VOID [Katsuki Bakugo x OC]

Rule #28: Family First

♪

Katsuki left little explosions in his wake as he propelled himself crookedly down the back halls of the venue.

Something sharp twisted in his gut, a foreboding, cold feeling that told him something was wrong. He saw Cade's strange behavior onstage and his heart sank, wondering what she could possibly be pretending for... until he realized she wasn't pretending. Without thinking, he flew from his seat before anyone could find him missing, thankful for Shane's help at the farm so he had two hands to beat people up.

Over and over, he called Kirishima, begging for someone, anyone to answer. "Come on, Shitty Hair, answer your motherfucking phone," he hissed, careening around a corner and nearly blasting a janitor on accident.

But every single time, Kiri's phone went straight to voicemail.

"For fuck's sake," Kat grumbled. His quirk intensified, shooting him down the hall in yards and meters rather than spurts and jolts. He didn't bother trying Blue's phone... he'd been blocked long ago, and likely by the people behind this whole shit show; in the back of his mind, he knew that someone convinced Cade that the silence from Kat meant he didn't care about her anymore, that all of his feelings were fake and that he merely used her. But in reality, he'd been texting and calling everyone nonstop, trying to get any message through to her at all.

Her tear strewn face from the Seattle parking lot haunted him, mixing with memories of that night when Ine broke into their hotel room in Beijing, horrified and vulnerable, all combining with Cade's terror in Paris, her panic in London, and her devastation in the Midwest. The Cadence in Katsuki's mind shifted between effortlessly happy and petrified with fear, like one of those lenticular pictures from when he was a kid — from one direction, the outside, Cade seemed fine, but from the other, the inside, she showed her true feelings, devastated by pain and loss and grief.

How could he have been so blind?

He should have been saving Cade, not standing around to passively protect her. He should've taken his gut feeling and went to his friends, to All Might, to the police. How could he have just left her alone with the very people who made her whole life a living hell, a waking nightmare?

His phone rang; it was Kirishima. Fucking finally.

"Shitty hair," he blurted, "Where is she? Where's Cadence?"

"K-Kat, I think I f-fucked up," Kirishima sniffled into the phone, his voice ragged with tears. In the background, Kat could hear Jiro shouting orders into her headset.

A sinking feeling threatened to swallow Katsuki whole, but he kept running, kept flying, kept going. Down and down and down. "What happened?" he snapped.

"I-I-Ine gave me something to give Cade before the concert... Sh-she said it was something to help with Cade's nerves, and I—"
"You believed her?!" Kat roared, his heartbeat slamming in his ears.

"Shut the fuck up, Kat, you weren't there!" Kirishima roared, "You were the one who forced me to take this job, and if you didn't want that witch as my boss, you shouldn't have asked me! You don't know what happened, so you can't judge me!"

"The fuck I can!" Kat yelled back. "Do you even know what it was?"

"N-no, but I—"

"Eijiro, I swear to fuck that if something is wrong with Cadence I will never talk to you ever again."

"Kat, j-just LISTEN," Kiri yelled into the phone. "There's blood. A lot of it... Heading from backstage toward the storage areas beneath the venue."