Vaguely in the distance Kaminari can hear someone yelling his name, but it's muffled and distorted by the ringing in his ears and the clouded nature of his head. Short circuiting is never a pleasant thing, no matter how many times he goes through it.
He wanted to move and say something, to let them know that he's okay, but somehow he can't break through the haze just yet.
Suddenly a sizzling hot hand grasped his wrist and Kaminari felt himself getting pulled to his feet, stumbling slightly before finding his footing.
"Get a move on, kid."
The voice manages to break him out of his stupor if only for the fact that instead it caused fear to spike through his body at the sound of it.
Dabi's hand was hot enough to leave a burn on Kaminari's wrist, but that was the least of his worries at the moment.
The haze was still lingering, and Kaminari was pretty sure he was going to lose himself again the moment Dabi's searing hand left his wrist.
"Kaminari!"
One of his classmates was calling out to him, though Kaminari had no idea who or where from with the ringing bouncing around inside his skull.
Things had gone to shit pretty quickly after Kaminari had arrived at school that Monday, and it seemed like that bad luck was going to continue. Not only did he forget an assignment and have to beg Aizawa for an extension, but he accidentally shocked Mina during lunch and Bakugo kept giving him the stink eye for some odd reason. Now, here he was with one hand firmly in Dabi's burning grasp while he was currently fried to all hell.
The only thing he knew at this point was that he needed to get out of there ASAP. This had not gone according to plan, since Kaminari was not supposed to short circuit here, and Dabi had to deal with his dumb ass.
"Kaminari!"
Oh yeah, and that too. Todoroki was finally close enough that Kaminari could somehow piece together that it was him who was yelling, and the hot presence peeled away from his wrist as Dabi let go.
He was then shoved, likely by Dabi's boot, away from him before a huge blast of heat and displaced wind knocked him back. He lost his footing as he stumbled, disoriented body crashing into the ground before his vision went black.
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When Kaminari awoke he was laying in a hospital bed, a blanket nicely tucked over his legs. He blinked a few times to let his eyes adjust to the light, which thankfully was dimmed. His limbs felt a little tingly, but stretching a little and shifting to sit up dispelled most of that.
Waking up after short circuiting always felt a little weird, like his body's equivalent of doing a restart. Still, this time didn't feel any different than the others, which reassured Kaminari that he'd be perfectly fine in a few hours.
Well, maybe not perfectly fine. There was some gauze and bandages wrapped around his arm, and a little bump on his head from where he'd hit the rock. Briefly, Kaminari forgot why he needed the bandage, though lifting up the edge to take a peek immediately reminded him why.
A sinking feeling settled into his chest, and he glanced around to see if his phone was left where he could get to it. It'd been left on a little side tray, along with his wallet and keychain with his student ID. Letting out a sigh of relief Kaminari reached over to grab his phone, intent on texting the group chat to make sure that everyone else was okay.
Just after sending off the text, there was a light knock on his door. A second later it cracked open, and Todoroki's head poked around the corner.
"Kaminari, can I speak with you?"
"Sure dude, come on in." Denki said as he put his phone back down onto the little table. He was feeling better already, and figured that Todoroki was probably sent by someone to talk to him. "Turn on the lights if you like, what's up?" He pulled his legs up into sitting criss cross as Todoroki turned on the lights and closed the door behind him after he entered the room.
"I considered bringing this up with Aizawa-sensei, but I wanted to ask you about it first."
"Okay.." Kaminari answered a little hesitantly this time, considering how serious Todoroki seemed at the moment. What could he even want to talk about? The two of them weren't that close in class and they didn't hang out outside of it either.
"At the end of the fight, you short circuited, right?"
"Yep, happens every time I use my quirk." Kaminari nodded, finding it a little weird that Todoroki was here to ask him about that. He saw that happen in training all the time.
"Do you remember what happened after that?" Todoroki was sort of hovering awkwardly by the side of the bed as he continued to question Kaminari, and in the back of his mind Denki wanted to offer the edge of it for him to sit down. He didn't know if Todoroki would take it though.
"Uhhhhh, someone helped me up but then I was knocked back and hit my head, then I woke up here."
"Do you remember who helped you up?"
Pausing for a second, Kaminari's brow furrowed as he tried to remember what happened specifically. It was always hard to recall what happened while he short circuited, but there was no way that he could forget the rough hand that had grabbed his wrist.
"Nope." He answered confidently, shaking his head slightly in emphasis.
"It was Dabi." Todoroki said almost immediately after, Kaminari's eyes going wide for a second before he fixed his expression to be a little more shocked and a little less guilty.
"H- how do you know that?"
"I saw him do it. I was the one calling your name because I saw him standing over you and I thought that he was going to…" Todoroki's gaze went down as his words trailed off, and Denki followed it, noticing how his hands were clasped so tightly that his knuckles were whitening. "But then he helped you up."
"Aha what? That's crazy, are you sure you didn't just imagine things?" Kaminari chuckled lightly in an attempt to lighten the mood, bringing his hand up to scratch the back of his neck.
"You have a burn on your arm where he grabbed you, Kaminari." Todoroki pointed out, as if Kaminari had forgotten about it.
Kaminari had not forgotten about it, clearly, and was internally panicking. Still, he had to remain cool on the outside, it would do him no favors to get defensive or act suspicious. Todoroki had mentioned telling Aizawa-sensei, and that was not something Kaminari wanted to deal with.
"Welp, I don't know what to tell you, man, but I'm not helping the League of Villains. That'd be crazy. I got no idea why he'd help me."
"Alright. Thank you." It seemed that his answer was satisfactory to Todoroki, and Kaminari held back a sigh of relief as the other boy started towards the door again. "Everyone else is doing fine, by the way. A few light injuries but nothing major."
"That's good to know." Kaminari said with a smile, and that part was absolutely genuine. He never wanted any of his friends to get hurt through any of this, and it was one of the main reasons why he wanted to get out of it as soon as possible. He didn't know what he'd do if one of them got seriously hurt because of something that he did.
With his smile appearing to settle whatever nerves Todoroki still had, Kaminari was left alone in the hospital room again. Not much later after that did a nurse return, happy to see that he was awake and running a few tests before clearing him. Even so, she suggested that he stay overnight just in case, and one of the nurses would change his bandages before he'd leave tomorrow morning.
Denki was fine with that, in fact he agreed that it would probably be a good idea. Everyone was still on edge after the attack, clearly, and he'd prefer to stay here where he'd have pretty good privacy and also a good alibi. He really did hate having to think about that sort of thing rather than normal teenager stuff like wanting to see his friends as soon as possible.
Once the nurse had done her final check for the night, Kaminari laid down in his bed and pulled the covers up over his head. He didn't want anyone catching who he was going to call and what he was going to say, because he didn't feel like explaining to anyone else just what hell he had gotten himself into yet.
He snuck his phone under the covers with him, making sure that the brightness was turned down so that it wouldn't shine through the blanket before opening it and going to dial the number. He didn't know what he was expecting, since Dabi hardly called when he could text instead, but on the final ring Denki's phone call was picked up. He just felt like this was something better talked about than expressed through text.
"Hey." Dabi's rough voice crackled through the phone once he picked up, already seeming disinterested in anything that Kaminari was going to say.
"Shouto Todoroki is on to me, he saw you help me up." Kaminari resisted the urge to whisper but instead just spoke quietly, trying to ignore the nerves that were already jumping up into his throat.
"Well, you wanted a chance to come clean, kid. Don't thank me."
"I- That's not how I wanted to do it! I just wanted to stop helping you guys, I didn't want to go to jail!" Kaminari was quickly beginning to regret ever having this conversation with Dabi in the first place back in the car that day. He practically could feel his dreams of being a hero already slipping from his grasp with the thought of being locked up as a criminal.
"Newsflash, this is the League of Villains you're helping. Jail is the nicest thing that could happen to you if the others find out that you're chickening out."
Kaminari slapped his free hand over his mouth to stop whatever startled noise tried to slip past his lips at the threat, also reminding himself not to hyperventilate at the same time. This phone call was clearly doing absolutely nothing to calm his anxiety about his current situation.
"Good luck."
He could almost hear the entertainment in Dabi's voice before the line went dead, leaving Kaminari to stare down at the ended call screen that glowed up at him in the dark.
Letting out a shaky breath Kaminari emerged from his blanket cave, still hugging it around him tightly as he laid down on his side and tried to at least not freak out any further. He should have known that nothing good would come from telling Dabi, now he had the threat to worry about on top of what he was going to do about this whole situation. He hadn't thought Dabi was going to hurt him before, but now he wasn't so sure.
His hands were trembling as he maneuvered his phone to be resting in front of his face, pressing the call button to Shinsou's facetime before he even had a chance to really think about it.
It rang only once before Shinsou picked up, the screen changing to the sight of him sitting on his bed with a pair of headphones in. There was a laptop pushed off to the side, probably what he was on before the call, but now his attention was on Denki.
"Hey, how are you feeling?" Shinsou's voice entered the quiet hospital room, and Kaminari instantly felt all the tension in his body drain away. And not because of his brainwashing quirk or anything like that.
".. not so great right now. Can you talk to me?" Kaminari asked quietly, feeling a little silly about the request now that just seeing Shinsou had already calmed him down.
"About anything or.." Shinsou didn't ask any more questions about it, just launched right into fulfilling Denki's request. That was what he liked about Shinsou; ever since Kaminari had managed to crack through his seemingly tough exterior he'd found out that Shinsou was a really great friend. Not that the Bakusquad wasn't, he absolutely loved them to death, but he didn't have to see Shinsou everyday if he wanted to pretend that this call never happened for a while afterwards.
"Anything is fine. Just tell me about your cats or something."
"Okay.. uh, so yesterday we got some new cat food and-" While Shinsou began to launch into the story of new cat food and whatever else he was going to talk about, Kaminari settled himself in to listen. Pretty soon he closed his eyes, and soon after that he was fast asleep, all the other things weighing him down now suspended by the dumb thought of Shinsou's cat being a drama queen over food brands.
