The Wielded | REWRITE

Chapter One: Fault Lines

Chapter One: Fault Lines

Bakugou heard the surveillance drone before anyone pointed it out.

It was not one of the city models. Those kept to assigned lanes and announced themselves with a faint, regulated pulse every few seconds—a courtesy built into municipal equipment after too many civilians had mistaken them for villain tech. This one moved without lights. Its rotors whispered somewhere beyond the lip of the roof, low enough to vanish beneath the traffic and the wet hiss of tires seventeen stories below.

Bakugou stopped beside a rusted ventilation housing and looked toward the adjacent building.

Nothing rose above the parapet.

Rainwater slid from the points of his hair and worked its way beneath the collar of his winter costume. It had been falling since noon: not hard enough to clear the streets, only steady enough to turn every rooftop slick and make the city smell like wet concrete, hot wiring, and old exhaust.

Behind him, Best Jeanist continued speaking as though Bakugou had not moved.

"The eastern route has narrowed since last month. Construction has redirected pedestrian traffic through three adjoining streets, which means any disturbance will become crowded quickly. Restraint will be more useful than spectacle."

Bakugou looked over his shoulder. "You could've just said don't blow up the road."

"I could have," Jeanist said. "You would have heard criticism and ignored the instruction."

Todoroki stood several feet away beside Endeavor, rain darkening the shoulders of his costume. His expression remained blank, but his eyes shifted toward Bakugou for half a second.

That was enough.

"Say it," Bakugou snapped.

"I didn't say anything."

"Your face did."

"Then argue with my face."

Endeavor's fire burned low along his jaw and shoulders, reduced to a deep orange crawl that steamed the rain before it could touch him. He did not glance between them. "If this is how you communicate during an operation, neither of you is ready to work without supervision."

Bakugou's palms warmed inside his gauntlets.

Best Jeanist caught the front strap of his costume with a single denim fiber before he could take a step.

"And there," Jeanist said mildly, "is the value of supervision."

Bakugou tore the fiber loose. "I wasn't going anywhere."

"Of course not."

Across the rooftop, the access door rattled in its frame as wind passed through the stairwell. Bakugou listened past it, searching for the drone again. The sound had stopped.

He disliked that more than he had disliked hearing it.

The exercise itself was ordinary. That was what U.A. had called it: an inter-agency field evaluation, arranged to determine whether second-year students could adapt to unfamiliar command structures. In practice, it meant Endeavor had brought Todoroki, Best Jeanist had brought Bakugou, and someone at the school had decided putting all four of them on the same patrol would produce useful data.

Bakugou suspected the real purpose was to see whether he and Todoroki could go two hours without trying to take control of the same scene.

It was insulting.

Mostly because it was a reasonable question.

Endeavor projected the route map from the bracer at his wrist. A pale grid opened in the rain between them, marking the ward in blue, active construction in yellow, and recent incident clusters in red.