Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Before UA
Age 11
3/4/21XX
My name is Bakugou Katsuki. I’m starting eighth grade next month. I’ve decided I’m not gonna tell people my age anymore. When I do they get proud for a while but they treat me like a baby. I’m not a fucking baby. Mom says I'm a whole lot smarter than everyone else my age. I know that. I wouldn’t have skipped grades if I wasn’t. I’m not dumb. That’s the whole damn point. But she made sure to sit me down and tell me I can't act ‘convoluted’. Don’t think she knows what that means. Think she meant conceited. And fine, I won’t. Cause I’m gonna be the greatest hero and if people are always going easy on me cause I’m younger I can’t say I’m the best. If I beat all their asses while they think I’m their age that’s just better for me in the end.
—
“Hey Bakugou! How's it going man?”
Katsuki grunts in acknowledgment, stopping his eyes from flicking to the side to look at the boy standing over his right shoulder. That’s all the response the extra–a tall boy with six eyes–is gonna get. Katsuki’s reading, gaining the knowledge he needs to be the best of the best, and the nerd should know by now that he's not gonna take time away from something interesting to talk to his boring ass. He tightens his grip on the book; it's honestly kind of pathetic that he keeps trying.
“So what’re you doing?” Small sparks shoot around the edges of Katsuki’s fingers, though he stops that quickly enough. He has notes in this book, he’s not gonna let it get trashed because Eyeballs won’t shut the fuck up and let him read.
“Staring at my hands. What's it look like, dumbass?” said Katsuki, lifting his eyes from the textbook to glare at the offending classmate.
“Jeez. You know you don’t always need to be a jerk,” the extra huffs, walking back to his seat with his arms crossed. His grumbling leads to loud laughter from the desk in front of Katsuki’s, where an obnoxiously bubbly girl–complete with fucking prismatic hair–sat, “you should know by now that Bakugou won't bother with anyone when he’s in the zone, Arata!”
Suck up. She was always trying to act like she was on his side, jumping on the chance to insult anyone he ignored. He doesn’t spare the time it would take to flip her off, she’d take it as encouragement. Besides, he was in the zone; the pages in front of him explained that Shield Industries had produced a new support item. Apparently, it conserved the power let off by some American hero’s energy-based quirk, letting him store it for harder hits. Katsuki offhandedly wondered if he could do something similar for his quirk, amplifying the explosions or allowing for more variation and control.
The teacher strode in, clapping his hands for quiet but still choosing to shout, “everyone! Get your notebooks out and flip to page 268 in your textbooks! Let’s make this quick, I have an announcement and I know you don’t want it spilling into your lunch block.”
There were groans and sighs, but for the most part the class did as they were told. Mr. Anaunsu would actually keep them if they didn’t finish in time. One time he held the class back a half an hour to get through his shitty lecture.
—
After the class finished their notes, some extras forgot there was an announcement and started packing up. Anaunsu yelled at them and that took another couple minutes. Katsuki tapped his foot impatiently–he had better things to do than sit around listening to other people get yelled at. Why can’t people just pay attention? It’s not that fucking hard. Once the class settled, thoroughly chastised, Anaunsu began passing out papers to all the kids, Katsuki accepting his with a curt nod.
“Okay students! The packet on your desk contains a list of all the high schools in Musutafu and the surrounding provinces. Do not lose it. I do not have extras. Fill out the forms with your top three choices and get your parents to sign them before class on Monday,” Anaunsu yelled, obviously irritated with the class. The man obviously didn’t like kids; probably just became a teacher so he could have power over someone for once in his life.
Anyways, Bakugou didn’t need to look at the packet stapled to the form. He was going to UA, no ifs, ands, or buts. He’d write down fucking Aldera High for his second choice, and some random third. It didn’t matter, he was going to his first choice.
Now let’s see if he has the tools he needs to recreate those energy storing gloves…they’d be crude, but they might work. Hell, maybe he could apply for a support license with them if they turned out halfway decent. He’d been meaning to get one, no way he was gonna let some shitty extra make his future hero costume.
—
The UA written exam. Covering five different subjects, writing, reading, science, history, and math, it was widely considered one of the hardest non-honors school exams in Japan. Students were expected to be well versed on quirk usage laws, anatomy, hero history, and more. Anyone going to UA needed to be ahead of the curve, otherwise they’d fall behind; the school operated on a half day academic model to allow for students to earn their hero license before graduation.
The test was eight pages long, but the questions were all easy enough. ‘For how many years are children mandated to attend quirk counseling?’ Two was standard, from about ages four to six. After developing a quirk, another 3 months. He checked off option B, ‘27 months’. ‘Which equation properly applies the measurements from the diagram to simulate a real world scenario?’ Slightly harder, almost looked like there could be two right answers, but one didn’t account for friction. Maybe he’d studied too much, overestimated the test-writers.
The only difficult bit had been dealing with some of the fuckass characters who’d show up; he knew hero schools attracted people with strong personalities and ideals, those were things heroes absolutely needed. It took a special kind of person to run towards a villain. But seriously? In his testing room alone, there was this one broccoli looking motherfucker who kept muttering to himself before the exam, and some hardass with a stick up his butt had gotten the idea he was the one responsible for shutting him up. They’d squabbled a bit before the test started, disturbing Katsuki from his pre-test mental review, but quieted down after that. Thank god. He’d been about ready to stop the argument with some well placed explosions–tailbone for Glasses, solar plexus for Broccoli so he’d shut up .
After Katsuki had finished the ‘first’ module, he stood and walked over to the proctor, waiting for the next packet. He was glad he’d finished the first bit so fast, the second bit would probably contain the harder questions he’d been prepared for.
“Oh–well, are you sure you want to turn it in already? There’s still over an hour left! You could keep trying,” the man said placatingly.
The fuck? “I’m ready for the next part. I finished. Checked it over too. I don’t need to ‘keep trying’,” Katsuki growled lowly, leaning forward over the desk a bit. This guy was talking down to him, and he didn’t need all that. Still, he wasn’t about to yell. The others were still testing and he was better than the veggie-hair from earlier. He wasn’t gonna disturb everyone.
“W-well,” the proctor seemed shocked, “as there is still an hour and a half left of the test, I will have to ask you to stay seated while your peers finish. I will explain the practical test once everybody has finished.”
He stalked back to his seat, glaring at some yellow haired bitch who started staring at Katsuki on his way back to his seat. Idiot was on the third page still, shouldn’t be wasting time if he was that far behind. He threw himself back into his chair, screwing his eyes shut and crossing his arms over his chest. Turns out it was a one part test. How was he supposed to know that? He thought UA was prestigious, and they had given a whole two hours. He figured there’d be at least two parts. Katsuki slumped back in his seat, not noticing the pro heroes scramble to get to his phone. Guess he had some time to kill; Katsuki opened his eyes and focused on his unused scrap paper, he needed to finish drafting his final support weapon anyways, the prototypes were due in a month.
—
By the time everyone was gathered by the gym for the practical section, Katsuki was pissed off. His design–a decay resistant capsule that could be used to store dangerous field samples–had been confiscated as ‘exam work’ at the end of the two hour written test. Then, the four-eyed rule freak from his testing room decided to interrupt the new teacher’s–Present Mic: the Voice Hero–already droning explanation of the robot types used in the trial to ask what the fourth, unpictured, robot would be. That just made it worse; it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the teacher was getting there, and all the questions were just slowing down the whole ordeal. Before the instructor could give a five minute lead up to the two minute explanation he was clearly already going to give , Katsuki decided to cut in, “if you let the man fucking speak, I’m sure he’s gonna explain. Do you mind not wasting my time?”
The damn extra stopped, mouth open, shocked, “ah! Yes! My apologies for interrupting you, Sensei! It won’t happen again!” Present Mic blinked, pausing for just another second before continuing his explanation. Katsuki cradled his head in his hand; he was starting to think the glasses prick would be better off redirecting the energy he was putting into chopping the air repeatedly into thinking.