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Katsuki didn’t want his parents to be proud of him.
So in second year, when the League was still running rampant, when All For One was dead, when Endeavor was the Number One Hero, and most importantly, when his father wanted him to choose an internship that was nice and safe and his mother wanted him to choose an internship that would show off his maturity and composure, he thought ‘fuck it’ and agreed to Miruko’s offer.
(“What the fuck, Katsuki? Are you fucking stupid? Did you listen to a word we-” Katsuki hung up on his mother. He threw his phone across the room. But that thing was expensive, with an expensive case that his mother had gotten for him with the money from her new fancy fucking job because everything they owned had to be fucking expensive now. It didn’t break, and it rung only a second later.)
(“Endeavor offered you an internship, and you didn’t take it?” Katsuki didn’t respond to his father. He was over at Icyhot’s sister’s place, with Deku setting the table and Fuyumi boiling water with a pot instead of a kettle and Shouto chopping up vegetables with a proficiency he had never had before he met Katsuki, and Natsuo was dropping a birthday gift for Shouto later, and Katsuki knew that this was the best birthday of Shouto’s life because Endeavor was off on a stakeout mission in Nagano. So, Katsuki didn’t respond to his father. “Endeavor’s agency is targeted sure, but he’s a much better option than a lone hero…” His father kept talking. He didn’t keep listening.)
(“Your parents have called me with concerns about your internship. They want you to reconsider.” Katsuki feels as tired as Aizawa looks, and he asks if he has to. Aizawa says no, and the matter is settled, even if Aizawa calls him Problem Child again to his face and Brat again under his breath. Katsuki’s updated hearing aids help him hear everything.)
Icyhot is Shouto, Shouto, Katsuki calls him Shouto now because they are friends and because Shouto understands. Shouto does not want his father to be proud of him either, because Endeavor is a shitty person and a shitty father and and a shitty bag of shit. Katsuki can ignore the fact that Shouto wants (needs) his mother to be proud.
Deku is Deku, Deku, Katsuki calls him Deku but now it’s because it’s his hero name and Deku will be a hero. Deku knows his mother is not proud of this decision, and his father had never been proud of him, having fucked off to America the first chance he got. Katsuki will ignore the fact that envy claws at his chest sometimes when Deku mentions this.
Katsuki is Katsuki, is Bakugou, is Kaachan, is Brat, is Problem Child, is Bakubro and Bakubae and the Sports Festival menace, because last year he was muzzled and chained like a fucking dog and this year he cussed out Endeavor when presented with a first place medal. Katsuki cannot ignore this fact, because he was presented with a lot less agency options this year.
So, Katsuki did not choose an agency. He chose Miruko, the Number Four Hero, and that’s almost ironic, considering Best Jeanist was Number Four Hero. But he swore to himself that he’d never choose to work with Best Jeanist again, and it was almost easier to reject his offer than Endeavor’s. But because he chose Miruko-
(“Miruko! The Rabbit? Katsuki, you’re going to either look weak, stupid, or crazy!”)
(“Miruko? Really? Kats, you’ve received two offers from heroes that rank higher than her.”)
(“Miruko will not teach you how to cooperate with other heroes.” Midnight- fucking Midnight- advised. She had thrown in an offer herself, but he fucking hated the bitch and hers had actually been the first on his list to be rejected.)
-Katsuki had no idea what to expect. But his parents didn’t call him to tell him that they loved him before his internship like they had done before his work study last year, so he figured it couldn’t be that bad. He walked up to Aizawa, fully expecting the address of some gym or warehouse, or maybe even exact coordinates considering that Miruko didn’t have an agency. And received the address of an apartment in Hiroshima. As he stared at it, Katsuki wanted to blow up a fucking train, which was not a good thought to have when one was about to board a fucking train. Would she be sticking him with all her extra shitty paperwork or some shit? Katsuki gripped the handle of his costume case tighter, ignoring the way his sweat would probably ruin the leather.
When he got to the apartment, he knocked on the door and she shouted for him to come in. Which was fucking weird as hell. Still, he slammed the door open. If she couldn’t handle his fucking personality like Jeanist, better to get it out of the way now. Except she didn’t glare at him. She was crunching on a bag of fucking carrot sticks and she grinned at him as he entered. Her shoes were off, revealing that she had normal, human feet, even if they were big, and she was wearing a tank top and shorts. By all means, she looked like a health nut, not a fucking pro hero. Katsuki felt his disappointment rising.
And promptly disappearing when she blurted out why she wasn’t in costume.
“Great! Now we can have a contest to see who can get changed faster!”
The answer was Miruko, which wasn’t shocking, but still made Katsuki grit his teeth in annoyance.
Miruko had him in his hero costume in the same amount of time it took Jeanist to tell him that he didn’t like him. This was already shaping up to be a better week. And it became the best week when she asked what he wanted to eat so they could pick it up before patrol. Patrol. He answered ‘the spiciest fucking curry you can handle’ and she shot him an approving look instead of telling him off for his language.
(“Language, brat!” Katsuki wanted to yell ‘fucking hypocrite’ at his mother, but his throat still hurt from the sludge villain and he couldn’t speak. She never usually cared, but now he had been on TV, and charming the reporters begging for a scoop was basically free advertising.)
(“Kats, you know I can’t handle spicy food. Why don’t we pick something different?” He had been told to pick whatever meal he wanted for his birthday. Except, apparently, what he actually wanted. He chose katsudon and he was forced to bring some over to Deku too.)
(“Bakugou, if I have to remind you to behave appropriately in public one more time…”)
The curry was delicious and the patrol was even better.
Hiroshima was busy. And had less agencies than other cities. More than Mustafu, by far, but a lot less than Tokyo, because most heroes in Hiroshima were stand-alones. Which meant Miruko had a personal relationship with the police. Which meant Miruko had longer hours. Which meant Miruko had more ground to cover and more criminals to go after, and by extension, Katsuki had been freed to deliver explosive attacks that were a lot more than self-defense. Katsuki had always hated the way he wasn’t allowed to use his quirk unless he was under certain conditions, but Miruko had given him permission to do whatever he goddamn wanted.
And Miruko was just as feral as him.
He could see it in the way her grin caught the sunlight, vindictive and white. She never held back, delivering bruising kicks to criminals’ ribs. So he didn’t either, focusing on the fight, on the skin beneath his fists, on the way air seemed to burn his lungs, on the scent of burnt sugar in the air-
-and Mirkuo stopped him, and said one thing.
“KId, you’re fighting better than you ever have in your life.”
And no, she didn’t know him, nor could she pretend to. But Katsuki didn’t get angry. He wanted to preen at the compliment, but before he gave in, he wanted to make sure she was telling the truth, so he looked around. The fact that there was no property damage in this narrow alleyway surprised him, because he had not been focusing on not causing damage. On the ground there were ten gang members, members of a Yakuza faction that had taken over after Overhaul. And sure, Miruko had attacked the heavier hitters, the ones with obvious and dangerous quirks. But there was a clear line between his fight and her fight, and Katsuki had taken out five. He was going head to head with the Number Four Hero. His fighting had become efficient and invigorating and free, because for once he had been brought out of his head and let loose. So he matched her grin, and she set him loose again.
(“Control yourself, Katsuki.”)
(“Kats, don’t you want people to like you?”)
(“Bakugou, if you’re going to be Number One, you should pay more attention to the amount of property damage you inflict.”)
Katsuki realized that when he was set loose, he tended to fight with his quirk coming off in even, consistent pops and burning hot hands, instead of the big, flashy moves he practiced to impress. And that should have bothered him, but what he was doing was so much more efficient and so much less tiring and Miruko sent him approving looks and-
Oh. She was proud of him.
He smiled as he punched the next criminal.
He pushed it to the back of his mind, fighting until he forgot about it.
Miruko stopped them again after a few hours of running through the city and taking down criminals. Her grin never slipped, and while Katsuki had faltered last time, now his adrenaline was pumping and he felt so fucking giddy. The sun was getting closer to setting now.
“That was a good patrol, kid, but we have one more thing to wrap up before we get back, and it’s gonna be a little different than what we’ve been doing.” Katsuki felt the gears in his brain starting to whir, but he desperately tried to tune out his thoughts and only pay attention to her words. “Now, because of my fighting style and the fact that most of my advantage comes from speed, the Commission likes to set me loose on the worse criminals- the ones you can just beat up, knock out, call the police on, and keep going. However, I’ve been put on a particular case for this week, and tonight we’re finishing it up. There’s a small drug ring of teenagers that have gotten in a little over their heads, and they’ve been supplying an alternate version of Trigger to the Yakuza.”
Oh. Shit.
The Trigger formula had burned in the League’s attack on the Yakuza base, and Overhaul, the only person who could’ve possibly remembered it, was killed. And any pure Trigger had long since been weakened, contaminated, or used. But no one would know how to combat an alternate version of the drug.
“Okay, what do we need to do?”
“My contacts have already wrung a ton of information out of these guys, including their contacts in the Yakuza. But what we need to do is find them and capture them with minimal injuries. We can’t knock them out, because they need to be coherent, and we’ll be bringing them directly to the station.” Katsuki nodded.
“Do we know their quirks?”
“One of them has a minor self healing quirk, one has a transformation quirk that turns their hair to removable spines, one has an unknown quirk, and one recently lost their quirk to a Yakuza dart in a deal gone wrong.” Oh. Katsuki tried to crush the sympathy in his chest.
(“Pray for a quirk in the next life and-”)
(“I’m sorry for everything, Deku!”)
(“Mirio lost his quirk in a Yakuza raid.”)
“Let’s do this.”
Katsuki and Miruko traveled over rooftops, and Katsuki reluctantly traded his explosions for Miruko’s jumps when they got closer, embarrassed as she slung one arm over him and jumped, but ultimately recognizing the need for stealth. When they finally got to the alleyway, they stayed on the roof, looking down and listening. It didn’t take Miruko’s super hearing to hear their arguing, because one of them (a strangely familiar voice) was yelling at the top of his lungs.
“THEY MADE ME QUIRKLESS! We CAN’T keep selling to them!”
“Dude, not so loud!”
“Listen-”
“All of you are TRAITORS! You wouldn’t even be here without me!”
Miruko gave the signal, and they dropped, each of them immediately cuffing one of the guys with the unknown quirk and the spine quirk. Katsuki was pretty sure he had the guy with the spine quirk, as before he was cuffed, he had reached for his hair, but quirk suppressant cuffs took care of that problem quickly. Miruko grabbed his guy from him and the wrist of one of the free guys- not the quirkless guy, not the guy that was yelling, so it had to be the healing quirk guy- and nodded towards the guy with the undercut.
(“Maybe you should hang out with Izuku more,” his mother suggested when two of his friends got suspended for smoking weed on school grounds. Katsuki had started to ignore Izuku even more.)
(“C’mon, Katsuki, let’s go hang out at the arcade. Unless you’re scared I’ll win more tickets.”)
(“I don’t want to be a hero anymore. I want to be a doctor,” his friend confessed one night. He was still smoking, and Katsuki was keeping his distance, and Katsuki scoffed and told him he’d never be a doctor with those awful fucking habits.)
Katsuki pinned the guy against the wall in one swift movement, gripping his wrists and cuffing them behind the guy’s back, and his eyes fell on an oddly shaped scar. A familiar oddly shaped scar, one that almost looked like a lightning bolt on the top of the guy’s back. Like one his friend had gotten in middle school because his stupid stick n poke had gotten infected and he poured over anatomy and medical books so he could safely cut it out without telling his mother he had someone give him a tattoo.
“Kari?” He whispered, but he shouldn’t have said it at all. He hadn’t meant to. It was a stupid nickname that had originated from the fact that he got an undercut in the second year of middle school. Nothing more. But Kari’s breath hitched and the other guys stopped yelling and trying to resist Miruko.
“Katsuki,” he breathed. “Guess you’re gonna be a hero, huh?”
“You should’ve told me to fuck off. You should’ve been a doctor.”
“Yeah, I know. I really know.”
Katsuki and Miruko dropped them off to the police station without another word from any of them.
When they exited the police station, Katsuki was tired. It was that bone deep kind of tired, the one that’s physical and mental and emotional and goddamn everything. Miruko led him into an alleyway before dragging out two old wooden crates from a pile and sitting on one. And Katsuki would usually complain about germs and health and wherever the fuck that crate has been, but now he just accepted the invitation wordlessly.
“You knew that kid?” It was a question in the way parents asked questions: with a clear hint towards what they thought was the right answer. But her voice wasn’t condescending like his father’s or derogatory like his mother’s. He didn’t curse or spit or ignore her.
“Kari was a friend from middle school. He- He always smoked and shit, and when he told me he wanted to be a doctor I told him he’d never be one if he didn’t quit. We didn’t stay in touch after graduation. I- I wasn’t in the best crowd in middle school, and I wasn’t even the best of them. We did some pretty awful shit. I was- I was a bully.”
Miruko nodded.
(“You were always a brat in middle school, but now you’re representing the Bakugou family as a second year hero student.” His mother was proud. He shredded his new uniform tie with scissors as soon as he got home.)
(“That boy with the finger quirk just got arrested for robbing a gas station. I’m so glad you made better friends in the hero course, Kats.” Katsuki mailed the bail to the police station. He didn’t know if it was enough, or if it even made it, but he didn’t want to see his old friend.)
(“You were a bully?” It took two weeks for Eijirou to speak to him after that.)
“Okay,” she said simply. “Let me tell you something, kid.”
She didn’t speak for a moment, just took a loud, shaky breath that Katsuki could imagine rattling his ribs.
“I used to be a vigilante.”
“...What?”
Miruko grinned at empty air as she stared ahead. Her grin was sad. Katsuki had seen people smile sadly before, but it was always soft and closed and faltering and decidedly not a grin. Nothing about Miruko was soft, not even this sad expression. Her sharp red eyes reflected the light from the street as they became shiny; her mouth was pulled open, revealing big with teeth in a way that was unnatural because her eyes didn’t crease at the ends in the slightest.
“I was a vigilante. The Commission put me through a reform program as a teenager. I never attended a hero school. There’s a reason I’m a lone hero, y’know.”
“But vigilantes still do good shit. I was a bully,” Katsuki found himself protesting. Miruko huffed a bitter half-laugh.
“I didn’t become a vigilante because I wanted to be a hero. I became a vigilante to take my anger out on villains. And one day, a boy asked me out because he was dared to and called me ugly because of my mutations when I accepted, and I was stupid, and I lost it on the next villain I saw. And… I put him in a coma for four months.”
Oh. Holy shit.
Katsuki must have said that part out loud because Miruko laughed nervously.
“That’s when the Commission put me in the reform program, and when my parents died, they took me in completely. I was an awful kid who always bounced back from their discipline, and really, I probably was worse than you in middle school, and I was seventeen and knew better. I’m not gonna judge for who you used to be, kid.”
“...Thanks.” Miruko grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. Katsuki tensed at the sudden touch, but her hand was warm and she wasn’t hitting him. His mother did this sometimes too, but Miruko’s open palm hadn’t hurt his shoulder with the sharp, quick sting of a hit, nor had it dug in with a bruising grip. He relaxed, and after a moment she removed her hand and stood up.
“C’mon kid, let’s go get some food. You did good today; I’m proud of you.”
Katsuki didn’t want his parents to be proud of him.
(But fuck, he really wanted Miruko to be proud.)