Fuck her life sideways.
That's what she thought when she checked the rankings that morning. Again. Like checking would somehow change the number. Like the algorithm would suddenly realize it had made a mistake and she was actually supposed to be in the top ten.
One hundred and eight.
She'd broken into three digits. Finally. After two years of active hero work. Two years of night patrols and villain takedowns and saving civilians from burning buildings and collapsed overpasses and quirk-related accidents that made the news for maybe six hours before everyone forgot.
One hundred and eight.
Great. Right?
It should have been great.
It wasn't great.
Because Katsuki Bakugo was number five. Or maybe six. She'd heard his ranking dropped recently—something about his attitude during a press conference, some journalist asking a stupid question and him telling them exactly how stupid it was. The Hero Public Safety Commission didn't like that. Didn't like heroes who made their jobs harder.
But he was still top ten. Still untouchable.
Still the strongest hero in Japan if you measured by raw combat ability, which nobody did officially because it wasn't about punching harder or blowing things up better. It was about cases resolved and public approval and media presence and all the things that had nothing to do with actually being good at the work.
She'd done the math once. Late at night when she couldn't sleep. If she maintained her current trajectory—if she kept climbing at the exact rate she'd been climbing—it would take her eight years to break into the top fifty.
Eight years.
And that was assuming she didn't plateau. Assuming she didn't get injured. Assuming the Hero Billboard Chart didn't restructure its ranking system again like it did every few years when someone important complained.
She closed the app.
Opened it again thirty seconds later.
One hundred and eight.
Amethyst. That was her hero name. She'd thought it sounded cool when she was fifteen. Mysterious. Elegant. Now it just sounded like a gemstone, which it was, which was the whole problem. Too pretty. Not serious enough. She should have picked something aggressive. Something that made people think twice.
But she hadn't.
And now she was stuck with it.
She scrolled past the rankings to the news feed. Deku had returned to active duty. Everyone knew that. It had been all over the media four months ago—Izuku Midoriya, the quirkless teacher who saved the world, back in the field wearing some kind of support armor that let him fight like he still had One For All.
Four months.
He'd climbed to number four in four months.
Of course he had.
Of course.
Because he was Deku. Because he'd fought Shigaraki Tomura and All For One and survived. Because he had Bakugo and Todoroki and Uraraka vouching for him, funding his gear, making sure he had the best support items money could buy.
She had... what? A rental apartment in a bad part of town and a hero costume she'd paid for herself by working part-time at a convenience store during her third year at U.A.
Life was unfair.
She'd known that before she became a hero. Everyone knew that. But knowing it and living it were different things.
She stuffed her phone back in her pocket.
The agency rejection email sat in her inbox. She'd read it twice already. We appreciate your interest, but we're currently not looking to expand our roster. We wish you the best in your hero career.
Form letter. Copy-pasted. The same thing she'd gotten from six other agencies in the past two months.
Nobody wanted a rank 108 hero.
Not when they could hire someone from the top fifty. Someone with name recognition. Someone whose face on a billboard would actually bring in clients.
She grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair.
Left her apartment.
The city was bright today. Too bright. The kind of brightness that made everything look washed out and fake, like a photograph with the saturation turned up too high. She walked three blocks to the convenience store. Bought a pork bun because she'd skipped breakfast and lunch was... she didn't know what time it was. Afternoon? Late morning?
It didn't matter.
She found a bench in the park. The small one near the shopping district. The one with the broken fountain that nobody had bothered to fix in five years. She sat down. Unwrapped the bun. It was still warm. Barely.
She took a bite.
It tasted like nothing.
Her phone buzzed.
Text : drinks tonight?? i need to vent about my boss
Text : saw you on the news yesterday. nice takedown
Text from her mother: Did you eat today?
She didn't answer any of them.
Instead she opened her hidden folder. The one buried three layers deep in her photo gallery. The one she'd password-protected even though she lived alone and nobody would ever look through her phone anyway.
Dynamight Fan Club.
It sounded stupid when she said it in her head. Sounded like something a middle schooler would have. But she didn't care. She'd been a member since she was sixteen. Since before it was cool to like Bakugo. Back when people still thought he was too aggressive, too violent, too angry to be a real hero.
She'd never thought that.
She scrolled through the recent uploads.
A photo from this morning's patrol. Someone had caught him mid-explosion, suspended in the air above a burning building, his gauntlets smoking. The photographer had gotten the angle perfect—the sun behind him, his face in shadow except for his eyes, which were bright and sharp and focused on something below the frame.
Another photo. This one from a week ago. Press conference. He was sitting at a table with his arms crossed, jaw tight, clearly pissed off about something. She'd watched the video. Some reporter had asked if he thought Deku deserved his ranking after being quirkless for eight years. Bakugo had called the question "fucking stupid" and walked out.
His approval rating dropped two points.
She didn't care about his approval rating.
She saved the photo.
Scrolled further.
A fan-taken picture from a distance. Grainy. Zoomed in too far. He was outside his agency building, talking to Kirishima. Just standing there. Existing. Looking perfect.
She zoomed in on his face.
God.
She was pathetic.
She knew she was pathetic.
But she didn't—
A crash.
Loud. Close.
Glass shattering.
She looked up.
Across the street. The jewelry store. The fancy one with the reinforced windows that were supposed to be shatterproof. They weren't shatterproof anymore.
Three people jumped through the broken window. Dressed in black. Balaclavas. Duffel bags stuffed with—probably jewelry. Probably expensive.
She was on her feet before she thought about it.
Her quirk activated automatically. Amethyst crystal formations spreading across her forearms, hardening into gauntlets. Defensive. Offensive. Blunt force.
She ran.
The thieves were fast. Already halfway down the block. One of them turned, saw her coming, shouted something to the others.
She was maybe ten feet away when—
"DIE!"
The wall exploded.
Not the front wall. The side wall. Brick and mortar and rebar bursting outward in a shower of debris and smoke and the smell of—
Caramel.
Burnt sugar.
Dynamight.
He shot through the opening like a missile. Airborne. Explosions propelling him forward, his gauntlets smoking, his face twisted into something between focus and rage.
She stopped running.
Stood there in the middle of the street.
Watched him.
He was—
He was faster in person. Sharper. The videos didn't capture it. Didn't capture the way he moved like every part of his body was a weapon, like he'd calculated the trajectory before his boots left the ground.
The thieves scattered.
He went after the one in front. The fastest one. Explosions firing from his palms, adjusting his angle mid-air, correcting for wind resistance and momentum and—
Something creaked.
She turned her head.
The storefront. The part of the wall that hadn't exploded. It was... leaning. Sagging inward. The support beam must have been compromised by the blast.
And there was someone underneath it.
A woman. Maybe in her sixties. Standing on the sidewalk with her shopping bags, staring up at the crumbling building like she couldn't process what was happening fast enough to move.
Fuck.
She ran.
Her quirk surged. Crystals shooting out from her hands, forming a lattice structure above the woman's head just as the frame collapsed. The weight hit her shield. Heavy. Too heavy. Her knees buckled but the crystals held.
The debris slid off. Crashed onto the pavement beside them.
The woman stared at her.
She pulled back her quirk. Let the crystals dissolve.
"Are you—"
"Thank you." The woman's voice was shaking. "Thank you, I didn't—I couldn't move, I—"
"It's fine. You're fine."
She wasn't fine. Her hands were trembling. Adrenaline. Delayed fear. Whatever.
She turned back to the street.
Bakugo had the thieves on the ground. All three of them. Pinned face-down with his boot on the back of one guy's neck, his hand sparking with residual nitroglycerin like he was daring them to try getting up.
They weren't trying.
They looked like they were praying he wouldn't kill them.
Sirens. Police. Always late. Always after the heroes had already done the work.
They pulled up. Six cars. More than necessary. Officers poured out, surrounding the thieves, hauling them to their feet, cuffing them.
Someone tapped her shoulder.
She turned.
An older man. Salaryman. Glasses. He bowed slightly.
"Thank you for protecting us. The debris—if you hadn't—"
"I was just—it's my job."
"Still. Thank you."
Another person approached. Then another. A small crowd forming around her. All of them thanking her. Bowing. Smiling like she'd done something extraordinary instead of just reacting on instinct.
She nodded. Mumbled responses. Tried not to look uncomfortable.
The smell hit her first.
Caramel. Burnt sugar. Sharper up close. Mixed with sweat and smoke and something else she couldn't name.
She turned.
Dynamight.
Standing there. Right there. Two feet away.
He was taller than she'd thought. Broader. The photos didn't—they couldn't—
"You." His voice was rough. Annoyed. Like she'd done something wrong.
She blinked.
"I knew about that debris." He jerked his chin toward the collapsed frame. "Was gonna blast it before it hit anyone. You didn't need to interfere."
"I—"
"But." He cut her off. Looked at her. Actually looked at her. His eyes dragged down from her face to her hero costume. The purple and black suit she'd designed herself. The crystal accents on her gloves. The utility belt that was mostly for show because she didn't carry much gear.
His gaze came back up.
"Good reaction time."
That was—
Was that a compliment?
"Who are you?"
Her brain stopped working.
"Hero name," he clarified, impatient. "What agency you with?"
"Amethyst." Her voice sounded wrong. Too quiet. "I'm... freelance. Right now."
"Freelance." He repeated it like the word tasted bad. "What's your ranking?"
"One hundred and eight."
He snorted. Not quite a laugh. Just... dismissive acknowledgment.
Then he looked at her again. Longer this time. Assessing.
"You want an agency?"
What.
"Mine's got an open spot. Just lost a guy to early retirement. Pay's decent. You'd mostly handle patrols and backup, but the combat experience is good if you want to climb."
He said it like he was offering her a job at a coffee shop. Casual. Uninterested.
But he was offering.
Katsuki Bakugo was offering her a position at his agency.
"I—"
"Think about it." He pulled a card from his belt. Shoved it at her. "Email's on there. Don't take too long deciding. I've got twelve other applications."
Then he turned.
Walked away.
Just like that.
The police were calling him over. Something about a statement. He waved them off, annoyed, but went anyway.
She stood there.
Holding the card.
Her hands were still shaking.
Not from fear this time.
The card was warm. From being against his body. From—
Stop.
She was wet.
That was—
She was wet and her face was hot and her heart was doing something violent in her chest and—
Too hot.
He was too hot.
The way he'd looked at her. The way his voice had sounded. Rough and commanding and completely unbothered by the fact that he'd just exploded through a wall and taken down three criminals like it was nothing.
She looked down at the card.
DYNAMIGHT AGENCY
K. Bakugo, Pro Hero (Rank #6)
There was an email address. A phone number.
She put it in her pocket.
Her phone buzzed.
She ignored it.
Just stood there in the middle of the street, surrounded by cops and civilians and the wreckage of a failed heist, trying to remember how to breathe.
...
She was going to take the job.
Of course she was going to take the job.
She'd decided that the second he'd opened his mouth.
Maybe before that.
Maybe the moment she'd smelled the caramel.