Chapter Text
It takes a rare snow-day-in-hell type of situation for Bakugou to admit he was wrong. Staring at the strange creature wriggling in his grip, Bakugou mutters to himself:
"So that Rody bastard did have a point. Fuck."
"Fuck!", echoes the creature, a delighted chirp. Waving tiny, stick-like arms around its round, grenade-shaped body, pupils huge and deep black like a cat staring at its favorite toy mouse.
"Fuck! Fuck ya!"
The mouse, in this case, is Bakugou. He tries not to be charmed and fails pathetically. The burst of blond hair on its head is fluffy. It communicates exclusively by swearing. The grenade is a familiar shade of green and its teeth are sharp like… like Kirishima's.
Dangerous yet small. It's cute as fuck.
Which explains why the creature is so happy about this. Because it's him. Or… connected to his emotions, or some shit. Bakugou had listened in on Rody explaining his quirk once — a difficult feat, the fucker got so shy over it he was mumbling like Deku to Deku — and he was right. This quirk sucks.
The creature shines on. It knows when Bakugou's lying, even to himself.
It sucks so bad.
"Bro… Bakubro. Bro, please."
Bakugou ignores the pleading voice. The creature does not and blushes. Bad, absolutely terrible—
"No."
A tug to his sleeve. "Please?"
Closing his eyes for one eternal second, Bakugou huffs out a sigh — and looks to his side, where Kirishima is holding himself back so much he's trembling in place.
"One pat. One."
The noise of excitement Kirishima makes is inhuman, the verbal rendition of that keymash he likes to spam in texts. Exceedingly gentle, he pats the creature's head. It's metal-gray tail begins to wag.
"I shall name you Dynamy—"
"No."
"—and you shall be mine!"
Behind his infamous glare, Bakugou’s heart skips several beats. The creature goes so red in the face it explodes. Kirishima laughs, fond and utterly unfazed since he hardened his palm in time.
Yeah. This is going to be the longest weekend of Bakugou’s life.
(Art by des_exe, posted with permission.)
*
It starts, as all terrible things do, with Monoma.
Stupid, shitty, copycat motherfucker Monoma, who trained his stupid, shitty copycat quirk to the point he can give someone else the duplicated quirk for a maximum of two full days. By the time Bakugou realized Monoma wasn't simply playing tag with their visitor from Otheon, Monoma's bare palm had slapped his shoulder in passing—
—and Dynamy manifested out of thin air, only Bakugou's quick reflexes preventing it from dropping to the ground.
...Them. Kirishima insisted Dynamy is manly and a being in their own right, so they get person pronouns. Bakugou was too busy containing the happy-dancing creature to object in any meaningful way.
And so began his two days of torture.
The thing about Rody's quirk is that everyone thinks it summons a Pokémon-esque representation of its user. Which it does. It just so happens that whatever it ends up being is also a direct link to the user’s innermost thoughts and feelings. Only Team Otheon — meaning Deku, Todoroki, Bakugou and Rody himself — are aware of that second part. And of that group, only Bakugou and Todoroki are at Heights Alliance, since Deku insisted on taking his long-distance boyfriend to see the sights or whatever.
Normally, Bakugou couldn't care less about stupid Deku's love life.
Normally, he wouldn’t have to deal with said nerd-boyfriend’s quirk or appreciate, say, a crash course on how to get people to leave him alone about it.
"Look, look! They actually listen to commands. Pspsps, Dynamy, come here!"
A chirp of "Ya bastard!", followed by the dull clonk of metal hitting carpet. The entire class fawns over Dynamy rolling across the room until they knock against Ashido's shoes. Dynamy's eyes go round as they stare up and wait. It has Bakugou's stomach swooping unpleasantly, how obviously they plead for praise over the simplest of tricks.
"Good grenade! Very good grenade!"
Dynamy beams.
(Art by des_exe, posted with permission.)
"Could learn a thing or two from your quirk child over there, hmmm, Kacchan?" That's Kaminari, smirking with all the world's smugness. He got Dynamy to give him a clumsy hug earlier and hasn't stopped gloating to Bakugou about it since.
It bothers Bakugou a regular amount. His squad of friends (ugh) have always teased him about this and that. It took two years and a war, but Bakugou recognizes the friendly intention behind it effortlessly now.
"Aw dude, Blasty listens to us plenty", contributes Sero, draping his lanky ass frame over Bakugou in a side-hug. "Because he loooves us!"
Pushing him off, Bakugou mutters, "As if I'd let dipshits like you order me around", crossed arms drawing tighter at the raised eyebrow Todoroki gives him. (That peppermint bitch better keep his mouth shut if he knows what's good for him.)
The only upside to this is that, as clever as they can be in the field, the dumbass energy of 3-A is unparalleled. None of the other people present are even interested in understanding the quirk; they're too busy cooing over Dynamy to turn their brains on. Bakugou has no choice but to watch the chaos unfold from a distance, anyway. Monoma would rather suffer death-by-explosion than let it fade early — he cackled himself hoarse while getting dragged away — and like hell is Bakugou leaving a version of himself behind to be prodded and gawked at.
No matter how much he trusts his class to have his back, these days.
"Let me try! Hey, Dynamy?"
"Fu?"
Tsuyu smiles, the bit of frog tongue sticking out speaking volumes of the audacious request to come. "Tell us a story."
Confusion sweeps the room. Kirishima tilts his head, "But they can only say—"
A deep breath (or as deep a breath as small Dynamy can manage). Bakugou can't help it: He grins, glances from Tsuyu to Iida. Their class president gives him a puzzled glance back before his eyes widen behind his glasses and his face loses all color.
"No!"
"Fuck! Shitty bastard, fuck, fuck ya!"
Whatever tale they're trying to convey: Dynamy does their very best to get it across, making exaggerated expressions and lots of hand motions. Flashy explosions accompany the most dramatic moments, a gesture Bakugou recognizes from himself.
Iida is a little shaky in his boots by the end of it, mouth agape. Bakugou laughs. Finally, vindication for the dozens of times the guy lectured him about language, Pro Hero Dynamight!
The others are laughing, too. Behind Bakugou, Kaminari and Sero are pretty much in stitches, wheezing out things like "The eloquence! Greatest poet of our time!" while Kirishima crouches to pet Dynamy again, a reward for a job well done.
Tsuyu wipes tears of laughter away. "So stupid", she rasps, and at first Bakugou thinks she means the joke. Or perhaps Iida's expression.
After all, they're all scratching 18; Bakugou gets into debates with him about the merits of policing speech around actual, full-ass adults every other morning. (And they're formal debates. Iida is excellent at them, and Bakugou needed a lawful good test dummy to practice keeping his shit together for interviews and the like. It works surprisingly well.)
Until she continues, "They sound so stupid", sighing out an amused breath. "Going 'fuck' over and over. Can they even understand anything we're saying?"
Bakugou's laughter gets stuck in his throat. On the other side of the room, Dynamy falls silent.
Ever the polite one, Iida mildly adds, "That certainly didn't meet the criteria for storytelling, no. Still an impressive feat for a living quirk!"
"Yeah, guys, cut Dynamy some slack." Jirou. Bakugou doesn't need her to fight his battles, but— "What more can you expect?"
What the fuck?
"A story's a story!" Kirishima, too soft-hearted not to immediately defend the creature slowly deflating into their shell. "Aw, little bro, don't be sad! I know it was a good one. The boom boom said it all!"
Proclaimed with that kind smile he directs at Bakugou to make bad days bearable. Tears gather in Dynamy's eyes and fuck, Bakugou's heart clenches, the mix of gratitude and shame inside him heightened by the notion that he's inflicting it on this poor, innocent thing.
"Oh no", gasps Uraraka, kneeling next to Kirishima. Dynamy sinks lower until their tears are hidden by their shell, sniffling miserably. "Don't cry, it's okay! Um, how about we, uh—"
A beat of awkward silence. Bakugou breathes a quiet tch over everyone's hesitation, squad included.
Suddenly, Todoroki is next to him. "Bakugou." Voice calm, yet the subtle twist to his brows betrays the sort of tension that preludes a far too blunt observation — or worse, the sort of white knight bullshit that Bakugou neither wants nor needs.
"Don't, Candy Cane. It's whatever", Bakugou tells him firmly, because it is. It doesn't matter. Why should he care that even his closest friends can't think of a single thing to cheer Dynamy up?
Not that Bakugou needs that, either.
It also doesn't matter that it's unexpectedly hard to maintain his pissed-off stare as he marches up between Kirishima, Ashido and Uraraka and plucks the creature off the ground. Dynamy hides their weepy expression against his chest like a child, a gesture so vulnerable it burns.
Bakugou doesn't want any of this. He wants Dynamy to feel rightfully furious.
All he feels for the both of them is hurt.
Ashido makes to speak. Bakugou glares at her, at them all. Growls, "Show's over. Follow me and you die", and takes minimal satisfaction in seeing every open mouth in the room close.
Nobody dares stop him on the way to the elevator. The last thing Bakugou hears before the doors slide shut is Ojirou muttering to himself:
"Jeez, talk about dramatic. It's not like we could've known they're that sensitive."