Apple

There it was.

His stupid alarm, signifying the start of a stupid day at a stupid new school, where he'd have to wear a stupid uniform and pretend to be friends with his stupid classmates where they'd all dance in a stupid circle singing stupid kumbaya. Fucking fantastic.

If it wasn't obvious yet, Katsuki had very strong opinions about his new station.

It was true. He, Bakugou Katsuki, a model student on the honor roll and former class representative; thought that this was, in fact, stupid.

Did he forget to mention that the uniform was stupid? It was. Dark pine green slacks and a white button-up with a medium gray blazer that had embellishments in the same color as the slacks. To top it all off the stupid thing had toned down maroon epaulettes and a matching tie. Oh, and he couldn't forget the gold buttons. God forbid the cuff links be left out.

He felt like a Christmas tree from The Nutcracker. An unnecessary extra, if you will.

How his parents, who moved here as a part of their career in the fashion industry, thought that this was passable was completely beyond him.

It didn't help that his old school had been burned down.

Nevertheless, he wore the stupid thing anyway, swung his black and orange randoseru over his shoulder, and was off to school.

Needless to say, the school was huge. Uncannily gigantuous. Luckily he had a map and found his homeroom with no hitches. Room 3-A, the honor students.

They didn't look like honor students.

Circus clowns, more like.

When he walked in they all quieted and stared. So much for no hitches. He glanced around the classroom, noticing a suspicious hole in the wall behind the door, but it was whatever. The first kids to approach him were a guy with shitty, spiky red hair and red eyes followed by a girl with warm umber skin, a fluffy pale pink afro, and bright honey/amber eyes.

"So you're Mineta's replacement, eh?" The girl said, leaning towards him with her hands clasped behind her back.

Katsuki grunted, "I ain't no one's fuckin' replacement, Pinky."

She only giggled, "Whatever you say~ I'm Ashido Mina, by the way, but you can just call me Mina. Shark boy here is Kirishima Eijiro."

The aforementioned 'Shark Boy' waved at him with a bright smile, revealing a set of very sharp-looking teeth. The nickname suddenly made more sense.

He must have noticed the blonde staring because he explained, "It's a genetic mutation. I'm one of the few on earth quite like me!"

"Uh-huh," Katsuki hummed, "Also, I think you have some hair in your hair gel- or is that a genetic mutation, too?"

Surprisingly the guy took no offense from Katsuki's sharp tongue and continued smiling, "Your hair isn't much different from mine, y'know!"

The blonde rolled his eyes and took off to find a seat. The only one that appeared open was right in front of some plain-looking green kid. Not too ideal, but it would be fine.

Soon after he'd settled into his seat, the classroom door opened suddenly with a 'bang', slamming roughly into the wall behind it. That explains the hole in the wall.

"Hey, Kiddos! Some of you remember me as the student teacher from last year, some of you don't, but that's alright!" A husky voice shouted enthusiastically, "My name is Todoroki Touya, but you can call me Dabi-Sensei, and I'll be your homeroom teacher this year!"

The most handsome man he'd ever seen walked up to the lectern in the front of the room, both hands in his pockets and a confident smirk on his face. He had dark purple mandala tattoos drawn from the crease of his lip up to the top of his ear. Each elegantly stretched under his jaw and along his throat where they disappeared beneath his t-shirt and reappeared down his arm, looping to a fine end like a one-finger glove on each of his hands. That, including the half-circle mandala stretching under each of his eyes like permanent eyebags.

He had three nostril piercings all on the same side, dimple piercings, a vertical labret, a pointed bridge piercing, quadruple helixes on both sides, plus his primary and secondary lobes. His eyes were a familiar shade of blue and his hair was black with extremely visible white roots.

Long story short, he was a parent's worst nightmare and a teenager's wet dream.

A brunette girl with a round face raised her hand, to which the teacher pointed a marker at her for her to speak, "Where's Aizawa-Sensei?" she asked.

"Uh… maternity leave. Yeah, maternity leave," Dabi-Sensei answered, though not without sounding incredibly unsure of himself.

"But Aizawa-Sensei's a man!" Shouted a different girl who had choppy, incredibly short jet-black hair and almond-shaped indigo eyes.

"Eh, it's still maternity leave," He shrugged despite how everybody around the classroom looked unsatisfied. Katsuki swung his feet up on his desk, catching the teacher's attention who cocked an eyebrow at him, "Is there something you want to say?"

The blonde hummed, "Yeah. I'd like to know what kind of shitty nickname 'Dabi' is."

He only laughed, much to Katsuki's chagrin. Everyone in this blasted classroom was too damned smiley. He didn't like it.

"Some of the kids here know, but when I did student teaching last year I tried to be the example in the chemistry experiment," Some students, Katsuki figured were the ones who know the story, stifled their laughter, "The thing is, I did it wrong, and the entire project when up in bright blue flames. It only lasted for a few seconds but it left nothing behind besides ashes. Hence the name, Cremation, a-k-a Dabi."

A honey-blonde boy, with a black streak much like a lightning bolt staining the side of his hair, cackled. Loud and obnoxious, it grated on his eardrums, "Must run in the family, since- ha- Shouto over here ended up making the same mistake!"

Some kids looked back towards a boy with white and red split hair plus a nasty burn scar on the left side of his face. He seemed completely unperturbed by the implications, "Kaminari that wasn't very scholarly of you," was all he had to say on the matter.

"Yep, a family of pyromaniacs, alright," Dabi laughed. It was a soft, warm, and overall pleasant sound. Katsuki found he wouldn't mind crowds as much if everybody had a laugh like that, "Anyway, when I call your name for attendance tell the class three things about yourself and then we can spend the rest of the day playing games to make sure we're all acquainted."

Katsuki couldn't believe his ears. They were going to play games?! This was the most prestigious high school in all of Japan. They were in the honors class at the most prestigious high school and they were going to spend the first day playing ice-breakers?!

The teacher went through the list, complimenting each student on various things about them like their name, haircut, hobbies, etc. He also gave a few of them nicknames.

Then it was Katsuki's turn.

"Bakugou Katsuki?" Dabi-Sensei looked at his clipboard and up, glancing around the room in question.

The blonde grunted, "Here."

The teacher instantly locked eyes on him. Red to blue, like fire to ice. The attention made a shiver he'd rather not acknowledge shoot up his spine. Must be a draft.

Dabi-sensei then smirked, "The name Katsuki as in 'I win', eh? Must have ambitious parents."

Katsuki scoffed and rolled his eyes, "I'll probably win more than you, Patches."

The entire class went stock-still at his words. They weren't sure how this teacher would take banter. Aizawa-Sensei, their previous teacher, was very quick to expel any student as he saw fit. One year he'd even expelled his entire class within the first week. They hoped for their own sake that Dabi-Sensei was different.

Everybody's shoulders relaxed when the teacher laughed.

"Ah, what a mouth you've got on ya, kid. So, what are you planning to win, exactly?" Dabi's laugh faded to a chuckle as he wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.

"Nobel Prize for Chemistry," The blonde replied apathetically.

"Ooh, fun! Any particular kind?" Sensei leaned forward on his lectern, an easy smile on his face.

"Thermodynamics."

"That was my dual major in university, alongside teaching, of course."

Katsuki cocked an eyebrow at the dual-white-and-black-haired man, "And you still managing to cremate your example for high school Chemistry how exactly?"

"Alright, change of subject," He stood straight abruptly, "You never stated three things about yourself."

Shucks, he thought he'd managed to wiggle his way out of that. The entire class looked at him expectantly, though the honey-blonde kid from earlier was asleep.

"Uh… I like rock music. Two of my hobbies are hiking and cooking," The blonde shrugged.

"Seriously, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to steal my identity," Katsuki only raised an eyebrow at him to which he chuckled, "What are your favorite bands?"

He shrugged again, "AC/DC, Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, Mother Mother, Nirvana… the typical ones, I guess. Rob Zombie… ABBA, Mindless Self Indulgence, MAXIMUM THE HORMONE. Eminem, too, he's not rock but I like Eminem."

"Nice, I really like those bands too," His smirk looked different despite how he'd been wearing the same one this whole time, "You should try GRLwood. Pierce the Veil, Get Scared, STARSET… heck, I'm surprised you didn't say Skillet. Also, if you like Eminem, you might like NEFFEX."

"Whatever,"

"Hey, now, don't sass me," Dabi replied though without any venom, "You're lucky I didn't flag you for breaking the dress code, Mister."

That made Katsuki snort, "That gaudy tie was cutting off the blood flow to my brain. How do you people expect us to learn if our brains are out of commission?" He chanced a small glance at the still-sleeping yellow kid, "Well, some of us, anyway. Pretty sure he didn't have a brain, to begin with."

That comment made the whole class laugh, even the teacher, and the poor yellow kid (candy-cane had called him Kaminari, earlier, like that electric car company) woke up.

With an almost drunken look around the room, he mumbled, "Izzit the end of the world?" which only made everybody laugh harder before the kid eventually shrugged and laid his head back down on the table.

When the cacophony of laughter died down the teacher resumed attendance, though the weight Katsuki had been carrying on his shoulder's since that morning felt just a tad bit lighter.

Then it was onto the games. He learned many things about his classmates, like how Pinky (Ashido Mina) and Shitty Hair (Kirishima Eijiro; 'my hair isn't that different from yours!') were dating and how the girl with the choppy black hair, Jirou Kyoka, played pretty much every instrument imaginable.

The girl with the round face, Uraraka Ochaco, wanted to go into Architecture while the plain-looking green kid he sat in front of wanted to be a WWE wrestler. Apparently, he was actually incredibly stacked beneath his uniform. Katsuki didn't believe him, or the others who vouched for him, because there was absolutely no way that somebody with such an innocent face was capable of bench-pressing Katsuki himself. He refused to believe it until he saw it.

A few of the kids here were legacy kids, too, like how Ponytail (Yaoyorozu Momo)'s family owned the second largest manufacturing company in the world, and how Glasses (Iida Tenya)'s family designed racecars used in professional Nascar racing. Candycane (Todoroki Shouto) and Dabi-Sensei (Todoroki Touya) were siblings and their father, Todoroki Enji, had won the Nobel Prize in Engineering the year prior. As it turned out, the yellow kid, who he was now calling Dunce Face because of his lacking brain, was actually Kaminari Denki, and the reason his name reminded him of the electric car company was that his parents were the founders.

So thus, Katsuki supposed, that maybe this new school wouldn't actually be that bad. While annoying, his classmates were more than capable, and he even had a lot in common with some of them. Hell, he had the most in common with their teacher. Their young and attractive teacher.

As he was headed home he found that the day had completely lifted the weight from his shoulders bit by bit and instead left a warmth pooling gently in his gut. It felt like perhaps he'd swallowed sunshine. Even the usual furrow in his brow lacked its usual intensity. If his parents noticed, they didn't say anything, only smiled at him.

But it was true. He, Bakugou Katsuki, a model student on the honor roll and former class representative; thought that this would be, in fact, quite alright.

He was in for a pleasant school year.

Or so he thought.