#ALSO IF THAT SUNFLOWER FINALLY GETS TO BE IN DAY’S HAND I WILL PARTAKE IN ACTS OF FEMALE HYSTERIA BEFORE DYING | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

belladonnaandulriched · 4 years ago

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burning sacramento | a one shot

synopsis: following the california fires, she had befriended them in her art gallery and was kind enough to invite them to an event with her best friends. it all seems so unlikely for all to go wrong and to happen but... it happens.

do not read if you’re easily scared or triggered given there’s quite a bit of morbid, dark imagery here. as for everyone else, enjoy and read in a bright lit room for full effect!

Jill had met him when he and his band toured in Northern California sometime following the release of their album For All Kings—she had fallen in love with his powerful voice. She was drawn to the whole band, for sure, but she kept returning to him like a magnet on cold iron. She never took that album out of her car stereo even as she was told to leave her home to avoid the flames, the first time from the Camp Fire and then again from the August Complex, the latter of which erupted when she had moved into her new apartment. Given her circumstances, she decided to move back in with her parents right outside of Sacramento as she started her own gallery on the eastern side. Every so often, she received a memory of both massive raging fires, but the memories had nothing on the power of her ink pens and her watercolor paints.

She knew what it was like to lose everything again and again, and yet Joey's voice gave her the strength to continue. Every glimpse into those brown eyes proved to be a glimpse into herself. Even though she knew he had his heart elsewhere, she still couldn't help but fall madly in love with the mysterious man from upstate New York, with all of his long beautiful flyaway curls and elegant slender body, even as a man summitting towards old age. You would never guess he was as old as he was, even with the pandemic having ended the whole world into complete oblivion, and especially the day he and Krista strolled into her gallery one day. They both gazed on at her drawings from the street and had come to the consensus to get to the artist a little better, to figure out the woman behind the name of Jillian Bones.

That was her actual given name.

“No bones about it”, as he joked to her. His sun kissed skin made her think of the barren earth on either side of the northern end of the Valley, but like with all ashes, there came forth a new sort of bare beauty to it. A new evergreen tree could sprout from a split pine cone courtesy of hot bright yellow flames in a similar manner his skin maintained such a lovely smoothness to it after years and years of touring about in the bitter, biting East Coast cold. The same could be said for Krista, with her golden blonde 'do and prominent dark roots, like the first beginnings of a sunflower as it rose out of the scorched earth.

Jill on the other hand had her sparse but lengthy black hair down to her thick waist, which stunned the both of them when they first met.

“Great artist and long hair,” he remarked with a lopsided grin and that accent utterly unmistakable, “I want you do Krista an' I a favor an' keep it that way.”

“We couldn't ask for anything more,” she added with the warmest, sweetest grin Jill had ever seen.

Even though Anthrax's show was that night there in Sacramento, and beginning in about two hours, which meant they both had to be there with haste, the two of them lingered there in the gallery and thus formed the first sparks of a friendship with the young artist, complete with an exchange of phone numbers and email addresses.

Once the three of them had left the gallery to attend the show, Jill sent a message to her two best friends what had happened. She was so eager to tell Elizabeth and Ellen that she had befriended the frontman of Anthrax and his wife in a matter of several minutes that she nearly dropped her phone on the floor between her legs. But she managed to tell them, and once she arrived at the venue, she found they had replied in rather quick fashion and wanted to know everything. Laughing, Jill vowed to save the details for later once she left the show.

“That's the best news to happen after all that had happened,” was the last thing Elizabeth had mentioned before Jill put her phone away in her purse. She gazed at the screen and thought about their dear departed triplet sister Elise, who had died shortly after the Camp Fire took place from complications from diabetes. It was in fact, the best news to come out of anywhere in such a long time that it coaxed a genuine smile out of Jill. Perhaps things were in fact looking up as she locked the car and followed Joey and Krista into the backstage area to meet everyone before the show and before she scouted out her place in the audience.

With her ears ringing and her eyes alight from the sheer sights before her, it was quite the catharsis to be a part of something that hadn't happened in what felt like a thousand years. She checked the screen on her phone again to find a message from Ellen begging for details.

She would then find herself caught in a mosh of communication between her two old friends and her two new friends for what felt to be several days. Joey and Krista had returned to upstate New York following Anthrax's stops in the Bay Area and then Los Angeles, and Jill found herself wanting to visit them, given it was safe enough to travel without the worry of a deadly cough on the back of her neck looming over her. She knew she had to work around her own schedule plus Joey's touring of his own with Chief Big Way and Journey Beyond.

“The man is an absolute work horse,” she told Ellen at one point during a lunch break; she took out the picks from Frank and Scott from her jeans pocket and smiled. Charlie was also kind enough to give her a packet of his fresh brewed coffee. “He told me—jokingly, anyways—that he's found the key to immortality: just keep going and keep moving about as much as you possibly can until you can't.”

“Fight 'em 'til you can't,” Ellen retorted.

“Exactly!”

That was also the same day Ellen told her about a big play she and Elizabeth were partaking in over the autumnal equinox down in the cute, quiet little alpine village of Murphy's, not too far from Sacramento.

“It was a play that one of our classmates wrote in Elise's honor,” she added. “Let's just say it's a catharsis for the both of us. It's over the course of a weekend.”

“Do you think I should invite Joey and Krista to come on out?” Jill asked her. “I'm finally making good money here in the gallery that I can get them a nice little room there in Murphy's.”

“If you want. We'll give the two of them—and you, too!—the star treatment if you don't mind.”

“The two of them deserve the best star treatment the Sacramento drama school can provide,” Jill told her with a run of her tongue along the top of her lip. She was eager to see Joey again, especially given the fact he never took his eyes off of her. The man was thirty years her senior, and yet he proved it all to be an illusion. Young, spry, and handsome, beautiful in fact, and elegantly slimming down with age, as if he aged in reverse. There was a point he hugged her and he held her next to him for something like twenty minutes. A thought lingered in her mind during those twenty minutes where she wanted to run her fingers down his toned chest.

His voice had filled out and developed this lush yet crisp timbre with time for some added strength, and to the point where if she listened long enough, she found her pelvic floor tingling. Lush but crisp and colorful, like the mountains of Northern California in late summer. She imagined him singing “Happy Birthday” to her with those lower rich notes and touching her breasts in the meantime with those big shapely Italian hands. An older gentleman as young as the springtime and defied all odds, much like Jill herself in the face of two gargantuan wildfires that burned whole towns to the ground.

Given the play was a month away, she placed the reservations at the little bed and breakfast there in the village after she got off the phone with Krista. She was quick to tuck a couple of large blankets into the back of her car because she knew those nights would be cold, much colder than upstate New York itself. To ensure their reservation was in place, she made the trip down to the village.

Even though she was driving through the Central Valley, a cool crisp thin blanket of marine layer entered into the Sacramento section to give the inland a feeling of the coastline. Outside of her windows beheld the low marsh lands complete with the tulare plants and small fledgling trees. She knew that Wine Country, which was not too far from there, following the sheer storm of fires, would still have to rebuild with all of those same type of plants plus brand new vineyards. At one point in her venture into the mountains, the clouds broke and the sun bathed over the bare earth and the forested foothills. All the colors warmed up and yet also washed out with each passing mile given the clouds burned away with the burgeoning warmth. To think all of that went on for hundreds of miles, all the way down the spine of California and towards the meeting of the San Andreas and the Garlock Faults.

On the way back, the clouds returned and she spotted Elizabeth had sent her a message at some point.

“I'm so excited to meet them,” she confessed.

Ellen and Elizabeth Bachara were two of surviving nearly identical blonde triplets attending the drama school there in Sacramento: two sisters who lived on after Elise, the third member of their party, had succumbed to diabetes. Neither of them developed it, but they watched their sister rocket into the horror of it all. She finally passed from an aggressive cancer on her poor pancreas: she was found on her bedroom floor with blood running from underneath her shirt and over her swollen belly. They could only assume that it metastatized all over her body, including her skin. The three of them oversaw her cremation, but Ellen and Elizabeth kept her ashes in a single urn on the mantel piece in the latter's apartment.

“We're not separating her ashes,” she vowed with a literal setting down of her foot on the hard apartment floor. “No way that is gonna happen.”

Elizabeth also told Jill that she was bringing the urn along to every play so they could literally pass off as triplets, and prove to be a release for the both of them. Jill knew she would have quite the story to tell to Joey and Krista once they met each other: two triplets with a phantom limb inside of a little coffee colored ceramic urn the size of a block of cheese.

That Friday of that big three day weekend, the two of them flew into Sacramento from Syracuse in the early hours of the morning. That dense fog from the Bay Area had made its way into the still parched Sacramento section of the Central Valley; Jill still pictured that orange tone to the clouds every so often, especially that time of year. Orange with sickness brought on by the inferno and the time she believed she couldn't breathe ever again.

She awaited them there at the terminal, wrapped in a little black windbreaker and with a black beret atop her coarse dark hair and her purse slung over her shoulder. She hoped Joey would recognize her full figure and her dark hair even covered up and obscured from the marine layer, and she had her worries given their flight had arrived five minutes early and she hadn't seen them. She glanced about the place for them, but only saw a series of unfamiliar faces around her. She started to wonder what happened to them as she took her phone out of her pocket for a new message to Ellen.

“No bones about it!”

She knew that upstate accent anywhere. She whirled around to see the two of them strolling up the narrow walkway next to one another, both of them wrapped up in black windbreakers themselves: Joey was unmistakable with that long wiry jet black hair down to his svelte waist, while she recognized Krista's crown of dark roots as they shone underneath the cold white lights of the terminal ceiling.

“I was wondering where the two of you had run off to,” Jill confessed to them.

“We were runnin' in circles,” Joey cracked to her, to which the three of them burst out laughing.

“So are you driving or should Joey or I do the chauffeuring?” Krista offered.

“I'll drive you guys,” said Jill as she adjusted her beret; Joey eyed that little beret and showed her a lopsided little smile in the meantime. “It's not far, but I know the way.” As the three of them headed out of the airport to her car: even with the marine layer looming over their heads, Jill wondered if it would rain there in the Valley. She hoped the show would go on in the dark forested mountains as the three of them drove out of Sacramento. Krista huddled down in the passenger seat next to Jill and rubbed the sides of her face with her gloved hands. Jill noticed the hair at the back of her head hanging away from her neck, as if she had put a bunch of hairspray back there, and yet she lacked that bold odor in favor of a softer, sweeter perfume.

“So much colder here, my goodness,” she muttered.

“Yeah, when we were comin' in, we felt it comin' down on us even in the plane,” Joey added with a soft groan in his throat as he got comfortable there by his lonesome in the backseat. Every so often on the ride up the hill, Jill took a glimpse in the rear view mirror at Joey lounging there in the back with his arms atop the seats. She noticed he had unbuttoned the collar of his shirt to show off some of his chest. She nibbled on her bottom lip at the sight of him.

Old but young. Aging but in reverse and as radiant as ever. Meanwhile, there was Krista with her colorful hair and skin like alabaster even with her age as well. Both of them thin and lovely despite the odds. Jill adjusted her fingers on the rim of the steering wheel given she was in the same car as them, and for about an hour until they reached the outskirts of the village.

Lucky for them, the marine layer had stopped at the rim of the Valley, which in turn left the mountains to stand out in the cold late summer sun. Joey peered out the window to his left at the gray and white clouds disappearing from around those dense dark green ponderosa pines.

“Reminds me of the Catskills—kinda,” he remarked.

“Yeah, me, too,” Krista added as she pressed the back of her hand to the window pane, complete with a clink from the tiny silver ring on her spindly index finger. “Joey and I have been needin' a li'l art in our lives.”

“The two of you are gonna like the room I got you, too,” Jill announced as the signs for the village emerged into her view.

“Thank you for that, by the way,” he told her with a clearing of his throat. “I wouldn't know where that sort of thing would be in a li'l rural place like this, if I'm honest.”

“Just gotta know where to look, babe,” Krista assured him with a lopsided grin herself.

“I tried ta look, though,” he quipped in a small voice.

“Nah, I did the lookin'—”

Jill nibbled on her bottom lip again from their cuteness and from Joey's transcending his own age with his open collar. Each adjustment of her fingers on the rim of the steering wheel only made her beckon for a breath of fresh air: she wanted to stay in that car forever, but she had an itch she couldn't seem to scratch.

They reached the bed and breakfast, which used to be a hospital back around the first World War before it was converted to an apartment building and then the intimate, warm lit entity it had become right then for the three of them. The dark wooden walls and golden lanterns near the ceiling, all which made up the front room, gave it that finishing touch of life in the woods of California.

Elizabeth, who had tied her hair into a loose ponytail behind her head and put on a soft pink sweatshirt, stood on the side of the front room with her face rosy with good health. Her face lit up at the sight of Jill, Joey, and Krista as they made their way towards her. Elizabeth brought that urn, which had tucked underneath her arm, towards her chest as if it were her journal.

“Joey, Krista—this is my best friend Elizabeth,” Jill introduced them.

“I've heard a lot about you both,” Elizabeth confessed as she adjusted the urn in her arms.

“What'cha got here?” asked Joey as he gestured to the urn.

“My sister is in here,” she told him. Krista gasped and he brought a hand to his chest.

“Oh, man.”

“It's okay, you didn't know,” Elizabeth assured him. “She died a couple of years ago—diabetes.”

“Oh, my God, that's awful,” Krista declared.

“Not to change the subject so hastily, but where's Ellen?” asked Jill.

“The back room here—” Elizabeth gestured to the corridor behind her, where Ellen stood across from a strange woman to converse about something. Jill turned back to Joey and Krista.

“I'll be right back,” she told them.

“Okay! We're gonna check in,” Krista quipped back with that infectious smile.

“All I know is your room is near the back across the hall from the old library,” Jill recalled.

“By the way, that hat is so badass,” said Joey.

“What, my beret?” Jill felt her face bloom with warmth.

“Yeah—totally the artist look. Wouldn't you agree, Krista?”

“Without question,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye.

Jill skirted past her friend to meet up with Ellen, who's face lit up upon sight of her.

“There you are!” She turned to the short woman before her. She was gaunt but shapely, and dressed in a soft looking red wine colored shawl and short white dress; to match her dress, she wore a necklace of pure white pearls. The skin on her legs resembled to the legs of a supermodel with their slender build and slight kiss of the sun. Perhaps it was merely the intimate lighting in there but Jill swore that the skin on her legs changed colors like the fur of a black cat.

“This is Seignora Marcia Ciccia,” Ellen introduced her, “our mentor, and the one who wanted us to perform this play.”

“It's an honor,” Seignora greeted her with a warm smile: she spoke with a slight lingering of an Italian accent, like someone who had lived in an English speaking country most of her life. although Jill knew she was quite educated. She did wonder how long she had been in the country given the smoothness and flawless quality of the skin on her face and neck. Krista, who was as old as Joey, held onto her looks quite well, but even she had the slight sag associated with age; Seignora's skin resembled to fresh glazed clay.

“I hear you are an artist,” she confessed to Jill.

“Kinda,” she replied; she peered over her shoulder to find Joey sitting at one of the low tables there in the front room with the urn before him. Elizabeth must have been standing out of sight. Jill spotted a narrow silvery barrel right next to the fireplace irons and the heavy stone fireplace, right behind him. The room was empty so she could hear Elizabeth's voice, but not the words of which she said to him.

“Perhaps for the next play we can arrange for something—you know, to have you make some kind of art for the set.”

“Oh, yeah!” Ellen recalled. “Like art direction for the stage setting. That is, if you wanna.”

“It's outside of my comfort zone, but I'd be down for it if business slows up,” Jill promised them.

“Cool!” Ellen declared with a throwing of her arms around her.

“Anyways, Ellen,” Seignora started, “—we should get ready. Rehearsal starts in about an hour and a half and we still haven't had lunch yet!”

“Actually I have,” she insisted.

“But I haven't, though… and you know me. It's hard for me to pick out what I want, even after living here in California as long as I have.”

“How long have you lived here?” asked Jill.

“Long enough to call myself a citizen,” she replied to which she flashed her a wink. Ellen then turned back to Jill.

“I'll catch you later.”

“Oh, yeah! Sure, sure—I'll be hangin' with the two birds straight out of New York for the time being.”

“And yes, they are getting the star treatment later on,” Ellen assured her; she passed her to fetch Elizabeth. It was that moment Jill knew that weekend would be majestic.

* * * * *

“I can't believe a li'l place like this out in the wilderness would prove to be a good setting,” Joey was saying as he and Krista nestled down in their comfy chairs together underneath the heavy Indian blankets Jill had brought along with her. They had been seated about ten feet from the stage, which had been set up right outside of the village and near a long low out building made of stone. Ellen had told Jill that was their dressing room.

“How would you know? We haven't even seen the play yet!” Jill proclaimed as she snuggled down to his left.

“I'm more perceptive than I look, y'know,” he teased her, to which Krista giggled.

Night had fallen over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Jill felt the marine layer returning to the Valley behind them. Even though she gazed up at the inky black sky and the crisp oak trees, she couldn't help but imagine snow falling all around them. She yearned for three big mugs of hot chocolate, one for the each of them, and each one with those little marshmallows floating near the top. Joey brought the blanket on the bottom up to his ears and hunched his shoulders: a few stray tendrils of his jet black hair brushed against the side of Jill's face to where it tickled.

“Skinny New York boy's cold,” Jill remarked as she tucked the edge of the blanket underneath her hip.

“Freezin'... I gotta hand it to ya, Jill—you're tough.”

“As tough as you, though,” Krista pointed out, to which he shrugged.

“I dunno 'bout that. I've had my ass handed to me time an' time again—and I know you have, too, sure, but I got nuthin' like her, though. Survived two horrific fires and then some.”

The lights before them dimmed and the audience behind them fell silent.

The urn had been made as a centerpiece of the set: the play itself was about a young woman, played by Elizabeth, who had lost her parents in a fire and had grown reticent to even so much as say the words “fire” or “parents” for that matter. Ellen played her stepsister, who was blind and along with her husband, encouraged her to continue her passion for blacksmithing alongside her fiance, a carpenter. The play came to a head when they discovered the fiance had started the fire and lied about it as well as his affair the whole entire time. Joey and Krista giggled like two best friends at the sheer amount of swear words peppered throughout the script. Jill meanwhile kept her eyes fixated on the urn in the backdrop and she knew Elise was smiling down on her sisters at the moment Ellen said, “I know what you've been up to” to Elizabeth's character's fiance. Even with his getting caught and his eventual shunning and disposal, both sisters knew their parents were not returning.

About five minutes from the ending, Jill caught the sound of rustling off in the bushes to their right. A cool, crisp breeze brushed over their heads and in turn sent a shiver down their spines. The first snow of the season was not too far off as Elizabeth turned to the urn on the backdrop and rested her hand on the side.

“I will always love you,” she whispered, which beckoned a sniffle out of Krista. Jill felt Joey lean over to put his arm around her; Jill herself felt tears well up in her eyes. Joey put his other arm around her and held both women close to him. The lights faded out to darkness and the applause beckoned forth; Jill raised her hands over her head like she did at the Anthrax concert. Seignora emerged from the darkness to tell everyone that it was merely the first act of two, the next act of which came on Saturday night.

“Amazing,” Joey remarked as he leaned forward. He glanced back at Jill with a grin on his face. “The whole weekend!”

“Beautiful,” Krista said. “Just beautiful. And addictive!”

Ellen and Elizabeth emerged from behind the set to meet up with them.

“Hey, the stars have fallen to the earth,” Joey proclaimed, which made them both laugh out loud.

“Seignora wants to speak to you, Jill,” Ellen told her.

“What does she want to speak me about?”

“Making a set for a future play, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, that's right!”

“Should we thank Seignora—what'd you say her name was?” asked Krista.

“Marcia!” Elizabeth answered as she tucked the urn underneath her arm.

“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” Joey cracked which made them erupt into laughter again.

“We'll help you guys pick up the chairs and blankets,” Ellen told them as the three of them stood to their feet and were greeted by the onslaught of stone cold mountain breeze surrounding them.

“Let's make this quick,” said Jill as she hunched her shoulders up towards her ears.

“She's in that little out building over here,” Elizabeth informed them. Joey thanked her and the three of them scurried across the grass and around the side of the stage; the stone building in question loomed behind the makeshift stage in shadow, but they were greeted by that warm glow of lamp light in the front windows. Jill led the way into the short front corridor, past a low wooden stool which she could only assume was for monologues, given all the times she watched Elizabeth and Ellen do something solo.

“Seignora?” she called out.

“In here.” Her voice sounded weak and gravelly, as if she was developing a dry cough of sorts. Joey backed off a bit.

“What's wrong, babe?” Krista asked him, but Jill kept going into the dressing room. Seignora sat on the sofa with a tissue to her face. In front of her stood what appeared to be a sewing kit.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked her.

“I think I am getting ill, so I will make this quick.”

“Six feet, Jill,” Krista advised her, to which Joey lingered back in the hallway.

“Always,” she vowed. Jill returned to Seignora as she bowed her head and breathed heavy.

“Should we do this over the phone or—?”

“No,” Seignora insisted with haste. “No, no, no, no—”

Something in the corridor broke, like broken glass.

“Shit!” Joey blurted out.

“Joey!” Jill shrieked.

“Jill!” he echoed.

“What was that?” Seignora demanded.

“I knocked over a vase—I didn't even see it, though, I swear,” Joey babbled.

“You—You—” Seignora sputtered. Even in the warm welcoming light of the dressing room, Jill watched her face turn pale and sickly. Her cheeks sunk into her face, and in turn revealed the bones underneath the otherwise thick flesh. She groped forward as if to hold onto something, but she was too far from the vanity mirror and the accompanying chair.

“Seignora?” Jill backed up to the door, where Joey and Krista had congregated to ensure all was alright. She staggered forward so as to catch her balance.

“I want to be an animal,” her voice lowered to a deep guttural growl.

“The—The fuck?” Joey stammered. Krista's eyes widened. Jill stood back with them as Seignora fell to her knees on the floor; she gasped for air as if that hoary old virus had ravaged her body, but there was no way it could have been it. Jill glanced at the shards of porcelain in Joey's hands.

“Put it back!”

“Put it back, Joey!” Krista added.

“Fuck!” he blurted out as he chucked the pieces towards the door.

But it was pointless as Seignora clutched at herself and her skin darkened from the loss of precious oxygen. Her fingers twisted and gnarled like old uprooted tree branches; Jill noticed them losing their flesh and blood all at once as both transformed into thick powder. The bones underneath the skin revealed to be pointed, made feral like the claws of a creature. The three of them backed away from there to the front corridor and to the front door.

“I am hungry,” she moaned. “I need it—I need flesh for my flesh! Where are my clothes!” She shook her arms about, and so hard such that patches of skin and dried dead flesh fell off like a snake shedding its skin.

“Shit!” Krista shouted and she ran to the door. Joey followed her, but Jill lingered back.

“Come on, Jill!” Joey called out, and Seignora's rotting body lunged out of the room. The warm light was enough for Jill to watch her skin fall off of her bones as if it had rotted. Joey yanked on her arm to keep her out of the way. Jill huddled behind him and next to a mortified Krista.

“If she wants flesh, she's gonna haveta go through the skinny man first,” he promised them as Seignora's teeth decayed into bright yellow and then brown, and then jet black before they fell right out of her skull. Krista set a hand on his shoulder and put her arm around his upper back: her other hand touched Jill's shoulder so as to comfort her.

Seignora clawed at the walls like the violent wild animal she so wanted to be. Her skin withered and rotted away, and revealed to them a thick coarse web of pitch dark veins akin to a leper: Joey stood there with his arms over Krista and Jill's chests, thus protecting them both from the creature before them. Both women huddled behind his slender but strong body.

They watched her hair slither off of her skull as if from sickness. Her eyes bugged out of their sockets, although they were as clear and white as the albumin in an egg.

“I'm old—I'm dying—I need—I need more!”

The flesh and blood she had borrowed over the years withered and faded away into nothing more than tired tendrils and a disgusting pile of regret. Regret for not having taken the cloak of the Grim Reaper herself when the time came.

“Should we run?” Krista's voice trembled. Joey's lip quivered and his body froze as if he had sustained rigor mortis.

“Joey!” Jill cried.

“JOEY!” Krista shouted into his ear.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” Joey shrieked like he would on stage. Krista reached for the stool and hurled it into the corridor so as to act as a barrier. The three of them ran out of the out building and into the darkness. Jill led them both to the front of the stage, where they met up with Elizabeth and Ellen right as they were about to fetch them.

“Hey! Hey, whoa, is everything alright?” asked the latter.

“We gotta go! We gotta go!” Jill proclaimed. “Seignora! Very bad things!” She could scarcely speak given the adrenaline. Confused, Elizabeth and Ellen followed them back to their cars and back to the bed and breakfast. Jill, Joey, and Krista, all of whom were alone by the time they reached their rooms at the back of the building, congregated in that hallway so as to catch their breath.

“What the fuck was that?” Joey demanded, his brown eyes wide and his expression twisted with terror.

“I wish I knew,” Jill confessed as she ran her fingers through her hair. “I know it's the least of our problems at the moment, but I hope Elizabeth and Ellen got my blankets in the back of their car.” Her eyes wandered over to the doorway to her right: it didn't belong to a room so to speak, but rather a small library, which had buttoned up for the night. But the little faded red cross next to the door frame was all the more apparent to the three of them. Krista knitted her eyebrows together; the hallway was silent save for the low chatter in the front room.

“What'd you say her name was?” she asked Jill.

“Marcia Ciccia. She also told me she was a citizen of California.”

“Marcia Ciccia...” she echoed in a near whisper. Jill and Joey watched her reach underneath her hair for a bobby pin which kept the hair off of her neck. She then stuck the pin into the keyhole, to which it unlocked. The door swung open to reveal the pitch darkness inside.

“Who says you can't be girly and badass?” Joey declared; Krista switched on the light and they stepped inside of the small, cramped library. A long low white cabinet stood on the right side of the room before a closet door.

“I'm sure records will be over here,” she pointed out as she made her way to the cabinet. “Records usually are in cabinets of sorts—given behind us there are nothing but books.” Joey meanwhile peered over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming. Krista knelt down before the cabinet door closest to them and used the same bobby pin to unlock it. Indeed, once Jill and Joey joined her on the floor, and she unveiled the section beginning with the letter “C”, they were met with over a dozen medical records.

“Ciccia,” Krista muttered.

“Right there!” Jill took out the folder first and opened it to reveal the medical records.

“Marcia Ciccia was an Italian immigrant—profession, a seamstress—born in—1906!” Krista gaped at her. “—it says here she was a few lines away from Bellardini.”

Joey raised his eyebrows at that.

“Bellardini,” he muttered.

“Bellardini—wonder if she knew your grandparents,” she suggested before returning to the article. Her eyes wandered down the column and she frowned at the markings underneath Seignora's name. “Wait a minute, this is a death certificate. It says here she died in the Griffith Park Fire of 1933—down in LA. This is her death certificate!”

“Wait a minute, but she was alive, though,” Krista pointed out.

“Yeah, she was alive and her skin looked radiant, as if her heart was in fact beating. She also gasped as if she was having trouble breathing.”

Jill picked up another piece of paper from the folder, which declared Seignora had died in October of that year from third degree burns and a choking on smoke. She then returned to the record in her other hand. “This considerable fire down south back during the Depression that killed like a hundred people—she was one of the victims, like her house was near the park. And she got caught up in a back fire and it killed her. Until the Camp Fire happened, it was the deadliest fire in California history. Twenty nine people.”

“And she was a casualty,” Joey said in a soft voice.

“Or so they believed,” said Krista as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“She survived it, though,” Jill pointed out. “She survived with those horrific third degree burns all over her body. Her body was broken but her soul kept going inside of her. It was—” Every time she blinked, she could picture Seignora lunging for them with the phalanges on her hands as sharp as razors to steal their flesh from them. She shook her head about. “—like the fire had made her super human. Like she clung to dear life and something kept her alive.”

“Maybe it was her will to live,” Krista suggested. “She wanted to be alive.”

“She stopped at nothing, too—” Jill flashed back on the sewing kit in the dressing room. “She was willing to do whatever it took, too. She wanted our flesh because she wanted to live.”

“And she was only twenty seven on top of it, too,” Joey added.

“Twenty seven—died young,” said Jill. “And she looked young, too. She looked young but it was all a disguise of her true age, though.”

“So we were dealin' with a hundred year old entity there,” Joey concluded as he swallowed down his nervousness.

“Looks to be,” Jill answered as she put the papers back into the folder. “Twenty seven when the fire happened, but she kept going for decades on end. Took people's flesh and blood and then buried their bones.”

“No bones about it...” Joey's voice trailed off, and Krista raised her head.

There was a gunshot down the hallway and the three of them gaped at each other.

“What the hell was that,” Krista's voice quivered.

“Put it back! Put it back!” Joey hissed. “Ya told me to put it back, now I'm tellin' ya to put it back!” Jill closed the folder and stuffed it back into the box; Krista put the box back into the cabinet and shut the door. The three of them scrambled to the door and back into the hallway, just time to find a shotgun blast right to Seignora's head at the far end. Jill stifled a scream with her hands, while Joey huddled behind her with his hands clasped onto her hips. Krista turned off the light and shut the door behind her. Seignora fell to the floor, flat on her back. A beautiful woman having rotted away and then suffered a violent gun blast to the head courtesy of Elizabeth. She stood in the doorway with the shotgun barrel pointed to the floor; even from a distance, Jill could make out the sight of the smoldering at the end. Breathing heavy, she raised her head to the three of them at the far end of the corridor.

“You guys alright?” she called.

“Yeah,” Jill replied as Joey put his arm around her and Krista, the latter of whom buried her face in his chest. Elizabeth and Ellen passed Seignora's smoldering corpse to talk to them and for one of the patrons to call the medics.

“She's a fucking zombie, man!” Ellen yelped with tears in her eyes. “A zombie!”

“She was wantin' to take our skin, though,” Joey pointed out. “Not our brains.”

“Or maybe,” Krista suggedted, “—'cause she asked 'where are my clothes?' and she shook her arms about. She was looking for new skin to comprise herself with.”

“Shook her arms an' a bunch'a skin tickets came flyin' off...” Joey shuddered.

“Skinlings,” Jill quipped.

“Somebody who was still alive and wanted it to stay that way,” Krista added.

“My God,” Ellen whispered as she handed Elizabeth the urn, and she tucked it underneath her arm. The five of them stayed there at the end of the hallway until the medics showed up to take the smoldering corpse away to the morgue. Seignora was perhaps going to end up in a fire regardless of what she wanted after the Griffith Park Fire anyway.

And even though it was almost midnight at that point, Elizabeth offered them a cup of late night coffee before bed. They congregated around the table of which Joey had taken his seat at before. Ellen lay Seignora's pearl necklace on the hearth before she sat down: the pearls were still intact despite having sustained not one, but two shotgun blasts.

“What I want to know is how in the world—would she remove someone's flesh and blood and not make a huge fucking mess?” Ellen almost gagged at the thought.

“Her medical record said she was a seamstress,” Joey recalled. Jill noticed his stomach cave in and his feet shuffle underneath the table. And then she gasped as the memory of Elise's burial returned to mind. Those last moments she saw her best friend's corpse before it vanished into the flames, she recalled a huge gash on her belly, which they all assumed came from the tumor, and yet it was too perfect. Too manufactured.

“What?” Elizabeth raised her eyes at her.

“She killed Elise,” Jill concluded. “She killed Elise to take her flesh—but wait a minute.” She turned to Elizabeth. “—Elise had cancer brought on by diabetes.”

“Yeah. But we thought it was that that killed her. We couldn't imagine somebody—much less Seignora—killing her, though.”

“And Elise still had her skin, too,” Ellen recalled.

“She was diabetic—and Seignora's skin was perfect. So she probably killed Elise and found out that it was the skin of a diabetic.”

“So what now?” Krista asked them, right as the waitress strode up to them with five white mugs of black coffee and an accompanying karafe of cream and some sugar packets.

Joey raised his mug to the warm intimate light. Jill noticed his brown eyes wandering over to the hearth and the string of white pearls laying there on top of the bricks.

“To Elise and Seignora,” he said in a low voice.

“Elise and Seignora,” the four women echoed all in unison. For a split second, Jill swore she saw Seignora's face appear in the warm light, but she knew it was the adrenaline waning off as she took a sip of that rich fresh coffee. That next act of the play would be even more cathartic given Seignora's absence, a heavy absence following someone who just wanted to live and stopped at nothing to find it for herself.

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miraimisu · 7 years ago

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These Stones We Skip | Chă̶̪͔̩̺̌̿̉ͅpter 1

◄ previous part ♣ next part ►

[Read at FF.net]

[Read at AO3.]

Summary: Ochako, as a newcomer to the most powerful guild in this forsaken village, had not only one, two; but three responsibilities: grow stronger until she was able to pin the world down, untangle the mystery that her past was and survive under the eyes of a crowd that watched over her as night chased the sun’s tail, the charade going on and on until the thread… suddenly snaps.

Rating: T because of obvious reasons such as Bakugou and swearing children. And it’s an AU. Medieval AU.

Word count: it’s fucking long get over it

Author’s note: i AM BATHING IN LIKE /checks almost 60 pages of fucking content and this is so hard because IT’S LIKE JENGA AND I HAVE TO LOOK OUT FOR PLOTHOLES AND I’M FUCKING OBLITERATED FROM THIS GALAXY OK. I am choking. Unchoke me pls :c

So I have to thank the people who actively support this???? somehow??? AO3 went kinda wild about it, and... FF.net too, for a reason. I’ll try to write another kacchako fanfic in the mean time. Idk. I could have written a novel with this length. Do you guys realize this is a disaster. Don’t kill me ♥ PLEASE DONT

Warnings: it’s long, it’s messy, OLD SCHOOL MIRAI :V It has them feels tho. Kinda. Tons of broshipping. And... some kacchako, finally?? maybe not idk

I’ll very likely have to edit this once I am over this chapter and repair any little plotholes I may have poked.

I just hope Mic. Word hasn’t munched nothing of this fic or left words out.

Yuuei was a weird place for Uraraka. No insults intended, but the second she had been officially introduced as an official member of the guild, nothing had changed.

In all honesty, she had expected some kind of warm welcoming, a party, or maybe a surprise token? but she didn’t get anything. From the most realistic standpoint, she should have expected this– after all, the battle against the rocky fireballs monster had been just a day ago, and people were still tidying the place up of upcoming foes.

The following two days after the battle, the whole guild had been imposed a ban from the council. As the sorcerer would later learn, that basically meant that the whole guild was forbidden to partake in violent events, organize for team battles or even do as much of a rock paper scissors competition. Turns out that the mission against the volcano boss was kind of too high for them, and it somehow made sense to her in the end: only she and Bakugou had been able to do significant damage to that son of a bitch.

When she tried to patiently ask the leader why they had embarked in such a counter-productive battle, he had unkindly explained with not much patience that it was a measure for later journeys, that it needed to be done, and that she shouldn’t meddle in business that didn’t affect her at all. Then he remembered that he had personally accepted her into the guild and marched off mumbling about her being a pain.

That was when Kirishima came rushing to her with a sheepish expression, and continued the events of the present day. “He’s too much of a short-tempered guy, don’t mind him.”

Uraraka had been going downstairs with her new uniform on, dressed in pink again after being marred in too many bandages after the last battle. Just the thought of the mental strain that the battle had meant brought chills down her spine. “Good to see you in shape, Kirishima. Is he feeling alright?”

If one listened carefully, it was possible to hear Bakugou and Midoriya arguing heatedly inside their office. Both let out a healthy chuckle as the redhead led her down the staircase. “Just Bakugou being Bakugou, no surprise.” and the girl seemed unfazed by this, which obviously surprised him. “And you don’t seem to have much problem with that.”

She shook her head as they arrived to the common room, where some people had lunch between loud chatter and laughter, all tables equipped with a vase full of three sunflowers. It was good to see the guild so alive after such harsh battle, so she couldn’t help but smile at her friend, and then curiously glance at the odd choice of flowers. “Once he stops threatening you with his toy knives, he’s bearable outside the battlefield. Not like he’s near being sane, but I can stop watching my step now. Step by step!”

He affectionately ruffled her hair with a little smile, and she puffed her cheeks in annoyance. Her hair was something extremely hard to deal with, above all with that habit of hers to ruffle it when nervous, anxious, or just plain observed. She threaded her hair back to place under Kirishima’s glance. That was when Uraraka noticed that he was noticeably taller than her. Actually, everyone was.

“I’m glad to see that you are still willing to give him a chance. Many people give up the first day when he screams for them to stop invading his privacy.” she allowed herself a sigh of exhaustion, remembering how he had been so adamant about her joining but had afterwards offered her a membership in the guild. It showed he was a tough one, but not invincible for that matter. “Oh, talking about people!”

Kirishima swung his arm around Uraraka’s shoulders and dragged her to a side, making the people on the tables look at the approaching couple. “Guys, have you met Uraraka yet?”

Of course, Uraraka couldn’t recognize a single face, for which she felt incredibly ashamed despite having no reason to, and the feeling of being observed by those analyzing eyes of theirs made go through ten seconds of self-consciousness and awkwardness. There was a blonde guy – he was a bit similar to Kaminari, maybe they were brothers? – another blonde guy, but this one had a much kinder set of eyes and he impregnated his glances with such softness, Uraraka felt instantly relieved. Her eyes travelled down his body to find him clutching his side in concentration.

“Guys, this is Uraraka, the volcano girl!” suddenly, a flash of recognition seemed to flash through their eyes, but it was short lived. Their shoulders went back down, and the very same skepticism returned in a moment. “She’s been resting till’ now, so be a bit easy on–“

“Wait, you are that girl!?” spoke someone with glee and a girly, excited tone, but Uraraka couldn’t see the person. Apart from those blondes, there was nothing else excepting food, the vase with sunflowers, discarded clothes, and gloves on the table–

“Holy shit!” let Uraraka out, rushing to the girl’s side, trying to make out her figure through her veil of invisibility. The nearer she got the more clothes she saw that outlined the girl’s figure. “You are invisible? How is that possible?”

The three other boys watched the scene unfold, and obviously no one had been this thrilled about invisible girl because they seemed hilariously shocked. The very same girl got up and showed herself to the newcomer. “I was jinxed when I was young by keeping my special ability on forever, until the very day I die.”

The soft looking boy glanced at Uraraka with, again, a very kind smile on. “She’s constantly travelling in recognition missions with us, she’s the stealthy boss of the guild” and no matter how much invisible girl was trying to deny it with flailing arms, the kind boy dismissed her. “You were lucky to find us in our resting day.”

Kirishima scratched his head, with an apology at the tip of his tongue. This was the most troubled Uraraka had seen him. “Man, sorry for not even asking about that. It’s been crazy here with the ban and fixing the mess after Pyrox.” the redhead looked at the brunette, sensing she’d be confused at all this new information. “What part didn’t you understand?”

“Pyrox?”

“The guy you basically cooled down back at the volcano.”

Uraraka let out an acknowledging hum, and one of the blonde guys, the one with this flickering passionate gaze, dig his elbows on the table. “Such an impressive feat, by the way.” the girl was startled by the praise, and he noticed this– and also winked, teasingly. “I’m Aoyama, please don’t forget my name like you did with Pyrox, pretty please?”

The invisible girl nudged Aoyama, and if it was possible to tell a pout would sure be present on her face. “Don’t tease her, Aoyama!” the gloves waved at her. “I am Hagakure! This is Ojiro.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Uraraka.” replied Ojiro, waving at her, and the sorcerer did the same with a little, shy smile. “We’ve been told about you by others, but seeing you with our own eyes is a bit clashing. You are so tiny.”

Kirishima crossed his arms after, again, ruffling the girl’s hair. It seemed like some kind of stress reliever. “She’s a tough cookie, don’t mistake her…”

Uraraka visibly jumped at such defensive remark, eyes twinkling and her hands flying to her heart. Kirishima had said those words with such faith and kindness that something hammered hard in her heart– warmth, tickles and butterflies at the prospect of being respected so much by the leader’s right hand. All she could do back that was minimally intelligible was smile. “Where are Sero and Shoji? Haven’t they reported back to base yet?”

Hagakure rounded the table to give the redhead a little scroll, all after some messy rummaging in her big cloak. “Sero gave this to me for Midoriya, and told us to meet at our base at Orange Forest.” Kirishima unhooked the paper and read the report as quickly and read everything briefly. “They have some successfully gotten into an illegal base, but we must let things work on their own.”

The redhead nodded, fingers tapping his chin. Uraraka didn’t really bother to follow the topic, as she’d sure not understand this mess. “Have you guys gotten any new information?”

Ojiro shook his head with resignation. “We haven’t heard anything from Sero from within the headquarters at the east. Shoji reunited with the others as far as I know up at the north, and we are supposed to meet where Hagakure mentioned.”

Kirishima rolled the paper and closed it with the bow, tucking it in his side bag. “I will go tell Bakugou as soon as he stops the bickering with Midoriya.”

The room casually fell silent, and a faint sound of crashing and roaring echoed in the distance of the offices. Ojiro laughed, then hissed and clutched his side again. Uraraka flinched and blinked at his poor pose. “Yeah, they sure are–“

The sorcerer was instantly fretting over him, had gone running to the boy and started pouring dewy, morning healing on his side. “I am not the best of healers, but I can help with that!” green lights started to patch the wound beneath Ojiro’s clothing, who looked at her with that impossible smile of understanding he seemed to always have. “Please, don’t move too much, or my magic may be rendered less useful!”

The blonde boy tried to swat her away as kindly as possible. “I’m overjoyed to see you so worried about it, but Shuzenji already patched this up and told me to–“

“But you clearly are in pain.” mumbled Uraraka, squinting for focus– the boy didn’t dare to interrupt her, as she looked stubborn as hell and by the look Kirishima was giving him… this was a given. “Besides, she doesn’t need to know.”

The redhead shook his head with a kind smile, scratching the back of his head with a mysterious glint in his eyes. “Man, and to think that Bakugou thinks you are a threat…” Aoyama looked at him in interest while Ojiro tried to calm Uraraka down. “Not completely harmless as I thought you to be, but man, you are a far cry from a monster.”

“But she’s still a threat, right?”

Uraraka’s healing halted, looking at the other blonde from the corner of her eyes. The passionate boy looked at Kirishima in vehemence and the most light-hearted tones she had ever heard regarding her professional status. “We still don’t know what she will do in the future. There’s no need to be so laid back about it either, right, Uraraka?”

“Huh!” her back was as straight as a tree, eyeing the suddenly menacing blonde who was looking at her piercingly– and it turns out that convincing everyone that she was trustworthy wouldn’t be as easy as to just get into the guild and hope that everyone would trust her. The faith they had put in her during battles, the littlest of trusts that Bakugou was putting on her when allowing her to roam around his peers as much as she wanted– it wasn’t enough. It seems like only time would fix this misconception. “Ah, well, I just hope I can make you all trust me, somehow!”

Hagakure pounded Aoyama on the head while Kirishima frowned at him for making his little pal so uneasy, and he was by her side in a heartbeat. “Aoyama, stop being such a creepo.”

“Apologies for being cautious, Hagakure.” stated he, eyes unblinking as he stared at the brunette. “She’s just so tiny, to think she holds such power… it’s beyond me.”

Kirishima had been apparently rummaging through his bag during the exchange, and Ojiro was up with Aoyama when he cleared his throat. “Anyway, go to Bakugou’s office with this scroll, and make him look it up so he can consider your mission concluded and give you some free days. I don’t think you guys should be off before Sero and the others report back.”

“Roger that!” exclaimed Hagakure, grabbing Aoyama’s arm as the passionate boy wrapped himself into more complicated thoughts that Uraraka wasn’t very pleased about. That guy seemed harmless a minute ago, why had he shown his fangs at her so quickly? Clearly, everyone was different in that guild, one way or another.

The trio was ascending the staircase in a loud exit the moment Mina came through the main door, her brows rising at the happy group of nerds. “Some people sure have some good breakfast.” murmured she before her black eyes were set on Kirishima and Uraraka, a smile shooting up to her round features as soon they looked at her. “Oh, my eyes have been blessed! Good morning, guys!”

Kirishima padded to her with a grin, and Uraraka waved at her while walking less enthusiastically than him. The redhead sure was a goof bear despite his tough exterior. “Good to see you around today, Mina! Any luck at today’s practice?”

The pink haired girl sighed, shoulders sinking in disappointment and the sight was so unsettling for Uraraka, somehow. There was something so irritating about seeing such a cheerful girl so sunken– the image was stirring something weirdly terrifying in her, and all the sorcerer wanted to do was hug those droopy eyes away. “It was a bit meh. No lucky shots or good preys to catch. Midoriya and barbarian would sure be disappointed with my performance.”

And Kirishima’s hands came to rest on her deflated shoulders, which perked up at the soothing gesture, and it brought a little smile to Mina’s face as soon as his calloused hands were rubbing her shoulders– and Uraraka didn’t know with all certainty, but Kirishima seemed to relax as soon as she was fine again. Light streamed around the pair, making it all look more heavenly to her. It made her heart squeeze comfortable in her chest, and the brunette smiled kindly at the exchange.

Her neck started sweating grossly, but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. Sparks of complicity flew and cracked from the pair’s fingers, ignited the ground beneath Uraraka and lifted her up in a trip to another world, all the world fading away, her included, and tainting it all it reds and roses, the color of his eyes and the blush of her cheeks. The world seemed simpler, their breaths dancing across pages of her life in blurs of iris, and it all felt familiar and warm to her.

She was suddenly wondering if Midoriya was also like this seeing how soft he was, or if Kaminari could smile like that too, or if Bakugou used to be this endearing before becoming such a beast. Not like she minded, though.

“Take it easy, though.” said Kirishima, finally, voice as soft as silk and his eyes bright. However, his brows were a bit furrowed. “I know how you all tend to overdo it when bad days go even worse. I don’t want to have you hitting the bed before dinner.”

“Ah, I’m going to rest for the rest of the day. I had thought about heading to the alchemist, then go downtown for the Sacred Sanctuary.” it sounded like assurance, but Uraraka couldn’t find what rest she would do in doing guild chores. All she did was smile with a shake of her head, which prompted Mina to look at her and grin. Everything was alright in the world, suddenly. “Wanna come with, Uraraka? There are some people I think you haven’t met yet!”

Before the brunette could even answer, the archer was already dragging her out of the main room until Kirishima stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Wait, can you do me a favor and take this scroll to the Sanctuary? Yagi will sure be happy to see we already have the zone swept for them.”

She removed her backpack to open it and put the scroll in. Uraraka could tell with a little glance that this woman was not a commoner archer, as all items she had seemed pretty damn hard to get. The moment the scroll was in, the inventory was closed. “I’ll try to be quick. The library at the Sanctuary will be jam-packed with people at evening.” her hand was on Uraraka’s elbow a second later as Mina waved at Kirishima. The sorcerer was being dragged so ruthlessly that all she could do was hum a farewell to the hunter.

While they walked through the plaza, Uraraka was slapped to reality when a crack on the ground called her attention. That was from when she used the ground spikes against Bakugou – she recalled unwillingly, and her face tensed when memories of the fateful battle swarmed in her brain, swum in her mind and drowned her in a sense of dread and, again, determination to get better the next time she trained with Bakugou.

“Don’t get worked up over it!” Mina patted her back as they neared an adjacent building. “Everyone at the alchemist will sure love you to bits!”

Yeah, well, not like that was what was going through her mind at the moment, but that would do. Uraraka nodded and let herself be guided to the alchemist, all troubling thoughts forgotten when her nose came in contact with what could either be an awful medicine or a wonderful poison. However, the room was cozy and warm, divided by a counter that crossed the whole room. There were two tables at the sides and bookshelves with books, flowers, and bottles full of pebbles and devices that were foreign to her.

The windows by the door provided with shedding sunlight onto the floor, making it glow in radiance and this familiar feeling writhed in her heart, a feeling similar to smelling fresh bread, or burying your face in the fluffiest pillow. There was a big cauldron at the end of the room, a bit hidden at the darkened ends of the room, and someone was moving around there.

When Mina closed the door, this very same person came running to them. It was a girl, green hair with big, doe eyes and a neutral, scientific look in her face. Her hair was tied up in a large bun, but was irremediably long no matter how much the girl tried to tie it. She shot a hand up to greet them, polite. “Good morning, Mina. This must be new girl, right?”

The archer hummed in agreement, and wordlessly handed a sheet of paper to her. The girl behind the counter read it slowly, eyes carefully examining the ingredients asked of her, and Uraraka was assured right there that this woman was a skilled professional. “The usual, I see.” she searched under the counter to get a seal and mark the sheet. “I’m Asui, by the way. I’m the chief herbalist of this guild, and also main alchemist. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

When Asui offered her a hand to shake, Uraraka gingerly corresponded the gesture. “Yes, I have heard of you as well. You must be a valuable member of this guild.”

A small, purple dressed man came to Asui’s side, face of a kid but clothes of a full-fledged adult. The herbalist gave him the sheet and guided him behind so he’d start working on it. “I am a fighter, as well, but I am specialized on potions and gems. This region is fertile and rich in minerals, so we are always coming up with new improvements.”

Uraraka nodded in awe, eyes sparkling at what could mostly be defined as a pure brutal hard worker. Mina nudged her with a mischievous glint in her eyes, but her smile was pure and genuine. “Guess what? She’s a sorcerer, too!”

Uraraka was quick to slam her hands on the counter, making the wood shake and papers crumble, and her words came out excited and overwhelmed. Her shoulders were shaking as her chords vibrated in glee. “Y-You are a sorcerer!”

Asui wasn’t affected by her happiness, only nodded with a finger to the mouth. “Always been one. It’s only natural since I was raised in a lake.”

In a lake? – when Uraraka turned to Mina, she only nodded slowly in consideration, then turned to the head alchemist. “She can only use water based magic.” Uraraka still seemed clueless, maybe because she hadn’t seen Asui’s whole non-human complexion. “She’s a mutant.”

A second passed, then two, and the girl was unresponsive. Before the brunette could flip the counter upside down, Asui chided the archer. “Please, Mina, don’t be so blunt, ribbit. Watch how you are talking about the person who makes your daily potions.” the pink haired girl shrunk a little, and Uraraka was stunned that such a stale, collected and calm person existed in such unkempt guild. “My family was cursed before my birth during a battle, and had to exile. I am mostly human, but–“

“Asui,” the small man came running again. “who is that cutie–“

The alchemist’s large tongue slapped the man back to work, and he whimpered back to the cauldron while blood drained from Uraraka’s face. Mina didn’t mind the little show. “–as you have just witnessed, I have frog-like abilities. I can also blend with the colors of a room, and breathe underwater. However, due to my slim, porous skin, I can’t handle fire magic. Other elements just bore me.”

“She’s a part of the exploration team too, with Hagakure and the others.” explained Mina, and Uraraka nodded stiffly, still shocked by Asui’s slap. “More than valuable, she’s just a mad woman. Midoriya accepted her so fast that Bakugou had no way to deny him. Maybe it was because of her handicap that Bakugou ended up accepting her, but that’s beside the point.” the archer smirked coyly. “You sure have been spending time with Midoriya ever since, right?”

The ever so phlegmatic girl, who had been blinking at them without a trace of emotion exploded into a small blush, cheeks dusted in pink. “He makes for a good companion when days are rainy. You will have time to talk with him as soon as the ban is over, I’m sure.”

“That will make tomorrow much easier for Bakugou.” commented Mina airily, hand on her waist as a hand racked behind her mane of pink locks. “He can’t handle being still and idle for more than an hour, let alone another day. That guy…”

“Give him a rest, Mina.” surprisingly, it was Uraraka who said that, a comprehensive smile gracing the view. “After all, we made a favor to the Council by defeating Pyrox. I can understand why he’s so annoyed with this situation.”

“It’s so weird to think that you are that girl who stood her ground against him. I was told all about it, and it’s a shame I wasn’t there to see the spectacle you made at Magma Volcano.” Uraraka was torn between feeling a bit offended and blushing for the compliment– but look, everyone had regarded her as tiny, but still a powerhouse, so she couldn’t complain, really. “I still reckon you have tons to learn, yes?”

“Now that I think about it,” Mina scratched her cheek – Uraraka noticed that she had a minor scar there – and looked at her newest friend. “I heard that you and Bakugou would be training, yes?”

Uraraka jumped at what had been presented to her as a secret, but seemed to have spread like wildfire. “Oh, do you have a knack for masochism, ribbit?” she jumped again. “You have such pretty skin, what a pity.”

The brunette knew she shouldn’t be as spooked as she was, but her peers’ behavior was frightening. The idea that they had of her sparring sure sounded different than what Uraraka thought. Asui and Mina were probably used to the barbarian they had as a leader and they were most likely disregarding him out of habit, thinking it would be just Bakugou being Bakugou– except it wasn’t. That man could kill her if he so desired, so nobody should be so aloof about such a threat.

“Hold on, it’s not a matter to be taken lightly!” exclaimed the sorcerer, hat dancing as her head shook in denial. “This is not going to be a walk down the forest! He is a mad monster with nothing else to offer but pain.”

“But that’s what you want from him either way, right?”

That made both archer and sorcerer look at the alchemist, who was neatly noting things down on a sheet of paper. “I mean, you can’t really ask for much more other than that. Bakugou isn’t going to change much no matter how much you try to hammer him into shape. He works in another more complicated way.”

Mina blinked at her for a second before glancing at Uraraka pensively. “She’s right on that. You are going to spend some more time with Bakugou as long as he trains with you– which he kinda actually ordered you to, right?”

Something clapped inside of her, as if her heart had orbited out of existence and all she had left was the thunder hammering of her heart against her chest, but it echoed out of her, as if it had ran a mile and was hanging on the hands of another person– another man. He had clutched her heart in commitment, punishment and obliteration, condemning her to a life full of wounds and interrupted healing. Somehow, her eyes would never heal from seeing him survive a meteor shower– but she’d cope and learn how to go against him.

Yes, that feeling of dread everytime the thought of sparring with him– it was so vibrant now, because he had directly given her the directions to walk, every single day, into a death flag. She was overcome with the same feeling of being thrown into a black hole with a blindfold, unconscious, and waiting for the fall to bend her broken.

“Well, yeah.” gulp. “He did say he’d impose his training schedules on me, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but still…” her hands reached out for her neck to mess with, but Mina held her wrists down with a pout. “… not gonna lie, he may be easier to deal with now in terms of speaking, but a one-on-one sounds like a bigger deal.”

“That’s what he wants you to feel.” butted in Mina again, planting herself in front of Uraraka. “He plays a lot with psychology, but gives himself away with the little details. When he called you roundface, he was mentally integrating you with the rest of us. I’m alien girl,” Mina pointed at Asui with her thumb, grinning. “she’s frog girl, but he respects us all the same. And the fact that he privately accepted you into the guild… he does respect you as a fighter.”

Somehow, the thought of Bakugou actively respecting her sent her heart into an override of confusing feelings, namely throbbing anxiety and crippling warmth that was so sketchy and edgy, all sticking to her lungs and constricting them in a deathly hazard of suffocation, because heat was issuing from her nonblushing cheeks and god forbid her from blushing at the mention of something as common ground – or at least, should be common ground – as respect.

“But you still are a universal threat.”

“Yes!” agreed Mina, and Uraraka deflated considerably, the high from the fantasy popping like a balloon. “You are still dangerous, and while most of us are open to trusting you, he will either never open up, or it will take a while. Asui was handicapped, but you sure are not.” insert humorless giggle and a blink from the herbalist. “See him as a toy, as a tool, get all you need to from him, and then quietly leave.”

“Does that mean I’d never make him be at least friendly or civil with me?” her tone was desperate, graver than intended, but reflected the worry she had intended to show.

Asui and Mina shared an unintelligible message that Uraraka knew to be a thing in this guild– man, it made her feel so out of context. Asui spoke up. “Kirishima made it happen, so I don’t see why you wouldn’t– but you are a sorcerer. So skipping the profession barrier is a tough thing to accomplish.”

“You guys shouldn’t brainwash her like that– you’ll only get her into trouble with grumpy nukes.”

The two clients spun to meet Kaminari at the doorway, who shook his head at their startled looks. Asui casually shrugged off the fact that the boy had been there for a pretty long time. “Sorry I didn’t properly greet you, ribbit. We were having some quality talks here, I didn’t want to interrupt them.”

“S’kay, Asui.” he kicked the door shut, arms busy and heavy with what appeared to be harvests from the forest, colorful fruits and leaves peaking from the bag. Uraraka wanted to help him with the burden, but he seemed to be handling the charge with those good arms he had sure worked hard for. “Sorry for taking so long with these. I just couldn’t decide on which ones to pick.”

The herbalist gathered a bunch of contents from the top of the pile and spread them on the table, pointing at them to teach some medicine basics. “This red one is used for kids’ medicines, as they are sweeter than regular herbs. It has no more use than its taste, used as an additive.”

Mina quickly grabbed it – she sure had a sweet tooth for fruits and sugary products – and munched it. “Yummy! How is it called?”

“It’s a variant of regular strawberries, called sterolia.”

Kaminari raised an eyebrow while Uraraka tentatively tried one as well. “Sounds tough work, all the naming stuff.” Uraraka spit the sterolia out– too much sweetness for her.

“This leaf here is poisonous, so I hope you were– ah, thank goodness you carried gloves with you.” indeed, the blonde had a very worn out pair of gloves with him, stained and unsown in some parts. “Touching them carelessly causes horrible stitches, and the wounds from scratching the stung parts attract lots of bugs. Not pleasant.”

Asui took the dark brown leaf and dipped it in a glass of water. Purple splotches of ink started to steam out of the leaf. “Bugs are in love with this thing, so we here use it for strategic purposes, to make enemies come out from their hideouts.” she wiggled the glass a bit in front of them, the liquid spilling gracefully from the container and the other three took a step back. “Drinking this is horrifyingly painful for your stomach, but it has a bittersweet taste and smell, resembling a health potion. Iida once mistook this with a stamina potion and… well, it was rough for him.”

Uraraka grasped the edges of her neck ties with concern and shock. “Who would have thought it! Did he have much trouble to fight it?”

The boy chuckled as good – should be bad – memories resurfaced from the bottom of his mind. “I remember once, he woke up mumbling something about a fight against aliens and him being super beaten up by them. What a weird guy.”

Before Uraraka could embark into a solo voyage of a worry rampage, Asui cut in. “It is hallucinations too, it was only natural he had those visions. This is a pretty good sample of nitoria. You did a good job, Kaminari. I might ask Midoriya for an allowance to hire you permanently.”

The job mustn’t have been easy or funny, because Kaminari paled at the prospect of doing the job again. “I’ll have to politely decline the offer, Asui. I’m of much more use at the battlefield.”

“You sure are, sparkles.” he tensed at the casual use of such dreadful nickname, and Uraraka and Mina giggled. Asui meant her words as a praise, but she doubted that edge had fallen their way. “Either way, there are also some other ingredients here for painkillers and sensorial enhancers. Mina, you had some ordered here, right?”

“Positive!” after a vigorous nod, Mina glanced at Uraraka, who was still observing the leaf let out the toxins deep into the water. “My Uraraka, you sure seem to like herbs and that stuff.”

Kaminari also looked at her in wonder, eyes drifting from the purpling water to Uraraka, time after time. “I don’t know why that surprises you so much. I had always thought sorcerers knew a bit about herbs and alchemy.”

“Excuse me,” the brunette sorcerer leant back from her watching pose and narrowed her eyes at him, trying to look as venomous as Bakugou would in a nice day. “I do know a bit of all that– after all, I know how to do potions and stuff, but just the basics.” her eyes wavered to Asui’s unblinking ones, as she scanned her over and over. It was all kinds of awkward when one caught her glance like that. “Would it be too much to ask for some practice now and then, Asui?”

The green haired pharmacist shook her head. While she walked to a shelf to get some flasks, Kaminari started setting some other things on the table. “Not at all, Uraraka. I bet Bakugou and Midoriya would accept me giving you some lessons. All for training’s sake and survival.”

“Thank you very much, Asui!” the girl vowed dramatically until her forehead touched the floor, and Kaminari pulled her back by the hem of her uniform’s neck. “I’ll try to come as often as possible.”

“Talking about lessons and nerdy stuff…” Kaminari tugged at the sorcerer’s sleeve so she’d stop rambling about her future lessons with their high-level herbalist. “Yaoyorozu came to me earlier and asked about your whereabouts. She said she needed to speak to you privately.”

Uraraka’s back tensed right after mentioning the knight’s name, and her eyes shone in anticipation. She was quick to jump in front of the blonde and start firing him with unspoken questions, all summed up to this: “Do you have any idea about what she wanted?”

“Nope.” but her eyes didn’t waver in intensity, her hands never let go of their tight grip on her chest’s fabric, and her smile was brightening with each passing second. No matter how many “She’s with Todoroki– necking, probably, discussing stuff at the library.”

The brunette nodded with eagerness and her feet quickly scrambled to the door. Giddiness was taking over her body as her frantic steps neared the sunshine outside the alchemist’s. “Thank you so much, Kaminari! I’ll see you later at dinner, guys! Please Mina, do take care of yourself.”

As soon as Uraraka was out of the room, Mina chuckled. “She sure is full of energy this late in the–“

The door was slammed open again. “HOW COULD I FORGET.” making everyone jump a yard back, she screamed at them for answers. “Has anyone seen Jack around? I need to have a little talk with her.”

“Last time I saw her, she was heading to the library downtown.” he scratched his chin, backtracking all the way back to the very same sunny morning that had turned slightly cloudy and grim without Jack, then had opened up when Uraraka decided to drop by. “She has been missing ever since.”

“Ah, I’m gonna head to the Sanctuary’s library right after getting my stuff from Asui.” and yes, Uraraka remembered that– also how Kirishima seemed to shine whenever she was close, and the way his tense muscles had softened around her shoulders, and it somehow felt like such a Yuuei-ish thing, making people so squishy and light inside. Uraraka’s heart leaped out of her chest whenever she remembered that she was a member of this family now. “Is there anything in specific you need from her?”

“Nothing in particular apart from a talk we need to have. If you see her, remind her of this.” the door was closing again, but no without a cheeky girl waving behind her. “Take care guys, see you later!”

When she was gone again, everyone let out a sigh of contentment. Kaminari looked at the archer while Asui sorted out the received items in a further shelf. “She’s always running around– kinda reminds me of you in your earlier days, Mina.”

The pink haired girl pouted and crossed her arms. “I am not a potential powerhouse threat to my peers, thank you so much. And I’m not in the best terms with Bakugou, but he at least hasn’t tried to kill me.”

“He did, once.” commented Asui from afar, her words reaching meekly and as unemotional as ever. “Remember when Kirishima almost dropped hunting practice to tend your sore ankle? He sure is an angel.”

There was a whole minute of silence in which the only response Mina gave was her left eye twitching, hands quivering, and as much as Kaminari did to wake her up from the trance, nothing was working.

When a shove didn’t work, he looked at the unfazed herbalist with a narrowed, pointy glare. “I think you just broke Mina.”

“Serves her right for calling me a mutant.”

Uraraka’s steps up the endless staircase of Yuuei’s main building were a nightmare scenario of blood red carpeted steps with golden strings, holding the secrets of the very same guild hanging from a thread, an inch away from her nose and making her chase after those demons with even more determination than before, the strings wearing thinner and thinner until, someday, the fibers would give in to their.

Sparkles of jars full of sunflowers and roses blurred at her sides the more stairs she flew upon, her rhythm long forgotten and given in to the frantic beat of her heart, the crossed and uneven gasps that escaped her mouth and how the clouds beneath her lungs transcended and transcended until she was breathless, hopeless, and falling into another place far away from there, away from the violence, the disturbance and the disarrayed stream of peace that shot out from each of her peers’ hearts.

“I gotta make it to the top…” her shoes stomped harder on the carpet, hands flailing in front of her as the end reached her eyes. “important matters await me there!”

Because Yaoyorozu screamed patience, understanding, intimacy, power and this dreadful sense of danger behind ever corner she had to turn, as if her eyes were always searching to corner hers into an alleyway of unfounded grudges that she clearly didn’t desire to hold, yet she did because no matter how good one tried to be, rumors would always prevail over human faith. And Uraraka knew this. She had seen the same phantom behind everyone’s seemingly innocent eyes.

But the brunette knew that while walking down this river, stepping on the wrong stone would have her meeting a fierce leader’s sharp blade, fueled with bravery and desire. No matter how good-intended her beliefs were, popular opinions would always squish her little hopes into nothing if she ever dared to show her teeth too much.

So, when she opened the door to the library. it was somewhat surprising to see the two knights talking animatedly, with no care in the world– and even when she came into view clearly, that little spark didn’t change. “Fancy meeting you here, Uraraka.”

The sorcerer closed the door behind her and nodded a greeting to Todoroki, who sat on the table by his female counterpart, who had aimed for a chair. “I’m glad Kaminari told you to come by, otherwise I’m not sure if you would have made it in time before dinner.”

“It’s fine, you know I would have come by sooner or later.” Uraraka decided not to sit down, and eyed some books with interest. Titles as The Sword and the Sun flashed in front of her like a bird crossing the horizon, briefly and in a blur of confusing colors. “Is the matter of such emergency that you had to get a messaging dove for it?”

Todoroki chuckled and beckoned her to get closer to them, which she did with a meek glance at them. “It’s good to see you in good shape after the events of last two days. I don’t think a classical commoner would have withstood being stabbed, being almost stabbed again by a bloodthirsty maniac and then defeating a monster almost on their own.”

The knight chuckled as well, but shaking her head at the boy and then looking at the confused sorcerer. “That’s Todoroki’s congratulations for… I guess not being a commoner. Don’t look much into that.”

Uraraka sighed, but it didn’t sound as relieved as one would have expected. “Yeah, it seems like people only know me for being ‘the kamikaze who put off a volcano’. Not that I’m ungrateful for the praise, but I just hope to grow a name out of my own personality, not battlefield victories– at least, for now.”

“So, you wanna yield a name?” Yaoyorozu looked up from her book to look at her friend, who nodded vigorously with her hands to her chest. “Interesting. You have so many things to do here, and you seem resilient.”

“It’s not like you have little things to do, either.” commented Todoroki with slight traces of both disdain and teasing, to which she responded with a little pout. “Besides, she’s new in here. Of course she’ll be busy, and even more while recovering and training with Bakugou.”

Uraraka’s brow twitched as she looked at the pair, who continued reading their books as if they hadn’t said anything of particular importance. “Why… do you all seem to know about the training thing? Are you guys spying on me… on him?”

She didn’t want to include the idea of an us because that would be awfully misleading.

“Information here spreads fast. I just hope Bakugou doesn’t know about it, he’d sure throw a monumental tantrum over being spied on.” complained Yaoyorozu. Uraraka felt a bit flustered at the idea that they had been spying on their last conversation, while she had been fixing his fingers– ugh. Some pink now sure had made its way to her cheeks and she didn’t know why because nothing of special relevance happened. “Either way, there are some things I wanted to show you.”

The knight let her book on the table – Todoroki slipped a finger on the last page she had been reading with a sly sway of his eyes, making Uraraka smile at the little act of complicity. Then, her eyes drifted to the girl scrolling her eyes for a specific book. It must have been one of those dusty ones if she was struggling so much to find it. Books at the top seemed dusty to the naked eye, big fat pages engrossing the eyes of the interested reader in hours of silent learning. Others seemed lighter, covers thinner, and some of these were piled up at the bureau at the back, mixed with some thicker ones.

Uraraka approached the bureau with curiosity under Todoroki’s veiled but short stare, and picked up a random book. This one specifically talked about metamorphosis, and as she eyes the first pages, it turns out like it was something she herself could do with practice. “Shapeshifting.” it came as a murmur that only Todoroki picked up, but he was now too busy reading his things to bother answering. “The art of material shifting.”

The knight was quick to slap the book away from her hands, as if Uraraka was a child and she was a mother, looking out for her. “Don’t you even dare go near that thing.”

The sorcerer frowned and squatted to pick the book up– her hands traced the spine of the book delicately, aware of its decripit state. “Why not? I bet this would help me train for a bit by learning new stuff, even if it’s side skills!” her eyes scanned the first pages of the book quickly while the other glared. Hard. “Well, this seems complicated– ouch, that can hurt like a– I can transform into wate–?!”

Yaoyorozu snatched the book away, frowning down at her. It felt like someone had cut down a rope that the sorcerer was climbing right before reaching the peak of the mountain, and now she was falling down to an abyss, her head full of questions as the knight left the book right on the top shelf where very few people could reach.

“Off limits, Uraraka.” spat she, not meaning to be unkind, but coming across as defensive and angry. “We do want you to expand your prowess, but there’s a limit to everything. What’s the first rule of sorcery use?”

A second later, Uraraka sighed and pointed out her index. “Never try or wield spells or moves that are high above your capacity, lest they will backfire on you.” listed she in a monotone deadpan. The knight nodded, and Uraraka instantly started to complain. “But that’s not fair at all! It’s not like I’m going to go around shapeshifting when I’m wary of–“

“But are you aware of what you can handle, really?” Todoroki flashed the other knight a warning glare, which Yaoyorozu blatantly ignored with a frown of hers. “Remember when you clearly consumed all your energy during your fight with Pyrox? Despite the fact that you kind of saved our lives back there, we can’t let you adopt to that habit. Sorcerers have great habilities, can usually pull off any level moves they wish for– but they can backfire dramatically.”

“I know the basics of sorcery, I know about level barriers and all of that.” the burn from the other day with a simple candle was the first example of how aware she was. Big things could be done with small bodies, but it would always backfire in catastrophic ways. It would always depend on how much energy you had and your capacity. “But I am pretty sure I can start learning the basics of high level stuff while I make my way–“

“That’s not it, Uraraka.”

“Then?”

Yaoyorozu locked gazes with the other knight, who seemed to be having trouble with focusing on the book and biting his tongue at the same time. His knuckles started to rub his thigh, a clear sign of distress– the knight hissed as she stared harder on him, as if telling him to either shut up or speak up, but stop making a fuss over it. It’s not like she usually had the upper hand on him, but this time, it looked like he’d let her maneuver to her liking.

Yaoyorozu was back to acting slightly worried about the handful she had in front of her, who blinked an alarmingly amount of times in confusion. “Power is a double edged sword. And in your case, it plays more to your disadvantage than it does in your favour.”

Uraraka glanced at Todoroki, who was having an internal crisis regarding how vague his companion was purposefully being, and then blinked back at the other female. “Care to elaborate?”

She sighed and sat down again on the chair, rubbing her sore eyes with fervor and enthusiasm before facing Uraraka again. “You are a sorcerer, a powerful one. Having you develop such high level skills at an early stage will only attract attention from people.”

“In other words,” cut in the other boy, without looking up from his book. “they will want your head faster.”

The notion fell on her like an avalanche shaking a tree, stars twinkling behind her eyes and her ears starting to deafen the more reality dampened her in fueled determination, but also doubt and everlasting dread of, again, that nauseous feeling of having a thousand eyes looming from above– and it all and it only made her wonder, wonder if there was no easy way to make them all realize that she wasn’t evil. Her eyes dropped to the ground, existentially decades away from the very moment when Todoroki felt a little bit of pity for that little girl. Because of course he was skeptical, but he hadn’t seen her do anything bad either.

“I don’t really see what’s the problem with me learning some basics…” her face was crestfallen, lips drawn in a thin line as she spoke. “But I guess I can understand your standpoint to a certain extent.”

Lights went on in Yaoyorozu’s stern glance, that had grown soft under Uraraka’s surrender, and she flung to a side of the table to gather a pair of books. “That doesn’t mean you can’t check some of these books out.”

Todoroki took the books from the knight and handed them to the sorcerer, but he still wouldn’t look up from his books. The brunette looked at the volumes in sheer happiness and excitement, like a little girl with a lollipop or a set of new crayons, and eyed the titles of the rather big volumes, all covered in leather and metallic intrincated patterns, rough to the touch but expelling wisedom and magic all over their surface. One of them seemed to be a basic guide into elementary sorcery and summoning, and another into basics of other side techniques.

It all screamed rookie, weak, and she didn’t really like it– yet, she reluctantly took the books to heart and nodded to the knight. The little snippits she had read touched on subjects she already had knowledge about, but it was a bit like mathematics and astrology: things she definitely knew about, yet she never gave them much use. Uraraka was more ambicious than to dive into the known seas of principant sorcery, expected exciting things to happen to her now that the Baku-deathflag was out of sight.

But she could understand that they needed to keep her a bit down to earth for the time being. Doing some basic training like this would open her doors more, make her rethink a little bit her choices during battles. Perhaps Bakugou was right and maybe – her hands clenched their grip on the books, making their existence and weight more relevant and vivid –, just maybe, she could improve by boosting some basics.

A minute or so after – when the black haired girl had sat down again, apparently for real this time, a tiny bulb lit up on her avid imagination. Her fingers threaded through the various pages of index references, eyes skidding over the words like water on ice, her eyes fixated in a single word she was struggling to find.

“Is there…” her voice trailed off for two seconds, giving the other two guild members to look at her, as she switched books. “is there any appendix on… dreams and the like?”

Their reaction was as she had predicted: surprised, albeit not completely shocked. Todoroki finally looked up from his volume – now that the sorcerer inspected it in a closer look, it was even dirtier and older than hers. “Dreams.” he tasted the word in his chapped lips, and then she nodded. “Are you interested in oneiromancy or something?”

Her head was going to shake in denial before she mentally took a step back and contemplated the word, appearing in glistening lights and a cloud of fog, trying to blur her thoughts until she snapped and nodded ever so slowly. “Yeah… kind of.”

“Well, I don’t think there is anything akin to oneiromancy here.” Yaoyorozu looked at the ceiling in wonder, gesture that somehow seemed so typical of her to do. “If there was, I certainly don’t know anything of it. But there are always oracles to go to.”

Uraraka left the books on the table, took out a very uncomfortable looking chair to sit down on and gawked at the knight. “Oracles?”

Todoroki carried on with the explanation. “They are usually old women who live in small villages, usually in exile. They often can practice oneiromancy, but,” his hands shot up to stop what was going to be a beaming interruption, her eyes dulling a little bit as her words were stopped. “it’s a bit dangerous to rely on a stranger for issues that involve psychology. If you ever encounter one and decide to consult her, be careful with what lies she can tell you.”

“Most of them don’t charge you for consulting them,” she said, thinking that Uraraka would be relieved to hear that – which she wasn’t, because gold wasn’t something she really cared about. “But it’s true that some people still leave their chambers in a worse condition than before. They are a tricky business to meddle with.”

Uraraka’s expression twisted into a sour frown, her hands now cluthing the book harder as she looked through some pages hesitantly. Ever since those dreams had been hunting her, her mind had woken in a haze of unchasable chains of events, something she felt close to her, but was somehow tearing her apart. Both her hands were stretched, two threads pulling her in opposite directions towards where home was supposed to be, yet she was feeling undeniable torn apart despite her general contentment.

In a sense, her mind wasn’t completely settled, it hadn’t wrapped around the facts that had been happening around her– and it was driving her insane. Everything around her was unknown, a foreign space where stars shone in a distance too far for her dainty hands to reach, and the void somehow grew bigger and bigger as flashes of people, smiles and sunflowers passed by. Her steps through the streets would feel ghostly, as if she had forgotten how to walk yet was managing to stand and survive, and not knowing how was eating her alive.

If her fingers stretched into the distance and screamed for her memories to come back, they wouldn’t. There was nothing there for her. They had never been to start with.

“I guess you have been having trouble sleeping, then?” wondered Yaoyorozu casually, but still addressed the matter with care, her reading slowing down to hear what she had to say.

Her head snapped up, and her fully white grin was back on full to grace their day. Uraraka scratched her cheek with nonchalance. “You could say that.”

“Then maybe Asui can give you a hand on that.” Todoroki grunted, his book already closed, and hoped off the table. “Anyway, duty downtown calls me. Do you need anything from there?”

“Wait!”

Uraraka abruptly rose from her chair and slammed her hand on the table to call his attention despite him being still in the room, looking at her with expectation– and her eyes trembled their way up his blue vest, padded up the porcelain skin at his neck and fixated her irises on his cold ones– which had little stems of concern in his eyes at times, but it was always short lived, and all she wanted was for everyone to bear with her a little longer than that.

But, again, something snapped inside of her the minute her eyes bore into his too far, as they got entangled with the miseries that heart of his must be enduring, and she felt worthless under his unpurposed glare. The words she had meant to say sunk down hell fast, trespassing her stomach and twisting her gut awkwardly.

“I just wanted to thank you for your assitance while I was dungeon hunting the other day!” her head was vowed a little bit, hat shadowing her flushed expression. “I am so sorry you had to go out of your way and look after me!”

The boy’s eyes fidgeted when looking at the bashful newcomer, then fluttered to rest on Yaoyorozu’s stare. Judging by her bored expression and how quickly her eyes had shifted back to her book, the same thought had crossed her mind. He waved his hand at her in dismissal, to which she only titled her head in disbelief. “There is nothing you need to thank me for.” he approached the door to leave the room, but looked at Uraraka and softly added something in the last second. “That’s what guildmates are for.”

When the door closed, a charge of meaningful feelings and newfound significances fell heavy on her shoulders, tingles of positivity and acceptance crushing her alive, so she smiled, grinned because someone seemed to be outwardly giving her a hand by giving her a chance– but Yaoyorozu had seen the way her mood lifted, and was quick to cut it short with her all-seeing eyes, the welcome slashed in mid air.

“The guild will be having dinner soon.” commented the other, aloof, as if not giving it importance. Uraraka twitched a bit, aware of how serious Yaoyorozu sounded and only being able to hear the busy rustle of pages being turned. “Leave your books at your dorm and go down with the others. If anybody asks, tell them I’ll be skipping dinner today.”

Uraraka turned to this, ready to give her a very ironic lecture on alimentation. “But–“

“Uraraka.”

The sorcerer fully turned to the knight, who was still pretending to read that very thick book, more intimidating than the ones she clutched close to her chest. Before the soorcerer could muster as much of a response, Yaoyorozu’s eyes had turned as cold as Todoroki’s frown– which was not visible, but was mentally craved on Uraraka’s head, eyes dull in menace.

“You didn’t mean to ask such petty excuse of a request to Todoroki, am I right?”

Such dour voice shook all muscles of her being, making her look at her books to just minimize the impact of Yaoyorozu’s future implications. The words rattled for minutes in her head before Yaoyorozu considered the silence as a very good answer on its own, and her eyes landed on Uraraka’s shaken up stance. Eyes black, dark glare, stared at her in a frightengly invisible threat.

“Don’t you ever dare pull again another move like the one you did back there with Bakugou.” pages still rustled. “If you do as much of a trick similar to that one, we will have problems. I am willing to accept you,”

–There was a pause, and Uraraka could feel her breaths consume her sole existence with anticipation and dread. –

“but I will never condone cursed magic in this guild. And I am in a stage that I could either hug you or gladly give you a beating without having very few doubts about it. Trust me when I say that not many people on here would even care to give you a proper burial.”

Her shoulders shifted, feeling how her words plunged all kinds of irrational fears and successfully took out all sense of acceptance and resolution she had ever held. These people were open to trusting her – she remembered, this bitter taste filling the room in white noise and backtracking, hope trembling again underneath Yaoyorozu’s pinning eyes – but they were also willing to kill her if she dared to do a single wrong move out of their eyes.

“I am more aware of that than what may seem.” spat she out without giving it much thought, words flying out of her mouth before she could take them back. “But I am going to show you all that I am trustworthy enough.”

“I am not saying that we are all spying on you.” her eyes softened the tiniest bit, making Uraraka remember that yes, Yaoyorozu was fierce, but she was also kind. “We are aware that there are people who are starting to trust you already– I myself find the heart to do so. But if you ever dare take our hands to then eat our whole arm… we will have problems, alright?”

“Again, I know that I can’t expect to be fully embraced the first day. You guys are… generous, kind. But I also know that being open to a risk doesn’t mean you are going to be fully reckless about it.”

She could feel Yaoyorozu shifting, feel her heart beating as fast and out of cadence as hers, lungs constricting and finding it hard to breathe under the looming, silent risk of having a potential terrorist in her headquarters– but still trying to find the heart to accept her and put their lives in her hands like they had done many times before, but risking a whole universe in the process.

“This is our last warning, Uraraka.” deadpanned the knight– but it felt like everyone was talking to her at the same time, their hands hovering over her throat with a plastic knife–, clothes crumpling in the distance and her voice thin and frail like a stray loose hair in a thread. “If you take things a step too far from now on, you’re over. So you can either stay or leave now.”

Uraraka shuffled the two volumes to her neck, knuckles white with so much pressure in them – the weight of maybe killing somebody, of maybe killing an entire nation and then, eventually, maybe killing a whole universe – the whole notion of blood and despair in the body of an innocent man flashed in front of her eyes, and flickered to disappear when Uraraka turned, mild frown wrinkling her features.

“I was personally invited by one of the leaders to stay for what I could create, not destroy.” one of her hands grasped the door as the other almost crushed the books on her chest. “And for the little amount of faith you guys have put on me, I will make it a worthy investment.”

And with that, her dress swayed out of the room with the soft thud of the wooden door, and Yaoyorozu finally let down the façade to lean back, smile and sigh in relief.

“And I shall welcome you here, Uraraka.”

“Who was at the kitchen tonight?”

Everyone sitting on the table turned to look at her while Uraraka minded her own business, drinking straight from the bowl of soup. This elicited a hearty laugh from her, wiping a stain of soup from the corners of her mouth. “C’mon, don’t look at me like that; this was pretty good!”

Kaminari, who sat straight in front of her with his over the top leather jacket– wasn’t he hot in that? – puckered his lips in focus at how happy she seemed with just a warm cup of soup, nose wrinkled in disgust. “It’s Asui’s explorer quick soup. Turns out somebody didn’t know how to shop around town right.”

Funnily enough, he was mocking himself, and it seems like making that soup was some kind of punishment for him. Asui, who sat with Uraraka, slapped his hand away from the bread. “You were unlucky it was only us three having dinner now. Things would have probably been different if it had been more of us here.”

“Speaking of…” Uraraka looked around the common room, where no other people other than those three members stood. The chattery guild had turned into a pale shadow of itself within the passing of busy hours, people coming and going out and in. “where is everybody?”

“Ah, this is the usual.” Kaminari drank some water to let the water cleanse his withering throat, feeling the bitter taste of the soup be washed away. “Since us all have different occupations and tasks, it’s fairly normal to have mismatched schedules. Asui and I are usually with Jack and Mina today, but last days’ events have shaken our schedules up a bit.”

“So you never have, like, family dinners?”

“We do, but it’s very unusual.” pointed out Asui, stealing her friend’s loaf of bread away. “It only happens after guild battles or during special festivities. Sometimes, mixed professionals have it easier to coincide with others, but there are very scarce examples of that.”

“Mixed professionals?”

“Todoroki, for example.” Kaminari drank more and more water the more soup he ate. “He can fullfill minor sorcery quests and S-class knight quests. Mina, also, can fullfill S-class archery quests – well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, she struggles a little – and some minor hunter ones. She can swing a hammer like a beast.”

“Some people usually tag together for quests like those. This guild doesn’t take in that many anymore, mainly because we don’t really need the extra gold with all these expeditions we partake in on a regular basis. We’re more busy with guild management more than anything nowadays, but this guild used to be buzzling with activity the first months.” added Asui, and Uraraka just listened intently, hearing Kaminari gulp all the water in a sole intake.

The sorcerer was starting to feel a bit thirsty, so she blindly reached out for the jar of ice cold water, only to feel it empty. “I can’t believe you drank it all in one go.”

The blonde scratched the back of his head, taking the jar from her hands with a guilty smile sketched playfully on his features. “Asui’s soup is a real killer!”

“Please, go fill it in.” he didn’t budge at first, but then Uraraka fluttered her eyelashes at him despite the blatantly obvious fact that her hands were sparking with a very troublesome looking yellow fire. “Now.”

And the boy dashed by them, only to be stopped by Asui’s tongue on his elbow. “With lemon.” and she let the boy hurry to the kitchen. Uraraka stared in wonder at the alchemist. “I like it refreshing. Hope you don’t mind. Besides, it will make the taste of the soup fade away a bit faster for him.”

The brunette turned her head to the kitchen, where Kaminari desperately searched for lemons on a big fruit basket. Then, a little giggle. “It’s alright. There was no need to be so hard on him for picking the wrong ingredients for dinner, though.”

“Don’t sweat it, Uraraka. He sometimes hesitates with which ingredients to buy, or just plain forgets about it.” the little girl craned her head a bit, and her eyes narrowed as he racked around a bag of goodies for lemons. “He is one of the very few that can’t stand the taste of the soup, others being Hagakure and Midoriya, ribbit. It’s very healthy and quick to make, so it’s what we usually eat during expeditions.”

“Sounds like a good deal for me.” Uraraka toyed with the spoon on the bowl, eyes imagining the vivid colors of a fire against the oak trees, owls screeching in the distance as members told stories while eating this soup, maybe Kaminari puking in a faraway bush. A dreamy sigh escaped her lips. “Yeah, definitely good.”

“So, what were we talking about, again?” Uraraka woke up from the daydream, looking at her friend while Kaminari approached them from behind. When the jar was set on the table, the sorcerer took the glass container with a smile. “Ah, yes, schedules and dinner.”

“It’s not like having dinner in small groups is a bad thing.” chipped in Kaminari, his arm draped across the bench. His eyes were focused in a far away memory. “I can’t remember the last time I had dinner with Bakugou and Midoriya, and it’s not something I’d be looking forward to.”

Asui nodded. “Agreed. Dinners with Midoriya are delightful, he’s always talking, almost like Uraraka… but Bakugou is either silent or moody.”

Uraraka had been busy with muscular rehabilitation all morning to even notice that she hadn’t seen Midoriya ever since she woke up the night after Pyrox’s defeat. “It’s been long since I last saw Midoriya… and Bakugou.” there was a trivial need to add the barbarian leader too, because now that she thought about it, they hadn’t talked much about their training sprees. Her eyes looked at the glassy glow of the bown under the candles. “Must have been busy.”

“They are sorting out some business at the Council, they should be here soon.” the herbalist offered Kaminari the jar of water, which he denied with a shake of the head as he spoke. “Doing paperwork at the office is absolutely dreadful, lemme tell you. Reports and the like are the worst part of sweeping off an area.”

“But it’s not like it was a quest, right?” asked the brunette, pouring some water on her glass. “As far as Todoroki told me, it was only another regular enemy on the way to an important path.”

“…which is correct information.” remarked Kaminari. “But it was not an authorized mission, therefore we are dealing with a ban. This village only authorizes business inside its borders, and the moment we meddle with enemies that are not only above our level, but also out of our barriers, we get a ban.”

“Then, why did we have to defeat an enemy out of our barriers to go to a path that is also out of our barriers? I guess there must be something important out there if Bakugou and Midoriya were so hellbent on going there, right?”

Asui and Kaminari blinked at her full load of questions, and discovered that she was way too quick to tie knots without enough information. Not like she was mistaken, anyway. “It’s a complicated story.” answered Asui, munching some bread quietly. “You should better ask Bakugou, who was the one leading the operation.”

“Yeah, I obviously did ask him as soon as I was told that we had that ban issue on our heads.” spat she, eyes narrowed and hands grasping the glass of water impatiently. Her fingers clenched around the glass when his insulting voice came to mind. “Told me to mind my own business. That insolent jerk…”

The blonde chuckled, eyes flickering in affection for the girl. Somehow, she had such warm spirit and sunny demeanor that seeing her so fixated on despising their leader was hilarious, and she had survived the tale after having Bakugou confront her. He couldn’t help but feel attached to her. “It’s fine to hate him at first. Trust me, I did at first too.” the girl looked at him, head titled and eyes sparkling against the molding candle light. “Not like I don’t dislike him now, but we all respect him as a leader.”

That statement did weird things to her twisting thoughts, and it clashed with a dangerous edge of her whole conception of her guild mates. “I’m always hearing you guys speak about Bakugou in terms of respect and, in a degree, fear – but Midoriya is another leader of Yuuei, and you guys almost never refer to him as such.”

Asui frowned at the statement, but didn’t disagree on this very right notion. “Their personalities are too clashing to wrap your mind about them being leaders. Bakugou is much more serious about it in the outside, while Midoriya… he works much more than he should. After all, mental effort counts as well.”

“We do aknowledge him as a leader, but he doesn’t give that vibe as much as Bakugou does.” Kaminari was drinking water again, and had also successully got himself some bread. “I bet you think the same.”

“Sincerely, I had already talked about this with Jack the day I fought Bakugou. Midoriya doesn’t seem as powerful as Bakugou is, but that may be because I have never seein him in action.” Uraraja clasped her hands under her chin, eyes shut as she tried to remember any image of Midoriya fighting during their encounter with Pyrox. “But if he’s a leader, I can only think he is powerful.”

“First, don’t think that a leader must be by force of occupation the most powerful member of a guild.” Asui’s words shut her mouth, speaking as bluntly and earnestly as usual. “And second, Midoriya is powerful, but he doesn’t let it shine too often. He is still a bit small in power, but I bet that with time, it will blossom.”

Blossom. The off choice of words made the sorcerer briefly wonder about what exactly were Midoriya’s skills in battle, but she decided to make a mental note to address it later to the leader. For now, she only drank water and tapped her fingers against the glass. “I just hope they aren’t doing too much stuff at the Council. Who knows how much patience one can–“

The door swung open with a loud bang, almost falling off its hinges as the charismatic leader triumphantly made his way into the guild’s common room. “WE ARE FINALLY FREE, DAMN IT.”

Midoriya, who was shyly trailing behind his cape, beamed at the trio of startled members, that were on the edge of their seats after Bakugou’s entrance. Uraraka’s eyes lit up at the comic duo. “He’s been screaming that just after we left the Council.”

“Dude, did they finally lift the ban?” asked Kaminari in his ever lasting laid-back voice, head lolling backwards to meet the hot-headed leader, who only snarled with a dangerous shadow on his eyes. “Does that mean you can already go around stealing kids’ candies?”

Bakugou’s hands wrestled Kaminari out of the bench and started grinding his fist against his blonde mane. “Who are you calling a bully, sparkles!?”

Midoriya ignored the ruckus and took Kaminari’s empty place with a placid smile. Uraraka also tuned off the noise of grunting and swearing to focus on Asui’s words. “I am glad we can finally go hunting. I don’t think Mina and Kirishima would have lasted another day without eating meat. And don’t get me started with the practicing straw dummies.”

Midoriya sighed, barely missing the jolts of electricity that Kaminari was defensively issuing to paralyze the beast that was overpowering him. Uraraka grimaced both at the beating and the hinder of those silly fake foes. “Yeah, I heard Kirishima moan about those. He sure doesn’t like idle enemies, huh.”

Bakugou finally let Kaminari drop to the ground, who was letting out nonsensical moans and cracking jokes with the floor he was licking. The ashen blonde only swore at him and shook his arms for some tension relieving, voice breathy. “Fuck, I truly needed that.” his eyes scanned the table and all around it, eyes finally landing on Uraraka, who was shaking with anticipation. However, the leader’s eyes were not as hard as usual, still bleeding in anger and violent discordance– but they were so, so clear now. “Shouldn’t you be doing muscular recovery, sleeping, or whatever suicidal sorcerers do?”

Her breath quivered a little when his lips drew down and down until he was frowning at her, either because she was being reckless – news flash: she wasn’t – or because she was existing in the same room he was. None of those options made her eyes back down from his digging ones, that pierced her chocolate eyes for answers and trying to make her shake a little.

Her heart was doing weird things out of intimidation inside her chest, beating to the rhythm of a crazy dance of chaos, and she could feel confidence skating on the surface of her fingertips like everytime they spoke or fought, and the stars that loomed high above the roof and the world sighed in unison to the erratical cadence of her little, throbbing heart. That guy was dangerous, made her feel too intimidated and so very angry at times, yet she felt the need to still stick relatively close to him, albeit just enough so they wouldn’t clash too often.

In the end, she just ended as far as a stranger– but her hands, those eyes of hers that lingered on his with determination, they all wanted a bit more.

The words slipped naturally, bones idle and her thoughts falling off her thin lips. “Shouldn’t you apparently be ambushing little kids for sweets?”

A count down was going on his head, fuse at the verge of ignition. His reaction was inmediate, and Midoriya had to calmly stop his companion from slaughtering her in the spur of the moment with a hand to his front. Kaminari’s words echoed right behind Midoriya, behind the bench, and a hand shot out from there. “Well done, Uraraka!”

“You little–“ Bakugou kicked his peer on the ribs, but not as aggressively as one would have expected. Asui was already up, ready to heal him, and the leader was quick to boss her around. “Heal that fucker and make sure he gets some rest.”

By the looks of it and surprisingly enough for Uraraka, seeing how there was this regretful corner on Bakugou’s eyes, he didn’t go beating his comrades very often, which was somewhat calming and smile-worthy. So, she smiled at him under Midoriya’s curious eyes. “You at least had the decency to let him be healed.”

The green haired boy took a sharp breath. “Urara–“

“I am not that kind of scum.” spat Bakugou, slowly rounding his way to her. His hand slammed the wood between her glass of water and the edges of the table, making the water dance at the brims. “They are members of this guild, I don’t go around beating the shit out of everyone I see, y’know. It’s conterproductive for our activity.”

“That’s true…” murmured Midoriya, amused by the way Uraraka wasn’t unfazed by that murdering glint he had on his eyes when he got too close for one to notice, and how Bakugou was internally screaming for not being able to scare the hell out of her. They were an interesting combo. “He’s strangely respectful to us.”

The ashen blonde made a sharp turn and his frown deepened, if that was possible, fists flying dangerously close to Midoriya. “What the fuck are you implying, greenielocks!? You calling me a wuss?”

The other leader gulped nervously, palms raised in defense as he inched away from the towering figure. The brunette sipped from her glass, eyes shifting between the rowdy mess and the more collected leader. “It’s not like that, Bakugou!”

The hunter leant back and his head snapped back to Uraraka, who eyed him with that soft, naïve spirit of hers that Bakugou absolutely despised, because he knew she was a fucking duplicitous sorcerer that had that veil of purity and cuteness, but was a beast on the inside– and he felt tricked, felt like she was lying on his face. Her eyes were always doing that thing that turned everyone to goo, was always letting out sparkles and butterflies like she was some goddamn fairy.

It did weird things to him. She was a liar, and it sent his heart on an override everytime she came to him with that cutesy acting when he had experienced her other face. “Whatever.” his eyes were peeled away from hers with the very same annoyed shine in his sunset eyes that defeated any traces of pardoning for the girl. “I’m going to bed. Don’t go making any fucking mess while I’m gone.”

Her head snapped up to see him making his way to the staircase, and was quick to chase after him seconds after his form had left the room. She got up as fast as possible, feeling a bit light-headed, and dashed after him. “Wait, Bakugou!”

And even after she closed the door behind her, not paying attention to Midoriya’s call, Uraraka could hear the angry steps of the short-tempered boy thumping on the polished carpet of the corridor, and her pace increased until his hunched form was visible to her on the staircase, him ascending to his room on the last floor.

“Bakugou.”

He was halfway through a step when his muscles tensed the tiniest bit, and his walk stopped alltogether to the sound of her irritatingly pitched voice. There was a little hiss, then he turned to look at her. He was always on top of her, him stoic and proud while she was a mess of breaths and pants floors and worlds beneath his reach and disruption, nice and tdy where he could watch her. They didn’t belong to the same world, him being a powerful hunter and she being a potential enemy.

He didn’t like that – and he frowned at her as she spoke, probably saying something stupid, as always, about nice things – he didn’t like having the enemy at home. Yet he had promised to stop whining and threatening her, so he would try not to.

“I just wanted to ask how you were feeling… but I see you have healed nicely.” his fingers were no longer bandaged, twitching in stiffness for whatever loss of time she would be saying now. “And just ask about the training you were so enthusiastic about. I didn’t put up with your mood swing that night to have you avoiding it.”

His hands scraped the fabric of his pockets, then fisted them and turned to her a little bit more. She wasn’t panting like he had expected, or breathless or struggling to stand. She was still there, looking up and expecting him to answer without fear in her little bland eyes, unprepared and raw intensity– oh, he hated her so much, sometimes. Never meeting his expectations.

He couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing, so when he blinked, his eyes were torn in between ire and peaceful displeasure. “Do I look like I care about it? Yeah, I know that you are gonna train with me, but I’ve had other things in mind other than your fucking stuff.”

That made Uraraka jump, but not in the way he wanted to – no negative emotions flowered in her: no anger, no sadness, no defeat. It was only empty surprise that made her hands fly to her front and her shoulders rise in shock. “Right. I’m sorry for being so impatient. The ban has me a bit uneasy too, I guess.”

A senseless, breathy laugh danced out of her mouth, blowing on Bakugou’s ears and vexing him to no end. She was always being this nonsensical, stupid, impatient, innocent and fake– she seemed to want to deceive him so hard that it was sometimes hard to believe she was an imposter. He was still learning to draw the line between them, so little by little, he would someday be able to block her.

For now, he had to suck it all up: the hate, the ignoration, the whirlwind he felt everytime their eyes met. It was all but positive. “Is there anything you need? or can I go to bed already?”

It was worded kindly, yet spoken brash and impatient. This made Uraraka deflate a little, and she retreated to the exit of the wing. “I don’t think so. Just speak to me as soon as you have a plan… and please, do sleep well!”

When Uraraka had turned to leave, Bakugou hadn’t still moved. Her flowing shape was becoming no more than a fading thread of footsteps when he called out her name, making her turn around, ready for an earful or something. But then came his almost hurried, whispered sentence.

“I will probably be at the clock tower’s balcony, knowing myself.” he then did something so contradictory that it made her feel mentally dizzy, yet warm nonetheless, despite all the coldness he carried with him. “Don’t come unless you gonna have something to say.”

And then he restarted his pride stride upstairs, Uraraka lingered on the sport – under him, as it would always be – while looking at him from afar, her hands looming over the doorknob to the common room. His back shifted under the lights of the candles, his body never bending no matter the stairs he walked on, the enemies, the heads, or the corpses he stepped on to reach his goal. Fake, invisible dust and blood mixed on his skin, and all she could do at that moment of silence was wonder who that man was… and why she was so fixated on him during late sleepless nights.

A gentle smile shone on her lips for brief seconds, and then she left to the common room. Uraraka was met with a panicking Asui and Midoriya also trying to tend to her, the whole room screaming anxiety and distress the more she looked into the situation.

“Kaminari… he’s just spluttering like a nerd. I think he’s gone over his voltage limit.”

“He has what.”

Uraraka had had doubt before her feet had quickly padded their way through the corridor, up the clock tower, and finally reached the door. When it had been time for her to call it a day, she had seriously intended it to stay that way: a day ended, night destined to peaceful slumber. However, no matter how much she rolled, wiggled, snuggled and tried to bounce on the bed, she would end up screaming in rage at her pillow.

A corner of her embroiled mind had swallowed Bakugou’s offer a little too hard. In fact, she was feeling choked up, her hands trembling because she knew that the fearsome leader was half waiting for her, half hoping she wouldn’t show up– but he was up there, and the fact that she even knew that little bit of information was driving her insane.

Her eyes had fallen shut for a few minutes, blackness welcoming her– but as if hands were shooting up from the darkness to squeeze her dead, her eyes would snap open again. Trepidation sneaked up behind her tense back, shattering her resolve to ignore the leader to peaces, and her plans were suddenly crumbling to nothingness as well. Uraraka stared at the ceiling, wind howling outside, stars in her eyes.

She could go, meet him up the clock tower.

But she really, really didn’t have the need to.

All traces of determination, all traces of feeling and rest that had been whirling all in between her bones, her muscles, making her heart soar– it all plumetted to the ground deep below her restless eyes, drew her eyes to a darker hue and made Uraraka fist the sheets in agitation and pure outrage. Confusing feelings clashed all over her, surfaced in front of her wide awake corpse as she stretched a hand, trying to make all determination and composure come back to her so she’d feel complete again.

Those fingers of hers fell on her chest, clutching her beating heart. Bakugou shouldn’t affect her this much, but a part of her knew why he had told her about his plans, knew that they had some stuff to talk about and that she had some questions for him. Despite all those very valid motives, a fraction of her conflicted mind had regarded them as stupid and trapped her on an empty bed, so focused on those intimidating eyes of his that

That was the moment when she put on some shoes, grabbed her dear shawl to put around her sleepwear, and thoughtlessly wandered around the corridors, lingered on each stair a second longer than necessary, and finally got to the door. Behind that very same door stood the leader– and she knew this.

Fear anchored her backwards in the very same way that it had done the first night. Hands trembled, afraid of what emotional rampage he would throw at her this time. But then she remembered, remembered that she was not going to do anything good down at her bedroom, and her hands clasped the knob and twisted as slowly as possible.

Moonlight shone on him like a mother looking down at a child, lovingly and gracing the leader with this calm, relax and light halo of purity and heaven. Her knuckles were paling the tighter she clutched the shawl and the more she looked at him, her presence probably undetected as his eyes twinkled underneath the pale dots of the starry sky, darkness enveloping his back and cape while milky light bathed his skin, moved his hair, and tied him down to a very heavy reality that was her sole existence and the demons she carried within.

The planets in orbit around them lined up to see her look at him, eyes gleaming under the precious satellite of light and nothingness as the midnight breeze clocked and blew the seconds, minutes, away. She didn’t know how long she stayed there, looking at him breathe in, looking human for once and knocking some sense of numbness and grace onto her.

After what seemed like minutes, hours, decades and eternities of air and pink supernovas blasting high above them, his feet turned to look at her. He looked painfully surprised to see her there, but his cold wall was back up a second later. “Took you long enough.”

Uraraka only stared up at him, shifting the shawl around her shoulders with unease as his eyes only scrutinized deeper into her brown pools, lukewarm contemplation crashing with his hellish irises the more air swayed her tresses, the more her eyes shone under the pearly moonlight– and his heart did that double clap, stomach lurched, warning him that this woman was dangerous, that he shouldn’t contemplate the idea of normalizing her stay at the guild. Dangerous but cute, deceitful and currently driving him insane, that was who she was and he couldn’t condone a single swat of her witch eyes.

Because she was anything but normal, she was terrifying in her own private ways. And he was a monstrosity as well, but his ways were more outspoken and irking than hers for mostly everyone. And the fact that Uraraka was an enemy, an enemy that nobody was considering– it put him on edge. Still, he found the heart to forget his tantrum for a little moment, heart clenching in thriving disgust that was reduced to a spotless aknowledgement and he turned to look out again, gaze cast on the ghost town below them.

She took this as some kind of permission to step nearer to him, nearer than she had that day he almost suffocated her with livid bites, and her steps sounded faint and too light for a deceiving being like her. He eyed her from the corner of his vision, hands deep in his pockets as she spoke with that pitched, yet now smooth trail of words. “I take it you must like astrology, yes? I could teach you some bits someday.”

“Astrology?” without looking at him, she smiled and nodded with that bright shit she had going on with her. He scoffed. “What the fuck. I don’t like none of that.”

At least he hadn’t insulted her yet, that was an improvement. Uraraka shrugged and took a little step closer to the stone railing. “Well, it sure feels nice here. If you aren’t coming for scientific business, it sure must be good to take a breather up here before going to sleep.”

“I don’t know what’s this small talk for, but I ain’t gonna play the game. I seriously hope that’s not what you came up here for, Uraraka.”

Her form recoiled from the railing and she took a step near him this time, making him take a step back in surprise too. No way she was going to invade his personal space now. “I do have questions! I just wanted to be nice!” her cheeks puffed, head turned to look at the town that lay under them. “Christ, give me a break. Can’t you at least bear with people being polite?”

His eyebrows furrowed in annoyance and hands fisted tight, he grunted a blunt response to her stupid words. “Not if they make me lose my damn time.” Uraraka sighed. “Make it quick: what the hell do you want?”

The brunette watched him blink at her with those thirsty eyes of his that could sure make nations crumble under his stares, make hordes of enemies shiver with a sole glance, and his skin was wrinkled in distaste at her, making her wonder what was the point on coming if he was probably going to be rude at her. She could see the threatening sharp blade of a thousand knived being pointed at her, grazing her skin tentatively as all she could do now was move forward or back down to her dorm.

And there was no way he would let that man shrink her so much. “You never answered me.”

He was clearly expecting something better from her from the way his arms crossed and his eyes looked plan red again, no longer aggressive. He sighed, making emphasis on his voice being scratched over in resignation. “Answer what?”

“I asked you about the ban, the other day.” both could recall that moment. “All you did was push me away.” yeah, they could remember that, too.

He looked at her, pointedly, his eyes narrowed and teeth showing under a grimace. “It is none of your–“

“Except the fact that it actually is, Bakugou.” remarked she, smashing his words into nothingness as her frown grew deeper, more severe and a different spark emerged in her chocolate eyes. “I am a member of this guild who had no prior information about it being an illegal mission– yet I went there and sorted out part of the business.”

“I don’t know if you are trying to be fucking humble for the sake of saving face, but you did pretty much everything.” before she could jump at his throat with some bullshit about cooperation, he growled at her. “You did, end of story. And it’s not like you would have made us stop when we were in the middle of the battle, we are not some wuss losers.”

Her arms crossed on her chest, and he felt a little bit mocked because it seemed like she was mirroring him, but in a smaller scale. “True.” condemned Uraraka, eyes squinted in accusation. “But I still would like to know why I ended up cooperating in an unauthorized mission.”

“Some fucker must have been feeding you lots of data if you are so nosy about it now.” murmured him, more like spat to her, but her posture didn’t falter a single heartbeat. His eyes still held the same anger and disorder as always, and hers were as strong, yet brilliant as always. “And I am pretty curious to know what they exactly told you to make you even doubt that our decisions, as leaders, are the best for our guild.”

Bakugou referring to the leader team as an us made her heart flutter in pure awe, because it seems like the only one who respected Midoriya enough as a leader was actually his sworn enemy. Again, all she did for now was push it aside. “They just told me it was for the greater good of an important mission, but that’s something that I don’t know about, either.”

The ashen blonde shifted under the moonlight and was reminded that, again, she was no stand-by member, for better and worse, and he would have to deal with her meddling around as long as she belonged to the guild. This thought caused his next sentence. “I don’t know why you assume you will be partaking on the mission. You are in no condition to put up a decent fight yet.”

He was so vigorous and obnoxiously disgusting to the human ear that she flinched at the venom aimed for her, and mentally dodged his spears. “I will always take part in whatever important voyage this guild has to do, handicapped or not.” he could have spoken right then, denied her all rights to even proclaim herself an incorporated member as she was too new, fresh and dangerous for them– but somehow knew her rebuttal would come in anyway. “So since I will be going with, I would like to know what we are facing that made us get a ban on our heads, and how it was worth it.”

“Don’t you dare be sassy with me, because remember that I fucking rule this guild, Uraraka. One snap of my finger will have your head chopped any second I wanna.”

“But it’s not like you’ll lose a valuable– powerful member of your guild, right?”

“Do you think I’m stupid or anything?”

That was Bakugou talk for a bland refusal, which she could easily read. Yes, she was a threat to them, but also a valuable asset for them as he himself had very well said when they met. For now, all he could do was be patient with her until they could get that boulder off the road.

“Then answer me.”

Bakugou looked at her, and even though he was clearly towering over her and aware of her knowing this– it all made him respect this woman maybe a tiny bit more, but this time as a person. Her perserverance in the battlefield, while reckless and stupid, was evident and worth praising. Still, it’s not like he would be giving her the pleasure of giving her positive backup when she still lacked as a guild member. He had invited her to the guild– but it had been only done to measure her and keep her under watch.

Yet, that Uraraka… he had this terrifying inkling that it was only matter of time until she was a full-fledged member of the guild. Her skin was thin as porcelain but tough as steel, and while she was made of the same materials as him, they were faces of a varied planet, separated by the moon that hovered over them and the sun that slept under the night’s tombstone.

The whistle of the silent, peaceful night only made his focus on her be sharper, and all he wanted was for her to be dead, gone, out of his sight– yet another part of him was curious to see what those hands of hers could do with given time.

Bakugou sighed on defeat, and stepped to the railing, leaning over on his elbows. “Yaoyorozu must have told you all about the timelines and all that stuff.” there was no need to look; he could tell by that stubborn hum of hers that she knew all about it, maybe even more than he did. “I also hope she gave you some warnings about the whole ordeal. It’s a fucking mess.”

Uraraka didn’t copy his pose, but stood looking over the railing with a determined frown, but it was curt and weak. It didn’t take long for her to sigh. “Yeah, it was all a bit messy. But she did tell me she believes it ties to a single mastermind behind it all.”

“She’s pretty fucking crazy to believe that, but I shamefully believe the same.” explained he, making these weird signs with his hands that only showed how deep in shit he was about that particular issue. “We have been chasing after what we believe to be one of this fucker’s tools, or peers, or however you may call it.”

“So, there is more than one person behind it all, then?”

Bakugou sighed and rubbed his face with stress, muttering curses to his hands. “See, this is why I didn’t wanna do this with you, because I have little fucking patience and you are damn slow.”

“I am new here, go out of your way to understand the struggle.”

Three exact seconds passed before he was able to crash the block and talk again without sounding too annoyed, hassled, or before letting out an explanation heavy in curses. He wouldn’t drop that low and pollute her naïve fairy ears. Bakugou had no patience, and giving such information was always Midoriya’s role– he never, ever, had to do these things, and it turns out he would have his first go with the most despisable person on the guild right now.

Or maybe it was because he was too tired to even be comprehensible. None of that mattered now, all that he could concentrate on were her sparkling eyes and the traces of another earful on the tip of her tongue– and god, didn’t he hate her for feigning to have the upper hand when she was no more than a fairy with the heart of a madman.

“There is this monster called RampAge, living at what we call the corner of the civilization – a place we don’t really know, but we are starting to cross out some damn stupid options that other shitheads have been offering.” he looked at her to see if she was following the explanation, and she seeemed good this far. “It is what we deem to be causing some temporal disruptions among with that fucker who is doing the time travelling thing.”

“So, there are two enemies involved in this.” Bakugou glared at her furiously, thinking that being proven right was all that mattered now for her. She stiffled a laugh in. Yet, a part of her had been coated in trepdidation for this terrifyingly sounding monster– it would only catch up with her later that night. “Sorry. But yeah, I get it. So apart from this major enemy, we have RampAge to deal with as well?”

The ashen blonde sighed. “Again, took you long enough. I didn’t know that you sorcerers were also slow apart from fucking terrorists.”

Uraraka fumed in pure exhasperation at him, hands on her hips with her nose wrinkled in disgust– it seems like that out of nowhere remark had cut deep in her, but Bakugou didn’t feel that proud about it. “Drop the act already, Bakugou.”

“I thought it was clear that it’s not an act.” he turned to look at her, a hand resting on the stone railing. His nose was also scrunched in pure hatred for the girl who he couldn’t still accept in the guild as a proper member. No way he would accept her so fast. “You are no more than a tool for me.”

“For fuck’s sake.” he was impressed by her avid use of insults, even if it had been directed at herself mostly. “I don’t know what to do to actually make you accept me in– and I don’t mean physically, but I just hoped that after inviting me over you would give in a little.”

“I don’t see the difference between RampAge, that fucker out there causing all this mess, and a probable future you.” he jabbed her on the forehead, teeth showing as he hovered over her with his arms now crossed, chest puffed– and damn her for thinking he looked terrifyingly male. “I can at least tame you under my hands, now that you are here. But trusting you is another whole story.”

A little hum of displeasure came out of her squeezable throat, one he had almost sliced that day– yet, he hadn’t, and he sometimes regretted that decision. “I still don’t see what I can possibly do to make you accept me as one of your peers. Why would I stay here if I knew I would be under watch? If I were so evil, don’t you think I’d be out of here?”

“For starters, you are still damn basic for a sorcerer. You know your basics well, and trust me I am aware of how much of a minx you are in the battlefield.” clouds rolled by on them, but they didn’t hinder the bloodlust in Bakugou’s eyes as he stared down on her with a piercing grimace. Everything regarding her degrading role as a sorcerer escape his lips hastily, yet there was a newfound feeling at the tip of his fingers. “And that’s exactly why I wanna train with you– a wimpy ass, but with potential.”

“And that was another question I had for you.”

A hand slammed the stone by his side, and his head was an inch too close for her liking. His smile was wicked, yet it had no glee or meaning behind. It shook her bones and chilled her to the deepest core of her being. “You sure are asking shit tonight.”

Uraraka pretended not to be affected by his proximity, and leaned a little bit back to mask the shake of her eyes. “Maybe because I am curious as to why you would wanna make a little sorcerer like me grow into that very same role of a terrorist.”

Bakugou pulled away a little, the thrill of menacing her long gone as she posed that important contradiction. In retrospective, asking that question was all but favorable to her, but it also made him realize that she knew what she was to others’ eyes, and it only made him think more about what was going on inside that stubborn head of hers.

“Because I am willing to shut my mouth about it and give you a half-assed chance to prove yourself.” he instantly regretted those words and wondered why he always regretted every decision he made regarding her. Bakugou saw her eyes light up in hope, and he would admit It wasn’t an ugly thing to see. “It’s not like I’m gonna give you my trust, which I sure think won’t be happening, but I at least wanna see if I did well when I invited you over.”

“As in,” he dug his hands in his pockets as she stared into the infinity, putting the pieces together. “accepting me?”

“I seriously don’t wanna do it.” he didn’t. A pair of minutes ago he was in the very same spot, three times less vexed than now, thinking straight and not willing to accept that damn sorcerer into their lives. “And I swore to myself that I wouldn’t. But you protected my people back there, and that’s something I can give some fucking credit to.”

Her pure, brown eyes melted against his still ones, swirling and embracing the embers of his incandescent coals, eating her heart like a wolf and still referring to her as an equal on some degree, yet stomping on her dignity like an avalanche. Both worlds were turned upside down in distress, discord and utter chaos at the sight of the other, his muscles clenching in menace and hers clenching in anticipation and horror for his teeth, those fangs that sucked her blood and drank from her misery.

Every time she blinked, a tornado of fury devastated his heart, and made him wonder, again, why that slut was still alive. “You still basically put me on the same level as RampAge and time-travelling foes.”

“Because I do think you can do the same harm at those bastards, therefore you are in that very same stage as them for being a misleading bitch.” she should be surprised at his bold choice of words, but couldn’t really find the words to lash at him because he was right on some degree that she could be named as such. “So when I say acceptance, I say that I am willing to push that stuff aside for the sake of both my people and my guild.”

Her eyes widened as saucers, blown wide and seeing how something as automatic as rushing to her companions’ side had somehow awakened a human side on him, and galaxies of gee and hope bloomed on her beady eyes. A little smile curled on her face as she clutched her shawl. “Are you… really?”

When he heard her warm up so quick when she should always be terrified of him like his people were– something snapped. He wasn’t to be considered kind or gentle, but rash and a fucking beast, because he didn’t do things smoothly and he’d make her walk through hell and back to show her so. “That ain’t mean I am gonna forget about it. It means that instead of considering you a fucker, I will consider you more of a sucker like the others. But I think that the terrorist tag will still hang on you– all I gotta see is if that will play in our favor or if you will end up backfiring on us.”

Uraraka nodded in comprehension. It turns out that all she had to do was find a way to flip that hard, rusty switch over to make him see her in the true colors some people were starting to see in her. Bakugou gave her the feeling that if she found the way to make him realize the good she had in her and her intentions, the whole guild would embrace her as well. Acceptance– that was her challenge and game now.

“Right.” condoned she, looking at his relaxed leaning form and how the cape rode the air that danced between their bodies. “And when will we be starting the bonding training?”

And there he was again, tense and irritated as he was by force of nature. “Oi, don’t give it such a misleading name, Uraraka! All we gotta care for is your growth now that the final showdown against RampAge is coming.” she nodded, again, and her hair bobbled with every move of hers and it was driving him up a wall. “I’ll be going to a dungeon tomorrow. I’ll let you tag along for this once.”

“Thanks for the blessing, mister.”

“What did I say about being sassy?”

Uraraka giggled and looked at him one last time. Her irises blinked on his unfocused ones, and then those red lights of his found their way to hers, and they shone in curiosity for her as hers did for him– and it sparked something weird in him. He hated her so fucking much, that damn midget. His breath always grew overly angry whenever she was near, and his brain would break down in ire if she passed by him an inch closer than necessary. Her world would sometimes get too mingled up with his, butterflies mixing with bats and spiders, and somehow, her sunshine would always prevail over the solitary moon of his heart.

And it seems like her sun had dug its way up the tombstone of his heart, too. Uraraka retreated from the balcony, grasping the thin fabric of her little shawl. “I think it’s time for me to go to sleep.” she would have patted his shoulder goodnight, but it would have meant taking boundaries too far. “Sleep tight, Bakugou. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Her soft words were taken away by the wind, by the deaf swing of a door shutting close, but there he stood– and the moment her presence faded away, the meaning of the promises of acceptance he had made came crashing down on him, and it dawned on him that It was too late to take them back.

Because, somehow, the moment he accepted her into the guild, he was growing weak for her– a terrorist, the person he hated the most in this cursed world of unfairness and violence. Yet, she was there, standing in the rain like it was nothing, and he couldn’t stand the fact that the world spun madly around her without making her dizzy, fazed, or that she seemed invincible to the naked eye of a dark boy, isolated in the darkness of his own untrust. He absolutely despised that fake innocent girl who could pin them all down with her pinky, yet pretended to be a child who knew nothing about the atrocities that this world held.

He hated liars.

He hated her.

Yet, a part of his heart had been too weak tonight. And the moment he started giving in, he knew there was no going back.

“Hey, girl, get back here!”

The little chubby child ran all the way to the awaiting adults, who held silver buckets full of water on a stone well. Her hands flew wild above her head as she squealed all the path to them, and stopped on her tracks to glance up to them from under her lashes. “I am here, sir!”

One of the men knelt down by her, clawed hands messing with her hair as they usually did with a smile, which had ended up making her giggle. “It’s father, child.” she titled her head a little, then remembered. “I am your father.”

It was obvious this man was not her father– his skin was too pink, eyes too black while her skin was fair, hair messy in brown and eyes a slain clean chocolate. Still, her toothly grin as she nodded brought satisfaction to her adoptive parents, who handed one of the buckets to her. “Take this to that house,” he pointed at a stone and golden house, to which the little girl nodded. “and bring the bucket back to us as soon as possible.”

Her hands reached out for the well, and tried to pivot herself up the stone structure mutteirng a little “giddy ap!” that she recalled to have been an inspiration when she lived… somewhere, a far off memory of scattered faceless people until her parents, these parents, had come to rescue her, months ago. One of the adults laughed and grabbed her small body until she touched solid ground.

“You sure can’t control your impulses yet, Nameless.” the brunette pouted, but smiled again brilliantly when she was handed one of the buckets. “Take them over there. Hurry, honey!”

The girl took some steps back before dashing off with the bucket grasped on her head, giggling with wobbles of her head, water splashing around her as it danced disorderly out of the brims. Her run came to a halt as she found a familiar red head sulking at his doorstep, so she let the bucket down and waved at her friend.

“Harold!” the boy looked up and grinned at her, running down the stairs to meet her. “Harold, gimme a ride, please!”

The young boy knelt down and wiggled his hips so he could hoist her up. “It will be a pleasure, ma’ princess! Your horse Harold will give you a ride!”

Nameless took the bucket full of water – correction, not so full anymore – and put it on her head again, screaming in childish joy as the boy ran with her on his back around his house. “Harold, take me to house number four!”

“Your words are orders for horsey Harold!” the red head raised his fist and shifted her behind him with a roar. “To house numba’ four!”

The two children ran their way to the neighboring stone house, a few blocks away from horse Harold’s residence. Most houses were small, modest, almost prehistoric and primal, but everyone had a roof to rest under when skies were gray and days were warm, placid, breezes pushing the rain away from the sun as children laughed under the sunshine of blooming sunflowers and fluttering butteflies of youth.

Harold and Nameless eventually reached the house, and he carefully let her down from his back as the brunette spotted a friend of theirs and ran clumsily to her, dodging stones and making water fall over. “We are here!”

The pink haired girl, one who was clearly a descendant from this village of a foreign species unlike Nameless and Harold, who clearly weren’t– she smiled brilliantly at them, rushing to their side. “Thanks a lot for the water! Come check this out!”

The other two children squatted before the little mount of soil that their friend had done. “I’m trying to plant some seeds here, like my parents told me to! I bet lots of flowers will bloom from this!”

Nameless and Harold gawked at the mount, waiting for the plant to blossom with excited smiles and blinking irises. The other girl coughed and eyes them warily. “Don’t be weird, they will obviously take long to flower! I’ll show you inside!”

The red head dashed after the girl, but the brunette only stared at the planted seed until, eventually, she snapped out of it all with a rub of her eyes. When she looked up again, the alien girl and Harold were waiting for her, and Nameless laughed as she ran to them. “Wait up,” she breathed in and giggled while reaching out for the door. “Mina!”

“Uraraka, stop following me already.”

“I’m not following you.” pouted the sorcerer behind the leader, eyes glistening with malice as he glared behind. “As you put it last night, I’m tagging along.”

“You’re so fucking determined to make me regret every decision I make these days, aren’t you?”

The brunette looked around her, and the scenery didn’t seem as towering and menacing as it had been some days before. The forest was, by nature, green and humid, crusts of dead wood fallen on the ground and crunching beneath Bakugou’s mad boots, and there were great possibilities for an unlucky encounter with bandits camping around the wilderness. Still, the ashen blonde walked straight forward, shoulders heaving as he heard her pestering a meter behind him– he knew the way to the nearest dungeon and if there was anything he needed in that moment, was to plunder some caves and haunted refuges.

Her presence had sparked unease in him. The many responsibilities that hung from her heart and lashes were too many to count, carrying that heavy aura of importance, terror and yet sheer glitter with her. He knew it shouldn’t irritate him so much that she had decided to go hunting with him, as he had stated that he would try to get used to her, but it was so damn hard to keep that oath with the heavy rain she brought with her. A blaring terrorist banner hung on her back and it was inked in her fair skin, a so smooth skin that sure held many bruises and self bites beneath the layers of innocence.

His eyes blared behind him to see her falling into step with him, looking around her with wonder and that placid smile of hers that he couldn’t bring himself to get used to. She herself was abnormal and stupid– stupidly powerful, stupidly deceiving, and such a bitch. Still – this was a reminder he did to himself everyday in a mental note about why he shouldn’t kill her – she had protected his people, protected the installations of the guild, and just… taken responsibility. That was the only thing that kept her alive now.

“Say,” started she once he had looked away, and Uraraka watched him slash some vines out of the way. She had to clumsily brush the remains away. “when you meant training and tagging along, you sure didn’t mean to trash me here and hope for me to survive, right?”

Bakugou stopped for a second and turned his head to look at her, red flashing in front of her as his teeth shone under the trees’ shade. “Oi, what kind of scum do you consider me to be? Not like it would be a wrong riddance, mind you.”

Uraraka smiled kindly at him, but he could clearly see how mischievous her intentions were. He continued walking forward, and the girl found joy in seeing the spots of sunshine take shape along his disarrayed mane. “You tried to kill me the very second day.”

And the leader smirked, because it wasn’t something he really regretted doing and, while he ended up giving her the mercy she perhaps deserved, Bakugou had sure enjoyed those moves of hers. At least, most of them. “It’s not like I fucking regret the fight. If you were just a bit less of a wimp, your shoulder would be fine now.”

“Whatever.” condoned Uraraka, and he could picture her crossing her arms like the little child she was. The blonde snickered, and swatted the vines away again. “Where are you taking us?”

Bakugou jumped over a tree trunk, making Uraraka want to do the same for the sake of imitation and making a decent impression. The moment her feet touched the ground, her soles slipped on a polished stone and almost fell over, but the short-tempered boy paid no heed to her clumsy shoes. His back had tensed upon mentioning their objective, the hairs of his neck snapping as his boots seemed to stomp harder on the mistreated soil.

“There is this dungeon around here that those fuckers from Grinning Blade take pleasure on pillaging.” explained he, licking the memory of catching them all in the act and relishing on the future prospect of seeing them suffer his wrath. The sorcerer saw how vicious his tongue had flickered those words, and an uncomfortable sense of danger ran down her back. “It has pretty damn good resources, and I will just have a fun time taking it away from them.”

Bakugou leaped over a small stream of water, trying not to wet his boots lest they slipped later with the polished pavement of the caves. Uraraka shamelessly stepped over it, boots splashing and the blonde wanted to curse for her lack of precaution. Yet, she beat him to the chase. “Sounds pretty legal from you, to conquer other people’s zones.”

“Watch the sass, Uraraka.” threatened he, eyes glaring at her briefly before focusing on the path ahead again. Birds chirped above the leaf ceiling of the forest, casting some shadows on Uraraka’s eyes. She looked up to the clear casket of trees and sighed to put herself together. Every single time his eyes loomed over hers so heatedly, her stomach would shrink in trepidation for what tricks he would pull out– the feeling had been lessening little by little, but it remained in an intricate chain of chilling emotions. “They have done this many times before, it’s almost like a tradition.”

“Yeah, I had guessed your relationship with them wouldn’t be so healthy if–“

Bakugou was quick to clutch the big, wide sword on his back with a mid turn of his body, grimace curling his angular jaw into a clenched unsightly beast. Turns out she had touched a soft spot in him and this was the first and last time she’d really regret it. “Don’t assume we are not civil with them even if we are fucking champions of the village. We have been plenty kind with those losers.”

Talk about kindness while insulting them– such a nice thing of thing to do. “That’s not what I meant to say.“ he was still grabbing the weapon, ready to smack her with it if her words weren’t quick and intelligent. “Jack and I crossed paths with their leader– Shinsou, was it?”

Wrong choice. Bakugou started to take the sword out of the ropes on his back, and the sharp edges of it grazed the ground in horrifyingly precise gentleness. His feet worked their way near to her until their bodies were close enough for him to be hovering over her shrunk, impatient and stupid body. “You’re wearing my patience damn thin. You have been seeing that bastard?”

Uraraka felt her eyes widen, take in the sight of a maniac with a weapon looking at her with narrowed eyes, red knocking chocolate out of the stratosphere to only fall through her stomach and make her take a little step back, smile apologetic and hands up. Those sun cores of his soul, such a royal mirror of his swirling rage… her heart pounded to the dance of his flames. “No, no! That guy looked scruffy as hell, no one in their right mind would hang out with him. At least, that’s what I feel.”

The weapon lingered around her a bit more– and his eyes still flickered between a wide catalyst of emotions as the steel touched the leather, brushing her boots until he finally put it back in place, on his back. But his eyes still felt erratic and wrong to the rookie view.

“Yeah, well.” Bakugou coughed, eyes roaming around her outwardly unfazed expression – it made good work to hide the trepidation she felt inside of her – and, after he was fed up with seeing her so damn resilient to hold her ground against him, he recoiled from her space. “That guy is an asshole, and probably near your class.”

“Class as in, profession? Or do you mean my super terrorist crew of criminals?”

The sarcasm was so heartfelt and offensive that he couldn’t find patience enough to snap at her without killing her in the spot. He then remembered that she did actually realize his struggle, and the feeling of unease felt a bit lighter. “He is a borderline, potential criminal. A sorcerer that seems to know where his badshit crazy priorities lay. You at least try to hide it.”

Air was knocked out of her lungs as soon as those words made their way to her ears, drilling and drilling in a very uncomfortable way knowing that there was, apparently, someone with ill intentions who managed a whole guild– a runner up, for that matter. And no one was stopping him. “Do you mean–?”

“Yes, Uraraka, yes.” he was mentally calling her all kinds of intelligence-degrading terms and Uraraka managed to feel offended when she saw the snarl of his face, the scowl of impatience. This man managed to flip her switches – from anger to annoyance, then intimidation and sudden peace, sometimes. Uraraka absolutely hated that effect of his. “He has some gruesome methods to change the fates of our fucked up timeline– y’know, like fix it or something.”

The brunette could see where the path was leading, and was afraid to pry on the subject any longer. Still, her heart tugged for her to ask more, so she did. “And what’s so wrong about that?”

The unknowing play of her words made the boy stop walking, but he didn’t turn to look at her. It was the very first time Uraraka saw him idle and so conflicted about how to put his thoughts into words meticulously, like he had the day before at the top of the clock tower– but this time, this seemed to hold more weight on the long run, so he tasted the metallic truth before spitting it out like blood in a tough battlefield.

“Rumor has it he has been seeing rogue bandits in search for time travelers, to seek time bending. He may plan to play with the chords of time or fucking twist them like the bastard he is.” yeah, judging by her face, the notion of danger floating a few months away, or maybe only days– it had dawned on her too. “I don’t trust that guy. He is the nearest thing to a criminal I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, and he apparently doesn’t give a shit about anything else.”

“You feel he intends to… destroy the timeline for the sake of being powerful?”

The boy grunted his response, anger shivering in her steaming eyes even more passionately than ever before. “I have no fucking idea of what is beyond timelines and stuff, if there is some kind of heaven or a black pitch for sinners like him.” so much venom in his words blinded Uraraka, who stepped a bit nearer to him albeit hesitant to even breathe the same air as him. “But I’m sure that all these disruptions with our timeline will end when we defeat RampAge and the fucker that is behind all of it.”

“Wait, hold on.” he didn’t. His step only quickened under the pressure of her impatience. “But is this all about Shinsou being a criminal official? I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s not fair to accuse him of being something he isn’t.”

No weapons were drawn to her throat, but his eyes pierced daggers on her stronghold heart. “Are you saying you relate to him?”

Uraraka frowned at him, disbelief written in her eyes. “Of course not! It just surprises me that such terrible rumors are spread so carelessly.” that made sense in his mind, so he let her carry on. “Hasn’t it drawn the attention of the Council?”

When she hurried to his side, instead of kicking her out of there, Bakugou just glared at her from the corner of his vision. “Do you even know what the Council is?”

The girl blinked a few times before smiling guiltily at him, for which he sighed with impatience. She sure was a hassle– forget all he said about not being uneasy around her shitty glitter stupidity. “Well, I saw this– Yamada, was his name. And this person called Yagi that belonged there, too? I just have this vague idea that it’s a round table of some sorts.” again, the blonde, groaned. “Christ, no need to be so vocal about your hatred towards me.”

“That’s not it.” his steps slowed down at the little inch of vision he had in the mist of the vast wilderness, then heard a noise that made him immediately stop and shoot a hand up to stop her behind his body. “I hear something.”

The sorcerer tiptoed to his side, still remaining behind his stretched arm. Bakugou had clearly heard this, after all he surely spent lots of quality time around the forest– but Uraraka had to make a little effort to distinguish the noises ahead of them from the brush of leaves, birds chirping and a river flowing nearby. When she finally focused enough, eyes closed and nose wrinkled in disbelief, there was chatter, maybe a grunt–

A piercing screech was heard ten meters ahead of them, at what Bakugou would reckon to be the entrance of the dungeon, but he didn’t flinch as much as Uraraka would have expected him to. The brunette was stiff in fear for whatever foe waited there, staff readied in her hands as words flew clumsily out of her mouth, dry and loose. It had been a pitched scream, grazing the limits of danger and fear that didn’t only boom across the trees, but it also stabbed Uraraka’s confidence. Such scream could only come from a bloody corpse, full of fear until it had been shattered, shredded to rotten pieces of meat with broken–

“Stop freaking out, bitch.” his words were rash, but effective to interrupt her crippling, escalating fear of whatever foe lay ahead. “It ain’t anything you should be losing your shit over.”

“How can–“ the leader slapped a hand to her mouth, narrowing his eyes to her to simply shut her up, signaling to the source of trouble with a lazy nod. Her voice lowered a few notches as his hand came back to pull his sword out. “How can you be so calm? We have to go help them!”

“Uraraka.”

“That was no regular scream!” she tried to round her way around him to walk on, and tried to make out any shapes that could give away the identity of the offender– but there too many vines in between them, the path to the clearing hidden by a maze of lianas and leaves. Her eyes tried to make her statement clearer, but it was to no avail as he still regarded her lazily with irritation. “C’mon, stop standing there and help me–“

The moment she tried to go past him, his sword was drawn in front of her, blades daring to slice her stomach in half if she dared either cross the path or interrupt his next orders. A shadow came to cast his eyes into a deep glare that craved all kinds of atrocities in her. “Can’t you be a little bit clever for once?”

Uraraka put a hand on the blade – softly and gingerly as to not cut herself, sparking a moment of surprise for Bakugou as she pierced her decisions on him. “Lower this thing down.”

“Fucking listen for once.” the blade inched closer to her, as he locked a sideways gaze with her. Her orbs trembled once, twice, until she blinked and sighed, hand coming down from the weapon. “You don’t live here, nor know these fuckers’ ways. Shut your mouth and listen.” Bakugou let the sword drop down once she nodded and stepped back, but the sword was still in his hand as both a warning and a measure for caution, just in case anybody decided to ambush them. “Those losers from Grinning Blade enjoy making human traps so people just run to their sides for some half-assed rescue. Kirishima fell for that shit once.”

“Kirishima?” his silence was enough response for her, his arms tense as he rewinded the sharp memory of an injured companion going on and on about what ways they had against him. It wasn’t a pleasant memory, and only Uraraka could be enough of a bitch to remind him of that. “Did he get hurt?”

The boy chuckled with no humor, eyes frowning at her from a side as she stared at the path ahead, something along the lines of flaring caution, a bit of fear and bravery covering it all– it all engrossed him into a mental lecture of her eyes, the way she got points across with a single glance, and how she was somehow failing to hide a little crack in her armor from him, dense and slow with emotional shit. The fact that the picture of an injured pal had affected her spoke volumes about her.

Again, he was torn between deeming it to be a good thing or a bad thing, but that discourse was to be taken care of any other moment than this. “Kirishima is, luckily, no wimp ass. He took care of the matter damn fast, but the scare was still there.”

Uraraka nodded, gritting her teeth at the mistake she had almost done. She would have to learn from these little things and grow some patience before jumping into conclusions quickly. A point was clear though: Grinning Blade was a whole different ballgame to a joke. And Bakugou was more aware of this than anybody. Was this maybe why he was so adamant on hating their leader?

The sorcerer focused on the road ahead, the touch of cold steel under her fingers reverberating with more vigor than ever as the thrill of what awaited for them behind overtook any feeling of distress. Regardless, a pinch of worry was well hidden underneath that mask of innocence and crumpling stone. “Then, what should we do?”

Bakugou took some steps forward, Uraraka staying behind this time in wait for a cue. “I’d say we are good to go.” the blonde waited for her to catch up. Her step was more hesitant than before, hands shivering ever so slightly, but her eyes were fired with bravery. It was an unnerving display to watch; she had never shown any traces of a faint heart before, so what was she shaking for?

Uraraka was too focused on keeping up with the leader to even realize that he was seeing right through her. Her mind was lost in a cloud of doubt, anticipation and trepidation for what kind of person would be waiting for them– if it was the leader of that damned guild, they were in serious trouble. He was a sorcerer as well, one with more skills and knowledge than her, and his ideas didn’t seem to be remotely close to sanity. Upon closer inspection, the man beside her was pondering this thought as well, as he was outwardly agitated.

However, something was wrong with the picture. Uraraka guessed that he must have easily assumed this chunk of information, or had either come to terms with it long time ago. Thinking about it, considering his hatred for that leader, this rumors were old and already glued to his mind, leading his stride to the place to be agitated, feisty, enthusiastic. Regardless, his eyes held an unsettling tranquility crowned with a frown of decision, his head titled forward– and she could already see it, the blood running down his arms as his chest heaved back and forth in front of a victim, heart soaring for the beast he had become and–

Her step haltered, breath hitched and jumping awkwardly inside her chest. Her deft fingers clutched the neck of her uniform as the dead images, stationary feelings of dread and fear attacked her heart aimlessly, eyes clenched in confusion as those sharp unwanted flashes threw her off a cliff to a sea of poking tragedies, unresponsive body spinning against the current as voids of emotion filled her throat, drowned her, and made her head squish in commotion.

The girl was overwhelmed, blinking to focus on the back of that man, blade of his gigantic sword twinkling under the shade of the high trees, sun looming above and throwing uneven smudges of orange on his scarred skin. His calmness, the recklessness against an international threat, his fatality, the fire burning from his fingertips far away from her ice cold ones– and suddenly, the abyss was intolerable, but she walked forward nonetheless.

He truly was a monster, wasn’t he?

Bakugou slapped some leaves away with his sword and hands, peeking some clearance around the entrance of the dungeon. His step was assured, filling the enormous place with his dominant scent and presence, so similar to the one of a lion or a bigger foe than Pyrox had been back in time. His eyes sharply turned to meet hers. “The path’s clear. Don’t go tripping on thin air, got it?”

They stepped out of the wilderness to be met with a clear spot in the forest, the only thing standing there being a little stone building, two floors tall, decrepit, with vines swarming its walls and debris decorating its creaked steps. Silence hung low in the air, the only thing that was heard was the crunch of Bakugou’s boots smashing pebbles to dust, and his cape flowing with the afternoon air. Uraraka fixated her eyes on his neck, trying to ignore the bad feeling she got from just standing in such bleak spot.

The blonde noticed her unease and turned, one feet on the first step of the dungeon. “The dungeon goes on underground. I ain’t gonna look after you like some babysitter, so watch your fucking step.”

The sorcerer breathed in deep, recovering all senses of bravery she had in her, and marched forward with her chin high. “I don’t need your assistance.”

The sorcerer breezed past him. The might that esteemed off every inch of her skin and notch of her voice coaxed a grunt out of him, but the prospect of having an entertaining member with him made the experience overall much more appealing to his incandescent eyes. He smirked at her waiting stance at the gate of the dungeon, went up the steps and brushed past her in the very same way she had done.

The moment she aimed to join him inside, her intentions died with the first step. “Oi, what’s gotten into you?”

“I’m… not entirely sure.” Uraraka turned around to face the clearing, stark naked of unwanted presences. No eyes were on her like her neck had registered, nothing pressed at her back or enemies glaring at her. The sorcerer rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Just… nevermind. It was nothing.”

Bakugou crossed his arms, leaning on the doorway to the ancient passage. The girl took the chance to look around. The place was devoid of furniture, cracks adorning the floor and walls, with bars closing the windows and dark plants climbing up every inch of wet stone. Her boots could feel the instability of the building with a single step, and when she approached the closed door to the insides of the dungeon, it came as no surprise to see it almost crumbling down.

She looked at the leader, who still leaned smugly on the threshold of the blocked entrance. He stared back at her expectantly. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

Uraraka’s eyes flared in intensity and exasperation. Her eyes then scanned the stone gates, which sure could be opened with some kind of switch or spell, and gave it a small push to test the waters. “Why am I supposed to open the gates? Do you think I can smash it open?”

“Can you?”

“I can.” answered she, and his shoulders raised in surprise. “But that’s not elegant– or intelligent, for that matter.” the blonde waited for her to go on, and the brunette sighed again. “If we leave the entrance blatantly open, enemies will come in freely and can ambush us easily.” he didn’t look that surprised, which made her raise an eyebrow. “But you already knew this.”

“You’re talking about it as if it were the smartest thing to say, but I’ve been a fuckton of times here. Don’t come with the sass if you ain’t gonna handle a comeback.” Bakugou growled under his breath and pushed her aside with a harsh shove. “I’ll be a damn gentleman and let you choose: you smash it or I smash it.”

Uraraka crossed her arms, staff swinging while she gave him the stalest glare he had ever seen. “Give me a reason to waste my stamina on such a measly thing like a switched gate.”

Bakugou pounded the ground with his sword, cracking the floor with a twitching eye. His patience was running out the more snarky remarks she came with and he couldn’t stand slow business when it came to dungeons. This was the reason why he most usually did plunders alone, so no smarty pants companion would go and question his methods. “First, because I am ordering you to do so. And second,” he took an experimental step towards her, just to see how she’d react now against direct authority. He jabbed her forehead with his free hand, words full of frustration. “because this is your damn training and I’m not gonna do all work myself.”

Uraraka realized his proximity when his words rung too close to her ears, when the violent shake of his threats reached way too close to her heart. She could hear and feel his breaths, and if she only reached out, she could grab his sword and stab him, leave him bleeding as a payback for their prior battle and flee. But pouncing would be giving him the pleasure of knowing he was above her, that he could berate her anytime he wanted, and she would never allow that.

The sorcerer turned swiftly to face the gates, her voice filling in the gap of his mistreated pride. Feeling obviously ignored, the leader growled again, gave her a withering look. The fact that she was willing to ignore him infuriated him, and he hated that. He hated her.

“You’re right, I guess.” Uraraka took a few steps back, and feeling the danger she supposed and inwardly acknowledging it, he did the same. He stood on the side of her line of attack, arms crossed with irritation for that little bitch. Not only was she a terrorist, but when she was given the opportunity to actually use it for his advantage, she refused. At least she was starting to give in a little. “Back off.”

“Don’t go shooting fireworks at me, Uraraka.” spat he. She turned to glare at him. “And don’t give me that fucking look. You aren’t an ally of mine, you are not much different than a fucking villain to me.” Uraraka shifted when he said that, poison shooting through his clenched jaw. “Don’t take your confidence too far.”

When he finished speaking, Bakugou was pleased to have made her react to his words, eyes a bit shaken and her pose less confident than before. She was no more than a fucking criminal to him, another one like Shinsou, a beast– but then, he remembered that, again, he had promised to change his ways towards her for the sake of the guild. However, his hatred for her wasn’t like a switch: it couldn’t go from a hundred to zero with the snap of a finger. She would have to work herself through it as well.

Bakugou was at least making the effort to not kill her. She could at least show some respect for him. Mischievous little pest she was, fuck her. His glare broke into her staff as she swung it around, as if she was stretching for a long run. The hunter started tapping his arms, impatient. “Oi, you gonna do anything?”

“I can’t go around nuking a whole door without making the building fall down. I attack from far distances to wide areas, not the other way around.” her face was constricted in a dangerous warning. “I am the only one who knows this struggle. You don’t know me.”

“For fuck’s sake, Uraraka.” he padded to gate, leaving Uraraka far behind him. Bakugou left his sword leaning on the wall as he gripped his right wrist. “Watch the professional doing your fucking tra–“

Something vibrated from within the dungeon, meters away from behind the stone gate. His hands faltered and ended up lowering until he was able to confirmate who was behind the door. “Bakugou?”

Yeah, he knew that voice. “Fuck.” Bakugou quickly took his weapon and stomped all the way to Uraraka, who jumped at his horrifying glare of disgust– but for once, it wasn’t really directed to her. He took her arm forcefully and dragged her to the entrance of the building, dropping her behind a fallen pillar. “You fucking stay here where you won’t cause me trouble.”

“But–“

“Just shut up.” he frowned harder at her, gripped her shoulders and made her squat behind the debris. “You ain’t good for this fucking situation. Stay there until I come back.”

Her eyes stared into this with intention, brow wrinkled in disgust at his bossiness and lack of attitude, how ruse he was being and the blood boiling in those troublesome eyes of his, wrinkled back at her in a silent warning. Death was marring his intentions, looking at her the same way he did back in that rainy night of empty threats and silent seething– but this was different, it was pondering mixed with annoyance and stars crashing with her seas of innocence and wonder in a devastating mix of sparks and hatred for the other.

This time, it was Uraraka who conceded him to take the wheel. Her head turned to avoid his glower, and he silently thanked her for cooperating this once when things were critical. Uraraka was keen on cooperation and being helpful, but Bakugou had this capacity to nullify all her good traits and twist them in a violent manner that only made her mind sink deeper into its hatred for him.

This very same man made his way into the building again, sword drawn out and having it secured by his side in full knowledge of who he was facing against. His eyes came to meet Shinsou’s bored purple orbs on him. Bakugou slowed his pace just to pour as much hatred as possible in one single stride. His enemy stood right in front of the now open gate, gloved hands shoved into his black pants, unimpressed at Bakugou’s undesired presence.

“I can’t believe you are still coming around this area.” muttered Shinsou, tone unmasked as he stared at the blonde. “What’s the point on coming to a pillaged area?”

Bakugou smirked humorlessly, teeth shining confidently at his opponent, who had one of his hands out in case Yuuei’s leader wanted to act funny. “Cut the crap, asshole. You know what interesting business is down around here.”

“All I know is that you are no more than a coward coming to an area my people have already cleared.” his tone was clear, deep but much more poor in life than Bakugou’s, whose fuse was being consumed the more shit Shinsou spat at him. “I’d be very thankful if you’d stop dropping by. And I wouldn’t like to have a fight in here, in such decaying place.”

“Ha.” the hunter’s sword was flung to his side, cape riding the waves of movement behind him. Light filtered behind the bars and shone down on his cape, gleaming and sliding down his muscular body like water down a polished stone. “Do you think I’d give a shit about wrecking a lousy building like this? I thought you knew your enemies better, purple.”

“You sure are searching for trouble today. Was this day difficult for you?” Shinsou calmly took a flask of water out of his bag and took some sips from it. The leader discarded it far behind, and the crash seemed to boom among the echo of the deep dungeon. “As you wish.”

Shinsou snapped his gloved fingers, and a fierce rain of steel arrows came to pierce his guts at amazing speed, surprising the blonde boy who had no time to cut them in half– and the tiny missiles would have made a number on him if a green shield hadn’t stopped the arrows, which were stabbing the makeshift barrier as both leaders turned to the entrance.

Uraraka stood there, on the steps, hands clenched in focus as a hard twinge of danger danced in her chocolate pools. “Such a sneaky attack. Sorry for being a nuisance, Bakugou.”

“Oh?” the barrier faded in thin air, and the arrows stumbled down with a clatter of wood and feathers. Bakugou smashed the darn goodies to pieces and he didn’t know if he should be glaring at her for being sarcastic or actually admiring the way she had basically sneaked up on them and protected him. He decided the latter, because Shinsou’s gasp of surprise was no better than his actual reaction. “And who is this, Bakugou? Have you gotten yourself a sidekick?”

Uraraka neared them, staff clutched in her hands with decided step and a changed direction of her heartbeats, escalating up the roof and soaring high above them as Bakugou regarded with a different gleam to his endlessly ire-driven lights. When she looked up, his heart also started twitching the tiniest bit– because she had protected not only his people, his guild, but also him as well. She hadn’t even let her be trustworthy before she had gone and slammed a shield right in front of him.

It turns out Uraraka wanted to prove a point, as well. “I’m Uraraka.” spoke she, tone gentle but wary of her opponent. “And I am far from being his sidekick, or a mere ally. But I belong to his guild now– his and Midoriya’s guild.”

“Yeah, your face seems familiar.” the brunette gulped nervously, but held her piercing glare pending in front of the other leader. “I saw you at the market with Jack– yes, the clumsy girl. I can see now why she’d be admitted in such worthless guild.”

“Fucking excuse me.” Bakugou pushed Uraraka behind again with an angry shove. That woman sure was a life saver at times, but she could also be a great hinder– and she did nothing good near Bakugou, who would start chopping Shinsou to pieces if his dirty tongue got close to spitting on his damn guild.

The blonde sneered at the man in front of him. “But our guild ain’t first for nothing, loser. Most of your people isn’t more than standby extras filling up space.” he taunted the stone ground with the sharp blade of his sword, voice loud and clear, savage, smirk growing more wicked than before. “I still can remember you losers kneeling before us for mercy, praying for us to not cut your damn limbs off. You got no right to shit on our prowess when you can’t even reach our ankles.”

Shinsou looked over Bakugou’s shoulder to see a still standing sorcerer behind, her staff settled on the ground between cracks as her stare was fixated on his eyes– and it was all the weirder for her, since this man had been spoken so highly of, yet his eyes were so dead, hard and emotionless. They didn’t betray his fortitude or strong ideals, but the fact that they didn’t express any power like Bakugou’s did, or that they were so dead and focused on her all of a sudden– it terrified her. The wall separating his heart and eyes was too thick, and if this man dared to make a breakthrough and make a display of power, the debris would be thicker and the impact, unfathomable.

A little chill escalated her delicate spine as his dark, musky tone dug into her ears. “Yuuei must be desperate if you guys are accepting sorcerers. The epitome of evil and disgrace, that pest you were so resolved to eradicate– but look, there she is.” Bakugou’s breath hitched because Shinsou was attacking a foundation that he and Uraraka didn’t even have, but he was most importantly questioning his decisions as a leader. The blade rose a bit higher, realizing that he himself doubted himself as well, sometimes. “Doesn’t look that weak enough. The better for me, I guess.”

“What do you even mean, you fuck–“

Uraraka’s hand trembled up to touch his shoulder and he instantly froze at the feeling of her gloves on his skin. A part of Bakugou wanted to scream because was was hellbent on believing she had casted a super fast spell on him, something that would kill him the moment he took a step in any direction and she’d be laughing at his corpse, something so she could take over the guild and, later, over the world– but he let the thought die wordlessly as she came to stand by him again, and her hand was gone with the wind.

“I don’t know what you even mean by me being useful to you.” stated she, eyes closed for a second as she thought on how to place her words to win that bastard off the building. “But I can assure you that I will never join in whatever dubious schemes you have behind the village’s back. I will never tire of saying that I will never break to that point.”

Shinsou narrowed his eyes at her, tone alive now as he spoke what he thought to be obvious to the common people. “You are a sorcerer– a beast made to take over and rule the world with a single thumb.” unlike the first time her power potential was tampered with, she didn’t even flinch. “You were born to change the fates of this world, not to watch it all pass.”

“I know.”

“We are destined to fight for power, we are destined to change the course of times and fix what’s broken.” his words were passionate, yet dead and meaningless in Bakugou’s ears. Judging by Uraraka’s pensive expression, she was taking them in as he had the first time, and, deep inside, he prayed for her to be swatting them away. This investment he was making on her couldn’t go to waste. “It’s in our nature to create great things. Everybody knows that, including Bakugou.”

Uraraka looked down, dejected, and the blonde tightened his fists because he should have fucking known he shouldn’t have put the tiniest of faiths in that little minx who would be biting his lungs off when she got tired of pretending– pretending to be weak, to not want to achieve power by bending time. When did he even began to believe her–

“He will never trust you.” added Shinsou, watching her squirm in deep thought. “No one will ever trust you. And you know that.”

Uraraka’s heart was beating fast– she had never thought that, in this time, space and day she’d meet somebody who spoke so deeply about power, about how focused his aims were while seeing worth in her, wanting her to change the world by his side in an unspoken manner. It made her grit her teeth as a tiny thought placed itself in her head, one she hadn’t even considered.

What if he was right? What if his ways to fix things were actually right? What if by destruction he– he– she felt choked up as facts and conclusions pounced on her from behind, eating her and drenching her in cold, invisible sweat that made up for the hot anger she felt that overtook any thought in her head, and burnt all traces of doubt away.

“I know who I am– I know what most people expect me to be doing. I know what you, Bakugou and even the people from Yuuei expect me to do.” this once, her talk wavered, quivered and thickened as the heavy weight of her thoughts and truths came to chase her enemies back, determination consuming her being. “But I don’t give a damn about being able to bend time, to kill civilizations, or to drive people crazy. I don’t aim to be the terrorist Bakugou fears me to be in the future. I know he will never trust me–“ silence, deep breath, and Bakugou stared at her in well masked surprise and patience. “as long as I can trust myself to go down a good path to find a solution to this mess with my peers, then nothing matters to me.”

Shinsou let out a heavy breath, a sigh of boredom and hopelessness escaping through his lips without him really wanting to sound so let down. And the way Bakugou was eyeing her– in respect, starting to swallow her whole persona little by little, it made it all worse. “You’re chasing your own tail then, but you’ll understand my point with time, Uraraka. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Uraraka saw a flash of negative colors invade her whole vision, focus tunneled into one point that where his dead, unfocused eyes as the world swirled and all she could see, hear, or feel was a cold, dreary and looming voice whispering things to her ears, her feet scrambling into a world of roses and blues while lights flashed and blinded her, purple prevailing as the words were whispered over and over in a madness of echoes and colors–

Then, she felt hands on her shoulders and something slapping her hard on the face, which made the fuzzy colours fade to Bakugou’s blood eyes screaming at her, her head wobbling as he shook her in anger and disbelief because Shinsou had fucking brainwashed her and he wouldn’t have that fucker imprinting sensitive material into her little peachy brain. When he saw her blink, eyes no longer small and looking straight into him, he took the liberty to give her another shake.

“What the fuck, Uraraka? Did you seriously let that mother–“

“Did you just slap me?” Uraraka wiggled out of his hold while rubbing her cheek.

Bakugou snarled hard at her unaffected twinkle of eyes, arms crossed. The brunette saw that the psychotic leader looked relatively calm in the outside but his eyes were screaming otherwise– disruption, anger, irritation, unnamable feelings of madness and impatience. Also, it seemed like Shinsou was gone. “You were deep into that fucker’s ability. I could have stabbed your shoulder again, thank me I was gentle enough.”

Uraraka frowned at him as she rubbed harder on the reddened spot. “Yeah, thanks for being a real softie and not stabbing my insides out, such a hero.”

“Don’t make me slap you again, Uraraka.” Bakugou turned to look from the open gates, prompting Uraraka to do the same. The darkness inside the dungeon seemed infinite, wind blowing from inside to tickle their courage. Bakugou found himself shaking his head in disappointment. “Yeah, this dungeon’s taken for the week. Tough luck that guy got here earlier.”

Uraraka’s mind finally landed back in time as the notion of falling into a pitch, pain in her abdomen and water dampening her fingertips– the sudden notion fell away to nothing as she blinked to look at his retreating form, who was advancing out of the dungeon without throwing a single glance behind. Uraraka rushed to meet him at the stairs.

“I still don’t understand… anything.” muttered she, afraid of what remark about her intelligence he’d come up with. “Why did he use the scream bait at us if he was going to be so quick with the plunder and we wouldn–“

“Again, you’re not seeing the big picture.” commented he infuriatingly fast and sharp. “He probably saw that the dungeon had been cleared and decided to get the hell out before we even arrived, so he tried to delay us.” she blinked up at him, and he could hear her heart thumping a meter away. “And I bet that brainwash was just a little remembrance present.”

“Brainwash.” she didn’t question it, just welcomed it with a statement because Uraraka was sure they’d be seeing that guy again. “Well, it was not a pleasant present.”

As they went down the stairs to the clearing, Uraraka heard a rope being tightened in the distance, making all those feelings of being observed wash over her once again. Her step slowed down, as did Bakugou’s in pure instinct. “I hope he didn’t imprint any nasty message in that sucker brain of yours. There’s no need to make you a worse terrorist than you already are.”

An empty smack of air rushed to Uraraka’s ears, who instinctively took a leap to Bakugou’s back and deflected the arrow directed at him with a swing of her staff, cracking the arrow with a might swoosh of power. The trail of power chased the trajectory of the arrow up the building and slammed its pressure on both the building and the ground below them with an empty smash, ground snapping to quake after the hit. The defensive counterattack had been too improvised, chaste and hurried for Uraraka to control.

The gust of dust and sand along with the deaf smack of magic beneath his feet made him turn around and see not only the broken arrows at the sorcerer’s feet, but also a mysterious figure standing on top of the stone dungeon. Bakugou readied his sword again for a fight against this impertinent enemy, who was only staring at them once his plan to kill the leader had backfired. “Oi, who the fuck are you now? Be decent and show yourself!”

Uraraka stepped to the blonde’s side, mouth in a tight line. Meanwhile, the attacker only stood and watched them, members of Yuuei quiet and ready for whatever attack that could come from this archer, but also whoever that could come from behind. The figure’s silhouette was framed and hidden by the glaring sun, and the shade was gone with the wind as the offender took a step back and ran away, jumping to the forest with a busy rustle of leaves and branches.

“Who in the world was that? We can’t let whoever that was escape!”

“It ain’t worth it.” muttered Bakugou, a mixture of anger and frustration eliciting a growl from him. Letting a foe off the hook so easily wasn’t in his murderous unmerciful style, always efficient when it came to taking enemies out of the way. This time though, he let it fly. “There may be a whole gang of them deep in there.”

Uraraka blinked at the sun in order to decipher how this person had fled into the forest from such a high building. The leader eyed the remains of the arrows suspiciously. “I guess you are right on that.” the blonde knelt down to see the little projectiles with more accuracy. “What are you even doing now?”

“Tch.” he was on his feet again, eyeing the arrows with this nasty glint of his that could drive a whole army off a cliff if he so desired, as if his hatred for the pieces of iron and wood were his worst enemy like Uraraka had once been– or most likely still was, after Shinsou perhaps. “We gotta get back to the guild. I’ll have to report all this shit– fuck my life.”

Uraraka couldn’t read what his eyes spoke about, his words too vague and her too drunk with information and a new sense of emergency hanging on the clear ceiling of the sky, a sky they shared with countless criminals, Shinsou, and a whole universe of timelines, entangled complications and the everlasting question of the sorcerer’s loyalty, her morality and if the spikes of ice beating inside her writhing heart were real, dangerous, and if Uraraka would remain by everyone’s side. The more Bakugou looked at the arrows, he felt angrier, sicker, mind surging until he basically snapped.

The pieces of broken wood were burnt with a small bubble of fire, and the boy tasted the smokes with his fingertips as his frown only deepened. The sorcerer trailed behind the leader, eyes following the shadows of his cape as she thought that – maybe, just maybe, that person was the very same one she saw at the market the other day – but it somehow sounded too far stretched and sketchy, an association too strained to be true.

Right? The pieces of the puzzle were scrambled on the floor, and it somehow seemed like the only one to solve the riddle would be her.

Her head shook in complete denial as Shinsou’s last words to her, whispered to her soul in a private embrace all the while he left them without a single word spoken out, yet slapped on her with abrassing fire, a very same fire that beat inside Bakugou’s eyes, his glare and all the trepidation carried with those little dropped words.

You’ll understand someday, fairy with the clipped wings.

It turns out they didn��t even have time to rest Shinsou’s exposition off, because the moment they stepped into the village again, it was as empty as it had been the day Uraraka had first appeared. The feeling of rain falling on her was gloomy, as if stars had started falling down the sky and had shattered the mental ground she was in, remembering the grim bitterness of being soaked to the bone, yet still alive but with no life purpose or a place to belong in.

Yuuei had given her a reason to stay in that village– the leaders, the members, the sun and the moon had given her a place to stay. But when Uraraka saw that there was no one in the streets, a part of her resorted into an abyss. It was in the air, written in the skyline, hanging from the rooftops and slimming down every sewer and pebble stone. Irregularity and silence with a tinge of bleakness and blind danger drowned the buildings, its inhabitants, killed every flower and chirping bird.

This was no village. It was the very same ghost town that had stayed under the covers of the night during her talk with Bakugou, during every restless night in her dorms, watching the faraway rain fall and drench her heart in a tight embrace– vivid nights of loss, ubiquity and confusion. Aftershock would plunge itself deeper and deeper as it slammed unrecognizable feelings of oddity and darkness– it was all dark around her, foreign feelings harboring down into a remembranceless sea of bubbles, silence and dark steep abysses of so many questions left unsaid, unspoken, unanswered.

All feelings were blending together, mixing, twisting, until that was left in front of her was a thread of lost streets with no people, no soul– just the skeleton of a broken body. The rain… it was always so familiar, yet so foreign.

“What the fuck is this?”

And in the middle of it all stood this ghost town, bricks missing from buildings, houses full of dust, cannon balls imprinted on some walls, trees falling apart– haunted memories of irregularity and despair that Bakugou was starting to realize with a start of a run, starting to hear noises and crowds banging on doors the more they ran to their guild, the nearer they got to the gates.

Right before they turned to the main street directing to the wall and gates, he pushed her to a side and changed directions, speed increasing. “If they see you with the village in this state, they’ll think it was your damn fault.”

Uraraka didn’t argue his point, but was still torn in between trusting his measure to be good intended or thinking he was going to throw her into a dumpster. “Why should I trust you in this?”

“The real question is why should I trust you with anything? You could take the opportunity to corner me into an alley, disarm me and tear my organs apart for some witchery sneaky business of yours.” spoke he bluntly, breathy as he struggled to remember which alternative path led to the guild’s secondary doors. “A part of me is fighting against it for my people’s sake.”

Yeah – she understood that – and a part of her was trying to put all his murder, blood and ire aside to try and see what hid behind those thick, heavy curtains he had around his weak heart. She was terrified of even peeking, afraid of being burnt with his death glares or his viscerous remarks and measures to keep her in place– yet, wasn’t he afraid too? Afraid of the monsters she hid inside her closet while she was also intimidated by the destruction he carried with him, afraid of being blistered beyond repair.

“Thank you, Bakugou.” the spiky boy turned to look at her, brows for once neutral when her smile came to view– and even if it was a small one, it was a step in the right direction. “For trying.”

“It ain’t gonna mean a damn thing until you actually show us you are valuable. Don’t go around making misleading conclusions.” because it wouldn’t be easy, but the fact that he was going to at least try to not murder her was… nice, in a way. It shouldn’t be so surprising, but Uraraka found herself smiling nonetheless.

When they finally exited the labyrinth of messy old houses and wet, dark streets, they found themselves running to the big barrier of the guild installations, the wall shining in all its glory with no disruptions to be seen, sunshine reflecting in every smooth corner to glorify the blessed territory. Uraraka squinted during their race to see a little gray door waiting for them.

“It’s an emergency door. Only you would make us use it for such petty issue as a crowd.” the leader gave it a good push with an ease that Jack sure hadn’t displayed some days earlier. He went through first and waited for her to get in before closing the door behind them, and hurried to the center of the guild plaza.

All members of the guild stood at the entrance, making the two remaining members rush to see Kirishima struggling to keep the mad crowd at bay. “Please, calm down! We are still fixing to check all damages done around the area, be patient!”

Uraraka stopped her run by Yaoyorozu, hidden from the crowd by Tokoyami as the leader stepped forward to face the angry mass of people barricading at his damn guild doors. “What the fuck is going on and where did you all pop up from?”

Midoriya looked at his peer and mused on the fact that his hands were reddened, bruised, and that Uraraka had just arrived with him. His eyes pierced his heaving chest, the irritation– but there was a little spark there, in a deep pitch of his endless galaxies of anger and disturbance. Something was clouding the aggressiveness off his glare, and replacing it with just exhasperation and impatience, now looking at Midoriya to find an answer that wasn’t just senseless screaming from the villagers.

“Disruptions have started appearing–“

“I know, dumbass. I saw it all with my own eyes before.” he then took out his sword again and flung it in front of the mass of crowds attempting to cross the threshold, successfully making them all step back as he pointed at them with a sneer. “What I don’t understand is why everyone is here and not whining to the Council.”

An elderly woman appeared in the middle of the line, eyes clouded by a gray fringe of disheveled hairs. “The door to my house is basically disintegrating! It’s being bitten by something and it will sure be long gone by the time I get home!”

Another voice boomed from the back, hand shot up to point to the village at their backs. “Tons of blades have appeared on my restroom, and water has drained from the well at my neighborhood!”

Uraraka looked at the restless crowd of people as the listed off all their problems, some blurry in her ears as worry settled in. She heard Yaoyorozu hum in preoccupation, eyes glaring at the back of their animalistic leader. “This timeline… is growing weak. This must be RampAge’s doing.”

Yes, RampAge, the angry monster waiting for them at the end of the world while he was slowly eating all bits of the timeline and tangling everything with his slimy hands, waiting for the truth to crash on Uraraka was she just stared at the danger before it was even in front of her, but the feeling of being cornered by fear and– just the feeling of being small, the problem being too huge and her being just so, so tiny and useless. As another lost star in the horizon against the blaring sun of the morning, her spark faded away slowly, the burden was too heavy on everybody’s shoulders.

People wouldn’t see her as the solution, or a part of it– they’d see her as the fucking problem herself.

Tokoyami realized that she was behind him and took a step aside, arms crossed. The moment she looked up, her eyes met the dozens of those who stood in the frontline, and when they saw the wooden staff in her hands… disbelief fell down on her like a tsunami on the destruction fall. A man was first to call out on this fact. “H-Hold on, that’s a–“

“A sorcerer! It’s a sorcerer!” Yaoyorozu dedicated Tokoyami a fierce sideways glare, to which the bird boy only shrugged in defeat. “This must have been her doing!”

Kirishima was the first one to tread forward and chide them for such quick grudge. Uraraka saw then a variety of knives tucked in his pockets and a very fancy looking one pinned on his back. “Nobody here is allowed to badmouth anybody from our guild, sorcerer or not.”

“How can we not do so!?” the elderly lady from before spoke up again, fists tight and her face scrunched in a frown. “We can’t let that vixen get away with this crime! She’s responsible for destroying our homes!”

It was not true. It was not true now, not before, not in the future, not in another place, not in another story – Uraraka would never attempt to destroy families, nations – but the mere accusation with such sharp edges and venom had her knees trembling, lip quivering as all she could hear was Shinsou whispering those words to her again while the whole world spiraled with their accusations, everything blending together to the rhythm of a parade with her head in their hands, blood splashing on the ground as they stepped forward and cornered her rotting corpse.

“She’s no more than a scoundrel!”

“All go for her head, she’s a witch!”

“No sorcerer shall–“

“SILENCE!”

Bakugou drove his blade straight into the ground, blade stabbing the stone like butter and cracking the pavement under his feet, making all his people’s clothes sway with the wave of the impact, but Kirishima’s knives were still out, Midoriya had the handle of his sword clutched as well– only Bakugou had lost his temper way before it was due. His glare was constricted, dreary, and incredibly defensive of these accusations that were directed to a member of his guild.

These guys– good for nothing losers were telling him he was wrong for inviting him over– a belief he was fighting against but people still wouldn’t let him get over with. He took a deep breath, unaware of having Uraraka staring at him with her brown eyes blown agape at his fierce interruption, the heave of his shoulders and the way he was struggling to keep his cool against such accusations not only against her, but indirectly against him.

“You fucktards have no right to say anything about who I admit in the guild. For starters, she had been under my watch all the time, and I can assure you that if she had gone and done anything risky, I’d let you have her head to be impaled.” he extracted the sword from the stone slot and directed the blade to the innocent villagers, who again recoiled from the enormous beast. “I won’t let you doubt my expertise as a co-leader of this guild, which has saved your eyes countless time. We ain’t stupid and we know when to cut off an investment.”

The mob of people went silent for a pair of seconds, and the whole guild held in their breaths. They knew who they were dealing with, and this crowd was no easy group to handle. Another pissy villager was quick to speak. “But the fact that you are even calling it an investment is worth noting! Making blind investments on a future enemy like her is a reckless move to make in such critical moments!”

“He’s kinda right on that one.” Tokoyami sighed, eyeing the girl from the corner of his vision– and the sight left him a little petrified. Her head was titled forward in a new, more courageous way that had just immediately surfaced when she had needed Bakugou– her sworn enemy, the most terrible of thunderstorms, to rescue her from the vicious hands of a blob of unknown faces, their words cutting like knives but he had this time shielded her from them– shielded his guild from the accusations.

“We can’t let this continue!”

He clearly had more to him than just simple anger to the world that dared push him down, so she took a step forward, and forward, closer to the people, closer to her enemies– eyes crunched into a venomous glare of defiance as she positioned herself just behind Bakugou, Kirishima and Midoriya.

“Look at her though, such a small thing.” commented a woman to another, a man standing by snickering at the harsh truth. “One can blow her away with a little breeze.”

“I can’t believe the leader of this guild has let a traitor in!”

“This guild must pay for bringing the devil closer to our–“

“I think Bakugou has told you all to stop talking.”

The three guardians turned to look at her, people’s mouths falling shut as her eyes narrowed at them in distaste. Bakugou crossed his arms at her, ready for whatever trick she’d do to either screw up or knock those asses off their knickers. “I don’t know where these biased opinions come from, but whoever that finds it suitable–“

The tip of her staff hit the ground with a hard slam, waking the dust from their slumber on the ground and blowing dirt away among with any loose pieces of clothing. “–shall come and prove themselves!”

“Oi, look at this thing being so pretentious and mighty!”

“Yeah, I bet I could take her anytime, man!”

Knowingly, the boys let Uraraka step nearer to the gates. Kirishima smirked at what he had called little lady when he saw her first, and hoped for her to prove him wrong again. Uraraka frowned at the crowd of people, chest puffed out and small lines of teeth showing behind those thin unharmed lips of hers. “It’s fine for me then.” her staff touched ground again, but only to make her statement clear as she put all her power and bravado in a single shot. “If all of you are so against me being here, so skeptic about my power, I challenge you all to fight me.”

“Is this girl craz–“

“I said,” her staff was risen to the heavens above, and thunder clapped on the death of a clear day of sun, shadowing her eyes for a dangerous moment of menacing bestiality. “fight me!”

The crowds pulled away from the powerhouse with renewed fear sinking their expressions to a pale shadow of the smug shame thrown at her that she had not only annihilated, but also returned to every single doubting civilian. They still stayed, but at a safe distance, which made Bakugou step forward again to the wooden bridge with his blade in front of him. Midoriya accompanied him on the stride as his frown deepened – a gesture out of character for him.

“We won’t repeat ourselves again: don’t dare come to shame on our members without being ready to face consequences.” Bakugou nodded curtly, nose wrinkled at them as Midoriya finished the discourse with a sharp response. “We will part as soon as possible to identify the source of this dilemma. Go to your houses and fight the war on your own for now, shall peace rest in your hearts.”

Kaminari and Yaoyorozu quickly closed the doors as Mina took a pretty shaken Uraraka into the faculty, the poor sorcerer recovering from the high of such mighty confrontation. The ashen blonde glanced at the fidgeting sorcerer, eyebrows scrunched in meditation over the show she had put out.

Maybe... just maybe–

"Bakugou, we can't stand still now." the aforementioned turned to look behind and see Midoriya standing by Asui, and that was when he realized that everyone was pretty much looking at him in anticipation, desperate for something– a reaction, some kind of order to carry them out of the stump. "I think it's time to make a move. Delaying this won't make this any easier."

The hunter hissed, eyes closed in thought. The sword was put aside again. "Yeah, I'm aware."

"I don't know if it's my place to say," Yaoyorozu approached them, fingers twitching on her chin as she went through all the information to the day. "But judging by the current state of the village, it's highly probable that the decay will go further. We can't go on like this. Stretching the damage in this timeline will only make things worse."

Uraraka's glance flew from the knight to Midoriya, then to Bakugou, who was the center of all eyes, darkness twiling around him until there were no lights floating, no more air– and suddenly, the world was underwater, the trepidation and anticipation for an incoming avalanche of danger suffocating her, hands shooting from those dark corners and suffocating her in a loving hug.

And again, there he stood, in the middle of it all, having to carry the burden of a guild along side another man, stood Bakugou– this man who was starting to at least be civil with her, who had sort of, kind of, in a way, defended her back there. He hadn't haunted her, tried to suffocate her. Now, he had a burden too big to even notice her. He had told her the night before.

She couldn't bring herself to hate him so much when such big things were coming and he was still there, proud and strong. Yeah, there was no way a part of her couldn't respect him both as a fighter and a leader. Her hand tried to reach out, yet curled back and fell limp on her side, eyes down as Uraraka was helpless, useless, and no more than another face in this place.

But somewhere deep inside of her, something screamed, flew up her torso, flew up her vocal chords as the limp hands clutched on the knot tying her uniform's neck. "Are we ready for this though? Can we really pull this off as confidently as we are putting it?"

Bakugou boredly looked at her as some guild members backed off at the implicaton. Uraraka didn't understand the offense until the ashen blonde strode to her in a slow pace, spikes swaying as ashes danced on his face.

"You can't go around as a new member throwing shit at us." his hands were stretched, fingers curled as his smile went downhill with a disapproving grimace. Yet, his fingers never dared to reach any of her as they would have done so recklessly before. He knew who he was talking with this time. "Don't understimate us. If you aren't letting anybody do that to you, don't let your shitty mind play tricks on you."

"I am not, by any means, implying that you guys are weak!" the girl looked around to see everyone paying attention to her, but their expressions weren't disappointed at her, or mad. "What I'm trying to say is that RampAge doesn't seem like a foe to be taken lightly–"

"Uraraka is right about that." interrupted Todoroki, sensing that the girl was about to step on a blind spot. "We should have a plan before even thinking about heading off into battle so recklessly."

"It's not we'll have a straight-away encounter with him." retorted Midoriya, his eyes unfocused as he displayed a mental map of the whole kingdom. "We'd have to cross a town in the Frost Way, then advance to the Capital. That would take us a minimum time of two weeks, but we can try to be faster by maybe crossing the river? But even that would–"

Asui smacked Midoriya on the shoulder with her tongue. "Quit it. You look creepy."

Midoriya looked at the pharmacist with a little blush of apology as Mina sprung back up. "It's not something we can't do, I bet. I am mostly worried about how we will know where this guy even is."

The redhead, who was currently trying to supervise Bakugou in case he snapped out of his train of thought, shook his head. "Midoriya and Bakugou have him vaguely located. It shouldn't be so difficult to pinpoint him in a mildly large area. Supposedly, he is not specially small."

"Playing with suppositions will not take us very far." Iida cleaned his glasses, then gave the cloth back to Yaoyorozu. "We can't risk such an important fact like actual situation. RampAge may move the moment we step out of the capital, for all we know."

Midoriya staggered a bit to find an answer, so Bakugou had to once again respond while so side tracked. "The area he is in is basically like a massive hollow mountain. It's fucking impossible for it to actually change places like you do, four-eyes." then, he rubbed his face with both hands. "Which means I can't take Amelie with us either."

Jack, who had seemingly popped out of nowhere, swiftly debunked that setback. "Amelie wouldn't have done much more damage than our best fighters would have done." the black haired girl looked at the brunette, who stared back in wonder. "Group in which I very gladly include Uraraka."

The ashen blonde found entertainment on seeing little Miss Terrorist explode into a mad blush of aknowledgement she wanted to deny, but Midoriya spoke before anybody else could refute, agree or interrupt the statement. "Now that I think about it, what's your opinion on this?"

She jumped a bit to look at Midoriya, and the guild stared in wonder. "My opinion?"

"Well, you are a newcomer here, but anybody's impression is welcome." the freckled boy smiled at her kindly, and the sorcerer was instantly relieved for an unknown reason. It came from deep inside her heart and it was driving her insane. "Besides, new opinions aren't biased, just raw and fresh."

"Oh!" gasp and wide eyes, fingers fidgeting with her sleeves as her arms crossed, then she stood still as her answer was clear, had always been from a start and it had taken her too much to figure it out. "In that case..."

Uraraka cleared her throat and spoke up. Bakugou watched her from slightly afar, brow wrinkled as a warning. "I believe that our leaders would never take us through the wrong path. If they believe in our power and believe in the path they have traced, I don't know why we wouldn't trust them." and this time, Uraraka fully faced Bakugou by staring right into his eyes. "That's what a leader stands for."

The boy's eyes widened with a disbelieving frown, her eyes solid brown and no longer swiming in emotions and brewing with mechanical schemes, ideas, or even hesitant. Todoroki smiled behind her, a knowing little smirk showing through that no one but him would understand.

"Hell straight." Bakugou stretched his arms, flexing his muscles for both a show of power and might, condemning the following measures to be followed. "We will start moving tonight while light is still out, and camp for the night in the way to our first stop."

He seeked Midoriya's eyes for approval, and he nodded with a solemn grim frown. "We should divide into groups to make travelling easy, and in case of an ambush we will be able to maniobrate much easier. We'll need a healer in each group, and as diverse class-wise as possible."

"We can talk that out when we set off later." the ashen blonde moved his cape aside and advanced towards the main building. "Move your asses and start packing, take only necessary battle items, just light package. You are dismissed until sunset, be quick."

“Uraraka– Uh, Uraraka?” Kirishima opened the door to her room a little bit more in pure shock after seeing the madness she was stuffing into her backpack. “How many books do you think you will be able to take?”

“Oh, Kirishima! Um…” the girl hesitantly took them out with a hand and slammed their weight on her desk, prompting the hunter to approach the pile. “I thought they’d be useful to have as an addition to basic training with Bakugou… and that way I can also have something to read if ever have to make guard!”

The boy leant back from the volumes and grinned at her. “No worries lil’ lady! Having your shoulder in such state will probably save you from the guards. Bakugou and Kaminari offered to do your guards until we get to the first stop.” the sorcerer titled her head, blinking as the thought of Bakugou actually going out of his way to help her started to sink in awkward places, still odd and out of character for him. “By the way, you’ll be going in Bakugou’s group– said something about watching you, so I’ll see you when we get to the first stop. Such a shame. Also, why is Edgar so… down?”

Uraraka padded to her shelves to gather some spare potions and scrolls, not surprised by Bakugou wanting to keep her under his hook. Her eyes then drifted to the sleeping form of her eagle, and sighed. “Little buddy here had a sever intake of ashes from the fight with Pyrox, as he flew around the battlefield for a while. I can’t take him with us, but he’ll come to me when I need him to. By the way, I take it you’ll be going with Midoriya, then?”

“Yeah,” the redhead picked up a random book from her desk. “with Yaoyorozu and Mina, good company. I’ll sadly have to deal with Todoroki being around as well, he is such a baby during expeditions like these.” the brunette nodded with a little airy laugh, letting Kirishima read the titles of her sorcery books. “Wow, all this stuff seems complicated.”

The girl approached him to finish packing up, but before she could take the books back, Kirishima lifted it out of reach and read the title from below. She tried to grab the volume with clenching hands and chubby fingers, but the redhead still held it in the air. “A book on chemistry and… magic law?”

Uraraka jumped and got her book back, almost tearing Kirishima’s arm apart. “Well, there are lots of things I haven’t had time to ask Yaoyorozu about this kingdom’s laws. So I need to learn if there’s anything specific I can’t do in certain places.”

The brunette clamped the bad shut with a huff, the potions clinking with the metal details of the books and various other items of good use. Kirishima opened the door for her so they could finally proceed to the exit. “Well, I bet you were already told the basics, right? About dungeon hunting, the libraries, the ice mag–“

The door fell shut as Uraraka jumped to Kirishima’s face. “I never got closure on that one!” Uraraka started to mess with her hair again, eyes darting all over the place. “I was given this creepy vibe about ice magic, like the fact that it’s considered a cursed magic– but she never told me why! Jack sure seemed bothered about it though. Oh, and she also showed me–“

The hunter slapped his hands on her shoulders, and rubbed softly. “Take it easy, roundface. Midoriya’s mumbling thing sure is rubbing on you easily, what a pain.” Uraraka slapped her cheeks, eyes wide, wondering where the heck that ramble had come from. “Well, first, our guild has protection against ice magic, so using this kind of magic is actually possible, but it weakens the body of the user spectacularly.”

The brunette nodded, adjusting her bag on her shoulder as Kirishima gave her an explanation. His scarf was tight on his neck, vest scraped to his chest and hands rummaging through his pockets, maybe checking to see if he has everything with him. “Ice magic is…” he gave an approving pat, then looked at Uraraka as they walked onwards. “out of the elemental circle. It’s a mystery how one can manipulate it, and too dangerous to deal with. There is water, wind, earth, fire– those are the main elements, then there are other side techniques that I’m not that aware of.”

The brunette gave him an endearing look of both surprise and pride. “You sure know what you are talking about.”

The other boy tried to shrug it off with that warm, humble demeanor of his. Still, the compliment took over his heart, and the very same emotion was reflected back in his eyes. “I spent some time with Asui at the infirmary after a raid gone wrong, and she told me all about it. She’s especially wary of this magic, considering she can only use water magic.”

Kirishima and her passed by the lobby in complete silence as the brunette thought her next question, and was able to pronounce it once they were half way through the corridors to the main doors. “Still, why is it so bad?”

“It’s just mysterious, and people fear the unknown in the same way I guess they fear you or Shinsou at Grinning Blade. My knowledge can’t reach that far, you should ask Asui about it.”

And of course Uraraka was going to ask her about it, because it turns out that she was feeling colder than usual, the fierce reminder that Yaoyorozu gave her still fresh in her mind– the way her eyes had flared with warning, how shocked Bakugou had looked when he saw his axe get knocked out of orbit in that wild winter frost. Bakugou knew, Yaoyorozu knew, but the only one who didn’t really know what was going on with this magic and its danger was Uraraka.

“Oi, what the hell took you damn losers so long!?” screamed Bakugou the moment they exited the building, waiting at the gates with horses and the whole guild gathered. The two remaining members shook their heads and ran to them, remembering the reason behind such rush. “We have stuff to do!”

“Bookworm here wanted to pack a whole library of books.” the blonde scowled at her in deep reprimand, but Kirishima was quick to defend her. “She did it for a good cause, though!”

Out of nowhere, Kaminari tapped Uraraka’s shoulder and made her look at him with a little tug. “C’mon, we’re sharing a horse, and we better get going before Bakugou here blows our asses up.”

“Hold up, Kaminari.” before the blonde could help her on his black horse, Bakugou forcefully gripped her arm and carried her to Kirishima’s horse. “You are a clumsy rider, no way I’m gonna involve more people in your damn disasters.” because it’s not like he cared for her– that definitely was not the case, but he wasn’t willing to have more casualties than necessary before the real war had even began.

Kirishima chuckled and took Uraraka’s arms. “I guess we will have to share horse then. My pleasure to comply, master!” the blonde glared at the two brainless idiots who he sure hoped would crash into the nearest cliff and disappear. “Hold on tight, miss!”

“Everybody up their horses?” called Midoriya, Asui behind him as she set all her potions and ingredients in her bag for a quick reach.

“Wait, I am not–“

“Kaminari, what the fuck. Hurry your ass up the damn horse.” Jack looked at the screaming leader and shook her head at Kaminari’s clumsiness when it came to riding. He sure had been practicing, but it’d take him a long time before he got used to it. Mina, grabbing her from behind, laughed freely. “I take it you all are ready.” there was a loud hum of agreement, and Kirishima handed Uraraka a big coat for her just in case she got cold. The sorcerer realized then that most people were wearing it as well.

Seeing that Kirishima was actually giving up his for her despite wearing less clothing, she politely rejected the offer with a shake of her head. That guy was impossibly kind to her.

“Pay attention, please.” Midoriya’s voice was clear, loud, commanding, similar to Bakugou’s but in a less dangerous way that filled the entire place, but in enthusiasm and diligence. “We will head to the Frost Way as a whole group, then head for the forest so we don’t make ourselves too noticed, and split up in groups. We should be there close to midnight, and meet again in a few days at the nearest village. Any questions?”

Uraraka had been giving this idea lots of time to go away– really, lots and lots of time. It was a crazy thought, a possibility that would be rejected the same moment it was spoken outloud. She gripped Kirishima’s vest for dear life, forehead cuddling with his scarf, and bit her lip. Yet, the words were escaping, floating into the skies of her brain until they couldn’t go higher, and instead dropped to the air below in quick sentences of anxiety.

“Why don’t we…” Kirishima now noticed that she was close to tearing his vest apart, and gently craned his head to look at her. “why don’t we ask Grinning Blade for help?”

“No.”

“But–“ nobody interrupted her, but they were obviously agreeing with Bakugou’s refusal by the way they glared at her. “they are up against this very same issue! They may be great help with different sets of–“

“Go to them.”

Kirishima, Uraraka, Bakugou and basically everybody looked at Midoriya, who didn’t dare to look back at his guild and instead focused on the road ahead. “Kirishima, take her to their headquarters and then head to the Frost Way. We will wait there.”

Bakugou almost went off his horse to chop his head off. “What the fuck do you think you are doing!?” his hands went wild into the air, little explosions rippling from his palms. “We can’t go ask for help from that good for nothing purple hairs! Who even–“

“I have the very same right as you to make these decisions as you have.” the green haired leader turned his head to look at the seething hunter, who then leant back in thought to think things through. “We are in no state to be picky… Kacchan.”

Bakugou didn’t make a fuss this time about the odd change of nicknames, only frowned heavily and gripped the bridles of his horse as hard as ever. “You got no right to call me like that, greenielocks.” Uraraka blinked at the exchange from behind Kirishima’s tense shoulder, and shook a little when Bakugou turned to look at her. “Be quick or we’ll end up delayed by those motherfuckers, so go on ahead of us. Be careful on the way.”

“Gotcha, master!” Kirishima whipped the bridles and the horse took a step back to then speed up across the bridge, stride clopping against the stone pavement as they rode into the sunset, turning at some houses and speeding up at empty areas.

Uraraka gripped Kirishima’s torso with a hand and held the hat on its place with the other, a grateful smile softening her round features. “Thank you for this, Kirishima! I would have never thought Bakugou would agree to this!”

His voice was hushed from the winds leaping at their sides, but it vibrated inside his ribcage and made her felt at peace, bathed in the sunset as the guild’s aroma carried their winds along. “He looks like a wolf, and actually fights like one, but he can’t deny help we need. And I’m just hoping Grinning Blade will agree to help us!”

“I bet they will, it’s not like it’s not their problem.”

Well, the real issue started when they were met with Shinsou’s tired and bored dead eyes staring right through Uraraka as she voiced her concerns with earnest frantic glances, hands clenched around the neck of her uniform, travelling everywhere and there was a moment when she gripped Kirishima’s sleeve for mere relief, her words being spat faster and sharper than ever. Her hair bobbed, arms shaking, and she finally shut up.

Shinsou only stared for a second, sipping from his drink, and gave a blatant answer.

“Not interested.”

Kirishima and Uraraka jumped five meters behind to only come rushing back to his side, Kirishima speaking as loud as possible. “Man, what the hell? This is an issue of vital importance!”

“I don’t give a damn about vital importances and what gets in your hairs. Nobody asked this guild for help, therefore I will never put my people on the line for others who haven’t asked for it.” Shinsou’s eyes travelled from the gaping redhead to the other sorcerer, whose eyes didn’t seem as surprised as one would have expected. “I guess you were already expecting this, clumsy girl?”

The hunter was startled to find that these powerful sorcerers knew each other, above all considering how ill Shinsou’s intentions. Kirishima hoped Bakugou knew about this and had found a way to be alright with it. The sorcerer spoke up, mouth grim in a line of disappointment. “I can’t deny that, but I sure was expecting to be able to see you cooperating.”

“Then we don’t need to speak anymore.” the leader did a double take when turning to close the door, and stared at Uraraka with analytical eye. He seemed to observe how the sorcerer was holding herself awkwardly, a hand gripping her side with strange delicacy. “Is there anything wrong with your side?”

“Ah!” the girl jumped and smiled awkwardly at the other sorcerer, who was still looking at her right side with a pointy glare. The brunette felt too observed to her liking, so she unbuttoned the lowest part of her shirt to show the ugly scar to the leader. Kirishima was internally raging over the display of skin she was offering so recklessly, but he guessed it wasn’t such a bad thing. “I got a pretty ugly wound when I first came to Yuuei.”

The hunter stepped forward to check the scar. “Woah, it sure healed ugly and big, lil’ girl! Does it hurt?”

She shook her head while still holding the shirt apart. Shinsou didn’t seem so fazed by the new information, but a spark in his eyes betrayed his appearance. Only Uraraka noticed. “It’s alright. It only hurts when I push hard enough, but really, it’s as if nothing had happened. Shuzenji sure is a miracle!”

“So, you got that in a battle?” the brunette shrugged while buttoning up her shirt, which only made Shinsou ask more questions. “You don’t know?”

Before the sorcerer could shake her head, Kirishima gently spoke first. “She’s got amnesia.”

“Amnesia, huh.” both outsiders nodded at the same time, Uraraka still lost at the huge meaning that word had in her life now. It was like a big, hideous stain had damped her life and there was no way to wipe it clean. The boy in front of them tapped his chin, eyes swinging from side to side in deep thought. He then stepped inside for a second, and was back with a piece of paper. “We may not be willing to help, but perhaps old man will actually help out somehow.”

Uraraka gingerly took the little note and read it with shock still imprinted in her easily molten eyes. “Old man?” the redhead looked from her shoulder, but didn’t bother to finish reading the note. “Are you gonna take us to some kind of elderly wise man?”

Shinsou flashed them a little private smile, but it was full of intentions and raging thoughts. “You could call him that. Just go to him and ask for his aid.”

Uraraka arched an eyebrow at him, but was elated to see him helping somehow. If this was his way to help, she would welcome it the first. “I am glad you are willing to help us indirectly, but how can we know if we can trust you?”

Shinsou chuckled at her endearing innocence and turned around. “Trust me, clumsy, I get nothing from helping you guys out. If I’m gonna go out of my way, I’ll at least try to be civil.”

Kirishima drove her with an arm around her shoulders towards their horse. “Thanks, I guess. Talk to Hatsume if you guys ever wanna help out, and she’ll make it work somehow. Good luck while we are gone.”

The door was closed behind them with no further ado, and while Kirishima led her to his horse, Uraraka reread the note with trembling hands. “You sure we can trust this guy?”

“I sincerely… am not sure.” her voice trembled at the end, but her eyes were focused and resolute. They had no other choice but the hard choice. “We have no other option but accept this little nudge. As Midoriya said, we are in no state to be picky.”

Kirishima hoisted her up the horse and adjusted the bridles in a second, not many changes needed. “Where do we have to go though?” Uraraka handed the piece of paper to him, and he had to read it a few times before he could actually recall where the location was. “Gotcha, it’s in our path to the Frost Way. I just hope I can find such accurate location.”

The hunter got on the horse and snapped the bridles to make him run out of town, all the while Uraraka read the note over and over again, eyes squinted at the smudged calligraphy, hugging Kirishima a little bit tighter the more she read into the note. “The Mountain’s Chamber. Sounds creepy.”

“It actually is creepy, if I do recall. It’s a place under a big mountain full of snow. There’s some big fog around there, I just hope it doesn’t hinder our arrival.”

Uraraka was worried about everything but that. Her hands scrunched the paper and held it tight to her chest, heart beating off a raging tsunami the further they got from the village, nearer to their only source of aiding and away from her short-lived home, away from her dorm, and away from safety. Shinsou’s words trumpeted deep inside her mind, where only deep husky voices like Bakugou’s arrived, provoking all sorts of little chills covering her spine.

“Yeah…” her face was buried on his scarf, fresh and old with use. Smelled like rain, smelled like home. “I really hope so, too.”

“Lil’ lady, this place sure is fucking creepy.” his head shot up from the foggy cover as the horse stopped, Uraraka seemingly seeing right through everything as she was blinking and looking around just fine. “I can see the entrance from here though. Looks dark.”

The sorcerer looked up to the sky and frowned slightly. “It’s cloudy now. Sunset must be over by now.” the girl took a leap of faith, brave despite what could lie beneath her feet, and luckily landed on safe ground. “I’ll go talk to him.”

Kirishima immediately got down from his horse, chasing after her little steps. “What? If that man is an acquaintance of Shinsou, he ain’t good news!”

Uraraka stopped her stride to turn and lift the hem of her shirt. “Shinsou only decided to give us some help when he saw this scar. Maybe if I show this man I am tough, he’ll believe we all are, as well.”

But the boy didn’t give it up. “Uraraka, if something happens to you out there, Bakugou will have my fucking head.”

There were a few seconds of silence in which Uraraka didn’t budge from her place. Instead of going forward, she let out a little laugh, humorless and her expression afterwards was kind of sad. “Like he’d even care about a terrorist like me. Despite being a member of the guild, I’ll never be more than that.” Kirishima was about to say something crazy to deny that truth – something with little foundation that could somehow make things better between them – but the girl spoke up again. “Besides, it’s ok. I can handle myself and flee if that man get’s feisty with me. Just watch after the horse.”

Kirishima raised his hand in protest to only have it meet the fabric of his combat pants. “Whatever, just be careful.”

Uraraka nodded eagerly and watched the man go down the little hill before she ran with big leaps up the little hill and towards the cavity on the mountain. There was some snow under her boots, crunching on her soles, humidity hanging low on the air as little stars twinkled behind a curtain of clouds above her bobbling head, which shook with every step she took closer to the hideout.

Her steps halted when she reached a regular door plastered on the cavern walls, where she knocked as soon as she got there, to get rid of the tension hanging in the unfallen snowflakes of white heaven. Uraraka heard steps behind the door, as swift and smooth like a leaf falling from a tree, and the door was opened slowly, cringing as it revealed a scruffy black haired man with a sand scarf on… that much she could tell from the darkness around them.

“Excuse me, mister! I hope I am not disturbing you.”

The man stared at her in silence, tousled hair covering a pair of eyes that rivaled the deadpan of Shinsou’s. “… who are you?”

“My name is Uraraka, sir. I belong to a guild called Yuuei, top champion of the season at the village we reside in… and my guild is fixing to go against a monster called RampAge, that lives far away from here!” her hands started fidgeting with the back of her hair again, twiddling and mixing with the lost strands of uniform. “Anyway, Shinsou gave us your address to seek for your help!”

At this, the man blinked and held out a hand. “Shinsou?” the girl nodded in response, frowning with determination. “Can I see some proof?”

Uraraka gave him the wrinkled paper, and the man read the letter carefully and slowly. Whoever this man was, he made her feel extremely uneasy. He looked scurffy, messy, darkened by the lack of lights and his eyes were devoid of any happiness, illusion or even anger. It was like watching a jar of water freeze over and to never melt again, his hair so unkempt and his scarf giving her a sense of humbleness from this man. Still, his hands were deeply scarred, marring his fingers, and it suddenly gave her a feeling of intimidation as this man… he was powerful. Maybe even more than Bakugou– her whole being agreed, heart thumping against her chest in sudden fear for what this man could do to her.

She was met with silence when he gave her the note again, and her fingers started to play with the folds of paper. “I just hope we are no hassle for you! I just felt like we needed to get more help in case out total prowess doesn’t suffice and… I’m just hoping to get people over because–“

The man raised a hand in the air in front of her, making her mouth clamp shut with a single movement of his. “I can’t help you. You aren’t strong enough.”

This made Uraraka come back at him like a boomerang, her face trying to get close to him for emphasis– something she did too often that she should really stop doing. “Wait, but I just told you that we–“

“I don’t give a shit about Yuuei. I am talking about you, Uraraka.”the man eyed her, glare narrowed as she blinked at him. “You don’t have the necessary knowledge to ask for my help. You are still weak.”

“Hold on, mister!” she tried to get him to not close the door on her face, which he ended up not doing. “I am not that weak! I almost took out my leader and Pyrox–“

“I don’t care what you did. I only care about what you can do in the future.” he shook her head at her, not a single trace of pity roaming his pale face. “I can’t help you yet. There will be a moment when you will really need to seek me, when the lights die and you are lost– then, you will find me.”

This kind of foretelling statement left her lost, empty, paling and eyes widening as dread settled in her heart and started quenching, gripping, squeezing, something venomous and poisonous filling her eyes to the brim with colors– but they were dark, shadows, ghosts of something she couldn’t see, but she could almost reach out to touch and feel the remorse, the pain, the wholehearted loss of a future she could almost taste in a metallic rain of blood.

Her mouth almost hit the ground when she tried to reach out for him, so he wouldn’t close the door on him, urgency rushing to her hands as they weighed on her. “What do you mean, sir?”

His shoulders heaved down in distaste as he eyed her one last time. Chocolate pools reflected his death charged abysses, and his hand clutched the knob once again. She wasn’t ready yet. “You can’t come to me.”

And the door closed after he roughly spoke his last words.

“You don’t know the meaning of death yet.”

[A/N]: define a mistake

me: shows you dis /giddy ap!

#fanfiction #kacchako #kacchako fanfiction #bnha #IT'S ALREADY DONEEEEEEEEEEE #yeah so 4-5 chapters my ass haha shame on me (9 .-.)9 #I SAID FIGHT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE #I love that scene only that one

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