Viridian: The Green Guide

Chapter 76: Drowning

Katsuki's eyes widened in horror and time seemed to slow down as he took in the scene in front of him. Rock Lock had finally managed to immobilize about half his tentacles and the others hung uselessly as Eraser took his quirk. Amplifier was wrestling with him as she tried to force his arms behind his back, and Katsuki expected to see rage and murder in the monster's eyes, considering how violently he'd been chasing him just a couple seconds before.

Instead, to him, his friend just looked broken.

He'd changed way too much. Katsuki swallowed down a gag as he filled in the blanks about what Ogawa must have been going through to make that big of a difference to his body and quirk. Katsuki felt tears at the corners of his eyes. He'd failed him. He hadn't been good enough to save him and instead, Ogawa had gone through hell and saved himself. He'd chased after Katsuk to try and find some semblance of safety after his world had been practically destroyed, just like Izuku had all those years ago.

And Katsuki hadn't even recognized him.

Amplifier raised her fist to give a final blow and Katsuki finally managed to shake himself from his thoughts, "Stop!"

His shout was enough to make her hesitate and she turned to him with shock that quickly morphed into anger as he started running towards them, "Kacchan! What are you doing?! I told you to run away!"

"Fuck that!" Katsuki snapped. "Don't you recognize him? Think about it for two seconds! Who do you know that has a tentacle quirk and got disappeared by the goddamn villain factory?!"

"Recognize..." Amplifier's face wrinkled in confusion for a moment before dropping in horror. "But...but his quirk isn't...he can't stretch...and the ink!"

Katsuki scoffed, "Yeah, well apparently that's changed." He hurried to Ogawa, who was starting to struggle in the heroes' hold again. "Hey man, it is you, right? I'm gonna kill you for disappearing like that, you know that right?"

Ogawa struggled a little more at that, "You...you have to help me save him! He's...he's still there! I can't...I don't know how to be a hero, man, I can't do it on my own! You...You have to help me save him."

He was getting more agitated by the second and Katsuki felt a hand on his shoulder as Rock Lock came up behind him, "Step back, Kacchan. You don't know what those people did to him, he might not be the person you remember."

That must not have been the right thing to say, because Ogawa went crazy as soon as he heard it. Eraserhead must have had to blink, because any tentacles that weren't straining against Rock Lock's quirk instantly flexed and grabbed at anything close to launch at the heroes, "Shut up! You don't understand! You lucky hero! Get out of our way!"

With one last grunt of effort, Ogawa broke through Rock Lock's quirk and Katsuki took an involuntary step back as all of his tentacles started writhing around in every direction. A few that had been anchored farther away and stretched as the fight moved snapped back like an elastic band and both Rock Lock and Eraserhead were hit full force by tentacles moving at slingshot velocity. Katsuki shouted and ran to Rock Lock's side, only to realize he had been knocked out by the blow. He couldn't see where Eraserhead had landed. Amplifier was trying to keep a hold on Ogawa's arms, but there wasn't much she could do. Even without his monster of a quirk, Ogawa was bigger than she was and whatever modifications those villains had done to him had only made him stronger. Within seconds, he had twisted out of her hold and shoved her to the ground.

Katsuki had to do something. He still hadn't been given permission to fight, but that didn't matter because he wasn't about to explode Ogawa just because he was panicking and not thinking right. Exploding his way out of this would be taking the easy way out and yes, running towards Ogawa when any single one of his tentacles could probably take his head off was probably one of the most terrifying thing he'd ever done in his life, but he wasn't a coward that just relied on violence to get his way anymore.