Chapter 19
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Fumikage Tokoyami wasn't the most approachable person in class 1-A. That was fine. He was used to it, with his face and his quirk, not to mention his somewhat esoteric hobbies. It was natural the other children in his primary and middle school classes had trouble breaking the ice with him, and he'd never felt the need to go out of his way to do so, content to step in to help when needed but otherwise linger at the outskirts, a vigilant guardian over the innocents around him.
No, Tokoyami was not the most approachable student in his class, and that was not surprising. What was surprising was that he was not the least approachable person in class 1-A. Not by a long shot. He was, at worst, third or fourth from the bottom, neck-and-neck with Shouji, who loomed over everyone with his multiple, heavily-muscled arms and never showed his full face (or even half of it). From day one, Bakugou Katsuki had established himself as aggressive, tactless, and antisocial, and even he wasn't the least approachable member of Class 1-A. That title was held firmly by the resident chimera, Todoroki Shouto.
Tokoyami had watched, as he always did, from the shadows (or, if you are an artless heathen who must take things literally, from his assigned desk directly in front of the other boy) as one by one, their classmates gathered their courage and attempted to reach out to the son of the Number 2 Hero.
Hagakure was the first to try. Her immutable invisibility quirk had, Tokoyami suspected, inspired her to set aside her inhibitions when it came to social interaction and introductions, lest she be overlooked entirely by those around her. It could have made her bitter, but instead he often caught sight of a disembodied UA uniform floating up to students from other departments who no one else had noticed sitting alone in the lunchroom. Looking back on that first day after learning about this habit of hers, it was no surprise Hagakure saw Todoroki sitting alone at the back of the room without joining any of the conversations around him and had gone out of her way to include him.
Unfortunately, her chosen ice breaker had set the stage for a comedy of errors: "Todoroki-kun! We were just talking about our favorite heroes. You must have met tons of pro heroes with your Dad being Number 2! Who's your favorite? Other than Endeavor, of course!"
It was only because he was sitting so close in front of him that Tokoyami felt the slight increase in warmth before a sudden burst of cold hit the back of his neck and had his feathers ruffling up in surprise. He shivered, tossing a glance over his shoulder and-
Todoroki looked like he was ready to murder someone.
Frost covered half of his cheek and part of his sleeve, and his breath came out in little, visible puffs of steam from the small cold front he'd created around his desk. But all of that seemed like a warm summer's day compared to the ice in his eyes.
Todoroki didn't answer the question, and Hagakure stammered some excuse and hurried back to the, now much quieter, conversation she had stepped away from.
Tokoyami turned back to the front, and spent the rest of the hour fighting off the urge to let his feathers puff up in reaction to the feeling of a threat at his back.
This initial scare didn't stop them for long. They were heroes-to-be after all, and the members of Class 1-A had never met a problem they weren't willing to beat their heads against repeatedly. They tried eating lunch with him (which he tolerated, if you can call ignoring their existence entirely and eating his lunch with a single-minded intensity tolerance), inviting him out after class (which he rejected with a short excuse of "training"), even just straight-out asking to be his friend (poor Uraraka, she had no idea what to do with his near-immediate response of "I am not interested", as if she were a door-to-door salesman). So far, there had been no success.
It was for that very reason that hearing Todoroki address Midoriya as they waited for the Sports Festival to begin was such a shock. At first, Tokoyami, caught up in his classmate's misadventures in attempting to befriend the stoic chimera, thought that Todoroki was going to wish the other boy luck, or offer a friendly challenge. Dark Shadow laughed at his naïve thoughts when Todoroki bluntly declared himself stronger than the green-haired boy and informed him that he was planning to win the tournament.
Do you think he knows that everyone is aiming to win the tournament? Dark Shadow whispered in his mind, sounding gleefully amused. Tokoyami kept a straight face through years of practice.
I think… that he has yet to realize that the rest of us exist. He admitted silently. Dark Shadow's eerie giggling brought a warm feeling to his chest, as it always did. His quirk was a bit unruly, but he wouldn't trade it for anything.
Tokoyami preferred to focus on his own matches rather than get distracted with too much speculation about the other students' prospects, but he made sure to keep an eye out for anything that might end up becoming important in his future match-ups.
And even if he hadn't been paying attention, it would be impossible to miss the massive glacier that Todoroki threw out against his first opponent. Looks like poor Sero is in a… sticky situation. Dark Shadow whispered to him. Tokoyami very carefully didn't react, not wanting to encourage his quirk's undignified behavior. He got the telepathic impression of pouting in return.
Todoroki usually has better control than that, he mused, is he nervous about the tournament? With how he spoke to Midoriya earlier, I'd have expected overconfidence.
Maybe he's just really excited! Dark Shadow suggested, and despite their telepathic link not allowing for things like tone and pitch, Tokoyami still got the impression that they were not being sarcastic. He had no idea what he did to deserve such an obliviously cheerful personality inhabiting his soul. He rolled his eyes.
Perhaps. He replied, feeling dubious about it. He'd never seen Todoroki excited about anything. Although if it caused him to shoot glaciers off at random, that would explain the other boy's determination not to react to anything. Perhaps it was a good thing he never seemed to emote.
After defeating Yaoyorozu and Ashido thanks to the long-range abilities of his quirk (and tuning out Dark Shadow's enthusiastic internal commentary about getting to "show off" – heroes don't show off, Dark Shadow, they keep people safe from the shadows!) he was expecting to face Bakugou Katsuki in the semi-finals. He had anticipated the need to work around Dark Shadow's weakness against light during the third round from the moment he saw the tournament bracket, so when his aggressive classmate forfeited his second match, Tokoyami had to reevaluate his whole strategy.
We'll just do the same thing and push him out of the ring! Dark Shadow cheered, and Tokoyami
sighed internally.
With his quirk, we can't be sure you'll be able to force him out of the ring. He pointed out. His mass seems to increase while it's activated, and you're not at your strongest with all these stadium lights shining down.
I can do it! Dark Shadow protests, but it was a token effort at best. They both knew Tokoyami was right. But they also knew that Kirishima's quirk did not pose the kind of threat that Bakugou's would have, so it would not be worth the wasted time worrying over it. Instead, they took the time to spectate the rest of the second-round matches.
All thoughts about Iida's quirk and the light cast by the faint ignitions within his engines were forgotten as soon as Midoriya broke his last finger. It was not an uncommon sight in the classroom after a couple of months, seeing Midoriya with some sort of injury from his astoundingly poor control over a terrifyingly powerful quirk (Tokoyami had some questions about UA's priorities when it comes to their student's abilities, but he'd leave that can of worms to his raging blond classmate), but it was usually a one-off and all injuries were treated immediately to avoid exacerbating the damage.
When Midoriya rebroke his finger a second time in order to keep fighting, even Dark Shadow gave up on their usual light-hearted banter and retreated into an uncomfortable silence. Tokoyami glanced at Midnight to see if she'd call the match, but she did not move to stop the two students, who seemed to be yelling passionately at one another. Perhaps there was more to the situation than meets the eye? But it was difficult to imagine what could be important enough to allow a student to mutilate themselves so thoroughly on public television.
When the yelling seemed to have finished and Tokoyami was starting to wonder if Midnight had just been caught up in whatever drama was going on between his two classmates (was this about Todoroki's theory that Midoriya was related to All Might? It was hard to miss his notes on the subject when their desks were so close), Todoroki surprised them all by bursting into flames.
The semester was not even halfway through, so there was still time, but in the last couple months Todoroki had adamantly refused to use the "hot" half of his quirk for anything other than melting his own ice. Some of their classmates had speculated that rather than being an even split, the hot half of his quirk was actually much weaker than the cold half. Tokoyami imagined those classmates were feeling a little embarrassed now, looking down on the minor inferno that Todoroki was creating.
The freezing air being superheated, combined with Midoriya using his already-broken fist to throw another super-powered punch, was a recipe for a disaster. Tokoyami saw Midnight call out to his classmates, but it was obvious they didn't hear her. Cementoss threw up several concrete walls between the two attacks, but it wasn't enough to stop the backlash of the two quirks from blasting debris up into the stands. Just before the two quirks hit, he threw Dark Shadow out to cover as many of his classmates and nearby spectators as he could, on the off-chance a larger piece of concrete would make it high enough to strike them. Luckily, only small, stinging pieces of concrete dust were carried high enough to reach them along with the uncomfortable wave of pressure and the ungodly noise of the destruction below.
"… How scary." Dark Shadow said quietly, still manifested outside of his body but shrunken back down to their smaller, "family friendly" (Dark Shadow's words) size. Tokoyami could only nod, grateful for the telepathic connection that allowed Dark Shadow to read the feelings he could not manage to put into words. "We won't let it get that far, next round." Dark Shadow promised, and despite knowing from their connection that Dark Shadow was only faking confidence in an attempt
to encourage him, Tokoyami felt his shoulders relax at the reminder that he wouldn't be facing his powerhouse classmate alone.
"Of course." He agreed, and Dark Shadow disappeared back into his chest to rest and prepare for their battle.
Standing across from Todoroki after the (unplanned) intermission to rebuild the arena and a surprisingly anticlimactic semifinals (Kirishima's quirk was easily worn out after several rounds of fighting, and Todoroki and Iida had a blessedly uncomplicated faceoff), Tokoyami was less intimidated than he had expected to be. Todoroki looked… tired. Wrung-out in a way that felt distinct from the familiar overuse of one's quirk. It made Tokoyami remember the one (and only) time he had overused Dark Shadow, and the unsettling sensation of being alone in his body for the first time in years as he waited for his quirk to recover the next day. He'd promised himself that he would train to become strong enough to control Dark Shadow even in the darkest night to avoid that ever happening again… he wondered if Todoroki was making similar promises to himself at that moment.
Midnight's whip cracked, announcing the start of the match as Present Mic's commentary bounced off the walls and became a muddled roar amongst the cheering crowd. Tokoyami, like every round, stayed in place and sent Dark Shadow out in a quick break, not really expecting to catch his opponent off guard this time. Sure enough, Todoroki, as he had every round, adopted a similar strategy, staying rooted in place and sending a burst of ice forward to test his defense.
Dark Shadow was able to shatter the ice, but the rebound sent them back several feet. Tokoyami sent a brief pulse toward his quirk, receiving a pulse of confirmation back reassuring him that they had not taken too much damage. Excellent, they could continue fighting. Both he and Todoroki eyed one another from their mirrored stances.
"I want to win this tournament." Todoroki said, apropos of absolutely nothing, and Tokoyami had to resist the urge to blink at him, in case it was a distraction. Dark Shadow puffed up in preparation for a sneak attack of some kind, but none came. "I want to be a hero." There was a beat, as if the other student expected some sort of response, and Tokoyami could not for the life of him figure out what that response was supposed to be.
"Does… Does he know he's in the hero course?" Dark Shadow changed shape slightly to turn their head and hold up a shadowy hand as if to whisper, but their voice was clearly pitched to carry across the field. Tokoyami held back a snort out of sheer will.
"We all want to win." Tokoyami said instead, as if Dark Shadow had not spoken. His quirk deflated comically and he sent a silent reminder to be on guard against a surprise attack, pleased when Dark Shadow returned to their ready position. "We all want to be number one. Why should you be?" And with that (seemingly meaningless) conversation finished, Tokoyami urged Dark Shadow to attack again.
The ensuing battle was exhausting. The stadium lights were too bright and, despite their luck with match-ups so far in the tournament, Dark Shadow was not in top condition after three rounds. But Todoroki had overused his ice, starting from the literal glacier with Sero and continuing through his absurd fight with Midoriya. It was clear that the ice he was throwing at Tokoyami at this point was weaker than it should have been, and a minute shiver had started up in the scarred boy's shoulders almost as soon as the fighting began. Not having used his fire since the second round meant Todoroki's internal temperature was reaching critical lows.
After several volleys of throwing their quirks at one another from long-range, Tokoyami decided it was necessary to change up the game, for the sake of the viewers at home if nothing else (I thought you said heroes don't show off! "Yes well, we're not heroes yet.") and called Dark Shadow back as he moved from his starting position for the first time since the round began.
Dark Shadow settled in around him like a cloak, still separate but coating him and following his movements instead of fighting independently like usual. The next wave of ice was even weaker than the last, and shattered easily under a Dark-Shadow-enhanced punch. He jumped over the ice- slick that Todoroki sent out to slow him down and landed in front of the bi-colored boy with a cat- like grace (you're so poetic, Fumi! "Shut up.") Dark Shadow stretched, giving his arms a longer range and huge, talonesque claws. He wasted no time using them to break the ice holding Todoroki's ankles to the ground and hoist his opponent in the air.
He hesitated, just for a split second, and more ice began to form on his arms, but Dark Shadow had no trouble moving even when Tokoyami was immobilized.
"Why don't you use your quirk?" He blurted out, and Todoroki's face spasmed before falling into its default blank mask. "You could beat me if you were not freezing."
The other boy did not respond, staring deeply into Tokoyami's eyes as neither of them moved to end the match despite the restless murmurs of the crowd. Tokoyami resented every author who had every implied that eye contact would carry some clear meaning, as he desperately attempted to figure out if Todoroki was searching his gaze, or trying to communicate with him, or had simply fallen deeply into thought and happened to be looking at his face.
After an incredibly uncomfortable and prolonged pause, Tokoyami urged Dark Shadow to lift the other student higher in preparation to throw him out of bounds. The motion seemed to snap Todoroki out of his contemplation, and for a moment Tokoyami braced himself, expecting the flames that would force Dark Shadow to retreat and leave Tokoyami to fight with only his fists… but they never came. Todoroki's face twisted through pride, frustration, regret, stubbornness, and probably a hundred other emotional nuances Tokoyami would never be able to name, before the other boy seemed to go limp in his hold, dropping his head and releasing all the tension from his body, giving up.
In the interest of not accidentally giving the other boy a concussion (if he didn't already have one from earlier), he had Dark Shadow gently place him outside of bounds instead of lobbing him as they had planned. Midnight and Present Mic both sounded mildly confused as they announced his win, and Tokoyami couldn't blame them. He wasn't sure why he'd won either, except that his opponent seemed to be having some sort of issue using half of his quirk.
Whether it was a physical restraint (bad control, similar to Midoriya, perhaps?) or a more complicated reason, Tokoyami felt bittersweet about a victory over an opponent at half-power. It was unpleasant, but he knew that whatever struggles his classmate was experiencing did not devalue his own accomplishment.
Still, after the initial applause for his victory was over and they were dismissed for a brief pause before the medal ceremony, Tokoyami could not resist approaching Todoroki where he stood near the edge of the arena, looking blank. Tokoyami waited, feeling awkward, for Todoroki to notice he was there, glance at him, acknowledge him in any way, but just ended up standing there silently as his classmate seemingly dissociated.
Well this is nice! Dark Shadow chimed silently. Together you two could be a magazine cover for angsty teens!
I am not an angsty teen, I have depth. Tokoyami corrected, but he did find the motivation to clear his throat and draw Todoroki's attention from whatever was so engaging in his thoughts. The two- toned boy blinked at him: "Congratulations." He said, robotically, as if he thought that was what Tokoyami was waiting for. Tokoyami had never been so glad that his face did not accommodate most human facial expressions, so his exasperation was not immediately obvious.
"Next year." He said, graciously ignoring the last few minutes. "I'll beat you and your fire."
There was another awkward silence, but at least this time Todoroki was looking at him, and he appeared mostly lucid. Dark Shadow was having a heyday laughing at Tokoyami's social skills, but he thought he was doing alright for the standards set by his partner here. Todoroki, after two full minutes of staring silently, looked down at his hands as if they might try to bite him, but then seemed to reconsider.
"Next year." He echoed, slowly. "Right."
When nothing more was forthcoming, Tokoyami excused himself to prepare for the medal ceremony, and decided he was never going to go out of his way to encourage his classmates again. Leave that to Midoriya and Hagakure, he'd stick to the shadows where he belongs.
Chapter End Notes
Things Tokoyami reads:
H.P. Lovecraft and anything remotely inspired by him Shakespeare (but he'll only admit to reading the tragedies) Angsty Wattpad poetry Horror Manga (and Kimi ni Todoke but he switched the covers for a few by Junji Ito).
Chapter 20
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The week after the Sports Festival feels surreal. Izuku is recovered from his surgery, although not without some permanent scarring, and Freezer Burn is brooding more thoughtfully than usual at the back of the classroom, but everything else feels so normal that it almost seems like a lie. Too much happened over the weekend for everything to just be business as usual Monday morning.
"Bakugou!" Gravity Witch says cheerfully as she plops down onto my desk with a grin, as if we're best friends – or friends at all . "So I was thinking about ways to experiment with my quirk and…" I fall back on deeply ingrained habits from growing up with Izuku and tune her out, focusing on putting some sort of barrier between us in case she decides to try her "experiments" on me.
Izuku makes an incredibly amusing noise as I pick him up and bodily push him between us as a human shield, but Pink Cheeks keeps babbling as if I was listening attentively. Damn, she's clearly picked up on Izuku's strategies for interacting with me, ie. ignoring me and continuing as if I was responding with interest. Actually, that might work for me as long as she stays out of arm's reach and I can just ignore her. I squint suspiciously at her from over Izuku's shoulder, ignoring her continued babbling and Izuku's squawking noises. Oh, wait. He's saying words. I ignore those too.
"Three feet." I say, firmly, pointing at her from behind my Deku Shield. "At all times." She finally stops talking to blink at me, and then she snorts, hand shooting up to cover the indelicate noise as she giggles. But she nods, and gets off my desk to make a big show of moving slightly away. I eye the distance, tempted to go grab a measuring stick from the front of the room to make sure it's actually three feet, but decide that might encourage her to ignore the terms of our new tentative truce. I grudgingly sit back down. She's right back into whatever she'd been saying so I give her a single deadpan blink before starting to get my books and notebooks out and pretending she isn't there again.
"I didn't know you two were friends!" Izuku says cheerfully from behind me, having waited until I was finished unpacking to try speaking again after failing to get a reaction earlier. It had taken a few years to train that into him, but it's finally paying off.
"We're not." I say absently, at the same time as Little Miss Demon Quirk chimes: "We talked at the Sports Festival!"
"One conversation does not make us friends." I protest, a bit offended for some reason. Did they think the bar was that low?
"That's one more conversation than you've willingly had with Deku-kun this year, and he's your Best Friend!" Uraraka points out, brutally and unflinchingly throwing Izuku under the bus. The wounded noise he lets out in response draws a laugh out of me, and I cover my mouth and try to glare, but it's obvious my lips are twitching, if the triumphant look on Uraraka's face is anything to go from. Fuck. I'll never be rid of her now. I clear my throat and lower my hand, pulling together what's left of my composure.
"I hang out with Izuku because our mothers are friends and the human psyche is delicate and strange," I explain as pedantically as I can manage with Izuku still whining in the background. Et tu, Kacchan? He cries dramatically, and I press my lips together to keep a straight face. Uraraka is turning red from trying to keep it together as her eyes flick between Izuku and me. "Sometimes we
grow dependent on the very things that are slowly killing us."
"How insightful." Aizawa deadpans from the front of the classroom right as Uraraka loses it and lets out a laugh like a donkey braying. It quickly turns to coughing and choking as she jumps in surprise at our homeroom teacher's sudden appearance. At this point we really should be used to him slithering in out of nowhere like this. "Perhaps you could turn some of that thoughtfulness towards today's lesson plan instead of… whatever this is?" He's too lazy to gesture, tilting his head pointedly towards Uraraka's slow asphyxiation and Izuku's attempt to sink into his desk like a bas- relief of tragicomic betrayal.
"I have never met either of these people in my life." I deny. Aizawa rolls his eyes (fucking rude, totally deserves those dry ass eyes he always complains about).
"Alright class, as you probably know, the Sports Festival that just passed is your first opportunity to get your names and faces out into the world, but also the first time for recruiters and Pro Heroes to see your skills as potential future coworkers and employees. Next week you will have a chance to do a week-long work-study, so today we will prepare for that." With a lazy flick, he unveiled a list of student names with numbers next to them. Todoroki was at the top with several thousand, followed by me with a little over 2,000 offers. Tokoyami, despite being the overall winner and having, in my opinion, the coolest quirk in the class (a sentient quirk that can function completely independently from his focus? Fuck yeah), has less than 900 offers. The next highest is only around 300 and they drop off quickly after that.
There seems to be no correlation to our actual performance in the tournament. Rather, it seems any quirk that is overtly offensive is favored highly, and even more than that, quirks that are attention- grabbing and large-scale are preferred to arguably more useful quirks that function on precision or versatility. The fact that Miss I-Can-Make-Any-Weapon-I-Need-Out-Of-My-Body-Fat only has barely more than a hundred offers is criminally idiotic.
Packets are handed out containing the standard agencies that have agreed to accept UA interns, with personalized lists of offers for those who received them. I snort at the truly absurd stack of papers dropped irritably onto Half-and-Half's desk, only to grimace when a still-disgustingly-thick pile is tossed pointedly onto my own.
"Narcolepsy-sensei…" I (do not) whine. "How much time do we have to go through these offers again?"
"Until Wednesday," Aizawa says, not blinking an eye at my disrespectful nickname. He's truly gotten used to his students' personalities quickly. An admirable trait in a teacher. Unlike his habit of sleeping through classes.
"That's impossible." I point out, gesturing at Todoroki. "Even if he could review an offer every minute, it'd take around 70 hours for him to go through that whole stack. Is there some way we're supposed to prioritize these?"
"However you want." The Worst Teacher Ever replies. I try to convey just how unimpressed I am in my look, but in this arena I have to admit Aizawa has me beat. His deadpan stare overpowers mine easily. "Prioritizing is based on your priorities. Do you want to intern with the highest ranking heroes you can, or do you want to get experience in a specific type of hero office? At the top of each page are some general labels to help you categorize them quickly. If you need help understanding them… ask Midnight."
That was apparently the cue our other teacher had been waiting for, as she takes that moment to make a dramatic entrance and start introducing our next activity. I miss the first part of her
explanation though, as Aizawa lets out a faint "Ah." next to me and rummages through the leftover internship packets in a very distracting way. I'm torn between watching him and trying to follow along with whatever Midnight-sensei is passing out whiteboards for when he tosses one last sheet of paper onto my desk.
"I was asked to give that one to you personally. Said he has a few things he thinks he could help you with, if you decided to intern with him. But didn't want to pressure you by giving you the offer directly." Favor apparently fulfilled, Aizawa shuffles off into his corner to nap and I am nearly hit in the face with a small whiteboard as Midnight makes her way down my row.
Juggling the whiteboard and dry-erase marker, and subtly (shut up Izuku I can be subtle fuck you) looking around to figure out what we're supposed to be doing, I see most of the students excitedly whispering or nervously staring at their boards.
"What kind of hero name are you going to choose, Kacchan?" Izuku whispers from behind me. I glare at him suspiciously for a moment, trying to determine whether he asked because he could tell I had no idea what was going on or if he's just being an annoying little pest as usual and trying to make small talk. He beams in response to the eye contact. That seemingly guileless smile is as inscrutable as always.
"I haven't thought about it." I answer honestly, deciding to throw him a bone since he did just help me out by letting me know what our current goal is. "I kind of forgot I had to have one."
"What!" Izuku squawks, gesturing meaninglessly in the air. "How can you forget about your hero name?! It's almost as important as your costume!"
"Except that my costume serves a practical purpose?" I retort, mildly bewildered. "As in protecting me from harm and making sure I don't accidentally blow myself or someone else up without meaning to?"
"I mean it's important for your Brand, Kacchan!" Izuku slices a hand in the air in a near-perfect impression of Iida, and I have to fight a smirk. Is he doing that on purpose? Mocking his classmates, for shame. I'm almost proud. "A hero has to be recognizable and distinct, in order for citizens to know who to approach or follow in case of an emergency, and to garner support from the populace!"
"Why do I feel like you read an article about this in one of your weird fanboy magazines?" I ask the ceiling. I tune out the following rant on exactly which magazine it was and the many other salient points the author had made in the same article, instead turning back to my whiteboard and contemplating my options. What was I supposed to choose as a hero name? I guess I'd always figured when I got to this point I'd just use whatever that Other Bakugou had chosen in Whoever-I- Was' memories, only…
I couldn't remember his hero name. Did Whoever-I-Was forget, or was it never stated? The only name coming to mind was something like King Explosion Murder, which… no. Why? Did that other Bakugou actually know what the words murder and kill mean? He sure threw them around a lot for someone wanting to be a hero…
Well, I guess I do threaten Izuku with bodily harm a lot more than a proper hero student should as well. Maybe it's a genetic thing with this body? Or hormonal? Is this male puberty? Or… anime puberty? Oh god I hope that isn't a thing.
I decide to take advantage of the whiteboard to brainstorm ideas, since I can just erase the ones I don't like. Anything to get the juices flowing. After a few minutes, I have a list:
Potential hero names
Nitro boy
Nitro man
Just Nitro?
C3H5N3O9
CEHSNEOP? Pronounced Kehz-nee-op?
Cehsneo-9 ?
Dynamite by Taio Cruz
The Bomb Dot Com
Captain Discharge absolutely not
Phlogiston (ehh that's more about things burning than exploding)
Arson (if I say it in English maybe they won't realize it's a crime?)
I stare at these options, and it slowly dawns on me that I am apparently just as shit at naming things as Original Bakugou was. That is mildly horrifying. I flip my whiteboard over so I don't have to look at them and drop my head down onto it.
A crinkling sound makes me lift my head back up, and I notice the extra paper that Aizawa had tossed onto my desk caught under the whiteboard where it's falling slightly off the main stack of offers. I pull it out from where it's caught, flattening it back out with one hand, not really carrying that it ends up still wrinkled, but mildly curious who had asked Aizawa to deliver an offer for them now that I remembered the paper's existence.
Glancing over it quickly, I feel my eyebrows rise. Present Mic? I mean, I know I'm a bit of a teacher's pet in his class since I'm already fluent in English, but why would he offer me an internship so specifically through Aizawa? There was no sense of deja-vu associated with it, but that doesn't mean the offer wasn't given to Original Bakugou too. But I wonder who he chose…
Flipping through the list of offers, my eyes stop on a pair of eyes and blonde hair poking out of a ridiculously high denim collar, and I'm hit with a flood of mental images that include… hair combing? A line of sidekicks and interns wearing form-fitting denim jeans? What the fuck?
Best Jeanist, I read, Ranked number 3… yeah I totally would have gone for him in another life. But… Seriously, what the hell? If you were going to force your (underage!!) intern to wear an article of clothing that you could unravel and control using your quirk (emergency extraction of sidekicks from danger? Backup weapons?), why in the name of All-Might's Glorious Forearms would you ever choose their pants ?? Jean jackets exist! And wouldn't have all sorts of horrifying implications!
I'm digging for a pen to add Best Jeanist into my list of people to research for my Lawsuit Folder when Midnight interrupts the chatter and scribbling of the class.
"Alright, who wants to go first?" Midnight calls, and I bite down on several expletives that want to slip out as I flip my whiteboard back around and hastily erase what I'd written on it. By the time it's clean, Aoyama is making his way to the front of the room using a type of ambulation that I can really only call interpretive dance. What the hell it's interpreting is anyone's guess though.
When he reveals his hero name as I can not stop twinkling I almost bust a gut laughing. He seems to take this as a compliment, winking at me (how the fuck does he get his eyes to shoot out little stars when he does that?) and Midnight shortens it to Can't stop twinkling , as if that is any better. It suits him.
Pinkie Pie is up next, proudly declaring the name Alien Queen . That one's actually pretty good, and I have hope for this exercise for one glorious moment before Midnight vetoes it.
"That vicious, bloody thing from Ridley? Try again." She says, and I blink in surprise. The problem is the bloodiness of it, not the copyright on Ridley's creature name? Did copyright even exist here? It must, right?
Frog girl goes for the weird and well-received Froppy , which is admittedly much cuter sounding to me, being raised Japanese, than to Whoever-I-Was, watching an anime through her American cultural lens. The next few names blur together as I try to muster up the energy to pick a hero name that isn't just "Explosion Man". Although… why should I? I really don't care…
Izuku goes up to the front and I can't ignore the way he keeps glancing nervously at me, like a dog that's waiting for a treat (or a boot). My eyes narrow on reflex, my Izuku-bullshit-o-meter ringing off the charts. I just know this dumbass is going to do something stupid.
"My hero name… will be Deku." He says, and I almost faceplant into my desk from how anticlimactic that is. It's literally the same as the show! Why was he acting all suspicious about it?? "It's an important name given to me by the one person who never doubted I could… no, that I would be a hero, and so I want to honor that person by choosing this name." He explains, flushing as the girls in class all coo loudly at his sentimentality. The nervous glances suddenly make more sense.
This gross little shit. I think in horror, feeling my face twist involuntarily in disgust. You're supposed to be reclaiming a nickname that I used to mock you, you dumbass. It's not a fucking petname! Now people are going to think I call you that affectionately or something!
If the way Izuku blanches is any indication, my thoughts are showing clearly on my face. Well, good. He should be scared. I'm going to burn every one of his creepy fucking notebooks for this.
"Friendship among young men really gets my blood pumping!" Midnight wiggles disturbingly, and I scowl at her in offense. Could she not? "That just leaves you, Bak-u-gou-kun~!" She sings. I stiffen, having momentarily forgotten about my lack of a name.
"Ah… do I have to pick one now?" I ask, and am grateful for the fact that I don't blush easily as several classmates send me surprised looks. Fuck off, just because you all fantasized about this doesn't mean I should have. I had better things to do. "I never thought about it and I don't really have any ideas." I shrug one shoulder.
"If you don't pick one today, I'll just have Hisashi give you a name. He picked mine when we were students." Aizawa says. Once again, he and I have an unimpressed-stare down as I contemplate whether or not I want to deal with a hero name like Eraserhead for the rest of my career. But then again… I really, genuinely, do not care. If my hero name could actually serve some kind of purpose, like my costume does…
I blink. I look down at the slightly wrinkled paper on top of my offer stack. I feel a grin threatening to break out on my face. Oh, if copyright is a thing in this world… that would be perfect.
"Aizawa-sensei, Midnight-sensei." I say, halfway between serious and gleeful. "Please give me until tomorrow to give you my hero name. I need to speak with Present Mic-sensei before I can give it to you."
"Oho, interesting!" Midnight says, clapping her hands and ignoring Aizawa's exhausted eyeroll. "I'll allow it!" She declares, and just like that, class moves on. Izuku spends the day cowering every time I glance in his direction, but I don't have time to deal with his stupidity today. As soon as the bell rings, I'm out the door with Present Mic's internship offer in hand. After all, if I want to pull this off, I'm probably going to have to make quite a few phone calls tonight.
The first clue Izuku had that something was odd was the smile on Kacchan's face when they left for school that morning. Kacchan didn't usually grin so much as bare his teeth, but he looked almost gleeful this morning. For a moment, Izuku thought about calling in sick. He hesitated, hand still raised to knock when Kacchan had opened the door without the usual banter and arguing.
"Well, are you coming, Dek- I mean, Dumbass?" Kacchan brushed past him somewhat roughly, and it was enough to snap Izuku out of it. The fact that Kacchan was avoiding using his nickname (probably due to his decision to use it as his hero name, but he knew his frien would slip up and start using it again sooner or later), reassured him that this was in fact the Kacchan he knew and not some weird smiley imposter.
"Wait up!" He called, and jogged lightly after him. Kacchan was apparently eager to get to school today… which just added to the mounting sense of approaching doom… or nonsense. Could be either one. I suppose I'm in too deep at this point, he pondered, scanning his train pass and absently shuffling along behind his friend. There's really no point pretending I'm going anywhere other than down with this burning ship.
From there, the ride to school was normal, aside from Kacchan occasionally smirking or smiling at nothing. Izuku embraced denial and focused on basking in the sight of his grouchy friend being borderline cheerful for a change. After all, if whatever was coming ended terribly, he might as well enjoy his last day to the fullest.
Unfortunately, Kacchan disappeared again as soon as they got to the gates. His only explanation a quick promise to meet Izuku in homeroom. This wasn't unusual, Kacchan was always trying to give him the slip, but Izuku could usually wiggle his way into whatever plan the other boy had for the morning. This time, however, the manic gleam in those red eyes left no room for questions, much less invitations.
So izuku settled into his seat and waited as his classmates trickled in one by one, blithely ignoring the creeping sense that he really should have offered Kacchan his list of potential Hero Names even if he hadn't asked for it. He trusted Kacchan. Unequivocally, the way some people trusted the ground beneath their feet or the blood flowing in their veins, he trusted Kacchan. So no matter how ridiculous things were about to get, he was sure it wouldn't hurt anyone.
So why did he get the feeling that he was going to regret today for the rest of his life?
The bell rang just as Aizawa opened the door with a record-breaking look of chagrin on his face.
Their eyes met and for a split second, Izuku felt something in him resonate with his tired-looking teacher like the ringing of a tuning fork through his soul. But then he reminded himself that he was happily in Denial and smiled at the older man, who closed his eyes resignedly.
"Right, before we continue with today's lesson, Midnight is here to confirm Bakugou's Hero Name choice. So if you'll all take your seats." Aizawa strode directly to his sleeping bag in the corner and crawled in, zipping it all the way up as if to block out what he knew was coming. That was… probably not a great sign.
"Good morning goddamn Listeners!" Kacchan announced himself as he strode in the door, Midnight smirking in amusement behind him. On his face were a pair of sunglasses identical to Present Mic's, and Izuku leaned forward in involuntary curiosity. Was this why Kacchan had needed to talk to Present Mic-sensei? "Thanks to my future Work-Study with Present Mic and the privatized and capitalist nature of the Hero Industry, you are looking at the newly-dubbed and legally binding Explosion Hero : Diablo Sauce sponsored by Taco Bell."
With a flourish, Kacchan presented a board, the same size and shape as the whiteboards the rest of the class had used to present their hero names, but made of foam board and printed with what looked like a professionally printed logo of his new hero name. In the lower right-hand corner was a watermark claiming copyright by Yum! Brands Inc.
Izuku dropped his face into his hands and sighed.
Chapter End Notes
Bakugou: I'm about to do what's called a Pro Gamer Move. Bakugou: *sells out to the first brand that will take him*
Izuku: The best version of Kacchan is when he is being himself. :) Bakugou: *hastily signs a legally-binding contract to prove a point and troll his teacher* Izuku: Not like that.
End Notes
\_(ツ)/
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