A/N: i don't even know what this is. i just thought the concept was funny and here it is now. also assume this takes place in 2012, even though BNHA doesn't have a canon year. this is just straight up crack enjoy
edit 2/7/2021: wow! somehow the formatting got wildly screwed up! adding dividers so people can actually tell where scene changes happen, lol. sorry to everyone who read it anyway, especially the one person who left a very sweet comment in spite of it XD
CRASH.
A tree at the edge of the clearing fell to the ground. The grass was charred, still alight with embers in some places, and in others it had been ripped up to expose the dirt beneath. Smoke and blue gas hung in the air.
Nine students in red and black school uniforms stood scattered around the clearing, panting, still in fighting stances, all staring in the same direction. Class 2-B of Nekoma High's hero course had just had their first encounter with the infamous League of Villains, and they weren't sure whether they'd won or lost.
"They took Kenma." Kuroo said in disbelief.
Fukunaga and Inuoka dropped their fighting poses. Lev's arm was stretched out a good fifteen feet, and he retracted it back to its normal but still too long length. Taketora stood straighter, but didn't retract his claws, Kai stopped glowing green, and Yaku's skin turned from dark gray to pale tan.
"How could this happen?" Kuroo growled, more to himself than anyone else, staring at the ground, fists clenched.
Kai put a hand on his back reassuringly. "He was just lying on the ground, and we only had one more person than they did."
"I know that," said Kuroo. "It wasn't a literal question. I thought we were holding them off just fine, and next thing I know he's gone and they're holding him for ransom!"
Kai just sighed and patted the class president again.
Lev looked like he was about to cry.
"And then the nerve! 'Tell anyone about this and we'll kill him?' And then they just run away?" Kuroo threw his hands in the air. "Who do they think they are?"
"They do have us there, though," admitted Yaku. "That was the literal League of Villains that's been all over the news lately. That threat is too dangerous to ignore if they really mean it."
"And then what are they gonna do if we comply, leave him on our doorstep stamped and addressed in the morning?"
"We should chase them down before they get too far!" Inuoka exclaimed. "I bet me and Kai and Taketora are fast enough, and I can smell where they went."
Taketora immediately got ready to run. "YEAH! LET'S GO! HANG ON KENMA, WE'RE COMIN' FOR YA!"
"And then what?" asked Kuroo. "Cut that out, Taketora. There could be more of them at their base, and we barely made it as is. No, we need a strategy for this."
Yaku nodded. "I agree."
Lev raised his hand like he was in class. "But we are gonna get Kenma back, right?"
"Duh." Kuroo aimed a sinister smile at him. "Don't think so little of your upperclassmen."
Everyone looked to Kai, the vice president, and Yaku, the most likely to shoot down Kuroo's bad ideas. They made eye contact with each other and shrugged.
"Well," said Yaku, "I guess we can't risk asking the police or the pros for help, and we can't risk leaving Kenma on his own. Let's regroup and get going."
Lev slapped Inuoka and Taketora as they all whooped and cheered, and Fukunaga smirked.
Maybe it was a bad idea, but since nobody in their class had a spectacularly strong quirk, Nekoma was used to going against stronger opponents. Strength could be nullified by teamwork, and they knew each other inside and out. If anyone was going to pull one over on the League of Villains, it would be them.
Kenma opened his eyes to a frankly nasty-looking ceiling full of dents and mysterious splatters. It smelled terrible in here. More importantly, he should be outside, in the grass where he'd lain down to charge his quirk, not in someone's gross finished basement on a holey couch full of soda stains.
Well, at least he'd charged his quirk, Power Nap. He had slept for five minutes, and he would be twice as fast and four times as strong as he ordinarily would for the next five minutes. That would be plenty to get him out of wherever he was.
Only problem was, his quirk didn't seem to be working. He gently punched the back of the couch to make sure.
It really wasn't.
Oh well. The villains they were fighting must have knocked him out while he was napping and brought him here, giving his quirk time to run out. If this was the villains' hideout, he didn't want to risk using Power Nap and leaving himself vulnerable again, so he would bide his time and wait for an opening.
Kenma sat up on the couch and reached into his uniform pants pocket, hoping the villains hadn't confiscated what he had left in there. His fingers touched a cold, smooth rectangle, and he let out a sigh of relief. With this, he would be fine.
He pulled out his 3DS and fired it up.
Shigaraki was annoyed, to put it mildly. A run-in with a group of hero brats was the last thing the League needed right now. Apparently they couldn't even take a nice nature walk without running into a gaggle of teenagers screaming about how evil villains were and how much they needed to be defeated.
Really, all he wanted was to lay low. There were plans in the works that could crumble with bad publicity, so much as he would've normally enjoyed game overing a dozen kids, that many disappearing would be too obvious, and any that were left alive would surely start blabbing and then they'd have to move out of their busted up hidey hole and it would be a whole production. Kidnapping one in exchange for silence wasn't an ideal solution, and they'd have to work at it more, but it would have to be good enough for now.
"I'm not touching him." said Dabi.
"So does he need his newspapers changed, or what?" asked Twice.
"He's not as cute as Deku, but maybe I could take care of him," said Toga.
"Great," said Shigaraki. "You're in charge of the hostage, then."
"Sweet." Toga grinned. "I'll go sharpen my knives."
Should have foreseen that, Shigaraki thought as he watched her skip off. So it was down to either Compress or Spinner, and Compress was whistling loudly and pretending like this conversation wasn't happening. He looked at Spinner expectantly.
"Uh… I don't know what kids need."
"And you think I do?" asked Shigaraki.
"I guess I can try," Spinner said nervously.
"Fine. Good. Thank you."
Spinner didn't move, still looking like he wanted to say something, but doing nothing besides looking at Shigaraki with puppy dog eyes.
Shigaraki huffed. "Fine, we'll take turns."
Spinner breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, yeah. I can do that."
And so it had been decided.
Now, Shigaraki was headed down the hall to look for Spinner. He'd left to check on the kid almost 40 minutes ago, and no one had seen him since. Shigaraki paused at the door with his hand on the doorknob, listening.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
He threw open the door and froze.
"What. Are you doing."
Spinner was leaning on the back of the couch, watching the kid play a game over his shoulder, and he looked up as Shigaraki came in. "He has Ocarina of Time," was all he said by way of explanation.
Shigaraki walked over to the couch, curious. "Good taste," he commented. "This your first time?"
"Nah," said the kid, not looking up. "I'm just replaying it since it was rereleased for the 3DS."
The two villains watched the kid play for a while, offering advice on where to find items and giving directions on which way to move.
Halfway through fighting a boss, the kid saved and snapped his 3DS shut. Shigaraki and Spinner stopped arguing.
"What gives, kid?"
"I can't focus with you guys yelling instructions at me. I can go right or left without you dictating my every little move. It's annoying."
Spinner looked a bit ashamed, and Shigaraki was about to protest that he'd been gaming since the kid was in diapers, but then he remembered that the kid was a hostage and shut his mouth. It wasn't worth his time to argue with a hero hostage. He was the boss here.
The kid tipped his head back against the back of the couch and shut his eyes. Shigaraki and Spinner stared at each other awkwardly for a minute. Was he just gonna take a nap right there?
"Hey." Shigaraki said. "Did you forget you've been kidnapped?"
The kid cracked his eyes open lazily and looked at the villains upside down. "No."
"Well, act like it."
"What do you want me to do, scream? Fight? I don't feel like fighting."
"You're just playing games like this is your living room, and it's not. It's mine."
"Well," said the kid, shutting his eyes again, "I was bored."
Shigaraki struggled for a second, trying to think of a comeback, and eventually decided on an eloquent "Tch."
His eyes moved to the case on the couch next to the kid. He snatched it up and unzipped it.
"Hey!" said the kid, turning around and grabbing at it with the most emotion Shigaraki had seen from him yet. Heh.
Shigaraki held it out of his reach, pinky fingers carefully extended so as not to touch it, and examined the games inside.
"Give that back." The kid was frowning.
Shigaraki's gaze settled on a game. "Hey kid," he asked. "What's your native fruit?"
"I'll tell you if you give that back," grumped the kid.
He handed the case back and waited for the answer.
The kid shoved it in his pocket and stared at his lap, and Shigaraki was afraid for a second that the kid had tricked him, but- "...Cherries."
"Ha! Trade with me! This loser only has apples," Shigaraki scoffed, waving his hand at Spinner.
"Will you give me a break already?" Spinner whined. "We've been over this. I didn't know you could try for anything else until I made it too far to reset."
But Shigaraki was already out the door, making a beeline for their DSes.
Toga hoped the new boy would be interesting. She skipped down the hall to his room, knives fresh and shiny. She'd taken her time sharpening them, and then yeah, she'd maybe gotten a little distracted trying new things with her hair in the bathroom mirror. He was a hostage, he wasn't going anywhere. What she had said earlier was true, he wasn't as cute as her Deku, but then she'd only seen him asleep. Cuteness wasn't just based on looks, it was personality too, and she couldn't wait to see what he was like.
She opened the door and peeked in, ready to greet him. But he didn't even look at her.
Not a good start.
He sat on the couch cross-legged, bent over a handheld game with his two-tone hair obscuring his face. What Toga really hadn't expected was the other two people in the room: Spinner, sitting on the floor next to the boy with his back against the couch, and Shigaraki perched on the coffee table across from them, both absorbed in their own games.
Shigaraki looked up at her with a half-sneer. Case in point, he had neither a cute face nor a cute personality. "Hey," he said before going back to his game.
This got Spinner's attention, and he looked up as well. "Oh, hi, Toga."
She walked over to them lightly and demurely clasped her hands behind her back, trying to see what game they were playing. "Whatcha guys doing?"
The new boy still took no notice of her.
"Gamer stuff. You wouldn't understand," said Shigaraki.
Toga puffed out her cheeks in a pout, but her eyes lit up when she saw what was on his screen. "Hey, that's Animal Crossing! I play and you know it."
"Oh yeah," said Spinner. "I know we were about to play something else, but Toga, you should go get your DS first." He turned around to the boy. "She has a great eye for design. You should see her town before we stop playing."
"Cool," said the boy. His voice was soft, like he didn't want to talk.
Toga could work with this. And her Animal Crossing town really was worth showing off. "Yay!" She clapped her hands. "I'll be right back. Don't miss me too much, 'kay, Pudding Boy?"
That finally got his attention. He moved his head up enough for his hair to swing back and give her a partial view of his face. He was glaring at her out of the corners of his half-closed eyes and his nose was wrinkled. Like a grumpy little kitty, she thought gleefully.
"What did you call me."
Toga giggled and skipped off to get her game. This wasn't so bad.
An hour later, Compress heard his stomach growl. He laid down the poetry book he was reading, and realized how quiet it had been. Quiet in their hideout was like quiet in a room full of toddlers: it meant danger.
But he really needed to get dinner, because clearly no one else was going to.
He began making rounds of the ramshackle base. No one was in their room, any of the bathrooms, or the kitchen. As he approached the room where the hostage was being kept, he heard shouts and irritated whining. Ah, so this was where they'd gone.
He opened the door. Everyone was there, even Dabi. He was leaning against the back of the ratty couch, and Shigaraki and Spinner sat on the floor in front of it. Between Toga and Twice on the couch, right in the middle of everyone, sat the hostage, a look of grim determination on his face. He, Shigaraki, Spinner, and Twice all held controllers, and everyone was staring at the TV and yelling.
"Buncha noobs! How do you even fall off there?"
"Waluigi- Twice- he pushed me!" Spinner protested.
"I did it on purpose! Totally an accident!" yelled Twice, veering off the track himself, solidly in 12th place.
On the screen, Mario crossed the finish line a split second before Daisy, and the hostage boy dropped his controller in his lap and pumped his fist in victory. Toga grabbed his shoulders and shook him, squealing happily, and the small smile that had been on his face for an instant changed to deadpan annoyance.
Shigaraki meticulously set his controller on the coffee table and then pounded his fist on the floor and swore loudly, scratching at his neck.
"THIS SUCKS. YOU SUCK, BRAT," he screamed. "SWAP CONTROLLERS WITH ME. WHAT KIND OF HACKS ARE YOU USING?"
"Thi-is is-s a W-Wii," the boy said. Toga was still shaking him. He slapped her away. "And it's yours! How on earth could I be hacking it?"
"NO! I AM THE SUPERIOR GAMER!" Shigaraki grabbed a leg of the coffee table and disintegrated it. "AAGH! Go. Again. I'll defeat you this time, hero scum."
Compress spoke. "Sorry to interrupt this riveting little tete-a-tete, but I'm ordering dinner."
Everyone turned to him.
"Ooh, I'm starving," said Toga, clapping her hands.
"Mountain Dew and wings," Shigaraki growled hoarsely.
"Ugh," said the boy, looking at Shigaraki like he wanted to strangle him. Compress suspected it was less an aversion to wings and more an aversion to Shigaraki in general.
"Excellent," said Compress, "I'll leave you to it, then." He gracefully bowed out of the room and went to call in the delivery.
Kuroo approached the rundown mansion in the middle of nowhere as quietly and unassumingly as he could, which wasn't hard, because he was in cat form. Operation Break Kenma Out was a go, and he was the clear choice for reconnaissance.
People tended to laugh at his quirk at first. A black shorthair house cat wasn't very intimidating unless you believed in bad luck, and out of the animal transformation quirks in his class, Inuoka's Newfoundland form was much stronger and gave him better endurance, and Taketora's tiger-chimera transformation was even stronger, cooler, and more intimidating. But Kuroo knew better than almost anyone else that even a house cat was nothing to sneeze at. You just had to know how to use it.
Case in point here. Not even villains would be suspicious of a stray cat.
Kuroo scanned the building, checking for open windows or other possible entry points. If there was nothing on the first floor, he could easily climb up to the second with all the trash and overgrown greenery there was.
Before he could make a decision, though, a car pulled up on the dirt road and stopped. A man in a red polo shirt and visor with fast food logos stepped out, pulled out a few plastic bags full of boxes, and looked around nervously.
Kuroo couldn't believe it. Maybe they'd gotten the wrong place. There was no way the League of Villains would just order delivery, it couldn't be this easy.
Could it?
He darted forward and fell into step beside the delivery boy, who cooed at him when he noticed. They stopped before the scuffed up front door, and the delivery boy took a deep breath and knocked loudly.
After a few seconds of waiting, a man of ambiguous age in a waistcoat, top hat, and medical mask opened the door. Kuroo recognized him as one of the villains who had attacked them earlier, although he wasn't sure what his quirk was. "Ah, thank you," he said, taking the food. "Step inside, I'll set this down and get the tip."
The delivery boy seemed to be debating whether the tip was worth it, but he must have thought so because step inside he did. Kuroo followed. The inside of the house was just as bad as the outside, although it looked like it might have been grand once.
The villain finally seemed to notice Kuroo. "Is that your cat?" he asked conversationally, setting the food on the hall table and rooting through a beat-up leather wallet.
"No, I- I just met him outside. If he's not yours, I guess he must be a stray."
"Ah, I see." The villain fished out three thousand-yen bills and handed them to the delivery boy, who snatched them hungrily with a small nod and a whispered thanks and scurried out the door.
Welp, now was the time.
Kuroo bolted down the hallway into the house before Top Hat could try to chase him out.
"Hey-" he called, but he didn't seem to be too concerned about pursuing. Good.
The scents of takeout, various humans, mildew, blood, and decomposing wood combined to make a confusing olfactory landscape, but Kenma's scent was definitely here. Kuroo followed it and the sound of voices as best he could, and ended up in front of an unassuming door.
"YEAH, KILL THE KID, SHIGARAKI!"
"I'M GONNA OBLITERATE YOU!"
"Let me hurt you, just a little bit?" cooed a female voice.
"Get off me."
Kuroo's ears perked up. That last one was Kenma, and although whatever was going on in there sounded concerning, Kenma sounded more pissed than anything else, which was a good sign. That and the music and video game noises.
Apprehension quickly turning to confusion, he slipped through the door.
Of course.
Of course this would happen. Sure, why not, made perfect sense.
Only Kenma could get kidnapped by the most notorious villain organization in Japan and then end up sitting comfortably on their couch playing Mario Party.
Kenma was in so much trouble.
Kuroo marched directly towards the group and jumped up on Kenma's lap.
"Ooh, kitty," said the girl, who was leaning on Kenma way too comfortably. She dropped her Wii remote and reached out to pat Kuroo's head.
He allowed himself to hiss at her.
She went ahead with the petting anyway, seeming to not care.
"Aww, I wanna pet it too, but I'm allergic," complained the villain with the two-tone face mask. "Tell me if he's soft, Toga."
Kenma's eyes were wide with recognition, and he had dropped his remote as well (for the first time in his life, probably, Kuroo thought). He leaned back with his hands hovering above Kuroo as if he had an invisible force field around him and stared.
Kuroo stared right back.
"What's that, a stray?" scoffed the white-haired villain. "Did one of you bring that in here?"
"Nope," said the girl happily, attempting to scratch under Kuroo's chin.
He bit her.
"Owie, he's got a temper," she pouted.
"I'd say you should probably get tested for rabies, but we all know you already have it," deadpanned the villain with all the piercings and scars, still focused on playing the minigame they'd been in the middle of.
Kuroo hoped that was a joke. It almost made him regret biting her. Maybe he should get tested after this anyway just to be safe.
"Don't you like cats?" asked the lizard guy, noticing Kenma's behavior.
"No, they're… fine," Kenma replied, absentmindedly placing a hand on Kuroo's back. "Um. Do you guys have a bathroom?"
The white haired guy jerked a thumb toward the door. "Down the hall, third door on the left." He didn't bother taking his eyes off the screen, instead choosing another minigame. "Here, take his controller, Twice."
"Be right back," said Kenma. He picked up Kuroo under his armpits and began to carry him out of the room. The brat knew Kuroo hated that. He really was just racking up the offenses, wasn't he.
The scarred villain eyed him. "Taking the cat to the bathroom?" he asked.
Kenma made a frustrated noise. Kuroo squirmed out of his grasp and dropped to the ground. "Of course I'm not," said Kenma unconvincingly.
He marched out of the room, and Kuroo followed him into the bathroom.
Kenma shut the door and locked it, tried it to make sure it wouldn't open, then unlocked and relocked it again. He put his ear to the door to make sure no one was coming and listened for a second, then turned on Kuroo. "What are you doing here?" he hissed.
Kuroo stretched upwards, shifting back into his human form to answer in a stage whisper. "Dude, what do you mean what am I doing here? You're the one sitting in the League of Villains' basement playing video games all buddy-buddy!"
"I was waiting for an opportunity to escape."
"They're not even sending a guard with you to the bathroom. I could smash this window right now and drag you back and they wouldn't even notice."
"I-"
Kuroo raised an eyebrow, waiting for an answer.
Kenma's gaze dropped to the ground. "Shigaraki is… good."
"Pretty sure he's a literal criminal."
"Not like that," Kenma mumbled, still refusing to look at Kuroo. "I don't know anyone who can even get close to me, let alone give me a challenge in multiplayer games. It hasn't happened in years." He was starting to do that sparkly thing Kuroo always teased him about whenever he got excited. "But Shigaraki's on another level. He… he beat me at Mario Kart, Kuroo."
Kuroo whistled softly.
Kenma's voice was almost too quiet to hear now. "I… might've… been having fun."
Kuroo let out a single loud "HA" before remembering where they were. He quickly closed his mouth and stood there, shoulders shaking as he desperately tried to contain his laughter.
This was too ridiculous.
Kenma was glaring at him from behind his hair.
"C'mon, then. We should get going before they come looking for us." Kuroo began struggling with the rusty bathroom window, still chuckling.
"I can't."
"Huh?" Kuroo looked over his shoulder.
Kenma met his gaze firmly, dead serious. "I left my 3DS in there."
"No," said Kuroo, turning back to the window.
"I'm going back for it."
"No, you're not."
"Yes, I am."
"No. You're not."
"Stop me." Kenma unlocked the door and darted out into the hallway.
Kuroo dropped the half open window with a curse and it slammed shut. He tripped out the door, midway through transforming into a cat, and followed after Kenma as quickly as he could. And they called him Nekoma's brain for what?
He froze in the doorway to the living room, trying to come up with a plan. He still had to be a convincing cat for as long as possible. Maybe he could attack someone, cause a distraction long enough for Kenma to escape, or-
"Back?" asked the lizard around a mouthful of food.
While they had been gone, Top Hat had brought in the takeout, and had joined them to eat. He sat on a rickety kitchen chair with his mask off munching on fries.
"Just getting this," said Kenma, reaching across the girl to grab his 3DS off the couch.
"Ah, gonna be in it for the long haul?" asked the guy with the two tone mask. "Been there, done that. Good luck, little buddy."
"Twice, please. Table manners," said Top Hat.
"Uh, yeah, that's it. I'll be back in a while," said Kenma.
He sounded about as convincing as Kuroo's grandma trying to do an All Might impression.
"No rest for gamers," sighed Shigaraki. "Even for the demands of nature. Gotta get that bread and all."
Kuroo was baffled, to put it mildly.
Kenma nodded in assent and hurried out of the room.
The villains kept eating.
Back in the bathroom, Kenma locked the door while Kuroo shifted back into a human and pried open the window again.
"Ready?" he asked.
Kenma nodded, clutching his 3DS and cartridge case to his chest.
"I can't believe that worked."
Kenma shrugged.
Kuroo gestured to the window, and Kenma put his game in his pocket and climbed out. Kuroo followed and shifted into a cat again. The two boys ran towards the forest.
Belatedly, Kuroo realized that he should've told Kenma to charge his quirk before they left so he didn't get tired. Oh well. He got them into this mess, he could suffer the consequences.
Besides, the rest of their class was waiting for them a short distance away, and they hadn't had to do anything, so they would be nice and spry and ready to give piggyback rides.
Several days later, Nekoma's Class 2-B sat in their classroom, waiting for class to start. They'd notified the proper authorities about the whole incident, but the League, of course, had disappeared without a trace.
Kenma sat at his desk, engrossed in a game as usual.
"Ooh, Animal Crossing!" said Lev, looking over his shoulder. "Open your gates, I wanna trade before class starts."
"'Kay."
Lev got out his own DS, turned it on, waited for it to load, and visited Kenma's town.
"Okay, where are you at, Kenma?"
"In my house."
There was a pause as Lev made his way there.
"Hey, you didn't mention you had other visitors! It's a party!" Lev typed a greeting into the chatbox. "I should get their friend codes, too."
Kenma frowned. "You probably shouldn't. Trust me."
"Aw."
And Lev was right to be disappointed. After all, who wouldn't want to play Animal Crossing with a couple of cool guys named Stain and Deathbringer?
