Work Text:
Kaminari Denki is not dumb. He’s not . Sure, maybe he’s a little dopey, and he definitely serves as comic relief in some circles, but he’s actually a very smart and very capable middle schooler. He just likes good memes and bases a lot of his personality off of YouTube videos. When it comes down to it, though, he’s got a banging quirk and his brain does the job. He doesn’t want a life of academic rigor though — he wants to take it easy. He wants to see how many electronics he can charge at one time; how many balloons he can stick to his body, and if he can manage to get every strand of hair on his head to stick up at once. He also wants to be a hero — he’s seen them on YouTube plenty of times, and even out in the streets and they’re just so cool. Girls love them, and they get all sorts of perks.
His friends don’t think he can do it — they tease and pick at him, saying that he’s too much of a goober to be a hero, and that he’d never be able to take things seriously when anything is on the line, citing incidents like the time he cried when a spider suddenly appeared in his bathroom, or the fact that he always burst into hysterical giggles at any intense parts of movies. He laughs along with them, but it hurts. Maybe they’re right — maybe he shouldn’t even try to be a hero. He just might not be cut out for it.
One day, Denki is walking home from after school activities. The sky is a dusty pink, and he’s kicking rocks and sending out little shocks of electricity into the air, testing his capabilities. He’s feeling kind of down, so when he’s suddenly approached by a shady, crusty stranger who promises him he could be a part of something incredible, Denki only hesitates for a moment. He’s sick of being looked down upon — this could be somewhere he can showcase his skill.
And so, Denki joins the League of Villains. By the time he realizes what the group stands for, it’s kind of too late. He has already accepted a friendship bracelet from a man who calls himself Twice. He can’t just leave after accepting a friendship bracelet. The hangout may be a rundown, musty bar, and he may be hanging out with a bunch of twenty and thirty-something weirdos, but they’re nice to him, and they don’t seem all that serious, so he sticks around.
They’re fun too, and they think his quirk is cool. Twice and all of his clones laugh hysterically whenever he shocks himself. Toga giggles and drapes herself over him all of the time, asking him to electrocute her, which is weird, but he doesn’t judge. Even Dabi buys him food once or twice a month. They tell him that their mission is to eliminate hero society, and Denki thinks it’s a steep goal, but he’s not going to tell them it’s impossible because there’s no need to crush dreams.
Shigaraki — the leader and aforementioned crusty one, gives him missions, starting with small tasks such as stealing a bag of chips from the convenience store, or spray-painting a wall. He feels bad about it, but he’s not hurting anyone so he can deal with the minimal amount of nefarious behavior. Most middle schoolers are colossal assholes by default, so he’s really just living up to his stereotype.
Any guilt he feels he shoves down by reminding himself that the League keeps him around because they trust him — they think he’s useful and smart, and every time he pulls off a mission, they tell him how great he is, so he’s fine with some petty crime. He won’t become an actual villain.
In the last few weeks before high school, Denki thinks again about his future — he itches to apply to UA, but he doesn’t think he can swing it. He doesn’t want to fail the entrance exam and embarrass himself, so he’s resigned himself to a much less prestigious school nearby. He tells the League about his school choice and they all give him their own form of encouragement (though most of it is to just drop out of school altogether). Shigaraki, however, smiles in that slightly unhinged way and says his name. “It’s time for your biggest mission yet.”
He’s to infiltrate UA — the very same UA that he dreamt of attending. Shigaraki tells him that this has been the plan all along, and he scratches his face and laughs a ton while he’s going over it, so Denki knows it must be true. Nothing like this has ever been accomplished, and Shigaraki promises him that it would require absolute precision, top-notch intelligence, and the ability to blend perfectly into the crowd of hero-hopefuls.
Denki is touched but also a little panicked — he blurts out his acceptance without thinking about it. As soon as it’s out of his mouth, he regrets it — he can’t get into UA, especially not as some undercover agent for a group of villains. Sure, they’re more of a hot mess than an actual organized group of chaos-bringers, but he’d still be doing something very, very bad. He wants to back out, but then Dabi suggests that Denki dumb himself down a bit, so he doesn’t finish too high in the rankings, and he’s reminded of why he joined up with this group in the first place — they believed in him when nobody else did.
So, he has to spy on some first-year hero students — big deal. He’s not doing anything harmful. The League are petty villains, and Denki is just helping entertain their strange fantasy of taking over society. Besides, he has to get into UA first.
He does. He not only passes the exam, but finishes in the top ten. He’s shocked (literally) and starts to think that maybe his friends from middle school were all wrong.
When he walks into UA on his first day as an official student, he expects to be met with fire and intensity, the best and the brightest. He’s excited, but also terrified. They’re going to be on an entirely different level. He hopes they won’t think he’s dumb.
He’s approached the moment he walks through the classroom door.
“Hiii, hi, hi, I’m Ashido Mina, and you are probably the third most attractive guy in this room — no, fourth, but the top two both look really angry, and I’d classify Eijirou as number three, but I already know him, so — ”
Denki can barely keep up with the whirlwind of pink that has landed in front of him but he’s about to give it a fighting try when he’s interrupted by another student with violently-colored hair sheepishly approaching him and smiling.
“Ah, hey, that’s me, Kirishima Eijirou. Mina, you can’t just tell people they’re the fourth most attractive person in the class...that’s kinda rude.”
Denki isn’t offended, especially when he looks at Kirishima. He’s definitely top two, if not number one. He’s not sure who really compares —
“Oi, will all of you idiots shut the fuck up ? It’s too early for you to be this fuckin’ annoying.”
Oh, that must be one of the angry ones, and yeah, Denki gets it. He’s trying to scan the rest of the classroom, doing his best to keep his head straight since he’s supposed to be reporting all of this to Shigaraki, but Mina demands attention. “Hey, get in my Snapchat!”
Denki smiles for the camera, a little bewildered. Shigaraki said this would be the hardest mission of his life, that every student at UA would be suspicious, closed off, intense, but as Mina jumps up and down and hits upload to her story, Denki thinks that maybe it would be a lot simpler than they thought.
-x-
A week later, Shigaraki cackles as Denki shows him his phone, filled with Snapchats, videos and contact information from his new classmates. Twice almost chokes on his fried chicken as he watches a clip of Sero taping Mineta to the ceiling and leaving him there. They’re all beside themselves with glee.
“They’re idiots,” Dabi grumbles, focusing for too long on a video featuring Todoroki creating an ice sculpture for Yaoyorozu. The others agree and Denki tries to hide his frown. The students in his class aren’t stupid. He’s pretty sure Iida dreams in math equations, and Yaoyorozu can quote their textbooks word-for-word. Bakugou sounds bothered whenever he’s asked a question, but he’s never wrong and Jirou schools Denki regularly on music theory. Denki thought he fit in with the League — they shared a strong sense of disdain, even if they were for different things, and all of them liked boba and fried food, but that’s about all they have in common. At UA, even among these brilliant (though maybe too trusting) heroes-in-training, Denki feels more in his element.
Of course, he reminds himself that he’s only at UA in the first place because of the League, and so he shakes the thoughts out of his head.
Besides — Shigaraki hasn’t done anything with the information Denki’s given him over the past few weeks. He probably just wants to feel like a spy or something. He can swallow down the guilt that he’s feeling, and if the smile that makes its way to his face whenever his classmates do something ridiculous is genuine, well then he’ll ignore that too.
About a month into their schooling, Aizawa announces they’ll be taking a field trip to train off-campus at the end of the week. He’s next level cryptic, so Denki figures he’ll have to wait to update Shigaraki, but then Mina starts shrieking.
“The USJ! Oh, Denki, haven’t you heard of it? It’s crazy famous at UA! It’s this whole dome, set up into different environments.” She goes on to describe the entire thing to him, instructions on how to get in and out included. Bemused, Denki tries to rationalize how he’s going to tell Shigaraki about this, but then Mina announces that she just has to announce this to her followers, and she types up a blurb and sends it off into the Internet.
Denki texts Shigaraki on his personal cell phone. Uh. Check Twitter.
-x-
Denki is in trouble. He’s in trouble, and he’s a true fool, because he thought the League was just a group of petty villains with big dreams that would never be achieved, but no — as soon as they find out about the USJ, Shigaraki tells Denki about his plan to attack it. He wants to kill All Might.
Denki is in over his head. He doesn’t know how to get out of this. He only wanted to be apart of a group that accepts him, and sure, he should’ve realized that something more sinister was up when Shigaraki threw darts at a picture of All Might, or when Toga talked about stabbing Aizawa multiple times and drinking his blood, or the times that Dabi spoke curses onto Endeavor but he thought it was all talk.
He needs to find a way out of it. He tries to warn the League about class 1A multiple times. He says warn and not inform, because he doesn’t have to tell them much about his classmates. They do that for him. The girls have a group Tik-Tok account where they post videos of themselves using their quirks — in battles, in the classroom, in dances. It has a hefty following, and they apparently showed up on Twice’s for you page without Denki even having to tell them about it. Twice had only shrugged and defended himself by saying the algorithm must have been glitching. Outside of Tik-Toks, Kirishima and Midoriya post their stats to a hero forum, comparing themselves to pros in their highschool era; Sato has a baking YouTube channel and often powers up during it; Yaoyororzu does unboxing with her own creations. Everybody is plugged in, and Denki doesn’t blame them — their quirks are cool, but seeing them in action doesn’t deter the League; it just fuels their obsession with ruining them.
“Are you sure that this is a good idea?” Denki prods. “The teachers — they’ll all be there, and they’re pretty intense.”
“We can handle it,” Shigaraki promises. “We have our own army.”
An army is much more threatening than a ragtag team of musty villains and Denki is full-on panicking. The thing is, the more time he spends at UA, the more he grows to love his classmates and the more he wants to protect them. They accept him — they respect him. Bakugou calls him a moron, but he calls everyone a moron. Sero asks him for homework help. Mina calls him her best friend. It turns out he didn’t have to join the villains to be accepted — he just needed to find his people, and they’re at UA.
“I don’t know if you can,” Denki continues, desperate, and Shigaraki fixes his menacing glare on him.
“Are you questioning your loyalties, Kaminari?” He asks, and suddenly Denki feels very trapped. He denies the accusation with a sinking feeling in his gut. He’s always wanted to be a hero at heart, but what he’s doing now is the opposite of heroic.
He has to do something — he needs help. This is his one chance to come clean to the heroes — if they all hate him, if he gets expelled, he deserves it all, but he can’t willingly put his friends in danger. It’s time to stop pretending.
It’s time to be a hero for real.
-x-
“I have to tell you something,” Denki blurts out, the day before they’re set to leave for the USJ. They’ve just finished an intense training session, and he’s sitting under a tree outside of Ground Beta with Mina, Kirishima, Sero and Bakugou. It’s hard to get everyone together (mainly because Bakugou tries to avoid them most of the time) so he knows this is the time to tell them everything. They’re all also slightly lethargic, so if they try to kill him, at least he can run.
He won’t run though — he’ll accept any punishment he’s given. He’ll leave UA. He’ll do whatever it takes. He just wants to make sure his friends — his real friends — are safe.
“What’s up, babe?” Mina cocks her head to the side, and his heart breaks, thinking that he might never see her smile at him again. He’s really an idiot.
“You good, Kami?” Kirishima looks concerned, like a sweet, buff puppy. Denki wants to throw up. He tears out a piece of grass, then word vomits.
He tells them everything, starting from the beginning. He tells them how he never thought he could be a hero, how Shigaraki approached him in the alley and brought him to the League. He doesn’t check their reactions — he can barely look at their faces as he rambles on, adding too much detail about how the League spends their time, and all of their antics, before ending with the fact that they were planning to attack the USJ tomorrow.
When he finishes, there’s silence, and he prepares for the worst, then it’s broken by the least likely person — Bakugou, who bursts into laughter.
“You fuckin’ idiot,” he barks out. “You joined a fuckin’ league of villains on accident. That’s so damn typical of you.”
Denki wants to argue but figures that one, he’s correct and two, he should probably stay humble about this entire thing. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “I understand if you want to tell Aizawa and the principal, and maybe the entire world, but I just — I had to warn you.”
“Denks,” Mina says softly. “I — I’m not sure what to say, honestly, except... it’s not really your fault.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah,” Kirishima muses. “We pretty much gave them all the information ourselves. You just kinda introduced it to them.”
“You even mentioned in the story that the Twice guy found the girls’ Tik Tok on his own,” points out Sero. “So in my opinion, you seem pretty innocent.”
“Guys?” Denki can barely manage to choke out the word. He finally looks up, just to see everyone staring at him, but nobody looks mad (aside from Bakugou, who always looks mad). In fact, Mina’s even smiling.
“You told us the truth,” Mina insisted. “You’re kinda like a double agent on the hero’s side, if you think about it.”
“I’m — I mean, yeah, but I didn’t start off that way.”
“Oi, what’s the fuckin’ deal?” Bakugou snaps. “Do you want us to hate you or some shit?”
“No! I just — I’m a traitor, and you guys are being way too nice to me about it.”
“You’re not a traitor,” Kirishima says. “You just got caught up in something you didn’t mean to. It happens to us all.”
“Yeah, been there, done that, many times.”
“You can make up for it by letting me hit you with my AP shot,” Bakugou decides.
“Okay! Wait — ”
“He’s not agreeing to that,” Sero interjects quickly. “Don’t worry though, dude. You told us, and we trust you, but I think we do have to tell Aizawa...how do we do that?”
“We’ll just tell him that if he wants to expel Kaminari, he’ll have to expel all of us,” Mina declares. “You’re a hero, Denks, and it would be a waste if you got cut off so early on in your career. We’re with you.”
“Hold the fuck on — ”
“Shh, he won’t really expel us and you know it,” Kirishima hisses.
“Yeah,” Sero agrees. “Dude’s a softie.”
They make a promise then — even Bakugou partakes — that they’ll stand by Denki no matter what. They’ll go to Aizawa together, tell the story, and vouch for him, and they do just that. Denki is on the verge of tears the whole time he tells Aizawa his story, but they don’t overflow until his friends start bringing out proof — their own social media posts — to show that he truly didn’t do anything wrong, not purposely.
Aizawa waits until they’re completely done, then nods his head. “There will be punishment for this,” he says, “for all of you. You should know better than to be so careless with your social media presence. Kaminari, the information you’ve given us on the League of Villains is invaluable. It was smart of you to choose to stick around and gather intel on them.”
He stares at him with meaning in his eyes, and Denki understands — Aizawa is giving him an out, a story to tell and a reason to stay enrolled in the hero course. Denki nods, shellshocked and Mina bumps his arm and smiles at him.
“We’ll handle the League of Villains. Kaminari, from here on out, you no longer need to associate with them.”
The warning is clear, but there’s another message underneath the stern words — Denki doesn’t need to worry. The heroes will handle the villains, and Denki is on the heroes’ side.
The trip to the USJ is cancelled, and later on, the students are moved into dorms to further guarantee their safety as they continue their education. Denki does not see the League again for several months, and he settles into his life of being an aspiring hero. The only ones who know anything about his past are Aizawa and his four best friends. They never say a word, and they never treat him differently for it. They treat him like he’s capable, like he’s smart, like he’s a hero.
When he finally does see Shigaraki again, it’s on a weekend outing to the mall — he spots him from afar, watching him with a curious look on his face, but without malice. Denki smiles hesitantly and raises his hand in an awkward wave. Shigaraki rolls his eyes and turns around, but throws a hand back behind his head — an acknowledgement.
He never sees him again.