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Watashi Kiyomi, known as Ki to those close to her, likes to listen to old podcasts. Sure, they’re a couple hundred years old, usually from the time before quirks, but she likes it. Her mother, being a professor that focuses on pre-quirk media, had such things playing in the house constantly. Ki grows up on ultraretro Sailor Moon. She watches Star Trek and Star Wars. She forms opinions on Disney and the earliest iteration of Astro Boy.
So, they have podcasts as well. Ki likes the ones of people just hanging around and playing D&D because it just…sounds nice. The in-between jokes of the cast and the story unfolding, it’s almost like having friends. She listens to the hours-long episodes a lot, probably at a younger age than she should. But the adventures are fun and she’s a smart kid, she knows not to use the swears she hears around her parents or brothers.
She likes the laughter and the chatter and the stories of people long gone. It makes her heart full of something…longing maybe.
She thinks she’d like to play one day, Dungeons and Dragons. It sounds like a lot of fun.
Ki doesn’t necessarily go out of her way to mention he interest in Dungeons and Dragons. She’s quite happy doing her own thing. While she knows she could hunt for a group on a forum or something, no guarantee that there wouldn’t be a perv out there or something. There’s a lot of weirdos online.
Then she gets distracted by training for UA and building her own ramshackle family.
Then she gets into UA.
Then she does Room King at UA and Wada, apparently, loves D&D, like so much. He’s a DM. Josh, apparently, did a game with his sister back in America and wants to get in again. Some of the others are interested as well.
The Class 1-A D&D group meets twice a month on Wednesdays at around six in the evening and play until eleven. It takes place in the common room with the others knowing to clear out for the night. Wada, in the week before the first session, has them roll out their character sheets in front of him and helps them work out their backstories. He decides to start them out at a level two so they have some juice to their attacks.
The group consists of Wada as the DM with Ki, Josh, Suzuki, Fukuhara, and Nishiyama as the players. Their group consists of Ki’s Pandora Herohalt, a half-eleven cleric/warlock, Josh’s Luka, a human fighter, Suzuki’s Lyo Starcatcher, a goliath monk, Fukuhara’s Wander, a tieflng bard, and Nishiyama’s Blaze Backdraft, a fire genasi barbarian.
And so begins the campaign of, what will be known as, the Feral Five.
It’s fun is the thing. Ki always thought D&D sounded like fun, but was never entirely certain about the actual play of it. But, yes, it’s great. She loves it.
For five hours every other Wednesday, Ki gets to be someone else for a little while in Wada’s homebrew world of Arcadia. She’s Pandora Herohalt, a cleric of who worshipped a goddess of redemption in place where such worship was banned. She was arrested and subjected to experiments, binding a demon to her soul. They fell in love.
It’s torrid sort of love story that she would never want to enact IRL, but is having so much fun in the game. Giving bits and pieces, Wada will send players away from the table for one on one moments. It’s all wild. It’s hilarious. It’s like playing make believe again. Not that Ki had many people to play it with in her childhood.
Love Tap and Akiyama are Ki’s best friends, of course. They know some of the darkest parts of her and some of the most vulnerable as well.
But Wada and the others in the game become another sort of unit as well. The others get drawn in to watch as the sessions progress and it seems like this isn’t stopping anytime soon. And they get invested as well.
They rope in Aizawa because duh.
They have to. It’s an Aizawa class tradition to rope him into their nonsense from time to time. It’s been proudly passed down from Ashido and Kaminari to Ki, who foisted it off on the rest of her classmates with Eri and Mic’s blessings and encouragement.
Every other Wednesday evening has become the Feral Five Power Hours. The entire class watches as the Wada leads the five of them into the game. They’re level five at this point in time, starting to make a name for themselves as a guild of adventurers.
Aizawa watches from the corner, needing to make sure no one is burning down the dorms or making the RP into a LARP-ing sort of experience. He’s invested though, Ki thinks. She’s pretty sure he’s been telling Mic the stories. Because she can’t think of another reason for Mic to know so much about Pandora otherwise.
“Sensei,” Wada says cheerfully. His orange hair flops into his face. “You should be our special guest tonight! I have a character made up that’ll be perfect for you.”
“Yeah,” Josh agrees with a wide grin. “That sounds like a lot of fun! C’mon, sensei, play with us.”
“Get feral,” intones Fukuhara with a sly grin, invoking their group’s slogan.
Suzuki just smiles hopefully. The others also jump on board. Ki chuckles as she gets out her dice. She meets Aizawa’s eyes, which are fond. He’s halfway there.
“I won’t tell Hitoshi for, like, a month about this.”
“Deal,” Aizawa says to the cheers of the rest of Class 1-A.
His character is named Morteus Dreamwalker, a tiefling paladin who worships the god of sleep and dreams. He’s a level 10 and whoops all their asses.
“What the fuck,” mutters Josh.
“It’s just like class,” laughs Nishiyama. “And I’m unconscious.”
Wada squints suspiciously, “Mic-sensei said you never played Dungeons and Dragons before.”
Aizawa only smiles.
It’s not an always sort of thing. Aizawa only joins the game sometimes. Either way, the Feral Five continue on to journey across the lands of Arcadia. Surprisingly though, the other faculty has gotten really into the game.
Ki’s, like, ninety-five percent sure that Nedzu has been posting video of their sessions to the UA private server. Everyone knows he has cameras set up in the common room. She would not be surprised in the least.
“That does sound like something he would do,” agrees Number One when he picks her up for dinner on a random Friday after her heroics lesson. He sounds fond, but given that he was a personal student of Nedzu he’s allowed the fondness. “He likes good stories.”
“Midnight keeps theorizing about my character’s torrid love affair. She’s very invested.”
“She and Toshinori have a romance bookclub with Vlad King and Snipe. It’s not that surprising.”
Ki stares at Number One for a long, long moment before nodding.
“You know,” she says faintly. “I used to think that pro heroes really had their lives together.”
“Rookie mistake,” he replies without missing a beat. “Pro heroes are disasters of human beings, which is why we’re so good at handling disasters ourselves.”
“Except Yaomomo-san.”
“All hail,” replies the Symbol of Hope. “Wanna get gelato after this?”
“I’m down.”
Shouta knew that when Ki started to date Sabotage, he was going to get a whole new level of headache. He wasn’t expecting to find the kid in UA on the common room couch. The only thing that told Shouta that this wasn’t a hallucination from lack of sleep was that Hitoshi was next to him. They both were wearing handmade t-shirts with FERAL FIVE written on them in marker.
He looks over at his protégé.
“Why.”
“I’m supporting my mentor’s interests.”
“And him?”
“I’m here, you know,” Sabotage says. He turns his gaze onto the teenage vigilante who burrows into his flannel. “Speaking was a mistake. I see that now.”
“He’s supporting my interests like a good boyfriend.”
Sabotage turns his eyes onto Ki: big and round. “You’re calling me your boyfriend?”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“Right! Right definitely not making it weird. Am I making it weird?”
“Little bit,” calls out Ito from where they’re setting up snacks with Hada and Kurihara. Shouta doesn’t know if he should be concerned or not that his hellions are taking the whole “Ki is dating a vigilante and said vigilante is on their couch, eating their mochi” thing with such ease. But, Shouta supposes, that’s what he gets with having nightmares around them.
(There was a stretch between his hellions and his nightmares that Shouta had a decently nice group of kids. They were…okay. Not traumatized or anything, but there wasn’t that connection that he had with these two classes.
He prefers this sort of chaos to quiet, boring, normal.
He has no clue what this says about him.)
“So,” Hitoshi says with a grin, “god of sleep, huh?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be minding your boyfriends?”
“Shouto has dinner with his siblings that aren’t in villain rehab. Izuku, Uraraka, and Bakugou are doing their weird bonding trip to one of those special quirk usage rage rooms.”
Shouta doesn’t think he’ll ever understand the relationship between those three. And, at this point, he doesn’t want to. If only for his health and sanity.
“Don’t dodge the question,” teases Hitoshi.
“Hail the Lord of Dreams. And may he keep watch over those who cannot rest,” deadpans Shouta.
There’s a laugh from him. Lavender eyes gleam with bemusement.
“Sounds legit. You know Yaoyorozu has been reading the DM’s guide. Maybe Class A should start a game.”
That sounds like a disaster. Shouta has to witness it.
“Only if I can watch.”
“Well duh,” he replies.
It takes about two months for the Class A game to get started, but Shouta is invited to watch along with other members of Class A and other assorted friends to them.
The Class A game takes place once a month on Saturday evenings. The group consists of Katsuki, Denki, Kyoka, Hitoshi, Fumikage, and Ochako with Momo as the DM. Those who want to watch join in. Shouta usually hears Ki’s cackle when Katsuki tries to blow up his dice.
Again.
He shakes his head and turns back to his grading.
Ki definitely has a point. There’s definitely something soothing about listening to a D&D game while you work. Maybe he’ll let Wada know that he’ll join in on the next session.