robson_girl
By their second year at U.A., most rivalries are supposed to mellow into something tolerable. Something you can work around. Something you can fake a smile through when the cameras are on.
Katsuki Bakugo and Lily Takami missed that lesson entirely.
They've hated each other since first year. Real hate, the kind that's intentional and earned. Not a misunderstanding. Not a temporary clash of egos. Two solid years of sharp words, wrecked training grounds and a quiet scoreboard that tracks who's landed the nastier hit, who's walked away bleeding, who's refused to be the one to back down first.
Bakugo's explosions are raw and aggressive, loud enough to demand the world's attention.
Takami's black fire is something else.
It doesn't flare. It doesn't roar. It creeps in with control and pressure, a heavy, smothering heat that swallows light and sound like it's starving. It doesn't burn bright.
It burns down to the bone.
Now it's their second year. Pro rankings are on the horizon, reputations are becoming real currency, and U.A. keeps shoving them into the same space-joint internships, shared missions, "strategic pairings" meant to sharpen their teamwork.
The staff calls it efficient.
Everyone else calls it a catastrophe waiting for a trigger.
Because when Bakugo blows the world apart, Takami doesn't even blink.
Hatred like theirs doesn't fade with time. It steepens. It changes shape. It settles into the pauses between insults, the half-second too long of eye contact across a training mat, the almost-touch of hands in a rush to the same target. They know each other's rhythm better than anyone else does.
They've spent two years trying to overpower each other.
Neither of them has stopped to ask what happens when that combustion stops being a weapon, and turns into a reaction neither of them can stop.