The Hero Sense can sense multiple threats at once
There were very few sounds that gave him the same cathartic rush as a body slamming into a hard surface after the deafening boom! of an explosion, but the breathless wheeze that followed a well-aimed bullet punch to someone's gut was a pretty close second.
With a triumphant, feral grin, Bakugou watched as Kirishima stumbled back, clutching his softened side with a wince. A good half of gym gamma was already in shambles, wrecked almost beyond repair from their last several rounds that night. Between the unrelenting wave of noise from their spars and a few extras from the other heroics class taking up the other half of the gym later in the evening, the two of them had been warned to tone it down for that night, once by Cementoss in fear of the gym being rendered temporarily unusable and then by Vlad King so that they didn't hog the entire building to themselves. Eventually, they agreed to downgrade to quirkless sparring for the night after Aizawa was finally called in to stare them down due to noise complaints.
This was why Bakugou preferred sparring on weekdays rather than weekends, when other people wanted to use the gym and were too weak to handle the intensity of a real off-the-walls no holds barred sparring session. If one of his idiot classmates wanted to throw a few punches with him, then maybe, but weekdays, when everyone was busy with homework or too tired from a long school day, that was when the good, productive shit happened in the usually empty gym space, when he'd pull in Kirishima or Icyhot or even Pink Cheeks or Deku and just let loose.
Of course, as it turned out, Kirishima was gonna be out of town for a good portion of that week, so if they wanted to get some training in, they had to do it while they could, even if the bastards from the other class that they were forced to coexist with made it really fucking inconvenient.
The redhead coughed hoarsely, his voice tight. "Yep. Yeah, just remembered why I hate quirkless training with you."
Bakugou rolled his eyes. "Save questioning your life choices for later and square up. I'm just getting started!"
Even when they'd started sparring regularly, it took Bakugou an embarrassingly long time to realize just how reliant on his quirk Kirishima was, almost as bad as Halfie with how often he used it as the answer to everything in battle. Sure, he knew how to throw a proper punch, and a good one at that, as Bakugou had personally learned many times, but despite being the 'tank' as he liked to claim, he was downright awful at defensive movements, naturally just leaving himself wide open and letting his hardening take care of the rest, and his agility was absolute shit.
Kirishima might be able to take a lot of punishment regardless, but man, was he not used to taking hits with soft skin. It had stunned them both just how quickly he bruised, but he supposed it made sense in some weird way.
"How many times do I have to fucking tell you!? Crossing your arms like that is only a decent block when your hardened! Your entire fucking torso is wide open and a solid hit between the eyes will end you!"
"Oh, yeah! Sorry!"
Even swiveling around, throwing punches and slipping out of Kirishima's reaching hands, he barely lost a breath. "If you wanna keep making yourself useful after your quirk runs out of stamina, you gotta know this shit! I've seen it give out before your body does and no villain's gonna wait around for you to regroup!"
"Right!"
Not to say that he wasn't actually exhausted himself. He and Kirishima had already been going at it for a while, after all. It's just that Bakugou was already somewhat ticked from losing two rounds in a row just before Aizawa forced them to tone it down.
So sue him if he decided to get the hardening quirk user back by pinning him for a sound defeat, his arms wrapping around one of Kirishima's and thighs pressing tightly around his neck, a move that Uraraka had taught him recently. The class had nearly lost their minds when Round Face had agreed to show him anything from her internship with Gunhead, but he felt like she owed him after using the exact same move on him in the middle of the common room when he'd gotten particularly snide with her at the wrong time of the month. It literally took him setting her pants on fire and Four Eyes prying her off to get her to let go.
To be completely transparent, he was genuinely impressed with her technique, even if he didn't appreciate the sudden assault.
And he'd gotten a shiny new move set out of it as well, which he hoped that Kirishima was really feeling right now since the dickhead had been one of the people laughing the hardest at his predicament that day. "Owowow, okay, okay! I fold! Uncle! Uncle!"
With one last squeeze and a yank on his arm for good measure, Bakugou released him, Kirishima gracelessly rolling away and stopping face-first against the stone floor. The ash blonde allowed himself to pause, sprawled out and only now realizing just how out of breath he actually was. From the nearby wheezing, Kirishima clearly wasn't much better. "I hate. Quirkless sparring. With you."
Bakugou huffed out some faded impression of a laugh despite himself as Kirishima slowly clambered to pull himself back up. After a moment, the explosion quirk user did the same, instinctively slapping Kirishima's outstretched hand away as he got to his feet. He reveled in the soreness in his shoulders and the burning in his joints, the sweat beading along his brow and the exhausted breathlessness.
"What time is it?" he asked, slowly stretching out his sore arms with a satisfying crack.
With a stretch of his own, Kirishima checked his phone, miraculously still intact after being left in his pocket. "Uh... About eight o'clock or so. Why? Planning to go to bed already? ...Like a grandpa?"
"Don't tell me Pikachu's gotten you saying that shit too!" Bakugou shouted irately. "Laugh all you want! I have better grades than all of you assholes combined, so fuck off!"
Kirishima pouted at him at that, his cheeks puffed out childishly. It reminded him of how Round Face or Ashido would make that face when he'd refuse to share his food with them. Rolling his eyes, he simply walked past him, his body still twitchy and tingling from the however many rounds of sparring they'd endured. He'd honestly stopped counting at twelve.
Making his way to the benches, he grabbed his backpack and violently yanked out a towel and his water bottle, rubbing the excess sweat off of his hands before chugging down the last half of the bottle. Right now, with how much he was sweating, he was sure he could blow up half the campus if someone threw a lit match at him. He'd have to make sure the towel was properly disposed of as to not accidentally blow up his dorm room...again.
He should really just spar with the gloves of his hero suit. That would make cleanup much easier.
"Hey, Kirishima, how far have you gotten on that hero analysis paper?" Bakugou fought not to smirk. The paper had been assigned for English class, so the entire thing, obviously, was supposed to be written in English. Surprisingly, Sparky was proving to have a natural knack for the language, one of the only things he was good at, apparently, so while he walked Sero through it, Bakugou could just focus on Ashido and Kirishima. Knowing the redhead, Bakugou had already guessed that Kirishima was picking Crimson Riot as his topic, and also knowing him, he was sure that he'd already tried to start the paper by himself. Whether or not his first attempts bore any success had yet to be seen.
Somehow, he doubted it.
Shoving his empty water bottle back into his backpack, it took a few seconds for Bakugou to realize that Kirishima hadn't answered him, the blonde turning back to glance at him with a raised eyebrow. The hardening quirk user seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, staring off into space with a blank look in his eyes that, for some reason that he couldn't quite understand, made him somewhat nervous. Bakugou watched him curiously, the way his fingers flexed gingerly and how his head tilted slightly in confusion.
"Kirishima?" he asked again, sauntering up to him, footsteps loud against the cracked stone beneath his feet, until he was standing directly next to him, looking at the other teen with his arms crossed and foot tapping.
Kirishima still didn't notice him, completely lost in his own mind and off somewhere that Bakugou didn't quite know how to get to. "Earth to Kirishima!"
Snapping his fingers in front of his face seemed to get his attention, the redhead blinking stupidly before he violently shook his head. "Huh? What?"
"The hell was that just now?"
"Uh..." Kirishima seemed confused for a moment, his head tilting again in thought. "Uh, oh! Oh, sorry. I guess I spaced out. It's nothing, really."
Bakugou considered him for a moment longer, looking him up and down for any signs of an injury he wasn't telling him about. He didn't see any particularly nasty bruising around his head, and there was no evidence of any serious pain in his expression or posture. By all intents and purposes, he seemed fine.
But something didn't feel right.
He found himself pausing, only now really paying attention to the twitching sensation still running through his fingers. How his heart had yet to come down from the fierce adrenaline high of combat. How the world seemed to brighten and clear before his very eyes.
Something's wrong.
It wasn't a very strong reaction, but...
At first, his eyes fell back on Kirishima, once again staring off somewhere with a distant look in his eyes. Emotional situations were not his forte, if the incident with Ponytail was anything to go by. However, maybe with Kirishima, someone who he felt genuinely safe and confident confiding in and talking with, he could pick it up more effectively.
But there was a disconnect happening that had his brows furrowing in confusion. There was no sudden focus or spike of clarity that hit when he watched him closely. No realizations or epiphanies that he could work off of.
Was it not for Kirishima then?
It was then that he remembered, almost absentmindedly, that there were other people in the gym that night.
Towers of rock were still strewn about, so it was impossible to see where the other fuckers from the second class were, but he was sure they were still there. He and Kirishima were closest to the main entrance, so they would have seen them leave if that was the case. They also must be all the way on the other side of the building, considering how little noise they'd actually heard from over there.
"Hey, Weird Hair," he suddenly spoke, his companion snapping to attention. "Do you know who else is over there?"
"From 1-B?" Kirishima questioned. "Uh, I know Tetsu's over there, and I think I saw Kendou, but that's all I know for sure. Hey, speaking of which, do you think we could-"
Bakugou was already stomping their way before Kirishima could even finish his sentence, said teen falling into step beside him a moment later. He seemed to catch on to Bakugou's tenseness almost immediately, remaining silent for the majority of their walk. Kirishima was always scarily good at reading him. Where Deku was his historian, Kirishima was his translator.
He was instantly pulled out of his thoughts by a cry of pain.
He turned to Kirishima instantly, met with wide, wild red eyes before said boy was booking it, Bakugou trailing not far behind. Anyone else and he might have blown a gasket, because how dare they think themselves so important that they could lead the charge like this, but Kirishima knew what he was doing. Unless villains had somehow gotten onto campus and were attacking them, this was probably a situation that the shorter boy was more qualified to handle. That, and if Bakugou remembered correctly, his gray counterpart from the other class had been mentioned and he was pretty sure that they were buddies.
For a moment, the redhead disappeared from his line of sight, but it wasn't long before Bakugou found himself leaping into a clearing to a scene that he honestly should have expected, all things considered. Kiri Wannabe was the first person he noticed, his face contorted into a mix of worry, anger, and a pinch of guilt as he knelt down where Kirishima was now standing, almost hovering.
"What happened to Kendou?" he asked breathlessly, eyes scanning over what Bakugou realized was Big Hands, curled up on the ground and clutching her arm tightly, teeth grit and eyes squeezed shut.
"She fell." Wannabe responded, vaguely gesturing towards one of the towering plateaus. "It was an accident."
A nearby boulder suddenly shrank, making Kirishima jump. Bakugou suddenly looked upward, his gaze immediately landing on a quiet girl huddled up by one of the edges of what was essentially a cliffside, eyes glassy and heavy with guilt and posture tense. If Bakugou remembered correctly, this girl was on Droopy Eyes's team during the joint training exercise, the team that went up against Deku's. Didn't her quirk have something to do with changing objects' sizes or some shit?
His eyes fell back to that pebble. Ah, so that's what happened. That might explain why she looked so stricken.
"Kendou?" Wannabe yelled. "Kendou, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes I can. Calm down, Tetsu." Big Hands responded, carefully pushing herself to a seated position with her good arm. "I think it's just my arm. I- Could you call Sensei? Please? And tell him to bring Recovery Girl?"
"Uh, right! Yeah!" Kiri wannabe shouted, Big Hands cringing at the volume. He felt around his pockets frantically. "Yeah, yeah, I just- Uh, shoot, okay."
He leaped up to his feet. "I left my phone on the bench! Kirishima, can you keep an eye on her for me?"
"Sure, man!" he responded easily, even as his clone was tearing off into the mess of rocks before the words even left his mouth.
Bakugou huffed. Man, he was overreacting. From the looks of it, she'd just broken her arm. Several people in his class have had way worse injuries than this, and that wasn't even including Deku or himself. If he remembered correctly, the same goes for these guys, actually.
He didn't particularly want to remember that, though, as a lot of that information was directly related to that night.
Even now, he still got the odd chill from memories of the Beast's Forest and everything that followed.
Fucking trauma.
Apparently, Kirishima had a similar train of thought. "Don't you think he's panicking a little bit?"
Big Hands chuckled, wincing as a spasm ran through her twisted arm. "Yeah, but I fell pretty far. It probably looked like I landed on my head, and who knows what damage that could have caused. I just scared him really badly is all."
Eh. He supposed that could be a fair point.
"What even happened?"
"It was just a training accident." Big Hands sighed, shrugging her shoulders and immediately regretting it. "Kodai and I were sparring up on the plateau above us and I guess the edges weren't as stable as we thought. She threw a pebble that turned into a boulder and while dodging it, I must have landed on an unstable ledge and I just didn't catch myself fast enough."
Kirishima whistled, looking straight up. He seemed to momentarily make eye contact with the girl who looked so bland and dead inside that Bakugou didn't even know what to call her, who quickly scooted away from the edge in response, before the redhead turned back to his impromptu charge. "Wow, I'm glad it was just your arm and not worse. That's really high up."
"Yeah... I guess I got lucky."
Bakugou began to pace, not entirely sure why he was sticking around for this. It wasn't like he was obligated to walk with Kirishima back to the dorms, nor would the other teen be bothered by it, but he found himself vibrating with pent up energy when he stepped any farther from the scene than he already was, almost as if he was tethered to it. He bit his lip, fingers drumming against his crossed arms, and suddenly, chills were running up and down his spine.
Something's wrong.
Something's wrong.
Something's still wrong!
He blinked in confusion. The feeling hadn't weakened. In fact, it hadn't gone away at all. There's something else. No change whatsoever.
They were missing something. He could feel it. He could feel it.
"Kirishima?" Big Hand's voice suddenly pulled him out of his thoughts. "Are you okay? You're spacing out."
Bakugou's eyes snapped to the redhead, said teen's expression back to that weird blank look from before. There was a minute crease in his brows, almost questioning, and slowly but surely, his arms began to move, hardened skin steadily running up from his fingers to his shoulders.
Something's wrong.
It was like a crack of thunder.
Something's wrong and Kirishima knows it, too .
Does that mean-
UP!
Kirishima's loud gasp synchronized perfectly with the sudden crackling in Bakugou's palms. With speeds that he didn't even know Kirishima was capable of, the redhead was scooping Big Hands into his arms before she could even try to understand what was going on. His eyes locked with Bakugou's, and for a moment, it felt like an electric current was running between them, like they were attached to a string, like their very heartbeats were perfectly in time.
"Bakugou, up!" he shouted almost hysterically, the dim light of confusion still present in his eyes as he held tight to the still very weirded out and concerned Big Hands and ran.
"I know, dipshit!" he shot back in response, blasting towards the plateau they'd just been sitting under just as a loud, ominous crack filled the air, followed by the sound of tumbling rocks and a startled shout.
It was almost in slow motion, watching as the entire side of the makeshift cliff crumbled to nothing, taking the other 1-B girl down with it. He thought he heard Big Hands shout the girl's name, but Bakugou really wasn't paying attention, focusing on efficiently maneuvering through the rain of rock, almost like Round Face's meteor shower, and plucking the girl out of the air with only seconds to spare.
He was sure he'd been scraped by a couple rocks cutting a little too close and his already exhausted body was not happy with him at the moment, but it wasn't long before they hit solid, steady ground, Bakugou unceremoniously dropping the size quirk girl to the stony floor by Kirishima's feet. Kirishima shot him a disapproving look, but didn't say anything otherwise.
Bakugou, however, had plenty of things to say. "We need to talk, Weird Hair."
Kirishima blinked at him, a painfully ignorant innocence in his eyes. "Why?"
"The fuck do you mean, why!? Didn't you just-?!"
The two were immediately interrupted by the sound of more rubble moving, two sharp pairs of red eyes falling on a very wide-eyed Kiri Wannabe, panting and clutching a cell phone against his ear so tightly that it might break in half at any moment.
"...Yeah, Sensei? You're gonna have to bring Cementoss in, too! The gym needs some serious maintenance done!"
It would be when Vlad King, Recovery Girl, and Cementoss arrived that Bakugou practically dragged Kirishima away from the scene and promptly shoved him against the wall outside. "Whoa, Bakubro! What's up with-"
"You have it."
Kirishima paused, blinking at him with wide, painfully unknowing eyes. There was an oddly nervous tick in the way he avoided eye contact, almost unsure.
"You have it." Bakugou repeated, a hint of awe in his voice.
Kirishima shook his head. "I- No, you got it all wrong." he laughed. "I know what you're talking about, but I don't-"
"Bullshit, you don't!" the blond shouted. "How long?!"
"No, I really don't! There's no way!" Kirishima reasoned loudly. "That's not something that I would have! Someone like me-"
"Kirishima!" the redhead's mouth snapped shut at his tone. "You literally predicted exactly what was gonna happen and where! You didn't even look! There was no warning signal before you were moving! You just knew! What else could that possibly be!?"
Kirishima was silent at that, doubtful as he stared at his feet. Bakugou roughly carded his fingers against his scalp with a huff. "Answer the question. How long?"
"I..." He hated it when Kirishima sounded small like this. He shouldn't ever sound like this. "I don't know. I really, truly, honestly don't know. I just, today, I felt all...twitchy-"
"Fidgety is the word you're looking for."
"And then, I just... My feet..."
His eyes never left his shoes, the toes of his sneakers wiggling experimentally. Bakugou already understood. "They just moved on their own, right?"
Kirishima finally looked up at him, slightly tensed. He sighed. "Yeah... Yeah, they just...moved on their own."
They stared at each other for a long time after that, eyes locked in a bizarre staring contest as they desperately tried to read what the other was possibly thinking. Bakugou himself wasn't even sure what was running through his own mind, with the exception of the thought that this was...unexpected. At least, somewhat. He hadn't been anticipating anyone else in their class developing a hero sense. As far as he knew, it was just him, Deku, and Icyhot.
Then again, in Bakugou's ever-humble opinion, if there was anyone else in class 1-A that he could ever see gaining this kind of ability, it would definitely be Kirishima.
Strong, brave, unwavering Kirishima.
A smile spread across his face before he could stop himself.
Kirishima stared at him wide-eyed as he found himself laughing, a genuine glee that he hadn't felt bubble up inside him since he was just a child, playing heroes and villains with the neighborhood kids without even the slightest care in the world. "Why the hell are you being so melancholy, you idiot?!"
Bakugou's open show of joy seemed to pull the edges of Kirishima's lips upward. "Uh, I don't know? What's gotten into you?"
"What's gotten into me?! What's gotten into me!? Kirishima!" He roughly grabbed the other boy's shoulders, his dark red eyes widening at the contact. "This is amazing! I don't know how the fuck you did it, but you actually developed a hero sense!"
Bakugou could practically see it in Kirishima's eyes, the sliver of doubt still festering in his mind, the denial of anything extraordinary just on the tip of his tongue. It made the familiar edge of anger surge through his veins. "Stop second-guessing yourself, you fucking dickhead! I'm trying to be happy for you!"
That seemed to pull the hardening quirk user out of his thoughts, a loud snerk escaping him at the unexpected comment. "Careful, Bakugou. You're care is showing."
"Eat shit and die, Weird Hair!" he shot back on reflex, grabbing Kirishima's arm and violently pulling him along. "Now, come on!"
"Hey, whoa, where are we going?!"
"To the dorms, moron! We're celebrating!"
Kirishima blinked numbly. "We are?"
"hell yeah, we are, by hogging the common room TV with breakfast for dinner!" he declared in aggravation. "Because I've had it up to here with your self-loathing and you doubting yourself! I wouldn't have let you stick around if I thought you were a weakling, and this just proves that I was right about you!"
Kirishima seemed to be in a state of shock at this point, stumbling along behind him as he was practically dragged back to the dorms. "B- But what about your bedtime?"
"Fuck my bedtime! This is more important!"
That got a laugh out of him, a bright, cheery sound as he finally found his footing and fell into step beside his best friend, rubbing at his eyes as he did so. Bakugou would have to make sure he got him to talk to All Might about this, tomorrow at the latest. Even as they reached the front steps of the dorms, Kirishima was still rubbing his face, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy.
Bakugou groaned. "Oh, what now?"
"Sorry," Kirishima laughed vibrantly, despite the wetness of his voice. "It's just that...you're a really good friend, you know that?"
Bakugou snorted. "Am not." was his knee jerk response.
"Yeah, sure." Kirishima rolled his eyes. "I just... I was having a bit of a rough week. Er, don't get me wrong! Nothing bad happened! It's just... It's been one of those weeks, you know? And tonight? Tonight helped... Tonight helped a lot."
Bakugou stared at him for a moment, an eyebrow cocked incredulously. Kirishima was absolutely beaming now, bright enough to rival even the brightest stars in the galaxy. Good grief, he would never understand these idiots.
Bakugou huffed dramatically as he stepped through the door. "Whatever you say. Fucking weirdo."
With a weightless chuckle, Kirishima happily trailed behind him, like sunlight falling against the Earth.