"Kyou, c'mere! Come check this shit out!" Denki calls out to Jirou, as she's headed over to their usual lunch hangout spot. After she sits down, Kaminari shows her the statistics of how the song is performing on HeroTube. "What am I looking at?" she asks, confused and not sure what she should be looking at between the graphs and the bars.
"Our first song's doing great! Look here; we've got like 750 views, 40 likes, 2 dislikes, and- wait, what? " he stops suddenly, confused at one number. "How do we have 35 shares?"
"Holy shit, seriously? How did we even get that many, and this quickly?" Jirou asks her best friend, who just shrugs. "Don't ask me, I'm just as confused as you are."
Meanwhile a day earlier…
Nezu sits at his desk, giggling incessantly, his tea in his hand. He's listening to the song his system detected as being posted from one of the hero students.
"Oh my word! How-ha- how delightful of a song! It reminds me of the glory days of the hardcore music I listened to after I got my freedom. To think that someone as bashful as Midoriya could be the front-man of this band. I think they could use someone as connected as I am to help get their name out. Don't you worry, children, your principal knows more than a few contacts that will spread word of this." Nezu says, right before sending it to someone he knows is willing to help him out in this endeavor.
"Miss Hatsume, I have a request for you."
"Anyway, we absolutely gotta show Midoriya this!" Denki says, taking a drink of his soda. "Oh, definitely. You can go show him right now, if you can manage getting him away from Uraraka and Iida." Jirou responds, motioning towards the table where the three were sitting.
"Eh, how hard could it be to pull someone away from their friends?" he assured her, unknowingly tempting fate.
He takes one last bite of his fried rice, stands up, and starts walking towards Izuku's table. He doesn't get very far, unfortunately, before a certain pink-skinned chaos child decides to tap his shoulder to get his attention. Denki lets out a very loud, very girly scream (one that Present Mic heard in the Teacher's Lounge and felt a weird sense of pride at) and loses control of his quirk, some of the electricity arcing towards the outlets in the wall. A loud pop echoes through the cafeteria, and the lights go out for a second..
"Kami! Hang on a sec! I've got something to ask you!" Mina says excitedly as Denki is stunned and left with massive brain-fog. "Wheeeeeee~!" he drones out, the power kicking back on. Jirou watches this with a smirk on her face, knowing this is gonna be hilarious to watch. Her best friend got caught by the pink panther, and now he has to reckon with what she dealt with.
He comes back to after a minute, and, having forgotten what she needed out of him, asks her what she said. She repeats it, and he responds, "What do you need?" as he tries to inch away from her. Mina, however, has her prey, and holds onto his arm, as if to say "You aren't getting out of this one, young man!"
"So, rumor has it you like being leashed? How did you find that out?" she asks, a shit-eating grin plastered on her face. Kaminari gulps, absolutely hating both the situation and the look on her face. "L-Leashed? Is this about the other day when me, Midoriya, and Kyou came back from the mall?" he stammers out.
"Yes! I've never seen someone bold enough to walk into a dorm with a leash on, much less being led by someone. What was up with that?" she says. Denki sighs. "I bought a leash to help us keep an eye on Izuku because Aizawa-sensei told me to 'keep him on a leash'. Izuku turned it onto me and made me wear it on the way back." he tells her, Mina getting a disappointed look on her face. "That's really all that happened?" "Damn, thought I saw a goldmine right in front of me, turns out it was just my imagination."
Denki walks away from her and goes up to Midoriya at his table, and pokes him on the shoulder.
"Oh, hey Kaminari, what's up?" Izuku asks him. Denki leans in and whispers in his ear, "Hey, when you get a chance, after class, come to Jirou's room, we have something we need to show you." Izuku nods his head in approval, after which Denki goes back over to Jirou, who just gives him a look.
"I see you found him, but I also see that a certain somebody captured you." she snarks, Denki flipping her off. "Oh fuck you, she just… surprised me, is all." he retorts. She just laughed. "Dude, you let out a discharge so hard you blew the fuses in the cafeteria. I thought having a release like that was a girl thing."
"Look, she shocked me, okay? Got so surprised I ended up losing a bit of control." Jirou raises one of her jacks, at which Denki starts panicking. "Hey hey, whoa, hold it! Was it something I said?" Jirou jabs him anyways. "Dude, seriously? Shocked?"
"Wait- what are you tal- Ohhhhh, I see what you mean now. Yeah, that one wasn't intentional."
After Classes
Izuku walks into the door from his training session to Ashido and what looked to be Hagakure chit-chatting about things, Bakugo and Kirishima competing on a video game, and Sato making dinner for everyone. He walks over to the fridge, gets himself a cold water, then heads to his room first to drop his stuff off, and then to Jirou's room, where he sees Kaminari and Jirou in there.
"Hey guys, what did you need from me?" he says, closing the door behind him as he sits on her bed. Kaminari, spinning in the chair, scoots over to him, showing him something on his phone.
"Dude, check it out! Our song's doing great on the internet!" he says, showing him the statistics on how the song's doing on HeroTube. Izuku takes a look at it, the song seems to be doing decently well on there, almost 900 views, 60 likes, and a large amount of shares.
"It's not that great…" Kyouka says, trying very hard to stay humble about their performance. Izuku can't help but notice a dusting of red on her face, seemingly embarrassed by their song doing well.
"Shush, Kyou. He knows nothing yet."
"I-it's doing this great already?" he asks, shock evident on his face.
"Fuck yeah, already!" Denki practically squeals, taking his phone back from Midoriya. "H-How? Oh god we have almost a thousand listens… oh god, I have no idea how many people would know it's me…" he starts panicking. Jirou perks her jack at that, shooting it towards Midoriya's hand, trying to calm him down.
"There's a sheer amount of luck in this shit- we just seem to have gotten super lucky with the reach being this good, this quickly." Jirou says, as she looks at the stats trying to figure out where they're getting shared.
"It's a bit more than luck, I think. Izuku and his writing must be scratching an itch for people." Denki chimes in. Izuku shoots a look at him, clearly caught off guard at his given name being used.
"Izuku?" he asks, not sure how to feel about it.
"Is that not ok? I mean, I think it'd be fine, what with me and Kyou already being on first name basis, I didn't want to leave you out, y'know?" Denki explains, quirking his eyebrow at Kyouka; evidently, there seems to be something they'll need to talk about later.
"I-It's fine, I just… I didn't think we'd be friends this quick. I mean, we… we barely started this entire thing a week ago." Izuku admits, not used to having friends, not that he'd admit it.
"What makes you think we wouldn't be friends, Green?" Kyouka asks. Izuku sighs.
"S-Sorry… I've just never had any real friends.." he admits, shocking Denki.
"Dude, seriously? You, never having friends? I find that hard to believe."
"Yeah, didn't you and Bakugo go to the same school before UA? You call him Kacchan and everything. Was he never a friend of yours?" Izuku cringes at the question, Kyouka not realizing she nailed it right on the head.
"Have you seen how he is? I'm not even sure he wants friends anymore. Kirishima's lucky to be in his circle." Denki knows that better than anyone else in the room. He'd tried for months to become friends with Bakugo, but kept getting yelled at and pushed aside, Kyou eventually convincing him to stop trying. He still hung out with his circle, and talked with Kyou and Mina the most.
"What about Uraraka? Or Tsu? Even Iida? Are they not your friends?" Kyouka asks Izuku, thinking that they've known him the longest here at UA, they had to have been friends with him. Izuku just shakes his head.
"They know me, but th-they don't really know me, i-if that makes sense."
"Dude, you hang out with them all the time. How can they not know you?" Denki asks, not quite getting what Izuku is saying.
"I mean… it's n-not like they asked about me as a person, they just ask me about hero stuff and what was what in class…" he explains, Kyouka not really surprised that either of them never tried to talk to him. She already knows about Uraraka's (very obvious) crush on Izuku, and Iida seemed like he had too much of a focus on heroics to make friends.
"Green, those aren't friends, those are acquaintances- treasured acquaintances, at most." Kyouka softly explains, lightly stroking Izuku's hand with one of her jacks. "Fuck them. Let us be your friends, okay? People that actually know you as Izuku Midoriya and not as Deku, if that makes any sense."
"Yeah, man!" Denki says, wrapping his arm around Izuku's shoulders "Who needs them, when you got us!"
Izuku just smiles at their words, and lets out a shaky sigh. After giving himself a minute to calm his nerves down, he goes to change the topic. "So, uh… do- do you guys wanna do anything? I mean we're apparently getting noticed by people, my anxiety is out of control, and I don't want to have a breakdown in front of you guys." Denki thinks for a second, then an idea pops into his head.
"I've been wanting to play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Ultimate Edition for a while, you guys wanna play it with me?" he asks.
"I mean, I guess we can. I'm no good at it, but I'll play." Kyouka agrees. Izuku just looks at Denki. "D-dude, we just built this friendship, are you t-trying to ruin it?" he asks. "You do understand that me and Kacchan used to play it back when we used to hang out, right?" Denki just laughs, patting Izuku's shoulder. "Yeah, yeah. I'll see how good you really are at this game. I mean, I play this every night, how good can you be?"
"Bruh, there's no fuckin' way. How'd you outrun that blue shell?!" Denki sits there, dumbfounded at how he got smoked in the cup they ran. Kyouka was not much better, looking at Izuku like he just spoke enchanting table.
"Green, where the fuck was this? You coulda told us you were good at this game, at least let us be prepared for the ass-kicking you gave us." Kyouka says, astonished at her friend's apparent skill at racing games.
"Hang on, is this why it only took you 2 hours to be a functional guitar player? Your hand-eye coordination is scary, dude!" Denki comments.
"I-I mean…maybe?" Izuku says with an unsure tone, "Applying previous skills to new things isn't really unheard of-" Izuku stops talking when he feels his phone vibrate, in his pocket.
"L-Let me take this, please."
"Floor's yours." Kyouka says, laying back on her bed.
"Put it on speaker!" Denki says.
Izuku answers the call, not even paying attention to who was calling him. "Hello-"
"ZYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTYYEEEEEEEEEE!" Izuku nearly threw the phone, he was so surprised at the volume from whoever was calling him. Denki snorts at his reaction, Kyouka covering her ears a bit from the volume, but a grin on her face. The laughter from the phone subsides after a while, to which they start talking.
"You damn zygote! I didn't think you had it in you to do that! You made me laugh so hard, I nearly passed a kidney stone!" The gears start turning in Izuku's head, trying to figure out who called him this late at night, but then it hits him. "...Torino-sensei?" a now-very-confused Izuku asks, to which he gets more laughter from the other line. "Of course it's me, zygote!"
Izuku couldn't even formulate a coherent sentence, then the jetpack-sized hero interrupts him. "Kid, kid, calm down. I'm not upset at all, if anything, I think it's fucking hysterical. So you finally had the balls to do something!"
Izuku is dumbfounded about the reaction. "W-wait, y-you aren't upset? I f-figured you would be, I-I mean it's essentially a diss track against you; wait, how did you even know it was me that wrote the song? How did you even find the song in the first place? Did All Might show you the song? No, it couldn't be, he doesn't listen to anything that isn't Garth Brooks…" he trails off, Kyouka poking him in the ear with her jack to knock him back to reality.
"Kid, are you around your bandmates right now? Put me on speaker." he says. "Uh, sir? You- you already are on speaker. We, uh, heard everything." Denki says, trying to stay calm about the entire situation.
"Right, ok, cool, listen up zygote! You kids need material for another song? Cause I have plenty I can give you about Toshinori!"
"Uh, who's Toshinori?" Kyouka asks.
"Shit, right, you don't know his name. You zygotes might know him better by his hero name: All Might." At that, both of their eyes widened. They're getting dirt on ALL MIGHT? "Wait, seriously? Bro, give us everything." Denki says excitedly, Kyouka grabbing her phone to start recording.