𝔸 𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕤𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕎𝕒𝕤 𝕆𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕖 𝕍.𝟚 💥𝔹𝕜𝔻𝕜💥

Chapter 45

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Echo of The Past, Shadow of The Present

KATSUKI

Katsuki's discharge from the hospital didn't feel like freedom. It felt like a countdown to the next damn clue, just another step closer to the same endless frustration. Days of needles, bland walls, and Recovery Girl's constant hounding were behind him, but he didn't feel "recovered." His body might be on the mend, but there was something deeper—an ache that stitches and IV drips couldn't heal. The doctors' fussing and their endless poking and prodding felt pointless, forced compliance like he was some helpless idiot. All their work didn't mean shit when the second he got out, he was still missing something infinitely more important. Izuku was gone. Vanished without a trace, as if he'd never come back from that coma and these last few months had all felt like a pipe dream.

The second he was cleared, Katsuki was in full motion. Finding Izuku was all he cared about—if he wasn't training, he was scouring every scrap of intel he had, combing through every snippet, every half-baked tip about the League of Villains, but it all just kept him circling. Every damn lead turned up dry, every dead-end mocking him with a painful clarity he couldn't stand: he had nothing. He was coming up empty, and every failure felt like he was letting Izuku slip farther away. It was driving the frustration deeper, twisting like a knife in his already bleeding heart.

The first seventy-two hours. The words seared through Katsuki's mind, a relentless, bitter mantra. Those hours were everything in a missing person case—he knew that, everyone knew that. He could almost hear the detectives, those smug idiots on TV crime shows, reminding the audience of this fact as if it was some universal truth, an unavoidable law of nature. And he'd lost every damn one of them. Every crucial second, gone.

A week after being discharged—seven days of clawing against the walls of his own failure—a tip finally came in, the kind that had him seeing a faint spark through the fog. He didn't hesitate, didn't stop to think. Rallying his sidekicks, he tore out of his agency like a damn hurricane, adrenaline burning like fuel in his veins. The lead took them out to a rundown warehouse on the outskirts of the city, where the stink of fish markets and the seedy glow of neon bars crowded every alley. Katsuki had felt a surge of hope flare up when he realized it was in the same area the League of Villains had been cornered in that late night op he'd done. Finally, something that made sense.

The streets around it were lined with alleyways and the constant hum of background noise that only the seediest parts of town managed to gather. He stalked through, his eyes scanning for anything unusual, trying to catch any hint that would give him a reason to rip this place apart. A faint red glow pulsed from somewhere nearby, catching his eye for just a second—a flash of the neon sign, Red Lotus, visible down an alley off to the side, then disappeared behind another warehouse wall. It held his gaze for a second, burning red like a warning, before he shook it off and continued forward.

He stormed into the warehouse, every step hitting with purpose, the fury boiling under his skin propelling him forward. His sidekicks kept up, but he hardly noticed—hell, if anyone in there wanted to put up a fight, he was dying for it. He needed something, someone he could shake down for a real lead, anything that'd break the silence he'd been forced to live in since Izuku vanished.

The itch to make someone talk, to pull answers from them if he had to, burned like a wildfire under his skin. The damn near frantic hope of finding someone—anyone—who could tell him where Izuku was kept him tense, fists ready. And if he had to beat it out of them? Well, he was way past holding back.