coagulate

Chapter 1: Musutafu By Gaslight

A/N//: Hello everyone! So. This is my first attempt at a period piece in some years. I've decided that for the most part, I'm just going to give them the same patterns of speech. Kacchan is still gonna say 'fuck' a lot. Deku will still call him Kacchan. Kirishima will love all things manly. I will just give them a broader vocabulary with fun, descriptive, fancy words.

Also. This will take place in the MHA universe minus the quirks. It will take place in Musutafu but give off Victorian Era vibes circa the 1880s, clothing and all. I'm going to do my best to keep things relatively historically accurate to the times in regard to technology. But uh. I'm not a historian. And yeah.

PLEASE BE MINDFUL OF THE TAGS! This is not for the faint of heart. It is very dark and very disturbing at times.

I really just love these two bois and want to throw them through the ringer. Again. Hope you enjoy!!

Katsuki

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"Kirishima, make sure you photograph her from this angle," Bakugou Katsuki's rough, sleep deprived voice said. "I want you to get her throat."

The young detective rubbed at his sleep encrusted eyes. He was exhausted. He'd rushed himself out of bed at the crack of dawn in just a few hours of sleep. He was never one to be found up early. He preferred to wake as the mornings dwindled into the afternoons. The demands of his profession kept him awake most of the night; he deserved what little sleep he could muster. But on occasion, though, there were mornings like these where he found himself dragged out of his bed because of unfortunate circumstances.

This time, like many other times, it was a murder.

Katsuki stood before the body of the victim, his lips pursed into a thin line. His hands were shoved into his pockets even though they itched to light up a cigar to ease his nerves. He was disturbed by this one, which was pretty unusual for him. Ordinarily, death didn't phase him. He was a military man and had seen his fair share of it. But this death - this murder - in particular was not for the faint of heart. It had even him wincing at its brutality.

He stood in the center of the alleyway on the edge of the Red Light's District. The various scents of garbage, urine, and refuse burned his nostrils. It wasn't a horrible smell. He'd smelt far worse in his time as a detective, but the scent of the alley wasn't pleasant all the same. He couldn't smell the body, not yet at least. Decay had yet to set in. He figured they at least had another day or so before that happened, considering they were easing themselves into the cooler months of fall. No. The scent that prevailed above all others was blood. Its iron tang consumed the alley that he and his colleagues, Kirishima Eijiro and Chisaki Kai, stood in. And there in the center of it all was the victim.

The woman laying dead on the ground was a young prostitute he'd met many times on his rounds. She couldn't have been a day over eighteen. She was plain in appearance with light brown hair and simple features. There wasn't anything notable about her aside from her excitable personality. A passerby would surely walk past her in favor of another. Her name: Hagakure Tooru. Or, at least, it had been before she'd been mutilated in a back alley and left to die.

A local woman had found her body early that morning, but by then, she was several hours dead. Her skin was cold. Her eyes were glassy. Blood had seeped across the cobblestones beneath her and coagulated in the cracks. It would take more than just tossing an old wash bucket on top of it to get it out. He'd have to have someone come down later on to scrub the old, cracked stones if he wanted any real results.

"This sucks," Kirishima said, his lips pursed in dismay. "Whoever did this really wasn't manly about it."

"No," Katsuki agreed with a low snort. "They really fuckin' weren't."