VOID [Katsuki Bakugo x OC]

Rule #9: Be Unforgettable

♪

Katsuki got his first real taste of non-hero fame that same morning.

Starting with a five minute breakfast, Cadence moved non-stop. She didn't even sit down to eat, but stood in the corner of the room, allowing herself to get poked and prodded during morning inspections while she crammed a protein bar and a cup of black coffee into her face without thought. Katsuki watched as Cade produced a finger for her first sugar check of the day and didn't even wince as the lancet pierced her skin. Someone wiped her face with a cream as she chewed, and another set of hands tied her hair back while she swallowed.

Like a doll.

Next, the group crawled to the gym, their bodyguards trailing along silently. All still yawned and rubbed the sleep from their eyes. Impressed and a little terrified, Katsuki jogged silently beside Cadence as she cranked the elevation on her treadmill as high as it would go and proceeded to sprint uphill. For ten minutes straight. Full tilt.

After the treadmill, she did one hundred push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, and a ten minute plank, all in total silence. No music. Nothing.

Katsuki matched her rep-for-rep and second-to-second without a word. She was obviously working through something, or having a 'moment' of some kind. And as much as he wanted to know what was going on in that weird little head of hers, he didn't care enough to ask. But... he wondered.

After she finished in the showers—careful not to get her hair wet—Cade and Ari met their bodyguards in the hall, where the boys ghosted alongside their wards, silent as death.

At the elevator, Katsuki ended up beside Aria, and Shinso beside Cadence. In the mirrored walls of the upscale elevator, Cade's expressionless façade warped and twisted, darkening and unfurling into something hideous. Katsuki couldn't help but think that maybe—

"Did you do something?"

He started, surprised to hear the whisper from the girl beside him. Aria, nearly a foot shorter than Katsuki, hadn't even moved her lips when she said it, and didn't even open her eyes when she spoke. Her head tilted back against the wall, and if Kat hadn't known better, he would've thought she was asleep.

"Did I do something?" He repeated in the same hushed tone she used, a little dumbfounded and pissy. "Like what?"

Aria poked one eye open, sizing Katsuki up for a bone-chilling second. "Trust me, we've seen it all, porcupine. Now... Why's Cade being weird? Did. You. Do. Something?"

Katsuki understood. "Your mom woke Cade with bitchery and bullshit at the crack of ass this morning," he hissed, "And I had to intervene."

"'Intervene', hm?" Aria pouted her lips in thought, as if the part about her mom's bitchiness wasn't anything out of the norm so she breezed right past it. "So you didn't try to make a pass at her? Or try to extort her? Or anything?"

For some reason, the feeling of Cade's lips in the pocket of his palm resurfaced, alighting his body with tingles, her kiss-print vivid and warm and tattooed to his skin. He lowered his head, shoving his hands in his pockets as he grumbled, "No, shit-for-brains, I didn't make a pass or anything at your sister."

Aria smirked. "Funny how that was the one that offended you the most: making a pass at her. Were you imagining past bodyguards doing that? Making a pass at Cade? Because they have. And my parents didn't care."

Before Katsuki could get properly worked up about this newfound information, the elevator dinged, arriving at their destination: the parking garage. And there, just beyond the bulletproof-glass-walled lobby around the elevator, Rocket sat at the wheel of a shiny, new car, beaming from behind her snake-bite piercings, her purple dreadlocks pulled up into a complicated knot atop her head.