Nerve Breaker

"Bakugou I have something to tell you!"

                 Anzu beamed at him. He had no idea why the hell she looked so happy but it was creeping him out. Anzu asked him with her eyes before lightly grabbing hold of his hand. At first he was about to rip away, but his curiosity meant more right now so he simply gave her a warning glance. Stared at it awkwardly. She picked up on the hint but didn't let go anyway. " Or rather... more like something to show you." She corrected, veering off into the underbrush of the woods. It seemed awfully suspicious, and he kept his wits about him but for some reason he knew it was more important than she was letting on. Bakugou stuffed his hands into his oversized pockets. He didn't want to be in the woods once the sun went down. So he had to make sure it was quick. Once they were a safe enough distance away, Anzu stopped and let his hand fall to his side, she took a deep breath. It just now occurred to her she hadn't thought any of this through. She wanted desperately to second guess herself but she was too far in now. She had no choice. 

                "Are you going to show me or what?" He asked, agitation saturated his tone. Anzu bit her lip and concentrated. How to word it... what to say... Anzu nodded and turned her attention towards him. 

                "Well... you know how Aizawa instructed me not to tell anyone at the school about my quirk?" She asked, trying to pull the right words out of her stomach but her mind was stalling and her heart was racing, everything came out slurred. She truly was beginning to feel like this was a bad idea, yet for some reason she pushed on. 

                "What about it?" He sighed, picking at the bark of a tree. To her surprise he looked the least bit interested, which kind of helped in a way.

                "Bakugou I want to show you. I don't want to do everything by myself. And you're the only person I can say I trust right now. I'm sorry to do this to you, I know it's probably selfish... but I... By myself I'm not going to get very far." She stumbled like her mouth was falling down a flight of stairs. It was just now that it occurred how self centered she must seem. Placing the burden on him too. At this very moment she hated the decision she made. She was so weak in the mind she couldn't realize she was offering her problems to someone else. Anzu wrestled with her thoughts until they became loud and she fought with the urge to backpedal. Forget this ever happened.

                "Finally. It's about fucking time." To Anzu's complete and utter relief, Bakugou let out a big smirk. She could practically feel the hundred pound weight in her chest fall away. 

                "The problem is... I don't quite know how to show you..." She said, her mind running with ideas. To use it on him, or animals? Of course there's always the chance it could backfire but where would she find an animal?" Anzu searched for a test subject, her eyes darting back and forth but to no avail. She looked towards him and smiled nervously. He could tell by her expression what this meant.

                "Depends how much it hurts." He answered her pleading eyes. 

                "Well... It's not so much while it's happening it's the after affect. You might be sore for a couple of days." She smiled bigger, hoping to persuade him. He looked at her completely blank. 

                "Fine." He sighed, taking his jacket and throwing it in the other direction. "What do I have to do?"

                "Nothing! Just stand there and look me in the... wait I should explain that first." Anzu reminded herself, removing the white gauze pad from her eye. She snickered at the expression on her friend's face. 

                "I fucking knew it!" He yelled, little pops coming from his hands. "I knew it had to do with that weird ass bandage!" He grinned wider, clearly she had accidentally fired him up. Was it really that obvious? Anzu kept her eye closed, but stared at him directly,

                "When I open my eye, it's important you keep eye contact with me the entire time. If something happens and you do decide to move, let me know before hand or you could get seriously injured okay?" She asked, taking in deep breaths. She was excited. The rush of finally being able to show off her gift was sending her adrenaline up. What if he didn't like it? Would he be mad at her for some reason? Would it be worth Aizawa's wrath? She still hesitated, worry swarming her judgement. No. She wanted this. She needed help that Aizawa couldn't lend her. "Ready?" She asked, staring at him intently. He nodded and she decided to act before another wave of doubt came. 

                Anzu opened her eye, and was greeted by the slightly familiar suction feeling. It took her a second to get her bearings, but she focused immediately on Bakugou's eyes. The crimson was dimmed to a grey behind her foggy lens. When she finally, perfectly balanced the white streak in her eye on his iris, she began counting. She hand't had time before this to see his expression. The stone cold, expectant person she knew looked genuinely shocked and it made her smile. He stared at her directly, heeding her warning. Anzu could feel the heat of the afternoon sun setting on her back. In just a moment's time she would barrel straight into the constellation phase. Bakugou seemed to become unsteady but continued to remain in eye contact. That was when Anzu could see his nerves. All of the pretty little white dots and lines and spider webs in patters all over. She could see them clearly against the black mirage her eye had created. But what function to shut off? She hadn't thought about it. Obviously nothing internal, seeing as that would cause allot more problems than she had bargained for. So maybe an arm or something? Maybe his pharynx? Or an eye? She didn't want to cause him too much trouble. She settled on a single finger. His middle one for the sake of irony. She focused all her thoughts on it, the way the system worked, the transmissions being sent to the brain. Kind of like electrical work. When too much electricity flows, the job of the circuit breaker is to cut the flow off, which may cause a short circuit. So she simply cut off the flow of transmissions temporarily and the task was complete. Though it seemed simple, Anzu had to collectively identify and think to remove thousands upon thousands of nerves, pushing the transmission hard enough to cause a short circuit. She removed herself from the constellation phase by placing the gauze pad quickly and directly in front of her eye, removing the flow. Bakugou immediately shot his glance down towards his right hand. He winced a bit, which caused concern but when Anzu began to walk towards him, he held a hand up. 

                "It just felt like a pinch. What did you do?" He asked, but noticed before she answered. He went to grasp his knuckle, but was stopped as his middle finger hung loosely form it's socket. He tried again, but nothing happened. He grabbed it with his hands then looked up, his hair bouncing with the motion.

                "What did you.... This is temporary right?" His eyes were wide. Bakugou rotated his hand back and forth, infatuated with the fact his middle finger wouldn't co-operate. Anzu nodded and hid her smile in her hands. She didn't know why but she felt a sense of pride. She had amazed him, and it was honestly the best feeling in the world. 

                "I can... well... kind of short circuit nerves... If that makes sense." Anzu sputtered for words. She had never tried to explain what she could do to someone. Bakugou stared on in amazement. 

               "I can't feel anything on that finger." He said, trying to use his quirk, but sparks flew off in a different direction, and his finger wouldn't ignite. "This could be seriously helpful against an enemy." He said eyeing her, with a grin. She didn't know if she should feel proud, excited, or relieved. All her happy emotions mixed in with the power of making her own decision left her beaming. 

                "So do you think you could help at all with my costume and name? I kind of have no idea what I'm doing." Anzu couldn't describe how badly she wanted this. To think of someone she cares about every time she went out into the streets, or did her job. 

                "Obviously. That dumb ass bandage will be the first to go." Bakugou scoffed, getting lost in a deep thought. Well. After all the ways it could've backfired, in the end she had made the right choice. That is... as far as she knew.

                "What color do you want to be noted by?" He asked, scribbling things onto a notepad. Anzu thought for a moment but nothing really matched her personality. Red was too flashy, blue was too bold, purple looked weird against her hair, everything had an issue. 

                "I don't really know... You can choose." Anzu decided, resting her chin in the palm of her hands. Bakugou made a weird face but thought for a moment. Shouldn't she be choosing this stuff? She's the one that'll be stuck with it. Bakugou thought to himself.

                "I think if you were going to be identified by a color it would be white." She could feel prickles on her back and she tried to hide her expression with her hand. Anzu knew he had no idea, but she couldn't do that. 

                "Maybe black..." She recovered, dismissing his suggestion. This seemed to leave him less than happy. He rolled his eyes but proceeded to scribble black on his notepad. If you're not going to listen, don't ask​​​​​​. 

                "You're going to need a recognizable symbol. Mine for example is an orange x. Kirishima has an R in odd font. Pick something like that." His tone was filled with impatience but his expression showed otherwise. He seemed to be enjoying himself in an odd way. Anzu thought for a moment... and she realized the only thing she could think of was her eye. After all that was pretty much what her quirk revolved around. She had never actually looked in a mirror at what the symbol in her eye looked like. But from what she could see and what Aizawa had told her it looked like the inside of a braid. He explained it as a zig-zag pattern with overlapping ends. She took the pen and paper from Bakugou and scribbled what she thought it would look like. It was simple and not difficult to draw, however it was certainly recognizable. 

                "What about this? It's the symbol in my eye, or at least what I think it looks like." Bakugou nodded with approval and copied it down.

                "I assume you will be focused more on stealth seeing as your quirk isn't flashy. If that's the case I would get something you can cover up with, maybe something with a hood." Bakugou sketched what looked to be a knee length cloak. all of the sketching was quite simple, leaving her to assume the costume makers would do the rest. Anzu also asked him to add lots of pockets, seeing as she hated the idea of a utility belt. 

                "I assume I should get some form of eye patch too right?" Anzu scratched at the gauze over her eye. It did attract quite a bit of attention. Bakugou looked at her for a bit, biting the tip of his pencil in concentration. He then drew a diamond shape onto the notebook and put a horizontal line across the center. He then added her symbol on top. 

                "I bet the mechanics could rig it up so that it will open when your eye opens and vice versa. Plus it looks bad ass especially if you have a cloak hanging over it." He said, jotting down yet more notes. She was pleasantly surprised with how clean and nice it was looking. She decided she wanted knee length boots and a turtle neck top. Her new symbol was added vicariously through the outfit. On the eye patch, across the chest-plate, even the shoelaces were rigged to the pattern. She wondered that if Bakugou didn't have such a good quirk for fighting, if he would design outfits. He seemed to be quite good at it.

                They continued to work until about eleven at night. They both had school the following day and she knew how much Bakugou loathed staying up late. She already felt guilty enough taking up so much time.

                "Hey... thank you so much for helping me. I've taken up so much of you're time since I came here and I haven't even given anything back. I really sorry." She apologized, staring off into the corner of the room. She had been meaning to say it for a while, but the time never seemed right until now. She wished she was making an income so she could buy him something or even make him something but she didn't even have enough for soap. She had no idea what she could do without money that he would enjoy. It was obvious he wasn't easily pleased. 

                "I don't care." Bakugou looked up from writing.

                "What do you mean?" 

                "You should stop apologizing. I don't care either way. Not like I have anything better to do." Bakugou assured her, closing up on the final page. "And I assume you already have a name in mind?" He asked, hovering the pen over the line. Anzu looked at him with embarrassment, answering his question. "So you came into this entire thing without a clue as to what you wanted?" He questioned in disbelief. When he was answered with silence he let out an exasperated sigh. "You said it had somethin' to do with nerves right?" He said thinking to himself. "Explain how it works."

                "Well, after I look at someones iris in the weird white streak, I can see all their nerves against a black background and they look like constellations. I can pretty much push neural transmissions hard enough to cause the nerve to temporarily shut down. It's kind of like how a circuit breaker shuts down an overflow of electricity." She explained, hoping she could find something decent. Bakugou thought for a moment. So she basically plays the role of the medical circuit breaker.

                "What about Nerve Breaker? Like a circuit breaker except with nerves?" He suggested, hiding his pride over the good suggestion. Anzu couldn't believe it. Nerve Breaker. It sounded nice in the mouth and if she heard that on the street she would be curious. It almost seemed flawless. Especially because Bakugou had come up with it.

                "I think it's perfect." She smiled softly to herself. This truly was the step she needed. In no time, Nerve Breaker would be saving lives. 

                "You're not just saying that? You serious?" He asked dumbfounded that she took his first idea. He was expecting to have to try a couple times but...

                "I'm sure. It's perfect." She took the pen from his hands and wrote the name on the line, signing her name under it. 

                "You're last names Miritomoku?" Bakugou looked at the paper, his eyes growing cold with thought. Why did that name sound familiar? He had heard it somewhere. Maybe it was just something similar and he was crazy. Miritomoku. For the life of his he couldn't place it, nor forget it. 

                "Yeah, it was the name I had before I was put in that room I told you about." She said, sealing up the filled out contract. 

                "Speaking of that... It doesn't make sense that they would lock you up for that kind of quirk." Bakugou accused, watching her carefully. He wanted to know. The UHA wouldn't make such a rash decision on a whim. There had to be something deeper going on and he had a feeling she knew what. 

                "Well... I have a lot more control over my quirk than I used to. I'll leave it there." He could see something dark grow in her eyes. An old nostalgia, but not a happy one. That old festering anger had been shoved farther down than when they first met but it still resided. And though it was discreet, he could tell it had grown bigger. He would almost go as far as to say it was eating away at her. Clearly her quirk did something inhumane before this. That could be the only explanation. 

                "So does this mean I'm the only student who knows?" Bakugou stood up and walked her to the door. 

                "Yes... and if it's all the same to you... I'd like to keep it that way." She smiled and bid him good night.

                That night Bakugou got little sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he could hear it. Ringing louder than the silence in his ears. He knew of it from somewhere, that damned name. Miritomoku. Who was it?