Chapter Text
Katsuki glowered at his beer. Kiri had convinced him to try a new bar this week and between the way his elbows stuck to the bar top and the television blasting some nonsensical interview with Shoto fucking Todoroki, he wouldn’t be making that mistake again for a while.
Icy Hot seemed confused as he answered what brand of socks he wore on patrol like he was trying to figure out if it somehow impacted his performance as a hero. They could have spent time talking about the surge of Trigger in Tokyo or anything related to actual hero work, but instead the whole fucking thing was focused on insignificant questions that anyone with a single brain cell could figure out by opening fucking google.
This is why Katsuki never did shitty interviews. It was a fucking waste of time. What was even more pathetic was how much that shit impacted the hero charts. Popularity had become a bigger pain in his ass than using his quirk in the winter.
Hawks once told him that if he ever hoped to break the top 50, he needed to put himself out there, gain some fans, and interact with the people of Japan . Katsuki tried it when he was 19 and ended up storming out when the overly chipper woman asked him what his fucking soap smelled like. If people needed to know how he smelled after a shower to become his fans, then fuck it, he would stay in moderate obscurity until he died.
Doesn’t mean it didn’t piss Katsuki off. It had always been his dream to be the best hero, it just wasn’t until he had graduated that he learned that the best and who was number one definitely weren’t the same thing.
“Man! I can’t believe Todoroki got on a primetime news spot!” Kirishima shouted over the noise, causing the few other patrons dumb enough to be drinking on a weeknight to jump and glance over at the boisterous hero.
The place was a nearly empty back alley sports bar, probably something fucking Denki had recommended. Even the bartender clearly didn’t want to be there and was leaning against the bartop watching the TV with a glazed over expression.
Katsuki rolled his eyes, “Dear old daddy probably pulled strings being Number One and shit. God! How is he more fucking awkward than when we were in high school.”
Kiri gave him the classic don’t be rude to your old classmates look and sipped his hard cider.
“Don’t give me that look, Shitty Hair. Nothing I said is fucking wrong.” Katsuki snapped.
“I didn’t say that you were wrong.” His friend started. “But… A lot of his fans find his awkwardness charming. People on Twitter are always on about how cute it is.”
Great. Not only did he have to sit in a shitty bar on a Tuesday night, but now he was listening to how fucking cute people thought the Half and Half bastard was. Normally he didn’t regret their weekly meetups, but tonight had Katsuki rethinking ever becoming friends with the idiot.
“If only they knew he believes every goddamn conspiracy theory he hears. Remember when Tape Face convinced him that Mind Freak from class B was Aizawa’s kid?” Katsuki sneered.
The redhead’s laugh echoed through the room. “He only believed it because they used the same capture weapon. It took weeks of him snooping around class B’s dorms before Shinso finally showed him pictures of his actual parents. Even though he dropped it I’m not sure he ever stopped believing it.”
Katsuki smirked into his half empty beer. He had more fond memories of that last year at UA than he would ever admit. It certainly helped that by that time, he’d been through enough therapy to get his head out of his ass and actually enjoy being around other people.
An overproduced watch commercial interrupted his thoughts by assaulting his ears with flowery music and suddenly the voice of his boss flooded the room. He slammed his head against the wood hoping to drown out the sensual tones of Hawks before cringing, remembering how unclean the surface was.
“I bet you could do commercials like that.” Kiri half wondered aloud. “You have the voice for it, but they would probably have to edit out all the times you start yelling and cursing at the production team.”
“If you have ever considered me a friend, you will bash my head in before shit like this ever comes out of my mouth.” Katsuki said as he buried his face further into the grime desperate to ignore Hawks talking about a wristwatch like he wanted to use it as a fucking cockring.
A heavy arm landed on his shoulders and he grunted at the sudden weight. They both had grown since first year, but Kiri was 6’6” of bodybuilder style muscle and not even Katsuki could fully ignore the sudden pressure.
“I never get tired of how manly it is when you admit we’re bros.” Shitty Hair sounded genuinely thankful.
“I take it back.” Katsuki grumbled. “Fucking kill me now so I can avoid this conversation.”
He lifted his head wincing at the layer of skin he left behind. Kiri was beaming at him clearly about to go into some long winded speech about how thankful he was that Katsuki had grown enough to admit their bromance, but thankfully the idiot was interrupted by a notification on his phone.
If Katsuki thought Kiri’s smile was bright before it was nothing compared to the blinding shark teeth grinning down at the message.
“Bakubro. Dude.” He almost whispered. Kirishima ran the hand not holding his phone through his spiked hair. He hadn’t given up the hair dye, but without Mina living in the same dorm to redye it constantly, his black roots had become a part of his daily look.
“Fucking spit it out, Shitty Hair.” Katsuki grumbled, finishing his beer and glaring daggers at the bartender when he made a move to refill it. There was no fucking way he would be staying for another round in a place like this. It was nearly 9pm and all he wanted was to get away from the constant reminder that anyone who would be number one had to have the approval of a bunch of fucking extras.
Kiri seemed engrossed with whatever was on his screen, ignoring the question. The Katsuki from high school would have blown up the idiot’s phone and told him not to ignore him, but the Katsuki six years into therapy pulled out his card and paid their tabs while he tried his best to find the patience not to walk out the door and leave Kirishima’s distracted ass behind.
After a few minutes, the phone was shoved in his face. He recognized the site immediately. Hero News Daily was the most popular source for actual hero information. Normally they reported on villain fights or hero injuries, which Katsuki respected for being something of actual substance, but this was an article under their Hero Profile tab. Next to a picture of Kirishima on his knees after a battle looking moments away from breaking down in tears was a headline.
“ Hero Red Riot: Scared Stiff! ” Katsuki nearly bellowed. “Are you fucking kidding me? Who the fuck had the god damn stupid fucking idea to write this shit about you! I’ll fucking find this idiot and introduce them to real fucking fear…”
Katsuki’s rage was interrupted by a full body laugh. Damn, he knew Kirishima was good natured and all that shit, but something like this had to piss even him off.
“Bakubro. It’s not like that. It’s just a clickbait title.” Kiri was still laughing. “I’ve been working on this interview for a while and I guess it finally came out.”
Katsuki was still furious. Partially because his best friend clearly didn’t give a fuck that some writer had the gaul to call him a cowered and because said best friend had went behind his back to do some shitty fanservice interview without telling him. Sure Kiri had done a few before, but they tended to be generic post fight bullshit or short magazine blurbs about upcoming heroes. He hadn’t, to Katsuki’s knowledge, ever sought out a chance to be the focal point of a major interview. Hero News Daily was a huge deal and an entire article devoted to him should have been on Katsuki’s radar. Fuck, maybe he was just a shit friend for not knowing what was going on in Shitty Hair’s life.
Kirishima was already halfway to the door when Katsuki finally untangled himself from his perceived shortcomings.
“Are you seriously not pissed some interviewer was stupid enough to write this bullshit?”
Katsuki knew his friend and he was far from a coward. He had seen the dumbass rush oncoming traffic to save small animals, sprint into collapsing buildings chasing after the sound of someone screaming. Sure, he had fears, it would be idiodic not to, but that never once in all of Katsuki’s years of knowing the guy, stopped him from throwing himself into danger to protect people.
Kirishima just shrugged and turned to grin at him, “You should read the rest of the article before you freak out.”
“You’re fucking impossible” Katsuki said shoving the phone back into his hand. He turned the opposite direction towards his apartment.
“Oh and I’m never letting you pick the fucking bar again, you idiot!” He shouted over his shoulder, still radiating anger.
“Have a good night Bakubro!”
~~~
Katsuki was still pissed when he finished climbing the three flights of stairs to his apartment. He unlocked the door and threw his shoes by the mat. There was no point in calling out that he was home since there was no one that would have heard him, excluding the old lady next door, but that was thanks to the thin walls. It had been like this since he’d left UA. He liked having his own space, away from people that demanded shit from him. Control over his life wasn’t something he was willing to give up after finally getting away from the hag that was his mother.
Roommates were messy, they stayed up past when Katsuki needed to be in bed, and people in general tended to be bad at giving him the space he needed to cool off when he was pissed. So after graduation he settled for a small, cheap single bedroom place a few train stops from Hawk’s office.
It wasn’t terrible. The appliances, water, and thermostat all worked and three years of cheap rent meant he had plenty tucked away in his bank account. Katsuki had planned on getting a nicer place once he made it up the ranks as a hero, but that required playing nice with media vultures and he wasn’t desperate enough to stoop that low.
Speaking of vultures, Katsuki looked down at his phone and saw that Kiri had texted him a link to the Red Riot hero interview.
Shitty Hair: dont blow anything up before you read it
Bakugo: Fine.
Bakugo: I’m still pissed you went the fanservice route to climb ranks.
Shitty Hair: i promise its not what you think
Shitty Hair: just read it bro. whole thing is super manly
How Kiri thought an article featuring a picture of him nearly trembling and calling him scared could be manly was beyond Katsuki, but he pulled out his laptop and opened Hero News Daily anyway. Despite respecting the news site more than others, he didn’t actually read it. Anything hero related he needed to know was covered in Hawks’ agency meetings.
The article was under the Hero Profile section of the site, completely separated from the interviews. It only took a glance to find that every article here was written by the same person, they were all pieces about heroes, and they almost all had borderline insulting titles. Whoever wrote this was popular enough to have a dedicated tab on the website and clearly relied on bashing the people they interviewed to get views. Fucking vultures.
Katsuki ignored the older ones before he found another reason to snap whoever wrote this in two and pulled open the one Kirishima had linked.
The same all too human face of his friend was front and center again. Kiri was in a half hardened state and looking closer Katsuki recognized that the photo had been taken after a particularly rough fight where his friend had been brought to his physical limits before finally bringing down the villain. It certainly wasn’t the most incredible Red Riot had looked, but Katsuki knew how much blood and sweat the hero had shed during the battle. Seeing someone use it to make him look weak sent sparks across his palms.
Katsuki glared at the title again as if he could frighten the offending works off his screen.
Hero Red Riot: Scared Stiff
By Ze
Ejiro Kirishima doesn’t seem like much of a hero. He’s a Crimson Riot fanboy with a quirk nearly as simplistic as his outlook on life. His hardening certainly doesn’t make him invincible and provides no more advantage than a decent set of support armor. It’s difficult to look at him and see much more than an average sidekick with an obnoxious desire to be manly. Working under the number two hero Hawks seems to be all anyone can expect of him. No one would blame him for living a comfortable life in someone else’s shadow. No one, but Red Riot himself.
I avoided asking about Ejiro’s fascination with everything manly for a while since I figured I already knew the answer. Manliness in my eyes is unshakable domination and power. It’s arm wrestling and beating your chest after victory. It’s never admitting that you’re wrong. Frankly it’s an outdated concept but to Ejiro it turns out, manliness is a lot more. It's compassion for the helpless, it’s kindness for those in despair, it’s beyond gender and classic masculinity, it’s about being the type of person Ejiro admires.
Never once in all of our conversations did Ejiro refer to himself as manly. It was a surprise at first because he would often rave about how manly some woman who helped him find his keys at the office was or how manly other heroes working to improve were. I realized after a while that manliness represented everything he strived for, both as a person and as a hero. He wanted to be eternally grateful for the stranger who held the door. He wanted to be infinitely kind no matter who had wronged him. He wanted to be as fearless as the heroes he admired when going into battle. They were ideals for him, but never reality.
I asked him about the first real villain fight he was in. It’s a common question in interviews and one I tend to overlook, but I’m thankful I took the time. As it turns out Ejiro had two answers. His hero debut fight with some unnamed villain, and the first time he had the opportunity to act as a hero and didn’t.
It’s not difficult to find the first official encounter Ejiro had with villains since the League of Villains attacks on UA were widely publicized while they occurred, but his first solo encounter was a battle during his first year internship with Fatgum. It was a stereotypical battle. The villain had a quirk that allowed him to grow knives out of his body and enhanced his quirk using the drug known as Trigger. Ejiro was able to protect everyone around him and apprehend the villain. All of that is easily found in a few articles from the time. What wasn’t written about was how the villain was trying to protect his friend by attacking the heroes that had captured him and that Ejiro had admired the villain’s loyalty and passion for the people he cared about. He told me how he unknowingly kept the villain’s spirits high mid battle by praising him for those traits and how it was the fight he learned that defeating someone is about who gives up mentally far more than who is physically stronger.
It seems ridiculous from the outside and there is a part of me that would agree, but there’s something endearing about a hero that is so encouraging that he forgets to discourage even the people he’s supposed to defeat.
The second story Ejiro told me was far more defining for him as a person. It happened in middle school. He was obsessed with both Crimson Riot and the idea of becoming a chivalrous hero just like him. I’ll always be one to say that aspiring heroes lack a fundamental understanding of the real threat of violence. Our society spends more time idolizing heroic sacrifices and placing plastic heroes on pedestals without understanding that the shinny lie we uphold just makes kids rush into situations where people get hurt and killed. Most kids end up in a dangerous situation after years of telling themselves they will be a hero and end up doing more harm than good.
That’s exactly what happened to Ejiro. After years of aspiring to be like the perfect version of Crimson Riot interviews sold him as, he finally saw a villain harassing a few girls. He told me his legs wouldn’t move, his body started shaking, and all he could think about was how to escape before he got killed. Suddenly every story he told himself shattered and he watched, frozen in fear, as someone else jumped in to do what he simply couldn’t.
I think that’s when most kids give up on their dreams. They tuck it away with their All Might posters and start dreaming of something more realistic, but it had the opposite effect on Eijiro. He acknowledged his fears and decided that next time he wouldn’t be controlled by them, that next time he wouldn’t freeze. I asked him if he still gets afraid before facing villains and he told me that the same mind numbing fear shows up everytime he enters a disaster zone, that he still shakes while he fights, that he still wants to run away, that every time there is a part of him that wants to give into the voice telling him he isn’t strong enough to survive let alone actually help others.
Looking at hero’s I always find their self sacrificing nature disturbing. People who have something to lose don’t run into disaster zones with smiles on their faces, they don’t grin while battling a villain trying to kill them. Either they want to die, or simply keep the lie of invincibility going until they have no more life to give. The hero Red Riot isn’t invincible and he doesn’t pretend to be. Red Riot is just a person, facing down the most dangerous situations imaginable, not with the lie of a smile in his heart, but the fear of someone who wants to live to see the next day. The line between bravery and stupidity blurs when I look at heroes, but I’ve finally pinned down where it is. Bravery has never been rushing into battles exuding absolute perfection. Bravery is being frozen with fear and finding the strength to fight anyway.
Katsuki couldn’t help the grin on his face, but he would certainly deny the warmth in his heart. Kiri was right. This shit was good. Not the vapid bullshit most interviews spewed, but somehow this Ze person had captured his best friend’s heart in their writing. More impressively, they had figured out Kirishima as a person, not just the hero persona he was trained by UA to put forward to the public. Whoever they were, they were fucking incredible.
The second half of the article was more hero analysis based, mostly how Kiri’s hardening quirk worked and how he had developed it through the years of training. It was well thought out and clearly done by someone who had a passion for dissecting quirks.
Katsuki was impressed. He’d never seen something like this. Hell, he wouldn’t even call it an interview or profile, more an analysis of Red Riot as a whole. There were even bits about current and past support items and how they interacted with Kiri’s quirk. Half the shit Katsuki was sure Kiri didn’t realize himself, but the author sure as shit figured it out.
If more people wrote about heroes like this Ze person, Katsuki might actually give a shit about reading them. At the end of the article were links to the author’s Twitter and a section for readers to leave comments. He scrolled to the top of the page, double checking the time stamp. It had been published while he and Kiri were getting drinks and over 2,000 people had already left comments. Even he knew that was an insane amount of interactions for as little time as it had been out.
Clicking on the Twitter link showed that Ze was verified and had 4.9 million followers. Their page was nothing but links to Hero News Daily articles and the occasional tweets thanking the people who supported them. Katsuki couldn’t help feeling bitter. This Ze person was more popular than most heroes and all they were doing was their fucking job.
Katsuki went back to the Hero News Daily page and clicked on the long list of hero profiles. Looking at the names, he was surprised to find that most of the heroes Ze wrote about weren’t the over-popular ones. Normally he would have expected Hawks, Mirko, and Endeavor as a start, but none of their names even came up in the search. There were a few popular ones scattered in, but looking at when they were published, they tended to be prior to the public latching onto them. If Katsuki had to guess he would say that a reason for their growth had been Ze's writing, especially given how popular it clearly was.
Katsuki was planning on leaving his fascination at that, but stopped when he saw a profile dated about a year and a half ago, Hero Uravity: Following The Money. Round Face and him weren’t particularly good friends, but after her performance against him in their first sports festival, he had a deep respect for the woman. She was determined and far more capable than anyone ever gave her credit for.
Around the same time Ze had published their article about her, she started gaining serious popularity and cracked the top 50 on the hero charts as a result. Everyone loved that she was so determined to earn money to support her parents. Normally a hero looking for financial gain was frowned upon, especially since the days of Stain, but people accepted Uravity and saw the intentions behind her goals.
Katsuki clicked the link and read through the whole thing. Ze captured her drive, intelligence, and unwavering effort better than he’d ever seen. Again they had an in depth breakdown of her quirk and support items through the years. He opened another article, this one about Shinhai, then another about Suneater, and another about Sugar Rush.
It was nearly 3am by the time Katsuki finally closed his laptop. He hadn’t meant to stay up so late, but Ze's words were captivating. Their outlook on heroes was brutally closer to reality than most reporters ever got and their ability to break down each one was fucking astonishing. Half the heroes Katsuki read about, he had known for years, lived with, trained with, bled alongside, but this person somehow had a deeper understanding of each of them.
Staring down his worn out reflection in his bathroom mirror while brushing, Katsuki made a decision. He was going to get this Ze person to write a profile about him. This was the only way he could rise up the charts without sacrificing himself as a hero.