A Lucky One

23

"...But, you're growing, aren't you?"

It was such a repetative line.

Mineta often used it to cheer up the others who seemed to be stuck on something in particular.

Like, when Bakugo got told off by Aizawa about the way he uses his quirk. He had a tendency to go back to his old ways of overdestructiveness whenever he was at the edge of his rage. Worse, considering that for the past two years, he's been doing well in terms of holding it in... although it had unexpectedly affected his performance. Even so, that didn't mean Aizawa wasn't going to be less strict about it.

Bakugo turned away, not wanting to hear it, "It's not enough... I need to get stronger."

Mineta paused, looking up at him from his side after he had just witnessed Bakugo blow up half of an abandoned and collapsing building. "But I'm proud of you already though?"

He took a second to glance, but Bakugo did not answer.

He knew how Mineta felt about everyone, just as how he knew about this midget's tendency to give out ridiculously honest remarks, but that did not mean that he knew what he should feel about being told such things.

Mineta frowned with a sigh, "You know, I don't agree with your way of doing this. It's just messed up."

Messed up? My explosions?

"If you shove your anger inside you like that as if it never existed, then it's gonna come out one way or another eventually. And by that time, it'll be as bad as you don't expect it to be."

Oh.

Bakugo gave no response.

"Give yourself a break, you know?"

He raised a brow, trying not taking any of this seriously. "A break... what, like a vacation?"

"Exactly."

Bakugo looked down at his fists, that calloused twice as much as it did last year from all the fighting he's done with villains, with heroes, civilians, and with everyone in general. Then an ache clenched his chest as if he himself was crushing his heart with his own fist and eating it with a ravenous pain until it hurt enough.

He didn't feel like he deserved something so good as a break.

"Where?" He asked, looking then around at all the destruction, the misery, and deathness, that loomed within the eyes of the people who now know no hope. He frowned, "There's no where to go."

"Not where," Mineta smiled, casually tapping Bakugo's arm twice because he could not reach his shoulder, "but, from who."

...That's not how vacations work...

"You're not making any sense."

Mineta shrugged, "You'll understand when you're older."

They were the same age though.

He definitely found it odd how such a tiny thing talked older than he should. He appreciated it though, like it was something to count on. Made him feel like he didn't need to be so worried about trivial things if Mineta was around.

"I don't know if I should be saying this." Mineta turned to head back to the group of people that gathered by a fire, "But somehow, I get the feeling that you aren't made to be someone so mellow."

He was gonna ask about what he meant about the 'who' though. He didn't always understood the midget's words, because they could sometimes sound serious but prove to mean little in the end, or, goofy but actually mean business. He wanted to know which one was it, and what he meant by it.

But he never got to see the boy again. At least, not whole.

It was a gruesome sight.

The villains apparently wanted to see if his quirk still worked after he was dead. So after chopping off his head, they begun pulling at the balls of his hair, but found to their dismay that they, in fact, did not regrow when he died... And neither were they sticky.

Left disappointed, they abandoned his head, hanging on the side of a ruined building where poles of metal stabbed the base of his decapitated neck. Dripping. Decaying. And looking, as bad as it smelled, like something that isn't anymore human, but just another slab of unpreserved meat.

And no matter how long they searched, no one found the body.