The first one to move was TinTin.
He was standing there, with his unwavering fake smile and then his fist was in Katsuki's face.
He didn't bother to move, after all it was a feint, the real attack would come after the literal tentacle erupted from the ground to throw his balance off enough that the wave of energy could throw him away.
As if.
His foot erupted, vaporizing the tentacle along with the mouth forming at its tip.
The energy wave knocked him from his perch, throwing him into the air, right where he wanted to be.
And sure enough, here comes Nejire.
The two race toward each other, only for a claw to burst fromt he ground this time, obscuring their views. A quick shockwave dispersed it, only for the older blonde's knuckles to meet his jaw hard enough to knock Katsuki into the ground.
Before he could recover, Katsuki was gripped in a large furry paw and held up to the sky.
An explosion reduced the paw to ashes, but he was too slow to get out of the titanic wave if energy that was an inch from his face.
The most he could do was allow his body to erupt, dispersing enough of the force that Katsuki was onyl ragdolled into the arena wall rather than ripped to shreds.
Right into the waiting fists of Mirio. Two punches hit his diaphragm before Katsuki could launch his own explosion infused punch…
Which just so happened to pass right throught he grinning third year's head and erase the wall behind him.
Fuck, intangibility, or something along those lines.
Hell of a quirk.
Katsuki was suddenly halted in his forward momentum by a birds claw of all things, where yet another sucker punch rattled his ribs before he could blow the offending animal limb apart.
Then that became a moot point when another wave hit him at point blank, right in the spine. Propelling Katsuki back to the center of the arena.
Fuck.
This was how it was gonna be then?
Allright no more kiddie gloves, got it.
XXXXXXXXX
"Sir? If I may ask, why are we here?" One Asui Tsuyu(call me Tsu) said as a man who went by Present Mic gathered her entire class into the living room area.
"Ugh, I need a cold shower, a warm bubble bath, and a message. Kiriiiii, help meeee." Tsu's classmate Mina said, whining to the half dead form of her best friend.
The rest of her classmates were draped all across the dormitory living room, in varying states of attentiveness.
Tsu couldn't blame them, they were all exhausted.
"Well, I figured you would all want to see this. You know, get your dues. See some payback."
What.
"Huh?!? You mean we get to see Bakugo get mauled too?!?!!" The midget who unabashedly stared at her breast earlier yelled out in excitement.
What?
"That's correct!" Present Mic's voice never lost its timber, nor volume. And the grin on his face never wavered. Like he'd said the same lines a hundred times. It was unsettling.
"Here at UA, at the beginning of every year, we put a single student against a teacher at a time. And show all of their classmates each other's matches at the same time to show you how far you really have to go. These can get pretty embarrassing! Especially when some firsty gets cocky!"
"Your classmate decided to go ahead and face you all by himself, so that kind of leaves the rest of the planned staff with nothing to do but watch Bakugo's trial." Something was wrong in the way he spoke about it, something that made her hidden claws twitch.
Something was fixing to happen.
"Oh hell yeah! Let me see the ass kicking!" The small grape haired student rubbed his hands together while cackling like some kind of b movie villain .
The creepy laugh was more disturbing than creepy if she was honest.
"Who decided to fight Bakugo, though?" Kirishima asked, barely moving his body so he could clearly see the tv.
And there they clearly saw Bakugo facing off against three different opponents.
One with an energy emission quirk that shredded the landscape. One with some kind of intangibility quirk, popping out of the ground and delivering punches and kicks that set her own bones creaking in sympathy.
And then there was the really scary one, the strange animal limbs that intervened when the flying woman was in danger. The claws tore the earth apart and the endless tentacles wrapped around their classmate before erupting into large spikes and mouths that latched onto him and drew blood before slamming him deep into the ground.
She was quite literally seeing through her classmate right now.
Oh, god.
"Hey, this isn't funny anymore." Surprisingly it was the small grape haired boy who spoke. "You can stop this now."
Another wave of energy was dispersed by a large explosion that managed to buy Bakugo enough time to appear directly above the blue haired girl and choke slam her through the concrete ground. Rather than a fist that pushed the explosive blonde away from her downed form, it was a large boulder that rammed him into the wall by an octopus tentacle. And pulled back to slam into him again and again.
"Hey, it's over, make them stop!" Now it was Kirishima who was trying to drag himself up off the couch. "The fights done, ring the bell!"
He was quickly proven wrong when the boulder imploded and Bakugo erupted out of the hole to slam an explosion into the blue haired woman hard enough the living room rocked a bit around them. Only for yet another fist to sock him in the jaw.
Every time the explosive teenager tried to retaliate, his opponent simply phased through it and landed yet another bone rattling blow. She could see blood flying from Bakugo with every hit he took, she could see how the older blonde's smile never once wavered despite being down a teammate, and she could see the blood dripping onto the ground from the wounds left on Bakugo's legs from the spikes that erupted every other second.
He was mostly hopping over them, but with all the punches that managed to acquire literally slip past Bakugo's guard, it was inevitable that a few would pierce through his feet, leaving bloody footprints in their wake.
It would seem that Bakugo had lost his patience, because he erupted from the ground and spun his way up to the ceiling, gathering momentum and flinging some sort of orange ball at the stands.
Stands that erupted in a beautiful display, sending chunks of chairs and concrete raining down.
That wasn't what drew her attention, what drew her eyes was the large shell that fell down right beside the older blonde man. A shall that dispersed to reveal an amalgamation of animal parts that horrified her more than she thought it should.
Maybe it was the obvious frog legs, or the webbed hand with tentacles for fingers and spike for fingernails.
Either way, the fight wasn't over yet.
The entire fight took ten minutes. Five to dispatch the blue haired woman, while the rest of the battle was wasted trying to make it past the defenses of the chimera quirk.
New animal limbs erupted to entangle the young blonde every time he destroyed a set and restrained him long enough to launch into every surface imaginable while being pummeled by the older blonde.
It was nauseating to watch because when Momo had tried to make her way out of the room to stop the match herself, Present mic had whistled of all things in her general direction, and she'd gone limp against the couch. Unable to do anything but watch the fight as their strongest classmate was being literally mauled by animal teeth and claws.
"Why are you making us watch this?" Her eyes met the pale form of Ojiro, whose eyes sometime in the fight simply gone to his lap as he listened to the fight still raging on, explosions detonated against the shell of the chimera quirked man and doing nothing to his body but erase his monstrous limbs.
"You've already passed the first test, Initiative." How many of these tests were there? "And during your fights with Bakugo, you learned humility. That you as you are now is not enough."
"Is that what he's learning now?" Her voice was a distant croak in her ears as she watched a spike manage to punch through Bakugo's shoulder before he was launched into another wall by the intangible blonde man.
"No."
What?
"He already knew that the man he was today could not accomplish his goals. It's the only reason he's even attending this school, to become who he thinks he needs to be."
"Then, what's his lesson?" Tenya's head was down, his hair shadowed his eyes, but the blood leaking from his clenched mouth and his white knuckled grip on his knees gave him away.
He was just as sickened by this test as she was.
They all flinched when they saw and heard Bakugo's elbow bend the wrong way, freeing himself from another full body hold.
"Retreat. Self preservation."
… What?
"Sometimes, the threat you face as heroes is simply too much to face. In times like that, you have no choice but to flee or buy time for someone strognet to come bail you out."
Bakugo was in front of the chimera quirk man, his only working arm held his palm against the hardened shell of his enemy. And then an actual beam of pure destruction pierced its way through the shell. And as the monstrous man fell forward, Bakugo put another hole through both of his legs.
All that was left was the older blonde now, Tsu noted in the back of her mind, past the numbness that had sapped whatever emotions had broiled their way into her heart.
He was still smiling. How was the man still smiling with both of his teammates, if not friends, out for the count? He was now alone against an opponent that had torn apart the stadium they dueled in.
The answer came in the form of both blondes rushing towards each other, the same pattern repeating from earlier.
Bakugo would launch attack after attack, and the man would be completely unharmed while pummeling the young blonde into the ground.
There was no difference.
The fight hadn't changed.
Even though Bakugo had bested two of the three opponents, it didn't matter if he couldn't touch the last one.
Eventually, one of the punches that rocked Bakugo's jaw managed to knock the beaten teenager out. His form spread across the ground among his own blood and ash.
The chimera quirked man simply stood up as his wounds closed, slowly making his way towards the intangible blonde, and reverting back into a normal human being.
The blue haired woman launched a titanic wave of energy that cleared her crater of debri before making her way to kneel beside the unconscious boy.
"Welcome to UA, kids. Where you'll learn everything you need to know to become the best heroes you can possibly be." With his peace said, Present Mic turned off the tv and walked out of the room, leaving them all alone in the suddenly too quiet room.
XXXXXXX
Mirio held his smile in place.
Past the deep scorched areas of his knuckles, burned quite literally to the bones by his own punches. Past the broken ankle he'd gotten by kicking Bakugo into a wall as he was launching another explosion.
Past the emotions he'd felt when Bakugo had managed to pierce through the hybrid shell of Tamaki the three had carefully honed to be nearly unbreakable.
Past what he'd felt when he'd seen Nejire go down, and felt the campus rumble.
Thankfully she still had her skin tight shield up, otherwise that would have killed her.
"I'm gonna take him to the infirmary. Big guy needs some rest." Nejire gently cradled him to her bosom, it seemed the younger blonde had made an impression on the blue haired girl. She was laser focused on the teenager's injuries, figuring the best way to carry him.
"Can you tell him I'm sorry?" His boyfriend's hunched form asked, the noticeable wobble almost making Mirio's smile drop.
Almost.
Sometimes to do some good, you have to be the bad guy.
It's why he'd signed to them both to stay down, rather than jump right back into the fight.
Bakugo had no way of making it past his defenses, no way to truly damage him. And no way for the powerful young man to overcome him.
He could handle playing the villain, just this once.
XXXXXXXXX
Nejire wanted to be a hero. She wanted to feel like a hero, someone who made people smile and laugh with her presence.
That's the type of hero she wanted to be.
She didn't feel like a hero right now, cradling the broken form of her adorably scary kohai.
She had him pegged the moment she'd seen him fight, he would never stop.
Never retreat.
Never ask for help.
This lesson, one that had been hammered into her own skull about a dozen different times in a much less brutal manner.
Self preservation.
A hero wasn't much of a hero if they couldn't even save themselves, right?
Atleast that's what she'd gotten out of those lessons.
But as she made her towards the stairs, on her way to the infirmary, she couldn't help but think of how beautiful it had been to see Katsuki struggle harder and harder against something he'd known he couldn't overcome.
She was stopped by something wrapping itself around her throat, and the feeling of something vibrating fast enough to tear her skin through her natural shield against her collar bone.
His friends.
Oh no, now she felt even worse.
Midoriya was just standing there shaking, tears fell freely down her freckled cheeks, marring her cute features. Her hands were limp beside her as she looked off into the distance.
Where?
Ah…
She was staring at one of the larger puddles of blood Katsuki had soaked the earth in.
She looked like someone had torn her heart out and fed it to her.
The fire and ice girl had gone completely still, staring off into space. While the invisible girl had simply blanked, looking at her own hands beside Midoriya.
Dear lord, these kohai of hers were gorgeous, it's just a shame that this moment was meant to be a tragedy.
She would have loved to meet them, and learn what their smiles looked like.
Now she had to see their tears.
Speaking of tears, the cord around her throat abruptly whipped her around, and she met the decidedly empty eyes of one Kyoka Jiro.
Oh dear, this one was crying as well.
Her shoulders were shaking, and her nails were dug deep enough into her palms to draw blood. Little Kyo refused to let her cries escape her lips, masking them behind a thin wall of rage.
Nejire would have to topple it, and let her process, wasn't she.
The vibrations against Nejire's throat were quickly drawing blood, she needed to get her kohai focused.
"He needs to see Recovery Girl ASAP. Think you can help me?" With that, Nejire turned around and allowed the earjack that rested limply on her throat to act as a leash.
She made her way towards the stairs, followed by the numb forms of four more people she'd made cry.
It was a long list.