Chapter Eight

Denki's worst fears finally came true nearly a year after becoming the UA traitor.

He'd been sent out on a raid together with a small group of PLF members. Their goal that night had been pretty non-specific. No particular Hero offices or government agencies were being targeted, but the Pros and police had been getting better recently at predicting Shigaraki's targets, so they'd begun orchestrating attacks at random like this in an attempt to throw them off.

They would show up and begin wreaking havoc in city centers or high-traffic urban areas just to spook the citizens and to send the local authorities into a panic. However, since they didn't actually have a goal other than sowing chaos and confusing the Pros, it didn't matter to Shigaraki what happened to the people he sent off on these raids. He saved his heavy-hitters, his more valuable pieces, for the real attacks. Distractions like these were for pawns.

And that was precisely why Denki was there. His reluctance to actually go all-out in a fight had been too obvious for the higher-ups to ignore. Instead of climbing the ranks and becoming a PLF leader like others had expected of him, he'd been relegated to the role of an expendable. And if he were being honest, he preferred it that way.

Many members of the PLF were angry with him, however, and his alleged indifference, but nobody had taken his reluctance to step up and lead harder than his mother. Once, she had treated him like he was the answer to her prayers, the one who would take the dreams she could never achieve on her own and elevate them to new heights.

Now, however, his perceived indecision and cowardice had damned her. Rather than earn his family praise from their leaders, he was a constant source of shame and derision from the community of Deika. His mother, it seemed, couldn't handle it. And she wasn't afraid to let him know.

Honestly, it was all becoming too much for Denki.

Months of fighting, months of suffering under the soul-crushing weight of his guilt, months of being forced to battle on the wrong side of the conflict and hurt people he'd honestly rather be helping, had steadily and surely scrapped away against the insides of his spirit until all he felt inside was hollow and empty and devoid of the spark that had once encapsulated everything about him.

More than once, he'd found himself listening to the tiny whisper in the back of his head, growing louder every day, telling him that maybe, just maybe, things would be better if he wasn't around. If he got killed in the next fight, if a stray blast or collapsing building erased him from the world, wouldn't that be better for everyone? Society would have its justice. The friends he betrayed would have their satisfaction. The PLF would be content that he was no longer wasting space. His mother wouldn't have to keep asking how her son had become such a disappointment. Everyone could move on. He could move on.

He was lost. Everything had grown dark. For weeks now, he'd been stumbling alone through the fog that had shrouded his mind, like a child lost in the woods, with storm clouds so thick overhead that he was deprived of even what little light the moon or stars could have given him.

If a path that could lead him out of this darkness existed, everything had grown so dim that it was impossible to see. He was going to die like this. Alone, in this impenetrable darkness that he'd brought upon himself.

And then, unexpectedly, he saw a light.

It had been dark in the real world as well on the night of that pointless raid, and Denki had been sent along with a few others to stage an attack on an outdoor shopping area. The League hoped that an increase in villain attacks in the area would pull the Heroes' attention away from their real next target: a hospital on the south side of Hosu which was planned to be hit in a few days.

Most of Denki's comrades had headed straight down into the shops, eager to stir up some chaos and maybe steal a few things in the process. 'Spoils of war' as they called them. That was half of the reason they'd even come.

Denki, however, opted to stay away. Across the highway was a quaint little shrine, built into the wooded mountainside that overlooked the shopping district. It was quiet and peaceful, with street lamps illuminating red-brick staircases that climbed the darkened hills, each with a few dancing moths for decoration. The path to the shrine on the hilltop consisted primarily of these staircases, each one connected by small, circular brick landings that served as little rest stops carved into the wooded mountainside.

There were virtually no pedestrians in the evening, which meant there was little risk of Denki running into or being forced to hurt anyone. He could hide up here on a park bench while his colleagues did their business. Officially, he was on 'recon' duty; he was supposed to let them know when the police and Pros showed up. An unglamorous job that nobody but him had wanted. He liked it that way.

It was almost… peaceful, sitting on the cold metal bench and looking down over the treeline. Or it would have been, if the air wasn't filled with shouts and screams as the villains ran wild, vandalizing shops, destroying vehicles, setting trees and buildings ablaze.

And then, all at once, without warning, a group of Pros arrived. Denki had no idea where they'd come from. One moment, they were just… there.

True chaos exploded throughout the shopping district as the Heroes struggled to apprehend the villains while simultaneously protecting the fleeing civilians and putting out the fires. Explosions and angry shouts filled the night as Denki watched, alone on his perch on the hillside.

He should be going down to assist, he knew. The others wouldn't let it slide if he sat this one out, not again. He needed to go down. He needed to. Even if it was just to show his face. If he gave his mother any more reason to hate him-

The crunch of gravel behind him had him turning his head.

Out of the shadows, a figure emerged into the garish yellow light of a streetlamp.

It was a girl, about his height, maybe a little shorter, wearing a familiar jacket with matching headphones and overly-large combat boots. It wasn't just the outfit that was familiar, however. He recognized everything about her, from the dark sheen of her hair to the odd shape of her earlobes to the way her eyes blazed with warring triumph and loathing the moment she set her gaze on him.

When Denki's gaze met Jirou's for the first time in nearly a year, it was like a bolt of lightning pierced the metaphorical cloud cover in his heart, illuminating everything for a brief, intangible moment in stark, painful clarity.

She looked the same as he remembered, though a little leaner, her expression harsher. She didn't bear any signs of struggle, which meant she'd been avoiding the battle down below. Yet she was winded, as though she'd raced straight up the hill, as if she'd somehow known he was there.

Breathless, she licked her lips, her arms trembling, and whispered, almost too soft for him to hear.

"Found you, Kaminari."

If her appearance was like distant, piercing lightning, her voice was the soft rumble of thunder that followed. For the first time in months, in the garish light of that violent flash, he could see his path.

And it was to run away as fast as he possibly could in the opposite direction.

Denki didn't waste another second. Fueled by a fear so intense it swept away all other rational thought, he was up, off of the bench, sprinting towards the opposite staircase. For months now, he'd been terrified of one day meeting one of his old classmates on the battlefield, but this was worse than he could have ever imagined.

Why did it have to be Jirou?! He'd take Kirishima, Sero, Mina, Mineta - hell, he'd have taken Bakugou over Jirou! Anyone but her!

Sheer terror had his heart in his throat as he reached the staircase, conscious of her rapid footsteps behind him, but it wasn't a fight he was scared of, or even being arrested, which would surely happen if she caught him. It was her eyes. Every night since the attack on UA, he'd seen them in his nightmares, hateful, judgmental, condemning, hurt. He didn't think he could handle seeing them up close again in real life.

Something hit him, like a wall of pressure that swallowed all other sound in a deep, painful buzz, disorienting him, making him lose his balance. He knew from past experience, as well as the way his eardrums felt like they were balloons and the violent, stabbing pain in his skull, that it was one of Jirou's soundwaves, likely produced from the speakers she had installed in her boots.

He pitched forward and fell, unable to use his feet or even tell up from down, and barely managed to snag the handrail of the staircase before momentum had him tumbling head-over-heels down every painful brick step. His legs were still up on top, however; his torso was dangling from the railing four steps down. He'd fallen out of her sound wave, but the nausea and vertigo had hit him hard and took longer to shake off.

She'd be on him in seconds. He needed to act quick. Forcing himself upright, he hastily aimed his Pointer and Shooter (the Detnerat Inc version made for him after he'd returned to the PLF) straight at the rapidly-approaching Jirou and fired.

Not at her body, though. Knocking her out would save him a lot of trouble, but he couldn't bring himself, even now, to hurt her. Instead, he fired the small magnetic disk at her foot and, after miraculously hitting his target, he fired off a blast of electricity that had Jirou leaping back with a fearful shout. From the sparks and smoke coming out of her boot, he knew he'd done his job. Her speaker was fried. Or at least, one of them was.

While she was distracted, he turned and quickly began racing down the stairs, desperate to get away. With any luck, his lightning blast would have at least numbed some of the muscles in her leg and foot. He hoped he hadn't burned her, but it was a risk he'd had to take. If he could just slow her down, even a little…!

He was halfway down the staircase when he risked a glance back over his shoulder and felt his stomach drop out.

Jirou had managed to stumble to the top of the staircase, her pant leg smoking and missing her shoe, and instead of stumbling down it after him, she'd hopped up onto the railing and was now sliding down at surprising speed.

For a wild, fearful moment, as he sprinted down the steps two at a time, he considered reaching out and grabbing the handrail… and stopped himself.

He could send an electric current up the rail and shock her, knocking her unconscious. But doing so would make her fall, and she could get seriously hurt. Granted she'd nearly made him do just that a moment before, but it was different. In her eyes, he was a traitor. To him, she was…

He reached the bottom of the staircase and bolted across the small plateau towards the next and final set of stairs. They led down to the street that divided the path to the shrine from the shopping district, still embroiled in conflict though he could just barely see the battle now reaching the road through the dense wall of trees. If he could lose himself in the chaos…!

The plateau was small, maybe twice the size of a regular gazebo, and had a little makeshift rest area that consisted of a bench and a vending machine situated beneath an old street lamp.

Denki ran around them, heading for the staircase on his left, but without warning, the ground erupted beneath him, knocking him off his feet, spitting up flecks of brick and earth. The street lamp keeled over, its light flickering out, crashing on the ground with the sound of shattering glass and plunging the surrounding area once more into darkness.

Breathless, Denki struggled to push himself up, aware that his chin was bleeding. Behind him, Jirou had reached the bottom of her staircase and had used the detachable speakers she carried on her wrists to pump the sound of her heartbeat into the ground. He'd seen her use it countless times before in class, as well as to particularly great effect during the Hero Licensing Course last year.

"No more running," she panted, half-limping towards him, her jacks still plugged into her detachable speakers, holding them aloft like extra limbs. "I finally caught you, and you're not getting away again. Don't make me hurt you more than I have to."

Frantic, still on all-fours and sweating profusely, Denki tried to find his best avenue of escape. The fastest was the staircase to his left, but that was also wide open and Jirou would have the easiest time following him down that route. Going back up the other staircase was not an option for obvious reasons. All that was left was trying to forge his way down the wooded hillside, but in the dark, with the steepness of the hill, not to mention how many trees and roots and small bushes there were, he was liable to fall and break his neck.

Jirou was practically on him. He'd wasted too much time thinking. He hadn't recovered from her last sound attack and his brain still felt fuzzy.

Hoping surprise was on his side, he leaped to his feet as fast as he could, but Jirou's earphone jack extended to block his route, the speaker pointed straight at him. He spun to face her, stumbling back towards the treeline that separated him from the street below, and activated his Quirk, letting the electricity crackle as it surged throughout his body. He had no intention of using it on her, but if he could scare her away from trying to apprehend him…

Without warning, she lunged forward, her tentacle-like earlobes extending on either side, boxing him in. She didn't need to touch him to knock him out with a blast of explosive sound. His only options now were to attack her or give up, and he didn't know which one sounded worse. If he didn't do something fast…!

Something over her shoulder caught his eye.

A figure, emerging from the darkness overhead on thick, bat-like wings. It was a man, one of his colleagues from the PLF. He'd come to help him.

He was rapidly approaching, silent as death, gliding on invisible air currents, and as he swooped in low, a wicked smile on his face, he drew from out of his coat a pair of knives.

Denki moved without thinking. Lifting his arm, he aimed his Pointer and Shooter up at his ally and fired, releasing all of the electricity he'd been trying to scare Jirou with in a single, powerful blast.

At the same time, Jirou, who hadn't noticed the PLF member approaching from behind, thought that Denki was going on the offensive and released an explosive soundwave from both speakers. The attack hit him in stereo a split-second after his lightning flashed over Jirou's shoulder.

As the would-be assassin hit the ground, unconscious and twitching, Denki stumbled backward as though drunk, the intense soundwave shattering his sense of equilibrium as a powerful wave of vertigo robbed him of all sense of up and down.

He pitched to the side, nearly falling over, struggling to hold the contents of his stomach inside. In front of him, through rolling eyeballs, he saw Jirou turn to glance over her shoulder in the direction he'd launched his attack, and for a moment she could only stare in silent shock at the unconscious body behind her.

"What…?"

Though disoriented, Denki was still trying to get away, which meant he was still drunkenly trying to walk backward away from Jirou. So perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised when his heel struck the outer edge of the plateau and he began to fall back into the tree line.

Jirou jerking forward and snagging his wrist, trying to catch him, was unexpected. Unfortunately, she was also much lighter than him, which meant that instead of her saving him, he wound up just pulling her along with him into his fall.

Their tumble down the hill through the woods can't have lasted longer than a few seconds, but Denki swore he hit every root and tree on the way down. He only came to a stop when he slammed back-first into a black pine that drove all of the air from his lungs.

For the next several minutes, he lay still on his side on the cool dirt, trembling in pain and struggling to coax his lungs into working again as the world continued to spin. He hurt everywhere, myriad cuts and bruises decorating his body from head to toe, but his spine in particular was in stabbing agony. It was so bad that he was afraid to move. What if he'd broken something? What if he was paralyzed forever?!

If that were true, he probably wouldn't be able to feel how badly his legs hurt. The throbbing pain in his knee wasn't just an indication that he'd possibly broken his kneecap, it also meant that his spinal cord was still intact. Silver lining?

Before too long, he heard footsteps and the unmistakable sound of someone blindly stumbling their way through the thick foliage around them. He didn't have to open his eyes to know who it was.

A moment later, Jirou was on him. Literally.

She knelt, flipping him onto his back, placing her left shin horizontally on his thighs, just above his kneecaps, and used her body weight to pin him in place. Her hands went to his wrists, trapping them in the dirt above his head. She loomed over him, breathless and sweaty, as one of her jacks plunged itself down near his neck. For a wild moment, he thought she was trying to hold it against him like a knife, but then he realized she'd stabbed it into the ground to amplify her hearing. She was trying to make sure she wasn't snuck up on again. Ever the Hero.

And for a while, that was how they stayed. Neither said a word, the only sound aside from the still-ongoing battle across the street being the wind in the trees and their slowly steadying breathing.

After a moment's pause, he felt Jirou lean closer.

"What do you think you're doing?" she hissed.

Denki's eyes were only partly open. They'd stopped spinning, thankfully, but it was so dark in these woods that he couldn't really see anything anyway. Jirou herself was more of a vague shape than anything remotely recognizable, but he could just barely make out her outline. He couldn't see her eyes, but he knew where they'd be, so that was where he kept his gaze. He didn't need a source of light. He had long-since memorized their shape and color anyway.

Did she know? Back when they were in school together, when she sat next to him in class every day, did she ever suspect?

In the first month of classes, he'd asked out every single girl in class 1-A and 1-B combined and had been summarily rejected every time. Every girl except for her. Did she even notice? If she had, did she ever pause to wonder why?

The fact of the matter was, Denki had avoided asking Jirou out because he wouldn't have been able to pretend like it was no big deal. When the other girls had rejected him, he'd been disappointed, sure, but that was all. If he'd asked Jirou out and she'd turned him down, it would have crushed him. She was the only one who he paid special attention to, the only one whose opinion of him held substantial weight.

And, at the end of the day, Denki was a coward.

When he didn't answer, her grip on his wrists tightened, her nails pinching painfully into his skin.

"Damnit, Kaminari, answer me! What the hell are you up to? Is this some sort of game to you?!"

A game? No. Games were supposed to be fun. Honestly, he was having a hard time remembering what fun felt like. It had been a long time since he'd had cause to smile and laugh like when he was back in school with her. She used to make it seem like teasing him was her favorite pastime. Did she know that he'd taken to purposefully setting himself up for her jokes just so he could have an excuse to interact with her? An excuse for her to turn her attention to him, an excuse to make her smile, even if it was at his own expense?

To be fair, her teasing had never felt malicious, even at the start of the school year when they'd been basically strangers, and before long, it had just become their… thing. He was the boke to her tsukkomi. The idiot to her straight-man. Though they hadn't gotten off to the best of starts during the USJ attack, somehow, the two of them had always seemed to just… click. And he would give anything to go back to that, even if for a day.

"I swear, if you don't start talking-!"

"What does it matter?" he cut in weakly, still winded from the fall.

That clearly was not the right response from the way he felt her entire body tense, but all of a sudden, all of the tension seemed to have left him.

What did it matter? She'd caught him, it was over. He was going to jail. And honestly? It suddenly didn't sound that bad. Getting away from the PLF and the League, away from his mother's eyes… He no longer had to sit back while his 'allies' hurt people. He no longer had to be complicit in their crimes. He could actually pay for what he'd done this way. And he would finally be left alone.

"What does it matter?" she parroted back in an ominous whisper.

"Nothing I say to you is going to-"

He cut off as she leaned down, her upper body weight cutting off the circulation to his hands as she loomed over him menacingly. He could feel the tips of her hair tickling his face. They were practically nose to nose.

"I finally track you down, after a year of searching, and the first thing you do is run?! You target my boot with your blast? You don't shock the pole, you don't try to grapple, you don't use an indiscriminate shock to take me or my speakers down, you just run?! Even now, I have you pinned, but we both know you could electrocute me and escape at any time! What are you playing at?!"

His mouth worked, but no sound came out. He had answers. He did. He just… he couldn't say them. They all sounded so… pathetic, so weak.

After a pause to let him speak which he didn't take, she continued.

"You attacked one of your teammates. He could have killed me. Why did you-?"

"He's not my teammate-"

"Oh, well the way you helped them burn UA to the ground a year ago could have fooled me!"

He swallowed but said nothing. This was why he wished it was someone else who had found him first. Bakugou wouldn't have waited. He wouldn't have tried to make him talk. He would have shot first and asked questions later. Denki would have been unconscious and in handcuffs by now if it was Bakugou.

"Damnit, Denki…" She was trembling, and for the first time, he found himself wondering if there was more to it than rage. "Will you just… talk to me?"

Her words seemed to echo back to a year ago, just before the attack on UA, when she'd taken him from class to the nurse's office at Aizawa's behest and had said, just before leaving him outside the door, "Hey… You know you can… talk… t-to me, if you need to. Yeah?"

He was struck with the sudden realization that he was being given a second chance here. A chance for what, he didn't know. No promises that his story would end happily. But that was what he got for not opening up to her back then when he'd had the chance. And if he passed up this opportunity to explain himself to her now, he'd likely never be given another one.

"They have my family."

There was a pause in which the sound of the battle across the street seemed to swell before Jirou finally responded with, "...What?"

"Shigaraki, the PLF. They have my family. That's why I had to help them."

"You're saying Shigaraki kidnapped your family in order to blackmail you into-?"

"No, no, just - listen."

And she did. Miraculously, she stayed quiet the entire time he talked. The peculiarity of his situation wasn't lost on him - lying on the cold dirt with a bruised spine across the street from what was essentially open warfare as the girl you loved in high school pinned you to the ground and forced you to confess your crimes.

It didn't take long. He kept it short because he knew they didn't exactly have time to chat. On more than one occasion over the past year, he'd tried to imagine what it would be like if he had the chance to explain himself to his friends, to let them know that he hadn't betrayed them because he'd wanted to, that he had extenuating circumstances. He'd pretended sometimes that they'd understand and forgive him, but he knew that was wishful thinking. Whatever his reasons, what he'd done had still been terrible. You can't just wash your crimes away just by feeling bad.

Still, part of him hoped. It hurt, and was stupid, but he couldn't help it. That hope had kept him going, even when things were at their bleakest. The possibility of one day having them back in his life, even if that chance was basically infinitesimal… It was all he had to live for.

Now that he had his chance to explain, however, all he felt was fear. Fear that it wasn't enough. Because deep down, he knew it wasn't enough.

After a moment, Jirou sighed.

"Yeah… We figured it had to be something like that. You aren't really smart enough to be some kind of evil mastermind, but we couldn't verify if you even had any relatives at all."

We? Did that mean the rest of class 1-A?

"You didn't know?"

"No. We haven't been able to find any records of you or your family anywhere on any national database. Someone on your side must be a whiz with computers."

Skeptic. He hadn't realized he'd deleted Kaminari's existence from the world after the attack. Probably to avoid turning attention to Deika for as long as possible.

"They're not my side-"

"Yes they are," she repeated, her voice cold and emphatic. "It doesn't matter what your motives were. You're supporting them, so you're on their side."

He knew she was right, but hearing it out loud, from her, he bristled anyway.

"What was I supposed to do?! Let them kill my parents and little sister while I cried in a corner? The attack would have happened anyway-"

"So you thought the solution was to join the villains and help them attack and kill innocent people?! You could have talked to us! We could have figured out a plan to rescue your family and-!"

"You don't get it, I'm all they have! They don't want to be rescued! They're part of the PLF now and that's where they want to stay."

"And where do you want to stay?"

Denki gaped, not understanding.

"You have people who care about you on both sides, but one of those sides is clearly in the wrong. I can understand wanting to protect your family but at the expense of innocent people? That doesn't make sense to me. That's not the Kaminari I thought I knew."

He had no argument against that, so naturally, he deflected.

"You act like I have a choice in this," he muttered petulantly, turning away. "It's either fight to protect my family or let you take me to jail where I'm no good to anyone-"

"No, it's not! It's either help Shigaraki destroy the country and attack and kill innocent people or stop doing that! Stop twisting this by acting like you're doing something noble and open your damn eyes for once!"

He swallowed thickly but didn't respond.

The problem was, she was right. All this time, he'd been telling himself that he wasn't in the wrong. He was just trying to protect his family, just like his dad had told him - protecting the thing that mattered most. He wasn't supporting the atrocities committed by the PLF, he never actively tried to hurt anyone. He was blackmailed into betraying his friends. He was caught up in this against his will. It wasn't his fault.

Only, 'the thing that mattered most' to Denki wasn't his family. Or at least, it wasn't only that. It was his friends, his school, his teachers. It was the people he'd been taught to protect and save. And not only had he been failing at doing that, he'd been on the side of those who were actively trying to harm them.

He was a villain. And it was time he stopped lying to himself and own up to it.

"...What do you want from me?"

"I want you to stop running," she said, and then a moment later, in a softer voice, "...and I want to know what it is you want."

What did he want?

He wanted this to be over. He wanted everything to be right again. He wanted his friends, and his family, and his school, and his life, to be just like how they were before everything had gone to hell.

But that was never going to happen.

There was a disruption out on the street. The villains had been pushed back out of the still-burning shopping district and were heading in the direction of the treeline, right where they were sitting.

If they found them before the Heroes did…!

"Go."

Jirou, who had sat up, alarmed, releasing one of Denki's arms so she could reach up to touch her headset (which had apparently managed to stay on in the fall, somehow), jerked her head back down to stare at him.

"If you think I'm going to let you get away so easily-!"

"You can't carry me out of here without being spotted, and if they see you, they'll kill you." He reached out with his free hand and found her arm, giving it what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. "This isn't the last time you'll see me, I promise. Go."

Surprisingly, she obeyed, crawling off of him and rising to a crouch, readying herself to sneak off through the underbrush. Then she hesitated.

"Kaminari…"

"Go!"

"I expect an answer the next time I see you."

And then she was gone, vanishing back into the darkness as she retreated up the hill, away from the retreating PLF members.

Struggling to his feet, his back still very much in pain, Denki stumbled out of the treeline and onto the street where he joined his retreating PLF brethren. Though he hadn't been in the fight with them, it was obvious from his appearance that he'd been fighting someone. Hopefully, that would be enough to silence any questions about where he'd been.

Still… to think he'd see Jirou again and not end up dead or in prison. Surprisingly, though he was still a little dizzy and very much in pain, his head felt clearer than it had in months.

Her words were still bouncing around in his head when they finally got back to the warehouse they were using as a base. He knew what it was he wanted. But he also knew it was impossible for him to obtain.

But maybe… Maybe, if he could work up the courage, he might be able to obtain something close.