Bakugou has always had a big personality. He was loud, angry and downright unpleasant in the worst of times. To the Typhoon’s luck, the fiery boy hadn’t made much of a debut in the land of pirates. He was still too busy sulking, sulking because he has had to start from zero after having built up so much. He’s worked for his strength, worked for his recognition and here he is: back to nothing. He won’t even begin with the possibility of Deku’s own progress in the world. As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, that quirkless boy had climbed the ladder of power. Heck, he had even had a head start. It infuriated him, and he feels an emotion he is not quite familiar with. A sense of loss? Not knowing how to progress? He wonders if it is just a phase, a crisis that has rendered him useless. Even his mind begins to explore the possibilities of just giving up, chewing at his mind like an infection or a harmful bacterium. He can’t stand it. The buzzing, the crushing feeling from one ear to the other, the fiery hearth that corrodes his throat.

He doesn’t want to think everything has been for nothing. He would have rather stayed dead – died as a force to be reckoned with than to have respawned to become but a speck in the universe, a piece of grime on a window. He’s been so busy worrying about himself that not once has he even considered the possibility of Kirishima being by his side. He’s chosen to accept the facts. It was probably better to stay in the Ascendants where all their other classmates had been. No one wants to be around old, boring Bakugou who was too bigheaded to let go of the past. He’s just pitying himself, letting himself drown and freeze over.

But there comes a time when he is surprised, and no anger arrives. This was one of them. He was strolling, looking for something else to throw his rage on when he stops, hearing a familiar voice reverberate against the trees and overgrowth of the island’s tropical forest. His venomous gaze scans around him, searching left and right before he recognises the name – Kirishima. He feels his own heart thud, like agony but different. Funnily enough, it was so different that it was agonizing but he knows that the source wasn’t pain. It was different, he knew it, legs lifting him immediately to the male and not even calculating why or when the feline had gotten here. The ragdoll halted, breaths escaping him like the puffs of a volcano, eyes bewildered and aflame.

”Kirishima, you’re here to join?”

It’s clearly a rhetorical question, but words leave him without being filtered. He’s felt so harmless the past week that he feels like he’s been softened by the moment, left vulnerable to the circling of vultures. But, mechanically, he regains himself. His eyes slant, his lips cur, his teeth glint a shark-like grin in the sunlight. ”O’course you can join. Welcome to the fuckin’ Typhoon.”