It was frigid that day.
Despite the sun peeking through the thin clouds above, the cold still bit at Uraraka's nose, washing over her face as she pushed through the door. The bustling of people could be heard over the apartment building's balcony, Uraraka casually peering over the concrete ledge as she hugged a steaming tupperware bowl full of homemade katsudon to her chest and watched her breath waft through the air in puffs.
"-promise we'll be careful!" she heard Deku call back as he appeared in the doorway, peeking back into his apartment as he left.
"And tell Katsuki hi for me!" she heard from inside.
"I will! Love you, mom! Bye!"
He shut the door with a click, a bag of more leftovers in hand as he pocketed his key and started on his way, Uraraka stepping to his side. The walk from his floor to the ground below was spent in comfortable silence as the two made their way to the sidewalk and started back towards U.A. campus.
"Thanks for coming with me." said Deku. "You really didn't have to. I know you wanted to work with Iida on your essay."
"It's fine!" Uraraka chirped. "I wanted to come! And your mom is so nice!"
Deku blushed, scratching at his cheek. "Yeah, she's the best."
There was no occasion that she was aware of, but Deku had desperately wanted to visit his mother. Maybe it was homesickness, maybe it was some kind of tradition or schedule, or maybe it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. Either way, Aizawa absolutely would not allow him to leave campus alone, so the only way he could go was if he brought someone with him.
Uraraka was so fast to volunteer that she surprised herself.
She supposed it didn't matter, shivering as an icy breeze blew through her hair. It was late afternoon, the sun peeking through the gray, cloudy skies, and not a single ounce of snow was anywhere to be seen.
Which was agonizing. It should never be so cold without any snow to play in.
"Ah!" Deku suddenly startled, staring down at his phone in horror. "We lost track of time! I'm supposed to meet up with Kacchan and I'm gonna be late!"
"Oh boy..." Uraraka huffed fondly as Deku took off running, the brunette chasing after him. Even without activating his quirk, her classmate was quick, having bulked up even more compared to when she'd first met him. She couldn't help the smile splitting her face in two as the pair hurried for the school grounds.
She saw it before Deku did, a group of young boys passing by as they ran. The freckled teen barely had a chance to gasp before one of the kids had subtly stuck his foot out, smirking as Deku toppled over and slammed face-first into the ground.
Uraraka yelped, skidding to a stop at Deku's side as he pulled himself up, cringing as he rubbed at his face. His bag had been thrown to the ground upon impact, tupperware bowls littering the sidewalk in a spray of leftover food that had Uraraka's heart breaking. All of Mrs. Midoriya's hard work, gone to waste.
Deku, still on the ground, turned to the boys first. The group of what Uraraka realized were middle school delinquents had stopped, watching in fascination as one boy in particular hovered over the teens. His bright red skin made him stand out from the rest as he stared down at Deku with glee, and Uraraka could feel her blood boiling.
How dare he-
Deku looked up at the boy in concern. "Are you okay?"
The red-skinned boy reared back, blinking down at them in confusion. The other boys, though equally surprised, snickered at their friend's stunned expression. Before Uraraka could even think to enter the conversation, Deku continued. "You should be careful." He said kindly, pulling himself up and dusting himself off. "Someone could get seriously hurt, and nobody wants that, you know?"
With that, he picked up the ruined tupperware bowls and put them back in his bag, looking back at Uraraka with an easygoing smile. "Come on! I don't wanna be late!"
"Hey, mister!" the red-skinned boy suddenly shouted, stepping in front of Deku. He was sulking, his face just slightly redder than the rest of him as his friends laughed at him, and Uraraka suddenly realized just how young he looked, easily somewhere around eleven or twelve years old. "You stupid or something?!"
His friends burst into hysteric laughter, and something in Uraraka's gut churned uncomfortably as the red-skinned boy's fists shook. With a burst of movement, the boy slapped the bag out of Deku's hand, the two watching as it clattered back to the ground. "You are!" the boy snapped. "You are, aren't you!"
Deku looked more confused than anything, staring down at the boy with a sincere gaze. Smiling sadly, he picked his bag back up, before reaching out and ruffling the boy's hair. "I'm not sure why you're so angry," Deku sighed. "But I'm sure there are better ways to release your anger than aiming it at others. I know people like that, and they're learning. I'm sure you can too, okay?"
With that, he patted the boy's shoulder before motioning for Uraraka to follow him. With a sigh, Uraraka fell into step next to him as the greenette turned back to the boy as they left. "I'll be rooting for you!" he called back.
Their pace after that was a lot slower, a leisurely walk through the city in case anyone else decided that they wanted to inconvenience the pair for no good reason. Uraraka was pouting, staring at her friend with a frown.
"Should we really let them off the hook so easily?" Uraraka questioned. "Kids are great and all, but without consequences, they'll just keep pushing people just to see how far they can go. They'll do this again, and someone could get hurt."
Midoriya hummed, expression tight as he scratched at the back of his head. "I wasn't sure what to do." he admitted. "My best idea was that they were looking for a reaction. We can talk to Aizawa-sensei about it, if you want."
Uraraka nodded, falling silent as they walked. With a sad smile, Midoriya gave her a reassuring nod, and Uraraka took comfort in the warm feeling in her chest.
"Hey, mister!" a voice called, and Uraraka just about snapped right then and there. She didn't know what the young boy wanted, but clearly, he wasn't planning on giving up yet. She was very much ready to scold him as the two turned, the young red-skinned boy running up to them with an excited smile on his face. "Mister!"
Alarm bells were going off in Uraraka's head, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and her heart beating wildly in her throat, but before she could even get a word in, the boy was reaching for Deku's hand, clasping it like you would when greeting an old friend you hadn't seen in years. The boy's eyes were wild, his smile blinding, and just behind him, his friends were watching with bated breath. Deku stared down at the boy in confusion, brows furrowed.
"Are you mad at me now, mister?"
Deku had opened his mouth to respond, but in the next moment, his expression went entirely blank, the light dying in his eyes as if the life was sucked right out of him. Uraraka felt her breath hitch, moving on instinct as she lunged at the boy. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"
She had no time to ponder over the way the boy genuinely startled at her shout, leaping back as she charged at him. Deku's hand fell limply at his side, dead eyes staring off at nothing with a ghostly sort of haze. Uraraka's hands were shaking as she pushed the boy back, one hand tightly grasping Deku's shoulder. "Deku?!"
He didn't even twitch at the sound of her voice. Uraraka's heart plummeted into her stomach as she swiveled to face the boy. "What did you do to him!?"
The red-skinned boy shrunk back. "It's just my quirk!" he said defensively. "It doesn't do nothing bad! Honest!"
The boys behind him were laughing again, and Uraraka felt sick. Swallowing thickly, she took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself and lowered her voice. "Okay, but what did you do? Using your quirk like this is against the law, you know."
The entire group went deathly silent at that, and Uraraka could only find some comfort in the fact that these boys had at least some sense of respect for authority. The group exchanged nervous glances as Uraraka stared them down, digging into her pocket and pulling out her provisional license. "We're heroes-in-training. We could get you in serious trouble and you didn't even know." The red-skinned boy suddenly went so pale that he looked pink. "What if you had done this to an untrained civilian with some kind of health problem? You could kill someone!"
"U-u-um, miss?" The boy suddenly asked, white-hot fear in his eyes. "What... What's his quirk?"
Uraraka's brow furrowed, mouth opened to respond when movement made her jump. She spun around wide-eyed as Deku bowed his head, face completely hidden from her view and shoulders hunched up all the way to his ears. With a gasp, she turned her full attention to her classmate, grasping his shoulders with trembling fingers. "Deku?! Deku, can you hear me?! Are you okay?!"
Silence was his response, and in Uraraka's mounting terror, she almost didn't notice the way his fists were clenched so tightly that they were shaking as bad as her own hands. She slowly lowered her hands to his, gently gripping his wrists. "What did he do to you?"
She was almost startled by her own realization, looking over her shoulder at the group of boys slowly backing away. At the front, the red boy's knees were buckling. "You never told me what you-"
Too many things happened at once.
Hands suddenly clasping her arms in a painful, vice-like grip was nothing to the blast of air pressure and green lightning illuminating the sky. Before she could even turn to see Deku's face, she was hurtling through the air, nothing but a boneless ragdoll as the momentum had her careening across the street. Even as her senses were spiraling, she could easily recognize the feeling of gravity pulling her back towards the ground, and in a moment of pure survival instinct, she grabbed her own shoulder, fingertips glowing a familiar soft pink.
She knew that weightlessness never canceled out the momentum, but she still wasn't totally prepared for the impact, colliding with a building on the other side of the street with enough power to leave her gasping and tumbling back through the air. The cartwheeling had her completely disoriented, the constant flashes of bright green doing nothing to aid her. Her only saving grace was that even though holding up too much weight made her nauseous, motion sickness was much less of a problem.
What was a problem was if she somehow ended up too high off the ground with no way of getting back down.
"Deku!" she called on instinct, even as she was already struggling to reorient herself, reaching wildly for anything to grab onto. The lightning was still crackling through the air and leaving her half-blind, but nobody answered her cry. She saw the incoming wall a moment before slamming into it, adrenaline and finely-tuned senses the only reason she even thought to lurch for an open window.
Even as she smashed into the glass of another building, her weightlessness keeping it intact, she held firm to the open window just next to it, righting herself as the world continued to spin around her. The wind had been knocked out of her, leaving her hacking as a few people in what she realized was an office building stared back at her in shock.
Around her, the air continued to glow with blinding green.
What is he doing?
Looking down, not only had she gone from one side of the street back to the other in her uncontrolled spiral, but Deku and the boys were all at least twenty stories directly below her. Deku was tense, approaching the group almost comically slowly as they backed away in sheer terror. As if being snapped out of a trance, the boys scattered, leaving the red-skinned kid alone on the sidewalk.
"Wait! Where are you going!?" he shouted, sounding as if he might cry. "Don't leave me here! You know I can't run-! I can't-!"
Uraraka quickly floated herself to the ground with a push, fingertips touching as the soles of her shoes clacked against the ground. Deku didn't even react to her, the air around him swirling like a powerful hurricane, but the boy was looking at her with wide eyes, something in his expression relieved. Thankful, even.
"What is going on?!" she demanded. "Deku? What's gotten into you?!"
"Step aside, Uraraka."
The tone caught her off-guard, and she flinched despite herself. Until now, she hadn't gotten a good look at his face since the boy had done something to him, and what met her was so foreign in his eyes that she almost didn't recognize him.
Rage. Pure, unadulterated, blood-thirsty rage.
His glare burned right through her, and Uraraka wondered if Deku was spontaneously gaining the ability to incinerate her from the inside out.
"D-Deku," Uraraka didn't even notice her own stutter. "I don't know what he did to you, but this isn't you. Please, calm down."
"Be quiet." he stated dangerously, and Uraraka gulped.
Whatever the boy's quirk was, it was messing with Deku's mind. Was it his personality, or was he just brainwashed? Whatever it was, it was making him angry. A 'rage' quirk, maybe? Uraraka wasn't even sure what that meant.
"You need to stop." she said, stepping firmly between him and the boy. "You can't think straight. Let's just stay here and wait this out, until whatever he did to you wears off."
"Or," Deku drawled coldly. "We kill him."
"Kill-" Uraraka's breath hitched. This was worse than she thought if her kind-hearted classmate was seriously considering murder. "The quirk is clearly making you insane, or- or something!"
"Miss," Uraraka startled, looking down at the teary-eyed red-skinned boy gripping her arm. "He's not gonna listen to you."
"Get out of my way, Uraraka."
Despite the icy fear gripping her heart, Uraraka frowned deeply, brows furrowed. "I won't."
"Get out of my way!"
"You'd never forgive yourself!" Uraraka reasoned, but it fell on deaf ears.
"Out of my way, you bitch!"
The coarse language flew over Uraraka's head as Deku took a menacing step forward, Uraraka taking two back and pulling the boy along with her. By now, despite the bizarre sense of whiplash she was battling, adrenaline had her fight-or-flight reflexes in high gear. Holding the small hand still clinging to her arm, Uraraka took another step back. "We need to run."
"We can't." the boy whimpered. "It's like running from a tiger, o-o-or a mountain lion. Sets off their chasing instinct." Even if this situation was entirely the kid's fault, the absolute terror in his young voice broke her heart. "He will attack us."
Deku took another step forward, eyes blazing with bloodlust. Uraraka bit her lip. "I think he's gonna attack us either way."
"Can we even get away?"
No, she almost said, but she swallowed her own apprehension and gave the boy a watery smile. "It's better than giving up."
Off to their left, they were nearing an alleyway. Likely a dead end, but not quite a death sentence. "Don't let go, no matter what." Uraraka ordered.
The boy didn't even have a chance to question her before she was lunging back, letting the two of them fall as Deku let out a demonic screech and reared his fist back. With agility she didn't even know she had, she turned on her heel and leaped into the open alleyway, clinging to the kid now in her arms as a blast of air and destruction roared past them.
Her movements were seamless and graceful as she jumped for the first ledge she saw, ghosting her finger pads along the boy before making herself weightless. A nearby pole caught her eye, and in the next moment, she was using it to swing herself into the air at an angle, already anticipating Deku to come tearing after them.
Not even a moment later, another wave of air was sending them tumbling through the air. Below them, Uraraka watched in awe and terror as black tendrils stormed through the alley under them, green lightning crawling along the walls and dancing through open air. Glass windows exploded on impact, screaming from inside dropping an unbearable weight on Uraraka's chest.
They're in the middle of the city. They're not the only people here.
Someone's gonna get hurt.
They reached the rooftop, Uraraka pulling them over the railing as she pressed her fingers back together. Even as the air began to still, Uraraka stayed vigilant, backing into a roof entrance door with the boy pressed against it behind her.
"Okay." Uraraka breathed. "You're gonna explain to me what you did. And you're gonna tell me how to fix it."
Silence was her answer. When Uraraka glanced back, he was looking at her with wide, watery eyes, his mouth wobbling dangerously. Her heart was in her throat. "We can fix this, right?"
He flinched at her tone, shoulders hunched all the way up to his ears. "I mean, in theory?"
"Hey!" A voice suddenly shouted, and Uraraka was instantly on high alert, running to the railing and staring down at the street below. From here, she could see an older gentleman standing by the alleyway entrance, staring in shock at the glowing green silhouette slowly turning to stare at him. "What do you think you're doing?"
Deku was still for a moment, studying him in silence, before he seemed to move in slow motion, raising his fist and pulling it back without even a word.
And the hero in Uraraka acted without thinking. "GET AWAY FROM THERE!"
Deku's reaction was instantaneous, whirling around and punching at the sky. The resulting shockwave not only blew her off of her feet, but sent the corner of the building she'd been standing on a moment ago rocketing away and to the ground. Screams erupted from below as she hit the floor of the roof, barely regaining her senses before tiny arms were dragging her into a dark space, a large metal door slamming behind them as they found themselves careening down a small flight of stairs and into an eerily quiet hallway, the only sound greeting them being the screams from outside and someone yelling.
"Shut up! Be quiet, all of you!"
Uraraka groaned, pushing herself up and rubbing her head painfully. The boy was crouched next to her, watching her intently as a small, barely-noticeable trickle of blood dripped down the side of his head. With a heave, the brunette got to her knees, not even taking time to assess where they were before trying to get to her feet. "We've gotta stop him!"
"Miss, wait!" the boy shouted, trying to push her back down. "He's so strong! He'll kill you!"
And wasn't that an odd thought, the idea of one of her closest friends actively trying to take her life. It was such a contradiction that the severity of the situation almost didn't register, because Deku may mutter a lot and apologize too much and not always be good at following the rules, but he's also one of the sweetest and most dependable people she'd ever met. He would rather tear off his own leg with his teeth and eat it than bring harm to a friend or an innocent or defenseless person, and if the monthly list of broken bones was anything to go by, it was proof of how little he cared for his own health when anyone else's life was in danger and there was something he could do about it.
And suddenly, here he was, not even bothering to fight his urge to kill a child and willing to take her out with him for getting in his way.
She didn't know the boy's quirk, but she knew Deku, and she knew that once he snapped out of whatever this was, whether anyone got hurt or not didn't matter. Just wanting to hurt someone for no adequate reason was going to destroy him.
So if he hurt someone, let alone killed someone...
Uraraka's eyes hardened.
"If I sit here and do nothing, he'll kill a lot more people, and he'd never live it down once this is all over." she replied. She couldn't even imagine. "We're heroes. It's what we do."
The boy recoiled at that. "R- Right." he stammered. "Heroes..."
Tears mixed with the blood dripping from his chin, and the silence that stretched between them had Uraraka's skin prickling uncomfortably. Despite the terror and anger weaving its way through her heart, she sighed. "My name is Uraraka Ochako. What's yours?"
The boy clearly hadn't been expecting that, staring at her in open shock and confusion. Somewhere deep in those eyes, there was still a hint of fear, but then he was scowling, a poor attempt to hide from her searching gaze as he looked away. "Why should I tell you?"
"Because now is a really bad time for you to not work with me." Uraraka huffed. "You started this, so we're going to fix it. Together."
The kid had the decency to shrink back in shame, curling into himself and looking as lost as a middle schooler could ever be. He muttered something, but Uraraka didn't quite catch it. "Say that again?"
"Kandai Reiji." he ground out, scowl still just as present as his tears.
He was shaking, Uraraka realized belatedly. Distant screams had her twitching. "Okay. It's very nice to meet you."
Kandai snorted at that. "You don't have to pretend. I know I screwed up."
His voice cracked at that, and suddenly, so fast that she thought she was suffering from whiplash all over again, Uraraka was left with nothing but a broken child. "I didn't mean for this to happen! Nothing like this has happened before! They always chase me all flailing and shrieking and it's funny and makes my friends laugh and- a-a-and I didn't mean to-!"
"Hey, hey, hey..." Uraraka shushed, because the last thing she needed was for Reiji to spiral into some kind of anxiety attack. "Shhh... It's okay. You'll be okay."
"Mom was right." he hiccuped, and Uraraka knew that he was falling. "I'm nothing but trouble."
Before she knew what she was doing, she was lurching forward, holding the boy close as he dissolved into sobs, and Uraraka felt her heart shatter even more than it already had, because this child had made big mistakes and caused a whole lot of trouble before anyone could even blink, but he was also hurting, and hurting people deserved saving.
And heroes save.
So, Uraraka sat there and held the crying child, praying that other heroes in the area could at least try to take control of the situation until Reiji calmed down enough to explain his quirk. In the meantime, as she used her free arm to maneuver around and grab her ratty old flip phone, she supposed that she could still make herself useful and sound the alarm.
Her friend was in trouble, and she wouldn't rest until he was back to normal.
It was too quiet that day.
That was Bakugou's first thought as he rolled out of bed that morning, still exhausted after his idiot friends pulled an all-nighter studying and bribed him into tutoring them through it. Glaring at himself in the mirror, brushing his teeth with far less vigor than usual, the bags under his eyes were as prominent as Aizawa's purple-haired mini-me.
They were lucky it was a shorter school day. Otherwise, he would incinerate all of them and their most prized possessions along with them, and then dance on the ashes in celebration.
Since the day had been rather dull, with no hero training to work off his frustrations, he found himself spending a large portion of the afternoon at U.A.'s gym and training grounds. Periodically, he'd see one of his classmates, or some vaguely familiar extra, but most of his time was spent either working out or practicing his special moves and agility in the air.
It was blissfully quiet, having this chance to work on his own without his classmates breathing down his neck like a bunch of stalkers, even if some of them could be decent sparring partners.
He'd almost forgotten how quiet things could get when by himself...
Too quiet.
Stretching to cool down after his training regime, Bakugou wiped the sweat off his brow, water bottle in one hand and a small towel over his shoulder. There was an icy breeze blowing through the campus grounds as he stepped outside, fighting the urge to drum his fingers as he made his way towards the dorms at a brisk pace. There was a familiar tick in his fingers and chill running down his spine, and it felt as if the light wind blowing through his hair was biting viciously at his skin. There were cracks in the pathway that he'd never noticed before and his excessive sweat was doing nothing to help with the chill, almost making him shudder.
He didn't know what was going on this time, but something was definitely wrong, and as the minutes ticked by, the annoyingly persistent fidgeting only grew steadily stronger.
So the problem wasn't going away on its own, then.
That's what he begrudgingly accepted as he trudged into Heights Alliance. The common room was teeming with activity, some students howling and shrieking like toddlers while others somehow miraculously ignored their hollering. The TV was tuned into some anime at a low volume while a sweet smell announced Big Lips's presence in the kitchen. The majority of the idiot parade and a few others were playing a horrifically loud game of uno, while others were wisely absent. Honestly, he would be doing the same before anyone could blink if he wasn't starving.
And maybe, possibly, slightly on high alert.
"BLASTY!" Pinky's shrill voice made him jump, and he was whirling around to find her waving at him. "Come play strip uno with us!"
"Strip-" He blinked dumbly. "Come again?"
Now that he was paying attention, he now noticed that Weird Hair and Tail were shirtless, Sparky, Grape, and Twinkle Toes were in nothing but boxers, and various socks, slippers, jackets, and accessories were scattered all over the floor. "Come on!" Sparky shouted. "It's hilarious!"
It was amazing how his classmates could leave him speechless so easily.
Wordlessly, Bakugou turned on his heel and marched into the kitchen as if the dipshits he'd somehow found himself associated with never even existed. Unfortunately, he was immediately greeted by the presence of Icyhot, blankly staring at nothing as he obnoxiously slurped on leftover cold soba while Big Lips flitted around him with what looked like supplies for cupcakes.
The big bastard was obviously going all out, and for what purpose was beyond the blond. There were multiple bowls littering the counters, filled with different flavors and colors of batter and icing, while bags of decorations and candy were strewn about them. He remembered someone mentioning something about Big Lips doing this, but it was lost on him. Peering over one of the smallest bowls, he raised an eyebrow at the scent, glancing over at Big Lips when his rummaging stopped.
The taller boy was grinning back at him. "Spicy chocolate." he chirped, far too proud of himself. It must have been his nerves from earlier, because Bakugou found himself fighting an upward twitching at the corner of his mouth.
Since Big Lips was taking up the entire kitchen, there was definitely no room for cooking, so he begrudgingly searched for a lighter meal. He found himself enough ingredients for a decent salad, grabbed a protein bar and some water, and went on his way.
Besides the shrieking in the common room and Sparky hiding behind a couch after Pinky had the audacity to try and convince him to give up his boxers, the trip was relatively painless, so he should have expected that something would eventually go awry. In this case, it came in the form of someone roughly tapping his shoulder. Glancing back with the meanest glare he had the energy for, he was once again met with the emotionless staring of Half n' Half.
"Do you have a moment?" he asked, and a hard 'no' was right on the tip of his tongue, but that vague, roiling sense of familiar dread was still churning in the pit of his stomach, and the air was still a little too thin and the carpet was still a little too rough.
So he relented. "Make it quick."
"Do you feel anything?" he asked, mercifully cutting to the chase. "Something's been...bothering me."
And Bakugou couldn't help the way he could feel his temper spiking, like the pressure in a volcano finally reaching the point of eruption, because all this single utterance did was validate this stupid underlying sense of panic that's been building since he'd rolled out of bed that morning. "You too, then."
"Ah, so it isn't just me."
"Fucking hero sense."
Todoroki shrugged, a vague look of concern marring his features. So far, the feeling wasn't as strong as it possibly could be, but it was getting to be enough for Half n' Half to get nervous, which meant that Bakugou's own reaction might start to become more severe as well. It was annoying, but if something really was seriously wrong, then it wasn't like they had the luxury of sitting around and letting someone else fix the problem.
He'd have to bring it up with stupid Deku. The nerd had wanted to meet up with him soon to discuss something involving OFA, since All Might was off gallivanting somewhere else and left Bakugou as the only other option. It was inconvenient, but ultimately necessary, he guessed.
Then again, hadn't he and Cheeks gone off-campus?
Bakugou frowned. There were implications there, and he didn't like 'em.
Deep in his own musings, he almost missed the Frog briskly strolling past, phone in hand and a deep frown on her face. His attention immediately snapped to the spark in her normally dull eyes, like someone had set a fire inside them with no plan on how to put it out. It pulled at him like a siren's song, like a lighthouse on a cliff during a stormy night, and suddenly, the way that Todoroki's gaze followed his was completely lost on him.
"Someone turn on the news channel, kero." she said sternly, the chaos in the common room pausing in blissful silence. While Sparky took the opportunity to grab his pants and flee for his life, Tentacles grabbed the remote and did as instructed.
Raising the volume, the class was met with images of smoke billowing up from downtown Musutafu. Though the damage wasn't the worst they'd ever seen, the crowds were in utter panic, fleeing from the scene as pro heroes began to circle the area, most familiar faces and with looks of unease and confusion. Bakugou's classmates were quickly gathering up their discarded clothing articles as Bakugou scanned the video feed with a keen eye, combing through every visible detail as his senses seemed to spike in anticipation.
If Froggy was being contacted by someone warning her about whatever was happening, then it was likely either Deku or Uraraka, which meant that they would be somewhere in the midst of this, and more than likely, they were going to get involved. However, as idiotic as both of them could be, he would think that they could handle it themselves. In fact, why were they bothering to call? Was it worse than it appeared?
And better yet, why were the pros hesitating? It seemed that the heroes that the class knew personally were the ones being the most cautious, and for whatever reason, in Bakugou's mind, that's what was raising the biggest red flag.
A flash of green. There.
"Deku's already involved." Bakugou stated, though mostly to himself. "If that's the case, then Uraraka's the one calling, but from where?"
"That's the thing." Frog responded, not even fazed by him ignoring her. "Uraraka said that Midoriya's the one causing this."
The uproar was delayed. A second turned to two, and then the entire class present was screaming, demanding answers, some almost even laughing at the absurdity of it. Bakugou himself was staring at her as if she'd just grown a second head, and it was hissing at him.
And yet, the heroes' hesitance, at least from the ones that the shitnerd had met, was making a little bit more sense. It also explained the fact that no matter how hard Bakugou looked, there were no villains in sight. Just unrestrained arches of green electricity and the occasional black tendril whipping through the smoke.
One such tendril slammed into the side of a building, sending a corner of the roof toppling to the ground and nearly crushing a child and their dog, and that's when the possible severity of the situation truly hit him.
This had to be what his senses were so up in arms about, because even a blind person would see that something was wrong with this entire picture.
And if he was gonna figure out what in the hell was going on, he would have to ask Round Face himself.
Nobody noticed when he slipped out of the common room, skipping the elevator and taking the stairs two at a time. He burst into his room, throwing his shoes onto the balcony before rummaging through his closet for something warmer. He had a feeling that he'd be out there for more than a few minutes, and his quirk would probably be put into use as well, because somebody out there was clearly gonna need some sense knocked into them, whether it be Deku for being more reckless than usual or whoever the real culprit in all of this was.
With that in mind, a winter vest and a scarf were probably best. No need to set any of his nice coats' sleeves on fire, lest he incur his mother's wrath. A moment later, he was grabbing his hero costume boots and stepping out onto his balcony, ducking down as a black blur caught his eye. He watched while securing his shoes as Aizawa disappeared under the roof of the front porch, Present Mic hot on his heels, and the ash blonde knew there was no walking out through the front door, unless he wanted a face full of capture weapon.
So, pocketing his phone, he swung from his balcony to Four Eyes's, hoping that the class prez wasn't there to notice him and that no one else around campus would hear him. From there, it was to the next balcony under that, and then he was rolling onto the grass, on his feet without losing momentum and sprinting across the yard towards the front entrance. Nobody on U.A. grounds was panicked yet, because the security wall hadn't gone up yet. Thanks to that, Bakugou didn't have to use his quirk to jump the fence, so he was out of the gate before anyone could even notice he was gone.
Out on the street, his hands were already popping, a meager attempt at warming them in case he needed to be at his best at the drop of a hat. The annoying churning in his stomach, like the goosebumps along his arms and the chills up his spine, was only steadily growing stronger, like a slow timer counting down to zero, and suddenly, there was a foreign hint of anxiety worming its way into his mind.
No time to waste, then.
Step one was to find Uraraka, because fuck did he have a lot of questions, and from the sounds of things, at least from Froggy's implications, she was the one with answers.
And if Bakugou happened to leave his phone on silent, that wasn't his problem.