Notes

Hello y'all, been a while since I've written for Kacchako! This is written for Kacchako Week, for day 0: AU! As such, of course I had to combine two of my favorite ships, Kacchako and DataStormShipping, lmao. That all being said,
WARNING. I don't go into too much detail, but this fic does involve a child getting kidnapped and kind of tortured. It's nothing graphic, and I'm assuming if you read/watch MHA it's nothing out of typical canon stuff, but just in case you weren't looking for that kind of material, figured I should let y'all know.

You don't really need any knowledge of the series, I don't think, but basic gist: it's a Yugioh show, so everything revolves around card games. You don't need to know anything about how the game works, really, since I don't delve into the dueling too much. Just know that, if you watched the OG series (or maybe GX or 5D's even), the card game has changed a ton.

If you are familiar with Vrains, the Ignis don't exist here, sorry lmao. This kinda mostly follows the basic premise of the first season - and if you've kept up with the series, you'll notice some very familiar scenes - but takes some liberties with the world and also with things that happen.

Anyways, I hope y'all enjoy, and thanks for checking this out!

by meeting you, the world is in color

In the year 20XX, technology has reached never-before-seen heights. Duel Monsters, the traditional card game that completely overtook our nation thanks to Industrial Illusions and Shimura Corporation, has now been implemented into virtual reality software. No longer do you have to keep track of physical cards - you can download them right onto your duel disk, for use in Link VRAINS; SOL Technology's leading dueling system.

Link VRAINS - standing for virtual reality artificial intelligence network system - makes the most of dueling, incorporating a virtual reality world and the power of AI to help you get the best online experience possible. Signing up and making an account is free for all, and if you don't want to buy virtual cards, never fear! The older models of SOL Technology's duel disks, still found in stores, have a slot that allows you to simply insert your physical cards; where it will then scan them for use in Link VRAINS.

Accounts stay firmly anonymous, so you should be rest assured that no user will have access to your private information. Please remember when using Link VRAINS to sit or stand in a comfortable, supported position; and to set safe limit for yourself while you are in the system. This reminder comes from our head of both cyber security and physical safety, Toshinori Yagi.

Katsuki ran down the street, eager to get home as soon as possible. His sixth birthday had passed earlier in the week, and it was finally, finally time to get his gift - his parents were finally allowing him to register for Link VRAINS. He was so excited that as soon as he got out of school, he had taken his deck out of his duel disk to hold and look at, just to remind himself that this was really happening.

The duel disk was the other thing that his parents had gotten him; an older model, since they knew he cherished the physical cards he'd spent all his allowance and birthday money for the last two years collecting.

He was so enthralled, looking at his cards, that he wasn't paying attention when he turned the corner on his normal route home.

"Ouch!" A small, feminine voice wailed from next to him as he toppled over, his cards falling every which way into the street. Somehow, he had managed to run head first into someone, he realized as he rubbed his head, blinking.

The girl in question pushed herself to sit up more across from him, big brown eyes looking in dismay at all the scattered cards. "Oh no," she mumbled, beginning to attempt to sort through the mess they'd made.

Katsuki instantly perked up when he realized that not all of the cards on the ground were his - a lot of what he was sure were her cards were there, too. "Do you play Duel Monsters too?" He asked, excitedly picking up his own Fire King monsters.

She looked up then, a smile blooming on her face. "Yeah!" Her smile then turned into a grin. "Do you wanna come over and play?"

He didn't even think twice about it, always up for a challenge. "You bet!"

The only way Katsuki could tell that time actually passed in the white room was when the lights went off, but how long they went off for was completely unknown to him. It was his only reprieve from what he should be doing, though, despite how much doing it actually hurt.

Duel, the AI would tell him, again and again and again until he couldn't take it anymore. Duel.

Katsuki Bakugou was so close to breaking, so close to just letting go and wasting away into the next life. Not dueling meant he wouldn't eat; meaning all he'd have to do is sleep, anyways. The blanket only showed up every so often, so he was used to sleeping without anything at this point. Sleeping sounded much, much better than dueling again, than getting electrocuted again, anyways. You Lose, the AI would tell him in its toneless voice, shocks going through his entire body.

He was tired. Sleep was his only refuge, as he laid down on the cold, unforgiving floor yet again; intent on not waking up for a long, long time.

"Hey," a voice called out, through the headset only a few feet away. Katsuki ignored it. Nobody could speak to him through it, anyways - just the AI telling him his wins and losses.

In all honesty, he'd lost count of how long it had been since he'd heard another person. He was sure he was just hearing things because of how tired he was. His mother had told him that he had an active imagination, after all.

"Hey," the same voice called out again, more forcefully this time. "I know you can hear me. Pick up the headset. Get up."

Slowly, Katsuki pushed himself up, mind drawing a blank. Maybe he was already dreaming - maybe he couldn't escape this place even if he dreamed, anymore. That wouldn't be that surprising, he supposed. It was all he knew anymore. He put the headset back on, covering his eyes but keeping them shut the whole time.

"Who is it?" He barely sounded like himself; voice meek and rusty from underuse, and he wondered if his parents would even recognize him anymore. How long had it been since he'd seen them?

"Three," the voice told him, as calm as could be in his ears. "Think of three things."

He didn't say anything, just listened to it. It had been so long, so long, since he'd heard a voice that wasn't cold and toneless. He wasn't sure if it was a person or just a different AI, but anything was better than You Lose again and again and again.

"Three things to live," the voice continued, "three things to go home, three things to defeat the enemy. By thinking, you can still live."

"Who are you?" Katsuki asked after a few moments of silence, once he realized he could even say anything in return, but he knew the voice was already gone.

Three things, he repeated to himself, taking a deep breath. One: I have to return to my family. Two: I have to grow up so I can do something with my life. Three: I have to show everyone I'm better than this.

It wasn't much, but it was a start - and for the first time since Katsuki had been kidnapped, he smiled as he began another duel.

Vaguely, as he pushed his cheek against the cold, hard floor, Katsuki wondered when he would be able to go home. The voice had come back, every so often, to remind him of three things - his own three things had now been solidified, and he thought of them often, as the voice told him to - but he was still tired. Living was something that was foreign to him, now.

What was it like, he wondered, back with his parents? Had he been happy? What had they done together? All he could think of now was that voice, dueling, and trying hard not to cry when he was shocked and denied a meal. His whole body ached, but his mind begged him to try again. He was so hungry. He was so tired. He was always tired.

"Hey," the voice sounded out from his headset, but he didn't even bother to pick it up. "Hey."

"You again," he whispered, throat burning at the words. It had been so long since he'd last had anything to drink.

"You did well," the voice said, and Katsuki blinked. It had never said that before. "I'm sorry it took so long. You can go home soon. I promise."

He could hear the telltale beep of the end of the connection, but all the same, he forced himself onto his knees to crawl over to the headset. "Home?" He asked aloud, knowing very well nobody could hear him. "I can go home?"

It didn't take long after the voice had told him that for a door to open up, where he'd only thought there'd been a wall. A man - a policeman, probably, his mind recognized - burst into the room, but immediately quieted himself down and bent down on his knees.

He started falling asleep, then, but the feeling of being picked up and put into a blanket was one he was sure he'd never forget.

"Thank you," he whispered, and though the man who was holding him didn't hear, it didn't matter. It wasn't for him.

Three things, his mind whispered, and he finally allowed himself to close his eyes.

As soon as he'd gotten out of the hospital, Katsuki threw out his deck. The Fire King cards that he had once thought were so cool haunted him now, reminding him of everything that had happened in that small, and white room.

Three things, that voice whispered to him; and he had clung to it like nothing else. Three reasons had become his mantra, the only thing that kept him going on those long, hard days where he couldn't eat because he lost his duels. Three reasons had become everything he had on those days.

It was still everything to him, really. His parents had never recovered from the shock, and when he had finally gotten released from the hospital, everything was different. The loving, albeit annoying, family with bright mornings and kind smiles had been thoroughly replaced during the apparent six months Katsuki had been kidnapped for. His father looked hollow, a shell of his former, gentle self, and his mother was in and out of the hospital for reasons they refused to speak with their son about.

They tried, Katsuki knew, but as time passed he realized things were never going to go back to what they once were. By the time he was ten, he had entirely forgotten what things had been like before that fateful day and that horrible white room.

Still, though, he didn't duel. Still, though, he didn't recover.

Time hadn't moved, and it was wearing on him as everyone else seemed to keep going. Still, now fourteen, he remained stuck in that incident from eight years ago. He could remember the cold white room, the hard floor, the feeling of slowly starving as he lost duel after duel…

The voice. The voice that had kept him going that day, kept him from completely giving up or giving in. Three things, it had told him, which even now kept him going every single day. It kept him trying to go to school, it kept him trying to pretend like his parents could recover and things would one day go back to normal.

Kept him pretending that one day he'd go back to dueling and become as great as the legendary All Might.

Most of all, though, as he got older, it kept him thinking about it. Was that girl - at least, he thought it had been a girl - still trapped there? When he and the five other kids had been rescued, he hadn't heard her voice among them. Katsuki had purposefully gone to every single child to check; wanting to thank the girl for giving him the courage to keep going, but she hadn't been there.

And now, eight years later, he was starting to wonder if he should go looking for her on his own.

There had been no media coverage of the incident, he had found on one of his many sleepless nights, driven from sleep with nightmares of You Lose and electrocution. Nobody seemed to know anything about it, as if it never happened at all, and any attempts to post about it on the many news forums Katsuki had come across would get his commends purged very, very quickly.

It was on one of those nights that he had decided that he couldn't take it anymore. That if the authorities didn't want to give him the answer, didn't want to find this seventh lost kid, he would have to do it on his own.

So one day after school, he stopped at the card store on his way back home - one of the only physical shops left in the city - and put together a deck. He didn't throw up, despite how nauseas the very act made him, and decided that was a good enough sign that he was ready.

Katsuki had never rushed home so fast in his entire life. Once he got back, he dug through one of the closets to find the duel disk his parents kept with the other things from that time, cringing the whole way through and even harder once he actually put it against his skin.

"Three reasons to keep going," he whispered to himself as he went through the motions of setting up a Link VRAINS account. "One: I have to know about what happened, and why it's so secret." A deep breath, and then: "Two: I have to do this so I can move on." Another deep breath. "Three: I have to find her. I have to save her."

He nodded to himself, finishing the last touches on his Link VRAINS avatar before allowing himself to be pulled into the virtual reality world he'd been so dead set on avoiding for so long. "No more," he told himself with force once he materialized in the virtual city. "I won't be scared anymore."

Since he'd taken on the alter ego Ground Zero in Link VRAINS, Katsuki had unfortunately not found much out about the incident that took his life away. Slowly, he'd been making some sorts of progress - more like, he'd been making a name for himself in the virtual reality network to have others help him make some progress.

He hated having to rely on others for anything, and this particularly grated on him. Since his parents were no longer people he could rely on, he'd been a fairly independent person, even learning how to cook and take care of himself from a very young age. After the experience he had, it was hard to trust other people to take care of him. To get the job done properly.

This was no different. There were a lot of bounty hunters and information brokers in Link VRAINS who made their livings by helping out people like him, but it was hard to hand the reigns off to someone else he didn't know. He doubted he could come to trust any of them, either.

It had been a long time since he had trusted someone.

Which is why despite the fact that none of this was his strong suit, he refused to take a back seat and let someone else do the work for him. Even though yes, technically he would hire people in the network, he still worked with them - often times helping them on information missions by being a distraction, or dueling his way into places where they could then work their magic.

It was far from an ideal situation, but it was something. It was progress.

Of course, nothing was ever that easy.

All his running around looking for information on something so top secret had, both fortunately and unfortunately, attracted the attention of a group called the Knights of Hanoi. Through some of his finds - mostly from the help of a guy whose avatar was called Red Riot, and another named Deku - he figured out that the incident he was involved in as a child was called the Hanoi Project. So when the Knights of Hanoi came looking for him, obviously, he did what any sensible person would do.

He challenged them all.

Apparently, according to Deku, who irritated the shit out of Katsuki, the Hanoi had been terrorizing Link VRAINS users for a while now. Constantly trying to get people to stop using the service, saying how SOL Tech was evil; generally just spreading all sorts of lies. Nobody really knew why they were trying to cripple Link VRAINS the way they were, but most people were sick of them at this point.

When Ground Zero started taking them out, one by one as they challenged him, he somehow became somewhat of a celebrity, much to his chagrin. And suddenly, all those people who had him perform menial tasks or pay up were now offering to help him out for free.

He didn't like it, but it was better than people not wanting to associate with him at all, he supposed.

It had been two years since he took on the alias of Ground Zero, and finally, finally, he was getting somewhere.

Over the last two years, he'd been slowly and steadily taking out all of the Knights of Hanoi who dared to come after him. Katsuki still hated dueling, he still to fight the waves of nausea he would get when it started, but he hadn't lost a match once since all this had started.

He may have hated what had happened to him as a child, but the fact remained that it made him into an unstoppable force that neither Hanoi nor SOL Technologies could do anything about.

And it had attracted the attention of the self-proclaimed leader of the Knights of Hanoi, too.

She stood before him, donning what almost looked like a superhero costume - donning a bodysuit made up of black and pinks, with puffed out boots and circles around her arms, she looked like something straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. The only thing that bothered him about her Link VRAINS avatar was her face - or lack thereof.

The mask she wore maybe could've been normal, if it wasn't for the fact that the clear part, where you were supposed to be able to see her eyes, had bright, yellow bug eyes painted on to it, giving her the appearance of an alien in human form.

It was incredibly unsettling, and Ground Zero did his best not to let it show.

"Are you the one they call Ground Zero?" She called out from the rooftop of a building, arms crossed over her chest. Something about the voice was familiar, but Katsuki couldn't put his finger on it.

"I am," he said back, not breaking gaze. He would not back down from this. Not when he was so close.

Red Riot had slipped him a document earlier - one that he'd been looking for a long, long time. It was documents from SOL Tech, supposedly information on the Hanoi Project and the one responsible for it. It could possibly contain the answers he'd been looking for over the last two years.

Answers that, truly, he'd been seeking since the incident happened.

"I hear you've been taking down my Knights," she continued, leaping down from the building to stand in front of him. Katsuki was shocked by how short she was; considering the kind of vibe she gave off, he figured she'd make her avatar taller. "And I also hear you're in possession of something I want."

The document. It was on his account, at the moment, so she couldn't swipe it yet. But if she defeated him in a duel…

"I am Uravity," she told him, bringing the arm with a duel disk attached up to her chest. "The leader of the Knights of Hanoi. And I want what belongs to us back."

Up close, her yellow eyes were even creepier. Everything else about her looked fully human, much like his own avatar, making the contrast even worse. Katsuki didn't shy away, however; he brought his own duel disk up high in defiance.

"You're not getting it, because I don't lose!" He shouted, mentally taking a deep breath. "Let's duel!"

"Very well," Uravity said, smiling at him. This time, he had to fight back a shiver - looking at that dead, emotionless face smiling was a sight he wouldn't be able to get out of his mind for weeks, most likely. "Let's duel."

He had expected this duel to be grueling, but Katsuki hadn't expected Uravity to be so… good. She had immediately figured out his Salamangreat strategy, seemingly having an out no matter what he put on the field; her Galaxy-Eyes Solflare Dragon's ability completely ruining his own board.

It was infuriating. Already, Katsuki was down to only 400 LP, and everything hurt.

He grunted, trying to push himself off the ground after the latest blast - which took out his Sunlight Wolf - wanting nothing more but to give up in that moment. Dueling wasn't even something he enjoyed. It had been a long time since he'd even considered it fun. Katsuki, as Ground Zero, only dueled because he absolutely had to. Desperately, he had wanted to know what had happened to him, why that had happened to him. He wanted to give himself closure, wanted to move on with his life.

"Giving up already, Ground Zero?" Uravity asked from across the field, her Galaxy-Eyes monsters floating menacingly in between them. Loathe as he was to admit it, her dragons were incredibly impressive.

Though, oddly enough, there was something about her words that reminded him of something. Of another time he had almost given up, and given into the pain. He shook his head, still on the ground, pushing himself up and away from those thoughts in the process. Ground Zero had a job to finish.

"I can't lose," he growled out, forcing himself to stand up straighter and meet Uravity's eyes. "There's three reasons why I can't lose!"

A look of shock passed over Uravity, so quickly that Katsuki barely even caught it.

"One: I have to find out why that incident ten years ago happened," he continued aloud, narrowing his eyes as he counted with his free hand. "Two: I must find closure so I can finally move on. Three: I cannot let the Knights of Hanoi terrorize any more innocent people! There's still someone I have to save!"

There was silence for a long few moments; only the sound of his virtual breathing filling his ears. Though it was behind a pane of glass and alien looking eyes, Katsuki could see Uravity's face morph into an odd expression at his words, before she quickly smoothed it out again.

"Then show me," Uravity said, waving her hand towards his duel disk. "Show me what you can do."

Whatever Katsuki had been expecting to hear after his impromptu speech, it most certainly hadn't been that, but he didn't let that stop him. He drew, praying, hoping beyond all hope that he could salvage this mess. Dueling wasn't exactly something that came naturally to him, anymore, but somewhere deep inside of him he knew exactly what to do next.

"Salamangreats are known for their recursion, you know," Ground Zero said, a lazy smirk making its way onto his lips. "We rise like the legendary phoenix."

And rise he would.

After he had managed to defeat Uravity, Ground Zero went to work. His old computer was slow, which made the process incredibly frustrating, but he didn't let it discourage him from his goal. Anything and everything about the Knights of Hanoi was saved into an old school offline hard drive that he had grabbed from the second hand store one day when he was coming back from school. Hacking had never been his strong suit, but Ground Zero had sway in Link VRAINS after his public execution of some of the Knights. Red Riot was always willing to do some hunting for him, and even Deku, who Katsuki found to be an annoying little shit, was often offering to help him.

He never told them why he was after the information he was after, and to their credit, they never asked.

The files he was currently reading, sent to him straight from Red Riot, had so far been the most useful. It was mostly a bunch of unrelated things clipped together, but one section stood out to Katsuki in particular.

Kai Chisaki was successfully infected on [DATE EXPUNGED]. The virus IGN007 did not stop his heart, but had rendered his body into a coma. He is currently being cared for by his adopted daughter Ochako Uraraka, at [ADDRESS EXPUNGED]. The Hanoi Project has successfully been expunged from all documentation.

Quickly, he searched through the other files he had collected from the depths of Link VRAINS for any other mentions of this Chisaki. The name didn't ring any bells, but clearly he was related to the Hanoi Project in some way, shape, or form.

After a few minutes of agonizingly waiting for his computer to load the search, something new popped up. He begrudgingly would have to thank Red Riot for this later, it seemed.

His eyes scanned over the document quickly, immediately realizing almost all of it had been expunged - just as the previous document had mentioned - but he took in what he could from it, anyways.

According to this document, Kai Chisaki was a head researcher at SOL Technologies, and orchestrated the Hanoi Project along with four of his interns. There was still no mention of what, exactly, the project was supposed to accomplish, but progress was progress.

At least it was a start. Now he knew to focus in on SOL Tech's databases instead of the Knights of Hanoi, which was certainly better than he was doing even earlier that day.

Besides, his run in with Uravity had left him pretty drained. That girl was a fantastic duelist, and even if he had won out in the end, it certainly wouldn't be easy pulling that off again. He needed some time to get better so he could beat her soundly, anyways.

There was also the matter of how familiar she seemed, in some ways, to him, but that was for another time. Quickly pulling up the Link VRAINS messaging system, he fired off a message to Red Riot.

To: Red Riot
From: Ground Zero
I need in on SOL Tech's security vault. Does tomorrow work?

If he had the patience, or the time, maybe one day Katsuki would learn how to do all this himself so he didn't have to keep relying on other people. For now, though, this would have to do. At least once he got the information, he did everything himself. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he was being force fed the answers he so desperately sought.

It didn't take long for Red Riot to get back to him, which wasn't a surprise. The guy seemed to always be online, and always willing to help him with the jobs. He wasn't really sure why, but he wasn't about to question his luck in finding such a talented hacker.

To: Ground Zero
From: Red Riot
Sure thing, man! I'll meet you in the usual spot.

The 'usual spot' was this weird, virtual restaurant that bounty hunters and information brokers liked to meet up in. Apparently, the person who ran the place would often have easy jobs for them, and over time it had just become a hub. It's where he first found Red Riot, a long time back.

Nodding to himself in satisfaction, Katsuki switched off his old computer, moving himself out of his room. He was starving, and still needed to finish his homework, anyways. There was nothing else he could get out of that first document, so he would have to wait until tomorrow to find out anything new.

His veins buzzed at the possibility. Finally, finally, he would know why that had happened to him. Maybe he'd even find that girl.

Katsuki shuffled uncomfortably from his spot in the back of the virtual restaurant, waiting impatiently for the bounty hunter to show up. Red Riot seemingly had no sense of punctuality, which infuriated him. The only reason he continued to work with him instead of finding a new source of information was simple - '

The other boy never questioned him.

The jobs got done quickly, and once they were all set, Red Riot would be on his way; no questions asked. It was a decent arrangement, especially for something as top secret as what Katsuki worked on. Even if it wasn't really necessary to keep it so private, he didn't want the world knowing about the Hanoi Project yet.

Not when he still didn't understand why he was put through that himself.

He was getting ready to open up the messaging system on his duel disk when a familiar voice greeted him from the entrance.

"Hey, dude!" Red Riot jogged over, looking just as ridiculous as always. Katsuki knew he wasn't really one to talk with his outfit, but at least he wasn't shirtless with just sleeves. "Are you all set to go?"

"Who do you take me for," Katsuki said, narrowing his eyes at his companion. "Let's get going. I have a lot of stuff to cover once I'm in there."

Red Riot rolled his eyes in good nature, and gestured towards the door. "Let's go, then!"

The inside of the vault made Katsuki feel weird as he moved through it, floating in the empty space of virtual reality. There was always some kind of disconnect between how things felt in real life versus when he was in Link VRAINS, but this was taking that to an entirely new level. In Link VRAINS, for instance, he couldn't float through the air like he was flying. Link VRAINS at least generally attempted to let you feel like you were living normally, but all bets were off here.

It didn't take long, however, for him to find the space he was looking for. Looking at it, he was sure it couldn't be anything else but the deepest section of the vault if the gold doors in the wall meant anything at all.

Pushing his weight towards it, still trying to figure out how to effectively move through space, he opened the executable file that Red Riot had given him before going on his way. Katsuki didn't bother holding his breath or anything as the program did its thing; he had full confidence that it would work.

The doors opened, and Katsuki floated inside. Immediately, however, gravity shifted back to normal, and he grunted as the weight of his body returned to him, feet planted firmly on the ground.

It took him a moment to regain his bearings, but once he did, he began looking around the room for clues. The large, circular statue in the middle was likely the information vault, he realized, blinking at it. The rest of the room was pretty bland, all things considered - there was nothing else in it at all, actually. Just the tile floor, the giant statue in the middle, and the doors.

Shrugging, Katsuki began his trek over to the statue to hopefully finally get more of the documents he needed to uncover what, exactly, had happened to him as a child.

From what he'd put together so far, he, along with five other children, had been kidnapped for six months. Once they were locked up inside that facility, each of the other five kids had experienced exactly what he had: trapped in a small white room, with only a VR headset. Forced to duel for food and water. The experiment, if you could call it that, went on until there was an anonymous tip from someone; calling authorities to go investigate the area.

After, he and the other six children were found, but the damage had been done.

Now, he thought with a deep breath, he would finally find out why it had all happened in the first place. Why this Kai Chisaki had done this to him.

He didn't make it more than two steps before a very, very familiar form materialized in front of the statue, blocking his path from what he'd came there to do.

"All Might?" Katsuki couldn't help but gape openly at the person standing in between him and the security vault. He was famous, after all - All Might was incredibly well known around Link VRAINS for being someone who helped out any player in need; whether it be newer users to the software or seasoned duelists.

The man coughed into his hand, looking mildly uncomfortable. "I'm Toshinori Yagi," he said, "head of security for SOL Technology."

Instantly, Katsuki's eyes narrowed. "How did you even find out I was here?"

The door behind him screeched open, and he flipped around to look at the newest wrench in his plan. Looking extremely apologetic, Deku stepped out, closing the large golden doors behind him.

"Hi, Ground Zero," he said, exhaling as he stopped in front of the now closed doors. "I'm really sorry about this. We aren't on SOL Tech business, though, I swear it."

"Like I believe that shit," Katsuki ground out, already raising his duel disk into an offensive position. He hadn't come here expecting to duel tonight, but if that's what it took to get to the bottom of the Incident, then there was no way he'd lose. "Which one of you losers am I fighting first?"

"Please," All Might - Toshinori Yagi - said as he stepped towards him, hands up in the universal 'calm down' position. "Ground Zero, I don't want to have to duel you. I'd like to talk about this."

He didn't even bother lowering his duel disk. "Unless you're gonna hand feed me the information I came looking for, we're dueling. No way in hell I'm leaving without it."

From behind him, Katsuki could hear Deku making all sorts of nervous noises, as he often did. How fuckin' stupid. He'd known there had always been a reason the self-proclaimed bounty hunter had irritated him, besides the annoying little quirks like constantly going off on a rambling tangent.

"Please," Toshinori Yagi said again, bringing his hand down to his side. "I know you're not a bad kid. Don't go down this path."

"You don't know shit," he hissed, duel disk still firmly held up. "You probably don't even know why I'm here. Now back off, or duel me."

Slowly, Toshinori raised his arm, frowning deeply. "If this is what it's going to take to stop you," he agreed, activating his duel disk. "Let's duel, Ground Zero."

The duel was less physically intense then Katsuki had been expecting, considering all the legends and talk surrounding All Might - Toshinori Yagi. It hadn't been an easy duel by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time didn't even compare to the duel he'd had against Uravity.

However, though Katsuki was dueling well, mentally, things were starting to grate on him, bit by bit. All Might had started the duel by trying to coerce him to stop what he was doing, and as the duel went on and Katsuki chipped away at the older man's Life Points, the fake sentiments became more and more frequent. All the while, Deku stood behind him, watching with careful eyes and a frown on his face.

"Ground Zero, please," All Might tried again, after successfully activating his trap card, Tindangle Delaunay; destroying Salamangreat Heatleo and summoning Tindangle Acute Cerberus, forcing Katsuki to set Salamangreat Rage and end his turn with only Salamangreat Balelynx on the field.

Unfortunately for All Might, despite his success at ending Ground Zero's turn, there wasn't much he could do with one card in hand. With a sigh, he set out face down and ended his turn, trying to focus instead on talking.

"Please what?" Katsuki scoffed, glaring at the duel field in front of him. "Please give up this duel? Not on your life."

"Please give up this needless desire for revenge!" It seemed All Might was finally snapping, and Katsuki sneered at the sight. "It won't grant you the happiness you seek. It will only continue to linger in your head, regardless of what you might find." Katsuki's nails dug deeper into his skin as he clenched his fist, holding back a snarl. "Please, let yourself become a normal teenager. You're only sixteen, aren't you? You deserve to have a normal life; hanging out with friends and only worrying about schoolwork. Let this go, for your own sake."

It would've been a beautiful speech - if he hadn't been talking to someone whose past had been inexplicably taken from them by force, for seemingly no reason.

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about," Katsuki started, almost wishing he was back in the real world to feel the blood pooling underneath his fingernails. "You don't know shit about me!"

From behind him, he could hear Deku take a step back, and he almost wanted to grin. Good.

"Ground Zero-"

"No, shut up and listen," he snarled, finally having enough of listening to him without saying much in return. Nobody else was here, and if it meant that All Might would finally get it through his thick skull… well, Katsuki supposed two people could know. That was alright. "I was kidnapped when I was six. You can't be stupid enough to not know that much, right?"

Each word he spoke was like a knife, but All Might nodded reluctantly. "Yes," he said, "I am aware of the basics of the Lost Incident."

"The Hanoi Project," Katsuki continued, correcting him with force, "was the reason me and five other kids were kidnapped. And do you know what exactly happened during those six months?" His voice was low, but it carried over the duel field nonetheless. Their monsters hung, almost frozen, waiting to continue, but it was clear neither All Might nor Katsuki had any intention of continuing the duel quite yet.

When All Might nodded once again, Katsuki continued, feeling the viciousness rise up within his chest, consuming him. "We were put into individual white rooms, with just a VR headset for company, and forced to duel. If we didn't win, we didn't eat. No contact with the outside world. No bed to sleep in, not even a normal bathroom to use. Just eat when you could, sleep, and duel. For six months."

Deku, from behind him, gasped, but Katsuki ignored him, staring down All Might as the older man stood there impassively. If he was anyone else, he wouldn't have thought he was getting through to him, but Katsuki could see it. The twitch in All Might's eye, the way his lips were now pointed downward instead of in a neutral position. Good.

"And you're telling me that I should just let that go? Let go of the fact that I had my childhood ripped away from me, and now I'll never get it back?"

His opponent's adam's apple bobbed up and down, before he turned his pained gaze onto him once again. "Ground Zero," he tried again, "I didn't mean that you should just forget about it. I meant that you should try to move past the things that have hurt you, instead of focusing on them."

"That's rich," Katsuki said, strangled laughter ripping from his throat. "That's rich, when I have no future! Time hasn't moved for me since I first woke up and was forced to duel to get scraps! Don't you get it," he tried, biting at his lips so hard that he was sure his real world body was bleeding. "I'm trapped. I've been stuck for the last ten years. Every night, for years, I couldn't escape it, reliving electric shocks. I can't move on, because it isn't an option. I don't have friends, nor a family that misses me," he continued, thinking back on his broken parents. "I don't have a life to be living. I need to know what happened to me - why it happened to me - to be able to even consider living again a possibility."

Katsuki shook his head, bringing his free hand up in front of him. "There are three reasons why I'll defeat you here. One: I deserve to find out the secrets of the Hanoi Project, and why I had to go through that as a kid," he said, lifting up a finger. "Two: I will prove to you that I am better. That even with everything, I can still come out on top. That I don't have to be a scared fucking kid anymore," he continued, putting up his middle finger to join the first. "And three: there was another person, who wasn't accounted for in the hospital when we got rescued," he said, inhaling deeply as he remembered her voice. "And she might still be in their clutches! She saved me once, and now I have to save her!"

With that, he drew, and smirked when he saw his hand. It was the only card he needed, with all the Salamangreats in his Grave already: Fusion of Fire. Despite only having Balelynx, his field spell, and two trap cards on the field, he knew he was in better shape, compared to the massive monster on All Might's side.

"Get ready to taste defeat, All Might!"

After he had successfully depleted the legendary All Might's Life Points to zero, Ground Zero stood tall, refusing to back down. "Out of my way. I have files to search through."

"Ground Zero," Deku said, finally stepping out from behind him, "I'm sorry that what happened to you happened. Really, I am. I hope in the future, you're able to be happy again. And maybe we'll be able to be friends?"

The words were sincere, but Katsuki scoffed. "Yeah, right."

Happiness wasn't even on his radar. If he could live normally, not have to worry about nightmares or not having enough food, then maybe, one day, he could think about happiness. But for now…

He thought again to that girl, who had spoken to him through the VR headset, and his heart felt full inside his chest.

I promise I'll save you, he thought, pushing past a logging-out All Might to get to the statue. I promise.

A scream threatened to tear right out of his throat the longer he sat at his desk, going through line after line after line after line of whatever he had managed to salvage from SOL Technologies. So much of it were things he couldn't really decipher, and even more of it was redacted, but so far, he'd gotten at least a few useful things out of it.

Mainly, that the Hanoi Project was originally supposed to introduce a new artificial intelligence to the world - one that would be built with its own free will.

However, six months into the experiment to see if it was even possible, it came to a sudden halt: an anonymous tip, called into the local Den City police, stopped the incident in its tracks. Katsuki shuddered as he thought about how long he possibly could've been in confinement for with those other five kids, had they not been rescued.

He knew exactly who had called in the tip, too. He'd figured it out the moment he read what, exactly, had stopped the experiment from continuing.

"Hey, you," a familiar voice chimed through the headset, but Katsuki didn't even flinch.

"It's that voice again," he whispered, trying hard to push himself up. He'd just lost yet another duel - how many had it been, now? It felt like it'd been weeks since he'd last eaten.

"It's okay," she soothed, voice sounding a bit static-y. "You did great. You don't have to fight anymore. You can go home, soon." It sounded a little hesitant, but he wasn't sure if that was just his imagination or not. He could barely tell if this was real; it had never said anything like this to him before, after all. "I promise."

He wasn't even able to pass out before the room exploded into natural sunlight; a door that he hadn't even known was in front of him the whole time opening up. An adult - a policeman, probably, Katsuki realized - scooped him right up, wrapping him in a warm blanket. He could barely keep his eyes open as he was carried through what looked to be a forest, almost not even registering the other few kids next to him.

"Wait," he mumbled, but the adult holding him paid him no mind. His mouth was so dry he could barely form words, but he just wanted to be sure - the child that had talked to him. That girl. She had to be there too, right?

He couldn't keep his eyes open long enough to figure it out. A dreamless, almost coma-like sleep overtook him as he walked in the real world for the first time in months.

It had to be her. There was no way she just would've happened to know that he was about to be saved that day. His adam's apple bobbed painfully, and his heart felt tight in his chest. She was still out there, somewhere. Maybe still out there, being held by the Hanoi for her crimes.

Frustrated with that fact, he continued to tear through page after page of what he had uncovered, finding the occasional useful thing; their address, so long as it hasn't changed, where the experiments took place…

Anything that could help him get to her - anything that could save her, the way she had saved him all those years ago. He would do it. He had to.

Hanoi, predictably, hadn't taken kindly to his new knowledge about the Incident - and thus, about them. The counter attack they started to launch in Link VRAINS was all anyone could talk about; even outside of the network system.

The message he'd gotten from an anonymous sender on Link VRAINS that morning told him all he'd needed to know: The Knights of Hanoi are building something called the Tower of Hanoi, the message had started with. It will take the entire week, but by the end of the week, anyone logged onto the system will lose their consciousness data permanently.

It was something that had happened in the past, in freak accidents; hence the need for Toshinori Yagi to step up as not only the head of cyber security, but physical security in Link VRAINS as well. SOL Technologies had argued that it would never happen again, but the public wasn't having it. It was something that sat in the backs of all their minds, when they'd stay in Link VRAINS for too long - could they be stuck there forever?

To hear that it was not only possible to do so, but also that Hanoi had figured out how… It wasn't an ideal situation. Of course, though, the message only got worse.

By "lose", I mean they will essentially be dead - a mindless husk of a body, with their consciousness data wiped from Link VRAINS entirely. Uravity will be in Link VRAINS on Sunday, ready to put the finishing touches on the Tower of Hanoi. Stop her at all costs.

The message wasn't signed, and the user could not be located no matter how much Katsuki had tried. He had even considered sending it off to Red Riot to inspect, since he was the hacker out of the two of them, but decided against it. He figured it was better not to cause any unnecessary panic about what could possibly happen.

So, instead of spending the rest of his week doing practically nothing but worrying inside the network, he'd decided to head to school.

It was rare, these days, that Katsuki even bothered to show up to school. He'd been doing too much work in Link VRAINS lately to have the energy, and it wasn't as if he really needed to attend, anyways. He was plenty smart - maybe not the best with coding, or anything like that, but his grades were consistent despite his absences. There were a lot of things he could go into for money, including dueling, as painful as the thought was for him at the moment.

Since he had nothing else to do, however, he figured he might as well prove to his teachers he was still the smartest student they'd ever teach. It was supposed to be a good distraction, but unfortunately, the fact that the Hanoi had been so active since he'd gotten into SOL's database was more interesting to the entire student body.

"Bakugou, it's been forever!" One student - Kaminagi, he thought, or maybe Kamanari - called out, clapping him on the back in a friendly manner. He shot the other boy his best death glare, and the blonde kid shrunk away slightly. "What have you been up to? Heard about the shenanigans over in Link VRAINS?"

Of course he'd heard about them. He was caught right up in the middle of them. Instead, however, he rolled his eyes, speeding ahead of his classmate. "Like I give a shit, nerd," he scoffed, barreling into his classroom.

It wasn't just him, either - his whole class was buzzing about it in between sessions, and during lunch, it was the only topic he could hear. It was so bad that he considered just heading home and taking a nap. That at least would've been productive, he figured.

The week was going to go by slower than he'd originally thought.

After one of the most boring weeks Katsuki had since becoming Ground Zero in Link VRAINS, it was finally show time. Taking a deep breath, he equipped his old school duel disk, getting himself comfortable in his desk chair. Who knew how long he'd be sitting in that thing; might as well make it so when he finally came back to the real world, he wasn't stiff as a plank of wood.

"Into the VRAINS," he whispered, feeling oddly nervous. It wasn't as if he hadn't beaten Uravity once before already, but still, this fight in particular had weighed on him differently.

The message from that anonymous user had stuck with him. These people, everyone in the VRAINS right now, they wouldn't just be locked out of their accounts. They wouldn't have to go to SOL Technologies and figure out a way to put their consciousness back into their bodies from the system. They would be as good as dead.

As he materialized in the virtual world, he took a minute to look around him. He didn't need to breathe, there, but the movement came to him naturally. His chest moved as he inhaled, virtual lungs not filling up with anything. It was a sensation he still couldn't get quite used to - though that wasn't uncommon. Most people who went into Link VRAINS continued to do things such as breathe, or blink, despite not having any need.

Around him, people moved as they always did; watching the large TV screens in the square to see the latest Charisma Duels, moving in between card shops and avatar customization areas alike. None of them knew what could happen to them today, if he couldn't stop Uravity. None of them knew that they would never get to do this again.

It was a harrowing thought, even as he tried to push it out of his mind. He had a job to do, and thinking too hard about the consequences of failing would only make him overthink his every step. Dueling was something, much to his chagrin, that came easily to him. It was something that was second nature, especially at this point.

It was something he knew how to do to survive.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a familiar black and pink jumpsuit on top of one of the many storefronts in the square. Despite knowing exactly who it was, Katsuki couldn't help but think she looked different. Burnt out, almost. As if some of the fire in her posture had been drained, but by what, he didn't know. Locking eyes with her, she nodded, jerking her head towards the edge of the town.

Nodding slowly, Katsuki began to move, feeling the pressure in every step.

He wouldn't lose. He couldn't.

As soon as he was in Uravity's vicinity, she snapped her fingers, and he watched in confusion as a large, almost bubble-like surface surrounded the two of them. There was enough space in between them for a duel, but the bubble itself was the cause of his confusion.

"What's this for?" He jabbed his thumb behind him, keeping his eyes on hers the entire time.

"Would you like the whole of Link VRAINS to hear us dueling, Ground Zero?" She asked, taunting. "Or would you rather not have any distractions?"

That, at least, made sense to him. It wasn't like he liked going along with the enemy, but it certainly was better than having everyone and their grandma distracting him while he would be trying to save them.

"Fine," he agreed, already turning his duel disk on. "How did you know I would be coming after you?"

Uravity, though he could barely tell underneath that glass mask of hers, smiled thinly. "Who do you think messaged you in the first place?"

That gave him pause. "What, you want me to stop you or something?"

The smile stayed on her lips as she readied her own duel disk. "More like I'd rather wrap up all the loose ends before I do something drastic," she told him. "I wasn't exactly happy with the fact that you found out about the Lost Incident, you know," she continued, voice growing darker with every word. "This was just an easy way to kill two birds with one stone."

He glared right back at her. The alien looking face that at first had creeped him out was now no longer even on his radar. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"By beating you here, I can fulfill my father's wishes," she said, odd alien eyes seeming to narrow as she spoke, "and also make sure you can't stop our plans." A duel field materialized before them, and Katsuki could tell Uravity was meeting his eyes despite the avatar barrier. "Are you ready?"

"For a cyber terrorist, you're oddly polite," he fired back, settling himself into a comfortable dueling stance. "Let's get this over with already! Get ready to lose!"

Again, Uravity did something completely unexpected - she laughed. He tried not to think about why that sounded so familiar to him; why he enjoyed listening to it. "Let's duel, then."

The duel was difficult, Katsuki would give her that. Uravity had cleared improved her way around her Galaxy-Eyes archetype, complete with some new monsters and Spell Cards that had him reeling at times. They were both down to only 200 Life Points, and one wrong move from either of them render them dead.

It wasn't really looking good for either of them.

"You know, Ground Zero," Uravity began after a moment of silence - her attack had just ended, though she hadn't declared the end of her turn, yet. "If you win, I won't stop fighting. I can't," she stressed the word, and he scowled.

"What was the point of calling me here, then?" He fired off at her, hand holding up his duel disk clenching and unclenching painfully. "To give me a false sense of hope that I could actually do something? Newsflash, Uravity," he scowled at her, "I don't care. I've dealt with enough fantasies about being saved and getting better, and none of it has ever mattered to me. It doesn't matter if you think you can just go through with the Tower even if I win this, because I'll just find another way to stop you."

Her face contorted into a pained look, despite how much she was obviously trying to school it back to neutral. "What do you mean?" Her words were careful, measured, but Katsuki knew what she was asking. Why she was asking, he didn't know, but at the moment, he didn't give a shit.

"You work for Hanoi," he told her, narrowing his eyes. "I can give you three reasons why you should already know."

Taking a step back, Uravity took a shaking breath. "It is you, then," she breathed out, and just like that, everything fell into place in his head. "I had thought maybe, back when we first dueled, but you were so scared back then," she said, voice shaky, and Katsuki found he couldn't open up his mouth to say anything in response at all. "I didn't want it to be you."

"Why?" His voice was no more than a whisper, but despite that, Uravity - Ochako - heard him, anyways.

His mind was going a mile a minute, with no signs of slowing down. This person, in front of him, was the one he'd been trying to save. Someone who had saved him; had made sure he made it out of that horrible situation okay. The same person who fought against him, worked for the same people that had put him in that situation to begin with.

He didn't understand.

"I wanted you to be happy," she told him, refusing to look at him properly. "I never wanted this for you. Not at all."

"And how did you expect that to happen?" The duel completely forgotten at this point, Katsuki flung his arms out as he spoke, his mind unable to settle on an emotion. "Did you forget what I went through? How was I supposed to just move on?"

He remembered, so vividly, the years after his release. Nightmares that plagued him, feeling completely disconnected from reality at all times, no matter how much he tried… He couldn't remember having a single friend, a single person to confide in or hang out with after school.

The only thing he could think about was the voice, that had saved him. That had encouraged him so many times.

That had told him that he had done well, and could finally go home again.

"No, I…" Uravity trailed off, still not meeting his eyes. "I didn't want to fight you. I never wanted this for you," she repeated, and Katsuki found he still didn't understand what she meant.

Quickly, though, his own fight was fizzling out from right under his feet. All the anger and righteousness he had come into Link VRAINS with that day was disappearing the longer they spoke to each other, and he didn't even have the will to reach out and grab it back.

He didn't want to fight her, either.

Neither of them said anything, both of their duel disks finally shutting off due to inactivity. It was that which snapped them both back into reality, and Uravity, without another word, logged herself out.

Katsuki stood there for a long, long moment, unsure of what to do, or where to go from there. Their duel hadn't concluded - all that the dueling itself had shown was that they were still very much evenly matched, never giving in or backing down no matter how much damage was dealt or what kind of board the other had managed to build.

Finally, though, he logged himself out as well, feeling himself seep back into his real life body. As soon as he was able to, he stood up, knowing exactly what he had to do. Firing off a quick message to Red Riot, he began to prepare himself once again.

"I'll save you," he whispered to himself, pushing down whatever other feelings he couldn't understand at the moment. "I promised. I'll save you."

Not long after he'd sent the original message, he heard his duel disk beep, and immediately opened it.

To: Ground Zero
From: Red Riot
The warehouse is located near the docks in Den City. It's number 508. Good luck.

It was go time.

He stood outside the warehouse, frowning at it. Normally, he would just barge in without a second thought; always one to be a bit reckless. Today, however, he wasn't sure what exactly to do. Not even an hour ago, after all, had he been in Link VRAINS dueling with Uravity over the fate of the Tower of Hanoi.

Now, he was standing outside of what he was sure was her home, feeling unsure for the first time in years.

Uravity, real name Ochako Uraraka was the girl he'd been looking for. She was his voice. He'd read about her so long ago - after their first duel - on his old laptop computer in the silence of his room, practically ignoring her name as he looked for any and all information on Kai Chisaki, her adoptive father.

Fate sure was a bitch.

Katsuki shook his head hard, almost wanting to slap some sense into himself. Regardless of his complicated feelings towards Ochako Uraraka, she was still Uravity, and she was still about to commit mass genocide using Link VRAINS. He had to stop her. He was the only one left to do so, even as he knew the fight had already fully left him. He had no will to fight her, just as he hadn't had the will to continue their previous duel.

He growled to himself, storming up to the door. He would do this. He had to do this. Not just for himself, not just for everyone else, but for Ochako, too.

Three things, he remembered. One of his most precious reasons for living, for continuing on no matter how hard it got: he wanted to save her. He'd always wanted to save her.

With that thought firmly planted in his head, he marched inside the seemingly abandoned warehouse, determined to put an end to this once and for all.

"Do we have to fight?" If it were any other time, Katsuki would've never uttered the words. Not only was he legendary link VRAINS vigilante Ground Zero, but he was also just a hardheaded person - he didn't like to back down from a challenge. But as he stood in front of Uravity, unmasked and in reality, all his willpower to defeat her completely vanished.

However, she scoffed at his question. "Are you really asking me that?" She said, narrowing her eyes. "I'm not stopping the Tower. You'll have to defeat me."

"But you're-"

"Yes," she cut him off with a frown. "I was the one who spoke to you, over the headset. And yes, I'm also the one who left the tip. The one who saved you all those years ago. The guilt… the guilt gnawed on me, every night," she said, and as she spoke, her tone turned painful, until she refocused her gaze on her shoes. Her words were hurried, but her voice was something that even still, over a decade later, was the easiest thing in the world for him to understand. "My adoptive father was a loving father, but a negligent one. When I found out what he was really doing to you and those other kids…"

Both of them shuddered at the thought involuntarily. It was probably the only showing of weakness either would allow, but for good reason. Regardless of their current stance as enemies, the Hanoi Project had been gruesome and horrific. No amount of self-control could stop Katsuki from instantly feeling the chills at the thought of what he went through; and though Ochako hadn't been in the project herself…

She shook her head, once again attempting to refocus herself. "I couldn't help but reach out to you, and later, call in a report. You all looked like you were dying," she continued, her frown growing deeper. With her so short in comparison, and staring down at her feet, he couldn't see her eyes very well, but her body language said it all: thinking about it was almost as painful for her as it was for him.

And Katsuki remembered those days well. There weren't many pictures of him, from any time after the kidnapping, really, but the ones that did exist, from the very first months… He looked like a ghost. A shell of a child. His was critically underweight and malnourished, and he remembered how long he had to be on special, awful diet plans that forced him to eat to the point he'd thought he'd explode. He had never fully recovered, even after all these years: still, his hair fell out regularly. Still, he had trouble not scarfing down food as soon as it was set in front of him; scared that it could be taken away at any moment.

"But," finally, she did look up at him, eyes narrowed in a slant. "I've regretted it every day since. I'm the reason my father is dead, now, and it's all because of my bleeding heart back then."

That grated on him. She'd told him herself back in Link VRAINS, not even two hours ago, that she hadn't wanted this life for him. That she had wanted him, and likely by extension the other five children, to be happy. That she'd wanted him to move on, and not have to duel again. Her words had seemed genuine, then - she'd logged out as soon as she'd been able, their duel abandoned completely.

"You're a terrible liar," he said in a huff, aggravated now. "If you regretted it so much-"

"Why do you think I'm prepared to die with the Tower!?" Her hands flew up in anger, chest moving heavily with her breathing. It was like a switch had been flipped, and the sudden change in demeanor almost surprised Katsuki. He hadn't realized she'd been ready to die. That message she had sent to him, then, was not her asking for a fair fight and to put the fact that she'd lost to him behind her. It was a cry for help.

"I have long since killed the part of me that wanted to save you," she all but snarled out, bringing the hand with her duel disk close to her chest. "And now, I'll defeat you here, so I can put all this behind me. So I can atone for killing my father."

It was then Katsuki realized where, exactly, they were in the underground warehouse. Behind Ochako laid her father, the heart monitor next to his bed completely flat. He forced down a gulp, and brought his own duel disk up to his chest. That was the man that had imprisoned him. That was the man that had taken everything away from him, back then - he'd lost his childhood, and hell, most of his life because of the actions and delusions of that one person.

And now that person was dead. Any fight he might've been able to dredge up from the pits of his stomach completely vanished. It was over, for him, but he knew it wasn't for her.

And for Ochako, for the person who had saved him… he would keep trying.

"Fine," he relented, hating that he had to do this. Normally, despite his hatred of dueling, he'd be itching to fight - itching to prove himself, but right now, all he wanted to do was stop. He'd finally found her, the girl who saved him, and in a dramatic twist of irony she was also the one he had been fighting against all these months in Link VRAINS.

The universe really was cruel to him.

"I'll stop you here, Uravity," he said, knowing he had no other choice. "I'll stop you here, and we can find a new future, together. Chisaki is dead, my revenge is over," his voice was angry, but he wasn't sure why. He should be happy that it was over, and yet… "This will be my last fight, but I'll do it for you."

Maybe he'd been relying on dueling as Ground Zero a bit too much for a crutch.

"Fine," Uravity agreed, her duel disk lighting up. "I'll stop you here, Ground Zero. I won't let you destroy my life's work!"

The duel, like their last, was grueling on both ends. They were incredibly evenly matched in strength and strategy - there were barely any weak spots for the other to take advantage of. Seemingly, Uravity had a counter for everything Ground Zero had to offer, and vice versa.

"Why did you have to come after us?" She asked, when once again, they were both down to just a mere 200 Life Points. She had only two monsters on the field; Galaxy-Eyed Solflare Dragon, and her Galaxy-Eyed Cipher Blade Dragon, which was left with no XYZ material after destroying both his Salamangreat Sanctuary Field Spell card, and his Salamangreat Roar trap card. "Why did you have to come after me? Why couldn't you have just recovered, and let yourself be happy? Had friends, a normal life?"

It was similar to what she had asked him in their last duel, but this time, instead of agitated, Katsuki couldn't place the emotion he felt. "Time stopped moving for me, after the Lost Incident," he told her honestly, letting any pretense of how he was supposed to act fall apart. This was the one person he could be real with - the one person he could trust. All his anger had melted away at that fact, leaving him with nothing else. "It was like I was separated from everyone else. Nobody could understand me, and I couldn't understand anyone. It was frustrating. Instead of trying to fit in, I grew angry," he continued, and Uravity just listened in silence, her alien eyes behind her glass mask never wavering.

He remembered those days well. The days where all he could think about was how angry he was; at the world, for doing this to him. At his parents, for letting everything fall apart.

At himself, for not being strong enough to come back from the trauma.

Most of his anger, after a certain point, had become directed at himself. However, with no outlet, it quickly became everyone else's problem. Nobody had wanted to interact with the angry kid who yelled about everything, and Katsuki had held no desire to interact with any of them. They wouldn't get it - how could he tell someone that he'd been tortured for six months, and it had been entirely covered up from the public eye? He doubted anyone would've even believed him; and even if they had, what would it have mattered? He was still angry, and impossible to approach. Nobody in their right mind would've wanted to help him.

"The only thing that kept me going," Katsuki continued, "was your voice. Three things. There was no normal life for me to fall back on, once I was rescued. Having friends wasn't even on my radar."

Uravity didn't say anything, but even with her yellow, expressionless eyes, he could see her face shift into something. He wasn't sure whether that was because he now knew who she was under the mask, or whether, through their encounters, he'd just gotten better at reading her avatar. He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Taking a deep breath, Katsuki continued to talk, hoping to get through to her - even if just a little. "But I can talk to you," he told her. Normally, he hated when he sounded vulnerable like this, but as his free hand clutched at his chest, it almost felt freeing, for once. "I can tell you all of this. You were there for me, when nobody else was."

"What does that matter?" She finally said, but the fire was gone from her voice. What had been a desperate plea, maybe even an angry plea, had been replaced with something empty, and Katsuki hurt at the sound.

He didn't know much about Uravity - Ochako Uraraka - not really. He knew that she was a fantastic duelist, that her father had orchestrated the Hanoi Project, aka the Lost Incident. He knew that she was used by her father to lure him, and five other kids, to the place that they were kept for six months, but whether or not she had understood was unknown. After all, she had only been six at the time, too.

He knew that, despite her love and loyalty to her father, she had felt guilty about what had happened, and reached out to him many times through his only possession in the white room: his headset. He knew that she gave him hope, and called the police to save him and the other five children, too.

He knew that she was strong, stronger than he'd ever be, emotionally. She had lived with the guilt of ruining her father's life, and ruining the lives of six children as a child herself, for years. It wasn't her fault, that the incident happened, but he had a feeling she didn't think of it that way.

He knew that she was witty, and a great strategist. She was quick to respond to his remarks, always seemed to be on the same page with him no matter what he said or did. She was the only person he'd ever deemed to be on his level, even before he had found out who she was.

Even though he didn't know much about her, not really, Katsuki knew he knew enough. Enough to know she was, at her core, a good person. Enough to know that she didn't really regret saving him, saving the other kids, or giving him hope for all these years - even if that had been an unintended side effect of her words to him, so long ago. He knew that she cared deeply about the people around her, and worked hard to help them to the best of her ability. He knew that she felt bad about her actions; enough so that she had anonymously messaged him to try and get him to stop her, much as she said it was actually to settle score.

"You saved me, once," he said, looking over his field carefully. His hand was empty, but all he needed was one card. One card, and he could do this. "And now, I can save you! Draw!"

Everything was on this one card. If he couldn't pull the card he was hoping for, it was all over. Her XYZ monster may have no material, but all he had on his field at this point was Salamangreat Heatleo. His Graveyard could be of some help in a pinch, maybe, but it still likely wouldn't be enough to stand up to the sheer Attack Points of Galaxy-Eyed Cipher Blade Dragon and Galaxy-Eyed Solflare Dragon combined, especially while he was only at 200 Life Points.

Katsuki wasn't scared, though. It wasn't that he trusted in the heart of the cards bullshit, as he often saw card shop ads reference. It was that he trusted in his own abilities - and his desire to save the girl in front of him.

As he turned over the card he'd drawn, he grinned. "I play the Spell card, Fusion of Fire to special summon Salamangreat Violet Chimera!"

Uravity gasped as her own Link Monster disappeared off the field, used for material for his special summon, along with his own Salamangreat Heatleo. "What!?" She exclaimed, mouth agape as she watched the play happen. "What are you doing!?"

"Salamangreat Violet Chimera requires a Salamangreat monster," Katsuki said, nodding to his own deck, "and a Link Monster. Fusion of Fire lets me take material from anywhere on the field." As his fusion monster appeared, his grin grew wider as its Attack Points rose. "And it's got a really cool special effect," he continued, "where it adds half of the combined Attack Points of both of our monsters!"

When he had first picked up the card, Violet Chimera was something Katsuki had been unsure about. Fusion summoning wasn't something he'd ever been crazy about, even back when he was a kid. The idea of having to use a specific Spell Card to get the monster out, like with Ritual summoning, just didn't appeal to him at all.

Over time, however, he'd understood the card's power. Especially if you were able to pull off its secondary effect.

Luckily, today, that wasn't necessary at all. "Salamangreat Violet Chimera's Attack is now 4900!" He shouted. He could win this. "Battle! Salamangreat Violet Chimera attacks Galaxy-Eyed Cipher Blade Dragon!" Even without activating its Quick Effect, he would do more than enough damage to take her out. The piercing damage would still be 1750.

After the bright flames from his monster's attack had dissipated, they both were silent as Uravity's Life Points dropped down to zero. They were silent still as the duel ended, his remaining monster disappearing, and their duel disks clicking off.

"Fine," Uravity broke the silence after another moment, voice weary. "Fine. You win. I'll cancel the Tower," she jerked her head off into the distance - likely where the Tower would've been implemented, he realized. "I hope you're happy."

"You were ready to die with that thing, along with everyone else," he reminded her, heart heavy as he spoke. "I didn't want that for you," he repeated her words from earlier. "I wanted us to be friends."

She didn't say anything to that, either, just staring at him with her avatar's too-yellow eyes. Instead, she reached for her duel disk, and just like that, her body was gone as she logged off of Link VRAINS.

Quickly, Katsuki reached for his own. They might've been in the same place in the real world before their duel, but who knew how long Ochako would stick around for. He wanted to talk to her - to really talk to her. Genuinely, for the first time since the Lost Incident, he wanted to call someone a friend.

Katsuki watched as Ochako took off, leaving in a car with haste that he had expected. After her loss, he knew she wouldn't stick around to talk to him, but he found himself wishing he could've been a few seconds faster to log out. Maybe he wouldn't have missed her, then.

The car went farther and farther out of view, but Katsuki couldn't stop staring at it regardless. After ten years, he had finally found her. Finally found his voice - his source of comfort in his darkest times - and just like that, she was leaving him. They had barely gotten to see each other, really, and their meeting hadn't been on friendly terms, either.

All Katsuki had wanted for so many years was to meet her. To meet the one who saved him, thank her, and…

And he wasn't sure what else. Having grown up isolated from the rest of his peers, he wasn't exactly sure what a friendship between them would look like. That didn't stop him from imagining it, though; imagining the two of them spending time together, doing the things he saw people on TV do.

Now, however, that dream was practically dead. He had met her - had truly gotten to know her, in a sense - and just like that, she was gone. All he could do was hope that he had gotten through to her in their final duel, and that they would meet again one day. Ochako knew where to find him, he supposed.

With a sigh, he began the long walk back to his place. The car that she had taken off in was long gone and completely out of sight now, and there was no reason for him to hang around there, after all.

Once Katsuki arrived home, he stood in his room, unsure of where to go from here. For the last half a year of his life, he had dedicated himself to being in Link VRAINS and tracking down the Knights of Hanoi, intent on understanding what had happened to him. For even longer before that, he had spent his time becoming well known enough that famous bounty hunters and information brokers in the system would be willing to work for him; doing his best to gather as much information on SOL Tech and the Hanoi as humanly possible.

Everything was over now.

With a sigh, Katsuki unclipped his duel disk, putting it on his desk as he usually did. However, instead of moving to get changed and possibly head to bed, he frowned at the device, for the first time in a long time feeling like it was out of place there.

After a moment of deliberating, he opened the drawer in his desk, and gently placed the duel disk down. He stared at it for a long moment before nodding to himself and closing the door, satisfied with its new home.

He wouldn't be needing it now, after all.

He began to move to his clothing drawers to grab himself some pajamas when he heard the distinctive beep of a new Link VRAINS message chime from his computer. Curious, he went back to his desk, moving the trackpad to wake up the screen. The only person he could imagine sending him a message at the moment was Red Riot, but he had been suspiciously silent since Katsuki had asked him to get the information on Ochako's family's warehouse. He clicked open the message, completely unsure of what to expect.

To: Ground Zero
From: Uravity
We'll meet again, I'm sure.

It was a simple message, but Katsuki couldn't help the smile that slowly grew on his face. He could so clearly imagine that in her voice, with a small smile on her own face as she would refuse to meet his eyes. He could picture her looking at anywhere but him, saying it with a surety that nobody else could muster, despite being such a vague statement.

From her, Katsuki knew it couldn't be anything other than a promise. She wouldn't have bothered otherwise. They might not have been able to become friends yet, no matter how much he wished it, but this was her response to his last words in Link VRAINS. He was almost happier she'd done this when she couldn't see him - couldn't see the heat that had, for whatever reason, stained his cheeks.

Ignoring the way his heart pounded, he quickly typed back a response, even though he knew she wouldn't expect one.

To: Uravity
From: Ground Zero
Looking forward to it.

Notes

Honestly, I still can't believe I wrote this much, since I know approximately two people maybe other than me would be interested in this, lmao. This is longer than all of my Kacchako stuff from last year's positivity week combined.

Anyways, some notes about the AU:

I gave Katsuki a Salamangreat deck because A) it's an explosive, fiery archetype, which suits his quirk and B) I have a mildly-competitive build of it IRL so I actually know how they work, lmao. Ochako I had decided really early on that she would play Galaxy-Eyed Dragons, which took a ton of research because I have not yet watched Zexal, nor have I ever played/played against them. Now I'm kinda interested because I love swarm-y XYZ focused decks lol. I let All Might keep Tindangles because I like them and was too lazy to figure out a better deck for him tbh.

If you somehow managed to read this whole thing and enjoy it, thank you so much for giving me the time of day! That means so much to me since this was really the definition of self-indulgent writing and a labor of love. That said, I do hope someone actually ends up checking out Vrains. For a children's card game show, it's actually so good, haha.

Thanks again anyways! See y'all sometime for more Kacchako, I'm sure.