Maskless (Bakugou public identity reveal and au)

Chapter 4: Sixteen Years

"Hey, guys.... What's going on there?" Sero asks their group.

He, Ashido, Kirishima, and Kaminari had come to the new coffee place for the hangout Kirishima had invited Bakugou to. It really is a nice place, and, for now at least, Kirishima is very glad they have TVs installed.

"Woah! That's a pretty intense fight going on there, isn't it?" Kaminari admires. "Imagine being out there."

Ashido stirs her drink, a sugary fruit tea, with a straw and takes a sip as she watches the news channel continue their broadcast and talk them through the fight. "It seems cool and all until you're actually out there," she replies, and Kaminari nods along dumbly, eyes firmly fixed on the TV. Ashido frowns at him. Did he even hear a word she said?

"That's why heroes are so manly, though," Kirishima adds with a smile. The group lapses into a comfortable since for a while, listening to the TV drone.

"Hey, uh.... Isn't that kinda...bad?" Kaminari pipes up, pointing a finger at the screen.

The TVs around the shop have gotten the attention of everyone in the cafe by now, people swarming under them and watching in shock and horror as children flood onto the field.

Kirishima feels his heart sink as he watches. It looks like the heroes are trying not to hurt the kids, but will that be possible? The reporter said they got news that the heroes were going after a human trafficking ring, so were these kids all being trafficked?

"Hey, what's wrong with Dynamight?"

•••

Bakugou feels his mind lose control over his body. He hears the battle around him. He smells the burnt caramel scent of his quirk. He feels the gash on his arm that was just beginning to bleed again, the large bruise on his leg, and the cut in his bottom lip. He tastes the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He sees the monstrous figure in front of him finally solidify again after the green eyes had usurped his vision and all of the men and women whose faces he had seen on the torso appeared to him, hugged him, coddled him, smiled at him, cared for him, and called him son.

He knows this is wrong. His mind is mostly back to himself, but Bakugou cannot move any bit of his body.

"Oh, this is rich!" The monstrous ringleader bellows. "Wow! What's the point of a fight anymore after figuring something like this out?" he continues to guffaw. Laughter spews from his mouth, and many of the children laugh a bit as well in a forced response; no emotion is felt from them.

What attracts all scrutiny is when Dynamight adopts the same creepy laugh and his eyes adopt the green-yellow of the children's. The villain continues to laugh, wiping a stray tear from his lashes. "Oh my gosh. I'd have never dreamed something like this would happen, but how amazing!"

Ingenium's face twists under his armor. "What did you do to him?" he shouts.

This only sets off the villain into another session of laughter that continues to filter through to Dynamight.

"That's it," Aizawa says into his comms. "Get Dynamight out of here, Ingenium."

"Tut tut tut. No you don't," the villain says, having heard the order. The children with unsettling eyes swarm Ingenium, barring him from movement unless harms them. He is stuck. Others move toward the rest of the heroes, stopping them from going anywhere near Dynamight.

"Dynamight, my boy, how about you come over here, hm?" The villain asks gleefully. Bakugou feels a pull on his mind, some of the characters who appeared to him with kindness from before appearing again, feeling so real as they hover around him, calling him to do as asked, but Bakugou fights. The smile falls from the villain's face and twists into a snarl. "Come. Here. Now." More of the faces appear, tugging at him, calling him, but Bakugou fights. They get frantic, pleading with him to obey, but he does not.