aerie (bakugo katsuki x oc)

chapter 43: hello, motherfucker

   There's a shit ton of people here. Like, way more than I expected. Who knew so many people buy into this prep school bullshit? Can't you get the same exact hero license by going to any dingy old hero school?

I look around at everyone, trying to "scope people out", as Shiggy put it. Not sure what that means exactly, they all look like hero nerds to me. But I guess some of these dweebs may be my classmates soon, and I should probably get on "collecting information", otherwise this little field trip of mine would be pointless.

After looking around and trying to figure out how many of these people are actually worth shit, I see a familiar face in the crowd. With that spiky blond hair and angled eyes, there's no doubt about it, it's him.

No fucking way! It's the sludge villain kid! Me and Shiggy laughed about that shit for hours! This is awesome. I've got to go talk to this guy.

   I quickly my way through the crowd to get to him. "Hey!" I call.

   His eyes widen slightly as he looks me up and down, then frowns. "What the hell do you want?"

   "Aren't you that sludge villain guy?" I ask, trying to hide my excitement.

I need to get his autograph or something.

   "Get the hell away from me!" he shouts, obviously triggered.

   Not gonna lie, I'm a bit taken aback. I haven't been yelled at that passionately since I was a kid. It's pretty shocking, but in a good way. It kinda makes me feel alive.

My initial reaction is to giggle.

What's with this dude? Sore subject? Better rub it in.

"I'm sorry," I say with a laugh. "It's just, the look on your face was priceless! I had never seen something so hilarious on TV before. I'm glad you lived, though, thanks to your quirkless little buddy, who did more to save you than you did yourself."

The look on his face is beautiful, just beautiful. But before he can open his mouth to yell at me again, someone screams over the intercom.

"And begin!"

Everyone takes off running, and I pull ahead of the pack with ease.

   Damn, these people are slow. And they think they can be heroes? What a joke.

   However, there is one person keeping up with me, sludge guy. He's actually kind fast (not fast enough to get away from the sludge villain, though).

   He looks over at me, makes a disgusted face, then sprints even faster to pass me.

Bastard!

"Oh, no you don't," I say to myself, then beam ahead of him.

I turn around to see the look on his face now, and it's absolutely priceless. I salute to him and sprint on ahead.

Take that. Now I'm "the hell away from you". Happy? Loser.

I'm the first one to get to the robots, and now that I'm in front of them, I'm a bit intimidated. I was trained in Judo (with a little teleportation sprinkled in there), but that's for fighting people, not 15 foot tall machines. But hell, it's now or never.

I beam to the top of the bigger one on the left, and just as I'd hoped, the one adjacent starts to attack. I quickly get beam back to the ground, and watch as they crash into each other like the dumb machines they are.

Easier than I expected.

I beam around like crazy, racking up points like it's nobody's business. This whole 'glitching' thing is annoying as hell, I have to snap like 10 times to get around where I want to go. It's kind of hard to gauge the distance, and I slip up here and there. I should probably work on that.

But after using the same method on the robots over and over, and I'm starting to feel like a one trick pony.

Time to shake things up a bit.

I try to figure out different ways to approach this without just beaming them to nowhere, (which is obviously the simplest and most effective way of going about this). But alas, Shiggy said not to show anyone I can take objects or people with me. He doesn't want anyone knowing my "true power". But martial arts doesn't get you too far fighting giant mechanical opponents, so it's back to method numero uno. If I can't show off by diversity in my technique, I can at least rack up a shit ton of points.

But after a while, the robots get too spread out for me to do the bait and switch method.

60 points is not enough! There's got to be a group of them somewhere around here.

After minute or two of searching around the arena, wasting precious time, I finally spot a group of 3 three-pointers all together about 100 yards away.

Perfect, 9 more points for 69!

After snapping 6 or 7 times to finally get there, I waste no time beaming on top of the one in the middle. But when I get there, I hear a beautifully raspy voice behind me screaming "Die!"

I turn around to look, and see sludge guy midair, palms glowing, looking like he's about to hit me with some sort of attack. But when he sees me, his face goes from determined to pissed, and instead of activating whatever quirk he has, he falls right back to the ground.

What was that about? I could've just beamed out of the way. What an idiot.

The other robot has already sensed me and is about to to attack, which is gonna squish this guy into mush. What Shiggy said about not beaming other people replays in my head, but I just can't let sludge guy get turned into a pancake. Asshole or not, I'm kind of a big fan.

   Before I have time to second guess myself, I beam to the ground and grab him by the arm, bringing him on top of the other robot with me.

Whew, that was close. Alleycat's gonna be mad, but at least sludge guy will be forever in my favor.

But instead of kissing my feet in gratitude, the ungrateful prick snatches his arm away from me, with a horrified look on his face. "What the hell was that?!" he shrieks, seeming panicked.

Ah. Some people react like that the first time they go nowhere. Oh well, he'll get over it.

   I playfully punch his arm. "You just glitched, brother!" I say with a proud smile. "No need to thank me."

He turns to face me, actually looking pretty intimidating. "Thank you?" he says, kind of getting in my face.

Oh, wow. Something about the way he said that just now makes me feel weird. I start to get a giddy feeling in my throat.

"You're welcome!" I say, kinda panicking at the strange feeling. I beam back to the ground to try to focus on killing these things again instead of that spiky haired... raspy voiced hothead with those crimson red eyes...

Jesus, what the hell has gotten into me?

I watch the -sludge guy- leap in the air, spin around, and unleash powerful explosions from his hands, destroying all three before I even had a chance.

Holy shit. This guy's kinda awesome.

I beam back next to him to bitch about him stealing my kills, but he turns to me looking pissed as hell.

   "Why the hell would I thank you?!" he shouts, "It was your fault I fell in the first place!"

   What's with this guy? Why is he screaming at me like that?! I've never seen such unadulterated anger conveyed so unapologetically! What a riveting experience!

   I shake my head to clear my moment of infatuation. "Yeah, but I also saved you. So let's call it even," I say, then beam the hell out of there before I gawk even more at his fascinating behavior.

   And just like that, the entrance exam is over. With me in second place. Score.