Red Ink

Part 57 - Hidden Signals

Katsuki wasn't usually one for stealth.

Why should he be? It's not like he needed the advantage— he was a fucking beacon of power, a trained soldier of combustion and perfect precision. Stealth was for political assassins and interns, not a professional hero. Normally, he barely thought twice before launching himself into danger at breakneck speeds. It was kind of his thing.

Not now, though. As Bakugou shifted near the walls and kept close to the ground, he pressed a small button on the cuff of his gauntlet that caused a technical ripple effect down his arm and across his suit: after only a few seconds, the flashy black and orange hero costume was transformed into a jet-black jumpsuit.

"I don't need a fuckin' stealth mode," he remembered grumbling to Tinkerbell.

She'd rolled her eyes at him and said, "Even you need to hide sometimes, and the orange won't be doing you any favors. Just trust me, Dynamight."

You'd think he'd know by then that she was always right. His fiancé was smarter than him— by a longshot, actually— and while it had infuriated him when they first met, it became one of the reasons he'd been so adamant about getting a damn ring on her finger. 

With his thoughts wandering to Tinkerbell— not that he was ever much good at preventing that— impatience made him grumble to himself at her late arrival. For nearly twenty minutes, Bakugou was silently familiarizing himself with the Event Sector's layout. Cipher was a technical wonder, but the Event Sector took precautions against quirks like hers, so there was no map for him to use at that point.

The arena was in the center, that much was obvious. A tunnel stretched along the outside of it with big doors to each fancy 'golden lounge,' whatever the hell that meant, and two more to the north and south were very clearly restricted access. If he were to guess, Kirishima was somewhere behind one of those doors.

Katsuki's entire body hummed with adrenaline. Most of the plans he was a part of wound up scrambled and unusable, but despite his nearly six months of working on the Crimson Doves case, he was now forced to go in completely blind. The Doves intentionally kept all of their information the old-fashioned way: manilla folders, papers, and physical copies of everything in an unknown location. That meant that even Cipher's abilities couldn't help.

Once his backup arrived, they could begin their search for Kirishima; but fuck, the wait was brutal.

The last time he had done this, he had Eijirou at his side and accidentally led himself and his partner directly into one of the Crimson Dove's main hideouts. He should've called for backup and he shouldn't have let Kirishima come in with him. Shame still beat against his chest like a drum whenever he remembered, and he could still hear Eijirou's excruciating cries reverberating in his ears.

It was his fault. He couldn't help but wonder if this was his fault, too.

Bakugou was still trying to grapple with what he saw on the television. He'd heard about the boxing matches before, obviously, but he cared as much about sports as he did the mud under his boots. They were a complete waste of time; and up until now, he thought Kirishima agreed.

Years. Red said that Eijirou had been doing this for years.

Why? He knew that Kirishima enjoyed competition, but enough to join the Event Sector? Enough to continue until he became the most prolific fighter in the Underground? Why the fuck didn't Kirishima tell him?

Even as the question sprouted in his head, he knew the answer. Since hiring Kirishima at the agency, Bakugou had been telling Eijirou not to get involved with the Underground— that it was a cesspool of crime, and that one day, they'd clean it up, just... not now. They had bigger things to deal with.