A/N:
gonna be totally honest here, i kind of really hate how i've been writing this fic, and the only reason i'm posting this chapter is because it was already written
i don't think i can power through like, a several hundred-thousand word fic if i don't like it, so i'm most likely going to rewrite the whole thing and let you know of the changes or whatever
i'm probably not gonna drop the fic entirely, because I *do* like the concept, but again, there are several things that i'd like to change
with that being said, this chapter was written several months ago and i just never bothered to post it, so here you go, if you want something new
Katsuki ends up at the academy a full thirteen minutes late because people would not stop trying to fucking talk to him , and he barely kept himself from telling them all to fuck off , instead choosing to take every back-alley path possible to ensure that he wasn't even later than he already would be.
It's especially annoying because Katsuki was planning on being early - which is why he left the house a full hour before class started, but apparently that's not enough - so he could ask about what kind of classwork he needs to make up and all that technical shit.
Now, though, he's standing outside the door, and while he's not especially keen on presenting any late excuses, the main reason he hasn't just slammed the door open and gotten it over with is because there are a lot of people inside the classroom, which means that there are a lot of chakra signatures, and he suspects that the only reason he hasn't fallen over from sensory overload is because the signatures are grouped together enough to seemingly appear as a single, large amalgamation of chakra (and one to two teachers) per room.
Unfortunately, he can't wait any longer because, a minute or so after arriving, the door is opened by a brown-haired man who his mind distantly registers as Iruka-sensei , and who's giving him a curious sort of look as he just… stands there.
"Sasuke-kun?" the man says, looking him over with a slight crease between his brows. "Are you alright?"
He's tempted to simply grunt in reply because he's still trying to adjust to the excessive amount of presences in the classroom, but he refuses to be an emo bitch and forces out a "...Yes." He then proceeds to intently focus on Ponytail-sensei's signature - which feels like sitting by a warm, crackling campfire with a gentle mist lingering within the air - and while it doesn't completely drown everything out, it helps enough that he's not in danger of collapsing and can actually listen to what the man's saying.
"Alright, then," Ponytail-sensei says eventually, eyes softening as he continues. "Let me know if you need to talk about anything, alright? And if you ever feel overwhelmed or just need to leave, go ahead - there's no need to ask." He pauses and adds, "Don't worry about any assignments you may have missed. I'll help you through what's important, but you already know enough that I'm not worried."
Katsuki decides that, while he's probably not going to be talking to the man about his issues anytime soon, that Iruka -sensei is currently in his good books and will stay there unless he does something stupid. He's nothing like Aizawa-sensei in terms of… well, anything really, but he can already tell that they, at the very least, share the same sort of devotion to their students that he can respect.
"Oh and," Iruka-sensei mentions after a moment, and after an odd glance at his mask, he offers a smile that looks somewhere between concerned and sheepish, "I won't mark you late for today, but try not to make it a habit, okay?" The request is fair enough, so Katsuki nods and the man smiles before turning around and gesturing towards the door. "Go ahead, then."
Katsuki takes in a breath and, before he can second-guess himself, steps inside. He thinks, briefly, that maybe everything will be fine, but suddenly someone notices him and shouts his name and the room goes pin-drop silent .
Fuck me , he thinks, trudging up the middle aisle as eyes trail him. He then slides into the first empty seat he sees, next to a girl with pale, lavender eyes and short, indigo-colored hair.
"O-oh, hello, S-Sasuke-kun," she - Hinata Hyuuga - stutters out.
Katsuki offers a tight nod in response and promptly turns to face the board, and just as he's contemplating whether or not he should risk projectile vomiting to stand up and tell everyone to stop fucking staring at him , Iruka-sensei finally captures the attention of the class and continues the lesson.
It's only when lunch time is announced - after three classes, he thinks - that he feels less like he's going to fall over or puke, and even then, he's still struggling to split his attention between Iruka-sensei's signature and whatever the fuck is going on around him.
It's… a problem, he knows, and he can only hope that repeated exposure will help him 'grow out of it,' but for now, he chooses to stay in the classroom while everyone else heads outside to eat so he can get a little reprieve.
Or, everyone except his deskmate, that is.
Chakra - which feels like warm static with an underlying feeling that he can't quite place - sparks slightly when he doesn't make a move to leave, instead simply placing his lunch onto the table in front of him. "O-oh, um… you're n-not going outside, S-Sasuke-kun?"
Katsuki glances in her direction and, after noticing her fidgeting under his gaze, turns back to his lunch. "No."
She lets out an awkward, "Oh," and Katsuki withholds a sigh.
"Do you know what we're doing for the rest of the day?"
Her head snaps upwards. "W-what?"
"Do you—"
"O-oh, um," she interrupts, looking vaguely mortified for a moment before she shakes her head. "S-sorry… um… Iruka-sensei said we'd be doing e-escape techniques instead of traps t-this week. Otherwise we just have t-taijutsu and shurikenjutsu like usual…"
"Escape techniques?" Katsuki echoes.
She hums, glancing up at him nervously. "Um, well he said w-we've been working on ch-chakra control for a w-while, so um, most of us are r-ready to learn our f-first jutsu, so…"
Katsuki stares for several moments before, upon seeing her start to fidget, he realizes that she's being serious.
Is everything a jutsu here? he wonders almost exasperatedly.
"S-Sasuke-kun?" Hinata lets out, and Katsuki zones back in to see her looking somewhat embarrassed. "Are you a-alright?"
"...Fine," he replies after a moment, turning back towards his lunch, only to realize that he can't fucking eat it because Hinata is sitting right next to him and he doesn't know how the hell to eat without letting anyone see his face. That , he decides, will be his next project to focus on as he purses his lips, putting the cover back on his lunch and sliding it into his backpack.
Hinata gives him a slightly concerned look, but he ignores it, keeping his eyes trained on the board - which, he notices, is covered in kanji and short explanations about each character - until kids start trickling back into the classroom.
Unfortunately, the return of his classmates brings the overwhelmed feeling back with a vengeance, and by the time Iruka-sensei is trying to get everyone to settle down, he's half-glad he'd forgone eating lunch, because he thinks he might've lost it otherwise.
He hears a soft voice next to him, and it takes him almost a full minute to register that it was Hinata who'd spoken. His head snaps to the side, and he immediately regrets the sudden movement because it did not help his nausea in the least .
Hinata startles at his sudden movement before a crease appears between her brows. "I-is everything o-okay? You l-look…"
She trails off, and Katsuki exhales. "Like shit?" he offers with a slight rasp, and Hinata flushes, but shrugs nonetheless. He opens his mouth to say that he's fine, only to shiver as several students' chakras suddenly jolt at Iruka-sensei's call to be quiet.
"A-are you s-sick?" she asks quietly, frowning.
"No," he bites out, then immediately feels guilty when she withdraws on herself. He closes his eyes and, after a moment, speaks once again, figuring that she might know more than him and that he should take any chance he has at getting rid of the terrible feeling. "There's a lot of chakra."
Hinata startles before her expression turns into one of confusion. "A lot of…" She pauses suddenly, looking back at him and blinking. "Are you a s-sensor?" He stares at her blankly and her cheeks dust pink. "U-um, c-can you feel peoples' c-chakra?" After he gives a short nod, she bites her lip before speaking. "W-well, I'm not… um… a s-sensor, but I do have c-cousins who are better at that s-sort of thing, and… well, t-they all say different things, but I-I've heard that some b-born sensors d-don't realize what they're doing and um…" Her face scrunches up as if she's unsure of what she's saying. "They a-automatically send out s-some of their chakra to 'p-pick up signatures' instead of d-doing it manually, and t-they don't 's-stretch it out like they're s-supposed to.'"
Katsuki takes a moment to process what she's saying, blinks, forces himself to focus on the chakra lingering in the air, and—
Well, fuck .
He notices, quickly, that there is, in fact, a buildup of his chakra in the air and, instead of spreading and simply 'pinging' like he figures it should be doing, it latches onto the signatures.
In other words, his own chakra is trying to pick up and send him every little detail about other peoples' chakra and he can't process the information overload. It's fine when he's focusing on a small amount of people - which is what he'd previously been doing unconsciously, like with L'Oréal, Iruka-sensei, and Hinata - but when there are a lot of people around and he doesn't reign in his senses, he takes in too much at once and it all sort of… bunches together into a mess of unanalyzable information.
Suppressing the urge to slam his face into the desk in front of him, he spends the next several minutes 'untangling' his chakra from everyone elses' - forcing it to touch upon signatures lightly instead of grabbing them in vice grips.
Immediately after finishing, he slumps back in his chair and lets out a deep breath, because fuck , that feels so much better.
"Thanks," he mutters to Hinata, and the girl startles and gives him a confused look. "I figured it out."
Hinata stares at him for a moment before flushing. "I-it's fine, S-Sasuke-kun. I'm g-glad you're o-okay now."
"Hinata, Sasuke," Iruka-sensei calls out, causing both of them to look up. He looks mildly confused as he says, "Please pay attention."
Just about the entire class looks in their direction, and Hinata sinks into her seat, looking redder than he'd ever seen her. "S-s-sorry, I-Iruka-sensei," she stutters.
Katsuki resists the urge to glare at his classmates. "Sorry," he says gruffly - or about as gruffly as an eight-year-old voice can sound - and leans back into his own seat.
"...It's fine," Iruka-sensei says after a moment, recapturing the class' attention. "Now, as I was saying, the Rope Escape Technique is more complicated than it seems, and is more of an umbrella term than a true technique. For example, figuring out how to untie different types of knots and dislocating one's joints are both ways to escape ropes. There's also a specific way to manipulate that I'll be teaching you later in the week that'll make it easier to escape from ropes, or most types of cord-like binding in general."
Iruka-sensei glances towards the back, causing Katsuki to take notice of the light-haired man in the back. He steps forward and Iruka-sensei moves to stand next to him with a smile.
"Class, this is Mizuki-sensei. He'll be helping me in class from now on, primarily during ninjutsu and taijutsu lessons," he introduces.
Bandana-sensei offers a slight wave. "Nice to meet you all."
"Right then," Iruka-sensei says after the class echoes the other man's greeting, grabbing rope off the desk and rejoining Bandana-sensei. "If you will, Mizuki?"
The man snorts and places his hands behind his back, allowing Iruka-sensei to tie them together. After the latter steps away from him, Bandana-sensei turns around, allowing everyone to watch as he swiftly frees his wrists from the rope.
"Obviously," Iruka-sensei says as Bandana-sensei turns back around, picking up the rope from the ground, "The rope was tied rather simply, and any shinobi - or even a decently crafty civilian - could escape if they so wished. It requires nothing but hand movements to loosen them enough to pull hands free. We'll try out more difficult knots later on, but for now, I want everyone to partner up with their deskmates and practice trying to free yourself. One to two of you will have the rope tied around your wrists while the last member remains on standby just in case, and then you'll swap roles." He looks around the room with a smile. "Any questions?"
When no one raises their hands, he gestures to Bandana-sensei, who nods and begins going down each aisle to hand out each pair their rope.
"Don't be afraid to ask Mizuki or I if you need any help," Iruka-sensei adds just as Bandana-sensei makes it to his and Hinata's - theirs, since there's no third person with them - desk. He offers a slight smile as he places the rope down, and Katsuki is about to nod in thanks when he feels the man's chakra churn slightly, causing his head to jerk in the man's direction as he continues up the aisle.
The fuck?
"Um… S-Sasuke-kun," Hinata says, "Do you w-want to go first, or…?"
Katsuki stares after the man for another moment before turning back towards Hinata. Quite honestly, he'd rather deal with curious civilians than turn his back to someone and have his movements restricted, but he nods nonetheless, forcing himself to turn and place his hands together.
"R-right," she lets out. She pauses for a moment before taking in a breath and beginning to tie the rope around his wrists.
He withholds a sigh when she hesitates to tighten the knot. "Hinata?"
Her chakra jolts slightly and she suddenly pulls the knot. "S-sorry."
Katsuki simply shrugs, flexing his hand once before beginning to roll his wrists. The rope slides off after a few seconds, and he turns to see Hinata looking somewhat surprised.
"D-did I tie it wrong?" she asks, worrying her lip.
"No. I've just practiced," he says simply, because he can't really say, Capture tape is really fucking annoying and I learned how to get out of it within seconds out of spite .
"O-oh," she lets out. "Um… Okay." She glances up at him, then hesitantly turns around and places her hands behind her back.
Katsuki raises the rope, only to realize that he has no idea what kind of knot he's supposed to use. He purses his lips and, after several futile seconds of glancing around, goes with the simplest one he can think of, making sure to make it looser than he normally would.
Hinata turns slightly once he drops his hands to the side, frowning in concentration as she attempts to get rid of the binding. After a few minutes, she starts to look frustrated enough that he thinks she might cry, and he suppresses yet another sigh before speaking up.
"You're too tense. If you don't relax, you might just end up making the knot harder to untie."
Hinata pauses, giving him a nervous side glance before forcibly loosening her shoulders. She's still tense, he can tell, but less so than before, and after another minute or two, she manages to get the knot loose enough to slip out of. She stares at the rope for several seconds before her lips curl into a small smile - wider and far more genuine than any of the polite ones he'd seen before. Then she seems to remember herself because she flushes and glances up at him.
"Good job," he says somewhat awkwardly, causing her to look surprised but happy.
"Everything alright here?" he hears, and he whirls around to see Bandana-sensei, who raises his brow at his sudden movement. "Any problems?"
Katsuki stares at him for several seconds before Hinata speaks up, eyes flicking towards her deskmate.
"Um, n-no, Mizuki-sensei. W-We were both able t-to get out."
"Oh?" the man lets out, adopting a surprised expression as his chakra churns once again. "That's very impressive, you two."
Hinata's cheeks redden. "T-thank you, M-Mizuki-sensei."
"Hn," Katsuki lets out, then proceeds to hide the sudden desire to throw himself off a cliff after making the sound.
Bandana-sensei's chakra twitches at that - the meaning of the twitch, Katsuki has no goddamn clue - and he smiles. "I suggest practicing until you're able to untie yourself within a few seconds, but you're free to help out any classmates that may be struggling with the exercise, if you wish."
"O-Okay," Hinata replies, dipping her head slightly. "T-Thank you."
"No problem," the man says easily, and Katsuki watches with narrowed eyes as he walks past them and to the next desk.
Just what the hell is up with you?
Katsuki's first spar goes… fine. He can tell he confuses Iruka-sensei each time he entirely misses a hit, though the man probably figures its due to his recent lack of practice rather than Katsuki trying to fight like he's in an older, taller body and doesn't know how far he's actually meant to be reaching out.
His next spar barely goes at all because the swirly-cheeked boy he's matched with - Chouji Akimichi - keeps pulling back his limbs right before any of them connect - which is an admirable portrayal of a human punching bag, but acting is, unfortunately, not what the class is centered around - and while he's annoyed , he's not about to beat up a kid who literally isn't defending himself and ends up pushing him out of the ring before things can get any more awkward.
As for his final fight…
"—and I'm gonna beat you, asshole!"
Katsuki suppresses the urge to close his eyes and scream. This is karma, isn't it?
Dog-boy - who very unfortunately reminds him of Shitty Hair, if the teen were an arrogant douchebag, and it takes everything he has not to kick him into the next dimension for not only making him think about his past life but corrupting it - swipes at him, and surprise surprise, he snarls when Katsuki ducks. "Stay still !"
Katsuki's eye twitches as he throws out a punch. If it's a little harder than he'd been hitting before, that's his own business.
"You ass!" Dog-boy barks out - hah hah - after spitting blood to the side. He bares his teeth and launches forwards, and because Katsuki's a vindictive asshole, he shows more speed than before and moves entirely out of the way, allowing the brat to sail right past him and across the boundary line before he slams into the dirt.
Katsuki, being mature, pointedly does not smirk. And even if he did, nobody would ever know with his mask hiding his lips.
"Ah- winner, Uchiha Sasuke!" Iruka-sensei announces, and several of his classmates - most of them being female, which Katsuki will ignore for as long as he can - cheer.
Dog-boy shoves himself off the ground, whirling around and spitting out the dirt in his mouth. "You cheated ," he spits out, glaring at Katsuki.
"He did not cheat , Kiba-kun," Iruka-sensei says exasperatedly. "Crossing the boundary has been an instant loss since we first started these spars."
"It was cheap ," the brat argues, clenching his fists.
Iruka-sensei closes his eyes for a pained second before replying. "Shinobi do 'cheap' things, Kiba-kun. And sometimes ," he says, shooting Dog-boy a look , "It pays to be more strategic than being bullheaded in a fight." Before more of the garbage in the kid's brain can escape through his lips, Iruka-sensei puts a hand up. "Just stop. We're already behind for shurikenjutsu as it is." He adopts a 'stern-teacher-look' and glances over the crowd of kids. "Everyone, get back to the classroom."
"Being a teacher is good for you, huh?" Bandana-sensei teases from beside him as everyone begins trudging inside.
The man's expression immediately becomes sheepish and his ears tinge red. As he walks away, Katsuki hears a mumbled, "Guess so."
A/N:
i wonder if i'm being an idiot or if this is genuinely terrible, like
this bakugou feels so OOC, in a way? like, he's decently normal in his own thoughts, but i feel like he'd never actually act like this around people
also, i only skimmed this chapter before posting it. apologies for possibly terrible quality - especially in regards to the dumb-as-heck chakra-sensing problem
/
agh, whatever
here's some notes about the chapter to clear things up, because i'm terrible at getting things acrossbr /
1.) I don't remember if I mentioned it, but he doesn't give Hinata a nickname because he thinks she's probably fall apart if he called her anything even slightly rude
2.) He calls Iruka by his name because he respects him, which I assume is the reason he calls all of his teachers at U.A. (like aizawa) by their actual names, too, instead of calling them by nicknames or just 'teach' like he did in middle school (mizuki, meanwhile, doesn't get the same privilege because there's no sasuke memories to give him a good impression of the guy)
/
anyways,
thanks for reading, wooooooooo