I have a fever as I publish this, so you can rest assured I wrote this in a very, very clear, conscious and generally well state of mind

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I stood motionless while the med bots helped Todoroki onto a stretcher. At some point, I stepped out of the arena and into the dark stadium tunnels.

Vaguely, I noticed an odd humming sensation bouncing around in my head; a thrumming I couldn't quite explain. It was like a voice at the back of my mind, whispering across my skull.

"It's match two of the semifinals; Bakugo versus Tokoyami! Take a look, Bakugo's rush is unstoppable!" I scooped the remote from the table and turned off the waiting room tv, silencing Present Mic's commentary. I folded my arms on the table and hunched over.

How long had the Chairwoman been watching? She looked dissatisfied. Could she tell l was slacking? 

Did it really matter? I was top of my class in hero's basics. I could recite all of the theories, every law related to quirks, and every complexity of the system that created, supported, and admonished heroes.

It wasn't enough. Would it ever be enough?

"Why'd you let him in close?" I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Aizawa who had spoken, leaned in a concealed spot just inside the doorway. I laid my head back on my arms.

"Aren't you supposed to be helping with commentary?"

I could see his eyes roll through the slits of his bandages. "Mic can handle it." He leaned back against the door, pushing it shut. "And you're avoiding the question."

I scowled. I couldn't lie to him – I mean, I could, but it would be pointless. And probably stupid. I looked the other way. "Yeah, I let him in close. What about it?"

"What about it?" he repeated, incredulously. "You tell me."

"There's nothing to tell you."

"Nothing to tell me, about how you tried to throw away a match without anyone noticing?" he said. "Don't bullshit me, Akiharu."

I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn't about to let it go. My eye twitched with annoyance. "Fine," I said.  "It's because I don't give a damn about the win. Is that what you want to hear? All I want to do is perform just well enough to keep the Chairwoman off my back, but everyone keeps saying, 'We're all trying our best,'  and it bothers the hell out of me, because I'm not! I just want to get this damn thing over with without everyone shoving the whole hero thing in my face over, and over again. It's exhausting." 

I winced at the volume of my own voice. Too far. I slumped in my chair, folding my arms over my chest. "Now can you leave me alone so I can figure out what to do about my next match?"

A chair grated across the floor as Aizawa pulled it up to my side. "Since when do you not want this?"

"Since I realized I didn't have a choice. How'd you put it? Having a 'prospective future outside of heroism?' Yeah, since I realized I don't have that."

"I stand by those words, unfortunate as they are."

"Will you stop treating me like a charity case and just fuck off already?"

His chair creaked as he leaned back. "You were a charity case when we first met," he said. "I was hardly out of school, asked to help train this kid on weekends; make sure her Quirk was kept in control. I learned what had happened sometime in the first year, and I was filled with doubt. How do they expect this kid to turn out to be a hero? I thought. Not under those circumstances. Not under that guilt.

He heaved a great sigh, and it made him sound much older than he was. "Do you remember what you said, when you spoke to me for the first time? I doubt it. You were seven, maybe eight. You said, '8,432.'  Then, with a terrifyingly determined little voice, you said, 'I'm going to save ten times that many.'  Now, I wonder when that got all turned around in your head. Yes, your options are severely limited, but there is always a choice. You can choose what kind of hero you'll become – Whether you'll keep doing whatever impresses; whatever keeps the Chairwoman off of your back. Or if you'll take the chance into your own hands, and make the best of it."

He rose to his feet, and reached for the handle. "No matter what you choose, I'll be proud of you for coming this far. Good luck on your last match." 

The door swung shut. I raised my eyes from the crook of my elbow, staring at my hand.

"My humanity... I won't let it be consumed by my father's will."

My fist slammed into the table as I buried my face back into my arm. "Damn it..."

The door burst open. I didn't bother moving. Today is just not my fucking day.

Bakugo stood frozen in the kicked-open doorway. "Why are you here! This is waiting room..." he leaned out the door to check the name plate. "Oh, this is room two. Damn it!"

I hummed in affirmation, waiting for him to leave. Maybe I could sneak a nap in before the next match – god, my head was killing me. Unfortunately, napping when Bakugo was around never seemed to be an option. Pissed off by my indifference, he stomped into the room yelling.

"I may have gotten the room wrong, but what's with that attitude to your opponent in the final!"

"You're my opponent?" I said, flippantly. "Damn, and here I thought Tokoyami would kick your ass to kingdom come."

Bakugo's hand slammed down on the table, igniting a blast. "Don't fuck with me!"

Hey, maybe I deserved it somehow, but the poor table certainly didn't. My face scrunched in annoyance – I didn't want to deal with one of Bakugo's hissy fits. My mood was shitty, irritated by my lack of sleep. If that wasn't good enough, my temples were throbbing, and that weird thrumming was getting worse, and the overpowering smell of his smoky, caramel sweat was making me nauseous.

"Are you done?"

Bakugo's teeth gnashed together. "You'd better not hold back on me like you did against the others!"

Of course he noticed. What a pain in my ass. With a sigh, I rested my head back down on the table. I waved my hand dismissively. "Actually, I'm not feeling well today, so I might just forfeit. Congrats on first place..."

The table was kicked out from beneath me, clattering across the floor. While I wondered if tables had done something to offend Bakugo in his past life, one of his hands shot out to grip my collar. "Don't ignore me!" His red eyes scoured my eyes for something, but I'm not sure what. "I'm going to get an indisputable first place!"

The humming was becoming unbearable. It reverberated through the ground beneath my feet, hammering relentlessly across my skull, growing louder. "Get your hand off of me," I said.

Bakugo's eyes squinted with a twisted smirk. "What kind of expression is that, huh?"

There was an energy buzzing in the ground. An energy that didn't belong to me, an energy running through the veins beneath Bakugo's skin. I could feel it all too closely; The breath in the soil beneath the arena, the life in its minerals, echoed in Bakugo's blood. I didn't recognize the sensation, but I recognized the danger. When I gripped Bakugo's arm, my voice dripped with a venomous warning, like the rattle of a snake.

"I said, let go."

Gritting his teeth, Bakugo shoved me away. "What the fuck is up with you today! One minute, you're smiling at me, the next you don't care, now you're looking at me like I'm dirt! Did USJ fuck with your head that bad!"

USJ.

"Adamus," I whispered.

"Huh?"

My eyes shot to him. "The Adamus," I said. "You know them?"

His nose scrunched. "That fuckin'... Earthbending family?"

For a moment, everything fell quiet. A cold stone settled in the pit of my stomach. "Your phone," I said.

"What?"

"Let me see your phone."

"Why the fuck should I listen to you!"

"Bakugo," I said, "Please. Let me see your phone."

He shoved past me, muttering something about 'insanity' and 'women nowadays' beneath his breath. After rifling through his bag, he shoved his phone into my chest. "Now, what the fuck do you want!"

"Unlock it, please."

"WHAT?"

"Please. Unlock it."

"You're out of your fucking mind!" he seethed, but still, unlocked the phone and handed it back to me. "You'd better not do anything weird!"

I opened his browser and typed in the search bar.

ADAMUS.

This time, there were results.

It was just like Todoroki had said. A family of heroes with a terrakinises-related Quirk. They dated back several generations, until about fifty years ago when they'd started vanishing without a trace.

There were pictures. Grainy black-and-white photos and news clippings, but most were in a noise heavy early-2000s style. The Adamus were beautiful creatures, all near-identical, with cherry-red skin and flowing green hair like moss. Their ears were long and pointed like an elves, and antlers poked out of their frizzy curls. 

The images flooding Bakugo's screen made my head swim. Static buzzed across my skull, filling my thoughts like white noise. It was clear at a glance they looked nothing me. Where they were soft and willowy, I was harsh and sturdy. But if I wasn't related somehow, then why the hell did it keep popping up everywhere?

I covered my mouth as I handed Bakugo's phone back to him.

The HPSC monitored my phone and laptop. So they'd blocked everything about the Adamus from it? If they knew I was related to this family somehow, they hadn't disclosed a damn thing about it. Not only that, they'd been taking extra efforts to hide it from me.

Why?

"We've compared your DNA to every record available to the government. We are completely in the dark about your origin." But the HPSC kept genetic data of every licensed pro-hero, of which many Adamus were.

How much was a lie? How much were they hiding?

Stomach roiling with confusion and rage, I spun on my heel and marched out of the room.

"Where the fuck are you going, now!" he shouted.

"I'm finding the Chairwoman," I said. All this time spent agonizing over unanswerable questions – Only, they had the answers this whole time.

"The fuck's that?" Bakugo uttered. "You can't leave now! We're about to have our match!"

"I couldn't care less."

"Hey! Hey, I said!" He grabbed for my arm but I yanked it out of his grasp. "What, so this is it, huh? You're just gonna run away?" He spat. "Fight me head on, huh? You aren't shit! You think you're so strong, but you're not!" His words were an desperate, ill-fated attempt to get me to fight him. "That's why Mr. Aizawa got beat up so bad at USJ. Because you're weak!"

The torrent of emotions came to a screeching halt, as did my feet. "What?"

"You heard me. If you actually gave a damn about anything, that wouldn't have happened!"

He hadn't really meant that, and once my mind caught up to the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I would realize it. But my anger acted first.

One moment, Bakugo was down the hall from me. The next, one of my knuckles was giving out, cracking against his face. Pain shot through my hand, shocking me out of my daze.

Bakugo was hardly conscious, if at all. Blood poured out of his nose. His breaths were ragged, his eyes thinned into slits. His jaw and cheekbone were red and swollen with future bruises.

I clambered to my feet unsteadily, huffing for breath. My heartbeat pounded irregularly in my ringing ears. I was shaking uncontrollably, from my hands to my feet.

Trees blurred past me as the U.A. campus gave way to the woods. I stumbled, scraping my hand against rough tree bark. My vision blurred. For a moment, I saw a forest different from this one. The trees grew large and close together, rough trunks clustered with bright moss. The underbrush grew thick and wild, tangling in my limbs. The forest floor was filled with such detail it felt much closer to me.

I blinked my eyes and the vision cleared. My head was splitting, and that thrumming poured into my senses relentlessly. My knees buckled and I puked.

"Ugh," I groaned, pushing my hair from my face. It stuck fast to the cold sweat breaking out across my skin. "What the hell is wrong with me..."

I flopped down on the ground, trying to calm my raging senses down. Something was seriously wrong – not just with my head and the thrumming. Something else was off, and the thought filled me with panic. Losing control of my Quirk for even a second could spill extreme disaster. With hundreds of thousands in the area for U.A.'s sports festival, I wouldn't get away with a couple thousand casualties this time.

First, I had to calm the fuck down. I pressed two fingers to my wrist and took my pulse. It was rapid and uneven. I tapped my thumb along with the rhythm, waiting for it to calm. Finally, my panic subsided enough for me to focus.

I found the problem instantly. My "energy" – That feeling I kept compacted in my core, – it was gone.

Vanished.

Since when?

Since Bakugo? No, since the match with Todoroki? When was the last time I'd had to channel energy into the ground to use an attack? I had no idea – I hadn't noticed. Such a compacted day, such constant use of my Quirk, I should've expected my hold to slip at some point. But this was different.

It was gone.

A slithering sound perked my ears. Dirt wrapped around my sneakers, pushing up through the grass. "What the..." I shot to my feet, trying furiously to brush it away. It was to no avail.

Relentlessly, the dirt crawled up my legs, as if it had a will of its own. My Quirk wasn't working to stop it. It wrapped around my legs like a vice, tugging me down through the grass. I tried to grasp at the tree roots for hold, but I was wrenched away, and the earth swallowed me whole.

𓆱❀𓆱

Hahaha... what?

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