Chapter Text
The prosecution’s office is cramped– two floors of a high rise office building jammed full of just barely enough cubicles to house all 132 of Shizuoka’s criminal prosecutors. It is certainly not as luxurious as some of the defense firms that are located just down the street, where even legal assistants get personal offices with actual walls and windows looking out over the city– but the bile that rises in the back of your throat whenever you think about being a defense lawyer means that you have no choice but to deal with your very sad cubicle, lest you go into property law or something equally boring.
Unsurprisingly, such a small office means that everything travels extremely quickly. You had learned that the hard way when the kettle had been broken in the breakroom and you had tried to microwave your pitiful excuse of a lunch, a cup of instant ramen, completely forgetting to add any water in your haste to finish up and get back to your desk. The ramen had practically been charred black and smoke had begun billowing out of the microwave by the time you’d realized. The entire office smelled of burnt noodles so badly for the remainder of the work week that you had been unwillingly bestowed with the nickname “Scorch”.
The whole event being so memorably annoying to your coworkers combined with it being your first week in an office with so much turnover that nobody bothered to learn each other's names meant that the nickname had been cemented and you still hadn’t managed to escape it. Even years later, you hear your actual name maybe once a week in the office– and to your absolute horror, the story of your transgression and subsequent title has even made its way over to some of the defense lawyers. The feeling of abject despair when you had once opened an email from a defense lawyer only to see that the opening line addressed you by “Scorch” rather than your real name is something you won’t forget.
Unfortunately, you are not only known for your instant ramen wrongdoings. If it was just the Scorch thing, you could handle it; the nickname was occasionally grating, but it didn’t impact your work. What was truly unfortunate was that you had offered one time to take on a difficult file from a coworker.
Transferring files happened all the time– whether it was discomfort with some details of the case or unfamiliarity with case law relating to the offense, handing over a file or two to another prosecutor was inevitable in this line of work. You couldn’t stand prosecuting stalking offenses– it hit too close to home and your coworkers had always been good about snagging those files from you whenever they found their way onto your caseload. You returned the favor often, quick to consult on or take over a file entirely if one of your fellow junior prosecutors seemed to be particularly struggling.
Your error wasn’t in offering to take a difficult file, you would do that in a heartbeat every time as long as you had capacity. No, your mistake was taking on a file with a very specific difficulty.
Katsuki Bakugou, better known as the number one hero, Dynamight, is a notoriously awful witness. He routinely fails to attend witness prep meetings and regularly threatens not to show up to court, which in itself is not the worst. You had heard from some of the senior prosecutors that back when Endeavor was still working as a hero, he never answered his phone and his assistants weren’t any help in getting a hold of him, either. Dynamight answered his phone at the least, but he typically answered it yelling and swearing before the person on the other end could even open their mouth to continue speaking after introducing themselves as being part of the prosecution’s office. A subpoena showing up on his desk was like a personal insult to him, and his actual conduct in court wasn’t much better from what you had heard floating over the cubicle walls in the office.
“He called the Justice a shithead the last time I had him as a witness for one of my files. I thought for sure he was going to get hit with a contempt charge.”
“We had six officers in the courtroom because he looked like he was going to leap out of the witness box at any moment and attack the accused.”
“He told defense counsel that he was going to beat the shit out of him.”
At least he showed up, you supposed. There were many heroes and police officers who thought court was beneath them and understandably would much rather be out on patrol rather than sitting for hours outside the courtroom until it was their turn to testify. Multiple distribution wide emails had been sent to the hero agencies and police commission in your time– reminding heroes and police alike that showing up to court was a legal obligation, and failing to do so could jeopardize the cases they had worked on and result in the villains they had worked so hard to put behind bars being released. You had very little faith that the heroes that needed those reminders actually bothered to read those emails, but at least the justice department was trying to do something.
A few months into working with Shizuoka’s criminal prosecutions, when your coworkers would still shoot you warning glares every time you got within a few feet of the microwave, you had been in the lunchroom while one of your colleagues was lamenting about how hard of a time she was having dealing with a witness on one of her files. She hadn’t gone into detail, just mentioned that she dreaded calling this witness to court and was considering withdrawing the whole file because of how poorly she anticipated the whole thing going– and you, the angel that you had been, hadn’t thought much of it and offered to take it off her hands.
During your first year in law school, an unfortunate amount of your classmates had been complete and utter assholes, constantly trying to one-up and sabotage each other. You hated it at the time, even considered dropping out and taking a gap year– but you pushed through and that year of hell had taught you very well how to deal with difficult people, to put it kindly. Dealing with assholes was something you didn’t mind, you had been called every name under the sun and were familiar with the authority you had as a prosecutor to make people listen to you. Witnesses have to show up to court, and you have no problem making it clear to difficult witnesses that you have the authority to issue a warrant for their arrest if they don’t.
So you had offered to take the file. You hadn’t noticed it at the time, but the prosecutors in the cubicles closest to the lunchroom had all paused in their typing, heads peaking over the edge of the cubicle walls to get a look and see which sorry soul had just signed away any inkling of job satisfaction they had left. Your coworker who had the file wasted absolutely no time and jumped up out of her seat at the lunch table, completely abandoning her lunch in favor of rushing over to her desk to gather up all of the folders and binders for the file. She had dumped the massive stacks of paper on your desk as quickly as she could, before you could realize what you had just signed up for and change your mind.
Looking over the file, you really hadn’t understood what was so difficult about it as you flipped through the pages. It was a routine robbery offense from a villain that was on probation and had previous theft convictions. There was security footage and the theft had been valued at over 700 000 yen, well over the 500 000 yen threshold for the theft to be classified as a severe offense worthy of jail time, especially given the repeat offense. The evidence was so strong for this file that surely whatever difficult witness your coworker had been dealing with wasn’t actually needed.
It was when you had found the witness list, buried in the midst of all the papers, that you had realized. Katsuki Bakugou was halfway down the list, hidden amongst the names of a handful of police officers and a civilian witness who you assumed to be the shop owner. Upon reviewing the security footage, you had realized precisely why your coworker was dreading going to court for this file.
Dynamight had beaten the shit out of the guy, thrown him through a wall and caused enough damage to the store that the cost of his damages probably outweighed the total cost of what this guy was trying to steal in the first place. You had cringed as you watched the video, the arguments the defense would almost certainly make about unreasonable force flashing through your mind. There was no way you could avoid calling Dynamight as a witness, because if you wanted any kind of substantial sentence for this villain, you had to prove to the Justice that Dynamight’s force was proportionally appropriate. Otherwise, defense would flaunt the video in front of the Judge and argue for the lowest sentence possible due to misuse of force in the process of the administration of justice.
In the end, the case had never gone to trial. You had accepted a plea deal from defense that resulted in a pathetically small amount of jail time and some mandatory villain reform programming. Definitely not your proudest moment, but you were lucky to even get a criminal conviction in the first place. After the file had been resolved, your coworker had dropped by your desk to profusely thank you for taking it off your hands, promising to call you by your actual name from now on.
In the end, you never even had to speak with Dynamight in regards to the file. There was no need for any witness preparation or damage control in court since the case had been resolved before trial, and Dynamight’s subpoena for the matter was cancelled. For a moment, you had pondered having a meeting to remind him of his duties to adhere to the use of force guidelines in place for heroes, but you were sure he’d already been chewed out by the commission for his actions. Even if he hadn’t, you highly doubted he’d retain a single word you said to him anyways if you bothered to call.
The real damage was that you became known in the office as being the one willing to take on files where Dynamight was the responding hero. Your coworker had sung your praises across the entire office, talked about how you had been so willing to take on the file and how you had apparently gotten such an amazing outcome despite how badly Dynamight’s actions fucked the whole thing up. Before you knew it, you had junior and senior prosecutors coming up to you with files, a smile on their face that you have now seen so many times you immediately know what they are going to ask for before they even open their mouths.
You had no problem being stern when it came to the prosecution of your files; you had argued with defense lawyers more times than you could count, pushed back against court decisions and been ruthless in cross-examining defense witnesses. You weren’t afraid to tell a police officer or hero that they had to show up or you’d jeopardize their work by issuing a witness warrant. Defense lawyers routinely rolled their eyes in annoyance when you met them in court and told them you were taking over a file. You had even received some very rare praise from some of the more senior prosecutors regarding your unwillingness to roll over when a Justice delivers a decision regarding evidence admissibility that you don't necessarily agree with.
Where you faltered and became a living doormat was in saying no to your coworkers. The junior prosecutors who approached you looked at you with so much hope, clearly way in over their heads; and the senior prosecutors demanded a level of respect that meant you could never decline. So you had said yes to taking each and every file that had Dynamight’s name on the witness list, which unfortunately meant that you took on quite a few files because he was the number one hero and never seemed to take a fucking day off.
Thankfully, a good chunk of the Dynamight files that landed on your desk were ones where the amount of contact required with Dynamight was minimal to none. At this point, Dynamight was so infamous in the office that prosecutor's merely saw his name attached to the file and immediately pawned it off to you as quickly as they could. You were pretty sure that it was the first thing some of your colleagues checked when they were handed a new case; and most of the time, you were able to resolve files with guilty pleas or have other heroes or officers who had been present testify at trial instead. You had been fortunate enough so far that whenever it seemed Dynamight was going to have to testify, you managed to weasel your way into getting a guilty plea from the accused and subsequently avoiding a trial.
Regardless, you had become well acquainted with Dynamight’s office, particularly his two assistants, who you pitied more than yourself. At least you got paid a decent amount to deal with this, whereas you doubted Dynamight’s assistants were getting compensation anywhere close to what they deserved for dealing with the firecracker of a hero.
You had fortunately only ever had to deal with Dynamight on the phone. You were sure he had your number saved in his phone as some sort of expletive, because every time you called in regards to a file, he was already angry before you could even get a word in. The sheer number of times you unfortunately had to call him meant that you had become very skilled at talking over his yelling and remaining unfazed in the face of his rage. Of course, he never really listened to you– it was nearly every other phone call that he demanded you talk to your supervisor and have him excluded from ever being subpoenaed again for anything, as if that was even a possibility in the first place. Sometimes you truly wanted to ask him if he only cared about throwing people through windows and demolishing buildings in the process, because his unwillingness to cooperate at all sure made it seem like he didn’t give a damn about any kind of justice. You never bothered to ask, partly because he’d never bother to actually respond and would instead probably go off on his own rage fueled tangent and partly because you already knew the answer anyways. Dynamight may be one of the most difficult heroes to work with, but there was certainly no shortage of other arrogant heroes with their heads so far up their asses that they too got offended when the telltale yellow paper of a witness subpoena graced their desk. Heroes were in most ways a blessing, at least to the general public. When it came to criminal prosecutions, a lot of them could really learn to be a tad more cooperative.
With this file, it seems that your lucky streak of not having to face Dynamight’s rage in person is coming to an end. It’s a high profile case on multiple well-known villains involved in an emerging gang named "Infinition" who have wriggled their way out of criminal convictions multiple times on technicalities. The defense has made it clear to you that this is going to trial, with absolutely no possibility of any resolution short of a complete withdrawal of the charges. A trial has already been booked for the span of nearly two months, and Dynamight is of course the star witness. He had led the raid on the compound and been the one to put the villains in cuffs after surveilling them for weeks and systematically taking down their accomplices. Your prosecution hinges on his testimony, which means that if you want this to go even remotely well, you need to prepare him very thoroughly for court, especially considering his infamous reputation among the Judges.
Considering the complexity of this file and your level of experience, it is truly shocking that it ended up on your desk. You were still a Level 1 prosecutor, a baby lawyer in the eyes of everyone above you in the office. A Level 4 prosecutor had unceremoniously dumped the file on your desk without asking (because who were you to say no?) and left you to fend for yourself. Any other Level 1 getting a file of this significance would be seen as an egregious mistake. Files like these– attempted murder with a restricted firearm, actual murder, hostage taking, kidnapping, and over 100 other similarly serious charges between the three accused– these files universally stay with the top of the top, the 4s and the 5s. You suppose that on the bright side, you should take it as a compliment; surely you must be pretty good at your job if a senior prosecutor is willing to hand a file like this over to you just so they don’t have to deal with Dynamight. Shortly after being given the file and having a very thorough mental breakdown about it, you had offloaded almost all of your other active files onto other prosecutors, all of whom had taken them with a pitiful expression, practically offering their condolences to you.
You sigh as you pick up your desk phone, dialing the number to Dynamight’s office without even sparing a glance towards the sticky note on the edge of your computer monitor with the phone number written down, a sad face next to it. The line rings twice before somebody answers.
“Ground Zero Hero Agency, how can I help you?” The voice on the other end is chipper, and you immediately recognize it as belonging to one of Dynamight’s two assistants.
“Hi Shimizu-san, how are you doing today?”
“Oh! It’s you,” Shimizu’s voice on the other end changes, and anyone else who hadn’t spoken to her as much as you had wouldn’t notice it, but you can hear the way the dread seems to settle over her when she realizes that it’s you calling and you are probably going to ask for something that will piss Dynamight off. “How can I help you today?”
“I need to book a witness prep meeting for a trial I’ve got coming up in September,” you answer. There’s a pause on the other end of the phone, like poor Shimizu is imagining how she’s going to work up the nerve to tell Dynamight she’s booked this after everything is all said and done.
“S-September?” she starts. “That’s nearly four months– isn’t that quite far away? I don’t think Dynamight has received any subpoenas for anything in September…”
“Sorry Shimizu-san, this is a big file– I’ve got to get my ducks in a row early,” you respond, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear as you lean back in your chair, staring up at the spackled ceiling tiles above. “Subpoenas normally aren’t delivered until a month before the trial date, but I’ll reach out to the court and see if I can have it delivered earlier. Hopefully that will make Dynamight more likely to comply.”
“Oh, okay,” Shimizu’s voice is more strained, and you can hear the sound of her nails clacking against a keyboard in the background of the call. “Is it just a phone call that you need with him? He’s not in office now, but I can have him call you when he gets back–”
“You know better than me that he won’t do that,” you interrupt. “I need an in-person meeting anyways. Book it for as soon as you can and blame me for it when you have to tell Dynamight. You can tell him I was a hard-ass about it, he shouldn’t have any difficulties believing that.”
Shimizu lets out a nervous laugh. “Uh– okay!” Bless her heart. If you had called and gotten Dynamight’s other assistant, Inoue, you probably would’ve had to do some more convincing to get her to book a meeting so soon. “Does next Monday at 10 work for you? Dynamight is not on patrol until 4 that day.”
“Yes, that works perfectly. Thank you, Shimizu-san,” you respond, making sure to thank her since you’re not entirely confident that she gets any positive feedback at the office. “Please make sure that Bakugou has any notes he has about the file present for the meeting. I will send you information on the file so he knows which one we are meeting about.”
“Notes… okay,” Shimizu answers hesitantly, pausing to perhaps scribble down a reminder on a piece of paper.
The call ends shortly after, leaving you the rest of the day to begin working on a plan for how the hell you are going to make Dynamight work as a witness for this trial. The defense lawyer for the accused is unfortunately very good at his job; you have had him as defense counsel on a few of your files, and he is the exact kind of lawyer that would easily bait Dynamight into anger and slip him up, using his rage-fueled words against him. From all that you have heard from your colleagues, Dynamight is a villain's worst nightmare and a defense lawyer’s dream. He doesn’t think before he speaks, and he is quite possibly the easiest witness in the world to paint as combative and uncooperative in front of a Judge.
The hours pass as you toil over the file, reviewing security footage and witness statements. The amount of evidence means that you have a dozen binders that are each at least three inches thick and stacked full of paper, not to mention the near terabyte of digital evidence scattered across multiple USBs. You try not to focus too closely on the fact that so far, there are distinctly no written statements or notes from Dynamight at all, despite him being the lead hero on the file.
Your desk phone ringing snaps you out of your spiral of worry. You lift your head from the third binder that you’ve gone through today, glancing towards the incessant sound.
GROUND ZERO HERO AGENCY
Your eyes narrow as you read the caller display, a sense of dread settling in the back of your throat. Shimizu better not be calling back because Dynamight threw a fit about the meeting, though in all likelihood that is probably exactly what happened.
Your hand grasps the phone, hesitating for a moment as you take a breath before picking it up and bringing it to your ear.
“Shizuoka Prosecutions, this is–”
“The hell do you think you are scheduling a meeting without asking me first?!” Dynamight’s enraged voice crackles through the phone, loud enough that you flinch away from the receiver and adjust to hold it an inch or two away from your ear.
“Dynamight, it’s good to hear from you, too,” you start, your calm voice a stark contrast to the fury you can feel emanating over the phone. “There is quite an important trial coming up later this year, and considering that you typically don’t answer when I call you directly, I went through your assistant.”
“Bullshit I don’t answer, you coward!” he snaps back, and you sigh. It’s not even worth bringing up the sheer number of case notes you have on the prosecution’s database that begin with ‘attempted to call pro hero Dynamight…’
“This meeting is very–”
“I don’t give a shit!” he interrupts again. “I am busy and this is bullshit– do you have any idea how many people I have crawling up my ass trying to get a meeting with me? You’re not special, you can wait like the rest of the extras.”
You don’t bother to pause to see if he has anything left to say. Any silence you give him, he will fill with his incessant whining. “It’s my understanding that you would like to see Infinition dismantled, correct? Or am I mistaken?”
“The hell does that have to do with anything? Of course I do, you dumbass."
“The prosecution for the three leading villains of Infinition is what the meeting is about, Dynamight. Your testimony is required, and if you want these people to see jail time, you need to cooperate with me.”
“I don’t have a subpoena for that bullshit yet, call me back when I do,” he snaps back, and you can almost hear the way his jaw clenches and his teeth grind together whenever he finishes speaking. How has this guy not had a heart attack yet with how angry everything seems to make him?
“You will be receiving a subpoena, and I need to begin preparing my case early. There can be no delay unless you want to increase the risk of these villains being found not guilty. The earlier we begin preparing, the more we reduce the chances of an acquittal.” You run a hand through your hair before leaning forward, your elbow propped on your desk as your hand rests on your forehead, keeping you upright. “If you are going to refuse to cooperate, I am happy to withdraw all of the charges against the accused. Is that what you would like?”
“Don’t you fucking dare, you–”
“Good. Then it seems we are in agreement,” you interrupt him, glad that he hadn’t caught on to your bullshit threat. “I will see you on Monday, Dynamight.”
You are already hanging up the phone by the time he’s responding, yelling loud enough that you can hear his muffled anger even when the receiver is more than a foot away from your ear now as you return it to its base. You triple check that the call is actually hung up before you mutter a curse under your breath and slump forward in your chair, burying your face in your hands.
The call wasn’t particularly severe– you’d had much worse calls with Dynamight than this one– but the fact that you will be meeting him in person in less than a week is making things more complicated. You let out a long breath that you hadn’t known you'd been holding. Should you wear a bulletproof vest to the meeting or something? Would that even work against his explosions? Maybe you can find some old quirk suppressor cuffs in evidence storage?
You cringe away at the shrill sound of the phone ringing again. You don’t bother to look at the display, instead reaching out a hand to blindly push the mute button on your desk phone. You glance up to see a senior prosecutor walking by, not bothering to hide the pitiful glance they’re throwing your way. You open your mouth, wanting to ask for advice on how to handle this nightmare, but that only makes the prosecutor quicken their pace and avert their gaze, disappearing around the corner of a cubicle wall before you can even speak a word.
Holding back a scream, you slump back in your chair. The spackle on the ceiling tiles above seems to swirl as your mind sifts through the case law you have committed to memory, trying to find any loophole you possibly can to see if maybe you can get away with not calling Dynamight as a witness. The media will be all over this file, and if Dynamight crashes and burns in court like he normally does and he takes the entire prosecution down with him, you’ll surely be given a worse nickname than Scorch. Every prosecutor in the office knows that– and that’s why none of them want to touch the file with a ten foot pole, heaven forbid their name pops up in the news next to the headline “prosecution nightmare results in serial villains walking free”.
Suddenly, being a property lawyer doesn’t seem all that bad.