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Denki always thought complex hero studies was a bit of an oddball subject for class 3-A. Ever since the battle against All For One in first year, All Might wasn’t physically able enough take two practical classes a week. So until they walked through the door on a Wednesday or Friday afternoon, they didn’t know what teacher would be taking the class. Today’s teacher was the topic of discussion as the students waited in the classroom for them to arrive.
“I’m just saying, after having Cementoss-sensei for the last lesson, we should have Thirteen-sensei! They’re usually much softer on the strategy side of things, and besides, how long has it been since we had a non-preparation battle exercise?” Mina was saying to Kirishima over her shoulder.
“Like, last month?” Kirishima replied, leaning back with his feet on Denki’s chair. “I don’t mind Cementoss-sensei’s lessons actually, I always feel accomplished after them.”
Sero stretched over to join the discussion as well. “All I want for this lesson is for it to be in the gym or in the indoor grounds, to be honest. It’s getting colder out, and my dispensers work better when it’s warmer.”
“Hey, Bakugou’s quirk works like that too, doesn’t it? Like it’s harder in autumn or winter.”
The classroom noise was pretty loud by nature of being 3-A on a Friday afternoon, but Bakugou still heard Mina’s comment. “You talking shit about me, Pinky!? You’d better-”
“Good afternoon students! P.E. uniforms, ground sigma, off you go!”
It looked like Midnight was the teacher for today, as she slammed the door open and immediately went to Iida, knowing he would’ve done the attendance already. Denki heard Sero groan, probably because ground sigma was a park setting, and not very warm at all. Denki ran to the locker rooms with everyone else, not wanting to get arrive late at the grounds and have to get a punishment of Aizawa-sensei’s choice. He shuddered at the thought of the last one, though often his saving grace was that Mina was always next to him.
Arriving at ground sigma in four minutes flat, Denki and the rest of the class saw some flags, boxes and random equipment in fixed places among the dead leaves covering the park. Some were even in the trees, a coloured rope-ladder was going up a particularly high oak tree.
“Looks pretty familiar. Kind of like middle-school problem solving.” Tsuyu said upon arriving, hopping in front of the cluster of students.
Well that sounded fine, Denki thought, usually problem solving was in a group. Most of the activities looked pretty easy, maybe not the one up the tree, but were they actually meant for 3-A? Weren’t they a little past team-building exercises?
Midnight sauntered to the students, whip and clipboard in hand, with… another woman(?) in tow.
Mineta’s attention was immediately on the woman with a high ponytail and tight clothing, though it wasn’t a costume. Maybe she wasn’t even a hero?
“It’s like Yaoyorozu with a flat chest…” He whispered, receiving a light kick from Ojirou for the comment. And that was being generous.
Midnight cracked her whip - god it was still a little bit scary - to get the attention on her before she spoke. “Class, I have brought someone into UA specially to assist with today’s lesson! Please be respectful to my brother, Kayama-san to you lot.”
Mineta made a choking sound. “That’s a man??” he shouted untactfully.
“Excluding Saturdays and Thursday nights, yes!” Kayama-san said joyfully, and Denki really couldn’t blame him for being mistaken, Kayama-san and Midnight looked nearly like twins.
Kayama-san stepped forward and flashed the group of students a familiar grin before reading from his sister’s clipboard. “As you can see, there’s a standard problem-solving obstacle course for you to work your way through. That in itself will be building on good foundational skills for heroism, but there’s a catch! To make this challenge suitable for the complex-skills course, you will be tested on your ability to handle interpersonal relationships in the field and manage emotional manipulation. For this, you’ll be under the influence of my quirk for the challenge! The parameters for the course are written on sheets by each problem in the grounds, as well as that problem’s instructions. Is that clear so far?” Denki was pretty sure he got it all, so he nodded when Kayama-san looked around the students.
At the edge of the cluster, Iida raised his hand rigidly. “Sir! What exactly is you quirk?”
“Ah, it’s part of the exercise that you don’t know.” Kayama-san said, not unkindly. “The first five students to complete all 14 problems will be rewarded, and the whole class must complete them all before the end of the period, otherwise Eraserhead gets to choose a punishment for the whole class.” The group groaned collectively, at least Denki wasn’t alone in thinking Aizawa-sensei’s punishments were the worst.
“And oooone more rule” Kayama-san held up the clipboard, “You can only use your quirk once!”
-
Denki kicked at the leaves by problem 3 as he waited for Midnight to announce the start of the challenge. Just his luck, problem 3 was the big tree, though he had Iida with him since there were six double-ups, so hopefully they could work together. They had found the instruction sheet at the base of the tree, and apparently all they had to do was remember the order of the coloured rungs of the rope ladder to enter as the code to open a box placed in the branches with evidence the for that challenge.
“I’ll have to take off my glasses in case there’s any traps that could break them, but it seems too easy…” Iida said, staring at the instruction sheet.
“Well we still don’t know what Kayama-san’s quirk is,” Denki pointed out, “it’s supposed to mess with us right? Maybe it’s like a psychological quirk that makes us all need to pee really bad all the time!”
“Kaminari, please.”
“Fine, fine.”
Birds fluttered out of the trees before Denki heard the crack of Midnight-sensei’s whip, (how did she make it that loud?) signalling the start.
Iida placed his glasses on the sheet and shot up the tree, already halfway up before Denki saw the pink gas rolling in.
“Uuuh… Iida!”
No response.
“Iida!”
The pink gas reached him before he could do anything about it. It seemed just like Midnight’s sleeping gas, same colour and smell and everything… though nothing happened.
“His quirk is a gas like Midnight’s, but I don’t know what it does!” He shouted up the tree to Iida, but the pink gas only reached just above his head, so he should be fine for now.
There still wasn’t a response from Iida, he must’ve been focusing. Denki had to wait until he got back down to do the problem for himself, and he had to start at this problem before going off any way he wanted, so he sat in the leaves next to the instruction sheet and waited for Iida to come back down.
The rustle in the leaves behind him didn’t startle him enough to turn around, but the soft-toned voice saying “Denki” did.
“Dude I thought we weren’t going to call each other by our first names in-” Denki felt a weird click in his chest when he made eye contact with his boyfriend “-class.”
Shouto shook his head a little bit and snapped to attention. “I did? I didn’t mean to; I just spoke without thinking. Anyway, I just finished the first two problems and it’s not that hard, I don’t get why it’s supposed to be difficult.”
“Do you know what the quirk does?”
“No clue. I mean, I feel a little different but I can’t put my finger on it.” Shouto looked up the tree. “I think I’ll come back to this one later.” And he was off in the direction of the next problem.
“Iiiiidaaaa, hurry uuup, Todoroki’s already on his third one!” Denki called up to Iida, on his way down now.
When Iida got down, Denki had his glasses ready to hand to him before he would climb the ladder for himself. He didn’t need to though, because Iida stared blankly at him for a second before accepting his glasses with an over-done bow.
“The challenge code is 307.”
“Huh?” Denki thought he had to get the code for himself?
“Uh, I- I held you up longer than necessary! I apologise, p-please use the code in your efforts to finish the course!” Iida pushed on his glasses and ran in the opposite direction to where Denki was planning to go.
That was… weird.
-
He managed to finish the whole course in 16 minutes and 34 seconds, third after Shouto and Yaomomo, with Hagakure appearing (well,) not long after him.
“Did… you guys… find anything weird… happen after the quirk?” Hagakure was quite out of breath, holding onto Yaomomo’s arm for support.
“Well I didn’t actually breathe in the gas, but I’m not sure about those two.” Yaomomo explained, trying to enunciate her words as much as she could though her gas mask.
“I guess I felt kinda fuzzy? Nothing dramatic though, it wasn’t like the problems were any harder because of it.” Denki said, and Shouto nodded.
“Yeah, it was like that for me too.”
Hagakure stood up straight. “I… didn’t feel any different at all.”
“Well done you four!” Midnight announced to them from the edge of a fountain. “I must admit, I didn’t expect so many to finish so early!” Stepping down, she checked that they had all fourteen challenge codes and recorded the results.
Denki leaned on the edge of the fountain to save himself the energy of standing. “So many? But there’s only four of us!”
“Um, this is a bit embarrassing but,” Yaomomo said while fiddling with the straps of her gas mask, “everyone else was quite affected by the quirk. I saw most of them by the river problem, acting... strange.”
Denki hadn’t seen anyone other than Iida and Shouto but thinking back to how Iida spoke to him after coming down the tree and breathing in the gas, he was acting strange too.
“Yeah, I think I heard them all fighting.” Hagakure said, her uniform sleeves behind her back.
“I wasn’t looking, though.”
Yaomomo turned her sharply to look at her. “Tooru you didn’t have your eyes turned up? That’s very impressive!”
“Momo!” Hagakure waved her arms (sleeves?) “You’re embarrassing me! Besides, I couldn’t have them higher than 0.3 for that long and I need the index to be at least 1.1 to see light. I used my one quirk use doing the tree problem with the colours.”
“Hold on, what do you mean by strange?” Shouto asked.
Yaomomo was quiet for a moment, figuring out how she was going to word it.
“They… were all clustered together, for a start, and some people were fighting. Some… weren’t.” She paused again. “I’m just going to say it, they were besotted with each other. It was like a public middle-school dance, everyone was-” she waved her hand towards the river, “-a mess, and it looked like Bakugou had a harem surrounding him!”
“How does it work, then?” Shouto moved to stand next to him. “Hagakure, Denki and I have all breathed it in, but nothing’s happened to us.”
There was a beat of silence.
Denki felt himself freeze up, suddenly hyper-aware of Shouto nearly leaning on him with how close he was. The air still had a pink tint as the quirk swirled around ground sigma, it kind of smelled like licorice.
Hagakure sniggered a little and holding her sleeve up to cover her mouth made it even more obvious.
“Denki?” Yaomomo looked quite surprised, and fair enough, as far as she knew he and Shouto were just classmates who studied together sometimes. Not really as first-name-basis friends.
Shouto carried on like he didn’t say anything weird, as if leaning on the fountain and being *this* far away from Denki wasn’t weird enough.
“Maybe there are several conditions for the quirk. The first one obviously being breathing it in,” he pointed at Yaomomo’s mask, “which Yaoyorozu hasn’t, so there’s something we’ve done that the rest of the class haven’t.”
“Oh, so I’m still Yaoyorozu am I?” She sounded kind of hurt, though teasing more than anything.
Hagakure’s sleeve started shaking again.
Denki bit his lip so that he didn’t say anything to make this situation more dangerous than it was already getting, though it was also kind of to stop himself from grinning.
“What?” Shouto still hadn’t caught on, had he really not noticed? He had never slipped up like this before, but he’s done it twice today. Maybe...
“I didn’t know you two were that close.”
Was he blushing? He’s been trying to get him to for a year, but his boyfriend didn’t blush. Maybe... it was the quirk.
“Like love-in-idleness.” Denki didn’t mean to say it out loud, but oh well. At least the attention was off Shouto now, too.
Hagakure’s uniform moved to jump up on the edge of the fountain. “Huh?”
“The quirk!” He exclaimed, getting excited in his revelation and standing up. “Like in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there’s this spell that makes people fall in love at first sight! You know, in act II scene II, um, what was it? What thou seest when thou dost wake; Do it for thy true love sake”
He was met with two blank looks and Hagakure’s confused voice.
“You lost me at Shakespeare.”
He moved from leaning against the fountain wall and started jogging towards the river.
“Like Midnight’s quirk but instead of falling asleep you fall in love with the first person you see!” He called out over his shoulder “Come on! We need to get the others to finish the course!”
-
Red-topped trees blurred past in the sides of his vision as Yaomomo led the way to the river. The liquorice smell was getting stronger and it was like the mist was in his head as well, making him feel… more. Like his emotions were plugged into an amp and everything was being played at once. He could still think clearly, he could still move quickly, but the stronger the mist was, the more hyper everything was.
“You’re such an English literature nerd.”
Denki huffed jokingly at Shouto’s comment. “Thanks for being supportive,, and totally not mean about my weird interests.”
“Shakespeare is the most popular English author ever, how does that make it weird?”
But wasn’t it weird how when he looked over to Shouto, with his only-slightly judgy look, the quirk’s effects were nullified? A second of eye-contact and his head was clearer, able to focus more on moving forward.
Shouto was running only a few feet away from him, and he couldn’t tell whether the quirk thing was happening to him too or not.
“Did you notice that?” He asked, slowing down behind Hagakure.
“The quirk? Yeah. It doesn’t work when I look at you.” Shouto said as he walked a bit further onto the root of a tree once they had all stopped to get a better scope of the other side of the stream, where everyone else was… doing their thing. It was quite a sight. Denki shoved next to him and leaned over his shoulder to see- woah. Yaomomo wasn’t kidding about Bakugou’s harem.
Hagakure clasped her hands and fawned over the two boys. “Awww! You guys are so cute!”
Ah, Denki thought, fuck. He wondered briefly if he didn’t move and stayed completely still, if he could avoid the looming confrontation.
Shouto stepped down and turned to Hagakure and Yaomomo, who looked to be both confused and calculating.
“What do you mean by cute?” He asked, cautious.
“Cute as in, you guys make a cute couple!” If Denki was able to see her features, he was sure she’d be grinning wildly.
It was only a matter of time before master of stealth and gossip-monger Hagakure found out, but how did she come to that conclusion so surely? He looked over to Shouto to gauge his reaction to what she said. They had a silent conversation which Hagakure interrupted.
“And cute because the quirk doesn’t work on you because you’re already together! I just think that’s adorable .”
“Huh? Huh?” Poor Yaomomo was at a loss, looking between the three of them blankly. "What do you mean?” She set her gaze on Shouto who, knowing him, would avoid the question. Denki had discovered that despite being known for Oversharing™ after the first-year sports festival, he didn’t particularly like letting others in on his personal life. Unless it was shit-talking his dad. He often shit-talks his dad.
“Well there’s only 23 minutes left so I’m going to jump across the river to not talk about this. Cool.”
Graceful. Like a swan trying to take off but catching its foot stuck so it ended up flapping its wings and face-planting into the water. Denki couldn’t help but laugh a little as Shouto avoided Yaomomo’s questioning looks and leapt across the river, landing on the other side safely.
“Okay then,” Yaomomo breathed, not letting the stress get to her. “Tooru, it’s a bit of a jump, do you want me to-?”
“I’ll just listen to Kaminari jump it, I should be fine.” She chirped. “It’s about 3 meters across, right?”
“Yeah, ish. I’ll go ahead.” Denki said before taking a few steps run up and clearing the width of the stream. Shouto wasn’t waiting up so he followed him towards everyone else, trusting Hagakure and Yaomomo would follow.
Before, Denki found the sight a bit funny, but closer up he couldn’t stop himself from bursting into gross laughter upon seeing Bakugou dramatically siting at the base of a tree, trademark grumpy look still there, but staring ahead following Aoyama’s every move. Even funnier with Jirou, Sero, Tokoyami and Mina all doting on him in turn.
“Wow this is actually kind of sad.” Shouto whispered beside him. Bakugou was trying to look nonchalant while paying close attention to Aoyama arguing with Uraraka, who was hand-in-hand with Midoriya- was Midoriya crying? That wasn’t that abnormal, though. Around that tree, Ojiro and Kirishima were having an intense DMC, Shouji was sitting sadly by himself, and Iida was trying valiantly at the actual problem by the stream.
“Mineta’s taped to a tree.” He said, when he looked up and saw the 3-foot menace himself.
“Good.” He heard Yaomomo and Hagakure say together as they came up behind them.
Denki gave the clearing a look around once more. Everyone seemed occupied with each other, no one was motivated to carry on the problem apart from Iida.
“So how do we fix it then? I doubt we can help them all through the problems without running out of time.” Momo was saying, but Denki was only half-listening. He crouched down to where Mina was playing with Bakugou’s hair and leaning on his arm. If the conditions were normal she’d be long dead by now, but this Bakugou didn’t seem too bothered, he was too busy looking at Midoriya with a sour look. Not that that was too different either, come to think of it.
“Hey Mina. Mina. Pinky. Mina. Beautiful best friend. Mina. Hey.”
She looked up at him if only to get him to stop pestering her, and then looked back. “What.”
“Wow, rude. Anyway, how many problems have you got?” He asked her.
“Problems? What- oh, those. Um, like three? I don’t care though, I’m fine just chilling here.” She said, not at all interested in him.
“Got three as in you’ve got three left, or you’ve done three?”
She ignored him.
He shook her shoulder to get her attention off Bakugou for like, two seconds. “Minaaaa.”
“I’ve done three- woah dude you have really pretty eyes; did you know that? They’ve got like, little gold bits in them that’s so wild.”
Denki was shocked still for a second, had she just ditched Bakugou for him? All he did was shake her shoulder a bit-
“Shou! Slap Mina in the face and then speak to her!”
Neither Shouto nor Mina liked that idea. “What?!”
Yaomomo was still confused about the name thing. “They’re both doing it now! Did you hear that Tooru? He called him Shou! Am I the only one finding this weird?”
Shouto pretended not to hear her and continued. “I’m not going to hit Ashido in the face for no reason.”
“I’ll do it!” Hagakure shouted out from the other side of the group at the base of the tree.
“Wait why are you- ow!” She must’ve hit Mina hard, the sound even echoed. He was allowed to laugh because he had best friend privileges and besides, it was Mina, it probably didn’t even hurt that much.
“I’m thinking that enough force can knock someone out of the effect of quirk.” He explained to Shouto next to him when he received a questioning look at his laughing.
“But there’s enough gas at the moment that she'll just fall in love again.” Yaomomo pointed out.
Denki shrugged, he hadn’t thought that far. When he was in a group, Bakugou was usually there so he left the strategizing to him. He just tried things out to see if they worked, and if they did, he went for it.
“Is she alright??” Hagakure said, poking an unresponsive Mina in the face. She was staring right through the invisible girl, with her already pink face getting darker and darker.
“She’s looking at me, isn’t she?” Shouto said. He really didn’t look impressed. “Why did you get her to look at me?”
Denki joined Hagakure in poking Mina’s face. “For evidence to my theory, duh.”
Mina moved her mouth as if she was going to say something, but only stuttered quietly. If only he had his phone to record this, the leverage would be just too good to ignore.
Mina stood up, shoving past the others surrounding Bakugou and running away from them all, covering her face.
“Well” Yaomomo started, as they all watched Mina run away like a TV show protagonist after a failed confession. “Todoroki and Kaminari haven't used their quirks yet, right? Here’s my plan.”
-
Finally, it was action time. Now that they knew where the source of the problem was coming from, they were at a point where they (read: Yaomomo and Shouto) could formulate a plan and stop Kayama-san’s quirk. The end of an exercise was always Denki’s favourite, especially when he had a purpose in the plan. There’s only so much his quirk could be helpful for in a non-combative situation, and UA has always focused on disaster rescue and strategic opposition as much as the huge, city-smashing battles that were inevitable. More and more villains were getting sneaky, though, meaning less were seeking the flashy fights with heroes that got them the first 5-minute segment in the evening news. Entering UA, Denki thought all he and his quirk could do were those big, flashy fights. But in two and a half years his perspective had completely changed; on the hero industry and himself. His friends gave him a reason to learn tricky fighting, not just ‘go in and wing it’ like he thought it all was. And when he still acted on instinct and fucked up big time, he could usually trust that his dear darling best friend, ever in tune with him, also fucked up big time so he wouldn’t have to dorm-cleaning duty alone.
Though mostly, how he saw himself was different from before - Shouto was the one responsible for that. He felt, no lie, dumb as hell in his class with freak geniuses like Yaomomo and Iida. Not just in class but during foundational hero stuff too. Having Shouto with him helped him not get kicked out of the hero course, because that was a Thing that they actually told him would happen if he didn’t get his grades up. And when Shouto helped him do just that, found things that worked for him instead of just trying the same old stuff like teachers did, it made him feel so much better about himself and his future. Denki wasn’t without self-doubt despite what some people thought, especially when it came to school. It was nice to have someone he could just be completely open with, it was nice to have someone who trusted him in return.
“Are you sure you aren’t affected by the quirk? Because you are looking mighty sappy there my guy.”
… He apparently hadn’t noticed the licorice smell getting stronger.
“Well you seem to be more in the know about how the quirk works, so I don’t know why you’re asking me.” He retaliated to the invisible girl, who was kicking leaves waiting for her cue from Shouto.
The plan at this stage was for Shouto and Yaomomo to run and find where Kayama-san was based because they were the fastest. Shouto would come back for Hagakure who would help Momo to restrain Kayama-san from escaping, so Shouto would use his quirk to form a airtight dome of ice large enough for Kayama-san to breathe safely inside without continuing the flow of gas. Denki’s job was to send out a current to knock everyone out of the effects of the quirk and then hopefully they’d all rush to finish the problems. It seemed like a pretty solid plan.
“I really don’t. All I’m saying is that you’re not being subtle~.” Hagakure giggled as she started making a pile of kicked leaves.
It was obvious that she knew, somehow. Denki prepared himself for a torrent of questions that he’d have to answer not dishonestly while still keeping things as vague as possible so as not to have his and Shouto’s relationship a talked-about thing. As much as Shouto didn’t like to admit it, the class dynamic kind of depended on Bakugou and Midoriya not being around each other for too long. They had gotten way better in the last year but since himself and Shouto were good friends with those two, if everyone knew they were dating it would throw everyone off, and it was easier for things to go as they were.
“Subtle... about what?” Okay, he knew playing dumb wouldn’t work, but it was worth a try.
The rustle of leaves stopped and Hagakure’s uniform moved to face him.
“I am invisible.” She stated.
“I was aware, thanks.”
“And that means that sometimes I can pass by unnoticed when others don’t realise I’m there.” She said pointedly, with a flourish of her sleeves. “So I might have maybe seen something that perhaps indicated a more-than-platonic relationship between you and Todoroki!” She was grinning as she said this, Denki could hear it. “Which is why I think the quirk didn’t work! Because you saw each other first, right?” The bright energy she had was evident in her voice.
“Yeah, so?”
Hagakure felt it was appropriate to give him a light shove. “So, if you’re already in love then the quirk wouldn’t have changed anything!”
The little Denkis in his conscience started freaking out and running around at that, screaming things in his head like ‘What? We’re in love with him?’ ‘I didn’t know that’ ‘holy shit’ ‘look it says right here, April 7th; We fell in love with Todoroki Shouto’ ‘why didn’t we notice that?’ ‘holy SHIT’.
To Hagakure he probably looked like he just short-circuited, and frankly he didn’t feel that much different from when he overused his quirk. It had been just over a year, and between him nearly getting kicked out of the Hero course, and Shouto’s disastrous first intern mission, they’d gone through quite a lot together. So it made complete sense that at some point he’d do so, he just thought it would… take longer. Realising that Hagakure was waiting for a response from him, he shook himself out of his headspace.
“Yeah that seems like a pretty solid reason.” He said, trying to match Hagakure’s brightness so she didn’t figure out that he only just realised that he was a little more into Shouto than he thought.
It was somehow possible for her to become more animated than before, as she started spewing questions nearly faster than Iida could run. “So you really are!! How long have you two been together? Why didn’t you tell anyone? You guys would be such a power couple, are you going to be a Hero Duo when you go pro? When are-”
Before Denki could even attempt to comprehend Hagakure’s interrogation, Shouto appeared from the thick of trees, slowing to a stop to the left of them. “We’ve found him.” He said, pointing back the way he came. “He’s south side of the fountain.”
Before they went off to subdue Kayama-san, Denki caught Shouto’s arm. “Did Yaomomo-”
He gave an exhausted breath, though not likely from the running. “Yes. Like she’d leave me alone after all she’s happened to hear.” Shouto looked back again to where Yaomomo would be waiting. “I’ve asked her to not share this - if you could too, Hagakure, that would be much appreciated. For the sake of the class and our privacy.”
Hagakure’s sleeve moved to her head in a salute. “Didn’t know ‘Kaminari’ and ‘Privacy’ were words that went together, but nah I got you.” She said, voice still lilting with a smile.
Denki let go of Shouto’s arm, but not before giving him a quick kiss on the cheek because why not? “Okay okay, you guys go do your thing, don’t fuck up.”
“It’s still class time, you pest.” Shouto swatted him away, but with a fond look in his eyes. Hagakure made a high-pitched sound before turning and running after Shouto who started off back to Yaomomo and Kayama-san.
Denki walked over to the space by the river, where everyone was mostly unchanged from their positions five minutes earlier. Iida had made some progress, but Denki remained out of his line of sight since he was pretty sure Iida was still able to function somewhat because he was the first person he saw, and he didn’t have his glasses on. Mineta was still taped a tree. Denki sighed, knowing he’d have to let him down for the whole class to complete the course. He tugged at the tape, which appeared to be 1st degree strength, Sero must’ve really been out to get him. Mineta remained unresponsive like Mina was before while he yanked him off the tree. Denki tried not to laugh because once on the ground, he started walking towards Bakugou’s group. Little homophobic fucker would hate that, Denki would be sure to let him know in excruciating detail the devotion in his eyes before he himself noticed the gas had stopped. He moved closer to the rough center of everyone and shocked the class out of their starstruck daze.
-
“Congratulations on all of you making it back!” Midnight called to the group of panting students that had all rushed to complete the course in the last 19 minutes. “Though only just! It wasn’t that hard once you got a hold of yourselves, right?” Most of 3-A were too exhausted to reply so she continued, looking at the clipboard. “And the first five to complete the course, in order, are Todoroki, Yaoyorozu, Kaminari, Hagakure and Iida. Congratulations to you!”
Kayama-san had calmly accepted his defeat according the others, and was now shivering slightly next to Midnight, up on the fountain again. “The first four specifically, for evading the effects of my quirk and saving the rest of you from what I imagine would be terrible punishment.” He sang, smiling and swishing his ponytail. The class found enough breath to talk about that, probably wondering how they avoided it.
“For the satisfaction of the rest of you who weren’t able to figure it out, if you’re familiar with Midnight’s quirk, it’s very similar.” Kayama-san smiled wider at the class and looked quickly over to where Shouto was before he addressed them as a whole. “Only a few things could make someone immune to the effects of a quirk as strong as mine, and luckily for you all, by some chance these four people avoided it. Most of you won’t be able to remember the time you spent affected by the quirk,” he paused for dramatic effect, “But it makes you fall in love at first sight.”