Chapter Text
Danny felt kinda weird during hero training.
It felt like watching school sanctioned brawls rather than any kind of lesson. Not to throw shade on the Number One, especially when Danny learned the same way, but putting everyone in a fight before teaching any basics wasn’t really teaching. And from the way some of them fought, it was clear that guidance was needed.
A lot of them relied primarily on their quirks to do the most damage and tended to avoid physical combat. It might work in the short term, but as Danny had already learned, if you relied too much on your powers, you could find yourself up the creek without a paddle.
Still, the battles were kind of interesting to watch despite how clearly inexperienced they were. It was clear that a lot of them had experience with their quirks and were decent at on the fly working together.
Midoriya and Bakugou’s battle was, of course, full of drama which didn’t come as a surprise at all. It was only the first official day and yet he could tell there was something fraught with tension between them. The kind that necessitated gossip and details to be shared, but ah well.
The next group had been Hagakure and Ojiro vs Todoroki and Shouji, he’d wished Hagakure good luck and been excited to cheer on one of his friends. Of course, he’d been completely taken off guard by how overboard Todoroki took it. He couldn’t help but worry for Hagakure and Ojiro’s health.
It had gotten so cold where they were positioned in the monitoring room and that wasn’t exactly close, he wasn’t sure how cold it was in the building itself. He didn’t know how much thermal regulation stuff was in Hagakure’s hero costume, but he hoped she wasn’t frozen solid.
“Dude, how are you not frozen?” Kaminari half whined from beside him, shivering as he tried to subtly huddle close to Jirou. Ashido was not as subtle about it considering her sleeveless outfit, and had practically flung herself at the girl when the temperature stopped.
Danny shrugged in response, honestly not sure himself. “Probably a quirk thing?” he offered. He knew he was a lot more resistant to temperature in ghost form, but he hadn’t noticed much difference in human form. Honestly his life had been so hectic and stressful since the Accident, he hadn’t exactly had chance to notice.
Next was Asui and Tokoyami vs Sero and Kirishima. It was an interesting fight, at least it gave him more understanding of his classmates’ quirks without having to focus on something else. He kind of wanted to pick their brains on them too, at least he figured out why Kirishima thought he didn’t need a shirt. He had… so many questions about Tokoyami’s quirk.
As the next fight was about to be drawn he realised that he would likely be fighting some of his friends at this rate. Jirou and Kaminari were on one team and Ashido on another, with only two matchups left he had a two in three chance of fighting one. Huh. Good thing he’d had all that experience fighting friends before he came here.
When the next fight was announced it was clear what the following fight would be. The fourth fight of the day was Jirou and Kaminari vs Yaoyorozu and Mineta. Danny was sorta sad he wasn’t gonna be able to fight Mineta, but kinda glad he wouldn’t be fighting Yaoyorozu. She’d probably be either terrifying or annoying to fight.
“Looks like we’re gonna be facing off against each other. I won’t lose to the likes of you Danny!” Ashido mock-glared at him, which teased a laugh out of his throat.
“Yeah, real shame you didn’t get put against someone who would give you a chance at winning, because me and Kouda have this one in the bag .” Danny retorted with a snort, still curious as to how things would play out. He’d need to talk to Kouda more about their strategy, but he also didn’t want to miss out on cheering his friends on.
He wished his friends good luck, and in the time for everything to be set up, Danny headed over to Kouda with a smile and a wave.
“Hey! Did you have any ideas for what our plan is gonna be?” Danny asked kindly.
Kouda gave a shaky smile and rotated his hand a bit in a universal ‘kind of’ gesture. “I know how I can help us.” He said in a quiet voice so Danny moved closer to make sure that he heard his partner. “My quirk is called Anivoice. I can talk to animals and they’re compelled to do what I say. I asked All Might if I could see if there were animals around and I managed to find a few wild rats, that can help us.”
Danny lit up and matched his volume. “Oh your quirk is so cool , it’ll be incredibly useful. I didn’t even see any kind of animals around, I doubt the others would either during the trial. They might not even think much about it if they did. They could be like, scouts or something. Give us heads up warnings to people approaching and I’ll just make us invisible when they come in and intangible if necessary.”
Kouda smiled wider and nodded, looking pleased that he could help out. “Good work, Kouda. We’ll for sure sweep the competition with us working together.”
After he saw Ashido talking with Aoyama, he decided to stay where he was as he watched the match start to unfold. It began simple enough, Yaoyorozu had put up traps with the aid of Mineta’s sticky grape hair.
Jirou simply put her earphone jacks in the wall and seemed to be listening for their opponents. It wasn’t hard to imagine whatever Mineta was saying being gross by the way Jirou’s face screwed up, she pointed in a direction to Kaminari and likely said something in her dry humour. Kaminari began grinning and— Oh. Huh. Well.
That was going to be uncomfortable to talk to his new friend about, Danny thought as his arm started to tingle in remembrance. He couldn’t not talk about it with his friend. It might be nice to not have to talk about it ever, but if he ever was pair up against Kaminari he didn’t want to lash out as a trauma response no thank you sir.
Talking about it would be the better option.
Wow. Look at that, Jazz. He was actually going to do the responsible shit and have a serious conversation, not avoid it until he couldn’t anymore. She’d be so proud.
As much has he wanted to cheer on his new friends, his enthusiasm dimmed and it became too uncomfortable to watch Kaminari use his quirk, by the time he allowed himself to stop watching the match from the corner of his eye, he noticed an oddity from Kaminari.
He watched as Kaminari started to stumble slightly after letting off a large electric charge, his face looking rather dazed and bit loopy. His mouth moved and he must have said something truly stupid because Jirou stopped putting the capture tape around their stunned opponents to look at him incredulously, then snort as Kaminari tripped over something and went sprawling.
All Might announced their victory and Danny started to fret slightly as Jirou had to lead all three of them out of the building, Yaoyorozu and Mineta seemingly recovering much faster than Kaminari. When they came in, the class congratulated the winners and consoled the losers, but Danny made his way to where Jirou was keeping Kaminari from tripping over himself.
“Is he alright?” Danny asked worriedly, Kaminari still looked rather dazed and out of it, replying with a faint “yeeeee”.
Jirou snorted and shrugged. “I dunno, he said to me before the thing started that after he used his quirk he’d ‘go stupid’, and I asked ‘more than usual?’ He then pouted until the match began and never explained, so I’m guessing this is what he meant.”
Ashido frowned a bit. “Should we send him to Recovery Girl? If it’s normal for his quirk, it might not be necessary but he’s not exactly aware is he?”
“Probably best just in case?” Danny offered, uncertainly. Sure Danny had a bunch of trauma related to electrocution, but he couldn’t really find a link between using that electricity and Kaminari’s current condition being anything but concerning.
“Mr. All Might sir!” Ashido piped up, interrupting whatever the teacher was saying and catching the class’s attention. “I think Kaminari should be sent to Recovery Girl, don’t you? He’s kind of out of it.”
“Ah, yes! Good catch Young Ashido!” The hero boomed. “Do you want to take him there?”
“I’ll take him.” Jirou interjected. “Ashido’s up next against Danny, it’ll take her too long to get there and back.”
“Good idea!” All Might praised her, visibly sweating slightly. “You’ll be able to review the footage of what you missed using your UA student login, but be quick if you can please!”
“Yup, will do.” Was Jirou’s relaxed response, she turned to Kaminari and continued to tug his sleeve. “C’mon Mr Brainless, let’s see if Recovery Girl’s quirk can work miracles and grow back brain cells.”
Kaminari’s gentle “yeee”s were starting to sound more like “weeee” as Jirou lead him away.
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Danny would like to say that the match was difficult, but honestly the actual match was incredibly easy. He felt kinda bad for Ashido and Aoyama, while they did get close a few times, with Kouda’s rats being very dedicated scouts each time they passed where they had the bomb, Danny just reached out and made them invisible.
There had been a close call where Ashido went to walk through where they were and Danny quickly made then intangible before she could slam into anything. Without Danny using his flight, they sunk down to the next floor where Danny let both aspects go, making sure that none of them fell.
When All Might announced his and Kouda’s win, Danny held his hand up for a high five to his partner with a wide grin. Kouda shyly returned the gesture, giving him another small smile, and the two of them made their way out the building.
Ashido whined when she caught sight of them and spent the whole of the short walk back trying to get Danny to tell her where they hid in the building because she was sure they’d searched the whole place twice.
Back at the observation booth the class was clearly excited and very interested in Danny’s powers.
“Woah, I’m not even sure what you guys did but I know that your plan was impressive as hell. Congrats!” Kirishima grinned, with a few others echoing his sentiments.
“WOOOO!” Hagakure cheered and jumped up on Danny’s shoulders, almost knocking him over. “Invisibility is the BEST, and Danny showed all of you exactly why.”
Danny laughed, and straightened himself, careful not to throw Hagakure off before she was ready. He rubbed the back of his neck at her praise.
“Young Danny, would you like to explain?” All Might asked, the class hushing with his words.
“Oh, yeah. Well, for starters, my quirk is kind of great for stealth and infiltration. Whichever side I was on, I was pretty sure that I had a significant advantage, but especially if I was on the villain team. See my quirk lets me go invisible and intangible, I can also spread it to objects and other people– so they can become invisible and intangible too.
“Pair that with Kouda’s quirk which lets him talk to and command animals, it let us have a heads up when anyone started to get near. When a rat told Kouda someone was coming I’d make us invisible, and if someone got too close I could phase us through them–which I did when Ashido was going to walk into us otherwise.”
“Wait was that on the second time I went through the building? There was this one time where it felt like someone dunked ice all over me and I thought I was going crazy, did I walk through you guys?!” Ashido turned to him, her eyes wide in disbelief.
Danny laughed with a nod. “Yeah, I personally haven’t experienced what its like for something to phase through you, but that’s what my friends back home told me it felt like.” He turned back to the class with a shrug. “Basically, that was it, nothing that complicated, my quirk is just kinda weird.”
“Dang, Danny, your quirk is just too strong, we were never gonna win against you.” Ashido jokingly pouted with a laugh.
“Sorry, but I did tell you we were gonna win.”
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After class was dismissed, they were meant to go back to the classroom for some more classes in heroics for the next two periods. Danny wasn’t sure what they were going to be starting with, but he was kind of interested in actually learning something. Instead of heading back to their homeroom straight away though, he instead went with Ashi— (“Call me Mina! We call you Danny! Feels only fair, right?”) Mina, Jirou and Hagakure to visit Recovery Girl and check in on Kaminari.
“Oh, hey guys!” Kaminari greeted them with a smile after a long moment of processing their entrance. “I was just about to come back to class.”
“You okay now?” Danny asked, still noting that Kaminari seemed just a little bit spacey still but more cognizant of his surroundings. “What exactly was that?”
Kaminari laughed nervously as Recovery Girl shooed them out so they wouldn’t wake Midoriya. As they escorted Kaminari back to the changing rooms, he explained in a way that made it clear he was uncomfortable and trying to brush his own feelings off.
“Haha yeah, my quirk, uhhh, when I use it too much it sort of… short circuits my brain? Like, I’m usually fine, electricity doesn’t hurt me and neither does my quirk but it does make me go stupid when I use it. But it’s fine, each time I go past my limit, that limit goes higher right?”
Danny pursed his lips, and hummed quietly in a manner that voiced his disagreement. Now, growing up Danny had never had that love of inventing that his parents had. He grew up around their stuff and he sometimes would come down to the basement and they’d teach him how some of their more basic inventions worked. They also taught him about how electric currents worked when he’d wanted to know how their electric powered stuff that was more common functioned versus their ecto-powered stuff that became the majority after the portal was turned on.
So although his knowledge of electricity wasn’t particularly high level nor anything more than a high schooler would understand, it did mean that he paid attention to it more than most people did. Especially considering the fact he tried his hardest to make sure that electric things that he used were safe, since he tried as hard as he could to stay away from being shocked.
He wasn’t exactly sure how to voice his disagreement to Kaminari in a way that didn’t make a big deal out of something he was almost desperately trying to pass off as a funny idiosyncrasy of his. So instead he chose to say nothing and brush up on it when he got home. He also still needed to figure out a way to maybe ask Kaminari to be careful around him, because one thing that Danny did not want was lose himself for a moment and accidentally hurt Kaminari trying to get away from the memory of his death.
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…It was already the second day and Danny knew that Midoriya and Bakugou would be at the centre of class drama, he could feel it in his bones. Midoriya putting off intense main character vibes with Bakugou chomping at the bit to be his rival.
It was most definitely a unique kind of situation for Danny, considering he was usually in the middle of class drama. Mostly as the punching bag to the A-Listers or because of his parents doing something embarrassing, but the feeling remained. Here he was a background character to the drama and he was truly living for it.
He hadn’t intentionally been watching Bakugou and Midoriya’s confrontation after school, but he had been waiting for Shinsou to meet up with him so they could head to the cafe. Since he’d been inside he hadn’t heard what they were talking about, but it sure was amusing to think about it. Did Danny ever have a rival?
The closest he could possibly have had was Valerie when she fought against him as the Red Huntress, but that was less a rivalry and more that he was her sworn enemy. Which. Well, Danny had a lot of sworn enemies, and not many of them were mutual enemy…ship. Vlad was one of them, but he was also over three times his age and wanted to marry his mom, so that would never come close to rivalry.
Most of his enemies were either much older than him, or had been dead for decades longer than him. Some hadn’t been born at all, but Danny was never all that clear when ghosts were Dead, Deathless or Neverborns. It wasn’t always easy to tell, and it wasn’t like there were many ghosts who were eager to tell him ghost stuff. Clockwork might, but he was also annoyingly hard to find unless he felt it was necessary to the timeline.
Regardless, good for them he guessed. He’d heard that having rivalries always pushed people to do better, so if that worked for them then so be it. Danny himself had way too much on his hands to even think about having any kind of rivalry if anyone even wanted one, he’d much rather just have friends.
It didn’t take much longer for Shinsou to find him and they headed towards the cafe together. It likely wasn’t going to be a routine for them to walk together, considering that Danny had an extra class in his schedule that Shinsou didn’t, but it was nice that he stuck around to wait. On the way, Shinsou told him how his day went, knowing that it wouldn’t be as exciting as Danny’s.
When they got there, Danny told him about his own day in comparison, Shinsou was unsurprised to find out that All Might wasn’t all that great a teacher but he did congratulate Danny on “showing the other hero kids who’s best”. Which, well, that was starting to make it sound like Shinsou was starting to dislike those hero course with Danny being the sole exception, which wouldn’t stand.
“We should have lunch with my friends from 1-A tomorrow.” Danny said, fending off a rather affectionate cat from trying to lay down on his head.
Shinsou scowled. “No thanks.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Look, they’re great. You’re still going to be my closest friend, but I think you’d change your tune if you hung out with them.” He paused for a moment. “Either that or you’ll have fun making direct fun of some of them and bonding with Jirou over snarky comments. Your snark with hers? A fatal combination that I want to see even if I will inevitably be a victim of it.”
Shinsou’s mouth involuntarily twitched in a smirk before he suppressed it under a scowl. Ha. Too late, Danny saw it. Sensing weakness, Danny continued.
“Look, just let them sit with us, you don’t have to talk to them. If anything, me, Mina, Hagakure and Kaminari will be doing all the talking, it’s how it is when we chat in class. Jirou only talks when either me, Mina or Kaminari say something stupid and it’s always hilarious. I can almost guarantee that if you’re grumpy they wouldn’t hold it against you. They’re not the boastful ‘holier than thou’ sort of people.”
Shinsou sighed in a way that gave away how defeated he was by the idea. “Fine, one lunch. Not tomorrow, I need more time to prepare, but if we don’t like each other I won’t do it again. You can eat lunch with them, but I won’t.”
Danny fist pumped, almost hitting a cat snuggled up to his side. “Awesome, we all gonna be friends in no time.”
Shinsou rolled his eyes at Danny’s optimism.
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When Aizawa announced they’d be picking class representatives, Danny was surprised that everyone clamoured for the position. It wasn’t completely foreign an idea that everyone would want it, back home it was less a position of responsibility and more for popularity considering the staff never really listened to the student council. He wasn’t sure the differences between American and Japanese student representatives, but he figured that it had more responsibility than just popularity.
So when Iida wrangled them all into a vote, Danny voted for Yaoyorozu. She seemed to be generally a responsible person, and would likely do a good job. In the end, the result ended up being a tie between her and Midoriya, to which Midoriya insisted that Yaoyorozu be president, seemingly unsure about his own position.
Kaminari and Mina continued to whine about the result up until lunch when it occurred to them to ask who everyone voted for. Apparently Danny was the only one who didn’t vote for himself.
“I mean.” Danny shrugged, when all but Jirou were shocked. “Back in America, or at least back at my old high school, the title of class president was less about actual work and more of a popularity contest. In Japan, I figured that it had a lot more responsibility so I voted for the person who seemed the most responsible and capable and that ended up being Yaoyorozu. I think she’d do a good job.”
Mina and Kaminari seemed to consider that for a moment before Mina sighed. “Yeah, Yaomomo seems to really responsible. I guess it would have a lot of work associated with it…”
Jirou seemed interested though in something Danny said. “I mean, you’re not wrong that class reps have a lot of responsibility, but if it doesn’t in America then what’s it for?”
Danny made a face. “I’m pretty sure that it’s meant to have a bunch of responsibilities, like voicing student concerns to teachers, but the staff at my high school were kind of dismissive of student concerns, so people just stopped bothering after a while. However, there would sometimes be events were class reps got excused for classes, so it became a popularity thing. Go to the meeting for an hour or so, talk with your friends and skip class with teacher permission.”
“Yikes, fair enough I guess.” Jirou made a sympathetic face.
“Sounds like—”
Danny never got to know what Hagakure was going to say considering the next minute there was an almost ear piercing alarm that caused Jirou to cry out and cover her ears and ear jacks, and Danny to jump to attention.
With the cafeteria suddenly thrown into panic, Danny almost ducked away to transform when he remembered himself. Right. Not a ghost attack, from what others were saying it was an attack of some kind. Danny tried to remember what the student handbook had said about various alarms, he remembered there were a bunch that he thought was odd they had a procedure for but acknowledged that it was useful.
Intruder alarm, that meant that students had to evacuate to safe points, right? He stood up to look for staff that were meant to calm and guide students but didn’t see any. That was… weird. He was vaguely aware of his friends starting to panic, and going to join the flow of the students but Danny pulled them back.
The way that the traffic was flowing, they were just going to end up clogging the hallway leading to a big crush of people. He could maybe use his powers to pull his friends through the crowd and stop them from getting hurt but it would make everyone uncomfortable and he wasn’t sure he could hold his concentration for that long, especially if he needed to make them invisible to prevent more panic.
“Stay out of the crowd!” Danny told them, having to raise his voice to make sure they heard. “I’m going to go find a teacher!” He said, floating slightly and when he got acknowledgement from them he flew off towards where he remembered the staff room being.
He remembered memorising the UA map, and being slightly confused by the fact there was more than one staff room, but decided that ultimately it made sense. Considering the size of the school and that there had to be more staff members that did other jobs than to teach, there would have to be a separate place for them to congregate that didn’t have desks for workspaces.
Figuring that the teachers were the more public heroes that would likely be dealing with the situation, he made his way to the other staff room rather than the teacher’s lounge. It wasn’t all that far from the cafeteria, so Danny made it there pretty quickly considering he’d been flying fast. It took a long moment for someone to answer the door and for Danny to explain the issue in the cafeteria.
The man with a more animalistic face thanked him for informing them of the situation and started to talk into a walkie-talkie. After a quick back and forth, the man told Danny that other faculty members will be there to calm the situation soon. He also explained what was actually going on.
Apparently, the media had managed to get past the gates and had stormed in, triggering the alarm. The staff had been mostly focusing on trying to make sure that nowhere else had been breached apparently someone had messed up and overlooked the importance of controlling the students.
Danny felt better now that he knew it wasn’t a real threat, but now that he knew he was also kind of annoyed about how the situation in the cafeteria happened at all. Even the older students had been panicking, he’d forgive some of the gen ed students, but there had to have been some hero course students in there in their third year. Those were considered almost pros, right?
It certainly gave him something to think about as he headed back to the cafeteria at a slower pace.
In the end, apparently, the situation in the cafeteria was calmed by Iida, which made it easier for the faculty to corral the crowd back to their seats, and assure them that heroes were dealing with the issue. Still. It made Danny uneasy, and to calm his nerves he searched for Shinsou in the crowd then pulled him over to his friend's table.
“Look, you probably almost got crushed by the students, think of this as calming my nerves while I finish my lunch.”
Shinsou grumbled the entire way, but after a brief introduction he predictably, was grumpy and said very little. He did raise an eyebrow in surprise when Jirou snarked at Kaminari, to which the boy mimed being wounded.
Though the lunch didn’t go exactly as planned, he had managed to introduce his two friend groups. By the time that they were heading home, Shinsou admitted that they weren’t that bad, which may as well be an endorsement to keep including him.
Danny rode the high of successfully introducing his friends that he didn’t give the commotion during lunch another thought. Nor did he feel anything other than mild excitement when the class got told they had a field trip coming up.