Endless Bounds

Chapter 11 (Bakugou) Part 3

Bakugou stands in the arena once again.

This time, his opponent is some one from class 1-C. General studies. The same extra with the crazy purple hair who was outside their classroom with all the other students. One Hitoshi Shinso.

He didn't stand out at all in the first round. Not to Bakugou's knowledge anyways. Same goes for the second round. He doesn't remember seeing anything particular about this guy standing out, other than the fact that two of his teammates from the cavalry battle pulled out—something about not remembering how they won.

Something about the mind then?

Bakugou rubs his bandaged hand that Recovery Girl partly healed before to his next match. Since Recovery Girl's quirk uses energy from the injured person to speed up the process, she didn't have enough time to heal it completely. But it's good enough. He doesn't need two perfect hands to win this match.

Bakugou sighs and drops his hand, looking at Shinso from across the arena.

Present Mics obnoxiously loud commentary confirms his prediction. A brainwashing quirk.

Great.

It's best to keep his distance for now. If Shinso's quirk has to do with the mind then there has to be some sort of trigger. . . and there's no telling what that is. If it wasn't, he'd have made the last two games look like a walk in the park.

So what could it be? A certain distance? A touch? A smell? Or maybe the target needs to look directly in his eyes like some sort of hypnotism.

The match starts. Neither of them moves.

Then Shinso's lips curl into a smile and he raises his hands into a shrug. "So after all that. . ." Shinso's words trail off, inaudible to Bakugou's ears over the crowd and distance between them. Even if Bakugou can't hear him, it's obvious he's trying to taunt him.

Bakugou slowly creeps forward to test the limits and turns his attention to Shinso's moving lips.

"What? The hot head of 1-A has no comeback? . . . lame. Come on. Say something back. I dare you." Shinso takes a step back as his opponent continues to advance.

Bakugou smirks and picks up his pace.

"What was that you said?" Shinso says with a smile to hide his growing panic rising in words. "This is what a pro's like. . ."

Bakugou looks back up to look Shinso in the eyes. He's very talkative for someone in the middle of a fight. Knows just the right buttons to push. So that's the trigger. He propels himself forward, eager to get this fight over with. With so much pent-up frustration and anger from all those things Deku said, he can finally start this match and release it.

Shinso's face drops in terror and realization. But it's too late to get out of the way. Bakugou, with an outstretched hand, tackles him. He holds Shinso down by the face, covering his mouth with his palm so he'd shut up.

"I'm sorry what were you trying to say?" Bakugou growls in Shinso's ear, "You know. . . a quirk that requires a response is quite useless against someone who has a hard time understanding what people are saying," he taps his ears so Shinso can understand. "It's not your fault. Just a bad match up."

A few moments pass and it's clear Shinso is unable to fight back. The crowd cheers, telling Bakugou the match is over. A win by immobilization.

Bakugou stands up and looks down at Shinso. "You damn extras think your everything these days. Be careful what you say or you'll lose your head. If that's how you trigger your quirk than you don't deserve to be here. Find something better or don't show your face at UA."