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Denki knew when he was being watched. There was this sense, a chill down the back of his spine. It had been going on for weeks now. Every time he left the dorms, someone would be watching him. Getting to his part time job hadn’t been easy ever since moving to UA. The fact that students needed permission to leave campus grated on his need for independence.
Pretty convenient if someone wanted to follow him. Denki wasn’t an idiot. The carefree exterior made a lot of people underestimate him, but that was fine. He tried his best where it mattered. Homework just...wasn’t important in the long run. Algebra, history, literature, it didn’t matter. So even if he got low grades, even if he goofed off more than the others, he wasn’t dumb.
The question was if a villain or hero was following him. There were rumors at UA, whispers of a traitor, and since Denki wasn’t dumb, he knew how he looked. He also knew how to cover his tracks. When he left UA, the reason given was always visiting middle school friends. A simple lie, easy to convince someone to cover for him or even just hang out a little before moving on to what actually mattered.
Lying wasn’t very heroic, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The truth would be too costly. They would definitely kick him out of the hero course, maybe even UA. His family would feel betrayed and try to manage his life for him. Denki would lose all of his freedom and never be able to reach his goals.
So the secret had to be kept. It wasn’t like he was hurting people. Sure, there were definitely people he helped who went on to hurt other people, but he couldn’t afford to stop. This was his only chance at being a hero.
If it was a villain following him, Denki had a provisional licence and knew how to defend himself.
If it was a hero, that meant they had caught on to his behavior and thought he was the traitor.
Denki really hoped it was villains that were after him. If that were the case, his quirk would be more than enough to protect him. He loved his quirk, loved the way it crackled just underneath his skin and energized him. It was like a welcoming, consistent hum that always sang to him.
For the moment, it didn’t really matter. Right now, he had to lose whoever was after him. A smirk bloomed on his face as he turned into the clothes shop sitting on the street corner. Fun fact, Denki was really familiar with this area. Familiar to the point where Mrs. Saikuku, the elderly woman who owned the shop, merely pulled him into the backroom and flipped the rug up to reveal a trap door.
Mrs. Saikuku was someone whose complete trust he earned long ago. Denki hopped down the opening and landed in a clean, dry sewer. It had long ago been sealed off from the rest of the sewer system by people who used to smuggle less than legal items. If he was being honest, the smuggling probably still happened. Oh hey, the air fresheners he left last time were still hanging along the walls.
Even though it was pitch black, he didn’t stumble. There was an exact number of steps to take before turning, then he walked until the faint glimmers of light from the holes in the manhole cover could be seen. There was a ladder to the left of the manhole that would get him high enough to be able to exit safely into the alleyway just a block from his destination.
When Denki left the alley, the feeling of being watched was gone. A drunk man nearly knocked into him, but that wasn’t anything new. His part time job wasn’t in the good part of town. Relief flooded his limbs as he looked at the familiar crumbling exterior. As soon as he stepped through the door, a giant grin split his face. It had been a while since he got to visit his second home.
“Ah, Kaminari, how nice to see you again.” Miss Saiton was a woman in her thirties with a particularly strange mutation quirk. She produced a paralytic venom that could be injected using jagged spikes on her dinosaur-like tail. The only problem was that the venom became more potent as she grew older, but her resistance to it didn’t grow at the same rate. As always, Miss Saiton’s movements were sluggish as she fought through the venom’s effect. Her facial muscles struggled to form a smile, but only the left side of her face actually moved. “Your medication must have run out a while ago.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t been able to get away from school to pick up a shift so I could get some more.”
“I feel you, life can get busy.” Miss Saiton spent a few minutes typing on the keyboard specially ordered to have bigger keys for her clumsy fingers.
“So, need me to organize the files?”
“Nah, we had someone do that the other week and things haven’t cluttered back up yet. Hmm. There are some new supplies that we haven’t unboxed yet, why don’t you take them?”
Denki flashed her a thumbs up. “Sure thing, Miss Saiton.”
It took awhile, but wasn’t particularly hard. Sure some of the boxes were heavy, but UA had served him well. At the start of the year Denki’s arms would have felt like noodles by the end of it, but the current Denki just noticed a dull ache. On his way out, he ran into someone he only knew as “Doctor”. A quick glance showed him that Doctor was female at the moment. Their quirk made it so they changed sexes without rhyme or reason. From what they told Denki, it was very painful and caused a slew of hormonal imbalances. The real kicker was that each change took it it’s toll and atrophied Doctor’s body more and more.
“Kaminari, I have your medication.” A bottle of pills was tossed at him in a weak throw. Denki pocketed the bottle. “These should get you through until you have a chance to come work again.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I turned down the work studies my school was offering so I should still be able to stop by every few weeks. The only reason it’s been so long is because of the licensing exams.”
Doctor gave him a tired smile. “You’re always so considerate, Kaminari. I really hope you live long enough to be a hero and do all those great things I know you’re capable of.”
Denki gulped and his smile fell into a determined line. Why did she have to remind him of that? He knew the thin line he was walking, had been walking it for years. At seven, he knew he would do anything to become a hero. At nine, he learned exactly what the cost would be and began paying it. It was all for the dream.
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t even hear Miss Saiton’s farewell. It was four minutes into his walk back that he felt it—that tingle down his spine. Someone was watching him. Logically, he had no reason to change his path. If it was a hero, all they would see is him walking back to UA. If it was a villain, being electrocuted would quickly convince them that messing with Denki was a bad idea. Still, better safe than sorry.
Within the next five minutes, Denki would make three key mistakes.
Turning into the alleyway was his first mistake.
Anyone paying attention would have noticed the dead end. He, however, didn’t really bother to notice anything about his surroundings before realizing someone was watching him. Then he heard the chuckle.
“I would have thought hero students would be smarter than to get themselves trapped like this.”
Denki overestimated his strength. He assumed it would be a common thug figuring they could follow in the League’s footsteps and mess with class 1-A.
That was his second mistake.
Because it wasn’t a typical thug or even some low level villain standing at the entrance to the alleyway, it was Dabi. There was a hissing noise as a wall of blue fire cut off the only exit. This was bad, really bad. Seemed like Doctor hoped for nothing, Denki wasn’t going to live long enough to do anything . Even if he was done for, he wasn’t going down without a fight. He didn’t bother to stop and plan or even examine his options, he just rushed Dabi.
That was his third mistake.
Against all odds, he made it to Dabi without being burned to a crisp and managed to grab one of the man’s scarred arms. He gaped when his quirk had no effect. That shock was what allowed the villain to grab him, one arm restraining the teenager against his chest while the other dipped into the man’s pocket. That was when he finally noticed the elbow length rubber gloves the villain wore.
“How-” Denki started to ask before a needle plunged into his neck. Things after that were hazy. He managed to struggle for a little longer before his mind went numb, barely registering his hands being zip tied behind his back before he blacked out.
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Denki came to slowly, everything odd and difficult to perceive. He groggily tried to roll over and rub his face, only to meet resistance. Huh? He sat there in a confused daze for a few more minutes before finally being able to open his eyes.
That’s when the panic set in. Denki thrashed, trying desperately to tug his limbs free. Thick rubber straps secured his arms behind his back. Matching straps similarly held his ankles together. The room around him was empty and looked worse for wear. Cracks in the walls suggested it wasn’t very structurally sound either. He tried to call out, whether it was a good idea to alert potential enemies that he was awake or not, but only managed to make an annoyed “oomph” sound.
A strip of twisted cloth was shoved into his mouth and tied behind his head. The panic got worse as Denki tried to worm his way over to the door. He had made it pretty far when the door swung open and caught him in the stomach.
“Oomph, arng.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t bother to try talking. It’s listening time right now.”
Dabi, arms still covered in those long rubber gloves, hauled Denki to his feet and roughly shoved the teenager in the back corner of the room. The villain paused to just stand there for a moment, blue eyes contemplative. Then the man simply huffed and sat in front of the door. “Y’know, I was surprised to find out how much I had in common with a hero brat.”
The man looked at him, something intense in those blue eyes that almost seemed to glow. “So, do the heroes know your little secret, that job you sneak out to do?”
Denki stilled, all the fight leaving his body. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way he could know. No one was supposed to know . If they knew, they wouldn’t let him be a hero.
“You see this,” Dabi gestured to the burned and stapled flesh on his face, “This is what my quirk does to me.”
Anyone else would have asked why the villain kept using a quirk that caused so much pain and damage to themself, but not him. Denki understood. After all, Electrification wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.
“Finding that place all those years ago is probably the only reason I’m still alive. I got lucky, finding a place that didn’t care if you were homeless or a villain or anything. A clinic for people whose quirks are killing them. A place for people like me.” Azure eyes shifted over to Denki once more. “And people like you.”
“Argn, nuf omph.”
The villain smirked at him, but it wasn’t smug. Instead, it was somehow sad, like the look a teacher would give a student who gave a particularly ridiculous wrong answer. “Imagine my surprise when I was filing stuff there the other day to pay for some more painkillers and I stumbled upon a familiar name. Kaminari Denki, the kid who short circuited himself in the UA Sports Festival.”
All Denki could feel was horror. Dabi had read his file, the villain knew . The smug look dropped off the man’s face. “Your file was even worse than mine. You have what, seven more years before your quirk kills you? Maybe less with how often you use your quirk.”
There it was, Denki’s greatest secret. No one at UA knew. Not even his parents knew. Since he was nine and overloaded his quirk in front of the doctor that ran the same kind of clinic in Denki’s hometown, he knew.
“Eventually your quirk will grow too powerful for your body to handle. You’re dying. And these,” the pill bottle Denki got was pulled out of the villain’s pocket, “Aren’t doing shit enough to help you.”
Blue flames consumed the bottle until nothing but ash remained. Tears fell down his face as the situation sunk in. Why? Denki knew he was dying, so why did he have to get kidnapped? Wasn’t it enough that he wouldn’t live to thirty no matter what he did at this point? That his electricity would grow powerful enough to end him in a little over five years, maybe less? He had a plan, become a hero and help people with the time he had left, even if it did accelerate the process. If UA or his parents knew, they’d never let him stay in the hero course, not when it brought the end even closer.
“I don’t owe you anything, brat. I don’t know you. I don’t care about you, but I know what it’s like to have the very thing that makes you special, makes you powerful, in this society hurt you. Once I finish what I’ve set out to do, that’s it for me. But maybe you can stick around a little longer.” Dabi shuffled behind him to bring out a long pole with a collar attached, like what was used by animal control. A collar that Denki strongly suspected was made out of rubber. Tied up as he was, Denki couldn’t do much to stop what was happening. Soon, the ties around his ankles were removed and the collar was secured. Dabi used the pole to force the teenager to walk an arms length away in front of him.
“There’s these Yakuza thugs the League has been working with. Shigaraki says they’ve been making a drug to erase people’s quirks for good. He says they need to test it.” A sharp tug on his neck forced Denki to awkwardly turn and face a grinning Dabi. “Lucky for you kid, I’m about to save your life.”
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Izuku woke up in the hospital after the Yakuza raid. He had to sit through being checked over by a nurse before his friends could come in. The first he noticed was the tears in her eyes.
“Urakaka? What is it? Did something happen to Eri? Is she okay?”
There were a few sniffles before she used the sleeve of her jacket to wipe the tears away. “Eri has a fever, but she’s going to be okay. It-it’s not that. Deku...they found Kaminari.”
Izuku froze on the hospital bed. Kaminari had been missing for weeks, rumors flying through the air. Class 1-A, on more than one occasion, had gotten into fights with other students who spread certain rumors. Like the rumor that Kaminari was dead and everyone was wasting time looking for him. Or, even worse, the rumor that he had been spying for villains and betraying UA. Even the normally even-tempered Tsu hadn’t bothered to hold Kacchan back from attacking that gen-ed student. Still, no matter what they did, the rumors persisted.
“Deku, he’s...not the same.”
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Shouta stood in his student’s hospital room with Detective Tsuakauchi, waiting for the nurse to stop fiddling with the boy’s IV. Once the nurse had left, the two men pulled up chairs. The teenager before them barely seemed to notice, only curling up into a ball on the hospital bed even further. He had been mostly unresponsive ever since he was brought here. Not for the first or last time, Shouta was glad beyond belief that the heroes and police were thorough in their search of Overhaul’s base after the raid. If not, they may never have found the student sitting on the cold stone floor of a locked room, empty save for a bed.
“Kaminari-” Shouta began before he was cut off.
“Gone.” The word was whispered, soft enough that neither adult was sure whether it was real or imagined.
“I'm sorry, what was that?”
“IT’S GONE!” Kaminari screamed at him. The teenager shot up to look at them and, for the first time since the boy had been rescued, Shouta saw how empty his eyes were. Normally, the kid would be one of the most upbeat and loud in the whole class. His personality always seemed to crackle around the room like the quirk he was known for. Now, Kaminari was muted and dull, some key part of him missing. The problem child’s hands moved to curl in the way they always used to when he summoned the sparking of his quirk, but nothing happened. The boy flopped back down on the bed and whispered much more quietly, “He took me, then they took it.”
Given what Overhaul had been making in his labs, a dark suspicion was starting to form of just what was taken. No matter how concerning that statement was, Shouta needed to find a way to comfort his student. Before he could, Kaminari spoke again. “I’m going to live now. I’m going to live.”
Those words tore at his heart. To think Nedzu suspected him of being the traitor, that the rat still suspected the student of being the traitor. At least some good could have come from that if the hero trailing the student that day hadn’t lost him in a clothe’s shop. Still, Kaminari should feel relief at his statement, not the devastated look of despair that Shouta caught. Maybe he didn’t really believe he was safe? “That’s right, Kaminari. We’ll keep you safe. You’re going to live.”
His student burst in body wracking sobs, hands fisted in the hospital sheets.
“That’s the problem,” Kaminari whispered between sobs, “I was never meant to.”