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Y/N REALLY NEEDED MORE EXERCISE. She was puffing a lot faster than she would've liked, though she was still keeping Bakugo in her sights.

Which was impressive, because based off the results she'd read from Aizawa of the Quirk Apprehension Test (which he had given to her purely to show her 'how much she needed to prove'), Bakugo could fly at a consistent speed of 43.2 kilometres an hour. 

Maybe she would never admit it to him, but Y/N was starting to tire already. It didn't seem like only a few hours had passed since she'd stolen Bakugo's chair - shit, it wasn't even time for lunch yet and she'd already been to Recovery Girl.

Pleasant way to start the year. 

She snapped out of her sarcastic thoughts, channelling more energy into her legs as she forced herself to run further, faster, anything to prove Bakugo's tease wrong.

He'd said she couldn't keep up - she had to.

Her eyes scanned the sky for him, but she couldn't pinpoint the source of the blossoming explosions anymore - they moved too quickly, and Y/N's field of vision was blurred with sweat and shook from the movement of running.

There was her first mistake - she'd focused too much on trying to find out if she was keeping pace with him, she didn't look at the ground.

Then came her second mistake: when her foot hit some dent in the earth and she fell forwards, Y/N stuck her hands forwards as most did subconsciously when they were falling.

Third mistake - not looking where she was falling. As her hands hit the ground, they scraped along some small pebbles, presumably thrown from some kind of explosion from the third-years and their combat practice. 

She rolled to a crouch, wincing as she instinctively brushed her hands off by pressing them into her shirt and smearing a red handprint across the navy blue fabric. 

"Son of a bitch," she muttered to herself as she pushed off from her crouched position to run, though even the noise of Bakugo's explosions had faded now. "Shit!"

She would've begun to yell some other choice insults, regarding where he could stick his ego, except finally the second Battleground loomed in front of her, where a tall boy with violet hair stood, staring at the ground.

"Your partner got here ages ago," he mumbled quietly, like he was unwilling to speak at all. "I think he left already. Midnight wanted him to tell Cementoss that more robots were coming, and she wanted him to make new buildings at lunch."

Y/N moaned, turning around and bouncing on the balls of her feet as she prepared to run again, when the boy said behind her, "Just stay here and wait for him to get back with the next message."

She nodded, falling awkwardly into a sitting position as she examined her scraped knees, which were leaking thick drops of blood down her torn tracksuit pants and did her best to wipe the red off her hands with a spare tissue in her pocket.

"I don't suppose you happen to have any water," Y/N asked, tilting her head to ask the question so that she didn't stare into the sun as she attempted to direct her question towards him as politely as possible.

He just turned away, returning a few minutes later with a black water-bottle labelled 'T. Amajiki'.

"Thanks ... Amajiki?" she grinned when he nodded, dribbling the stingingly cold window over her palms. "I'm Y/L/N, by the way."

"Well, I'm glad I got to know your name," he said, in a kind of brotherly way as he took back the water-bottle. "Because that boy's coming back, and he doesn't look happy. Don't die, Y/L/N."

"Hey-!" Y/N turned to say something defensive, but Amajiki was gone. When she got to her feet, swivelling her feet to try and approach Bakugo before he could tower over her, she knocked straight into him.

"Y/L/N."

"Bitch!" she would've pushed him, except her palms were stinging uncomfortably as she flapped her hands. "Why'd you just leave me behind?!"

"Not my fault you couldn't keep up," he grumbled, looking at her knees with a flash of unreadable emotion crossing his face for the briefest of seconds. 

"Oh, I'm sorry that I can't run as fast as you can fly." Y/N made a face that was meant to show her annoyance, except she probably just looked like a petulant child. 

She stomped away, ignoring her pain as she began to jog again.

⋘ ──── ∗ ⋅◈⋅ ∗ ──── ⋙

"How was Running?" Kaminari asked.

Y/N held up her bandaged hands. "Don't even."

All three of them that were gathered around the table winced.

"You know, you could just swallow your pride and be nice to Bakugo," Kaminari suggested, pointing his chopsticks at her. "I bet if you were really nice to him you could wear him down because he'd be bloody surprised."

"That won't work," Y/N replied instantly, speaking through the mouthful of rice in her mouth.

"Okay," Kaminari waved his arm, physically dismissing the idea. "Can I at least ask you a question?"

"What?"

"Why can't you use your Quirk properly?"

Y/N dropped her spoon, the metal clattering on the floor not exactly loud amongst the loud chatter of the cafeteria they were eating lunch in.

Her mind rushed through a thousand and one different scenarios, panic, fear and adrenaline rushing along her blood like sugar, feeling like the world had slowed down, because there was no way out of the question.

Nowhere to run. Noescape.

Until she saw Bakugo crossing the cafeteria, on a trajectory that would conveniently place him right in front of their table.

Kaminari's earlier suggestion flashed into the forefront of her mind as she stood up to intercept him.

He glared down at her. "What?"

Y/N smirked, and did something she'd been able to do all her life - she closed her eyes and fainted.

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thank you for reading this
book and i hope you enjoy it!
~ jazzi