Chapter Text
Too much noise. Too much commotion. Too many voices that scream all over another. She already frowns before she had even opened the door to her classroom. 1-A, the first year of hero course in UA high school, was a mixture of rowdy teenagers who don’t know how to quiet down. In anticipation of noise that would become even louder as soon as she would enter the room, Okami Kida pulls out her earbuds and activates the noise cancelling feature before she finally opens the door.
A sea of sensory overload greets her – just as she had expected. People are talking loudly through the whole room, busy with bonding and befriending everyone.
Kida sighs. A quick scan over the room was already enough for her to want to leave again. Ignoring everything that went on, she heads straight to her desk in the last row. Her neighbour to the left with red and white hair is luckily very quiet and the girl to her right at least isn’t screaming around like that blonde kid in the front who is currently yelling at the green head behind him. How obnoxious. She had luck with the seating chart at least, being as far away as possible to the loudest troublemaker in the class – Bakugo Katsuki.
That boy has been awfully noticeable since day one, being the first placed in the examination and having a very loud and aggressive personality. His quirk in particular though flashy and strong is definitely her least favourite of them all. She would try to keep her distance from him.
Not that finding friends is difficult enough for her, but loud noises have always bothered her to an extent where she would rather spend her time alone than being among others. It definitely doesn’t make it easier on her that these hero aspirants are so outgoing. But she would have to manage through in order to become a pro hero.
When the school bell rang for lunch, the guy called Kaminari comes up to her, “Hey, Okami, wanna sit with us at lunch?” His face is definitely flushed, and his grin practically screams ulterior motives. She looks behind him and sees the small grape guy Mineta whose face looks even worse.
She shoulders her bag, properly shoving her chair against the desk and goes straight past them. “No.” Both of them freeze on the spot and she hears Ashido laugh at them.
“Totally rejected, you perverted losers,” she practically loses herself in laughter. “As if you could pull a beauty like Okami!” These are the last things Kida hears before she steps out of the room, a hint of a smile creeps on her lips at the sound of the last sentence.
Okami Kida knew that she was rather pretty, with shoulder long silver-grey hair and smooth pale skin. Countless people have told her that in the past and still do even now that she enrolled to UA. She really couldn’t complain about compliments, especially since the other option would be people telling her she looked too cold and scary to approach.
When she had gotten her food tray at the Lunch Rush cafeteria, she sits with Tokoyami whom she had deemed as pleasant enough to hang around with. They both share a liking for the dark and had rather calm personalities, as she had found out after the first class with All Might, where they were teamed up as the villain team together against Kirishima and Sero. Just in the moment when she opens her mouth to start a conversation, the voice of Kirishima calls for them.
“Hey look, Okami and Tokoyami are there! Let’s join them!” he grins in that ever-optimistic way of his, tagging none other than a scowling Bakugo Katsuki behind him. “That’s okay with you, right?” he asks when already sitting down next to her.
Tokoyami already agrees before she could say anything and there she is now, with no way out. She could obviously just leave, but that would make her look like a jerk. She glares at Bakugo who sits down next to Tokoyami, across the table from her, already fuming with anger in his face. Her eyebrows start knitting out of reflex. He sees her staring at him and instantly glowers back at her.
“What are you looking at, huh?!”
She sighs and reaches into her pocket to plug in her earbuds again. Then she continued to eat her Soba noodles without paying any more attention to him. Which clearly pisses him off.
“ANSWER ME, DUMBASS!” he now screams at her, as the red-haired fails at his attempt to calm him down.
“Would you please just let me eat in silence, thank you.” Why does she have to deal with this crap? “I can’t stand your constant screaming.”
“Scared of loud noise, puppy?!” Bakugo provokes her with an evil grin, earning an evenly agitated “Huh?!” from her.
Before they could escalate any further, Bakugo’s hands already crackling with small explosions and Kida already sticking her fangs out, the guy next to her at least tries to change the subject, “What are you listening to? Are you also into emo rock and metal like Tokoyami?” Tokoyami flinches at the exposure of his music taste, even though he had never told anyone about that. He is clearly easy to read, even for someone who doesn’t seem to be the brightest.
She calms down with a click of her tongue. “That’s none of your business,” Kida replies emotionless, trying to eat faster to get out of there soon. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Bakugo do the same.
Unlike most people would, Kirishima doesn’t react to her harsh answer and laughs instead. “You’re not so talkative huh! Kind of fits your lone wolf stereotype!” Yeah, she hears that a lot. “Speaking of which, your quirk – Wolf Transformation, right? It’s super cool! I hope we get paired for a training drill some time!”
She eyes him from the side, thinking about his words. His quirk is Hardening, which she definitely found interesting. She did bite her teeth out at him during the first drill, after all. “Sure.”
The rest of the lunch break goes by with Kirishima pulling even more people to their table – including Kaminari and Sero. As soon as she was finished eating, she doesn’t want to waste a second more at that table. It was way too uncomfortable for her to be bombarded with so many people she hadn’t known for too long. “See you later,” she says to Tokoyami and Kirishima as she stands and heads off. The others seemingly aren’t even worth a glance.
As she puts away her tray, she can feel a piercing stare in her back. Kida glances back with her ice blue eyes and is met with fiery rubies that practically challenged her to a duel. Her eyes narrowed before, a hint of a smile on her lips as she turns and leaves.
If he wanted a fight, he would get a fight.
Afternoon lessons consist of training drills on ground omega, and everyone changes into their costumes for it. Kida’s costume was relatively plain. She was wearing a really wide sitting white button-down shirt and a black scarf that almost covers her mouth. On her wrists and ankles sit black cuffs that acted as speakers. She was adjusting her long sleeves when Ashido speaks to her.
“You were sitting at a table with some of the boys today, right?” She is putting on her face mask and all the other girls look at them, too. “How do you keep up with that Bakugo?”
Uraraka also adds to the conversation, “You could hear him yell from across the whole room.”
“That guy is like super scary!” Hagakure, the invisible girl, confesses and the others agree with her.
Great. Now they think, she is part of that weird group. “I actually got dragged there by accident,” she explains nervously and picks on the rolled-up sleeve that still reached just over her wrist. “It’s not like I want to be part of their group or something. They are way too loud.”
“I totally get that,” Uraraka, her seat neighbour giggles.
But Jiro thinks further, “Although when you do get riled up, you tend to overreact almost just as easily as he does!”
Her brow instinctively twitches. “THAT’S NOT TRUE” she yells at them, though instantly recognizing the pattern as the others chuckled. She clears her throat before speaking in a calm, even tone, “I am not like that explosive kid, unlike him I can control my temper. After all,” she finishes her styling before opening the door and looking back at the girls with a mischievous smile on her lips, “his bark is worse than his bite.”
~~~
When they all arrive on the observation platform, Aizawa explains the situation, “Today we will be training survival skills in a forested terrain. You will be acting in teams of four, searching the grounds for ten explosives that are spread in the woods. You have to deactivate each one of them by pushing the button.” He demonstrates with a prop of a bomb in his hand and pushes the red button on it. “Simple right? You have ten minutes to find and dismantle all of them before they explode and cause a wildfire. If even one detonates, because of time up or other reasons,” his tired eyes glance at Bakugo who glowers back with his iconic scowl on his face, “you fail. That’s all.”
“ONLY TEN MINUTES?!” The whole class is in revolt.
The screen in front of them changed into the five teams that would go one after another. Kida was partnered with Kaminari, Sero and Midoriya. The last of them was already mumbling for himself, thinking hard about a strategy and how to act, while Kida was inspecting the prop Aizawa had shown them, taking in its structure and metallic, smoky scent.
“We have a short time span of only ten minutes, which would mean one explosive per minute. We have to act really fast then, but how do we find them? The forest is pretty dense, so scouting from above could be an option, though maybe not as effective since the bombs are really small and probably can’t be seen, so maybe we should just run ahead and hope for the best? But no, that doesn’t sound efficient at all –,” Midoriya just keeps on blabbering without listening to everyone telling him to stop.
The first team is already on their position and Aizawa activates the countdown. They have Uraraka scouting from above, while Iida is having issues navigating through the twisted forest. Of course, high speed has its disadvantages when it comes to difficult terrain. Their team eventually finds one out of sheer coincidence. When Aoyama is headed to disarm it, he is surprised by a small robot who is defending it.
“So they are protected,” Yaoyorozu mumbles to himself as everyone is watching the live footage.
“They don’t seem very strong though,” Hagakure adds as she sees Aoyama defeating it with a simple navel laser and disarming the bomb. Such a weird quirk.
“They are probably strategically placed to take our attention from the bombs,” Midoriya mumbles and looks at Bakugo, “Kacchan, you should pay attention not to blow them up with the explosives-“
“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, DEKU!!” he immediately yells back. “MOREOVER, DON’T TALK TO ME AND HELL, JUST DON’T EVER TALK AT ALL!!” Midoriya quickly folds and apologizes multiple times, clearly scared of his childhood friend.
“He’s right, stop talking too much,” Okami interferes and actually gets mixed reactions to her agreeing with Bakugo. She pats the green haired kid’s shoulder and casually hands him the prop she was just sniffing at. He instantly flinches and gets nervous by her touch. Then she looks at Bakugo with a sly smile. “Who cares if that guy fails, as long as we win.” It somehow turned into a competition.
“HUH?!” Oh, he is so pissed at that comment. So easy to provoke, maybe he is actually fun after all. If he just wasn’t so loud with it. “You trying to challenge me, puppy?!”
The girl stems one arm on her hip and tilts her head back. “Please, you can barely call this a challenge.”
He takes a few heavy steps towards her and growls in a deep, rough voice, “Yeah, because I am gonna win.”
“Let’s see you try,” she smiles in his face as the timer lands on zero and five explosions are heard and take everyone’s attention away from those two.
The screen is partly covered with pink smoke – probably the result of the remaining bombs that have detonated to simulate a fire. The team is starting to become visible, coming back with hanging shoulders. They didn’t make it.
The next round has Koda and Jiro in their team, making it a perfect combination for gathering intel on where the explosives are. The animals of the forest would make out the spots and Jiro could hear the feint noises the robots make.
They are done with only one minute left and already set a very good example. The next team already prepared for their round.
Unexpectedly, Kida feels slight excitement to watch the next round – the team with Bakugo in it. She doesn’t entirely know if it is because she actually expected it to be interesting or if she just wants to watch him fail. A feeling of uncertainty climbs up her spine as she thinks of the possibility of him succeeding. That would make her look pretty stupid if she wouldn’t make it as good as him. Maybe she shouldn’t have provoked him. But she couldn’t help it, it came naturally out of her mouth the way a “good morning” comes out of a teacher’s mouth when entering the classroom.
However, her thoughts are disrupted the second an explosion sounds from the screen. No, it was not a bomb blowing up, but none other than Bakugo Katsuki storming off and leaving his comrades behind. Just what she expected.
It’s not like he is moving badly; he sure is fast and quickly manoeuvres over the trees through the forest. He does find some of the robots that protect the bombs eventually and immediately blows them up, not caring about deactivating them as he leaves that task to his teammates who can barely follow him. They seem to have decided that Asui would be following Shoji’s instructions as he can scout better. Meanwhile Ashido is running after Bakugo, disarming every explosive she comes around. Technically good teamwork if it wasn’t based on an egomaniac carelessly running ahead.
It was at their eighth bomb that Bakugo is caught off guard when a robot aimed a laser at him from a dead angle. Quick witted as he is, he doesn’t leave any time before aiming a stream of explosions against it, unbeknownst of the fact that the hypersensitive bomb laid right behind him. Ashido is extending an arm, a string of acid splashing out of it to veil the explosive, but it is coming to an opposite effect. Her acid is ignited by the sparkles of Bakugo’s explosions and sprays in every direction – triggering a pink burst of smoke.
“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE?!” he shouts at Ashido who is still coughing in the pink fog.
“You were about to blow it up anyway! I tried to cover it!” she defends herself and they start to fight. Asui and Shoji appear shortly after and pull them away from each other before heading back to the platform.
The whole class is staring at the troublemaker who is getting scolded and critiqued by Aizawa for going on his own and starting a fight between teammates. The rest of the team is comforted for having to be put in a team with Bakugo.
“Don’t worry, guys, it was destined to turn out that way with him on the team,” Kida comforts them and glanced a cocky smirk to the mentioned boy who was just stepping past her.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP, EXTRA!!” he yells out of frustration. His brows were heavily twisted downwards in a way she thought no one could be able to do that, as he curses for himself. “Stupid fucking shit.”
“Come on, guys,” Kida croons and waves Midoriya, Sero and Kaminari to follow her, “let’s show ‘em how it’s done.”
Her team descends to the starting point where they talk about their strategy.
“I think the fastest way would be to split, but then communication would be difficult, so maybe teams of two?” Midoriya suggests and earns agreement from everyone but her.
“Here, take these,” Okami unshackles the cuffs from her ankles and one from her hand, “they only work one-way with the microphone in my scarf.”
“Oh! You can pinpoint the bombs and instruct us where to look exactly for them, right?” Midoriya recognizes her idea.
“Wait, you can do that?” Kaminari is surprised.
“Yeah,” she mumbles and checks their functioning. An echo of her voice sounds through the black cuffs. “I’ve already memorised the smell, so it should be pretty easy. I’d like for you,” she looks at Sero who is adjusting the cuff to his arm, “to still look from above though. It’s probably still more practical to have you versatile in the air.”
He nods, with a question in his face, “I kinda thought you were more of a lone wolf. But you’re like super strategic.”
“Yeah, and the way she just spoke to Bakugo? She’s a total badass!” Kaminari adds to the conversation. What? Did they really just talk positively about that barking behaviour her father would always scream at her for? Wow, she could get used to that.
“I guess I’m a brat,” she nervously laughs and scratches her head when the starting sound rings and they dispatch in four different directions.
Kida takes a deep breath, the fragrance of flowers and greens reaching her nostrils, of rabbits and birds. She can smell and hear her teammates, Midoriya and Kaminari to her right, Sero on her left, jumping from tree to tree with his tape. And then it struck her – the scent of metal. Bingo. She quickly instructs them where its coming from, dispatching the closest member of the group there.
Bakugo Katsuki’s frown gets deeper and more intense the more explosives Kida’s team find. What a shitty assignment. Of course, a stupid dog like her would have an advantage. It just isn’t made for him. Then again, to be a hero means to adapt to every possible situation – and he had failed at doing so. It stung deep inside of him that he would lose to a stupid fucking girl who had dared to provoke him. Then again, it is at this moment, when she finds the last bomb and disarms it without the robot even noticing her, that he needs to accept that she isn’t as bad as he thought. Heck, she didn’t even have to transform into a wolf. In just six minutes, they had found every single explosive and pressed the button. And he hadn’t even gotten to the one he blew up in that time. A weird sensation of something that felt like respect slowly climbs up his spine – and instantly turns to infuriating anger as soon as he sees her ascending the stairs and stopping her conversation with her team just to show him a victory sign and give him an ugly smirk.
“I AM GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU, BITCH!!”