Chapter Text
The world jerks sideways.
His palm reverberates and then a real explosion tears out, propelling him across a chasm that wasn’t there a second ago. He feels the familiar heat and the burn in muscles, force arcing up his bones and rattling his teeth.
Fucking finally.
Katsuki hits ground like shell artillery. For a second he can forget the horror of the past hour, the memory of gore under his hands buckling in the face of the force with which his bones quake, absorbing the shock as he lands in a low skid. His shoes grind against stone that immediately starts to ripple like muscle. A sound tears out of his chest, wild and flammable. It might have been a laugh, or a wail, hard to tell.
The explosion that launched him across the expanse still rattles the walls at his back. Wind and dust whip at his skin. Beak Bastard Number 2 sends a column of concrete in his direction, and Katsuki raises his palms and makes the world’s most explosive aerial maneuver around it to land on the solid slab of flooring Izuku’s crouched on.
“Kachaan!” Izuku’s head whips to him, voice ragged with exertion and the sheer effort it must take to keep himself upright.
“‘Sup, Nerd.” Katsuki skids to a stop next to him.
“What are you doing here?” Izuku’s voice is more a lame shriek than a question. And before Katsuki can reply, another barrage of concrete spikes zip through the air toward them. Izuku braces his fucked up hand with the marginally less fucked up one and Katsuki lifts both of his least fucked up palms before the nerd does anything stupider.
BOOM!
An explosion rattles the building, devouring the attack mid-air. Heat crawls up Katsuki’s arms, his shoulders whine in protest. The recoil knocks him a step to the side, and he backpedals to stay upright. It feels like violently ripping the blanket off his slumbering muscles, something dormant still only half-reawakened in his brain. Explosion feels like letting a dog off leash, easy to get it to run, harder to get it to go where you want it to. But if nothing else, Katsuki has gotten pretty good at handling shit that wants to fly out of his control.
Izuku eyes go comically wide for half a second before a concrete fang tries to take his head off and he has to flip away. “Kachaan, your quirk…!”
“Long story!” He calls over the renewed shriek of stone crashing to the ground. He jerks his chin toward beak fucker, “the fuck’s his deal?!”
Izuku snaps back into focus. “That’s Overhaul!” He shouts back, a few paces away and still barely audible.
Katsuki’s face curls in annoyance. He wants to groan. Fucking Nerd. Two seconds in and already dancing on his nerves like a klutz bumbling on a foot piano. They don’t have time for this. “That name supposed to mean something to me?”
Izuku barely reacts. “See what he does to the building?” He jumps up, flicking a shockwave out to cut a stalagmite the size of a car that explodes upward where his feet were a second ago. “If he touches you, he’ll do the same to you!”
Oh, so that’s what that Nemoto fucker was going on about.
“You should have just said that, idiot!”
Katsuki can hear a long groan come from Izuku’s direction and the wimpy sound of his voice going, “I just did!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Katsuki sees a flash of red, white, and yellow. Icyhot skirting the edge of the room with Mirio and co. and ducking into a hallway. Then, walls fuse behind them. The room ripples like the inside of a stomach, probably with the digestive capability of one too. Katsuki spins back around to the beaked culprit.
Overhaul stands a few paces away with a detached, surgical look in his eye, mask cracked and hanging off his jaw. Wait. Not anymore, he lifts a hand and it is completely rebuilt before Katsuki can blink. Dust settles around the fucker’s shoulders like the grimy mantle of a man with delusions of sovereignty. His gaze sweeps from Izuku to Katsuki, lingering on the blackened skin along Katsuki’s hands.
Then, the ceiling drops in jagged slabs. The fucker is already reconfiguring the battlefield like a stoner with a dollhouse and murderous intent, every solid surface swings out at Katsuki like he’s a baseball. Pillars launching from every direction to try and cut off his path before he gets close.
Katsuki grits his teeth and breaks his own path to drop next to Izuku again.
Okay, new plan.
“I have a gun!”
Izuku balks. “What?!”
A column erupts where they were standing a heartbeat ago, rebar lancing through empty air.
“Are you deaf too now!?”
“Kachaan what happened to no lethal force?!”
“It has a quirk neutralizing dart!”
“Oh.” Izuku looks at Katsuki’s pants like the gun was somehow his pocket, then the backpack slung on Katsuki’s shoulders. Then he turns back to Overhaul. “Can you shoot from here?”
Katsuki shakes his head. “Not when he’s doing that bullshit!” He jabs a finger toward the concrete shenanigans Overhaul is currently pulling, metal and stone crawling over his body like an exoskeleton.
Izuku exhales, then nods. “Okay… okay.” He looks at a mezzanine area above. “You get there. I’ll make an opening.”
Izuku kicks up concrete into the air and Katsuki uses the cover to launch himself up and out of the way.
He watches Izuku fight now, different this time, less to subdue and more to try and corral Overhaul into somewhere for a clear shot.
Katsuki creeps across the side, behind some stone and swings the backpack over one shoulder. The handgun is solid to the touch. A stupid fucking weight he’s lugged around at the bottom of his bag since that robbery. Another fun incriminating souvenir from what has been, by far, the absolute worst chapter of his life. 0/5 stars, would not recommend.
Katsuki grips it in his right hand and tries to focus on all the ways this is different than half an hour ago he held weapon in his hand just like this. The handle was less curved. And it’s lighter than the other gun, or maybe that’s just his mind playing tricks on him.
He looks over his shoulder. Overhaul is blocking Izuku’s attacks, and whipping around, definitely looking for Katsuki.
Then Overhaul has to turn back to block the rubble Izuku galvanizes with a Detroit Smash or whatever new fucking full body smash he’s come up with. Overhaul absorbs the brunt of the blow but the shockwave pulverizes the stone on his arms.
There.
Katsuki rolls off the ledge and drops down like an elevator with its cord cut. Hand circling around the gun and holding it out. It’s an easy drop to a platform just above Overhaul. Easier now, with the nice cushiony knowledge that he can break his fall at any time with an explosion.
He sticks the landing. Steadies the gun with both hands.
And the trigger stutters.
Katsuki pushes harder. The plastic bows but doesn’t snap, as if it were nothing more than an edgy toy. From the opposite side, Izuku’s wide eyes dart up, for one, catastrophic second, and that’s all it takes for Overhaul to whip back around, see Katsuki and the barrel.
And whatever the fuckass walls were doing before is nothing compared to the small seismic event that ensues in the next few seconds. Before even his own panic can set in, the platform Katsuki’s on tilts almost 90 degrees vertically and he slips, arms scraping on the rough slab.
“Kachaan!”
And then Izuku’s there, catching him with his shoulder, broken arm flopping, more useless than a football flag. Katsuki just barely manages to stick his own arms out to break the fall before their skulls can bounce against the asphalt. There isn’t even a moment to catch their breath before a shadow looms over them, a tsunami of construction bits. The walls engulf them like a creature devouring two insects.
And it’s like that stupid fucking collapsing building all over again. Katsuki grabs Izuku by whatever he can, which, unfortunately, happens to be the Nerd’s broken arms, and rolls them into a cavity under a cracked, slanted slab of rebar-reinforced concrete. They tumble to the ground in a heap, just as several tons of building crash onto where they were just moments before. Izuku makes a choked, pained wheeze and Katsuki wrenches himself onto his back and raises both palms, ready to defend against the next attack
But their surroundings just creak and groan, layers of rubble that block out most of the light. The world narrows to this cramped space, the dust that falls into his eyes, and the sounds of their breathing.
“Kachaan, what— what happened? I thought you were gonna—“
“The fucking safety is stuck.” Katsuki bites out, shame clawing at his throat. He drags his knuckles over his eyes and wants to scream, he wants to laugh at the sheer incredulity of it all. Of course this happens to him of all people. And there’s no one to blame but himself. This was their shot and Katsuki was the one who fucking blew it. His hands shake again, the gun’s handle slides in his palm. “FUCK!” He chucks the dart gun. It clatters to the ground and Katsuki grips his hair.
“Stop that.. Kachaan.” Izuku wheezes next to him, limp, battered hands at his sides. And that sight, in the dim light, halts Katsuki’s mind in its own tracks. Katsuki’s arms drop to his sides. Suddenly, he feels unsteady in a way that has nothing to do with the shaking of the ground under their feet. Izuku is still on his back, the space is too cramped to even sit up.
For once in his life, Katsuki’s brain skips two steps ahead. Overhaul’s quirk was a bitch, even with the two of them here. They’re gonna win though, of course they will. Either that or they don’t make it out and that’s not an option Katsuki will ever entertain, not when Deku has his cosmic freebie and Katsuki’s quirk is finally doing its fucking job.
In the distance, stone grinds against stone, steel bends with an earsplitting shriek muffled by the layers of whatever-the-fuck-else-buildings-are-made-of blocking them from Overhaul’s eyesight. Katsuki thinks past this fight. He thinks about Shinsuke, about Mirio and Shoto and that kid and his parents. And how here, the two of them probably look like they’re a stubbed toe away from needing stretchers.
The problem is, Katsuki’s stretcher will probably come with handcuffs.
“Izuku.” The next words creep up his throat and dig their claws in just before they reach his vocal chords. He drags his hands over his eyes again, the dust clings to the sweat of his palms and he ends up rubbing it into his skin. If he doesn’t say it now, would he ever get the chance? If they make it out of this, who knows when Katsuki would see him again.
“I was wrong.”
Izuku blinks, then exhales softly.
“It’s fine, Kachaan. We’ll come up with another plan to beat him.”
Katsuki grits his teeth.
“I’m not talking about that!” He snaps.
Beside him, Izuku stills. He has one of those looks on his face, the one that makes Katsuki’s skin crawl like he’s slipping back into a version of himself he already outgrew, a shirt several sizes too small that squeezes his neck and restricts his arms from moving in all the ways they should be able to
Katsuki wants to laugh again, or scream. His throat feels so stiff they would probably sound the same, coming from him right now. His feet want to take him anywhere but here, sweat pools in his palms, ready and itching to propel him right into that beaked fucker’s path rather than face the look he can feel Izuku sending at the side of his skill.
“You don’t need me to tell you this. You already know, but—” He chokes again. It feels like he has to drag every syllable out of his own throat. He takes a breath to try and force it out, but what comes out is another bitter little laugh. “The shit I thought about you. That I said to you. That I did—”
Izuku says nothing. And Katsuki can’t bear to look over. No. He’s refusing to, like a coward. But he’s not a fucking coward. He forces his head to turn. Green eyes meet Katsuki’s from what feels like inches and lightyears at once. And it’s that look that does him in, like a nebula collapsing on itself and taking everything nice and new with it. Because he knows that look. The shield of blankness, the tired little tilt to Izuku’s eyes that has been there for so long the rest of his face seemed to grow around it.
Katsuki put that there. He welded it in.
He wants to puke.
He sucks in air with shaking lungs and he can’t tell if he’s about to laugh or if he’s just hyperventilating.
“I’ve never been more wrong, about anything, about anyone—” He heaves, nauseous, on the guilt and the loathing, that crawled up his esophagus and died there. “In my whole fucking life.” He bites out the last words before he can chicken out.
Seconds stretch like eons and his breathing shorts, the next words dropping down like leaves in the dead of autumn.
This is it.
“I’m sorry, Izuku.”
Izuku’s hand drops back to his side.
He blinks up at Katsuki and all Katsuki can do is stand there like a fucking idiot, his brain taking off and floating somewhere behind his senses to hide from his own nerves, staring at the proof of every awful version of himself that ever existed.
He doesn’t know what he thought would happen next. The earth, for the first fucking time since this battle started, doesn’t shake. The words are out, now; little dead leaves tossed out. Only now, in the stifling quiet, it’s as if a rogue breeze unexpectedly kicked them up and Katsuki finds them plastered across airways, blocking them.
He didn’t really think about what Izuku was to do with that. Maybe Katsuki should have just kept his fucking mouth shut, who the fuck drops a bomb in an enclosed space with no exit for anyone involved—oh wait: Bakugo Katsuki, that’s who. For years and years Izuku has been on the receiving end of that bullshit. God, he really hasn’t changed a bit, has he? Still a fucking mess and making other people deal with the fallout, Katsuki’s just become more of a wimp about it. He should have just shut the fuck up—
“…Who?”
Katsuki’s thoughts screech to a halt.
“…You…?” He says, both an answer and a question at the same time. “…Who else would I be talking to?”
“What’s my name?” Izuku asks again, voice still light but a bit more insistent.
Katsuki locks up, looking up and to the side. Did he hear right? Or was this a trick question? Is he concussed? Are they both concussed?
“Midoriya Izuku.” He answers, slower this time. And then, he can’t help himself. “Are you okay? Did you crack your head on the concrete or some shit—? Do you know my name?” His voice rises at the end, pitched and a little frazzled. Katsuki replays the past few minutes in his mind, he rolled Izuku over on the concrete, was that it? Without thinking, Katsuki leans in to check Izuku’s pupils, hand coming to the side of his face to angle it up.
Katsuki is close enough to Izuku’s face to see the quirk to his lip.
“No, I’m fine,” Izuku rasps. “S’just not my name.”
Katsuki’s brow furrows. His hands stall, that ugly wad still caught in his throat. “The fuck are you—?”
“Kachaan,” Izuku’s mouth moves, lips parted and arrested like he can’t decide whether to talk or smile. “What’s my name?”
Katsuki’s breathing stutters.
“…Deku.”
It comes out as a whisper.
He feels more than he hears Izuku’s next breath, a soft puff of air. Izuku’s eyes seem to shine, reflective even in the dark. “That’s right,” he nods, one side of his face stretching into a lopsided grin. “Now, say it right.”
Katsuki’s jaw drops.
And finally, finally he lets out a disbelieving, breathless bark of laughter that hits his lungs like a Heimlich maneuver and knocks the lump in his throat free. “Fucking hell.” He runs a hand through his hair. He can breathe again. “I’m sorry, Deku.”
He says it louder this time, and Izuku lets out another winded little laugh.
Instead of saying anything more, Izuku shifts and holds his hand up again to Katsuki. The same hand he held out when they were kids in the river, the same hand he held out last year during the Sludge Villain attack, The hand he may as well have held out to him in Nezu’s office. It all feels like three lifetimes ago.
Now Katsuki sees that hand again, in this stupid fucking yakuza base, again, after all those times he bat it away. Again, Izuku reaches toward him, hand outstretched, and looks at him with that exact same unreal, unflinching, world-tilting look in his eye. As if all the other times weren’t a reason not to continue with the same insane persistence; the persistent insanity of someone doing the exact same thing and waiting for the one day the outcome changes.
Today, Katsuki reaches back.
He takes Deku’s hand and pulls just as the floor under them rotates, and Katsuki doesn’t really know who’s helping who anymore. He finds, the distinction matters less to him now than it used to. His mind feels a little shaky still, like getting yanked out of the water after doing laps, every part of him still remembering the burn of it all, something evaporating off his chest and something else left behind, drying and crusting over.
Then Izuku winces and Katsuki looks down. The dumbass’s hand is bruised and fractured.
Oh fuck. Katsuki lets go and crouches and it’s a bit like like maneuvering in a calcified cocoon, so cramped that Katsuki can actually brace his foot on the wall and use the leverage to hoist Deku up by the armpits.
“Stop flopping like a fish and use your fucking legs, Deku. I know they’re not broken.”
Izuku makes a scandalized noise somewhere between an offended gasp and a snort. “I though you were gonna be nice to me now, Kachaan!”
“I’m keeping you on your toes.” Katsuki huffs under his breath. "Literally and figuratively."
That earns him an elbow jammed into his side and Katsuki isn’t even mad. And when he catches the side profile of Izuku’s face, he’s grinning.
“Ready?” Katsuki holds up his palms to the rubble.
Izuku nods, lowering to an athletic stance, which doesn’t actually mean all that much because of how fucking cramped it is here. “We need to get him off the ground. He can’t use his quirk if he can’t touch anything.”
Katsuki feels his own face pulling into a vicious little grin. “Got it. Gimme space, Deku.”
“Can’t really do that, Kachaan.” Katsuki can feel Deku’s hoarse breath on the back of his neck. Ew.
Katsuki rolls his eyes, “I mean after. And cover your ears.”
“Can’t really do that either, Kachaan.”
”Okay y’know what, Deku? Fine! Burst an eardrum for all I care!”
He can feel Izuku’s snicker behind him as he braces his back against the stone. Then, Katsuki blasts a hole in the rubble that kicks up a cloud of dust. In the next second, Izuku slides down toward the edge of the newly liberated space.
Across from him, Overhaul stands there, adjusting his shirt sleeve.
“Oh,” he says, voice low and contemptuous, “You survived.”
“Don’t sound too thrilled.”
“I find it rather insulting, to be honest. That they sent another child to face me.”
Katsuki’s heart bangs against his ribs. His hands are torn up and he just used this same power to burn the hole in Shinsuke’s side. But there’s a clarity that comes with motion and imminent death. All the static in his head burns off. There’s just him, Deku, the target, and the one, constant, truth that Nemoto didn’t fully yank out of him. Physically, metaphorically, in every way that counts:
Bakugo Katsuki is really fucking good at blowing shit up.
“Nah,” Katsuki calls, because if he doesn’t talk he’s going to think too much about the blood and dust caked under his nails and the way his whole body is trembling for ten different reasons at the same time. “They sent a bomb.”
The ground bucks under his feet.
Rebar spikes lance up. A wall tears itself sideways like a wave and crawls across the ground with the speed of that lady with the black hair from The Shining, or was it the The Ring? Whatever, it’s fucking freaky and it tries to circle Katsuki’s ankles.
With that, he slams both palms to the ground.
BOOM!
The blast rips out around his hands and tears at everything within the immediate vicinity, pulverizing the ground and kicking up any other part of the building unfortunate to get caught in the crossfire. The force launches Katsuki up and forward like a missile. The air scorches his face, his eyes water. For a second, his vision narrows to a tunnel with Overhaul at the end.
From the side, Izuku darts out, moving in his own nightmarish dance, using One For All to slip between rising spires and closing jaws of stone. Every time Overhaul focuses on Katsuki, a Izuku launches a blow at any weak point the his armor he can reach, forcing him to reassemble himself and the fuckass terrain that’s really getting on Katsuki’s nerves right now.
They slip into rhythm without realizing it. Old instincts, old rivalry, old… whatever the hell they are now.
Katsuki forces out another explosion, angled to the left and down, and obliterates a spike before it can skewer him. Shrapnel whips past his cheeks and Izuku uses it as a launchpad away to send a supersonic kick at Overhaul’s next WorldEdit from hell. The ground spins and Katsuki has to twist mid-air, propelling himself sideways to avoid a collapsing section of ceiling that used to be floor and he hits some other wall with his bad shoulder. Unfortunately Overhaul, the fucker, has also somehow caught himself at the last second and lashes out with his free hand toward Deku, stone warping around his fingers. But before he can complete the motion, Katsuki jumps forward detonates another blast with a shockwave that knocks the offending arm off-course, the lethal touch grazing empty air.
Katsuki keeps going, launches himself closer and aims another explosion at the ground to slow this guy's resource draw, and in return gets a cloud of dust and probably asbestos right to the face. When it clears enough, in his periphery, he sees a flash of green as Deku rockets off the larger chunks of debris, using them as mid-air footholds to close the distance; A series of stepping stones, one after another…
…until he runs out of them.
“DEKU!”
And Katsuki is there before he can think. Deku’s wide eyes meet his.
“I’m gonna jump!” Is all the warning Deku gives before he lands, feet first on Katsuki’s shoulders.
“Yeah no shit!” Katsuki growls back, twisting to align their centers of mass. In the air, his brain takes a step out his body. Seeing the world without eyes, like every cell was made for movement in three dimensions, already thinking in instantaneous velocity and impulse and how force compounds from the confines of his own two hands.
“Go up!” He screams
Deku’s boots dig into his shoulders, green lightning sparking around them with the beginning of the jump, the loading phase. Katsuki’s elbows lock, angled down, and another explosion tears out of his hands right before Deku kicks off.
BOOM!
In the next moment, Katsuki floats, weightless in the air, and Deku rockets up with the combined force from One For All and Explosion. He's a green blur that barrels right into the platform Overhaul is fused to and barely loses any speed. He just keeps going, up and up until he tears through the ceiling.
Sunlight streams through the gaping hole in the roof.
Katsuki shoots into the sky after them.
Wind beats his face, throwing his hair in every direction.
Overhaul looks like a falling, bloated concrete planet blocking out the sun, and Izuku is an orbiting asteroid chipping pieces off his shell. But neither are as at home in the sky as Katsuki. In the sky, fighting Katsuki is like playing dodgeball if both your arms were broken and every single ball were on Katsuki’s side of the court. (the former of which was maybe a bit too literal, in Deku’s case) Whatever. Point is, they have this in the bag, probably.
Katsuki catches Izuku around the midsection before he can fall too far and levels an explosion to redirect the momentum sling him back up. His shoulder twinges when Izuku kicks off again. Katsuki looks up and sees a flare of lightning as Izuku turns his body into a battering ram at the next pillar of stone aimed their direction.
The concrete around Overhaul shatters like plaster, but the bastard manages to hold on to just enough to stay annoying.
“Kachaan!” Katsuki’s gaze snaps to the sound, neck craning up Izuku’s direction, then to the little black shadow in his hand. His eyes widen.
The gun. Deku must have swiped it when he took off.
Instead of passing it to Katsuki, Izuku cracks the barrel like an egg.
The single quirk canceling dart slips out and falls the air. Katsuki’s eyes latch on to it, the liquid sloshing as it spins, the metal of the needle glinting in the sun.
Time seems to stretch like a rubber band.
Katsuki takes off in an elliptical arc, swings himself around in three planes, spins to align himself on three different axes, until his arms are in line with the dart, in line with Overhaul himself and the exposed flesh as Izuku obliterates more of the concrete crusting over his body.
Katsuki braces his right arm at the elbow with his left, the same way Deku did during the Sports Festival, index finger loaded behind his thumb.
He flicks, a tiny pop at the back.
The band snaps.
The dart whistles through the air.
It hits the beaked fucker dead on.
At first, the Overhaul barely reacts beyond a twitch and the slow drift of a larger body of mass after colliding with a smaller one. Then, his eyes widen as the last of his armor flakes off like dandruff. That’s all Katsuki sticks around to see, because to his right, the green lightning around Izuku fades and there’s only the light of the cloudless sky. He dives like a hawk to catch Deku’s falling body. The wind barrels around him, burrowing under his shirt.
“Deku! You good?” He shouts over the sound of the air whistling in his ears.
Deku doesn’t respond. Deku looks like shit, actually. His arms bend at angles that make Katsuki’s stomach lurch as they fall. His eyes are half-lidded and a little dazed, lips parted and making a word that may be Katsuki’s name but is quickly swallowed by the velocity of their fall.
Katsuki doesn’t have time to think. He hooks his legs around Izuku’s midsection and lets off several oblique explosions to slow their descent. His shoulders strain, eating every instance of recoil in a stubborn fight against gravity itself. In fact, every muscle in his body aches. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees another person falling, a few meters parallel to them, those cruel, alert eyes attached to a body that hangs loose like a puppet with its strings cut.
Katsuki looks back at Deku, then over to Overhaul. And would have let out a long string of swears if he didn’t currently feel like his breath was being ripped out of his lungs from the sheer speed of their descent, and the growing realization that he was once again faced with the delightful opportunity to save another one of humanities living shitstains.
The ground approaches at increasing speed.
Goddamnit.
Katsuki maneuvers over and grips Overhaul by the back of his shirt, “Don’t fucking move!” He yells, and doesn’t bother looking at the fucker’s ugly mug. They keep falling, the ground closing in faster. The windows start looking like windows instead of little dark flecks.
Not yet.
They enter the altitude of the high-rises, towering above them and blocking out the greater part of the sky.
Not yet.
The whoop of police sirens cuts through the beat of the air and his own heart thrumming in his ears.
Not yet.
The streetlamps approach rapidly. He can see the glint of a crosswalk, a traffic light close enough to visibly switch colors. Pedestrians stop in their tracks to look up at the three of them falling out of the sky.
Now.
And then Katsuki twists in the air so they’re in one level. He tosses Overhaul upwards like the world’s most evil beanbag, with every bit of force he can muster to counter the pull of gravity itself. At the same time, he angles his better arm down to counteract the worst of the recoil. And he may as well have lit every joint in his upper body on fire too, from the angle and the force, and the fact that in the past few hours he’s essentially done the quirk equivalent of running a half-marathon after sitting on his ass for a month.
With two free hands he manages to land (crash) him and Deku, collapsing in a heap on the cool grass of the manicured lawn outside what remains of the Shie Haissaikai base.
Exactly one second later, Overhaul hits the ground at a much gentler speed than before Katsuki’s intervention.
Katsuki rolls off of Deku, gasping for air. His arms feel like jelly, his legs do too. The skin of his arms and knees feels like it's pulsing, red and raw like he tried to exfoliate with a cheese grater. He tries to stagger to his feet but ends up slumped on his side on the grass, feeling all the adrenaline leak out of his pores and seep into the dirt beneath him. He can’t even lift a hand to brush the hair out of his face, can’t even lift his eyelids at the rising pitch of sirens and the sound of a faint, agitated voice.
“There they are!”
Katsuki's head slumps to the side. The last thing he sees is the green of Deku's hair.