Chapter 7
Chapter Notes
Dedicated to Nira, who made this incredible art of Baks bitchily braiding Izuku's hair in the coffee shop from last chapter: https//hichigoloves112/art/Braids-791241465
I sat down last night and started writing this chapter, fell asleep, and finished it as soon as I got home from work today just because I wanted to share that link with all of you so you could see how pretty it is and squeal with me. So you have them to thank for this mess coming out like, a solid week earlier than it would have otherwise.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
I leave for class early to make sure I have time to find all my classrooms and figure out my way around the school before all the Extras start crawling around like roaches. Unfortunately, Izuku knows me well enough to predict what I'm going to do in situations like this, so he's waiting for me when I step out of my front door before the sun has even started to rise. The idiot's tie looks like something a clown would wear. Coupled with his huge red boots and green hair, he could be a somewhat boring circus performer.
I at least manage to school his locks into a professional-looking French braid while we're on the train, so he's not a complete disaster for his first day of classes. Nerd's lucky our morning commute is so boring, or I'd leave him to sort out that green rat's nest on his own.
Campus is quiet when we arrive. The door to classroom 1-A is ridiculously large, but all the desks in the room are the same damn size. Was the door not designed for the students, or are there desks in different sizes stored somewhere that can be brought out if needed? Does Hagrid teach here or something?
The lunchroom is not as large as I had expected. It's smaller than our middle school's cafeteria, and all the chairs and tables are set up in neat rows. (once again, all the standard size. Why is that door so fucking big?) It's a stark reminder that despite UA's absolutely ridiculous budget (seriously, who builds hundreds of robots just for a bunch of adolescents to destroy them every year? That's like, Tony Stark levels of rich obliviousness), it's actually a fairly small high school. There are only two hero classes, 20 students in each, and if the other areas have similar numbers, with general education being the largest with, say, 4 or 5 classes… that's only about 200 students in first year. That's 600 students total, except the drop out and expulsion rate is somewhere around 50% by third year, so probably closer to 450 students in all three years.
Considering the population density of Musutafu, and my vague memories of being in a high school where my graduating class had contained more than 450 people, UA seemed surprisingly small compared to my expectations. But maybe that was a good thing. The staff would need to have time to really get to know and work closely with their students if they were going to produce the best heroes in the country.
Still, with such a low number of alumni being turned out, where the hell do they get their funding? Bake sales? Now there's a thought.
I finish exploring by returning to the classroom to get a good seat. By the time I get back to it, there are a couple other early-risers who have shown up. One of them is that kid who scolded Izuku during the entrance exam, Iida, and the other has hair that's split red and white down the center part. Todoroki Shouto my brain whispers, and then: Daddy issues.
Well, never let it be said that all of my foreknowledge is helpful foreknowledge. Sometimes I wonder if Whoever-I-Was had really been paying attention when watching this story I'm now living.
I settle in to a desk by the window, and Izuku happily sits behind me, chattering away about all the different rooms we'd seen. I've just gotten comfortable when a sudden wave of deja-vu hits me and robot boy comes up to me like he's about to impart the holy gospel to me and save my damned soul.
"You should not have your shoes on the desk!" He says in a voice that sounds like he's straining to handle the massive stick up his ass. "It is disrespectful to both your classmates and the seniors who have used this desk in the past, not to mention the craftsmen who produced it…" I zone out as he continues to explain the many reasons I should feel ashamed of myself. He has a point about my shoes being dirty, though, so I lean down and pull them off, revealing All Might ankle socks, and set my shoes on the floor, my clean socked feet going right back onto the desk.
Iida seems unsure what to do with this. I've technically followed his advice, and my socks are clean, so I go back to ignoring him and he luckily turns his attention to the nerd after he recognizes him from the entrance exam and decides to apologize for misjudging him. Nah, you were pretty accurate in your judgement. I think. He really is a disruptive menace.
A girl with soft-looking pink cheeks and shoulder-length brown hair bounces up to Izuku while Iida is still in the middle of freaking him out by being the first person besides his mother to ever really apologize to him. She's the kind of cheerful and friendly that always makes me itch, and I scowl at the trio over my shoulder while Izuku turns bright red at being smiled at by a member of the opposite sex. What a dweeb.
Luckily, our teacher chooses that moment to enter the classroom. Unluckily, he's also a complete fucking weirdo and decides to do it by rolling into the room in a bright yellow sleeping bag, looking like a sleep-deprived and very hungover caterpillar. He sucks down a juice box and quiets the class as if this is all routine, which, honestly, if he does this regularly, that would explain why they need such a wide door. A grown man needs to fit through it horizontally. Maybe the height was just added to keep it proportional?
Before I can decide whether to keep this hypothesis or scrap it, our sensei has introduced himself as Aizawa, Eraserhead, Underground Hero, will fight the Nomu in USJ and barely survive, and ordered us all to change into our gym uniforms and head to the field.
The sense of knowing anticipation that has been prickling at my scalp all day intensifies, and I wonder what Whoever I Was had thought of this first day of classes when she watched it as a story. Did she find it as ridiculous and illogical as I did, or had she given in to suspension of disbelief and ignored the details?
I avoid the other students exchanging small talk in the locker room in favor of changing quickly and getting out to the field first. The only one who beats me out is Todoroki, and he has the advantage of not having a surprisingly heavy nerd hanging off him like a limpet in the face of prospective social interactions, so I still count it as my win.
The others join us in a slow trickle, and already I can see cliques forming among them, although I
know from not-experience that the social circles will continue to evolve and shift around for the next few days before really settling. Hopefully Izuku will move to sit next to Loud Mouth and Soft Cheeks on the opposite side of the room, so I don't have to listen to them get each other off with simpering compliments all day.
Aizawa explains the quirk assessment, and I watch in amusement as Izuku pales, only to pale even further when the pink girl's enthusiasm prompts our teacher to decide that the person with the lowest scores at the end of the day will be expelled. There's that 50% drop out and expulsion rate I've heard horror stories about. Izuku sure didn't do his homework about this school for someone who's always claimed to want to be a hero. But then again, he didn't really start training seriously until ten months ago either, so I'm not surprised.
Once the quirk assessment gets underway, I focus on figuring out how to get the best scores I can. The other students are all going to go all out in order to avoid being the loser who gets expelled, so if I want to come out on top, I'm going to need to push myself a bit. It's not quite the rush that I got from the entrance exam, but the competition and the freedom to use my quirk still gets my heart pumping a little faster in excitement. I wonder what this feeling is called, I muse, it's not quite bloodlust, since I don't want to hurt anyone, just let loose… What would Izuku call it? Fierce? Nah, too weak…
I keep low to the ground and focus on using my explosions to add horizontal force to increase my speed for the 500-meter dash, instead of wasting energy on a vertical force to keep myself in the air. With the combination of my feet pushing off the earth and my explosions propelling me, I'm sure I manage to beat whatever record the other Bakugou would have gotten. Dumbass didn't even think about the actual physics of his techniques, just getting through on brute force. I pause to think about this as I take a break and drink some water, watching the next group line up to run. Although considering how little this universe seems to care about the laws of physics in general, I can't really blame him.
Unsurprisingly, as students are waiting their turn for each part of the Quirk Assessment, the topics of quirks comes up. The yellow-haired kid (Kaminari Denki, short circuits from quirk overuse) suggests everyone introduce themselves and share their quirks. Although some are reluctant, most agree. Izuku agrees for both of us.
Some of the quirks are almost understandable. Kaminari's is just the ability to let off a large electrical discharge, which, if his biology is weird enough, could be perfectly plausible. How the boy isn't concerned about the obvious brain damage he's probably inflicting on himself when he literally fries his own brain with his quirk, I don't know, but the quirk itself doesn't make me want to punch anyone. He should really just stop using it for massive discharges and instead get like, a portable rail gun of some kind and wreck everyone's shit with a simple electrical current and some metallic projectiles. But I digress.
"That's awesome, man!" The red one, Kirishima Eijirou my brain whispers creepily, tells Kaminari with a slap on the back. "Super flashy and cool-looking! My quirk is strong but it's not very cool to look at." He demonstrates by hardening the skin on one of his forearms into some sort of jagged crystalline structure and babbling about how it can't be broken. Like, sounds fake but okay, Shark Teeth. At least it isn't as bad as Tokoyami's quirk.
Seriously. That guy has a bird head, but he still has teeth. Does that mean he has a human skull inside a fake bird's head, like some sort of demented camouflage? How does his neck hold that up? Also, what the actual fuck is up with his quirk apparently being sentient? That's… no. No. I don't need this right now.
And he's not even the worst. There's a guy here with like, four arms, and he can apparently grow any body part on the end of them? He even talks with a mouth he grows on his weird tentacle stub, instead of whatever he's hiding under that mask of his (I do not even remotely want to know). How does that work? Where does he get the correct type of cells to create different body parts? Does he use his own stem cells? Is he limited to recreating his own body parts or could he create organs to match another blood type for a transplant? This kid could be a walking talking cure for cancer and instead all anybody encourages him to do is learn how to punch petty criminals in the face.
Speaking of cancer, apparently our teacher has some sort of laser vision that cancels out quirks when he's looking at you with it activated. I don't know what he's thinking, but any form of radiation that alters my cellular makeup that drastically is pretty much guaranteed to be carcinogenic. There's no way he can remote-control my fucking sweat glands and not cause serious problems. In thirty years, all his past students are going to sue the hell out of UA, and I am going to be right there with them. In the meantime, I am going to make sure not to give him any reason to use his quirk on me. Yikes.
"Oh, my turn!" Soft Cheeks chimes in, cutting off some poor schmuck with purple spheres for hair. "I'm Uraraka Ochako and my quirk is Anti-Gravity!"
Her quirk is what ?
I don't hear any of the other introductions, too busy gaping in actual open-mouthed shock at the girl who has just casually declared the most horrifying quirk I have ever heard of as if it's a fun party trick. How could they let someone with a quirk like that into a hero school?!
"Kacchan?" Izuku asks hesitantly. He doesn't touch me, and I actually snap out of my shock enough to turn to him, which really goes to show how much both of us have grown over the years. "Are you alright? We're moving on to the ball toss, but you didn't seem to hear Aizawa-sensei at all…"
"That Urara-girl is a fucking monster." I blurt, and Izuku blinks at me in confusion.
"Who… Uraraka-san?" Green eyebrows rise in disbelief. "What are you talking about, Kacchan?"
"Her quirk!" I hiss. "It's anti-gravity!" The other boy's brows furrow in confusion.
"Yeah, I know." He says slowly, as if he thought I was having some sort of stroke and might be a bit mentally addled. "She used it on me on the day of the Entrance Exam and-"
"SHE WHAT!" Before I even realize what I'm doing, I've already grabbed Izuku by the shoulder and started patting him down. He yelps at the rough treatment, but I hardly even notice. "Holy fuck Deku you should have told me that as soon as it happened, I'll kill that fucking bitch for using such a dangerous quirk on someone holy shit what was she thinking how are you even alive-"
"K-KACCHAN!" Izuku's voice usually only squeaks like that when he's asking for an autograph from a hero or on the rare occasions that I say something that could be generously interpreted as a compliment. It's enough to set off my Creepy Deku Senses and make me pause. The blush and starry-eyed gaze that the green-haired boy is sporting have me jumping away as if burned. He looks like he regrets speaking up for a moment before his expression settles into something more concerned. "Kacchan, what are you talking about? She used her quirk to help me, it wasn't dangerous at all."
Is this kid for real? I think, before remembering; Right, oblivious moron. Better explain then.
"Deku." I speak slowly, as if talking to an idiot, because I am. "The Earth rotates at a speed of over 1500 kilometers per hour. Without gravity to hold you into place and cancel out the lateral component of your inertia, you would just… continue in a straight line – at 1500 plus kilometers per hour, into space. If that girl can cancel gravity, she can just launch anything she touches into the sun." I don't know how to explain this any more clearly, so I just reiterate: "She's a monster."
"S-She's not!" Izuku defends, although he looks a little paler after my explanation. Good, you should be, idiot. Letting some bitch cancel one of the four fundamental forces on you. "When she used her quirk on me, I became weightless and started to float, but I didn't go flying anywhere or anything like that! Maybe her quirk cancels the… the inertia you have, or something… But it doesn't send people into the sun!" Despite seeming shaky on the details, the nerd is pretty firm on that point, at least. I feel my shoulders relax slightly, only to tense up as horror gives way to a different kind of despair.
Cancelling inertia would just have the same effect but in reverse… I mentally groan. God, why do quirks sometimes make perfect sense and other times entirely destroy the laws of physics for fun? What's next? Is there someone out there with a quirk that can just change Planck's Constant? Is one of these students hiding a perpetual motion machine under their uniform?
"Kacchan, it's your turn." Izuku's voice snaps me out of my musing.
"I know, Nerd." I definitely did not know. "I'm just preparing." Preparing for what? Oh, the ball toss. Right, I have to do this again for the official score, not just the example or whatever. Easy. I line up my toss to maximize the horizontal distance before the vertical force loses its fight against gravity, and let rip. A bit under a kilometer, and my palm hardly even stings.
The next person up is Daddy Issues, who launches his ball using a column of ice. Actual solid ice that he then proceeds to melt into liquid water. What the hell? Where did he get all that water? The other students are all gathered around oohing and aahing over his quirk, which he stoically calls "half-cold half-hot", and that… that doesn't make any sense. If his quirk is just half-cold and half- hot, he shouldn't be able to produce pillars of ice. At best he should be able to frost things over, maybe lower their temperature to the point that they shatter. Even if you are generous and say he's taken the water from the air around him and solidified it, there's just not enough water vapor contained in the air to produce such a large volume of ice.
He could be pulling oxygen and hydrogen out of the air separately, but there still wouldn't be enough, and then the sudden lack of oxygen around us would create enough of a vacuum effect that we would feel the air displacement, not to mention suddenly being unable to breathe until oxygen from the air further away had re-dispersed into this area… Did he teleport the water from somewhere? Did he just produce more matter out of nothing? Does conservation of mass mean nothing to you, you IcyHot Prick?!
"Next up, Yaoyorozu Momo." Aizawa calls as if standing there reading names off a sheet of paper is using up the last dredges of energy keeping him alive. A girl with a frankly enormous ponytail steps up to the plate, looking determined. God, that hair is ridiculous. I think. And then I have to bite my tongue to keep myself from screaming in rage when she unzips her sports jersey and pulls a fucking canon out of her stomach.
"Kacchan, you're really acting odd today." Izuku says. I'm not sure what he's talking about, really. I'm almost always considering just how terrible a person Whoever-I-Was must have been to have deserved this hell I now suffer. It just doesn't always show on my face so clearly. "I know our classmates have some incredible quirks, but you don't need to be intimidated. You're amazing, Kacchan." God, he looks so earnest. I might puke.
"I'm not intimidated, I'm pissed off." I correct. Izuku doesn't look convinced, but he's never been great at reading my moods. "My quirk lets me turn my glycerin-based sweat into nitroglycerin through a chemical reaction that can only occur because of specialized glands on both of my palms. My quirk does not allow me to cancel one of the fundamental forces of the universe or produce matter from nothing."
"I do not produce matter from nothing." Ponytail Girl corrects primly. (Yaomomo, Rich Girl, good grades.) "My quirk allows me to convert fat to other matter on an atomic level, so I must eat an appropriate amount to replenish my lipids after using it."
"You… you convert fats to… whatever other element you want?" I deadpan. She nods ("As long as I understand its structure, yes.") "And what does your quirk do with all those extra protons and electrons, huh? Does it just leave the neutrons where they are, and fuck the isotopes? Are you full of unstable isotopes at any odd moment?"
"Of course not, they just get… recycled." She's talking through her ass. This universe is bullshit.
"I think it is a very useful and versatile quirk!" Iida chimes in. "Very appropriate for a rescue hero, or perhaps a specialized first responder!" Ponytail Girl looks like she's trying to hide how pleased she is with the compliment. Noob. "I can sympathize with the limitations of a quirk that forces you to consume fuel." He continues, robotically sympathetic. "My own quirk relies on a steady supply of orange juice to fuel my engines." And he revs his fucking calf-engines as if to punctuate that utter nonsense.
"How fascinating!" Izuku says, asking for more details on Iida and his garbage legs. I stare ahead with dead eyes, watching the three of them nerd out as if all of this makes some sort of demented sense to them. Is it me? Am I just missing something here? I turn my eyes to stare at the sky, only to see Uraraka's fucking ball passing by in the distance, still orbiting in the lower atmosphere.
"This must be what a world without god looks like." I realize.
"Are you sure you're okay, Kacchan?"
Chapter End Notes
I'm cackling because this is like 1/8th of the notes I have for this chapter, but apparently it's going to be like 5 chapters of Bakugou just screaming in rage every time someone uses a quirk in front of him. (Except Kouda. Talking to animals is dope.)
Also cackling because I got to introduce one of my two favorite running gags for this story in this chapter: Uraraka's Demon Quirk.
Chapter 8
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
In a way, Izuku manages to snap me out of my panic over quirks. Unfortunately, he does this by very loudly and very graphically shattering his pointer finger in front of the class. It's the sound that draws my attention, and everyone else's – a wet sound combined with several simultaneous cracks. There's blood coming from small lacerations on the purple, crinkled digit, and my stomach turns unpleasantly. What kind of quirk causes a finger to literally burst like that? I'm glad his limbs had already been healed up by the time I picked him up from Recovery Girl's office last time.
Oh fuck. I realize. He's going to keep doing this, isn't he?
"Oh my god." One of the female students whispers in horror. I think it's the pink one, but it could have been the invisible girl next to her. At least I'm not the only person freaking out about this quirk. Aizawa's manic grin doesn't seem like an appropriate response to a student's self- mutilation, and I make a mental note in my "future lawsuit against Aizawa" file. How on earth does this guy qualify as adult supervision?
"Deku!" I scold, stomping towards him. A few little pops go off in my palms involuntarily, which I think is a perfectly reasonable response to my best friend exploding his finger in front of me but apparently Aizawa doesn't agree, since he immediately turns his cancer eyes on me and sends his illogically floating scarf to wrap around my limbs. I stiffen as they tighten, holding my arms in place, and I know if it weren't for the other man's quirk nullifying my own, I would instinctively let off an explosion in panic. It's like being hugged, but a thousand times worse, because at least with hugs I can talk myself out of panicking by reminding myself that it's just a hug, I'm not really restrained. This is real. This is dangerous.
All the hair on my body is standing straight up, I notice absently. I can feel the goosebumps all the way up my arms to the back of my neck. I'm holding my breath and flexing all of my muscles as the scarves settle into place, and frantically wondering what my body is trying to do before the scarves stop moving and then I start moving and all I know is both of my thumbs and wrists are suddenly filled with a hot pain and I've somehow pulled my arms up under the scarves around my body and I'm struggling, fighting, I can't give up I have to get home to Sam have to get away- "Bakugou" – what did I do wrong how did this happen to me how why me why me – "Bakugou calm down!" – Have to fight have to get away get away get back – "Kacchan!"
It's not that the nerd's voice snaps me out of it so much as it mixes with the flashback and the teary eyes of a small child that I've only ever seen in dreams, the same child's face that has always driven me to be kinder to Izuku where I could be crueler, to wait when I could leave him behind. His voice digs into the part of me that is desperate to return – return where? Home? Another life? Whatever it is, Izuku's voice mixes with it and directs my desperation toward a new target, although it doesn't lessen the feeling of run run run get away that's flooding my system.
The scarves fall slack around my feet the minute I stop thrashing, and I grab them instinctively and pull, catching Aizawa by surprise if the slight eyebrow raise he gives me is any indication. He follows the momentum into a smooth roll and easily retakes his weapon from my hands (ow ow ow what the fuck why do my hands hurt so much?) but I have already let go and moved to grab the back of Izuku's shirt, ignoring how much the motion hurts and how I can barely get my fingers to wrap around the fabric. I bare all of my teeth at our teacher in my fiercest snarl and manage to
grind out the word "nurse" before I'm stomping off with Izuku in tow, struggling to keep to something that could be considered a walk when all I want to do is run run run.
"I-I'm sorry, Aizawa-sensei, I think Kacchan wants us to see the nurse!" Izuku calls, not fighting my grip so much as forcing me to slow down until Aizawa grumbles out a "you're excused." As if getting in trouble with Professor Pink Eye is what matters here. Seriously.
Recovery Girl greet us with the sort of disappointed but not surprised look that you would expect from the nurse at a school for heroes in training. The woman must have the patience of a saint. Or be a total sadist on the inside. Honestly some old lady getting off on a bunch of children ruining their bodies in a desperate bid for recognition would hardly even register on my radar of Fucked Up at this point. It'd be somewhere in between "letting the invisible student run around naked" and "not doing anything about the kid whose quirk literally explodes his limbs" on my current Bullshit Scale.
"The idiot needs his finger healed." I say instead of a proper greeting, shoving Izuku forward in a clumsy motion, since I can't really seem to uncurl my fingers from his shirt. They just sort of… fall open. That's probably bad.
"A-ah, Recovery Girl Sensei!" Izuku yelps. "It's just my finger this time. There was this ball toss, and Aizawa erased my quirk, but then I… Oh!" He turns back to look at me, specifically my hands. "Kacchan hurt his hands too." He tattles. Snitches get stitches, Deku.
"I'm fine." I lie shamelessly. Two pair of eyes look between me and my hands with the sort of deadpan disbelief that you would expect to see from someone watching a politician denying sexual relations with his secretary. I follow their gazes down.
"Oh, come on." I protest, flailing my swollen and slightly-misaligned hands toward Izuku. "That doesn't look nearly as bad as his actual mutilated finger!"
Recovery Girl acknowledges my very fair point with a tilt of her head, and focuses on fixing Izuku up with her quirk first. (Adding "Kisses children's injuries" into the "probably a creepy sadist with a thing for kids" theory.) Watching her massage his finger so that the bones were aligned correctly before kissing him is enough to make me want to hurl. Izuku is sweaty and pale by the end of it, close to hurling himself, if I had to guess, but the nerd doesn't make a sound. Holy shit. What does Auntie Inko feed this kid?
"Alright, now let's take a look at those hands of yours." Recovery Girl turns to me. I hide my hands behind my back instinctively, only to reluctantly hold them out for inspection at the unamused look she shoots me. She huffs as she takes them and turns them this way and that, looking at the strange bruising beginning to show up around my knuckles and the swelling in my wrists and around my thumbs. A niggling of worry has me gnawing my lower lip. My quirk relies on my hands. If I fucked them up somehow…
"Want to tell me how you dislocated both your thumbs, pulled multiple tendons in each of your wrists, and hyperextended five of your remaining knuckle joints?" I keep my mouth shut, reading a poster about the food pyramid (complete bullshit, why does she even have that in here?) as an excuse to look away. Izuku, as usual, doesn't take the hint to keep his damn mouth shut.
"He dislocated them trying to get out of Aizawa-sensei's capture gear." He explains, looking nervous. "I don't really know how he managed to do it, but he got his arms under the scarves and close to his ribs, and he struggled a bit before Aizawa let him go…"
"I took a deep breath and tensed my muscles before he tightened the scarves." I answer his
question automatically, only realizing it's true as I say it, "Relaxed and breathed out to give myself some slack, then pulled my arms up before he had time to tighten the scarves some more. He must have reacted faster than I could move, though, since I had to dislocate my thumbs to get my hands free…" I look down at my hands, feeling oddly embarrassed about my actions. Ugh, I hate explaining myself. "I didn't mean to fuck up my knuckles. That must have happened when I was pushing against those damn scarves…"
Recovery Girl looks like she's craving something alcoholic. "I'm not going to ask why Aizawa felt the need to use his capture gear on you. I'm not even going to ask why you wanted to get out. What I want to know is why you felt like it was worth dislocating your fingers."
My first reaction is to get defensive, to get angry at being talked to like a child, like I've done something stupid and I need to have it explained to me. But she doesn't ask it like it's a rhetorical question. She's looking at me patiently, waiting for an explanation. So I swallow down my knee- jerk rage and try to find the words that never seem to come when I need them.
"I… panicked." I admit, and then scowl, because that's not exactly right. I had lost myself for a second, had forgotten where I was and who I was with. "I panicked, and wanted to get out, but then there was the nerd, and he needed to get his finger looked at, and it all just mixed together and… yeah." I'm glaring at the food pyramid again by the time I finish that entirely useless explanation. Recovery Girl doesn't say anything for a moment, and then she suddenly pops both of my thumbs back into place, which makes me yell a few words that are most definitely not appropriate for school, as Izuku frantically reminds me.
Recovery Girl doesn't even blink at my language, which earns her a bit more of my respect (not that much though, since she still has a pretty high chance of being some sort of sadistic freak), just makes sure the rest of my joints are also set in their correct places before giving me a peck on the hand, and a rush of exhaustion follows the sensation of my inflamed tendons and ligaments returning to their previous whole and healthy states.
"Thanks." I mutter, rubbing my wrists as the phantom pains slowly fade. What a weird quirk.
"I'll talk to Aizawa about using his capture gear on his students, but before I let you two return to class, I need you to answer me honestly, Bakugou-kun." Recovery Girl's tone has me reluctantly turning to face her as she continues. "You say you panicked, but if we are going to allow you to continue to attend this school and attend hero training, we can't have you going berserk any time you're attacked. With your quirk you could seriously injure yourself or one of your classmates. Do you understand?"
"Kacchan wouldn't-" Izuku tries to protest, but I cut him off with a glare.
"She's right, Deku." I snap. Take a deep breath. "If they're going to let me stay here they need to know if I'm a danger to myself or others." I meet Recovery Girl's eyes. "This is the first time I've panicked like that. My trigger is probably being restrained, which I've never liked, but before…" I can't hold Recovery Girl's eyes for the next part, hoping she'll take it as discomfort with recounting the events and not with the slight omission of truth. "Did you hear about what happened with the Sludge Villain last spring?"
"Ah." Recovery Girl sounds like she's just realized something. "Yes, the staff was briefly told you were the student involved… Then, you've been having trouble coping?"
"Not usually." I deny. "Today is the first time since the incident itself I've panicked like that, but… Well, I'm not going to let it happen again, but you should at least know what caused it today."
Recovery Girl eventually lets Izuku and I return to class, but only after shoving a bunch of pamphlets about UA's free counseling services into Izuku's hands (after unsuccessfully trying to get me to take them) and ordering us to tell her if anything even remotely sets me off again (her blatant use of Izuku to spy on me has me torn between fury and admiration). By the time we get back to class, Izuku has worked himself into a panic over the possibility that he's going to be expelled. I'm honestly too exhausted to care. Maybe if I get expelled, I can have a peaceful career as a male model for sports wear or something. I'm sure my parents would be delighted to have me try on a million outfits for them.
After Aizawa announces that no one is going to be expelled (logical ruse my ass, this guy is just making shit up as he goes, I swear), the rest of the week passes as first weeks tend to: in fits and starts, and many, many introductions. We meet our other teachers, all pro heroes, all freaks, and even the cafeteria is run by some hero called Lunch Rush. (Is his quirk something to do with food or is his hero name just a reference to his current position? Didn't most heroes choose a name while still in school and stick with it throughout their career? Can you even change your hero name? This fucking school.)
Our Modern Hero Art History class (which, what the hell even is this class? It's like modern art history, which is useless enough, but it's only art related to heroes. Great. This world is obsessed with heroes enough as it is, do we really need to make it worse?) is taught by the pro hero Midnight, who strolls into class dressed like a dominatrix and uses a whip to point at things on the board as if it's a perfectly normal item for a teacher to have. Do Title IX laws not exist here? I should have studied more than just quirk regulations in my free time.
Outside of her generally over-sexed image, Midnight-sensei is actually pretty cool. She's not super uptight about rules and regulations, and as long as I keep up with the subject, she doesn't mind if I sometimes work on other things during her class. Unfortunately, not all of the students are able to get past the hurdle of her hero costume and persona.
"God, what a view." Minoru Mineta, the kid with purple balls for hair, moans grossly from where he sits to my right. He's staring at Midnight-sensei's butt while she leans over to pick up a piece of chalk she's dropped, and I feel my eye twitch. This is not the first time he's made some gross little remark during this class, but it is the first time he's said it loudly enough for more than one student to hear. Uraraka gives him a disgusted look from where she's sitting in front of him (way too close to me for my comfort. I make sure to keep my bag between us in case she reaches over here and I need a shield). He sticks his nose in the air.
"What? I'm just appreciating." He defends. "If she didn't want the attention, she wouldn't dress like that."
"Just because she puts forwards a sexual image doesn't mean she shouldn't also be treated like a person." I snap. This kid has been getting on my nerves all day, and the part of me that used to be a woman is spitting mad in the back of my mind. "She owns her sexuality, it doesn't own her. If you can't stop objectifying her long enough to notice that she makes sure to keep her actual behavior professional around us students, then that's your problem, not hers." I huff, turning my head back to my notes and away from the startled-looking Grape Shit. His dumb comments are bringing up all sorts of not-memories of schools and dress codes and girls being blamed for boys harassing them and rape victims being told they were asking for it and… ugh. Maybe this stupid quirk- obsessed society is better than the one Whoever-I-Was lived in.
It takes me a few seconds to notice how quiet it is and look up. Most of the class is looking between me and Midnight-sensei and Grape Shit in anticipation. I blink and look at Midnight- sensei in question. Her face is hard to read, maybe because I'm so used to seeing her putting up a
front, but I think she might be surprised. Maybe she thought I agreed with the twerp? I mean, she's pretty and all, but I'm not really attracted to in-your-face sexuality, so if anything, I just think she's annoying. I raise an eyebrow at her, hoping she can read all of this in my face, and she settles back into her usual sadistic smirk in response.
"Oh, sweetie." She purrs. "You're my favorite type. A real Tsundere, aren't you?" She licks her lips at me, just about the least professional behavior she's exhibited so far during class, and I despair for about the 5th time in the last three days of class over UA's decision to hire pro heroes to teach instead of, you know, qualified education professionals.
"I'll kill you." I say in response, but it comes out sounding a lot more like please kill me. Her grin is delighted, and she spends the rest of our class teasing me and very deliberately ignoring Mineta, so I guess you could call it favoritism. Or sadism. It's probably sadism.
The second weirdest class experience I have during my first week at UA is in English class, of all places. I've always been top of my class in English, since it was the native language where Whoever-I-Was grew up (I'm guessing America, based on the foods I sometimes find myself unconsciously cooking). While I don't know all the words off the top of my head (I speak, read, and write almost exclusively Japanese, and all my thoughts are in Japanese), I still retain an American accent from subconscious memory.
Most people don't even notice that my accent is American, and just notice that I'm really good at English and leave it at that. Even my English teachers typically aren't good enough to distinguish between different English-speaking accents from around the world. Hell, half of them were making simple grammar and pronunciation mistakes practically every-other-day, and I was much more concerned with resisting the urge to correct them than the possibility that someone might notice my accent and find it odd.
And then I meet Present Mic, who, despite not being a native English Speaker, is apparently really really into English-speaking radio programs, and immediately pegs my accent as "Midwestern American, Wow!" I blink at him in surprise, but I know he's right. I've never even heard of the "Midwest" before this moment, but images of wide-open skies and huge fields of grass and grazing cows and horses and long highways are bombarding me fast enough to make my head spin. What the hell? Was I a hick in my past life?
"Uhhhh." I say articulately. Luckily Present Mic is not the type of hero who lets awkward silences linger. Or form in the first place. He's already ranting about how useful an accent like mine can be and asking a million questions about where I picked it up, which Izuku is excitedly answering while flipping through his notebook in order to find whatever progress chart he has on my language abilities. Because of course he does. I try not to give in to the urge to sink into my seat, annoyed at myself for wanting to cower. As much as I've influenced Izuku over the years, it seems I haven't been able to escape some of his pansyhood rubbing off on me as well.
"Well then, Little Listener!" ("Don't call me that.") "Would you be willing to read this passage to the class, since your accent is so good? I think it would help them to hear how it sounds when you say it."
And that is how I become the unofficial TA for Present Mic's English class. It starts off as just the occasional task here or there, read this poem out loud, lead this group of students in conversation while Present Mic helps the other group, write from a slightly more challenging essay prompt since my classmates are not at the same level… Until I look around and realiz that I'm helping grade papers while my classmates study for a quiz I don't even need to take.
When I ask Present Mic about it, he just laughs and says UA lets their teachers decide what to teach and how to grade their students, so if he wants me to work as a pseudo-TA, then he can just give me a grade based on how well I do in that job, while grading the rest of the class normally. I make a little note about this ridiculously easy-to-abuse policy in my "lawsuit for UA" file (I'd gone ahead and bought a neat little manila folder for it after the fourth day of class revealed the existence of student-designed hero suits, but that's a rant for another time) and accept my fate.
And then, of course, there's Hero Basics with All Might.
Part of me is delighted to be in the presence of my favorite hero. It's like meeting Superman in real life (who Whoever-I-Was apparently loved because she was also from the Midwest, that hick). The rest of me is absolutely exasperated with the man who gave Izuku a quirk that shatters his bones and then set up a battle trial "with no holds barred!" What is he actually thinking? Is he thinking? It's our first week, no one here knows how to hold back, and Izuku least of all! He's going to reduce one of these kids to a smear on the sidewalk by accident, and he's going to lose a limb doing it.
"And our first pair of Heroes is… team A! You will have five minutes to look over the map of the building and prepare your strategy. Meanwhile, our first Villain team will be… Team D! You will have ten minutes to get your base set up and hide the nuke. Does everyone understand their roles?"
I look over at Knockoff Sonic and tilt my head, leading the way onto the training ground so we can start setting up and plan our strategy as Villains. All we have to do is keep the heroes from either capturing us or touching the "nuke" that we'll be guarding, and we have the homefield advantage as long as we don't waste time.
"So, who are our opponents, then?" I ask Garbage Legs as he power-walks beside me. "I assume you were paying attention like a good little student?"
"Of course I was!" He says, not seeming to notice my slight mockery. "I believe Team A consists of Midoriya-san and Uraraka-san. We'll need to watch out for Midoriya-san's quirk and…" He looks back, seeming to only now notice that I had stopped walking several strides earlier. "Bakugou-san?"
"Izuku and who?"
Izuku was struggling a bit with his strategy for the battle trial. Uraraka was a great teammate for him, both because they were friends (ohmygod he still can't believe he's really friends with a girl!) and because… well…
"I think I know how we can win." He admitted quietly, feeling guilty at the thought of taking advantage of his friend's weaknesses. He hadn't thought of it that way when he took all those notes, but now that he was facing Kacchan in a match, he realized that he knew exactly what it would take to beat him. And the easiest way to do that… "But you'll need to trust me."
"Of course, I trust you!" Uraraka chimed without any hesitation. Izuku's face burned red, and he was sufficiently flustered enough that he stuttered out his plan in a rush, seeing Uraraka's eyes widen as he filled in the details. In the end, even though she looked like she thought he was crazy, she didn't argue, just looked him in the eyes and asked one question.
"Are you sure, Deku-kun?" The sound of his childhood nickname in such a feminine voice would normally be enough to fluster him (especially since she kept calling him that ever since he explained it was a nickname and she had declared it "adorable"), but the seriousness in her tone kept him level-headed. He nodded once.
"I'm sure."
This battle trial could not be going worse.
On top of my first opponent being Izuku of all people (that creepy freak has been dissecting my weaknesses for like a decade now, he's probably got a hundred weird fantasies for exactly this situation that he's dying to act out), I also have to worry about that absolute heathen cancelling out one of my fundamental forces and accidentally launching me into space. So far, she's managed not to murder anyone with her quirk, so I assume it also involves some form of controlled levitation in order to cancel net forces on an object in a certain reference frame. Still, that is an entirely separate action from cancelling gravity, and if she slips up and only uses one part of her quirk, it's bye bye earth, hello unforgiving void of space.
So even before the battle trial starts, I'm stressed the fuck out. This is only exacerbated by Legs McGee apparently being a method actor, and insisting on using a "villainous" speaking voice to talk over all of our plans. I'm tempted to knock him out and finish this exercise on my own, but the cameras in the corner of every room remind me that people are watching, and mutiny is not usually seen as a heroic act, even by villains.
We settle on a simple plan based around our quirks. We hide the nuke on the top floor, in the center of the largest room we can find, since I know for a fact Izuku's quirk can bust through walls (and floors, but not much I can do about that), and I station myself directly in front of the nuke to puppy-guard it with my close-range quirk, while Iida circles the perimeter of the room and uses his speed to keep people from getting close to me or the nuke.
(I may have also chosen the largest room so that the distance between Garbage Legs and me would be just a bit too large for small talk.)
After All Might's voice announces that the Hero Team may now enter the premises, my heart rate kicks up a notch and that addictive battle-calm settles over my vision again. I can hear the slight breeze rattle against the window panes of the cheaply-made building, the not-silence of another human breathing in the same general area as me, the quiet rush of my blood pumping through my veins. It's quiet for the first few minutes, but I know Izuku just as much as he knows me, even if I haven't been taking notes this whole time. The nerd is going to try an ambush, and he's going to do absolutely everything in his power to make sure I don't see it coming, which means…
"They'll come through the front door." I murmur quietly into my headset, "Don't say anything to give us away. Pretend to keep watching the windows. That's what he'll expect. I'll keep an eye on the walls." Iida, miracle of miracles, only nods once, silently, to show he understood. We continue to keep watch, each of us keeping the door only in our peripheral vision. That's fine. It's the peripheral vision that picks up motion most easily anyway.
There.
Twin blurs of green and pink in the corner of my eye. My palms are up and I'm readying a blast before I even register which one it is coming for me. I see green intercept a blur of white and blue near the door, and my stomach drops down to my feet. Because that means the pink blur is heading
for me, and that means…
"Goddammit Deku!" I yell, blasting pinky back before she can get close enough to touch me. It's difficult to get enough force to hold her at bay without knocking the floor out or something. "That's fucking dirty!" A series of small explosions keeps that Gravity Witch on the run, but she's not stopping, dodging left and right and trying to get around my guard. That stupid smile is nowhere to be seen, a frown of concentration taking its place on her face. "Why won't you die, dammit!" I yell, sending her skidding across the floor with an explosion and a well-timed kick.
"Die?" I hear Iida splutter, only to cough when Izuku takes advantage of the moment to get a good kick in to his stomach. Serves him right for getting distracted.
"I won't give up!" Gravity Witch says with a grin. "I trust Deku-kun's plan, and he's right when he says I can do this. All I need is one touch, after all." And she holds up a hand. Does that count as brandishing a weapon at me? "Either to you or that nuke, and we win."
Okay, fuck this. It's literally the first class of the year. This exercise is not worth getting accidentally launched into the sun for, if she touches me and I've given her a concussion or something. Iida lets out a cry of despair that announces Izuku successfully tangling his legs in the capture tape the Hero Team had been given, and now I'm standing between two pairs of huge, piercing eyes, and their goal. Izuku and that monster look at each other and nod in determination, before turning to me with identical grins.
"Surrender now, Villain!" They cry, as if we're all kids playing Heroes vs. Villains on the playground. Yeah, fuck this. I'm not dying for a playground game. This time, when they come running for me, I step back, giving up ground on my close-range perimeter in order to give myself room to turn around.
"You asked for this, Deku!" I yell, turning my back on them and ignoring all my instincts screaming at me not to let either of these people near me. I raise my left arm, with the grenade- style bracer around my wrist that has been storing all my spare sweat since the beginning of this exercise. With a feral grin I slap my palm flat against the side of my fake nuke and pull the pin.
The following explosion is large enough to send both Izuku and his Terrifying Girlfriend tumbling ass over teakettle and into the opposite wall. I guess without using his quirk to redirect the force, my gauntlets are actually enough to send him flying. Good to know. The nuke is reduced to several significant chunks of scrap, most of which have been forcefully embedded into the walls on the side of the room opposite from where the Hero Team landed (I at least had enough foresight to avoid injuring my classmates, unlike Gravity Witch and her demon quirk). The specially designed grips on my boots had kept me in place, and the arm bracers had managed to keep the recoil from seriously damaging my tendons, but my back still ached from the pressure of the blast. I'd have to talk to the support department and give them some feedback on my costume. I shake my head, ignoring the ringing in my ears from years of practice, and turn to grin at Izuku and her triumphantly.
"Steal my forces now, bitch."
Chapter End Notes
Yaomomo, in the observation area with the rest of the class, after Bakugou has blown up his nuke: Can he do that?
All Might, frantically flipping through his notecards: I mean, technically, yes?
I call this chapter "Bakugou feels fear" in my notes. Enjoy his terror.
(Title IX laws are the laws that prevent discrimination on the basis of sex in American education, and they also prohibit sexual harrassment of students, in case any of you didn't know.)