Chapter Text
The heavy door swung shut, cutting off the sounds from the private karaoke room with the finality of a guillotine.
Bakugo Katsuki hissed with relief. Rubbed his ears and adjusted himself in his jeans. It might have originally been an excuse to get away from Denki's caterwauling before Katsuki mauled him, but now, standing in the hall, Katsuki found all the beer he'd been swilling had gone straight through him, and he badly needed to piss.
He stalked down the hallway, hands fisted, mouth the jagged line of a frown, a headache boiling behind his right eyeball. He passed the various numbered doors to other private rooms, his footsteps muffled on the worn black carpet. The glossy red doors were all shut, trapping the sound of strangers baying their sad renditions of song, but scent snuck out to linger like an unwanted guest in the hall: cigarette smoke and sweat, booze and fried meat, human musk and industrial cleaner.
And the stench of the great evil, the Wyrm, layered over it all like the sticky film of oil on a poorly cleaned grill.
That was normal in a city as big as Musutafu, Katsuki had come to learn. The corruption of the Wyrm was everywhere, in everything. Especially in cheap, shitty joints like this, where broke university students like them came to cut lose, choking down bad drinks and worse food, not caring about anything except the easy high they got off of salt and alcohol and adrenalin as they poured out their soul in lyrics pre-digested for them, cut up and spread out on a flashing screen.
There was gum on the staircase railing, and the stairs themselves were sticky with a spilt orange soda the staff hadn't yet been by to clean.
Asswipes.
Katsuki grit his teeth at the feel of it on his shoes, kept his hands to himself. Each sticky step made the rage he'd been trying to suppress boil in his gut a little hotter, made his lips pulled back a little more, until he was snarling fiercely with his white teeth bared and a little too sharp, the Change itching under his skin.
Human, he reminded himself. You're a human. You have thumbs. You walk on two legs. And this shit's not worth your time. Losing your cool because of orange soda? Fuckin' lame.
The sensitivity headache he'd been trying to ignore flared up in ugly pulses, making him jam his eyes shut for a moment. He swore under his breath. He needed that bathroom.
~
He made it to the bathroom with only a bitten lip and four neat crescents cut into each palm, the wounds already healing, healed, vanished by the time the door swung shut behind him.
But the bathroom, a space of dingy tile and urinals set too close together, barely registered to Katsuki. He was too caught up in looking at the windows. At the window. The open one, that Deku was trying to crawl out of.
All the windows were the same long, narrow shape, set high up on the wall, like in a basement. Deku —and it had to be Deku, Katsuki would know that a- those shitty red hightops anywhere— had climbed up and managed to half-open the farthest one, and was now squirming out, his jean-clad legs scrabbling for purchase against the wall.
The hell is Deku doing here?
He hadn't come with Katsuki's little pack of morons. So he was here, why? Because of some coincidence? Or was the freak stalking Katsuki again? Was he climbing out the window to try and escape before Katsuki caught him?
Frustration and rage rattled around in Katsuki's ribcage and escaped past his teeth in a long, low growl. Quick strides brought him to the window, and he grabbed Deku by those thick, muscled calves and yanked.
Deku yelped as he was hauled back into the bathroom. He hit the ground hard, ass bouncing on the tile, white t-shirt all askew, eyes wild as he flailed.
His t-shirt had 'band shirt' printed on it in ugly black katakana. It made Katsuki hate him a little more.
"The fuck are you doing, nerd?"
"Kacchan!" He looked up at Katsuki, eyes wide and guileless and green as poison. And instead of answering Katsuki's entirely reasonable question he demanded, "What are you doing here? Did you come with Mina and the others?"
It was reflexive: "The fuck you saying? You think I can't come to karaoke? You think I need my hand held if I wanna be here?"
As soon as the words were out, Katsuki's rage spiked. He hated, hated how Deku twisted conversations around. Katsuki was the one asking questions, Katsuki should be the one getting answers!
His hands twitched. He wanted nothing more than to reach out a paw and swat this yabba upside the head, rattle Deku's brains so he remembered which one of them was king.
Except, of course, that wasn't Katsuki anymore.
"What. Are. You. Doing?" he snarled to the pulse of his headache.
Deku flushed, freckles disappearing in the wash of red, and he dropped his gaze from Katsuki's. "Oh, um. Trying to leave."
Katsuki sucked in a deep breath. "Why."
"W-well. Well, there's a girl." Deku peered up at him through messy green bangs. "She's. Um. Intense?" And then it came out in a rush: "Her name is Camie and she's been following me around for a few weeks now, popping up in weird places and being really clingy, really, um, handsy, and once she even showed up in my dorm room naked and I still don't know how she got in and now she's here and Todoroki said he'd keep her busy but I think Camie's got someone helping her so I figured I'd leave this way instead of the front door?"
Katsuki was torn. On the one hand, this sounded like some sweet karma for the years of Deku's creepy attentions, but on the other- "Who wants to follow a loser like you around?"
"Right?" Deku agreed easily. "It's very suspicious."
"So it's not you. It's something you've got, something she wants. What she smell like?"
Deku's tongue flicked out, back in, a distinctly reptilian motion that the Deku from childhood would never have done. "She doesn't have Wyrm taint, if that's what you're asking. Not more than any other human, anyway."
Katsuki's interest waned immediately. "Probably just wants you to fake her grades, then. You're good enough for that," he grudgingly admitted. He turned away and to the urinals, unbuckling his belt as he went.
"Kacchan?"
"Some of us came here for a good reason, nerd, so shut up and push off."
"A-ah. Right. I'll just. Go. Then."
"Whatever," Katsuki grunted. His head hurt too much for this shit. Let the nerd sort himself out.
Katsuki resolutely took care of his business, ignoring Deku clambering to his feet and scrambling up the wall again, trying to wedge himself through the half-open window. Trying. But Deku's shoulders were broad with all the new muscle he'd packed on over the last year, and he couldn't fit himself through, instead getting wedged halfway. Soon he was back to exactly as Katsuki had found him: his legs dangling, his sneakers skidding for purchase on the tiled walls.
Katsuki closed his eyes. Fucking pitiful. This was the successor to All Might?
"Change into your lizard-shape, you dumbass," he said to the wall in front of him. He refused to acknowledge Deku any more than that, instead preferring to tuck himself away in his pants and go wash his hands.
". . . . Oh, right. I always forget I can-" Deku's shape blurred and melted, and within a heartbeat an enormous Komodo dragon was hanging from the window frame.
Its massive body rippled with corded muscle, tail swinging lazily, long claws digging into the grout between tiles. Within moments it had crawled up and through the window, and out into the dark of Musutafu city.
Katsuki watched its reflection slink away in the bathroom mirror, then dropped his gaze to his hands. Incompetent. Clumsy. Unnatural, his brain insisted. No matter how everyone said the awkwardness was a product of Deku being a late bloomer, Katsuki knew the truth: the body of a Zhong Lung was a poor fit for Deku's soul.
~
With the headache still sullen behind his eyes, Katsuki was in no hurry to go back to the karaoke room where he'd be mobbed by the extras who called themselves his Pride. Jirou was the only one of them that could sing, a fact that became more and more relevant the more and more those losers drank. Worse, they all got clingy when drunk, draping themselves over him with total disregard for dignity and decency.
Instead he chose to prowl the empty hallways, trying to shake the itchy feeling in his bones.
It was tough to do with Deku's scent so heavy in the air. That odd mix of reptile and human and other that fizzed at the back of the throat, like the ozone off a sparkler. It was all too familiar to Katsuki, made Deku easy to track, made it the work of a moment to back-trace him to another of the private rooms, which Katsuki did because Deku might have said there was no Wyrm taint but the moron could barely remember how to Change, so how could he be relied on to know up from down?
But it left Katsuki frowning at the door. He'd forgotten that Deku must have come here with his own pack of extras. Now Katsuki was confronted with the stink of them —Uraraka, Iida, Asui— and those were bad enough, but layered under those were the traces of pine trees and charcoal and tiger musk: Todoroki.
'Todoroki said he'd keep her busy.'
Yeah. There was something else. Someone else. Someone human, but . . .
Katsuki's growl rumbled deep in his chest. He hated sniffing around like this, like he was some sort of dog, when he'd much rather go in and see. But going in and confronting Half-and-Half? What was Katsuki supposed to say, that he was there to refill the drinks?
He stewed over his excuses to get inside for all of a minute before common sense reasserted itself: He was Bakugo Katsuki. He went where he pleased, when he pleased, and if someone had a problem with it they could get in his face and they'd settle it in the parking lot like Selene intended.
He wrenched open the door. Stepped inside. Swept his gaze across the room and took in the sight of Deku's shitty Pride and landed on Todoroki making no-doubt-bland conversation with one of the hottest girls Katsuki had ever seen, a brunette in skintight biker leathers with the front zip pulled down to show off incredible cleavage.
Just that glance was all Katsuki needed to know that something was seriously wrong. This 'Camie' was completely out of Deku's league. Breasts and legs and an ass like that, and she'd shown up in Deku's dorm room naked? No way. No way, unless she wanted him to kill someone.
"Bakugo." Asui recovered from his sudden appearance first. She tilted her head and stared at him with those huge, dark eyes. With her expression blank as always, her voice the same flat tones, you'd almost think she'd been expecting him to barge into their karaoke party. "Always nice to see you."
It was impossible to tell if she was sincere or not when she spoke that way, and Katsuki ground his teeth together to keep from demanding she emote like a regular person. It was a lost cause, and Katsuki didn't waste his time on those.
Instead he jerked a thumb over his shoulder and announced, "Pack it up, losers. Your princess is in another castle."
Relief flashed across Uraraka' and Iida's faces. Todoroki stayed as blank as Asui.
'Camie', though, pouted lusciously and abandoned Todoroki right away with a, "Izuku's gone? Lame. I'm out." She sashayed toward the door.
And that was another thing that was weird. No red-blooded girl should ditch Half-and-Half so easily. He might have a constipated personality but his face was enough to make up for that, and his rich kid duds combined with the raw power hanging around him like cologne should have sealed the deal.
Instead this 'Camie' was all set to get up and go without a backward glance.
She was trying to slip by Katsuki but he blocked her exit. "You, I don't know," he said, pretending to check her out, and breathed deep, mouth open a little to catch the taste of her on the air, scent mingling with it to give him a better sense.
He got no Wyrm taint off of her. And yet. And yet.
"Me? I'm Camie," she lied.
There it was.
Deku might be able to muddy the air with his endless mumbling misdirections and Asui might be able to stonewall with her blank face, her blank intentions. Even Mina was able to dodge with her endless bubbly bullshit.
But an out and out lie? Katsuki knew that taste, knew that stink. His lip curled, and he watched as 'Camie' realised he wasn't buying it.
Her eyes narrowed and her pout came back, sour this time instead of sultry. She pushed past him, hurrying down the hall and out of sight with none of the slinky grace she'd shown before.
Just how much of her was a lie?
And why the fuck was someone like her wasting her time on targeting Deku?
~
Katsuki left before Deku's Pride could do more than offer a thank you for letting them know he'd escaped.
"It's whatever. Now fuck off."
A quick text to Kirishima telling him Katsuki was leaving the karaoke bar. Katsuki had had more than enough of that shit for the night. But once outside in the busy streets of Musutafu, Katsuki found himself at a loss, unsure where to go.
'Camie' was nowhere to be seen, and her scent was fading fast in the passing crowds of tourists and night shoppers and university students. Honestly, Katsuki wasn't sure he cared enough to follow her. He was curious about one thing, though, so he made his way down the alley at the side of the building to where the bathroom windows were, and he poked around a bit.
The alley was typical of its kind: very narrow, with little neon signs above discreet back entrances and gaudy paper lanterns above open-air restaurants, shadows strung between them in thick wefts. Discarded boxes and crates stood in neat stacks cluttering up fire escapes, a bicycle was parked by a telephone pole plastered with fliers, a potted plant huddled like a lost child in the corner of a brick wall, and all of it was draped in muddy darkness.
With the light so uncertain around the bathroom windows and so much clutter around, Deku should have been able to crawl out and disappear like water into a pond.
'I think Camie's got someone helping her.'
The nerd's scent lingered in the humid night air, lizard and human and the ozone tang of other that had shrouded Deku in its stench since he was four years old. Katsuki took a few breaths of it, tasted Deku's Change back from lizard to man. So, he'd left on two legs.
Katsuki looked up, saw the flat roofs and the overhangs, and reached within himself to his Lion nature. Slowly, slowly he brought it to the surface, allowing only a little of it through. Just enough for his vision to sharpened in the dark, for his fingers to grow claws to help him grip the cement, for his legs to strengthen so he could make the jump easily, soundlessly.
The leap took him to a narrow second story ledge where he huddled against windows papered over with the disassembled corpses of cereal boxes. He balanced effortlessly, hidden in shadow, and from there he climbed up the side of the building to the roof, a forest of ventilation pipes and air conditioner units and laundry lines.
After that he made it to the next roof, and then to the next. But he only had to check those three before he found traces of the Fomor.
An empty beer can. A couple of candy wrappers. The stench of the Wyrm like a rancid fart. The Fomor had sat here in its human shape, eating, drinking, waiting. You couldn't see the bathroom windows from here, but you could see the patch of light that fell on the alleyway a few steps forward from them. And yes, the Fomor's scent led off in a long ribbon tracing along above the alley, following Deku's path.
So the nerd really is being shadowed.
He slipped his phone from his pocket and sent a new text.
~
» youre being followed dumbass
» look up
The words had Midoriya Izuku's heart in his mouth. He very carefully, very deliberately, did not look up.
He was still in Kamino ward, in the dazzling neon dream where people walked the streets with their faces painted in dancing colour and black, black shadows. Everyone crowded close on the sidewalks, warm bodies too sticky-near in the summer night, and the streets ran black-white-red with cars.
He'd stopped just outside a pachinko parlour, but the howl of its music, the loud clatter of its cheerful bings and electronic whistles were nothing compared to the roar of panic in his ears. He swallowed, then swallowed again, choking. Glanced around desperately, and saw a vending machine in front of a nearby konbini.
Two hundred yen later he was chugging down a cold milk coffee as his mind raced through possibilities.
Kacchan wouldn't have bothered to send him a text if it was just about Camie. Or, for that matter, if it was some random thug. No, the only thing that would have pushed Kacchan to care would be an agent of the Wyrm.
Izuku flicked his tongue. There was taste-smell of Wyrm everywhere, a sour fug of car exhaust and old sweat that clung to everything, to everyone. There'd be no tracking his enemy that way.
He decided to take a risk. He took another drink from his coffee, tilting his head back and using the motion as a cover to glance up at the roofline.
No luck. The light and dazzle from the streets below left the roofs in total darkness.
What should I do?
His hand snuck up to toy with his lower lip as he ran over his options, mumbling them under his breath. He could head straight to the dorms as fast as possible, maybe even take a taxi there? Or he could lose himself in the crowds and try and shake his tail? Or he could hide and hope that they'd give up and leave? Or he could go back to the karaoke bar and get backup from Todoroki and the others?
Or he could find a secluded spot, lure out his pursuer, and kill them.
He shivered as the last option left his mouth, grateful for the noise of the pachinko parlour covering his murderous thoughts.
They were still new to him, those thoughts. Only a year of blood-hunger and rage to counter over a decade spent running, spent being weak and frightened and bleating, and even just mumbling the possibility to himself as a half-considered option left a strange taste in his mouth.
But the idea, once brought to light, would not leave him.
"If I go down an alley and try to reach the rooftops they'll likely see me coming and run. I might be able to keep up in my human shape but knowing Fomori they'll probably have some kind of enhancement to make them superhuman. That means I'd need to shift to keep up, but I'm not as fast in my Komodo lizard shape as I was in my old sheep body, and definitely not as good at jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and I can't just Change into a dragon when I'm downtown like this, either. So going to the rooftops is a bad idea.
"My best bet is to lure them down to me. To do that I'd have to go someplace they can't watch over from above but that they feel is safe enough to follow me into. No warehouses or deserted buildings or underground tunnels. But. Maybe. There's a park nearby, I think? And it's pretty big . . . "
He checked his phone. Yes, the park was only a short ways away, and it was a good two by three blocks large. He started walking as he scrolled through photos of it —there were lots of trees and winding paths and plenty of manicured bushes perfect for ambushes— tossing his empty coffee can in the trash can he passed by, his brain working, working, working on the situation he found himself in.
He himself had never staged an ambush, but hazy memories of them floated at the back of his mind like half-remembered dreams. He chased them even as his body wove through the crowd on autopilot. What had worked? What had failed?
I want to be away from lights, of course, and other people, but I also want to make sure there's plenty of bushes to drag my watcher into, and I'll have to make sure to be upwind, and no tracks leading to my hiding spot . . .
It was strange. All Might had said that such memories were best remembered through meditation or when asleep, but for Izuku they welled up as they pleased. Maybe it was due to his original nature as a changeling, a child of dreams, that he could access them easier?
Certainly it had changed the ritual All Might had used to transfer his draconic nature to Izuku, remaking him in a cocoon of scales from a hapless sheep pooka to a great Zhong Lung dragon, and that thought snagged Izuku's attention.
The ritual.
'It's not you. It's something you've got, something she wants,' Katsuki had said, and, of course, how had Izuku not realised it sooner? Camie and her accomplice must have been after the ritual to transfer a Zhong Lung's nature to another.
It was the only thing Izuku had that could be worth this kind of attention, and the thought of the ritual in the hands of the agents of the Wyrm made his blood run cold. With it they could steal away the dragon-essence of every Zhong Lung, give it to their twisted mutants and create monsters of looping coils and dripping ichor to ravage the face of Gaia.
How they could have possibly found out the ritual even existed, he didn't know, but that hardly mattered. What was important was that Fomori were selfish by nature, and Camie would have likely kept her knowledge limited to her immediate accomplices so as to net all the credit for the acquisition herself. That meant Izuku had the chance to snuff this problem before it could kindle into something bigger.
And the first step was murder in the park.
~
Izuku found his killing ground: a remote path in the park that led from a crumbling statue to an old, dried up drinking fountain, its winding length snaking between flowering bushes and only barely illuminated by a lamppost that flickered and throbbed.
Its bulb was slowly dying as he watched, a flurry of moths dancing around its strobing light. The flash of their green wings was a good omen, which, nice. He'd take any blessing he could get.
He settled on the cool, damp earth under the bush. He was in his Komodo shape again, and the colours of the night were like gem-dark banners, the scent of the blossoms around him like heady nectar. He felt dizzy with it, flicked his tongue and scented the air again and again, waiting for his stalker. Waiting for his prey.
He'd killed before now, but that was Bane spirits, grotesque creatures of magic and pain, or Chimera, the monsters of nightmares pulled into reality. The thing following him was most likely a Fomor, and to be able to tail him so easily through the mundane world without catching attention meant it was still human, at least in shape if nothing else.
The thought made his stomach twist. He had a fleeting moment of gratitude that lizards didn't puke.
He'd never expected to have to do this so soon.
He'd never expected to have to do this alone.
He'd thought- at least for the first time killing another person-
He remembered Kacchan's first time. Remembered the Takoba Pack taking Kacchan out into the dark and bringing him home quiet and pale-faced. They'd stayed with him despite his protests, gotten him drunk despite him only being seventeen, and Izuku had brought him-
-there was movement on the path.
A man stepped into the light of the lamppost. He wasn't anything particularly special to look at, just a scruffy thirty-something in cargoes and a white tanktop, his messy blond hair cut short, a cigarette drooping from his lips.
But all the fluttering moths shivered, died, drifted to the stone path like old leaves and vanished into stardust.
Izuku dug his claws into the dirt and forced his breathing to stay deep and even. This was simple. This was easy. He was fifty kilograms of corded muscle with a venomous bite and a human-smart brain, and he remembered doing this before. Different enemies, different places, different selves, but the memories were there, faded and the faces blotched out but they were there, showing him how to move.
The man, the Fomor, walked closer. Izuku could smell the stink of him, the pungent cigarette smoke doing nothing to hide Wyrm stench, man musk, old blood. Izuku's body tensed.
Just.
A bit.
Closer.
Izuku erupted from the bush in a spectacular lunge. His serrated teeth snapped shut on the man's ankle and Izuku twisted, throwing all of his weight and strength to the side, yanking the Fomor's leg out from under him and sending him sprawling on the ground. A strangled yell was all the Fomor managed before Izuku was on him again, scrambling down the length of the Fomor's body and burying his face in its neck.
His teeth, so sharp. That skin, so soft. The blood, all wrong. No salt-metallic tang but sour and spoilt and Izuku jerked back, his mouth dripping with ichor.
The body beneath his rippled, the Fomor's eyes bugging out, and a seam split right down the middle of its forehead. Izuku backed away some more, horrified, as that seam split wider and wider, the skin of the face pulling away to bare a pulsing, thrashing mass of pink and glistening worms.
Shuddering in disgust, Izuku tried to spit the ichor from his mouth, saliva drooling out in spools, the best a lizard could manage. His gaze stayed riveted to the Fomor, however, watching as its skin and clothing completely melted, as the worms that had been puppeting the creature began twining together tighter and tighter, squeezing each other until they burst like pustules, until there was nothing left of them but steaming mush that slowly dissolved.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! Fuck!
Not a normal death. Not a human death. Not even, he thought, a Fomorian death. This had been something else.
At least I don't have to worry about the body, he thought, the words edged in hysteria. He ducked back into the bushes and let himself lie on the cold dirt, soaking in its patient strength, its clean scent.
His panic eased in slow stages as the wretched taste faded from his mouth. But as the fog of fear left him, a single thought took shape:
I killed someone.
Maybe. If the Fomor-thing counted. Certainly he'd tried to kill someone. He'd downed a man and ripped his throat out and that was enough, wasn't it? Never mind what had happened after, the act had been committed. Izuku had basically killed someone. Izuku had killed a person.
That's when he started to shake.