Work Text:
It's not simply that Kaminari Denki was an idiot. He just had difficulty concentrating. That didn't make him an absolute moron, not in his book. But Kunugigaoka Junior High School thought otherwise. Even if Denki had killer scores in English and anything related to literature, he failed a lot of other classes, which branded him as an idiot and a bad student . Unteachable. A failure. A rat in a advanced society.
But Denki only had troubles concentrating in class. And he knew it was because of his quirk which also granted him a really short attention span. Electricity was coursing through his veins. The teachers talked too much for too long. So his grades plummeted and he ended up in 3-E, the End Class. When that happened Denki was pretty sure his dream of ever being accepted in UA was done for.
His quirk could be really powerful, sure, but they wouldn't let him become a hero if he couldn't pass the written exam and didn't have an above average IQ.
Maybe it was fate or destiny, or just really luck on Denki's part, but ending up in class 3-E was the best thing to ever happen in his life.
When Kaminari first learned about a giant octopus villain to would be teaching them, the electric user was sure it was some kind of joke. It first became obvious for him that it wasn't when Nagisa ordered everyone to stand up and shoot their homeroom teacher while he was taking attendances.
To be honest, even with all the money he would receive for killing this villain that was threatening to destroy the Earth, Kaminari Denki had the most difficulty with accepting having to kill. Denki's parents weren't good people, that he knew.
His mom was high half the time and his dad was always knee high in some shady business. Kaminari never wanted to become anything like them. That scared him more than anything.
He was against ever becoming an assassin, even if no one else but him in his class really objected. If he did become an assassin, wouldn't that just make him another villain? How could he ever become a hero? Would he even be able to become one or would the government keep track of the fact that he, as a teenager, once assassinated his own teacher under their request? Would they try to use him again to take out other bothersome villains?
Kaminari didn't want to become a villain, but he certainly didn't want to become the government's dog either.
"See it as new abilities you'll be able to use to save people with someday." Koro-sensei said to him. His teacher had come to him to talk about his reluctance about killing him. "Your skills are like a toolbox. The more you have up your sleeves, the more you'll be able to help and be useful in all different situations. I'd say, this training to become assassin is a big advantage for you. You'll already have some combat experience and you'll already understand the importance of your training."
After this day, Kaminari gave it his all to become one of the best. Maybe he wasn't as good as Nagisa when it came to sneaking up on people, and maybe he didn't have Chiba and Hayami's marksmanship's skills, but he was good enough.
For once in his life, Denki started to take things seriously. That would be his way to his goals. The End Class would allow him to become a hero, something he had already lost hope on.
When came the exams, when they were competing directly against 3-A,Kaminari gave it his all. And for once, it came back with results. He and Nakamura both took the first place in the English exam and he even managed to be third on the Japanese exam. For once, reading all those literature books was useful.
Kaminari loved those kind of books. He liked having a varied vocabulary.
Thanks to Koro-sensei, Denki didn't even fail in any of the tests. He was improving fast. Each day as he became a better assassin, Kaminari knew he was one step closer to becoming a hero.
The day he took the entrance exam to UA, Kaminari wasn't even worried. The written part wasn't so bad. In his head, Kaminari was in a battlefield, attacking each questions to the best of his capability.
As for the physical part, Kaminari felt all his training pay off. He was almost like a fish into water. Almost. Denki noticed it kind of bothered him to have so much people around, able to witness his abilities.
That's when he realised it was because of the assassin mindset. An assassin had to go unnoticed. A heroes were flashy and directly broadcasting their powers to the world to see. Then, another thing came to mind.
"What if the others find my assassin abilities weird. What if they think I'm a villain?" He asked his classmates, one day.
"If they label you as a villain because you're better than them at fighting, that means they're just a bunch of sore losers!" Karma exclaimed.
"I don't think you should be afraid of showing them what you can do, Kaminari, that's part of who we all are now." Maehara, Denki's best friend, said.
"Yeah," continued Sugino "plus, after this year, when we'll have killed Koro-sensei, we'll all have to go on with our lives. That doesn't mean we'll forget any of our training, so I don't see why you couldn't become a great hero with all that we learned this year."
His classmates were defenitely the best Kaminari could ever ask for.
When time came to choose a team, Denki went blue, on Nagisa's team. Koro-sensei had helped him so much, he didn't want to kill him anymore. If there was a way to save him, Denki wanted to find it. He wanted to be a hero.
"Guys! I made it! I'm going to UA! I gonna become a hero!"
That morning, Kaminari arrived late at school. He had just received his acceptance letter and was too in shock to realise that he was going to be late for class.
Even if Denki hadn't made it to class in time, none of his teachers reprimanded him.
The next weekend, he and his classmates allowed themselves to celebrate and all reunited themselves at a shopping center, having fun and playing games at the arcade. Kaminari wasn't even surprised when he saw his homeroom teacher there, poorly disguised as a normal human being.
Koro-sensei's death had hit hard on all of them.
With the money, their class of supposedly unteachable students bought the 3-E class. They promised to at least all reunite there once a year.
A few months later, Kaminari was starting in UA, the most prestigious hero school in all Japan.
Kaminari wasn't completely alone there. Itona was in the support course. Denki could vaguely recognise Monoma in 1-B. Kaminari knew he used to be in 3-A, in Kunugigaoka. Obviously, landing in the B class hurt his ego.
Class 1-A first came across one of Kaminari's former classmate not even a few days after school started. The bell had just rung and everyone was putting away their books back in their bags when Itona showed up in their classroom. The boy had entered uninvited and no one had noticed him until Kaminari talked to him:
"What's up Itona?"
Everyone just suddenly turned to the two, as if having a heart attack at suddenly noticing the boy was here.
Itona handed him what looked like tiny disks.
"I made those." He said, even if Kaminari wouldn't have thought otherwise. "They're exploding bombs if you charge them with your electricity. You charge them before hand and we can program them to explode with an electrical burst at contact after being thrown."
"Those are so cool Itona! I'll be sure to add them to my hero gear!"
"I want you to come back at me and tell me everything about them once you'll have tested them."
"Kaminari-kun, who's that?" Asked Momo Yaoyorozu.
"Guys, this Itona Horibe! He's in the support course and was my classmate last year." Or well, part of last year, when Itona wasn't obsessed with winning.
When he thought about it, Bakugou was kind of a loud mix of Karma and Itona.
To say that the USJ attack didn't affect Denki would be a lie.
After all, his own uncle was there, attacking his classmates. Denki couldn't see his father but he had no doubt he had a play in this.
As for his uncle, he always lacked any form of conviction. He was only a spawn there to jam the communications.
When some police officers interrogated him, Kaminari had no choice but to say the truth, in front of a lie detector quirk. One of the villains that had attacked him was his uncle. That didn't really get the other officers to trust him. At the end, he was deemed completely innocent and unrelated to the events, but the feeling of maybe getting kicked out for something out of his control lingererd in him.
Kaminari was part of a group friend. A squad. The Bakusquad, like they called it.
Denki at first never thought he would, but he became sort of friend with Bakugou. The guy was loud, abrasive and reminded him of all of Kunugigaoka's 3-A jerks, but it was fine. Somehow, the explosion boy was showing that he cared in his own strange way, even if he was always so angry about everything.
And everyone else was so friendly! Kirishima, Mina and Sero were the easiest to get along with and Jirou was pretty chill herself.
He really shouldn't have been surprised when Mina convinced them to spy on his conversation with Aizawa-sensei, believing he was in trouble. She was just worried about him, because she cared so much about all her friends.
"The board of Defense finally let me access to your file after the USJ attack."
And that was it, Denki thought. He was done for. Since he had helped kill his own teacher, he could never become a hero.
"Are you going to expel me?" He asked quietly. More softly, desperate than he ever heard himself speak.
"No." His teacher said almost emotionlessly. "What I want to know is, Kaminari, are you okay?"
"What?" The electric user choked, dumbfoundedly.
"You and your previous classmates were taken as hostages to a villain for a whole year. I want to know if you are alright. UA has therapists you know. I'm pretty sure every kid in the hero course should consult one, but I really think it couldn't hurt you to talk to one so early in the year. It's only been a few months since he died, after all."
That hurt. Kaminari didn't need to be reminded. He missed his teacher in an odd nostalgic way. He knew he'd die, but him not being alive anymore was an odd feeling for Denki. His target was dead, some satisfaction of accomplishment was there. But at the same time, he felt infinitely sad. He'd come over it, he knew. Koro-sensei had all changed him and his classmates as successful young students. He would just never get to chance to show him all his appreciation.
"Yeah, I'll think about it."
When they opened the door to their classroom, they were met with the Bakusquad obviously eavesdropping. Mina didn't waste a second in hugging him.
"You were taken hostage for a VILLAIN for a WHOLE YEAR!?" She exclaimed, or well, yelled in front of the whole class.
"This was a private conversation." Aizawa glared down his student. "This is national defense secret. You won't be asking him any question about it, am I clear?"
"YES, SIR!"
"And if I catch any of you ever eavesdropping on a teacher again, you'll be automatically expulsed."
It was obvious there were a million things his friends were dying to ask him, but all Kaminari could do was give them a small forced smile.
Kaminari was having fun at the Sports Festival. They were taking a break for lunch, and the electric hero couldn't wait until the matches begun.
He was sitting at a table with his friends when he was called:
"You did a good job there, Kaminari-kun."
At their table was an attractive blonde woman accompanied by a stric looking man with jet black hair.
"Karasuma-sensei! Bitch-sensei!" Kaminari was pretty sure he heard some of his friends choke when he called the woman 'Bitch-sensei'. "What are you doing here?"
"We wanted to watch you and Itona live in the Sports Festival. Tadaomi was also worried about you." His previous English teacher said
"From what I've seen, you're doing great. Keep it up. Have you maintained your training?" His previous PE teacher said.
"You bet I did! Just wait and see, I'll be in the top three of the Sports Festival!"
His teachers grinned, not doubting him before bidding him goodbye and good luck.
"Uh dude, who was that?" asked Kirishima once they left.
"And were you really calling that woman Bitch-sensei?" Sero stiffled a laugh, his face was red, surely from trying so hard to contain his laughter.
"Those were a few of my teachers from last year. Bitch-sensei was my English teacher and Karasuma-sensei my PE teacher. They're great people and I'm pretty sure they started dating."
As he had told earlier, Kaminari did arrive third at the Sports Festival. Maybe that wasn't first place, but Kaminari was proud of himself.
"Korosenai?" asked Midnight. "Kaminari, that's a pretty bold name, are you sure you want your hero name to be Unkillable?"
"Yes. This was the name of someone important for me who passed away last year. That person taught me so much and I owe him a lot. I want to carry his name as my hero name."
"I'll allow it, but you'll have to be careful. You'll probably attract a lot of trouble with that name."
"I know."
Thanks to all the study techniques learnedd from Koro-sensei, Kaminari didn't fail any test. And so, he didn't have to take extra classes when came the Training Camp. Maybe if he did, he wouldn't be in this situation.
"We know you were trained as an assassin, Denki Kaminari." Tomura Shigaraki said. "There's a bloodlust inside of you that none of your peers will ever understand. Join us, so you'll be free from the hero society again."
The big bad handy villain was giving him his villain speech. Yes Denki was an assassin. But he certainly was not a villain!
The League of Villains had kidnapped both him and Bakugou, but kept the two 1-A students in different facilities. That certainly didn't look good for him. Kaminari couldn't find an escape, but maybe he could buy some time. Time to get that big mouth of his to work.
"Ok man, but like, why?"
Why, the most dreaded question in the world.
"The society is trashed. We need to burn it to the ground with its hero system so we can rebuild it to the better."
"Ok, I hear what you say, but why burn it?"
"It's figuratively speaking."
"Why?"
Maybe this wasn't the best plan after all. Kaminari was most likely the get killed for his annoyance, but the villain before him didn't seem to catch on to what he was doing. So for an hour or more, he let Handsy talk, only responding to him with questions to keep the conversation going.
He could do this.
"So you're the wannabe heroes who let two of their classmates get kidnapped, huh?" A red haired boy asked.
Class 1-A had all come to visit Deku at the hospital, they didn't expect to have extra visitors. No one knew what to say. None of them recognised the three boys there. Two blondes, a blue haired and a red haired.
"That's harsh, man." Kirishima said. "Who even are you guys?"
"We heard your plan about going to rescue that Bakugou guy and Kami." The girl said, careful not to answer the question.
"We only wanted to let you know that they'll be keeping Kaminari in a different facility than Bakugou."
"Amd how would you know that, kero?" asked Tsuyu Asui.
"We have our ways." responded the blonde guy. "The fact is, go for Bakugou, for all we care, but we're going to save Kaminari."
The hero class froze.
"You can't!" exclaimed Iida, alarmed. "You're inexperienced, you'll die!"
"And what would you know about us?" sneered the redhead. "The government gave us the authorisation to reunite our class with some of our old equipement to go on a rescue mission. We're the ones who's gonna save Kami. Try to stay out of our way."
Three of them left, leaving only the bluenette.
"I'm sorry about Karma. He's just worried about Kaminari. He was our classmate last year and we were all close to each other. As for Nakamura and Maehara, well, they're two of Kaminari's best friends. They're extra worried. They said their blond trio can never be complete if their missing him. We just want our friend back."
"Who are you?" asked Ojiro.
"My name is Shiota Nagisa."
"Were you all of you taken hostages by a villain for a whole year too?" asked Mina.
"He never really was a villain for us." Nagisa said before leaving them more and more confused.
"I'm surprised the Hand man didn't kill you" Karma said and Terasaka snickered at that. Terasaka was carrying Kaminari, who couldn't support his own weight anymore, out of the villain hideout while the rest of the End class was scouring around, efficiently taking out any goons that were still there. Karma was staying with Terasaka and Kaminari for protection purposes since the electric blond, in his state, was pretty much a dead weight.
"I don't think he understood that I was messing with him. I just asked him 'why' all the time and I guess he concluded that I'm an utter idiot."
"Let's get out of here, I have an exam tomorrow." Karma said, though he didn't really seem bothered by it as he was smirking. Kaminari knew that Karma would probably mark a perfect score in his test, even if his study night was interupted by Kaminari's rescue mission.
They were all out in the streets, changed in normal clothes to fit in, Kaminari still on Terasaka's back when Denki spotted Bakugou, Midoriya, Iida, Todoroki, Kirishima and Yaoyorozu in the middle of a crowd.
"Hey guys!" Kaminari practically shouted, getting their attention, waving at them from Terasaka's back. "You managed to get Bakubro out, didn't you? That's so cool!"
None of them seemed to be in the same happy-go-lucky mood that Denki was.
Terasaka then shoved Kaminari, as if he only was a ragged doll, on Kirishima.
"You take him." Said Karma to the other redhead. "It's better if our involvment isn't too mentionned."
And just like that, the rest of the E class, excluding Denki, disappeared into the night, as if they were never there.
Kirishima tightly hugged Kaminari. "I was really worried about you, man." he whispered to his friend.
They went to the police to give their testimony. All the way there, Bakugou didn't say a word.
Kaminari Denki knew he had fallen hard the moment he saw Shinsou Hitoshi enter their classroom, officially a part of their class for their second year at UA.
The blond tried everything he could to spend the most time with the purple haired teen. He openly flirted with him, but most often than not, he got caught at his own game since Shinsou with his calm confidence that melted Kaminari. He always seemed to know what to say so that the electricity user was suddenly embarrassed.
"Hey Shinsou, you're gonna become an underground hero, right?" Kaminari asked one day, as the two were chilling in Shinsou's room. They started hanging out a lot together and at one point, Shinsou seemed used to Kaminari's presence and him pretty much invading his personal space. The two passed nights together, as neither of them could sleep. Shinsou with his constant insomnia and Kaminari often had just too much energy. So they sometimes passed their nights into the other's dorm, just hanging out, scrolling cat videos on Tik Tok.
"Yeah, and your point is?" Hitoshi asked as he took another strawberry flavored pocky.
"I could help train you in combat and stealth."
"You could help me in stealth?" Don't get him wrong, Shinsou loved Kaminari, but the blond was loud and noticeable and far from what Hitoshi classified as stealthy.
"You'd be surprised."
"So, Kaminari sensei, what great secrets do you have in stealth to teach me?" Shinsou asked, amused at seeing the blond turn red.
"Um, yes. For most situations, being stealthy won't really mean that you have to be good in hiding in the shadows like a creep or something. Most of the time, you'll have to fit in and adapt to everything that will come your way. If you can falsely convince yourself that you're supposed to be here, then the others will most likely start to think it too. Sometimes you have to act in the most normal way to be stealthy. I know a guy who can look at you in the eye, smile as if he was calmly going to school and stab you next."
"That's... not actually bad..."
"Yeah well, I learned from the bests."
"Aren't you just full of mysteries?"
Maybe Kaminari's heart was beating way to fast when he was around Shinsou, and maybe he was constantly making a fool of himself when he was near him, but Denki didn't really mind.
Denki was pretty sure that everything would turn out just fine.