Chapter Text
Bakugou’s first impression of her was that she was a very large dust bunny, her body completely covered in fluff; from her hair, to around her shoulders, and falling down the nape of her neck to the floor, but he was wrong. She wasn’t covered completely, only her neck had the light brown fluffy substance, running down to her shoulder blades before fading into a short, light brownish-gray furred cloak with large black and white prints.
Her skin was chalk white and seemed rough to the touch, her arm count was four: two whose three fingers were laced tightly together near her waist, the other pair holding on shakily to a prettily decorated box with a red ribbon bow, which just so happened to cover her face from view, but not the long, black feathered antennas that fluttered in the wind above her head.
For once in his life, Bakugou was speechless.
“Who is that?”
“I didn’t know Bakugou had a girlfriend.”
“How do you know they’re a girl? We need less fluff, more skin, and a visible chest!”
“If she really is his girlfriend, you’re gonna die before the night ends.”
“Pray to your gods, short stack, he looks ready for murder.”
Bakugou heard the entire class give different sounds of agreement, and at the same time witness the person in front of him begin to shake uncontrollably, the antennas fluttering more aggressively. Their bottom pair of skeletal-like hands wrapped around their body protectively, the other pair pressing the box further into their face as if that alone would make them disappear from U.A.
“I-I . . . um, I,” her voice was soft, almost inaudible, and hard to hear when spoken into a box.
“What? Speak up,” Bakugou demanded, seeing a shiver take over her entire body the second he spoke. “I don’t have all night. Why’d you call me out for, you lookin’ for a fight or something?”
The entirety of class 1-A was glaring at him, he could feel the daggers digging into his back, and apparently, she could, too. For a second, the box lowered to reveal a single, completely black eye with a light gray ring that he guessed was her iris. Their gazes met, and she covered herself again before he could see anything more than just that one eye.
“What the fu—”
“Bakugou,” Iida yelled from behind him. “Mind your manners!”
“Fuck off,” was his response, turning to glare at his classmate. “All of you! And you,” his red eyes glared directly at the ‘gift’ covering her eyes, “why the fuck are you hiding your face? What kind of game are you playing at?”
“I’m not . . . not playing games,” she said, in a voice as soft as the night breeze. Bakugou swore a minute had gone by when she suddenly bowed, stretching the arms with the gift at him. “P-please,” he heard the faint sound of a sob, “accept this!”
Excited voices came from the dorm door, they had ignored him and stayed put, but Bakugou’s attention was now on the bowing girl and her peculiar hair style.
It was a mixture of soft hair and fluff in the shape of and insects tail, black antennas coming out from the top of her head near the forehead, her strange, partially black bangs looked like two large eyes looking up at him, and falling to either side of her head, two wing-like appendages. It was the same color as the fluffy fur around her neck, maybe just a lighter shade in color.
From this angle, her back was completely visible, giving Bakugou a better view of what he had mistaken for a cloak moments before: it was a pair of very, very large wings.
“Mayu!” He lifted his gaze at the person who had spoken, catching sight a group of girls hidden a couple of feet away from the dorms. There was no way Aizawa would have overlooked a group of teenage girls, but there was also no indication that he knew they had come along with this fluffy person before him.
His classmates looked just as surprised as him at the appearance of the girls, wondering if they should call Aizawa or let it be as it was clear the group knew who this person was, why she was here, and had possibly come with her. To Bakugou, it looked like they came as witnesses, making sure this fluff ball went through with whatever it was she had been tasked to do, by them no less. Why else would they butt in?
“You’re supposed to look him in the eyes, clearly state your name, and do a couple of spins for him to get a good look at all of you.”
“Stop covering your cute face.”
They dissolved into cackling laughter, their neon colored hair causing them to look like devilish, rainbow-headed bobbleheads as they tried to quiet down but failed each time they looked up. The cackling grew louder, more obnoxious, the sound causing Bakugou’s blood to boil.
“If you’re going to confess, you have to do it right,” one of them called out, the others joining in on their taunting.
“Look up! Look up!”
“We want to see that pretty, little face of yours. The one that got you into Shiketsu, because everyone knows it wasn’t that quirk of yours.”
They broke into cackles again.
“Are you chickening out, you coward?” Bakugou’s eyes locked onto the voice of who he thought was the leader, the redhead, the one that got ‘Mayu’ to slowly raise her head and look Bakugou in the eyes. “You know damn well what you need to do, now do it.”
She was covered in fluffy plush.
Mayu was soft all over, that was the only way Bakugou could filter her appearance when she raised her head to gaze into his eyes. They were huge and captivating, the sclera an endless black and the iris a pale gray-blue color that shone like polished silver. Her face was round and as white as her arms, maybe even more so, and it seemed to be growing paler by the second. She was small and round and fuzzy and looked near to tears as she spun around to show her massive wings to him.
What happened next was a blur to him. One moment he had taken a step towards Mayu, arm slowly coming up to turn her to face him, and in second he was swarmed by the unnecessary extras that were his classmates and those cackling, neon-bobble headed hags.
The two groups of students had reacted at the exact same time: class 1-A had moved to take hold of Bakugo, who they were sure was about to commit involuntary man slaughter willingly, and the group of girls had descended on the trembling Mayu like starving wolves, each one picking a wing and pulling it violently up to reveal sectioned portions of skin that resembled the stomach of a bug.
“Gotta show your love the goods Mayu,” the leader taunted again, pulling Mayu’s wing harder and laughing as she gave a squeak of pain. “Show him how disgusting you are!”
It had become an outright brawl between the teens by this point. Although having the skills to subdue them quickly, class 1-A held back on their quirks, fully aware that these girls were not heroes in training, but the girls were hell bent on embarrassing Mayu and whisking her away with them.
Three of the U.A students reacted faster than the rest, each one reaching towards Mayu, but the one who manage to pull her away from the girls, shoving her behind him, was not the one everyone had expected.
“Don’t you dare put your hands on her.” Mayu couldn’t be completely hidden behind his back, Bakugou knew this, but he kept himself between her and these neon colored beasts. “Who the fuck do you think you are to assault her like that? What gives you the ri—”
“She’s a freak,” the leader spat out, “that gives us the right. What, you telling us you actually liked being confessed to by this filthy bug?”
Bakugou glared at the clearly terrified girl who refused to show any weakness in front of her lackeys, debating whether if he should even bother with society’s trash or leave it for Aizawa to deal with, choosing at the last second to look over his shoulder at Mayu before making his decision.
She was collapsing into herself; one set of arms wrapped tightly around her trembling body, her fluff mangled and strewed all over the floor, her eyes red and puffy. She was surrounded by the girls, cocooned in between their bodies and arms, tears running slowly down her face and falling onto her trembling hands that held on to the gift for dear life.
“Hey, fluffy, what’s your hero name?” Mayu hiccupped as she looked up at him, her feather-like lashes caressing her cheeks each time she blinked. “Are you deaf, I said: your hero name, what is it?”
“Yama—Yamamai.”
“How about you morons,” Bakugou asked, taking a step towards the ringleader of these clowns whose eyes kept a steady glare on Mayu. She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Which one of you has an official hero name?”
Their faces turned red with embarrassment, their eyes refusing to look at the young heroes now crowding Mayu behind Bakugou. The leader kept a steady glare on Mayu over his shoulder, holding her eyes as much as she could before turning away and spitting on the ground in a dramatic show of disgust.
“She doesn’t deserve a spot—”
“And you fucking do,” Bakugou demanded. “You think wretched fucks like you deserve that place at Shiketsu?”
“More than her!” The leader yelled back, making the wrong decision of stepping forward to get in Bakugou’s face. “We deserved it way more than she did. Any one of us would’ve been better than that fucking parasite!”
A sudden rush of blood to his ears blocked the voices of everyone around him, ignoring the screaming shrills of the girls running around like headless chickens as he took hold of the leader by the throat. Bakugo had her a foot off the ground when her lackeys found the exit to the dorms and fled, leaving the now terrified redhead at the mercy of this blond devil who no one could get through.
“Call her that again.” His voice was as calm as the winds before a storm as he said, “This all started over a fuckin dare, didn’t it? Then I fucking dare you to call her that in front of me again and take notes; I don’t give a fuck about the punishment, I’ll end you on the fucking spot if you ever speak to her again.”
“Bakugou, put her down!”
Iida rushed forward to help the now screeching girl yelling obscenities at Bakugou, but Mayu had beaten him to it. With her hands still trembling, she wrapped all four around Bakugou’s forearm, the one holding onto the girl’s throat, at softly pulled down until he dropped her onto the floor. She landed flat on her ass, scrabbling to get on her feet as she cursed at him, but completely ignoring Mayu’s presence all together.
“That is no way to treat a young lady, Bakugou,” Iida lectured. “It’s not befitting of a hero!”
“Bitch brought it on herself,” he responded offhandedly. It took him a second to realize Mayu’s hands were still wrapped around him and it took another two for him to look at her face, which now had bright red cheeks. They looked like lightbulbs that had been left on too long, turning a burning hot red. “Are you finally gonna say something coherent or not?”
There was a collective groan around them as Mayu let go of his arm, his eyes trailing behind those strange, little claws that were her hands as they accidentally touched his. They were softer than they looked, than he thought.
“You have no tact, Bakugou!”
“Screw you, dunce face!”
When he turned back to Mayu, she was kneeling on the floor before them, head bent so low that he could only make out those strange eye-like bangs and her wings. He cocked an eyebrow at the sight. She resembled a moth, a very large moth, a moth that was the size of a Great Dane.
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t want an apology from her, he didn’t need a damn apology for this, but he couldn’t leave it alone.
“You don’t have to do what they tell you to do,” he said, taking her by the hands, the top pair, and lifting her up. This wasn’t an excuse to touch her. It wasn’t! “Whatever the dare was, whatever it was they forced you to do, just forget about it.”
“I,” she began, chocking on her words as she looked up and caught sight of Bakugou studying her closely. She fidgeted, trying to pull her top pair of hands out of his grasp, but he refused to let go. “I thought. . .the dare, it was—the thing is,” Bakugou was already fuming, “I mean, I wanted to do it. My friends, they just encouraged me to do it by making it a dare.”
“Friends?” he said it with so much disgust in his voice that Mayu recoiled, “those things weren’t friends. They just wanted to screw you over.”
Mayu’s face fell, her bottom lip trembling, causing Bakugou to become uneasy. He didn’t know what he should do or what he should say to her.
“Kacchan,” he was about to blow Deku’s head off, but when he turned to him, he caught sight of the box Mayu had been holding. “It sounds like it was something she wanted to do and those girls just came to ruin it for her.”
Mayu reached for the box with her bottom pair of hands, but Bakugou was faster. He kept one of her wrists locked in his hand, thinking she would literally fly away if he let go of her, her remaining three hooking on to his arm that held the box.
“Please,” she said, “that’s mine.”
“Really,” his voice was even, emotionless, “It has my name on it and earlier you told me to accept it.”
“Bakugou,” round-face glared at him from the dorm door, she, along with the rest of the class, deciding that they needed some space. But those extras always had something to say before getting lost. “Stop being mean to her! It takes courage to confess to your crush!”
There was a loud ‘What!’ from within the dorm, as well as the sound of the girls trying to keep the troublemakers from butting in on him and Mayu. Round-face was giving them a thumbs up, shitty hair joining in with two thumbs up and a large, stupid smile. It took everything he had not to try and demolish the building.
Bakugou, managing to ignore their moronic faces pressed against the windows, turned to look at Mayu. She was biting down on her bottom lip, sheepishly reaching towards his outstretched arm with her remaining three as he had lifted the gift into the air, her eyes locked onto the much more interesting concrete floor.
“Fuck.” She jumped at his voice, finally looking at him with wide, curious eyes. “Wasn’t this a dare? Didn’t they threaten you to come to U.A at this goddamned late hour, call me out, and give me whatever it is they chose for you to give?” He brought the box between them, the paper shredded, the bow a mess, but she kept quiet. “Answer me!”
“They didn’t choose anything!” If she was trying to match his tone, she failed miserably. Wind chimes had a stronger sound than her soft voice, but it held determination and a slight stubbornness. “I made it. For you. If. . .you like it. I’ll take it back if you do—”
“I’m not giving you what’s already mine.”
Bakugou could see the panic in her eyes as he slowly let go of her wrist and brought the gift down from the air. Although she seemed about to pounce on him and take the box away, she did nothing but fiddled with her fingers as he ripped the remaining decoration on the box. He opened the box, taking out scraps of what felt like silk, and watching her bite her bottom lip again to stop whatever sound was threatening to come out.
Her hands reached for the torn garment, taking it slowly from his hands. Bakugou couldn’t make out what it had been originally, but by feel alone, he guessed it was made from expensive material.
He said nothing.
Anything that would come out of his mouth at this point wouldn’t make her feel any better. His words would make him sound as if he pitied her, or worse, as he were blaming her for the destruction of the gift as she chose to believe those girls were her friends. She didn’t need that, not now, so instead he reached for the piece she held tightly to her chest. It was the largest piece, one with a partial image of what looked to be a cross. . .or an X.
“What was it,” he asked, running his fingers down the red lines.
“A haori,” she answered, voiced laced with grief. “I worked endlessly so it would fit your hero costume, made as much silk as I could manage, and I didn’t even notice it had been ruined by Chieri before I wrapped it.”
It took him a bit to process what she had said, and a second more to think over the idea of whether he should ask or not.
He did so anyway, “You made silk? Not collect it, but made it.”
“I,” she blushed, he saw her turn more pink than red this time. “I have trouble making it, but I didn’t want to ask mama to give me some of hers.” His confused expression seemed to prompt her to explain more. “It’s like the tale of spinning hay into gold, except the hay is my hair and the gold is silk.” She blinked her huge eyes at him. “I’m sorry, that sounds creepy.”
“You’re a fairy tale princess incarnate, Miss Mayu!”
Her pink cheeks turned a bright red.
“I thought I told you to screw off, dunce face!” Bakugou yelled, turning to face his classmates, but instead facing a very annoyed Aizawa. He eyed Bakugou and Mayu, his eyes lingering longer on the latter, grumbled something neither teen could understand, and motion for both to follow him back into the dorms.
Bakugou took this silent moment to clarify one thing, “You brought this on yourself for letting fluffers here into the academy grounds and near the dorms. Can’t blame me for anything that happened after!”