Chapter Four: Anger Two (Apoplectic Boogaloo)

Katsuki was having an almost perfect day. Grape boy had shuffled off to exactly where he belonged, today's class involved beating up the extras, and to top it all off, All Might would be teaching them. The one thing souring his mood, as usual, was Izuku.

With the grape pervert gone and their homeroom teacher too lazy to remove the empty desk, Izuku had taken it for himself. Notebook out, scribbling furiously as he muttered to himself, Izuku looked as though he belonged there, as if he would have somehow made it if he hadn't drowned to death in a villain's clutches. It made Katsuki feel angry, and something else that definitely wasn't anger and felt far worse, which only made him angrier.

The door slammed open, snapping Katsuki out of his brooding thoughts. He felt his pulse quicken as the brilliantly colored hero stormed into the room.

"I am coming through the door like a normal person!" All Might bellowed as he made a flamboyant entrance.

Katsuki's own cheer at seeing his favorite hero wilted at Izuku's familiar fanboyish rambling. "Oh wow, that's the Silver Age costume, and it even has the cape! Did he have it retailored? He switched costumes because he had put on even more muscle, at least, according to the article in Hero Magazine, plus he also complained about how the cape fluttered so much when he had to move quickly. If he found a way to fasten the cape in place whenever he moved…"

Katsuki wrenched his focus away from Deku as All Might handed out their hero costumes. He cracked his open and grinned at the grenade gauntlets. Practically salivating at the thought of letting loose even bigger explosions, Katsuki rushed ahead of everyone else and threw his costume on in the locker room.

"Alright!" All Might said once they had all assembled in the viewing deck for one of U.A.'s giant training grounds. He read from some flash cards he kept in his pocket. "Today, we will be doing basic combat training, to get a feel for where you all currently stand. Each of you will draw straws to pick your partner, and each pair will be randomly selected to act as the heroes or the villains in a classic bomb defusal situation."

"Excuse me!" Iida shouted, hand stretched up. Katsuki growled under his breath at the blatant interruption to All Might's explanation. "But we only have nineteen students. It isn't possible to have us all in even pairs."

All Might looked between his notecards and the assembled students. "Well, uh, nineteen doesn't divide cleanly into anything, so I suppose we'll just have to have a group of three."

"Wouldn't that mean we would only have nine groups?" Yaoyorozu asked. "One group would go twice or be left out."

"Then someone will be working alone, I suppose?"

Katsuki grinned and barreled forward. "Leave it to me, All Might. I don't need a partner."

"And you are… Bakugo, right?" All Might pulled out his phone. "Thirty-sixth in the exam… I admire your enthusiasm, but I don't think that's a good idea."

While Katsuki choked on his own rage, All Might looked around the room. "We should make the last slot more balanced, maybe a recommended student? Hmm… ah, Todoroki! Perfect! You'll be just fine working by yourself if you're anything like your dad. Great hero, always a pleasure to work with him."

Both Bakugo and Todoroki had matching faces of fury. All Might, completely missing the sudden plummet of the room's temperature, held out a box of straws and said, "One at a time, and no peeking!"

Bakugo snatched his first and glared at the letter printed on it. As he hunted for his partner, he muttered under his breath, "Not Round Cheeks, anyone but her."

"It seems that we both have matching letters!"

Iida held up his own straw. Katsuki ground his teeth and cursed his luck. On his way to his seat, Katsuki walked past Iida and bumped his shoulder. "Don't get in my way."

"You could have walked a little bit to the side," Iida pointed out.

Katsuki rolled his eyes and watched the other pairs form up. Deku gave running commentary on how all their Quirks could pair up, but Katsuki tuned it out. Didn't take a genius to realize that Ponytail would make a halfway decent villain with her infinite cleavage of holding.

All Might brought out a box with paper slips inside. "Now that you're all grouped up, we'll randomly select your opponents! First up, for the hero team, Group E!"

"Looks like we get to set an example for the rest of this class," Iida said, nodding.

"Mess this up and I will kill you."

"You shouldn't make jokes like that! It could be easily misinterpreted as a hostile and offensive remark."

"Who said I was joking?"

"And for the villain team," All Might continued, "Group B!"

Katsuki grinned as he looked at the two girls All Might had pitted him up against. Frog-girl and Round Cheeks. His perfect day was back. A quick smackdown, and he could prove she didn't belong here. Maybe Deku would appreciate getting a second desk for his diary collection.

While they waited outside the building for the villains' ten minutes of prep time, Iida adjusted his glasses, with a grim expression as though he were donning armor. "I know you and I don't get along very well, but we should come up with a plan before going in there."

"How's this for a plan?" Katsuki snapped, crackling nitroglycerin in his palms. "You be a good little sidekick and take care of the frog. Round Cheeks is mine."

"Are you referring to Asui-san and Ochako-san? You should use their names, it's impolite to use nicknames for people you just met."

"Can it, Four-Eyes."

The remaining ten minutes passed in awkward silence as Iida shot Katsuki disapproving glances and Katsuki plugged his ears against all the 'you should work together' nonsense that Deku was droning on about.

Over the intercom, All Might said, "The hero team may enter the building in three…"

"Fucking finally," Katsuki muttered.

"Two!"

"You shouldn't swear, it's ill-becoming of a hero."

"One!"

"I'll swear as much as I fucking want!"

"Zero!"

With a pop of nitroglycerin, Katsuki blasted the front doors into a shower of glass shards. Just ahead of them in the main lobby, Ochako flinched from the blast and ducked into a room.

"You're not getting away!" Katsuki roared as he sprinted through the room. He tried the door, found it locked, and blasted a hole through it.

Ochako screeched in surprise, evidently halfway through cluttering up the ground-floor office. She shoved a bookcase aside and darted into another hallway. As Katsuki blasted his way through the cluttered desks and filing cabinets, he shouted back at Iida, "You better not touch that bomb until I'm through with Round Cheeks. Got it?"

Iida frowned at the carnage of splintered wood and scrap metal Katsuki left in his wake. "We should work together. I can run around the long way and corner her-"

"What part of 'she's mine' do you not understand?"

"Fine. I'll look for the bomb."

Katsuki caught up to Ochako as she ran into another room. As she shoved a table and some wooden chairs in his way, she said into her earpiece, "Iida's heading up towards you, Tsu-chan.

Katsuki fired a blast at her. Ochako yelped and leapt aside, narrowly avoiding the explosion.

"Are you going to fight me like a hero or keep running like a coward?" Katsuki asked.

"I'm a villain, remember?" Ochako snarked back.

"Still a coward!"

Ochako led him on a merry chase through cluttered rooms and staircases littered with loose sheets of paper and slick puddles of water. While Katsuki ran, Iida spoke into the earpiece. "I've found Asui-san, but I've been through most of the building and haven't seen the bomb yet."

"Not my problem," Katsuki snapped back.

After a room littered with janitorial supplies, Katsuki noticed that Round Cheeks never once used her Quirk. Deku, noticing the same thing, floated through the ceiling, something which almost made Katsuki gawk in surprise.

Mid-way through another obstacle course, Katsuki shouted, "Is your Quirk so useless that you can't even use it?"

"I don't need it to beat you!"

Katsuki let the anger fill him. As his heart hammered out a war-beat, the rush of blood to his palms heated his hands. Sweat ran in rivulets down his fingers, and his palms dripped with nitroglycerin as he blasted his way towards her. Yet, for every room he blasted his way through, every staircase he scrambled up, another obstacle lay in between him and pulverizing Round Cheek's smug face into the dirt.

Halfway through giving another room a WWII style renovation, Deku floated back down through the ceiling. "I know why she's not using her Quirk! She has the bomb floating over the building! You have to go get it, Iida-san would never be able to reach it!"

Katsuki tuned it out. Deku wasn't real, it was playing tricks on him, trying to distract him. He could see panic in the girl's eyes as he steadily closed the gap between them. The rooms were getting thinner and thinner with supplies, and his sweat flowed more freely.

Iida said into Katsuki's earpiece, "Bakugo-san, I need you on the rooftop!"

"Don't tell me you can't even handle the frog."

"It's not that! The bomb's floating above the building! I can't jump up that high, but you can propel yourself up with explosions, correct?"

Bakugo felt his blood run cold as he discreetly glanced at the ghost floating over his shoulder. Was there some way he had subconsciously guessed Round Cheek's plan? Deku couldn't be real, he didn't have a Quirk, he was dead, gone, too weak, but then, maybe he wasn't crazy? Maybe the doctor was wrong? Was everything wrong?

"Bakugo-san! Can you hear me?"

Iida's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. He heard Round Cheeks running up another flight of stairs and scowled. Bomb be damned, Deku be damned, he was going to crush Round Cheeks under his boot.

"I'll take out Round Cheeks. You better be ready to get that bomb."

"We're running out of time! You should just head up here and-"

Bakugo crushed the earpiece in his hand and ran after Ochako. He blasted his way around corners and through hallways, careening through the building at breakneck speeds. Knocking aside cubicle walls and smashing through desks, Katsuki finally caught up to her in a long meeting room. She was struggling to push a long table against the door, but Katsuki shattered it beneath his palm.

"End of the line, Round Cheeks."

All Might's voice boomed across the facility. "Thirty seconds left!"

Ochako smirked. "Looks like I win, jerk. Think I can't be a hero now?"

Katsuki leveled a gauntlet at her. "I'll show everyone how weak you are."

All Might's voice sounded panicked over the intercom. "Bakugo, you need to be careful in such a confined space-"

Katsuki pulled the pin. His arm snapped back, jarring his shoulder with the recoil. The whole room vanished in a bright flash of light and a cloud of burnt-sugar smoke.

When the dust settled, Katsuki, panting and grinning, searched the rubble for Round Cheeks. As he stepped forward, a shadow blotted out one of the overhead lights. He looked up and saw Ochako floating mid-air, holding both hands to her mouth.

Katsuki aimed his other hand at her. "Good thing I have two gauntlets. Night night, bitch."

Ochako hurled, and acrid vomit spewed all over Bakugo. He wasted a few seconds trying frantically to shake it off, remembered the time limit, and blindly aimed the gauntlet.

"That's time!" All Might shouted hastily. "Villain team wins!"

Bakugo's finger froze around the pin. For a split second, he thought about pretending he didn't hear, firing anyways and proving that he would have won the fight. That's what mattered, right? Heroes always won. He couldn't lose here, not to Round Cheeks.

Deku ran in front of his gauntlet and spread his arms out. "Don't do it! The class is over, didn't you hear him?"

Katsuki's hands shook. For a moment, he was five again, staring down as Deku put himself in front of the weakling that had thought they were better than him. Katsuki gnashed his teeth, tempted to blast the specter into oblivion.

Letting out a frustrated snort, Katsuki let his hand fall. He glowered up at Ochako, who was still floating around the ceiling, and said, "You wouldn't last ten seconds in a real fight."

The second the day ended, Katsuki stormed out. He left behind Round Cheeks and Glasses, Endeavor Jr. and all the rest of the extras, but as always, Deku stuck to him like a noose around his neck.

"You can hear me, can't you?" Izuku asked. "Mom's only getting worse, and I can't do anything for her. Why won't you answer me?"

Katsuki's anger reached its boiling point. Not giving a damn about the handful of people walking around him, Katsuki shouted, "You spent your whole life clinging to me like a leech, and now you're doing it from beyond the fucking grave! Leave me the fuck alone!"

Several people gawked at him as though he had gone insane, but Katsuki didn't care. A few extras thinking he belonged in the looney bin was worth the walk home without Deku hovering over his shoulder.

Me: I already have the five chapters planned out and just realized I never put in the combat training thing with All Might. What should I do?

Me to me: do anger again and make a meme out of it.

Me: Brilliant!