#hyperfixation 1

Just like her namesake, she dropped out of the sky and into Katsuki's life with an ungraceful flutter, made a bunch of noise and a huge mess, and then disappeared to who knows where. It wasn't until after she was gone that Katsuki realized how someone, anyone, should have probably questioned her presence. But at the time, he was so caught up in the moment that he didn't question a thing.

It all started in Basic Heroics class.

They were having a pretty standard lesson that day, but it's one Katsuki had been looking forward to all week: one-on-one battle training. Just saying the words made the blood pulse through his veins, sweat and adrenaline pooling in his body in equal measure. Nothing compared to the thrill of combat. And to not only be asked, but encouraged to dominate his opponents, to crush them beneath his boots and prove his absolute superiority over them? It was almost too good to be true.

He loved this school so much.

Now that the moment had actually arrived, the only question left was who would be his victim (opponent)? He hoped it was one of his stronger classmates. As much as he loathed to admit it, Katsuki had to acknowledge that some of his classmates were incredibly strong. But that would just make it even more of a pleasure to destroy them. Because where was the fun in crushing someone who was already beneath him? The only way to prove he was the very best was by taking down the very best.

Finally, after what seemed like hours of explaining the rules and goals for this training exercise, Aizawa started to assign partners. Katsuki was jittery while he waited for his name to be called, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. Why the ---- was Aizawa not using an alphabetic list? At least then Katsuki's name would be near the top.

“Bakugo,” his teacher droned.

Yes! FINALLY.

“You will be paired with-”

“Excuse me?” A small, gentle, female voice interrupted.

Katsuki wanted to blast it straight to ----.

Who was freaking interrupting them!? And why did they pick now to do it!?

Pausing and glancing up from his list, Aizawa scanned the room to see who had spoken. The voice was unfamiliar, which meant she wasn't part of his class. Who else was in the training room with them, and why were they here?

A muted shuffling echoed into the quiet, and Kirishima, Sato, and Tokoyami shifted out of the way to reveal a (very short) girl standing behind them.

The first thing Katsuki noticed about her was her school uniform. It was outrageously oversized. He couldn't help but sneer at such poor fashion taste. How pathetic do you have to be to not realize you look that stupid? A uniform that big would look baggy on a girl twice her size and weight. Didn't she have a mirror? Didn't she have eyes?

Oh … she didn't.

When Katsuki's own eyes tracked up from her uniform to her head, they were met with milky irises and a jagged, lightening-shaped scar that cut a deep, horizontal path across her face. She was obviously blind. Despite that fact, she somehow seemed to be staring directly at Katsuki. It made him feel unsettled for a reason he couldn't put his finger on.

“And you are?” Aizawa asked bluntly.

“Pigeon,” she replied, just as abrupt.

Aizawa eyed her incredulously, waiting for her to elaborate. She didn't.

“According to to Article 288 of the UA Student Manual Of Conduct and Activity,” she spouted off instead, “Participation in heroics activities for training purposes is considered a shared learning opportunity across all heroics classes of a particular grade level, and is therefore not limited to one singular class roster in such cases that participation in such activities would not conflict with previously established class schedules.”

Katsuki's head was spinning by the end of her speech. Based on the looks on some of his classmates' faces, he wasn't the only one. He tried his best to keep his confusion masked under a scowl lest he be lumped into the same category as Dunce-Face.

Had to hand it to the girl: it was impressive she had managed to say so many words in one breath.

Aizawa, on the other hand, didn't look impressed. He looked annoyed.

“Yes. That's the precedent between joint training exercises. Your point?”

“My point is,” she took a deep breath, then pointed directly at Katsuki. “I request permission to participate in this training exercise. More specifically: I would like to fight him. Bakugo Katsuki.”

Against his will, Katsuki flinched. Then he bristled. Who the ---- did this girl think she was, singling him out like that? Did she really think a little blind pipsqueak could stand a chance against him in fight? Was she making fun of him!?

Aizawa raised an eyebrow at her, contemplating her request. “And why do you think I should permit that?” He asked coolly.

Lowering her hand, she turned to face Aizawa. It seemed she had come prepared with an argument. “Because it is a low risk, high reward training opportunity. One additional fight isn't going to take up too much classroom time. There's no physical danger to your student, since you know you can stop the fight at any time if you're concerned for his safety. Your own quirk guarantees that, sir. Put simply, my fighting Bakugo can't do any harm. It can do some good, though. At this point in their heroics training, quantity of combat experience trumps quality. In other words: the more fighting your students do, they better off they'll be. It takes lots of practice against lots of different kinds of opponents to hone these skills. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that.”

In her blunt little way, she cut off her speech once more, and stood quietly facing Aizawa. Waiting for a verdict.

Apparently, he found her argument to be sufficiently logical.

“All right. I'll allow it. Bakugo, you will be paired with … Pigeon.”

Katsuki's jaw dropped open. A ripple of murmurs and glances made their way around the class. It seemed that everyone was surprised by their teacher's decision.

Katsuki, on the other hand, wasn't surprised. He was livid.

How could Aizawa let this happen!? How could he, Bakugo Katsuki, the best fighter in the whole school, be expected to pair with an insignificant little nobody!? How dare she drop in and ruin an exercise he had been looking forward to!? This was so beneath him!

He opened his mouth to say as much. “Hah!?” was all he managed to sputter out, before Pigeon was suddenly in front of him. Her posture was relaxed, not intimidating and non-threatening. At the same time, she was close enough to his personal space to instantly demand his full attention.

And she had moved very quickly. Alarmingly so.

“I'm certainly not interested in forcing you into a fight that you don't want to have,” she addressed him. Her voice was calm, placid, and steady, as if she were simply continuing a conversation that they were already in the middle of. As if she hadn't just basically teleported across the room to stand a few inches in front of him. Her serene attitude might have been unnerving (not frightening. Unnerving. Bakugo Katsuki didn't get frightened), except for the fact that he had to bend has neck so far down just to be able to see her face. He wondered if she realized that standing this close made her seem even tinier than she already was.

“So,” she went on, “to ensure that we are both equally invested in this fight, I propose some ground rules. Once you agree, then the match can begin. Rule 1: whoever is officially declared the winner of this match is required to accept their win, regardless of how it came about.” She paused after stating the rule, and Katsuki's mind catapulted back to the sports festival. He had a feeling he knew why she wanted him to agree to that.

“Rule 2: the match cannot be won by knockout. It's only over when one of the opponents gets down on one knee and verbally admits defeat. Even if Aizawa calls a stop to the fight,” she emphasized, straining her face towards his in a way that made everyone else in the room fade into a blurry background image. Like the two of them were the only two people that mattered. “Even if Aizawa calls a stop to the fight, the match isn't over. Not really. The only path to victory is for one of us to get down on one knee and verbally admit defeat.” Springing back and away from him, she half turned to face Aizawa. “Are these rules acceptable to you, sensei?”

Crossing his arms lightly, Aizawa nodded and offered a quiet, “I'll allow it.”

Pigeon turned back to Katsuki. “And you? Do you agree to these terms?”

Katsuki's eyes shot skyward. How could she say all that crap with a straight face? This girl took herself way too seriously.

Did he agree to her terms? Why the ---- not? It's not like it was going to be hard to end this fight. Maybe if he won quickly enough, Aizawa would let him have a real opponent next. This “match” was bound to be over in 10 seconds flat. Especially if all he had to do was make her admit defeat. That was, unless …

“Don't you know who you're talking to, extra? You sure must be confident in your quirk if you think you can beat me,” Katsuki growled, lowering his stance and letting a few small explosions pop out of his hands for good measure. With any luck, she would give him some intel, some indication on what kind of quirk he was about to go up against.

He wasn't worried about it. But only idiots jumped into battle without thinking things through first.

The only thing she offered was a tight smile. “I'm confident that this fight will go exactly the way it needs to. Do you agree to these terms?”

“Yeah,” Katsuki snapped, “freakin' whatever. Just stop your blabbing and start fighting already.”

Infuriatingly, rather than respond to his taunts, she gravely stuck her hand straight out in front of her. Asking him to shake on it. With another eye roll, he complied.

Despite his initial annoyance, Katsuki was starting to get excited about this fight. The fact that she refused to reveal anything about her quirk, not to mention that cleverly worded argument with Aizawa, were both promising signs that at least she wasn't an idiot. She might have something close to a tactical brain hidden inside that weirdly scarred head. She also seemed extremely confident, which, in Katsuki's experience, didn't happen unless a person had a quirk good enough to back it up. And then there was her speed when she had moved across the room. This might shape up to be a fun fight after all.

Breaking away from their handshake, Katsuki leaped back into a fighting stance. He felt like a hungry dog with a raw steak dangling above his nose – so ready to go, he was practically drooling.

“Begin,” Aizawa's voice rang out.

“There's something you need to know-”

BOOM!

As if Katsuki was going to wait for whatever lame crap she was about to say. He wasn't about to take chances, not with an unknown quirk and a fast opponent.

While the last syllable of Aizawa's signal was still ringing through the room, Katsuki had already launched himself straight at Pigeon. Arching his back as he landed, he swung his arm around in a strong right hook, opening his palm and blasting off a medium-sized explosion the moment before contact.

He used the recoil of his own explosion to spin his body away from his opponent, putting himself out of striking distance. Then, just as the smoke from his first blast began to dissipate, he shifted his weight onto his back foot and readied for a second volley. His eyes rapidly scanned in a circle around him, even glancing up to check the air above him when he didn't locate Pigeon right away. He needed to figure out where she had dodged to, or else he had no idea where to aim his next attack.

Because … surely she had dodged, right?

Because a normal opponent would have seen that attack coming. Would have dodged it. That's the only reason Katsuki led with such a strong explosion. That way, the effects of it could still stun his opponent, even when they dodged the bulk of the blast.

Except … she hadn't dodged at all.

When Katsuki finally located her, she was all the way across the room. Even with her light frame, she wouldn't have flown that far unless she took the entire weight of the explosion. Katsuki kept his game face on, but inside, a sharp stab of panic shot up his spine. The front of her uniform shirt was scorched, still glowing in some places. What skin he could see was red and blistered.

What the ---- was this girl playing at? Was it some kind of trick? Was she acting defenseless so he would let his guard down, leave himself vulnerable?

Yeah, as if that was going to work.

Katsuki launched himself towards her with a roar. She was just pulling herself to her feet when he reached her. She'd better freaking dodge this time, because he wasn't going to hold back. After all, she was the one who had picked this fight in the first place.

Swinging his left arm forward, he felt his palm make contact with her skin as he blasted. One more explosion, layered on top of the wound from the last one. That would be all it took. Surely the match was over now.

This time, Katsuki kept her in his sights, tracking her path as she flew limply across the room. His stomach twisted as she landed on the other side. Why wasn't she fighting back? At the very least, try to move out of the way! What was wrong with this girl!?

Pointing both arms down and straight behind him, he blasted off from each palm, springing into the air and sailing across the room. She was on her knees when he touched down in front of her, and he hauled her the rest of the way to her feet by what was left of her shirt front.

“Admit defeat!” he snarled into her face, triumph over his own display of power and frustration over her lack of response fighting for top spot in his chest.

“There's something you need to know before the fight begins in earnest,” she flawlessly continued her sentence from earlier, and for the second time that day, Katsuki's jaw dropped open. She was using the same placid, calm tone she had used when explaining the rules to him. It was as if she wasn't even aware of what had happened to her body in the past 35 seconds. “You were right, I do have a quirk that I'm confident in. But I won't be using it. Not during this fight. In fact, I won't be fighting back at all.”

… what.

She observed him silently, waiting for the import of her words to sink in. They caused such a chain reaction of anger, confusion, and disbelief inside of him that at first, he couldn't even form a sentence. What he wanted to do was scream directly into her face, maybe a launch a few more explosions at it, until he got the message across – but one look at her peaceful expression stopped that thought at the gate. Some sort of gut instinct, deep inside Katsuki, was telling him that his current tactics would not lead to victory. Not with this girl.

And defeat wasn't an option.

So, brain whirring, he switched tactics. In the span of a breath, everything Pigeon had said and done since coming into the room replayed in his brain. He thought of her logical, point-A-to-point-B set of rules. He thought of her argument to Aizawa.

If violence wouldn't work on her, then maybe reason would.

He wanted to try reason. But his current level of anger made it impossible to completely separate the violence part of the equation. In the end, he settled on wildly shaking her, screeching out in a half strangled scream, “If you won't fight me, then how d'ya think you're gonna get me to admit defeat!? Hah!?”

“You're right,” she replied, ignoring his aggression yet again, “I can't win. But then again, neither can you.” For the duration of this exchange, Pigeon's body had been limp, her full weight hanging from her shirt balled in Katsuki's fists. Now, she stood on her own two feet, gently extracting her clothes from his grip. Once that task was accomplished, she tilted her head back up at him, a determined look on her face.

“I want you to understand the way the rest of this fight is going to go. I will not attack you. I will not fight you. And I won't try to dodge. That means there's only one way for you to win.” She paused again, and the room was so silent that Katsuki could hear his heartbeat in his ears. It seemed that all his classmates were holding their breath too, waiting to hear her next words.

“A person, even a very pain-tolerant person, can only hold up to torture for so long. So if you want to win, you're going to have to pull out all the stops. Because I promise you,” and she suddenly stepped forward until her body was only inches away from him, “I am a very pain-tolerant person. I won't fight you. But the truth of the matter is, I want victory just as much as you do. So I also won't admit defeat. Not until you make me. If you choose that path, do it with the full knowledge of what it means. You are going to have to beat and beat and beat me, mercilessly, probably for a very long time. You are going to have to inflict blow after blow, snap bone after bone, spill pints of my blood on the ground, before I will give in to you. And all the while, while you grind and break me, you'll be doing it with the knowledge that I am a defenseless opponent. Smaller than you. Weaker than you. And not fighting back.”

Katsuki's face twisted up in horror, and he took an involuntary step back. WHAT!? What kind of person would do something like that!? Was she insane!?

“So there's something you need to know, before this fight can begin in earnest,” she plowed on. “There are questions you need to ask yourself, and you need to be very sure of the answers. You need to ask yourself … how much is victory worth to me? What kind of person am I? What kind of hero am I? How much am I willing to do, how far am I willing to go, to be able to say that I am the winner? And at that point, can I still even say that I'm winning?”

Finally, she took a step away from him, and Katsuki found himself gasping for breath. She hadn't laid a finger on him. So why did he feel like her hand had been on his throat? She hadn't kicked him. So why did he feel like his vision was spinning?

“Now it's up to you. This is the moment where you choose, the moment where you decide, and where you prove it to the world. What kind of person is Bakugo Katsuki? Are you the kind of man who would brutalize the weak in the name of victory? Are you really a hero?”

The silence in the room was deafening. Katsuki stared at the girl in front of him, stared at her confident posture and resolute face, and he knew in an instant that this was no bluff. She really wasn't going to fight back, no matter what he did to her. As he slouched in front of her, panting for breath as if he had been sprinting, his brain flew through a thousand different scenarios. Almost against his will, he conjured a thousand different ways of getting her to admit defeat. Every fiber of his soul screamed at him that failure was not an option, especially not at the hands of such a pathetic opponent. But … could he really do it? Could he really torture this girl, in the middle of a class designed to create heroes, with all of his classmates looking on?

In a turn of events that was beyond his own comprehension, he found himself asking a very new question for the very first time.

What kind of man was Bakugo Katsuki?

He wasn't sure he knew the full answer, but in that moment, he discovered part of it. He was not the kind of man that would continue to hurt this girl.

So Katsuki did something he had never done before, and that he had thought he never would do. Shoulders slumping, head glued to the ground, and face slack with disbelief, he knelt before her. And in a voice barely above a breath, he whispered, “I admit defeat.”

The rest of 1-A were standing too far away to hear his words, but his body language made his intentions clear. They had all heard the rules. More than one gasp escaped into the room, along with a squeaky, shocked, “Kachaan!?” Katsuki's face burned in shame. He couldn't bear to look up at his classmates. He had never felt so humiliated in his life.

Not even when he lost to Deku.

Suddenly, he became aware of a hand hovering in front of his face. Pigeon's head was tilted down toward him, her expression emotionless. She was offering to help him up.

With his last shred of dignity, he slapped her hand away and stood on his own. He refused to be pitied by this little maggot. But she was insistent, and he was too emotionally drained to offer much resistance. Once he was standing, she firmly grabbed his hand and led him across the room until they were standing directly in front of Aizawa. Then, she bowed from the hips, low and deep.

“My sincerest apologies, sensei. I've wasted your class's time,” she said into the floor.

Aizawa raised an eyebrow at her, seeming to forget for a moment that she couldn't see it.

Straightening up, she continued to address Aizawa. “You see, I'm from the Support Course. And while Article 288 of the UA Student Manual Of Conduct and Activity applies to all members of the Hero Course, the rule doesn't extend to any of the other classes. I was never authorized to participate in this match to begin with.” Then, turning towards the rest of the class, she raised Katsuki's arm in the air. “That means that, in light of my disqualification, Bakugo Katsuki is the winner of today's match.”

Katsuki blinked, unseeing, at the air in front of him. He felt completely numb.

Her dramatic pause seemed expectant. Looking around hesitantly, Sero tried out some slow, erratic claps. A few more classmates added to the confused jumble, until the whole room was awkwardly clapping.

When Pigeon was satisfied, she dropped Katsuki's hand and turned to face him directly. “Do you see, Bakugo Katsuki?” she asked gently. “You won this fight. I had lost it before we even began. You were always going to win. It wasn't even a question. Do you understand? Do you get the point?”

He did not understand, and he did not get the point. In fact, the past five minutes seemed like the most pointless thing that had ever happened in his life.

She seemed to sense his rising frustration. Leaning in close, she dropped her voice to a whisper, her tone increasing in gravity. “You were always going to win, no matter what. But in order to bring the match to an end, in order to secure your win, you first had to admit defeat. So the point is this: sometimes, if you really want to win … then you have to be willing to lose.”

Katsuki felt like he had been dumped into a swimming pool full of ice water. And like he was being held down in that pool by two deceptively tiny, unnaturally strong hands. The colors of the room around him blurred together, the noises muted and out of focus. By the time he came back to reality, the rest of the one-on-one matches were almost over. He was sitting alone on a bench in the back of the room. The rest of the class were occasionally flicking him side-eyed looks, but they were giving him a wide berth. Giving him time to think.

And Pigeon was gone.