I've decided to upload more of this thingy!
Funnily enough, I already forgot the names of most of my OC's and had to reread my own stuff to find out. This speaks volumes of how responsible I am.
Meanwhile, a crossover fic I wrote hit about 800 follows in just a month! What?
Well, have fun reading this!
-SpiritOfErebus
The combat training had been finished by the time Bakugo was cleared by Recovery Girl to at least walk, and I, being the "good teammate" that I was, stayed with Bakugo to "support him with his injuries".
Really, I just didn't want to face the questions about all of the abilities that I just pulled off.
Midoriya was in a different room, since he was messed up the worst. I rustled my costumed robes awkwardly, the dirt and slight tears on the material spoiling the mystic effect. I just looked like a cosplayer that had been thrown to the roadside because they had ran into some ruffians at night.
Somehow, I had imagined the ruffians with blonde hair and red eyes.
I then looked at Bakugo, who looked like he had run out of rage and just sat in the bed, permanently disgruntled expression pasted on his face.
I opened my mouth to make conversation, but clicked my mouth shut almost immediately.
Bakugo's red eyes flickered over to me again, and the sighed.
"Alright. I'll bite. What the fuck was that?"
"What do you mean?" I asked, already kind of knowing what he was going to ask. My heart began filling with dread and I began sweating. Rapidly, my brain began running through a list of excuses.
"How the fuck did your floor not get destroyed by Deku's punch?"
"I bought the authority from the local sprites..?" I said in as confident a tone as I could muster. It wasn't confident enough.
"Bullshit!" Bakugo said, small explosions cracking.
I grabbed my metal staff nervously, ready to run out of the room and barricaded the door if I had to. Even when hospitalized, Bakugo's snarling expression was terrifying.
"I don't buy your psychic bullshit, you scammer! Nature sprites, my ass! The real world isn't fucking Dungeons and Dragons. What the fuck did you do? Tell me the truth, damn it!"
I gulped. Out of everybody, I least expected Bakugo to figure out that I was lying. My powers began waning, the influence of his expectations dimming my prospects.
"That's just what I did." I said, more resolutely. My heart was beating in my throat.
"This isn't the end of this, you fucking scammer." Bakugo said, relenting a bit on his answers. "You're going to have to fucking tell everybody eventually."
"I'm not hiding anything." I said, trying to wipe off the sweat before Bakugo noticed with my white sleeves.
I had earned myself a nickname in that clinic. It wasn't a very positive one.
But it was accurate.
Scammer.
How fitting for a fraud like me.
…
I had changed out of that costume that felt more like a second skin as time went on, along with many others in the changing rooms. Wanting to avoid questions, I took off my robes as quickly as possible, but at a pace which didn't seem like I was rushing.
It was a careful balance.
"Your darkness has reached new heights, has it not?" Tokoyami said, sitting down next to me.
Adjusting my UA uniform, I shook my head. "The happenings in that room were not my work. These powers came with a price."
Tokoyami raised an eyebrow, but his widened eyes on his normally unexpressive face told me of his concern.
"My friend, even if challenging yourself is what one should seek, doing so at a cost-"
"The cost was three plates of fried tofu." I said, cutting off his dramatic epithet before it attracted even more attention.
"…What?"
"It's an offering to the local sprites for bending their authority."
"Ah. I see. Then it is a mere trade of no harm to your wellbeing." Tokoyami said, expression back at placid.
"Wait, so spirits and stuff are actually real?" As boneheaded as ever, Kaminari stumbled his way into this conversation.
"Of course they are." I said, "Do you think that all of the happenings of the universe could be explained by mere science? Quirks violate the laws of physics and create something out of nothing."
"But what about quirk drawbacks?" Kaminari said, latching onto my words like it was some sort of gospel. "Why do I shock my own brain and become an idiot? Why does Midoriya hurt himself so much when he uses his quirk?"
"Again, it is an exchange in authority." I said solemly.
"Why do I sound like the old tutorial men in RPG's so much?" I thought, finally snapping my tie back into its correct shape.
"So what you're saying is that… me shocking myself is the price I have to pay for my quirk?"
"The average human generates about a hundred watts internally." I said, despite not knowing the statistics beforehand. I could feel the sentence being shoved into my mind merely because other people thought that I could know it.
"And you, Kaminari Denki, do not have a special diet consisting of electron donating metals, do you?"
He nodded dumbly. "I don't even know what those are."
"Then where do you think your power comes from?" I said, walking out of the room in a way to make a mysterious exit, but also to get out of this awkward conversation as fast as possible.
There was no way that what I was implying was correct, but it didn't matter how Kaminari interpreted his quirk. Even if it came from some unique biological mutation within Kaminari, or even if his quirk was really the result of an exchange from the lightning spirits…
The results would still be the same.
Tokoyami got up and followed me out of the door while Kaminari looked at the empty doorway that I had just walked through, with an expression on his face that only priests that have received a revelation from the gods had.
Then, Mineta began peeling at the corner of a poster, and the moment was ruined.
…
"If our quirks are truly a result from the gifts of spirits, then what price does the manifestation of my darkness have?" Tokoyami said, trailing behind me.
I racked my brain for an explanation. Coming up with one right on the spot was difficult, but then, I remembered something. Something that every child had experienced at least once.
"Your price is fear." I said. "The fear of the dark. If your quirk truly does get stronger in the dark, then it draws in the innate fear that everybody intrinsically has of the unknown."
Tokoyami stopped walking, and stared straight ahead, contemplating.
"Forgive me if I'm being insensitive, but you're afraid of it too, right?"
"Of what?" Tokoyami said, black eyes focusing on my own brown ones with a fierce intensity.
"Of your own quirk." I said. "Your quirk gets stronger the darker the environment is, right?"
Tokoyami nodded very slowly.
"Then that's correct. You yourself do not fear the dark, but in the shadows, you fear yourself. Or specifically, what your shadow might do. What the darker side of you would do without the shackles of light restraining it under the public eye."
Tokoyami's legs began shaking imperceptibly.
"Your quirk… really is a test of your integrity."
What in the world did I just say?
Maybe I was developing too many chuuni delusions under the influence of my quirk.
"I'll give you some time to think." I said, looking at Tokoyami, who was now leaning on a wall. The sound of heavy breathing filled the air, and slowly, he slumped to the ground.
Great. I just ruined a friendship. I looked back at Tokoyami, who was now sitting against the wall, with his arms around his legs. Dark Shadow crept out from underneath him and I could see it tentatively pat him on the shoulder.
"This is even worse than turning into a fish." I groaned, putting my hands over my face.
"I knew your name was familiar!" a still rather squeaky voice said, an empty sleeve pointing right at my face.
"You're Yohaku Tenshin, right? We were in the same class in fifth grade."
"Hakagure-san." I said, sighing. "I thought it was you, too."
"Then why didn't you say anything?" she demanded, her hands now presumably on her hips, if the wrinkles in her fabric and the orientation of her uniform was any indication.
I saw some more students making the bend in the hallway, and dragged her out of their view.
"Can we… talk about this later? Like after school?"
Hagakure reluctantly agreed, though it was difficult to tell what her emotions were due to a lack of facial expression.
…
I stood next to the empty bike stands, nervously tapping my feet. The rest of the day had been a disaster. Tokoyami was still depressed, and nobody knew why. Kaminari bugged me with various questions that I gave answers to halfheartedly, while I contemplated what to say to Hagakure.
In the end, I decided to improvise.
A set of uniforms floated over to me, and I took that as my queue to start talking. Passersby looked at us and gave us a little space, no doubt misinterpreting the situation entirely. Still, because of my quirk, it gave the encounter an uncomfortable energy because of the setting.
The sun was shining, and it was fall. Orange leaves cascaded across the sidewalk, getting blown into the gaps between the grey stone bricks in the sidewalk. The boy involved was nervously twitching, while the set of feminine uniform in front of him was totally still.
It was the air… of a confession.
Of course, I had a different confession in mind. It was more of a… religious one.
"…What happened to you?" Hakagure said softly.
Out of every question, I didn't expect it to be this.
I expected questions about how I was doing, and what I did during these years.
It was in a tone of pity.
"You were so different back then." She said, figure still unmoving, but I could hear the sadness in her voice. "You used to be hopeless with directions, and clueless about everything. But after you left my class and we moved into sixth grade, that slightly awkward person I knew was gone, and nobody turned into fish anymore in school. I thought you had… gone somewhere else, or…."
The next statement went unsaid. The bullying I endured in fifth grade was… soul crushing, to say the least.
"A lot of things happened." I said, emotionally. "Also, I finally figured out what my quirk is."
"Didn't you talk about it in class?" Hagakure said.
"That was a lie." I said, sighing.
"What? Why would you lie about your quirk?"
A headache began pounding in my brain, sending pulses of pain. I only had to utter those words, but to say those words were so hard. I bit down on my lower lip, hoping the pain would distract me from the ache in my head, but it only made things worse.
Finally, I spat out the words.
"My quirk makes me become whatever people think I am."
Like a deflating balloon, the pain slowly left my head. I could feel Hagakure's expectations turn from confused to very confused.
"It makes me do whatever the people around me think I should do, and turns me into whatever they think I am. I decided to act like I had a lot of confidence after we changed classes, so I turned into a fish less, and since I said I wanted to be a hero just so I would seem normal, my quirk was assumed to be something strong automatically. Eventually, my classmates thought that I seriously wanted to become a hero, and my quirk forced me to apply to a hero school."
"You didn't want to-"
"And because everybody thought I would make it, even if I tried to fail the test, I made it in."
"Wh-wha-" Hagakure stammered, but I continued on anyways. My speech was barely cohesive, and I was just spewing out my rather generic backstory, but it still served its purpose.
I felt lighter, as if the burden of hiding this secret from everybody outside of my family was finally unladen.
After I had finished my speech, I simply walked away. I was emptionally and physically spent today, both from getting attacked by Uraraka during the battle training, potentially traumatizing Tokoyami, and making one of my classmates realize what a fraud I was.
What an amazing day.
…
Kaminari kneeled in front of an altar, carrying a stack of… certain magazines.
He lovingly caressed one of the titles, a rather well read copy of [REDACTED]. Then, wincing and gritting his teeth, he put it in the sacrifice bowl and lit it on fire with a match.
The pages curled into ashes, the title cover burning up as the contents in the magazine were slowly revealed, each page burning after the next, revealing more and more pictures of a very… racy quality.
His parents watched him in pride, sniffling and wiping tears off of their faces from the doorway.
After burning most of the pornography, Kaminari held his hands together and prayed.
"Whatever spirit that gives me the quirk to use my electricity, please make it so that I don't shock my brain anymore with my quirk!"
Tenshin-san had said that using a quirk came with a price, and that these tolls could be payed off with material sacrifices. Apparently Tenshin-san really liked fried tofu, so that was his sacrifice.
And if fried tofu was a good enough material sacrifice, then so was [REDACTED]. Honestly, it was probably an even more significant object to Kaminari compared to his favorite food.
"Please." Kaminari thought, screwing his eyes shut. "Let this be enough."
The sacrifice did work, though not how Kaminari thought it would work. No lightning sprites existed to answer Kaminari's calls. However, through the belief in his classmate's words, the expectation based quirk of Yohaku Tenshin fulfilled Kaminari's expectations and beliefs, allowing him to use his quirk freely.
Were quirks supposed to work this way? Probably not.
(Was it funny? Definitely.)
Another chapter, another upload…
This was barely edited because I'm too tired right now. I'm in the middle of a research program doing stuff about solar cells, oddly enough, and I've been staring at scientific articles and an infuriating calculation system called Abinit for about a week now.
This was written in between long calculations, and while waiting for things to load or packages to download. If there are mistakes, or inconsistencies, then please point them out via PM/reviews.
Thanks for reading, and please follow/favorite if this piqued your interest. I would also love to hear about what you thought of this chapter.
Discord: discord . gg / 9t9MK3jHmV (Come here to chat about life or something.)
-SpiritOfErebus