My Hero Academia: Ruby and Emerald

Chapter 18: Older Bakugou Katsuki(Katsuma)

The next few months were fucking interminable. Baby Icyhot was now the cats’ problem. That was a good thing. Katsuma and Mikumo talked to some other heroes in Mustafu about suspected gang connections in the sparkly fucker’s neighborhood, so that neighborhood now had increased patrols and more scrutiny. That was also good.

What wasn’t good were all the strides they were making towards stopping the League of Villains from forming. Precisely because they weren’t making any strides.

Twice was a name that had already been on the Most Wanted list for a few years. Magne was also on the list. Dabi wasn’t a name on any list.

Kurogiri and Shigaraki were a whole different can of worms. They might be in Kamino. They also might not be in Kamino. If Katsuma and Mikumo went after them there, AFO doubtlessly had a myriad of other hiding places he could whisk them away to hide in.

That wasn’t a fight they were ready for.

Moonfish, the creepy-ass teeth villain that Katsuma had fought at the summer training camp, was an inmate awaiting the trial that would put him on death’s row. Nothing they could do there; if they warned anyone about the escape he would make in the next couple of years, they’d get shot down as crazy. Whatever. He got re-captured at the training camp anyway.

Spinner was someone they could track down, though. Spinner, and one Sako Atsuhiro.

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“Are you okay?” Mikumo asked. His voice always felt extra–soft at night. It was soothing. A light to move towards.

Spinner—or at least, the man that would become Spinner—sat slouched against the wall of the alley they were all standing in.

“What does it matter to you?” he scoffed, turning away from Mikumo’s outstretched hand.

“Oi, asshole! We’re heroes, so it’s our job to help pathetic nobodies like you. If I were in your place, I’d take the fucking hand!” Katsuma barked. That got Spinner to turn towards them again, mouth lifted in a sneer and rage burning at his eyes.

“What, so you’ll only help me because it’s your job? You couldn’t care less either way! Some hero you are!” Spinner shot back.

“Wrong again, dumbass!”

“Ruby! Sir! Both of you, calm down,” Mikumo requested. “Please.”

“What, I should go with you so you can throw me in some homeless shelter where I’ll be kicked out the first time someone who looks normal comes along?” Spinner asked, turning his attention to Mikumo. Katsuma felt the wind leave his sails.

“That’s actually happened to you?” Katsuma asked before Mikumo could. Spinner rolled his eyes.

“Yeah? What, you live on a planet where that doesn’t happen?”

“I live on a planet where the help offered is sincere,” Mikumo cut in, eyes brimming with tears like the emotional nerd that he was. “Please, sir, let’s find you a better life.”

Spinner eyed Mikumo’s hand suspiciously, then turned to study Katsuma’s expression (which was decidedly not teary-eyed). He must have seen something he trusted, because when he stopped searching, he took Mikumo’s hand.

They got Spinner set up with a new job at a local call center that handled a suicide hotline. If there was one heroic trait that Spinner had displayed in the future Katsuma and Mikumo came from, it was his compassion for the underdog.

This had been the villain who cosplayed as Stain. Who believed that heroes should be good. Who believed that true heroes existed.

He would be good at this.