The Orange Cap Witness

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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The officer wanted a sentence.

He held his notebook open beside the paramedics' vehicle while I sat on its rear step. Beyond him, the street was still wet where the canister had broken. A crew in heavy gloves was working around the fragments. Nobody had decided what to call the spill yet.

"You ran in, used something from the truck, and All Might got the boy out," he said. "Is that right?"

It was short. It was almost true. My shoulder hurt from the maintenance door, my elbow stuck to my sleeve, and the folded jacket under my head had been replaced by a step that seemed to tilt whenever I looked up. I wanted him to write the sentence so I could stop listening to the crowd say my name without knowing it.

"Not quite."

His pen stayed above the page. "Which part?"

All Might stood twenty meters away, answering a question from a police captain. Cameras had gathered at the other end of the cordon. From where I sat, I could see the bright edge of his grin and the way he kept his left arm close to his body. He had told me we needed to talk when the paramedics released me. I still had no idea whether I wanted that to happen sooner or never.

"I didn't know what was in the canister," I said. "I thought it might react with the sludge. The worker knew which one to try."

"The city worker?"

"Yes. He said orange cap before I crossed. I tried lifting it myself. He shouted 'Handle!' after it dragged me down."

The officer wrote a few words. A woman from the cleanup crew asked him to move his boot. He did, carrying the notebook with him. The pavement beneath us had a pale splash across the darker water; the liquid had reached farther than I remembered.

The worker stood behind the truck with a towel wound around one hand. Someone had given him a paper cup, but he held it without drinking. When the officer called to him, he came over after checking that the crew had the compartment door secured.

"You identified the solvent?" the officer asked.

"No." The worker looked at me before he looked at the page. "I called for the orange cap. I didn't identify a solvent."

The distinction sounded small until I remembered how confidently I had pointed at the truck. Solvent. Detergent. Something. I had said all three in about two breaths.

"What does orange mean?" the officer asked.

"On our truck, it's the residue kit we use after certain polymer work. It isn't a treatment for a person. I saw that stuff moving around the kid and thought the outer layer might react. That's as far as I got."

"You were certain?"

"No, sir. I shouted if."

The officer turned a page. "Did you direct Midoriya to take it?"

"I pointed to the orange cap before he crossed your line. I didn't tell him to cross. I shouted 'Handle!' after he tried to lift it."

I looked at the worker's hand. The towel was spotted red near the thumb. He tucked it against his side, away from the cup.

"You don't have to stand here," I said.

"I do if my truck's in your statement." He sounded tired, not unkind. "They'll ask which kit got opened. I might as well tell them before they invent one."

The officer asked for the truck number. The worker read it from the side panel without pretending to remember it. When the officer asked for his name, he gave it. I didn't recognize him. He had been one frightened voice among the sirens until the moment I needed the handle.

"I thought the cap was red," the officer said, checking his first line.

"Orange," the worker said. "Red is for the other compartment. Please don't put red in there."

The pen went back and crossed something out.

That was the first correction. The second would be harder.

"It hit the street," I said. "The canister. I missed the part I aimed for. Some of it touched the outside, and the villain pulled back. I can't tell you how much that helped."

"It made an opening."

"Kacchan made the opening. He fired under his own arm."

The officer glanced toward the other side of the cordon. Bakugo was sitting on a low concrete divider with a blanket hanging from one shoulder. A rescue worker stood near him with another blanket she had clearly been instructed to offer and not force. He saw us looking and scowled.

"He was inside the villain," the officer said. "Can he confirm where the blast went?"

"Ask him."

My answer came out sharper than I meant it to. The officer closed his mouth for a moment. Then he called another officer over and asked her to speak to Bakugo separately.

"I don't need him in here," I said.

"I wasn't bringing him here."

"Good."

Across the street, Bakugo pointed at himself when the second officer approached. He stood up too fast, wavered once, and turned that into an angry step forward. Even from here, I could tell he was talking with his whole body. He could tell the part he had seen. I didn't get to borrow it because we had occupied the same disaster.

The officer with me waited until I stopped watching.

"The backpack," he said. "Yours?"

"Yes. I threw it into the gap after Bakugo's blast. It jammed for a second. Long enough for him to breathe."

"And then All Might struck the villain."

"Yes. Before that, Kamui Woods put a branch between the blast and the crowd. Death Arms moved people back. There was another hero with a man by the storefront." I could see her from the corner of my eye, packing up beside the rescue crew. "I didn't see what happened to him."

"I can get their reports. I need what you saw."

I had nearly turned it into a full analysis anyway. Old habit, faster than pain. A list of everyone on the street made me sound observant. It could also make it sound as though I'd been standing somewhere I hadn't.

"I saw the branch and the people being moved," I said. "I saw All Might arrive. I didn't see what the rescue hero did after I went down."

The officer repeated that back, slowly enough for me to correct him. He asked where I had been when the first officer stopped me. I pointed to the broken barrier line. The officer looked at it, then at the wet street between there and the truck.

"He told you to stay behind it?"

"Yes."

"And you went under his arm."

"Yes."

For the first time he stopped writing. A camera shutter clicked beyond the tape. The cleanup crew shifted the canister fragments into a container, and the sound of plastic against metal made me flinch.

"You know that part goes in," he said.

"It should."

"I'm not asking what should happen. I'm telling you what I'll write."

My hand went to the edge of the step. There was grit in the cut across my palm. I wanted to explain the seconds: Bakugo's mouth closing, the heroes caught between fire and an airway, my own body moving before the officer finished his warning. Every bit of it mattered to me. None of it made the line disappear.

"Write it," I said.

"It may be read by people who weren't here."

My mother came to mind so suddenly I looked toward the crowd as if she might have arrived. She had no reason to know yet. That wouldn't last. Someone at school might read it too. There would be no version in which crossing the cordon became a clever technique just because Bakugo was alive.

"I know."

The officer put his pen to the page. I watched him write that I entered the restricted area after being directed to remain behind the barrier. He did not add reckless. He did not add brave. The sentence looked worse without either word to fight.

The worker shifted his weight. "He could've gone for the red cap," he said. "I shouted orange because it was the only one I thought might do anything."

"You did," I said. "That needs to be in yours."

"It will be."

The officer looked between us. "I'm taking separate statements."

"That's good," the worker said.

He went back toward the truck, still carrying the untouched cup. It occurred to me that opening the compartment might bring questions about his work that had nothing to do with me. He had chosen to answer them anyway. I wanted to call him back and thank him. I couldn't find a way to do it that didn't sound like asking him to make my account nicer.

Bakugo's voice rose above the crowd.

"I said I can tell you what I did!"

The officer across from him held her ground. Bakugo pointed at the wrecked street, then at his own palms. He was furious at the question or at being asked in front of strangers. Maybe both. He didn't point at me.

"Would you sign one account together?" my officer asked. "It saves us reconciling two versions later."

Bakugo heard the word together. His head snapped around.

"No," he called. "Whatever Deku tells you, it's his. I saw my side."

The rescue worker near him lowered the spare blanket without offering it again. His officer nodded and went back to her page. He had made that decision before I could answer for him.

"Separate," I said.

My officer made a mark beside my name. "Separate."

There was no thank you from Bakugo, no agreement that the backpack had helped. I was relieved until I realized how much I had wanted him to say it. The feeling embarrassed me more than the missed throw.

The paramedic at the vehicle asked the officer how much longer he needed. She didn't come over with new instructions. Her colleague was sorting supplies on the bench behind me, close enough to see whether I tipped sideways. The officer said he needed to read back two lines and then would be done.

"Midoriya observed a municipal worker indicate an orange-capped canister as a possible response to the outer material," he read. "Midoriya retrieved it after entering the restricted area contrary to a police direction. The canister broke on the roadway. He observed a reaction at the surface but cannot attribute the hostage's release to it alone."

"That's right."

"Bakugo produced a blast that made space near his shoulder. Midoriya then threw his backpack into that space. Other heroes moved civilians. All Might ended the incident."

The words left out the part where I thought I might die. I didn't ask him to put that in. He had not asked me how scared I was; he had asked what I saw.

"Kamui Woods put up the branch before the heat reached the crowd," I said. "Death Arms moved them. I don't know who got the injured man out."

He added the two names and kept the last uncertainty. Then he turned the notebook so I could see the corrections. The strike through red was visible. So was the line about the barrier.

I signed where he pointed. My hand shook, and I had to write the last stroke of my name twice. He didn't offer to steady the page. That would have made it easier for him and stranger for me.

"This doesn't settle anybody else's account," he said as he closed the notebook.

"I didn't think it would."

"Good."

He went toward Bakugo's officer. The worker had begun speaking to someone by the truck, showing the orange lid without touching the broken container. Behind them the city kept trying to turn the rescue into one photograph: All Might smiling, Bakugo standing, a boy on the pavement. None of the photographs could show the officer's crossed-out word.

I could still feel the pen in my fingers after it was gone.

The paramedic came to the step and looked at the space the officer had left. He picked up the forms he had set aside earlier. I waited while he found the page he wanted. Across the street, All Might was finishing with the captain. His eyes found mine once over the moving crowd.

We still needed to talk.

Now there was one thing I would not have to make up an answer for: when he asked why I ran past the line, I could tell him I had told the police that I did.

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