Chapter Text
Kaminari had long since stopped counting how many hours he’d been awake.
Hell, he’d stopped counting the days.
It couldn’t have been more than five. Or was it six? Did it even matter at this point?
He couldn’t say he was tired. At least not physically. His quirk made sure of that.
The electricity that emanated from his body kept him on edge, it kept him aware, it kept him awake and away from the blissful blackness that was supposed to happen when his head hit the pillow instead of the urge to stay awake for the next twenty-four hours.
In terms of mental toll, Kaminari felt like a bomb had blasted its way through the remaining shreds of his sanity.
Awake meant conscious, and that meant thinking. While Kaminari knew that most of his classmates thought the only thing playing behind his eyes was elevator music, in the long, lonely hours that stretched from darkness to dawn, Kaminari’s mind played through the sequence of everything they had been through since their first day at UA.
USJ attack. Sports Festival. The disaster that was training camp.
Kidnapping. Villains.
What it meant to truly be a hero.
And once he was down that road it was a dangerous spiral into philosophical territory Kaminari knew he wouldn’t be able to reach without an insomnia induced, energy-drink fueled state of consciousness.
Sacrificing your life to protect others. The possibility of dying.
It scared him. Badly.
Sleep was no refuge. It was a failed sanctuary, taunting him, forcing him to run through scenario after scenario that made his heart wrench and his breath stop.
Nightmares were preferable to the stuff he could concoct.
He wished he could sleep. If only he could drift into state that wasn’t waking for a moment.
But it seemed like sleep was out to get him, like it had a personal vendetta- no, a restraining order- against him, refusing to let him get within fifty feet of it.
When sleep scorned him, as it always did, Kaminari turned to the next best thing in his arsenal to keep the thoughts at bay: a game of Pokémon.
Simple. Light-hearted. Nostalgic. Incredibly mind-numbing. Full of pretty colors and fun creatures, it was the perfect diversion.
He loved that shit to death.
He’d stumbled across it as a solution by sheer luck.
One night he fumbled around for a charger, came away with what he thought was the right one, put it in his mouth to burn off some of his excess electricity in the hope that he’d be able to shut his eyes for a grand total of five minutes, and found the unmistakable green-stripe of light that signaled a charged DS blinking back at him.
The rest was history.
He’d been trying to catch em’ all since the last time he’d gotten some shut-eye, if not a bit earlier than that.
Insomnia wasn’t so terrible to manage now that he could jam his thumbs into small buttons designed for children’s hands and swipe a stylus across a screen mindlessly.
It brought back memories. Happiness practically flooded through his veins when he relived the good old days through the capture of an Eevee or a Jigglypuff.
Sure, he’d grown rusty since middle school, but it was coming back to him quick enough.
And the DS was another blessing in and of itself.
Its battery-life was downright atrocious, dropping massive percentages within minutes. His abuse of the system in years past meant that it required frequent charging. And DS batteries took up more energy than people realized.
The synthesis of the two allowed for Kaminari to feel his eyelids begin to droop at last. Not enough excess electricity existed to keep him feeling like a live wire.
Even though he wanted nothing more than to pass out right then and there, he knew he should take the time to shut down the DS properly.
It was barely hanging on already, and while he knew using it for hours on end had worn down the durability of the battery to something positively perfect for him, he didn’t want to break the thing.
It would be useless if it bit the dust.
It wasn’t exactly in the greatest condition and doing anything to exacerbate the damage his past self had dealt to it was probably not a good idea. That included just snapping it shut to dive off the deep end of wakefulness.
So, like the model Nintendo product user he was, Kaminari saved his file and exited out to the main menu.
A yawn tore apart his lips.
Damn, my body is actually tired for once.
He planned on taking full advantage of it.
The icy light seared his eyes, yet something tugged at the part of his brain that hadn’t consigned itself to rest.
A memory stirred, waves of sentimentality washing over him.
No. It couldn’t be.
How could he forget?
Holy shit, is that PictoChat?!
Kaminari almost let out a giggle into the nighttime. Or was it morning? Whatever. If he was giggling over this, it was stupid o’clock.
Clear as the day that would be dawning sometime too soon, the pixelated smile inside a square greeted him, it’s icon perched next to Pokémon ’s.
The chatting software that only worked with other people close by.
God, those were the days, laughing with his friends, writing the silliest things on their screens despite the fact they were right next to each other.
Without thinking, he clicked on it. The nostalgia factor was just too strong. It overwhelmed him, compelling him towards that fateful click.
It offered him an option of four chat rooms.
A, B, C, or D. Hmm.
He deliberated over it for a moment and then promptly realized it didn’t matter because 0/16 people were in any of the rooms.
In the end, Kaminari went with C. How could he not? It was the first letter of his hero name after all.
Just one picture, he told himself. He would draw only one, for old time's sake.
He had made maybe two artistic brush strokes across the digital canvas before he stiffly inhaled at the notification that flashed across the screen.
Now Entering [C]: doggielvr
His eyes widened and he felt a strange surge of adrenaline flood through his bloodstream.
Electricity crackled across his skin, the way it did when he was scared out of his mind, dishearteningly nervous, or downright excited.
Right now, he was possibly a combination of all three.
One thing was for certain: there would be no rest for Kaminari Denki tonight.
Jirou was beginning to really hate the ceiling.
It was mocking her, sitting there all high and mighty, looming over her in the darkness.
Looking down at Jirou, who was stretched miserably across her mattress, the ceiling seemed to say: “Why can’t you sleep? It’s an easy enough thing to do. Every idiot does it.”
Oh, how Jirou envied those idiots.
Her eyes burned from exhaustion. They refused to feel leaden. They were annoyingly open. Unwilling to close.
Ever since she’d collapsed onto her duvet all those hours ago, Jirou had felt wide awake, like someone was injecting her directly with espresso.
The false caffeinated fix had not worn off, much to her dismay. Now she was here, stuck awake and not knowing what time it was. Rather, she knew she desperately wanted to hit the hay and see the world in a few hours.
It seemed like the world and her idiotic ceiling were there for the timebeing, though.
Jirou wasn’t sure what was keeping her awake tonight.
She slept well for the most part, minus the odd occasion following one of the traumas she and everyone else at UA went through.
If her brain was refusing to turn off, normally she could pinpoint it down to two things: those bothersome thoughts that forced her to realize the gravity of being a hero and what it really meant, or the replays inside her head of all the incidents she’d experienced with her classmates.
Tonight her mind was blank as a clean page. Nothing but the image of her ceiling registering inside her head.
The lights were on, but no one was home. Emptiness was all that greeted her. Her brain was undeniably off.
It was almost worse than her usual two causes of minimal sleep.
She wasn’t like some of the other students, the ones who could go with only two or three hours and make it to the next day.
Jirou needed sleep, and the fact that she wasn’t getting any right now was ticking her off.
Screw this.
Jirou was going to sleep, whether her body wanted her to or not.
She threw off the covers she’d strewn over herself haphazardly and strode over to her desk, careful not to set off any part of the drums or strum a guitar string. The last thing she needed was to wake anyone else up.
There has to be some in here.
Jirou was scavenging for a bright orange bottle full of little pills labeled with the most beautiful word she had ever heard: melatonin.
Whoever had discovered this was a genius in her book. It was a natural hormone secreted by the body before sleep, no weirdness involved at all. If she could find some of it, she’d be home free.
Jirou rifled around in a desk drawer for a few moments until her hand finally flicked against something smooth. She fished it out without hesitation, and only until it burst out into the dim light of her room did she realize it wasn’t cylindrical at all. It was kind of flat and definitely rectangular.
Is that… my old DS?
Jirou blinked a couple of times.
Why did she bring it with her to UA? She’d only taken what she deemed necessary with her when she’d moved into the dorms. Had it really been sitting in her desk for so long that it had survived the journey?
Sleep-deprivation was most assuredly having its way with Jirou. She had no other reason to give for why she did what she did next.
It was that time between night and morning where all caution is thrown to the wind, and all Jirou could think when she flipped it open was, Wow, this thing is ancient.
When was the last time she even used it?
She absentmindedly pressed the power button as she walked back over to her bed and flopped onto it.
Jirou almost yelped.
A white glow coated her in a silver sheen, a familiar logo beamed out at her.
It had turned on .
If Jirou hadn’t known her body wouldn’t let her rest she would’ve thought she could faint.
How many years had it been sitting in that desk, collecting dust? How was this even possible?
Jirou checked the battery percentage once the welcome screen faded to a menu she had used many times before.
The bar looked a little under halfway.
Well, I’ll be damned. I must’ve put it away fully charged or something.
She swiped through the menu eagerly, the fit of the stylus in her palm reawakening things Jirou hadn’t thought about in ages.
An icon grinned up at her, a square with a smile in it.
Oh my God, it’s PictoChat. I remember this.
Jirou clicked on it with much less hesitation than she would’ve liked.
The nostalgia was washing over her in unrelenting waves now, or maybe it was the lack of sleep that was driving her to do this.
A screen signaling that it would take a moment to process allowed for Jirou to snuggle up beneath all her blankets. She was feeling like a child in every way again.
Once the loading screen had passed she let out a small smile as she saw the four available chat rooms.
This was taking her back.
These were so old-school, especially compared to the text messages her classmates never stopped sending in the dumpster fire that was the class group chat.
And to think you had to be within a certain distance of someone to use this.
Jirou snorted.
And then her laughter soon turned into a cough because her eyes caught on Chat Room C.
1/16. Beside the person icon.
Jirou couldn’t believe her eyes.
She clicked on the chat without even stopping to think about what could happen.
Now Entering [C]: doggielvr
Who in the fuck is playing on a DS at 3:24 AM around here?
The thought was shared by both Kaminari and Jirou, the first thing that entered each of their minds.
Oh, they were not going to get a wink of sleep tonight.
At first Kaminari thought he was hallucinating.
Yeah, he knew there were others in Class 1-A who wrangled with a sleepless night or two every now and then, but who in their right mind (because he was certainly not in his) would do what he was doing right now.
He’d heard stories of people who stayed awake for more than should be humanly possible; they’d lost their marbles, headed straight off their rockers for a short time period, and believed they were some kind of famous athlete or professional chef until one hell of a nap restored them to normal.
Was that what was happening to him?
Was he imagining that someone else was opening freaking Nintendo DS PictoChat, clearly someone from his class, at the ungodly hour of the morning they should both be asleep at?
When the first message popped up on the screen, he shook his head back and forth and rubbed his eyes.
Nope, not hallucinating. And there was no chance he was dreaming, because that required sleeping, and he was painfully awake.
doggielvr: what the fuck
Three simple words.
Now had never been a better time to use them.
He tapped furiously with his stylus. doggielvr had stolen the words out from under him. He hit send on the reply.
smexybeast: i could ask you the same question
Kaminari felt the urge to strangle his middle school self. Was that seriously the kind of dumb shit he had set his username to?
Unbelievable.
With an almost inconceivable kind of karma, the universe was kicking his ass years later for being a gross prepubescent boy by making him use that moronic username in PictoChat, of all things, at 3:25 AM with one of his classmates.
doggielvr: smexybeast? what kind of stupid name is that
The response loaded into existence. Kaminari banged his head against the pillow in anguish.
Order up! One tray of cosmic retribution with a side of regret for Kaminari Denki!
The reply stared up at him, a challenge to take up arms.
smexybeast: and doggielvr is better because?
A minute went by.
Growing into an uncomfortable mix of boredom and impatience, Kaminari clicked on the light green corner containing doggielvr ’s username.
Couldn’t you have a bio about yourself of something?
Oh. You could absolutely have a bio about yourself.
Kaminari did not care how late or early it was, he laughed at full-force, his belly aching, his sides cramping, and his chest heaving. Iida in the room next to his be damned, his cackling could not be contained.
Twin points of pressure formed behind his eyes. Moisture dripped down his cheek.
He hadn’t laughed this hard in a long time.
He wasn’t sure if it was because of what it said or the fact that one of his classmates, the people that the world would expect to protect them from harm one day, had written it. Or maybe it was that he was delirious. That was plausible, too. It was probably a glorious combination of the three, and it was making him cover his mouth to diminish the gleeful noises spilling out of it.
doggielvr: x luv dogs and all my besties x
i want an emo bf no normies or gtfo
emo guys own all my uWus :D hehe
Yep, Kaminari had to be hallucinating. It was just too good.
He even pinched himself to make sure.
It was real and there in all of its horrific beauty.
There was no possible way it was ironic, it just screamed of being something embarrassing from the past.
He wiped away his tears and tapped out something that was sure to start the dawn of a very big realization.
At the same time, a new message popped up.
doggielvr: who are you anyway?
smexybeast: i like your bio
smexybeast: i reallyyyyy like it
The grin that spread across Kaminari’s face was downright maniacal.
As soon as she saw that notification emerge onto her screen, Jirou felt her stomach sink, taking her heart and dignity with it.
She’d clicked on her profile frantically and felt the immediate sensation of regret settle over her.
Jirou regretted being alive. She regretted existing. Because if she’d never been born on this planet, she never could have written the monstrosity that would come back to haunt her like this.
She didn’t even want to think about who had seen that. It was obviously someone from Class 1-A, and like it or not there were several people who she thought were too clever for their own good in there. And that meant they would be outright awful for hers.
If she was uber lucky, no one would figure it out that is was she, Jirou Kyouka, who had written a digital testament to the cringe culture surrounding her middle school identity. In this scenario, the person on the other side of the screen would remain a mystery to her. If she was just plain lucky, it would be one of the girls, and the worst out of them would be Ashido. She would probably just tease her for a week or two after she realized it was Jirou and drop it when the next juicy bit of information came up.
If she had no luck at all, maybe Midoriya or Todoroki could be it. But then again, they didn’t strike her as people who would be doing anything with a DS at this hour. Those two were probably sleeping.
Jirou was jealous, especially because if she wasn’t conscious right now she wouldn’t have dug herself into this mess.
She figured she could rule out Bakugou. Even if he played games against Kirishima sometimes, he didn’t have a sentimental bone in his body. He wouldn’t have clicked on PictoChat and if he had, the messages would’ve been much more violent, full of uppercase letters and a colorful array of expletives.
Sero, maybe? Possibly Kirishima. She couldn’t discount them as candidates.
Her mind flitted to a certain blond boy that sat next to her in class.
Short-circuiting, brain-frying, one point three million volt wonder.
Jamming Whey.
This whole situation was so outrageously stupid, and it was directly in his line of expertise.
The pit her stomach stretched into an abyss.
He would be the worst if he found out about this.
He was the option for rotten luck.
She could picture him now, a stupid grin lighting up his features at the discovery.
She teased him relentlessly, and sometimes her remarks came out harsher than intended. She’d called him dumb, perverted, and immature. Most every negative adjective contained in the dictionary had been spewed at Kaminari by Jirou at one point or another.
It was all in good fun, right? Kaminari was an easy target, there was so much material to work with and Jirou couldn’t resist.
She was a moth to flame, taunting and lording things over him.
But if he was actually the one to lord something over her…
Jirou did not want to find out what that could entail.
The pit in her stomach swiftly closed.
Even if this debacle was pointing in Kaminari’s direction, (there was still a strong possibility that Kirishima or Sero, or even some other wild card of a person was on the receiving end of her chat) there was minimal evidence pointing to doggielvr being her alias.
No one knew about the plushie tucked under her bed that had been by her side since the age of three. Or its ridiculously bang-on name.
She didn’t have the heart to not bring it with her once she’d moved into the UA dorms. It was a permanent fixture in her life, even if she didn’t sleep with it any more.
If anyone was going to put it together, she highly doubted it was going to be Jamming Whey.
There was nothing to worry about. She was being nonsensical.
Besides, it wasn’t as if Jirou had anything extreme to be ashamed of. She was overreacting, at least she told herself that.
She didn’t like the idea of Kaminari returning a school-term’s worth of teasing with one gigantic catapult loaded with her former idiocy as a counterattack, though.
Whatever.
Still, Jirou was debating whether she wanted to go back in time and take a sledgehammer to both herself and the cursed hunk of metal and plastic in her hand or if she should hunt down this smexybeast (she hated how that sounded) and jam her earjacks so mercilessly into their eyes they would forget about whatever that was.
Why did I write that? I hate myself. So much. So, so much.
smexybeast: i know who i am but who are you
They’d finally answered the message she’d sent at the same time as their evil one.
Of course that was the response she got for her question. It appeared on her screen and offered no answers. Useless.
Jirou had no intentions of disclosing her identity, least of all after what had transpired seconds ago. smexybeast was acting the same way.
She’d been so traumatized by her own bio that she’d forgotten to check theirs
She clicked on it.
smexybeast: pokémon is a good game
Seriously? That was all it said?!
There wasn’t anything remotely humiliating like she’d sadistically hoped.
It was just a fact.
doggielvr: i don’t know if i should murder myself or you -_-
A few seconds passed.
smexybeast: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
smexybeast: what are you even doing awake here rn
The tell-tale noise of plastic against plastic echoed in the silent void of Jirou’s dorm. She hit send.
doggielvr: do i look like i know? bc if i did this wouldn’t be happening
doggielvr: why are you on pictochat it’s almost 4 am
smexybeast: do you really have room to talk????
doggielvr: i only joined bc i saw someone in a chat
A moment went by.
smexybeast: yeah that’s fair
smexybeast: we’re not asleep so do you wanna play a game or something
Jirou did a double take.
And then another.
She really needed to stop thinking she’d lost her grip on reality. Tonight was weird, and it kept getting weirder. When was she going to get with the program?
The offer was there, waiting for Jirou to scoop it up and embrace it fully.
What did she have to lose? Sleep was a long lost friend by now.
There were too many hours left before her alarm would go off for her to keep staring at the ceiling.
With the type of resolve that can only come from lacking proper rest, Jirou made up her mind.
doggielvr: sure. i don’t think i have many games, though. i only found this hunk of junk tonight
Did fortune favor Jirou enough that there was a cartridge left inside the DS?
It was so warm and cozy here beneath her blankets. Moving out from under them did not sound pleasant.
She felt around the base of the lower screen. A tiny thwack and out popped the weasel of a cartridge she’d wished for.
She read the title in the illumination offered by the alabaster glow of the screen. The sticker across the front had chipped away at the corners, its once brilliant hues now pastel versions of themselves, but it was still recognizable. It seemed that years of neglect could not keep her trusty old friend down for the count.
doggielvr: how does a round of mario party sound to you?
Jirou smiled at the screen.
Although it didn’t show much inside the classroom, Kaminari had a fierce competitive streak.
His grades were scraping the bottom of the barrel, and in terms of quirk control he couldn’t say he was slaying the game.
Needless to say, it was thriving right now. Nintendo was his forte, a strength he could always play to. He knew the ins and outs of every last board on Mario Party DS . He was a beast (maybe even a smexy one) at party mode. When doggielvr had suggested it he’d thanked his lucky stars that he was alone in his dorm so no one could hear his squeal of devilish delight.
He was crushing doggielvr . Beating the absolute shit out of them.
They were on their 25th turn now, and short of a last-minute twist of Aizawa caliber, Kaminari had it in the bag.
With six stars and eighty-three coins to boot, he was leaving doggielvr in the dust.
A measly two stars and seven coins were all they had. Third place.
The COM in front of doggielvr couldn’t even dream of touching him.
A miniscule cheerful sound emitted from the DS signaling the start of a minigame.
The announcer professed a four-way minigame was going to commence.
Goomba Wrangler.
Perfect. Kaminari was going to dominate the competition one last time
At the end of the twenty second interval, Kaminari did a miniature victory dance that made him look like he was some kind of deranged worm wiggling under his blankets.
The match had been a piece of cake. All the other fools had grabbed too many Bob-ombs leaving him an opening to wrangle every Goomba in sight.
Hell yeah, he’d gladly take those sixteen coins. doggielvr got nothing.
Zero. Zilch. Nada.
He wished he knew who they were so he could see the devastation written on their face. Served them right. Who sucked now? Not Kaminari.
They’d even forced him to play as Luigi of all characters, snagging Yoshi away from him with what had to be world record speed.
Fine. He wondered how doggielvr felt about hearing Luigi say “I am a superstar!” like a broken record for the past hour and a half.
It was music to his ears.
The screen rolled over to the results montage.
Leading Player: Luigi.
Ninety-nine coins and six stars? Not too shabby in Kaminari’s opinion.
His gaze shifted over to the clock.
5:36 AM. What a time to be alive.
He exited out of the game, the DS menu greeting him, familiar as ever.
He clicked on the icon that started this whole digital gaming rendezvous.
Maybe a minute later; Now Entering [C]: doggielvr
A soft smile tugged at Kaminari’s lips.
smexybeast: how does it feel to lose to someone named smexybeast
They hadn’t been able to chat through the whole course of the game, but he felt like he could imagine their reaction to his brutal smackdown of the other competitors.
He guessed they weren’t a fan.
doggielvr: this whole thing is stupid
Correct assumption.
smexybeast: that’s what i thought :)
doggielvr: you do this kind of thing a lot?
Kaminari paused.
Was confessing to one of his classmates that he played Nintendo games until the wee hours of the morning really something he wanted to divulge?
Sure, it was innocent enough, but the reasoning behind it was personal and he didn’t want anyone to worry about him. His classmates had their own problems and fears. Their burdens didn’t need his piled up on top, too.
It was the main reason he hadn’t told anyone how out of hand his insomnia had become.
But then again, he could hide behind smexybeast and something about the atmosphere surrounding tonight made him feel as though this couldn’t deal him any real damage.
Plus, he doubted anyone would pick up on his reasoning if they found out who he was. They would probably just assume it was dumb, idiotic Kaminari with so few brain cells children’s games were still exciting to him.
They could laugh all they wanted. Pokémon fucking rocked, no matter what age you were.
He typed out his reply.
smexybeast: yeah i have a bad relationship with sleep
smexybeast: never met anyone else doing it tho
smexybeast: most people aren’t awake by now
The reply bubbled up from the bottom of the top screen.
doggielvr: i couldn’t sleep tonight either
smexybeast: thanks for playing with me :D
doggielvr: anytime
Kaminari gave the screen a million-watt grin. This had been fun.
Having company had made the time go faster, and he’d been so immersed in beating doggielvr that his brain had gone blank. No thoughts to plague him. Just Mario.
doggielvr: kill me now. we have class in a few hours
Oh yeah, that.
He felt the joy in his chest deflate like a leaky balloon. Kaminari dreaded turning in his math homework. Ectoplasm’s red pen was going to be all over it.
smexybeast: you should try and sleep at least
doggielvr: yeah
doggielvr: see you in class
smexybeast: see ya then
Blue text flashed along the bottom of the screen. Now Leaving [C]: doggielvr
Kaminari exited shortafter and powered down the DS. He snapped it shut and flung it gently onto the mattress.
What a night.
Just who, exactly, was doggielvr ?
Kaminari was going to do his damndest to find out.
Jirou found herself staring at the ceiling again.
There was less hatred this time, more of a quiet acceptance that this was her fate and maybe it wasn’t so bad. It hadn’t been, not when she’d been able to play Mario Party DS until morning light began to seep through the scarlet of her curtains, reminding her that class would be in full-swing way too soon.
And smexybeast would be there.
They’d obliterated her at party mode, with almost unnatural skill and precision. And a surprising amount of strategy that she’d failed to realize was being used until it was much too late.
It had been fun all the same. She’d found herself smiling more often than not, even when she’d been pulverized in minigames.
Her work was cut out for her. A sleuthing mission set to begin. She could only hope that smexybeast didn’t have the same plans.
And with that, Jirou’s alarm decided to go off, signaling that the long night was over and another day at UA was set to begin.