Lightning Strikes the Heart

Chapter 4: Too Many Fools

December 9th, Saturday Afternoon, 11:30 AM

The mall was so crowded. When the group stepped in the doors, they all stopped and collectively grimaced at the amount of people–well, Bakugo did more of a snarl and Kaminari wasn't grimacing for the same reason as the others, but same difference. "So, where to first?" Mina asked. She was looking very stylish in a short, black, off-the-shoulders t-shirt dress, with thick strips of dull yellow on the arms and a smaller one along the bottom of the dress. She paired it with black knee-high, high-heeled boots and a dark pink hand bag, and wore a gold necklace.

The rest of them weren't dressed that nicely. Kirishima wore a simple red short-sleeved shirt (how he wasn't frostbitten, Kaminari had no idea), jeans, and those God-forsaken crocks. Bakugo had black jeans and a black shirt with a skull on it–Kaminari wondered how many of those he even had. And Sero wore an orange sweatshirt and jeans. And Kaminari himself wore a white long-sleeved shirt that had a lightbulb and the words "watts up?" on it, with jeans and tennis shoes.

"I say we hit the food court before anything else," Sero volunteered. Mina rolled her eyes, smiling. "Of course you do." "I've got no objections," Kirishima said. "What about you, Bakugo?" "I don't fucking care." "Okay, then!" Kaminari exclaimed. "Food court it is!" He needed a bit of a distraction until he showed up to utterly wreck his day.

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Five full stomachs later, they decided on a plan. Each person would get a chance to go to two shops of their choosing and if they ended up with free time after everyone was done, they'd decide from there who got to choose. Mina went first, choosing a clothing store, then the Bath & Body Works.

Bakugo was glaring so hard at these choices, Kaminari was sure he'd make little kids cry. But, he didn't say anything. Sero was slightly grimacing, but he went along with it. And Kirishima of course was too nice to say anything about being dragged to two girly stores. Kaminari didn't really care–he was glad for the distraction. And Mina sure delivered on the distraction–she talked a mile a minute about all the clothes she tried on, so Kaminari didn't have the time to focus on his issues.

After that, Sero chose to get snacks for the dorms, goof off for when he accidentally taped stuff together (which happened pretty frequently with his homework and textbooks), and Kirishima had to drag him away from the pet store after Sero started looking at a Steatoda grossa–a false black widow. Sero's argument: "They let Koda keep a bunny in his room!" Kirishima's response: "Because that's related to his quirk–and bunnies aren't potentially dangerous to anyone!" To which, Sero pointed out that the #5 top Pro-Hero had a rabbit quirk.

After Sero got finished, it was 1:37 and Kaminari was starting to get antsy. Somehow, he managed to get the last place for choosing where he wanted to go and he somehow doubted he'd be very happy if Kaminari was a couple hours late to their meeting. He was fidgeting as Bakugo got his turn to choose the shops he wanted to go to.

"The second floor?" Kirishima asked. Kaminari immediately tuned back into the conversation. And then realized they were all walking away from him. "Hey, wait up!" He blurted out and ran to catch up. "Spacing out there, man," Sero said teasingly. Kaminari just huffed and continued walking, thinking about how he'd give them the slip on the second floor. Bathroom run? That'd be the easiest. He'd just have to think of a way to stop either Kirishima or Sero from coming with him–the only reason Aizawa Sensei had let them leave without a teacher was the promise that they'd all use the buddy system wherever they went. The perpetually-tired teacher's exact words were: "If I find out any of you went anywhere by yourselves, all of you will be cleaning the dorms for a month, is that understood?"