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Katsuki roars with frustration as Deku disappears just inches away from Katsuki’s outstretched grasp, green eyes wide and mouth set in a grim line as he realizes he cannot break free of the villain’s hold. Moments after Deku vanishes into the purple wormhole, floating text appears in the air.
NEW QUEST
RESCUE THE PRINCESS
REWARDS: 1000 XP, 80 GOLD, AND YOUR FREEDOM
Gnashing his teeth angrily, Katsuki marches forward. The words shatter and letters spin away as he shoulders his way through them without pausing, following the path to the only place Deku would likely have gone: the dark stone castle at the top of the hill, framed by ominous arcs of lightning. Rolls of thunder boom infrequently as he draws closer to the castle gates.
Here, Katsuki hesitates. It’s his instinct to blast his way forward and keep blowing shit up until he finds Deku. But he is, in every way, out of his element here. Who knows what consequences rushing in haphazardly could wreak? Begrudgingly, in the name of prudence and Deku’s safety, Katsuki tries circling the high stone walls for signs of enemies or more favorable points of entry. However, his efforts are stymied almost immediately. He is abruptly halted by some sort of invisible forcefield, though the barrier doesn’t feel like anything at all. Katsuki’s legs keep working, and he feels like he should be moving forward, but the scenery refuses to pass him by.
It really is just like a video game.
Mind Games, the uncreatively named villain who’s been terrorizing the streets of Tokyo for two weeks now. At first, no one knew what was going on. People would suddenly collapse, and after about an hour, die. It was only when the twentieth victim, a young woman, was the first to wake that they learned more. The villain’s quirk traps victims in their minds, creating a virtual simulation that must be defeated in order to break free.
He and Deku hadn’t planned on getting caught.
Tricky bastard.
You die in the game, you die in real life, Katsuki reminds himself, sweat collecting in his palms and beading on his brow. He has to be smart about this.
Deku’s life depends on it.
He presses his hand to the massive wooden double doors, intending to force them open, but they silently swing inward at the first touch. Katsuki sucks in a deep breath and enters.
It’s utter bullshit, is what it is. What psycho designed this place? Spiked maces the size of Katsuki’s torso swing without warning from the ceiling, and he dodges them just in time to skid to a teetering halt in front of a line of lethally sharp spikes that spring from the stone corridor floor. One cavernous hall is filled with floating rocks that Katsuki must launch himself from to reach the next door, which is set high into the far wall -- and then he realizes he needs a key for the fucking thing, and has to retrace his steps until he finds it.
And don’t even get him started on the fucking lava.
Finally, he finds him. Deku stands in a massive birdcage hanging from the center of the ceiling - and how ridiculous is that, what cage could ever hold him, the strongest hero their world has ever seen? But whatever laws of physics this virtual place follows proves stronger, and though Deku rattles the bars with renewed fervor at the sight of him, they hold strong.
A monster emerges, larger and more foul than any yet Katsuki has defeated in this place, and Katsuki sets upon it with a feral grin. He can taste victory now, he knows the pattern of this sort of game well enough to know the end is in sight.
“Kacchan!” Deku cries out in distress as an unexpectedly powerful blow from the disgusting troll-like creature sends Katsuki hurtling across the hall to crash against the wall, knocking the breath from his body. He thinks he’s probably fractured a rib, and the blood from a shallow head wound he’d sustained at some point in the battle keeps trickling into his eyes to obstruct his vision. But it doesn’t matter; none of it matters. He will defeat this monster, rescue Deku, and beat this fucking game.
And then he’s going to beat Mind Game’s face in with his own fucking arm, god damn.
Sure enough, after a few more minutes of fierce fighting and a couple well-placed explosions (thank fuck his quirk still works here; Katsuki’s begun to suspect that Deku’s has been stripped from him, because how else could he be contained?) the monster falls and a glowing key materializes in the air above its chest. Howling with giddy triumph, Katsuki seizes it, and a loud mechanical grinding accompanies the lowering of Deku’s cage to the ground.
“Amazing, Kacchan!” Deku praises him gratefully, and there are already tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes. “I knew you could do it!”
“Tch. Of course, nerd. Come on, let’s get the hell outta here.”
He’s about to lead Deku back through the same serial killer obstacle course of death traps that lead him here when a new door appears at the end of the hall. Convenient. Katsuki grabs Deku’s hand and tugs him toward it.
Katsuki doesn’t expect the last trap.
As Katsuki turns the door handle, a scythe swings through the air, it’s near-silent swish its only warning.
Deku sees it first.
“Kacchan! No!” Deku shouts but there’s no time, and Katsuki can only watch in shell-shocked horror as the sharp blade buries itself in Deku’s chest.
“No,” Katsuki chokes out, reaching for him with shaky hands.
The scythe moves no more, its thirst for blood appeased. It remains half-sunk in Deku’s chest. Deku coughs, blood dripping freely from the corner of his mouth.
“K-Kacchan,” he wheezes weakly, grasping one of Katsuki’s frantic hands with his own, cold and clammy.
“C’mon, Izuku,” Katsuki pleads. “Get up, we’ll get out of here and it’ll be okay, right? It’s just a game, just in our heads. And we beat it, damn it! We won! We just have to go through the door…”
Deku nods, but though he obviously tries to heed Katsuki’s words his body cannot obey him, His legs don’t even twitch, and Katsuki forces himself to examine Deku’s injury more closely. God, the scythe’s blade is so big, so big in Deku’s small body. How deeply does it cut? Did that cruel edge find Deku’s spine? Katsuki’s throat burns with tears.
Helpless, he jerks his gaze away and back to Deku’s face. Deku seems to be struggling to even keep his eyes open now. His heavy lids slip closed as he pants shallowly, every scant draw of air a fight of its own.
“Izuku,” Katsuki whispers, tears now falling freely down his cheeks. He doesn’t know what to do. Fuck, he doesn’t know what to do. “‘Zuku, you have to stay awake. Please, baby. For me.”
“S-sorry, Kacchan,” Deku says softly. “I don’t think I…
He doesn’t finish the sentence.
Katsuki, body beaten and heart broken, kneels at Deku’s side and waits far longer than he should for Deku to.
When he comes back to his senses he is sobbing openly, choking breaths echoing around the cavernous hall. Katsuki clings to Deku’s cold, limp hand, babbling nonsense, cursing and praying with every other word that falls through his grieving lips.
Then, quietly, the hand in his disappears.
Katsuki screams, red eyed and voice hoarse from crying. He scrabbles frantically at the air as pieces of Deku fall away to pixels, which drift away before disappearing.
“YOU WON’T EVEN LET ME HAVE HIS BODY?” Katsuki rages, so full of desperate anger and sorrow that his skin feels far too tight to contain it all. “YOU SICK FUCK, YOU BASTARD, I’LL KILL YOU, I’LL KILL YOU SO FUCKING DEAD-”
But as the last piece of Deku spins away into oblivion, words appear in the air in the same golden, glowing font as before.
QUEST UPDATED
HEALTH: 74%
CASTLES COMPLETE: 1/???
MIDORIYA IZUKU LOCATED: 0/1
YOUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE
Again and again, Katsuki storms castles and rescues Deku. Over and over, he leaps and dodges and fights, but it's never the real Deku. Every time they're almost out of the cursed castle when something, despite all his efforts, kills Deku right before his eyes.
The second time, Katsuki readies an explosion for the falling scythe when instead a cannon bursts from the opposite wall, taking off Deku’s head in one almost-clean strike.
The tenth time, Katsuki makes Deku go ahead while he waits, alert, for a trap to spring, only to see both the door and Deku burst into flames the moment he touches the handle. It takes a full five minutes for the screaming to stop.
The thirty-ninth time, a second monster rips its way out of the stomach of the first and descends upon Deku before he’s even fully stepped outside of his cage, the “Sugoi, Kacchan!” still echoing in Katsuki’s ears as the scaly thing slices Deku open from groin to throat with its long, sharp claws.
QUEST UPDATED
HEALTH: 28%
CASTLES COMPLETE: 39/???
MIDORIYA IZUKU LOCATED: 0/1
YOUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE
Katsuki feels no hunger or thirst in this nightmare realm where reality only exists to laugh at his meaningless efforts, but he feels pain, feels the broken bones he’s clumsily bound with leather from the fallen monsters’ bodies protest each attack. He feels exhaustion, a type of exhaustion he’s never known before, not even when he was waiting for death in the clutch of the League of Villains. Not even when they fought All for One.
Katsuki feels grief, too, watching his lover die a hundred agonizing deaths. His worst fear come to life. It was always foolish to love another hero, he knew that from the beginning. On some level, even when they were kids he had a looming sense of what disaster such vulnerability would bring. But love, like Midoriya Izuku, proved undeniable all the same.
QUEST UPDATED
HEALTH: 13%
CASTLES COMPLETE: 99/???
MIDORIYA IZUKU LOCATED: 0/1
YOUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE
Again he stands. Again he fights.
What else can he do?
Izuku kicks feebly at the impossibly strong bars of his cage, feeling nauseous as this once again causes it to swing back and forth. His arms gave out ages ago, exhausted from maintaining One for All. Hours ago. Weeks ago? Izuku has no way of knowing how long he’s been here.
It’s maddening. He researched this villain’s quirk extensively before they tracked him down. It traps those affected in their minds, but not indefinitely! The victims are given a chance to beat the game.
So why is he stuck here?
Izuku’s tried everything he can think of, with absolutely nothing to show for it. He finally came to the conclusion that the conditions of this virtual world are linked to Kacchan, instead, and his gut twists with worry. Is Kacchan okay? Is he hurt? Is he coming?
At the very least, Izuku is certain of the answer to the last question.
Kacchan will always come, just as Izuku will always come for him.
The time that passes uncountably and endless proves to be the greatest danger. Izuku’s mental fortitude wears under the burden of endlessly waiting, unable to do anything to help Kacchan escape this place. After running out of possibilities for escaping the hateful prison, Izuku tries to keep his mind occupied. He lists all the heroes ranked one through five hundred in the most recent polls. He recalls all the quirks of Aizawa’s latest batch of students and redesigns his proposed training regimes for each of them.
Then, Izuku thinks of Kacchan. Thinks of all their memories since becoming an official couple and tries to rank them, too. This proves to be an excellent distraction. How best to weigh each memory’s merits? The first time they slept together, drunk and giddy on one another, must surely rank quite highly. But is it better than when Izuku was down with a fever and Kacchan called into work for both of them, bullying Red Riot and Uravity to cover while he spent the entire day at Izuku’s side, spoon feeding him rice porridge and gently wiping the sweat from his skin?
It helps, to remember such things.
Finally, god, finally, the familiar sound of explosions reach Izuku’s ears. With a raspy (voice long gone strained from talking to himself for so, so long) whoop of triumph, Izuku lunges to his shaky feet and grasps at the bars of his cage, straining to catch a glimpse of his Kacchan.
Kacchan… Izuku gasps. What on earth happened to him?
The dark circles under Kacchan’s eyes are visible even from this distance. No inch of his skin or uniform is free from blood and grime, and even his blond hair is several shades darker than usual from sweat and more. Though he fights as relentlessly as ever, Izuku can tell he is badly injured, favoring his right side and cringing with every explosion he releases in the face of the beast that seemed to appear beneath Izuku’s cage the moment Kacchan entered.
Most strange is the way Kacchan does not look Izuku’s way, not even once, despite Izuku calling out encouragement as he corners the beast. Surely they have nearly beat the game, though Izuku wishes he could have done more. Can’t Kacchan see him? He’s right here!
“Kacchan! I’m here, you’ve done it!” Izuku tries shouting, but still Kacchan does not look his way, even with the beast dead at his feet and a shuddering movement that suggests the cage has begun to lower at last.
“Kacchan, that was amazing!” Izuku says, bursting out of the cage. Katsuki seems neither happy nor relieved. Odd as his behavior is, though, Izuku supposes it can be attributed to his atrocious state.
“I hope those injuries heal themselves when we wake up,” Izuku mutters anxiously. “Otherwise we’ll have to call for help right away. Do you think Mind Game is still nearby? I wonder how long we’ve really been in here. It’s felt like ages, hasn’t it?”
No response. Kacchan simply levels a curt nod behind Izuku, who turns to see a door appearing in the wall.
“Excellent, the exit! Come on, Kacchan, let’s go!”
They’ve nearly reached it when Izuku hears a rumbling groan. His danger sense flares urgently and Izuku cries out in alarm as the beast, not quite as dead as they thought, rouses himself to toss a wickedly accurate handaxe at Kacchan’s back.
“No!” Izuku throws himself in the weapon’s path, reaching for his quirk, but his attempts at escape earlier have drained him of even the last lingering drops of that green lightning. Instead, the axe buries itself in his shoulder.
But Kacchan is safe, Izuku thinks gratefully as he falls to the floor. He saved me, and I saved him. And so long as he gets us out of here right away, we’ll be okay. Trying to grin reassuringly even as tears of agony stream down his face, Izuku looks up at Kacchan.
And Kacchan just turns away as he bleeds.
Wha-
Why is Kacchan walking away?
Without Izuku?
“Ka- Kacchan?”
“Sorry, nerd,” Kacchan says, so callous. So quiet, Izuku can hardly hear it. “Sick of watching this. Just die quick this time, alright?”
Kacchan… wants him to die?
He’s not going to help?
This is wrong. Kacchan would never turn his back on Izuku. Never, never, never-
“Where’s the real Kacchan!” Izuku grits out, clutching at his wound the best he can. The axe is still embedded in his shoulder, it’s heavy weight inflicting more pain with every agonizing second, but he dares not remove it for fear of bleeding out all the more quickly.
“Shut up, just shut up-”
“Kacchan! Kacchan, I’m here! Help me!”
“God, just, for the love of fuck,”
“KACCHAN!”
“ENOUGH!”
To Izuku’s ultimate horror Katsuki whirls around, but from the look on his face it is apparent that he intends not to help Izuku, but to finish him off himself.
The world is upside down. Black is white. Of all the impossible things since entering this nightmare world, this is the worst. That ranking takes no deliberation at all. Kacchan leaps towards him, hands outstretched as though to strangle him. Or perhaps to seize the axe and strike Izuku again and again until nothing remains.
No.
Not like this.
Not at the hands of the one I-
“I love you, Kacchan,” Izuku weeps, defeated. He can do no more than this, to have these as his final words. A last flicker of energy blooms in his chest, and a green flicker of lightning arcs across his skin before extinguishing.
The green light is reflected in Kacchan’s widening eyes. He slows to a halt inches away from Izuku and drops to his knees.
“Deku?” Katsuki whispers.
“Yeah?” Izuku answers fuzzily. He’s lost so much blood, now. The room spins around him.
“Deku?!”
Izuku’s eyes fall closed.
Then they fly open again and he screams in wordless pain as he is roughly scooped into Kacchan’s arms. Kacchan holds him tight as he races for the door, cursing wildly. Is it Izuku’s darkening vision, or is the door beginning to fade?
They reach the door, and the handle turns with only a little difficulty under Kacchan’s blood-slick hand.
QUEST UPDATED
HEALTH: 9%
CASTLES COMPLETE: 100/100
MIDORIYA IZUKU LOCATED: 1/1
YOUR FREEDOM AWAITS
They awaken in an alley, whole and uninjured but from the lingering soreness of having lain on cold cement. A team of their agency’s emergency personnel surround them, apparently in the process of strapping them onto backboards. Eijirou runs forward, tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes as he sees them struggling to sit up.
Izuku and Katsuki ignore everyone else, and look to each other.
“You’re real?”
“Yes, Kacchan. And you?”
“Fuckin’ obviously.”
But it’s not obvious, not anymore. Even once Mind Games is finally captured and behind bars of his own, Katsuki and Izuku struggle with the after effects of their time in his realm. Every night they wake, once, twice, three times, and reach for each other.
“I’m real.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re real.”
“Yes.”
“I love you.”
“Yes, god. Yes, Kacchan. I love you too.”
They will eventually fall asleep, forehead pressed to forehead and hands entwined, breathing each other's air.
They will eventually believe in the world around them, and in each other.
Eventually.