Chapter Text
Pairs of eyes leer at him from every corner, unsmiling faces gaunt with the shadows crawling along the walls. He grinds his jaw and takes a long, slow breath, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Just a few more wires.
He draws a slim cord up from beneath the tangled mess, twisting it back and forth to inspect the fraying ends. Sparks bounce out, skittering down the lines and popping tiny stains into his well-worn gloves, now pockmarked with smoke and ash. Just a few more wires. How long has he been telling himself that now?
It must be a trick of his imagination, his mind adding excitement where it isn’t needed. That must be it. It has to be something produced from boredom, the echoes of an unoccupied brain, because there is no way that mannequin just looked straight at him. Absolutely not. There’s also no way it just lifted an arm, twitched a leg, jerked its neck hard enough to the side that it ought to have snapped. No way in hell that actually happened. No way in hell it’s still happening.
He shakes his head, huffing out a sharp exhale to get his matted bangs off his face. Definitely not happening. None of the mannequins have moved, because that would be ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if magic can actually do that or not, because who would waste their ability on something like that? No one, exactly. Just two more wires.
With no small amount of panic sending his hands into tremors, he loops one wire over and around the other, pulling them taught and dragging a tiny blade along the side to remove the protective casing. The inner wires, tangled copper and silver and flecks of steel, spring free and claw for purchase, flickering with white-hot sparks that leap at his face. He jolts back on instinct, flinches sharply as his back makes contact with something not quite solid, but definitely there.
He glances up, eyes darting around wildly to process something, anything. It’s the mannequin, to be sure—though he’s pretty certain it wasn’t behind him when he began—but its eyes are wrong. Not missing, or too big, or off-colored, just wrong. Like they belong on a different face. Not that their current home can necessarily be called a face, but still. They seem to pulse in tandem with his heart, managing to glare without moving, without even shifting, as that awful mouth that definitely wasn’t there before yawns open, letting out a curdling scream that wrenches at his gut, seeps into his veins, shatters his bones before abruptly cutting itself off. The silence is so loud, he almost misses what it says next.
“...iya?”
“...doriya. Midoriya!”
And that voice is—definitely not the mannequin’s. “Care to join the rest of the class?”
“I, uh, sorry, I, um,” Izuku says expertly, every inch of heat in his body flooding to his cheeks as he stares at his desk—his very real desk, that actually exists, unlike the vivid just-shy-of-horror story he managed to daydream up in the middle of class—and pretends like he isn’t about to cry as Ishiyama, his (also very real) English teacher, glares daggers at him. “I, I mean, uh, I’m,” he continues.
“Would you mind telling me the answer now?”
“The, um, the answer to what?” Izuku mentally slaps his face before smoothly continuing, “Would you, uh, could you maybe repeat the question please?”
“Repeat the question,” Ishiyama echoes, inclining his head. “You want me to repeat the question I’ve asked you to answer three times already?”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Izuku whispers, still focused tightly on his desk and trying to keep his voice from trembling.
“Ernest Hemingway!” another voice calls out from the other side of the room. Izuku dares the briefest of glances over to see Ochako Uraraka leaning over her desk, one hand stretched in the air, a look of stubborn desperation on her face.
“Thank you, Miss Uraraka, but I was not asking you.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t giving him the question, either.”
“Because I already gave it to him several times. Please take your seat, Miss Uraraka, and let your fellow students answer their own questions in the future.”
“But you wouldn’t give him the question,” Uraraka insists, her cheeks turning a soft pink. Though he doesn’t know her terribly well, Izuku’s pretty sure that’s less from embarrassment and more from general irritation. “You can’t expect him to answer if he doesn’t know the question.”
“I’ll consider that moving forward. Now take your seat, miss Uraraka.”
Izuku wants to melt into a puddle, especially when he glances at the pink slip Ishiyama drops on his desk, but he forces himself to look back at Uraraka anyway. She shoots him a wink and a thumbs up, then sticks out her tongue at Ishiyama’s retreating back. No matter how much he might want to, Izuku resists slamming his forehead into the desk to wait out the rest of this class, instead trying to pay at least a little attention. It doesn’t work, but he tries.
Detention is not a fun place to be, Izuku has decided. He hates how weirdly quiet it is, he hates how it feels like Aizawa—the teacher blessed with the opportunity to preside over detention this fine Friday—is glaring daggers at him even with his eyes closed, he hates that he can’t tap his foot or bounce his leg without it feeling like a crime. The best possible scenario is that this will be over quickly, but the most likely scenario is that Izuku is going to die in here. Either of boredom or embarrassment, he hasn’t decided which yet.
Perhaps infinitely worsening the situation is the fact that Izuku arrived on time—that is to say, ten minutes early. He glances around the room, noting just how many desks are empty and wondering how many kids are going to join him—and how many of those are here every week. Maybe there’s a group of detention regulars, and they all have unassigned-but-still-sort-of-assigned seats, and he stole the scariest kid’s seat, and they’re going to beat him up outside the school until he forgets what a seat is.
At least there are a few familiar faces, though Izuku isn’t entirely sure whether that’s a good thing or not. Uraraka took a seat by the window on the opposite side of the room from him and has not looked away from the clouds once since she sat down. She bounced into the room with a forced smile, waving the pink slip over her head until Aizawa looked up at the sound of flapping paper. There’s also the student council rep, Tenya Iida, who spent a solid five minutes mumbling to Aizawa about how he isn’t supposed to be here, he has a squeaky clean record, he was just trying to help a freshman, it wasn’t even on his usual way to class—okay, so maybe Iida wasn’t mumbling , exactly, but he isn’t a quiet guy, so speaking in an inside voice counts as mumbling for him.
“This is your fault, you know,” an incredibly familiar voice grumbles at the door. Izuku tries his best not to glance up at the noise—it’s borderline impossible to mistake the owner of that snarl, and if he’s right, that’s not exactly a friendly familiar face he wants to see. Kacchan stomps into the room, backpack hanging precariously off one shoulder and Eijirou Kirishima leaning on the other. They have twin black eyes, which would almost be funny if it weren’t for the sheer rage burning behind Kacchan’s swollen left side. Okay, so maybe Izuku did glance up. Whoops.
“Hell you lookin’ at, you damn nerd?” Kacchan growls, shooting a glare at Izuku. Izuku busies himself picking at the dirt under his nails as the pair passes Aizawa, who accepts both of their pink slips. “Seriously,” Kacchan continues in a marginally quieter tone, “I can’t believe you really thought you could just throw a punch in the hall like that. Like no one would see.” To emphasize his point—or to let out some of that rage, Izuku isn’t sure—Kacchan elbows Kirishima in the side, forcing the latter to stumble against a desk. He laughs it off.
“I mean, it was fun though, right? You got a solid right hook there, man, where’d you learn something like that?” Kirishima laughs again, and Izuku can’t help wondering whether it’s for show as Kacchan storms off to the back of the room. Then he can’t help wondering whether it’s any of his business. Probably not.
A few more people file in—Izuku has found a particularly stubborn spot of dirt under his left pinky, so he doesn’t take too much note of who will be joining him this afternoon—but eventually Aizawa coughs, drones out the rules (you’ll be here ’til four, don’t be disruptive, and no phones ) before returning his exhausted gaze to his laptop screen. Izuku wonders just how many shots of espresso are in the thermos on his teacher’s desk. He also belatedly wonders how on earth he’s going to entertain himself for the next couple hours or so. He doesn’t have much homework—not that he would be able to do half of it without his textbooks, anyway. Sketching anything is out of the question, especially with Kacchan in the room; he’s practically got a homing beacon for Izuku doing anything “painfully weird,” as he once put it, and Izuku’s already been mortified beyond belief in a classroom once today. He really doesn’t know if he could handle it a second time.
Izuku inches his hand toward his backpack on the floor, reaching for his water bottle blindly. He’s pretty sure he refilled it at lunch earlier, and even if not, it’s something to distract him. The bottle has some resistance, for some reason, and it takes a second too long for Izuku’s mind to register that as a bad thing, but it’s already too late. Ripping the bottle free, he can only watch in horror as the bag he left under it in the pocket goes flying, the tear in the worn plastic yawning open wide and the contents scattering in every direction. Contents such as dice. A lot of dice.
He drops to his knees, frantically trying to scrape the closest ones into a neat little pile and ignoring the fact that he has nowhere to store them, now that his bag’s out of commission. Maybe he could get one of those fancy painted containers, or a nice knit bag, something that won’t rip or break or anything. Something opaque, maybe, so people can’t see what a nerd he is for carrying dice around for a game he doesn’t even play, because he doesn’t have enough friends (or any friends) that will play with him. The chances of that ever happening now are pretty much shot, anyway, if anybody in this room has a cell phone, which is literally everyone. So. In less than thirty seconds, everyone in the entire world will be laughing at Izuku scrambling to collect bits of plastic off a dirty tiled floor, regardless of Aizawa’s phone rule.
“Here, let me help you with that.” Izuku very much does not glance up as Uraraka deposits a hefty pile next to his own, a few sliding down and bouncing off his backpack. “Some came all the way to the window.”
“I, uh, yeah,” Izuku mumbles. “Thanks.”
“So, hey, that’s a lot of dice, what’re they for? I mean, you’ve got a bunch that are just the same kind.”
“Oh, um, you know, I just like, uh, dice. Dice are cool. Love me some dice, yep, that’s me! Dice man!” Izuku wonders how much worse the situation would really get if he were to jump out the window right now. It probably couldn’t hurt, right?
“Sorry?”
“I, uh.” Well, it can’t get much worse at this point, Izuku figures, deciding to hang himself out to dry. “They’re for, uh, dungeons and dragons. The, um, the tabletop game.” Izuku mumbles it into his sleeve, but in the silence of the room, there’s no way Uraraka—or anyone else, for that matter—didn’t hear it. She’s definitely going to make fun of him for it, there’s no way out of it, and Kacchan ruthlessly mocked him when he showed off his first dice set, so there’s no point postponing the inevitable laughingstock he’s about to become.
“Oh, cool, like those podcasts! I’ve heard of some of them, but I’ve never gotten to play, and I definitely can’t sit still long enough to listen.” Uraraka laughs lightly, daring a glance over at Aizawa. Izuku follows the look, but the teacher apparently couldn’t care less about the conversation as long as they’re staying in the room. “Well, um, I guess I’m gonna go back to my seat, since you got most of your dice back. Sorry if I missed any!”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure.” God, Izuku could literally just spontaneously combust right now if only to stop the words coming next. Definitely no way to prepare for it, but is it any better to see his fate coming if it’s still going to annihilate him anyway? “I, uh, would you want to, um, to play sometime? I mean, if you want to. I mean, I guess I just said if you want to, but. Um.”
Izuku can feel her stare burning into the top of his head, but he just stares very intently at the pile of dice and wonders how weird it would look if he put them into his water bottle. He doesn’t even care if it’s full anymore, he just wants to be done with whatever disaster just happened here.
“Sounds fun!” Okay, great, so Uraraka’s still here, so that is just super good for Izuku’s blood pressure and—wait, what did she just say? “Do we need to have, like, a certain set-up? We could probably push some desks together, if you want.”
He must be daydreaming again, because there is no way Izuku is actually having this conversation with a living, breathing human that isn’t related to him. “I think, uh, I think we’d need more people than just one person, just to make it, you know, I mean, to make it worth your time, I guess? N-not that I wouldn’t want to play with you, but I mean—and then there’s Aizawa, too, I don’t know if he’d be okay with us playing a game when we’re supposed to be all miserable in detention and everything, but—”
“Hey, Aizawa, do you mind if we play dragons and dungeons?” Uraraka calls, and it takes everything in Izuku’s being not to correct her on the name, no matter how badly it grates on his ears. He supposes it doesn’t matter, though, since Aizawa just shrugs, although there does seem to be a wince when she says the name like, well, like that. Weird.
“Just keep it down, do whatever you want.”
“What’s that about dragons?” someone else asks, perking up from the back of the room. Mina Ashido from his art class, he’s pretty sure—those pink patches on her face are impossible to miss, though he’d never say so out loud—who’s sitting and sharing headphones with Denki Kaminari. Ashido bounds over and practically floats circles around Izuku’s little plastic piles, picking up one of the dice and inspecting it carefully. Talking at a rapid-fire pace, she holds it up to one of the streaks of neon pink shooting through her brown hair. “Oh, this one is so cute! I love the pink ones, where did you get them? Can I have one? What’s dragons and dungeons?”
“Dungeons and dragons,” Izuku corrects softly. “I got it with a set, I’d prefer to keep it if it’s okay with you, and it’s a game where you, um, you use your imagination to tell a story and fight bad guys.”
“Oh, hell yes!” Ashido shouts. Aizawa gives her a look, but says nothing. “So can I play?”
“Um,” Izuku says. “I mean, if you want to.”
“Alright, what are we playing?” Kirishima cuts in, striding up from out of nowhere. Well, out of the back corner of the classroom, where he’d been terrorizing Kacchan, probably. How is he still alive? Izuku wonders absent-mindedly, before remembering this is a kid who was on the varsity football team as a freshman and thinking oh, yeah, but still.
“I, uh, it’s a game where you use your—”
“Would you please keep it down?” Iida shouts as Kirishima slides into the seat next to Izuku. “I would appreciate some quiet for my studying!”
“Oh! Yeah, um, sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Bakugou, get over here!” Kirishima yells. “We’re playing dragons and dungeons!”
“Dungeons and dragons,” Izuku whispers helplessly, shooting a glance at Aizawa’s desk.
The teacher barely looks up, most of his face still buried in his hand, but he manages to say “quiet” loud enough for even Iida to recoil. His voice is so impossibly deadpan, as if he couldn’t care less about what the kids were doing, except that it’s his literal job to care. Tragic, truly.
“What, that lame-ass waste of time? Yeah, I’m good.” Izuku doesn’t have to look to know how hard Kacchan is rolling his eyes.
“So!” Uraraka exclaims. “How do we win?”
By some stroke of luck—or misfortune—that’s the magic word. Every other voice in the room halts, and even though it’s not all that many voices, it’s effective enough.
“You can win?" Ashido breathes, her eyes sparkling.
“I’m gonna win, I have to, show me how to play,” Kirishima demands.
“You, uh, you have to make your characters first, which—”
“Show me how to make an awesome character that can kick Kirishima’s character’s ass,” Kaminari says. Izuku almost flinches at how everyone is staring at him now. He never thought so many people would want to play this, much less with him.
“Okay, so, um, pull up a desk, I guess? So we have, uh, Ashido and Kaminari, Kirishima, and Uraraka, right?”
“And me!” Iida yells suddenly, practically vaulting over the closest desk to claim his own spot. “As class rep, it is my sworn duty to supervise and ensure no real ass-kicking happens on school grounds!”
Everyone falls silent—or as silent as this gaggle of loudmouths can manage—as student council rep, basically-already-valedictorian, most likely to succeed Tenya Iida pretends not to have just cursed and sits next to Denki Kaminari, the resident town fool. In detention, no less.
Izuku is honestly pretty proud of himself for managing to recover in time to pick back up on the rapidly collapsing conversation. “Right, so Iida, too, then, okay. Um, we can either start with—”
“Make some room, shove over,” Kacchan grumbles, elbowing a spot for himself between Kirishima and Uraraka as everyone arranges their desks into a messy circle.
“Oh! Oh, um, and Kacchan too,” Izuku says, trying and failing to keep the tremor out of his voice.
“What, you got a problem with me playing your shitty game?”
“I, uh, no, of course not! Anyone can play, I, um, it’s fine. Great, even.”
“So how do we win?” Ashido presses, leaning forward to rap her knuckles against Izuku’s desk. “I have glory to get!”
“So, um, you need to start by making a character,” Izuku says. “Usually that’s kind of an involved process, lots of dice rolling and stuff, but this is probably just a one-time thing, I guess? So we don’t need to go that in depth. Just, um, I guess everyone pick something you want your character to be good at, since a whole character-making session would take up pretty much a whole day.”
“Good at what?” Uraraka prompts. “Like, good at math?”
“Well, no, like charisma and dexterity and constitution and stuff.” Izuku hesitates, his hand halfway to the notebook in his bag. It would be so much easier to explain if he could just show them, but he really doesn’t feel like getting ridiculed for his absurdly extensive notes on something like this. Just by glancing around at everyone else, though, he can tell he’s already lost them. “So, like, if your character is really strong, or really sneaky, or really persuasive, that sort of thing.”
“So like superpowers?” Kaminari tries.
“I, um, no. Not really, no, but if you want to, I could change the—”
“Yeah, superpowers are so much cooler than just ‘being strong,’” Ashido says, making air quotes around the words. “I vote superpowers.”
“I mean, sure, okay. You guys are the ones playing, it’s supposed to be up to you anyway.”
“Superpowers,” Iida agrees, and apparently that’s the main vote of confidence everyone was waiting for, as they all start scrambling to come up with cool superpowers.
“Oh, um, also you should come up with names,” Izuku pipes up. “Just so I’m not, um, pointing at people and saying ‘go,’ you know?” As they all whisper amongst themselves, Izuku finds himself wondering how he ended up with six actual, breathing, human people willing to so much as interact with him all at once. He’s gotta be dreaming again—seriously, he never imagined having more than three, and even that was wishful thinking. Not to mention the logistics, since now he has to figure out a plot for all of them to work cohesively, and deal with Kacchan of all people glaring daggers at him the whole time; there’s practically no way Izuku will come out of this in one piece.
“Room for one more?” yet another voice asks, and Izuku is pretty sure he might just evaporate on the spot, because this is not happening. There is no way he’s actually alive and seeing this happening right now, absolutely not.
“Yeah, sure, if you want,” Izuku says, his voice cracking into the stratosphere as Hitoshi fucking Shinsou, one of the scariest kids in the entire school, slips into a spot between Ashido and Uraraka. “So, um, we’re thinking of super—”
“I heard,” Shinsou says shortly, lifting an unimpressed eyebrow. “I was sorting some of Aizawa’s tests and grading them, but he said he was set. I still have a while until auto shop’s done with my car.”
“Oh,” Izuku says faintly, desperately hoping that Shinsou doesn’t notice his bewilderment. He hadn’t even noticed the guy next to Aizawa when he walked in.
“I’ve got my character!” Kirishima declares.
“Show off,” Kaminari mutters, but Kirishima barrels on like he didn’t hear, the bruising skin around his eye crinkling with excitement.
“So his name’s Red Riot, yeah? And he can make his skin super tough, so it’s like defense, but since he can harden his hands, too, he can just whale on the bad guys nonstop.”
“Jesus Christ.” Kacchan buries his face in his hands.
“Didn’t we agree being strong was boring? Isn’t that why we’re doing, like, superpowers instead?” Ashido asks quietly, nudging Kaminari. He shrugs and looks at Izuku, who definitely doesn’t want to burn that particular bridge right now. Not with Kirishima, a kid who manages to be almost as scary as Shinsou ( Hitoshi fucking Shinsou, his brain supplies again) without even trying.
“I mean, that works fine,” Izuku says, finally giving in and reaching for his notebook. If nothing else, some of the pages toward the back are blank, so he can use those and pretend like it’s just a normal notebook that happens to have a fancy cover. On the earliest available page, he writes down what Kirishima said, then hesitates. “But, um, nonstop whaling? That makes him a little bit, well, overpowered, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, that’s the point. Permanently unstoppable good guy, all the time.”
“Ugh, lame.” Ashido rolls her eyes. Izuku dutifully ignores her.
“Okay, but what if—well, I mean, push that to the next step. Would it be possible for him to reach a limit, like maybe he can only be that tough for so long before he can’t hold it anymore?”
“I mean, I guess so, but isn’t that kind of lame?” Kirishima stretches his arms over his head, his shoulders cracking. “I want to play as a cool character.”
“Well, yeah, but you might break the game if you start out at level fifteen and you’re fighting level one monsters, you know?”
“Uh, no.”
“It’s like this.” Izuku waves his fingers over his desk, reaching for a good metaphor. “So, um, imagine you’re you, just normal you, and you’re fighting, like, a toddler.”
“I don’t want to fight a toddler!”
“No, but like—just stick with me, yeah? So right now, you would just absolutely decimate a toddler, so that would be boring for both you and everyone else—in this case, everyone else is also just normal them, watching you beat the crap out of a toddler, and that’s not super fun, you know?”
“Yeah, I gotcha.”
“So, in the game, you would also be a toddler, but so would everyone else. Level playing field, which means that if you’re too perfect of a character, there’s not really a point to playing, since you’ve basically won from the moment you start.”
“I think I get it.” Kirishima nods to himself, as if reaffirming the metaphor in his head. “So we’re just going to be beating up toddlers the whole game?”
“What? No! It’s just a metaphor, you’re not—”
“I’m kidding,” Kirishima cuts in as Uraraka fails to hide her laugh. Thankfully though, the rest of them seem to have paid at least a little attention to the conversation, so Izuku won’t have to explain to all of them that they can’t be perfect overpowered characters. “I got it. Maybe put a timer on him, so he can’t be permanently tough?”
“Yeah, that works perfect! And, um, D&D—uh, the game—usually has this mechanic called rests, so maybe after a short rest you can go another ten minutes, after a long rest you can go another hour, next session you’re good as new, that sort of thing?”
Kirishima nods as Kacchan leans forward on an elbow and glares at Izuku. “I got one.”
“Oh, uh, okay. What, um, what might it be? Um, he be? Be your character—er, your character be, I mean?”
“King Explosion Murder. I can blow shit up with my hands. I shoot out explosions.” Kacchan lifts an eyebrow, almost daring Izuku to question it—but, then, it would probably be more suspicious if he acted like he understood perfectly. It’d undoubtedly cast suspicion on why Izuku isn’t fazed by Kacchan’s character. Armed with this mental reassurance, he presses onward.
“Okay, uh, two things there. So, first off, do your hands explode? Like, is there a consequence to your hands constantly, um, exploding? Or do they make explosive powder or something?”
“Or something.”
“Um, cool, sure, got it. Then, second thing, um, I don’t know that you could be called King Explosion Murder? I mean, you don’t have to play a good guy if you don’t want to, but the king part—”
“Obviously I’m playing a hero, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, uh, your name has murder in it, and most heroes try to, um, not do that?”
“I don’t see the problem.”
“Alright, well, uh, so the ‘king’ part, that would make you sort of, like, super royalty? So you wouldn’t be in the party like that, you’d probably be off running a kingdom or something.”
“Lord Explosion Murder, then.”
“I, uh, that’s—yeah, alright.”
“Aw, look at you cooperating, Bakugou!”
“Shut up before I give you a second black eye, Shitty Hair.”
“Oh, so my natural hair is shitty, but Ashido’s neon pink monstrosity of a highlight job gets a free pass?”
“These streaks cost more than your entire life savings, Kirishima, so shut it.”
Izuku quirks his mouth to the side and flips to a fresh page to write everything down.
“I want mine to be called Chargebolt!” Kaminari announces. “He can shoot lightning bolts and stuff, and it can be in big blasts or he can concentrate it if he really focuses, but if he does too high of a charge at once, he kinda goes a little—” Kaminari cuts himself off to whistle and draw circles in the air around his head.
“Kind of like how you were when Momo slapped you for flirting with her!” Ashido teases, sending cackles through the rest of the group. Kaminari laughs along with them, leaving Izuku wondering how he hasn’t just melted into a puddle of embarrassment yet. Iida lets out a heavy sigh.
“Okay, mine next!” Uraraka says, slamming one hand down onto the desk. Shinsou raises one eyebrow at her dramatics, but doesn’t move otherwise. Uraraka chances another look to Aizawa, who looks much more tired than normal, which is saying a lot. He lifts a single finger to his lips, then pinches and draws to the side as if to zip them. Uraraka laughs lightly, nodding at him before continuing. “So her name is Uravity, and she can turn off gravity with her fingertips, so anything she touches starts floating. Gravity turns back on when she puts her fingers together, and she can use it on herself, but if she uses it too much for too long, and especially when she uses it on herself, she gets nauseous and has to stop.”
“Awesome,” Izuku mumbles, dutifully writing it down. He can already almost see images of the characters floating around in his head, and oh does he wish he had the time to draw them all right now, but he’d sooner die before drawing in front of other people. Drawing dungeons and dragons characters, no less.
“I want to be the Alien Queen!” Ashido announces. “She has acid that can come out of her skin, and she can change how liquid-y it is and how acid-y it is, so it can be less lethal, and she can only use it for so long before it starts eating away at her skin, which is normally resistant, but the eating away part is like a time limit.”
Izuku is a little slower on the uptake to reply, distracted by how Ashido managed to say all of that in one breath. Luckily, he doesn’t have to respond, since Kacchan’s already on it.
“If I can’t be King Explosion Murder, she can’t be Alien Queen,” he fumes, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
“Mine’s different!” Ashido argues.
“How so?”
“Mine’s based on a beloved character from a 1979 movie series!”
"Beloved?"
“Hold on,” Kirishima interjects. “Is nobody going to talk about how she just made her superpower acid that can come out of her skin?"
“I mean, you made your skin literally impenetrable?” Kaminari shrugs. “Anything goes, bro.”
“Yeah, but like. Does she melt spoons when she tries to eat soup?”
Kaminari’s eyes go wide. “Oh my god. Is it like a defense thing? Like she feels threatened and then—pffff! Oh, or can it be like when peacocks are showing off their feathers and just start screaming at the top of their lungs?”
“You’re telling me her spewing acid everywhere is a mating call?”
“It is kind of unfair, about the name,” Izuku admits, eager to steer the conversation back to characters so they can actually play the game before everyone changes their minds. “Do you have any other ideas?”
Ashido sighs dramatically and flops back in her chair, but nods. “Give me a minute.”
“Mine has engines on his calves,” Iida says, somehow choosing something the least fantasy-inspired but also the most ridiculous power all in one go. “Obviously, they make him go faster, but he can also adapt how he runs in order to better react to the situation.”
Izuku nods, writing it down beneath the blank space he left at the top of the page. “How does he power them? Does he have to, um—would he drink gasoline?" And god, if Iida says yes (because he would ) Izuku is going to have an absolute ball coming up with a realm that is somehow high fantasy enough to have superpowers but also realistic enough to have gas stations.
“No, not gasoline,” Iida replies, thank god. “Maybe he—”
Uraraka points across the room at Iida’s backpack, where a near-empty bottle of Sunny-D peeks out from the side pocket. “He’s gotta drink orange juice," she declares, and Kaminari cracks up. Iida turns bright red, and Izuku looks at him cautiously.
“I, um, suppose that works.” Iida coughs, and Izuku nods, hiding his smile as he writes it down.
“Sounds good. Does he have a name?”
Iida hesitates and looks away. “I, um, I hadn’t thought—well, I did, but I mean—Ingenium. His name’s Ingenium.” Izuku copies the name in his messy handwriting, choosing to table the conversation Iida was clearly avoiding regarding his character’s name.
“Pinky!” Ashido declares, slamming her fist on the table again. She cows slightly at Aizawa’s stare, but the look in her eyes is defiant.
“Pinky,” Izuku echoes, flipping back to the correct page. “Well, um, Shinsou, I guess that just leaves you.”
“Sure. If he’s activating his power—if that’s what we’re calling it—then he can mind control anyone who responds out loud to anything he says. They have to answer out loud, though, and he can’t make them say anything specific, just do things.”
“Name?”
“No.”
“I—what? He has to have a name.”
“Says who?”
“Well, I, uh, you know. Society.” Izuku wonders whether that really was the less horrible option compared to just saying Me, the one who’s letting you play.
“Society says so,” Shinsou repeats flatly.
“How about Purple Man?” Kaminari says, waggling his eyebrows. “Y’know, ’cause of—”
Shinsou runs a hand through his hair and glares at Kaminari with a look that could level a building.
“—Those bruises under your eyes?” It would really be a flawless execution, were it not for the pure fear in Kaminari’s expression and the fact that the temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees.
"Or because of the Marvel comic character?” Izuku corrects, hoping Shinsou won’t fly off the handle and—well, Izuku doesn’t know what the and is, exactly, but he’d rather not find out. “The Purple Man has mind control, too. He is a villain, though, so there’s that.”
“Oh, hey, perfect!” Ashido exclaims.
“How is that perfect?” Shinsou mutters dryly.
“I mean, don’t you want to play the villain?” Kirishima says, his tone light.
“You definitely have the temperament for it,” Kacchan agrees.
“Hey, big boy words! Look at you go,” Kirishima teases.
“I’m not playing a villain,” Shinsou says. “I’ll be Purple Man, whatever, but he isn’t a villain in this one.”
“Purple Man, mind control, not a villain, got it,” Izuku says. “Anyone else have anything to add about their characters?”
“So, just to be clear, this isn’t like Trouble or Chutes and Ladders or whatever? Like, there’s no physical board or game pieces?” Kaminari asks.
Izuku bites his lip, because god would he love to go into the whole spiel about the blood circle and the boards and the character models and how the dice factor in and the different editions and—but no, that’s not what they signed up for. Maybe later. “Right. So you’re all just—”
“Wait, you don’t have a character, Izuku,” Iida cuts in. The rest of them straighten, as if just realizing it themselves.
“Oh, I, um, I don’t have one. I’m what’s called the—” he cannot say the words ‘Dungeon Master’ to these people with a straight face— “the DM. I kind of narrate the story—tell you what’s around you, ask you what you’re going to do in certain situations. I’ll be the voice of anyone else you interact with.”
“So it’s like a play?” Ashido tilts her head. “Like we have a script, and you narrate it?”
“Um. Yes and no. You’re going to be in a setting—well, your characters are—and there’ll be a plot that happens, a boss to fight, a puzzle to solve, but it’s just through me telling the story and you guys interacting with it. I’ll present a scenario, but then you choose what your character does during the scene. The actual rules are kind of long, but they’re easy once you get the hang of them. I’ll probably just have you roll straight d20s and judge them on a normal scale, maybe with advantage if it fits your character.”
He pauses, glancing around. Oddly enough, the only people who don’t look completely bewildered are Aizawa and Shinsou, which is incredibly unnerving, for a number of reasons. “Okay, so here’s this die, right? It’s got twenty sides. You roll each time you perform an action, to see how—how well you do the action—an attack, a spell, a defense, whatever. So if you roll a twenty, that’s the best, you succeed. Roll a one, that’s the worst, you fail. If, say, Red Riot is trying to defend someone with his tough skin and Kirishima rolls a three, I’ll give him advantage, so he can roll a second time to try to get a higher number. Make more sense?” Everyone nods, and seriously, what Izuku wouldn’t give to be able to play an actual, real game with proper rules and models and sheets and everything, but this is better than nothing. Well, maybe, he thinks.
“So it’s just in our imagination?” Uraraka asks.
“Uh—right. You can write down names and stuff in a notebook if you want to, but I’m not gonna do anything too complicated, since we’ve only got—” Izuku pauses to glance at the clock over the door. “We’ve only got a little over an hour to play.”
“This better not be a waste of my time,” Kacchan grumbles.
"Shush." Ashido glares at him and crosses her arms. Uraraka mirrors her.
“You didn’t have to play,” Kirishima points out—much to Izuku’s relief, since he came incredibly close to saying so himself and potentially becoming the third student in the room with a black eye.
“Whatever, just get started.”
Oh.
Izuku is suddenly all too aware of everyone’s expectant eyes on him as he opens his mouth and lets some words fall out. He’s more distracted by how his hands are moving to illustrate what he says, how weird it probably looks, but he doesn’t quite have it in himself to care, since he’s actually playing D&D, this is actually happening right now. “You all find yourselves clustered outside of the nicest tavern in town, the door slamming shut behind you as raucous cheers and laughter rise from within. There’s a pair of eyes glaring at you from the nearest window, and some thumbs-ups from the other one. The skies above you turn grey with the approaching evening and the storm bringing it in, but there’s something else darkening your view. A huge monster of dripping, viscous slime and entirely too many eyes grins at you, and raises a hulking hand to block the last slender rays of sunlight.” Izuku grins around the table, ever so slightly enjoying how closely he’s holding their attention. Time to say something he’s been dying to say for the last ten years to people outside his family.
“Roll for initiative.”
Silence.
Kaminari blinks. “Huh?”
Shinsou lets out a long-suffering sigh—his third so far, if Izuku’s been properly keeping track. "Roll for initiative. It’s the order of who acts first. Highest number, you go first. Lowest, you go last.” Izuku can only stare, gobsmacked, as Shinsou cooly swipes up his d20 and rolls it across his desk. “Twelve,” he announces, sliding the die to Uraraka’s desk.
The order comes out to be Kacchan, Kaminari, Shinsou, Iida, Uraraka, Ashido, then Kirishima. Izuku, by then, has recovered from the shock of Shinsou knowing what a roll for initiative is, so he nervously turns to Kacchan.
“So.” He clears his throat at the suddenly fierce look in Kacchan’s eyes, deciding to forego the ‘movement’ part of typical combat for the time being. “What do you do?”
Kacchan smirks. “I explode it.”
“O-okay. Uh.” Izuku hesitates, mentally running through which checks might fit ‘Man Who Explodes Things.’ It shouldn’t matter anyway, he reasons, since it won’t make a difference right now without proficiencies. “Um, roll for—just roll to attack, I think.”
Kacchan reaches out to snatch the die from Ashido (and boy, isn’t that going to get old, them playing with one set—but what is he thinking, this is just to entertain them through one single detention, it’s not going to get old, calm down—) and sends it clattering across his desk.
“A six?!” he bellows, and Aizawa shoots them all an icy glare as Kirishima and Kaminari dissolve into laughter.
“Sounds like your explosions aren’t as amazing as you thought, Lord!” Kirishima hoots. Kacchan’s scowl deepens into something that sends actual, literal chills down Izuku’s back, before Uraraka comes to his rescue.
“Hey, you said we have advantage when we do stuff we’re good at, right?” Uraraka nods as she says it, like that will affect Izuku’s answer.
“Um, right. So, since you’re just rolling to use your literal power, the thing you’ve probably been doing since, um, for years, right? So you know how to use your explosion abilities, so you’re good at it, so you can—”
“I get it, I can roll again. Shut up.” Kacchan grabs at the die again, and it takes everything in Izuku not to duck. Kacchan wouldn’t throw the die at him, right? Right. He thinks so. He should be safe.
“Your die is broken!" Kacchan snarls, eyes blazing. Izuku dares a glance at the die. Cool, so that’s a critical fail. Izuku gets the distinct impression he is no longer safe.
“Alright, so that’s a one, which is lower than a six—”
“Which is bullshit," Kacchan cuts in.
“Nah, Bakugou, I’m pretty sure one is less than six—”
“I will kill you—"
“—Which means you, uh, Lord Explosion Murder jumps forward first, and the slime monster opens what can passably called a mouth to counter the attack. Lord Explosion Murder thrusts out his fist, pops and sparks of bright orange blinding against the gloomy sky overhead, but the slime monster slams what may or may not be a mouth shut around his shoulder, completely drenching Lord Explosion Murder’s arm in the viscous fluid as he pulls it free.” Izuku pauses, grabbing a d6 and rolling for damage. “Okay, so that’s gonna be seven points of damage, and for your next turn, any attacks with that arm will only do half damage.”
Izuku looks up, almost expecting to see Kacchan writing that down. Obviously not the case.
“Couldn’t I jump in and defend him?” Kirishima chimes in. “I mean, with my tougher skin, I could jump over and block him from it?”
“Not really?” Izuku says weakly. “You’re not right next or before in the order—well, before, but you haven’t gone yet, and you didn’t hold your turn from a previous round, but. Um. So, no, you can’t. Sorry.”
Kacchan glares with entirely too much disdain for Izuku’s tastes. “Explain that in normal human words, and change it so I killed the monster on my first shot.”
“I, uh.” Izuku pretends to have an itch on his forehead so he can hide his face in his hand for a minute.
“If this is only a one-off thing, how necessary is it to do damage rolls for the players?” Shinsou asks. Izuku can’t decide whether it’s relief or terror flooding through him right now. “You can do damage on the monster, but if you’re trying to keep it simple, there’s no point to roll damage on the player. Unless you expect us to do death saves, which I doubt.”
After recovering from hearing more than two sentences leave Shinsou’s mouth at a time—directed at him, about dungeons and dragons, no less—Izuku nods. “Yeah. Um, yeah, good point. So, Kacchan, you can ignore the damage part. The attack part boils down to, um, you didn’t hit the monster well enough, so it hit you back to counter the attack, and the, uh, slime part stuck to your arm, so now that arm can’t do as much damage on the next turn. On your next turn, I mean.”
Before Kacchan can launch into a tirade about how he should’ve definitely won the fight by now, Kaminari comes to Izuku’s rescue. “Me next! Okay, so am I allowed to move at all?”
Izuku glances at Shinsou, as if he’ll supply the answer. Of course not. “Um, that’s normally an action, which is another set of rules that’s not worth dealing with for a one-off session, so we’re just gonna say yes. You can move, but not, like, out of reason, so you can’t jump up and land in a different town or anything.”
“Cool. So I move forward—Chargebolt, I mean, moves forward and around to the back of the monster, and he releases a huge blast of about four hundred and twenty thousand volts of electricity.”
“Give or take,” Ashido snickers, nudging Shinsou. He doesn’t even crack a smile, but Kirishima leans forward to high five her across the desks.
“Roll to attack?” Izuku asks, using the free time as the die makes its way between hands to scribble down notes on Chargebolt’s page. Since Kaminari pointed out how he had to move behind the monster, that probably means Chargebolt can’t direct his charges precisely enough to avoid his teammates. Even if that’s not the case, it’s a nice addition to short-circuiting his own brain with over-usage, and it could come in handy for plot later, even though this is only a one-off thing, and these people aren’t exactly going to be hanging around again for Izuku to implement that plot thread, but it’s fine.
“That’s a sixteen!” Kaminari high fives Ashido as Kacchan stews in furious silence.
“Okay, so since that’s a hit, you have to roll damage, or how many points of health the monster loses from your attack. To keep it simple, just roll two d6.” Izuku reaches into his bag for another d6, belatedly realizing, oh, yeah, he has several dice in there, so they don’t have to keep passing around the same d20 and wasting time. He grabs a fistful of dice and deposits them on the table, passing the d6 to Kaminari and making sure to pass Ashido the pink one she liked earlier (and definitely not smiling at how much her face brightens). “So here’s that, roll it twice and add up the numbers, and tell me what you get.” As Kaminari bounces the new die between his hands, Izuku picks out a couple more d20s and hands them to every other person, so sharing the dice won’t be such an agonizingly inefficient process.
“I got a two and a four,” Kaminari announces.
“Six,” Ashido supplies. “I know, I’m a genius, no need to thank me.”
“Um, right. So six points of damage.” Izuku nods and makes a mark on the scratch page for this session, keeping one arm around the edge of the page so no one can see what he writes. Not like they’d necessarily know what to do with the information, but still. “Next in the order is Shinsou. Er, Purple Man.” Okay, so Shinsou might know what to do with the information. That’s a problem for later.
Although Izuku is used to the idea of putting on voices when playing—that’s half the fun, honestly—he is sincerely taken aback by the voice that comes out of Shinsou. It’s not even that different from his normal tone or rhythm, it’s just off enough that everyone looks up, even Aizawa.
“Hey, Chargebolt, how’s your day going?”
Kaminari hesitates, but quickly shrugs it off. “Not bad, just fighting this ugly—”
“Roll a d20,” Shinsou cuts in, rolling one himself. “That’s an eighteen for me.”
“Oh! Um, hold on—okay, I got a nine. What for?”
“So you start walking over to the other side of the slime monster, and stand between it and the rest of the group. Any time someone attacks, you can step out of the way, but you keep going back to standing between it and everyone else.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I said so. Midoriya?”
Izuku flinches, half expecting the conversation to have resolved itself without him. He’s never had to referee something like this before, and he isn’t exactly prepared for it. “So, I’m guessing Purple Man used his power on you, Chargebolt, and since he rolled a higher number than you, he won on what would be an unofficial wisdom throw—well, wisdom saving throw for you, but I think Purple Man might’ve had advantage since you weren’t expecting it—anyway, so he won the check, so you just. Um. Do what he says, I guess? Unless you feel like fighting it on your next turn, I mean.”
Shinsou nods, and Izuku feels weirdly relieved, like he just passed some test he didn’t study for. Kaminari looks less than thrilled, and more than a little confused, but he shrugs and agrees anyway. Shinsou gestures to Iida, who takes the die resting on the corner between his and Izuku’s desk.
Izuku winces, watching Iida roll it around in his hands before he throws it. “Alright. Um, Iida, your move, just—just like you’re already doing right now, so that’s good. Sorry, that’s one of my unlucky d20s, but maybe it’ll work better for you.” Great. Nice going, Izuku, bet he’s real excited to play now.
Iida gives the die a suspicious look. “What makes you think a piece of plastic can be unlucky?”
“Social superstition?”
Iida nods, as if that’s explanation enough, and rolls the die around in his hand as he talks. “Ingenium charges forward and aims straight for the center of the monster, increasing speed as he goes so he can run a hole through the middle of it. And, let’s see—that’s a twelve.”
“So not great," Izuku says lightly, looking over his paper.
“What? That’s above a ten, that should be fine! That’s in the top sixtieth percentile of success in terms of numbers out of twenty!”
“Wow, the student council rep thinks the sixtieth percentile is the pinnacle of achievement?” Shinsou mutters, completely deadpan. “I’m flabbergasted.” This, somehow, manages to send most of the rest of the table into a fit of giggles that draws even Aizawa’s attention, though Iida’s face turns a soft shade of pink again.
“I see what you mean,” he admits.
“So, Ingenium,” Izuku says in as gentle a voice as he can manage, “you run full force at the monster, and instead of running through it like you intended, it manages to adjust its solidity, so you run into it like a brick wall.” Iida visibly flinches, which is absolutely not something Izuku can stand to see, much less be the cause of. “Um, maybe not a brick wall, but like a stale nature valley granola bar, so it’s really solid, but a little bit crumbles away at the edges. Well, as much as slime can crumble, I guess. Roll a d6 for me?”
“That’s a two,” Iida says dejectedly.
“Two,” Izuku repeats quietly, jotting it down. Even as he tries to keep up mentally with how this random group of people in detention decided he was worth talking to, another part of his mind is spinning away, figuring out how the monster might react, how much longer the monster will last, whether it’ll have a second stage and when that might be, where the group should go if and when they actually manage to beat the monster, and—
“Oh, Uraraka, hold on,” Izuku says. Uraraka halts, halfway to reaching for the die in front of Shinsou. “The monster rolled initiative, too, and he’s right after Iida. Sorry.”
“No problem!” Uraraka smiles brightly and sits back, and Izuku tells himself it’s fine and that she doesn’t hate him for delaying her turn. He doesn’t believe it, but at least he tries.
“Okay, so the monster is going to take a swing at, hm, let’s say Iida—er, Ingenium, sorry—just since he’s closest and took the most recent attack. It’s going to raise both arms and clap down on either side of Ingenium’s head, like one of those freaky monkey toys that bang cymbals together.” Izuku catches the d20 Iida tosses to him— the unlucky one, Izuku can’t help thinking—and drops it into a roll. “Wow. Okay, so that’s a three, so not super good. Worst that happens is Ingenium’s got some more gunk in his ears than usual, but you should be good to go. Uraraka—um, Uravity, I mean, you’re up.”
“Are you saying Ingenium has his ears stuffed all the time?” Iida demands indignantly.
Uraraka smoothly ignores him. “Do we know what the monster’s made of?” she asks, her hand inching above her head as if to ask a question in class. At the weird look Kacchan gives her, she yanks her arm back down.
“Well,” Izuku says, “that would probably be an intelligence or a wisdom check, which we aren’t really doing? If you want, you can roll a d20, and I can just tell you how much you know about what it’s made of.”
“I want to do that,” Uraraka says, already rolling her die. “Eleven?”
Izuku picks up his pen and doodles along the margins of his scratch page, mulling it over in his head. “Hm. Alright. You can tell from how everyone else has interacted with it that it can change how solid it is at will, and you notice from Iida’s attack that the flecks that fly off of it just sort of sit there on the ground—they don’t reattach, and they don’t form new mini-monsters.”
“But she rolled an eleven!” Iida argues. “That’s less than my twelve, how did she get more out of it than me?”
“What I just told her could have been observed by anyone without having to do a roll,” Izuku says. “Normally you could do, like, a perception check if you wanted to, just to see what’s going on, but if anyone had asked me, you know, ‘hey, are the loose bits of goop forming new monsters,’ I could’ve just told them what they saw.”
“Aw, man, wish we knew that sooner!” Kirishima sighs, though there’s enough of a laugh behind it that Izuku isn’t too worried that he upset the guy.
“What, like you would’ve strategized based on how the monster moves?” Kacchan rolls his eyes. “Give me a break. You can’t strategize to save your life, much less in some stupid imaginary fantasy game with no real stakes.”
“Uraraka?” Izuku says weakly. “That help at all? You good to take your turn? I mean, knowing about the slime not forming new monsters or reattaching or anything.”
“I can work with that.” Uraraka pulls her lower lip between her teeth and wrinkles her nose. “Uravity jumps to the front and throws herself full force at the thing, her fingers stretched as far apart as possible to hit the most surface area at once, and she turns off gravity on the monster wherever she can reach.”
“Roll to attack?”
“Um—oh! A twenty!”
“A nat twenty?” Izuku repeats, somehow surprised. Excited, maybe, on her behalf.
"Nat?" Kirishima echoes, the word rising in the back of his throat like something he can’t quite swallow. He pronounces it more like the word gnat, the sharper a drawing his lips back into an almost-smile that makes his teeth look more like fangs.
“Nat as in natural,” Izuku explains.
“So why not just say natural?” Ashido asks.
“Efficiency.”
“This doesn’t seem very efficient,” Kaminari points out.
“It’s efficient later on, when you can just say ‘nat twenty’ and not have a conversation about linguistics.” Immediately after saying this, Izuku claps a hand over his mouth, terrified he might have come across as rude. Lucky him, no one seems too put off by it. Well, Kacchan does, but Kacchan always seems put off.
“Makes sense, but why wouldn’t it be natural? What makes an unnatural twenty?” Kirishima asks.
“We aren’t doing it now, but when you actually make thorough character sheets—er, if you do that, I mean—you can have extra points in certain proficiencies. So, like, if you’re good at talking to people, you’d have a plus two to charisma, maybe, so when you roll an eighteen on a charisma check, you’d add two and have a twenty. A dirty twenty, technically, since it wasn’t a natural twenty.” Izuku pokes his tongue at a piece of food caught between his molars to get himself to stop talking.
“So I succeed, right?” Uraraka says.
“Right, so it works as well as it realistically can in the situation. Roll for damage, and I’ll tell you what happens, since you pretty much completely succeeded at exactly what you were going for. Two d6.”
“Okay, five and a four, so nine.”
“Awesome! Alright, your attack succeeds, and the monster takes nine points of damage, that’s all great. You also see—you all see, I mean—little bits of the monster floating up and away, and where the outer layer is this musty, dingy sort of greyish-beige, the globs that peel away reveal more of a blue tone underneath. Blue-grey like the sky right after a morning storm. Uravity, as you land, you can look up and see all the globs just hovering in the air near the canopy of the trees ringing the tavern, but they don’t seem to be attacking or condensing or anything. Next up is Ashido—Pinky, rather.”
“Finally!” Ashido looks up from whatever handshake she and Kaminari had been improvising to grab the die between them. “I’m gonna wreck this guy’s shit!”
“Wreck away,” Izuku replies.
“Pinky jumps to the front and throws her hands out, and shoots acid from her fingertips at the max acidity that she can!”
“Before you roll,” Izuku cuts in, “can I ask something about your character?”
Ashido scowls, her hands thrust forward to mimic what she’d described and her shoulders slumping slightly. “What.”
“Can she control the direction the acid goes out? Like, can she aim it in certain directions, or is it random like Chargebolt’s?”
“Mine isn’t random!” Kaminari protests. “I was very thorough about only hitting the monster.”
“By hitting it from behind, where you couldn’t hit anyone else,” Iida points out.
“Oh, you hit it from the back, Kaminari?” Ashido jeers, going for a high five with Kirishima. Kacchan trades a long-suffering look with Uraraka, who actually mirrors the expression, which is something Izuku doesn’t particularly feel like unpacking today.
“Ashido?” Izuku prompts.
“Oh! Um, I guess it probably just goes out in whatever direction she’s holding her arm?” Ashido says. “So, like, if I point my finger in that direction, it’ll go that way, but it won’t be super precise like the arrow splitting an arrow on the target in Brave, y’know?”
“What is it with you and movies today?” Uraraka asks.
“I know things sometimes.”
“Can’t relate,” Kaminari mumbles, sticking his tongue out when Kacchan growls about the delay.
“I know Disney’s a corporate machine that thrives on capitalism as a failure of an economic system,” Shinsou says flatly, and wow, Izuku really doesn’t want to have that conversation right this minute, thank you very much.
“Got it, Ashido. So with that in mind, tell me what your character does again.”
“Pinky throws her hands out, and shoots acid from—oh, I see what you mean. Okay, so she points her fingers in the general direction of those blue spots Uraraka—Uravity, I mean—revealed.”
“Roll to attack?”
Frankly, Izuku’s surprised this didn’t happen sooner. If nothing else, he’s disappointed in himself for not expecting it. The die goes rolling across the floor (as it should, since Ashido all but spiked it into the center of her tilted desk and sent it flying directly behind her) and bounces to a stop at Aizawa’s feet. The teacher leans down and pinches it between two fingers with something a little bit north of a scowl.
“Dungeons and dragons,” Aizawa mutters. He says it at the die, but it’s clear enough the statement is directed at Izuku, even with Ashido running over to get it back. “Can’t believe you’re actually playing it. I figured you were joking earlier.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Izuku mumbles into his hand, staring at the floor. “Sorry.”
“Just keep your dice over there. It was a critical fail, by the way.”
Ashido plunks the die back on her desk with only marginally more care, twisting her mouth to one side and looking to Izuku. “Critical fail?”
“Nat one. No damage, fails spectacularly, that sort of thing.”
“Oh, so like Bakugou did earlier!” Kirishima cuts in, beaming. Izuku deflects for his own health and safety.
“So, in universe, maybe Pinky doesn’t put quite enough force behind the attack, so the acid just sort of sputters out and lands in a puddle on the ground in front of her. Kirishima?”
“Wait, before he goes,” Shinsou cuts in, halting Kirishima as he reaches for the die. “Can we hold our turns in the order? Can he?”
“Um, yeah, if you want to,” Izuku says. He wonders whether he’ll ever get used to Shinsou just, like, knowing these things already. To everyone else, he says, “So holding your turn is just what it sounds like. Instead of doing your action now, you wait, and you can do your action later whenever you want. So, say, Kaminari had held his turn the last round, and gone between Uraraka and Ashido. He could do that, but then he would permanently be in that spot in the order for this fight, so he’d always go after Uraraka, unless someone else held their turn and shifted the order around again. Make sense?” Everyone nods, aside from Shinsou, who wears a bored frown. “So, um, Shinsou, I guess Kirishima could hold his turn? The issue is that he’s technically last in the order, even though it’s pretty cyclical—it’s just that, if he holds, he’s closer to the front.”
“You’d rather pay attention to the mechanics of how holding a turn works than let this play out to see what kind of chaos your players might create, is what you’re saying,” Shinsou clarifies, and damn, that’s a really good point. Izuku has always wanted to have a bunch of players wreak havoc on a plan of his—even more, to wreck their plans later on. The mutual schadenfreude of his dreams.
“I guess not,” Izuku finally relents. “Kirishima, if you want to, you can hold your turn and go later—or earlier, depending on how you look at it.”
“Why would I want to do that? I want to fight now!"
“You want to do it because I’m telling you to,” Shinsou says.
“Telling him as in Purple Man’s power?” Izuku asks. “Or telling him as Shinsou?” Hitoshi fucking Shinsou, he doesn’t say out loud.
“Can Purple Man control more than one person at a time?” Iida asks. “You already clarified that they have to respond verbally, but if he’s thinking in someone else’s direction, wouldn’t that remove his attention from the initial target?”
“Who’s telling Kirishima what?” Izuku whispers miserably.
“As Shinsou, who Kirishima is smart enough to listen to without protest,” Shinsou replies coolly. If nothing else, it’s certainly interesting to see Kirishima, two hundred pounds of pure muscle packed into a six foot two body, a terrifyingly unstoppable force on the football field, shrink back in his seat.
“I’ll hold my turn,” he says meekly. Izuku is, to put it lightly, not a fan of Kirishima’s voice sounding ‘meek.’
“Alright, um, Kacchan, you’re up again, then,” Izuku says.
“I blast it with explosions.” Kacchan rolls the die and props a hand on his fist. “Fourteen.”
“Roll damage?”
“Two and a three. Five.”
“Cool.” Izuku is severely uncomfortable with how quickly the side conversations and interruptions halted during Kacchan’s turn. “Um, Kaminari?”
“Hold on,” Shinsou says. “Kirishima, you should take your turn now.”
“What? He only waited one person, what’s the point? At that rate, he should’ve just gone before!” Uraraka points out.
“It does seem like a waste to only wait one turn,” Iida agrees. “If you’re going to implement strategy with holding turns, you should at the very least do something useful or honorable with it.”
“Who says it won’t be useful?” Kirishima retorts. “Maybe I’ll hold until the last move and deliver the ultimate finishing blow!”
“There isn’t really a predetermined number of moves,” Izuku says weakly, though no one hears it.
“But what’s the point, then it’s just a waiting game until you can rush in and grab the glory!” Ashido complains.
“Maybe if Deku’s dice weren’t so shitty, we could actually win this stupid fight,” Kacchan growls. Great, so Izuku is definitely going to die before the end of the day because Kacchan absolutely believes Izuku is purposely not letting him roll a nat 20 and do whatever he wants.
“Deku?” Uraraka repeats under her breath. “I thought your name was Izuku.”
“I, um—yeah, it’s, well, you know. Both?” Izuku cringes at his weak attempt to smooth over the situation. It would probably be worse to explain the source of the nickname, right? He’d be better off giving Kacchan a weighted die that always lands on a one. “Both. Yeah, um, both are right. Izuku and Deku. You can read the characters different, so—yeah. Both.”
“Got it. Deku. I kind of like that—it’s cute!” Uraraka nods to herself, and perhaps more strikingly, Kacchan says nothing about the conversation. Neither does anyone else at the table, and Izuku really doesn’t know how to feel about that. Shaking her head, Uraraka points to Kirishima and continues, “Does he have to act within this set of, um, moves? Like, is he allowed to wait a full round before he goes?”
“The monster could attack him even as he’s holding, but he could probably hold in perpetuity if he wanted to,” Izuku explains.
“So you would rather hold your turn forever just to make yourself look good at the end?” Iida gasps.
“No, absolutely not!” Kirishima shouts, drawing Aizawa’s attention again. The teacher stares at him until he lowers his voice to an indignant hiss. “That’s nowhere near being manly, let alone chivalrous! Of course I wouldn’t do that!”
“Kirishima,” Shinsou says.
“Yeah?”
“Take your turn now.”
“I, uh, I’ll take my turn now, please, Midoriya.” If Izuku’s discomfort was at a nine out of ten before, well. It’s solidly through the ceiling by now.
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Just stand between everyone else and Kaminari with your skin hardened,” Shinsou says. Orders, more like it.
“I, um. I do that. Do I need to roll?”
“Um, not if you aren’t, y’know, actually attacking, I don’t think, since you aren’t making a check or a contest or anything. So, um, next is Kaminari, now.”
“Who I’m still controlling,” Shinsou adds. “So he lets out the maximum voltage possible.”
“Can Purple Man control power usage, too?” Izuku asks. He really doesn’t love how this is playing out, but in terms of game mechanics, he’s desperately invested in finding out more about how these characters work. Selfish curiosity, maybe, but it’s so interesting.
“I’ll just do it because I want to,” Kaminari says quickly, grabbing the die. “And—hey, another twenty! Nice! Nat twenty, I mean.” Izuku studiously ignores the way Kacchan’s eye twitches.
“Okay, so everybody needs to also roll a d20 now, to see if they’re safe, since Chargebolt’s attacks can’t be directed at one specific target.”
“Red Riot’s directly in front of Chargebolt, so anyone right behind Red Riot is safe,” Shinsou says.
“Provided Red Riot makes a solid saving throw.”
“He’s already activated his power, so if nothing else, he’ll absorb all the attack going that direction.”
“And just let him fucking die?" Kirishima demands. Uraraka snorts, then immediately covers her mouth with her hands. Ashido snickers, too, and the two share a knowing look.
“He can roll advantage, since it’s his power,” Shinsou says.
“Even if he passes, the people behind him aren’t necessarily safe,” Izuku retorts. “The electricity might be able to flow around him, or into the ground if it’s random.”
“But they should still have advantage, too.”
“Provided they’re ready for it, but Chargebolt didn’t exactly issue a warning so they could be prepared.”
“Wow, thanks, Chargebolt," Ashido teases. Kaminari’s jaw drops.
“But with the shield from Red Riot—”
“Would you damn nerds stop arguing and get on with it already?” Kacchan demands. “This is torture!”
Izuku bites his tongue, having lost himself in the argument—well, debate, more like it. He’d never really been able to so passionately discuss the logistics of something like this before. It was, well, fun. Best not to get used to it, though.
“Everybody roll a d20, I guess, and we’ll say Shinsou and Iida—er, Purple Man and Ingenium have advantage, since you went the longest ago, and had the most time to fall back to safety.”
Dice roll all around, and everyone rolls above a twelve except Iida, whose measly three is rescued by his advantage. His second throw is a seventeen.
“Great, so no one killed any of their team members, so that’s awesome that we passed that bar. Roll for damage? Actually, since this is, like, your ultimate move, basically, no holds barred, essentially a perfect attack, do three d6, just for fun.”
“That’s a six! And another one!” Kaminari leans forward over the table, shaking the die over his head like he’s gambling as cheers rise from the rest of the table. “Let me see another six, baby!”
The die skitters across Ashido’s desk, bouncing to a stop in front of Shinsou. Nat one.
A collective sigh drifts around the group.
“Thirteen’s still pretty good,” Izuku offers. “And, wouldn’t you know it, some of those stronger volts bounce off and strike right in the center of those pale blue spots Uravity revealed. Where they hit, they pierce and burrow down, little rods of—”
“That’s not how electricity works, though,” Kaminari cuts in. “It’s the motion of matter with an electric charge, and with the lightning power Chargebolt has, it’s specifically equalizing the two electrically charged regions—in this case, the monster and the air around it. It doesn’t work in tangible rods with specific paths longer than the shortest route.”
Iida makes a strange noise in the back of his throat. Izuku blinks. “Um.”
Kaminari blinks right back. “What?”
“You know what? Nothing, that’s great. So the lightning does its lightning thing, zip zap, and some of the more powerfully charged particles burrow into the pale blue spots on the monster, and the chemicals do a reaction thing, and you see this slime monster thing just start vibrating , entirely too fast for your eyes to keep up with. It’s almost off the ground, even, just buzzing right up into the air with the fallout from the charged particles around it, and it’s moving faster and faster and, oh, there’s just these gross globs of slime flying off and scattering every which way. Some get stuck in your guys’ hair, a bunch smatters against your costumes, you can hardly see the green of the trees through the thick of it anymore, and enough even manages to smack up against the tavern behind you, darkening the windows and blocking the view. Essentially, you literally blasted the thing to bits.
“Congratulations! You’ve solved my slime monster puzzle.” It should honestly come as no surprise to Izuku that no one laughs at his reference, not even Shinsou. Well, he’s a little surprised at Shinsou, but maybe the guy just doesn’t do laughs. It wouldn’t be a shock. Maybe he doesn’t do podcasts, either. Maybe he sits in the dark and stares at walls and practices his frown and thinks about committing arson, for all Izuku knows.
Izuku doesn’t know much.
Despite the jokes flying overhead, cheers and high fives make their way around the table, with even Kacchan giving a smirk, before everyone’s eyes return to Izuku. He does his best not to feel just a little bit giddy at how raptly they’re paying attention.
“So as you all calm down from the adrenaline high of fending off the monster—”
“I want to go make sure Chargebolt’s attack didn’t, like, kill him,” Uraraka interrupts.
“I want to go make fun of him. He said he’d be an idiot afterwards, right?” Kacchan adds. Izuku blinks. He remembered something about someone else?
“Uh, yeah. Sure. So, as Uravity and Lord Explosion Murder head over to Chargebolt, the back door of the tavern rattles a few times, sealed shut by the slime around the edges. Finally, someone manages to kick it down, and what you assume to be all of the tavern’s patrons come streaming out, hooting and hollering and whistling and cheering. Most of them bounce around from one of you to the next, gushing about how grateful they are.”
“Are there any kids?” Kirishima asks.
“Um, it’s a tavern, which serves alcohol, but—you know what? Yeah, there’s some kids, too, because they’re just that cool.” What’s up, you cool baby, Izuku is wise enough not to say out loud.
“I go up to one of them and drop into a squat, and stick out my hand to introduce myself as Red Riot.”
It’s habit more than anything else, just the genuine instinct to play along, that spurs his next action. Izuku puts on his best attempt at a kid’s voice and beams. “Hi, Red Riot! Wow, I can’t believe you all beat that monster! And right at the end there, when you protected those two guys from the big explosion? That was amazing! I never saw anything like that before!”
Silence.
Oh my god. Oh my god, I just did that without thinking. Oh, my god, I just sounded like I reversed my way through puberty like an idiot without explaining that DMs do voices for the NPCs and now they’re all staring and I did it in front of Kacchan whose sole purpose in life to mock me so he—...isn’t?
“I, uh,” Kirishima finally says, before coughing and clearing his throat. When he starts again, his voice is a little bit deeper, a little more gravelly. “No problem, kiddo! I wanted to put on a show so it wouldn’t be totally boring for you to watch, y’know?”
Izuku swallows the few remaining shreds of dignity he has and nods, widening his eyes as best he can. “It was so totally not boring, can you do it again?”
Kirishima—well, Red Riot, Izuku supposes—hesitates, before shrugging and doing something between a nod and a wince. “Maybe someday, but you gotta promise not to get hurt, yeah? You have to stay safe so you can grow up big and strong!”
The childlike gasp that forces its way out of Izuku’s mouth is not entirely planned. “I’m gonna be a hero, just like you!”
“I ruffle the kid’s hair and say, ‘yeah, I bet you are!’” Kirishima says.
Izuku drops the kid’s voice and continues, now looking toward the center of their circle of desks and feeling everyone’s very pointed gazes on him. “So after that, this lady—who’s absolutely built , mind you, she could bench press the entire building with one arm if she wanted to—walks up to you guys and introduces herself as the owner of the tavern.” He only winces a little bit before shifting his voice even higher up the register. “Thank y’all so much for taking that monster down! I know I said it shouldn’t be any trouble for a group of seasoned heroes, but still! Now, about that reward—”
“Reward for us winning, because we won," Ashido points out cheerfully.
“Yes, that reward,” Izuku says, choosing not to note that Ashido just used her normal voice. They’ll get to character voices later—as if there even will be a later, Izuku, this is, again, obviously a one-time thing so they wouldn’t be bored in detention for an hour, just shut up already and get it over with so they can all leave like they want to—anyway. He drops his voice conspiratorially, as if telling a secret, and can’t stop himself from narrowing his eyebrows just so. “Alright, now you didn’t hear it from me, but word on the street is there’s this massive vault just a few days out of town, and they say anyone who can break in and get out safely will be the proud—”
“Right, that’s time, everyone go home. Don’t get caught wandering the halls or you’ll get another detention, which I want even less than you do,” Aizawa interrupts, shoving his chair back from his desk. Everyone in the group—which, Izuku notices belatedly, had been leaning towards his desk—startles at his sudden announcement. Even Shinsou manages to look somewhat caught-off guard, blinking owlishly before settling back into his signature slouch. Izuku catches Kacchan scowling deeply at Aizawa—but that very well could just be Kacchan’s natural expression exacerbated by his bruised left eye.
“But the massive vault!” Kaminari whines.
“We were just getting to the good part!” Kirishima adds, eyes wide—well, as wide as the left one can be, having definitely puffed up in the last hour or so.
“Not that it wasn’t already good,” Uraraka clarifies, perhaps noting the broken look in Izuku’s eyes. “The even more good part, he means.”
“I don’t care.” Aizawa slings his bag over his shoulder and shuts whatever desk drawers he’d had open. “Go home.”
“This sucks,” Ashido mumbles, sliding lower in her chair until her back is on the seat.
“Couldn’t care less,” Kacchan says gruffly, standing and heading for the back of the room to grab his bag.
Izuku bites his tongue, wondering if it would look egotistical to pitch in his own displeasure. At least he got to play at all, he supposes. Better than nothing. As he collects the various dice and deposits them at the bottom of his backpack—he’ll find a better home later—Iida and Uraraka stand to help rearrange the desks how they’re supposed to be. Everyone else just leaves from there, though to Izuku’s unending shock (and maybe a little bit to his relief), they all say goodbye to him as they go. Well, Kacchan doesn’t, but that’s normal. Izuku’ll probably see him on the walk home, anyway, so there’s no point. At least, that’s what Izuku tells himself so it doesn’t hurt as bad to see Kacchan storming out with just as much disdain on his face as when he walked in.
Well, that could’ve gone worse.