Chapter Text
Katsuki wakes up aching, bathed in a cold sweat, and strung up by his wrists like meat in some kind of fucked-up meat freezer. He blinks down at the damp, concrete ground once, then twice, and he grunts, shifting on his shoulders. His bare toes (did they take his fucking socks ?) brush against the ground, but no matter how much he strains, he can’t take any of his weight off his shoulders.
His heartbeat pounds in his temples and behind his eyes. He grits his teeth and forces his head up off of his chest with more than a little effort (if he’s concussed, whoever did it is going to catch hell, he swears to God, because no way in hell is he missing out on training just because a few shitty villains got the drop on him), and Katsuki catches sight of another hanging figure in his peripherals, drags his eyes toward it, and—
“Fuh- cking Deku ,” he mutters, half slurred and half pissed off. Of course it’s Deku strung up next to him, his stupid hair covering the top half of his face but his slumped posture giving away how passed-out the shitty nerd still is. Deku is stripped down to the t-shirt and leggings he wears under his hero costume; even his compression sleeve is missing, leaving his less familiar scars and more than a few blotchy, fresh-looking bruises on display. Katsuki studies the discolored, waxy skin that criss-crosses the skin on his arms for a long moment before huffing and rolling his eyes. “Time to wake up, nerd,” he says, more for himself than for Deku, before he starts to swing himself side-to-side.
The chains suspending him from the ceiling clink and rub together, the sound impossibly loud in the quiet room. He’s never been so thankful for Vlad-sensei’s brutal upper body training sessions as he is now. Katsuki’s wrists are chained to the ceiling but not bound together, so he pulls himself up by one arm, then by the other until he gets enough sideways momentum to swing at Deku. He grunts at the contact and has to close his eyes as he spins in the other direction.
As he rights himself, still swaying and now slightly more nauseous, he shoots a glare toward Deku.
The nerd swings like a ragdoll, his head rolling against his pale bicep, and remains unconscious like a total asshole. His chains jingle, and Katsuki’s chest rumbles with an irritated growl.
“Wake up, shitty nerd,” he barks, but it does nothing except bounce off the plain walls of the concrete box they’re hanging in. His own voice is abrasive and booming in his ears. It does nothing to coax the nerd awake.
As Deku rotates toward Katsuki, an achingly slow movement but what else does Katsuki have to do in this featureless room, he catches sight of the dried blood on the far side of the nerd’s face, plastering his hair to his skin in matted, dark patches. It runs over his eye from an unseen gash on his hairline, and it must have been a hard fucking blow because there is blood the whole way down to the collar of Deku’s ripped t-shirt. His eye is swollen shut and purple with a fresh black-eye.
“Oi,” Katsuki tries, struggling against his chains so they make more noise. Deku’s face twitches. “Yeah, come on. No way in hell I’m fucking entertaining myself here, Deku, so wake up.” Beyond that, Katsuki also needs one of the nerd’s dork analyses to get them the hell out of here. Between the pounding in his head and the chill preventing him from building up enough sweat to do much of anything beyond setting off a few firecrackers, there’s no way he can get both of them out of here.
Katsuki is smart enough to realize when he’s in over his head, and he knows that Deku is sort of their only hope in getting out of here right now. Damn.
One of Deku’s eyes, the one not swollen shut and covered in blood, slides open into a narrow slit before dropping closed again.
“Uh-uh. No you don’t.” Katsuki grunts and starts rattling his chains again until Deku lets out a pathetic whine. “Yeah, wake the fuck up. Lazy shit.”
“Kacchan?” Deku murmurs, slurring worse, even, than Katsuki.
“Yeah, hey, did you get us fucking kidnapped , nerd?” Deku blinks slowly, rotating slowly still. He jerks with a weak cough, and he either chooses not to answer or his concussed brain lets the question go in one ear and out the other. Either way, Katsuki has to bite back the urge to cuss the shitty nerd out.
His therapist’s words come back to haunt him: letting your anger get the better of you, is that constructive? Effective? Yeah, well. Fuck that.
“You did—you got us kidnapped. Fucking figures.” He rolls his eyes as he spins the other way, and Deku slips out of his field of vision. He won’t admit to the panic that sets in at the fact that no matter how much he tries, he can’t see Deku. He swallows convulsively like he might vomit—and he might. Vomit, that is. His stomach rolls. He blames it on the concussion and not on the rolling anxiety that comes with, you know, being kidnapped and strung up like a piece of vulnerable-ass meat.
From behind him, now: “You fin’lly woke up, Kah-Kacchan.” It’s muffled and almost incoherent, but Katsuki is well versed in Deku-speak, from mumbling to…concussed mumbling.
“The hell’s that supposed to mean? In case you didn’t notice, I woke up before you. You must be real concussed if you’re this confused.” He huffs, but when he finally rotates around to see Deku again, the nerd is shaking his head and then groaning at the movement.
“Was awake earlier.”
“And you just…went back to sleep?” Katsuki gapes and narrows his eyes at the figure in front of him. Deku still hasn’t managed to drag his head up, to lift his chin off of his chest, but he makes a vague gesture that looks like a denial.
“No,” he whispers, not like a secret but like he can’t muster up the energy to talk much louder. “Was awake, ‘n they came in. You—you were asleep. Asleep still.” Katsuki blinks. He goes cold all over at the thought of him just—just what? Hanging here? While some strangers, some villains, came into the room for Deku.
Oh, damn. He really might throw up.
“What did—what did they do, Deku?” He feels like he’s talking to a kindergartener or something. For all the bullying and insults, he’s never talked down on the nerd like this. He hates it, but he hates the fact that Deku doesn’t seem to notice it even more.
“Nothin’ big. Hit me a few times. Asked if they should, if I thought they should wake you up. Said no.” The nerd pauses, and the moment drags on. He sucks in a breath through his teeth, the sound whistling and thin. “Wanted to let you sleep.”
Katsuki lets out a humorless bark of laughter.
“Wha’s so funny?” Deku squints at him through his one working eye.
“My hero ,” Katsuki says. “Of course you fuckin’ told them to let me sleep. God.” He scoffs and rolls his eyes, smiling without humor. It’s more of a sneer than a smile. “Did they ask you anything else?”
“Don’ remember,” Deku whispers, sounding ashamed. His voice is wet—more than likely, he’s crying, but Katsuki can’t help the bolt of fear at the thought that it could be blood. Unbidden, the flashing scene of Deku choking on his own blood as Katsuki hangs helpless beside him, forced to listen and watch as Deku flails and suffocates, plays out on the backs of his eyelids like some fucked up HD, 3D movie. He swallows around the bile rising in his throat at the thought.
“Great,” Katsuki huffs despite himself, his annoyance born more out of fear than anything else. “You got us fucking kidnapped, and you don’t even know what they want from us.” He yanks on his chains, but the metal cuffs dig into his wrists hard enough that he winces, and his shoulders ache like a rotting tooth he keeps poking at. “Fuck. Fuck. Dammit.”
“S’rry, Kacchan.” Deku’s chin lists back toward his chest, his lips moving around breathy, incomprehensible words. Apologies, maybe. Katsuki debates trying to keep the nerd awake, but it seems like a lost cause, considering the fact that he all but passed out mid-word. He hangs limp and bloody next to Katsuki, fingers twitching and purple at the tips from the pressure on his wrists.
To entertain himself, Katsuki watches Deku’s chest rise and fall steadily. He has long since stopped spinning in lazy circles, but it’s not like there’s much else to look at in this shit hole. And if the sight of Deku breathing makes him feel a little less like the world is going to fall out from under him, then that’s his fucking business and no one else’s.
He counts the beats between Deku’s whistling inhales and the labored exhales, memorizing the pattern.
He ignores the skinny, windowless door on the wall behind him flying open with enough force to bounce off the wall. Katsuki counts under his breath and only stops when his captor grabs a fistful of his hair and tugs his head backward hard enough to have Katsuki grunting in pain. His scalp twinges, and his eyes strain with his effort to keep his eyes on Deku. The nerd doesn’t even twitch.
“Oi, hey!” his captor shouts, and their whiny-ass voice echoes off the concrete walls. “The asshole’s awake in here.”
“Hey, fuck you,” Katsuki bites, and he drags his gaze away from Deku and toward the captor, who stands in the very corner of his vision. When he tries to turn his head to get a good look at their ugly mug, they tighten their grip on his hair and laugh at his pained expression. Above him, his chains jingle and chime cheerily. He kicks his legs, but nothing connects. “I ain’t the asshole here, asshole,” he grits.
Outside the door at his back, a pair of footsteps grows louder, and another of his captors (and how many of these assholse are there going to be? While Katsuki is in the mood for a good beat-down, his fingers are growing steadily more numb by the minute, and he’d like to get this whole ordeal over with sooner rather than later) stumbles into the room, breathing heavily.
“Thank God, man,” they mutter, coming closer. Their footsteps clink like they’re wearing metal shoes, and their voice is tinny. “Thought I hit him too hard when I knocked him out, considering he slept through our first visit.” The sick smile in their voice sends a bolt of disgust down Katsuki’s spine.
A metal woman appears in front of him, grinning despite her robotic eyes. She runs a cold finger down his throat, and he suppresses the urge to jerk away. Instead, he glares at her and bites at her finger when she gets too close to his face. She withdrawals with a tittering laugh at that, and the hand in his hair loosens its hold until he can jerk away.
A short man—skinnier, practically, than either of Katsuki’s biceps, but he’s got weirdly long limbs—edges around from behind Katsuki to stand next to the robot bitch. His hands nearly drag on the ground as he walks, but his arms retract into his body the moment he comes to stand next to the woman. Katsuki catalogs this; a robot woman and a man with elastic limbs.
Fuckin’ fabulous. He’s turning into Deku, dork analysis and all.
Katsuki scowls at the thought but shoots an unthinking look toward his hanging companion. Deku hasn’t been roused by the noise Katsuki and their kidnappers are making, not even a twitch or a murmur. He just hangs, his chin resting on his sternum in a limp way that makes Katsuki’s head hurt to look at.
“Ah, your friend,” the woman says, and Katsuki whips his attention to her instead, as if that will take the attention away from the unconscious nerd. “He let you sleep through our first visit—wouldn’t you call him…kind-hearted?”
“I’d call it fucking stupid,” Katsuki grunts.
“Sad you missed out on the fun, are you?” She steps away from Katsuki, toward Deku. His breath catches in his throat as she wraps her metal hand around Deku’s ankle and shakes it. Katsuki tracks the movement with a sharp glare that gives way to surprise—Deku’s ankle is swollen, red and purple, and obviously broken beyond anything Katsuki’s ever seen before. He gives an aborted shout as the bitch digs her fingers into the nerd’s skin and tugs at the appendage with a wide, toothy smile. The chains rattle above them, and Deku wakes with a pained, choked gasp. His eyes are blown wide, and his lips work around silent words (a scream, maybe, if the way his throat strains is any indication).
Katsuki’s yells fill the space as he kicks and flails. “Let him go you fucking bitch! ” The woman doesn’t release her hold even as Deku makes a weak attempt to tug his foot out of her hold. “I’ll kill you. I fucking will—let me out of here, and then we’ll go, you pussy .” Spit flies from the corners of his mouth, and he’s red from the effort, but every word from his mouth only seems to fuel the woman’s smile.
Katsuki’s chest heaves, and he jerks his arms but bites his tongue. A moment of silence passes, broken only by Deku’s pained breathing and Katsuki’s heartbeat throbbing in his temples. The woman’s hand slides away from Deku’s foot, but she doesn’t move away from him.
“You know what else he told us during our first visit?” she purrs. Her voice sounds fake and hollow, like the voice out of that one Class B extra’s voice modifier, and it bounces off the corners and edges of the concrete room. “He told us to leave you alone. Don’t you dare put a finger on—what was the name he used?” She turns to the man. His face breaks into a wide smile under her attention.
“Kacchan, I think it was,” he answers like a diligent student. He preens when she clicks her tongue and hums appreciatively.
“Yeah, he just begged us to leave poor, poor Kacchan alone.” She runs a finger down her cheek and exaggerates a frown. Above her, Deku struggles to lift his head, blinking blearily and swallowing like he’s trying not to throw up all over himself. “And since he asked so nicely,” the bitch continues, “I think we should listen to what he wants.” She gives Katsuki a wicked smile before squeezing Deku’s ankle again.
This time, the nerd chokes, and bile dribbles from his lips, staining his torn and bloody t-shirt. He coughs on it, whines low in his throat, and curls his fingers into his palms like he can’t work up the energy to struggle beyond that. Tears drip down his pale cheeks. Katsuki grits his teeth hard enough to make his jaw ache.
“Fuck what he wants,” he bites, pleads, begs. “What about what I want?”
“What do you want?” The woman takes a step toward him, leaving Deku heaving and breathing hard behind her. Katsuki forces himself to look at her instead of at the nerd.
“I want you to let me down,” he growls, tugging on his chains, “so I can tear you to fucking pieces.” He kicks at her, and she’s moved close enough that he catches her in the jaw. She grunts and stumbles, holding her jaw, as his own foot throbs—she must actually be made of metal or some shit because that fucking hurt more than it should have. The woman glares up at him as she spits a glob of congealed, purplish blood onto the ground at Katsuki’s feet, and he glares right back.
“Like I said, your friend just asked us so nicely,” she says. The woman straightens and turns on her heel. She makes it to the door before turning over her shoulder to look at the man with the elastic limbs. “I’ll send Umesaka in soon. Make sure he’s ready for her.”
With that, the woman leaves, and the door closes heavily in her wake. The entire room seems to vibrate with the force of it, and for a moment, the man seems at a loss. He and Katsuki stare at each other before the man grins and shoots out one of his arms to grab Deku by the hair.
The nerd grunts and grits his teeth. One of his eyes is still swollen shut, but the other squeezes closed and forces out another fat tear as the man suspends him farther above the ground, where Deku’s toes can’t even touch the ground anymore and his stupid hair almost brushes the ceiling. From there, the man lets go, and he cackles as Deku drops like a stone. The chains rattle, and Deku throws back his head as his shoulders strain against the force of his own weight. There’s a sick popping noise, and Deku drops another few inches as his shoulders dislocate. He swings and twitches, making little wounded sounds that Katsuki can barely hear over his own labored breathing.
“You’ll like Umesaka,” Elasti-Douche says, sounding almost…caring or gentle, as he reaches for Deku again. This time, his fingers wrap around the chains where they’re attached to the nerd’s wrists. “And she’ll have a lot of fun with someone like you.” He pauses in undoing Deku’s restraints to run his hand over his cheekbone, a gesture Katsuki’s seen a million times in the healing bay at school. Recovery Girl will rub her withering fingers over their cheeks before she heals them; seeing it now, from a man who dislocated Deku’s shoulders on purpose, makes Katsuki’s stomach turn. A disgusted shiver runs down his spine and settles as nervous energy in the tips of his fingers and toes. “You have such a strong spirit,” the man continues. “She’ll love breaking it.”
The chains on Deku’s wrists slither to the ground, leaving Deku to drop the rest of the way to the ground. He lands on his feet but crumples into a heap with a pained sob the moment his weight settles on solid ground. Katsuki kicks his legs and struggles, grunting, as the man rearranges Deku’s limbs so he’s laying on his back, his arms and legs tucked neatly around him.
The nerd doesn’t fight it. His head rolls against the ground, and his eyes flicker under his eyelids. His lips are parted and bloody; his breath whistles between his teeth in pained, uneven gasps.
The door opens again as the man twirls a strand of Deku’s sweat-matted hair around one of his fingers. Katsuki is too busy burning holes into the side of Elasti-Douche’s head to get a good look at the newcomer. He half expects it to be the robot bitch coming back from more, but instead of the metallic footsteps, there are small, shuffling ones growing closer.
“Umesaka,” the man greets. He doesn’t look away from Deku. “Are you sure—”
“Yes, I am sure.” A small woman, shorter than Grape Asshole, comes to stand next to Katsuki. The top of her head barely comes up to his knees. “You can unhand him now, Eizan. Thank you.”
The man leaves Deku lying in the middle of the floor before shuffling out, leaving Katsuki and Deku at the mercy of some fucking Oompa Loompa munchkin. He could bunt her into space if they’d just let him down. He struggles against his own chains again, kicking his legs and swinging his arms as much as he can, making as much noise as humanly possible.
Still, Umesaka pays him no mind. She brushes past him and kneels next to Deku, who tries to roll away but can’t seem to work up enough energy to turn onto his side, even. The nerd grunts and jerks one of his shoulders in a futile attempt, but the girl takes his head in her hands and forces him to stay still.
She lays his head in her lap where her legs are crossed, keeping her hands on either side of his face. Finally, she looks at Katsuki. Her eyes are a deep gray color, and she’s as pale as a sheet of paper, almost translucent. Her white hair hangs over her face in a thick curtain.
“They call me a monster,” she murmurs, and her fingers twitch where they rest against Deku’s freckled, bruised skin, “and a god.”
“Who the fuck —”
“Because they are scared of me, Katsuki.” Katsuki can only blink at the mention of his own name, gaping, but his silence or his reaction is enough for her to continue after a beat. “The truth is, they have no idea what I can do.”
Between the strands of hair, her eyes begin to glow. Her hands clamp more firmly against Deku’s head, his eyes, too, start glow a radioactive shade of green, and the nerd—
The nerd absolutely wails . It’s high-pitched and agonized; Katsuki’s never heard such a sound come from anyone before. It sounds like Deku is being torn to shreds from the inside out. His screams echo endlessly in the concrete room. He arches off the floor, and his feet, even the broken one, slide against the floor, trying to find purchase and failing, and his purple fingers scratch at the floor until his fingernails are bloody and torn from the nail beds.
Deku doesn’t even pause to breathe, his screams so unceasing and so loud they make Katsuki’s ears ring. He grits his teeth, and tears leak from his eyes. He kicks out weakly, but it’s an aborted, half-assed movement. He can’t even hear the chains jingle above him over the wordless howl.
As Katsuki is sure either he or Deku will explode if it goes on for another second, the bitch releases her hold on Deku’s head. The moment she does, the nerd goes boneless and limp and terribly, terrifyingly quiet. The sudden silence vibrates in his temples. His chest heaves, but Deku’s breaths are weak and thin despite how long he spent screaming bloody fucking murder.
“What,” Katsuki gags, “the fuck did you do to him?” He glares at the bitch as she combs her hands through Deku’s sweaty hair. What the fuck is up with these people and touching Deku like they’re his friends? Katsuki wishes they’d fuck off.
“My Quirk is called Fracture,” she tells him like that explains literally anything. Katsuki growls, the sound rumbling in his chest and the back of his throat.
“I’ve seen him break his bones and not say a word,” Katsuki argues, “so what the fuck was that, bitch?”
“I do not touch bones, stupid boy.” Umesaka huffs and rolls her eyes like she’s offended by the idea of fracturing bones. “I touch souls . Spirits.” She strokes her hand over his hair again, even as thin, acidic bile dribbles from Deku’s bloodied lips. There’s more blood on his chin than before; he must have bitten through his lip or his tongue at some point during all of this.
More than anything, Katsuki wishes he could check Deku over, catalog his injuries. He needs to know what to tell Aizawa-sensei when he gets them out of this mess.
“And his—his soul was bright. And large. Perhaps the largest I have ever touched. It is weaker now, but not diminished.” She clicks her tongue and shifts so Deku’s head falls off her lap with a dull thunk. It rolls so Katsuki can see the nerd’s tear-streaked face.
For lack of a better word, Deku looks pathetic. Stained with blood, sweat, vomit, and tears, eyes half-lidded and barely coherent.
“Of fucking course it’s not diminished, you piece of shit,” Katsuki spits. “It’s fucking Deku .” No way in hell some extra will take Deku out. No way he’ll let his soul be diminished or whatever-the-fuck before he can make All Might proud, before he can be the best or the next Symbol of Peace.
“Such a rude name you call him,” Soul-Fuck muses. She rocks back on her heels and bites at her lip.
“Fuck off.” To his surprise, she listens. Umesaka brushes dust off her pants and starts toward the door. Behind him, the door’s hinges squeal, and the door closes again with a click, leaving Katsuki to hang and Deku to recover, if only for a moment. “Bitch,” he mutters under his breath. “Oi, Deku. Talk.”
A long moment passes, and Katsuki chews on his lip. He needs to make sure Deku isn’t dead down there, but even he feels like an asshole for asking Deku for shit right now, even if that shit is to talk, which is what the nerd does best. Then, Deku shifts, coughs weakly, and Katsuki watches his throat bob and his lips form silent words.
“Hurts, Kacchan,” he breathes after another minute passes.
“I know, nerd.” Katsuki’s voice is sickeningly soft, more vulnerable than he’d allow himself anywhere else. A lump grows in the back of his throat; he of all people knows how much Deku hides his pains, and the fact that he admitted to it now, so readily too, pricks at the back of Katsuki’s eyes like little, hot needles.
“Feels like ‘m dyin’,” Deku continues. Clumsily, he knocks his hand against his sternum as if to identify where the pain is, but the gesture is vague. “All over. Hurts all over.” He makes a low, wounded groan that trails off into a sob. A tear leaks from Deku’s one unswollen eye and drips into his hair with the way he’s half turned in Katsuki’s direction.
“I know,” he repeats because he doesn’t know what the hell else to say. Deku was always the one who could comfort everyone else’s hurts before everything went to shit. Katsuki, even as a toddler and a kid, never knew how to comfort other crying kids. Stop being so weak , he’d huff in lieu of the sweet words Deku seemed to spew endlessly back then. He tries to remember any of them, but he can’t. He used to tune them out or shove Deku away when he tried to direct them in Katsuki’s direction.
“Am I dying, Kacchan?” Deku’s voice is small and underlined in some emotion like acceptance. Katsuki’s body rattles with a deep sob at the tone.
“No, you fucking idiot.” His own voice is wet and unrecognizable. He hates it. He wants to be strong for Deku in case he really is dying—because who fucking knows what that bitch did when she got her grubby little hands on Deku’s soul. It’s not a thought he wants to have, but unbidden images of their rescue plaster themselves on the backs of his eyes. Deku, cold and gone, and Katsuki untouched. He sobs again.
“‘S okay,” Deku murmurs. “You’ll be…” he trails off, losing his breath or his thought, but he catches it again after a second, “you’ll be okay.”
“No, I fucking won’t,” Katsuki argues. “Why did you tell them not to touch me? We could have—could have split it or some shit. You didn’t have to do this.”
“Wanted…wanted to let you sleep.” Deku chokes on a gasping breath, and Katsuki can only listen as he coughs and splutters. When he finishes, there is a new splatter of blood on him and on the floor beneath his face.
“Bull shit .” Deku shakes his head and blinks lethargically.
“Didn’t wanna—couldn’t watch you get hurt,” Deku breathes. Katsuki gives a high-pitched, frustrated yell that cracks in the middle. He squirms in his chains and wishes he could pop off some of his explosions to make himself feel better, but it’s so cold in this cell, and he burnt off most of the sweat left on his palms when he first woke up, and the corners of his mouth are dry and cottony with the need for water.
“You think I wanted to watch you get hurt?”
“S’rry, Kacchan,” Deku slurs. He shifts, and a hand lifts toward Katsuki. “‘M sorry. Sorry.” Deku gasps for breath, choking, but his chest stalls, and he keeps muttering his stupid fucking apologies until they’re breathless and incoherent. Katsuki’s muscles seize and tense with panic.
“Shut up,” he yells. “Shut the fuck up, Deku!”
“‘M sorry. Kah—Kacchan, I’m sorry.” Deku’s cheeks are losing color, and blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth in a thin rivulet. Katsuki’s face is hot with his own tears as they drip off his chin. “I don’—‘m I gonna die? I’m sorry, Kacchan.”
“Stop fucking apologizing,” Katsuki pleads. “Please, stop.”
“I’m—”
Deku cuts himself off with a scream to rival the one when Soul-Fuck had her hands in his soul. He arches off the ground again, feet sliding and hands scrabbling, and his eyes are blown wide as his jaw works around his wails. This time, it sounds more like begging and more apologies than the wordless agony from the first time.
This time, Katsuki screams along with him: “Let him go, you fucking bitch , I’ll fucking kill you, I will, stop it you’re killing him —” He fights against his chains, straining and yelling and pleading, but it’s all drowned out by Deku’s shrieking.
What the fuck kind of touch-based Quirk works from a distance like this? He’s never seen anything like it, never heard about another touch-based Quirk working from a distance (except for in Deku’s conspiracy muttering, but never in practice). As far as he knows, there isn’t a Quirk like this on record.
He and Deku make brief, panicked eye contact before Deku’s screaming picks up in volume and desperation. Deku squeezes his eyes closed and wrenches his head back hard enough to crack it painfully off the concrete floor. His muscles are tense everywhere, a vein bulging on his forehead and another on his neck.
Green lightning turns the room a sick shade of green for a split second before Black Whip tears at the air. Katsuki hasn’t seen Black Whip get so out of control since it activated, and even then, he’d been too far away.
Now, he’s in the middle of it all. It shoots past him and recedes in chaotic waves, straightening into all jagged edges before smoothing into wild curls and waves. One of the edges catches him in his exposed side, and he grunts at the feeling of his flesh opening. Warmth drips down his side, his leg, and blood pools in a lazy puddle under his feet.
Through the haze of Black Whip, he can see Deku tense all over, flickering again with his green lightning, then yellow lightning, then blue, all in rapid succession. His screams are lost under the overwhelming sound of Black Whip, which is something close to what sticking your head out of a moving airplane would sound like.
Black Whip disappears so suddenly that it makes Katsuki dizzy. In the middle of the room, Deku is now somehow turned away from him, but his shoulders are moving with uneven breaths. He is no longer screaming, and Katsuki takes this as a good sign.
The nerd shifts with a light groan. He rolls onto his back, stares at the ceiling for a long moment, and sits up.
“Oi—oi, hey,” Katsuki barks, panicked because a second ago he’d been shrieking like he was dying, and now he was here trying to get vertical, “lay back down, nerd—oh my god. What the fuck.” A moment of silence passes before the nerd turns his head slowly to look at Katsuki. He blinks once.
“I am Shimura Nana,” Deku says, and it sure as hell doesn’t sound like his voice, too feminine and mature, “seventh user of One For All.”