CHAPTER 3:

A/N:

My teacher for afternoon classes only made a passing remark, luckily, about my absence during the morning. I still felt my face burn and pressed my face into the desk though when I had the attention called to me. Classes for the day otherwise proceed normally, even up until the after-school attempt Bakugo makes to bully me. A year ago his attempts would have worked, I would have COWERED, been beaten up, and never had the strength or finesse to resist. But after learning basic combat strategy through the extensive reading on the subject and spending hours watching old videos of broadcasted American hand-to-hand quirk assisted combat competitions over the internet, I was able to survive decently.

My seemingly newfound and almost overnight skills, where I get better at DODGing the more frequently he attacks me, frightened him into confrontation, as far as I can tell. The force of my DODGEs left him stunned, and to the point of using a full frontal blast on me that I couldn't dodge. The radius was too wide to manage such a feat. So I BRACEd and took the hit, lowering my stance to not be knocked flat against the wall, and raising my arms to protect vitals (face, upper chest, neck). I took the hit and didn't get knocked back. GAME informed me that the taking the brunt of such a strong blast has LEVELED UP my BRACE SKILL to LEVEL 2.

"SKILL HAS LEVELED UP" the message wrote in a bubbly, cheerful green font

I prompted OPENing the message, which led to a secondary dialogue page:

"BRACE HAS LEVELED UP. BRACE is now LEVEL 2.

At LEVEL 2 the following bonuses are gained:

+ Resistance + Chance to not be STUNNED"

STUNNED was written in a deep purple, but the GAME interface did not allow me to open any pages further. I quickly CLOSEd the interface to get back to Bakugo. Bakugo was staring. Obviously my quiet commands and slight movements of the hands to close windows had not gone entirely unnoticed.

His usual obnoxious tone was with tinted with sarcasm and interest according to ANALYSIS (CLOSE) as he asked me, almost seething, how I was doing 'that.' He didn't elect to explain what 'that' was and he didn't have to. He wanted to know how I dodged, how I moved nimbly around him without much of a care. After determining quickly that an explanation was in fact what he sought after, I explained; just as I did two years ago, when I had barely gotten a true hold on it, I told him about my Quirk. That had been during a class show-and-tell. Nobody had believed me back then. All my quirk had for it was my word, I couldn't use it for anything and had still been exploring other functions, testing them. I do my best to withhold some information on my quirk from him as I explain the progress meter once again, and the SKILLs allowing me to to predict his movements. I make it sound like my dodging itself was entirely on my own, instead of a separate feature of that SKILL. I don't know if he buys into my explanation fully, but he stops bullying me for the time being.

A week later, he comes to me after school and silently walks back keeping a few paces ahead of me. He does this every day for the next four school days and when I don't question his actions and continually allow him to do that, he turns around halfway back to our homes and glares at me sharply. "Well?" His reply comes in the tone of a shout with his arms motioning aggressively at me as he would in a shout, but at a quieter volume than he would ever shout at. Does, "aren't you going to say anything about any of this?"

I look at him with a pleasant smile on my face, "No, of course I wasn't going to, Kacchan! I didn't want you to yell at me like you usually would!"

"Didn't you say your quirk could perform analysis up close?"

"Uh well yeah but I have to ask it to and you weren't being aggressive towards me so I didn't want to intrude so…"

At that comment he starts yelling at me with full force, small sparks igniting inside his clenched hands. "It isn't like I particularly believe in your ability to get into UA, DEKU, but are you going to just completely give up on trying? It doesn't matter how interesting or unique your shitty quirk is if you're an idiot seemingly committed to not using it. Why the fuck would you not use it whenever you get the chance?" He shoves me down, "If you're not going to fight back or even attempt to learn from this then don't bother to come near me. If you want to earn your dreams, you have to earn them! Don't you dare try standing on the same stage as me if won't put in the same effort as me. A week ago you might've been worthy, you were standing up to me!; so either get your act together and learn or lay prone and be my stepping stone!"

He stalks off with a run before I can protest or give a reply.

I look down and push myself into standing up, and chase after him. Sometimes Kacchan was hard to understand, but for this rant of his, I could see his meaning clear as the sun myself; no quirk was needed. He was angry at me for sure, but underneath that he felt wronged. He had seen me try me best to stand up to him, even if it was only in self defense and that had (briefly) elevated me into a person worth considering, outside of the background cast of extras that otherwise makes up his life. Then, when I didn't show myself to be exploiting my Quirk whenever I could it probably angered him because he saw it as an insult to his dream. Perhaps he was still being rude, but I understood his reasoning. If I had a dream like that, I'm sure I would still act more understanding and kind but it would be an annoyance. I jog home the rest of the way, with slightly more determination to do better.