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Graduation Day comes — all smiles and photos and handshakes at UA. Bakugou Katsuki is clapped on the back more times today than his whole life so far.
He hates it.
Looking at his classmates — no, his friends — he sees their growth, their strength. He knows how much closer they've all become and the things they've survived together. They're graduating as heroes, and that's enough.
Who cares if he doesn't have any offers from hero agencies? He's a hero in the eyes of his friends.
It's fine. Bakugou's fine.
Until someone needles him about his hero name. Again.
"Can't get signed to a hero agency without a name, Bakugou-kun!"
"Yeah, Pro Hero Kacchan! Or is it still King Explosion Murder?"
"Maybe Ground Zero will stick?"
"Nah, he's definitely gonna be Cherry Bomb."
"Wait, wait — no, Gremlin, the Feral Hero!"
Ignoring them — ignoring everyone — he clams up, jaw tight. It doesn't matter. He'll still look constipated or rabid in any photo, still shrug off any touches.
The day finally ends. He slips away from the raucous maelstrom of the third-year classes in after-after-party madness.
It's quiet in the cemetery.
Figures I gotta find a buncha dead heroes to get some fuckin' peace.
There's a glade of trees at the far end of the grid of graves, where the land slopes down and the high walls dip so that you can see the ocean.
Among them stands a tall headstone, unadorned but for a simple script: Best Jeanist. It's hard to read — the lights that line the paths are low to the ground, like spattered bleach on the dark-dyed night.
He puts a hand on the headstone and rests it there, contemplating how Jeanist would hate this — a cold, hard, inflexible material to mark his mortal remains. It's not the first time he's thought that.
The first time was the day they buried him.
Bakugou had attended the funeral seething with anger and bubbling with recriminations. He'd stayed at the back of the gathered crowd — a small, private funeral for close relations before the public mourning, but still it seemed like a hundred people were crammed around an empty pit puddled with rainwater and regret.
The urn for the ashes was denim blue, at least. Bakugou scoffed as he watched the Commissioner lower it ceremoniously — sanctimoniously — into the indifferent earth. Among the mourners was a fleet of pretty-boy sidekicks, each with high-collared coats and combed hair, standing under black umbrellas, looking smug even in sadness.
Though Bakugou might judge those prim fuckers from here to hell for being lame-ass losers, he grudgingly respected them for keeping their shit together at the funeral. Because he was doing the same. Or trying to. Somehow he'd had to struggle against the tears. If maybe he shed one it would be lost in the rain, so who's to say?
Funny, really, how much the man meant to Bakugou, despite himself.
It's not like Bakugou spent all that long as an intern at Genius Agency, or that his time there was anything but torturous. He'd hated the criticism, the instruction, of feeling so obviously inadequate. It rankled not because it hurt his ego — though it did — but because Jeanist had, in a single glance, assessed everything Bakugou had made of himself and pronounced it not good enough.
Some 'mentor' Jeanist was — more like 'tormentor'.
Yet, through the sting of dismissal, the shame of correction, Jeanist showed that it was possible to be the best. He did not tell Bakugou that he would always be lacking. No, he showed Bakugou that perfection is achievable.
That's what sticks with him now — the belief that he still can become great, that no matter how he's measured in this moment, he is still capable of greatness. He need only work harder, be stronger, to become the best. It's a rallying thought Bakugou returns to often.
Inspiration even from beyond the grave. Like pomade that holds no matter how hard you try to scrub it out.
Is that what it means to be a hero?
The stone is cold, with bevelled edges all around making it seem softer than it is. It's tall, too, almost to Bakugou's shoulder, and he's practically the height Jeanist is.
Was.
Jeanist had always seemed so tall, so proud. He'd carry himself like he was bigger than All Might, walking with the sure-footed steps of a man who knew who he was: the best. He'd led by taking charge, by example, with skill and panache to justify it. A dyed-in-the-wool hero.
He didn't have to die.
It all seems so stupid now — the war, the "liberation", the destruction. The good guys had won, in the end, but at what cost? If only Jeanist had been there, if only he hadn't died so senselessly at the hands of that traitor. Then maybe the day would've been won with fewer casualties, with Jeanist there to knit the heroes together and raise morale that had been hanging on by a thread.
Bakugou fishes in his pocket for a slip of paper, creased into meticulous eighths. He unfolds it, but needn't look to know what's written on it.
"Hey," Bakugou says, his voice rough. He clears his throat and tries again. "Uh. Here," he says to the gravestone, laying the unfurled paper down amid the neat, tasteful bouquets others have brought.
He doesn't know what else to say. There's so much to say.
I promised I'd tell you my hero name, and I don't say shit I don't mean, so…
"Fuck, why is this so hard?" There's no answer from the grave. Bakugou glowers into the gloom.
It's just a stupid alias. Just a name. It doesn't… it shouldn't have to mean anything, but it does. Why? Why's it so important to distinguish between the person I am and the hero everyone is supposed to see? Why isn't it enough just to be me? Hah? You don't know? Yeah, I thought as much. You don't know shit. Fuck, I don't know shit.
"Fuck!" Bakugou kicks the headstone. His toe smarts through the leather of his loafer.
"Ah, I thought I might find you here."
Bakugou whips around, palms sparking. They blaze bright as his eyes when a tall figure steps out of the nearby treeline. The light of his quirk illuminates the shadows, and Bakugou sees a ghost.
No, not a ghost — a thief, then.
"You got a fuckin' deathwish wearing that face in front of me? Here? Today?"
"Soft spoken as ever, aren't you, Bakugou?"
"The fuck you think you playin' at?" Bakugou says to the man wearing Best Jeanist's face. He's not wearing Jeanist's clothes.
"It is I. Believe me."
"And why should I?"
"Because you want to."
"Best Jeanist is dead."
"Yes, but Hakamada Tsunagu lives."
"This is the shittiest trap I've ever seen."
"It's no trap, Bakugou. Deep down you know it's me. Deep down you never believed I was gone. Besides, I know why you're here."
Bakugou juts his chin — a challenge, a dare. Go on, prove it.
"You're here to tell me your name."
A sharp gasp. Bakugou's heart hammers in his chest. He feels hopeful for the first time in an age.
"You—"
"Yes, it's really me." A hint of annoyance creeps into his voice.
"But… you died. There was a body..." Bakugou takes a step back, bumping into the headstone carved with the name of one for whom he'd already grieved. He bristles, then — he's been lied to. He's believed a lie and let that falsehood direct his course. The very thought rankles him.
That it's Jeanist who lied to him, that Jeanist lied at all, shakes him up.
"So I'd have everyone believe."
"Why?" Bakugou's voice is tight, incredulous.
"Always skipping the niceties. Still no manners, I see. Aren't you going to ask how I am? Compliment my outfit?"
"Fuck," Bakugou whispers. "It really is you."
"Indeed. Now, let's you and I take a little walk. I'll tell you all about what I've been up to these two years, hmm? I feel a bit of a chill standing next to my own grave."
"So, what do I call you?" Bakugou asks eventually. The sea is spread before them like a dark carpet, like rippling silk that glints in the half-light of a waning moon. There's sand in his loafers. He grimaces.
"I should be asking you that. You came to tell me your hero alias, after all."
Bakugou remains silent.
"Hmmm, so you still haven't actually chosen. Or — ah, I see. You hoped I'd help you decide."
"And so what?"
"So nothing. I think it's rather sweet. There's a certain poetry to it."
"Tch. You always liked that sappy shit."
"I'm hardly the romantic here: you're the one moping in a graveyard."
"Well then? What's your name now? Worst Jeanist?"
"Charming. No. Fiber Master. The name of my Quirk."
"Fiber Master, huh? Sounds like a box of cereal teaching aerobics."
"I see your wit has improved even if your manners have not."
"'Went to hero school not finishing school. And I'm fuckin' hilarious. Clearly you didn't go to school for marketing."
"Quite so. Well. You can just call me Master, then."
"The fuck would I call you that for?"
"Come with me, Bakugou. Be my pupil once again."
"What, pretend to be dead with you?"
"No, I'm the one pretending to be dead. For now. You'd still be very much alive, but working for me — with me — to make a real difference in the world."
"You got some new secret hero agency or somethin'? Is this some sort of a formal offer? Because I've got—"
"I know all about your offers, Bakugou. All zero of them."
"Oh, great, you're spying on me now?"
"It's easy. You're not the only student at UA I mentored, and word gets around. But you are the only one who seems to have learned nothing from your time with me. You've tested everyone's patience, refused to accept any authority, then you act the misunderstood maverick when no one wants you to play on their team. Hardly hero material by any stretch."
"If I'm such a disappointment why the fuck do you even want me in your stupid not-agency, hah?"
"I told you then, and I meant it: it's my job to tame wild creatures like you."
Bakugou swallows down a growl, ignoring the baited words, grinding his teeth instead. Then he scowls at the smug look on his former mentor's face.
"There, see? You have learned that self-control, self-betterment is only a matter of choosing. I knew you had it in you. I saw — I still see — your potential. You're capable of greatness, Bakugou. Like me, your abilities mirror your quirk and its strength. You're explosive, powerful, and though you may seem volatile you now have control over your abilities. You have self-discipline and drive, and a powerful body to carry out that resolve. And you have an admirable… moral fiber. Why wouldn't I want you by my side? Why wouldn't I want you and your abilities to work for the righteous cause?"
"If it's so righteous then why all the cloak and dagger? Why pretend to be dead?"
"There's too much chaos where the Commission carries out its farce of protocol and order. They spend so much time setting rules it's like digging holes at the edge of the water and trying to scoop out dry sand." He grinds a booted toe into the soft, salty sand, a crunching sound barely audible over the rhythmic hiss of waves lapping.
"So you've gone independent?"
"Underground, shall we say."
"And you're running a shadow agency outside the jurisdiction of the Commission."
"It's easier to control a smaller operation. Oversight is simplified. Cleaner lines, so to speak."
"Vigilantism is illegal."
"I'm not interested in cleaning the streets, leaving petty thieves trussed up for the delinquent police. For every criminal apprehended, a tiny vacuum is created that sucks in another small soul who just wants to have it better than before. And why? Because the chaos of the world is unfair. But I bring order where there was chaos. To people's lives. The way they think and comport themselves, giving purpose, a means for clean living. To free them from themselves."
"So if only people were better they'd be happier?"
"Precisely."
"And you're the judge of that."
"It is in everyone's interest that someone be the arbiter."
"Funny, I've heard this argument before. From another geezer who tried to "free" people by taking over. He said the difference between a criminal — someone who breaks the law, someone who uses their Quirk unfairly — and a villain, is that villains act deliberately, with the intent to break systems down."
"And was he wrong?"
"A lot of people died at his hand," Bakugou snarls, indignant. "Good people. Because of him. Because of the decisions he forced people to make."
"Like me?"
Bakugou recoils at that, his footing uncertain on softening ground. He'd cursed the world for the unfairness of Jeanist's death, but apparently needn't have. He feels disoriented, wondering — perhaps for the first time — if maybe he isn't a hero, if being a hero isn't all it's cut out to be.
"They didn't have to die. You didn't have to die," he says. The words ring hollow in his ears.
"People are naturally brutal, and thus the world. Chaos doesn't create brutality — it merely unlocks it, like rope fraying. The only thing keeping a rope from falling apart is the counter-twist of the fibers, the tension, the opposing force."
"I'm guessing you're the opposing force in this metaphor."
"Not at all. Pay attention, boy. Heroes, villains, good, bad — they're forces in opposition, but together they are still fibers wound around each other, holding each other in place, locking them there. I am not one or the other. I'm the one guiding the rope."
"Pulling the strings."
"Come, follow me, Bakugou. You're nearly there. What justice has the Hero Commission ever really held? Think, Bakugou! Think of all the things you can do, can achieve, without the hypocrisy of the Commission. Reject the corrupt system. Transcend it."
"Hah! And be a vigilante? Or a villain?"
"And be the best. The best you can be, the best the world has to offer. An example. A leader."
"I can be that without you."
A raised eyebrow. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah. Seems like you need me more than I need you."
"I don't need you. The world needs you. If you can better yourself, control yourself, be your absolute best, then think of all those other little savage creatures who'd look to you and see a path to be good. Despite your unfinished state, we're cut from the same cloth, you and I."
"I'm nothing like you!"
"Not yet. But I can guide you."
"No."
"You're making a mistake to deny me."
"And you're making a mistake thinking I'll just go along with your bullshit philosophical twisting," Bakugou spits, jumping back, palms crackling. "I already buried you once. I'll do it again if I have to."
"Ah, there's the bold creature I know! What a challenge! What a triumph it would be to reform you! What power you'd have to show people how righteous they could be!"
"Eat shit and die!" Bakugou shouts over a blinding flash from his palms, covering his feint to the left.
Fiber Master laughs, eyes closed against the brightness, hands outstretched, calling to the threads of Bakugou's clothing. The knit of Bakugou's shirt, the weave of his trousers, they obey the command, thrumming with their master's intent.
Squeezing tighter around him, Bakugou's clothes give away his location, halt his dodging, divert his flaring blasts.
Bakugou tears at his clothes, burning them, smearing his bare skin with ash. Uncaring of his nakedness, he launches himself forward on blazing hands, face alight with fury at being betrayed by his hero, betrayed by a memory that never was.
"Such determination! Such fire! If only you'd channel it for good, Bakugou!"
Good.
That word again.
Bakugou yells, guttural and wordless against the accusation of being less than, of being not good, of being not good enough. Bright blasts erupt from his palms, charring the threads Fiber Master unravels from his own sleeves. Bakugou builds up pure heat to melt synthetics and singe away cotton, but the kevlar threads of the new costume — black, clean lines, tight fit, high collar — are unaffected by mere fire.
Dark lines of unyielding stuff shoot towards Bakugou. Were it not for his sparring with a certain classmate with a certain Black Whip quirk, surely he would have been snagged. Instead, Bakugou flips, reeling backwards over the water, speeding out to sea above darkened waves.
Fiber Master has only so much thread to work with. Bakugou flies fast, out and upward, letting the kevlar unspool as it reaches for him. Away he blazes, naked and smudged and fearful, knowing the fiber quirk is limited by concentration and distance. Bakugou knows he can affect only one of those things.
He can feel the threads following him, inexorable and swift. He weaves and winds, tangling the threads behind him into knots like a chaotic shuttle. It's a race between opposing ideas: explosive chaos, or restraint and order. Which one will run out first?
Pure adrenaline fuels his sweat as he burns it. He might not make it out of this. He might drown, fall into the sea exhausted and unable to rise out of it.
Death or surrender?
Surrender is death, so neither. Never!
Bakugou risks a backward glance and gives a burst of speed as he watches the thread reach its very end, straining but not stretching far enough. He cackles — he's free! He made it!
Take that!
Then the ocean below trembles, waves churn. Bakugou watches a dark body, long and sinuous, rise from the depths.
At first he thinks it's some mythical beast he's disturbed. Then he sees it for what it is: fiber-optic cable, on the seafloor, running from Japan across the Pacific.
His heart sinks even as his blasts fail.
There's nowhere he can fly, no distance he can go, to escape the Fiber Master.
Death or surrender?
He falls, wishing for the sea to take him, for the water to bear him down.