Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was common knowledge that you could use the voices in your head to find your soulmate, or rather, that your soulmate was the cause of the voice in your head. Even a dunce like Kaminari Denki could gather that much, but the details had to be explained multiple times before he felt like he actually understood.

He asked his parents why he didn’t hear anything, and they explained that the soulmate voices will come later, and you can only hear them when they’re singing. Denki thought that was weird but ultimately accepted it. He didn’t make the rules, of course; he was hesitant to ask why in fear of that exasperated look coming across their faces again when he just wouldn’t give it a rest. So, he forced himself to accept that answer as it was and not seek out more detail.

When he heard the voices for the first time, he was ecstatic, but also overwhelmed. No one had told him that he would have two overlapping voices at the same time, both singing different songs. As soon as they both appeared, though, they were both gone. It was disorienting, and the experience knocked him over as he was changing for gym class at school. It took him a while to get his balance back. Recovering from the effects of his lightning quirk—that he was finally getting the hang of, he was proud to say. Having two voices suddenly jolt through his mind only to stop just as abruptly? That left him out of it for longer than usual, but he didn’t think he could be blamed for that.

Denki was understandably upset when he was taken to the nurse’s office and reprimanded for using his quirk when he was not allowed to, and how many times do I have to tell you? He had tried to argue that he didn’t use his quirk, but no one bothered to listen. Denki slumped down into the chair, wrinkling his nose in distaste at both the antiseptic smell of the nurse’s office and the unsurprising trend of ignoring what he has to say. The nurse had called his parents and told them about him becoming disoriented from using his quirk, yet again, and interrupting his studies. He couldn’t stay focused on being mad at the nurse for long, though, because the excitement at hearing his soulmates’ voices kept pushing its way to the forefront of his mind.

When he got home, he was anticipating telling his parents the news. The excitable energy bubbled out of him like one of those toy bubble lawn mowers, but broken so that it never stopped and went into overdrive, maybe.

“You’ll never guess—” he started as soon as he got home, kicking off his shoes and sending his bookbag skidding across the floor, only to be interrupted by his displeased father.

“The nurse called again today, Denki. What have we told you about using your quirk during school?” he reprimanded, sounding entirely perplexed at why his son could not understand and follow such a simple rule.

Denki opened his mouth to explain, but his mother started talking before he had a chance.

“We’re only worried about you, honey. We don’t want you to fall even further behind than you already are,” his mother stated, concern lacing her voice, making Denki feel even worse than he thought possible.

All Denki wanted to do was tell them his good news, and they weren’t listening to him because that nurse didn’t listen to him and passed on false information. No matter, though! He easily decided that he would just have to correct everyone!

Denki excitedly started, “I only fell over because I heard my soulmates in my head! I didn’t use my quirk! I swear! I heard my soulmates!”

In his excitement, Denki had jumped up and down in place, squeezing his hands together against his chest to try to contain his excited energy and wearing a huge smile on his face, waiting for his parents’ reactions. His father had smiled at first, but his mother looked concerned right away with no hint of happiness for her son.

“What did you say, dear? Soulmates? You heard more than one voice?” she questioned gently, and Denki’s father’s face fell to match the concern on his wife’s.

“Yeah!” Denki announced excitedly, fidgeting with the string of the hood of his jacket before holding out two fingers. “Two soulmates! Double lucky!”

Denki should have known something was off when his parents didn’t reprimand him for yelling indoors. Maybe he did know something was off, in hindsight, but just wanted so badly for something to go right for him for once that he ignored it in hopeful bliss.

“Honey,” his mother started, a sad worry blatant in her eyes, “no one has two soulmates.”

She was wrong, of course. It was rare, but it happened. But how was little 12-year-old Denki supposed to know that? In Denki’s mind, his parents knew everything, and they had never been wrong before that he could tell, so he never thought to question his mother’s expertise in the matter of all things soulmate related.

Denki was scared when he sat next to his parents in the emergency room. The nurse had led them through a corridor behind locked doors, but he never went through doors that locked behind him when he was there a year ago when he broke his arm.

Then, the nurse started asking him questions, like if he wanted to hurt himself. He was very confused and denied everything, but she kept asking if he was sure he never hurt himself or thought about hurting himself.

They asked him how long he’s been hearing the voices, and he wanted to tell them that they were his soulmates, not just random voices, but his words died in his throat when he remembered that his mother said that it wasn’t possible. If they weren’t his soulmates, he guessed they were just voices after all. He had been so excited, too.

Dejectedly, he explained how it had just happened earlier that day in school. The nurse made him think back to try to remember if he had heard them before, but he said no. The nurse asked him and then his parents to confirm about if he had had any traumatic experiences and how he had been sleeping and eating.

The doctor talked about him with his parents like he wasn’t even there, asking if he had been under an immense amount of stress recently. They were throwing around big words like “psychotic” and “schizophrenia” and “hallucinations” and “delusions” and Denki didn’t know what they meant, exactly, but he could infer enough to figure out that it wasn’t good.

“Schizophrenia doesn’t usually present itself until the late teens or early twenties.” Finally, the doctor addressed Denki directly, “did you get to hear your soulmate sing, yet?”

“I thought the voices were my soulmates,” Denki muttered dejectedly, wiping the tears from his eyes with the soft fabric of his jacket’s sleeves before they could fall. He felt so stupid, crying when there really wasn’t anything to cry about. The lights were too bright, and the room was too white, and the words were too big, and he felt too small, but there was no reason to cry. “They both started at the same time and then stopped quick. I couldn’t even make out what they were saying. They were just loud, saying different things, and then they were gone.”

The doctor had opted to not explain to the family that it is, in fact, possible to have two soulmates for a few reasons. First was that it was a controversial topic; even when fated by destiny, polyamory was frowned upon, and many parents would rather not have the stigma surrounding their child if at all possible. Second was that maybe the voices weren’t his soulmates. It was rare for people to develop schizophrenia so early in life, but young Kaminari was young to be hearing his soulmate, too. That plus the rareness of having more than one soulmate led the doctor to believe it was more likely that Denki was hallucinating and not hearing multiple soulmates. Third was that the probability of his electric-type quirk causing enough trauma to his body to elicit schizophrenia wasn’t zero. It would not have been the first time that a physically demanding quirk pushed people into schizophrenia earlier than was usual.

The doctor wanted to have Denki sing and see if he got a response back, but that was for his own, selfish curiosity alone. Hallucinations could just as easily sing back, masking as a soulmate or two.

The doctor recommended inpatient treatment to get Denki stabilized on the medications he would need to offset the hallucinations, a preventative measure to keep the hallucinations in check, he had explained. If he marked down in the chart the possibility that Denki had experienced a rare early onset soulmate bonding with more than one soulmate, and allowed the possibility to be explored behind the locked doors of the facility rather than right there in front of the worried eyes of his parents, well, then that was his little secret to keep. Either way, the doctor wished he could reassure Denki that the truth would be discovered, no matter what that truth ended up looking like in the end.

Denki thought he was scared before, but it was a whole new level when an ambulance came to take him away and his parents weren’t going to ride with him. He had to ride with strangers to a different place where he had never been before. When the ambulance stopped, the EMTs helped him climb out. It was frightening and disorienting being somewhere he had never been before with strangers that he had never met before. If his parents hadn’t waved him goodbye, he would have sworn he was kidnapped; he still wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t been.

Just as he was about to run for his life, thinking that this must be some horrible plot to a terrible horror movie, his parents pulled into the parking lot. They had filled out paperwork, and Denki’s relief of having his parents was short-lived as they left after Denki was safely behind a locked door that would only open with a key card.

Without a second thought, Denki impulsively slammed his hand against the locking mechanism and released a small stream of electricity, trying his best to not fry the system—or himself, which was a possibility in his current state of mind—completely.

His small, secret practice sessions had entirely paid off in that moment, and he was able to open the door and dart out only to be immediately restrained by the workers on the unit. If Denki wasn’t absolutely panicking, he would have wondered if one of the technicians had a future-telling quirk. Denki was screaming and crying and struggling as the team of fully grown adults struggled to pin him to the ground. They tried to calm him using soothing voices. They tried to explain what would happen once he calmed down so he would know what to expect. He didn’t hear any of it over his own wailing and the panicky, erratic heartbeat pulsing in his ears.

When he started zapping people, it wasn’t on purpose. He was so stressed and scared that his quirk just started letting off excess energy. Luckily, he didn’t hurt anyone. He felt like he was suffocating on his own snot and tears as he apologized through his sobs for using his quirk, even as he continued to let off small shocks. To the staff’s credit, they didn’t let go and continued to attempt to reassure Denki as he continued letting off electricity as he struggled to regain control over his emotions. When the charge nurse came to give him an injection of anti-anxiety medication to calm down, the order to give him a quirk-nullifying drug as well was already passed down from the doctor. Unknowingly to Denki, the nurse saved him some heartache by mixing the drugs so that he only had to get jabbed once.

The nurse was empathetic. She loved kids, and hearing Denki’s howls and pleas tore her heart apart; this was not what she signed up for. She wanted to help kids, but drugging them against their will never felt right, no matter how out of control some of them got. He was already crying even harder because he couldn’t control his quirk in his current mental state, so it really was necessary to give him the injectable sedative and quirk-nullifier. It scared Denki even more, though. With the blood pounding in his ears as he struggled only to get nowhere and a nurse coming at him with a needle in hand only for his captors to forcibly turn him over onto his side and pull his shirt up and his waistband down enough for them to get access to the injection site… it was terrifying. He couldn’t hear the explanations over his panic and probably wouldn’t have believed them anyway. In that moment, he truly thought that he was going to die. If he didn’t die from whatever they injected him with, his panic was sure to suffocate him.

The injection didn’t hurt as bad as Denki had feared and the drugs worked wonders. Denki had calmed down considerably, and he was able to hear the staff talking to him. The man holding down his left shoulder explained to him that once he was calm, they were able to let him go. Denki continued to apologize over and over again, tears still leaking from his eyes, for shocking them, for making their jobs harder, for every little inconvenience he could think of. All of them provided reassurance that none of them were hurt and that he was okay. If Denki picked up any frustration from any of them, he wouldn’t have known it was because they had requested over and over again to give the first quirk-nullifying drug upon arrival because this type of thing happened all of the time. It was only a matter of time until someone got hurt, and it wouldn’t be the fault of the scared patient they were holding down, but the higher ups who thought it was inhumane to drug someone upon entry to restrain their quirks, but thought it was just fine to submit them to a restraint in the lobby of the unit after they use their quirk to try to escape.

Two of the three workers who held Denki down ended up putting their notice in. The risk was too high and the reward not enough as they had to hold down a 12-year-old kid who was struggling, scared to death, and still apologizing to them through his tears about shocking them when they were the ones preventing his escape. Both technicians that quit loved the kids, but the lack of support from the institution itself was unforgivable and unsustainable.

If Denki had thought that the embarrassment was over, he was sorely mistaken. Next, two male workers had taken him back a hallway to a bathroom that had no door, just a curtain. They didn’t let him close the curtain as they had him strip and hand over his clothes. He didn’t know what they were looking for as they ran their hands over his clothes and double-checked the seams, but he didn’t care to ask either. He was tired from the struggling and the sedative and he was ready for bed. He didn’t protest when they took the laces out of his shoes or the string out of the hood of his jacket, though he would curse them all later when he struggled to get the string back in after he was released.

It was near 10 in the evening, an hour past his bedtime already. Time seemed to have dragged on since going to the emergency department after school only to end up here hours later. Denki hoped that in the morning he could go home and forget all of this ever happened. He was thankful, at least, that it was so late that he didn’t have to try to fight against the drugs to stay awake.

The workers explained to him, once again now that he was calm, that he would be there for at least a few days. That shot down his hope at going home the next day, but he was thankful that they were being honest with him after they had just dealt with his over-the-top tantrum. In truth, he wondered why they didn’t lie to him to prevent another one, but he wasn’t complaining.

Denki was so exhausted that even as he was falling asleep, the voice that began to sing softly didn’t jolt him back into awareness. After a second voice joined in, this time singing the same song instead of blurting out different lyrics, Denki was easily lured to sleep, even in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar bed, with an unfamiliar roommate snoring in the bed next to his.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Denki looked at his jacket in despair. Of all of the things that had happened the day before, the second worst thing was the string being removed from the hood of his jacket.

His parents hated when he pulled the strings out of his clothes. He was actually doing a good job of keeping the string in that jacket so far. Every time he almost pulled on it too hard, past the point of no return, he would reprimand himself, worried that he would accidentally pull it out the whole way and make his parents disappointed in him again.

Now, all he could think about was the way the worker just pulled the string out of his jacket on purpose. It looked kind of freeing, actually, and he made a mental note to do that one day. If his parents thought this place was going to be a good influence on him, they were sorely mistaken! He planned to laugh maniacally as he ripped the strings from all of his clothes! Who cared if his parents screamed in horror and agony! That’s what they got for sending him to this place! Who cared if his sweatpants fell down with no drawstring to tighten them?! That wouldn’t be the most embarrassing thing to happen to him that week, or probably that hour if he was being honest…

The tragic removal of the string was second only to the devastation he felt when his mother told him that he wasn’t hearing his soulmates. Denki had never been a lucky kid, but to have two soulmates would have felt like all of his bad luck before was just to even the playing field for the good luck to come. He had always felt like there had to be some kind of balance, but maybe the balance wasn’t for individuals. Maybe he would get all of the bad luck so that other people, like the smart and talented students in his class, could have endless good luck without having to fear that the bad luck would eventually come for them to even it out.

Denki hated thinking that way because it mixed his emotions all up. He was mad that he wasn’t one of the lucky ones or that it wasn’t balanced and even and fair. On the other hand, he kind of felt like an underdog hero, taking all of the bad luck so that others didn’t have to worry about it. He just wished that the bad luck would take a break when it came to his soulmate of all things. Even the person who carried the worst luck in the world deserved a little bit of happiness, even if that means that a few of the luckiest people had accidentally stepped in gum on their way to work one morning to keep balance in the universe.

The technicians had gathered everyone from their rooms and lined them up at the med nurse’s window. Denki looked at the little pills in the white cup he was handed. The med nurse explained quietly that there was a vitamin, a quirk-nullifying drug, and an antipsychotic to try to get the voices to go away. Denki shrugged, tipped the cup against his lips, and swallowed the pills whole, much to the surprise of the med nurse. He had been a med nurse for a few months, and the patients, even the young ones, usually had questions at the very least. It was also pretty common for patients to outright refuse them as well. Denki handed the cup back, and copying the patient who had gone before him, opened his mouth for the nurse to check that he had swallowed the pills, stepped out of line, and made his way into the group room where everyone else was heading.

He felt out of place in his borrowed clothes that the technician who had woken him up that morning had given him to change into after his shower. He didn’t feel like himself at all as he wrapped his jacket around him tighter, thankful that they didn’t take that away to wash at least. His fingers fidgeted with the ends of his sleeves after he reached up to fidget with the string and came up empty, stupidly grasping at the fabric on the chest of his jacket to find the ends of the string to pull on and run his fingers over only to remember that the string had been confiscated. His cheeks had darkened against his will as he redirected his hands down to his side and fiddled with the jacket sleeves instead, but thankfully no one seemed to have noticed his little internal conflict or embarrassment.

The others must have sensed his awkward mood because they didn’t stray over to introduce themselves, opting to keep to themselves until the technician that was situated in the middle of the room called them over one by one to get their vital signs checked. When it was Denki’s turn, he thought it was weird that he had to tell her his name and birthday when it was right there on the chart that she was writing on, but he guessed that she had rules to follow, too, so he answered and allowed her to take his temperature, pulse, and blood pressure.

The technician gave him a little cup of juice and a muffin for breakfast, and he sulked over to the furthest table away from everyone else to eat, content with being alone as he observed his surroundings and made a plan of attack of how to best make friends with the other patients.

Music therapy was interesting, Denki had to admit. He thought it was actually pretty cool that instead of being in his math class at 8:00 a.m., he was sitting around a circle, playing music trivia with the other patients on the unit. Denki wasn’t much of a singer, though. He would much rather erratically grind on his air guitar as backup instead of taking center stage with actual vocals leaving his mouth. And that’s exactly what he opted to do instead of singing along to the trivia samples.

Everyone else had been singing along softly, brows furrowed and hands moving rhythmically as they tried to recall the name and artist of the song, but he strummed his imaginary guitar instead. One girl who saw him out of the corner of her eye turned to full on stare at him with a weird look on her face.

“Are you serious?” the purple-haired girl had sneered, turning her nose up at him.

Denki froze, heart jumping up into his throat as he looked at the girl sitting next to him, bracing himself for whatever insult that was to come and deciding if he should back down or stand his ground.

The music therapist started to intervene, “Kyoka—”

Kyoka had ignored the music therapist in favor of continuing her harsh criticism of Denki.

“I know you’re new here and all, but that’s no excuse!” she growled, putting her hands in loose fists in front of her as she adjusted her posture to sit up straighter. “How are you supposed to keep on pace without a drummer? Don’t you know anything?”

Her hands started to move to the beat of the music playing from the portable stereo. To Denki, it looked really convincing, too. He remembered thinking that she probably actually plays drums when she wasn’t trapped in Fields Mental Hospital. Denki was utterly relieved and couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face at the unexpected friendliness coming from the girl with the conflicting harsh demeanor.

She was technically calling Denki stupid. He was used to that, but it didn’t sting like normal—maybe because it wasn’t deep and malicious. It was a nice kind of accepted warmth that enveloped him as he started strumming the invisible guitar once again, trying to out-do her expertise with enthusiasm alone.

Her eyes sparkled as she picked up the theatrics, but always stayed on beat. Denki went off-beat to strum even faster, but Kyoka just moved her arms even higher. Denki was extremely impressed as she even remembered to hit the invisible symbol the same time it tinged in the song.

The others quickly followed their lead. His roommate laughed as he strummed his own imaginary guitar, kindly allowing Denki to be lead guitar and following him up with bass, faded red hair swishing as he bobbed his head to the beat. The brunette girl, who was not musically inclined, laughed as she held up her invisible triangle: “the only instrument that might actually make the sound it’s supposed to if it’s coming from me!”

The pretty girl who had been there for a week, who still rocked a sleek ponytail despite the cheap, drying shampoo offered to the patients, pulled up an imaginary microphone, belting the next lyrics into her fist as she stood up and started jumping to the beat. Her eyes sparkled and her ponytail bounced as she jumped. Denki was impressed that she could jump like that and keep her breath enough to sing loudly and clearly at the same time. The others quickly followed her lead, standing up and giving all of their energy to the impromptu concert.

The music therapist was smiling and laughing and clapping along. Eventually, she had the idea of becoming the impromptu band’s paparazzi.

Denki struck a cool pose with the bass guitar player, leaning with their backs together and really giving their invisible guitars everything they had. The music therapist turned around the group, snapping pictures on the imaginary camera and giving each kid the chance to shine. The vocalist had posed for a pretty shot that, if any of it were real, would have been the shot for the poster for the upcoming events. She then wrapped an arm around Denki’s shoulders and shoved her fist in front of his face, and he had no choice but to belt out the lyrics that shifted from the soprano female voice to the tenor male voice into the invisible microphone. He probably sounded horrible, but he was pleasantly surprised that they all seemed to just love that he was going with the flow and participating and making their concert one to remember. He had to admit that he felt like a rockstar while strumming his guitar, belting out the words (that he actually knew!) into an invisible microphone, and posing for pictures from the relentless paparazzi.

The vocalist quickly moved on to the bass player to give him a shot at the next set of tenor vocals after her own two lines that followed Kaminari’s verse.

When the song ended, they were all a little breathless and in a good mood.

“Okay!” the music therapist said loudly, regrouping the youth back to the activity at hand. “So, who knows what the song was called and who it was by?”

Denki wasn’t even mad when the pretty girl with the ponytail got it right. She got every single one of them right, but now it almost felt like they were all on the same team anyway. He offered her a high five for answering correctly and she returned it with no hesitation, flashing a huge smile with perfect teeth at the praise from her peer.

At that point, if his parents had changed their mind and had come to bust him out of that place, Denki would have refused. Even with the rough start the night before, it was a pretty good first day so far. He got to have a concert with an attentive adult acting as the paparazzi instead of reprimanding him for not following directions and all of the kids joining in his antics instead of rolling their eyes at him.

Next, instead of reading class, was free time.

“I’m Momo,” the pretty girl introduced, holding out a hand for Denki to shake.

“I’m Kaminari Denki,” he said, returning her handshake.

“Oh, no!” she whispered, pulling him in by his hand to whisper the correction as to not alert the technicians that he wasn’t following the rules. “We don’t use family names here. We aren’t allowed. Just Denki, okay? Didn’t they tell you this when you came in?”

“Oh, sorry,” Denki said, rubbing the back of his neck. “They probably did tell me, but it was so late, and I was so tired… and scared…”

Kyoka had come up behind him.

“So that was you last night?” she asked, inserting herself into the conversation.

Momo didn’t seem to mind the intrusion, so Denki affirmed, cheeks darkening in embarrassment when he thought that they might have heard him screaming.

“What? What happened last night, Kyoka?” Momo had asked.

Maybe Denki was in the clear after all. He relaxed just a little.

“The lights were flickering like crazy!” Kyoka said, crossing her arms as she studied Denki. “Is that your quirk?”

“I tried to escape,” Denki admitted in a mutter, puffing out his cheeks and looking down at his lace-less shoes. “I used my electric quirk to jam the door and tried to run, but they caught up right away.”

Kyoka drew in a breath through her teeth. “That’s badass.”

“Kyoka!” Momo reprimanded. “That is pretty cool, Denki,” Momo altered when she noticed that Denki was reprimanding Kyoka’s thought process instead of her language. “Don’t let the technicians hear you use that kind of language,” she directed toward her friend. “You won’t be able to go to the cafeteria for lunch!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kyoka responded, rolling her eyes but smiling all the while.

“You get to leave this place to eat?” Denki asked, eyes sparkling with hope of looking around without the frantic desire to escape.

“Not you,” Momo said sadly. “You tried to escape, so it would be too risky to take you off of the unit, at least for the first few days.”

Denki deflated. He knew this meant that his new friends would be able to leave, and he would be left behind. He was already feeling the walls close in on him at the prospect. He vowed, then, to follow all of the rules so that he would be allowed to leave and eat with his new friends as soon as possible. With the new self-imposed mission on his mind, he perked up and joined his friends in a game of cards, betting promised drawings instead of money or poker chips. When Denki had won by pure luck, he was blessed to be given a beautiful drawing of an apple by Momo. He didn’t know how even making such a life-like replica was possible with only the off-brand crayons offered to them, but it looked like he could just pick it up and take a bite.

What wasn’t Momo good at? … Besides card games, apparently.

Denki offered endless compliments to his new friends. Momo was just good at everything and Kyoka was so likeable in a blunt, honest type of way. The others drifted off to play among themselves, but there was no tension between the two groups that just kind of split off naturally. While Denki’s group entertained themselves with card games, the other group preferred board games. The groups reconnected when both wanted to draw at the same time, all gathering around the same table instead of spreading apart around the other tables scattered throughout the room.

Momo showed Denki which off-brand crayons were better than other off-brand crayons and tried showing him how she drew the apple. Denki tried to copy her step-by-step, but his attempt was laughable.

“Can I have that?” Momo had asked, pointing toward his deformed, miscolored attempt at an apple. “Even though I didn’t win any card games?”

“Sure,” Denki said, shrugging as he passed it over.

Honestly, though, he was jumping for joy on the inside. His heart could have exploded when she had requested that he sign his name at the bottom. He felt so happy and accepted, even with his mediocre apple.

His mood crashed when the others left for lunch, and it was only himself and three technicians on the unit. He went from feeling on top of the world to crashing back down and staring reality in the face once again. He was alone, locked in a strange place, and didn’t really have the whole picture of what was actually going on, yet.

And he didn’t even have the string from his jacket’s hood to fidget with.

Chapter Text

Denki was eating slowly, looking around the room as he chewed, bored out of his mind. Every time he met the eyes of the technician who was keeping an eye on him, he’d hurriedly look away. It was awkward and Denki missed his new friends already, and it was only five minutes since the others had left for the cafeteria across campus.

Momo had drawn him a map of the place, which would be helpful if he wanted to attempt another escape, but he figured he’d better not. He liked his new friends, the days weren’t terrible (except right then as he was awkwardly eating alone), and he didn’t want to accidentally shock anyone who would try to hold him down if he tried to escape again and got caught. Also, where would he go? Home? His parents were the ones who admitted him here in the first place, so Denki didn’t really have a choice when it came to staying.

Denki glanced over the map that Momo had drawn, eyes tracing the steady and precise lines. She was an expert in all things except winning card games, but Denki suspected that she might be good at that, too. Maybe she had to downplay some of her strengths to keep her friends from becoming bored with her perfection. The thought made Denki sad. He had felt entirely accepted by her, and he would be ecstatic if his new friend was amazing at literally everything, card games included. It would be a challenge to overcome, and he wouldn’t give up and play with someone else just because he probably wouldn’t win. Though, he was used to not winning in a lot of things, so maybe her other friends would prefer to win every once in a while, to keep entertained with her company.

Denki traced his finger along the path on the map that his unit mates would have taken to get to the cafeteria from their unit, Unit Beta. It had looked huge and scary when Denki was first brought here, but the map helped him feel better and more in control. Knowledge was power, after all.

Unit Beta was right next to the cafeteria, and actually shared a wall with the children’s unit. At certain times throughout the day, Denki could hear knocking, slamming, and faint yelling coming from the shared wall. He felt lucky that he was on one of the teenagers’ units because it sounded like absolute chaos on the other side of that wall. Momo had explained that they were near the age that they could be moved around if there were problems. There was a frequent flier here who had been released three days before Denki showed up, and he was unhinged. He would pick fights with anyone and everyone.

Momo had Kyoka and Denki in a trance as she told them about the infamous Neito. How he was beaten up by two of the older kids on Unit Echo, the unit for the older teenagers that was across campus. Denki’s eyes trailed over to the rectangle that acted as Unit Echo on the map as he recalled her storytelling. Apparently, Neito had instigated the older kids on the unit until they snapped. One kid, probably 16 or 17, had grabbed Neito to hold him still while the other one, probably about the same age, punched him over and over again. Neito had been bragging about it when he arrived on Unit Beta. The technicians had to yell at him over and over again to keep his shirt down as he continued to pull it up to show the bruises on his stomach that matched the ones blooming on his face, but every time someone would show interest, there he’d go again, raising the hem of his shirt to show of the bruising and abrasions with a smug smile on his face.

According to Momo, when Neito tried picking a fight with Denki’s current roommate, Touya, he was then transferred to the children’s unit. A day after that, he was transferred back, with even more bruises than when he came from Unit Echo. He made the younger kids so mad that they all ganged up on him and held him down as they stomped on him and punched him. Touya had smirked every time Neito had winced from his various injuries but didn’t start anything new and Neito was too sore to risk starting a fight with Touya.

Even with the quirk-nullifying drugs given every morning with the vitamins and other drugs, Touya was strong. Denki thought of his roommate. He was so fun when he played the air bass guitar with him, so Denki couldn’t exactly picture him being mad, but thinking of the build of the older teenager, he figured that it was better if he never did get the chance to see him get mad.

When Touya was out of the group room, Momo had hurriedly whispered to Kyoka and Denki that Touya was 17, and should have been on Unit Echo, but he got into fights with the older kids. Momo guessed that Touya was fine if no one instigated him, which made Unit Beta the best place for him… well, when Neito wasn’t on the unit, of course.

Denki jerked in his seat, startled by the voice that started singing in his head. He scolded himself for it quietly when the technician gave him an odd look. What is more pathetic than being startled by your own hallucinations? Denki scowled down at his plate, appetite gone. He picked up his plate and threw it away, walking toward the door slowly. When the technician didn’t stop him, he moved out into the hallway, looking down the hall to find a blond boy sitting on top of the main desk like he owned the place, swinging his feet and rocking his head back and forth.

Denki squinted; it looked like the boy was saying something, but he didn’t see anyone else in the hallway. Denki inched closer, planning to introduce himself and hopefully make the new patient feel at ease the way the others had helped him, but he stopped dead in his tracks, holding his breath in horrible terror when he had realized something, unable to tear his attention away from the dreadful realization happening before his eyes.

The boy’s lips were moving in a way that perfectly matched the voice in his head.

Denki felt the panic bubble up his throat. He didn’t understand why his mind was playing cruel tricks on him this way. It was bad enough that the voices existed, but now they were merging with his reality to make him feel even crazier than he already was.

Denki jumped when the technician spoke suddenly from behind him.

“Neito! Didn’t last long on the outside, huh? I thought you said you’d never be back!” the technician spoke as he walked up to the desk, completely ignoring the fact that the blond boy was sitting on the high ledge of the desk.

In turn, the blond boy, the infamous Neito, apparently, ignored the technician in favor of continuing to sing. He did, however, hold up his finger to indicate that he had heard him and would be with him as soon as he was able. Neito wasn’t ignoring the technician just because; he was busy. It seemed to Denki like they had a fun relationship with the teasing banter and lack of discipline from the technician and the chill, calm atmosphere around Neito, which was exactly the opposite of what Denki had expected from Momo’s stories.

Honestly, Denki was in awe of the whole interaction. If he ever ignored an adult and put up a finger to tell them to wait, he’d be in huge trouble. But this technician just respected Neito enough to understand that he was busy, even if he didn’t understand what he was busy with.

Neito continued his whispered singing and the voice in Denki’s head matched the words effortlessly until Neito stopped as two technicians stepped out of the weird hallway with the curtain-bathroom with a disheveled boy with purple hair and tired eyes. He was too young to look so tired, but there he was.

“I’m not here for me, this time, Chizato,” Neito muttered without turning around to look at the technician, hopping down from the desk and following the technicians back.

Neito was already pulling his shirt over his head as he turned the corner around the hallway, making the technicians grunt and mutter about acting indecently. Denki hid his snicker behind his hand, appreciating that Momo was so detailed in her gossiping and that Neito lived up to his reputation.

“I know the drill! Let’s get it over with!” Neito had responded to their muttered objections, throwing the shirt backwards towards the technicians without looking back at them.

“I’m Denki,” he had introduced to the purple-haired boy, holding out a hand. Denki was immensely proud of himself for remembering to only use his given name.

“Hitoshi,” he muttered, easily taking Denki’s hand in his own.

“Come here often…?” Denki joked, leaning against the desk with a wink and shooting finger-guns at Hitoshi.

To Denki’s delight, Hitoshi cracked a smile. It was easier than he thought it was going to be to get a positive reaction from him.

“First time. What about you?” Hitoshi asked, relaxing just a little more before immediately tensing up again. “I mean! No! Uh… tell me if you have been here before,” he slowly corrected himself, thinking about each word before it left his mouth.

“It’s my first time, too. I got here yesterday evening, and I was not nearly as calm as you are!” Denki complimented.

Hitoshi visibly relaxed once again when Denki took his mess-up in stride. He didn’t yell at him for asking a question or refuse to answer or even demand to know why he reworded his question so awkwardly into a command. If people don’t already know about his dangerous quirk, people just think he’s rude and don’t want to talk to him. If people do know about his quirk, people know he’s dangerous and don’t want to talk to him. Normally, either way, people didn’t want to talk to him, so Denki was a breath of fresh air in that he just glossed over the awkwardness to keep the conversation going, and Hitoshi liked him already.

Hitoshi briefly wondered why he didn’t have a soulmate like Denki, but immediately felt bad afterwards. Neito was… irritating on a good day, but he had his redeeming qualities, too. He should be thankful that he gets a soulmate at all. Some don’t. He should also be thankful that Neito is going through this with him when he very well could have objected and left Hitoshi on his own. It was Hitoshi’s fault and his own problem after all, so Hitoshi was very grateful that Neito didn’t push him off to the side to experience this alone.

Hitoshi had been terrified, but if all of the other patients were like Denki, he might have been able to handle it on his own… Maybe not, though. Maybe Hitoshi was open to Denki’s welcome because of the support that Neito offered by coming here with him. The idea made him feel even worse. All Hitoshi has done was use others as a crutch or shield, and he wasn’t brave enough to do this on his own. Sure, there were benefits to having his soulmate come along for the testing, but in all honesty, he knew Neito demanded to come along just to make him feel better. Neito might pick fights with him, but he puts in the effort when it matters. Hitoshi was quickly starting to learn more about his soulmate, even after being classmates since kindergarten. He never really paid Neito much attention until they found out they were soulmates, and what a shock that was!

Hitoshi knew that the staff must know about his quirk, but they hadn’t muzzled him, yet. He wondered why the technician that sat behind the desk, working on intake paperwork, didn’t warn the bright-eyed blond about how dangerous it is to talk to him. He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, however.

Before Hitoshi could inquire about Denki’s experience to keep the conversation going, they heard a squeal followed immediately by maniacal laughing. The boys heard the footsteps before they saw Neito coming back into view of the hallway, hopping on one foot as he tried to get away from the quickly gaining technicians while simultaneously trying to put his shoe on. He tripped; it was no surprise with the floppiness of the shoe on his other foot that no longer had its laces to secure it in place. He landed sprawled out on the floor with a deep thud and lied there, stunned, staring at the ceiling for three seconds.

Hitoshi sighed under his breath, and Denki took a step forward to help Neito up when Neito burst into even more maniacal laughing, only to jump up, kick the shoes off completely, and take off down the hallway and… right into Denki’s assigned bedroom.

He came back out just as quickly, frowning as he looked again into the room, but from the hallway.

“I wanted to be Touya’s roommate, but someone’s already set up in there,” he pouted, stomping his foot.

“Why?” the technician behind the desk, Chizato, Denki remembered from how Neito had addressed him, snorted, leaning back as leisurely as the stiff plastic chair would allow. “You want to get pummeled?”

“What are you talking about?” Neito sassed, narrowing his eyes in challenge of the technician. “I could take him!”

Neito took this time to flex his arm, that was very lanky and not muscular, as was expected of a 12-year-old boy.

“Maybe you should have thought about favors you wanted to ask before playing your dirty tricks, Neito!” one of the technicians that had gone back to strip search him had scolded, flailing his hand around that held a fake, plastic cockroach.

Chizato immediately burst into belly-clutching laughter and was scolded by the other technician. “Don’t encourage him!”

Denki watched the interaction with a lazy smile on his face, enjoying the theatrics. He also glanced over at Hitoshi a few times to gauge his reaction. Hitoshi’s eyes flipped back and forth between the arguing parties, but his face remained expressionless. Denki was jealous already of Hitoshi’s self-control in his facial features alone and was excited to see what other areas Hitoshi showed perfect control over.

They did end up moving Denki from Touya’s room, but they put Hitoshi in there in his place instead of Neito, much to Neito’s dramatic and loudly proclaimed disapproval.

They moved Denki to the room that was right next to the center desk and directed Neito into the same room, telling him to make his bed and put his things away. Denki kept glancing over at Neito as they quickly made their beds, pulling boring white sheets over their respective vinyl mattress.

Neito had met Denki’s eyes twice before he whipped around.

“What’s your problem? Huh? New kid? Take a picture! It’ll last longer!” Neito spoke loudly, quickly, and clearly.

Denki had raised his hands and mimicked holding a camera in front of his face, making a small spark of electricity dance across his fingers to act as the flash as he pushed down on the imaginary trigger.

Denki missed Neito’s dumbfounded expression when he opted to stare at his hands, startled that his quirk was working.

“An electric type, huh? What’s your name, Sparky?” Neito said, quickly recovering from his roommate’s odd response and taking a step forward, extending his hand in greeting.

“Denki,” he greeted, pleased at the quick change in tone, putting his hand in Neito’s. “I already know you’re Neito. I heard a lot about you,” he admitted sheepishly.

“Yeah, yeah. Everyone gossips, I know,” Neito muttered as he pulled his hand back from Denki’s. He was more focused on his own hands as his roommate’s quirk flashed across his fingers, startling him. He’d never gotten to use an electric quirk before, so this was new and exciting. It made it even more exciting by the fact that he was absolutely not supposed to be doing this and he was in for a hell of a lecture if any of the technicians or nurses caught him using his quirk in here before they had the chance to shove the quirk-dampening pill down his throat, not that it would have made a difference either way.

“You’re an electric type, too!” Denki practically squealed, temporarily forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to have his quirk to begin with in his excitement about meeting someone with a similar quirk to his own.

“Nah, this is your quirk,” Neito said, shrugging like it was no big deal as he lifted his eyes from his own sparking hands to Denki’s expression full of awe and wonder.

Neito hated to break the news to him, but he was going to find out sooner or later. He was surprised that Denki knew of his name and reputation, but not of his quirk.

Neito explained that he could copy quirks with a touch, and to his surprise, Denki looked even more impressed.

“You can copy quirks?! That’s so cool! That’s like having all the quirks!” Denki drawled as he stared at the familiar electricity in unfamiliar hands.

“It’s called Copy,” Neito offered. “I can copy someone’s quirk for up to five minutes, so far. I can copy up to two quirks right now, but I can only use one at a time.”

Neito wasn’t one to be stingy with the details, especially not while the wonder lasted. He soaked it up while he could because he was sure that his new roommate would soon connect the pieces together. He was second-rate because he could only copy other people’s quirks. If he was in a room full of quirkless people, he’d also essentially be quirkless. Denki would ask him what he wanted to be when he got older, and he would laugh when he would proudly say he wanted to be a hero before exclaiming that he would be too much of a liability like Neito had never heard that or thought of it himself before.

Hitoshi stepped into the doorway then, hoping to connect with the other two boys who were the only other patients on the unit at the time, only to sigh when he saw electricity dancing across Neito’s fingertips.

“Knock it off, show off,” Hitoshi grumbled without any force behind it. At this point, it was more of a habit than an actual correction to grumble at Neito when he did something he wasn’t supposed to do, which was very, very often.

“So, they can’t room soulmates together, then?” Denki mused, sitting on top of his newly made bed as Hitoshi stepped further into the room. “You’ll like Touya! He’s great!”

“Touya is not great!” Neito objected automatically. “I thought you didn’t want to tell anyone that we’re soulmates because you’re so embarrassed by me!” Neito said then, flinging the accusation toward Hitoshi.

“I didn’t tell anyone anything,” Hitoshi defended, trying to keep the grimace off of his face. It was hard to remember that Neito was doing him a huge favor by being here with him when he instigated fights whenever he saw him. “And it’s not because I’m embarrassed, jerk!”

The soulmates studied each other for a second before turning to look at Denki, who was awkwardly watching the interaction that was simmering in hostility. Denki didn’t know that soulmates could be like this, but to be fair, he had never met new soulmates. They were young to have found each other so early, and his only other experience with soulmates interacting was with adults, like his parents and teachers.

“How did you know that we’re soulmates, Denki?”

Chapter Text

Hitoshi was awaiting Denki’s answer and did not bother to reword his question into a statement, if he even noticed he asked a question in the first place. Neito was also waiting for Denki’s answer and didn’t poke at Hitoshi for asking questions either, though he definitely did notice and kindly decided to give Hitoshi a small mercy by ignoring it while he stared at Denki, who was fidgeting under their watchful eyes.

“Sorry. Was I not supposed to say anything?” Denki stalled.

Neito wasn’t having any of that, though. “How did you know, Denki?” he repeated.

“Well… you were singing to Hitoshi when they were searching him, right? And you said you weren’t here for you this time, so it makes sense that you would be here for him since he’s your soulmate. That’s probably the reason that they moved me from Touya’s room instead of just rooming both of you together, isn’t it? There’s probably a policy against rooming soulmates together,” Denki rambled, a blush rising on his face as he felt dumber and dumber as he talked in circles, using his hands to try to convey what his words were lacking, attempting to explain what his brain had just assumed to be the truth with no hard evidence.

Denki wasn’t about to tell these boys that the voices in his head sang when Neito did and that gave him a hint as to what he was doing when Hitoshi joined them in the hallway. He felt crazy enough as it was, so he didn’t need them to add to his feelings of inadequacy and strangeness.

After a pause for the boys to consider Denki’s words, Neito snorted. “Of course, they put me in a room with a genius!”

Denki was immediately taken aback because there was no sarcasm or malice dripping from Neito’s words. Was he being serious or was Denki just being extra dense that day?

“They can’t trust me enough to room me with just anyone! They are starting to understand what they’re up against here! It’s about time they didn’t underestimate me!” Neito got louder and his movements more frantic as he ranted and conspired.

Denki was speechless because he realized that Neito was serious. He opened his mouth to correct him, but Hitoshi spoke first.

“A genius? Really?” he looked hopeful, but Denki didn’t understand why.

Before Hitoshi could backtrack and take back his questions, Neito supplied the context for Denki without having to be asked, “Hitoshi thinks that people could probably break out of his quirk, and the smarter they are the easier it should be for them. No one will give him a chance, though. Wanna try it out?”

The dangerous, excited glint in Neito’s eyes should have warned Denki to say no. It was probably against multiple rules on the unit. He did just promise himself that he would follow all of the rules so that he could get off the unit as quickly as possible to join the others for lunch, but Denki rationalized to himself that if they all got in trouble, he would at least have Hitoshi and Neito as lunchtime-companions-in-crime. And hey! That was only if they got caught!

“No! He doesn’t even know what my quirk is, Neito! I wouldn’t—”

“Sure! I’ll do it!” Denki chirped, cutting Hitoshi off before he could get even more tense and start to obsessively reword his sentences again. He didn’t want to cause Hitoshi unneeded stress, and besides, it was now or never. Soon, the other residents and technicians would be back from lunch, and he might never get to be alone with both newcomers again.

Hitoshi and Neito turned toward him, surprised.

“You don’t even know what my quirk is,” Hitoshi insisted.

The last thing Hitoshi wanted was to push Denki away when he was so damn warm and open. He hadn’t had this kind of anonymity since… well, since before his quirk became apparent. Everyone always knew who he was and what he was capable of and acted accordingly. Denki was going to get himself killed with this level of just blind trust, but maybe he had never met someone with such a dangerous quirk before. Still, Hitoshi would rather add a friend to his short (nonexistent) list of friends than to get the chance to test a theory.

“Don’t tell me!” Denki rushed out, plugging his ears in case they were about to spoil his fun. “Surprise me!” he demanded, eyes sparkling with excitement.

Neito and Hitoshi shared a glance, and with an encouraging nod from Neito, Hitoshi took a breath and prepared himself. Hitoshi figured that even if he backed out now, he might not be able to keep Denki as a friend, because sooner or later, he would find out what his quirk actually was. Hitoshi never really had the opportunity to use it on someone unsuspecting, so it felt like a now or never kind of situation that he had to take advantage of if he ever wanted to figure out the nuances of his quirk and make people less afraid of him.

Besides, he was here, in Fields Mental Hospital, to figure out what had his quirk acting up and affecting both himself and his soulmate, so he might as well take full advantage of it when someone was kind enough to offer.

Denki had cautiously removed his hands from his ears to make sure no one was going to ruin the surprise before giving Hitoshi his full attention.

“Are you sure?” Hitoshi had breathed out, and Neito shivered. He could hear the difference in Hitoshi’s voice and knew that it was a trigger. He wasn’t sure if it was because they were soulmates or if it was something that anyone could pick up on. Maybe it was even something that Hitoshi could improve upon and make it indistinguishable from his regular speech so that even his soulmate wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The possibilities were endless and so, so exciting.

“Yeah! Do I need—”

Denki freaked out a little bit, he would admit. In a way, it was kind of like when he short-circuited from overusing his quirk. Everything was hazy and confusing, but he was still present. He almost panicked. Had he used his quirk without realizing and fried his brain once again? After his new friends had called him a genius, too! He was so embarrassed!

Through the haze, he saw Neito and Hitoshi glance at each other before looking back at Denki, but they didn’t look like they were ridiculing him. It was like they were anticipating what would happen next and treading carefully. They both took a few steps closer and watched Denki intently. Now that he had a moment to process, he figured out that this must be part of Hitoshi’s quirk. It made sense when he thought about it. It felt similar to when he short-circuits, but it wasn’t exactly the same. He couldn’t move, for one thing. He couldn’t give them a thumbs up to let them know that he was okay, just needed time to recover, and that he wasn’t a threat about to electrocute them.

“Stand on the bed,” Hitoshi commanded.

Denki could have laughed! He was confused about how he was supposed to do what Hitoshi said when he couldn’t even move, but then his body was moving on its own! It was robotic and jerky, but he ended up standing on the bed. In all honesty, it was probably even more graceful than if he had tried to stand on the bed on his own. Without Hitoshi’s quirk, he would probably trip on the blanket and go tumbling off.

Neito and Hitoshi continued to watch Denki.

“Is he pushing through?” Denki heard Neito ask quietly through the haze.

“He…” Hitoshi started, choking on his words, and blinking his eyes hard, shaking his head to clear it. He cleared his throat and tried again, “he’s not fighting it at all.”

The soulmates looked up at Denki in wonder, and Denki was internally cursing himself. How had he already forgotten that he was supposed to try to break out of it? Some genius he was!

Denki focused on the faces of the boys who stood on the floor below him, trying to sharpen their features through the haze. He was ashamed that he didn’t have any better ideas. He was grasping at straws on how to fight through this quirk, so he decided to go with what always helped him get through his own electric quirk-induced haze that he often found himself in. It might have been his imagination, but he thought it might be working.

Denki could see Hitoshi’s eyes widen as his features came into better focus.

“Sit down,” Hitoshi commanded firmly, and the haze was back full force.

Denki repeated the ritual of focusing on something and mentally slicing through the haze, using Hitoshi and Neito’s faces as his focal points. He wanted to see their reactions, even if they were disappointed. When the haze cleared enough to see their expression, though, he was surprised to find out that they were staring at him in amazement.

“He’s doing it?” Neito whispered, stepping forward to closely watch Denki’s face, jumping when Denki’s eyes flickered over to him.

Hitoshi let out a shaky breath. “Yeah. He’s doing it.”

Hitoshi was nervous, now. He was regretting doing this at all. This was amazing progress, but at what cost? What would Denki say when he broke free? What fearful, mistrustful, terrified expression would he have on his face when he got control back?

Neito laughed softly, moving toward Denki to excitedly whisper, “C’mon, genius! You can do it! Break free, Denki!”

Switching between Neito’s and Hitoshi’s faces was harder now that they were different distances apart and his eyes had to refocus when he moved from one to the other, but maybe that gave him the final push to break through Hitoshi’s quirk.

It was anticlimactic on Neito’s end. One second, Denki’s eyes were flipping back and forth between Neito and Hitoshi, and the next, Denki was blinking and shaking his head, rubbing at his eyes with his fists.

It was a terrifying anticipation on Hitoshi’s end as he waited for Denki to say something or look at him. Who knows? Maybe he would just walk out and never speak to or even look in his direction ever again. It wouldn’t be the first time he got that reaction, even.

“That is so cool!” Denki exclaimed, eyes bright as he looked right at Hitoshi. Right through Hitoshi, it felt like. “Why’d you stop? I think I was getting closer to breaking through!”

“Denki,” Hitoshi said weakly, not quite believing the reaction he was getting. “You did break through.”

“What? No way! That was awesome! I did that?!” Denki rambled in quick succession, feeling extremely proud of himself.

“What was it like?” Neito demanded, planting himself on the bed next to Denki.

“It was so cool! It feels similar to a side effect of my own quirk when I overuse it, actually. I think you can keep me under by giving me more commands, though, Hitoshi! When you told me to sit down, everything got hazy again and I had to start over,” Denki explained, waving his hands in front of his eyes to demonstrate the haze he experienced.

What was this? Why was this energetic blond boy even still talking to Hitoshi, let alone telling him what it felt like and how to keep a stronger hold on him?

“What did it feel like for you? Is it different for everyone?” Denki asked, turning toward Neito.

“He’s never put me under before,” Neito said, looking at Hitoshi in a way that was hard to decipher.

Why did Hitoshi never practice his quirk on his soulmate? Was it Hitoshi’s hesitation or did Neito refuse? Did Neito want to do it now that he saw someone as dense as Denki could break through it? Would Hitoshi be willing to try it on Neito now that he got a positive reaction from Denki?

“Oh,” Denki said, dumbly. To change the subject, he asked, “have you ever copied his quirk, then?”

“No…” Neito said, eyes again flicking to Hitoshi, but this time with a growing maniacal grin on his face.

Hitoshi could read his thoughts on his face and wanted to object. It was one thing to risk his new fragile friendship with himself, but for both of them to make enemies with another patient on the unit would not be a wise thing to do.

Hitoshi wanted to object, but he was too close, and Neito was too fast, reaching out and grabbing Hitoshi’s hand.

“Hey, Denki?” Neito asked.

“What?” Denki responded, turning toward Neito.

Neito growled out in frustration. “A blank?”

“No, you got it. You just have to focus from the first sound to leave your mouth. I heard the waver on Denki’s name, but you need to commit,” Hitoshi explained, placing his hands on Neito’s shoulders, and giving him a little nudge to try again.

Hitoshi had given in quickly because he figured if he can’t beat them, he might as well join them.

Just to be safe though, he warned Denki, “if you don’t want to go under my quirk, don’t answer the questions.”

Neito scoffed, slightly irritated and unimpressed that Hitoshi was trying to protect this random stranger over letting his soulmate try out his quirk on a willing victim.

Neito refocused, feeling the quirk glow around his brain, in his throat, and on his hand where he had touched Hitoshi to get the quirk in the first place.

“Will you answer me, Denki?” he asked, making intense eye contact with Denki as he focused on injecting the question with all of Hitoshi’s quirk that he could manage, praying that it would work. He hated feeling like a failure, which he did often enough because of all of the different quirks he shuffled through. A jack of all trades and a master of none.

“Always!” Denki answered, smiling brightly.

Neito faltered. He wasn’t really expecting an answer at all after Hitoshi warned him how it was started. Neito paused in surprise at Denki’s open, trusting, upbeat answer, but managed to direct the quirk right into Denki’s head before the chance passed, visualizing the glowing borrowed quirk engulfing Denki’s head until it shrunk down to wrap tightly around his brain inside his skull. Neito almost winced. If he did it wrong, it looked like it could be super painful.

He felt irresponsible in that moment. Trying out his soulmate’s quirk wasn’t worth hurting Denki, or even giving him a minor headache. He underestimated the complexity of Hitoshi’s quirk and the skill it takes to not cause harm to the people he puts under. He didn’t want to hurt someone who was so open to helping literal strangers with their quirks. He tried to tell himself that someone as naïve as to allow themselves to be used like this deserved whatever came their way, but he couldn’t think that of Denki as he sat there, dazed expression on his face once again, staring straight ahead, focused on nothing, giving virtual strangers a chance to use their quirks on him when it was obvious that others would not.

“Good,” Hitoshi praised simply, but Neito knew that he meant it.

“I feel like I was too rough,” Neito admitted, tearing his eyes away from Denki and rubbing his hands together.

“It comes with practice. It feels rough and jerky, but I’m sure you didn’t hurt him. Smoothing the application out will help you get faster and more efficient. Even a stronger hold, sometimes. But you won’t hurt him,” Hitoshi explained quietly.

“Promise?” Neito asked, taking in a shaky breath.

Hitoshi nodded and Neito snorted.

“So, this is what it’s like to not have your questions answered verbally,” Neito said, shaking his head to rid himself of the self-pity he was threatening to drown in seconds earlier.

“Can’t be too careful,” Hitoshi said, shrugging, but Neito could tell that it hurt Hitoshi every time he was ignored, even when he pretended to not notice.

“Well, he could be, couldn’t he? More careful, that is,” Neito said, indicating toward Denki. “Ready to fight against it? I want to feel it,” he challenged the blank-faced blond.

And feel it he did. Denki immediately shot a pinpoint through the glowing quirk that stretched from Neito to his own brain. Neito watched in awe as the visualized pinpoint started to grow, thinning the glowing haze connecting the boys through Hitoshi’s quirk.

“Amazing,” Neito breathed. “Your quirk is amazing, and his mental fortitude is amazing.”

“Try giving a command,” Hitoshi instructed, and for once, Neito did as he was told.

“Come here,” Neito said, putting the power of Hitoshi’s quirk behind the command, backing up off of the bed to give Denki room to follow his order.

The glow of the quirk filled in once again as Denki’s resistance was cut off, erased, and he did as he was told and stood in front of Neito.

It surprised Neito when the pinpoint shot out again and started growing rapidly, even faster than before, dissipating the glow of the borrowed quirk. Neito felt a sharp pain behind his eyes, winced, and almost collapsed by the sudden flash of pain that just got sharper and sharper.

“Denki! Stop resisting!” Hitoshi commanded sharply, catching Neito before he could hit the floor.

The tunnel through the glow disappeared just as quickly as it appeared.

Denki didn’t mean to hurt Neito by trying to resist, so when the command came from Hitoshi, who had no control over him quirk-wise, Denki complied automatically. Denki was not in any pain or discomfort, and he was used to the haze of his own quirk overuse, so he was in no hurry to get out of the copied quirk. He could wait patiently until they told him what to do next so that he didn’t hurt Neito further.

Neito felt the pain ebbing away almost immediately and within 30 seconds, he could stand on his own again.

“What was that?” Neito asked, rubbing at his forehead as his eyes flitted between Hitoshi, who was rubbing his back encouragingly, and Denki, who had gone back to the blank stare as he stopped fighting and even purposefully pulled back his resistance to actively undo the damage he had caused.

“It happens sometimes. I think it’s quirk fatigue because it happened when I would start getting tired and they would fight back. Usually, it ends up with me having a terrible headache for a few days, but you seem okay,” Hitoshi explained, and was almost jealous that Neito somehow already countered the negative side effects of his quirk when he never could.

“It was Denki,” Neito realized aloud. “He pulled back and stopped fighting right away when you told him to. Could that be why it didn’t hurt me like it normally hurts you?”

Hitoshi frowned in thought before nodding. “That’s probably it. For everyone else, I wonder if it would have gone back to normal if they would have stopped fighting long enough for me to release them…”

“So, I should release him now, then?” Neito said, trying to keep the sadness out of his voice. He was having such a good time, too. “Actually,” he said before Hitoshi could confirm, “I want to know what it’s like for him to be broken out of it.”

Hitoshi was about to object, but they had gone that far already, so why not?

“Your wish is my command,” Hitoshi joked, giving a dramatic bow before stepping forward and flicking blank-faced Denki in the middle of the forehead.

Neito was in awe as the glowing haze around Denki’s brain popped like a bubble and dissolved, causing the glowing string that connected them to snap back toward Neito with nothing else to hold onto.

Denki grabbed his forehead where Hitoshi had flicked him and laughed, eyes squinting from the force of his smile.

“Are you okay, Neito?” he asked as he calmed down. “I didn’t mean to hurt you!”

“I’m fine! Thanks for stopping when Hitoshi asked you to. I really don’t want a terrible headache that lasts for days,” Neito responded, feeling a little sad that Hitoshi had experienced such a thing more than once and that he himself who borrowed his quirk was spared because of the agreeable participant.

“Are you okay?” Hitoshi asked, checking in on the one who was put under a stressful quirk twice in a row and still stopped fighting the instant Hitoshi asked, even when Hitoshi had no control over him. Denki stopped willingly while under a strange quirk, and Hitoshi has no idea that someone like that even existed.

“I’m great! That was a lot of fun! Are you guys going to be heroes?” Denki asked, bouncing on his toes in excitement, ready for some future hero talk with the coolest boys he had ever met.

“What?” Hitoshi asked startled.

At the same time, Neito repeated, “Heroes?”

“Yeah! With quirks like those, I bet you could manage bad situations with no injuries! How cool would that be! The soulmate duo, making villains turn themselves in before they even know what hit them!” Denki practically had stars in his eyes as he imagined his new friends kicking some serious villain butt and all of the adoring fans cheering and the potential victims crying happy tears of joy at being released unharmed.

Before they could comment, not that they could as the soulmates were, for once, speechless, the sound of the others coming back echoed through the halls. As voices and footsteps entered the hallway, Neito’s face grew a huge, manic smile.

“Touya!” he yelled at full volume, eyes sparkling as he winked at his soulmate and roommate before he bolted out into the hallway, spreading his hands to present himself to the other residents who were filing in behind the technician who had opened the door for them. “Guess who’s back!”

Chapter Text

Touya hated Neito, but it was better than dealing with the pricks on Unit Echo.

And, well… Touya didn’t so much hate Neito as he was envious. It wasn’t fair that Neito could copy his quirk and wield it even better than the original user, but when was life ever fair for Touya?

It was a small blessing that he wasn’t roomed with the overdramatic nuisance, but he would have much rather kept Denki as his roommate instead of being placed with someone new. Denki had only been his roommate for one day, but he was easy to get along with, and switching so quickly gave him emotional whiplash. Looking at the purple-haired kid, though, Touya didn’t think that he’d be too much trouble.

Touya did like the attention Neito always gave him, though, not that he’d ever admit that to the small, obnoxious, blond boy. It was a similar set-up to his own home; Neito grabbed everyone’s attention just like Shouto did. But, instead of someone always whisking Neito away, like Enji did with Shouto, Neito was allowed to stick around. It was incessant, but Neito gave Touya the attention that he missed out on everywhere else.

At home, Shouto was the prodigy, so he got all of the attention. His siblings would stop mid-sentence when Shouto did come through, trying to soak up every little second of interaction that they were allowed to get before Enji would come barging through to drag little Shouto along behind him on the way to the dojo to train.

Out with his friends, they would ask him about his father and his father’s pride and joy instead of asking him about himself. What 17-year-old wanted to spend time with his friends to only talk about his father and his little brother? Not that he knew much to tell them, anyway. He hadn’t spent more than five minutes with either of them since Shouto had developed his quirk. Enji always had high hopes for him, though, even when he was a baby. His coloring gave him away that he would be powerful, but Touya still made the wish for Shouto to be quirkless when he blew out his candles on his birthday cake, despite the x-rays showing that Shouto did not have an extra joint in his foot. Still, every year, he would make his wish over the birthday cake that his mother would bake, and his siblings would sing to him around as the candles burned.

Touya felt pretty stupid when Shouto’s quirk had developed. He could feel his hope slipping away as a new prodigy took his place, but Shouto didn’t have the drive that he did. He knew that if the technology existed, Enji would have taken Touya’s drive and determination and implanted it into Shouto’s powerful quirk and body strong enough to handle said quirk.

But, now here he was, locked away like his mother was after she had burned Shouto’s face, though his stay would be significantly shorter. Neito was like another Shouto in regard to all of the attention going to him, but Neito stuck around long enough to throw some of that attention back to Touya.

Touya was surprised, though, when Neito started spreading his attention between the three patients, taunting one second and then soothing with a quick, but genuine compliment before going for the throat once again. Touya didn’t even really mind because it was obvious that Neito still saw him as his number one competitor, and truth be told, he did like Hitoshi and Denki.

They had quickly formed their own little group of four while the others still split among themselves to play card games or board games because they found something better to occupy their time with.

It started during group therapy that afternoon. Everyone was spread out among the tables, having another go at trying to outdo Momo’s expertise at drawing when the therapist walked in. Before he even said anything, everyone else already started heading toward the open space in the center of the room, sitting down on the floor in a circle as the therapist got situated. Hitoshi and Denki were not left out because Neito had quickly explained to them who the therapist was and that they all sat on the floor in a circle for group therapy.

That had surprised Touya, too. Neito wasn’t one to spare someone from confusion or go out of his way to make sure someone feels included. Even if not always intentionally done maliciously, Neito would be so self-centered that he wouldn’t think of informing the newbies what was going to happen next. Touya could see that Momo was surprised, too. She had been on her way to tell the newbies what was coming next, and Neito had quietly slipped in her self-imposed job to guide them to the next scheduled activity. No one thought that Neito would last long on the outside. Everyone figured he would be back soon. He was basically discharged to keep him from being pummeled once again and had no other units to be passed around to after the technicians got nervous about how adamant he was about toying with Touya nonstop. But to actually see a change from the four days he had been gone… what had happened to him?

“I see a few new faces!” the therapist started as he took out his clipboard and a pen, sitting on the floor with the rest of the patients. “And one returning…” he joked, shooting a glance at Neito who preened under the attention, rolling his eyes even as he smiled.

“Let’s get this started! We’ll go around and introduce ourselves! First names only, please! State your name, your age, your quirk, why you were admitted, and a fun fact about yourself,” the therapist directed.

“I’m Neito, obviously,” Neito started without waiting to be called on to go first. He wasn’t even next to the therapist in the circle, so he messed the whole process up, which is something he took great pride in. “I’m 12. I can copy other people’s quirks through physical touch, so I’m basically the best ever. I was admitted because of Hitoshi here,” he stated, nudging the purple-haired boy next to him.

Touya snorted at that, and to his delight, Neito didn’t ignore that slight.

“I’m serious,” he insisted, turning toward Touya. “It’s not my fault this time.” And, before anyone could argue, he rebutted, “I know I always say it’s not my fault, but it really isn’t this time. A fun fact about me is that I found my soulmate,” Neito finished, looking toward Hitoshi to go next like he didn’t just drop a bomb on the others.

“Wait! What?” Momo asked.

“Yeah, I found my soulmate. Big deal,” Neito murmured, but enjoyed the attention on him that he didn’t have to fight tooth and nail for. “Hitoshi, your turn.”

Before anyone could object, Hitoshi started speaking. “I’m Hitoshi and I’m 12. My quirk…” he paused, eyes flicking to Neito and Denki before continuing, “is called brainwashing. I was admitted because my quirk is acting up not only for me, but affecting my soulmate, too. My ‘fun’ fact is that I’m Neito’s soulmate.”

The whole room took in a deep, surprised breath, but before anyone could dive into the new information, Denki took his turn. Was he oblivious to the absolutely nuts situation his unit mates had just disclosed, or was he trying to get the attention off of them? Denki had been with them while everyone else was at lunch, so maybe he already knew what was going on with them. Hitoshi did look a little uncomfortable with the admission and attention, so Touya figured that maybe Denki was protecting his new friends by moving the attention on to himself. That was fine, though. Touya would get the truth out of them later.

“Hi! I’m Denki! I’m 12, too, and my quirk is electrification! If you noticed the lights flickering last night… no you didn’t!” Denki joked, winking in a random direction and not at any one person in particular. “I’m here because… well… I started hearing voices in my head,” he said, shrugging, looking uneasy for the first time. “A fun fact about me is that I’m going to be a hero when I grow up!”

You know what? Touya could be a team player, too, when he wanted to be. Before anyone could ask him about the voices when it was obvious that he was trying to quickly move through the fun fact to distract everyone with something else, Touya decided to introduce himself. That was a change, too. Usually he went last, especially when Neito goes first and messes up any chance of order to the introductions.

“I’m Touya, 17. I have a fire quirk and I’m here because of self-harm. I’ve been training to be a hero for 12 years,” he said, glancing toward Denki whose eyes lit up. Hook, line, and sinker. If Neito and Hitoshi tagged along with Denki later when he went to ask him about his training, then he would be able to get the truth about what the hell is going on. Take that, Momo! I’m going to get the information before you for once!

“Since we have no organization to this madness, I guess I’ll go next,” Momo said, brushing her ponytail over her shoulder.

Momo, Kyoka, and Ochako went next, zigzagging through the circle until they had all introduced themselves. Touya always felt a little left out during these when they had to say how old they were. He was good with younger kids because of his younger siblings, but the age difference seemed vast when said aloud. Even then, he would take Unit Beta over Unit Echo any day.

Honestly, Touya had hated Neito so much from the beginning because he worried that Neito was going to be the reason that he was eventually moved to Unit Echo. Thankfully, keeping his cool around the little menace was enough for the hospital to decide to just discharge Neito when he continued picking on the older teenager rather than moving Touya to Unit Echo in fear of him retaliating against Neito. Touya understood: He was a big, angry teenager who came from a very well-off and privileged family. If Touya had decided that enough was enough and pummeled Neito into a fine mush into the ground, dear old dad would be able to bail him out of any trouble, wouldn’t he? The technicians knew this, but Touya wasn’t heartless. Sure, he’d throw insults right back at Neito and wouldn’t back down when he got into his face, escalating rather than deescalating, or even staying neutral, but it was all their own kind of fucked-up communication. Touya liked the attention from Neito, and Neito liked that Touya didn’t brush him off as an unintimidating bother not worth the trouble of engagement.

Touya still smiled when he thought about how the week prior, Neito was raising his shirt to show off the bruises that he had gotten as a souvenir from the children’s unit. He would growl at Touya when he noticed him smirking in satisfaction to himself whenever Neito would flinch and wince when he thought no one would notice.

That’s the thing about being center of attention, though, isn’t it? Someone is always watching you, and someone is bound to notice. You don’t get the courtesy of privacy when you’re an attention hog. Maybe Neito did understand that, because after a sneer in Touya’s direction, he would turn and stomp off instead of trying to pick a fight.

After group, Touya cornered the three boys who stuck together like glue. He figured he wasn’t going to get either of the soulmates alone, but also did not mind having his former roommate stick around, either. If he already knew, then the boys wouldn’t need to hesitate to tell him because of the extra set of ears. Also, Denki might be an asset in that he seemed to like Touya. Denki might have told Hitoshi that Touya was a nice guy while Neito might have filled his head with awful things about Touya just to stir the pot. Having a neutral Denki there was a good idea if he didn’t want to scare the purple-haired newcomer into clamming up.

Momo had been on her way to invite Denki to play a card game but turned on her heel back to her own table where Kyoka sat when she saw Touya approaching the group. She didn’t want anything to do with whatever was coming between Touya and Neito, and she hoped that Hitoshi and Denki would be able to read the situation well enough to get the hell away if it turned ugly.

“Neito, Denki,” Touya greeted with a nod to each as he plopped down in a chair at their table in the corner of the group room without waiting to be invited. “Hitoshi, right? I’m Touya.”

“Yeah,” Hitoshi said, eyes on Touya as he wondered what he wanted. “Denki and Neito mentioned you.”

“Conflicting opinions, I suppose,” Touya teased, smirking with a playful glint in his eyes. “Tell me about why you’re here,” he demanded, not being one for beating around the bush.

Hitoshi had opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Where to start?

“High five first!” Neito demanded, lurching across the table with his hand outstretched in Touya’s direction.

Touya rolled his eyes but wanted to know enough that he did not put up a fight, reaching out and hitting Neito’s hand with sarcastic enthusiasm. That was enough for Neito, though, as he flopped back down into his seat and lit a flame of blue fire in his palm before quickly putting it out before a technician could see. Touya hated it with a passion, but there was little he could do about the fact that Neito could use his own quirk with fewer repercussions than he himself could. It was a fact of life that Touya would have to learn to accept. Denki’s reaction might make it easier, though.

“Blue fire?!” Denki whisper yelled. “You guys are so cool!” Denki paused, wide-eyed. “But how do you do that with the drugs they give us?”

“They call them quirk-cancelling drugs, but those are against the law for psych patients. Safety concerns or something. They’re actually quirk-dampening drugs, and they don’t work on me,” Neito explained, rubbing his palms together to disperse the heat from the one he had just alit. “I can’t get the full effects of quirks of people who have them, though, but I can get a limited version, just like you can still use a limited version of your own quirk,” Neito explained.

Denki hummed in understanding. “Well, that’s a relief. The first time I used my quirk, I knocked myself out. I was kind of jealous that you used my quirk so easily for your first try,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

That also explained why he could use his quirk, still. He had been wondering about it but kept forgetting to ask Neito or Momo. He wasn’t about to ask a technician just in case that would mean that something else besides the voices was wrong with him. He figured that if they called them quirk-cancelling drugs, that might be enough for most patients to not even know that they could still use a watered-down version of their quirks and save the technicians a lot of headaches.

“Tell me about it,” Touya grunted, eyes darting to Neito before glaring back down at his own hands that rested on the table. He didn’t elaborate and no one was brave enough to ask him to.

Instead, Neito decided to take it as him demanding to know what he came over there for instead of empathizing with Denki, giving Touya a break. It seemed that having a soulmate had him wanting to start acting more heroic or something, giving all of these small mercies out like candy instead of zeroing in on weaknesses and pointing them out to anyone within earshot.

“Well, since you’re all dying to know, I guess I’ll tell you how I met my soulmate. Do you care if I do the honors?” Neito asked Hitoshi before diving in.

Hitoshi shook his head. Neito knew Hitoshi would not want to take the attention for himself, happy to sit back and allow Neito to do what he does best. Hitoshi knew that Neito asking him first was a sign of high respect that he did not think he would get, at least not so early on, but he hid his surprise well.

“We were in music class,” Neito started dramatically, setting the stage.

Chapter Text

It had been just an average day for Hitoshi.

It wasn’t for Neito, because none of his days have seemed to be average in quite a while. He had just gotten settled back into his class schedule after being in his favorite mental hospital for a week and a half. That was a lot of school to miss, but Neito was smart and caught up quickly. He knew the school sends the hospital his work to do, but Neito never once actually tried doing it in the mental hospital. He always had too much fun with the other patients to worry about schoolwork. It was supposed to be a vacation to restore his sanity, after all.

Speaking of patients, he was surprised that he never ran into Hitoshi in any of his inpatient adventures. The other boy across the classroom was sitting alone, like always, dead eyes staring at the wall and waiting for the teacher to call his name for attendance tracking. That kid was due for a breakdown or two if their peers had anything to say about it.

Hitoshi had always been a sort of mystery to Neito. Neito easily got under everyone else’s skin, but Hitoshi usually remained stone-faced and refused to even glance at Neito most of the time, let alone use that amazing quirk of his on him. The only time Hitoshi really gave Neito a reaction was when he dodged his touch. Neito was used to it from his other classmates always keeping their distance, terrified that he would be able to use their quirk better than they ever could on his first try and outshine them like the damn star that he was. It was a little different for Hitoshi, though. When Neito reached out to him, he saw panic in his eyes. He knew for sure what it was after being holed up in multiple psychiatric wards with other patients who had anxiety and panic attacks.

Annoyingly, it always stopped Neito in his tracks. He liked when people were annoyed with him, but he didn’t like that fearful panic that Hitoshi always portrayed with his eyes when Neito got too close to making physical contact. Neito figured that Hitoshi would eventually chill out after he saw that all Neito wanted to do was showboat after copying a few of his classmates’ quirks while they were unsuspecting, but Hitoshi continued to have that damn look on his face every time Neito tried to target him.

Was Shinsou Hitoshi’s quirk really something to fear that he had to make sure that someone as crazy as Monoma Neito never got his hands on it? Everyone else was scared of Hitoshi to the point of not speaking to him, but they never jumped in to try to stop Neito from copying the quirk. Still, Hitoshi guarded his quirk from the copycat with increasing dodging expertise. Neito knew he was a little manic, but he never felt as though he was untrustworthy.

Hitoshi had started wearing long sleeved shirts with tall necks to cover his skin, reducing his risk of Neito copying his quirk, pulling his sleeves over his hands whenever he didn’t need them to write. He grew his hair out longer to cover the back of his neck and his ears, and always wore pants and sneakers, never shorts and sandals, no matter how hot it got. Neito almost felt a little bad when it was late spring and the air conditioning broke. The school even relaxed the dress code to allow students to pull some layers off. The girls were lounging around in tank tops and short shorts for the whole week that the air conditioning was being fixed, and dear god, no one failed because they were distracted with the girls showing their shoulders and kneecaps. Imagine that! It was a damn miracle. Even the teachers were allowed relaxed dress codes, wearing colorful, breezy Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts as they stood at the chalkboard to teach. The show must go on, or whatever.

But Hitoshi came to school wearing what he always did, not even switching out the turtleneck style shirt for a crewneck. Neito felt like he was in an oven just by looking at him, and he felt bad because he knew it was his fault. He tried to tell Hitoshi that he would get a pass this week; Neito would not try to copy his quirk and he could relax and not sweat to death in the seat next to him. Hitoshi glanced at him, and he knew he heard him because he offered a small smile and nod before turning back toward the teacher at the front of the room, but the very next day, he was still wearing his usual outfit. Yes, Neito knew he was a little manic, but he never felt as though he was untrustworthy. Until he met Hitoshi.

He would never admit it, but the challenge was there in his mind: He had to get Hitoshi to at least acknowledge him. He didn’t respond to his normal teasing, and he was agile enough that Neito couldn’t get a rise out of him by threatening to use his quirk because he could never get his hands on the boy.

So of course, Neito wondered why Hitoshi had let him touch him when they were with Denki. He was trying to catch him by surprise, but that never worked. Neito saw that Hitoshi saw what he was doing, and probably even expected it, but he hesitated in moving away from him, and Neito got to make physical contact for the first time. It was exhilarating until he failed to get Denki under Hitoshi’s quirk. Everything had been going to plan, too, so why did his stupid quirk decide to not work when it was the most important time in his life to do what it was supposed to do?

Hitoshi could have left him thinking he drew a blank, but he realized how much it meant to Neito to be able to do this. He was kind enough to volunteer to go along with Hitoshi to the mental hospital, even though that was the same one that he was literally kicked out of for being too much of a nuisance just four days prior. Hitoshi hadn’t missed the blond’s stories as he pulled up his shirt to show the yellowing bruises along his stomach to his classmates, even though he never directly looked or made it noticeable that he was, in fact, paying attention. Plus, Neito had sang to him during that terrible strip-search the technicians put him through. With two strange men staring at him and going through his clothes as he undressed before handing them back, even going as far as taking the laces out of his shoes… he didn’t think he would have been able to go through with it (at least without force) if it weren’t for Neito’s observance and how he knew exactly what to do to get Hitoshi to calm down enough for the new, strange, unpleasant experience.

So, when Neito looked frustrated for the first time, and it was frustration with himself instead of Hitoshi after dragging him into this mess, he knew he had to give a little. And with how open Denki was… He didn’t even try to fight back when he first went under. Hitoshi had gotten such an excellent and strong grip because there was no resistance as he felt for the best hold. And it seemed that Denki was still willing, and he didn’t want to deprive Neito of this experience when no one was around to see what evil quirk they were messing around with.

Denki seemed relaxed, calm, in total control of his own emotions and reactions. He was honest in the nicest way, a true breath of fresh air. Usually when people were honest with Hitoshi, it was quite brutal, and he would end up crying himself to sleep that night.

When Denki shot through his quirk like slicing a warm knife through butter, and then gently began expanding that resistance until Hitoshi’s control snapped, he thought he might have found a great partner to practice his quirk on if he were ever willing to do it again. Hitoshi was nervous that Denki might come out of it thinking it was way too much for a 12-year-old to deal with, and he would be right, but he came out of it excited and telling Hitoshi that he can actively stop the resistance and set him back to square one by giving another command. So, Hitoshi then thought that he might have just found a new best friend. His first best friend.

When Denki resisted against Neito’s control, causing the sharp pain that Hitoshi is oh so familiar with, Hitoshi issued his command, trying to offset the resisting like how he normally attempted for himself, almost feeling the same pain that Neito must have been experiencing at that moment. When Neito swayed and stood upright, reorienting himself instead of collapsing to the ground, Hitoshi was amazed. Did his command work even when it was Neito who was brainwashing Denki? No, that didn’t feel right. When he looked at Denki and realized what he had done, given up control of breaking free to give his controller a chance to recuperate… he thought that Denki is someone that he could fall in love with someday.

He scolded himself for this thought, of course. They were only 12, and he already found his soulmate who he was actually starting to appreciate, but the thought was there. It wouldn’t be good to lie to himself and say that he didn’t think the thought. It would be better to acknowledge the thought, remind himself that he was lucky enough to have a soulmate who had been oddly supportive, and then release the thought so that it would not pop up again. That’s what he did with other intrusive thoughts, but that one would continue to pop back up for years.

Neito had been strangely supportive and agreeable, but not awkwardly so, still opting to throw teasing insults his way whenever possible. It didn’t bother him as much as before he found out that they were soulmates, however. It felt different, now.

The day he found his soulmate, Neito was really getting on his nerves. More so than usual. The teacher stupidly asked the class which song they should add to their roster for the upcoming chorus concert instead of just picking one for the class himself, and Neito suggested a Christmas song, just to be annoying, Hitoshi was sure. But he wouldn’t let up after everyone objected multiple times, suggesting a different Christmas song every time the previous one was shot down. How did he know so many? And why the new fixation on Christmas in April? But he wouldn’t let it go, finally coming over to Hitoshi to ask if he preferred Jingle Bells or Masters in This Hall.

“Neither,” he muttered under his breath, just wanting Neito to go away and give someone else his irritating attention.

The class was stunned and quickly fell silent because Hitoshi never really spoke ever, and maybe also because they didn’t want to have any chance of falling under his control. Neito was obviously delighted that he had finally gotten some kind of response from Hitoshi.

“Oh! That’s right!” Neito drawled, and Hitoshi braced himself for the taunting insult that would follow. “It’s not like you would have a chance at winning one of the solos anyway, tenor,” he sneered.

And there it was, but it wasn’t what Hitoshi was expecting. If Neito wanted to go for the throat, he should have said something about never speaking or not wanting any songs with questions or commands, so he doesn’t turn the unsuspecting audience into mindless zombies. The rest of the class would have hopped right on that and goaded him on, even with his stupid Christmas song ideas.

Hitoshi saw red. Maybe on a normal day, he would have been grateful for Neito pulling his punches and not giving him too much trouble, but now he felt that he was not worth it for Neito to deal with the consequences of passing over from teasing to hurtful bullying. He knew Neito wanted a reaction from him, but he didn’t think he was worth it to fight for it. Taking safe shots was worse than taking cheap and predictable shots, and it made Hitoshi so angry. Why couldn’t he have one peaceful day? Just one?

“I was just thinking,” Hitoshi sneered back, reveling in the astonishment on the faces of his classmates of his retaliation, “why not go for Little Drummer Boy?”

Understanding quickly flashed on Neito’s face, and the rest of the class soon understood, too. Hitoshi had asked a question, and that specific song started with a simple command as the first word, ‘come.’ The class scrambled from their desks, hands clamped over their mouths as to not let a single sound escape to be the response that allows Hitoshi to take control, the first one to the door flinging it open and running out, the others following her lead, ignoring the teacher’s frantic requests that they retake their seats, trying desperately to regain control of his classroom.

Neito didn’t leave, though. He leaned in closer, right in front of Hitoshi’s face, and sneered, “that’s just the choice a tenor would make,” like it was the worst insult in the world.

And to Hitoshi, it was, because he was still taking mercy by glossing over the threat Hitoshi had issued and didn’t even have the grace to look scared about it or even avoid verbally answering his question. He didn’t want Neito’s pity, and he had had enough. He was being challenged by Neito to open his mouth and issue a command, something that would be harmless without having control over him, but something that scared his classmates just as thoroughly either way. Neito wanted to make him out to be the bad guy without taking any cheap shots so he could plead innocence later? Fine! Hitoshi would take the bait because it didn’t really matter anymore, did it? Not when it was his last week at that specific middle school. The kids all looked at him in fear anyway, so he wasn’t really causing any harm by falling into Neito’s little trap.

Hitoshi had screamed out the first line of Little Drummer Boy the same time Neito had belted out the beginning of Masters in This Hall. They both froze after a second, staring in shock at each other. The first student to peek her head in thought that they might have brainwashed each other at the same time if Neito had somehow managed to copy Hitoshi’s quirk, but she quickly reared back out of sight when they looked in her direction, out into the hallway through the open door, before looking back at each other.

“Oh, no,” Hitoshi whispered, putting his face into his hands, but not before catching the brief glimpse of hurt flash across Neito’s face.

“Looks like you’re stuck with me now, soulmate,” Neito had declared loudly, always aiming to be the center of attention and wanting to give his classmates something to talk about before they were inevitably led out of the classroom and probably sent home for the day for disrupting the class so badly.

They both had heard the other’s song loud and clear both in the room and echoing loudly in their heads. Predictably, they were sent home for the day.

The next day, they talked because Neito wouldn’t leave Hitoshi alone, asking him if it meant that they could hold hands, even though they both knew that he only wanted physical contact to try to copy Hitoshi’s quirk. Hitoshi denied him, and Neito thought his head was going to explode when Hitoshi actually joked with him that he was against PDA and that was why they could not hold hands. When they were arguing about Neito wanting Hitoshi to at least use his quirk on him if not allow him to copy it, a new voice blasted through both of their heads. Two simple lines from a common song before the voice was gone once again. Hitoshi had thought about playing it off, but he had jumped the same time Neito did.

“Did you hear that, too?” Hitoshi had whispered, a blush creeping across his cheeks at how crazy he sounded.

Thankfully, or maybe regretfully, Neito quickly confirmed that he heard it to. Both of them might have thought that they had just heard their soulmate if they hadn’t found each other the day before.

When they went to the counselor, she thought that they might be fighting, knowing that the young boys found out they were soulmates the day before. Her thoughts of how to best explain effective communication to the young soulmates flew out the window when she came out to greet them before inviting them into her office.

Both boys were pale and not speaking at all. That was normal for Hitoshi, but Neito was never quiet. They both sat calmly, faces stricken, and Neito’s arms were around Hitoshi’s clothed shoulders, not even trying to inch his fingers closer to Hitoshi’s exposed neck or hands, just offering basic comfort as his soulmate panicked.

Hitoshi just knew that it had to be his fault. Neito suggested that maybe they had a third soulmate, trying to be hopeful and cheer Hitoshi up. Instead of snorting and saying that one of Neito is quite enough to deal with, let alone another one like he had hoped he would, he looked at him solemnly with dread in his eyes.

“It’s my fault,” he said, gripping his hair with his hands, the purple strands splaying out from between his tense fingers.

When Neito pulled his hands from his hair, he didn’t copy his quirk. He would take the credit for being nice enough and having situational awareness, but he honestly didn’t even consider it. He had something more important on his mind.

It didn’t help when the counselor agreed that it was probably a weird side effect of the new bond along with Hitoshi’s brainwashing quirk. Mental quirks sometimes offered weird effects for new soulmates, and especially since they found each other so young, they might be extra perceptible to the effects that might not have been as strong had they found each other later once Hitoshi had gained better control over his quirk.

When the concerned counselor called Neito’s parents, they agreed that they would be right in to discuss what this meant for the boys. Hitoshi was nervous about meeting Neito’s parents but was even more nervous about who was going to come in to discuss this from his side. When the counselor called Hitoshi’s foster parents, they gave her the number of the caseworker that has educational, physical, and medical custody of Hitoshi, but he could not make it in on such short notice because he had multiple other cases. Honestly, Hitoshi was surprised that she even got through to Wakakuro over the phone instead of being forced to leave a message.

Hitoshi had wondered if he would be spared from changing to another foster family since he had found his soulmate but tried not to get his hopes up too high. Nothing had ever stopped a move before, so he was expecting the worst as to not be surprised when it doesn’t go his way, because nothing ever went his way.

When the counselor had quickly researched the issue and suggested a controlled study in a mental hospital, Neito’s parents had agreed. Neito wasn’t surprised. He had, after all, basically spent a quarter of his life in mental institutions since he turned 10, so this was nothing new for the family. After contacting Hitoshi’s caseworker and getting her consent, the boys were transported to the mental hospital that Neito had just been discharged from four days prior, despite the concern of the bruises that had finally healed. None of the other facilities had both two beds and resources for something other than crisis diversion, so that was the only option.

Hitoshi was amazed that Neito didn’t even look scared. He thought that his showboating about the bruises was fake and exaggerated, but Neito didn’t even look nervous. It was almost like he was going home, and that made a knot form in Hitoshi’s throat that he had to fight to swallow down.

Hitoshi was also amazed that Neito didn’t grill him about having foster parents and what had happened to land him in foster care. Hitoshi knew sooner or later that he would ask, or that he would have to break the news that he was moving school districts when he moved in with a different family. He was dreading the conversation, but with the way Neito had been with him, it might not be as hard as a conversation as he feared. On the other hand, his understanding might make him feel even worse. He wouldn’t know until he broke the news, and that scared him.

Nothing was stable in his life. More than once, Hitoshi had come home to find his bag already packed and his caseworker there to take him to a new house to start over. Some families were better than others, and the ones he had been staying with had been pretty great. So, when he got the news that next week, he would be moving houses and school districts once again, his fuse shortened, and Neito knew just how to light it.

Hitoshi wondered if finding his soulmate would change anything. It was rare for people to find their soulmate so young. He would have to pour over his copies of the foster care documents to see if they said anything about mated foster kids. Maybe he would find a way to stay in the school district, at least, if not with the same foster family that he had been with for over a year and a half now.

It surprised him that even after scaring his whole music class half to death, he would really fight to stay where he was for once. He might not have expected to find his soulmate, and he definitely didn’t expect his soulmate to be Neito of all people, but he felt for the first time since he was six that he really wanted to put effort into something other than just laying low and staying under the radar.

Maybe Neito was starting to rub off on him already, because he actually felt like he had the determination to go after what he wanted for once instead of letting others direct his fate.

Chapter Text

Denki had stars in his eyes as he gave Neito rapt attention throughout the retelling of the last few days, glancing at Hitoshi every once in a while, during major points in the story with the same awe in his gaze. He made Hitoshi feel very seen. That was different because others usually avoided looking at him at all when he could notice as to not engage him in unwanted conversation where they would be open to brainwashing.

Hitoshi even felt a little shy with so much attention being thrown his way when his bigger-than-life soulmate was right next to him. He could see Neito exaggerating even more than usual with his movements and dramatic words as he retold the story, but even still, Denki’s eyes would switch between the two of them. Hitoshi even believed that Neito might be doing that for his sake, exaggerating and upping the dramatics, that is. Others from the outside looking in might see Neito being an attention hog who is jealous when Hitoshi gets any attention usually reserved for him, but Hitoshi could see the way Neito glanced at him throughout the story when too many of his audience’s eyes flickered in his direction. He was making sure that he was okay and trying to read him to know what to do next, whether that be bring him into the conversation if he looked left out, or even kick the dramatics up a few notches if he looked uncomfortable with the eyes flickering to him at certain parts of the retelling of how they met.

That was when Hitoshi thought that they might be a good match, after all. Hitoshi kind of froze then, though, because with all that Neito was doing in his small ways to keep Hitoshi comfortable, what did he have to offer? What if his soulmate gets tired of his selfishness someday?

Neito, on the other hand, saw that Hitoshi was grateful, and he loved feeling like a hero. Hitoshi didn’t know it, but he was giving Neito everything he needed through the small grateful glances that lasted half a second but held full conversations. But maybe it was because they were actively looking for examples that bonded them further as soulmates, or else they would have also noticed the same kind of connection with Denki.

Both boys noticed pretty quickly that Denki was excellent at reading them, from the second he asked about them being soulmates when they hadn’t decided if they were going to tell anyone, yet. Denki seemed to read people easily, regardless of who it was. It was effortless, too. Neito and Hitoshi didn’t even know if Denki realized he was doing it.

When Hitoshi would shift in his seat after too many eyes would be on him, Denki would jump in with a wild question for Neito, spreading the attention between the blonds instead. When it was not a good time for a valid question, Denki wouldn’t hesitate to ask what color the curtains in the classroom were, like he just had to be updated on the latest curtain gossip. Denki didn’t even mind when a technician who was checking in on them snickered at his pointless question because all of the people who mattered, the three at the table with him, knew exactly what he was doing and went along with it anyhow. Denki was amazed when he was allowed to take the lead like that instead of having pushback and forced to stay in a follower kind of role. He wasn’t used to people following his lead, especially when it was something that could easily be thrown back onto him in order to tease and pick on him for his situational unawareness, even though to the most observant people, it was quite the opposite. So, when Denki just had to know what color the curtains were, Neito just had to lean in like he was about to unleash a mind-blowing secret and tell Denki in bated whispers, loud enough for the others to hear if they leaned in and gave him their full attention, that the curtains were royal blue with red and yellow triangles all over them. Denki would gasp like the thought was ridiculous and ask why they would use triangles instead of music notes in a music classroom. Touya would point out that Denki should be an interior designer, but Neito would argue that triangles are an important instrument. Ochako, who was passing by, would second that wholeheartedly before going back to coloring with the group who sat a few tables away. And just like that, all of the attention would be away from Hitoshi as they all laughed at how talking about soulmates led to a debate about which instrument was objectively the most important.

When Neito had, for once, been shy when he had been talking about always wanting to be a hero, just like Denki had said during group therapy introductions, Denki would tell him that he would top the charts before quickly moving on to target Touya with his next question, easily transitioning the conversation into his training regimen to prepare himself for heroics that he had mentioned during group therapy introductions. Denki was an expert on transitions in conversation.

“Touya!” Denki had chirped, turning toward the older teen who looked over at him, not prepared to be flung into the conversation but easily going with the flow.

If you want to be a hero, you have to be flexible, and not just physically. Touya was socially flexible as well, but even he felt inadequate in comparison to Denki’s ability to read the room and jump around where it benefited the group and conversation the most. Denki was just feeling more relaxed than usual, though, so he was really shining in his element. No one had called him dumb for a while because he hadn’t been given any schoolwork to do.

“Do you train on your own or do you have someone train you?” Denki asked, eyes wandering briefly over Touya’s physique and wondering if he would look like that, too, someday.

“My father used to train me, but now I’m on my own. I learned a lot from him,” Touya had admitted with a shrug, “but I adapted to better suit my personal needs as much as I could.”

“Is your father a professional hero trainer?” Neito had asked to Touya’s surprise.

For once, Neito wasn’t taking a jab at him, but genuinely curious. If Touya knew when he first met the little shit that heroic talk would get him to behave, he would have given away every little secret the moment he realized.

“My father is a Pro Hero,” Touya answered with a shrug, but reveled in the attention the boys flung his way. If there was any good about being the son of Endeavor, Touya felt that he had the right to milk it. He had earned it, after all.

“Endeavor?” Denki had guessed right away with wide eyes.

He felt stupid as soon as he said it and wished he could take it back, swallow the words that were already out into the open before they could reach the ears of his new companions. Just because Touya had a fire quirk, seemed strong, had faded red hair, and said his father is a Pro Hero doesn’t mean his father was the number two Pro Hero in all of Japan. And Denki had been getting along so well with everyone. He just had to go mess it up by slinging wild guesses around, hadn’t he?

“Yeah,” Touya answered, surprised that he had guessed it so immediately. Most people never did, out of fear of being wrong or maybe because Touya’s build didn’t exactly look like Endeavor was the one sharing workout secrets with him.

“Oh!” Neito sang out, leaning in closer to the group to speak more quietly. In a conspirative whisper, he said, “so you’re a Todoroki, huh? What are they doing sending a rich kid to a place like this? What did you do, Touya?” he teased, but was actually interested.

Neito’s eyes had flashed in surprise when he got an actual answer instead of punched across the face, especially leaning in like he was and teasing like that, he really was instigating hard. Touya took it in stride. Maybe he saw his actual curiosity, or maybe no one had ever been brave enough to ask that before and Touya really wanted to tell someone. The other option that had come to mind was pointing out that if anyone in the group acted like a rich kid, it was Neito.

Touya wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that he was Monoma Neito. The Monomas had a lot of reach and influence after becoming designers, expertly creating all things fashion and even nice looking gear for heroes that was previously bulky, uncomfortable, and ugly. Touya opted to just answer the question instead of biting back, because it was glaringly obvious why Neito had be locked away in this place over and over again.

“I’m here for self-harm,” Touya started simply, noticing all three sets of eyes shoot down toward his wrists, and actually seeing relief when they saw nothing concerning there. Touya clarified, “I got my fire quirk from my father, but my body’s temperature tolerance from my mother. I can stand very low temperatures easily, but I’m actually not so great with the heat.”

Neito had sucked in a breath through his teeth. “That’s rough,” he stated, feeling a little sorry for asking in the first place.

Touya shrugged it off; he didn’t need anyone’s pity. But when he looked around the table, it wasn’t pity that he saw, but more of a sad understanding.

Empathy?

Empathy from 12-year-olds when he had never seen it in the adults who tried to break the news to him over and over again that heroics wasn’t in his future.

So, Touya felt comfortable and confident enough to continue. “My own flames burn me when I use them too much. I can do small things without too much damage, but it gets really bad if I try to do anything that would actually be considered heroic. I was training my own way, because Endeavor doesn’t know how to train a body not fit for the quirk because he had always had a strong control over his own. After training for a year, I tried using my quirk again at full strength, and…” Touya winced at the memory. “He has healers on standby, of course. Really good ones. They saved my life, healed me right back up to normal, then I was promptly dumped in here to atone for my sins.”

“Sins?” Hitoshi asked quietly, wanting Touya to continue.

All three boys were entrapped in the story that Touya was painting with his words that Hitoshi didn’t even realize the uptick at the end of the repeated word, putting him firmly in question territory. Touya, unaware of how Hitoshi’s quirk can be triggered, answered before Hitoshi had time to reevaluate, realize his error, and reframe his question into a prompt or statement instead.

“My father told me to give up heroics because my body isn’t meant for it… But I’m going to make my body be meant for it,” Touya growled, eyeing his own hands palm-up on the table.

Neito noticed Touya take a quick glance around the room, so he shot forward to touch one of Touya’s outstretched hands before he could ignite them. The next instant, four hands were upturned on the table in the corner of the group room, small blue flames flickering across their fingertips as the other two boys stared in awe.

“Your body is better with cold, then,” Neito surmised, eyes not daring to leave the flames of their palms on the table.

He felt like he could cry, he felt so bad. He swallowed it back, knowing that he would never live it down if he did, and that is exactly what Touya wouldn’t want. He knew that because pity is the last thing Neito himself would ever want, and they were more similar that he cared to admit aloud.

“So, my body can handle your flames better than your own can?” Neito finished, glancing up at Touya.

Neito expected a hardened expression, but Touya was smiling at him.

“You got it, smartie,” Touya praised with a nod, surprising himself along with everyone else.

He could tell then that Neito never meant to hurt him beyond anything than surface-level teasing. Neito didn’t have the heart to be anything other than annoying. He wasn’t malicious. Touya couldn’t be mad at him for something he didn’t even know.

Neito felt terrible. He always wanted to be the one to be the best at every quirk he had ever copied, pulling ahead of his peers after copying their quirks and showing them how adaptable he can be. He never meant to hurt Touya. He wanted to best Touya because of his adaptability and quick learning, not because Touya’s body will be forever unsuited for his own quirk. He wanted to win in a fair fight to prove his worth, and this wasn’t fair at all.

Out of all of the quirks that Neito had copied, Touya’s was one of his favorites. It was powerful, showy, and he gained easy control over it. Now, he kind of never wanted to use it again.

Neito let the flames go out and just stared at his empty palms. Touya reached over and slapped his hands into Neito’s open palms, fire still flaming.

“What--?” Neito gasped, igniting the flames once again to prevent Touya’s flames from burning his skin.

“You still have one minute fifteen seconds left, but I think you can last one minute thirty seconds, can’t you?” Touya challenged with a determined glint in his eyes, glancing toward the clock ticking on the wall before meeting Neito’s gaze once more. He figured if he couldn’t use his quirk to its fullest potential, might as well let someone get good use out of it. This was as good a place as any to start.

Neito tried, a manic smile growing across his face at the challenge. He didn’t make it the extra fifteen seconds, but he did last an extra five.

“Progress is progress,” Touya praised the boy with the already inflated ego, but maybe he started to see them as being on the same team instead of someone to compete against with no hope of ever pulling out on top.

That was something that he had taught himself. Endeavor was an all-or-nothing type of trainer, and Touya could never keep up, no matter how hard he tried. For his own sanity’s sake, he had to adapt his training to be at peace with smaller victories than meeting insane standards the first try. Touya might never know how much that would help Neito, the secret perfectionist who loathed not getting a quirk right on the first try.

Others might have seen that whole conversation as Denki bringing Touya into the fold to make sure everyone was involved and no one was left out, but Touya had looked comfortable, lounging back as far as the heavy sand-filled plastic chairs would allow, and watching the conversation unfold among the younger boys. Everyone at that table had quickly figured out that Denki brought Touya in because he wanted to give Neito a second to regain his bearings and take attention away from the fact that heroics is an insecurity that Neito has. In Hitoshi’s and Neito’s eyes, Denki was a social genius, but it wasn’t this genius that allowed him to break from Hitoshi’s brainwashing so easily. Later, they would learn that it’s more of a brainwave thing, and because Denki’s quirk is electricity that messes with his brainwaves, he can more easily break free from Hitoshi’s quirk because of the similar and extensive practice he had from his own quirk backfiring on him. So, the next thing that Denki would ask would set him up for a lifetime of success, and he didn’t even know it.

“Will you train me, Touya?” Denki had asked out of the blue.

“What?” was Touya’s clever response. He hadn’t been expecting that.

“Oh! Me, too! Please!” Neito intruded, slamming his palms down on the table as he stood up, leaning over the table to get closer to Touya like a closer proximity might convince him to say yes.

It wasn’t the proximity, but the fact that Neito had said ‘please’ so easily and without the normal bite of sarcasm or hint of attitude. He pretended to be thinking it over as the blond boys continued to throw pleases in and up the stakes with promises of extra muffins in the morning for breakfast.

Hitoshi surprised them all by saying, “yeah. I’m in, too.”

“Who said I was going to do it?” Touya said matter-of-factly.

“What else are you going to do? Play more Monopoly?” Hitoshi sassed, looking across the room at the group who were currently playing Monopoly. “Monopoly that has missing pieces, at that.”

Touya thought that maybe Hitoshi could brain-read people as well as brainwash because he said it so surely as if he knew that Touya had already decided to say yes.

“Fine! Fine!” Touya conceded as if it were a huge pain, but the smile on his face gave him away. “But keep your muffins. You’re going to need every calorie you can get.”

Chapter Text

Denki’s heart sunk like an anchor into his stomach when the technicians announced that it was time to go to the cafeteria for dinner. His heart then soared when he realized that Hitoshi and Neito weren’t making their way for roll call for the trip over to the cafeteria. He thought it was too good to be true, so he thought it would be pretty self-sacrificing and heroic of himself to tell them to go to dinner with the rest of the patients.

“We can’t. New patients on the unit don’t get to leave until they have been here for three days,” Neito said with a shrug. “I think I should be exempt since I’ve been here a million times, but they never let me. They don’t seem to care what I think,” he sassed, shooting a lighthearted glare in Chizato’s direction. The technician just shrugged at him, unable to change the rules that have been in place since the facility was opened for a single patient. “Why aren’t you going?” Neito asked, turning back to Denki, and not maliciously. As far as Neito was concerned, Denki could have been admitted the day of or the day after he had left, and that would put him at or over three days.

“Oh! I didn’t know that! Well, this is only my second day… and I tried to escape when I first got here. Momo said that I’ll be stuck here for a while after that,” Denki disclosed, rubbing the back of his neck as he admitted to his impulsive action.

Neito’s eyes roamed over Denki thoughtfully before he guessed, “you used your quirk to get the door open, didn’t you?”

Denki’s eyes lit up at the intelligence of his new friend. “Yes!” he said excitedly. “How did you guess?”

“It’s what I would have done if I had your quirk,” Neito admitted, looking down at his hands, visualizing the electricity cracking across his fingers only hours earlier. “I mean, if it was my first time and I was scared,” he clarified before his companions thought that he would escape and leave them behind if given the chance. “This is honestly my favorite hospital out of all of the places I’ve been. It’s almost like a second home, I’m here so often.”

When Neito noticed the awkward silence, he looked around at his companions’ faces.

“Well don’t pity me!” Neito demanded. “I have a blast here! It’s so much better than being at home.”

Then, after more sad looks, “Not like that! It’s just boring as hell if I’m not causing trouble!” Neito sighed, adding, “I don’t have it bad. It just gets boring when no one will even look at me. My parents are always busy, and the cleaners just started to ignore me when I would try to get them to do something with me, saying that they have to work.”

After that, when his friends’ sad faces didn’t change, Neito yelled at his friends to just forget it, but he was cut off abruptly by Denki’s hug. Before he could complain, Hitoshi’s arms went around both of the blond boys, and Neito couldn’t say no to his soulmate, could he? Okay, he could, he just didn’t want to. And honestly, he wouldn’t have wanted to say no to Denki either. So, he let himself have that moment of comfort, as long as they would stop giving him looks of pity afterwards.

When Denki got distracted as they were eating, hands flailing about as he told them a story that might have been a little exaggerated, they had to remind him to keep eating. Denki would duck his head and blush every time, but Neito and Hitoshi would just chuckle and nudge him, telling him to keep going with the story, but reminding him that Touya commanded him to get all of the calories he could for the upcoming training. Denki would shovel a few mouthfuls of food into his mouth, chew a few times, and force it down before jumping right back into the story, delighted that his new friends were actually paying attention to what he was saying, sometimes jumping in with their own comments of the situation and what they would have done under that circumstance.

Denki loved the interaction. The whole back-and-forth conversation was rare for him to get because everyone else either got annoyed or couldn’t really follow along with his train of thought. They would get frustrated that they had started talking about playgrounds and ended up talking about an apple orchard that Denki had visited with his parents.

It made perfect sense to Denki because playgrounds have slides, and so do waterparks. His favorite waterpark happens to be a part of a huge amusement park a few cities over, and his favorite ride there looked like apples. The spinning contraptions were red and sparkly and reminded him specifically of candied apples. Then that made him think about that one adult he met with the quirk that made the skin of fruits into a candied texture without having to go through the trouble of actually melting down candy and dipping the apples in. That then led him to the apple orchard that his family went to, but the apples were too sour for his taste, and he really would have loved to bring that fruit-candy quirked person along to make the apples more appetizing.

Neito didn’t mind Denki taking the reins of the conversation. It gave him a chance to observe now that he was excused from being the default center of attention. He paid close attention to Denki’s stories that were admittedly hilarious, even as his eyes trailed over to Hitoshi quite often, admiring how his soulmate seemed just as invested in Denki’s retelling as he was.

They were off to a decent start, he figured, with both of them seeming to really like Denki. That was one more thing that they had in common that Neito could use in his favor to start treating Hitoshi better, now that they were stuck with each other indefinitely.

Hitoshi noticed his soulmate glancing at him with a soft smile on his face in between climaxes of Denki’s tall tales, but he didn’t make it obvious that he was aware. He liked the way Neito was looking at him when he thought he didn’t notice. He was softer, and not so much on guard all of the time. Hitoshi didn’t want to end that just by acknowledging what he was doing, so he let him be and focused on Denki. Denki was an energetic spark of a boy whose happiness was contagious, so it was not hard to get lost in his stories.

When Denki had finally run out of steam and took a break to shovel more food into his face, Hitoshi decided to inquire about something that he had been nervous about since arriving that morning and being put in a room with Touya instead of being able to stick with Neito.

“Hey, uh, Denki?” Hitoshi had ventured, not bothering to stop himself from asking a question. It was really amazing how different this place was from the outside. Whether he was at home, at school, or out in the community, people avoided speaking to him like the plague, and even went as far as giving him dirty looks and stomping away when he dared to ask a question instead of a suggestion. “What’s Touya like as a roommate?” And, after a pause, clarified, “like how does he sleep? Is he a heavy sleeper?”

Denki nodded, swallowing down a bite of food before answering. “Yeah, I think so. He snores!” Denki laughed, once again verbally answering Hitoshi’s questions without fear of being brainwashed. “And I got in last night after he was already asleep and didn’t wake him up. Why?”

Denki felt bad about asking as soon as Hitoshi looked away from him, avoiding his gaze.

“Nightmares?” Neito guessed, quickly and correctly.

Hitoshi nodded, but didn’t offer a verbal response, still avoiding eye contact.

“Hey,” Neito demanded, making Hitoshi look up at him. “If you wake up with a nightmare, just sing Little Drummer Boy and I’ll know to start singing you back to sleep, okay?”

“You’d do that for me?” Hitoshi asked, breaking eye contact once again as he awaited the answer, not wanting to put pressure on Neito to answer in any way that wasn’t truthful.

“Of course. I bet Denki here would, too, if he could,” Neito answered, and like Denki, did not seem phased in the least about verbally answering Hitoshi’s questions.

Hitoshi could have cringed. Neito bringing in a new potential friend like that and putting him on the spot wasn’t a good way to keep him around, was it? But, when Denki answered, Hitoshi’s face lit up.

“My singing is terrible, but even then, if I could make you feel better and I had that mind connection with you, I totally would!” Denki agreed.

What had he done to deserve such a supportive soulmate and new friend? Maybe all of the negative karma from his terrible quirk was making the positive karma rush to catch up to keep the balance, at long last.

“Okay. If you need me to sing to you, just sing Masters in The Hall, so then I’ll know,” Hitoshi said in a joking matter, but all three knew that the offer was real.

“Denki, if you need me to sing to you, just wake me up by singing Jingle Bells, all right?” Neito half-joked to his roommate, not wanting to make Denki feel like the odd one out.

Denki laughed wholeheartedly, eyes squinting at the force of his smile. “You got it!”

When Denki was pulled into the psychiatrist’s office, he felt like he was in trouble. It was too much like being pulled into the principal’s office. He answered all of the doctor’s questions, and eventually relaxed when the questions kept coming, but no reprimand. Denki explained when the voices started, that there was two of them, and even embarrassingly admitted that they sometimes matched the words that other people were saying.

He was surprised that this doctor was actually listening to him and writing everything down when the doctor from the emergency room kept making him repeat himself. Like when the psychiatrist asked him if he ever thought of hurting himself and he said no, the psychiatrist nodded, wrote something down, and then asked the next question without bothering to ask him if he was sure. He didn’t know how anyone could be unsure of such a simple question in the first place, so he was grateful that the doctor in front of him was actually listening to him for once.

Denki had mixed feelings when he saw his parents. For a second, he was kind of sad that he would have to leave so soon. Later, he would think he was weird for his thoughts, but he would quickly correct his thinking. It kind of made him similar to Neito if he kind of liked it there, didn’t it? And Neito wasn’t weird, he was awesome! Thankfully, his parents had just come to drop off some clothes for him.

Denki would never admit to laughing outright on the look on his mother’s face when the technicians who were going through the clothes started pulling the strings from his hoodie and sweatpants, but he did. Fully belly laughs at the downright horror on his mother’s face, and delight that she wouldn’t be able to blame him now that she saw the technicians doing the unforgivable sin with her own eyes.

He was actually able to focus on the conversation that the psychiatrist had with his parents. He wasn’t sure if it was because he used easier words deliberately so that Denki would be able to understand or if Denki was just smarter when he was more relaxed. Denki was grateful when the doctor recommended that Denki not be medicated because of a few reasons, mostly that the side effects would not be worth the effect of the drug, especially when the voices weren’t telling him to hurt himself or others. There was no reason to dampen the voices unless and until those voices tried telling Denki to bring harm to someone, and his parents actually seemed relieved.

It was late when Denki stirred from his sleep. There was no clock to tell what time it was exactly, but the moon was out in full force. Denki had awoken gently, but for no reason it seemed. He did a quick mental check, and he didn’t have to pee. He wasn’t itchy anywhere. He wasn’t lying on his arm weirdly and it didn’t become numb and tingly from the lack of circulation. He was no longer roomed with Touya, and Neito didn’t snore. A quick glance over at the blond let him know that he was still sleeping on his side, facing away from Denki, just as he was before Denki had fallen asleep a few hours previously.

He turned over to get comfortable and was ready to fall back asleep again when he realized what it was that awoke him in the first place.

…To lay before the king, pa-rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum. rum pum pum pum
So, to honor him, pa-rum pum pum pum…

Denki could have snorted to himself if he didn’t want to wake Neito. Of all the songs to get stuck in his head, it was a Christmas song. One that was mentioned earlier that day, no less! His brain did weird things, so he just figured it was one of those things that was better to learn to accept than to try to fight.

As Denki’s breathing evened out and he was falling back asleep, two voices overlapped. The first one stopped then, replaced by another one: A lullaby to lure his nightmare-ridden soulmate back to sleep. Just like that, Denki was in dreamland once again.

In the next room over, Hitoshi shifted, hugging the pillow closer to himself, and huddling under the blanket. The tears were already drying on his face and his breathing relaxed. Denki had been right: Touya was a heavy sleeper. He was relieved because he might have freaked the older teenager out if he had woken up to Hitoshi tearfully whisper-singing a Christmas song in the middle of April. Neito, with his many stays at these types of facilities, would probably have taken it in stride, having seen much weirder things before. But a Todoroki? Yeah, he’d demand a new roommate, probably, and he’d get one, too.

Neito whispered the soothing lyrics to his favorite lullaby as to not wake Denki, smiling softly to himself that Hitoshi trusted him enough to actually do what he had told him to. Neito wanted more than anything to prove to Hitoshi that he could be a good soulmate. He could do this little gesture for him, and not even tell anyone about it in the morning. It could be their little secret, and Hitoshi would learn to trust that he could keep his big mouth shut when it mattered.

Chapter Text

Denki was mortified.

After taking his morning pills (sans the antipsychotic. The doctor was true to his word), he had joined his friends in the group room. They already had their muffins but were waiting for him. He groaned but obeyed when the technician called him over to check and document his vital signs, wanting to check on Hitoshi and eat his muffin, but he figured that it was better to get it out of the way now rather than being pulled away from his friends after he sat down.

When he finally made it over to his friends, Neito held out two muffins.

“Blueberry or chocolate chip?” he asked.

Neither wanted to choose which one, both insisting the other one choose as Hitoshi rolled his eyes but smiled as he ate his own banana nut muffin.

“Why don’t you split both so that you don’t have to decide?” Hitoshi joked with a snort.

To his dismay, the blonds decided to do exactly that. Denki had taken an experimental bite out of both muffins to see how they flavored together before promptly telling Neito to learn from his mistake and only eat one at a time.

Their laughing and good attitudes abruptly came to a halt because of Denki. He always screwed everything up, didn’t he?

He had just asked Hitoshi if he fell back asleep okay after having a nightmare last night.

Denki though it would be bad enough to come up with that seemingly out of nowhere; Hitoshi would laugh at him and ask him what the heck he was talking about. Instead, Hitoshi went pale before a blush rapidly creeped up his cheeks.

Hitoshi quickly turned to Neito, “you told him?!”

“What? No!” Neito promised.

“Then how would he know?” Hitoshi demanded, more hurt than angry.

Hitoshi didn’t want to seem like his world revolved around his soulmate when he was trying to make a lasting friend out of Denki. He didn’t want Denki to think that he couldn’t last a night away from his soulmate, separated by only a wall. Hitoshi might have ended up telling Denki anyway, but he felt like that was his decision to make and felt a little betrayed that the choice was taken from him.

Denki knew he had to fix this. The last thing he wanted was a stupid, impulsive comment from a stupid, impulsive boy to come between literal soulmates.

“Sorry! Sorry!” he started, hands up in a surrender, making the two look over at him. “It must have been a dream or something.”

“Or something?” Hitoshi fished, sulking.

“I hear voices,” Denki admitted, looking down at the ground. He hoped he didn’t scare his new friends off. “They’re weird. They’ll match what people are saying in real life and echo it in my head at the same time. I guess they aren’t above singing songs to me when I wake up in the middle of the night, especially songs that had been mentioned earlier that day.”

Hitoshi and Neito shared a glance.

“I swear Neito didn’t tell me anything,” Denki doubled down. “One of my voices was singing your alert song to me last night, or maybe it was just stuck in my head. I don’t know why I thought—” Denki cut himself off, feeling super stupid and small.

He didn’t know why his brain would make the connection that Hitoshi must have had a nightmare just because he had a song stuck in his head. He wasn’t Hitoshi’s soulmate, so there was no connection there, so why had he gone and said something stupid like that? It would have been better if Hitoshi didn’t have any nightmares because then he would be laughed at, maybe mocked, but he wouldn’t have gotten between two new soulmates if that had been the case. That was the first time his stupidity caused a rift between the two soulmates who were already struggling to connect, and he would feel just as bad and stupid every time, vowing to never do it again, until of course the next instance occurred.

Denki jumped when Touya abruptly joined the group, noisily pulling out a heavy sand-filled chair and sitting in it like it was a throne and he owned the place before opening his own muffin and digging in, chasing it down with a gulp of orange juice.

“You said you’d trade your muffins for my expertise,” Touya stated, glancing at the empty wrappers on the table and breaking the horrible tension that Denki had caused.

“You said—!” Neito started, standing up from his own chair and slamming his palms on the table, always willing to fight back.

“I know what I said!” Touya interrupted, making Neito fume at being cut off.

But still, Neito adored his interactions with Touya.

“Are you always going to do what I say? You listened this time. What about when I tell you to do five more pushups when you think your arms are going to fall off?!” Touya quizzed.

“Fuck you, you bastard! Of course, I will!” Neito retorted automatically. “I can do anything!”

“Neito!” came the sharp warning of the technician who looked up from the blood pressure cuff around Momo’s arm to make sure Neito was aware he was being scolded. “Language.”

“Sorry!” he responded back easily, with an award-winning smile. “Won’t happen again, miss!”

Neito usually held his tongue well when he wanted to. There was just something about Touya that set him on fire, and he bit back at full strength every time. Maybe it was because he knew Touya could handle it. Maybe he subconsciously knew that Touya liked their hostile interactions as much as he did.

He wondered if Hitoshi got this heated when dealing with him. Probably, but Neito wouldn’t feel bad about it. Okay, maybe a little bad…

Hitoshi wasn’t sure how Touya convinced the hospital staff to allow them access to the second, smaller group room to train to become heroes, but he had. It might have had something to do with being Endeavor’s son, but maybe it was just because he was that persuasive.

They had to keep the door open, and Touya whined about needing to “hot box the attitude out of Neito” but eventually conceded to make do with what they were given, giving cheeky smiles and sarcastic waves to the technician who checked in on them every 15 minutes.

Touya immediately demanded jumping jacks from the boys, immediately starting on them himself. He wasn’t about to slack off while he was training the younger teens; he was going to use every minute to his advantage.

“How many?” Denki asked before immediately starting.

“Until I say stop,” Touya demanded with no room for argument.

Neito scoffed, but started his jumping jacks, remembering that he literally swore that he would listen to what Touya told him to do. Denki was just happy that he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself if he lost count, getting lost in his thoughts instead about what kind of hero he might be in the future and what his hero name might be.

After jumping jacks, Touya explained the basics while they all stretched together.

“Someone like Iguchi might want to focus more on strength training,” Touya explained.

Neito nodded, but Hitoshi and Denki looked at each other, lost already.

“Sorry,” Touya said, shaking his head. “I forgot that you two haven’t bounced across the different units like we have. Iguchi is on Unit Echo. He has an animal mutation quirk. Something like that can greatly affect muscle development and training, and he’d do well to take advantage of that, regardless of what career path he’d want to consider.”

Neito scoffed, and Touya tensed, looking at Neito with his face guarded for whatever insult was to come out next.

“Career path he’d want to consider?” Neito repeated, anger simmering below the surface. “You say that like he’s going to have a wide variety of choices. Like people with mutant quirks aren’t discriminated against as it is, let alone when they look like him.”

Touya’s shoulders lost their tense posture as he regarded Neito in a new light. Who would have thought that the spoiled rich kid was knowledgeable in current human rights movements? Well, maybe that wasn’t fair, considering where Touya himself stood.

“You’re right,” he conceded. “And that’s going to be on you to change once you have a public platform and widespread influence as a hero. To get you to that point, your training will be different than what Iguchi’s might be because of the quirk factor. His would assist in building and maintaining muscle, but all of yours doesn’t exactly work like that.”

Denki and Neito had to train to keep up with the physical demands of their quirks, Neito especially since he could realistically take any quirk, so his body needed to be in prime condition to use whatever he needed at the time he needed it. Denki’s whole body was subject to the effects of electricity, so he needed to increase his endurance and be able to fight against the electrical impulses that zapped along his muscles so he could continue to fight and not be hindered by spasms and twitches.

Hitoshi was a little different in that his quirk was not physical. Hitoshi felt a little bad about this, but Touya was quick to reassure him that this was not a bad thing.

“Sometimes… No. Most of the time, heroes rely too heavily on their quirks. Then, when they lose their quirk, or face someone who their quirk doesn’t work on, they’re in big trouble because they don’t have any other tricks up their sleeves. You’re going to be great because you don’t get any other choice. If you’re going to be a hero, you’ll have to be great because you won’t be able to rely so heavily on your quirk. It’s like built-in security that you won’t start slacking and getting overconfident in your quirk’s abilities and incorrectly assume that you won’t ever have someone that can fight against you.”

Touya turned his attention back to the blonds, “and if you guys are smart, you’ll follow Hitoshi’s lead. You can’t relax on the close combat, even if your quirks can be long-range. What happens when a villain is right there, and you don’t have an ally to borrow a useful quirk from nearby?” Touya questioned Neito. “Or the villain has an electric quirk as well, or maybe a conductor quirk and is unaffected by your electricity?” he questioned Denki.

“You need to be prepared in all circumstances when you’re a hero, or you’ll die,” Touya lectured.

He sounded laissez faire about it, but he was serious. He wasn’t about to put a regimen in place for these kids only to set them up for big heads and fatal failures. When he was satisfied that they were all taking his warning seriously, he moved onto a tried-and-true tactic of bringing out the best in everyone: Competition.

“First one to fall out of plank position is a villain,” Touya declared, mischief glinting in his eyes before immediately dropping down into a plank position.

The others quickly followed, stating that this would be easy.

Hitoshi couldn’t lose. He felt silly admitting it, even to himself, but this trivial way to prove that he was not a villain was too good to pass up. Without it, he would have given up long before the others, but the idea of being declared the “villain” in the competition pushed him to go past his limits like he had never done before. Yeah, Touya knew just which buttons to push, didn’t he?

Denki had a pretty easy time of it, actually. It wasn’t that he was strong, and he never exercised his core like that before, but he was easily distracted. He started out by glaring right into Touya’s eyes in challenge, repeating to himself over and over again that he would not lose. Eventually, though, he lost the forceful look on his face. Touya could see him spacing out but didn’t snap him out of it. Whether he was present in the moment or not, his body was holding up. He wasn’t even shaking, just staring straight ahead, right into Touya’s eyes. Denki was imagining himself swimming, reminded of the clear, blue lake in his grandparents’ backyard. He didn’t even feel the burn in his arms right then, but he was sure to feel it the next morning.

The three younger boys were relieved when Touya dropped first. Neito was so exhausted from the effort that he didn’t even gloat, immediately dropping down onto his stomach and groaning with his face pressed against the floor. Hitoshi was relieved that the others seemed just as exhausted as he was. The last thing he wanted was to fall behind. He had to stay in line or ahead if he wanted a shot at becoming a hero with a quirk like his.

“Really good job,” Touya wheezed, shaking out his arms to rid himself of the fatigue.

He didn’t have to give in, but he wanted to give the boys a taste of victory that would carry them through the rest of the exercises. They deserved it because they lasted a lot longer than he thought they would with this being their first training session. And, if they were anything like him, they would be riding the high of the win for at least the rest of the day, even with something as trivial as a little competition between friends. It was worth it to him to take the loss to give an extra confidence boost to the boys and hope that they continued to work with him, and even continue later on when they left this mental hospital behind. Hell, maybe Neito would chill out a bit after getting some self-discipline and he wouldn’t end up here ever again. Wouldn’t that be something? Touya would feel incredible if he could do something that all of these therapists couldn’t even do, and he would have a blast pushing the young boy’s every button while he was at it. He made himself a goal right then to get Neito to swear in front of a technician again by the end of the next day, planning in advance of how to push Neito to and over the edge as he stands above him, gloating and egging him on.

He directed everyone to get a drink of water from the water fountain in the hallway before joining back together again.

“Sit ups?!” Neito screeched, appalled at the fact that there were more core exercises to be had.

It might be easier than he thought to get Neito riled up enough to curse in front of a technician again. And he thought that it would be a challenge!

“Just for that, you’re my partner,” Touya retorted, gesturing for the small blond to come hold his feet. Before Neito could object, Touya reminded, “remember what you declared during breakfast? You’re the best right? Even at taking orders while trying to become a hero?”

“Especially at taking orders while trying to become a hero,” Neito corrected with a grumble, dropping down to put his hands on Touya’s ankles, putting his knees over the toes of Touya’s lace-less shoes, knowing that he’ll need the extra leverage to give the bigger teen a more stable base. Neito gave 100% to everything he did, even if he didn’t want to. That’s why he would be the best.

Denki held Hitoshi’s feet as he started doing his sit-ups next to Touya, quickly adjusting to Touya’s pace and form to get the best out of the workout.

“I really am sorry about earlier,” Denki said quietly, not wanting to accidentally embarrass Hitoshi further if Touya were to find out about his nightmare.

“Already forgotten,” Hitoshi grunted out in between sit-ups, then, “will you tell me about the voices?”

Denki did. He explained to Hitoshi about how he thought that the voices were his soulmates, but quickly discovered that they were just hallucinations. When Denki started, he couldn’t stop, going on to tell him about how the voices really confuse him because sometimes they will say the same thing in his head that someone else is saying out loud, or that they’ll sing to him, like the night before.

“How many was that?” Denki had asked, looking over to find Touya and Neito looking at him, wide-eyed as he finished venting his frustrations of his mental disorder to Hitoshi.

Denki felt a blush come over his cheeks as he realized that they also heard everything that he said. He wasn’t mad about it; they were his friends, too. He was just not expecting the rapt attention from the two who he thought would be too busy bickering with one another to pay attention to his rant to Hitoshi.

Touya let out a low whistle. “Damn, you’re going to be physically and mentally strong.”

Denki blushed harder, this time more pleased and elated than surprised and embarrassed. The last thing he was expecting was a compliment, and a way to view his situation in a positive light, but that was exactly what Touya threw in his face. He could already tell that Touya was going to be a great trainer.

Touya had led the boys through a cool down series just in time for one of the technicians to pop her head in and let them know that it was time for school.

Denki was mistaken when he thought this would be a getaway from school, and he feared his new friends, who had called him a genius of all things, were about to find out how dumb he could be.

Denki’s worst fear had come true, but it was even worse than he imagined it would be.

Neito had let out another sigh, glancing over at Denki’s work, and perked up when he realized they were working on the same things.

“Hey genius,” Neito said, scooting his chair closer to Denki’s and bringing his math worksheet along with him. “Will you walk me through how to do these? The order of operations makes no sense!”

“What? Neito—” Hitoshi had started before being abruptly and rudely cut off.

“I’m not asking you, Hitoshi. You can’t teach to save your life. I’m asking my good friend, Denki here, if he’ll walk me through the steps,” Neito spat, putting force and effort behind every word, hoping to get the message across.

Denki froze, not knowing what to do to diffuse the situation between the soulmates, and also because Neito was about to find out that he was not, in fact, a genius. One problem solved itself, though, when Hitoshi glanced between the two of them, smiled a knowing little smile, and went back to his work without fighting with Neito.

That still left a major problem, though.

“Uh, I’m not the best at this stuff, either,” Denki hedged, but Neito continued to insist that he couldn’t make it any worse and maybe he had been taught a different way than Neito’s school taught it, so he might be able to understand it in a different way.

“Well,” Denki started, internally wincing, hoping to soften the blow of anything stupid that might come out of his mouth. “We use “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally,” Denki started.

Neito looked intrigued instead of unpleasantly mystified, so Denki elaborated.

“The first letters of each word mean something, and it is the order that you go in. Please starts with P, so you would do anything in parentheses first. Excuse, or E, is for exponents. Where it gets complicated is that My and Dear go together, so you do multiplication and division at the same time in order from left to right. The same thing for Aunt Sally, too. Addition and subtraction happen at the same time from left to right,” Denki explained.

Neito nodded as Denki explained, then asked, “I think I understand what you’re saying. Will you show me?” Neito indicated toward Denki’s paper.

Denki took a deep breath and started walking through problem number 3 on his worksheet that his school had sent into the hospital for him to complete, repeating the order of the steps to Neito as he went.

Neito looked slightly confused at the end, squinting at the paper.

“I’m sorry, Denki. I think I got lost in the middle there somewhere. Would you mind doing that same problem again? One more time?”

Denki had to agree. It was terrifying knowing that he might confuse Neito further and make this topic even harder for him, but when he asked like that and insisted that Denki be the one to help over someone else, like Hitoshi, who probably has a better understanding, Denki couldn’t allow himself to say no. Especially when he had already started. Leaving him on his own now would be rude, and if they had switched places, he knew he would be more lost than ever.

Denki flipped the paper back and forth, writing the original problem on the back to redo. He went over the steps for Neito again as he worked through the problem. Denki’s heart sank into his stomach when he realized that he had gotten a different answer the second time, flipping back to the front to double check and cursing himself when he saw where he went wrong the first time. Of course, he couldn’t even do something like this right, not even when his new friend was depending on him to teach him how to understand this stuff—

“Great! I think I get it now! Thanks a lot, Denki!” Neito exclaimed before turning toward his own paper and writing ‘Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally’ across the top of the page and starting on his own problems.

Denki’s heart soared at the praise, basking in the glory of not only helping a friend, but helping a friend with something that made him seem smart. Whereas before, Denki was struggling and erasing attempt after attempt, Denki was then able to fly through the rest of the worksheet, flying high on the feeling of Neito’s praise and the fact that his mediocre teaching actually helped him.

Back at Denki’s school, his math teacher wondered who had helped Denki with his homework that he ended up getting the first 100% on something for the entire school year.

Back at Neito’s school, his math teacher wondered why Neito had actually completed the work sent to the hospital for him when he had never bothered with it before.

Chapter Text

When the testing was to be started, Hitoshi and Neito shared a glance with each other and a subtle nod before volunteering their new friend, hoping they weren’t overstepping or misjudging the situation, hoping that they could rely on Denki for this task, but still unsure if they should put him in the predicament in the first place. They both shared the same thoughts, though: Better Denki who can break out of it and who seems unphased rather than someone who doesn’t know what it’s like and might freak out, especially when they wouldn’t be able to just break out of it like Denki can.

“Denki would be a good choice,” Hitoshi said, turning back to the examiner.

“Denki who?” the examiner asked.

Neito scoffed. “They don’t let us share our family names in here, so we don’t know!”

“Oh. He’s a patient here…” the examiner realized, pausing in thought. “I don’t know if that’s allowed. I was hoping for someone at school, or a sibling at home, or something,” he pressed.

“Denki is the only one,” Hitoshi insisted with a firm nod.

If he wasn’t feeling so anxious, Hitoshi would have laughed at the idea of a classmate willing to participate, like they would place themselves in the position to allow him to use his quirk on him willingly when they had literally screamed in fear and bolted from the classroom when he indirectly threatened to do so a few days prior.

And did no one give this guy his files? He should know that he is in foster care. He doesn’t have any siblings. No foster siblings either, out of fear of his quirk. The workers always explained that it was a liability issue, but Hitoshi knew it was a fear issue, especially because when in a bind, they would overlook the ‘liability issue’ and place him somewhere with foster siblings.

“Touya, too!” Neito impulsively added, glancing between the examiner and his soulmate to see if they would bite at his suggestion.

“Touya who?” the examiner asked, showing no sign of being agitated with having to demand more details with every suggestion.

He was accustomed to this, and patience was a virtue. When dealing with scared kids who didn’t know why their quirk was interfering with their soulmate bond, it was entirely understandable that they might be a little hesitant with information or even a little scatterbrained as they tried to find the best participants to help them out with their testing trials.

“Todoroki. He’s a patient here, too,” Neito supplied before turning to console his soulmate, who looked a little unsure.

The soulmates ignored the thoughts flashing on the examiner’s face as he realized they were talking about Endeavor’s son, who also happened to be a patient here at the mental hospital. Did these kids not have anyone else besides the other patients here on the unit? The examiner started to plan out the day, knowing that he’ll have to get consent from the parents, especially considering that the participants are minors for one, and also members of a vulnerable population due to being in a mental health facility setting for another. He would need to explain that they have every right to refuse and that he would take the fall or blame their parents for the refusal to keep the peace with the soulmates, if needed. And that is if he could get permission from the parents in the first place. Would Endeavor allow his eldest son to participate in something like this? Would Denki’s parents allow it when their son was supposed to be here for mental health help of his own, not to be a convenient test subject for a powerful quirk to mess with his mind and see what happens?

While the examiner contacted his supervisors to start getting permission from a top hero, along with finding out who Denki was and contacting his parents as well for permission, the soulmates had a second to check in with each other before they got started.

“You really think Touya would let me…” Hitoshi trailed off, wistfully imagining Touya’s fierce blue eyes going blank and having to do what he said.

“He’s the same as Denki and me,” Neito said with a shrug. “He knows what your quirk is, but he answers your questions without hesitation anyway.” After taking a second to think, he added, “I think a lot of the other patients wouldn’t mind, either, if we interacted with them and got to know them better. Actually, even now, I bet that perfect princess Momo would do it just to gain approval from us. Kyoka might do it just for the experience. Ochako might be harder to convince, but I think that’s just because she’s more cautious and thinks every possibility through before making a decision.”

“What are you talking about?” Hitoshi finally asked as Neito rambled on, missing the cue of his soulmate’s confused expression that indicated a need for explanation.

“I know them all pretty well. I have been a frequent flier, after all. Remember? Or did you forget already?” Neito teased with a small smile and nudged Hitoshi’s shoulder with his own. “Momo is a literal genius. Her quirk is amazing, too. Copying that one would probably one of the hardest because I’d need extensive knowledge, not just luck and practice for it to work. Kyoka is impulsive, but friendlier than she lets on. She acts all tough but likes for everyone to feel included. I think if you were here without me, her and Momo would have swarmed you and made you feel like you belonged right away. They might have actually been mad that you came along with me. They think I’m a bad influence,” Neito said, looking off to the side and smiling as he thought about all of the mischief they’ve witnessed from him.

Hitoshi snorted and Neito nudged him with his shoulder again, all in good fun.

“Ochako comes from a struggling family. She learned early to consider every possibility for every action because that is what she grew up with,” Neito explained. “They’re all very nice, actually. Denki and Touya included, obviously.”

Denki and Touya especially. Who else would refrain from decking Neito across the face during his relentless tormenting? Especially when he realized later how much he must have really been hurting Touya, getting too close to the truth for comfort. And who else would blindly allow Hitoshi to use his quirk on him, without even knowing what that quirk is? Denki was a trusting gem of a friend, and he knew that he wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to help his new friends in this way.

“That’s my worry, though,” Hitoshi confessed, looking down at his hands. “What if we ask and they say yes because they feel like they have to, just to be nice? What if they aren’t really willing, and then my quirk scares them so much that they can’t even stand to be in the same room with me anymore?”

“We go to school with a bunch of wimps. Anyone who has spent any time in a mental hospital is automatically stronger than the average kid,” Neito said, knowing that when their classmates caused a scene in the music classroom, it had affected Hitoshi more than he liked to show.

“I’ll be the one to ask them, anyway,” the examiner explained, getting off of the phone with his supervisor. “After we get permission from their parents to participate.”

“If you get permission,” Hitoshi amended, sullenly.

If anyone was more afraid of him than his peers, it would have to be the adults that knew of him and his quirk.

“While my supervisor is working on getting permission, let’s get started with just you two,” the examiner said, giving the boys his full attention.

“What?” Hitoshi asked, fear gripping his mind as he glanced over at his soulmate who looked relaxed. Did Neito not understand what was being asked?

“I’d like to see you put Neito under your quirk,” the examiner clarified slowly, knowing that something was off by the way Hitoshi had paled.

“Ask me anything,” Neito commanded, turning toward Hitoshi without hesitation, eyes widening and quickly narrowing when he saw the look on Hitoshi’s face.

“I can’t do that to him. I can’t do that to my soulmate,” Hitoshi objected, looking back and forth between Neito and the examiner, blinking back his tears of panic before they could escape his eyes.

Hitoshi was so glad that he found Denki who seemed unaffected by the absolute magnitude of power that Hitoshi’s quirk held. To push his luck the very next day and use his quirk for the first time on his soulmate of all people? That was just asking for disaster.

Hitoshi only gets one soulmate.

Hitoshi doesn’t want to ruin the forming bond by scaring his soulmate. Before he even found his soulmate, he decided he would never use his quirk on them. He would never want to put someone in the position to fear him like that when they were supposed to trust each other unconditionally. This would definitely set them back and might even ruin them.

“If I can dish it out, I can take it,” Neito encouraged, watching Hitoshi’s face closely for signs that he might be heading in the right direction. “If Denki can handle it, I can, too. Don’t you think?”

Okay, that was a low blow, Neito would admit. He wasn’t actually competing with Denki, but Hitoshi would not get over this anxiety until he actually used his quirk on Neito, and everything turned out fine. Neito was on the commander side of Hitoshi’s amazing quirk already, and he had been wondering what it felt like to be on the commanded side as well. The best way to get to know a quirk and for him to be able to use it better was to get to know it inside and out. If Neito ever wanted to use Hitoshi’s quirk like it was his own, he would need the experience of being under its influence.

Plus, he knew that Hitoshi worried about it. He had only ever seen Hitoshi use his quirk once, and that was on Denki. With how much everyone feared this boy, he was essentially harmless, bound by the fear of harming others, even if that harm was just a little bit of initial fear. That fear wasn’t unfounded either, Neito realized with disdain. His classmates were terrified of Hitoshi when they had never been under his quirk or even seen his quirk in action before. Absolutely ridiculous. The eggshells that Hitoshi must feel like he has to walk on every second of every day… he must be absolutely exhausted all of the time.

Neito had to admit that he probably made it worse. Without his interference and constant goading, Hitoshi might have been able to fly under the radar after the initial fear wore off. Neito had to be the one to antagonize Hitoshi on a daily basis, though, keeping their classmates in fear of setting Hitoshi off and capturing them all in some never-ending mind control nightmare. Some of them swore that Neito would end up being the catalyst for Hitoshi’s villain origin story.

The terrible thing was, that even if Neito realized all of the shit that Hitoshi had to go through, being bounced around in the foster care system, and just how much anxiety his quirk caused him, he still probably would not have gone easy on him. To be honest, Neito liked Hitoshi from day one, and Neito’s love language is attention, which is most often consistently given through annoyance.

“Are you sure?” Hitoshi had asked Neito.

“Absolutely,” Neito answered without hesitation, growling when he was still in full control of his body. “I swear, Hitoshi, if you don’t put me under with the next question out of your mouth, I’ll sing the Song that Never Ends all night tonight. Maybe I’ll get Denki to join in, and we’ll have a competition to see who can sing the loudest, and we’ll keep the whole unit awake! Is that what you want?!” Neito demanded, fuming, knowing that that might be the push Hitoshi needs to just get it over with.

“And my next answer will be a curse, as well. So, if you want to save your soulmate from getting in trouble, you’ll put him under your quirk!” Neito pushed further, adding extra insurance, and trying to make Hitoshi feel more heroic and less villainous when he instigates his quirk.

Hitoshi snorted at that. “Why would I want to save you?”

Neito’s eyes flashed fire. He was so mad that he didn’t notice the waver in Hitoshi’s voice as he asked the question. “Why the fu—”

“I stopped him in time!” Hitoshi insisted, turning toward the examiner. “He didn’t curse.”

The examiner smiled, putting Hitoshi’s mind at ease. Hitoshi really didn’t want to get Neito in trouble.

Hitoshi glanced over at his soulmate who stared straight ahead, eyes blank and unfocused, anxiety already climbing up his throat. What must Neito be feeling right now?

Hitoshi let out a shuddering breath when he realized that, like Denki, Neito wasn’t struggling like everyone else did when they were put under. He gave him a few seconds to get used to it before issuing his first command, grateful that the examiner wasn’t rushing him.

Hitoshi’s quirk had hit Neito full force. A warm haze immediately took over his mind and clouded over his vision, but he wasn’t scared. This was his soulmate’s quirk, a quirk that he had already had the pleasure of using himself. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be based on everyone’s fear of Hitoshi. Was it his quirk that they were afraid of, or was it that he could command them to do anything he wanted afterward? That didn’t concern Neito, either. Hitoshi was a gentle soul and would never command anyone to do anything harmful.

Neito remembered that Denki had said that it is similar to how he feels after he overuses his quirk. Neito imagined that could be annoying, but it didn’t seem super harmful, so that was one less thing for him to worry about for his new friend. The voices, on the other hand, concerned him greatly.

“Stand up,” Hitoshi commanded, the power of his quirk infused in the words.

Neito complied automatically, standing up from his chair, and looking straight ahead, eyes remaining unfocused. It was a little disorienting having his body move without the command from his own brain, Neito had to admit, but nothing terrifying. The experience kind of reminded Neito about how in his dreams, he couldn’t control his body very well. If he tried running, he just couldn’t move his legs fast enough. It was a little bit like that, but far less frustrating because at least he knew the reason behind the disconnect from his mind and body and wasn’t left floundering as villains chased him, quickly catching up when he willed his legs to work faster, knowing that any other time he would be able to outrun the criminals hot on his tail.

Hitoshi quickly released the quirk, jolting Neito back into control of his own body.

Hitoshi’s heartrate increased when Neito turned toward him wide-eyed, preparing for the worst. What was the worst that Neito could say? That he wouldn’t accept him as a soulmate? That he refused to build any kind of relationship with a freak? A monster? A villain?

“That… was so cool! It didn’t hurt at all!” Neito exclaimed, breathing out a sigh of relief. “I know you told me that I didn’t hurt Denki when I used your quirk on him, but I was still nervous that I might have. That wasn’t even the slightest bit uncomfortable! It’s really amazing!”

Hitoshi watched Neito go on and on about what it felt like, comparing it to his dreams where he is not in total control of his body. Hitoshi stared on in wide-eyed wonder and awe at the total acceptance he was getting from his soulmate.

Hitoshi just knew it had to do with luck. His bad luck must have run out with his parents dying one after the other, being moved from foster home to foster home, and all of those adults and his peers being absolutely terrified of him, piled on top of the recent news that he was yet again moving to a different foster home. Luck was the only explanation that he could think of as to how he ended up getting someone like Neito as a soulmate and finding a friend like Denki just a day later.

Meanwhile, the examiner’s supervisor immediately got to work, getting the contact information for the potential participants from the mental hospital and calling the boys’ parents. She called Endeavor first, hoping that if she had to leave a message, that the number two hero would get back to her quickly. Surprisingly, when the supervisor introduced herself and asked to speak to Endeavor about his son, she was immediately patched through to the hero himself. At best, she was hoping to leave a message with one of his sidekicks, so she quickly started in on what she was asking.

“You need permission from me to allow Shouto to participate in some kind of experiment with a mental quirk? No. I won’t allow it,” Endeavor stated gruffly.

The supervisor knew that he was about to end the call, so she quickly interjected, though she wasn’t hopeful that it would change his mind.

“Not Shouto. This is a program attached to Fields Mental Hospital for quirk evaluations. I was hoping to get permission for Touya to participate,” she clarified.

“Oh. Touya? Yeah, whatever. You have my permission. I have to go.”

The line went dead, and the supervisor was left staring at the phone in confusion. She was sure that if Endeavor said no for one child, who was not a part of a vulnerable population currently residing in a mental health facility, he would definitely say no to the use of a mental quirk on his eldest son who was in fact, in a mental health facility. Touya was 17, though, and old enough to object himself if he thought it might interfere with his treatment, so she would just be sure that the examiner explains thoroughly and make sure that Touya understands that he can absolutely say no with no repercussions or consequences.

Next, she called Denki’s parents.

After introductions, she explained why she was calling.

“You want our permission to allow Denki to be a test subject for some other kid’s mind control quirk? I don’t know… it sounds kind of dangerous,” his mother said, hesitating on giving an answer one way or another.

The supervisor explained in more detail, going over the potential risks, which were few, and the benefits, which were many. The supervisor reminded Denki’s mother that it was ultimately up to them as his parents, but that if they said yes and Denki himself felt uncomfortable with it, he also had the ability to opt out.

“I just don’t think it would be productive for him, especially with the voices and other things already going on with him,” his mother explained.

“I understand completely,” the supervisor said, accepting the fact that the answer was most likely to be no.

“Do you think Denki would be able to say what he really wanted if I said yes, and you asked him?” his mother asked.

The supervisor hesitated, eyes scanning over the boys’ files once again.

“I think he would say yes. And I think that would be what he really wanted. He seems to have formed some quick friendships with the other participants,” the supervisor said, trying to give an objective and full picture for Denki’s mother to make her decision based off of.

“Really? He’s making friends so quickly?” Denki’s mother asked, hope lilting in her voice.

She was nervous. How could she not be? Denki had already had so much trouble making friends because of how impulsive and scatterbrained he was. Now with the added stigma of hallucinating voices, she was sure that he would be having an even worse time, but maybe the other patients there would understand Denki more than the average middle school student ever could. If Denki was making friends, she wasn’t about to discourage that or get in his way.

“Okay, then. As long as it’s explained to him, and he gets the final say. Oh! Can he stop if he doesn’t like it after the experiments start, though?”

“Yes,” the supervisor informed, a smile growing on her face at having permission for both potential participants. “He can stop at any time with no repercussions or consequences.”

“Okay, then,” Denki’s mother said decisively. “I give my permission for Denki to participate.”

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Kaminari. I will personally keep you updated if anything is to change, or any complications arise.”

The supervisor excitedly punched in the extension for the conference room where the examiner was talking with Hitoshi and Neito, excited to tell him to get started on debriefing Touya and Denki and seeing if they are willing to participate in a few experiments to help figure out what is going on with the soulmates.

Chapter Text

The examiner excused himself to talk to Denki and Touya about whether or not they wanted to participate in some tests to figure out what might be happening between Hitoshi’s quirk and their soulmate bond.

The examiner called Denki out of the group room and into the hallway first.

Denki had sluggishly forced himself up from the chair he was sitting at with Touya, going over the different muscle groups and in which order to work through them and how many days of rest each muscle group would need before working it again. Denki was worn out from the training earlier, and the mental anguish he put himself through until he was sure that Hitoshi forgave him for unknowingly knowing that he had had a nightmare the night before. He didn’t even have it in him to be anxious that he might be in trouble and just dragged his feet out into the hallway where yet another adult needed to speak to him.

“Kaminari Denki, correct?” the examiner asked.

Denki looked around the hallway. Was this a test to see if he remembered not to disclose his family name?

“Uh…” he stupidly stalled.

“Oh!” the examiner corrected. “I’m from the testing side of Fields, not the mental health side. I just need to confirm that I’m talking to the right person,” he explained, remembering that the patients are prohibited from sharing personal details with each other and putting the young boy’s mind at ease.

“Yeah… that’s me…” Denki answered hesitantly.

The examiner wondered if this was a good idea, watching Denki fidget under his gaze. The examiner wasn’t an intimidating man, which made him perfect for his job, but this young boy still shifted under his perceived authority.

The examiner still had a job to do, so he started explaining who he was and that he would be the one conducting and observing the tests that Neito and Hitoshi would be put through.

Denki perked up at the mention of his friends and tried to focus on what the examiner was saying, relaxing as the examiner discussed the testing his friends would be going through and the need for extra participants to use their quirks on. Denki did wonder why he was being privy to this information. He was just another patient on the unit. He wasn’t any kind of authority or even a close friend of the soulmates, so why was their examiner coming to discuss any of this with him?

“So, what I want to ask, and what I want you to think carefully about before answering, is this: Will you be a participant for the study between Hitoshi and Neito?”

“Yeah! Sure!” Denki answered without hesitation, bouncing on his feet in anticipation of helping his new friends.

The examiner was surprised that the timid, anxious boy moments earlier had developed a healthy spark in his eye and literally bounced in place as he quickly agreed without even having any details or asking any clarifying questions.

“Denki, I asked you to think carefully, first,” the examiner reminded, trying to make Denki think this through before agreeing.

“I want to help my friends,” Denki said simply with a shrug, hoping that the examiner wouldn’t get mad that he wasn’t slowing down to think it through.

The truth was, Denki didn’t have to think it through. He would do anything for his new friends, and he would feel damn heroic while doing it, too!

“You’ll be put under Hitoshi’s brainwashing quirk,” the examiner clarified, desperately trying to make this 12-year-old boy understand what was being asked of him.

“Oh yeah! Sounds great! When do we start?” Denki asked, looking around the hallway to see if he could catch a glimpse of the soulmate duo.

“If you don’t want to do it, I can tell them that your parents said you couldn’t,” the examiner offered. The examiner doubted that Denki was only saying yes in fear of letting his friends down, but he needed to cover all of the bases.

“My parents said that I could do it?” Denki asked, eyes widening as he looked right at the examiner, gaze filled with surprised wonder.

“Your mother gave permission,” the examiner informed him.

“Wow!” Denki exclaimed, smile growing even bigger now that he knew that he wasn’t trying to sign up for something that his parents might disapprove of. “I’m in! Let’s do it!”

“Okay,” the examiner sighed in resignation, but couldn’t help the smile creeping along his face due to Denki’s contagious excitement. “But please be aware that you can stop participating at any time. You’re allowed to change your mind at any time, and you won’t be in any trouble at all.”

When Denki nodded his agreement, still buzzing with newfound energy, the examiner called for Touya next. The examiner failed to hide his surprise at Touya’s stature. With all of the other pre-teens running around, the near-adult towered over the examiner and had an intimidating aura that shocked his system a little bit. The examiner plastered a smile on his face anyway, and continued with his job, even though he couldn’t see why the soulmates would want a ray of sunshine like Denki and a looming teenager like Touya to both help them out. They seemed like polar opposites, but he had a job to do.

He did start to understand why they wanted Touya pretty quickly, though.

Touya’s icy stare gave rapt attention as the examiner explained that he was from the testing side of the facility as compared to the mental health treatment side and that he was assigned to be working with the soulmates on the unit. Touya nodded along, showing his understanding and active listening, but that didn’t really calm the examiner at all.

When the examiner asked Touya if he would be interested in participating in the studies, he expected a no. He did not expect Touya to suddenly relax his posture, falling against the wall as he exhaled, a smile taking over his face.

“They both want me to help?” he inquired.

The examiner couldn’t decide if the smile was genuine or mischievous, probably because it was a little bit of both. Touya was delighted that the soulmates would ask this of him. He was relieved that they seemed to enjoy his company as much as he had been enjoying theirs, even with the intense training session that very morning.

“Yes. They both recommended that I ask you if you would be willing to help them out,” the examiner offered.

“I’m assuming Endeavor has already agreed to my participation,” Touya drawled with a slow blink, waiting for the affirmative head nod from the examiner. “And Denki is participating as well?” Touya asked, already guessing at the answer but also still needing to know for sure.

“Yes, he is. If you don’t want to participate, we can always tell them that Endeavor said—”

“I’m in,” Touya declared simply, pushing himself off of the wall and standing straight in front of the examiner, waiting for his next instructions.

“Okay,” the examiner agreed hesitantly, unsure if this teenager would actually be of any help or if he would hinder the study. “You can also back out at any time without any consequences.”

Touya laughed at that, throwing his head back before looking the examiner dead in the eyes, challenge glinting in his own icy blue eyes.

“Like I would ever back down from a challenge!” Touya declared. The ‘Neito would have a field day with that’ went unspoken; Touya knew that any indication that he was not prepared to back out should he become uncomfortable might disqualify him before they even get started, even if it was only intended as lighthearted teasing.

In the conference room, as soon as the door shut behind the examiner as he exited to talk to the potential participants, Neito turned toward Hitoshi.

A thought had been at the forefront of his mind since he himself had put Denki under Hitoshi’s quirk: Maybe Hitoshi would be less fearful of his own quirk if he knew what it felt like himself.

“Can I try putting you under your quirk?” Neito asked.

“What?” Hitoshi asked, though he heard him just fine, turning toward him with wide eyes. “You want to brainwash me?”

“Well, yeah. Don’t you want to know what it feels like?” Neito asked, genuinely curious of Hitoshi’s answer.

“Kind of… but…” Hitoshi trailed off, looking away in apprehensive thought.

“But nothing!” Neito pushed. “I’ve been under, and Denki has been under, and you don’t seem to understand just how amazing your quirk is. Everyone else is wrong, Hitoshi! Your quirk isn’t something to fear. Let me show you what it feels like, okay?”

Neito held out his hand in offering for Hitoshi to transfer his quirk over to him but didn’t try to make the contact himself. This wouldn’t help Hitoshi if he wasn’t allowed to make the choice for himself.

Hitoshi took a deep breath, and put his hand in Neito’s, giving permission for Neito to copy his quirk.

“I trust you,” Hitoshi confirmed, nodding with intent when Neito glanced at him to make sure that he was certain.

Neito smirked, and asked, “what was that?”

“I trust you,” Hitoshi repeated with a small smile, knowing full well that Neito’s question was perfectly loaded with the brainwashing quirk and answering without hesitation anyway.

Neito’s torso filled with warmth, even as he shot the quirk forward to envelop Hitoshi’s brain, going much smoother than even the time before with Denki. Neito was proud of his progress already with Hitoshi’s complex quirk, but the warm feeling of being trusted and accepted evidenced by Hitoshi’s unwavering answer to his question, even as he knew he could tell that Neito had activated his quirk… that feeling overshadowed everything, and he made a mental note to always, always, always answer Hitoshi. Neito wanted Hitoshi to feel like this all of the time. So many people were afraid of his potential that he might not be getting these automatic responses from anywhere else, so he must be able to trust his soulmate to always respond verbally, whether the question was primed with quirk or not.

The haze settled over Hitoshi’s mind and vision, and he relaxed into it, knowing that he was in good hands. He watched Neito as his eyes scanned over him. Hitoshi was completely at his mercy, but Neito had nothing but kindness and happiness in his eyes as he allowed Hitoshi to settle into the feeling of control being taken away from him. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Hitoshi feared it was. He knew he never physically hurt people with his quirk, but until Denki and Neito, he always scared them without exception. They would panic and fear him afterwards, always hesitant to talk to him, even when he wasn’t asking any questions.

When Neito gave the command laced with quirk to stand up, Hitoshi’s body responded automatically. It jumpstarted his heart, but he quickly calmed again, not that he had much of a choice. The quirk didn’t let his body do anything, include exist in a state of panic, which Hitoshi could see as being disorienting by itself—a truly brainwashing experience.

Hitoshi figured out, then, that his quirk was something to fear, but only if whoever was under it feared whoever was wielding it. Hitoshi trusted Neito not to make him do anything dangerous, so it really wasn’t terrible. It was kind of freeing, actually. Hitoshi always had to feel in control, and to give the control up to someone else, to allow his soulmate to take over the control instead, was a breath of fresh air. It felt like an emotional reset in a way.

Hitoshi filled with warmth when he realized what this meant.

All of those people who freaked out and fought back feared not his quirk, but him. That sucked, but trust isn’t inherent, so it was understandable.

However, two people, Neito and Denki, allowed him to take control and didn’t fight it or freak out. That means two whole people trusted Hitoshi completely. To further the amazement, he didn’t really give them a reason to trust him. They just trusted him automatically. Was it just some sort of predestined connection that allowed the trust to just naturally be there already? That would make sense for Neito, but not Denki. Did they see something in him that was trustworthy? Maybe. If Touya was allowed to participate and allowed him to take control and didn’t freak out, maybe that would be the answer.

“Thanks, Neito,” Hitoshi had whispered, still in a state of awe when Neito allowed the quirk to dissipate.

Neito had never felt more heroic.

Chapter Text

It was procedure for the examiners to experience the quirks for themselves whenever possible.

When the examiner was released from Hitoshi’s quirk, he was heaving. He couldn’t get enough oxygen. Honestly, the experience was terrifying, and he was uncertain about the ethics behind allowing underage mental health patients to undergo the same treatment under Hitoshi’s quirk. Along with the policy and procedure, he also wanted to get a feel for Hitoshi’s quirk for himself so that he would be an accurate observer, but for how young Hitoshi was, he had the examiner under his complete control with no way for him to break free.

The examiner had been under many different types of quirks before, but Hitoshi’s was on another level completely. There was usually a mind-over-matter element to mental quirks that you could fight back if you were calm and fought hard enough, but there was absolutely no way for Hitoshi’s quirk, and that was terrifying all on its own.

The examiner tried to quickly compose himself, but the terrified awe must have been obvious in his expression because Hitoshi looked quickly away from him and tensed, bracing himself for whatever was to come next.

“Ah! Me next! Please!” Denki pleaded, jumping up and down and waving his hands erratically like his request might be considered more carefully if he was as visible as possible. “Do you want me to break out or not fight it?” Denki asked, facing Hitoshi in thought.

Hitoshi looked over at the examiner who was still in too much shock to speak. Getting no guidance from the examiner, Hitoshi shrugged, stating, “let’s just get into it, and we’ll let you know if you should try to break out after.”

Denki nodded enthusiastically, waiting in excited anticipation to answer the trigger question that was sure to come soon. Neito leaned back in his chair, coldly observing, displeased about the examiner’s reaction to Hitoshi’s quirk, but mentally deciding to not jump down his throat about it until he says something negative about Hitoshi.

Neito tried to cut the guy some slack; reactions cannot always be controlled, after all, especially after experiencing the power that is Hitoshi’s quirk. But Neito would be damned before the examiner did any more damage to Hitoshi’s self-esteem. Neito stared coldly at the examiner, not even bothering to watch his soulmate and roommate for the moment, ready to spring into action to cut off any potentially damaging statement that might try to burst free from the man’s lips.

The examiner looked hesitant, eyes switching between Denki and Hitoshi, but he was also aware enough to look intrigued and a little confused as well. He was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, at least, and observe, as it was his job to do so.

“Are you ready?” Hitoshi asked, for once feeling a little peace while slinging his quirk through the words that left his lips.

Ordinarily, he would be anxious about the end results and would not look so relaxed. The words had a lazy drawl as they exited his mouth, primed with quirk, and Neito saw a new confidence in his soulmate that he had never seen before.

Hitoshi was relaxed, even while he was starting off this experiment to see if it was his quirk that was messing with his and his soulmate’s heads. Maybe it was because he was putting Denki under, and he had already learned that Denki wouldn’t let him down. Maybe it was because he was surrounded by friends, and he had never felt that kind of support before. Hitoshi didn’t even give much thought to the scared look in the examiner’s eyes as he dropped his quirk from his mind, knowing that right on cue, as always, Denki would burst into the conversation like All Might bursting in on a villainous plot in action and relieve any negative attention by redirecting it to himself.

“You know it!” Denki chirped, shooting a comically dramatic wink and finger guns in Hitoshi’s direction.

Neito knew that Hitoshi was feeling good when Denki’s reply wasn’t cut off. Hitoshi was not feeling rushed. He did not feel the need to hurry and get it over with. He allowed the full answer, chuckled at Denki’s antics, and calmly reached over Denki’s mind, enveloping his consciousness and taking over control. Denki relaxed into it immediately. Hitoshi knew he would, but it still made him feel amazing each time, just like it was the first time. He didn’t know why he was so awestruck, but Denki’s reaction to his quirk, how he just relaxed into it and enjoyed the experience would never cease to amaze him.

Hitoshi spared a glance to the examiner, who seemed to have shaken off the initial shock of being under Hitoshi’s quirk and was diligently writing notes on his clipboard.

“Is he fighting back?” the examiner asked, pausing the movements of his pen and looking between the two boys who were currently connected through Hitoshi’s quirk.

“He would have gotten out by now if he was,” Neito boasted casually, flopping down into a chair, eyes switching lazily between his soulmate and roommate.

Touya stood off to the side, not moving from his position against the wall. When Hitoshi dared a glance in his direction, he was pleased that Touya seemed unaffected. He was just distantly observing, no emotions being shown, but that seemed typical of Touya, so it didn’t freak Hitoshi out. Hitoshi was surprised about his lack of surprise about Touya’s reaction, or lack of reaction to be more precise.

Touya was impressed, though he was not quite certain what exactly was happening in front of him. He had never had the honor of seeing Hitoshi’s quirk in action before, but if the dazed, blank look in Denki’s normally bright, observant eyes was anything to go by, he could deduce that Denki no longer had control. It seemed quick, efficient, and painless. Touya couldn’t wait until he got a chance to go under, wondering if it really was painless or if Denki was trapped in his mind, silently screaming. Touya heavily doubted that, but it was interesting to imagine, and he wondered if it would be possible for Hitoshi to induce some kind of mental or even physical pain through his quirk. With how confident Neito had been about Denki breaking free if he had fought against it, though, Touya was pretty certain that Hitoshi was not causing Denki any pain. Denki was a firecracker, but he would not be able to withstand something distressing while he had the option to stop it. At least, not yet. When Touya was through with his training, though, that would be a different story.

“Neito, what do you mean by that?” the examiner inquired.

Neito sat up straighter, eyes hardening to force himself to continue to look at the test subjects instead of the examiner. The examiner wasn’t stupid, though. He was good at his job, and to be good at his job, he had to be really observant.

“You won’t get in trouble. I need full disclosure here. Nothing learned here will be passed onto the mental health staff of the facility,” he promised.

“He’s telling the truth,” Touya offered from his position against the wall, making everyone, except Denki who was still in a dazed haze, look over at him. “It’s in the paperwork of the facility. I underwent some test here for my quirk a few years ago, and it was clearly outlined. He wouldn’t risk his job by reporting you for some harmless quirk usage to get you guys in trouble on the unit.”

Touya’s word was basically law to the boys. Touya was going to let the examiner flounder for a bit, but he figured that if they felt more comfortable with the examiner, they would get more out of the experiments. Plus, Touya would admit that he was curious to hear about it as well.

“Hitoshi had already…” Neito hesitated, looking over at his soulmate, who nodded his permission for Neito to admit what had happened. “Hitoshi had already had Denki under his quirk before. I did, too. That is, uh… I copied Hitoshi’s quirk and used it on Denki,” Neito clarified.

Neito was used to getting in trouble himself, but he was adamantly against bringing others down with him. Denki faltered under Hitoshi’s quirk as he heard his normally confident roommate stumble over the explanation, the urge to intervene and draw attention to himself flowing though and tugging slightly on Hitoshi’s quirk.

“Spin in a circle,” Hitoshi commanded, trying to reestablish the baseline control over Denki.

Hitoshi knew what Denki was trying to do. He was also aware that “trying” wasn’t the right word, because it was an automatic reaction to help his friend. They were already all aware of Denki’s social genius, but Hitoshi realized then that Denki was heroic in that way as well. He didn’t actively think about rushing in to help someone out of an awkward situation. No. Denki rushed in without thinking about it, which was one of the reasons so many people thought he was stupid: Because sometimes he would have to jump in with something outlandish to get the attention off of whoever was suffering under social scrutiny.

But Neito was among friends, and Hitoshi knew that in the long run, Neito would have to be more open to being more vulnerable with the people he trusted. That short list was exactly the same for both of them, and included only the others in the room, minus the examiner. Neito could handle it, and Hitoshi was not going to let go of the chance to have Neito face a challenge and come out victorious on the other end. He knew that Denki meant well, and he knew that Denki immediately thought similarly because he relaxed back under the quirk again immediately after the command instead of trying to fight it, consciously or not.

The examiner looked at the pair in question.

“Denki can break out of my quirk. It’s actually pretty easy for him. Giving him a command resets him back to baseline and he has to start all over again if he wants to break free,” Hitoshi offered.

“Resets him back to baseline…” the examiner muttered under his breath as he wrote on his clipboard before pausing and looking up toward Denki with concern in his eyes. “He was trying to break out of your quirk, is that right? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Hitoshi reassured, but felt the doubt creeping into his mind. He was certain that Denki could break out quickly and easily if he wanted, but he did not want to seem like some kind of monster to the examiner.

“Then why was he trying to break out?” the examiner questioned, still looking at Denki with concern.

Hitoshi sighed, dropping the quirk from Denki’s mind, and giving him control back. Hitoshi flopped into a chair along the edge of the room, trying not to look as discouraged as he felt.

“I’m fine! I just got distracted, is all,” Denki reassured, shaking his head and blinking to clear the remaining haze that lingered in his eyes.

Before the examiner had a chance to question him further, Touya chimed in, “how are they supposed to get anything done if you’re going to interrupt every five seconds? Denki can take care of himself. We’re all friends, here, and if Hitoshi felt that any of us were fighting back, I know he would drop his quirk. We all trust each other, but you’re getting in your own way of your own experiments.”

Touya’s statement was delivered in a calm, cold, matter-of-fact manner. He wasn’t angry or yelling, just stating a fact that needed to be heard. And the examiner quickly realized that he was right, apologized to all of them, and asked that Hitoshi start over after checking with Denki one more time that he was still happy to keep participating.

Hitoshi was awestruck. Touya had stood up for him, and to an adult, no less! And that adult had listened to what Touya had to say, accepted that he was wrong, and then apologized to them! Hitoshi had never been apologized to by an adult before, and when he looked over to put Denki back under, he could see the same awe and shock in his eyes as well. Touya was unphased as always. Neito did not look phased by the apology, but rather interested and almost suspicious of the way Hitoshi and Denki were reacting to the examiner’s apology.

Once Denki was back under, Touya finally stepped away from the wall, and exclaimed, “might as well use this opportunity to push some limits, yeah?” with a maniacal smile on his face.

The statement along with the crazy-eyed smile was enough to put the examiner on edge, but Hitoshi and Neito beamed at him, bouncing up to stand at attention with a competitive gleam in their eyes, wondering what Touya had in store for them. Denki stood there, still gazing blankly in Hitoshi’s direction, but was paying attention and sharing the same sentiments as the other two 12-year-olds who still had control over their bodies.

Chapter Text

Denki’s arms were steady as he stared straight ahead, this time into Hitoshi’s eyes instead of Touya’s sharp blue ones, losing himself in the white pupils surrounded by deep purple irises. Instead of swimming in the ocean, Denki imagined himself ice skating on a perfectly circular patch of ice surrounded by wisteria trees. The sun beating down would provide warmth despite the chill of the frosty, white ice and make the purple of the blooming flowers pop.

The examiner watched closely, monitoring the others just as much as he monitored Denki to make sure that Denki would not be pushed past his limit by force. When he voiced his concerns, however, Neito reminded him that Denki can break the hold of the quirk on him easily, and Hitoshi can feel if he were to start fighting back and can drop it even faster. The examiner had never been put in a position like that before, and he was hoping that he would not get fired if anyone were to question the safety and motives behind the experiments that quickly took on a life of their own. He had to admit, though, that these were good ideas and would get results much faster than the traditional experimental procedures.

Denki focused his eyes on Hitoshi’s, cutting through the haze just enough to gauge how his friend was holding up. Denki felt the examiner’s eyes on him but questioned if anyone was thinking about how this might be harder on Hitoshi than anyone else. Hitoshi amazed Denki. Who else had the physical and mental fortitude to hold the plank position while also keeping someone under his quirk?

Except for maybe Neito, who happened to be giving off strong hints that he wanted to see if he could keep Denki under the brainwashing quirk while being under physical pressure as well. Okay, they were less like hints and more like loud, obnoxious, unending taunting that he would be able to do that, too, and wiggling his eyebrows at Touya as he suggested that he copy Hitoshi’s quirk and put Touya under right then and there. Touya rolled his eyes good-naturedly, threatening to give tougher commands if Neito still had the energy to whine even while the sweat was pouring off of all of them as they maintained the steady plank position, too stubborn to even waver or sway, staying as still as statues… if statues could sweat and swear and whine, that was.

When Denki sliced through the haze just enough to visually check in on Hitoshi, who seemed to be multitasking without much effort, Hitoshi’s eyes darted to meet Denki’s, feeling his control starting to slip just a little bit. After he determined that the change came from Denki and it wasn’t because he was losing control due to the multitasking, Hitoshi tried to gauge Denki’s intentions. Denki didn’t back off and allow the quirk full control again right away, but he didn’t thin the quirk out even more until it burst either.

Neito noticed that Hitoshi was looking intently at Denki and was not really surprised to see Denki’s eyes focused on Hitoshi instead of staring off into space, dazed and unfocused even as the sweat poured off of his body from the physical effort.

At first, Hitoshi was worried that Denki was in pain from the exercise, but maybe it just wasn’t enough pain to snap him out of the quirk. Hitoshi quickly disregarded that possibility and realized that Denki was just checking in on him. Hitoshi couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face, even as he grimaced from the effort of holding the position Touya had commanded them into, using nothing but the friendly authority of his unofficial title as their trainer.

Hitoshi managed to give a small nod toward Denki, and rasped out, “I’m doing okay. Are you?”

Denki’s eyes lost their focus and Hitoshi’s quirk was no longer stretched as thinly, coming back in full force over Denki’s mind.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Hitoshi rasped out, managing to bark out a short laugh before his arms finally gave in and he fell to the floor, groaning at being the first one out.

Neito followed soon after, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling while Touya and quirked-out Denki were still in the running.

“Hey! On second thought,” Touya gasped out, looking at the three boys, “maybe this isn’t so fair after all. Denki only has to rely on his physical strength and not mental.”

Neito burst out laughing, not bothering to move from his spot on the floor as he turned his head to look at Touya.

“Being a sore loser before you even lose, Touya?” Neito taunted, the gleam in his eye coming back quickly even after collapsing in exhaustion.

“I see where you’re coming from,” Hitoshi offered, a small smile gracing his face as he watched the two still in plank position, Touya rapidly declining in stability. “But I don’t think it would help you either way, Touya. I’m pretty sure Denki could do anything he set his mind to, and it’s easy for him to set his mind to something, don’t you think?”

Instead of responding, Touya groaned, dropping to the ground, and pressing his face against the blissful, cool tiles.

With a confirming glance at the examiner, Hitoshi dropped the quirk from Denki who immediately smiled widely at all of them but did not drop from his plank position.

“Looks like I win!” Denki sang, not showing any signs of tiredness except the sweat still pouring off of him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Neito grumbled. “No one likes a sore winner.”

“You’re one to talk,” Touya snorted.

“Sore winner?” Denki teased, eyes squinting in delight at the thought that popped up in his head. “I’m already the winner, but I’ll need to stay like this for another five minutes if you want me to be sore.”

Neito stared at Denki in shock but could not contain the burst of laughter that bubbled out of his throat. Soon, all four boys were on the floor, heaving and laughing so hard that tears were pooling in their eyes. Denki had immediately dropped to the floor after the statement, the laughter wracking through his body too much to maintain the position for a second longer.

“That confidence is well-earned,” Touya complimented when they had all calmed down, giving Denki a slap on the back.

Denki preened under the praise, turning to give Touya a bright-eyed smile.

After cooling off and rehydrating, the boys broke off into pairs, as directed by the examiner. Neito was going to put Denki under the quirk and Hitoshi was going to put Touya under.

Neito shot a cheeky grin in Touya’s direction before singing, “looks like you’ve escaped me this time, Touya! You won’t be so lucky next time!”

Touya cursed under his breath and responded before turning away and giving his attention to Hitoshi, “I’d hate to see what you’d make me do under your control.”

That was a lie, though. Neito was abrasive and obnoxious on the worst days, but he didn’t have a villainous bone in his body. Neito could tease and taunt all he wanted, but Touya trusted him, actually. Touya would answer a quirk-loaded question in a heartbeat if Neito asked it, just as willingly as he was about to answer Hitoshi’s. These boys looked up to him. He was the role model for once. And the whole little group just kind of clicked together perfectly and seamlessly. Touya wasn’t much of a dreamer. No, Touya preferred to live solely in the present and think realistically about the future, but even he could imagine the four of them teaming up one day and doing a hell of a job based on the team chemistry alone.

Touya wasn’t nervous at all about Hitoshi’s quirk. If Denki could handle it effortlessly, then he was sure that the examiner’s reaction was over the top. Touya would never admit it to anyone, but he kind of freaked out a little bit when he answered the question and then suddenly had no control over his own body.

Touya’s life had gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. At first, he was Endeavor’s pride and joy. The best hope at overcoming All Might. Even though Endeavor was only second to All Might, he always seemed to be miles ahead, the distance insurmountable in Endeavor’s lifetime. So, Endeavor turned his attention toward the next generation.

Touya had no control over his life. His days were scheduled down to the minute to account for all of the training he had to go through. His meals were planned down to the last calorie and carb to get the most out of his food and start building muscle as quickly and efficiently as possible. His school days were filled with intense study; not a minute was spared because he did not want to waste any potential training time to finish any leftover homework, so while other kids talked before class started and after class ended, Touya was nose deep in his books, absorbing the information as quickly and thoroughly as possible to complete assignments as they were given instead of waiting last minute like a lot of his peers tended to do.

After his quirk examination turned out with bad news and little Shouto came along, Touya’s life switched to the other end of the spectrum. He went from having no control over his life to having total control because suddenly no one else cared what he did. The first time he came home from school five minutes late, he was rushing through the door, an apology already on his lips, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he realized that no one was there to greet him. Endeavor was already off with Shouto, preparing him for greatness. His mother had been whisked away to a long-term mental hospital earlier that year for hurting Shouto. His siblings were busy doing their own things. His sister was at an after-school dance club and his brother had gone out with friends. Shouto was obviously occupied by Touya’s old schedule that suddenly became his when he showed how much potential he really had, and Touya was left out with nothing to fall back on.

Touya had nothing. He didn’t have a schedule to follow. He never had the chance to join any clubs. He never even had time to make any friends. Touya decided that he could wallow in self-pity, or he could take control over his own situation and prove everyone wrong. Since then, Touya had had almost complete control over himself, though his schedule did not change very much. Touya still trained like it was going out of style, but he squeezed in some time to make friends, taking the time before and after class to start socializing instead of cramming every second with schoolwork since he suddenly had more free time after school that he could use to finish up any homework.

Touya had nothing, so he gave himself everything.

Having that careful control stripped away and no longer having any control over his body sent Touya in a brief spiral, but he quickly got ahold of himself.

I’m fine. This is fine. I trust Hitoshi. This is fine.

Touya never had any trouble giving up control to his father when they were training to become the best, so he did not know why he reacted so strongly like that. On the other hand, it really had been quite a while since he wasn’t in complete control of himself. Maybe the complete control over his own future became a coping mechanism for him and before that, he didn’t realize how much he relied on it. Hitoshi had just pulled that rug out from under his feet, only for Touya to realize that instead of sturdy floors under that rug, there was fragile glass that was already splintered with hairline fractures, and one wrong step would send him hurtling toward ruin.

Touya quickly regained his sense before he could try to struggle against Hitoshi’s quirk, and he was grateful for that. Hitoshi had enough on his plate without someone he trusts showing him that his quirk was something to fear when it really wasn’t.

Denki felt the familiar haze wash over him, and this time it was smooth and natural, like Neito had been born with the quirk. Denki was amazed at his friend’s quick learning and easy control over a complicated quirk, and he was not going to hesitate to tell Neito just how awesome he thought he was, even if Touya would roll his eyes and tell him not to stroke his ego because it was already too big already.

Neito had glanced over at Hitoshi and Touya and felt a lot more relaxed after he realized Touya was under, and Hitoshi was smiling and calmly talking with the examiner. Neito was relieved that it went well. He knew Touya could handle it, but he still worried a little.

The week went on like that, with Hitoshi and Neito putting Denki and Touya under the brainwashing quirk and doing different stress tests and other experiments, but Hitoshi and Neito didn’t report hearing any extra feedback or anything else abnormal between their soulmate bond and Hitoshi’s brainwashing quirk.

Touya also continued with the training, getting each boy set up with a great plan that they could take and use outside of the mental hospital, threatening to hunt them down if they strayed from the plans at all.

Denki verbalized his wishful future plans, where all of them would be Pro Heroes together and kick some serious villain butt. Denki was thrilled when he suggested code names and they all agreed. Even the technicians played along, walking past them like they didn’t see them crouched in the bright, open hallway as they practiced having quiet footsteps and rolling past doorways.

Momo, Ochako, and Kyoka were discharged in the middle of that week, quickly replaced by a timid green-haired boy, a wound-up boy with navy blue hair and glasses, and a short boy with purple balls on the top of his head. Denki tried instigating a “boys club” now that there were only boys on the unit, but the groups didn’t mix well with how established the QQQ (the Quick, Quiet Quad) was.

As for the quirk experiments, Touya only panicked the first time under Hitoshi’s quirk, and even when he was put under by Neito, he was calm and collected. Touya figured that the first time must have just been a shock to his system about how he could not have predicted what having literally zero control over himself would feel like.

Denki and Touya were discharged on the same day. Denki cried, hugging his friends, and promising to keep up with the workout plans so that one day they could all be pro heroes together.

Two days later, Neito was discharged back to his family, and Hitoshi was discharged back to the children and youth agency who then took him to his new foster home in his new school district.

The next day was Hitoshi’s first day at the new school, and just by bad luck, it happened to be a field trip day. Hitoshi was dreading spending the day alone with no time to even try to make friends, let alone have a plan on how to succeed with keeping said friends once they discovered his quirk. He missed the mental hospital already.

Chapter Text

Kaminari Denki felt like Neito more and more every day since leaving the mental hospital. He missed his friends. They weren’t allowed to share family names, so he had no idea how to find them. Their quirks would be helpful to find them, but Denki was only 12 and did not have access to highly classified quirk registries and databases, so that was a dead end.

He also did not have access to any hackers that could illegally access those registries and databases, so no luck there, either. Plus, it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea after Touya had gone through the trouble of making a training regimen so that he could get his body in tip-top shape to become a hero. He should probably avoid doing anything illegal… not that he actually had the means to even attempt any illegal hacking in the first place, but a boy could dream.

With all of his wishful thinking and resulting sulking with every dead-end outcome, he wasn’t even excited for the field trip to the zoo.

It didn’t help that his friends kept flip-flopping between teasing him and avoiding him, not really sure how to react to having a friend who hears voices and spent over a week in a mental hospital. Sometimes, when his friends acted like they were afraid he would snap if they said the wrong thing, he thought that that must be how Hitoshi feels when people are nervous about his quirk. He felt that way as he boarded the bus, thinking about Hitoshi and not knowing who he was going to sit with because his friends were back in the silent treatment phase and acting scared around him.

Denki stopped dead in the middle of the aisle of the bus, causing one of his friends to crash into the back of him and immediately start yelling and shoving against him. If Denki had time to think, he would realize that that is not how someone acts when they are actually afraid of you, but Denki was a little distracted.

“Kaminari!” his friend had whined loudly, hitting him in the back in frustration. “You’re so annoying! Why did you stop like that?”

But Denki wasn’t paying attention because Denki’s heart fell out of his chest and onto the dirty bus floor when he saw a mess of purple hair, purple eyes reflected in the bus window. He was already freaking his friends out enough, but now that he was hallucinating Hitoshi sitting there at the front of the bus, he knew that his mind was playing mean tricks on him, and he was nervous that he would accidentally talk to a hallucination and make his friends hate him even more.

Denki forced himself to keep moving toward the back of the bus where his friend group sat. Denki’s worst nightmare happened again when his friends paired up without him, pretending that they did not want to sit at the very back so three people could sit next to each other to include Denki in the group, even though that seat was empty. His other classmates started maneuvering around him as he tried to convince a pair of friends to move to the very back to sit with him, and he almost cursed under his breath when he turned and realized that the back was taken.

Yes, Neito definitely had influenced him, maybe more than he had initially realized if he had to stop himself from cursing in front of his teachers. He would have to really work hard to police his thoughts so that he didn’t blurt out anything inappropriate and get himself into trouble.

Denki was going to flop down in an empty seat near the middle of the bus, dreading the two-hour bus ride to the zoo, when his teacher called for him near the front of the bus, requesting that he come sit up at the front with the new student.

Denki was quickly learning that he had a lot of “worst nightmares,” and this was another one. He worked hard to make the friends that he had, and he was hesitant to try to start a new friendship now. What if it made his friends mad and they thought he was trying to replace them? What if the new kid gets a bad reputation after being associated with the stupid, hallucinating freak that was Kaminari Denki?

Denki sulked back to the front of the bus, dragging his feet, but not daring to say no to a request from his teacher.

His teacher smiled warmly at him, like he was trying to give Denki and the new kid a chance to form a good friendship. It wasn’t a bad plan. Pairing up the bright ray of sunshine that is relentlessly picked on by his peers and who won’t stand up for himself with the gloomy new kid who also happened to be in foster care (yikes, double whammy) was probably a great idea. His teacher didn’t know it was going to work that well and that… instantly, either. But beggars can’t be choosers and he predicted that it would be the start of a beautiful and supportive friendship.

“Kaminari, this is Shinsou. He’s new, and just transferred from Katsuhhiko Middle School,” the teacher introduced. “Shinsou, this is Kaminari.”

Denki’s breath froze in his throat as the familiar face turned around to look at him, scared out of his mind that he was hallucinating Hitoshi’s face over the face of a new student, but it looked so, so real.

Hitoshi turned around lazily, glancing up at the student introduced as “Kaminari,” ready to give the bare minimum nod of acknowledgement before going back to sulking in self-pity when he froze in his seat, eyes widening.

“Denki,” Hitoshi whispered in awe, automatically reaching out for his friend when Denki launched himself forward, arms wrapping around Hitoshi who automatically squeezed back just as hard.

Hitoshi was laughing, petting Denki’s hair as Denki simultaneously laughed and sobbed against Hitoshi’s neck. This wasn’t a nightmare after all.

Hitoshi and Denki talked the whole way to the zoo, not letting a second go by now that they had actually found their way back to each other. It seemed impossible, but there they were, together again.

“So, Shinsou, huh? Shinsou Hitoshi,” Denki tested out. “I like it,” he nodded decidedly.

“Kaminari Denki,” Hitoshi tested out in turn. “It suits you well.”

“Oh! Can you tell me Neito’s full name then?” Denki asked, leaning closer in anticipation of getting all of the answers to all of his questions.

Hitoshi laughed, automatically answering, “Monoma Neito.”

“Oh! I like that,” Denki complimented, easing back against the seat, sighing in content.

Hitoshi hummed in agreement, copying Denki’s movements and leaning back against the seat, as well.

“I just got out yesterday,” Hitoshi ventured, looking straight ahead instead of in Denki’s direction. “They took me to my new foster home right from the hospital. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my old foster family.”

Denki sucked in a breath through his teeth, turning and placing a hand on Hitoshi’s shoulder.

“That sucks,” Denki offered, feeling unhelpful, but that was exactly what Hitoshi needed: Pure validation. No pity. Perfect.

“It was so busy that I didn’t even get a chance to talk to Neito about it, yet,” Hitoshi admitted, feeling a little guilty that he was talking about this with Denki before his soulmate, but ultimately knowing that Neito really wouldn’t mind as long as it was Denki.

“I bet we’ll find him at the zoo,” Denki declared, already planning a route in his head to cover the most ground in the most efficient way.

“Oh?” Hitoshi inquired. “I can’t remember if Katsuhhiko had this as an upcoming field trip or not. I was too concerned about keeping Neito away from me and changing foster homes.”

Denki just had to hear about keeping Neito away, and the story ended with Denki and Hitoshi falling over each other laughing about Neito’s antics and the lengths Hitoshi went to dissuade Neito from trying again, but always failing. Neito was a persistent one!

“Oh!” Denki exclaimed, sitting up straight with the realization. “That’s why you were so good at tag! Even Touya couldn’t tag you because you would dodge out of the way last second. You never gave up when he got too close like we did!”

“Touya was just going easy on us,” Hitoshi said, rubbing the back of his neck at the compliments.

“No, Shinsou! That was all you!” Denki declared.

“You can call me Hitoshi,” he insisted before thinking better of it, freezing when Denki froze. “I mean if you want. You’re, like, my best friend,” he admitted. He figured he might as well go all in instead of backtracking. New foster home, new school, new Shinsou Hitoshi who actually means what he says and goes after what he wants. Too bad his cheeks didn’t get the memo as they started to gather heat.

Denki blissfully ignored the blush spreading across Hitoshi’s cheeks in favor of crashing into him for another hug.

“I am so glad that you think we’re best friends, too! I thought it might be just me!” Denki admitted.

Denki knew he messed up when Hitoshi questioned why he would think that, and skillfully changed the subject. Hitoshi noticed, of course, but allowed it, not wanting to pressure Denki to tell him something he wasn’t ready to, yet. And especially not if it was going to ruin the mood of the upcoming manhunt for Hitoshi’s soulmate at the zoo.

“And now, here we are! At the zoo! In search of the elusive… Monoma Neito…” Denki declared, gradually decreasing his volume until it was a whisper, and waving Hitoshi forward like they were sneaking in undetected, in broad daylight, surrounded by other students and teachers.

Hitoshi was used to this, thanks to the QQQ ‘missions,’ so he quickly and naturally fell behind, following Denki’s lead of when to rush forward and when to fall back, wanting to find Neito and sneak up on him before he could spot them. What a surprise that would be! He knew that Neito was worried for him, so if he could see that Hitoshi ended up at Denki’s school of all places, he would feel much better.

Denki was so enthralled with finding his friend from the mental hospital that he did not even bother trying to sneak back in with his usual friend group. If he had thought about them at all (he hadn’t), he would have wondered how long it would take them to realize that he wasn’t there and figured that they probably wouldn’t notice at all.

The truth was, they all noticed right away. They had been doing such a thorough job of maliciously ignoring him that they failed to realize that he had found a better, more interesting friend to spend his day with.

While Denki and Hitoshi were already sneaking through the entrance to the zoo, off to find the elusive species that is also known as Hitoshi’s soulmate, Denki’s group of friends were looking around casually, trying to spot Denki to avoid him when he would inevitably start walking their way and ask to join them. When they didn’t spot him right away, their subtle looking around started to become frantic. They had started to joke amongst themselves, saying things like “Kaminari probably fell into the lion’s den and got eaten already, and we haven’t even been here for 5 minutes!” Everyone would laugh boisterously, but then go right back to looking around to see if they could find the honey blond firecracker that would normally fill the awkward silence when everyone else ran out of things to talk about. They wouldn’t admit it, but it was more fun with Denki around.

Maybe they would learn their lesson that if you don’t treat a friend nicely, they will find a new friend who will. Or maybe they wouldn’t, and they would just blame Denki for replacing them with some purple-haired, sad-faced loser. And you know what? Denki would be okay with any insults flung his way. He would laugh and shrug them off, because they were probably kind of true in a way, weren’t they? But insult Hitoshi? That’s crossing a line.

Shinsou Hitoshi is one of the kindest, warm-hearted people that Denki ever had the pleasure of meeting, and everyone in his school would be wise to remember that he has been sent home for quirk usage before, and he wasn’t afraid to do it again! Seeing the disappointed look on his parents’ faces would be well worth it to show Hitoshi that he would always stand up for him because he deserved to be defended against cruel kids who didn’t quite understand what torment they were putting their peers through with their relentless bullying and low-blow insults.

When Denki and Hitoshi rounded the corner near the penguin exhibit, they both spotted Neito at the same time and immediately fell back. There was no way that he saw them because he was actively engaged in conversation with three other boys from a different school, if their uniforms were anything to go by.

Denki and Hitoshi went into full undercover mode, locked in on their target. The other students and chaperones probably thought they were nuts, but they only had eyes for Neito, eyes locked in on him as they crept closer, dodging behind lemonade and cotton candy carts to shield themselves from view just in case Neito was to suddenly turn around.

Hitoshi noticed what was happening before Denki did, though Denki caught on quickly when he realized the change in Hitoshi as they snuck closer. What started out as a stake out mission turned quickly into a rescue mission.

While Hitoshi was the first to notice, Denki was the first to act. He gave a firm nod to Hitoshi before stalking right up to Neito and slinging his arm around his shoulder, plastering a huge smile on his face, and jumping right in. Basically, he did what Denki does best: He played the unaware idiot.

“Hey, Raion! What’s the hold up? You were supposed to meet us near the polar bears five minutes ago! We had to come searching for you and everything!” Denki whined dramatically, interrupting the conversation, and not bothering to stop when one of the other boys tried to keep going with what he was saying.

Neito had initially tensed, wrapping a hand around Denki’s wrist in preparation of throwing his arm off of him, a scowl on his face as he turned toward Denki before immediately lighting up in pleasant surprise. At first, Neito thought that there were more tormentors coming to join the fun, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

“Yeah, Rai! Don’t keep us waiting forever!” Hitoshi chimed in from his other side, making Neito turn and smile even wider at his soulmate.

Neito went from arguing with bullies to being flanked on either side by his favorite two people in the universe, so his day was officially awesome already.

“Rai?” one of the bullies repeated in question.

“I told you!” Neito had sneered. “I look similar to this copycat guy, but I’m not him! Easy mistake! Happens all the time! Glad we could clear that up! Let’s go guys,” Neito rushed through, trying to get his companions out of the mess he had found himself in, but to no avail.

“Not a chance!” the boy on the left sneered, stepping forward threateningly. “You’re definitely that little copycat freak! I don’t know what mind game you’re trying to pull, but it won’t work on us!”

“Again?!” Denki exclaimed dramatically, throwing his hands into the air. “Rai, we have to change your hair or something, so you stop getting mistaken for your look-alike!”

“He should be the one to change,” Neito pouted, fully in character and completely immersed in the ruse they had going.

“Rai here is an electric type,” Hitoshi explained to the group. “He’s often mistaken for that other kid, Monoma, right? We get that all the time!”

Denki grabbed Neito’s hand to start to lead him away like the conversation was over, but the other boys circled around, not letting them off that easily. That’s okay, though; they were prepared for that. Actually, they might have been disappointed if the opportunity to shine didn’t present itself so nicely.

“Wait! Prove it first!” the tallest one demanded, eyes squinting in suspicion.

“No!” Neito pleaded. “I’ll get in trouble if anyone sees! We aren’t allowed to use our quirks!” Neito’s eyes darted around, searching the area to see if any teacher or chaperone was looking in their direction.

“C’mon, Rai!” Hitoshi drawled. “No one’s looking! Just hurry up and show them so we can move on.”

“Coast is clear!” Denki added encouragingly, head swiveling around to check to see if anyone was paying any attention to the mismatched group.

Neito sighed, acting annoyed, when in reality he was ecstatic to be able to use the electrification quirk once again. Lightning danced across his fingertips as he held his hands in the middle of the group of boys, displaying ‘his’ electric-type quirk. The boys from the other school were stupid enough to believe it and not realize that he would have had the chance to borrow a quirk from his companions to make it work. Neito was grateful that Hitoshi and Denki came along when they did. He had been in similar circumstances where he tried to say that he was quirkless, but that was rarely believed. He didn’t know why showing a quirk was more believable, though, when they knew their intended target could copy one.

The boys muttered out non-apologies before rushing off to find someone else to torment.

When Neito turned around to face his friend and soulmate, they both rushed forward and engulfed him in a group hug.

“We were going to sneak up on you, but we decided to come to the rescue instead,” Denki muttered against Neito’s shoulder as he squeezed tighter.

“I didn’t need rescued,” Neito grumbled, though the smile was still on his face.

“We know,” Hitoshi soothed, knowing that his soulmate loved his independence. “But it was the perfect opportunity to see if we could pull off an improv scenario in real life.”

“Touya would have torn our story apart, but it was good enough for those losers,” Neito conceded.

Denki finally pulled away, shook off the tension from the ruse they had actually succeeded in, and stuck out his hand in Neito’s direction.

“My name is Kaminari Denki.”

Chapter Text

The zoo was fantastic. More amazing than any of them had imagined it would be.

Hitoshi was expecting a boring day, wandering around without any friends. Or worse: being the unwilling tag-along to an uninterested group that the teacher forced to include him in. Hitoshi had sighed in resignation, sorry for whoever was being stuck with the new kid, and was pleasantly surprised that Denki stood there, staring at him like a sika deer in headlights. Hitoshi had a small moment of self-doubt, that Denki wouldn’t want to be seen with a boy that he had met in a mental institution and that their friendship was only supposed to last for the duration of their stay, but those thoughts were completely erased when Denki lunged forward without hesitation and squeezed Hitoshi like he had just saved him or something.

And to Denki, Hitoshi did save him. Denki no longer had to worry about spending the field trip making sure to keep an active eye on his friend group so that they didn’t leave him stranded the second he got distracted by an animal exhibit. When Denki had stared at the lions a little too long, he frantically looked around, expecting to see that Hitoshi and Neito had walked off on their own, but they were still there, just as intrigued by the lions as he was. He wondered if they looked at the lions and were listing the similarities to Neito like he had been. That is where Neito’s codename, Raion, had come from, after all. When Denki got lost in thought watching the penguins, and he looked left and right after a few minutes without seeing his companions, his heart dropped down into his stomach. When he turned around though, Neito and Hitoshi were just on the other side of the exhibit, having back-tracked back to the seals. They didn’t leave him the whole time, not even to duck around the corner and play a prank to make him think that they had left him. It was the best field trip ever.

Neito was hoping that Denki and Hitoshi would end up being there, too, with it being a popular destination for the local schools and with the zoo being closed to the public in the interest of attracting more schools. He didn’t expect for them to come to his rescue at the same time, ready to jump in and act as a team to get him out of an annoying situation that he had found himself in. Neito noticed his classmates actively avoiding him, even more so after they saw Hitoshi next to him.

Neito wouldn’t admit it to Hitoshi, but he basically became the new Hitoshi of the class. Everyone had always been so paranoid of Hitoshi and his quirk, but now that he was gone, but his soulmate who also happened to have the ability to copy quirks was still around, they avoided him. Neito figured that it had more to do with them being afraid of retaliation against them for how they had treated his soulmate before they knew they were bonded, and he would be correct. They didn’t actively target Neito, but he was excluded more often than he had been previously, which was still a lot. As far as Neito was concerned, he already had two strikes against him. One was his own quirk that could copy anyone else’s (except mutation quirks, of course). Two was his soulmate bond to someone that the class had always feared since learning of his quirk a year and a half ago when Hitoshi was first transferred to Katsuhhiko Middle School.

Neito didn’t even really mind it, really. He felt a little heroic, actually, being able to suffer in silence and experience what Hitoshi must have felt, minus an obnoxious blonde always trying to instigate him, of course, but there was no substitute for the enigma that was Monoma Neito.

Neito was really happy that he found Denki and learned his full name and other personal details that they weren’t allowed to share on the unit. He felt like he found a good friend and he was lucky that he found him again so quickly. He obviously just had to invite Denki to his birthday party that was happening in a few weeks.

“Me?” Denki asked dumbly, mind going blank at the unexpected invite.

Denki felt stupid and expected a response of either ‘who else would I be talking to’ or even a ‘never mind.’

“It wouldn’t be a party without you,” Neito insisted, holding steady eye contact with Denki until he gave him an answer.

“I would love to!” Denki gushed. “But I’ll have to ask my parents if I’m allowed.”

“I’ll send your invitation with Hitoshi, and he can give it to you in school, if that’s okay,” Neito stated, already planning on the logistics and knowing how some parents can be. If you don’t have an invitation, some parents think that you weren’t really invited.

“That’s perfect! Mine is at the end of June, and of course both of you will be invited!” Denki exclaimed, a skip in his step as they walked to the next exhibit, more attention on each other than the animals for the moment.

“Really?” Hitoshi asked, glancing at Denki as they walked. “Mine is on July 1st.”

“No way!” Denki squealed. “Mine is June 29th! We’re two days away from being twins!”

“You’ll have to tell me which weekend you’re having yours, and I’ll ask my foster parents if I can have my birthday party the next weekend,” Hitoshi said, already smiling at the thought of two weekends in a row being taken up by spending time with his friends and eating a bunch of cake and ice cream.

“How are your foster parents?” Neito asked, turning the conversation to a more serious note.

Denki remembered that Hitoshi had told him that he hadn’t even had a chance to talk to Neito about the transfer.

“They’re actually really nice,” Hitoshi admitted with a shrug. “They seem a little uneasy, but I think that’s because I’m their first foster kid and not specifically because of my quirk.” Hitoshi barked out a laugh at the thought before adding, “I haven’t even seen the muzzle since I was dropped there yesterday. Usually, they like to have it out as a precaution, like a warning, if not make me wear it until I ‘earn’ their trust that I won’t use my quirk on them.”

When Hitoshi didn’t get a response, he looked over at his companions to find that they were still walking in line with him, and he didn’t lose them. Instead of a reply, though, they were both looking over at him with a shocked, sad look on their faces.

“Oh, no! Don’t even start—” Hitoshi tried to warn but was cut off by the force of the hug from the duo, squeezing him as hard as they could from either side.

After a few minutes, Hitoshi laughingly fought his way out of it, and Denki and Neito were feeling a little bit better, too.

“Sorry,” Hitoshi apologized, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sometimes I forget that what I go through isn’t normal.”

“Stop,” Neito commanded, holding out a hand to reinforce the idea that Hitoshi should stop talking.

Denki enthusiastically nodded beside Neito, encouraging Hitoshi to hear them out.

“You can tell us anything at any time. I’m your soulmate, Hitoshi,” Neito reprimanded.

“And I’m your best friend!” Denki added with a stomp, trying to match Neito’s dramatics.

“Best friend?” Neito asked, whipping around to focus his intense stare on Denki and giving Hitoshi a much-needed break from the intensity. “I want to be your best friend, too!” he demanded.

“I thought we already were!” Denki yelled, stomping his foot, and throwing his hands in the air.

Denki couldn’t hold up the dramatics for long, though. Seconds after, he broke down into laughter.

“You’re soulmates, so you’ll just have to share me as your best friend,” Denki said matter-of-factly.

Denki was so comfortable with the two that he didn’t even beat himself up over his cocky statement. Normally, he might think that he assumed the wrong thing and was acting overly confident, but that thought didn’t even cross his mind. It probably helped that he didn’t even get time to second-guess or doubt himself because his best friends were right there, hemming and hawing, and finally agreeing that maybe they could both have Denki as a best friend.

“Just remember that we established our best friendship first,” Hitoshi quipped before quickly walking away toward the next exhibit and pretending to be fascinated with the animals within.

Truthfully, though, Neito had his full attention as he watched him in the reflection of the glass, mouth gaping and looking back and forth between Hitoshi and Denki. Neito would never admit it out loud, but he kind of liked the way that Denki was rubbing off on Hitoshi. He liked the cheeky, sassy retorts and the swift exit that left no room for argument. Denki was thinking the same thing about how Neito must be rubbing off on Hitoshi. And Hitoshi was just so happy that he felt comfortable enough to actually let his personality start to shine through instead of hiding behind quiet obedience. Yeah, with Hitoshi’s new school being Denki’s, and his new foster placement already starting out so well, and his soulmate and best friend spending the day with him, he was pretty sure that that was the best day of his life so far.

Luckily for Hitoshi, he was going to have a lot of best days ever going forward with Denki and Neito working hard to make every single day even better than the last with the common goal of making every new day Hitoshi’s new favorite.

Denki’s friend group spotted them after they just got out of the concession stand line with their ice cream and decided to see what was keeping Denki from sneaking around behind them and trailing after them like the sad puppy he was (or, at least, he was supposed to be) the whole field trip.

“Hi guys!” Denki greeted, just as cheerfully as ever, like his friends weren’t actively trying to make him feel bad. “This is Shinsou, he’s new to our school. And this is my other friend, Monoma.”

“Oh, I’d love to stay and chat, but we were just off to see the zebras,” the ringleader of the friend group said, turning on his heel, obviously hoping that Denki would follow along with them, and not even really caring if he let the strays follow along, too.

“Uh… zebras are that way…” Hitoshi offered, pointing in the correct direction.

Neito and Denki laughed, pleasantly surprised that witty Hitoshi seemed to be sticking around. The trio then wandered off toward their next destination, leaving Denki’s friend group behind, wondering what the hell had just happened. When had Denki ever been so relaxed and comfortable in such a small group of friends? His friend group had only ever seen him be more confident in the middle of large groups, so they did not understand why he seemed to be so at ease and comfortable within the little trio. And how could they? They only saw what they wanted to see. They saw Denki as a stupid little boy who they allowed to tag along for comedic relief. He was annoying and stupid and was always talking about off-topic things.

But now that he was spending time with other people, the group was sorely lacking on topics of conversation. Their silences spread out awkwardly between chats and no laughter, that was usually either with or at Denki, was bubbling throughout the group like it usually did. They had thought that they were doing Denki a favor, but it seemed that Denki was the glue that kept the large friendship group going for so long.

By the end of the field trip, Denki’s friend group was rolling their eyes and scowling at each other, annoyed with the lack of interesting conversation. They didn’t even have the common courtesy to ask questions to engage the conversation and keep the topics flowing from one to another like Denki did.

By the end of the field trip, Denki was feeling grateful to have two close best friends, and he wondered why he always felt the need to have large friend groups when Neito and Hitoshi filled every second of his day with happy memories.

By the end of the field trip, Hitoshi was even more confident in his new position in life, especially now that he had his soulmate and best friend to talk to, even about his tragic time in foster care if he felt like it, and they wouldn’t make it awkward or guilt trip him for it. Sure, they might send some sad eyes his way and squeeze the breath out of him, but that was nothing he couldn’t handle. Actually, it was kind of exactly what he needed.

By the end of the field trip, Neito wished that he was going to Hitoshi’s and Denki’s school, too, because he could imagine all of the mischief that the trio could cause if they were to spend every school day together. That was a lot of hours for a lot of scheming and just plain messing around with people he enjoyed the company of. Neito had never felt so lucky before. His family was wealthy, but he had already learned that money can’t buy a soulmate or a best friend. He was so grateful and would hold on tight and never let go.

Chapter Text

Denki and Hitoshi became inseparable.

Denki and Hitoshi were both absolutely delighted when they realized that they were in the same class together. And, just like Neito had promised, he sent an invitation to his birthday party to Denki through Hitoshi. Denki took it him and handed it straight to his mother so that he would not risk misplacing it, and begged her to go, but Denki’s parents needed little convincing to allow him to go to Neito’s birthday party. Denki’s mom connected the dots quickly that these were the same soulmates from the mental hospital that Denki wouldn’t stop talking about, but instead of tearfully wondering why they seemed to not like him some days like with his previous friends, Denki was always bubbling over with laughter as he talked about his newest, closest, two best friends.

Denki had gotten lucky when he ran into Momo at the mall while looking for a present for Neito. He knew he recognized that sleek, bouncy ponytail, and Momo was just as happy to see him as he was to see her. After formal introductions, Momo gave him her phone number and promised to keep in touch before running off to catch up with her friends that she was at the mall with. At this rate, Denki was going to find all of his friends from the mental hospital, and he was very excited about the possibilities.

At school, Denki’s original friend group would try to pull him back over, sometimes actually thinking they were doing him a favor by giving him an out from being friends with the freak, but Denki would drag Hitoshi right along with him as he rejoined the group. Every time, without fail.

“You know that they’re trying to get you to go without me, right?” Hitoshi asked one time at lunch as Denki started to repack his lunch bag to join his other friends a few tables away after he had been invited to join them once again.

Of course, Hitoshi knew that Denki knew, but what he didn’t understand was why Denki would keep trying to include him every time.

Denki paused in his packing, looking up at Hitoshi in subtle horror.

“Sorry, Hitoshi! I didn’t even ask if it was okay with you. If you don’t want to join them today, I can—”

Hitoshi braced himself for Denki to suggest that he leave him there to eat his lunch alone, but he should have known better.

“—tell them I changed my mind. We don’t have to join them if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that,” Hitoshi reassured, also starting to pack up his lunch to follow Denki to the other table.

Hitoshi would follow Denki just about anywhere.

“I guess I just don’t understand why you keep bringing me along,” Hitoshi admitted with a shrug.

“Well, ‘cause you’re awesome, Toshi,” Denki stated simply, closing his repacked lunch bag and standing up straight. “Once they spend more time around you and find out how cool you really are, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start asking you to join them and to leave me behind,” Denki confessed, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly at the thought.

“Then why would you risk that?” Hitoshi asked, completely intrigued by Denki’s thought process, as always.

“You deserve it,” Denki answered simply. “You deserve to have all of the friends you could ever hope for.”

Hitoshi thought quietly as he stood up from his chair and started making his way over to Denki’s friends next to Denki.

Before they were within hearing range of the target table, Hitoshi muttered, “if I have you and Neito, who else could I ever need?”

Hitoshi glanced over at Denki to make sure he heard and was blessed with the sight of Denki’s bright eyes sparkling as his grin overtook his whole face.

“I know I tell you this all the time, but you’re my best friend,” Denki said as they neared the table, not caring that his other friends rolled their eyes at his attachment to the newest student.

Hitoshi wanted to tell Denki that he tried his best to be a valuable friend to Denki because he didn’t deserve anything less. Hitoshi wanted to tell Denki how much he lit up his world when he thought it was going to fall apart all around him. When Hitoshi had seen Denki on that bus before heading off to the zoo, all of Hitoshi’s problems seemed to shrink down to microscopic size. With Denki next to him, Hitoshi felt like no problem was too big.

Instead of blubbering out all of the things that he wanted to say that still would not even scratch the surface of really getting Denki to understand how much he valued their friendship, Hitoshi simply replied, “you’re my best friend, too.”

Denki was so excited for Neito’s birthday party. While Hitoshi had gotten to visit Neito multiple times since the field trip, Denki hadn’t seen his friend since then. Denki was overdue for his dose of Neito dramatics, and Hitoshi was excited to have both of his favorite people in the same room once again.

Neito was feeling similarly. It was nice to have his soulmate visiting on a regular basis, and he wouldn’t even dream of taking that for granted, but there was no getting around that Denki was important to him, to both of the soulmates. Denki was the life of the party, and while Neito and Hitoshi had finally started to get along well on their own, it was just more fun, and even easier, with Denki added to the mix. On the rare occasion that there was a misunderstanding or an awkward moment brewing, Denki would erase it like it never happened, jumping right into the next topic of conversation, and distracting the soulmates from dwelling on a misunderstood comment or awkward silence. Everything was just easier with Denki around; both soulmates could agree on that, at least.

When the doorbell rang, Neito sprinted to the door, skirting around one of the maids as she went to answer the door so that he could get to it first, sending a cheeky smile over his shoulder as he slid around her easily and rushed to the door. The maid gave him a smile in return, turning around to continue her duties for the day, happy that little Neito actually seemed excited for once. Even on the days that he got to see his soulmate, he wasn’t this filled to the brim with excited energy.

“Denki!” Neito yelled out as he flung himself at the electric blond.

Denki reacted quickly and caught Neito, hugging him back just as tightly, laughing as he spun him around in circles.

Denki’s mother stood behind the boys a few steps, her nerves already dissipating as she saw the boys interact.

She had been nervous when she found out that one of Denki’s newest best friends was a Monoma of all families. She had been nervous at the mall when Denki was trying to pick out a gift for him but got a nice break from her stress when he ran into that little girl that he had also met at the psychiatric hospital.

Then, she promptly almost had a heart attack because that little girl was a Yaoyorozu.

Somehow, her little Denki had been picking up friends left and right that are from prestigious, wealthy families. She was almost relieved when she had met Hitoshi, but it seemed that Denki was making friends with the super-rich or the super underprivileged, the extreme ends of the scale with no in-between. But, when she thought about it, it kind of made sense.

While Hitoshi might have had a hard time making friends due to his status as a foster child and moving around constantly, kids like Neito and Momo probably had a plethora of friends to choose from, but probably often wondered if they were friends because they liked each other or because they liked their family name and the wealth that they come from. Denki was a pure heart who seemed to subconsciously seek out the people who needed a good friend the most before quickly and naturally filling in that role, and they all seemed to value him just as much.

Denki’s mother had been worried when Denki, despite having many, many friends, never really seemed to get super close to any of them. With his new schizophrenia diagnosis, she was worried more than ever that Denki would lose his current friends and have difficulties making new ones, but the friends that he had been picking up who had been so, so excited to see him each time had been from the mental hospital; they already knew about Denki’s diagnosis, and they still rushed right over to him with wide arms anyway. She was relieved that he had found friends that valued him as much as he valued them, even as she stared wide-eyed at the huge mansion that she stood in the doorway of as her son hugged another blond boy so enthusiastically that you would have thought it was years since they had seen each other last.

The doorbell rang once again a few minutes after Neito had finished the tour of the mansion for Denki, who had bounced on his feet and looked around in awe at every new room discovered. There was just something different about him; Neito had noticed it before, and he was noticing it again right then. While his other friends that he had had over to his house before looked envious in between the smiles and nods, Denki just looked purely ecstatic that his friend was so fortunate and that he was lucky enough that Neito was sharing these things with him.

Neito and Denki shot each other a wild look with huge grins stretching across their faces.

“Hitoshi?” Denki whispered conspiratively.

“Hitoshi,” Neito whispered back in confirmation.

The boys took off then, racing back to the front door as quickly as they could before a maid could beat them to it. Neito was surprised that Denki stayed right in step with him, thinking that he’d eventually fall behind when he took a wrong turn. Neito was more impressed with Denki each time they spent time together, and this time it was because of his spatial awareness. Neito was sure that Denki would be a great hero; he could imagine him taking a look at a map once, and then maneuvering his way through a dusty, dark hallway to find the trapped civilians in the collapsed building without hesitating or getting lost at all.

When they reached the door and flung it open, they both simultaneously flung themselves toward Hitoshi, who caught them easily and squeezed them back just as enthusiastically. Neito and Denki were expecting to knock Hitoshi over with their combined love-bomb, and both of them noticed that he had been keeping up with his workout routine from Touya just as religiously as they both had been.

“Guys! Guys!” Hitoshi laughed as neither of the blond boys were ready to let go of him.

But they had an audience and Hitoshi had introductions to make.

“These are my foster parents. My foster father, Hamabi Genori, and my foster mother, Hamabi Hanisu,” Hitoshi introduced with a smile. “This is my soulmate, Monoma Neito. And, this is my best friend, Kaminari Denki.”

“We’ve heard so much about you!” Hanisu gushed as she greeted the boys who Hitoshi had not stopped talking about since moving in.

“It’s nice to finally put faces to the names,” Genori agreed.

Denki was surprised at how kind and gentle Hitoshi’s foster parents seemed. Hitoshi’s smile was easy and not forced, so Denki took their friendliness at face value. Hitoshi had told him that his foster family was actually pretty great, but Denki, along with everyone else not directly involved in the foster system, had heard about how terrible and scary it all was. Denki was relieved that Hitoshi seemed to be in good hands and was even grateful that he had changed placements because that threw him right into Denki’s school district so that he could see his new best friend every day.

Neito requested that they all change into specific outfits for his birthday. Denki and Hitoshi were confused, but complied, knowing that Neito must have a reason for it. They were even more confused when their outfits turned out to be pristine white t-shirts and sweatpants. They looked even more nuts then when they were confined in a mental hospital, but they quickly shrugged it off in favor of following Neito, who had a giddy energy radiating off of him. That would have made anyone else nervous, knowing Neito and his tricks, but Neito was also decked out in pure, bright white and, to be frank, Hitoshi and Denki trusted Neito. If it did end up being a prank, they were sure that it was actually going to be funny and not damaging. They knew Neito was sneaky and tricky, but in a fun way that would never intentionally cause someone harm or discomfort.

It made it easier to go along with because they all trusted each other so much. Denki figured he might feel a little self-conscious when the other kids started showing up, but as it was, he felt like he was part of their team that they were all wearing identical clothing, even if that clothing was, for some reason, pure white. Denki then imagined them all during a winter rescue, and how pure white would be the best camouflage. He could imagine himself reaching out to share his quirk with Neito and sending a disruptive current through the villains’ electrical grid, cutting off their power in their hidden, isolated hideout. He could imagine Hitoshi’s voice echoing through the trees as the sun set, the villains answering back, and Hitoshi easily taking control. He could imagine Hitoshi commanding the villains to do silly things, like the chicken dance, in between commanding that they show them where the hostages are being held. The chicken-dancing villains would help put the hostages at ease that Hitoshi, the brainwashing hero, was there to save the day!

Neito led both boys to the back yard where there was a huge bouncy castle, a piñata already set up, hanging colorfully from a tree with sticks lying in the grass underneath it, and a circle of tubs of water balloons and water guns.

Denki bounced on his feet as he looked at all of the options and decided that once the rest of the kids showed up, he was definitely recruiting Neito and Hitoshi to his team, and they were going to wipe the floor with the other kids who wouldn’t know what had just hit them!

“What are you waiting for?” Neito prompted with a grin in Denki’s direction, noticing his visible excitement and anticipation. “What do you want to do first?”

“Shouldn’t we wait until the others get here?” Denki asked, wanting to just dive right in but not wanting to ruin the experience for anyone else.

“I only invited you two,” Neito admitted with a huge smile. “That way my birthday party would definitely be the best because you two are the best.”

Denki looked over at Neito in horror.

Neito rolled his eyes. “Don’t get all dramatic on me. That’s my job!” he scolded light-heartedly, not wanting Denki to feel bad for a decision he had made back when they were all getting to know each other in the mental health facility.

“No,” Denki disagreed, shaking his head sadly. “It’s just I wanted to be on the same team as you and show everyone else how awesome we are when we work together.”

“I bet we’d make the other team cry,” Hitoshi added with a smile growing over his face at the thought of those snobby brats from his old school crying when they were absolutely demolished at a water balloon fight.

Denki nodded sadly in Hitoshi’s direction. “And what fun that would have been.”

Neito snorted, looked sideways at the two other boys, and darted off with no warning toward the bins of water balloons. Neito wasn’t even surprised that Hitoshi and Denki had taken off in the same instant and that they all reached the bins at the same time. It was no surprise that they could practically read his mind anymore, but he still liked to keep them on their toes by trying to get the lead on them.

Hitoshi could have dodged the water balloon that Neito whipped in his direction; he was awfully good at dodging, after all. But it was hot, and Neito was the birthday boy, and he figured he could take one for the team. It would have been more fun that way, anyway. So, when Hitoshi looked down after being hit in the center of his chest, he expected to see the pure white shirt dampened by water. Hitoshi was very confused when he looked down and saw that he was covered in bright yellow instead.

“Wha—” Hitoshi started to voice his question when he was hit in the back by another balloon, this one coming from Denki.

“Blue?!” Denki squealed, delighted at the unexpected turn of events.

Hitoshi saw a balloon whip past his head and straight into Denki’s stomach, red paint splattering across the white shirt and dripping down onto the white pants.

Denki laughed out loud, rushing to grab another balloon to try to get some color on Neito as well.

“You’re a genius,” Hitoshi whispered, but it was loud enough for his soulmate to hear.

Neito shot him a quick, appreciative smile before refocusing on Denki who was rearing his arm back to send a paint-filled balloon in his direction. Neito had managed to catch the balloon, but the force behind the throw caused it to burst anyway. Neito cursed his poor decision because the paint made his hands slippery and it was harder to throw the remaining balloons at his companions, so he quickly changed tactics and picked up a water gun, sending a blast of pink paint toward his companions who seemed to be teaming up against him.

Hitoshi and Denki jumped back, a dripping pink line appearing across their chests after Neito’s assault. Neito had mixed feelings about the two pairing up against him. He was playfully angry that they would choose each other instead of himself, but also kind of proud that they determined him to be a threat that needed teaming up against.

After they were all thoroughly covered in paint, and the last balloon was popped during a struggle between all three of them to see who would get the honor of throwing the last balloon, they moved on to the piñata as the paint dried on their clothes, skin, and hair.

Neito handed Denki the colorful stick to go first, blindfolding him, and spinning him around.

When Denki wobbled in place and readied to swing, standing facing the wrong direction completely, Neito reached out to Hitoshi, who met him halfway.

“Hey, Denki! You want some help?” Neito asked.

Denki heard the waver in his voice and new that the question was primed with Hitoshi’s quirk. A huge smile grew over Denki’s face as he lowered the stick and turned in the direction of Neito’s voice. If it turned out well, then this could be fun and training in one. If it didn’t work out, then at least they knew and would not try to rely on an idea like this when it really mattered.

“Hit me!” Denki accepted, feeling the quirk envelop him.

Each time, Denki felt more and more comfortable. Even if he wasn’t in control anymore, he knew he was in safe hands and the feeling of being under Hitoshi’s quirk, no matter if it was Hitoshi himself or Neito at the controls, was actually relaxing.

With the blindfold on, Denki had no visual cues to help him follow Neito’s commands. Neito had to focus on giving exact commands that Denki’s body would be able to follow without having the vision to guide him.

The simpler commands of “turn toward the piñata” and “swing at the piñata” turned into more detailed commands of “turn 90 degrees to the left, take three steps forward, and swing as hard as you can at chest height.”

Neito and Hitoshi switched off giving commands, and even receiving commands from each other. Denki was used to being under, but watching the soulmates put each other under Hitoshi’s quirk and see them giving detailed enough commands to get blind bodies to do their bidding was absolutely breathtaking. Being under the quirk himself made him feel safe and relaxed; watching others under the quirk, especially the soulmates themselves, gave him chills.

The third time Denki was under the quirk, he swung like he was commanded to do. There was a cracking, a pause, and then cheering as the quirk was dropped from his mind. His excitement already growing, he pulled the blindfold up over his head and looked at the broken piñata and the candy covering the ground. He was swiftly scooped up into a celebratory hug by Hitoshi and Neito, and even though he was the only one who could only take commands and not give them using Hitoshi’s quirk, he felt like a valuable part of the team. He didn’t know how the duo of literal soulmates made their little group feel like a true trio, but he loved them both so much for including him so completely.

The ate candy and bounced in the bouncy castle until it got dark, then they moved inside for cake and presents.

“Where’s Touya when you need him,” Neito grumbled in frustration as he tried to get the lighter to work.

Neito paused in thought for a moment, but quickly went back to trying to light the candles without pausing to tell his soulmate and best friend what he had been thinking.

“Denki,” Hitoshi started. “Can you set things on fire with your electricity?”

Neito perked up in interest and reached out for Denki, who met him halfway to willingly pass on his quirk to the birthday boy. Neito could have cried. It was the best idea he had ever had to only invite his best friend and soulmate to his party. Both of them would reach out to him as he reached out to them instead of flinching away and stepping out of reach, and that little show of trust alone was enough to make him feel like the luckiest kid on the planet.

Denki experimented by having the electricity zap across the space between his thumb and pointer finger, lowering his hand so that the wick of the candle was in the crossfire, and just about jumped out of his skin when it actually worked, and the candle started burning. Hitoshi and Neito clapped him on the back in congratulations before Neito moved forward to try to do the same, quickly catching on. Once all 13 candles were lit, Neito sat back in his chair.

“This is the part where you make a wish,” Denki supplied helpfully.

“I don’t know what to wish for,” Neito had admitted. “I have everything I could possibly need. With the addition of my soulmate and my best friend this year, I think I’m just going to wish that things never change.”

“You have everything, you say?” Denki asked with a glint in his eyes. “I didn’t see any pet rocks during my tour…”

“Denki…” Neito started, turning toward him expectantly. “Did you get me a pet rock for my birthday?”

“Nope!” Denki quipped, looking around the room at everything except his best friends, which was more telling than his vocal answer ever could be.

Denki was telling the truth, though. He did not get him a pet rock… he got him a craft kit to make himself some pet rocks. And because there were three rocks in the kit, Neito quickly tore the packaging open to pull the rocks, paint, feathers, and googly eyes out and passed them around, asking his soulmate and best friend to make pet rocks with him.

Neito’s pet rock was made by Denki, Denki’s was made by Hitoshi, and Hitoshi’s was made by Neito.

When they fell asleep that night, their rocks were covered in just as much paint as they were from their balloon fight earlier, and the remaining feathers were sticking up in their hair after Denki had thoughtfully put a white one in Hitoshi’s hair to see the contrast against purple. Eventually, they resembled chickens more than children, if chickens were also covered in paint and exhausted from a fun day full of activities with their favorite people in the whole world.

Denki went home the next afternoon after bouncing around more in the bouncy castle and eating more leftover candy from the piñata. Denki couldn’t stop gushing about how much fun he had had, showing his parents the paint-splattered outfit that used to be pristine white and exclaiming that Neito was a party-planning genius. He showed off his pet rock that Hitoshi had made for him with stars in his eyes as he talked about how nice it was for Neito to share his gift with them and that he was going to keep that rock forever and ever because one of his best friends had made it for him.

The paint stayed permanently on the clothes but washed easily off of his skin and out of his hair. In the shower, he even pulled out a feather from his hair that he must have missed earlier and smiled at it. Neito’s birthday was filled with fun, the goofy kind of fun that Denki took the most pleasure in, and he was so happy that his best friends seemed so in tune with himself, so much so that he wished that he was their soulmate, too, so that he would also have a permanent bond to the both of them and they would never, ever grow apart.

Denki froze, the warm water still streaming over him and washing paint down the drain. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He was lucky enough to have two amazing best friends; he wasn’t about to let himself ruin it by longing for more in a way that was impossible.

Chapter Text

Denki and Hitoshi continued to grow closer, but Denki started to grow closer to the soulmates as a pair, as well. After Neito’s birthday party, Denki tagged along every once in a while, when Hitoshi would go to spend time with his soulmate. Denki was worried about this, at first. He reassured his friends over and over again that if they want time just for themselves, that he would not be offended or hurt in anyway and that he would completely understand, but both boys insisted that they loved his company and asked him to keep joining them.

Denki spoke to Neito and Hitoshi separately, as well, in case they didn’t feel like they could voice their true opinions in front of each other without looking like a jerk, promising each one to start backing off and not let the other know that it was for any other reason than his own choice, but even in private, both boys were adamant that Denki continue to join them.

Denki felt like he was walking on clouds for the first time in his life; he was no longer walking on eggshells, nervous that one wrong subject change would annoy his friends enough for them to start a silent treatment period that he always hated, or even drop him completely as a friend if they were annoyed enough.

Denki’s metaphorical feet had healed nicely after his runway of choice switched from eggshells to clouds, no longer having to nurse the micro-injuries from every misstep taken that would build up and get worse over time.

Denki’s parents noticed the change in him easily and quickly. When Denki’s grades started to rise steadily, they were even more lenient with how often they would send him across the city to spend time with the soulmates that he declared as his best friends. They didn’t know if they were actually studying together, or if it was something as simple as Denki’s self-esteem allowing him more confidence and less second-guessing that allowed his marks to rise so steadily, but they were grateful for it either way.

It was a nice, positive cycle that Denki had found himself in. He got better grades, so he was often less stressed and in a better mood. He was in a better mood around his soulmates, who then were also in a good mood because Denki’s smiles and laughing fits were contagious. When the soulmates were in a good mood, their time spent studying was filled with fun and laughter. When Denki was taking an exam, he would think back to a joke that Hitoshi had made about the subject matter, chuckle to himself, and then promptly pencil in the correct answer.

Denki was hesitant, however, when Hitoshi brought up the idea of learning degrees, angles, percentages, and fractions on their own time without it being the subject of study in his math class. Hitoshi and Neito agreed that it would be best training-wise to get to know those areas very, very well so that they could use the commands while under Hitoshi’s quirk.

At first, if Hitoshi or Neito commanded Denki to turn 1/3 of the way around to his left, he would have just stood there, his brain not being able to compute what was being asked of him. But now, he could be given the same command and automatically comply… even while not under a brainwashing quirk. That is how thoroughly they dug into their studies to make giving and receiving precise instructions as efficient as possible. Denki was nervous for nothing, because with his best friends by his side, he could learn anything! And they never even once called him stupid, even when he struggled with associating degrees with percentages!

So, when Denki answered the door an hour before his birthday party was due to start and saw his two best friends standing there, both wearing their paint-covered clothes from Neito’s party a month and a half earlier, Denki couldn’t help but double over laughing because that was what he decided to wear as well. They were just so in tune with each other.

“You guys are my soulmates!” Denki exclaimed as he wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes, but quickly froze when he realized what he had said and that the soulmates looked a little shocked, too. “Sorry, guys, I didn’t mean like actually—”

“It’s fine,” Neito soothed, pulling him into a tight hug. “Happy birthday, genius.”

Hitoshi took Neito’s place in Denki’s arms as soon as Neito went past Denki to put his gifts on the table, murmuring, “happy birthday, Denks,” before turning him around and leading him back into his house to follow Neito.

Denki was immediately relieved that the soulmates didn’t take offense to his thoughtless comment. Denki knew that they weren’t secretly stewing over it because of the bubbles in his stomach at being called a nickname by Hitoshi, who still sometimes called him Kaminari instead of Denki, so a nickname was definitely a good sign!

When the other party members started showing up, Hitoshi and Neito started sharing sneaky glances that Denki was also being included in. Denki felt like all three of them were up to something mischievous, and he didn’t even have any idea what was going on! He just knew that he was all in, whatever it was that his best friends had in mind.

When Denki’s mother brought out the Pin the Tail on the Donkey poster, Denki almost groaned. He had already told his mother that he was too big for that kind of party game, but like usual, she didn’t really ever listen and taken Denki’s wishes into consideration.

When his friends from school started to snicker at the childishness of it, Denki dared a glance over at his best friends, who were staring at the poster with wide eyes and wider smiles. Denki let out a sigh of relief. At least his best friends weren’t going to make fun of him, and by the looks of it, they had an idea that would make even Pin the Tail on the Donkey fun.

“Denki goes last because it’s his birthday, and his sticker gets to be on top because he’s going to win it,” Neito declared, naturally taking the role of gamemaster, and handing out the tail stickers and markers for everyone to write their names. “Every player can choose one person to give them instructions with placing the tail, but the one who is giving directions cannot be the same one that blindfolds and spins the player. Any questions or objections?”

Denki looked around at the members of his party to find them all staring wide-eyed at Neito, this random, blond, short, scrawny kid who none of them knew just coming in and giving everyone directions like he owned the place. Neito might as well have owned the place, as far as Denki was concerned, because he got no questions or objections, and when he started pointing at people to indicate that it was their turn, there wasn’t a single refusal or even an off comment about how it’s too childish for a 13-year-old’s birthday party.

Denki’s friend group had fun giving bad instructions to each other, causing each other to pin the tails erratically around the donkey instead of where the actual objective was. They all laughed at each other, but Denki dreaded his turn because he knew that when he inevitably missed, they would laugh at him and not with him.

When Denki’s friends had all had a turn and it was just the trio left that still had to go, no one had hit the target, yet, or really even got close. Denki wasn’t even upset that they weren’t taking it seriously because then maybe it would be easier to move on to something more age-appropriate without them holding this party hiccup over his head.

“Direct me?” Hitoshi asked Neito.

“Of course,” Neito said with a smile and nod, a competitive glint in his eye.

“Blindfold and spin me, Denks?” Hitoshi asked, holding out the blindfold in offering toward Denki.

“You know it!” Denki chirped, skipping toward him to accept the blindfold.

Denki carefully blindfolded Hitoshi, making sure that there was no way that he could see anything before helping him spin around ten times. Denki adjusted Hitoshi’s stance so that he stood at the center of the poster, facing it directly, and with his arm outstretched, he was only a few centimeters away from making contact with the poster.

“Perfect,” Neito complimented Denki as they switched places so that Neito could be ready to give accurate directions.

Denki smiled in appreciation at the praise but didn’t dwell on it because he was too excited to see his best friends absolutely demolish this stupid, little party game.

“Sixty degrees. Go,” Neito commanded, short and direct.

Hitoshi complied immediately, his arm moving smoothly and slowly in a right-upward direction, the position of the tail right in the path of his arm.

“Stop. Target acquired,” Neito stated simply.

Hitoshi, with full trust in his soulmate, didn’t hesitate to press the sticker against the paper. He removed his blindfold to find the tail sticker with his name on it in the perfect position. He turned to see his soulmate’s and best friend’s reactions, but was met with more faces that just theirs, all staring at the poster and between himself and Neito in awe.

“So, this is what having a soulmate can do,” one of the kids from school had whispered.

Hitoshi didn’t bother to correct them. That is what training with people you trust can do, but they didn’t seem like they would care, or even understand.

Hitoshi turned with the blindfold and tied it around Neito’s eyes.

“Wait!” one of the kids objected. “You said the same one giving directions can’t be the one who blindfolds and spins!”

“Denki is directing me,” Neito replied without missing a beat.

Denki jumped to attention at this reveal as Hitoshi started to spin Neito in place.

“What? Me? Really?” Denki asked, readying himself to try to get Neito to change his mind.

“You’re my best friend, Denks,” Neito deadpanned, even while he was still being spun in circles. “I trust you with my life, so this little party game really isn’t anything to stress about.”

Butterflies exploded in Denki’s stomach, but he swallowed his anxiety and self-doubt, and lined up behind Neito to give him the best instructions that he could manage.

“Uh, forty-five degrees,” Denki supplied hesitantly.

Despite Denki’s lack of confidence in his answer, Neito automatically started moving his arm in the direction that Denki specified.

“Stop,” Denki commanded, when he lined up with the tail, though he fell a little too below. “North,” Denki demanded firmly, eyes closely watching Neito’s movements to tell him the perfect time to… “Stop! Target acquired!”

Neito pressed the sticker against the poster and took the blindfold off, immediately laughing at the fact that his sticker covered Hitoshi’s perfectly. They all really were in sync, weren’t they?

The other kids made comments among themselves as they switched places, but the trio ignored them in favor of focusing on and carrying out their self-imposed mission of pinning the tails on that donkey.

“Hitoshi, will you direct me?” Denki asked, looking up at him just before the blindfold was placed by Neito.

“Of course,” Hitoshi stated, ruffling the top of Denki’s hair as Neito tied off the blindfold.

“Wait!”

The objection came from the leader of Denki’s friend group from school. “We think you guys might be cheating, so we should be the ones to spin Denki.”

“That’s fine with me,” Denki stated, cutting off an objection he knew was coming from Neito a second later.

He knew his friends would try to sabotage any chance he had, and that was fine. He had been embarrassed before, and he would be embarrassed again, but nothing would ever let him swallow the shame of not being able to fend off a preventable disagreement during his birthday party.

Denki’s friend group snickered as they all helped spin him. Denki felt hands all over him, but none were rough, just more disorienting that a single pair of hands would have been. They positioned Denki and covered their laughs with fake coughs as they backed away, giving Hitoshi space to give his commands.

“Spin toward three o’clock and take one step forward,” Hitoshi commanded, and Denki complied just as automatically as if he had been under Hitoshi’s quirk.

“270 degrees. Go,” Hitoshi commanded.

Denki hesitated, the directions not matching up with what he imagined in his head. Denki quickly got over his hesitation and complied with Hitoshi’s directions. While his friends might have given terrible directions, he knew his best friend, Hitoshi, would never lead him astray, and that the weird directions were probably due to his friend group placing him incorrectly in the first place and Hitoshi was just giving the commands to correct the misplacement.

“Stop. North. Go.”

Denki complied, moving slowly so that Hitoshi would have plenty of time to tell him when to stop.

“Stop. Target acquired.”

Denki could hear the smile and excitement in Hitoshi’s voice, and he pressed his sticker against the poster. Denki tore the blindfold off and just about wailed, because his sticker covered Hitoshi’s and Neito’s completely. They had all placed their tails perfectly, and Denki had never felt so cohesive as he did at that moment with his two best friends.

Neito and Hitoshi immediately jumped on Denki, praising him for following Hitoshi’s directions so well and the unparalleled trust that he had shown them when following Hitoshi’s unexpected directions in order to correct Denki’s misplacement by his friends from school.

“I told you that Denki would win,” Neito bragged toward the slack-jawed friend group that stood, staring in amazement at the poster.

“Neito is always right,” Hitoshi added, throwing his arm around Neito and shooting him a cheeky, confident smile that Neito and Denki both hoped to see more of in the future.

When Denki dragged himself into his classroom and slumped over in his seat on Monday, he wondered why Hitoshi was in such a good mood. Going back to school after spending a weekend with Neito always seemed to drain them both of energy at first, so Denki didn’t understand why Hitoshi was looking at him with thinly veiled anticipation.

Denki tore his gaze away from Hitoshi and looked toward the board before almost bouncing out of his seat.

“Fractions?!” Denki exclaimed, turning back to Hitoshi in excitement.

“Fractions,” Hitoshi confirmed with a definitive nod, his smile never leaving his face. “Now you get to show everyone how smart you really are.”

“I don’t know…” Denki whispered conspiratively, leaning closer to Hitoshi. “I think being underestimated might be one of my favorite tricks so far.”

Hitoshi shared a smile with Denki, and whispered back, “you don’t want anyone to know how killer you are at fractions? Your secret is safe with me, genius.”

Denki flushed under the praise, but smiled widely, and Hitoshi couldn’t wait to call Neito after school to tell him how damn adorable their best friend was.

Chapter Text

Denki tried to convince his friend group to attend Hitoshi’s party the next weekend, but they all declined, whining about how his party wasn’t any fun, so they didn’t want to attend Hitoshi’s, either. Denki knew they didn’t have ‘fun’ at his party because there was nothing that happened to make fun of Denki for, and that seemed to be their main form of entertainment. Denki was starting to see this and distance himself from them; it was happening naturally just from how much he really enjoyed spending time with his other, newer friends, but he was also consciously widening the distance between himself and his previous friends. Still, he wanted what was best for Hitoshi, so he had to do something to make his party a hit. It might hurt his feelings that he invited the whole class and only Denki would show up.

Great minds think alike, so Neito was also up to his own antics for making Hitoshi’s birthday party the best one ever.

“This is everyone!” Hitoshi declared to his foster parents as Neito and Denki arrived.

He knew that all of the other kids threw away their invitations at school, not even bothering to take them home to their parents or even think about it when he handed them out. It didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. Partly, because he was used to being the outcast because of his quirk, but mostly because his soulmate and best friend would be there. Neito’s party consisted of only the three of them, and it was so fun, so Hitoshi did not have any regrets or hesitations about it only being the three of them for his party as well.

He did feel a little bad that his foster parents went all out for this, and only two guests showed up for all of the hard work they did. It was bittersweet; he never had a birthday party before because he never had anyone to invite that he knew for sure would show up. Plus, previous foster parents seemed to always be short on cash and couldn’t actually get any party supplies anyway, even if they wanted to throw a party for Hitoshi, which also wasn’t always the case. His current foster parents weren’t rich by any means, but they were savvy savers and would spend the money when it mattered, like for throwing their new foster son a birthday party for his 13th birthday.

When a knock came at the door, Hitoshi turned, confused. Did someone from school actually keep the invitation and decide to show up?

“Happy birthday, Hitoshi!” multiple voices blasted as soon as Hitoshi opened the door, followed by confetti poppers going off and sprinkling the doorway with colorful paper and glitter.

On his doorstep stood Momo, Kyoka, Ochako, Izuku, Tenya, and Minoru, arms overflowing with presents and bright smiles on all of their faces.

Hitoshi turned to face his soulmate, who looked just as surprised as he felt, so his eyes shifted over to Denki who was sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck and looking anywhere but at him.

Hitoshi pulled Denki into a quick hug, whispering a thanks in his ear, before he turned and greeted his impromptu party guests with a smile. They all immediately noticed the change in Hitoshi from the shy, soft-spoken boy on Unit Beta to this warmer, laidback, confident boy, so they also felt better and less anxious about crashing his birthday party.

Momo was hesitant when Denki called her out of the blue, asking if she knew anyone else from Unit Beta who was there when Hitoshi was there and if they would want to be surprise guests for Hitoshi’s birthday party the next weekend. Momo was hesitant, but Denki is persuasive, so she gathered up all of the kids that were there, including Izuku, Tenya, and Minoru, who only arrived a few days before Hitoshi and Neito were discharged. Denki insisted that the more people she could round up, the better, and she took her task seriously.

Hitoshi’s foster parents, Hamabi Genori and Hamabi Hanisu, about fainted when they realized that the Yaoyorozu family was included in the mixture of kids at their front door. They about had heart attacks when Momo’s father exchanged numbers—personal numbers—with them in case anything was to come up during the party that would need his attention. Then they found out that Pro Hero Ingenium’s little brother was in attendance, and they had to go collect themselves in the kitchen and have a quick and quiet discussion about where Hitoshi had gathered such friends.

The kids all gathered in the living room, pushing furniture out of the way so they could sit in a circle on the floor. All at once, presents upon presents were being shoved in Hitoshi’s direction. After opening a few amazing gifts in a row, he started to tear up. He paused and took some deep breaths, and his friends started asking if he was okay. His friends. His friends. Hitoshi had friends.

“I hope I didn’t cross a line—” Denki whispered to him but was cut off when Hitoshi pulled him into a tight, quick hug.

“Thanks so, so much, Denks. I owe you one,” Hitoshi assured.

The truth was, he had never had so many nice things, and the idea of these gifts being for him, and him alone without the expectation to share with other kids, was overwhelming.

Hitoshi wiped at his eyes and addressed the group, feeling safe among these kids who had all shared their feelings and emotions and stories with one another while in the mental hospital. It was a completely different feeling being surrounded by these kids than the ones at school. He felt warm and trusted that anything he said would be listened to and taken seriously. No one would talk about him behind his back, call him a crybaby for whining, or spread rumors about him. He was truly in a safe space surrounded by these people, and he couldn’t have wished for a better group to celebrate his birthday with.

“Did Neito ever tell you about when I wore long sleeves every day?” Hitoshi asked the group.

Hitoshi almost teared up again when everyone made a conscious effort to verbally answer his question before he had a chance to rephrase. Honestly, before everyone was already answering, he didn’t even think about the fact that he had asked a question. It was a non-issue around Denki and Neito, and he was around at least one of them for the majority of his days, so there was never the pressing need to rephrase questions into statements instead to make sure that he didn’t make someone uncomfortable and to protect himself from being ignored if they decided answering wasn’t worth the risk of potentially being caught under his quirk. He had never felt so trusted before.

“A lot of people get weird around me when they figure out my quirk. Neito, though, tried to copy it and try it for himself, so I started dressing in long sleeve shirts with high necks to try to limit any skin available for him to touch,” Hitoshi explained.

“He got really good at dodging, too,” Neito huffed dramatically, pulling out a laugh from the group, but Neito was just as entranced as everyone else.

He knew the story from his point of view, but never talked it over with his soulmate before. He just remembered being kind of hurt that Hitoshi never seemed to trust him, even after he stated that he would not touch him during the heat wave. It never really made sense why he trusted him so easily and quickly after they found out they were soulmates when he wasn’t trusted at all before that.

“A heat wave happened, and the school’s electricity cut out for a week. They relaxed the dress code, but still required attendance,” Hitoshi informed.

Hitoshi dared a glance in Neito’s direction, knowing that this would be new information to him as well.

“Being in foster care, I only got a certain allowance every few months for clothing, and I used it all on long sleeves and pants to try to cover as much skin as possible. There was nothing left over to buy any relaxed clothes for myself, even after Neito promised that he wouldn’t try to copy my quirk during the outage,” Hitoshi murmured, embarrassed about his situation despite knowing that it was completely out of his control.

“I’m so sorry,” Neito whispered, taking Hitoshi’s hand in his own as tears pooled in his eyes. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know I didn’t show it, but you were my favorite classmate, Neito,” Hitoshi admitted, sending a bright, wide smile in Neito’s direction. “Everyone else treated me like a threat, and you treated me like a challenge instead. You never flinched away when I spoke, and even tried to get me to answer you or ask questions. It scared me at first, because I didn’t know what your end game was. I thought you might have been trying to get me in trouble.”

“I would never…” Neito whispered, eyes desperately seeking Hitoshi’s to make sure that he understood that that was never his intention.

“I know that now. It didn’t take me long to figure it out then, either. After being scared of you, I started being scared for you. If you had managed to touch me and copy my quirk, our classmates could have turned on you and started to treat you like an outcast like I had always been treated. It’s one thing to know that you’re capable of copying my quirk, but it would be too real for them to actually see it in action,” Hitoshi explained.

Neito let out a self-depreciating laugh before disclosing, “I’m the new outcast anyway. I didn’t want to tell you because it’s really not a big deal, but I guess you deserve to know. They see me as your soulmate and think I might be storing your quirk or something—who knows how they think, honestly. They won’t answer me or talk to me but being seen as a potential villain is way better than being seen as useless, so it really doesn’t bother me.”

“Why would they see you as useless?” Denki questioned softly, not wanting to disrupt the delicate mood, but also wanting answers.

“My quirk,” Neito explained, turning toward Denki to find him paying rapt attention to him and Hitoshi. “They say that it’s like I’m quirkless if I don’t have anyone around to steal a quirk from, and they’re right.”

“I am quirkless,” Izuku supplied, with a shrug and a carefree smile. “And I still want to be a hero someday.”

“My quirk makes me sick,” Ochako supplied. “Everyone thinks it’s so cool that I can basically fly, but it isn’t so cool anymore when I vomit all over them.”

The group laughed, and others started chiming in, trying to show that no one’s quirk is perfect and brightening the mood of the group.

“My quirk is very strange—a weird genetic mishmash of my parents’ quirks gone wrong,” Minoru said. “It gets joked about often, even by adults, because of the shape and because they’re sticky. I didn’t really understand their jokes at first, and sometimes I still don’t. The least it could do is not make my head bleed when I use it, but no!” Minoru complained loudly with a large, rueful smile on his face as he rolled his eyes. “Can’t be that easy!”

“My quirk is just like my whole family’s, so I’m scared I’m never going to live up to what they have already done, let alone surpass them like they expect me to,” Tenya admitted. “How am I ever supposed to live up to let alone surpass, Ingenium?”

“My quirk is too strong for me to handle, and I’m scared that I’ll never be strong enough to withstand it,” Denki admitted. “You’ve never seen it before, but if I go too high with the voltage, my brain short-circuits and I’m basically useless until my brain’s electrical signals can get back to normal. I could be a huge liability as a hero if I can’t get this under control. I could electrocute other heroes by mistake, or even become a hostage if a villain gets to me while I’m out of commission. I don’t know how I’d ever come back from that if it happened.”

The group sat in thoughtful silence for a moment, and Denki was relieved. That proved that they were taking his fears seriously. Previously, his friends from school might have ‘consoled’ him by telling him that he would never make it as a Pro Hero anyway, so that it was nothing that he had to worry about. This group of friends sat in quiet solidarity with Denki as they considered his words and really understood just how bad that situation would really be for him, imagining themselves in his shoes and what it might feel like to mess up and cost the heroes a mission, and maybe even put more lives in danger, doing more harm than providing actual help to the situation.

Hitoshi’s foster father appeared around the corner from the kitchen, prompting the kids to hurry to the cake before the candles melted all the way down. Everyone stood up and rushed to the kitchen, making sure to pull Denki along physically as well as pulling him mentally from the fears and doubts that he had just been sharing with the group. Denki was grateful. Hitoshi and Neito were grateful as well that they could count on others to be there for Denki and take him seriously. They could let their guard down for once and not have to constantly monitor what was being said and done like when Denki’s school friends were around.

“Okay! Time to sing!” Hamabi Genori prompted, taking a deep breath to start, once all of the kids were in the kitchen, standing around the table that had a cake with 13 candles flickering atop it.

“Wait! No!” Hitoshi quickly cut him off before he could start. He hesitated, reaching for an excuse, but remembered that everyone in attendance was already aware of Denki’s schizophrenia diagnosis, so he went with the truth. “Denki doesn’t do well with singing voices. They tend to overlap in his head and can disorient him. So, no singing, okay?”

“Hitoshi, I’m fine! I—” Denki started but was cut off by Hitoshi shaking his head adamantly.

“My day won’t be perfect if I can’t be your hero in this way,” Hitoshi insisted, knowing that phrasing it that way would make Denki give in instantly, and it did.

Hitoshi was learning more and more about Denki all of the time, and he felt that he had a good understanding of Denki’s inner thought process, even where he struggled before. Denki would not want to be a burden in any way, especially not on Hitoshi’s birthday. But, if Hitoshi insisted that letting him take care of Denki in this small way would make him feel heroic, Denki would give in easily. They all wanted to be heroes and they all knew that feeling of something going really well in training, like the week before when they had all pinned their tails perfectly on the donkey poster at Denki’s party, or when Neito smiled nonstop the day after Hitoshi would sing his alert song because he felt heroic and helpful to his soulmate who had turned to him for comfort after having a nightmare. Hitoshi phrased it in such a way that Denki could feel like he was giving a missing piece to Hitoshi’s perfect day by allowing him to be heroic, and he knew he would not be able to refuse or even fight him on it.

Just like he predicted, Denki gave him a small, appreciative smile and nodded his affirmation. Smiles were shared all around the table; no one was upset about the singing being skipped and no one made it awkward, which was quickly becoming one of Hitoshi’s favorite things about having a friend group full of previous psychiatric inpatients.

With Hamabi Genori’s blessing, they all took their plates of cake and ice cream back into the living room to continue talking in a circle. The Hamabis took turns walking past the entranceway to keep supervising the group, but they also made sure not to hover, wanting to give Hitoshi his own space to spend time with his friends. The more they saw of the group having fun and Hitoshi genuinely smiling and laughing, the less they popped in to supervise and the more they popped their head around the corner just to catch the smile that was frequent on Hitoshi’s face.

“So…” Neito drawled, a smile growing on his face. “I was your favorite classmate, huh?”

“Too bad Denki takes that spot, now,” Hitoshi teased, causing Neito to pout playfully, bumping his own shoulder into Hitoshi’s with an eyeroll. The soulmates didn’t miss the blush that quickly took over Denki’s cheeks at the comment, though, and they shared their own charged glance when Denki wasn’t looking.

“How about a game?” Denki suggested, shaking his thoughts away and trying to cool down his cheeks at being declared Hitoshi’s favorite anything.

“Truth or dare?” Momo offered, smiling when everyone readily agreed.

“Izuku, truth or dare?” Momo started off, causing Izuku to look up at her with wide green eyes, surprised that he was chosen to go first.

Izuku quickly swallowed his bite of ice cream before responding, “truth.”

“What’s the hardest part about being quirkless?” Momo asked.

The group sucked in a breath collectively. Momo really was going straight into the heavy stuff, wasn’t she? But Izuku didn’t look phased in the least, humming as he held his chin in thought.

“Probably that my friends are growing apart. They are so busy with their quirks and learning what they can do with them and how far they can take them that they’re kind of leaving me behind,” Izuku admitted. “My best friend, Kacchan… he has an amazing quirk. I can’t tell if we’re not close anymore because I can’t keep up with him, or if I didn’t try hard enough to spend more time with him because deep down inside, I’m actually jealous, and maybe he picked up on that. Even if I had a small quirk, at least it would be something that I could count on, but I have nothing.”

Denki knew that he felt pretty bad for Izuku. It was one thing to have little control over your powerful quirk and another thing entirely to not have a quirk at all. Even as young as he was, he knew all about quirk discrimination and how it made the quirkless people’s lives so much harder than it had to be. Even if you were born with a small-time quirk, like the ability to change the size of your ears or something, that would open up many doors for you that would be closed to quirkless people. Even jobs that didn’t require the use of a quirk would still hire someone with a quirk over someone without. He knew that right now in Izuku’s life, the hardest part was losing his friendship, and while that was terrible, he hoped that it never got worse. He hoped that Izuku got into the best high school, and never got jumped or mugged because he was quirkless and landed a good job well-suited for him despite not having a quirk.

Izuku looked up to see sad eyes from all around looking at him, so to move on from his sad, pitiful story, he moved the game along. “Hitoshi, truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Hitoshi answered easily, willing to give Izuku the out he was looking for.

“What is the hardest part about being in foster care?” Izuku asked, truly curious as he had never met anyone in foster care before.

“My quirk,” Hitoshi answered automatically before pausing to collect his thoughts to explain his answer. “My current foster parents are great, really,” Hitoshi said, a smile growing on his face as he thought about how kind they have been to him. “And the ones before were okay, too.”

“Just okay?” Tenya asked. The group gave Hitoshi their undivided attention.

“They didn’t go out of their way for me like the Hamabis do. I’m sure if we had a power outage, they would be willing to buy me some lighter clothing without having to wait for the seasonal clothing allotment to kick in. But they weren’t abusive or anything. They weren’t scared of me, I don’t think, because they never put the muzzle on me,” Hitoshi divulged.

“Muzzle?” Izuku repeated in horror, regretting asking such a loaded question in the first place.

“Yeah,” Hitoshi sneered at the idea. “The placement agency always makes sure that my new foster families have a muzzle for me and that they know how to put it on. For safety, they say, even though I’ve never done anything to… warrant it, you know.”

“Does it hurt?” Minoru asked. “To have the muzzle on?”

“Not if you don’t struggle,” Hitoshi answered with a shrug.

“I want to try it on!” Kyoka declared.

“Kyoka—” Momo started to scold, but Hitoshi interrupted her by shrugging and calling for his foster parents.

The Hamabis huddled in the doorway after hastily wiping their traitorous tears away, trying to act like they weren’t listening in to Hitoshi’s experiences. Truthfully, he had never really opened up to them about his previous experiences, and it was probably because he was afraid of giving them any new ideas once they had heard a little of his past with other foster families.

When he asked them for his muzzle, they faltered, and Hitoshi’s heart squeezed in his chest because he assumed that they did not trust him with the muzzle that they might need to use some day. He was about to promise that he wouldn’t break it or anything when they admitted that they had gotten rid of it.

“You—what?” Hitoshi asked, unable to comprehend what exactly they were saying.

“The first day you arrived here, when your caseworker showed us how to put the muzzle on… your face just went blank, and you stayed that way all day until it was time to go to sleep, barely muttering answers to our questions and not asking any questions of your own. We became foster parents to help kids like you, not to put you through more trauma. After waking up to the sound of you screaming in the middle of the night, we threw it away,” his foster mother, Hanisu, explained matter-of-factly like it wasn’t a huge deal.

And to them, it wasn’t a huge deal. To Hitoshi, it was everything.

“What if you need it someday?” Hitoshi asked in a whisper.

“We won’t need it,” Hamabi Hanisu answered before Hitoshi could rephrase his question into a statement out of reflex. “We pass people on the street and talk to people every day who might have quirks like yours without fear. You’re not evil just because you have a powerful quirk.”

“We’re your foster parents, not your puppet masters. Our job is to protect you and help you grow in the place of your birth parents, not to control you and traumatize you further. Besides, we trust you,” his foster father, Genori, stated, pulling his wife into his side to form a united front so that Hitoshi knew he was speaking for both of them.

“But… why?” Hitoshi asked, tears gathering in his eyes at this new feeling bubbling in his chest.

“Look around you, Hitoshi,” Hanisu said. “All of your friends trust you. Your best friend trusts you. Your soulmate trusts you. We haven’t known you for very long, but the way you treat other people and the way they respond to you shows that you are a good friend and a good person.”

When the tears overflowed Hitoshi’s eyes, and he let out a sob, the group immediately closed around him, holding him tightly and grounding him. His foster parents took their leave, giving Hitoshi’s friends the space they needed to help Hitoshi through his feelings. At that point, they knew that Hitoshi just needed time and there was nothing else they could say. They would just have to show him, over and over again, that they had meant every word, and eventually, they knew that Hitoshi would grow to trust them.

“Woah, wait. What’s wrong, Toshi?” Denki demanded, holding Hitoshi’s face and forcing him to look at him directly.

Denki had noticed Hitoshi’s breathing quickening instead of slowing down, and his happy tears started to turn into panic tears.

“I—” Hitoshi started, but stopped, his breath catching in his throat. He tried again, “If I get moved again, my caseworker will think that I stole the muzzle and that my foster parents are covering for me. I’ll be in so much trouble.”

“I don’t think they’d let that happen,” Ochako reassured, thinking back to how kind and caring his foster parents seemed.

Denki and Neito shared a glance, knowing that reassurances wouldn’t get Hitoshi out of this mindset, but at a complete loss of what to do except help him work through his feelings on the matter.

“Well, I could always just make you one,” Momo suggested light-heartedly. “It’ll be a good challenge for my quirk!”

That caught Hitoshi’s attention, and he focused in on what Momo was suggesting.

“You would do that for me?” Hitoshi asked, touched by how far his new friends would go for him.

“It will be good practice,” Momo repeated, trying to avoid another round of tears. She tossed her cell phone his way, “find a similar model, I’ll research it, and I’ll see what I can do.”

At that, Kyoka stood up from the circle and left toward the kitchen, only to come back with the remaining cake. She plopped back down next to Momo and shoved the cake in her direction.

“Eat up!” she commanded with a smirk. She was truly excited. She loved to see Momo’s quirk in action.

Hitoshi passed the phone back to Momo with the correct model on the screen, and Momo dug into both the research and the cake while the game continued. If Hitoshi’s foster parents had peeked in again to see Yaoyorozu’s daughter scrolling intently on her phone as she shoveled cake into her mouth as Denki demonstrated his electric quirk on one of Minoru’s purple, sticky balls to see what would happen on a dare, they didn’t say anything.

Sooner rather than later, much to the delighted surprise of the group, Momo was handing a prototype of the muzzle over to Hitoshi. Hitoshi inspected it thoroughly before looking around the room. It looked right, but he wouldn’t be able to tell for sure until he made sure it felt right. So, with a shrug, he slapped it onto his face and started strapping it on, adjusting the individual mechanisms for customization as he went. He gave it a wiggle against his face to test the fit and gave all of his wide-eyed friends a thumbs up.

After a pause, when Hitoshi had started to wonder if everyone was okay, Denki finally spoke up to relieve the awkward silence.

“I want to try!” Denki declared, jumping to his feet, and raising his hand like he was waiting to be called on.

Before Hitoshi could take it off to hand it over to Denki, Momo was already handing yet another one over. To the astonishment of the group, she started handing them out to everyone.

“I never saw your quirk in action before,” Neito muttered in amazement, leaning forward to receive a muzzle as she passed one his way. “It’s amazing.”

Neito didn’t even try to make physical contact to copy her quirk. Ultimately, he didn’t have the knowledge necessary to make something with it, even if he could copy it, and he didn’t have the time to research something so thoroughly while there at the party. Neito planned on talking to Momo before the party was over, though, and asking where she started with her quirk to see if he could pull off the same thing in the future, if she was willing to let him have a go at it. It would probably be one of the hardest physical quirks that he would ever get the chance of attempting to master, and he wanted to try so bad. Just not right here in front of everyone just in case he failed the first few (thousand) times.

“A compliment from Neito? Is it my birthday, too?” Momo teased, smiling good-naturedly at Neito, who sneered back playfully in return.

If Hitoshi’s foster parents poked their heads in to see a bunch of kids sitting around in a circle, taking turns helping strap each other into muzzles, they did not say anything.

“Okay, yeah, this sucks,” Kyoka exclaimed, being the first one to take hers off.

Ochako let out a sigh of relief, quickly following her lead. “I’m glad I’m not the only one. It’s pretty claustrophobic.”

Hitoshi shrugged to express his agreement while simultaneously giving off a what-can-you-do vibe. He knew just how claustrophobic it could be. Truthfully, he either panics or shuts down when someone puts the muzzle on him, but there was something liberating about putting it on himself and knowing that he could simply take it off and speak up whenever he wanted. He actually didn’t mind it like that; it was almost sort of comforting having that kind of control over something that he had never had control over previously.

Denki tried speaking, but it came out a muffled mess. He ripped the muzzle off and rubbed at his cheeks and nose.

“Ouch,” he complained sadly.

Hitoshi took his muzzle off, then, actually grateful to have one in his possession in case his caseworker was to show up unexpectedly to move him to a new foster home. He was safe. He was okay.

“It doesn’t hurt if you don’t fight against it or try to talk,” Hitoshi supplied.

What he thought was a helpful tip made everyone’s eyes linger on him just a little too long with just a little too much empathy showing through. Hitoshi let out a shaky breath and refocused; now was not the time to get choked up at the unlimited understanding his friends consistently showed him.

Neito and Denki were spending the night, but everyone else was going home. Before Momo left, she handed Hitoshi another muzzle. He gave her a confused look because he—and everyone else at the party—already had one, but she just pushed it further into his hands when he gave her a questioning look, and she was gone before he could question her verbally.

Denki was timing himself to see how quickly he could put the mask in place, demanding Hitoshi check to make sure that the straps and measurements were done correctly. Hitoshi laughingly agreed. It was just like Denki to find the best in every situation and lift spirits, even in this one.

As Denki struggled with the adjustments, Hitoshi looked over the muzzle. It looked the same, but it felt different somehow. Maybe the weight? Or the shape?

Curious, Hitoshi started strapping it on. It felt like a regular muzzle, so he wasn’t sure what made him think it was different.

Mumbled murmuring came from Denki who was excitedly jumping up and down and pointing to the muzzle on his face, trying to get Hitoshi’s attention to come check it. Hitoshi did a diligent job, checking every strap, and making a few adjustments where they were needed, but overall, Denki did an excellent job, and he was learning quickly.

“Do you feel the adjustments I made? Do you feel the difference?” Hitoshi asked. “That’s what it should feel like every time.”

Denki nodded, fingers already fumbling at the straps to reset and try again. As he pulled the mask from his face he turned to Hitoshi and his smile suddenly dropped.

“What?” Hitoshi asked, extremely concerned. Looking over at Neito, he wore the same stricken expression, making Hitoshi’s heartrate spike. What was wrong?

“How are you talking with that muzzle on?” Denki asked, taking a step closer to get a better look.

Hitoshi’s hands automatically went to his face, and after a thoughtful moment, it finally clicked. Neito and Denki quickly crowded Hitoshi to see, demanding him to keep talking, and singing Momo’s praises at her ingenuity.

“This will keep you safe,” Neito said, wonderment clearly in his eyes, so thankful that Momo gave such a wonderful gift to Hitoshi.

Hitoshi’s own eyes were watering and overflowing, amazed that Momo trusted his character so much to give him something that would trick the foster system into sending him into foster homes without the protection they thought a muzzle would offer.

That thought also made him pause. Now was the perfect time to try a theory he had had since he was first placed in foster care.

He switched out the muzzles for one that actually worked and strapped it on quickly and correctly. He opened his mouth and fought against the panic rising in his throat at the edges pressing sharply into his cheeks and the bridge of his nose at the restricted movement. This is okay. This is fine. I can take it off whenever I want. I am in control.

Hitoshi mumbled through the muzzle, and the question was indecipherable.

What he had said, though, was “do geniuses say ‘what’?”

“What?” Denki asked automatically.

Denki’s gaze unfocused and he was under Hitoshi’s quirk, quick, seamless, and easy. Hitoshi immediately dropped control and started undoing the straps keeping the muzzle firmly against his head. He was trying to go too fast and not taking his time, and he started hyperventilating when it wouldn’t come off, so Denki and Neito both stepped in and had it off of his face in seconds.

Hitoshi looked frantically between the two.

“Do you know what this means?” he asked, looking down at the muzzle still in Neito’s hands.

“You’re safe, even with the muzzle on, as long as you can get someone to respond,” Denki whispered, eyes sparkling with so much happiness at the discovery that you would have thought it affected him directly.

“You can never tell anyone,” Neito spoke aloud as he realized. “We can never tell anyone.”

Hitoshi was completely mesmerized by how instead of them thinking that no one was safe from Hitoshi’s quirk, that they focused on how Hitoshi was safer by being able to rely on his quirk, even when muzzled. He was amazed that how, even now, they were planning on keeping this secret of his because they were concerned with his safety, and not concerned at all, or even considering that Hitoshi could use this to his advantage and hurt someone someday.

When Hitoshi lied down between his friends that night to go to sleep, he cried. That was not exactly rare, but what was rare and special about it, was that they were big, fat, grateful, happy tears.

Chapter Text

A blow horn woke the trio up.

A blow horn woke the trio up?

A blow horn. Woke the trio up.

Or, more specifically, Touya, holding the button down on a blow horn, woke the trio up. No where was safe from his tyrannical training. Not even Hitoshi’s foster home the morning after his first ever birthday party since entering the foster care system.

“You’re burning daylight!” Touya yelled in his best deep-voice no-nonsense Endeavor impression. “Let’s go! Move, move, move!”

Once the boys were all standing up, wide eyed and hair mussed from their sleep, staring at Touya like they just knew they had to be dreaming, Touya started giving off orders of jumping jacks, laps around the yard outside barefoot (to get those calluses up to where they need to be, of course), and push-ups. The strain from their arms and abdomens during the plank competition threw away any hopeful remnants of the idea that they might be dreaming.

Touya was proud to say that he did get Neito swearing again but was disappointed that there were no technicians to shoot him a dirty glare. To add fuel to the fire, Touya added thirty sit-ups to every curse that left Neito’s mouth. After Touya changed the number to ninety sit-ups, Neito quickly learned to give scathing glares that spoke volumes but did not let another curse leave his lips.

“What’s with the look, Raion? Lion got your tongue? Go ahead and curse me all you want. I won’t mind! It’s your core that will suffer…” Touya warned with manic eyes and a grin stretching across his face. Yeah, Touya was in his element, all right.

Neito smartly kept his mouth shut.

To be honest, Touya was impressed, even for being forced into a heavy workout first thing in the morning after being abruptly awoken, they were all holding their own. He figured that they would slack off after he was not there to guide them, but by how much they had improved since they last saw each other, it was obvious that they all had strictly followed Touya’s workout regimen that he had sent them home with.

Denki distracted himself by once again picturing himself swimming in the ocean blue of Touya’s eyes, imagining himself being pulled into the black of his pupil by a lazy, but strong, whirlpool, and being dumped into another dimension where everyone’s quirks were switched around. He imagined himself with Neito’s quirk, failing at every quirk where Neito so easily succeeds. He imagined himself with Hitoshi’s quirk and wondered if he’d even be able to control it so flawlessly. Neito handled it so perfectly and so quickly, but everything seemed to come easily to Neito.

Neito distracted himself by remembering the look on his mother’s face when she caught him in her study, her contact book open to Endeavor’s page. Neito had to swear up and down that he wasn’t trying to prank call Endeavor, but that he needed his household number for another reason entirely. He could still hear the wariness of the girl’s voice he heard on the other line when he asked for the super-cool, awesome hero trainer that had blue fire to be put on the phone. His heart hurt for Touya when she had responded that “Shouto doesn’t have blue fire.” Neito quickly dropped the act and demanded she put Touya on the phone immediately. How the hell was Touya so overlooked that when blue fire was mentioned, they thought that Neito had made a mistake about the color of the fire quirk instead of realizing that he was talking about Touya? The fury Neito felt kept him going a lot longer than he normally would have lasted, and the competition between the boys fueled him even more. Neito felt like he could last in a sturdy plank position for hours on rage and competition alone.

Hitoshi distracted himself during the plank by letting his thoughts wander to what happened overnight because Neito rudely refused to brainwash him so that he didn’t have to actually put mental effort into the workout because then no one would be available to brainwash Neito, then. So, they both had to power through with the other not willing to put the other under Hitoshi’s quirk just in case the other changed their mind about putting the other one under. Yeah, that thought process didn’t make much sense to Hitoshi, either. He was struggling, so his thoughts wandered to what he had dreamed the night before. Was it a dream?

Hitoshi swore that his birthday party was so great that he wouldn’t have nightmares that night, but sometimes nightmares don’t care that you just had the best day of your life. Hitoshi had woken up and jostled the other two he was sleeping next to. Denki had tiredly reached out a comforting hand before immediately falling back asleep. Hitoshi was relieved that he hadn’t disturbed him too much. Neito was already whisper singing, the now familiar lullaby echoing a millisecond after the lyrics left Neito’s mouth in real-time.

Hitoshi had snuggled back into the blankets, and that was the fastest that he had ever fallen back asleep, until he was once again sitting up pin straight. That time, though, Neito was also startled, and they made wonderous eye contact with each other before looking over at Denki, who shifted in his sleep to face the other way before going completely relaxed again, back in deep sleep in an instant.

Hitoshi couldn’t figure out if what they had heard was some kind of freaky shared dream between soulmates who had just started drifting off again, or if it was his quirk messing with the soul bond once more, but he could have sworn that Denki had sleepily mumbled out some of the lyrics, just a few words at the end of a verse, before going silent once again. And Denki’s voice had echoed in his head, a millisecond after the words left Denki’s mouth.

How did Denki know the lyrics to the lullaby? Did he recognize what Neito was singing, even as he sang so softly? Did Hitoshi just dream it all? He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Neito about it, yet so maybe him sitting up and looking back at him was all just part of a dream that happened after Neito sung him back to sleep. Or maybe that did happen, but Hitoshi and Neito just imagined it. Or maybe they didn’t imagine it, but the soul bond is interacting with Hitoshi’s mental quirk again. He had put Denki under the quirk while muzzled earlier, so maybe using it on him and having him sleep so close while using the bond to sing to each other made some brainwaves get mixed up.

Hitoshi dared a glance over at Denki to find out if he was aware of what transpired the night before. Denki’s head was tilted in thought, even as he maintained his plank position, as his eyes followed Touya’s face as he walked around, barking orders on how to fix lazy positions and threatening to add another sixty seconds of plank time for every correction he had to make. Hitoshi didn’t think that Denki seemed off in any way; he was acting like he always does. Nothing was out of the ordinary for Denki, or for Neito for that matter, since they had all been woken up by Touya. That had Hitoshi thinking that maybe he dreamed it all. That he woke up with the nightmare, Neito sung him back to sleep, and then he started dreaming that both he and Neito heard Denki singing.

It wouldn’t be out of the norm for his brain to conjure up such a dream based on how Neito and Hitoshi got sent to the inpatient mental hospital to begin with; it wasn’t like his brain was pulling this idea out of thin air. There were a lot of unknowns and fears around what Neito and Hitoshi had experienced the day after becoming soulmates, and maybe Hitoshi was just subconsciously waiting for it to happen again, so his mind did something that might help him feel like the other shoe had dropped so he could relax. He hated to tell his mind this, but it made things worse, not better.

Hitoshi could have scoffed at the thoughts running through his head if it weren’t for the fact that if he changed his breathing pattern, he would definitely collapse.

“Hitoshi,” Neito drawled, voice sounding steady, even as he was shaking from the effort of maintaining his position. “Truth or dare?”

“Seriously? Right now?” Hitoshi asked, breathing harder from the effort of speaking. When Neito shot him a glare, Hitoshi sighed, and answered, “truth,” knowing that Neito would dare him to lose the little competition they had going on if he had chosen dare, but that gave him an idea that might just work.

“If you could go anywhere before the summer was over…” Neito paused to get a breath, “where would you go?”

“The beach,” Hitoshi answered without hesitation. “Any beach. I love the ocean.”

“Do you like the ocean, too?” Neito asked, turning his head toward Denki.

Denki just nodded, still focusing on keeping himself in the competition. Hitoshi didn’t have the excess energy to jokingly sneer at Neito that it was his turn to ask now, thank you very much.

“Touya,” Hitoshi heaved. “Truth or dare?”

Touya snorted but chose dare.

Hitoshi ducked his head to hide his smile. He had him right where he wanted him.

“I dare you to release us from this exercise and move on to something else.”

Neito and Denki both snorted and swayed, but didn’t fall out of position until Touya conceded, reminding himself to never pick dare while in the middle of a workout again.

“Clever,” he complimented grudgingly, shooting them a smile for the ingenuity.

It sucked for him; he wanted to push them as far as he could. But it was great for them, working together to start a simple game, make him drop his guard, and have him walk right into a trap. The trap involved questions, but Hitoshi didn’t even use his quirk on him, even when he answered without hesitation, relying on his own intelligence instead of his quirk. They were doing so well, and Touya was proud at how nicely they were coming along.

The very act of conceding was enough to show Touya that he himself had progressed immensely. He used to not be able to stand the idea of anyone being better than him in any way, even in a small sense of a quick out-witting instance like Hitoshi had pulled on him, feeling that his own confidence in himself and his intelligence was being called into question. He had to retrain himself on the ways that he thought about things. He didn’t want to snap at people when he got mad, especially when he was often madder at himself than anyone else and was just taking out his anger the only way he knew how; the only way Endeavor ever modeled taking out his own anger. He didn’t want to be the uptight sore loser, though, was the main problem. He looked at his peers who could be laidback and easygoing, even when they were losing. They would laugh it off, and still give 100% to the rest of the game, even if there was no chance of catching up to the leaders. Touya wanted to be like that.

First, he had retrained himself to see certain personalities as his new role model in the place of Endeavor. Every time he thought, ‘what would Endeavor do in this situation?’ he had to correct himself and ask, ‘what would a flexible, laidback hero do in this situation?’ His friends saw an immediate change that became more natural as he practiced it. Now, it was as if he was raised with that mindset instead of the complete opposite. That was the power he had over himself and his frame of mind.

He noticed a similar mindset to his previous one in Neito, and maybe that had a lot to do with why he agreed to train them in the first place. So, when Fuyumi told him that the phone was for him, and Neito asked to crash Hitoshi’s little slumber party the morning after, he didn’t hesitate to agree. Seeing all three boys getting along better than ever, yet to be turned off by Neito’s strong personality, gave him more hope for Neito than he had ever had for himself. Seeing their determination and self-discipline that mirrored his own made him truly believe that these kids were going to go far. Maybe even farther than Shouto ever would because they have the support and teamwork already going strong among themselves while the way Endeavor was going, Shouto would only have himself.

Touya could already see Shouto pulling away. He hadn’t been as uptight about getting their father’s approval since the boiling water incident had happened and their mother got taken away. Shouto didn’t have the small support that their mother had offered before her breakdown, and now, Shouto himself was wearing thin. Humans just weren’t meant to train constantly and only rely on themselves. Shouto was smart; he had already figured out that he could not rely on Endeavor.

The inconsistency became more and more apparent as the training went on. One day, a thousand sit-ups would be met with a small smile and maybe even a “good job.” The next day, a million sit-ups wouldn’t even be enough, and Endeavor would be breathing down his trainee’s neck to do more, more, more. Then, when he became aware that he might be losing respect from his trainee, he would throw in a “good job” here and there again. He was well aware what a cycle of abuse was, and he wasn’t afraid to use it to his advantage to keep his children training way past their limits to try to make them the best.

Even if Endeavor had any interest in what Touya was doing recently, and even if he had tagged along to see what his eldest son had been up to, he would think that these three boys had no chance and did not even come close to Shouto’s level, but he would be so wrong.

When faced with a challenging opponent, Shouto would go full force, like he was trained to do. When he started to tire and had no back-up, he would lose, and might even die from over exhaustion if the villains didn’t finish him off first.

These three would look out for one another. They would take the brunt of the fight when one was feeling overwhelmed to give him time to recuperate. They would work together, coming up with new strategies right then and there as they learned more about their opponents and their strengths and weaknesses.

Honestly, Touya was inspired by the boys. After a full day of training, and the boys challenging each other to even more when Touya was about ready to let them off, Touya felt a little jealous. He wanted the same thing that they had. He wanted a powerful quirk that didn’t hurt his body every time he used it. He wanted a close group of friends that he knew he could always trust and rely on more than anyone else. He wanted to continuously improve and never stagnate in his progression.

So, that night, Touya finally decided that he was as ready as he would ever be. He trained rigorously with no cheat days. His muscles were dense, but his frame was lean. His body was young, and he was resilient. It truly was now or never if he would ever take control over his quirk instead of allowing his quirk to control him.

So, that night, Touya snuck out, not that anyone would have cared if he had been caught. He climbed up the mountain where he had trained many times before, and where he had been found a few months prior after he had attempted to use his quirk once again, going too far as always, and had been promptly healed and admitted to a mental hospital for “self-harm.” But it wasn’t self-harm, it was self-progression. No pain, no gain, right?

Touya lit up his quirk, but this time didn’t hesitate to let it engulf his full body. No hesitation this time—maybe hesitation was the mistake that messed him up the time before. He felt the heat and the burning; he pushed through anyway. He just kept going and going and going. He couldn’t even hear himself as he screamed in pain through the roaring of the flames in his ears. His skin blistered and popped, but he still didn’t let up. He was going to master his quirk; he wasn’t going to give himself any other choice.

Hitoshi had been through a lot in his short life. There had been many ups and downs in his life, but never anything quite as high as his birthday party and having all of his friends there to support him in their own ways, with a new foster family who seemed to really care about his well-being instead of how to exert the most control over him. Oppositely, there had never been anything quite as low as attending Touya’s funeral the very next weekend after his birthday party.

Hitoshi hadn’t believed it at first. Neito and Denki hadn’t, either.

“But I just saw him… he was just at my party…”

The Hamabis never wanted to see Hitoshi with that numb look on his face again, so they had tossed out the muzzle from the caseworker. The Hamabis had no idea how to protect their foster son from this type of loss. They couldn’t hide him away and tell him to make no friends in case he lost them. It was better to have loved and lost than to not have ever loved at all, of course. But it still scared the new foster parents.

Hitoshi didn’t know how to process this. He buried it when his parents had died, the idea of never seeing someone he loved ever again. Previous placement changes were different in that he knew that, someday, if he wanted to, he could track them down and see them again. But death? Death was so, so permanent, and Hitoshi had never lost a friend before.

“You guys have to promise me you won’t die,” Hitoshi had demanded gravely before the funeral had started.

“What? Toshi—” Denki had started but was interrupted.

“If either of you die, I’m going to think that it’s my fault. That I’m some kind of bad luck charm. Please, don’t leave me here alone,” Hitoshi had whispered, tears starting to fall down his face.

Neito stepped forward quickly to embrace his soulmate and Denki took the time to gently wipe Hitoshi’s cheeks of the tears that escaped his eyes.

“If I died, who would steal your quirk at the worst possible moment?” Neito asked, feigning sincerity.

“You—!” Hitoshi started to object, but his eyes glazed over as he fell under his own quirk. The quirk was dropped just as quickly, and Hitoshi stared at Neito in open amazement. “First of all,” he started, dropping his eyebrows into a fierce glare, “you definitely have the worst possible timing down. Second of all,” he added, eyes softening, and he looked at his soulmate in wonder, “you’re getting really good at that. I didn’t even realize you had activated my quirk. I didn’t hear it in your voice or anything.”

“He’s chasing after you,” Denki supplied, opting to give more information when Hitoshi’s eyes darted in his direction, shooting a quick, apologetic look at Neito just in case he wasn’t supposed to tell Hitoshi about the extra training he had been doing. “You’ve been getting really good at hiding when you’re using your quirk, and Neito wants to keep up with you, so we’ve been practicing together.”

Neito, instead of denying Denki’s admission, nodded in agreement, looking at Hitoshi with undisguised wonder and amazement that he felt all of the time, but often tried to dampen. Hitoshi pulled them both into a hug, then, and squeezed them tightly.

“I don’t know what I’d ever do without you guys.”

One thing that Denki had focused on, the ‘silver lining’ of the funeral, was that he would get to meet Touya’s little brother that he had mentioned a few times during their time at the mental hospital. He said that he was their age and had distinctive half red, half white hair.

Denki’s heart broke for Touya even further when he looked around at the small gathering only to realize that the little bother in question was not in attendance, and neither was Endeavor.

Chapter Text

Neito was having difficulty distinguishing the difference between his feelings for his soulmate and his feelings for his best friend. He felt bad asking Denki to not join him and Hitoshi every once in a while, so he could try to sort his feelings out. He felt worse when he heard Denki telling Hitoshi that he couldn’t come with some bullshit made-up excuse, but knew it was for the best. If Hitoshi knew that Neito was asking Denki to skip out on their weekends occasionally, he would ask why, and then he would know that Neito was feeling the same type of way for Denki as he was for Hitoshi.

Hitoshi, of course, saw right through the excuses, but didn’t know the reason why, figuring that Denki had other friends that he wanted to hang out with or something, and that he was hesitant to tell Neito and Hitoshi like they were hogging him for themselves. Spending time with just Neito, though, left a hole in Hitoshi’s heart, and that was a problem because Neito was his soulmate, and Denki was just a friend. He shouldn’t have been holding them to the same level. So, sometimes Hitoshi asked Denki to not join them on the weekends, just every once in a while, so that he could get his feelings recalibrated toward his soulmate and his best friend. Denki was always super understanding, and never even questioned Hitoshi’s motive, just readily agreeing.

Denki felt like he was intruding on the soulmates and was horrified that he was getting so close to them, so when either one of them asked for some alone time, Denki immediately obliged. It was healthy for soulmates to spend alone time together, and it wasn’t like they were cutting him out completely… so then why did it hurt so bad spending the weekend alone in his room, with nothing but his pile of homework for company?

All three boys kept up with their training regimen by Touya, even though it was really hard to continue at first. In a way, it made them feel connected to Touya, so they pushed through the tears and sadness until there was just a dull ache every time they started their workouts.

When it had been a good month since Denki had spent the weekend with Hitoshi and Neito, he finally made it to Friday without either of them reaching out, asking if he would pull out of the weekend so they could bond together as soulmates alone. Denki had been spending time with the friends he had made on Unit Beta, because that made him feel more included. It made him feel closer to Neito and Hitoshi because they were ultimately part of the group, too, even if they weren’t there. It made him feel closer to Touya, too.

He would tag along sometimes when Kyoka and Momo would have spa days and wonder if the two would end up as soulmates with the way they seemed to thrive and ebb and flow with each other’s energy. They talked about and debated everything as they braided hair and painted nails, from which hero should on the next cover of the top magazine to the ethics behind lethal injection for the villains deemed beyond rehabilitation and if there was such a thing as being beyond rehabilitation in the first place.

His parents hesitated when he first came home with painted fingernails, makeup on his face, and bows in his hair, but they quickly got used to the state he would come home in after spending time with the girls and learned that he was having fun and there was no harm, so there was no reason to put a stop to it. It was leagues better than when he was worried about whether or not his friends were going to pretend to hate him the next day or not, so his parents figured they had no room to protest. Glitter him up, they decided, as long as the mascara stays on his lashes and doesn’t streak down his cheeks!

He would invite Minoru to his house to play games or go to the beach; he lived quite close to Denki even though he went to a different middle school. His debate practice with the girls helped keep him knowledgeable when Minoru would talk about his cousin, who worked in the police system and who eventually wanted to transfer to Tartarus.

“It’s dangerous,” Minoru said.

“We want to be heroes, dude,” Denki shot back with, laughing. “What we do is dangerous, too.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Minoru said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “It’s just, they have all of these angry, high-level villains, and they only get angrier the longer they’re there, plus with the solitary confinement added on top.”

“Well, maybe they should get rid of solitary confinement, then,” Denki said. “If it’s only a power-trip for the guards and doesn’t actually help anything in the long run.”

Minoru hummed. “I don’t know. I never really looked into it.” He paused the game and looked over to Denki who was already reaching for his laptop.

One time, Minoru dropped by just as Denki was returning from a D.I.Y. spa day with Kyoka and Momo.

“What is this?!” Minoru had asked, absolutely flabbergasted.

His parents were prepared for the friendship to fall apart. For tears. To explain that it’s okay if you don’t follow typical gender roles, but that not everyone will understand.

“The results of a particularly epic spa day with Momo and Kyoka,” Denki had answered.

Minoru’s jaw dropped. “The same Momo and Kyoka that I know?! How do I get invited?! Your skin is glowing!”

“I know, right?! I’m practically a goddess when they get through with me!” Denki preened, curtsying dramatically under Minoru’s praise.

Minoru clapped appreciatively before they both broke out into laughter over their own dramatics.

“I’ll see if I can extend the invite next time they ask me to come along! Usually it’s a last minute thing, though!”

“Oh! Maybe we can have a ‘who wore it better’ competition where we—” Minoru’s excited voice trailed off as they rushed upstairs.

Denki would join Izuku, Ochako, and Tenya when they found a new volunteer thing to do—usually helping pass out food at a soup kitchen or spreading antidiscrimination awareness for the quirkless population which ultimately gave Denki one of the best ideas he had ever had. And once Denki had an idea, he couldn’t seem to get it out of his head. Once he got the okay from Hitoshi, along with the unconditional support from influential families like the Yaoyorozus and the Iidas, the demonstration was scheduled.

Imagine everyone’s surprise when they showed up on a Saturday morning at the local mall, ready to shop and spend a carefree weekend on happy, normal activities, only to be met with a gaggle of kids who were muzzled and marching around with signs that depicted the horror and tragedies of children in foster care. Thanks to Momo, they even had extra muzzles to pass around to let the interested kids, teens, and adults try it on to see what it felt like for themselves. Many were horrified and signed the petition offered right away.

Although they got many signatures, nothing ended up being changed in the foster system as far as policies go about muzzles and other quirk-suppressing mechanisms, but at least they were being watched more closely and making sure they weren’t adding too much undue stress onto foster kids. Foster parents who previously relied on muzzles quickly found new ways to feel safe around their foster children, and a lot of foster children benefited from the small demonstration that lasted four weekends in a row.

Neito thought that spending time in a huge group was a great way for him to recalibrate his feelings. He figured that if he could see Denki the same way he saw Momo and Izuku, for instance, then he would be back to baseline. Only, it didn’t happen that way. Neito couldn’t shake the intense affection he felt for Denki every time he saw his face when he got another signature, knowing that he was smiling by the way his eyes crinkled, even when the entirety of his lower face was covered by a muzzle.

Hitoshi was touched that all of his friends would go that far for him, just because of his sad story about being muzzled while in foster care. Hitoshi’s heart exploded in warmth every time he looked at the instigator of the demonstration: Denki. Hitoshi had hoped that spending more time with Denki around other friends and in more public places would help him see him as a friend instead of holding him up right next to Neito, but Hitoshi got the same feeling in his chest when he looked at his soulmate and best friend that was absent when he looked at his other good friends, Kyoka, Ochako, Minoru, and Tenya. He knew he was in trouble, and so he just had to figure out what to do about it.

Denki had hoped that his organization of the movement would put out an olive branch, and hopefully make up for whatever he must have done to make his best friends angry with him, but it seemed to have backfired because he went two months after that without seeing Neito at all, and only seeing Hitoshi at school. Even at school, Hitoshi seemed hesitant around him, only giving short answers, and not engaging with him like he usually did.

When Denki’s mother asked him what was wrong when she found him crying once again, like he used to with his old friend group after they excluded and made fun of him, Denki refused to open up, saying that it was stupid and he was just imaging it, refusing to go into further detail when prompted.

Around this time is when Denki started online gaming. He didn’t have close friends at school because he must have done something to anger Hitoshi, and he didn’t have close friends on the weekend because he must have upset Neito and Hitoshi. He started spending more time with his older friend group, though he kept it casual and didn’t take any extended offers to spend time with them outside of school. He was just thankful that they were being kinder to him and not ostracizing him anymore, though sometimes they did seem unsure of how to act around him and it just didn’t feel as warm and genuine as when he spent time with the soulmates.

His self-esteem took a hit, and he didn’t want to bother his newer friends that he met at Fields Mental Hospital every weekend just in case he would somehow upset them, too, and make them want to stop spending time with him like the soulmates had. When his mother and father gifted him a nice PC setup for his harder schoolwork as a reward because of keeping his grades consistently high, he asked for a headset and some games to play, too.

“Don’t let this interfere with your grades,” his mother had tried joking with him, but he just nodded and thanked her with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

She was worried about him and hoped that giving him this gaming outlet might be the thing to get him back on track. She had already been in contact with the inpatient hospital, nervous that it might have something to do with his schizophrenia, but they said that as long as he was not an imminent threat to himself or others, there really wasn’t anything they could do for him, and to just keep an eye on him.

A month later, and Denki had an online gaming best friend who could play with Denki for hours and hours every single night and never get bored of him.

High5UrDead was almost annoyingly good with coming up with strategies that worked almost too well, but Denki couldn’t complain because he was the one who came up with the foolproof back-up plans that got them out of sticky situations on the rare occasion that one of the plans High5UrDead came up with backfired spectacularly. It made Denki feel better that the most common strategies that they used they had come up with together.

As the soulmates steadily pulled away and increased their space from Denki, he couldn’t help but feel that it was only a matter of time. Everyone got annoyed with him eventually. The truth was, he was a lot to handle, and he couldn’t even be mad at Neito and Hitoshi like he wanted to be. He was just grateful that as one friendship came to an end, he seemed to have a new one budding and taking its place. When his friend group from school had really started treating him badly, he had Neito and Hitoshi to rely on. Now that they were drifting apart, he had High5UrDead.

He also managed to get back into the swing of things with his old friend group. They seemed to have realized that it was more fun with Denki than without him, and with Denki keeping a healthy distance and opting to play online rather than spend time with them outside of school, they haven’t been getting as annoyed with him as quickly, which he was grateful for. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and all that. Right?

“Two o’clock!” High5UrDead warned through the headset Denki was wearing.

Denki reacted automatically, turning his character in the game to the right and shooting without hesitation.

“Fuck yes! You’re the best teammate I’ve ever had!” High5UrDead exclaimed when the victory screen replaced the gamescape.

And to think that they had been placed together by pure coincidence. High5UrDead was not pleased when Denki admitted that it was his very first time playing the game but quickly warmed up to him when he realized his reaction time was lightning fast, and he was a quick learner. He learned the maps quickly and maneuvered around the gamescape like he had been playing since the game had launched five years prior. He followed directions well and offered great ideas when High5UrDead was out of strategy and was about to give in and die, ready to just start the game over again.

Denki, though. Denki showed him that you always fight until you can’t anymore, and Denki managed to get them out of more than one tough spot and kept fighting, long after High5UrDead was ready to call it quits and just reset the game. Their teamwork improved even more as they played together, and even through a virtual online game, they developed a solid sort of trust that they would respond to each other’s commands first and ask questions never.

So, Denki didn’t hesitate to shoot a player that headed in their direction when High5UrDead commanded it. High5UrDead broke out into manic laughter over the headset as the player respawned, only to fill Denki’s headset with another voice.

“Is that any way to treat your teammate?” the newcomer’s deep voice asked in response to High5UrDead’s laughter, but he didn’t seem too upset. There was a nice lilt in his voice that gave away his amusement.

The new character had the gamer tag ‘2Hot2Die’ floating above his head as he crouched down to join the meeting that Denki and High5UrDead was having before infiltrating enemy territory. It would be very helpful to have another player to help out. Three against twenty-five was better odds than two against twenty-five, of course; though, Denki knew that with their teamwork, it could still be a success, even if the newcomer decided not to help after all.

“So, you’re the one who took my place, huh?” 2Hot2Die asked Denki. “P05itiv3R3v0lt? I’ve heard good things about you.”

“You guys know each other in real life?” Denki guessed.

Denki’s headset crackled to life with an overlapping “yeah” and “unfortunately.”

“Don’t act like I’m not the best thing to ever happen to you,” 2Hot2Die teased High5UrDead.

“Maybe if you wouldn’t have ditched me, I wouldn’t have to question your loyalty,” High5UrDead retorted quickly.

“Okay,” 2Hot2Die bit back, “Just because I’m not some freak, no offence to you, P05itiv3Revolt—”

“None taken.”

“—who can play every day for hours upon hours, doesn’t mean that I’m not the best teammate you’ve ever had.”

“P05itiv3R3v0lt is the best online teammate I’ve ever had. And, if I ever met him in real life, he might even surpass you.”

“Uh, I think probably not. With a tag like that… Say, P05itiv3R3v0lt, what do you want to be when you grow up?” 2Hot2Die asked with a strange tone. It was teasing in a slightly menacing way, but Denki didn’t feel like he was being made fun of.

“I’m going to be a hero,” Denki answered with conviction, hoping with his whole heart that his online friends wouldn’t laugh at him.

“I figured,” 2Hot2Die answered. “And with everything I’ve heard about you, I’m sure you’ll make a great one.”

That was the opposite of what Denki was expecting and it took his breath away for a minute.

“With your strategizing and your tendency to fight until the very end, the heroes will be lucky to have you,” High5UrDead added, and Denki had never heard his voice so soft before. “But, until then, you’re going to help me kill these assholes. 2Hot2Die, are you in or out?”

“Aw,” 2Hot2Die cooed. “You think I’m hot, boss?”

Denki could only assume the resulting yelling and scuffling sounds coming through his headset were the result of High5UrDead physically tracking down 2Hot2Die and maybe murdering him in cold blood. Was Denki a witness to homicide?

“Change your tag, dumbass,” High5Ur Dead muttered when he came back onto the game.

2Hot2Die blew a kiss through the headset, and High5UrDead’s character turned around, lifted his weapon, and killed 2Hot2Die. 2Hot2Die respawned, and High5UrDead shot him once again.

“Okay! Okay! Just no more friendly fire!” 2Hot2Die pleaded, making his character run to find cover from High5UrDead’s wrath.

“Friendly? There’s nothing friendly about my fire,” High5UrDead sneered with a maniacal laugh as he rounded the corner to fire once again at 2Hot2Die.

2Hot2Die became Fri3ndlyFir3 as an extra jab at High5UrDead, but ultimately, he accepted the replacement, and only then did the game continue. They took down all twenty-five enemies with no casualties, if you don’t count High5UrDead killing his own teammate multiple times in a row, that is.

Chapter Text

“I don’t understand why you’re so… down. Honestly, it’s kind of scaring me,” Neito stated, placing a hand on Hitoshi’s shoulder and ducking his head to look him in the eye.

When Hitoshi didn’t answer, opting to look away from Neito’s inquisitive gaze instead, Neito sighed in resignation before offering, “let’s just invite Denki, over, yeah? He is the life of the party. Whatever you’re feeling, he will make it go away, at least temporarily.”

The last thing Neito needed was for Denki to stop by, but if it would make his soulmate feel better, he would grin and bear it.

Hitoshi started to shake his head, still refusing to look into Neito’s eyes.

“It’s been months since we’ve seen him, sure, but I’m sure he’d rush right over. I’ll call him now,” Neito decided, reaching for his phone, only for his hand to be intercepted by Hitoshi’s, holding it tightly against his chest so that he couldn’t get to the phone.

Hitoshi finally looked up at him, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, but refusing to fall.

“We can’t call Denki. That would make it worse,” he whispered out hoarsely.

“I don’t understand,” Neito insisted, but sat back down and didn’t try to reach for the phone again. “Did something happen? Please explain it to me. Please?”

“I… God, Neito. I love him,” Hitoshi blurted out, tears finally overflowing and trailing down his cheeks.

“I do, too! But—”

“No!” Hitoshi interrupted, grabbing Neito’s shoulders to face him head on to try to make him understand what he was saying, the betrayal that he had hid for too long already. “I feel the same way about him that I feel about you. Do you understand?”

Hitoshi saw the surprise in Neito’s eyes, but the betrayal wasn’t obvious, yet. Hitoshi wanted to look away; he didn’t want to see the hurt he was causing his soulmate, but he didn’t deserve to hide from what he was doing to him.

“I… I do, too,” Neito whispered, collapsing against Hitoshi at the confession.

“What?” Hitoshi asked. He heard; he just couldn’t comprehend it.

“I didn’t want to tell you, so I’ve been trying to push the feelings down. You’ve been doing the same thing, right? And that’s how we’ve both gone a month already without talking to Denki at all. I was so scared to tell you,” Neito admitted.

“I was scared to tell you, too. I just need you to know that this doesn’t change anything about the way I feel about you… I just feel the exact same way for Denki as well,” Hitoshi explained, trying to soften the blow and ease any uncertainty that Neito might have about his feelings.

The conversation was going much better than he expected. The only tears were tears of relief and understanding and acceptance. There was no yelling at all. Maybe they were really meant for each other. They fit together so perfectly that they were both falling for the same electric boy.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Neito conceded.

When Neito and Hitoshi slowed down communication with Denki, Denki didn’t reach out as much, trying his best to respect their wishes. When they stopped responding at all, Denki tried a few more times. After the fifth time reaching out with no response, he took the hint and didn’t try to contact them again, hoping that after an extended break from him, they might be more inclined to reach out in the future. Denki figured that they had just had too much of him. He knew he was a lot to handle, so he could hardly blame them.

It hurt more than he thought it would, though. He felt like he had a real connection with the soulmates. They were his best friends, and they called him their best friend, too. He thought they were all on the same page, but now he knew better than to get his hopes up like that again.

Throughout middle school, High5UrDead and Fri3ndlyFir3 were his only constant friends. He kept a healthy distance from his friends from school as to not go through the same hurt again if they started to feel like they’ve had too much of him, too. He felt incredibly fortunate that High5UrDead and Fri3ndlyFir3 never seemed to tire of him. When he felt like they might be tiring of him, they would groan about how the game had gotten old and predictable, then Denki would get an invite to follow the two to the next game they wanted to demolish.

When he wasn’t at school and he wasn’t gaming with his online friends, he started up a new hobby that he knew he entirely sucked at. Recording and editing videos for TikTok was a lot harder than he thought it would be going in, but it took up a lot of his time and gave him something to think about other than how he had lost two valuable friendships and really never even got closure as to what he did to push them away. For the distraction, he was grateful.

Hitoshi had been watching the same TikTok for five minutes straight, and Neito knew that could only mean one thing.

“Denki posted another video?” he guessed, sitting down next to Hitoshi, who was supposed to be working on his literature report that was due in a few days.

“Yeah,” Hitoshi sighed, longing evident in his eyes, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

Hitoshi passed the phone over to Neito, and Neito was immediately reminded of how hard it was to scroll past Denki’s videos. He had gotten much better at recording and editing. His transitions improved until they were flawless. Neito knew because he had gone frame by frame on the more recent videos and could not figure out when the transitions actually occurred—they were that smooth. Denki had started picking up different dancing trends and really had a knack for them. Neito felt bittersweet when he thought about Denki spending all of that time learning new dance trend after new dance trend.

On one hand, he was glad that Denki seemed to be spending that time alone. But then he would immediately feel guilty for thinking that. It wasn’t fair to expect Denki to not share his time with others when Neito hadn’t called him back in months. He planned to call him back. Of course, he did. Just as soon as he could look at Denki without feeling the same exact warmth he felt when he looked at Hitoshi. As he stared at the virtual image of Denki dancing on the screen, he knew that that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

“He looks like he’s doing well,” Hitoshi whispered, staring at the screen from over Neito’s shoulder.

“What makes you think that?” Neito asked, as he was just thinking about how much time alone Denki must spend to learn and practice the dances and record and edit the videos.

“His handle is as upbeat as always, isn’t it?” Hitoshi asked hopefully.

In reality, Hitoshi kind of hoped that Denki had moved on from them. It hurt when he stopped reaching out, but what did they expect when they stopped returning his calls? He deserved to be happy with people who didn’t confuse their feelings for him with something that wasn’t even possible. He deserved to find his own soulmate without having two people who had already found their soulmates pining after him and making him seem unavailable.

Neito glanced down at the new handle and wondered how long this one would last. First it was P05itiv3R3v0lt, then it was 1derCircuit. After that, it was Strik30ut, but that one didn’t last too long. Now, it was High5ImAlive. Neito thought about it for a bit before voicing his thoughts aloud.

“This is the first one that doesn’t have anything to do with his quirk, isn’t it?” Neito inquired.

“Yeah, from what I can tell, anyway,” Hitoshi shrugged, not giving it too much thought as he watched the smiling, dancing blonde on the screen, doing the same dance over and over again, steadily building up Denki’s views.

“I miss him,” Neito admitted with a whisper. “Do you still see him at school?”

“Only when first arriving and leaving. We haven’t been in the same class since the year I transferred,” Hitoshi said, wondering if things might have been different if they had been in the same class. On second thought, it would probably just make his life that much harder.

“Maybe we should just tell him,” Neito suggested, and not for the first time.

Hitoshi lazily looked sideways at his soulmate and gave him a small kiss on the cheek.

“I wish we could, but I think that might make things worse. What if he doesn’t feel the same way? We would have tried to get into his life again only to make him feel awkward being around us. What if he agrees, but finds his soulmate later? Do you think you could handle that loss? Because I don’t think I could. What if he doesn’t agree and he pulls away permanently because he fears that he might mess up and come between us somehow—”

“He wouldn’t—”

“But he would think he would. You know him, Neito, just as well as I do. He wouldn’t risk something that major if he thought that he might end up hurting us somehow in the long run, even if that is what he wanted, which we’re not even sure about. This is the safest route. He’ll forgive us and invite us back with open arms once we get our feelings under control and can love him like a true friend, like he deserves.”

“And until then, we suffer in silence?” Neito grumbled.

“At least we have each other?” Hitoshi whispered, making Neito turn back toward his soulmate at the question in his voice.

“We’re going through a tough time right now because we both love our best friend more than a friend should. But I still love you, Toshi, and I wouldn’t change being your soulmate for anything in the world.”

It had been a few years since they had all met and formed that friendship in the mental hospital. Hitoshi and Neito had applied to get into UA and were awaiting the test results to come back to see if they made it in or not. That was stressful, but even that did not take away the empty feeling they had in their chests when Denki was not with them.

It was weird finding your soulmate so early on. At first, they were just best friends, right along with Denki. Sometimes, in some situations, that all it ever amounts to be. Because they found each other so soon, and because they shared the same strong feelings toward Denki as well, both thought that maybe their soulmate bond was going to turn into a strong friendship and nothing more. When the romantic feelings started bubbling up a year ago, they were both horrified to find out that they were feeling the same type of thing for Denki as well as each other. When Hitoshi had admitted his feelings about Denki to Neito, Neito had actually collapsed in relief because he was feeling the exact same way. They couldn’t exactly be mad at each other for pining after the same person, could they? They might have tried, but always failed. Denki was just so loveable that there was no avoiding it, it seemed.

When Neito opened up his UA acceptance letter that had come in the mail that afternoon, he screamed. He knew he had done really well on the technical and practical exams, but still, the acceptance rate was so miniscule that he couldn’t be sure. Even now, it felt like a dream.

He called Hitoshi not a second later, wondering if he had gotten his acceptance letter, yet. And he had, though he had more mixed feelings about his because he was only admitted into general studies instead of one of the hero courses. Neito tried to comfort him and remind him that he could always transfer into the hero track if he does well in general studies, but Hitoshi still seemed a little reserved. Neito could hardly blame him; already he was feeling the pressure of inadequacy looming over him as he thought about how he wasn’t good enough to get into Class 1-A. He couldn’t exactly complain to Hitoshi about it, though, could he? Not when he actually made it into the hero track when Hitoshi did not.

It wasn’t fair. The admission tests were tough for a mental quirk wielder, so the fact that Hitoshi got in at all was a huge sign of his incredible ingenuity and flexibility, but the scores were more objective than subjective, and there was no way to account for how amazing a hero he had the potential to become.

At least this was something to take their minds off of falling in love with Denki without finding a way out, even after they had cut contact with him. That’s what the soulmates were thinking when they walked through the entrance gate on their first day at UA High School, right up until they saw the electric blond staring up at the building in awe. The soulmates would have been, too, if the view of Denki wasn’t even more amazing. What was he doing there anyway? If he was in the same class as Neito or Hitoshi, it would be even harder to try to dampen their feelings toward him.

“I’m in Class 1-A,” Denki informed cheerily, excited to share this milestone with those he considered his best friends, even when they hadn’t spoken in almost a year. “I didn’t know you guys got in, too! That’s so cool!”

When Neito told him that he was in Class 1-B, and Hitoshi admitted that he was only in general studies, Denki pouted.

“Too bad we weren’t all in Class 1-B together. We could have gone from the Beta Bros to the Class B Bros!” Denki exclaimed, pumping a fist in the air as they walked through the entrance together.

When Neito and Hitoshi quickly excused themselves to start making their way toward their classrooms, Denki didn’t try to follow after them, knowing that they didn’t want to spend any more time than they had to with him, but not quite understanding why. There was no big fight or blowout, or even anything small that gave him any hint of what had happened to make the soulmates no longer want to associate with him, and it made him nervous for the future.

What if he had done something unforgivable and he couldn’t even figure out what it was? How was he supposed to make any long-lasting friendships while he was here at UA if he didn’t know what caused his most precious friendships to fail so drastically?

Little did he know that they both still had their little decorated pet rocks displayed proudly in their rooms, just like Denki did, and they both continued to wear their paint-splattered clothes occasionally, even when they knew it was probably counterproductive when they were trying to dampen their feelings toward Denki only to turn around and continue to remind themselves of the fun times they had with him.

Neito and Hitoshi couldn’t believe how much seeing Denki for just a minute had brightened up their day, and even their perspective of not being in Class 1-A, because at least one of them had made it! But then they had to remind themselves that they were no longer the trio that they had once been, and it was all their fault for falling for someone who was only supposed to be a friend.

Denki forced his hands to drop from where they reached on his chest, seeking out hoodie strings to fidget with that were not there because, alas, no hoodies were issues as part of the uniform. Denki wondered how many signatures on a petition it would take to change something like that. Denki’s worries were momentarily forgotten when he entered Class 1-A and it was basically being back on the unit at the mental hospital.

“Huh… maybe you have to be a little crazy to be a hero…” Denki thought aloud, muttering to himself as he took an empty seat next to Kyoka, reminding himself to call her Jirou and to not give away that he had met a lot of his classmates before in a mental hospital.

That was not a good way to make a good first impression on the kids he was meeting for the first time, and it was a great way to lose trust in the friends that he already did have going in.

Keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything stupid. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything stupid.

“Hey Denki! Oh—Kaminari, I mean,” Izuku started in his chipper tone, excited as everyone else to be in the elite class of future heroes. “Where are Monoma and Shinsou? I thought you three would be joined at the hip wherever you ended up!”

“Hey, Midoriya!” Denki exclaimed, giving himself a mental high-five for using his surname. “They made it to UA!” Denki bragged with a blinding smile, adding, “Shinsou is in general studies and Monoma is in 1-B!” to explain their absence from the classroom.

Denki didn’t bother to add that he had just discovered that today and the soulmates had quickly taken off afterward. He just hoped that the classes would train together often so he could try to mend the relationship that he must have done something to break.

Chapter Text

The first battle of the classes was a disaster. It was also how everyone found out just how deep Denki was in his feelings for Neito. He looked up to him, sure. It was easy to look up to everyone else who made it into a hero course at UA; that much was obvious. But it was so much more than that, wasn’t it? Denki’s immense concern and immediate action coupled with his intense defense of criticism toward Neito when anyone else in Denki’s position would have refused to help and held a grudge lasting years… the fact that Denki jumped right in and defended Neito over and over again from any harm, physical or emotional, just proved to everyone that Denki loved Neito so, so much. Maybe Denki didn’t see it himself, or maybe he was just playing dumb to get everyone off his back, but everyone could see the adoration and care that Denki held for Neito in his eyes and posture whenever Neito was around and whenever someone said something insulting.

Denki had been doing decently in class. He wasn’t at the top; classes were much more intensive than his middle school classes, but he was passing. He was kind of thankful for how tough the course material was because it helped keep his mind off of his lost friendships. He only had time for training, studying, eating, and sleeping. There was no room in his schedule for ‘wallowing in self-pity.’ However, that still didn’t stop Bakugou from dubbing him “Dunce face.” Denki didn’t mind, honestly. That’s just how Bakugou was, he learned, and he never meant anything malicious by it.

His schedule was even more tightly packed when Shigaraki Tomura and the ‘League of Villains’ decided to break into the USJ training building while they were there. No one was fatally injured; it could have gone a lot worse.

Denki felt utterly useless during the invasion. He couldn’t help his friends because he was too close to them. He couldn’t fault them for yelling at him to help and electrocute the villains; everyone was terrified out of their minds and just wanted to find the quickest way to get out of the mess they had found themselves in. He was just grateful that they listened when he hurriedly explained that, unless they wanted shock treatment that day, he wouldn’t be able to electrocute the enemy without them being caught in the crossfire.

One thing that he was grateful for is that Momo had been near him. She was able to make an insulated blanket so that he could shock the villains without risking hurting his comrades. That was a lucky break, though, and he needed to figure out a way to aim his quirk so he could use it without fear of hurting an ally. Neito might have some good ideas on how to do that if he was still around, copying Denki’s quirk, and improving both of their usage on it. Denki felt like he had slowed down a lot in his progress since he didn’t have Neito to help him work out different ways to use or advance his quirk.

Another thing that he was grateful for is that Class 1-B and Class 1-C wasn’t at the USJ training with them. He could focus a little better than if he was worried about where Hitoshi and Neito ended up and how they were faring against the villains.

It kind of hurt, though, when he passed them in the hallway afterwards, and they barely looked at him, let alone asked him if he was okay since the attack.

He was not okay.

He had nightmares, but he could hardly complain. Mr. Aizawa and the other pros were the ones who got hurt. Denki felt like he had no right to even have the nightmares, let alone complain about them.

In times like these, Denki felt almost lucky to have schizophrenia. Almost every time he woke up, he would hear a familiar lullaby in his head, lulling him back to sleep. When he didn’t hear the lullaby, he would simply start to sing it to himself as he drifted off again. It became a comfort song for him, but he couldn’t figure out where he had ever learned it from. It felt ingrained in him, somehow, but he knew that his mother and father never heard of it before; he had asked. He thought maybe he had made it up, but then figured that he wasn’t musically inclined enough to make such a sweet song. He assumed that he must have heard it somewhere before, maybe playing in the background at a restaurant or something, and it just stuck with him.

Even though he hadn’t been sleeping well, Denki’s excitement still burst out of him when Mr. Aizawa announced that they would be competing against Class 1-B in a training exercise. Denki hadn’t seen much of Neito and Hitoshi; the classes didn’t really mix unless there was a reason to, like a scheduled training exercise to make the classes compete against each other. And, as luck would have it, Denki’s group was chosen to go up against Neito’s group.

Denki’s excitement simmered down as nervous energy took its place. Denki was excited to be able to go against Neito, but it was nerve-wracking as well. Neito was a force to be reckoned with, but his classmates didn’t seem to have taken his warnings seriously.

Denki couldn’t help but smile as he saw Neito in his hero costume. While Denki chose to be more simplistic, Neito had gone all out. Denki wouldn’t have expected anything less, and he felt a weird sense of pride for his estranged friend at the three stopwatches on his belt. Denki and Hitoshi had recruited other friends every once in a while, to get Neito up to three quirks copied at a time, and it was harder than any of them had expected it to be. But he did it. Neito wouldn’t have stopped until he did, and Denki was sure that he would get it eventually, because Neito always succeeded when he put his mind to something, no matter how long it took.

“Progress is progress,” Neito would murmur to himself as he tried to copy a third quirk, the look of pure concentration on his face.

Neito still got upset when he couldn’t master something as quickly as he’d like, but he still never gave up, even when he became overly frustrated with himself. Denki looked up to him for that. If they had switched places, he didn’t know if he would have the courage and dedication to keep pushing through after failing again and again.

On the other hand, Denki had failed again and again, hadn’t he? He messed up using his own quirk again and again and never stopped trying to gain better control over it, but he was just trying to make the best out of what he had been given. If he thought about Neito doing the same thing, he felt a warm sense of connection that they were going through the same thing, even though Denki struggled at the same quirk over and over again while Neito would finally master one only to go on a search for an even trickier one to master and start all over again.

Neito was amazing and Denki always strived to keep up with him and Hitoshi. They were incredible and had very niche quirks, so he felt like he had to work hard and endlessly to keep up, and that might not even be enough someday. He felt lucky every day that he was admitted to Class 1-A, because that’s what it was in Denki’s mind: Luck.

He was lucky that his training with his best friends overlapped heavily with his schoolwork so that he was able to learn in a more hands-on, applied sort of way, which helped him get good enough grades to qualify. He was lucky that he could recall the methods he used to teach Neito different strategies during the entrance exam and passed. He was lucky that his electricity took down the robots during the practical exam like it was made specifically for him to pass with flying colors.

He felt a little too lucky and felt guilty about it. His video games and playing consistently with High5UrDead and Fri3ndlyFir3 against various other players were helping with strategy development and accounting for the teams’ strengths and weaknesses, but he wasn’t really a natural born leader like Neito and Hitoshi were. Even if he had come up with an idea to best Neito’s group, it wasn’t like he could just start giving orders. And if he did start giving orders, it’s not like his teammates would actually listen to him. Especially because natural-leader Bakugou happened to be on his team, and Bakugou didn’t take orders from anyone. But that was an excuse, Denki had to admit to himself. He wouldn’t feel comfortable dishing out orders even if he was placed on a team with other follower-type classmates.

So, when Bakugou gave the orders, Denki listened. He was harsh and abrasive, but he could tell that he was a good friend when it mattered, so he didn’t mind so much. Bakugou started calling him “Dunce face” when he missed an obvious question on an exam after another restless night, but he didn’t retaliate when Denki started calling him “Kacchan” in return. Fair’s fair. Besides, Denki knew that Bakugou didn’t mean anything by it. If he wanted to hurt people’s feelings, he would. He was like Neito in that way: Picking and prodding on surface level irritations, but never going any deeper than that, never causing any actual malicious harm. And maybe it was his similarities to Neito that drew Denki in right away when they had first met. That, and it was easier to not slip up and accidentally call him by his first name since he hadn’t met him in a mental hospital beforehand like he had with a good chunk of the rest of Class 1-A.

“Dunce face, you’re on copycat duty,” Bakugou had commanded, finishing up giving everyone their assignments for the strategy that he had in mind.

“Kacchan, I don’t think—” Denki tried to explain that there was a past history there, but Bakugou cut him off.

“Just do it, idiot!” Bakugou demanded.

Denki imagined that Bakugou thought Denki was the best bet because his electricity quirk would be risky to copy, but Bakugou didn’t know that Neito had copied Denki’s quirk before. Multiple times, actually, and had shown even better control over it than Denki had.

Denki shook his head, clearing his thoughts, before giving Bakugou a thumbs up and taking off to find his target. Denki had done a lot of training on his own and had developed a lot since the last time they had trained together, so he might have come up with new tricks that even Neito might not expect. He doubted it, but at least he could go to a higher voltage than he used to before he short-circuits his brain.

It was going to be a disaster from the start because Neito had already set his sights on Denki. Neito hated himself for thinking it, but maybe if he could prove that he was better than Denki at using his own quirk, and therefore Denki didn’t deserve to be in Class 1-A, then he could start to view him as more than a friend than as a soulmate-extension with the constant injustice simmering just below the surface. He was nervous about it, because if it worked, he might just see him as a rival and nothing more, but with how strongly he felt toward Denki, he figured it was probably a safe bet that that wouldn’t happen. He didn’t have high hopes for his plan, because Denki was just overall amazing, but he had to try something because not having Denki in his life at all was really painful.

Because of all of their training together, Denki had gotten almost as good as Hitoshi at predicting Neito’s moves and staying just out of reach. Neito wasn’t proud of himself for what he had said to get Denki’s guard down, and he knew he would regret it later, but he couldn’t just waltz on up and ask Denki to share his quirk with him during a training exercise where there supposed to be enemies, could he? Especially because he didn’t know what Denki’s answer would be.

Denki had done a good job at isolating Neito away from his classmates and staying out of the way of all of the quirks he had copied beforehand until the timers had run out. As long as Denki kept Neito in that area, the others could focus on keeping the rest of their team busy. He could do this; he had to for his team. He was sure that Neito was feeling the same determination and loyalty to his own team, so he tried not to pay attention to what Neito was yelling at him, but it was hard, because what if there was truth in there, and it wasn’t just pure distraction and manipulation to try to win the battle for his team?

Neito knew what he was saying was cruel, and the only way for him to even come up with those ideas was to think about the opposite of what he felt about Denki. Later, once his little crush had passed, he would apologize, and they would laugh over how absolutely in love with Denki Neito had been. Until then, he would have to play the villain.

Denki dodged away from Neito’s touch once again but blocked him from leaving the area. He was stalling for time, and Neito had to do something.

“Who are you to be in Class 1-A? Huh?” Neito spat, lunging at Denki once again, who once again moved out of the way.

It was past the time limit, so Denki knew answering questions wouldn’t result in being put under Hitoshi’s quirk. Even if it could, he would have answered anyway, and just blamed it on his forgetfulness later when Bakugou would inevitably question why he had been so stupid. Bakugou would know he was lying, but he wouldn’t be able to dig the truth out of him, so it would have been fine.

He will always answer Hitoshi and Neito. Always.

“I got really lucky,” Denki conceded, but didn’t allow Neito through to try to find his classmates. “It was like the test was made for me or something.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Neito spat, frustrated that when he did finally make contact with Denki, his costume got in the way from making skin-to-skin contact, and Denki leaped out of the way before he could correct. “What are you going to do when the class finds out that you hear voices? How are you going to be a hero that they can count on when you don’t know what you’re hearing is real or not?”

“UA already knows. And… It hasn’t been bad,” Denki defended, but his thoughts were evident on his face. “Maybe I’m getting better?”

Neito knew he should probably back off when Denki phrased his statement as more of a question, but his reactions had slowed down. He was so close to touching Denki’s exposed skin and copying his quirk.

“UA knows, but do your classmates? I bet Bakugou would have a field day with that!” Neito taunted. “You would be demoted from stupid to crazy.”

Neito knew that he was being a hypocrite, considering that he knew for sure that Bakugou had also been inpatient himself, as a result of seeing him when he was on Unit Echo before he was held and beaten. Surprisingly, Bakugou hadn’t participated in Neito’s punching-bag session. But Bakugou was a loud-mouth, abrasive asshole who didn’t share personal details with anyone, so he was certain that Denki wouldn’t be aware of his mental health history of all things. Honestly, anyone crazy enough to want to be a hero and make it far enough to get into UA must have something mentally wrong with them, whether that be some sort of trauma, something they feel the need to prove, or just plain old masochism.

Sure, Neito was being a hypocrite, but he was a successful hypocrite. He finally managed to tackle Denki and put his hand over the exposed skin of his throat. Just in time for their other classmates to join them. The other side battles had wrapped up and winners had been declared. It was down to Denki and Neito, and now they had an audience just as Neito was coming out on top.

Victory tasted great.

While it lasted.

Neito stood up, already feeling victorious, and charged up. Denki shot up after him, and put his hands up in a calming gesture, but Neito wasn’t paying much attention to him. It had been a while since he had copied Denki’s quirk, and by the feel of it, Denki had built up some stamina and endurance to get the voltage even higher. It felt powerful, unstoppable, and electrifying.

The last thing Neito saw was Denki’s concerned face as he rushed toward him, even through the blast of electricity that Neito had surrounded himself with.

After that, everything went dark.

Chapter Text

Denki had tried surrendering, even if it would mean a tongue-lashing from Bakugou later. Afterall, his best friend’s safety was more important than winning a training, even if they were supposed to be enemies in that moment. He tried to surrender and get Neito to stop building up charge, but Neito just kept going higher and higher, the manic smile growing and his laughter getting louder. He didn’t realize the danger he was in; he was just high on the newfound power that Denki had been steadily growing. While everyone else took cover, Denki had rushed forward, right through the electricity that zapped and sizzled across his skin. Denki had managed to catch Neito before he fell to the ground or hit his head on a nearby piece of pipe that was sticking out of the wall.

The training ground was unsafe and disorganized, which was good for training heroes to be prepared for anything, but bad for heroes who just wanted to help their friend who took on a quirk that had grown more powerful than he had realized.

Denki didn’t even realize that he was hurt until he woke up in Recovery Girl’s office.

Denki had a truly heroic experience where his legs moved before his mind had even decided what to do. When the static charge around Neito got too big and started to burst, others recoiled, which was the right thing to do. Denki rushed forward, and the only reason he was mostly unharmed was because it was his quirk that had been stolen, so his body was well-equipped to handle the electricity. Denki didn’t care either way. He would do it again. And again. And again, given the opportunity.

Denki had crashed against the wall with the broken pipe sticking out of it, and it had easily slashed through his costume and the skin on his back, but he didn’t even feel it because he was too concerned about his best friend who was finally in his arms once again, and he wasn’t about to get distracted by pain and mess anything up.

Denki immediately gathered the charge that was still raging though Neito and pulled it into his own body instead. As he continued pulling the electricity from Neito, he started to discharge it into the ground below them and the building at his back, anywhere that would take the charge and dissipate it instead of continuing to be a risk to Neito. Denki couldn’t remember it later, but he was screaming at someone to go fetch Hitoshi, knowing that Neito would want to see his soulmate when he finally came around again.

Denki did all this so automatically and quickly that he short-circuited his own brain, but he was so high on adrenaline that it didn’t catch up with him until after he was sure that Neito was in the clear.

The electricity roared and crackled in Denki’s ears, but he could still hear his louder classmate yelling at him to back off of Neito and let him face the consequences of his own actions. Denki ignored Bakugou, not caring if he would be lectured later as long as he knew that Neito wouldn’t go through the same thing he always did when he went all-out, but it looked like it was too late for that.

Still, he could make it better, and he would.

When the excess electricity was away from Neito, though still haphazardly striking off of Denki’s skin, Neito started to stir. Denki had hoped that Hitoshi would have arrived quickly but knew that probably wouldn’t have happened quickly enough based on how far away the training ground is from the school building. Denki hoped that any familiar face and voice were good enough to help Neito through waking up disoriented, even if it wasn’t his soulmate that was there to comfort him. Denki grit his teeth, hoping that experience under Hitoshi’s quirk would make him feel more familiar and at ease as he came around.

“You’re okay, you’re fine,” Denki started, looking around for Hitoshi, but not seeing him arrive yet. “You’re at school. It’s a training exercise. You took my quirk and short-circuited. You’re just waking up. You’re going to be fine. You’re at school, outside. It’s a training exercise. You took my quirk and short-circuited. You’re just coming around now. No big deal! You’re fine.”

Neito’s eyes fluttered open and looked up at Denki, who was still absolutely glowing from all of the electricity thrumming through his body that he had taken out of Neito.

“Does anything hurt?” Denki asked.

Instead of answering, Neito asked, “did I win?”

And then Denki collapsed.

No one could get close because of the electricity that Denki was still emitting. Mr. Aizawa and Vlad King tried to command Neito away so that he could go get checked by Recovery Girl, but Neito couldn’t just leave the boy he loved in this condition until it went away naturally. That would take too long. It hadn’t been five minutes, yet, and Neito still had Denki’s quirk, so he started pulling the electricity back from him and pushing it into the ground, just like Denki had done for him seconds earlier.

It was a genius move that was really only helpful in this specific type of circumstance, and Neito didn’t know if he would have thought of it on his own. He realized that Denki must have done extensive quirk work during the year, and probably just as much extensive research into electricity as well, if his various TikTok handles had anything to do with it.

However, even with extensive research, and even if he got to practice, which wasn’t likely unless he got another electric-type quirk user to help him train, it was still a risky move. Neito blinked back tears as he thought about the nasty things he said to him, and yet he still rushed forward to immediately come to his aid when he overused the stolen quirk. That was the exact type of thing that people looked for in a hero, and Neito hated himself for ever even trying to doubt that Denki didn’t wholly deserve his spot in Class 1-A, let alone trying to make Denki think that the other students would call him crazy if they found out about the voices he heard.

If anyone was crazy, it was Neito, wasn’t it? He was the one who was unhinged, yet his classmates still treated him decently. Neito didn’t even have an excuse or reason, like Denki had the voices, to be as crazy and manic as he was. Denki was lightyears ahead of him, and Neito knew he made a huge mistake because Denki probably believed every word Neito spat at him, even though in reality, it was just a massive self-projection.

Neito felt a little fuzzy and noticed the similarities to how it felt being under Hitoshi’s quirk. He felt he was fine to walk, but his teachers insisted that he allow the robots to wheel him to Recovery Girl’s office, and he couldn’t exactly directly disobey his teachers twice in a row, so he complied.

He heard the hero course students, from both Class 1-A and Class 1-B, muttering amongst themselves about how terrible Neito is and how selfless Denki was to save someone who underestimated him, copied his quirk, and brought disaster onto himself. They called him a crazy bastard and didn’t care if he overheard.

Neito tried not to care. He tried to mentally brush the comments off, but the most he was able to do was to refrain from letting the tears fall until he was out of sight of the other students. But it was just as he deserved, wasn’t it? He tried to distract Denki by threatening the very thing that their classmates now thought about him.

All he wanted to do was to beat Denki with his own quirk to try to knock him off of the pedestal that Neito had placed him on in his own mind ever since Denki snapped his imaginary picture on his imaginary camera in response to Neito’s signature sass.

All he wanted to do was to stop being in love with Denki, but it backfired. He was more in love with Denki than ever, and he hated himself more than ever, too.

Hitoshi was waiting in Recovery Girl’s office when Neito was wheeled in by the robots, Denki’s own set of robots wheeling his unconscious body in right after. Hitoshi stood up, but hesitated, before coming over to Neito. The hesitation hurt a little, but Neito wished Hitoshi would have gone to Denki first, instead. He felt lower than low and needed something to help him drown in self-pity, but he didn’t have any excuses or reasons to justify it other than what he had done to himself.

Neito explained what had happened, and Hitoshi listened quietly. Neito had tears dripping down his face, and he didn’t even bother to wipe them away. Hitoshi never saw Neito so vulnerable, but even then, his eyes still lit up when he talked about how amazing and heroic Denki was. Hitoshi had mixed feelings. Hitoshi was grateful to Denki for getting Neito out of that situation unscathed, but him acting like that did nothing to dampen the feelings that either soulmate had developed for him. He knew that Neito was feeling the same way and had fallen even deeper for Denki.

When Neito told Hitoshi about what the other students were saying, Hitoshi knew they were in for a rough ride, because Denki would absolutely not allow anyone to say anything bad about Neito, and both soulmates would fall for Denki even harder.

“Is there any denying it? Is fighting it even going to do anything?” Hitoshi had asked, glancing away from his tearful soulmate and to the electric blonde boy who lied unconscious on the next cot over.

Recovery Girl had given him a kiss to heal the wound on his back, but his brain had short-circuited and just needed time to bounce back and get the electricity stabilized again.

Neito opened his mouth to respond, but at that moment, Denki let out a gasp before sucking in a breath immediately after. He twitched in his unconscious state, and his breathing increased.

“Nightmare?” Hitoshi questioned, moving closer to get a better look.

Neito opened his mouth and started singing the lullaby that he sang almost every night for Hitoshi. Hitoshi looked back at him with nothing but pure love in his eyes, but Neito felt that he did not deserve to be looked at like that, so he focused on Denki, and watched his twitching stop and his breathing return to normal.

“We have to tell him,” Hitoshi declared.

Neito continued to sing.

Hitoshi sighed. “We have to. Maybe the not knowing is the worst part. There’s too many what-ifs. What if he doesn’t suspect and he thinks we actually hate him? What if he feels the same? What if—”

“You said so yourself,” Neito argued, abruptly stopping his singing. “It would end badly. Either he doesn’t feel the same way for us, or he does. If he doesn’t, maybe he never will because of the way we’ve been distancing ourselves from him. If he doesn’t, maybe he could someday. If he does, or he could, he might find his own soulmate, and that would hurt all of us. If he does, and it even works out, he might feel like he’s coming between us, or that he will never truly be secure because he isn’t permanently bonded to us like we are to each other. There are so many different scenarios that could go wrong and ruin everything.”

“So… we tell him anyway?” Hitoshi pressed, eyes flickering between his soulmate and his crush.

Neito sighed with a decisive nod. “We tell him anyway.”

When Denki woke up, he was disoriented and alone. It wasn’t as disorienting as usual because he recognized the ceiling of Recovery Girl’s office, so at least he had a location to ground him and remind him of where he was and what happened. He rocked his head back and forth to recalibrate his feeling of orientation in time and space before slowly sitting up.

Denki slumped in on himself when he remembered.

“Oh!” Recovery Girl exclaimed as she came in to check on him and saw that he was awake. “You were hurt during—”

“I remember,” Denki stated without his usual enthusiasm.

Recovery Girl hummed, pleased that Denki’s memory was intact, and ignoring the fact that she was interrupted. The aftereffects of her quirk could make the most patient students into irritable, drowsy disasters for a few hours, so a small interruption so that his day wasn’t needlessly repeated to him wasn’t anything to fuss over. Especially when some excess electricity was still snapping across Denki’s neurons, it was easy to see that he still wasn’t quite himself, yet.

“You’re going to be tired for a while. You hurt your back on the way down. That’s all fixed up, but I couldn’t do anything about the electricity in your brain. That will just have to work itself out like it normally does. Don’t go pushing yourself until you feel like yourself again,” Recovery Girl warned. “And no quirk until tomorrow at the earliest. Just take it easy for now.”

Denki nodded but wondered if he was ever going to feel like ‘himself’ ever again. He often felt this way when coming out of a particularly bad short-circuit, but the added stress over the conflict with Neito and directly disobeying Bakugou and his instructors amplified the feeling of no-return.

Before he could ask about Neito, Recovery Girl announced that he had a visitor. Denki perked up and nodded, and because Recovery Girl could already see the old spark of Denki back in his movements, she allowed the visitor in instead of sending him away.

Denki was hoping that it was Neito, or even Hitoshi who had an update on Neito if Neito wasn’t up to visiting himself. But Neito had gone home early, and Hitoshi had accompanied him to make sure he made it home okay.

When Bakugou stomped into the room, Denki slumped against his cot and put his arm over his eyes.

“Oi, Sparky. That was a risky thing you did out there. You looked heroic as hell, but wasted it on that manipulative little shit,” Bakugou started at his normal, loud volume.

Denki didn’t mind the volume; he didn’t have a headache or anything. He just minded the content. Hell, Bakugou was basically complimenting him, which is unheard of from the self-focused Bakugou, but red-hot anger flashed through him anyway at the mention of Neito.

"Don’t,” Denki warned simply, taking a deep breath to calm himself.

It didn’t do anyone any good to get worked up when he was like this after a short-circuit occurrence. He needed to feel in control before he said or did anything that he couldn’t take back.

“Hah?! He—” Bakugou started, leaping to his feet to defend his right to talk down about the menace who hurt one of his friends.

“Please don’t,” Denki whispered, heart hammering in his chest. “I’m not a hero. What you saw wasn’t heroic. I was just trying to help my best friend avoid the worst side effects of short-circuiting.”

“And here you are,” Bakugou argued, but more gently, sitting back down, “taking on the full effects in his place. Some kind of best friend he is.”

“Please, Kacchan,” Denki pleaded again, finally turning toward Bakugou, not caring that he saw the tears in his eyes.

“You love him,” Bakugou accused incredulously, not even bothering to phrase it as a question. “He has a soulmate, idiot!”

“I love his soulmate, too,” Denki admitted easily with a shrug, like that made it all okay and evened everything out.

They already weren’t talking to him. They were already avoiding him. And in his post-short-circuit state, he didn’t care if anyone or even everyone knew. He just wanted everyone to stop saying nasty things about a boy he loves. He just wanted everyone to stop saying that he was heroic when it was something that anyone would do for a loved one. If Denki had done that for an enemy, that would be heroic. He would even accept the compliments if it was for someone he just disliked, or even an acquaintance, and maybe even a friend. But, for his best friend? One of the two people who he felt such a strong connection with? One of the two people he loved? If anyone, even a civilian, or hell, even a villain, felt this way about a person, they would have done the same exact thing.

So, no. It wasn’t ‘heroic’ at all. It was selfish because he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t do absolutely anything and everything possible to protect those that he loves. If Neito got hurt, he would hate himself. If he didn’t do absolutely everything he could to ensure Neito made it out safely, he would hate himself. It was the bare minimum to keep himself functional.

It was selfish because he wanted to be Neito’s hero. Neito would have been fine after some treatment. He wouldn’t have recovered quite as quickly, but the teachers probably already figured he might do something like that and already had a game plan in mind for how to bring him out of it. Now, Denki probably made Neito feel small and insecure. Denki knows how much Neito’s self-image and progress means to him, but he went and took the experience and opportunity away anyway because he couldn’t stand to see him get hurt the same way he had over and over again as he was building up his ability to use that high voltage. It was terrifying coming around from that, especially when he woke up alone and it took him a few minutes to figure out what had happened. Denki knew he was the best one for the job, from taking the electricity away from Neito to helping him reorient himself when he regained consciousness, but that still did not mean that Neito would ever forgive him for taking away that training experience, let alone making him look bad and himself look good in front of both hero classes.

Denki didn’t know if there would ever be a way to make it up to Neito for his reckless, quick-thinking. Denki knew an apology wasn’t quite right because, to be honest, he wouldn’t change a thing about what he had done. He would do it all again; and that was selfish. You can’t call it a mistake if you’d do the exact same thing again. You can’t apologize if you don’t completely regret what you have done, and Denki didn’t regret it because the outcome was favorable: Neito was okay.

He was lost in these thoughts as he walked across campus, fully intending to grab the next train to take him home and continue to sleep his bad mood off. His journey was brutally interrupted by a harsh slap to the back, and before the offender even spoke, Denki knew who it was.

There was only one classmate who wouldn’t treat him like he was fragile and would slap him right in the back where he had just been impaled hours earlier.

“Come with me,” Bakugou commanded, stalking off ahead of Denki without waiting to see if he would follow.

Denki did follow. He wasn’t pleased with Bakugou’s comments about Neito, but he didn’t push it further when Denki asked him to stop. They were still good friends and Bakugou was someone he could trust to give him blunt truths and not skirt around important issues.

Bakugou also didn’t leave Denki to be alone. He could have avoided the electric blonde, but he was hyperaware and attentive to his friends, and he didn’t let Denki feel left out since the first time Denki followed Bakugou and Kirishima during a training and made the one-off comment that he didn’t like being alone when questioned why he followed. Bakugou was harsh and loud and explosive, but he was a good friend.

So, when Denki mindlessly followed Bakugou through random alleyways until they ended up at a junk yard, he was lost in his thoughts and didn’t realize the weird location until they had arrived and Bakugou presented the view with a wave of his arms.

“What?” Denki asked, mentally exhausted.

“Time to blow off some steam,” Bakugou explained, stalking forward toward some abandoned televisions, and setting one up onto a table.

“I can’t use my quirk until tomorrow,” Denki tried to argue, really just wanting to go home and wallow in self-pity.

“No quirks allowed. Just pure destruction,” Bakugou clarified, a promise in his voice.

Bakugou expertly flipped up a bat into the air, catching it by the handle, and giving it a few good test swings. He then whipped the bat in Denki’s direction with no warning, and Denki caught it wide-eyed before looking at Bakugou like he was nuts.

“Are you nuts? Are you trying to kill me?” Denki asked incredulously.

“Just trying to get your mind on something else. What better way than a shock to your system? Nice reflexes by the way,” Bakugou complimented, jutting his chin up in the air as he nonchalantly reached behind him.

Denki should have known something was amiss when Bakugou was giving out free compliments, but hindsight is 20/20.

Denki reacted beautifully, his instincts kicking in before his brain even had a chance to make a conscious decision to swing the bat as Bakugou whipped an old alarm clock in Denki’s direction.

“Dude! You can’t just—” Denki tried to object but was rudely interrupted by a lamp flying his way next.

Denki swung the bat and reveled in the lamp breaking and the reverberations it made against the bat that traveled into his hands and up to his arms. It made him feel alive.

“There it is!” Bakugou yelled, pausing his movements mid-throw, finding the essence of Denki coming back to the surface as Denki’s eyes glittered and he smiled at the feeling. “Now, see how much damage you can do to that,” he commanded, pointing at the television that he had aligned on the table earlier.

And Denki didn’t hesitate to step forward, and swing.

Chapter Text

Denki was spacing out, like he always did when he did one of the exercises that Touya had taught him years before. Staring into the familiar icy-blue color, he imagined himself as a figure skater, even though in reality, he had horrible balance on ice skates. He had tried before, imagining himself skating backwards, skating so quickly that he passed the other skaters in a dusting of ice from his skates, and even doing cool tricks. In reality, though, he fumbled, running in place but not actually moving forward before he fell face-first onto the ice. That was back during a fun weekend when he was still best friends with Hitoshi and Neito, but it was fun to reminisce.

Denki had slept soundly throughout the night, no nightmares at all. He woke up refreshed around 5:00 a.m. and wanted to get some training in before class started, so off to the training gym he went. After a boring, lonely train ride, he walked through the school entrance and headed to the furthest gym from the entrance, hoping that he could avoid interrupting anyone else who might be up this early. Denki didn’t usually train that early in the morning, and he didn’t know what everyone else’s routines were, so he was trying to avoid messing up someone else’s morning ritual. He hadn’t seen anyone as he walked, so he had thought he was in the clear.

Imagine Denki’s surprise when he opened the door to find Todoroki Shouto warming up. He had attempted to excuse himself and leave, but Todoroki said that it was okay if he joined him and that he usually does better when there’s a little competition. Denki couldn’t argue with that logic, because he often did his best when he was competing against Hitoshi and Neito, so he stayed.

Denki was feeling a lot more like himself, even though he was sore from his destruction-fest with Bakugou the evening before. His muscles were sore, but his daydreaming really helped take the edge off. What’s better on sore muscles than laying right on a huge floor made of ice?

“Why are you staring at me? Is there something on my face?” Todoroki asked, looking at Denki in question.

“Oh! No! No, no. Nothing like that,” Denki reassured, shaking his head. “Just daydreaming. Sorry!”

“Daydreaming about what?” Todoroki inquired.

Todoroki didn’t really care, but he wasn’t the best social butterfly, and needed some practice. Who better to practice with than the electric social genius of the class?

“Ice skating,” Denki answered laughingly. “Your blue eye is easy to get lost in, and it helps me focus… or rather, it distracts me so I can make it through my workouts.”

“You’re surprisingly competent,” Todoroki attempted to compliment.

“That’s not the compliment you think it is, my dude,” Denki said, but laughed, so Todoroki knew he wasn’t upset with him for his social misgivings.

“I just mean,” Todoroki continued, actually interested in the conversation as more than just social practice and wanting to keep it going, “you’re easily keeping up with me, and I was trained daily by the number two hero,” he explained as he shifted his position, but not dropping out of the plank position that the two had been holding for four minutes and was still holding on strong.

Neither wanted to be the first to drop, and neither had even started to feel the strain, yet. Todoroki was surprised. Denki seemed to fly under his radar—maybe under everyone’s radar, because no one seemed to see him as a threat. Under the school uniform, gym uniform, and layers of his hero costume, it’s not so obvious just how fit Denki had really become from sticking so rigidly to Touya’s training regimen.

“I guess you never noticed before because we’ve never really spent any time together,” Denki pondered aloud.

Todoroki nodded his agreement. “You spend a lot of time with Bakugou, I’ve noticed.”

“He’s a good friend,” Denki commented, holding steady in the plank position, grateful for the distraction of conversation.

“Is he?” Todoroki questioned flatly.

Denki couldn’t decide what he meant by that, so he moved the conversation along. “You spend a lot of time with Izuku.”

Todoroki quirked his eyebrow at that, and commented, “I didn’t know that you two were on such friendly terms to be using given names.”

“Oh! I didn’t mean—" Denki started to backtrack, but Todoroki interrupted him.

“He won’t tell me how he knows you, either,” Todoroki admitted. “He used your given name when referring to you before, and he had the same reaction.”

“How was training with Endeavor?” Denki asked to change the subject.

“Horrendous,” Todoroki answered bluntly, causing Denki to let out a bark of laughter.

It was funny how the world worked sometimes. Here was Todoroki, in a prestigious high school, in one of the top hero courses in Japan, and he hated the training that helped get him there, while Touya would have been ecstatic to keep training with Endeavor if it weren’t for his quirk and body being incompatible.

“Do you even want to be a hero?” Denki questioned.

“No one has ever asked me that before,” Todoroki admitted, dropping his head toward the floor to think.

Denki waited patiently for an answer, feeling kind of sad for Todoroki that he had never been asked that before. What kind of life must he have lived if no one, not even a friend, had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up?

“I think I do,” he finally decided on, looking back up at Denki. “Do you?”

“So much,” Denki admitted. “Honestly, I didn’t think I stood a chance with something as common as an electric quirk, but here I am!”

“Others underestimate you, but maybe you underestimate yourself, too,” Todoroki suggested, noticing Denki’s insecurity among other top hero students.

“I like when others underestimate me, to be honest,” Denki admitted, pausing to think. “But maybe you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” Todoroki stated. “Not just anyone can keep up with me. Who trained you anyway?”

“Oh? I’m surprised you don’t know,” Denki stated, looking closely at Todoroki to see if any facial expressions might give him away.

“Why would I know?” Todoroki asked flatly.

“Your brother… Touya. He trained me,” Denki confessed slowly, watching Todoroki’s face for any hint of a reaction.

Todoroki was a very flat, controlled individual, but even then, Denki saw the slight widening of his eyes before he quickly schooled his face back into a neutral expression. He really didn’t know.

Denki hadn’t wanted to admit it, but he figured Todoroki might want to know, and if he shared more information, maybe he would learn more about his late friend.

“In the mental hospital—Fields? We were patients at the same time, and he trained with us to help us become heroes. He made this amazing training regimen, and I still follow it every day,” Denki explained.

Todoroki’s mismatched eyes trailed up and down Denki’s lean, muscular body and nodded his understanding.

“So, that’s why you and Midoriya are so familiar,” Todoroki connected.

Denki looked away, not wanting to confirm an answer that might negatively affect his friend, but not wanting to lie because he didn’t know how much Todoroki knew.

“I think half of our class has been in a mental institution at some point or another,” Todoroki added, in the interest of continuing the conversation. “It’s almost like a prerequisite to being accepted into UA.”

Denki burst out laughing at that, the emotional tension leaving his body, even as the physical tension remained as he held his position.

“Others are being open about being patients in a mental hospital?” Denki questioned.

“It comes up randomly. Just like you, everyone is super open about their own experience, but they won’t talk about anyone else they met there specifically. Only after Midoriya, Yaoyorozu, and Uraraka were all talking freely about it did any of them talk about being in the same hospital at the same time with each other. That’s how I know that you’re all meant to be here,” Todoroki stated with a definitive nod.

“How so?” Denki inquired, the burn in his arms and abdomen all but forgotten.

“You all care about doing the right thing. You all freely admit that you were a mental health patient but treat your knowledge about others’ mental health treatment with the highest confidence. It’s very insightful,” Todoroki supplied.

“Did Touya ever talk about the annoying electric blond boy that he was roommates with for one night?” Denki asked, wondering if Touya told his little brother any stories about the antics they got up to. Denki wouldn’t have been surprised if Touya had talked about Neito’s antics without mentioning him by name, or the QQQ in general.

“I never really talked to Touya,” Todoroki informed.

“What? You never talked to your own brother? That doesn’t make any sense,” Denki commented, furrowing his brow in thought at the new information.

“I didn’t even know he was dead until a month after it happened,” Todoroki admitted.

The surprise made Denki drop from his plank position and look at Todoroki with wide eyes, not caring that he lost the little competition they had going on. Todoroki elegantly lowered himself out of the position as well, stretching out his muscles as a cool down.

“A month?” Denki asked, horrified. “But that was after his funeral!” he objected, switching positions to sit crossed legged and give Todoroki his full attention.

Todoroki nodded, confirming Denki’s assertation. “My father had me training constantly. If I wasn’t in school or studying or sleeping, I was training. When he left to go deal with ‘matters,’ which I later found out was to help organize a search for Touya when he went missing, he left me to train on my own and build up my endurance. He had me working on a new technique during the funeral, and I was so exhausted from the intense training that I slept through Fuyumi’s crying that night,” Todoroki explained, a distant look on his face that was somehow different from the neutral expression he usually wore.

“How did you find out?” Denki whispered, trying to hold back tears from the awfulness of the whole situation.

“We had family dinners once a month,” Todoroki started. “It was Fuyumi’s idea, and the only time I really got to see my siblings for more than just a few seconds while passing them in the house on my way to train. I was waiting for everyone to arrive, but everyone else started eating. Then, I realized that there wasn’t an extra plate, so I asked if Touya had other plans with his friends. Fuyumi broke down sobbing, pushed her plate away, and ran from the room. Natsuo was pissed and started yelling at our father, questioning how I didn’t even know that Touya was dead.”

Denki’s heart hurt at the new information. He knew that Touya had it rough because he had wanted more than anything to be in Shouto’s place, to be trained by a Pro Hero in preparation of becoming a hero himself someday. He wasn’t aware of how awful it must have been for Shouto, who never had a choice, either. Shouto, who was never even trusted with the information that his older brother had died, and who wouldn’t have known even a month later if he hadn’t questioned his brother’s absence.

“My own brother. Dead. And I didn’t know about it. I didn’t join the search when he was declared missing. I wasn’t there when his remains were discovered. I didn’t attend the funeral. I was training. Only training. So, I stopped training, and started to spend more time with Fuyumi and Natsuo. When Endeavor would enter the room and command me to go train, I would act like I didn’t even hear him. From that point on, I would only train alone or with Natsuo. If Endeavor even dropped by just to watch, I would stop mid-exercise and leave.”

Denki felt a little guilty. He didn’t realize it until that moment, but he had held some resentment for Endeavor and his youngest son when they weren’t bothered enough to come to the funeral for Touya. He had it in his mind that the only way they wouldn’t have shown up was because they didn’t care as much as they should have, but with the tears gleaming in Todoroki’s eyes, he came to the realization that Shouto cared and regretted that he wasn’t there for Touya’s life or death, and that he started to make up for that immediately by making a point to spend more time with his remaining siblings.

“You know, it hurts to think about, but without his training, I wouldn’t be anything near how powerful I am today,” Todoroki muttered, avoiding eye contact with Denki. “I’m trying to make it on my own from now on, though. That’s why I won’t use my left side. Because it’s from him. I want nothing to do with him.”

There was a pause then, for Todoroki to process that he just shared this information with Denki, a boy in his class who he hadn’t said two words to previously, who now knows something about him that not even Midoriya had unpacked yet. Todoroki knew that Denki was a social genius, but he didn’t know he was that good. He knew he was trustworthy, though, so he didn’t feel insecure about what he had just disclosed. Quite the opposite, actually. He felt lighter, talking to someone who knew Touya about what he himself had gone through after Touya’s death, and how much his brother’s passing had impacted him and changed his outlook.

“Can you tell me about him?” Todoroki asked as they both sat on the floor, stretching out various muscle groups as they talked.

And Denki did. Denki told him about the QQQ and all of the mischief that they had gotten into on Unit Beta. Denki told him about the training and the competition that Touya instilled in his trainees to make them better, faster. Denki told him about Touya’s fun, laid-back attitude and how dependable he was. Denki told him about his dreams of becoming a hero, despite his lack of control over his powerful quirk, and waking him and his friends up with a blow horn, only to have them run outside barefoot before working through the exercises.

Denki had never seen Todoroki smile, let alone laugh, until he told him stories about Touya and his warm and welcoming personality.

“I bet he felt the same way about you and Monoma, as well,” Todoroki had commented after Denki expressed how much Touya’s help had helped him progress, and how he never would have developed the confidence in his body without the muscle there to help control his electricity better. “Even if he never made it as a hero, I’m sure that you helped him realize that he could still impact the world if he were to become a hero trainer.”

“Woah, back up,” Denki commanded, furrowing his eyebrow. “I never said anything about Monoma.”

“Sorry, I just assumed,” Todoroki answered. “Was I incorrect?”

“What made you think that Monoma was part of the QQQ?” Denki asked, answering Todoroki’s question with a question, but Todoroki didn’t mind. He knew it was a sensitive topic to disclose another person’s involvement in the mental health setting.

“I witnessed his performance during the entrance exam. He’s very impressive,” Todoroki complimented.

“That doesn’t—” Denki started, but Todoroki sighed. He’s always been a bad liar, and he knew that wouldn’t explain how he so confidently came up with the Class 1-B student’s name.

“I was trying to avoid this, because everyone is so secretive about everyone else’s involvement in a mental institution except for themselves, but you might already know,” Todoroki started. “Monoma and Bakugou were arguing after class one day as I was leaving the premises. Bakugou called him crazy and unhinged, and Monoma said that he was one to talk because they both knew that Monoma wasn’t the only one who had inpatient history in a psychiatric hospital. Bakugou shot back with at least he wasn’t moved around through all of the units because no one could stand him for more than a few days at a time without wanting to smash his face in. Monoma started to leave, and Bakugou yelled after him, saying that he would always be second class: in a mental hospital, in Class 1-B, and later in the real world, too. I thought there was going to be a huge fight, but Monoma just continued walking away instead of turning back around.”

Denki had a lot to think about with this new information, and Todoroki did, too, with new insight on his brother. Todoroki left the training gym, and Denki took the opportunity to practice building up and maintaining his charge. It was always shaky after a short-circuit, but it had to be done to rebalance and to get his confidence back. Who knew when the next training would be? He was surrounded by amazing potential heroes, so he had to be in top shape at all times if he even hoped at staying on their level.

He had started his breathing routine and building up charge in times with his breaths but heard the door open again.

“Did you forget something?” Denki asked, turning around to warn Todoroki not to get too close to him, lest he get shocked, only to freeze when he met the familiar blue eyes of Neito.

Speak of the devil.

“Sorry,” Neito apologized, reaching for the door handle to leave. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Wait!” Denki asked, taking a step forward and willing his electric charge to dissipate so he could get closer without risking shocking Neito.

“If it was anyone else, they wouldn’t be able to stick around because I’m working my way back up to full charge after short-circuiting, but since you’re you and your quirk is yours… What I’m trying to say is, will you stay? Do you want to train with me?” Denki asked, hopefully.

Chapter Text

Neito froze in the doorway of the training gym and forced himself to make eye contact with Denki. He looked sincere. Neito decided that even if Denki was pissed and wanted to zap the fuck out of him because of the stunt he had pulled the day before, then who was he to stand in Denki’s way? Even if it came down to it, Neito knew he was safe. Denki wouldn’t save his ass just to harm him the next day.

Neito kind of wished that Denki would knock him on his ass. Or at least yell at him a little. Call him a few names, maybe. And if Denki did, Neito knew he would deserve it. The fact that Neito knew he wouldn’t made him feel terrible. If Denki was angry, Neito could beg for forgiveness. The way Denki is, he would think there is nothing to forgive, even though Neito is so, so sorry.

So, Neito sighed, crossed the threshold, and closed the door behind him, closing him in with the electric boy that his soulmate and himself loved dearly.

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want… just because I asked,” Denki reassured as Neito stepped closer, noticing his dejected mood.

“It’s not that,” Neito said, shaking his head and hoping that Denki might drop it.

But Denki always knows what Neito needs most, doesn’t he?

Neito made his way to the center of the roomy gym, toward Denki. Denki offered his hands, and Neito took them, feeling Denki’s familiar quirk envelope his own body, begging to be used once again.

“Raise the charge on your inhales, and stabilize it on your exhales,” Denki instructed. “Repeat until you start to feel disoriented, then back off a little. If you can stabilize it, then you can try to go higher again.”

Denki showed Neito the meter strapped to his wrist that determines voltage levels and explained that it goes the whole way up to 3 million volts, but Denki had never made it past 1.3 million, yet.

Neito nodded in understanding, and they both allowed the electricity to come bursting forth and surround them.

After a few breaths of steadily rising the charge with each inhale, Neito asked, “how did you learn how to do this?” on an exhale.

On the next exhale, Denki answered, “I taught myself. It took a long time.”

“You did a good job,” Neito complimented, his voice wavering.

Denki was amazing enough not only to improve that much since he had last copied his quirk but did it all on his own. Neito was in amazement at the lengths his friend would go to. He unwittingly squeezed Denki’s hands, and Denki knew that yesterday’s events were weighing down on Neito but was mistaken about the exact feelings Neito had.

“I’m really sorry about yesterday,” Denki blurted after building the courage along with the electric charge a few exhales later.

“Don’t,” Neito commanded, biting his lip and looking away, but not pulling his hands out of Denki’s and storming away.

It was probably wrong of Denki, but he was going to use this to his advantage. Neito was obviously curious and eager to advance, and Denki was offering a great training opportunity, so he would hold him hostage and make him hear him out.

“I didn’t mean—” Denki started but stopped himself abruptly, not wanting to be dishonest in anyway with Neito. “I did mean it. And I would do it again. But I’m sorry how it turned out for you.”

“Seriously, don’t be,” Neito attempted to dismiss, but Denki would just not let it go.

“If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you—” he started.

“Tensai,” Neito interrupted, immediately grabbing Denki’s attention at the use of his code name from the QQQ. “You didn’t do anything wrong. If anyone should be apologizing, it’s me.”

“No—” Denki tried, but Neito interrupted.

“And I knew this is how you would be if I tried to apologize. Dammit, Denks! Why do you want anything to do with me after what I did? After what I said?” Neito asked, genuinely distressed about his friend’s lack of anger.

“It was just a training exercise,” Denki defended.

“But I made it personal!” Neito argued, the electricity swelling around them as they argued.

“I can handle it!” Denki argued back. “I handled it just fine!”

“You handled it perfectly,” Neito spat angrily. “But you shouldn’t have to, is the thing! Not from a friend, at the very least!”

When Denki opened his mouth to retort, Neito tensed, ready to be called out on his behavior that wasn’t nearly friend-like in over a year. Neito should have known better.

“It’s fine because you’re my friend!” Denki retorted, brow furrowing, wanting Neito to understand. “Your friendship means more to me than some harsh truths thrown around during a training exercise!”

“They weren’t true, though, is the thing, Denki!” Neito screamed, the lightning cracking around them, their conversation becoming as charged as the air. “They were all lies, thought up so easily because the only truth in them is that they’re all true about me.”

Denki didn’t respond right away, just kept shaking his head back and forth, tears starting to fall down his cheeks. Neither boy made a move to wipe them away, gripping onto each other’s hands like a lifeline; and unbeknownst to them, it was.

“I was just trying to think of the meanest thing I could say to distract you, just to win a damn game,” Neito yelled admittedly. “I’m sorry, Denki! I’m so sorry,” he yelled over the lightning, flashes of light dancing across his troubled face. “I don’t deserve to be your friend!”

Whatever Denki was going to say was interrupted by the shattering of the electricity meter, having reached past its limit. Denki and Neito were startled by the shattering and looked around the gym, blinding electricity shooting off to every corner, bright, hot, fast, dangerous, powerful, and completely addictive.

Neito could see the confusion turning to understanding on Denki’s face, loving that he got to see a new realization happening up close, with the shattering light effects of the lightning striking throughout the gym.

“Together, we make a circuit. We can go higher together than I ever could on my own,” Denki explained as he made the connections. “We’re over 3 million volts combined, and I don’t feel disoriented at all. How are you feeling?”

That was just like Denki, to be worried about how Neito was faring after an intense argument that literally lit up the whole gymnasium.

Neito nodded, certain his hair was standing on end just like Denki’s was. “I’m okay.”

“You’re my best friend, Neito!” Denki yelled over the lightning. He waited for Neito to meet his eyes to finish, “nothing will ever change that!”

When Neito finally smiled at him, Denki asked, “now how are you feeling?”

“Like I could kiss you,” Neito admitted, leaning in as Denki processed what he had said.

Denki’s eyes had widened, and he froze in place. Denki would admit to not pulling away from Neito, but if asked, he would deny leaning in to meet Neito halfway, even though that would be a big fat lie.

Before Neito could finally, finally kiss Denki, the door slammed open. Both boys whipped in the direction of the door to see Hitoshi standing there, staring wide-eyed at his soulmate and best friend in the center of the gym, inches away from kissing, as lightning surrounding the two struck out fantastically around them, reaching the whole way to the door where Hitoshi stood.

Denki’s heart fell to the floor as he jumped back and tried pulling away.

“Stop,” Neito commanded, holding on tightly to his hands, but not moving closer. “At this voltage, we’ll be knocked out if we break the circuit! Talk me through coming back down!”

Denki nodded, shakily, and walked them through lowering the charge on exhales with a wavering voice. It was easier and faster to lower the charge than it was to build it, but Denki refused to look Neito in the eye throughout the whole process. Neito was dismayed to feel Denki shaking, and knew it wasn’t because of the high voltage. He knew nothing he could say would make Denki feel secure. Time would just have to do the work for him.

Neito noticed with surprise that as the lightning started to decrease, all of the lights in the gym were shattered. Denki seemed too numb to even brag about how amazing they had been.

When it was finally safe for them to release each other, they both looked toward the door to find Hitoshi gone.

Denki held back tears as he quickly packed up his things.

“Denks,” Neito whispered, wondering how much damage he had just done.

“I never meant to come between you two. I’m so sorry,” Denki whispered back as he left, quickly exiting out of sight.

Neito groaned, falling back onto the gym floor that was still hot after the repeated lightning strikes.

"Cheating on me, huh, soulmate?" Hitoshi asked as he strolled into the gym, his smiling face and happy lilt in his voice contradicting the words.

“Almost,” Neito groaned, rubbing at his eyes, and dragging his hands down his face in dismay. “If someone hadn’t interrupted,” he finished, darting a glace at his soulmate who stood towering over him.

Hitoshi wore a soft, but mischievous, smile as he stood over Neito, holding out a hand to help him up off of the floor. Neito took in the view of his soulmate, the light from the open doorway silhouetting him, a purple halo surrounding his head. Neito swore he fell more in love with Hitoshi every day. If only it were that simple. The problem was, he fell more in love with Denki every day, too.

Hitoshi hoisted Neito onto his feet, glass from the shattered lights crunching under their feet as Hitoshi steadied Neito. Hitoshi quickly noticed that Neito did not seem as pleased as he should have been about almost kissing the boy who they both love.

“What’s wrong?” Hitoshi asked, all signs of humor dropping from his face as he gave his soulmate his full attention.

“You were right,” Neito whispered, looking down at the floor. “Denki apologized to me,” Neito informed, making Hitoshi smile smugly at knowing him so well, “and he thinks he’s coming between us,” Nieto finished, making Hitoshi’s smile drop off of his face and rub his forehead in dismay.

Hitoshi let out a resigned sigh. “One step forward…”

“Two steps back,” Neito finished with a dejected sigh.

Recap of the last 25 Chapters:

Denki heard voices in his head, but instead of only hearing one, he heard two at the same time, which knocked him on his ass (literally)! Because it’s rare to find your soulmate at 12-years-old, and even rarer to have two soulmates, the doctor told his parents that he most likely has early onset schizophrenia and is hallucinating, but marks in his chart the potential that he might have heard his soulmates just so that the possibility can be explored more discreetly, once he’s away from his parents and so no one’s getting their hopes up just for it to not be true.

Denki is sent to Fields Mental Hospital where he meets Momo, Kyoka, and Touya and jams out during music therapy. Back in school, Hitoshi and Neito hear Denki sing and think that Hitoshi’s mental quirk is interacting with their new soulmate bond, so they are sent to Fields Mental Hospital to do some testing with Hitoshi’s quirk and their bond to see if they can determine what is going on. My OC, Hitoshi’s foster care caseworker, Wakakuro, is mentioned, but not actively introduced. Denki gets to meet Neito and Hitoshi. Neito lives up to his reputation as a frequent flier of Fields. An OC technician, Chizato, is introduced. He has a lighthearted, easygoing relationship with frequent flier, Neito.

Neito doesn’t act like he normally does around Hitoshi and Denki, and Touya wants to find out what’s going on. Denki and Neito are amazed that Touya was trained by Endeavor, so they get Touya to agree to train them after catching him up about how they had arrived on the unit together (and how it actually wasn’t Neito’s fault, for once). The QQQ (Quick, Quiet Quad) was formed, training regimens were made, and code names were dished out. Neito was deemed “Raion,” meaning lion. Denki was deemed “Tensai,” meaning genius. The other two code names haven’t been disclosed thus far, yet!

Hitoshi and Neito go through quirk-bond experiments after roping Touya and Denki into the mix. Hitoshi and Denki are amazed at how easily Neito and Touya can stand up for themselves against adults and how the adults actually listen to them and respect them because they are both used to following adults’ blind authority.

After being released from Fields, Hitoshi get placed with new foster parents, more of my OCs, the Hamabi family, consisting of his foster father, Genori, and foster mother, Hanisu. They are pretty great, but Hitoshi also had to move schools after finding his soulmate, but he luckily finds himself at Denki’s school! They go on a field trip to the zoo and have a great time after locating and rescuing Neito from a group of bullies who target him because of his quirk.

Neito’s birthday party consists of only Denki and Hitoshi. They practice using Hitoshi’s quirk and careful instructions to add to Touya’s continued training programs to add an extra level to the piñata. Denki’s birthday party is fun because Neito and Hitoshi look out for him and don’t let his other “friends” ruin his day. Denki secretly invites the others from Fields (Kyoka, Momo, Ochako, Minoru, Tenya, and Izuku) to Hitoshi’s birthday party, knowing that no one from class will show up. Neito gets ahold of Endeavor’s phone number to track down Touya so that he can crash the slumber party to hold an impromptu training the next morning. Touya dies.

Neito and Hitoshi distance themselves from Denki after they discover that they feel the same about Denki as they feel about each other. Denki spends some time with his other friends from Fields, but ultimately finds new hobbies, like playing online video games and making TikTok videos.

Neito, Hitoshi, and Denki all make it into UA. Denki and Neito face off in a battle where Neito steals his quirk with the plan to outdo him with his own quirk in front of both hero classes, but it backfires spectacularly, and Denki jumps in to undo the damage as much as possible. Bakugou is a good friend to Denki, even though he doesn’t understand what he sees in Neito and Hitoshi, and provides Denki with some much needed catharsis in the form of junk yard therapy. Denki makes a new connection with Shouto, and then promptly destroys the gym by almost reconnecting with Neito.

Chapter Text

Denki had become a ball of nerves since the almost-kiss happened with Neito that Neito’s soulmate had just happened to witness. Denki didn’t know what to say to Neito, so he just avoided him. Denki didn’t want his face smashed in, so he avoided Hitoshi as well. How was he supposed to explain to Hitoshi that it was probably fine because he desperately wants to kiss him, too? He’d probably get punched twice. Maybe even brainwashed to hold still so Hitoshi could get the perfect aim lined up, and Denki would let him and not break free because he would deserve everything that happened to him.

What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking at all, was the issue. He was just so happy that Neito wasn’t angry with him and with the buzz of electricity zapping around and not making him feel disoriented like usual—he was high on the feeling, and he wanted to kiss Neito, so it didn’t even cross his mind to stop him.

He had to talk to someone about this, and he knew exactly who he could speak with to get an objective view of the situation. He knew exactly how talking to any of his friends would go, and he was too cowardly to go directly to the source, so that left one option who was detached, completely removed from the situation, and who was able to give him an objective viewpoint and tell him what an idiot he had been.

“So, you almost kissed someone who isn’t your soulmate. So what? It happens all the time,” High5UrDead’s voice crackled through the headset Denki was wearing. After a pause to give full concentration to shooting the incoming zombie hoard, he continued, “it’s not like you kissed someone who has a soulmate himself, right?”

Denki opted to shoot a zombie coming from behind Fri3ndlyFir3 instead of answering.

“Right?! P05itiv3R3v0lt?!” High5UrDead demanded after Denki’s lack of response.

After a few more seconds of giving no response, Denki’s headset crackled to life with the sound of manic laughter from Fri3ndlyFir3.

“Shit,” High5UrDead muttered.

“I know,” Denki whined into the headset, dropping his head back against his chair in resignation.

“Is the soulmate going to come after you?” Fri3ndlyFir3 asked after recovering from his laughing fit, still heaving from the intense feeling of schadenfreude.

“I don’t know. Maybe?” Denki offered, closing his eyes, and bracing himself for his next confession, “but I’d like to kiss him, too.”

“What the fuck?!” High5UrDead yelled through his headset, making Denki wince at the sudden volume blasting in his ears, almost toppling over in his chair at his useless attempt to reflexively try to get away from the loud burst of sudden sound. “Let me get this straight,” he demanded. “You’re in love with two people who happen to be soulmates with each other?!”

“That about sums it up,” Denki admitted.

Being said aloud by another person made him feel terrible. There was no redeeming that, was there?

“So, if I drop off the face of the planet and don’t meet you guys on here, you have to promise me that you aren’t going to rat them out to the heroes for killing me and disposing of my body,” Denki insisted with a laugh, even though he was semi-serious. “It would be exactly what I deserve.”

“We wouldn’t rat them out to the heroes,” High5UrDead promised automatically, almost sneeringly, but Denki didn’t think too much about it, just accepting it as imaginative banter between online friends.

At the same time, in the current League of Villains hideout, Dabi and Shigaraki were lounging in the shared leisure area, headsets on and controllers in hand. Dabi turned to Shigaraki with a wide, manic smile on his face.

“We’d track them down ourselves?” Dabi inquired, after muting his headset so P05itiv3R3v0lt wouldn’t overhear.

“No one messes with our P05itiv3R3v0lt,” Shigaraki confirmed, gloved hands tightening around his controller, and meeting Dabi’s manic eyes with a mischievous look of his own. “They’d wish they were turned in to the heroes once we’d finish with them.”

Denki was nervous, but also excited, for the sports festival. Whenever he thought about it, he became nauseous from the butterflies crashing into the walls of his stomach.

While complaining about his tragic love life was reserved for his online friends, he shared his hesitations about the upcoming sports festival with his Class 1-A friends.

“Oi, Dunce face! Are you paying attention?” Bakugou barked at Denki, who was staring off into space and not working through the math problem in front of him.

“Sorry, Kacchan,” Denki soothed with a smile before looking down, furrowing his brow at the seemingly impossible question.

He had started off strong, but it seemed that he was falling behind once again in his studies. No matter how much he studied, or how long Bakugou would coach him through the problems, he just wasn’t grasping it as easily as he used to. Denki was worried that maybe his quirk was catching up with him and affecting his memory and cognitive ability, but his literature and language grades were better than they ever were, so he was hopeful that it wasn’t anything permanent that a little extra studying couldn’t handle.

“What’s on your mind, Kami?” Kirishima asked.

Bakugou groaned and slammed his book shut, sulkily accepting that the study session was about to turn into a support group and no work would be done.

“It’s just anxiety about the sports festival coming up,” Denki attempted to brush off with a shrug, knowing that he really did need the study time.

“I know exactly how you feel!” Ashido exclaimed, throwing her books and supplies to the side to scoot closer to Denki.

“Can’t relate,” Bakugou interjected, nonchalantly leaning back against the wall. “I know I’m going to win, so it’s not a big deal.”

The group laughed, but they all knew deep down that he was serious. His confidence was well-earned, too. They had all seen the way he trains, the way he studies, the way he goes all out in every single exercise. They all saw how every win wasn’t quite good enough for Bakugou, and how every loss tore him apart only for him to piece himself back together even stronger and not allow himself to make the same mistake twice. Truthfully, they all had complete confidence in their friend, and they all hoped to be up there near the top of the rankings with him.

It turns out that Denki did better than he thought he would. Of course, he would lose to Shiozaki. He thought he had an easy win, but further research into electricity and vines showed him where he went wrong.

Denki was so proud of Midoriya for winning the first round. For such a late bloomer quirk-wise, he was really catching up and determined to bypass them all.

Denki tried to keep his eyes and attention away from Neito and Hitoshi, but it was just so hard. Denki kept a watchful eye on Neito’s group. Having such an intense group made up of Iida, Todoroki, and Yaoyorozu, though, he had his work cut out for him that he didn’t have a spare second to look around for Neito until their groups would pass by each other. Denki would quickly dart his eyes away, and so Denki didn’t notice that Neito’s gaze would linger on him until they absolutely had to focus on his next target.

Denki watched with bated breath as Hitoshi almost beat Midoriya and was so excited that everyone had just witnessed how powerful he was, thinking that maybe he would get the chance to move into the hero course and be with Neito or himself. He stopped at that thought, though. Why would Hitoshi ever want to be in a class with him after he almost kissed his soulmate?

It was also very cool of Midoriya to coax Todoroki into using his fire, even though that turned out to be counterproductive if Midoriya ever wanted a chance of winning.

It was like a bucket of cold water being spilled over him when the winners were presented for the audience and cameras, and there stood Bakugou in the number one position, just like he said he would, but not of his own accord. He was strapped to a cement pillar, shackled, and muzzled. He was struggling and Denki could hear his muffled yells, even through the nasty comments that the crowd was throwing his way.

As someone yelled out about him acting like an animal and how he was going to turn into a villain with that attitude, Denki slapped a hand over his mouth and turned around to retch, trying his best not to vomit everywhere.

Was this his fault somehow?

Maybe someone who helps run the sports festival saw the protest he had organized at the mall. What if that gave someone the idea of using muzzles on misbehaving children instead of informing them of the horrors of some practices in the foster care system? It was a lesson that Denki had to learn eventually: That good deeds and good intentions don’t always have good results.

Thankfully, Denki was socially aware enough to never mention this possibility to Bakugou. The last thing he would ever need was to have one of his friends make his traumatic experience about themselves instead of offering support. Support that Bakugou would scoff at, but secretly appreciate, nonetheless.

It was this incident that made Denki talk to Neito and Hitoshi before he felt ready. To be honest, he would have never felt ready, but it felt like it was way too soon.

Denki braced himself when he caught up to the two soulmates leaving school grounds after the crowds had dispersed, ready to be yelled at or even punched, ready for tears and accusations, ready for the request to just leave them alone already… but none of that came. They just stood there, open looks on their faces, ready to hear him out.

And instead of begging for forgiveness, because again, he wasn’t really sorry if he couldn’t tell them he regretted it and would never do it again, could he? Instead of begging for forgiveness, he asked them for help. And like the best friends they were, they ignored the looming problem over their strained relationship, and helped Denki with what he requested, putting the issue on hold until a better time to discuss it.

“I can call Momo tonight,” Hitoshi volunteered.

“We can all meet tomorrow morning, at 4:00 a.m., and get started,” Neito added. “I’ll start researching tonight. Ask Momo to email me anything that would help me.”

Hitoshi nodded in agreement.

Denki sighed, shaking off his nerves, and added, “I’ll bring the donuts and ice cream.”

“Donuts and ice cream for breakfast?!” Neito exclaimed, eyes wide, looking between his two favorite people in the world. He cherished the moment, knowing that it might not last, and added, “can it be chocolate?”

“Anything for you!” Denki had chirped before thinking it through.

He groaned to himself as he walked to the train station, wondering why in the hell he thought it would be a good idea to tell Neito, “anything for you,” with Hitoshi standing right there. Then, he had to go and make it worse by trying to backtrack and tell Hitoshi that he would also do anything for him, as well.

As Denki rushed away from the pair of soulmates, they turned to look at each other, smiles stretching across their faces, and not bothering to hide their flushed faces from the excitement of talking to Denki again and the adorable, awkward encounter that just took place. They might not have talked about what they needed to, but at least Denki was looking at them and talking to them again.

As Denki fell asleep, he was just grateful that Hitoshi didn’t punch him in the face. Then he immediately felt nervous that maybe the punch was coming later, or maybe that he hurt Hitoshi so much that he felt numb, and he wasn’t even angry. Before Denki could continue to spiral into self-doubt and worst-case scenarios, a familiar lullaby started playing in his head, and he was out seconds later.

Chapter Text

Hitoshi and Neito loved Denki. One of the reasons was because, when it mattered, he could put everything aside in order to do the right thing.

Neito’s classmates have heard it all. They know how he feels about Class 1-A and how they think they are so great. They know that he wants to be in Class 1-A, and that is one of the reasons he goes so hard. What they don’t know is that he is so adamant about getting into Class 1-A because of a certain electric blond boy who had stolen his heart is there. After the showdown between Neito and Denki, Class 1-B thought they were doomed to be enemies forever. Neito never talked about his affection for Denki with his classmates. They knew he had a soulmate, and that soulmate was Hitoshi, and he knew they would never understand. They would think he’s throwing away a good thing, that he’s passing over his literal soulmate just to go after someone who is powerful and had made it into Class 1-A. But Neito doesn’t underestimate Hitoshi like others do, because he knows from multiple experiences just how powerful Hitoshi’s quirk is, and just how capable and good Hitoshi is.

Denki is capable and good, too, which is another reason that he loves Denki so much.

But Class 1-B wouldn’t understand; not when they already had the idea of unstable, unhinged, crazy Neito in their minds.

So, it took them all off guard when, instead of gloating and taunting Bakugou, as he was strapped to the podium to stand in the number one spot, he was quiet. When they all turned to look at him, ready for him to burst out with catastrophic insults and join in the leering crowd, they found him lurched forward over the railing, white-knuckled grip on the metal bar keeping him from falling from the balcony seating area, and paler than any of them had ever seen him before.

Neito was breathing hard and had tears in his eyes, but that wasn’t like him at all. He remembered the suffocating feeling of the muzzles that Yaoyorozu had made for them, and the pain of trying to fight against it. He could only imagine the pain that Bakugou was going through, but even more so, the fear. Everyone saw Bakugou’s widened eyes, and took that as rage and indignation, but Neito could see the panic that Bakugou was attempting to fight back with pure anger.

Neito and Bakugou had been on Unit Echo at the same time, and before Neito had wound everyone up enough to pummel him, he had heard about Bakugou’s run-in with a sludge villain who had almost suffocated him during a group therapy session.

Neito criticized everything everyone from Class 1-A did, but he never mentioned the fact that Bakugou never wore his uniform correctly, sporting a loose collar and a missing tie every day. There was a reason for that. Maybe Neito wouldn’t have cared as much if he wasn’t bonded with Hitoshi, who had had similar experiences being in foster care with a dangerous and powerful voice quirk. But did it matter that under different circumstances he would have been taunting Bakugou’s erratic behavior right along with the crowd? Neito didn’t think so, but he didn’t feel like he was thinking at all in that moment.

When Neito lurched forward, trying to get to Bakugou as quickly as humanly possible, Kendou had saved Neito from a nasty fall by grabbing onto him, pulling him back from teetering over the ledge. Neito had turned around and beelined to the stairs, trying to get onto the field as quickly as possible, to get those damn chains and that damn muzzle off of Bakugou’s face.

He didn’t care that Bakugou had called him crazy and unhinged. He didn’t care that Bakugou didn’t think he was good enough for one of his close friends. None of that mattered, because Neito would hope that someone would do the same if it was Hitoshi in that situation. Someone had to do something, and sometimes that someone was going to have to be Neito.

By the time Neito had made it to ground level, pushing past the crowds on the stairs trying to beat the traffic out of the arena, the winners were out of sight once again, and Neito was too late.

So, when Denki had yelled out for them before leaving school grounds that evening, Neito had a hunch that it was going to be about Bakugou instead of the almost-kiss, and he was right, of course. Neito had kept his eyes on not only Hitoshi, but also Denki throughout the sports festival.

When the winners were announced and presented to the crowd, Neito was looking over at Denki instead of the podium. Denki’s color draining from his face and the fact that he almost vomited gave Neito the idea that something wasn’t quite right, and he felt the visceral reaction come over himself as soon as his brain had comprehended what he was looking at.

Neito was just happy that some of the teachers and UA administrative staff had taken Hitoshi aside, out of view of the commotion, probably to talk to him about how far he had made it as only a general studies student. It was a surprise to everyone, and there was murmuring among the crowd about how such a powerful quirk had passed under the radar of the hero course.

But that murmuring quickly turned to sneering in distaste at Bakugou’s erratic behavior, because that is how it might look to those who don’t know someone’s trauma and specific triggers. It didn’t excuse their nasty behavior toward a literal teenager, but it did give reason behind it. It was cruel and heartless, but maybe not senseless.

Hitoshi and Neito were walking in silence as they started to head away from school grounds. Neito had already quickly and quietly explained to Hitoshi what had happened while he was being offered a chance to prove himself further to potentially transfer to the hero course. Hitoshi’s excitement was quickly overshadowed by Neito’s anxiety.

Neito had tried to be happy and excited for his soulmate, but Hitoshi saw right through him. Something was more important than Hitoshi potentially joining the hero ranks, and Hitoshi wanted to know what that was. So, Neito had told him what had happened.

For something like that to happen in the broken foster care system, it was something that could be prepared for. For something like that to happen at UA? In front of a crowd of people who hurled insults instead of expressing concern over how a teenager was being treated by authority figures? For the blatant misuse and abuse of power the organizers had displayed against a student? It was shocking and frightening.

So, they walked in silence, both thinking about how Bakugou must be feeling and wondering how to show their support, even if it came later than they would have liked. It was no use imaging rushing onto the stage, copying a helpful quirk, and breaking Bakugou out of the chains that bound him and the muzzle that silenced him. Not that Bakugou would have much appreciated being rescued like a damsel in distress anyway...

They both stopped short when they heard Denki calling their names and rushing over to them.

“I have an idea. I don’t know if it’s any good or not, but I could use your help,” Denki had huffed, catching his breath after rushing to catch up with the duo.

Neito wanted to bring up the almost-kiss right then, when all three of them were finally together, but even being himself, he knew that another matter was more pressing.

And Denki’s idea had been amazing and thoughtful, as always.

“Do you think he’ll be mad we didn’t run it past him? I would, but he should already be back home and in bed by now…” Denki pondered.

“It’s perfect,” Hitoshi supplied, giving a small, reassuring smile. “I think it shows we support him, and the more people we can involve, the better. He won’t feel indebted or anything because this is all happening after the fact as a response instead of intervening in the moment. But you know him better than we do. What do you think, Denki?”

“Exactly that. He’s too independent and proud, but he likes to make waves and be a leader. Showing a lot of support afterwards would be the next best thing to it not happening at all,” Denki explained before pausing. “At least, I think. What if I’m only thinking that to protect myself because I didn’t think to jump into action like Neito did?” Denki asked, thinking aloud.

“No!” Neito jumped in automatically. “We all know how he would have reacted as soon as I got down there. He wouldn’t want anyone’s help in the moment, least of all mine. It was thoughtless. Like I’d really be able to fight off the organizers myself to get to and release Bakugou? It was dumb.”

“It was heroic,” Denki whispered encouragingly, taking a step forward before hesitating.

It probably wouldn’t look good to reach out and physically comfort Neito right in front of Hitoshi when the two blonds had already gotten caught almost kissing.

“It would have been an amazing display to watch you two use Hitoshi’s quirk against the adults to get them to go away. Then Neito could switch and use something like Kirishima’s quirk to break the chains. It would have been amazing! But with Hitoshi pulled aside, it would have been nearly impossible to get past the organizers to even get the chance.”

Neito had a small, blissful smile on his face as Hitoshi and himself walked with the new plan in place.

“What’s got you smiling again so soon?” Hitoshi asked. He had worried that Neito would be stuck in a foul mood for quite a few days after the muzzle and failed rescue incident, but here he was, smiling and dazing off into space.

“Denki noticed that I had rushed to go to Bakugou,” Neito said, his smile widening as he turned to face Hitoshi. “He noticed that you were pulled away from the rest of the students. He was watching us just as much as we were watching him.”

Hitoshi nodded slowly in thoughtful agreement. “That’s a good sign,” Hitoshi murmured, throwing a small smile in Neito’s direction. “It’ll help that we’ll all be working together tomorrow. All on the same side for once instead of working against each other.”

The day had been a rollercoaster, and they were in for a long night. Who knew what kind of reactions Denki’s plan would bring the following day? As far as the soulmates were concerned, it was worth it just to ease back into Denki’s favor alone. They would do whatever it took, and it also helped that they would be helping with an issue that they had already strongly opposed, even if it centered around another student that they didn’t particularly get along with.

At 4:00 a.m. the next morning, they all met in the gym furthest away from the school’s entrance gate. Todoroki came in around 4:45 a.m., like he always did, and was met with the sight of Yaoyorozu and Neito stuffing their faces with donuts and ice cream and handing off muzzle after muzzle to Hitoshi and Denki. Denki greeted him and invited him to help.

Todoroki was not a social butterfly. He also was not very socially aware. However, even he immediately understood the general purpose and was immediately relieved. Standing at second place on the podium, next to Bakugou, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react or respond. He was very glad to find out that that was not typical and acceptable for adults to restrain a student like that. Living with Endeavor had greatly skewed his normalcy meter, but he was learning. He was glad that his sinking feeling as he stood up there, with Bakugou never giving in or relaxing for even a single second against the chains that bound him, was in tune with how his classmates seemed to be feeling as well.

Todoroki had briefly wondered if he was broken beyond repair from lack of socialization and endless training. This small validation of his own thoughts and feelings was a great relief that maybe he wasn’t a lost cause.

Plus, any sign of teenage rebellion that would make his father go over boiling point with anger was a cause that Todoroki wouldn’t hesitate to get behind.

Neito was just glad that he quickly figured out how to work with Yaoyorozu’s quirk. It was very tricky and took intense concentration, but he was getting more efficient with every mask that he produced after studying the materials and designs all night. He couldn’t help but preen under Yaoyorozu’s praise at getting the hang of her quirk so quickly; he didn’t have to tell her that it was tricky, and that muzzle was literally the only thing he was capable of making because she was already fully aware, and yet she complimented him anyway.

He had always wanted to try Yaoyorozu’s quirk, and it was more exhausting than he thought it would be, but it was also super satisfying feeling the completed muzzles exiting his body, one after another, completely formed and perfect. The caffeine from the chocolate ice cream was helping at least a little bit, and he would be fine until school ended and he could crash that afternoon.

Yaoyorozu was one student from Class 1-A that Neito would admit fully belonged there. Having a cool quirk didn’t mean that she didn’t put a lot of hard work into maintaining it, and it took a lot of knowledge and brain power to have the versatility that she did.

When 6:00 a.m. hit, Todoroki, Denki, and Hitoshi started taking armfuls of muzzles to hand out to classmates who were willing to partake in the demonstration while Yaoyorozu and Neito continued to shove food in their mouths and output more muzzles, with an undefined goal to just make as many as physically possible until the very last minute.

Bakugou sat in one of the vast gyms, empty besides himself, sweating and panting and crying. He was just so frustrated and felt so alone. When the door opened, he turned to snap at whoever it was to leave. When he saw who it was, he added a more personalized bite to his words.

“What the fuck do you want, mindfuck? With those eyebags, I thought you’d be sleeping in until the last possible second,” Bakugou sneered, hoping that the purple-haired general studies student would think his tears were just more sweat. Or better yet, maybe he’d just be offended and leave.

No such luck.

“Denki is organizing a demonstration in protest of how you were treated at the sports festival,” Hitoshi informed, ignoring the remarks, and definitely noticing that there were tears among the sweat on his face, but gracefully not mentioning it. “We’re passing these out to anyone who wants to participate, and we’re wearing them until you get a public apology and an official change to the policy to make sure it never happens again.”

“I don’t need your pity,” Bakugou spat, turning away, and starting to do some push-ups, hoping that Hitoshi would take the hint and leave.

“It’s not pity,” Hitoshi supplied, walking in further and sitting down a few feet away from where Bakugou was, trying his hardest to ignore him as he focused on using the correct form for each push-up, not allowing his fatigue to make him sloppy.

“It’s actually kind of personal. Everyone hates that that happened to you, sure. But I was muzzled in foster care for ‘safety.’ Denki organized a rally at the local mall and got a lot of signatures against the practice. So, you can imagine how it made him feel seeing the practice spread to somewhere as prestigious as UA instead of being wiped out by the demonstration,” Hitoshi explained evenly.

“Dammit,” Bakugou growled, shifting to a kneeling position, and looking over at Hitoshi. “He thinks he gave someone the idea?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Hitoshi admitted with a shrug. “If it’s any consolation, it’s as much about relieving everyone’s guilt for not acting in the moment as much as it is about how you were wronged and how no one wants it to happen again.”

“You know just what to fucking say, don’t you, smartass?” Bakugou grumbled.

Hitoshi just smiled widely in response, knowing that he had Bakugou on board.

“But I’m not… I can’t…” Bakugou started, gesturing toward the muzzles next to Hitoshi.

“Oh! Here! This one is mine specifically. It’s supposed to be a secret, so I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell anyone, but right now, you need it more than I do,” Hitoshi said, grabbing a specific one, even though it looked like all the others.

Hitoshi explained that Yaoyorozu had made some adjustments and that it covers the face but allows for talking and breathing and everything else like it wasn’t even there.

“Use it if you want. I don’t want you to feel left out of your own demonstration. If it’s still too much, no big deal. This whole thing is because this happened to you in the first place, so don’t feel pressured,” Hitoshi explained, handing his prized possession over to Bakugou.

“Don’t feel pressured,” Bakugou repeated mockingly.

Hitoshi just smiled at him, knowing that the whole conversation was pressure and small manipulation in order for Bakugou to feel better about the demonstration taking place in his honor.

Hitoshi had started toward the door to pass out more muzzles when Bakugou whispered, “Shinsou—”

Hitoshi stopped in his tracks and turned around to see Bakugou standing, holding out the muzzle to him from the center of the gym. Hitoshi thought that Bakugou was just going to choose not to participate, but what he actually asked surprised him.

“Will you show me how to put it on?”

And Hitoshi did. He warned him that it’s a weird feeling the first few times and he can either verbally tell him to stop or tap his arm any time he felt like he couldn’t handle it. Bakugou was about to scoff, but quickly uncovered the serious concern behind Hitoshi’s words, and silently nodded his understanding instead.

Hitoshi thought that Bakugou would tap out a few times, his hands hovering around his face and the muzzle and his breathing quickening, but he powered through, slowing his own breathing and recentering himself each time. He also showed him how to feel for the release button to remove it on his own once it was on.

“How does it feel?” Hitoshi asked, stepping back to give Bakugou more space when the straps were adjusted correctly.

“Not terrible,” Bakugou admitted before immediately amending, “actually, pretty easy now that I’m talking right through it.”

“Yaoyorozu is amazing,” Hitoshi offered with a smile and a shrug, gathering up the muzzles and continuing his mission to pass out the others, leaving Bakugou to continue working through his anxiety about the faux muzzle alone.

Hitoshi knew Bakugou was stubborn and wouldn’t want to see him struggle through it. He seemed fine once he was able to speak through it easily, but Hitoshi figured that Bakugou would need some more time to be completely comfortable with it. Hitoshi knew from experience that he himself wouldn’t feel completely comfortable if he didn’t know he was in control and could take it off whenever he wanted, and he also knew that Bakugou wouldn’t want to show weakness in front of anyone, even just Hitoshi, by taking it off, so he left to give him that freedom.

Bakugou was actually really appreciative and spent the rest of his gym time feeling out the mask, pressing it against his face, and breathing through the claustrophobia. Hitoshi was right: Yaoyorozu was amazing, and the mask couldn’t have been more perfect. Bakugou thought that there was no way he’d be able to handle something like that over his face when he couldn’t even stand to button the top button of his shirt or wear his uniform tie, yet there he was. And Hitoshi was pretty amazing, too, to give Bakugou this precious item for him to use through his own hard times.

Hitoshi had quickly and easily handed out muzzles to students who had started trickling in and heading to class. As Hitoshi rounded the corner back toward the gym to get another armful of muzzles to hand out, a realization came to him.

Bakugou had answered his question without hesitation, even after seeing what he could do at the sports festival. Hitoshi often failed to notice right away, like he used to, after being spoiled by getting immediate answers to his questions from his soulmate, friends, and foster family.

Bakugou had also used his actual name, and no one would believe him if he told anyone.

Chapter Text

Aizawa trudged into the classroom, glanced up to see every single one of his students with a black muzzle covering the lower half of their faces, and let out a long sigh, dragging a hand down his face.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but this isn’t productive to learning,” he attempted, putting his bag down and taking his place at the front of the room.

Aizawa’s dark, steely gaze wandered over his class; no one made a move to remove the muzzles.

“If you don’t remove the muzzles in the next five seconds, you’re suspended,” Aizawa threatened, narrowing his gaze and waiting for the compliance from his students, any student at all to start the domino effect of compliance.

Denki had shifted backwards in his seat, getting more comfortable, and meeting Aizawa’s gaze with a hardened and determined one of his own.

“I get it,” Aizawa leered at the class. “You have something to prove. But how are you going to amount to anything if you can’t listen when I tell you to do something? Every student who doesn’t remove their masks in the next thirty seconds is expelled and will not be allowed to attend UA again.”

At that, some students shifted uneasily in their seats, eyes darting around at each other to determine if they were going to stick together on this or if it was every student on their own at that point.

Yaoyorozu was 100% in from the second she agreed to make a ridiculous number of muzzles. If she couldn’t commit to what she believed in, what good was she as a hero?

Uraraka was wondering if she’d ever get another opportunity like UA. Would another high school accept her after she was expelled from UA? Would her scholarship transfer or be rescinded with an expulsion on her record? Then she thought of Bakugou and how hard he had worked and what a great show they had all put on for the potential sponsors for UA, only to be repaid by being strapped, restrained, and muzzled.

Midoriya was thinking about how it was so important to go to UA because that is where All Might was teaching, and how would he ever get a handle on his quirk without All Might’s guidance? Then he thought of Kacchan, and how terrified he had looked as he ran toward him to try to get him away from the sludge villain. He thought about how he was put into the same situation again by heroes, or at least staff hired directly by heroes, and how Kacchan had suffered enough without another incident coming from the heroes as well as the villains.

Iida squirmed in his seat, struggling against different values that were at war at that very moment. Did he follow commands and show that he would be a good hero who could easily respond to the Commission’s demands, even when not completely ethical, or did he stick to his values? He thought about what his older brother, Ingenium, would have done in his place, and that solidified his answer for him. He forced himself to relax back into his seat and focused on his breathing, deciding that he wasn't going to remove that mask for anything.

Bakugou was just pissed. He wanted to see Aizawa try to expel not only the number one winner of the sports festival, but also second and third place, and somehow try to justify that.

Kirishima thought it was super unmanly of his teacher to be taking that stance. Kirishima would proudly stand in defiance to be on the right side of history on this issue.

Bakugou’s other close friends, Ashido, Sero, and Jirou, had wanted to remove their muzzles so badly, but only to yell and scream about how the whole thing was messed up. They all steamed in their seats, knowing that their silent refusal spoke volumes for them, even though it wasn’t quite as satisfying as they wish it was.

Mineta thought that his brave act of defiance might help him win over the favor of the ladies of the class, if nothing else.

Hagakure, Sato, Ojirou, Tokoyami, Koda, Asui, Shogi, and Aoyama all figured that there was strength in numbers, and if everyone decided the same thing, they were safer from consequences. When no one made a move to comply with Aizawa’s demands, they felt more cemented in their decision with every second that passed. Everyone was strong enough to withstand the pressure, so they would all make it out on top, together.

Todoroki just daydreamed about the look on his father’s face when he broke the news that not only had he failed to win the sports festival, but he also got expelled from UA.

Denki’s glare didn’t stray from Aizawa’s face, and his hands didn’t move from where they relaxed on top of his desk. His notebook and pens were out, ready to learn, but he was not going to budge on the protest that he had organized. Not after he had worn Yaoyorozu and Neito down by asking the almost impossible from them, yet they completed their task with tired smiles on their faces. Yaoyorozu was nodding off in her seat, trying hard to stay awake and focused. Denki assumed that Neito was probably just as exhausted. He wasn’t going to give in after Bakugou was treated like that in front of the live audience and on national television by organizers and staff who should have known better. He wasn’t going to let this slide, even if that meant that he would be expelled and banned from UA, because that wasn’t right, and sometimes someone has to make corrections, and sometimes that someone is going to have to be Denki and anyone else he can get to stand with him.

Denki felt eyes on him, and he knew that others were going to follow his lead because he was doing the right thing. These were hero course students, and they should want to do the right thing, too. To remind everyone what they were fighting for, Denki turned his head to look directly at Bakugou, who had been silently staring at his desk and breathing evenly, not making a move to remove his muzzle, but Denki could imagine his grimace under the mask at the threats coming from their teacher.

“Bakugou,” Aizawa started, making the explosive blonde look up at him. “Aren’t you feeling a little claustrophobic? Go ahead and take that off. Be a leader and show everyone that it’s okay to look out for yourself.”

Bakugou sat up straighter in his chair. Everyone in the room held their breaths as Bakugou had reached up to the muzzle over his face. Even through the muzzles, a relieved sigh could be heard from all of his classmates when he just adjusted it against his face before placing his hands firmly back down onto his desk, meeting Aizawa’s steely gaze in challenge.

“Fine. Have it your way,” Aizawa deadpanned before reaching down into his bag and pulling out a muzzle of his own, to everyone’s surprise.

“Sometimes, when you’re a hero, you have to make choices that go against the norm in order to make positive changes. Sometimes, when you’re a hero, you have to go against the status quo to make a positive impact where it matters. I’m proud of all of you for standing up against authority when you know that authority has overstepped. You’re all going to be great heroes, and now I’m going to join the movement if that’s okay with you,” Aizawa indicated, looking directly at Bakugou, then Denki, for confirmation.

After a nod from Bakugou and Denki, welcoming their teacher to the ranks, Aizawa strapped his own muzzle to his face. Aizawa then turned to the chalk board and wrote, ‘Today’s Lesson in Stealth: The Basics of Sign Language.”

Between passing notes and learning what little sign language they had picked up in the first few days of the demonstration, Denki found out that all of the classes were participating.

All of them. At every level. And every student, too.

Not only just the hero courses and hero support courses, but also general studies and the business courses as well.

Of course, only the hero courses got the terrifying lesson of how to laugh in the face of authority and keep defying when faced with major threats of consequences of doing the right thing. And still, not a single student had removed their muzzle.

Denki made a mental note to find a way to thank Neito and Yaoyorozu for making a muzzle for literally every student.

After the weekend, with the hero course students going above and beyond what homework was given, conversations could generally be had without resorting to note writing at all. If there was any confusion over a certain sign that one student had learned on their own that the other hadn’t gotten to yet, a simple fingerspelling of the term would pass the knowledge along and get everyone back on the same page so that the conversation could continue.

They had started a revolution and had greatly benefited from it. Being able to communicate silently in the field could come to be a huge advantage. Step aside, current heroes! The next generation is here to take over!

‘Are you doing okay with the muzzle?’ Denki had signed to Bakugou.

‘It’s a secret, but you already know, don’t you? It’s your boyfriend’s, so I’m fine,’ Bakugou signed back, his slender fingers expertly moving from word to word, not fumbling even with the speed that he had naturally picked up after being good at literally everything.

‘Neito isn’t my boyfriend,’ Denki signed back with an eyeroll.

‘No. Not that boyfriend. Purple hair,’ Bakugou signed.

‘Hitoshi? He gave you his muzzle?’ Denki asked, already knowing the answer, and falling even more for Hitoshi and his kind heart.

‘You don’t deny he’s your boyfriend,’ Bakugou signed, and Denki knew that he was smirking under that faux muzzle and not even feeling the sharp edges to warn him to not speak at the movement of his face.

‘Only in my dreams,’ Denki signed, smiling, even against the edges of his own, very real muzzle.

The demonstration last two weeks before the public apology and decree to never use restraints and muzzles on their students who weren’t harming anyone ever again.

In all honesty, the administrators of UA were already planning to publicly apologize, even as Bakugou was chained to the podium, rushing from the highest balcony to get them out of the public eye as quickly as possible.

Extending it out for two weeks was just for the benefit of the students. They felt like they had fought hard and were unwavering in their sense of justice for their fellow classmate. Plus, they had really gotten the hang of sign language with that being the only form of communication.

They had thought about letting it go for another week, just to cement everything in, but Lunch Rush was becoming agitated when the students were forgoing lunch, refusing to remove the muzzles even to eat, signing to the frustrated hero that they weren’t going to give in that easily, but nice try.

Neito also got cut some slack by his classmates, who had been awfully short with him since the showdown with Denki. It didn’t help that Tetsutetsu and Shiozaki had been passing by on their way to class when Denki had come flying out one of the training gyms like a bat out of hell. When the pair peeked into the gym, only to see Neito surrounded by shattered glass from the lights, they had assumed the worst. And while only the facts were passed on, rumors and assumptions started to grow on their own until the general consensus was that Neito had tore into Denki once again, stealing his quirk and shattering the lights to prove that he was, in fact, better than Denki, and the day before was just a fluke.

After Vlad King had threatened to expel anyone who refused to remove their muzzles, Neito had stood up, and walked straight out of the room. Others quickly followed suit, deciding to save Vlad King the trouble of kicking them all out and leaving of their own accord. Vlad King did not have the shining moment that Aizawa had, having to chase his angry class down the hall and only getting them to turn around when he reassured them that no one was being expelled and to just go back to the classroom so that he could explain.

Of course, some classmates thought that Neito had only done that for the brownie points, and that he must have known that it was a test, but others, the ones who noticed his stricken face during the announcement of the winners at the sports festival, knew that he was completely genuine.

So, finally, when he tried to start a conversation about Denki with Kendou, she listened instead of yelling that she didn’t want to hear his fruitless complaints and storming away in a huff.

“Kaminari? Again?” Kendou asked, exasperated.

“Yeah, but—” Neito had started, only to be cut off.

“Why are you so obsessed with him?” Kendou asked, trying to get Neito off of the subject of tearing down another Class 1-A student when she just didn’t have the energy to humor him.

“Because I’m in love with him,” Neito had grit out through his teeth, needing Kendou to just listen.

“That’s no reason—Wait. What?” Kendou had blanked, recalling the last thing that Neito had said because it did not match up with any of the options she was expecting to come from his mouth.

“I love him,” Neito repeated with purpose, not allowing himself to shy away from the fact when there was nothing there for him to be ashamed about.

“But—Oh my god. Oh my god! Neito! You have Shinsou! You have a soulmate,” Kendou stressed, ducking her head closer to Neito to reduce the chances of them being overheard.

“Oh, Hitoshi is in love with Denki, too,” Neito explained easily with a laidback shrug.

“Back up!” Kendou demanded. “Details, now!”

“I’ve been trying to tell you!” Neito sneered, but immediately recentered himself, ready to get into the whole big drama and exactly what had happened between himself and Denki.

Kendou, like everyone else, had assumed that Denki was hurt by Neito’s hurtful ramblings, but they didn’t know Denki like Neito did, and thought that Neito was just trying to downplay the damage he had caused to a Class 1-A student. She, and everyone else, didn’t realize that Denki is a strong character who would never be deterred by words from a friend in training, but no one else knew that they were friends to begin with either, thanks to Neito and Hitoshi avoiding Denki at all costs to try to dampen their feelings towards him.

Kendou, like everyone else, had assumed that Denki storming out of the gym was due to Neito digging in the knife a little deeper and really tearing him down. The last thing anyone expected was that they had almost kissed, and Denki was upset because he was afraid of getting in the way of the soulmates.

“I…” Kendou started, hesitating, really looking Neito over and taking him in. “I completely got the wrong impression of you.”

And finally, finally, Neito had made a friend that wasn’t due to Hitoshi or Denki. He had made a friend all on his own.

Chapter Text

The training camp was a nightmare, but following Touya’s training regimen religiously helped Denki stay near the front of his class as they worked their way through the forest, even though his electricity was essentially useless against the mud monsters. It was frustrating to him that the entrance exam was so easy because all he had to do was send a pulse of electricity through the metal robots, but this was so difficult because his quirk did nothing against the mud monsters, and even worse, would hinder his friends if he had tried to use it. Against all instinct, he had to not use his quirk and just keep moving, leaving the mud monsters to those more suitable.

He hated feeling useless, but he knew that his classmates all felt the same way, and in some situations, he would be the one carrying the rest of the class through, so he pushed his feelings of inadequacy down and just admired how his other classmates handled the huge muddy figures in various creative ways.

Denki dodged out of the way as a laughing Sero flung himself forward, using his tape and the branches of the trees to build up his momentum, before immediately crashing into a tree that he didn’t expect to be there.

Denki fell back as his other classmates advanced as he checked on Sero, who was still laughing, and who quickly recuperated, shooting his tape out to the nearest branch, and starting to fling himself through the trees again, but more carefully that time.

When Denki finally made it out of the danger zone, Neito was there, disheveled from the unexpected task, but still having enough energy to taunt his rival class.

“Coming up near the end of the class, huh?” Neito challenged Denki.

Denki laughed as he pulled a stray twig from Neito’s hair and flicked it away, grateful that they were back on friendly terms. “Yeah, my quirk and mud do not mix!” he conceded, allowing Neito to have his moment.

Instead of Kendou smacking Neito down and dragging him away, she watched the two interact with amusement in her eyes. Class 1-B was confused, but every time they stepped forward to drag Neito away, Denki would say something to pull Neito further into the conversation. Was he playing right into Neito’s hands? Denki’s other classmates would just roll their eyes and walk away, so why was Denki feeding into Neito’s chaos instead of ignoring him?

Denki was just enjoying the view of Neito finally feeling like he was in his element for once. He had come out on top by strategizing which quirks would be most beneficial to copy and using the different ones as he maneuvered through the forest. According to Denki, Neito should always feel on top of the world like that.

Neito was left to bask in his bragging glory until he was suddenly stopped short by the pure, genuine essence of Denki. Denki wasn’t just nodding along, humoring Neito, but actively adding to the list of reasons of why Neito was amazing.

“Thanks for looking out for me out there,” Denki had yelled out as a last statement as he turned to catch up with his class to go shower and get changed out of his muddy costume.

When the surprise activity had first started, it took Denki a second to realize just how useless he was in that specific scenario. As a mud monster loomed over him, ready to crush him, a blast had come out of nowhere, blasting the head off of the mud monster, and Neito rushed from the direction of the blast, pulling Denki out of the way, no concern for himself if Denki would have activated his quirk.

Bakugou was not pleased that Neito had copied his quirk early on, but even he had heard about Neito’s walking out of class stunt that he had pulled and decided not to put up too much of a fuss about it. Bakugou just made a mental note to try to get paired up with Neito at the next competition and show him what his quirk can really do. A few bruises and abrasions might do him some good.

Neito held his tongue when some of his classmates started saying that Denki was stupid to feed into Neito’s comments instead of just walking away like the rest of Class 1-A had already learned how to do. Denki was kind, not dumb. But Denki likes for others to underestimate him, so Neito wasn’t about to take that away from him. He’ll just have to show everyone just how smart and strategic he could be the next time the classes were battling against each other.

Kendou was confused. She had seen Neito blush under Denki’s praise, but then turn around and completely ignore when his classmates had called him stupid.

“Didn’t you hear what they were saying about Kaminari?” Kendou questioned.

“Oh, yeah. That he’s dumb for instigating me and feeding the fire. Right?” Neito asked, kicking at a rock on the path to where they would be staying.

“Why didn’t you stand up for him?” Kendou demanded, but not harshly. She was truly curious.

“Everyone who matters to Denki knows the truth. Nothing else matters,” Neito had offered as a quick explanation when she questioned him.

They had parted ways, Neito heading toward the boys’ hallway and Kendou to the girls’ section, so she was unable to question him further and was forced to take his answer at face value. She just hoped that Neito wasn’t going to mess up the friendship that he had developed with Denki, no matter if it turned out to be more or not in the future.

After the next day full of relentless training, Neito had asked Todoroki if he had wanted help lighting the fires for the cookout they were preparing for. Neito wasn’t even snarky with his offer like he normally would be, thoroughly exhausted from the full day of endless limit-testing.

Todoroki had looked at him consideringly before offering his hand. Neito had offered to help, but he was surprised that Todoroki accepted. Todoroki seemed very independent, but more naturally reclusive instead of actively repelling help like Bakugou. He had expected to be brushed off, maybe even completely ignored with how Class 1-A seems to cope with Neito’s presence.

It was simple in Todoroki’s mind: Todoroki likes Denki, and Denki was in the ‘QQQ’ with at least his late brother and Neito, so Neito must not be as terrible as everyone seems to think.

Plus, it would make Endeavor mad to know that Todoroki is out there, willingly sharing his quirk with someone who copies quirks.

Denki’s eyes had been wandering from Bakugou’s expert fingers as he diced the ingredients to Neito’s delighted face as he finally had a fire quirk to play with again. It wasn’t a very taxing task to wash the ingredients before handing them over to Bakugou, so his eyes and mind had a lot of free time to wander.

Denki wondered how Hitoshi was holding up. Hitoshi had surprisingly refrained from mentioning the almost-kiss, but Denki didn’t really know what to make of that. He hoped that Hitoshi wasn’t worried about them. He hoped that he knew that the classes were separated for the majority of the time. He hoped he knew that they were sleeping in different areas. He hoped he somehow knew that he felt the exact same way about Neito and Hitoshi, but the opportunity had presented itself first with Neito, and that was the only reason why the almost-kiss had happened in the first place. If he had found himself in the same position with Hitoshi instead, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself then, either.

None of that information might make Hitoshi feel better if he didn’t feel the same way about him, but Denki wished that Hitoshi at least had a hint of the full truth instead of just wondering if he wasn’t good enough. He had seen the way that Neito looks at and talks about Hitoshi and knew that his feelings toward his soulmate weren’t lacking. He just really needed to stop being such a coward and talk to them about what had happened and how to move forward.

Hitoshi hadn’t seemed worried during the few interactions they’ve had, but Denki knew that all three of them tended to be more self-sacrificing than was healthy at times. That was just one of the traits that would make them excellent heroes but made navigating friendships difficult when they would tiptoe around each other instead of saying exactly what they needed and wanted from the relationship.

Denki thought that the haunted trail walk was a good idea; Bakugou thought it was very stupid and a waste of time. Even with Bakugou’s endless grumbling about the pointlessness of it all, Denki still jumped at the jump scares, laughing immediately afterward, and praising the ingeniousness of the Class 1-B students who had managed to scare them. Bakugou would then grumble for him to speak for himself and that he wasn’t scared at all.

When the fog started gathering in Denki’s throat, and he started coughing, that was his first instinct that something was wrong. It was no longer fog from the fog machines lined up along the trail, but a dense greenish fog that got thicker and thicker as the seconds passed. Bakugou was quick to realize that no one who was supposed to be at the camp had any kind of quirk like that and quickly signaled for Denki to follow him, taking a sharp left off of the path. Denki complied easily, following Bakugou and grabbing Class 1-B students to join them as they went, strictly using sign language to stay silent to avoid any potential villains.

Chaos started once the announcement went out that there were villains on the premises, and they were after ‘Kacchan.’ Bakugou, of course, did the opposite of what he was supposed to do, not accepting help and protection from his classmates, believing that he could do it on his own. No villains were ever going to get the best of him. They all got separated after fighting a creepy tooth-quirked villain.

Denki froze when he came upon a wall of fire. Normally he would be on top of his game with the adrenaline pumping through his system, but the huge wall of fire was blue. Denki probably would have been a goner if it wasn’t for Neito, who quickly pulled him away and snapped him out of it.

“Where’s Kacchan?” Denki had asked, quickly wiping the soot and tears from the smoke and fog from his face as he ran, his other hand firmly grasped in Neito’s.

‘Safe,’ Neito had signed quickly, ducking beneath branches, and weaving around trees.

Denki followed along easily, following Neito’s lead, and trusting his instincts completely. He would have led them to safety, too, if it weren’t for the blonde girl who dropped down on them from the trees, laughing maniacally. Denki was sure they could have taken her together, but a new wave of blue fire had separated himself from Neito and the blonde villain.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath as he tried to find a new path around, to get to Neito, attempting to steal glances through the flames to see how Neito was faring.

He ran along the blue wall of fire before stopping abruptly and just deciding to burst through to the other side when he saw Neito might need his immediate help, continuing his roll to suffocate any flame that might have ignited on his clothing. In front of him were two identical blonde girls, fighting on the ground. They were both wearing the same clothing and had the same wounds. One was pulling at the other’s hair and the other was trying to pull the equipment off of the other’s back.

“Neito!” Denki called, rushing forward, only to stop short when both girls answered.

Denki had quickly figured out that Neito must have copied the girl’s quirk and turned himself into her carbon copy. He couldn’t tell them apart, though. Who did he help?

He picked randomly and pulled the one on top off of the other, holding her tightly as she struggled, not giving up trying to tear the other blonde girl to shreds.

“How did you know it was her?” the blonde girl who was not currently restrained by Denki asked.

“Us Echo Bros have to stick together,” Denki answered, tossing a smile at the blonde girl that was currently not being restrained.

She nodded, “right. Thanks, Kaminari.”

At that moment, Denki released who he then knew was Neito and they both lunged toward the villain, quickly disabling her.

They were breathing heavily, the villain not going down without a fight, but they had succeeded. They looked up at each other, smiling. That was when Denki noticed the man standing behind Neito. He wore a mask and top hat and had a cane in his gloved hands. Before Denki could warn him, the man expertly slammed his cane into the back of Neito’s neck, at the perfect spot to make him fall unconscious instantly.

Denki had rushed forward, to attack the newcomer or to catch Neito as he fell, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t have to decide in the end, because suddenly, he was surrounded by cold darkness and couldn’t move.

It had felt like an eternity and no time at all at the same time by the time Denki was released, only to see the petrified faces of his classmates as he was pulled backwards through a portal of endless swirling darkness.

In front of him were his classmates and friends, and next to him, he saw out of the corner of his eye, also being pulled backwards through the portal, was Bakugou. Denki’s heart sunk as Midoriya yelled out for his childhood friend, knowing that they had all failed to keep Bakugou safe, and he had ended up being collateral damage, an extra hostage to the villains who now had the two blond hero students in their grasp.

Chapter Text

The next thing Denki knew, he and Bakugou were being shoved down into metal chairs and chained up with metal chains. Bakugou had the extra torment of his hands being restrained in a metal box as to not be able to utilize his quirk. Denki immediately knew that his quirk would be sufficient, but without the ability to aim and avoid including Bakugou in the aftermath, it wasn’t a valid option.

Denki looked over at Bakugou, hoping that the strategic genius might have a battle plan already that he could somehow communicate to Denki, but Bakugou wasn’t acting right. Instead of squirming, fighting back, swearing, or any other typical behaviors, he sat still and calmly as the villains worked quickly to secure him.

“Bakugou? Are you okay?” Denki whisper-yelled, despite the fact that all of the villains were in earshot and could definitely hear him.

Bakugou slid his eyes in Denki’s direction before looking back down again, and Denki just knew that something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just Bakugou’s behavior, either, but he couldn’t quite figure out what made him think that. He started struggling against the chains, trying to get to Bakugou to see what the hell was wrong and if there was anything he could do to fix it.

Everyone had seen how Bakugou had reacted at the sports festival when he was tied up, and that was by staff of UA. He should be fighting even harder against villains.

“Not much of a fighter. Maybe you chose wrong, boss,” a deep voice from behind him said.

Denki tried to strain his neck to see behind him, but he could not get a visual on the person who had spoken.

“Maybe he just knows he’s in good company,” the red-eyed, blue-haired villain, who the students knew as Shigaraki Tomura, had responded, though he did not sound confident. He was probably also fully expecting Bakugou to fight with everything he had.

Denki recognized Shigaraki from the USJ incident, and his breath caught in his throat. It was terrifying enough to be in his presence among the chaos of the USJ invasion, but to be one of two UA students, stranded in the middle of the League of Villains’ hideout, was another thing completely.

“Something’s wrong,” Twice stated, grabbing at his hair under his mask, “everything’s fine.”

Everything had seemingly gone of without a hitch, so why was Twice so unnerved? Maybe it was that little blond nuisance who, for some reason, seemed to have sought him out, tagged him on the exposed skin of his neck where his mask had ridden up in a previous tussle, and darted away laughing maniacally, like it was some kind of game. That kid was nuts, surely, even more so than Twice. So why did that incident keep replaying in Twice’s mind? He didn’t quite understand what he was missing and would have put it down as just his craziness getting the best of him, as it often did, if it wasn’t for the others who quickly figured out just what was wrong.

From behind Bakugou, a scarred hand reached out and grabbed a fistful of his blond hair, pulling back so that Bakugou was forced to look up.

Denki realized it right away, being close friends with Bakugou, but it took the villains a few extra seconds before they had realized what had happened. Denki realized, then, what he had noticed before was the shade of red of his eyes was not quite the same. It was too dark and muddy instead of the bright, clear scarlet that he was used to.

“That little, crazy bastard!” Toga had screamed, as she realized the same, plunging a knife directly into Bakugou’s chest.

The class had quickly gone into recovery mode, despite the dreadful feeling of failure when it mattered most. An unfortunate part of heroics was failure; no one could win every time. They had broken off in pairs to gather any stragglers to head to the academic building to debrief and get medical attention for anyone who was hurt, including anyone who had breathed in the poisonous gas from one of the villains.

It was Kirishima and Tetsutetsu who came across Neito’s unconscious body in the forest. They had almost missed him, and Kirishima’s heart stuck in his throat as he feared for the worst. Kirishima wasn’t fond of Neito, but he didn’t want him dead. Checking his vitals, though, he sighed in relief, realizing that Neito was just knocked out and not dead.

Kirishima and Tetsutetsu knelt down on either side of the unconscious student and shook Neito gently at first, increasing the roughness until he began to stir.

“Monoma?” Tetsutetsu spoke, trying to give him a familiar voice to latch onto and not immediately freak out. “There was a villain attack. You were knocked out. We’re all gathering for debriefing.”

Neito had sat up and shook his head, trying to get rid of the fuzziness in his eyes and the dull ache at the base of his skull.

“What happened? What’s the damage?” Neito asked as he was pulled to his feet by Tetsutetsu and Kirishima.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Kirishima asked, leading the way back toward the academic building where they were to meet.

"They were after Bakugou. Bakugou is safe. Denki and I were taking on the blonde girl,” Neito spoke aloud, even as the memories were just coming to him. “We won, but then everything went dark.”

Kirishima and Tetsutetsu shared a pained look, knowing that telling him then was better than waiting until later. If either of them was in his place, they would want to know instead of being kept in the dark.

“The League of Villains successfully captured Bakugou and Kaminari,” Tetsutetsu answered.

“Bakugou is safe,” Neito repeated, continuing to walk forward before stopping suddenly. “They took Denki?”

“They took both Bakugou and Kaminari. Is your head okay? Are you hearing what we’re saying?” Kirishima asked, trying to gauge Neito’s pupils for signs of concussion.

“I hear you fine,” Neito mumbled, looking away and gripping at his hair at the revelation that he had saved his crush’s best friend, but not his crush. “Bakugou is safe,” Neito insisted.

Kirishima had had just about enough of Neito and was about ready to knock him out again. He was close friends with both Bakugou and Denki, and despite his normally kind personality, he was at the end of his patience. If it wasn’t dangerous, he would have attempted knocking Neito out again and leaving him there in the forest.

Before Kirishima could retort and say something that he would have regretted in the next millisecond, Neito stopped and pointed upward before taking a seat against a tree to process that Denki had been captured by the League of Villains. He just needed time to think, dammit.

Kirishima and Tetsutetsu looked up to where Neito had pointed and just about collapsed. Immediately, Tetsutetsu climbed up the tree and untied the capture scarf from the branch, allowing the angry, struggling Bakugou to fall, only to be caught safely by Kirishima. The three struggled to get the capture scarf off of Bakugou, freeing his mouth first so he could send scathing insults and threats toward Neito, who still sat against a neighboring tree, trying to think about what he could possibly do to get his ray of sunshine back. Also, how the hell was he going to tell Hitoshi that he couldn’t protect him? That he had failed them all?

When Bakugou was finally freed from the capture scarf, he lunged at Neito, pushing him against the tree. He held his hand next to his face, ready to blast it right off of his head, sparks already flying, when he asked, “what the hell was that for?!”

“You would have jumped right in because you feel like you have something to prove,” Neito muttered, not even flinching away, enraging Bakugou even more.

“Like that’s not exactly what you did?!” Bakugou seethed.

“I do have something to prove, and this was my first and maybe only chance,” Neito said, though he still sat numbly instead of yelling back like Bakugou expected. He didn’t even brag about how he had tricked him and beat him and saved him. “And I failed,” Neito finished, tears gathering in the corner of his eyes as he tried desperately to blink them away.

“The fuck you talking about?” Bakugou growled, letting off an explosion next to Neito’s head, sending bark from the tree flying in all directions.

“They have Denki,” Neito said, trying to keep composed, but unable to help the sob that escaped his throat as he tried to say his crush’s name.

At that instant, Bakugou’s anger had deflated and immediately turned into concern. His hands that were sparking ceased immediately, wrapping around Neito’s shoulders, pulling him in, and cradling his head against his chest as Neito started sobbing uncontrollably.

Kirishima and Tetsutetsu were very confused.

As far as Kirishima was aware, Denki had a crush on Neito, for some reason that he could never figure out. To see Neito reacting that way was a shock. Kirishima wanted to think that it was just because he felt like he failed, but he could tell, especially from Bakugou’s reaction, that it was much more than that. For the first time, Kirishima wondered if Neito returned Denki’s feelings. It seemed so far-fetched, but looking at him now, he didn’t see anything else.

Tetsutetsu and most of Class 1-B thought that Neito hated Denki, with the whole standoff and the rumors about what must have happened in the gym that Denki was running away from Neito. He thought that Neito might be upset about losing classmates, but not this upset. He was acting like villains had just kidnapped his soulmate, not a classmate that he hated.

Bakugou was silent as he carried the crying Neito to the meeting spot. Bakugou was glad to do it, in fact, because it lessened the sting of being caught off-guard by Neito in the first place. Bakugou knew he was facing villains, but he did not realize that he also should have been on the lookout for backstabbing Class 1-B students. Caring for Neito while he was in that state evened the score a bit, at least in Bakugou’s mind. Neito was able to pull himself together before they reached the academic building and was able to explain why Bakugou was currently still among them and not being held hostage with Denki when multiple witnesses saw them both being pulled through the portal.

The initial commotion of Bakugou walking in through the door gave Neito enough time to calm himself further and collect his thoughts.

When all eyes were on him, and it was positive, rapt attention instead of annoyance for once, he couldn’t even find it in himself to enjoy it.

Neito quickly explained how he had copied three quirks throughout the invasion.

Neito copied Yaoyorozu’s quirk and was able to make a capture scarf. Ever since the sports festival, Hitoshi had been having training sessions with Aizawa, and of course practiced on Neito as well, in his free time, to improve faster. Neito was intimately familiar with the material, as he had helped Hitoshi research different fabrics and methods to optimize his own fighting style. With all of this intense knowledge about capture scarves, it was easier than he thought it would be to make one after copying Yaoyorozu’s quirk.

With this capture scarf he made, and all of the practice with Hitoshi, it was easy to follow the sound of explosions and tie Bakugou up securely until the crisis would pass. What better way to make the crisis pass than to give them a fake Bakugou to take and leave them the hell alone?

So, Neito had copied Twice’s quirk. His Bakugou double wasn’t perfect, like it might have been if Twice had done it himself. Neito’s mother had fashion connections, and Neito himself had dabbled in costume design when he knew that no one else would be able to make a better costume for him than himself. He was able to guess the measurements pretty accurately; accurately enough for the clone to be able to stand and run, but he didn’t look quite right. His face was too narrow, his shoulders were too broad, and he was a little too short. Bakugou would have been rightly insulted if he ever got to see the clone Neito had made of him, but it suited his purposes in the crisis, so he decided it would have to work.

Neito had copied the blonde girl’s quirk. Uraraka helpfully supplied that the girl called herself Toga Himiko when she had faced Uraraka and Midoriya earlier in the evening. Neito reported that he and Denki had been fighting against her when he must have been knocked out by another villain.

Others chimed in then, stating that it must have been the marble villain that a few of them had run into in the forest: The same one who had released Denki and knock-off Bakugou right before they were forced through the portal. It would make sense of how Denki was so easily overpowered after Neito had been knocked out.

For once, everyone was solemn and straight to the point as they talked. They had all started to plan a way to get Denki back before being stopped by the teachers, commanding them to leave it to the Pro Heroes, lest the League of Villains get their hands on another student during a failed rescue attempt.

“It’s bad enough that the villains have one of our own. It would be worse if they had more than one. Let’s be grateful that no one is there for them to use against Kaminari,” Vlad King had announced over the murmured worries of the students.

“Grateful?!” Bakugou sneered, never one for just letting things be, especially not when it came to one of his best friends.

“It’s fine,” Neito said quietly from beside him, placing a hand on Bakugou’s shoulder, to get Bakugou to sit down or to make sure he heard him, Bakugou wasn’t sure.

Bakugou turned on Neito, then. “Nothing is fine!” Bakugou barked. “What’s wrong with you?!”

“Denki will be fine,” Neito insisted, just as quietly as the first time, before standing up and walking out, heading toward his room to scream and cry in peace.

Bakugou was still raging, but he toned it down, understanding exactly where Neito was coming from. Others didn’t understand, thinking that maybe Neito was just shutting down mentally. Others, still, thought that Neito was being a heartless dick who might be jealous that Denki was getting more attention than he was, and he wasn’t even there to bask in it.

Bakugou understood, in a way that Denki’s other close friends did, that Denki is truly a social genius who can get along with anyone. It was terrifying that the villains had one of the students in their grasp, but it didn’t get any better on their end than it being Denki. As far as luck goes, if someone had to be taken captive, it was a good thing that Denki ended up being the one. Bakugou still paced his room. He still tossed and turned all night. But ultimately, he knew that Denki would be returned unharmed. He didn’t know when or how, but he knew that Denki’s personality and talkative spirit would quickly gain the favor of the villains, even if he didn’t give up any information. Throwing a “no, sorry,” with a regretful grin in their direction before changing the subject would be enough. No one else would get away with that. Denki stood the best chance.

The real Bakugou kept repeating these things to himself, and he knew they were all true, but he still didn’t sleep at all that night.

The fake Bakugou had quickly turned to mush, the chains falling and clanking against the metal chair. The villains started arguing amongst themselves about whose fault it was that Bakugou escaped their grasp. All blame initially fell on Twice, since it was his clone that they had unwittingly captured in place of the real Bakugou, but he said that there was a student that must have copied his quirk and made the Bakugou clone. At first, everyone thought he was just making up wild excuses because they would have noticed such a student at the sports festival, but Toga grudgingly agreed that that same kid was an absolute menace and had also gotten the better of her.

Denki was relieved that Bakugou wasn’t also captured. It would have been too easy to use them against each other, though he felt awfully alone in that moment. His heart swelled with pride at how well Neito had done to mess up all of their plans, flitting around the forest like some kind of hyperactive rabbit getting the better of foxes, or maybe a sly fox himself, perfectly messing up just the right things at just the right time.

With Bakugou being a fake, Denki realized he was currently strapped to a metal chair, restrained by metal chains, and no one else was in the vicinity except the villains. Denki couldn’t control the smile spreading across his face as he activated his quirk, lightning zapping across his skin as his smile widened. The villains jumped back, swearing.

Denki was about to electrify the whole place to hell. He figured if he short-circuited, he wouldn’t be any worse off than he already was. He was helpless either way if no one untied him, so he might as well make everyone else useless as well! They can all sit there, drooling together, if recently inspired Denki had anything to say about it.

But there was a figure moving along the perimeter of the room. Denki caught the shadow of him out of the corner of his eye and whipped his head around to finally see the member of the League of Villains that he had not been able to visually observe up until that point, always staying out of his line of view.

Denki’s eyes widened, even as his electricity stopped and he struggled against the chains holding him down. Everything had suddenly connected in Denki’s mind, and suddenly, something else was more important than showing the villains just how much they screwed up.

“Let me free!” Denki demanded, not taking his eyes off of the icy-blue ones, straining his neck as far as it would turn as to not lose sight of him in fear that he might disappear.

“Yeah? So, you can electrocute us better? Not a chance!” Toga sneered, still backing away in case he decided to charge up his electricity once again.

“I won’t,” Denki pleaded. “Unchain me, please.”

“Do it,” the figure, still half-hidden in the shadows of the room, demanded, though he didn’t move forward to do so himself.

“What?! Dabi—” Toga tried to argue.

“I’m with Dabi,” Shigaraki stated, eyes darting between the blond captive and his most loyal recruit. “Free him.”

Shigaraki didn’t know if Dabi was thinking of trying to get the kid to trust them and put them on a level playing field or if he felt like they were absolutely screwed, even if the kid was tied up, if the kid decided to unleash his electricity on them, and maybe he would cooperate better if he felt like he had some freedom or control, but he trusted Dabi’s judgment and it had never steered them wrong before.

Twice had stepped forward to do the task, trying to ease the residual guilt of his quirk being used against them, muttering, “please don’t shock me,” and “electrocute us all,” in some weird, contradictory chant.

As soon as Denki was freed, he leaped up, shaking the chains off, fully intending to run toward the person still in the back of the room. He spun around only to see Twice on his left and Toga on his right, blocking the obvious paths to the man they called Dabi.

Denki was creative, though, and knew how to find his way to the man, deciding to take the shortest, most direct path.

Denki rushed straight forward, putting one foot on the seat of the chair that he was just unchained from, the other on the backrest of the chair and transferring his weight so that the chair would fall. He used the momentum to fling himself forward so that the stunned villains wouldn’t be able to catch up to him and stop him.

Denki leaped over the couch, and launched himself at the scarred, black-haired villain, wrapping himself around him like a koala as soon as he was within reach and holding on tight, lest the other villains come to pry him off.

The other villains were on their way to pry him off, thinking that the kid was going to turn up his electricity any second and electrocute Dabi to death, but stopped when Dabi had wrapped a supportive arm around the student’s lower back, using the other hand to wave them off before wrapping that arm around the kid’s shoulder blades, squeezing him back just as tightly.

The villains thought they were confused before, but when a loud, sudden sob came from the blond boy, currently clinging to Dabi, they had no idea what was happening. They had never felt so much like an outsider in their own damn villain base. They shared confused looks, but backed off, earning a grateful glance from Dabi.

“I didn’t think you’d figure me out that quickly,” Dabi had muttered against Denki’s hair, neither making a move to release the other.

“I’d recognize those eyes anywhere, Aka,” Denki said, trying to catch his breath.

Dabi went to put Denki down, but Denki just held on tighter.

“I thought you were dead, Touya,” Denki whispered in protest.

“I actually go by Dabi, now,” Dabi informed, but didn’t try to put Denki back down again.

Dabi felt Denki’s hair swish back and forth along his jaw as he nodded in understanding.

“Okay, Dabi,” Denki said, testing the name. “I’m so glad that you’re alive.”

“Even though I turned out to be a villain?” Dabi asked.

“It was inevitable since the moment you lost the plank contest,” Denki retorted matter-of-factly and without hesitation.

The villains all whipped their heads in their direction when they heard Dabi laughing. They had heard menacing laughing, and maybe some chuckles here and there, but they had never heard the unfiltered, pure, uninhibited, happy, loud laugh that Dabi had just let out, throwing his head back and stumbling under the effort as he still held onto their blond captive.

Chapter Text

“Our mission wasn’t a total loss,” the disembodied voice blared through the television where no real picture could be discerned. “We did get a helpful new quirk added to our arsenal: Search, thanks to Ragdoll.”

Even as Shigaraki continued to review the group’s shortcomings, Denki’s mind whirred at the new information, trying to connect the pieces that were there. They couldn’t mean that this man on the other side of the television could steal quirks, right? He had never heard of such a thing before. Were they just trying to confuse him? To scare him, maybe, so that the threats they would dish out later would be more realistic?

“We did capture one student, but not the one we were hoping for most,” Shigaraki reported, scratching at his neck anxiously.

“Which one?” the voice asked, pure curiosity in the tone.

Denki was surprised that the voice did not seem angered or defeated in any way after learning that all of their hard work and planning had not turned out the way they had hoped it would.

“Kaminari Denki. His quirk is electrification,” Shigaraki offered, and Denki could have cried.

Even if they were just trying to scare him, it was definitely working. He didn’t want the strange voice to know he was there or anything else about him, for that matter.

“He has an electric quirk, and yet, you all are still conscious, and the television is still working, so I assume he has not retaliated. Could he be a good candidate for our cause?”

“Doubtful,” Shigaraki stated bluntly, shooting a glare in Denki’s direction.

Denki just answered his glare with an apathetic shrug. He wasn’t sorry about not being a good option to be recruited to a villain organization. Shigaraki rolled his red eyes away from Denki before refocusing on the weird, staticky image on the screen.

“But there are other strategies around that.” Shigaraki continued after a pause to consider, “do you want us to prepare him to be relieved of his quirk?”

Dabi’s hands tightened on Denki’s shoulders, but that offered little relief to Denki. Dabi, however, was not consciously trying to comfort Denki. Dabi himself was nervous about the answer, wondering how the hell he was supposed to oppose All for One and wondering if Shigaraki would stand with him in opposition if it came down to it.

Luckily, it didn’t seem like it would come to that. Denki had been on the verge of panicking at the thought of actually having to meet this scary dude in person, let alone face the strange reality that his quirk could be stolen from him, and his relief at the man’s response nearly knocked him off of his feet.

“His quirk is powerful of his own right,” the voice stated, crackling assuredly through the speakers. “That is, it’s nothing special; it’s only as powerful as it is because of Kaminari’s hard work and dedication.”

Denki didn’t appreciate the compliment because it felt more like an animal in a zoo being admired than an up-and-coming hero-to-be being praised for his quirk training. Luckily, Denki did not have to pretend to preen under the compliment for his own self-interest because he was not called upon to speak. No one had spoken directly to the TV-man besides Shigaraki.

Denki had this uncanny feeling ever since Shigaraki had turned the television on and started conversing with the voice, calling the man on the other end “master,” only to suddenly realize that the man sounded oddly like Aizawa; not the voice, but the way he spoke in an even, factual cadence. He was lecturing, teaching, Denki realized. Denki had thought that this mystery man was the leader of the whole operation, and thought it was weird that they would allow him to stay if the League of Villains wanted everyone to believe that Shigaraki was the mastermind, but with the way he was lecturing and talking Shigaraki through everything, it seemed like he was training Shigaraki to eventually take the lead himself.

By this time, the students had all been sent home, just in case the League of Villains would try to come back to take the real Bakugou and cause more damage. A state of emergency had been declared and all available heroes were gathered to strategize and search for the kidnapped UA student.

Aizawa had been the unfortunate one who broke the news to Denki’s parents. His mother had wailed into her husband’s chest like she would never see him again, and for all she knew, maybe she wouldn’t.

Neito had been the unfortunate one who broke the news to Hitoshi.

“I heard that a student had been taken… but Denki? Are you sure?” Hitoshi asked.

If Hitoshi was going to go through all five stages of grief, the least Neito could do would be to help him through it. It was his fault, after all.

He was so concerned about messing up the villains’ plans that he didn’t realize what would happen as collateral damage. He was so hyped up about thinking ahead to save Bakugou and thoroughly messing the villains up that he didn’t think about what might happen if they were content with getting any students at all, including the very real Denki who was not a half-assed clone.

“I didn’t see it myself, but there were multiple witnesses. He was the only one absent during the headcount afterwards,” Neito offered, trying to feel less sorry for himself so that he could be the soulmate that Hitoshi deserved at that moment.

Hitoshi paled even further since first hearing the news, shifting his weight between his feet as he thought.

Taking a deep breath and steeling his resolve, Hitoshi nodded. “He’s going to be fine.”

“He’s strong, Toshi,” Neito attempted to reassure Hitoshi. “He’s—Wait! What did you say?” Hitoshi’s words finally catching up to him.

“He’s going to be fine,” Hitoshi repeated, taking another deep breath and actively working to calm himself down. “If anyone could make it out unscathed, it would be Denki.”

“Can’t you just be sad and let me comfort you? Just this once?!” Neito asked, defeated, as he slumped against the door frame, not daring to enter Hitoshi’s room after he had just broken the news that he had let the boy they love be taken by villains while Hitoshi was stuck going to class in general studies.

Hitoshi pulled Neito into the room by the hand, tugging hard enough to pull him into his chest and squeezed him hard, knowing that Neito was tearing himself apart inside of his mind, but not showing it as to try to be a good support to Hitoshi. But sometimes, Neito needed the support and Hitoshi was there to offer it. Hitoshi always knew what to say.

“It wasn’t your fault, Neito,” Hitoshi had whispered against Neito’s hair, squeezing tighter to keep him securely against his chest as the first of many sobs escaped him.

Neito felt sorry for himself, and Hitoshi made it so easy for him to have the space to feel his emotions before regrouping and overcoming them. Neito once again wondered what Hitoshi was getting out of their relationship, because it seemed to Neito that all he did was take, take, take, and Hitoshi had never stopped giving, not yet. Neito could only wish that he will get the chance to return the favor before Hitoshi gets tired of the one-sided relationship and calls it quits.

Hitoshi had snuck out that night, hours after Neito had gone home and he was supposed to be sleeping. His foster parents had retired to bed hours before, but Hitoshi couldn’t stop tossing and turning, his mind refusing to shut off and give him the sleep his body so desperately needed.

He had gotten dressed and wandered out into the night, heading toward the nearest train station that still ran at the later hours. After a villain attack, he felt that he should be more alert and maybe even jittery, but Hitoshi was not more on-edge than usual. In fact, he was a little more relaxed. Hitoshi snorted as he walked, thinking to himself that maybe he felt more at ease because the villains have their hands full with Denki and none of them would have any time or energy to prowl the streets for unsuspecting victims.

Hitoshi knew that Denki would be returned to them, but it bothered him that he didn’t know when. He knew that he would see Denki again, because Denki is a social genius who can talk his way out of any situation. This would be the ultimate test, sure, but he knew that Denki would be successful. Even so, he couldn’t relax. He couldn’t sleep. He had wished that they had made time to talk, to admit his feelings to the electric blond. The not knowing was the worst for Hitoshi’s anxiety, and what better way to use the excess energy than to train some more?

He didn’t blame Neito for what happened, but he would be lying if he hadn’t thought of how it might have been different if he was there. All he would have had to do was ask the villain a question, and Denki would have been released after a simple command from Hitoshi. It was his own shortcomings that allowed him to fall so far behind his soulmate and other peers, so much so that he was put into general studies instead of the hero course where he strived to be, and he was going to work hard to make sure that his previous mistakes never happened again. He was going to catch up to—maybe even surpass—his peers if that meant he could keep his loved ones safe. If that meant taking a midnight train to school grounds to practice more with the damn capture scarf, then Hitoshi would gladly put in the hours. Anything to be transferred into the hero course. Anything to be able to protect those he loved.

He had only been practicing for 20 minutes when Aizawa startled him by coming in through the door unannounced.

“I figured I’d find you here,” he grumbled from the doorway.

Hitoshi just shrugged in response, hoping that Aizawa would join him instead of sending him home, hoping that Aizawa would demonstrate his own skills once again and make Hitoshi curse in the morning from how sore his overworked muscles would be, because at least that would be something to think about other than Denki at the hands of the League of Villains.

To Hitoshi’s relief, Aizawa started unwinding his own capture weapon from his neck as he advanced toward the center of the gym.

"You couldn’t have done anything to stop it,” Aizawa stated, partly because it was true, and partly to add the distraction of conversation for Hitoshi to work through as he shot his capture weapon in Hitoshi’s direction.

Hitoshi dodged it easily, knowing that Aizawa was just getting started and trying not to get his hopes up and become overconfident. Overconfidence and underestimating the enemy might be the last mistake a hero makes.

“I know,” Hitoshi grunted out as he rolled away from yet another lazy attempt of capture from Aizawa.

“Do you?” Aizawa inquired, tired eyes not allowing Hitoshi to leave his sight as Hitoshi moved around the gym, evading attacks and sending attacks of his own that Aizawa had easily side-stepped.

“If I was there—” Hitoshi started, pausing to attempt to capture Aizawa with his own scarf, before continuing, “I could have used my quirk to get the villain to release Denki.”

“If you were at the right place at the right time,” Aizawa retorted, stepping on the end of Hitoshi’s capture weapon.

“Right,” Hitoshi grumbled, pulling his capture weapon free after Aizawa eased off the end of it.

Hitoshi had quickly recovered and used his own capture scarf as a block to Aizawa’s without letting it get tangled and ripped from his own hands, which was a massive improvement. Hitoshi’s sour mood had helped him focus and revisit his initial motivations for why he wanted to become a hero.

“I didn’t know that you and Kaminari were on a first-name basis,” Aizawa continued, not because he cared, but to attempt to distract Hitoshi as he sent the capture scarf in his direction again, picking up speed to see how much Hitoshi had improved.

Hitoshi was well aware of Aizawa’s motives, but he was also well aware that Aizawa was listening to Hitoshi’s responses, whether he had genuine interest or not. Hitoshi kept his face blank, resisting the urge to smile in anticipation of his next move, the first would-be smile since Neito had broken the news about Denki’s capture hours earlier.

“It’s because I’m in love with him,” Hitoshi stated bluntly, keeping his eyes open for the opening, and taking full advantage when Aizawa whipped his head in his direction in surprise.

For the first time since they had started training, Hitoshi successfully captured Aizawa.

Chapter Text

“So, let’s talk business, yeah?” Shigaraki started off with, sitting down across from Denki and looking at him head-on.

They had sat Denki on the couch. It all felt so domestic in the strangest, uncanny way. It was disorienting, and that was probably the point.

Shigaraki had pulled up a wooden chair, flipping it around and straddling it, placing his forearms on the back to stare directly at Denki.

Even with only Shigaraki and Dabi in the room, it was kind of intimidating.

That was a lie. It was very intimidating.

“I—uh—have nothing to say to you…” Denki attempted.

“Really?” Shigaraki taunted, a mean glint in his eyes, thoroughly appreciating the fear wafting off of his hostage in response to his presence and attention. “Because that sounded more like a question than a statement.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Dabi drawled from across the room.

Denki felt a little betrayed by how far away Dabi had removed himself from the situation. He wanted him right there with him, also staring death in the face. He felt very small all by himself, talking to the future leader of the League of Villains. At least Bakugou wasn’t there to be a bargaining chip; at least Denki wasn’t able to be used as a bargaining chip against Bakugou.

“How so?” Shigaraki asked, flicking his eyes to Dabi, genuine curiosity in his voice for what his companion had to say about the situation.

“I trained him years ago and set up a regimen. By the looks of it, he hasn’t strayed since the very first training session,” Dabi explained, gesturing lazily to their blond hostage.

Shigaraki’s eyes trailed up and down Denki, and he had never felt so exposed before in his life, not even when he was telling his friends about the voices for the first time. He shivered under Shigaraki’s gaze. It was utterly intimidating to have someone as threatening as Shigaraki giving him his full attention. He wondered briefly what Neito would do in this situation, being the one who thrives under attention. Denki decided he would probably have witty comebacks and either not be afraid at all, or at least be able to hide his fear.

“So, you’re loyal to Dabi?” Shigaraki drawled.

Denki’s mind whirred and his vision blurred under the flash of adrenaline coursing through him. How the hell was he supposed to answer that? If he said no, they might finally leave him alone, but he couldn’t risk hurting Dabi’s feelings. If he said yes, they might try to use Dabi against him to join the League of Villains. He was stuck. At least, he was until Dabi spoke up for him.

“He’s loyal and dedicated to his goal of becoming a hero. Correct me if I’m wrong, Denki.”

Denki knew that Dabi was technically a villain, but he had totally just come to his rescue and saved him. Dabi would always be a hero in Denki’s mind, since that first moment he agreed to train the trio and they became the QQQ.

Denki nodded in response, hoping that Dabi could sense the gratitude in the simple glance in his direction.

“Wait…” Shigaraki commanded, holding up a finger as his mind reversed the conversation, picking up something that he had not considered before. “So, you know Dabi’s true identity?”

Denki’s eyes widened. The only thing worse than being a useless hostage to the League of Villains was being useful in the way that they wanted information from him. After they got the information they wanted, he would then become useless, which was infinitely worse than starting out as useless in the first place.

“What is Dabi’s real name?” Shigaraki pressed when Denki just sat there, eyes widened, and didn’t make a move to answer.

“It’s not nice to call people by anything other than their preferred name,” Denki responded, finally finding the courage to speak.

Maybe Neito had rubbed off on Denki after all. Denki could imagine Neito saying the exact same thing, though with significantly more attitude and less paralyzed by fear. Hitoshi would answer Shigaraki’s question with a question, then the command to release him would come shortly after, not that the rest of the League of Villains would allow it, based on what Denki had seen.

If Denki was correct in his thinking, it was assumed that Shigaraki was the strict mastermind behind the League of Villains. Denki had learned two important things already: Shigaraki was acting under the guidance of another man he called master, and Shigaraki was open to others’ input and not just using them strictly as pawns to carry out his own ideas. Denki based the second point on Shigaraki taking Dabi’s comments into consideration instead of just waving him off, but that could also be because they were soulmates or something. Denki had to make sure to watch out for how Shigaraki treats the other members’ ideas as well to be able to differentiate.

“It’s not a preferred name,” Shigaraki argued with furrowed brows. “It’s an alias to disguise his real identity that I feel like I have the right to know.”

The fact that Shigaraki didn’t make a move to decay Denki’s face off gave Denki enough courage to continue to argue his own point.

“It’s a name… that he prefers over any other… hence, a preferred name,” Denki argued back, finally finding some bite to his words.

Dabi laughed at Denki’s response, then laughed louder when Shigaraki had accidentally decayed the chair he had been sitting on after gripping it too tightly in agitation.

Even as Dabi was laughing, he strolled over to help Shigaraki up from the floor where he glowered at both the hostage who caused the situation and Dabi who was making it infinitely worse with his damn laughter. Dabi reached out a hand and Shigaraki took it, being careful not to place all five fingers down as Dabi hoisted him up.

Denki figured that there was definitely a connection between the two. Shigaraki accepted Dabi’s help, even as he was laughing at him, and Dabi didn’t flinch away at all from Shigaraki’s hand as he helped him back up off of the floor.

“Join us,” Shigaraki demanded, glaring at Denki as he stood in a pile of dust from the chair.

“Uh… no, thank you?” Denki offered as a response, tensing his shoulders in preparation for retaliation.

“Okay. That’s fine,” Shigaraki said, brushing the dust off of his pants.

Denki was afraid at his lackluster response.

Denki’s instincts were right on the mark.

Shigaraki continued, “I’ll just let it leak after you return to UA that you’re a traitor, and we took you on purpose to get updates from you.”

Denki’s heart dropped.

“They wouldn’t believe you,” Denki tried, knowing full well that at least some might believe him.

“They will when we return you on our own tomorrow, no hostage negotiation or rescue needed,” Shigaraki threatened. “You’ll continue on to your UA classes, gathering intel for the League. That’s what they’ll believe, anyway…”

“They won’t,” Denki insisted, though his heartrate increased in response to the danger.

“They will because there actually is a traitor among the students at UA. I’ll leak some of the intel I have from the real traitor, and with the other ‘leaked’ information, all of the evidence will lead straight to you.”

Denki’s heart thundered in his chest. One of his classmates was a traitor? Or was it someone from the other hero course, or maybe even general studies to be less suspicious? Or was all of that a lie to get Denki to comply to Shigaraki’s demands?

“I’ll let you sleep on it and see what you have to say in the morning,” Shigaraki offered, getting up to leave the room, leaving Dabi and Denki alone.

Denki would have given anything to brainstorm with his friends right then. Maybe they would have a very obvious idea that he just wasn’t seeing.

Well, he did have Dabi, didn’t he? Not really… but it was better than nothing!

“He really trusts you, huh?” Denki asked, trying to recover from the very real, very scary threat Shigaraki had just issued.

“What makes you say that?” Dabi asked, dropping down lazily onto the couch next to Denki.

“He knows that we were friends before, but he still left us alone. What if we were close enough that you would release me?” Denki asked, trying to get a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between Dabi and Shigaraki.

“Do you want me to release you?” Dabi asked blankly, not allowing any emotion to show to give Denki a hint as to what he was thinking.

Denki’s heart leaped in anticipation, even when he knew that he would decline. Even the idea made him anxious. So much could go wrong. The initial escape attempt could be intercepted. If they didn’t really trust Dabi, they might just be waiting for the moment he betrays them. If they succeed, what will be the fallout for Dabi once Denki is safely back home? Also, what would become of Shigaraki’s threat? If he was serious about it, it might make Denki look even more suspicious, being released so soon after his capture. Would it look like just enough time to disclose important information before being sent back out to gather more? Was this a set-up by Dabi to fall into that exact trap?

No. Denki stopped his thoughts on the matter right there. There was no way that he was going to sit there and let his wild thoughts taint his friendship with Dabi, not when he had just gotten him back.

“No,” Denki answered, slumping into the couch as he relaxed a little more.

“Why not?” Dabi asked, though he didn’t sound surprised.

Denki quickly jumped into his thought process, explaining the different things that could go wrong for himself, for Dabi, and maybe for both of them.

Dabi nodded, following along with Denki’s multiple reasons.

After Denki had finished, Dabi flatly stated, “no.”

“No?” Denki repeated as a question. “What do you mean, no?”

“It wasn’t any of those reasons separately, but a different one entirely when all combined,” Dabi stated. “You said no because you’re going to be a hero.”

“What?” Denki asked, not following Dabi’s logic.

“You’re still just as selfless as you were back on Unit Beta. Instead of only looking out for yourself, you kept the fallout for me in mind, too,” Dabi explained, turning sideways on the couch to face Denki. “Instead of only being worried about your future at UA, you’re nervous about the lies about you being a traitor messing up the current investigation and throwing actual progress off-course.”

“I never said—” Denki attempted to argue but was cut-off by Dabi.

“You didn’t have to,” Dabi interrupted, rolling his eyes. “I know you, Denks. Take this very genuine compliment for once in your life, okay?”

“I didn’t think a villain calling someone a hero would be considered a compliment,” Denki retorted.

Dabi snorted, knowing that was as close to acceptance as Denki was going to get in his current mood and circumstances.

Denki and Dabi were interrupted by Shigaraki, Twice, Toga, Spinner, Kurogiri, and Mr. Compress filing back into the room, Dabi quickly and quietly supplying names of the villains as they entered for Denki.

“Okay. So, what if we retried for Bakugou?” Shigaraki offered.

Denki’s mind whirred, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Should we be discussing this in front of the kid?” Toga asked, glancing quickly in Denki’s direction.

“Doesn’t matter after the rumor that he’s one of us spreads,” Shigaraki declared with a shrug. “They won’t believe a word he says. They’ll think he’s trying to throw them off-track, because why would villains have a meeting with important information right in front of their hostage, unless that hostage was part of the plan to begin with.”

Denki’s heart sunk, and he suddenly wished to be discluded for the first time in his life.

“So, Bakugou?” Shigaraki reoffered.

“It’s a lot of work to get everything in motion and the information on time to actually get a plan in place,” Spinner offered. “We should try to make sure that Bakugou would be a willing participant before we try again.”

“Are you crazy?” Toga offered, making Denki wince and lean away from her, even though she was across the room from him. “You saw the way he was acting on stage! He is our best option.”

“You want to recruit Bakugou?” Denki blurted, finally understanding. “That’s a bad idea.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t want us to go after anyone else,” Toga attempted to dismiss him. “Very heroic and all, but shut up.”

“He’s a feral dude,” Denki agreed with earlier sentiments, nodding. “But he’s determined to become a hero. He wants to be the number one hero, and he wouldn’t let anything stop him, not even a group of villains offering him the world.”

“He has to feel betrayed by what UA did to him at the sports festival, though,” Mr. Compress offered, wanting to see what Denki had to say about that.

“We all did,” Denki admitted with a shrug. “We took care of it ourselves, and everything is okay again.”

“Took care of it yourselves? What do you mean by that?” Toga asked, leaning toward Denki and giving him her full attention.

“We held a demonstration. We all wore muzzles and held our voices hostage until they promised to never do anything like that again,” Denki explained slowly, running what he was going to say through his mind to make sure that he wasn’t giving anything important away, purposely skipping the little tidbit about them all learning sign language in the meantime.

“Who did?” Mr. Compress asked.

“We all did. All of the students,” Denki offered, again skipping the fact that the teachers had joined in so they didn’t question how they learned so the sign language wouldn’t come up. “When I started the movement, I didn’t think that everyone would join in. Bakugou comes across as pretty rough to a lot of people… But, literally every student, even in the general, business, and tech classes joined in.”

“Impressive,” Spinner muttered under his breath, earning a quick glare from Shigaraki, but Shigaraki couldn’t exactly argue. It was quite impressive.

“What about that child that I knocked out?” Mr. Compress offered to be considered by the group next.

“The one that caused us all sorts of problems?” Toga grumbled as she pulled a binder from the bookshelf, she was standing next to and thumbed through the pages.

“He was surprisingly competent,” Twice offered. “I could have handled him.”

“That must have been Monoma Neito. His quirk is Copy: He can copy other people’s quirks through physical contact,” Toga read from the page.

“That’s interesting,” Shigaraki offered, already thinking that his quirk might be useful in his master’s arsenal if he doesn’t agree to join of his own free will.

“Shit! Wait!” Toga interjected. “He has a soulmate. Shinsou Hitoshi.”

Toga flipped through more pages before finding the one she wanted.

“It’s hard to recruit those who have soulmates because they aren’t willing to leave them…” she muttered as she skimmed over the selected page. “The soulmate is in general studies, but—oh, wow! He made it to the final round of the sports festival! He was the one with purple hair who lost against darling Izuku.”

“Darling Izuku?” Denki questioned aloud but was ignored in favor of Shigaraki’s question.

“The one with the brainwashing quirk?” Shigaraki asked, perking up at the mention of the holder of the advanced quirk.

“The very one!”

“Someone like that being reduced to the general studies course must feel undervalued. We probably couldn’t get one without the other, but if we could get both…” Shigaraki started, his mind combing through all of the possibilities.

“No,” Denki declared, trying to veto the answer.

“No?” Shigaraki asked. “What’s wrong with these ones?”

“I also trained Neito and Hitoshi,” Dabi offered, sparing Denki from having to answer.

Shigaraki scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Then we take their quirks. Fuck. Why don’t you just go and train all the heroes, Dabi?”

“I had thought about it, but then what would you do here without me?” Dabi drawled, a lazy smile growing across his face at the banter.

“I’d be able to play my video games in peace, for one. And I’d have one less disrespectful, terrible, good-for-nothing, annoying—”

“—hot, sexy, amazing, strong partner in villainy? Care to continue?” Dabi taunted.

“Underling,” Shigaraki corrected in a huff before opening his mouth to continue, but Dabi beat him to it.

“Last time I checked, you’re the one who’s under me,” Dabi quipped with a smirk and a lax shrug, sending a wink in Denki’s direction.

Denki had been watching, turning his head back and forth as the two bickered. To Denki’s surprise, Shigaraki’s face quickly turned red, even as he scowled at Dabi through the blush.

“We’ll see later,” Shigaraki growled as a threat, but it just happened to rile up Dabi more.

“You can be on top if you want to, boss,” Dabi offered with faux innocence, batting his eyelashes in his direction.

Shigaraki fisted his hands in his hair before cursing under his breath and stomping away before he impulsively decayed Dabi’s face off at the public insubordination.

Toga laughed nervously. “I hate when you get him all riled up,” she nervously squeaked at Dabi. “It’s going to be like walking on eggshells for the next week now.”

“Just because you’re safe from his wrath, doesn’t mean that the rest of us are!” Spinner added in agreement.

“He throws threats around like free candy,” Mr. Compress stated with a shrug, not buying into the fear. “He acts like he hates it, but I think he secretly likes being included in such a raw, unfiltered way.”

Kurogiri added, “Dabi shows him what it’s like to have a friend who doesn’t take his dangerous quirk into consideration. Dabi shows him that he treats him the way he does because that’s the way he shows he cares, and not out of some cold, distant type of respect.”

Kurogiri had seen a massive change in Shigaraki and his leadership style since Dabi had joined the League of Villains. While doubtful before, even Kurogiri could imagine Shigaraki succeeding with his new and ever progressing leadership style and personality. Power and connections can only get someone so far. Loyalty from followers is what really helps people to succeed, but loyalty from fear is only superficial and doesn’t last. As far as Kurogiri was concerned, Shigaraki was definitely on his way to gaining true loyalty from his following, slowly opening up and not immediately retaliating against any sign of disagreement, or anything other than pure respect.

“Maybe not as aggressively lax as Dabi, but we should all try to include Shigaraki more as a friend, when appropriate,” Mr. Compress offered.

“Does that mean I have to sleep with the boss, too?” Spinner groaned, making Dabi snort.

“You sleep with all your friends, big guy?” Dabi asked, raising his eyebrows as he awaited Spinner’s response.

Spinner laughed nervously, shaking his head, rubbing the back of his neck, and retreating from the room.

“Then don’t worry about it!” Dabi shouted at his retreating form.

Denki took it as a small blessing that he did not have to dig hard to figure out the exact relationship between Dabi and Shigaraki, though he could have done with fewer innuendos.

Chapter Text

“I just don’t understand why you can’t recruit from a villain school instead. It’s counterintuitive to go after students from a hero school to find villain recruits, don’t you think?” Denki attempted to persuade, blocking and dodging Dabi’s punches.

“A villain school, Denki? Really?” Dabi deadpanned, dropping to try to kick Denki’s feet out from under him.

Denki knew that a move like that would be coming eventually after Dabi had focused heavily on making Denki block his upper body, so he easily jumped over the kick aimed at his ankles, throwing his own kick towards Dabi’s face while he was in the air. Dabi, however, was expecting him to take that specific opening and grabbed his leg before he made contact, causing Denki to fall to the floor. Denki had committed falling properly to muscle memory years prior, so he easily rolled into it without hurting himself.

“Well, I want to say take anyone from any other school, and just leave all of my friends at UA alone, but that wouldn’t be very Plus Ultra of me,” Denki admitted, lying on the floor, breathing heavily.

Dabi snorted in response, offering a hand to pull Denki up. Denki took the hand but pulled Dabi down onto the floor next to him instead, flashing a mischievous smile at him.

“Plank competition?” Denki offered, eyes sparkling.

“You’re on,” Dabi responded, immediately getting into plank position with Denki scrambling to follow suit so that they would start at the same time so it would be fair.

“So…” Denki started, wanting to be distracted from the strain of the plank on his core. “You and the boss man, huh?”

“Yeah,” Dabi answered easily, a soft smile on his lips. “He’s great. What about you? Anyone special?"

"Uh... well..." Denki started.

Normally, Denki was very open about his feelings for the soulmates, but it felt strange telling Dabi about his feelings when Dabi had been there when they had all first met. Dabi had known about Neito and Hitoshi being soulmates for a long time, so to admit to liking them was a little more nerve-wracking than admitting it to his classmates, for instance.

“Spit it out!” Dabi commanded, shifting his weight to bump his shoulder into Denki’s.

“I’m in love with Neito and Hitoshi,” Denki admitted, squeezing his eyes shut at the anticipation of Dabi’s response.

Denki peaked his eye open and glanced toward Dabi who seemed to be deep in thought.

“You’re in love with both Hitoshi and Neito?” he asked for clarification.

Denki nodded, fearing the worst.

“Hitoshi and Neito who are soulmates with each other?” Dabi asked.

Again, Denki nodded.

“Hm,” Dabi hummed in response.

“That’s it?! Hm?” Denki asked incredulously.

“Do you like video games, Denks?” Dabi asked instead.

“What does that have to do with—?” Denki started to ask but was interrupted.

“Just answer the question,” Dabi demanded.

Denki sighed, shifting his weight to be distributed more evenly across his forearms against the floor.

“Yeah. I play often,” Denki answered, wondering why Dabi was asking.

“What kinds of games?” Dabi asked.

“All kinds. I just follow my friends to whatever game they invite me to next,” Denki responded.

“Cool, cool. What’s your handle?” Dabi asked.

“P05itiv3R3v0lt. Why?” Denki asked, patience running thin as his muscles strained against the weight of gravity.

“No reason. Maybe we’ll have to play together sometime. So, tell me about Hitoshi and Neito, then,” Dabi commanded.

Denki swore he was going to get whiplash from Dabi changing topics so suddenly, but he needed to talk about the soulmates with someone who might understand, so he jumped right in about how they had started pulling away at the same time he started online gaming and how they had slowly started to come back together again, only to be distanced once more.

“Neito was going to kiss me,” Denki answered.

Dabi had already known this; however, he used the opportunity of fake shock to fall out of the plank and allow Denki to win the challenge.

Denki dropped from his own plank and explained in detail what had happened with Neito, which was new to Dabi.

“What did Hitoshi say? What did he do?” Dabi asked, intrigued at his old friend’s wild love life.

“He just walked away. I thought he was going to punch me the next time he saw me. Hell, I would have let him! We haven’t really sat down and talked about what happened, but he didn’t seem mad at me when we were organizing that muzzle demonstration thing,” Denki mused.

“I think they both love you, too,” Dabi declared suddenly.

“Wh—what?” Denki sputtered.

“Yeah. Why else would Hitoshi be okay with Neito trying to kiss you?”

“What if he thinks I was trying to kiss Neito, and Neito wasn’t actually going to go through with it?” Denki countered, flopping back onto his back on the floor.

“Can you imagine Neito lying to Hitoshi?” Dabi asked, laying down on the floor next to Denki, joining him in staring up at the ceiling.

“No,” Denki answered sulkily.

“They probably had confessed to each other to liking you long ago. They’re probably more worried about your reaction than the idea of betraying one another,” Dabi offered.

“My reaction?” Denki inquired, prompting Dabi to continue with his thought process.

“The exact thing that you’re doing right now! You’re scared of getting in between them, of messing up this good thing that they have if they were to add you into the mix.”

“But I could, though,” Denki argued.

“It’s a possibility,” Dabi agreed, always the realist. “But I would bet money that to them, it would all be worth the risk.”

“How did you get started here with the League of Villains anyway?” Denki asked, changing the subject.

Dabi allowed for the subject change, knowing that he gave Denki a lot to think about later.

“After Hitoshi’s birthday invasion—” Denki snorted, and Dabi cracked a smile at the memory before continuing, “—I went up to the mountain near my house to practice my quirk without the risk of setting anything on fire. It worked in that nothing caught on fire except for me. It was bad, Denks. I thought I was going to die. I stumbled down to the river to try to cool off and soothe my burns, which is where one of the League’s recruiters had found me and brought me to a healer. I didn’t die, but the healer was mediocre at best and the scarring… well…”

“You look so badass like that,” Denki offered. “I’d bet you get all the ladies if you weren’t wrapped around Shigaraki’s little finger.”

Dabi smiled genuinely and didn’t even retort against the idea that he was enamored with Shigaraki, because he was. It was just a huge relief to know that Shigaraki was just as hooked on him. Nothing is better than requitted love.

“I saw you guys at my funeral,” Dabi admitted.

Denki gasped. “You were there?!”

“I looked in through the windows for a few minutes. It was kind of like attending the funeral of my old self so that I could move on to my new destiny after I accepted to join the League of Villains after I had thought that I would end up as a hero someday. It was cathartic,” Dabi mused.

“It was devastating,” Denki countered. “None of us could believe it at first because you had just been there with us, laughing and training the week before.”

“I missed you three the most,” Dabi admitted. “I thought I would miss a lot more from my old life, but this crazy bunch has really come through for me.”

“But not even the League of Villains can measure up to the QQQ, huh?” Denki asked, sitting up to comically flexing his arms as a show of strength against the very villain group who had ironically successfully captured him.

Dabi laughed and agreed, “nothing could measure up to the QQQ.”

Denki flopped back down onto the floor and asked, “so who was that television guy?”

“They call him All For One. He really only speaks to and through Shigaraki, so I don’t know much about him,” Dabi offered.

“Did he really take Ragdoll’s quirk, or was that just a scheme to get me to be scared?” Denki inquired.

Dabi shook his head, and Denki’s stomach dropped. “He really did take her quirk.” Dabi continued when he saw Denki pale, “if it’s any consolation, though, he returned her. She’s back home now, safe and alive, just without her quirk.”

“What does he do with the quirks he collects?” Denki asked, narrowing his eyebrows at the audacity of this strange man he had never met before.

“He can use them himself, or he can pass them on to others who are in alignment with his own goals.”

Denki rambled as he thought aloud, “Shigaraki calls him master, which is super weird and creepy. He talks like a teacher to Shigaraki, though, like he is preparing him to take over. But how did he get so lucky as to get someone so loyal like Shigaraki in the first place?”

“Shigaraki accidentally killed his whole family when his quirk developed,” Dabi explained. “All For One was the one who found him and took him in right after.”

“That’s kind of suspicious, though, isn’t it? All For One can take and give quirks, and suddenly finds an orphan boy who had just happened to have killed his whole family with a powerful quirk that had just developed?” Denki pondered, furrowing his eyebrows in concentration.

“You’ve been hanging around with Shouto too much,” Dabi offered, though he tucked the idea away to think about later when he had no distractions. He didn’t much care for the dynamic that All For One had created for Shigaraki, either.

“Well, he is the master of conspiracy!” Denki declared proudly.

“You have spent time with him?” Dabi asked, surprised. “I didn’t think he’d be allowed to socialize,” he mused, turning his head to look straight up at the ceiling as he reminisced about his youngest brother and the few memories he had of him.

“We trained together once when I barged in on his private gym time. He was surprised that I could keep up with him since he was trained by a Pro Hero, so I bragged that I was trained by you. He was surprised and asked me about you. I told him about the QQQ, and he immediately guessed that Neito was part of the QQQ as well! The true conspiracy king!” Denki complimented.

"He was interested in knowing about me?" Dabi asked, looking over at Denki for confirmation.

Denki nodded. “Anything I could tell him about you, he wanted to know. He didn’t know…”

“He didn’t know what?” Dabi demanded, the smallest bit of anger leaking through his tone.

Denki’s eyes teared up as he made eye contact with Dabi. “He didn’t know that you were pronounced dead until a month later, at family dinner.”

“What?” Dabi asked, all anger dissipated and pure confusion leaking through his voice.

“During the search party, Endeavor had him working on a new move on his own. During the funeral, Endeavor was coaching him through mastering different skills and working on new, advanced ones. Shouto was so tired that all he did was sleep, eat, and train. He said it wasn’t until family dinner, a whole month later, when no one set out a plate for you that he learned what had happened to you. He said that he asked if you were out with friends, and his sister broke down into tears and ran to her room. His brother yelled at Endeavor for not telling Shouto that his oldest brother was dead, and that is how Shouto found out,” Denki explained quietly.

“Is that why Endeavor is allowing Shouto to socialize more? Out of some fake show of guilt for not telling him that I died and making him miss the funeral?” Dabi asked, rage building under the surface.

Denki smiled softly through his tears that started leaking down his cheeks. “Shouto basically disowned Endeavor!” he exclaimed, laughing despite his continued tears. “He refused to train with him and would stop training if he even tried to watch! He practically lives to spite his father for what he has done and made sure to make a point to spend more time with his siblings. Fuck, Dabi. If he knew you were alive, I’d bet he’d spend countless hours making it up to you.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Dabi insisted, his anger deflating once again. “And he can’t know.”

“I know,” Denki answered to both statements.

Denki continued to tell Dabi about Shouto and mentioned that he was close friends with Midoriya and how powerful the two were becoming.

Dabi swore under his breath at that but allowed Denki to continue.

“You know, he thought Midoriya was All Might’s secret love child and told Midoriya this information to his face during the sports festival! The true king of conspiracy hath no shame!” Denki declared.

“And he can’t always be wrong,” Dabi offered, a small, knowing smile gracing his face.

Dabi laughed until there were tears in his eyes when Denki talked about Shouto’s deadpan humor that no one is even sure if he is intending to be funny or not. He laughed so hard that his stomach hurt when Denki told him about the conversation about the way Shouto decides to do things: if it would make his father mad, he is definitely in. Going against UA with the muzzle demonstration for the benefit of the feral boy who had beaten him at the sports festival? That would infuriate Endeavor, so Shouto was in. Sharing his quirk with the copy-quirked boy in Class 1-B? That would enrage Endeavor, so Shouto gladly shared his quirk with Neito.

“I’m glad he’s making so many friends. It seems like he has good taste,” Dabi commented, making Denki smile, causing the salt tracks on his face to crease and crack from the tears that had long since dried.

“Did the League of Villains consider taking Shouto?” Denki asked.

“No,” Dabi answered, shrugging. “He’s a bland kid who doesn’t stand out, no matter how much our father had tried to make him shine. He stands out to you because you got to know him, but others on the outside don’t see him that way. He’s a rich kid whose place was bought by his rich Pro Hero daddy. Even if the League knew that he was totally against Endeavor, increasing the odds of him joining us, the risk would be too great because we wouldn’t need his quirks. He is impressive, but it’s just like with you. He’s great because of all of the training and hard work, not because his quirks are anything special. His quirks only get attention because he has two opposite ones.”

Denki nodded, “that’s good. That’s one less person I have to worry about their quirk being taken away from them.”

Denki turned his head to look at Dabi, new anxieties arising, unshed tears gathering in his eyes once again.

“He already said he won’t take yours,” Dabi offered, trying to comfort his old friend.

“Mine is nothing special,” Denki whispered. “Electric quirks are plentiful and easy to come by. I’m not worried about my quirk.”

Dabi’s eyes widened in realization. “The soulmates?”

“They both have amazing quirks, and both are on Shigaraki’s radar. I—” Denki choked, the tears overflowing down his cheeks as he imagined Neito and Hitoshi facing that dangerous, scary, powerful man, knowing that their quirks would soon be his after they had worked so hard to get to where they were. And what if he wasn’t feeling as gracious as he was with Ragdoll? What if the soulmates never made it back to him, quirks or not?

“Well, you’ll just have to go convince Shigaraki, won’t you?” Dabi asked, hoisting himself up, pulling Denki along with him.

“What? Right now?! Is this his room?! I can’t just barge in there!” Denki tried protesting, putting his hands up to try to talk Dabi down from his absolutely demonic idea. Denki swore Dabi had suddenly decided that Denki could no longer be alive and decided that Shigaraki was the man to do the job.

“Just play a few video games with him!” Dabi encouraged, holding Denki by the shoulders to prepare him mentally, giving him a small shake. “Let him kill you a few times in the games to stave off his urge to decay your face off in real life!”

“Gee, thanks, Dabi. That makes me feel so much more confident that I’m going to survive this encounter,” Denki sneered.

“Hey! Your sarcasm has improved!” Dabi facetiously pointed out. “Get in there! Do it for the soulmates!”

Damn it all to hell. Dabi knew he would do anything for the soulmates, including this. Denki took a deep breath and stepped up to the closed door, anxiously bouncing on his toes, hyping himself up to knock.

Turning back toward Dabi, he requested semi-jokingly, “if I die, tell Hitoshi and Neito that I loved them both."

Walking away, Dabi murmured under his breath, “I’m sure they already know.”

Taking one more deep breath and mentally counting down from three, Denki knocked on the door.

Chapter Text

“What do you want?” Shigaraki sneered at Denki standing in the doorway before turning his attention back to the colorful screen in front of him.

Denki really wasn’t a threat to Shigaraki; he knew that. But to have Shigaraki completely disregard him to turn his back on him still made him feel very small.

“Uh… Can I play?” Denki asked hesitantly, taking a cautious half-step further into the room.

Shigaraki glanced back at him once again, pausing his game to really look him over and consider. He did like having someone to play with. It beat playing alone, that is, if the kid turned out to be any good. Shigaraki figured that because Denki was a teenage boy, there was probably at least some video game experience. Besides, Dabi had flat out refused to play with him while Denki was there, wanting to keep an eye on the kid at all times. So, why was the kid wandering into Shigaraki’s room of all places, unaccompanied by Dabi?

“Shut the door behind you,” Shigaraki grumbled, moving over to make room for Denki on the futon next to him.

Denki let out a breath and willed his heart to calm down as he carefully shut the door and made his way closer to the villain. It was weird being in Shigaraki’s presence, and so close to him, of his own accord.

Denki flopped down next to Shigaraki and finally looked at the screen. He slapped his hands over his mouth, but the muffled snort still captured Shigaraki’s attention.

“You got something to say?” Shigaraki growled, red eyes narrowed at him in warning.

“Just… I didn’t take you to be an Adventures of All Might player, is all,” Denki admitted, holding his hands up in surrender.

“There’s a glitch,” Shigaraki informed matter-of-factly, turning his attention back to the game and unpausing it. “I’ll show you.”

Shigaraki proceeded to jump, fly, and run his All Might avatar throughout the cityscape of the game, ignoring the NPCs trying to catch his attention to do various tasks to earn points. Finally at his destination, Shigaraki stopped the All Might avatar in the middle of a sidewalk, next to a fire hydrant. Denki was about to question what he was supposed to be looking for when a small flowerpot fell from above screen, flattening the much larger All Might avatar like a pancake. The ‘GAME OVER’ flashed across the screen and offered to restart the game or exit.

“Holy shit,” Denki whispered under his breath before bursting out laughing. “A flowerpot can kill All Might in this game?! It wasn’t even like a giant one, or a quirked-out spiky one! It was just a little old lady one! It had daisies in it!” Denki exclaimed as he wailed through his laughter, eyes squinted in absolute hilarity.

Shigaraki’s own smile grew over his face; laughter was contagious after all. He looked over at Denki consideringly before choosing the option to exit the game and choosing a multiplayer one that he frequented.

“Are you any good?” Shigaraki asked, nodding to the screen.

“I can hold my own,” Denki promised, not wanting to put Shigaraki off by saying he wasn’t the best, but also not wanting to make him mad by implying that he was amazing at it, either.

Denki didn’t know what tended to set Shigaraki off, but he knew he would rather not if he could help it. He was trying to be as neutral as possible. Shigaraki quickly logged out of his own account, opting to move forward without the stress of worrying about an inexperienced player messing up his stats.

If Shigaraki had used his account, maybe Denki would have noticed his username. Alas, they were declared as generic Player 1 and Player 2.

Shigaraki handed over his spare controller, and Denki quickly took it, immediately turning to the screen to choose his character and other preferred specs. Denki worked quickly, not wanting to keep the villain waiting; Shigaraki might have noticed that he seemed very competent already from the way he immediately knew the order of the specs and which ones he wanted. However, Shigaraki was gazing at Denki in wonder instead of watching the screen, eyebrows furrowed as he thought about what he knew about the electric blond.

Shigaraki had come up with little, unsurprisingly. Denki was never one of the League’s considered targets. What had puzzled Shigaraki was that even colleagues like Toga and Twice would still flinch and pull away from him when his hands were too near, worried that he might accidentally, or maybe even purposefully and impulsively, use his quirk on them, given the chance. So, why was it that Dabi was no longer the only exception? Why was it that this hostage of theirs had quickly snatched the controller from his hand, not flinching away or caring when their hands had touched briefly in the transfer? Why was it that Denki didn’t hesitate to grab the controller from him, or maybe even insist that Shigaraki put the controller down on the futon before he would pick it up?

Was this kid reckless? Maybe that was part of it, but he didn’t seem suicidal, or he would have lit the League up with his quirk, consequences be damned. But maybe his connection to Dabi was truly the only thing holding him back from doing just that.

“How do you know Dabi, anyway?” Shigaraki inquired, starting the game after Denki indicated that he was ready.

Denki moved his avatar forward, following Shigaraki’s avatar around the familiar landscape that he had played forward, backwards, and sideways with his online friends at one point or another, conquering multiple other groups before moving on to another game completely.

“Oh, we go way back,” Denki answered, eyes and focus not straying from the screen, but still aware enough to not give anything away about Dabi that he did not want to be public knowledge.

“That wasn’t an answer,” Shigaraki growled.

Denki just shrugged in response, continuing to follow Shigaraki to a safe hideout in the game to regroup and plan the strategy for victory.

“Why did you come in here anyway?” Shigaraki asked as they both reacted quickly and took out the threats coming at either side of them.

Shigaraki whistled lowly, impressed with Denki’s quick reflexes. Maybe playing a few games with the hero student wouldn’t be too bad after all.

“To ask you to reconsider targeting Hitoshi and Neito,” Denki answered honestly. “The soulmates,” he clarified, in case Shigaraki didn’t remember their names.

Shigaraki scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You can’t just barge in here, asking for favors and making demands! What made you think I’d agree to any of that?” Shigaraki demanded, smashing the buttons on his controller a little bit harder than usual, hinting to Denki that he was becoming agitated already.

“Dabi seemed convinced,” Denki admitted with a shrug, not wanting to make demands, but still wanting to be heard out. “Plus, you guys literally kidnapped me. I think I reserve the right to at least ask, at the very least.”

In response to that, Shigaraki’s character turned around 180 degrees and fired right at Denki’s character.

Denki started wide-eyed at the screen before turning the same expression over to Shigaraki, who just spared him a disinterested glance in return.

“What’s with the friendly fire?!” Denki asked, flailing his hands around at the betrayal.

“There’s nothing friendly about my fire,” Shigaraki sneered, making Denki perk up in familiarity. “And until you tell me what I want to know, your avatar’s blood is going to coat the ground we stand on.”

There was a pause where Shigaraki invited an argument from Denki, but he didn’t get one.

“No complaints?” Shigaraki asked when Denki didn’t respond.

“Uh, no. I just had some weird déjà vu is all. Besides, Dabi said to let you kill me a few times as to reduce your impulse to decay my face off,” Denki offered with a shrug, waiting for his character to respawn.

Shigaraki scoffed. “Let me kill you a few times? Like you could possibly defend yourself!”

“I think I could hold my own!” Denki defended, nose scrunched in determination as he stared at the screen, trying to figure out if there was a way to dodge Shigaraki’s shots without firing back at him in return.

“What’s Dabi’s real name?” Shigaraki asked, hoping that the quick back and forth banter might cause Denki to slip.

“Ask him yourself,” Denki demanded bluntly.

After respawning, he hadn’t even gotten to take one step before Shigaraki’s character shot him again.

Denki groaned, flinging his head back against the futon in dismay.

“Tell me Dabi’s name, and I won’t go after your friends,” Shigaraki offered.

“How do you not know your own soulmate’s name anyway?” Denki asked to derail the conversation, knowing that he couldn’t betray Dabi like that.

If it came down to it, he would just have to warn the heroes who the League of Villains was after next, and hoped they believed him. Maybe that would be enough to save the boys he loved from the scary reality that is All For One.

“Soulmate? Dabi’s not my soulmate,” Shigaraki said, dumbfounded at Denki’s assumption.

“He’s not?” Denki asked, tearing his eyes away from the screen and looking at Shigaraki. When Shigaraki shook his head, Denki continued, “then how do you do it? How do you risk getting attached to each other with the possibility that one of your soulmates might come along and ruin everything you’ve built together?”

“What we have…” Shigaraki started, not used to talking about his feelings for Dabi and just experiencing them in the moment. “It isn’t that serious. It’s whatever.”

“Liar,” Denki blurted before he could stop himself.

Shigaraki turned on him, game forgotten, an incredulous look on his face at the audacity of his hostage.

“What did you just say to me?” Shigaraki demanded flatly.

Maybe Denki was dumb and reckless, but he didn’t hear any anger in Shigaraki’s voice, but surprise at being talked to that way. Denki figured that instead of backtracking, he would push forward. He would either end up dead or gain a newfound respect from Shigaraki for his courage. He figured it was worth the risk, though he might look back on that exact moment in the future and realize how reckless he had been.

Though, if Neito and Hitoshi were there, they would agree with him completely. They would know that he had picked up some kind of subtle hints from Shigaraki that let him know instinctively that it was safe to forge ahead, and they would have trusted him unconditionally. But they weren’t there, Denki was on his own, and he was nervous.

“I said that was a lie,” Denki said, doubling down. “I heard the way Dabi talked about you and saw the look on his face when he was thinking about you. That’s not nothing.”

“What do you know?” Shigaraki retorted quietly, without the expected bite to his words.

Denki started to understand. Shigaraki was trying to keep a distance, not wanting to get attached because he thought Dabi might just be using him for some fun and not taking what was budding seriously. Maybe he was thinking that his feelings were one-sided, but he saw the way Dabi looked when Shigaraki was brought into conversation, and he saw the way Shigaraki’s grip had tightened on his controller when he implied that their relationship wasn’t that serious.

Denki decided to treat Shigaraki’s defensive rhetorical question as an actual question.

“Dabi is… eccentric,” Denki offered. He wouldn’t give away Dabi’s identity, but he could give Shigaraki this, at least. “When he was still training us, he crashed Hitoshi’s birthday party by waking us up the next morning with a blow horn and making us train.” Shigaraki snorted, and Denki continued, a smile on his face from the memory, “he does unpredictable things sometimes, but he doesn’t get involved with someone if he doesn’t care. If he didn’t care about you and what is going on between you two, you wouldn’t question it, you would know. He would make it obvious. The way he egged you on earlier? From where I stand, that was so obviously him showing the highest affection for you, at least in Dabi’s own, unique way.”

Denki was too busy watching Shigaraki’s face to realize that they were being surrounded by other players on the screen, slowly creeping closer and ducking out of sight every few steps in the virtual forest that surrounded them.

Shigaraki picked up his controller, sending a glance and a small smile in Denki’s direction. Denki knew that that was Shigaraki’s way of saying thanks, and Denki followed suit with picking up his own controller, ready to get back to the game.

“No more friendly fire,” Shigaraki promised softly, ending the conversation, and turning back toward the game.

Denki didn’t mind the conversation being cut short. The intensity of Shigaraki’s face relaxing was enough to show him that he at least gave Shigaraki a lot to consider.

“Six o’clock!” Shigaraki urgently commanded when he saw a player sneaking up behind Denki before firing his own weapon at other incoming players.

Denki whipped his character around 180 degrees and fired automatically without thinking, muscle memory easily taking over.

After a few more tense seconds with rounds being fired from both sides, Shigaraki’s and Denki’s avatars were the only left standing. Shigaraki and Denki turned to face each other, wide-eyed.

“How…” Shigaraki started to ask before a horrible realization took over his face, the uncanny feeling of familiarity finally making sense. “Are you P05itiv3R3v0lt?”

The impressive reflexes, the easy and familiar cadence of their banter and conversation flow during the game, Denki’s familiarity with the game and map, and now his effortless following of Shigaraki’s barked command led to Shigaraki’s horrifying realization.

Shigaraki jumped, startled, when Denki screamed, jumping to his feet.

“You’re High5UrDead?! Oh shit! Oh shit! And Dabi!” Denki exclaimed, taking a dramatic breath in before belting, “he’s Fri3ndlyFir3! Oh my god!”

Shigaraki watched, stunned, as Denki carried on.

“And! And… you’re upset,” Denki realized, his energy levels immediately stabilizing as he realized that Shigaraki was not quite as excited as he was. “Are you disappointed that it’s me?”

Shigaraki shook his head in response, leaning forward and rubbing his temples with his fingertips. Pieces were falling into place. Namely that P05itiv3R3v0lt admitted to being in love with a pair of soulmates, and the League had just decided to target a pair of soulmates, the same pair that Denki was currently trying to dissuade him from going after.

“The soulmates that you’re in love with…?” Shigaraki inquired.

“Oh, yeah. That would be Hitoshi and Neito,” Denki admitted with a shrug.

“Well, there goes my bargaining chip,” Shigaraki sulked.

Chapter Text

“Does Dabi know that you’re P05itiv3R3v0lt?” Shigaraki asked, recovering from the fact that all of his previous plans were now off the table.

“Uh…” Denki stalled as he thought back, “I think so,” Denki said as he realized. “We were talking about me stupidly being in love with Neito and Hitoshi when he just kind of abruptly changed the subject and asked if I liked video games. I think he figured it out then.”

“And that’s when he sent you in here to play games with me…” Shigaraki mused aloud, conflicted.

What the UA student was saying earlier about Dabi truly caring for him started making sense to Shigaraki. How else would Dabi trust sending in his long-time friend, who also happened to be his gaming friend, in to play with Shigaraki unless he knew that Denki would make it out safely? Did he really trust him that much? Or did he just know him that well?

He knew that Dabi valued P05itiv3R3v0lt by the way they planned to hunt down the offending soulmates if any harm was to come to their online friend after the almost-kiss had happened. If Dabi cared for this kid so much, how could he risk his wellbeing by sending him in to compromise with Shigaraki of all villains? Did Dabi recognize that Shigaraki isn’t as explosive as everyone makes him out to be?

Maybe Dabi just knew both of them well enough that he predicted how the exchange would go and knew that Denki’s personality wasn’t going to clash with Shigaraki’s. But that would mean that Dabi had been paying more attention to Shigaraki during their interactions than he had realized.

Shigaraki’s heart fluttered in his chest at the possibilities of what that could mean.

“That manipulative, little—ugh!” Denki raged with wide eyes before storming over to the door and ripping it open before bolting out.

In true Denki fashion, Shigaraki noticed that he didn’t hesitate in which direction to run in. He was always good with his spatial memory, always quickly becoming familiar and confident with the game maps. It was no surprise that this skill turned out to be useful in real life, too.

What was a surprise was to the other villains who were lounging around the barroom, waiting for Shigaraki to come break the news that he accidentally-on-purpose killed the UA student after they had discovered that Dabi left the two alone together.

“Hey, uh—where’s the kid?” Spinner had asked as Dabi leisurely strolled into the barroom like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Ah, Denki?” Dabi asked, like there was another ‘kid’ that Spinner could possibly be referring to. “He’s playing games with the boss man.”

“You left Kaminari alone with Shigaraki?!” Toga shrilled, jumping to his feet. “You want him dead now, or what?! I thought we needed him! I thought you liked him!” she accused, pointing a judgmental finger in Dabi’s direction.

“He’s going to be fine. They’ll both be better off for it,” Dabi reassured, but the other villains weren’t as confident and started planning what the next steps would be if Shigaraki killed their captive.

Spinner, Toga, Twice, and Magne jumped, whipping around to look at the staircase when they heard a scream that had to have been from Denki.

Even Mr. Compress and Kurogiri peered around the stairway, concerned.

Dabi was unphased, sitting there, playing with the remaining ice in his glass from his finished drink as a smile started growing over his face.

“You really did want the kid dead,” Spinner accused in a whisper, noticing Dabi’s reaction.

Spinner knew he was bound to interact with some crazies when he joined, and maybe he had no room to talk seeing as he had inpatient history himself, but that kid trusted Dabi, villain or not. And he was just a kid! So young with so much potential!

So, naturally, everyone was stunned when footsteps were heard barreling quickly down the stairs and the electric blond appeared, completely unharmed, but with a wild look in his wide eyes. Everyone was so surprised to see him alive that they didn’t even make a move to stop him. Denki could have bolted for the door and made a good attempt at escape; he might even have succeeded.

Instead, he set his sights on Dabi, running full force toward him and flinging himself with even more strength than hours earlier. To Denki’s dismay, he didn’t knock Dabi down onto the floor like he had intended.

Stupid Dabi with his stupid strength and ability to predict me.

“You could have told me!” Denki yelled at him, pushing against his chest with both hands.

Denki knew that Dabi took a step back, not because he had to because of the shove, but to give Denki the satisfaction. To Denki, that satisfaction wasn’t any less satisfying either way.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Dabi drawled, a genuine smile still gracing his face and refusing to leave.

Dabi had considered the whole situation a win in his book.

He had connected Shigaraki with a new friend who he knew wasn’t going to take his quirk into consideration when interacting with him. The reason Dabi himself was so unaffected by Shigaraki’s quirk from the very beginning was his practice with being under Hitoshi’s quirk. Dabi knew from experience that just because someone had a powerful, and even potentially destructive quirk, it didn’t mean that they were going to use it or cause harm. He accurately guessed that Denki would be the same way.

Dabi had also shown the other members that they were greatly misjudging Shigaraki. They had immediately jumped to the idea that he had killed someone instead of considering other possibilities, like Denki might have just lost horribly and had gamer rage or something. But maybe he was being too hard on them. Of course, Dabi had predicted pretty reliably what that scream was actually about, but he had a more intimate knowledge of the situation than the others. He just hoped that this little experience helped them see Shigaraki in a new light, even just a little bit.

If Shigaraki didn’t kill the obnoxious, energetic, hero course student who wants to grow up to be a hero, maybe the League members can start to understand that Shigaraki isn’t going to suddenly turn on them, who are on his side and working toward his cause.

Dabi knew that Shigaraki had a sad sort of appreciation for his quirk. Fear helped control his following, but fear didn’t breed loyalty, and Dabi knew that Shigaraki knew that. Dabi knew that Shigaraki was waiting for the day that all of them would betray him, and he wondered how he was going to admit to his ‘master’ that he had been turned on by the very group he had founded. Thrown away like trash, just like his family would have done had he not immediately demolished them upon developing his quirk. They were already so mad at him all the time; they would have dropped him in a heartbeat if they had learned what his quirk was before it was too late.

“New plan,” Shigaraki had announced from the base of the stairwell.

No one had even noticed him coming down the stairs, too focused on the commotion that the miraculously-still-alive kid was making.

“The soulmates are out,” Shigaraki declared, taking a seat at the bar, and putting his head in his hand. “We can’t target them.”

Shigaraki wondered briefly if Denki had a second quirk that sucked all the energy out of him and funneled it to himself, the energetic brat.

“Why not?!” Toga protested, turning to him wide-eyed.

Denki hopped up onto a barstool as well, the one next to Shigaraki, and looked around with interest. Being underage, he had never been inside a bar before. It was a nice setup they had, he thought, not that he had much to compare it to.

“Oh!” Denki chirped, turning to look at the confused faces of the League of Villains, and deciding to answer the question that wasn’t directed at him. “I’m P05itiv3R3v0lt!” Denki introduced with a little wave.

Denki paused for a moment in thought and was about to clarify that what he meant by that was he was an online gaming friend of both Shigaraki and Dabi, but the room exploded in a flurry of activity and yelling.

Toga had quickly advanced on Denki, yelling “you’re P05itiv3R3v0lt?! You?!”

“I can see it!” Twice declared, before immediately contradicting with “there’s no way!”

“We’ve heard all about you!” Magne cried, stepping forward and extending her hand for Denki to shake. “These boys can’t get enough of you!”

“You should have heard them threatening the soulmates that you like if they were to hurt you!” Spinner added before gasping and looking at Denki wide-eyed, finally understanding why the boss had declared that the soulmate plan was no longer serviceable.

“You talk about me?” Denki asked, with a bewildered grin on his face, turning to look at Shigaraki.

Shigaraki went from rolling his eyes in faux annoyance to putting his hands up in surrender when Denki’s bewilderment turned into simmering rage, when he growled, “you threatened Hitoshi and Neito?!”

“You were nervous that the one was going to punch you for kissing the other!” Shigaraki defended.

“Almost kissing!” Denki interjected with the important correction.

“Almost,” Shigaraki agreed with a nod, trying to get Denki to just relax. “Dabi agreed with me!”

“Hey! Don’t bring me into this!” Dabi exclaimed, though he ran away laughing manically as Denki darted off the barstool to chase him around the barroom.

“So, the soulmates we were considering, they are the same ones that you’re in love with,” Spinner guessed aloud.

“Yep!” Denki huffed quickly as he passed next to Spinner, reaching out to try to snag the back of Dabi’s shirt.

“How could anyone like Monoma willingly?” Toga grumbled openly into the barroom, recalling how he was an absolute pain in the ass. “At least his poor soulmate didn’t really have a choice!”

“He grows on you!” Dabi chirped as a defense against Neito’s character as he ran past, still expertly dodging Denki’s attempts to grab him, but just barely.

“He’s the best!” Denki added, turning his comical rage to Toga. “If it wasn’t for…” Denki looked around the room before spotting him, “you!” he yelled, pointing at Mr. Compress, “we would have gotten the better of you!” he finished, turning back to Toga.

In response, Toga simply eased a knife out of the harness around her thigh, causing Denki’s eyes to widen and him to back away, hands raised in surrender. The scariest part was that she never even removed her own eyes from Denki’s. It sent a shiver down his spine.

“He copied my quirk, too!” Twice interjected, trying to ease Toga’s rising feeling of anger at the reminder of her failure. “Kill him, would’ya?” So much for that idea.

“No one’s killing anyone,” Kurogiri commanded easily from behind the bar, but made no move to physically intervene. The group was pretty good about following directions, even when riled up as much as Denki seemed to be getting them.

“He was all over,” Dabi agreed, turning the conversation back to Neito. He guessed he only had himself to blame for Neito’s attributed quickness and stealth. “He almost spotted me. Even if he had, though, my quirk wouldn’t have been of any use to him when the forest was already on fire.”

“You should have stopped him, then!” Twice whined. “Let him run free!”

“What if he had recognized me?” Dabi quipped as a counterargument. “You saw how fast Denki realized who I was! I’m telling you…” Dabi started, a serious tone in his voice that wasn’t there before, “those three are something else, even all on their own. You should see them when they work together.”

“Any chance of all three of them joining us?” Magne offered to the group.

“None!” Denki interjected, a cheeky smile on his face.

“If any heroes could be truly good for the whole of society, it would be them,” Dabi declared with the upmost confidence in his voice, causing Denki to look over at him with shock and intense consideration. “Our best bet is to make sure these three become heroes as smoothly as possible.”

To Denki’s disbelief, the other villains in the room had simply started nodding their agreement. Even Toga nodded, though she rolled her eyes in annoyed, reluctant acceptance while doing so.

“Only because you trained us,” Denki rasped, struggling to maintain eye contact with Dabi at the intense and unwavering praise and confidence.

With all of the amazing quirks he was constantly surrounded by, Denki was not used to being the center of attention when it came to the topic of heroics. Standing next to Bakugou, he was never the one who got the attention because of Bakugou’s no-holding-back determination, well-deserved confidence, and sarcastically harsh attitude. Standing next to Neito, he wasn’t the one who could literally become a second Denki with one touch, so he wasn’t anything special in comparison. Even standing next to Hitoshi, who was soft-spoken and didn’t command attention like the other two, he was overshadowed by Hitoshi’s quiet intelligence and attention-grabbing quirk.

“Not even close, sparky,” Dabi disputed, nudging Denki’s shoulder with his own, not missing the small smile that Denki couldn’t hide.

Dabi believed every word he had said; nothing had been a lie to make Denki feel better. Even without Dabi’s influence to help them along, they were just good kids who were growing up to be good people, and if more good people were in heroics, maybe it wouldn’t be such a huge, disastrous mess. Their connection with each other only amplified that and would give them something to hold onto when nothing seemed worth it anymore, when they had civilians, villains, and the Hero Commission all against them, like some sort of filter that never allowed anyone to pass beyond, to be able to make a real and truly good impact on society. They would make it out just fine, and it’s about time that someone made it to the other side of that barrier. If anyone could do it, it would be the trio, Dabi knew.

If this succeeded, they would have the League of Villains working on restructuring the hero society from underground, working in tandem toward the same goal (though, with admittedly different methods) with the heroes in the spotlight, refusing to back down when they get enough traction to go against societal norms, to make a change.

“So, I’m officially endorsed by the League of Villains, am I?” Denki teased, though his face was soft with affection and appreciation for the kind words from an old friend.

“I’m going to take full advantage!” he declared abruptly before walking with purpose to plant himself in front of Mr. Compress. “Will you show me your quirk again?!” he had asked, hopefully.

Mr. Compress’s masked face turned from Denki to Shigaraki, who was still seated at the bar, looking to him for guidance.

“Do what you want,” Shigaraki offered with a wave of his hand. “If you want to indulge him, go for it.”

With a nod and a dramatic flourish, Denki was once again suspended in endless darkness before being plopped back into reality.

“Woah,” Denki muttered, stumbling to catch his balance. “Every time, it feels like just a second and a thousand hours at the same time.”

“Does it?” Mr. Compress asked, amusement laced in his voice.

“It’s super trippy. If Neito was here, he’d be able to show you what it feels like, I’d bet. Have you ever wondered?”

Mr. Compress hummed, “I never thought about it because I never realized it was a possibility.”

“I’m sure he’d find your quirk worthy of adding to his arsenal,” Denki said with a firm nod. “Can you do it again? This time I’m going to guess how long I was in there.”

After about a dozen tries, Denki started getting the timing down where it no longer felt like a moment and an eternity all at once and he could accurately guess how long he was trapped in the marble for.

“Thanks. Your quirk is amazing!” Denki complimented with a charming smile, and Mr. Compress gave a theatrical bow.

Denki didn’t waste any time darting over to Twice.

“Will you show me what your clones are supposed to look like?” Denki asked. “Neito kind of butchered his attempt.”

Those who were still paying attention laughed, agreeing that it was a sad attempt now that the sting of their failure had lessened.

“Oh! Don’t tell him I said that!” Denki asked, backtracking. “It was a good first attempt—”

“It was amazing!” Twice interjected. “Amazingly terrible. To be able to make a functioning clone without taking any measurements—and on the first try?! Amazing!”

“It was amazing enough to trick us until it was too late to correct our mistakes,” Shigaraki supplied, swirling his glass around that Kurogiri had set in front of him, ice clicking on the sides of the glass.

The villains all spared Shigaraki a cautious glance, wondering when the tantrum was coming, and who would get the brunt of it. One by one, they all seemed to realize that Shigaraki had said our mistakes. Maybe they wouldn’t have realized before, too relieved about avoiding one of Shigaraki’s meltdowns, but after the discussion about treating Shigaraki more warmly, they had subconsciously started to try to do just that. After a few seconds of silence, waiting for the rage that they had quickly figured out wasn’t going to come, they went back to interacting with Denki.

Both Kurogiri and Dabi noticed the way that Shigaraki had relaxed, just a little bit, and leaned against the ledge of the bar. Normally, after a few tense seconds, he would have taken his leave. The others would think it was to go rage somewhere else, but Kurogiri and Dabi knew it was to give them space to relax.

Shigaraki’s followers did a lot for him. He would never has gotten as far as he had without them, and now that he finally had a strong, competent group, he wasn’t trying to scare them away. With the earlier discussion, along with the surprise that Denki wasn’t screaming in fear as he was being decayed into ash and was still alive, added to the fact that Denki had willingly gone within arms’ reach of Shigaraki when he had hopped up on the barstool next to him with no fear of retaliation all helped the group of villains move on from Shigaraki’s statement, taking it as it was and not reading too much into it as a survival mechanism.

Plus, Shigaraki had called Neito’s actions amazing with no sarcasm to be heard. If Shigaraki can appreciate the efforts of his enemies, then he can surely understand the failure of his group because of the unforeseen circumstances.

Denki had gasped in delight, eyes sparkling, when Twice had quickly measured him and made a clone, and suddenly, he was standing there staring at himself.

Not wanting to miss out on the fun of an outsider, a hero-in-training no less, flitting around them in awe of their amazing quirks, Toga stepped forward and held out her hand, her other hand digging in a pouch strapped to her thigh. Denki quickly realized what she wanted, and to everyone’s surprise, giddily thrusted his arm in her direction, practically bouncing on his toes in anticipation. Toga took it in stride, though she also wouldn’t have been surprised if Denki had hesitated or refused; it just depended on his thoughts about a villain having his blood and any past experiences that would make trusting her seem like a good idea or a bad one. The only reason Toga hesitated was to glance in Shigaraki’s and Dabi’s direction, to see if there was any sign that they opposed, seeing that Denki was apparently under both of their personal protection, but there was only amusement dancing in their eyes as they saw the social butterfly who was Denki completely enamor the rest of the villains, one by one.

Toga quickly tied a tourniquet and disinfected Denki’s arm. Sliding the needle in smoothly, she succeeded on the first try (like always), to Denki’s absolute delight.

“You didn’t even need to search around for one!” Denki exclaimed, wide-eyed in admiration. “And you got it on the first try! I’m always a difficult one for blood tests usually… What do you think my doctor would say if I brought you along with me at my next appointment?”

“That’s not even the most impressive thing,” Dabi drawled from across the room, the corners of his eyes crinkling from the pure enjoyment he was getting from Denki’s reactions now that he could rest assured that he and his friends would be safe. “Just wait!”

With that, Denki turned to Toga, absolutely giddy with wide-eyed anticipation. She quickly pocketed the vacuum tube of blood she had collected before popping the end of the tube directly in her mouth while she undid the tourniquet and staunched the bleeding. Before his eyes, Denki watched as Toga transformed into another perfect version of himself.

Twice, Toga, and Denki had fun making Denki turn around as Toga and Twice’s clone switched positions, then Denki had to figure out which Denki was the clone and which one was Toga. After a few obvious guesses where he was only getting it right about half the time, something changed, and he was confidently and immediately pointing out who was the clone every time.

Spinner whistled lowly as he watched, thoroughly impressed with the kid.

Shigaraki decided that he wanted a turn, too. Denki excitedly agreed and joined the ranks of the fake-Denkis to mix up to not make it easy on Shigaraki. That was, of course, after Toga removed the bandage from the impromptu blood draw as to not give them away.

“No bruising!” Denki exclaimed, lifting his arm to show the room like it was a successful magic trick. “If villainy doesn’t work out, you could be my phlebotomist any time!”

All three Denkis were squirming excitedly as Shigaraki approached, the real Denki and clone Denki showing true excitement, and the Toga-Denki following suit so that it would not be so easy.

Shigaraki stared intently at each one, bringing up his hands and wringing them in front of his chest as he thought and took a half-step forward to choose the correct Denki, even when he had not quite decided who it was yet, until… Ah, yes! There!

Shigaraki smirked as he reached out to the real Denki, ruffling his hair with his hand, keeping his index finger high above the rest.

Denki’s jaw had dropped. “How did you know it was me?” he protested laughingly.

“I’ll never tell,” Shigaraki swore, though he wore a soft smile.

Truthfully, when he was wringing his hands in thought and took a step forward, already starting to reach out, the fake-Denkis had changed from excitedly watching his eyes. It was a quick glance down to his hand, to make sure that it wasn’t headed in their direction, aimed to kill, but it was there all the same. Even the clone Denki, who it didn’t matter if he were to be decayed on the spot, looked nervous, the true feelings of its creator contaminating his creation.

The real Denki had continued to watch Shigaraki’s face for any indication that he might choose the right one. The real Denki didn’t flinch as Shigaraki’s eyes locked on him. The real Denki didn’t flinch or hesitate in his excitement when Shigaraki reached out toward him. The real Denki didn’t even cower or tense as Shigaraki’s hand landed on his head to ruffle his hair.

Shigaraki would keep this secret to his grave, because if the real Denki ever did flinch away, even if it was fake and just to trick him into confusing a fake Denki with himself, he knew he would never recover.

Chapter Text

Denki didn’t fall asleep until hours after his capture, even though his capture happened in the evening hours, after it had already gotten dark. Daylight was peeking through, over the horizon, before Denki actually crashed. He slept sprawled out on the floor in between Shigaraki and Dabi after they had all basically passed out after playing multiple games together. It was more fun than usual because he was actually in the same room as them. He could hear their banter in real time and see the facial expressions instead of only hearing the reactions through his headset with only his imagination to fill in the visual blanks.

“I’m going around the corner; follow my lead,” Shigaraki commanded, full concentration on the screen.

They were all spread out, using pillows, cushions, and blankets arranged and then rearranged in various manners to get the most comfort whenever they decided to change from lying on their stomachs to sitting (and then back again, of course), the designated lookout’s eyes never leaving the screen.

“Yes, boss,” both Dabi and Denki had stated at the same time, Denki sending a smirk in Dabi’s direction as he had accurately guessed what his response would be.

Dabi nudged him with his shoulder, but neither gamer’s fingers faltered over the controls as they moved their characters to follow Shigaraki’s character.

Everyone else had already trudged to bed, wondering how the trio could manage to stay up even longer after the stressful day they had all been through. Even if Denki felt safe now, he was definitely under a lot of stress at the beginning. It would have knocked the rest of them out. Hell, the failure of their mission had exhausted most of the villains, and they had each other to rely on. Denki was brought here alone (well, with a fake-Bakugou, but essentially alone, nonetheless), so everyone thought he’d ride high on adrenaline before crashing, but that didn’t really seem to be his style.

When Denki’s mind made a connection far past the time it should have, though, he dropped his controller and looked on either side of him to the villains who were still enmeshed in the game.

“Am I the traitor?” Denki asked hesitantly, repeating himself louder when the two villains didn’t quite hear him.

Shigaraki paused the game, the menu options coming up in front of the divided screens, each showing the immediate area around P05itiv3R3v0lt, High5UrDead, and Fri3ndlyFir3. Shigaraki looked over at Denki with a blank expression on his face, not giving anything away before looking past him and meeting Dabi’s eyes.

“Why do you think that?” Shigaraki asked vaguely.

Denki’s head swiveled around, trying to catch a telling expression on one of the villain’s faces on either side of him. He made a mental note to never play poker with them because they had absolutely no tells when they were concentrating on not giving anything away, like at that very moment.

Denki’s heart dropped, but he answered, “because we play together online. Are you learning stuff from me?”

Dabi’s face cracked first, and then both Dabi and Shigaraki were laughing, their laughing only getting louder as the seconds passed instead of calming down.

Trying to catch his breath and not break out laughing again, Shigaraki asked, “did you even know where the training camp would be before you got there? Did you talk to us about training at the USJ? Did you even ever tell us that you were a student at UA?”

“No…” Denki realized, before horror washed over him. “Did you hack into my system?!”

The laughter had started up once again.

“So naïve!” Shigaraki howled. “So innocent!”

When Denki only pouted in response, too stressed to join in the laughing fit, Shigaraki and Dabi took pity on him.

“No!” Dabi exclaimed after he had stopped wheezing. “You’re not the traitor, Denks.”

“The traitor isn’t unaware. They know exactly what they are doing and reporting it back directly to me. They intentionally sought out information that wasn’t disclosed to them before going to the training camp to pass on the information to me so that we could prepare,” Shigaraki explained easily, not giving up too much information.

What surprised Shigaraki, though, was that Denki’s face had fallen at the news. Wasn’t that exactly what he wanted to hear?

“What is it?” Shigaraki asked, now slightly concerned, the paused game on the screen all but forgotten.

“If it was me, then I wouldn’t have to wonder who among my friends is the traitor,” Denki explained solemnly.

The fact that there was a traitor at all, whether it be Denki or someone else, had Denki’s mood plummeting.

“And what am I going to say when I get back to UA?” Denki continued, sitting up and back to look at both villains at the same time without having to look back and forth between them. “What are they going to think when they realize that I’ve been gaming with you guys? They’ll think I’m the traitor. What will happen to me then?”

“We’d come get you,” Shigaraki stated firmly. “But that’s not going to happen anyway, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“Coming to my rescue would just solidify in their minds that I really am feeding you information. They’d never believe we’re just good friends who don’t discuss heroics and villainy over our game strategy. If I tell them that I’m endorsed to become a hero by you, and that’s why no harm came to me… I’d probably get sent back to the mental hospital,” Denki argued, though there was no bite to his words, only somber acceptance. “They’ll know if I’m lying… and I don’t think I could bring myself to lie anyway. I’m absolutely screwed.”

Dabi and Shigaraki shared a look that Denki couldn’t decipher.

“We have a way around that, if you’re willing,” Dabi offered vaguely.

Shigaraki briefly wondered how he went from threatening to frame Denki as the UA traitor to making sure that he doesn’t look like a traitor in any capacity. He knew then that Dabi was right; Denki was going to make a great hero who actually cares about everyone and doing the least amount of damage possible. He knew that if Denki agreed to trust them with this, then he’d be able to do what it takes to withstand the pressures from the Hero Commission once he goes Pro.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Denki agreed. He didn’t even ask for details, putting the absolute highest amount of trust into these two villains. Many would think he is stupid or naïve, but he knew that he was doing the right thing that would cause the least amount of damage. Likewise, the villains understood that Denki wouldn’t have an easy time working from above-ground at restructuring the whole heroics system if he was even suspected of working for the League of Villains.

When Denki woke up in the morning, he was alone on the floor, tangled in a heap of blankets and pillows. He blinked a few times, a smile growing over his face at the realization that reuniting with Dabi and finding out Shigaraki had been one of his online friends was real. It really happened! He didn’t hallucinate it or dream it up!

He evaluated his surroundings, looking around to see if he could spot any League members. He heard low murmurs coming from the barroom, so he hoisted himself up and started heading in that direction.

“—saying is I’ve never used my quirk on a kid before,” he heard an unfamiliar voice argue quietly. “And I don’t intend to start now. There are limits. Even you should understand that.”

“He’s willing,” Dabi offered, making the newcomer huff in annoyance.

“Like I’ve never heard that before! I—”

When Denki padded his way into the barroom, he went right past the group and behind the bar, digging out a bottle of water from the fridge. Denki’s eyes shot sideways as he drank from the bottle, and he watched the newcomer along with Dabi, Shigaraki, and Spinner watching him. Dabi, Shigaraki, and Spinner looked quite amused that Denki had just made himself at home and helped himself to their bar’s fridge. The newcomer was observing him closely, eyes wandering all over him and closely observing his movements and face.

Denki recapped the bottle, wiped the excess moisture from his mouth on his arm, and gave a little wave of greeting to the newcomer.

“Hi. I’m Kaminari Denki,” he introduced, rounding back to the other side of the bar to join the others.

“I know,” the newcomer stated, still watching him closely. “You’re all over the news.”

“I am?!” he asked, wide eyes looking around at every villain in the room. “Why did no one tell me?! What picture are they using of me? Oh, no. I hope they aren’t using the footage from the sports festival—you know, the footage from the match that I lost? That would be so embarrassing! I already had to live it once, and I had to live with knowing that my loss was broadcast nationwide! It would be objectively really mean of them to use that specific footage when I’m already down and out, don’t you think?”

“Uh…” the newcomer hesitated, taken aback by Denki’s energy and enthusiasm, “no. It’s all, uh… very flattering. They’re using photos of you in your hero costume and some TikToks that you’ve done.”

“Wait! Really?! That’s so cool! I’m going to have so many new followers! Maybe I’ll finally get verified!”

After another moment of intense observation, the newcomer sighed. “Don’t answer any questions for him," she warned the villains.

Dabi drew an X over his heart to indicate his promise, and the newcomer rolled her smokey grey eyes, but slowly stepped forward toward Denki, like she didn’t want to scare him off.

“Hi, Kaminari. You can call me Force Majeure,” she greeted in a gentle voice, eyes darting over Denki’s face and frame to try to catch every minute response.

“That’s a cool name. Did you pick it yourself?” Denki asked, settling back against the bar, putting his water bottle down on the surface.

“I did. Did you pick Chargebolt?” she asked back, easily keeping the conversation flowing.

“I did,” Denki parroted back, a proud smile growing on his face.

“Well, just like how your alias reflects your quirk, mine does the same. My quirk is called Compulsion,” she explained, still watching closely for any reactions.

Denki’s eyes widened and he whipped his head in the direction of Dabi and Shigaraki, who were standing off to the side with Spinner.

“This is your solution?!” Denki asked. Force Majeure was about to reassure Denki that her quirk was not going to be used on him against his will, but then he laughed. “Amazing!” he exclaimed, awe clear in his voice.

The amazement came from multiple different things, like the very nature of Force Majeure’s quirk and how the League of Villains had such strong connections and ties that they could get someone like her there the very next morning after the plan was hatched.

“How does it work?” Denki asked before Force Majeure could recover from the unexpected reactions she was getting out of the blond hero student. “Oh—wait! Am I allowed to ask that? Am I allowed to know?”

“A lot of people know already,” Force Majeure reassured with a small shrug. “Plus, you won’t be able to mention it anyway if I use my quirk on you.”

“That’s so cool,” Denki whispered, his full attention on Force Majeure, practically begging her with his eyes to continue telling him about herself and her quirk.

“With my quirk, I can plant the instinct to urge you to do or refrain from doing whatever I choose. So, if I planted the idea that you couldn’t walk through doors that had hinges on the left, you would not be able to physically force yourself to do so. If I planted the idea that your hands got dirty every five and a half minutes, you would feel the uncontrollable urge to wash your hands every five and a half minutes,” she explained, fascinated with the way Denki was drawn in by her words.

By this point, people would usually lean away from her, break eye contact, do anything to prevent her from using her quirk on them. Denki’s reaction reminded her of the first time she had met Dabi, because Dabi also defied these normal reactions to learning about her quirk. She spared a quick glance at said villain, who gave her a knowing smirk and nod in return.

“How are you going to use it on me?” Denki asked, intrigued to the highest level.

“I’m not,” Force Majeure stated firmly, then more gently added, “not unless you consent. This is all up to you, kiddo. If I explain all of this and you don’t want to do it, then we’re not doing it.”

Force Majeure spared a glance to the villains, but none made a move to interject or oppose what she was saying.

After a nod from Denki to indicate his understanding, she continued, “the plan is to plant the compulsion to not talk about what has happened here with anyone except these guys.” She waved a hand in their general direction but didn’t take her eyes off of Denki.

“Communicate,” Denki offered after a moment to think.

“What?” Force Majeure inquired.

“It should be that I can’t communicate about what I learned and know from being here,” Denki amended. “That way it includes writing and sign language, too.”

“You know sign language?” Dabi asked from the other side of the room.

“Not important!” Denki dismissed, trying and failing to look unaffected by the slip.

Dabi, Shigaraki, and Spinner just laughed, but not maliciously. Denki didn’t tell them that literally every student at UA knew sign language, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

“Good idea,” Force Majeure stated, nodding, feeling more comfortable about her decision to help.

The truth was, she always used the vague and general term ‘communicate’ with these types of compulsions. The fact that Denki offered the idea himself showed her definitively that he was completely on board and wanted the effect just as much as the villains did. Otherwise, he would have kept his mouth shut, planning to tell everyone what happened through writing, or apparently sign language in his case.

“My quirk doesn’t work when it comes to soulmates, though,” she warned. “If you are around your soulmate with no one else around to kick the compulsion in, you’ll be free to speak, write, and sign freely.”

“Oh, I don’t have a soulmate. Not yet, at least,” Denki said with a shrug. “So, I’m in. Let’s do it!”

“Just like that?” Force Majeure asked incredulously. “You don’t have any more questions? You don’t even know what it’s going to feel like.”

“I’ll find out when you do the thing!” Denki drawled, waving his hand in the air dismissively. “What do I have to do on my end?”

“Just look into my eyes. Don’t look away, okay?” Force Majeure instructed, getting closer to make firm eye contact with Denki.

“Okay,” Denki confirmed, locking his yellow eyes on her grey ones.

“No matter how much it hurts,” she tacked on before diving into his mind.

She felt slimy doing it that way; all of these superficial values she held didn’t stop her from her abrupt warning, giving him no time to react or back out.

But Denki didn’t wince. He didn’t shut his eyes tightly in pain. He didn’t look away to make the pain stop. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t fight her diving right into his mind; it was almost like he was waiting for her and maybe even pulled her in to right where she needed to be. It was the first time that her target had openly cooperated throughout the whole process. Usually, she had to get a little rough, grabbing at hair and the sides of her targets’ heads to keep them looking at her and not backing off.

It was quicker work than usual, too. His brain was malleable, and he was relaxed, not resisting or fighting in any way. There wasn’t a conclusive tell; it wasn’t like there was a mark or a signature left behind, but Force Majeure could tell that she was not the first one to use a mental quirk on Denki.

When she backed off, both out of his mind and physically stepping back to give him space, he shook his head to rid himself of the fuzziness that came along with the abrupt onset of a mental quirk.

“That didn’t hurt at all!” Denki argued, flashing a bright smile at the scarlet-haired woman.

She had never used her quirk on someone who had said it did not hurt, but she had also never used her quirk on someone willing before, either.

“That wasn’t your first time,” she stated, leaving the opening for Denki to talk about his previous experience or to bypass it altogether.

Being an open book, Denki responded, “you must be talking about Hitoshi’s quirk! That’s amazing that you can tell!”

“What’s his quirk?” she prompted easily.

“Brainwashing. Did you watch the sports festival on TV? He was the one with purple hair who made it really far!” Denki bragged, fully proud of the accomplishments of his friend.

“He uses his quirk on you often?” she ventured.

“Yeah! He—” Denki paused, looking at the carefully controlled face of the woman in front of him. “No. No! Don’t even think that. He’s my best friend. He’s not abusing me or taking advantage of me with his quirk. I’m a willing participant,” Denki automatically started to argue.

He’s heard it all before, starting back in middle school when Hitoshi first transferred to his school. The fake concern from his friends that just wanted to see both Hitoshi and Denki alone and miserable made Denki nauseous when he thought about it, wishing that he had dropped all of them completely the first time they managed to insinuate that Hitoshi wasn’t the purest person any of them had ever met.

“Okay, okay,” Force Majeure soothed, hands open and moving in a calming gesture, but not reaching out to physically touch Denki. “I’m sorry. But I still think you should know that he might be able to tell that someone else was messing with your mind, the same way that I knew.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Shigaraki asked, stepping forward now that the task was completed.

Force Majeure responded in kind by backing off of Denki, keeping her distance from the interim leader of the League of Villains.

“It shouldn’t be,” Force Majeure said after intense consideration. “The heroes will most likely figure out that I had something to do with Kaminari’s inability to tell them what happened, so it won’t be entirely unexpected, either.”

Before Force Majeure saw herself out, and after making sure that her debt to Shigaraki was paid in full with the favor she had just followed through on, she asked Denki why he agreed to any of this. She wasn’t going to, but she just felt the need to know why Denki had chosen this path instead of giving everything he knew to the heroes. From what she could tell, the League of Villains would eventually release Denki unharmed either way, so she couldn’t understand and didn’t want to put herself through the torture of always wondering.

“This way causes the least amount of damage on all sides,” Denki answered simply with a shrug, reaching back behind him to grab his water bottle and take another drink, not focusing on giving the right answer, but just letting the truth flow freely out.

Force Majeure joined in the ever-growing list of people who adored Denki, even within their short time interacting. She finally understood what Shigaraki, Dabi, and Spinner were going on about when they said that this kid was going to be a real hero.

Chapter Text

“Just because we kidnapped you doesn’t mean that you can slack on your training,” Dabi lectured, leading Denki back to the training area. “Also, I’m using my quirk this time.”

Denki blanched. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“That’s not fair!” Denki whined, sounding more like a toddler on the verge of a tantrum than a high school hero course student.

“Use your quirk on me if you want,” Dabi offered with a nonchalant shrug.

“I could quite literally kill you,” Denki retorted, letting the heavy metal door fall shut behind them as the entered the underground training area that was positioned right under the bar.

“See, that’s the problem with you hero types. You’re so squeamish about death,” Dabi breezed.

Denki burst out laughing at that but was still aware enough to dodge out of the way of the blast of blue fire that Dabi had sent his way.

After a good hour of relentless training (the only way that Dabi seemed to be able to train was absolutely relentless and ruthless, but that worked for Denki), the villain and the future hero were breathing heavily, cooling their skin on the cool cement of the floor.

Denki was just happy that the floor was still cool after having Dabi’s flames steadily heating the room to boiling point for the last hour. Denki hissed as he sat up, feeling the tightness of his skin where he was burned when he didn’t move out of the way quite fast enough.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Dabi drawled, remaining steadfast in his position sprawled out on the floor. “You’ll have to make do with basic first aid; villains don’t tend to have many healers at their disposal, let alone magic healing ladies to miraculously kiss boo-boos away.”

Denki snorted at that, eyes following Dabi’s whimsical hand movements that emphasized his words. “I’ll forgive you if you patch me up,” Denki chirped, smiling widely at the villain sprawled out next to him.

Dabi groaned, sitting up to go grab the supplies, not quite ready to leave the coolness of the cement. He figured he’d have to get up anyway because Denki wouldn’t know where the first aid kit was, and if he sent the kid asking for it, the other villains would question why he needed it and then be on his ass for going too hard on the kid during training. Not only would that annoy Dabi, but it would also be uncomfortable for Denki. He’s a tough kid; he has to be to be in the hero course. He’s probably had much worse. The only difference was that he would have to endure the normal healing process the natural way.

It was also a good workout for Dabi. Villains had their specialties, and to stay alive, they usually stuck strictly to what they were good at. Again, they didn’t have many healers to fall back on if they made a mistake. What might be a simple wound to heal for a hero with a healer at their agency could mean the death of a villain. So, Dabi hadn’t had many willing participants that he could go all out with in quite a while. Of course, he understood; training wasn’t worth potentially dying over. It was still nice to go all out, though, when he could manage it. And Denki put up one hell of a fight.

He wasn’t going to go as hard as he did, but Denki never backed down or looked scared, even with the blue flames coming right at him before he dodged away. The challenge in Denki’s eyes and the glee evident in his smile pushed Dabi to go further and further. He might have scolded himself for being too careless, but he doubted he would have gotten so wired if it wasn’t Denki in that training room with him.

Truthfully, Denki appreciated that Dabi always took him seriously and treated him like he knew what he was doing. Always following Bakugou’s orders didn’t leave much room for him to show off and live up to his full potential, so it was nice to be training with Dabi again, whose observant eyes tracked him like radar. Dabi would make minute adjustments until he was running Denki at full throttle and continue to make little adjustments to keep him there. It was exhausting and exhilarating and Denki loved it so, so much.

Denki hummed in relief as Dabi put burn relief cream on the areas that were sure to blister if left untreated.

“Sorry,” Dabi repeated, now that he had a chance to look at the damage that he had caused up close.

“Don’t be,” Denki dismissed. “I’ll be fine. And I know you went easy on me.”

Dabi scoffed. “And why would I do that?”

“I think you’re a whole lot more powerful than you ever let on,” Denki accused lightly, watching Dabi loosely wrap gauze around his arms. “You could have melted me if you wanted to. I bet you could have filled every corner of this room with your flames if you wanted to.”

Dabi hummed in appreciation. “You handled a lot more than I thought you would,” Dabi praised. “I went harder than I had initially planned because you just kept taking everything that I threw at you and rolled with it.”

Shigaraki had narrowed his eyes when he had spotted the bandages wrapped around Denki’s arms, looked between Dabi and Denki, and rolled his eyes when they both looked away simultaneously like the wall and ceiling were so interesting. They might as well have started whistling while they were at it with how conspicuous they were already being.

“I expect this kind of recklessness from the heroes, but you, Dabi?” Shigaraki scolded lightly, but already knew that he wouldn’t push it.

He had noticed that both boys were in a fantastic mood. Both seemed energized and bright, so he wouldn’t fault them for something that made them feel that way. He himself often chased the high of happiness wherever he could find it.

Later, Twice had demanded that the trio of gamers pause the game and come eat the dinner that he had made with Magne’s help. The trio tried to say that they weren’t hungry, but Toga threatened unspeakable things if she found out they snuck any snacks later. Shigaraki grudgingly paused the game and shuffled out to the kitchen, Dabi and Denki following behind, eager to eat once the smell of the spices hit them. The League members that were present were only a little surprised that Shigaraki didn’t even threaten to high-five Toga’s face for the threat and fell into easy conversation across the table instead of waiting in silence for Shigaraki to lash out for the slight against his authority. Progress.

It was during dinner that Denki learned about All Might’s well-kept secret that now involved Midoriya.

“So, the soulmates are off limits?” Denki clarified.

“I already said they were,” Shigaraki answered, but more amused than annoyed.

“And Class 1-A?” Denki continued.

Shigaraki didn’t answer and wouldn’t meet his eyes. Super sus of him.

“Class 1-B?” Denki asked.

“Sure,” Shigaraki answered, just glad to be off of the topic of Class 1-A but knowing that it would circle back soon enough.

“Upper-level hero courses?”

“No use to me.”

“General studies?”

“Safe.”

“Business?”

“Safe.”

“What about the support classes?”

“Safe.”

“Class 1-A?” Denki asked again, hoping that the repeated question-answer rhythm would get Shigaraki to slip up and answer him.

Shigaraki just sighed, finally looking over at Denki and meeting his eyes.

“What is it? Oh, no. Is it the traitor?!” Denki gasped.

“No. It’s not about the traitor. It’s about Midoriya,” Shigaraki answered hesitantly, figuring that the heroes who knew probably knew that the League of Villains knew about the quirk One For All.

Either way, Denki wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone being under Force Majeure’s compulsion quirk.

“If you’re trying to recruit him—!” Denki started but was interrupted.

“No. Nothing like that,” Shigaraki reassured. “He’s already heavily involved.”

“What do you mean?” Denki asked, putting his eating utensils down to give Shigaraki his full attention.

After a look around the table to make sure none of his followers objected to telling Denki, Shigaraki explained to Denki that Midoriya was gifted his quirk by All Might.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that before,” Denki stated, intrigued.

Then he paled. He hadn’t heard of anything like that before until he heard of All For One being able to take and give quirks as he saw fit. Was it related to that?

“He told you he was quirkless when you guys talked before going to UA, didn’t he?” Dabi interjected, pulling Denki’s attention to himself, knowing that Midoriya had been on Unit Beta during a time that overlapped with Denki’s stay and that Midoriya had been one of the ones invited to crash Hitoshi’s thirteenth birthday party.

Dabi knew how bonded people could get with those they met at a mental health hospital. He also knew how trusting they could be after continuously talking about difficult topics during group therapy session. Dabi had easily predicted and had not been surprised that Midoriya would have talked about being quirkless as that was the major reason why he was inpatient in the first place.

“Yeah, but I thought he was just a late bloomer… a really late bloomer,” Denki admitted, eyebrows furrowed in thought.

Shigaraki remained silent, giving Denki time to think over what he was being told.

“Is that why he keeps breaking his bones when he tries to use his quirk?” Denki asked finally.

He wasn’t going to ask. He was going to just suffer forever wondering. However, he knew that everyone had seen Midoriya during the sports festival, and he had very obviously hurt himself during the duels. He figured it was a safe bet that this little tidbit of information wasn’t a secret from the villains, or anyone else, really.

Shigaraki nodded, scratching at his neck absently as he answered, “his body didn’t grow with his quirk because it wasn’t his until recently. He was given a fully mature quirk that his still-growing body can’t handle. It’s ripping him apart from the inside.”

Denki picked up hints of anger as Shigaraki spoke. Denki failed to see how it was villainous to be angry about a teenager hurting himself over and over again just to grow into a quirk that was thrust upon him, but maybe that was just the villains rubbing off on him.

Turning on the television, everyone who was still at the base gathered around to watch. It made Denki uncomfortable watching Aizawa and Principal Nezu apologize for something that wasn’t their fault. How could they have predicted a traitor and then prevented that unknown traitor from getting information? It wouldn’t have been easy if it was possible at all.

“You can’t tell me,” Denki declared as the press started asking questions of the panel.

When prompted for clarification, Denki continued, “you can’t tell me who the traitor is. I wouldn't be able to handle it! All—all this mess! How could I—?”

A knock came at the door then. “Pizza delivery!”

It didn’t look suspicious at all to the heroes who burst in through the walls and door from every angle with Denki backing away from the villains who were facing him, surrounding him, hands up and outstretched as if to tell the villains to keep away, even if in reality, he was begging for them to keep a vital piece of information to themselves.

“Kurogiri!” Shigaraki commanded, knowing that his interim guardian would understand the command without it having to be spelled out for him.

As Kurogiri’s mist started to spread in preparation to making multiple warp gates for the villains to escape, branches extended from who was soon revealed to be Kamui Woods, wrapping tightly around every villain, rendering them all immobile.

As Dabi allowed the blue flames to start to overtake his body, a manic grin spreading on his face at the sudden action and anticipation of a good fight, Gran Torino came darting in, foot aimed to knock Dabi unconscious and render him and his quirk useless to the other villains.

Denki didn’t know how to feel as All Might reassured him that they were there to rescue him and how brave he was in a time when he must have been so scared. He didn’t know if the compulsion would have let him answer, even if he had made the effort to. He watched in horror as a falling wire from a hole in the ceiling dropped down onto a restrained Shigaraki.

Denki had enough experience with electricity to know that it was a live wire, and the resulting convulsions from Shigaraki was him being electrocuted. Luckily, Kamui Woods wasn’t out to harm anyone and quickly moved Shigaraki out of the reach of the wire, but Shigaraki remained limp and unmoving in Kamui Woods’s branches.

Denki was already taking a step forward, panic gathering in his throat, when something amazing happened.

The swirling cloud that tickled his stomach, which he thought at first was just nausea from the intense situation he had found himself in, soon spread and flowed quickly out of his mouth, quickly enveloping his whole body. He choked and gagged and couldn’t breathe, but in just a few seconds, it was over, and he was in a completely different area altogether.

Denki rushed forward toward Shigaraki, whose body lied too still in the gravel. With no heroes around to witness his quick reflex to help the villain who kidnapped him and who was supposed to be his enemy, Denki dropped down at Shigaraki’s side, quickly rolling him onto his back and making sure that his hand wouldn’t accidentally fall on himself or the surrounding area around them. The last thing Denki needed was to be injured or have the surface collapse under them as he assessed Shigaraki’s condition.

There were no heroes to witness UA’s consistent first aid and CPR training paying off.

There were no heroes to pull Denki away from the one who had organized his capture.

There were no heroes to help Denki stay calm and go through the motions of CPR after Denki realized that Shigaraki wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

There were no heroes to rely on to take over if Denki became too exhausted.

There were no heroes that would correct Denki if he made a mistake that could very well be fatal for Shigaraki.

Even if there were heroes there, Denki knew he’d be on his own anyway. He knew that him trying desperately to save Shigaraki’s life would look awfully suspicious.

Denki was so grateful that there were no heroes there.

Chapter Text

Yes, Denki was grateful that no heroes had shown up yet as he got to work on Shigaraki. What Denki didn’t know, however, is that there were already students there.

Did Hitoshi, Neito, Midoriya, Bakugou, Kirishima, Iida, Yaoyorozu, and Uraraka know that the heroes were doing everything in their power to get Denki back safe? Yeah, sure they did.

Did that stop them from taking matters into their own hands and finding out one of the League’s hot spots? Not in the slightest!

When they first arrived, decked out in disguises, they were disappointed to find no sign of anyone. They figured they must have gotten it wrong somehow and hoped that the Pro Heroes were having better luck than they were.

It was Kirishima who noticed that where there were people there whereas seconds before there were not. He silently drew everyone’s attention back to the area with the helpful sign language that they had all learned and continued to practice religiously.

Bakugou could have sworn and maybe even exploded something in frustration if it wouldn’t have given them all away. It was unlucky that the tuft of blonde hair was on the opposite side from them, and it only made matters worse that there were two villains near him, and it seemed like the others who had appeared spread out were also making their way in that direction.

Neito’s and Hitoshi’s eyes locked on Denki, grateful that he was still alive and desperate to see what his current condition was. Mentally, they braced themselves, like they had been doing for the two days since Denki had been captured and taken by the League of Villains. They were expecting the worst, and simultaneously hoping for the best.

From what they could tell from the distance, Denki was okay. He was still moving and showed no signs of favoring any of his limbs over another, so physically, he seemed fine. That didn’t bring much relief as they wondered about what his mental state might have suffered if the League of Villains didn’t resort to physical torture. Once again, they hoped that Denki’s social skills had played a huge part and that he would come out of this relatively unscathed, but until they confirmed that, they would have to tread carefully.

It was automatic for Denki. And to think he despised going through the motions of CPR and first aid over and over again, believing that it was pointless and maybe even a punishment from Aizawa for something the class must have done wrong. Later, Denki would realize that the muscle memory of going through the steps over and over again in class helped him to not freeze up and panic in the moment. Even as his mind felt blank, his body moved and got started, giving his mind time to catch up and actually start paying attention to exactly what he was doing and what was going on around him.

Dabi had just stumbled over when the ground shook, dropping to his knees on the other side of Shigaraki. A quick look over his shoulder, and Denki could have sworn as he saw All Might standing there in all his glory. It made Denki feel special that they were pulling out all the stops to get him back, but it could not have been worse timing during a damn medical emergency that his long-term online gaming friend was experiencing, villain or not.

Denki would feel bad about it later, but he was happy in the moment that the big, scary villain that he had yet to meet seemed to be like a challenging match to All Might. That gave him time and room to help Shigaraki before he was dragged away, back to safety, leaving his friends to deal with the aftermath of a fight with someone as strong as All Might. The dread sat heavy in his stomach.

“He’s not breathing and doesn’t have a pulse,” Denki declared, fighting the panic crawling up his throat down, knowing that he needed to communicate clearly so that everyone knew exactly what the situation was.

Looking at Dabi, Denki knew that he was going to have to take charge in this situation. Dabi was already out of it from the probable concussion after being knocked out by Gran Torino. With someone he loved dearly in a perilous state added to that, Dabi wouldn’t be much more use than blindly following Denki’s orders.

Dabi heaved, but immediately pushed his feelings and nausea back to take his place at Shigaraki’s side, starting compressions on Denki’s orders, and praying to gods that he did not believe in for Shigaraki’s life.

Denki quickly looked around to find others rushing toward them: Toga, Twice, Spinner… They were avoiding the middle of the area, avoiding getting too close to the fight between two very strong beings, not wanting to get caught in the crossfire.

There were no phones in sight to call for emergency medical help, not that any would be willing to come save the perceived leader of the League of Villains.

There was no AED to attach to Shigaraki’s chest to shock his heart back into rhythm.

But there was Denki.

Denki hadn’t even realized the tears dripping from his own eyes as he demanded Dabi back off. Dabi, who had just pulled away from giving Shigaraki two rescue breaths, had opened his mouth to argue, eyes wide with panic; however, he was present enough to understand that Denki was going to do what was best for Shigaraki. He had to believe that, and so he backed off like Denki said.

“Don’t touch him,” Denki threw out his warning loudly and to no one in particular, just trying to reach the ears of the approaching villains who got closer with every second.

Toga got to them first, dropping down beside Dabi and reaching out toward Shigaraki before pulling back when she saw the electricity leap across Denki’s fingers and hands as he tried to regulate himself to 3,000 volts. It was a lot less than he was used to using, but when he got to it, it felt right. It was muscle memory once again that he swore and cursed during training at UA. He knew he would have to thank Aizawa profusely and never question his teaching methods ever again.

Denki put his left hand down on the right of Shigaraki’s chest, not bothering to remove his clothes first like he would have to with an AED. His electricity would go through the clothes no problem, not having to worry about sticking pads directly onto the skin to keep in place. His right hand went into place on the left side of Shigaraki’s rib cage, putting his heart in the center of the path that the electricity would travel through. Denki didn’t hesitate to give himself time to think, knowing that no amount of thinking would change the current situation. He just sent a pulse through Shigaraki’s chest, biting down on his tongue and not bothering to wipe away the tears that pushed from his eyes when Shigaraki’s body tensed up and then relaxed once again.

Toga joined in the rescue effort then, fingers against Shigaraki’s neck, automatically finding his pulse point and face hovering above his own, checking for his pulse and breathing. When she shook her head, Twice dropped down next to Denki, nudging him out of the way, and quickly started on compressions before Dabi had a chance to, giving Dabi a much needed break.

His head was killing him, but he would fight through it if it meant Shigaraki had even a fraction of a percent more chance of surviving. He was grateful that Twice took over compressions, going at exactly 110 beats per minute.

Spinner took his place at lookout near the group, makeshift sword of knives and daggers at the ready, on guard and ready to alert them if the fight got too close to them as they worked on Shigaraki. He shot them worried glances every once in a while. Even though Shigaraki sometimes scared the shit out of him, he would rather have Shigaraki than start over with someone new. At least with Shigaraki, he knew the rules. At least, he had thought he did, until Denki and Dabi showed him that Shigaraki might not be as impulsive and blood thirsty as he had initially thought. Spinner never thought he’d see the day, and a week ago he would have called someone crazy if they told him that he would actually start to enjoy Shigaraki’s presence instead of chronically wishing that he’d just go hide away in his room like he normally did.

Toga remained in her position above Shigaraki’s head, keeping his head tilted back and his airway open. She had tried to scoot around to give Shigaraki breaths after Twice had given 30 perfect compressions, but Dabi was there and refused to move, leaning over to seal his mouth around Shigaraki’s, pinching his nose and forcing air into his lungs. Everyone knew better than to tell Dabi to back off because they were worried about his concussion. Everyone knew how Dabi must have been feeling, and they pictured how they would feel if they were being ushered away from a loved one who needed help. No one even suggested that Dabi move away. No one wasted any time arguing with Dabi that should have rightly gone to giving Shigaraki the best care possible.

Midoriya quickly worked out a plan from the other side of the field, changing aspects when he saw even more villains surrounding Denki that he had moments previously, and accepting different ideas from the group to make the best plan possible on such short notice.

Everyone had just wanted to rush in, so they were lucky that Midoriya was there to make a realistic plan that might actually work. They knew that the other heroes had to be on their way, but who knew how long that would take for them to arrive? With All Might’s hands full with the creepy, masked villain, the students knew that they had to act to save their friend.

Bakugou had wanted to go in, palms blazing. Neito was ready to copy more quirks; he already knew how to use Toga’s and Twice’s quirks. Hitoshi wanted to brainwash as many villains as he could and get them to release Denki.

“I bet they know about you,” Midoriya warned Hitoshi. “They were after Kacchan specifically. I bet that’s because they watched the sports festival. If I’m right, I bet you stood out to them, too.”

Hitoshi had deflated. He had finally been ready and willing to use his quirk at full force in a proactive way, regardless of if anyone who saw might become scared of him because getting Denki back safely was more important than any of that.

“Monoma,” Midoriya started, grabbing the blond’s attention immediately. “Can you copy Uraraka’s quirk?”

Uraraka immediately held out her hand to Neito as an offering of her quirk, and Neito didn’t hesitate to take it. Neito had experimentally touched a small piece of pipe that was disconnected from the ruins that surrounded the hero students. Even Bakugou was impressed that he made it work so quickly when he had never used hers before. Momo knew that he had correctly copied her own complex quirk when making masks for the student body, so she was not surprised in the least. Hitoshi had seen Neito succeed over and over again with every quirk he ever got his hands on, so there was no surprise on his end either. There was no time for anyone else to dwell on Neito’s skill because there was an electric, blond, social genius to save.

Everyone gathered around for the final plan, and not even Bakugou found it in him to argue. With no counter strategies offered, they put their hastily made plan into action.

When two minutes of CPR had passed, Twice quickly jumped out of the way, allowing Denki back in who had already calibrated his electricity to 3,000 volts as the others took care of the other aspects of CPR.

Denki once again sent a pulse through Shigaraki’s chest. Denki didn’t have time to check to see if it worked when the familiar fabric of Aizawa’s capture weapon had wrapped around him, abruptly yanking him upwards into the air, leaving the villains behind.

At the other end of the scarf, though, was not Aizawa, but Hitoshi. And he wasn’t alone. The mishmash of students all interconnected together, flying quickly through the air with the help of Iida’s engines and Bakugou’s explosions to propel them forward and away as quickly as possible. Denki might have taken the time to be thoroughly impressed if he wasn’t so worried about the unfinished task he had just been yanked away from.

Denki looked over his shoulder to see the villains quickly recovering from his abrupt absence and gathering quickly around Shigaraki, Toga once again checking for his breathing and pulse as Denki lost sight of them as the group propelled away, Denki’s view quickly being blocked as they moved forward, refusing to let up on any speed even as they finally had Denki back in their grasp. Instead of relief, Denki’s anxiety only spiked higher when he saw the Pro Heroes arriving on scene, ready to jump into the mix and probably pull Shigaraki’s help away from him and into a fight that they did not have time to waste on.

Hitoshi was shaking. The pressure of only having one chance to get his aim right to get Denki up and away before the villains could notice and retaliate was incredibly heavy, and the adrenaline and anxiety didn’t go away immediately just because he had succeeded. Hitoshi figured that Denki was shaking for a similar reason, and that the relief of being rescued just hadn’t reached his nervous system so quickly.

But it wasn’t relief that Hitoshi saw when he finally got the chance to grab onto Denki’s face, turning his head to look at him straight on. Denki’s breathing was shallow, like he was trying to contain his building panic, and tears had gathered in his eyes, even as the tear tracks of his previously shed tears were still evident in the dirt, dust, and grime on his face from being transported to the ruins after the demolition of the base.

Neito saw Hitoshi’s face lose its color and quickly turned Denki’s head to look at him, seeing the same building fear that Hitoshi had seen.

Denki had opened his mouth to beg to be taken back, to beg to save Shigaraki’s life, to explain that they didn’t hurt him, and he didn’t even really believe they were the enemy anymore, but the words wouldn’t come out of his throat. Denki realized that Force Majeure’s quirk, the very thing meant to protect himself and the League of Villains, might have just killed Shigaraki.

The feeling of dread settled in the soulmates’ stomachs as they shared a concerned look. The soulmates thought that the heavy feeling might have been enough to send the flying group crashing to the ground, but between Uraraka and Neito erasing their gravity, the group didn’t even falter, and no one else had noticed the lack of Denki’s relief upon being rescued.

Chapter Text

Denki sighed, rubbing at his temples to try to ease his stress headache. By that point, it had been three days since everything went down at Kamino Ward and neither Dabi nor Shigaraki had logged into their accounts. The dumb 'three days ago’ under their usernames taunted Denki, telling him that he didn’t do enough.

No one would tell him what had happened after he was whisked away by his classmates. Everyone said that it was nothing he needed to worry about, and he wondered if some of them got away, and that is why they wouldn’t tell him, but maybe that was just wishful thinking on his end. Denki figured that from their perspective, he might have become more anxious and paranoid if he knew that some of the villains had escaped. Denki couldn’t tell them otherwise; Force Majeure’s quirk wouldn’t let him.

They had tried plopping Denki down in a therapist’s office, but Force Majeure’s quirk wasn’t cancelled out by the calm and caring voice of the psychiatrist enlisted to talk to the students affected by Denki’s kidnapping, including Denki himself.

Denki was slightly impressed by the way that the therapist didn’t become frustrated or annoyed at Denki’s lack of response, even before everyone had figured out that there was something stopping him from talking that wasn’t just himself or his perceived trauma.

“Hey, kid,” Aizawa had greeted, tired and dusty from the events at Kamino Ward.

He had sought out Denki right after he was released by the Hero Commission after debriefing, not surprised to find Denki surrounded by his peers. Of course, they would be reprimanded later for taking matters into their own hands. What did surprise him was Denki’s fatigue and quiet sadness. Aizawa had honestly been expecting jokes and high energy from being rescued by his peers. He expected laughter all around and not the silent, concerned glances that Denki’s peers were shooting at each other when Denki would look away. He had never seen Denki so despondent, and it seemed more to him than just the trauma that Denki had gone through. Likewise, Denki had never heard Aizawa’s voice so gentle. It was more unsettling than calming.

“Your parents are on their way,” he informed, noticing that Denki tensed further instead of relaxing.

“He won’t talk to us,” Neito whispered, a quiet desperation in his tone.

“I don’t think he can,” Hitoshi added, directed toward Aizawa but not looking away from Denki.

Denki had quickly looked up to meet Hitoshi’s eyes, and Hitoshi was almost relieved to see some emotion coming from the normally hyperactive, excitable boy, even if that emotion was simply a blunted surprise.

“Oh, Denki,” his mother had wailed, collapsing into him.

He pet her hair to comfort her as she sobbed with relief at having her baby boy back after two days of being held hostage by an infamous group of villains. When she noticed the burns on his arms, she wailed even louder. The burns weren’t bothering Denki at all; Dabi had done well with his first aid care. His father had put a shaky hand on his shoulder, and when Denki dared to look at him, he saw that he was tearing up, too. While his mother was more upset with Denki physically being injured, even though he had had much worse before from his own quirk, his father was more concerned about Denki’s change in demeanor.

When Aizawa introduced the idea of moving Denki, along with all of the other students, into on-campus housing, Denki’s parents immediately objected and threatened to pull their son from the program entirely. Aizawa calmly pointed out the benefits and safety measures that keeping Denki on campus full-time would give them, but Denki’s parents argued back that he was kidnapped under their care in the first place.

Denki spoke for the first time since being rescued, and said firmly, “I want to stay.”

His parents tried to argue with him, but he was determined. When they asked him what the villains had done to him, he couldn’t answer, which didn’t help his case in convincing his parents that he was actually fine.

Dabi had put his faith in him that he would be a good hero, and he passed that faith onto the other League members. Denki would be damned if he allowed himself to let them all down right after being returned to UA.

No.

Denki was going to be a hero.

For once in his life, he didn’t back down when his parents tried to reason with him. They defended their position, argued the logistics, and even tried to guilt trip him with how much they would worry if they didn’t get to see him every day. He shot each attempt down like a cold-hearted, sharp-shooter assassin.

“I’ve never asked for anything,” he stated coldly, not allowing his mother’s tears to manipulate his decision. “I’ve done everything I could to make you proud and even made it into UA’s hero course. Now that I’m here, you really want to take that all away from me? You really want the lesson to be that no matter how hard I work, the actions of others will matter more than my own actions and reactions?”

It was Denki’s turn to guilt trip. He didn’t even feel bad about it, like he might have before. He had a pure reason in his heart for doing so, and he had been guilt-tripped enough that he felt it was time to repay the favor. His feelings from every scolding session from when he let his quirk get out of control and disappointed, worried look every time he failed a math test piled onto Denki’s determination, and his delivery was cold and concise, and it worked.

Denki’s parents shakily signed the consent form, and he hugged them back extra hard when they embraced him before leaving him in the care of UA when they had fully intended on taking him home and never letting him out of their sight ever again. Their little boy was growing up, and even if they tried to smother him, Denki made it clear that he would no longer tolerate it.

The first step of becoming a hero endorsed by the League of Villains? Taking charge of his future and not allowing anyone to come in the way of his goals.

He thought he might feel bad about it later, but he never did, and his parents never brought it up that he argued against them like that. It seemed they took his returned guilt-tripping to heart and learned how bad it felt, committing that feeling to memory and vowing to themselves to never make Denki feel that way again. Now that he was growing up, treating him like that would only push him away instead of getting him to let them control him. From that point on, they had to trust that Denki would be able to control himself, because they were damned sure that he wasn’t going to let anyone else do it anymore. And isn’t that the ultimate goal of parenthood? Raising your child to become their own, independent person with their own ambitions, dreams, and goals? It still hurt to let go, though, but they always knew that it would.

He was taken to see Recovery Girl after the school had gotten signed consent to continue to care for Denki. Recovery Girl was quiet and moved slowly and carefully as she completed a full examination. Later, she would report to Nezu, All Might, and Aizawa that Denki was surprisingly clean for being a hostage for two days. Besides the burns on his arms, he was physically no worse for wear, and the burns weren’t even that bad, already having been taken care of with basic first aid. None of his teeth were broken, and it actually seemed like the villains allowed him to keep good dental hygiene while under their control. His hair and skin were still healthy as ever, so it seemed like they even let him take a shower while there. He weighed the same and his muscle tone versus body fat percentage had stayed the same as well.

It was only two days, but Recovery Girl had seen noticeable changes in similar cases before, especially when it came to heroes in training whose bodies were strictly attuned to a certain diet and exercise regimen that any deviation would result in quick changes. It was almost like Denki had been eating well and even still exercising during his time with the League of Villains.

That might have worried her about his alliances if it weren’t for the fact that he was Denki and that he seemed downright depressed. He moved slowly without his usually jittery energy and fun humor. He answered questions in as few words as possible and didn’t even try to answer any questions about his time spent with the League of Villains. Recovery Girl wondered if their torture methods were more mental than physical, though she never would have expected that from the League of Villains before seeing Denki’s condition.

She hesitated in healing Denki, seeing as how lethargic and fatigued he already was and considering the fact that the burns were healing nicely on their own and well taken care of.

“Do you want me to heal you, dear?” she asked gently, a comforting hand on Denki’s shoulder.

“I get to choose?” Denki asked, making an effort to look up at her with his sad, tired eyes for the first time since he arrived at her office door.

“Yes, dear. Everything looks good, so it’s up to you. Are you in any pain?” she asked, just glad that she finally seemed to be getting some interaction and participation from him.

“I’m not in pain,” he answered. “I don’t want to be healed. I’ll heal fine on my own… if that’s okay?” he ended in a question, looking back up to her again.

With a nod, she dismissed him back into the care of Aizawa, who had been waiting in the hallway on the other side of the closed door. He didn’t seem even the slightest bit phased that Denki still sported the burns on his arms. He didn’t comment on the fact that Denki seemed just the slightest bit brighter.

Neito’s parents had been concerned when they learned about his antics during the training camp and how he took on the villains directly. They were even more concerned when they learned that he was part of the rescue operation that went to save Denki out from under the noses of the villains and Pro Heroes who were surrounding them and did so successfully.

They were proud of him, but also reminded him to keep his ultimate goals in mind and to not push boundaries too much.

“I’ll push whatever I need as far as I need to make sure that my friends are safe,” Neito had muttered under his breath, though he was grateful when his parents easily gave permission for him to move into the dorms.

They could tell by his endless motivation and his increasingly good mood that he was right where he needed to be, and who were they to stop their son from achieving the dreams he worked so hard on?

Neito had acted downright offended when his parents offered to get him into UA on recommendation with their connections to the hero school. He wanted to prove that he could get in on his own due to his own talents and hard work. His parents tried warning him against it, telling him the very real possibility that something could go wrong, and he might not make it in. They explained that the testing is always different and what could be easy to someone one year would be the hardest thing the next year, even if that person had a great quirk and could make a great hero. But Neito had never used his family name to his benefit before, and he wasn’t about to start when it mattered most. Neito wasn’t worried, but he found out exactly what they were talking about when he realized the struggle that Hitoshi had going through the training, unable to use his quirk on the massive robots.

Hitoshi’s foster parents had pulled him into a combined hug that was a mishmash of limbs. Hitoshi might have felt trapped and suffocated if it was anyone else, but with them, he felt warm and secure. They had laughed watery laughs until they cried with pure relief that their foster son was okay. They joked around over dinner, once the initial shock had worn off, about Hitoshi getting up to “no good,” even though they thought it was brave (reckless, but still brave all the same) of Hitoshi to risk facing villains to save a valued friend of his. Hitoshi reassured them that his friends would have done the same for him if he had been in Denki’s place. Then they made Hitoshi promise to never be kidnapped by villains, and instead of arguing that he couldn’t exactly control that, he promised with a definitive nod and a smile.

UA had made quick work of building the dorm rooms and within a week, they were ready to be moved into.

Hitoshi had wondered what would happen since he was a foster kid, but no one had brought it up to him, so he figured he was in the clear.

He should have known better.

On Friday, after classes had finished, he made his way home. The dorm buildings were getting their final touches that evening and would be able to be moved into the next day for the students to settle in before classes resumed on Monday.

When he came in through the door and announced his return, he heard a sob coming from the living room. Immediately, he had dropped his bags and rushed in, only to find his foster parents and foster care caseworker, Wakakuro, surrounded by his already-packed bags.

It was a familiar scene, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. He had been with these people since he had been twelve. It had been an amazing three years, and he thought he might be with them for the rest of his time in foster care. They never showed any sign of wanting to get rid of him, so he was blindsided. Usually there were signs when he was about to be moved, though he was never actually warned ahead of time.

“What is all this?” he asked, looking around at his bags, and trying not to make any assumptions.

He loved his foster parents and would allow them to explain. Either way, he didn’t get a say, so there was nothing he could do to change anyone’s mind. There never was. No matter how much of a tantrum he threw or how many threats he made or how long and hard he held onto the door frame as he was pulled away, he never got to stay.

“Oh, Hitoshi,” Hanisu whimpered, holding out her arms in invitation for him.

He noticed that Wakakuro winced when Hanisu had answered the question, and he didn’t relax, even when it was clear that Hitoshi didn’t take the opportunity to brainwash his foster mother into attacking him or anything else his scared mind had come up with. Out of his whole caseload, Hitoshi was his least favorite foster child. An absolutely terrifying monster of a child who just got scarier and scarier as he grew and learned. Then they went and had him enrolled in a hero school where he could not only use his quirk but was encouraged to do so! Absolutely insane!

He was glad that Hitoshi was being removed from the care of these people who gave him too much freedom, but he was dreading that he was the one who had to do the removing. Ever since he learned about the placement change, he contemplated quitting his job. His hair had started to fall out, he was so stressed!

“Where’s the muzzle?” the caseworker had asked, looking around and trying to block out the family’s distressed emotions. He was not pleased when he was ignored.

Hitoshi was quickly becoming emotionally exhausted. First, Denki was kidnapped by a bunch of dangerous villains. Then he was rescued, and Hitoshi got to be a part of that rescue operation. Then Denki wouldn’t talk about what happened, or couldn’t talk about what happened, more likely. Even so, he wasn’t his normal, happy self, and Hitoshi didn’t know what to do to fix that. Now, he was facing being moved to a new placement. It might be a new family, a group home, or even a detention center. Even if he hadn’t done anything wrong, just his status of having a dangerous quirk allowed the foster care system a lot of leeway when it came to placing preventative restrictions on him.

“It’s good news,” Hanisu assured Hitoshi, though the tears still leaked from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks.

Hitoshi reached up to wipe her tears away, and she offered him a smile that wasn’t strained, but was sad. Hitoshi had never seen anything like it before, and he had no idea what it meant. He had no idea to brace himself for what information might come next because he believed that she wasn’t lying. What good news would cause her to cry, though?

Hitoshi looked over at Genori, who was rubbing his wife’s back. Genori took his turn to pull Hitoshi into a tight hug and sniffed, not allowing himself to cry, not when he had to be the strong one for his wife as their first ever foster child moved on to new opportunities.

“I’m leaving,” Hitoshi stated the obvious, hoping that someone would add details on that he didn’t know, yet. He intentionally didn’t phrase it as a question, hoping that if his foster parents hesitated, Wakakuro might feel comfortable enough to chime in with missing information if he didn’t feel like there was a chance he’d be brainwashed.

And he hated it. He hated having to walk on eggshells once again. He hated having to watch his wording so he wouldn’t unintentionally scare someone. He used to be so ashamed of himself and his quirk, but after making so many friends and having teachers answer his questions instead of staring at him in fear, he was tired of the old song and dance, and he was terrified that he would have to start all over again with someone new.

But there was nothing he could do. So, he plastered a reassuring smile on his face as he looked between his foster parents.

“You’re being adopted, son,” Genori informed, clearing his throat of the potential tears that clogged it. "We applied, and we were going to break the news to you, but we were denied in favor of a better match for you.”

“What? No… I want to stay here,” Hitoshi whispered, his own tears starting to gather in his eyes, astounded at the fact that they had wanted to adopt him. They wanted him around, they wanted him as their own permanently, and his caseworker had to come along to break the news that they wouldn’t be permitted to give Hitoshi his forever family, his happily ever after that he so desperately desired.

“You can visit all the time,” Hanisu reassured, hiccupping on her held-back sobs, knowing that she would be crying for hours once Hitoshi left, but at least they would be bittersweet tears instead of just bitter. “You aren’t going far.”

Hitoshi had a million questions, but he couldn’t ask questions if he wanted any answers. He wanted to know what was going to happen to his schooling. He wanted to know if his pre-adoptive parents would allow him to continue to go to UA. He wondered what his pre-adoptive parents were like that they were chosen over the already established relationship with his current foster parents.

By what he knew of the foster care system and what they thought of him, he figured that his pre-adoptive parents would be strict. Maybe they had quirks that made them more immune to his own and that was why his placement was being changed and they were the ones approved for Hitoshi’s adoption over his current foster parents. Maybe they were villains in disguise who saw him during the sports festival and intend to use him to suit their needs. Sadly, it would not have been the first time something like that would have been attempted.

Hitoshi’s caseworker was just relieved that Hitoshi would be under the care of someone properly equipped to handle the monster child. He, along with everyone else, had heard rumors about how strict, harsh, and unforgiving his pre-adoptive father tended to be, and the caseworker thought that was exactly what Hitoshi needed. All he had to do was survive the transfer, and then he would be able to pass off Hitoshi onto the adoption department and wipe his hands of him for good. Hitoshi would become a problem for someone else to have to dread until the adoption went through, then the adoptive family would be on their own. If the adoption happened to fail and Hitoshi returned to foster care, his caseworker would be searching for job opportunities elsewhere before he would accept Hitoshi under his caseload again.

Chapter Text

Hitoshi thought he was more mature and level-headed now. Maybe he was, but the terrible feelings that surrounded him when he was forced to wear that damn muzzle again showed him that he hadn’t changed as much as he hoped he would.

Did it help that it was the muzzle that Momo had made for him specifically? The one that Bakugou had returned in mint condition after the school demonstration with a grunted ‘thanks’ before stomping away? Yeah, it helped. The panic was no longer clawing at him, darkening the outer edges of his vision, but the humiliation was still there in full force.

It was different wearing it of his own will when demonstrating and protesting. It was another thing entirely for it to be forced upon him unwillingly with no say on his end. Context and choice made all the difference.

Putting his forehead against the cool glass of the car’s window, Hitoshi closed his eyes and took some deep breaths, trying to regulate his own inner emotional turmoil and get himself readjusted to his new reality. For all he knew, he was going to be expected to wear this thing almost constantly when he was placed with his pre-adoptive family.

Still, his heart fluttered at the thought that someone wanted to adopt him. Not only that, but also the Hamabis were wanting to adopt him as well. He tried to not allow himself to get his hopes up, but it was hard.

He had learned from a young age to expect the worst and treasure every little circumstance that wasn’t as bad as it could have been. After being with people as kind and considerate as the Hamabis, his old mantras and self-trainings had gone out the window. He stupidly believed he might not need his old mantras anymore after feeling more and more secure in his placement with the Hamabis as the months went on without them requesting his removal.

Don’t speak unless spoken to, and don’t ask questions. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t bring any unnecessary attention to yourself. Fuck, there were more. What were they?

Then the Hamabis fought for him to be able to attend UA, even when his foster care caseworker was against it. They went to bat for him, and they won.

As far as Hitoshi knew, up until that point, his foster care caseworker’s words were as good as law. For the Hamabis to not only go against him, but win, was unimaginable to Hitoshi and he hardly believed it when they broke the news to him that he would be allowed to attend. He had already been resigned to the fact that all of his hard work to actually get accepted into UA was going to go down the drain. He had learned long ago that life wasn’t fair, and no one cared when you pointed out things that could help make it fairer.

Don’t speak unless spoken to, and don’t ask questions. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t bring any unnecessary attention to yourself. Stay out of sight and out of mind: You shouldn’t be seen or heard.

To Hitoshi, the Hamabis were heroes in their own right, just by what they had done to show him that he was truly and genuinely cared for. He had been especially surprised because the Hamabis had never shown an interest in heroics until Hitoshi had voiced his desire to apply to UA. Suddenly, heroic literature was scattered around the house and the news stations that played in the background were changed to the hero-heavy reporting networks. What used to be discussions about grades and friends and his school day over dinner turned into discussions and debates about current hero policies and politics and the old and newly discovered dangers of becoming a hero, including both physical and emotional dangers. The Hamabis went from asking about Hitoshi’s homework to asking about his training regimen. They went from kid-friendly movie night to hero documentary movie night.

Hitoshi had never felt so welcomed and wanted. Hitoshi had never had someone so interested in him as a person, and not in the way of how they could mold him into the person they wanted him to be instead of helping him grow into the person he himself strived to become.

And now all of that was over. Hitoshi was starting all over again.

Don’t speak unless spoken to, and don’t ask questions. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t bring any unnecessary attention to yourself. Stay out of sight and out of mind: You shouldn’t be seen or heard. Make the best of every situation: No one is coming to save you.

When the Wakakuro’s GPS directed them to stop in from of UA, Hitoshi’s heart dropped further. He had the tiniest bit of hope that he would at least be able to continue to go to UA, but it looked like they were making a pit stop to officially unenroll him from his classes.

He dared a glance over to his caseworker, expecting to see a smug smirk sent in his direction. He swore the man got off on his despair (so much for the whole Empathy quirk, huh?). So, he was taken aback by the poorly hidden confusion on his caseworker’s face, even as his caseworker refused to even look in Hitoshi’s direction. His caseworker double checked the address typed into his GPS with the paperwork that included the information for Hitoshi’s pre-adoptive family, and his confusion just seemed to deepen.

Hitoshi would have done anything to trade quirks with Neito at that very moment so he could take Wakakuro’s Empathy quirk and experience some nice, cathartic schadenfreude as he basked in the confusion of the man sitting next to him, but alas, it was not meant to be.

Hitoshi looked out of his window to see a woman he had never seen before, along with Aizawa standing there. Hitoshi felt his face burn in shame at Aizawa seeing him with his stupid muzzle on. Hitoshi felt weird feeling embarrassed when he had proudly worn the muzzle in front of the man in demonstration in Bakugou’s honor a few weeks prior, but consent made a huge difference. Again, it was a different thing entirely to use the muzzle during a demonstration of his own free will, and something else completely to be forced into it because everyone saw him as a dangerous creature not worth any respect or dignity.

He wondered if the woman might have been his pre-adoptive mother. She looked kind. She had warm eyes. But Hitoshi had learned that looks can be deceiving. Hitoshi would gladly take any opportunity to get away from Wakakuro, though, so he figured it would only be a good thing if he got to transfer cars and ride with her.

She confidently rushed over to Hitoshi’s side of the door and flung his door open.

“Welcome—what the fuck.” Her voice went from friendly and upbeat to deadpan and annoyed so quickly that Hitoshi recoiled.

She offered a hand to Hitoshi, and he took it, knowing that disobeying, or even hesitating, would make things worse on his end. Internally, he swore. He had regressed so quickly it seemed like he had made no progress at all.

Don’t speak unless spoken to, and don’t ask questions. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t bring any unnecessary attention to yourself. Stay out of sight and out of mind: You shouldn’t be seen or heard. Make the best of every situation: No one is coming to save you.

“Seriously? This is what the foster care system has been up to?” she snarled, but not at Hitoshi. Her anger was directed past him, directly at his foster care caseworker.

“It’s for safety,” Wakakuro argued, indignant.

Before the woman could retort, Hitoshi had interjected, “it’s fine, really.”

All eyes were on him.

That’s what he gets for trying to be a damn peacekeeper instead of allowing the adults to have it out on their own. He should have remained silent and in the background. UA had made him too brazen.

Don’t speak unless spoken to.

“How can you talk with that on?” Wakakuro whispered, the color leaving his face as he realized that Hitoshi could have potentially brainwashed him at any point while they were alone, and he would have been helpless to stop it.

Hitoshi froze, face paling at the magnitude of the mistake he had just made. He gave away his safety net so easily. He had gotten too used to having a voice and being able to speak that he messed everything up. The precious gift from Momo didn’t even last an hour for him before he gave the secret away. At that moment, he just wanted a chance to talk to Neito before he started downward spiral of self-loathing.

Don’t speak unless spoken to, and don’t ask questions. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t bring any unnecessary attention to yourself. Stay out of sight and out of mind: You shouldn’t be seen or heard. Make the best of every situation: No one is coming to save you.

No one is coming to save you.

No one is coming to save you.

No one is coming to save you.

“Is that how Bakugou was able to join in the demonstration?” Aizawa asked.

Hitoshi had never been so thankful for Aizawa, even as he offered to train him in the art of capture weaponry and hand-to-hand combat. He knew, of course, that Aizawa was just trying to ease the tension, but he was so good at it that it immediately put Hitoshi at ease.

“Yeah,” Hitoshi answered verbally as he reached back to unclasp the straps affixing the muzzle firmly against his face.

Hitoshi smiled softly as he thought back to Bakugou actually calling him by his name, and it was then that he knew that his prized possession would be in safe hands, and any risk he was still taking was completely worth it.

Hitoshi’s smile grew lopsided into a smirk when he saw Wakakuro try to object to him removing his muzzle only to be stopped by the woman. He was liking her more and more as the minutes passed by. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad living with her.

“That was really kind of you to trust him with that,” the woman offered, her smile kind and genuine.

“I bet he didn’t even hesitate,” Aizawa directed toward the woman, but didn’t take his eyes off of Hitoshi.

The pure warmth coming from the duo was something that Hitoshi had never felt from people he had seen as ultimate authorities over himself and his life. It reminded him a lot of the way the Hamabis made him feel.

“Are you ready to move into the dorms?” Aizawa asked.

“I’m going to be allowed to stay at UA?” Hitoshi asked, his voice heavy with breathy disbelief as his eyes flickered between his teacher and his pre-adoptive mother.

“You didn’t tell him?” the woman asked Wakakuro, a disproving frown gracing her pretty face.

Instead of waiting for the two social workers to get their shit together, Aizawa took it upon himself to break the news.

"Kid, I'm the one adopting you."

Aizawa saw the tears rush to Hitoshi’s widened eyes and fall down his face as he was unable to hold back the flood of emotion. Aizawa saw Hitoshi freeze in place, too scared to move to break this perfect moment to reveal it all to be a fantastic lie. Aizawa saw Hitoshi’s knees buckle, and he was there to catch him before his knees could hit the ground. Aizawa held Hitoshi firmly as he sobbed into his shirt, hands clenched tightly into fists around the fabric.

As Hitoshi and Aizawa had their first moments as a pre-adoptive family, Wakakuro was officially dismissed and told to go back to the office, where an official complaint would be waiting for him from the adoption agency.

The woman turned out to be Hitoshi’s adoption caseworker, and there was no more need for a foster care caseworker. Hitoshi was just glad that he didn’t embarrass himself by voicing his first thought that she might be his pre-adoptive mother.

“Why me?” Hitoshi asked quietly.

His adoption caseworker had left after having Aizawa sign some paperwork to officially accept the custody and take over care of Hitoshi. Aizawa and Hitoshi had moved him in a day early into the Class 1-C building, carrying his bags to his room and starting to unpack to make it feel more like home.

Good things never last, however; Hitoshi was already worried that he was a burden. He questioned what made Aizawa want someone like him, someone who couldn’t even make it into the hero course. He thought back to training and wondered if he ever accidentally guilt-tripped Aizawa into adopting him, but he didn’t remember ever really talking about his situation.

“I’m going to be honest with you, because you deserve it,” Aizawa started quietly, taking a seat at Hitoshi’s desk while Hitoshi sat on his bed across the room, heart in his throat as he awaited what was sure to break his heart. “Your foster care caseworker was going to forbid you from attending UA. There are policies in place that state that foster kids cannot live away from their foster parents, and your caseworker was going to enforce it.”

“You did all of this so I wouldn’t have to leave UA?” Hitoshi asked, absolutely amazed that Aizawa had seen his potential and trusted that potential enough to make such an outrageous decision.

“No,” Aizawa stated, making Hitoshi lean in, giving him his full attention. “The Hamabis were my friends growing up, and we have always kept in contact. They told me that they had become foster parents and their foster kid was interested in becoming a hero. I told them it was dangerous and difficult to get into the schools for regular kids, let alone the kids who have the added stress and restriction of foster care. They told me that you were special, and that you would definitely make it. They asked me for recommendations for documentaries, shows, and literature for current politics. They were scared for you, but they wanted to give you all of the information to make your own choice anyway.”

“Is that why you started training me?” Hitoshi interjected to ask, not bothering to wipe the tears away, too absorbed in the intense feeling of finally being cared about for once to even notice.

Aizawa continued, “when I started training you, it was because I saw that determination and drive that I had myself when I was an aspiring hero. Truthfully, Hitoshi, I didn’t even know you were the kid that the Hamabis had taken in. They called me about a week after we had started, mostly to rub it in that they saw the potential you had before I did. You’re a good kid who got a tough break.”

Hitoshi sniffed and smiled through his tears at Aizawa. “I know you care about all your students. Do you have any other kids? Have you ever fostered before?”

“No. I am not a good candidate to be a parent,” Aizawa stated bluntly and shaking his head, looking at the wall and refusing to meet Hitoshi’s eyes. “A hero rarely is because sometimes we have to choose the job over our families, and even once is too many times. A lot of kids wouldn’t be in foster care in the first place if their parents had chosen safer jobs. But you’re going to be a hero, too.” Hitoshi’s eyes watered at the absolute confidence with which Aizawa stated that, like it was already a fact. “So, what do you say? Do you think that you can join a family of heroes?”

“Do I actually have a choice in the matter?” Hitoshi asked, though not cruelly.

“A lot of people owe me a lot of favors,” Aizawa answered vaguely, but it was answer enough for Hitoshi. “But you need to know that I’m not doing this for anyone else but myself,” he continued, catching Hitoshi’s full attention once again. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m not doing it for the Hamabis. I’m doing this for purely selfish reasons. Hizashi and I have always talked about fostering or adopting, but it was never in the cards for us because of our profession. So, when the chance came to adopt you, and the Hamabis agreed that you would flourish under our care, I applied for your adoption and cashed in some favors to expedite the process. You’re here, right now, in this situation because we want you. You aren’t a burden. No one’s doing you a favor. Do you understand?”

Hitoshi nodded, overwhelmed with being told the opposite of what he had always believed.

“Do you want to give this a try? Do you want us to move forward with the adoption?”

“Yes. Yes, please,” Hitoshi whispered hoarsely.

That night, as Hitoshi stared at the ceiling of his new dorm room and wrapped himself up in his blankets, he thought about how crazy excited Denki would be once he realized that Todoroki (A.K.A. “The Conspiracy King”) had correctly guessed that Aizawa and Yamada were a couple. He hoped that would be enough to break Denki out of the depressive funk he had been under since being rescued.

Likewise, Aizawa knew that his relationship with Yamada would be common news among the students after Hitoshi told his soulmate and best friend who he happened to also be in love with about the good news. He wasn’t even mad about it, smiling as he fell asleep against his own loud blond’s shoulder.

Chapter Text

After everyone had moved into the dorms and unpacked, Kirishima and Bakugou made a beeline to Denki’s room. Unfortunately, they weren’t surprised to find him sitting on his sheetless, unmade bed, slouched over in a way that should be painful, staring at the wall opposite of him. They had thought that he was lost in thought a lot recently, but Kirishima’s mind conjured the idea of Denki disassociating, and now that thought wouldn’t leave him alone. It didn’t help that Denki seemed so… empty.

When yellow eyes flicked over to the newcomers, it didn’t reassure Kirishima at all. It was like he was looking through them instead of at them.

“Hey, Kaminari!” Kirishima chirped, charging right into his room with a pep in his step, like if he had extra energy wafting off of him, some of it might seep into Denki.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Denki muttered, moving to stand up when Kirishima started unpacking the untouched boxes.

“No big deal, man. Let me help you out, yeah?” Kirishima chirped, beaming fantastically at Denki with his sharp, white teeth. Kirishima knew that he always felt better when his space was tidy and organized, even if that had nothing to do with whatever was on his mind. If he could help Denki in this small way, it would be an honor to help his friend.

It was the first time in a while that anyone had smiled at him, and it did make him feel a little more present, so Denki nodded and collapsed back onto the bed, opting to stare straight up at the ceiling instead of the wall.

Denki’s body bounced a little when Bakugou flung himself onto the bed as well. While Kirishima began to unpack and organize to take care of Denki’s physical space, Bakugou had set his sights on Denki’s mental space, and Bakugou wasn’t discouraged by Denki’s lack of reaction.

“Do we need to take a trip down to the junk yard later?” he muttered, looking sideways at Denki as he just stared straight up. At least he wasn’t crying.

“No. That’s okay,” Denki answered, quieter than usual.

In Denki’s defense, Bakugou was being much quieter than usual, too, so maybe he was just using his social genius to match the tone and volume. Denki knew it wasn’t that, of course, but it made him feel a little better to think it might be a possibility. At that point, he would take anything he could get. But then he would start to feel guilty because how dare he feel better when he didn’t know how the League of Villains was faring? How dare he be safe, let alone happy, when he didn’t even know if Shigaraki was alive?

“If I have to drag you there by your—” Bakugou started to threaten lowly, only to be cut off.

“Who are we dragging where by their what?” Neito interjected from the open doorway, letting himself in.

Bakugou wasn’t even mad about getting cut off. He wasn’t even mad about Neito just barging right on into his friend’s room. He was a little relieved, even—not that he would ever admit that out loud. Neito had really proven himself in Bakugou’s eyes since Denki’s rescue.

He really came through for them; without his help, Uraraka would have been too sick to make sure that all of them could float away to a safe distance to ground again. It might have been too much for her to do alone as she was still getting used to taking the gravity away from bigger objects for longer periods of time. Without the pressure, Bakugou was confident that she would be able to do it no problem. If that was their only choice, he knew she would have tried her best. But with Neito right there, eyes bright and hopeful, holding out a hand in offering, not even flinching at the warning of the side effects, all to help Denki… Well, it made Bakugou a little less explosive toward Neito.

Not that he would ever forgive him for tying him into a tree during the invasion, mind you. But that revenge would come at a later time, when Denki wasn’t having a fucking crisis, thank you very much. Who ever said that Bakugou couldn’t prioritize?

Kirishima and Bakugou let out an audible breath of relief when Denki’s eyes darted over to Neito, and he sat up to fully look at him. At least Neito could get his attention. Neito was good at being the center of attention, and Kirishima had never been happier for it.

Kirishima struggled to understand what Denki saw in Neito, especially after the insults he had hurled at him during the training exercise where Neito had stolen Denki’s quirk. Kirishima prided himself on being kind, friendly, and open-minded, but Neito just grated on all the wrong nerves. Looking over a Bakugou, though, he knew that many could say the same thing about him. Every time he wanted to scowl at Neito (just a reflex or instinct, not out of any active disgust, but still the urge was there), he remembered how it feels when someone insults Bakugou in front of him.

Kirishima is getting better at refraining from snapping at Neito every time he sees him. It probably helps that Neito had toned down the Class 1-A slander. But still, Kirishima had to wonder if it was their teamwork that had Neito forming a new respect for Class 1-A, or if it was only to spare Denki’s feelings alone. The possibility wouldn’t have been considered after the training incident, but Neito had been nothing short of perfect toward Denki since then. Kirishima knew that Bakugou was quite the bully in middle school, so who was he to hold a grudge against Neito when Denki himself forgave him even as the words left his mouth? That would be hypocritical.

When Hitoshi showed up not too long after, Kirishima and Bakugou shared a glance before making excuses to leave and basically racing out of the room. They knew that if anyone could get Denki’s spirits up, it would be the soulmate duo. Bakugou would get indignant if he thought about it for too long, though. What made those extras better at cheering Denki up than him and Kirishima? Whatever it was, it was magic. Those three just had a very strong connection that not even Bakugou could compete with, not that it made it any easier for Bakugou to admit, however.

“Did you hear the news?” Hitoshi asked gently, but with an excited lilt to his voice that had Denki tuning in immediately.

“No. What news? You didn’t tell me?” he asked, directing his last question to Neito. “You’ve been here for 90 whole seconds and didn’t tell me the news?” he accused.

“Woah, Sparky!” Neito said, putting his hands up in surrender, a soft smile on his face. “It’s not my news to tell!”

“What is it? What’s the news?” Denki asked, turning toward Hitoshi.

He wasn’t bursting with energy like usual, but it was a huge improvement to the motionless, expressionless zombie that he was not five minutes earlier. He was present and interested, and that alone was a huge success in of itself.

“Do you want the good news or bad news first?” Hitoshi asked.

“I don’t know if I could handle the bad news at all… so better get that one over with so we can smooth it over with the good news,” Denki decided, putting serious thought into what made the most sense to him.

Hitoshi and Neito shared a glance that was part concern and part relief. The concern was for Denki’s admission of not being able to handle more bad news, but the relief was that he was being self-aware and considering his options carefully, which was more than anyone had gotten out of him the whole weekend.

Denki was just so tired. He had spent multiple hours over the weekend in police stations and hero agencies, staring blankly at the ones asking him questions because he physically just couldn’t answer them. It was frustrating to everyone involved, and it sucked the energy right out of Denki. He thought he might never get it back again, but just being around Neito and Hitoshi was already charging him up.

With the feeling and emotion returning, the fear and guilt came rushing back in, too. What kind of monster was he that he could just move on like nothing happened when the League of Villains could literally have been torn apart?

“I was removed from the Hamabis. They aren’t my foster parents anymore,” Hitoshi stated.

Denki’s eyes widened, and he screeched, “what?!”

It was the loudest he had gotten since being rescued, so Hitoshi had to lay it on thick.

“Yeah, the dorm situation messed everything up with my foster care. The rules state that I can’t be away from my foster parents for more than 10 days in a row, which would be fine if I just went home every weekend. But my caseworker is a… stickler for the rules.”

“Sadistic bastard,” Neito translated for Denki with a nod.

Denki’s attentive and alert eyes switched between them as they talked, weaving the story with dramatics to keep his attention.

Hitoshi nodded with a smile, not bothering to try to defend his old foster care caseworker. “He would enforce the other rule that says that I cannot be away from my foster parents for more than one-third of any given month.”

“So how are you here then? You’re not leaving, are you?” Denki asked, breath picking up, but not enough to worry the soulmates. They wouldn’t let him get into full panic mode, and a little emotion might do him some good.

“How could I ever leave you?!” Hitoshi asked, throwing his arms out to the side, really putting on a show.

“Then how?!” Denki demanded, sitting up onto his knees on the bed to look at Hitoshi at eye-level, showing more and more energy since Hitoshi’s tale began.

“I…” Hitoshi started, pausing for dramatic effect. A glance over at Neito told him that he was also enjoying the theatrics, which was no surprise. “… was adopted,” Hitoshi finished with a shrug like it was no big deal. “Okay! Now you know! See you later!”

Hitoshi turned around and started walking to the door, smiling when the blond boy, as fast as his lightning, shot past him and stood in the doorway, arms outstretched to block Hitoshi’s exit, eyes gleaming with the intense desire to know more.

“You can’t just leave me like that, dude! You gotta’ tell me!” Denki insisted, shaking his head in disbelief that Hitoshi would dare to leave him hanging like that. “Who adopted you?”

Ojirou, who was walking past the open doorway on his way to his own dorm, smiled to himself at the Denki-miracle-workers. Everyone would be relieved to know that at least Denki is still himself around Neito and Hitoshi.

“Aizawa,” Hitoshi answered, eyes widening just the slightest for effect as he said the name, his chin jutting up in pride.

Denki’s jaw dropped. “No way…” he whispered, in complete awe.

“… and Yamada,” Hitoshi added with a shrug of his shoulder, like he didn’t just drop a bomb on Denki.

“No way,” he screeched, jumping up and down in place and pumping his fist in the air. “Shouto was right? He’s never going to let anyone forget that he called it! The first week in, too, when everyone thought there was no way!”

As Hitoshi jumped into the details of everything that happened, Neito stood off to the side, content to watch instead of being the center of attention for once.

When Denki grinded to a halt mid-sentence, a panicky kind of gloom settling over his face as he realized that he was fucking celebrating, Neito took that as his cue to leave them to it.

Hitoshi caught Denki as he collapsed, going from one extreme to another as he went from laughing and joking around, like his usual, bubbly self, to sobbing against Hitoshi’s neck, holding on for dear life.

Hitoshi caught Neito’s eye as he tried to sneak out. “Stay?” he offered, though it wasn’t a command, just purely an offer.

“Thanks, but I’m not good with tears,” Neito shrugged off before leaving.

If Denki was in his right mind, he would have known that was a lie and that Neito would have been there for him if he didn’t have ulterior motives. If Denki was at full strength social genius levels, like he usually was, he would have seen the unspoken conversation between the soulmates that went something like Neito telling Hitoshi that he needed to talk to Denki on his own and that it was his time to shine.

“I’m sorry,” Denki sobbed against Hitoshi’s neck, not pulling back to look at him.

“You have your own stuff going on,” Hitoshi soothed, running his hand over Denki’s blond, knotted hair.

“Not for just being a party pooper,” Denki argued, shaking his head, but not moving his head back from being firmly planted against Hitoshi.

The ends of Denki’s hair tickled Hitoshi’s jaw as he continued to sob and shake his head back and forth. We’re doing this already, are we? Denki diving right into all the problems didn’t really phase Hitoshi, though; he was kind of expecting it. Denki usually was all or nothing, and admitting to his perceived wrongs was no exception.

Denki abruptly pulled back from Hitoshi, not feeling worthy of asking for comfort from the one he had hurt the most. Denki wasn’t sure if he himself would even be capable of comforting someone who had tried to kiss his soulmate if he actually has a soulmate out there somewhere.

Will he be able to tell the difference between his soulmate and the voices?

That was a problem for another day. Today, it was about sincerely apologizing to Hitoshi and accepting whatever would make Hitoshi feel better, even if that meant that he would never speak to the soulmate duo again. Even if he felt like he would go insane… well… more insane, he guessed.

“Everyone knows you’re a nice person,” Denki sobbed, hiding his face in his hands, unable to look at the boy he betrayed, the boy he loved dearly. “You don’t have anything to prove to anyone, so I don’t understand why you’re still here.”

Oh. Then Denki understood. Neito had shown up to his room first, Hitoshi following shortly after. That would have made Denki nervous if he was in Hitoshi’s position. He must have been nervous that a repeat might happen and came to monitor the situation. Even that was a huge kindness because they could have just discounted him altogether. Denki didn’t understand why they would risk their relationship just to spare his feelings.

He was ruining everything.

First, he almost kissed someone who is a soulmate to someone else, both of whom he absolutely loves. Second, Shigaraki might be dead because of him. If it weren’t for him, the heroes wouldn’t have busted in to rescue him, and Shigaraki would still have been okay. If Shigaraki was not okay, Denki would be devastated, and he knew that Touya would be even more so than himself.

Bad luck seemed to follow him around, but Denki couldn’t even blame the nature of his luck, or lack thereof. He was solely to blame, and it wasn’t very heroic of him to pass the blame onto his bad luck status.

At this rate, he would bring more disaster than hope and rescue as a hero. Briefly, in that moment, he wondered if the League of Villains would make good on their promise to pull him out, even though he let Shigaraki down, or if they all hated him now. Maybe he was their new enemy number one. It actually made him feel worse knowing that they were better than that and they wouldn’t hold any of what happened against him. His pity was only for himself, and there wasn’t even a real reason for it because, for some unknown reason, no one was ever mad at him.

“I’m not mad at you,” Hitoshi started.

Case in point.

“I know you saw… at the training gym…” Denki mumbled against his hands, his sobs being forced back, but the tears were still freely flowing. Denki didn’t deserve to use his sobs and tears to guilt-trip Hitoshi. He didn’t deserve anything at all. “Why did you leave instead of bashing my face in?”

A sob escaped his lungs then. Oops.

“Denks,” Hitoshi breathed, grabbing the blond by the face, and forcing him to look at him directly.

Denki was startled by the tears at the corners of Hitoshi’s eyes. Great, perfect. He had Hitoshi feeling bad for him when he was the villain here. This was not going how he wanted it to go.

When Denki averted his gaze away, the tears continuing to stream rivers down his face, Hitoshi continued, “Neito is my soulmate, Denks.”

“I know!” Denki practically wailed, still not looking at Hitoshi in the eye. “That’s why I don’t understand why you aren’t mad!”

“We’re soulmates,” Hitoshi repeated. “We tell each other everything, Denki. Did you think I didn’t know that he has feelings for you?”

Denki’s eyes snapped to Hitoshi’s, then. “What?” Denki whispered, not believing his ears, needing to see Hitoshi’s lips match the sounds he was hearing before he dismissed it completely as his hallucinations trying to make him feel better.

“I mean, he jumped the gun, a little, but that’s just how he is,” Hitoshi snorted to himself, removing his hands from Denki’s face and leaning back now that he had his full attention and ripped him from the unending cycle of self-pity. “Whoever got you alone next had full permission from the other to make a move. I thought that would, you know, include talking… but Neito has always been extra, so I should have seen it coming.”

Denki blinked, trying to process what he was hearing.

“We’ve actually been meaning to apologize to you,” Hitoshi continued, Denki’s eyes widening in surprise. “When we both started catching feelings for you, we both started pulling away, trying to refocus on each other. We were both miserable. Nothing I did made him feel better. I felt like I was failing as his soulmate, and I didn’t understand why. First, I caught feelings for you, then I couldn’t even cheer my soulmate up. I was even so oblivious to not even know why he was so upset in the first place. He felt the same way about me, so he offered to call you because you always cheer me up. That’s when I admitted that I liked you as more than a friend. I thought he would be upset, maybe even mad, but he was relieved because he felt the same way and it felt like less of a betrayal when we realized that we both have feelings for you.”

Denki’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You both—you both like me?”

“Yeah,” Hitoshi admitted easily, “and hey, no pressure to like us both back either. If you only like Neito—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Denki deadpanned, bringing a hand to his head to rub at his temple as he thought.

"No!” Hitoshi demanded loudly and suddenly, making Denki jump and redirect his attention to him. “I know what you’re thinking, Kaminari Denki, and you need to stop that right now!”

“How would you—”

“I know you,” Hitoshi spat, exasperated. “You’re thinking about how you could ever come between us, right?”

Denki averted his eyes, and that was answer enough.

“Well, you want to know about why it took so long for us to actually make a move? Huh?” Hitoshi didn’t even wait for a response as he continued, “because we didn’t want to make you seem unavailable if you were to ever find your own soulmate! You’re more worried about us, and we’re more worried about you! How fucking crazy is that! So, maybe if we all stop being so careful, and just let shit happen every once in a while, maybe we could all be happy, yeah? Is that too much to ask?!”

Denki’s eyes widened further and further as Hitoshi’s rant continued, getting louder and faster as he went.

When he was sure that Hitoshi was finished, he muttered, “well aren’t you confident.”

Hitoshi’s face ignited in a blush, and he looked away, mumbling an apology.

“Don’t,” Denki demanded, stopping Hitoshi from apologizing for getting so fired up. “It suits you. I like it.”

Hitoshi’s blush deepened, but he stopped apologizing, so Denki considered that as a win.

“Anyway, I’m still sorry about crying on your parade,” Denki insisted, wiping his face of the remaining tears that lingered.

Hitoshi didn’t bother to correct the phrase, hoping that Denki wouldn’t ever feel like he couldn’t have negative emotions and that he would never use the phrase ever again anyway.

“Seriously, there’s no need to apologize,” Hitoshi insisted, waving Denki’s concerns off. “You’ve been through a lot, and you can’t even tell anyone about what happened.”

“Have you overheard anything now that you’re being adopted by Pro Heroes? About my situation, I mean?” Denki asked hopefully. “Seriously, the last thing I need is for everyone to think I’m some sort of villain because I can’t tell anyone anything,” he grumbled, rubbing his temples to ward off the incoming headache.

“Aizawa and some of the other underground heroes talked about a vigilante that has a quirk that, if used a certain way, can get people to act or talk in a certain way… or not talk,” Hitoshi shared, eyes narrowing as he tried to remember the specific way that the vigilante’s quirk was explained before he was discovered eavesdropping and shooed away. “They said her name is Force Majeure.”

When Denki’s eyes snapped in Hitoshi’s direction, eyes widening for just a fraction of a second in surprise, Hitoshi nodded. “That’s confirmation enough for me. They said that it’s a brutal quirk. I’m so sorry that they hurt you like that,” Hitoshi whispered gently, not wanting to bring up something that Denki didn’t want to talk about, but also knowing that he might desperately want to talk about it, but physically can’t.

“Uh…” Denki hesitated, trying to word it so that he doesn’t get blocked by Force Majeure’s quirk. “It’s not what you think,” he settled with, happy that he could at least get that out so Hitoshi wouldn’t think he was absolutely tortured the whole time he was held captive.

“Maybe… maybe I could override her quirk,” Hitoshi offered, eyes squinted in determination. “Will you answer me, Denks?”

“Always,” Denki answered automatically, “but—”

And he was under, finally floating in the comfortable haze that was Hitoshi’s quirk. The underlying panic didn’t go away, though. If anyone found out about what happened at the League’s base, Denki would never be trusted to become a hero. No one would ever hear him out and understand him. At the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to break out of Hitoshi’s quirk. It was so familiar and comfortable, and he missed it. He also knew that there was a chance he could give Hitoshi a migraine if he broke free without him expecting it, and he wasn’t going to risk hurting Hitoshi any more than he already had.

Besides, Denki trusted Hitoshi completely. If Hitoshi was able to bypass Force Majeure’s quirk and find out what had really happened while he was with the League of Villains, Denki would accept whatever Hitoshi decided to do after that. If Hitoshi decided to turn him in, that was definitely the right thing to do. Maybe he would have noticed something that Denki didn’t about the situation that made it more dangerous than Denki realized. It would actually be a relief for Hitoshi to find out when Denki thought about it. If he didn’t turn him in, and maybe even agreed with what he had done, Denki would feel more confident that he was making the right choices. Either way, Denki would know that Hitoshi would always have his best interest in mind.

Denki saw Hitoshi frown deeply through the haze, looking at him with concern and consideration before voicing his command.

“Answer this question. Did her quirk hurt you?”

Denki felt his mouth move without any input from him, his tongue struggling to form the word that he was commanded to answer. The answer was right there, about to come out, when Hitoshi sighed and pulled his quirk back, release Denki.

“I’ve been trying to get better at more complicated demands,” Hitoshi explained, “including multiple steps and answering questions, but it hasn’t gotten very far. Even without the quirk you’re restricted by it might not have worked.”

“That’s so cool,” Denki drawled, completely enamored, like always, at not only Hitoshi’s quirk, but also his dedication to improvement.

“I did get it to work once, on Neito, but it was a simple yes or no question, and I think the added bond of our soulmate connection and his willingness under my quirk made it possible,” Hitoshi added.

“That’s still amazing. Seriously, Toshi. Cool shit!” Denki praised. His mood sunk again as he added, “I really wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you everything. But, seriously, I’m okay.”

“You don’t seem okay,” Hitoshi commented gently, honestly, reaching out to put a supportive hand on Denki’s shoulder.

“It’s not about me,” Denki answered vaguely, hoping that Hitoshi might understand with the very limited, vague information that Denki was able to offer.

And Hitoshi did. He was surprised and disappointed in himself for not seeing it before. Denki wasn’t traumatized by anything that he had gone through or that had been done to him. Denki was worried about someone else. Typical Denki.

The revelation gave Hitoshi mixed emotions. He wondered how bad Denki had it, considering that he overheard Recovery Girl’s examination results that found so little injuries on Denki, to everyone’s surprise. Even with Denki’s social genius, even Neito and Hitoshi thought that Denki might have suffered a few broken bones before appealing to the villains’ good side. So, was it all mental torture, then? Did it even matter? Whatever happened, it wasn’t bad enough for him to override his worry for someone else, but that narrowed it down very little. Denki was just like that; he could have come out in a full body cast and still worry about this other person. Who though? Was there another captive that the heroes were unaware of? Hitoshi had so much to think about.

“Has anyone debriefed you?” Hitoshi asked hesitantly, unsure if his next move would help or harm.

“No,” Denki answered firmly, looking straight into Hitoshi’s eyes, straight into his soul.

Hitoshi had already made his decision when he asked, of course. He knew he wouldn’t be able to deny Denki, especially not as something as important as information that should have been given to him from the very beginning. Just because the therapists were not getting anything useful from him to determine his mental status didn’t mean that he didn’t deserve to know.

“The guy that was fighting All Might when we escaped was captured,” Hitoshi explained.

Denki’s breath caught in his throat. He had quickly figured out that the massive villain was All For One, and he absolutely loathed the guy already. He still worried though, because if someone as powerful as him was defeated, the others were probably rotting away in Tartarus at that very moment, the others who had been dealt a tough hand and were misled and never got a helping hand out from a hero that actually paid attention to those who needed it most. Denki’s own intense, bitter feelings surprised him.

Hitoshi hesitated, but in for a penny, in for a pound. “The other villains got away,” he whispered.

When Denki’s eyes widened and he took a deep, surprised breath in, Hitoshi pulled him into a hug, whispering apologies as he rubbed Denki’s back. Hitoshi knew something was off, because even though the tears were present, the sobs hadn’t made a return, though he never would have guessed that the tears were of pure relief.

Denki was so grateful, because even if Shigaraki didn’t survive, at least Touya and the others had another chance. At least they weren’t trapped in Tartarus without even having each other to lean on to help each other grieve. At least Denki no longer felt stupid by checking his online gaming account for messages each night before he tossed and turned before falling into a restless sleep.

A few days later, everyone felt like they could actually breathe around Denki again. He wasn’t even close to being his normal self, but he was more alert and aware of his surroundings, which was a huge improvement. He was also eating again, to everyone’s relief.

When Denki passed by Kirishima and Bakugou in the common room, there was actually his normal bounce in his step. He wasn’t dragging his feet and staring off in the distance while deep in thought. He walked with a purpose and seemed to have the spark of his usual determination back in his eyes as he made his way to the stairwell. Even that alone was an improvement instead of staring blankly at the elevator doors, waiting for them to open so he could stare blankly from the inside until they opened again on his floor.

“Hey Kami!” Kirishima greeted, happy to see the ray of sunshine actually acting like a ray of sunshine again. “Want to join us for dinner later? Bakugou’s cooking!”

“Oh?” Denki asked, whipping his head in their direction like he hadn’t noticed them. He smiled then, and chirped, “yeah! Sounds great!”

“What happened with him?” Bakugou grunted, thrusting his thumb in the retreating blond’s direction.

“I don’t know,” Kirishima mused with a carefree shrug, a smile growing bigger on his face. “But I’m glad that he’s feeling better!”

When Denki passed Midoriya and Todoroki in the stairwell on his way up as they made their way down, he smiled brightly at them before stepping to the side to allow them to pass before rushing up the stairs, taking two at a time.

Todoroki paused on the steps, looking up at where Denki had just been before turning around the bend to go up the next flight, his quick footsteps still going strong toward the third floor.

“Oh, no. Don’t you even go there!” Midoriya warned, grabbing Todoroki’s arm, and trying to pull him away, both physically out of the stairwell and mentally away from the assumption he was about to make.

“But, what if—” Todoroki started in a purely hear-me-out sort of tone.

“No! We don’t need any more conspiracy theories!” Midoriya cut off, though he was laughing as he pulled Todoroki along.

“In my defense, I did correctly guess that Aizawa and Yamada were together romantically. In the first week of class, might I add,” Todoroki reminded. “Shinsou was kind enough to let everyone know that I was correct.”

“In my defense, you thought that I was All Might’s secret love child, so maybe it’s a good idea to quit while you’re ahead this time.”

“… I see your point. Let’s carry on, then.”

Denki sat at his desk in his room, pouring over his math book, cursing under his breath at the elusive problems. He had been at it for hours, starting that morning, immediately after checking his gaming account and once again finding no new messages from Fri3ndlyFir3 or High5UrDead. He was so frustrated with not understanding the math, but he didn’t have anything better to do, so he pushed forward, grabbing at his hair often. Better to be frustrated with math than to let his mind wander to how he wasn’t able to save a friend, he figured. At least he could whine to Bakugou later about getting every single problem wrong; he couldn’t whine about not being able to save Shigaraki. Force Majeure’s quirk saw to that.

Behind him, Denki heard his door quickly open and shut. He spun around lazily, ready to dismiss whoever he saw with the excuse that he was trying (and failing, but that was none of their business) to study and they would have to come back later (or preferably not at all, ever again). However, he froze in place when he saw himself standing there, back pressed against the door with a huge grin stretching over his face.

“No!” he screamed angrily, leaping up, causing his chair to fall and slam onto the ground.

“Woah! Hey! Sorry!” the other Denki rushed out, hands extended in a calming manner, but the real Denki wasn’t having any of it.

“Why?” he wailed, tears springing to his eyes. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“I thought you’d be happy to see me,” the hallucination offered, sounding confused and backing up, trying to real-Denki some space and seem as nonthreatening as possible.

“Why the fuck would I be happy to be having visual hallucinations? Huh? What the fuck!” Denki screamed, fisting his hands in his hair.

Just when he thought that things were looking up, of course his schizophrenia symptoms had to worsen. It wasn’t enough to hear voices. That wasn’t bad enough, was it? He had to start seeing shit, too! How the fuck was he going to be a hero if he couldn’t even tell if what he was seeing was real or not? He would have to drop out of UA.

Ignoring the hallucination, Denki picked up his chair and slumped down into it, tears falling once again, dropping one by one onto his open math book, even when he had thought that there were no more tears left to cry. Why could nothing ever go right? And even now that he knew that both Hitoshi and Neito felt the same way about him that he felt about them, he would have to keep this secret from them. He knew without a doubt that Hitoshi would think that the added stress of using his quirk on top of Force Majeure’s could have caused enough stress to advance his schizophrenia to the next level. This was something he would have to suffer in silence with, just like everything else, it seemed.

Chapter Text

Denki spared a quick glance behind him, hoping that the hallucination had taken the hint and disappeared. He jumped, startled, when he saw the hallucination still standing there, looking fucking concerned of all things. His own fucking hallucination, of himself no less, was looking at him like he was fucking crazy.

“Fucking hell,” Denki cursed under his breath, turning back around, and slamming his head right onto his open math book. “Why me? Why now?”

The thoughts of everything that this change in his mental status meant came crashing down upon him.

He had had years to orient himself with the singing voices in his head, and eventually even felt lucky that his schizophrenia wasn’t worse. Some people had voices telling them to do bad things. Some people not only heard things but saw things as well. Denki figured he had gotten off easy until he had turned around only to find himself standing in his room. He guessed that maybe the added stress of everything that went down with the League of Villains and Shigaraki’s currently unknown status had advanced his disease and now he was worse off than ever before.

He didn’t dare blame Hitoshi’s quirk for his misfortune, not even in his head where no one else would ever know. Hitoshi’s quirk was a comfort to him, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to know about this new development, already planning potential excuses he could use to drop out of the hero course. Briefly, he wondered if there was any coming back from this or if his visual hallucinations would be there to stay. He wondered if his chances at becoming a hero were thoroughly squashed.

“I thought you’d be happier to see me, to be honest,” he heard himself insist quietly from across the room.

Denki only groaned in response, not lifting his head from his book. He jumped when he felt hands come down on his shoulders, spinning around and looking at the hallucination incredulously. Not only was this hallucination invading his personal space, but it was also touching him in a way that he could feel. Was this also a tactile hallucination? It was just getting worse and worse.

“I didn’t know about the hallucinations,” the hallucination defended itself gently. “If I did, I would have gone about this a different way. I swear.”

Denki didn’t bother responding, hoping that ignoring it might make it go away. He was already crazy enough to hear voices, and now see visual hallucinations, he didn’t want to downgrade to actually talking to his hallucinations, too. He fisted his hands in his hair, trying to completely ignore the hallucination, which was harder than he thought it might be considering the fact that he could feel the hallucination touching him.

The hallucination grabbed onto Denki’s hands and gently unfurled his fingers, pulling his hands away from his head and holding them instead.

“What is it going to take to get you to go away?” Denki snarled quietly, hoping that no one was passing by his door to hear him talking to himself.

“I’m really sorry, Denki,” the hallucination said, a worried look across its face. “I’d change back into me to prove to you that I’m not a hallucination, but I didn’t bring any extra clothes…”

Denki paused. That sounded absolutely insane with no connection to anything, just a random jumble of thoughts. Or, it would have, if he had never had the pleasure of meeting—

“Toga?” Denki whispered hopefully, looking up at his own face, silently praying to a god he didn’t believe in for it to be true.

“Ye—” Toga was cut off by Denki slamming into her, pulling her into a tight hug, and sobbing against her shoulder.

“How are you?” Denki practically wailed into her shoulder, his question muffled because he didn’t even bother to pull away from her shoulder at all before asking.

“I’m okay,” she answered, nodding encouragingly, and patting his back.

She didn’t normally comfort people, but Denki was so easy. He made normal human interactions that might otherwise be intimidating seem like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. She knew she wasn’t the only one who was affected by him in this way, either. If she didn’t already know what his quirk was, she would have thought it had something to do with putting people at ease and getting people to like him so quickly.

“How’s Spinner?” Denki asked next, pulling back, his lashes wet with tears as he looked at her, bracing himself for any negative answer that might come.

“He’s fine, too,” she answered.

She could have just told him about how everyone was, but she let him do the honors of what order he wanted to ask about people in.

“And Twice?” Denki ventured, eyes gleaming with a hopeful innocence that begged to be protected.

"He’s great! Just as always!” she answered, her smile growing wider across her face.

“And… Dabi?” he asked hesitantly, flinching as he said the name, not quite ready to hear the news, but knowing that he needed to if he wanted to get any sleep that night at all.

“He hasn’t been the same…” Toga started, but trailed off, looking off into the distance to think about the specific changes.

Denki’s heart dropped, but Toga continued, “he changed since the whole concussion thing.” When she noticed Denki’s worried expression, however, she stopped playing with him. “Oh! He’s completely normal around us!” she reassured, nodding like she wasn’t just setting him up for bad news. “But he acts completely different around Shigaraki, now.”

“Shigaraki is alive,” Denki whispered, but it wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t directed at Toga. “Shigaraki is alive. Shigaraki is alive. Shigaraki is alive. Shigaraki is alive. Shigaraki is alive.”

His chant became more frantic and excited, his voice gaining speed and volume as the intense grin stretched over his face and he started bouncing as he chanted the words over and over again, finally starting to believe them.

“Yeah. He’s pissed, though,” Toga added, shrugging like it was no big deal.

“Why?” Denki asked, scared to know, but also scared not to ask, wondering if there was a lack of oxygen to his brain before he was revived, wondering if he was still truly himself, the same Shigaraki that he had played online with for years at that point.

“Lots ’a reasons!” Toga chirped, making her way over to Denki’s bed and flopping down onto it now that Denki didn’t have her in a death grip. “He’s pissed that Dabi broke his ribs during CPR for one.” Denki forced the corners of his mouth back down as they tried to quirk up. “He’s also really mad that you saved him. He totally supports you becoming a hero, don’t get me wrong! But he didn’t want to be the test subject that proves that he made the right choice!”

Denki bursts out laughing and can’t stop until there are tears streaming down his face. His laughs turn back into sobs, and then back into laughs again. He’s just so, so relieved that he can’t regulate his emotions, and he didn’t care. If anyone would roll with his emotional release, it would be those who had gone through the same situation that he himself had gone through.

Once he had calmed down, Toga joined him on the floor. He was too tired to pick himself up to flop onto the bed next to her, so she would just have to go to him!

“We’re all really sorry about leaving you in the dark, by the way,” Toga whispers. Denki had never heard her so quiet before. “The heroes have been trailing us too closely for comfort to be able to get any message out to you before now. We’ve finally settled at our new base, and they’re still trying to get their hands on a game system. You should have seen how distressed Shigaraki and Dabi were when Kurogiri tried to tell them that it wasn’t the priority.”

Denki hummed in understanding, though his eyes were still a little sad.

Toga continued, “we all were distressed, to be honest.” She looked down at her hands as she spoke, treasuring the newfound connection they had all found with each other since living through that nightmare. “We all knew why they were so damn determined to get a game system up and running. None of us were stupid enough to think that they were just antsy to get back into the game. They made contacting you their own top priority, but when it didn’t work out the way they wanted, they sent me instead, as soon as they felt like we had finally lost the heroes for good.”

“Is it scary?” Denki asked, secure enough to move the topic of conversation along. It honestly just felt so refreshing to be able to talk freely without Force Majeure’s quirk rendering his tongue useless at the worst possible moments. When Toga furrowed her brow in question, Denki clarified, “coming here all on your own. Is it scary?”

“It’s exhilarating,” Toga practically moaned, stretching out her arms and leaning so far back that she just kind of ended up sprawled out on the floor, grinning up at Denki. “It keeps my skills sharp. It helps me to avoid getting lazy. It’s so easy to start to rely on the others,” she admitted, eyes looking straight up at the ceiling. “I wouldn’t want to become a burden and weigh others down with my mistakes just because I felt too comfortable that they would be able to come along behind me and clean up my mess. Individual missions are vital to our continued success.”

Denki was so extremely relieved that the feeling was overwhelming after being in a constant state of perpetual stress since the rescue. Not only was he relieved at the good news, but also at the way Toga was speaking, like they were a closely knit team now, bonded by trauma, but bonded all the same. It was a far cry from the hesitant way that they had all behaved around each other before, especially around Shigaraki. He wondered how different the atmosphere was and how many of them had started to grow comfortable in Shigaraki’s presence.

Before sneaking out again, Toga turned back to Denki abruptly. It was comical to Denki to see the startled and excited expression on his own face staring back at him with wide eyes.

“I almost forgot!” she whisper-yelled. “I totally told Bakugou and Kirishima that you’d be eating dinner with them tonight!”

“Oh, no!” Denki groaned. “Did they say who was cooking?”

“Bakugou!” Toga chirped.

Denki slapped a hand against his face and let it drag down in exasperation. “My taste buds are never going to recover,” he whined, already salivating in self-defense at the threat of how spicy the meal was sure to be.

Toga smirked and shot him a wink, not caring in the slightest about how his mouth was going to be on fire for at least three hours after the last bite that Bakugou would force down his throat if he didn’t willingly eat it himself. She’d done her job, after all.

When she left, Denki kept his lights off and stayed quiet, just in case anyone saw her leaving and then immediately saw that someone was in his dorm room. That would be suspicious.

It was easy, for the first time since the rescue, to be left alone with his own thoughts. He hadn’t even realized he drifted off into a peaceful nap until there was a gentle knock at his door.

“Hey!” Kirishima beamed at him, blinding him with his smile, when he opened the door. “It’s time for dinner and—woah! Were you sleeping? Sorry, dude!”

“It’s fine, Kiri,” Denki said with a sleepy smile, stretching his arms over his head as he stepped out into the hallway, closing his dorm room door shut behind him. “How much damage are we talking?”

Kirishima grinned mischievously at Denki. “I might have swapped Bakugou’s ghost pepper flakes with something… well… mild.”

Denki gasped, bouncing on his toes at the anticipation of Bakugou’s reaction when he realizes.

“Oh, Kiri,” Denki winced. “I’m sorry, buddy, but you’re on your own for this one!”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way!” Kirishima answered, grinning and purely excited for Bakugou’s inevitable explosion. “He’s going to know it’s me, anyway.”

“Why’s that?” Denki asked, almost afraid to know.

“I signed the bottom of the jar with my name!” Kirishima chirped, the gleam in his eye absolutely begging for punishment.

“Yeah… uh… quick question. What kind of flowers do you want me to bring to your funeral?” Denki asked, proud of himself for keeping his face and tone serious throughout the whole question.

Kirishima barked out a laugh, threw his arm over Denki’s shoulders as they walked, and softly shared how glad he was that Denki was feeling more like himself. Kirishima was glad that it didn’t seem like a fluke before in the common room. He’d be damned if he wasn’t going to keep a close eye on Denki though, just to be sure.

Shouto stood in the kitchen, against the counter, facing the toaster, and just staring at it. Bakugou was grumbling every time he had to move around Shouto, but he didn’t seem to have the time or energy to spare to actually yell at him to move out of his way, god dammit! Or maybe he had already tried to no avail before Kirishima and Denki had made their appearance.

Shouto saw Denki out of the corner of his eye, grabbed a fork that was sitting on the counter next to the toaster, and dropped it in. Denki saw him do it. And Shouto was very intentional about it, not caring that Denki saw, and maybe even wanting Denki to see him do the odd action.

“Oops,” Shouto deadpanned, no emotion in his fake-surprise. “I dropped my metal fork into the toaster. What can I do?”

His eyes didn’t leave Denki’s. Very subtle, Shouto. Very subtle.

Denki wasn’t sure what Shouto was doing, but he was in a good mood and was ready to play along.

“Just unplug it, dude,” he suggested, walking over and reaching for the plug.

“No. That will ruin my toast,” Shouto argued.

By the smell of it, the toast was already burnt beyond recognition, but Denki just shrugged, a smile growing on his face at Shouto’s strange antics.

“Can you safely get it out for me, Kaminari?” Shouto asked. “Since your quirk is electrification, it should be easy for you to not be electrocuted by something that could kill an ordinary person.”

Okay… morbid and graphic… but still whatever.

“Sure,” Denki shrugged, charging up his quirk to counteract the circuit that would connect once he grabbed the fork, easily plucking it from the toaster and handing it to Shouto.

Shouto took the fork carefully from Denki’s hand. “Thanks,” he stated easily, before turning the fork in his hand and stabbing it right into Denki’s arm.

Denki hissed, pulling away. “What the hell was that?” he growled, watching Shouto carefully for any more signs of attack.

Instead of answering, Shouto turned to the rest of the kitchen and announced loudly, “it’s okay, everyone. This is the real Kaminari!”

Denki stared at him, completely dumbfounded as he walked away, tossing the fork that was just used to assault him in the sink as he passed by. He wasn’t the only one. It seemed like everyone’s eyes were wide as they followed Shouto’s retreating figure until he went through the doorway to the dining room and was out of sight. Midoriya quickly shuffled over to Denki and offered to wrap the stab wound that Shouto had just caused to his arm with a fork of all things. Maybe he was actually still in his dorm room, Denki thought. Maybe he was still dreaming during the nap he fell into after Toga left. But, if he was dreaming, it wouldn’t have hurt, would it?

“Sorry about him,” Midoriya murmured, shaking his head in exasperation. “He got it into his head that your happy mood in the stairwell was a red flag and decided to test to see if you were one of the villains from the camp acting as Kaminari.”

Denki snorted. That damn king of conspiracy was going to be the death of the League of Villains if they weren’t careful. A smile grew on Midoriya’s face, too, grateful that Denki was still in a good mood, and he didn’t react negatively to Shouto’s weird tests to make sure that he was still him.

“It shows that he cares,” Denki reassured Midoriya as he finished wrapping his arm in gauze. The wound wasn’t deep and there was really no need for anything more than a band aid, but Midoriya was just as extra as Shouto, just in his own way, so Denki didn’t object. “Plus, one of these times he’s going to get it right, and he’s going to save everyone with his outrageous thinking.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Midoriya answered noncommittally with a shrug, but Denki saw his smile grow as his eyes lingered at the doorway where Shouto had exited.

Chapter Text

“I’m getting better at ice skating, though, so that’s a plus,” Denki chattered as he maneuvered his character through the maze-like gamescape, leading Dabi and Shigaraki for once instead of following behind.

Denki was catching up his friends on everything that had happened since the whole incident happened at Kamino Ward, including everyone throwing him a surprise party after his mood had drastically and suddenly improved after the very enlightening visit from Toga.

“Isn’t the nearest ice rink, like, three hours away from UA?” Denki heard Dabi ask through his headset.

“How do you even know that?” Shigaraki asked incredulously.

“Shouto made one of the training gyms into an ice rink for us! He’s seriously so cool!” Denki bragged. After a pause, he added, “pun intended?”

“Didn’t sound intended to me,” Dabi quipped back with a laugh. “Just lucky.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Denki agreed, humor laced in his voice.

It was just nice to be playing with his online gaming friends again. It felt so normal after everything had gone haywire. It was especially relieving because of the fact that Denki wasn’t sure he was ever going to hear Shigaraki’s voice again.

“Can we stop here? Is it safe?” Shigaraki asked, pausing his forward movement in the game.

“Sure, but we can’t stay for long! If we stay in one place for too long, the demons will track us down!” Denki warned, also stopping his own forward movement to join in the huddle of characters on the screen.

“I just need to grab some water. I’ll be right back,” Shigaraki stated.

Before Denki could respond, he heard a shuffling through his headset, then Dabi’s distant voice in the background, like he had taken his own headset off, telling Shigaraki to stay put and that he would get him his water.

“Is there anything else you want?” Dabi asked quietly, but to no avail, because Denki heard it all.

“When Toga said that you had changed after your concussion, I didn’t think she meant like this,” Denki teased when Dabi got back to his controller and headset.

“We all know it wasn’t the concussion,” Dabi admitted shamelessly.

Of course, he was referring to the fact that Shigaraki almost died. If it weren’t for the human AED that Denki could turn into, they would have lost him for sure. It wasn’t like they could just waltz on into a civilian hospital and get someone to help. It wasn’t like the heroes would jump at the chance of saving a villain. Well, most heroes, anyway, because Denki quickly showed that he didn’t really care about the norms; he was just going to save as many people as he could.

“People say that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone,” Shigaraki added gently.

“I don’t ever want to find out, because having you almost gone was bad enough. You go out like that again, and Denki will have to save both of us, because I’m going to have a fucking heart attack.”

When Denki and Shigaraki snorted, Dabi insisted, “I’m serious!”

“So dramatic,” Shigaraki dismissed.

But Denki didn’t see the light blush dusting Shigaraki’s cheeks and the small smile gracing his face as he looked over at Dabi who sat next to him on the couch. Dabi did, though, and he smiled back just as genuinely, not even trying to hide how much he felt toward Shigaraki. No, not when he had gotten a reality check that time wasn’t guaranteed.

“Anyway,” Shigaraki started as they moved their characters forward, luckily not seeing any demons. “I’ve heard a lot about a lot of your friends, but you’ve never talked about Todoroki Shouto before, but you two are on a first name basis. I didn’t know that you two were that close.”

“I mean, we talk and train together sometimes, but we aren’t best buds or anything,” Denki answered, not realizing the trap he was walking into.

That’s okay, though, because Shigaraki didn’t know it was a trap that he was setting.

“Then why are you so casual about him? You have friends who you are close to that you still call by their family name when you talk about them,” Shigaraki inquired.

Honestly, he was just curious about all of the dynamics of Denki’s various relationships. Shigaraki had never had friends before, let alone a boyfriend, and he was unsure how to navigate certain situations. Denki was a social genius, so he figured it was a safe bet to use him as a role model in that department.

“Uh… um…” Denki stuttered over his response, unsure of how to answer.

He didn’t want to lie to Shigaraki, but he couldn’t exactly just blurt out that Dabi was also a Todoroki, so it felt weird to call Shouto by his family name when talking to his older brother about him.

“It’s because I’m a Todoroki, too,” Dabi said nonchalantly, like he didn’t just give up a secret that he had been careful to hide since his not-death.

“What?” Shigaraki whispered.

His character stopped moving on the screen, and the other two stopped as well. This was a big moment. If Denki was in Shigaraki’s place, he would have laughed and claimed that they were all Todorokis on that blessed day, but Shigaraki automatically took Dabi at his word, trusting that he was telling him the truth.

“Yeah,” Dabi insisted gently. “I’m the oldest of the Todoroki kids. Everyone thinks I’m dead though, so don’t go ruining my street cred, yeah?”

“Why?” Shigaraki asked quietly.

Denki stayed quiet, listening intently

“I can’t have people thinking I’m some spoiled rich kid—” Dabi started but was interrupted by Shigaraki’s clarification.

“—No. I mean why did you tell me that?”

Deciding to match Shigaraki’s tone and answer seriously, Dabi simply said, “because I love you, Tomura.”

Shigaraki cleared his throat nervously, and Denki took that as his cue to jump in and wreck the delicate mood.

“You’re gonna have to do better than that, Dabi!” Denki blurted. “I literally saved Shigaraki’s life, and all you did was crack some ribs! If anyone loves Shigaraki, it’s obviously me!”

Denki smiled as he heard Dabi’s boisterous laugh come through his headset. He didn’t get to see Shigaraki’s dumbfounded expression after being told that he was loved by two different people back-to-back. Dabi would be sure to tell Denki all about it later, though.

“So, you have hero genes, huh?” Shigaraki asked, finally finding his voice once again. “I read that heroes are more likely than villains to get a soulmate.”

“What—why were you reading about something like that?” Dabi asked, genuinely curious and a little confused.

“I was researching about soulmates because of Kaminari’s situation,” Shigaraki offered vaguely.

“He loves me back!” Denki shouted into his headset, jumping up off of his chair and jumping around. “Take that, Dabi!”

“Woah—I never said—” Shigaraki tried to argue, but the evidence was there. If Shigaraki didn’t care, he wouldn’t have been researching soulmate stuff for Denki in his free time from gaming and undermining the hero society.

“You didn’t have to!” Denki interrupted. “You love me! I know it!”

“Yeah… okay,” Shigaraki admitted, defeated. “It’s not too late for you to start to hear your soulmate, you know,” Shigaraki added, directed at Dabi. “It would be later than average, but it’s not exactly rare.”

“If my soulmate isn’t you, then I don’t want ‘em,” Dabi declared confidently and without hesitation.

Shigaraki’s breath caught in his throat. When he managed to speak again, he breathed out, “I love you.”

The feed was silent, but Denki just knew in his gut that they were sitting there, smiling softly at each other and basking in the intensity of their feelings.

When a demon came out of nowhere on the screen, they all jumped. Denki actually screamed, as well, but he would deny it if asked about it. The jump scares of the game were amazing already, but they really took you by surprise when you weren’t even paying attention to the screen.

“There goes our winning streak,” Shigaraki muttered under his breath, but both Dabi and Denki could tell that he wasn’t actually upset. It was confirmed for sure when Shigaraki joined in their laughter as they reset the game.

-.-.-

Hitoshi took a deep breath to calm himself before asking, “can I help?”

When Yamada turned to look at Hitoshi to see him gesturing vaguely in the direction of the various pots and pans on the stove, Yamada absolutely beamed and invited him over right away.

“I didn’t know that you knew how to cook!” Yamada exclaimed.

Hitoshi quickly grew accustomed to the naturally loud volume at which Yamada spoke, no quirk needed. It was a relief to both Yamada and Aizawa when Hitoshi no longer flinched when Yamada spoke. Yamada had tried hard to tone it down, but old habits die hard, do they not? It was a relief to Hitoshi, too. He hated seeing the concern on his pre-adoptive fathers’ faces when he flinched at the loud and sudden voice where there had previously been blissful silence. He didn’t want to add to the worry they already experienced on a daily basis as heroes. He didn’t want to become another burden to their already hectic lives.

“Parentification at its finest,” Hitoshi grumbled under his breath.

When he was met with silence, he cursed under his breath, turning to find Yamada looking at him with that same poorly concealed concern in his eyes.

“Sorry,” Hitoshi quickly dismissed, “I didn’t mean to bring the mood down or anything.”

“There’s no need to worry about the mood. The mood can always be lifted once again,” Yamada argued, but kindly.

“That sounds like a direct quote from Principal Nezu,” Hitoshi scrutinized, eyes narrowed at Yamada.

Yamada laughed loudly and sang, “guilty!” He continued, “but seriously, we want you to be able to talk about anything and everything with us. Both the good and the bad. Whatever is on your mind.”

Hitoshi didn’t detect any lies in Yamada’s statement, so he told him about how in some of his foster homes, he was not the only child, and how many responsibilities fell onto him and the other older children in the home. At one point, two foster homes before he was placed with the Hamabis to be exact, he was responsible for cooking every meal for the seven-person household, while his older foster sister was responsible for cleaning and folding everyone’s laundry, and his younger foster brother was responsible for cleaning all of the floors on a weekly basis. The three of them were also given the responsibility of looking after the younger children, which included another foster sibling and a biological child of his foster parents.

“It really wasn’t too bad,” Hitoshi shrugged as he stirred the liquid in the pot in front of him. “At least they didn’t muzzle me or forbid me from talking. The other kids would even answer me when I would accidentally ask a question instead of refusing to speak in fear that I would activate my quirk. It was actually a positive change from the foster home before that. It just seemed to get better and better with every move after that, and—why are you crying? Did I say something wrong?”

Yamada tried desperately to hide his tears from Hitoshi, but this kid—no, his kid—had been through so much and had come out so, so strong when others might have given up. Yamada himself wasn’t sure if he would have been able to survive something like that being only a child, or even then as an adult, now that he had thought about it.

“It must have been so lonely,” Yamada settled on.

“No!” Hitoshi was quick to dismiss, not wanting Yamada to worry about him. “It could have been worse!”

Yamada’s eyes widened at that, his mouth falling open. “How was it worse?!”

Aizawa had just wrapped up at UA, continuing to deal with the mess and tie up loose ends from one of their students being kidnapped while under their care. It was a huge mess, and Aizawa was grateful to come home to a calm, relaxed, and happy atmosphere with his husband and his pre-adoptive son.

Aizawa’s hopes and dreams quickly shattered when he came home to Yamada in tears, sobbing loudly and holding a pillow tightly to his chest while curled up on the couch. Hitoshi swung his head in the direction of the door, eyes wide and panicked, seeking help.

“I’m sorry I broke your husband! Please help!” he requested quickly and quietly as Aizawa kicked off his shoes and strolled into the apartment, jumping from one mess to the next.

“What’s the matter?” Aizawa asked, sitting down gently next to Yamada.

Even with the simplicity and bluntness of the question, Hitoshi had never seen Aizawa so soft, eyes open and attentive, no judgment or harshness, not even any sign that he was too tired to deal with yet another thing. It just added to the security that Hitoshi felt within his pre-adoptive family. It was so different from what he had experienced before, and much more in line with the Hamabis than he had initially realized. Typically, a sobbing spouse would be met with eye rolls, heavy sighs, and condensation about how dramatic they always were and what was it this time that set them off. With the Hamabis, and now Yamada and Aizawa, Hitoshi saw a true, soft kind of love and care that never wavered, patience that rarely broke, and infinite understanding and compassion for not only one another, but directed toward Hitoshi as well.

“Hitoshi told me something really sad, and then when he tried to fix it, more sad stuff came pouring out,” Yamada sobbed. “Hitoshi, it’s okay to cry and let those feelings out! See?!” Yamada wailed, gesturing to his own puffy, wet face.

“Uh, thanks, but I’m good,” Hitoshi said, awkwardly looking around at everything in the room except for Yamada and Aizawa.

When Aizawa finally got Yamada settled down, they all traversed to the dining table to eat their dinner.

“Smells good,” Aizawa muttered, grateful for any sustenance, but it obviously made it better that his husband was such a good cook.

“Hitoshi helped,” Yamada offered with a smile in Hitoshi’s direction.

“Oh? How did you learn how to cook?” Aizawa asked, bringing a spoonful of soup to his mouth.

Hitoshi saw Yamada’s lip wobble, and tried to dismiss with, “oh, I just had a lot of practice, I guess.”

It turned out to not be the right thing to say, if Yamada’s re-energized sobs were any indication.

Chapter Text

Everything had been going well.

Neito asked Denki for help with math, and Denki suggested that he just join in Bakugou’s study group with him. After the offer, the blond boys had stared at each other for two seconds before bursting out laughing, knowing exactly how much of a disaster that would turn out to be. So, Denki readily agreed to learn during Bakugou’s study group, and then bring that knowledge over to Neito and Hitoshi when they studied later in the week.

Neito and Bakugou were not on friendly terms, even after teaming up to rescue Denki together. Bakugou could hold a grudge, after all. And tying him up instead of allowing him to take on the villains who were after him head-on was unforgivable. While Neito and Bakugou shared heated glares every time their eyes met, Bakugou’s full of rage and Neito’s full of challenge, Hitoshi and Bakugou had been getting along just fine. Well, as well as anyone can get along with Bakugou, that is.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Hitoshi asked, standing a few meters away from Bakugou in the center of the training gym.

“How many goddamn times do I have to ask before—”

And, with a smile, Hitoshi enveloped Bakugou’s mind, taking over his free will completely.

It was completely foreign to Bakugou. He had never felt anything like it. The lack of control was almost liberating, in a way. He didn’t have to be so damn perfect because, under Hitoshi’s quirk, he couldn’t be anything at all that Hitoshi didn’t command him to be.

Hitoshi’s quirk had been getting stronger and stronger. He could hold up to five people at once under his quirk, but the more people he added, the easier it was for the stronger ones to break free. With just one person getting all of his attention and the full force of his quirk, it was virtually impossible to escape from unless there was an outside force, like a sudden shove or some pain, that would give the clarity needed to break out of the hold he had over their mind. Even then, he was getting better at holding that down, too.

It was almost laughable how Denki could just as easily break through his brainwashing just as easily as he had that first time, back on Unit Beta. Actually, it might have been even easier and more efficient on Denki’s end, now, even as Hitoshi’s quirk advanced and his skill increased. It was like nothing changed how Denki experienced and interacted with Hitoshi’s quirk.

After taking an extreme amount of pleasure bossing Bakugou around and having him mindlessly follow his commands, Hitoshi released his hold on Bakugou’s mind.

“How the fuck can a nerd like Deku break through your quirk when I can’t?” Bakugou grumbled, kicking at the ground in frustration, shoulders and arms tense with frustration.

“My quirk has advanced a lot since then,” Hitoshi answered, even though Bakugou wasn’t really looking for an answer and just wanted to drown in self-pity. It wasn’t Hitoshi’s style to let a friend drown in self-pity, though, so too bad for Bakugou. “I think I’d be able to hold him until I decided to release him if we ever got a rematch where he would answer me again.”

Bakugou blew out a breath from puffed cheeks, consideringly, rolling his red eyes as he thought.

“Yeah, maybe,” Bakugou finally settled on. “Even if it’s impossible for everyone else, I’m still going to break through someday, though, so watch out, Mind Fuck.”

“Actually, Denki can—"

Hitoshi was about to explain how Denki has always been able to easily slice through his quirk like it was nothing, but they were interrupted.

“Speak of the nerd, and he shall appear,” Bakugou grumbled under his breath as Todoroki and Midoriya came into the gym.

“Oh, sorry, Shinsou! Sorry, Kacchan! We didn’t know anyone was in here!” Midoriya offered, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly as he turned with Todoroki to leave.

“We’ve just finished up, actually!” Hitoshi chirped, running over to see what both of them were working on and talking about his own advances with his own quirk.

“Seriously? That’s amazing, Shinsou! With that kind of advancement, and so quickly, too, I bet you’ll be unstoppable!” Midoriya gushed.

Everyone in the gym knew he was itching to get his hands on his notebook to write down the new information. Hitoshi was always happy to give it to him, too. Midoriya was a genius when it came to quirk analysis, and he was the one who helped Hitoshi get from three to five being under his control so quickly.

All of the groups had started intermixing and really improving drastically, much to the surprise and delight of the teachers. They had seen it before, but rarely. After the first battle of the classes, they never thought that this group would be the ones to do it.

Neito spent a lot of time with people who had difficult quirks to copy, helping him get into the rhythm of any quirk he copied more quickly, even if just using it for the first time. He had been training with Yaoyorozu and really building up his knowledge of everything he could get his hands on to try to be able to have a more extensive arsenal of what he could make when he copied her quirk. He even spent time training with Mineta, who in turn built up his own stamina from training and practicing with his quirk. Neito almost got sick when he copied Kaibara’s gyrate and ended up spinning his whole body with a single leg remaining still instead of the other way around; he was very thankful for practice with Uraraka’s quirk to help push down the nausea.

Bakugou had offered to spar with him, even after the whole tying him up thing. Neito thought it was an awesome opportunity and took it right away. Bakugou knew it was half revenge, knowing that his own body was fine-tuned to his quirk in a way that Neito’s wouldn’t be, and he would be sore for a week afterwards. The other half, though, was because Bakugou was always saying he was the strongest and he wanted to fight the best. What better way was there to fight the best than to fight the next best thing to himself?

Of course, Neito went all out.

As a result, Neito was very sore.

Hitoshi and Denki didn’t hear the end of his complaining until he was back in tip-top shape, but they didn’t mind, of course. Mostly, they just laughed at Neito’s expense, all in good fun.

“I’m so hungry!” Neito would whine during study group as Denki walked him through a tough math problem.

“Then go to the kitchen and get some food,” Hitoshi would respond, hiding a smile because he knew what Neito wanted, but he just wanted to play dumb and make Neito work for it.

“But I’m so sore. The trek down to the kitchen and back might actually kill me. How would you live with yourself if I died such a devastatingly embarrassing death?” Neito would whine, throwing himself backwards to be sprawled out on the floor, wincing for effect.

Both Hitoshi and Denki would see Neito peek at them from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge whether they were taking the bait or not. Both Hitoshi and Denki knew that it was bait. Both Hitoshi and Denki willingly took the bait every time.

“What do you want to eat?” Hitoshi would drawl, like it was the most demanding chore in the whole world.

Neito would perk right up and tell Hitoshi what he was in the mood for. By the time Hitoshi would get back, Denki would have walked Neito through the math problem. And Neito was always generous enough to share his snack with his two favorite people.

After Neito’s recovery from his all-out brawl with Bakugou, the classes decided to have some fun for team bonding. During a water balloon fight, Yanagi was kind enough to lend Neito her poltergeist quirk. Coupled with Kodai’s size quirk, the water balloons suddenly turned massive right before they hit their target, and everyone was completely drenched except for the three conspirators. It was okay, though, because they were chased down by their betrayed classmates, buckets of water in hand. Soon, everyone was thoroughly drenched and happy.

Thanks to his soulmate’s new connections, Neito was even able to copy Aizawa’s and Present Mic’s quirks a few times! And it was always fun feeling the subtle differences as he switched between Kirishima’s hardening and Tetsutetsu’s steel. He even got Mirio to share his permeation quirk with him, and they were both through the floor, Mirio’s grip on Neito so that he doesn’t sink down through to the core of the Earth, laughing, as Neito struggled to even stay upright with the quirk activated. And don’t for a second think that Amajiki, who had gone to check on the bright, blond boys, got away, either. After a quick snack, Neito was laughingly chasing the 3-A students around the gym, trying to catch them with his newly acquired tentacles for arms.

For the first time in forever, Neito had an arsenal of amazing quirks belonging to amazing people who didn’t shy away from his touch. Amazing people who didn’t get mad if he could use their quirk better than they could, and instead took the full opportunity to learn and better themselves, and also passing on different tips to Neito that they had learned the next time they trained together. It was absolutely refreshing.

When Hitoshi wasn’t training with Aizawa, he was training with Sero or Shiozaki. Trying to dodge Sero’s tape or Shiozaki’s vines was almost as difficult as trying to avoid Aizawa’s capture weapon.

Denki had spent a lot of time with Tetsutetsu, as he was able to withstand Denki’s quirk at full force, and even use his steel as a conductor to use Denki’s quirk to his own advantage, directing it in the vague direction he wanted it to go in.

By the time the next battle of the classes rolled around, Hitoshi was even invited in. It was to be a preliminary test to see if he had what it took to transfer to the hero course. What no one expected was for Midoriya to spring up out of nowhere with another quirk. What no one expected was for Hitoshi to be the one to help him get it under control. What everyone expected, and what did end up happening, was that Hitoshi was moved to the hero course shortly after that. There was discourse over which class Hitoshi would be placed with. His soulmate was in Class 1-B, but his to-be adoptive father was the teacher of Class 1-A. So, into Class 1-B Hitoshi went!

Hitoshi invited Denki and Neito over to the teachers’ living quarters on campus where Aizawa and Yamada were staying for the time being, to be close to the students to respond if any other shenanigans were to occur after Denki’s abduction. The boys were seated on the living room floor, cards spread out around them as they played a game. That’s where Hitoshi broke the news, unable to contain it a second longer.

“Oh!” Denki exclaimed when he heard the news. “If they transfer me, then we can go from the Beta Bros to the Class B Bros!” Denki excitedly announced.

“Not a chance, problem child,” Aizawa interjected from the kitchen counter where he was sipping his evening coffee. (Decaf. Yamada insisted.)

“Aw! You love me too much to let me go, Mr. Aizawa? I guess I can stay, since it means so much to you!” Denki shot back easily, cheeky smile not leaving his face, excitement about Hitoshi’s good news oozing out of his pores.

Aizawa let Denki have his moment, knowing that reminding him that he didn’t have a choice either way would just lead to more back-and-forth tongue-in-cheek banter.

Yes, everything had been going well, so Denki’s guard was down, and that’s how Neito and Hitoshi found out.

After studying and completing the assigned work, the boys settled down to play some poker. Denki had gone from absolute newbie to champion very quickly, to absolutely no one’s surprise. Neito turned out the be the big risk taker, to absolutely no one’s surprise. Hitoshi, when struggling with what to do, would use his quirk to make his opponents drop their cards so he could decide if he should call or fold. That surprised everyone! But it was all in good fun! And it was so nice to see Hitoshi so comfortable that he was able to use his quirk around his soulmate and best friend without warning them beforehand or apologizing afterwards. Progress was progress, after all.

“If I didn’t know better, I would think that you had a poker quirk, or maybe a good luck quirk,” Neito sassed, pushing all of his chips over to Denki.

Neito had gone all in, once again. And once again, he had lost to Denki.

“I’m starting to figure you out, though!” Neito warned, a huge smile spreading across his face.

“Oh, yeah? How so?” Denki asked, ready to hear about any tells he might be giving.

“When I think I should go all in, I should not. When I think I should not go all in, I also should still not. I should stop going all in,” Neito said with a dramatic pout like he just came to the realization as he passed out the next hand to the remaining players that consisted of Hitoshi and Denki.

“We all know that’s not going to happen! But now I’m curious. Is there a quirk specifically for playing poker?” Hitoshi asked as he intently gazed at his hand of cards.

Denki answered, “I don’t know! But—”

Hitoshi commanded, “Drop your cards for me, Denki.”

Immediately, Denki dropped his cards, not bothering to fight to get out of the quirk until Hitoshi release him, which he did so right after he saw the cards, puffing out a breath of frustration.

“I don’t know!” Denki continued his answer from before as Hitoshi folded once again. “But we should look it up!”

Neito reached across the floor to grab his phone, swearing under his breath when he saw that the battery had died while they were playing. After asking Hitoshi for his phone, they realized that his had died, too.

Denki’s was at full charge, though. Denki tossed his phone to the soulmates to use to find the answer to the question as he went downstairs to grab another phone charger. As Denki walked past Neito, Neito held out his hand and Denki automatically brushed his own fingers against Neito’s as he exited the room, passing on his quirk to Neito who was already reaching for Denki’s charger. Hitoshi watched with a content smile.

“You guys are so in sync,” he commented when Denki had bounded off in search of an extra cable.

“I think that about you two all the time,” Neito admitted, shrugging. “It always feels really nice when it happens, like we are so connected that we can almost read each other’s minds.”

“I don’t even remember when it started happening. It was like it was instant when we all started to get along really well on Unit Beta,” Hitoshi explained. “That strong connection with us is explained because we’re soulmates, but it’s like Denki just kind of fit right in with us, too.”

“I just figured it was because we became really good friends with Denki at the same time we started to build the foundation of our relationship after we found out we were soulmates,” Neito said, still scrolling through Denki’s phone.

Hitoshi hummed, “maybe.” Then, “did you find the answer, yet?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah,” Neito chuckled, unconcerned. “It looks like there’s a few, and that they are strictly documented because of the potential for exploitation. Even some that could be vaguely used in any way for gambling are closely watched, like this one called Seek that could be used to locate where specific cards are in a deck or in someone else’s hands.” He popped the end of the charging cable back in his mouth, continuing to charge his dead phone.

“Well, that’s no fun,” Hitoshi said, but didn’t actually sound upset about it.

“This is, though,” Neito mumbled around the charger in his mouth, tilting the screen of Denki’s phone in Hitoshi’s direction.

“I haven’t seen that one!” Hitoshi exclaimed, taking the phone from Neito.

“Because it hasn’t been published, yet,” Neito whispered conspiratively, a manic smile growing on his face.

“What if Denki doesn’t want us looking at his drafts?” Hitoshi whisper-yelled back. That didn’t stop him from scrolling to see the next one, though.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Denki said from his place in the doorway, leaning against the frame and smiling at the wide-eyed soulmates who just got caught. “Let me know if there’s anything embarrassing that I definitely shouldn’t post, though.”

Hitoshi smiled at Denki, not even sheepish about being caught. Hitoshi handed Denki his dead phone so he could charge it for him, and briefly admired the sight of Neito and Denki, both with cables in their mouths as they shuffled the cards and redistributed the poker chips to start the game over again. Neito mumbled threats around the cord sticking out of his mouth about how it will be a game-changer once he gets his hands on a quirk fit for gambling. It would have been the third new game that evening because Neito kept going all in and losing. They weren’t playing with anything at stake, so they would just restart whenever that would happen.

It was nice how everyone just accepted everyone else just as they were. No one was annoyed with Neito for going all in against Denki, even though it didn’t work out the last two times. No one was annoyed with Hitoshi for using his quirk to blatantly cheat. No one was annoyed that Denki kept winning, and no one got bored and decided to stop playing with Denki; Denki didn’t feel the need to dumb down his playing to let the others win to keep them interested. He possibility of doing so didn’t even cross his mind when it came to those two.

Hitoshi paled, then, but the two competing to see who had the better shuffling technique, cords still in their mouths as they focused, didn’t notice.

“Uh, Denks?” Hitoshi whispered. “What’s this?”

He turned the phone around toward Denki who lit up.

Pulling the charger out of his mouth, Denki answered, “that’s one of the dances that was trending last month! I’m surprised that you haven’t seen it, yet! It was all over the place!”

Neito peeked over at the screen that played the draft on loop, Hitoshi looking more and more conflicted as he watched it.

“I’ve seen that one before!” Neito chirped. He turned to look back at his cards to get his shuffling grip right when he immediately turned back and took the phone from Hitoshi’s hand, looking at the video closer, and finally understanding what had Hitoshi looking so concerned.

“What’s wrong?” Denki asked now, very aware that the mood had turned down. “Is there some kind of controversy over the song or dance that I don’t know about? Should I delete it?”

“You should delete it,” Hitoshi insisted.

Neito nodded in eager agreement, pressing the phone back into Denki’s hands.

“It was recorded on one of the days that you spent with the League of Villains,” Neito explained before Denki could ask why.

Denki opened his mouth to respond, but Hitoshi beat him to it. “And that’s not a filter that’s creating six of you on the screen.”

Chapter Text

Denki looked startled, looking wide-eyed and a little panicked as his gaze continuously switched between Hitoshi and Neito. They didn’t warn him not to lie to them; they knew Denki wouldn’t be able to bring himself to try to deceive them, just like how they would never have been able to lie to each other or him. Despite Denki’s amazing poker face minutes earlier during the game, it was no longer a game, and Denki’s thoughts were clear on his face for the soulmates to read.

“I wanted to tell you guys, I really did,” Denki started out slowly, waiting for the quirk-induced block to render his tongue useless.

Hitoshi had started to run his hand through his hair every few seconds, a very clear sign that he was very, very stressed. Neito sat very still, hands clasped and pressed against his lips as he hunched over, his elbows supporting his weight on his legs as he stared at Denki. It wasn’t a good sign that Neito didn’t have anything to say.

The soulmates’ reactions fed into Denki’s own anxiety, so he rushed to explain himself, hoping to give everyone, including himself, a little relief. “It’s not what it looks like! Or maybe it is, depending on what you think it looks like… I wanted to tell you everything, but Force Majeure’s quirk wouldn’t let me! I couldn’t talk about anything that happened with the League, or you know I would have told you, right?! I couldn’t even use sign language or write anything down, she’s so thorough! Her quirk is really amazing actually, but—”

“Did it hurt?” Hitoshi interrupted, brow furrowed with concern. “Her quirk? Aizawa said that it’s painful to her victims.”

“That’s what she warned me before she started!” Denki exclaimed, flailing his arms around in his energetic state as he rushed to make his best friends understand. “But it didn’t hurt at all! I was waiting for the pain to start, and then the next thing I knew, she said it was over!”

“How are you talking about this right now?” Neito wondered aloud, not moving from his position with his hands still clasped tightly against his mouth, his voice slightly smothered from the obstacle.

Denki stopped and held his breath, paranoid that now that he was thinking about it, her quirk would start back up again.

“Uh,” he hesitated, “I am not sure, actually. I swear it really wouldn’t let me before, though. You have to believe me!”

“We believe you,” Hitoshi answered automatically, answering for Neito as well.

“Oh, uh… good. Good!” Denki sputtered, hands clenching into fists and unclenching again.

“We’re going to sit here and talk this out,” Neito reassured Denki in a gentle voice, intentionally relaxing his body language to put Denki at ease, even though he still felt very tightly wound up inside. “No one’s going anywhere, and there’s no rush. Take a deep breath, okay? Copy me.”

Denki would have laughed at the irony of copying the boy with the copy quirk, but he was too wound up with anxiety, so he just did as he was told. Neito continued to model deep breathing for Denki to copy, and Hitoshi had unwittingly joined in as well, matching their calming breaths.

“What did they do to you?” Neito prompted once everyone was calmer.

Denki slumped in place before muttering, “nothing.”

“We were so worried when you came back so depressed, and now you’re saying that they didn’t do anything to you?” Hitoshi asked.

And it wasn’t that he didn’t believe Denki. Denki didn’t lie, not to the soulmates, at least. They were closer than that. He just didn’t understand how both things could be true and needed further explanation.

“Yeah…” Denki muttered under his breath. He took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and continued. “When Hitoshi snatched me up with his capture weapon—nice aim by the way, Tosh—"

“—Thanks. I was really nervous. I only had one shot because you were surrounded by so many villains.”

“You actually ripped me away in the middle of CPR,” Denki said.

There was a pause to allow everyone to consider what that meant, and to think back to the configuration of the villains near Denki at the time of his rescue.

“On… on Shigaraki?” Neito asked hesitantly.

“On Shigaraki,” Denki confirmed, eyes switching back and forth between Neito and Hitoshi, looking for any sign of what they might have been thinking. When he didn’t see any accusation, he continued, “I was using my quirk to act as the AED to try to get his heart rhythm back to normal. I had just made my second attempt when you pulled me away.”

“I haven’t heard anything about Shigaraki from Aizawa,” Hitoshi admitted, slight worry weighing on his heart for a villain he had despised until just a few minutes ago for taking Denki away from him, now concerned because Denki would be hurt if he was unable to save him.

“I saved him,” Denki said with finality to it, nodding his head as if to try to convince himself that he really did something like that, like he still couldn’t believe that he was actually successful. “He’s alive.”

“You didn’t know at first, did you?” Neito asked, connecting the pieces in his mind. “That’s why you went from depressed back to normal so quickly. That was when you found out.”

“Yeah. I was so worried!” Denki winced at the crack in his voice. “That sounds stupid, though, doesn’t it?” Denki asked, looking away from the soulmates, not wanting to see their reaction when they realize that Denki was truly worried for the wellbeing of not only a villain, but the very villain who orchestrated his capture, intentional or otherwise.

“Of course not,” Hitoshi insisted so firmly and immediately that it made Denki swivel his head around to meet his eyes. “Anyone would have been worried to be pulled away from a rescue without knowing of the outcome.”

“No, you’re not understanding,” Denki insisted, running his hand through his hair.

He could have just left it at that, but that wasn’t fair to the soulmates, and it wasn’t fair to himself, either, if he was being honest. He had wanted the support since he had returned to UA, and now that the chance was there to get everything out, he was going to take it, even if that meant that the soulmates’ opinion of him would forever be altered.

“Then explain it,” Neito nudged. “We’re listening.”

And they were, Denki could tell. No judgment was visible in their eyes as they waited patiently for Denki to explain his feelings and allow them to help shoulder the burden. They had shared everything else, hadn’t they? What was one more shared emotional turmoil in the grand scheme of things?

“They really didn’t do anything terrible to me,” Denki started, needing them to understand where he was coming from. He decided that the best place to start was from the beginning. “They figured out that the Bakugou that they took wasn’t the real Bakugou pretty quickly after we were taken from the forest. Without Bakugou there to use against me, and just me with a bunch of villains in my immediate vicinity… Well, they quickly figured out that they weren’t prepared to deal with an electrification quirk because I wasn’t part of the plan, apparently. And we all quickly realized that they didn’t have the actual Bakugou sitting next to me to threaten me with or keep me from electrocuting the whole room.”

When Denki glanced up at the soulmates to make sure they were still following along, he saw a sense of pride in their eyes. It put a crushing weight on his heart that he knew that the incoming truth would change that. He wasn’t as strong as they thought he was. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be a hero; maybe he wasn’t made of the right stuff.

“Wait…” Neito started, a hungry glint in his eyes, unable to resist asking. “How did they react when they realized that Bakugou was a clone?"

“They were absolutely dumbfounded!” Denki exclaimed, throwing his arms out and smiling wide as he remembered. “They quickly figured out that it was you behind their failure, actually. It was pretty intense! I think it only made it worse that they were bracing themselves for Shigaraki’s reaction to the fact that they had failed.”

“Way to put yourself on the League’s radar, Nei,” Hitoshi grumbled, but the blond boys picked up the genuine concern in his tone.

“They considered coming after you, first, Toshi,” Denki countered. “They had footage from the sports festival, and they had this huge binder full of information on all of the students. When they saw that you two were soulmates, they were all like, ‘well, let’s just grab the both of ‘em!’”

Denki’s upbeat, mocking tone and dramatic arm movements to match did nothing to quell the new anxiety that rose in Hitoshi. “They’re targeting us next?!” His eyes were wide with fear at being specifically targeted by the same group that left the social genius of their group a burned shell of himself for days after his rescue. If Denki barely made it out, Hitoshi knew that no one else stood a chance.

“They can try!” Neito sneered, the challenging spark in his eyes letting Denki know that he was itching for a rematch.

“No! No! I got them to back off! You guys are off limits!” Denki reassured, cursing himself in his head for making things worse and causing more anxiety for his friends as he tried to explain.

The soulmates stopped dead in their thoughts, turning to Denki with incredulous looks on their faces.

“Uh, Denki?” Hitoshi started, trying to keep his voice gentle, even when he was screaming on the inside. “How did you manage that?”

“I played some video games with Shigaraki and got him to promise to leave you guys alone. I just kept adding to the list until almost everyone at UA was on it,” Denki answered simply with a shrug, like that explained it all.

The soulmates shared a glance, looked back at Denki, and then looked back at each other again before bursting into laughter. After two full minutes of full-strength, non-stop laughter, Denki was getting concerned.

“You guys okay?” Denki asked hesitantly.

“We knew it!” Neito managed to blurt out in between heaves. “We called it!”

Denki was even more confused if that was possible.

Hitoshi took a few deep breaths to calm himself as he wiped the tears from his eyes, the smile still on his face, and his laughter just under the surface, waiting to burst out of him again. “When you were first taken, we told everyone that you would be fine right away, and we were totally right! We—” Hitoshi snorted before controlling himself enough to continue. “We even said that you would charm your way out of there! Looks like we weren’t too far off!”

“You guys aren’t upset?” Denki ventured cautiously, needing to get clarity on how they were feeling about everything before his anxiety would start to ebb away.

“About what?”

Denki blew out a breath through puffed out cheeks, frustrated that he would have to spell out his own shortcomings for the soulmates to understand just how fucked the whole situation was. “I saved a villain’s life. The world would probably be better off as a whole if I had just decided to do nothing.”

“Since when have any of us just sat back and decide to do nothing?” Neito asked rhetorically. “I’m also not big on the whole utilitarian thing. You saw someone who needed help, and like a goddamn full-fledged hero, you helped him.” Neito was going to pound this praise into Denki’s thick skull if it was the last thing he ever did.

“But—”

“Are you uncertain because you didn’t suffer?” Hitoshi asked incredulously.

“Well... yeah,” Denki said with a matching incredulous shake of his head at the question that he thought would have an obvious answer. “I made friends with the villains! Instead of resisting everything they might try and sticking to strict morals! Instead of fighting back with everything I had until I either died or escaped! I took the cowardly way out!”

“Cowardly?!” Neito repeated, clearly very offended on Denki’s behalf at his own thoughts. “Sparky, you did amazing, and I’m not just saying that because it’s what you need to hear. I’m saying it because it’s the truth. Would I lie to you?” When Denki shook his head, too stunned to answer verbally, Neito continued, “you managed to survive becoming a hostage to the League of Villains, which is incredible all by itself. Adding to that, you got out with no casualties, and that is completely because of you because there would have been at least one if it wasn’t for your quick thinking and heroic impulse to just rush in and help in any way you can when there is someone who needs a hero, let alone how many people would die if the League went on a rampage after their leader died, so you might have unintentionally prevented more massacre just by that alone! How many people can say that they went against the League of Villains, got out alive, and also made damn sure that there were no casualties in the aftermath?”

“Well—” Denki started to answer, absolutely certain that he wasn’t the only one.

“Not enough,” Neito answered for him with a sense of finality to his answer.

“Plus, you even got the villains to agree to your terms just by talking things out instead of having to resort to violence,” Hitoshi chimed in. “If it was one of Aizawa’s practical exams, you’d pass with flying colors because you caused zero collateral damage.”

“And charmed not just Shigaraki, by the looks of it,” Neito added, calmer now, indicating toward Denki’s phone where the evidential TikTok draft resided.

Hitoshi doubled down, not giving Denki a chance to find a way to depreciate himself once again. “Anyone would be relieved to find out that a rescue attempt was successful, regardless of if the one you were rescuing turned out to be a villain. You more than anyone with your intense ability to become friends with literally anybody.”

“It’s proven,” Neito added decisively with a firm nod.

“And it’s an asset,” Hitoshi insisted. “Not a failure. Just because you didn’t do things the traditional way doesn’t mean that you didn’t do it right.”

“Sometimes tradition should just fuck right off!” Neito added, voice loud.

At that, Hitoshi and Denki looked at Neito oddly.

“Too much?” he asked, quieter.

“Too much,” Hitoshi and Denki confirmed.

But had Neito not achieved his goal? Denki was looking a lot less lost and a lot more comfortable, which is exactly how he should feel all the time around the soulmates if Neito had anything to say about it.

“Are they going to come after you again?” Hitoshi asked, not as concerned as he would have been if Denki had reported that he had offended all of the villains on a personal level and then destroyed their most prized possessions, but still concerned nonetheless.

“Oh, no!” Denki assured, a newfound energy in his words with the relief of the support of the soulmates washing over him. “They all know that I’m going to be a hero! In fact, they want me to!”

Hitoshi and Neito stared blankly at Denki for a second.

“You might be the first hero ever to be endorsed by a villain organization. Not just tolerated, but completely supported in your mission,” Neito breathed, amazed. The unspoken question of how the hell Denki could have doubted himself with this much potential at his fingertips lingered for a moment. “You could change this whole thing around, make people less violent, make people feel even safer than the Symbol of Peace even could.”

“You could give a new meaning to heroics altogether,” Hitoshi added. “Not everyone can throw a punch like All Might,” Hitoshi knew better than anyone, “but a whole lot more people can learn communication skills and feel heroic with you to compare to. You have this amazing quirk, and for people to see that you would freely use it to assist but refrain from destruction at all costs… that could do unbelievable good, Denki.”

“You could be the greatest hero ever,” Neito whispered, eyes sparkling with joy for his closest friend. “Just don’t forget about us when you make it big, okay?”

“What do you mean?” Denki bit back, but the intensity was lost in his growing smile. “You’ll be right up there with me. I wouldn’t make it nearly as far without you two helping to pave the way. It didn’t take much convincing for Shigaraki to see that, either.”

A heavy pause weighed in the space between the trio as they looked at each other, Denki’s grin growing wider as the soulmates’ eyes grew wider as they started to realize.

“Us?” Hitoshi asked simply, unable to form a cohesive question at the magnitude of what Denki was telling him.

“We are—also—?” Neito was also speechless for once. He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and tried again. “How did you convince Shigaraki to include us in his support?”

“You both were vouched for,” Denki said vaguely, continuing, “I explained that you two made me who I was, and that they shouldn’t even try to recruit you because you two were even more steadfast than me in your goal to become heroes. We’re a team. It feels like it’s always been that way.”

“And he just took you at your word?” Hitoshi asked, amazement still lingering.

“You did,” Denki countered, making intentional eye contact with both boys, the gratefulness of their trust in him not needing to be spoken aloud when his voice was already heavy with it.

Neito shook his head as if to physically shake off the newfound pressure. “What about all the burns you had?” he asked then, if only to change the subject. To be fair, though, he was curious. “Did that happen before you got them to come around to your side?”

“No.” Despite talking about injuries sustained during his time held captive, a wide grin grew over Denki’s face. He closely watched Neito as he answered smugly, “they didn’t want me to fall behind in my training, so… I spent some time training with some of the League members.”

“What?!” Neito shrieked, jumping to his feet. “I want to do that!” he all but whined, a pout on his face as his brows furrowed at the unluckiness of it all.

Before Hitoshi could make a smart comment, Denki supplied, “oh, I’m sure you’ll get your chance.”

“If they crash another training, I’m volunteering for tribute!” Neito stated decidedly with a firm nod.

Hitoshi snorted and Denki smiled at the thought of Neito proudly and immediately offering himself for the taking if the villains were to ever invade again. Denki smiled wider when he thought of the fact that Dabi wouldn’t even be surprised, and wider still when he imagined the looks on their classmates’ faces when the villains would actively avoid taking Neito, partly because they knew how much trouble he could be, and partly because he was off-limits to them, now.

“So, this draft on TikTok…” Hitoshi started, breaching the subject once again.

“Oh!” Denki exclaimed, bringing up the offending video in question. “This one is me, this one is Toga, and all of those ones are Twice’s clones!” Denki explained as he pointed at each of his images on the screen. “Twice was actually very impressed with you, Neito,” Denki added, looking up from his phone to meet Neito’s eyes. “At least, I think he was… he tended to say one thing, and then immediately say the opposite thing. But he definitely said that you made an amazing clone for your first try and without any exact measurements. He said that the clone shouldn’t have been able to even walk without taking measurements, but you still managed to not only have the clone walk and run, but also trick them into thinking it was actually Bakugou until they brought us back and they took a closer look after he was suspiciously not fighting back.”

Neito grinned at the praise. There was something immensely satisfying at being recognized for your hard work and talent by an enemy.

“Toga was pissed, though.”

Hitoshi and Neito laughed at that, the splayed cards and poker chips laying around them long forgotten.

“I think Mr. Compress would let you try his quirk if you two ever met under the right circumstances," Denki informed Neito.

"Mr. Compress? Which one is that, again?” Hitoshi asked, fully invested in learning more and relieved that the intense atmosphere was dissolving into something more lighthearted once again.

“The one with the mask and the top hat. He has the quirk that turned me into a marble!” Denki chirped.

It was comical and strange, but on Denki, it felt totally natural that he would be so thrilled about the quirk that played a huge part in his capture.

“What did it feel like?” Hitoshi asked, completely intrigued. Neito, too, leaned in with rapt attention to soak in Denki’s answer.

Denki explained how it felt like a million years and a millisecond at the same time until he got the hang of the timing. Neito and Hitoshi thought it was outrageous, and also just like Denki, that he could convince a villain to use his quirk on him over and over again until he could figure it out.

Denki looked sidelong at his companions.

“What?” Hitoshi inquired when he caught Denki’s quizzical expression.

“Even before knowing any of this, both of you told me that I should delete that video. I guess I just don’t understand why… why you would…?” Denki trailed off, knowing that the two would understand what his words could not express.

“We guessed from the beginning that you’d make it out just fine and might even become friendly with some of the members,” Neito answered easily. “The only reason it was surprising just now was because of the way you acted after you were rescued. We thought we were wrong.”

“I’m actually kind of relieved… No, really relieved that you were treated well,” Hitoshi admitted.

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t… you know…” Denki argued lightly, rolling his eyes in frustration at himself for not being able to find the words.

“While you were missing, there was talk of a traitor disguised at UA, reporting back important information to the League of Villains,” Neito spoke quickly in a hushed voice. “Some people who don’t know you thought that you might be… an informant for them, and that maybe they took advantage of the opportunity to get an update from you.”

“Everyone who knew you quickly shut that down, though,” Hitoshi added when he saw Denki’s face start to lose its color. “And when you came back, you were so traumatized that everyone just kind of assumed that you were treated horrendously by the League. It cleared your name for the few who theorized that you were working with the League. If this had gotten out, it would be hard to explain that away.”

“It was easy to explain away to you guys,” Denki argued, though he knew exactly what Hitoshi meant.

“We know you, Denks. Everyone else is so ramped up with fear that they would jump on the first scapegoat they could find, just to feel a little more secure,” Neito explained.

“Yeah…” Denki gave in. “Shigaraki threatened to leak information that would make me look like the traitor. He said it would be easy… I didn’t realize just how honest he was being at the time…”

“Is he—?” Hitoshi asked, eyes wide with alarm as he jolted forward, adrenaline coursing through his veins as if he was going into battle at that very second with the intended threat against Denki.

Even if Shigaraki and the League of Villains had implied that they would support the trio becoming heroes, it didn’t necessarily mean that they wouldn’t throw as many roadblocks as they could at them.

“No,” Denki answered with a small smile, shaking his head. “That was before. They all decided that their best bet was for the three of us to become heroes as quickly as possible. Force Majeure was actually their way of making sure that I wouldn’t be considered as a traitor.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you can talk to us about all this,” Hitoshi pushed.

“Maybe it’s because you two found out without any communication on my end,” Denki guessed with a shrug. It was his best guess. “I was unable to communicate it with anyone new, but it didn’t stop me from talking about what had happened with those who were there. Maybe you transferred into that category when you started to piece together what actually happened on your own.”

Neito shrugged, not super concerned with the specifics now that Denki seemed to be able to talk freely with them. Hitoshi, however, made a mental note to explore different possibilities later.

Hitoshi and Neito didn’t end up asking Denki if he was still in contact with the League of Villains; it didn’t matter because they knew that Denki would never betray them or anyone else at UA. Maybe it was naïve of them to think that Denki had an accurate read on the situation he was in, but they trusted his judgment completely. Denki was so observant and socially gifted that he would surely be able to see right through any tricks that the villains might have tried to play. It only made them more confident in their decision when they learned that Denki had saved the life of the League’s leader. Denki was a hero through and through, and apparently, even villains could be convinced of that.

“Check out this one!” Denki exclaimed as he scrolled to the next video in his drafts.

“Shadow clone jutsu!” the Denki on the screen yelled. A second later, five more Denkis popped up on the screen in various ninja-like poses.

“We even got Mr. Compress to put Toga and the Twice clones in his marble things, then release them all at once so they appeared instantly like that. We tried it a few times before with them just jumping into frame, but something was missing, you know?”

The idea of having a notorious and dangerous group of villains so enamored with Denki within the few short days he spent there that they would use their quirks to help Denki make not one, but two TikToks, was almost unbelievable. Almost.

“If Todoroki is the king of conspiracy, you must be the king of content,” Hitoshi theorized aloud.

After a pause, with the repeated “shadow clone jutsu” coming from the phone every few seconds, the trio fell into a fit of laughter once again.

It felt so good to know that gaining the support of the League of Villains didn’t mean that Denki would lose the support of his best friends. He felt like he could truly breathe again.

Chapter Text

“Oh, she’s hot,” Mineta gasped, trying to discreetly get Denki to look in the girl’s direction without blatantly pointing at her. “I’d climb her like a tree.”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” Denki offered without even looking in the vague direction that Mineta was hinting at.

“Damn. They have you down bad, don’t they?” Mineta probed, squinting at his friend as they ate together in the food court at the mall.

“Who?” Denki asked, entertained and ready to hear Mineta’s theories.

“Those soulmate dudes… Monoma and Shinsou, right? Hook, line, and sinker, buddy!” Mineta exclaimed.

“Is it that obvious?” Denki asked, amused.

“Is it that obvious?” Mineta mocked, but his smile was still friendly and not malicious. “The only thing more obvious is the fact that you’re UA’s traitor. Are you going to finish that?” he asked, gesturing towards Denki’s milkshake.

“Uh—what?” Denki stuttered out, pushing the remaining milkshake toward Mineta who snatched it up quickly.

“Oh? Yeah, it’s obvious. You come back from the League unharmed, you keep talking to the damn villains even after figuring out who they are, and you let them ‘endorse’ you, like that would ever go over well!”

“It’s just video games. We don’t talk about anything important,” Denki defended, but weakly, knowing even as he said it that it was a weak argument.

After slurping up the rest of the milkshake, Mineta snickered. “That’s not how everyone else sees it, whether it’s true or not. You’re just so damn stupid, aren’t you? Or maybe you’re just crazy? Do we need to send you back to Fields? Maybe you should never have left.”

“I knew Dabi from before, though. He was Touya! I can’t just ignore that!” Denki pleaded, ashamed at the crack in his voice.

“Why not? You ignore everything else!” Mineta exclaimed, throwing his hands out to the side in his amusement at Denki’s stupidity.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Denki asked hesitantly, not sure he wanted to know what the little purple boy thought anymore.

“You ignore your own feelings towards Monoma and Shinsou, and you ignore that their feelings match yours. Why don’t you go after what you want, huh?” Mineta pried, the smile on his face still seemingly friendly, not matching the content of his voiced thoughts.

“It’s not so simple!” Denki argued with a frustrated shake of his head.

“You better make a move before it’s too late! Oh—! Never mind. It’s already too late,” Mineta sneered, gesturing with his hand further toward the center of the food court where Hitoshi and Neito stood on raised platforms, both muzzled and chained.

All For One’s figure loomed in the background, blurry but unmistakably him. He came forward, ready to take the quirks from the boys who Denki loved. Denki lurched forward, toppling his chair over in his frantic rush, but no matter how fast he ran, he knew that All For One would get there before him.

With no more options, Denki charged up at full strength, and shot his electricity forward, praying to whoever might be listening that he hit his target and not either of the soulmates. When All For One buckled, Denki rushed to undo the chains and muzzles restraining the soulmates.

“What have you done?” Neito asked, tears in his eyes as he looked at the scene around them. “I thought you were against collateral damage!”

Denki was about to argue that he didn’t cause any, but when he followed Neito’s stricken gaze, he saw that most of the lights had shattered, the few that survived flickering ominously.

“I—I didn’t mean—”

“You never mean anything!” Hitoshi protested, interrupting Denki’s pitiful excuses. “Yet, you somehow manage to ruin everything! You can’t just leave a good thing alone, can you?!”

Denki knew that Hitoshi was talking about him meddling in their soulmate relationship, and not about the destruction that littered the area they were in. The crowd was long gone, and Hitoshi’s angry voice echoed off of the walls, tormenting him over and over again.

“I didn’t—”

“You did!” Neito raged, flipping over one of the tables in the food court in his anger, cups and empty plates and bowls flying in every direction.

“I’m sorry!” Denki wailed, dropping to his knees, and pressing his forehead against the floor.

“You should be sorry,” the distant voice of Aizawa stated.

When Denki looked up, tears blurring his vision, he was surrounded by his classmates and teachers. Denki choked and heaved when he realized that every single one of them sported horrendous wounds. As he staggered to his feet, taking a step forward to offer help, Aizawa pushed him away with so much force that Denki ended up on the floor, looking up at his classmates and teachers who were towering over him, staring down at him with pure hatred and disgust in their eyes.

“How dare you endanger my students?!” Aizawa roared, eyes flaring red with anger, his quirk activated as if Denki would fight back.

No, Denki knew he deserved every bad thing that was about to happen to him. Maybe the pain would help lessen the guilt.

The floor turned to murky, bubbling water that deepened as his classmates surrounded him, putting their hands on him, some fisting the fabric of his clothes or the hair on his head in their hands, and forcing him down, under the surface of the water. Denki couldn’t even bring himself to fight back, forcing himself to accept his fate.

When Denki shot awake just as he was about to give in and allow the murky water into his lungs, he was breathing heavy and looking around frantically. He was relieved when he was met with the dark sight of the inside of his dorm room, fresh oxygen flowing through his lungs instead of water.

“Just a dream… it was just a dream…” he tried to soothe himself, but he couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

He burrowed himself under the covers and surrounded himself with his pillows to try to feel more secure. When he lied awake an hour later, no closer to sleep than when he first jolted awake, he squeezed his eyes shut and began to sing.

“Dashing through the snow… in a one-horse open sleigh…”

Maybe it was stupid; no, it definitely was. But the idea that Hitoshi and Neito could sing to each other when they had nightmares was at the forefront of his mind, and he felt so, so lonely in that moment. If he was lucky enough to have a soulmate out there, they would probably be so annoyed that he was singing a Christmas song in July, but that was the alert song that was assigned to him way back on Unit Beta, so that was the one he chose.

“Over the fields we go… laughing all the way…”

Denki knew that if he started sobbing while singing, he would feel even more pathetic. He was relieved that the singing actually made him feel a little better, a little less alone, like he was actually connected to someone out there.

“Bells on bobtails ring… making spirits bright…”

Denki fell asleep with the lyrics dying on his tongue. Hitoshi and Neito didn’t stir from their own sleep, but strangely, they did find themselves dreaming of Christmastime.

“Who did you choose for summer internship?” Neito asked Denki as they walked out of the academic building together.

Hitoshi had already bid them both farewell and headed in the opposite direction, toward the gyms to have the last training session with Aizawa before they all moved off campus, Hitoshi out of the dorms and Aizawa and Yamada out of the teachers’ block, back to their apartment in the next city over.

“Thirteen,” Denki declared proudly, to Neito’s surprise.

“Really?” Neito asked consideringly. “What made you choose Thirteen?”

“Uh… what you said, actually,” Denki admitted, going from being extremely proud to almost bashful. “You know, about how you thought it was heroic that I was the reason there were zero casualties with the whole League of Villains thing, and what Hitoshi said about collateral damage… I just think it’s a good idea to get stronger in the area of rescue and focusing on defensive maneuvers and civilians who might be in the way.”

“That’s awesome!” Neito exclaimed, having already worked through his thoughts as Denki explained. “Your quirk is obviously amazing for offensive uses, so it’s really amazing that you’re trying to be well-rounded and figure out more unique and creative ways to use your quirk. You’re going to be a force to be reckoned with!”

“Thanks,” Denki said, smiling and not looking away from Neito, even as his cheeks began to redden with all the praise being thrown at him. “What about you? Did you decide between Sir Nighteye and Midnight?”

“I actually went in a whole different direction!” Neito chirped, a smile growing over his face. “I was almost completely decided, but I’m pretty sure Sir Nighteye only offered because Mirio bugged him endlessly, but I’m not sure how I would feel about copying Mirio’s quirk in public only to lose my pants! I’m shameless, sure, but even that’s a little much for me!” Both boys chucked, specifically remembering when Neito had started to strip in the hallway back on Unit Beta, to the chagrin of the technicians who worked there.

“So, then you chose Midnight?” Denki prompted.

“Nope!” Neito chirped. Denki wasn’t even surprised. The only way Neito could be surprising to him anymore would be to actually do something that he had predicted. “I went with Best Jeanist! The added bonus is if I can copy his quirk right before meeting with Toshi, then I can help him train like Sero and Shiozaki do while increasing my skills with yet another quirk!”

“Uh… Nei…” Denki started, furrowing his brow. “That’s where Bakugou chose to internship, too.”

Neito’s smile grew manic, or maybe it was that way from the beginning and Denki was just then realizing it.

“I know.”

“Okay,” Denki dragged out, wondering which blond boy he should be more concerned for. “Is Hitoshi interning with Eraserhead?”

“No, actually,” Neito asked, just as perplexed as he was when Hitoshi broke the news to him. “I’m not sure if Aizawa wouldn’t allow it or if Hitoshi didn’t want to, but he’s going to be interning with Ms. Joke this summer.”

“Oh, wow!” Denki exclaimed. “She’s really good with hand-to-hand combat, so that’s a really great choice for Hitoshi!”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Midoriya,” Neito guessed, and he was right, of course.

Neito knew that Denki was smart, of course, but the only one who would know specifically about a hero that the classes had never trained against would have been the note-taking hero-obsessed green-haired nerd in Class 1-A.

“I was with Hitoshi at lunch when Midoriya and Todoroki joined us to talk about internships. When Hitoshi said he hadn’t decided yet, Midoriya slammed one of his notebooks on the table and got started with the best options depending on what skills Hitoshi wanted to better develop,” Denki answered with a shrug, not concerned in the least. Midoriya was great company, and he always learned a lot when he was with him.

“Where the hell was I, then?” Neito asked incredulously.

“In Recovery Girl’s office… after you picked that fight with Bakugou…” Denki reminded gently, a smile threatening to take over his face.

“Oh, yeah… I’m getting better at handling his quirk; he got a lucky shot in, was all,” Neito dismissed, not commenting on Denki trying and failing to contain his smile at his antics.

“It’s all fun and games until you’re sent to Recovery Girl,” Denki quoted.

“Tell me about it,” Neito muttered in agreement, before defending, “it was all in good fun… kind of.”

Neito joined Denki’s burst of laughter as they walked to the train station, duffle bags swinging at their sides as they walked, taking turns balancing on the curb or jumping over benches that could have just as easily been walked around.

This is the moment that Denki thought of fondly as he traipsed through the rubble at the first major disaster that Thirteen’s group had responded to of the summer a week later. The mood was somber because there was already one fatality; the heroes had to be on high alert as to not let any more casualties happen, so despite the sadness and helplessness that comes along with not being able to save everyone, Thirteen’s team pushed on, almost desperate to save as many people as they could to atone for their failure. The fact that there was nothing that anyone could do didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things; heroes would still feel the loss in full-force and wonder if there was something they could have done.

With the villain, Full Throttle, involved, there was always at least one casualty. In fact, it was considered a massive success if there was only one.

Full Throttle had surfaced as a villain the year before. His quirk essentially turned someone else’s up to eleven, which always ended in death for the one affected. Full Throttle was a smart and calculating young man who chose his targets carefully. Using his quirk on a healer might actually do some good but using his quirk on someone with a quirk called Shake could make a massive earthquake with the victim at the center. The victim’s quirk had overpowered her, bringing her office building down around her as she succumbed to her quirk at full power overload.

Full Throttle was at the top of the list of dangerous villains. Unlike other notorious villains, he did not discriminate against who he targeted. The League of Villains went after heroes, or up-and-coming heroes at the very least. Full Throttle wasn’t above targeting civilians, children, and even the elderly. Anyone who had a quirk that could be turned destructive if given enough power behind it was a potential target to Full Throttle. That day, it just so happened to be Misone Ayatsu, a low-level manager at the collapsed office building that Denki found himself rummaging through.

If there was ever a time to be hiring quirkless people over people with quirks, it was when Full Throttle was at large and causing as much damage as possible with his carefully chosen targets. Did that make it easier for quirkless people to find jobs? Unfortunately not.

Denki heard a wheezing cough from his left and shone his flashlight in that direction, his beam cutting through the dusty haze from the collapse that happened not thirty minutes earlier.

“Anyone there?” he asked softly, stepping carefully in the same direction. “I’m hero intern Chargebolt, and this is hero intern Real Steel. We’re here to help.”

Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu had never walked so delicately, following Denki closely, and trying to avoid causing any secondary collapses within the disaster zone. He had to admit that he was impressed that Denki never hesitated in his path, always confident with every turn he made. He had heard that Denki was very spatially apt but seeing him in action was something else entirely.

Denki’s flashlight beamed over a figure that was trapped beneath a fallen beam, and he quickly and carefully rushed over. Before he could reach the victim, however, Tetsutetsu placed a hand on Denki’s chest, stopping his progression. Denki didn’t resist when Tetsutetsu took the flashlight from him, shining it into the young man’s face.

Tetsutetsu sucked in a breath through his teeth. He knew that face, even covered in dust and soot. There was no mistaking the villain that was featured in a major case that his spring break internship had focused heavily on.

“He’s a wanted villain in the middle circuit,” he informed quietly, glancing over at Denki to make sure he was listening. “We should wait for backup.”

When the ceiling creaked under the weight of the upper floors, Denki rushed forward toward the man anyway. “No time.”

Tetsutetsu was no stranger to the sounds of the structural integrity of a building quickly giving way; a few fights against the destructive force that is Bakugou could turn anyone into a quick expert. He cursed under his breath but didn’t hesitate to join Denki in his self-appointed mission. A preventable casualty wasn’t going to happen on their watch, villain or not.

Tetsutetsu was secretly glad that he had the steel quirk to be the one to brace himself against the beam that was pressing the villain into place against the floor; he didn’t know how Denki didn’t even need to hype himself up before reaching right for him and pulling him out from under the beam, quickly checking him over for injuries and asking him if anything hurt, if he felt dizzy, and if he could walk.

The villain activated his quirk, turning his hands into sharp instruments of destruction, and reached for Denki’s face. Tetsutetsu, if questioned, would probably just assume that Denki had activated his electricity at a low level to discourage contact, and that is what made the villain turn tail and scurry away as quickly as he could.

That wasn’t it, though.

The villain got a good look at Denki as his hand got closer, ready to slash at the hero-in-training before making his getaway to ensure that the other hero-in-training would be too concerned with his companion to stop him.

The villain cursed under his breath as he pulled back, scrambling to his feet. He hesitated in his escape, nervous that if he were to leave the amateur heroes behind, that they might meet their demise if they did not find an exit quickly enough.

“Exit’s this way,” the villain muttered under his breath before darting around the corner.

Tetsutetsu would later report that they chased the villain as to not let him escape. Denki would know that they followed because the building was seconds away from collapsing if the groaning and creaking from above was any indication. Only the villain would know that he helped a pair of heroes-in-training. And only he would know that it was because the blond boy who introduced himself as Chargebolt fit the exact description sent out by the League of Villains.

Razor was smart enough to not make an enemy out of the League of Villains. If something as simple as showing the two the way out before a building collapsed before making his quick escape could get him on the League’s good side, then he would be a fool not to take full advantage of the opportunity.

There was something uncanny, though, about the kid. Razor thought hard about it as he checked over himself when he was sure he was in the clear, cleaning his scrapes and icing his bruises from the collapse. It was so weird that, even with his sharp-as-knives fingers heading right towards the kid’s face, only pure concern continued to shine in his eyes. His line of questioning about Razor’s wellbeing didn’t pause or hesitate, neither did his instinct to follow Razor when offered to be shown the quickest way out.

And was that a smile on the kid’s face as he told him to follow him to the exit? No… He couldn’t have known that Razor was actually showing him the exit. He couldn’t have been confident that Razor wasn’t leading him right into a trap. It was probably a grimace if anything. It couldn’t have been a smile!

Could it?

Chapter Text

“So, I’m chasing this guy, right? And I have him cornered. He knows from experience in the short chase we just had that even if he were to magically develop a second quirk and scale the wall, I’d still be right behind him because of my skill with my capture weapon—”

“And what skill that is!” Neito interrupted.

“—Shut up! Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted…” Hitoshi continued.

Neito shrugged in a very relaxed way, knowing that Hitoshi basked in compliments about his improvements. Even if someone passing by weren’t an intimate part of the group, they would still know that Hitoshi wasn’t actually upset because of the huge smile he sent in Neito’s direction, unable to hide his amusement at his soulmate’s easy compliments that he started to seem to throw around more and more as time went on.

“… he turns around, right? Then, get this! He takes a step forward, quirk activated, ready to send porcupine quills right through me. He takes one look at me, sighs like the world is turning against him, and surrenders! Just like that! He lowers his quills that would have definitely done a lot of damage, maybe even enough for him to escape, and he just gives up! I thought that maybe my reputation might have gotten him to cooperate, but when I asked questions, he answered them!” Hitoshi raved, hands moving wildly to express his absolute confoundment.

“Did you use your quirk on him?” Midoriya asked, pen posed over paper, ready to take notes to further his understanding of Hitoshi’s quirk.

“No,” Hitoshi admitted with a shrug, a calmness taking over quickly from his rapid-fire storytelling. “He surrendered. No quirk needed.”

His constant changes in volume, speed, and tone didn’t phase his close friends; everyone figured that Neito’s dramatics were rubbing off on his soulmate, but a select few had figured out that this is how Hitoshi had always been, and everyone would have seen that if people hadn’t cowered in fear whenever he spoke. Neito often wondered if he would have guessed they were soulmates before it was confirmed if he knew how similar they were if Hitoshi’s traumatic upbringing hadn’t stifled his personality to keep him flying as low under the radar as possible.

“Interesting,” Midoriya muttered, taking notes.

“What the hell are you even writing if he didn’t use his quirk?” Neito demanded, trying to peek over to see.

Midoriya snapped the notebook closed and held it against his chest. “None of your business!”

“If you have notes on me in there, I think it is my business!” And, after a hesitant pause, Neito asked, “do you have notes on me in there?” No one was cruel enough to mention the hopeful tone in Neito’s voice.

“Of course, I do,” Midoriya reassured him. “Nothing that would be helpful, yet, though. I’m still working on the basic information before I can start to play around with it to see if I can think of anything you haven’t already.”

“You’ll let me know if you come up with anything?” Neito asked.

“Definitely!” Midoriya chirped.

Neito had seen how Midoriya had narrowed in on what Hitoshi should work on, so much so that he had helped his soulmate to choose who to intern with to improve most, and even to get from three people under his quirk to five in such a short amount of time when going from two to three was painstakingly slow.

Midoriya had talent for quirk analysis and creative ways to use quirks in different situations. With Neito’s the possibilities were endless and depended entirely on who was around to copy quirks from, so Midoriya had a big project ahead of him.

Midoriya himself was surprised about how easygoing and playful Neito was once he got to know him. It was a little scary how someone’s opinion could change so quickly and drastically, just by getting to know them a little better and seeing that he truly meant no harm. After letting his guard down, Neito had quickly grown on him, and his comments and antics were actually seen as endearing and complimentary rather than obnoxious. Having Neito ask Midoriya for help and acknowledge his competence without using some snarky backhanded comment to get his point across? There was no greater compliment.

Neito was often seen as unhinged and uncontrollable, but Midoriya quickly learned that Neito keeps a close and careful control over himself. He never crosses a line, keeping himself well within his own boundaries. When Midoriya snapped his notebook shut, Neito didn’t pry further, demanding to see or taking the book from him to look for himself. Midoriya wouldn’t have even been mad or upset had he done exactly that; sometimes that’s just how friends act with each other.

At first, Midoriya feared that even as he saw Neito as a friend, maybe he didn’t see Midoriya as a friend back. After a while, though, Midoriya figured out that Neito had that strong boundary with everyone, to never go to far and do or say something that he couldn’t take back, to never push people over the edge.

It made Midoriya wonder how Neito could have said those things to Denki way back during the first battle between Class 1-A and Class 1-B. Did he change because of that, or was he always like that and just had some strong, intrinsic trust that Denki would forgive him? If that was the case, he was right. Midoriya doubted there was anything that Neito could say or do that would make Denki hate him.

To be fair, though, Denki didn’t hate anyone… well, except for All For One, but that was so understandable that it didn’t really count to Midoriya.

“What are you doing Saturday?” Hitoshi asked Denki.

He had been quietly observing Hitoshi, Neito, and Midoriya interact, laughing and egging them on when appropriate, but not really contributing to the conversation. Nothing was wrong, and everyone knew that. No one was worried that he wasn’t jumping in because sometimes Denki just liked to sit back and observe. Everyone was getting along so well that there was no need for the social genius to jump in and smooth things out, so he just enjoyed the endless entertainment as it was.

“I’m busy!” Denki chirped, barely containing his growing smile.

“Do you have your internship that day?” Neito asked, confused because they had already shared their schedules with each other. If Denki didn’t have anything come up, he should have been free.

“No,” Denki answered, giving as little information as possible, unable to meet the soulmates’ eyes.

Hitoshi and Neito narrowed their eyes at him, their own smiles growing on their faces as they glanced at each other. It was Midoriya’s turn to sit back and observe; it never failed to amuse him when it came to those three.

“Then what are you doing on Saturday?” Hitoshi asked, willingly taking the bait.

“It’s a secret, I guess,” Denki answered simply with a shrug, his huge smile giving his game away.

“You guess?” Hitoshi asked, picking up the hints that Denki was throwing down.

Denki absolutely beamed, laughter barely contained as he answered, “yeah, until you tell me what we’re doing, then it won’t be a secret anymore.”

“You said you have plans because you already decided to agree to whatever we were about to ask you?” Neito mused, then snorted.

After a pause, all four boys were laughing.

Everything was going so well for all four of them, and so any little thing could send them into a laughing fit when they all got together and started their mindless chatter.

“Go to the waterpark with us,” Neito demanded, though his eyes were warm and crinkled from the force of his lingering smile.

“What? Me?” Denki asked, slightly stunned. “People don’t usually like having me around water with them because of my quirk…”

“Oh, please!” Neito wailed dramatically, throwing his hands out to the side. “You have perfect control over your quirk! If anyone should be feared at a waterpark because of their quirk… it’s me!”

“Oh, please no!” Hitoshi quickly interjected, before explaining to Denki and Midoriya, “last time he was told no for something, he copied my quirk and made the worker do what he said.”

“Oh!” Denki drawled, realization dawning on him. “Is that how we got in to pet the penguins when no one else was allowed?!”

“You looked at them like they were the most amazing creatures on Earth,” Neito defended. “I asked, they said no. I held my soulmate’s hand, asked again, and they answered with no again. Third time’s the charm, as they say!”

“Yeah, let’s not do that ever again!” Hitoshi insisted, shaking his head frantically, as if that might dissuade his soulmate from getting what he wants by whatever means necessary.

“No promises,” Neito answered before quickly moving on so that Hitoshi wouldn’t get a chance to respond. “So, Saturday. Waterpark. You in, Denks?”

“Yeah!” Denki chirped. “You coming?” he turned to ask Midoriya.

“He’s not invited,” Neito rushed out.

“Neito, you can’t just invite me in front of someone else only to exclude them!” Denki scolded lightly.

“What he means,” Hitoshi started, coming to Neito’s rescue, “is that we’re taking you on a date. Midoriya would just be the fourth wheel if he tagged along.”

A glance over at Midoriya showed him to be smiling contentedly, leaning back on his hands and watching the interaction unfold with amusement dancing in his eyes.

“Like a date date?” Denki dared to ask.

“Yes. You already know how we both feel about you, Denks,” Hitoshi stated with a sigh, running his hand through his hair. “Let us help you find out if you feel the same.”

“Oh, I do!” Denki answered. “Wasn’t that obvious? I feel like everyone else knows. Did you guys not know? You don’t have to take me on a date to help me work out my feelings because I already know!”

“Then we’ll take you because you deserve to go on nice dates,” Neito insisted firmly.

“Did you know about this?” Denki asked Midoriya, confused as to why the soulmates were asking him out on a date (he could still hardly believe it. If you caught him pinching himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming… no you didn’t!) with Midoriya right there.

“He was moral support,” Hitoshi answered like that explained everything.

“Moral support?” Denki pressed.

“He was going to pummel us into the ground so hard that we would forget our despair if you were to turn us down,” Neito answered with a shrug, like that was a simple and obvious explanation.

“I wouldn’t have actually,” Midoriya insisted, hands up in a surrendering motion when Denki turned to look at him disbelievingly.

“But that was your purpose?” Denki shook his head, letting the train of thought go. It was surely something to think about (and laugh about) later. Turning to the soulmates, he asked, “you seriously thought that it was a possibility that I’d say no?”

“Yeah,” Hitoshi admitted while Neito shrugged. “Even if you liked us back… both of us… you still might not have wanted to change anything. We’re getting along so well, and…”

“And all the what-ifs…” Neito supplied.

“Screw the what-ifs and the maybes,” Denki declared with a shrug. “If something unexpected happens, we’ll deal with it when the time comes. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think our friendship is strong enough to withstand anything. If you guys are willing to take the risk of taking me on and trying this out for real, then I’m in!”

“I thought it would take more convincing, honestly,” Neito muttered to Hitoshi, but loud enough for everyone to hear.

Denki laughed. “I trust you two with my life. In comparison, trusting you with my heart is no big deal.”

And while Hitoshi and Neito were happy and relieved that Denki had agreed, their hearts broke a little, wondering why fate had failed to see that all three of them would have been perfect for each other.

If fate wasn’t going to make them all soulmates, then screw fate; they’d do it by themselves.

Chapter Text

“Oh, hey! You’re that kid from the sports festival, aren’t you?” the ticket stand guy asked, staring straight at Hitoshi. “The one from general studies who made it really far!”

After a short hesitation, Hitoshi answered, “yeah… that’s me.”

“So cool!” the young man praised. He might have even been a teenager, around their age. It was common for some teenagers to get summer jobs, especially when they didn’t have hero internships to worry about.

“Oh, I think I remember you two being in the sports festival, too! How many quirks do you have, man?” he asked, turning his attention to Neito.

“Just the one,” Neito dismissed coolly. “Now, about those tickets—”

“Yeah, sorry guys! You two are good to go, but you have an electric quirk, don’t you?” the ticket stand guy asked, finally turning his attention to Denki. “People with electric quirks aren’t allowed in this waterpark, but there’s another waterpark about two and half hours from here by train that does allow people like you!”

“You’re really going to discriminate based on quirks? Don’t you know that’s illegal?” Neito sneered, slamming his hands on the countertop, indignant at the audacity of the waterpark.

“Sorry, man,” the ticket man offered, his hands out in a placating manner. “It’s not up to me or you know I would let you all right in. Seriously! Big fan!”

Neito took a deep breath in, let it out, and demanded through his teeth, “let me speak to your manager.”

As the ticket man left the window to fetch his superior, relieved to not deal with that situation any further, Denki tried to tell them that it was okay, and that he was used to it.

“You shouldn’t have to be used to it!” Neito seethed, angry for Denki. “That’s the point! How the fu—How are we supposed to train hard and become heroes if they won’t even let us get some self-care and relaxation? They want us to burn bright and die early! And I don’t care who hears!” Neito ranted, getting louder as he went, and turning on his heel to yell the last part at the gawking group at the next ticket window over.

Luckily, that group was smart enough to quickly divert their attention back to their own ticket window and quickly move on after making their purchases.

Denki, the peacemaker, tried, “you guys can just go without me, and—”

He stopped as he saw Hitoshi shaking his head. “This was meant to be a date with you. It wouldn’t exactly be a good date if you weren’t there, would it? Let us handle this. We have your back.”

Denki sighed and contemplated, but inside, he was warm and absolutely thrilled. When was the last time that someone had defied rules for him? When was the last time that someone pointed out when he was being treated unfairly and actually worked toward fixing it?

“You always take care of everyone else,” Hitoshi continued as Neito continued to shoot glares at everyone who looked at them for more than half a second. “You took care of me with the muzzle demonstration at the mall, and then Bakugou with getting the whole school to participate in yet another demonstration.”

“And don’t forget about when you saved my ass after I was so rude to you during training,” Neito tacked on after sending a glare at an older lady who had been shooting disapproving glances in their direction. When he finally made eye contact and the lady rushed away, Neito grinned manically at his little success.

“That was just training!” Denki defended Neito against himself. “Anything goes during training!”

“No, it doesn’t!” Neito argued. “Because I would have been devastated if the roles were reversed! You are so good at letting things go, but maybe you’re too good at it. When you do that too often, you let people walk all over you instead of standing up for yourself and taking what you deserve.”

“And you deserve the best,” Hitoshi tacked on with a determined nod.

“What can I help you with today?” a middle-aged man asked from the counter window, the original ticket man standing nervously and awkwardly in the background.

“I’m sure you already know the situation,” Neito spat. “Give us all entry to the waterpark.”

“It’s against policy—” the manager started to recite, but Neito wasn’t having any of it.

“Do you know who this is?” Neito asked, gesturing toward Denki. “This is Chargebolt. He’s currently interning with Thirteen.”

“That’s very cool, but that doesn’t change the policy,” the manager said calmly.

“Do you know who this is?” Hitoshi asked, gesturing toward Neito. “This is Monoma Neito, and I’m sure all of the media outlets would eat up a story about how you denied access to three hero interns who were just trying to have a good time.”

“Do you know who this is?” Denki jumped in, not to be outdone, gesturing toward Hitoshi. “This is the son of Pro Heroes Eraserhead and Present Mic, vocal advocates against quirk discrimination. How do you think an investigation would go into the legality of you discriminating by quirk type?”

Denki ignored Neito’s muttering, “still spending too much time with Midoriya,” under his breath.

The manager got paler and paler as the gravity of the situation started to weigh on him with the incoming almost-threats from the teenagers in front of him.

“Since it’s a safety issue, if he can pass a quirk control test, then he can enter,” the manager offered as a compromise, but everyone knew that it was just to save face.

Knowing that the manger was not the one who had made the policy and that he was just trying to do his job, Hitoshi and Denki were kind enough to allow him to try to salvage the situation.

Neito was not.

“Why wasn’t that offered in the first place, then?” he sneered, jabbing his finger into the countertop to get his anger across.

Of course, Denki passed with flying colors, and they were allowed into the waterpark for free, probably in hopes that the sign of goodwill would prevent the teenagers from actually going to the media with their complaints.

Fat chance.

What kind of heroes would they be if they let something like that slide as long as they themselves were exempt from it? Not any kind of hero that they wanted to become, that was for sure.

“Thanks for letting us in for free!” Neito yelled back as they entered through the gate, cupping his hands around his mouth, making sure as many people in line as possible heard him.

“And for the free meal tickets!” Hitoshi yelled as an addition on pure impulse.

“And for the free locker rentals!” Denki yelled, following Hitoshi’s idea, before quickly pulling the soulmates through the gates before the manager could change his mind and deny access to all three of them.

Because while they did get access to the park for free, they did not, in fact, get free meal tickets or locker rentals.

They quickly set off to change and put their things away in a locker (that they did purchase the rental for), laughing and enjoying the schadenfreude of the increasingly angry voices they left behind at the ticket counters for the manager to deal with.

As far as the boys were concerned, it was a win-win. Either they made the park give away a lot of free things and made them take a hit to their profits for the day, or they had a lot of angry customers when their requests for free things were denied.

May the online reviews of the waterpark rest in peace.

Coincidentally, the waterpark that was suggested that was two and a half hours away had a huge influx of new customers, and they couldn’t figure out why.

While they did act up a bit at the ticket counter, they followed all the rules and didn’t give the lifeguards any trouble. They knew the difference between quirk discrimination disguised as safety and actual safety, after all.

When Denki started creeping around, hiding behind pillars and trash cans, doing useless somersaults to get from one hiding place to the next when walking would have been just as effective, if not more so, the soulmates smiled to each other and joined right in. What kind of date would it have been if they didn’t get up to their old QQQ habits?

If they hadn’t been playing around and drawing attention to themselves, she might not have noticed that they were there and missed their chance encounter completely.

When Denki flopped onto his back instead of finishing yet another somersault to get from one point to the next, staring wide-eyed at a girl who was just watching the trio with a huge smile on her face, it caught the soulmates’ attention.

“Hi!” she greeted as she ran over, quickly sending a sheepish apology in the lifeguard’s direction after he reminded her that it was against the rules to run. “I wanted to go on the family waterslides, but they won’t let just one person. If you guys went with me, that would be an even four! What do you say?”

Denki held his hand up, and she took it, pulling him to his feet.

“Yeah, sure! I mean if it’s okay with Hitoshi and Neito,” Denki amended, looking over at the soulmates.

They easily agreed but were confused because they had no idea who this girl was. They had all been at the same mental hospital, went to the same high school, and Hitoshi went to the same middle school, but neither of them recognized the girl.

As Denki and the girl rushed forward to look at their options to choose which one to go down first, Hitoshi informed Neito, “she’s not from our middle school. Maybe she’s from primary school.”

“Or maybe they are complete strangers,” Neito added with a snort, then softer, “it wouldn’t surprise me if people could just sense how caring he is.”

“Okay. Slippery Serpent first, then Gushing Geiser!” the girl finalized their choice. “Have you made a move, yet?”

“No,” Denki answered sheepishly. “They did, though!” he added, sending a smile in her direction. “We’re on a date right now, actually.”

“Shit,” she swore in a whisper, “I’m interrupting your date?!”

“It’s fine! I’ve been wanting to introduce them to you anyway, so this is perfect!” Denki reassured.

“I’m going to get brainwashed today,” she said, narrowing her eyes and nodding, stating it like it was just a simple fact, or maybe a goal. “Oh, maybe they’ll even attempt to kill me! No—” she said, quickly changing her mind. “They aren’t like Iida, Todoroki, and Izuku.”

“Wait—what?” Denki asked, turning to her wide-eyed, a million possibilities of what she might mean passing through his mind.

“Tell you later,” she promised in a whisper, sending a wink in Denki’s direction, before turning toward the approaching soulmates. “We chose Slippery Serpent, first! Any objections? No? Let’s go!”

“I can’t believe they tried to deny you entry!” the girl complained, indignant on Denki’s behalf.

“Right?!” Neito added, egging her on. “What I can’t believe is that Hitoshi played the ‘don’t you know who I am’ card!”

“Technically, I played the ‘don’t you know who he is card.’ Denki was the one who played the card on my behalf, after you played it on his behalf,” Hitoshi countered.

“I’d give you guys whatever you wanted if I was in his situation. Like ‘you want free season passes for life? Here you go!’” the girl added, enjoying the easy banter with the trio that she found herself quickly falling into.

“Damn!” Denki swore under his breath. “That would have been better than thanking him for a free locker rental. I’ll have to remember that for next time.”

“Hopefully there won’t be a next time,” Neito growled, sharing a meaningful look with Hitoshi.

“How do you two know each other anyway?” Hitoshi asked as the group ascended the stairs as the crowd moved forward, getting closer to taking their own turn down the slide.

“I didn’t introduce you!” Denki exclaimed, slapping his forehead. “This is Shinsou Hitoshi, and you already met Monoma Neito.”

“We already met?” Neito asked as he extended his hand to shake hers in formal greeting, a habit from meeting with his parents’ important and wealthy guests whenever they hosted.

“Unofficially,” the girl answered with a shrug, reaching out to shake Neito’s hand.

Neito’s eyes had widened with realization as he felt the familiar quirk wash over him, taking root in his body, where it would remain active for the next five minutes.

“You—” he started to accuse, taking a step back. He looked around, noticing all of the people who would be caught in the crossfire if a fight were to take place. He absolutely hated the strategy of just going along with whatever was demanded of him until an opportunity presented itself. He’d rather take the chance and make his own openings, but that didn’t seem to be an option in that situation, standing in line on a tall staircase, crowds of civilians both in front and behind the group.

“Not very Plus Ultra of you to copy my quirk,” the girl pouted dramatically before smiling her sharp smile.

“And this is Toga Himiko,” Denki finished the introduction, suddenly realizing he probably should have gone about it a different way.

Chapter Text

Hitoshi froze in place on the concrete step. He grabbed onto Denki and Neito, and it hopefully looked like he was panicked, but he really just wanted to give Neito the chance to copy his quirk to use if Toga didn’t end up falling for it from him, first. Denki did say they had a huge binder of information on all of UA’s students, after all, and that he and Neito were considered as targets before Denki was able to redirect their efforts.

What if they changed their mind and Toga was there to collect them all?

What if she was there to just take Denki again? Like hell he would let that happen! And he knew for sure that Neito would go all out as a form of redemption for his perceived failure the first time Denki was taken captive by the League of Villains.

As Neito kept his eyes strictly on Toga, Hitoshi glanced around them and used their position on the tall staircase as a vantage point to check out the lower areas as well, looking for any more League members that might indicate an ambush or planned mission.

“What are you doing here?” Hitoshi whispered harshly, determining that if there were any other villains around, they were disguised or out of sight and turning his attention back to Toga.

“Just here to have fun!” Toga answered automatically, hands up in a placating manner. “Oh!” she chirped as she realized she had answered a question, bringing her hands to her cheeks as a smile grew. “Are you going to brainwash me now?!”

As soon as Hitoshi enveloped her mind with his quirk, he turned to Denki incredulously, gesturing vaguely at Toga, and at a complete loss for words.

All three boys looked at Toga, then, helpless under Hitoshi’s control. Neito understood why he didn’t recognize her at first; she looked totally different than when he saw her at the training camp. Then, she was decked out in a bulky schoolgirl uniform with huge storage tanks on her back. He didn’t really get a chance to commit her features to memory because he was too busy trying to avoid the big ass needles coming toward his face. The Toga that stood in front of him then had on a pink and navy blue bikini, and her hair was loose, reaching down to her midback, instead of in her signature twin buns.

As Neito looked into her blank eyes, he realized that even the way she carried herself and the way her eyes looked was different. There was a lack of intensity, he noticed. Maybe she really was there to have fun and wasn’t on a mission after all.

“Game plan?” Neito asked lowly, looking back and forth between Hitoshi and Denki, trying to keep casual as to not let any civilians know that Hitoshi had just used his quirk on someone and that that someone was a notorious villain.

The last thing they needed was a panicked crowd on a staircase. That would be a recipe for disaster, and the hope of keeping collateral damage to a minimum would go out the window as people clawed their way over one another until a rioting stampede threatened to smother those unfortunate enough to stumble.

“She’s telling the truth,” Denki reassured. “She’s just here to have fun!”

“They aren’t trying to take you back?” Hitoshi asked, just to be sure.

“No!” Denki chirped. “They wouldn’t have to!” he added vaguely.

The soulmates decided that it was too risky to discuss that right then, among all of those people, so they tucked that away in the back of their minds to discuss later.

“You trust her?” Hitoshi asked. When Denki nodded without hesitation, Hitoshi looked over at Neito to gauge his response.

“If Denki trusts her,” Neito sighed, “then I’m all in, too.”

With a shrug, Hitoshi released Toga from his quirk, automatically reaching out a hand to her as she swayed on her feet upon regaining control of her body.

“Woah!” she squealed, a delirious laugh bubbling from her throat as she reoriented herself. “That would have been a useful quirk to have in our ranks!” And, after a worried look, she snorted. “Oh, calm down. Even if we had realized how flippin’ amazing you are and went after you instead, it would have had the same result!”

“What does any of this mean?” Neito whined, hands going to grip his hair in frustration at not being able to follow all of the details that made the conversation absolutely confusing.

“Sorry!” Denki offered, a sheepish smile on his face.

“You didn’t tell us everything, did you?” Hitoshi asked, but he wasn’t upset.

“Not everything is mine to tell,” Denki answered vaguely, but that was enough for the soulmates.

If Denki said that he couldn’t tell them, then he couldn’t. It was as simple as that. Denki didn’t lie, not to the soulmates.

Taking a deep breath, Hitoshi regathered his thoughts and forced himself to calm down as if he wasn’t standing directly next to a villain, one of the villains who played a hand in Denki’s capture to be exact.

“Why did you answer me?” Hitoshi asked, turning his attention back to Toga, forcing himself to calm down in her presence.

Fake it ‘til you make it.

“I wanted to see what it felt like! It’s all floaty! Very cool!” she complimented, bouncing on her toes at the edge of the step she stood on.

There she went, intentionally answering him again when she knew what his quirk could do.

“I could have had you captured! You must be crazy!” Hitoshi spat, still tense and tightly wound despite his best efforts to relax.

“Then I’m among good company,” she chirped in response, not phased in the slightest at the insult, bumping her shoulder against Denki’s with a small, knowing smile.

Hitoshi shared a glance with Neito and sighed. “I guess we have no room to talk, do we?”

“Not about being crazy,” Neito agreed. “But we do have room to talk about how Denki and I totally kicked your ass!” Neito finished, pointing at Toga and laughing manically.

Denki and Hitoshi reached out their hands to settle Neito firmly back onto the step as he swayed with his laughter.

“Of course, you would use this opportunity to brag!” Toga sneered. “I just think it’s hilarious that you copied my quirk, but you can’t even use it! Not here! Can you?!”

“I wouldn’t want to!” Neito retorted. Maybe Denki’s intense observation skills have rubbed off on Neito, because he could have sworn he saw the smallest hint of hurt on Toga’s face. When he added “I’d have to lick some kid’s bleeding knee or something to use it now. No thanks!” the hurt look on her face disappeared, morphing into genuine amusement and pleasant surprise.

Did she think that he didn’t like her quirk? Her quirk was amazing. Kind of gross, but also one of the most fun and effortless ones he had ever had the pleasure of copying. Impressive, too. What her quirk lacked in finesse, it made up for in pure rareness and potential alone. Plus, he was sure that she might be just as observant and socially aware as Denki to be able to use it properly to be able to trick others into thinking she was someone else.

“Your clone sucked,” Toga sneered.

“You guys are the ones who fell for it,” Neito bit back, “so that says more about you than about me, don’t you think?”

“Just because the real Bakugou isn’t anything to look at either, or we would have been able to tell the difference,” she retorted, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand.

“Are you kidding?! Bakugou is hot!” Neito snapped back quickly, lost in the intensity and speed of their hostile banter before he realized what he just said. “Oh, I mean, uh—”

“Yeah, no. You have a point,” Hitoshi agreed with a nonchalant shrug. “The way he uses your name when he calls everyone else a dumb nickname…”

“Oh, and the way he pretends like he doesn’t care, but he totally notices when something is off!” Denki added thoughtfully with a nod.

“The way he looks all tied up in a tree…” Neito swooned dramatically.

After a heavy pause, the boys burst out laughing and quickly filled Toga in on what had happened with the real Bakugou the night of Denki’s capture. All of them were laughing as they continued to climb up the stairs in intervals as the line progressed, receiving odd looks from those nearby when the laughing went on for longer than expected.

Toga’s a little messed up, but even she knows when she’s overstayed her welcome. She tried sneaking away after the group had gone down the Slippery Serpent, but the boys had pulled her right back, demanding that they go on the Gushing Geiser next, just like they had planned. That didn’t really surprise her, though. What did surprise her was that it was Hitoshi that called her back when she tried to sneak away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Hitoshi demanded, making Toga tense her shoulders, like if she stayed still enough, he would suddenly be unable to see her.

“I’ll only answer you if you brainwash me!” Toga chirped as she turned around, hopeful that even though she couldn’t sneak away, she might still come out with another experience to add to the ever-growing list.

“I already did!” Hitoshi argued, but there was no force behind it. “And you just answered again anyway!”

Honestly, adding Toga to the group was easy. She was like a nice mixture of Denki and Neito in a way: Excitable, happy-go-lucky, and a little manic, too.

“You never made me do anything, though!” Toga argued back, stomping her foot against the concrete floor to really drive her point home.

Hitoshi didn’t know what happened that landed him in that position again and again. Before meeting Denki and letting Neito in after finding out they were soulmates, people avoided speaking to him like he’d brainwash them and command them to jump off a cliff. Now, though, people seem to flock to him, everyone wanting to experience it themselves, and just as eager to help Hitoshi improve his quirk as they were to try to break free, just to prove to themselves that they could (they couldn’t).

“Why would you want me to?!” Hitoshi spat, allowing his voice to pick up the cadence and get a little heated.

So, when Toga started to answer, she wasn’t expecting Hitoshi’s quirk to form a haze over her mind once again. She would have laughed aloud if her body would have let her! That cheeky, smug bastard! Toga really liked him. Even more so when he commanded her to start walking up the stairs, not giving her another chance to slip away. He even waited until there were others that came up in line behind them before actually releasing her mind and body to her own control once again. Sneaky and calculating… yes, Toga approved of Hitoshi.

“I think if you had been there that night, we wouldn’t have been able to grab anyone,” Toga pondered aloud, then, as an afterthought, asked, “why weren’t you there?”

“I didn’t get into the hero course until recently. I was still in general studies when the training camp took place,” Hitoshi offered with a shrug.

“You’ve wanted to be a hero since forever, so I’m guessing being in general studies wasn’t your first choice,” Toga guessed.

“How did you know that I wanted to be—you know what? Don’t answer that. I don’t know if I even want to know, and it might be something you can’t tell me anyway,” Hitoshi sighed, running his hand through his damp hair that would be soaked again in a matter of minutes once it was their turn to go down the slide.

“Couldn’t you just use your quirk to get me to tell you anything you wanted?” Toga asked.

There was no fear in her voice and no hesitation on her face. She was just truly curious, and no matter what the answer was, Hitoshi knew that she wouldn’t use it against him. It was refreshing to have this kind of openness come from someone who was not in the hero course, someone new who he had never interacted with before. It gave him a warm feeling, almost as warm as when he had first met Denki who had exceeded all of his expectations in only the first day, and never ceased to amaze him every day after that.

“I’m working on that,” Hitoshi admitted with a small smile, proud of how far he had come. “Sometimes I can get Neito to answer yes or no questions, but it’s hard. It’s a work in progress.”

“You’re going to be unstoppable someday!” Toga chirped, bouncing on her toes in excitement. “I’m just glad we’re all on the same side, here!”

“Speaking of the same side,” Denki interjected, “villains have been acting strangely toward us during our internship.”

“Oh… really?” Toga asked, completely unconvincingly feigning ignorance.

“You gonna tell us, blondie, or are we going to have to force it from you?” Neito asked.

“I’d like to see you try! And anyway, you’re blond, too, so—”

“To be fair, Mr. Compress isn’t here to intervene,” Denki offered with a shrug.

“Whose side are you on?!” Toga screeched. She looked to either side of her to see the soulmates that Denki was absolutely in love with, and conceded, “oh. Their side.”

“You know, you could have told us who you were interning with!” Toga started. “We had to find out the hard way!”

“So, the villain known as Razor…” Denki prompted.

“He said he helped you escape. We’ve been meaning to ask if that’s true,” Toga informed nonchalantly. “Dabi threatened to kill him if he was telling lies about you to get on the League’s good side.”

“No, yeah, he totally saved my ass,” Denki assured, before switching to his own question, “get on the League’s good side?”

“Well, yeah! Why do you think we broke Porky out of his holding cell?! Not just for giggles!”

“Porky?” Neito asked, trying to think about who Toga could be talking about.

“Uh…” Hitoshi started, hoping he was wrong, “do you mean the guy with the porcupine quirk that surrendered to me?”

“The very one!” Toga confirmed with a nod.

“His alias is Quill, and I doubt his legal name is Porky…” Hitoshi countered. “And I didn’t know he was released.”

“Not released!” Toga corrected. “Broken out! He did you a favor, so we did him a favor.”

Hitoshi stared at her with wide eyes. When he was able to dart his eyes in his soulmate’s direction, he wasn’t surprised to find that Neito looked the same.

“Denki…” Neito started, taking a few breaths before continuing. “When you said that the League is supporting us…”

“Yep!” Denki chirped, taking amusement in the realization that the soulmates were going through. “We have the full power of the League behind us! I actually didn’t realize how intense they were going to be until Razor helped get Tetsutetsu and me out of a collapsing building!”

“He’s how we found out that you were interning with Thirteen!” Toga practically wailed. “You should have told us! What if Razor decided not to risk saving your ass? Huh?!”

“But how would he even let you guys know?” Neito asked, not following Toga’s consistent insistence that Denki should have shared information with them.

“Oh, don’t you know? Denki here is Shigaraki’s favorite online gaming teammate, much to Dabi’s displeasure,” Toga shared with a shrug, like she didn’t just drop a bomb on the soulmates.

Chapter Text

“Does Neito seem a little… upset?” Denki asked from the side of the gym, pressed up against the wall to avoid the ice spikes that Neito was sending in all directions.

“Did his endless, frustrated screaming give it away?” Hitoshi asked, sending a small smile in Denki’s direction right before they dived in opposite directions as a spike went right for them.

“Sorry!” Neito called out, a frown on his face as he lowered his hands and started to make his way over. “I get a little ahead of myself when I get to use Todoroki’s quirk.”

“Aren’t you tired? You went the whole six minutes without stopping!” Denki praised in awe at his friend’s progress.

“I was trying to get myself up to seven,” Neito said, brow furrowed slightly in frustration at his failure.

“Seriously?! You went from five minutes to six over summer internship, and now you’re already shooting for seven on top of second year schoolwork? That’s amazing!” Denki praised, genuinely gushing over Neito’s successes.

He knew just how to disarm Neito and get him out of his negative headspace, didn’t he? Well, maybe not this time, because Denki was the reason Neito was so frustrated in the first place. And he didn’t even know it because he didn’t exactly do anything wrong!

“Denki,” Neito started, and Denki gave him his complete and serious attention right away, knowing just from the tone of Neito’s voice that what he was about to say was important. Frustrated, Neito pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and shook his head to clear his thoughts. He had to get this right, or Denki will think that he’s blaming him for something when it’s the other way around. “How long have you been online friends with…” Neito hesitated, looking around to make sure the gym was empty besides them, and muttered “League members?”

“It’s been years! Since middle school, really,” Denki answered easily. “Shigaraki was actually the first one that I was teamed up with when I first started. How weird is that?”

“Middle school?” Hitoshi asked, eyes widening as he understood Neito’s thought process, a feeling of dread washing over him. “Like when we stopped talking to you and you started to play games and make TikToks, right?”

“Yeah!” Denki chirped, turning to see the stricken look on the soulmates’ faces. “Oh, no! No, guys! Don’t do that! It’s not like that!”

“Something bad could have happened to you because we couldn’t deal with our feelings for you,” Neito insisted.

“All my bad luck is used up!” Denki insisted, seemingly out of nowhere, but Hitoshi knew exactly what Denki had meant because he had had the same thoughts before. “It turned out great for everyone! So, no harm, no foul!”

“But—”

“Fine!” Denki blurted out loudly, feigning annoyance as he rolled his eyes dramatically. “Don’t let it happen again!” he finished in a faux scolding tone, wagging finger and all.

The soulmates shared a glance.

“We weren’t planning on it,” Hitoshi answered for the both of them, reaching out to lightly grab Neito’s hand in solidarity before quickly releasing again.

Hitoshi hadn’t expected Neito to copy his quirk.

Hitoshi made a mental note to always suspect Neito of copying his quirk.

Heart pounding loudly in his chest, Neito asked, “do you trust us, Denki?”

Denki had started to answer immediately, no hesitation to tell them that he would always trust them, when the familiar haze of Hitoshi’s quirk enveloped his mind. He relaxed into it automatically, allowing Neito to take over total control. He was giddy and amazed because he hadn’t even heard the waver in his voice as he asked. They were both improving so much on so many levels, and he was truly happy and proud for his friends.

More than friends? They had gone on a date, after all.

“That was a cheap shot,” Hitoshi reprimanded lightly.

“I couldn’t do this otherwise,” Neito admitted, wringing his hands and bouncing on his feet, finally giving away how nervous he felt. “Besides, he can break out whenever he wants,” he added in defense with a shrug.

“We were going to do this separately, so it didn’t feel like we were teaming up on you or anything,” Hitoshi started to explain to the blank-faced Denki when it was clear that Neito, for once in his life, was at a loss for words. “But it’s always been the three of us, hasn’t it? I don’t think it would feel right if it wasn’t all three of us. Not for something as important as this.”

Neito’s nervousness must have rubbed off on Hitoshi because Hitoshi’s breathing was quicker than usual, and he looked a little pale.

“You want in on this?” Neito asked before allowing him to move further, knowing that Hitoshi was feeling a little out of control of the situation, even if they knew that it would end well.

“Let’s try it,” Hitoshi agreed after a moment of thought. Turning toward the blank-faced Denki, he said, “we’re going to try to get you under my quirk from both of us. If you don’t want that, break out now.”

They knew he was all in before they even asked, but they waited a long 30 seconds before nodding to each other and seeing if they could pull it off.

“Will you answer me, Denki?” Hitoshi asked, voice laced heavily with his quirk.

“Say yes,” Neito commanded.

“Yes,” Denki recited easily, probably because it was what he wanted to answer anyway. His will and Neito’s command were working in the same direction.

And Hitoshi’s layered quirk put a thicker haze over Denki’s mind.

“It doesn’t even surprise me anymore that everything with Denki is just so easy,” Hitoshi sighed out, feeling better now that he had some control.

Even when it was the first time trying something that the soulmates had only discussed briefly, not even knowing if it was possible, Denki would be the one to come along and make it so easy that they wondered why they hadn’t had the idea sooner.

Just then, the door loudly banged against the wall as it was pushed open with too much force. Looking over, the soulmates saw none other than Bakugou, who groaned aloud when he saw that the gym was already taken. Before leaving though, he hesitated, glancing at Denki once again.

“You have him under your quirk? Not really fair that it’s two against one when that one doesn’t even have control over himself,” he muttered loudly, stalking forward towards the trio.

“Please,” Neito sneered, not in the mood to be interrupted. “He can break out whenever he wants.”

“Not a chance,” Bakugou retorted automatically. “If I can’t do it, then he sure as hell can’t either. Whatever is going on here, it’s sketchy as hell. I can feel your anxiety.” Stomping over to Denki he shoved him hard, “come on, dunce face. Let’s get you out of here.” He stopped short though, confused when Denki stayed firmly under the quirk’s influence, even as he toppled over and landed in a slouched sitting position on the gym floor. “The fuck?”

Hitoshi and Neito had already decided to just let Bakugou get on with it. There was no use in fighting him when they really just wanted to be alone with Denki again, and the best way to do that was to have Denki tell him to get lost himself. But when he was shoved so roughly, and the control started to slip, they felt Denki pull the control back over his mind, not only not taking the freedom that Bakugou’s actions had offered, but actively refusing to leave the haze of the double-dose of quirk he was under through his own will alone.

The soulmates looked at each other wide-eyed. Inside his mind, Denki was furiously determined to not let the control slip. The soulmates were nervous, which was rare. They just did something completely new and amazing and barely gave it a second thought. Wherever this was going, Denki wanted to see it happen. He didn’t want to give the soulmates any reason to stop, so he willed himself to stay firmly under their influence.

“Do you know what this means?” Hitoshi asked Neito, brows furrowed in amazement.

“No,” Neito drawled as he turned his head to look down at Denki.

“Okay, cool. Because neither do I.”

“Get out,” Neito demanded next.

The demand was not laced with quirk, so Denki was not affected. The demand was sent in Bakugou’s direction anyway, even as Neito’s eyes didn’t move from Hitoshi’s.

“I’m not just going to—”

“He wants to stay under,” Hitoshi tried to reason with him.

Bakugou hesitated. Sure, Neito was a slimy son-of-a-bitch, but Hitoshi had already proven himself trustworthy.

“Ask him yourself, but later,” Neito demanded, the desperation leaking through in his voice. “Please.”

Neito said please. To Bakugou. It was sketchy as hell, and Neito’s forced politeness made it even more so. Bakugou made a mental note to check in on Denki later, and hoped he was making the right choice. Looking back at Hitoshi once more to see the desperation and anticipation as clear on his face as it was in Neito’s voice, Bakugou turned and sulked his way to the door.

“You do anything to hurt him, and I’ll kill you,” he snarled as he stormed through the door.

He didn’t look back when Hitoshi called out after him. “We wouldn’t have it any other way!”

“You go first,” Neito decided quickly.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I messed it all up last time.”

“If you don’t stop putting yourself down, Denki will break free just to argue with you,” Hitoshi warned, though a smile tugged on his lips, his tension slowly ebbing away as they were left alone again, and he had more control over the situation.

Denki didn’t have to tell them that Hitoshi was right. They already knew. They knew him so well.

“I thought we’d have to play rock, paper, scissors to see who got to go first,” Hitoshi continued as he stepped forward, speaking to Neito with his eyes solely focused on Denki. “Stand up,” he commanded then, gently, and Denki’s body moved without his permission to retake his standing position as Hitoshi got closer and closer.

Denki’s heartrate sped up, but immediately slowed again, his body not allowing anything out of the norm that wasn’t commanded of him. His breathing didn’t pick up to allow for his heartrate to remain elevated. It was a forced sense of calm that felt so natural because he had been under this quirk so many times. It was like the injection of calming drugs given to him at the psychiatric hospital, but without the side effects and the ability to turn it off just as soon as the soulmates deemed it appropriate to do so, or even for Denki himself, if he had decided to break free.

“This might be unconventional, but we really need the time to go slow and think without your reactions… or your worry.” Hitoshi leaned closer, looking intently into Denki’s eyes. “But you aren’t worried, are you?” he asked rhetorically, already knowing the answer, but not any less amazed.

Neito stood a few short steps away, watching intently with his hands clasped in front of his lips, holding himself back and being content to just watch, forcing himself to take deep, steady breaths.

Neito had never been good at waiting for his turn, but there in that gym with the harsh fluorescent lighting, the view was amazing, and the moment was serene.

“I’m going to kiss you, now,” Hitoshi warned, voice dropping to just above a whisper, his breath heavy with anticipation. “If you don’t want me to, you know what to do.”

After a slight pause to give Denki time to break free and push him away, Hitoshi leaned in, and pressed his lips against Denki’s.

When the thought that maybe Denki was unable to break free, even if he wanted to, because he was under double the amount of quirk, Hitoshi’s panic started to bubble up. It accelerated rather than eased when he felt Denki break free after a moment, wondering if it maybe just took him longer and he had just messed everything up.

When Hitoshi started to pull back, Denki reached up and grabbed the back of his head, pulling him back in, his own lips moving to mold against Hitoshi’s.

Pulling away, Hitoshi blinked in awe at Denki, who was smiling brightly at him.

“Sorry!” he chirped, not sounding sorry at all. “I couldn’t just not kiss you back! That would have been torture!”

“My turn,” Neito demanded, deciding that he waited for his turn enough for a century. “I’m ready for my redo,” he rushed before his lips landed on Denki’s, taking the place of his soulmate’s lips a few seconds earlier.

When Neito felt Denki smile against his lips, he pulled back, his own confused smile on his face as he watched Denki look up and around.

“What?” Neito asked, feeling light and carefree.

“We didn’t destroy the gym lights this time!” Denki declared, smiling wider as he looked back at Neito. “Success!”

The three boys lied on the gym floor, hoping that Bakugou wouldn’t rush back in and grumble about them taking up a gym to just lie there on the floor like a bunch of extras who would be lucky to end up as sidekicks to some D-listers.

Denki had the fingers of one hand intertwined with Hitoshi’s, while the other hand traced patterns across the back of Hitoshi’s hand as he stared up at the ceiling in thought. Neito’s head was on his stomach, rising and falling gently with each inhale and exhale Denki took. They all just basked in the glorious feeling of reciprocated love.

“Did you know what we were planning?” Neito asked suddenly.

“No, but I hoped!” Denki chirped with a breathy laugh, gently jostling Neito’s head that still rested on his stomach. “I thought it might be coming after Hitoshi showed so much trust at the waterpark.”

“The fact that it was a date didn’t give it away?” Neito asked with a smile, still staring straight up at the ceiling, at the lights that they did not shatter.

“I mean, I didn’t want to assume anything!” Denki lilted. The soulmates didn’t have to turn to see Denki’s expression because they heard the smile in his voice.

“Back up,” Hitoshi requested, “how did I show you trust at the waterpark? The Toga thing?” he guessed.

“Well, that, and… well… you know how you told us about how you were nervous around water for a long time? After your one foster brother pushed you in the deep end of a pool when you didn’t know how to swim?” Denki started.

Hitoshi hummed his acknowledgement and Neito stayed silent to listen to his two favorite people discuss trust and small details that others might not notice.

“You’re still nervous, a least a little bit, I think, because when we swim as a class, you make sure that you’re never near the edge if there’s a chance someone can be behind you.”

After a moment, Hitoshi agreed, “yeah, I guess. But what does that have to do with anything?” he asked, genuinely curious as to where the conversation would lead.

“When Neito and Toga were on the racing slides,” Denki started, and Neito really tuned in, wanting to hear about something that he didn’t get the chance to witness himself, “you went right up to the edge as you yelled and cheered for Toga.”

“Traitor,” Neito muttered under his breath.

“You didn’t even flinch when I came from behind you to cheer on Neito.”

“At least someone was on my side!” Neito grumbled.

“Someone had to cheer Toga on,” Hitoshi retorted. “Especially when she goes against a cheater.”

“How did I—?!”

“We both saw you copy that weight changing quirk,” Denki admitted. “That’s how you won by a landslide! It should have been a close race, but it wasn’t at all!”

“Yeah, okay,” Neito gave in, a wide smile growing on his face as he recalled Toga’s indignant accusation that he cheated, but unable to answer how when questioned.

“I knew you wouldn’t push me in or anything,” Hitoshi answered simply, bringing them back to the original topic.

“Not only that,” Denki disputed. “You didn’t even flinch when others passed by behind us. One guy even bumped into you and you stumbled forward, but you didn’t even turn around! You just kept yelling for Toga to go faster!”

Neito turned his head to look at Hitoshi’s face from his position on Denki’s stomach, ignoring the stretch from his neck being at a weird angle as he watched his soulmate consider Denki’s revelation.

“I guess… No, I definitely trust you enough that I know you wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. If anyone was going to try to push me in on purpose, I know you’d be able to sense it from a mile away,” Hitoshi rambled, saying the words aloud as they entered his brain, not feeling the need to censor any thoughts or rephrase anything into something more acceptable.

“That’s a lot of pressure!” Denki squeaked.

Hitoshi laughed. “Even if someone did manage to sneak up and push me in, I knew it would be fine.”

“Because you can swim now?” Denki ventured.

“Because I knew you would be there to pull me right back out.”

Recap of the last 50 Chapters:

Denki heard soulmate voices in his head, but instead of only hearing one, he heard two at the same time, which knocked him on his ass (literally)! Because it’s rare to find your soulmate at 12-years-old, and even rarer to have two soulmates, the doctor told his parents that he most likely has early onset schizophrenia and is hallucinating, but marks in his chart the potential that he might have heard his soulmates just so that the possibility can be explored more discreetly, once he’s away from his parents and so no one’s getting their hopes up just for it to not be true.

Denki is sent to Fields Mental Hospital where he meets Momo, Kyoka, and Touya and jams out during music therapy. Back in school, Hitoshi and Neito hear Denki sing and think that Hitoshi’s mental quirk is interacting with their new soulmate bond, so they are sent to Fields Mental Hospital to do some testing with Hitoshi’s quirk and their bond to see if they can determine what is going on. My OC, Hitoshi’s foster care caseworker, Wakakuro, is mentioned, but not actively introduced. Denki gets to meet Neito and Hitoshi. Neito lives up to his reputation as a frequent flier of Fields. An OC technician, Chizato, is introduced. He has a lighthearted, easygoing relationship with frequent flier, Neito.

Neito doesn’t act like he normally does around Hitoshi and Denki, and Touya wants to find out what’s going on. Denki and Neito are amazed that Touya was trained by Endeavor, so they get Touya to agree to train them after catching him up about how they had arrived on the unit together (and how it actually wasn’t Neito’s fault, for once). The QQQ (Quick, Quiet Quad) was formed, training regimens were made, and code names were dished out. Neito was deemed “Raion,” meaning lion. Denki was deemed “Tensai,” meaning genius. Touya was deemed “Aka,” meaning red. Hitoshi’s code name has yet to be revealed!

Hitoshi and Neito go through quirk-bond experiments after roping Touya and Denki into the mix. Hitoshi and Denki are amazed at how easily Neito and Touya can stand up for themselves against adults and how the adults actually listen to them and respect them because they are both used to following adults’ blind authority.

After being released from Fields, Hitoshi get placed with new foster parents, more of my OCs, the Hamabi family, consisting of his foster father, Genori, and foster mother, Hanisu. They are pretty great, but Hitoshi also had to move schools after finding his soulmate, but he luckily finds himself at Denki’s school! They go on a field trip to the zoo and have a great time after locating and rescuing Neito from a group of bullies who target him because of his quirk.

Neito’s birthday party consists of only Denki and Hitoshi. They practice using Hitoshi’s quirk and careful instructions to add to Touya’s continued training programs to add an extra level to the piñata. Denki’s birthday party is fun because Neito and Hitoshi look out for him and don’t let his other “friends” ruin his day. Denki secretly invites the others from Fields (Kyoka, Momo, Ochako, Minoru, Tenya, and Izuku) to Hitoshi’s birthday party, knowing that no one from class will show up. Neito gets ahold of Endeavor’s phone number to track down Touya so that he can crash the slumber party to hold an impromptu training the next morning. Touya dies.

Neito and Hitoshi distance themselves from Denki after they discover that they feel the same about Denki as they feel about each other. Denki spends some time with his other friends from Fields, but ultimately finds new hobbies, like playing online video games and making TikTok videos.

Neito, Hitoshi, and Denki all make it into UA. Denki and Neito face off in a battle where Neito steals his quirk with the plan to outdo him with his own quirk in front of both hero classes, but it backfires spectacularly, and Denki jumps in to undo the damage as much as possible. Bakugou is a good friend to Denki, even though he doesn’t understand what he sees in Neito and Hitoshi, and he provides Denki with some much-needed catharsis in the form of junk yard therapy. Denki makes a new connection with Shouto, and then promptly destroys the gym by almost reconnecting with Neito, getting caught almost kissing him by Hitoshi and freaking out by assuming that he must hate him for getting in between the soulmates.

The sports festival happens, Bakugou wins, and he is thrown onto stage in chains and muzzled for the effort. This is more important that whatever is going on between Denki and the soulmates, so Denki puts this all aside and asks Hitoshi and Neito for their help in leading another demonstration, which is pretty damn successful and also has the added benefit of having the whole school pretty competent with sign language.

The students are shipped off to Beasts Forest for the training camp and Neito goes wild. On top of his classes from studying with Denki instead of being preoccupied with harassing Class 1-A, Neito is able to participate in the festivities, and so he is in the forest when the League of Villains attack. Neito is an absolute menace and takes every advantage, copying Twice’s quirk to make a clone of Bakugou so they kidnap a clone instead of the real thing. He also copies Toga’s quirk and turns into Toga during a scuffle with her, but Denki is able to quickly tell them apart. Mr. Compress makes quick work of knocking Neito out and taking Denki as another captive, though.

The League of Villains find out quickly that Denki is the only student they have because the Bakugou they have is a clone. Denki recognizes that Dabi is Touya immediately and starts to worm his way into the hearts of the members of the League, one by one, starting with Shigaraki once Dabi figures out that Denki is none other than their online gaming friend that they’ve been playing regularly with for years. Denki declares his friends as off-limits, and my OC, Force Majeure, is introduced, using her quirk, Compulsion, to protect Denki from being suspected as a traitor to UA when he is ultimately returned. During the botched rescue, Shigaraki is electrocuted, and Denki ends up performing CPR and acting as an impromptu AED. He can’t tell anyone anything because of Force Majeure’s quirk, so everyone thinks that he’s been tortured instead of that he’s worried that he wasn’t able to rescue Shigaraki.

Hitoshi gets moved from his current placement with his foster parents, the Hamabis, to his pre-adoptive family including Aizawa and Yamada. Hitoshi and Neito are able to cheer Denki up, and after a visit from Toga (which Denki, at first, mistakes as a visual hallucination) in which he learns that Shigaraki had survived and is alive, he is back to his cheerful self. Hitoshi and Neito find out about Denki’s time with the League of Villains by going through his TikTok drafts, and Denki tells them some about what actually happened with the League. The boys start seeing evidence of the League’s intentions in action through their internships when villains refuse to go against or injure them. My OC, Full Throttle, is mentioned, as he is the cause of the building collapse that Denki meets my other OC, Razor, in.

Hitoshi and Neito confess their feelings to Denki and invite Denki on a waterpark date where they experience some quirk discrimination and run into Toga. During training, Neito and Hitoshi both put Denki under Hitoshi’s brainwashing quirk to gather up the nerve to kiss him for the first time.

Now that we’re all caught up, let’s move on to Chapter 51! <3

Chapter Text

“I really think they’re trying to kill us.”

“You’re so dramatic, Nei,” Hitoshi dismissed with an affectionate eyeroll.

“No, no! He might have a point!” Denki defended lightheartedly, leafing through the papers he was given, mind half on the conversation and half on his task at hand. “This year’s schoolwork is really intensive, and now they’re adding another internship on top of it. Maybe it really is to kill off the weak.”

“Too bad I’m not going down that easy!” Neito declared as he bolted forward to grab his own stack of flyers, reinvigorated and ready to get down to business. He always was ready to accept a challenge! “Let’s see them try to call me weak!”

“Holy shit…” Denki whispered under his breath before leaping up, his flyers scattering everywhere. He repeated louder, “holy shit!”

Hitoshi glanced over at the flyer that Denki was holding tightly in his hands and let out a low whistle. “You’re being recruited by Hawks? That’s great! Are you going to take it?”

“How could I pass up the opportunity to intern with the number two hero?! I’d regret it for the rest of my life!”

Neito stepped forward to pry the flyer out of Denki’s hands, and Denki quickly let go with a sheepish grin.

"Don’t want you to rip it. You’re going to be a big hot shot someday, and you’ll want to remember this moment, I’m sure,” Neito mused, a soft smile on his face at his blond boyfriend’s barely contained excitement. “I can get it framed in gold for you, if you want.”

Denki snorted, though he wondered if Neito was being serious. Knowing him, he probably was. Denki swore he’d never get used to this and wondered how Hitoshi did. After a glance in Hitoshi’s direction only to see him shrug uselessly at him, Denki figured out that Hitoshi hadn’t figured it out quite yet, either.

Neito’s eyes scanned over the flyer, and he asked, “I wonder why Hawks chose you.” He hummed in thought before adding, “I wonder if he has something in mind…”

“How do you mean?” Denki asked, looking over his shoulder to look at the flyer again, but wisely keeping his hands off of it.

“Well, he taught Tokoyami how to fly. I wonder if he saw some untapped potential in you, too.”

Denki smiled as he thought about the shocked faces from all of his classmates, himself included, as Tokoyami literally took to the skies in their mock battle of their second year at UA.

“If he does and he’s successful, I’ll teach you everything I learn!” Denki promised easily.

It wasn’t unexpected, but it still made Neito feel warm and happy that Denki made it a priority to always make Neito feel completely welcome to his quirk, like it was meant to be both of theirs from the beginning anyway.

As the soulmates got up to leave, gathering their own flyers and helping Denki pick up his own and neatly stack them once again, the Hawks flyer lying proudly on top, they each pulled Denki in for a quick kiss before leaving through his dorm door, promising to meet up for training the next morning before class.

Denki swore he would never get used to it, and he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face even an hour later.

“What has you so happy?” Toga asked, amusement dancing in her voice.

“How can you tell?” Denki responded, answering her question with a question, still unable to force the corners of his mouth back into a neutral position. He flopped back onto his bed, holding his phone lightly against his ear as he smiled dumbly at his ceiling.

“It’s in your voice. I can tell you’re smiling. Now, spill! Is it about the soulmates?”

“Of course, it’s about the soulmates!” Denki laughed out. “They kissed me! Both of them! And every time it happened after the first time, it felt like the first time all over again!"

“I’m not surprised,” Toga responded, thought Denki knew what she meant by hearing a smile in a voice and was sure that she was smiling as she said it. “You freely admitted to being in love with them—”

“Back when you kidnapped me.”

“—Back when we kidnapped you, but that’s all in the past! Water under the bridge!” Toga insisted, making Denki laugh loudly before returning to her original train of thought. “And the chemistry you three had at the waterpark! Don’t think I didn’t notice how it was almost like you were reading each other’s minds! I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before!” And, after a short pause. “After heavy consideration, now I’m sure I’ve never seen anything like it before!”

“Well, you’re in a good mood, too, I can tell,” Denki offered, hoping that Toga would tell him what has her in such a good mood as well.

“Hanging around the waterpark with other teenagers who actually didn’t mind being around me… well, you know, after getting over the whole me being a villain thing—”

“No biggie.”

“That’s what I’m saying! Oh! Also, we have a hero trying to infiltrate the League right now!”

Denki sat up, heartrate increasing, the smile finally wiped off his face. He pressed his phone against his face, his grip on his phone tightening every second. “What?”

“He thinks he’s being so sneaky!” she snickered. “Like he doesn’t think that we would figure out that he will report every little thing back to the Hero Commission!” Her snickering turned into full belly laughing.

“That sounds a little risky,” Denki offered quietly, hunching in on himself, suddenly too self-aware about the anxiety wracking his body for his liking.

“No need to worry!” Toga tried to placate. “We meet him at places that we determine, and he has no idea where our base is located. We have Kurogiri on standby every time, so if it’s a trap, we’ll be pulled out immediately!”

Denki blew out a breath from his puffed cheeks. “If you say so.”

“I do say so! It’s been so much fun recently! More freeing and relaxing… and it all started after the whole thing with you… or maybe after All For One was captured and Shigaraki truly took over without any oversight. So much happened so quickly, I’m not sure what the exact cause was. Maybe all of it combined? But we’ve all been having so much fun!”

Who knew being friends with a villain would be so emotionally taxing? All Denki did was worry all day!

He worried all day about his hero friends, too, so he guessed he was just a worrier.

“Just be careful,” Denki asked, his voice giving away how worried he was.

“Oh, it’s not me you should be worried about! Twice and Dabi are the ones who are out recruiting!” Toga chirped.

“Not helping,” Denki snapped.

-.-.-

“So, then, after we kiss Denki goodbye, Neito and I walked out of the dorms right into Todoroki! Spilled his soba everywhere! So, like the good fellow classmates we strive to be, we helped him make a replacement. He invited us to eat with him, and we couldn’t exactly turn him down. Have you ever spent more than five minutes with him? He’s hilarious!” Hitoshi rambled, drying the dishes that Yamada was handing to him after a quick wash. “Anyway, that’s why I was late for dinner.”

“And not hungry,” Yamada added with a nod.

“That just means we have extra leftovers for lunch tomorrow!” Hitoshi countered. “It’s not like Endeavor will miss the extra money it took to feed three people instead of just the usual one. Actually, Todoroki offered to have us for dinner again, and offered caviar… and oddly a saltshaker filled with gold flakes instead of salt.” Hitoshi shrugged. “He said that gold flakes are edible, and Neito agreed, so I’m inclined to take their word for it. It might be edible, but I don’t know if it would actually taste good or if it’s just a status thing for rich people.”

Hitoshi handed the dried bowl over to Aizawa, who was tasked with putting them away, but Aizawa just stood there with the bowl in his grip, a thoughtful look on his face.

“Back up,” Aizawa demanded then, deciding that no, he really couldn’t just let Hitoshi gloss over major details like that. “You said you kissed Denki goodbye?”

Yamada smiled as Hitoshi handed Aizawa another cleaned and dried bowl, only for Aizawa to stack it on top of the other as he stared down at the kid. He knew he was in for quite the entertainment. Dinner and a show? He was being spoiled!

“Well, yeah,” Hitoshi muttered, brow furrowed with confusion. “I already told you both that Neito and I were going to take Denki on a date to the waterpark, so I thought that you would guess that this would be the natural order of things.”

“I thought you meant, like, a friend date.”

“A friend date?” Hitoshi snorted. “What the hell is that?”

Aizawa looked to Yamada for help, who just shrugged uselessly at him with a huge smile on his face.

“Besides, I already told you that I love Denki. Remember? It was the first time I successfully captured you,” Hitoshi reminded, flinging the dampened dish towel over his shoulder and leaning against the counter.

“Only because I was distracted,” Aizawa muttered under his breath, though the corners of his mouth quirked up.

“Damn it!” Hitoshi shouted suddenly, letting his head fall into his hands in tragic despair. Aizawa and Yamada startled at the loud exclamation and were about to ask what was wrong, but there was no need because Hitoshi continued in a dramatic whine, “I should have saved the reveal for training so I could get you again! If I would have known that you were such a prude—”

“I’m not a prude!” Aizawa interjected indignantly.

“Do you have anything to say about this?” Hitoshi asked, turning everyone’s attention to the quietly smiling Yamada.

“I think I’ll sit this one out,” Yamada tried to diffuse, but his husband wasn’t having it.

“No, no! I think I want to hear what you have to say!” Aizawa demanded, finally turning around to put the dried bowls up in the cabinet where they belonged.

After a brief hesitation, Yamada braced himself, offered a traitorous smile to the two, and blurted, “like father like son?” with a shrug of his shoulders.

“And what do you mean by that, Hizashi?” Aizawa demanded, hands on his hips as he stared his husband down.

“I would also like to know,” Hitoshi offered matter-of-factly. “I don’t see how I can be compared to a prude.”

Hitoshi ran from Aizawa, laughing loudly and dodging the capture weapon that snapped at his heels.

“Well, you trained him well,” Yamada offered after Hitoshi made a successful escape to his bedroom.

“Maybe too well,” Aizawa muttered, but he had a smile quickly growing across his face.

Aizawa and Yamada shared a knowing, comfortable smile. Every interaction with Hitoshi further proved to them that they had made the right decision, and every day was more fun and interesting than the last.

Chapter Text

Denki was sore and exhausted. He wasn’t surprised that he ended up chasing an impossibly fast Hawks all weekend during his first intern shift; Tokoyami had warned him, after all. He had no reason to complain; he knew what he signed up for. Still, he hissed in pain as he lowered himself gently onto his bed. The hot shower he had taken had provided little relief. He hoped that he didn’t have practical training the next day.

Had Denki ever wished for textbook work over applied heroic lessons before? Well, there was a first for everything!

Still, he fell asleep with a smile on his face, knowing that he had gotten Hawks’s attention.

When the building collapsed, another disaster caused by the villain Full Throttle, Denki was already close by, so he didn’t miss all the action by running all over the prefecture, trying to catch up to Hawks.

It was actually Tokoyami who passed on the message that his group needed help. It had seemed that Tokoyami and Denki had essentially switched internships. Denki was spending his days chasing after Hawks, and Tokoyami took to the skies to be the bird’s-eye view for Thirteen and their rescue teams.

Tokoyami had shared with Denki that now he could fly, he wanted to figure out all of the ways that he could use this to better himself as a hero. It seemed that surveillance for rescue missions was first on his list. He just so happened to see Hawks flying nearby right before the building went down, so he offered to request his assistance, and Thirteen readily agreed. It was much safer to send in Hawks’s feathers than actual rescuers after all. The less risk, the better they could serve those who needed help.

Denki was a little put out by the fact that he wouldn’t be adventuring down dusty, crumbling hallways again, but then he remembered that he only got out unharmed because of the goodwill of a villain. He figured that his boyfriends might revive him just to kill him again if he took such a risk when there was a safer alternative.

As he was walking around the perimeter, looking for anything or anyone that might benefit from his attention, he found a gaggle of kids huddled off to the side, worried looks and tears running down their faces as two adults were trying, and failing spectacularly, to calm them down. When one of the kids bolted, Denki ran after him, waving off the frazzled adults to stay with the other children.

“Hi,” Denki greeted when he saw the kid around the corner, huddled against the wall in an alleyway.

The kid startled, backing away with his hands held up, his face paling.

“Woah, it’s okay,” Denki reassured in a gentle voice, hands up in a placating manner as he stopped his advance. “I’m Chargebolt. I’m a hero student who is interning with Pro Hero Hawks.”

“Hawks?” the kid asked, face gaining color again.

“Yeah. You saw his feathers, didn’t you?” Denki asked, trying to gauge if he believed him or if he needed more convincing. When the kid nodded, Denki laughed to ease the tension and said, “I couldn’t believe when the number two hero wanted me to intern with him. Pretty crazy, huh?”

“You must be good,” the boy commented, starting to calm down, unknowingly copying Denki’s slower and deeper breathing pattern. “To be recruited by Hawks.”

“Yeah, I must be,” Denki said, nodding, fostering the confidence the kid would have in Denki. “Hey, you’re a big, brave kid, right? You’re not one of those… baby type kids, are you?”

The kid sneered. “Do I look like a baby kid to you?!”

Denki smiled. The tears were already drying on the kid’s face without any more rushing to replace them.

“No, of course not,” Denki placated. “But I needed to make sure before I shared any top secret, confidential information.”

“Top secret?” the boy repeated, inching closer and lowering his voice. “You can tell me.”

“Only the bravest kids can handle it,” Denki warned. “Otherwise, you could get all of the other kids all upset and whining.”

“I can handle it!” the boy insisted, voice still quiet, but stomping his foot with his determination to hear what Denki had to say.

“The building collapsed because of a villain attack,” Denki informed him, voice low.

The boy moved closer and leaned it to hear better. His breath caught in his throat for just a moment before steadying out again.

“But with the number two hero on the case…” Denki trailed off.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” the kid finished.

Denki beamed at him and ruffled his hair, glad that the kid came up with it on his own, so it felt like his own idea instead of something fed to him. Manipulative? Maybe a little, but there was no use in the kids worrying about something that they had no control over.

“This is Chargebolt,” the kid introduced to the other children and the two adults as they wandered near the group. “He’s going to be a top hero! And he needs our help!”

The kids listened intently as Denki told them that they needed to keep track of every single person that came out of the three exits that were within sight of the group.

“I need hair color and length, shoe type and color, and whether they are wearing glasses or not,” Denki instructed. “It’s a lot to keep track of and remember, but I’m sure with all of you working together, you can do it.”

Denki sent a wink in the adults’ direction, who glanced at him gratefully before encouraging the kids to get started as someone exited, covered in dust and coughing, but essentially unharmed.

Hawks had heard of what Denki had done and pulled him aside. Denki had braced himself to be reprimanded, but Hawks had praised his good idea. The kids were being cared for in the daycare portion of the building, the majority of them having parents that worked in the building. Giving them a task to focus on, given to them by an up-and-coming hero no less, had redirected their attention and greatly eased the job of the daycare employees that were at a loss on how to handle something so traumatic as it was unfolding before their eyes.

“Is Shigaraki joining soon?” Denki asked Dabi, adjusting his headset to sit more comfortably over his ears as he entered the game, his character spawning next to Fri3ndlyFir3.

“Not today,” Dabi answered, immediately charging his character forward as soon as Denki was situated. “A lot has been happening lately, so he’s dealing with some fallout right now,” Dabi informed vaguely.

“What has—?” Denki started.

“I heard what you did,” Dabi stated suddenly through Denki’s headset as they maneuvered through the gamescape. “With the kids at the collapse.”

Dabi was merciless, killing everything that moved without hesitation, and moving forward to do it all again.

“More villains spying on me and reporting back to you?” Denki asked lightly.

“Something like that,” Dabi admitted in a mutter. “That was a lot for you to put on a kid.”

“Oh. You think?” Denki asked, second-guessing if he had actually done the right thing or not.

It worked out well because, like before, the only casualty was the direct victim of Full Throttle. If any of the kids had lost parents during the collapse, Denki could have ruined their view on heroes altogether.

“Shit. I didn’t mean it like that, Denks,” Dabi offered. Denki could hear the frustration in his voice. “That wasn’t fair of me. It’s not like it’s not a lot to be put on you, either. You’re still just a kid who shouldn’t have to make these big decisions and face these dangers.”

“Oh,” Denki started, surprised at the direction of the conversation. “It’s no big deal, really. I feel like I was made for this.”

“No offence, Denki, but you also feel like you were made to be with Hitoshi and Neito, and look how that turned out.” When Denki didn’t respond, Dabi knew that he had royally messed up. “Shit, Denki. I didn’t mean—I’m just going to go before I ruin anything else.”

And with that, Dabi’s character dissolved, leaving Denki’s character alone on the screen. Denki’s protests entered the empty line, not heard by anyone else as Dabi had already logged off.

Chapter Text

Denki had spent the next few days trying to speak to any member of the League. The usernames Fri3ndlyFir3 and High5UrDead stayed dark, the ‘last signed on’ hours and days growing every time he checked.

Either Toga’s phone was turned off, or she blocked his number. He didn’t think he had done anything to warrant their hatred, so he guessed (and hoped) that they were really busy with some villainy that they didn’t have time to answer him quite yet. When the incessant thoughts started to creep in that he must have somehow offended them (yes, the whole League of Villains, and something that he couldn’t even pinpoint. He knew it was ridiculous, but sometimes the thoughts just popped up), he would spend more time with the soulmates, his boyfriends.

When the classes were put against one another once again, it was for rescue training. Rescue training is important because civilian lives would be at risk, so everything had to be done with the utmost care. However, that didn’t mean that heroes could take all the time in the world to finish their tasks. Denki and Tetsutetsu knew that better than anyone, having been part of the rescue mission that the building had almost collapsed on them.

As luck would have it, Neito and Hitoshi were paired up during the random drawing.

“Fate really wants those two together,” Kendou offered in defense as the rest of Class 2-B groaned.

As fate would have it, Denki and Bakugou were the other pair that was entering the rescue simulation at the same time.

“Tch. I’m using you as a distraction for your boyfriends. They’ll expect it, and it will still work anyway,” Bakugou warned as he stalked forward to the starting line. “Anything to add?”

“Nope,” Denki answered easily. “We’ll plan as we find out what’s actually going on in there. No use in planning when that plan is probably not even going to be relevant.”

Bakugou looked at Denki closely, and Denki returned his gaze.

“Better to be flexible than too rigid with the planning?” Denki tried.

“I know what you’re saying, dunce face,” Bakugou barked. “I just didn’t expect our fighting—”

“Rescuing,” Denki corrected automatically, trying to keep Bakugou in the right mindset for the training.

“—styles to match up so well.”

The buzzer to start the training went off, and Denki rushed forward, Bakugou rushing through the doors to the building right behind him.

“And you didn’t say ‘they aren’t my boyfriends’ like you usually do,” Bakugou muttered quietly as he gracefully darted past.

Denki stopped for just half a second before following Bakugou’s lead as he rounded a corner, choosing a direction easily and not spending a second to hesitate or second-guess his choice. Despite the intensity of the dark atmosphere with the flickering fluorescent lights, Denki smiled.

True to his word, Bakugou had tracked him down after finding them in the gym that one, early morning. Denki didn’t really know what to say; he never discussed with the soulmates if they were going to be a public thing or not, so he just reassured Bakugou that he was fine and that those two were super trustworthy so there was nothing to worry about. Though, Denki did thank Bakugou for worrying in the first place. It was nice to be reminded that others cared about him enough to notice things and follow up with him later.

Denki figured that Bakugou might figure it out eventually, and probably sooner rather than later. Bakugou wasn’t top of the class for nothing!

And because it might actually break Denki’s heart to deny that those two boys were his boyfriends, he just smiled at Bakugou, his answer clear in his eyes.

“Well, shit,” Bakugou muttered under his breath as they made their way through the darkened hallways. “You don’t have to make heart-eyes about it.”

“Can’t help it,” Denki chirped easily with a shrug, not stumbling as he ran next to Bakugou, unable to wipe the smile off of his face.

After making another turn, both boys stopped in their tracks as they came face to face with their opponents.

“Any luck?” Hitoshi asked.

“None,” Denki responded automatically.

Bakugou nudged him sharply in the side. “Well don’t answer him, dipshit!”

“Hey, we’re all rescuers here, aren’t we?” Neito asked in a teasing tone.

Bakugou didn’t dignify that with a response—just stalked forward, nudging his way past the Class 2-B students.

“What if we split up and let each other know what we find?” Denki asked in an effort to both keep things civil and get the rescue done as efficiently as possible.

Bakugou turned on his heel, fire in his eyes. “This is supposed to be a competitive training to see who can successfully rescue the dumb fucking victim that got stuck in this hellhole.”

“We can get competitive after we locate the victim, yeah?” Hitoshi offered as a compromise, ever the peacemaker.

“If you don’t want to—” Denki started, going to offer to do things Bakugou’s way—they were teammates after all—before he was interrupted.

“Screw it,” Bakugou sighed out, his fingers going up to tightly pinch the bridge of his nose, trying to fend off the incoming stress headache he felt coming on. “Knowing our teachers, there’s probably some underhanded lesson in here about working together or some shit.”

“That does make a lot of sense,” Hitoshi offered. “That would explain why we weren’t allowed to watch the first two groups and hear their results.”

Bakugou grunted in agreement before extending his most sincere offer of working together. “Slow me down, and you die.”

“So dramatic,” Neito whispered with a smile ghosting his lips as Bakugou took the lead of the newly formed group of four.

Bakugou, not even bother to turn around, snapped, “you would be, too, if you were suddenly playing fourth wheel during what is supposed to be a training exercise.”

The soulmates glanced at each other, surprised at the specific wording. They glanced over at Denki who gave them a shrug with a lopsided grin, and suddenly they were all on the same page, fully understanding one another, like always.

“Touché.”

After a quick but thorough search of the first and second floors, the boys regrouped and wandered down to the basement level, Bakugou grumbling all the while about how it’s always the basement and they should have started there in the first place.

“The time we do decide to start in the basement, they’ll have the target on the top floor,” Denki offered with a quiet snicker.

“HELP,” the loud voice boomed, echoing off of the walls.

The boys looked around at each other, dread filling every ounce of their bodies as they all realized who exactly was playing their helpless victim.

“HEEEELP,” the voice boomed again, the swelling rise and fall of the tremor of the quirk-laced voice shaking more dust from the cracking walls, further darkening the hallways that they explored.

The four heroes in training rushed forward, taking care to move quickly, smoothly, and quietly to get to the ‘victim’ as quickly as possible without causing further damage to the structural integrity of the building.

“Hi, Present Mic,” Denki whispered as he dropped down onto his knees. “Uh, I mean, hello there, civilian. I’m Pro Hero Chargebolt. We’re here to help, but first I need you to keep your voice quiet. Without shaking your head yes or no, tell me if you can do that for me.”

“Sure, little listener!” Present Mic chirped.

“Great. What hurts right now?” Denki asked, getting down on his hands and knees to be on Present Mic’s level as the others got to work inspecting the pile of rubble that Present Mic was ‘stuck’ under to make sure that there was nothing they might have to be careful of during extraction.

Denki was a great distraction to the ‘civilian’ and asked all the right questions.

“Nothing hurts. I’m feeling pretty good. I was just scared of being alone and I’m a little stuck,” Present Mic informed.

The three boys who were busy inspecting made sure to listen actively to Present Mic’s answers as they did so, so that no time was wasted repeating answers.

“Are there any others that were near you when the building collapsed?” Denki asked, looking around at all of his companions occasionally, looking for any signal that they were ready to move on to extraction.

“No. Everyone else was on lunch break. I was manning the phones when the building started shaking and came down around me,” Present Mic answered.

“Hmm,” Denki hummed in thought as he gave another quick look around the building.

He noticed that there were no phone lines among the rubble. The training organizers wouldn’t overlook something like that.

“What floor do you work on?” Denki asked.

To a civilian, it would seem like he was just trying to keep them calm and distracted while the heroes worked. He had more than one motive, though.

“Here on this floor. Can you believe they stuck me in the basement?! After all these years of me giving my everything to this place, and they can’t even give me an office above ground?! I thought that after Endeavor became number one that things might start changing around here. I don’t think I’m asking for too much. Do you think I’m asking for too much?”

Denki realized that Present Mic wasn’t just playing a civilian, but either a civilian who was so hurt that he was confused, or a villain who actually didn’t belong there. Present Mic was oriented to time and space, as evidenced by his complaints about his expectations after Endeavor took the number one spot and his placement in the basement of the building. The ‘victim’ was oriented to time and space, but there were no phones on that floor. In fact, there were no phones allowed at all, according to the signs that were posted at every corner. Their ‘victim’ was also a villain.

“Is the exit out that way?” Denki asked as he pointed in the direction away from Hitoshi.

When Present Mic turned to see what Denki was pointing to, Denki quickly signed to Hitoshi to use his mask to mimic his voice to get Present Mic under his quirk.

“No, that’s the way to the boiler room,” Present Mic answered.

Before he could turn around, Hitoshi asked, using Denki’s voice, “what allergies do you have?”

Present Mic turned back to answer, his mouth already forming his answer when his eyes turned blank, and he was under Hitoshi’s control. The four heroes got to work pulling the rubble off of Present Mic as Denki explained that he thinks that Present Mic is playing not only their victim, but also a villain. The other four quickly agreed with Denki’s assessment, and Neito supplied their plan of attack.

“He already confirmed that he’s not hurt, so if we can get him out while keeping him under, then we should pass the training either way,” Neito offered.

“If he’s a civilian, he’s no worse for wear, even if a little mad about how we went about it. If he’s a villain, then we successfully extracted him without any casualties or collateral damage, got the villain out safely, and captured him all at the same time,” Bakugou reasoned aloud.

All four looked around at each other to listen to any other scenarios that any other might have thought about. When no one objected or offered a better alternative, they nodded and got back to work, pulling the blank-faced Present Mic from the pile of rubble that still surrounded him.

“He said that the exit was not that way,” Denki offered. “Though, he didn’t know enough about the building to fake working here, so I doubt if he knew whether or not that really was the exit. Kacchan, which way do we go?”

While Denki was a master of memorizing the layouts and maps, Bakugou was the one with the infallible internal compass. If there was an exterior wall that was close by, Bakugou would know which direction it would be in.

Without hesitation, Bakugou pointed in the direction to the group’s left, adjacent to where the ‘villain’ had told them was not the nearest exit. Without argument, the other three followed, Hitoshi commanding their possible villain to follow them quickly and with soft footsteps.

Bakugou hated these kinds of tactical trainings. In such closed spaces and with delicate infrastructure, he couldn’t take advantage of his quirk. He would never admit it aloud, but being with the three who counted on him for something other than the brute force of his strength was refreshing. He wasn’t the number one student in Class 2-A for nothing, and all of these extras would be wise to remember that!

Denki loved these kinds of trainings because it reminded him of his internship with Thirteen. He felt more at ease than his peers might in that type of circumstance because he had already faced it out there and experienced how current heroes handle different situations. He felt valued among the group, immediately being allowed to take charge of the questioning, and his judgment of the situation being accepted so easily. He felt important and smart, but also nervous that someday he wouldn’t live up to the expectations that he was building. This time, he knew they were making the right decision. But what about next time, when he’s a rookie among seasoned pros who doubt his observations? When he has to argue and fight for his ideas to be used, and when the pressure is there that any failure would be solely on his shoulders? Would he be able to handle the pressure and still come out strong? Still demand to have a say? Still demand to do what is the right thing for that specific circumstance?

Every time Hitoshi used his quirk in a heroic sense without his peers freaking out about it, he felt great. Even when his classmates would make a big deal in a positive way about his quirk, it still made him feel other, but it was hard to put those feelings into words when he was supposed to be enjoying any morsel of positive attention thrown in his direction.

Neito was just relieved that Bakugou wasn’t still on his ass about tying him up in a tree at the training camp.

When the boys plus their captive maybe-villain climbed some stairs to ground level only to reach a dead end instead of the expected emergency exit door, Denki insisted that it wasn’t a dead end.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are we looking at the same wall?” Bakugou snapped.

“I don’t know, are we?” Denki sassed. “Because, to me, it looks like these are newer bricks than the ones surrounding it.”

Hitoshi whistled lowly. “Nice catch, Denks.”

“So, we blast through,” Bakugou snarled, stepping through the group to brace himself for the explosion.

“Wait!” Neito demanded, grabbing Bakugou’s shoulder and pointing up at the ceiling. “It’s a load bearing wall. You blast through, and this whole thing could come down.”

“I don’t think it would count against us in a collateral damage sense,” Hitoshi offered. “The whole building would have to be demolished and rebuilt anyway.”

“But if we get hurt or hurt this guy,” Neito stated, gesturing wildly toward Present Mic, “that will definitely count against us.”

“So, one of us blasts from the front to get the wall out of the way, and the other blasts from behind to get us out of the way,” Bakugou stated matter-of-factly, like they should have already been doing just that instead of just discussing it.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Neito chirped, holding out his hand to receive Bakugou’s quirk.

Everyone was surprised when Bakugou was the one to suggest it, and everyone was even more surprised when Bakugou gifted Neito use of his quirk without further argument.

“I’ll take the back,” Bakugou volunteered. “It’s easy to blast through a wall, but it takes finesse to use the explosions to maneuver a body… or five.”

“Works for me,” Neito agreed, getting into position in front of the group.

Hitoshi used his capture weapon to wrap it around the group to make it easier on Bakugou to get everyone out as quickly as possible, putting Present Mic in the middle in hopes of cushioning him enough to keep him under Hitoshi’s quirk.

With two large blasts in quick succession, the group was on the outside of the building. The building groaned and shifted but didn’t fall. Present Mic was still under Hitoshi’s quirk. The group let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Finish line is over there,” Neito pointed, shaking the dust from his hair as he helped Hitoshi untie the group from the capture weapon.

“Only one group can win,” Bakugou muttered. “What happened to us splitting up once we found the victim, huh?”

“Hitoshi and Neito should take Present Mic over the finish line,” Denki said, his gaze already determined.

Bakugou sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “I get it, all right!” he snapped. “If Present Mic is actually a villain in this situation, and mindfuck lets go of him, then he could cause a lot of damage. It’s either they win, or we all lose.”

“You’re not going to try to suggest that Denki electrocute him so you both can take him over the finish line?” Neito offered.

“Fuck no. You think I’m stupid or some shit?!” Bakugou snarled. “And what happens when it’s revealed that we fucking electrocuted an innocent civilian who only looked like he might be a villain? Just fucking go before I change my mind and decide to fail us all by blowing all this shit up.”

If Hitoshi thought that getting Bakugou to call him by his name was a success, he hadn’t even ever considered the possibility of Bakugou agreeing that the win should go to any other team than his own.

“We think you did a great job, too, Bakugou,” Hitoshi offered with a smile as they walked past, issuing his command for Present Mic to follow.

“Fuck you.”

Aizawa greeted the group at the finish line.

“Present Mic and I together will give you your final evaluation scores,” Aizawa informed. “If you could release him, Hitoshi.”

With a lazy salute from Hitoshi, Present Mic regained control over himself.

“Present Mic will talk Shinsou and Monoma through their scores, while I’ll take Kaminari and Bakugou,” Aizawa instructed, beckoning the former two to follow him.

Aizawa led Bakugou and Denki into a high-tech building with multiple video screens, various parts of their rescue frozen in time.

“Why did you agree to work together?” Aizawa asked, his face blank and giving nothing away.

“We all decided that it would go faster if we worked together to locate the victim, then we just kind of never found a natural breaking point again after that until the finish line was right there,” Denki explained.

“So, you just hand over the win without a fight? That doesn’t seem like you, Bakugou,” Aizawa prompted, wanting to hear from his more explosive student.

“If Present Mic was a villain in that scenario, then he would have already found out that we were onto him,” Bakugou grumbled. “He would have made a pitiful attempt to escape and could have taken others down with him, if given the chance. Dunce face could have electrocuted him, but if he was actually just a confused civilian and not a villain, that would have been terrible. Shinsou was the only one who could safely take Present Mic across the finish line, and that copycat extra was just lucky enough to be on his team.”

“Well, you passed,” Aizawa answered with a shrug, starting to turn away.

“Wait! What?!” Denki screeched, rushing around to once again be in front of Aizawa as he had attempted to walk away.

“Rescue missions aren’t about fame and glory. They’re about getting people out in the safest way possible. And you did that. So, you pass.”

After making sure he was dismissed, Denki bolted from the room, running straight over to the soulmates who had just been released from their own evaluations.

“I passed!” Denki yelled as he got closer.

“You passed?!” Neito and Hitoshi yelled back, Denki’s excitement easily transferring to the soulmates.

“I need a confetti quirk!” Neito shrieked into the sky.

Denki ran full speed into the soulmates, knocking them all over onto the ground in a heap of celebratory laughter. Bakugou trailed behind at a leisurely pace, slouched with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, but he couldn’t quite get the normal scowl to rest on his face.

Neito was the first to hoist himself back up to standing, and with Hitoshi sprawled out on the grass, hands behind his head, enjoying the feel of the sunshine on his face and the company of his boyfriends, Neito offered his hand to Denki to help him up.

Denki took it, smiling, and it felt so natural when Neito hoisted him up so effortlessly that he continued forward until their lips collided. Neither was sure if that was his intention, the other’s doing, or if it just happened so naturally that neither made a conscious effort.

The only thing that broke them apart in that moment was a gasp, followed by, “oh, shit!”

Chapter Text

If the students weren’t already looking in the trio’s direction due to their loud nature and small celebration of them all passing their evaluations, they were when Mineta made his loud exclamation.

“Oh, shit,” Mineta repeated once again when he turned to see that Hitoshi definitely saw Denki just lay one on his soulmate.

Hitoshi lazily pulled himself to standing.

Rushing over to plant himself between Hitoshi and the blonds, Mineta shouted “run away!” at Denki, pulling two purple, sticky balls from the top of his head as he passed.

“Mineta… buddy…” Hitoshi drawled, eyes flashing with what Mineta mistook as malice that Neito and Denki knew was amusement in the purest form.

Hitoshi took a relaxed step forward, but his ease put Mineta on the verge of panic. Mineta gulped and hunkered down, folding in on himself, but to his credit, he held his ground.

“Don’t you know that those with purple hair have to stick together?” Hitoshi asked playfully, taking another step forward and not letting his face give anything away.

“Now, Shinsou,” Mineta tried to reason, “you know I’d be on your side for anything else, but there’s no reason to go after Kaminari for some stupid mistake, right?”

Hitoshi was surprised that he got an answer so easily out of Mineta after asking him a direct question, not that he had his quirk active and ready to go, but still. He wondered if having Denki, Neito, and even Bakugou answering his questions on a regular basis had softened others to him, or maybe Mineta didn’t even notice what a huge mistake he might have been making.

Mineta, a little surprised that he still had control over himself after answering Hitoshi, dared a glance backwards to gauge how far Denki had managed to get and blanched when he saw that Denki was still standing there, not trying to run away at all. After the total self-sacrifice that included answering a direct question from Hitoshi to act as the ultimate distraction? The audacity!

Denki just shrugged at him, trying very hard to keep his face schooled, and stated, “It wasn’t a mistake. I just have to face the consequences of my actions this time, dude.”

“I’m sacrificing myself for nothing?!” Mineta whined, voicing his thoughts aloud and stomping his foot.

Realizing that his back was to the enemy, he quickly whirled around, relieved to find that Hitoshi hadn’t snuck up on him.

“Not for nothing! You look so cool and brave right now!” Denki encouraged from behind him.

“Literally not helping,” Mineta muttered under his breath before pausing, considering. “You seriously think so?”

“Yeah, dude! I totally trust you to have my back!” Denki quipped. “In fact, maybe you could use your quirk to stick us all together so then they have to let me join Class 2-B.”

Mineta was so stunned by the unexpected answer that he didn’t try to stop Denki as he skirted around him and straight to his demise.

Standing in front of Hitoshi, Denki looked up at him through his lashes and whispered an apology. The quick switch from the teasing and excitable tone Denki had just been using to the demure and quiet behavior he took on just then threatened to give Hitoshi whiplash.

“What are you sorry for?” Hitoshi asked.

Anyone within earshot might think he was degrading Denki, having him admit out loud that he had kissed his soulmate, but Hitoshi really didn’t know what Denki was apologizing so sincerely for when he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Exposing us like this. We never even talked about going public, and I kind of took that choice away without discussing it with you guys. It was an accident, and—”

“Denks, we literally couldn’t care less. We were ready to scream it from the rooftops when you said that you’d go on a date with us, and again when we finally got to kiss you. We’re going at your pace,” Hitoshi insisted.

“Well,” Denki said with a definitive nod, “this is my pace,” Denki declared, and that was all the warning that Hitoshi got.

The class was expecting a huge argument, and maybe even for Hitoshi to punch Denki across the face. They figured that it was the calm before the storm, and a teenage lovers’ quarrel would break out with Neito screaming, Denki pleading, and Hitoshi throwing punches.

What no one expected was for Denki to grab Hitoshi’s face, hands quickly threading in his wild, purple hair at the back of his head, and pulling him in to share a kiss of their own.

Some were just plain confused, and others, mostly those in Class 2-A, figured that Denki was just pulling out all the stops before Hitoshi literally murdered him right there on the training field. They were used to Denki gushing about the soulmates, and some of them had even heard Denki say that he loved them.

When Neito wandered over at a leisurely pace to join them, Denki whipped his head around to look at Mineta once again, and yelled, “so what do you say, Mineta? Stick us all together so we have to be in the same class?”

Aizawa shouted from the doorway to one of the training examination towers, “not a chance, problem child!”

“Worth a shot!” Denki shouted back, full of giddy happiness that always seemed to radiate from him whenever he was around the soulmates. Then, more quietly, so Aizawa wouldn’t hear, “maybe Sero’s tape?”

“Tsuburaba’s Air Prison?” Neito offered to the outlandish conversation.

“Oh!” Hitoshi exclaimed, eyes widening at an idea. “If he could get it into a spherical shape, we could travel around like hamsters in a huge ball.”

At the same time Denki exclaimed, “that is the best idea I ever heard of!” Neito muttered, “that is the worst idea I ever heard of.”

The group then delved into the logistics of what it would be like to be trapped together in a huge hamster ball. Denki admitted that it would suck having no access to his notes or even a desk, and that it would be hard to focus with his boyfriends literally right there. Neito, in turn, admitted that it would be hard for anyone to separate them, and it would be fun if not practical. He also mentioned that it would be super easy to cheat off of Denki if they were all trapped together like that, which had Denki snorting at the force of the unexpected laugh that escaped him. Hitoshi admitted that it might not be the best idea he had ever come up with, but it was definitely in the top five.

On the trek back to the classrooms, Denki gasped, causing Neito and Hitoshi to turn toward him immediately.

“What if we get Shouto to make a giant ice ramp that leads down into a lake, and we took the giant hamster ball down the ramp?!”

The trio then spent the rest of the trek back across the field talking about all of the injuries that they would sustain from bumping into each other, and if the fun and experience would be worth it anyway. Consensus was yes, it would be worth it.

The rumor of the kisses transferred around from group to group for those not lucky enough to witness it themselves due to their examinations coming after, and the boyfriends’ classmates trailed behind them as they all traversed back to the main academic building, looking at them incredulously and trying to figure out if this was some kind of elaborate prank.

The teachers never saw the two classes together being so quiet. Instead of being competitive over the smallest of things, or sharing about new moves they had developed, they were all following the trio in stunned and almost suspenseful silence.

Class 2-A had heard all about how Denki fancied the soulmates (Denki was shameless about his feelings toward the soulmates, and sometimes wondered how not everyone felt that way about the soulmates), but they never imagined anything would come out of it. Kendou knew that Neito liked Denki but had no inkling of Denki’s returned feelings. The rest of Class 2-B had no idea what was going on, thinking that Neito and Denki must hate each other after the few interactions that they’ve witnessed. Some of them secretly wondered if Hitoshi was brainwashing both of the blonds to have them both to himself, but all of the ones who thought that were wise enough to keep that thought to themselves. They all decided to keep a lot of initial thoughts to themselves.

Not Bakugou, though.

“Get a room, you love-sick bastards!”

The effect was immediate, the majority of the tension relaxing away from the students as the elephant in the room was properly addressed.

“We’re trying,” Neito snapped back without hesitation, lip curled up in a snarl.

Those who didn’t know better flinched, expecting a fight to break out between the two. Denki, Hitoshi, and even Kirishima knew that that was just the way the two communicated.

“The Class 2-B classroom to be exact!” Denki added. “Hey, Sero!” he yelled, turning to walk backwards to face the rest of their classmates who had kept their distance just in case the world was about to implode with the unlikely trio at the center, raising his hand to get Sero’s attention as if all of the attention wasn’t already on him anyway. “Got any extra tape? We want to test a theory!”

“No,” Aizawa drawled, somehow sounding both loud and lazy from behind the group.

Exacerbated, and secretly completely pleased that Hitoshi was blessed with a soulmate and a boyfriend who were completely in sync and infatuated with him, and equally worried that adding a boyfriend into the mix of a soulmate connection might end in disaster. The only way for Hitoshi to learn was to experience, Aizawa reminded himself often, whenever he felt like warning Hitoshi to guard his heart. And who knew? Maybe it would all work out after all. Stranger things have happened.

Besides, he knew it wouldn’t be fair to let his own negative experiences hang a cloud over Hitoshi’s happiness. As Hitoshi’s pre-adoptive father, he would have to learn how to let go of his own past to make room for Hitoshi’s future. There was no room for fear, he tried to tell himself.
Later that evening, Denki whipped through the common room of his dorm building, trying to get by unnoticed.

“Hey, Kaminari! Want to join our study group for the history exam tomorrow?” Midoriya chirped from his spot at the coffee table, textbooks and notes littering the area around himself, Uraraka, Iida, and Tsu.

Midoriya jumped to attention when he saw the tears streaking down Denki’s face when he turned to face him. Denki shook his head and waved him off.

“I’ll check on you later!” Midoriya yelled the promise after him as Denki ran to the stairway, desperate to get to the third floor as quickly as possible.

Midoriya settled back down again after one last glance at the door that led to the stairwell, pushing down his urge to find out that very moment what was going on.

“I knew things with the soulmates wouldn’t last,” Uraraka said quietly, a sadness to her tone. She wasn’t happy about being right, not this time. “Poly relationships are hard, even when they’re fated. Poly relationships going directly against fate—well, it would take a miracle to work out.”

“Let’s hope our friend gets his miracle, then,” Tsu nodded, ready to get back to studying.

“And if not, let’s help him heal,” Iida added.

And that was that. The group got back to studying.

Hitoshi and Neito were coming down the stairwell in the Class 2-A dorm building, having just finished up some quirk training and analysis with Yaoyorozu. Neito was getting a lot better at making more complex things, and Yaoyorozu was benefiting from relearning the basics from her more advanced level, so much so that even her more complex creations were happening faster after every training session with Neito. Yaoyorozu also found being under Hitoshi’s quirk strangely meditative. He got to practice on someone new, and she got to destress before the history exam the next day. Win-win-win. Or was it win-win-win-win?

Hitoshi and Neito were blindsided as they were almost barreled over by none other than their boyfriend as they made their way to the third-floor landing in the stair well.

“Oh, hey! We were just—what’s wrong?” Neito asked, reaching for Denki.

Denki gave him a look that broke his heart before darting through the door, into the hallway that led to his dorm room. Denki looked scared, terrified, and heartbroken. Helpless, hopeless, and panicky. It wasn’t a look that suited Denki’s face, putting stress and lines in all the wrong places.

Hitoshi and Neito didn’t hesitate to follow Denki. Hitoshi blocked the door from closing when Denki tried to slam it on them, and Hitoshi and Neito slipped through into the room before closing the door firmly behind them, trapping the three of them in the room.

The electric blond was a trapped bird, so desperate for freedom that he crashed into the bars that confined him with no regard for how it might damage his wings.

Hitoshi blocked the door, leaning firmly against it, arms outstretched to catch Denki if he happened to get within reach.

Neito snagged Denki as he tried to run past, pulling him into his lap, and squeezing him tightly, collapsing on the floor in a heap.

“Copy my breathing,” Neito demanded. “It’s going to be fine. You’re fine. You’re okay. You’re among friends,” he chanted rhythmically. “Only friends here. You’re fine. You’re okay. You’re safe. No one here is against you. We’re all on your side. You’re fine. You’re safe. I’ll let you go, but you have to calm down first. You need a clear head. You understand?”

Denki stopped his struggling, panted from his effort, and buried his face against Neito’s shoulder before releasing pent-up sobs that were so desperately being held back until that moment.

The figure falling apart in Neito’s arms tensed when the door jiggled, held closed only by Hitoshi’s body that was still tensed against it.

“Oh! You guys in there? I have the worst timing, I swear.”

The blond head lifted off of Neito’s shoulder to look past Hitoshi at the door, his eyes locking on the door at the sound of the familiar voice, tears still overflowing.

After a considering look into the eyes of the blond boy of whom he loved, Neito nodded at Hitoshi, “let him in.”

Chapter Text

Denki had just gone to the restroom and wasn’t gone for two minutes, and of course he wasn’t there to greet his boyfriends with a hug and kiss like he had planned. They had beat him to his own dorm room, and just let themselves in. The familiarity that they treated each other with sent warm butterflies through Denki’s stomach. He’d never get used to it.

When he turned the handle and pushed on the door that he knew for sure that he didn’t lock before just going down the hallway to the restroom, he figured out instantly that his boyfriends must be inside.

What he didn’t expect to see, though, was a pale-faced Hitoshi opening the door and abruptly yanking him in before slamming it shut again and locking it behind them. What he didn’t expect to see was himself, scrambling to get out of Neito’s hold just to barrel into Denki himself.

The two Denkis collided, one easily and opening accepting the other, coming together and embracing as one sobbed against the other’s chest. Real-Denki didn’t have any hesitations this time; if the soulmates were interacting with her, then she wasn’t just a hallucination trying to ruin Denki’s life.

Denki’s serious eyes met the eyes of his boyfriends who matched his intensity. Great. They were all on the same page.

It was strange and a little disorienting to see two Denkis, one still sobbing and the other consoling. The soulmates were already on board; of course, they were. Ever since that day at the waterpark, they formed their own, individual friendships with her, too. For a villain, she was surprisingly likeable, but the soulmates figured that having an in with Denki worked heavily in their favor on that front.

“Toga,” Denki whispered as he slid down the wall next to the locked door, pulling her down with him. “Tell me what’s wrong when you’re ready, okay? I’m ready to listen. We’re ready to listen.”

“It’s Magne!” Toga wailed against Denki’s shoulder, pressing her face even harder against his shirt, trying to relieve the emotional pain that was anything but simple. “She’s dead!”

Between bouts of wails and sobs, Toga explained how during a meetup with one of Twice’s picks for recruitment, they had a run in with the Yakuza. It went south when their leader, Overhaul, had suggested that they should join forces with Overhaul being the leader of both groups instead of Shigaraki. Shigaraki actually tried to diffuse the situation, but everyone else was so wound up and it all got out of hand so quickly. One second, she was there. The next second, her molecules had burst apart and there was nothing left behind. It was instant, much faster than even Shigaraki’s decay.

As Denki helped Toga work through her emotions while struggling with his own at finding out the news of Magne’s early demise, Hitoshi ran downstairs to get some snack and drinks; it was looking like it was going to be a long night. While rummaging through Class 2-A’s cupboards and refrigerator, Hitoshi was so focused on his task and getting back as soon as possible that he didn’t notice Midoriya wander in.

“Hey, Shinsou!” Midoriya greeted in his normal, upbeat tone. “Party in Kaminari’s room, huh?”

“Not exactly a party,” Hitoshi mumbled, reaching into the back of the fridge to grab some sodas. When Hitoshi turned to catch the concerned look flashing across Midoriya’s face, he added, “we need something to hold us over for the night to study for that damn history test. I thought it was next week, so they’re helping me catch up on my studying so I might pass by the skin of my teeth.”

“Sounds stressful,” Midoriya empathized, reaching past Hitoshi to grab a few bottles of water from the refrigerator before heading back to his own study group in the common room.

“You have no idea,” Hitoshi mumbled to himself in response, long after Midoriya was out of earshot.

“Maybe we should go check on Kaminari,” Uraraka suggested to the group as Midoriya handed her a bottle of water before retaking his place on the floor next to her.

“Great idea,” Iida praised loudly. “What a good way to show Kaminari that we notice and care about him!”

“Maybe later,” Midoriya suggested.

Everyone turned to look at him, puzzled. Usually, he would be the one suggesting such acts of consideration, so it was odd that he was opposing it.

“I just ran into Shinsou in the kitchen,” Midoriya explained, throwing his head in the direction from which he came to make sure they understood that it was the kitchen in their residential building, dropping his voice down lower so no one would overhear if anyone were to wander into the common room.

“He’s here?!” Uraraka asked, eyes widening as she looked toward the stairway, like she might be considering bolting up the stairs to check to see if Denki was okay that very instant.

“I don’t know what might be going on up there,” Tsu started slowly, “but whatever they’re doing to fix the mess they’re in—I trust Shinsou and Monoma to treat Kaminari with respect, and I don’t think that he’d appreciate us barging in and interrupting if they’re talking things out right now.”

“You trust Shinsou and Monoma that completely? Since when?” Uraraka challenged, but not unkindly. She was concerned, and no one blamed her.

“Have you seen the way they all look at each other? Ribbit,” Tsu inquired in response; it was so obvious, was it not? “They both look at Kaminari the same way they look at each other. Their conversation might not be pleasant, depending on what they’re talking about, but even if there are hurt feelings, they really care about each other.”

“Even after the whole incident with Monoma tearing into Kaminari during the first-year training?” Uraraka pressed, still not convinced.

“You didn’t see them today,” Tsu argued, but not harshly. “Your group was the last to go and the last to join the rest of us, so you only heard about what happened, and didn’t actually witness it yourself. When Kaminari kissed Shinsou, ribbit, and everyone was watching them, I was watching Monoma, and I don’t think I have ever seen him look more… comfortable than in that moment.”

After a heavy pause for the group to consider Tsu’s argument, Iida declared, “you both make excellent points. I, for one, trust Kaminari to be able to handle himself and ask us for help if and when he needs it. He’s not, after all, one of our more stubborn classmates who will refuse to ask for help at any cost.”

After everyone nodded in agreement, they all turned their attention back to the task at hand.

“I’ll check in on everyone tomorrow,” Midoriya promised, assigning the task to himself, and ending the conversation for good.

With no objections or further concerns, the group got back to work, mapping out the routes that trading ships would have taken across the globe back in the 18th century.

When Hitoshi got back with his arms full of snacks, sliding himself into the room and closing and locking the door behind him once again, and dumping the pile of sustenance on the carpet, Toga was tense.

“How are Dabi and Shigaraki handling it?” Denki asked.

Toga roughly wiped at her tears with her arm, frustrated that they just wouldn’t stop falling, even when she felt a little calmer.

“Dabi… a lot as been going on with him besides this, and this just added shit onto the shit pile, so to speak,” Toga said, voice cracking with emotion. “Things with the Hero Commission, and now Magne, on top of—oh—that hero I was telling you about! After he—did he tell you?”

“Neither of them has been online for weeks,” Denki whispered, desperate to hear about how his friends were doing, even if they weren’t telling him directly themselves, and even if Toga’s shattered and scattered thoughts weren’t quite making it through in a way that could be understood.

“It’s not my news to tell,” Toga hedged softly. “I don’t think even he knows what he’s going to do about it all, yet.”

Denki nodded, understanding exactly where Toga was coming from. Glancing at the soulmates, he knew he had no room to argue. He hadn’t been forthcoming about Dabi’s identity; he was astounded by their laissez-faire reaction to his rapidly developing friendships with the various villains who called themselves members of the League of Villains. He didn’t know how to tell them that Touya was actually still alive, and it turns out that he’s a villain. It also wasn’t his story to tell. He hadn’t talked with Dabi about revealing his identity to the soulmates; truthfully, Denki was too nervous to even inquire about that because that was a heavy task that he wasn’t sure he would even handle correctly. How do you tell someone that the person they mourned and even attended the funeral for was still actually alive? Denki had no idea.

“Shigaraki, though,” Toga continued, after not receiving any backlash or argument from her withholding from Denki. After a heavy pause to consider what she wanted to say, she settled on, “he’s so cool.”

Hitoshi and Neito, who were listening with rapt attention, but not quite following along, were so taken aback that they snorted.

“Sorry,” Hitoshi forced out from behind his closed fist pressed against his mouth.

Toga shrugged, knowing that it probably wasn’t expected. She was the queen of inappropriate reactions, so she waved off their shows of unexpected, pleasant surprise while surrounded with less than desirable circumstances.

“He’s taking everything in stride. I don’t know how—I would have broken down and went on a rampage by now if I was dealing with everything he was. I don’t know what it’s like behind closed doors, but he’s keeping a brave face for all of us, at least. He practically apologized to the Yakuza! Can you believe that?!”

“Apologized?!” Neito interrupted, appalled on behalf of villains that he had never even properly met. “After they killed Magne?!”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Toga insisted, rapidly gaining energy as she spoke and explained. “No one else would have been able to do it, even with the strategy in mind! He’s so damn self-controlled now, and none of us have any idea when any of that changed!”

Toga realized that she had unknowingly relaxed in the trio’s presence. After Hitoshi had dipped out with the excuse of grabbing snacks, she thought for sure he’d come back with reinforcements to drag her away. It would have been so cruel, ripping her away from her chosen family after losing Magne forever. It would have been unbearable.

She knew that they were on decent terms after their fun at the waterpark, but she didn’t know that she could rely on them so firmly like this. They didn’t even hesitate; there was no discussion about what to do about her abrupt intrusion. They seemed to know what Denki would do, and they followed suit without a second thought. It was amazing, and not just because Toga benefited from it. She thought about how their in-sync ways reminded her of Shigaraki and Dabi in a way, and she hoped that they would have a better outcome than those two misfits did.

“What strategy?” Denki had asked. Then, more urgently, “Toga, what strategy?”

“Oh!” she chirped, breaking out of her thoughts and sitting up straight. “We’re going to infiltrate the Yakuza and take them down from the inside,” she explained like she was telling them that she was going to separate her colors before she did laundry.

“Toga,” Denki drawled, the concern as clear in his voice as it was on his face.

“It’ll be fine! I’ll be with Twice!” Toga quickly informed, like that made it any better. “And it’s super flexible, too. Shigaraki is sending us in with no plan or instructions or anything. Just kind of letting his feral pets to run free and cause havoc!”

“Do you see the kind of stress I have to deal with on a regular basis?” Denki asked, ignoring Toga in favor of turning to look at his amused boyfriends that had perched themselves on the edge of his bed.

“I see two Denkis sprawled out on the floor,” Hitoshi answered automatically.

“I know!” Neito gasped, turning to glance at his soulmate. “It’s trippy, isn’t it?!”

After Toga promised not to take any unnecessary risks, and after Hitoshi checked the hallway to make sure that it was clear, Denki gave Toga one of his jackets to make it look like he was just popping out for some fresh air if she happened to pass any of his classmates on the way down. To make it even more convincing, Hitoshi and Neito were going to go with her. It was in no way unusual to see the three together, so it would be a perfect cover for Toga, and the soulmates were heading out to their own dorm building anyway. Two birds, one stone. Win-win-win-win.

After the three left, Denki sat quietly on his floor with the lights turned out. It wouldn’t do the group any good if someone had seen Denki in the stairwell, only to see signs of life in Denki’s dorm room seconds later. It also allowed him time to think (and worry) about what his friends in villainy are getting themselves into.

“So…” Hitoshi drawled the next morning as the three made their way to class, finally getting the chance to voice a concern that was at the back of his mind since running into Toga on the stairwell, “are we going to talk about how Toga knew which room was yours?”

“And how she turned into you?” Neito tacked on. “How did she get your blood?!”

Chapter Text

Unsurprisingly, Neito and Hitoshi were decidedly cool about Toga having already been to Denki’s dorm once before. And they understood it wasn’t like he was trying to hide it; he introduced them point blank at the waterpark for fucks’ sake. It just slipped his mind, which was understandable amongst all of the other crazy shit that he had already told them about.

Plus, Toga was actually kind of cool, and they both felt more in the loop now that they had stumbled upon her trying to infiltrate Denki’s dorm room and heard what she had to say. They knew a little more about the League as explained to them in different terms and dialect than from just Denki alone. This should have scared them, that they might have just implicated themselves further if they were to ever be found out, but that’s not how they felt then, or any time after that, either. The more tight knit they are, the harder it would be for them to ever be caught in the first place. And what would they be caught doing? Being supported in their endeavor to become heroes by villains? Sketchy, maybe, but there was no precedent for this type of situation, and it would seem counter-productive to try to make it illegal, because how and when would it ever happen again? How did it even happen that time? And what details would be included in the laws? They wouldn’t have the faintest idea.

The boys were exhausted. All of the students were exhausted. Between their academic work, tactical training, and internships, the second-year hero course students were dead on their feet, moving automatically throughout their days as their minds reviewed invaluable information they learned from their experiences during their internships, and yes, even the tactical trainings, even though they were much less intimidating and stressful after having gotten some real-world experiences under their belts.

Everything had been going well for Hitoshi. He was finally interning underground with Aizawa, now that he was competent with his capture weapon enough to keep up with the hero, using their capture weapons to catapult themselves across the tops of buildings. Nothing risky like going undercover, of course, but night patrols were something completely different than the daytime patrols with Ms. Joke.

Hitoshi had taken up singing during these patrols, much to Aizawa’s chagrin. He figured that he wouldn’t bother Neito with his singing if it was midnight and Neito was dead asleep after a grueling day fulfilling his own internship duties.

“You’re going to scare all of the criminals away with your singing,” Aizawa grumbled quietly.

Despite the cold night air, they were both warm as they came to a stop on top of one of their normal lookout points. Swinging and jumping from building to building was a full-body workout after all. With a sad sort of amusement, Hitoshi thought about how Touya would have been so pleased that Hitoshi had gotten to the point where he could do something as intensive as this without being nearly as tired as he would have been previously. Planks had nothing on Aizawa’s preferred form of transportation, that was for sure.

“Good,” Hitoshi replied easily. “The best heroes prevent instead of just react and respond. They take initiative and are proactive.”

“Or maybe they’ll target us because you sang a song they didn’t like,” Aizawa tried next.

“Who doesn’t like the popular TikTok songs?” Hitoshi asked, inserting an extreme amount of disbelief into his voice to sound dramatically flabbergasted.

Hitoshi had a theory he wanted to test out, and it was better to do it on his own. He didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up on a hunch, after all. So, unless Aizawa was going to shut him up forcibly, which Hitoshi knew he would never do, knowing his past history with muzzles, he was going to continue to sing his songs until he determined if they had any effect or not.

Besides, Hitoshi knew that Aizawa had a soft spot for him. Why else would he take him into his home? Why else would he and Yamada sit Hitoshi down and ask him if it would be okay if they were to proceed with his adoption? Why else would all three cry hysterically when Hitoshi said yes, and Yamada blubbered about being a family?

When Aizawa scoffed at Hitoshi’s dramatics, Hitoshi retorted with, “it’s not surprising, really. That’s exactly how a prude would think.”

It was sudden how Hitoshi immediately bolted, laughing as Aizawa chased him down, when he had been standing so calmly and relaxed just a moment before as the taunt left his lips. Hitoshi ended up wrapped up in Aizawa’s capture weapon with Aizawa threatening to dangle him off the roof to use as bait for any villains unless he apologized.

“Do it! You won’t!”

He would, Hitoshi discovered.

Earlier that day, Hawks had been acting differently during Denki’s internship time with him. Instead of flying ahead and having Denki chase after him endlessly, they walked together on the sidewalk. Hawks showed off using his feathers to help citizens with various tasks, explaining to Denki that the hero rankings are by popularity, not necessarily who the best hero is with the most saves or the least collateral damage or anything like that.

“So how did Endeavor end up so high?” Denki asked.

Hawks smiled a sad sort of smile, not realizing that Denki was observant enough to pick up on it, or he would have turned away, acting distracted by a civilian that might benefit from his assistance.

“He’s what’s familiar right now,” Hawks stated, trying to make a complicated and convoluted issue simpler, not because he saw Denki as not being able to understand, but to not allow this specific line of questioning to last all day. Hawks could talk about Endeavor for a long time, but he had another conversation in mind that he wanted to get to. “After All Might’s… retirement, the people needed someone that they already knew they could rely on. If the charts had been replaced with all rookies, there would have been unease and hesitation across the nation. People like what they are familiar with, and no matter how callous he seems, Endeavor pulls through when he's needed.”

He pulls through when he’s needed for strangers but can’t be bothered to show the same consideration for his own family, Denki bitterly corrected in his mind, but knew better than to say it aloud.

“Fancy something to eat?” Hawks asked when Denki remained silent. “I’ll show you where the heroes go to fill their stomachs during the day!”

Denki never thought that he would actually get anything out of the internship from Hawks specifically. His sidekicks and other supports? Absolutely. But not Hawks himself. It surprised him when Hawks decided to walk along beside Denki and surprised him even more by having lunch with him. Denki knew he wasn’t going to suddenly sprout wings and fly, so he figured that Hawks, despite offering, wasn’t really interested in Denki.

True to his word, Hawks showed Denki his favorite restaurant that has private rooms to host heroes looking to get out of the spotlight for an hour while they eat and recuperate. Even the wait staff seemed entirely unaffected by Hawks’s number two status, easily bantering with him when he would say something snarky, wearing easy-going and relaxed smiles and not working hard to impress, but just working while having a good time, whether they were interacting with the number two hero, a second-year hero student, or a nobody tourist that they would never see again.

Hawks continued to make small talk with Denki in between ordering and receiving their food, but as soon as their waiter left them, closing the door behind him, the mood and tone of the conversation switched drastically.

“Can you tell me anything about the time from when you were taken by the League of Villains from the training camp to when you were rescued by your friends at Kamino Ward?”

Denki choked on his food, grateful that he had the self-control to not spit it out onto the hero he was interning under. That would have been catastrophic.

Denki opened his mouth to tell him no, but Force Majeure’s quirk kicked in like a charm, charging forward to block any noise that might escape that would be able to answer Hawks’s questions. It took him by surprise after not kicking in for so long. In the beginning, with all of the questioning from heroes, police officers, and even therapists, he was constantly rendered speechless. After they all gave up trying to find out what had happened to him after he had seemingly gone back to his normal self on his own, Force Majeure’s quirk had lied dormant in his mind, waiting to be sprung again at a moment’s notice. Her quirk really was so cool.

“No, then,” Hawks answered for him, sitting back against his seat. “I heard that you might be under Force Majeure’s quirk, but I had to make sure.”

“Why?” Denki asked.

“Confidential,” Hawks answered bluntly.

It wasn’t like Denki could argue; he had nothing to bargain with, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have given away any information about the League. Besides, Denki figured that any hero might take up the opportunity to find out more about a growing villainous group who had recently began to break seemingly random other villains out of police custody. If anyone made the connection that it was the villains involved with three specific second-year students at UA, no one had voiced it so far. If anyone did make the connection, they would probably think that the League of Villains were just still keeping tabs on Denki, to make sure that Force Majeure’s quirk was still working or even to find an opportunity to get their hands on him once again.

When Denki gets back to his dorm building that evening, he’s absolutely exhausted, even more so than after chasing Hawks around for hours at a time. Being around Hawks’s energy was pretty awesome because Denki felt like they were pretty similar once you get past the whole flying thing being the most important to Hawks, but the added pressure of the line of questioning about the League of Villains and Force Majeure’s quirk making a reappearance had Denki worried, filled with anxious energy that immediately fled once he entered the familiar space of his dorm building and saw some familiar faces. The anxiety left, his mind deciding that he was safe once again, and he was just about to head up to his room when the front door banged open.

“Kaminari!” Tetsutetsu yelled, looking around the common area frantically with wide eyes.

“What’s up?” Denki asked, turning back around and taking a step forward, immediately concerned with Tetsutetsu’s urgency.

“It’s Monoma!” Tetsutetsu rushed. “He’s been hit by a quirk. Can you please come help?”

And just like that, Denki was filled with so much energy once again that he couldn’t even imagine the feeling of ever being tired before. He didn’t have to answer; anyone would have known that the answer was yes. Denki and Tetsutetsu rushed out, running full speed toward the Class 2-B dorm building.

Upstairs, a teenage boy sighed, completely exhausted, emotionally drained. Going to school as a hero student while also working with the League of Villains was very stressful, the balance incredibly delicate.

“So, tell me again why you decided to run through the common room crying,” he demanded, pressing the phone against his face, closing his eyes in agitation.

“I told you already,” Toga insisted, irritated that he wasn’t listening. It wasn’t that he wasn’t listening though, it was that he didn’t understand because nothing she was saying was making sense. “I was upset about Magne and needed to talk to Kaminari.”

“To the boy you literally kidnapped,” he clarified, hoping that Toga might see reason.

“Uh-huh. Like I said, we’re friends. Best friends, probably.”

“Yeah, sure,” the boy dismissed. “But that doesn’t excuse your reckless behavior, Toga,” he stressed, trying to get her to understand that her rash actions had consequences for others and made his situation riskier. “I had to cover for you, you know? It wasn’t just me who saw you run through crying. The study group thought that Kaminari must have fought with his boyfriends.”

“He’s practically their third soulmate,” Toga insisted dismissively. “They never fight.”

“Which is why your appearance was such a problem,” the boy explained, feeling like the discussion was going in circles. He didn’t have the time or energy to find out exactly what Toga knew about the soulmates, and he really wasn’t that surprised. The League of Villains had their hands in a lot of pies. “If you had run into Kacchan or Kirishima, you would’ve risked exposing yourself and getting caught. And what if Shinsou or Monoma saw you and you didn’t accurately act exactly like Kaminari? They spend every free moment with each other that I think they’d be able to tell if something was off.”

“Oh, they sure did!” Toga informed, and he picked up some awe in her voice. “Right away, too!”

“… What?”

Chapter Text

“It’s nothing harmful or painful or deadly or anything,” Tetsutetsu reassured as they ran toward the dorm building. “We just can’t handle it anymore. Tsunotori was being torn to shreds when I started over here, and everyone else has already been run through. We didn’t know what else to do… Monoma’s going to murder us all when this quirk wears off, but we’re desperate, man!”

“Hitoshi is still out on internship?” Denki asked to confirm, pretty sure that he had just started a few hours earlier and would be out until either very late that night or even early morning the next day.

“Yeah, or we wouldn’t have come to get you,” Tetsutetsu informed.

No, but Hitoshi would have, Denki was sure. He felt the twinge of exclusion that came with only being a boyfriend to two literal soulmates who were destined for one another. He brushed it aside, knowing that the only ones who mattered in that regard were the soulmates themselves, and they had never treated him differently from each other. He was fully informed about major events at the same time the other soulmate was informed, and he was included in all of the dates. He had offered a few times to let them do their own thing, partly to be considerate of their already established relationship without him, and partly because he was terrified of annoying them and losing both the relationship and subsequently their friendship, but neither of them would have it. They had laughed at the idea, and reminded Denki that he was equal in this mishmash of a relationship they had all found themselves in. That was all that mattered, so Denki brushed off the small comments made by others who assumed otherwise.

Tsunotori had abandoned the small study room in tears as soon as Denki had entered. He paused briefly to watch her go before turning toward Neito, who sat on the floor in the middle of the room, completely ignoring the chairs, tables, desks, and couches in favor of sulking on the carpet. He looked numb, emotionless; it was strange to see a lack of emotion on a face that gave away every little thing that he was feeling at any given moment.

If his face could give anything away, it would show that he was terrified. Neito tried to clamp his mouth shut and force his brain to just shut down or do something other than tear Denki apart with words born from his observations of him—of which he had plenty, too many that could be turned into weapons that could leave permanent scars.

He had already torn into Tetsutetsu, conveying through insults that it was absolutely the worst possible idea to get Denki or Hitoshi involved and that he would just have to ride it out without them ever even finding out about it. However, Neito wasn’t so sure if calling Tetsutetsu a dumb-fuck metal-head who pushes his problems off onto others truly got his message across.

Tetsutetsu hovered in the doorway to explain. “It happened earlier today during a rescue mission. It was an accidental thing that was started by a civilian, but… it’s not a truth-telling quirk or anything. He’s really going to kills us,” Tetsutetsu repeated, hesitating and thinking about trying to get Denki to go back and they would find some way to manage. One look at Denki’s determined face, and he knew that was not going to happen short of the whole Class 2-B dragging him forcefully back to his own dorm building, and maybe not even then. He started something that he couldn’t unstart.

Tetsutetsu sighed in resignation and acceptance that his demise was near, and continued, “it’s a relationship destroyer, though. We tried putting him with classmates that he doesn’t spend much time with, but he’s so observant that… well, the quirk makes him say really mean things. Again, it’s not a truth quirk—it’s not really what he thinks or anything he would say otherwise. Knowing that, we've all had our turns, thinking that we could handle it, and none of us could. We can’t leave him alone because that quirk could turn around on himself—”

“I can handle it.”

Denki had heard enough. Neito needed someone, he couldn’t be alone, and Hitoshi was currently unreachable. He was definitely the one for the job. Besides, what could Neito ever say that would hurt Denki?

“Just like you handled your jealousy by inserting yourself into my relationship?” Neito asked from his spot in the center of the room, his face not changing.

Oh. That’s what he could say.

Tetsutetsu and Denki both turned to look at Neito in shock, and Tetsutetsu was about ready to send Denki away and just try sticking earplugs in and trying to ignore any sounds that did get through. But, to Tetsutetsu’s surprise, Denki laughed and stepped closer, plopping himself down on the floor in front of Neito and facing him head-on.

“The insults seem to come at a slower rate if you’re not in his line of sight,” Tetsutetsu offered, trying to help the situation in any way he could. Denki really was doing all of them a solid favor, here.

“I’m fine,” Denki waved off, not even bothering to turn to look as he spoke to Tetsutetsu, having eyes only for Neito. No different than any other day, Tetsutetsu decided.

Yep, Neito was going to kill all of them once this quirk business was over. Tetsutetsu would have bet money on it.

“Exactly like that,” Denki answered in response to Neito’s first of many insults as Tetsutetsu closed the door, leaving the two alone and hoping that he didn’t just destroy a good thing by getting Denki involved instead of just trying to handle Neito on his own. “I couldn’t resist you two then, and I can’t resist being here with you now. Being with you two is my favorite thing in the world.”

“I thought your favorite thing in the world was hanging out with villains,” Neito bit back. “So much for becoming a hero, huh?”

“You got me there,” Denki agreed with a small smile and nod. “But I believe you when you say that this could change the whole hero society around to be more beneficial for everyone if everything goes well.”

“You also believed that you were tutoring me when I ask you for help with your worst subjects, when really I just pitied how stupid you were. You’ve believed lies in the past, and it’s no different now.” Neito’s voice was quick and sharp, but his face stayed flat. At that new insult, Neito’s eyes shifted down and away, which Denki immediately recognized as shame.

Neito never wanted Denki to know that he was faking not knowing material when he asked for Denki’s help. Neito got extra practice, extra time with Denki, and the pleasure of seeing Denki’s face light up when he would tell him what grade he got on the exam. Was all of that over now? Neito felt intense self-hatred in that moment, figuring that the whole relationship could come crashing down, not just the time spent with Denki while studying. He might ruin the whole thing, but at least he could offer that Hitoshi and Denki could still be together, even if Denki no longer wanted to be with Neito, too.

Denki realized that Neito was fully aware of the mean-spirited things he was saying, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was a nasty quirk indeed, not affecting his mind, but the impulse of what comes out of his mouth. His mind was still the same, suffering at the things that his mouth was putting out into the world against his will. Denki knew that Neito was suffering more than he could ever try to hurt Denki with his words.

“I knew from the beginning,” Denki admitted quietly to Neito’s surprise, eyes tearing up at the thought of what Neito was going through. They were in for quite a rough ride, all right. “But you were my hero that day on Unit Beta, and I wanted you to keep being my hero every day after that. I always felt so safe when I knew I had you there to rely on, whether it be for math or stealing me back from the League of Villains, you always come through for me.”

“You’re so pathetic,” Neito responded without hesitation. “Why else would you forgive me so easily after I said those things to you during our first training exercise together?”

Denki reached out as the first tears fell from Neito’s eyes, pulling his chin up to get Neito to meet his own gaze for the first time since he entered the room. Denki could see the pain in Neito’s eyes as he noticed Denki’s own tears.

Denki smiled through those tears like they weren’t even there when he answered, “there was nothing to forgive.” It would be the same answer every time Neito would bring it up because it was the truth. “Just like there’s going to be nothing to forgive after this, either. I hope you remember that later.”

“You’re so pathetic that it’s almost sad. Self-depreciation at its finest, really.” Neito would have cringed at his own self-projection if the quirk hadn’t forced him to continue. “And if you think you deserve this, you’d be right. Why else would you sit here as I insult you now?"

Denki smiled a watery smile. “You know the answer to that, Nei!” He laughed a watery laugh. “It’s because I love you.”

Neito reached up to brush away Denki’s tears, even as his own continued to fall. His heart breaking in the best of ways when Denki smiled at him and said, “there’s nothing you could do to change that.”

“What if—”

“Nothing,” Denki insisted. “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I let a little quirk mishap get in our way?”

Hitoshi entered the room then, breathing heavily, heart dropping when he saw both of his boyfriends on the floor in tears. “I got here as quick as I could! How bad is it?”

Denki opened his mouth to answer, but Neito beat him to it.

“You sure rushed to Denki’s side as fast as you could,” Neito sneered. “It’s fine, though. I understand completely because, just like you, I love Denki more than my own soulmate.”

Hitoshi’s shocked face slowly morphed into a grin as he closed the door behind him and joined the two blonds, shedding the capture weapon and extra layers that kept him warm as the weather cooled as he sunk down onto the floor.

“No, it’s okay, though, because I love Denki more than I love myself, too,” Hitoshi reasoned with a laugh and casual shrug.

Hitoshi had had the same thought Denki had, then, because of course he did. Agree with everything Neito said instead of starting an argument. Turn it into lighthearted teasing, and hope that that will be enough to not let Neito sink too far down in the aftermath. Denki thanked Neito in his mind for dragging them both to an improv class where every answer had to start with “yes, and—” because they might not have had this cohesive combined effort otherwise.

Denki nodded, “that tracks. I’m very lovable.”

“Too lovable if even the villains switch to your side,” Neito snapped before turning his attention back to Hitoshi. “You’re so sad with your stupid little life story, aren’t you? You surround yourself with a fake family because your real one didn’t think you were worth sticking around for and a fake soulmate because you know you’re not good enough for your real one. You’re never going to be good enough.”

“Oh really?” Hitoshi mused, eyes lighting up with the ultimate amusement even as Neito’s expressed that he was absolutely horrified at the lies leaving his mouth. “Well, you have to give me credit for choosing so well. Both my ‘fake family’ and my ‘fake soulmate’ are amazing, just like my real soulmate.”

“That’s why you and Denki need each other in this relationship,” Neito added, despite his straining against the quirk, to just make it stop before he said something he couldn’t come back from, if he hadn’t done so already. “Neither of you will ever reach your full potential. Compared to me, who can have any quirk I want, I don’t blame you. Neither of you on your own would ever be enough to keep me interested for long because you’re so one-dimensional, so you’re trying to keep me around by allowing me to have both of you. With Denki’s way of ‘solving’ math problems, I can see why he would think it would work.”

“Thanks to you, I’ve gotten a lot better with math. It might be correct this time,” Denki supplied with a nonchalant shrug.

Hitoshi nodded. “I can feel it. You’re totally right this time! All three of us are going to be together forever!”

“Guys! This is serious!” Neito insisted, and Denki smiled as he saw the emotions bloom on Neito’s face. “What are you smiling for?!” Neito asked incredulously. “I’m insulting you and saying unforgivable things and you’re just looking at me like—like—”

“Like we love you,” Hitoshi supplied. “Nothing you do or say could ever be unforgivable.”

“Not even forgivable because there’s no forgiveness needed!” Denki chirped.

“Why the fuck are you both so good to me?!” Neito demanded, and finally, something had changed. He had started to move his hands erratically, like he always did when he was trying to get a point across, to physically put emphasis on certain words when vocal stress just wasn’t enough. “You both make me love you so much that I’m terrified of losing this crazy thing that we have going for us. Even after all of this, you aren’t calling it quits?”

“There’s nothing that you could say or do that would change the way I feel about you,” Denki insisted, swearing he would never get tired of saying that just to see the wonderous, loving expression come across Neito’s face, even though it only lasted a moment before the self-destructive confusion and doubt replaced it.

“You’re stuck with me. Fate said so,” Hitoshi lilted. Then, “did you hear an insult in there?” Hitoshi asked Denki, “because I didn’t.”

After multiple unneeded apologies to everyone who had the displeasure of interacting with Neito during his time under the quirk, he locked himself away in his room, not allowing even Denki or Hitoshi inside, stating that he needed some time to himself.

The boys knew that time to himself was probably the last thing he needed, but it was what he asked for, so they reassured him that he had done nothing wrong and that they were here when he wanted company.

“Do you want to go for a walk around campus?” Denki asked Hitoshi. “I want to talk to you about something.”

“Yeah, of course,” Hitoshi answered without hesitation.

With one last wayward glance toward Neito’s closed dorm door, the only thing that turned the trio into two and one, the boys turned around away and started downstairs.

Once outside, they had walked for a few minutes in peaceful silence under the lamps that lined the walkways that webbed all across UA. Hitoshi let his mind wander as he watched their shifting shadows against the pavement, not rushing Denki with whatever was on his mind that he wanted to talk to him about.

After taking a deep breath, Denki forced out the words that he had been repeating different variations of in his mind since they left Class 2-B’s dorm building, settling on the simple “I just wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me? For what?” Hitoshi asked, slowing down his walking speed to a lazy stroll.

Denki unconsciously followed suit and slowed down, too, so tuned in to Hitoshi that it was natural, maybe even instinctual.

“You never make me feel like I’m the odd one out,” Denki answered, hoping that Hitoshi would understand so he wouldn’t have to explain further.

Hitoshi understood, and his heart dropped at the unspoken implication.

“Someone does make you feel like that, though?” Hitoshi asked, concern written across his face.

“They don’t matter,” Denki said simply. “They aren’t involved in this relationship, so they don’t know, and their comments and opinions don’t matter.”

“They matter to me,” Hitoshi countered gently. “You shouldn’t have to thank me for something that was so obvious and right to Neito and me. Effortless, even.” Yeah, that was the term he was searching for. “It was effortless to integrate you into our relationship, and it feels almost like it has always been that way, or that it should’ve at least. The fact that anyone says something so insensitive as to make you think you don’t fully belong with us is—is—it’s frustrating.”

“I know,” Denki placated. “I just wanted to let you know that I never feel that way when I’m with you guys, just in case you hear things like that, too, someday. It really meant a lot to me that you didn’t kick me out when you got there to help with Neito. You didn’t dismiss me and only let me see you both on good days. I want to be there with you two through it all, and I’m just so relieved that we all seem to be on the same page about that.”

Hitoshi snorted then, immediately lightening the mood in a way that comes natural to him. “You think I was going to let you off the hook? If I was going to get verbally ripped to pieces, you sure as hell weren’t getting a free pass!”

Denki laughed. Denki’s laugh was contagious, it always was, so Hitoshi laughed, too.

“We’re going to have to get him back on track,” Hitoshi instigated, already imagining how down Neito would be for the next few days.

“If I was in Neito’s position right now, I would feel horrible, too,” Denki empathized. “From being on this side, I know that there’s nothing for him to feel guilty about, but even then…”

“Yeah,” Hitoshi agreed with a firm nod. “Same. I’m sure he knows that we mean it when we say that it was nothing, but it’s still going to be rough.”

Denki took a deep breath, then. “So, I wanted to bring this all up now because I don’t know if we should go at this together like we do for everything else.” When Hitoshi opened his mouth to respond, Denki was quick to interject, “hear me out!” When Hitoshi nodded, Denki continued his thoughts piecing together as he spoke, “he’s going to be really upset. At himself, at the civilian whose quirk did that to him, at Tetsutetsu for coming to get me and notifying you, and maybe even us for responding and seeing him like that.”

“You think he might feel ganged up on by us?” Hitoshi asked, tilting his head and averting his gaze as he thought about the different options they had.

“Maybe not,” Denki answered with a shrug. “But he said a lot of things that would probably be very hurtful coming from anyone else under different circumstances, so it might be easier for him to address the things he said to each of us separately.”

Hitoshi started to nod slowly, but soon his nodding picked up pace as he grew more confident with Denki’s plan of action.

“Whoever can get him alone and stationary enough to talk to him first goes first,” Hitoshi stipulated.

“Let the best boyfriend win,” Denki challenged cheekily, putting his hand out for Hitoshi to shake.

Hitoshi reached out and shook Denki’s hand with a smile that was widening by the second, matching the mischievous energy of his boyfriend. If there ever existed a competition where Hitoshi wanted to win so badly while also simultaneously being just as happy if he lost, it was this one. It would be a win-win-win, nothing to lose, so they were both going to give it everything they had.

It only occurred to Hitoshi as he was jogging back to the rendezvous point to meet back up with Eraserhead for the rest of his internship night that Denki had something that he didn’t: contact with the League of Villains. If Neito was as slippery as he predicted he would be, Hitoshi was sure that that specific resource would be invaluable to help Denki get what he wants. Hitoshi grinned to himself as he jogged, eyes crinkling with the force of the smile as he sang his TikTok song of choice for the week under his breath to the beat of his footfalls.

Chapter Text

Hawks took a shuddering breath in and was ashamed when it came out uneven. There was no one else around; he was alone in his boring, plain apartment, but his cheeks burned with shame of not having total control over his emotions, nonetheless.

Hawks had naively thought that, if anything was going to truly be his, it would be his soulmate. But now that he found Dabi, he came to the hard realization that nothing was ever truly going to be his; nothing was ever truly going to go well with no-strings-attached. No, not for Hawks. But this is what it takes to become the number two hero. He squashed down the inner voice that said that all of this wasn’t worth it, even if he were to advance to being the number one hero. He was a dead man walking, anyway, so it didn’t help to have any thoughts at all. The truth was, he wouldn’t live long enough to ever get the chance to be the number one hero, so why even think about if all of this was worth it or not?

When he would betray the League of Villains, they’d kill him. If the moment came, and he failed to deliver, the Commission would see to it that he was “killed in the line of duty” as it were. Now he just had to figure out which would be a more dignified way to go.

If he betrayed the League of Villains, he might feel some cathartic relief that he got back at his soulmate, but that wasn’t fair, was it? It wasn’t Dabi’s fault that he was unfortunate enough for fate to match him up with a good-for-nothing failure of a human being, if Hawks even could be considered human anymore. He wasn’t so sure these days. It wasn’t Dabi’s fault that he had already fallen in love the old-fashioned way with someone who suits him so perfectly that Hawks wondered why fate decided to mismatch them together instead of letting Dabi and Shigaraki live and love in peace.

If he betrayed the Commission and went back on their plans for him, he would die a meaningless and staged death. But at least he would be released from the never-ending hell that was his life.

Damn. He was really banking on finding some semblance of happiness once he found his soulmate. Now, though, he kind of wishes he didn’t have a soulmate at all. That would hurt less than having a soulmate who looked at him with anguish and disappointment in his gaze every time he was unfortunate enough to make eye contact with Hawks.

When Hawks had first infiltrated the League of Villains and was finally in, he had noticed that the gaming system was religiously used by Shigaraki and his chosen number two. After they had discovered that not only were Shigaraki and Dabi not soulmates, but Dabi was Hawks’s soulmate, Hawks hadn’t seen anyone use the gaming system since. In fact, it seemed to be gathering dust, untouched even by Kurogiri, like it was cursed or something.

It was awkward—every interaction with the League of Villains was so painfully awkward and uncomfortable. Maybe the awkwardness would kill him before the League or Commission had a chance. It all had been going so well, too, before the whole soulmate disaster. He was even getting closer to Shigaraki before it all came crashing down.

Hawks tried to get pulled from the mission, explaining the very unusual and extenuating circumstances to the Commission. He wasn’t exactly surprised when his handler basically lit up, saying that this was something they could use to their advantage, like Hawks would be able to just turn around and betray his soulmate at the drop of a hat. Well, with the way they had conditioned him, he might have been able to.

The problem was Shigaraki, oddly enough. The few things Hawks let slip as he was trying to gain the League’s trust was met with intense anger and indignation from Shigaraki, not directed toward him but on his behalf.

“They shouldn’t treat you like that,” Shigaraki had growled once, surprising Hawks. It almost sounded like he actually cared. “It’s not good strategy either. ‘Loyalty begets loyalty’ or something like that.”

The way Dabi had looked at Shigaraki anytime he said literally anything—Hawks felt the sting of envy before pushing it away, knowing that if it was meant to be, then he would have a soulmate out there somewhere. Look how that turned out. Hawks should know better than to get his hopes up.

Hawks had smiled easily at Shigaraki and offered a nonchalant shrug. “It’s not one of your games, though, boss man. The Commission has all the power, so what they say goes. That’s why I’m cheating the system—coming to you guys, getting the cheat codes or whatever game analogy fits.”

The lie tasted bitter on his tongue at the time, but what was once only his cover story started sounding more and more like a good idea. The last thing the Commission could have planned for was that this ragtag group of villains, with their outstanding shows of outraged empathy, to have more sway than their years of unrelenting conditioning and unspoken threats of what would happen should Hawks fail.

Shigaraki had hummed, the suspicion in his eyes about Hawks’s true motives, even after finally extending the invitation to meet the boss man himself and disclosing the location of at least one of their safe houses. So damn observant, and not just Shigaraki, no. All of them were, and maybe that’s why they had lasted so long and only seemed to be growing in strength. The Commission was right to fear the League and to try to wipe it out, destroy it from the inside, but maybe, just maybe, they chose the wrong pawn for the job.

To try to make a firm decision that he wouldn’t change his mind about five minutes later, Hawks had tried to sit down with his intern, Kaminari Denki, and ask him about what his time with the League was like. He had intel that Denki was under Force Majeure’s nasty quirk and wasn’t able to tell anyone anything, and he was disappointed to find out that the intel was accurate. That made Hawks question his own motives once again. Was the League of Villains as empathetic as they seemed when they could really put a teenager through that quirk? Or was it just their own underhanded strategy to turn Hawks against the Commission so they would have their own inside man?

All he was doing was thinking in circles. Hawks groaned as he slammed his head backwards against the drywall of his apartment, wincing at the loud noise, and then sighing in quiet relief when he didn’t hear a shout of complaint from his neighbors.

He wished more than anything that he could just waltz on into the League’s base, call a meeting, sit down with everyone, say exactly what was going on with him from both sides, his thoughts on the matter, and get his questions answered so he could finally make a decision for himself for once in his life. But that would be a death sentence all on its own, wouldn’t it?

-.-.-

Hitoshi and Denki had tried and failed multiple times throughout the week to get Neito alone and cornered so they could force him to talk through his feelings instead of wallowing in solitary self-pity. Neito was an expert at chasing; he had to be to get anything for his quirk to latch onto. So, it made sense that he was also really good at evading. He knew all of his own tricks, and he had more tricks than the average person, so he was really good at staying out of reach, and sometimes even out of sight. He didn’t choose ‘Phantom Thief’ as his alias for nothing!

Bakugou had seen the little blond menace creeping around the common grounds after classes ended, eyes fixated on Denki who was looking all around. Denki had slumped when he didn’t spot the blond hiding behind a tree, and Neito slumped, too. Even when Neito had succeeded, he seemed to fail.

Bakugou let out a heavy sigh. Why the fuck had he wanted to be a hero again? He figured that he had the time, and Hitoshi and Denki were his friends, and for some incomprehensible reason (fate), Neito was important to them. Plus, he had his own frustrations to work out after a certain green-haired nerd started acting strangely.

“C’mon,” he grunted, kicking lightly at Neito’s shoe as he slumped against the tree in pained relief at not being discovered.

Neito startled, looking up, relaxing when he saw that it wasn’t one of his boyfriends, and then tensing again when he realized that it was Bakugou fucking Katsuki.

“You gonna kill me?” Neito asked, but stood nevertheless, following Bakugou after a quick glance around to make sure the coast was still clear.

“Haven’t decided, yet,” Bakugou deadpanned, only half-joking. “Looks like you’re on death’s door anyway. Looking more like your soulmate with those bags under your eyes.”

Neito offered a small smile, hands starting to trail up to his eyes before forcing them back down to his sides.

“Well, shit,” Bakugou barked as he led the tired, blond boy off campus. “If you’re so damn head-over-heels that you fucking swoon and shit when I compare you to your sleep averse boyfriend, why the fuck are you avoiding him, huh?!”

“You haven’t heard?” Neito asked, surprised.

“That you said a bunch of fucked up shit to everyone within sight?” Bakugou asked, scoffing when Neito flinched at the reminder. “Get over yourself, copycat. Not even you can just resist a fucking quirk like that. How bad could it have been, anyway?”

Neito took a deep breath, ready to die if it was his time. “I told Denki that he forced his way into our relationship, and he didn’t actually belong.”

“Big deal,” Bakugou grunted. “Probably didn’t even phase dunce face. He’s… resilient like that.”

“Yeah,” Neito agreed, thinking about the time he tried to distract him during training by saying terrible things.

Bakugou took a water bottle from his bag and started to chug it viciously. Neito snorted. It figured that everything Bakugou did, it was with aggressive energy.

“I also told Hitoshi that his father killed himself because he wasn’t good enough.”

Neito would swear that he didn’t find it amusing when Bakugou spit his water out in surprise, and he would be lying. Even through the intense fog of guilt that had settled over his mind, Neito was immensely entertained.

“Shit, copycat.”

“I know.”

“That’s—”

“I know!” After a few more steps taken in blissful silence, Neito sighed. “He wasn’t even mad. He laughed. They both did, and they both agreed with everything I said, turning it into a joke.”

“So, what’s the issue then? Why are you playing super-spy and somersaulting around campus to avoid your boyfriends?” Bakugou asked patronizingly with a sneer.

“First of all, it was QQQ behavior, not ‘super-spy,’ you neanderthal,” Neito snapped. He rushed to continue before Bakugou could retort, “because I don’t deserve any of that. I didn’t deserve for them to laugh and smile and brush my comments off. I didn’t deserve for them to even stay and keep me company.”

“What would have happened if they didn’t stay? If they just locked you in a room alone?” Bakugou asked, scuffing his shoe on the ground as they walked, taking more sips from his water bottle more carefully, just in case Neito tried to drop another unexpected bomb on him.

“I, uh… I would have turned the negative thoughts onto myself if there wasn’t another… target.” At Bakugou’s incredulous look, Neito rushed to argue, “it would have been fine, though. I could have handled it.”

“If you could have handled something like that, why don’t you trust that your boyfriends could handle what you threw at them?” Bakugou asked, turning it back around on him.

Neito cursed him in his mind for making sense. Since when was Bakugou the reasonable one? Neito had followed Bakugou to meet his untimely demise, not to have sense talked into him. Neito groaned at his misfortune.

“It’s not that they can’t handle it. It’s that they should never have had to,” he attempted to explain.

“But they did. Life isn’t full of ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots.’ It’s full of ‘is’ and ‘is nots.’ You can’t go back in time, so you have to look forward and decide what the fuck you’re going to do about it,” Bakugou spoke like he knew from experience as he used the motion of putting his water bottle back in his bag to avoid looking directly at Neito.

“Well, what the fuck can I do about it?” Neito asked, angrily kicking at the ground.

“You can start by blowing some shit up.”

At that, Bakugou swept his arm out to present the vast junkyard that stood before them. Neito nodded slowly before gaining speed and energy to his movements. If Bakugou was going to kill him and still wanted to continue working to become a hero, this was a great place to do so. But when Neito looked over at Bakugou, he was just standing there with his hand outstretched, glowering at him.

“You gonna copy my quirk or not?!” Bakugou snapped. “Fuck, copycat. Do I have to walk you through this shit step-by-step or some shit?”

After another pause as Neito processed the unexpected offer, Bakugou decided to initiate contact for him, reaching out to grab Neito’s hand and giving him an intense look that said he better be copying his quirk dammit, because Bakugou wasn’t going to do this again. In that moment, for the first time, Neito felt that ‘copycat’ might even have an affectionate ring to it, if he listened hard enough.

Neito smiled at him, copied his quirk, and turned to look at the endless expanse of shit that he was going to blow up with one of his favorite quirks.

“Thank—”

“Don’t,” Bakugou cut off. “I’m not doing this for you.”

Neito hummed, though it was obvious that he didn’t believe Bakugou for a second.

“Shut the fuck up—"

“Didn’t say anything,” Neito snarked, amusement dancing in his narrowed eyes.

Ignoring him, Bakugou continued, “you’re going to blow shit up, put on your big boy pants, and go fix what you fucked up. Understood?”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Neito drawled with a lazy salute.

“That’s Captain Explosion Murder to you, copycat.” Bakugou smirked at him.

Bakugou had made a joke, and not at Neito’s expense. No one would ever believe him.

Neito laughed, palms crackling as he turned to face the endless options of targets for his frustration, and he felt more like himself than he had in a week. His laugh became more and more manic as he took off running, straight for an ugly ass vase that was begging to be destroyed.

Hitoshi and Denki were going to owe Bakugou. Big time.

Now with Neito checked off of his list, Bakugou only had to find out what the fuck was wrong with Deku. Before that, though, he was going to enjoy himself by destroying some shit.

Chapter Text

“Can we talk?” Dabi asked from the doorway.

Shigaraki tensed where he sat, shoulder drawing up and teeth grinding together, sending an annoying vibration through his jaw. And though his eyes were fixed downward toward the blueprints of the Yakuza hideout that he had sent Toga and Twice to, he wasn’t really seeing them. Blood pulsed behind his eyes as his vision flashed, and he duly noted that there would be an incoming headache after this exchange.

“The silent treatment is a form of abuse,” Dabi stated like he was explaining the concept of his own quirk, easygoing and familiar. Even though the words were accusatory, his tone wasn’t. It was more like a lighthearted observation than an accusation or a call for change.

Dabi entered the room slowly, but not because he was being cautious, no. He trusted Shigaraki, and even if the man was pissed, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. One look at Shigaraki, tensed as tightly as a wound coil, hands fisted on top of the desk he was working at, and Dabi knew that as much as Shigaraki was a real threat and feeling real, intense emotions, he wasn’t going to do anything.

“It’s not the silent treatment,” Shigaraki ground out, not turning around to look at him. From his place in the middle of the room, Dabi could see the irritated twitch of Shigaraki’s eye that was closest to him. “I’m counting and breathing.”

Dabi smiled easily at the explanation and sat where he stood, allowing himself to flop down onto the plush, navy carpet, combing his fingers over the texture as he waited. Dabi smiled at Shigaraki’s irritation, and Dabi smiled because he knew Shigaraki had the power to do a lot of damage, and Dabi smiled because he knew Shigaraki wouldn’t use that power against him, and Dabi smiled because he always smiled around Shigaraki. He loved him endlessly.

Dabi frowned and looked away, distracting himself by looking at a loose thread on Shigaraki’s pillowcase in the opposite direction from where Shigaraki himself sat. Dabi frowned because Shigaraki’s pain was his doing, and Dabi frowned because there was no easy solution to their problems, and Dabi frowned because he was in way too deep to just walk away and never think of Shigaraki again, and Dabi frowned because Hawks was growing on him despite his active resistance and distancing from him.

When Shigaraki got his heartrate under control and was finally able to force his muscles to relax enough that he wasn’t comparable to that rocky Class 2-A student, he turned around only to see Dabi staring at his bed, an intense concentration on his face.

Taking one last deep breath, Shigaraki muttered, “what did you need?”

It was quiet, but so was everything else, so Dabi heard him loud and clear. Dabi sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, a sure sign to Shigaraki that he wasn’t as relaxed as he looked.

"I need to know what you need,” Dabi answered. And when Shigaraki didn’t respond, Dabi looked up to meet his gaze, and continued, “what do you want me to do?”

The question had undertones of desperation. It wasn’t rhetorical or condescending; he was truly asking Shigaraki what he could do to start to mend things between them.

“What do you want to do?” Shigaraki returned.

Dabi looked away again, his hands going back into his hair, but staying there and tightening on his strands instead of just running through. “I don’t know. Fuck. Tomura, I don’t know.”

Shigaraki knew that this answer would be a possibility, but it still stung. A pang of envy and rejection pierced his heart, and his stomach dropped. So, he took another deep breath. And then another.

With a sad kindness in his voice that Dabi had never heard from him before, Shigaraki said, “then you need to figure it out.”

-.-.-

“Chargebolt!” Hawks barked. “Are you ready to fly?”

Denki smiled widely and lifted his arms, then suddenly he was no longer on the ground. Hawks had a firm grip on his arms, and Denki gripped him back just as firmly.

Denki kicked his feet out at nothing and laughed, amazed by the feeling of flying through the open air. Hawks looked down at Denki, endlessly amused by the little intern he had taken in. Watching people’s reactions the first time flying never got old, even when they weren’t flying of their own accord.

On the outer limits of the city, about 2 minutes and 45 seconds of flight away if Hawks was carrying a Denki-sized weight with him, a hospital was experiencing a power outage. There were emergency generators buzzing to give power to the most important things, but they had been due for an update for over a decade and were predicted to give out at any moment. They lasted long enough for Hawks to drop Denki in the mix of rescue heroes and teams working in orderly fashion to try to get a replacement powerline up and running. Until then, though, they needed Chargebolt, specifically.

It was Gang Orca’s crew who were the closest when the powerline went down after a neglected tree had fallen and severed the connection. The tree had already been dragged away with the help of Uravity and Phantom Thief, both using Zero Gravity to share the strain of the weight of the tree against the quirk.

Neito about had a heart attack when he realized they called in Denki for help when he saw Hawks’s red wings getting closer at an alarming speed. He about rolled his eyes into the back of his head when he saw one of the rescue teams setting up a ladder so that Denki would be able to reach both ends of the broken powerline to resume the current.

“You can’t do that!” Neito rushed over, still out of breath and a little nauseous from moving the tree. “Are you trying to kill him?!”

“What’s the issue?” one of the workers sneered, annoyed that a teenager had the gall to boss him around.

“You’re trying to put an electric-type on a metal ladder, up off of the ground, which is important for, you know, grounding,” Neito snapped, rolling his eyes.

“He won’t be able to reach otherwise,” the worker argued as he shifted the rim of his yellow hard hat but looked more hesitant now as he regarded the ladder. He didn’t want to be the reason a teenage intern died, and during a rescue mission that didn’t involve any villains, no less.

“He won’t be able to reach when he’s dead either,” Neito grumbled, moving forward to get the ladder out of the way. “I’ll copy his quirk. Between the both of us, we should be able to reach.”

The rescue worker regarded Neito for a moment and then moved forward to take the ladder from him. Neito was about to argue, but the worker nodded at him, awkwardly tucked the ladder under his arm until it was balanced and strode away with it.

Neito only had time for one more deep breath before Denki was right there next to him. Like a well-oiled machine, even after avoiding him for so long, Neito reached out to meet Denki halfway. The second their hands touched, and Denki’s quirk was copied, the boys ran to either side of the disaster area, building charge even as they ran. Ignoring the shouts of alarm and without hesitation, they each grabbed onto one side of the broken power line and wrapped it tightly around their wrists as they started dragging their respective ends back toward the center.

The onlookers were nervous; electricity was nothing to mess with, which is why they had wanted them to go slower and be more careful. The heroes that the interns worked directly with and other student interns from the hero course at UA watched intently, but with something akin to excitement in their eyes rather than hesitant nervousness at the delicateness of the situation at hand.

When the boys met in the middle, they each gave one last tug at the thick, coated wire around their wrists as they reached out, meeting each other’s eyes for the first time in over a week, grabbing onto each other’s forearm, and connecting the hospital to grid power once again. The heroes, interns, and civilians cheered. The other members of the rescue team looked on in awe at the surprising success. They were kind of expecting an explosion or something. The other interns were kind enough to explain that when Phantom Thief uses Chargebolt’s quirk so often that it’s almost like it’s his own, and that they work together so well that it’s like they read each other’s mind, they don’t have to hesitate and second-guess. It’s like muscle memory for them.

“So,” Denki started, a smile tugging on his lips. “Now that I have you stuck here—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Neito grumbled. “We should talk.” He took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes closed, and offered, “if you only want to be with Hitoshi from now on, I’d understand.”

Neito turned his head away just in case he was tempted to open his eyes to peek at Denki’s reaction. Neito didn’t need his eyes for Denki’s reaction, though.

Neito whipped his head around to openly stare at Denki when he laughed aloud, basically heaving while having so little room to move, arms stretched out as they were.

Those who had moved forward to connect the new powerline looked over at Denki. Neito was about to snap at them to mind their own business, but he saw genuine concern in their eyes and started to move quicker.

“He’s fine,” Neito called out. “Seriously, take your time. Don’t rush on our account.”

“Yeah,” Denki heaved, unable to wipe the tears from the force of his laughter from his face. “I’m good. Phantom Thief is just so funny.”

“I’m not trying to be funny,” Neito insisted then, in a quieter voice as more eyes left them and focused on the task at hand after they were assured that Denki wasn’t becoming delirious from the current rushing through their bodies.

“It’s always been the three of us,” Denki said, a seriousness lacing his tone that was a vast difference from only seconds before. “And I hope it always will be.”

“Even after I said… all that,” Neito grimaced, unwilling to delve into the details of the insults he had thrown.

“Your words under a stray quirk mean nothing to me.”

“They should, though,” Neito argued.

“They don’t. At all. Because the way you treat me every second of every minute of every day shows me how you feel about me. Five minutes of insults can’t undo all of that.”

“I don’t do anything special.”

“And, just because you think that, it makes it all the more impactful!” Denki insisted, gaining energy to his voice as he continued, “you and Hitoshi never make me feel like I’m the odd one out. You treat me just like you treat him, and you’ll never know how much that means to me, Nei.”

“Stop, I—”

“I love you,” Denki said, but his brow was furrowed, and he said it like it was a warning. “Don’t you go insulting my boyfriend, now.”

Neito laughed then, for the first time in what felt like forever.

“What if Hitoshi or I had been hit with that quirk?” Denki asked then, to really drive the point home. “Think of the worst things we could ever say to you. Would you be upset?”

Neito snorted. “Of course not. Even if you weren’t under a quirk, I—”

Neito cut himself off and turned to look at Denki. Denki’s smile was growing wider and wider.

“You love me, and I show you every day how much I love you, and words wouldn’t be able to undo all of that?” Denki finished for him. He would have been bouncing in joyful smugness if remaining on the ground wasn’t so vital in that moment.

“Yeah,” Neito grumbled, but he smiled. “Something like that.”

When the rescue group successfully transferred the flow of current from the broken line to the newly attached one, Neito and Denki collapsed on the ground in exhaustion as everyone around them clapped. It would never fail to give Denki the chills, and so he smiled and waved in appreciation as Neito hauled himself up, offering a hand to help Denki do the same.

As they walked away and were completely out of earshot, Neito asked, “did you put the League up to this? Was this their doing?”

“No,” Denki said, shaking his head. “But I do need to call Spinner and cancel an event I had scheduled for tomorrow.”

A laugh bubbled out of Neito without his permission. He didn’t ask Denki if he was serious or just joking. Maybe Denki had been spending too much time with Todoroki, and his dry sense of humor had rubbed off on him. In any case, Neito didn’t really want to know, and it wasn’t important either way.

Chapter Text

Neito had been loving. Maybe too loving. It was suspicious, and Hitoshi and Denki shared glances that confirmed that the other also picked up on Neito’s erratic affection.

When the hero students piled onto the busses, separated by class, Neito had even tried to bribe Vlad King to let Denki sneak onto the Class 2-B bus. When that was a bust, he had turned his attention to Aizawa. Unsurprisingly, Aizawa seemed immune to bribery, which was good for society, but bad for Neito.

“I’ll host our get-togethers at my house!” Neito had tried, also putting on his best puppy-eyed look.

“That’s no matter,” Aizawa responded in his deep, tired voice. “Having you two over livens things up.”

“Then I’ll make sure we definitely meet at my house if you don’t let Hitoshi and me on this bus!” he tried, stomping his foot and pointing at the bus like Aizawa might have confused which one they were discussing.

“The peace and quiet is always nice,” Aizawa mused in return.

Neito saw where Hitoshi got his easygoing attitude from. Diffusing by endless agreement seemed to be his specialty. Denki’s, too. And it seemed to work, evidenced by Neito sulking back to his own class’s bus, Denki waving at him enthusiastically as he went. He was greeted by a smirking Hitoshi.

“I told you that it wouldn’t work,” Hitoshi chirped, smirking.

Neito could kiss that smirk right off his cute face. On the other hand, he liked it just fine on Hitoshi’s face. It suited him well. Just maybe not when it was at Neito’s expense.

“It was worth a shot!” Neito insisted, grabbing onto the handrail and swinging himself around to start climbing the steps to enter the bus.

Hitoshi followed, smiling. Everything was good. Neito had stopped acting so uptight around him and Denki, so Hitoshi considered that a win, even though Neito had been overcompensating with uncharacteristic, intense love and attention. Aizawa and Yamada were continuing to talk about adoption. The real thing. It gave Hitoshi chills every time. He didn’t know why it always took him by surprise; they were his pre-adoptive family, after all. But the fact that they wanted to turn pre-adoptive into adoptive just made Hitoshi smile so wide that his cheeks hurt every time he thought about it.

Neito was just so, so grateful that his lovely soulmate and boyfriend were able to overlook his transgressions.

Denki made his way through the bus, sending a smile in Midoriya’s direction. When Midoriya averted his gaze without smiling back, Denki didn’t hesitate to move past his seat and aim to sit with someone else. He had no idea what he might have done to upset Midoriya, but a bus ride full of their classmates in close proximity was not the time or place to try to find out.

For the first five minutes, he had sat next to Mineta.

“You never hang out with me anymore!” Mineta whined.

“Uh… have you seen my boyfriends?!” Denki joked, shoving Mineta playfully with his shoulder.

Denki seat-hopped like a few others. Mina was known for being the best seat-hopper, though.

Denki had sat on Kirishima, much to Bakugou’s chagrin.

“Don’t you have anyone else to bother?” he had barked.

“You mean you?” Denki asked, feigning innocence as he stretched out so he was across both Kirishima and Bakugou’s laps. With a laugh, Denki attempted, “I’ll get up if you promise to leave the spice out of dinner tonight.”

Bakugou had said “yeah, whatever.”

Denki moved with a smile, but even he knew that there would be extra spice that night, and everyone would (rightfully) blame him.

The seat next to Iida was free, and Denki’s eyes targeted in on it.

Denki had felt like he was getting faster at chasing Hawks. He was still way behind, but progress is progress. Also, he had never had this level of endurance and stamina. He sometimes wondered what would happen if he challenged Iida to an endurance competition. Speed, Iida would win, for sure. Endurance, though, Denki feels like he would have a good chance.

“Hey, Iida, buddy! Bro! Pal! Class rep! The man!” Denki listed as he plopped himself down next to Iida on the bus.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mina fling herself on top of Kirishima and Bakugou. Bakugou glared directly at him as if to say ‘see what you’ve started,’ and Denki looked away and pretended he didn’t see any of that.

“Kaminari,” Iida greeted simply, wondering what the electric blond was gearing up to ask him.

“Let’s race!” Denki blurted. No need for easing into it.

“I regret to inform you that it would not be a fair challenge,” Iida answered, a small smile on his face.

He wasn’t even smug about it, just factual. Denki found him endlessly amusing in the same way he found Todoroki endlessly hilarious.

“Not a quickness race, but an endurance race!” Denki specified, bouncing a little in his seat as he imagined it.

“That would be a more even match,” Iida pondered, bringing his hand to his chin as he thought about the logistics.

When the bus lurched to a stop, everyone slid forward with the momentum at the unexpected and abrupt change in acceleration. Confused, the students began to pile toward the front of the bus. They shouldn’t have made it to the training ground, yet, so they were all curious as to what made the bus stop.

Iron villain.

That’s what made the bus stop. A villain made of iron.

Tetsutetsu was the first one out of the bus, running out into the street to join in the action. He knew he was in for some joking later on about how both he and the villain were made of metal, but if he could get a head start and just rush right in, then he would have something to combat the teasing with. He knew it would be harmless, but it was still fun to have ammo to keep the banter and trash-talking going. Class 2-A watched through the bus windows as he sprinted past, looked around at each other, smiled, and rushed to join him, mixing in with the rest of Class 2-B who were hot on Tetsutetsu’s heels as they swung themselves into the fray. The students were only more encouraged and hyped up when Vlad King and Eraserhead, after quick consideration, shrugged at each other and let the kids have at it. They never strayed far in case they needed to intervene, but they did stand back to let the students have an opportunity to shine.

Class 2-B had been whining about catching up to Class 2-A in terms of real villain experiences in the classroom, so maybe this would give them what they needed and calm them down. It wasn’t like Vlad King could call up some villains and schedule an attack on Class 2-B. Even if he had tried, which he swears he hadn’t, the villains would think they were walking into a trap and refuse. Vlad King decided that this would be the next best thing, even if Class 2-B shared the experience with Class 2-A.

Out of all of the years they had taught at UA, though, Vlad King and Aizawa never saw their classes get along quite like their current ones. Usually, the best they could hope for would be distant tolerance of each other. Sometimes it was hostile, competitive rivalry that would carry over into their professional careers after graduation. But this playful kind of competitiveness where they also cheered each other on and pushed each other to new limits intentionally and not just as a by-product of training together… Well, they just knew that these kids would be important in the hero world once they got out there and made names for themselves.

Aizawa was actually kind of relieved. He had been knee-deep in Yakuza recon for the previous few nights, and Hitoshi was getting a little antsy after not being permitted to join Aizawa on his nightly patrols without knowing why. This would hopefully get Hitoshi back in better spirits as far as his internship was concerned. And if it would turn into positive PR for UA, Aizawa would take it. Anything to boost confidence in UA after Denki had been captured by the League of Villains right from under their care.

While their classmates kept the iron villain busy and distracted, Hitoshi tried to goad him into answering a question. It should have been a huge red flag that the villain didn’t answer, but no one thought much of it. Sometimes, especially with metal quirks, the jaw can be affected in a way that makes it difficult or even impossible to speak. It wasn’t the students’ fault that they were not aware that the iron villain already knew about Hitoshi’s quirk.

Denki stood back, shifting his weight and looking around for an opportunity to assist his friends, knowing that he wouldn’t be helpful in the traditional, straightforward way because his electricity wouldn’t stop the villain, and the villain might even be able to turn that electricity onto his classmates.

So, when Neito came over to copy Denki’s quirk, Denki tried to stop him. He should save that space for a quirk that could actually help the situation rather than hinder it.

“Trust me!” Neito pressed.

And of course, Denki did.

Neito dragged him over to the side of the road where the guide rails were staked into the ground to prevent vehicles from driving over the side of the embankment. With intense concentration, Neito extended his arms. Just when Denki thought nothing was going to happen, the guide rail started to lift out of the ground, and all Denki could do was stare in open amazement. Neito must have found a metal manipulation quirk among the civilians that had gathered, leaving their cars in favor of watching the hero students fight.

“Pick your jaw up off the ground and help me!” Neito chastised, but he was smiling, secretly pleased that he could still amaze and surprise his boyfriend.

“An electromagnet?” Denki whispered as he moved forward, looking at the twisted coil Neito had morphed the metal into.

Neito beamed. “You got it, hot stuff. I’ll push the current, and you pull. Alright?”

Denki nodded his agreement, unable to do much else, still stunned that Neito was able to pull something like this off so quickly. Not only with a quirk he never used before, but also just coming up with this plan on the spot.

Denki grabbed one side of the coil, and Neito grabbed the other. They reached for each other and grasped the other’s hand, both reminded of the week before when they had supplied power to the hospital. With the changing season, it had gotten considerably colder since then, but with the adrenaline pumping, the boys didn’t have time to shiver.

Neito sent a strong pulse through, Denki received it and moved it along, back to Neito, who continued to ramp up the current and voltage. Neito and Denki’s hair stood on end, and they smothered their laughter and refocused on their task.

Before anyone knew what had happened, the iron villain was suddenly propelled through the air, straight into the magnet that Neito and Denki had created. With forty students and two pros surrounding the villain to thoroughly keep him occupied, he never knew what hit him until it was too late. He struggled but couldn’t break free. The responding police officers had to use plastic cuffs (the metal ones flew to join the villain stuck to the magnet), but they got the job done and hauled the villain away to the cheers of the civilian bystanders.

Nothing had ever been so easy, Denki remembered thinking. He made a mental note to never think that again because it was sure to jinx everything.

The civilians, now that the area was clear, swarmed the hero students. Aizawa and Vlad King decided to let the students have their moment of fame before they would shuffle them all back onto the busses.

“Hi! Chargebolt, right?” a young man asked as he approached Denki with his hand extended.

The man had short rusty brown hair and wore an easygoing, friendly smile. Denki automatically liked him and felt at ease by his relaxed approach. He was a little taller than Denki, and quite lanky compared to the hero students mucking about, but he was nothing to sneeze at, either. He had a faded scar on his neck that disappeared under the neckline of the brown sweater he was wearing.

“That’s me!” Denki greeted with a huge smile, and he surged forward to meet the man halfway, extending his own hand in official greeting.

As soon as they had shaken hands, Denki had shocked the man with a pulse of electricity. Denki withdrew quickly, his face heating up in embarrassment.

“I’m so sorry! That hasn’t happened in years!” Denki realized something was wrong when he tried to turn his quirk off and it only sent more electricity shooting out from his skin. He wrung his hands in frustrated anxiety, wondering what the hell had gotten into him.

When Denki looked up to apologize again, the man’s smile had morphed from friendly to triumphant.

“I haven’t introduced myself,” the man said, smiling even wider. With a shallow bow as to not take his eyes off of Denki, he drawled, “you can call me Full Throttle. The pleasure is all mine.”

Chapter Text

When Denki lunged forward, Full Throttle flinched away, stumbling in his effort to get out of reach. But Denki wasn’t reaching for him; he wasn’t trying to grab on and take him down with him, no. Denki was trying to minimize collateral damage.

Denki had seen the aftermath of what happens when Full Throttle gets his quirk activated on someone two times, and both of those times were only civilians with under-practiced vibration-type quirks. Who knew what kind of damage Denki’s well-developed electric-type quirk was going to cause?

Denki shot forward at full speed, knowing that he wouldn’t last long climbing the hill at that rate, but reassuring himself that he could slow down and pace himself when he got a safer distance away.

He turned around momentarily when he reached the tree line and met Aizawa’s gaze. At least he knew that someone knew what was going on. And it looked like Aizawa had the soulmates under control and would keep them safe.

The forest thickened around him, and he almost tripped over a root as he climbed, the incline getting steeper as he aimed for the top of the mountain. Getting to high ground would be safer for everyone else; no one else should get caught in the crossfire of his electricity that way.

Denki left chaos behind him, solely focused on his goal of getting away and keeping everyone safe. Everyone except for himself, that is, but he knew he was doomed either way. No one had ever survived Full Throttle’s quirk, and Denki knew that he wasn’t special enough to be the exception.

Aizawa had been watching the trio a little more closely than the rest. If anyone called it favoritism, Aizawa would call them a big, fat liar. Those three just seemed to get into more trouble than usual. So, when he saw Denki’s quirk envelop his whole body, and the look of embarrassed panic on his face, Aizawa automatically activated his quirk to cancel out Denki’s. When Denki’s quirk persisted, Aizawa swore. He rushed forward, but Full Throttle had already disappeared into the crowd, and Aizawa didn’t get a good enough look to track him down. Besides, he didn’t have the time for that anyway.

Neito and Hitoshi had also seen what happened, but they didn’t quite know the extent to what was wrong. When Denki took off in a full sprint toward the forest that covered the mountainside that they had been riding along just twenty minutes earlier, Neito and Hitoshi took a step forward to follow him, but they immediately found themselves wrapped tightly in Aizawa’s capture weapon.

Aizawa knew that explaining it to them wasn’t going to get them to stand down.

“Oh, our boyfriend is going to die? Guess we’ll have to find a new one!” said nobody ever.

Not a chance, Aizawa knew.

“It’s Full Throttle,” Aizawa hissed.

Immediately, the boys understood. They looked at each other, faces paling. They looked in the direction of the lightning that was increasing every second, stricken. Then they fought tooth and nail to untangle themselves from Aizawa’s capture weapon, huffing and puffing and swearing and threatening.

As Hitoshi made progress at untangling them, he ignored Aizawa’s demands that they leave Denki to the pros, talking over him like he wasn’t even there.

Neito wasn’t so gracious as he sneered, “what pros? Huh? What the fuck are they going to do? What have they ever done when it came to Full Throttle’s quirk?”

“The one civilian who came to talk to me has an electric-type quirk,” Hitoshi informed Neito before he could continue with his raging.

“The girl with the blue hair?” Neito confirmed, looking around to find his target, refocused on what mattered most in that moment.

“That’s the one. I’m going to see what Yaoyorozu can come up with for me. Some kind of super insulated suit or something.”

“What are you thinking?” Neito asked, to be clear on the plan before they get separated.

“You go ahead and do that closed circuit thing with Denki so that he lasts longer at higher voltage." Neito nodded his understanding, looping a section of the capture weapon out from under his arm and over his head. Hitoshi unwrapped a section from his ankle and stepped over it before continuing, “I’m going to get close enough to get him under my quirk.”

Understanding and awe filled Neito’s eyes. “You think that you can get him to turn it off by commanding it?”

Hitoshi shrugged, completely at a loss. “It’s worth a shot. We have to try something.” A pause. “Do you have a better idea?”

Neito shook his head, spinning in place to loosen the capture weapon further. “I think if anyone can do it, it would be you. Let’s try it.”

Between the two of them, they had managed to worm their way out of the capture weapon faster than Aizawa had predicted they would. That’s what he gets for teaching Hitoshi how to use the capture weapon and practicing with him constantly. It was no surprise that Neito followed suit; Hitoshi trained with Neito all the time, so Neito was used to the nuances of the capture weapon, too.

It wouldn’t exactly be responsible to allow his pre-adoptive son and his soulmate to chase after a lost cause, would it?

But they did have a plan. And when had Aizawa ever claimed to be responsible?

Besides, it would be hypocritical. Aizawa himself was chasing after what a lot of people would consider to be a lost cause.

Aizawa would say that at least he was responsible enough to let Neito and Hitoshi know what they were up against. And maybe the trio would be the first to figure out a way around Full Throttle’s quirk. Stranger things have happened.

Neito took off, throwing a “follow the lightning” over his shoulder to Hitoshi, and making a quick pit-stop at the girl with the blue hair to grab an electric quirk so he could touch Denki without being electrocuted. Hitoshi rushed over to Yaoyorozu, and she listened to him with an intensity that Aizawa had seen often, but then it morphed into something else entirely. Panicked concentration would be the closest Aizawa would get to explaining it with words.

Aizawa opened his mouth, but before he could even get the first word out, Hitoshi looked at him with a calm sort of stormy determination in his eyes.

“I’m not leaving my soulmate and boyfriend up there on that damn mountain alone.”

Aizawa knew this day would come eventually. This is the life of a hero. This is the life that he chose, that Yamada chose, and that Hitoshi was actively choosing every day he continued to work toward his goals.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Aizawa deadpanned. “You’re a hero, aren’t you?”

“I’m trying to be,” Hitoshi responded softly, forcing himself to stand still and not shift his weight under the anticipation of when Yaoyorozu would be finished with his insulated suit.

Hitoshi then explained his theory to Aizawa, also explaining how Neito and Denki could get to a higher voltage with no side effects when they made a loop together for the electricity to travel through. He explained how that would give him enough time for Yaoyorozu to save his ass by being fucking awesome and how it would allow Neito and Denki to hopefully have a little more control over the electricity and be able to direct it away from him as he got closer.

When a loud crack of thunder followed immediately after a bright column of light shooting straight up into the sky, everyone startled. Hitoshi stayed tense until Yaoyorozu was finished, thanked her incessantly as he suited up, and sprinted off without another look back.

Running toward the lightning was terrifying, but it made it easier knowing that he was running to his boyfriend’s rescue. Also, his soulmate’s rescue since Neito had taken off in advance to help stabilize Denki and maintain him until Hitoshi could get there.

Except, if Hitoshi’s theory didn’t work, then they would all die, and it would probably be pretty painful. Hitoshi pushed the thought away and continued running. Instead, he thought about how Neito was doing with the task of running up the mountain and how he was managing.

“Speed.” Neito muttered to himself under his breath. “I am speed. Lightning quick! Ka-chow!” He sent a wink at a tree that he sped past. “Lightning can’t hurt me. I am lightning, motherfucker!”

As if testing his claim, a bolt of lightning headed straight for Neito, and like he was made for it, he allowed the lightning to flow through him with the help of the electricity quirk that the blue-haired girl was more than happy to share with an up-and-coming hero. Neito’s steps didn’t even falter.

“You thought—!” Neito screeched at the sky as he laughed in victory, continuing to run at full speed.

Denki had managed to get to the top of the mountain in record time. That’s the benefit of adrenaline, he figured. Too bad he would die before he could tell anyone he probably broke a world record.

Denki wasn’t sure how out of hand his electricity would get before it finally overtook him, so he decided to try to give everyone as much time as possible to get as far away as possible. He sat in the middle of a rocky clearing, closed his eyes, and started his rhythmic breathing, attempting to decrease the voltage with every exhale. He was proud of himself when he felt himself stabilize for a minute, even when the power started to rise again. He would take any small victory he could get at that point.

Hawks watched from a safe distance away, wings spread for balance as he stood on a branch of a tall tree on top of an adjacent mountain, one hand in his pocket and one on the trunk of the tree. Anyone looking might have seen his easygoing posture and thought he was relaxed, but the way his fingernails were digging into the tree indicated otherwise.

This is bad, he thought. If Kaminari dies, that will create more problems than it’ll solve, I’m sure.

It would free Denki of the League of Villains, who had seemed to have taken an interest in him if Dabi and Shigaraki asking about how his little protégé is doing was any indication. They never ask about his sidekicks, so why his little intern? Were they really that bad that they would go after a child who they had already kidnapped once before? And he’s the one they used Force Majeure’s quirk on, no less. The kid couldn’t catch a break; bad luck followed him.

The hair on the back of Hawks’s neck stood on end as a particularly powerful lightning strike lit up the surrounding clouds.

He was damn powerful, too. Hawks had never seen power like that before. Maybe the League knew the kind of power that Denki was capable of; that would explain the continued interest after they had already failed with him once before. As far as Hawks could tell, Denki was doing a fantastic job of staving off the full power for as long as he could. And if he looked closely, it even looked like Denki’s outline was fuzzing around the edges as he sat there with his eyes closed, electricity crackling around him as he breathed. Once, Hawks lost sight of Denki completely, his silhouette disappearing in the flash of light. Hawks’s heart had flipped, and dread filled his stomach as he thought the worst. The immense relief he felt when the light subsided to reveal Denki still sitting there on the ground was like nothing he had ever felt before, because it also came with a realization and a theory.

“I’m rooting for you, kiddo,” Hawks muttered, squeezing his fists tightly, ignoring the feeling of his knuckles scraping across the bark of the tree, helpless to do anything in this situation.

If Denki survived, Hawks swore he would teach the kid how to get airborne.

Denki didn’t hear Neito’s approach, and when he felt hands on his and the strain of the power of the electricity lessen, he opened his eyes. At the sight of Neito there, sitting down with him, and smiling, though out of breath, Denki thought that he had fought a good fight and died trying. He was sad that he left his boyfriends behind, but at least he was able to avoid taking anyone down with him. It also seemed like his version of eternal paradise coincidentally included the vision of Neito, so it wasn’t all so bad.

After a moment, Denki’s eyes widened and his heart raced when he realized that he was, in fact, not dead. The electricity surged around them with renewed energy, drawing from Denki’s panic as he asked Neito what the hell he thought he was doing.

“I’d follow you anywhere,” Neito responded over the loud cracks of lightning scattering around them.

Denki couldn’t respond, because how could he? Neito was using his own tricky words against him, and Denki both loved him and feared for him.

“What about Hitoshi? What’s he going to do without his soulmate?” Denki tried, desperate to not take Hitoshi’s soulmate down with him.

“He’ll be hauling ass up this mountain like something is chasing him, if he knows what’s good for him!” Neito snapped. It got the desired effect.

“He’s coming here?!” Denki screeched, panicked eyes searching the gaps in the trees to see if he could spot him.

“He’s getting some impromptu tech support from Yaoyorozu, but he should be here soon! Even Aizawa’s quirk is useless against Full Throttle, but we think Hitoshi might be able to get Full Throttle’s quirk to stop by using his own quirk against it and shutting if off at the source,” Neito explained, glad to help Denki catch up.

“That’s such a risk, though, Nei,” Denki argued, even knowing that he wouldn’t be able to change anyone’s mind.

“No broken glass this time, so I’d say this is actually an improvement!” Neito continued with an easy-going shrug as he looked around them.

Denki laughed. His death was almost certain, and there he was, laughing with Neito. He wouldn’t have it any other way, except maybe having Neito and Hitoshi miles away so he could rest easy knowing that they were safe.

Neito didn’t mention when he noticed that the force of the electricity decreased with Denki’s laughter. Denki didn’t need to worry about anything except keeping the power down as much as possible until Hitoshi could get there. Besides, Neito wanted all of Denki’s attention on him, none to even spare on the crazy situation they had found themselves in.

“A connected kiss would make it a definite improvement,” Denki added. “But it might literally kill us if we changed our circuit at this level.”

“Worth it,” Neito deadpanned, smiling when he made Denki laugh again.

“If we were on the beach instead, we could’ve made the glass with the sand, and then broken it,” Denki mused.

“Hey! No one could complain if we made it in the first place, right? We made it, so it’s ours to destroy!” Neito insisted, putting so much intention behind an unlikely scenario.

“I’d like to see them try to complain! Do you know who this is?!” Denki wailed dramatically, nodding his head at Neito in lieu of pointing. “This is Monoma Neito. And you dare criticize the art that he has displayed here? And for free, too! How ungrateful of you!”

Neito laughed. “Do you know who this is?!” he continued the joke. “This is Kaminari Denki. The only one in history to have survived Full Throttle’s quirk! And you have the gall to tell him what to do?!”

Denki smiled sadly at him. “I’m not going to survive this, Nei. Really, you should get out of here while I can still keep it down enough for you to get a safe distance away.”

“Do you know who I am?!” came from Denki’s left.

Denki whipped his head to find Hitoshi standing there, decked out in bulky, but effective, insulated clothing.

“Don’t come any closer! Seriously! You guys have to get out of here!” Denki pleaded, the electricity rising once again with his panic.

“I’m the one who saved Chargebolt from his own quirk!” Hitoshi continued, wincing when a bolt of lightning struck near his feet.

"Who am I?” Hitoshi yelled.

“The one who’s going to save me!” Denki yelled back, feeling hopeful, if not for his own sake, then for the sake of the two idiotic boys who followed a ticking time bomb up the mountain.

Damn, he loved these idiotic boys. And he knew they would argue that if their positions had been reversed, Denki would have rushed right in, too. And that made Denki feel a little off kilter because he knew they would be right, but the disconnect in his mind wouldn’t allow him to feel relieved that they were there with him. No, not until he knew they were safe.

Denki wasn’t surprised when the familiar haze fell over his mind after he had answered Hitoshi’s question. If he was going to die, under the comforting haze of Hitoshi’s quirk was the way to go, if Denki had anything to say about it.

“Take a deep breath in,” Hitoshi commanded, and Denki felt his chest rise to accommodate all of the air being taken into his lungs.

“Let the breath out and decrease your power output,” Hitoshi continued.

His calm voice was soothing and such a comfort to Denki. What was even more amazing was that after a few more repeated cyclic commands, Denki could feel the relief of not being at full power anymore. He could have cried in happiness, but he guessed Hitoshi would have had to command him to do so.

When the lightning had died down to just sparks crackling off of his skin, Hitoshi commanded, “turn your quirk off.”

Something in Denki’s brain flipped, switched, reset. The sparks dispersed completely.

Hitoshi and Neito looked at Denki with bated breath for a full minute before nodding at each other. Hitoshi released Denki from his mind control quirk, and they all braced themselves to be blasted into hell. After a few seconds, Denki squinted his eyes open to see the damage, only to find Hitoshi and Neito smiling widely at him.

“You guys!” Denki cried out, tears finally falling. “You did it! I can’t—How—”

Denki stood up only to collapse, but Neito and Hitoshi were there to catch him and take on his weight for themselves. That was no surprise though, was it? They were always there.

“I guess I can never doubt or second-guess how you feel about me ever again, can I?” Denki slurred, giggles bursting out of him as the delirium took over.

Hitoshi and Neito just whispered relieved reassurances to Denki as they maneuvered him back down the mountain. Halfway down, Aizawa came into view, and he about collapsed with relief. He hunkered down and got Denki up onto his back, but not without argument from Hitoshi and Neito.

“You’ve done enough,” Aizawa insisted, leaving no room for argument. “You’ve done something that has never been done before.”

There was a strange mix of crying and cheering when the four made their way out of the forest and in view of the students that milled around, wondering what had happened since Denki’s lightning had stopped. Luckily, the civilians had been cleared out quickly after Neito had stormed through to snag the girl’s electric quirk, so they were only swarmed by their fellow classmates instead of strangers. Surrounded by people they knew so they didn’t have to keep paranoid watch for someone who might be Full Throttle coming back to finish the job.

In a small voice and with tired eyes, Neito asked, “can Denki ride the Class 2-B bus?”

“No,” Aizawa answered. Neito deflated, but Aizawa wasn’t finished. “None of you are leaving my sight for the next ten years. All of you on the 2-A bus. We’re going home.”

It was good thinking on Aizawa’s part; Class 2-A would have rioted to be able to pour themselves all over Denki.

Full Throttle watched from a few kilometers away, on top of a nearby mountain to have a decent view. He had been keeping an eye on a certain red-winged hero that had been flying around, but Hawks seemed to be intently watching Denki and not on the lookout for Full Throttle. When the electricity finally fizzled out, Full Throttle nodded his respect toward the life lost at his hands before turning and heading back down the mountain. It had taken longer than he thought it would; heroes were on another level completely to civilians, it seemed. They were able to control their quirk for longer, even if Full Throttle’s quirk overpowered them in the end. It was impressive, really.

He deemed his quirk well-spent. He had to be selective about these things because, like Sir Nighteye, he could only use his quirk once before needing a certain recovery period. Unlike Sir Nighteye, though, Full Throttle needed a full fortnight before he could go again instead of a mere 24 hours. Yes, he had to be super selective, and he was confident that he definitely chose the right target. He had never seen anything quite like an electricity quirk going full force like that before. It was even more intense and visually pleasing than the vibration quirk users who he could use to cause destructive earthquakes.

He couldn’t wait to use his quirk on another electric type again. As many as it would take for those after him to understand the warning, that he was not to be fucked with.

Bakugou served Denki’s dinner to him that night in his room. Denki swore he was fine, but the others were determined to pamper him to death anyway, including giving him time alone after being smothered on the drive back to UA.

“Room service, eh?” Denki teased, gratefully accepting the bowl that Bakugou held out to him, moving carefully and using both hands. He still felt a little unsteady after having so much electricity buzzing through him for so long.

“Don’t get used to it,” Bakugou muttered, but the typical bite to his words was missing.

When Denki brought a spoonful to his mouth, his wide eyes shot to Bakugou’s intense glare.

“You got somethin’ to say?!” he barked, knowing exactly how Denki was going to react before he even took the first bite.

Denki’s smile crinkled his eyes and almost split his face in half, and Bakugou huffed in annoyance before stomping out of the room.

“If almost dying gets you to tone down the spice, I should have near-death experiences every day!” Denki shouted after him.

“I’ll show you a near-death experience,” Bakugou threatened under his breath as he stormed away, not bothering to turn around, small explosions crackling in his palms.

Chapter Text

If Denki thought he would get a pass after almost dying, he was sorely mistaken.

Emphasis on sore.

He winced as he gently lowered himself onto his bed, completely exhausted. He thought it was bad when Hawks was flying around, making him run around the city endlessly. He thought it couldn’t get any more exhausting than that. But now it seemed like Hawks had taken an intense interest in his intern that was not there before.

“Higher!” Hawks would command.

Denki would inhale and drive up his voltage levels higher.

“Higher!” Hawks would repeat, with an annoyed kind of tone like Denki wasn’t giving him exactly what he had already asked for.

It was never high enough, it seemed. Denki was starting to think that Hawks was trying to kill him, finish the job that Full Throttle started, but through authoritative command instead of an actual quirk.

The least Hawks could do was help Denki study for his history exam while he continuously pushed him past his limits.

Denki complied, pushing higher. Not for free, though.

“Keep going!” Denki sang with a shit-eating grin on his face.

Hawks huffed and rolled his eyes, but he did look down at the notecards Denki had forced into his hand and read off the next question.

“What year did Gran Torino make his debut?” Hawks asked.

Denki sighed. He had no idea and guessing incorrectly could be a huge insult to the hero if he implied that the man was older than he actually was.

Denki didn’t know what he did to insult Midoriya, but that boy was avoiding him like the plague. He would have thought that maybe Midoriya had a theory that Full Throttle’s quirk was contagious, and he didn’t want to hulk out, but this avoidance has been going on since before he had the run-in with the villain. Either way, Denki was suffering in more ways than just missing his company. His history grades were getting worse and worse, and it figured that they were getting into more recent history that Midoriya absolutely excelled at around the time that Midoriya wouldn’t even make eye contact with Denki.

“Either answer or work harder!” Hawks demanded.

Denki wondered if Hawks would relay an insulting answer to the retired hero. Not wanting to take the chance, Denki nodded, and forced his voltage up again.

As he lied in bed, his muscles continued to twitch from the residual effect of having high voltage electricity coursing through his body for hours on end. His mind was fuzzy, too. It was hard to concentrate, and he didn’t really remember his journey back to UA from his internship. It had been so long since Denki had overdone it that he felt his anxiety rise at the thought of short-circuiting his brain, and how Hawks would see that he absolutely will not live up to whatever potential Hawks had seen in him.

His anxiety only increased when he thought about the history exam that was coming up at the beginning of the next week.

He guessed he could try to solve one problem, at least.

He hauled himself up out of bed with a groan befit someone as allegedly old as Gran Torino, not that Denki would even estimate, before making his way to the elevator. Steps be damned, he was taking the elevator for once.

He pushed the button to descend, and his heartrate increased at the impending confrontation. Once on the second floor, he walked down the hallway and felt like he was in a horror movie. All he needed was ominous flickering lights and creepy background music.

Denki reached up a shaky hand (if anyone asked, he would totally blame it on his training earlier that day with Hawks) and knocked on Midoriya’s dorm door. After a minute with no answer, Denki tried again, knocking harder.

Denki sighed in resignation, dragging a hand down the side of his face as he contemplated what to do. With a quick look down both sides of the hallway, Denki grabbed onto the handle and pushed his way inside.

“Midoriya! I just want to talk! Why—”

No one was there. But Midoriya’s notebooks were, and Denki so badly wanted to take a peek and learn all about the heroes that were bound to show up on the history exam. Denki looked at the pile of notebooks on Midoriya’s desk in longing before sighing and backing out of his room.

On second thought, he opened the door again, turned the lock on the doorknob from the inside, and firmly pulled the door shut as he exited once again. It was kind of irresponsible of Midoriya to leave his door unlocked, what with a traitor potentially running around these halls. Denki couldn’t fault him, though. Things have been hectic for everyone, and Denki himself knew he had left his door unlocked more than once, too.

Midoriya, though. He’s got the jackpot of all of those notebooks that would absolutely not be in the best interest of anyone to fall into the wrong hands.

Was the League of Villains the wrong hands?

Denki thought about his stance that might seem hypocritical if you squinted and tilted your head the right way as he rode the elevator back up to his own room and entered through his unlocked door. Denki smiled at the irony before slowly pulling himself up onto his bed to get comfortable and stare at history books he knew would not be ingrained into his memory when it mattered, no matter what methods he tried.

Even then, Denki didn’t think the League would be ‘the wrong hands,’ but he also knew that he wasn’t really in the best position to decide that. Also, who knew if their inside person could be trusted? What if the traitor found this information and passed it on to—to—to the Yakuza or something?! Or maybe whoever was the highest bidder? That would be a disaster.

Or what if the League of Villains weren’t the only ones who had someone on the inside?

Midoriya’s information would be priceless, and tons of people from other classes knew about Midoriya and his analytical skills because he’d talk to anyone who asked a question that he knew the answer to, or at least the most likely probabilities depending on their quirk versus their opponent’s quirk.

Denki wondered if the League of Villains knew about Midoriya. They did say that he was involved, but maybe having One For All wasn’t the only way that Midoriya was involved. But it’s not like Denki can just ask him if he’s working with the League of Villains. If he’s not, that spells trouble for Denki who would have give himself away. And if he’s not involved, then he wouldn’t understand the nuances that came along with associating yourself with an organization such as the League of Villains, who acted more like a protective family than a group like the Yakuza, who coincidentally did happen to be mostly related to one another. Being family by blood didn’t make someone loyal. No, they weren’t the same at all. Society just lumped them all together, but that wasn’t accurate.

The League of Villains wouldn’t have people splitting off to make their own little groups to make a name for themselves (looking at you, Shie Hassaikai) because every member of the League was valued; no one was disposable. It probably helped that they weren’t as large as the Yakuza, either, but Denki would stand by his thoughts if it came down to it. He might be biased, but the League of Villains was just made of different stuff, and he wondered how many groups out there were like them and how someone might go about finding them. It wouldn’t exactly be practical for Pro Hero Chargebolt to waltz on into a villain group’s hideout and ask them if they are the good kind of villain or the bad kind.

Denki’s studying (read: daydreaming) was interrupted by a familiar, black, hazy portal opening up in the middle of his room. Denki sat up straighter, pushed his books aside, and moved to the edge of his bed, closer to the portal, ignoring the soreness of his muscles in favor of hoping to see one of his friends who had been pointedly avoiding him.

Denki wasn’t disappointed when Shigaraki himself stepped through the portal, quickly looking around and sighing with relief when he spotted Denki and no one else.

“Glad you’re here!” Shigaraki rushed. “Do me a favor?”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Denki argued, standing up from his bed. “You ignore me for weeks, and then you just drop in unannounced and ask for my help?!”

“Oh, excuse my manners,” Shigaraki sneered. “I’ll be sure to ring UA ahead of time and let them know to inform you that I’ll be dropping in.”

After a quiet second of the two glaring at each other, Denki broke and started laughing. Shigaraki’s hardened expression broke and a smile spread across his face at Denki’s laughter.

“Yeah, man. What do you need?” Denki asked, relieved that nothing had changed between them.

Shigaraki put his hand back through the portal, and a second later, Force Majeure was stepping into Denki’s room holding onto a small girl who was curled up in her arms. Force Majeure held her tightly, securely, and looked incredibly relieved to see Denki.

“Hi!” Denki greeted. “Who’s this?”

“You know how people were inexplicably losing their quirks recently?” Force Majeure asked, blowing red bangs out of her eyes, refusing to shift the girl in her arms to get a hand free.

“Yeah. Weird, right? You have Full Throttle going around, turning people’s electricity against them, then you have people losing their quirks altogether. Just can’t win anymore, ya’know?” Denki conversed, stepping closer to get a look at the girl.

“This is Eri. The Shie Hassaikai was using her quirk to eradiate quirks,” Force Majeure explained.

“Kaminari…” Shigaraki hedged, “what do you mean by Full Throttle and electricity? Your electricity?”

Bravely ignoring Shigaraki’s line of questioning, Force Majeure continued, “she’s exhausted, so she won’t be waking up for a while. I have her under my quirk, so she won’t be able to use her quirk for a week, exactly.”

“Does my version of your quirk have a time limit?” Denki asked.

When Force Majeure shook her head no, Denki hummed in response and mentally crossed that off the list of why he was able to tell the soulmates. He had already guessed that, though, considering that he was unable to tell Hawks about his time with the League of Villains, but it never hurt to verify.

“Can we leave her here with you?” Shigaraki asked. “The heroes saw us take her, and once the fight is over, Twice is going to hint at the fact that we left her here with you.”

“You want her to go to the heroes?” Denki clarified as he held out his arms for Force Majeure to transfer the girl to him. “Eri, right?”

Force Majeure nodded, grateful that Denki was showing just as much care as she had been.

“Yeah. Some stray Shie Hassaikai members were targeting her, and the heroes were all fighting. No one was left to look after the girl, so we decided that we’d keep her safe in the meantime,” Shigaraki explained. “What better way to show the heroes that a villain can out-class them? Don’t you guys have trainings about valuing civilian lives over the capture of a villain?” When Denki nodded, Shigaraki muttered, “damn hypocrites. Though, I guess a lot of them were still students.”

“Is that where Midoriya is?” Denki asked, suddenly piecing together his mysterious absence. “I tried looking for him earlier.”

“Yeah, he’s down for the count.” Shigaraki paused when he saw Denki’s alarmed expression. “Not dead!” Shigaraki amended quickly. “He practically carried the heroes to victory with only the help of her,” Shigaraki explained, nodding to Eri.

Denki sighed in relief. “Okay,” Denki answered simply, satisfied with the amount of information he had received. “So, after you leave, are you going to go back to ignoring me?” he asked.

Shigaraki got whiplash from the subject change and winced at the accusation in Denki’s voice. “Toga has been keeping you updated, hasn’t she?” Shigaraki confirmed.

“Enough to let me know that you’re all still alive, and she and Twice were infiltrating the Yakuza, but not much else,” Denki grumbled, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration that had been building and simmering since he lost contact with Shigaraki and Dabi.

“Dabi… he, uh… he found his soulmate, who is not me,” Shigaraki explained. “I’ve been trying to keep busy, and gaming wasn’t helping because he’s the second-best teammate I’ve ever had.”

“Oh, Shigaraki,” Denki empathized, sucking in a breath through his teeth. “That’s rough, man.”

Force Majeure silently found her way back through the portal, now that she knew that Eri was in safe hands. Denki maneuvered backwards onto his bed, cradling the sleeping Eri in his lap before giving Shigaraki his full attention.

“To make matters worse, it’s the hero who was infiltrating us from the Hero Commission. So, now we have no idea whose side he’s actually on. We don’t have the advantage that we did before, because Ha—he probably doesn’t even know what he’s going to do.” Shigaraki’s hands tightened into fists and relaxed again at his sides as he spoke, but he didn’t move to start scratching, so Denki figured it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Denki squinted at Shigaraki as he processed the information. “Sounds like you care about the fact that he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.”

“No!” Shigaraki objected. After a second of thought, he sighed, plopping down on the floor, and ignoring the swirling warp gate behind him. Kurogiri could and would wait, he knew. Looking around at anything other than Denki, Shigaraki admitted, “he’s actually really cool.”

“Oh!” Denki exclaimed loudly, making Shigaraki look at him in question. “Are you the me?”

“What?” Shigaraki asked shaking his head, not understanding what Denki was asking.

“I’m the extra person in a relationship with two other soulmates! So, you’re like the me of your trio! The question is, though, would Dabi be the Neito or the Hitoshi?”

Shigaraki laughed for the first time in a long time, more than he had since finding out that Hawks and Dabi were destined to be together by fate, and he was left out like he always was. For the first time in weeks, he had someone to talk out these complex feelings with, and he was laughing while doing it, when he was sure he’d want to cry if he ever said any of this out loud.

Then Shigaraki blushed because of the implication. “It’s not like that!” he insisted. “We aren’t all together like that. We aren’t together at all. Dabi can’t even pretend to know what he wants anymore, and the damn hero is being so fucking kind to me, when if I was in his place, I’d be using the whole situation to my advantage.”

Denki smiled. “What I’m hearing, Shigaraki, is that there’s potential.” That’s a Hawks word, Denki realized. Maybe Hawks had a point when he talked about Denki’s wasted potential. He just wished Hawks would be clearer with what exactly he believed that potential was. “If he’s being nice to you, it’s probably because he likes you as a person—”

“Or he’s afraid that I’ll high five his face.”

“—and if Dabi can’t decide, maybe both is the way to go!”

“The idea of sharing Dabi—”

“Don’t think of it as sharing!” Denki demanded with a giddy laugh at the ideas swirling in his head. “It’s more like everyone gets two boyfriends and each of your boyfriends has two boyfriends!”

“Haw—the hero doesn’t like me like that!”

“But I’m not hearing that you don’t like him like that,” Denki challenged with an amused sparkle in his eyes. Before Shigaraki could argue, Denki added, “and I thought that there was no way that Neito and Hitoshi would want me when they already had each other. And now look at us! We're unstoppable! We can do anything! Including stopping Full Throttle’s quirk in its tracks! They would have never run after me if we didn’t go for what we wanted and connect the way we did! We would have never discovered how to survive a quirk that we thought was certain death!”

“So, I did hear correctly earlier. Full Throttle targeted you?” Shigaraki asked to confirm.

“Yeah,” Denki verified with a shallow shrug as to not disturb the sleeping girl in his arms. Noticing the look in Shigaraki’s eyes, Denki was quick to add, “it’s fine though! No harm done! Progress was made, even!”

“And what’s going to happen when he finds out that you were somehow able to survive his quirk?” Shigaraki asked, the anger clouding his mind with a red, pulsing haze at the audacity of Full Throttle.

“It wasn’t me, though. It was Hitoshi,” Denki informed.

“Well, that’s even worse, isn’t it?” Shigaraki asked, thinking of how he would feel if he was in Denki’s position and Dabi was in Hitoshi’s. “Are you going to be okay with Full Throttle and his lackeys going after Shinsou to get rid of the one cure for his quirk?”

Denki paled. “Oh, no.”

Shigaraki nodded in understanding. “Who knows?”

“Me, Neito, and Hitoshi,” Denki listed. “I think Aizawa might know, too. How else would they have convinced him to let them follow me?”

Shigaraki nodded as he thought. “It should be fine. I’m sure someone like Aizawa would understand the implications.”

“I can’t tell the soulmates,” Denki whined as he realized. “They’ll realize that I’m in danger if Full Throttle finds out I’m alive. Hitoshi will realize that he could take that danger for himself if he revealed that the fact I survived was all because of him and not anything that I did!”

“No one else can know,” Shigaraki agreed.

“No one else can know,” Denki repeated in solidarity with a definitive nod.

Shigaraki’s phone beeped, and he stood up after glancing at the screen. “Twice dropped the hint. I’ve got to get out of here. Besides, I have… an errand to run.”

Denki paused, about to ask about the ‘errand’ when he decided that he definitely didn’t want to know based on the inflection in Shigaraki’s voice. Villains gonna villain, after all.

“Don’t disappear on me again, okay?” Denki asked, wanting to reach out to Shigaraki, but not letting go of the grip he had on Eri.

“Okay,” Shigaraki agreed. He knew he would keep his word, too. Talking with Denki had been eye-opening, and a little clarity was always appreciated.

As Shigaraki stepped through the portal, he left Denki and the unconscious Eri with these parting words: “Dabi would be the Shinsou. Definitely.”

Not two minutes after Shigaraki had gone and the warp gate along with him, Denki heard the faint tell-tale sign that he was about to have company. The explosions got louder and louder as Bakugou blasted himself through the air. Denki had just put Eri down on the bed and opened his window before Bakugou blasted through, Aizawa swinging in immediately after.

They landed, crouched, and quickly surveyed the room for any sign of danger. Seeing nothing, Bakugou took off out into the hallway to investigate the rest of the building, not bothering to shut the door behind him after flinging it open.

Aizawa stood and looked at Denki. “Sorry to burst in.” He didn’t sound particularly sorry.

“I was kind of expecting it,” Denki admitted with a shrug, gesturing to the unconscious girl on his bed.

Aizawa rushed to her side with three long steps, crouched down next to the bed, and grabbed her little wrist, placing his fingers delicately against her pulse point. After a moment, he sighed in relief.

Before Aizawa could say anything to activate Force Majeure’s quirk, Denki quickly blurted, “Eri can’t use her quirk for a week, but after that she’ll be fine.”

“What—? Why did the League of Villains bring her to you?” Aizawa asked. He cursed in his mind, already knowing that was not the correct question to ask.

Denki opened his mouth, and his response was blocked, like he figured it would be.

Aizawa nodded his understanding and didn’t press him further, knowing that even an intense torture session wouldn’t be able to override Force Majeure’s quirk.

“Is it okay if I take her now?” Aizawa asked, gesturing toward Eri.

“Yeah, of course,” Denki agreed, gesturing for Aizawa to help himself. “Is there anything else I can do?” he asked as Aizawa carefully lifted the girl into his arms.

“Not right now. You’ve done more than you realized, actually.” Then, after a pause, “you aren’t going to ask about her?”

Denki smiled, then, not even bothering to try to answer.

Aizawa nodded again. “I see. I wonder what they told you,” he pondered as he looked down at Eri in thought. His gaze transferred to Denki where it stayed for a moment longer before he exited the dorm room, carrying Eri out of the door that Bakugou had flung open a minute earlier in search of villains that he could blast from existence.

Denki hadn’t heard any explosions since then, but he did hear Bakugou yelling and swearing and threatening. It was safe to say that he hadn’t found what he was looking for.

Chapter Text

When Denki heard some others piling in downstairs, he rushed down the steps to the common room, his soreness momentarily ignored in favor of seeing his classmates faster.

“Well, well, well! Look who we have here! A bunch of people who I thought were friends and who would inform me when they were going on a crazy intense undercover mission to infiltrate the Yakuza,” Denki greeted, friendly malice in his tone.

Kirishima looked pretty rough. He rubbed the back of his neck and blinked at Denki with tired eyes. “Sorry, man, but I couldn’t tell you. You know how these things go.”

“I would know how these things went if I was ever invited to them!” Denki argued, but smiled as he joined the group of tired hero students.

“It’s actually better that you weren’t there,” Kirishima offered with a yawn. “There were some villains there from the League of Villains. We had no idea who to fight and when. It was super confusing and actually pretty terrifying.”

When Denki didn’t respond, Kirishima apologized for bringing the League of Villains up, thinking it was a sensitive topic.

“Dunce face can’t respond because of that fucking quirk. He can’t talk about the League of Villains, but he don’t look scared to me,” Bakugou muttered as he stomped through, not bothering to catch up with the other students who had slowly been gathering in the common room to find out what the commotion was all about.

Kirishima’s eyes darted over Denki’s face, and he nodded, sighing in relief. “Just punch me in the face if you don’t want me to keep talking.”

Denki laughed and sat down on the floor, ready to hear about the secret undercover mission that was no longer a secret now that it was done. Other classmates joined him.

Kirishima talked about blasting their way in, all of the hallways, and running into Toga and Twice. “It was weird. They were taunting us, you know, verbally, but they made no move to actually attack or even hinder our efforts. When one of the Yakuza members asked them for help, they called him a ‘big, strong man who can handle his own shit,’ blew him a kiss, and left. And, uh, spoiler alert, he was a big, strong man, but he apparently could not handle his own shit.”

Everyone laughed. Kirishima was tired, but he was so grateful to have made it out of there in one piece. For a second there, he wasn’t sure if he’d see his classmates’ faces ever again.

“It was weird. The leader of the League of Villains popped in out of nowhere, too. I got separated from Fat Gum, and I was losing the fight. It’s not like… it’s not like training or when there’s a lot of back up, you know? I only had myself, and I was failing majorly.”

His classmates listened intently with bated breath as Kirishima explained what had happened.

Kirishima was fighting with everything he had. Fighting blind, even, when blood would drip into his eyes. His quirk was getting more difficult to activate every time he let it slip, but he couldn’t really hold onto it either.

He tripped backwards after a particularly bad hit. He might have been able to recover if it hadn’t been for a large piece of rubble aiding in twisting his ankle and sending him to the floor. He had squeezed his eyes shut, wondering if death hurt as bad as dying did.

“I can take it from here,” he heard as the Yakuza villain stumbled closer. When the villain hesitated, Shigaraki insisted, “go get patched up. More heroes are bound to show up any minute. You think they came here without backup? Are you all this dense?”

The Yakuza villain snarled at Shigaraki and spit a glob of blood at his feet, but he did leave. Kirishima wanted to beg him to stay, to send Shigaraki away and continue the fight on their own. He wasn’t prepared to fight the Yakuza, he learned quite quickly. So, how was he supposed to fight the League of Villains after being so thoroughly pummeled?

Shigaraki had stared at Kirishima, and Kirishima’s life flashed before his eyes. Shigaraki waited until the Yakuza man had limped all of the way out of the room before actually moving in his direction, taking slow, deliberate steps, the smaller pieces of rubble cracking under Shigaraki’s red shoes.

Kirishima had never been so afraid to see red in his life. Red was usually his comfort color, his confidence color.

Shigaraki squatted down in front of Kirishima. He was right there, but even if Kirishima was frozen in place in terror, he was too tired and injured to really put up a fight, even if he could catch Shigaraki off guard.

But instead of decaying his face off, Shigaraki touted a teasing “you’re welcome” as his hand got closer and closer to Kirishima’s face.

“Then he booped my nose, stood up, and walked out the same direction he came in from,” Kirishima stated, just as confused about it as when it happened. Retelling the story didn’t make it all suddenly make sense.

“I’m sorry…” Yaoyorozu started, then, without having the proper words to eloquently express herself, she settled with “what?”

“He. Booped. My. Nose.” Kirishima stated. He laughed then, just as incredulous as his classmates listening to him. “Like this,” he said before stalking over to Denki, crouching down, reaching out, and tapping his nose.

Denki smiled widely up at him, laughter threatening to break through the surface.

“Except I didn’t look like that,” Kirishima said, looking at the amused expression on Denki’s face. “I was still absolutely terrified, sure he was going to say that he was just messing around before grabbing my face and decaying me away into dust.”

“How bad did you look?” Sero asked from his place next to Denki. “Maybe he thought you were on death’s door already and didn’t feel the need to bother.”

“I looked terrible,” Kirishima admitted with a laugh, but his gut instincts were telling him that wasn’t what had happened at all. Kirishima’s mood dropped quickly. “I almost thought he was actually helping me, helping us, until he grabbed Eri and vanished.”

Kirishima offered a quick explanation of Eri and what the Yakuza were doing that needed such a big response effort from the heroes. The reactions among the listeners were intense. How could someone do something like that to a child? And then how could someone else take over, taking the child away from salvation that was so close? What was happening to Eri at that very moment? It made everyone feel sick to think about, except Denki who couldn’t speak around Force Majeure’s quirk to say otherwise.

“Eri is fine,” Denki heard from the direction of the entrance to the dormitory.

Everyone turned to see Midoriya there. His hero costume was torn, and he slumped with exhaustion, but otherwise, he seemed to be physically whole.

Midoriya joined the group to talk about how he followed the fight above ground and went directly against Overhaul with the help of Eri’s quirk. When Aizawa had turned her quirk off so she wouldn’t kill Midoriya with it, she had fallen unconscious. The other Yakuza thugs weren’t so disloyal as to leave their boss there without a fight, and so everyone was distracted by rounding up the last few standing villains when Kirishima yelled out for Shigaraki to stop. Everyone turned in the direction where Eri had been lying, only to find Shigaraki carrying her through a warp gate. By the time the nearest hero got to the warp gate, it had already completely closed, vanished without a trace.

The heroes scrambled as soon as the last of the Yakuza was restrained, trying to figure out where the League of Villains might have taken Eri. There was speculation that the two groups were working together, but that didn’t seem to be the case when Twice told one of the heroes that Eri was safe and sound with the electrical student at UA.

Bakugou had taken off without hesitation, Aizawa not far behind him.

Everyone turned to look at Denki, wide eyed and stricken.

“Kami? The League was here? They tracked you down here?” Kirishima asked.

No one was surprised at Denki’s blank face, unable to even communicate his emotions on the matter.

Midoriya shifted his weight, inhaling only to exhale with a sigh as he considered.

“Kacchan said that Kaminari didn’t look scared, and Eraserhead didn’t haul him away to be checked over by Recovery Girl. He’s still here, he wasn’t taken again, and he’s unharmed, at least physically. I, for one, believe that Kaminari can take care of himself,” Midoriya said.

Denki was surprised, but glad that Midoriya was at least acknowledging him instead of intentionally ignoring him. His feelings of relief vanished when he looked at Midoriya only to see him looking back at him with furrowed eyebrows, hesitation and suspicion clear in his eyes.

Did Midoriya figure out that Denki was friendly with the League of Villains? Is that why he had been avoiding him?

Denki didn’t know, but he had a feeling he was about to find out when he finally made his way back to his room only to be greeted by a nervous-looking Midoriya waiting for him.

“Hi,” Midoriya greeted, immediately looking sheepish for greeting Denki in his own room. “Can we talk?”

“Yeah, of course,” Denki said, pulling off his (Hitoshi’s) hoodie and throwing it on the bed before he hopped up beside it, giving Midoriya his full attention. “I actually went to talk to you earlier, but you were off saving the world, I guess.” Denki laughed. “Your door was unlocked, though.”

“Oh!” Midoriya exclaimed, looking at Denki with renewed anxiety. “Did you—”

“Lock the door? Yes, I did!” Denki interjected. “You really should be more careful with a traitor running around, you know? All of those notebooks full of information would be devastating in the wrong hands.”

Midoriya looked at Denki, trying to decipher something without verbally asking. Denki looked back at Midoriya, trying to figure out what Midoriya needed from him.

“I’ve been avoiding you,” Midoriya said. “And you’ve been asking for help with history. Did you look at any of my notes?”

“Of course not!” Denki answered.

Midoriya slumped with relief.

“Though, I did think about it! It wouldn’t have been very heroic of me, though. And with my luck I wouldn’t be able to find what I needed. So, I locked your door for you,” Denki continued with a shrug. “You really should remember to keep that locked!”

Midoriya gave Denki a blank look. His eyes darted to Denki’s own door and then back to Denki.

“We should really remember to keep our doors locked,” Denki corrected with a laugh.

Midoriya smiled. Denki had a way of putting people at ease. But apparently, so did Full Throttle, so that didn’t really help much.

“I don’t want to insult you,” Midoriya started, “but I have to know instead of going back and forth between my thoughts all day. Are you the traitor, Denki?”

“What? Me?” Denki asked, surprised. “No.” His heartrate increased, and his speech became a little more frantic against his will. “Why did you think so? Are other people saying that about me?”

“No,” Midoriya answered, though he was still looking at Denki with slight suspicion.

Denki couldn’t blame him. Would the actual traitor be like, ‘ah! You got me! Nice detective work!’? Denki highly doubted it.

“And I haven’t talked to anyone about this, either. I don’t want to start rumors or anything,” Midoriya said.

Plus, Midoriya believed that he could take Denki in a fight, Denki realized. Why else would he confront Denki alone? What if Denki had been the traitor and decided to fight? To be fair, Midoriya was a powerhouse, and he probably could take Denki in a fight.

“What makes me suspicious?” Denki asked, worried about the answer, but knowing that he had to know.

“Well, you were taken by the League of Villains,” Midoriya said. “That alone should be enough to clear you, especially considering Force Majeure used her quirk on you. But then Toga came to visit you. And now Shigaraki is dropping in to give Eri directly to you. Like I said, I kept going back and forth in my mind, and I just had to know.”

Denki opened his mouth to respond, only for his words to be blocked by Force Majeure’s quirk.

“Aaaaand I triggered Force Majeure’s quirk, didn’t I?” Midoriya asked, rubbing at his forehead. “I don’t know how to go about this in a way that you can talk about it.”

“Wait here,” Denki commanded.

Without waiting for Midoriya to confirm, Denki bolted out of the door, running full speed toward the Class 2-B dorms.

Midoriya sat on Denki’s desk chair, shifting his weight, shifting his eyes, wondering if he should run away and never come back. What if what he said was enough to trigger an investigation into himself? Where had Denki gone anyway? It wasn’t like he could talk to anyone about anything to do with the League of Villains.

Midoriya jumped when the door opened again, but Denki wasn’t alone. Midoriya wasn’t sure how to play this. What if Denki, Hitoshi, and Neito were all traitors and they saw Midoriya as a threat for questioning their loyalty? He might have just painted a huge target on his back.

“You think Denki is a traitor?” Hitoshi asked after they all entered the room and shut the door firmly behind them, sparing a glance at the hoodie that was definitely his that was lying on Denki’s bed. He pushed down the smile; he could think about that later.

Midoriya shrugged and averted his gaze.

Hitoshi and Neito looked at each other, then looked at Denki for good measure.

“Denki wants us to tell you everything,” Neito offered. “So, we’re going to tell you everything.”

“Just like that?” Midoriya asked, disbelieving.

“Ask and you shall receive,” Hitoshi muttered with a one-sided shrug as he heaved himself backwards onto Denki’s bed, lying right on top of the hoodie that was definitely his. “What do you want to know?”

“When Denki was taken hostage,” Midoriya started. “That was for real, right?”

“Yes,” Neito said with a sharp nod. “Scared the fuck out of us.”

“Then what happened that Toga came to visit Kaminari? And today with Shigaraki?”

“You know how we kept ourselves calm by telling everyone that Denks would be fine because he can make friends with anyone?” Hitoshi started.

“That actually happened?!” Midoriya asked, wide-eyed gaze lingering on Denki before going back to Hitoshi for confirmation.

“Wait,” Neito demanded. “How did you know that it was Toga? No one else knew.”

“I saw her running through the common room, crying.”

“That doesn’t explain how you knew it was her instead of thinking it was just Denki,” Neito pressured.

Midoriya shifted his weight, and the trio waited patiently for Midoriya to answer.

“You know how at the beginning of our first year, a bunch of us went to the mall together?” Midoriya asked. When he received nods, he continued, “the mall was evacuated because a member of the League of Villains was spotted. It wasn’t just that simple, though. Shigaraki found me and pulled me away from my friends. He asked me for advice, and I gave it. Anything to not die, you know? But the weird thing was that he actually took my advice and benefited from it.”

“We’ve heard really good things about him,” Hitoshi offered.

“Yeah,” Midoriya agreed. “He’s… weird. Not what I think about when I think of a villain, you know? But when Kaminari was taken from the training camp, I thought I had gotten it all wrong. But then he was completely fine when we got him back. Physically, at least. But then he was completely back to normal. I could tell he wasn’t faking it, too.”

“Denki found out that he was old friends with Shigaraki and another member of the League,” Neito said. “He was giving Shigaraki CPR when we pulled him away, and he didn’t know if he had succeeded or not.”

Midoriya drew in a breath through his teeth. “That must have been difficult for you,” he said to Denki. “I don’t know if I would have been able to look past them using Force Majeure’s quirk on me, even if they were old friends.”

“Denki was willing,” Neito offered. “And it didn’t hurt him like everyone thought it was going to.”

“How do you know all of this?” Midoriya asked then.

“We found a draft on Denki’s TikTok that showed him being friendly with a bunch of League members. We figure that must have put us on the inside of her quirk, finding out without the help of anyone else,” Neito said.

“We’re still trying to figure it out for sure, though. We’re not certain why he’s able to talk to us about it,” Hitoshi added.

“Do you know who the traitor is?” Midoriya asked.

“No. And it seems like you don’t know either,” Neito answered. “Are you involved with the League?” Neito asked in return, knowing that Denki must have sensed something about Midoriya to ask them to give him all of the answers like this.

“Yeah,” Midoriya answered immediately, rubbing the back of his neck with a laugh that lacked all humor. “It turns out that All For One is actually my father.”

All three heads whipped in his direction, and Midoriya had everyone’s undivided attention.

“What does he want? Does it have something to do with One For All?” Hitoshi asked.

“Oh, wow,” Midoriya said, surprised. “They really told you just about everything, didn’t they?”

“Denki made a list of people who were untouchable to the League. They agreed for everyone except you, so Denki made them explain why,” Hitoshi informed. “He was—we were just relieved that it wasn’t something more nefarious.”

“More nefarious?” Midoriya repeated. “What could be worse than having him as a father?”

“Having the League against you instead of on your side,” Hitoshi answered easily.

Midoriya nodded at this and continued nodding as he thought. He stopped suddenly and asked, “the recent villains that have been turning themselves in to our classmates?”

“Yes,” Neito answered.

“Shigaraki actually helping Kiri?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” was all Midoriya could ask.

“Denki here is going to be the first hero endorsed by the League of Villains, or any villainous group, really,” Neito said, throwing his arm around the blond in question.

Midoriya had rushed to his own room and came back just as fast, sprawling his notebooks all over Denki’s floor. He showed them the pages upon pages he had of the various League members and their quirk analyses that he gathered from spending time with them.

“Though, they don’t seem to like me as much as they like you, Kaminari,” Midoriya teased with a smile.

“With all this intel, I can see why they wouldn’t,” Neito said, eyes scanning the pages. “You’re dangerous in your own right, quirk or not.”

“Thanks for saying that.”

“You don’t have to thank me for stating the truth.”

Neito turned on his boyfriends as soon as they all bid Midoriya goodbye.

“I told you I didn’t take your hoodie!” Neito grumbled playfully as he gestured to the stolen hoodie on Denki’s bed.

Hitoshi shrugged, barely holding in his laughter.

“And you!” Neito said, eyes wide with mania, turning on his heel to face Denki. “You’ll steal Toshi’s hoodies but not mine?! What’s up with that?!”

With a smile, Denki strolled over to his closet and opened the door, gesturing inside like a magician presenting the result of his illusion.

There were three more hoodies that belonged to Hitoshi hanging up, right beside two hoodies, a long-sleeved shirt, and a fleece jacket that belonged to Neito. Belonged in past tense because Denki commandeered his treasures fair and square.

Neito examined Denki’s stash, nodding in thoughtful appreciation. “Not bad. But you have a while to go before you catch up to me.”

Denki gasped, scandalized. “Are you the reason I can’t find my Pikachu onesie?!”

Neito just laughed, but that was answer enough.

“No honor among thieves,” Hitoshi grumbled, shaking his head in disappointment.

“Says the one who took my whole fucking blanket!” Neito argued, voice raising an octave.

“Oh!” Denki shrieked with realization. “Is that why I only have one pillow now?!”

“You didn’t realize earlier?”

“I thought that UA was trying to save money and decreased our pillow ration,” Denki explained, nodding with a lopsided smile on his face.

Hitoshi shrugged. “Makes sense to me. Maybe they have a blanket ration, too.”

“Oh, you—”

Neito lunged toward Hitoshi, and Hitoshi dodged laughing. Neito chased Hitoshi all the way back to the Class 2-B dorms, where no one was surprised to see them up to their normal antics.

Denki was just glad that Hitoshi didn’t have the chance to steal his hoodie back.

Chapter Text

“I just don’t understand why I wasn’t invited!” Hawks complained lightheartedly. “The Commission leaves me out, you guys leave me out. Clue a guy in, yeah? When I saw you guys on the news, on top of that van? You looked super cool, but it would have been nice to know what the hell was going on.”

“Sorry,” Dabi drawled with a lazy smirk and a glance in his direction.

He didn’t sound too sorry, but Hawks wasn’t bothered. He was used to it, and he would even admit to finding it kind of endearing if anyone had asked. He wouldn’t just volunteer the information, but he felt like he had the right to gush over his soulmate if anyone asked him how he felt about him.

Hawks thought he might have fallen for Dabi anyway, even without fate to push them along. Hawks was attracted to the powerful type. He wanted to feel protected; it was so rare for him to feel safe that he ate that shit up whenever it was offered. What gave him pause is that he rarely felt more protected than when Shigaraki got that look on his face when Hawks shared just a little too much truth about his situation and how he was treated by the Hero Commission.

Hawks knew that Shigaraki must have been used in a similar way before, or maybe was even currently being used and fully aware of that fact, just like Hawks was. Hawks kept trying to dismiss these feelings, telling himself that Shigaraki just gets upset easily and it had nothing to do with him personally, but just people being used in general. That lie didn’t get too far because of how calm and collected Shigaraki had been while executing his revenge scheme against the Yakuza in Magne’s honor.

He looked between Dabi and Shigaraki as they talked with the other League members, celebrating their huge success. Hawks was long past feeling surprised at his own feelings, a similar warmth radiating his chest when he looked at either man. He had learned to accept his feelings and then let them go. That was the safe thing to do when feeling frustrated with the Commission. But he really, really didn’t want to let these feelings go.

“Then the hero reached out to grab me!” Twice said, reaching his arms out in front of him to mimic the action. “Kurogiri had perfect awful timing as always, and I dropped straight down back here! Safe and sound!”

“Yeah, because you landed on me!” Toga chimed with a laugh, fiddling with her equipment to store the blood for future use.

Hawks never thought that he would be so enraptured by the group, but he genuinely liked every single member, even Twice, though he knew he was suspicious of Hawks. So was everyone else, but Twice had a more severe suspicion, like he thought Hawks actually might have a chance of succeeding any scheme the Hero Commission had cooked up. The others were more relaxed, keeping a more easygoing kind of guard up that seemed to slip more every day.

Hawks’s handler was pleased with his progress. Hawks was, too, but for different reasons. He was learning more and more about the League members every day, and he grew closer to them every day.

He knew that every undercover agent went through similar situations, forming genuine bonds with the people they would have a huge hand in capturing. This was different, though, because Hawks was pretty sure he’d rather have the Hero Commission arrange his death than betray this ragtag group of villains.

And maybe, for once, it was time that Hawks did something that he wanted to do.

Hawks was broken out of his thoughts by the name of his intern.

“Full Throttle targeted Kaminari,” Shigaraki declared.

It was weird. The celebratory mood instantly chilled and he had everyone’s complete undivided attention.

Hawks still didn’t understand the intrigue the League had with Denki, and he was honestly afraid to ask, nervous that they might not trust him enough to tell him, or maybe they would and he wouldn’t like what he heard. He knew that Denki was captured and taken hostage, and before being rescued by his friends, he had undergone Force Majeure’s quirk so that he could not tell anyone anything about what he had learned from his time with the League. If the League had that foresight, were they already planning on letting Denki go?

It didn’t make sense, and while Hawks really liked the League, he wasn’t going to go so low as to sacrifice his intern, someone who relied on him to keep him safe, to get even further into the League’s good graces. In fact, Hawks would go to bat against the League to keep Denki away from them, even if it messed everything up and majorly set him back. The League would be pissed, the Commission would be pissed, but Hawks would be able to sleep at night.

The least Hawks could do was set Denki up for success and make him as powerful as possible, just in case the League tried to target him again.

So, Hawks spent his mornings being a hero in the public eye and reporting any updates to his handler with the Commission. He spent his afternoons training Denki. He spent his evenings becoming closer and closer with the League of Villains. And he started spending his nights with Dabi.

The days flew by. So much was happening, and he was actually enjoying himself for once. He dreaded speaking with his handler, but besides that, things were as close to perfect as they had ever been.

He would spend his mornings patrolling different areas. Mornings were usually boring because there wasn’t much villainous activity happening, but Hawks would find ways to entertain himself, whether that be by helping an old lady carry her bags home or following Endeavor to his agency on his regular route, incessantly talking about anything that came to mind and dropping not-so-subtle hints that they should totally team up sometime.

The answer was always no, of course. And Hawks knew it wasn’t anything personal against him. But he was the Hero Commission’s puppet, and no one else wanted to get roped into that mess. (Except the League never seemed to rub it in that Hawks was dragging them down with him, but Hawks tried not to think about that.) Endeavor had a kid attending UA, rising through the ranks, constantly growing, so powerful. The last thing that kid needed was to gain the Commission’s attention.

Hawks hoped that the Commission looked at Denki as just a publicity stunt to garner more support for the number two hero and didn’t actually recognize the raw power the kid possessed. He hoped that he could bring it out of him without alerting the Commission or League of what exactly he was capable of.

So, Hawks spent his afternoons training Denki, pushing him endlessly. He felt bad, sometimes. Denki would scream with the pure electricity coursing through his body, frustrated that he was giving so much, yet Hawks was always demanding more. In the long run, though, Denki would be able to protect himself, from the League and the Commission. He might be nearly unstoppable if he could just get everything to click into place.

Sometimes Hawks would even make the evening news based on what he had done during his morning patrol, but only if nothing extreme had happened that would overshadow a feel-good news story.

“Saw you on the news,” Shigaraki said as Hawks entered the hideout.

“Hi, Hawks. How are you? Oh, I’m great, Shigaraki. Thanks for asking! Of course, Hawks. Anything for you!” Hawks teased.

Shigaraki’s jaw dropped at his audacity, but Hawks had stopped worrying about crossing lines with his snark alone. It seemed that the League was one of the rare cases that could take exactly the severity of sass that they dealt out. What surprised Hawks, though, was the pink tint spreading across Shigaraki’s face. He might have missed it if he was wearing that creepy hand, but Shigaraki had been forgoing his handy attire more and more as time went on. He was rarely found with the hands on, even as he enacted plans and dealt with others outside of the League, and never while inside the hideout.

“Well excuse me,” Shigaraki snapped. “While you’re out there, saving school children from slipping on the ice like some damn crossing guard, we’ve been here getting actual work done.”

“Actual work?” Hawks said, a teasing lilt in his voice as he glanced sideways at Dabi, who was actively shooting at zombies on the screen, yelling loudly into his headset at a player deemed P05itiv3R3volt.

Shigaraki’s sneer in Dabi’s direction easily morphed into a smile as Dabi stood up, screaming in celebration of his victory. When he realized that his gaze lingered on Dabi for a little too long and that his gaze was less annoyed and more full of content adoration, Shigaraki shot Hawks an apologetic look before explaining what he meant.

“Toga and Compress are out doing recon, trying to find out more information on where Full Throttle might be hiding and who his allies might be.”

Every single member of the League of Villains had become obsessed with hunting down Full Throttle after Shigaraki had announced that he had went after Denki. Hawks sometimes caught himself smiling and nodding along with their scheming against Full Throttle, like the League might actually have Denki’s best interest in mind. And Hawks wanted to believe that. Denki was a good kid, but that was a double-edged sword. He was a good kid, so he deserved to be protected. At the same time, he was a good kid, so he wouldn’t associate himself with villains.

Hawks knew this because he himself was not a good person and look where he ended up: Empathizing with villains and falling steadily for his villainous soulmate.

“Oh, hey!” Dabi greeted, glancing over his shoulder at Hawks. “I saw you on the news! You look great on television! I wonder how I would look…” A pause, and then a boisterous laugh at something his gaming teammate must have said. Dabi moved his player on the screen and replied into the headset, “I thought you said my scars look cool!” Then, “you know what? You have a point!”

It was about a week after that when Shigaraki and Dabi were still awake when Hawks meandered into the hideout later than usual. When Shigaraki and Dabi turned to look at him with these serious expressions on his face, Hawks thought he was found out. They must have figured out that Hawks was supposed to double-cross them, and that was going to be his last night alive. There were worse ways to die, Hawks figured. If it was violent enough, maybe he could even stick around as a ghost and haunt his handler. He would make her life so inconvenient.

“Have a seat,” Shigaraki said, nodding to the chair across from where they sat.

Hawks thought about running, but where would he go where his literal soulmate wouldn’t find him eventually? If someone as reclusive as Full Throttle, who was unassuming and average looking, was going to be tracked down by the League, Hawks wouldn’t stand a chance with his huge, red wings. Hell, even in Antarctica, he was sure the League probably had penguins on the inside that would report back to them. No, Hawks just had to face the music, so he kicked his shoes off and made his way over to the duo, trying not to give away how nervous he was.

“We wanted to talk to you about this soulmate situation,” Dabi said.

Oh. Maybe Hawks wasn’t going to die that day after all.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you two about this, too,” Hawks admitted, figuring it was best to just dive right into the crux of the conversation. “I know that you two have something really—you have a strong connection already. I never intended to come in between that.”

Hawks continued, pushing through his nerves as Shigaraki and Dabi shared a charged glance. This was good, Hawks tried to convince himself. No more tiptoeing around each other. Clarify what lines would be drawn, and then everything is settled. Maybe then the look on their faces won’t hurt so much when they find out that Hawks betrayed them.

“Soulmate connections don’t have to be romantic, and you two already have an established relationship. So, it’s cool with me if we just have a platonic connection,” Hawks offered with a heavy heart.

It was better than nothing at all. Even if his handler was going to throttle him for his insolence.

“What?” Shigaraki said. “Dabi isn’t good enough for you?”

Hawks head snapped up, and he immediately felt like he was walking into a trap.

“What? No!” Hawks sputtered. “I would love to—I would—"

This is not how any of it was supposed to go. His gaze switched between the two, trying to figure out what he could say that would get him out of this in one piece, trying to understand their end game.

“Just admit that you want to kiss me, birdie,” Dabi challenged, looking intensely right at Hawks and refusing to look away.

Well, if he was going to die, he was going to be honest for once in his life.

“I want to kiss you,” Hawks said easily, not hesitating to meet Dabi’s challenge head-on.

Dabi was up in an instant, leaning over Hawks. Hawks expected to be lit up with flames, maybe. But when Dabi’s hands caressed his face, they weren’t scalding hot. Then, with a smile, Dabi leaned down and placed his lips on Hawks’s. He pulled back to gauge Hawks’s comfort level before diving back in again, deepening the kiss.

Dabi didn’t use his flames, but Hawks melted anyway.

When Dabi pulled away again, he glanced over at Shigaraki. “You okay?”

Hawks expected to have hands reaching for his throat, ready to decay his head right off his body. But when he looked over at Shigaraki, he just saw the man’s red eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.

“I’m okay,” Shigaraki confirmed after another minute. “Are you okay?” Shigaraki then asked.

Hawks was startled to find Shigaraki’s eyes on him. Shigaraki was asking him if he was okay?

“Yeah,” Hawks said, a little out of breath from the confusion of the whole situation, “but what’s going on here?”

“We know these soulmates who invited a third into their relationship,” Dabi answered carefully. “Two soulmates, plus one more who wiggled his way into their hearts—”

“Everyone’s hearts,” Shigaraki muttered in correction.

“All dating each other.”

“Both soulmates are dating each other and the third person?” Hawks asked to clarify.

Dabi and Shigaraki nodded, watching Hawks carefully for his reaction.

“And you want that for us?”

Hawks immediately felt stupid and wished he could snatch the words back from the air in front of him before the vibrations could reach the eardrums of the men in front of him. Unfortunately, that was not a perk of his quirk, so he braced himself to be laughed at, ridiculed, maybe even hit if it was insulting enough. The idea that Shigaraki would want Hawks as much as Hawks wanted him—

“If that’s what you want, too,” Shigaraki answered slowly and deliberately, not wanting Hawks to misunderstand. “We could also arrange it so we’re both involved with Dabi but not each other. Or I could—”

“You want me?” Hawks asked, unable to hold back, staring intently at Shigaraki and pointing at himself like there was another ‘me’ that Hawks could have been talking about.

Shigaraki smiled. “Who wouldn’t?”

Hawks knew at that moment that he loved Shigaraki. He was so strong that he could adapt to his lover finding his soulmate and roll with the punches, find a solution. Hawks wondered if Shigaraki could find a solution to the situation that Hawks had found himself in, caught between his villainous soulmate and boyfriend scenario, and the stronghold that the Hero Commission held over him. He wondered if Shigaraki would reach out with those hands and kill him for daring to scheme against the League of Villains. He wondered if it would be more personal. Maybe Shigaraki would reach out to kill him for himself and not think of others for once. He wondered if Dabi would be angry or relieved when Hawks was nothing but a pile of ash on the ground.

Hawks gave a shaky smile. “Does that mean you’re going to kiss me, too?”

“Come here, pretty bird.”

Yeah, Hawks was in trouble, all right.

Hawks wasn’t sure if he was brave, stupid, or just oblivious, but it wasn’t until he was lying in bed that night that he realized that he had leaned into Shigaraki’s touch, four deadly fingers on each side of his face.

So much trouble.

Hawks wondered what he would do if the League ever asked him to help them capture Denki again. Before, he would have said no. Not a chance. Then, he would have had to actually think about it. Maybe a week from then, he wouldn’t have to think about it, and he would do anything asked of him. He already wanted to do everything asked of him, and he wondered how much longer he would still be able to resist if something didn’t feel right.

It was strange. He hated doing things for the Commission. They could tell him to save a kitten from a tree, and he would hate doing it just because they are the ones who told him to. Being raised as a puppet to the Commission, he hated taking orders, but found out the hard way, multiple times, that it was easier and less painful to just carry out the orders as effectively and efficiently as possible. Yet, it was a relief taking orders from the League. When Hawks thought about it, even when he first started and had to do mindless tasks before being able to meet with Shigaraki and learning where one of their bases were, he didn’t have the visceral reaction that he did when given orders by the Commission. Hawks wondered what would happen if he denied an order. He knew what would happen if he told the Commission no, but what would Shigaraki and Dabi do?

“Hawks, I need you to go with Toga for surveillance,” Shigaraki demanded as he poured over his maps and plans. “We need an aerial view of the forest.”

Heart pounding and blood pumping, Hawks answered, “no.”

Shigaraki looked over at him, brow furrowed. Dabi looked over at the two from his position on the other side of the room, mapping out plans for a different mission.

“Are you feeling okay?” Shigaraki asked.

Hawks’s adrenaline spiked, but it wasn’t a condescending tone. It was a genuine question, not fishing for a reason why Hawks might deny a request. Hawks forced himself to push harder.

“Yeah. I just don’t feel up to it.”

Shigaraki nodded, narrowing his eyes and looking down at his plans while Dabi went back to sketching potential escape routes. Hawks braced himself for something to be thrown at him, for yelling, for Shigaraki to just lunge at him.

“You know what?” Shigaraki started.

Here it comes, Hawks knew.

Shigaraki continued, “all you do is work. You have hero shit in the morning, intern shit in the afternoon, and then you are working with us all evening and night. You deserve a break, and I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this before. Dabi!”

Dabi perked up, hand pausing his sketching.

“When’s the last time you took your soulmate on a date? Huh?” Shigaraki demanded. Not waiting for an answer, he said, “well get to it! Do I have to do everything around here?!”

Dabi smiled as he dropped his pencil onto the map and stretched his arms over his head. “You joining us, boss?”

“No.”

“That’s fine. I’ll just make some soba and get a picnic basket together,” Dabi said.

He started to walk away, allowing himself to smile and roll his eyes at Hawks, but only because his back was to Shigaraki, so he couldn’t see Dabi’s scheming.

Shigaraki only hesitated for a moment more. “Soba?” He took a breath and seemed to be weighing his options. “No, you two go. Just save some for me.”

The way Shigaraki glanced at Hawks before making his decision gave him away, though.

“I want you to come,” Hawks said with a nod. “What kind of date would it be without my boyfriend there?"

It felt strange calling one of the most dangerous villains in Japan a title as fluffy as his ‘boyfriend,' but Shigaraki’s face lit up, and Hawks decided that he could very quickly get used to it if that’s what he got to see every time.

“Why soba?” Hawks asked Shigaraki as the warp gate disappeared after dumping the trio on top of a secluded, scenic mountain.

Hawks grabbed one side of the picnic blanket, and Dabi grabbed the other. They spread the blanket and smoothed it out while Shigaraki stood off to the side, holding the picnic basket full of freshly made soba, vegetables, and fruit, enjoying being taken care of for once, even in such a simple way.

“Dabi makes the best soba,” Shigaraki answered with a grin in Dabi’s direction.

“It’s my sister’s recipe,” Dabi shrugged off, not wanting to take full credit. “It was my little brother’s favorite, so we made it all the time.”

“The cold version?” Hawks inquired as they all sat down and Shigaraki started handing out the utensils.

“His eating schedule depending on his training schedule, and it wasn’t ever the same from day to day. It was best to have the cold version that could just stay in the cooler for as long as needed instead of trying to time hot foods right only for him to not make it back in time to eat before it wasn’t fresh anymore.”

To Hawks, this was absolutely fascinating. “You’ve never told me about your family before.”

“He gives random pieces of personal information at the weirdest and most unexpected times,” Shigaraki warned with a knowing smile.

“Hey! It’s like you’re writing a manual for dating me or something!” Dabi said, pausing his hand as he lifted the noodles to his mouth. His mouth was too busy arguing with his lovers to actual eat at that moment.

“No need for a manual, I don’t think,” Shigaraki teased, looking over at Hawks. “I’d say you’re stuck with us, so it doesn’t need to be written down for anyone else.”

Hawks had wanted to see how bad the punishment would be if he refused a command and ended up on a fun date with the two people he felt the safest with. He was hoping for leniency, but for Shigaraki and Dabi to turn it around as he was being overworked and use it as an excuse to have fun instead? Mind-blowing to Hawks.

For the first time since starting this double-crossing undercover mission, Hawks withheld pertinent information from his handler.

“Progress report.”

Hawks winced, holding the phone away from his ear. Her voice got more and more grating every time he spoke with her, and if he never heard her voice again it would be too soon.

“New arrangement,” Hawks reported, short and to the point. “I’m involved with Dabi, but Dabi is also involved with Shigaraki.”

“They know you know?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.”

Not as interesting as knowing that all three of them were involved with each other, but Hawks decided that was none of her business. He was starting to feel like none of this was anyone’s business. What anyone else did with their soulmate and romantic lives was private, so why did Hawks not have the same consideration?

Hawks had stopped worrying so much about the Commission because most of his worry was directed toward his intern. Internship periods were ending, and Denki still hadn’t progressed as much as he needed to. Hawks was nervous that Denki would choose someone else to work with next, but Hawks wanted another round with him.

“Higher!” Hawks sang.

Denki shot him a glare, but then he closed his eyes and the electricity around him got brighter and crackled louder. At one point, the view of Denki’s outline began to fuzz, and Hawks silently celebrated at the progress, not wanting to interrupt Denki’s work.

“You’re doing good,” Hawks complimented, and Denki looked surprised.

Hawks made a mental note to give more positive feedback in the future. The Commission gave demand after demand, and success was met with more demands, but Hawks didn’t want to be anything like the Commission. He had a lot to unlearn.

“Before you go,” Hawks started as Denki started packing up. “I wanted to let you know that I’ll be putting in a bid for your internship again.”

“Really?” Denki asked, giving Hawks his full attention. “You aren’t bored watching me try and fail at something you’re trying to get me to do?”

“You’re not failing; you’re getting closer. Progress is progress.”

Denki looked at him oddly in consideration but nodded his agreement.

“I really think I can take you to the next level if you give me another chance with you,” Hawks confessed. “Will you accept my internship for your third year at UA?”

“The year-long internship that lasts my whole last year of UA?” Denki clarified.

Hawks nodded.

“The one that is the most important for my future as a Pro Hero?”

Hawks nodded.

“After we’ve done nothing but sit on this mountain and test my endurance?”

Hawks winced and nodded.

“Yeah, okay.”

Hawks did a double take. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“You won’t regret this, Chargebolt!”

“You mean spending my whole last year with the number two hero? And you’re acting like I’m the one doing you a favor?” Denki laughed, slung his bag over his shoulder, and left.

Between Denki and the League of Villains, Hawks was surrounded by weird people who constantly did unexpected things. Hawks couldn’t stop smiling.

Chapter Text

As the seasons changed, Denki continued to go to school in the morning, practice overusing his quirk with Hawks in the afternoon, and spend time with his friends and boyfriends in the evening. Usually that time coincided with studying, though, so it wasn’t as much fun as it could have been.

Denki tried to hide how tired he was, but the soulmates picked up on it easily. Not that it was hard to see, Denki guessed, seeing as how even Mineta had commented how run-down Denki seemed.

“You would be, too, if you had Hawks badgering you to overdo it with your quirk literally every day!” Denki said, sliding down into a lazy slouch on the common room’s couch.

“Yeah,” Mineta agreed. “I bet patrolling with the number two hero is stressful.”

“That’s the thing!” Denki complained. “We haven’t been patrolling! Every afternoon, Hawks sits there and tells me to send out more electricity, and it’s never enough.”

Denki paused.

“But don’t tell Neito I said that, okay? He’d want to talk to Hawks. I just want to talk to him,” Denki mocked, pretending to be Neito. “It’s not like I’m going to bury him alive for doing his job and trying to make you improve. He just needs to see that you’re absolutely perfect just the way you are, and he just doesn’t seem to understand that, so I’m going to force that through his thick skull with a sledge hammer.”

Mineta laughed and nodded. “I can imagine him saying exactly that.”

“Kaminari,” Midoriya called across the classroom. “I’m studying for hero history tonight. Did you want to join me?”

“Absolutely!”

And even though Denki couldn’t even speak when Midoriya brought up the League of Villains, he still shared all of his notes on them. Denki learned that Midoriya didn’t have consistent contact like Denki did, and they only reached out to him sporadically.

“I’m kind of relieved, actually, but you don’t seem to mind it.” Midoriya didn’t look up for verification, knowing that Denki couldn’t give it. He knew if he assumed anything incorrectly, Hitoshi or Neito would send the message that corrected his thinking. It had been a few weeks since he had gotten anything wrong, though, now that he seemed to have a better understanding of the type of relationship Denki shared with the League of Villains.

Denki had been spending time playing games with Dabi and Shigaraki again. It seemed like things were heading in the right direction if their improved moods had any indication.

“Oh, hey!” Denki heard Dabi say through his headphones, but it was obvious he wasn’t talking to him. Dabi continued, “I saw you on the news! You look great on television! I wonder how I would look…”

“You’d make it look more like a horror movie than the news,” Denki offered.

Dabi barked out a laugh and moved his player on the screen as he replied, “I thought you said my scars look cool!”

“They do! Just in the really awesome girls-falling-in-love-with-the-handsome-killer kind of way.”

“You know what? You have a point!”

“I always do!”

Training with Hawks was exhausting as usual.

“Higher!” Hawks sang.

Denki shot him a glare, but then he closed his eyes and the electricity around him got brighter and crackled louder at his efforts. When Denki ran out of steam and the electricity flickered out, he looked over to Hawks for feedback.

“You’re doing good,” Hawks complimented to Denki’s surprise. “Before you go,” Hawks started as Denki started packing up. “I wanted to let you know that I’ll be putting in a bid for your internship again.”

“Really?” Denki asked, giving Hawks his full attention. “You aren’t bored watching me try and fail at something you’re trying to get me to do?”

“You’re not failing; you’re getting closer. Progress is progress.”

Now that was a familiar phrase. He heard it often enough from Neito and Hitoshi, but only because it was something they had all learned from Touya when they trained together as the QQQ. It was probably just a coincidence, but Denki wondered if Hawks might be the hero that the Commission sent to infiltrate the League, who also happened to be the same hero that was Dabi’s soulmate, and the one that Shigaraki had taken an intense interest in.

“I really think I can take you to the next level if you give me another chance with you,” Hawks tried, probably thinking that Denki was just going to say no without some more prompting. “Will you accept my internship for your third year at UA?”

Denki squinted at Hawks. He totally would, now that he had his suspicions, but he wasn’t going to make it too easy on him.

“The year-long internship that lasts my whole last year of UA?” Denki clarified.

Hawks nodded, and Denki wondered if the League asked him to keep Denki under his literal and metaphorical wing throughout the rest of his time at UA.

“The one that is the most important for my future as a Pro Hero?” Denki asked, teasing. “After we’ve done nothing but sit on this mountain and test my endurance?”

Hawks winced and nodded. Denki nodded back at him.

“Yeah, okay.”

Hawks did a double take. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Why not?” Denki shrugged with a lazy smile stretching across his face.

“You won’t regret this, Chargebolt!” Hawks declared.

“You mean spending my whole last year with the number two hero? And you’re acting like I’m the one doing you a favor?” Denki laughed and went on his way to see his boyfriends.

During the first week of the third year, the lists and flyers were handed out for internships once again. Class 3-A and Class 3-B pushed a bunch of tables together at lunch to pour over their options together, despite the disapproving looks from Lunch Rush. Conversations weaved around and through the tables, naturally shifting to include others in the different discussions around them.

“I’m thinking about interning under Mount Lady,” Uraraka offered to the table. “I have better endurance with Zero Gravity now, so I’d be able to float up to her height whenever. Mineta, didn’t you shadow her during your first year?”

“Yeah…” Mineta said, thinking back. “I did nothing but chores, but it’ll probably be different for you seeing as we’re so close to graduation. What kept me safe then would be dangerous for you now.”

“I already interned with Gang Orca, so I want someone different to get as many different experiences as I can,” Neito offered. “I think I might try out some rescue stuff. I’d get to experience more disasters, even if I don't get to chase the villains that caused them. Denki, do you recommend interning with Thirteen?”

“Yeah, of course. They’re great!” Denki answered with a smile. “What about you, Hitoshi?”

“You make a great point about gaining different experiences,” Hitoshi said, directed at Neito, “but I think I’m going to just stick with Aizawa. I still have so much to learn from him. What about you, Denks?”

“Same. I’m sticking with Hawks.”

The people closest to Denki all paused their conversations and looked over at him.

“Hawks offered to host your internship again?” Tokoyami asked.

“Not just offered,” Denki answered. “Requested.”

“Why?!” Neito spat. “He just runs you into the ground! You’ve been exhausted this past year, and you’re going to do it again just because he asked you to?”

“Who knows?” Denki chirped, not phased in the slightest at Neito’s fiery spirit. “Maybe he’s determined to teach me to fly!” Denki winked in Tokoyami’s direction.

“I would not put it past him,” Tokoyami offered deadpan.

“Whatever reason, Hawks asked for another year. And who could say no to interning under the number two hero in all of Japan?”

“I could!” Neito said without hesitation, slapping his hand down next to his lunch tray.

“Well, he didn’t ask you!” Denki snarked back, sticking his tongue out in Neito’s direction.

“I wish he had so I could tell him no fucking way! Wait! Do you want me to tell him no fucking way for you? I will!” Neito offered.

“No!” Denki laughed. “I’m seriously excited about continuing with him. I still have no idea what he’s hoping for, but he’s so determined. You both trusted me when I had little explanation to offer, and everything turned out amazing. I want to give Hawks the same chance that I got, especially because it really seems like he’s trying to benefit me.”

The next week, Aizawa’s gaze lingered on Denki’s internship selection form for just a second longer than everyone else’s, but to his credit, he didn’t question Denki’s decision.

A week after that, Denki was slightly regretting his decision when Hawks demanded he raise his voltage higher once again. Denki knew he long surpassed the little wrist dial that only went up to 3 million volts, so he had no idea where his voltage levels were. Hawks didn’t really seem to care about the numbers all that much. When Denki’s vision flickered, Hawks would get excited and encourage him to keep going. What was he seeing that Denki wasn’t?

Instead of getting angry and frustrated, Denki took more breaths, gathered more energy, and pushed it out to zap around his body.

“Yes!” Hawks screamed. “Perfect! You’re amazing!”

The next day, Hawks demanded he do it all over again, but instead of the mountain, he took him to some abandoned city ruins. Denki figured it was to see if he could get that high in a different environment or if he was a one-trick pony who could only give Hawks what he wanted under specific circumstances.

Denki wasn’t as calm as he was the day before, anxious that he might not live up to Hawks’s expectations. He didn’t even understand what he did to make Hawks so excited. He didn’t understand what arbitrary line he crossed that Hawks considered it a success. He so badly wanted Hawks to just tell him what the end goal was.

That’s how Hawks and Denki got into a screaming match on top of the skeleton of an abandoned skyscraper. It wasn’t even the tallest one in the cityscape. Denki could see the tallest one towering over the rubble a few blocks away. That small detail made Denki even angrier.

“What?! I’m not good enough for the tallest building?! Huh?!”

“Just focus!” Hawks encouraged, speaking loudly to be heard over the cracks of lightning shooting off of Denki’s body. “You’re so close!”

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you! Just tell—just tell me!”

“You’re doing great!” Hawks diverted. “Just push as much power out as you possibly can!”

“Are you trying to kill me?! Just let me know so I can say my damn prayers! Are you going to write down my final words or will you commit them to memory?”

“I’ll record them!” Hawks joked, but he did take out his phone and aim it in Denki’s direction.

Denki didn’t know if Hawks was actually recording or not, but he still yelled, “tell Aizawa that it’s no big deal if he wants to adopt both Eri and Hitoshi! He can do that! I looked it up! It’s allowed! Tell Yamada that his radio show rocks! Tell Neito and Hitoshi that I love them, and I hope they remember me fondly! Tell Sero that he still owes me, and until that debt is repaid, I’m going to haunt his ass! Tell—”

Hawks just nodded and continued to look amused throughout Denki’s rant. But then he looked distracted, almost alarmed, as he looked past Denki, toward the tallest building.

Denki turned around just in time to see a cloaked figure toss a bundle over the edge, immediately retreating, not sticking around to see the thing fall. The thing—Denki recognized the pink frills of a baby blanket, and the bundle was very human-baby sized.

The lightning that Denki had been building flashed brightly in front of his eyes, and then he was free falling. But that pink bundle was right there. He reached out for it, and as soon as it was in his hands, his lightning pulsed in his vision again. He lied on the ground, staring up at the grey, cloudy sky. His face twitched when a raindrop landed on it. With the ringing in his ears, he didn’t even hear Hawks yelling to him as he flew closer. He had just lifted his head to look down at the pink bundle tucked into his arms before everything went black.

Chapter Text

When Denki opened his eyes, it was to the familiar view of the ceiling of Recovery Girl’s office. He went through his normal routine of checking his body over, moving different parts until he determined that he wasn’t in pain. He sat up quickly and was pleasantly surprised that his vision didn’t swim. He was usually dizzy for a while after over-exerting himself and short-circuiting his brain.

He saw Hawks but no sign of Recovery Girl. He groaned, dragging a hand down his face.

“Pushed me over the edge, didn’t you?” Denki half-asked, half-guessed.

He didn’t quite remember, but he was sure it would come back to him.

“Hey!” Hawks responded, indignant at the accusation. “You went over the edge all on your own!”

Denki furrowed his brow in concentration, confused by what Hawks could have meant by that. He looked more closely at Hawks. He stood in the middle of the room, excited energy wafting off of him as he shifted from side to side.

“What?” Denki asked dumbly.

“You don’t remember?!” Hawks screeched. “That’s the coolest damn thing I’ve ever seen, and you don’t even remember?!”

“It’ll come back to me,” Denki assured, pulling his legs up onto the cot to get more comfortable. “It always does. Can you please just explain in the meantime?”

“You… turned into lightning,” Hawks said dramatically, looking upwards and spreading his hands in front of his face like he was reimagining it.

Denki laughed. “No really, though. What happened?”

Instead of answering, Hawks just smiled at Denki as he tossed him his phone. Denki caught it easily, surprised that the aftereffects of his quirk overdose hadn’t affected him as much as it usually did. Usually, his reflexes would be off for at least a few hours, if not for a few days. Denki tapped on the play icon on the screen and smiled as he watched his ‘last words.' It seemed familiar, so it all started coming back to him.

Then the camera shook and shifted just the tiniest bit. The on-screen Denki had abruptly stopped his speech to whip around and look behind him and upwards. On the top left of the screen, Denki saw a black smudge toss a pink smudge off the top of the building. Denki’s heart flew up into his throat, wondering if he didn’t remember because it was too damn traumatic, but that wouldn’t explain why Hawks was so excited.

Denki startled when a bright light filled the screen, blinding him, and he jumped again when it was followed by a loud, crunchy noise, the sound distorted by the recording device. When the light vanished as quickly as it had appeared, Denki was missing from the frame, and another flash of light hit again, further away from the camera, closer toward the tallest building. Denki recognized it as lightning and didn’t jump when the crunchy noise blasted through the speaker again.

Narrowing his eyes and moving his face closer to the screen, he restarted the video and watched it again. And again. And again.

Hawks was patient, watching Denki with a permanent smile on his face as he reviewed the footage over and over again, letting Denki come to his own conclusions instead of force-feeding him the information when he didn’t understand quickly enough.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he concluded, not moving his eyes from the screen, trying to pick out the trick. “Being a TikTok legend myself, I’ve seen it all, but this doesn’t make any sense. How did you do this?”

“Me? Kid, that was all you!” Hawks insisted. “You turned into lightning, practically teleported, and grabbed onto that falling baby before turning into lightning again and practically teleporting to the ground instead of free falling!”

“Putting unnecessary emphasis on multiple words doesn’t make what you’re saying true,” Denki snarked.

He pressed the replay button again, but the video was interrupted by a phone call.

“Uh… Too Hot to Handle is calling you?” Denki said, offering the phone to Hawks.

Hawks blushed, cursing Dabi in his mind for changing his code name in his phone, quickly swiped to dismiss the call, and handed the phone back to Denki. As soon as Denki restarted the video again, he sighed, and held the phone back out to Hawks.

“Now Number One Boyfriend is calling you. Did your multiple lovers find out about each other?” Denki joked as Hawks took the phone back, once again swiping to dismiss the call.

“Maybe,” Hawks answered, but distractedly. Two phone calls in a row must have meant that something had happened. He knew that they knew he would call them back as soon as he was able to. “If they kill me,” Hawks went on, trying to make his cover airtight, “maybe I’ll take your strategy and haunt them.”

Denki smiled, but then the memory hit him. He wasn’t so excited about turning into lightning as he was about what might have done during that time. “Oh no! Hawks…” he whispered, eyes narrowing. “Did I kill that baby with my electricity?”

Denki thought that maybe he had initially mistaken Hawks’s nervous energy with excited energy, and Hawks was there to drag him to Tartarus for killing an innocent baby, but he was shaken out of those thoughts when Hawks laughed loudly, taking two large steps forward and planting himself on the cot next to Denki.

“Absolutely demolished the baby,” Hawks answered, his tone happy despite the melancholy, gruesome news.

Hawks reached under the bed and tossed a pink bundle at Denki before he could devolve into a panic, thankfully not being cruel enough to prolong the torture of not knowing.

Denki doubted that Hawks was going to toss a dead baby’s corpse at him, but he was cautious and hesitant as he unraveled the toasted, pink blanket to peek inside anyway. He sighed in immense relief when he saw that Hawks was right: He had demolished the fake, plastic baby. The battery compartment was blackened with how much electricity Denki must have pushed through the stupid thing, frying the batteries. He couldn’t remember even hearing the baby crying over the roaring in his ears, so the fried batteries were an absolute waste.

He risked his life to save this toy.

“This was a set-up?” Denki asked, but he already knew the answer. “What made you think I was capable of something so—so—”

“Powerful? When you were waiting out Full Throttle’s quirk, your outline seemed to completely disappear at times before coming back again after a really strong bolt of lightning. It happened a few times before that blond friend of yours—”

“Boyfriend,” Denki corrected automatically.

“Before your boyfriend got there,” Hawks corrected easily. “He’s the one with the copy quirk right? What did you guys do? Make a circuit? That was really smart.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that you were there,” Denki hedged. “Have you told anyone?”

“Are you kidding?” Hawks said. “I’m not trying to get you killed, sparky.” Denki snorted, and Hawks smiled. “Believe it or not, I’m on your side, here. If you manage to get full control over this, you’d be pretty close to unstoppable.”

That sounded pretty damn cool on the surface, but Denki still didn’t quite understand.

“Why did you do this? Electricity isn’t exactly your area of expertise, is it?”

It’s not like Hawks was going to come right out and say something like, ‘the League of Villains requested I take you in and share everything I know with you,’ even if that was the truth, but Denki felt like he had to ask anyway. It’s not like Denki could ask what he really wanted to know, not with Force Majeure’s quirk sitting dormant at the back of his mind, ready to flicker to life at a moment’s notice.

“No, but I know potential when I see it.”

Denki nodded and fiddled with the edge of the blanket wrapped around the broken, fake baby. “How am I going to get full control?”

“I’ll keep working with you.”

“What?” Denki asked, a smile forming quickly across his face, continuing with a teasing lilt in his voice, “gonna challenge me to a race, Hawks?”

“I’m fast, but I’m not faster than the speed of light,” Hawks said, nudging Denki’s shoulder with his own.

Denki blanched, his joking nature seemingly draining from him. “Oh, shit. I’m faster than Hawks.”

“Yeah, you are! What are you going to do, now, hot shot?”

Denki didn’t even have to think about it. “I’m going to challenge Iida to a race.”

Hawks laughed, leaning back against his hands on the cot to make himself comfortable. “Until you get full control, you should probably keep this to yourself.”

“Yeah,” Denki agreed nodding. “Except I’m going to tell Neito and Hitoshi.”

“Neito is your boyfriend, right?” Hawks asked and Denki nodded. “Okay, so who’s Hitoshi?”

“Hitoshi is my other boyfriend, and also Neito’s soulmate,” Denki informed, then, “I’m actually surprised you didn’t know about this. We were a hot topic when we first arranged all that, though I guess Tokoyami isn’t exactly the gossiping type.”

Hawks had frozen. Dabi and Shigaraki had told him that they knew of a group who gave them the idea to set up their relationship the same way. This whole time, they were talking about Denki. Hawks knew that the League did extensive research when it suited them, but to keep such close tabs on Denki continued to be surprising to him, especially the lengths they seemed to have gone. Plus, they knew that Denki had been targeted by Full Throttle, and Hawks wasn’t the one to tell them that. It was more than just a vague interest in someone they had captured; it was much bigger than that.

Denki eyed Hawks as he remained silent and emotionless. “I don’t think you have any room to judge, Mr. I-have-two-lovers-calling-me-within-seconds-of-each-other,” Denki said, trying to be lighthearted about it, but it definitely hurt if Hawks was put-off by his relationship with the soulmates.

“It’s not that,” Hawks reassured him. “But I do really have to call them back and see what they wanted. It’s rare that they call me back-to-back like that, so it must be important.”

Hawks then excused himself, and Denki smiled as he fiddled with the baby doll on his lap. It was looking more and more likely that Denki was right about Hawks being the one infiltrating the League of Villains. He wondered what would have happened if he had answered Hawks’s phone for him.

“I have big news!” Hitoshi announced before Denki had the chance.

“You’re finally fluent in Spanish after all of those lessons from Sero?” Neito guessed.

“No.”

“You got bitten by a radioactive spider and now you have an extra quirk?” Denki chimed.

“What—no!”

“You—"

“I’m getting adopted next week!” Hitoshi rushed out before his boyfriends could thrust another wild theory onto him. “Eri, too!”

“Holy shit! Congratulations!” Neito said, leaning forward toward Hitoshi with excitement written all over his features.

“I knew it was worth including in my last words,” Denki said with a nod.

The two soulmates whipped their heads in Denki’s direction. “Oh, I’ve gotta hear this!”

“Okay, so Hawks taught me how to turn into lightning, right? Well, as he was doing that, I felt like he was actually trying to kill me by making me overuse my own quirk, so I started listing off my final words to everyone. My final words to Aizawa were that he could adopt both you and Eri, and he should! So, I’m really glad he is!”

“Back up,” Neito demanded. Hitoshi nodded in agreement that Denki needed to back the fuck up. “Hawks taught you how to turn into lightning?!”

“Oh, yeah! That was going to be my news!”

“… Well, tell us the details, Denki! I’m dying from anticipation here!” Hitoshi demanded, plopping himself down on the floor, dragging Neito down with him.

Denki looked down at the soulmates who looked back up at him with endless admiration and excitement in their eyes. God, he loved them. He plopped down on the floor, too, and told them all about it.

“So, when Tokoyami joked around that Hawks was going to teach you how to fly…” Neito started.

“When has Tokoyami ever joked about anything?” Hitoshi finished the thought.

“I don’t think he knew what Hawks had in mind,” Denki said with a shrug. “I just think he knew he had something big in mind for me or he wouldn’t have poured that much time and energy into me.”

“So, Neito was wrong,” Hitoshi stated bluntly out of nowhere.

“Excuse me?” Neito said with a scowl.

“You’re excused,” Hitoshi answered automatically with a smirk.

Denki bit back laugher, and Hitoshi said with a wink, “Eri taught me that one.”

“I was wrong, too,” Denki admitted to ease the rising tension, though he knew it was nothing serious. “None of us knew what Hawks was up to, so it was easy to misjudge him and his intentions.”

“Well, he could have told you,” Neito said, glaring at nothing in particular.

“Would I have believed him, though?” Denki asked, placing his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. “Hey, Chargebolt! I’m going to push you past your limits to help you turn into lightning! Wow! Thanks, Hawks! Sounds fantastic, like a completely reasonable goal to attain.”

“Okay, smartass,” Neito said, shoving at Denki’s shoulder, but he was smiling all the same. “You have a point.”

“I always do.”

Chapter Text

Denki practiced with Hawks on a daily basis, and while he was frustrated that he wasn’t progressing as fast as he would have liked, he no longer felt the need to take out that frustration on Hawks, now that he realized that Hawks wasn’t even really benefiting from teaching him something that was so far out of his own element. That idea just made Denki work even harder.

Hawks would fly them out to abandoned cityscapes or secluded mountains to practice where no one might oversee before Denki was completely in control.

Hawks had drilled it into Denki that power was a delicate thing that needed to be kept hidden until it reached its full potential. Otherwise, there would be people out there who would want to take advantage.

Despite feeling frustrated at his slow progress, though, Denki had never felt more powerful. He finally had something that kept him in line with his classmates. He finally had something that was helping him progress just as quickly as everyone else seemed to. He no longer felt that he might be falling too far behind to catch up. He finally had hope that he might be a valuable member of hero society because of his quirk, instead of his quirk being his downfall and making him into a liability.

By the time the end of his third year was nearing, Denki had his new move down to near perfection every single time.

“I’ve been doing some research,” Hawks said as he handed Denki a bottle of water during one of their frequent breaks. “You know how you said you didn’t understand how you would short-circuit when using lower voltage and feel completely fine when blasting your power up to lightning-levels? I think that might be because you’re pushing that power out and through you when you’re turning into lightning, but just kind of blocking it off and holding it in when you short-circuit.”

Denki nodded as he swallowed the water down, barely taking a chance to breathe before chugging the whole thing, heaving from the effort, and wiping his mouth.

“The first time it happened, it was terrifying,” Denki disclosed. “After that, I tried to limit how much power I’d put out so that it wouldn’t have as many side effects when I tried to shut it down again. But you’re saying I should have done the opposite?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“Hawks?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“Where have you been all my life?”

Hawks barked out a laugh and reached out for Denki, but Denki was faster. With a bright light and a crack of thunder, Denki was across the small clearing, out of reach, and wearing a shit-eating grin.

“Fastest hero, my ass, Hawks!”

“Hey! I’ll still hold that title until you graduate and become pro! Until then, you will bow down to me as the fastest hero!”

“Yeah, sure…” Denki hedged, taking two steps back. “But you gotta catch me first!”

Hawks was already speeding toward him, and Denki still had time to laugh before he sizzled out of Hawks’s reach.

“Oh, ho, ho! You gotta be quicker than that!” Denki teased to get Hawks wound up.

Hawks knew it was to deliberately get him wound up, and goddamn if it didn’t work just as the kid intended. Hawks chased after Denki, a challenging smile on his face.

Hawks felt amazing every time he did manage to catch Denki, but he wondered each time if that one would be the last time he ever did so. He had been improving steadily, and it took more and more time using more and more strategies and tricks to actually catch Denki. It if was a pure competition of speed alone, Hawks wouldn’t have ever stood a chance from the second that Denki learned how to activate it at will from baseline, from zero to lightning instantly, instead of having to build up to it.

When Hawks had reached for Denki the same time Denki started to zap off, both of their hearts stopped. Hawks expected to wake up dead, and Denki expected to have to recruit his boyfriends to hide a dead body. So, when Hawks and Denki were both standing on the top of a nearby mountain, they stopped and stared at each other for a few seconds in silence.

“Uh, you feeling okay, Hawks?”

“Yeah… but what was that?”

“I think… I think I brought you with me.”

“Okay. But how?”

“I don’t know!” Denki practically whined, relief pouring out of him at the disaster they had just unintentionally averted. “I saw you grabbing onto me, and I just tried to focus the energy away from you.”

“Okay,” Hawks said, brow furrowed in thought. “Hear me out: Maybe the rest of you turned into lightning, but you somehow managed to keep your arm intact so that I was dragged along with you instead of being electrocuted.”

“Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know! I’m not the lightning expert, Denki! I’m just winging this shit! I had no idea from the very beginning! I just try things and sometimes they work out! So, let’s just try it again!”

“You lost me at try it again.”

“Right,” Hawks said. “Maybe we should practice with things that won’t die before we graduate back to practically teleporting me through the air. Good idea!”

“Yeah, I’m full of them!” Denki said, fully accepting the credit for the idea that absolutely did not come from him.

That’s how Denki and Hawks ended up surrounded by a pile of fake babies. Denki leveled an incredulous look at Hawks, and Hawks shrugged at him.

“It was just in case you didn’t see the first baby falling. We had multiple back-up infants to toss off the roof. Now we can put them to good use, and they won’t go to waste!”

Denki was glad that they were practicing on an isolated mountain so no one would see him toting around fake babies, some ending up fried beyond recognition, and others making it through to see another attempt. Hawks physically recoiled at the sight of the first fried baby, picturing himself if he hadn’t had the great idea to practice with fakes before volunteering himself once again.

-.-.-

“Can you stay a while?” Dabi asked, tossing the water bottle to Denki from behind the bar.

“Yeah. Hitoshi and Neito are covering for me,” Denki said, cracking open the sealed cap and taking a sip.

“We’ve been trying to track down Full Throttle, but every time we get close, he disappears again. Goes completely off-grid, and it takes forever to even get another hint of him,” Shigaraki complained, sitting at one of the tables in the barroom, fiddling with the cap of his own water bottle.

“Well, I know what Full Throttle looks like now,” Denki said. “And now that your boyfriend taught me how to literally turn into lightning, I doubt that he’d be able to touch me again.”

“Hawks taught you how to turn into lightning?” Shigaraki repeated, almost disbelieving.

Denki smiled. “I knew it! Hawks is the Commission-sent-infiltration hero that you’ve all been talking about. You’re welcome, by the way, for the stellar advice I gave you that actually worked out perfectly,” Denki said pointedly to Shigaraki. “You really thought you could keep a secret from me, huh?”

“It’s not like we were trying to keep a secret,” Dabi said with a shrug in Shigaraki’s defense. “But we’re getting off topic, here. How exactly did Hawks teach you something like turning into lightning? He’s not even close to an electric type.”

“He said that he saw potential in me during that whole thing with Full Throttle. It’s why he requested my third-year internship,” Denki said.

“Wait! What? Did we know about this?” Shigaraki asked, turning to Dabi. When Dabi shook his head no, Shigaraki asked, “how did we not know that Hawks’s intern was Kaminari?”

“Yeah, I guess I never really brought it up,” Denki said with a sheepish smile and a shrug.

“No, but Hawks should have told us. He knows that we keep tabs on you, and that we’ve been looking for Full Throttle after what he did to you,” Shigaraki said, running frustrated hands through his hair, which was a major improvement from scratching relentlessly at his skin.

“But Hawks doesn’t exactly know what you have going on with us, either,” Dabi said to Denki before turning toward Shigaraki. “He could very well think we have less than perfectly good intentions toward Denks. We never exactly told him otherwise.”

“Yeah, well he never asked!”

“He did say that I couldn’t tell anyone about the whole lightning thing until I mastered it because people might want to take advantage,” Denki said. “I thought he was talking about the Hero Commission, actually.”

“He probably was,” Dabi agreed with a shrug. “But not just the Hero Commission. Us, too.”

“Literally everyone. Except Neito and Hitoshi, of course,” Denki informed.

“Of course,” Dabi repeated, and Shigaraki nodded.

“I tell them everything,” Denki said, heavily insinuation that if they wanted to model their relationship off of Denki’s very successful one, they should follow his lead. “Maybe you guys should—”

“Thanks, but I think we’ll do this our own way this time,” Shigaraki interrupted.

Denki smiled widely, not insulted in the least. As long as they were planning to do something, Denki could and would stay in his own lane.

“Just go easy on him, yeah?” Denki requested. “I really like Hawks. He’s the best mentor I’ve ever had."

"Better than even Aizawa?” Shigaraki asked.

"Yep," Denki answered with a pop, no hesitation whatsoever.

“Damn. That lightning must be one hell of a trick,” Dabi said.

Denki smiled. “Wanna see?”

“Uh, yeah! Obviously!” Dabi said, slamming his hands on the tabletop as he stood up.

“Can we get Force Majeure in on this, too?” Denki asked. “It would be cool if she could include Hawks for the in-group exception to her quirk. Midoriya, too.”

“Ah,” Shigaraki grunted, nodding. “I figured you’d find him eventually.”

“He found me, actually!” Denki said. “He asked me if I was the traitor!”

“He didn’t,” Shigaraki said, looking intently at Denki.

“He did!” Denki confirmed, bursting out laughing. “Like, how many insiders do you have—? No! Don’t actually answer that!”

“Wasn’t going to,” Shigaraki retorted.

“We all know that you totally would if he really wanted to know,” Dabi said, shaking his head and rolling his eyes, even as the smile stayed firmly on his face.

-.-.-

“Kaminari Denki,” the woman greeted, extending her hand out in greeting.

“Hello,” Denki said, pleasantly enough, reaching out to shake her hand.

“I’m glad you’ve agreed to meet with me, today,” she said with a smile, sitting down on her side of the desk.

Denki flopped down in an overstuffed armchair on the other side of the desk, looking around at the dark mahogany lined office.

“It sounded more like a demand than an offer,” Denki chimed, his friendly grin not matching the resentment in his words. “Maybe that’s something you should work on.”

The woman’s smile tightened but didn’t drop. “If we’re offering feedback, here, I think it’s only fair that I should warn you about the risks of shaking someone’s hand. I would have thought you had learned your lesson after your encounter with Full Throttle.”

Denki laughed, not phased in the least. Maybe that is what annoyed the woman the most; that Denki couldn’t be brought down as easily as she herself could with little jabs.

“I survived once, didn’t I?”

“Maybe your good luck is running out,” the woman said.

“It’s the opposite, actually. All of my bad luck has already run its course. I only have good luck left in the reserves.” Denki shrugged and stretched out, making himself comfortable.

“Did the voices tell you that?”

The malice in her voice at the snappy retort wasn’t unexpected. The retort itself wasn’t unexpected. If the League of Villains could use unofficial routes to gain access to UA’s records, then the Hero Public Safety Commission would have no trouble using official routes to get Denki’s psychiatric records.

Denki paused, eyes going to his right for just a second, and a small smile and nod sent toward nothing in particular before looking back at her. With a nod, he whispered conspiratively, “they told me I’m not allowed to tell you what they actually said. That’s between me and them.”

The woman was no longer smiling, no longer pretending to be amused.

“Is this really professional for a soon-to-be Pro Hero?”

“You’re trying to coach me on what’s professional after bullying a student and trying to intimidate him into enlisting with the Hero Commission? You must not have gone to UA if you never learned about how to persuade while avoiding hypocrisy. Verbal de-escalation 101, but your type like to act first and ask questions never, I heard.”

“That’s bold of you to say,” the woman said, bristling. She opened her mouth, probably to give off some threats, but was interrupted.

“No. What’s bold is you poaching Principal Nezu’s students.”

No response.

“What? You think they teach us how to put our lives in danger and become heroes, but not about the agreements between important institutions?”

“Many would die to have the opportunities we’re offering you.”

“Many have, I’m sure.”

Denki stood up, stretched, grabbed an armful of the donuts offered for guests on the little side table, gave a little salute, and stalked out the door, grumbling, “if you’re going to waste my time, I might as well get some donuts out of it.”

Chapter Text

Hawks walked into the bar, feeling the stress of the day fall off of him like it was being washed away by a waterfall. He didn’t find it suspicious that both of his boyfriends were on the couch. He didn’t even find it suspicious that they were on opposite ends, even though he had never seen that before. In the back of his mind, if he had thought about it at all, he just assumed that it was his turn to be the center of attention, so they moved apart for him to have the middle. The middle seat was still vacant when he returned from the bathroom after having changed into his loungewear for the evening, stretching his arms over his head and spreading his wings out as he padded barefoot across the floor to join the villains on the couch.

Oh, it was his turn to be the center of attention, all right.

“Boyfriend’s here, gotta go!” Shigaraki spoke into the headset before backing out of the game.

“You don’t have to stop on my account. I suck at these things, but it’s fun to watch you two,” Hawks said as he meandered closer, letting himself plop down in between his soulmate and his boyfriend.

Dabi reached out and turned the console completely off, followed by the television.

This was new. The news or a random soap opera? Sure. But the duo never ended their gaming sessions early just because Hawks arrived, not when the increasingly familiar gamertag P05itiv3R3v0lt was hovering above one of the characters on the screen.

“Keigo, baby,” Dabi drawled as he turned his attention straight onto Hawks, stalking forward like a predator stalking its prey.

Hawks inhaled sharply at the butterflies slamming around the sides of his stomach and shifted sideways on the couch so that Dabi was approaching him straight-on, turning his back in Shigaraki’s direction. When Dabi neared closer, Shigaraki’s hands were there, pulling Hawks backwards to lean against his chest, legs already on either side to accommodate Hawks’s frame as Dabi closed in. Hawks allowed his wings to drop and rest comfortably, slotted between himself and Shigaraki without smothering him.

It was amazing to see Dabi and Shigaraki so in sync, but when they used it against Hawks like this, he could die a happy man. Hawks figured that if they ever found out what he had been planning to do for the Hero Commission, that this would be the best way to die: Trapped between the two men who he had fallen hard for. One, his soulmate given to him by fate itself, the other, a genuine man who follows his own strict moral code who has made him feel so valued and protected.

Hawks felt Shigaraki entangle his fingers into his hair, scratching deliciously at his scalp as Dabi leaned in to steal a kiss, the familiar cold metal of the staples a welcome comfort. Dabi pulled away too quickly, but then immediately started trailing kisses down Hawks’s jaw, moving down to spread kisses along his neck.

Hawks breathing picked up as he relaxed further, leaning back into Shigaraki’s chest, head lolling backwards onto Shigaraki’s shoulder as Dabi’s warm hands slid up under Hawks’s shirt, tracing delicate, shiver-inducing patterns on Hawks’s stomach, right above the hemline of his shorts.

Hawks let out a sigh as Dabi’s hands warmed up further; he had never felt so relaxed and wound-up at the same time. He wasn’t in a rush, though, and neither of the villains sandwiching him seemed to be, either. Moving slowly, taking their time.

So, Hawks was surprised when Dabi’s hands continued to heat up until they were no longer just warm. It wasn’t enough to burn him, but they felt hot and searing against his skin.

He forced his eyes to refocus and looked down at Dabi, who was smiling up at him maliciously.

“You’ve been keeping secrets, pretty bird,” he whispered.

Hawks tensed up, ready to sit up and possibly beg for his life, but the grip in his hair tightened and pulled his head back to rest firmly in the crook of Shigaraki’s shoulder, temple right against the side of Shigaraki’s jaw. Powdery blue hair brushed against Hawks’s forehead and cheekbone as he tried to control his heavy breathing. He looked sideways at Shigaraki from the corner of his eye, a malicious smiling gracing his face to match Dabi’s as red eyes stared straight through his eyes and into his soul.

Hawks felt a cold rush through his head as his blood hurried to his extremities, preparing him to fight or flee, but all Hawks could do was freeze. There was nowhere to run with Dabi in front of him and Shigaraki right behind. There was no will to fight, not against them, and not when he knew that this would happen eventually, inevitably.

“Relax,” Shigaraki commanded, even as one hand tightened in Hawks’s hair to keep him in place and the other slowly, gently glided against Hawks’s skin to rest on his throat that was completely exposed from the angle of resting his head back against Shigaraki. “We’re just going to talk.”

There was no pressure behind his hand, no promise or even a hint of cutting his airway off, but with a quirk like Shigaraki’s, a threat was present all the same. Shigaraki hummed as he felt the quick pulse just below Hawks’s skin. He hummed again, eyes rolling back when Hawks spoke, and he felt the vibrations of his voice through his skin. Dabi smiled up at Shigaraki, knowingly, before redirecting his icy blue gaze back on Hawks.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Hawks had said.

“We know you will, Keigo,” Dabi responded, his voice gravelly with lust, threat, or anticipation, Hawks wasn’t sure. “But first, you need to relax.”

When he took a mental assessment of himself, Hawks realized that his elbows were drawn back, resting against Shigaraki’s hips as Shigaraki sat directly behind him, legs bent out on either side of Hawks, fully trapping him in as if his hands weren’t enough; however, that wasn’t completely of Shigaraki’s own doing. Hawks’s forearms were tucked tightly against his sides, and his hands were in tight fists around the fabric of Shigaraki’s pants, pulling in toward himself, keeping Shigaraki’s legs firmly around him.

It was kind of grounding, making Shigaraki surround him like that. But still, when Dabi reached out with warm hands to unfurl Hawks’s fists, Hawks let him. Warm hands got warmer as they rubbed and kneaded Hawks’s hands and forearms, helping him to follow the command that he relax, before moving up to his shoulders. Dabi’s hands stayed at a relaxing range, not rising again to the edge between very warm and too hot.

Hawks almost felt tired by the time Dabi had made his way up to rub out the knots and tension in his neck. He tried to ignore how he and Shigaraki would share a charged look over his shoulder when Dabi’s gentle fingers would caress the hand that Shigaraki still had resting against Hawks’s throat.

Shigaraki hummed once again when Hawks had fully relaxed, allowing his full weight to rest against Shigaraki, his head easily moving whichever direction Shigaraki’s fingers prodded as he released his grip on his hair and resumed to trace and scratch patterns onto his scalp.

“That’s a good, little hero,” Shigaraki drawled in Hawks’s ear. He was pleased when Hawks remained relaxed instead of tensing up again, and he nodded briefly at Dabi to get started.

Dabi slotted himself between Hawks’s legs. When Hawks started to tense up again, he fell quickly back into full relaxation as Dabi continued to use his warmed hands to caress Hawks’s sides under his shirt, sliding down over his hips, to the inside of his knees, and then back up again, warming his inner thighs through the fabric of his shorts with a slow, gentle glide of his hands.

Hawks had guessed for a while that these two men were too good for him. It was confirmed now, no doubt left in his mind about it. Despite being villains, at least they followed a code. It was a code set by themselves, sure, but not one that they just broke whenever they felt like it, not like how Hawks was told one thing by the Hero Commission, and then the next day told to ignore all the rules he was just told and do this other unethical thing instead. If it was for the greater good, then it was fine, right? It was fine to sacrifice his own morals if it meant saving people. It was fine to bend a few rules and fight dirty if the Hero Commission would come out on top.

Villains were irredeemable, is what they raised Hawks to believe. Yet, here these villains were, showing him immense mercy and grace in a time where he expected them to be cruel and unforgiving. Where he expected them to take great pleasure in his suffering, they eased him into total relaxation. Hawks knew that he didn’t deserve to die that way. He had fully accepted that they would slowly torture him if they ever found him out, and he knew that’s what he deserved: Nothing more and nothing less. But it was also the Hero Commission who put that fearful thought into his head, how if he were to ever be caught, the villains would do worse to him than what the Commission ever did, so he should be grateful that the Commission had gone through so much trouble to train him so well to reduce the chances of that ever happening.

But no. Hawks was going to die fully relaxed and comfortable. The only pain he’d feel is his heartbreak that he couldn’t have been good enough to choose a side and take action before it was too late, that he hurt these two misfits by shoving himself between them, where fate had no goddamn right to put him.

If he cried tears of regret, it wasn’t because he ended up where he was, it was because he came along and ruined a good thing while he was at it. He ruined everything he touched, so why was he stupid enough to believe that his soulmate might be the exception?

“Tell us what you know, Kei,” Dabi said softly, busying himself with tracing warm patterns on Hawks’s hip bones. “Fill us in, yeah?”

Hawks took a deep breath in and let it out; it didn’t even shudder. He kept his eyes closed as he talked, partly to continue to stay relaxed, and partly to not see the look of betrayal on their faces.

“The Hero Commission sent me here as a double agent, and I’ve been reporting back to them regularly.”

Dabi’s hands paused their calming circles for just a second before starting up again. Hawks kept his eyes closed, not wanting to see the killing blow when it comes.

“They sent me in to take you down from the inside, and they’ve been building plans with the information I’ve been sending back to them. When I told them that you were my soulmate, Dabi, I thought they would pull me out, bring me back, find a different way in, but they didn’t. They said it was a good thing, and you’d never see it coming. When I found out that you and Tomura were already together, I thought that might be my way out, but they said to use it against you two, to start making you fight and tear your loyalty and ranks apart from the inside.”

Shigaraki not only continued to scratch at Hawks’s scalp throughout his confession, but also started to trace delicate patterns across his neck, making the hand that seemed so threatening before feel so calming, caring, and maybe even loving. Occasionally, Shigaraki let his fingers wander up to caress Hawks’s jaw, brush at the sensitive skin behind his ears, before trailing back down to slide across his collar bones.

“What did they say when they found out that all three of us are together?” Dabi asked quietly, not wanting to disturb the peaceful, delicate balance of relaxation and harsh truth that Hawks had found.

“They don’t know,” Hawks said simply.

“Why not?” Shigaraki inquired, keeping his voice soft to match the mood of the other two.

“They didn’t ask. So, I didn’t tell them.”

Hawks felt Shigaraki’s jaw twitch against his temple. He wasn’t sure if it was agitation or maybe something like amusement. He didn’t understand how anything he did could affect someone as powerful as Shigaraki in any way.

“Omission of the facts. I’m sure they wouldn’t take kindly to that,” Shigaraki said matter-of-factly. “What’s their plan?”

“For me to act jealous and possessive, say that I changed my mind and want my soulmate for myself. Let you argue among yourselves and send the signal when everything turns to chaos for the Pros to swoop in and save the day.”

“And if that didn’t work?” Dabi asked. “If we were just like, ‘sure, whatever.’ What would happen then?”

“I’m supposed to kill you in your sleep.”

Dabi huffed out a short, quiet laugh. “When’s the deadline for my untimely demise?” Dabi asked, a teasing lilt in his voice.

“Last week,” Hawks breathed out, squeezing his eyes shut a little tighter at the anxiety of having a missed deadline and his handler breathing down his back. “I told them you’ve been having trouble sleeping, so I couldn’t get a good opportunity.”

“Oh,” Dabi drawled, “moving into flat-out lies, are we? I’ve never slept better, Kei. You know that,” he teased. “What did they say?”

“That if it doesn’t happen soon, I just need to take the risk anyway. That I’ll be a martyr, and future generations will learn all about me and what I’ve done for hero society.”

Hawks forced himself to relax further into Shigaraki’s hold as his fingers tensed over his neck, knowing that if Shigaraki was about to turn him into that martyr he spoke of, he deserved it.

“They were preparing you to die?” Shigaraki whispered, but the snarl in his voice was unmistakable.

“You both know as well as I do that I wouldn’t stand a chance against you two. Not even if I wanted to.”

“Maybe not on your own,” Dabi admitted. “But with Kaminari Denki, who can literally turn into lighting, on your side, I think the outcome would highly skew in your favor.”

Hawks opened his eyes then, and stopped breathing, staring straight ahead at the wooden planks of the ceiling.

Shigaraki forced his fingers to relax and trace swirling patterns again. He hummed. “Yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, birdy, but the Commission is not what we were talking about when we asked for information.”

Hawks made a move to sit up, but Shigaraki was prepared for that and tightened his grip against the honey blond strands once again.

“Please, he doesn’t—” Hawks choked off his own argument before it could leave his lips. With how badly he wanted to protect Denki, he knew he couldn’t lie to Dabi and Shigaraki. Even if he could force the lie out, that Denki couldn’t actually do it, or that it would be a long time before he had control over it, they would see right through it, and it would make everything worse.

“We saw it in person. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you were working on some crazy shit like that!” Dabi said, leaning back, but still continuing to rub his quirk-warmed hands up and down Hawks’s legs. He laughed. “It’s ground-breaking, really! I knew he had potential from the first time I met him, but lightning potential? You really have a keen eye for that kind of thing, don’t you?”

Hawks thought Dabi was being cruel, saying that he saw potential in Denki from the moment they had kidnapped him. Hawks might have had a better idea about that if Denki had been able to tell him literally anything about his time with the League. Maybe it would have helped Hawks prevent this exact moment from happening. And what the hell was Dabi thinking? Turning Hawks into some kind of talent recruitment specialist for the League? And that would only be a possibility if they decided to look past Hawks’s transgressions and betrayals, or at least let him earn the trust back instead of killing him right away. Did Hawks just jump out of the frying pan and into the fire?

Dabi wasn’t being cruel, though, because Denki’s capture from the training camp was not the first time they had met, and that isn’t what Dabi was talking about. Dabi watched Denki as Denki watched his peers climbing the ranks, constantly and consistently improving, getting better and better day by day, month by month, year by year, only for himself to feel stagnant. For Dabi’s own soulmate to be able to bring something out in Denki that no one else had seen was amazing, and a testament to the fact that fate got it right for once: Dabi and Hawks were meant to be together.

Fate only got a minimally passing score on that front, though, because Shigaraki definitely should have been included in the soulmate situation.

Dabi leaned forward again, capturing Hawks’s lips in a searing kiss. When Shigaraki finally activated his quirk, it was to rid Hawks of his shirt instead of his life.

As he lied in bed that night between two villains, Hawks wondered how much time he had left, now that he told the League of Villains about his continuing work for the Hero Public Safety Commission. With the League’s vested interest in Denki, though, Hawks didn’t feel grateful for the life he had left, what little of it there might have been left.

Chapter Text

Denki did a little spin as he walked, arms outstretched and face lifted to the sun, much to the amusement of passersby on the sidewalk around them.

“It feels good to be out on patrol again,” Denki said, looking down at his hero costume.

Hatsume Mei had been the one to volunteer (quite enthusiastically) to make some adjustments to make his hero costume able to withstand the full force of lightning. It wouldn’t last forever, only a few full-force blasts, but Denki already had back-ups in his closet back at his dorm. It was better than something that would fall apart after only one or two, and Mei was hard at work to make it even better for the upcoming revisions.

“It seems like the citizens missed having you around, too,” Hawks said, nodding toward a gaggle of kids across the street who were jumping up and down and waving excitedly.

Denki spared a quick glance at Hawks who nodded him ahead, opting to lean back against the building with his hands in his pockets as he watched Denki soak in the much-deserved attention. He signed autographs and made big, surprised faces when the kids told him about their own quirks.

“Will you take a picture?” one girl asked, trying to be confident through her natural shyness. She blushed hard but stood her ground and maintained eye contact with the soon-to-be Pro Hero. Admirable, really.

“Sure,” Denki said, laughter clear in his voice as he took the proffered camera and took a photo of the girl.

The girl pouted. “I meant with me, Chargebolt.”

“Oh, yeah!” Denki said, laughing as he repositioned himself to be crouched next to her and handing the camera off to one of the adults of the group. “That makes more sense!” Denki said with a secretive wink toward the adults, like they were all part of the team to make this girl feel so super special that an up-and-coming hero would take a picture of her alone and not realize that she wanted a photo with him.

When the kids gathered around for a group photo, Denki pretended not to notice that the boy behind him was giving him bunny ears, and when the kids switched around to take turns being next to the hero, Denki sneakily returned the favor with a wink in the camera’s direction as the flash went off.

The kid was a riot. A bright ray of fucking sunshine. Shining so bright that he ended up on the League’s radar of all things.

The kid was unfortunate, more so when you realize that Hawks was the only one standing between Denki and the League of Villains. Because Hawks was a damn coward who didn’t know what to do. But he better figure it out. Fast.

When his phone vibrated against his palm in his pocket, Hawks tore his eyes away from his intern across the street who had picked a boy up onto his shoulders and was teetering around like he might fall over, causing the boy to squeal, laugh, and hold on tightly to Denki’s hands.

Number One Boyfriend.

“Hey, can’t be long. I’m on patrol right now,” Hawks said in greeting, glancing quickly around to make sure no one was in earshot, not that he would give anything away from his side of the conversation alone.

“Intern-assisted patrol?” Shigaraki asked. “With Kaminari?”

Hawks hesitated for only a second, but in the end, he couldn’t even lie to Shigaraki to protect this innocent kid.

“Yeah.”

“Great. Bring him over to the warehouse where you first started meeting with us. We have some things to go over.”

Hawks’s heart jumpstarted in his chest, and he tried to object, “Tomu—” He stopped, looking around again and sighing in relief when no one was there to witness his near slip-up.

“It’s urgent. You can convince the Commission that you’re helping him scope out high profile areas or something, can’t you?”

Goddamn it. Say no. Say. No.

“Yes,” Hawks said, pushing his fist into the area between his eyes to try to stave off the rapidly growing pressure of an oncoming headache.

Goddamn it.

“Great. We’ll see you both soon.”

Hawks sighed. “Yeah.”

“Thanks,” Shigaraki said, putting a lot of meaning behind the single word. “This really is important, or I wouldn’t ask.”

After hanging up, Hawks hesitated for about two seconds before pulling out his Commission-issued phone and calling his handler.

“We have a situation.”

“You killed a League member?”

“No, I—”

“There’s chaos among the ranks?”

“No, they—”

“You—”

“Shut the fuck up and listen to me. I’ll tell you. God fucking damn it.”

Silence, then, “okay, Hawks. I’m listening.”

“I just got a call that they want me to take my intern to them. What the fuck do I do?”

“Your intern, Kaminari Denki?”

“Yes.”

“Follow protocol: Do what they tell you to do. Update us how it all turns out when you get the chance.”

“What? You can’t be ser—”

That bitch hung up on him.

Okay. Moment of truth. Do or die. Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. I got this. I got this.

“Sorry that took so long!” Denki said as he jogged back over. “They were a rowdy bunch! What’s next?”

Tell him we’re ending early today. Tell him to go back to UA, where it’s safe.

“We’re going to go scope out an area with some recent suspicious activity, see if we can get an accurate read on the operations there in the daylight before the villains become active in the area at night.”

Fucking hell.

“Okay! Sounds great! Lead the way!”

Lightning started to overtake his body as he looked up into the sky, aiming for where he wanted to end up.

“Put the lightning away, kid. We’re walking this time.”

Denki smiled and rolled his eyes. He was used to Hawks not allowing him to use his lightning in public. He knew it was for his own safety, but he was dying to show off a little. Hawks was thinking more along the lines that maybe walking instead of flying them both over would buy him enough time to get a grip and warn Denki to run the hell away as fast and as far as he could.

As Hawks argued with himself in his head, mentally frozen with indecision, Denki watched him from the corner of his eye as they walked, keeping one eye on Hawks and one on the civilians that waved as they passed by so he would be sure to keep up citizen-hero engagement. After Hawks had made sure Denki understood the importance of that specific part of heroics, he didn’t seem so intent to make sure Denki was doing a good job.

“You know,” Denki started, kicking a stray pebble as he walked, “villains have been acting kind of strange around me and the rest of my classmates.”

“Yeah?” Hawks asked, though it was clear he was still lost in thought.

“Yeah. Ever since I was kidnapped by the League of Villains,” Denki said, watching closely out of the corner of his eye for Hawks’s reaction.

It was very anticlimactic because Hawks didn’t give a reaction. Here Denki was, talking to him about something he shouldn’t have been able to talk about because of a compulsion quirk, and Hawks had no response. If he hadn’t already confirmed it with Dabi and Shigaraki, he would have second-guessed his theory that Hawks was the one who was sent by the Commission to infiltrate.

“Listen—” Hawks started, very intense and quiet, like he was about to share a conspiracy theory. “Whatever happens, you’re not a Pro Hero, yet. You keep yourself safe above all else, even if that means leaving me behind.”

“What—? Hawks! Are we walking into some crazy Yakuza shit or something?”

“Or something…” Hawks muttered under his breath. “Just keep that in mind, okay? You don’t owe me anything. I’m a Pro Hero who can take care of myself, so if something were to get too intense and you don’t feel safe, you just book it, and I’ll catch up with you later.”

“I’m a month away from graduation, Hawks,” Denki said, confused at where all this concern was coming from when he had literally risked Denki turning into lightning at the beginning of the school year. “I’m this close to being Pro,” Denki said, showing his fingers pinched close together to Hawks. “If I get in the habit of running away now, I’ll look pretty ridiculous later.”

“Sometimes, kid, it’s not about how you look. Sometimes it’s about knowing when to slink away so you can live to fight another day. Not every hero’s story needs to end as a martyr’s legend.” Denki opened his mouth to respond, but Hawks swore under his breath and nodded down the street. “This is it.”

Denki turned to look at the giant warehouse with boards fastened up behind shattered glass windows at the corner intersection of two streets.

“Let’s split up. I’ll take the front lower level, you start at the back upper level,” Hawks commanded. “We’ll both work our way to the middle.”

Denki smiled at the change up, knowing that Hawks must be used to starting at the top and working his way down because of his quirk.

“You got it, boss,” Denki whispered with a toothy salute as he made his way to the other side of the alleyway to line himself up with the correct side of the building.

As soon as the electric blond was out of sight, Hawks flew. He didn’t have much time. He didn’t stop to look around or peer through the windows to see what dangers might await; no, he was already fully aware.

He burst in through the door, Shigaraki, Dabi, and Twice startled and spun around to the door, sighing and rolling their eyes at their own reactions when they saw that it was just Hawks.

“Where’s Denki?” Twice asked.

“Here,” Hawks said, breathing heavy from his quick sprint through the air to the front door of the warehouse, stalking forward to slam his Commission-issued cell phone on the table that the three villains were gathered around. “No more contact with the Commission. I’ll give you whatever you want, and I’ll never ask for anything again. Just give the orders, and I’ll storm into headquarters and take as many of them down with me as I can. If that’s what you want, I’ll do it. I don’t care. I—Just please, not Chargebolt.”

Shigaraki and Dabi shared concerned glances. “What? Keigo—”

There was a snapping sound from the staircase, and everyone’s head whipped over in that direction as the soon-to-be-hero in question stumbled out.

“Okay!” Denki declared breathily, looking back up at the deathtrap that he almost fell through. “Those stairs are not up to safety code!”

He turned around to see Hawks standing there among a bunch of notorious villains, all huddled around the table like they were all just scheming together. Hawks hoped that that was warning enough for him to get the hell out of there, even if it meant that his cover was ruined. Even if it meant that he lost Denki’s trust. Whatever it took to keep Denki safe.

Denki’s eyes sparked to life, and there was barely any warning before he was barreling straight for the table full of villains. Hawks felt the cold grip of anxiety smother his heart when Denki ran straight for Shigaraki. Of fucking course.

It happened in slow motion in Hawks’s mind. Denki had taken a few running steps before launching himself at Shigaraki. Shigaraki, the leader of the League of Villains. Shigaraki, the one with the five-finger activation quirk that instantly decays anything he touches. Shigaraki held out his arms, which Hawks couldn’t even blame him for with a cackling teenager with an apparent death wish barreling toward him. Anyone in his situation would do the same.

Denki’s arms wrapped around Shigaraki’s waist, and Shigaraki wrapped his arms around Denki, one going around his shoulders and one bringing a deadly hand up to grasp the top of his head.

And then Denki turned to dust and all of his hard work went out the window because Hawks wouldn’t be able to live with himself after something like this.

“I’ve missed you so much!”

Hawks could still imagine the sound of Denki’s voice.

“Okay, ouch,” Dabi said, feigning hurt. “Why is Tomura always first?”

“A few reasons,” Denki said, pulling away from Shigaraki to list them on his fingers. “First, Shigs, here, is the me of your little group. Second, Shigs, here, brought Eri to me, thereby giving Hitoshi a little sister. Major brownie points! Third, we accidentally broke Shigaraki’s ribs that one time, so I have to test to make sure they’re still holding up.”

“Okay,” Dabi said, the argument to come already clear in his tone. “Your first point is valid. I’ll give you that. But Eri would have ended up with Aizawa anyway! His quirk is the best for her while she’s learning hers, and you know that. And I’m the one who broke his ribs, thank you very much! It’s not like they rebreak out of nowhere! If they did, I would know! So where do you get off by using that as an excuse? Who’s the one who set up your training regimen when you were 12? Huh, Denks? Who did that? I did! I knew you first! So, I don’t know why Tomura is your favorite—”

“He’s the best gaming teammate I’ve ever had,” Denki said cheekily with narrowed eyes.

“Those are fighting words,” Dabi growled, reaching out for Denki.

Denki didn’t flinch away. Just offered a wink before a crack of lightning flashed bright and he was standing on the other side of Shigaraki.

“You can control it enough to use it indoors outside?!” Twice screeched. “That’s so cool ordinary.”

“Of course! Hawks probably the best trainer I’ve ever had,” Denki said, voice full of snark as he glared right at Dabi as he said it, really digging the knife deep. “And Twice is the best TikTok teammate I’ve ever had,” Denki said from behind Shigaraki, sticking his tongue out at Dabi. “Please don’t tell Toga I said that, though.”

Dabi ignored the jab about Hawks being the best trainer, because Hawks literally taught Denki how to turn into lightning.

“Well of course he is because I can’t turn into other fucking people, Denki. You saying you want this face,” Dabi yelled, pointing at his very distinguishable features that completely outs him as a very infamous villain, “to be on your little hero TikTok channel?”

Denki ignored the fact that Dabi ignored the jab about Hawks being the best trainer he had ever had.

“Little?!” Denki repeated, distraught. “I’ll have you know that I have over a million followers, Dabi!”

“You think I don’t keep track?! You only got that many after you forced Uraraka and Bakugou to do that dance with you!” Dabi retorted, basically snarling.

“Well, they did it together first without inviting me! So, yeah! I wanted my turn, too!” Denki yelled, waving his arms around for effect. “What’s wrong with that?!”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Neito!” Dabi barked. “His argumentativeness has rubbed off on you!”

Denki’s eyes flashed as he moved forward, not using his lightning, just his quick reflexes, to tackle Dabi onto the floor and pin him down.

“You’re only saying that because you’re losing the argument, Dabi!” Denki said, smiling manically in his face. “But you always were a sore loser!”

“When did you get so damn heavy?!” Dabi grunted as he tried to flip Denki over to get the high ground. He huffed, giving up his physical pursuit in favor of continuing the verbal blows. “Better than being a sore winner like your sorry ass!”

“A winner? Yes. But we’ll have to keep going if you want me to be anything close to sore!”

A pause, then the two on the floor broke out into laughter. Denki stood up and offered a hand to Dabi. Dabi took it, only to pull Denki down instead of accepting the help up.

“That was a dirty trick!” Denki heaved from the floor where Dabi sat on top of him.

“Uh, yeah. Villain, remember?”

“Totally,” Denki wheezed. “I was there for your villain origin story when you lost against a bunch of 12-year-olds.”

Dabi barked out a laugh and got up, pulling Denki up from the floor and brushing him off.

“Yeah… what’s going on here?” Hawks asked, watching the interaction unfold, thinking he must be hallucinating. Or maybe he died, and this is what his brain conjured to be his last moments so that he could go in peace.

“He doesn’t know about me?!” Denki asked, whirling on the villains. “I’ve been dropping hints that I can talk about this with him, and he didn’t know because he didn’t know!”

“No one is making any sense,” Hawks said, shaking his head.

Twice nodded at him in agreement. That was not helpful.

“These guys are some of my best friends!” Denki said, watching Hawks carefully. “When I said that villains have been acting weird around me and my classmates, I meant that these guys have been terrorizing other villains so much that they’ll just give in as soon as they learn what school we’re interning from.”

“You have no proof we had anything to do with that,” Dabi said.

Denki leveled him with a glare.

“You might have strong suspicion, but no proof,” Dabi insisted.

“Twice,” Denki said, turning toward the villain in question. “You know how these villains have been turning themselves in for me and my friends?”

“Yes no.”

“And how every time these villains are locked up, they suddenly disappear out of their cells? Usually by a cloudy, black, swirling fog?”

“Absolutely no.”

“Is that the League’s doing?”

“You mean, like when Kurogiri helps the villains heroes who followed our orders to leave you alone by breaking them out of their confinement and giving them a fresh start?” Twice turned to look at Dabi, who was glaring fiercely at him. “No. I have no every idea what you’re talking about.”

“Ha!” Dabi barked. “See? No proof!”

“Oh, maybe it’s Overhaul I’ll have to thank for watching out for me, then,” Denki quipped with a smug smile.

“Must be,” Dabi agreed. “You could try to shake his hand or give him a high five for his effort if you wanted. I’m sure he’d really appreciate the gesture.”

Twice burst out into loud guffaws, and Shigaraki held his hand tightly against him mouth to avoid letting the laughter come out, but his eyes were wide with unabashed amusement.

Denki rolled his eyes, and then rolled them even harder when he turned to see Hawks also trying to smother his laughter. “You, too, Hawks? Seriously?” But Denki was just relieved to see Hawks relaxing a little bit.

“I don’t understand,” Hawks admitted, looking between Denki and the villains. “What about Force Majeure? If you’re all friendly, why subject the kid to that?”

“That was my idea!” Denki said, raising his hand with a shrug. “I knew if I was questioned, then I would mess up.”

“And how are you talking to me right now about this?” Hawks asked, realization coming over him. “Oh, you—"

“It’s not what you think,” Shigaraki said, knowing that Hawks was horrified at the idea of Denki not only experiencing Force Majeure’s quirk once, but multiple times.

“Oh, yeah,” Denki said, his frown causing a line between his eyebrows. “I keep forgetting that her quirk is supposed to hurt. It didn’t hurt at all for me. Ever.”

Dabi explained. “She wasn’t even going to do it until she realized that Denki wanted her to; she never used it on a kid before and she wasn’t going to start. She told him that it’s going to hurt, he said okay, and then after it was over, he said he was ready, and she was like ‘what do you mean you’re ready? I did it already!’ Turns out she’s never had a willing participant before.”

“We can talk about that later,” Shigaraki said, eyes glancing over everyone in the room. “I wasn’t lying when I said it was important that you both come here. Twice got intel from one of our connections from the Hero Public Safety Commission, and they have set their sights on Kaminari.”

Denki and Hawks looked at each other, stricken.

“Wait,” Hawks hedged, hesitant, unsure. “I should have known about this. He was kidnapped by you guys before they sent me in, and he’s my intern. They should have told me first. Is your source reliable?”

“Yes no,” Twice chimed in quick succession. “They didn’t tell you?”

“Hell no!” Hawks said. His shoulders sagged with dread. “I swear, they didn’t say anything about—”

“We believe you,” Dabi said. “You don’t have to grasp for straws to explain why you might not have been aware of something.”

“I swear I was trying to keep you off their radar,” Hawks said, turning toward Denki.

“I know,” Denki said with a reassuring smile in Hawks’s direction. “That’s why we practiced in abandoned areas, and why you insisted on flying me places during patrol instead of letting me zap across the city. It was a huge surprise when I got the ‘invitation’ to meet with a Commission recruiter.”

All four men stared at Denki, their shoulders sinking lower, slumping over as they held the weight of stress that this teenager had brought to their lives.

“You didn’t think that was important information to tell us?” Dabi asked, voice thin with agitation.

“It’s not a big deal,” Denki said, shrugging all the while he shrunk under the men’s glares. “I told them where to shove their offer, stole their donuts, and left. It’s common knowledge that they aren’t allowed to poach UA students, or else they’d be all over Bakugou, Midoriya, and Shouto. I don’t know why they risked pissing Nezu off to go after me of all students.”

Hawks paled. “Before bringing you here, I called them to ask what I should do after Tomura told me to bring you to them—”

“Keigo!” Shigaraki and Dabi voiced. Twice just stood there, arms crossed, shaking his head in disappointment. It wasn’t exactly a surprise to him, though.

Hawks winced. “I know, I know. Well, now I know, okay? How was I supposed to guess that this aspiring hero was mixed in with you lot willingly?”

“This is why I stressed the importance of open communication—”

“Not now, Denki,” Shigaraki grumbled.

Hawks sighed, rubbing at his temples. “Jesus fucking Christ on a bike. It’s like pulling teeth trying to have a conversation with all of these personalities in one room. As I was saying, when I asked my handler what to do, she said to bring Kaminari to you and update her on what happens afterward.”

“Oh.” Denki narrowed his eyes and mused, “I’m being targeted for turning them down.”

“You could sound a little more alarmed about that!”

“What are they going to do? What’s going to happen?” Denki yelled out, a manic smile growing on his face. “Throw me in Tartarus for hurting their feelings? I doubt it! They’d have to catch me first; I’m like a whippet!”

Twice nodded solemnly in agreement. “It’s too bleeding late.”

Denki nodded back. “I’ve done it now.”

Hawks opened his mouth to respond, brow furrowed in confusion.

“They’re speaking in the language of TikTok. It’s best to just ignore it until it passes,” Dabi said, but he didn’t quite manage to wipe the amused smile off of his face.

“So, what are you going to do, Kei?” Shigaraki asked. “What are you going to tell the Commission?”

“I don’t know,” Hawks said, contemplating. “Can I just ignore them and pretend I forgot? Maybe I’ll tell them that it’s none of their business. No, I’m not allowed. I know I’m not allowed.”

“Oh, Hawks! Please record a TikTok with me!” Denki begged. “I’ll have a billion followers, and then I’ll be the top of the class in terms of TikTok.”

“Why not spend time trying to be the top of the class in terms of grades instead?” Dabi asked, rolling his eyes.

“You’ve met Bakugou.”

“Oh,” Dabi deadpanned with narrowed eyes. “You have a point, there.”

“I always do.”

“Why didn’t they tell you?” Shigaraki asked, looping back to the earlier topic of conversation.

Hawks understood the question immediately and winced. “I swear to you, Tomura, I didn’t—”

“No, I know you didn’t know, Keigo. But why didn’t you? Why didn’t they tell you?”

After a second of contemplation, Hawks paled. Dabi and Shigaraki understood shortly after.

Dabi swore under his breath. “They aren’t counting on you anymore.”

Hawks shook his head. “They don’t see me as reliable anymore. I’ve become disposable.”

“You can’t go back there,” Shigaraki said, shaking his head as the thoughts came to him. “They’d use you against us.”

“And it would work,” Dabi added, looking up to make meaningful eye contact with Hawks.

Later, after making sure Denki got back to UA safely and returning to the base, Hawks asked, “even now?”

“What?”

“You said that the Commission would use me against you, and it would work. Even now, after everything I’ve done, everything I’ve admitted to?”

“Yeah, of course,” Dabi said.

Shigaraki hummed in agreement. “We knew from the beginning that you were a plant.”

“What?!”

Dabi laughed. “Yeah, we thought you knew that we knew, actually. We didn’t know how freaked out you were this whole time. We just thought it was a not-saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud type of understanding.”

“Well, it was endless stress on my end, thank you very much! I’ve been fearing for my life! I was a dead man walking in my mind!”

Dabi smiled and cooed, stepping closer and cupping Hawks’s face. “Did you think you were being sneaky, Kei?”

Hawks blushed, swallowed, nodded.

“We’re sorry for the unintentional deception,” Dabi said, leaning in to plant a light kiss on Hawks’s forehead before scattering kisses around the rest of his face.

“Let us make it up to you,” Shigaraki said, coming up behind him, fingers gliding across Hawks’s wings, sending shivers wracking through his body.

Not all five fingers, though. Never all five.

Chapter Text

Denki sat, his uniform only half on, staring at the screen of the television. His face was completely blank, but his heart hurt. He saw it coming. They all did. But it was worse actually experiencing it than just imagining it.

Denki’s eyes trailed over the repeated BREAKING NEWS floating across the bottom of the screen. Anything to not have to look at the stupid, excited faces of the news anchors. This was just an exciting story to them, but this was Hawks’s life. And they had the audacity to be grinning and giddy? Disgusting.

“The Hero Public Safety Commission has made an official comment. Number two Pro Hero, Hawks, was sent in undercover to infiltrate and leak information from the League of Villains. Hawks has not been spotted since Friday evening when he was patrolling the city limits with his intern, Chargebolt. The Hero Public Safety Commission asks that the public keep an eye out for Pro Hero Hawks, speculating that he could be a hostage of the League of Villains, or potentially in hiding to avoid further confrontation.”

Sure, they didn’t exactly call Hawks a traitor, and there was no actual civilian manhunt being called by the Hero Commission, but it was so obvious. Wasn’t it? Would civilians overlook the fact that just outing this information could put Hawks into harm’s way if he was still with the League of Villains when it aired? That was, of course, the Commission’s intentions, Denki was sure. But to observant citizens, it’s a questionable comment to make to a news station, even if they had believed it was the truth.

Denki figured it could have been worse. It was a relief that Hawks’s original mission wasn’t a secret among the League of Villains. There would be no surprises there to talk his way out of, at least. And it also didn’t seem like the Hero Commission had imagined that to be a possibility.

Denki’s phone vibrated against his hand. He didn’t even remember picking it up and unplugging it from the charger before sitting down to watch the news segment.

Unknown Number

“Hello?”

“Kaminari! Oh! Guys! Kaminari answered! I’m putting you on speaker.” There was a change in the ambient sound coming through the phone, then, sounding more distant and echoey, Hawks asked, “have you seen the news?”

“Yeah. Just watched it now. Are you okay?”

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” Hawks said. “I’m just worried that they mentioned you.”

“Do you think they’ll come after me next if they can’t find you?” Denki asked, taking a deep breath to calm down, his racing thoughts doing nothing to ease his anxiety.

“I don’t know, so we should get our stories straight now. I think they’re thinking that I just blatantly ignored their orders and sent you back to the dorms instead of taking you to meet with the League. I think that’s our safest bet.”

“I’ll be able to avoid Force Majeure’s quirk that way, too. Maybe that’s why they haven’t come barging in, yet,” Denki guessed. “They know that even if you did take me, I wouldn’t be able to tell them anything.”

“That’s a good point. While they might not look at you as suspicious, thinking that we just had a distant and strictly professional intern relationship, I don’t doubt that they’ll try again. They’re either going to try to get you to sign on with them after graduation, or they’re just going to keep being careless when you’re concerned and hope that the villains take care of you for them.” Denki heard the wince in Hawks’s voice, even as he spoke the truth and everyone listening knew it. “You need to make strong ties, and fast, to someone who the Commission knows better than to mess with.”

Denki knew he was safe as long as he was a UA student, but with graduation nearing, that protection had a time limit.

“Who did you have in mind?” Denki hedged, bracing himself for an answer he wouldn’t like.

“Endeavor—”

“Hawks!” Denki whined.

“I know,” Hawks insisted. “But he’s the one that the Commission is going to hesitate to get involved with. He inherited his prestige from his parents, and the Commission never had anything to do with his rankings. They never paid him any favors because he didn’t need them. They have nothing to hold over his head. He’s currently number one. He’s the best option.”

“Dabi? Shigaraki?” Denki tried. “Give me reasons why this is a bad idea?”

“We agree with Hawks,” Dabi said.

“We thought about some of the underground heroes, like Aizawa. But you’re too bright and noticeable to be underground. If Endeavor is going to be useful for anything ever in his whole life, it’s going to be protecting you.”

Denki paused to take a few deep breaths, then asked, “it’s really that serious, huh?”

“I know you can take care of yourself, sparky. But they frame you for something, and get the chance to get those quirk-cancelling cuffs around your wrists?” Hawks offered. “Believe me, you’d beg to work with Endeavor over experiencing any of that.”

“You sound like you speak from experience,” Denki said, brow furrowed in agitation. Denki squeezed his eye shut and inhaled sharply when Hawks didn’t respond to refute Denki’s assumption. “I’ll go see Endeavor after school today and plead my case.”

“I’m sorry,” Hawks said. “I know this is—”

“Thank you,” Denki interrupted. “I need someone in my corner who is always looking out for me and giving me advice, even—especially when I don’t want it. I’m glad I have all of you to do that for me. Is there anything else I need to do while I’m at it?”

“Actually, yes,” Hawks said.

Shigaraki continued, then. “We’ve been tracking Full Throttle, and we’ve been keeping an eye on where UA has been taking you off campus since last year to make sure that his last known location and your location are never too close. But with the broadcast, if he saw it, he now knows that you’re still alive.”

Denki let out a big breath. “Shit.” He hadn’t thought about that. Being out on patrol with nothing bad happening had given him a false sense of protection.

“That about sums up our feelings on it, too,” Dabi said.

“Okay. I know what he looks like, and I can keep my distance pretty well, now,” Denki said, listing off his qualities on his fingers, even though no one else was in his dorm room to see him. “What else do you have for me?”

“We don’t know,” Shigaraki admitted. “Not much is known about him at all. He might not have even seen the broadcast. He seems to just drop off the radar until he pops up again every few weeks to cause more destruction. Then he disappears just as quickly as he appeared.”

Denki’s dorm room door slammed open and Midoriya rushed in, slamming the door shut again behind him. “Kaminari! Did you see the news—? Sorry for just barging in, but I feel like this is super important for you to know about right away… and I’m interrupting a phone call. I’m so sorry! I’ll come back!” He turned around to reach for the door.

“It’s fine,” Denki said with a reassuring smile. “It’s just the League.”

Midoriya froze in place, hand inches from the doorknob. After a few breaths, he turned around to face Denki with clear question in his eyes.

“Midoriya!” Shigaraki’s voice greeted loudly through the phone, enough to carry across the empty space even without being on speaker.

“Shigaraki,” Midoriya greeted through his teeth in return.

“Class is starting soon,” Denki said into the phone. “I’ll call you guys with updates after I try to land the contract this afternoon.”

After a chorus of wishes of good luck, Denki hung up and gave Midoriya his full attention. “I did see the news.”

“Hawks?” Midoriya questioned. The spoken question was so simple, the underlying layers so complex.

“He’s safe,” Denki said with a nod. “For now, at least.”

Midoriya sighed in relief and nodded.

“So, Force Majeure…”

“Yeah. She altered her quirk to include you in the in-group,” Denki said. “And it didn’t hurt. Everyone thinks that it hurts, but it didn’t hurt me, so no need to give me pitying looks, okay?”

Midoriya offered a small smile. “Okay,” he agreed. “What contract were you talking about? Am I even allowed to know? It’s fine if not.”

“I’m going to try to get a hero contract through Endeavor’s agency. Some baddies are after me, you know how it is,” Denki said, hoping his nonchalant shrug would mask how nervous he felt.

“I do know how it is,” Midoriya agreed easily. “Shouto has been going back and forth about joining his father. Maybe knowing that you’re trying for the same thing will help him make his final decision.”

“Oh, yes!” Denki exclaimed. “It would be so much better if you two were there, too!”

“How do you figure that I would be there, too?” Midoriya asked, grinning.

Denki smiled. “Very little gets past me, Midoriya.”

Midoriya rolled his eyes and started to list on his fingers. “Except that I had a connection to the League, too.”

“Yes, there’s that.”

“And I really am quirkless and that I didn’t just get my quirk late.”

“And that.”

“And that my quirk is eerily similar to All Might’s, whose strength had been weakening as mine had been increasing.”

“And that.”

“And—”

“Okay, I think we get it,” Denki said, laughing. “Let me rephrase.” Midoriya nodded and extended his hands in a ‘go ahead’ manner. “Very little in the way of romance,” Denki purred, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, “gets past me.”

Midoriya brought his hand to his chin as he thought. He started nodding slowly, shallowly, but rapidly gained confidence. “Yeah. I can’t argue against that.”

“That’s right!” Denki exclaimed as he jumped up in celebration.

“Come on,” Midoriya said, openly laughing. “Let’s go before we’re late to class.”

-.-.-

“Only three more weeks to go!” Denki announced as he sat down at the table with his boyfriends, sliding his lunch tray in place in front of him.

“How close does it have to get before you start counting the seconds?” Hitoshi asked.

Neito nudged his soulmate with his shoulder. “Don’t be giving him any ideas.”

The soulmates turned to look at Denki who had a thoughtful face as he did the math in his head.

Hitoshi looked back at Neito with a shrug. “Too late!”

“Want to go do some training?” Neito asked as they finished their lunch early.

“Yeah! Let’s—”

The familiar, warm haze enveloped Denki’s mind, and he would have laughed if he had any control over his body.

“I told you he wouldn’t notice!” Neito said to Hitoshi. “Follow me,” he commanded Denki as he led the way to the nearest training gym.

“That proves nothing,” Hitoshi argued. “Even if he did notice, he would have answered. You know that!”

“Why do you always have to argue with me?” Neito asked, exasperated.

“Because I—”

“Follow me,” Neito commanded cheekily to the blank-faced Hitoshi.

Hitoshi could do nothing but obey. No one who walked past them bumped into him to knock him out of his own quirk; everyone was already familiar with the ease and comfort that the trio worked together in, so no one was going to come to his rescue. No, he’d just have to sit there in his head and fume as his legs followed commands that were not his own.

When he was finally released when they had arrived at their destination, he turned his glare on Neito. “I really love you, you know.”

“But?” Neito asked, grinning.

“Nope,” Hitoshi said, relaxing and shaking out his shoulders. “I just really love you.”

“You can’t do that to me,” Neito said, a warning tone to his voice.

“We both really love you, because you’re the best,” Denki chimed in, snaking his arm around Neito’s and Hitoshi’s waists as he wormed his way between them.

“You can’t counter my mean shit with your love! That’s not fair!” Neito grumbled under his breath.

No matter how many times they teamed up on him like that, though, he couldn’t train his cheeks to not turn pink.

“Did you see the news this morning?” Denki asked as they ran laps to warm up.

“No. Why?”

So, in that big, empty gym, three boys got in a quick workout, got up-to-date with current events, and planned some counter-strategies for when things get out of hand faster than anyone else might see coming. Anyone else, that is, except for three third-year UA students.

-.-.-

“I’m here to join your agency,” Denki said as he let himself in, not even bothering to knock.

“Who are you?” Endeavor asked, obviously wondering who this weird kid was, walking into the number one hero’s office like he owned the place.

“Kaminari Denki. Chargebolt, if you will.”

Oh, yeah. Endeavor knew who this kid was. He just needed a reminder, was all. This is the kid who was kidnapped by the League of Villains, which led to the fight that was ultimately the major catalyst to All Might’s retirement. Endeavor was glad to be number one, where he rightfully belonged, but still felt a little bitter that it happened the way it did. He wanted to earn it through hard work and endurance, but instead, it just felt like the villains cheated and ended up actually helping Endeavor meet his goal. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, despite All Might’s vocal support of Endeavor’s new ranking as number one.

“I don’t recall sending an invitation.”

“That’s why I’m perfect for the job!” Denki quipped, throwing himself down in one of the overstuffed armchairs on the other side of Endeavor’s desk. “I’ll keep track of the invitations you send so that you won’t have to.”

Endeavor narrowed his eyes as he looked the kid up and down. He’s a confident one, he’d give him that.

“I don’t need an electric type.”

Denki perked up. “How did you know that I was an electric type?”

“You’re in Shouto’s class, aren’t you? I know who trains next to my son. I don’t have many spots open,” Endeavor said.

“And you’re holding out for Shouto, right?” Denki asked. “That’s some nice nepotism you have going there. I’m impressed, really. It’s all so blatant and shameless.”

Endeavor’s eye twitched. Of course, everyone would know about their little disagreement about where Shouto should end up for the beginning of his hero career, including this little, electric annoyance.

“Kidding!” Denki said with a laugh, holding his hands up in surrender, sensing that he was nearing Endeavor’s boiling point. “Shouto is really powerful and strategic. Any agency would be lucky to have him!”

“Listen, Chargebolt. Thank you for your interest, but I need people who will have my back. People who can take care of themselves. You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course, I do!” Denki said. Endeavor had a feeling based on Denki’s chipper attitude that he, in fact, did not understand. “Like I said, I’m perfect for the job! Where do I sign?”

“People who are kidnapped by villains don’t seem to also be the type of people who can take care of themselves,” Endeavor said, figuring that he had to be very to-the-point if he didn’t want Denki to keep dancing around the issues.

“I could argue that the people who failed their provisional licensing the first time might also have difficulty,” Denki said, humor dancing in his eyes, no sign of insult or indignation. “But I’m classier than that. It would be rude to bring up Shouto’s failures in his own father’s office, would it not?”

“What—"

Endeavor was interrupted by the doors bursting open yet again, and Endeavor almost burst a blood vessel from the anger at the consistent disrespect. He opened his mouth to yell, but hadn’t yet decided if it would be words of anger or just a scream of frustration when he saw his son and Midoriya standing in the doorway.

“Speak of the devil!” Denki chirped with a toothy smile, sending a small wave in Shouto’s direction like he hadn’t just been insulting him to his father’s face.

Endeavor stood up. “Shouto, are you here to accept a place in my agency?”

“Maybe,” Shouto said. “If you offer Deku and Chargebolt the same type of deal.”

Endeavor took a breath and looked at the three almost-heroes in the room.

“You’re my son. And you’re so powerful. You’ll always have a place here. Deku is… fast. He’s strong. He could fill in some weaknesses among our ranks. But Chargebolt—we don’t have a need for an electricity quirk,” Endeavor tried to reason. When Shouto did not look impressed, he added, “plus, I don’t know if you’d all get along.” Who could get along with a smug brat who talks shit to Endeavor’s face about his son?

Shouto smiled and looked at Denki. “What did you say?”

Denki shrugged, rubbing the toe of his shoe against the carpet in faux bashfulness. “Just that I shouldn’t be looked down on when you’re the one who failed your provisional licensing.”

Endeavor was aghast at the audacity of this kid to repeat that to his son’s face. He was about to order the blond out, but then Shouto laughed.

“He has a point, Endeavor,” Shouto said, the humor still lacing his voice. Then, more seriously, “Chargebolt can keep up with me during pre-training workouts.”

Endeavor paused, reconsidering what he was about to say. “Really?”

Shouto nodded.

“And I’m not just an average electric type,” Denki said, deciding that he had deserved the right to brag, at least a little. And hey, if Hawks said to trust Endeavor, then he would. He didn’t have to like him to trust him, he decided. “I’m faster than Deku!”

Endeavor looked warily at Denki, but didn’t respond, turning back to Shouto. But Shouto and Midoriya were looking at Denki, too, surprise clear in their eyes.

“I’m faster than Hawks?” Denki tried when he didn’t get the response that he was looking for the first time.

That got Endeavor’s attention. He snapped his head back in Denki’s direction.

“Hawks is the fastest hero.”

“Sure is, until I graduate in a few weeks,” Denki said, faking nonchalance by examining his fingernails instead of the hero’s face like he so desperately wanted to. He had a mission from Hawks: Sign on with Endeavor. He’d regret failing, he was sure, so he was going to try his best to succeed. “Then I’ll be taking that title.”

“What?” Midoriya asked, eyes not leaving Denki as he slipped off his backpack to pull out his notebook and a pen.

“Hawks sent me here,” Denki admitted to Endeavor, staring him down to try to convey the importance of this information. “He said that having a contract through your agency will protect me.” From the Hero Public Safety Commission went unsaid, but completely understood on Endeavor’s side. Endeavor wasn’t a perfect human being by any means, but he was actually a decent hero, and he wasn’t stupid.

“That’s a big risk you’re asking me to take on empty promises,” Endeavor argued.

He never teamed up with Hawks because of his affiliation with the Hero Commission, so why risk getting on the Commission’s bad side by taking on this kid who held no respect for him? Though, if Endeavor sat down to think about it, he was trying to get Shouto to sign on with him, and no one had less respect for Endeavor than his own damn kid.

“Fine,” Denki said. “Let’s play tag. If you can catch me, I’ll leave, and I won’t bother you again. If you can’t catch me, then you give me my contract.”

Endeavor considered for a few seconds, stood up, and stretched his arms out, preparing himself for a chase. “Time limit?”

“We can go as long as you want, big guy. You’ll give up before I do.”

Endeavor wasted no time and leaped across his desk without warning, arms going around Denki, thinking about how easy this was to get this kid out of his hair without having to be the bad guy in front of his son. But then, Denki just wasn’t there. A light flashed before his eyes and thunder boomed in his ears… well, maybe. It was so quick that he wasn’t sure if it actually happened or if something weird with his blood pressure was to blame. Then, Denki was across the room, giving a little, taunting wave.

Midoriya and Shouto stood, eyes wide as they took in the sight of Denki. Midoriya broke out of his trance first, hurrying to scrawl new information on the pages in his notebook dedicated to Denki.

“Hawks taught me how to turn into lightning,” Denki said when he saw that Endeavor wasn’t going to make another impulsive leap toward him. “He said himself that even he’s not faster than the speed of light.”

An hour later, Denki walked back to the dorms with Shouto and Midoriya. “That wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be,” he admitted. “I didn’t expect him to actually follow through with our little deal. I thought I’d have to work harder than that.”

“He’s cooled off a lot since I first interned with him,” Shouto said. “That’s why I was considering signing with his agency in the first place. Even after everything I’ve done to go directly against him, he still welcomes me. He didn’t even argue with me when I found out that Yaoyorozu is my soulmate, but I chose Midoriya, instead.”

“To be fair, Yaoyorozu also chose Jirou over you,” Midoriya said, fighting the blush that crawls across his face every time he thinks about Shouto announcing that he found his soulmate, but he was taking Midoriya as his partner instead. Midoriya then spoke to Denki, “Endeavor’s been trying to talk things out and use reason rather than force, and he’s actually getting better and better at it.”

“Ah,” Denki said. “He found out that honey attracts more flies.”

“Exactly,” Midoriya said at the same time Shouto said, “huh?”

“Can you show us that lightning thing again?” Shouto asked.

“I’ll do you one better,” Denki answered with a quickly growing grin stretching across his face.

As lightning started to crackle across his body, he reached one arm out to each of his newly signed workmates. When, in the next instant, they were all standing outside the gates of UA, Shouto and Midoriya turned to look at Denki, stunned.

Denki shrugged, said “Hawks taught me that!” and strolled in through the gates, the stunned duo following after him, completely speechless.

Midoriya’s fingers twitched as he anticipated how much writing and analyzing and predicting he was going to do once he was back in his dorm, surrounded by his notebooks on the floor and piled on his desk.

Chapter Text

“Shouto found his soulmate,” Denki said into the phone that was held strategically between his shoulder and ear as he lied on the floor, books spread around him as he prepared for final exams. “You’ll never guess who!”

“Well, he’s always around Midoriya,” Shigaraki said. “But since you said I’d never guess, it’s probably not him."

"Yaoyorozu!” Denki said excitedly into the phone, hands pushing the books away to dig his fingernails into the carpet at his excitement.

“You didn’t let any of us guess!” Toga complained.

Denki laughed and apologized before going into the details. “So, Shouto finds out that Yaoyorozu is his soulmate. They speak alone for like five minutes before they have already decided that it's a platonic soulmate situation because Yaoyorozu is already head-over-heels for Jirou, and Shouto is obviously gay for Midoriya. So, Shouto tells Endeavor that he found his soulmate, and Endeavor is so pleased that it’s Yaoyorozu. Then Shouto absolutely destroys this man’s plans for the future by saying that they will only be friends because he, and I quote, has chosen to take Midoriya as his partner instead.”

Denki smiled as he moved to pull the phone away from his ear as laughter burst through.

“What if Midoriya finds his own soulmate later on?” Mr. Compress asks. “Have they planned for that?”

“They really doubt that Midoriya has a soulmate out there because of his… questionable lineage.”

“That makes sense,” Shigaraki agreed, recalling his research when Denki was only known to him as P05itiv3R3v0lt, and knowing that it’s the same reason that he doesn’t have a soulmate of his own out there, either.

“But even then, Midoriya is so enraptured with Shouto that I think it would also just be a platonic thing if he did happen to have a soulmate show up. I didn’t realize how messy soulmate situations could be until I found myself causing a mess of my own."

Dabi, Shigaraki, and Hawks had all verbally expressed their agreement at the same time. There was a pause, and then spirited arguing over who was the one who was the mess of the group. Shigaraki said it was obviously him because he was the one who wasn’t destined. Hawks argued that Shigaraki and Dabi would have been perfectly fine if he hadn’t come along to make everything more complicated. Dabi argued that if he could have just decided instead of selfishly wanting them both, then it wouldn’t have gotten as far as it did.

By the end of the debate, they all agreed that whoever’s fault it was who caused the mess had done everyone a huge favor because none of them would have had it any other way.

-.-.-

Even Endeavor would admit that Denki was endlessly useful, even before he graduated and joined full-time ranks. He was the calming voice for the panicking victims of disasters. He was the one who chose his words carefully, giving the press wordy nothingness with a bright smile that no one dared argue with. He was the one who could teleport to the top of a building to get a good look or act as impromptu surveillance (even when he would argue that it wasn’t really teleportation, and the rest of the team would roll their eyes at his insistence on the importance of semantics. To be fair, they had never experienced Kurogiri’s warp gates. Denki’s lightning quick transportation wasn’t nearly the same as that, not that he could force that argument from his throat to make his point).

Graduation was largely uneventful. Though, even with all of the extra security surrounding the event, Denki still had disguised Toga and unmasked Mr. Compress in the crowd, cheering the loudest when he walked across the stage, his parents shooting odd glances at the odd couple a few rows over who were screaming loudly for their son. They confirmed with each other that they had never seen those people before, and just figured that Denki must have saved them during one of his internships or something.

Aizawa pulled Denki away right after graduation.

Denki groaned dramatically. “Going to give me detention right after graduation?” he teased. “Think I can outrun you?”

Aizawa looked at him consideringly, hands grasping the capture weapon around his neck. “Maybe not before you developed some new skills. Now? Absolutely.”

“Definitely!” Denki agreed. “What did you need?”

“The Hero Public Safety Commission put in an official request for you to report to their office tomorrow morning,” Aizawa said, voice not giving anything away, but Denki could still somehow tell that Aizawa was not pleased. “It’s mandatory. They’ve put in an official drafting notice.”

Denki sighed and rolled his eyes. “How are they supposed to get anything done if they can’t even do their own research? I’m exempt from their drafting.”

“UA’s exemption runs out after graduation,” Aizawa said.

“That’s why I signed on with Endeavor’s agency three weeks ago.”

Aizawa stared at Denki, his expression giving nothing away. After a moment, Aizawa nodded and grumbled under his breath, “good planning ahead.”

“Honestly, they shouldn’t have given away their hand by bringing me in early,” Denki said with a shrug. “I wouldn’t have known they had any interest in me if they would have just lied low and used Hawks to keep tabs on me.”

“I’m assuming it was Hawks’s idea to sign with Endeavor’s agency,” Aizawa said, not waiting for confirmation, “but how did you get Endeavor to agree?”

“I challenged him to a game of tag,” Denki said, a grin growing over his face at the memory. “It’s hard to win against literal lightning.”

Aizawa hummed. “The news programs have still been airing the same story about Hawks and the League,” Aizawa hedged.

“Hawks is safe,” Denki said simply.

Aizawa nodded, relieved, and repeated, “Hawks is safe.”

-.-.-

“Endeavor! Endeavor!”

“Endeavor! Over here!”

“Comment? Care to comment?”

“Hi there!” Denki chirped, sliding in between the reporters and the retreating Endeavor. “Chargebolt, here! Ready to answer your questions!” He shot a wink at one of the cameras, knowing that he’d have some fans swooning when the evening news played.

“Chargebolt!” the channel six news reporter exclaimed, excited to be first in line to talk to the easy-going hero. “What happened here today?”

“There was a building collapse, as you can see behind me,” Denki said, waving his arm behind him for the camera. “All employees and customers are accounted for with only minor injuries. The rescue teams, which included heroes and sidekicks from Endeavor’s, Best Jeanist’s, Mount Lady’s, and Gang Orca’s agencies, responded quickly and efficiently, getting the last cashier out less than four minutes after the building first collapsed.”

“You mean, no casualties besides the one fatality, correct?” the channel three news reporter asked, pushing his way to the front to shove his microphone in Denki’s face.

Denki’s smile tensed, and the channel six news reporter winced. Channel three, however, remained oblivious. Channel three was always oblivious.

“Now, that’s how rumors start,” Denki chastised lightly. “We don’t want any of that! There were no fatalities. Like I said, there were only minor injuries.”

“But with Full Throttle, there is always at least one casualty,” the reporter argued, pushing the microphone further into Denki’s face.

If Denki didn’t pull back, the microphone would have been pushed right up onto his mouth. How unhygienic. Denki put his hand on the microphone and gently pushed it away.

“No one ever said anything about Full Throttle,” Denki said. “This was not a villain attack, just a quirk malfunction from a customer’s child who had recently developed their quirk. Please refrain from spreading false information in the future. It only discredits channel three, and I think we all know that channel three needs all the help it can get!”

As if on cue, the surrounding reporters and civilians laughed, making Denki’s harsh criticism sound more like lighthearted banter. Channel three reporter’s face had paled, and he had quietly backed away from the front of the pack, contenting himself to record from the back, where he should have stayed to begin with.

“If I had said anything like that, they would have had my ‘bad attitude’ all over the network,” Endeavor grumbled as they walked back to the agency.

“It’s his winning smile,” Midoriya said, flashing a huge smile in Endeavor’s direction as if to show him what he meant.

Endeavor huffed. Denki didn’t notice because he was too busy watching Shouto’s mouth quirk up into a small smile in response to Midoriya’s, no matter how sarcastic.

And if Denki was a little more harsh on channel three reporters than other channels because they were the ones who continued to push for new information on Hawks, well, then that was Denki’s business.

-.-.-

“Word got out after we tried to draft Chargebolt. Every damn hero that graduated in the past five years is suddenly signed with agencies. We have no new candidates. Agencies that haven’t been signing new heroes in decades have suddenly signed dozens of newbies.”

“I bet this is Hawks’s doing.”

“You think he’s smart enough to pull something like this off? Doubtful. Even if it wasn’t this organized and large-scale.”

“I think it’s funny that anyone thinks he’s still alive. I bet the League of Villains had a great time torturing him to death. I hope they pulled his feathers out, one by one.”

“And I know it’s organized, because every single person who comes through takes exactly half the donuts. We start with twelve, then we have six, then we have three, then we have one and a half. Who takes exactly one and a half donuts? Then we have three fourths of a donut left! It’s deliberate!”

“It would be a mercy if he was dead, now that I think about it. If he is still alive, then damn, even I feel bad for him. For his pitiful death to be this drawn out? I can barely imagine. He’d probably be begging right now, pleading for the torture to end…”

-.-.-

“Please!” Hawks begged. “I can’t take it anymore!”

“You aren’t going to die if you don’t get attention for five more minutes,” Dabi said.

The satisfying crackle of the eggs frying in the pan was music to everyone’s ears, except for Hawks, who would rather starve as long as he was getting attention. Shigaraki was draped over Dabi’s back, smirking and enjoying a nice side of schadenfreude to go with his eggs, knowing perfectly well that Hawks would have been completely satisfied with his attention and that it didn’t have to be Dabi’s.

“I’ll give you attention, Hawks,” Spinner said, strolling up behind him and plunging his hands into Hawks’s feathers. After a surprised pause, Spinner added, “actually, this is very nice.”

Hawks hummed with content, and suddenly Shigaraki found himself nudging Spinner out of the way.

“I can take it from here, thanks,” Shigaraki said.

“No, no. I’ve got it,” Spinner dismissed.

“No, I insist. He’s my boyfriend, my responsibility.”

“How leaderly of you, but I can handle it.”

“Leaderly isn’t a word, the author checked. So, maybe you should go read a dictionary instead. Time well spent, I’d say.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Hawks chastised, unable to wipe the smug smile off of his face. “There’s enough of me to go around!”

Dabi scoffed, scrambling the eggs a little too aggressively. “Two boyfriends aren’t enough for you, birdy?”

Hawks flushed. “Not what I meant, and you know it!”

Shigaraki pulled Hawks’s face toward him and planted a kiss. When he saw that Spinner still had his hands threaded through Hawks’s feathers, Shigaraki went back in and deepened the kiss, drawing it out and giving Hawks exactly the kind of attention he deserved.

“I know exactly what you’re doing,” Spinner said. He sighed and withdrew his hands. “And it’s working anyway. You win!”

“I always do,” Shigaraki said, pulling back to smile cheekily, resting his forehead against Hawks’s.

Just as Shigaraki was about to lean in to continue where they left off, Dabi announced that the eggs were done. Hawks groaned when Shigaraki pulled away, and Shigaraki offered a sympathetic smile before shrugging and rushing over to Dabi to receive his plate and a kiss.

Yeah, Hawks was facing the most unbearable torture to ever exist.

-.-.-

“That confirms it,” Hitoshi said, flinging himself backwards onto Neito’s bed. “You were right, Denks. They targeted every single graduate, and not just from this year. It looks like they went four or five years back.”

“It might have been a little overkill to warn people who graduated up to a decade ago,” Denki admitted with a sheepish smile.

“Better safe than sorry, I say,” Neito said, reaching over and grabbing Denki’s hand. Not to take his quirk or anything, just to hold. “Everyone I talked to in the phone tree was really grateful.”

“Same,” Hitoshi said, automatically offering Neito his other hand, knowing that Neito would have been seeking his out next.

Neito sighed in content, splayed out on his bed with his soulmate on one side and his boyfriend on the other. Another heroic endeavor come to pass that they wished they could see the look on the Commission’s face when they realized that they had run out of options.

“I wonder why they wanted me so bad,” Denki thought aloud. “I don’t think they knew about my lightning, and it’s not like I won any of the sports festivals or anything. If it’s because I was interning with Hawks, then Hawks should have known about it. They should have gone through Hawks to better secure my agreement.”

“Maybe it’s because you’re the only one to have survived Full Throttle’s quirk,” Hitoshi guessed. “You’re kind of famous among the few people who actually know about it.”

“That’s the only thing that I could come up with, too,” Neito said. “Unless they really did somehow find out about your lightning or something.”

“Doubtful,” Denki hummed. “They couldn’t even resist talking about how they knew about my schizophrenia and my time at Unit Beta. I think they would have mentioned it if it was in their arsenal at all.”

Neito hummed, mind wandering. His grip tightened on their hands, and that’s the only warning that Hitoshi and Denki got before Neito voiced his idea. “I wonder if I could turn into lightning and transport us like Denki can.”

“No!” the boys yelled urgently, scrambling to get up and trying to rip their hands out of Neito’s grip. Neito focused on keeping hold of his boyfriends and just cackled, lungs heaving at the force of his laughter and the hands trying to be yanked desperately from his grasp.

Everything had been going well. The boys had been planning on getting their own apartment, and Hitoshi would laughingly relay Aizawa’s message that Neito and Denki were absolutely forbidden from taking Hitoshi away from him when he had just adopted him. Aizawa’s scandalized look when Neito had stuck out his tongue at him when they had passed each other next had him laughing at random points throughout the whole week. Denki, on the other hand, had recurring nightmares of endless detentions and begged Neito to never instigate Aizawa like that again.

“He was terrifying! He’s so scary!”

“He didn’t do anything!” Neito argued.

“Not in real life!” Denki shuddered. “But in my dreams…”

“So that’s what all your tossing and turning was about!”

Neito made sure to instigate Aizawa every time he knew Denki was watching, knowing that Denki would surely cuddle up to him under the covers that night. Denki knew what he was doing, of course. He found it fun that they had this little unspoken game that included Hitoshi’s father without them even realizing it. He also didn’t have to tell Neito that he didn’t need a reason or excuse to snuggle up to him; they both just knew it was more fun to act oblivious.

One morning they had shot apart from each other when Hitoshi had woken up, and he had given them a strange look.

“I—uh—we—” Denki stuttered.

Neito saved the day by chiming in, “Denki had a nightmare, so I was comforting him.”

“Uh huh,” Hitoshi said before hoisting himself up to go start breakfast.

He had quickly figured out what they were doing and knew that they would keep it up until he said something about it. So, he didn’t say anything about it. Hitoshi could have his fun and play his tricks, too!

Apartment hunting was fun, but it was almost like they were living together, anyway. They were never apart for long since graduation. Their pet rocks they had constructed at Neito’s thirteenth birthday party had even all found their way back together, never to be separated again if they had anything to say about it. Barring patrols, they spent every spare second together, rotating between all of their parents’ houses, plus adding the Hamabis into the rotation, much to Hitoshi’s pleasant surprise.

They had their hands full with two more foster children of their own but having three Pro Heroes under their roof for a weekend did wonders for those kids, especially when they learned the reason that these big time Pros were visiting the Hamabis in the first place was their foster connection with Hitoshi.

“If Hitoshi could make something of himself coming from a hard place, you absolutely can, too,” Genori would say.

Hitoshi would blush, but Denki and Neito knew he was pleased and secretly proud. Hitoshi reminded the Hamabis often that they had had a huge influence on his life, and they told him that he was the reason they adjusted their fostering form to only accept those who would otherwise be rejected and moved around from home to home, and that was only if they weren’t unlucky enough to be placed in a group home where they might never get out until they age out.

Their foster daughter, Tohiro, had blood red eyes to match her blood-based quirk. She quickly bonded with Eri over eye color alone before finding more commonalities, and Hitoshi wished he could casually bring a notorious villain around to meet his former foster parents.

As their patrol group started to split up to cover more ground and organically move into different areas, Denki was on high alert. That was obvious because he was on patrol, but it was more so than usual because Full Throttle had been active in the area. The last time had been just a week and a half prior. With how often Denki was pushed in front of Endeavor to be the bright, sunshining face of the agency and reduce any hurt feelings (Endeavor could only say ‘no comment’ so many times nonchalantly before he got snappy), he’d be surprised if Full Throttle hadn’t gotten word that he survived.

It would be a nightmare to run into him again. Sure, Denki could just zap away, but not everyone else had that option, and he wouldn’t just leave someone behind just because he knew how devastating Full Throttle’s quirk could be.

He wasn’t too worried though. It was bright, mid-morning. What kind of villain would target someone specifically during such an inconvenient time of day for villainy?

Hitoshi had flopped down on his bed, hair still a mess from sleeping after a rough patrol the night before. Neito was putting a late breakfast together for him while Hitoshi scrolled through TikTok, inevitably finding his way to Denki’s page.

When the idea came to him, he tried to dismiss it, but then he figured, why not? It’s not like Denki would be upset with him if he found out he snooped through his phone. It was just sitting there on the bedside table, fully charged, untouched since it woke Denki up for his patrol that morning. Denki had rolled out of bed just in time for Hitoshi to come clambering in from his own patrol and take Denki’s place, curling up next to Neito with a satisfied hum at how warm the bed was. Hitoshi stayed awake just barely long enough for him to feel Denki plant a kiss on his temple, falling asleep before Denki had even made it to the other side of the bed to give Neito his good morning kiss. Hitoshi didn’t hear Denki get ready or the door close as he left, absolutely dead to the world until waking up around 10:30 a.m.

Quickly thumbing in the passcode, Hitoshi went to the TikTok icon and immediately went to Denki’s drafts. Everything else he’s already seen about a thousand times, and he wanted to see the things that no one else had had the pleasure to before.

“What are you doing?” Neito snapped from the doorway, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame.

Hitoshi had jumped and threw a sheepish look over his shoulder at his soulmate. “Just snooping on Denki’s phone. The usual.”

“I don’t know if we should be doing this,” Neito said, his words going directly against his actions as he flopped down on the bed next to Hitoshi and squeezed in close to better see the screen.

“What?” Hitoshi laughed. “You think our boyfriend is cheating on us or something? Between two boyfriends and his patrolling with Endeavor, I think his schedule is too full to fit some side action in, don’t you think?”

“It’s not that,” Neito said, smiling and rolling his eyes. His smile fell, then. “It’s just, what if there’s things we shouldn’t know about, like with the League or something?”

“And those secrets are kept in the oh-so-secure location of Denki’s draft TikToks?” Hitoshi asked, his voice laced with sarcasm.

Neito nudged Hitoshi’s shoulder with his own and muttered, “it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Hitoshi paused at that, then laughed. “You have a point there, but now, he tells us everything.”

“I don’t know,” Neito said. “We know so much about a lot of the different League members, but Denki never talks about Dabi.”

“Maybe he doesn’t get along with Dabi,” Hitoshi said, more focused on scrolling through Denki’s drafts.

Neito sighed in frustration, combing his hands through his hair as he thought. “That’s just it, though. Dabi is one of the villains that he regularly games with. He should be talking about him the most. And he’s the one with the blue—are you even listening to me?”

Hitoshi had been focused on the phone, starting with Denki’s older drafts and working his way to the ones that were more recent. His brows furrowed and his scrolling started increasing in pace until he stopped completed, his thumb hovering over the dancing Denki on the screen. Hitoshi’s face had gone pale.

“What’s wrong?” Neito asked, grabbing the phone from Hitoshi’s limp hand and scrolling through, trying to see what Hitoshi saw to make him react that way.

Hitoshi turned toward Neito, the color still not coming back to his face, and whispered, “Denki is our soulmate.” Neito opened his mouth, to argue most likely, but Hitoshi continued before he had the chance. “You know how I’ve been singing those songs during my patrol and switching every week? I was starting to think that I had just been imaging it, but Denki’s drafts line up perfectly with what I had been singing.”

“Every week?” Neito asked.

“Every week,” Hitoshi confirmed. “During one of our sleep overs, I thought I heard him sing. It was late. It had been a long day. I was sleeping right before and went to sleep right after, so I thought that it might have been a dream, but I couldn’t shake the thought that it might not have been, too.”

“You’ve been dealing with this on your own for years?! Why didn’t you let us know? Or me, at least?” Neito asked, not mad, just disappointed that he missed an opportunity to be a support for his soulmate.

“I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up,” Hitoshi admitted. “I didn’t want you to think that you weren’t good enough for me on your own, and I didn’t want Denki to think that we’d only want him if he was actually our soulmate, and that we were only interested in him because we suspected he might be. What if it turned out he wasn’t? After we had finally just got him to accept that he wasn’t coming in between us and messing everything up?”

“Yeah, okay. I might have done the same thing when you explain it that way.” Neito’s eyes slowly widened as the realization hit him. “Denki’s schizophrenia! The voices were us this entire time!”

“Which also explains why we all get along so well! Why we all fit together like we were made for each other—because we were!”

Neito laughed, flipping over so his back was against the blankets and kicking his feet up in the air in pure elation. “He’s going to be so happy! And us! We get to keep him forever! We don’t have to worry about another soulmate coming along one day and sweeping him off his feet!”

Neito and Hitoshi were laughing and smiling when the song rushed through their minds, forcing its way to the forefront of their thoughts, making itself known.

Dashing through the snow, in a one-horse open sleigh…

Chapter Text

Denki watched Full Throttle from across the room, speaking in hushed whispers with a woman with brown hair and red eyes, who was very obviously not the helpless victim she seemed like she was half an hour prior. He fidgeted with the quirk-canceling cuffs encircling his wrists as the embarrassed panic burned at the back of his eyes. He blinked it away, but the guilty thoughts about how he could have walked right into their trap had lingered.

He closed his eyes and took some deep breaths, thinking about if he and Neito had switched places, what he would tell Neito.

Probably something like: “it wasn’t your fault, Nei. Anyone would have fallen for it, especially in the middle of a life-or-death situation that had a time limit. You did the heroic thing. You did what any other hero would have done. You chose the only option that was available to you, and sometimes this is just how things go. Sometimes the villains are really smart. Sometimes the villains watch you closely for days and set up the perfect trap. Sometimes, whether or not you had a feeling it was a trap, you still have to walk right into it, because what if it wasn’t? What if that woman really needed a hero, and she saw you walk away from her? You did the right thing—the only thing.”

Denki, of course, would be harder on himself than he would be on Neito, even fully aware of the cognitive dissonance at play, but it did help. He was able to take deeper breaths and get his heartrate under control. He was able to look at the positives and realize that, because that woman was an accomplice, there wasn’t anyone around to be hurt if a fight broke out, if he managed to get those cuffs off or even just to get out of the cell that they had placed him in.

Touya had drilled it into his head that he couldn’t always rely on his quirk, and he was never more thankful for that than in that moment. He had back-up plans, more than one, even; all he had to do was wait them out and try to gather information to see what they wanted. He could do that.

While the two talked in hushed whispers that Denki couldn’t even begin to make out, no matter how hard he strained his ears, he took the chance to take in as much detail of the room as he could. Cracked and barren concrete floors, flickering fluorescent lights, and the sturdy iron bars dividing the room were the major things. Denki noted that his own little section of the room had a walled off part and cursed when peeked around the partitioned wall to see that it was a bathroom. There was no chance that he was leaving that cell until they were good and ready for him to. There was a plain metal chair bolted to the floor next to a little shelf-like table bolted to the wall. It was like a damn prison cell, but there was no bed.

Maybe they weren’t planning on keeping him alive long enough for him to need to sleep?

Denki immediately shoved that line of thinking out of his head. Instead, he thought about how it wouldn't be the first time he has ever slept on the floor, though the living room floor at the Hamabis was cushioned with thick, lush carpet, and he was cuddled up against the warm body of Hitoshi that night…

It was fine. He’d manage.

Denki used his senses to try to narrow down more information about his situation. He heard water dripping, and found an exposed, dripping pipe in the far corner of the room, outside of the reach of his cell. He smelled a faint scent of chlorine and the rich, earthy scent of soil. Another glance around, and he had to admit to himself that the place was clean for how terrifying and rundown it looked otherwise. He wondered if he was in the lower level of a building, underground, maybe.

He would have had a better idea of his general location if the villains hadn’t blindfolded him and put noise-cancelling earbuds in his ears playing some, admittedly, decent music at a loud volume on the drive to the secondary location to mask any sounds that might give away where they were. They were prepared for him, and that scared him more than anything else.

He looked across the room, past the bars caging him in, past the arguing villains to see a filing cabinet with a chair on either side. Those chairs were armchairs, though, and looked about a million times more comfortable than the metal one bolted to the floor inside the cell with him.

Denki wished he had that teleportation quirk that everyone at Endeavor’s agency was always teasing him about. He would totally switch out his stupid metal chair for one of those overstuffed, cushiony chairs. If they were anything like the ones in Endeavor’s office, he knew he’d just sink right down in them and would be perfectly content staying there for hours.

“Chargebolt,” Full Throttle greeted.

Denki looked over to meet Full Throttle’s gaze, the fading footsteps of his accomplice’s retreat being the only indication that she had just been there. Full Throttle’s face seemed open enough, waiting to see what Denki’s reaction would be. He didn’t seem overly confident or cocky to have made it that far already. He didn’t seem to be underestimating Denki, at least not right away.

“Full Throttle,” Denki returned with a nod. “Come here often?” he tested.

Full Throttle looked at Denki up and down, a lopsided smile growing on his face as he took him in. He had never gotten to be acquainted with Denki before, never got to see the sarcastic, fun side of Denki, even when in a life-threatening and unknown situation. Last time, it was just a quirk-and-run type of thing. It was always a quirk-and-run type of thing. So, this was sure to be interesting.

“I don’t get you,” Full Throttle admitted, sitting down in one of the overstuffed chairs.

Denki took a step forward, wrapping his arms around the cold metal bars, pointedly ignoring the metal-on-metal clank the quirk-cancelling cuffs made as they hit the bars. “What’s not to get?”

“I know we made it hard for you, and you have no idea where you are, but I thought you’d at least throw something out there for your soulmates,” Full Throttle said, watching Denki closely. “To let them know that you’re not coming back, at least.”

It wasn’t often (it was never) that Full Throttle got to know his victims on a personal level, have an actual conversation with them. He was going to take full advantage, but he was absolutely stunned with confusion when Denki laughed.

“You’re not the first one to make that mistake,” Denki said, still smiling. “You’re talking about my boyfriends, right? Phantom Thief and Mindjack? They’re soulmates, but I’m just their add-on boyfriend. Buy two, get one free deal. Common misconception!”

Full Throttle adjusted his position in the chair so he was leaning forward, focused intently on Denki, brows furrowed in concentration, or maybe suspicion. “Lying to me won’t do you any good. And I’m not sure what goal you have in mind for lying about something so obvious.”

“What? You think I think you’re going to ransom me off or something? No.” Denki shook his head and allowed more of his weight to settle against the bars as he sighed. “This is Full Throttle versus Chargebolt, the rematch, isn’t it? I’m not lying to you.”

“So, then you just don’t know,” Full Throttle said decidedly, standing up and opening up a drawer from the filing cabinet and rifling through the files.

“Of course, I know. Well, no. I mean, if there was anything to know, I would know. You know? You’re the one who doesn’t know!” Denki argued, surprised that he was actually getting worked up. He took a deep breath to collect himself before continuing, not to be discouraged by Full Throttle’s lack of attention as he fingered through the files, pulling his selection out before diving back in for his next intended file. “What? You think that just because I’m with them that I must be destined to be with them? Is that it? Well, you’d be surprised at how open communication and—”

“Shinsou Hitoshi and Monoma Neito,” Full Throttle started, stopping Denki’s rant in its tracks and drawing his eyes to the files that Full Throttle had in his hands that were opened and he was scanning and reading from. “They were admitted to Fields Mental Institution the day after you were. The reason listed was a possible soulmate bond-quirk interaction, but the notes detail that they both reported hearing another voice in their heads that very morning. Singing.”

“They really need to lock their records down,” Denki tried to joke, but he physically stepped back from the bars, letting his hands drop to his sides as he stared at Full Throttle. Full Throttle wasn’t done, though. He closed that folder and switched it for the one underneath.

“Kaminari Denki was admitted to Fields Mental Institution after an emergency room visit after an episode at school where he had reportedly heard voices, plural,” Full Throttle read, looking up after emphasizing the detail. Satisfied that Denki was paying attention, he looked back down and continued, “admitted on suspicion of early onset schizophrenia, but there’s a personal note here from the emergency room doctor that the idea of potentially having two soulmates and discovering the bond early should be explored.”

Full Throttle looked up once again to meet Denki’s eyes. “Did they not explore that idea?”

“No,” Denki whispered, taking a few steps back and flopping down onto the metal chair, putting his elbow on the metal tabletop to support the fist holding his face up. “They did not.”

When he thought about it, the voices had only ever sung to him. They never insulted him or put him down or encouraged him to hurt anyone like he feared might happen when he started to research the common symptoms. Denki started to feel stupid, then, when he remembered that the ‘voices’ would line up with other people’s voices. Where did he get that idea from? Neito.

All the songs stuck in his head, were they Hitoshi and Neito singing to each other? That didn’t make sense though, because why would they sing Up by Cardi B to each other on repeat for a week straight? (Studying at night was a nightmare, and his dreams were filled with TikTok collaborations with heroes like Gang Orca doing the dances with Denki and Dabi. Super trippy.) That didn’t exactly scream ‘romance’ to Denki, but he never heard them bicker or tease each other about it otherwise.

Denki looked up at Full Throttle from between the bars and shrugged at him. “Only one way to find out.” He opened his mouth and sang. Full Throttle didn’t try to stop him, and to his credit, he only looked mildly perplexed at Denki’s choice of song.

Denki felt only mildly ridiculous singling Jingle Bells as he was trapped in a potentially underground cell as his captor watched on, waiting for a sign (and hopefully not a hallucination) that he actually did have a soulmate (or two). He was kind of getting into it, entertained by the barely contained wincing at Denki’s obnoxiously loud and over-the-top singing that got progressively louder and more dramatic as the song progressed.

“OH WHAT FUN IT IS TO RIDE—”

Masters in this hall, hear ye news today…

Come, they told me, pa-rum pum pum pum…

It was like a bucked of ice water had been dumped over him as the déjà vu hit him, followed by the feeling of a warm blanket as the familiar lullaby then took over. Denki knew that he was going to doubt whatever happened, if anything happened, and attribute it to actually being a real hallucination. But not that. He didn’t think his mind could ever devise something so cruel that would trick him so flawlessly that he wouldn’t even realize what had happened all those years ago until after he experienced it again.

So, Denki did what anyone in his position would do. He turned in the chair, cradled his face in his arms against the smooth metal of the table, and cried.

He cried because the doctors didn’t even try to mention the fact that the voices could be his soulmates, not even when he thought they were all those years ago.

He cried because he was right.

He cried for the lost years where Hitoshi and Neito struggled with their feelings toward him when they shouldn’t have had to.

He cried for his futile attempts to resist his own feelings toward them.

He cried for their anxiety that he might find his own soulmate one day.

He cried because they took the chance on him anyway.

He cried and Full Throttle let him in peace. Then he pulled himself together because he had shit to do. Denki wiped his tears, took a deep breath, and nodded.

Denki inhaled and belted, “spare him his life from this monstrosity!” making Full Throttle startle. “Easy come, easy go, will you let me go? Bismillah! No, we will not let you go!”

Denki ignored the way Full Throttle winced at his overly emphasized pitch changes, not even bothering to try to hide it anymore. Denki, though, was no longer bothering to tone down just how diverse his vocal range was for how tone-deaf he was. “Uh,” Denki hesitated as he thought and clapped in success when the idea hit him. “Changing up the order a little bit, so don’t at me for not being a true fan,” he warned Full Throttle before, “Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening me!”

“Clever,” Full Throttle complimented with an appreciative nod. He’d never had the opportunity to see a soulmate realization come to fruition before, and he doubted that any would ever top this. “Though they can hear it just as clearly if you whisper it.”

Denki cackled at the underhanded insult, and Full Throttle looked away at the wall to try to hide the small smile across his face.

The woman appeared once again, and Denki would have jumped if he wouldn’t have been looking in that general direction already. Her footsteps were silent, and he wondered if that had anything to do with her quirk.

“I’m putting him under,” she said to Full Throttle.

“You worry too much,” he said, relaxing back into his chair once again. “I don’t think it’ll help as much as you think it will, anyway.”

“I don’t care. I’m doing it anyway. Are you in or out?”

Full Throttle looked down at his arm, pulling the sleeve up to check his watch. “We still have quite a few hours to go.”

“Fucking druggie,” she snarled, but despite the venom in her words, there was no bite in her tone.

Full Throttle laughed. “Whatever helps to pass the time! You should join us!”

“Us?” Denki asked, not liking the sound of that.

As the room filled with a cloudy haze, Denki tried to hold his breath, and he realized he severely miscalculated when he thought her silent footsteps might be her quirk.

“No use in avoiding it, Chargebolt,” Full Throttle said, eyes seemingly piercing Denki through the haze. He hadn’t moved from his spot on the chair. “Now that you’re free from the diagnosis of schizophrenia, it’ll be quite an adventure to find out what these hallucinations that you’re missing out on are like, won’t it?”

Chapter Text

When Denki’s alert song filtered through the soulmates’ minds, they shot out of bed like he was there and had just electrocuted them. Opening their mouths to respond, to give him something, anything, they both had similar ideas as they blurted out the first lines of their own alert songs before stopping and looking at each other. Neito reached out a hand to Hitoshi, nodded at him, took a breath, and started to sing the lullaby that had become a familiar comfort to Hitoshi.

“Well, he knows now, too. But why is he singing that song?” Then, with horrible realization, “where was he patrolling today?” Hitoshi grumbled as Neito sung, switching between rifling through Denki’s outlines of patrol plans and scrolling on his phone to find the group chat from Endeavor’s agency.

Spare him his life from this monstrosity! Easy come, easy go, will you let me go? Bismillah! No, we will not let you go!

Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening me!

“It’s out of order,” Neito frowned.

Hitoshi nearly snorted. “I’m a fan as much as the next guy, but is now really the time to be a music snob?”

“That’s not it,” Neito said. “He’s sending us a message, I think. He’s asking to be let go, and someone is saying no. He’s captured, maybe?”

“Captured? Who could have captured Denki? He can literally turn into—” Hitoshi paled.

“Toshi?” Neito hedged, stepping closer. “Tell me. What are you thinking?”

“Why would thunder and lighting frighten Denki?” Hitoshi asked, looking up to meet Neito’s eyes. “Full Throttle?”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Neito said, but both heroes were already ripping their civilian clothes off, pulling their hero gear on, and tearing out of the room to find backup.

“Me, too.”

“Denki’s in trouble!” Hitoshi blurted out to Aizawa.

And that’s how they ended up rushing through the explanation that the three of them were actually soulmates, promising to explain more later, just please gather up the forces while they had the advantage of having an early lead.

The response seemed to move at a snail’s pace to the soulmates, but from an objective perspective, things moved quickly. Aizawa had a lot of sway all on his own but adding Present Mic to that sped things along that much more. Plus, even being new heroes of their own right, Phantom Thief and Mindjack have already had made names for themselves and established some powerful connections. Adding all of that onto the fact that everyone absolutely adores Denki, and well, people were cutting corners and ignoring the red tape to get the rescue and search teams in position. The required paperwork would still be there when they returned with Denki, safe and sound, and no one would squint too hard at the suspicious timeline of the paper trail or question about whether a document had been backdated.

The general search notification went out to all active heroes across Japan, telling everyone to be on the lookout for any signs of unnatural lightning accumulating in any one area. Some surveillance heroes were sent out specifically to look for signs of such phenomena in more isolated locations where it might not be noticeable, like in the forests, mountains, and oceans.

Hitoshi and Neito, along with a few other heroes and sidekicks, scoured the area that Denki was supposed to be patrolling that morning, but nothing was out of the ordinary. There was no sign of struggle or any scorch marks that would indicate that Denki used his electricity. Hitoshi and Neito sat a little ways off the path through the lightly wooded area, sitting in the shade, leaning against the sturdy trees to face each other and the unknown.

“I didn’t know that Denki knew Bohemian Rhapsody,” Neito said suddenly.

“He didn’t learn it from me,” Hitoshi said. “That wasn’t one of the ones I used in rotation during internship patrols.”

“I bet it was from Hawks. Probably played it on full blast along with any other song that even mentioned lightning while he was training him as inspiration,” Neito guessed, a whimsical smile on his face as he imagined Hawks guarding a little radio from the lightning striking off of the powerhouse that was his soulmate.

His soulmate.

“I wonder how he’s holding up,” Neito said, trying to sound unbothered and failing spectacularly.

Hitoshi graciously ignored Neito’s failure and said, “why don’t we find out? Broke boys don’t deserve no pussy!” he sang suddenly and without inhibition.

Neito’s jaw dropped and he looked around to see if anyone saw Hitoshi singing such a vulgar song in public while in his hero costume, but all thoughts of public image were gone when Denki’s response flitted through their minds, reassuringly chipper and without a second of hesitation to answer the call that Hitoshi had sent out.

I know that’s right!

“That was one of the songs that was in rotation during my internship patrols,” Hitoshi stated.

“I’m aware,” Neito grumbled.

“That was also one of the dances that Denki ate and left no crumbs. It got so many views.”

“We were probably half of them,” Neito stated, daring Hitoshi with his tone to argue against the extreme exaggeration.

Hitoshi was his soulmate for a reason, though. “At least,” Hitoshi agreed easily with a nod.

-.-.-

“Relax,” Full Throttle suggested. “Phantasm can’t choose for you to have a good trip or a bad trip specifically, and statistically for her quirk, you’re more likely to have a good trip. The hallucinations won’t start for a few minutes, so you can stop wondering if everything you’re seeing and hearing is real for now.”

Denki didn’t need to be told to relax. He was already floating, his anxieties easing when the quirk eased over him more than hit him.

“Phantasm,” Denki repeated. “Her quirk causes hallucinations?”

Full Throttle nodded, caught himself, frowned, shook his head, then verbally answered. “Yes. Hallucinogenic Gas is what her quirk is called.”

“She’s cooler than you,” Denki said bluntly. “But that doesn’t take much.”

“What?” Full Throttle asked, turning toward Denki. “I thought we were getting along, here.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Denki said. “It’s all in the name. It’s bad luck and completely uninspiring to have your alias match the name of your quirk. I mean, look what happened to Overhaul.”

“Your buddy’s hero name is his actual name,” Full Throttle deadpanned. “And that’s probably only because Half-Cold Half-Hot doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

“It suits him,” Denki defended with a huff. He opened his mouth to argue further, probably to point out that Half-Cold Half-Hot was never even mentioned as an option, but, at that moment, broke boys don’t deserve no pussy rushed through at the forefront of his mind, and Denki automatically brought his hands up to his mouth to amplify his voice as he yelled out, “I know that’s right!”

Full Throttle squinted at Denki before humming in realization. “Soulmate check-in?”

“Soulmate check-in,” Denki confirmed, unable to stop the smile growing on his face at the fact that he had referred to Neito and Hitoshi as his soulmates.

In from the doorway walked Spinner and Mr. Compress. They were discussing something heatedly, Spinner talking loudly and animatedly with his hands and Mr. Compress spinning his staff as he nodded to show that he was listening and actively engaged with the conversation.

Full Throttle’s eyes tracked Denki’s and saw him focus on something that wasn’t there. Before Denki could call out his greeting, Full Throttle warned, “it’s a hallucination. What do you see?”

“Really?” Denki asked, mesmerized as he looked at Full Throttle for confirmation before looking back at the duo. “The League of Villains,” Denki answered without thinking.

Full Throttle hummed and shifted in his chair to get more comfortable. "Sorry, Chargebolt. Looks like you drew the short straw, this time."

"What do you mean?" Denki asked, too confused to feel too afraid to ask.

“When you start off with a bad trip, it’s nearly impossible to turn it around. Usually what you start with is what you’re stuck with.”

“Oh,” Denki said and left it at that.

There was no use explaining to Full Throttle that it wasn’t a bad trip, even if he could get around Force Majeure’s quirk. Thinking Denki is going through a bad trip could help give Denki the edge he needed, anyway. It might make him underestimate him enough to give him an opening to get the hell out of there or let some information slip that he could find a way to get to the soulmates without alerting Full Throttle of what exactly kind of information he’s sending across.

But then, Denki realized something else. “Hey, Full Throttle? You live under a rock or something?”

Full Throttle laughed, his eyes trailing through the air above him, following after his own hallucinations most likely. “Basically,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

Denki had been wondering if Full Throttle, and now also Phantasm, were brave or just stupid for going directly against the League of Villains’ order of protection over him. Now, though, he was starting to see that they were probably just completely unaware of it to begin with.

“Seems kind of dangerous, is all,” Denki said. “What if I had super powerful connections? What if you pissed off—I don’t know—the League of Villains, or something, by taking me, and you didn’t know it because you aren’t in the know?”

Full Throttle hummed, dragging his eyes away from whatever he was seeing to look at Denki through the bars. “There’s always risk no matter what we do. Right now, we already have our hands full with the devil we know, so we don’t have time for the devil we don’t. So, we fly under the radar, only surfacing to gather information before ducking down and laying low,” Full Throttle said, trailing off. Shrugging, he refocused and said, “it’s been working so far.”

“So, what’s the plan then, huh?” Denki asked distracted as Magne popped in, told Spinner that Shigaraki needed him, and they both left through the doorway, leaving a bittersweet, empty aching in his chest. Denki pressed himself against the bars to watch them leave, trying to keep Magne in his sight for as long as humanly possible. “You going to let me out of here, take me out into the open, and try again?”

Full Throttle laughed, throwing his head back. “Nice try, Chargebolt, but I’m not going to underestimate you.”

Denki gave up trying to spot Magne again, sparing a glance at Mr. Compress, who seemed to be staring right back at Denki, leaning against the far wall, tossing and catching a marble over and over again. “Well, it’s going to be hard to have a rematch with these,” Denki said, extending his arms through the bars to allow the harsh fluorescent lights to glint off of the quirk-cancelling cuffs.

“I appreciate your concern,” Full Throttle said, “but my quirk isn’t inhibited by quirk-cancelling technology worn by the recipient.”

“Oh,” Denki said, pulling his arms back toward him and stepping backwards to retreat further into his cell.

“I’ll get my rematch on my own terms soon enough,” Full Throttle said easily. “I’m just still confused as to why I need a rematch in the first place. Care to enlighten me?”

“No.”

“Oh?” Full Throttle said, his eyes shooting from whatever hallucination he was experiencing straight to Denki. “It’s not that you don’t know? That’s fascinating. I was under the impression that it was a fluke, but something happened, didn’t it? Something intentional, with purpose. A plan that was put into action that actually worked to stop my quirk? Won’t you tell me?”

“No means no, and consent is sexy, and all that, so—”

Full Throttle’s eyes narrowed, he glanced down at his hands that still loosely held the file folders, and dread filled Denki’s stomach with stone as he watched the realization come across Full Throttle’s face.

“You’re so resistant because it has to do with your soulmates. It wasn’t you or anything you did to stop my quirk. It was Mindjack, wasn’t it? Did he brainwash you and command you to—what? Reject my quirk? Turn your own quirk off?”

“Does it matter?” Denki asked, at a loss for what other options he had. He was backed into a corner. “You said yourself that I won’t be able to send them any hints to find me because of all the trouble you went through, so what does it matter now that you have me right where you want me?”

“I don’t have a soulmate of my own, but I know how they work,” Full Throttle said. “You say you’ll do anything, but they’d also do anything for you. I get all three of you, I win, you lose, the end.”

“Is it ever really that simple?”

“It used to be,” Full Throttle said. “Before you survived my quirk.”

Denki refused to answer, and Full Throttle didn’t press further, so they sat in silence. Well, to an outside observer, it would have been silence. To Full Throttle, he watched and heard tennis balls bounce around the room, a gaggle of children playing a game and making up the rules as they went. Denki watched and heard various League members, Hawks included, come in and out of the room and snippets of their conversations.

Mr. Compress was the only one there from the beginning who had stayed in the room the entire time. Denki wasn’t looking at him when he tossed the marble, but he acutely heard when it when the marble rolled across the floor. His eyes followed it, the smooth surface glinting the harsh light catching his eye easily enough as it bounced against the wall right next to a couple of rats. Denki was surprised that the rats didn’t scatter because of the intrusive marble, but then he remembered that it was just a hallucination.

“Tell me your weakness.”

“What?” Denki asked.

“Hallucination,” Full Throttle sang.

“Tell me your weakness,” the small voices said again, and Denki squinted at the rats and decided to go with it.

“Oh, I keep it a secret.”

“Oh, come on, just one vice.”

“Okay, it’s vodka on ice,” Denki responded, and was about to continue when the idea slapped him in the face.

“Full Throttle!” Denki whisper-yelled. “Do you see the rats over there?” he asked, pointing.

Full Throttle gave a glance over and nodded lazily. “Not a hallucination. Don’t tell me that Chargebolt is afraid of mice.”

“They aren’t mice. They’re rats. And I’m going to serenade the shit out of them!”

“What?” Full Throttle hesitantly asked, immediately regretting his decision to not ignore it.

“Just remember that they started it. I’m just returning the favor,” Denki insisted. If real rats paired with hallucinated voices didn’t promise a good time, Denki didn’t know what did.

“Whatever,” Full Throttle muttered, going back to watching his hallucinations argue about a rule change mid-game.

“Into your sanctum, you let them in! Now all your loved ones, and all your kin, will suffer punishments beneath the wrath of god! Never to forgive, never to forgive! Them rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh—”

“Would you shut the fuck up?” Phantasm deadpanned from the doorway.

Mr. Compress barely spared her a glance. Spinner flipped her off. Shigaraki, smiling maniacally, reached his open hand toward her unsuspecting face.

“Sure, yeah, of course,” Denki agreed easily. “I think I got my point across.”

She glared at him as he forced the corners of his mouth down, mentally scolding hallucination Shigaraki for palming her face and looking so disappointed that his quirk wasn’t working.

Chapter Text

“Come on, somebody, why don’t you run. Ol’ Red’s itching to have a little fun,” Denki continued to sing under his breath, trying to avoid another visit from Phantasm. “Who let the dogs out? Who-who-who-who?! It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight—”

“I think I preferred the Christmas songs, actually,” Full Throttle muttered.

Shrugging, Denki switched to “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer—”

“Reindeer,” Full Throttle chimed.

Denki smiled wider. “Had a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw it—”

“Saw it.”

“You would even say it glows.”

“Like a lightbulb.”

“All of the other reindeer—”

“Reindeer.”

Reindeer.

Reindeer.

The echo repeated in his head as his soulmates chimed in, and he continued the song with both Full Throttle and his soulmates chiming in on the background lyrics.

“Used to laugh and call him names.”

“Like Isozan.”

Like Neito.

Like Neito.

Denki refrained from wincing, knowing that some kids personalized the song’s echoes based on what school they went to, but he still didn’t like the idea of his soulmate being teased, and he was pretty sure his other soulmate’s name would show up later in the song, too.

“They never let poor Rudolph.”

“Rudolph.”

Rudolph.

Rudolph.

“Join in any reindeer games.”

“Like Uretori.”

Like Hitoshi.

Like Hitoshi.

And there it was, replacing the name of a game with an example of a person who was typically excluded from games, and oh it hurt Denki to think about.

“Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa did say: Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight! Then how the reindeer loved him!”

“Loved him!”

Loved him!

Loved him!

“As they shouted out with glee!”

Yipee!

Plus Ultra!

Plus Ultra!

There was the UA spirit!

“Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.”

“Reindeer.”

Reindeer.

Reindeer.

“You’ll go down in history!”

“Like All Might!”

Like Chargebolt!

Like Chargebolt!

And, well, that took him off-guard because he’d never heard that version before.

More lyrics filtered through his mind as soon as the song ended. Baby, I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down eat you alive. Just like animals, animals. Like animals. Then, switching almost immediately to I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign.

Denki exhaled and allowed himself to relax, just a little more than he had previously. His soulmates understood what he was trying to convey, because of course they did. They had always been so in sync that he wondered how none of them had pieced it together before.

It was about an hour later when Full Throttle’s eyes trailed after something that Denki couldn’t see, and Full Throttle got up to follow whatever hallucination caught his attention, Denki took the chance to give as much warning as he could to the soulmates about what they were up against.

“Do you know the enemy? Do you know your enemy? Well, gotta know the enemy, wah-hey!” Denki sang before quickly switching to another song to give the next clue. “Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Lucy in the sky with diamonds.”

Full Throttle was there then, eyes narrowed, regarding Denki suspiciously, most likely wondering why he felt the need to try to warn his soulmates about the existence of Phantasm when there was no way that the soulmates would be able to find him.

Unless…

Full Throttle’s eyes widened. “Phantasm!” he called out as he started to yank the filing cabinets open, pulling out folders and throwing them onto one of the chairs. When she appeared in the doorway, he commanded, “we have to be ready to move! Goddamn it! They have someone who can talk to animals!”

Denki watched as they quickly packed up, but after everything essential was removed from the building, Full Throttle was back in the armchair, eyes sometimes straying to watch a hallucination, but mostly watching his own hands as he fidgeted with his fingers, deep in thought and planning.

“Why would you send out hints like that when we had just talked about why it would be a bad idea for them to come to your rescue?” Full Throttle asked, his eyes flickering up to pierce Denki through the bars. “Now we’re going to wait for them to show up and walk into one of the traps we’ve set. Or, if there’s more backup than we can handle, we have everything ready to go to just take off.”

“I trust them,” Denki said. “If our positions were reversed, I would want them to keep asking me for help, regardless of the risk. Besides, I want to see my soulmates.”

“And how will you feel knowing that you’re the reason they’re coming to meet their demise?”

“Well, I’ll just have to hope that the League of Villains gets here before my soulmates do, won’t I?”

“What?” Full Throttle asked, thoroughly exhausted.

This hero had stopped making sense and he didn’t have the energy to play convoluted games to follow along anymore. Phantasm was a little ball of anxiety at the abrupt change of plans, and Full Throttle’s long-term plans hinged on their continued success. His failure would let her down, and he couldn’t afford to do that.

“Maybe if you weren’t so concerned with laying low, you would know that I’m under the protection of the League of Villains,” Denki said with a laissez faire shrug.

Full Throttle had paled but tried to remain calm and think it through. There was no way, right? This had to be a bluff, and a ridiculous one at that. But why choose such an unbelievable one in the first place? And Denki hadn’t lied since first arriving, opting to refuse to answer when feeling cornered instead of lying. That didn’t make it make sense, though. Maybe it had to do with the hallucination and Denki thought that he was telling the truth. It wouldn’t have been the first time Phantasm’s quirk caused something like that to happen, but he would have expected Denki to be able to keep reality and hallucination separate once he got the hang of it.

Denki was freaking out a little bit, too. Force Majeure’s quirk didn’t kick in, and his first thought was, oh shit, Full Throttle was his third soulmate, and two were plenty, and he didn’t really want Full Throttle to be his soulmate. It helped when he realized that he had heard Full Throttle sing with no echo in his head and realized that when he requested Force Majeure remove the restriction from Hawks and Midoriya, she might have just removed the whole quirk.

Full Throttle didn’t have the chance to ask any clarifying questions because, at that moment, the far wall crumbled to dust, replaced by a flickering wall of blue flames.

-.-.-

Oh, I keep it a secret… Okay, it’s vodka on ice…

“Who the hell is singing to our soulmate?” Neito growled.

“Maybe he’s making friends, again,” Hitoshi offered. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

Into your sanctum, you let them in! Now all your loved ones, and all your kin, will suffer punishments beneath the wrath of god! Never to forgive, never to forgive! Them rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh—

Hitoshi looked over at Neito who looked skyward, considering. “Ghost,” Hitoshi explained. “I’m not surprised that you’re not familiar. Denks probably learned it from Ashido.”

Come on, somebody, why don’t you run. Ol’ Red’s itching to have a little fun. Who let the dogs out? Who-who-who-who?! It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight—

“Wow, okay. For someone who never sings, I didn’t realize he knew the lyrics to so many songs from so many different genres,” Hitoshi commented when the stream cut off, trying to lighten the mood after noticing Neito going deeper into his thoughts instead of coming back to him. “It’s fine if you didn’t know some of those. You’re so busy being master of all the quirks; no one expects you to be master of all the songs as well.”

“It’s not that,” Neito reassured, looking into the sky in consideration once again. “Denki switches from topic to topic, but not like that. His mind doesn’t work like that. He’s trying to tell us something again, I can feel it.”

“Okay,” Hitoshi agreed, taking a breath and gathering his own thoughts. “He started out with the Stand by Mother Mother, then Rats by Ghost, changed it to county by singing Ol’ Red, then back to some more classics like Who Let the Dogs Out and Eye of the Tiger,” Hitoshi listed, mind whirring, trying to pick up a pattern in the titles, artists, genres, anything that he could think of.

Neito perked up. “What if we ignored the Stand because someone else was interfering?”

“You want to ignore a clue because you’re jealous that someone was singing to our soulmate?”

“Shut up.” Neito rolled his eyes and shoved at Hitoshi’s shoulder, but Hitoshi got a small smile out of Neito, so it was worth it. “No. What I’m saying is that if we ignore that first one, which was an outlier anyway, all of the other ones have animals in them.”

As the lyrics about a certain red-nosed reindeer ran through their minds, it just added confirmation.

Hitoshi’s gaze locked on Neito’s. “He’s somewhere with animals around. Probably rats, or at least some type of rodent, if we go by the first song that came to his mind, if we go by your theory to ignore the Stand.”

Neito smiled his trademark manic smile, and Hitoshi knew that smile should never have left its place to begin with. “We need Koda,” Neito said.

… All of the other reindeer.

“Reindeer,” Hitoshi and Neito echoed, smiling at each other as Hitoshi pulled out his phone to track their previous classmate down to see if he’d be willing to lend his quirk to Neito.

Used to laugh and call him names.

“Like Neito.”

They never let poor Rudolph—

“Rudolph.”

Join in any reindeer games.

“Like Hitoshi.”

“Brings back memories,” Neito muttered. Not all good ones.

“Hey Koda, we need a favor,” Hitoshi said into the phone as the song ended.

While Hitoshi handled getting Koda on board and arranged the meeting place, Neito took care of sending a message back to their soulmate to let him know that they understood, and they were using the idea that he had sent.

“Baby, I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down eat you alive. Just like animals, animals. Like animals,” Neito sang loudly. Hitoshi threw a lopsided grin in his direction, not bothering to tell him to tone it down. Koda was sure to know what was going on with Denki. And even if he didn’t quite know about the soulmate situation, everyone knew how close the three were. “I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign!”

“I don’t mean to underestimate you—” Koda started.

Neito kept his voice quiet but spoke quickly. Time was of the essence of course, but Koda was doing them a huge favor, here. It wouldn’t help to upset him. “I know we didn’t work together much, but the quirks I copy last up to an hour for me now.”

“I’ve heard,” Koda admitted. “But my quirk was really hard for me to get started with.”

“That’s also the thing that makes my quirk so unfair,” Neito explained. “I don’t get your quirk from how it was from the beginning. I get your quirk with everything you’ve put into it up until how it is from the moment I copy it. Remember that training when I went against Denki? I wasn’t expecting it to be that powerful because I didn’t know that at the time, and I didn’t know how much he’d progressed since the last time I’d copied his quirk. I completely benefit from all of your hard work with none of the work put in on my own, and I know it’s not fair, but please—”

“That’s what you really think of yourself?” Koda asked as he reached out his hand to offer his quirk to Neito, offering no resistance. “You made it, and you graduated from UA with the rest of us because you deserved it. I saw you training with so many different quirks, and I saw you train quirkless, just in case you were in a situation where you couldn’t get your hands on a quirk. I don’t think in terms of fair and not fair, but even for those who do, you’re more than deserving, Monoma.”

Neito grabbed Koda’s outstretched hand with both of his own, pulled it toward him, and bowed forward until his forehead touched Koda’s wrist. “Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means.” Then he turned to Hitoshi and said, “let’s go.”

“Hi,” Neito said, feeling so strange to be talking to a random rat he found in an alleyway. It was even stranger when the rat looked at him instead of scurrying away and stranger yet when it responded with a greeting of its own. “I’m looking for a hero who is in trouble. Can you help me?”

“What’s in it for me?” the rat asked.

“What?” Neito asked.

“I should get something out of this exchange.”

“We really don’t have the time. Can we work out the details later?”

“What’s going on?” Hitoshi whispered, looking frantically from the rat to Neito. It was very strange seeing his soulmate trying to negotiate with a rat.

“It wants something in return for its help,” Neito said, exasperatedly dragging a hand down his face. “How are we ever going to find Denki like this?”

“Denki?” the rat repeated. “Kaminari Denki?”

“You know my soulmate?” Neito asked turning back to the rat, surprised.

“Our soulmate,” Hitoshi corrected automatically in a grumble.

The rat looked back and forth between the two desperate heroes. “The blond hero who wears white and black and makes my hair stand on end is your soulmate? He comes through here sometimes, dropping crumbs from his breakfast. He freed my brother from a trap once, loudly stating ‘no need to fear, for Kaminari Denki is here!’”

Neito choked on something that he couldn’t quite tell was a laugh or a sob. The rat agreed to find out if any other critters knew of anything, and Neito quickly explained to Hitoshi what the rat had been saying.

Hitoshi hummed and pulled Neito into a tight hug. “That’s just like Denki. Somehow making friends with the right people at the right time, even if the right people happen to be rats in a random alleyway.”

“I know where he is!” the rat reported to Neito as it came scurrying back out. “Follow me!”

The rat led Neito and Hitoshi through alleyways, in through a door that Hitoshi spent exactly forty-eight seconds picking the lock for, and down a set of stairs. When the rat rounded the corner and immediately turned tail again, it was too late for Hitoshi and Neito to avoid going around the corner as well.

They dropped down into a defensive stance, Hitoshi’s hands already weaving through his capture weapon and Neito reaching for Hitoshi’s hand to have his quirk at his disposal if nothing else.

On the other side of the dimly lit corridor stood the League of Villains, completely decked out in their villainous attire, also crouched and ready to leap into action.

Toga gasped, straightened, and waved while bouncing in place. “My boys! Don’t worry, guys! It’s my boys! Hi, guys! What are you doing here?!”

She took a step forward and Twice grabbed her wrist to stop her. She turned around and giggled, pulling herself free. “Thanks for the worry, but these guys won’t hurt me. We’re best friends, basically!”

She practically flung herself at Hitoshi and Neito, who took care to catch her carefully, their gazes forced from the rest of the League of Villains to make sure her equipment didn’t end up jabbing them.

“Woah, Toga!” Neito admonished. “Watch where you’re throwing those sharps around, yeah?”

“Oh, this is fun!” Toga said. “I’ve never gotten to play peacekeeper before! Shinsou and Monoma, this is the League of Villains! League of Villains, this is Shinsou and Monoma!”

The villains had relaxed from their ready-to-go stances and started to ease their way forward carefully.

“Uh, we’ve heard a lot about you,” Hitoshi offered.

“Same,” Shigaraki said. “What are you two doing here?”

“We could ask you the same thing,” Hitoshi reflected. After a moment of the two staring each other down and reminding himself that Denki fully trusted all of these people, Hitoshi relented. “Probably for the same reason you are. To rescue Denki.”

“What? No. We’re here because this is the last known location of Full Throttle,” Shigaraki said. He paused, eyes narrowing. His voice lowered, he continued, “Full Throttle has Kaminari?”

“Cool!” Toga squealed. “We’re all on the same side. I’m so good at this peacekeeping thing!”

“Are you suggesting that we work together?” Hitoshi asked.

“I don’t see why we can’t, unless you have any objections,” Shigaraki said, “heroes.”

How could Hitoshi have any objections when they’re just going to answer his questions like that? When Shigaraki himself was just going to answer his questions like that? If they wanted to play nice and fake the trust, he could have had one of the underlings always answer, but for the leader himself…

“None here.”

Hitoshi didn’t have to look to know the existence of the smile growing on Neito’s face. He sidestepped out of the way just in time for Neito to leap forward, having the quirks of the League of Villains lied out like a buffet for his choosing, and he went straight for Dabi first. He was a sucker for fire quirks, and Hitoshi wasn’t the only one who had theories floating around inside his head.

Some of the other members of the League tensed and flinched as Neito neared, unsure around a new hero with whom they’ve never interacted before. Dabi stood his ground, not making a move to pull away when Neito reached out to make contact. The League wasn’t sure what to expect: Maybe some manic laughing or for Neito to burst into blue flames as soon as he got the intended quirk. What they didn’t expect was for Neito to stand there in front of Dabi, hand held out in between them with a small blue flame alight, Neito standing perfectly still and quiet. Hitoshi took a hesitant step forward, and without turning to look back at him, Neito held the hand that wasn’t alit back to invite Hitoshi forward. Hitoshi grasped the hand with his own and was startled to see the silent tears dripping down Neito’s face. Neito slowly looked up at Dabi, and Dabi didn’t look away from Neito.

Neito squeezed Hitoshi’s hand and said, “looks like the QQQ is back in business.”

Hitoshi looked from Neito’s face to Dabi’s and was struck with the familiarity of his icy blue eyes darting over to meet his own. “Long time, no see,” Dabi said.

“Because you fucking faked your death and then avoided me in that damn forest when I had the chance to figure your ass out,” Neito snapped, melancholy washing away already. “I’m going to kick your fucking ass!”

Dabi clicked his tongue and shook his head in faux disappointment. “I thought I trained you better than that. Where’s a technician when you need one?”

Hitoshi grabbed Dabi’s wrist and yanked him into a hug. Dabi hugged back just as tightly.

“At least Hitoshi will protect me,” Dabi said.

Hitoshi hummed as if he was trying to commit the moment to memory. “I just wanted to get one last hug in before I attend your real funeral.”

Dabi gasped and pulled back, scandalized. “You won’t protect me, Seigen?”

“Protect you?” Hitoshi laughed cruelly, not deterred by the use of his old QQQ codename. “I’ll be the one holding you down!”

Dabi laughed boisterously, pulled both boys back in, and whispered so only they could hear, “we’ll talk later. I’m so proud of you.”

Do you know the enemy? Do you know your enemy? Well, gotta know the enemy, wah-hey! Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

Hitoshi and Neito recoiled and looked at each other, alarmed.

“There’s more than just Full Throttle?” Hitoshi asked, trying to see if Neito thought that Denki could mean something else.

“What?” Toga asked. “What do you mean?”

“Denki sang Know Your Enemy, and then Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. That has to be it, right?” Neito asked, not seeing anything else that it could be.

“LSD? Someone who can make drugs?”

“Or maybe someone who can induce hallucinations?”

Hitoshi and Neito looked at each other, faces paling. “We have to get in there.”

“You aren’t making any sense!”

“Denki’s our soulmate!” Hitoshi rushed to explain. “He doesn’t have schizophrenia, the voices were us this whole time, and he’s been sending us hints through songs, which is how we got this far on our own before meeting up with you guys. We can explain more later, but we have to get him out of there. If they’re subjecting him to hallucinations after everything he’s been through—he doesn’t deserve that!”

Neito took a deep, shuddering breath, shook it off, and refocused. They had their soulmate to save, after all. Everything else could wait. He walked over to Shigaraki and held out his hand in offering.

“Can I try your quirk on for size?”

Shigaraki smirked at him and reached out his hand to meet him halfway. Just like how Shigaraki didn’t hesitate to answer Hitoshi’s questions, Neito didn’t flinch when Shigaraki’s hand touched his own.

Shigaraki sent a glance toward Dabi that clearly read, where the hell did you find these kids?

“Last but never least,” Neito said, holding his hand out to Hitoshi, requesting his most frequently used quirk. Hitoshi easily obliged, and Neito was ready.

“Just on the other side of this wall,” Spinner said, tapping a knuckle against the bricks under the flickering fluorescents. “We figured it would be safer and more unexpected to make our own entrance than use one that is already established.”

Neito nodded, grinned, and put his hand against the wall. “I’ve always wanted to do this.” Then, he allowed Shigaraki’s quirk to course through him for the first time, and the wall disintegrated under his fingertips.

He switched Shigaraki’s quirk to Dabi’s and filled the space with blue flame, laughing manically as led the way through, leading two groups combined as one to save their soulmate that they had not had the chance to lay their eyes on since knowing that he was actually their soulmate, and not just their boyfriend.

Chapter Text

When the wall crumbled and the blue flames rushed in, to say Denki was surprised to see Neito rushing through, cackling, would be an understatement. Neito’s eyes locked on Denki’s, and Neito beelined for the bars, ignoring Full Throttle who was calling for Phantasm, as if she wouldn’t have been alerted by all the noise already. No one made a move to stop Neito from getting to Denki. There were plenty of others to occupy Full Throttle and Phantasm as Hitoshi, Shigaraki, Dabi, Twice, Toga, and Spinner made their way into the room.

Neito grasped each bar in his reach as they dissolved to dust under his touch until there was enough room for Denki to slip through as he yelled across the room to not worry about Phantasm because she won’t use her quirk if she can’t leave the area because it affects her, too. Grabbing onto Denki’s wrists, Neito put Shigaraki’s quirk to work dissolving the quirk canceling cuffs, quick to adjust his grip to not lay all five fingers against Denki’s skin as the cuffs gave way.

Denki opened his mouth to thank Neito, or maybe to give recognition that they understood his hints, or maybe to confess his undying love. Neito would never know because he used his grip on Denki’s wrists to yank him forward, releasing his wrists only to press his palms against either side of his jaw, careful not to allow all his fingers to touch, and pulling his face closer to finally connect their lips once again. He had wondered if it would feel different, now that he knew that Denki was his soulmate, but it didn’t. It had always felt so right, so perfect, just now there was a known reason for why it had always felt that way.

“Way to save some of the action for me, guys,” Neito pouted.

“Well, if you weren’t so concerned with hogging our soulmate, then you would have been involved,” Hitoshi sassed back.

“Our soulmate,” Neito parroted dreamily, gazing lovingly at Denki with a dumb smile stretching over his face. Giddy butterflies filled Denki’s throat as he mirrored Neito’s expression.

“Besides,” Hitoshi continued, “it was two against eight. Not exactly a fair fight that was drawn out long enough for you to get any hits in, anyway.”

With Full Throttle and Phantasm tied up in Hitoshi’s capture weapon, Hitoshi stood, swiveled, and stalked forward toward Denki, and Denki ran the few steps to meet him halfway, unable to wipe the smile off of his face, even as his lips pressed against Hitoshi’s.

“How’d you figure it out?” Hitoshi asked.

“Full Throttle did, actually,” Denki admitted. “He had records from when we were all admitted to Fields Mental Hospital and the testing they did on Unit Beta, and he connected the pieces that no one else had before.”

“Okay. And why didn’t you tell us about Dabi?” Neito butted in before Hitoshi could continue with that line of questioning.

Denki paled, paused, laughed nervously, rubbed the back of his neck, and looked around the room for someone to act as his hero in the room full of villains.

No such luck.

He sighed, resigned. “How was I supposed to tell you that Touya was still alive, but that you couldn’t go see him for yourselves?” Denki asked. He chewed on his bottom lip as he looked between his soulmates. “I thought about it, and he never said that I couldn’t tell you guys, but if I was in your position—I don’t know. I’m really sorry.”

“Forgiven,” Hitoshi said easily, pulling Denki in for an embrace.

Neito sighed and rolled his eyes. “I hate when you make sense. Nothing to forgive,” Neito said, then added pointedly, “grudgingly, though.” Then he wrapped his arms around his soulmates who both pulled out an arm to include him in their huddle.

“What now?” Full Throttle asked from where he and Phantasm were tied up, leaning back against the wall, looking around at their captors, helpless to do anything about it. “You going to walk up to the Hero Commission, say that the villains and heroes worked together, and hand us over?”

“Well, not exactly. The Hero Commission doesn’t like me as it is—but that’s beside the point. What do we do from here?” Denki asked, looking around the group. “I didn’t exactly expect all of you to show up at the same time, and my planning was kind of banking on one group getting here before the other.”

“I have a few ideas,” Shigaraki said, sending a glare in Full Throttle’s direction.

Full Throttle flinched, but held his eye contact, moving forward slightly as if to block Shigaraki’s view of Phantasm, like he might forget all about her involvement if he couldn’t see her.

“We should head out and let the heroes handle it from here,” Spinner said. “I’m sure there’s a manhunt for Kaminari right now, so it would be harder to explain how he got away with our involvement added to the mix than if it was like we were never here to begin with.”

“First, peacekeeper,” Toga said with faux exasperation, putting her hand to her forehead dramatically, “now silent hero in the night? I need to update my resume.”

“For what?” Shigaraki argued as he pulled out his phone to notify Kurogiri that they needed his assistance to get back to the base. “You planning on leaving us? Moving on to bigger and better things?” he teased distractedly as he tapped on the phone.

“I don’t know, Shigs!” Toga snapped. “Maybe I’ll get a side job or something. What else are we going to do? Start a fundraiser? Sell cookie dough door-to-door? What if some crazy person invites me inside and kidnaps me? Then what will you do?”

“They’d give you back,” Dabi said, laughing, saving Shigaraki from answering as the warp gate appeared.

“They’d give you back,” Toga mocked in lieu of a proper insult to throw back at him.

It happened when the rest of the League was heading toward the warp gate, and Toga was heading in the opposite direction, toward Denki, to say goodbye. Hitoshi and Neito had wandered back over to Full Throttle and Phantasm to make sure they were still secure and behaving themselves.

When the heroes came crashing in from above, Denki and Toga were separated from the others, and the ceiling above them crumbled, collapsing on top of them.

Denki had recognized the heroes and cursed under his breath. He had reached for Toga automatically as the ceiling crumbled. He had to be quick about this.

“Are you hurt?” he whispered.

“No,” she whispered back, all humor gone from her voice. She understood as well as he did what kind of situation she had just found herself in.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Denki promised.

Gritting his teeth, he reached out in front of him and scraped his palm across a broken beam.

“Wha—” Toga tried to protest, but Denki slammed his bleeding hand over her mouth.

“You’re going to be me. I know you can pull it off. You’re going to be me, and you’re going to let my soulmates help you, and you’re going to let me worry about myself. Got it?” Denki practically growled, pressing his hand harder against her face.

She nodded, blinking her tears back, and Denki quickly explained what she needed to tell the soulmates once they were alone. Villains were easier than heroes to convince in these types of situations. It would be easy for Denki to prove that he was himself once she was out of harm’s way. It wouldn’t be so easy for her to break out of Tartarus, not even with the League trying to get her out. She was a key player in the breakouts, after all, and they had never went against Tartarus. No one had and succeeded.

“P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face. P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face,” Denki quickly sang to try to get across the idea to his soulmates of what they had to do as he crossed his fingers that the other League members made it out in time.

That’s all the warning that his soulmates would get because hands were pulling the rubble off of him and Toga, grabbing at their arms, and hoisting them up. Friendly hands quickly turned into bruising grips when they realized that there were two Chargebolts where there should have been one.

Denki shook the dust from his hair, and was pleased that when he opened his eyes, he saw Toga doing the same. He knew she could pull it off. She was similar enough to him as it was, and she was observant as hell. She had to be to make good use of her quirk.

“Way to make an entrance!” Denki heard his own voice say from his left.

“Yeah,” Denki agreed. “Didn’t you take any anti-collateral damage classes?” He glanced toward Toga and made a show of doing a double take.

Toga acted similarly.

Toga laughed. “Nice try, but my boyfriends are here. They’ll be able to tell the difference, no problem! Toshi? Nei?” She said, remaining calm and relaxed like it was already decided that she was the real Denki, reaching out a hand to invite them to clear things up.

“Hitoshi,” Denki said. “Neito. It’s me. You know it’s me.”

The heroes stood around the room, looking between the soulmates and the doubles, trying to figure a way out of the mess they had found themselves in. No, Denki realized. They were fidgeting, unable to stand still, filled with giddy excitement at having a member of the League of Villains finally in their grasp. A quick glance around the room showed no other League members, and Denki was grateful that everyone else made it back. He sent a silent promise to his friends that he would be sending their missing link back to them soon.

“Phantom Thief,” one of the heroes said. “Copy one of their quirks and see which one you get.”

“That’s a great idea, but I’m already at my limit for another thirty-five minutes,” Neito said, checking his timer affixed to his costume. “And none of the quirks I currently have copied would help in this situation.”

“Toga can’t use her quirk, so Chargebolt should just show us that he can use his,” another hero offered.

"That won’t work, either,” Neito said.

Before anyone could argue, Hitoshi explained, “after being around Full Throttle, it’s dangerous for him to use his quirk at all until he’s cleared, or it could start something that can’t be stopped.”

Everyone seemed to have stopped breathing at that, imagining the damage Denki could cause if he would ignite his lightning and be unable to stop it. Denki dared a glance in Full Throttle’s direction only to see that another hero must have already escorted Full Throttle and Phantasm out.

“I’ve got this,” Hitoshi said, looking between the two Denkis who stood atop the rubble, a hero holding firmly onto each one, ready to take the imposter away. “Where did Neito and I take you for our first date?”

“The waterpark,” Toga answered easily.

Denki had opened his mouth and hesitated. “Wait!” Denki argued. “I knew that!”

“There would be no way for her to know that,” Neito said. The hero’s grip tightened on Denki’s arm as he was shoved forward and Toga was released, allowed to run to the waiting embrace of Denki’s soulmates. “And only our Denki answers questions without hesitation.”

Denki owed them big time.

Dusty, tired, and already missing his soulmates but not having one, single regret, Denki was re-cuffed with law enforcement grade quirk cancelling cuffs that actually connected, restraining his hands behind his back. The hero paused, confused when a worn Toga didn’t appear, but another hero came along to explain that some quirks, once activated, would continue until dropped, and could not be turned off forcefully through quirk cancelling technology or drugs. Denki learned something new and laughed in his head because he knew his luck wasn’t running out! So that Hero Commission recruiter could shove it! He was then shoved into the back of the waiting prisoner transport vehicle only to come face to face with Full Throttle.

Denki smiled, trying to make it look extra sharp. “Where’s the chick?”

“Not going where we are,” Full Throttle dismissed, leaning forward and looking at Denki, scrutinizing. "Chargebolt said that the League was looking out for him. Too bad he wasn’t looking out for you, too.”

Denki didn’t miss the fact that Full Throttle seemed relieved that Phantasm wasn’t with them, so he figured she was going to a minimum-security prison, or even just into holding for now. Just like how Toga was one less thing for Denki to worry about, Phantasm seemed to be one less thing for Full Throttle to worry about.

“What’s your goal here?” Denki asked. “Trying to get me to see the light? Change sides? I’m a Chargebolt stan ’til the end!”

Okay, Denki might have overdone it there, but Full Throttle just scoffed and rolled his eyes, so maybe he didn’t blow his cover. It wasn’t paramount to keep his cover forever, just long enough for Toga to be out of the line of view of the Hero Commission’s heroes who were lurking around. He doubted five minutes in the truck would be quite enough time, but he wondered if Full Throttle would foil their plans if he knew the truth about what was happening right in front of him.

What would he have to lose?

What would he have to gain?

“What?” Full Throttle asked when Denki had been staring at him for too long.

“Why didn’t you use your quirk on Kaminari?” Denki asked.

Full Throttle sighed. Denki didn’t know why he decided to answer. Maybe he heard the genuine question in Denki’s voice, even as Denki was trying to put hints of Toga in his mannerisms. Maybe he just didn’t give a shit now that they were on their way to Tartarus.

“My quirk can only be used once before it has to recharge. It wasn’t time, yet.”

At that moment, Full Throttle’s watch started to chime, an alarm going off. Full Throttle met Denki’s eyes, and in that moment, Denki understood that his rescue had come just in time. An hour later, and it would have been certain disaster.

Recap of the last 75 Chapters:

Denki heard soulmate voices in his head, but instead of only hearing one, he heard two at the same time, which knocked him on his ass (literally)! Because it’s rare to find your soulmate so young, and even rarer to have two soulmates, the doctor told his parents that he most likely has early onset schizophrenia and is hallucinating (even though that’s rare for such a young age, too), but marks in his chart the potential that he might have heard his soulmates just so that the possibility can be explored more discreetly, once he’s away from his parents and so no one’s getting their hopes up just for it to not be true.

Denki is sent to Fields Mental Hospital where he meets Momo, Kyoka, and Touya and jams out during music therapy. Back in school, Hitoshi and Neito hear Denki sing and think that Hitoshi’s mental quirk is interacting with their new soulmate bond, so they are sent to Fields Mental Hospital to do some testing with Hitoshi’s quirk and their bond to see if they can determine what is going on. My OC, Hitoshi’s foster care caseworker, Wakakuro, is mentioned, but not actively introduced. Denki gets to meet Neito and Hitoshi. Neito lives up to his reputation as a frequent flier of Fields. An OC technician, Chizato, is introduced. He has a lighthearted, easygoing relationship with frequent flier, Neito.

Neito doesn’t act like he normally does around Hitoshi and Denki, and Touya wants to find out what’s going on. Denki and Neito are amazed that Touya was trained by Endeavor, so they get Touya to agree to train them after catching him up about how they had arrived on the unit together (and how it actually wasn’t Neito’s fault, for once). The QQQ (Quick, Quiet Quad) was formed, training regimens were made, and code names were dished out. Neito was deemed “Raion,” meaning lion. Denki was deemed “Tensai,” meaning genius. Touya was deemed “Aka,” meaning red. Hitoshi’s code name was deemed “Seigen,” meaning limit.

Hitoshi and Neito go through quirk-bond experiments after roping Touya and Denki into the mix. Hitoshi and Denki are amazed at how easily Neito and Touya can stand up for themselves against adults and how the adults actually listen to them and respect them because they are both used to following adults’ blind authority.

After being released from Fields, Hitoshi get placed with new foster parents, more of my OCs, the Hamabi family, consisting of his foster father, Genori, and foster mother, Hanisu. They are pretty great, but Hitoshi also had to move schools after finding his soulmate, but he luckily finds himself at Denki’s school! They go on a field trip to the zoo and have a great time after locating and rescuing Neito from a group of bullies who target him because of his quirk.

Neito’s birthday party consists of only Denki and Hitoshi. They practice using Hitoshi’s quirk and careful instructions to add to Touya’s continued training programs to add an extra level to the piñata. Denki’s birthday party is fun because Neito and Hitoshi look out for him and don’t let his other “friends” ruin his day. Denki secretly invites the others from Fields (Kyoka, Momo, Ochako, Minoru, Tenya, and Izuku) to Hitoshi’s birthday party, knowing that no one from class will show up. Neito gets ahold of Endeavor’s phone number to track down Touya so that he can crash the slumber party to hold an impromptu training the next morning. Touya dies.

Neito and Hitoshi distance themselves from Denki after they discover that they feel the same about Denki as they feel about each other. Denki spends some time with his other friends from Fields, but ultimately finds new hobbies, like playing online video games and making TikTok videos.

Neito, Hitoshi, and Denki all make it into UA. Denki and Neito face off in a battle where Neito steals his quirk with the plan to outdo him with his own quirk in front of both hero classes, but it backfires spectacularly, and Denki jumps in to undo the damage as much as possible. Bakugou is a good friend to Denki, even though he doesn’t understand what he sees in Neito and Hitoshi, and he provides Denki with some much-needed catharsis in the form of junk yard therapy. Denki makes a new connection with Shouto, and then promptly destroys the gym by almost reconnecting with Neito, getting caught almost kissing him by Hitoshi and freaking out by assuming that he must hate him for getting in between the soulmates.

The sports festival happens, Bakugou wins, and he is thrown onto stage in chains and muzzled for the effort. This is more important that whatever is going on between Denki and the soulmates, so Denki puts this all aside and asks Hitoshi and Neito for their help in leading another demonstration, which is pretty damn successful and also has the added benefit of having the whole school pretty competent with sign language.

The students are shipped off to Beasts Forest for the training camp and Neito goes wild. On top of his classes from studying with Denki instead of being preoccupied with harassing Class 1-A, Neito is able to participate in the festivities, and so he is in the forest when the League of Villains attack. Neito is an absolute menace and takes every advantage, copying Twice’s quirk to make a clone of Bakugou so they kidnap a clone instead of the real thing. He also copies Toga’s quirk and turns into Toga during a scuffle with her, but Denki is able to quickly tell them apart. Mr. Compress makes quick work of knocking Neito out and taking Denki as another captive, though.

The League of Villains find out quickly that Denki is the only student they have because the Bakugou they have is a clone. Denki recognizes that Dabi is Touya immediately and starts to worm his way into the hearts of the members of the League, one by one, starting with Shigaraki once Dabi figures out that Denki is none other than their online gaming friend that they’ve been playing regularly with for years. Denki declares his friends as off-limits, and my OC, Force Majeure, is introduced, using her quirk, Compulsion, to protect Denki from being suspected as a traitor to UA when he is ultimately returned. During the botched rescue, Shigaraki is electrocuted, and Denki ends up performing CPR and acting as an impromptu AED. He can’t tell anyone anything because of Force Majeure’s quirk, so everyone thinks that he’s been tortured instead of that he’s worried that he wasn’t able to rescue Shigaraki.

Hitoshi gets moved from his current placement with his foster parents, the Hamabis, to his pre-adoptive family including Aizawa and Yamada. Hitoshi and Neito are able to cheer Denki up, and after a visit from Toga (which Denki, at first, mistakes as a visual hallucination) in which he learns that Shigaraki had survived and is alive, he is back to his cheerful self. Hitoshi and Neito find out about Denki’s time with the League of Villains by going through his TikTok drafts, and Denki tells them some about what actually happened with the League. The boys start seeing evidence of the League’s intentions in action through their internships when villains refuse to go against or injure them. My OC, Full Throttle, is mentioned, as he is the cause of the building collapse that Denki meets my other OC, Razor, in.

Hitoshi and Neito confess their feelings to Denki and invite Denki on a waterpark date where they experience some quirk discrimination and run into Toga. During training, Neito and Hitoshi both put Denki under Hitoshi’s brainwashing quirk to gather up the nerve to kiss him for the first time.

Denki spends his internship with Hawks and has his suspicions that Hawks is the hero that was sent to infiltrate the League of Villains by the HPSC. During internships, Neito is hit by a civilian’s quirk in which he says the worst things that come to mind that are not necessarily truthful or things that he means, just things that he knows will cause pain to those hearing his comments. Hitoshi was out with Aizawa on his own internship, so Class 2-B asked Denki to help as a last resort. Everything turned out fine, but Neito was hard on himself until Bakugou took him for some junk yard therapy and blasted some sense into him. Denki corners him during a rescue mission when their internships line up and they are able to talk things out.

Denki is targeted by Full Throttle and being the self-sacrificial type, runs up a mountain to get as far away as possible from everyone else. Hitoshi and Neito go after him. Neito makes a circuit to buy some extra time while Yaoyorozu makes an insulated suit for Hitoshi so he can get close enough through all the lightning, then Hitoshi puts Denki under his quirk and commands him to shut it off, and it actually works. They make it down the mountain successfully surviving Full Throttle, something that has never been done before.

Hawks teaches Denki how to turn into lightning by pushing him past every limit he has ever known. The League of Villains corner Hawks into bringing Denki to them during patrol where it finally comes out that Denki and the League are familiar and friendly with each other, and it wasn’t what Hawks thought it was. Denki discovers that he is being targeted by the HPSC and seeks out a contract with Endeavor, which he successfully wins by proving that he’s the new fastest hero on the scene. He’s great at his job—the smiling face of the company.

Denki is targeted by Full Throttle again, out to finish what he started, this time with my OC, Phantasm, added to the mix. We learn that Full Throttle’s quirk can cut through quirk-canceling technology. Hitoshi and Neito finally meet the League of Villains and find out that Dabi is actually Touya. Light-hearted threats to Dabi’s life are made. Denki is rescued and everything promptly goes to shit when the heroes intervene, causing a lot of collateral damage with their dramatic entry. Toga is separated from her escape route, and Denki gets her to pose as him to spare her from Tartarus.

Chapter Text

Lightning Serenade: Halloween Special

**This chapter is just a bonus and has no influence on prior or upcoming chapters. Just for funsies!**

“Why are we starting on this end of the city? Over by Neito’s is where they give out the full-sized candy bars,” Hitoshi complained, dragging his feet as Denki excitedly led the way to their first stop of the evening.

Hitoshi’s eyes trailed after Denki’s stupid little devil’s tail for his devil costume. It was cute. Really cute. And it was hard to stay annoyed, so he made an effort to look away, only for his eyes to trace the outline of the halo affixed to the top of Neito’s head, streetlights dimly glinting off of the metallic material as they walked along the sidewalk. Damn it all to hell.

“We’re meeting up with some friends!” Denki chirped. “I told you already!”

“Why didn’t we just meet at UA?” Hitoshi groaned, pulling at the collar of his priest costume. “It’s where we meet any other time.”

Neito smiled, but remained silent, letting Hitoshi figure it out on his own.

Hitoshi gasped.

“There you go!” Neito chirped, joyfully swinging his candy bucket as he walked.

“We’re going trick-or-treating with villains?!” Hitoshi hissed under his breath, ducking his head down to whisper more quietly, even though no one was in earshot of the trio.

“We’ve done worse,” Denki said, shrugging.

Hitoshi opened his mouth to argue, promptly shut his mouth, then nodded in agreement. “Yeah, sure. I’m in.”

“Good, because—” Denki said as he, without warning, burst in through a street-facing door, to finish the sentence in a yell, “we’re here!”

Seeing the villains all decked out in their official attire made the heroes’ adrenaline spike, even though they all knew they were in good company. Or maybe it was seeing Hawks again, who wasn’t declared an enemy of the nation in so many words, but also wasn’t not.

“You’re going as yourselves?” Neito asked.

Hitoshi hummed and narrowed his eyes at Neito because it wasn’t judgment in his voice, but inspiration. “Why? Are you going to rush back and change your costume? You want to go as Phantom Thief instead?”

“I was thinking more like Chargebolt,” Neito quipped back without hesitation, making Hitoshi’s jaw drop.

Denki laughed. “You’d make a great Chargebolt! I’d love to try out Mindjack, and I think Hitoshi would look great as Phantom Thief. Maybe we should do that next year!”

“Where’s Dabi?” Hitoshi asked, looking around, trying to change the subject in hopes that maybe Denki would forget about this idea by the time next year rolled around. “And Toga?”

“They’re getting ready,” Spinner said.

“They’ll be out soon, and then we’ll be ready to go,” Hawks said. “We’re just waiting on them. Slow pokes!” he said, yelling out the last part.

“We’re coming, we’re coming,” Dabi said as a door opened from the hallway.

The heroes and villains alike stood in open wonderment as two Dabis stood before them. One dressed in the traditional Dabi garb, the other in a maid costume. With stockings. And cat ears.

“What?” maid-Dabi asked. “It’s suspicious if there’s exactly one member of the League in the group and they are all accurate, but if there are two Dabis and no Togas, then the suspicion fades away. Which is kind of stupid, actually, now that I think about it…”

“I think,” Hawks started, “and correct me if I’m wrong, that it’s because one of the Dabis is wearing a maid dress.”

“And looking fabulous!” Twice chimed. “Maybe I should—shouldn’t.” The group paused, waiting for Twice to finish his sentence, but he must have thought better of it because he just shrugged and leaned back against the wall.

“My question is,” Shigaraki started, “is why Toga is the normal Dabi and Dabi is the maid.”

The Dabi dressed in villain garb squealed and jumped in place. “See! I told you someone would know, Dabi!” Toga said.

“I didn’t think anyone would get it that quickly,” Dabi said. “Could you tell?” he asked Hawks.

Hawks had been nodding in agreement with Shigaraki’s question and quickly changed to shaking his head. “Uh—no?” Hawks tried.

Dabi sighed. “You could. What gave it away?”

“Just—I don’t know. The way you stand. The energy that wafts off of you. The cadence of your speech,” Hawks listed, trying to pin down what exactly gave him away.

“We just know you,” Shigaraki said. “I bet you’d be able to tell the difference between Toga and me, or Toga and Hawks. I think it’s just a… familiarity thing?”

“An intimacy thing,” Hawks tried.

“Yeah,” Shigaraki agreed easily with a nod. “That’s it.”

The group did end up making their way over to Neito’s area, because Hitoshi was right: They did give out the full-sized candy bars.

“Trick-or-treat!” the group belted as the door started to open, only to reveal Endeavor decked out in all brown.

Endeavor scowled. “That’s so insensitive,” said the master of sensitivity himself. “Dressing up as active villains,” he paused, narrowing his eyes at the back of the group, and growled, “and having a Chargebolt in the mix? Very poor taste.”

“Hi, Endeavor!” Denki chirped, waving. “What are you supposed to be?”

“Oh,” Endeavor deadpanned. “Of course, it’s the real you. Isn’t it obvious what I am?” he asked, gesturing to his plain, brown attire.

“Ah! I know!” Dabi exclaimed. “You’re a flaming pile of shit!”

The group burst into laughter; Denki tried to refrain for the sake of his boss. Endeavor frowned, looking down at his clothes.

“I’m figgy pudding,” he muttered.

The group had enough tact to nod sympathetically, barely holding in their laughter.

“Oh!” Denki said. “You need some holly or something to make it obvious that you’re going for a Christmas type thing,” he supplied helpfully.

Everyone knew as they stood there, though, that it was Shouto’s suggestion, and that he left out the idea of adding anything red and green on purpose so that people would come to the exact same conclusion that Dabi had.

Chapter Text

Denki lost track of how many checkpoints they had to go through before finally making it to the point where they could exit the truck. To be fair to himself, though, his attention was divided between trying to memorize the layout of the turns (which was intended to be confusing specifically for people like him who are good at that sort of thing) and sending various comments and light-hearted jabs in Full Throttle’s direction to try to keep up appearances that he was probably Toga without giving a definitive answer one way or another.

“Do you think if we’re in the middle of fucking when they open the doors, they’ll let their guard down enough for us to escape?” Denki asked, his internal scheming mixing with his attempts to be more like Toga resulting in the question escaping before he could think better of it.

Too much! He knew it was too much.

How was Toga so good at mimicking other people? Denki was observant, sure, but Toga’s skills went above and beyond that, Denki was realizing.

Full Throttle’s eyes traveled over Denki’s form. “I’ll pass.”

Denki scoffed, eyes narrowed in faux indignation. “Is it because of your girlfriend? I’m sure she’ll understand! It’s for the greater good!”

“Phantasm is my sister,” Full Throttle said, and Denki couldn’t say he was surprised. “And I’m sure you’ll have your work cut out for you once you can’t hold that form anymore, so you might want to save your energy.”

Denki eyed Full Throttle warily, pressing his shoulder blades against the cool metal of the truck. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, come on,” Full Throttle drawled. “I’m sure you’ve heard at least the general rumors. It’s even worse for the female prisoners.”

Denki visibly deflated, incredibly relieved that it was him instead of Toga. He knew about the rumors, of course, but it said something when someone who was as oblivious of current events as much as Full Throttle was knew about them as well.

The harsh clang of metal against metal was heard from the back of the truck as the guards prepared to unload their newest prisoners.

Full Throttle leaned forward and harshly whispered, “if I were you, I’d hold onto that form as long as humanly possible, no matter what they try to threaten or bribe you with. They won’t give you another chance to use your quirk. Understand?”

Denki nodded, and then there were guards shoving him out of the truck so harshly that he didn’t have time to hop out on his own. He fell from the drop and landed on his side on the concrete, his hands still restrained behind him. If he hadn’t had extensive training and practice with his reflexes when it came to falling, he could have really gotten hurt. He wondered how many prisoners got broken bones and concussions within their first seconds of arriving.

He glanced over at Full Throttle and was relieved that he seemed to be okay, too, even though he was receiving similar treatment.

Denki had extensive hero training to help him, but he wondered how Full Throttle was faring so well in such harsh circumstances. He was staying so calm, and even giving sound advice to someone who he saw as an adversary. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Denki figured.

“You’re in for a real treat,” the guard leered in Denki’s ear as he was hoisted roughly to his feet and shoved forward.

Denki doubted he was getting any donuts.

Denki was strip searched. That was nothing new, and he knew what to expect from his experience on Unit Beta. This time, though, it was two female guards who performed the search. Until that moment, Denki didn’t realize how much power heroes really held in the field. Just Neito and Hitoshi vouching for one Denki over another over a single answer to a simple question made everyone move full speed ahead with no hesitancy or second guessing that the heroes might be mistaken (or maliciously, purposefully incorrect).

Denki was given different clothes to change into. They were soft with age and wear, and Denki couldn’t tell if they were originally supposed to be black, navy blue, or really dark purple, but it was a faded dark mauve color by the time they were given to him.

“If you just drop your quirk, we can give you clothes that actually fit you, so they don’t fall off of you when you do change back,” one of the guards offered.

“That would be great and all,” Denki said with a shrug, “but I’m actually just me. You’ve got the wrong guy… girl? Person. You’ve got the wrong person.”

“Suit yourself. Don’t come crying to us when your pants fall right off of you in the middle of the mess hall.”

The guards paused as if Denki would magically transform into Toga, but Denki just grabbed the offered clothes, put them on, and stood at attention, ready to follow them to his next destination.

“Her funeral,” one guard had muttered to the other as they started to lead him away.

The light above the metal door changed from red to green, and there was an audible click of the door unlocking. The guard slid the door open, gave Denki a nudge inside, and closed the door behind him.

Denki’s heart raced as he looked around the room.

Blood rushed from his head and core to his extremities to prepare him to fight or run as he took in the sight of the room full of villains, and he came to the realization of why exactly they would shove him in a room full of menacing male prisoners if they really thought he was Toga.

“There she is!” a burly man said, standing up from the table where a few of the larger men were playing cards. “We’ve been waiting for you! Aren’t you gon’ turn back for us?”

Denki dropped down into a balanced stance to lower his center of gravity, but quickly realized that there was no way to fight his way out of this, and decided to back away instead, holding his hands up.

“Fellas!” he tried. “I—”

The man rushed him, pinning him up against the wall with a loud slam, a big, tattooed hand pressing tightly over Denki’s mouth. It took a second for Denki to realize that the loud noise came from the man’s forearm hitting the wall at the same time and not himself.

Denki fought back the bile rising in his throat as he tried to think of a plan, but what could he do in that situation? He didn’t have his quirk. And even if he could win against this one, there were so many more. Even if he could win against all of them, he was still locked in that damn room. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so trapped.

The man towered over him, his dark indigo hair seeming like a halo around his head from the lights behind. Denki’s vision was filled with him. He couldn’t see the others in that moment, but he could hear them. As he heard the men taunting, jeering, and hollering, he hoped that his lack of transformation into Toga would hold them off.

The man ducked his head down and Denki winced when his breath hit his ear.

“Listen carefully,” the man whispered.

And Denki did.

Because this wasn’t the voice he had heard before. It wasn’t leering. It wasn’t threatening. It was urgent, and almost pleading.

“We know you’re Toga. You have to believe that the last thing we want to do is piss off the League of Villains, yeah? If the guards aren’t satisfied that we thoroughly messed you up, they’ll take it upon themselves to do the job right, and you might not make it out of that alive. Do you understand?”

Denki nodded, then reached up and pried the hand off of his mouth, just enough to quietly whisper back, “but I’m not Toga. I’m really Chargebolt. Kaminari Denki.”

The man pulled back and eyed Denki, surprised. There was no lull in the noise that the other men were making, and Denki realized that they weren’t even paying attention to them but focused on covering up any sign of the conversation that the big man was trying to have with their intended victim.

They were being monitored.

Denki’s eyes traveled around, but he couldn’t see any cameras or recording devices. Then he realized that’s why the man was crowding him in like that—so that the cameras couldn’t pick up on Denki’s reactions when they tried to explain to him what was going on and his few shitty options to pick from.

“I don’t know how long you can hold that form, but you’ll have to drop it eventually, and—”

“I’m not Toga. I’m really Chargebolt,” he insisted.

“Chargebolt?” the man asked, hopeful trepidation in his eyes.

Denki nodded. “Can you tell me more about what happens in here?”

The man stood up straight, threw his head back, and laughed. The room had gone silent. Everyone who had been pretending to be leering and speaking loudly about what they were going to do to Toga as soon as she turned back were looking in their direction, stricken and confused about the change in plan on the fly.

“Care to play some poker?” the man asked, gesturing toward the table that he had been at before Denki arrived, wiping gleeful tears from his eyes even as more rushed to replace them, shoulders shaking with the effort of staving off another laughing fit.

“Only if you care to lose,” Denki quipped, already gliding over to take a seat.

Once the ambient noise from the men participating in various activities around the room picked up again, the discreet comments went from table to table until everyone knew that the newcomer was claiming to actually be Pro Hero Chargebolt and not Toga in disguise.

And once again, Denki was impressed. Heroes had to know everything the second there was something to know (though that wasn’t necessarily a flaw; communication was key, after all). Villains, though, could bide their time and allow the information to come to them at the best time instead of charging forth and demanding to know. If it was a room full of heroes, the guards would have been swarming the room, already knowing that something was going on by the hushed whispers and glances in Denki’s direction. But because they were villains who grew up differently than most, who had different experiences to fall back on than most, the guards were probably just confused as to how Toga convinced all the convicts to play cards with her instead of the nefarious acts they had originally been planning.

“Is it always like that for the female inmates?” Denki asked as he drew another card and looked consideringly across the table.

“Yeah,” the man to his right answered easily, not giving anything away for any guards who might be monitoring the cameras.

“Luckily there aren’t many who are notorious enough to warrant being sent here,” the one to Denki’s left added as he threw some more poker chips in the center of the table. “Raise.”

“We’ve gotten good at making it look convincing enough. Make enough rips in the clothes in the right places…”

“Grab a little too tightly to leave some bruises…”

“Have her fight back. It won’t look realistic if we don’t come out of it without any scratches or bruises ourselves.”

“Then we all just align ourselves where the cameras can’t exactly tell for sure what’s going on, and we just make them believe they’re seeing what they want to see.”

“It’s pretty easy to make they see what we want them to see,” the one to Denki’s left said. “They think we’re all irredeemable monsters, so in what universe would we pass up the opportunity and go through all the trouble to pull the wool over their eyes? They’ve never once followed up with anything. I don’t think they’ve ever even been suspicious.”

“But why do they do this?” Denki asked.

“They’re cruel bastards. Plus, it gives them more ammo against us if we were to ever find evidence to prove our innocence, or at least lessen our sentences.”

“But, hey. Now that the people’s hero is here, maybe things are going to start changing for the better.”

Denki did a double take. “I’m sorry. What? The people’s…”

“Chargebolt: The people’s hero. That’s what the underground circuit is calling you.”

“I heard that you saved Razor during a building collapse! Word is that you helped him even after you realized he was a villain. That’s cool shit, Chargebolt.”

“Stain, the crazy bastard, has claimed you as a true hero. He’s fucked, but he has hella high standards.”

“Not to mention that everyone knows that the League of Villains is looking out for you.”

“Everyone?” Denki repeated warily.

“All the villains,” the man corrected. “The heroes don’t know, and they won’t be finding out. Lest we face the wrath of the League of Villains,” he said in a faux creepy voice, wiggling fingers and all. Still, the mention of getting on the League’s bad side made the men around the table look uneasy.

When the door opened to reveal a long line of guards, the inmates lined up, and Denki followed their lead.

“Let us know if you need anything else. We’ll spread the word that you’re not to be messed with, that you’re the real deal. You won’t have to worry about the other prisoners.”

“Thanks,” Denki said, trying to convey his appreciation through his voice because he had nothing else to offer. “I have a feeling I’ll need all the help I can get.”

“Damn,” the guard who grabbed Denki said as he took in Denki’s intact appearance. “They found out you’re Toga, didn’t they? Bunch of fuckin’ scaredy cats. Just you wait, honey. When you turn back, I’ll show you that you’re not as on top of the world as you think you are.”

“Are you going to hold your breath?” Denki sassed.

The guard shoved him forward toward his cell—his new home for the next five hundred years if the Hero Public Safety Commission had anything to say about it.

Chapter Text

Toga, looking, sounding, and acting exactly like Denki, took a running leap at Hitoshi and Neito, who caught her easily.

“I knew you guys would know it’s me!” she said in Denki’s voice. “I can always count on you!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Neito said, flashing Toga a small smile as he wandered off to let the other heroes know that they were taking their boyfriend home.

Hitoshi made a show of checking Toga over.

Toga’s breath caught in her throat when she realized it wasn’t an act, when she realized that he was genuinely concerned for her wellbeing, when she realized that the smile he beamed her way wasn’t forced in the slightest. He was truly relieved that she was okay, even when it was his soulmate who was taken in her stead.

When the tears flowed over, Hitoshi asked, “what’s wrong?” and everyone within earshot looked in their direction.

“I just love you both so much,” Toga declared loudly before flinging herself forward to once again be wrapped in Hitoshi’s arms.

The other heroes laughed and went back to what they were doing, beginning clean up or starting on their required paperwork mostly. Neito made his way back over after getting the all-clear to take their worn-out boyfriend back home, ‘his’ emotional outburst just then more than proving that he had been through more than enough to justify missing out on clean up duty. (Especially because they had only destroyed a single wall instead of sending the whole building crashing down, thank you very much.)

“Calm down, peacemaker,” Hitoshi murmured as he tightened his hold on her, helping to ground her. “We’ve got you.”

And there it was. Total confirmation that they knew she was Toga. If she wasn’t completely sure before, she knew then.

“I’m so sorry!” she practically wailed once they were finally alone.

Neito shot her an incredulous look. “Uh… For what?”

“Don’t act oblivious, Nei,” Hitoshi admonished, schooling his face as to not give away his intentions. “She’s obviously sorry that she hasn’t come to visit us sooner.”

Neito snapped his fingers and nodded in quick agreement. “Right, right. You should have, you know. But, luckily for you, we’re pretty forgiving people.”

“What—no! You just found out that you’re all soulmates, and he went and sacrificed himself for me, and then you both just played along! I owe you all so much! Big time! Huge!” Toga continued, getting louder and faster in her anxiety.

“Maybe you should let the League know that you’re fine before they attempt to storm Tartarus,” Hitoshi offered as a distraction, tossing her Denki’s phone.

She caught it, pausing in her rant to look between the two. “You should hate me, or at least be annoyed with me, I guess. It would suck if you hated me after what you just did.”

“We don’t hate you,” Hitoshi reassured. “Now let’s get everyone together so we can go over Denki’s plan, yeah?”

“How did you know Denki told me a plan?” Toga asked.

“Denki always has a plan,” Neito chirped. “We’ll explain more once everyone’s together.”

When Toga texted simple coordinates to Kurogiri, and seconds later a portal opened up, Hitoshi and Neito shared a narrow-eyed glance.

“We definitely need to get in on this whole League business thing,” Neito declared, and Hitoshi nodded enthusiastically as they followed Toga through the warp gate.

The League members were gathered around, all attention on the three as they entered through the gate.

“They have Toga?” Shigaraki asked when it was clear that no fourth person was coming through the gate.

Toga laughed nervously. “Not exactly,” she said as the vision of Denki melted to reveal her own form underneath.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Dabi said as he rushed forward to envelop her in a hug.

“Where is Kaminari, then?” Spinner asked.

“Tartarus,” Hitoshi answered.

Before anyone could react, Toga blurted, “I’m so sorry! I changed into him, and we tricked them into thinking that I was the real him and he was actually me pretending to be him, and then they took him away! How can they do that? How can they just take him away?!”

“Don’t be sorry,” Dabi said, shushing her as he held her head against his chest. “It’s easier to break people out when we have you. It’s easier to get him out with you helping than to get you out.”

“That’s what he said,” Toga admitted, though everyone could tell from her tone that it didn’t make her feel any better.

"Won’t they figure out pretty quickly that he’s actually himself, anyway?” Spinner asked.

“Well, hopefully not too quickly!” Neito chimed. “He’s been dying to get into Tartarus!”

The villains kind of paused in their scheming to look over at the heroes, who were just making themselves at home, wandering through the base to plant themselves at the bar and accepting water from Kurogiri with a grateful nod.

“What?” Twice asked so eloquently, standing there with his head tilted, utter confusion seen even through his mask.

Toga sniffed, took a breath, and said, “he did say to tell you not to make a scene about them having your soulmate unrightfully imprisoned until he sang his alert song.”

“Oh!” Neito said, perking up. “Should we say that we’re soulmates? The Hero Commission doesn’t know yet, and it seems to already be serving us well that they don’t.”

“I think just the fact that our supposed boyfriend disappeared, and Toga made a reappearance would be enough to convince everyone that they have the wrong person,” Hitoshi said. “I don’t think we have to mention the soulmate thing at all.”

“Right,” Neito said. “Until then, will you continue to pose as Denki, Toga?”

Toga took a deep breath, pulled away from leaning on Dabi to stand of her own accord, and nodded. “I’ll just have to sneak into Tartarus to get more blood. I’m running low on Denki’s.”

“I’ll just have to sneak into Tartarus,” Neito mocked, rolling his eyes.

Toga smirked. “What? Like it’s hard?” Turning to Hawks, she asked, “care to fill me in on the floor plan?”

Neito was about to argue that it couldn’t be that easy to just waltz into Tartarus and back out again undetected, but then a familiar figure caught his eye.

“You,” he snarled as he slid off the barstool and stalked forward toward his target.

Mr. Compress held his hands up in easy surrender. “I apologize for knocking you out.”

“What? I don’t care about that! Denki said you’d be able to teach me how to marbleize people!”

Mr. Compress lifted his mask to reveal an easygoing smile. “Sure, but you have to go all in, or you can end up doing some damage,” he warned. “We’ll start with inanimate objects, just to be safe!”

He slid the glove off of his hand and held it outstretched toward Neito in offering, and already cackling and eyes alit with mischief, Neito arose to the challenge.

“You’re next,” he warned, pointing at Twice from across the room. “My clones are going to be better than the damn originals by the time I’m done with you!”

“Better than the originals?” Twice muttered to himself, trying to figure out how that was possible, exactly, as Neito started taking instruction from Mr. Compress.

-.-.-

“Here she is,” the guard announced, pushing Denki forward into the infirmary.

He stumbled from the force of the shove. He’d normally be able to handle it, but not after the beating that he’d received from the guards. He was sore and a little out of it from when they’d punched him in the face, and he could already feel his eye swelling up, the tingling in his nose from the impact still not having subsided.

Denki doubted there’d be donuts or any magic healing ladies.

The guard was gone as quickly as he’d come, and the nurse was there, helping Denki to his feet. She was surprisingly gentle, but he figured that the doctors and nurses still had to abide by the do-no-harm thing, even when working in a place like that. That didn’t seem to matter when it came to using the biggest needles and jabbing him with extra force every time it came time to give him another dose of quirk nullification drug, but he would take any kindness where he could get it.

The nurse hissed like she was the one in pain when she finally got Denki onto the exam table, only for him to slump backwards into it.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he reassured, waving her off with an uncoordinated hand. “I’m just glad to be lying down, is all.”

“Yeah, that’s real convincing,” she said with a snort, but she did move away to grab the materials to run some tests.

When she came back to his side, she quickly wrapped a tourniquet around his bicep and wiped off the junction of his elbow with an alcohol prep pad.

“Oh, hey,” Denki said, turning his head in her direction. “Just to warn you, my—oh…” he paused, wondering if maybe he did sustain a concussion after all when he saw the clear tubing fill with red as the nurse began to expertly fill collection tubes before replacing them with empty ones. “Huh… the only one who has ever gotten my veins that easily is…”

The nurse shot him a sharp smile and a wink.

Denki sat up bolt straight, or tried to, but Toga was there, pushing him back down. “You’re injured,” she admonished.

“Yeah, and they still think I’m you,” he informed.

They sat in silence, staring at each other as the implications of that settled in.

“What happened?”

“They said that if I wasn’t going to change back so they could treat me like a woman, they would show me what it means to be a man.”

Toga swallowed. “I never got to thank you—”

“Seriously, there’s no need.”

“Hitoshi and Neito have been saying the same thing,” she said. “But thank you anyway.”

Denki smiled, and Toga knew that was as much acceptance of her thanks as she was going to get. To him, he didn’t need thanked because that’s what a hero does, and a hero is, by definition, a largely thankless job. In cases like this, it should be, because anyone would do this if they could, he thinks.

“How’d you manage to get in here, anyway?” Denki asked.

“It’s easier than you’d think,” Toga said, shrugging. “With some blueprints, Hawks’s expertise on the layout, some insiders who don’t mind having a day off, and everyone having their guard down because they think the shapeshifter is already on the inside… it was so easy, Denki.”

“Much easier to get in and out than to just break out, I’d imagine,” Denki said.

“Yeah,” Toga agreed. “You were right to do what you did, but it’s not easy for a villain to be saved by a hero. It’s hard to wrap my head around, even after learning about your ulterior motives.”

“What about a friend being saved by a friend?” Denki asked.

Toga paused. “Yeah, I can live with that.”

“Good, because I might need saving in the near future. It’s a lot worse in here than I’d imagined it would be.”

“Do you need extracted right now?” Toga asked, pulling the tube free and placing the end of the tubing in her mouth, allowing Denki’s blood to flow right from the source.

Denki laughed. “I don’t doubt that you could, really, but I feel like I’m still needed here a bit longer. I think there’s still more for me to see. The other inmates call me the people’s hero. Did you know about that?”

Toga put pressure on Denki’s arm before pulling the needle out and wrapping his arm up, pulling the tubing from her mouth and pocketing the vials of blood she had collected. “I’ve heard it a few times, but I didn’t know that it caught on so much that it had even become popular in here. All the prisoners have been kind to you, then?” Toga asked, a threatening tilt to her voice not going unnoticed.

“Yes. Thanks to the League, my reputation precedes me.”

“Uh… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure,” Denki said, rolling his eyes before wincing, making a mental note not to do that again when his eye was in the process of swelling shut. “It’s admirable how you all stick so strictly to that story. How are Hitoshi and Neito?”

“They’re great. I thought they’d be so mad at me, but they were all like, ‘typical Denki.’ Neito is picking up a bunch of new skills, but you’ll never guess which quirk out of everyone’s is his favorite.”

Denki hummed in thought. Neito loves to master the complicated, and he had done so well with Twice’s the first time, so he guessed it would probably be Twice’s or Mr. Compress’s.

“Mr. Compress’s?” Denki guessed.

“Shigaraki’s!” Toga blurted.

“No!” Denki gasped.

“Yes!” Toga squealed. “And you should see the look on Shigaraki’s face every time! Neito will decay something, go absolutely nuts cackling about it, and muttering to himself about how he will rule the planet. Hitoshi will sit in the corner with Spinner, making loud commentary about how Neito always said that you spent too much time with Midoriya, and now look at Neito muttering to himself like a nut. Then Neito will chase Hitoshi around, hand outstretched and laughing like he does. Then when Neito catches Hitoshi, and Hitoshi laughs and doesn’t even flinch away from him… I heard Shigaraki tell Dabi that he was starting to understand why he was never afraid of him, and why Denki was never afraid of him, or well, his quirk, I guess.”

“I’m glad they’re all getting along. Is Neito threatening to decay my face off because I kept Dabi’s secret from them?” Denki asked.

“No…” Toga said, but her eyes were looking everywhere except for at Denki. When she did look at Denki again and saw his unimpressed look, she sighed. “He was muttering about using Mr. Compress’s quirk to cut you in half—”

“Oh, no!” Denki gasped. If he had pearls to clutch, he’d be clutching them.

“—but! But! Dabi had spent some time with him and Hitoshi. I think he’s just mad that he would have done the same thing in your position, so he has nothing to be mad about.”

“He can be mad with no reason,” Denki said. “I’ve never minded.”

Toga smiled. “I’ll let him know.” Toga turned away before Denki could see her smile sharpen because she knew it would only piss Neito off even more.

“Don’t tell him!” Denki pleaded. “It won’t make him feel better!”

Toga scoffed and rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath about ruining her fun.

Toga filled Denki in on where there were cameras and where there weren’t. She also let him know that the soulmates had discussed not letting anyone know that Denki was their soulmate, and asked what Denki thought about it.

“That’s actually really smart,” Denki said. “I think that’s perfect. We can use it to our advantage longer if people don’t realize that we can communicate this way while we’re apart.”

“We all knew you’d agree easily, but I still don’t see how. If I was in your position, I think I’d scream it from the rooftops that I had soulmates and those soulmates were mine and I was theirs,” Toga said. “It’s cool how you three are so secure that you don’t have to have everyone knowing every little thing to make it real.”

“It’s always been this way,” Denki said with a shrug, looking up at the ceiling and picturing his soulmates. “They’ve always treated me as an equal to each other, and I’ve never felt out of place with them. It never really mattered how the rest of the world saw us, because I knew that they would always bring me back into the fold, even if someone else didn’t see us all on the same level.”

“They’re just as secure in you, you know?” Toga said. “When I freaked out about what happened, about you being locked in here, they were just like, ‘typical Denki, at it again.’ They have so much faith and trust in you, just like you have in them and us to trust that we’ll be there when you need us to get you out of here.”

“To be fair, they’ve had a lot of practice in that department,” Denki said, looking at Toga with a narrowed gaze through his one good eye as his other one got closer and closer to being completely swollen shut.

“If you mean the fact that they’ve had to experience you being taken by villains and somehow coming out unharmed multiple times… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, uh huh, sure.”

Chapter Text

Dashing through the snow…

“Showtime!” Hitoshi declared, bounding to his feet and hoisting a laughing Toga up behind him, yanking her to standing by her wrist. “Ready to make an appearance?”

“As Denki?” Toga asked.

“Nope! As your beautiful self!” Hitoshi gushed, squinting his eyes and poking Toga on the nose.

Toga giggled, her eyes crinkling with the force of the smile overtaking her face. “Flattery will get you everywhere!”

“Oh, he knows,” Neito deadpanned with a targeted glare as he stood up on his own, without help from his soulmate as he was too busy helping someone else, and stretched, lifting his arms over his head. He continued to watch as Hitoshi’s eyes were drawn to his stomach as the hemline of his shirt was lifted from his movements during his stretch, and his glare fell into a faux innocent, questioning look. “Collecting all the blondes, Tosh?”

“Gotta catch ‘em all!” Hitoshi said and stuck out his tongue at Neito. Neito smiled cheekily in return.

-.-.-

“This is a mess,” the man grumbled, his eyes switching between the two televisions in the break room, both on different news stations.

Nato Hachisho was a simple man. He figured that being the public relations manager of the Hero Public Safety Commission wouldn’t be too challenging, and it had worked for a few years. They had a lot to lose, so they would tread carefully and not put him in difficult situations, right?

Wrong.

One television was turned to channel four; it was muted with captions turned on. The pretty pink-haired newscaster wore a grim expression on her face as she explained the recent developments of how notorious villain Toga Himiko was spotted along with Spinner, speeding down the freeway. The man cringed as the newscaster was replaced with shaky, amateur cell phone footage of a red beater car with Spinner behind the wheel, a focused grimace on his face as he sped past. Toga was hanging haphazardly out the passenger side window, quickly securing her equipment back into the car with seemingly little regard for herself. The camera changed position back to where the car was coming from to see a frazzled Present Mic rounding the corner, yelling about her taking his blood. By the time Present Mic had reached the civilian who was recording on the cell phone, the red car was no where in sight, and the captions read that the civilian excitedly asked Present Mic for his autograph. The footage tilted and jolted, probably as the civilian reached for something for Present Mic to sign, and Present Mic’s incredulous look was quickly replaced by the corner of a skyscraper and the glare of the sun.

Maybe the Hero Public Safety Commission could have run damage control and assured the public that it must have been Twice’s clone posed as Toga in an attempt to break the real Toga out of Tartarus in some elaborate scheme. There were a few problems with that idea, though. The League hadn’t even made a single attempt toward Tartarus. There hasn’t even been any scouting of the location that anyone has picked up on, which was strange. As far as everyone could tell, Toga was a vital asset to the League, so they figured that this was their chance to start picking them off one by one as they tried to come to her rescue.

The other problem happened to be broadcasting to the public on channel six news. The man turned his attention to the other television, the one that had its volume turned up past its normal low background murmur.

The newscaster whose head looked like the top of a half-melted candlestick was talking quickly, his voice wavering up and down with empathetic emotion as he interviewed the two Pro Heroes on-site with Tartarus looming in the background.

“When did you realize that villain Toga Himiko had tricked everyone into believing that she was the real Chargebolt?” the newscaster asked.

“It wasn’t until a few hours ago,” Hitoshi said, his voice rough and his eyes deep set and red rimmed. He ducked his head and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration before shaking his head and immediately perking up again, like he was just remembering that he was on screen and had a task to accomplish and couldn’t break down until later. Neito placed a reassuring hand on Hitoshi’s shoulder, but Hitoshi didn’t look back at him. It was probably a good thing because Neito didn’t look any better.

“Fucking hell,” Nato muttered to himself, his coffee long forgotten on the break room table. Coffee couldn’t fix this. Nothing short of a miracle could. Maybe some groveling and begging of forgiveness? Yeah, he’d have to suggest that at the emergency meeting taking place in eight minutes.

“We don’t know how—” Neito started when it was clear that Hitoshi wasn’t going to continue, but then Neito’s voice choked itself off. The newscaster waited patiently as Neito cleared his voice, took a breath, and tried again. “We don’t know how she tricked us as long as she did. There should have been something that gave her away, but even now, thinking back…”

“There was nothing,” Hitoshi said, reaching down and intertwining his fingers with Neito’s, finally looking over and meeting his eyes.

“Still,” Neito said. “We’ve been inseparable since middle school. We should have known.”

“Please excuse my saying so,” the newscaster said. “But Toga has not lasted so long as a free villain without being very talented and skilled. I think it’s easy to look from the outside and say, ‘that could never happen to me,’ until, quite frankly, it does. Chargebolt is the public face of Endeavor’s agency, so it would be easy for anyone to get a good feel for his personality and mannerisms. I would also say that it’s easier to replicate the personality of such a bright and happy person.”

Reluctantly, the Pro Heroes nodded.

“That’s why we need him out,” Neito said. “Now. He’s never done anything wrong. He’s the best hero ever, and he doesn’t deserve to be punished for anything, let alone being locked up in Tartarus over a mistake.”

Hitoshi nodded his agreement, picking up steam. “Right. And now they’re saying that they can’t be sure either way, but the Chargebolt in there hasn’t transformed back into Toga, and there’s a Toga out here on the outside, and the Chargebolt that came back with us is gone. I don’t know what more proof they need to give us our boyfriend back!”

“Boyfriend?” the newscaster inquired.

“That’s right,” Neito said, stepping forward. “Maybe it’s discrimination! We’re good heroes, aren’t we?! So, what does it matter that Mindjack and I are soulmates and also love Chargebolt just as much as we love each other? Whose business is that? Are they doing this to separate us?! Why is that so wrong?! Who are we hurting?!” Neito continued, growing more and more hysterical as he continued until he collapsed, sobbing. Hitoshi fell right along with him, holding him close, and squeezing his eyes shut to hold off his own tears.

“The public deserves to know,” the newscaster said, speaking directly to the camera. “Who exactly is being held in Tartarus right now: the villain Toga, or beloved hero Chargebolt? What is the reason that this has not been resolved already? Could it be discrimination against something as pure as love? A conspiracy to keep three separated? Tune in tonight for channel six exclusive updates or follow live updates on our website.”

“Fucking hell,” the man repeated, reaching for the remote to turn the volume back down to it’s low rumble. What else was there to say?

Reluctantly, the man visited channel six’s website, and already there were comments pouring in, raging against any and all authority over Tartarus and heroes in general. Some were pissed that the heroes had to out their relationship in the first place to have anything done about it, stating that heroes deserve to have privacy, too.

While not many people kept up with Mindjack after he left UA, people loved Phantom Thief’s personality and versatility, and everyone absolutely loved Chargebolt. There was no way that this was going to go away quietly, not now.

The man stood up, feeling like he aged fifty years in five minutes, and headed toward the board room for the meeting. He took some deep breaths and prayed that Tartarus had treated Chargebolt well.

When he entered the board room and saw pictures of Chargebolt in the infirmary with a black eye and busted lip, people already arguing over whether or not he deserved it based on if he was actually Chargebolt or not, he could have screamed. Maybe he did scream, actually, based on the way everyone stopped and looked at him with wide eyes. The room was finally silent.

“Let’s begin,” he said.

His throat hurt a little. He definitely screamed.

There was a lot of back and forth as everyone got up to speed with all of the information that was known. Then it was time for ideas to be offered.

At one point, one agent said, “well, Chargebolt didn’t go to the press after we tried to recruit him while he was still at UA.”

“What?” Nato practically snarled. “That’s against the contract you have with UA.”

“Yeah,” another agent said, tapping her long nails against the tabletop in boredom. “He knew that, too.”

Nato took a deep breath. Then another. Then another.

When the first agent opened his mouth to speak, Nato deadpanned, “shut the fuck up.” The agent wisely did as he was told.

After a good two minutes of deep breathing, Nato said, “I’m ready to start hearing suggestions and brainstorming. Before we start, I’m putting rules in place. If it’s illegal or against a contract that is already in place, the agent who suggests it is going to stand in the corner for five minutes.”

“You can’t—”

“Corner.”

“But—”

“Corner,” Nato repeated, pointing his finger in the direction of the preferred corner that the agent should put his nose in.

After a brief staring competition, the agent did as he was told.

“Our contract says that you’ll do as I say, so going against what I say is breach of contract, which means you stand in the corner. This isn’t a democracy, as all of you have eagerly taken advantage of. Now you’re all going to know how it feels to be on the inferior end of the pecking order. Am I understood?”

Reluctantly, everyone nodded and averted their gazes.

“Great!” Nato chirped with sarcastic enthusiasm that made those closest to him flinch. “Now let’s get started, shall we?”

What Nato, the agents at the Hero Public Safety Commission, and many other major hero agencies and their staff didn’t see due to being in the middle of their own major meetings, was what happened right after the commercial break.

When the cameras went down, Hitoshi and Neito thanked channel six staff for helping them out, and channel six was glad to do it, even though some of them were a little concerned about how different Hitoshi and Neito were on camera versus off. As soon as the cameras were off, they wiped the tears away, stood up, stretched, and cracked their backs, and were talking and bantering with those around them like nothing was wrong.

They weren’t sure what was going on, but channel six loved Denki. He treated them great, and even showed them favoritism from time to time, so anything that would benefit Denki, even if it wasn’t the 100% the truth, was actually fine with them.

“Is he really your boyfriend?” one of the camera women asked.

She had a special vested interest in Chargebolt and had been following his career since she spotted him in the sports festival his first year at UA. She had an electrical-based quirk, too, though it didn’t have nearly the amount of kick that Denki’s did. It was perfect for keeping the cameras online when every other news station’s failed, though.

“Yeah. Has been since high school,” Hitoshi said, accepting a bottle of water with a nod of thanks from the van driver.

“Oh…”

“You’re wondering why we seem to be fine, then,” Neito said. It wasn’t a question.

The woman shrugged. “It’s none of my business, so I didn’t ask.”

I’m beggin’, beggin’ you, so put your loving hand out, baby…

“He’s the friendliest, most outgoing person I’ve ever met,” Neito answered anyway. “He makes friends with everyone, basically. Everyone loves him, heroes and villains alike, because he treats everyone with dignity and respect. Plus, he’s a damn good hero, and he can take care of himself.”

“You sound like you speak from experience,” the woman commented with a knowing smile.

“He’s given us quite a few heart attacks in the past, yes,” Hitoshi quipped with a laugh. “It always works out, though.”

At that moment, there was a loud crash behind them. The heroes and the crew turned around to watch a section of the roof of Tartarus crumble. They stood there, wide eyed and silent. A few seconds later, flashes of lighting started to emit out from the new hole in the building. Hitoshi and Neito swore and started running forward. The camera crew started to run the cameras again.

Before they even made it ten steps in, there was a flash of bright light and a crack of thunder. Hitoshi and Neito tracked the lightning through the daytime sky, straining their eyes to see the lightning head west, so that is the direction they headed in, too.

-.-.-

The day after Toga’s visit was when the guards started acting more hesitantly with Denki, and he knew that they were finally starting to question if he was really Toga or maybe telling the truth about being Chargebolt. They were muttering their commands and still shoving him around some, but not as forcefully. They were interacting with him as little as humanly possible and avoiding eye contact.

Denki figured that it was time, so he sang his alert song the second he was alone long enough to do so to start to get his exit plan in motion.

What he didn’t expect was for them to try to continue to kill him, anyway, even suspecting that he might really be Chargebolt.

The guards still lined him up that morning to receive his daily dose of quirk nullifying injection, and the nurse still used a larger than necessary needle, in Denki’s opinion, so at least that wasn’t any different.

After he ate the barely edible mush they called lunch and played a few rounds of various card games as he made his way around the tables during recreational time, chatting with the inmates and gathering more evidence against the place, he was beckoned over to the door.

When he asked where they were going, they wouldn’t answer him. When they shoved him yet again through another door with it locking behind him with a click, he stumbled into the room only to find an empty room with only Full Throttle in it.

Full Throttle had been sitting on the floor with his back against the concrete brick wall but jumped to standing when Denki was introduced to the room.

“You can’t lock us in here together—” Full Throttle started to protest, but his words died on his lips as the doors locked behind Denki. He quickly realized that no one cared about his rights and whether he knew them or not. He apparently wouldn’t be alive long enough to complain that they were violated if the guards had anything to say about it.

“Listen, Toga,” Full Throttle started, backing away from her with his hands up to show that he didn’t want to fight. “I swear I didn’t know that Chargebolt was under the League’s protection. I’m not stupid or reckless! I’m just ignorant and uniformed, okay?”

“I’m not actually Toga,” Denki admitted finally with an easy shrug. “I’m Chargebolt.”

“And I’ll support that. I’ll tell the guards that I believe that, okay? Whatever you want. I just think we don’t need to be enemies here. Us trying to kill each other would just be giving them what they want, you know? We already have it rough enough as it is with the guards after us,” Full Throttle said, gesturing vaguely toward Denki’s face to indicate the bruising. “Uh… how have you been, by the way? Are you okay? You know what—never mind. I shouldn’t have asked. It's none of my business. Sorry.”

“Kill each other?” Denki repeated, circling back.

Full Throttle paled. He sighed, dragging a hand down his face. “Well, you killing me. We already know how this would end if it came down to it, yeah?”

“It wouldn’t be very heroic of me to kill somebody,” Denki said lightly. He couldn’t exactly imagine standing over a dead body, proclaiming ‘Plus Ultra!’ with pride any time soon. Some heroes might be able to justify the image if that body was that of a villain, but even then, Denki just couldn’t picture it.

Full Throttle looked at him then. Really looked at him.

“Chargebolt?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Denki said.

“Huh,” Full Throttle said, and just continued to look at Denki like he had never seen anything quite like him before. “Sucks to be us.”

Denki laughed, found a spot against the wall opposite to where Full Throttle had been sitting, adjacent to the door he’d been shoved through, and slid down against it to sit on the floor. After a hesitant moment, Full Throttle did the same on the other side of the room, reclaiming his original place.

“You really did take Toga’s place, then,” Full Throttle said. “Or did you just play along so I wouldn’t catch on while we were locked together in that truck?”

“Maybe a little of both,” Denki said, “for the truck part, at least. I totally saved Toga’s ass back there, though! It was a team effort, so I can’t take all the credit. We—"

“I’m sorry,” Full Throttle said suddenly.

“What?” Denki asked dumbly.

“For what I said in the truck about you not coming to her rescue, when obviously you did. It was a low blow anyway because I thought there was no way for you to actually do that, and yet here you are. You’re something else completely, and I regret targeting you at all.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Denki said with a nod.

“For what?” Full Throttle asked incredulously.

“For making fun of your villain name,” Denki said with a nod.

Full Throttle laughed for the first time since he was shoved into that damn truck. It was funny, too, he thought, because the last time he laughed before that was because of Denki, too.

“Apology accepted, though I do think you had my best interests in mind. Do you have any suggestions for an updated name if I ever make it out of here?” Full Throttle asked.

Denki hummed. “Depends on if you want to continue to be a villain or if you want to take a vigilante or hero route, really.”

“What?”

“Eleven would be cool.”

“Wait! Back up! First of all, Eleven is that girl from Stranger Things—”

“Oh, so you know about Stranger Things, but you don’t know that Chargebolt is under the protection of the League of Villains, huh? Likely story!” Denki teased.

“Second of all,” Full Throttle continued, completely ignoring Denki’s interjection, though he couldn’t help the smile on his face, “I’m already a villain. A villain can’t wake up one day and decide to be a hero instead.”

“Why not?” Denki asked.

Full Throttle squinted at Denki from across the room. “You’re actually serious?”

“Of course! My friend and colleague, Pro Hero Deku, is great at quirk analysis! He would be able to give you great options about where you’d fit in perfectly!”

“Even if anyone could just overlook my past—”

“It’s been done before,” Denki chirped.

Full Throttle rolled his eyes. “—my quirk takes two weeks to recharge after I use it. Every time. I would be useless.”

“I think we should leave that for the professional analyzer to decide, don’t you think?”

“But—”

“That’s what professionals are for, of course.”

“You—”

“I liked you before,” Denki said. “But I like you even more now that we’re on more equal footing. This is nice.”

Full Throttle snorted but didn’t disagree.

“I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. You’re not anything like I imagined Toga to be,” Full Throttle said, crossing his legs in front of him and leaning back against the wall.

Denki barked out a laugh. “I definitely thought I blew my cover with every word out of my mouth on the way here! But as soon as we got here, I told the guards and nurses and everyone that I’m actually me, but of course they didn’t believe me. I couldn’t tell them that I’m Toga though, or that would come back on me once I get out of here. I’m pretty sure they’ve figured out I’m not Toga now, though, or at least they suspect it. But now they shove me in here with you, anyway? If they weren’t dosing us all up with quirk nullification drugs, I’d truly believe that they were trying to kill me!”

It seemed like a long time before Full Throttle spoke again. He just stared across the vast expanse of the empty room, the glare of the fluorescent lights harsh on their eyes.

“They haven’t given me a single dose.”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean they haven’t given you a single dose?” Denki asked. “You still have your quirk intact?”

“Yeah,” Full Throttle admitted, but seemed to almost shrink in on himself. “They made a game out of it to try to tempt me to use it. Every guard they put me with and every prisoner I come into contact with has a quirk that would backfire against me if I used my quirk on them or it wouldn’t do much of anything at all.”

Denki paled. “They really are trying to kill us.”

“Yeah,” Full Throttle agreed, his eyes scanning over Denki. “And if I was still dead set on killing you and didn’t care that I’d bring myself down with you, I could finally finish the job.”

Denki’s eyes locked on Full Throttle’s as he sat up pin straight against the wall. “You said earlier that you quirk bypasses quirk-canceling technology…”

Full Throttle sighed and leaned back against the wall, nodding at Denki’s unspoken question. “It cuts through quirk-nullifying drugs like they aren’t even there. Burns right through them within seconds and then you’re blasting at full force once again.”

When Full Throttle met Denki’s eyes, he didn’t expect to see awe, but yet there it was, plain as day. He should have been scared. He should have been up, pounding at the door, demanding they get him out of there, name-dropping and throwing around any threats he could think of to just get the hell out of reach.

Endeavor will have a field day with this! Having the face of his agency shoved in this room with a villain like some common criminal! Phantom Thief will have your head! And so will the goddamn League of Villains, apparently!

That’s what Denki should have been saying. That’s what Full Throttle would have tried in his position anyway, and yet…

“You’re amazing!” Denki praised, just in case Full Throttle might have missed the look in his eyes or mistaken it for something else. “Everyone here is underestimating you! What do you say we get out of here?”

Full Throttle’s face contorted into a skeptical sneer. “What part about what I just said made you think that was a good idea?”

Denki laughed. “So, I have this ability to turn into lightning, right? And I have this theory that—”

“Wait,” Full Throttle called out. When Denki stopped, Full Throttle sighed, slouched like he was at least sixty years older than he actually was, and rubbed at his temples. He moved his hand in a circular motion in front of him as he asked, “can we start with the lightning thing?”

Denki beamed. “Sure! It’s how I lasted so long the first time I got to experience your quirk.”

Full Throttle looked at Denki closely and strangely at ‘first time’ like there was ever going to be another and ‘experience your quirk’ because that was a hell of a mild way of putting it, but he allowed Denki to continue on without interrupting.

“I got as far away as I could from everyone else.” Denki watched Full Throttle’s fingers idly trace the scar that started at his neck, travel over his collar bone, and disappear under the collar of his faded mauve uniform shirt.

Full Throttle remembered that well. Denki had leaped forward, and Full Throttle swore his life flashed before his eyes, ready for Denki to grab him and take a villain down with him, because that would at least be a heroic death. But no, he ran right past him, his goal to get as isolated as possible as to cause the least amount of damage. A truly heroic reaction.

If Full Throttle had been in that position, he would have thrown one hell of a tantrum in the 90 seconds he might have lasted (and that’s being generous). He would have made national, or maybe global news. He would have at least lived on that way instead of having his young life putter out insignificantly on a mountain by himself.

“When I made it to the top of the mountain, I was doing my deep breathing exercises, just trying to give everyone enough time to get further away or for a miracle to happen. I was hoping that maybe I could outlast it if I tried hard enough, but no one even knows if that’s possible.”

“It is,” Full Throttle said, causing Denki’s eyes to refocus on him instead of wandering off as he recalled his memories. “The last time it was tested, it lasted about two hours. I just don’t tend to use it on people that have a chance of outlasting it anymore.”

“Two hours…” Denki repeated, and Full Throttle did not like the sound of that. “I think I could manage that.”

“Uh, keep going with the discovery of your lightning ability, please,” Full Throttle prompted.

Denki smiled and complied but wouldn’t forget. “Hawks was watching, I guess. I didn’t even know it, but he said that he saw my form fuzz and even completely disappear at times. That gave him the idea to push me past my limits so I would be able to control it at will.”

“So, if I had taken those quirk-canceling cuffs off of you at any point…” Full Throttle hedged.

“Exactly! I would have zapped right out of there leaving behind nothing but a flash of light and the sound of thunder, leaving you to question what the hell had just happened! The mechanics to your quirk kind of ruined all of that for me, though, so I had to start all over with new planning.”

But that’s not what Full Throttle had been thinking. He had been thinking that he and Phantasm would both be fried, but he was once again reminded who he was talking to. “Wait! You can teleport?!”

“It’s not really teleportation, but it pretty much looks like it from how quickly I move! It’s like traveling through lightning, I guess, is the best way to describe it.”

“So, then how did you end up getting out of the quirk, then?” Full Throttle asked.

“Neito copied an electric quirk and created a circuit with me to share the load and buy us some more time. Hitoshi did what you guessed he did. He asked a question, I answered, he put me under his quirk. First, he commanded that I lower the voltage output, which worked. Once it was low enough that it wasn’t terrifying anymore, he tried commanding that I turn my quirk off, and that worked, too,” Denki explained easily. “So, what do you say? Let’s get out of here?”

Full Throttle sputtered at the thought. “And how do you think we’re going to manage to do that?!”

“You use your quirk, and I zap us out of here,” Denki said with a shrug. “Pretty simple plan, sure. But I think there’s little anyone could do to stop us once it’s in motion.”

Full Throttle rubbed aggressively at his face, imagining all the ways it could go wrong. He was so tempted, though. He wasn’t much use to Phantasm or anyone else while he was sitting in there and helping out someone as influential and charismatic as Chargebolt could really help him in the long run. That’s only if he doesn’t kill Chargebolt and himself in the process, though, which is a big if.

Once Chargebolt was out, and if he survived the quirk, even if he couldn’t find Hitoshi to help him end the quirk prematurely, would he still come back to help Full Throttle? Full Throttle looked up at Denki again consideringly and didn’t have to think for long.

“Your ideas seem to work out better than mine. If you think you can do this, I guess I’m in.”

Full Throttle figured that if Denki did end up dying, Full Throttle wouldn’t end up any worse off than he already was, so at least this was a chance he could take with nothing to lose.

Denki smiled. “I knew I liked you!”

Full Throttle cursed in his head because he liked Denki, too, and he realized that maybe there was more than just ‘nothing’ to lose if this went wrong.

Denki walked over and held out his hand to Full Throttle. Full Throttle looked up at him, and hesitated. Denki could see the hesitation and uncertainty on his face.

Denki smiled and burst into song. “I’m beggin’, beggin’ you! So, put your loving hand out, baby!”

Full Throttle’s eyes widened, and he reached out for his arm. Denki hoisted him to his feet but noticed that nothing was happening.

“This is something new for you, and I get that,” Denki said. “But I need your help. My soulmates are on the outside right now trying to get the attention of anyone and everyone, and Toga is going to be making a public appearance to cast doubt that they have the right person in here. But with how they’re treating us, I’m starting to wonder if that will even matter or if they’ll panic and get more frantic with pushing me toward my untimely demise.”

Full Throttle understood. Of course, he did. He had been between a rock and a hard place his whole life, so how could he not recognize that Denki was facing the same sort of choice now?

Full Throttle nodded and activated his quirk, quickly looking over at the clock behind the cage on the wall to note the exact time so he knew when he would be able to use it again in two weeks. A habit that had saved his ass more than once.

When Full Throttle let go, Denki thought that he might have changed his mind for a split second, but then he felt the initial pulse of electricity shoot through his core before disappearing again, and Denki imagined the electricity targeting the quirk nullifying drug coursing through his system and sizzling it until it evaporated completely. He took the moment to back away from Full Throttle as he felt the electricity return, quickly building up to full force once again.

Denki laughed as it shot out of him, and Full Throttle watched as his eyes glowed with the electricity that he had not been able to access for days, not since he had been first captured by himself and Phantasm.

Squatting down and looking up, setting his sights on the ceiling above himself, Denki allowed the charge to swell to extreme heights and aimed to reappear right at the ceiling.

Having it explained to him and seeing it were two completely different things, Full Throttle realized. His heart pounded in his chest as he backed away, pressing himself against the wall, trying to give Denki as much space as possible to work without having to worry about electrocuting him, and thanking the designers of the facility that the floors weren’t metal.

With a bright flash that imprinted an afterimage onto Full Throttle’s brain for a few seconds (even while being mindful to not look directly at him), and a loud, crackling crash of thunder, Denki had torn through the ceiling like it was tissue paper on a birthday present.

Full Throttle smiled and yelled out in success when suddenly he was stumbling backwards because a glowing Denki was suddenly back in front of him with another flash and bang. Denki reached out for him, and before Full Throttle could pull away or beg to be spared, light filled his vision, and then the scenery was different.

Where he had just been surrounded by sterile white and grey, brick and concrete and speckled tile, he was now surrounded by the greens and browns of nature, speckled with the various natural colors of blooming flowers. Where he had been squinting up into the harsh fluorescent lights, he was now shielding his eyes from the sun that sat in the clear blue sky. Where he had just felt claustrophobic, he now felt a little agoraphobic, but he would voice neither concern and just appreciate the view. It had just been so long since he’d been out in the open without any protective cover or shelter.

Heaven was beautiful, Full Throttle decided. Then he wondered how long he’d get to stay before they realized they made a mistake and dragged him down to Hell where he belonged. It was a little strange to feel agoraphobic in Heaven, was Full Throttle’s next thought. Was he not supposed to feel perfectly content?

“I’d call that a success!” Denki said from his left. Full Throttle turned to see him stretching out, happily watching his own electricity dance across his body, not seeming to be worried that he couldn’t stop it. “Though, I would probably fail if it was a test back at UA. Collateral damage loses quite a few points. In this case, I think they totally deserved it. Don’t you think?”

Full Throttle just stared at him.

“Shit! I forgot to tell you that I can bring other people with me!” Denki realized, his eyes widening. "I’m so sorry, man! I didn’t mean to surprise you like that! Everyone close to me already knows and we were getting along so well and—”

“You came back for me,” Full Throttle said.

Denki looked at him for a few seconds before simply saying, “yes.”

“You could have gotten a head start if you would have left be behind,” Full Throttle said.

“Did you see how fast we went?!” Denki said laughing. “I don’t need a head start!”

“You’ll lose credibility now that you helped a villain escape.”

“I couldn’t leave you behind!” Denki said, his happy-go-lucky attitude dropping into something more serious. “You are the only reason I got out of there alive. When I went in there and I put off having my soulmates try to pull me out, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I didn’t think they were actually going to try to kill me, especially after they realized I was actually me. Since you’re the reason that I was able to get out of there before the official processes could happen to get me out for real and they would be able to arrange an ‘accident,’ I’m sure you wouldn’t have just been left alone.”

“That’s not for you to worry about, though,” Full Throttle said, not unkindly, but like he just couldn’t wrap his head around Denki’s thought process.

Denki beamed at him. “We’re friends, aren’t we? I always worry about and look out for my friends, just like they look out for me. You really took a risk helping me get out of there, so I just returned the favor is all!”

“I’m friends with Chargebolt?” Full Throttle said incredulously, like he didn’t quite believe it.

“Dude, we escaped Tartarus together. If that doesn’t warrant friendship, I don’t know what does! Call me Denki!” he said, walking over and offering his hand.

Full Throttle watched, amazed, as Denki focused the electricity away from the offered hand so that Full Throttle wouldn’t be electrocuted. To have that much control over his quirk after being targeted by Full Throttle was unheard of. He had quite the strong friend, indeed. He shook the hero’s hand.

“Isozan,” Full Throttle introduced with a small smile. “The pleasure is all mine, Denki.”

“So,” Isozan started after a moment of getting his bearings, “why Eleven?”

Denki smiled, dropping down onto the grass and being mindful of his breathing patterns. “Because you crank other quirks up to eleven.”

Isozan laughed and found a tree to prop himself against, sliding down against it to rest on the ground, propping his leg up on a large root. They were going to be there for a while because he already knew without asking that Denki would prefer to stay put until his quirk wore off.

He wondered if Denki’s soulmates would get to them before the quirk would wear off. He wondered if he would survive meeting Denki’s soulmates, at least long enough for Denki to convince them to allow him to live and keep all of his bones intact.

Chapter Text

“So, what you’re saying is that you called your friend at Tartarus, told them that it’s probably Chargebolt and not Toga Himiko they have in there, and to kill him anyway?” Nato pressed, hissing through his teeth, eyes narrowed.

The agent smiled, glad to know that Nato was keeping up. They should really clue in their PR guy more often!

“Yes! I was thinking of arranging for an accident or something, but those guys there are professionals and decided to just stick Chargebolt in a room with Full Throttle and let them go at each other. Two birds, one stone. You know?”

The other agents winced. One sucked in a breath through her teeth and looked away, finding the wall more bearable to look at.

“Right, right,” Nato said. “And what was the reasoning behind that, exactly?”

The agent frowned. Maybe this guy wasn’t as smart as he gave him credit for. He sighed, and started to explain, figuring he could be a team player and dumb it down for him. “If we’re getting Chargebolt out of the picture, it’s best to get rid of Full Throttle, too. We wipe our hands clean of it all. We’ll just have to send the word to whatever holding cell has Phantasm to really secure everything.”

“Phantasm has escaped,” one agent who opted to stand leaning against the wall instead of sitting in a free chair said, glancing down at his phone where the update glared up at him.

Takaga Mayori was the only agent away from the center table by choice, not being punished by having his nose in a corner. At least he contributed by staying up to date with current events if he was going to have his eyes glued to his phone. There were worse agents to work with, in Nato’s opinion. They were currently surrounded by them.

The first agent laughed nervously. “Well, that can easily be fixed. After that, no problem! No evidence, no witnesses, nothing!”

“Except,” Nato started, and the agent realized by his tone that he might have messed up somewhere, “the mistake is all over the news, the evidence of Chargebolt’s mistreatment is all over the walls,” he said through gritted teeth, gesturing toward the projected images behind him, “and this is supposed to be a goddamn hero organization.”

Nato rifled through the folders on the table in front of him and pulled out the one that held his contract. “This here. This says nothing about helping criminals get away with murder. Literal murder.”

“We aren’t criminals,” the agent argued, turning to his colleagues for support, but finding none.

“Let’s look up the definition of criminal, shall we?” Nato offered, pulling out his own phone. “And then you can join the others in the corner.” Huffing as he looked around the room, he asked, “are there any rooms in this building with more than four corners? We’re quickly running out. I’m thinking like an octagonal room might be better suited for us.”

The agent furrowed his brow as he looked around in confusion, silently counting to himself. “There are only nine of us in here.”

Nato’s grin wasn’t what anyone would describe as friendly. “Exactly.”

“Nato,” Takaga alerted, still leaning against the wall, glancing up at Nato from his phone where he was still getting alerts about the current situation that was still unfolding even as they were meeting about it. “You might want to turn on the news. Channel six.”

The images of Chargebolt’s black eye and bruised form staring sulkily at the meeting’s inhabitants changed to the news, and Nato reached forward for the controls to turn the volume up.

“As you can see behind us, and as we’ll play as soon as we get the footage turned around on-site, we are experiencing a first in the history of Tartarus. The first escape, caught on camera, only here, on channel six news! Stay tuned!”

“I wonder who that could be,” Nato muttered under his breath, the barely-there amusement quickly dimming further.

“I’ll bet two days PTO that it’s Chargebolt,” Takaga supplied helpfully.

“There’s no way,” the woman who incessantly tapped her fingernails against the tabletop commented. Nato wondered how it didn’t hurt her fingers to do that constantly. “We can’t be that unlucky, no matter what he says about how lucky he is.”

When the footage blasted through the room, showing the lightning strikes moving quickly away from a crumbling Tartarus, Takaga laughed. “So, that PTO. Will you transfer that to me now via the app or later through hardcopy paperwork?”

The woman scowled, but pulled out her phone and logged into the app.

“This might have just solved our problems!” the agent that was about to stand in the corner exclaimed, slamming his hand down on the table as he stood up, his eyes glued to his own phone screen. “My contact at Tartarus said that the initial sweep showed that Full Throttle is gone, too! If Chargebolt helped Full Throttle escape, there’s no way for him to turn that into a positive! We can take him down without having to hide anything because he’d turn into public enemy number one!”

“What if he didn’t do it willingly?” Takaga asked as his phone pinged with the notification of two days’ worth of PTO being transferred to his account. He quickly thumbed over the acceptance of the transfer. “What if Full Throttle got to him, and your stupid plan backfired on everyone? What if Chargebolt hightailed it out of there so he wouldn’t bring everyone down with him, and what if Full Throttle just happened to use the chaos to escape on his own terms? We can’t jump the gun on this; if we’re wrong about this, we’ll dig ourselves into an even deeper hole than we’re in already.”

“I hope you’re all wrong,” Nato said. “The last thing we need is for Chargebolt to become an enemy, here.”

“He chose that for himself when he didn’t agree to our terms—” the woman who was already agitated because she had lost two days of PTO argued but was cut off by Nato.

“You mean when you tried to strongarm him against his will? Going directly against the contract you hold with UA? That time?” Nato sighed, irritated to the highest degree. “I think we could spread all the rumors with all the evidence, fake or real, we wanted. I don’t think it would make much of a difference. Out of all the heroes, Chargebolt was a poor decision to make an enemy out of. He’s loved by the people.”

“With the right rumors, that can be changed.”

“I don’t think you get it,” Nato spat, standing up from his chair and pushing away from the table. “Even if I would overlook the legality of falsifying information to try to push this under the rug, Chargebolt is the one who is out on the streets. He’s the one who is saving people, giving kids high fives, signing autographs, and talking to the press. He’s the face that people see on TV and if they happen to be in a collapsed building when they aren’t sure they’ll ever see their loved ones again only to see his smiling face and hear his voice telling them that it’s going to be okay. And who are you people?! Huh?! Who the hell is going to believe anything you have to say about that fucking ray of sunshine over what they already know about him from personal experience?”

Nato stalked to the door, anger wafting off of him. The agents who had the displeasure of still being in the corner hunkered their shoulders up to their ears in anticipation of what might come next without risking turning around to see, feeling the tension increasing in the room and bearing down on them from behind.

“If Chargebolt doesn’t rightfully take us for everything we’re worth, then he’s going to be our goddamn hero, too. You’d be smart to keep that in mind for any future plans you have regarding him. I’m going to recommend to the council that any private actions not be protected by the Commission as a whole and be fully punishable to the fullest extent of the law. Please keep that in mind for anyone who thinks of going off on their own with any more idiot fucking plans in the future, yeah?”

Nato stormed through the door, slamming it behind him without waiting for a response, so he missed the curse that the agent who barely escaped getting sent to the corner muttered under his breath.

He had already sent the go-ahead to cause a big distraction in the city.

-.-.-

It was the seventh… or maybe the eighth time… Isozan lost track. It was either the seventh or eighth time since making it to the mountain top that Denki’s electricity had built up too much for him to contain.

The first time, Denki had electricity zapping off of him, Isozan was close to panicking, but Denki had just smiled, as he looked out toward the direction of the city—not that they could see anything through the trees—and sang, “I’ll be here to hold your hand, I will wait for you, I will wait for you.”

Denki then told him to wait right there, took a few steps away, and did something that Isozan had never imagined possible.

Standing in the middle of the clearing, Denki had closed his eyes, and instead of suppressing the charge, he allowed it to overtake him and consume him completely. A bolt of lightning struck, and he was gone, nothing but a scorch mark in the dirt where he had stood.

Isozan had freaked out. Of course, he had. He knew it was a bad idea. He had tried to warn Denki that he wouldn’t be able to manage it, but Denki had seemed so sure of himself that Isozan figured Denki must have figured something out that he didn’t know himself. Isozan knew what Full Throttle was like, but he figured that Denki knew his own quirk well enough to know what he could handle. How could he have been so stupid to have agreed with such an off-the-wall, impulsive plan?

Right before Isozan could collapse with the overwhelming feeling of dread and helplessness, another strike of lightning struck the same exact area, and Isozan directed his eyes upwards to find Denki falling through the air from a great height.

So, Isozan naturally panicked again for another reason.

But, before Denki could hit the ground, the lightning would strike again, and he’d just be a speck in the sky before he’d appear to get larger as he’d free fall once again. Isozan would think he was dead if he didn’t figure out that it was his quirk that was doing all that. He looked so peaceful as he lazily spun through the air, arms and legs spread, spinning and flipping however the wind deemed it necessary to move him.

When another bolt of lightning struck only for Denki to land right in front of Isozan, smiling and shaking off excess electricity like water after getting out of a pool, Isozan could only stare.

“What?” Denki had the audacity to ask.

“What?” Isozan repeated with a squawk. “What do you mean what? I thought you died, you dick!”

“Oh,” Denki said, a conflicted look on his face as he brought his hand to his chin in thought.

Isozan did notice the difference immediately. Whereas seconds before, lightning had been striking off of him and his eyes had been glowing, his hair lifting uncontrollably, it was almost like his quirk was not inherently on at that point after getting rid of all the excess energy. It made Isozan feel better, that maybe he did know what he was talking about and that he would be able to make it until the quirk Full Throttle wore off.

“I’ll just bring you with me next time, then! So, then you won’t need to worry!” Denki offered, eyes squinting with the force of his smile.

“Uh, what?” Isozan asked.

“Yeah! Actually, come here! I’ll show you what it’s like right now!” Denki said, reaching out for Isozan.

“Oh, fuck that!” Isozan screeched and bolted away, a laughing Denki chasing him until they both ended up out of breath and laughing on the plush grass carpet covering the mountaintop.

“It does look peaceful,” Isozan admitted after taking some deep breaths, turning his eyes up to watch the clouds through the leaves of the trees. “You even had your eyes closed as you let yourself fall. I can guarantee that I wouldn’t be so relaxed, though.”

“You have control issues, Isozan?” Denki teased.

“I’ll say no to your face,” Isozan said, “but then I’d be crawling all over you like a cat trying to avoid a bath if you ever actually tried to get me to do that with you.”

Denki burst into laughter once again but didn’t try to take Isozan with him every time he repeated the maneuver to let of excess energy that built up due to Isozan’s quirk, leaving him to watch from the security of the ground beneath his feet.

“Do a flip!” Isozan yelled.

Denki, the overachiever he was, pulled his legs up into his chest and tucked himself into a tight ball, allowing himself to flip the whole way from the top of one lightning flash to about ten feet from the ground until another lightning flash put him right in front of Isozan once again.

Isozan let out a whoop of approval while simultaneously reaching out for Denki to steady him as he tilted and laughed, dizzy from the quick, endless spinning.

-.-.-

Neito and Hitoshi were booking it through the city, going in as straight of a line as possible from Tartarus to the last place they think they saw lightning strike down, when the ground rumbled and shifted under their feet, making them stumble.

Civilians came pouring out of the nearest underground metro station, screaming for help, some already bloody and bruised, stumbling around with delirium from fear, pain, or both.

Hitoshi and Neito shared a pained glance, shooting once last longing look toward the mountain before changing course and descending into the metro station, running down the stairs against the masses running, stumbling, scrambling up.

“Time is running out for the magic pair, I know you gave the best that you have, But one more chance, Couldn't be all that hard to bear, Wait for me please, Wait for me,” Neito sang under his breath as he ran, Hitoshi shooting a grateful glance in his direction.

I’ll be here to hold your hand, I will wait for you, I will wait for you.

That quick glance was all Hitoshi could spare at the moment; he had to turn his gaze right back in front of him to avoid crashing into any incoming, panicking civilians. They would just have to trust that Denki would be able to hold out until he could get to him, or until Neito could.

Before they split up, Hitoshi running down the south tunnel and Neito running north, Neito and Hitoshi reached out for each other. A brush of the fingers, one last glance that said everything that they didn’t have time to actually say, and they split up.

Neito wondered if Hitoshi was having better luck than he was as he looked around the derailed subway car. The civilians were mostly uninjured but had stayed put, not daring to make their way out and around the tense group of villains that guarded their hostages.

Hitoshi cursed under his breath as the dust settled heavier in his lungs, pulling his capture weapon around his face to better filter the air as he made his way deeper into the tunnel, softly calling out for anyone who didn’t get out.

“In here!” a voice whisper-yelled, then coughed. “I’m stuck,” the voice rasped from inside a station office, the door blasted off its hinges and light flickering ominously.

Hitoshi ventured in quickly and carefully and swore under his breath as the man began to struggle and panic.

“Not you! Anyone but you! Please!”

Chapter Text

No matter what it looked like to the general public, saying Phantasm ‘escaped’ wasn’t exactly correct. It was more like she was forcibly taken out of the pan and thrown into the fire, actually.

“No!” she screamed, her voice cracking with the effort. “Just leave me here! Why are you doing this to me?”

“Just go through the damn warp gate,” Dabi commanded, shoving a rough hand through his hair, ignoring the staples snagging on some stray strands. “It’s almost like we’re doing you a favor!”

“I don’t want your favors!” she insisted, breathing heavily with panic. “I just want to be left alone! I’m sorry about the whole Chargebolt thing, okay? Just please—” her voice cracked again, and she stopped to take a breath. When she continued, she was much quieter, and Dabi had to strain to hear her over the alarms blaring overhead. “Just leave me here.”

“Not a chance, cupcake. Come on! Up you go!” Dabi chanted with synthetic cheer as he hoisted her to her feet.

He was forceful, sure. He had to be because she wasn’t coming willingly. Not only that, but she was putting up one hell of a fight.

Phantasm didn’t let herself dwell on the fact that Dabi was as gentle as possible while still succeeding in his goal of getting her through the portal. She didn’t have a single scrape, bruise, or burn as she stood, surrounded by the League of Villains on their own turf. Did it matter that she was unharmed in that moment when they were sure to do much worse to her before the day was out?

Out of all of the things she imagined, though, it wasn’t this.

They had directed her back the hallway and into a side room that seemed to be an entertainment room with a television, various game systems, couches, and beanbags scattered throughout.

As soon as she was led to the room, Phantasm had done an excellent job of backing herself into the corner, but Full Throttle wasn’t there to protect her like he always was, so it was probably poor judgment on her part. To be fair to herself, she really didn’t know what else to do.

When they all started piling in, Phantasm didn’t know what to expect. She was initially wondering if they were going to interrogate her, but why would literally everyone in their base need to pile into the room to make that happen? Hell, even Hawks was there. She’d heard the surface rumors of him going AWOL from the hero scene but didn’t stick around anywhere long enough to know the details. Seeing him there among the League of Villains caused more questions than it provided answers.

“I’m Toga,” the blonde, bubbly girl with the sharp smile had introduced, getting way too close for comfort. “This is Spinner, Mr. Compress, Shigaraki, Dabi, Hawks, and Twice. And you saw Kurogiri out in the main room, but he won’t be joining us in here.”

Phantasm looked around the room at the intimidating villains as Toga introduced them, but they were talking among themselves rather than focusing all of their attention on her. It was relieving to not be the center of everyone’s attention in one way, but in another way, it was extremely frightening for them to be going against everything she expected of them.

They didn’t even seem to want to try to frighten her, so their interrogation tactics weren’t the greatest if that was what their intentions were for her. Hell, after dragging her through the warp gate, Dabi had changed out of his villainous attire and was just lounging around in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt with two weird vertical slits in the back. No one else seemed to have had to make the change because everyone else was already in loungewear when Phantasm first arrived.

“Dabi said that you said that you didn’t mean to target Chargebolt—”

“We didn’t,” Phantasm insisted, shaking her head frantically. “We didn’t know that he was under your protection.”

“But he is,” Toga chimed, “and you did. So, now you’re going to show us what you did to him!”

Phantasm’s brows furrowed as she thought about what exactly Toga was asking for her, then she really took a look around the room itself and noticed the small size of the room and the rolled towel placed at the bottom of the doorway. She paled and with every exhale, she seemed to fold in on herself a little more with the weight of her anxiety.

“I—I can’t—I—” Phantasm sputtered, panicking, trying to figure out a way to explain in a way that these villains would understand and empathize and not force her to do it anyway.

“Hey,” Toga soothed, her mouth twitching up into a smile as she crouched down in front of Phantasm, crowding her into her corner. “We’ve got you covered!”

The smile that Phantasm had interpreted as malicious and cruel suddenly seemed playfully mischievous and anticipatory instead when Toga had brought out from behind her back a gas mask and shoved it into Phantasm’s hands.

“What?” Phantasm dumbly said.

“Remember when we crashed through the wall? Of course, you do! Denki said that you won’t use your quirk if you can’t leave. Kurogiri’s on phone duty, and Twice is on babysitting duty for us while we’re tripping,” Toga explained, “so you have to stay in here with us, but there are ways to work around that!”

Phantasm furrowed her brow and looked over at Twice who was planted in a beanbag in front of the television, his gas mask already firmly affixed to his face.

“I can’t control if it’s a good trip or a bad trip,” Phantasm said, trying to get her to call it off.

Honestly, the last thing Phantasm needed was a room full of villains blaming her for having unpleasant hallucinations.

“That’s why we have Twice!” Toga said in her best reassuring voice. “He’s here to help us through anything that might be too much, just in case! But we’re all in a good mood and surrounded by friends, so we’re not too worried about having a bad trip. Even if we did, though,” Toga added, seeing that Phantasm was about to argue, “we wouldn’t blame you for it! We totally asked for it and brought it on ourselves!”

“And after…” Phantasm hedged.

“You’ll be free to go,” Toga said. “We even have the track record to prove that! I mean… as long as you aren’t going to go after Denki again.”

“Never again,” Phantasm deadpanned.

Toga laughed. “Glad we’re on the same page! Okay! We’re ready, now!” Toga trilled, rocking up onto her toes in excitement. “Gas the room up for us, would ya?”

And Phantasm did, after firmly affixing the gas mask to her own face, hoping that she could trust the villains to follow through. She figured that she didn’t have much of a choice but to hope and trust that what they were saying was true, and even if it wasn’t, she didn’t have much to lose by playing along and making them happy.

The room filled with the foggy gas, and the villains’ eyes lit up as they looked around at it, then over at her, with awe. Phantasm swore someone muttered something about a Midoriya having a field day or something, and then something about the similarities and differences between Mustard’s quirk… Phantasm wasn’t sure.

When everyone had breathed in their fair share and the fog started to dissipate, it turned into a waiting game until they would start to see and hear their first hallucinations. When Phantasm took her gas mask off, Twice did, too, and Phantasm noted that they were trusting. She didn’t know if they were more trusting of her or of Chargebolt’s assessment of her and that she wouldn’t be subjected to her own quirk, though.

“Guys?” Twice muttered softly. Then louder, “Hey guys? Someone escaped from infiltrated Tartarus.”

Dabi threw a carefree laugh over his shoulder. “Twice! You’re supposed to be our sitter! You’re not supposed to be hallucinating, too!”

“I’m not! At least, I don’t think I am,” Twice said, starting to worry about if what he was seeing was real or not. “I am! Reality check!” he yelled. “Did Chargebolt escape from Tartarus?”

An echo of yelled “what” reverberated throughout the room as the group swarmed to gather around the television, Phantasm included.

“It’s real,” Phantasm offered helpfully to answer Twice’s call for reality check.

“Damnit, Denki. What have you done?” Dabi muttered, voice thick with awe and trepidation as his eyes were glued to the screen.

Hawks swore under his breath, typing furiously on his phone. “Tartarus staff did a preliminary sweep. Denki’s not the only one missing. Full Throttle is gone, too.”

Suddenly, all eyes were on Phantasm, and she wondered if the door was locked and how far she’d make it if it wasn’t.

-.-.-

Neito hadn’t decided if he was going to try to be more subtle or make his presence known and approach from a negotiating standpoint, but that option was taken away from him when a civilian looked out from the cracked, dusty window and let out a warbled cry of relief.

The villains closest to the door whirled around to face him, and Neito put his hands up in a placating manner as he slowly continued moving forward, knowing that he had to get himself into that metro car to fully understand the situation.

This was not a good scenario for Neito. He had Hitoshi’s quirk at the ready, sure, but that was the only thing he had to rely on, and he couldn’t expect to get everyone under that quirk once they found out what he was doing. One or two, maybe even three was definitely manageable, but eight or nine? Not a chance. Especially not when he and Hitoshi had just put on the show of their lives on the news, reminding everyone about who Mindjack was and what he could do and that he was out there in the underground hero circuit, keeping everyone safe without anyone even knowing it.

When he met the eyes of a familiar villain, not because he knew him personally, but because Denki had told them about his near-miss at one of Full Throttle’s disaster sites when he was interning with Thirteen, he zeroed in on him, figuring that Razor might be his go-to person when dealing with the rest of the villains. Razor similarly locked his gaze on Neito and gave just the tiniest nod of acknowledgement.

“No brainwashing,” Razor demanded, the first of many demands to come, Neito figured.

“Wouldn’t get me very far, anyway,” Neito grumbled in easy agreement, dropping his hands and picking up his pace to get into the car.

The other villains’ voices raised slightly in quick protest, but Razor harshly whispered something about cooperating if they don’t want to be incinerated by the League of Villains’ blue-flame quirk user, and that got everyone quick to comply with wide-eyed understanding and bated breath as they figured out how delicate of a situation they had found themselves in.

Quickly making his way past the villains and turning his attention right to the civilians, Neito quickly introduced himself as a Pro Hero and asked, “any injuries?” He crouched down in front of them, all huddled together in the corner furthest from the exit, furthest from the villains.

There were a few minor to moderate injuries, the worst being a broken leg, so Neito asked, “what are your quirks?”

“She has a healing quirk,” an elderly man offered hesitantly, gesturing to the small girl beside him.

“What?!” one of the villains snapped, stepping forward behind Neito.

Neito didn’t even turn around, even as he saw the civilians’ eyes move from him to behind him, cowering, further pressing their backs against the plastic seats as if they could melt and blend together with the material to get away from the wrath of the villain.

Neito simply held up his finger, indicating that the villain needed to wait. He heard an indignant huff. The villain didn’t retreat, but didn’t step closer, either.

Neito was lucky he was the only hero on the scene, or he would be hearing it during debriefing about never turning your back on a villain, and here he was, his back to literally every villain in the damn metro car, all his attention on the young girl who couldn’t be more than eleven years old.

The elderly man’s grip did not loosen on the girl as his eyes flickered from Neito to the villain standing behind him. “Her quirk is influenced by her emotions. She was just involved in a major accident, and now she’s a hostage to villains. She’s going to cause more harm than good if she tries to heal anyone.”

“Hi,” Neito said softly with a smile, talking directly to the girl and ignoring everyone else in the moment. “I’m Phantom Thief, and my quirk allows me to copy others’ quirks.” Her eyes met his, tears still gathering in the rims of her murky gold eyes even as tear tracks dried on her face. “Can I copy your quirk so I can get everyone healed up?”

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Neito said. “All we have to do is make physical contact, and then I have a copy of your quirk for the next hour. It doesn’t even affect you at all because you still have your quirk, too.”

Biting her lip and inhaling shakily, she nodded, and held out her hand. Neito beamed at her, doing his best Denki-smile impression, and grabbed her hand in both of his, thanking her profusely as he felt the quirk flow in and settle, already getting a feel for it and how it was tapping into his emotions, waxing and waning with the slightest changes as he thought about different things.

Very volatile quirk. Amazing. And he told her so, making her smile a watery smile up at him as he stood up to move over to the man with the broken leg.

“Woah!” the man protested, holding his arm out to keep Neito away. “If that quirk is connected to emotions, then I don’t want you anywhere near me!”

A crunch and crash was heard then, and the occupants of the car turned to look in the direction, but saw nothing.

“Are you sure?” Neito drawled, trying not to put too much attitude into his voice, knowing that this civilian was scared and hurt. “Because I’m pretty sure that the station entrance just collapsed, so there won’t be any ambulances or EMTs with stretchers getting in here any time soon.”

The man shot a panicked glance at the villains in the other side of the car, probably imagining that he might be left there alone if he isn’t able to walk out independently. He grimaced and nodded his permission for Neito to continue.

Neito sat himself down next to the man who was on the floor, trying to subtly nurse his leg to not let on to the villains how fucked he actually was, but it was fine, because Neito was there to help, and this is what Neito was made for. He took a few deep breaths, felt the quirk weave in and through his emotions, and reached out for the man. It only took a few seconds before the man, who had had his eyes screwed shut in anticipation of it going horribly wrong, had gasped in stunned relief and moved his leg easily, testing it out now that it was good as new.

Neito smiled and quietly asked, “who’s next?” He moved on down the line, healing as he went, even if it was just a cut or scrape. “Better to handle it now than for it to be a problem later,” he said when one woman suggested he move on to the next and pass her by.

With the civilians all taken care of, at least physically, and a little bit emotionally, now that they knew a hero was on the scene and actively working to take care of them, he turned his attention back toward the villains, noticing that while others had been shifting around, moving closer and again moving away from him as he worked on the civilians, one had remained right where he was, seated in the opposite corner to the civilians. He was also paler than when Neito had first stepped into the car.

When Neito walked with purpose to drop down in front of him, everyone was silent and tense, waiting for the fight to start. The civilians pressed further back into their seats once again, and the man with the now healed leg had made good use of his renewed mobility to crowd closer to the group and scoot further from the villains.

“Where are you injured?” Neito asked, not shying away from the villain’s gaze as he looked directly into Neito’s eyes, trying to find the trick.

“Don’t answer,” another villain warned. “His soulmate is Mindjack, and they were just together on the news.”

Neito ignored her and the new side conversations that started about if Mindjack might be nearby and coming to his soulmate’s side soon, one stepping just out of the metro car and onto the tracks to keep watch.

“I already told Razor I wouldn’t brainwash anyone,” Neito said. “If you tell me where you’re hurt, I can heal you.”

Even with the pallor of the villain’s skin, he still had the energy to snort at Neito’s suggestion. “Even if I believed that, we all heard what pops said. The girl’s quirk is connected to emotions. Like hell it’ll be the same for you to heal me as it was to heal them.”

“Lower back,” Razor chimed grimly, ignoring the weak glare that the injured villain sent his way. “It made it worse when we moved him, but we couldn’t just leave him where he was. It was too dangerous.”

Neito reached out for the villain but stopped short, waiting for permission. The villain’s glare softened, with fatigue or relaxed will to fight, Neito wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t until he glanced at Razor that his resistance chipped away completely.

“I trust him,” Razor said.

Neito didn’t turn to look at him, keeping his eyes on the injured villain in front of him, waiting to use the girl’s quirk that was raging and soaring around inside of him to its fullest potential. Even so, he still heard and felt the shift.

The side conversations stopped. All of them. The villains stopped planning what to do if Mindjack suddenly appeared, stopped recalling the few facts they actually knew about the underground hero. The civilians stopped their whispered plans on how to escape, how to shield the youngest if the fighting started and there was no way out, how to help Phantom Thief, which villain they might be able to take on their own if they could distract any away from the main fight.

Even the air seemed to still, the draft deciding to take its leave and not disturb the delicate atmosphere that Razor had created with three little words that had to be a lie. Right? A villain trusting a hero was unheard of, but there was Phantom Thief, kneeling in front of an injured villain, offering his healing hand without making compromises or demands in exchange, so maybe it wasn’t as suspended of a belief as it would have been otherwise.

The elderly man knew that they were a lucky group when it was Phantom Thief that boarded the car, knowing that if a healer wasn’t going to be on board, he would be their next best bet. The villains had already questioned them about their quirks, asking if any of them had any healing abilities when they had dragged their friend out from a fallen beam when he had volunteered to look for an exit before everything had settled after the initial collapse.

He wondered if UA knew what the hell they were doing when Phantom Thief had turned his back to the villains, completely ignoring their existence completely, but then he commanded the finicky healing quirk like he had years of practice, like it wasn’t his first time wielding it. The man quickly apologized in his head for thinking ill of any of Phantom Thief’s methods because this young man, practically still a kid, was going to be the one to get them all out unharmed.

And by all, he meant all, apparently, because he moved right on to the villains, too. Instead of jumping straight back into judgment, wondering why he didn’t use the healing to negotiate, he tried to think about it from another perspective. Maybe it was the emotions? If Phantom Thief was nervous or uptight from the potential of negotiations falling through, that could affect the healing quirk. That didn’t seem quite right, though.

The elderly man just knew that they were extremely lucky that it was Phantom Thief. If it was a more act-first-ask-questions-later type of hero, they might have all ended up dead, stuck under a secondary collapse if the fight happened to get large enough to cause another. And maybe Phantom Thief realized that. But the way he healed the cuts and scrapes of the villains, just as he had with them, had left the elderly man doubtful that that was the entire reason.

The injured villain had nodded at Neito, and Neito didn’t hesitate to finally make contact and heal him, the villain slumping with visible relief.

Neito smiled mischievously, and the villains around him tensed, wondering what was in store for them. He turned his head and looked right at Razor as he stood up.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you’re favoring your left leg,” Neito sassed reaching out for Razor.

Razor huffed out a laugh under his breath, rolled his eyes, and reached out to meet him halfway. The villains watched as Neito reached for Razor’s hand, not hesitating even though Razor had the ability to change the tips of his fingers into sharp blades and slice him to ribbons. They watched as Razor straightened up under Neito’s quirk after being healed, not at all concerned that Neito might copy his quirk and use it against him while he had his hand on his wrist.

The civilians were smart enough to stay quiet and let Neito work, no matter the mixed feelings and racing, conflicting thoughts at war in their heads, wondering if this was going to get them out unscathed or get them all killed. Really, they continued to have these back-and-forth thoughts in their minds until they reached the surface and were free to go, rushing back to their own families to tell them that Phantom Thief had saved them, but oddly not divulging any details beyond that.

“Did I heal everyone?” Neito asked, turning his head back and forth to look at both sides of the metro car in turn.

When no one spoke up, Neito nodded and took a steading breath. “Great. Now, can anyone explain what the hell even happened?”

“They—” the man with the previously broken leg started, pointing across the car at the villains, only to be interrupted.

Absolute chaos on both sides, but no violence at least. Just hurled insults and accusations.

Neito rubbed at the area between his eyes and sighed, moving to the center of the metro car and sitting cross legged on the floor, his left ear toward the civilians, and his right toward the villains. Everyone stopped talking pretty quickly, seeing the odd display of the Pro Hero.

“Razor?” Neito asked hopefully.

Razor stepped forward, joining Neito in the center of the car, and sat himself down to be seated directly in front of Neito.

“It wasn’t us,” Razor said. One of the civilians scoffed, and Razor shot a glance in their direction. “Seriously. We have a meeting point in a side room off the tunnels down here, alright? But we weren’t trying to demolish the place or anything. We would’ve made it out with everyone else, but the emergency exit point collapsed before we got to it. This car was still in one piece, so this is where we decided to go.”

“We knew that they were villains when we saw them poking around,” the woman of the group explained. “A few of us recognized some of them, so we stayed quiet, but they found us here anyway. We couldn’t leave Tosano behind,” she explained, gesturing to the man who had broken his leg. “What if he had passed out and couldn’t call for help when the search teams finally came?”

“Great,” Neito said in a decidedly manner, slapping his hands down on his thighs before making a move to stand up, offering a hand to Razor to help hoist him to his feet as well. “Seems like a big misunderstanding to me, then. Let’s just all get to the surface, and we can go our separate ways.”

“What?” Tosano asked, purely confused. “Can you even do that?”

Neito shrugged. “Who’s going to stop me?”

The villains laughed and swarmed to crowd Neito as they discussed the emergency exits that they had frequently used when getting to and from their meeting. Now that everyone was healed, it would be no problem to travel a little further to get to one that was—hopefully—not caved in.

The civilians watched the villains lead Neito out of the car and draw a rudimentary map of the tunnels and emergency exits in the dust on the floor. And the civilians talked.

Neito was going over the strategy, and the back up strategy, and the back up to the back up strategy with the villains, just in case anyone got separated or had any better ideas to adjust the plan before they got started. When they heard the civilians climbing out of the metro car, helping each other not to trip over the tracks, some of the villains turned, probably to warn them not to wander off on their own, but they were all making their way over to join the group, standing around and looking down as Razor and Neito knelt over the lines drawn in the dust.

“Ready to get out of here?” Neito asked, looking around the group, relieved to see that everyone seemed healthily motivated and there was a lot less fear and uncertainty.

“Where is Mindjack?” Tosano asked in lieu of answering.

“We split up. He went south,” Neito explained.

“And…” Tosano hesitated, but decided to ask anyway, even if it wasn’t his place. “Chargebolt?”

Neito swallowed. “He can handle himself. We’ll get to him when we get to him.”

Tosano glanced around at the other civilians, and glanced around at the villains, too before nodding, like he had come to a decision. “You’ll go on without us, then.”

Neito blanched. “What?”

“These guys seem to know the tunnels well enough. We’ll follow them out. You’ve done enough here,” Tosano said.

Neito looked around, noting the steely, determined gazes of the civilians, their stances not wavering. He looked at the villains, none making a move to protest. He slowly nodded, but quickly gained speed and enthusiasm.

“Yeah, okay. If you’re sure—”

“You’re going to find Mindjack first, right?” Razor asked. “I’ll come with you.”

Neito only thought about protesting for a millisecond. He could be better at accepting help, and he figured, why not start now? So, he nodded his thanks and took one last look around to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.

“Uh…” Tosano hesitated. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I trust him,” Neito said, echoing the returned sentiment from earlier. “And it will be nice to have someone familiar with the tunnels to help me navigate.”

As the ragtag group of civilians and villains made their way through the tunnels in the opposite direction than the hero and villain duo had gone in, the civilians listened to murmured conversations and rumors about the people’s hero, and how there might just be more than one. The civilians found it hard to disagree when they went from doubting they would ever see sunlight again, buried underneath the streets, to being assisted out of an emergency exit from the metro tunnels, villains of all people helping to pull them from the darkness back into the light.

When heroes and villains collide, there is normally collateral damage. Most commonly expensive property damage, but often time injuries and even casualties happen, too. These are always blamed on the villains, of course, because the heroes are the ones who are just reacting to the villains who are committing the crimes. But what would the world be like if more heroes were like Phantom Thief? What would it look like if heroes took care of people first, regardless of status? Regardless of who “won?” Regardless of who got the glory?

Because, at the end of the day, everyone survived. There were no injuries because of Phantom Thief’s expertise with a quirk he had never used before. The villains were talking about Phantom Thief with stars in their eyes, and Tosano doubted that Phantom Thief would ever have an issue with any of them ever again.

Sure, it was something new, and maybe even a little uncomfortable to watch at first. It looked a little too friendly, and it caused bitter feelings at the beginning, watching a hero heal a villain without using it as collateral to negotiate their safe escape. But look at the outcome.

Tosano wondered what the outcome would have been if it had been another hero, and he was surprised to find himself grateful that he didn’t have to find out.

Chapter Text

“Not you! Anyone but you! Please!”

Hitoshi swore under his breath, causing his former foster care caseworker to flinch. Hitoshi opened his mouth to apologize, thought better of it, and promptly snapped his mouth shut again, opting to back out of the side panel room, hands up in a placating manner.

Of all the goddamn people, it had to be Wakakuro Seibo.

Hitoshi did a quick visual check in both directions and listened carefully but didn’t hear or see any indication of anyone else coming to help. Huffing at the unfortunate circumstances, he shoved an irritated hand through his hair, glancing at the still-terrified gaze of Wakakuro. The emotion in his eyes wasn’t anything new, but the higher level of absolute terror and panic was.

Hitoshi, not moving anything but his eyes, did a quick visual scan of the man, and it didn’t seem like he was majorly injured and in need of immediate assistance. By “stuck,” Wakakuro seemed to be trapped against the wall between a ladder leading up to the city streets by the bent metal of the ladder that must have been crushed in the chaos, but it didn’t seem that any of Wakakuro’s limbs were crushed, just his clothing, so Hitoshi had time to work through this diplomatically. Well, that was unfortunate. It would have been much easier to rush the situation and apologize for the mental scars afterwards, explaining it all away due to the nature of emergency of the situation.

Hitoshi took another deep breath and coughed, the dust sticking in the back of his throat, making Wakakuro flinch again, and Hitoshi sighed. It looked like they were their only options, so they were stuck with each other, whether they liked it or not. Hitoshi was also on a time limit; he had his soulmate to save, after all.

“I’m a Pro Hero,” Hitoshi said, stepping cautiously and slowly into the room again, like he was approaching a wild animal. “Pro Hero Mindjack. I graduated UA this year—”

“You’re lying,” Wakakuro accused, fear still deeply lacing his voice. “I haven’t heard of you.”

“I’m an underground hero,” Hitoshi said. “If you would think about it for two seconds, you would realize that is the best fit for my quirk.”

Wakakuro flinched, and Hitoshi ran his hand through his hair again. Hitoshi forced himself to relax, making his shoulders drop, trying to get Wakakuro to mirror him, even just a little.

“Sorry,” Hitoshi apologized. “But there’s no one else coming—”

Wakakuro broke out into a coughing fit, and it went on longer than Hitoshi felt comfortable with. Just as Hitoshi was about to step forward—to do what, he didn’t know—Wakakuro finally regained control over his lungs again.

“You’re a villain, aren’t you?”

“I have my hero license,” Hitoshi said, reaching for his pocket.

“Those can be faked.”

“My soulmate, you remember him, right?” Hitoshi asked, wondering if he could use his more influential and public soulmate as his way in, at least long enough to get this former foster care caseworker out of there.

Wakakuro flinched, and Hitoshi swore under his breath.

Right, no questions, got it.

“Sorry,” Hitoshi apologized, again, shaking his head. “Monoma Neito. He’s Phantom Thief, now. You have to know Phantom Thief. He’s—”

But Wakakuro was already shaking his head, shoulders drawing up near his ears in fear of—what? Retaliation for not knowing?

“Chargebolt, then. He’s mine and Phantom Thief’s boyfriend. We were both just on the news about him.”

Hitoshi watched as Wakakuro’s eyes went from staring at the floor to jolting up to looking straight ahead at the wall before hesitantly dragging across the room before meeting his own eyes. Progress.

Hitoshi took another small step forward with a lazy shrug. “Everyone thought we were crazy at first, because Neito and I are soulmates, and everyone thought that that should be enough. Not everyone gets a soulmate, but there we were, wanting Denki, too. Everyone thought he was crazier because he wanted us back, thinking that there was no way that we were going to last and that it was just going to end in heartbreak for all of us, but we’re still going strong three years later.”

“Chargebolt works at Endeavor’s agency,” Wakakuro commented skeptically, but Hitoshi could see his doubt wavering.

“Yeah. The Commission tried to contract him before he even graduated, so he rushed to sign on with Number One for protection. I knew I wanted to be in underground anyway, and Denki was already too public for anything like that because of his recognizable quirk and his run in with the League of Villains. He’d never get away with going undercover!”

“And Phantom Thief?”

Hitoshi smiled. “Neito follows Ground Zero wherever he goes. Explosion is one of his favorite quirks, and he loves to torment him. Ground Zero won’t admit it, but everyone knows that he likes having Neito around for the training. Ground Zero is working on opening his own agency eventually, and I’m sure Neito will be there to support him as soon as he decides to break away to make his debut.”

Wakakuro almost smiled, Hitoshi was sure, before looking at Hitoshi consideringly. Then there was a distant crash from the direction that Hitoshi had come from, and Hitoshi would bet a month’s worth salary that it was the entrance to the metro that he and Neito had come through collapsing. Even though the sound was distant and not loud, Wakakuro still jumped, scared out of his skin, his breathing picking up once again.

“I don’t think any additional help is coming. It really is just you and me,” Hitoshi said, the unspoken question of the offer of help lingering between them.

Wakakuro nodded, and Hitoshi was across the small room, on his knees next to the man, utility knife in hand as he worked on sawing through the straps that could not be pulled free from where the metal of the ladder compressed into the concrete of the wall.

It was slow work, the knife not being much of a match for the material that was quirk-enforced and designed to last. Having Hitoshi so close just increased Wakakuro’s anxiety, keeping his breathing rate high, causing him to breath in more dust floating around, making his coughing fits more frequent and longer in duration as Hitoshi worked.

Without looking up from his task, Hitoshi mentioned, “Neito’s quirk is called Copy. He’s put me under my own quirk, before.” When Wakakuro didn’t say anything, Hitoshi took that as his sign to continue.

“The first time I put him under, I was terrified that I was going to lose him, that he wouldn’t want to be my soulmate anymore, but then he told me how cool it was and offered to show me what it was like, and I couldn’t say no to that,” Hitoshi said, a small smile growing over his face as he painstakingly sawed away at the material. “With how everyone always reacted, I was expecting something terrifying, cold, maybe even painful, like how I would get headaches when someone would resist, but it was like a nice cloudy haze, a warm floating feeling. Disconnected and disconcerting, sure, but I trusted him, so there wasn’t anything to fear from the command aspect. The cool thing about it is that it has a forced calming effect,” Hitoshi revealed, continuing to saw away at the straps, not reacting or even pausing his movements when Wakakuro’s breath hitched at the implicated offer.

“I—I’m scared,” Wakakuro admitted.

“I know, but you’re already panicking as it is,” Hitoshi pointed out. “Look at it this way. Even if you still doubt that I’m a hero, and you think I could still be a villain, I wouldn’t gain anything from hurting you or taking you hostage—I know what kind of salary social workers make,” Hitoshi deadpanned, and smiled softly when Wakakuro actually snorted, “and if I was going to leave you behind, I wouldn’t have to put you under my quirk to do that. So,” Hitoshi said, with a sense of finality, “you can panic and breathe in all of this dust at a rapid pace, or you can be scared under my quirk, but at least spare your lungs while you’re at it. If you’re going to be scared either way, you might as well get a benefit out of it, don’t you think?”

Hitoshi asked the question, Wakakuro squeezed his eyes shut as he braced himself, the question not slipping by unnoticed, and he answered, fully understanding that what he was agreeing to would activate immediately.

“Yes.”

And just like that, Wakakuro’s mind was Hitoshi’s, and Hitoshi didn’t waste a second getting to work.

Standing up, he explained to the slack-faced social worker, “you were panicking before and would have passed out, but now…”

Hitoshi removed his capture weapon, wrapping it around Wakakuro’s head so that it would filter out some of the larger dust particles floating around in the air. Even though it opened up Hitoshi to more dust himself, he knew he had more access to healers as a hero than the social worker would at the local hospital, so it was fine.

Hitoshi’s fingers brushed against his support gear that hung unused around his neck, wishful, but knowing that the plates wouldn’t protect him from the dust and putting it on and breathing through it would only encourage the dust to get in between the plates and scratch them up. He’d receive hell from Hatsume for a stunt like that.

“Sorry about this in advance,” Hitoshi muttered, dropping his hands as he gave up on the fruitless idea of using his artificial vocal cords as a buffer, “but this way you’ll know what it feels like when I command something, so you aren’t worried about it sneaking up on you later. It’s necessary because you can’t control your reflexes while under my control, so if dust got into your eyes, you wouldn’t be able to blink it away.”

Hitoshi gave him a second for the explanation to sink in before commanding him to close his eyes.

Hitoshi knew how sketchy it must seem to Wakakuro, so he continued to talk as he worked, just about anything and everything: How far he had cut through the strap thus far, little details that are already public knowledge about his, Neito’s, and Denki’s work, and, eventually, all of the things Wakakuro had done.

“The Hamabis were great,” Hitoshi said, pausing in his work to clear his throat, blink the dust away from his eyes, and quickly shake out his cramping hands before continuing with his tedious task. “They threw me a birthday party. I had just been placed with them, so I didn’t really know what to expect… I didn’t know what I could ask for.”

Hitoshi sneezed, watching the dust scatter from the force of his breath in disgust, trying not to think about the scratchy particles that had to have been coating the inside of his lungs.

“I only invited Denki and Neito, but then all of these kids that I had met at Fields showed up,” Hitoshi said, getting lost in the memory as he worked. “They were the most understanding friends I ever had. They answered my questions without hesitation. Even Denki and Neito, even after I had put them both under my quirk before. No fear whatsoever—”

Hitoshi noticed the fog start to waft in and thicken, but there was nothing he could do, not with Wakakuro still very much stuck. Hitoshi hoped that whatever the hell it was, it wasn’t poisonous or acidic.

Not wanting to alarm Wakakuro or give whoever was giving off the fog any indication that Hitoshi had noticed their presence already, he continued to talk as if nothing was amiss.

“—Imagine my surprise when I made it into UA only for it to be like déjà vu! There must be some correlation between mental health patients and heroes. In my mind, it’s that they don’t want anyone to ever have to feel as hopeless as they did, but that’s just anecdotal,” Hitoshi rambled. “If I had gone onto university instead of going straight into underground heroics, I think that’s what I would have based my dissertation on, though.”

“And what a dissertation it would have been!” chirped the voice from the doorway behind Hitoshi.

Chapter Text

Neito and Razor quietly and quickly made their way through the tunnels, feet moving steadily, not getting tripped up despite the haphazard shadows the flickering overhang lights were throwing around.

Neito had started to feel like something was off, like maybe they were being followed, but before he had made a decision to either ignore it or address it, a figure had crashed down from the ceiling of the tunnel, sunlight streaming in through the newly made hole where there wasn’t a hole before.

All three figures coughed from the newly disturbed dust as they dropped into defensive stances as they regarded one another.

Deku stood across from Razor and Neito, eyes glowing green with a determined grimace on his face as he braced himself further against the ground in preparation to strike.

One second, Deku was covered in a beam of light from the newly made hole above him, and the next second, no one could see anything, everyone’s vision suddenly filled with an intense, thick, opaque, white fog.

When the fog started to thin, Deku tensed further, but eased his stance to stand more upright instead of moving into action, seeing another villain behind Neito who hadn’t been there before with a blade against his neck.

With a quick glance over to Neito and Haze, Razor swore under his breath, wondering if everything had just gone from bad to worse.

“Let us pass,” Haze demanded, his voice barely registering above a whisper, but the threat all too real with the blade hovering above Neito’s skin.

“I can’t do that,” Deku said, shaking his head.

“I really don’t have time for this,” Neito grumbled, reaching up and grabbing the villain’s wrist, shoving his hand away from his neck and stepping away.

When Deku made a move to get closer, to instigate the fight, Neito also held out a hand to stop him. “I don’t have time for this,” he repeated with more emphasis. “I’ve gotta get to Denki.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Deku said. “To relieve you so you and Mindjack can get to Chargebolt.”

“On Endeavor’s orders?” Neito asked.

“Not in so many words…” Deku admitted, eyes still continuing to scan over the three in front of him, waiting for any movements that would indicate that he would need to jump into action.

Neito snorted. “There’s a bunch of civilians who are heading that way,” Neito said, gesturing with a lazy wave behind him, “looking for an emergency exit that hasn’t collapsed. They’re being led by villains who are helping,” Neito rushed with emphasis when he saw Deku’s eyes widen, “so I can get to Chargebolt faster. Looks like we’re all on the same side here, for once.”

Deku sighed, straightened completely, and rolled out his shoulders before shaking the dust out of his hair. “For once,” Deku repeated under his breath.

“We’re going to find Hitoshi and get the hell out of here so we can get to Chargebolt and cancel out whatever the hell Full Throttle did,” Neito explained.

Deku nodded and bounced on his feet. “I’ll go the way you came from and make sure there aren’t any stragglers and that the one’s you separated from found an exit. If they didn’t, I’ll make one,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the Deku-sized hole above him.

“Yeah, just tell them that Phantom Thief and Razor sent you, and the villains should cooperate easily enough,” Neito said. “Thanks.”

When Deku was gone with a breeze and a flash of green glow, Haze asked, “just like that?”

“We’re lucky it was Deku,” Neito said. “Why are you following us?”

“I was trying to catch up,” Haze said, raising his hands in defense. “We started walking in the other direction, like we planned, and with how dusty it got, I was able to use my quirk to purify the air. Then I thought that I better turn around and help you two out, especially because you’d have to go past the secondary collapse.”

“Well, thanks,” Neito said. “I appreciate it. Just, for future reference, it’s probably a bad idea to use me as a hostage.”

“Noted.”

They ran steadily but had to slow down near the collapse site as to not stumble and fall over the rubble. Once past the entrance point, they got back up to their steady speed again before Neito indicated for them to slow down, a smile growing on his face when he heard the familiar cadence of his soulmate’s voice.

“—some correlation between mental health patients and heroes. In my mind, it’s that they don’t want anyone to ever have to feel as hopeless as they did, but that’s just anecdotal,” Hitoshi rambled. “If I had gone onto university instead of going straight into underground heroics, I think that’s what I would have based my dissertation on, though.”

“And what a dissertation it would have been!” Neito chirped, stepping into the doorway that separated the side panel room from the tracked tunnel.