Chapter 32
₊˚⊹✷ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘-𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓
⤷ dunno what’s gotten into him.
YOU NEVER FORGET IT. The way the air seems to compress when one of the most powerful men in the world stands in front of you. The way your instincts scream at you to run even when your legs refuse to move. The way your body recognizes something predatory long before your mind catches up. It didn’t scare Oda for the reason it would have scared most people.
It scared him because somehow, impossibly, that terrifying man had seen him through the disguise he had spent his entire life perfecting.
“Oh, I see… You’re one of his.”
The words replayed endlessly, etched into the inside of his skull with brutal clarity. Oda would not forget them. He couldn’t forget them. He had known the moment they were spoken that something irreversible had happened, that some carefully guarded door had been kicked open and could never be closed again.
He knew.
That was the worst part.
How did he know? Did Shigaraki know too? Oda’s thoughts spiraled immediately to that conclusion, dread coiling tight in his chest. He had to. There was no way someone like Shigaraki wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t connect the dots, wouldn’t realize what All For One had realized in a single glance.
Oda had cursed himself every night since Kamino, lying awake and replaying his life choices like a crime scene reconstruction. He dissected every moment with ruthless precision, trying to find the fracture point where it all went wrong.
Had Que ratted him out?
The thought came sharp and vicious, a knife to the gut, before Oda forced himself to shove it away. No. No way. Que wouldn’t do that. They’d been reckless, unethical, dangerous—but not that. Oda clung to that certainty because the alternative made his chest feel too tight to breathe.
Ango, though.
Ango was going to kill him when he found out.
Not literally, probably. But the version of death Ango specialized in—the quiet, bureaucratic kind where doors closed and didn’t reopen, where opportunities vanished and handcuffs replaced choices—was just as final. And Ango would find out sooner or later. There was no avoiding that.
All For One was in Tartarus.
Which meant he was in Ango’s sector now.
The thought made Oda’s stomach twist. Ango was meticulous. Obsessive. He would interrogate All For One again and again, peeling away layers, cross-referencing details, hunting inconsistencies. It was only a matter of time before something slipped. Before Ango called him in, expression cold and disappointed, and asked the question Oda had no safe answer for.
Where did you screw up? Oda didn’t know. That might have been the most terrifying part of all.
With a frustrated, shaky breath, Oda rolled onto his back in bed and raised a hand, pounding his fist against his forehead as if he could physically beat the thoughts out of his brain. The impact was dull and useless, but he did it anyway, over and over, because doing something felt better than lying there drowning in his own head.
He was laying in bed, pretending that the posture itself might trick his body into sleep.
It wouldn’t.
He knew better than that.
He was too scared to sleep, because sleep was when the monsters came. Sleep was when control slipped, when his mind startled awake and his quirk reacted faster than reason ever could. Sleep was when buildings broke and people got hurt and consequences followed.
So he stayed awake.
Then suddenly, from the wall behind his bed, there was a loud bang.
Oda shot upright so fast the mattress barely had time to creak. His quirk activated instantly, red light flaring around his body as his eyes snapped across the room, scanning corners and shadows for threats that weren’t there. His heart slammed against his ribs, adrenaline flooding his system before his brain could catch up.
It took a few seconds—long, disorienting seconds—for him to realize there was no enemy.
The glow around his body vanished just as abruptly as it had appeared, like a switch being flipped. Silence rushed back in, thick and unsettling.
He wasn’t in danger. He was fine.
Oda hugged his arms to his chest, breathing hard, trying to convince himself of that fact while his pulse slowly steadied. Confusion crept in beneath the lingering fear. What the hell had that noise been? Had something fallen over? Above him, maybe? Another floor? Someone else’s room?
He sat frozen on the edge of his bed, waiting.
Listening.
Nothing happened for several long minutes, and Oda started to think maybe it had just been a fluke. A single noise. An isolated incident.
Then it happened again.
This time, Oda flinched violently, muscles jerking before he could stop them. It wasn’t just one bang—it was several, rapid and sharp, echoing through the wall beside his bed. The sound was unmistakable once his brain processed it.
Explosions.
His stomach dropped.
Is that Bakugo?
Oda stared at the wall like it might answer him, every nerve on edge. The noise stopped again, plunging the dorm into an uneasy quiet. He waited, counting the seconds, hoping—stupidly—that maybe it really was over.
Then the explosions started up again, louder this time, more frequent, the vibrations rattling faintly through the wall.
Oda’s jaw clenched.
Is no one else hearing this!?
He glanced around his room, but everything stayed maddeningly still. Maybe everyone else was asleep. Maybe everyone else could sleep.
Oda waited another half hour, lying rigid on his bed as the explosions continued on and off, his patience eroding with every muffled bang. If he was going to fake sleep, he was going to fake sleep in silence, goddamnit.
Enough was enough.
He swung his legs off the bed, yanked his socks on, and shoved his feet into them with more force than necessary before tucking them under his sweatpants. His movements were sharp, irritated, fueled by exhaustion and stress and the edge of too many nights without rest.
Oda stormed out of his dorm room and marched down the hallway to the neighboring door, raising his fist and beating on it shamelessly, the sound echoing just as loudly as the explosions had.
“Bakugo—hey!” He hit the door again just as another chorus of explosions went off inside the room, the sound muffled by thick walls but still loud enough to rattle the frame beneath his knuckles.
The timing was almost comical if Oda hadn’t been running on fumes and nerves for days. From inside the room, he heard a sharp curse, clipped and furious, followed by the abrupt silence of someone cutting their quirk off mid-breath.
For a brief, rational moment, it occurred to Oda that knocking on the King-of-Anger-Management-Issues’ door in the middle of the night was probably not his brightest idea. There were easier ways to get killed. But Bakugo had been glaring holes through him all day, so fair was fair. If Oda wasn’t sleeping anyway, neither was Bakugo.
“Oi—”
Oda lifted his fist to knock again, irritation buzzing under his skin, but the door yanked open before his knuckles could make contact.
He was immediately met with deep red eyes, bloodshot and sharp, dragged down by heavy, sleepless dark circles that made Bakugo look even more volatile than usual. His chest rose and fell a little too fast, and the hand that wasn’t gripping the doorframe was clenched tight at his side, fingers slightly smoking.
“The hell do you want? Who’s bothering who now?” It wasn’t a full snarl, more like an angry mumble forced through clenched teeth, but the hostility was unmistakable.
“Me,” Oda snapped without hesitation, unimpressed and exhausted enough that his usual restraint was gone. “I’m the bothered one. Are you trying to wake the entire neighborhood?”
Bakugo’s lip curled. “Just fuck off.”
“Pretty sure I was the one saying that earlier,” Oda shot back, his patience snapping clean in half, “so if we’re still playing the disrespecting-boundaries game, why the fuck are you setting off firecrackers at—” He yanked his phone out of his pocket and checked the glowing screen, jaw tightening. “—1:51 in the morning?”
Bakugo stared at him blankly, eyes narrowed, like Oda had just spoken in a foreign language he refused to learn.
“Hello?” Oda waved a hand sharply in front of his face, irritation bleeding into sarcasm. “I asked you a question. Do I need to ask it in English too, or—”
“Would you just fuck off?”
“Is that all you’re gonna say to me?” Oda demanded, incredulous now, disbelief edging into his voice.
Bakugo’s eyes flashed. “Are you gonna answer my questions?”
Oda paused, thrown off just enough to frown, his brows knitting together as he processed that. “No.”
“Then I’m not telling you shit,” Bakugo snapped immediately. “And I wouldn’t anyway, so just go away, you little twerp.”
Oda stared at him for a long second, genuinely stunned, before letting out a short, disbelieving scoff. “Fine. Whatever.” His shoulders tensed as he took a step back. “But if you keep setting off grenades in there, I’m not gonna be the only one making noise complaints. Control your goddamn quirk.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He didn’t give Bakugo the satisfaction of another word. Oda turned on his heel and started back down the hall, annoyance buzzing hot in his chest, every step tight and sharp. He’d made an attempt to be civil—barely—but it still counted, and this was what he got for it.
“You’re one to talk.”
The words cut through the hallway.
Oda stopped mid-step, his entire body freezing as his eyes widened, anger flaring hot and sudden in his chest. His heartbeat spiked instantly, a sharp, dangerous pulse that made his fingers twitch. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. He reeled the anger back by force alone, jaw clenched so hard it ached, but he still threw a vicious glare over his shoulder.
“Go fuck yourself, asshole.”
That was it. That was all he gave him.
Oda didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and walked back to his room as fast as he could without outright running, every muscle tight as he shoved his door open and slammed it shut behind him, needing distance, needing walls, needing anything to keep himself from turning around and committing what would absolutely qualify as a heinous murder.
𓏵
ODA’S NEW SUIT modifications had come in only a couple of days after he’d put the request through, delivered with the efficiency UA prided itself on and a small, handwritten note from Power Loader.
The first thing he’d tried on was the metal torso piece that went under his costume. It sat low and snug on his hips, hugging his frame as it curved upward along his sides, stopping halfway up his ribs just before it reached his chest. The material was cool and dense against his skin, skin-tight without restricting his breathing, and once it was in place it was almost unsettling how easy it was to forget it was there at all.
No bulk, no clanking, no obvious armor silhouette—just a quiet, constant pressure meant to take the worst of the strain off his organs when gravity tried to fold him in on himself.
The second modification had been to his boots. They looked almost identical at a glance, still sleek and utilitarian, but the moment he lifted his foot he felt the difference. Thick iron soles weighed them down. The extra mass gave him a clearer sense of orientation when he was airborne, a reliable down he could feel even when his surroundings blurred or flipped.
It made landings cleaner, steadier, and for the first time since he’d started pushing his quirk toward enhancement rather than brute force, he didn’t feel like he was constantly correcting himself mid-movement.
And the last change was subtle but deliberate. Added pouches lined his gold belt, evenly spaced so they wouldn’t throw off his balance, each one holding steel marbles that had been tinted gold to match the rest of his gear. They were small, unassuming, and easy to miss, but Oda liked that. They sat heavy and familiar against his hips.
“Heyyy, Oda.”
The sing-song voice snapped him out of his thoughts the moment he stepped into Gym Gamma the next afternoon. He barely had time to register the sound before Kaminari’s hands clamped down on his shoulders from behind, jostling him with barely contained enthusiasm.
“Looks like you’ve made some improvements.”
Oda turned his head just enough to glance back. “Yeah,” he replied, voice flat but not unkind, his eyes flicking down to the big, white directional gun mounted to Kaminari’s right arm. The thing looked absurdly large compared to Kaminari’s usual getup. “You too.”
Kaminari puffed up immediately, beaming. “Right? Hatsume went nuts with this thing. Says it’ll keep my output focused so I don’t short-circuit myself as fast. But don’t worry,” he added quickly, leaning closer like this was classified information, “you still look the coolest.”
Oda snorted softly.
“I don’t think he’s worried about it,” Kirishima chuckled, appearing behind them with his usual easy grin, hands resting on his hips as he took in Oda’s updated costume with an approving nod.
“Where’s Bakugo at?” Kaminari asked, finally letting go of Oda as he looked around the gym, clearly noticing the absence of a certain loud, explosive presence.
Kirishima’s smile faded just a little. “He’s been in a mood all day,” he admitted, brow furrowing. “I figured it was better not to poke the bear.”
“Oh yeah?” Kaminari blinked, curiosity instantly piqued.
Oda hesitated, then asked despite himself, “What happened?”
Kirishima exhaled slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, he blew up at Midoriya at lunch for literally no reason,” he said, tone edged with concern. “And then he had an outburst in the locker room and I decided to dip before I caught shrapnel.” He shook his head, baffled. “Dunno what’s gotten into him.”
Oda didn’t say anything after that, but the faint tightening in his chest told him exactly why Bakugo was in a mood, even if Kirishima didn’t.
“Maybe the stress of being kidnapped finally caught up to him,” Kaminari offered, “I mean, he was way too calm about it when it happened. I’m still kinda waitin’ for this guy to snap.”
As he said it, his eyes slid back to Oda, lingering there a little longer than was comfortable.
Oda immediately made a face, one eyebrow ticking up in irritation. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kaminari didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stepped in close again, hands coming up to grab Oda by the shoulders and physically turn him so they were face to face, studying him with exaggerated seriousness.
“Oda. My guy. My pal. My best friend,” Kaminari said, voice dropping into mock gravitas. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
I don’t think I have, Oda thought automatically, the realization sliding through him with uncomfortable ease. The nights blurred together in his memory anyway—lying still, listening to every sound in the dorms, muscles aching, brain refusing to shut up—but there was no universe where he was going to say that out loud.
Instead, he scowled and leaned back slightly. “You calling me ugly?”
Kaminari recoiled like he’d been accused of a crime. “Ugly? Never. Looking exhausted? Yep,” he said immediately, nodding with far too much confidence.
“Yeah, I gotta agree with him, man,” Kirishima chimed in, leaning in from the side so he could get a better look at Oda’s face. “You sure you’re sleeping, like, at all?”
“You sure you’re okay?” Kaminari added, tone quieter now.
Oda stared at both of them for a long second, their faces open in that irritatingly sincere way that made it hard to just brush them off. Something tight twisted in his chest, sharp and unwelcome, and he reacted the only way he knew how.
He knocked Kaminari’s hands off his shoulders with a sharp motion and stepped back. “I’m fine,” he snapped, voice clipped. “You’re both stupid.”
“Uh!” Kaminari yelped in mock offense, clutching his chest dramatically. “We might be stupid, but we’re worried about you.”
“No reason to be,” Oda shot back, already turning away before either of them could push the issue further.
He didn’t wait for a response. He just headed deeper into Gym Gamma, boots heavy against the floor, shoulders set, eyes already scanning for an empty section of concrete where he could focus.
𓏵
AS OBVIOUS AS IT WAS that Oda wasn’t sleeping well, Bakugo’s situation was arguably more noticeable—and far worse. The anger management issues Bakugo always carried around like a live wire had been steadily escalating for days already, but layered on top of that was the unmistakable, bone-deep exhaustion that clung to him now.
It showed in the way his movements were sharper, more erratic, in the way his voice snapped faster and louder than usual, and in the way his patience—already notoriously thin—had completely evaporated. By the time afternoon training rolled around, it was painfully clear that whatever sleep Bakugo wasn’t getting was finally catching up to him in a big way.
He nearly murdered Midoriya during drills.
It wasn’t aggressive competitiveness the way Bakugo sometimes framed it. It was raw, ugly rage, the kind that made teachers step in immediately and made the rest of the class go quiet in that uncomfortable, uneasy way where nobody quite knew where to look.
Even Kirishima, who usually stuck to Bakugo, had started giving him space as the week dragged on, clearly deciding that poking around right now was a bad idea. By the time Thursday rolled around, Bakugo was walking tension incarnate, jaw clenched, eyes dark, hands twitching like they were just waiting for an excuse.
Every night, Oda heard it.
The explosions.
They were more muffled now than they’d been before, but there was no mistaking what they were. Short bursts. Sudden concussive thuds. Oda couldn’t stop noticing the pattern anymore, couldn’t stop connecting the dots between the nighttime detonations and Bakugo’s increasingly volatile behavior during the day.
It was obvious to him in the way only someone dealing with the same kind of problem could recognize.
When 1:30 a.m. hit and the explosions sounded for the fourth time that week—Thursday night, right on schedule—Oda reached the breaking point. His nerves were frayed, his body exhausted, his patience nonexistent.
He lay there for exactly half a second longer before the thought solidified in his head: either I make him stop, or I commit a murder. Either way, the explosions would end.
Oda was out of bed and moving before he could really think about the consequences of what he was doing. He stalked down the hallway with single-minded purpose, exhaustion and irritation fueling every step, and knocked hard enough on Bakugo’s door that his knuckles stung.
The door flew open, and he was immediately met by a boy who looked like he wanted to murder Oda just as badly as Oda wanted to murder him.
“What the hell do you want now?”
Bakugo’s eyes were bloodshot and furious, dark circles carved deep beneath them, his hair messier than usual like he’d been running his hands through it over and over. He looked feral, wound tight, vibrating with restrained violence.
“I want you to stop,” Oda said flatly, crossing his arms despite how tired his limbs felt. “Four nights in a row. Four. Nights. I can’t sleep in these absolutely abusive conditions.”
“Not my fucking problem.”
“Clearly it is, because you clearly aren’t sleeping either, explosion-boy,” Oda shot back immediately, pointing directly at Bakugo’s face, at the shadows under his eyes, at the proof written all over him.
Bakugo’s lip curled. “Get it out of my face or I’ll break it.”
The threat might have been more intimidating if Bakugo didn’t look half-dead on his feet. Oda almost felt bad.
Almost.
“You can try.”
For a brief, tense moment, Oda genuinely expected Bakugo to lunge at him, to explod right there in the hallway. Instead, Bakugo just stared at him, chest rising and falling hard, eyes burning like he was waging an internal war. Then, without another word, he slammed the door shut in Oda’s face.
Oda stood there for a second, staring at the closed door, jaw tight.
“Does that mean you’ll stop the late-night bombing?” he called through the thick wood.
“Fuck off!” Bakugo yelled back.
Oda let out a long, exhausted huff, the kind that came from somewhere deep in his chest, and finally turned away. He dragged himself back down the hallway toward his room, irritation still buzzing under his skin but slowly giving way to something heavier.
And yet—annoying as it was—a small part of Oda pitied him.
Because he’d guessed the reason behind Bakugo’s late-night explosions almost immediately, and it was painfully familiar.
Quirk activation during night terrors.
Trauma replaying itself when the mind lost its grip. Power lashing out uncontrollably in sleep. Oda dealt with the same thing. That was why he wouldn’t sleep without his medication, why he was so terrified of drifting off unguarded. He was pretty sure that if he did, he’d tear a hole through the building and hurt someone without ever meaning to.
And Bakugo was facing the same problem.