#2: Personal Hell
Whatever was in that weird sex-drug was causing an insane feeling of withdrawal, and fast.
Bakugo woke up alone in his room, feeling awfully sick to his stomach. He looked around and finally landed his eyes on a precious glass of water, which subsequently meant absolutely nothing seconds later, because it was gone down his throat, nowhere to be seen or relief to be felt again. As he chugged down the water however, he noticed 2 things:
1. Uraraka was missing.
2. An off-white replica of his suit hung by the door to his room.
Uraraka being missing was a shock, but it wasn't. Bakugo had a feeling that she'd be taken away after their little...rendezvouz the day before, but he didn't expect to miss her that bad. He felt like he'd never see her again, that she'd be gone and forgotten from his memory as just another fellow pro he'd hooked up with a few times. For some reason, the thought of that made him sad, like, really sad, and in a fit of anxious movements, he hopped up from his bed, oblivious to the small stinging pain of the scrape on his back and even more oblivious to his stolen DNA.
He felt like he should have been more alert, more on-edge, more ready-to-attack, but he could only think about her. It was driving him crazy, more like he felt like he was going crazy as he stumbled around the room. Her voice, the sound of her quickened breathing, the memory of how she felt, it was all swirling around in his head like a violent little tornado, and no matter what he thought of, he couldn't escape the storm.
Nothing felt worse than when he remembered that he'd said he loved her.
Tiny little explosions began popping off in his hands like fireworks, and to his horror, he found they weren't of his own will. But they actually were, and he actually wasn't aware he was having a panic attack because he was Katsuki Bakugo, he didn't have those. He had to force himself from refraining to grab his head in agony, not wanting to burn himself. To find some sort of relief, he pressed his hands against the large metal door he had been struggling to reach, and wheezed as he slid down to the floor on his knees, the popping of his hands turning into massive blasts second by second.
Forgetting his hands for a second, Bakugo wondered had she heard him? Did she hear the moment of weakness those dreaded words brought, or did she not hear them, and his feelings were lost to the silent, lonely, depths of this singular white room. Was it all in vain? Should he say it again? When should he say it? Bakugo found himself in an intense state of panic as these thoughts ran his head, the buzzing of the fluorescent light above getting louder, louder, LOUDER-
"Relax there, Sparky."
Bakugo whipped his head around frantically, his entire body feeling like numbing cream had been running through his veins. His hands stopped firing blasts, and he let his arms slump against his body as he fell forward, leaning against the door. He couldn't see, his hearing was fuzzy, and his sense of touch was off. Nothing felt real with every second that passed, and his sense of self waned thinner and thinner as the Doctor spoke to him.
"K-Keigo..?" Bakugo whispered. For what is was worth, no one else called him Sparky, and right now, he needed saving from whatever personal hell this was.
"What? No, I'm not your stupid boss, idiot. Get up." The Doctor snapped. Not being able to place her voice with a physical body was seriously fucking up Bakugo's psyche, and he lolled around with the little energy he had left.
"Where is she?" He asked, assuming the black circle that served as a camera on his ceiling was the voice talking to him.
"I said get up." She replied curtly. "Put on the suit, we have more tests to run."
His panic attack fading, Bakugo found himself able to breathe a little bit better, but he still felt so out of touch with the physical world. "Ocha...where is she? I have to...I have to know, for f-fuck's sake..." He said slowly. The Doctor sighed dramatically and took a pause before responding.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" She asked.
"Wha-"
"This is the Katsuki Bakugo, #11 pro hero, Explosion Hero: DynaMight? Get a fucking grip. I can't believe I thought you'd put up more of a fight than this." The Doctor slumped back into her chair in her surveillance room, clearly annoyed. If anything, she thought Bakugo would be her problem subject instead of Uraraka, not the other way around.
"The fuck..?" Bakugo muttered, coming to his senses. He got up slowly, wobbling once he placed all his weight on his feet again. "I'll fucking...I'll kill you.." He seethed.
"You can't even stand without bitching about some bimbo of a hero who could seriously do better."
"Show your stupid fucking face so I can bash it in," His body was a serious wonder at times like these, the times where he felt like absolute shit, times where the average person just gave up, something, no anything that made Bakugo mad was enough to keep him going for another 12 straight hours. How dare this woman kidnap him, drug him, and then talk down on him. Matter of fact, how the fuck did he end up in this situation, like seriously, how did he let Hawks of all people convince him this was a good plan, he wasn't even sure if, when, or how he was getting out of this place, or what this place actually was.
"Put on the suit, and I will," The Doctor said calmly.
Realizing that if he simply, but aggressively obliged, he could see her face sooner than later so he could...y'know...bash it in, Bakugo stomped into the suit, angrily clamping on the ugly white gauntlets. Even if it wasn't his suit, he felt a twinge of normalcy being in a suit, and he was ready to go. The door opened shortly after he put the suit on, and two Nurses came in, ready to apprehend him at any moment's notice if he got too cocky. They didn't touch him, and they didn't say a word as they motioned to the door. Singed and beat up, the door look almost ready to fall off it's hinges from Bakugo's panic attack, but it held its own as he exited the room with the Nurses.
They took him down the hall, and he noticed the room across from his belonged to Uraraka, though it just...felt empty. Now that he wasn't ready to go on a murder-spree to find the Doctor, his anxiety started settling back in thinking about Uraraka. It was like an itch he couldn't scratch, but nothing felt more annoying than knowing he was at the mercy of these feelings.
Eventually, he was led to another white room with padded walls save the one across from the door with no handle, it seemed to be a mirror of some sorts. The Nurses gently guided him in and closed the door behind him, leaving him a good few minutes to walk around the room. Out of curiosity, he set off a few explosions, finding that the padded walls were hardly affected by any of his blasts. That annoyed him to some degree, and he walked over to the mirror, pressing a single finger against the cool glass. Finding that he could see a gap between his finger and its reflection, he stepped back a bit defensively, preparing his body for attack.
A two way mirror? He asked himself. Who the fuck is watching me?
As if on cue, the Doctor's voice rang through again, and this time, it felt like a series of violent waves crashing through his head when he heard her voice. He stumbled in the padded room, his breathing become quicker and less helpful, his vision burring and his sense of self waning once again. He felt like he did when he first woke up, but something was different this time, it wasn't right at all. Bakugo fell to his knees once again, trying to tune out the suffocating voice of the Doctor.
"Submit, and this trial will be over." She told him. "The drug is still in your system, all you have to do is submit."
He couldn't though, even if he wanted to. It was too much, the after thoughts, the doubts, the concerns, the mixed feelings of yesterday. Everytime the Doctor spoke, or he was reminded of the drug, he was reminded of her, and it started all over again. This happened for a few hours once he had been left in the padded room, and willed himself to pass out, even going so far as to try to knock himself, but the pain he inflicted on himself made it worse.
"Wha...What is this?" He croaked out, lying in the middle of the floor.
"It's the second phase of my testing," the Doctor replied swiftly. "That drug you two inhaled yesterday? It's only supposed to be breathed in 30 seconds doses. I guess it is a bit my fault you slept a whole night in it. Forgive me for the withdrawals, this isolation period should help you out."
"Just tell me what the fuck is going on!" Bakugo tried to scream out, though it came out like a muted cry.
"Shut up, you're fine," The Doctor said. "Besides..."
A clicking sound, then the sound of a mechanism whirring drew Bakugo to the mirror in front of him. It was like it was clearing up, showing another room just like the one he was in. Too tired to get up and observe the scene, Bakugo sat there on the floor as he watched a woman in the other room writhe on the floor in pain. From what he could tell, she looked horribly sick, as if she hadn't eaten in weeks, and her hair was a mess, the skin-tight white bodysuit she was wearing stained from her own bodily fluids. There was overturned furniture in the room, a chair and a ball, but he couldn't be too sure what it was doing there. Bakugo could hear the Doctor saying something, but the messy chocolate brown hair and the pink flashes of energy from her hands was just too familiar.
Too sickening, too horrifying...too recognizable.
"It could be worse. You could end up like dear Ocha over here."
Uraraka remembered waking up in the padded room instead of her normal room, and she remembered being in an off-white version of her hero suit as well. What she didn't remember was Bakugo telling her he loved her, or even that entire moment and any afterwards. All she knew was that she was sick beyond relief, and the Doctor putting her to useless tasks was only making it worse. The chair and ball in her room were actually weights, and were both 2 ton weights. Uraraka remembered from highschool that 1 ton was roughly 2000 American pounds, and while she could lift nearly anything she put her mind to, the increased weight of certain objects put a strain on her body.
She had trained her physique over the years to where she could lift a relatively small building or prevent a huge collapse if need be, but this excessive and continuous use of lifting and throwing and moving 4000 pounds for a few hours was way more than anything UA could have prepared her for. Uraraka's body had passed the vomiting stage, and she fell to the added ground again, shivering when she saw red drops emit from her mouth instead of her usual post-vomit dry heave.
Forced to life the weights again, she struggled this time, the objects wavering violently in the air before falling, the force of gravity pulling her down to the floor as well. Her face slammed to the floor in the blood she coughed up, and she was certain she had reached way beyond her physical limit.
"Damn it..." She cursed to herself. She heard the whirring of the two-way mirror exposing the other room, and she lay on the floor in pain, in her own vomit and blood, completely unable to move another inch. This whole time she had been locked away before Bakugo was a test of her endurance combined with the after-effects of the drug, and while it didn't affect her as bad as it did Bakugo, the Doctor found that both heroes had a more uncontrollable sense of ability, their quirks were more sensitive and quicker to activate.
The Doctor wondered how she would be able to isolate the after-effects of the drug without actually using it for, well, obvious reasons, and use it to amplify quirks to make them more unstable. The more unstable the quirk, the more powerful the offspring she figured.
In the case of quirk users such as Uraraka however, the drawbacks of her heightened quirk were also increased, and every second longer that she used it, she felt like her body was being ripped apart from the center.
She groaned loudly, trying to move so that she wouldn't completely pass out, and Bakugo paid more attention when the mirror finally cleared, and he realized he was looking directly at Uraraka. Seeing her like that, motionless, in pain, it killed him. It murdered him, actually. He rushed to the glass, the lasting influence telling him to react instead of think, and he blasted off, growing angrier and angrier the more the glass withheld his attacks.
Uraraka finally gathered the strength to look up to find the source of the shaking little tremors each of his blasts left behind, and the soundproof rooms meant that she couldn't hear his screams cracking from his throat for her.
It was like the world stopped when they locked eyes, the one little light of hope from their personal hell.
From her monitors, the Doctor watched them, content with her gathered research for the day. She pressed a few buttons and the monitors flashed dark, the questioned gasps and screams of her subjects letting her know they had reached the experiment once and for all. The SoothSayer sighed and left the surveillance room, off to do his own work, and the Doctor turned on the mic one last time before leaving her subjects to rest.
"Now that you've seen each other, remember how that feels. The next time you'll see each other, let alone anyone else will be a while." The Doctor cooed.
Bakugo and Uraraka's moment of peace was short-lived, and they were thrust into a darkness so black they couldn't even see their own bodies. Firing off blasts, Bakugo lit up his side of the room temporarily, and Uraraka counted the 5 short flashes of light before they stopped for what she assumed was a few hours.
Figuring it would be a while before he completely lost his mind, Bakugo gave up after the 5th flash, sinking to the floor and letting his overflowing thoughts consume him.