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His thoughts are screaming at him. You’re smarter than this, you’re smarter than this. You know you can think of a way out of this, you’re so much smarter than this. C’mon, Denki think. Think! But all he can see is his friends, the people who were like his family laid out in front of him. He’s the last man standing. His entire team is on the ground, and he knows that if he short circuits, if he goes too far, he’s damning not only his enemies but his friends too.
You have no friends there, Chargebolt. You’re not there to make friends, you’re there to gather information and report back on progress.
No. No. He is not going to be reduced to what that bitch thought she could make him. He is not just a commission pawn, he is a friend to these people. A good one. And damnit, their lives are not worth the sacrifice.
He shakes his head, and he reaches out to Jirou first. Kyoka Jirou, the woman he’s fallen head over hills in love with. She’s a talented spitfire who had fallen just as hard for him as he knows he has for her.
Kirishima, tough as nails, manly bastard. Loyal as all hell. A good person over all.
Hitoshi Shinsou. His boyfriend. The Commission doesn’t know about him, just like they don’t know about Kyoka, or what it is they share. But he’s good and deserving and far from what everyone thought he’d be.
These people are his friends. His family. The one he had found on his own. And he will not hurt them any more than they’ve already been hurt.
“You’re running out of options, Chargebolt.” Their attack says, and he shakes his head.
“There’s always options, Asshole. You’re just too stupid to see them.” He laughs.
The fact of the matter is, Denki doesn’t care if he kills the bastards that attacked them. Denki doesn’t care. It’s been bred into him since he was a child that death is a fact of life when you’re a hero. And sometimes to ensure the good of the many, you have to kill a few bad bastards. But time is of the essence and he has to take them down before he discharges his static into the ground at his feet and takes his friends down too.
Fuck.
If it isn’t always something.
Kirishima is forcing himself to rise to his feet, and he’s taken a hold of Jirou. “I’ll be back for him in a minute, can you hold em off til then?”
He is doing his damndest to do exactly that. His team is important. They need to retreat. They will retreat. His eyes shift momentarily to Hitoshi, who he stands protectively over, and he nods. He is the last line of defense between his unconscious boyfriend and the villains surrounding them. He knows this. He accepts this, and he is definitely ready to fight to make sure he stays safe.
The first two make the mistake of getting within close proximity. The charge from his hand drops them both like flies. He doesn’t need to check for a pulse. He knows their dead on impact. He’s made sure of that.
But his quirk is unstable, and he also knows that and the longer Kirishima takes the more his anxiety creeps in, and he’s counting the seconds until the inevitable happens. Electricity crackles over his skin, and he feels it like it’s trying to tear the life out of him, but it can’t quite get there. So it seeks out others, expelling from his body and latching onto any life form it can find until their bodies drop to the floor just as dead as the first two.
And the fear creeps in as his eyes turn to Hitoshi, and he finds scars that tells him he wasn’t spared. And he hopes in vain, as he kneels down beside him that when he checks he’ll find a pulse. Because he’s not stupid, and he’s not short circuited, and he knows deep down that the love of his life is gone.
And Kirishima returns to find the carnage, bodies crisped by the sheer intensity of his voltage, and his still sparking form clutching tightly onto Hitoshi like he can will him back to life.
"What the hell did you do?" Kirishima is angry. It's painting his tone. "You killed them… you… you killed him." He says more but Denki can't hear it.
He can hear Kyoka calling out to him though, it's soft and out of place. But she's there. He knows it.
#
Denki wakes with a start, the tears coming before he realizes. Panicked breathing follows and he tries to grasp reality in the palm of his hands and settle himself only to find that he can't breathe.
Fuck the tightness in his chest is suffocating, like someone is pressing a ton of pressure down on his chest and he’s grasping at an attempt to hold himself together. Bodies lay on either side of him. Kyoka smooths his hair and tries to make him relax, but it’s not helping. God, it’s not helping. He bolts upright in the bed, as if to get away from her touch.
“Hey---” Hitoshi. God, Hitoshi. “How can I help?”
The nagging part of his brain knows that this is a ploy to get him to speak. To get him to answer, a question to get him to stop hiding his face and force his attention to calming down. Because it’s not working, he can’t fucking breathe, and his fingers are tangled into his hair, pulling at it because even if just in his dreams he’s a bastard.
But it’s not just his dreams, and he knows it’s not just his dreams.
He was raised by people who had taken a brilliant boy, with a sometimes broken quirk, and turned him into a weapon. And Denki knows what he is. He’s always known it.
“I don’t know.” He still answers anyway. Because he wants the sweet release from the darkness inside his head.
“Look at me.” The order comes and he follows it blindly. His chest is still heaving, as he struggles for breath. “Breathe in deep through your nose, and out through your mouth.”
It takes a handful of minutes but he finally achieves a state of calm, before his mind is his own again. He’s come down from his adrenaline high and has accepted that he’s safe. And his first instinct is to look over Hitoshi, and touch his face with fingers buzzing with the electrical charge his body naturally puts out. “You’re okay.” He reassures himself.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Hitoshi responds, his fingers coming to curl around Denki’s.
“It was just a nightmare. I---” The words are unintelligible leading up to the last, “You.”
“What?” Kyoka asks, her tone is groggy. Denki fights his desire to smile at the sound of it. He doesn’t deserve to smile now. Not given the reality of their situation.
They’re just kids. Holed up in a twin bed together. A tangle of limbs wrapped around limbs and bodies on top of each other because there’s nowhere else to be. But all he can think about is what if those bodies were dead, and what if it was his fault.
“I have to go.” He says, ambling to get out of the bed, out of the tangle. Away from the people he loves because fucking hell he doesn’t want to hurt them. And he doesn’t get to have them. The belief that this will last is a naive hope and he knows it. He wants to go home. He wants to smoke until his lungs burn and he feels like the weight of his problems disappears from his shoulders. Because he’s just a kid.
He wants to just be a kid.
And he fucking can’t.
So he forces himself out of the bed, despite the hands that desperately claw at him to keep him there with them.
“Babe, it’s three in the morning--- come back to bed, please.” Kyoka pleads with him, as he pulls his shirt and shoes on, and grabs his phone.
“Dad’s gonna be mad as hell if he finds out you left in the middle of the night. Please just wait until morning?” Hitoshi says.
And Denki understands their reasoning. He gets it. He really does. But he can’t stay. Especially as the buzzing under the surface of his skin rises in voltage and he risks hurting them and everyone else by being there.
Weapons don’t get happy endings. Weapons don’t have feelings. That’s all you are. It’s better to end it while you have the chance. Before something happens that removes them from the picture entirely.
He’s out the door before either one of them can untangle themselves from the blankets or each other. His hands are shaking by the time he’s out the front door, and the cold air breezes across his skin. And his immediate response is to pull his phone into view and call his brother. Because Keigo would know what to do. He’d have the answers, and if he didn’t then Hina would. Someone would be able to tell him what to do. Someone had to be able to tell him how to deal with this.
Kaiya. Keigo. Keegan. Hina. Someone.
Worst case scenario he’d smoke a joint with his brother and discharge some of his pent up energy along the way so that he didn’t hurt anyone.
He dials Keigo’s cell. And listens to the phone ring as he makes his way across campus.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Ring Ring Ring.
Ring Ring Ri----
“It’s three in the morning, Volts, everything good?” Keigo asks into the phone, and Denki almost chokes on a sob.
“No.” He says, forcing an air of calm, he can still hear his voice waiver just a little though. “I have to get out of here before I hurt someone.” He does choke on those words, and the sob tears out of him. “I can feel it under my skin like it’s threatening to tear me apart if I don’t get rid of it.”
“Denki.” Keigo says his name with a sort of authority that shocks him. It always does when he actually shows his position as oldest. “Listen. You can’t leave campus right now. Madam Prez would have both of our asses. You don’t want that.”
He shakes his head as if Keigo can see it. “What do I do?”
“Head out to one of the many on campus training scenarios, and expel as much of that energy as you can. It’s not ideal. And I know it’s not what you want. But it’ll keep you and everyone else safe until you can get a pass off campus in the morning.”
There is a rustle in the receiver and someone else is on the phone in a matter of seconds. “Hey--- D. Listen. I know you’re scared. I know, okay?”
Keegan. His sister, the one they’d all thought they’d lost a long time ago. The one that everyone knew had been stolen away from them, in the deepest parts of their mind that the President couldn’t reach.
“I don’t want to hurt them, Gi-” He breathes into the receiver and tries to pull himself together. His feet carry him towards Ground Beta. The closest of their training grounds to his current location.
“I know you don’t. You won’t. I promise, you just need to let that energy out. I promise, it’s gonna be okay.” Her voice speaks like she’s so sure of this thing. Like him being okay, his friends being safe is a given.
If he doesn’t hurt them, he’s sure Noriko will. That’s just how she is. Taking everything and anything that could be a distraction and removing it from the scenario until nothing is left. Until there’s no feeling. No heart. Nothing.
He isn’t a monster.
He doesn’t want to.
The phone goes dead in his hand, a jolt of electricity frying the circuits and leaving it unworking in his hand. He throws into a stone wall, at one of the buildings that stands around him, watching it shatter in steaming parts to the ground with a great scream.
He’s sure they can hear him all the way across campus. He hopes they stay away. Because he’s let his guard down now.
He’s let it drop and his power has exploded out of him, riding up the sides of buildings, gripping power lines in the city scape, forcing lights on and off, on and off. The sheer force of his power riding through the very earth as he tries to make the buzzing beneath his skin stop.
It doesn’t.
It doesn’t stop.
It never stops.
He’s a monster.
He’s going to hurt them.
He screams again. And again. And again.
Until his lungs are sore, until the buzzing of his electrical current threatens to short circuit him like he pretends to during class, to make himself seem like he’s on par with his classmates.
A carefully trained lie.
He’s a liar.
A fucking liar.
Monster.
“DENKI!”
He barely hears them. Their voices calling to him in unison. He barely sees them, his vision white with the sheer amount of voltage expelling from him. They shouldn’t be here.
Why are they here?
Don’t they understand!?
NO!
“Denki!” Kyoka moves first.
He shakes his head, pulling his arms tight to his chest.
Please. No. No no no no no n o no!
“Stay away!” He demands, his voice raw, cracking like lightning in the air with the sound of his current. He can’t stop. “GO! Please!”
He swears he thinks Hitoshi says something, but he can’t hear what it is.
He can’t hear anything. He’s twitching. His fingers have lost feeling, and he can’t hear over the roar of his own quirk. Hitoshi brings his phone to his ear, and the power keeps flowing. Lights flickering, Kyoka gaining on him down the stretch of street, almost in the reach of that current.
“STOP!” He knows he’s screamed it, and can feel it against the rawness of his vocal chords. “PLEASE!”
She freezes, when she sees that his current will not stop for even her. He almost feels the sigh of relief wash over him, until he notices she's preparing herself for the pain of his shocks. She’s going to continue progressing.
He turns pleading eyes to Hitoshi, his quirk doubling up--- more energy leaving him. Higher voltage.
Stop. Stop. Stop. Please. Stop.
He focuses on pulling it all back. Back inside him. Away from her, away from the people he loves. If it hurts him he doesn’t care. He doesn’t fucking care, but he’ll be damned if he lets his power taint them.
No. He won’t.
He fucking won’t.
Kyoka is screaming something at him, as the current recedes and then disappears all together, even the buzzing stops under his skin, and he understands why when he sees his teacher, standing behind his boyfriend, a hand on his shoulder.
He called Aizawa.
For now, there is peace, but as soon as his teacher’s quirk is no longer active. What then? What when the buzzing returns to make his blood sing and threaten to spill their blood.
He couldn’t make Aizawa look at him forever. He couldn’t ask that of his teacher.
But the man approached him, where his knees wobbled and collapsed under him, leaving him falling to a heap on the ground.
Scared. He is fucking terrified. Because they know the depth of his power. The fact that it’s all been a lie. They see him now. Perfectly able to think as if he hadn’t used an ounce of that power.
They know it’s all been a lie.
He pulls his arms tight to his chest, wrapping them around himself and trying so hard not to show them just how broken he is in that moment. He is seen, and that scares the fucking hell out of him.
He expects to be chastised by the man, if not for being out past curfew then for scaring the hell out of Hitoshi and Jirou.
He doesn’t expect him to keep his eyes trained on him, as he drops down to a crouch in front of him. “Are you hurt?” Which was followed very closely by, “What brought this on?”
Denki searches for the words, some way to explain without revealing everything. He can’t. There aren’t enough words, there’s nothing for him to say, nothing for him to do. He tells them everything. Or he tells them nothing.
But if he tells them the truth--- He knows what will happen. It’s happened a million times before. A million times where he’s had to end lives for finding out the truth of what the Commission did.
He couldn’t do that to them. To Hitoshi. To Eri, who had played cards with him the other day, and laughed when she’d absolutely beat him into the mud.
“I can’t.” His voice is raw. “I--- I’m sorry.”
As if that served as an explanation. It was hardly one.
===
Shouta Aizawa knows that look. The one that rests on his students face, pure anguish and fear. Someone put that look there. Someone made this child fear for his life, for his well being. For the wellbeing of others. And of all people in the world to discover this fact, they would regret it being him.
Denki Kaminari is stronger than any of his students.
Someone made him this way.
Who and Why were his next questions?
He escorts Denki back to his dorm room. Not Hitoshi’s, where the three of them like to sleep. But on his own, because he knows that there’s no way Denki is going to let either of them touch him now.
Not after that display.
In fact, it was a miracle that Shouta had gotten Denki to offer him his hand. But he had, shakily offered it. And even though he was exhausted, Shouta needed answers. So he guided the boy into his room and sat him on the bed, before pulling the desk chair over.
"Do you want to tell me what that was about?" He asked. He spoke to Denki as he would've spoken to Eri. As he had on several occasions.
"I can't."
"Kaminari, you realize you can tell me if someone's hurting you? Or has hurt you, right?" Exasperation mingled with rage, and stayed hidden beneath the surface as Shouta put his best foot forward to get the kid to talk.
"I know. But it's not something you can fight. Or fix." He shook his head, "No one can fix it."
That was something.
"I don't want anyone to get hurt because of me."
Who was a force strong enough to strike this level of fear into a child who had faced down the League of Villains?
"No one's going to get hurt."
"No. You don't know that." Kaminari snapped.
Shouta had only a couple of seconds to analyze the situation and devise a plan. It seemed that the best he was going to do was to push Denki into his anger.
"I know you well enough to know you wouldn't hurt anyone."
"I may not have a choice!"
Shouta could see it on his face that he regretted the words as soon as they'd left his mouth.
###
Denki had backed himself into a corner with that one. He should've just kept his mouth shut. From this angle he'd said just enough for Aizawa to force his hand in regards to an explanation.
"I--" His head hung low as he crossed his legs on the bed. Eyes turned up to his teacher and he sighed. "If I talk about it people will get hurt. There's no way around it."
"Kaminari. I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong."
What was he supposed to say? He'd broken so many rules. And Aizawa wanted to help him. He genuinely believed as much. But what was he supposed to do? If he spilled his guts, who was to say that his teacher wouldn't go do anything stupid.
Aizawa was a logical man. But he seemed the type to do dumb shit if the situation called for it.
"It's complicated and messy and I don't… i can't…" He shook his head. If he tried to talk about it. He'd have to explain everything and he didn't have the energy.
He could be vague.
Denki assessed the option quickly. If he said just enough that his teacher could deduce the answer without him out right saying it, he should be okay.
"If I tell you they'll kill me, and there isn't a soul in the world who can stop them." He said, "It's like that when you're above the law."
He left it at that, shifting to lay in his bed. "I'm tired."
###
Shouta pushed himself up out of the chair and pushed it back under the blondes desk. He mulled over the words that Denki had used. The logical part of his thoughts knew that the boy was smart enough to speak vaguely.
He sighed and made his way out of the room and back towards the commons. The words still turned over in his head. Who the hell was above the law.
Above the law.
There were only a handful of organizations in the world that actually stood above the law. And even they weren't entirely untouchable. Just nearly so.
It didn't take long after that to put the rest of the pieces into place. Right down to his insistence on not saying a word about it out right.
If his suspicions were correct, and he was damn near certain they were.
Denki Kaminari was insinuating that the Hero Commission was corrupt. And if that happened to be the case… they were all fucked.
###
Morning came, along with the off campus pass that was handed to him by none other than the man he’d spilled his guts too in the most vague way possible the night before. He'd done so well up to that point. Or so he'd been told on numerous occasions.
But fuck if it hadn't gotten increasingly more difficult. To pretend to be everything they thought he was.
His fingers twitched at his sides as he moved towards the familiar building towering over the others through the city. At the top, 100 stories above the ground he'd find the advice he craved.
And a chance to let the mask drop.
He sighed heavy, before taking his first step into the lobby. The doorman offered a greeting. Denki nodded ever so slightly in acknowledgement as he put himself in the elevator and allowed it to take him up, up and up. Floor after floor he thought about the situation.
With each passing ding as the car carried him up to towards the penthouse the buzzing under his skin threatened to overwhelm him. He sighed, shook his hands out as if he could rid himself of the static feeling. Eyes turned to the monitor displaying the floor number just as it reached the hundredth floor.
The doors open and Denki stepped off into the familiar penthouse. Shoes were discarded at the door.
The penthouse was empty.
He realized as he made his way through to plop down on the couch.
"You look like you've seen better days." The voice pulled his attention, where he found the slightly glitchy form of his sister.
"Yeah. So do you. You're glitching." He muttered. "You're past due for an update. I'm sorry I haven't been able to get here."
"Heard you're having trouble." The hologram spoke, and he rose his hands to thread back through his hair.
"Where's Keigo? Keegan?" He asked, watching as the woman glitched straight through the center.
"They'll be back soon. Where they went, I don't know."
Of course not. Or she did and she wouldn't tell.
"Well I'm gonna work on getting you back to fully functioning while they're out." Denki pushed himself up from the couch. He moved towards a small room off the kitchen, where the system storage for her entire set up rested.
#
Hours of work melted the time away, and when he was finished the two of them had made their way to the couch.
Hina offered him a smile. "Thank you for the upgrades."
"Sorry they're not an actual body." He breathed, and despite the reality that he hadn't had the time to figure that out yet. He relaxed for the first time since the night before the tension eased from his shoulders.
"Sorry that took so long." Eyes turned up to find the two missing members of the house standing in the doorway shedding their shoes.
"Heh. No worries. I updated Hina's systems and took care of a few other things. The uncomfortable glitches should stop now." Denki shrugged.
"How're you feeling?" Keegan asked, raising a brow as she moved to plop beside him.
In that moment he felt fine. But he was one bad nightmare away from absolutely losing his shit. And that was a problem. "Fine… Right now."
"Last night that wasn't the case though." Keigo parked his ass on the coffee table, wings hanging over the back as if the damn thing were a bench and not a table.
"No. The nightmares have been getting worse." He admitted. "I killed Hitoshi in the one I had last night."
There was a collective sigh. Denki watched as Keegan’s fists clenched, and unclenched, before balling up again. And Keigo looked like he was going to explode.
“You won’t hurt them, Denki.” Hina said, crossing her arms over her chest, and shaking her head. “We all know you wouldn’t do it. And I know it’s hard to unlearn what you’ve been taught. But you are safer in that school than you are at the HPSC compound.”
“Hina’s right, Volts.” Keigo said, another deep sigh filled the space. “You don’t have to hide anymore. At the very least Eraserhead wouldn’t let them get close to you. I’d bet my life on that.”
“Stop pretending, D. Fuck the mission. Keigo and I will deal with Madam Prez. Be a kid, love who you want. Do what you want. Commission be damned.”
“I can’t--- I can’t ask you guys to do that.” He said, besides he didn’t know what to do with himself outside of his mission. He’d never been given a choice of what he wanted. He was raised to be a pawn in a god awful game of chess, where his wants had never mattered.
“You’re not asking. We’re telling you, as two of the most trusted adults in your life. Go be a kid. Go live your life. And if Noriko has a fucking problem with it, I’ll kill the hag myself.” Keegan said.
It was almost freeing to hear it, that they were willing to go to war with the woman who controlled their life for him. A shocked laugh bubbled from his lips and he shook his head. “What if they hate who I really am? What if they hate the truth? What if they hate me because I lied?” The buzzing was back in his fingertip.
Keigo reached into a box under the table and pulled out one of the various stim toys kept on hand for situations like this one. He pushed the cube into his hand, and Denki took to clicking the switch on one side of the object over and over to kill the desire to move.
Fuck.
Fingers moved over the cube as he contemplated the options laid out before him, waiting for some sort of advice.
"I've met your partners, D. They're not going to hate you. Hell, they'll probably love you more if you just be yourself."
He'd forgotten that both of them had met Kyoka and Hitoshi. The fact that Keegan felt that way managed to allieviate some of the anxiety. "Where do I even start?"
"At the beginning. There's no half assing this, if you're going to be honest with them. You need to be honest. If you aren't ready to embrace the dark bits yet… don't. They should be more than willing to give you the time you need to be comfortable."
He sighed, nodding. It wasn't going to be a fun conversation. And he was going to have to have it more than once. But he could do it. He was going to take back his life.
#
Denki allowed himself a few more hours of time, lounging on the couch without expectations before he sighed, said goodbye and began his descent to the lobby.
He made his way through familiar streets, and a few blocks of walking and a train ride later he stood at the front gate of the UA campus. All he had to do was be himself. That was all he had to do. He had to keep telling himself as much, to keep the buzzing in his fingers from becoming unbearable.
Another deep grounding breath brought him up the front steps of the class dorms. His eyes cast over the gathering of his classmates and he fought to suppress a groan.
He had options. He realized as his gaze caught on Kyoka where her fingers twirled at her earphone jacks, and Hitoshi where he sat next to her twiddling away at his phone. The others looked concerned. He didn't blame them. No doubt everyone had heard what had happened last night. It would make sense.
If he was going to commit to this. He needed to be open and honest with everyone. Maybe together they could all do something to change the way things were.
It was about time right?
He looked at his friends and put a lopsided grin on his features. He plopped down in the first available empty spot.
"I'm gonna tell you guys some things that might be hard to believe and I need you to trust me."
And he laid it all on the table.