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They were very much aware that they were not supposed to be doing this.
The four young adults interspersed among the members of Class 2-A were the very reason they were all in the same place to begin with. The dorms had been built to keep the League of Villains out of UA. And yet… here they were anyway.
After saving her life on the battlefield, Uraraka couldn’t leave Toga Himiko behind. After saving his life on the battlefield – and splitting his mind away from All For One’s horrid chimera – Midoriya couldn’t leave Shimura Tenko behind. Though the two of them had done very little saving, Todoroki Shoto and Touya were still brothers, and Touya’s therapist had suggested he spend time with his family, so long as it wasn’t his father.
Even Spinner was there, not necessarily connected to any one person but as one of the few people that could really understand what was left of Class 2-A. With all the hurt and trauma and permanent scars, both physical and mental, that they would never escape and that they’d received so young, before they were ready to face the world
And what were the four members of what had once been the League of Villains doing in the middle of Class 2-A’s common room? Well, obviously they were-
“I’M GOING TO RIP YOUR THROAT OUT WITH MY BARE HANDS, SCARFACE!” Bakugou howled, furiously mashing buttons and almost kicking Kaminari in the back of the head.
“COME UP WITH SOME NEW MATERIAL, BLASTY-BOY!” Touya shouted back, jolting abruptly in place and shoving Shoto halfway off the couch.
Shimura cackled at them wildly, making thrilled grabby hands as he waited for this round to be over so he could take a controller. Because they were playing Super Smash Bros Ultimate, of course.
“Hold still!” Uraraka insisted, one of Shimura’s hands gripped in her own as she tried to wrap flexible tape around his pinkie. He only tsked at her, temporarily freezing in place to let her finish. “Okay, you’re good.”
“No, I’m evil,” Shimura said petulantly.
Everyone around him rolled their eyes.
Bakugou shot to his feet with a roar of victory, shouting his trademark “DIE!” before reluctantly dropping onto the couch again.
“Okay, final bracket!” Toga grinned, chewing on the end of the pen she’d been using to keep track, “Shimura, Blasty, Mini-raser, and Spinner!”
Shimura snatched Dabi’s controller out of his hands with manic energy, while Spinner reluctantly sat up and accepted Mina’s. One more controller traded hands, Dark Shadow passing it back to where Shinsou was sitting. Shinsou wasn’t the one who accepted it, but Dark Shadow had her attention glued to the screen and didn’t bother to look.
Standing slightly away from the chaos, the newcomer grinned. Shinsou, half asleep draped over his shoulder, hummed a vague amused sound and blearily lifted his head, sensing something glorious coming from the ultimate chaos-causer of them all.
Characters were selected. Bakugou, who had insisted on being Player 1, kept his selection of Princess Daisy. Spinner chose Yoshi. Shimura went with Sonic. Player 4, which had been Dark Shadow’s remote, slipped away from Joker and instead selected Wolf. The players locked in their choices, and the game began.
The first rounds of the match were judged on performance, audacity, and trash talk. It was no one’s surprise that Bakugou had made it to the final playoffs. Shimura, though not the best at trash talk, was very skilled at the game and willing to take risks. He also won every match he played, and so he easily beat out the competition. Spinner had climbed more from audacity. He’d lost one of his games, but had in the end received more points for the show he’d made of it. Shinsou had mostly gotten through on performance, with just the right amount of biting, perfectly-timed comments to get him a solid position from trash-talk as well.
This final round, though, was judged purely on skill. Whoever won this was the winner, no questions asked.
Shimura was completely silent, laser-focused on the screen as the characters fought. Bakugou was muttering ‘die, die, die’, under his voice with the occasional louder curse or insult flung at his opponents. Spinner had his eyes narrowed in concentration, his claws occasionally clacking against the plastic of the controller. The whole room seemed to breathe as one.
Princess Daisy was flung off the platform by Yoshi, losing a life in a column of light, and everyone gasped. Wolf made an impossible jump and grabbed the Smash Ball before anyone else could get it and the whole room ‘ooooh’ed. Sonic managed to jump back onto the platform from where Princess Daisy had flung him off and all the assorted students and ex-villains cheered.
Finally, people began to fall. Yoshi went first, flung off the platform and to his demise. Princess Daisy followed a second later, too distracted dealing with Yoshi to notice the threat behind her. Then it was just Wolf and Sonic. Wolf had two lives left, but Sonic was down to one.
Shimura narrowed his eyes and squeezed his controller tight. The fight began.
They clashed in a flurry of dodges and combo moves, leaping and slicing and barreling towards each other. Sonic threw Wolf away so fast he had no hope of recovering. And then they were tied, both with one life left.
But Sonic had taken far more damage than Wolf.
In a decisive strike, Wolf threw Sonic off the platform and to his doom.
The room erupted with noise. Cheering, cursing, wordless shrieks, congratulations and belittlement alike.
Shimura howled, flinging his controller at a ready-and-waiting Shoji and whirling on Shinsou. Who was, of course, practically snoring and had definitely not just thoroughly trounced him at Super Smash Bros.
Instead, Shimura was met with the simultaneously smug and unimpressed gaze of Eraserhead himself.
He froze.
Touya, sensing that something was wrong, turned to look at whatever Shimura was looking at and also froze. Shoto, who was more than a little irritated because Touya hadn’t stopped moving since he sat down, curiously followed his gaze.
Instead of freezing, Shoto made the only sane and logical choice available to him. He shouted, “FPHE, FPHE!”
Kaminari, somehow in possession of the brain cell, responded with the instruction, “OPERATION SLUMPER PARTY!”
In less than ten seconds, the TV had been turned off, the bowls and plates of snacks had been discarded in a towering but stable pile the coffee table, the open bottles of nail polish and nail polish remover had all been capped, and every single member of Class 2-A was something approaching horizontal. They were lying on the floor, on the couch, somewhere in between, and draped across their friends. Blankets and pillows were flung in haphazard layers over everyone and everything. Assigned friends had grabbed their designated villain and yanked them down alongside. Spinner, without an assigned friend and not even aware of the danger, immediately followed the trend anyway and was only a few seconds slower than the rest.
Aizawa Shouta, in his infinite wisdom, sighed. He hefted Shinsou off his shoulder and dropped him across the couch, right on top of Bakugou and Tokoyami. Then, Aizawa turned away from the living room and into the kitchen.
“FPHE?” Shimura asked in a whisper.
“Feral Pro-Hero Eraserhead,” Midoriya supplied, equally hushed. “Aizawa-Sensei goes a little bit rabid after dark.”
“And then he hunts us for sport,” Sero whined into the pillow someone had dropped on his face.
“Unless he thinks it’s supposed to be trauma support,” Uraraka whispered, “in which case he usually lets it happen.”
“And since we’re all bonded together and codependent thanks to shared trauma, we sometimes need to be around each other to remind ourselves that all our friends are alive,” Midoriya said.
There was a brief pause as the ex-villains – who had been the source of a great deal of that trauma – digested that comment.
“Hence, Operation Slumber Party,” Touya broke the silence, his voice muffled by the pillow that Shoto was apparently attempting to smother him with.
“Exactly.”
Aizawa emerged from the kitchen with a muffin in one hand and a small paper bag hanging from his wrist.
“I can hear you, Midoriya.”
“I’ve been known to talk in my sleep,” Midoriya informed him.
“You’ve been known to mutter to yourself at all hours of the day and night including when you should be asleep, but that is decidedly not the same thing.” Aizawa walked back to the couch with Shinsou on it and proffered the controller he still had in his left hand. “Thank you for the controller, Dark Shadow.”
“Fumi wants to know if you’re ‘Raser-Sensei, ‘Zawa-Sensei, or Dad-Sensei,” the shadow creature said, plucking the controller from his hand.
“Fumi wants to know that, does he?” Aizawa asked, one eyebrow tilted judgmentally.
“Noooo,” Tokoyami wheezed into the couch cushion.
“Shut up, bird brain,” Bakugou hissed at him.
“I can’t feel my fingers,” Kaminari whispered. “Kiri, you’re on my wrist.”
“I can’t move, bro, Katsuki’s kneeling on me,” Kirishima whispered back.
“Yaomomo’s hair is in my mouth,” Jirou said blankly.
“Sorry,” Yaoyorozu whispered, chagrined.
“Class Prez, your engines,” Hagakure wheezed, Iida’s engines digging into her side.
“I would move them if I could,” Iida responded apologetically and with only minor difficulty breathing, “but I am also unable to move.”
Shoji, with his entire upper body slumped over Iida’s chest, only grunted.
“I’m half blind, not deaf,” Aizawa sighed.
“Sorry,” Shimura whispered with a guilty wince.
“Not your fault. Also, you’re not here.”
“Right.” Shimura freed the hand that had been pinned under Uraraka and mimed zipping his lips. “I was never here.”
“And for every ‘turning a blind eye’ or ‘leg to stand on’ joke I hear, that person will get two days of detention,” Aizawa added as Kaminari, Mina, Hagakure, Sero, and Dark Shadow all opened their mouths with gremlin intent. “Which is a threat that applies to everyone in this room, even if, for some reason, you think it might not. I will find a way.”
Bakugou snorted. Spinner, having ended up mostly on top of the pile, was one of the few who actually saw Aizawa’s expression as he issued his threat. The feral smile curving at Aizawa’s lips did not make the threat any less believable or more amusing. In fact, it kind of made Spinner want to crawl into a small dark space and curl up into a tiny ball and never come out. Like, more than Spinner usually wanted to do that.
“I’m leaving Hitoshi here,” Aizawa said. “He’s asleep. Don’t wake him up. Good muffins.” With that parting remark and a muffin raised in Sato’s direction, Aizawa vanished the way he’d come, disappearing into the shadows with only the missing pastries to show he’d ever been there in the first place.
Midoriya was the first to tentatively sit up, blanket sloughing off him and falling into a crumpled heap on Shimura.
“Is he gone?”
Jiro plugged her single remaining earphone jack into the floor and listened closely. Shoji lifted his arms – ignoring the ‘oof’ from Iida underneath him – and turned several into extra ears.
“I think so,” Jiro decided. Shoji agreed.
“Best two out of three?” Bakugou offered.
Shimura had reclaimed his controller and his spot on the couch in record time. Just as quickly as it had begun, Operation Slumber Party was discarded. Blankets and pillows were whipped away and returned to their rightful owners. The haphazard dogpile of Heroes-in-training and ex-villains was sorted out in seconds, unfolding like they had practiced it with assigned friends pulling their designated ex-villains along with them. Nail polish bottles were uncapped, the tower of bowls, plates, and cups stacked on the coffee table was rapidly redistributed, and the TV flicked back on with a low buzz, the game declaring Player 4’s victory still displayed proudly on the screen.
With the help of Uraraka, Shinsou’s sleeping form was carefully transported to the one couch that had not been dragged around this particular TV, and his position as final contestant was claimed by the runner-up, Dark Shadow herself.
The game began again.