"I just don't understand why you can't recruit from a villain school instead. It's counterintuitive to go after students from a hero school to find villain recruits, don't you think?" Denki attempted to persuade, blocking and dodging Dabi's punches.
"A villain school, Denki? Really?" Dabi deadpanned, dropping to try to kick Denki's feet out from under him.
Denki knew that a move like that would be coming eventually after Dabi had focused heavily on making Denki block his upper body, so he easily jumped over the kick aimed at his ankles, throwing his own kick towards Dabi's face while he was in the air. Dabi, however, was expecting him to take that specific opening and grabbed his leg before he made contact, causing Denki to fall to the floor. Denki had committed falling properly to muscle memory years prior, so he easily rolled into it without hurting himself.
"Well, I want to say take anyone from any other school, and just leave all of my friends at UA alone, but that wouldn't be very Plus Ultra of me," Denki admitted, lying on the floor, breathing heavily.
Dabi snorted in response, offering a hand to pull Denki up. Denki took the hand but pulled Dabi down onto the floor next to him instead, flashing a mischievous smile at him.
"Plank competition?" Denki offered, eyes sparkling.
"You're on," Dabi responded, immediately getting into plank position with Denki scrambling to follow suit so that they would start at the same time so it would be fair.
"So…" Denki started, wanting to be distracted from the strain of the plank on his core. "You and the boss man, huh?"
"Yeah," Dabi answered easily, a soft smile on his lips. "He's great. What about you? Anyone special?"
"Uh... well..." Denki started.
Normally, Denki was very open about his feelings for the soulmates, but it felt strange telling Dabi about his feelings when Dabi had been there when they had all first met. Dabi had known about Neito and Hitoshi being soulmates for a long time, so to admit to liking them was a little more nerve-wracking than admitting it to his classmates, for instance.
"Spit it out!" Dabi commanded, shifting his weight to bump his shoulder into Denki's.
"I'm in love with Neito and Hitoshi," Denki admitted, squeezing his eyes shut at the anticipation of Dabi's response.
Denki peaked his eye open and glanced toward Dabi who seemed to be deep in thought.
"You're in love with both Hitoshi and Neito?" he asked for clarification.
Denki nodded, fearing the worst.
"Hitoshi and Neito who are soulmates with each other?" Dabi asked.
Again, Denki nodded.
"Hm," Dabi hummed in response?
"That's it?! Hm?" Denki asked incredulously.
"Do you like video games, Denks?" Dabi asked instead.
"What does that have to do with—?" Denki started to ask but was interrupted.
"Just answer the question," Dabi demanded.
Denki sighed, shifting his weight to be distributed more evenly across his forearms against the floor.
"Yeah. I play often," Denki answered, wondering why Dabi was asking.
"What kinds of games?" Dabi asked.
"All kinds. I just follow my friends to whatever game they invite me to next," Denki responded.
"Cool, cool. What's your handle?" Dabi asked.
"P05itiv3R3v0lt. Why?" Denki asked, patience running thin as his muscles strained against the weight of gravity.
"No reason. Maybe we'll have to play together sometime. So, tell me about Hitoshi and Neito, then," Dabi asked.
Denki swore he was going to get whiplash from Dabi changing topics so suddenly, but he needed to talk about the soulmates with someone who might understand, so he jumped right in about how they had started pulling away at the same time he started online gaming and how they had slowly started to come back together again, only to be distanced once more.
"Neito was going to kiss me," Denki answered.
Dabi had already known this; however, he used the opportunity of fake shock to fall out of the plank and allow Denki to win the challenge.
Denki dropped from his own plank and explained in detail what had happened with Neito, which was new to Dabi.
"What did Hitoshi say? What did he do?" Dabi asked, intrigued at his old friend's wild love life.
"He just walked away. I thought he was going to punch me the next time he saw me. Hell, I would have let him! We haven't really sat down and talked about what happened, but he didn't seem mad at me when we were organizing that muzzle demonstration thing," Denki mused.
"I think they both love you, too," Dabi declared suddenly.
"Wh—what?" Denki sputtered.
"Yeah. Why else would Hitoshi be okay with Neito trying to kiss you?"
"What if he thinks I was trying to kiss Neito and Neito wasn't actually going to go through with it?" Denki countered, flopping back onto his back on the floor.
"Can you imagine Neito lying to Hitoshi?" Dabi asked, laying down on the floor next to Denki, joining him in staring up at the ceiling.
"No," Denki answered sulkily.
"They probably had confessed to each other to liking you long ago. They're probably more worried about your reaction than the idea of betraying one another," Dabi offered.
"My reaction?" Denki inquired, prompting Dabi to continue with his thought process.
"The exact thing that you're doing right now! You're scared of getting in between them, of messing up this good thing that they have if they were to add you into the mix."
"But I could, though," Denki argued.
"It's a possibility," Dabi agreed, always the realist. "But I would bet money that to them, it would all be worth the risk."
"How did you get started here with the League of Villains anyway?" Denki asked, changing the subject.
Dabi allowed for the subject change, knowing that he gave Denki a lot to think about later.
"After Hitoshi's birthday invasion—" Denki snorted, and Dabi cracked a smile at the memory before continuing, "—I went up to the mountain near my house to practice my quirk without the risk of setting anything on fire. It worked in that nothing caught on fire except for me. It was bad, Denks. I thought I was going to die. I stumbled down to the river to try to cool off and soothe my burns, which is where one of the League's recruiters had found me and brought me to a healer. I didn't die, but the healer was mediocre at best and the scarring… well…"
"You look so badass like that," Denki offered. "I'd bet you get all the ladies if you weren't wrapped around Shigaraki's little finger."
Dabi smiled genuinely and didn't even retort against the idea that he was enamored with Shigaraki, because he was. It was just a huge relief to know that Shigaraki was just as hooked on him. Nothing is better than requitted love.
"I saw you guys at my funeral," Dabi admitted.
Denki gasped. "You were there?!"
"I looked in through the windows for a few minutes. It was kind of like attending the funeral of my old self so that I could move on to my new destiny after I accepted to join the League of Villains after I had thought that I would end up as a hero someday. It was cathartic," Dabi mused.
"It was devastating," Denki countered. "None of us could believe it at first because you had just been there with us, laughing and training the week before."
"I missed you three the most," Dabi admitted. "I thought I would miss a lot more from my old life, but this crazy bunch has really come through for me."
"But not even the League of Villains can measure up to the QQQ, huh?" Denki asked, sitting up to comically flexing his arms as a show of strength against the very villain group who had ironically successfully capture him.
Dabi laughed and agreed, "nothing could measure up to the QQQ."
Denki flopped back down onto the floor and asked, "so who was that television guy?"
"They call him All For One. He really only speaks to and through Shigaraki, so I don't know much about him," Dabi offered.
"Did he really take Ragdoll's quirk, or was that just a scheme to get me to be scared?" Denki inquired.
Dabi shook his head, and Denki's stomach dropped. "He really did take her quirk." Dabi continued when he saw Denki pale, "if it's any consolation, though, he returned her. She's back home now, safe and alive, just without her quirk."
"What does he do with the quirks he collects?" Denki asked, narrowing his eyebrows at the audacity of this strange man he had never met before.
"He can use them himself, or he can pass them on to others who are in alignment with his own goals."
Denki rambled as he thought aloud, "Shigaraki calls him master, which is super weird and creepy. He talks like a teacher to Shigaraki, though, like he is preparing him to take over. But how did he get so lucky as to get someone so loyal like Shigaraki in the first place?"
"Shigaraki accidentally killed his whole family when his quirk developed," Dabi explained. "All For One was the one who found him and took him in right after."
"That's kind of suspicious, though, isn't it? All For One can take and give quirks, and suddenly finds an orphan boy who had just happened to have killed his whole family with a powerful quirk that had just developed?" Denki pondered, furrowing his eyebrows in concentration.
"You've been hanging around with Shouto too much," Dabi offered, though he tucked the idea away to think about later when he had no distractions. He didn't much care for the dynamic that All For One had created for Shigaraki, either.
"Well, he is the master of conspiracy!" Denki declared proudly.
"You have spent time with him?" Dabi asked, surprised. "I didn't think he'd be allowed to socialize," he mused, turning his head to look straight up at the ceiling as he reminisced about his youngest brother and the few memories he had of him.
"We trained together once when I barged in on his private gym time. He was surprised that I could keep up with him since he was trained by a Pro Hero, so I bragged that I was trained by you. He was surprised and asked me about you. I told him about the QQQ, and he immediately guessed that Neito was part of the QQQ as well! The true conspiracy king!" Denki complimented.
"He was interested in knowing about me?" Dabi asked, looking over at Denki for confirmation.
Denki nodded. "Anything I could tell him about you, he wanted to know. He didn't know…"
"He didn't know what?" Dabi demanded, the smallest bit of anger leaking through his tone.
Denki's eyes teared up as he made eye contact with Dabi. "He didn't know that you were pronounced dead until a month later, at family dinner."
"What?" Dabi asked, all anger dissipated and pure confusion leaking through his voice.
"During the search party, Endeavor had him working on a new move on his own. During the funeral, Endeavor was coaching him through mastering different skills and working on new, advanced ones. Shouto was so tired that all he did was sleep, eat, and train. He said it wasn't until family dinner, a whole month later, when no one set out a plate for you that he learned what had happened to you. He said that he asked if you were out with friends, and his sister broke down into tears and ran to her room. His brother yelled at Endeavor for not telling Shouto that his oldest brother was dead, and that is how Shouto found out," Denki explained quietly.
"Is that why Endeavor is allowing Shouto to socialize more? Out of some fake show of guilt for not telling him that I died and making him miss the funeral?" Dabi asked, rage building under the surface.
Denki smiled softly through his tears that started leaking down his cheeks. "Shouto basically disowned Endeavor!" he exclaimed, laughing despite his continued tears. "He refused to train with him and would stop training if he even tried to watch! He practically lives to spite his father for what he has done and made sure to make a point to spend more time with his siblings. Fuck, Dabi. If he knew you were alive, I'd bet he'd spend countless hours making it up to you."
"It wasn't his fault," Dabi insisted, his anger deflating once again. "And he can't know."
"I know," Denki answered to both statements.
Denki continued to tell Dabi about Shouto and mentioned that he was close friends with Midoriya and how powerful the two were becoming.
Dabi swore under his breath at that but allowed Denki to continue.
"You know, he thought Midoriya was All Might's secret love child and told Midoriya this information to his face during the sports festival! The true king of conspiracy hath no shame!" Denki declared.
"And he can't always be wrong," Dabi offered, a small, knowing smile gracing his face.
Dabi laughed until there were tears in his eyes when Denki talked about Shouto's deadpan humor that no one is even sure if he is intending to be funny or not. He laughed so hard that his stomach hurt when Denki told him about the conversation about the way Shouto decides to do things: if it would make his father mad, he is definitely in. Going against UA with the muzzle demonstration for the benefit of the feral boy who had beaten him at the sports festival? That would infuriate Endeavor, so Shouto was in. Sharing his quirk with the copy-quirked boy in Class 1-B? That would enrage Endeavor, so Shouto gladly shared his quirk with Neito.
"I'm glad he's making so many friends. It seems like he has good taste," Dabi commented, making Denki smile, causing the salt tracks on his face to crease and crack from the tears that had long since dried.
"Did the League of Villains consider taking Shouto?" Denki asked.
"No," Dabi answered, shrugging. "He's a bland kid who doesn't stand out, no matter how much our father had tried to make him shine. He stands out to you because you got to know him, but others on the outside don't see him that way. He's a rich kid whose place was bought by his rich Pro Hero daddy. Even if the League knew that he was totally against Endeavor, increasing the odds of him joining us, the risk would be too great because we wouldn't need his quirks. He is impressive, but it's just like with you. He's great because of all of the training and hard work, not because his quirks are anything special. His quirks only get attention because he has two opposite ones."
Denki nodded, "that's good. That's one less person I have to worry about their quirk being taken away from them."
Denki turned his head to look at Dabi, new anxieties arising, unshed tears gathering in his eyes once again.
"He already said he won't take yours," Dabi offered, trying to comfort his old friend.
"Mine is nothing special," Denki whispered. "Electric quirks are plentiful and easy to come by. I'm not worried about my quirk."
Dabi's eyes widened in realization. "The soulmates?"
"They both have amazing quirks, and both are on Shigaraki's radar. I—" Denki choked, the tears overflowing down his cheeks as he imagined Neito and Hitoshi facing that dangerous, scary, powerful man, knowing that their quirks would soon be his after they had worked so hard to get to where they were. And what if he wasn't feeling as gracious as he was with Ragdoll? What if the soulmates never made it back to him, quirks or not?
"Well, you'll just have to go convince Shigaraki, won't you?" Dabi asked, hoisting himself up, pulling Denki along with him.
"What? Right now?! Is this his room?! I can't just barge in there!" Denki tried protesting, putting his hands up to try to talk Dabi down from his absolutely demonic idea. Denki swore Dabi had suddenly decided that Denki could no longer be alive and decided that Shigaraki was the man to do the job.
"Just play a few video games with him!" Dabi encouraged, holding Denki by the shoulders to prepare him mentally, giving him a small shake. "Let him kill you a few times in the games to stave off his urge to decay your face off in real life!"
"Gee, thanks, Dabi. That makes me feel so much more confident that I'm going to survive this encounter," Denki sneered.
"Hey! Your sarcasm has improved!" Dabi facetiously pointed out. "Get in there! Do it for the soulmates!"
Damn it all to hell. Dabi knew he would do anything for the soulmates, including this. Denki took a deep breath and stepped up to the closed door, anxiously bouncing on his toes, hyping himself up to knock.
Turning back toward Dabi, he requested semi-jokingly, "if I die, tell Hitoshi and Neito that I loved them both."
Walking away, Dabi murmured under his breath, "I'm sure they already know."
Taking one more deep breath and mentally counting down from three, Denki knocked on the door.