Chapter Text
AT THIS POINT, BAKUGOU WASN’T SURPRISED TO WAKE UP IN LOCKDOWN MODE.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t, almost immediately, make him incredibly pissed off. He hears...muffled speaking, which can only mean that someone’s using the PA system that nobody is supposed to use aside from Glasses, Yaoyorozu, and the teachers. Bakugou slides off of his bed and takes a deep breath, lighting up his room with small explosions in his hand and grabbing his hearing aids off his side table. It takes a little bit to turn them on and put them in, but when he’s done, he hears the chilling final message from the perpetrator --
“...friends and I are armed and among you. We will pick you off one by one. Good luck trying to weed us out.”
Oh, great.
Someone is so dead.
With a plethora of curses leaving his mouth without him even realizing and not the slightest inkling of a plan, Bakugou takes his phone, puts on the flashlight, and exits his room. He sets his hearing aids to a higher volume than normal -- thank Mei for that one. The custom aids (with his own little design on them, the orange and black explosion) are able to turn up sensitivity without becoming overbearingly loud -- essentially, he can hear better than most of his classmates without close-up sounds blasting in his ears.
Everywhere is dark without his flashlight, and his brows furrow -- how did someone make their way down to the control centre of all this stuff? At first, he would have assumed that Sparky accidentally triggered something, but the message over the loudspeaker confirmed that this was a villain attack. Great. Somehow, villains follow Class 1-A like a God damn puppy, and when they made the dorms to stay safe from all of that, they still followed them. And this time, it wasn’t even Class 1-A -- Copy Cretin, Fist and Kirishima-2 are here, too, along with Purple Aizawa.
Bakugou curses the fact that he was asleep for most of the message -- what was their motive, who were they working for? He’s, literally and metaphorically, in the dark as he navigates the hall and tries to make it to the elevator. He smashes the down button, but it doesn’t light up -- they must’ve turned the power off on the elevators, the bastards. They’ll have to take the stairs down to the basement --
“Y’know, as backwards as this sounds, I’m tired of villains wanting to spare me.”
Bakugou freezes as nervous laughter fills his ears. Seriously? What god decided to make him the first person he met in this situation? Him and his entire squad, too?
“Uh, so…” Bakugou silently listens to Round Face mutter. “How are we supposed to get out of here...safely?”
Bakugou rolls his eyes -- listening to this isn’t going to do much. For once in his life, he thanks God for his hearing aids. True to normal Bakugou style, he takes a deep breath and yells the name of his mortal enemy --
“DEKU! ”
The voices in the elevator shaft cease almost instantly, and he can hear someone (either Glasses or IcyHot, he can’t tell) mutter a quiet, “Oh boy.”
He hears the meek boy cough up a shaky, “Kacchan? Is that you?”
He scoffs. “Who else would it be? Sit tight, I’m gonna blast this stupid door open --”
A chorus of “No!”s ring out, and he rolls his eyes. “WHAT?”
“Bakugou!” he hears Glasses say. “You cannot just recklessly damage UA property like that, it could be dangerous--”
“You could accidentally cut the cables and drop the elevator, kero --”
“Are you trying to get all of us killed here?”
Bakugou covers his ears with a growl.”Oh my God, SHUT UP , GLASSES! ” Silence. “Jesus, I get it, just give me a Goddamn second, Christ .”
Stupid Dekusquad and their incessant worrying. He wouldn’t blow the cables, he isn’t stupid , alright? But if it really makes them feel so worried, then fine. He’ll find a way that makes them feel safer or whatever . He bites his nails and thinks for a moment.
“Alright, here’s what you extras have to do,” he starts, and he can hear a groan coming from Gravity Girl. Screw her, he isn’t exactly wrong . Aside from Deku, they’re all just side characters to his story, right? “First of all, you dunces make sure the elevator door is open. That doesn’t need electricity. Round Face, you float up the elevator and the rest of you after I say so, got it?!”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to lift that much without --”
“Pink Cheeks, I don’t care if you lose your lunch on everyone just don’t do it on me , got that?!”
She doesn’t respond, so he rolls his eyes and squints, firing up explosions in his palm before --
“Bakugou, what was that? ” he hears Frog Face say.
“That ,” he says, picking his phone back up. “Was me blasting the stupid door open. Round Cheeks, you know what to do.”
He hears a chorus of sighs, but eventually, Kirby floats the elevator up with everyone inside, and they all step through the very explosion sized hole in the metal door as Deku stops the elevator box from floating further up. Round Face herself steps out of the box last and releases it behind her, leaning on the wall and looking about as sick as a dog. As Bakugou expects, the rest of the Dekusquad crowd around her once she starts to dry heave, and even Bakugou raises an eyebrow -- not in concern, of course. He’s just wondering why she hasn’t barfed everywhere yet.
Pink Cheeks waves them off and holds her stomach. “It’s fine, really guys!” She says, putting up a smile. “There’s nothing in there besides candy and cupcakes, anyways.”
“Speaking of which…” starts Deku, and Bakugou immediately recognizes that tone of voice. He’s about to delve into a muttering session. “If the entire class ate those cupcakes, then unless this is a prank being played on us by everyone else, that means everyone else would’ve been knocked out too, and for an entire hour? Oh, but that should mean that Mina would be the last one to be awake since she got down there last, maybe we should ask her about what happened once she wakes up. I doubt the drugs would be strong enough to keep her out for any longer than two hours, but that begs the question -- why did the traitor decide to keep us locked up in here instead of killing us while we were unconscious? Is it a sort of game? Because -- “
Bakugou stops him by setting off a series of loud pops and crackles in his palm before he growls out a question: “What do you mean ‘traitor?’ What traitor? What are you even talking about?”
Deku looks almost surprised that he doesn’t know before coming to the sudden realization -- “Oh, you were asleep, weren’t you Kacchan?” Bakugou only raises his eyebrow. Deku seems to take this as a yes, and launches into a lengthy explanation of what happened in the past hour and a half or so, and by the end of the story, Bakugou can feel his eye twitching. He cannot wait to get his hands on the idiot that decided to betray Class 1-A, or really just UA in general, seeing as how Purple Aizawa is here from General Studies and Copy Cretin, Fists, and Kirishima-2 are all here from Class 1-B. Whoever it is, whichever class they’re from, they’re still a blithering, bumbling fool , even worse than Sparky, to think they can do this and get away with it. Kill twenty children and get away with it.
He can almost commend their ambitious goals.
Bakugou cracks his knuckles and asks, “So, what’s our plan? When do we get to blow this bastard halfway to hell?”
Frog Face puts her finger to her chin. “I think our best bet is to regroup with the rest of the class first.”
Emergency Exit starts to do his stupid hand thing whilst yelling at the top of his lungs , “Yes, Asui --”
“Tsu.”
Glasses huffs before issuing an almost curt apology. “Yes, well, we should work on getting with the rest of our class and visitors! In that case, if the traitor wants to do anything --”
“They can’t because everyone will be around and watching everyone!” Round Cheeks finishes. “Great thinking, Tsu!”
Frog Legs furrows her brow. “It was just common sense, it wasn’t that impressive,” Bakugou cracks a smile. At least one of their group members had her own braincells. The rest of them seem to just have one and pass it around occasionally. She adds, “But thanks anyways, Ochako.”
IcyHot clears his throat and points towards the stairwell to their right. “We should start going,” he says in that stupid monotone voice of his. “If we just stand around, we’re sitting targets.”
They all nod in agreement and start walking over to the stairs.
Unbeknownst to them, they would be meeting a couple of...unexpected guests as they traverse downwards.
-☆-
Bakugou has no idea why they made the dorms so freaking huge. Like, couldn't they just have had roommates? That'd make the entire building like, halve in size.
...on second thought, that probably would be an awful idea. Their class is filled with crackheads and rivals, so sharing a dorm room all day outside of school probably wouldn't be the safest thing to do, no matter how convenient it may be. And even then, Bakugou didn't have a problem with the stairs -- extra exercise and whatnot -- but what he did have a problem with was the fact that he couldn’t go as fast as he wanted. He ended up behind Sonic and Half-n-Half, and while he pushed past Glasses without a moment’s hesitation, he grumpily fell behind Endeavor’s kid.
The dart had landed on…. Todoroki.
The thought of it makes him incredibly annoyed -- he made the board to challenge himself, as per usual with all the hard things he does. He has pictures (drawings in some cases, or just papers with names on them if he really doesn’t care) of almost all of his classmates on a board in his dorm room. Everyone that has seen it immediately assumes that it’s one of those comedic things from TV shows, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Every morning, he takes a dart, spins around, and throws it at the board. And for the entire day, he has to be...he wouldn’t say nice , but at least cordial to whoever it landed on.
It’s the worst. He’s found a way so that he can at least aim in the general direction of who he can usually stand -- Pinky or Sparky or Tape Face will do. He took Kirishima off the board since he usually gets along with him, along with Uraraka and Deku. Uraraka because he doesn’t think she needs to be subjected to that -- really, he'll be nice to her without him even noticing. Again, not nice , but certainly not Bakugou either. And Deku...well, their relationship is growing. He doesn't need some forced niceness. Cordialness.
But anyway, the dart landed on Todoroki. Since he just has to be cordial, he could just ask him to move, but God knows that he isn't going to politely ask IcyHot to do anything for him, so he'll settle for second in line. Frog and Round Faces are next to each other, and Deku is in the back, muttering to himself and throwing glances over his shoulder like he's expecting something to snatch him from behind -- memories of the training camp, maybe? Scared that he'll be snatched from behind?
Bakugou almost scoffs . If anyone's afraid of that, it should by him, and he sure as hell isn't. So he takes it upon himself to tell Deku to...stop worrying.
“Deku,” he growls, and the shorter boy’s head snaps up and back to the front, giving Bakugou a wave and a nervous smile. The ashy blonde furrows his brows -- he hasn’t looked this nervous about anything for several months now -- well, he guesses it could be chalked up to the fact that there was just a full-scale villain attack (to him, at least) on his home, but something tells him that that isn’t it. “You’re freaking everyone out. Stop looking behind you, Jesus freakin’ Christ.”
“He’s right, Izuku,” deadpans Todoroki. He hadn’t even seen the scarred boy glance backwards, when did he…? “It’s unsettling.”
“Sorry!” Deku squeaks, and Bakugou finds himself rolling his eyes. Their relationship is improving, it isn’t all that great yet. “I just have a really, really bad feeling about all of this -- AH!”
Deku lets out a shrill cry as the sound of doors bursting open above them echoes throughout the nearly pitch black dark stairwell. Opening doors should have let in a considerable amount of light, but given that the entire building is still plunged into what seemed to be a dark abyss, nothing emerges besides two frantically waving beams of light, which could easily be identified as phone flashlights. Bakugou glances around him -- everyone seems ready to put up a fight, but he doesn’t think it’s the villains. They would probably have much better equipment than petty phone flashlights -- they might not even need flashlights at all. Night vision goggles.
“Cool your jets, Deku Diehards,” Bakugou spits, shoving one hand into a pocket and using the other to point up at the two sporadically moving lights. The kids around him stare at him with weird expressions -- he doesn’t know whether it’s because of the name or because of what he told them to do. “Those are students, not villains.”
Sure enough, the two people finally come barreling down the stairs at full speed, almost crashing into each other when they reach the platform above where the Dekusquad and Bakugou were standing. All lights turn to them, and both of the figures squint, completely out of breath.
Kaminari lets go of Shinsou’s palm and runs his free hand through his hair. He looks past everyone else and directly at Bakugou, looking terrified .
“Dude,” he pants. “We almost died.”
Bakugou rolls his eyes and turns around. “What else is new?”