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Bakugou Katsuki glowered at the blonde bimbo standing on the other side of the training field, lips pulled back in a feral snarl. One cherry-red eye was twitching, and throbbing veins bulged along his forehead. Killing intent radiated from every atom of his body, and smoke rose from between his fingers as tiny explosions crackled and popped in the palms of his hands in anticipation. He’d been looking forward to this bout all day – another battle, another chance to grind his opposition into the dirt where they belonged as he climbed the ladder to his rightful place at the top of the world. And what better place to do it than right here in the Sports Festival Arena, where that piece of shit Icyhot had cheated him out of his total victory?
Where the four reject newcomers had come from, he didn’t know and he didn’t give two shits. They’d shown up almost a month ago and said that they were from some other faraway school – Bichon or Beacon or something along those lines, he’d just about tuned out everything save for the fact that whatever shithole they’d come from apparently didn’t have Quirks. Sounded like a bunch of fools that’d deluded themselves into thinking that they’d actually amount to anything, a whole school’s worth of useless little Dekus. And sure enough, that green-haired thorn in Katsuki’s side had started sucking up to them like a fly on a cow’s ass, asking a hundred goddamn questions at once and writing it all down in those stupid fucking notebooks of his; god, he wished that he could just incinerate those damn things, but Aizawa always yanked him back whenever he tried to grab one in class. The rest of the extras in 1A hadn’t paid it much mind – they’d gotten used to the sight of Deku continually evading his better’s attempts to knock him back down into the dirt, but the four newcomers… they’d reacted differently.
Whenever he tried to reassert the natural order of himself above the damn nobody when they were in earshot, at least one of them would stop him; either blocking his path to get to Deku, herding the nerd away from him whenever he got close, or even fucking standing up to him and telling him to cut his shit to his face. No matter how loudly he swore and shouted, no matter how many bursts of Explosion he released from his hands, they just outright refused to back down, even arguing back at him – they couldn’t seem to get the fucking hint that their little angel didn’t deserve their damn sympathy. Worse, though, this bullshit started to spread - at first it had just been the four new weirdos, but in no time at all the 1A extras began to… change. Where once they’d been content to let Katsuki do his thing, they were starting to grow some goddamn backbones around him, especially that little crowd of sycophants that Deku had somehow managed to build up around himself no matter how many times he tried to beat into their thick skulls that associating with that nobody made them just as bad by proxy. Even the loyal flunkies that’d flocked to the proper alpha male in the class just the same as they had back in Aldera had started to pick up on it, thinking that they were being subtle as they tried to steer him away from Deku whenever they were in the same room or starting to avoid him – as if morons like Shark Week and Raccoon Eyes even fucking knew what ‘subtle’ was. Those four goddamn rats were spreading their bleeding-heart bullshit to the entire class like a disease, infecting even people almost equal to Katsuki himself with their weakness. In Aldera, he’d just corner them after school or between classes to beat and burn them senseless until they got the hint to stay away from Deku if they valued their lives, but UA was different – the teachers here didn’t give him the same leeway that his old ones had, and the rat-thing that ran the school had eyes everywhere. Much as he craved the opportunity to beat these intruders senseless, he wouldn’t be able to do it without facing expulsion… until just such an opportunity practically fell into his lap, when one of these new extras, he didn’t remember which one and he didn’t care, had finally snapped and signed their death warrants.
They’d challenged him to a spar – one at a time against each of them. No restrictions, no subtleties, just combat.
Of course, Bakugou had jumped at the chance to put these four losers in the dirt – if fucking Deku’s miserable fawning over their stupid little weapons was any indication, they were probably Quirkless wastes of oxygen like him that needed those goofyass things to measure up to real Heroes with real powers. Against a real Hero like him, they’d be nothing more than lambs to the slaughter, another few pebbles to crush to dust under his boot in his journey to become the greatest of all time. As the challenged, Katsuki was allowed to choose the time and place, and whether people were allowed to watch – without so much as a moment’s hesitation, he’d chosen the arena for the Sports Festival the very next day, with an audience to boot. The stands were more than large enough to hold all of 1A – with those extras watching the beatdown, they’d get the message just as clearly as the four soon-to-be dead girls about what happened to anyone dumb enough to get the way of Katsuki fucking Bakugou.
If he had only known.
Katsuki’s first opponent was apparently the leader of the little band of rejects – a red-haired slip of a girl as pale as a ghost who dressed like she was some sort of lure to bring in kiddy-diddlers. She looked like a stiff breeze could knock her over, carrying her away on that ridiculous hood and cape she always wore. She quailed whenever Katsuki so much as sent a mean look in her direction – he’d almost felt sorry for her when she stepped into the arena, clutching that briefcase-sized chunk of metal like a kid with a teddy bear. Almost being the keyword – she was disgustingly chipper and upbeat about everything, and her shitty squeaky little voice was just as annoying as Deku’s was, if not even more so, and whenever those two idiots were near each other they both talked a mile a goddamn minute to the point that you could barely hear yourself think! Seemed that she had the same delusion as Deku that she could be some kind of hero without even having some shittyass power that could categorize her as human – that alone was reason enough to want to simultaneously crush her dreams and send a message to that useless nerd about what happened when he tried to pollute people’s minds with his bullshit. But then she’d gone aside and signed her death warrant in bold and underlined it twice by getting fucking mushy around the stupid nerd, blushing like a crushing middle schooler whenever she was around him – she was actually desperate enough to want to get in Deku’s pants?! That had been the last straw; as soon as the redhead had stepped into the ring, Bakugou had launched himself at her with a feral roar, eager to send her back to wherever she came from in a body bag…
…Except the moment that the filth-loving freak entered the arena, every shred of insecurity had crumbled away from her like dust in the wind, her entire body language changing from some simpering weakling to infuriatingly confident as the piece of metal she was carrying unfolded into a goddamn fucking mechanical scythe that was taller than she was and SHOT BULLETS LIKE A GODDAMN SNIPER RIFLE. She’d had Bakugou on the ropes from the very beginning, friggin’ dancing around him like she wasn’t hefting a weapon that probably weighed more than he did – and with all the spinning twirling bullshit she was doing with that scythe, Katsuki couldn’t call it anything other than dancing. Every time he let loose with an explosion or tried to get in close to blast her to bits, she just disappeared like a goddamn ghost in a blur of red petals, only to reappear halfway across the battlefield to nail him with another shot – mostly rubber bullets that hurt like hell, but sometimes mixing it up with weird bullshit ammo that burst into all sorts of magical explosions. By the time she’d finished using him like a cheap clay pigeon, he was covered in several layers of soot, ash, ice, fucking rock, and god knows what else… but most infuriatingly, she hadn’t even once used her stupid fucking scythe as an actual weapon! She was fucking holding back, like he was some kind of Quirkless nobody like her that she needed to be careful not to break, and she’d still somehow managed to beat him with whatever bullshit gadget she was using to teleport around! And worst of all, Katsuki couldn’t shake that little voice in his head that couldn’t help but notice she was only using rubber bullets – that if she had actually been using live ammo, she could have ended him in an instant.
But whatever – guns and gadgets were a cheap bullshit tactic anyway that worthless nobodies had to rely on to try and compete with their betters. As soon as he’d caught his breath again, Bakugou was right back up and ready to really get serious. His bout with the redhead was just a one-off fluke, there was no way that it’d happen twice!
Next was a prissy bitch dressed in white and blue with a dinky little sword on her hip – absolutely a prep-school rich kid like Four-Eyes, but with a stick even further up her ass than he did. Her shit-talking tongue was probably sharper than the worthless sword she carried around if the way she’d shouted him down was any indication; she’d never failed to look at him like he was something that she’d scraped off her designer shoes, and he’d been eager to get to see that look of disgust turn terror-stricken. But no sooner had he launched himself forward the moment their spar began than she’d waved her sword in the air like a fucking magic wand, conjuring up a ghostly snowflake pattern out of thin air that he’d collided with as if it were a solid brick wall and bounced off of like it was some kind of goddamn trampoline… whereupon he slammed into another, and another, and another. Every time he had tried to change his course of direction with an explosion, she’d just conjured up another of her bullshit barriers right in his path to send him ricocheting off of like some sort of human pinball. She’d sent him careening around for nearly twenty goddamn minutes before finally send him crashing down in the seats… and directly on top of the grape-headed extra, which meant two fucking hours of being stuck to that simpering midget’s head!
And then there was the cat-eared bitch in black that was his final opponent’s partner – the mild irritation on her face when the match had started had pissed him off even more than the redhead’s stupid fucking smile, as if he was just some bug that had landed on her lunch. He’d launched himself towards her with a roar as soon as the spar began, eager to rip that condescending look off her face… only to be sent crashing to the ground with a screech of agony as the first hollow-point bullet buried itself in the shattered remnants of his kneecap and sent white-hot agony racing through his leg, greater than any that he’d ever felt before until an identical agony exploded in his other knee. She’d shot him – the bitch had just fucking shot him in the goddamn knees! She never even said so much as a damn word to him the entire time – the brunette had just extended a ribbon from her weirdass gun-sword-whatever-the-hell-it-was and wound it around his shoulder before unceremoniously dragging him out of bounds with a flick of her wrist, but not before evidently deciding to show a bit of mercy and knocking him out cold with a pistol-whip as he whizzed by her. It had taken the rest of the fucking day for Recovery Girl to fully repair his knees, meaning that the last match had had to be moved to the next day when he’d recovered – Katsuki refused to give his final opponent even the slightest iota of an advantage.
Said opponent was getting under his skin without even trying with how casually she seemed to regard her upcoming beatdown – she’d been chatting happily with her teammates before the match as well as with Deku, giving the redhead a hug and snapping a picture of the two of them with Deku… she’d even sent a fucking wink his way that’d made him flush like a fucking tomato and the redhead pout as she protectively hugged the blushing nerd’s arm, to say nothing of how Round Face had squawked in flustered indignation. If she hadn’t already been on Katsuki’s shitlist before (itself a multi-section epic that needed an index to cross-reference), the blondie absolutely was now with how she fucking debased herself by fucking flirting with that Quirkless fucking nobody. Even now she was waving at the extras in the seating area all around them, as if she deserved their admiration like he did. Ah, fuck it, no matter; they’d see things his way once Blondie was a bleeding wreck on the floor.
“Ladies first?~” The blonde teased with a playful wink that made Katsuki’s blood boil a few degrees hotter than it usually did. After watching her friends make a fool out of him, she was confident that she could follow suit without any of their fancy weapons… oh, he was going to fucking relish the look on her face when he showed her just how fragile her pathetic little body was without a gun to cheat with. Best to let her get cocky – it meant that he’d be able to kick her further down into the dirt.
“Guess it’s only fair I let you get one hit in before I sent you home in a funeral urn.” He sniped back; already, he was tensing himself up, waiting for the twitch of his opponent’s leg that he’d learned to recognize came right before a lunge forward to strike. But the girl didn’t move – if anything, her grin seemed to get wider.
“It’s your funeral, then.” She all but purred, cocking one powerful arm. Immediately, the golden bracelets on her wrists expanded and flattened, unfolding into segments of armor plating that covered her forearms as what looked like a fucking gun barrel extended out to just above her knuckles, one of which she leveled at him as she threw a punch at empty air… and much to Bakugou’s surprise, almost made contact. With a thunderous bang, a red-and-orange slug the size of one of Katsuki’s thumbs blasted forth with a flash of fire, rocketing right towards him like a bat out of hell. Bakugou hurriedly launched himself straight up into the air with a burst of his own, the shell whizzing through the empty air that he had occupied just milliseconds earlier before detonating in another burst of golden flames with a THUUN that made even his ears ring and nearly knocked him out of the air as the shockwave slammed into his back.
“The fuck was that, hotheaded bitch?!” He roared as he hurriedly twisted his body to reorient his course and land on both feet, shock quickly bleeding away to be replaced by his usual anger. “You think that you can steal my fucking moves and get away with it?!”
“Oh, please, kid.” Yang grinned; she cracked her knuckles as she stalked forwards, a nearly-feral glint in her violet eyes. “You think that you’re the only game in town with explosions? Just sit tight and watch, and I’ll blow you away!”
Bakugou bristled at the pun with bared teeth and an ugly snarl, stretching out his arms behind him and leaping back into the air with another burst of energy.
“I’ll fucking show you blown away! Get your ass over here and DIIIIIIIIE!!!!”
The blond bomberman’s shout rose over even the terrific bangs of his own explosions as he engaged his Quirk once again, riding the recoil of his bursts to rocket straight towards his newest victim. The air whipping at his face only made his sadistic smile stretch even wider as he cleared nearly a dozen meters of distance in mere moments, reaching out with one smoking palm to grab at Yang’s face and give it few nice decorative third-degree burns--
--Only to be met with something slamming into his abdomen like a runaway car, completely halting his momentum and driving the air from his lungs in a single rattling gasp alongside a spurt of something red and coppery-tasting that stuck between his teeth. Was… was that his blood? Was he fucking bleeding?!
“Y’know, it’s pretty easy to use that momentum against you when you do the same trick just about every time with it.” Yang remarked as she pulled her fist back from where she’d buried it in Katsuki’s gut, sending him crumpling to the ground in a heap – evidently, the pain of getting hit in the stomach by a girl who could bench-press cars had taken a moment or two to kick in. “Hope I didn’t crack a rib there – I know you UA guys don’t have Aura, so I gotta watch myself not to break you. Maybe take this as a lesson to not pick a fight with everybody that so much as looks at you funny, yeah? Anyways, later!”
With a cheeky wink to her downed opponent, she turned and walked off to leave the sparring ground… not paying any mind to the demon that she had just enraged.
“I’m not done yet…” Came a low raspy snarl from behind her, just barely audible. Bakugou was pulling himself up to his feet, panting heavily but more infuriated then ever. Aiming one palm at the retreating blonde’s lower back, he cupped his free palm into a ring over around the aiming hand and concentrated, funneling all the destructive power of Explosion into one tiny point. This fucking cunt had the fucking balls to pretend that she was holding back against him, and to think that she could just walk away from disrespecting Katsuki fucking Bakugou? Then he’d be happy to make it the last mistake she ever made!
“Super Move: A.P. Shot!”
The pop of the narrow, concentrated burst fire rang out like the crack of a rifle, the projectile whizzing home with lethal accuracy.
“Hm?” Yang turned her head towards the heat suddenly building at her back, only getting a glimpse of the explosive burst for a split second before it hit home with a crackling bang like the report of a firing squad and engulfed her in flame.
“That’s right, bitch! That’s what fucking happens when you try to just walk away from the greatest Pro Hero ever to live!” Katsuki jeered – he turned to where Deku was sitting with the other three bitches and flipped them the bird with both barrels and a sadistic grin. “See that, you worthless fucking rat? That’s what fucking happens when you disrespect me – it doesn’t matter how many other weaklings you send to try and stop me, I’ll blow them all to ash and leave you all in the dust when I’m making history!”
“I dunno about that one, chief.” A voice called from behind the blond bomber, cutting off what was already shaping up to be another of Bakugou’s infamous rants. “Hate to burst your bubble, but I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Yang Xiao Long stood tall and proud as she emerged from the smoke, looking none the worse for wear save for a bit of ash still caking her back… and more importantly, her hair. Her previous stupid vapid little smile was gone, nothing but steel in her eyes.
“Why won’t you fucking stay down, god dammit?!” Katsuki snarled, and fired off another A.P. Shot, this time aiming directly for her face. Yang didn’t even try to dodge it; instead, she simply swung again and punched directly into the incoming ball of explosive death, firing off another shot at the last possible moment to let the explosion tear harmlessly asunder in the face of the detonation of her own shell. Channeling Aura into her arms, she braced herself slightly and clapped strongly enough to create a visible shockwave, sending the smoke and ash blowing right into Bakugou’s face just to add insult to injury.
“I wanted to get this over with quickly, but you wanna do this the hard way? Then we’ll do this the hard way.”
Aiming her gun-gauntlets behind her, she fired once and launched herself forward on the shockwave of the blast – less of the pseudo-flight that her opponent had utilized and more a boost to clear the distance between her and him with one superpowered jump that ended with a boot to Bakugou’s sternum that sent him back ass over teakettle before coming to a stop nearly five meters away. He barely had time to right himself before Yang was upon him like a hawk snatching a rat, battering him with punch after punch that hit like runaway cars – it was all that Katsuki could do to try and match her blows with his own strikes, but between a schoolyard bully and a trained brawler, the difference between their skill levels was as drastic as night and day.
“Sloppy.” Yang coldly noted as she swatted away a haymaker and returned it with a light jab to the solar plexus that nearly knocked Bakugou flat on his ass again. “Basic.” An uppercut put a swift stop to the windup of a mean left hook, almost dislocating the blond boy’s arm and shattering the grenade gauntlet strapped to it with a nasty-sounding crunch. “Telegraphed.” A knee to the gut sent him staggering and dislodged the burning hand he’d attached to her forearm, followed up by a headbutt to the face that made his ears ring and sent blood gushing from his now-broken nose. “You’ve never actually fought with your fists, have you Blasty?” The golden brawler asked coolly. “I’m guessing that you’re used to bullying people into submission, or just using that Quirk of yours to win every fight you’re in – course, that’s not really helping you here.”
“Oh, I’ll fucking show you what it can do, bitch!” Bakugou snapped back, shaking his head to try and dislodge the stars that had come to start filling his vision. With a feral snarl, he grabbed the oversized pin on his remaining gauntlet and yanked at it to break the seal it formed over the reserve tanks within it, letting the liters of built-up sweat churn and boil as it was all exposed to sweet, combustible oxygen. “My Quirk lets me make explosions from my sweat – these gauntlets help collect and store it. You’re about to see what happens when I let all of it go off at once!”
“K-Kacchan, don’t!” Midoriya squawked from the stands. “You could kill her with that blast!” Typical fucking Deku, always thinking that he could save everyone, even the jackasses that didn’t even deserve the pathetic lives they were given.
“It’s just like I told All Might when I used this shit on you before, Deku!” Bakugou shouted back. “She’ll be fine as long as she dodges!”
With a single tug, he tore the oversized pin free, shutting his eyes tight to avoid being blinded by the miniature supernova that detonated between the two combatants, forcing the onlookers to shield their own eyes as well. The blond bomber was sent flying into the air by the shockwave of the building-leveling blast, but a couple quick bursts from his hands set him back on the ground… only to nearly get swept off his feet again as Yang slammed her fist into the ground with enough force to blow the flames of the explosion apart with a massive shockwave that rippled through the ground like a miniature earthquake, then rocketed towards her opponent with another gauntlet shot-assisted jump to close the distance between them. Katsuki would find both of his hands caught in a grip like steel as the blonde brawler grabbed him; try as he might to try and struggle, his opponent was as solid and unyielding as a brick fucking wall, refusing to so much as budge despite his best efforts.
“That all you got, Sparky? I barely even felt that!” Yang laughed; she paid no mind to the smoking rising from between their fingers as Bakugou wilted whatever sweat he still had on his palms to ignite and detonate the same way he used to do in school to give Deku a few good ‘reminders’ to stay down, not even so much as twitching at a trick that Katsuki knew was capable of burning through skin like it was nothing. “Aren’t you supposed to be the strongest person in your class? You’re disappointing me here, man – I thought that you were more than just a big ego and a bad attitude!”
Katsuki’s eye twitched at the jab, teeth grinding together as he all but frothed in barely-coherent fury. This bitch had the audacity to treat her better like this?! He’d fucking show her just what happened to smartasses who tried to pull that kind of shit with him!
“Then let’s see how you handle this!” He snarled; his grip suddenly slackened as he pulled back, making Yang stumble and giving him an opening to grab her wrist tight with one hand while the other pointed away, already sparking and popping. “Super Move: Explod-A-Pult!”
With a burst of explosive force from his free palm, both combatants were launched skyward in a whirl of blond hair and flame before the taller woman even had a chance to scream. She jerked and twisted as they tumbled, trying to land a blow or a blast to either stabilize the whirling tangle or punch Bakugou off of her, but her blows hit nothing but empty air as Bakugou clung on like the world’s largest and angriest barnacle, the shots of her gauntlets only sending the two of them tumbling even further and faster. Once, twice, three times they collided with the concrete around the arena floor, actually cracking the cement under the force of their impact before their sheer momentum sent them ricocheting away in a totally new direction – after the third, Katsuki finally hurled Yang back down to earth with a yell of victory, his mad grin only widening as he watched the blonde powerhouse slam down into the dirt hard enough leave a crater, carving a trench nearly three meters long and a meter wide into the ground around her as she skidded along the ground before finally coming to a stop.
“You’re fucking finished, blondie!” He jeered; leveling a sparking, popping palm at her downed form, he cupped his other hand into an ‘o’ over it again, this time gathering even more power. “Let’s see you handle my A.P. Machine-Gun Burst!”
The salvo of deafening cracks and bangs that filled the air as shot after concentrated shot of raw explosive power rained down on Yang’s prone form was music to the bully’s ears; every impact that didn’t drive her even deeper into the widening and deepening crater sent more dirt and debris tumbling down onto her as they detonated against the walls of her tomb. In no time at all, Yang was completely hidden from sight beneath the roiling cloud of smoke and dust that quickly rose to fill the air. But Katsuki kept up the barrage, the recoil from his shots keeping him airborne as he fired again and again and again and again for nearly a full minute before finally letting gravity reassert itself and landing heavily on his feet at the lip of the crater. He gave no mind to the gasps and shouts from Class 1A as they stared in shock at what was an unprecedented level of brutality even for him or yelled to him to just stop already – neither reaction would have given him pause, even that of the students that had just a few weeks ago considered themselves to be his closest friends, his ‘Bakusquad.’
“Teach you and your bitch friends to try and run with your betters.” He smirked – for good measure, he hawked up a glob of phlegm and spat into the crater. “Maybe if you’d just done the smart thing and bent the knee, you wouldn’t be fillin’ that grave right now.”
“Is that so, Blasty?” A very familiar voice remarked from the cloud of debris, making Katsuki jolt in surprise. This time, though, something had changed – Yang’s voice had changed somehow, gaining a faint echoing quality to it that set off warning alarms in Katsuki’s head that he didn’t even know he’d had… the same warning bells that had gone off screaming during his final exam, moments before All Might himself had decided to use him as a fucking club to beat Deku’s ass with.
Yang’s fists slammed together with a KRAK just as loud as his explosion had been, the impact generating a flash of fire that washed over the entire battlefield, incinerating the smoke and debris immediately surrounding the blonde brawler and slamming into Katsuki like a tidal wave; a hiss of pain slipped through gritted teeth as the heat washed over him, dissipating too quickly to leave any lasting damage but enough to hurt like hell in the aftermath of the flames’ caress and singe his hair. No sooner had he blinked the burning pain out of his watering eyes then they would widen in shock, pupils shrinking down to mere pinpricks.
Yang strode forth from the crater that was supposed to be her tomb with a strut in her stride to the cheers of her teammates in the stands above, twin pinpricks of red shining through the last remnants of the smoke before she pushed her way through. Her eyes had gone from purple to a baleful ruby-red glow, casting her form in harsh shadows and contrasts; every step she took kicked up a spray of sparks and embers and left a bootprint of vitrified silica glass burnt into the dirt beneath her feet, the grass burnt away to cinders. Her hair was a matted rat’s nest of grit, dirt, and the loogie that Bakugou had spat onto her, and she was streaked with ash and grime, but beyond that there was barely a scratch on her anywhere… and the feral bloodthirsty grin on her face sent a shiver down Katsuki’s spine. She hadn’t changed size or bulked up or anything of the sort, but for the first time in years, Bakugou couldn’t help but feel very, very small.
“Now, you’ve shown me yours, Katsuki…” The blonde powerhouse remarked, her voice almost a purr. “Now let me show you mine.~”
Her ruby eyes closed for a moment as she let out a wordless adrenaline-fueled roar to the sky above… and the very air around her seemed to tremble as she was engulfed in a brief surge of golden light and another burst of scorching heat that slapped her opponent in the face as if he’d just opened up a roaring oven. Her blonde mane rose into the air in proud defiance of gravity to flicker and dance like fire, seemingly bursting into flame and burning away the crud matted within it as its color went from blonde to glowing gold – literally glowing, so bright and painful that it almost hurt to look at directly. Her powerfully-built frame seemed to grow as her toned muscles swelled thicker and sturdier, her height increasing until Katsuki was just barely eye level with her chin – for a moment, the bomber swore that he saw gleaming fangs lining her mouth in place of her teeth as she grinned even bigger, wider, almost hungrier. Heat was coming off of her in nearly-visible waves that distorted the very air around her, a dim golden glow still radiating off of her every cell as if a visual signifier of the power within her.
“My turn.~” Yang cooed to her momentarily stunned opponent; already, he was shaking off his shock and leveling another round of A.P. Shots at her, but the powerhouse was already in motion. She rushed forward with the wild implacable fury of a grassfire, at first darting and juking out of the way of the first few explosive salvos and letting them harmlessly detonate behind her as easily as a bullets whizzing through a campfire, but the gesture of caution proved to be unnecessary as she simply lowered her head and charged, A.P. Shot after A.P. Shot hammering into her and doing precisely jack and shit besides feeding the flames of her Semblance, stoking her flames ever-hotter, ever-brighter.
The clothesline slammed into Bakugou like a runaway express train, snapping his collarbone like a twig and sending him flying back to slam back-first into the padded far barrier hard enough to crack the concrete foundation behind it, tearing at the muscles anchored to his newly-fractured shoulder blades. No sooner had he impacted than a glowing armored first slammed into his abdomen with meteoric force, forcing another surge of blood out of his mouth as ribs gave way with a wet crunch muffled by the flesh tearing around them – the next punch hammered into his left shoulder region, almost turning it concave as bones were crushed beneath the tearing skin. Katsuki’s howl of pain was swiftly cut short as Yang grabbed him by the hair and lifted him up like a sack of potatoes before spinning on her heel and hurling him across and above the battlefield; two quick bursts of firepower from her gauntlets, and she had crossed the entire breadth of the stage to meet the falling demolitionist, this time grabbing him by the ankle and slamming him into the ground once, twice, three times. Every impact left another smear of blood and a few more scattered teeth in the dirt, dislocating limbs and cracking bones each time flesh hit dirt – even while struggling to retain consciousness, Bakugou struggled and screamed like a cornered alley cat, hurling unprintable obscenities as he kicked and scratched at Yang’s hand in a vain attempt to break her steely grip. Respite would only come when she finally tired of the game and hurled him into the air once more, higher this time to the point that he was almost scraping the clouds – something clicked in his adrenaline-soaked brain, and an idea came to the bombardier.
Ignoring the pain that shot down his twisted fingers from the exertion, he launched himself further and further upwards, then twisted himself in midair to orient himself properly… and fired again, lending a hand to gravity as it began to tug him back down to earth. Pain gave way to fury, his eyes blazing as he began to twist himself midair in a spiral, explosions firing all the while to speed his whirling descent ever-further. The wind howled and whipped at his ears as it curled around him almost like a cocoon to form what could only be described as a miniature twister – even as it grew and grew, soon growing powerful enough to build up on its own momentum, Katsuki’s scream of rage carried above the winds whipping through the air and battering the onlookers below as he fell to earth faster and faster with every passing millisecond.
“You want to die so bad, you overconfident fucking cunt?! Then I’ll fucking GIVE you death! HOWITZEEEER… IMPACT!”
Yang turned her head to the sky and saw the devastation coming her way; heard her opponent’s scream of pure and utter fury over the thunderous bursts of his Quirk detonating again and again and again and again; felt the first few ‘small’ currents of the twister touching down to earth to whip at her and stir up whirling eddies all their own of stinging grit and burning sand…
And she smiled.
“Let’s see you TRY, Sparky!” She boomed; she made no effort to avoid the oncoming whirlwind, merely bent her knees and stood even taller with her arms outstretched, letting her Aura flare and stoking her burning golden light even brighter. “Show me what you can do – HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT!”
Whatever obscenity-filled reply that Katsuki could muster up in response would never be known – the time of Impact had come. Bakugou’s twister slammed into the ground mere moments before he did himself to engulf Yang within its winds, letting the power building and building ever-closer to release… and detonated.
It was as if a second star had been born on the battlefield as it was engulfed in the sheer force of the missile-strength Howitzer Impact; the spectators in the stands had to recoil or shield their eyes from the blinding light, while those unlucky enough to be in the front rows hit the deck with their arms over their heads as the reinforced glass barriers around the arena seats shattered like cheap china. The very walls of the arena creaked and groaned as their durability was put to the test, the seats shaking as if they were in the grips of an earthquake. For several long, terrible seconds, nobody dared to so much as breathe, the ringing in their ears and the echo of the thunderous explosion the only sounds in the arena. On the ground below, Bakugou was struggling to get to his feet, hissing in pain as every little shift of his weight aggravated any number of bruises and fractures, but no amount of pain could halt his cruel grin. He’d done it… he’d fucking done it! Nobody could have survived that shit, especially not some Quirkless subhuman. All he had to do was challenge the other three again and crush them just the same, and then shit could go back to the way it was supposed to go – his perfect heroic origin story could continue, setting him up for his meteoric rise to the top-!
Heat washed over the bomber’s back as if a bonfire had just roared to life behind him, and a powerful hand grabbed his gauntlet-baring arm with a grip like steel before bodily lifting him off the ground by it and twisting him around, putting Katsuki’s bloodstained visage mere millimeters away from the last face that he had ever wanted to see again.
“SHE’S UP! SHE’S UP!” A voice cried out from the spectators’ seats – Ruby Rose had finally peeked out from where she and her teammates had taken cover with Midoriya to gaze into the clearing smoke, her silver eyes widening and a whoop of joy escaping her at the sight below.
Yang wasn’t even so much as singed from the Howitzer Impact; if anything, the glow around her had only grown even brighter, flickering and roiling around her as if she were engulfed in flames and making Katsuki’s eyes water with his proximity to the painful heat and brightness. While she’d been tossed back a bit from the shockwave of the explosion – the twin parallel trenches in the charred ground of the crater Bakugou’s blast had created showed where she’d been pushed back a few feet – all that Katsuki had done was sign his own death warrant, dumping even more fuel onto the roaring inferno that was Yang Xiao Long. And now, brimming with more power than she’d held within herself since coming to UA, she had Bakugou completely at her mercy – he writhed and struggled in her grip, but each flailing movement only brought him more agony from the dozens of injuries that Yang had already inflicted upon him as they practically screamed out in pain, and he had no hope of besting her strength even if he were at full strength rather than the drained wreck he was now.
“Y’know, I feel like I should be mad at you, Katsuki.” The blonde brawler nonchalantly told her prey, not even feeling the blows of his boots kicking at her shins. There wasn’t a trace of her joking light-hearted tone from earlier – just a veneer of deadly calm over a boiling sea of simmering anger. “You talk all this shit about how you’re the greatest around, how you’re going to be the best hero ever… but you’re honestly the single worst person I’ve ever met, and I’m including a couple of career criminals in that list.”
“Ffffuck… you!” The broken bomber spat; with another hiss of pain, he flailed his dislocated free arm at Yang’s fist, hammering at it with the badly dented but still-intact gauntlet on his wrist to try and break her grip; when that didn’t work, he slapped his palm against her arm to try and sear her flesh, but only managed to make a bit of smoke. “You don’t know shit – you’re just – gah! – just a worthless, Quirkless nobody like that fucking Deku!”
“And yet you couldn’t even put a scratch on me, while I was doing my best not to snap you like a twig.” Yang countered coolly. With her free hand, she pointed up to where her team had been sitting, all of whom were now up and cheering for her alongside the starstruck Class 1A while their green-haired companion simply stared in shock. “You made Midoriya’s life hell, broke him almost completely… but he’s still more of a capital-H hero than you’ll ever be. You want to be a good hero? Try being a good person first.”
“I’m not beaten yet!” Katsuki yowled. “You fucking cheated, you bimbo bitch – you and the rest of your useless little shits with your fucking fake Quir-AAAAAAAAGH!”
“Oops.” Yang murmured, as if she hadn’t just crushed Bakugou’s last gauntlet to shrapnel and his wrist along with it with just a simple squeeze and a wet crunch. “Like I said, I feel like I should be mad at you with all the shit you just pulled… but honestly, I figured that you’re not worth it. Your friends saw what you did, heard what you said – you dug your own grave, I’ve just gotta let you sleep in it.”
Her red eyes seemed to dim their glow… and then relit with vengeful fire as the blonde brawler’s mouth curled back into that feral grin.
“But then you just had to talk more shit about my teammates… and more importantly, my little sister. And, well, that just means that all bets are off.”
Quick as a viper, she grabbed Bakugou’s arm with her other hand and roughly yanked it out straight, then twisted down to snap the limb just past the elbow and tear at his tendons, effectively disabling his hand… then let go of his less mangled arm to toss him a little bit into the air before winding up and slamming her fist down into his crotch with a blow strong enough to shatter concrete. The young man didn’t stand a chance – he only had a split second for his eyes to widen in primal terror before pain that put everything else he’d been inflicted with to shame engulfed his entire lower body, his testicles popping like grapes in an industrial press and his pelvis collapsing in on itself with a meaty-sounding crunch. The agony overshadowed even the force of his final bone-cracking impact with the ground as the power behind the single strike knocked him out of the air and slammed him into the dirt hard enough to leave a crater nearly a meter deep, with Katsuki in a broken, bleeding heap upside-down at the bottom as consciousness finally, mercifully left him.
“That’s one bang that you won’t be letting off anytime soon.” Yang quipped; with that, she dusted off her hands, turned on her heel, and strode out of the arena, letting her Aura simmer down with the fight concluded. Class 1A would probably be in some shock at the sight of their tyrant getting his ass handed so readily to him, not to mention realizing just what kind of person he really was, but they were a tough bunch – they’d get through this. For now, Yang had a cheering team to rejoin and a little sister to hug… not to mention tease. She’d seen how Ruby and Ochaco had reacted to her little flirt towards Midoriya; maybe with his longtime tormentor thoroughly crushed, the dork would be able to realize that the world wasn’t as cold and cruel a place as Bakugou had tried to make it for him.