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...
Nobody really likes Hitoshi.
Not the people at school, not the people at the orphanage, not the kids that hang out at the local park.
So Hitoshi goes to a park that's farther away after school. It's half an hour away instead of ten minutes like the closest park is, but that just means none of the kids from Hitoshi's school play there. None of the kids who know what Hitoshi's quirk is play there. And that's just better for everyone.
"My name is Sinsou Hitoshi, and my quirk is called Brain Freeze. If I ask a question, and you answer, you won't be able to move." Hitoshi introduces himself to the local kids. He initially addresses the group as a whole, but when he's done every kid there turns to the blond in their midst for judgment of the newcomer. Hitoshi's eyes turn to this child as well. Hitoshi feels lesser under the blond's red eyes, in his second hand clothes and ragged shoes and his lie of a quirk. Hitoshi knows paralysis quirks get some flack, too. But a paralysis quirk is better than a brainwashing quirk.
The silence drags on while the blond seizes him up, eyes narrowed. Then...
"Ask me a question!" The blond demands.
Hitoshi freezes up. "Wha-what?" He stutters out.
The blond huffs. "Ask me a question! Use your quirk on me."
Hitoshi swallows, but nods. Hitoshi had gambled that people would be less afraid if he pretended he couldn't control them with his quirk, and he had been ready to demonstrate, but somehow he never really expected anyone would actually encourage him to use his quirk. Hitoshi said the first thing that came to mind. "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
The blond kid stared at him. "What kind of stupid-?"
Hitoshi's face went red, but luckily all present were distracted from the blond's initial judgment when Hitoshi pulled the puppet strings taunt and the blond's confident posture fell slack, his face wiped blank and his pupils turning a mindless white.
Hitoshi very carefully did not order the kid to do anything.
There was a long moment where all the kids, Hitoshi included, stared at the blond, and the blond stared into space. Then one of the other kids lightly pushed the blond's shoulder, and Hitoshi felt his control snap. The blond stumbled, shook his head, and righted himself. Hitoshi froze at the absolutely furious expression on the blond's face, but the kid only turned slowly to direct the look at the kid who had pushed him.
The kid shook and smiled nervously. "Ah...ha...ha...sorry Bakugou, but he...you...looked like you...needed-"
"Are you gonna say that I looked like I needed help?" Bakugou demands.
"...No! Nononono!" The kid stuttered and sweated nervously. "I wouldn't do that! You're gonna be the number one! Of course you don't need help!"
Bakugou eyed the kid and huffed, but ultimately turned back to a now nervous Hitoshi. Bakugou eyed him up and down, then turned his nose up. "I guess you're pretty strong..." he mused, and Hitoshi felt his heart lift along with his head. "So I guess you can be my sidekick." There was a gasp from all the kids around, and Hitoshi looked around nervously, unknowing if that was a good or a bad thing.
"Lucky!" Another kid said and elbowed Hitoshi in the side. Hitoshi blinked.
"Come on, we're playing heroes and villains. Sense you're my sidekick, you'll be on the hero's side with me." Bakugou jerked his thumb at himself and grinned. "And make sure you're not caught using your quirk. Some grown ups will make us stop because of the quirk laws, but as long as no one's looking, you can use your quirk however you want to win...except you can't use it on me, because you're my side kick."
Hitoshi's eyes widened and his breath caught. Slowly, he smiled back.
...
It didn't last.
...
It started with a girl.
"Don't you know that villains never win?!" Hitoshi shouts, striking a pose even though no one can see him. The girl pretending to be a villain in their game has made a smoke screen out of bubbles to prevent the faster Hitoshi from catching up and tagging her.
The girl, forgetting herself, responds. "Today the villains will-!" And she falls silent as Hitoshi's quirk snares her.
"We win!" Hitoshi shouts, smiling. "Bakugou, we win!" Hitoshi calls out, spinning round and round, trying to find the others through the bubbles.
The kids gather round, the end of another successful game, and someone shoves the girl to get her moving again.
The girl stumbles, bursts into tears, and runs.
The smile slips off Hitoshi's face.
...
Bakugou and his group only come out to the park on Saturdays, so Hitoshi doesn't find out what he did wrong until a week later.
The leader of the girls comes up to them and addresses Bakugou. She says the girl that cried did so because she felt like Shinsou was 'touching her brain and its gross' and she doesn't want to play with him anymore. She says that the other girls in their group feel the same, and as long as Shinsou is still a part of their group, they don't want to play with the boys any more.
Bakugou snorts. "What pansies." He says, and then turns away from the shocked and affronted girls, who apparently expected Bakugou to side with them. Shinsou had, too. He is so pathetically grateful the boy did not.
Bakugou grabs his wrist and starts dragging him away, and the other boys in their group start scrambling after them. The boy who always agrees with Bakugou stumbles to the front of the pack.
"Girls are so dumb and weak, anyway!" He grins nervously. "I don't know why we ever let them play with us to begin with." The others in the group are noticeably silent. Shinsou doesn't miss the way they avoid looking at him, the way they glance at each other the way that they do when they don't agree with Bakugou, but are unwilling to say it.
Even the boy who agreed with Bakugou won't look at Hitoshi.
Hitoshi's shoulders shrink up around his ears.
...
The silence from his school and his homelife follows him here. Hitoshi can't even blame them. He can feel their brains when he puts them under, like fingers caressing piano keys, ready to type in instructions. They can feel it too, though they don't have the words to describe the wrongness. They won't talk to him.
But as long as Bakugou still tolerates Hitoshi, the others do, too.
For now.
...
The air of the playing has changed, since the vow of silence. It's not as fun anymore, with Hitoshi as a roadblock in every conversation. Hitoshi tries to stay quiet as much as possible, so the awkward silences don't come up as often, but the games they play require quirks to stay ahead.
Bakugou gets frustrated.
Hitoshi isn't as good at the games anymore, since no one will give him an opportunity to use his quirk. Bakugou calls him- "-almost as bad a sidekick as Deku!" without his quirk. "You might as well be quirkless, at this rate." Bakugou scowels while the boy with the fingers pushes Hitoshi over, or the boy with the wings uses his appendages to keep Hitoshi at wings length, all while remaining stubbornly silent to Hitoshi's jokes and questions and cajoling.
Hitoshi gets desperate.
Hitoshi gets mean.
"You know Bakugou is never going to like you, right?" He says, laying on the ground, pinned by the boy with the growing fingers while the other two dance around, trying to tag team Bakugou. "You know you're always going to be just another extra to him, right?"
The boy's eyes snap down to him. "You little-!" And the boy's fingers fall lax as his face goes blank, Hitoshi's fingers in the boy's mind like hands on the reins of a horse.
Hitoshi grins, rolls to the side, careful not to jostle the frozen boy, and joins Bakugou in the counter attack. He continues this line of attack, hurling a little kid's version of abuse at their opponents. Their faces get angrier and angrier, and one even falls for the bait, and Bakugou forces the other to surrender.
Hitoshi wins the game, as he always does when he plays with Bakugou, but he loses the war.
Fingers is jostled back into wakefulness, and right away he is scowling, as are the other boys.
Hitoshi already knows what's about to happen. The boys join the girls on the opposite end of the park.
...
Bakugou is staring after them, a shocked and offended look on his face. Hitoshi needs to act fast.
"Are you scared?" Hitoshi asks, goads, suddenly right up in Bakugou's face.
"What...?!" Bakugou replies, staring at Hitoshi's audacity incredulously. His face falls blank, his hands lax. Hitoshi holds him there for a good moment, imagines himself running his fingers all over Bakugou's brain, and then Hitoshi physically pushes him. Bakugou stumbles back and out of the brainwash-the brainfreeze, Hitoshi reminds himself desperately. Here, in this park, for a few hours a day, Hitoshi's quirk is Brain Freeze.
"I said, are you scared of me too?! Like those extras?!" Hitoshi shouts. He does not know what he is doing. He is angry and a lot of other things and he acts on it.
"I'll kill yo-!" Bakugou goes lax again. Hitoshi pushes him again. Bakugou stumbles to the ground.
"Are you going to run away? Stop talking to me? Are you afraid to open your mouth-?" Hitshi spits out rapid fire. He is interrupted. Bakugou comes up screaming, and Hitoshi's eyes widen in surprise and then he is on the ground from Bakugou's fist in his face, the blond panting and sweaty above him. "Ask me that one more time...!" Bakugou bares his teeth down at Hitoshi, pounds his fist into his palm, and smoke explodes.
Hitoshi glares up at, jaw aching with a too familiar pain and gaze sullen. "Are you afraid of me?" He spits out, holds Bakugou's gaze, swells his chest up.
"No." Bakugou says simply, and then he punches Hitoshi again.
Hitoshi is lying on the ground, staring up at a big blue sky. Bakugou walks away without another word.
The next week, they are back, just the two of them, away from the other kids.
"You're really not scared of me?" Hitoshi asks when Bakugou trots up to him.
Bakugou punches him again.
