Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or My Hero Academia

The first hit was a fist to his side, making solid contact with his rib cage and knocking the breath out of him. A split second later, he turned his right hand toward his opponent and attempted to land an explosion into the clone's gut. But even acting as quickly as he could, as the familiar sound hit his ears, he received an elbow to the back that forced his body forward. He used the momentum to drop to the ground and did a leg sweep, planning to force the Hokage clone into the air where he would then blow it away. But before his hands were even up, he received a roundhouse kick to the face that spun him around.

He grit his teeth as he attempted to stand up; but he hadn't caught his breath and his head really fucking hurt.

"Damn it!" He had just absolutely gotten his ass handed to him in about ten seconds by a clone that wasn't even half as strong as the real deal; how the hell had that happened!

"One. Two." The monotonous voice counted, slowly. What was the rule again? Ten seconds to get up if he got knocked to the ground? He got back to his feet after hearing three, and focused more intently on his opponent than he had before. Obviously, their first engagement could not have gone any worse; it was a total disgrace and he wanted to kill something, but he already learned a few things.

First, his opponent was fast. He already knew that, but there was a huge difference between being fast while running in a forest and being fast in an actual fight. He knew now that he would definitely need to use his quirk to enhance his speed and go all-out in terms of mobility, but as long as he could do that he definitely had an easy win coming his way. A smile formed on his face; yep, he was still in control of this fight. Like he had thought earlier, as soon as he knew his opponent's quirk, there was no way he could lose. Unfortunately, Hokage's other strength was that his hits felt like they were coming from a damn baseball bat, but all he had to do was avoid those.

"Alright, hope you're ready to die!" He put his hands behind his back and used them to launch himself at the clone, knowing he had figured out how to win this fight. Rearing his right-hand back, he kept a close eye on his opponent for any hint of the direction he would try to dodge. But there was no tell, which meant it was going to face the attack head on.

Bakugo threw his right hook, and Hokage barely moved, dodging his head backward before using both hands to grab Bakugo's right arm. "Wrong move pal!" Bakugo shouted, but when he brought his left hand forward to unleash an explosion, Hokage spun him around and propelled him several feet through the air before he could even get off an attack. He had been expecting the guy to go for a knee to his exposed stomach; that would have ended it for sure because there was no way the clone could have dodged while doing that. But he supposed this was an improvement over last time and a sign that he had taken the advantage.

Before he touched the ground, he found his orientation mid-air –intensively practicing his aerial combat had definitely paid off– and blasted toward his opponent with the intention of wiping him off the face of the planet. Thrusting his hands forward, he released an explosion straight at the clone.

If there was anything he had been expecting, it was not for Hokage to charge at him in that situation. After all, he himself was the one on the offensive and in control, not that damn clone! Almost anybody in that situation would have tried dodging to the left, right, or backwards, it was common sense, and yet this clone had the balls to quickly rush forward and dodge under his hands, evading the attack completely. Before Bakugo could turn the situation around, a fist was in his stomach, and its momentum delivered a devastating blow.

The clone jumped away as Bakugo doubled over, cursing himself; if he hadn't lost focus he could have hooked his hands over the clone's shoulders and destroyed him with one well-placed explosion. He had to be able to take advantage of this; there was no way one little punch should rattle him! If there was a one-second window of opportunity, then he would always blow that damn window straight to hell. But instead, Bakugo found himself on the ground, panting, his arms and torso already bruised and battered.

"I...will… kill you..." he huffed out, and got to his feet as quickly as he could, which was admittedly a little slow.

"Timeout!" He heard a too familiar annoying voice say; honestly, he had forgot all about that damn blond during the fight. And why was the guy calling a timeout for him, it's not like they were on teams or anything! "You're really getting a beat-down out here Bakkun!" That smile was on Naruto's face again. The eyes closed, wide smile that really truly irritated him to his core and made him want to nuke the idiot.

"Shut the hell up and don't ever get in my way."

"Don't be dumb Bakkun; I just wanted to give you some advice." The guy then seriously crossed his arms and turned away, like he was pouting. If Bakugo hadn't been focused on taking out Hokage, which was definitely going to be a lot more entertaining than fighting some neanderthal degenerate who got lost and couldn't find his way back to the cave, then he really would've killed the guy here and now. In fact, even with all that, the temptation to raise his arm and blow him away was hard to resist.

"Why exactly do you think I need your help? And stop calling me that, damn it!"

"Hehe, you're so stubborn Bakkun! Well, I guess I'll leave you to getting kicked around; it's pretty fun to watch." He laughed and jumped away, and Bakugo felt a headache coming on; honestly, as if he needed any help from a brain-dead degenerate. Although, now that he thought about it, if Naruto could jump away like that, it pretty much fully confirmed that Naruto's quirk was also that 'chakra' thing. He'd store that information for when he destroyed the idiot.

Turning back to his current fight, he was pretty pissed he hadn't managed to win it yet. He thought about using his gauntlets but that probably wouldn't work since the guy had already shown himself to be fast enough to dodge Bakugo's move if there was distance between them. But if they were close, it also seemed unlikely he would be able to pull the pin without Hokage being able to stop it or get away from it. Unless, of course, the guy was distracted by something else. Bakugo growled; the best plan was still to use his maneuverability to land a solid hit. But then, he thought with a smirk, there was no reason he couldn't do both.

"Time in." He launched himself forward using his explosions, this time a little quicker than before. There was a slight crackle in his left arm from the exertion but he would just have to deal with it until he won. This time, when he thrust his hand forward, instead of throwing a right hook, he aimed an explosion straight at his opponent.

"Die!" But instead of a massive explosion, he created a small one just in front of his opponent, who dodged to the side. Bakugo smiled at that because it was exactly what he had wanted; still in mid-air, he aimed his gauntlet at the clone and quickly pulled the pin. The explosion that followed was enormous and deafening but he was sure it had hit the target At least, until he saw a blur of movement to his left and realized the guy had somehow managed to dodge it. Based on everything Bakugo had seen from the guy, that should have been impossible. Apparently, the freak could move even faster.

Hokage then rushed at him and threw a quick punch; Bakugo should have blocked it cleanly but his damn arms felt so heavy and the strike opened up his guard. It didn't take a genius to know that this exchange was going to end badly. And that's when he saw Hokage's right leg lift off the ground. He didn't even have time to properly react before it connected.


"You take a student under your wing and you knock him out on day one? And then you think you can just interrupt me while I'm on an important business trip to take care of him?"

The woman's voice above him was authoritative, and practically shouting, and it took a few moments for Bakugo to process things. Knocked out? He realized he was lying on his back and suddenly remembered the fight with Hokage. Had that final kick managed to put him out cold? Damn, he had gotten his ass kicked! Damn!

"Damn it!"

"Oh look, I see you're awake. Listen you little brat, try not to move too much. I didn't get dragged all the way out here just to have my hard work put to waste."

Bakugo took a look at the woman leaning over him; she looked older but didn't have wrinkles and her blond hair was tied into pigtails. She also had some kind of weird green jewel on her forehead. "And who the hell are you supposed to be?"

She had the nerve to ignore him. "Why are you teaching this kid how to fight? It's clear to me he needs to learn some manners!" He glared at her, and when she returned it with her own glare, he had to admit that it was pretty intense. Craning his neck, he saw that Hokage and Naruto were both in the room as well.

"Bakugo-san, this is Lady Tsunade; she is a very talented healer who I brought in to make sure you could resume training today."

Naruto snickered to himself. "Lady Tsunade? Hah, more like Granny Tsunade!"

"Don't call me that!" The woman yelled and punched the floor, and to Bakugo's surprise, it actually left several knuckle imprints in the wood. Apparently the idiot blond's nicknames annoyed other people too. A healer that could do that much damage with only a light punch was not exactly normal; he couldn't think of any way that Recovery Girl at UA would hold up in a fight, but this woman looked like she could.

Ignoring that, he focused on his own body. His head hurt like hell, probably due to the knock-out kick in the face he'd taken like a pansy, and both of his arms were definitely sore, though they had definitely been worse in the past. If he had only fought the Hokage clone, he doubted they would be hurting like this; it was using an unfinished move against that villain copy of himself earlier in the day that had probably done it.

"I can't believe you dragged me out of important business for this" she went on, clearly irritated.

"Oh, boo hoo, Granny had to leave the slot machines for once in her life to help someone out! Oh the horror!" The way Pigtail scowled made Bakugo think she was going to leave knuckle imprints in the moron's skull but after a second she just sighed.

"Should have known as soon as I hit the ten-to-one payout that I was going to have my day interrupted."

Hokage interrupted both of them, something Bakugo had to admit he was thankful for. "Will his injuries be healed enough to resume training today?"

He started to sit up, ignoring the aches in his upper body. "Yeah, I'm good to go," Bakugo growled. The muscles in his wrists and shoulders were pretty tight but nothing he couldn't push through easily and it didn't really matter if his ribs were sore; it's not like he was punching anyone with his rib cage. Realistically he had every advantage over his opponent going into the next fight, and just thinking about how he'd gotten knocked out made him scowl and itching for another go. No way was it happening again, that much was for damn sure.

"He's fine." Tsunade confirmed with an amused sneer. "Even without my healing he would have been in fighting shape by tomorrow evening at the latest. Definitely an unnecessary trip."

"Can it Granny! That's a whole day away and he needs as much training as he can get! He couldn't even land a single hit out there!"

"Shut the hell up you blond idiot," Bakugo snapped before Tsunade could respond. But if tomorrow afternoon was a 'whole day away', and the fight had been in the evening, that meant he'd been out cold at least through the night and now into the morning. Damn, he literally got kicked to sleep, what an embarrassment.

"Two hours with a decent breakfast and he should be almost as good as new. Honestly though, I shouldn't have done any of this after what this brat did to me."

"The fuck have I ever done to you woman?" Bakugo had never seen Pigtail once in his life before now, as far as he knew. Then again, that really didn't mean much because he really didn't care about all the random people who introduced themselves to him. If his entire middle school class came in right now he wouldn't know a single one of their names and he wouldn't care even a little bit that he didn't. Hell, if his entire class at school right now did, it wouldn't go much better.

"You cost me a lot of money at the Sports Festival. Endeavor's kid had 3 to 1 odds and I had my money on him. But then you decide to go and spoil things for me by beating him in the finals. Even worse, I made another bet with an old friend and turns out you came up big for him."

"Stupid bet, not my fault you're a sucker." Honestly, like he cared about some lady's gambling problems. But based on how many times she'd mentioned gambling, he was willing to bet she was up to her pigtails in debt.

"Thank you for healing him; if you don't mind, I need to talk to you about something else. Then you can go back to your business." The two of them left the room, leaving him alone with the nuisance. He already knew this was going to be annoying.

"How are you doing today, Bakkun?"

"Stop talking."

"Sheesh, so rude! Anyway Bakkun, I was thinking about your fight. And you know what? I gotta admit, you did pretty good for your first time. I thought for sure the speed would be too much for you but that quirk can be used in some pretty awesome ways."

"I don't need your analysis."

"Of course you do Bakkun, because at the end of the day, you lost! To a clone at just ten percent too!" The guy kinda chuckled a bit and Bakugo really, really wanted to blow the blond straight to hell, but he figured it would not be looked upon kindly if he destroyed Hokage's house. Probably wouldn't get a rematch, after all. A scowl formed on Bakugo's face at the idea that he had lost, especially to a clone that was only ten percent of the original. "Oh, I get it, you're really bothered by the ten percent thing huh? Guess that means you haven't figured it out yet."

"The hell are you talking about?"

"Come on Bakkun, use your head. Aren't you supposed to be a genius or something?"

"Whatever; doubt it matters anyway." Honestly he didn't need any advice and he damn sure was not about to be led on by some moron.

"I guess since you don't have chakra, you don't really get it. The clone you were fighting had ten percent of the chakra that Hokage himself has; but that doesn't mean what you think it means."

"If you're gonna keep talking anyway, at least make some sense."

"Well, it might be a little weird to explain because I mostly just learned through experience. I guess it's kinda like a lake or something. If you can only use ten percent of the lake water, and just pretend that anything you do on the lake uses up the water," the guy was probably hurting himself trying to figure out how to use a metaphor, "if there's no option at all once you use up that percent, then you're going to be careful in using it. If something uses a lot of water, like filling a swimming pool, you're not going to do it. You're going to use less for bathing and focus more on the essentials, like drinking. Even then, you're gonna be careful with that. Oh man, I am nailing this! I need to write this down."

Holy shit, the guy had actually had a moment of not being a total idiot and then proceeded to blow it up better than Bakugo himself could have done with a literal explosion. "Basically, the clone was rationing since the fight could have lasted an hour at max, and that's why he wasn't using any weird techniques. Only using it for hand-to-hand."

"Exactly, Bakkun! You catch on quick, you know that? Of course, moving at the pace the clone was comes completely natural alongside training and uses almost no chakra really. Jumping takes a little but a guy like the great Hokage replaces it faster than that uses it, but clones don't generate chakra so it had to keep these things in mind. So when it got in a bad situation, it had plenty left to use to bail itself out."

"And that's why he seemed faster after I used my gauntlet. Damn, I KNEW I almost had him!" Bakugo knew there was something wrong with the way Hokage had mentioned the ten percent strength and now he finally figured out what it was. It didn't necessarily mean he had one-tenth the speed or one-tenth the hit power that the real Hokage had, it just meant the clone had less ability to use that chakra stuff to enhance itself or attack. But, when he thought he had the fight won, it had enough to use a boost to escape his attack.

"After watching that fight, I gotta say, you've got some crazy good fighting instinct Bakkun. I know you're gonna be all mad because you lost, I would be too, but the clone really was not holding back more than it needed to make sure it could last the whole time. Even without all the fancy stuff, Hokage's basic fighting style is hard for most quirks to keep up with in a fair fight. Of course, with his job, he doesn't get many fair fights, but still."

Of course most people couldn't deal with it. Even the clone using the basics had very high mobility, high strength, and a very high reaction time. At this level, the quirk and reaction time didn't really matter together but it was easy to imagine that with more abilities in-play they would. Unfortunately, he didn't even know the basics about what those abilities could be besides the 'shadow clones'; damn, oh well, he was just going to have to find a way to win anyway. If he could just get a little more creative in making explosions that should be enough.

"Most quirks are useless." For every one that was like his, there was one that was a gimmick. Something like a stomach laser or resistance to heat or other shit that wouldn't get anyone even sniffing the top of the hero rankings. Power and Versatility were all that mattered.

"Well, that's a little harsh Bakkun. Gotta play the hand you're dealt, as they say." Yeah, unless you didn't and you got to cheat the cards after the fact, Bakugo thought. "Your problem though is that Hokage has instinct and experience; he is a pro hero after all, and you're just some grumpy little student." It was strange the way this guy only seemed to talk about fighting relative to Hokage and hadn't mentioned his own capabilities even once. "Thinking about it, there are really only two other people in your class who could have hoped to compete in that fight. Endeavor's kid would have it pretty rough because his moves are so predictable. One hand forward, ice goes forward. Other hand forward, fire goes forward. But maybe he could pull something off. Really it'd be between you and that Midoriya kid."

"Do NOT compare me to that worthless Deku!"

"Oh man, touched a nerve there huh Bakkun? He didn't seem all that bad. What's he ever done to you?"

"It doesn't matter. That damn Deku… quirkless all his life until he gets into UA..." he trailed off, scowling as he thought of the damn nerd. From the time they were kids, Deku always, ALWAYS, thought that Bakugo was inferior, like he needed protection and rescuing. He could see it clearly in his head, that time he barely fell into a creek and the way the loser extended his hand to help him up, a look in his eye like he was worried. Always playing the part of the hero, no matter how stupid it was. Like that time Bakugo got jumped by that sludge villain, and none of the pro heroes were doing anything, but damn Deku comes running in like he can do anything about it. Deku had always thought he was a real hero, even before he could back it up.

"D-did you say Midoriya was quirkless before high school? Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" There was a serious look on Naruto's face, for the first time Bakugo could remember since he'd met the blond idiot.

But just then, Hokage calmly walked back into the room. "I apologize; taking Tsunade back took a bit longer than expected. She wouldn't let me leave until I won once at the slot machine." What? How in the hell did Hokage get Pigtail anywhere she could gamble, actually gambled himself, and already gotten back? Could he use chakra to pull off something like a spatial quirk?

"How much did you win?" A stupid grin and starry eyes had replaced the moron's serious look of a moment before. Bakugo was not surprised at all that it was a fleeting expression.

"Not much; she took most of it of course. Said she needed to buy something for Shizune. Anyway, I'll get started on breakfast. Bakugo-san, you're free to wander around the house if you like but don't stress yourself for now. You'll have your rematch later. As for you, Naruto, you shall attend to your duties. It should be at least a half hour."

"Aww, but that's boring! I wanna hang out more with Bakkun!" But Hokage left the room without a response and, a few seconds later, Naruto did as well, though with a scowl on his face.

Bakugo wondered what that was all about but decided he didn't really care.


A/N: Yes, another chapter's here already. Maybe I exaggerated when I said I would update this slowly because I do enjoy writing it quite a lot. Probably because it's the only outlet for MHA writing I have. Anyway, I do hope you liked this chapter. Hope you enjoyed the fight scene and don't mind too much that our poor little Bakkun got knocked out cold. Tough matchup but I think he did well. Don't really know what else to talk about for this chapter which is always a good thing.

Hope you enjoyed it! Please be sure to follow/favorite/review! The positive feedback for this story has been beyond what I expected and I am very thankful.

Beta read by: the road I know