[happens two years prior to the main events of 'a feat equal.']
this is definitely meant to be part of the same continuum as 'a feat equal.' it was slotted to be chapter three, actually...but just, motif-wise, it wasn't a good fit. and also, it got waaaaaaay too long to be a stand-alone flashback chapter. i have two follow-up chapters already in-the-works, actually: one to wrap up the action from this first installment, and another in which bakugou gets domestic and makes tea and snacks for uraraka. as often (read: always, inevitably) happens, the scenario took on a life of its own, and after a certain point, it'd spun itself clear out of the other story's orbit.
and now it stands apart.
i imagine this means i'll be working both fic simultaneously...why i do this to me? T_T
chapter one: an historic tattoo
Fuck this.
The Bakugou Katsuki of this present moment is crossly contemplating his future life as a human fucking pincushion. Even as he wrenches one handful of thread-thick, steel-strong spines from his abdomen, another volley ricochets with lethal precision into the alley down which he leads his pursuers. He only just ducks the scatter, swearing loudly as fingers of searing heat comb through his hair, demonstrating exactly how close he'd come to a fatal, full-frontal lobotomy. He waits only long enough to hear the tell-tale, serial 'shunk' of metal implements embedding into the crumbling brick of the façade at his back, signaling the all-clear, before he sweeps out an arc of low-grade bursts to conceal the tuck-and-roll maneuver he executes.
Katsuki emerges from the smoke before an irritatingly familiar pair of beat-up, bright red tennis shoes, and mentally snarls at the reality that Deku's 'brand' has so permeated the zeitgeist that even villains are taking cues from his lame-ass fashion choices. He comes out of the roll and immediately launches upward with an explosive uppercut to the jaw of Hari Senbon's* leaping bungle-fuck of a partner, Grasshopper, a towering, wild-eyed shit-for-brains in stupid sneakers. Bug Fuck topples backward, ass over ears, landing in a tangled heap on the sidewalk fronting the alley.
Then Needle Bitch reappears, rounding the corner and raining a hail of fire-touched, screw-tip needles, gaze purposefully riveted to his person. He makes a mental note, and an aggravated hypothesis. From this point-blank range, Katsuki has time only to throw his forearm out before him to defend, resulting in the inadvertent grafting of spikes to his left grenadier –an upgrade that'd be easier to appreciate if one of said spikes hadn't penetrated deeply enough to have also speared the flesh of his arm. He does have the presence of mind to expel a wave of contained, concussive blasts to cover himself, but she's already twisted back, out of the alleyway.
Fuck this.
And the tag-team continues, because Bug Fuck is back on his feet, howling with rage and visibly contracting those massive flexor muscles to fire himself at Katsuki, full force. With legs designed to catapult him across vast distances, Grasshopper's blows –those that actually land—have power sufficient to shatter bones, or send his victims cratering into buildings. But by himself, he's fucking useless. He telegraphs his moves like he's in a bad action flick, and his martial style boils down to roughly two basic attack patterns on loop, making him good for nothing more than precisely what Hari's using him for: a high-speed, hard-hitting diversion.
Katsuki uses the precious seconds before Grasshopper springs to rip out the tine shish-kebabing his arm to his bracer –or he would've, except it doesn't fucking budge. It's lodged tight into the material of the grenadier, stuck.
An historic tattoo of vile profanity fills the alleyway as he makes the split-decision to inflict devastating bodily harm to both himself and the insect fucker flying toward him at a speed approaching Four Eyes pulling a Recipro: he dodges left at the last possible second, and barely raises his definitely-fucked bracer in time to catch both it and Grasshopper in a vortex of flame that'd put Todoroki and his prick of an old man to shame.
Charred and molten chunks of his grenadier clatter noisily to the ground, though a handful of ridged panels cling stubbornly to what remains of the apparatus –namely, the panels attached to the skewer. With an anguished, furious cry, he yanks the barbed head of the spine out of the ruined landscape of his forearm and tosses away the debris, ignoring the intense wave of nausea rolling through him at the sight and smell and feel of –his own—melted flesh.
Breathing deeply around the agony contouring itself to every nerve in his body, he surveys the battleground: Grasshopper, crying and cursing and holding his bleeding abdomen, although –fuck— Katsuki hasn't done nearly as much damage as he anticipated, because the resilient shit is already getting back up. Slow as fuck, but he can tell the idiot's rallying. The corner structure of the Izakaya** forming the eastern wall of the alley has been badly damaged, together with portions of the sidewalk at its entrance –for which Edgeshot will fucking definitely have his ass—though thankfully, any patrons and staff have long-since fled. His eye catches on a peripheral flash from the apartment building across the street, and he becomes aware of a dozen or more civilians watching the action through their cell phone cameras. He successfully marshals the impulse to flip them all off and shout at them to stay the fuck down and out of sight.
Through the pane of one window, a girl wearing the uniform of a middle school near his agency is frantically gesturing toward the pub, and he immediately turns a more critical eye on the joint –right as Hari, who suddenly materializes from behind the service counter within, looses another barrage of needles through the hole he inadvertently opened in the building. He throws himself sideways, out of the alley, with an explosion he aims intentionally back into it, evading the needle buckshot and knocking Bug Fuck off his feet all over again in one fell swoop.
Katsuki skids a step or two, but lands surely, only clenching his teeth at how this series of movements jostles his mangled arm, and finding himself increasingly annoyed at every stab of distracting, excruciating pain he incurs by continuing to fight and move and fucking breathe.
Hari is good. She strikes from a distance, and her quirk appears to include a line-of-sight targeting system that makes dodging a precarious fucking enterprise, since her needles can apparently hone in on a single target and give chase, only abandoning pursuit when he manages to slip out of visual range or they hit something solid. More than that, though: she watches him closely, thoughtfully adapting her approach to his largely improvisational combat style. She also brought a partner well-suited to giving her both the distance she needs to be effective, and the time to strategize.
But he can take her, easy, as soon as he can put her six-legged stooge to pasture. Which will need to be soon, because fuck, how the shit did Deku hack it when he was fucking himself up like this every day of the fucking week? The amount of pain he's in is bullshit.
Katsuki realizes he scored a hit with that last blast as he spies Grasshopper struggling to stand again: one of Bug Fuck's middle arms –or legs, who the fuck knows—swings unusably at his side. With the freely weeping abdominal wound and the newly broken and blackened leg/arm, he's willing to afford Grasshopper some small measure of respect for soldering on. Because soldier on he fucking does, nodding at some unseen cue from Hari in the pub before he starts lowering his weight again, in preparation to jump.
Bring it, bugman.
Grasshopper leaps, kicking off what Katsuki instinctually recognizes as end game maneuvers.
Survival instincts and adrenaline briefly dilate his perception of time, and several things happen, seemingly all at once: he lifts both hands –one with tremendous effort—and brings his wrists together to merge the epic twin bursts he means to discharge, while Hari manifests at the margins of his vision, still partially hidden amidst the wreckage of the restaurant, maniac smile dialed all the way up to Himiko fucking Toga. The inexplicable shriek of metal sounds from somewhere above, and a distinctively-shaped pool of shadow spills over the sidewalk, and he definitely intends to find out why the fuck that is, but there's a fucking grand legion of needles filling his periphery, and Grasshopper's rocketing out of the alley and across the sidewalk like a bullet, and he's focused on keeping his targets in sight as the explosive chemical reaction of his quirk catalyzes—
-but then a dumpster falls from the sky and crashes between the combatants, and the satisfying smash-and-clatter impacts of Grasshopper's body and Hari's needles gives him a brief interval to look up –to see what is unmistakably Uraraka Ochako, also falling out of the fucking sky—
"Bakugou-kun!" She calls down, opening her arms in a way indicating she wants him to do the same, to be in a position to catch her. She can land all the fuck by herself, and he knows this –he's seen this, but he doesn't have time enough to access that memory and override the years of training and practice that've instilled the reflex to save morons falling from great heights, so he braces himself against the absolute fuckfest of pain he's going to experience when she hits and opens his own arms.
Just before she's in grasping range, he sees her lift her fingers to her mouth, then press all five to her jaw to activate her quirk, timing it perfectly: no sooner does he catch her than she becomes insubstantial, weightless, immediately effortless to save from a sloppy, stupid death.
A (round) face Katsuki hasn't seen in real life since high school beams across at him from a distance of roughly no fucking distance at all. Briefly, he considers dropping her, but reminds himself she's floating and that it would be meaningless to let go. So he doesn't.
Out-of-breath, "Need a hand?" There's something on her tongue, he passively notes.
And now there's something on his, because the second he opens his mouth to be hateful for the hell of it, she fucking attacks him. The first thought to surface when Uraraka kisses him in the middle of a bombed-out, bloody war zone is no fucking thought, because what the shit is happening?! She starts with tongue, fingers at his jaw and neck holding him fast with gentle pressure. He's fucked up already on the adrenaline high of combat and autonomic pain disruption, so when this fresh fucking hell descends, his heart tries to piston-kick its way the fuck out of his chest, and goddammit, why the fuck does she taste like candy?
Then, as abruptly as she initiated this ill-timed, fucked up thing she's doing, he feels her pulling away.
Which is when it gets really fucked up, because instead of letting her disengage, he draws her forward with his good arm and kisses her the fuck back. She produces a breathless, startled noise he has no idea he's going to have to relive, repeatedly, for fucking months to come, and he stifles the warning in his brain, screaming that this is going to get them both fucking killed, that there is still a wily, leering, sharp-fingered psychopath out there somewhere, hungry for the opportunity to transfigure him into a gore-gushing sieve.
Eventually, the notion that this moronic episode might really be the last in his already storied career overpowers whatever the fuck psychosis has taken hold of him, and he finally releases her, immediately furious at the expression he finds her wearing, which is equal parts red-faced embarrassment and flustered astonishment, like she hadn't just thrown herself at him out of fucking nowhere. If anyone here has the right to look outraged or bewildered, it's him. Katsuki has no fucking clue what his own face is doing, but after a beat, Uraraka –and it is Uraraka, not Uravity, because she's in civilian attire, tights and skirt and a sleeveless top with a bow at the collar—sheepishly clears her throat and straightens her legs to set her feet on the ground, restoring her own gravity as she does so.
All of this, in under a fucking minute.
"I –ummm, got the signal." He only vaguely remembers activating his emergency beacon when Hari and Grasshopper waylaid him at the pachinko parlor down the street –another reflex effort he only bothers to make because it's a rule and he's a hero and that means rules are his fucking religion. "It's…good to see ya' again, B-Bakugou-kun! In person, I mean..." She grins nervously, face still as pink as her cheeks always fucking seem to be, stepping back and turning toward the dumpster he's now certain she's responsible for weaponizing.
He starts to snap at her contradictory action and reaction –and only then realizes there's something in his mouth: something familiar in flavor and texture. He takes a couple of assessing chews –Recovery Girl's gummies, three of them. It's what he spied in her mouth earlier, right before—oh. Fucking oh. Katsuki's sudden epiphany magnifies his wrath to an unprecedented degree. That explains why she looked so fucking stunned when he-fuck, what the hoodwinking fuck?
His thoughts scatter as he swallows the gummies, and he sinks to his knees, overwhelmed by a well-remembered, bone-deep exhaustion. His arm is still tender, and the scar tissue looks raw and gnarly as shit, but at least he can move and flex the damn thing with less sense-shattering, nerve-wrecking misery. The messy perforations in his abdomen mend and close over, too, and for the first time in several minutes, he takes a breath that doesn't feel like a sucker punch to the balls.
He doesn't intend to thank her –magic healing candies or fucking not, she just goddamn mauled him—but he misses the chance to be pointedly ungrateful when Uraraka takes off in the direction of the Izakaya in pursuit of the fleeing Hari Senbon, who's already a good three-quarters of the way up the side of the building via the fire escape. She pauses only long enough to bind the unconscious Grasshopper, laid out in the most undignified position fucking possible behind the dumpster, with a length of what he instantly identifies as the quirk-suppressing rope all the heroes in the region carry. Fluid, practiced motions and a handful of seconds later, Uraraka's off again.
As she goes—"Let's get her!" comes tumbling over her shoulder, accompanied by a side-view of the biggest, stupidest smile he's ever seen. Katsuki shakes himself out of his bleary-eyed, enervated stupor and blasts off right the fuck after her…because that was the fucking plan anyway, because it's his fucking job. It has nothing the fuck to do with any unthinking compliance her cheerful command might have inspired in lesser shits like, say, the perennial Shitlord, Deku.
No fucking way.
…fuck.
*hari senbon - '1000 needles;' a lyric in that super cute 'yubikiri' promise ditty in japanese culture.
**izakaya - a japanese gastropub.
i feel like bakugou would curse…less? when up to his ears in fisticuffs? at least in his brain? somehow? i don't know, it just happened this way.
i also really think bakupoop–and everyone in class 1-A—would be constantly comparing every villain and/or hero they meet to their classmates.
really put my angry trash toaster through the ringer here…while uraraka comes out completely unscathed. XD
also, yes, i am going to continue to allude sideways to deku as the acknowledged number one hero in Japan.
[next chapter: bakugou believes he can fly, and continues to have no established protocols for accepting compliments. uraraka schools an old classmate on the fundamentals of being nauseous.]