Chapter Text
At the age of 18, Katsuki was legally allowed to do many things. He could qualify for his hero’s license once he graduated from UA (which he would as soon as he got back!), he was licensed to drive most vehicles, and he was able to begin applying for university testing for acceptance (if he was interested in that nerd shit). One thing he was not allowed to do, apparently, was rent an apartment. Under the age of 20, it was illegal to rent independently without permission from a parent or legal guardian, which Katsuki did not have in this world. It was also illegal to work in several different types of jobs without parental permission, and to buy many different types of substances.
This was why, when Katsuki tracked down someone who could make decent fake identities, he’d told the man to make his say that he was 20. It just made his life a lot easier, and it’s not like it was a huge age jump. Besides, in his own world, a Hero’s License granted a legal exemption to almost all age restriction laws, so he was obeying the law according to his own world. Mostly.
That’s what he told himself when he threatened the underworld nerd into putting together his fake paperwork. A driver’s license, family register, number card, insurance card, and even a residence card in case he needed to claim to be from the U.S. It would make a convenient excuse for a lack of paper trail in the Japanese government, and would cover him if there was a cultural misunderstanding of some kind. The existence of quirks and 200 years of time had probably drastically changed some aspects of the surrounding culture. He’d already noticed that sex and related topics were more taboo, especially LGBT+, compared to what he was used to, and there were probably other major topics similar to that.
He’d managed to start making money as a male model, his natural hair and eye coloring making him stand out drastically and his modeling career took off much faster than he expected. He had to work part time to help with making up the money, but he was able to do that as a bouncer at a bar in a less savory part of town. While he had to be careful not to get bruised to make sure his modeling wasn’t affected, drunkards presented no challenge for the trained hero, even when he didn’t use his quirk.
The hardest part of all this had been finding a place to stay. He’d had to rough it for several nights to be able to get his feet under him, and living without access to showers was not just gross, but actually unhealthy for him and the people around him. His sweat was different enough from true nitroglycerin that it wasn’t a health risk in low doses. Even if he, theoretically, held hands with someone, it would take several hours of hypothetical hand-holding before there started to be any effect. Of course, he had a significantly strong immunity to his own sweat as well, it actually helped him because nitroglycerin lowered blood pressure and his temper tended to raise it. However, even he would begin to feel the effects of nitroglycerin poisoning if he went for days without showering. Plus, he couldn’t start modeling until he had reliable access to hygiene supplies.
Eventually, he’d signed up for a free month of gym service, then used their showers there. It was great, because he could stay in shape and had access to a place to clean himself up. After that, he’d called up the modeling company. To try and get more stable income too, he initiated his first attempt at a hero-like career by getting a part time job as a bouncer at a bar in a sketchy area. With three paychecks under his belt, he’d found an apartment he could afford in a city a ways outside of Tokyo. It had a couple of plugs for electronic kitchen stuff, a working toilet, and just enough square footage to lay down. The walls were peeling from water damage, but he couldn’t smell or see any mold, so it was safe enough until he could get some more money together.
One surprising thing he found though was that his phone worked here. At least, mostly. He had no service whatsoever, but he could connect to wifi and use his internet browser. His phone was also a special model made for heroes, extra sturdy with a high res camera for collecting evidence, and, most importantly, a solar charger built into the back of the phone. He had some social media apps, and it hadn’t taken much research to find what the main forms of social media were here. He created a handle to post pictures from his shoots and from his life to try to drum up some internet cash as an influencer, but he really didn’t have high hopes for that without the pre-established fame from winning the Sports Festival.
He’d thought briefly about going by @DynaMight for his handle since that was his current one at home for his public profile, but the people in this world wouldn’t get the reference and he didn’t want to be needled for supposedly spelling dynamite wrong. So, instead, he went by the best name ever: @KingXplosionMurder, his personal profile name at home, and set his profile picture to a photo of him wearing his signature black shirt and orange X from his hero costume, minus the rest of his hero gear.
He felt settled, he had his physical and immediate needs taken care of, now he just needed to get home. He had been stuck here for a month already, but he found that he had little to no path to escape. There seemed to be absolutely nothing like quirks, magic, sci-fi wormhole tech, or anything remotely close to something that might help him. The only unexplored path Katsuki had was Kira and his mysterious method of murder.
He’d done his best to track the murders, with a hundred or so tabs open on his phone to different articles since he couldn’t print anything and didn’t have access to a computer, but his lack of resources really slowed him down. So far, he’d managed to figure out that Kira had access to private information that he suspected was from the police, and that Kira could control the time of death and what criminals did just prior to death.
Admittedly, that last bit was actually not public knowledge, but there was a small group of cops who came down to the bar Katsuki worked at and they drank themselves silly until they answered any question he had about the investigation.
From that information, it might be a leap of logic, but Katsuki suspected Kira could kill with more than just heart attacks. After all, if he could control what someone did right before they died, why couldn’t he make them jump into traffic or something? From there, supervillain logic was easy to figure out. The deaths Kira wanted to be associated with were heart attacks, and the ones he wanted to keep hidden weren’t. However, there were so many naturally occurring accidents every day that Katsuki had no way to discern the difference between real accidents and murders made to look like accidents.
He sighed, and looked at the building in front of him. The exams for Tokyo University were scheduled for today. He claimed that he hadn’t attended high school to explain his lack of academic transcripts, and made up a middle and elementary school in the United States. His mothers fake name on his records was Mary, while his father had a Japanese name of Kasu.
The university had agreed to let him sit the exam (well, a bit of hacking meant that he retroactively applied before the deadline and faked some reviews and shit), but whether or not he was able to attend was completely dependent on his score. However, he was confident in his ability to ace it.
He ended up seated near the front of the testing area, and he could see the proctor staring at him. Katsuki wanted to snap at him to mind his own business, but he could tell that would just get him kicked out for disruption. Even by his home’s standards, people often said he acted and spoke like a hoodlum. By this world"s standards, he looked the part too with spiky blond hair even if his appearance was rather normal for back home. He only saw a handful of people in the room with bleached blond hair, a few more with brown, but anyone whose hair wasn’t black definitely had it cut and combed into a prim and proper look that would make Best Jeanist proud. High end shits.
“Face forward,” the proctor said swiftly, and Katsuki turned his head forward and carefully signed his new name Katsumi onto the paperwork as he settled in for the long haul.
“Sit properly,” he heard the proctor somewhere behind him. He spared a quick second to glance back and see a sleep deprived homeless looking student who had been sitting on their feet adjusting, then faced forward once more to focus on his test.
Leaving, he sighed. He felt good about pretty much the entire thing except the Japanese section and the history sections of the test. He knew he had aced math and science, but language changed a bit over 200 years and though he’s researched the history of this world before the test, he still wasn’t confident in it.
Not that he would ever say that, out loud or in his conscious thoughts, because he was Katsuki Fucking Bakugou and he was the best at everything. Katsuki pulled out his phone and signed in to the guest wifi at the university since he was on campus anyway to look up recent news on Kira. Nothing besides the normal deaths, so the police were clearly trying to keep the strange murder experiments hidden. Sucks that they had so many people in the know, it made leaks really easy. If L really wanted to keep information on Kira private, he would need a smaller group of people that he trusts. Until that happens though, Katsuki was happy to chat up the cops who came into the bar.
He put his phone in his pocket and left campus.