The two of them arrived at the destroyed Ground Beta. The same place where they had fought their very first battle after joining the academy. The night air was cold, and stillness wrapped around the space as though it were holding its breath before a storm.
Bakugo stopped in the middle of the field and turned his back to Midoriya, who stood a few steps behind him, breathing lightly, his heartbeat climbing.
"Here..." Bakugo broke the silence in a low, rough voice, weighed down by something Midoriya had never heard from him before. "This is where we had our first fight after entering the academy. That day, you showed me a Quirk I'd never seen in my entire life."
Bakugo turned around slowly. His eyes weren't burning with their usual anger. They were dark and bloodshot.
"I've been thinking a lot. Since the sludge villain incident, through what happened at Kamino, all the way to today's license exam." Bakugo narrowed his eyes and added firmly. "That villain leader, All For One. I heard about his power. He can steal Quirks and give them to others."
Midoriya's eyes bulged in shock, and he began stepping back involuntarily, but Bakugo kept firing his words like bullets.
"That explains everything. How a Quirk appeared out of nowhere for you, how it used to destroy your body at first like it didn't belong to you, and how All Might's power matches exactly what you do."
Bakugo pointed a finger at Midoriya, his voice shaking with emotion.
"All Might lost his power. Your Quirk, you got it from him, didn't you?! He passed it to you!"
Midoriya lowered his head without a word. He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. There was no room left to run or lie.
"Ka... Kacchan... I..." Midoriya whispered, and his silent confession was enough to confirm every one of Bakugo's suspicions.
Bakugo's body shook, and a broken, painful smile spread across his face.
"So that's it then. But the hell doesn't stop with you, you damn Deku!"
Bakugo raised both hands to cover his face for a moment, then dragged them violently back through his hair and shouted.
"At that cursed camp, I thought I was strong enough to protect myself! But what happened?! That bastard with the three swords, he saved me, and paid for it by getting kidnapped in my place!"
Bakugo stomped his foot into the ground hard enough to crack it slightly, and continued in a voice dripping with frustration.
"I went to Kamino! I flew through the air and grabbed his hand to wipe out that humiliation, to pay off that damn debt and get my pride back! But what did I find out there?! I found out I was nothing but a 'secondary target' to that obsessed Shigaraki! While moss head, he was the 'primary target' for the villain leader himself!"
Bakugo struggled to breathe, his chest heaving violently.
"Even the villains see that he's better than me! Someone without even a Quirk, and he surpassed me, became the focus of the strongest villain in the world! And because of him, because of his kidnapping, All Might was forced to fight and lost everything he had!"
Midoriya's eyes bulged further as he finally grasped the full weight of the double knot strangling Bakugo.
"If I hadn't been weak at that camp! If I hadn't needed someone to save me at the last second, Zoro wouldn't have been taken! And All Might's era wouldn't have ended that way!" Bakugo screamed, tears he refused to let fall shining in his eyes. "I'm the reason that whole damn chain started! And yet, you're the ones who pass!"
Bakugo lit up violent explosive sparks in both hands, lighting the field with a burning orange glow.
"You inherit his power and get a license! And that bastard causes his retirement, and still he passes and walks around cold like nothing happened! While I'm left behind, failing like trash and treated like a kid who needs protecting!"
Bakugo pointed his blazing palms at Midoriya with a murderous look.
"Fight me, Deku!! I want to know what you and that swordsman have, that I don't! Why did the man I always admired choose you?! I'll rip the answer out of you right now!"
And the moment Bakugo finished his harsh words at Midoriya, readying himself to lunge, the sound of quiet but heavy footsteps echoed from among the rubble shadows surrounding Ground Beta.
Bakugo and Midoriya froze where they stood. Both turned toward the source of the sound.
From the darkness, Zoro emerged with measured steps, his right hand resting quietly on his sword hilt, his eyes watching them both with a cold stillness. He had been following them since he heard their conversation from his balcony at the dorm.
"What are you doing here, you bastard?" Bakugo shouted, anger veins bulging along his neck. "Were you spying on us, following us around like a rat?"
Zoro didn't answer. He kept walking until he stood at a short distance from both of them.
Bakugo smiled a savage smile and raised his blazing palm toward Zoro. "Are you in that much of a hurry to die?"
Zoro furrowed his brow coldly. "What are you talking about?"
"I was going to come to you the moment I finished crushing this damn Deku!" Bakugo shouted, his voice echoing through the empty field. "But since you dragged your feet over here yourself, you just saved me the trouble of looking. I'll crush both of you together right now!"
"Do you think I'm some idiot who can't see what's happening in front of him?!"
Zoro stayed where he was and gave Bakugo a calm look. "I don't get it. What exactly are you raving about?"
"Your power! Heh... your power makes me laugh at how stupid this all is!" Bakugo laughed bitterly, but his eyes still burned with dead seriousness. "Do you really think you're fooling me? How can someone 'without a Quirk' pull off all that garbage? Don't try telling me what you do is just physical strength and martial arts and playing around with swords!"
Midoriya froze in place, while Zoro kept his expression flat as he listened.
"I've been watching you since the beginning!" Bakugo kept unloading, throwing out his evidence one piece at a time like gunshots. "During the practical exam, all of us faced teachers from the academy, so why did they bring in a pro hero from outside just for you? And why did they isolate you in some far off zone for your fight? You're getting some unnatural level of support and attention from the administration!"
Bakugo took a step forward, his voice climbing sharper. "And why were the villains specifically targeting you as the primary target at the summer camp? And what's the story behind that terrifying aura you hit me with before, the one that froze me in place without you even touching me?! And even that pathetic reporter at Principal Nezu's press conference, how did you make him tremble and run just from one look, like death itself was standing in front of him?!"
Bakugo struggled to breathe, his chest heaving, and he looked at them both with blind resentment. Both of them had passed, both of them were ahead of him, and both of them were hiding a secret that made him feel like he was falling behind everyone else.
"You're all making a fool of me." Bakugo whispered through his teeth.
Zoro remained standing without a word for a long stretch of seconds. The air felt heavy. Even Midoriya didn't dare open his mouth, stunned by the precision of Bakugo's observations and the terrifying accuracy of his conclusions.
Finally, Zoro broke the silence. He let out a light sigh, and his cold tone hadn't shifted a single degree.
"You've genuinely impressed me." Zoro said it calmly. "Your intelligence and your sharp observation aren't a joke."
Zoro put his hand in his pocket and stared directly into Bakugo's red eyes.
"But why did you wear yourself out over all of this? Why do you want so badly to know the source of my power, or my secret?" Zoro tilted his head slightly and threw his sharp question. "What exactly would change in you, or in this world, if you knew?"
Bakugo's fists trembled, and for a moment it looked like the question had stopped something inside him. But the fire returned to his eyes quickly, burning fiercer than before.
"What would change?!" he shouted, and stepped toward Zoro without hesitation. "Everything would change, you idiot! Because then I'd know I'm not some obsessive freak seeing ghosts around every corner! I'd know that everyone around me is carrying some hidden winning card, while all I have is exactly what your eyes can see. Nothing more than that!"
He struggled to breathe, and pointed a finger at Zoro, then at Midoriya behind him.
"You two walk through this world like some hidden power is protecting you from behind! While I train until my body breaks down, and pay every possible price, and still I stay the third one! I stay the one left behind everyone else!"
Zoro stayed quiet for a moment, then crossed his arms over his bare chest and fixed his gaze on Bakugo without wavering an inch.
"Is that so?" He said it in a cold tone that carried something closer to a genuine question than mockery. "Then let me ask you something. Who carried an exhausted body through the air, in the middle of factory rubble with no known limits, on enemy ground that could kill him in the blink of an eye?"
Zoro didn't move, but his tone gained an extra weight.
"Who decided, with no 'hidden winning card,' with no secret giving him an advantage, to fly toward Kamino and rip me out of there?"
Bakugo's eyes bulged, and his lips trembled without a single word coming out.
"There was no one carrying a secret in that moment, Bakugo." Zoro added in a low voice. "There was just you. And your decision not to leave me there."
For a moment, it looked like the words had pierced straight through the armor Bakugo had built around himself all night. His feet stumbled backward a step, and the fire pulled back from his eyes for a second, replaced by naked shock.
But his pride refused to surrender that easily.
With a hoarse scream, Bakugo unleashed a massive explosive charge at Zoro, not with intent to kill, but as a desperate cry searching for any way out of the weight strangling him.
Zoro didn't budge an inch. He raised his sheathed sword in one smooth motion barely visible to the eye, and absorbed the explosion with a precise sideways deflection. Smoke and sparks scattered into the cold night air, and Zoro didn't retreat a single step.
Bakugo stood breathing violently, his arms still extended in front of him, his eyes staring at Zoro in a daze mixed with something close to silent breaking.
Zoro lowered his sheath slowly and looked at Bakugo with no trace of victory or mockery.
"Every one of us carries something from that night at Kamino." He said it in a calm voice. "You already know I was the 'primary target.' But knowing the shape of a wound doesn't mean you understand its depth."
He turned toward the dorm, but stopped after two steps, without looking back.
"And Bakugo." He added in a slightly softer tone. "Whatever guilt you're carrying, dumping it on Deku isn't going to fix anything. No one chose me to be a primary target that night, exactly the same way Deku never chose you to be a secondary one."
He walked a few more steps, then added without slowing his pace: "Go to sleep, both of you. Tomorrow's going to bring its own difficulties, whether you two like it or not."
Zoro's shadow gradually faded toward the dorm entrance, leaving behind a silence heavier than any that had come before it that night.
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