A/N: So guys, fun fact, I once took a chem placement exam for university and scored in the 8th percentile. As in, the bottom eight percent. Meaning if the science here doesn't make sense...well you know why. LOL. ; - ;
Also, I realize Jirou didn't have sufficient interaction with Bakugou last chapter, so she plays a major part in this chapter too! Enjoy!
He fucked up.
He really fucked the fuck up. He truly dropped the ball on this one and then made another ball out of tinfoil and dropped that one too.
Because now Uraraka won't look him in the eyes anymore. Not since that...performance.
See, the good thing about her knowing who the song was meant for is that, well, at least she understands he's a pining idiot. Now, the bad thing about her knowing who the song was meant for is that she understands he's a pining idiot.
How is he supposed to get close to her now, when she avoids eye contact and refuses to be seen in the same room as him?
"Yeah, at that point you're not supposed to get close to her," Kirishima had said. "Most people would get that you're supposed to give up if it reaches that point."
Well, Katsuki isn't most people. And he doesn't have a concept of personal boundaries. So he's going to keep trying to get closer to her because he's not a baby-ass, shit-eating giver-upper.
...But wait, if Uraraka doesn't want to be alone in the same room as him and he keeps insisting on it, wouldn't that make him a bit of a...jerk?
Okay, now he has a concept of personal boundaries.
Congratulations! New skill «Respect» has been gained.
Congratulations! Your Empathy Level grew from Level 4 to Level 5.
And he already misses the moment one minute ago when he didn't understand the concept. Because now that he's no longer ignorant to the notion of respect, he realizes there's nothing left for him to do other than give Uraraka some space and time to herself while he latches onto the crumbling bits of hope that she doesn't transfer out of this school over her embarrassment.
What is he supposed to do with his life now, without his purpose of pursuing her? Study? Read a book? Make friends?
Well, he doesn't really have hobbies anymore now that Koda's banned him from seeing Coco for reasons unknown, so he supposes he could make friends.
Especially since all his current friends keep looking at him with a mixture of pity in their eyes and uncontrollable laughter bubbling from their lips. Yeah, he needs new friends.
"So why are you hanging around me?" Jirou asks.
They've all gathered around the common room again, except this time, Katsuki's deliberately chosen not to sit next to his regular pals — also known as Kirishima, Sato, Aoyama, Todoroki. You know, his regular bros.
Why, you ask?
Well, because they all broke the bro code by refusing to give him a break from reliving the embarrassment of his dumbass decisions by constantly replaying his stupidass song they somehow managed to catch on their phones, so no, they're not his bros anymore. Just random Joes. Toes? He's like a pizza connoisseur and they're all dough he wants to throw over and across the other side of the Earth. They're all roe, because they're the caviar of bad friends…
No. None of this works. What's a good enough insult for them that properly conveys how they're the exact opposite of a "bro" and yet also perfectly rhymes with that word?
Oh wait. He's got it. Damn, he's so good at this word shit.
They ain't his bros.
They're crows.
Annoying. Loud. Everywhere he goes and ready to pester him at a moment's notice. Just like crows.
Fucking got'em.
"Bakugou, you didn't answer my question," Jirou repeats. "Why are you hanging around me?"
Oh. He was so wrapped up in sticking it to his old friends he forgot about making new friends. Although, he wouldn't really count Jirou as a new friend, per se. Maybe — if he estimates his friendship points with her rather generously — more like half a friend. Or, after that whole fiasco, more like a non-tutor who's embarrassed by her non-pupil.
He doesn't know what to call their relationship, actually. But, based on his interaction — or lack thereof — with her compared to his fake bros, he's pretty sure they don't quite count as friends yet.
"Dunno," he finally says.
...It turns out after all that thought into what the status of his relationship was with her, he didn't put any thought into what words could be a detriment to that status. And out of all possible words, "Dunno" is probably somewhere near the tippity top of that list.
"Then, do you want to…" —Jirou not so subtly inches away from Katsuki, leaving a Grand Canyon of space between them— "do you want to, like, not hang out with me, then?"
She frames it like a question, but delivers it like a demand.
But also, no, Katsuki doesn't not want to hang out with her. He needs friends. New friends. This is the only hobby he has left and he'll be damned if he has to give this up too.
"I can't sit next to you or something?" he asks. "It's not like it's illegal. Not like there's a rule in place here that says you and I can't hang out together."
"No, but I can sure make it one."
"Well, I—" Shit, Katsuki forgot he should never pick a verbal fight with her. More like, he forgot exactly how good she was at her comeback game. "I...uh…"
"Hey, what'cha two up to?" Pinky suddenly barges herself into the conversation, plopping herself into the convenient space between him and Jirou.
Though Katsuki would normally be annoyed by someone inserting themselves into his quality time with someone, Katsuki is anything but annoyed. In fact, he might even be grateful for Pinky. For one, his time just now with Jirou was anything but quality, and for two, Pinky just saved his ass from that awkward situation.
"Man," she exclaims, extending the vowel a bit in a verbal pout, "did you guys get the homework last night? Like, I came to Yuuei to become a hero, not a calculus professor. I wish we could spend some more time on training instead." She abruptly changes her line of sight from the nothingness of space before her to the deep red of Katsuki's eyes. "Hey, speaking of homework, isn't class starting soon? Wanna head over together?"
"Oh, sure," is what escapes his lips before the words can even properly process in his brain.
"Great!" Pinky exclaims, grabbing both Jirou and him by the hands and dragging them up and off of the couch. "Let's go!"
And then the next thing he knows, the harsh light of the outdoors glare directly into his retinas and suddenly, he's taking a walk with Jirou and Pinky to class. On either side of him, both girls ease into gossip.
"Hey, Ashido, you used to go to middle school with Kirishima, right?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"So I've been wondering this for a while but is his hair...really just like that?"
"Ha, no! That guy probably goes through two cans of hairspray a day! For real, I don't know how he has the money to deal with all that upkeep on the daily."
"Then what did he look like back in middle school?"
"...Wanna see a pic?"
"Do you really have one?"
"Yeah! Lemme dig through my phone real quick to find a pic!"
...Why does Pinky have a pic of the guy on her phone? Katsuki doesn't even have any pics of the guy on his phone, and Kirishima's pretty much straight up told him at some point he's closer to him than he had ever been with any of his middle school friends. So why Pinky would have a pic of him on her phone, then, is beyond him.
It's not going to stop him from talking a peek at the pic though. Who knows, maybe it'll make great blackmail fodder to get Kirishima to stop playing that stupidass song every time he enters a room.
"Ah, I found it! Take a look at him. I can't believe a haircut can make someone look so different!"
Katsuki and Jirou both lean their heads over, quite literally butting their heads over who the first to see Kirishima's embarrassing middle school hair phase would be. But before any of the glowing pixels on screen can register in his head, something knocks him on the backside of the head and the next thing he knows, the world fades to black.
When he wakes up, he finds himself bound to a chair in a room devoid of all color and personality minus a few imperfections in the paint job. On either side of him are Jirou and Pinky, who have also both been tied to chairs, with one circle of rope tied around their chests and binding all three of them together.
How did this happen? He was kidnapped? By a method as simple as just knocking him out? But normally, his reflexes are good enough that people wouldn't be able to get within a meter of him without him hearing them.
Does this mean...being with the two of them lowered his guard? Does this imply making friends has made him...weaker?
No, it couldn't be.
Could it?
...Nah.
"Ouch…"
"Where are...we?"
It seems the two girls have woken up, too, by now. And they seem to be just as confused as he is. If not more.
"Have we...been kidnapped?" Jirou asks.
Yep, yep. Jirou seems to be great at thinking on her feet, even with a possible concussion from getting knocked out.
And then Jirou clicks her tongue. "Bakugou, is it a given that you'll get kidnapped every three months or something? Because if so, I'm going to need to start keeping a calendar just so I know when to not be around you."
Katsuki doesn't know what hurts more — the simple fact that he's been kidnapped, or the affront on his pride by Jirou insinuating he's a cursed little bastard. Regardless, he really took a hit today, more than physically.
"Look, if anything, me getting kidnapped so often means I have a shitload of arch-nemeses, and if anything, that just makes me a greater hero."
"Yeah. Sure. If that helps you sleep at night."
"I sleep just fine—"
"Hey, you two! Quit fighting and let's figure out how to get out of this!" Pinky butts in.
Jirou sighs. "Well, Bakugou's already been in a situation where he's been tied up before—"
...And exactly whose fault was that, Jirou?
"—so can't he just break us out the same way?"
"You mean by blasting off the ropes?" He scowls. "You realize if I did that, I'd probably hurt you two as collateral damage, right?"
Jirou turns her face towards him, eyes a little bit wider than normal. "Oh, Bakugou...being considerate?"
Her words are hidden is so many layers of both sarcasm and genuine astonishment he isn't sure what the center of her intent would be even if he managed to pull back all those layers like an onion. But she's right. Since when did he become genuinely considerate of others? Since when did he start caring about whether or not he would hurt others? This is truly a new experience for him, here.
"How about Pinky, then? You can shoot out acid, right?"
"Yeah, but then I'd run into the same problem as you." Pinky contorts the shape of her mouth into a something akin to an upside down 'v,' deep in thought. "I might burn you two with my acid if I tried to bust us all out of the rope."
"Damn."
"Also, Bakugou! I didn't know you knew my hero name!" Pinky chirps up, dialing her personality from pensive and concerned back to its regular station of cheerful ball of excitement.
But Katsuki, hearing that, can only furrow his brows in confusion. "What are you talking about?"
"Pinky! My hero name!"
Ah.
Fuck.
He slipped and called her "Pinky" out loud? He had been doing his best up until now to keep his nicknames for his classmates under wraps, because he figured it would sure make him look like a jerk if he kept publicly referring to them as something other than their names. Sure, this time he lucked out and Pinky just happened to be her hero name, but if there's ever a next time where this happens, he's not guaranteed to be this lucky again.
"Actually, I didn't know your hero name," he blurts out. Without thinking. For the nth time in his entire, wholeass life.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He dug himself a hole, she lent him a hand and shoveled dirt back in, and then he decided to just bulldoze his way all the way to Brazil even with all her help to not be a fucking idiot.
"Oh. So then you were just calling me Pinky because—"
"Look, I just called you that based off of skin color." When he finally hears the words that just escaped from his lips, his eyes widen so much he swears they've become a large enough circumference to legally use for target practice. "It's a...nice skin tone, though...?"
Look, for as smart and as fucking genius he can be sometimes, Katsuki really needs to learn how to shut the fuck up sometimes. Because did he just imply there were not nice skin tones?
The only bad skin tone there's gonna be after all this shit is going to be his kidnappers' after he beats them up and carts them off to jail for getting him into this situation to begin with. Because none of this could possibly be Katsuki's fault. Nope. Not a chance in the world.
But Pinky, unperturbed, just shoots a broad smile in his direction. "Thanks! It took me a while to really come to terms with myself, but I really like my skin tone too! It's why I chose it as my hero name in the first place! But really, you can just call me Ashido instead!"
...How he just managed to get himself out of that situation is beyond him, but he'll take the chance he was just given and even grovel before it if necessary. Time to change conversation topics before he induces a seizure by continually fucking up conversation with Ashido.
"Then Jirou," he says, turning towards her, "what's your quirk? Do you think you can break us out of here?"
For a moment, she's silent. Yet, when she opens her mouth, it's the last answer he expects. "Didn't you say something last week something akin to: 'Well it's second semester, so you should know my quirk by now.' What, are you exempt from your own logic?"
Katsuki can feel his face turning red from embarrassment. "W-well, I'll have you know, those weren't actually my words. I was just repeating what Uraraka told me a while back!"
Ha! Take that, Jirou. Check-mcFuck-Mate. Let's see how you get out of that one.
"Then isn't it worse that you're aware of the issue and still haven't done anything about it? And isn't it hypocritical of you to call someone out for a fault you share?"
Oh. Well, Katsuki now realizes he doesn't know how to play chess. So maybe what he just did was analogous to if someone exclaimed, "Slam dunk!" in a game of "Go Fish." It turns out, Jirou is always one step ahead of him, circling around his words like a shark, ready to pick them out and apart like her prey.
Damn, she's good.
Jirou sighs. "My quirk is Earphone Jack. See my ears here?" She tilts her head a little to the side, allowing Katsuki a good glimpse of the extra appendages hanging off her lobes. "I can plug these into anything and channel the sound of my heartbeat into those things."
"...So do you think the vibrations are strong enough to separate the fibers of the ropes?" he asks.
A split second of thought passes through her, reflecting gentle surprise in her eyes. "Hmmm, yeah. I think that could work. And it shouldn't hurt you too much, save for a little ringing in your ears. If I slowly adjust the frequency too, your ears should accommodate enough that it shouldn't burst your eardrums."
"Yay, Jirou!" Pinky giggles. "I'm so glad I got kidnapped with you!"
"I don't think there's any sufficient reason to being glad you were kidnapped at all."
"Yeah, but since I have been kidnapped, you're definitely the best to get kidnapped with, you know."
Katsuki sighs, just wanting to get out of these ropes and stretch his limbs. You know, gotta get in a good stretch before he renders his kidnappers into meat shreds. "Could you just get on with it already? I wanna teach those kidnappers a lesson or two." If he had free reign of his arms, he would definitely be smacking his fists together right now in his own hype.
Jirou gives him a look that tells him she doesn't appreciate him rushing her. But, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, she extends her earjacks towards the rope. Evidently, she's just about as irritated as he is with this whole situation, and probably figures the sooner she can pick an actual fight with the kidnappers, the better.
It begins as a low grumble, raising an octave in pitch maybe once every thirty seconds. It's enough for his ears to adjust to each change in pitch, but not enough for the final result to still not sound shrill as all hell. If it weren't for Jirou's consideration of their fragile ears that aren't hers, he's pretty sure his ears would be bleeding right about now.
But just as he's about to faint for the second time today, he notices the ropes dancing around, each individual fiber beginning to unravel from the shock. In just another half a second, the ropes binding the three of them together have all but turned to something akin to limp hair on the ground.
"Great job, Jirou!" Ashido exclaims, dusting herself off before throwing a thumbs up in Jirou's direction.
"T-Thanks," the other girl replies, absentmindedly twiddling with one of her earjacks as the faintest blush dawns upon her cheeks.
Oh. Is Jirou actually...shy?
Time to record that in the books. You know, to remember for later. Just in case. Or something. You know, it's probably not easy to blackmail someone for being shy, but he sure can try.
"Okay!" Ashido pumps her fist into the air. "It's time to get back at them for kidnapping us!" She makes a motion with her arms, as if ready to shoot acid at the door and break it down.
But just as Ashido's about to shoot out jets of acid, Jirou places a hand on the girl's arm, startling her from being able to properly use her quirk. Rather, a few droplets fall from her fingertips, bubbling and fizzing on the ground, but otherwise doing nothing — not even leaving a hole in the floor.
"What?" Surprisingly, it's not Ashido to state her annoyance that her destructive impulses have been quelled. Rather, it's Katsuki who just said that. "Why can't Ashido just bust us outta here? I wanna beat up some dumbasses."
Jirou lets go of Ashido's arm, placing her hands on her hips now. She gives an irritated huff. "Well, think about it. Our quirks are meant to wreak havoc on a mass scale. Sure, we're working on more streamlined lines of offense so we can more accurately target things, but we're still novices on that type of plan of attack."
"So what's your point?" Katsuki asks, arms folded and head churning with confusion over how any part of what she just said was relevant to their situation. Mass destruction? Yes please.
As if she can read his thoughts, Jirou glares at him. "So my point is, if we're not sure if we're the only hostages here, we shouldn't go around blowing shit up."
Oh. Fair point. Isn't that what got him into trouble at the extra hero practice the other day? When he busted in too quick into All Might's fake armed robbery?
Impatience is a sin, Katsuki, he has to tell himself.
"Then what are we gonna do about it?" Ashido asks.
"Let me stake out the perimeters of this building first. I'll listen in and check if there's any hostages other than us. And then we'll talk about blowing this place into smithereens."
"Wait, but Jirou, I thought your quirk could only extend to a radius of about twelve meters," Ashido says.
"Well, yes, but I've been training it a lot recently, and I think I can get it to extend it a lot farther than that now, though I haven't really been able to measure the distance of how far, lately. But assuming all the walling is directly connected to each other, I can probably...well, approximately...hear a few vibrations from every room," Jirou explains.
Katsuki places a hand on his chin, deep in thought. This is the first time in a while he's probably thought about anything, to be honest. "How well does your quirk work?"
"Do you mean how my quirk works? Dude, I already told y—"
"No. Like, does it work sort of like echolocation? Do you think you could use it to give us a general layout of this building?"
"Ooh! Good idea, Bakugou! If we can get an approximate map of this place, then we can even plan some sort of sneak attack on them!" Ashido exclaims. And then she remembers that the other party hasn't answered whether or not her quirk even works that way. Awkwardly turning towards Jirou, Ashido softly says, "You know, so long as that's within your quirk abilities, Jirou."
Jirou, in response, seems deep in thought. Scratching her temple, she says, "Well, I've never really thought about using it like that before. And I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to push the upper limits of my quirk right now…" she trails off, before glancing up at the other two, who now seem to be wracking their heads to figure out some other strategy to get back at the kidnappers.
Then again, they can always just default back to the original plan: straight up fucking up the building.
"But you know, I can try," Jirou finally concedes, already heading to the doorway, earjacks ready to go. Plugging them into the wall, she shuts her eyes closed as tightly as physically possible.
Her intense concentration renders both him and Ashido unable to move, in fear of interfering with her hearing by making noise of their own. Rather, he thinks in the one or two minutes she spends listening to the vibrations of the building, he probably only breathes 0.5 times.
How can you only take half a breath, you may ask?
Well, the second he realized he was involuntarily breathing, he kept all the air trapped in his mouth to prevent it from escaping, and he kept this up until he was quite literally blue in the face. Maybe even purple.
Good thing Jirou didn't have her eyes open. She would've made fun of him.
Although, Ashido's eyes were open, and it literally took every ounce of her will to not fall on the floor in laughter of his dumbassery.
Why is him trying to be considerate so funny? He's trying his best here, he really is.
Or is he?
He actually doesn't know the answer to that himself. After all, he can't feel his brain or his lungs or his blood pulse anymore, so honestly speaking, there's not a single coherent thought running through his head right now.
(But is there ever any coherent thought running through his head? You decide!)
"Okay, I think I sorta got the layout of the building!" Jirou exclaims, unplugging herself from the wall, and ultimately breaking the silence.
"Shit, finally I can breathe again!" Katsuki shouts out, gulping in large pockets of air.
But him finally being able to breathe again means that Ashido is also finally free to laugh at him. And that she does. Over and over and over until both his ears and lungs are ringing with the sound of her laughter.
But when Jirou asks, "What's so funny?" it turns out Ashido's enough of a bro to give Jirou nothing more than an "It's nothing" while wiping the tears from her eyes.
And with that, Ashido is now his second favorite girl in Class 1-A, after Uraraka. If only because Ashido understands he's already suffered enough humiliation under Jirou to not deserve more cannon fodder of disgrace thrown his way by her and her cutthroat words.
As Ashido's peals of laughter begin to die down, Katsuki turns towards said girl with said cutthroat words. "So whaddya learn?"
"Okay, so this building seems to be pretty tiny. Only two stories tall. It's also pretty good, which is good for me because that means there's less soundproofing. Anyway, I could only catch three distinct sets of footsteps, so I'm guessing there are three kidnappers."
"Hear anything other than those footsteps?" Ashido asks.
"Yeah, if there are other hostages who were tied up like us, they definitely wouldn't be walking freely around," Katsuki continues what he presumes was Ashido's train of thought. "So just because you can't hear more distinct footsteps, how can we be sure there aren't other people here?"
"You're right." Jirou nods her approval at Katsuki's musings. "I took that into account, but I also only heard three sets of voices along with those three sets of footsteps."
"But what if there are other hostages who are just knocked out, like we were? We can't just go destroying this building on the chance that we're the only hostages here. I don't want to mess up and get people unnecessarily hurt." Ashido frowns. "Wow, hostage situations sure suck." Turning towards Katsuki, she rather innocently asks him, "How do you deal with this all the time?"
Katsuki scowls back at her. He doesn't deal with it all the time. Okay? He isn't just constantly getting kidnapped. It's not like he runs around the city with a sign taped to his back that says, "Villains! Kidnap me!" He's not a fucking idiot. Just fucking unlucky.
But just as he's about to retort her rather rude insinuation — even if it is somewhat truthful from an outsider's perspective — Jirou interrupts the flow of their tangent and says, "Yeah, I also took that into account. But I heard a little bit of their conversations, and I think I caught them saying something like, how they're going to get famous within certain villain circles for capturing three Yuuei students."
"Did they mention anyone else?" Ashido asks.
"No." Jirou shakes her head. "The only number I heard them repeating was three."
"So the probability that we're the only hostages here is around ninety-something percent, huh?" Katsuki slowly turns his frown upside-down and changes his newfound smile into the smirk of Satan. "So it would be pretty safe for us to just destroy this building, huh?"
"Yeah, that's the conclusion I came up with too," Jirou says.
"Then what are we waiting for?" Ashido practically shouts out, before she instinctively covers her mouth in fear of the kidnappers hearing them. "Let's go!" she whispers to them, heading toward the door.
"Wait!" Katsuki motions at Ashido to stay where she is. Turning towards Jirou again, he asks her, "Do you know which room the kidnappers are?"
Jirou nods. "I think they're directly below us."
Katsuki thinks for a second. What would be the most efficient way to go about things? "Okay, Ashido, instead of blasting through the door and walking towards them, I think we should just go for a surprise attack." Pointing at the floor, he continues, "While Jirou and I stand outside of the corrosion radius, you melt the floor beneath us with your acid, and then all three of us will jump them from above."
"Ooh! Good thinking!" Ashido grins, before darkening her expression to one of pure seriousness. "Stand back then, you two. Preferably up against the walls."
So Jirou and him do just that, pressing their backs flat against the walls as Ashido splatters the floor in a pool of acid. It doesn't even take five seconds for the floor to entirely liquify and drip down to the floor beneath, a trickling waterfall of unadulterated peril.
Judging by the way the acid is falling down, too, Katsuki wouldn't be surprised if the kidnappers beneath came out of this with acid burns on their faces.
Ha! That'll teach them to mess with him.
And Jirou.
And Ashido, for actually doing the acid stuff.
But most importantly, him.
"What's going on?" he hears a voice beneath them shout out. It's an incredibly raspy male voice, as if the person the voice belongs to has been dehydrated for the past thirty years.
"I don't know," a different voice replies. It's a voice whose timbre and enunciation is so absolutely average and indistinctive he's already forgotten what the voice sounded like.
"Well then, figure out what's going on!" a third voice screeches. Or is it bellows? This voice sounds like it's gone through several vocal adjustments from a music producer or something. It's both high and low — soprano, alto, contralto, and bass. Like the guy has multiple sets of vocal chords in him or something.
But from Katsuki's room, which is quickly dissolving closer and closer to his feet, Jirou and Ashido and him all look each other dead in the eyes and come to an unspoken agreement: it's time to jump these villains.
Ashido takes in a deep breath, readying herself. And then, with one trill of a shout reverberating out of her lungs, she kicks herself up on one leg and points the other downwards, in a kick playacting as a plunging attack.
Inspired by her initiative, the other two also jump downwards, both readying their fists and Katsuki adding in that extra wow factor of readying an explosion in his right fist.
Using his left hand to propel himself in the air for a few more seconds, Katsuki lands his infamous right hook into someone's jaw.
Someone screeches in pain as Katsuki lands on his two feet. As his brain begins to orient itself from his dizziness, he finally takes a good look at his kidnappers.
The first one he takes notice of looks like an amalgamation of people. Like a Frankenstein concocted in a witch's brew. The guy's right arm is the beefiest arm Katsuki's ever seen. And he's seen All Might's muscles up close before, so this guy is pretty beefy. But in contrast, the guy's left arm is a scrawny twig, forcing the guy to lean heavily towards his right from all the weight in his right. The legs are around the same deal, with the pant leg on the left side ripping apart from being unable to encircle around his thighs, yet having the fabric also drape loosely over the right leg from that leg being too thin. Meanwhile, his face is a fusion of strong jaw, asymmetric ears, a nose that looks like it's been broken ages ago, heterochromatic eyes — one piercing blue and one deep brown — and two eyebrows one as thick as a caterpillar and one as thin as a pencil line. The face ends in flowing green locks on one side of the head and a buzzcut of purple on the other end. Through the guy's bare torso, Katsuki can see plain as day the black stitches running rampant up and around the guy's skin, as if he really was made to be a Frankenstein of sorts.
A little off to Frankenstein's right, is a drastically emaciated looking man, his sallow-brown skin dry and full of bumps. He's wearing a button-up denim shirt and blue pants to match, but even the abundance of material can't hide the fact the guy looks no better than a skeletal frame. His eyes are bloodshot and sunken in, ducking beneath the weight of what seems to be a thousand eyebags. Katsuki can only guess this is the man the raspy, dehydrated voice belongs to. He certainly looks the part, after all.
And then to Dehydrated's right, there's...some guy. Sporting a plain white t-shirt and some jeans, his apparel is nothing out of the ordinary. His frame is average. His height is average. Everything about him is so unextraordinary, Katsuki can't even remember what the guy's face looks like. Even while staring directly into the guy's eyes, he can't pick out a single feature of him worth remembering.
"What'cha looking at, huh?" Frankenstein leers at Katsuki.
"Just trying to remember what you guys look like so I'll get a good before and after image of you when I beat you up." Katsuki cracks a rather sadistic smile.
"Hey, Riptide, looks like we got a fucking wise guy over here," Frankenstein says, looking over at Dehydrated. Well, Riptide. Riptide is the name of the dehydrated guy. Okay, noted.
"Let's just knock them out again. Gotta get that ransom money from Yuuei somehow," Riptide says, his sandpaper voice low and soft.
"And once we're on the news, we'll get famous!" Some Guy excitedly exclaims.
Even the guy's sheer lust for fame is obtusely plain.
"Then let's make this re-capture quick," Frankenstein says with a grin on his face.
The next thing Katsuki knows, Frankenstein's suddenly beside him, a trail of dust behind Frankenstein in the wake of his running. "Got'cha," he whispers in Katsuki's ear, grabbing a hold of Katsuki's arm with one hand. In the guy's other hand appears to be Ashido, who he had somehow managed to grab hold of in the short amount of time he had been moving. In shock, Katsuki tries to blast himself out of the guy's hold.
But then the next thing he knows, his vision is a kaleidoscope of colors. And when he comes to, he's on the Frankenstein's other side, staring directly into the blood-red eyes of...himself?
"Why are there two of me?" he hears himself say. But not himself himself — it's the self he's staring directly at that's saying that. "Huh?" His mirror-self yelps. "My voice sounds different!"
As an idea of what's going on begins to formulate in his head, Katsuki looks down. He notices pink skin. His pink skin.
It seems he and Ashido have switched bodies.
"Oh? Picked up on it, huh?" Frankenstein snickers. "Name's Vice Versa. If I grab hold of two people, they swap bodies." He unceremoniously drops their hands from his. "Have fun trying to defeat us like this."
"Ashido! Bakugou! You two alright?" Jirou shouts out, in the midst of a hand-to-hand combat with Some Guy off in the corner.
"Yeah!" Ashido-in-his-body exclaims. "Just a little disoriented, but we're good!"
Katsuki flicks his wrist back and forth, trying to get the pain of Vice Versa's vice grip to subside. And he watches, fascinated, as bits of acid spray off his skin.
Kinda like...his sweat.
And when he notes that, he can't help but laugh. Chortle. Bellow from the pit of his stomach as if he's reaching into the depths of hell itself and wrenching out the cries of the damned straight from their cursed lips, if you will.
And soon enough, Ashido-in-his-body begins to follow suit. Meaning, she must have noticed too.
That their quirks are similar. Very similar. Meaning they work just about the same way, and the learning curve for getting used to each other's body won't be steep.
Leaning their backs against each other to make sure they keep each other's blind spots in check, they both grin.
"You better kick some ass if you're gonna be in my body," he says.
"Same to you!" Ashido-in-his-body snickers.
And then as Ashido-in-his-body runs over to Riptide, he rushes over to Jirou, who looks like she's been struggling for a while to deal with Some Guy.
Her arms raised in a defensive "X" above her head, Jirou seems to be taking quite a beating from Some Guy.
Although, looking at Some Guy, Katsuki's pretty sure he's not exactly what one would call strong. But then again, based on what he knows of Jirou's quirk, she's probably best suited as a ranged attacker and likely doesn't have too much experience fighting people head-on.
Well, Katsuki's been waiting for Ashido to spray some acid at people. But it's all the more satisfying if he's the one who gets to do it this time.
He watches them for a bit, sidestepping every now and then to keep out of her way. But as soon as he sees an opening, Katsuki give a victorious smirk and flicks his wrist, watching with sadistic glee as a stream of acid shoots from his fingertips.
Some Guy's eyes widen. Reflexively, it seems, he shoots a surge of clear liquid from his fingertips, squinting his eyes shut as the acid lands on him.
Or, what should have been acid.
Because when the acid lands on him...nothing happens.
No burning.
No smoke.
No cries of pain.
Nothing.
Katsuki's sadism is left yet unsated.
"What the hell?" Katsuki mutters. "Why didn't it work?"
"Ah." Some Guy opens his eyes. Even he seems to be surprised that nothing happened to him. "Is your quirk, by chance, acid?"
"Well" —Katsuki scowls at Some Guy— "it should be."
"Then it seems we aren't well matched!" Some Guy rather confidently declares. "For my quirk is that I'm basic!"
"..."
"..."
"...Pardon?"
Hands on his hips, Some Guy repeats, "I'm basic!"
What...the hell?
"How is that a...quirk?" Jirou asks, lowering her hands from its defensive posture. Seems both she and him have been caught off guard by this guy's dumbassery.
"My quirk is that I secrete a basic solution!" Some Guy chuckles. "In fact, before I turned to villainhood, I was a janitor! Name's Haruto, by the way."
"Haruto?" Jirou frowns. "If you're a villain, wouldn't you usually say your villain name instead of your real name? You know, to keep your actual identity under wraps so it's harder for the police to catch you?"
"Haruto is my villain name!"
Wait, isn't Haruto, like, the most common guy's name in Japan?
Wow, everything about this guy depresses the hell outta him. He really is super basic.
But the most depressing thing about Haruto is that he's right. They really aren't well matched. Because if they match acid and base, then what they're left with is just a neutral ph. As in, just water.
And he can't hurt anyone with just water.
Just as he's thinking that, though, a spray of water hits him from the right.
"Katsuki," he hears from beside him. It's his voice. Meaning this is Ashido-in-his-body speaking to him. Wow, hearing his voice from somewhere not his own vocal chords is trippy as all hell. "I think I'm having a little problem here," Ashido-in-his-body continues.
Riptide stalks towards them, globes of water cradled in both his palms.
So Riptide has a water quirk. How...predictable.
Katsuki looks at Ashido-in-his-body, who's drenched from head to toe. Well, that's not good. After all, he knows from experience that he can't sweat if he's a soppy wet rag.
Fuck. Seems like both of them are at a disadvantage then.
"What do we do?" Jirou asks, gathering towards him and Ashido-in-his-body. "How are we gonna get out of this situation?"
Katsuki wracks his head for every single bit of knowledge he's ever learned about chemistry.
So, he creates acidic solutions, and Haruto creates basic solutions. Mixed together, they make water, which Riptide will be able to freely manipulate from there.
No matter how he looks at it, him and his classmates are at a definite disadvantage here.
Riptide hurls a glob of water at him, which rushes at him at a speed so quick Katsuki can only barely dodge it. That would've hit like cement if he didn't have quick enough reflexes.
Ah wait, now that he thinks of it, even if the two solutions of him and Haruto's mix together to form water, what if he could just...reverse it? Some solutions are reversible, right?
Then again, he doesn't know what the actual properties of the solutions are. So, he can only hope that applying enough energy can reverse the solutions.
But wait.
As he wracks his brain for more vague memories of chemistry, he realizes that because he doesn't know the exact properties of the solutions, he shouldn't risk trying to mess with the reactions as they are. Something completely unplanned for could happen, after all.
Well, he guesses he has to settle for another plan then.
"Okay, Ashido. Just dry yourself off as fast as you can!" Katsuki yells out.
"How?"
"I don't know. Just think of something!"
"Okay! Gotcha!"
And then Ashido-in-his-body literally drops to the floor and immediately starts breakdancing.
...Seems like she's the type of person to think with anything but her brain first. But you know what, watching the droplets fly from her body like a fireworks show of...well, water, he has to nod his approval at her rather unorthodox method.
Well, time to pay attention back to Haruto. The basic boy.
So Katsuki can't get too acid happy, or they'll just mix their solutions together into a ton of water. Which won't be good. But maybe, if Jirou could just render him immobile for a few seconds, then he could—
Wait, maybe he doesn't even need Jirou.
After all, Haruto's physique isn't anything special. Which means...he could just...fight him directly?
Oh, well that works too.
He takes an offensive stance, feet wide apart to keep his balance. And then he lands a right hook on the guys jaw. Before Haruto can recover from the swift blow, he kicks him in the side, pushing Haruto backwards. Then he surges forward, landing punch after punch after kick after punch so quick that Haruto can't react to what's going on.
In mere moments, Haruto is rendered immobile. Not from any quirks, but from a gentleman's friendly fistfight.
Ha. Fucking loser.
Ashido-in-his-body, on the other hand, has apparently gotten herself dry enough to distinguish sweat from water on her skin, and is now utilizing her perpetual movement from breakdancing to become a cyclone of explosion.
Like, imagine a tornado but it's ejecting explosives from every which direction.
That's what Ashido-in-his-body is doing, and it's fucking cool. He's gotta remember to have her teach him how to dance some day. It'll really open a new pathway of destruction for him, if he can master it.
Against Ashido-in-his-body, Riptide manages to hold his own decently well, but it also seems like the more water he takes up, the more dehydrated and sallow his skin looks.
Oh. So, if there's no direct source of water for the guy to manipulate, then he has to draw out water from his own body?
Well, that's a pretty fatal quirk limit.
Especially if Ashido keeps releasing explosion after explosion, which will definitely dehydrate him even faster.
But also, the guy is so physically weak by now it would probably be best to just mercy-kill him.
Well, not kill.
He doesn't want to be the one to get carted off to jail here after everything that's happened today.
So, while Riptide's distracted, Katsuki sneaks behind him and punches him in the back of the head, knocking the guy out.
Meaning now, there's only Vice Versa left.
With renewed vigor, he and Jirou stalk towards the guy. And Ashido-in-his-body, once she gets her — well, his — body off the floor, joins their little gang.
But Vice Versa is clearly the big bad of the three of them.
"Jirou," Katsuki says, "the plan of attack here is for me and Ashido to distract him. When I tell you to go, plug your earjacks into his skin and then up your frequency immediately. You know, give him a heart attack." Katsuki prepares to to run towards the villain, before pausing and remembering a few more words of instruction he should give. "But make sure to wait for one of us to give you the okay, because we wanna get back in our own bodies."
"Got it!" Jirou nods, running out of the edges of what she guesses will be the battlefield.
Ashido then goes in for a punch, propeling herself towards Vice Versa with a few blasts from the palm. Taking note, Katsuki secretes acid from his feet and uses that to slip across the floor.
And thank fuck he has a great sense of balance, because otherwise, he can't imagine how doing this could be physically possible. It literally takes all his core muscles not to slip on his ass. Well, not his ass. He mean, the ass that he's currently conscious of.
Not that he's conscious of Ashido's ass.
He means—
Okay, never fucking mind. No asses. What connects the back to the leg? He has no idea. Ass? What's that? He doesn't know.
On Vice Versa's left, Ashido-in-his-body lands an explosive blow. And on Vice Versa's right, Katsuki coats his fist in acid and makes a direct connection to the villain's side.
Vice Versa hisses in pain, swinging his right arm around as if to swat them away like flies. But because of the makeup of his imbalanced body, the swing is so slow it appears drunken, and the guy stumbles over his feet.
"Ashido!" Katsuki shouts. "Grab his hand!"
"Roger!"
"Jirou, get ready!" he yells back.
"Gotcha covered!"
And taking hold of Vice Versa's hand in his moment of confusion, Katsuki shuts his eyes and prepares himself again for the kaleidoscope of colors that'll lead him back into his body.
When he opens his eyes again, he can see from across Vice Versa's body the face of Ashido. Meaning the face plastered onto his conscious now is his own again.
Ah, it feel so good to be back in his own body.
And so all this means: it's time to make way for Jirou to fuck it up.
"Jirou, go!" he shouts out, both he and Ashido simultaneously letting go of the villain. But not before Ashido sprays more acid on Vice Versa, such that he's doubled over in so much pain he can't move.
And with that opening, Jirou rushes in, extending her earjacks. As they pierce through Vice Versa's skin, the guy begins to jolt so hard he becomes a blur.
"Yeah! Kill him!" Ashido-in-her-own-body shouts out in glee.
And while Katsuki is normally a huge proponent of murder, today he's not normal Katsuki. Well, okay, he wasn't normal Katsuki just a few moments ago because he was Katsuki-in-Ashido's-body, but now he's not normal Katsuki because now he's learned morals. Now he's moral Katsuki.
Congratulations! The title «Master of Morals» has been added to your list of skills.
Congratulations! Your Empathy Level grew from Level 5 to Level 6.
"We're not gonna kill him, Ashido," Katsuki says. "We'd get suspended if we did."
"Oh. Yeah. Wait, what if we get expelled?" Eyes wide in fear, Ashido cups her hands around her mouth as a makeshift megaphone and yells out to Jirou, "Don't kill him! I don't wanna get expelled!"
Next to Vice Versa, Jirou gives her classmate a thumbs up before unattaching her earjacks from the villain's body.
Vice Versa collapses onto the ground with a heavy thud, foam dribbling from his mouth.
Collecting her heaving breaths, Jirou weakly smiles at them. "C'mon. Let's tie them up and report them to the police."
"What do you mean we're suspended?" Ashido whines.
"Like I said, as students, you can't use your quirks without our explicit permission," Aizawa replies, arms crossed and face cross.
"Would you rather the school pay a huge lump sum of cash to them then?" Jirou bites back.
"Yes, because it would've been much safer. And we could've just discreetly sent some pro-heroes your way to rescue you instead of having to risk your lives and the school's money." Aizawa glares at them with his bloodshot eyes. "So that means suspension for the three of you."
Ah shit. This makes Katsuki's third suspension.
"And you." Aizawa turns his gaze towards Katsuki, who uncharacteristically begins to wither beneath the teacher's gaze. "Since this is your third suspension, I have a special punishment waiting for you."
Katsuki gulps.
Special...punishment…?
Ha.
Ha.
Fuck.
A/N: Sorry guys this chapter isn't really that funny. Hopefully it makes up for it in friendship though? I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Aizawa's special punishment ;)
(Hint: involves our favorite smol child.)
