~~~
Bakugou never returned last night. However, Kira knew exactly where he was the whole time, having listened to him train all through the night, venting his anger and frustration out on the defenceless trees. Kira heard his fists beat against wood for hours, never stopping, relentless. Part of her wanted to storm out there and tell him to give it a rest, but she couldn't get her feet to move, too anxious to see his dismissive expression, too frightened of the rejection.
Instead, Kira stayed up with him, watching him work himself to the bone all night through the blinds of her window, his knuckles bleeding, his sweat slicking his hair to his neck and forehead. Neither one of them slept that night.
Akira wondered if everything they shared together during these last few days will simply vanish the second they return to their own reality, if they'll just pretend that certain thoughts and feelings that they experienced never even occurred. She couldn't just forget the words they've shared, the tension, the looks. His brilliant eyes remain constant in her mind, like she'll never be able to rid Bakugou from her now. She didn't know if she even wanted to or not.
Even last night, something was going to happen between the two of them, something that seemed to have a mind of its own. Whether that occurrence was going to be a mistake or something beginning, Kira will now never know, but what's to stop her and Bakugou finding themselves in another similar situation just because they share something new and scary? This sensation she feels is completely foreign to Kira, unlike anything she felt when she was by Kirishima's side. That felt safe, sincere. This is terrifying and unpredictable, causing her heart to leap to her throat at the mere mention of Bakugou's name. She clung to parts of him that only she can define: his eyes, his scent, his undying character.
Kira felt that if he ever admitted feelings to her, sharing the same emotions that coursed through her veins, then she'd simply explode. However, the chance that he mirrors a fraction of her affection is slim. No - it's non-existent. Her mind must have been playing tricks on her last night. After all, it was dark and her mind was galloping, trying to steady her racing adrenaline, her fractured heart. She must have been wanting to see her emotions returned so badly, that she's seeing things that aren't really there. All Bakugou cares about is being the next number one hero.
Today was the day that Class 1A returned home. As Kira watched Bakugou, they simultaneously noticed the sun beginning to rise and so Bakugou wiped the sweat from his brow, observed his handiwork and started to make his way back to the cabin. When he heads back up the steps towards his room, should she bid him a 'good morning'? Or should she simply ignore him? She skipped over to her door on her tiptoes, as if any creak of this old cabin would put her in the spotlight. Such a bizarre thought as she's still in her bedroom with no one around to witness her strangeness. Kira placed her ear on her door, listening for footsteps, when she heard them, firm and loud, like they had zero care in the world - definitely Bakugou. She was milliseconds away from opening her door to greet him when she abruptly hesitated, her hand curved and ready to latch onto the handle, but untouching. What is she: stupid? Wanting to cheerfully greet Katsuki Bakugou after he had just spent hours pummelling a few trees to a merciless death? That's a sure-fire way to meet her own untimely demise.
Instead, Kira cleared her throat and backed away from her door before starting to pack away her belongings, her eyes slowly moving to Bakugou's hoodie and shoes. Two parts of him that are now hers. Kira approached the now dented wall of her bedroom, scoffing at her rashness last night and picked up the hoodie before shoving it into her bag, burying it to the very bottom of her belongings, trying to hide it from the world. She wondered if he wanted it back? She slipped on the shoes, still far too big for her, as if she had expected them to transform into her size.
Kira found it hard to leave the room, no matter how dull it was, how uncomfortable. Some part of her still wanted to stay behind, because it just felt better here, to spend her life at this quiet campfire, away from her troubles back home. But, she knew she had to face it. She knew she had to say goodbye to this place and eventually... her father. Kira found herself looking down at her hand, frowning at her skin, knowing that she probably won't be able to evolve her healing Quirk the way she wants to. It won't be enough to save her father. After all, hasn't he tried to fix his broken body most of his life?
Kira sighed heavily, clenched her hand into a tight fist and brazenly stormed out of her bedroom, not even looking over at Bakugou's room beside her and made her way to the ground floor. Kyoka was already there, despite it being early. She was gripping her bag over her shoulder, her gaze glued to the ground with a pensive look in her eyes.
"You're up?" Kira wonders, startling her friend slightly.
"Yeah," Kyoka nods quickly, her throat slightly hoarse, before she clears it. "Couldn't really sleep."
Kira returns her nod sadly. "Hard to let this place go, right?" She replies. "Knowing we have to return to a more... difficult life?"
"Hey, we can't slack off forever." Kyoka whacks Kira on the arm jokingly, trying and failing to lighten the mood.
"You two are already awake?" Kirishima peers over the banister at Kira and Kyoka. "I thought me and Kaminari were the only ones up at this time."
"I think Bakugou is up too," Kira tells them before she can stop herself. "I-I heard him in his room. Thin walls..."
Kirishima and Kaminari share an uncertain glance with each other, before joining Kira and Kyoka on the ground floor.
"In that case, I'm sure he'll be out in just a second," Kaminari adds, staring up at the banister by Bakugou's door.
Everyone follows Kaminari's eyes up to Bakugou's door, as if willing him to leave, except Kira. She keeps her eyes squeezed tight, her head down, her hair shielding her expression from her classmates. She didn't want to leave when everything just felt so right. Such a twisted mind.
Kira hears Bakugou's door open, then his footsteps and she slowly opens her eyes, looks up and turns her head. He's glaring down at the four of them, practically looking down his nose at them and a slither of Kira's heart peels away at the look in his eyes, written across his features. Now that her own emotions and thoughts have been revealed to the light, she's noticing his that much more and it burns. Knowing that to him, she's simply nothing.
"What are you idiots standing around for?" He says, his tone harsh. He sounds tired as he makes his way down the crooked cabin stairs to them. He doesn't even offer Kira a single glance as he barges past them. "The sooner we get out of this shithole, the better."
Kaminari is the first to chase after him. "Hey, we were the ones waiting for you, Bakugou!" He bellows, having to rush to keep up with Bakugou's firm stride.
Kirishima follows after, joining Bakugou on his right side, with Kaminari on the left. Kyoka gently places her hand on Kira's shoulder - she never misses a beat - before joining them. It's like Bakugou had forgotten these past few days, as if it literally meant nothing. He probably assumes that anything he may have felt can simply be left behind here, but to Kira, she's keeping these memories a little closer to home. She's desperately battling her willpower to remain here in this desolate reality, whereas Bakugou can't wait to be rid of it. She wants to hold on and he wants to let go.
Kira looks back at the chests scattered around, once rummaged through and now been discarded, wondering if they'll start to collect dust here, or if something else will inhabit this space. She pushes away her fragile thoughts to a dark corner of her mind and jogs to catch up to the others, the good luck charm hanging by the cabin door catching her eye before she spots her other classmates all leaving their own cabins. They're within yelling distance, but Kira will have to strain herself to hear a clear word. She notices the girls waving from their cabin on one side of the lake and Kira offers a half-hearted gesture in return.
She grips her bag tightly and makes her way over to the spot where they were first transported by Visage, beside the small-sized shack where they all signed their names everyday to ensure they weren't missing anybody. Iida was doing a headcount by the time she made it over, standing on his toes and rapidly counting the students repeatedly. When he counted all twenty-one, he released a relieved sigh.
"Okay, everyone gather around!" Iida bellows. "Stay close. We'll be back in our own world soon enough."
"This was so fun!" Toru beams, her clothes spinning around. "We need to do this again - soon!"
"I agree!" Mina nods quickly.
"Taking a week off from everything is something I could definitely get used to," Sero adds.
Soon enough, everyone is talking over one another, voicing their thoughts, their favourite memory, their favourite snack, game, firework, everything they've done together. Apart from two of them. Two that changed and experienced more than the others can even imagine. Two that shared and felt more than two people should ever feel. It felt so loud, yet also silent, like the voices around Kira simply had no meaning and all her friends faded away into hazy black shadows.
Before she drowned in that sudden sensation, she saw it in the corner of her eye. Another black shape but inhuman. Massive. It had returned, found the courage to strike again, just when everything was going well and they were about to return home. With a thirst for blood, Kira's blood, the bear lunged out of the woods with surprising speed aiming directly for her. Only one other person was silent during the excitement. Only one other person acted with equal, urgent speed as the bear.
Bakugou surged towards her, immediately discarding his bag and shoved himself into Kira, like she had done for Kyoka, barging his shoulder into her. However, he twisted his body, angled himself so the bear's claws swiped his upper arm, just below his shoulder, tearing his shirt and drawing blood. Kira felt like screaming - another moment of uselessness. Once injured by the bear and now a burden. Oh, how Bakugou will blame her for this one. She can see the spitefulness in his eyes now.
Those voices she drowned out burst to life in a panicked confusion and very few acted quickly. The shock of the bear's presence has stunned about three-quarters of the class, reducing them to paralysing fear. Kira heard Midoriya call out for his childhood friend, she saw his blood in the air, frozen in time. She felt the mud between her fingers, where Bakugou had launched her out of harms way. She heard the surge of fire and ice beside her, but her peripheral vision is now vanished, her vision locked on Bakugou, his face twisted in pain and hatred.
Suddenly, all Akira can hear is her blood rushing, pumping around her body at an alarming speed, struggling to keep up with her as she feels the blazing heat her skin now creates. Her rage fills her core and Kira's suddenly standing, facing this beast before her, the one that sought her out to finish her off. One with fur as black as coal, and her with skin as white as ice. Her clothes instantly singe at the blazing heat radiating off her body, her Atomic Power having been unleashed after such a long time staying dormant. She's never felt her Quirk so... violent before, her mind and heart pulsing with such a fierce determination and the promise of death.
Her classmates have grown quiet and she no longer hears their panicked response. Midoriya has grown quiet, no longer beckoning for his friend, she no longer sees Bakugou's blood crowding her vision. The mud on her skin has simply disintegrated, feeling nothing but heat and hatred. Todoroki's Quirk has silenced, as everyone stands by, mesmerized by Akira's light Quirk. She must be hard to look at, perhaps they're squinting. Kira will never know as her sights are locked on her enemy, this monster that decided to ruin everything.
Who really is the monster?
Bakugou looks determined to counter the bear's attack, but Kira lunges, faster than she has before and blasts the animal with two powerful twin beams of searing, white-hot light from her palms. The bear's coat is ablaze with her fury, burning through its fur with a power so inescapable that the beast desperately tries to shield itself with its claws. Kira's head pounds still and she feels her body stumble slightly, her skin struggling to repair itself against the intensity it's experiencing. Her healing Quirk isn't enough to counter her light Quirk. Her beams stop abruptly and the bear straightens, it's fur greatly burnt, but as Kira shakes her head in a poor attempt to rid her aching mind, she notices the animal's incredible ability to rapidly heal. Even her Atomic Power isn't enough to stop this monster.
"Is that all you got!?"
Kira blinks quickly, turning her head to her brazen classmate, ignoring his injured arm. He's not looking at the bear; he's looking at her. His expression screams encouragement and Kira feels like smiling, but suddenly she can't see. She panics, begins to grab her face, only seeing a blurry darkness. Her own Quirk is overpowering her like it's done every time it's been unleashed, eating away at her flesh. She can only withstand a few seconds this way before her body can no longer cope. A few seconds just wasn't enough.
She can hear Bakugou yelling, cursing at the bear, his explosion's ringing in her ears somewhere to the right. If she can't defeat it in this state, then what hope does Bakugou have? Flashes of some kind of light come to mind, but it isn't her Quirk, this is gentle, lacking the ferocity her power possesses. She sees Bakugou, but... is it really him? For some reason, he isn't moving and that's when she realises: the document she found in the basement, the confidential file detailing the death of Katsuki Bakugou from this reality when he fought the bear on his own.
"No..." Kira mumbles, willing herself to keep fighting, to save her classmates, to save Bakugou from this monster.
All this time, her classmates have been the ones to save her - that just needs to change. Kira still sees nothing, just a fuzzy blackness to keep her company, but she turns her body towards the sounds of Bakugou fighting. It sounds like others have found the willpower to assist him, but the bear is relentless. That light returns in her mind, beating away the darkness crowding her vision, reminding her of something. It's a soothing warm, so juxtaposing of her ability - it sort of feels like the sun. The source of most of her strength, here to offer it's energy when she so desperately needs it. The sun that Bakugou once revealed to her when she was scraping death's door. The light he showed her.
Her vision returns to her and Kira feels like she's been reborn in a strange way. She feels invigorated, her healing Quirk fixing her dying body in a swift fashion, repairing her eyes and her bubbling skin. She faces the sight before her, the state of her classmates, half of them staying clear out of the way, while the stronger, more capable half try to defeat the beast.
Kira steps forward slowly, almost relishing this new strength she's discovered, when she feels the ground between her toes - her devastating Quirk has reduced Bakugou's shoes to smouldering embers. No matter - Kira has received something better in return, as she slowly paces over to the battle scene, noticing that the small cabin where they signed their names in has been destroyed, several trees have collapsed, splintered into nothingness.
Kira doesn't know if her body will allow her another chance at ridding this reality of this bear, so she simply fires another blazing double beam at the beast and this time, it burns a hole right through it. Everyone who had joined in to stop the bear, recoils at her light, too blinding for them to look at, shielding their delicate eyes with their arms. Kira finds her lip twitching into a sickening, sinister smile at seeing the bear's charred body, cancelling her beams and shaking off her hand as if she were simply swatting a fly. It was that easy, after all.
That annoying thump echoes her mind, rattling her skull and Kira collapses to one knee, feeling her body succumb to her power once more.
"Look!" Someone's muffled voice calls out behind her.
Kira cranes her neck and she notices a bubble evaporating from the air and suddenly a thousand voices call out to her. She sees her classmate's around her, Visage and Vibe, Present Mic. They must be back in their own reality now - where the hell where they five minutes ago?
"Present Mic!" It sounds like Momo's voice. It's hard to tell with this pain inside her. "Where's Mr Aizawa? We really need him right now!"
"He's- he has to stay close to that girl we rescued from the..." he trails off, before rushing over to Kira.
Kira simply raises a hand out to the crowd gathering around and forces herself to stand. She can't speak - why can't she speak? Everyone looks deathly worried, scared. She hates herself. She hates her Quirks, she hates her weakness. Present Mic is there, struggling to calm her down, but what does he know? He knows nothing about her.
"Akira..." Kirishima's voice. She whirls to him, his hands raised in surrender, as if she's the enemy here. The real monster. "Just relax," he adds, his brows tight with worry. "You did it, okay?"
"It's not okay," she manages to say, her throat hoarse. "How is any of this okay?"
"Tha- that's not what I said."
"Kiriya." Midoriya's voice in her left ear and she spins to him, begging him to keep his distance. "You're really strong. That's what all this training has been for, right? Why you and me spar sometimes?"
"Not like this." Kira shakes her head vigorously, seeing her stark white hair in the corner of her eye.
"Kira." Mina and a few other girls take a tentative step forwards. "Just breathe. You can relax now."
"Breathe?" Kira repeats. "I can't breathe." She meant it literally, as she feels her insides start to melt away.
"Hey, you plan on dying today?"
Kira freezes, as if this heat coursing through her veins suddenly evaporated. She actually looks down at herself in case she really has, as if Todoroki may have used his ice Quirk to cool her body down. Instead, she turns to that knowing voice, the one that has the ability to make her lose all sense in just a few small words.
Bakugou shoves himself past the crowd of concerned students and marches right up to Kira, even though her light radiates off her like a blazing furnace. The others have all kept a safe distance, but Bakugou doesn't seem to care about succumbing to her Quirk.
"I just- I don't want to go back," Kira says, tears brimming in her glowing eyes.
"Yeah, you said that already," Bakugou replies, his own eyes burning just as brilliantly as hers.
"Well, you seem to be the only one here who wants to!" Kira blurts.
Bakugou hesitates, his gaze never leaving her own, his expression stern, but never worrisome like her classmates.
"You just want to forget all of this?" Kira whispers so softly, that the others around her don't seem to hear.
He still doesn't answer, his eyes so certain that Kira feels like she can't look away, like she's entranced by his severity. He then sighs so heavily that Kira actually flinches, but it's not an irritated gesture, more like he's been battling something internally and it's finally revealed itself. "What the hell do you think I've been worrying about?" He whispers back finally.
Kira looks down at her hands, seeing the whiteness of her skin, feeling the terrifying guilt and realisation of making him and everyone else worry about what she's really capable of. Has everyone been on edge since the last time her Atomic Power unleashed?
"I'm sorry," Kira mumbles, finally feeling her Quirk start to cool, as her tears melt into her cheeks. She peels her eyes away from her hands to stare back at Bakugou. "I'm sorry you're worried because of me."
Bakugou shakes his head slightly and looks over his shoulder at the other students, noting their closeness. "You're missing the point again, you idiot," he says so quietly that Kira's not sure what she's really hearing. "I'm not worried because of you. I'm worried about you."
~~~