Getting Kandai to step out of the building they'd sheltered in had been a hassle, but frankly, Uraraka didn't blame him.

The streets were chaos when they exited the building, throngs of people running from the commotion that had moved farther into the city. Uraraka felt her heart drop when she realized that Deku had gone towards downtown, where the denser population was, and after one or two heroes zipped past her, she was running, pushing against the crowd towards the action.

Kandai must have been just as aware of the danger as she was, because instead of trying to pull away and disappear into the sea of people, he held on tighter.

"I'm gonna need an explanation sooner rather than later." Uraraka spoke, voice rising over the crowd. "You've stalled for long enough."

Kandai didn't answer immediately, worrying his lip in hesitation as he scanned the people rushing past them in panic. "It's a rage quirk." he said. "It affects your emotions. Makes you angry."

"I'm gonna need more than that."

He gulped. "It makes you angry, like super angry, but not like a wild, animalistic anger, you know?"

She didn't, but at least she could assume she wasn't dealing with blind rage. It would explain Deku specifically targeting Kandai, or using a civilian as a means to lure Uraraka out. She was sure that's what happened back at that building, considering how fast he reacted to her shout.

It didn't explain everything, but it was a start.

The streets of downtown Musutafu were less annihilated than she'd feared they'd be, but just about every window she saw for miles was obliterated. There were overturned cars dotting the streets, some thrown into buildings and others caused by crashes from civilians trying to avoid the danger. Immediately going into hero mode, Uraraka decided that her first course of action should be to check the crash sites for casualties.

"Stay close to me." she ordered. "I'm gonna check for people in these cars."

Kandai nodded, trailing like a shadow as she went from window to window. Most cars were already empty, but her hunch did pay off, as she soon discovered a child alive but trapped and injured underneath a pile-up, likely catapulted from her seat. Kandai watched in amazement as Uraraka lifted each car one by one, letting them float into the air before pulling them back down for a soft landing.

It was meticulous work, with nausea bubbling up her throat and each second dragging on the longer she stayed here instead of searching for Deku, but then she found an old couple unconscious and breathing in their seats or a dog locked in a car about to catch fire, and she couldn't help but be glad that she slowed down enough to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

That didn't stop her from worrying though, because with every innocent bystander she helped get to safety, more people might be getting hurt or killed because of her friend's altered state of mind, and that terrified her more than anything.

With a sudden burst of energy, she went running, dropping a car behind her and startling Kandai out of his stupor. With barely a pause, he came running after her, his eyes far more alive than they had been a moment ago.

"You'll need a shock."

She blinked. "What?"

"A shock!" he exclaimed. "Like getting hurt. Feeling pain or taking a hit like that, you know? He's so strong, but maybe... Maybe if you threw something heavy at him, like those cars-!"

He was rambling now, but Uraraka's mind was spinning. Pain? Yeah, right. The idea was laughable.

'In theory' made sense now, because Kandai might not realize it, but that small detail alone screws up this entire operation. How is she supposed to make Deku of all people feel enough pain to-?

Her breath hitched. "What if the person has an abnormally high pain tolerance?"

Kandai went quiet, staring up at Uraraka even as she didn't bother looking back. There was a moment where she could see clarity cross his features from the corner of her eye, a dreadful understanding that had the situation sinking in all over again.

He slowed to a stop, staring at the ground with tears in his eyes as Uraraka slowed and jogged back to him. "I'm sorry..." his voice wobbled. "I- I didn't know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Hey...," Uraraka spoke carefully. "I know you didn't mean for all this to happen. What you did was stupid, but you couldn't have known."

She bent down to his level, putting one hand in his and another on his shoulder, and met his tear-stricken eyes as chaos unfolded around them. "That being said, I get the feeling that this isn't the first time that you did something like this, so something was bound to go wrong, eventually. I hope you learned your lesson. This won't happen again, right?"

Kandai looked up at her in awe, but said nothing as she got back to her feet, staring off in the direction that she'd last seen heroes heading. Heart set like steel, she ran into the fray, Kandai right behind her. She didn't even blink when he grabbed her hand.

The deeper into the city they went, the more smoke filled the air. The population thinned out, leaving an almost dystopian world for them to stumble upon. It had grown quiet, with the smoke acting as a sort of smog shrouding the city in a thick, sickening haze. Uraraka pulled her scarf over her face, Kandai doing the same with his shirt as they trekked along the sidewalk. Their only source of light other than the sun peeking through the fog was the streetlights flickering on around them, as if night had suddenly descended upon them.

Kandai held tight to Uraraka's hand.

"Are you guys alright?!" she heard through the haze, a hero she was sure she'd recognize if she saw their face calling out to a comrade.

"We need an ambulance!" someone else shouted. "Damn, what's that kid made out of?!"

"Did you see where he went?"

"I thought I saw him head towards the Wobani Office Building, but that's all I know!"

Wobani?

"That's not too far from here." Uraraka thought aloud.

"Why would he go there?" Kandai asked. "Is there something about it he hates?"

"I don't think so." Uraraka answered.

"Huh. That's weird. Usually, people affected by my quirk act with intent."

"What do you mean?"

"They're still thinking straight." Kandai explains. "He can still think and strategize and stuff. He's just really, really mad."

And there was yet another giant wrench thrown into things.

"Welp, considering that he's a brilliant strategist," Uraraka huffed, stomach churning with anxiety. "That makes this even worse."

Kandai was silent beside her, hand slack in hers, so she filled the silence. "If that's the case, then I bet he's using Wobani as a base of sorts. It's one of the tallest buildings in Musutafu."

And hopefully evacuated by now.

The red-skinned boy nodded numbly, pulled along like a ragdoll as Uraraka weaved through the wrecked streets. She'd spot a shadow every once in a while, heroes shouting orders and disappearing into the sea of dust or reporters creeping through the cover of artificial night to catch a good story, but Uraraka paid them no mind, charging forward towards what she knew was the general direction of the Wobani building.

Like approaching the final boss's lair, the dust suddenly cleared. It didn't quite swirl around the building like the eye of a hurricane, but it sure felt like it did as the brunette stared up at the towering skyscraper materialized before her. More windows were broken out, but other than that, the building itself was relatively undamaged.

Around it, evacuees in business suits and camera crews were pressing against a growing barricade, seemingly appearing right before Uraraka's eyes. There was a mix of curious civilians, having braved the dust storm with their phones out and raised high to catch a glimpse of the action. Far above, helicopters were circling the rooftop.

It almost looked apocalyptic.

"We gotta get in before the police completely barricade it." Uraraka thought aloud.

Kandai blinked up at her. "Isn't that illegal?"

"You'd be surprised about the things my class has gotten away with." she chuckled dryly. "Besides, I got a hero license, so for me, it's technically not."

"You're gonna leave me here?"

Uraraka's eyes softened as the boy next to her seemed to deflate with panic. "You definitely can't go in."

"I- I can help!" he tried to argue. "I-I-I can distract him, or something like-!"

"If you got hurt, I'd never forgive myself." Uraraka stated resolutely. "And he wouldn't, either."

"Same goes for you, Cheeks."

Uraraka jumped, turning on her heel so fast that she nearly tripped over her own feet. Kandai startled next to her, pressing against her hip and glaring at the newcomer with suspicion.

Uraraka felt no such apprehension.

"Bakugou!" she exclaimed, fighting to keep her voice down amongst the chaos around them. "When did you-?! How-?!"

Another news chopper flew overhead. Bakugou glanced at it.

Ah. Right. He can fly.

"You have a minute tops to explain to me what in the utter hell is going on before I charge in there blind, because there's already fucking carnage and I can practically hear Deku crying over it."

Behind her, Uraraka could feel Kandai gripping at her clothes, his hands shaking just slightly as he slid farther behind her and away from this newcomer. Bakugou's sharp gaze flicked over to him for a moment, and the boy startled.

"Deku was hit by a quirk that messes with his emotions." Uraraka explained. "It makes him super angry, but I guess he's still able to think straight, because he's using strategies instead of attacking everything that moves blindly."

Her voice felt robotic, almost as if she was reciting a list in a board meeting. For that moment, emotion was cut out altogether, and perhaps, if she thought about it, maybe it helped her feel just a little bit more sane. "Apparently, the only way to get him back to normal is through a major shock to the system of some kind, so I guess that means fighting him."

And this right here, in the midst of this situation, is probably the best-case scenario, isn't it? Endeavor's nowhere to be seen, Aizawa-sensei is likely trying to keep order at U.A., nobody knows what the true cause of this quirk accident is, and only one person in her class was able to get to her.

But that person was Bakugou.

And if there was anyone who could get Deku back to normal through sheer brute force, it was him.

Bakugou nodded, glare blazing and grin manic. "So you're saying that all I have to do is kick his ass."

Uraraka said nothing, and Bakugou's grin grew. Kandai shrank back behind her as he turned on his heel and marched towards the Wobani office building. "Got it. I'll be back, Round Face."

Uraraka watched in silence as he casually hopped the barricade, throwing his provisional license at the first officer who tried to approach him. She could feel Kandai relax behind her. "So much anger..."

"Hm?"

Glancing down at Kandai, his face looked constipated. "I've never seen someone with so much natural anger before."

It took Uraraka a moment to respond, but when she did, it was with a smile and a hand in his hair. "Don't worry. He's scary, but he's a good guy."

Kandai searched her eyes, but Uraraka only smiled brighter, straightening up and looking back at the waves of dust wafting through the city. There were probably still people who needed rescue and evacuation, and with her abilities, whether she could fight or not didn't matter when she could save so many lives here on the ground, where the destruction was more widespread and the environment posed so much more of an imminent threat.

Looking back at Wobani one last time, she frowned when she noticed that her classmate had paused, staring far off to the side with a heavy frown.

Squinting in that direction, off in the distance, the zero gravity quirk user could see the silhouettes of two people crouched on one of the rooftops. Flowing white hair and bright red feathers waving in the breeze clicked in her mind immediately.

Hawks and Miruko were staring him down, though Bakugou's returning glare was more focused on Hawks. The winged hero looked more serious than Uraraka had ever seen on TV, and though she couldn't see his face from here, there was a strange sort of foreboding in his slouched posture and tilted head. Miruko, meanwhile, looked like a tense spring ready to lunge.

Bakugou's gaze didn't waver, and after several long, agonizing seconds where he should be finding and stopping Deku, please, Hawks shifted, slightly nodding his head to the side.

The ash blonde only paused for a moment longer before disappearing into the building.

"So, you're gonna let a kid do our job for us?"

Hawks just smirked, stretching out the crick in his wings. He could feel Miruko's eyes boring into the side of his head, practically radiating incredulity.

"I think that back then," he started, rising to his feet. "When we were students, we would have wanted to handle our own problems ourselves."

Miruko was still frowning at him, pent-up energy rolling off of her in waves, but Hawks only gave her a glance, staring at the Wobani building with a smile. "The commission's gonna kill me, but I think those kids have it covered. It wouldn't be the first time they've done our jobs. For now, I say we focus on evacuating people who might get in their way."

"This is stupid." Miruko huffed, throwing up her hands as she turned on her heel and stomped away. "Fine, Mr. number-two-hero. Call your shots. If the hero commission's gonna crawl up anyone's ass for it, it'll be yours."

"Sure." Hawks chirped, watching as the rabbit hero disappeared over the roof's edge. With a long, heavy sigh, he turned back to Wobani, now blanketed in the light of the setting sun. The building itself had received little to no damage so far, and as far as Hawks was concerned, it was emptied. He would need to figure out a headcount, just to be safe.

How messy.

He knew these kids weren't ready to stand up to the best of the best. Not yet, anyway. However, he also knew that they were strong.

That Midoriya kid... His blackwhip alone could toss cars around like it was nothing. Throwing lower-ranking heroes at him would just lead to casualties, and he had no clue where Endeavor was at the moment. That, and from his brief interaction with those boys and from what Endeavor had mentioned in passing, blondie and greenie had history.

He also knew that Midoriya was a sweet kid, so this sudden change... It couldn't be natural, and from the looks of things, the other kiddos had a better idea of what was going on. Perhaps it'd be best to speak with the brown-haired girl. Get an idea of what exactly they were dealing with, because if a villain was involved, he'd need to hunt them down asap while the kids handled their own problems.

Hawks himself was barely twenty three. For all he knew, he could be making a bad call out of bias. He wasn't a kid anymore, but he could remember those days so clearly. That desperate search for independence...

Mind made up, Hawks simply stepped off the roof, fluttering down towards the crowds beginning to form despite the police force's best efforts. If he was needed, he'd be here, but he had a hunch that he wasn't quite making the worst mistake of his life.

Inside the building was intimidatingly silent, and he could already hear his younger self berating him for admitting such a thing to the buried recesses of his own mind.

It was as if his mind was cutting him off from the outside world, the voices outside muffled in his ears despite the panels of broken windows that littered the ground floor. It was odd, not bothering to take it all in and walking up the first flight of stairs he saw, as if he was just heading to class and not a slugfest with a former victim gone rogue.

In fact, through his peripheral, this building almost looks like the one they took their first heroics class in.

Bakugou sneered. Now wasn't the time for this. For all he knew, other heroes were on their way, Aizawa was probably hot on his heels, and when the battlefield got muddled with people, the nerd would either use it to maim or escape.

Normally, the idea of Deku getting hit by a mind-altering quirk like this would be hilarious on paper, because the nerd needed to lash out at everyone once in a while anyway, instead of trying to be perky all the time and getting himself walked all over. Admittedly, the freckled nuisance had gotten better at voicing his opinions and standing up for himself, but the lack of self-esteem, if one knew where to look, was still astoundingly blatant.

Of course, Bakugou himself had never been much help with that, but still.

Two flights of stairs became three, then four became six, and the explosive teen was finding himself wandering aimlessly through an abandoned building looking for even just a speck of color, scouring every room on every floor before moving onto the next. If Deku was as out of control as what had been televised made it seem, and if what Uraraka said about Deku's current intelligence in this state of mind was true, then the shithead wasn't being quiet for the sake of taking a nap.

He was plotting. He was sure of it. He had to assume that every move Deku made was deliberate, and in this case, he didn't want to be found. Why was up in the air, but whatever he was planning out, someone was gonna get hurt, or worse. For all Bakugou knew, he was meticulously planning out just how he was going to destroy the entirety of Musutafu at that very moment.

It was on floor fifteen that he lost his patience.

Theoretically, they were dealing with an angry but still intelligent Deku, and if he was assuming correctly, they were dealing with a Deku whose memories were still intact.

And if there was anyone whose memories would make him angry...

"DEKU!"

His voice reverberated against the walls, bouncing back at him like an ocean wave, and the building itself seemed to groan at the sound. "I KNOW YOU'RE HERE, YOU LITTLE SHIT! COME ON OUT, COWARD!"

"You looking down on me!?"

"N- No-! I'm sor-!"

The atmosphere seemed to still all at once, the sounds of the Earth ebbing away and falling quiet with bated breath. The only things Bakugou could hear clearly were his own footsteps and his breaths, puffs of warm air wafting through the chilly room.

"SO, THAT'S IT, HAH!? HIDING LIKE A COWARD!" he screamed, and not even the echoes of his voice could break through the oppressive atmosphere, growing heavier by the second. "JUST 'CAUSE YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME!?"

He threw his arms out, barely registering the laugh that escaped him. "YOU'RE AN IDIOT FOR HOLDING ONTO THE FAINTEST HOPE THAT YOU COULD SURPASS ME! OUR FIRST BATTLE AT U.A. WAS A FLUKE, BUT I'VE BEATEN YOU FAIR AND SQUARE, EVEN WITH YOUR CURSED POWER, AND NONE OF YOUR NERD TRICKS WILL CHANGE THAT! YOU HEAR ME?!"

The halls seemed to loom over him. The silence laughed back at him. "COME ON! FACE ME!"

The nothingness was his answer.

Frozen in place for a moment, he let his arms fall to his sides with loud pats against his pants. Any creaks and groans that he might have heard before had disappeared, not even the sounds of rats in the walls there to keep him company.

Completely and utterly alone.

Bakugou huffed. "Figures." he muttered, hands stuffed in his pockets as he stomped towards the next flight of stairs.

And then the entire ceiling caved in behind him.

The sound made him jump, staring forward with wide eyes as air pressure and dust blew past him. Electricity had his hair standing more on end than normal, static crawling up his arms as if he was sitting next to Sparky during a thunderstorm, and with barely a moment of hesitation, he turned just in time to see the heel of a red sneaker swinging down at him.

It missed his head by a millimeter, clipping his bangs as he leaped back. The floor exploded upon impact, more dust swirling through the musty room like a whirlwind, and Bakugou found himself just barely catching himself after going airborne.

Crouched like a predator preparing to strike, Bakugou watched the dust begin to still with a keen eye. Every movement had him winding up further, one hand flat on the ground and the other crackling to life, illuminating the room as the dust momentarily blocked out the sun.

"You're here..."

Bakugou's gaze shot forward, razor-focused as he slowly got to his feet. In front of him, a shadow was beginning to take shape.

"I should have known you would be here." he whispered, a manic edge to his voice. "Why are you here? You shouldn't be here."

The tone of his voice was wrong. Bakugou couldn't help but notice the subtle ways it pitched and strained, not in response to an internal battle, per se, but just...

Too much. It was too much.

To be so angry and feel so many things all at once...

Bakugou wasn't planning on wasting his time trying to talk some sense into him, but at least he knew for sure that it wouldn't work, anyway.

"You shouldn't be here." He sounded insane. Didn't Uraraka say he was still able to think? "I don't want you here."

"Tough shit, nerd." Bakugou spat back. "I've been stuck with you since we were in diapers, so now you're stuck with me."

He was sure the idiot's teeth cracked with how hard he clenched them. The look in his eyes, void of light and carrying nothing but malice, spoke of nothing but the desire to maim.

To kill.

It was almost like there was a film over those stupid round eyes of his, blocking the reflection of light and revealing nothing but dark orbs of hate, like black holes swallowing up the stars around them. For all intents and purposes, they looked soulless.

But there was a calculated glint in them, the part of Deku that was still there in that moment. The hint that he was still thinking, still plotting his best move before he strikes. If his memories are intact, and they just might be, then he knows his opponent all too well.

In a sense, there is a battle of wits commencing, but Bakugou holds his glare despite the shiver those dead eyes send down his spine.

There is no preamble.

Deku launches at him without so much as a battle cry, with one roundhouse kick that he ducks under and a right-handed jab that nicks his ear. The flurry of crackling palms and fists that strike nothing but air would have made most people's heads spin, but Bakugou had no doubt in his ability to keep up with every attack. Deku had nothing on his speed.

Strength, however...

It was a lapse of judgment on his part, but the forearm he blocked sent him careening into the wall to his left, cartwheeling through the air before he could catch his balance and flip back onto his feet.

The light pouring in behind him was plenty of warning of the windows behind him. Without even blinking, he leaped to the side, not looking back as the walls and windows behind him were blown out with a spectacular crash and a spray of green lightning.

When it came to brute strength, Deku's borrowed quirk gave him a major advantage, which shouldn't be a problem, but it was something that needed to be considered.

Especially with the nerd's current state of mind.

"I don't want you here!" he shouted. "I don't want you anywhere!"

Bakugou grinned wolfishly. "All this time, and you've finally had enough?!"

With a guttural roar, Deku launched broken tables at him like toys, the dust in the air following Bakugou as he darted through the door and back into the interior of the building. On light feet, he passed from one room to another, the walls behind him collapsing as Deku bulldozed through them like a freight train through drywall.

Bakugou wondered, as he sidestepped and watched a blaze of green energy shoot right past him, if Deku's artificial anger was messing with his decision-making, after all. Rage could do that to a person.

And if he was being reckless, he could use that to his advantage.

Deku was flying back at him before he knew it, and with a warcry of his own, Bakugou prepared to strike, right hand high in the air and prepared to swing down like an explosive guillotine. With a critical eye, he watched Deku's face, glare flicking to his raised hand with a snarl.

He dodged right, and Bakugou didn't hesitate.

His open palm caught him square in the face, sending him barreling through several more walls and rubble that was once walls until he'd stopped in a heap in a cloud of soot. Sparks flying, Bakugou grinned, stance wide and palms white-hot.

The stillness only lasted a moment, Deku slowly pulling himself up like some immortal eldritch abomination. There was a new glint in his eyes, one that spoke of nothing but murderous intent.

"I hate you." he rasped.

And wasn't that the weirdest thing he'd ever heard come out of the nerd's mouth.

"About time." Bakugou snorted.

Deku stumbled, feeling at his charred cheek. With a shaky smile, the last dredges of restraint began to snap. "You tricked me. I thought for sure it was a feint."

Bakugou didn't answer, simply stretching out his sore shoulder from his earlier attempt at a block and letting the freckled loser stew in whatever he was feeling now. He certainly wasn't snapping out of it, despite the burns littering his face, but the explosive teen wasn't expecting him to. Not with his kind of inhuman pain tolerance.

The only thing he could think of to describe the look creeping into his eyes was unhinged.

"I'm gonna kill you." he said, and Bakugou takes it back. That's the weirdest thing he's ever heard him say. "I will kill you."

A thin stream of blood dripped from Deku's nose, where Bakugou's palm had struck dead on, but he barely noticed as he wiped it away, eyes like pinpricks of laser focus. In his current state, he was nowhere near snapping out of it. Not for someone who broke limbs on a regular basis. Not for someone who never cried from the burns he took home as a string bean in middle school.

But here's the thing.

It didn't matter if Bakugou felt remorse, because as a hero-in-training, if there was one thing he never pulled his punches on, it was making someone bleed.

He needed to make him feel pain? Who better for such a job?

"I'd fucking love to see you try."