Bakugou Katsuki, now pro-hero nicknamed KaBoom, stomped his way through the ruined street, surrounded by crumbling buildings of a ghost town.
A villain with a cloning quirk decided to be a pain in the ass after eating her breakfast and rampage this part of the city. Something about money or whatever. She was stopped two hours later after having to blast, float, punch, and kick their way through a horde of misshaped impostors to the real one, who stupidly decided to wear a sun hat where all the others didn't; but that wasn't really much of a problem since the more she used her quirk, the more weak, misshaped and inhuman they became. The problem was that her clones could last for up to 24 hours if they weren't destroyed properly, and there was bound to be at least one or two still hanging around.
Now, here he was three hours later, checking every square inch of this place for more clones or whoever got caught up in all this.
He scanned over every open space, looking left, then right, then left again. Rubble crunched under his his heavy boots while his signature sneer rested on his pissed off face. He was assigned the ruined part of the city where his quirk could run wild if more clones were still around, while Uravity and Deku and what's-his-face searched the more populated part of the city.
All he wanted to do was sleep for a year and a half but nooooooooo. Every day this week, some villain said, "Hey, you know what would be hilarious? Robbing a bank or beating up an old lady! Yeah, that would be fun!" And then they'd go and do that. Great.
He turned down another destroyed block when he heard the faintest of sounds: a body hitting the hard ground. Bakugou smirked wickedly. "Alright, you bastard, come on out," he said quietly. Well, quietly for him.
He tred carefully down the street, flicking his calculating eyes back and forth, left and right, glancing into every building and alleyway. His fingers wriggled in anticipation.
Then, he heard a sniffle. He stopped, raising a brow, and waited for another sound. A pair of seconds later, full blown wailing could be heard from a sad and defeated office building. He guessed what it was and annoyed dread sunk into his stomach.
He trotted to the building, anyway. It was part of his job, wasn't it? He looked inside through the empty doorway where a not-ripped out glass door should be, but inside was just a thrown over reception desk and multiple chairs sticking out of the walls. But the wailing continued outside.
Bakugou back-tracked and strode down to the alleyway separating the office building from the other building. He stopped at the entrance and squinted into the shadowed way. Then, he spotted a small, hunched figure sitting on the cold concrete in front of an over-flowing dumpster. Rubbing its eyes with its little fists, it continued to cry with wet sobs in between.
"Oi! Kid! Who are you?" Bakugou recited the first basic saying of How-To-Deal-With-A-Kid class from high school. He hated that lesson, but at least it was finally becoming useful.
The brat looked up and before he knew it, it was running toward him with open arms. He tensed up when the thing leached itself to his leg and continued to wail, with fat tears and snot running down its face.
"Oh, for fuc-" he interrupted himself before he broke the deal with Uraraka. He couldn't swear in front of little kids after losing a bet to her somehow. He may be a jerk, but he kept his promises.
"Oi. Oi! Hey! Get off, would ya?" The munchkin immediately stopped crying and slowly turned its head up to gazed up at him with tear-stained cheeks, while a bad smell invaded his nostrils.
He confirmed that it was a girl. Bark brown bangs covered her forehead while the rest of her hair was pulled back into neat pigtails. Wide glasses outlined with rubber framed her eyes, rubber straps tied at the back of her head to them from falling off. She wore a white shirt decorated with painted sunflowers and pants rolled up to just below her knees and white saddles covered her feet. A so bright it hurt the eyes pink backpack hugged the brat's back. She sniffed again and rubbed her face into his pants, also managing to wipe her nose across the fabric.
"That's it! Get off!" Bakugou yelled as he pried the kid from his leg and placed her a meter away. He rubbed his hand over his pants before looking up and seeing the kid was on the verge of crying again. Panicking slightly, he quickly knelt down on the balls of his feet to her eye level and asked with a little more care, "Alright, kid, what's your name?"
It took a moment for her to answer, trying to find the words to this intimidating person, and him growing a little impatient. Finally, she mumbled, "Hmmngg, H-Hachi."
"I meant your full name," Bakugou clarified.
"H-Ha-Hareta H-Hachi," she muttered a bit louder.
"Okay, Hareta Hachi. I'm gonna take you to your parents. So, don't worry," he told her, though harsher than intended. The girl got the message, though, and she nodded at the ground as she sniffed once more.
He was about to stand up again when the girl held out her hands at him. Her palms were riddled with scratches and some leaked with blood, and then he finally realized this kid reeked. It didn't take long for him to put two and two together.
He face-palmed. "Oh, please don't tell me you hid in the dumpster!"
Hachi nodded and drew back her arms to look down at her palms. "Yeah, I was wa-walking back to my h-hm-house when a whole bunch of people started ru-running and a-a lot of ladies came and started punching everybody, and I got sc-scared, and-and I jumped in the dumpster before one of them got me. When I thought nobody was a-around I ju-hmm-jumped out, but I tr-tripped and got my hands and knees all scraped, s-see," Hachi gestured to her knees, which Bakugou could see was bleeding through the fabric of her pants, "Yeah, and, uh, hmmm." She trailed off when she looked up to his face again and saw that he was not amused.
"What do you mean you were walking home? It's noon! You should still be in school! And it's the middle of the city! Are you telling me you got lost on the way to your house?!" he yelled at her, which he soon regretted when he saw her eyes growing wet again.
"Uggggmmmm, I-I j-ju-just w-wanted to go home, mmmgg," she struggled to say with her tear ducts threatening to let loose once more.
"Well, don't do it again! You might get even more hurt than you are now. Or worse! If you wanna go home, just tell the teachers or something. Okay?" He waited for her confirmation, which was another nod. "What the f- arghhhh, what is wrong with the teacher's staff? Can't they keep track of one kid?"
He stood up again, but not without saying, "And don't hide in dumpsters. You don't know what could be in there." The girl nodded and went to his side when he began to walk the way he came, and she fiddled with the straps of her sickeningly pink backpack. Bakugou also tried to lean away from the awful smell coming off of the brat, but somewhat failing.
"How old are you anyway?" he wondered.
"F-five and three quar-hmm-quarters," Hachi answered simply. Her face brightened up as if she found the thing that would make him like her. "Oh! You wanna see my quirk! It's really cool!" She waited for him to answer.
He only rolled his eyes and grumbled, "Fine."
She beamed up at him and stretched out her hand in front of herself. Above her red scratched palm, a wobbly magenta orb flickered on and off before remaining on and taking shape as a perfect sphere with scribbles of light moving around in the inside like lightning. She threw her hand down to the street and the orb followed before releasing itself from the gravity of her hand and embedding itself in the pavement with a big crack. It soon dispersed into fading magenta sparks.
Hachi looked back up at his face and grinned even wider. "See! Very cool!"
Bakugou only grunted.
"Hey, w-what are these for?" Bakugou looked down to see the girl poking one of his grenade gauntlets with a hesitant pointer finger.
He jerked it away slightly before answering, "It's my grenade gauntlets. They store my sweat so it can cause a bigger explosion."
"Oh," Hachi murmured, "Wait, does it help, uh, your quirk?"
Bakugou could feel the vein pop up on his forehead. "Yeah, what did you think it did?" he said as his eye twitched.
"I dunno, m-maybe to just look cool," the brunette admitted. No, that wasn't the reason at all. Okay, maybe part of the reason, but this brat got it wrong.
The unlikely duo turned down another block in silence, the street looking just as ruined as all the others in a one kilometer radius. Well, not completely silent, Hachi was humming a tune that was clearly off-key and only intelligible to the little girl. It continued in its jumpy way before Bakugou finally had enough. "Oi! What are you hummin'?" he questioned, trying to keep down his irritated tone, and somewhat failing.
"Oh, B-Beauty and the Beast," Hachi replied, looking down. She kicked pebbles of broken street farther in front of herself.
"It's outta tune."
"S-Sorry."
The silence went on, no longer with humming sprinkled in. Bakugou began scanning over every building and alleyway again. Now it was even more dangerous. If a villain popped up it would be that much harder to defeat them without getting the kid caught in the crossfire. Stupid thing had to waltz out the front doors and get herself lost because she wanted to go home. Damn it.
Then a bitterness filled the air, soon choking the atmosphere. Bakugou stopped in his tracks, following the gut feeling he had learned to trust many years ago. Hachi stopped also, looking up at the adult with the giant gauntlets.
"Kid, get behind me," Bakugou commanded quietly. The little girl obliged, sensing the possible danger and moving behind so she peeked out from behind his leg. She gripped one strap of her backpack while the other clutched the fabric of the hero's cargo pants.
Bakugou sauntered forward steadily, stance posed to action at any given moment, his eyes flicked to every which way so not to be surprised easily. Hachi followed, glancing down the way they came so to make sure no one stood at the end, wanting blood to spill. Tension settled deeper and deeper in the pits of their stomachs, tying tiny knots to form one huge knot. But the adult of this party was used to this feeling, staying calm while the girl behind him quivered silently and stumbled at each step. They were almost to the end of the street, almost there to discover what lay-
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" blood-curdling screeches echoed and vibrated through the air from two alleys. Not long after at least seven dozen unholy misshapened excuses for clones poured out from the two alleys at the end of the street. They all ran, crawled, or scrambled toward them with surprising speed. Hachi's pupils shrunk and she screamed shrilly like tomorrow wouldn't come.
Bakugou launched forward with no hesitation. The clone in the lead didn't know what hit her when an explosion was aimed directly at her face and taking off her head in one sweep. But no scarlet liquid squirted out of the stub of a neck, for the insides of all these clones all looked like clay.
The body collapsed to the ground like a sack of potatoes, Bakugou then kicked it forward to knock over the ones behind it like bowling pins. The clones caught in the wake of the lanky form instantly hit the concrete, one shattering its weak skull and steaming into nothing like the beheaded clone. The ones still standing only ran around or over the others that were still getting up, making a beeline for KaBoom: The Explosion Hero.
"HAHAHA, COME AT ME, YOU FUCKERS!" the man screamed at the rampaging horde. A sadistic grin replaced his normal frown, eyes filled with murderous glee. Three hours of no action had finally lead up to this.
Two clones rounded both his sides, aiming to damage his abdomen, but he was one step ahead. He set his arms left and right and exploded the upper body of both clones, the clones falling to the floor. Another freakishly crawled to him to bite his ankles, but at the last second, he kicked its head up and blasted it with an upper cut, sending it back to hit more clones mindlessly came forward all the same into the massacre of KaBoom.
Hachi watched from afar, her mouth hanging wide open.
The hero's heavy gauntlet collided with heads on the left, while the other blasted the chests on the right. He clamped down on the arm of a spidery clone, spun and hit more of them with their own comrade. He threw the clone away after it lost its lower body, and sent explosions flying, sweeping his arms left and right. The clones just kept coming.
A screech came from above and Bakugou looked up to see another clone falling toward his head. He threw his arm up to blast it from the sky, succeeded, but two more launched themselves forward from the side and landed on top of him. One yelled at the sky while the other came too close for comfort to tearing his shoulder wide open. Before either could create damage, he threw them off of him with a scream. Then he realized that they had almost surrounded him.
"OUTTA MY WAY!" he screeched to every clone. He blasted more clone flesh to the sky. Slimy hands reached out to trap him but he smashed every one of them. Shrieks of agony escaped the mouth of every damaged body.
He spun in a circle, around and around, detonating explosions from his hands in every direction. Suddenly, a hundred tiny needles sunk deep into his calf.
He head swung down to see a clone chew his leg with what could only be described as smugness. Bakugou aimed an explosion for the back of the bastard that was tearing into his flesh.
But a scream from behind interrupted the blast. He whipped his head around to see three inhuman clones closing in for the kill of the little girl in his care.
"DAMMIT!" he screamed as he blasted the back of the leg-chewing clone. It released its jaw on his leg, then he stomped on the burn on the back with a sickening crack, breaking its spine.
He turned on his heel, set his arms back to rocket his way to the murder scene, killing two birds with one stone by hitting the clones right behind him with the blast and slamming into clones in front like a freight train.
The explosions from his hands propelled him forward, only a second going by before he kicked one abomination in the neck, shot another with an explosion, and landed on the skull of the last one just before they laid their hands on the girl, the bodies slamming to the ground and laying lifeless.
The five year old stood motionless, hands clamped on her ears and a few salty tears leaking from her closed eyes. One eye cracked open a bit to see the black and orange hero hunched over the body of a clone with its head squished under his black boot. Her eyes widened.
He was an idiot to leave the girl without any safety.
Bakugou turned to see the rest of the clones advancing toward them. More than five dozen remained. His eyes flicked to the buildings and back to the clones and then to the ground below him and back-
Both grenade gauntlets glowed red, one after the other, signifying the time for the final explosion. Oh, how he grinned.
"KID! Hold onto me!" Bakugou ordered as he snatched the girl by the backpack. She quickly did as instructed, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly. He threw his arms to the street and detonated two giant explosions from his hands to carry him and the little girl to the rooftops. Faintly, he heard a squeal from the girl's mouth as her grip became even tighter; from fear or joy, he had no clue.
The two flew to the top of a nearby building, but not too near to get the girl caught in danger again. He landed heavily on the gravelly surface with a grunt, skidded a couple feet before stopping completely. The kid slowly loosened her grip, dangled for a second before letting go and landing on her butt on the hard ground. Though she wanted to cry, she didn't. This was important.
"Stay here until I get back. Got it?" he commanded. The girl answered by nodding her head vigorously.
The man spun on his heel back to the sad excuses of clones street. Starting with a run, he leaped from the side of the building. He caught his fall with several explosions from each hand, steadily dropping himself down to the street.
Hachi trotted to the side of the building to watch the battle from above.
Bakugou hit the ground with a thud, right in front of the zombies who were looking around for their two foes a second ago. Noticing him once more, they started running at him again with screeches and shrieks.
"Just a little . . ." Bakugou muttered bitterly as he lowered himself into position. His sadistic grin widened as all the clones seemed to go along with his plan, somewhat aligning themselves into the giant blast range. He clicked the grenade stick back, the pin popping out . . . closer . . . he pulled back the other grenade stick with the pin coming into view too . . .closer . . . the first line of rampaging creatures were now at least fifteen meters away. With some difficulty, Bakugou pulled each pin from its holder, one after the other in a split second. Hurriedly, he again aimed at the oncoming army with both arms.
A year seemed to pass before-
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
All time seemed to stop when the explosion that could be used to launch a rocket into the atmosphere caught an entire street in its wake.
The recoil of the humongous explosion sent the explosive hero skidding back on the street until he came to a complete stop. He waited until he stopped moving backward, hunched over and panted heavily. His shoulders shook slightly from the shock wave, fortunately not dislocating or breaking any bones. After a moment, he slowly lifted his head to see the aftermath.
The street was blackened with soot and smoke, and just started to settle to the ground, but he could just make out the remains of incinerated clones. They didn't even look like bodies, only huge lumps of burnt clay. All of the lumps were eroding away with steam, slowly but surely fading into nothing.
Only now did he remember the horrible wound that was bitten into his leg. He almost fell over, but caught himself, even though it hurt like a bitch. With his leg screaming bloody murder, he quickly set his hands to the ground and rocketed himself back up to the roof where the girl sat waiting.
When he landed on the roof again, with a curse because of his leg, he expected the girl to be quivering at the side of the roof, inching away from the scary beast that stood before her like so many kids and even adults did. But when he looked up to find her, she was right there, bristling with excitement and awe.
"That, that was so COOL! You were amazing! I din't know your quirk, but now I do and it's the best! That explosion was awesome! And now all those monsters are dead and you were awesome! And all those kicks and punches and explosions! I thought they were gonna get you for sure!But you were not having it and hit them! And with that giant boom! Oh, so cool! And, and-" Hachi interrupted herself when she saw his face. He looked angry, but really he was just bewildered and dumbstruck. Anybody else would be horrified, but this brat was acting like she was in a damn candy store.
When he didn't say anything for a moment, she took it as a cue to go on. Quieter than last time, she continued, "And, t-that was really cool. So, I just w-wanted to say your the greatest. . . ." She trailed off, staring at the floor and wondering if she did something bad.
Bakugou recovered from his inability to speak. "Yeah, well, thanks," he grumbled.
Hachi's face brightened up again. Until she looked down at his leg to see the crimson liquid streaming down his boot. She gasped. "Ohmygosh, you're b-bleeding!"
"Really? I hadn't noticed," Bakugou said, the words dripping with sarcasm. He was about to start walking to the door leading to the inside of the building, when the girl slipped off her backpack, unzipped the top, and pulled out another pair of pants.
She held it up to him. "M-My mom makes me carry a-around another pair of p-pants in c-case i wet myself at sc-school."
His face scrunched up in disgust. "Lovely."
"Oh, d-don't worry. It's clean."
He glared at the suspicious pair of pants before rolling his eyes and snatching it out of her hands. Hachi grinned at the act of kindness accepted as Bakugou wrapped and tied the pants around the wound. It covered most of it, but the brat was happy so it was fine. Blood was already starting to seep through the fabric.
"Ooo, gross," Hachi commented and moved to his other side.
"What? You see a giant explosion and dead clones and you call a blood stain 'gross'?" Bakugou questioned harshly as he walked to the door, with a limp so slight you had to be paying attention to notice it.
"W-Well, I dunno."
The two descended the dark stairwell. When they reached the thirteenth floor, Bakugou decided against taking the elevator, one, extra precautions, and two, to maintain his pride. He can go down fourteen flights of steps, no problem.
"So, you're a h-hero, right? What's your hero name?" the girl asked.
"Yeah, I'm a hero. And the name's KaBoom," Bakugou answered gruffly.
"KaBoom," she repeated with an almost comical respect. "Like a explosion!" She then proceeded to make several explosion like noises. Bakugou's eye twitched ever so slightly.
Hachi continued to chatter quietly either to Bakugou or herself until they reached the main floor. When they got to the front doors, Bakugou grabbed her backpack and stirred her away from the blackened street, thinking of another route back to civilization. When they exited the destroyed street into another destroyed street, Bakugou let go of her backpack and began leading the way back once again.
They had walked down a few more blocks, Bakugou still taking precautions and checking every building and alley, when the unimaginable happened. The girl slipped her hand into his. He tensed up and almost jerked his hand away, but he let the kid's hand remain there. He didn't hold her hand back or anything, just let it stay limp while she gripped two of his fingers lightly. It was strange, she had seen that those hands could destroy any number of people, maybe even blow up her whole arm in one go, but she still wanted a hand to hold.
It took a while for him to realize that the kid was humming again, but he was too tired to tell her to stop. No one else but the girl knew that it was "Your Welcome."
When the two finally made it back to the populated parts of the city, the only thing that separated the public from the wreck of a couple blocks of ruins were police tape and actual police. But that didn't stop civilians from getting as close as possible.
One civilian with twisty horns saw the duo coming before everyone else did. "Look! It's the explosion hero! He's got a girl with him!"
Everyone who heard whipped their heads where the twisty horn guy was pointing, and they cheered for they assumed correct that this was a rescue. Not an intended rescue, but a rescue all the same.
A few police officers ducked under the tape and ran up to where Bakugou stood with the little girl holding his hand. She stepped behind Bakugou again, suddenly shy of all the eyes on her.
"Oi. Get this kid to her parents. They're probably going fucking crazy," Bakugou instructed the nearest police officer. "And get her a bath. She was sitting in a damn dumpster."
All too late, Bakugou realized he broke his promise with Uraraka. Now he had to be her cooking slave for a month.
Another officer ran up and said, "We heard explosions. What happened in there?"
"Just met a couple clones. Nothing I couldn't handle." Bakugou noticed a camera crew and a news reporter setting up, so he turned his head away. He didn't really like the spotlight as much as he used to. Too many questions, stupid nosy reporters.
"Hey, what's your name?" another police officer asked when he bent down to the eye level of the little brunette.
"Ummmmmm," the girl looked up at Bakugou, silently asking him what to do.
"What are you looking at me for? Just tell him your name."
The girl looked back at the officer. "Ummm, uh, H-Ha-Hareta Hachi."
"All right, Hareta, we're going to take you to the station and call your parents, okay? They're going to come and take you home," the officer said in a gentle voice.
Hachi nodded and replied, "Okay." The man took her free hand and gently pulled her along. Hachi followed, but suddenly remembered something. She wiggled her hand out of the officer's and turned back to Bakugou. She ran up and hugged his non-injured leg tightly. Bakugou was surprised, but it could barely be seen on his face.
"Get better and fight more bad guys, okay? You're way too cool to let 'em win," Hachi told Bakugou. He would be lying to say that it didn't warm his heart, but he's lied more than once.
A series of "awwwwwww"'s could be heard from the crowd and Bakugou stonily replied, "Fine, I will."
Satisfied, Hachi let go, grinned and ran back while waving over her shoulder and yelling, "Bye, KaBoom!" Then the officer lead her away to the police station.
Bakugou turned back and started back to his agency building, so he could clock out and sleep for a year and a half.
But little did he know that he had became that little girl's hero.
Hey, Angelfishcake, here.
This is a story I thought up to distract myself from my constant writer's block of my other story. I really need to continue on it.
I hoped you enjoyed. Spent like a month thinking of this and then actually writing it within a week. Strange.
If you noticed a lack of Bakugou swearing, sorry. I'm not really a big fan of writing swears.
Man I love Bakugou.
Alright, please review (come on, do it) and stay creative.