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Aizawa Shouta liked exams.
Not in a sadistic way—though the students might disagree—but in the sense that, for a few blessed hours, they were quiet. No explosions. No screaming. No surprise monologues. Just papers, pens, and peace.
Class 1-A filed in like usual. Sleepy. Buzzing. Nervous energy radiated off Kaminari and Ashido like a cheap cologne. Todoroki looked bored. Iida was doing stretches for some reason. Bakugou was…
Calm.
Aizawa narrowed his eyes.
That wasn’t strange, necessarily. Bakugou was always composed during tests. Sure, he was loud during training , loud during lunch , loud in the hallway , but when it came to academics, the boy turned into a sharp, focused machine. Always still. Always deadly. Focused. Sharp. Usually the first to finish, and the last to cause trouble during midterms.
So Aizawa handed out the exams, one by one, without a second thought.
For the first five minutes, everything went according to script. The room was eerily quiet. Pens scratched, pages flipped. Uraraka bit her lip. Todoroki blinked like time had paused. Midoriya was scribbling furiously, lost in a haze of muttering and formulae.
It was the peace Aizawa craved.
That is until Bakugou—unprompted, unprovoked, and, apparently, unhinged —slammed his pen on the desk like it had insulted his ancestors.
SLAM.
Aizawa looked up from his grading clipboard.
The rest of the class flinched.
He was scowling at the test, nostrils flaring, hand twitching like he couldn’t decide whether to snap the pen or set it on fire.
Iida opened his mouth, then closed it. He’d never heard him go off during exams. No one had. This wasn’t normal Bakugou rage. This was mid-exam meltdown Bakugou. And no one had seen it before.
Bakugou growled at the paper. “What the hell is this phrasing?! What kind of sadistic, word-twisting—this isn’t an essay, this is a war crime !”
And it began.
One by one, the warning signs.
He glared at the page like it had insulted his intelligence, his life, and his quirk.
He
flipped a page
like it owed him money.
And then, without fanfare—
He threw the paper.
Just—tossed it in the air like it was tainted. It fluttered down, landed sideways, and he stared at it like it had personally betrayed him.
Aizawa, still swaddled in his cocoon of exhaustion, blinks. “Bakugou.”
The boy muttered, “Shut up, I’m dealing with this.”
Kaminari leaned back in his seat slowly. “He’s dealing with it,” he whispered to Sero.
And then it got worse.
Bakugou kicked his desk.
Not nudged. Not shifted. He football-punted the thing three feet forward with an enraged grunt, like it had dared challenge him to a duel.
The entire class stopped writing.
Sero’s mouth dropped open.
Midoriya blinked. “...Is he okay?”
Mina looked around, wide-eyed. “Uh…?”
Ochako’s pen slipped from her hand. Jirou’s earjack twitched in alarm. Todoroki looked at Bakugou the way one looks at a bird suddenly on fire.
Kirishima was mid-sentence in his head, mouthing something like “explain the ethical implications of—” and paused. “Yo, Bakugou?”
Aizawa considered intervening. Truly, he did.
But then—“I’M JUST TRYING TO FINISH THIS DAMN THING, DON’T YOU SEE?!” Bakugou roared, wild-eyed, hair crackling with static. His fists clenched. His left eye twitched like it was thinking of joining a different body.
He sounded genuinely distressed.
Aizawa blinked.
“…Right.”
Bakugou, chest heaving, stood still with the test clutched in one hand and murder in his eyes—then grunted, dragged the toppled desk upright with a clang, snatched a new pen from Todoroki’s desk (without asking, of course), sat down in a violent slump and began to write.
No. Write is too soft a word. He attacked the paper. He assaulted it with genius and fury and the raw, unfiltered energy of a volcanic rant trapped in paragraph form. An essay that bled ink and fury. Every sentence stabbed into existence. Every paragraph slammed into form. Scribbling with the rage of ten thousand unjustified plot twists. At one point, he underlined a phrase so hard the paper tore.
Aizawa rubbed his eyes. “He was fine this morning,” he muttered. “He ate toast. What happened?”
Ten minutes later, Bakugou stood up, stormed over, and slapped the paper onto Aizawa’s desk like he was submitting evidence in court.
Then he turned. Sat. Folded his arms. Silent.
Kirishima stared at him like he’d just watched Godzilla recite Shakespeare. “Bro... are you possessed?”
Bakugou didn’t answer. Just muttered, “Stupid test pissed me off.”
The class did not recover.
Later that night, Aizawa sat grading.
And stared at Bakugou’s test.
From the hallway, Mic poked his head in. “Grading Bakugou’s?”
Aizawa just held up the paper.
The corner was crumpled. There were fingerprints— soot fingerprints . The essay section was written in all caps for five straight lines before suddenly slamming into cursive, then back to block letters as though the paper itself was experiencing mood swings.
Mic let out a long, low whistle. “That kid needs a nap. And maybe a hug. But like, the kind you give with tongs.”
Aizawa blinked. Stared at the name in the corner.
K. Bakugou.
Right. That tracks.
The multiple choice was flawless.
Each answer bubble perfectly filled in, not a single erasure mark. No hesitation. Every formula correct. Every analysis sharp.
He flipped the page.
Short answer?
Also perfect. One even cited a supplemental reading he didn’t think Bakugou had even looked at. “Does he have a
photographic memory?
” Aizawa muttered, scratching at the back of his neck.
And then…
The essay.
He took a deep breath. Braced himself.
The essay— deranged , frankly. Written with the urgency of a man escaping an active volcano. Possibly written mid-breakdown. The phrase “this institution is built on the ashes of false heroes” appeared at one point. Another paragraph started mid-sentence with “—and another thing , if you think I won’t call out this biased phrasing, think again—”
“…What?”
He kept reading.
At one point, Bakugou had underlined an entire paragraph three times and added a side note: “This is the only acceptable way to ask this question, fix it next time.”
Aizawa stared at the page. The page stared back.
“…This is… correct?”
His voice was soft. Tired. A man grappling with the implications of grading an
emotionally unhinged genius.
He flipped to the rubric. Mechanics: full marks. Content: insightful. Voice:… too much voice? He scribbled a note and scratched it out.
It was… correct. Every single answer.
Aizawa sighed, scribbled:
“100. Do not kick the desk next time.”
He meant it.
Because whatever that had been?
It was not a normal exam tantrum.
It was a scholarly apocalypse. A knowledge-based catastrophe. A high-IQ breakdown with excellent grammar.
And Aizawa, weary and defeated, closed the folder and whispered to the fluorescent lights above:
“…I need a raise.”
He sat back. Rubbed his temples. Glanced across the stack of remaining papers and then back to Bakugou’s war journal.
“…He got mad at this test because it wasn’t hard enough, didn’t he.”
A pause.
He sighed. Looked to the ceiling like it might offer divine guidance.
“Why are my most powerful students also the most emotionally unstable.”
Aizawa dropped the test into the graded pile with a soft thud .
Then, grim-faced, he turned to the rest of the stack.
Kaminari’s paper: had water damage despite there being no water involved.
Jirou: wrote “I can’t concentrate with all the yelling” three times in lieu of an essay.
Yaoyorozu: one answer written twice.
Todoroki had apparently drawn an hourglass and labeled it “TIME.”
Ashido’s answer to question 4 was just “I think Bakugou’s going through something.”
The entire class had been distracted. Flustered. Spiritually wrecked.
Everyone had been distracted. Everyone failed.
The next morning, Aizawa—tired, eyes bloodshot, coffee in hand—stood before the groggy, traumatized class and delivered the news:
“You’ll all be retaking the exam next week.”
The groans were instant. Emotional. Protests. Sero nearly fell out of his chair.
“Except,” Aizawa added, “Bakugou. He passed.”
Silence.
Dead silence.
Everyone turned slowly. Like horror movie survivors realizing the monster had been one of them all along.
Bakugou leaned back in his chair, arms crossed like a smug, war-torn scholar-king.
Mineta whispered, “This is how supervillains are born.”
Kirishima hissed, “Bro, are you kidding me?”
Ashido snapped her pencil in half. “HE was the distraction!”
Jirou muttered, “I feel like I got caught in an academic natural disaster.”
Bakugou just scoffed. “Tch. Maybe if you extras could handle pressure, you wouldn’t have to take it twice.”
Mineta buried his face in his hands. “I studied so hard and now I have to do it again because he kicked a desk like it owed him money?!”
Aizawa sighed again. “Next time, I’m sedating him.”
In the group chat later that day— ‘Midterm Trauma: The Bakugou Incident’ —Kirishima simply posted:
😭 bro we suffered and he WALKED
Kaminari wrote:
“I am never sitting near him again.”
Sero replied with:
“He bent time. I swear we lost fifteen minutes to his rage vortex.”
And Todoroki just sent a meme of a burning building captioned:
“He got a 100. We got therapy.”
And no one ever felt safe during midterms again.