One Tuesday, Zuko and Denki were sparring in a gym, a few hours after school. Without quirks; Zuko was teaching the other escrima sticks.
"Shouto, I think I'm doing better!" Denki said, when the two were taking a break.
Better, certainly." Zuko realized Denki reminded him of the Water Tribe peasant, Sokka; who he was trying not to think of while serving tea in Ba Sing Se, but as Jet so aptly put it, one can't run from their past. Well, Zuko though wryly, you can if you run to another dimension. Although he now had three names to answer to, which was troublesome.
"Denki; I feel your lightningbending could use some improvement. Try this. One...two...three." Zuko showed his friend the kata to create lightning, which Iroh and Azula could both figure out but which blew up in his face. "That's an interesting maneuver." Denki commented.
"You have to separate the energies, and pass the lightning through your stomach, keeping well away from the heart. And preferably the brain." Zuko said.
"Well, it's worth a try."
Denki stood up, felt the electricity crackling around and within him, and copied Zuko's movement, taking care where the sparks twisted. One, two, three--KABOOM! Denki stared at the massive hole in the quirk-proof wall. He gaped.
"That could kill someone!" Denki yelled, waving at the carnage. Aizawa and a tall, skinny blond man they'd seen around the school sometimes poked their heads into the school gym they'd been using.
"Young Todoroki, I was sure we warned you against freezeflash explosions. However...this one seems to have been of an incredibly dangerous caliber." the blond man said.
"That was me, actually." Denki waved his hand sheepishly. The two looked at him.
"Kaminari, you would have to summon enough power to recreate a lightning bolt to blast such a hole in the wall, and we tested your volt limit; there is no way you could get anywhere near that without killing yourself." Aizawa said.
"Tell that to Shouto's special lightningbending manuever!" Denki said, swinging his arms towards Zuko.
"Todoroki, what did you do?" Aizawa asked.
"I, uh, told him a a way that he could properly lightningbend? It's based off martial arts. I figured it out, thought it could help." Zuko said.
"Problem Child. Explain." Aizawa said.
"Okay. It's different with Denki, because his energies are different--here, let me show you." Zuko realized he couldn't lightning bend through Todoroki's ice side, and adapted the manuever accordingly.
Aizawa watched Problem Child #3 move his arm in a circular motion, creating blue sparks. A small jolt of blue lightning zapped about Todoroki's hand.
"Hey, look, I did it! I figured out how to lightningbend!" he said, and spun his hand again, wreathing it in crackling energy before blasting a small amount into a training dummy.
"What." said Denki.
"It's small, yeah. But! This is better than the last time I tried this, I nearly blew my eyebrows off. Then I yelled at a storm." Todoroki said.
"WHAT?" Denki asked.
"That was because I was full of inner turmoil." Todoroki explained. This explained nothing.
"Todoroki, your quirk is half-hot, half-cold, not lightning." Aizawa pointed out.
"...lightning's hot?" Todoroki offered. Aizawa gave him a look.
"Enough practicing for tonight. We'll get the gym fixed; go home." he told the two, and they walked off.
"I must admit, I am somewhat concerned." Yagi said. "You're not the only one." Aizawa muttered, staring at the hole in the (quirk-proof?) wall.
The two walked through the school corridors, and Zuko caught sight of a yellow laptop in the AV room.
"That's yours, isn't it?" Zuko asked. One of the reasons he loved this world; laptops and similar technology! They were amazing. Denki ran over, unplugging his laptop.
"I was downloading this cool game; it's finished now, we can play it later." Denki explained, stuffing the laptop into his bag.
"What's that?" Zuko asked, catching sight of an oddly shaped device plugged down low, nearly hidden in the clutter.
"Hmm." Kaminari bent down, and poked it; it was yellow, and looked like a kind of transmitter.
"Oh, I know these things. This one's an old model, over fifty years old; it's for sending information to a big screen. There's a little fold-out demo screen here, see? This is plugged into the school information outlet though; judging by the bashed wire, it seems someone tried to use this to project something to class 1-A's tv, but they messed up, 'cause this model doesn't work like that. I wonder what it's actually projecting to...I can find out if I...aha!" Denki fiddled with some buttons, and the small fold out screen turned on. Denki shoved Zuko out of view.
"Our traitor finally decides to contact us in person. What do you gain out of sending us information and betraying UA, Kaminari Denki?" Shigaraki Tomura asked.
Denki flicked a nervous glance to Zuko, then back to the screen.
"Um. UA traitor, that's me. Aha. See--the problem with heroes--um--" Zuko grabbed the camera. Denki could not act to save his life. Wrapping his hand around it to prevent Shigaraki from seeing, he spoke in a passable imitation of Denki's voice.
"The Hero system is a blight on this world. They're our first responders, yet we treat them like movie stars; make idols out of people because they have a strong quirk and bright costume. Heard of Stain? He's got the right idea, but even All Might is not above the others; the very backbone of what he does is corrupt and rotten, and don't even get me started on the Hero Safety Commission," Zuko snarled. Mostly lying, he held true resentment towards the commission, for how they 'helped' train Touya; not that he'd ever met Touya, but he'd heard Fuyumi and Natsuo talk about him. He imagined Touya as a less sadistic Azula, in his head. Denki was staring at him. Zuko waved towards the device, making a face that conveyed 'what else was I supposed to do?'.
"Stain. Everyone loves Stain. I'm glad you understand All Might is as much a problem as the rest of them." Shigaraki said.
As Shouto and Shigaraki ranted at each other, Denki breathed a barely perceptible sigh of relief. The other hadn't noticed Denki's true loyalties; hopefully, he would retain no suspicion. After Shigaraki signed off, Shouto freaked out, and went to tell the teachers, but Denki stopped him.
"Dude. We can't. That way, the villains will realize they've been tricked." he pointed out.
"There are cameras everywhere, Principal Nedzu will have seen already." Shouto told him. Uh oh. The two looked towards the camera in the corner...which was blacked out and sparking. Shouto climbed on a desk to look at it. "It's deactivated. When you blasted the wall in the gym, this was knocked out of alignment." he said, and looked at the plugs surrounding the yellow device.
"If whoever did this right did it right, it would have recorded stuff about 1-A and sent it to the class tv; do you think Monoma tried to set up something and accidentally broadcasted to the villains?" Shouto asked Denki.
"Looks like it." he replied, still getting over the fact that Shouto had up and lied to Shigaraki's face. Shouto snapped the yellow device in half.
"Well, that's that fixed. Who knows what the villains managed to learn, but they won't be learning anything anymore." he said, and walked home. Denki walked to the bus stop, holding what was left of the device. The truth of the UA traitor had been found out, he thought, and, after Shouto's (actually quite excellent) acting, to Denki's amusement, his deception had gone unnoticed. As a bonus, he'd learned an amazing new battle technique. Denki was not nearly as stupid as he often appeared; the electricity in his brain often jolted him to say whatever he was thinking in the moment, and sometimes stuff he wasn't. He was glad he'd made Shouto his friend, as he was quite interesting, especially on Tuesdays.
Zuko, back at the Todoroki house, wrote down the new info on the UA traitor--that the USJ was Monoma's fault, while music played on his (well, Shouto's) phone. Another reason he loved this world: it had the most interesting music. There was nothing like it back home.
"I'd rather listen to the silence telling me...I cAnT hEEEEAR yOOOOu,
(meanwhile, in Ba Sing Se, Shouto sings while making tea: "...I won't FEAR you!" Iroh cannot place the song, much to his consternation.)
Notes:
forgive me for the cringey title I couldn't help myself
but yeah there's NO way teaching Denki lightningbending will cause any sort of problem