Chapter Text
Ochako’s list of places she would like to be in while half-covered in the collateral damage three pints of melted Chunky Monkey has brought on over the course of her eat-her-feelings extravaganza approximates to exactly zero.
So, it seems about par for the crash course she’s taking in having the worst week of her life that she’s called down to the principal’s office.
Because she’s the special kind of genius who goes around assuming the universe will allow her to stuff her face in peace and not pitch her another ninety-miles-an-hour screwball of an event, her phone is off. Powered down to escape the slew of messages pouring in from the catalyst of this whole disaster that she just can’t handle right now.
Wrong move.
No warning comes her way. No virtual heads up.
Instead, Ochako gets a knock at her door, Tsu croaking that Nezu wants them for something. Right now.
The sound is enough to make her jump out of her own skin; it can only be the harbinger of her impending doom. The cherry on top of the garbage pile sundae of her week. She’s tempted to float herself out the window.
However, Ochako knows that’s something she can’t do, as much as asphyxiating in the vast vacuum of space appeals to her, given the circumstances.
“One minute!” she yelps back at the door like it stepped on her foot, frantically stalling for time and scrambling to come up with a solution to the situation at hand.
There’s the matter of the tear stains on her clothes.
The ones that unceremoniously decorate the neckline of the well-worn and altogether too small debate team shirt from middle school that she’s since repurposed into a pyjama top. And also the streak of dried ice cream smack dab in the middle of said shirt.
Combined with the rat’s nest she calls her hair, it’s not quite the way she wants to be seen by anyone, let alone the person (animal actually, but Ochako’s mind is far from technicalities) in control of her academic career.
Showcasing her face all puffy and swollen? She’ll pass.
However, Ochako’s never owned many nice things, so it makes perfect sense that she isn’t afforded this luxury. Fact of the matter is, she’s probably about to face detention or suspension. Maybe outright expulsion.
What for? Ochako’s clueless, but that doesn’t stop the thought from running back and forth across the forefront of her mind waving a shinny banner that reads “ Haha, you’re getting kicked out of school!”
She doesn’t have a choice. Not really. At least, not a good one. An audience with Nezu isn’t something that can be avoided or delayed.
But if she’s been sentenced to the guillotine, the best she can do is walk to her fate as quickly as possible with her head held high to get it over with.
It’s only natural then that Ochako decides to do the death march to her door and fling it open.
“Have you been crying?” is what falls out of Tsu’s mouth as she takes in the sight of Ochako in all her totally-definitely-not-a-blubbering-mess glory.
“What? No!” The response is an obvious lie accompanied by Ochako haphazardly fumbling a hand through her hair.
Both of them know what red eyes and drip dried ice cream mean, but Tsu’s got a tendency to cut straight to the heart of any and all issues with innocuous questions that go down like a blunt scalpel without anesthesia. Admitting what she’s been up the past few hours is as good as openly inviting Tsu to ask them, and Ochako has got no interest in being dissected on that operating table.
“Really?” Tsu says, tilting her head.
“Nezu wants to see me?” Ochako squeaks, settling for redirection to stop any more white lies from slipping out of her mouth.
And stop that avenue of conversation from progressing any further.
“See us, ” Tsu corrects. “The girls, that is. Momo’s waiting in the common room to walk us all over.”
“Well, we can’t keep them waiting, can we?” Ochako offers cautiously with a smile, putting on a face that’s a lot braver than she feels and venturing to join Tsu in the hallway.
Truth is, she’s more than a little terrified of just what, precisely, is pressing enough that Nezu wants to see them at ten o’clock on a Friday night. Her stomach folds itself over and over again, the electric mixer of fear whipping it around like pancake batter. Logic is a long lost friend at this point. Never mind that Momo, their deputy with a spotless record, is going to be present.
In fact, Ochako’s so caught up in guessing the horrors that await them that she forgets what her current get-up is as she parades down the stairs with Tsu and around her classmates congregating in the common room.
Hell, she doesn’t even make noise during the five minute walk to the main campus. She’s silent and stiff as they go from street lamp to street lamp, the rest of the group chattering nervously as the building looms nearer and nearer.
Ochako’s a perfect lamb to slaughter, blindly stumbling after Tsu and the others because she doesn’t know what to do with herself anymore.
Her night’s gone from worst case scenario to somewhere beneath rock bottom and she’s still sorting through her feelings by the time the six of them arrive at the Nezu’s office after four flights of stairs.
As expected because it’s to Ochako’s surprise, Midnight is standing outside the slightly ajar office door.
She gives them a once over, double checking that they’re all present and accounted for. Her gaze is searing and Ochako can’t stop her cheeks from burning when Midnight’s eyes snag on her pyjamas and trail down to her bare feet.
Ochako may have forgotten what she looked like while pinballing from prospective bad reason to prospective bad reason as to why she’s been called down here on the way over, but she’s certainly aware of it now.
Go figure she doesn’t have on shoes. Not like they make walking on concrete easier.
It’s the kind of mistake that fits right in with the rest of today. The kind only Ochako has the displeasure to make.
Midnight catches sight of her face and something on it must read with anguish or maybe it’s just the tear tracks because Midnight shakes her head and waves all of them through.
“Come on in, we’ve much to discuss.”
They file through one by one. The door shuts behind them.
Ochako thinks this might be her last chance to kiss the halls of UA goodbye.
Spacious and plush, the office has an air of coziness that’s at odds with the tension in the atmosphere. A tea set is laid out on a long, low table in front of a welcoming couch that she would love to throw herself down on at any other time.
Heading it all is Nezu, perched in a handsome armchair, humming happily to himself as he sips a cup of tea.
“Hello girls,” He shifts his faraway stare onto them and gestures at the couch. “Please, have a seat. Help yourselves to some tea.”
If it’s meant to soothe their nerves, it does the opposite. Jirou looks like she last breathed a millennium ago. Mina’s complexion is several shades of pink paler than usual.
They shuffle about like they don’t cram onto the sofas in the common room daily, suddenly acquiring in-depth knowledge of personal space to sit on the cushions.
Tsu’s deadpan as ever and Tooru’s expression is physically impossible to gauge.
Ochako settles gingerly on the arm; there’s five cushions and she won’t risk upsetting the precarious balance in the office that her fate hangs alongside.
“It has come to my attention that there is a bit of an issue in current female heroics,” Nezu says.
She hasn’t the faintest where this is going but the alarm bells in her head start shutting down and simultaneously ramping up. This isn’t about discipline, which leaves her with more questions than answers.
“Miss Midnight has pushed this issue with me constantly, spurred by the reports of an internship from Class 1-A that saw one of our bright young pupils be recruited due to her appearance and receive mentoring that merely constituted of being asked to appear in a commercial.”
Momo shifts uncomfortably at the far end of the couch, clenching and unclenching her hands in her lap.
Ochako is pretty familiar with how most of them felt about their internships. It was a repeat subject of sleepover discussion for two months. Momo had always kept the details of hers vague. Ochako now realizes why.
She had lived for every moment she spent under Gunhead’s wing. Point blank, it made her a better hero. It gave her the gift of an entirely new skill set, and albeit she isn’t perfect at martial arts by any measure, Ochako is more well-rounded because of that internship.
It was everything she’d hoped for plus a little bit extra.
Being deprived of that experience during a keystone moment in their development as heroes is a major blow she wouldn’t wish on anyone. Least of all, Momo.
“It’s more than that,” Midnight cuts in, slinking across the room to stand by Nezu. “There’s less of us in the industry. We’re underrepresented and even if we do manage to get signed by a big agency, we’re marketed not for our prowess but for our appearance.”
Ochako’s wriggled her jumpsuit past her hips too many times to count to pretend this is a lie. She’s never thought too hard about it is all. Her stomach stops writhing like snakes in a basket and morphs into an ever-widening pit.
“I know I’m hardly the person to campaign against this- my costume’s been the source of much scrutiny since my debut- but that’s related to functionality. It’s necessary for my quirk. And,” Midnight’s not quite finished, fixing all of the girls with a pointed look that makes all of them hinge on her every word. “I chose to wear this. To market myself the way I do.”
“Midnight wants you girls to have that same choice. To be the kind of heroine you want to be, not just one that will sell.” Nezu looks over at Midnight for confirmation, choosing his words carefully. “Therefore, we want to give female students at UA, especially, a platform to showcase your skills and your personalities.”
Mina reaches for the teapot cautiously and pours herself a glass.
“Principal Nezu,” Tsu says, voicing the thought all of them share. “what are you trying to say?”
Nezu gestures to Midnight with one of his snow white paws.
“I present to you: the first annual Miss UA competition!” Midnight’s got a million dollar grin that makes Ochako half wonder if she’s going to bring out a whiteboard to illustrate her points. “A competition that will test your brains, brawn, and beauty. Nationally televised like the sports festival, it will offer the young women of UA a chance to show agencies their abilities and who they are.”
“So, a beauty pageant,” Jirou observes.
“No!” Momo cries, “Well, yes. But, not in the way you think.”
This outburst prompts all of them to direct their attention to her.
“It was my idea,” Momo admits, not meeting any of their eyes and planting hers firmly on her lap. “Partly. After my internship with Uwabami, I felt like I wasn’t valued for my quirk or my skill. I was told I could have a fanbase if I sat still and looked pretty. That’s not why I want to be a hero.”
Momo pauses, steeling her nerves with a fresh breath, ready to come back at them with renewed vigor, but Midnight spares her the effort.
“Yaoyorozu approached me after class one day. Since then, we’ve been brainstorming a way to provide you with greater visibility to avoid such experiences again. I believe this is the best course of action UA can take.”
Ochako isn’t quite sure what’s going on, but she definitely doesn’t feel ready to prance around stage for a crown. Last she checked, beauty queens don’t wear spilled ice cream couture featuring hand-me-down leggings and sniveling.
Any chance to show off her heroics is one she’ll take, though.
“Why a pageant?” The question slips off Ochako’s tongue before she even processes she’s asking it.
“Yeah, isn’t that kind of... not the message you’re trying to send?” Mina pipes up, lowering her teacup from her lips as she finishes her sip.
Midnight fixes Nezu with an expectant look, as if this is a problem of his own creation it’s up to him to solve. The glance is charged enough to make Ochako feel static.
“To draw viewership, which is the entire point of this exercise,” Nezu is weaponized politeness, killing Midnight with a tone laced with sugar so sweet it’s sickening. “We have to diversify our programming portfolio. A simple battle royale or tournament is too similar to the sports festival. Audiences want new content, not a rehashing of something they’ve already seen. Furthermore, if we are going to spotlight our female students we must do it in a familiar format and context in order to not alienate viewers- a pageant is the ideal form. Of course, it will be modified to include combat sections, but it will also provide the chance to highlight your personalities through interview and talent portions.”
Midnight clears her throat, giving new meaning to the term staring daggers. Nezu doesn’t cut himself on the razor edge of her watch, he simply looks at her for a length of time that exceeds convention enough to confirm Ochako isn’t wrong in thinking she’s witnessing a silent standoff.
Nezu returns his focus to them, and Midnight does the same.
“There is another reason,” he begins. “If UA were to hold a large-scale event without including any of its male students, it would ruffle feathers. Many would be antagonized, particularly those within our student body. Yet, since females are underrepresented and thus the highlight of the event, the pageant format enables us to showcase them while still enabling a way for a lesser number of boys to participate through the use of a traditional escort system.”
The word ‘escort’ lands with the grace of a giraffe attempting advanced figure skating sequences.
“Excuse me?” Jirou’s eyes practically bulge out of her head.
Mina slams a hand over her mouth; tea spews out the side and a nasty coughing fit wracks her frame. Momo slaps a hand down onto her back. Hard.
Choking crisis averted.
They’re teenagers after all, and outside of life-threatening situations, maturity isn’t exactly their strong suit.
“Many pageants typically include a male escort for female contestants. Although antiquated, it is the best option to appease the greatest number of people and ensure the success of this competition,” Nezu responds as if he is wholly unaware of the connotations that set of words comes with. “For those of you who elect to participate, male escorts of your choosing will accompany you in all portions of the competition except for the individual quirk assessment.”
It takes all of two seconds for Ochako to realize the implications Nezu’s words carry if she wants to participate.
With it comes the crushing weight of everything that happened before- her mistake, the clumsiness, the frantic apology, and the utter havoc one moment wreaked on her heart- who she would’ve turned to for this kind of thing once upon a few hours ago, she can’t even look at anymore.
She’s a bona fide Atlas, but her quirk has given out, the upper limit exerted. When the sky comes tumbling down, there’s only so much her shoulders can take. The same old urge to retch and heave creeps up inside. Ochako folds in on herself. Everything is wrong now. All ruined. All her fault.
How could she have been so stupid?
The question looms over her like a juicy piece of meat dangled over a starving lion’s gaping maw it can’t quite reach. Ochako’s a glutton for punishment and so she bats up to it repeatedly, tearing a little bit more of herself down with it every time. Her hunger to know is all-consuming.
There’s never going to be an answer, not one that won’t hurt.
Ochako might have shown up to Nezu’s office in the regalia of a tragic teenage girl post-break-up scene from one of the guilty pleasure chick flicks Mina watches, but she still has standards.
Crying in here is a low she absolutely will not hit.
Whatever it takes to get a grip, she’s going to do.
She bites her lip. Gazing at the ceiling and refusing to blink, she ignores the metallic taste of blood. Her nails dig into her palms.
Sure, it’ll leave several crescent-shaped marks, but it hones her concentration. Ochako doesn’t completely absorb the rest of the ongoing dialogue. Something about the six of them getting told before the rest of the school because Momo was the architect of it all. A couple more queries and quips.
There is the dull ache of her lip and her stinging hands. It’s enough to keep the liquid proof of her emotions at bay.
She staggers out the door once they’re dismissed, trailing behind their excited babbling.
“Are you going to do the pageant, ‘Chako?” Tsu falls in line with her when they’re halfway back to the dorms. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”
She knows Tsu will catch onto the underlying cause of her behavior sometime soon if she doesn't outright tell her first. But, the wound is still raw, torn anew by the requirement of a boy to escort them.
Ochako stares at the pavement disappearing in rhythmic motions beneath her feet.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
Katsuki’s never been one for gossip.
He hates that shit. A waste-of-breath-dulling-of-the-mind experience that accomplishes less than nothing. Talking about a situation doesn’t change it. Feelings towards it are irrelevant. Deal or don’t.
It ain’t fucking rocket science.
The sound of his mother’s voice along with the smell of coffee floats up the stairs and she’s doing exactly that. Flapping her jaws like a schoolgirl on about her crush from homeroom to whichever shitty friend she’s invited over.
Katsuki uses the term loosely. Lord knows why anyone would voluntarily spend time with the bitch. Wasn’t like he chose to be here of his own accord.
His nerves are raw at the best of times and she shreds them like they’re prime real estate for a goddamn cheese grater. Calling last night to demand he squander his day off, pissing Sunday away here in the name of “quality time with the family” or whatever lovey-dovey bullshit terminology she’d used over the phone.
Yeah, right. Like hell she meant that.
If he can’t train his body today, he wants to train his mind. Convenient as it is to blast himself through the air, that ability isn’t worth shit without understanding how to do it. There’s force it creates- mass and acceleration- mix it with velocity and factor in time to yield the issue of momentum.
Don’t get him started on having to account for wind resistance or recoil. And a million other things he has to factor into these clusterfucks called equations to solve for what he wants.
But it’s damn near impossible with the door to his bedroom wide open like he’s the latest addition to a museum display. The wicked witch and her monkey minion are doing a gallery walk, yapping with the gusto of those ugly ass purse dogs with beady eyes.
Katsuki moves to shut the door and before he can even finish stomping his way across the carpet, a screaming tears across his eardrums.
“Think about closing that door Katsuki and I’ll rip it off its goddamn hinges!”
“The fuck am I home for in the first place?” is what he fires back, launching a ball of venom off his tongue with an overload of decibels.
A voice emerges in the following silence like the first signs of life crawling to the surface after an asteroid collision. It gut punches Katsuki without reserve, clobbering him with a fistful of memories he’d rather not have.
He couldn’t make it out at first. Not over the shrill static of his mother’s jabbering. But that interference is gone now, along with his own effort to tune out the station.
The signal comes in crystal clear this time.
“Oh, I didn’t know Katsuki was home.”
Said by none other than Deku’s fucking mom.
“Yeah, he’s a real joy of a houseguest,” his mother snorts.
“You invited me here, old cow,” Katsuki hurls it down the stairs for all its worth.
The clinking of a spoon against the side of a mug fills the quiet, but he knows better than to think the storm has passed. This is the eye- calm halfway through the coming calamity.
“They sure do work our boys hard,” Mrs. Midoriya says uneasily downstairs, as if testing the waters after a tsunami for shipyard clearance. It’s meant to be an olive branch, but the grouping of himself alongside Deku, so much as suggesting the notion that they could possibly share something in any way, shape, or form makes Katsuki bristle like a porcupine. “Izuku hasn’t stopped by in weeks.”
Forget ripping the door off its hinges, Katsuki is ready to explode it out the fucking frame.
He strides back to his desk, equations swimming before him, now meaningless after being washed out in the tide of rage.
Pencil to paper. Mind to matter. This is a rhythm he knows well, one he can get lost in. Using his quirk in the house is a sure-fire way of inviting the screaming match of the century.
Lovely as that sounds, Katsuki has better things to do. Physics, for one. Goddamn vectors.
“I have to practically hold a gun to Katsuki’s head to get him to come home,” his mother replies with a calculated laugh.
Not true, he thinks and beads of sweat begin to crop up on his palms.
Living in a constant state of fury means that Katsuki has plenty of firsthand experience in leaving his temper on low, letting it stew at a simmer till it inevitably boils over in a massive blowout. That being said, there are certain things that can turn that dial all the way up and escalate the eruption from that of a kid’s science fair project on volcanoes to Old Faithful at full steam.
Being the subject of gossip is one of them. Deku is another.
“Izuku does update me often, though. Just yesterday he told me they’re going to have a pageant for the girls.” whether Mrs. Midoriya knew how thin the ice she was treading on before was or not, this shatters it in its entirety.
The pencil slips out of Katsuki’s grip, slick with that nitroglycerin-like fluid he’s too good at producing. It slides across the notebook, spreading a thin coat of on-the-brink-of-explosion dampness wherever it rolls.
“A pageant for the girls?” there’s an edge in his mother’s voice, hidden in the innocent question.
He has about five minutes before he cuts himself on it when she inexorably goes slashing it around like a serial killer on a stabbing rampage. Katsuki is no fan of being held at knifepoint but he’s here, stuck between a sharp object and a hard place.
Two or fewer questions before either of their fuses burns to the base. It’s a matter of whose burns faster.
At this point, Katsuki is huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf and he’s damn near ready to bring this house down in one shot.
“Yes, sort of like a beauty pageant but most of the main components were switched for combat exercises. It’s about them as heroes, that’s how he described it,” Mrs. Midoriya carries on like a sleepwalker on a tightrope, oblivious to the danger she’s one gust of wind away from plummeting into. “Even our boys might have a chance to participate, they’re supposed to have escorts for the girls who compete. So, in reality it’s more like a pairs competition, according to Izuku.”
With that, the final nail is rammed into the coffin, Katsuki’s fate sealed as Mrs. Midoriya lends that information all too willingly and leaps to her death into the abyss below.
The hag is going to come here any minute now, wailing like the banshee she is. Katsuki’s itching for a fight and he’s not going to pull any of his punches. Damn it all to hell, he’s not getting torn a new one over having the chance to participate in a fucking beauty pageant.
He doesn’t understand why she cares about it, but he knows that she does. And it’s not like he told her about it.
That’s enough to start nuclear war with them.
Mrs. Midoriya might want to run for the hills if she values her hearing. Or else she’s about to get a taste of what it’s like to be one of the bystanders at Chernobyl.
“Oh, really?” Katsuki swears he can hear the microscopic lift of his mother’s brows in those words, the tell-tale sign that she’s about to unleash a can of whoop-ass. “That sounds lovely. Is Izuku going to be an escort?”
The kicker comes in the latter half -that superficially inoffensive inquiry about Deku- it knocks Katsuki on his ass.
Bitch said that on purpose. No doubt about it. Knew it would only add fuel to his fire that’s a lot closer to an inferno by now.
But in the Bakugo household, words and actions speak at the same volume. If it’s said, there will be consequences, a guaranteed follow through on someone’s part to make the other put their money where their mouth is.
“I don’t know yet,” Mrs. Midoriya replies. “I just know they’re having a pageant is all. He has one friend who might ask him, but he hasn’t updated me much about her in the past few weeks.”
Katsuki knows plenty about that and has plenty more to say. However, he does what no one thinks he’s capable of- he bites his damn tongue till he’s sure it’s bleeding.
This is a family affair. She’s not the one he’s gunning for. Not the one who needs to pay.
“Katsuki sure as hell won’t be entering. Any girl who cares about her hero image isn’t gonna want him to ruin it,” his mother says like the fucking snake she is, fangs dripping with smug poison.
Oh.
She’s going to be destitute when he’s done with her.
“I’ll ruin what I damn well please, bitch,” Katsuki flies out of his seat and shouts it out the doorframe like it’s a mountaintop.
It ricochets through the house like a bullet, headed straight for the coffee table with intent to kill.
Katsuki understands why silence can be described as deafening. All he can hear is blood rushing to his skull, heat rising under his skin in white-hot anger. Seeing red is an understatement. It takes over all his senses with reckless abandon.
Deku gets everything, and he’s nothing more than a weakling. Frail and breakable. Like one of those damn boxes valuables are shipped in that say FRAGILE: Do Not Touch.
Katsuki’s been working at this his entire life and he’s a natural to boot, so this thing, ridiculous as it is, that his mother dares to imply Deku could have over him, no instead of him- the best and brightest genetics and the one hundred and ten percent of effort he puts in day in and day out can produce- makes him want to reduce this house to nothing more than a pile of ash and a few scorch marks on the property. Burning it twice as bad as this has burned him.
And in the time that Katsuki’s taken to wallow in this particularly bad flare up of the eternal temper tantrum he’s throwing over someone who shouldn’t- no, doesn’t matter to him, his mother’s wrapped up her meeting with Mrs. Midoriya in one fell swoop, tying up all the loose ends in a neat bow and delivering her guest out the door from whence she came.
Maybe deliberately, she drags her feet up the stairs like she’s got all the time in the world, incessant thumping that seems to never end. She’s stirring in her rage too, dismantling that wall of politeness to reveal much nastier foundations.
By the time she gets to his room, they’re both fuming. The tension built between them ready to detonate with the slightest amount of pressure on its hair trigger.
Katsuki swings with everything he’s got the minute she steps foot through the door. If it’s a crappy carnival game with one of those meters that test your strength, he’s going for a high score.
“You fucking invite her-” that’s as far as Katsuki gets.
“Don’t you even start with me,” she hisses and points a finger at him. “I can invite whoever I so desire. My house, my rules. Get out if you don’t fucking like it.”
“I ain’t wanna be here in the first place,” Katsuki returns and swats her hand away. “If you want me home, don’t go around inviting the mother of that piece of shit.”
“Quit being such a little bitch,” she says and cuffs him by the ear. “I’ll be damned if you think you can scream like that with a guest around. Like her or not, you will respect the people I bring into this house, Katsuki.”
“Like hell!” he bellows, palms itching from an overabundance of sweat.
“Violate the rules of hospitality and make me look bad ever again- your ass won’t be enrolled at UA anymore.”
It’s an empty threat, and Katsuki knows this. She wants him there with an almost equal amount of fervor that he does. He wouldn’t have gotten this far if she didn’t.
But Katsuki’s too hyped up on his own emotions to rationalize it. He looses a guttural sound in response, half yell and half something else, incapable of articulating anymore.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter if you attend. Keep up this act and no agency will hire you. It’s the same reason I said no girl at that school will want you to join her in that beauty pageant.”
“I didn’t tell you about it for a reason.” Katsuki is done with this argument. It’s about nothing and everything and he’s not going to partake in it any longer. Waste of his time.
“Stupid girly shit,” he mutters bitterly.
He turns tail and heads back towards his desk where his notebook lies.
“Oh, don’t you walk away from me, Katsuki. We’re not finished.”
She stomps after him and soon her shadow looms large over the scrawl of diagrams and equations he’s dedicated himself to with renewed vigor.
“Write it off as stupid girly shit. Shows what you know,” his mother’s got the ears of a hawk, and she’s honed in on her prey. “You’re an idiot if you don’t see an opportunity.”
He takes to being called an idiot like a newborn baby to deadlifting three hundred pounds. “Say that again and I’ll kill you.” Katsuki tightens his grip on the pencil.
“You’re scared because you know I’m right.” she’s cruising for something special, alright. “Make all the excuses you want. At the end of the day, it’s about your little ego. Who would ever want to do the interview portion with you. Amazing public image that would create for them. They won’t pick you, so you won’t pick them.”
Katsuki’s list of things he hates doesn’t end at Deku and gossip. No, it’s a bottomless expanse that can stretch to accommodate anything and everything that offends him, and close to the top is Freudian bullshit; any kind of psychoanalysis pisses him off to no end. His mother thinks she’s got the goddamn sofa and ink blots to match at this point, scrutinizing him with the magnifying glass of her words.
“They’d be fuckin’ lucky if I chose them,” he shouts back. The world is a haze around him and all he knows is to lash out at it in an attempt to clear the fog. “You don’t know shit about this. Or me.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Katsuki. I’ll consider you blessed by a goddamn saint if you worm your way in,” she doesn’t need to whack the back of his head, this is enough of a slap on its own.
Saints are known for helping the sickly and poor, and the implication that he’s someone who needs a handout for something as idiotic and inconsequential as a entering a beauty pageant tips Katsuki over the edge.
Violence is no stranger to him, all he needs is a target to direct it at. He brings down his open hand with the force of an angry god.
Unfortunately, Katsuki aimed for the nearest object. And boy, is his aim deadly.
From the amount of friction created on impact and the puddle of that oh-so combustible sweat of his already tainting it, Katsuki’s notebook explodes.
It’s no small thing either; tendrils of paper smoldering at the edges fly through the air. Scrawls of equations and all devoured by the flames.
The acrid tang of smoke gags the two of them. His mother swats at the burning pages, fanning them away from her face.
Less than two seconds later, the smoke detector goes off.
“For fuck’s sake!” his mother’s yelling pierces through the crackling noise created by the fire eating at thousands of shreds of what used to be Katsuki’s notebook.
The smell of burning plastic, the cover half-melted. Little piles of ash settling on the hardwood as paper scraps disintegrate. Mother and son staring at each other in a way that it’s a miracle they don’t spontaneously combust due to the heat of their eyes. Smoke detector still beeping.
All in all, it’s a lot to take in.
In fact, the scene itself is encompassing enough that Katsuki didn’t hear the chime of the doorbell a few minutes ago or the new pair of footsteps heading up the stairs.
“Honey, I’m home! Is there a fire? What’s going on-” just Katsuki’s luck, his dad’s voice grows louder and louder until its crescendo is cut off the second he looks into Katsuki’s bedroom.
“Fucking fire department!” his mother pushes past his father and hurries down the stairs as the blare of sirens grows closer.
His father blinks once. Then again.
“What’re you looking at?” Katsuki doesn’t give a shit if it looks like a bomb went off in here. “I could enter a stupid beauty pageant if I wanted, no matter what the bitch says.”
His father looks like he’s tried to swallow a frog whole and is quickly learning that it doesn’t go down so easy. Did his son say something about wanting to enter a beauty pageant?
Blue and red light begins to splash on the wall behind his father in alternating flashes. Of course, the smoke detector has done its job. A little too well.
With a volume that would make a stranger gawk at how she still has functioning vocal cords, his mother screams his name.
And this is why Katsuki has never been one for gossip.
Blasting himself through the roof of a building and needing to come out a few stories beneath gives Katsuki time to reflect.
They’re doing a free-for-all combat exercise in a fake city block crafted by Cementoss, shattered pavement and shrapnel soaring. Outside the designated area, the fields (he’s got quite the view from up here) gleam with fresh dew.
Monday morning at UA.
This is one of the more boring ones, truth be told.
However, they’re on the flip side of the pageant announcement and entry submissions are due at the end of the week. Not to Katsuki’s surprise but much to his irritation, the class grapevine is doing its damndest to grow like kudzu; comments about projected winners and people pairing up weaving their way into each and every conversation.
The fifteen minutes in the classroom before Aizawa dragged his ass out of his sleeping bag were torture.
Katsuki hits the floor beneath. It splinters on impact, a spider’s web of cracks fissuring outwards. Of course, that’s not enough for him. As he plunges into the chasm of his own creation, a series of explosions pulverize the rubble to dust.
He doesn’t need to accelerate this fall- conserving energy by only demolishing subsequent floors- gravity does enough work to take him where he wants to be. All he has to do is remove what’s in the way.
Five floors to go. Todoroki will be at the base, to the left. Standing on a mountain of ice. Last Katsuki saw.
Fucker. He’s going to get to participate in that idiotic shit. Asked by none other than bob-the-builder-with-a-ponytail this morning.
Todoroki had the audacity to be confused. Getting a clue has never been his forte, but it’s gotta be a new world record for obliviousness. Drives Katsuki up a wall.
Speaking of things that drive Katsuki up a wall, his bitch mother has the innate ability to turn him into a mountain goat on a flat vertical surface. In the aftermath of dealing with the fire department, he’d sat there simmering from all her pageantry crap.
The ground of the next floor comes up to greet him. Katsuki gives it a nice warm welcome: he explodes it.
She’d yammered about how it’s impossible for him. No girl with an ounce of sense in her body would touch him with a ten-foot pole. Actually closer to a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot one, because he’s the fucking Grinch.
It’s about public image, and Katsuki knows his is a scourge. Being muzzled like a rabid dog at the sports festival podium tends to make an impression on the general consciousness. And it’s not a good one.
Wind whistles in his ears. A swift punch and a burst of heat. Three floors remain before he needs to change his trajectory.
However, Katsuki never sits on his ass. Even if it looks like he is. Sitting there, snappy after dealing with firemen who couldn’t seem to process there wasn’t a problem, gears turned in his head. Forget physics, Katsuki’s mind was calculating a new equation.
Another floor gets smashed by Katsuki. There’s only two more waiting for him.
He would never admit it, but his mother is right. It is an opportunity. One of the best he’s been presented with in a while.
It’s a fundamental truth of Bakugo Katsuki that he despises being wrong; it means he’s fallible. Excellence means no error. But, he can reconcile it with his ego if he can trick himself into drawing the conclusion he’s been led to on his own. Nothing like shielding the psyche.
The very reason he’s the opposite of a shoo-in for this pageant tomfoolery is the very reason he knows he needs to be a part of it, now, after working it out for himself. He’s a media antagonist, not a darling. Yet, he’d be loath to deny that public perception is one of the cornerstones of marketing yourself as a pro, and Katsuki wants to be the greatest of all time.
There’s the battle royale component, too.
Passing up a chance to show his prowess on national television is something he’ll do when his body is six feet under in this bitch of an earth.
Is it ‘stupid girly shit?’ Absolutely.
That’s what makes it perfect.
Make himself seem like some prince charming wannabe by escorting a girl and the media will go wild. Get to show the world how fan-fucking-tastic he is in the process.
Piece of cake. And it’s fucking delicious.
Katsuki beats the shit out of the next floor. One more left till Todoroki gets what he deserves.
Nonetheless, he’s still missing the final piece of the puzzle, the last input into the equation to make it spit something out.
For all that to happen, he needs, well… a girl.
Ain’t like he knows where to find one he can stand for this. Mina’s the only one who hangs around him, but she’s a dimwit and already asked Kirishima. Exhibit A for dimwit being part of her description.
The last floor hurtles towards Katsuki at breakneck speed. Time to change direction. He doesn’t want to destroy this one, he needs to shoot out the leftmost wall like a cannonball with a vengeance.
He brings his hands in front of him and releases a pointed explosion, shifting to a ninety degree angle. The wall gives out the instant he makes contact with it. Blue sky emerges above. He’s in the open air.
Katsuki had been relying on gravity to be the sole accelerator of his fall. What he hadn’t been counting on was someone else being in the air, this is a domain that belongs to him.
Someone who could remove the effects of gravity in its entirety.
She’s floating there, right above what should have been his end location if she hadn’t splayed her hands out and connected one of them with his shoulder coming out of the wall.
Eyes wide, she’s got a full on deer in the headlights look. Her cheeks are pinker than usual, wind burn the likely culprit.
A meteor shower waiting to end him. She’s the one who made it, at the sports festival. The match Katsuki can’t forget.
A worthy opponent. Possible entrant into that dumbass pageant. Uraraka.
Katsuki’s crashed into his solution.