People call Denki Kaminari a lot of things.

Stupid was a common one. So were idiot, moron, and dumb.

He would laugh off the insults every time with practiced ease. It wasn't his classmate's fault they made him feel bad. After all, they didn't know any better. Kaminari had never once told them how those words made him feel.

He knew his classmates said those things jokingly (most of the time), but that didn't make it hurt any less.

It wasn't his fault he had both dyslexia and ADHD. It wasn't his fault he could never focus on school work for more than a few minutes. It wasn't his fault he had never attended a school before UA. It wasn't his fault that he had been told those words so many times that they had become ingrained into his very being.

xxx

Kaminari knew he wasn't book smart or math smart, but he could speak eight different languages fluently. He had to, in his previous line of work. He never demonstrated these skills, though. Not once had he showed off in class, corrected Present Mic when he flubbed the pronunciation of a word, or demonstrated his skills. That would make his classmates suspicious. They would start asking questions that the electricity user wouldn't know how to answer.

The fact that he always scored low on the tests helped keep up his act. After all, he could speak English as fluently as he could Japanese, but that didn't mean he could read it very well.

Dyslexia was a bitch, but it was out of his control. Still, he'd gotten punished for it more times than he could remember.

xxx

He'd been told that he was weak a few times, that he could never even think about holding a candle to his classmates. Monoma had told him that once. He'd promptly received a well-deserved punch in the face from Bakugou, but Kaminari didn't mind the insults. He and he alone knew that he was stronger than all of his classmates. The electricity user knew that he could've won the sports festival without breaking a sweat if he wanted to. All of the hellish things he and his class had gone through was nothing compared to what Kaminari had to endure all his childhood.

Growing up with villains for parents did that to you.

xxx

He'd heard the words "useless" and "worthless" more times than he could count. Kaminari had come to fear those words. Whenever they were spoken to him, they were usually punctuated with a slap or a stab. Kaminari rarely received praise. The whole concept of people congratulating him for a job well done or complimenting him for his actions was an utterly foreign concept to him. It didn't help that out of the thousand things Kaminari did right; his parents always managed to find something wrong.

Bruises and blood were a constant on his body whenever it came to his parents.

xxx

He'd been forced to start assassinating when he was no more than seven years old under the code name Golden. At that point, he had four years of rigorous training under his belt and combat skills that could put nearly anyone to shame.

Kaminari quickly became the best assassin for hire in the span of a few short months.

On average, he killed more than twenty people a week. He wasn't exactly happy with the arrangement. He teetered somewhere on the line of indifference. He had more blood on his hands than most major villains, yes, but the beatings he received from his parents became few and far between because of it.

It was as close to a reward as he was going to get, and he knew it.

For the first time, Kaminari could breathe without a sharp pain in his stomach or and ache in his limbs.

xxx

Kaminari was immune to almost everything. He had been trained to handle pain like an average person would handle a paper cut. He no longer screamed when his bones were broken. He no longer flinched while being stabbed repeatedly. He didn't bat an eye at any poisons anymore. None of them affected him anyway. He could go weeks without any water, and even longer without any food. Neither the cold nor the heat bothered him.

His parents had subjected him to endless bouts of torture ever since he was little, but it had trained his body to handle almost anything. As far as Kaminari knew, he had the highest pain tolerance on the planet, and that was without his quirk. It was even higher when he used it, though. At the mere age of six, he'd figured out a way to send a small pulse of electricity to his pain receptors and shut them off.

The only reason he figured that out was because his dad had been slicing at his back for hours, and the pain was becoming something close to unbearable.

xxx

Lies slipped off Kaminari's tongue like butter. He knew how to act in front of people, how to gain their trust, how to flash what looked like a genuine smile, but most importantly, how to pretend like everything was fine.

It wasn't.

Kaminari made friends with people easily. He could read the emotions on people's faces like a book, and he was always ready to help someone in need. No matter what his upbringing, he refused to become inherently evil.

His parents hated that about him, but no matter the punishments, Kaminari kept doing it anyway. It was a coping strategy of sorts. If he couldn't do anything to help himself, then the least he could do was help others.

That's what he thought, anyway.

He sometimes wondered if it was worth all the knife wounds, though.

xxx

Kaminari was thirteen when he finally decided to run away.

He had been debating the possibility for a while now. He hated killing, he hated villainy, but on top of all that, he hated his parents. Yes, Kaminari had killed people; probably more people than his parents could ever hope to. But he'd done it because he had to. He'd done it because he could either give the target a quick and painless death and avoid a beating or refuse and be tortured for days on end while the victim died anyway.

He'd much rather choose the former.

The first few weeks had been difficult. Even though Kaminari was a trained assassin who could probably take down All Might if he got close enough, he was still a thirteen-year-old kid. However, thanks to his years of training and countless stealth missions, Kaminari had been able to slip under the radar of his parents and escape the hell hole he had come to know as home.

The hard part was staying that way.

Kaminari wasn't on the run for long before he discovered that his parents had planted a tracker on him.

He hadn't been surprised. It had been easy enough to get out, anyway. All he had to do was slice open his arm and dig around until he found it.

Nothing he hadn't endured countless times before. Yet, unlike the other instances, it left a pretty morbid scar since he hadn't been able to find clean bandages and gauze to disinfect the wound.

Kaminari always made a point to wear long sleeves after that. Midoriya had asked him about it once. Kaminari had simply laughed and smoothly wrote it off as coincidence.

xxx

Kaminari was fifteen when he decided to enroll in UA. After running around the country for two years while desperately trying to avoid any detection from his parents or their goons, he figured staying in the highest security school in Japan would help ease his mind.

He aimed for the hero course. Kaminari decided then and there that he would do everything in his power to end up the exact opposite of his parents.

The physical entrance exam and the quirk testing was painfully easy. Kaminari had simply scoffed and wondered how more people didn't get into the school every year. He had only had to put in about 5% of his usual effort into passing.

The writing and testing portion of the exam was a great deal harder for Kaminari. He'd never had any schooling in simple things like math or science. Plus, he hadn't studied at all beforehand. He didn't have the facilities for that out on the streets. However, he had traveled all around the world on assassination jobs. That knowledge was enough for him to scrape by.

Barely.

xxx

When he'd first met the other members of Class 1-A, Kaminari had immediately taken a disliking to Bakugou. The explosive boy reminded him too much of his parents: rough, abrasive, and unnecessarily violent towards people for little things. Bakugou would shout death threats if anyone so much as looked at him wrong.

It took a few hours, but Kaminari eventually realized that the spikey blond was all bark and no bite. He didn't really mean the vile things he said.

That was the difference between Bakugou and his parents. Bakugou's knee jerk reaction was to spout some bullshit about hurting somebody, but that was all it was. Bullshit. He never actually did anything.

If Kaminari's parents said they were going to torture their son until he screamed, they meant it.

xxx

Kaminari made friends instantly. His cheerful smiles and friendly nature drew people toward him like a magnet, and in no time at all, he had unintentionally wrapped the entire class (save Bakugou, who still wouldn't talk to anyone unless he was threatening their well being) around his pinky finger.

Kaminari had never really had friends before. Yes, he was friendly by nature to people he wasn't assigned to kill and innocent strangers, but he'd never had the chance to maintain any actual friendships until now. He was surprised at how easy it was, how natural it felt to talk and joke around with everyone.

After only the first week, he found that his smiles were more genuine, and his shoulders less tense.

For the first time in fifteen years, he felt safe.

xxx

When Kaminari first saw his classmates demonstrate their quirks and combat skills, he had to fight the urge to laugh. They were all clearly untrained, clearly unprofessional, clearly had no experience, clearly amateurs at handling their quirks, and nowhere near Kaminari's level.

The electric blond did not doubt that he could take every single one of his classmates head on right now, and he would still come out on top without even using his electricity.

However, one boy in particular caught Kaminari's eye. Out of everyone, it was painfully evident that Izuku Midoriya had the worst handle on his quirk. His bones broke every time he used it, he looked unsteady and unsure, and Kaminari could clearly see a hint of frustration on the greenette's freckled face.

When the blond's sharp eyes spotted All Might leering around the corner to watch Midoriya perform, Kaminari put the pieces together in five seconds flat. Midoriya had been chosen as the successor for One For All. Kaminari wasn't really surprised. In the short time he'd known Midoriya, he could say for certain that the green-haired boy was one of the best people he'd ever met. Plus, Kaminari was familiar with the aspects of this particular quirk. All For One never shut up about it, after all.

It was then that Kaminari decided to limit himself. With everyone else so inexperienced and clumsy in their movements, questions would undoubtedly be raised if Kaminari showed off his real strength to his classmates and teachers.

He purposely made his moves sloppy when his turn came to demonstrate his combat skills. Honestly, he suspected his four-year-old self would've been able to fight better than most of his class. Kaminari made sure he landed smack in the middle of his classmates when it came to both combat and quirk experience. Not too low, not too high.

The night after, while he was talking with Kirishima and Sero about everyone's particular quirk, Kaminari subtly worked in the fact that his limit was two million volts. In reality, his real limit was somewhere around two billion, and even then all he had to do was catch his breath for a bit before starting back up again, but they didn't need to know that.

From then on, Kaminari put all of his efforts into making himself and his skills as average as possible. After the second week, he had everyone convinced that the stopping point for his quirk was, in fact, two million. He managed to sell the act when, during another training exercise, he "overused his limit" and went into "stupid mode".

It was laughable, honestly, how hard everyone fell for it.

Hook, line, and sinker.

He couldn't help but love them for it, though.

xxx

Kaminari grew more and more attached to his classmates as the months went by. He could safely say that his smiles were 100% real now, and he had stopped looking over his shoulder to see if the villains of his past were following and started looking forward to where his friends were waiting.

He felt true, unbridled happiness for the first time in his life. He had fun, played games, and when he was with them, he managed to forget all about who he was and what he had done.

Day by day, he grew more and more afraid to lose them. Even if their occasional degrading comments about his smarts or intelligence hurt Kaminari, painfully reminding him of the countless awful things his parents had said to him, he loved them in a way he had never loved anything before.

He knew they loved him back, even Bakugou, who he now considered less of an enemy and more of a best friend.

But that just made lying to them every day so much harder.

xxx

Even though Kaminari had escaped his lifestyle of torture and assassination, he never stopped training. He would cut himself often, go for days without sleeping, eating or drinking, and practice honing his stealth, quirk, and combat skills under the cover of darkness while everyone was asleep.

Kaminari knew he couldn't afford to get rusty. He had to keep his moves precise with the intent to kill, senses vigilant, and keep his body used to pain, hunger, and loss. If he didn't, he knew all too well that that mistake could cost him his life.

Or worse, the lives of his classmates.

xxx

The media considered Class 1-A unlucky. After all, they had experienced more targeted villain attacks in only a few months than any other class in the history of UA.

The heroes considered Class 1-A strong. The students were often praised relentlessly for the perseverance and bravery in battle, never once backing down.

The villains considered Class 1-A a nuisance. Those pesky children were keeping them from taking back what was theirs, and they simply couldn't accept that.

Kaminari was the only one who knew why his class was experiencing so many villains attacks, and he hated it. But he couldn't exactly say anything about it. All he could do was do his best to keep his classmates safe.

None of them knew it, but during these attacks, Kaminari was always watching everyone's back. His lightning-fast moves and precise hits often weakened the villains enough so his respective classmates could finish them off themselves.

Most of the time, his moves were so fast that none of his friends could see them.

Kaminari considered that a win-win. He was able to keep his identity a secret while at the same time giving his classmates the glory of capturing a villain and protecting them from something that was his fault.

All the incessant villain attacks were the product of them trying and failing to kidnap Kaminari. The electricity user had no doubt that at this point, after two years of build-up, there was a massive reward for bringing him back to his parents, alive, so that they could kill him themselves.

It was a morbid concept, but Kaminari was no stranger to death. Not even his own.

xxx

The USJ incident had been a low blow. After numerous failed capture attempts, it appeared the League of Villains was finally getting serious. How they managed to find out Bakugou was his friend was beyond him, but when it had been announced that they were after the explosive boy, Kaminari had nearly ripped his hair out in frustration.

Everyone had their own respective conspiracy theories about why LOV targeted Bakugou. Todoroki thought it was because they saw villainous potential in him. Mina thought it was because he was considered one of the strongest in the class. Kirishima simply didn't care what the reason was; he just wanted to get his friend back.

Kaminari wanted to scream. He hadn't been there. He'd been stuck in a stupid classroom because he had purposely failed a stupid exam, and now his friend had gotten punished for it.

He had tried so hard to change, but in the end, all he did was bring trouble.

Kaminari hated himself.

xxx

When word reached Kaminari that Bakugou had been rescued, he nearly cried in relief. He had been two days away from giving himself up to the League of Villains in exchange for his friend, no questions asked. The only reason he hadn't already was because of Kirishima's rescue plan. Kaminari desperately wanted to take part in it, but he knew if he did, he'd be playing right into the villain's hands.

If Kirishima, Iida, Midoriya, Todoroki, and Yaoyorozu hadn't succeeded, then Kaminari would.

He would give up his freedom, and quite possibly his life, if his friends could stay safe.

But Kirishima had, and Kaminari didn't have to resort to any desperate measures. The second Bakugou walked through the dorms, Kaminari barrelled into him, wrapping his arms tight around his neck and refusing to let go. Bakugou had grumbled, yelled, complain, and threatened him, but ultimately returned the embrace with just as much warmth.

Kaminari could only hope that the League of Villains kidnapping Bakugou had been a fluke, just a lucky guess. Truthfully, he didn't think he could handle any more of his friends being in the hands of the very people that had caused him fifteen years of suffering.

However, Kaminari's classmates were smart. That, paired with the fact that they were around him 24/7, made it increasingly more difficult for the blond to maintain his rigorous training, hide his various grotesque scars, and keep up the act of being an innocent, naive, average student of the hero course.

Even for someone as skilled in deception and sneaking around as Denki Kaminari himself, there was no way he could keep up appearances for long without messing up a few times.