2. Then
Their third year at U.A. High School passes relatively peacefully, all things considered. Summer holidays had kicked off with an intensive week-long training camp, where they had once again been carted off to the middle of nowhere to duke it out in the name of rapid improvement. Meeting them in the depths of the Aomori countryside had been six members from Saga Hero Agency, razor-sharp grins at complete odds with the casual way they held themselves. Like every other camp before that, they'd had to earn the right to their first dinner, and the challenge of choice had been a full-on brawl, battle royal style. They'd put up a formidable fight, Bakugou especially, which was why it had been so goddamn frustrating when one of the pros had thrown him out of bounds in ten minutes.
The only two bright pieces of consolation to his wounded pride had been the facts that: Todoroki had been thrown out shortly after ("Your hand-to-hand combat is lacking!" the pro who had knocked him out had yelled over the angry cracking of Todoroki's ice giving way under his body. "Thought your teacher said you were working on that!") and that Kaminari had laughed so hard that he'd been punted out of bounds by Kouda, of all people). Uraraka had done well for herself, charging into the fray with all the fury of an enraged bull. Kirishima might have screamed a little as he braced for her attack, smacking her threatening fingers away from him in an attempt to grapple.
They'd come back bruised and aching, each with an exhaustive list of things they still needed to work on. Then, they'd been awarded with two weeks of actual break before they had come back to trudge on towards their third year Work-Study assignments. From there, it had been three grueling weeks of working patrols and cases, of building public relations and continuing to learn the ropes of giving interviews.
It's this last aspect that drives Bakugou up the wall. He's still objectively terrible at marketing himself to the public because he refuses to cut off little bits of himself in order to pander to brainless extras who want someone more personable or friendly or some shit. In Bakugou's honest and humble opinion, that's the most useless fucking part of being a hero. Bakugou's not here for that shit. He's here to blast villains to pieces and save anyone stupid enough to get in a situation where they would need saving and soak up all the associated glory on his way up to the top. He does what he can do with admittedly far more grace than what he had when he was sixteen, but that doesn't mean he has to like every second of it.
He's in a truly pissy mood when he stomps back to campus the last day of summer break, one last disastrous interview behind him. It was the shitty cherry on top of a melted ice cream. The day had started out perfectly fine at Mirko's office. He'd been faster than Deku and had successfully apprehended yet another villain in their morning patrol. The rest of the patrol had been largely uneventful save for the handful of kids he hadn't made to burst into tears. Just before they had been set to head back to the agency to wrap up and clock out, they'd received a call for backup in another villain apprehension. They'd excelled at it—of course—but that had ultimately led to them being pounced on by a small handful of reporters who had been prowling the edges of the scene. As always, they had asked nothing but asinine questions, and as always, Bakugou had been one wrong look away from exploding. Mirko, of course, had thought the entire thing hilarious, and had whacked him on the back—hard—with her prosthetic arm.
He swings open the door to their dorm building to the obnoxious sound of Sero and Kaminari absolutely losing it. When they poke their heads over the back of the couches and see Bakugou, they go off into another fit of hysterics. Bakugou snarls at them, diverting from his planned stomp towards the kitchen to instead round onto the idiots, dropping his bag heavily onto the coffee table and slamming his foot down onto the couch cushion.
"The hell are you losers laughing at now?" he barks, hands stuffed into his pockets and shoulders hunched threateningly. Unfortunately for him, the idiots in his squad had long since grown immune to his prickly exterior.
Sero, still poorly muffling his snickers behind a hand, turns his phone to Bakugou. "There are clips of your latest interview up," he says, except it takes him several tries because he has to pause every now and then when Kaminari's wheezing gets to be too much. Bakugou can feel a vein twitch threateningly on his temple.
"I'm so glad they didn't cut you out entirely this time!" Kaminari finally manages to huff out. He looks about two seconds away from short-circuiting himself from mirth, and Bakugou very seriously weighs the merits of helping him along faster. He squashes that urge however—it wouldn't do to start the new semester with detention or house arrest. He opts for a glare instead, despite it feeling wholly unsatisfying.
"They stopped cutting me out totally in the middle of second year," he says flatly.
"We know," Sero says in some mockery of being soothing. "Doesn't mean we won't stop bringing up your iconic first interview though."
He's saved from another scathing remark by the arrival of Yaoyorozu, who is pushing a truly massive tea service ahead of her. Uraraka follows closely behind her, laden down with a tray of rice crackers. The girls greet them brightly while Bakugou grudgingly scoops up his bag to jam it back onto his shoulder, opening up the table. Yaoyorozu presses a cup of fragrant tea into his hands. "It looks like you had a good internship regardless," she says kindly, because of-fucking-course nothing couldn't be overheard with how open the dorms' common areas were set up. "Mirko-san doesn't give out compliments all too easily, but she seemed to have a lot for you and Midoriya-san."
Bakugou clicks his tongue in annoyance. "It was entertaining watching her rip into Deku, I'll admit," he huffs, which sets off another round of hysterics amongst his idiots. Uraraka rolls her eyes and throws a rice cracker at him, which he snatches out of the air with his teeth to crunch down viciously on. At least it's spicy soy sauce flavored.
"When is Midoriya-san getting back, anyways?" Yaoyorozu asks. "More tea? Sugar?"
"Yeah. And hell if I know. We're not joined at the hip." He looks disgusted at the very thought, and then glares balefully at the sugar bowl until Yaoyorozu turns to offer it to Satou, who had come wandering in with a container of fairy cakes. "Auntie's probably holding him hostage until the last possible minute."
"Must be nice," Uraraka sighed wistfully. "Honestly, I would've loved more than two weeks at home."
Satou trades her a fairy cake for a rice cracker. "It's tough when you live further away," he muses, like his family didn't live clear across the country in Tottori prefecture. Satou hadn't gone home at all that summer; instead, his parents had come up on his last free weekend to stay with relatives, and they'd gone sightseeing in Tokyo. Shoji's parents, on the other hand, had chipped in and bought him plane tickets all the way back to Fukuoka after the training camp.
"Must be nice being local," Uraraka mutters around a mouthful of cake, glaring at Sero without heat.
"My parents went to Okinawa without me," Sero complains. "And it was during one of the free weeks, too." He jabs a finger at Bakugou, who simply raises one eyebrow over another rice cracker. "Also, if we're talking local, shouldn't you be grilling Bakugou over here? He's from right here in Musutafu. It still takes an hour and a half to get to Tokyo."
"I don't want to die before the semester starts," Uraraka states simply, and then she dives past a very bemused Kirishima as Bakugou leaps to his feet, outraged and spewing crumbs.
"Y'all had a good holiday then?" Ashido chirps cheerfully when she pops out from behind her sturdy friend, the girls easily swapping places. There's a lot of yelling from the Kirishima-Bakugou duo as Bakugou tries to dart around the former to grab at Uraraka. She sticks her tongue out at him, which only serves to enrage him further. Ashido, for her part, only shoos the confusedly pivoting Kirishima along before bouncing over to help herself to tea and sweets. "Because let me tell you: I had a great time until some villain threw a bike at me and I accidentally melted it instead of catching it, like, y'know, a normal person would."
"Are we normal though?" Satou asks.
"Ojiro is!"
"Man, he'll cry if he hears that you're still saying that!"
.
"Oi, Deku," Bakugou sneers, hours later when Midoriya returns to the dorms to find all the tables pushed together and a truly massive hotpot spread laid out for their back-to-school dinner. Bakugou stands in the entranceway, arms crossed over his chest. Uraraka and Ashido flank him on either side, both looking similarly intimidating, although even then neither girl truly manages to hold a candle to how downright menacing Bakugou looks even in vaguely amused neutral.
Midoriya takes two experimental shuffles to the left. Uraraka mirrors him. A step to the right is matched by Ashido. "Yes, Kacchan?" he asks, smiling disarmingly at his childhood friend and getting an even more impressive look for it.
"Those who don't contribute don't get to eat."
Midoriya blinks. The girls are nodding along seriously behind Bakugou's shoulders. The other boy holds out a hand imperiously, palm out and waiting. Midoriya's gaze shifts rapidly between the open palm in front of him and the bags in his own scarred hands before everything falls into place and he grins, almost sly.
"And if I don't want to pay?"
Bakugou lazily shrugs a single shoulder. "Guess you'll just have to sit back and watch us eat this entire delicious feast all by ourselves," he says, his own crooked grin widening. "And to think, Ponytail went out of her way to get us a good cut of Matsusaka beef."
Anything else he was planning on saying is immediately cut off as Midoriya all but slams his bag into his chest. "I would be honored to contribute these side dishes!" he yells, pitch and tone and speed enough to rival Iida's. Bakugou barely has enough time to blink before he's fumbling with the bag. In that time, Midoriya had already kicked off his shoes and hurled himself fully into the building.
"Fucking hell," Bakugou mutters, as Uraraka slaps both hands over her mouth to choke back her laughter. "You're all heathens."
"It's Matsusaka beef, Kacchan!" Midoriya yells from the table, where he's already settled himself down comfortably between Iida and Todoroki. His chopsticks are poised and ready, and the expression on his face means business.
Bakugou mutters something under his breath that has Uraraka tripping over her own feet as she actually laughs this time. He handily ignores her and her ugly guffawing, breezing past her as he yanks out container after container of lovingly packed side dishes courtesy of Auntie Inko.
"Make some space, extras! Tonight we feast! And if you all hog the beef there'll be hell to pay!" A resounding cheer goes up in tandem to full glasses.
It takes Aizawa's unruly class of third-years five seconds to calm down when he slinks his way into the classroom and over to the podium. He's already tired, no thanks to Present Mic who had dragged him off campus the night before for drinks and then had refused to let him leave at a normal hour. The other part of his exhaustion could be attributed to how he had pulled an all-nighter reading over his class's Work-Study reports rather than actually going to bed, but that was far less satisfying than simply blaming Present Mic.
"This is why you'll never develop better life habits," Midnight had chided in the early morning when they had all stumbled downstairs to congregate around the coffee pot. Aizawa had drained the pot out of spite when he went to pour himself a generous helping, then had slipped out of the teacher's dorm with Lunch Rush when a mad scramble broke out amongst the remaining staff to refill the pot before Vlad returned from walking his dog to find absolutely no caffeine.
"That was petty of you," Lunch Rush had remarked when the other hero had noticed Aizawa's tiny pleased smirk. "You know how Vlad gets without his second cup of coffee." Oh, Aizawa knew alright.
Now, Iida walks the class through their morning greetings while Aizawa shuffles through his papers and slowly enjoys his bountiful coffee. Iida's no sooner sat back down when Aizawa is turning his dead-eyed stare to his class of problem children. "Right," he says, every bit as uninterested as always, "Summer is over. None of you were kidnapped, no one broke the law, and no one needed hospitalization. I see that we've finally had a peaceful and productive break."
He reaches into his sleeping bag and pulls out a massive stack of folders. "This was already mentioned during the actual training camp, but Saga Hero Agency has kindly taken the time to compile full status reports for each of you. You will find that this is a more thorough review of your strengths and weaknesses than what was given at the end of camp, and I expect that many of you had already been working on these things in your Work-Studies. Nevertheless, it's in your best interests to review these documents closely. Saga doesn't often do favors like these. Iida, Yaoyorozu—the two of you will distribute these reports after classes."
He takes a long drawn-out sip of his coffee while he considers his class. Midoriya is practically vibrating in his seat, no doubt itching to get his fingers onto his report. In front of him, Bakugou's face is stormy and stubbornly fixed out the window, no doubt still bitter about the thrashing he had taken at the beginning of camp. Occasionally bringing him closer to Earth wasn't a bad thing, no matter what his ego says, Aizawa thinks. Better still that it was at the hands of an agency that wasn't known for having individual Quirks that were immediately flashy; Bakugou still had to learn how to exercise appropriate caution towards unconventional Quirks. As for Todoroki—his eyes shift to the other boy to find that he's already staring down at his hands, a pensive look on his face. A Saga member had flatly summed him up as: "He could stand to switch faster between his ice and his fire since he's rather obvious as he currently is. As for hand-to-hand: just throw him in a ring with a power-type and tell him to go Quirkless." Good thing he had a lot of power-types in his class to choose from.
"Your hero courses this semester will heavily target all your weak points that Saga and your Work-Study leaders wrote down for us. Work hard; it's never too late to be expelled." A groan rumbles out from the class, who are at least 95% certain that Aizawa is too fond of them by now to actually expel any of them but never fully confident in their safety. After all, something or other seemed to happen every year that made that remaining 5% more likely to happen.
"Oh, one last thing," Aizawa says, despite how much he wants to crawl into his sleeping bag and take a nap. "You should have all received an updated class schedule over break and noticed that the free period you all enjoyed last semester is no longer available. You will instead be getting guest lectures in Hero Management. Those of you who wish to individually found an agency had better pay close attention. Knowing even the basics can go a long way in saving your careers before they even kick off the ground." He drains the last of his coffee and then glances towards the door. "You can stop lurking now. They're ready for you."
The heavy door slides open and an extremely average man steps through, dressed very obviously as a civvy. For a class more used to seeing heroes in full uniform at the head of their classes, this gets their attention immediately. "This is Mutou Keisuke," Aizawa introduces, sounding unenthused. "Unlike the Departments of Heroics and Support, the Departments of General Education and Management are taught by a mix of Pro Heroes and Hero Consultants, although you'll find more of the latter in Management. Although they're not active in the field in the same capacity as heroes, they have more than enough experience to keep all of you in line. Don't underestimate them." He pauses, and then tacks on: "Bakugou."
"I ain't gonna do shit!" Bakugou roars, because he's nothing if not a creature of habit when off the field.
Oh my god, the rest of the class thinks. What a terrible first impression to make on their newest teacher.
Mutou, to his credit, looks remarkably unfazed. "It's good to be energetic, but all should be in moderation," he says cheerfully as he replaces Aizawa at the podium. His blitheness only seems to further peeve Bakugou. "Now, most of you ought to know by now that U.A. is unique in its educational methodology for grooming young heroes. Most other schools don't give their hero students even a sliver of the administrative knowledge that we do. Which is a pity. Us management consultants are quite expensive. I've seen many agencies sink into oblivion before they can even get off the ground despite having a roster of talent due to a combination of limited capital and poor management. But not to worry!"
He whirls around to the board, chalk a blur as he throws up a complicated diagram and series of flow charts with entirely way too many arrows. Midoriya scrambles to find a clean notebook and start scribbling along. "From navigating Villain Damages Insurance to Hero Tax Deductions! Hero Law and Exceptions! Agency placement do's and don'ts! PR that goes beyond the paltry interview training you've all been doing!" Someone whimpers. It sounds suspiciously like Kaminari.
Mutou leans over the lecturer's podium and grins at their horrified faces. "In sixteen weeks, I will cram all this and more into your heroic brains. Welcome to U.A's Year Three Real Life Administrative Crash Course from Hell."