place, but that's not right, that can't be right, his ears must be tricking him, he presses his knees closer around his ears and squeezes his eyes shut tighter, waiting for whatever it is to go away-

"Time to go, Ojiro."

He could swear that he knows that voice, but he can't, won't make the connection. That sounds like hope to him, unless it really wasn't real. Unless he's been making a fuss over nothing.

How long has Bakugou been waiting for him to get a grip?

Mashirao raises his head, slowly looking up to see exactly who he expected from that voice. Around them, though, things have not suddenly returned to being normal, as he would've expected from suddenly being jolted back into the real world, which he must have been, since he recognizes the person in front of him. That's how it works, right? Right?

"Bakugou, what's going on?"

He doesn't get an answer, just an eyeroll and a hand in his face. He takes it, and is hauled upright.

"I'll explain in a minute, let's go. This place sucks ass."

Mashirao's too blindsided by that to laugh, even a little bit. He's dimly surprised at the understatement, but that's all.

He barely even pays attention when Bakugou lifts up the curtain behind him to reveal a plain white hallway, something that's been here this whole time, an exit he could've gone through ages ago, why the hell is he so useless that he couldn't even find that?

He stumbles numbly through, following his classmate, barely noticing that the fractured branches of crystalline fractals in his tail are gone completely, leaving only the limb that was there before. Instead, he just thinks about how all of this could have been avoided so easily if only he'd thought to look behind the curtain of the tent, he's such an idiot, that's the easiest spot in the book! A child could have found the exit easier than he could! Instead, he sat there and cried like the pathetic mess that he is-

"Fucking hell- breathe, asshole. You're fine. We're fine. It's fine. Chill."

Mashirao does not chill. He belatedly notices that he's sitting against the wall of the hallway, with Bakugou crouched in front of him, both hands on his shoulders.

"In for, what was it, three? Four? Four seems right, right? Yeah. In for four, hold for- oh for fuck's sake, match mine, I don't remember the damn numbers!"

Mashirao very kindly doesn't point out that Bakugou's breathing is a lot faster than it should be, too, and instead tries to focus on calming himself down, and being in the present. Right. No point in beating himself up over something that's over and done with.

"Good. Okay. Don't freak out on me like that again, yeah?"

Mashirao wordlessly nods, really not feeling up to talking at this point in time. He looks at where his hands have clenched into fists, and slowly uncurls them, imagining the rest of his body relaxing along with them. It doesn't work as well as it used to.

"Alright. Considering the kind of domain we're in, I should've expected this, that's on me. You could not have gotten out alone. I don't care how simple I made it look, if you'd crawled under that tent flap you'd have just ended up on the other side of the maze. Make sense?"

"No." His voice sounds hoarse and cracked, but it's better than nothing.

"Good, it's not supposed to. That's the freaking Spiral, nothing makes sense in there. Besides, that's how it works everywhere, nobody can leave anywhere without help. The world won't let them."

Mashirao doesn't respond. He just looks despairingly at Bakugou, who seems to immediately understand.

"Get up. We're going somewhere safe."

Mashirao pushes himself upright using the wall, then offers a hand to Bakugou, who's still crouched in the same spot. He bats it away, and stands on his own.

The walk is... unpleasant, obviously, but not worth complaining about, relative to where he was before. He's not paying too much attention, just trailing behind Bakugou, until they enter a place that looks like an abandoned mall, and he hears-

"Mashirao!"

A seemingly empty school uniform is running at him, sleeves outstretched to him, and it takes a running leap- and he catches Tooru as easily as he used to in training, as easily as though he'd just done it yesterday.

"You caught me!"

"Of course I did!"

He ignores everything else around them, to focus on her, his best friend, maybe something a bit more in the time before. Tooru is here, she's real, and everything is alright. Things are calm enough for now.

Anything else, they can take on together.

Katsuki tries not to watch the sappy reunion between the two extras in front of him. It's something that he can't have for himself right now, so there's no point in beating himself up and forcing himself to see it, to think about it, to mentally substitute himself and Eijirou into that scene-

No. He isn't watching.

Instead, he nods to the co-CEOs of Hot Topic, and says, tonelessly, "I'm probably not going to be back for a while. I don't think I'm bringing any more classmates here."

The Raven nods in acknowledgement, but does not respond. He seems stable enough, in the here and now, that Katsuki doesn't think he'll need to worry about him possibly losing control and snapping again, like it had been when it had been him, his quirk, and the Sparkly Ass.

He turns and leaves. The mall gets quiet as he exits, which he's grateful for, at least; he doesn't need to hear the enthusiastic greetings that Tail's getting, he doesn't need to think about what Mina or Denki or Hanta would say in their stead.

Don't stop. Don't think too much about it. Just keep walking.

He starts walking faster, nearly running, to try and escape his thoughts, but of course it doesn't work like that. Still, the mall is long behind him, and there is nothing familiar around. He took a different route this time, hopefully to take a shot at finding the last three extras from his class.

Even if the numb feeling of awareness tickles at the back of his mind, will he obey it? He has to, right? Because he can't save his friends, he has to settle for the next best thing- no. He's doing this because he's the only one who can, the only one who will.

And yet he can't get to London. He can never get to London.

Don't stop. Don't think about it. Just keep walking.

What happens if Helen is destroyed, like Eyebags had said? They'll get redistributed, but who says that they'll be back in Japan? Just because this is the kind of familiar fear landscape that would draw more out of them, just because they're young and have so much more fear to experience, doesn't mean that they and all the others in that hotel won't just get dumped in the nearest End domain and... disposed of.

Don't stop. Don't think about it. Just keep walking.

He's practically screaming it at himself, but it's no use. His thoughts keep circling around that same subject, the knowledge that they are in a place so similar to the one that he just pulled Tail from, but a thousand times worse and half way across the planet, to boot.

What wouldn't he give to be there with them? It wouldn't matter if he could pull them out or not, if he could leave or not, just Knowing that they were there, that he was as safe as they were-

No. Stop. That doesn't make sense, that's not even possible anyway, get a fucking grip, Katsuki.

He feels something lava-hot running down his face, and for a moment he thinks that molten wax from a Desolation domain has gotten on his face, somehow- but no. He wipes it away, and it's clear.

Is he really so pathetic that he's started crying?

Now, of course, is when he feels the slight pulling of his awareness towards a point in the domain that he's in, because of course someone he knows is here. He doesn't even know what Fear this one belongs to.

He looks around, at the people walking, at the general gloom in the air, and he knows. He doesn't need to Look.

The End.

What's he going to find here? A person or a body? Who was he too late to get to, Rock Face, the quiet dude that everyone likes, or Satou, the only other person he would trust in the dorm kitchen, who won a bet and his respect in order to be called by his real name? Someone else?

Is Eijirou already here? Is that it? Is he going to come just barely close enough to hope for something better, for just one person back, only to have it snatched away at the last possible instant?

His legs don't give out, necessarily, it's just that whatever part of his brain is in charge of making them move has decidedly given up.

The second he hits the ground, he's screaming at himself to get up, get up, get up, you useless ass, but he remains unmoving for ages longer.

What's the point? The world has ended. Things will never go back to the way they were, this isn't a fairy tale or comic book- things don't get wrapped up in a neat little bow at the end. The best that he can hope for is that the Archivist in freaking London, on the other side of the planet, doesn't fuck things up even more. There's no way that he can even begin to entertain the possibility of hope. He can't, feasibly, give himself that kind of salt in his wounds. He doesn't know if he'd even believe it if things did go back.

Is he just... delaying the inevitable? Making a- a facsimile of safety, so he and his classmates can all lie to themselves a little longer?

He doesn't want to do this anymore. He doesn't know if he even can. He's like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing a boulder uphill, only for it to slide all the way back down in the end. All this work, for nothing- he doesn't even know if he's too late here, the one place where his presence might- might- make any kind of difference to the world.

He can feel that awareness, that little ping! in the back of his mind, getting stronger and stronger, trying to pull him up, pull him towards someone- or nothing. The final resting place of whoever he failed.

How long would they have had, here? There's nobody that he can think of who was particularly afraid of dying, but then again, he doesn't Know. He didn't Look. Should he have, when he had the chance?

The more afraid they are, the faster it goes, here. The End takes a certain amount of fear from everyone, they keep on the path until that amount has been met- how many miles did they trek, whoever it was? Was it like a hike, or more of a quick jog- did it happen quickly, or did they suffer?

He sits with his eyes closed, sick of watching the doomed strangers weave around him, knowing only their own impending demise. The feeling is insistent, begging him to go and find a body, or an empty plot of land, or whatever remnant this place leaves- because he's sure that he's too late. He's sure. If he'd gotten here on time, he wouldn't feel like giving up nearly as much as he already does, right?

Who is he kidding. He's wanted to stop for ages, now, because there's no goddamned point to any of this. He tells himself to keep walking, but there is nowhere to go. Nowhere is safe, nothing is sacred, and everyone is going to die cold and alone after being used as glorified pigs for slaughter.

The pull in his mind goes taut, and snaps into an empty silence.

Oh. That's it, then? He's not being pulled anymore? That must mean that he's failed, that they're-

Somebody trips over his leg. Katsuki opens his eyes, and he Knows why the connection closed. The person he was supposed to be looking for isn't dead- he's right here.

"That's strange- I didn't know that you could trip over here! Wait- Young Bakugou, what are you doing here? I thought that you were supposed to be like Young Midoriya!"

All Might sits up, still in his skinny non-powered form, and tries to smile reassuringly at Katsuki. It doesn't really work, but some part of him feels put at ease anyway.

"... Somewhat. I'm kind of wandering around, bringing people out of their hells as much as I can. How the hell do you know about Deku, though- ?"

All Might waves a hand in the air, and lightly says, "Oh, I figured that he wouldn't be with the rest of us. He's like how Mirai- Sir Nighteye- used to be. Just slightly off. I noticed it of you, as well, Young Bakugou, though I thought it would be rude of me to mention it."

Katsuki is surprised that All Might noticed something amiss, though he supposes that he really shouldn't. The man wasn't the Number One hero for so long by just brute force, after all. He had to be at least somewhat observant to get to where he got.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's how it is. Usually I have to put more effort into dragging someone out, and I figured that whoever was in this domain wouldn't be easy..."

Katsuki trails off as All Might looks at him with a scrutinizing gaze. He looks like he knows what Katsuki was thinking earlier, but without any aid from Beholding, just through sheer force of will and that keen natural eye of his.

"You thought that you were too late, didn't you?"

Katsuki can only bring himself to nod, and hunches his shoulders and bows his head in shame. All Might doesn't let him wallow for more than a moment, though, before his hand is on Katsuki's shoulder, and he looks up to stare him in the eye.

"Believe me, I know how it feels to be burned out. To feel like there's no point in going on, because you can only ever do so much- I'd hoped, at least, that none of you students would have to feel that way for a long time yet. Things obviously didn't turn out in the way that anybody hoped, but all that we can do is live through it. I can't tell you what to do, what not to do, but I can offer my own advice: doing something has always felt better than doing nothing. Maybe that's just the part of me that kept going through this injury of mine, but it's true all the same."

"How do I... I don't have anyone left. I mean, there are people to be rescued, still, obviously, but I- "

"You don't have those that matter most to you."

Katsuki shakes his head. All Might stares up, right into Beholding's heavy stare, and considers.

"I'm sure that since it's weighing you down so much, they're inaccessible somehow, or at the very least somewhere far away. They're not anywhere like this, though, correct? You wouldn't be so dejected if so, strange as that may seem. You look like you're bearing the burden of uncertainty more than anything."

Katsuki nods, waiting tensely for whatever All Might is going to say next. Maybe he wasn't always perfect, as his experience at UA could attest to, but this is still his childhood hero, and he has more than earned that title.

"I... I apologize, but I cannot help you get your friends back. I don't know anything about this whole Sectioning business, but I do know what it's like to be in a precarious situation. It's not pleasant, though you know that already; the best you can do is wait it out. Wait until there's something that you can do about it. If there is nothing to be done, then there's no point in beating yourself up over it- that's something I had the hardest time learning, myself, so it may not be a message you take to heart just yet, but consider it."

"But I- "

"Is there something that you can be doing, right now, right in this very moment, that will lead to you being able to get them back?"

"... No."

"Then there is no reason to work yourself up over it. An opportunity will come; never have I found myself in a situation in which I never once had the opportunity to save those I had the capability of saving, even if it wasn't immediately apparent. There are some exceptions, but I found that I never could have saved those people in the first place- I was never strong enough, at those times. I have my full faith that this is not what is going to happen to you, Young Bakugou- I wholeheartedly believe that you have the capability of doing what is necessary, and the judgement to decide what is right."

"... Thank you."

"Of course!" All Might's back to his less serious, booming "reassurance" voice, the one he uses in front of crowds and cameras alike.

"I still don't know how you got out so easily. We're still here, but you're aware, and I don't- you just fuckin' tripped over me."

All Might laughs, seeming a little nervous in it, and rubs at the back of his neck with one hand.

"I suppose it must be the same reason that I've been here this whole time! I once made contact with someone that was a part of this particular style of fear, so I suppose it must have been nearly obligatory to put me here, of all places. The truth is, though, I've never been all that afraid of dying. I suppose that whole walk was an attempt to draw some sort of fear out of me, but I accepted the reality of my eventual demise at the same time I accepted this quirk, the one that Young Midoriya holds now. Perhaps that lack of fear made it easy for me to slip out of its grasp."

Katsuki nods at this explanation. The End can't drag things out forever, so it takes a certain amount of fear from everyone in its domains- if it wasn't getting that much from All Might, of course he would have been here for a while; of course he would have literally stumbled his way out.

The man in question stands, and brushes himself off before reaching out a hand to help Katsuki up.

For the first time in ages, he feels like he's allowed to take it.

It takes longer than he remembers the route being in order to get back to Deku's domain. There hadn't been any doubt about where he was going to be leaving All Might for safety, knowing that Deku's practically the man's own son.

Still, they get there eventually, accidentally interrupting Round Face and Four Eyes' phone call with Ears on her radio station, as well as making Deku jump practically six feet in the air in surprise- while he's clutching a suspicious piece of paper in his hands.

Katsuki rolls his eyes, and steps aside to give a suitably anticlimactic "Say hi, assholes."

All Might ducks through the doorway, slightly too tall for the frame even without use of his quirk, to a chorus of loud greetings from Deku and his nerd friends. The reunion itself is less obnoxious than Katsuki had prepared himself for, which makes it easier for him to warn Deku about his future movements.

"I'll bring Asui here, then I don't think any of you are going to see me for a while. I've got shit to do."

It's practically the same warning he gave to Emo Squared, and he gets practically the same response: understanding nods from everyone who isn't distracted by a reunion. He knows that after his class is safe, he's going to be doing something; what that something is, he isn't sure yet. He doesn't want to stick with any of them for the time being, and he's truthfully predicting that he's going to end up wandering around aimlessly for a while, maybe getting some of the adults in his life out of their domains, but eventually, he plans on trying to save his "squad," no matter what that ends up looking like.

Maybe he'll rope IcyHot into it, and stick at his place for a while. Bastard's rich enough to handle it, and that manor of his only proves it.

That's still a bit of a ways off, though, and he's still got three of his classmates left to save. He plans on bringing Rock Face and Satou to Ears, with Asui going to Deku and his pack of nerds plus All Might.

Katsuki waves to everyone in the weird hut, and walks out the same door he always has, but this time he decides to pick a new direction. He feels lucky going perpendicular to his usual path, this time, so that's the way that he goes.

He wanders, for a while, drinking in the fear around him without really meaning to. He doesn't want to benefit from this, but Watching is something that comes too quickly, too easily for him to stop. He studies the people inside of the domains, these strangers that he knows the deepest fears of with merely a glance, and he wonders if they know that he's here. He wonders if they feel something different.

He wonders what he would do in their situations. Watched, with no way of knowing how to stop it, how to look back.

He wonders, most of all, how bad this habit is going to feel when he finds the next person he doesn't expect. Not a classmate, they all already know terrible things about each other and what they've gone through; no, he means his teachers, or worse, his parents. He doesn't want to know what they fear, he didn't want to know about Aizawa or Yamada in the first place, the only reason he was alright with All Might was because he wasn't really afraid at all.

Still. There's nothing he can do about that now, and given the choice between saving, say, his mom, or leaving her to rot wherever she is because he doesn't want to know what she's afraid of- he knows which one he'll pick every time.

He walks for a while longer, until finally, finally, there is that old and familiar pull in the back of his mind, pulling him towards someone in this domain.

Kouji feels like he's six years old again.

This is exactly the way it had once felt, to be trapped in the writhing nest of unfamiliar centipedes, just as cold and awful as he remembers. He can feel their legs creeping all over him, he can feel their venom coursing through his veins, though this time he doesn't have the fortune of being allowed to pass out from the poison.

This time feels worse, because he feels like he's small again, like a helpless child when he'd once been a Hero in training, someone who's supposed to be able to help himself, to escape from something like this- he'd imagined, a few times, being back here. He'd imagined breaking free easily, because he's not a little kid anymore. He remembers thinking he'd exaggerated the danger of it, too, but he knows that that's not true. If anything, his memory understated it, because every second is so much more excruciating, so much more terrifying than the last, and infinitely worse than the way it had been when he'd been a child.

There are a few differences to the way it was then, of course. Now it's not a towering nest anymore, instead a massive dirt pit full of the same whispering centipedes, the same ones that refuse to listen to a word he says. He can feel the filth they track with their legs, like a greasy film over his skin, tacky with bacteria and rot.

He stopped trying to talk to them a long time ago, because they had closed in so quickly, so tightly, that he got scared that one of them would crawl into his open mouth if he even tried.

He wonders if he should try it anyway. He can already feel little legs pressing into his nostrils, his ear canals, the corners of his eyes. It's not like it'll get any worse, right? His quirk's gotten more powerful over the years, maybe this time- this time- they'll listen to him.

He steels himself, takes as deep a breath as he can through all of the filth and insects, and he tries. He goes to try, for what it's worth, though his success is sabotaged almost immediately by a centipede doing exactly what he feared it would.

It wriggles past his lips, even as he tries to clamp them down to keep it out. He can feel its legs poke gently at his gums, at his tongue, and he fights the instinct to bite down. The little pinprick sensations of the hint of a salty and sour taste, like filth in its purest form, are what keep him from killing the thing the easiest way that he can, and flooding his mouth with its blood, its chitinous exoskeleton pressing onto his tongue, he's nearly gagging just imagining it.

It crawls around, pressing insistently at the insides of his cheeks, the roof of his mouth, under his tongue. It moves and writhes around in there, and Kouji wishes that he could spit it out without risking more going in, he wishes that he could bite down without it possibly exploding in a mess of insect-filled gore.

He can feel every tap-tap-tap of each of its legs moving against his teeth, squirming around and somehow gaining purchase in the places where the gaps between them are more gum line than tooth. It pokes and prods at the soft parts of gum, nearly drawing blood with the force it uses and the sharpness of the ends of its legs.

Kouji thinks he could grow to tolerate it, as long as he doesn't bite down- and this, the moment that he has this thought, is the moment that it decides to try to poke at the back of his throat. He almost gags immediately, but it doesn't relent, pressing insistently at the back of his throat, and he violently suppresses the reflexive urge to swallow it. Instead, he does what he swore that he wouldn't do just moments before, and bites down.

The texture, the crunch of it is reminiscent of a stale cheese puff. That's the immediate comparison that comes to mind, in the instant before the taste of its gore registers in his mind, that of a slightly old chip. It's crunchy in a way that makes him recall the air-filled corn chips, but the chitin of its exoskeleton offers just enough resistance to his jaw that it feels like it was left sitting out for a while before he actually ate it.

Then comes the taste.

It's thicker than he thinks a bug's blood should be, if they even have blood at all, and it's almost milky in how viscous it is; it coats the inside of his mouth like a film. The taste itself is horribly unpleasant, reminding him simultaneously of sour milk and stomach bile. He can feel the loose pieces of leg, of chitin, floating around in it, too, and he nearly gags again from that alone. Then- then- he feels it.

The floating pieces of the centipede are beginning to move again. Like earthworms cut in half to form two new living organisms, the pieces of centipede slowly reanimate themselves and continue to crawl around his mouth with even more frenetic energy.

This time, he really does gag, especially since the insect nearest the back of his throat has gone right back to pressing at it. He tries to keep from vomiting, even though he can feel the bile pooling in his mouth along with everything else that's in there, and in repressing a gag, he accidentally swallows.

He can feel the scrape of its legs against the walls of his throat, trying to gain purchase against the tide of sludge that ended up with it; he can feel it writhing around as it travels down his esophagus, and he knows that he's lost.

Before the inevitable, though, something reaches through the squirming mass of other centipedes on his back- and all of a sudden, he's being pulled up and out of the pit by the back of his shirt. He lands roughly on the lip of it, but before he can turn around or even open his eyes, he leans his head over the pit and vomits.

He heaves for a long time before he even looks around. He sees that this place, wherever it is, is riddled with pits just like his, filled with other bugs and other people, though he doesn't see his savior yet; they're behind him, somewhere, and he isn't yet brave enough to assume that he's done heaving, so his head remains over the mass of centipedes.

He works up what spit he can, and sloshes it around his mouth in the vain hope of getting the taste out- that particular endeavor is fruitless, but he does get more pieces of exoskeleton and detached legs from the places between his jaw and the inside of his cheeks. Finally, after ages of spitting up nothing but bile and longer of doing nothing but dry heaving, he thinks that he's done, and so turns around to see who was able to pull him out of that nightmare.

He comes face to face with Bakugou, who he hadn't really expected to be the person who would do something like this, but then again he can't quite bring himself to be surprised. He, along with some other classmates, had always been a little off, and even if he hadn't noticed it, the animals did.

Between the five of those that ended up scaring any mammals that crossed their paths, the more likely candidates to be running around and pulling people out of things like this would have probably been Jirou, Midoriya, or Bakugou.

As it stands, Bakugou seems like he's the only one of those three doing anything like this, if the way that his eyes have bags that have bags beneath them is any indication, or at the very least the dirt and filth he's got in various places on his clothes and in his greasy hair. Other than that, he seems a little perturbed, as though he doesn't really know how to react.

"You, uh... you good?" Case in point.

Kouji simply nods. He doesn't talk much normally, anyway, so it's accepted without any further expectation of elaboration.

"Okay. Cool. There's vending machines and shit where I'm dumping you off, I'm pretty sure, so you're not going to be stuck like... that. There is someone else I want to get first, alright? He's nearby, I'm pretty sure."

Kouji just nods again. He's looking forward to those vending machines- a nice green tea, even canned, would be like heaven to him right now. He won't begrudge whoever else needs to be pulled out of wherever they're trapped for his own sake, though, so he won't insist on trying to go wherever Bakugou has deemed safe.

Rikidou is pretty sure that his muscles have atrophied by now.

He can't see his arms or legs or anything to confirm it, but that's what it feels like. Plus, it's only logical, after how many days, months, years here? Lying here, unmoving, without even a morsel of food or a drop of water- at this rate, he'll need several sugar packs to even be able to walk.

That is, if he ever walks again. There's no guarantee that he'll ever get out of here, no guarantee that he'll ever see the sun through anything more than by the slightest beam of light filtering weakly through a crack in the boards above him. He isn't even sure that he's facing upwards; he just knows that there's light filtering in from somewhere, and he hopes that it's coming from the sun.

He has no way of knowing if he's even outside, though, because he just woke up in here. He doesn't remember how he got where he is, he doesn't know if he's been attacked, kidnapped, or something else.

He's been in here longer than he can keep track of. He lost count of the seconds, minutes, hours ages ago- painstakingly calculating, second by second, the amount of time he's been trapped here, because the light outside is unreliable. It hasn't moved, hasn't changed, in the thousands and thousands of hours he's been lying here, motionless, unable to do anything more than breathe.

As far as Rikidou knows, he woke up in this strange, too-small wooden crate. It seems like it was measured out specifically to fit his proportions, because the top of his head and the bottom of his feet have the same amount of allowance of space against the walls of the thing as his hands or his nose do. He can't even bend his arms to try and bust himself out, can't even try it with his legs. That was in the beginning, though; he'd tried and failed that a hundred times over, and now he's too weak from thirst and hunger to be able to give it a half-decent try. All that he can do, then and now, is wriggle around the crate and make a lot of noise, but even then, after a while, whatever is sitting on top of the crate gets inexplicably heavier and presses him ever inward, and he knows that he must stop.

He knows that there must be something sitting on the crate. There has to be, because sitting in a crate alone wouldn't make him nearly so claustrophobic, like he's sitting in a concrete chamber instead of a simple wooden crate. Then again, nothing has made sense as of yet; if things were obeying the rules of logic, of reality, then he would be long dead by now; humans can only last, on average, three days without water, related quirks notwithstanding. Rikidou's quirk does not help with this matter; he should have died of dehydration ages ago.

Dehydration or suffocation, because there's no way that the singular crack in the side of the thing is providing enough circulation for him to be able to breathe properly, as he has been for these past months. No matter that the air has been getting progressively staler, more musty every moment, he should still be dead. It doesn't matter how his chest is tight all the time, how much every gulp of still and stale air hurts from how little oxygen there actually is, how his thoughts are more muddled than they've ever been, the fact that he's still alive is a miracle, a gift that he's certainly squandering by just lying here.

His teachers would be disappointed in him, he bets, because he's been here for so long and still hasn't made any progress on figuring out how to escape.

He can hear muffled voices outside, sometimes. He can never distinguish the words that they whisper, and he has a rising suspicion that they're not real at all. Just figments of his imagination, produced by the lack of air to his brain. He's heard that that can happen, because of bad circulation, oxygen not getting to the brain, strange things start to happen. Things like hallucinations.

They also happen due to a lack of sleep, which is something he isn't getting much of these days, either. He can't fall asleep, can't even pass out, because the sheer effort it now takes him to keep his lungs pumping air in and out is too much for him to do automatically anymore.

He remembers when he got hallucinations from staying up too long, once. It only ever happened once, and he'd sworn that he'd never repeat it again if he had the choice. Nightmares from after his work study had kept him awake, and he'd baked pastry after pastry to keep himself from getting bored enough to go to bed, and to have something to do with his hands. He couldn't really keep himself still when he was stressed out, as a kid, and so he learned to bake.

He still feels like he needs to do something, just move and stretch, even just a little bit. Something to do with his hands would be nice, if there was even space enough to move them, touch them together somehow, but as it stands, he would be lucky if he were to crack a knuckle.

Maybe he would get to sleep if he passes out from exhaustion, rather than simple oxygen deprivation. He might make a dent in the crate, too, while he's at it, though that may be more wishful thinking than actual planning. He ignores the voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously similar to Yaoyorozu telling him to save his energy and be strategic about it, and goes right for slamming his face up into the wood in front of him.

It's like hitting pure marble nose-first, and Rikidou has to blink spots out of his eyes before he even registers the new dark stain on the wood in front of him. The only reason he can tell that there's a change in color at all is because the opening of light is right near that spot, so there's just enough to show a shift in shades, but that's all. He can feel a bruise forming on his nose, too, and something oddly sweet-smelling starts dripping out of it.

Ah. Nosebleed.

He tries to catch his breath and not let the blood into his mouth, but doing both at the same time is more impossible than he'd vainly hoped it would be. The blood drips into his mouth, and though he doesn't really care, it's still somewhat inconvenient. He hopes that he'll be able to try it again, when he hears something like an impact on the side of the crate.

The thing is, that crash, that thump of something slamming into his prison, it wasn't caused by him. It's been a long time since he could truthfully say that. He wonders if something is finally happening, if something's falling, if someone's coming for him.

He feels it again, and feels prepared, this time. There's something a little different, this time: a cracking sound, spreading out from the initial impact point.

Is it just him, or does it seem brighter in here?

There's another slam, a dozen more cracks. It's definitely brighter in here, though the moving shadows don't let his eyes adjust very well. He wishes he could turn his head, but his still-tender nose would press too closely against the wooden wall of the crate for his liking. There's shifting, and more cracking, and things get brighter and brighter until there are hands pulling at his arm.

He tries to cooperate along with his savior, but the box is still quite the obstacle to get past. He clears out what splinters he can, and tries to help pull himself out the rest of the way. It's not long until he collapses on the floor, having just barely caught himself before falling flat, and breathes like he's just run a marathon.

The smell of dust and blood still sits in his nose and mouth, but the air is fresher than he can remember it having ever been.

It takes longer than he would have once admitted to in order to catch his breath and actually take stock of his situation, but he figures that being kind of disoriented is excused this time. As he looks around, he's a little surprised to see that he looks exactly the same as he did before the box, no thinner than before. What's more surprising, though, is the sight of the person that saved his life.

Bakugou is standing above him, waiting for him to stand, a hand held somewhat out- like an offer that he's hesitant to make. He gets it- him and Bakugou are kind of friends, at least he'd like to think so, and at this point he knows the guy well enough to know when he pushes and when he doesn't.

He reaches out and takes the help for what it is.

Katsuki treks back to Ears' radio station, Satou and Rock Face in tow. They've struck up a sort-of conversation behind him, one that he occasionally interjects in, but mostly participates as a silent observer. It's quiet, peaceful but for the occasional scream, but that's as quiet as it gets anymore.

The walk isn't too bad, really. It's a lot nicer than the others have been, though that might be because he'd been to preoccupied by other things to let himself just enjoy the fact that there are people with him. He's been alone for far too long, and he's going to do so again- he's going to do whatever it takes.

Too soon and not soon enough, he's pulling open that door at the bottom of the radio tower. There's an abandoned break room that he goes to first, one that exclusively has discontinued drinks in stock. Rock Face rushes toward it and punches in the code for Sierra Mist, the one that's occasionally appeared in the vending machine just down the hall from the Support Labs.

Once Rock Face has his soda, they all troop upstairs, where Ponytail and Sparkles are sitting on the hot pink couch. The door to the radio studio is closed, with the "ON-AIR" sign brightly lit. Sparkles waves, and Ponytail puts a finger over her lips while nodding to the studio door. Katsuki and his current group all nod back in acknowledgement.

Katsuki moves to a table off to the side, where there's a pen and a pad of paper emblazoned with the logo of some hotel chain he's never heard of. He writes out the same warning he gave to the other two Avatars, saying that he probably wouldn't be back for a while, folds it, and hands it to Ponytail while pointing to the studio door.

She gets it well enough, so he turns and walks back downstairs.

He picks a new direction this time, wondering how long it's going to take to find the specific Lonely domain that Asui is in, that is, if she's still there. How long has it been since IcyHot told him about where she and the rest of them were? Relative to real time, anyway, because time doesn't work the same here, too quickly and too slowly all at once, or swinging back and forth like a pendulum, or some other method of passing that Katsuki doesn't care to put into words at the moment.

He goes through so many domains, that at this point, time may as well have stopped. Each and every one of them experiences it differently, trying to keep track of it all would be pointless. He can figure, though, that if time were to restart right now, most people would say that it's been a matter of months since it stopped.

He feels lucky, though. This particular direction doesn't feel right, exactly, but something is going to happen this way, he Knows it. He can practically feel the anticipation in the air as he moves through domain after domain, until it all comes to a head in what seems to be an antique shop.

The first clue that something's gone wrong is the sheer number of cobwebs in the place. They're on the shelves, in the corners, on the ceiling, sometimes cutting off entire pathways between walls and shelves. They're mostly wooden bookshelves, repurposed to hold various knickknacks and dish sets and all the other old things that end up in antique stores.

There are a few boxes towards the back of the store. The first is filled with vinyl albums, all pre-quirk, some of which he has already. He flicks through a few of them with vague interest, noting that they all seem to have at least one song to do with spiders- "Spiderhead" on Melophobia, "Arachnophobia" on Meth Wax, and so on.

He finishes with that box, and opens another, not far away, to find that it's full of cassette tapes. He moves to reach inside, but he stops when a flash of red flies in front of his hand.

There, sticking out of the wall where it wasn't just a moment before, is a bright red feather, sharp as a blade and still quivering with the force of its travel.

The tape recorder is clicked on.

- Be careful, kid. Don't want to get hurt, do we?

- ...Hawks. What the hell?

- Oh, don't be so surprised! Granted, I'd be shocked to see me here, too, because this particular domain is not my favorite, but it'll do. You know about the Web already, right? You can figure the rest out.

- ... So you- you're the one who did this, you son of a-

- Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. I did not engineer the apocalypse. I did make sure that you'd be able to save your friends, though. You're welcome!~

- What the hell do you mean, you're not Beholding, it doesn't work like that! What fucking motive would you have for that, anyway? Aren't you supposed to be evil or something?

- ...Eh, somewhat. Not really into the whole "moral" side of things, I do what needs to be done. What needed to be done here was what we call a backup plan.

- Me? Backup for what? You saying I'm a goddamn extra?

- More like understudy, but call it what you will. To really get the plan, let me explain it out entirely. No interruptions. Alright?

- ... Fine. Whatever. Monologue.

- Thank you for your permission, Oh Great Archivist. So. Once upon a time, in a universe far, far away, there were these entities of nightmares and terror and blah blah blah. The specifics don't particularly matter, because we're already familiar. There, in the beginning, was a particular cast of characters: the Archivist, the one you met before; his companion, Martin; Jonah Magnus, the guy up there in the center of that eye in the sky; and of course all the rest of those bigwigs in England. They were exactly the same as they are here, plus or minus a few details, but slightly different in their foundation- they were entirely different people, albeit exact replicas of those here.

- And what does that have to do with anything?

- Hush, child, I'm talking. This particular set of people was faced with the same situation that we're in right now: the same apocalypse, with the same way out. There was a small hole in the fabric of their universe, the same as in our own, one that would allow the fears through, to contact a massive amount of other universes, with other sets of people; because people usually tend to come in sets, they've found. Sometimes, those sets can combine- in places like here. The Archivist was never supposed to exist at the same time as we do, he's either supposed to be three hundred years dead or we're supposed to exist three hundred years later. This has led to some... instability. Hence, you.

- Me.

- Since there were two similarly influential sets of people concurrent with each other, there was a much larger margin of error as to whether or not their story would go the same way as before. A backup plan, a possible failsafe, became necessary. There was no guarantee that the Archivist would survive to do what is necessary, or that he would make the right choice. To this end, there were a few major candidates, but by time we had to start focusing on one in particular, we had our two possibilities.

- Me and... who, Deku? He'd have been better for it! I'm not some kind of- of- desk nerd!

- Believe me, Bakugou, I agree completely. I was rooting for Greenie the whole time! Of the two of you, one had the experience and the other had the power- one of them would have been much easier to engineer, and it wasn't you. Maybe I was biased, because I found I did like you a bit. You didn't feel like the relatively pathetic type of person who becomes an Archivist. But then the Green Bean got that quirk, and we were down to one man standing.

- Why the fuck was a backup necessary at all? In case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of an entire ocean away from the people that are busy doing shit!

- Because this isn't the kind of thing that's designed to last. The world doesn't stay ended. It very rarely does. For there to be a beginning, and therefore an end, there must be an Archivist. If the one in London wasn't cut out for it, or if something decided to happen this time around... you were supposed to be it.

- But as far as I know, he is there. Doing what he's supposed to, right?

- The same thing as he always does, yes. Right now, he's nearing that hotel run by the Distortion. The Mother of Puppets has kept me updated.

- So what the fuck does that mean for me?

- You get the same happy ending as everybody else, you and all your little friends. Congratulations.

- And if he didn't? If he didn't survive, what was going to happen to me? To everyone else?

- If the Archivist was out of commission, then you'd have suffered an unfortunate injury soon after, preventing you from becoming a Pro-Hero entirely. Then, the Magnus Institute would have been there with its convenient job offer, and you'd have been back to collecting trauma like trading cards.

- ... Bastard.

- That's just the way it is!

- So why tell me this? Why come here at all? There's nothing for you to gain from telling me the truth. Your thing's done, right? Our "set" ain't doing shit!

- Well, when I said you were an Archivist, I may have... exaggerated, just a bit. By time all this actually happened, you weren't done yet. You hadn't made contact with everything like you needed to. You went from being a failsafe to a redundancy; in turn, I went from being a backup to a liability. You may not be a complete Archivist, but you're powerful enough to do what he does. Focus the Beholding on one being, for just long enough to turn the Watcher into the Watched. Just long enough to make it dissipate into nothing.

- ... You want me to kill you.

- That's how this ends, yes.

- Wh- you're serious. You're actually- okay. Okay. You're just going to fucking- stand here and tell me-

- It'll be quick. That method always is.

- I- No! I'm not doing that! I don't want to fucking kill people!

- I just told you that I would have ruined your entire future, your career, your everything without hesitation, and you're still just standing there? Going against it? That's... man. I miss those days. So naïve and hopeful, I miss it.

- You said I wasn't finished, how the fuck do you even know I can do the- the whatever-it-is?

- You can. You'd have been a lot closer to being a full Archivist if I'd focused more on this, instead of focusing on the Heroism mask and my ex and all that-

- Dabi?

- Forgot you knew that, ha. Yeah.

- He said something about the Sword of Damocles... that's why you ended it, you thought I was going to kill you.

- That's not the point. Just do it, there's nothing left for me to do! I'm not going to be pulled along to whatever new batch of worlds the fears are going to infect, I'm going to be just as powerless as any other human will, there's no point to sticking around! You have your right to revenge, I screwed up your life, just stop drawing it out and take it!

- I'm not doing it. You're not... you're just another pawn in someone else's game. I'm not going to fault you for that. I'm sure as hell not going to kill you over it. Just... find the people you knew before the end. I think they're going to be more willing to forgive you than you think.

The tape recorder clicks itself off.

Katsuki leaves the antique shop, with a shell-shocked Hawks staring out the door at him, tape recorder in hand.

That revelation was certainly a shock to his system. The knowledge of the origin of the fears, multiple universes, it all sounds like some sci-fi show he'd have watched as a kid. But it's real.

He's not the one who has to deal with it.

He leaves the place long behind, walking almost blindly through the domains. It makes sense, it makes a concerning amount of sense, the way that he'd apparently been a part of a major plot to end the world- no wonder he'd been in so much contact with these things that were supposed to live on the edges of the world, they had been specifically targeting him.

He wasn't going to murder the man who did it, though. Hawks is just as much a puppet as the puppet master; he'd even said he was just going along with someone else's plan, or at least, he didn't have complete say in it. He'd have completely been behind imprisoning him, or something, but cold-blooded murder? For all that he shouts about death and destruction in battle, he doesn't actually want anyone dead. That's not who he is.

He numbly keeps walking, knowing that everything is going to come to a peaceful end. Hawks had said- he'd said that he and his friends all get happy endings.

Nobody is going to die.

The thought doesn't really register just yet. Maybe it will, once he's finished his mission to get his classmates out of their own personal hells, once he sees the other person who could've been in his current situation, or maybe only when it's all over. That last thought doesn't feel real, either.

Eventually, he finds a house surrounded by fog, and he's pulled away from his thoughts by the thing that pushes people into their own heads. It's a little ironic, in his opinion, but he doesn't even hesitate to open the door.

It's a strange maze in here, with people wandering around and asking where they are, picking things up and sitting on furniture at random. There are people crying in corners, people staring in fogged-up mirrors, and altogether it seems like very few people have a decent grip on reality.

He finds Asui sitting in a plush chair on the second floor. She's staring around vacantly, which is somewhat unnerving given that she's never looked this vague even on the class-wide late nights in the dorms. She also seems to be trying desperately not to fall asleep, and nodding off intermittently anyway. Every time, she jolts awake with more distress evident on her face, and Katsuki decides that brute force is the way to go.

He physically brings her into a standing position, which she acclimates to and therefore becomes aware of impressively quickly. Her face regains its characteristic no-nonsense kind of look, and she stares him right in the face before asking, "Is it time to go?"

He barks out a single, sharp bark of laughter, before telling her to never change. They both turn around and leave the way he came.

He expects it to be a simple journey, considering that he thinks he may have passed through some of these domains before, but he feels a strange tug on his awareness in one of the Spiral ones that he had been through before.

There shouldn't be anybody in here, especially since he's already gone through, right? He turns, and makes sure that he didn't accidentally lose Asui, but she's exactly where he expects her to be. There's no reason for there to be anybody new now, unless-

Unless.

His eye catches on something bright red in his periphery. He turns, and he thinks he must be lying to himself, this can't be real, he should have fought and bled for this to be real.

But he didn't. And Eijirou is standing there, eyes wide and locked with his. He must have awoken the second he'd caught sight of Katsuki, because it's not long before he's bolting over to where he is, a wide smile on his face like nothing was ever wrong.

All that Katsuki can do is smile back and catch him.

[There it is. There's that happy ending. You're due to be leaving soon, aren't you?]

[I know you counted on him killing me. I know I'm a liability to you, but at the same time... what am I going to be able to do to you when you're gone? Nothing. Nothing at all.]

[I loved you. I still do. You were there when nothing and nobody else were, and for that I can't thank you enough, but... It's time for me to move on. I'm- I'm going to try to fix things with Dabi.]

[I wish you and Annabelle well in the future. I guess... this is Takami Keigo, signing off. Statement ends, stop recording.]

[Goodbye.]