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“Um, excuse me?”
Only a minute ago, Izuku had heard a conversation in the halls. A cyan haired kid talking to a redhead.
“Hey, I think the teachers are drinking.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah! Terasaka just saw Midnight-Sensei, and he said she looked a bit... tipsy. And Nakamura said the same about Vlad-Sensei!”
“Honestly? Good for them. They deserve a break.”
“.... Agreed.”
And of course, Izuku always knew how to make the best out of a situation. So he called his boyfriends, and started planning
“Hey Toshi, Denks. The teachers are drunk. Want to play Indian Poker?”
“Are we cheating?”
“Of course we are cheating. And I’m fucking in.”
“Then I’m in too, I guess.”
“Great! I’ll be the dealer”
So, here he was.
“Get in little listener!”
He entered the room, and saw some of the teachers. Midnight, Present Mic, Vlad King, and Snipe were all there. They all looked, not blackout drunk, but tipsy enough to make the plan work.
“I was wondering if any of you wanted to play cards with some of us? Me, Shinsou, and Kaminari are practicing strategy and how to manipulate expressions, but we need practice against someone else. Do you think you could help us?”
“Sure darling, why not. What card game?”
“It’s called Indian poker?”
“Haven’t heard of it.”
“I’ll call the other two and then I’ll explain.”
Minutes later, the two arrived.
“Ok. In this game, I’ll be the dealer, so I’ll be totally impartial. First of all, all cheating is allowed until a player reports it, and even then, all progress you made cheating is still valid. We mostly do this with new players, because we have more experience. Now, the rules.”
“We remove the face cards and jokers, and then divide the cards equally. Each turn, the player put one card on their forehead, without looking at it, and grabs one card normally. Then, the player bets as many chips as they want. Then, the card in the hand is revealed to everyone, and the player sees their forehead card.”
“There are three types of results here: pig, spade, and king. Pig is when your cards are completely different. Spade is when they have the same suit. And King is when they have the same number. King wins over spade and pig, Spade wins over Pig, and Pig is the lowest. If this ends up in a tie, like two kings or all pigs, then the one with the higher number wins, and get all chips. This goes on for 10 rounds”
Then Kaminari interrupted
“Normally we play one normal round, and one betting money. Each chip is 50 yen.”
“Betting money? Isn’t that... Y’know... not allowed?”
“Snipe-sensei, we’ve found out that people perform better the higher the stakes. However, if you’d rather not...”
“Everything for the sake of education!”
“Well said auntie. Let’s play”
The first game went ok. Mic won, with Snipe in second place and Shinsou in third
However, it was the second game where everything went to shit.
The teachers were obliterated. They went into the game thinking it was just an easy way to make a couple of bucks. But they weren’t expecting for the genius of Shinsou Hitoshi. He got most of the chips in the table, coming out of the game with 2500 yen.
“The game was rigged! Midoriya helped them!”
“I can swear on Nedzu I remained impartial for the whole game, Vlad-sensei.”
“Another round! I’ll win this time!”
“I’m sorry Midnight-Sensei, but Curfew is approaching, we really should go back to the dorms. You can have your revenge tomorrow, maybe?”
“Sure thing kiddo!”
And then, they went back to the dorms, and congregated on Kaminari’s room.
“Here Denks, your 200 yen back.”
“Thanks Babe! Think they’ll discover we cheated?”
“They got nothing on us. We did say cheating was allowed.”
“I just hope Dad doesn’t find out about this.”
At this, the three of them grimaced, no one wanted to face an angry Aizawa.
And thus, everyone went to their rooms for the night
However, the next day there was a confrontation. They were all called into the teachers lounge. There, seated, were Aizawa, Nedzu, and the four teachers from last night, obviously still hungover.
“Midnight sensei? You don’t look so swell. Want some painkillers?”
“I don’t take gifts from liars, thank you.”
“I mean we never lied? But go off I guess.”
“Well, Shinsou-kun, could you explain the situation then?”
However, the one that answered was Kaminari.
“It was hero training, principal nedzu”
“Could you explain your thought process?”
“First of all: information gathering. By eavesdropping, we decided who was going to be where, since this was going to be a game changer: Even if drunk, Ectoplasm, Aizawa, or All Might would probably have stopped us. And, due to certain circumstances I don’t want to explain, Cementoss would have known my and Shinsou’s strategy, so he was a big No. Also, we needed them to be at least a bit tipsy, or even sleep deprived, so their perception would be lower. We chose the perfect moment, people, and situation, to strike.
Then, manipulation. We used a creative reason to get them into the game, and then made us seem minor, made us seem defenseless during the first round, when the only thing at stake was pride, and then went all out in the last one, where there was an actual risk in losing, and a prize in winning. Also, Shinsou managed to keep a Poker face, where I just made my face emote differently to how I was actually feeling. So, even if I felt I had a winning hand, my expression betrayed that.
Let’s not forget the smart use of lies. Technically, everything we said was true. Sure, there were some lies of omission, and some stuff had double meaning, but if we passed it trough a quirk like, for example, Tsukauchi’s? Everything would ping truth.
Also, we had two class member looking through the halls, ready to alerts us of any teacher walking to the lounge. So, teamwork.”
“Summed up, last night was merely but a demonstration and practice of four fundamental skills for heroes to have, even if the first three are more prominent in Underground Heroes.” Kaminari finished, with an innocent smile.
“And don’t forget bullshitting your way out of situations, like Raichu here just did.” Shinsou added, looking smug.
“I must admit, those are important skills. However, I must ask. How did you do so well in a game of chance?”
“Oh, we cheated.”
“I KNEW IT”
“We legit started explaining the rules saying you could cheat, but go off I guess.”
“Could you explain how you did it? I have my suspicions, but still.”
“Is it necessary? We like to keep our methods as secret as possible.”
“I understand. Snipe, Kayama, Yamada, Ken? Please leave.”
The four left reluctantly, muttering something about sneaky bastards.
“Now, please explain.”
“The trick was in our dear pikachu here. By the way his cards were tilted, he told me the suit on my forehead card: to the left is spade, to the right is Diamond, Straight is clover, and Slide it before you put it down is heart. Then, he told me the number by fidgeting, something we could pass as something normal since he does it often. We had a code going on, mess with his bracelet, it’s a ten. Mess with his nails, it’s a nine. Etc, etc. We normally only cheat suits, but since the teachers werr drunk, we managed to pull it off.”
“And I truly was impartial during the game! Every strategy and planning happened before the game, and since I wasn’t a player, I couldn’t report cheating.”
“And how did you device this... strategy?” Aizawa questioned. “It doesn’t seem like something you’d come up with on your own.”
Oh, if only he knew...
“First of all: rude. Second of all: We literally ripped it off an anime so I guess you have a point.”
“Yeah, Kami is right, don’t be rude dad. But yeah, we took it from Kakegurui, a new anime on Netflix.”
“Truly ingenious, the three of you! However, as fun as it was, you aren’t allowed to fool the teachers like that again.”
“Fair enough.”
“You can leave now”
They all left, under Nedzu’s mischievous grin and Aizawa’s disapproving glare. However, if you looked a little deeper, you could see the pride in his eyes
They were wandering down the halls, going back to their dorms, when Midoriya spoke
“So... what are we doing with the money?”
“Maybe we can go on a date to that new cat cafe?”
“Denks, the love of my life, the light of my days, the yee to my haw, when the fuck were you planning to tell me there was a new godamn Cat Cafe?”
“I wanted to take you two, but then I realized: I’m fucking broke.”
“God same” muttered Izuku
“So I wasn’t going to say anything until I got the money, and here we are! So, this Saturday? At 6?”
“Sure hun!”
“Only if I get to treat you two to dinner.”
“Deal!
“Y’know... he never said we couldn’t do it to our classmates.”
“Game night?”
“Hell yeah.”