"Well done today, kids!" cried Burnin' as she led the exhausted trio back through the agency doors. "I know it can be a bit of a shock, going from school to real hero work, but I think you all handled it super well!"
Even Izuku was too tired to do more than thank her five times, but that was still better feedback than Todoroki's imperceptible nod or Bakugou's slight increase in the volume of his growl.
"But we're not done yet! Bossman might have let you go for the day, but the Flaming Sidekickers have you now! We're going to give you a real, scorching-hot, Endeavor Agency welcome!"
"Ah… Burnin'-san…" stuttered Izuku, stealing a side-glance at Todoroki. From the utter blankness on the taller boy's face, Izuku was certain that the last thing any of them wanted was an Endeavor-style welcome. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
Burnin's hair flickered orange for a second, and Izuku made a guess at her mood and a mental note to write down the correlation later. Annoyance, maybe?
"Of course!" Burnin' replied, with a grin that threw Izuku's calculations out the window. She herded them into a conference room and started raiding the cupboards for snacks and office supplies. "It's not a proper first day without a good old-fashioned initiation! I know you're all good students and huge fans of ours -"
Bakugou and Todoroki both turned glares on Izuku for that, and he wearily slumped down into a padded chair. Izuku just knew a lot about heroes, okay, of course he was going to ask as many questions as he could get away with, so what if it ruined Kacchan and Todoroki's cool-kid vibes by association.
"- but what you might not know is that the Flaming Sidekickers are not just total badasses in the field! We're also a great big ball of fun! On fire!"
Izuku heard a soft, pained sigh from Todoroki at that.
"Does this have anything to do with hero work, or can I fucking leave," grumbled Bakugou, spinning in his chair and kicking at the table leg.
Burnin' clicked her tongue and started tossing packets of snacks at them, then dimmed the lights in the room. "This is very important, top-secret information," she declared. "You'll never look at Endeavor the same way again!"
Izuku choked on a nori snack, and Todoroki stopped slurping up a Pocky stick (how did he even manage to do that?) to comment: "I highly doubt that."
"Oh, little Shouto-kun." Burnin' angled her face away, casting it into shadow except for the bright flames of her hair reflecting in flickers off the whites of her eyes. "This is something even you never knew, and must swear to secrecy for the rest of your days! All of you! Endeavor must never know that we know - his most dreadful, sordid secret!"
Todoroki blinked in alarm, and Izuku stood up so fast his chair rocketed out to crash into the wall behind him. "Burnin'-san! It's fine! We don't want to know! In fact, it's probably best that we forget that you're implying there's something everybody knows and keeps secret and presumably does nothing about, even when it's something as terrible as this! No Todoroki family secrets needed here, please!"
"A-fucking-men," yelled Bakugou, then talked straight over Todoroki's comment of I didn't know you swung that way too, Bakugou. "No one asked to know about their shitty fucking bullshit and I - what did you say, Icyhot asshole?!"
"That explains that choice of nickname," said Todoroki to himself, and then Izuku's two best friends were trying to kill each other, but he had more important things to take care of.
"If I may, Burnin'-san -" Izuku utilized Full Cowling to shut the laptop she was plugging into projector before whatever terrifying revelations from its screen could flicker to life. "Uh, tell me more about your Quirk! And the many successes of the Flaming Sidekicks! I'd love to know the real story behind your takedown of the Yo-yo villain last month!"
"Aw, sweetie," said Burnin', but did not fall for Izuku's trick of trying to get her to talk about herself. "That can wait till after, this is going to be the best thing you've heard all day." Heedless of the brawl happening in the background, Burnin' opened her laptop and a video started to play.
"Endeavor, the Number One Hero," an artificially deep voice droned, while Izuku buried his head in his hands and prayed that Kacchan and Todoroki's penchant for property damage would shortly take care of Burnin's laptop. "Is not what he seems!"
"I could've told you that," grumbled Todoroki. His unfortunate pause enabled Bakugou to shove a packet of wasabi peas into his mouth and crow in triumph.
"This illustrious hero, who boasts the most powerful offensive Quirk in the nation -"
Todoroki hacked up the sleeve of snacks and tossed the saliva-covered package distastefully into the bin. "Bakugou, you could've just asked if you wanted to shove your nuts down my -"
Izuku covered his ears for many reasons then. When he finally deemed it safe to receive auditory input again, things had somehow gotten even worse.
"- A terrifying secret that could bring down his entire career!" the video announced.
Even Bakugou and Todoroki were paying attention now.
"Shut it off," Izuku pleaded, reaching towards Burnin' with a hopeless sense of dread.
"It's just getting to the good part, wait for it," she said with unbridled glee.
Izuku let his head fall to the table, and was disappointed when it failed to knock him out. They just didn't make tables like they used to.
"Well, here it is folks: the shocking truth about your Number One Hero! Endeavor, the Flame Hero, is guilty of…"
There was an actual drumroll. Beside Izuku, Bakugou and Todoroki both looked faintly nauseous.
"Copyright infringement!" announced a new voice - Burnin's, Izuku recognized after a beat, as it was filled with a borderline villainous glee.
"What the fuck," yelled Bakugou, sounding relieved.
"I know, right?" cried Burnin' with a melodramatic mock-gasp.
On screen, the deep voice was back, droning something about where it all began, and then a younger Burnin' appeared, seated on a barstool.
"I started at Endeavor Agency during Pride Week," she said to the off-screen interviewer. "As you all know, that's something that's very dear to my heart, and I wanted to make a difference with my hero debut! So I showed up to work like this."
"Oh, wow," muttered Izuku, drinking in the photo of Burnin', her hair flaming pink, yellow, and blue, with what looked like either a decorative or armored wok atop it all.
"Iconic, right?" interviewee-Burnin' chuckled, spreading her arms wide. "I'm pan and I love puns, so this was a big hit for pun-sexual visibility." She winked at the camera.
There was a thud as Bakugou's forehead hit the table.
"The Flaming Sidekickers, who are all absolutely flaming in every sense of the word -"
Izuku was the one to let out a groan this time.
"- loved it, of course, and welcomed me into the fold right away! It was a huge relief, especially since the boss is so intimidating, y'know? Very serious, traditional kind of guy, I mean, super private with his personal life but it's pretty common knowledge he's got a wife and kids he makes a point to go home to at the same time every day, so we weren't all convinced of his flaming status or if that was just a sidekick thing."
A new face appeared in the corner of the screen, someone Izuku vaguely recognized from their whirlwind tour of the support and analytics floor. "Flaming status: confirmed. Bi ace."
Izuku was a little confused at why someone had popped up just to say goodbye - and was Ace a nickname of Burnin's? - when he saw the text accompanying the analyst's name. Quirk: Gaydar. He scribbled it down in his notebook, determined to check out the applications later.
A second thud caught his attention, though, and he looked to the side to see Todoroki picking his head up off the hardwood table and trying to peel his own face off with his fingernails. Izuku's eyes widened as he re-interpreted the words he'd just heard, and he felt a sudden impulse to throw bleach in his eyes, or better yet his ears.
But the horrific flood of information he could have been happy never knowing continued. "It started as a joke, right, because that's the initiation thing around here. If you got the job, we know you've got the skills, but if you've really got the fire, you need to prove your worth by pranking Endeavor."
At least that got Todoroki to stop clawing at his face, but Izuku didn't like the look that crossed it instead.
"Now, my first datemate at Shiketsu was a marketing specialist, and they'd actually drawn up a copyright on my hair as part of a class exercise once," continued Burnin' on the video. "I didn't remember that when I presented my plan, though! So it got unanimous, uproarious approval!"
The next video clip that played made Izuku and Todoroki cover their eyes in terror. "Oh, no."
Every single one of the Flaming Sidekickers had their hair aflame, whether through their own Quirk or someone else's, as they did a dramatic slow walk through Shibuya Crossing.
"Oh, yes!" cackled Burnin', accompanied by a surprised yet not derisive snort from Bakugou.
Izuku was supremely disappointed in his childhood friend.
"I pitched the concept to Endeavor's PR team, those poor sweethearts, and they actually managed to get him to agree to it."
The clip continued under Burnin's voice-over. As if on cue, the Sidekickers parted in the center, and someone's light-manipulation Quirk threw the space in between them into ominous shadow… until it lit up with a very familiar silhouette.
"Fucking hell," muttered Bakugou.
Izuku snuck a peek at Todoroki, who looked as if he was in mourning (probably for his lost childhood, among other things) as he watched Endeavor stride down the divide, flaming moustache, beard, and eyebrows flickering.
"And the rest, as they say… is history."
The announcer's voice took over from Burnin', declaring in the tones of a sensationalist news anchor: "That's right, folks! Endeavor's trademark look, the one that got him voted Hottest Hero three years in a row, and not just for his temperature, is plagiarized!"
"HA," Todoroki gloated, instantly cheered up by the accusation. "I knew there was a reason I always hated that stupid fire beard. Not that it ever kept his face from looking like an asshole."
"Like you're one to talk," growled Bakugou, aggressively signing three letters - DNA - into Todoroki's face.
"You like my face," protested Todoroki, tone back to bland. "So what does that say about you?"
What does that say about the whole school, Izuku thought before immediately throwing the brakes on that train of thought. Being a teenager was the worst.
In the video, things were progressing rapidly and Todoroki was no longer gloating as the announcer continued. "After that day you'd never see the Flame Hero without it, but the beard that made a brand - probably literal for any villains who got too close - and cemented Todoroki Enji's stardom as Playboy Magazine's Daddy of the Decade -"
Izuku never forgave himself for letting his guard down and letting the next image through to his visual cortex.
"Oh my God," he heard Bakugou choke. Todoroki also sounded like he was both in desperate need of first aid and would definitely refuse it in order to speed his passing to the next life.
The image disappeared in the next second and the video went on, but it was burned into Izuku's retinas. His mouth was open, he vaguely registered. His body was limp. His mind was reeling.
That couldn't be real, was Izuku's first thought. Endeavor didn't do photoshoots, much less… Playboy photoshoots. His brand was power, not sex appeal, so why…
Gaining some control back over his traitorous body, Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. He opened them again almost immediately, because his stupid hormonal brain had supplied him with a thought starting with one day, Todoroki might…
But no. Todoroki currently had Bakugou's nitroglycerin-laced palm clutched to the left side of his face, clearly attempting to nope out of the current life, and Todoroki was the spitting image of his mother, so would Izuku's mind please return to a civilized plane of existence and not remember that Todoroki had an older brother whose body type definitely took after Endeavor's.
Being a teenager was the absolute worst, and Izuku was definitely a flaming something.
He made a grab for Bakugou's other palm.
Bakugou headbutted him so hard that Izuku saw stars and then thankfully nothing for a while, and when sound filtered back in the cursed video was over and Burnin' was talking.
"We might be called sidekicks, but we can take down the Number One with a click of a button. Never forget that, when you're Pros yourselves. Your team is everything. Without us to run evacuations and direct engagements to appropriate venues, Endeavor would hardly ever be able to fight villains, and thanks to him we can take down tougher enemies than we ever dreamed of."
Izuku dearly wanted to pay attention to what was surely an Important Hero Lesson, but it felt like his poor brain was fried worse than Kaminari's after two million volts. Thankfully, Burnin' was looking at Todoroki now, who looked as if he'd been forcefully dragged back from the afterlife.
"I know you weren't ready to hear that the first time you worked here, kiddo, but when you came back this time with your team already picked out, Bossman was real proud of you. And while three power-offensive types certainly isn't the textbook combination, you all work together surprisingly well."
"Auntie Moe," rasped Todoroki. "I might appreciate you saying this at literally any other time, but right now I am having the worst day of my life. I really just want to forget everything that happened in the last fifteen minutes."
Burnin' let out a flaming peal of laughter and beat her fists on the conference table. "All right, all right, it's been a tough day for you boys, for sure! I'll let you get to the showers now. Go on, shoo!"
Izuku dragged himself to his feet in a daze, falling into step beside a strangely silent, likely equally traumatized Bakugou.
His hand was on the doorknob when suddenly the lights went out, casting the room into total darkness. Izuku sparked into Full Cowl and Bakugou let off a small explosion, which definitely didn't help their eyes adjust to the darkness.
"Just remember," boomed out a loud voice, and suddenly a face appeared, a light from under its chin casting it into sharp lines, only broken by the curve of a bald crown.
Izuku jumped, almost hitting the ceiling, and heard sharp inhalations next to him.
"This secret does not leave this room. Or else…"
That voice, there was something about that voice…
The lights came back on, and all three boys screamed.
It was Burnin'. With her Quirk off… with her hair off.
The next thing that happened, Izuku was at least prepared for. Todoroki and Bakugou set the room on fire.
Or at least, they tried to. Turns out most of the furniture at Endeavor Agency was fireproof, so they didn't get very far in their attempt to burn the world down around them.
Burnin' threw her bald head back and laughed, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "Your faces. Oh my God, your faces, this is so worth it every time."
Her hair flickered back on by the end of the sentence, which helped Izuku's heartrate to return to a normal range at least. "Burnin'-san," he managed weakly, a plea for this all to be finally over.
"Welcome to Endeavor Agency!" cried Burnin' with a megawatt smile, and then the lights snapped off once again, taking her smile and her hair with them.
They screamed again.
"This secret also never leaves this room," she intoned. "On pain of death!"
Izuku had never been so happy to see Bakugou explode the door straight off its hinges.
All the aches and pains of earlier forgotten, the trio ran for their lives.
A/N: I don't know why I wrote the entire summary in clickbait titles, but... did you click it? :D
I can't stop writing dumb shit involving these three, please send help.