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Sakura hummed as she made her way through the wooded area, beryl eyes glued to the ground as she searched for her prey. Hanging from a strap on one small shoulder was a plastic, bright blue bug box with three tiny snails inside. Around her, the sound of cicadas was nearly overwhelming in the warm summer afternoon.
“Hmmm, maybe here?” She whispered to herself as she came upon a cluster of rocks half buried in the ground. The eight-year-old kneeled in the soft soil, heedless of the dirt smearing the yellow fabric of her dress. She could still hear the sounds of the other kids screaming and laughing as they played back on the playground, so she wasn’t too far away just like she had promised her Papa.
Small hands began to dig and lift the rocks in front of her, intent to find the snails that she was looking for. Her Auntie Tsunade had shown her the coolest snails and slugs when she had visited her house the other week. She had said that she started her own collection of mollusks by digging in her garden when she was a little girl, and Sakura was determined to do the same.
She had already been gifted Katsuyu, one of Tsunade’s Giant African Land Snails, and was learning so much about how to take care of them!
So lost in her own thoughts about snail care and habitats was she that Sakura didn’t hear the loud trampling of footsteps through the foliage until the person was on top of her.
Literally.
Sakura looked up from her snail hunt just in time to see a blur of blonde and white barrel into her head-first, sending both of them tumbling back and into the mossy ground behind her. The woods were surprisingly quiet as green eyes stared up at the branches and leaves above her, trying to figure out what just happened.
Next to her, whatever beast had tried to run her over let out a series of curses that would have surely led to a scolding from her Mama that would have made her ears ring.
“Hey, are you broken or somethin’?” A boy about her age leaned over her, bright red eyes looking at her skeptically. His forehead was covered in sweat and clumps of dirt were lodged within his spiky hair. The frown on his face worsened. “You aren’t gonna cry are ya?”
Sakura groaned and rolled over so that she could push herself up to her feet. In the back of her mind, a small part of her mourned over the scolding she was sure to get from her mother about the state of her dress. She scowled over at the boy responsible for her future misery.
“You should really watch where you’re going, ya know? We could have gotten hurt!” Without thinking, Sakura stepped forward and poked the strange boy on the chest. Carmine eyes blinked in surprise before narrowing in annoyance.
“Pssh, whatever! What kind of weirdo just hangs out in the woods alone anyways?”
An indignant squeak made its way from her mouth. “You’re out here alone too you-you....you weirdo!”
“I already called you a weirdo, you can’t call me a weirdo!”
“Oh yeah?!”
“Yeah!”
“Guys! I think he went over here!” What sounded like other kids their age shouting in excitement broke them out of their argument. The boy scowled over his shoulder towards the racket and grabbed her wrist before pulling her away from the clearing and further into the trees.
“Hey-!” She shouted, only to be cut off when she was pushed into a random bush. The boy jumped in after her and was quick to slap his hand over her mouth while he peered through the leaves surrounding them. Not long after they had settled, a group of three or four boys came trampling into the area.
“Aw man, I thought we had him that time,” one of the boys whined. One of the boys stayed around the edge of the clearing, seemingly more subdued than his comrades. “He’s too fast.”
“I swear I heard him over this way. How much time do we have left?” A second boy asked. All of them were practically covered in sweat from running around outside. A few of the group spread out, and Sakura found herself subconsciously holding her breath when one of the buys came close to their hiding place.
“We still have like, two minutes I think.” Another one mused. This one was slightly bigger than the others, and Sakura nearly cried out when she realized that his foot was precariously close to stepping on her bug container. “Come on, let’s go check out deeper in the trees. He’s not gonna win this time!”
Just as quickly as they arrived, the group was gone. Sakura waited for the boy to remove the hand that was still covering her mouth, however when he didn’t she took the liberty of working up a good bit of spit before licking his hand. It tasted absolutely horrendous, but the squeal of disgust that escaped him was more than worth it.
While he was busy scrubbing his hand on his pants and mumbling about germs, Sakura scurried over to her container to check on the little critters inside. Thankfully, the snails seemed completely unbothered by their near brush with death by bigfoot.
“What the heck didja do that for? I knew you were a weirdo! Who licks other people like that?!”
Sakura whipped her attention back to him. “Who drags random girls into bushes? Perverts, that’s who!”
“Who the heck are you calling a pervert?!” Sparks started shooting from his hands, and ok-that was a pretty cool quirk. But Sakura refused to get distracted. “The name’s Bakugou Katsuki, and don’t you forget it!”
“Ha! I told you he was here!” The boys from earlier came crowding back into their area. Sakura got a better look at the boy that had caught her attention earlier. He was scrawny with wild green hair and covered in freckles. His hands were twisting into the bottom of his shirt and he was covered in about as much dirt as Sakura was, which was saying something cause she had pretty much been rolling around in it.
He stood next to two other boys, a shorter one with wings growing from his back and a taller boy with...really large teeth. It took Sakura a moment to realize that they were watching the larger kids warily, and all of them looked pretty roughed up for a day at the park.
The bigger kid that had almost smooshed her snails stepped forward away from the group and stood in front of Bakugou with his arms crossed and a nasty grin on his face. Two other kids came up to either side of the blonde, throwing their arms across his shoulders and roughly digging their knuckles into the top of his head.
“Found you, loser.” Bakugou growled at them like the feral child Sakura was coming to believe he was.
“Who’re you calling a ‘loser’? And I thought we were just playing hide and seek, Genji. Why are my friends all banged up, huh?”
“You, obviously. And I don' have to answer to you, but if you wanna know they slipped and fell into a couple of trees.” Genji sneered before turning his attention to her.
“What’s this?” He said. Sakura tensed as he stepped uncomfortably close to her. “Big, bad Bakugou is out in the woods hanging out with a girl collecting bugs. What's with the pink hair, huh?”
Bony hands yanked her blue box out of her grasp from behind her and held it above her reach. The owner of those hands laughed derisively. “What are these? Snails? They aren’t even finding anything cool!”
“Give them back." Sakura demanded as she reached up for the box. The boy’s fingers were freakishly long, probably something to do with his quirk. There was a rushing sound in her ears that drowned out the sound of his cackling and she had to remind herself to not lose her temper.
Genji wrapped a sweaty arm around her shoulders and pulled her in until his hand rested on the shoulder closest to him. Sakura’s nose scrunched as the smell of his sweat assaulted her senses.
“Bakugou really likes to collect his strays doesn’t he? First that quirkless wonder and now this freak with the pink hair and massive forehead!” The rushing sound morphed into an aggressive pounding as Sakura glared at the taller boy through her loose bangs.
“You wanna repeat that for me?” She asked, voice deceptively soft.
“What, is your forehead so big that it’s making you hard of hearing? You probably can pick-up satellite with a billboard brow like that!”
With a mighty cry, Sakura wrapped her tiny fists into the boy’s shirt, pivoted and flipped him over her shoulder and onto his back on the forest floor. There was a tense moment of silence before the popping sound of sparks coming off of Bakugou’s hands got progressively louder.
“FIGHT!!” The blonde shouted before moving to tackle the boy that had dug his knuckles into Bakugou’s head earlier. The three other boys yelled as well before jumping into the fray, and before Sakura knew it chaos descended.
Sakura growled as fingers found themselves tangled in her hair and swung an uppercut in retaliation. The green haired boy from earlier was suddenly at her side, swinging a stick at the bully in front of her and forcing him further back.
Before she knew it, the bullies had run from the clearing sporting new bruises and scuffs from their tussle. Sakura gave a final huff in their direction before marching over to her abandoned box to check on her snails.
Mochi, the first snail she had found, waved one of her upper tentacles in Sakura’s direction while the other two were comfortably settled on the leaves and sticks she had stuck in there earlier. She heard Bakugou aggressively whispering to his friends behind her and turned to face the group of remaining boys.
“You’re not that bad for a girl,” he said. Sakura felt one of her eyebrows twitch in annoyance. “You got a strength quirk or somethin’?”
“Or something,” she said as she tried in vain to brush the dirt from her knees. The green haired boy next to her held out a folded piece of cloth in her direction. Sakura shot him a bright smile. “Thank you!”
Bakugou pushed his way in front of the stuttering boy and back into her field of vision. “Hey! You should hang out with us from now on. What’s your name? I’ve never seen you around here before.”
“My name’s Haruno Sakura! I just moved here from Tokyo.”
“Like I said earlier, my name is Bakugou Katsuki, you can call me Katsuki. Over there is Suzuki Mitsuru and Ito Kaito.” Big Teeth and Wings gave jaunty waves and smiles her way. “And this one here is Midoriya Izuku.” He finished with an aggressive smile that showed off the points of his canine teeth. The hand she licked earlier was held out to her, asking if she would like to accept their friendship.
Sakura signed and swung the strap to her bug box back over her shoulder and looked at the four boys with a considerate eye. With a smirk of her own, she thrust out her hand to Katsuki and shook his offered hand.
"I guess you aren't so bad, for a pervert." Sakura threw her head back and laughed when Katsuki started choking on air, trying to deny her words when Izuku turned scandalized eyes his way.
It was the start of a relationship that would undoubtedly last for years to come.