Chapter Text
“Listen up class,” Aizawa called out to the group of students gathered behind him. “Today’s exercise is a race.”
Immediately a cry came from the students. Some were clearly excited, some were complaining about how it was unfair. Aizawa spun on his heel, turning to face them and fixing them with a glare, quickly shutting them up.
“You will be paired into groups of four and separated onto different tracks. Those groups of four will be split into pairs of two and you will be working against the other pair. The race is not about reaching a finish line. You will be searching for a hidden crystal.”
Mina leaned over from where she was standing next to Katsuki, close enough that he could feel her hair tickling his shoulder. “It’s like an escape room!” she whispered. “I’ve always wanted to go to an escape room.”
“Back off Pinky.” He muttered, leaning away from her, rubbing the feeling of her hair off of his arm. “Listen to Sensei.”
“What’s different about this exercise,” Aizawa continued, “Is that you will all have different amounts of time to retrieve the crystal, and you won’t know how much time you have. If the overhead lights turn red, you’ve run out of time.”
“I think the purpose of this assignment is to make it more like a real mission.” Katsuki can hear Ida muttering to Deku.
“Ooh, I think you’re right Iida.” Deku says back. “Because in real life, we won’t know how much time we have. I mean, you could probably get a general idea, like if you need to rush before a villain arrives or if the fighting is all done and it's the aftermath…”
Katsuki turned away from their conversation. Once those two started conspiring it was nearly impossible to stop. His left ear suddenly started ringing and he winced away from it. He’d left his hearing aids in his bag, tucked away in their case because he hadn’t needed them for the past few days. It only lasted a minute or so, lucky for him.
“Kacchan!”
He glances towards the sound of his name, still rubbing his ear. Deku was waving him over.
“You’re in our group!”
He dropped his arm and wandered over to Deku, who was standing next to Tsu and Jiro.
“Are your ears okay?” Deku asked quietly when he was close enough. It wasn't a secret to the class that Katsuki’s hearing liked to take sudden leave of absences, but it always set a little angry fire off in his stomach when it was brought up, especially in a group.
“They're fine.” He muttered. “How are we paired up?”
“Deku is with me, ribbit,” Tsu said. “You're with Jiro.”
Hm. Jiro might not be a bad partner. Her quirk was simple but powerful. He admired her carefully designed costume too - every part had a purpose and yet still looked nice while optimizing the ability of her quirk. It even had some hidden components as Katsuki had learned while being paired against her a while back. Plus her ear jacks could be plugged into anything to create sound vibrations. Although, she sometimes didn’t recognize her own limit and would overdo it, causing her ears to bleed. At least she could still hear, which Katsuki didn’t understand. It must have something to do with her quirk. It would be useless if she lost her hearing. No matter how little Katsuki could hear, he could still create explosions.
Tsu, although it had turned her into a frog, had a strong quirk. She knew how to use it well, even the strangest parts of it, and because her quirk was the mutation type, it couldn’t be erased by Aizawa. And of course Deku had ... whatever he had. It was powerful, great for offensive combat, that’s for sure. Katsuki wondered how well it would work for this type of assignment.
Tsu and Deku had stepped away from the other two, forming a plan. Katsuki turned to Jiro, who was standing next to him looking unbothered.
“So, we have to find a crystal in an undetermined amount of time. Sounds easy enough.” She said, twirling one of her ear jacks.
“Oi, can you use your quirk like echolocation?” Katsuki asked.
“Well… less like echolocation and more like… have you ever seen the show Avatar?”
“The fuck is Avatar?”
“Geez, calm down.” That little fire from before suddenly relit in Katsuki’s stomach. “In the show there is this blind girl who can see with her feet -”
“She has eyes on her feet?” He’s baffled.
“No, she can, like, feel with her feet and stretch it out to see what’s around her.”
“Get to the point.” Katsuki steps in. “We don’t know when Aizawa is going to start us. What are you getting at about this blind girl?”
“Oh my God. It’s kind of like… kind of like how a spider feels the vibrations on it’s webs.”
“Can you use it to find the damn crystal?”
She sighed heavily. Katsuki glared at her. “It’s not so good with small items, unless they are really dense, but it might help narrow down the location.”
“Whatever. If it'll give us an advantage against those two,” He said, nodding his head over to where Deku and Tsu stood, “then we should try it.”
“Everyone! The fields will be opening in thirty seconds! Be ready!” Aizawa’s voice rang out before Jiro could respond.
The students quickly all regrouped in front of their assigned doors. Deku bummed his shoulder into Katsuki’s.
“Watch it, Nerd. I’m going to beat your ass.”
“Sure you will.” Deku smirked back just as the light above the door turned green. Tsu was the one to open the door and in a flash she and Deku were off running.
“Tsh, why are they running? They have no way of knowing where that crystal is. This place is huge.” Bukugo followed Jiro into the room, shutting the door behind him.
“They can waste their energy all they want.” Jiro muttered as she knelt down to the ground. “It helps us out. Now don’t move, you’ll make it more difficult for me to hear.”
She plugged her ear jacks into the ground, scrunching her eyes closed in concentration. Katsuki stood over her, looking around the room.
It really wasn't that big, maybe the size of half a football field. Compared to some of the training fields they had been on that was tiny but when the task was to simply find a small crystal that could be anywhere - it was looking like a needle in a haystack situation. The terrain was similar to a forest, but there was a random small building in the center.
“Well,” Jiro stood up, brushing the dirt off her hands. “It definitely isn’t in this corner. I didn’t see anything out of place. Let’s check on the other side before moving closer to the other two.”
They set off at a jog, dodging around trees and rocks. They ended up closer to the building this time, which turned out to be just a cement box
“What is even the point of that?” Katsuki asked and Jiro plugged in her earjacks again.
“Who knows.” She shrugged. “Oh wait-”
“What? Did you find it?”
“No, I just heard the other room - their lights turned red.”
“Already? Well then hurry up dammit! We might be next!”
Jiro only raised an eyebrow. “I can’t do it if you’re yelling. It messes up my sound waves.”
Katsuki huffed, clenching his fists. Jiro closed her eyes again, searching. In the corner of his eye he caught sight of Deku and Tsu running towards the building.
“Hold on -” Jiro pulled her ear jacks out of the ground. “I think it’s in the building.”
“Cmon then! The nerd and the frog are already headed over there!” Katsuki started running towards the cement box, Jiro close on his heels. Turns out it was really just two cement walls with wide gaps on either side. There was no ceiling or windows. Katsuki rounded the corner, finding the other two crouched just outside the other door.
“Keep them distracted.” Jiro whispered, stepping back out of their line of sight to plug her ear jack into the wall.
“How are you doing Katsuki? Where’s Jiro, ribbit?” Tsu asked, standing up from the ground.
Tsh. All Katsuki had to do now was keep these two quiet long enough for Jiro to do her thing. He bit his inner lip and adjusted the gauntlet on his arm, pretending he hadn't heard. The two went back to their whispering after a second. He couldn’t hear much of it but he definitely heard Deku say “There’s nowhere else it would be!” before he crouched down into his power stance, activating his quirk.
“Yeah, no, that’s exactly what I don’t want you doing right now.” Katsuki said, stalking towards them. He only received a glare from Tsu before Deku raised his fist, ready to punch the wall.
Sorry about this Jiro. Using his explosions, he was on Deku in a second, one hand grabbing his collar and the other blasting them away from the walls.
“Ah! Kacchan! What the hell!”
“Midoria!” Tsu chased after them. Perfect. At least, until she was using her tongue to tug Deku back towards her, sticking to a tree so she wouldn’t get pulled along with.
Deku struggled in his grip, managing to grab the arm he was using for explosions. They fell down to the ground, rolling in the dirt. Deku’s foot somehow ended up kicking his shoulder but he must have hit him back somewhere because he heard a sharp cry come from the other boy. They came to a stop and were both kneeling on the ground, facing each other a second later. Behind Deku, Tsu was hopping towards them but behind Tsu, Jiro was frantically waving her arms, trying to get him to come back without alerting the others.
Deku glanced behind his shoulder, seeing Jiro. He looked back at Katsuki, making eye contact. It was on. There was a split second of the challenge passing between them before Katsuki launched himself into the air, flying back towards Jiro.
“I found it!” She cried as he came close. “It’s in the wall, right here!” She pointed to a cluster of holes in the wall, clearly there to mark the spot. “It’s about the size of a soda can.”
“I’ll blow up the walls around it and then you can use smaller vibrations to get it out.”
“Watch out!”
Katsuki was suddenly blasted backwards, the wall in front of him exploding into his face. What the?
That damn nerd, he had snuck around to the other side of the building! Debris was scattered around him, crystal lost. Suddenly all four of them were all digging through the pieces, trying to be the first to find it.
“I’m going to use a sound blast to break up the concrete.” Jiro hissed in his ear. “Use your explosions to keep them away. When I find it, grab it. Fast. ”
For a second Katsuki had to process the fact she had just given him some very direct orders but before he could argue about being bossed around he was launching himself at Deku again, blocking him before he could reach Jiro. He pushed him to the ground, one knee pressed harshly into his chest and twisted to fire small explosions at Tsu, just enough to keep her away from Jiro. Deku shoved him off a second later but by the time they stood back up the group beneath them started to shake.
Jiro had her hands pressed over her headphones and ear jacks plugged into the speakers around her legs. The buzzing was causing absolutely everything to shake - Katsuki felt like his brain was rattling in his skull. Around them, the scattered debris began to crumble.
Pressing his hands to his ears, Katsuki forced himself to stand, stumbling over to Jiro. He could feel his shirt shaking against his body, it was so damn loud. Something shiny caught his eye.
It was the crystal, no doubt, and he dove for it just as Deku did.
There was no way he was going to lose.
He shot off an explosion, propelling himself forward. He felt the edge of the crystal press into his stomach a split second before the full weight of Deku landed on top of him.
“Get off of me dammit!”
Well shit. He had been yelling, but his voice sounded distant to his own ears. Apparently the combination of Jiro’s quirk and his own had caused the end of his good hearing streak.
Deku scrambled off of him, offering a hand to help him up. Katsuki ignored it. He could see Deku’s lips moving, but all he could hear was a faint buzz of his voice. He looked down at the crystal in his hand. It wasn't anything special, just some fake metal thing, about the size of a soda can, like Jiro said.
He looked up when someone set a hand on his shoulder, ignoring the small thrill of panic that went down his spine. It was just Deku. He was still talking and Katsuki still couldn’t hear him. After a few seconds Deku suddenly stopped, tilting his head a bit. He tapped his ear, asking. Katsuki nodded. Deku pulled a face, something that looked like he was pitying him.
“Let’s go give this thing to Aizawa.” He said suddenly, walking towards the door, brushing off Deku’s hand. He assumed the rest of the group started following him but he didn’t look back to check.
Aizawa was standing out in the hallway. He held a bin out, which Katsuki dropped the crystal into. He couldn’t hear what he said next, but it made the girls excited and Deku was smiling too, suddenly tugging on his arm and leading him towards the locker room. Were they already done?
Deku wrapped his arm around Katsuki’s as they walked and Katsuki let him because the girls were ahead of them and no one else was around. He could tell Deku was talking but he couldn’t make out any of the words. It wasn’t like their relationship was a secret, he just didn’t like to be too public about it. Everyone always seemed to make a big deal about it and that kind of attention made him uncomfortable. He tugged on his ear and opened his mouth, trying to get himself to yawn because sometimes that fixed it.
It worked a little bit, because at least now he could mostly understand Deku, because he was so close.
“Sensei said our room had one of the longest times but we got out in less than fifteen minutes. That’s pretty cool. And he said we’d be regrouping on the exercise tomorrow, so we were allowed out of school early and now we have an extra hour.Maybe we should do something with the extra time we have.”
“We could study.” Katsuki mumbled, fighting a second yawn.
“...something that isn’t school related?”
“But then we’d be wasting our time.”
Deku shook his head. “Kacchan, you can’t do work all the time.”
Of course he could. That’s how he got where he was. Hard work, a tough act and grit.
“C’mon Kacchan. We can hang out in my room.”
“And do what? Talk to the All Might plushies?”
“Shut up.” Deku bumped his forehead against Katsuki's shoulder. “You have one too.”
“Yeah, one .” Katsuki lightly bumped Deku back.
“What ever. Your room then. And we’d just hang out. Talk to each other, read, draw, watch something, just a little break from school. It’s one hour.”
By then they had reached the locker room and Deku was forced to let go of Katsukis arm so they could get through the door.
“Ok fine.” Katsuki said as he began tugging off gloves. “One hour.”