Bakugo couldn't sleep. Depressing thoughts flooded his head.
—I'm useless. Even a six-and-a-half-year-old could beat me up. I don't want to be here anymore. I feel so helpless. Why aren't I back in my own world yet? Have they stopped trying to get me back? —Bakugo thought, tears welling up in his eyes. —Dad... Mom... I miss you so much. —
She spent that entire night crying uncontrollably.
From that day on, his attitude changed drastically. He became even more surly than he already was, stopped trying to train his chakra, and spent his days at the orphanage, hoping that one day, sooner rather than later, they would come back for him. Just as he told Sasuke, he stopped going to the Uchiha neighborhood. The food at the orphanage was disgusting, unlike Mikoto's, so he set himself up as the chef there. It also served as a way to kill time.
He received visits from both Mikoto and Minato, but Bakugo's indifferent attitude made them uncomfortable. After a year, they stopped visiting him. However, on his eighth birthday, Mikoto visited him again in the morning, six months after her last visit.
"Katsuki, happy birthday!" Mikoto said with a smile.
"Get out," Bakugo said sulkily.
"Come on, don't say that, I brought you a gift!" Mikoto continued, pretending not to have heard Bakugo.
"You're not my mother, I don't want your gift! I made that pretty clear to your son," Bakugo said, frowning at the floor.
Bakugoi was surprised by the pain he felt on his cheek. His eyes widened and he looked at the cause of the pain, Mikoto. The woman's eyes were watery and her hand extended from the slap he had landed on her.
"How long are you going to keep up this nonsense?" Mikoto shouted. "I tried to be patient, thinking it would be just one of your tantrums. But I'm fed up. This has gone too far. I don't know what I did wrong that day to make you not want to spend time with me again. But if I did anything wrong, I apologize."
"You didn't do anything, just... It doesn't matter. Go away, I want to be alone," the ash-blond said, turning around. But this time Mikoto didn't let him go and hugged him from behind.
"Is it because I'm not your real mother?" Mikoto asked, hugging him tightly. Bakugo froze at Mikoto's touch; he missed her so much.
"You said it yourself. You expected nothing less from your son, referring to Sasuke. You don't expect anything from me because I'm not your son. That's why you don't care that I'm useless," Bakugo explained, gritting his teeth tightly to keep from crying.
"You've been angry for so long over that nonsense?" Mikoto asked incredulously.
"It's not nonsense to me," Bakugo replied, annoyed.
"Well, that's nonsense, Katsuki. It's true that you're not my biological son, but you are my son. Let that be clear. You're as much my son as Itachi and Sasuke are. And it's also true that I don't care if you don't know how to use chakra, but you're not useless. From what I've heard, you're better at cooking than I am! You have other talents that my other children don't! Which is normal, it's what I expected from a son of mine," Mikoto explained with a smile.
Bakugo couldn't hold it in any longer and hugged Mikoto tightly, leaving a river of tears on her dress.
"I'm sorry I said you're not my mother!" Bakugo sobbed, resting his face on Mikoto's shoulder. "I've missed you so much!"
—Me too, Katsuki... —Mikoto replied, kissing Bakugo's hair. —Bakugo, do you want to live with us from now on?—she asked, separating from him.
"It'll be a pain living with the dwarf and the dark-circled one..." Bakugo said, wiping away his tears.
"Katsuki!" Mikoto scolded him.
—It was a joke! Well, maybe not... But of course I want to live with you! —Bakugo replied, hugging Mikoto again.
"You're such a fool, Katsuki," Mikoto said. "Tonight will be your last night at the orphanage. I have to fill out the paperwork to become your guardian. So I want to see you with your suitcase packed tomorrow."
"Don't say anything to the shorty or the dark-circled one. I want to see their faces when they find out I'm their roommate," Bakugo said with a mischievous smile.
"As you wish, darling," Mikoto said, kissing him on the forehead. Bakugo stopped her as she was about to leave.
"Mikoto..." she turned around at the blond's call. Bakugo blushed violently. "Can I call you mom?" Mikoto's heart skipped a beat.
"I'd love to, Katsuki," Mikoto replied with a sincere and affectionate smile. "I'll wait for you here tomorrow at the same time with your suitcase packed." "See you tomorrow, Katsuki!" Mikoto said goodbye.
—See you tomorrow, ... mom! — Bakugo said goodbye in turn.
Bakugo never imagined that mom would be the last word he would say to Mikoto.
It took the ash-blond boy less than half an hour to pack his suitcase. Four T-shirts, a pair of shirts, three pairs of pants, and a pair of flip-flops were his possessions. He spent the entire afternoon wondering... Would this be a betrayal of his real mother, Mitsuki? Would she understand?
He was so excited he couldn't stay still, let alone sleep. So, as dusk fell, he went to the Uchiha district to get to know his new neighborhood better.
When he got there, it was already nighttime, so he was surprised to find all the lights were off. He didn't give it much thought until, thanks to the moonlight and his sharp vision, he glimpsed in the distance a person with long, dark hair—not like Itachi, though, since Itachi didn't have a ponytail—and wearing a black suit and carrying a katana.
But the most distinctive feature of the figure was that it wore a mask. But it wasn't a mask like the ones I'd seen on ANBU members before. This one was orange, with a single hole over its right eye, surrounded by a bunch of strange black markings.
"Hey!" Bakugo shouted, approaching the mysterious figure. He turned toward the voice. "Do you know why none of the lights are working, masks?"
For a moment it seemed that he was going to unsheathe his katana, but the stranger, seeing that he was a kid and not from the Uchiha clan, decided to let him pass and teleported to another place, revealing a black spiral as he performed the technique.
"What the fuck...?" Bakugo said, raising an eyebrow in confusion.
Then his eyes opened wide when he saw that there was damage everywhere, he noticed that there were also traces of blood and shurikens stuck everywhere.
"Shit..." Bakugo whispered in fear, realizing that the culprit was most likely that masked figure. "Mom!"
He ran through the neighborhood like a bat out of hell, at a speed unbecoming of a child his age. Ignoring the corpses he saw in the streets, he headed straight for the Uchiha mansion. On his way, he saw a kunai stuck in the ground, which he picked up without stopping running. The adrenaline coursing through his body allowed him to ignore the fatigue in his legs from running for so long.
He threw open the door to the mansion's grand hall. There he saw a scene he would remember for the rest of his life. Fugaku lay dead on the floor, and Itachi, dressed in his ANBU uniform, was plunging his katana into Mikoto's heart. Hearing the blond's footsteps, he turned his head to look at Bakugo with his three-bladed sharingan.
Bakugo stood petrified for a few seconds, not because of the Sharingan, but because of the shock the scene caused him. First, he looked at Itachi, and then at Mikoto's corpse, which had fallen to the ground after Itachi withdrew the katana she was holding. He suppressed the sadness and anxiety he was feeling and focused on the hatred. A hatred great enough to make him forget everything else. A hatred with one goal: to kill Itachi Uchiha.
"You shouldn't be here, Bakugo," Itachi said in an emotionless tone.
"Itachi..." Bakugo said in a terrifying whisper, gripping the kunai with such force that it caused wounds that bled. The hatred he felt was such that he stopped using the nickname to refer to the Uchiha genius. He could never forget the name Itachi Uchiha again.
"That's the first time you've said my name, Bakugo," Itachi said in a tone unbecoming of someone who just murdered his parents.
—And the last one too! —He ran towards him with the kunai in his right hand since he was right-handed. —DIEEEEEEEEE!—
Immediately afterward, Bakugo leaped over two meters high and tried to stab Itachi, who dodged it with little effort. With superhuman speed, Itachi struck Bakugo in the neck with the back of his hand, knocking him unconscious.
"I'm sorry. But I'm also doing this for you, Katsuki Bakugo," Itachi said regretfully.
The ash-blond man couldn't hear these words. Nor did he feel a tear, belonging to the Uchiha genius, fall onto his face.