"So, let's talk business, yeah?" Shigaraki started off with, sitting down across from Denki and looking at him head-on.
They had sat Denki on the couch. It all felt so domestic in the strangest, uncanny way. It was disorienting, and that was probably the point.
Shigaraki had pulled up a wooden chair, flipping it around and straddling it, placing his forearms on the back to stare directly at Denki.
Even with only Shigaraki and Dabi in the room, it was kind of intimidating.
That was a lie. It was very intimidating.
"I—uh—have nothing to say to you…" Denki attempted.
"Really?" Shigaraki taunted, a mean glint in his eyes, thoroughly appreciating the fear wafting off of his hostage in response to his presence and attention. "Because that sounded more like a question than a statement."
"You're wasting your time," Dabi drawled from across the room.
Denki felt a little betrayed by how far away Dabi had removed himself from the situation. He wanted him right there with him, also staring death in the face. He felt very small all by himself, talking to the future leader of the League of Villains. At least Bakugou wasn't there to be a bargaining chip; at least Denki wasn't able to be used as a bargaining chip against Bakugou.
"How so?" Shigaraki asked, flicking his eyes to Dabi, genuine curiosity in his voice for what his companion had to say about the situation.
"I trained him years ago and set up a regimen. By the looks of it, he hasn't strayed since the very first training session," Dabi explained, gesturing lazily to their blonde hostage.
Shigaraki's eyes trailed up and down Denki, and he had never felt so exposed before in his life, not even when he was telling his friends about the voices for the first time. He shivered under Shigaraki's gaze. It was utterly intimidating to have someone as threatening as Shigaraki giving him his full attention. He wondered briefly what Neito would do in this situation, being the one who thrives under attention. Denki decided he would probably have witty comebacks and either not be afraid at all, or at least be able to hide his fear.
"So, you're loyal to Dabi?" Shigaraki drawled.
Denki's mind whirred and his vision blurred under the flash of adrenaline coursing through him. How the hell was he supposed to answer that? If he said no, they might finally leave him alone, but he couldn't risk hurting Dabi's feelings. If he said yes, they might try to use Dabi against him to join the League of Villains. He was stuck. At least, he was until Dabi spoke up for him.
"He's loyal and dedicated to his goal of becoming a hero. Correct me if I'm wrong, Denki."
Denki knew that Dabi was technically a villain, but he had totally just come to his rescue and saved him. Dabi would always be a hero in Denki's mind, since that first moment he agreed to train the trio and became the QQQ.
Denki nodded in response, hoping that Dabi could sense the gratitude in the simple glance in his direction.
"Wait…" Shigaraki commanded, holding up a finger as his mind reversed the conversation, picking up something that he had not considered before. "So, you know Dabi's true identity?"
Denki's eyes widened. The only thing worse than being a useless hostage to the League of Villains was being useful in the way that they wanted information from him. After they got the information they wanted, he would then become useless, which was infinitely worse than starting out as useless in the first place.
"What is Dabi's real name?" Shigaraki pressed when Denki just sat there, eyes widened, and didn't make a move to answer.
"It's not nice to call people by anything other than their preferred name," Denki responded, finally finding the courage to speak.
Maybe Neito had rubbed off on Denki after all. Denki could imagine Neito saying the exact same thing, though with significantly more attitude. Hitoshi would answer Shigaraki's question with a question, then the command to release him would come shortly after, not that the rest of the League of Villains would allow it, based on what Denki had seen.
If Denki was correct in his thinking, it was assumed that Shigaraki was the strict mastermind behind the League of Villains. Denki had learned two important things already: Shigaraki was acting under the guidance of another man he called master, and Shigaraki was open to others' input and not just using them strictly as pawns to carry out his own ideas. Denki based the second point on Shigaraki taking Dabi's comments into consideration instead of just waving him off, but that could also be because they were soulmates or something. Denki had to make sure to watch out for how Shigaraki treats the other members' ideas as well to be able to differentiate.
"It's not a preferred name," Shigaraki argued. "It's an alias to disguise his real identity that I feel like I have the right to know."
"It's a name… that he prefers over any other… hence, a preferred name," Denki argued back, finally finding some bite to his words.
Dabi laughed at Denki's response, then laughed louder when Shigaraki had accidentally decayed the chair he had been sitting on after gripping it too tightly in agitation.
Even as Dabi was laughing, he strolled over to help Shigaraki up from the floor where he glowered at both the hostage who caused the situation and Dabi who was making it infinitely worse with his damn laughter. Dabi reached out a hand and Shigaraki took it, being careful not to place all five fingers down as Dabi hoisted him up.
Denki figured that there was definitely a connection between the two. Shigaraki accepted Dabi's help, even as he was laughing at him, and Dabi didn't flinch away at all from Shigaraki's hand as he helped him back up off of the floor.
"Join us," Shigaraki demanded, glaring at Denki as he stood in a pile of dust from the chair.
"Uh… no, thank you?" Denki offered as a response, tensing his shoulders in preparation for retaliation.
"Okay. That's fine," Shigaraki said, brushing the dust off of his pants.
Denki was afraid at his lackluster response. Denki's instincts were right on the mark.
Shigaraki continued, "I'll just let it leak after you return to UA that you're a traitor, and we took you on purpose to get updates from you."
Denki's heart dropped.
"They wouldn't believe you," Denki tried, knowing full well that at least some might believe him.
"They will when we return you on our own tomorrow, no hostage negotiation or rescue needed," Shigaraki threatened. "You'll continue on to your UA classes, gathering intel for the League. That's what they'll believe, anyway…"
"They won't," Denki insisted, though his heartrate increased in response to the danger.
"They will because there actually is a traitor among the students at UA. I'll leak some of the intel I have from the real traitor, and with the other 'leaked' information, all of the evidence will lead straight to you."
Denki's heart thundered in his chest. One of his classmates was a traitor? Or was it someone from the other hero course, or maybe even general studies to be less suspicious? Or was all of that a lie to get Denki to comply to Shigaraki's demands?
"I'll let you sleep on it and see what you have to say in the morning," Shigaraki offered, getting up to leave the room, leaving Dabi and Denki alone.
Denki would have given anything to brainstorm with his friends right then. Maybe they would have a very obvious idea that he just wasn't seeing.
Well, he did have Dabi, didn't he? Not really… but it was better than nothing.
"He really trusts you, huh?" Denki asked, trying to recover from the very real, very scary threat Shigaraki had just issued.
"What makes you say that?" Dabi asked, dropping down lazily onto the couch next to Denki.
"He knows that we were friends before, but he still left us alone. What if we were close enough that you would release me?" Denki asked, trying to get a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between Dabi and Shigaraki.
"Do you want me to release you?" Dabi asked blankly, not allowing any emotion to show to give Denki a hint as to what he was thinking.
Denki's heart leaped in anticipation, even when he knew that he would decline. Even the idea made him anxious. So much could go wrong. The initial escape attempt could be intercepted. If they didn't really trust Dabi, they might just be waiting for the moment he betrays them. If they succeed, what will be the fallout for Dabi once Denki is safely back home? Also, what would become of Shigaraki's threat? If he was serious about it, it might make Denki look even more suspicious, being released so soon after his capture. Would it look like just enough time to disclose important information before being sent back out to gather more? Was this a set-up by Dabi to fall into that exact trap?
No. Denki stopped his thoughts on the matter right there. There was no way that he was going to sit there and let his wild thoughts taint his friendship with Dabi, not when he had just gotten him back.
"No," Denki answered, slumping into the couch as he relaxed a little more.
"Why not?" Dabi asked, though he didn't sound surprised.
Denki quickly jumped into his thought process, explaining the different things that could go wrong for himself, for Dabi, and maybe for both of them.
Dabi nodded, following along with Denki's multiple reasons.
After Denki had finished, Dabi flatly stated, "no."
"No?" Denki repeated as a question. "What do you mean, no?"
"It wasn't any of those reasons separately, but a different one entirely when all combined," Dabi stated. "You said no because you're going to be a hero."
"What?" Denki asked, not following Dabi's logic.
"You're still just as selfless as you were back on Unit Beta. Instead of only looking out for yourself, you kept the fallout for me in mind, too," Dabi explained, turning sideways on the couch to face Denki. "Instead of only being worried about your future at UA, you're nervous about the lies about you being a traitor messing up the current investigation and throwing actual progress off-course."
"I never said—" Denki attempted to argue but was cut-off by Dabi.
"You didn't have to," Dabi interrupted, rolling his eyes. "I know you, Denks. Take this very genuine compliment for once in your life, okay?"
"I didn't think a villain calling someone a hero would be considered a compliment," Denki retorted.
Dabi snorted, knowing that was as close to acceptance as Denki was going to get in his current mood and circumstances.
Denki and Dabi were interrupted by Shigaraki, Twice, Toga, Spinner, Kurogiri, and Mr. Compress filing back into the room, Dabi quickly and quietly supplying names of the villains as they entered for Denki.
"Okay. So, what if we retried for Bakugou?" Shigaraki offered.
Denki's mind whirred, trying to figure out what was going on.
"Should we be discussing this in front of the kid?" Toga asked, glancing quickly in Denki's direction.
"Doesn't matter after the rumor that he's one of us spreads," Shigaraki declared with a shrug. "They won't believe a word he says. They'll think he's trying to throw them off-track, because why would villains have a meeting with important information right in front of their hostage, unless that hostage was part of the plan to begin with."
Denki's heart sunk, and he suddenly wished to be discluded for the first time in his life.
"So, Bakugou?" Shigaraki reoffered.
"It's a lot of work to get everything in motion and the information on time to actually get a plan in place," Spinner offered. "We should try to make sure that Bakugou would be a willing participant before we try again."
"Are you crazy?" Toga offered, making Denki wince and lean away from her, even though she was across the room from him. "You saw the way he was acting on stage! He is our best option."
"You want to recruit Bakugou?" Denki blurted, finally understanding. "That's a bad idea."
"You're just saying that because you don't want us to go after anyone else," Toga attempted to dismiss him. "Very heroic and all but shut up."
"He's a feral dude," Denki agreed with earlier sentiments, nodding. "But he's determined to become a hero. He wants to be the number one hero, and he wouldn't let anything stop him, not even a group of villains offering him the world."
"He has to feel betrayed by what UA did to him at the sports festival, though," Mr. Compress offered, wanting to see what Denki had to say about that.
"We all did," Denki admitted with a shrug. "We took care of it ourselves, and everything is okay again."
"Took care of it yourself? What do you mean by that?" Toga asked, leaning toward Denki and giving him her full attention.
"We held a demonstration. We all wore muzzles and held our voices hostage until they promised to never do anything like that again," Denki explained slowly, running what he was going to say through his mind to make sure that he wasn't giving anything important away, purposely skipping the little tidbit about them all learning sign language in the meantime.
"Who did?" Mr. Compress asked.
"We all did. All of the students," Denki offered, again skipping the fact that the teachers had joined in so they didn't question how they learned so the sign language wouldn't come up. "When I started the movement, I didn't think that everyone would join in. Bakugou comes across as pretty rough to a lot of people… But, literally every student, even in the general, business, and tech classes joined in."
"Impressive," Spinner muttered under his breath, earning a quick glare from Shigaraki, but Shigaraki couldn't exactly argue. It was quite impressive.
"What about that child that I knocked out?" Mr. Compress offered to be considered by the group next.
"The one that caused us all sorts of problems?" Toga grumbled as she pulled a binder from the bookshelf, she was standing next to and thumbed through the pages.
"He was surprisingly competent," Twice offered. "I could have handled him."
"That must have been Monoma Neito. His quirk is copy: He can copy other people's quirks," Toga read from the page.
"That's interesting," Shigaraki offered, already thinking that his quirk might be useful in his master's arsenal if he doesn't agree to join of his own free will.
"Shit! Wait!" Toga interjected. "He has a soulmate. Shinsou Hitoshi."
Toga flipped through more pages before finding the one she wanted.
"It's hard to recruit those who have soulmates because they aren't willing to leave them…" she muttered as she skimmed over the selected page. "The soulmate is in general studies, but—oh, wow! He made it to the final round of the sports festival! He was the one with purple hair who lost against darling Izuku."
"Darling Izuku?" Denki questioned aloud but was ignored in favor of Shigaraki's question.
"The one with the brainwashing quirk?" Shigaraki asked, perking up at the mention of the holder of the advanced quirk.
"The very one!"
"Someone like that being reduced to the general studies course must feel undervalued. We probably couldn't get one without the other, but if we could get both…" Shigaraki started, his mind combing through all of the possibilities.
"No," Denki declared, trying to veto the answer.
"No?" Shigaraki asked. "What's wrong with these ones?"
"I also trained Neito and Hitoshi," Dabi offered, sparing Denki from having to answer.
Shigaraki scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Then we take their quirks. Fuck. Why don't you just go and train all the heroes, Dabi?"
"I had thought about it, but then what would you do here without me?" Dabi drawled, a lazy smile growing across his face at the banter.
"I'd be able to play my video games in peace, for one. And I'd have one less disrespectful, terrible, good-for-nothing, annoying—"
"—hot, sexy, amazing, strong partner in villainy? Care to continue?" Dabi taunted.
"Underling," Shigaraki corrected in a huff before opening his mouth to continue, but Dabi beat him to it.
"Last time I checked, you're the one who's under me," Dabi quipped with a smirk and a lax shrug, sending a wink in Denki's direction.
Denki had been watching, turning his head back and forth as the two bickered. To Denki's surprise, Shigaraki's face quickly turned red, even as he scowled at Dabi through the blush.
"We'll see later," Shigaraki growled as a threat, but it just happened to rile up Dabi more.
"You can be on top if you want to, boss," Dabi offered with faux innocence, batting his eyelashes in his direction.
Shigaraki fisted his hands in his hair before cursing under his breath and stomping away before he impulsively decayed Dabi's face off at the public insubordination.
Toga laughed nervously. "I hate when you get him all riled up," she nervously squeaked at Dabi. "It's going to be like walking on eggshells for the next week now."
"Just because you're safe from his wrath, doesn't mean that the rest of us are!" Spinner added in agreement.
"He throws threats around like free candy," Mr. Compress stated with a shrug, not buying into the fear. "He acts like he hates it, but I think he secretly likes being included in such a raw, unfiltered way."
Kurogiri added, "Dabi shows him what it's like to have a friend who doesn't take his dangerous quirk into consideration. Dabi shows him that he treats him the way he does because that's the way he shows he cares, and not out of some cold, distant type of respect."
Kurogiri had seen a massive change in Shigaraki and his leadership style since Dabi had joined the League of Villains. While doubtful before, even Kurogiri could imagine Shigaraki succeeding with his new and ever progressing leadership style and personality. Power and connections can only get someone so far. Loyalty from followers is what really helps people to succeed, but loyalty from fear is only superficial and doesn't last. As far as Kurogiri was concerned, Shigaraki was definitely on his way to gaining true loyalty from his following, slowly opening up and not immediately retaliating against any sign of disagreement, or anything other than pure respect.
"Maybe not as aggressively lax as Dabi, but we should all try to include Shigaraki more as a friend, when appropriate," Mr. Compress offered.
"Does that mean I have to sleep with the boss, too?" Spinner groaned, making Dabi snort.
"You sleep with all your friends, big guy?" Dabi asked, raising his eyebrows as he awaited Spinner's response.
Spinner laughed nervously, shaking his head, rubbing the back of his neck, and retreating from the room.
"Then don't worry about it!" Dabi shouted at his retreating form.
Denki took it as a small blessing that he did not have to dig hard to figure out the exact relationship between Dabi and Shigaraki, though he could have done with fewer innuendos.