Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Thing was, Danny was tired. But who could blame him for his shot reaction time?

He was a fifteen year old boy who had the pressures of doing well in high school because he came from a family of geniuses, who just so happened to be a half ghost who spent a lot of his free time (and not-free time) fighting ghosts that came out of the portal to hell in his parents’ basement lab. 

He was the sole protector of the town who could go toe-to-toe with some of the heaviest hitting ghosts in the zone, so he couldn’t just spread out the ghost fighting to Sam and Tucker. Sure they helped (a lot), but ultimately it was up to Danny to keep the ghosts out of Amity Park. 

So sometimes, he got lazy. He didn’t really pay attention to his surroundings, relying on memory to trek the familiar walk home from school to home. He’d lived in the same town his whole life, and he’d walked almost the same route home for the last five years. He relied heavily on his ghost sense to keep an eye out for an attack. 

And that’s why the hand that pulled him to one side got him so easily. 

“Wh—!” he exclaimed, trying to get his balance or whip his head around to look at who’d grabbed him but he didn’t see much other than a hoodie sleeve pulling him through some fuschia coloured portal. Okay, not green, so it wasn’t a ghost thing that had tricked his senses.

Before he could really think of anything else, something…strange washed over him. It felt like something tingled through all the atoms in his body, they twisted sharply only for a second in a way that didn’t hurt but felt distinctly uncomfortable. Like being on a rollercoaster that just had crested the highest point and was rocketing towards the ground. 

The sensation didn’t last long until he felt his legs give out and he fell to the floor, the hand on his backpack helping to slow his fall to the ground slightly. He felt dizzy, with some kind of…ringing in his ears. His eyes were shut tightly to fight off the nausea but he had to fight to try and discern the noises around him. 

There was a hum of voices that it took him a little while to decode, finally he managed to understand what they were saying. 

“—ure this is the person we’re looking for?” A man asked, his voice wasn’t anything special but the way he spoke had an air of authority in it. Like he was used to being one of the most important people in the room. 

“Yup, this is the human with ghost powers, specifically not a quirk but powers that can be recreated.” A feminine voice replied from much closer to him, likely the person who had pulled him through the portal. 

“Excellent.” The man replied before humming. “Is he conscious?” 

There was a hand on his backpack moved to his shoulder and shook him lightly. “Hey kid, this won’t take long. You can throw up in a minute if that’s still your problem.” 

It wasn’t really. Danny had fought through worse, which is why he made the decision to shake off the hand and stumble to his feet, opening his eyes and looking around. 

It shouldn’t have been a surprise to see that he was in some kind of dingy warehouse that was suspiciously kitted out with a bunch of temporary lab equipment. He recognised some of the things that his Mom would fantasise about owning so they could do lab stuff while they went on a family camping trip. 

The lighting wasn’t all that good, but it was lit up enough to take note of the…frankly bizarre appearance of some of those he was in the company of. There wasn’t really a way for Danny to describe just how weird the people were. They had bumps and odd angles where regular people didn’t, in ways that implied that their skeletal structure was different in ways that weren’t an anomaly. 

In the small group in front of him, there was a man sat in a chair studying him closely, presumably the voice he heard before from the way that the other people were positioned around him. He was the most normal looking of the bunch, but even then, he had sharp teeth and orange eyes with slitted pupils. 

Danny turned around and looked at the person who brought him here, somewhat relieved to see she at least looked normal. Her fuschia hair was incredibly vibrant to the point it was either freshly dyed or…some other explanation. She seemed to be mid twenties at least, somewhat punk looking in her fashion and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. 

“What the hell?” Danny blurted, backing up from the woman and but not going too far when he noticed there were more weird people behind him. “Why am I here?” 

His mind was racing, trying to figure it out. His core was humming with an intensity that he wasn’t sure what to do about, she’d mentioned ghosts. She mentioned powers. 

She knew. 

Somehow, she knew, and his ghost sense was so deathly silent, he knew that other ghosts wasn’t involved in this at all. Even around the Guys in White, his sense would flare up slightly due to the ectoplasm in their weapons. 

The woman held up her hands. “Relax kid, we’re not going to hurt you, you just need to tell us how you got your power, how to recreate it and we’ll take you back to your original universe.” 

Danny blinked. “Universe?” 

“Yep, welcome to an alternate universe from your own, super powers are the norm, and we’re about two hundred years ahead of where your universe is at. Because of this, whatever you tell us, won’t effect your world. As simple as opening a door for a stranger.”

Danny’s mind was racing faster than he could remember. He’d vaguely been aware of alternate universes. It was one of the few things that he’d learnt about the Ghost Zone. The hundreds of doors that lead to unknown places, with no way to discern if a door would lead you to a ghost’s lair or if it’d lead you back in time, or to another planet. He’d thought the gateway to parallel universes was a trick one of the ghosts was playing on him to try and get him lost in the doors. 

Because he didn’t want to possibly get lost forever, he’d given the doors a very wide berth, and so he while he knew that alternate universe could have existed he didn’t want to risk getting trapped to test it. But here he was. In an alternate universe. Completely alone. 

Fuck. 

“What the fuck, no? Just take me back home!” Danny demanded, trying to work out if this was the biggest most elaborate prank he’d been in, set up by complete strangers, or if this was actually happening. “You’re messing with me.”

“Just tell the boss what he wants to know, and we promise kid, nothing’ll happen to you.” One of the weirder looking guys said, his body covered with tan fur, the large ears on his head twitching. And— Oh. He has a tail. Right. 

Please just be a really expensive furry suit. Please just be a really expensive furry suit. Please just be a really expensive furry suit. 

“How do we know this is really what we’re looking for?” The boss spoke again, directing his question to the woman. “After all, you didn’t allow any of my men to accompany you on the retrieval.”

The woman turned back to him. “I didn’t bring any of your guys because it’s not easy bringing someone there and back, and I can only take one person at a time. It was either, I leave your guy in that world, or I leave the kid on his own while I take the guy back. I already did my scouting before, and your guys would have been spotted in an instant. I blend in.”

“He looks like a normal teenager to me, not the ghost fighter I was promised.” 

Danny wanted to run, he wanted to get away from this situation, because for all his bravado and confidence in fighting, this was so far from what he could handle on his own. He stood there awkwardly, making no move to do anything as he just listened. He wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or not that none of the guys seemed to have any visible weapons. 

“I did my research, alias Danny Phantom. Used to be an ordinary kid until a year ago when he was in some kind of accident, now he’s half ghost with a bevy of powers, intangibility, flight, ecto blasts, invisibility, duplication I think? Whatever, it’s like the kid has the swiss army knife of quirks. Exactly what you’re looking for.”

His dread was building the more she spoke. How the hell did she get that kind of information? Sure there wasn’t much that Danny could keep secret from the ghosts in the Ghost Zone, considering they knew where he lived and could interrupt his day whenever they felt like it. But that didn’t mean that they had loose lips. Sure Amity didn’t pay close attention when they called him a halfa, or didn’t really listen to the things ghosts would say. But there was no way that they’d be interested in telling those secrets because what would they gain?

In either case, she clearly knew too much for this to be an elaborate unrelated prank. 

“So…‘Danny Phantom’,” the boss started in a sly voice, directly addressing Danny. “Tell us. How did you get your powers? You’ll be brought back to your universe with only a slight delay.”

“Why do you want to know that?” Danny rebutted. His mind whirring. Could be threaten them to let him go? He turned to the woman. “If you know all that, then you know how powerful I am. You’ll regret messing with me, if you don’t take me back right now.”

“She’ll take you back when I authorise it.” The boss interjected, standing up now. “And I want to strengthen those underneath me, our foes are powerful. But with your help, we could defeat them. We wouldn’t have to hide who we are, fight back against the system that oppresses us.” 

The thing was that Danny was young but he wasn’t gullible. There was no way to ensure that these guys would take the knowledge he could possibly give them and use it for good. He wasn’t even all that sure how to exactly recreate the accident! …Maybe. 

Okay he could probably guess, but he didn’t have the schematics for the portal and there no way that he’d be able to give them it even if he wanted to. The schematics had been a casualty of one of his earliest ghost fights, unsalvageable, his parents might have a copy somewhere on their many backup hard drives. But they were scattered over the house, it would take weeks to dig up every single one and then another few trying to locate the file on them. 

“No, for all I know, you guys are criminals, after all you did just kidnap me. I’m not gonna give you that information so you can hurt people.” Danny refused jutting his chin, he let the wash of transformation flow over him, taking in how some people flinched at the whoosh and others prepared themselves for a fight. He brought up his fists and let them glow green. “Take me back, and leave me alone or you’re going to see exactly what I can do.”

The boss hummed. Before he reached out his hand and pulled it into a quick fist. He felt a foreign feeling wash over him, trying to grip onto something but unable to find purchase. He watched the man pull back slightly with confusion, whatever it was that he tried to do had clearly failed. With that, his face scrunched up before he snarled. 

“Kill her, and capture him.”

“What?!” The woman squawked. Clearly taken off guard at the order, her hand dipping into her pocket and pulling out a knife. Danny didn’t take much notice, because as soon as the order was made, the goons around them started to charge. 

He threw weak ectoblasts at them, watching them recoil when they were hit, a couple of the more agile goons managed to dodge, and one that got hit kept coming so he shot more blasts their way. There was one that hadn’t gotten hit and managed to get in close, this one was large and hulking. One of his arms thick with muscle tried to punch him in the gut, but Danny turned intangible, going to punch him with his charged up hand. 

Some of the goons were getting up again, he heard a commotion coming from further down the warehouse they were in - reinforcements. The woman who’d brought him there was holding her own pretty well with a small knife, until he saw the boss reach an arm out in her direction and do the same thing he tried to do on Danny. She yelled in pain, which let her opponent punch her hard in the forearm which made her drop her knife. 

Danny made a decision.

He flew over to the woman, scooping her up by grabbing under her arms and flew them both out of the warehouse. He made sure he was invisible as to lose them, but Danny knew that when he flew high he was pretty dang fast, being able to fly through the entirety of Amity in only five minutes. 

The woman was yelling, presumably in fear because she likely didn’t know what was going on. A vindictive part of Danny couldn’t help but think ‘Karma’ but a kinder side decided that they were probably far enough away to put her down and talk. 

He landed on the top of a tall building, putting her down on her feet although shock made her legs fall out from under her. 

“Alright you better give me answers, I just saved your life back there.” Danny demanded, folding his arms as he stared down at her. There wasn’t all that much light, the streetlights were well below and the light pollution levels weren’t that bad, but Danny’s own cold bright glow was enough to see her. 

“Look I didn’t mean for this to happen!” The woman threw her hands up, standing on shaky legs, he noticed she was taller than him by a few inches. “You were just meant to tell the guy what he wanted to know, and be on your way! For all you knew this was a dream, and the consequences wouldn’t matter. How was I supposed to know you’d turn him down?” 

Danny raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “If you did that research on me, you would have known that I don’t let innocent people get hurt. That’s pretty much my whole schtick. Of course, I wouldn’t help guys who hurt people no matter if they were in my universe or not!” 

“Urgh this is what I get for dealing with villains. Should have just moved universes for a while until he lost interest in me, not like I’m stuck here.” The woman grumbled to herself, wincing as she tried to assess the damage in her arm. 

“Look — just take me back and we can forget about all this!” Danny ordered, fighting the urge to stomp his foot in frustration. He just wanted to go and scream into his pillow for the next five minutes before passing out for the next thirty six hours. 

“Fine! Fine!” She yelled before she waved her unhurt arm in a casual practised movement before she stopped. She looked at where she’d waved her arm, before she blinked. She waved her arm again, with nothing happening. 

“What are you waiting for? Is this some weird dance?” 

“No! I’m trying— it’s not working. Why isn’t it working?” She asked to herself, moving her injured arm in the same way, with no results. She was visibly starting to be more distressed and less vaguely annoyed. “What the fuck?” 

There was a pit opening up in Danny’s stomach the longer it became clear that whatever she was doing wasn’t working. There was something about her distress, the way she tried to hide it under her calm facade, her body starting to shake and her jaw setting. 

Something occurred to her, she pulled her shirt to one side and showed a mark in the shape of a lock above where her heart would be. She did the motion again, and the lock glowed slightly. She stumbled back a step.

“I— I can’t.” She said weakly, turning to look at Danny with a manic look in her eye. “I can’t take you back. He…did something to my quirk.” 

“So I’m—” Danny started, before swallowing. “I’m stuck here.” 

Chapter Text

I’m gonna miss the algebra test tomorrow. Danny faintly thought. 

“I’m…” He said again, stepping back slightly. “I’m stuck here. In an alternate universe. Alone.”

“Kid, I—” She started, before she sighed. “Look, I can. I can go get some answers why I can’t use my quirk, I got you trapped here, I’m gonna get you home. For now, let’s get back to my apartment. You can crash for the night. Day. Whatever.”

Danny heard her, he just wasn’t sure what to say. His brain felt like an old record that got stuck and started to repeat the same thing over again. He was stuck. He was vaguely aware of going to pinch himself to make sure that he wasn’t dreaming, because it didn’t exactly feel real. But the wind on his face, the sound of traffic below, the texture of the roof scraping against the soles of his boots. He’d never had proper senses in dreams, so this was very likely real. 

He noticed that the sky was starting to brighten, and wondered what time zone he was in. The woman said they were a few hundred years in the future, did the time of day line up too or was that like Australia time? 

“Kid?” She called. 

Danny looked up at her. “Why?” 

“What?” 

“Why’d you grab me? Was it money? Power? What?”

She sighed. “Look, I don’t really have much use for money. I hop universes on a daily basis, if I need money I just take something unimportant from a different universe and sell it here, pays rent. If I need money in another universe I do the same thing in reverse, you get me? And I don’t really need power, I just go wherever I fancy, why would I need power? They came to me and told me to help them. They didn’t outright threaten me, but they made it clear that they could track me down in this universe. I was born here, didn’t want to avoid this place, so I just did what they wanted me to. Didn’t think it would be that hard to just give them what they wanted. Obviously I was wrong.”

Okay that was a reasonable answer, Danny had to admit. The things she implied though made it feel like she wasn’t pinned down like everyone else, she had free range, could go wherever or whenever she wanted. She kind of reminded Danny of Clockwork in that way. Danny wasn’t sure what he’d do in that situation himself, so maybe getting mad at her for doing something she was threatened into doing wasn’t going to help. 

“Alright.” Danny said, letting his transformation go. “Take me back to your place, but I swear if you put me in danger again…”

“I won’t! I know it’s hard to trust me, but you gotta. You can’t keep your guard up all the time, I have no reason to hurt you, I’m not a villain.” 

“Yeah that’s another thing, ‘villain’? That’s an actual title here? Not just, some bad guys in media? And what the heck are quirks?” Danny questioned, following her down the somewhat dubious looking fire escape. 

“I’ll give you the run down as we go, but the basics is that two hundred ish years ago super powers started to appear in children being born. First one was a glowing baby, we call the powers quirks. Society adapted, wars happened, and eventually we get to now where people started to fight superpowered criminals with superpowered law enforcement. Villains are people who use their quirks to break the law, and Heroes are those licensed by the government to fight criminals with their quirks.”

The woman continued to tell Danny the basics of the world, there were differences that made Danny’s head want to spin. There was even a part of Danny that was excited, because he was one of two people in his universe that had superpowers, he couldn’t exactly go to Vlad and chat about how awesome their powers were. He could just imagine it.

“I used my powers to prank Dash today, he tripped in the cafeteria and landed face first into his spaghetti.” 

“Nice one, Daniel. I used my powers the other day to overshadow a political rival and ruin his twenty year marriage, devastating him on an emotional level and making him withdraw to focus on his personal life.”

Yeah, no. 

The woman also told him a bit more about her own power, saying that she’d seen at least a hundred different universes, and started to tell him the specifics of it until—

“Wait, we’re in Japan? How come everyone’s speaking English?” 

“Simple answer: we’re not. You’re actually speaking Japanese right now, your brain is just translating it into a language you understand how it works. If you concentrate though, you can speak actual English, but you have to work at it to understand exactly what you’re saying in Japanese. It depends where I first touch down in the universe that you default start to speak. If I brought you to this universe’s Spain, then you’d be speaking Spanish. When I first went to your world I landed in France, so when I go there my speaking defaults to French even if I’m in America.”

She pursed her lips. “I’m hoping that I’ll be able to figure this out and get you back soon. I haven’t left anything in your universe, so hopefully I can drop you back off at a time that’s somewhat close to when I picked you up. See if I leave something from this universe in another, it…locks down? Aligns? The timelines, so that if that item is gone from this universe for like a year, then a year would have passed in the other universe when I go back. If I don’t leave anything, I can choose which part in time to go to with rough accuracy. I can’t do that if there’s something that’s been left there at any point in time.”

Okay, at least there was that, Danny gave her. With any luck, she’d figure it out in the next few days and get him back home within the hour that he was taken. No one would even know that he got kidnapped to an alternate universe! 

“Here we are.” She said, motioning up to an apartment block. “My place is up here, it’s like five am, I only have one bedroom so you can either have the couch or my room. The bed is kinda shit though, the couch is comfier.”

On one hand, if he took the bedroom, he wouldn’t have to be around her for longer than he had to, but on the other he’d feel really weird being in a stranger’s bedroom. They walked up the stairs until they came to a stop at a door. The woman went about unlocking the door and Danny looked at the plate on the side of it. 

It was obviously in…kanji? It was something that Danny knew he wouldn’t be able to read if he was in his home universe but somehow he knew that it said “Watanabe”. It then occurred to Danny that he did not know this woman’s name. 

“Uh, what’s your name? You didn’t say.” He asked, as she unlocked the door and flicked the light on. 

“Oh! I didn’t did I, kid? The name’s Watanabe Kirika, surname first. You can call me Kirika though. You cool with me calling you Danny or do you want me to call you something else?” 

“You mean you’ll stop calling me kid? You’ve used my name only twice now, and kid about sixty times instead.” 

She laughed. “Yeah fair enough, kid. Okay, decision time, couch or bedroom? You need to choose so that I can take the other and do some research.” 

Danny took the moment to look around. The place wasn’t the cleanest place, not that it was dirty, just things were left out and not put in the right place. Knick knacks were scattered throughout and rested in odd places, there was seemingly no organisation, and the only clear area was surprisingly the kitchen. Danny wasn’t all that familiar with Japanese architecture, but he did know that open plan apartments weren’t all that common. 

From where he stood, the couch did look comfortable, and honestly he didn’t want to trap himself in a room with only one exit. He could stay out here and know what was going on. 

“Couch.” He said, turning to move the stuff that was on it onto the floor, not particularly caring about being polite. Kirika had kidnapped him, she could deal with a little bit of a messy floor. 

“Alright kid, blanket’s now on the floor in that pile, steal food if you need and give me a shout if you want to know anything else. Bathroom is the door on the right, my room is the door on the left.” Kirika told him before leaving him in the room. 

Danny wanted to keep freaking out. He couldn’t help it, he was trapped in an unfamiliar world. Honestly it felt like that time that his parents had left him behind at the park one time for a few hours, accidentally. They’d thought he was asleep on the backseat with Jazz when they’d left, it wasn’t until hours later at dinner did they realise. He was seven then, so it wasn’t super traumatising, but the memories had definitely stuck. 

Except now it was even worse because he knew that his parents wouldn’t come racing down the street breaking three traffic laws and almost running over the neighbour to come and pick him up when they realised. At the moment, he had no way home. No one knew where he was, he’d have just disappeared into smoke. 

But Danny was exhausted. 

His body was so tired. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a solid period of sleep without interruption. He was always fighting ghosts, burning so many calories, ghosts showing up in the night, doing homework for hours on end so that he wouldn’t have to repeat the grade. Just last night he’d been up until four chasing a ghost around Amity, then cramming for the Algebra test, because he was so critically in need of a better grade in that class otherwise he’d flunk. 

So after digging up the blanket from the pile, he fell back on the couch, pulled the blanket over his face and passed out almost immediately.

.

.

.

When he woke up, he could almost convince himself that the previous night’s events had all been a dream. 

Almost. 

“…In todays news, rumours have been circulating about All Might’s return to Japan, after being overseas in the states for many months, the public have stated their concern about the Number One Hero’s disappearance. Though we have a press statement from The Might Hero Agency, informing us of a convert investigation, appearances have been few and far between…”

Danny woke up to see a television playing what looked like the news. One of the presenters had a horn on the side of his head. By his feet resting her back against the couch while sat on the floor was Kirika. From the angle, Danny couldn’t see what she was doing, but she was scrolling through her phone.

“Did you find anything out?” Danny asked, making Kirika jump out of her skin. 

“Jeez kid, nearly scared me to death.” She sighed out, putting a hand over her heart before looking down at it and frowning. “Yeah, I did. It’s…not exactly good news.” 

He expected his stomach to plummet at that, but it didn’t. He was just…sort of numb. “Oh.” He said simply. “What is it?” 

She sighed again, tapping at her phone until she found what she was looking for and turned the phone to show him. It was a mugshot of the boss guy from yesterday. “The guy who got me to take you, his villain name is Locksley. He can ‘lock away’ someone’s quirk, disabling it until he lifts the lock. He uses it to blackmail people into paying him money, or do favours for him. You remember that villain ranking system I mentioned? He skirts the line of the B and A ranks. He’s tough and pretty illusive, the heroes only caught him once and he got out within half a day.” 

“Is there any way to lift the locks besides from him doing it?” Danny asked, still trying to get his head around the mechanics of quirks, it wasn’t quite as unrestricted as his concept of superpowers from what he could gather. 

“Not that anyone knows, some of my contacts guess that if you kill him it might release the locks but then it could also permanently lock them away forever so no one wants to take the risk. I’m guessing that his plan was to use his quirk on you so you couldn’t fight back and make you tell him what he wanted.”

“…But he couldn’t use it on me because my powers aren’t a quirk.” 

“Exactly. Which is why he took a different approach. I can get like, zero information about his motivations for you though. When I talked to him, he was just wanting to be stronger, my guess is that he’d want to be a big enough threat to the heroes that they leave him alone. So because I don’t know his motivations, I can’t tell you how much effort he’ll put into tracking you down. He might decide you’re more trouble than your worth and give up, he might be desperate for what you can give him. But he might just be fascinated by you. He seemed to be very interested in ghosts? I guess? He was specific about what he wanted at least.”

“He knows where you live.” Danny said. “Are we safe here?” 

“Nope, not really. I’ve stayed up the whole time though, have a gun I was gonna use to scare him, but I’ve also got another apartment in a different city I was gonna move to. I already did some packing,” she waved to the room that now that Danny was looking was actually surprisingly emptier with boxes stacked by the door. “I was waiting for you to wake up.”

“Why?” 

Danny couldn’t really think. He was a do-er. If there was a problem, he didn’t passively wait until a solution fell into his lap, he went out and fixed it. Or he’d go to his friends and they’d brainstorm a solution until he knew what to do. 

“Kid, I don’t know what we’re going to do but we need to figure out how to convince Locksley to unlock my quirk, so I can get you back. I’m not exactly a law abiding citizen, so going to the heroes isn’t an option even if they were at a point where they could catch him.” 

“So…your idea was that I come with you to your other apartment, and we plot to coerce this big name criminal into giving you your quirk back?” 

“Yeah pretty much, unless you have something that we can use to do it ourselves?” 

Danny paused. “I…might do. But it might be something we figure out after we leave. How long was I asleep?” 

“Six hours. You showed that you were pretty tough though so he might be trying to get some stronger or faster guys, or something to get an edge on you. He’s not likely to strike during daytime because that’s when there’s more heroes about, so we’ve got about six more hours to be gone from here. I was gonna wake you up shortly because my other apartment is a couple hours away, so we need to be gone ideally as soon as possible.”

Danny sat up and looked around properly. There didn’t seem to be too many boxes, he wasn’t sure exactly how Kirika had managed to get so much stuff to fit neatly but she did it. He wasn’t sure how they were going to get to the other apartment, nor how they were going to get the boxes there, but they should probably get a move on. 

“Feed me then we’ll leave.” 

Kirika snorted. “Fine, are you a picky eater?”

“Just as long as it’s not grass. Or soil.”

“Okay, one mud pie coming right up.”

He gave her a very unimpressed look which made her snort. “Fine, I need to use up the eggs, so I’m making tamagoyaki, a sweet rolled omelette; or the other option is omurice, which is omelette over fried rice with tomato sauce.”

“I dunno, the sweet one?” Danny shrugged. He hadn’t had much experience with foreign food, there was a chinese takeout in Amity but he didn’t eat there very often, and the Italian restaurant got shut down because of a ghost rat problem. 

“‘Kay. Any other questions you have about this world while I’m cooking, probably be less suspicious asking here than when we’re on the train.” 

And so they talked more about the world. It was still very bizarre. He didn’t have much more questions other than quirk limitations, she likened quirks to a function of the body and told him about some of the quirk drawbacks she knew, like her neighbour growing up could produce water from his mouth but it would take moisture from body and quickly dehydrate him. 

He wanted to know more about Kirika herself, but he wasn’t quite sure if it’d piss her off. She’d been rather tolerant of his many questions, he could see it was slightly annoying explaining it all to him, but it seemed like she’d decided that she genuinely wanted to help Danny out after trapping him in this world. It was decent of her, and he didn’t want to cut that decency short by asking something he shouldn’t have. 

After they ate, Danny helped Kirika pack the last of her things. There were things that were so foreign and unfamiliar that he could only assume that these were things from other universes rather than this one or his own. But there were also a few normal things as well. By the end of the hour, they’d boxed almost all that they could and Kirika got a text as they finished up. 

“Oh right on time.” 

“What?” Danny asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“I called a favour, I’m borrowing a van to get these boxes to a storage lot so we can take a train to my other apartment. I usually would have just used my quirk to ship them back and forth, but that’s not an option until I get it back. And we’ll be safer if we use public transportation, less chance they’ll run us off the road. Help me get these into the van.” She said picking up one of the boxes and starting to leave the apartment. 

Danny picked up one of the heavier boxes before he paused a moment. Would…would it be too obvious if he used his levitation? After all, they were in the world of quirks. He wouldn’t have to make so many trips up and down the stairs, four flights of stairs just to get to the bottom floor could add up for a minimum of five trips each. 

He shrugged, the worst that could happen was that he’d drop something. From what Kirika told him, they were going to be gone from here, there wouldn’t be any harm even if someone did spot him. 

So he lifted the boxes behind him, there weren’t that many, not including the box Kirika took down and the box in his arms, there were eight floating behind him. He didn’t run into anyone until he met Kirika on one of the stairs. He saw her eyes widen as she saw the boxes he was floating, he just raised an eyebrow at her. 

“Right. Ghost powers.” She shook her head, grabbing one of the boxes he was floating and then leading Danny down again. “Try to limit your powers though, maybe don’t use more than one around other people. At a glance, it’ll be pretty recognisable.” She advised him. 

“Yeah I thought so. But if we’re not going to be coming back here, I figured there wasn’t any harm.” 

“Fair. Word of warning, be very careful about using your quirk around heroes, it’s potluck if they’re super strict about quirk usage or not. If they are, you get minimum a fine, max a mark on your record. Which considering you don’t exist…”

“Would be…a nightmare yeah okay.” Danny got the idea, he’d probably end up being interrogated and marked a villain. That would seriously hinder his plans to get home, he didn’t know the specifics of how his powers interacted with things meant to counteract certain quirks, so he couldn’t rely on just going through the walls to escape. 

They managed to put all the boxes in, drove for a short while to a storage lot. Danny had never really been in a place like it, where people rented storage sheds. It was somewhat of a surreal experience considering they were there back home he just never had any need of them. Though arguably, his parents should have used one instead of filling the garage full to bursting with equipment.

After that, they left the van in a seemingly random location and headed for the station. 

(“Why’d we leave the van there?”

“Oh, it was stolen.” 

“Wait what?”)

Danny didn’t exactly pay attention to where they were going. His grasp on geography was limited to the states of America, the cities outside of Amity Park and a few major cities. He didn’t even know if the states in this US was the same back home. It was exhausting and somewhat boring ride considering his phone was dead and presumably cut off from the internet. He complained as such to Kirika who was listening to music, she rolled her eyes, offered an earbud to him and told him to take a nap. 

He did both, listening to music sung in Japanese that he understood perfectly, and nodded off resting his head against the window. 

Chapter Text

There was an hand that slapped his arm, jerking him awake. “Hey kid, wake up we’re almost there.” 

It was still sort of surreal - the whole situation. It was slowly sinking in the more he saw of this alternate Japan, that he was actually here. The more odd looking people he saw walking around in public the more that he was realised that it wasn’t a fever dream. Even the most normal looking of people had quirks (not the superpowered kind) to them, considering Kirika told him that a lot of bright coloured hair was naturally occurring now (weird). 

Danny stretched in his seat as the train approached a station. Without much hassle, Kirika directed him out of the station and towards her spare apartment. “This one is smaller so I don’t generally tend to use it a lot, but it does have two bedrooms. I’ll have to rent another storage lot and clear out the spare room, so that’ll be yours for now. I go by Kamiya here, Kamiya Kirika. We’re gonna make a quick stop for groceries though.”

And so they went to a grocery store. It was…another genre of weird that Danny couldn’t quite get used to. There were aspects that were similar than back home, but he recognised none of the products, some had characters on them that Kirika told him were famous heroes. 

They didn’t get much, but Kirika got a few groceries that would let her cook western style meals, which Danny was grateful for. It wouldn’t be the same but it might make getting used to being here easier while they figured out a plan. 

When they got to Kirika’s apartment, he was surprised by how small it was. He’d vaguely known that Japanese homes were usually rather small, but he hadn’t expected it still. The whole of this apartment would fit at least five times into the FentonWorks. Kirika hadn’t been kidding about emptying the second bedroom because you could barely open the door. 

“Okay, what was that thing you mentioned back at the other place. You have an idea of getting us out of here?” Kirika asked as they sat on the couch, she pulled up her sleeve and redressed her wounded arm. It hadn’t been hurt that bad, a deep muscle bruise she had determined, apparently she had some good bruise cream from another universe that would help heal it in no time. 

“So you did your homework on me - I’ll want an explanation of how you got it later - and found my powers are intangibility; flight; invisibility; ectoblasts; and duplication. You’re right I can do all of those and a few other things, make ectoplasmic constructs to make a shield or weapon; use telekinesis to move stuff and let out an unearthly ghostly wail that can decimate almost anything in its path, plus a few other things I either haven’t got the hang of, or discovered yet.” 

Kirika just stared at him with wide eyes. 

“Oh and I can also take over someone’s body, possess them and control their actions.” 

She was silent for a second before she took a breath and looked at the floor. “Wow. No wonder he wanted to know how to get your powers.” 

“Yup. Which is why you can see I am very protective of the knowledge of how I got these powers in the first place. I am not unaware that someone with my powers could take down worlds.” 

Danny fought off a shudder. No. He wouldn’t. He knew what Dan was and he knew he wasn’t going to make the same mistake, no matter what, he wasn’t going to turn into him. But if he gave someone the ability to become what Dan was? No, that would be just as bad. 

“Wait, possession.” Kirika blinked. “You can control people?” 

“Okay this is where I say that it might work. Locksley couldn’t disable my powers because they weren’t a quirk, when I overshadow a ghost, I can sometimes use their powers but it’s tricky. Because I haven’t overshadowed humans with powers or quirks, I have no idea if I can use them. If I can use someone’s quirk, then it could be as easy as me overshadowing him and getting him to release your quirk. But if it turns out that I can’t , then it’d be a dead end.”

Kirika hummed, “So we’re going to need to test your limits basically. Is it painful?”

“Nope, they usually don’t remember it or feel any pain during it. They’ll be slightly confused, like blanking out for a second, but they’ll generally go back to whatever they were doing before.”

“Then in that case, test it on me. When I try to use my quirk, that lock mark whatever glows slightly, but it doesn’t when I don’t. If you overshadow me, and try it then we’ll know if you can use other people’s quirks. We could probably try it on other people if you want to make sure.” 

Danny stood up, prompting Kirika to stand up too. “You sure? I will be controlling your body against your will.” 

Kirika stood up too and shot him a look. “Kid, consider it pay back for kidnapping you. Just don’t do it to me without permission and you’ll be fine. You do this,” she started moving her hand in the familiar way, “and concentrate hard on the universe you want to go to.”  

“Okay.” Danny shrugged, transforming before zipping into Kirika before he could psyche himself out of it. She stumbled slightly as he got used to controlling the body. 

It always felt weird overshadowing someone. It felt like wearing a three layers of thick clothing, or having a dissociative episode. The body never really felt real, but he was also aware of the sensations it was picking up, like the mild ache in Kirika’s arm, or the sound of the city from the window, the smell of an unused living area. 

“Okay.” Kirika’s voice sounded, as Danny flexed her uninjured arm and repeated the motion she used. He looked down at the mark and tried again. With a deep sigh, he slipped out of Kirika. 

He saw her blink, shake her head and look at where Danny had dropped back on the couch with a dejected expression. “Didn’t work?”

“Nope. Not sure if it was because the lock, or because of the limitation of overshadowing. I think it might be the limitation though, it might be easier to test it out with other quirks though. What was it you said? The different quirk types?”

“Emitter, transformation and mutant. My quirk is an emitter type, I can emit things, and it has minimal effect on my body. Transformation is where the quirk temporarily transforms the user, either by will or an outside trigger. Mutant type is where the quirk gives the holder permanent changes to their body, like an extra tail or the appearance of a dog.” 

“Right, because overshadowing is all to do with controlling the body I usually can’t control people to do things that I can’t do myself. Like for example, I can’t play the guitar, even if I overshadow someone who can, I don’t have that knowledge to make them do that. I think it’s the same for emitter type quirks, it might be the same with transformation too. Mutant types are likely the type I might be able to use but I’m not all that sure about that.” 

Kirika sighed. “And that means that even if you can control quirks, you wouldn’t be able to use emitter quirks, which means you wouldn’t be able to use Locksley’s quirk in the first place.”

“Exactly.” Danny sighed. “Which means we can’t use my powers to force him to release your quirk. I might be the exception of his quirk, but he’s also the exception of my powers. We’ll have to find another way to force him to reverse it.” 

Kirika sighed and laid back. 

“I know I said this before, but I really am sorry, ki— Danny. Not just because I lost my quirk. I’m so used to not being pinned down, I forget that consequences for people are usually an actual thing. Morals are more like guidelines to me.”

Danny looked at her, seeing the remorse on her face. At this point, he’d mostly forgiven her, sure he was a little bit bitter still, but that was primarily directed at Locksley. Yes, it was scary that he was trapped here and he didn’t even know if anyone back home knew he was gone, or if they were going out their minds with worry. It was scary that he wasn’t familiar with anything around here, he was going to have to adapt until they force Locksley to give Kirika’s quirk back. 

But Danny could adapt. He was good at it! Sort of. After all, he’d adapted to turning into a halfa, using his powers felt so natural to him now. And if he was here for a while, he could use his powers freely! Without having to worry about possibly being dissected, which would be nice. 

“I forgive you.” He said. “I’m going to be here for a while aren’t I?” 

“Yeah.” Kirika winced. “Oh god, I’m going to have to get a job, aren’t I?” 

Danny laughed. 

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After a long day of transporting boxes of Kirika’s stuff to a closer storage lot (without stealing transportation), they managed to empty out and clean the room that would be Danny’s temporarily. It was tiny. It was probably smaller than the bathroom in Danny’s house, maybe eight or nine square metres. There was a bed and a set of drawers, but other than that there wasn’t any other furniture. 

“I have enough money to get you a few things while you’re here, a new phone, a bunch of clothes and maybe a piece of furniture, but I can’t spend too much. If you see something I have, ask me if you can borrow it and I’ll tell you if you can. I’ll set up another user on my laptop, so you can use that when I’m not.” She’d said before retreating to her room to start up the job searching. 

Thankfully, she left him alone with the TV and a notebook so he could at the very least try and make more sense of the world outside of just what Kirika told him. He wrote out a cheat sheet of some of the things she told him that he remembered. Things like quirks, how the society went, some of the laws she’d idly mentioned that she never followed. 

Danny spent most of the day going from watching the news and getting the basic gist of local and famous heroes, he watched a few documentaries, and even a movie. It was weird how…focused this universe was on their heroes. They were almost a replacement of celebrities, from what Danny could grasp there weren’t many celebrities that weren’t also heroes. Heroes tended to do a multitude of jobs, such as Present Mic being a radio host, Uwabami being a model, and a number of other heroes being teachers. 

He supposed that if the hero profession was so saturated with heroes, then they’d be better off getting side jobs to fill their time, but it was still weird how fixated the world was on Heroes vs Villains. It left somewhat of a bad taste in his mouth when he noticed that the villains seemed to be some of the more abnormal looking people, the underprivileged or mentally ill. 

Danny knew that there were similar problems back in his universe, he wasn’t as ignorant to ignore his privilege there. But there was something sour about it when it was glorified as such. 

By the time that he was starting to get hungry, Kirika emerged from her room looking like death. Danny fought the urge to say ‘mood’. “I wanna die, job searching is so soul sucking.”

“Oh I already did that, not fun.” He joked. 

She snorted. “Alright food time, can you cook?” 

“Define ‘cook’.” 

“Is the food you make edible?” 

“I can make a sandwich? If it involves heating something up other than boiling it or throwing it in the microwave, then no.” 

“Okay, I’m gonna teach you to cook while you’re here then. If you’re staying with me, I’m not going to cook all our meals, deal?” 

Danny groaned. “Okay.” 

She went to the kitchen and started to pull out ingredients for spaghetti carbonara, while they talked for their plan for the next day. They would go shopping for some things for Danny, while Kirika would apply for some more jobs in person. Danny somewhat had the feeling that he’d have to keep an eye on what they were buying, because he got the vibe that Kirika probably would likely steal some of the things they were going to get. 

(He was still bewildered by the fact that he rode in a stolen van.)

(Wait did that mean he assisted in a crime?)

When he laid down in his new bed for the night, it took him a while to fall asleep. There were so many thing he wasn’t used to, the feel of the sheets that weren’t softened by use, how Kirika’s spare t-shirt and pajama bottoms felt on him, the sound of the city outside. He wanted to brainstorm until he had a solution, but he knew that he’d just work himself up into a frenzy. 

Instead, his mind drifted back to his family and friends. He wondered what they would think about this world, the mechanics of it and the possibilities. Jazz would no doubt be fascinated by the psychology of quirks, Sam would likely be against the turning of heroism into something from which capitalism could benefit from, and Tucker would probably straight up stab someone to get a hold of technology from two hundred years in the future. 

He missed them, but he couldn’t keep musing on what they were doing or feeling right now. Danny rolled over and went to sleep, finally without any pressure of waking up for any reason in particular.

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That morning, Danny woke up and realised that it was now his third (technically second) day in this universe. He faintly heard rock music playing from elsewhere, presumably something that Kirika was playing. After he spent a few minutes absorbing the atmosphere, he kicked the sheets off and padded out to the kitchen.

Kirika was there at the table typing at her laptop, looking like she’d rather be doing anything than whatever she was doing. Danny snorted, she was probably still doing the job searching. She’d told him that she’d only ever gotten jobs when she was in her teens but hadn’t needed to since she could just sell things from other universes. 

“Please tell me you’re ready to leave soon, I can’t take another minute of this.” She whined pushing the laptop away and laying her face on the table. 

Danny rolled his eyes as he went about getting a bowl of cereal - the All Mighty-Os was supposedly very popular he hoped it tasted as sugary as it looked - as he replied to her. “I mean, let me eat, shower and change then we can go.”

It turned out that Danny had been right to keep an eye on the stuff they were getting because he caught Kirika slipping things in her bag that they hadn’t paid for more than a few times. He managed to put them back before anyone noticed, not without a glare to the girl which got one in return. At some points, she left Danny to browse while she went to talk to people about jobs, she said she had a few in the area that would give her an interview that day but she wasn’t all that excited to be doing them. 

They got Danny a phone that allowed him to download apps and use the internet if he had wifi, with a limited amount of roaming. It wasn’t a very expensive model, but it would do. They had even managed to find a phone charger that would work with his old phone, it wouldn’t be able to do anything but function as it would on aeroplane mode, but at least it would let him play his own music, take photos and reread old texts. 

By the time that they got back to the apartment, Danny had a sizeable amount of things to his name. But there had been one thing that had occurred to him as they were out. 

“We need a cover story.” 

“Huh?” She asked as they were putting Danny’s new clothes on in the wash, and he was double checking their haul to make sure Kirika hadn’t stolen more things when his back was turned. 

“Y’know, what we tell other people? I don’t exactly look related to you, and my name says I’m not from around here. We don’t want to broadcast where I’m really from and how I got here, do we?”

“Hm,” she considered. “Point. Well my cover story here is that I have a weak quirk that means I’m more adaptable to temperature, and my surname is Kamiya. I don’t really talk to anyone, but my landlord, he thinks I work from home.” 

“Yeah what is your real name, because at your old place you said it was Watanabe.” 

“Watanabe is my real name, but I have a bunch of different names I use depending on the location. I am an actual criminal remember? But you’re right, we need to figure out a cover story for you. I’d say we stick to the whole you’re from America thing, but you should definitely be related to me in some way.”

“A cousin maybe?”

“Yeah that’s pretty reasonable, you can just say that you learned Japanese from me growing up, and you’re staying here because…” 

Danny shrugged. “My parents are ghosthunters, I can’t think of a reasonable excuse for them to ship me off abroad without making them sound bad, which I don’t want to do, and I’d like to stick as close to the truth as possible with them.” 

“Fair enough. We’ll think about it, but for now just be evasive about why you’re here instead of America. But that will also lead to another question.”

“What?”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“ Oh. Yeah, I’m pretty obviously a teenager. Homeschooling wouldn’t work as an excuse would it?” 

“Not really, besides you need something to do all day if I’m going to be at work. I can get you some fake papers and enrol you in the middle school round here.” 

“Wait middle school, but I’m in high school?”

“Different school system kid, in Japan, high school is the last three years only, and I’m pretty sure that you’re in your first year, right?” 

“That’s going to be a blast. Middle school was so much fun!” He said sarcastically as he found a pocket in Kirika’s bag that he hadn’t known was there, that was filled with things that were stolen. “Aw, c’mon seriously?” He glared at her while pointing to the secret pocket. 

She smirked at him and made her way over to her laptop before typing. “Don’t see you stepping up and buying them for me. Besides, about the school thing, if we’re lucky we can figure it out before you’re there for that long. It’s December now, so we’ve got a few months before you’re expected to go to high school. I didn’t tell Locksley your surname because I didn’t bother learning it, so you should be fine using that. You’ll get called it by default though, Japanese culture thing.” 

“Oh yeah, that. I did wonder at that. My name’s Fenton, my alias is a play on it. Danny Fenton. Danny Phantom .” Danny shrugged. 

“Wow that is so ridiculous, I love it. Cool, well I guess the fake documents we’ll need for you are a US passport, and a visa. Other than that, I just need to register that you’re staying with me, then I can sort out your enrollment. Good job I also stole you some school supplies while we were out.”

Danny sputtered. “Just where did you hide them?!” 

Kirika looked Danny dead in the eye and started to empty the pockets of her cargo pants. By the time she’d finished, there was not a small pile of stationary and other miscellaneous school supplies on the table (including some A4 sized books and a calculator big enough to hurt if you hit someone with it). Danny was starting to be intimidated by her slight of hand. 

“And that, my friend, is why you put function above fashion every time you go out. Plus I pull off these pants, as well as some people pull off a tight dress.”

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The same day that Kirika managed to land a job, was the same day she enrolled Danny in school. She came home and groaned collapsing onto the couch and almost hitting him. She’d picked up both their uniforms, and told him that he’d be starting school next week, on Monday, she on the other hand would be starting tomorrow, on Friday as a waitress. 

“The hours are so bad!” She groaned, “I’m going to be in customer service! I hate interacting with people.” 

“What am I, a rock?” Danny snarked, kicking at legs. 

“Teenagers are different, I’m usually good with teenagers, I get them, it’s other people I can’t handle it. There’s a big difference between people and people in public. Customer service is another type of hell, that I curse you to have to work in at least once in your life.”

“Well I rebuke that curse to lay one on you that you can only work in customer service for the rest of your life.”

“Damn you really got me, laying nonexistent curses on me. Oh how will I go on?” She replied in a dry voice. Which Danny snorted at. “Anyways, what’ve you been doing today, kid, while I’ve been busting my ass?” 

Danny rolled his eyes and shrugged. “I’ve just been trying to learn more about this universe? I don’t want to feel or seem like an actual alien unfamiliar with the humans’ ways. I’ve mostly just been lurking on what looks like the equivalent of twitter, and chat forums which I thought were pretty much dead, but in this universe surprisingly alive.” 

He’d been mostly bored if he was honest, it was nice to start to finally have a grasp on how the society functions to the point where he’d wandered out to the shop and got a snack without feeling significantly out of place. He’d even got tripped by a guy with some kind of lemur tail quirk by accident, and it’d been like someone accidentally stepping on the back of his shoe in a crowd, easy to brush off. 

Danny wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed it, but he was actually looking forwards to finally going to school just to break up the monotony of the day. Maybe he was just going stir crazy talking only to Kirika. Or just stir crazy in general. 

They’d agreed that it would probably be best for him not to abuse his ghost powers. Kirika had said that it was slightly weird while trying to pass off his powers as a quirk, for him to use his powers in both forms, so she’d told him to either only use them while transformed or to not transform. Danny really did not like the idea of being able to only use them while transformed, so he would be working on strengthening the powers without being transformed.

His powers when in his human form were always just a tad bit harder to pull off, more tiring and required more concentration unless he’d practised at it. The only powers he’d perfected in using in human form was flying and telekinesis. When he wasn’t moving places though, the flying was really more like floating and generally felt like the most natural way to be. He’d often just float in his room when he knew his parents were busy or out, and his telekinesis was practised because it usually was the easy way to do things. 

In a way, the restriction might help him pass his powers off as a quirk, they generally seemed a lot more limited than Danny would have thought they’d be, but considering they were something people were born with it made sense. Nature wasn’t exactly be kind to those that had to evolve, what with the survival of the fittest and what not. 

“There isn’t a chance that you’ve made a breakthrough in the ‘Force Locksley to Give Me My Quirk Back’ plan?” 

Danny slumped. “No,” he grumbled. “I don’t have the same information network you have access to, and I’ve never done something like this before. All my enemies knew where I slept, and if they wanted to catch me, I’d punch them, capture them and have maybe a day of peace. I’ve never gone after them , so plotting coercion, believe it or not, is probably out of my range of abilities. At this point, I kind of want to talk to the heroes about our encounter just to give them some kind of lead and deal with him for us.” 

“But that would lead to my arrest and without my quirk I wouldn’t be able to get out, and who knows what’d happen to you, I don’t know if you’ve read up about it yet but the Hero Commission has done some shady stuff, if they found out you’re from another universe, I have no idea what they’ll want to do.”

Danny considered it. He’d read a few things about the Hero Public Safety Commission, he’d naturally distrusted it. He’d always gotten bad vibes from politicians, they usually acted more in their own interests than the publics’, and it apparently translated over to this world too. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that the government would deem him something to investigate or treat as a prisoner. He wasn’t even all that sure if he had any legal rights, considering he wasn’t technically a citizen of any country in this universe.

They were in an impossible situation. They likely only had one shot to be able to easily get to Locksley, the moment he realised what their goal would be, all his defences would be up and make it significantly harder. At the moment, they thought that they were just on the run, fleeing because they knew that getting the quirk back would be impossible. 

Danny did not half-survive death itself just to protect his friends, for him to wind up trapped in an alternate universe with no way home and resign himself to living out the rest of his days here. Even if it took him ten years, he would find his way back to them, that he would make sure of. 

“We’ll figure it out.” He said with confidence. “And Locksley won’t know what hit him.”

Chapter Text

Danny was turning into a nerd - he could feel it in his bones.

He’d conducted so much research to prepare himself for going to Japanese Middle School. Kirika had reminded him that there would be a lot of differences that wouldn’t occur to him until he was in the moment, especially because Danny’s concept of Japanese culture was incredibly limited to some samurai inspired movies and video games not actually made in Japan, so there was definitely going to be some inaccuracies. 

The little details were probably what caught him out the most; the fact that teachers were the ones that changed between classrooms; that students would put on indoor shoes when they arrived; students cleaned the school themselves instead of janitors doing it for them; there would be no cafeterias so he’d have to bring a packed lunch. 

One of the biggest things he was worried about getting used to that he wouldn’t have to dash out of class at the drop of a hat with an excuse on his tongue. The lack of ghost attacks was both a relief and something that kept him on edge. He hadn’t had a solid break from them since he died, with the longest period being a week, and even then it had been a loose week because the Box Ghost “attacked” three times. 

So. Yeah. Danny was nervous. He hadn’t been expecting to get a second first day at middle school in his life, but here he was, wearing a school uniform and flipping Kirika off as she took a teasing ‘first day at school’ photo which had her cackling. She threw him the bento she’d made and told him that he’d be expected to make some of his own lunches. 

Kirika had already walked the route with him so he knew where he was going, but if not, he’d printed out a map of it and stuck it in his hand nerdbook, where he was storing all of his ‘please don’t vivisect me i am not an alien’ research. See? Nerd. Sam was going to bully him so hard when he got back and showed her it. 

Though Danny had tried his hardest to reign in Kirika’s lawbreaking tendencies, she’d apparently managed to sweet talk her way into adding Danny’s ‘quirk’ to the national registry. It had been necessary for his fake visa to be considered valid, it had been registered to be as vague as it could legally be so that he could handwave things if it didn’t line up to his definition. 

Kirika told him that she’d registered it as ‘Phantom: gives the holder the powers of a ghost’, which was about as vague as it could be. Though to their advantage, the registry didn’t store the identities of whoever had what quirks to protect people, they used identification codes to verify that yes, this quirk has been registered. It had been an essential to cement his place in the universe, as pretty much everyone had access to the registry but could only look up anything if you had that specific ID code. Even then there was another layer of security that you could only access the details outside of its name if you high level access apparently. 

But back to the first day of school. Danny had hidden himself in the closest alley to the school, trying his hardest to calm his nerves. It was actually surprising just how nervous this made him feel, he’d rarely been all that nervous about normal things since he got his powers. All the things that made him nervous to this level had been directly related to his powers, or to his ghost hunting. 

This was just a normal first day, he didn’t even have to make a positive impression! He was just there to fit in, to make sure that people wouldn’t look too closely at him and Kirika and go investigating how suspicious they were, and that one in fact was a criminal and the other didn’t officially exist in this world. 

It wasn’t even that he was scared of being bullied or an outcast either! He’d been bullied by Dash for as long as he could remember, and it stopped being hurtful after dying. Danny’d been a bit of a loner before he befriended Tucker, but that hadn’t been very long in elementary school. 

“What are you doing?” A voice from behind him asked. 

Danny yelped and almost jumped out of his skin, he whirled round to see where it had come from to see an exhausted looking, purple haired teen wearing the same uniform as him. “Um.”

The teen in question raised his eyebrow and looked at Danny. “If you’re new, word of advice, people are going to tell you to ignore me or stay away from me. If you want to fit in, you better listen to them.” 

Danny couldn’t help but stare slightly at him in response, that…was one of the most puzzling things he’d heard. 

“You’d best get to class, we’re running late as it is.” The boy said, walking around Danny and towards the school. 

In a way, that encounter had somehow given him the courage to follow the boy in through the gate and to the entrance. He found his foot locker and put on the slippers he’d been given by the school, putting his shoes in the locker. Thankfully, Kirika had asked for a map of the school for Danny, so he didn’t have too much trouble getting to the teacher’s lounge he’d been asked to go to when he arrived. 

The teacher himself — Kawakami-sensei — didn’t seem all that happy to be doing their job. When Danny introduced himself, the teacher started to speak slowly and simply to him, obviously underestimating Danny’s fluency and intelligence. Which would be fair enough if he was actually speaking Japanese without the quirk perk, but it still was rather insulting if he was being honest. 

He simply didn’t get a good vibe from the guy, and for a split second, Danny felt a pang of homesickness. He’d never thought that he’d actually miss Mr Lancer but here he was. 

Danny followed the teacher at an even pace to their classroom, listening to the man as he said that he wasn’t expected to have a perfectly aligned curriculum, but to try and follow along best he could regardless. 

He didn’t hold out much hope for getting good grades if he was honest. One of the few things he’d found out was that Japan focused a lot more on education, so their education system and overall grade average were generally higher than almost all American educations. Danny struggled getting a passing grade back in America, trying to get good grades here sounded like trying to climb a sheer mounting with no experience hiking or rock climbing. 

It wasn’t all that long before they reached the classroom, where they heard students being rowdy and talking to each other through the door. The noise dimmed slightly when the teacher opened the door and registered his presence, but some students didn’t seem to care, going back to their conversation while sat on the desks. 

“Quiet please, class is starting.” The teacher started, reverting his to natural speaking speed. “We have a new student with us for the rest of the year, he’s coming to us from America so do be patient with the language barrier.” The teacher then turned to Danny, returning to his slow speech.

It was still insulting. Logically he knew it was likely a kindness, but the way it was executed seemed rather belittling of his intelligence. Realistically, if Danny had just moved from America he wouldn’t know much beyond generic greetings and random phrases, not to mention he’d butcher pronunciations constantly. He’d been so overwhelmingly lucky that there was an built-in translation feature of Kirika’s quirk. 

That being said though, being so patronising to Danny’s face was rude, so of course Danny was going to try and throw the attitude in Kawakami’s face. 

“Hey there, my name is Danny Fenton, or Fenton Danny as you guys would say.” He started facing the class and keeping an eye on the way the teacher startled at his perfect Japanese. “Call me Fenton if you’d like, but I really prefer to go by Danny. Apologies that I’m coming in so late in the year, but it wasn’t really in my control. Though I’m new around here, I hope we can all get along.” He bowed his head slightly.

The teacher cleared their throat after a moment, when it was clear that Danny was done talking. He didn’t seem to acknowledge that he’d been presumptuous but his body language was clearly awkward enough that he knew he’d messed up. “Right, well, Fenton if you could please pick one of the spare seats, and we will begin registration.”

Danny would have liked to be at the back or near the window, but there were only two spare seats - one in the front near the door, and the other in the centre of the room. He decided quickly and made his way to the centre seat, noting as he went to it that the purple haired kid who spoke to him in the alley was in this class. Huh.

Through registration, Danny tried to remember as many names as he could. He’d never been very good at that, but as if to prove his budding nerdism, he realised halfway through that he’d started to write all the names down in his nerdbook. 

“...Shinsou Hitoshi?” the teacher spoke hesitantly for some reason. 

The purple haired boy replied with a curt, “Present.” 

The interaction confused him. Honestly, he knew that being unfamiliar with the society would trip him up but it seemed like he’d only seen Shinsou interaction with people twice and both baffled him - that talk in the alley and answering the teacher. 

“If you’re new, word of advice, people are going to tell you to ignore me or stay away from me. If you want to fit in, you better listen to them.” 

What did that mean?

He tried to focus in class. He really did, but it wasn’t surprising to anyone that he couldn’t. He was crowded around between classes and spoken to as if he’s the most exciting thing to happen to the school since sliced bread. 

Some ask uncomfortable questions regarding his reasons why he’s here so late in the year. He’s not sure if it’s a normal thing here, but a lot of the questions started to feel rather invasive to a level he wasn’t okay with, so he tried his best to dodge them. 

He was almost glad when lunch rolled around and people started to disperse from the classroom with some staying where they were. He’d known that there wasn’t a cafeteria in the school, but it was still weird to see people openly eating in a classroom and so many with packed lunches. Danny found his eyes following the one person who hadn’t approached him and ends up following. 

“Hey Shinsou, wait up!” He called out, his new classmates lingering gave him a look. He vaguely heard someone whisper to their friend ‘no one warned the new guy?’, but he ignored it. 

Shinsou didn’t stop at the call, but did slow down enough to raise an eyebrow at Danny. “Didn’t I tell you that you should stay away from me?” 

“You did, but you’re also the only person who hasn’t asked me any uncomfortable questions or badgered me nonstop.” Danny shrugs. “If you don’t want to talk to me, fair enough but I’d like to sit with you anyway, if only to get away from everyone else.”

Shinsou seems to consider it before shrugging. “Suit yourself, but you don’t know what you’re doing.” 

Danny rolls his eyes. “What I’m doing is dodging a bullet, I have a feeling that if I stayed there or stumbled upon the most crowded areas I’d be swarmed and could barely eat my food. No thanks.” 

It was really hard to read Shinsou’s expression. Danny couldn’t tell if he really was pissed by his unwelcome company, but his body language didn’t indicate that he was angry that Danny had tagged along. Danny decided that he’d let Shinsou be the one to start up conversation when they sat down, which they did after a long while. 

Shinsou had lead them seemingly to the back of the school, an area that didn’t see much in the way of traffic or cleaning if they were going off the grime level. Shinsou sped up slightly and jumped up on the school wall, turning and sitting on it as he raised a brow at Danny as if challenging him to do the same. It was a rather high wall, perhaps just below shoulder high, but it was no problem for Danny. 

He wasn’t sure if using his “quirk” would seem like showing off though, so he just followed Shinsou’s lead and copied him with only a little exertion. He pulled his backpack off his back and took out his bento, glad that Kirika had included a fork instead of forcing him to use chopsticks. He wasn’t quite ready to embarrass himself in front of any of his classmates just yet. I’d happen eventually, he knew, but doing it the first day wasn’t his best idea. 

They ate in silence for a while, which was fine with Danny. It game him time to eat, if Shinsou didn’t want to talk at all, then that was fine. Danny could try and get a nap in maybe. But just as Danny was finishing up, Shinsou finally started to speak, seemingly having eaten slowly.

“You should stay away from me, you know.”

Danny couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Yeah, you said that before. Any reason why in particular, or are you anti-social?”

“I have a bit of reputation around here. My quirk scares people, so they don’t take the risk to interact with me. If you stick around me, they’re going to treat you the same as they do me.”

“Eh, who cares? I got bullied all the time back home, a big meathead jock called Dash. He’d stuff me in a locker constantly, and got away with it because he was on the football team. Did give me a thick skin though.” It didn’t, that was the death that had. Hard to angst over being bullied after genuinely dying. “Besides, if it’s a choice between enduring awkward questions and sitting in silence with you, dude, then I think it’s a really easy choice.”

“You don’t even know what my quirk does. For all you know, it’d be your worst nightmare if I used it on you.” 

“Dude, that’s against the law. There’s no way you’d be dumb enough to do that, even if you wanted to. What would you get out of it? If you really want me gone, just tell me. But if you’re struggling to understand that I genuinely do prefer hanging out with you over them, then try me. If I run away screaming, you have full permission to deck me.”

Shinsou was silent for a while, staring at Danny with pursed lips. Danny just wrapped up his bento box and put it away before turning to face Shinsou head on. After a moment or two Shinsou decided. 

“Brainwashing.” Shinsou visibly braced himself, not looking at Danny while he spoke as he clenched his box in a tight grip. “If you respond to me, I can put you under my control and make you do what I say.”

Danny did blink at that. It…wasn’t perfect but it was almost eerily similar to possessing someone. “Is that why our homeroom teacher was hesitant to say your name during registration today?” 

“Yep, they usually skip it and just mark me down if they see me in my seat. You going to leave me alone now?” 

“Nope!” Danny grinned. “I’m staying, but do you want to know what my quirk is?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Hmm yeah? I mean I was just gonna tell you that I kind of relate to yours in a way? Not to devalue your struggles or anything, it’s just that there’s an aspect of my quirk that I can use in a similar way to yours.”

Shinsou’s brow furrowed as he stared at Danny with confused suspicion, as if Danny was going to try and pull something over on him. Danny couldn’t help but wonder if Shinsou was a naturally distrusting person or if it was a behaviour that he’d learned. 

“Okay,” Danny started, taking the lack of answer as an invitation to go ahead. “I call it ‘Phantom’. It lets me do whatever a ghost can, fly, go through walls, disappear, and a few other things. It’s…well, it’s kind of powerful and that’s not me trying to brag, but there’s one aspect that always makes me nervous and that’s. Well, I have the ability to possess someone.” 

Now it was Shinsou’s turn to blink. “What?”

Danny had no doubt that if more people in Amity knew that ghosts could genuinely possess people, they’d be a lot more scared of him and the other ghosts, but it didn’t seem to be something that people had caught onto. It would definitely impact how people viewed him, so he did relate. Sam and Tucker hadn’t shown much of an opinion on his ability, but the way that Danny felt about other ghosts possessing him did freak him out somewhat. 

Though that was probably the trauma speaking. 

“Yeah, you know like ghosts possessing people and getting exorcised of them? Those ghost films and stories where people get possessed and start killing people? Well, I can do that - the possessing, not the killing - which is why I don’t tend to broadcast it, and only really do it if I need to.”

Shinsou stared at him as if he didn’t believe him. Which was fair really, it wasn’t like he could prove it without a willing volunteer. Kirika had definitely been the exception. 

Danny floated a little bit off the wall and laid back. “Look, if you don’t believe me, that’s fine. If you want me to leave you alone, that’s fine. I’ll just go chill on the roof or something until the bell rings, but I’m not gonna avoid you because your quirk is scary.”

In the end, Danny couldn’t figure out what Shinsou internally decided, but in the silence after Danny heard him go through his bag, he decided to have a doze. 

“Wake me when lunch is over.” Danny threw out, only half meaning it. He doubted that he’d actually fall asleep, but dozing while floating would always be relaxing in a way that Danny couldn’t quite explain. 

It was different to regular dozing. He didn’t feel the pressure of something below him, he hung weightless in the air as if he was floating on the surface of a pool. It was always so serene and gave him a sense of tranquillity that was unbelievably hard to get elsewhere. He barely ever got to enjoy it, he’d never dared to take the chance if his parents weren’t away for the weekend, too afraid they’d catch him floating. 

He dozed for a long while until Shinsou grabbed his attention and told him that class was going to start again soon. They walked back to class in silence, Shinsou seemingly in thought and Danny trying to ignore the way people gossiped about him around them, and hoping that he could sit undisturbed until class started again. 

He did not get to be undisturbed. 

“Psst, Fenton!” The girl next to him whispered, Aoki if he remembered correctly, as she leaned over the aisle and looked at Shinsou. “Stay away from Shinsou, he’ll brainwash you into doing thing!” 

“No? He won’t?” Danny rebutted her easily. See the thing is, Danny was getting frustrated. He had this…this thing where if enough people kept repeatedly telling him the same thing, sometimes he’d go do the thing out of pure spite, and it very rarely lead to him actually listening to them because if he did, the annoyance would just continue to grate him to a painful degree. 

It was also the fact that this universe had a very clear law prohibiting quirk usage on someone else. Sure it was mostly a case-by-case basis, but the fasted way to get in major trouble was to use your quirk maliciously on another person. 

But apparently people forgot that no one actually wanted to get in major legal trouble, and break that strict law unless they had a really good reason for it. Even for teenagers there were harsh repercussions to it, putting a black mark on your permanent record, meaning that any reputable school would refuse their admittance unless in the most exceptional of circumstances. 

The girl shot him a pitying look. “It’ll be a matter of time, it’ll probably be subtle, like making you befriend him. Get out while you can is all I’m saying.”

“Oh yeah?” Danny replied, raising his voice and purposefully gaining the attention of those in class already. “See there’s this thing called the law, people don’t usually break it unless they had a very good reason to. Shinsou hasn’t used it so far, which is a miracle considering how everyone treats him, think how easy it would be and then think of how hard it would be to resist that?

“Please, if I had a guaranteed way to get people to stop bothering me, I’d use it in a heartbeat. Shinsou is a good person, and I’m not gonna sit here and listen to people telling me to stay away. I’ll decide who I’m going to hang out with, thank you very much, but feel free to give me the same treatment as Shinsou if it’ll make you all feel better!” 

Danny ended his announcement with a roll of his eyes, sitting back in his seat after he realised that he’d stood up at some point. He was just so frustrated by the distrust and general attitude of the student body, he wasn’t naive to think that the boy was a saint. He was just tired of people writing him off as a criminal without having any proof except for his vibes. 

So focused on blocking out the class and getting his things out for the lesson, he missed the purple haired boy stare at him before looking away with a slight smile.

Chapter Text

“I’m home.” Hitoshi called as he entered the apartment and locked the door behind him. He turned and threw his keys onto the hall table, landing in the dish he was aiming for on the first try. He barely had time to do a victory little fistbump celebration before a body was racing down the hall and almost tackled him as they slid into him. 

“Toshi!” 

“Hey Yume, you feeling better?” Hitoshi smiled, hugging the eleven year old back before letting go and making his way into the kitchen, knowing his sister would follow. 

“Yep!” Yume grinned, “I coincidentally started to feel better after my third period ended, but it wasn’t worth walking all the way to school by then.” 

Hitoshi laughed. “You’re going to have to make up that test tomorrow, you know that, right?”

“Yeah, but I crammed today to get that extra knowledge in my brain. Plus I got to sleep in, it’s not like I do this every single time I get a test. Just when it’s overwhelming, y’know.” The girl shrugged and hopped up to the stool at the breakfast nook. “How was school for you?”

“Hm,” Hitoshi hummed as he inspected the fridge for what they’d have for dinner. “It was weird, there was a new student.”

“Really? This late in the year? Why?” 

“Not sure, but he’s from America. He’s…an interesting guy.” Hitoshi commented, turning his nose up at their dinner options before deciding they’d get takeout tonight instead of cooking, he grabbed an apple then closed the door and faced Yume. “He decided to sit with me at lunch because he was tired of everyone badgering him.”

Yume snorted. “That is a mood. Did you sit in silence, or did he talk to you?”

“We talked a little, I warned him to stay away, he said he didn’t care about my quirk, then he took a nap.” Hitoshi furrowed his brows. “He’s a little weird, but…he stood up for me when people told him to stay away from me. So maybe he’s not bad.”

Yume perked up. “Please tell me that you’re going to make friends with him. Pleeeeease!! ” She playfully hit the counter repeatedly as he demanded. 

Hitoshi laughed. “I dunno, Yume. I’m not gonna make him, but if he decides to hang out with me more then I’ll at least make an effort, how about that? As long as you don’t skip any more school for at least the next school year, that is.”

Yume pouted. “For the next month, and you invite him over when you do befriend him.” 

“Done.”

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The restaurant was somewhat busy, the bustle of talk surrounded him in a comforting way, scrapes of cutlery and chopsticks against dishes, the sound of drinks being prepared. The atmosphere was nice too, it wasn’t too bright nor too dark in the large room, with enough wall decor for there to be enough places to stare at and not get bored. 

It was the perfect place to sit and do classwork in Danny’s opinion. 

He never usually did his homework the day he got it set, but he needed to figure out where he’d need to cram to be able to pass as from this universe. His teachers had each given him a copy of the syllabus, and annoyingly he found that most of the stuff was either in line with what he was currently failing back home, or things he had absolutely no experience with. Not enough things he was familiar with and grasped well.

It was looking like he’d have to fill all that spare time he thought he had, with actually. Doing? Schoolwork? A baffling idea to say the least. Jazz would be proud. Maybe when he got home, he’d manage to improve his grades and surprise everyone by getting Bs in his classes. Wait no— that would be too high an expectation. Maybe C+? 

His musings were interrupted by a glass of soda being placed on the table. “Here you go kid, how was school?” 

Danny looked up at Kirika and had half the mind to smirk. Her uniform was very much not her usual style; white dress shirt with a black bowtie, black waistcoat, skirt, tights, and shiny mary jane shoes. The restaurant was mostly western themed, so the clothes matched, being the most stereotypical waitress uniform outside of a diner waitress. 

He’d also been enjoying watching her serve some of the other tables. The best one had been the next table over when Danny could literally see her eye twitching as she tried to take their order, her smile tense and almost maniacal. He’d had to go to the bathroom to laugh loudly at that without provoking her. 

“It’s so hard to tell. Almost everyone in school wanted to ask me invasive questions, and my homeroom teacher tried to talk to me like I was stupid at first. But I also got peace at lunch when I sat with a social pariah, and I think I’m gonna try and befriend him. Didn’t make any cultural blunders yet, so there’s that. But the schoolwork is gonna kill me.”

Kirika snorted. “Yeah, school does that to you. But keep up with it kid, even when you get back. I never went to high school and look at me now, I am staying right here trying to avoid table ten with a five year old who keeps looking me in the eye and spilling their drink on the table just for me to clean up.” She said with a tight smile, ignoring the call of “waiter!” that came from the table in question.

“Would it give you extra time if I ordered an appetiser?” Danny asked with a laugh, wondering about the lack of high school, but knowing now wasn’t the time to go into it.

Kirika pursed her lips and debated. “I’ll get you a salad, that way you’re still hungry when I clock out and we have dinner here.” She said, writing out the order on her notepad before heading towards the kitchens. 

Danny rolled his eyes, it was better than nothing, he could munch while working he guessed. 

It wasn’t until someone sat in the seat opposite him that he realised he’d gotten so absorbed in his work, that he’d blocked out the rest of the world. A quick glance at his phone showed that he’d been focused for well over an hour and a half, he’d almost finished his bullet point list of things that he’d need to study organised into two neat sections. One for things he was familiar with, and another for Kirika to explain and help him understand. 

Speaking of which, Kirika had sat down and put two plates on the table, shoving Danny’s work aside to clear some room. “Here you go, eat up.”

“Thanks,” Danny said, feeling slightly weird as he came out of his hyperfocused haze. It was also so weird coming out of it, the world just didn’t quite feel real and it was all overwhelming as his senses slammed into him as one. He also noticed that the salad Kirika had ordered for him sat uneaten on the table, so Danny tucked into the burger, noticing how hungry he was. 

Danny ate silently, but faster than he usually would, his body needing the extra food to make up for the hyperfocus from before. He listened to Kirika talk about her day, and almost spat out his food when a table tried to get her attention and berated her for not doing her job. Kirika stared at the guy with the most dead look and told him in a ‘polite’ voice that she wasn’t working at the moment. 

As they left, Danny suggested that if he kept coming to the restaurant after school, she should probably bring a change of clothes so she can change out of her uniform when they stay to eat. Kirika wrinkled her nose at that, one oddity about her that Danny learned was that she didn’t like carrying bags. She’d usually just use her portals to grab things from her apartment directly instead of packing bags to carry. Another thing that she was struggling to adjust to. 

When they got home, Danny really didn’t want to do more school work, but he knew he had to make sure that there wasn’t anything stupid in the curriculum that he’d get strange looks to not know anything about. So as they sat down in the living room (with Kirika flopping on the couch face down), Danny asked if they could go through the list. 

Kirika groaned loudly at that, too tired from all the work she’d done today and Danny commiserated with that. Without speaking, it was mutually agreed that they’d do that later after they wind down for a while. After a few minutes, Kirika stood up and went into her bedroom for a while. 

Danny was half expecting her to not come back out and was about to turn the TV on to have a look at the local news, when Kirika came back with a box. 

“Wait, is that a Nintendo Wii? You guys have the same consoles? Does Nintendo exist in this universe?” 

Kirika laughed. “Yeah, it’s a little different though. As in, to me, your Nintendo consoles are flipped. Like those mirror tracks in Mario Kart? That but with literally everything on the console.”

Danny stared at her. “I think that might be the most heartbreaking thing you’ve ever told me.” He said in a wobbly voice. He hates those mirror tracks so much. 

Kirika had to pause in setting up the console to cackle loudly, it went on for a while before she got a hold of herself and finished setting it up with a shake of her head. It didn’t take them long before they had a working console, and she threw him a remote. 

Danny almost choked when he saw that the game was called ‘Luigi Kart’. He turned to her slowly and she grinned wide and sharklike. “You know how Mario is the main character in your universe? Here’s, it’s Luigi.”

“I…I do not know how to process this.”

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The next day at school, Danny had arrived early to class. It was still weird how there were no interruptions to his day, no ghosts sneak attacking him in the night, nor any attack where he’d have to dash out of school and flake the rest of the day, trying to pretend that he hadn’t. But he needed a little bit more time to go over all the things that Kirika had told him about the Quirk Universe (different from Ghost Universe, it made Danny feel better to name the two) that he’d need to know for school. 

There weren’t massively concerning things. He knew the bare minimum details now that could be passed off as ‘I don’t really care about world events’, or ‘I didn’t pay much attention to the news then’. Not ‘Wait there were multiple wars around the globe that overhauled society completely within the same time frame?’. 

Which was…yeah, Danny wasn’t really surprised to hear that there had been a decade long period where wars reigned when quirks first appeared en masse. Wars were always waged when people wanted something of someone else’s, whether it be land, money, power, eradication or subjugation. If suddenly people had all these superpowers… of course someone would use it if they had the lack of morals to start a war. 

Thankfully, from what Danny could grasp though the world had been at war, it was generally just countries being at war within themselves. Like the whole world decided that they’d each have a civil war. Some countries’ whole political structure got overthrown because of the outcomes of those wars. It was…fascinating learning about these things. 

It was absolutely overwhelming, the amount of things he’d be expected to learn in such a short amount of time, but it somewhat felt like uncovering the creator of a video game had made a whole world building encyclopaedia about the game world and it was thicker than a phone book. 

Except way more interesting because in fiction, no matter how detailed, there would always be a layer of…neatness? Things were both way too tidy but way too messy, as if someone had painted a brilliant photorealistic landscape, but when they came to drawing the sky they drew a sun in the corner with a crayon and called it a day. 

But anyways. Back to the present. Danny was now to his knowledge, caught up on what he’d have to learn, and it was frankly a scary amount. Again, good grades were not going to be expected, nor would he try to achieve them, but he wanted to get a decent grade. He was used to barely coasting by back home when all the subjects and background behind them was familiar, but that wasn’t something he’d be able to get away with here in the slightest. To coast by he’d have to work harder than he had ever done before. 

It was refreshing though not to have his classmates swarming him, many gave him weird looks and kept their distance but Danny would take that any day of the week. He tried his best to follow along in class and take as many notes as he possibly could, but he was pretty sure that he failed. At some point he decided to take the risk and just record the lessons with his phone, in the hopes that it’d help him if he missed something during his note-taking. 

When lunch finally came, he wanted to cry with relief, his brain felt fried and he was absolutely looking forward to a quiet lunch with Shinsou. Thankfully he didn’t have to rush after Shinsou, Danny seemed to have been able to pack up at the same time as him, and caught him as he left the classroom. 

They didn’t speak as Danny fell into step beside him, but Danny did make a note of the students that continued to gossip and give them both judgemental looks and expressions. Maybe he’d get in trouble for quirk usage, but he missed using his powers to prank Dash…it would perhaps relieve some stress by exercising that particular skill set again. 

Shinsou led him back to the spot they’d gone to yesterday, and though it would be easier to use his powers to float up the wall, it had been kind of fun to jump it like he’d done yesterday. As they sat on the wall, and pulled out their lunches, Shinsou visibly hesitated before addressing him. 

“You’re…Fenton, right?” He asked cautiously, as if he was worried that Danny wouldn’t respond. 

“Yep, I prefer to go by Danny though. But I also understand that there’s cultural things, so people’ll usually call me by my surname. Feel free to call me whatever, but if we’re gonna hang out at lunch like this a lot, I’d really prefer Danny. I won’t call you by your first name unless you ask me to, though, Shinsou.” Danny clarified, one of the first things that Kirika had taught him about Japanese culture was that. It was definitely different to what he was used to, but he could understand it enough to respect it. 

“Uh, okay then. Danny.” Shinsou replied hesitantly, testing out the name. “You sure you want to keep hanging around me? Those whispers today were not kind. You can still dodge them though if you leave.” 

Danny had to fight the groan that overtook him. “I am sure, and don’t worry about the whispers. I am not against using my p— quirk to prank the hell out of them all. I used to do it all the time back home against the bullies. I think my first target is gonna be the girl I sit next to - Aoki? - it’s getting cold so it’ll snow soon, I like to make snow fall on people if they walk underneath a roof or something.”

Shinsou snorted. “You willing to get caught? That’ll get you in trouble.” 

“Dude, not if they don’t see me.” Danny turned to Shinsou with a grin, waiting until the boy looked at him to turn himself invisible. “They won’t even know I’m there.” 

Shinsou raised his eyebrow, “You can use two parts of your quirks at the same time?” 

Danny made himself visible again, and took a large bite of his sandwich, nodding. “Invisibility isn’t very tiring, neither is flying, but intangibility can get a bit iffy depending on how big the thing is that I’m trying to phase. Phasing things through stationary things is easier than phasing stationary things through moving things though. Not sure why. Also it’s a struggle to keep things being phased through things for a long time, so I try to keep it to short time periods.” 

It was so weird openly talking about his powers to someone who wasn’t Sam, Tucker or Jazz. Even with Kirika it was only slightly okay because she knew what his world was like, usually without any powers. She’d visited it occasionally before she’d nabbed him apparently, so she was familiar with his world. But she was still part of the Quirk Universe, so powers were generally the norm for her. 

Shinsou pursed his lips. “How many powers can you use at the same time without exhausting yourself?” 

Danny hummed. “You know I’m not that sure. I think the most I’ve done is…three? But those are the things I’m best at, like flight, invisibility and telekinesis. They’re usually all low energy separately, so putting them together isn’t super tiring in short bursts.” He paused a second, not wanting to come across as bragging. “Tell me about your quirk, I’m more interested in it than I am talking about mine.”

He didn’t miss how Shinsou seemed to close himself off slightly at the suggestion. Shinsou shrugged. “Not much for me to tell, if someone responds to me I can tell them what to do. Even if it’s just an exclamation or noise of acknowledgement, if it's in reply to me, I can control them.” 

“Okay but can you use your quirk over the phone? Is there any way to break it outside of your control? Are people more resistant to things they morally don’t agree with? Can you make them do something that you don’t know how to do? Can you make someone do something that you know how to do but they don’t?” 

“That…is a lot of questions.” Shinsou blinked. 

Danny shrugged in return. “I thought about my abilities for possession a lot, and tested a few aspects out with my friends back home, but some of the answers were inconclusive. I was wondering if you had different limits than I do, or more benefits to it. We can talk about something other than quirks if you want.” 

Shinsou was quiet for a while, the two eating in silence before he spoke up. “How come you joined so late in the year? I mean, it’s not even between American school years.” 

“Oh, yeah well my parents are scientists, they got this big opportunity to do an extended research project for anywhere between a few months and a couple of years, so they’d be too busy to look after me. My sister would be too busy with college, so I got shipped over to stay with my cousin.” Danny shrugged, happy with the excuse that he’d had a galaxy brain revelation over last night. “It’s a good thing I’m fluent in Japanese, otherwise this would be a lot harder.” 

“Huh.” Shinsou replied. “I bet. What’s your family like then?” 

“Well my parents are scientists, we live in Illinois, a state in the midwest of America. The town we live in is small, but I’ve lived there my whole life. My sister, Jazz, is older than me and in her final year of high school, she’s a genius and is on track to be super successful in her studies, and get a lot of scholarships. So she’s independent enough to stay on her own. My cousin frequently travelled, so she used to visit all the time. I grew up learning Japanese from her, she’s older than me though in her twenties so she’s responsible enough to look after me from my parents’ point of view so it made sense.” 

Danny had briefly told Kirika the newly updated cover story this morning, but she’d been too tired to really process it other than giving him a solitary thumbs up, before she downed her death-by-caffeine concoction. 

“You never visited here?” Shinsou asked curiously. 

“Nope, first time staying here. My family whenever we went on vacations were more the ‘take a road trip’ kind of people, or camping kind of people. It just makes more sense for my cousin to come visit the four of us and tag along with our holidays than the four of us going through the ordeal of flying over. My parents especially are a nightmare for packing anything. What about your family?”

If Shinsou was bothered by how sharing the conversation was, he made no indication, simply putting away his finished bento and starting to doodle in a small notepad. “My parents work a lot, like, a lot a lot. So I mostly just look after me and my little sister Yume. It’s fine, I guess. I’m not super close to my parents, but they’re not complete strangers. It’s usually pretty quiet around my place, but we look after our neighbourhood cats when people go away, though, so it’s not empty.” 

“Are the cats cute?” 

Shinsou looked slightly surprised before he smiled slightly and pulled out his phone. “I take a lot of photos of them - here. This one is Tamago and her sister Tofu, I haven’t seen them in a while but they’re my favourite…” 

Danny hadn’t been expecting to spend most of lunch looking at cat photos but he did. He groaned when the bell went. 

“Not a fan of school?” 

“I’m. So stupid. My brain is going to explode, school is so much harder here and I struggled back home with my grades. If I flunk out, pray for me.” 

Shinsou snorted. “I’ll tutor you before it gets that far.” 

Danny whipped his head around and looked at Shinsou with wide hopeful eyes. “You will? So you’re accepting that I’m sticking around?” 

The boy wrinkled his nose up a little at the words. “Well, it’s not ideal but if you’re not gonna leave me alone, I might as well help you.”

Danny fistpumped and grinned. “Great, well when we do, let’s make a day of it! You can hang out at my apartment, or we can go to an arcade or something. It’d be nice to hang with a friend again, I…uh. I’m kind of missing my friends if I’m honest. So making a new one, is always a good thing in my books.” 

Shinsou paused for a second, blinked at the words and gave him a small smile in return. 

Chapter Text

"Wow. Uh. Yeah." Shinsou said as he blinked at the paper Danny had handed him. "Yeah, you might be a lost cause."

Danny groaned into the table they were sat at. "I'm so stupid!" He half yelled, getting a few looks from the others around them.

"Didn't you basically rewire my phone and practically replaced my battery without any spare parts to replace it with?" Kirika interrupted, setting down their drinks. "Kid, you may not be brain smart but what you do know, you know well." Uncharacteristically, she smirked and ruffled Danny's hair while he was still face down on the table.

"That's different, Tucker taught me that trick..." Danny groaned into the table.

Kirika gently swatted Danny's head causing the teen to complain and lift his head to whine at her. "And get your head off the table, I'm gonna have to wipe it down anyway, at least be kind to your servers or I will have failed as a guardian."

"Bold of you to assume that I don't respect servers, you're just the exception."

"Brat."

Danny grinned, and looked over at Shinsou's quiet snicker.

Kirika looked at Shinsou. "Hey, if he's a lost cause, then that's fine it's not like I'm expecting solid As or whatever. He just needs to skim by and maybe pass a high school entrance exam if he'll be sticking around that long. Homeschooling is really not gonna work out and his parents'll kill me if he doesn't go to school."

"Don't worry Kamiya-san, I'll help him out." Shinsou replied politely, to which Kirika snorted hard.

"Don't let the fancy get up fool you kid. You're calling me Kirika or I'll call you eyebags and you'll be stuck exclusively with the kiddie menu here, take your pick."

Shinsou looked at Kirika with wide eyes which made Danny almost cackle. "O-okay then, Kirika-san."

Kirika sighed dramatically. "I suppose it's good enough. Make sure he doesn't slack off." She grinned at Shinsou, messed Danny's hair up once again, then headed off to get back to work. They were luck that Kirika's boss was understanding of her plight and let Danny monopolise a table almost every weekday, they didn't need to push his limits by Kirika not working while he was here.

"Your cousin is cool." Shinsou remarked as he flipped through their textbooks to get to the right place. "Not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't that."

Danny smiled. "Yeah, she's annoying sometimes, but cool."

If she stops stealing things she'd be even cooler... Danny thought to himself, remembering their last trip to the market and seeing her pull out a variety of trinkets she'd slipped in her pockets when he wasn't looking.

He'd given up trying to stop her a little while ago, it only increased her haul afterwards out of spite. At least this way it would draw less attention to them, and sometimes Kirika would swipe something cool for him which was fine. In those cases though he tried to go back and leave the thing where she'd stolen it from if he could. She'd caught onto that fact though at some point and only stole things he couldn't easily return. It was a silent war between them that likely would never fully go away. Danny still hadn't forgiven her for being an accessory to car theft that first day together.

"But seriously, please help me or I'm going to be the laughing stock of the school and become a social pariah." Danny bemoaned his fate.

"I don't know why you're doing so bad? This is the kind of stuff that's just cementing everything we already know, unless you slept through the entire school year, I really don't understand." Shinsou remarked with a slight frown.

"I told you before, I was already an idiot back in America. Didn't help that my school got constantly disrupted by small time villain attacks, well the town in general did a lot, so my lessons were a mess. Plus, I kind of have a low work ethic if I'm not fixated on a specific goal." Danny replied, musing on how he could have probably done a whole lot better with his grades if he hadn't dropped his ambition to be an astronaut completely after the accident.

His family always had a rather high work ethic, unsurprising considering they were all overachievers most of the time, pre-Accident Danny was among the top students in his year. He'd been considering taking a few AP classes, but decided to wait until sophomore year for that, in a way it had been a good choice, it made it less embarrassing to rapidly drop grades as much as he did.

"You got a lot of villain attacks? Didn't you say your town only have a few thousand people?" Shinsou asked, looking even more confused.

Danny hoped he wasn't going overboard in trying to integrate his history into what could possibly have happened her in the Quirk Universe. He was trying to keep it as close as possible to the truth so he wouldn't trip himself up with a lie, but it was still so hard to judge what was and wasn't normal here outside of theory.

"Yeah, there wasn't really much there. I guess people just liked trying to attack our only pro hero? He wasn't all that good, which is probably why the villains kept getting away to strike later, but he always tried to help the town as much as he could. I think as a whole, the town like him? Well, the people in my school do. Not sure about the adults or whatever outside my parents, but he does the best he can. We're so far out in the middle of nowhere though that no heroes want to move there and help, and the only reason our hero hung around is because he's from there."

"Huh. Sounds like you have a lot of respect for him." Shinsou mused, almost trying to seem casual as he asked his next question. "You like heroes then?"

Danny shrugged. "I mean, they do their jobs? I find it kind of weird how ingrained they are to popular culture, but they're hard working. The flashy ones look cool, but I only ever like to read about them if they're fictional which is unfortunately a dying genre...actual flashy heroes just give me a headache honestly."

He'd unluckily been in the presence of a fight that had Present Mic involved. He'd been almost two blocks away and yet he'd still gotten a migraine from the sporadic yells. If the police hadn't sectioned off the area, he was sure that anyone in that range would have had burst eat drums, which is probably why he'd been called in.

Shinsou snorted. "Glad you have some taste. If you said that you adored the big flashy heroes, I think I would have ended this arrangement before it even began."

Danny grinned. "Nah man, you can't get rid of me. I'm stuck you like a sticker slapped on a public transportation system."

"I don't think that's a saying."

"It might be a fancy american saying where I'm from, you don't know."

"Yeah, I do know. I think the american saying is 'stuck like glue', not whatever you said."

Danny threw a fry at Shinsou, starting an unfortunate mini food fight where they tore the fries into smaller chunks and tried to hide what they were doing so they didn't get kicked out. It didn't stop Kirika from hitting the backs of their heads with her notepad when she came over and saw the carnage, watching them with a stern expression as they tidied up after themselves.

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"I'm never going to move again." Danny declared to the room, barely managing to speak through the fur.

Distantly he heard the snickers of Yume, and saw the eyeroll of Shinsou but all he focused on was the deep rumbling purr of the biggest cat he'd ever seen, along with the other two cats all laid on him for some reason.

He had no idea if this was some dormant part of his powers or whatnot, due to his lack of interaction with cats post-accident (all the cats in and around Amity were mandatorily indoor cats on account of some rare wildlife that cats had pushed to the brink of extinction in the area), but shortly after he arrived at the Shinsou apartment, the cats that were being looked after practically swarmed him.

There was one cat that was a giant Norwegian Forest cat, with a thick white coat and the most striking yellow and blue eyes that was responsible for the purring; the tiniest adult cat he'd ever seen, that was the forest cat's sister who was pure black with a sleek thin coat; and one tortoise shell cat that was a little old lady who was delicately laid across his neck, rubbing her nose through Danny's hair.

He'd already been warned in advance that the big Norwegian forest cat was incredibly friendly and would demand to be played with, but he hadn't expected him to launch from the couch and into Danny, making him slip on the wood floors without shoes on and almost hit his head as he fell. The perpetrator in question had then turned in circles trying to get comfy before turning into a loaf on Danny's stomach.

Seeing the cuddle pile for what it was, the tiny cat had sprinted over and snuggled up to Danny's side, not actively on him but he had no doubt she would have been if the forest cat wasn't almost completely covering Danny's torso. At that point, he'd thought that would be it, until the little old lady cat at a staggering seventeen years old had daintily pattered over to them and laid across Danny's neck.

Shinsou had come in from the kitchen where he'd been getting them drinks and was bemused by the whole situation. Yume was delighted, but started to worry when Danny explained that the forest cat had pushed him over.

"Are you alright, Danny?" She asked, carefully making her way over to him and hesitantly trying to feel the back of his head for bumps. "Chibi doesn't usually launch himself at people..."

Danny grinned up at her. "Yeah, don't worry. No harm done, I'll let you know if he cuts off my breathing though."

Yume grinned in reply, gently stroking the tortoiseshell under her chin, before getting up and giving Danny some space.

"Well, you're gonna have to get up, your homework was terrible this week and we're starting to get closer to high school entrance exams." Shinsou remarked, kicking Danny's leg who gave him a whine in return.

"Dude I'm already a lost cause, give it up. Let me flunk out so I can waste away peacefully under this soft and warm pile of cats." Danny dramatically declared, lifting his hands to stroke Chibi and his sister.

"The little one is Aiko and the tortoiseshell is Kameko." Yume told him, staring at Danny with rather obvious jealousy. "The big one is chibi."

"Chibi, seriously?"

"Yeah, apparently he was the runt of the litter so they thought he'd be on the smaller side. Turned out he was going to be close to the largest cat of his breed in Japan." Yume shrugged.

"This guy wakes me up the most out of all the cats we look after." Shinsou informed Danny, leaning down to gently pick up Kameko, to which she gave the sweetest meow to before he passed her to Yume. Yume lit up when Kameko started to purr and obviously demanded snuggles on the couch.

Shinsou then tempted Aiko away with a feather toy. He hadn't even managed to pick it up before she was shooting up and racing to attack it. With his foot, Shinsou gently pushed Chibi off Danny's chest. Chibi wailed pathetically (and dramatically) in response, staying sprawled out where he landed on the floor. Shinsou smirked at the cat, but Chibi calmed when Danny sat up and pet him a couple of times before he stood.

"Alright, I'm up. What was it that you said the other day? You can't wait to be absolutely destroyed by me in Mario Kart?" Danny smirked.

"Yeah, you're definitely remembering wrong because I said that I can't wait to absolutely destroy you in Luigi Kart. Still don't get the constant switching of Luigi and Mario's names..."

"I don't you, inside joke with my friends since we were five." Danny waved off, sitting on the couch and trying in vain to brush off the hundreds of white cat hairs that were stuck to his black t-shirt. "You going to be playing with us Yume? I'll go easy on you, I promise."

Yume grinned at him shyly. "You wouldn't mind?"

"Dude, if you didn't play it'll be more humiliating for Shinsou, at least if there's another person to race against, he can say he put up more of a fight than he did. "

Yume giggled, and Shinsou clearly had enough of Danny's jabs at him, so he waved the feather toy in Danny's direction. Aiko was on the feather as fast as lightning, but not fast enough to redirect her leap when Shinsou pulled the toy away from her, launching her straight into Danny's face with paws outstretched.

"Ah!" Danny yelled in surprise, making Shinsou snicker and Yume giggle.

"Alright, time for you to put your money where your mouth is."

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.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone that Yume did in fact utterly humiliate her brother and his friend. While she was wearing the winner's crown as Baby Peach, Shinsou (playing Waluigi) and Danny (playing Boo) had ultimately tied in dead last place below almost all the AIs, all because of how much they had been sabotaging each other rather than actually focusing on the race.

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"They're so weird!" Aoki cried shrilly as she talked to her friends near the entrance to the school. "I mean, Fenton seemed cool at first, but now he's inseperable with Shinsou."

"Do you think that Shinsou brainwashed him into being his friend?" Tomue suggested idly.

"No, I bet it's because Fenton is just as freaky as he is. Did you see him use his quirk during gym class the other day? He managed to move his whole body out of the way of the ball I threw! Like, y'know his chest and stomach area? It was so weird! He seemed surprised after he did it too." Kanada chimed in, shuddering dramatically at the memory.

"Y'know, I wouldn't be surprised if they were up to something—" Aoki started, only to scream along with the others as they were suddenly pelted with snow. Some of it even seemed to fall directly under her shirt collar making her squirm and yell harder.

After a moment of dancing around, she looked up to see Shinsou laughing quietly as he looked after at them, while Fenton grinned fiendishly. She didn't hesitate to point at them and yell, "I know you both had something to do with this!"

"We're all the way over here! How would we manage to do that?" Fenton called over from the other side of the courtyard, putting his hand to his mouth as he yelled to emphasize the distance.

"You have a freaky quirk, that's how!" Kanada yelled back, while Tomue nodded and glared.

"Okay, you quirkist bigots. But you might want to get inside and warm up, it's below freezing! You'll get frostbite and that'd be such a shame."

"This isn't over Fenton!" Aoki yelled before shuffling her friends inside and over towards the heater in the entrance hall.

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Danny hadn't been in arcades very much, there had only been one back in Amity, and it had been really run down, what with the increasing availability of games consoles at home. No one was going to the arcade to spend $20 on half an hour of short games when there were much better games they could play at home.

So obviously, after years of it being run down and only visited by the nerdy teenagers of Amity that consisted of maybe a dozen visitors each week, it was inevitably shut down. Of course, this being Amity, it meant that a ghost violently objected to the closing of the arcade and started to fight, pretty much ensuring that it would stay closed.

All of this to say that it was refreshing to enter the arcade where he'd meet up with Shinsou. The games were very different and much more up to date than Amity's (there had been machines from the 80s there, the newest machine had been from '91), but the sounds were almost the same.

If Danny closed his eyes, he could just imagine that he was back home. With Sam and Tucker getting way too intest during air hockey and having to scramble to find the only puck between three machines after it was launched across the arcade and clattered somewhere between the other machines.

But it still wasn't quite the same when he heard the sounds of bowling going on, which was apparently how the arcade could continue to survive if it didn't get much traffic. Good business idea, a shame that Amity hadn't figured that out, but the bowling alley was half a block away and it was also just as run down.

Figuring that Shinsou would be a while, Danny headed towards the most bright and flashy game he could see, knowing immediately that Shinsou would get exasperated in the funniest way. It was really bright, Danny found himself almost squinting as he approached it.

It looked like some kind of side scroller beat em up, themed around All Might fighting random villains as he made his way through the states. He'd always found All Might's american theming just a little bit weird, because from his research he knew that the hero in question was 100% Japanese with no american upbringing, apart from a few years spent there in the beginning of his career.

That being said, if All Might had a move centred around Illinois, he would at least laugh a little.

As anticipated, when Danny heard the loud groan behind him, he grinned but didn't take his attention off the game. "Hey Shinsou, want to take over for me?"

"You literally could not pay me enough to even look at that machine. I think it's turning me into a vampire."

Danny chortled, getting hit in the game before managing to recover and get back into it. A quick glance backwards to his friend showed that Shinsou was indeed facing away from it, so that the blinding light wasn't even in his periphery. That got Danny to laugh harder, and made him lose his last life.

"Aw man."

"Serves you right, c'mon let's go play something that won't blind me." Shinsou dragged him off before he could enter more money into the machine as he was just about to do.

Danny definitely appreciated being friends with Shinsou. It was...different from his friendship with Sam and Tucker. While they had their similarities, Shinsou had a bit of a sharper snark and more of a mean streak than Sam and Tucker did. It wasn't even targeted at the weak, mainly just those he thought deserved it.

Whereas Sam would stew in anger and bitterness until confronted, if Shinsou saw an opportunity to get back at those people without serious repercussions he'd usually do it without thinking.

For example, one day they had been slow to leave the classroom and were the last ones left. Shinsou had spotted Aoki's finished homework for the next day, which had fallen on the floor next to her desk. Instead of leaving it on her desk for her to find when she realised the error, he'd folded the paper up and taken it home. Aoki had to redo the homework between classes so she wouldn't get detention.

Danny didn't hold it against him in the slightest, sure it was kinda mean but the students at the school, especially in their class, were a whole lot meaner. It wasn't like Shinsou would do anything to get someone expelled or excluded, it was just little inconveniences that made him feel better about the whole situation and less hopeless.

(It was why Danny didn't hesitate to use his quirk on his classmates to help cheer up Shinsou when he needed to.)

In some of Danny's moments of extreme homesickness he imagined Shinsou and Kirika going to Amity park and showing them around. Maybe even introducing them to Sam and Tucker, and show them the Ghost Zone.

He and Kirika had been trapped in the Quirk Universe for over a month now, and Danny would like to say that he'd gotten Shinsou to break out of his shell a bit more. Though he still remained tight lipped on a few subjects, Danny was sure that he'd be able to crack him by at least the new year in a few weeks.

At least once good thing came from this whole situation being that Japan didn't really celebrate Christmas, which had been the best thing he'd heard when Kirika told him that.

"So we're getting close to high school applications, you have any idea of where you're going to go if you're still in Japan?" Shinsou asked as they sat down to play a racing game together.

Danny frowned. He didn't like the fact that applications were so close, it was almost the middle of December, and applications were late January to mid February. The idea that he was going to be here long enough to actually start a new school in April was nauseating really.

"Nope, no clue. I don't think it really matters to me, after all I don't think I'll be staying to high school graduation anyway." Danny shrugged. "What about you? I'll probably try to get into whatever school you're going to, being the new transfer student again would suck."

Shinsou faltered in his game slightly, allowing Danny to take over him, but the boy shook his head minutely. "I dunno. There are a few schools I've been looking at..."

Danny pursed his lips at that response. It was hard to figure out but it kind of sounded like when Shinsou didn't want to talk about something. Was he...worried about Danny maybe making fun of him or something?

"Dude, I can tell you have your heart set on something. I promise to take you seriously if you tell me."

Shinsou fell silent at that, and the silence between them persisted until the race ended. Danny turned to look at his friend, wondering if the boy would quickly move away and drop the conversation completely, but Shinsou was still sat there silently his hands still on the wheel.

They sat there in silence for a short while before Shinsou closed his eyes, took a deep breath as if to brace himself, then responded. "I want to go to a hero school."

"Okay? That's cool. You'd probably make a pretty good hero." Danny shrugged, and almost jumped when Shinsou's head whipped around to look at him immediately. "What?"

"You..." Shinsou stared looking so baffled, Danny was almost concerned. Then suddenly his expression hardened, as he had to shove down hope. "You're lying. No one ever thinks I can be hero, if they know about my quirk."

Danny sighed and turned his body to fully face Shinsou. "Remember how I said that your quirk didn't scare me? That's still true, and it's a really powerful quirk. If you want to use it to be a hero, then good for you, you'll be able to pull it off if you work for it. Really."

Shinsou stared at him wide eyed for a long moment, processing the words, before he gave Danny a gentle and shy smile before he looked away.

"Thanks..." He said quietly before clearing his throat. "Anyways, I bet you I can beat your ass at air hockey."

Danny smirked. "You're on."

Chapter Text

"Lay it on me. What's our plan for Locksley?" Danny asked one night while they ate dinner.

Kirika's face hardened, and she bit her lip slightly. "That's the thing... I don't know."

"We need some kind of plan." Danny argued. "You've said that when you get your quirk back you can drop me right after you took me, right?"

Kirika nodded and made a so-so gesture with a wince. "It won't be super precise. If I try to get it down to the second, I'll probably end up taking you back way earlier than you need and you'll have to spend some time hiding out and away from yourself and your loved ones. I haven't messed with time so far, but when I come close to it I can feel reality shuddering. Like when something heavy creaks enough to warn you to leave it alone or it'll collapse?"

Danny nodded, chewing over that thought as he chewed over his meal. Sometimes Danny hardly ever worried about messing with time because Clockwork was always there to smooth it over, but as he'd already assumed he couldn't be sure if the quirk universe and his universe could work together.

It would be irresponsible to automatically assume that Clockwork could fix everything. Maybe if it was just Danny's universe, then that would be a fair assumption considering the ghost was also one of the oldest and most powerful ghosts in existence - almost predating life itself.

But to expand that scope from something as huge and ever changing as the timeline in one universe and add more universes that connects to others might be too much of a risky stretch. After all, you rarely knew how much damage something could take before it broke. It simply was impossible to know for certain unless it or something like it had been broken before. And shattering the timeline wasn't something that likely could be fixed. Best to leave it alone.

"Okay, so aim for maybe...uh ten—"

He took in Kirika's wince. "Twel—"

"..."

"Okay how about you tell me when you recommend. Because I don't think I like the idea of being listed as a missing person. If it's just twelve hours I can pass it off, but any closer to twenty four hours is something I won't be able to brush off. I'm already gonna be different enough as it is, I've spent two months here without everyone."

Kirika heaved a large sigh and got up to put the rest of her food away for leftovers, seemingly having lost her appetite. "I really don't know. I'd give it a full day just to be sure, but at the same time, I used to almost never care about the timings. When I first used my quirk it was mostly just to get away from my life here, and the people who looked for me all knew my quirk and my tendencies to take off. Didn't make them accept it, but it made me care less about precision. The reason I just don't know is because I never paid attention to the times when I would go, I'm sure I could control the time when I go but I just never cared to pay attention to it. I genuinely don't know if I could be so precise when getting you back there."

Danny was silent taking that in. He tried not to panic about the idea. About Danny suddenly disappearing and absolutely no one knowing even where to start. Sam and Tucker would suspect maybe he needed to fight a ghost and hold off his parents for a while, maybe into the night while they panicked thinking Danny was in a bit too deep alone.

They'd look for him all by themselves, and get increasingly stressed and guilty. Feeling like it was a failing on their part that Danny had to fight alone sometimes, like they weren't human. The worst part about Danny's life is that all his loved ones would assume ghosts for different reasons, when just this one time, it wasn't anything to do with ghosts at all. They would be barking up the wrong tree until Danny managed to get back himself.

"That's not to say I won't try, Danny." Kirika spoke up, force behind her tone, alerting him to attention. It was still rare for Kirika to use his name, she evidently only used it when she was being serious. "I got you into this mess, and if I have to give everything I have to give to get you home, I will. I fix my mistakes."

Danny felt comforted by her words and stood up. She was clearly puzzled until he put his arms around her, drawing her into a hug, when she gasped slightly.

It was almost painful when she hesitated, like she wasn't used to hugs. From what Danny had pieced together from all the information she'd given him, she rarely interacted with people long enough to get hugged. Clearly Kirika was lonelier than she let herself feel, and even though she'd messed up, even though Danny was her sole victim, he still forgave her and cared about her.

He squeezed her gently until slowly she brought her arms up and hugged him back, her hold was feather light and unsure. Letting her grip be incredibly easy to break out of it Danny didn't want her to hug back. Instead he smiled and hugged tighter.

"I know you will." Danny reassured her. "I trust you, really. Not just because I have to. But because I know that you're a good person."

Danny wasn't sure how long they stood like that in the kitchen just holding each other, but it was long enough that Kirika had gotten used to it and her hold was firmer. Still not very tight and easy to get out of, but firm enough that Danny knew she wasn't hesitating.

"Woo!" She suddenly said, pulling back and clearing her throat obviously trying to mask the serious and emotional moment. "Alright, let me just clear up dinner and we'll continue brainstorming." She said before quickly turning Danny around and shoving him out the kitchen without listening when he started to protest.

He still had his food left, damn it.

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After Kirika had finished bottling back up her emotions, she joined Danny in the living room where he was eating a bag of chips to replace the food he'd been inadvertently denied.

"Alright. Where were we?" Kirika asked.

Danny rolled his eyes, but didn't call her out on it. "I was asking about the timing thing, but mostly that was just clarification. I was wondering exactly how long we have to get me back unnoticed by my family, I know I don't exactly...age correctly, but I need to get back before it's noticeable."

"Yeah, what's the deal with that if you don't mind me asking? In my research I thought it was weird, but didn't really think much of it."

"How much do you actually know about how I got my powers?"

"Literally zilch. If I knew I would have just told Locksley without even bringing you to this universe, kid. I scoped you out for ages and the most I could get was conflicting, all I really knew was that you fit the bill for what Locksley wanted."

Danny considered this. He still wanted to know exactly how Kirika got what information she got about him, but he couldn't afford to get side tracked like he did earlier. He'd ask another time, but for now he had to focus. They need a plan. Getting by trying to fit in was working so far, but if they did nothing it was possible that they'd never get Danny home and Kirika would never get her quirk back.

"So the way that I got my powers, I basically died, but not all the way. I was fourteen, and I'm told that my ageing would be slower than normal because of that. Not a super noticeable amount right now, but when I'm meant to become an adult I'm probably going to look fifteen. But still even just looking a few months older will be a problem, even with how slow I age, it's not a standard rate as far as I can tell. So while it's not an immideiate 'I need to get home now' kind of thing, I do need to be home realistically within the next few months or so."

"You...died?" Kirika looked at Danny with a strange sort of expression, both unbelieving and something undefinable.

Danny winced slightly. "Yep, I don't really like to think about it all that much, but basically that's what gave me my powers. I have ghost powers because, well, I'm sort of already one. However, I'm still alive. It's different than before, but I'm certain of that fact, here." He grabbed her hand and moved it so she was holding his wrist in a way that felt his pulse.

It was faint Danny that, a little too faint to be able to pass of as fine and healthy, not to mention the speed his heart rate went at was much slower than it should be. But through all his and his friends' tests they knew without a doubt that it was his heart that was beating. He'd worried often if it was just his ghost core mimicking life, but he knew it wasn't. Even in his ghost form, they found his heart was still what kept him going and not just replaced by a ghost core. 

"My friends and I made absolutely sure that I was alive, it helps me to know that." Danny reassured her. He'd even snuck them into the hospital (well, just him and Sam on account of Tucker's fear of hospitals, he'd chosen to guide them from his safe bedroom) so they could use the CT machine using knowledge from one of the few not-mad scientists in the Ghost Zone.

Kirika took a deep breath as she felt Danny's pulse. "Right. Yeah, you're alive. And we're going to keep you that way, kid. So we need to get you back sometime before you're visibly older, yeah?"

Danny nodded, not pulling his hand away until Kirika let go. "And I have high school applications coming up, I really don't like the idea that I'm going to be around long enough to actually attend, but unless we figure out a plan I'm going to have to."

Kirika nodded.

"Right. Yeah. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten that we need to act to progress any, it's just. It's difficult because we get just one shot at this. One." Kirika looked at Danny with an intense seriousness, more than any other times he'd seen before not counting the night they'd met. "And what resources I have are incredibly limited without my quirk. In some ways I've always been incredibly cocky concerning it, but when I get it back you bet your fuckin' ass I'm gonna be way more prepared.

Danny smiled. "Of course. I wouldn't expect anything else."

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They spent most of the night workshopping various ideas, when Kirika had said that she didn't have many resources she wasn't lying. Danny had originally been under the impression that Kirika knew a network of criminals and thieves due to how casual she'd been with stealing, but it turned out she only had one contact who was rather finicky and charged an arm and a leg for any kind of favour.

Unfortunately Kirika had used up her favours in getting the information about Locksley and a request for a stolen van they could use to transport Kirika's stuff into storage.

"I mean, they're always an option but the thing about them is that they decide what the favour is going to be if you don't have one stored away. For example, if I ask for a favour to help take my quirk back from Locksley, they'll be able to set the price and they can just. Not tell me what it is until they want to cash it in, and if I don't want to do what they ask me to then I'll likely end up dead. I mean I can do it but seriously, this option is good only as a last resort." Kirika had explained.

From what Kirika could understand, Locksley had originally recruited Kirika to find the ability to enhance his lackey's skills and create an unstoppable army. It had to be something that could be created and not born, hence why Kirika knew that Danny would have fit the bill. Whoever her source was had told her that Danny wasn't always a halfa, and got his powers in some kind of way. That was enough for Locksley.

"Without being able to use my powers, he'll be stuck finding that kind of thing in our universe. And honestly, I'm not sure that we have the kind of science to do that. Quirk Science and Research has come a long way in the last couple decades, but not nearly enough to replicate it on any kind of level beyond what we could already do outside of quirks, y'know?"

The bad news was that a lot of the information that Kirika had gathered was given to Locksley automatically. Turns out if you threaten someone, you're going to insist that there wasn't a way for them to double cross you by withholding information.

"I wore a wire tap. It didn't give them a live feed because universes aren't connected in a way that would allow that, but it would record and when I got back to base they'd take the wire tap and upload it to their database. It got busted during our fight out of there, so I can't find out what information they for sure have, but I would say they probably know a few tricks on how to stop you kid."

Which was even worse news because if they went into the confrontation being cocky then there was every bit a high chance that they'd throw away their chances. After a bit of interrogation from Kirika, they guessed that they knew at least of Danny's main weakness being that he was vulnerable to any weapon that attacked ectoplasm.

While the ambient ectoplasm was different in this universe and very scarce, it would be stupid to decide that they couldn't build their own weapons to fight them. Their only set back would be that they'd be inventing the technology from scratch, because a very thorough yahoo search (google had recently gone bankrupt) foudn that there weren't any alternate universe versions of the Fentons. So they thankfully didn't have to worry about Fenton weaponry, nor their contributions to ectoscience.

In the end they'd come up with a dozen or so ideas and scrapped the worst of them, they'd shelved a few that would need thinking about but there were a few that seemed a bit promising. They weren't going to go into this guns blazing, but Danny did state that they'd need to have a plan ready at the very least before he graduated middle school. He did not want to enter high school for the first time again.

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"So tell me about heroes," Danny started one lunchtime, being a general nuisance and laying his head in Shinsou's lap as the boy was trying to eat, making Shinsou have to rest his lunchbox on Danny's face. "You obviously admire some kind if the flashy ones give you headaches, so spill."

Shinsou sighed, his expression was resigned as if he'd been waiting for this question since their conversation at the arcade the other day. It seemed he'd taken a leap of faith by confiding his dream in Danny but was utterly unprepared for anyone to actually want to talk about it with him. Well tough cookies, Danny was gonna support Shinsou so hard, there'd be no doubt in his confidence by the time that Danny left to go home.

"You're not very familiar with heroes, right?" Shinsou clarified, accidently dropping a bit of his pasta salad on Danny's face causing the boy to flinch slightly while Shinsou snickered.

"No, not really. I mean, I see them around but countries are weird with their differences around heroes. Besides I've always been more interested in space, and my family were focused on science and psycology." Danny explained, wiping the pasta with its sauce away.

"Right, well, at least here in Japan there's a type of hero that mostly does undercover and recon work. They're usually called underground heroes, and they're almost all unknown. There's little to no information publicly available for them, because every scrap of information is used against them. They rely on stealth and covert tactics to bring down the villains that they fight, they don't do it for the fame, glory or the money, they do it to get the job done."

Danny watched as Shinsou got excited and spoke with passion. It wasn't incredibly visible if you didn't know what to look for, but you could see it in the way Shinsou straightened up and his eyes were wide with excitement. It was nice to see him get so enthusiastic, that Danny couldn't help but smile, glad that Shinsou's lunch was hiding it. Shinsou could be unexpectedly shy when it came to expressing his emotions, it would suck if Danny's happiness ruined Shinsou expressing himself.

"That's the kind of hero that I want to be. It suits my quirk too, because if you know about it, then it's generally easy to counter. I don't know about many underground heroes, because as I said they're notoriously difficult to find anything about, but I do know of a few and I've actually met one."

"No way, you met one? Tell me about it."

Shinsou was pretty much not at all focused on eating by then, so while he was distracted, Danny started to pack away the boy's lunch so Danny didn't have to feel bad if he dropped Shinsou's lunch off the wall into the grimy alley behind the school. He kept his head on Shinsou's lap mostly because he was starting to feel a little homesick for how he'd do things like this with Sam and Tucker.

"The underground heroes I know of but haven't met are kind of boring in comparison, but their names are Whipsnap and Friday, and I have almost no information on them. And the one I met is called Eraserhead.

"It wasn't anything super special or anything, but he'd helped one of my neighbours get home after she was almost attacked by a group of villains. He escorted her to my apartment to pick up her cat, and the guy was really cool. The next day I'd asked my neighbour the story, and she told me exactly what he did. From what she could tell, he'd taken out a gang of seven people, all without using anything more than just combat training. She didn't know if he'd used his quirk, but he didn't take more than a decent hit, and the fight only lasted a couple minutes. It was amazing."

Shinsou's look of excitement had evolved into something resembling awe, even just reciting the story he'd heard secondhand, Danny could clearly see the respect. It was a side of Shinsou that Danny was endlessly grateful that Shinsou trusted him enough to be able to show it.

But the story had also given Danny an idea.

Without thinking much more on it, Danny twisted and rolled off of Shinsou's lap and the wall, landing on his feet but very almost falling over from the unpractised manoeuvre. Shinsou looked at him questioningly, before Danny held out a hand.

"C'mon, then. If you liked his skills so much, obviously that means we're gonna have to practise combat, right?"

Shinsou raised an eyebrow. "Are you even trained in it?"

Danny made a bit of a face. "I mean, not technically, but I know a few tricks in terms of fighting. You look like you haven't even thrown more than a pathetic punch when you were five."

"Excuse me, but I was six." Shinsou snarked back with a smirk, jumping off the wall and landing far more gracefully than Danny could have hoped for. "Okay then, wise teacher, teach me all the stuff you've learned by watching shitty action movies."

"Uh, rude, it was watching the bullies beat me up, clearly." Danny snarked back only half joking. He actually got half his knowledge of brawling from fighting ghosts but Danny couldn't think of any kind of excuse that could translate to in this universe, and to be fair the other half was self defense skills that Sam had taught him.

That was how Danny and Shinsou managed to get detention for fighting on school grounds.

Chapter Text

Thankfully, Danny didn’t get in trouble with Kirika after what she thought was a real fight between him and Shinsou. She’d been concerned and had asked if it was a genuine fight. When Danny had explained they were just sparring, she’d laughed until she was out of breath, then gave him a high five. 

Danny was pretty sure that Shinsou wouldn’t get mad at him if he told Kirika the reason for his friend, so he did so after she asked about the sparring. Shinsou seemed to be protective over his dreams, worried about them being dismissed, but if Kirika had a problem with it then Danny knew she’d never let him know.

“Shinsou wants to be a hero, huh?” Kirika looked thoughtful for a moment, digesting the fact. “I mean, I guess if he wants to go underground I’ll support him. But I gotta be honest kid, I’m not a big fan of heroes.”

Danny supposed that made sense with what he’d learned about the woman from his time with her. It didn’t sit well with him though, it seemed natural to like them in a society that was structured around the fight of good vs evil - heroes vs villains. 

Kirika took in Danny’s reluctantly accepting but puzzled expression, and sighed. “Society as it stands isn’t really sustainable. Heroes have just as much potential, if not more, for corruption than the cops in your world. There’s also the fact that with all the responsibility placed on them, half of them only put in the bare minimum of effort doing their jobs. Not to mention that nearly every hero is always on the lookout for people breaking the law, and that they label literally everyone breaking them as villains. 

“Now, I am an actual criminal and with y’know accidentally kidnapping you using my quirk, I’m also technically a villain. But even before that, because I used my quirk so liberally, a lot of people who knew I did thought it was breaking the quirk laws. A hero with strict definitions on the quirk laws could choose to arrest me, and I’d’ve likely gone to a high security prison, just for using my quirk non-aggressively.”

Danny considered it, from that perspective he could understand her distaste for them. He wasn’t all that fond of cops either, one rather eye opening trip with Sam and Tucker to the next town over had one of the cops try to harass Tucker when he was alone for a couple of minutes and another had brushed off someone spewing antisemitic insults at Sam, claiming the man had the right to free speech. 

Yeah Danny was definitely an outsider to the Quirk Universe, and couldn’t really make an informed idea of how to improve the societal structure, so he wasn’t sure how or if the hero world could be improved. Hell, he barely had any idea of the corruption that went on within it.

It could be worth looking into.

“I guess I can understand that. Is that why you want to take down Locksley without going to the heroes?” He asked, he’d wanted to ask about it when they were initially starting to plan, but hadn’t wanted to get sidetracked by debating it. 

“Yeah kid, the last time I tried to get help from a hero about a villain they brushed it off, they pretended to investigate but they didn’t . And what do you know, I was right , and the villain went on to do it again and again. I’m not saying all heroes are trash, most of them are okay. I just…” she trailed off with a sigh, rubbing her arms. “They make my hair stand on end, most of the time I’m around them. Underground heroes are the one exception I think. They’re more focused I guess, they take on specific villains and don’t tend to kick up a fuss about people using their quirks or are more likely to look the other way when they find a vigilante.”

“And I assume that the reason we haven’t approached an underground hero…”

“Is that their whole schtick is to be untraceable even if you need their help. The protocol is to get in contact with the Villainous Problem Helpline and they’ll pass on the case to the relevant  hero, if its a problem that needs discretion then they’ll slap an underground hero on it if they can spare one. But the fact is that the backlog is massive, and you’ve only got a one in a hundred chance to have your case investigated. So your best bet is to go to the source.”

“Which brings us back around to the first issue.”

“Exactly.” Kirika agreed. “I mean if you encounter an underground hero and can verify them, then by all means ask how to get in contact with them and we’ll see if we can take the Locksley case to them. But in the mean time, no hero involvement.”

“That’s fair I guess. So…you’ll support Shinsou?” Danny asked hopefully. 

Kirika rolled her eyes with a smile. “Yes I’ll support him, not sure how I can help. My combat experience is mostly nonexistent but if you guys need snacks or lesson funding I’ll help. Will that do?”

“For now, in the meantime me and Shinsou’ll find a more private area to spar in at lunch.”

“Good idea, as much as I want to encourage children fighting, I don’t want to get in trouble for it.”

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Hitoshi hadn’t expected to ever make a true friend. 

His quirk was scary and intimidating, he was convinced that his only positive interactions would be with his cat-sitting clients who were unaware of his quirk, and his little sister. But then Danny Fenton had walked onto the scene and thoroughly threw all of Hitoshi’s expectations out the window. 

He’d told himself not to get attached, after all Danny had said he could be going home at any point. Shinsou had looked at the time difference between Japan and Illinois, a staggering fifteen hours . If they wanted to communicate when Danny went home, they’d have only a slim window for communication unless they wanted to send emails. 

But alas, Hitoshi got attached regardless. It didn’t help that the boy was also the only one outside his immediate family who believed he could be a hero. It was one of the reasons Hitoshi and Yume didn’t see their extended family much. Though psychological quirks had run the gamut in both lines of his family, they hadn’t cared much for Hitoshi’s quirk and Yume’s had been on thin ice ever since that one instance when she was three and had unintentionally given a particularly bitter relative a horrendous dream. 

He’d still not expected Danny to keep seeking him out and consistently encouraging his dream. Their spars became more regular when they realised no one else could get to the roof and it was hard to spot them out there if Danny used his quirk to give them access to it. 

It was… odd - learning the basics of self defence when Danny wasn’t all that confident in his memory. It had been disjointed at first but eventually after a little bit of running through the motions, Danny remembered the steps and Shinsou started to get confident in it. It quickly became evident however that once Shinsou learned what Danny could easily remember, that neither really know how to actually spar. 

Danny, in his determination, had searched out for a cheap place locally that would teach them the basics of martial arts and Kirika had bullied Shinsou into letting them pay for him too. There wasn’t much that they could do with UA’s entrance exam practically around the corner, just less than six weeks away. 

During this time, it was clear that Danny was starting to worry about something though. There was a lot that was kind of off about his friend. But Hitoshi wasn’t a very nosy person, he knew people had things they didn’t want anyone else to know. And they were entitled to that privacy. No one had the right to know literally everything about someone no matter how close they were. 

So Hitoshi kept his questions to himself, even if he’d never been able to find the city that Danny had once said he was from, or that he didn’t really understand what glowing green eyes had to do with his incredibly versatile quirk. 

Hitoshi respected Danny’s privacy and he knew that it was greatly appreciated. 

But Hitoshi still wanted to help. In his experience, the only way he was good at that was finding out what the problem actually was and making a plan around that knowledge. Since Hitoshi didn’t want to pry too hard, he was struggling to find a way. 

He wanted to repay every single thing that Danny had done for him, because Hitoshi hadn’t actually recognised how much that was until he realised he might really have a shot at getting into UA after all. 

Hitoshi had always had the drive to be a hero, he’d always known he would have to shoot for the biggest school if he was going to be one. Any other reputable hero school would have been too expensive in tuition fees and the cheaper ones would just discriminate against him because of his quirk. One of the reasons that UA was so popular was because the only fee they required was the small cost of the entrance exam, when you got in that was that. The only things you’d have to pay from then on was uniforms, lunches and stationary. And even then, there were still programs that helped forgive some of the cost.

But Hitoshi hadn’t felt this much passion and drive to get into his dream school until Danny encouraged him. He was there, every single step of the way. Which is why Hitoshi wanted to help him in return. 

Trying to find out Danny’s dream had been almost like pulling teeth, and even then he still hadn’t managed to find out. He’d just been given a defeated, “It’s never been an option for me”. It was clearly a raw wound. One Hitoshi couldn’t get close to to figuring out. 

While Shinsou was driven and determined, his gaze fixed solidly on his dream as he marched towards it, Danny floated down the stream, letting the river take him wherever it pleased, he was untethered and spiralling in the vast depths of space with no way to manoeuvre. 

It was as the entrance exam application deadline was approaching when Hitoshi broached the idea that he’d been contemplating. 

They’d been hanging out in Hitoshi’s room, Danny sprawled out on the rug with Tofu laying curled up on his chest, purring. Hitoshi sat on his bed doing his homework, something that Danny had given up on entirely almost an hour ago when Tofu first came in. 

The boy in question gave a world weary sigh that spoke of overwhelming exhaustion before speaking. “I’m going to be here longer than I expected, I think.”

The statement was clearly despondent, something that ached with homesickness and guilt. It was rare that they had sombre moments between each other, a lot of topics ended up being layered with enough quips and jabs that made it all feel… lighthearted. This time, there wasn’t any of that, and Hitoshi could tell that Danny was feeling more vulnerable than usual.

“That sucks.” Hitoshi almost winced at his response. There wasn’t much that he could say to that really. Even trying to reassure him with the possibility they could still hang out would seem too dismissive of Danny’s struggles. But without much context to it, he didn’t know what else he could have said. “Wanna talk about it?”

Danny sighed again, this time with a hint of aggravation. “There’s… not much to talk about really, I just thought I’d have gone back before the year was over is all, now it’s getting closer to high school entrance exam cut off dates and if I’m gonna be here after graduation there’s no way I’ll be able to get homeschooled, so I’m gonna have to at least apply to high schools here. Any suggestions?”

Hitoshi took a deep breath to stop himself from blurting out an embarrassing jumble of words that could possibly be a request for Danny to come with him to UA, to be a hero with him. But he knew that if he didn’t word it carefully, Danny would just dismiss it as a possibility. 

“Well, I know that the local high school around here is decent enough. It’s entrance exam isn’t too hard, and you wouldn’t have to move, but it’s just as discriminatory as our school and a lot of our classmates will go there.” Hitoshi shrugged, trying to keep casual, even if his notes had become scribbles with how little attention he was paying to them. “I don’t have much confidence in your grades, but you could always apply to UA with me. You could cheer me on at the entrance exam.”

Danny snorted. “Isn’t UA one of the most prestigious schools in the country? Yeah, there’s no way I’d get in, but then again, if I at least applied then I could keep you company on the test day… Hm. Well I’ll think about it. But if you could help me figure out a few other schools that I could try, I’d definitely appreciate it.”

“Yeah, sure. Wanna look now? I think there'll be some application-cutoff deadlines soon, and the sooner we apply, the better.” Hitoshi offered, trying to hide his joy. Danny hadn’t outright shot him down. From what Hitoshi had gathered about his friend in the time he’d known him, was that if Danny said that he’d think about it, then he’d almost certainly give it serious thought. 

They had spent the rest of the day looking at various options on Shinsou’s laptop, Danny making a list of options in his notebook he could talk about with Kirika-san. A lot of them had been local high schools, and a handful from around the country. Danny had said that Kirika-san often moved, so he was sure that if they found him a good school she wouldn’t mind moving. Hitoshi even managed to find a few other high schools around Musutafu. 

Hitoshi had already managed to strike a deal with his family for if he did manage to get into UA. After all, it was too far to commute each day so if Hitoshi did get in, they’d all move to Musutafu. It didn’t matter much to his parents, they weren’t home often enough to really be affected. They were medical researchers with a lab located almost halfway between their current home and Musutafu anyway. Yume might be a little bummed to leave what she was familiar with, but a fresh start away from her classmates would definitely be welcome. 

The only thing that Hitoshi would miss were the cats he would catsit. He’d already told his clients that he might be moving with the new school year, but that if they ever needed long term care he’d always be available. Even if he was in Kitakyushu and he’d have to travel to Aomori to pick up the cat(s), then head back. Thankfully he’d only be moving a couple prefectures over even if he did manage to get in.

Because this was a big If. 

The biggest If of Hitoshi’s life. 

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Danny finally decided on the very last day. Kirika had been very against the idea of moving to Musutafu. It wasn’t that far away from the first apartment that Kirika had taken him to when he first arrived, just a few towns away if he understood it right. 

She’d been nervous about the whole thing, she’d stated her opinion on heroes and hero schools a number of times, and definitely didn’t like the idea of being closer to where Locksley operated. Kirika had sold her apartment she’d had when he first found her, and then had done her best to hide her address while she was working for him. 

Danny had reasoned with her that it didn’t hurt for Danny to at least just attend the entrance exam. He’d be there to emotionally support Shinsou, and if Shinsou didn’t get in then Danny wasn’t going to brother going. Not to mention, that Danny had already set a deadline for them to attempt to hit Locksley before the school year started so it was also possible that Danny would have been gone before he could attend if he did get in. 

And so on the very last day, he applied to take the entrance exam. He got the email the next day with more detailed information on the exam that he would be taking, and the things that he’d need to bring. His first instinct was to shrug and let Shinsou tell him what he’d need and just go play video games, but in an act that would have made Jazz proud, Danny read through the information carefully. 

It was a lot of information, there’d be a written exam and a practical exam, they weren’t permitted to bring in any stationary for the exam to prevent cheating, and phones weren’t allowed on campus after you’d checked in. Not to mention the various security checks they’d do before entering. 

It made sense, in a way, from what Danny could tell of UA, it was the top of the top. It was the school to go to and it had massive amounts of power and status. Nearly all the top 50 pro heroes attended the school, which gave it a lot of time in the spotlight. The only time that non-students would enter outside of events would be the entrance exam. 

Despite the comprehensive information on the written exam, there wasn’t much information on the practical heroics exam. Other than the fact that applicants had to be prepared that injuries were common during them, and that there would be medical staff with healing quirks to help if they did get hurt. Examinees also needed to bring exercise gear, though there didn’t seem to be any restrictions to what you could use in the exam. You’d have to get them through the security checks first before you could get to the practical, so logically if it wasn’t allowed through that first then it wasn’t allowed during the exam. 

Danny wondered if they hadn’t mentioned what was and wasn’t allowed in the exam was purposeful so that the smarter ones and the ones without combat quirks could take advantage of it. It was a little late to try and find a class to learn some weapon fighting so that Shinsou had even more of an advantage, but it was probably still worth mentioning. 

Though Danny had known Shinsou for a few months, it was clear the boy had more of a mind for strategy than brute force. His devious streak was vindictive and Danny could very easily see him dominating any challenge if he was given enough time to plan and be precise. He’d probably thrive if he had to come up with an incredibly detailed plan that needed careful control of a number of moving parts. 

It was why Danny thought that he’d make a good hero, even if he couldn’t brute force his way through most villains. Danny was sure that with the right training Shinsou would take to it like a duck to water. It was just that getting to that training was going to be difficult. 

What worried Danny slightly was the fact that there wasn’t any information available anywhere about what the practical exam would involve. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find anything. However, considering Tucker had made an algorithm that alerted him to mentions of actual ghosts outside of Amity before censoring it, Danny wouldn’t be surprised if there was a more high tech version being used for it here. 

Maybe it was the fact he’d been in the Quirk Universe for two months, but his overwhelming Obsession to help made the lack of information more frustrating than it was worth. He had to distract himself, and so he took to cleaning the kitchen and starting to make lunch for him and Kirika. 

To make sure his mind was far, far away from thoughts of entrance exams, he thought over the plan that he and Kirika were slowly stitching together. Between them both, they weren’t the smartest people and they didn’t have any experience putting together plans that were so high stakes, but they had to at least try. 

Sure, Danny had technically fought dozens of ghosts that didn’t have any good intentions (one of those being a king and another destroyed the whole world in his time), but those were always mad scrambles with not a second to rest. It was completely different to this prolonged battle off his home turf and without backup, if they messed up they’d be lucky enough if they escaped empty handed without any repercussions. 

It was daunting and scary, but they had to do it.

Danny needed to get home. 

Kirika ruffled his hair when she saw the clean kitchen and the passable lunch waiting for her when she left her bedroom. She teased him, and as he took a bite of his lunch he tried not to think of how much it reminded him of Jazz. 

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“You’ve got this.” Danny tried to reassure Hitoshi as they travelled to Musutafu together. 

Hitoshi had been a roiling ball of nerves for the last twenty-four hours, and Danny had burst into Hitoshi’s apartment the night before and declared that they were having a sleepover. Despite the fact that he’d invited himself over without even a warning, Hitoshi was grateful that he had. 

Danny was observant and successfully distracted Hitoshi when it looked like he was too deep in his own head or when the nerves had started to overwhelm him. Hitoshi also didn’t know how he’d managed to be so lucky, but one of his clients had asked Hitoshi to look after his favourite cats just for the night. Tofu and Tamago had been a wondrous balm for his nerves, and Hitoshi knew for a fact that Ms Yamaguchi wasn’t going anywhere considering the woman was an eighty-three year old who never needed his services for just one night. 

“You’re taking the test too.” Hitoshi reminded Danny, trying to deflect the reassurance. It felt too genuine and heavy right now, Hitoshi just wanted to worry it out because the next few hours would legitimately define his whole life and that wasn’t his teenage brain talking. 

He was fairly confident that he’d get good marks on the written exam enough to at least get into general education, but there would be hundreds trying to do the same thing Hitoshi was doing. No one really knew the exact requirements that UA had for their General Education students, when they had hundreds of applicants and only three classes a year in the department. There weren’t any guarantees that he’d make the cut. 

“Yeah, but if I don’t get in, then I don’t get in. Honestly, the only reason that I’d want to go to UA is if you went. If you make the hero course, then I’ll join you. I don’t think I could follow you if you get into Gen Ed, but at least I could always make one of the Musutafu high schools.” Danny sighed and Hitoshi winced. 

Hitoshi loved Danny, but honestly the boy didn’t have the brain academically in any subject other than astronomy. He did well if he ever needed to use the knowledge practically, it was just trying to get that information onto paper that it got lost. The likelihood of Danny beating out someone else for a seat in general education was slim to none. 

Still, the idea of both him and Danny making it onto the hero course sent a thrum of excitement coursing through him. He’d been friends with Danny for only three months and yet trying to imagine going to a school without him made Hitoshi hesitate. Hitoshi never wanted to go back to the loneliness he felt before. 

“No matter what the exam throws at you, just remember that while it’s a test, they’re testing for heroic potential right?” Danny reasoned as they walked from the station towards UA. “There’s gotta be some loopholes for those that aren’t specialised in fighting villains right? I still wish we’d gotten weapons training…”

Hitoshi wasn’t sure about the weapons training. He’d never been sure just how he would fight villains off, he liked using dirty brawling moves like going for the eyes and sensitive areas but using a weapon like a staff of some kind didn’t seem… flexible enough.

“Think like a hero.” Hitoshi stated, mulling the advice in his head. After all, one of the few things that he’d been able to find out about Eraserhead had been that he graduated from UA. With the fact that underground heroes didn’t often have physical quirks, Eraserhead had to have gotten into the school somehow if he’d graduated. 

Hitoshi looked up at the building they were quickly approaching and felt the thrumming of his nerves crescendo. 

“I’m going to throw up on you.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Chapter Text

Danny had to hand it to UA, they did not skimp out on security nor did they hesitate to shell out for the good stuff. 

For starters, just getting into the school grounds had been a well organised affair. The street outside the gates were already tucked away from busy traffic, but even then they had closed it before the main entrance. To even approach the gate, you had to check in at what seemed to be temporary stations. The check in process included a bag search, a phone deposit and an identity check. 

It was a little worrying being away from his phone, but Danny knew that even if he needed it, it likely wouldn’t have helped much. What was he going to do? Call Kirika, who didn’t have her quirk and wasn’t trained in combat regardless? He was a little reassured that there would be no theft while they held their belongings, considering the guard of tough looking heroes protecting the safes. 

It felt a little overboard for what was just a high school, but Danny thought maybe private schools back home had something somewhat similar. The only difference was that the security point was outside the school grounds. Likely because, as Shinsou explained, no one was allowed on the school grounds without permission. He even showed a video of people trying to get into the school without it, and was appropriately impressed. It would make sense to have the initial security check in outside of the impenetrable barrier like that to mitigate any potential harm. 

As soon as he and Shinsou passed the threshold of the front gate, they were essentially free from scrutiny and Danny felt his shoulders relax. He hadn’t noticed how tense he was in the large crowd and being assessed for danger. It felt like one of the staff would realise his papers were entirely fictitious and assume he was a villain looking to infiltrate it. 

He and Shinsou followed the signs to the testing area they had been assigned for the written exam, thankful they seemed to be in the same one. As they entered the room, a staff member gave them a small bag of stationary for them to use during the test. Another additional step, this one to prevent people bringing in stuff with hidden cheat answers or something. 

Danny thanked them and headed to his seat. He got a little antsy as they waited, Shinsou had been too anxious to risk not coming early, so they would have to wait a while for the test to start. Danny entertained himself by drawing on the note paper that they had been given in case they needed spare room to work out the answers. 

He was trying not to let the nerves of the other applicants get to him, after all he had a fraught relationship when it came to tests. And well, if all went well, Danny wouldn’t need to stay in the Quirk Universe and go to high school here. So he let his mind concentrate on smoothing any potential kinks in his and Kirika’s plan, while his hands doodled blob ghosts and things he missed from home. 

He was in the middle of doodling him, Sam, Tucker and Jazz hanging out when a staff member called for attention, making Danny jump and draw straight through himself striking him from the image. It left him feeling hollow as he tried not to think of anything but the here and now. 

The test itself was very daunting when it was put in front of him. It was stupid how much tests scared him now, especially when he knows his fears are completely irrational. It was only that one specific test that it made sense for him to feel this sense of dread and fear, not…all of them. 

By the time that the proctors called for the end of the test, Danny knew he hadn’t completed nearly enough to get a good grade. His brain felt like it was an overworked computer whirring with an underpowered fan on the brink of coming apart. His brain was fried, but he had done his best. Though he was here primarily to support Shinsou… well. 

On the off chance that Danny screwed up his and Kirika’s plan for Locksley, and they’d need to resort to other methods or get help, it would be a good idea to be somewhere he could get direct access to a hero that would take him seriously. Kirika was against getting hero help, but Danny wanted to believe in heroes so much, because they were so engrained here. 

He wanted to believe that there was hope for this society and it wouldn’t be as tumultuous as his own. There were clearly big issues, yes, but with the amount of power placed in these heroes and a great emphasis on being good and kind… maybe there would be greater chances of a better life for everyone. 

There was also the added bonus that if Danny actually did well on this test, he could probably bring physical proof of it back home to prove to Jazz that he hadn’t been slacking off. She she’d never held his failing grades against him before, but he knew that she’d be proud of his hard work. 

As the staff ushered them towards the auditorium for the next stage of the test, Danny almost wept with joy when he saw Shinsou’s wild mess of purple hair in the crowd. With ease, Danny weaved through expertly and rushed towards his friend. He ended up nearly tackling Shinsou in his relief, but the taller boy managed to readjust their weight so they hadn’t gone sprawling. 

“I think my brain died.” Danny moaned as they continued walking, he kept his weight slumped over Shinsou’s in a way that Danny knew was annoying, it was something he and his friends had done to each other back home. 

“There, there.” Shinsou faux soothed as he patted Danny’s head. “Your poor brain won’t have to do much more, the next part should be purely brainless.”

Danny sighed, relaxing under Shinsou’s mocking. It was easy at this point to be able to read Shinsou’s mood, and clearly the boy hadn’t had as much trouble as Danny which was to be expected. There were the undercurrent of nerves with how stiff Shinsou was, but there was a steady confidence in his gait which meant he was at least happy with how the exam had gone for him. He also hadn’t missed the way that Shinsou had relaxed when Danny joined him, it was nice to know that Shinsou truly liked him despite his sass.

When they reached the auditorium, the two moved towards their seats. With a few other students from their school also applying, with Danny’s being the last one to apply, their seat numbers weren’t next to each other. Danny considered asking one of the others to move, but he doubted they’d agree. Danny and Shinsou were still the outcasts of the school. 

As the loud announcer teacher explained the exam, Danny couldn’t help but pity the guys sat in the front. It was a little bit of a distraction from thinking about how his heart was starting to sink as he realised the exam was going to primarily be physical in a way that Shinsou wouldn’t be able to show off his quirk. The exam itself sounded easy to Danny, battling robots was something he was very familiar with. He’d fought Skulker and Technus on a near weekly basis, he could probably fight them in his sleep. 

Danny leaned forwards in his seat, trying to look past the people in the way and saw the grim look of resignation and apprehension on Shinsou’s face. Well, that clearly wouldn’t do. Danny reached out with his telekinesis just to pull at Shinsou’s sleeve slightly, the boy looked up and met Danny’s eyes. 

Danny gave him a warm smile, a thumbs up and mouthed “you’ve got this,” to him. 

Shinsou’s expression faded and he smiled back at Danny.

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.

.

Unfortunately for them both, Danny and Shinsou were assigned different battle grounds. It was understandable somewhat, limiting possible cheating by making sure that those from the same schools don’t collaborate and make sure that everyone is on equal footing. It made sense! But Danny was rather annoyed that Shinsou couldn’t brainwash Danny and use his quirk to decimate.

The exam started without warning, and though Danny could’ve dived off like a shot, he hung back, deciding to observe for now before acting. He didn’t doubt that he could get a fair number of points if he zipped on ahead and took out the robots before the others got to them, but he needed to analyse the exam if only for his own piece of mind. 

A school that Shinsou clearly looked up to wouldn’t be so unfair that they only let physical type quirks into the hero course. 

It wasn’t until Danny instinctively blocked debris from hitting another examinee (and glaring at the person who’d been careless enough to put others in danger) did he realise. After the examinee he saved thanked him briefly, Danny noticed that the majority of examinees were too focused on their own point totals to care about property destruction or anyone else caught in their way. 

Danny flew through the crowd, looking out for imminent danger before he spotted a group of robots alone. It was a simple matter to fly through them grabbing chunks of wires as he went, disabling them with ease. He would have easily been able to take them out with his ecto-blasts but with the way that everyone else was being lax with collateral damage Danny didn’t want to risk it.

Besides, he’d gotten accustomed to minimising property damage through his fights, it made the town look at him more favourably than his parents who tore through anything in their way if they thought there was a ghost on the loose or if their children were in danger. Not to mention, Danny had always felt bad when he’d destroyed someone’s stuff, it felt mean and unnecessary.

Danny didn’t bother keeping track of how many robot he’d disabled, nor how many people he’d saved from the other examinees. He doubted that the other people taking the test would get hurt more than a few minor injuries, but it was still significant enough that it’d play a large part in hampering their tests, so Danny didn’t hesitate to help. 

They were getting close to the end of the exam when the ground shook and suddenly there was a massive robot taking up the street. If Danny hadn’t been in actual life or death situations before, he might’ve panicked, as it was he just snorted at the ‘roadblock’ that the loud teacher guy had told them about. 

He flew higher to make sure that everyone was getting away safely and was glad he only had to help a few people up when they tripped and not dealing with people stepping on the fallen. When he deemed that everyone was safely getting away, Danny moved to the robot to make sure that there hadn’t been anyone caught close and was relieved that there wasn’t. 

Still. The amount of destruction the robot was doing was excessive. Maybe UA made these areas to be destroyed but it wouldn’t hurt to minimise it if he could. Danny flew through and it was easy to repeat his actions on the bigger robot. He didn’t have much knowledge on robotics, but he found what he assumed to be a battery and pulled it out with him. 

The robot shut down, it’s limbs lowering slightly but with a power source removed the robot froze in place. Danny sighed in relief that removing the power hadn’t made it go limp and destroy even more stuff. He then flew down and put down the large battery, almost as big as his torso, on the ground. 

After a moment’s contemplation, Danny sat on the battery and caught his breath again. 

It was weird how out of shape he felt. The exam was easily harder than chasing the Box Ghost through Amity but not nearly as difficult as fighting Valerie. He’d been used to running on empty with his near daily ghost attacks, it went to show how quickly he’d relaxed outside of it all. He didn’t feel like jelly, but he was out of breath, which didn’t usually happen when he flew. 

Then again, he had done everything in his human form, something that by default made his ghost powers harder to use. It had been so long since Danny had been in ghost form that he was just thankful he hadn’t transformed automatically when the test began, that would have been a fun way to completely obliterate his cover without thinking.

Danny had pretty much caught his breath back when he noticed the crowd at the end of the street, after a moment’s thought he flew over to join them. Many were talking between themselves, but most were catching their breath, or nursing minor wounds. 

They didn’t wait long until a group of medics approached and another staff member ushered the uninjured back towards the entrance so they could get back on the bus. It was quiet, a lot of people decompressing and processing but Danny couldn’t help but hope that Shinsou had realised other people in danger and helped. He was sure that had to be a factor in the test, but he wasn’t sure if Shinsou had managed to stop panicking enough to notice it. 

It was easy to make their way to the changing rooms from where the bus dropped them off, and from there Danny made his way to the checkpoint where he’d agreed to meet Shinsou. There they’d pick up their stuff and head back together, Danny would be going back to Shinsou’s place to have dinner and talk about the exam. 

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Danny had to stop himself from zipping over the crowd of other test takers and scanning for Shinsou, he knew that wouldn’t work out well. Instead Danny restrained himself to bouncing on his tiptoes to one side. It took a while but Danny spotted Shinsou’s purple hair in the crowd and charged forwards, using his intangibility and invisibility to get there faster. 

“So how do you think you did?” Danny asked managing to stop himself from tackling his friend just in time. 

“Fucking—” Shinsou cut himself off as he almost leaped out of his skin. He didn’t hesitate to turn in place and hit Danny’s shoulder with all his strength. “I’m going to eviscerate you one day.”

Danny laughed slightly, “Sorry I didn’t mean to. I could barely concentrate while doing my exam because I wanted to know how you were getting on. How’d you do?”

Shinsou took a deep breath and let it out as a huge sigh, almost slumping as he did so. “I don’t know. I did manage to get some robots, but not nearly as much as some of the others did. Was everyone in your area being reckless too? I pulled a couple people out the way of falling stuff, but half the time I wasn’t close enough.”

Danny nodded. “Yeah, I spent most of my time pulling people out of the way of things and telling others to be more careful. I actually think that it might be an intentional part of the exam, but I’m not all that sure about that.”

“Really?” Shinsou considered that as they approached the collection line. “It would make sense… I mean if it hadn’t been for what you said about thinking like a hero, I might have been too focused on taking out the robots to help everyone else.”

“How’d you end up dealing with them? I don’t think they were super strong, but it was hard for me to tell considering I just ended up phasing their insides out.”

Shinsou winced slightly. “They’re lightweight for machines, but they were still metal so it hurt when I tried to hit one straight up. Grabbed some debris through and used it to trip them up, so they weren’t super hard to disable them. Most of the challenge was getting them down before the other examinees got to them.”

Danny sighed. “If only we were in the same area, you would have swept the competition if you’d’ve taken control of me.”

The boy made a face. “You’d practically be taking the exam for me though.”

“No better than others using their quirks to win the exam.” Danny argued. 

Shinsou sighed, knowing that it was something they’d have to agree to disagree on. It didn’t take them long to get through the queue to pick up their belongings. It was an efficient process, and while it flowed seamless and practised to perfection, it was clear the security was tight.  It almost felt like Danny was visiting a government building and not a school. 

On the way back to Shinsou’s apartment, they didn’t speak much. Shinsou was clearly decompressing over the stress of the exam being taken out of his hands, there would be nothing he could do more at this point, he’d just have to hope. Whereas Danny was trying to distract himself from thoughts of home by reading more about the society of heroics on his phone. 

When they got in, Shinsou almost immediately fell headfirst onto his couch and was greeted by the cats they were catsitting this week. None that Danny was familiar with, but no matter. As Shinsou took a nap, Danny talked with Yume. He liked the girl, she was younger than him and Shinsou by a few years and clearly a lonely soul but she was sweet. 

Her quirk was cool as well, on the rare occasion that Danny had slept over she’d told him about it. Apparently she had the ability to influence people when they weren’t wholly aware of themselves, like if they were on the brink of sleep or otherwise addled by something similar. He’d also helped her with quirk experimentation and it was clear that hers and Shinsou’s quirks worked well together, with him using his quirk, Yume was able to use hers. 

She had a cute habit of coming into her family’s bedrooms while they were falling asleep and using her quirk to make sure they slept well or had sweet dreams. She’d explained her quirk to Danny that first time he’d slept over and he’d enthusiastically wanted to see how it would work. It worked like a charm, and gave Danny easily the best sleep he’d had in years. 

He hoped that Shinsou would get into UA, whether it’d be straight to Heroics or to the Gen Ed course, because that would mean the family moved. It seemed like Yume just needed a new place to start over again, she deserved a fresh start. He had no doubt that she’d blossom in a new environment. 

With Shinsou still passed out, Danny took charge of making food for them. Kirika had stuck to her word in making sure that Danny pulled his weight in terms of cooking, so now Danny could cook a few meals reliably. 

They weren’t impressive meals, but the fact that he could make them without using any pre-made ingredients or pre-packaged meals was something he took pride in. Today he chose to make one of the Japanese recipes he knew, yakisoba. 

Yume seemed impressed with Danny’s skill and it took a lot to make sure that it didn’t go to his head. But he was proud of it! Jazz still hadn’t managed to be able to cook many things without pre-packaged stuff, but mostly that was just because cooking in their house was a risk and the processed stuff had the least chance to reanimate. He still wasn’t all that good at cooking, but it was…fun when someone else was there while he did it. 

Shinsou had offered Danny the chance to sleepover, which he’d normally accept without much thought. But tonight was when Kirika and he would start to put their plans into effect. So after waking Shinsou with a kick to the side, then eating food with him and his sister, Danny headed back to Kirika’s apartment. 

When he got there, Kirika was already suited up in dark clothes, her hair hidden under a hood as best as she could. Danny didn’t take long to ditch his school uniform and dress in some similar dark clothes he’d loaned from Kirika. 

They didn’t speak as they headed to the station. 

The plan was simple. It had to be, really, otherwise it ran the risk of throwing them off track if and/or when it didn’t work out. They’d scope out the place from a distance, to make sure that they were still using the previous base as before. When they did confirm it, then Danny would go through the base with a camera and record how many guys were in there so Kirika could plan the best route out of there when Danny had Locksley hostage. After that, Danny would overshadow Locksley, walk him out of the base and then threaten him. 

It was the only plan they could come up with that wasn’t suicidal or required favours from Kirika’s contact. They’d discussed multiple different plans, including Danny sneaking Kirika in there with him so they didn’t have to risk discovery of trying to get Locksley out of there without alerting his goons. But after a bunch of testing, they found that it was overwhelmingly hard for Danny to use his powers while overshadowing someone else. It was much easier when he was in ghost form as he did the overshadowing, but it still required a lot of focus and time so it wasn’t ideal. Not to mention the whole other box of issues when it came with using Danny’s ghost form. 

The plan they had was the best that they’d got. 

It was all or nothing, and Danny hoped to everything that they’d be successful. 

He missed home more than he let himself feel.

Chapter Text

Hitoshi wasn’t all that sure what changed for his friend after the entrance exam, but all of a sudden Danny would come to school defeated and dejected. 

His mood was dour a lot of the time, and Hitoshi was at a loss for how to help him. What he’d learnt was that when Danny got into weird moods, it didn’t help if Hitoshi tried to ask him what was wrong. It seemed he needed time to process before he could talk about it, which was valid if he was being honest. Hitoshi needed that too, though Yume often told him that he just sulked and became bitter. 

So instead of making Danny talk, Hitoshi invited him over a lot and ended up doing the talking for the both of them. During lunch, they wouldn’t speak but Hitoshi would play music from his phone, sharing his favourites with him. After a few days, Danny played his own music that Hitoshi had never heard before. It was weird, Hitoshi hadn’t been able to find the artists when he went back home and searched for them. Must have been some indie American groups. 

When they hung out after school, they watched TV series and played video games. Danny seemed to be really interested in the ones that had fictional heroes set in worlds where quirks weren’t common, he looked at them almost… wistfully a lot. 

It had almost been a week since the entrance exam that Danny finally spoke. Shinsou caught him staring at some photos on his phone, who Danny assumed was his family. It was taken candidly, closest to the camera was a red haired teen smiling widely at the camera while Danny made a face behind her, and two figures behind them were in the kitchen. One clad in a bright orange hazmat stabbing a large cooked bird, and the other was someone in a teal suit holding what looked like a fire extinguisher. 

The photo held a great deal of chaos, but the two teenagers were amused and casual about the whole scenario. It felt… strange, looking at the image. It was clearly a glimpse into a life that was much different to Danny’s current life. 

“Is that your family?” Hitoshi tentatively asked, making Danny jolt out of his reverie. “She must be your sister, are the other two your parents?”

Danny took a moment to respond, moving the phone to let Hitoshi see it easier. “Yeah. That’s Jazz, this was during last year’s Thanksgiving. Mom and Dad decided that they’d cook a turkey, despite the fact that it goes the same every time that they try to, so Jazz and I cooked the two years previous.”

Hitoshi’s brow furrowed. “It… looks fine to me?” He said hesitantly.

Danny snorted softly. “Nah, it just looks that way because it’s a photo. See, Mom and Dad work with weird chemicals a lot, and because our house is so saturated in it, it has some… unintended side effects mostly when anyone tries to cook something. The turkey had reanimated, so Dad had to kill it again , that’s why he’s stabbing it. And Mom sprayed some decontamination stuff on it after to make sure it was fully dead.”

“What.”

Then Danny smirked at Hitoshi, wide and with a little bit of pain behind it, but still genuine. “See Mom and Dad are researchers in Ectobiology, literally ghost science. They’d brought it back from the dead with ectoplasm, because apparently Dad made the freezer work on it.”

Hitoshi stared at Danny. “Your family is weird.”

Danny laughed, “Yeah. Much weirder than you know really.” His smile then turned melancholic, as he swiped to the next one. “I miss everyone back home a lot.” 

The next picture was a selfie of Danny with three teenagers, one was Jazz but the other two were likely Danny’s friends. One with dark hair, purple lipstick and a gothic attire, the other dark skinned with a beret and baggy clothes. 

“These are my friends, Sam and Tucker. Sam is really sarcastic and snarky, kinda like you, and Tucker is a tech wizz. He could probably hack a supercomputer with barely any effort. I just hope they’re doing okay while I’m gone… I had to leave really suddenly and international contact is… it’s been a while.”

They sit in silence for a long moment, Danny stewing in his thoughts, while Hitoshi tried to think of what he could do to help. Hitoshi had almost gained enough courage to speak when Danny spoke first.

“I’m going to be here… quite a lot longer than I thought.” Danny spoke quietly, in almost a whisper. “I thought that it’d be going home before I had to go to high school here. But things didn’t work out. I like being here, don’t get me wrong. Befriending you, and helping you reach your dream has been one of the best parts of being here. But I don’t know if I fit in here, and I miss where I did fit in. Where everything was familiar, and I had a lot of support. Hell, I even miss my old English teacher who kept getting on my ass about everything I did.”

Hitoshi understood that. He really did, he just couldn’t relate to it a lot. Hitoshi hadn’t had a place where he ever fit in, maybe back before his quirk came in and everyone started treating him differently. After that it felt like there was a perpetual distance kept between him and everyone else, when Yume got her quirk it felt like she was the only one he could keep close, because she never fit in either. 

At his core, Hitoshi was generally a selfish person. Sure he had the selfless goal of being a hero and helping people but outside of that goal, when it came to himself and the people he cared for he was selfish . He was glad that Danny had to stay longer, but he was also sad that his only friend was so disconnected from those he cared about. 

“I don’t know if it’d help,” Hitoshi finally spoke after too long a silence. “But if you ever want to talk about your life back home, I’d be glad to hear it. If you need anything, just let me know. We can just hang out without talking if you want for as long as you need, or I can throw a number of distractions your way.”

Danny turned to Hitoshi fully and smiled. “I know. You’re the best friend that anyone could ask for. And I hope that when you get to UA, you’ll find people who understand that too.”

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When Danny got home from school the next day and found he had a letter from UA, he didn’t bother to get settled down, he threw the envelope in his pocket and dashed back out to run to Shinsou’s.

Their apartments weren’t too far away, but they didn’t walk very much together. In the end he sprinted to Shinsou’s apartment and let himself in using his powers. 

“Have you opened it?!” Danny half yelled, startling Shinsou who yelled and threw his bag at him.

“Stop doing that!” Shinsou yelled back, nerves making his voice crack slightly. 

“Sorry, too excited.” He replied with a smile, “I saw mine and knew that you’d have yours too. I just sprinted over here. Have you opened it yet?”

Shinsou shook his head, staring at the envelope that sat neatly on the countertop. Danny didn’t share Shinsou’s same hesitation, excitement and fear when it came to the results, but he couldn’t help but liken it to the astronomy camp he’d attended when he was thirteen. 

It was rather prestigious, focused on kids who wanted a career in astronomy and gave them guidance on how to pursue their dreams. Danny had only just missed the mark, and was gutted for a few days. But then they’d had a cancellation, meaning Danny got to go after all. It had been the best week of Danny’s life, filled to the brim with a space focus and he’d come away thinking his dreams were closer than he thought. 

Little did he realise that the following September, Danny would have his accident and all his dreams of being an astronaut had been dashed completely. 

“Hey,” Danny said gently, putting a hand on Shinsou’s shoulder comfortingly. “No matter what that says, know that I’ll be here with you. If you get in, I’ll follow. If you don’t, then I’ll still be with you, I took nearly all the same entrance exams you did. I have full faith that you will be a hero, no matter how convoluted that path may be.” 

Shinsou seemed to relax at Danny’s words, he gave him a shaky half smile, closed his eyes and took a long deep breath. After a few moments of deep breathing, Shinsou seemed to have calmed himself enough to reach forwards and carefully open the envelope. 

There were three sheafs of paper, written on good quality stuff. Danny didn’t try to read it but focused on Shinsou’s face, he watched as a number of different emotions passed. Heartbreak, resignation, dejection, relief, annoyance, and determination, the emotion that Shinsou seemed to settle on was resignation. 

“I failed the hero course, but I got on the general education course at least.” Shinsou said hollowly. 

Danny hugged him, holding him tightly. “You’re going to transfer in no time. I know it.” 

Shinsou snorted. “I’m not so sure, but thanks. I apparently did really well on the gen ed exam, top 30 at least. I missed the cut off of the hero course though.”

“The hero exam was dumb and you know it.”

“I guess.”

They held each other for a long time, at some point Yume had come in, read the letter held behind Danny’s back and joined the hug. 

“Alright!” Danny said suddenly, breaking the silence of the moment. “We need an action plan, what did you say your back up was for transferring? Some kind of event, right?”

“Ah-ah.” Shinsou gave Danny a look. “No talking about that until we open your letter. You got yours too, did you bring it or leave it back at your place like an idiot?”

“I brought it!” Danny defended himself, well aware of the fact that it was completely in character for him to forget to bring his along. “I just don’t really care about the results as much as I care about you transferring.”

Shinsou pulled back and gave Danny a Look, then folded his arms. “Okay, but what if my plans for transferring rely on whether or not you’ll be there to help me out.”

Danny sighed. “Fine, here you go.” He pulled out his crumpled envelope and gave it to Shinsou.

Shinsou rolled his eyes at the condition of the envelope but opened it anyways, his brows furrowing in confusion when he pulled out a second envelope and a disc of some kind. 

Yume gasped at the disc. “Is that a holodisk?! Those are like. Super new. In the prototype stage, I think.” 

“Well then, you do the honours, Yume.” Danny shrugged, taking the disc from Shinsou and passing it to Yume. “I think we’re meant to, uh, play? This first before opening the other envelope.”

“Oh! Well, I think you just…” Yume put the disc flat on the kitchen counter and pressed a button in the centre, all three of them startling back slightly when a bright holographic screen popped up with a loud cry of “I am here! As a projection!”

Yume hurriedly pressed around the side hoping to find some kind of volume control, thankfully finding it. Thankfully they added subtitles to the projection so Danny didn’t have to work overtime to process the information spoken, though it probably raised the chances of Shinsou asking Yume to mute the thing on principle.

Already this was different from Shinsou’s letter, and Danny suspected the reason for it. He recognised All Might if only from the All Mighty-o’s cereal Danny had. 

“Young Fenton! Though your results for the written exam were below those of many that applied, you did exceptionally well on the practical portion of the exam! You scored a number of fifty points for defeating villains, however! That was not the only aspect of the test at play!”

“I knew it.” Danny whispered, earning him an eye roll from Shinsou.

“You seemed to focus mostly on helping your fellow examinees, which in the end amounted to seventy points! With a total of one hundred and twenty points, you were in fact the highest scored applicant in the last decade! Because of your phenomenal score I am pleased to welcome you into the hero course class, 1-A. You will find all necessary information in the secondary envelope included with this holodisk. Congratulations!”

“Huh.” Danny remarked, slightly bewildered. He’d… aced an exam? Him? Granted he hadn’t passed the written portion of it on its own, and if there was anything that Danny was skilled at it would be fighting. But still. That felt… weird.

Especially weird because Danny had so easily gotten the place that Shinsou deserved so much more than him. Danny wasn’t aiming to be a hero, he hopefully wouldn’t be stuck long enough in this universe to make it to graduation. 

“Well.” Danny said after a long moment of silence. “I’m gonna record all the lessons, and be your spy. Now, tell me your plan to get on the hero course because I will sacrifice my place for you if need be.” 

Shinsou seemed conflicted between emotions, and struggling for something to say, so Danny saved him the trouble. He put his hands on both Shinsou’s shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes to show how serious he was.

“Look, it sucks. I got something without even trying that you have to work your ass off to even get close to. You’re upset because you want what I have, but I’m your friend so you want to be happy for me. Forget about me for a minute, you’re allowed to be upset and jealous about this, I would be concerned if you weren't . If you need time to be upset, then have that time. But I just want you to know that I will happily and gladly throw away my position there if it means you’ll get to join the hero course.”

Shinsou pulled Danny into a hug after staring at him for a long moment, and Danny pretended that Shinsou had done that out of thankfulness and not just because he had wanted to stop Danny from seeing him cry. Regardless, Danny hugged him tightly and swayed them both slightly, trying to put all his care for his friend into it. 

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Bloodblossoms. 

Of all the things that stayed consistent through the universes, the fact that this one had to also have bloodblossoms that did the same thing… That was some truly astonishing luck. 

Danny and Kirika had gone into their plan expecting Locksley to have no anti-ghost precautions. Ghost tech here was almost unheard of and was similar to all those cheesy ghost movies that Danny had watched when he was younger during family movie night. 

Jazz had thrown a hissy fit when she turned eleven that if they didn’t watch something other than ghost films she’d never attend them again. It had worked, but unfortunately for Jazz that meant they didn’t watch the horse films she’d wanted to watch, just general supernatural and sci-fi things. Danny probably shouldn’t have watched the movie Alien at age nine, but it did desensitise him to horror, and it did nothing to make him reconsider a career as an astronaut. 

Danny’s experience with bloodblossoms outside of that one time with Vlad and the InfiniMap, mostly consisted of their own experiments. Sam had been fascinated by the rare flower, mostly because as an avid gardener the fact that she hadn’t heard of the plant before then was an insult. She’d put in a lot of work to make sure that her studying of it never once got the chance to hurt Danny, which he’d appreciated a lot. 

Her studies found that the modern day equivalent was incredibly rare, having been unsustainably harvested during the large-scale witch hunts for three hundred years. They were mostly kept by some wiccan and pagan groups, but they didn’t sell the seeds, apparently Sam even had to bribe the group heavily for the seedlings she’d gotten. 

Between him, Sam and Tucker they decided that it was unlikely that Vlad had access to the plant itself, mostly because the kind of people who had them would be too infuriating for him to deal with. He also wouldn’t’ve been able to steal them with his powers either due to the properties of them. 

The properties of the modern variety was somewhat diluted from the original version, but it still caused Danny great pain when in the presence of a bouquet of them, not enough to incapacitate him but enough to severely weaken him. The thing that they weren’t all that sure of was the fact that if Danny was around enough of them that weren’t concentrated together they significantly diminished Danny’s powers. 

For their tests, Sam had spread a bunch of the petals around a room, none were all that close to each other but while Danny was in the same room he found it hard to concentrate on anything and almost impossible to access his powers with entering the room while using them often involved the shorting out.

Each time he had tried to use his powers in the room, or entered using them, he would experience pain when he tried. Together they’d theorised this was how Vlad had made the Plasmius Maximus, or at least had gotten the idea from. After those tests, Sam wasn’t enthused about continuing their experiments and Danny wasn’t either, even if the knowledge would be helpful to have. So Sam had incinerated the whole batch, disinfected her entire house and didn’t deign to touch the plants again. 

Danny didn’t think about the idea of someone turning the flowers into a perfume. 

Sam would be so annoyed when Danny told her about it. She’d been an avid enthusiast of living as sustainably as possible, she made her own makeup, her own hair dye and also her own perfume. The fact that they’d all stopped the bloodblossom tests before she’d made some and tested it, would frustrate her to no end. 

Sure Danny wouldn’t have known beforehand that Locksley would have gotten his hands on some, and from there make perfume out of it, but it would have made Danny much more aware of what it would do to him. 

Their plan had been going well until Danny entered Locksley’s room and found the man inspecting a tattoo on his arm. Almost immediately Danny had felt weak and stumbled, knocking over a few things, alerting Locksley to Danny’s presence. Assumedly, Danny had flickered into visibility, to which Locksley considered Danny for a moment and simply pulled out a perfume bottle from his jacket and sprayed himself, then calmly called for reinforcement. 

“I hadn’t expected you to hand deliver yourself to me.” Locksley had remarked, striding towards Danny with confidence. “Glad to see my preparations weren’t for nothing.” 

When Locksley sprayed the space between them with the perfume, Danny had gagged violently and had thrown himself out the window, barely catching himself with his flight powers before he hit the ground three stories down. He didn’t really register much afterwards other than the frantic way he’d dodged guards and haltingly made use of his powers. 

They flickered angrily, and were painful to use, but eventually Danny managed to get away from them and reunite with Kirika shortly afterwards. From there, Danny had been nauseous the entire way to the station until he realised he probably still had the perfume on him. They stopped at a pool so Danny could shower and change into some new clothes that Kirika bought him on the way. 

Talking didn’t come easy to either of them that night, nor the following days. The mood in the apartment was incredibly depressing. After all, Danny’s chances of getting home quickly had become almost impossible and Kirika wasn’t even sure if she’d ever get her quirk back. Something that was a key part of herself. 

It wasn’t until the UA results came in that things changed, Kirika hadn’t been thrilled that Danny was going to go. But in the end she hadn’t kicked up much of a fuss, seemingly resigned to the fact that Danny was going to attend and it would just be easier on them both if they moved. 

It wasn’t until the week of moving arrived that Danny learned they were moving to the same apartment building as Shinsou. They weren’t exactly neighbours, Shinsou’s apartment was bigger than theirs but it meant that they could hang out much more and head to school together, rather than just meeting at the school. 

Apparently, Kirika had contacted Shinsou’s parents and figured the details out with them, offering babysitting services if they needed it. That had somehow culminated into Danny and Kirika being invited to have dinner with the whole Shinsou family. 

Shinsou’s parents were nice, it was clear they were hard workers and loved their children. Both of them seemed proud of Shinsou for doing so well on his exam, they had both privately thanked Danny for his endless support of their son and told them that if he needed anything to just ask them. 

Danny had appreciated it. It had also been hilarious to see Mr and Mrs Shinsou treat Kirika as a child like they treated Hitoshi and Danny. Of course, in their eyes Kirika would be a child, she was in her mid twenties and they their early forties. It had certainly knocked Kirika off kilter, until she’d noticed Danny’s quiet snickering, then she’d kicked him under the table and got herself back together. 

When the day finally came to attend UA, Danny wasn’t all that sure what to feel. It had been six months since he arrived in the Quirk Universe, and here he was having his first day of high school all over again. He’d almost gotten used to having to wear a uniform to go to school, but the new one made it weird again. 

It was also daunting. Danny would be in a new class without Shinsou, if he got stuck he’d have to figure it out on his own. Though he’d gotten much more familiar with the universe in the time he’d been here, some major things still tripped him up. He wasn’t sure on what would be his next step, but if he could focus all his attention on getting Shinsou into the hero course…

Maybe he wouldn’t be able to focus much on how he won’t be going home.

Chapter Text

Danny liked the new apartment. 

It was slightly bigger than the last one, with two bathrooms instead of just one. So there wouldn’t be any more morning fights over who had to get up earlier to use the bathroom first. Kirika also let him have more say in how they decorated, which primarily was his room but they also debated on the layout of the rest of the place as well. 

She’d let him go full out in decorating his room within budget, but it had been worth the trouble of spending a whole bunch of money on fibre optic lights and paints to recreate a galaxy on his ceiling as accurately as he could. It was a much improved variant of his starry sky back home, where he’d gotten glow in the dark star stickers stuck there as an eight year old. 

Considering the decorations were now permanent, they probably weren’t allowed to do it in a place they only rented but it had been worth it. Shinsou had been suitably impressed when he’d come to their new apartment to visit. 

It had been a nice surprise to learn that his and Kirika’s new apartment was in the same building as the Shinsou family’s new apartment too. Theirs was on a different floor considering it had more bedrooms, but it was nice that if Danny wanted to he could walk up the building in his pyjamas and visit his friend whenever he wanted. 

As a symbol of trust, both he and Kirika got keys to their apartment, and they shared keys of their apartment with the Shinsous. Not that Danny needed it, it was much easier to just ring the doorbell and use his powers to let himself in. Danny hadn’t always decided to ring the doorbell but after almost petrifying Yume by entering silently, he’d started to. 

The Shinsou apartment was notably quieter after the move due to the fact that Shinsou lost almost all his clients. A large majority were those that lived in the same building as him, so they’d have to unfortunately rebuild their client base, but Danny was sure they’d get more pretty soon. Shinsou had put small notices in every mailbox for the apartments, but apparently some of his more loyal clients had reached out to friends in Musutafu, so they weren’t quite back to square one. 

With the move, Kirika had been relegated back to job hunting again, which she wasn’t especially thrilled about, but at least the new job she’d found would be much closer than commuting almost two hours just one way to get to it. Kirika had been glad to be rid of the fancy waitress outfit but the job she did manage to get was almost as bad according to her. 

Danny’d had to bribe the information about her new job from her, it didn’t quite make sense why he’d had to needle her so much for the info until he heard what it was. She’d apparently been accepted to be a waitress at a cat cafe with a rather cute uniform. Danny had to restrain himself from busting a lung laughing at the picture it painted. 

Because one thing that had become painfully clear when Kirika and Danny had visited the Shinsou house for dinner, she was not a fan of pets. At. All. She’d tolerate them, but it seemed that pets were something that continued to baffle and off put her. Seeing her awkwardly interact with cats on a daily basis would be hysterical to watch. It was clear she had no idea how to handle them. Danny couldn’t wait to visit her after school with Shinsou to watch. 

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Danny walked to his classroom at UA with a mixture of feelings, he’d separated from Shinsou at some point with their classrooms in different corridors. On one hand, he was curious how the heck a hero school actually worked and functioned, and yet on the other he felt two distinct feelings of loneliness. One was far off, missing going to school with Sam and Tucker, and the other missing Shinsou’s comments on their classmates or teachers. 

He wanted to withdraw into himself and sulk, but he shook himself. If Shinsou was going to be very stupidly kept out of the hero course, then Danny would have to experience it for him. Memorise as much as he could and report back to his friend, that way when Shinsou did transfer into the hero course he wouldn’t be behind in the slightest. He’d even bought a crappy audio recorder so he could record the audio of the lessons for Shinsou if he wanted them. 

When he reached his classroom, Danny had to blink at the size of the door. It was massive , there were a lot of quirks that enhanced size in the Quirk Universe but the door had to be at least twenty feet tall. The max that Danny had seen outside of size-altering quirks had been at most ten feet, so a twenty foot tall door was likely overkill. 

The door was open, and the classroom sparsely populated, maybe half the class were there already. Shinsou had been insistent that they get there earlier than Danny liked, but whatever, Danny was here now so he just had to deal with it. There weren't many people interacting with each other when he entered, in fact there were just two people interacting - a blonde kid getting lectured by a taller guy wearing glasses. 

As much as Danny wanted to pick a seat in the back and hope that he could tune the lecturing out, he’d been given his seat assignment along with all the documents he’d been sent with his acceptance letter. He’d almost hoped that the seat numbers were sorted in the American way going from left to right then backwards, but the sticky notes of which desk was which had been stuck on the top crushed that dream. His seat number was 12 and the blonde guy’s was 18. Apparently, his seat was situated diagonally from the commotion. Yay. 

Danny tried to tune out the lecturing behind him by going over the information he’d been given. The class timetable was odd, with some classes that didn’t seem to make sense to him. What the heck was “Modern Hero Art History” about? He wasn’t happy either that most of the period blocks were just labelled “hero training” with seemingly no distinction between if it’d be physical training or via classwork. 

He was almost too caught up in the realisation that he had class on a Saturday as well that he almost entirely missed the way that the lecturing had come to a stop by the strict guy loudly introducing himself to a newcomer. 

The class had also seemingly filled in while he wasn’t paying attention and was watching the scene with idle fascination. They were basically just waiting on the teacher and a few people to sit down now, so Danny did the same and saw a green haired boy stutteringly introduce himself.

“Midoriya, you realised there was something more to that practical exam, didn’t you?” Iida asked, making Danny blink. “I had no idea. I misjudged you. I hate to admit it, but you are better than me.”

The way that Midoriya winced while Iida looked away made Danny think he hadn’t noticed the rescue points thing, which made Danny snort slightly. It was also rather amusing to watch the boy turn bright pink when a bubbly girl arrived and started gushing to him. 

Danny and the rest of the class almost jumped out of their skin when a dry voice cut through the bubbly girl’s chatter. “Go somewhere else if you want to play at being friends. This is the hero course.”

From Danny’s position he couldn’t see much outside the door except a bundle of bright yellow on the floor behind the three who’d been talking. After a moment, he saw the bundle shift, heard the sound of a zipper opening slightly and then a slurping sound. The mass of bright yellow then rolled and moved through the door like a caterpillar before standing up and emerging like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. Except in this case, instead of an insect with pretty and colourful wings, the cocoon revealed an exhausted hobo. 

“Okay, it took eight seconds before you were quiet. Time is limited. You kids aren’t rational enough.” He turned to the class and continued. “I’m your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shouta. Nice to meet you.”

Huh. 

“It’s kind of sudden, but put these on and go out onto the field.”

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Danny changed quickly, remembering at the last moment to grab his audio recorder for Shinsou to keep in his pocket. Even if it didn’t end up being useful for Shinsou, it might come in handy if Danny needed help remembering all his classmates' names. 

He was thankful that there were stalls where people could get changed in private, he wasn’t exactly secretive about his scars, but they did cause a lot of questions that Danny never wanted to deal with. After all, while he didn’t scar too often when hit in ghost form, the particularly nasty ones did stay and the scar he’d gotten from the Accident was… well it was especially big. He couldn’t completely hide it with the short sleeves of the uniform, but no one needed to know it went all the way up his arm and across his torso. Thankfully the worst of it centred around his chest, the pale lichtenberg figures tended to only be prominent up close.

As he headed out of the changing rooms to meet with their teacher who would lead them to the field, Danny pondered on his own personal goals in this class. Sure, he was going to be doing everything he could to make sure that Shinsou transferred, but outside of that what could the class do for him? The curriculum seemed to be mostly universe specific, but… well a group of kids all training to be heroes would at least be kinda friendly?

It was easier to scout for the people who were friendly if they had already started talking to other people. That boy Midoriya seemed to be pretty friendly, but he was also clearly a nervous wreck so it would probably be a good idea to give him space. There was a red haired boy joking with a black haired guy with large elbows, a blond guy talking to a dark haired girl with… were those aux cords for earlobes? Nice. 

He almost did a double take at a uniform that was seemingly moving on its own, as if the person was completely invisible. When he noticed them, he didn’t hesitate to approach. 

“Hi, sorry but is your quirk permanent invisibility?” Danny asked, wondering where he should look when he talked to them. He tended to usually go for eye contact or close to it, but it was hard to tell. From the clothes, he’d guess they were shorter than him by a fair amount, he didn’t want to look too closely at their body in case he was being creepy but their figure had seemed feminine to him. 

They jolted at his words, their body turning to face him. “Hi!” A feminine voice replied, full of enthusiasm. “Yes! It’s a mutation quirk, I’m completely invisible, so it makes it pretty easy to go around without being noticed. I’m Hagakure Tooru!”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Danny laughed. “Sorry, forgot to introduce myself, I’m Danny Fenton, originally from America so just call me Danny. I was just surprised is all, my quirk lets me go invisible too, but only when I want to.” He grinned then turned briefly invisible to show her.

She jumped and made an excited noise. “No way! Okay, now we have to be friends.”

Danny laughed and easily agreed.

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Shortly afterwards, when it seemed like the rest of the class was ready, Aizawa took them outside. It didn’t take long for him to explain what they were doing, to the shock of the class. There were a few people audibly confused that they weren’t going to be going to the entrance ceremony or orientation. Shinsou could probably give Danny notes on those if he needed them. 

“If you’re going to become a hero, you don’t have time for such leisurely events.”

Oh boy did Danny understand that. In comparison to his life back home, here in the Quirk Universe things were so peaceful and relaxed. Sure he somehow found time to have fun back home, but they were always infrequent and relied on him giving up sleep a lot of the time. But still, how important is a set of tests that they’d skip tradition? 

The physical fitness tests were something that happened every new term back at his old middle school, so Danny had only taken it once. He hadn’t bothered doing much of it then, the second they said no quirks he didn’t see the point in trying. His powers were so intrinsic to who he was that it was almost impossible to just stop using them. He was somewhere that he could openly use his powers and he was made to go back to hiding them? They couldn’t get him to do that even for a minute. 

“Bakugou, you took down the most villains in the entrance exam. In junior high, what was your best result for the softball throw?” 

After tossing the ball to the angry blond, Danny watched as he did a couple of stretches. He was watching but he’d still almost jumped out of his skin at the loud explosion. Huh. That… was kind of a cool quirk. Incredibly destructive and almost terrifying, but cool. The guy getting over ten times his previous record was also telling of how illogical doing the tests quirkless was. 

Danny found himself getting excited at the idea along with the rest of the class. Him, Sam and Tucker had never had the time nor space to go full out on testing his powers. All of what he’d learned mostly came from one fight after another, so after being encouraged to go full out… huh maybe his time in UA would be fun after all. 

“‘It looks fun’, huh? You have three years to become a hero. Will you have an attitude like that the whole time?” Aizawa chided them before pulling a truly threatening grin. “All right. Whoever comes in last for all eight tests will judged to have no potential and will be punished with expulsion.”

Danny blinked while the class visibly panicked. “Intense.” He murmured, Hagakure next to him hummed in agreement. 

“We’re free to do what we want about the circumstances of our students. Welcome to UA’s hero course!”

After a brief discussion on the harshness of being a hero, Aizawa ended with the apparent school’s motto “Go beyond, Plus Ultra.”

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They went in order of seat number apparently, with Aizawa calling them out by name. The first up was a fifty metre dash, which Danny had no clue how that’d go for him. He could fly pretty fast, but measuring speed wa something he could never wrap his head around. Not to mention all the knowledge he had about his powers were when he was in ghost form, so it was anyone’s guess really. Instead of spending the time thinking about what result he’d get, he spent the time talking. 

At some point, the aux cord girl joined in and introduced herself as Jirou, he recognised her as the person who sat behind him. She was pretty cool and kind of reminded Danny of Sam, she was snarky and looked like she could absolutely rock the goth look.

She’d started the conversation off by asking their quirks, Hagakure’s went quickly because it was rather obvious. Danny was a little harder to explain. 

“Eh, mine is kind of broad with what I can do with it. I call it Phantom, it basically lets me do a bunch of things that are related to ghosts and stuff. Like I can go invisible, go through stuff, fly and a couple other things.” He explained with a shrug. 

Jirou looked at him with raised eyebrows. “That… sounds like a pretty powerful quirk. What are its drawbacks? Quirks usually have some kind of balance.”

Danny screwed his face up, “Apart from a couple things, they all require a lot of concentration and doing a bunch at the same time is always much harder to do. It’ll probably be something that I could work on but I haven’t had the space to be able to really. What’s your’s?” 

“Earphone jack,” she explained twirling one of the aux cords around her finger. “I can plug them into anything and extend my hearing, and even without plugging them in I hear a lot better than a lot of other people.” 

“That’s so cool! Do you use headphones then or is it easier to just use your quirk?” Hagakure asked, with Danny agreeing. Her quirk was definitely cool and very interesting.

Unfortunately that was when Danny’s name was called along with a guy called Kirishima. He wondered if he could get Aizawa to use his first name when he got his attention, it would make him feel less like he was in trouble. 

“Hey! I’m Kirishima, you’re Fenton right? Nice to meet you!” The red haired boy grinned at him.

Danny smiled back. “Call me Danny, nice to meet you too.”

“Oh you’re from America, then? Or England?” 

They’d gotten distracted by talking to each other that they almost missed the countdown of the machine that would record their scores, making them scramble to get into place before countdown finished. 

Danny thought the three and a half seconds that he got was pretty good considering a lot of the others were getting between five and seven seconds with a few exceptions. He ended up not getting the answer to Hagakure’s question from Jirou but Kirishima did apologise for distracting him and they had a conversation too while the test wrapped up. 

It was nice, seeing how friendly they all were. Back home, Amity Park wasn’t that big of a town so mostly everyone knew each other, knew of each other or recognised faces around town. The familiarity made people less likely to befriend new people, but here everyone seemed be rather excited to make new friends. It helped keep Danny from getting too lonely.

In the second test, he stuck close to Hagakure and Jirou who admitted they didn’t have much muscle so didn’t except good results. Danny as Phantom had been strong enough to lift massive objects, but in human form not so much. He was stronger than average, but he’d still never trained his grip so he wasn’t disheartened by the 50kg he got. 

The third test was the standing long jump which made Danny laugh a little, when it was his turn he just sort of started flying and looked at his teacher. Then he kept flying until Aizawa called out for him, he’d gotten pretty far away by then, so it wasn’t clear if Danny got a higher score than the others. It was pretty obvious that his ability to keep himself in the air was nearly indefinite. Something he showed off when he talked to Jirou and Hagakure again while still floating. 

For the forth test, it was the repeated side steps which Danny didn’t put much effort into. He’d tried to fly side to side, similar to the hip height guy but apparently he needed to touch the ground each time that he switched direction or it didn’t count. 

The fifth test was the ball throw that had been shown as an example, but after the bubbly girl Uraraka used her quirk to launch the ball into the stratosphere then got infinity, he knew the average for the class would be incredibly skewed. Before she went though, the nervous guy Midoriya had went and seemed panicked when he only got forty-six metres. 

“I erased your quirk.” Aizawa said, the scarf around his neck began to unravel and float with his hair as he stepped forwards. It was probably a pretty intimidating sight by the way that Midoriya paled when he looked at him. 

“You erased my quirk? Of course! You can erase other people’s quirks with your quirk just by looking at them. The Erasure Hero: Eraserhead!” Midoriya identified him, making Danny jump with surprise and look at their teacher in a new light. Wow, okay he had some good news for Shinsou then. 

But Eraserhead’s quirk… now that was an interesting one. Definitely something that suited an underground hero from what Danny understood, considering a lot of villains never used weapons that weren’t their quirk or related to it. But someone prepared would likely carry a weapon if they knew they were going to face him. Idly, Danny wondered if Aizawa’s quirk would work on Danny. 

Locksley’s quirk hadn’t worked on him, he and Kirika thought it was because it wasn’t a quirk, but it was still possible that they’d meet someone with a quirk that did affect Danny’s powers directly. Still, probably not a good idea to ask him the specifics, he didn’t seem to be the type to explain. 

Danny did feel bad for Midoriya considering Aizawa was apparently dealing out one hell of a lecture or some kind of threat. He was already a nervous wreck that it was probably overkill. He did have an incredible bounce back ability though, considering he’d managed to pull it off then give their teacher a determined look while his index finger was noticeably injured. 

Angry blond pretty much exploded and tried to attack Midoriya for some reason though? It was interesting watching them beef it out. He hadn’t realised that some people had already come into the school with their own rivals. Maybe it was just them though, Bakugou did seem to be pretty intense about everything. 

After that was the sixth test were they’d done sit-ups, Danny did approach Midoriya to ask if he was okay, it was kind of unfair that he couldn’t be excused to go to the nurse, but whatever. Midoriya nervously said that he was alright, but it was said with a wince which didn’t fully sell it. Regardless, Danny introduced himself and hoped that the next couple of tests wouldn’t aggravate the injury more. 

The seventh test was the seated toe touch which was pretty good for Danny. He’d had a fair amount of flexibility before the Accident, but afterwards he cold probably pull off some contortionist tricks without that much practice. 

The final test was the long distance run which, again, wasn’t an issue considering he could just fly. One girl managed to pull a whole ass bike out of nowhere and use it, which was completely baffling to him. Encouraged by the amount of socialisation going on, afterwards when they were the first ones to finish he introduced himself to her and asked about her quirk. 

She introduced herself as Yaoyorozu Momo, and showed her quirk by making a small bouncy ball from the back of her hand. He was… in awe of the amount of knowledge she had to have for such a quirk, and did admittedly gush about how smart she must be to have such a mastery of it. It had made her blush scarlet but hopefully he had made a good impression. 

By the time that the tests were over, he was feeling pretty confident he was going to get a decent score. He wondered if Aizawa really would follow through on his threat to expel someone, he kind of hoped not because of who Danny had talked to they all seemed pretty nice. 

“Oh! You’re fifth place! Congrats Danny!” Hagakure congratulated him, “I wish I had gotten better, but I’ve improved on my times since middle school so I’m pretty happy with my results. I feel bad for Midoriya though.” 

“Thanks, Hagakure. Yeah same, he seems nice.”

“By the way, I was lying about the expulsion.” Aizawa said off handedly, almost as if he’d forgotten to mention it before he gave them all a menacing grin. “It was a rational deception to draw out the upper limits of your Quirks.”

The way that Midoriya was so relieved that he got a little dizzy was almost funny in its intensity, but he got the vibe that he was just intense about everything. After Aizawa concluded the class and sent Midoriya to the nurse’s office, he promised everyone that tomorrow would be even more rigorous than today. 

Oof. 

Chapter Text

“Welcome to the Cozy Corner Cat Cafe!” A familiar voice reluctantly chirped as he and Danny walked through the door. “I’m Kamiya, I’ll be your server today.”

Hitoshi really didn’t know what to expect when Danny said that they were going to hang out at Kirika-san’s new workplace. He’d been half expecting a restaurant like her last job was, but to Danny’s utter delight, it turned out she was working at a cat cafe. 

The uniform clearly wasn’t Kirika-san’s style, however. Hopefully the job wouldn’t be as intensive as her old one. Hitoshi had seen how busy she’d been while he and Danny had occupied a table, then again, Kirika-san might’ve preferred that to having to interact with the cats. She weaved around them awkwardly, trying to ignore their presence as best she could.

“Hi there, Kamiya-san, my friend and I love cats. Do you know which one is the most cuddly one?” Danny asked with an unashamedly wide grin of amusement. It was nice that he and his cousin had such a good relationship, it was clear they cared enough that they could tease each other affectionately. It was good Danny had that, he seemed to miss his other family, so at least he had Kirika-san.

Kirika-san, on the other hand, was clearly not enjoying the teasing. She grit her teeth and answered, “I’ve been told that Gijitsu is a wonderful cuddler, though I believe he is currently sleeping somewhere above us.” 

Hitoshi had immediately fallen in love with the cat cafe in particular when he’d seen the inside. The cafe did live up to its name as cozy, with various soft areas to lounge in with low lying sofas and other seating nooks. The best part was the ceiling suspended cat obstacle course, where the cats could have fun, with a few sections made clear so they weren’t hidden from sight. 

“Hi Kirika-san. I hope that you’re doing well here.” Hitoshi broke in before Danny could go too far in his teasing and accidentally get Kirika-san in trouble.

Kirika-san turned to him and her tension eased somewhat. “Thanks kid, glad someone can be considerate. I’m adjusting, I don’t think many of my co-workers have caught onto my unfamiliarity with cats, but hopefully I’ll get used to them before they notice.”

“That’s good, we won’t take up too much of your time. But can I have a coffee please?” Hitoshi asked, as he ignored Danny’s slight pout that his teasing got cut off.

“Sure, oh I talked to my boss about putting up a notice for your cat-sitting and he said he’s fine with it if you talk to him. It’ll go up over on that board over there, so just lemme know when you’ve got something you wanna put up and I’ll let him know.”

“Thanks Kirika-san.” Hitoshi smiled, a little taken back that she’d asked for him. He hadn’t expected her to, but he was grateful. Hopefully it would help build his client base, apparently their apartment building didn’t have many cat owners. 

“I’ll have a mango boba tea - hey where are your cat ears?” Danny asked with a grin as a couple of cats approached his and Shinsou’s table. 

Kirika gave Danny a glare so cold and harsh it sent one of the more timid cats running. Without breaking eye contact she flipped him off then left, Danny cackled as he saw the cat-tail belt swinging with her movement. 

Hitoshi just raised an eyebrow at Danny. It was nice to see his friend happy again after that funk a month or so ago, but perhaps it wasn’t a good idea for that fun to be had at his cousin’s expense. If only for the sake of Danny’s continued existence. 

Danny got a hold of himself as he found himself almost smothered by the cats’ attention. It really was fascinating seeing how cats were drawn to him, he’d speculated it was a minor effect of his quirk since corvids were also drawn to him. It had made Hitoshi want to take him to a zoo or something to see if bats and owls also were fascinated by him too. 

“So how come your class wasn’t at the entrance ceremony? I looked for you guys but there was just a spot for a class.” Hitoshi asked, trying to tempt away one of the less interested cats for a cuddle with him rather than waiting for Danny to get round to them. 

“Oh yeah, our teacher is intense. He took us all out to the field out back and made us do a quirk assessment test, y’know like the fitness tests we did in middle school but with our quirks. Some girl did the ball throw and since she had a gravity nullification quirk she yeeted the ball into orbit and got a score of infinity.”

Hitoshi blinked. “Huh.”

“Yeah, and the other part is that our teacher said that whoever got last place would get expelled after he heard some people say that it would be fun. Gotta take it seriously with him I guess. He’s odd too, when he first showed up he didn’t just walk through the door he crawled in the room while in a sleeping bag like a caterpillar.”

What. That was… definitely baffling. The most interesting thing for Hitoshi today had been the fact that his homeroom teacher was the rescue hero Thirteen who had a space theme. He was sure that Danny would get a kick out of them. 

“UA is weird.” Hitoshi said after a moment. “What’s his hero name anyway? All the homeroom teachers are pros from what I can tell.”

And, oh. Danny’s smile had gone from bemused to smug as he looked at him. “He didn’t give us his hero name, introduced himself as Aizawa, but a kid in my class recognised who he was and… turns out his hero name is Eraserhead.”

Hitoshi felt his mind bluescreen. 

“No…”

“Yup,” Danny replied smugly. “I also know what his quirk is…”

“Danny, please.” Hitoshi almost whimpered. 

“And when you get into the hero course and join my class then, well, you’ll also be Eraserhead’s student.”

Hitoshi wasn’t sure exactly how intense his drive to get into the hero course was before, but now, under Danny’s teasing and smug smile, it had just doubled.

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They spent a nice couple of hours hanging out at the cafe. When Danny’s teasing of Kirika got too much, she brought them a complementary glass of water and “accidentally” spilled it on Danny’s head which was probably a good indicator that Danny should back off. He conceded defeat and  genuinely told her that he loves the apron and asked if they sell any variants that he could buy. 

She rolled her eyes in response on told him that she’d see what she could do. Clearly she saw right through him though because Danny was absolutely thinking of getting one for Shinsou’s birthday in a few months if he could swing it. He wondered what kind of colour would look best on him. Afterwards, the three of them walked home, letting Kirika relax and zone out as they walked. 

It was Danny’s turn to cook tonight for them all, he’d bring Kirika her portion when he was done eating with the Shinsous’. It was an arrangement that wouldn’t have worked if they lived in separate building but it felt nice that they could divide up the responsibility of food management between them, it meant less cooking for everyone.

It was certainly different to what Danny experienced back home, but had a similar feeling. Home in a different flavour. 

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The next day at UA was the first full day of term. Yesterday had been an initial introduction — their homeroom teacher was meant to tell them all they needed to know about UA and how the classes worked, then bring them to the entrance ceremony. Instead the next day when Iida inquired about student orientation, Aizawa gave him a dead-eyed stare and told him that he wasn’t going to waste time going over the information they already had in their student handbooks. 

To be fair to Aizawa, Danny kind of agreed. If their teacher did spend an hour or so telling them all that, then he’d absolutely space out. While Danny’s ability to take in audible information had improved slightly, and he had the advantage of an audio recorder, he still took in information better when it was written down. Besides, he’d already read through the handbook so he was pretty confident that he knew all that he needed to. 

It was still weird to him that for their classes the teachers were the ones that moved from classroom to classroom rather than the students. It made sense on some levels, and it made it easy for the teachers to keep track of their classes. On the other hand, it made him rather restless, there were five or so minutes between each class that he could theoretically walk around the classroom but he didn’t want to draw attention when most everyone was sitting down or standing in place. 

Instead he got to know the people that sat around him between classes. Hagakure came over as well, happy to keep getting to know her new friend. It was interesting to see her outside of exercise gear, she wore circular glasses with hair accessories and fingerless gloves, she explained that it made it easier for others to interact with her. Knowing where she was looking and if she needed to motion to anything with her hands. At first he’d worried if she had bad eyesight which would make it difficult for being a hero, but she’d reassured him that the glasses had fake lenses, and that her eyesight was surprisingly great. 

Danny was also surprised by how quickly he got along with the other two people near him in seats 7 and 8. They were truly kindred spirits; Ashido, a bubbly girl with bubblegum pink skin and hair; and Kaminari, a blond with a black zigzag stripe in his hair. They both struggled academically and loved to take things easy. Between classes he found it hard to pull away from conversation with them because it was just… fun.

Jirou was usually rather quiet when they talked but not in a ‘loner in a large group of people sort of way’. She spent their breaks listening to music and being a silent participant in their conversation, usually only speaking up to say something snarky. It was always funny whenever she did. Danny really wanted Shinsou to just join their class already because if the two of them teamed up, he knew their snark levels would be devastating. Truly a formidable opponent. No one would be safe. 

After barely half the day is through, Danny realised something incredibly annoying. The guy that sat next to the left of him in seat 17 was a fucking pervert and he wanted to yeet the guy out of orbit just like Uraraka did to that ball yesterday. He also kind of wanted to request the guy get moved elsewhere but other than swapping seats with Uraraka in seat 5 he couldn’t think of anywhere that wouldn’t put him close to any of the girls, and the guy was the height of a six year old so he was too short to be put back there. 

Danny couldn’t decide whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that the guy didn’t do or say anything perverted when the teachers could do anything about it. Either that meant the guy knew what he was doing was wrong and avoided the consequences for it, or he was just a coward who was intimidated by the pros that taught them. Could have been both really, but he hoped that one of the teachers would pick up on his behaviour and deal with it. A lot of his comments had been relatively harmless and untargeted for now, but with the way people like him operated, digging their roots in and waiting for the truly gross stuff after they’d settled. 

At least now he and Shinsou had a target of who they’d aim to kick out of 1-A to make sure that Shinsou had room. He had been kind of dreading that aspect of getting Shinsou to transfer, but this perv had made the decision incredibly easy for him. He kind of hoped that he would be put against the guy in hero training if only to make sure that he knew not to fuck with him. 

When lunch came around, Danny wanted to invite his new friends to sit with him and Shinsou. But unfortunately, he knew how prickly Shinsou could be around outsiders, so he’d just have to introduce him to the idea slowly. After he tells his friends he’s going to sit with his middle school friend they tell him to have fun, and he makes a mental note to tell them about Shinsou. Danny got the feeling that they wouldn’t look down on Shinsou because of his quirk like he seemed to think they would. 

He spent the majority of the lunch break trying to balance introducing Shinsou to the idea of hanging out with his new friends by dropping tidbits of information about them with reassuring the guy that he was still Danny’s closest friend and wasn’t going to leave him behind. It was a hard thing to balance considering he’d never really had to try and merge two friend groups. He’d only ever had the one. 

By the end of it, Shinsou didn’t seem to be too annoyed so hopefully it was alright, but then it was time for his first hero lesson. 

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It was kind of weird seeing All Might in person. When he’d first come to this universe he didn’t really care about the guy, he was a hero, sure, and the feats he’d done sounded pretty impressive but all in all Danny was kind of… used to really powerful people?

There was Dora, Frostbite, Clockwork, Fright Knight, even Ghost Writer and Desiree were  incredibly powerful ghosts able to manipulate reality. There were countless other powerful ghosts too that Danny had heard of living in the zone, but he hadn’t ever had to fight (yet). 

He sort of had a feeling that the heroes of this world wouldn’t really be able to fight any of them too. Maybe the people with non-physical quirks might be able to, but with most of the pro hero powerhouses being physically strong it would be tough . That’s not even considering the fact that of all people the Box Ghost would be able to take advantage of All Might if he just overshadowed the guy. 

Without any kind of ghost hunting tech, this universe was just not equipped to deal with ghosts in general. As such, Danny just didn’t feel impressed by All Might. He respected him of course, the guy had saved hundreds of thousands of people during his career and that was always something that Danny respected above all else. But his lack of excitement over meeting All Might was a stark reminder to Danny just how much he stuck out sometimes when almost all of 1-A was enthralled by his appearance. The only exceptions seemed to be Todoroki and Bakugou. 

Still Danny was kind of excited to see how his hero costume turned out. 

He’d considered just not having one and transforming when he needed to wear it but there wasn’t really any way to explain his unnatural appearance away as a regular costume in that form so he’d dismissed it. He had considered just going with what his suit had looked like before he’d died so that his black hair wouldn’t stand out, but that felt… ominous. 

He already had a hero costume, even if he wasn’t sure how to change it, he didn’t want to give it up entirely. It was what he was used to, so he took inspiration. 

His boots were the same white, but more combat boot style rather than rubber boots. They ended below his knees, gave him some protection for his shins and more ankle support. His trousers were black cargo pants that weren’t too loose but not too tight, with a bunch of pockets if he needed them. It would be more useful than just phasing things into his body as a makeshift pocket when he’d needed one. 

Instead of a belt around his hips, he had a somewhat loose white belt over his chest. He’d wanted to put the emblem that Sam had designed for him somewhere on the design and it felt a little… goofy to just plaster it on his black shirt. So instead he had the emblem engraved in white on the belt’s black buckle. He’d considered having elbow length gloves like his original design but he wasn’t a super big fan of wearing fingered gloves for long periods of time when in his human form. So he had fingerless black gloves instead. His shirt sleeves were elbow length and tucked into his white elbow pads. 

It was also kind of dumb, but Danny had always kind of wanted a cape with his costume. Like. From day one of realising he was sort of the town’s superhero. That was probably why when he had split his ghost form from his human form and became Fun!Danny and Super!Danny, the Super Danny had, without hesitation, made a cape out of his bedsheet. 

So he gave himself a cape. Technically it was closer to a cloak, similar in style to Clockwork’s. It hung around his shoulders, with an inner lining of galaxy print that would show a green hue at the right angle. It had a white hood that he kept up, completing the look. It would have been impractical to reapply temporary hair colouring, so the hood helped in that aspect.  

All in all, Danny was proud of it. 

It felt right in what was the first time that he could think of. This is what he should look like back home, when he fought off the ghosts that wanted to attack Amity. This is what Danny Phantom ought to look like. 

He could tell that Danny wasn’t the only one fascinated and excited about their costumes. If Danny was in his ghost form he just knew that his ever present dim glow would be luminous. Still not sure about where they were meant to go, he waited around until he saw some of the more competent looking classmates head out of the changing rooms and walk with purpose in a direction. 

As a result, it seemed that the whole class arrived at the training grounds at the same time, with All Might praising their costume choices. He had to agree honestly, a lot of the costumes he saw were all really cool but a few of them looked to be more clunky and impractical to fight in. 

In his ghost form, it didn’t really matter what he was wearing, his body was made of ectoplasm in that form as was his clothing, so it never restricted movement. He didn’t get sensory information the way that his skin did, but it felt as if he was wearing a second skin. Clothes never felt uncomfortable, such as wearing full gloves constantly, or the way that hazmat suits were actually super uncomfortable for long periods of time, or the rubber boots that he’d been wearing when he died were stiff and creaked a lot when he walked. None of those issues bothered him in ghost form, but in human form those things would definitely bother him. 

Hence why he was a little confused in particular about four of them. Particularly Bakugou, Aoyama, Todoroki and Iida. Honestly he was also a little confused about Kirishima’s too, but that was mostly wanting to ask if the guy was cold without a shirt in April. 

For Bakugou, it was mostly the massive weights that looked like grenades on his forearms. They looked to be incredibly heavy, not to mention the sheer bulk of them would make it almost impossible to do anything that needed him to carry anything. Surely, whatever function they served could be slimmed down into something less awkward. 

As for Todoroki, aside from the fact that the design was kinda ugly, it was boring and the material that looked like ice covering his left side undoubtedly unbalanced him even if the material was lightweight. Not to mention the fact that it covered his left eye if not cutting his vision in half, then it had to significantly hamper it. 

As for Aoyama and Iida, he had similar issues with them both. They arguably were the most defended in terms of armour but the downsides of full suits they both had was that it was loud and limited movement. It seemed the two of them were themed in their own ways, so perhaps it was a result of those themes, but still it made Danny a little concerned that they wouldn’t be able to fight as effectively without nor more quietly if they had to.

Hm. Should he say something? He did have practical experience fighting people that this world would call villains, but then again he didn’t want to insult anyone. Maybe they were the way they were to help their quirks. 

Before Danny could think on it for much longer, he was approached by Hagakure. It was hard to tell that she was there, but Danny had fought many ghosts who liked to use invisibility in the early days. He’d long since taught himself how to spot it without relying on his ghost sense, she was almost entirely invisible except for a pair of boots and a pair of gloves. 

“Please tell me you’re not naked, Hagakure.” Danny asked, slightly afraid of the answer. 

He heard her laugh joyously. “Nope! Don’t worry! That was my original plan, but apparently one of the support companies that UA use has the ability to manufacture fabric that can be given the same properties of some quirks. I gave them some of my hair and I have a pretty lightweight costume that you can’t see! I super love it. Now all I need to do to be completely invisible is take off my boots and gloves and bam! You’d never even know I was here!”

Danny grinned but couldn’t help the slightly alarmed pinch to it as he repeated her earlier words. “Going naked was your go-to plan?”

Hagakure just laughed even more, and Danny had the feeling that she had most definitely gone naked in the past to be fully invisible. He decided that he did not need to know more and that he’d move on. He wanted to talk to Jirou and compliment her outfit, it was stylish and looked to be easy to fight in. Kaminari and Ashido looked cool as well, but there was something about the theming of Kaminari’s outfit that made him pause slightly. 

Before Danny could either gather up the courage to approach his tentative friends, All Might finally spoke up and explained what they’d be doing. It seemed a little bit comical in Danny’s mind, but he probably didn’t have much room to talk considering a fair amount of his villains liked to monologue. Well. Mostly just Technus and the Box Ghost, but still. 

He was much more interested in the lots that everyone drew and who he’d be paired with. He ended up on team F with his teammate being a rather silent guy named Kouda. He looked rather abnormal from Danny’s outsider perspective but he was also friends with a bunch of ghost yetis so he didn’t even blink at the odd sight. 

“Hi, I’m Danny. You’re Kouda right?” Danny cheerfully greeted, waving slightly at the nervous looking guy. 

The guy was rather tall and bulky, but he seemed to be very timid and just smiled at him with a nod and returned the wave. 

Danny didn’t want to assume but he had to ask… “Hey, I’ve noticed that you’re rather quiet. Sorry if this is rather rude or blunt, but are you mute? Or do you just not like to talk? It’s okay if you do, I just want to clarify things so we don’t get off on the wrong track.”

The guy blinked slightly and gave him a less nervous smile back. “Can talk… little. Prefer not.” He said in a very quiet voice. 

“Ah, gotcha.” Danny nodded in understanding. “I know American Sign, but I never got ‘round to learning Japanese Sign, otherwise I’d ask if you preferred to use that. I have a plan that will likely guarantee our win, but it relies on me quite a lot of the work. Would that be okay with you, or do you want to work out a plan where we both contribute equally?”

Kouda blinked slightly and thought it over. “What’s your idea?” 

“Oh, well my quirk is called Phantom. It basically gives me a wide range of powers, the main ones are intangibility and invisibility. If we end up on the villain team, all I'd need to do is to hold the bomb and use my quirk on it through the whole match and we win. Our opponents wouldn’t be able to capture me, nor would they be able to recover the bomb. Only issue is that I’d need to concentrate if I do both at the same time, so you’ll be in charge of keeping the heroes mostly distracted but if we hide well enough we might not need to.” Danny explained with a shrug.

He felt kinda bad for their opponents really, no matter which side Danny was on he likely could cinch the victory. It would be slightly harder since he was on the villain team, meaning he’d have to keep his concentration up for a long period of time rather than zooming in and touching the bomb, but all the same he likely didn’t have anything to worry about. He explained as much to his teammate.

Kouda seemed to think about it seriously for a long moment, he looked around the area and sighed a little. He then smiled and pointed at Danny, seemingly agreeing to Danny’s plan. 

“You good with my plan?” Danny asked just to clarify, which Kouda nodded to. “Okay, that’s good. We can talk more about where we’ll keep the bomb and stuff when it comes to our turn. But in the meantime, I just wanna make sure you’re cool with us talking like this. That is, me talking and asking clarifying questions. I’d suggest that if you wanna explain more then for you to write them down, but I left my phone in the locker room too so that’s no good.” 

Kouda smiled gently at him. “It’s okay. Thanks for understanding. I don’t mind guessing. It's… easier.” 

Danny nodded. “Yeah that makes sense, well I won’t make you talk more than you're comfortable with, so I’m gonna mostly just watch the others. If you need me though, don’t be afraid to pull me away just tap my shoulder or something, yeah?” 

Kouda smiled with a nod. Danny gave him a grin and a slight wave before he headed towards Jirou, Kaminari and Ashido. 

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. 

Chapter Text

Danny couldn’t remember the last time that he’d been on a school trip. 

He wasn’t sure if he was bothered by that to be honest, Amity Park was rather away from traditional school field trip spots. And knowing the town, the only place locally that would be potentially of worth to visit would be Fenton Works. Which… uh. No. 

They weren’t going to be leaving campus apparently, but that wasn’t all that surprising considering the campus grounds were absolutely massive. They would however be taking a bus to their destination, it made sense, while the class on a whole could be expected to traverse the campus to their practical hero classes, it would be a mess trying to get them all to meet on the literal other side of campus. 

Apparently, their destination was on the outskirts of the campus. Danny listened with mild amusement as Mina and Kaminari tried to badger the information out of Aizawa-sensei before they gave up. 

Still, it was fun sat on the bus and listening to conversation go on around him. He was in the mid point of the bus, able to hear the front and the back. He didn’t participate in either of them, just absorbing the vibes of it all. Danny missed home with all that he was, sometimes he ached with how much he missed Sam, Tucker and Jazz. Hell, he even missed his parents and their attempts to capture him. 

But this was nice too. 

When the bus pulled up at their destination, he was excited to see that it was the Space Hero: Thirteen waiting for them. 

“Hello!” They greeted, which made both him and Uraraka slightly freak to their embarrassment. But they looked at each other in a way saying ‘I understand don’t worry’. 

Danny wasn’t quite a hero fan in the same way the people of this universe were, but sometime in the early days he’d looked up space themed heroes just to see the kind of quirks they had. He’d been fascinated by Thirteen’s quirk, it was such a destructive quirk but the fact that they had absolutely no incidents of harming civilians on their record was highly admirable. To be able to turn such a destructive quirk to be used for so much good so easily added them directly to his “favourite heroes” list. 

“Quirks that can kill…” Danny felt himself murmur. 

He tried not to think about that aspect of his powers. How easy it would be to kill someone, maybe not even knowing that he had killed until later. He was so highly aware of his strength and that was one of the reasons he’d wanted to stick to human form here in the Quirk Universe when using his powers. It was more muted, harder to do. 

“Right! Let’s get inside then, we’ll be going through the various areas and work on exercises in each one. You’ll all get a chance to do everything, so please keep your complaints to a minimum.”

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Danny didn’t know what the fuck was happening. 

One moment they were being split into twos and the next a wave of dread washed over Danny so powerful he had to check that his breath wasn’t fogging up with ghost sense. The lights burst one by one in a line, and the teachers started to bark orders to stay calm. 

And then. A crowd appeared in the central plaza. 

Suddenly Danny felt like he was fourteen again and face to face with his first battle, floundering and unsure of what to do. He hadn’t used his powers in a combat situation in this universe yet, he wasn’t sure how to in a way that wouldn’t hurt. His main way of fighting was with ectopowered punches and ectoblasts for range. He still hadn’t decided if he should claim the two to be apart of his quirk either. Outside of his ghost form he wasn’t physically strong either. 

It took him too long to decide what to do, because after a quick bark of orders Aizawa told Thirteen to evacuate the class and he ran into the plaza to face the villain group head on. Hagakure latched onto his wrist in panic and pulled him along as they ran to the entrance. Danny went with it, he couldn’t figure out what to do now so better to keep moving in an emergency than be a sitting duck while he thought. 

Except a large mist with yellow eyes appeared in front of the exit, blocking the way. It spread and Danny was strongly reminded of a ghost, if the purple mist had been green instead he would be worried his ghost sense had forgotten to act up. 

“Greetings, young hero hopefuls. Sorry for crashing the party, but we are the League of Villains. Do you know when All Might will be arriving? We had been told he’d be here from the start, we’re rather interested in removing him from this life you see.”

They were here for All Might? That… made some sense. Still, it was odd targeting UA rather than ambushing All Might on his way to school. After all, if you know where your target was going to be it’d be better to attack before they got to the heavily fortified area. Then again, they had managed to sneak past all of UA’s defences. 

The group must either be complete idiots or they had an ace up their sleeve. He wasn’t sure which was scarier. Even idiots could land a lucky hit or two if their opponents weren’t prepared, but if they had something that had a chance of bringing All Might down it would be bad news. 

“Hm? Ah, I see. No matter. I should carry out my orders then.” The villain continued after no one spoke up. Danny could see Thirteen prepare their glove to use their quirk but before they could Kirishima and Bakugou launched in front of them and swung for the villain with Bakugou letting off a massive explosion. 

On reflex he pulled Hagakure and shielded her with his body. He felt the heat on his back due to the proximity but thankfully Bakugou didn’t seem to have caused any damage. Hopefully it just meant that the punch itself had hurt, not the explosion.

“Bet you didn’t think we’d beat you before you could!” Kirishima goaded, Danny looked over his shoulder to see what was going on as the smoke cleared. But something told Danny that it wouldn’t be that simple. Of course, he was right. 

“You should be more careful around your peers, hm? Someone could get hurt.” The villain retorted, seemingly unphased. 

“Move out of the way you two!” Thirteen shouted as they got into a practised stance. 

“My orders are to scatter you all, my coworkers shall have their fun with you!” He called as the mist exploded and covered them all with the fog. Danny felt shivers run down his spine, the mist was cold and murky, it prickled his skin and plastered his clothes on himself. 

In the split second of the feeling overtaking him he considered making himself and Hagakure intangible so the mist didn’t affect them, but whatever this fog was going to do it was going to happen to everyone. He missed his opportunity and felt as if he had breathed in ice cold dry air, his stomach tightening in knots as if suddenly dropping down a rollercoaster. 

The floor fell out from beneath him, the class around them screamed and Hagakure clung to him with all her might. 

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Tooru admired Danny. He was kind, funny and powerful. He was also very laid back and encouraging too, cheering on their classmates and always happy to have fun with them. 

It was also fun to have an invisible buddy!!! She hadn’t met anyone other than her family that had true invisible type quirks, she’d met someone who could make themselves unable to be perceived at will, but they could still be seen. 

Sometimes she didn’t mind being invisible. As a kid, she’d been very shy so being invisible to everyone was preferable. As she got older she started to lament the fact that no one could see her or read her body language or expressions. It really limited communication and stifled her efforts of making friends. 

Then she’d started experimenting with various methods to help. Makeup had been… an interesting experience, but ultimately a failure. Accessories were occasionally useful but unless she went all out, it could look a little weird. Hats were surprisingly one of her best friends, especially caps, they shaded her eyes and could let others see which way her head was turned. The only drawback was that it wasn’t always socially acceptable to wear them, so she regularly didn’t. 

The thing that she finally settled on as her day to day appearance modifiers was a pair of glasses with fake lenses, and gloves when it wasn’t too hot. The other things she did was to put a lot of emphasis on most of her actions, whether it be using lots of exaggerated body movement or putting as much emotion as she could in her voice when she spoke. If people couldn’t see what she was feeling by her expression, she’d compensate in other ways. 

Sometimes she daydreamed about the possibility of turning her quirk off at will, so that one day other people could see her. It was lonely being the only one to ever see what she looked like if she looked in the mirror. It was near impossible to really explain how she could see herself to others. The closest she could explain was in the words of her quirk councillor. 

“Your body seems to have the properties of UV light, but you aren’t made of it. Under everything your biological makeup is almost identical to the standard of your age, you’re likely more resistant to forms of skin cancer, though you should still take care just in case I’m wrong. 

“As for your appearance, I imagine that someone with UV photography equipment would be able to take your photo and you’d appear as everyone looks under that kind of photography. You likely don’t see yourself in colour because UV light doesn’t carry colour all that well outside of purples.”

Which had made total sense! She’s always thought that the patterns on people’s skin were pretty, but people only got confused whenever she mentioned them. Scars or marks on the body that had “faded” were always prominent to her, honestly the idea of not being able to see like she did sounded awfully boring. 

So in conclusion, having Danny as a friend was fascinating. He could turn his invisibility on and off at will, but it didn’t seem that he could see in ultraviolet. She could see him when he did so, but it was hard and details weren’t all that great. 

Honestly he was fascinating to look at when he was visible too. She suspected that what she saw wasn’t what everyone else did. He had these almost green lines that seemed to cover his whole body, but more clustered together on his left side. They looked like old porcelain that was still smooth to the touch but looked as if it had cracks running all throughout it. (Oh, she’d looked up the term once… something close to crazy?)

She didn’t think that it was a natural thing that he was born with though. Not like the deep freckles nearly everyone had, or the patches of skin that were different shades. It kind of reminded her of what scars looked like. 

But other than that, he seemed to put off some faint kind of aura around him. Just a tiny bit of light that emanated from him, which is mostly what she saw when he was invisible now that she thought about it. She wasn’t sure that everyone else could see it though. 

All in all Tooru was glad she had made a friend in Danny. She wished that he could see like she could, but ah well. With how versatile his quirk was, it probably wasn’t necessary to give him more stuff. He hadn’t really shown off his power much, it didn’t seem to be the physically strong kind but it was more in how diverse his abilities were. 

She prided herself on stealth, but Danny would truly shine in that without even trying. Sight was only one sense, but with his quirk Danny would negate noise, sight, presence, feel, everything. The only thing he couldn’t control would be his body heat. 

But as she clung to him while they fell, she was pretty sure that it would only be the cold that gave him away. It wasn’t that obvious, but he felt as cold as someone walking around in winter. She felt as if she was hugging a mildly chilled ice pack— no, scratch that, it suddenly felt as if she’d slipped into a frozen lake and she gasped with the sensation. 

“Todoroki!” Danny called, pulling her free of the iced ground. “Be careful, me and Hagakure are here.” 

“Oh. I didn’t see you.” 

Ohhhhhh that made more sense. Todoroki had accidentally frozen them. 

“Are you alright, Hagakure?” Danny asked, helping her to stand. 

“Y-yes, just… what’s happening?” She couldn’t help but stutter slightly both from cold and fright, her costume was somewhat thermal but not enough to keep her warm when she’d almost been fully iced. She almost jumped out of her skin when she looked around and saw various figures encased in ice, those must have been more villains than the ones in the plaza. 

“It looks like villains are attacking the USJ.” Danny said with pursed lips, looking around at the iced villains that surrounded them. “I don’t know if it’s just here or if the main campus is being attacked though. What do you think Todoroki?” 

Todoroki looked at Danny from the corner of his eye before turning back to the villains. “I think that if we’re looking for answers, these villains should be able to tell us.” He said almost menacingly, ice starting to grow thicker over the villains. 

As it turned out, Todoroki was more than just intimidating in the “we’re all teenagers but he’s very standoffish and I don’t want to pick a fight” way but also intimidating enough that full grown adult villains with tough quirks were also intimidated by him. 

“We’ve got to get to the plaza and help Aizawa-sensei.” Danny said, to which Todoroki gave a nod and the three started on their way. 

“Oh! Danny would you be able to hold onto my boots and gloves? That way I’ll be able to sneak up better on villains and sucker punch them.” 

“Sure, I can stick your boots to my belt if you’ve got something I can tie them with.” Danny agreed taking her gloves as she passed them to him, stuffing them into one of his many pockets. “But are your feet gonna be okay? It’s not exactly even terrain here.”

Tooru was busy rolling her boots up and tying them with the hidden band near the top of the cuffs. “Yeah, I have thin little slip ons to help with rougher terrain, helps with sneaking but I’ll have to be careful if there are any sharp bits. Here, there’s little hooks you can use to attach it.”

“Man you thought of everything, huh?” Danny laughed as he attached the boots to each side of his belt, moving slightly to make sure they wouldn’t hamper or unbalance him. “Well if you need a piggy back let me know, but be prepared for me to drop you without warning if I need to jump into a fight.”

Tooru giggled. “I might take you up on that, but considering we don’t know how many villains are here I’ll say no for now.” Todoroki was starting to look a bit annoyed by their banter, so she left the conversation there. 

Occasionally, there would be another group of villains they’d encounter that Todoroki iced them as soon as he saw them before Danny could get there which seemed to be annoying her friend. When they were almost out of the area they’d landed in, Danny looked back at the occasional ice fields and looked pensive. 

“Those villains won’t get frostbite from being in ice for so long, right?” 

Todoroki gave him a glance then kept walking. “Don’t care.” 

Danny frowned at that. “Look they may be villains, but that doesn’t mean we should, like, endanger them right?”

Tooru kinda agreed with him but also… “I mean you’re right, Danny, but we don’t have the stuff to contain them right? And I don’t think it’d be a good idea to let that many villains wander around, especially when we don’t know how many others there are.” 

Danny continued to frown but seemed to accept it reluctantly, which Tooru understood. The plaza was just in view now, it had likely only taken them maybe ten minutes to traverse the terrain with Tooru hopping onto Danny’s shoulders only once or twice. Todoroki was being considerate to them since he could've made an ice path to skate down to the plaza like he did for some uneven slopes. 

By the time that they reached the plaza, Tooru’s blood ran cold at the sight before them. Aizawa-sensei face down in a growing pool of blood, a massive monster with a fist as big as his whole arm holding up Midoriya and a crusty looking villain covered in hands reaching for Tsuyu. 

Tooru hardly registered what was happening when a blur of black and white flew past her towards the commotion. 

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Danny was moving solely on instinct, flying forwards and into the body of the massive monster. 

Usually whenever he possessed someone, he liked to take a few moments to adjust to the sensations of the body, especially when they were outside what his body type was. That way he could be careful with what he was doing and not hurt either the body nor anyone around while doing so. But this was life or death, Danny could tell. He couldn’t spare moments when every second counted. 

He made the body release Midoriya and moved the arm enough to swat away the hand guy from touching Tsuyu. The body moved much faster than he’d anticipated and used much more force too considering the guy practically flew in the direction he was swatted. 

There seemed to be a long moment where everyone froze, and dimly Danny could hear the light thunk the villain made when he hit the ground. Danny struggled to find mental strings to move the body now that it wasn’t reactionary movement. In the end the movement was jerky and the body almost stumbled but he managed to turn around so that Midoriya and Tsuyu were behind him. 

“WHAT?!” The villain shrieked. “Noumu what are you DOING?! Kill the brats!” 

At that Danny felt the body start to move and slammed down his control yet again to halt the movement. He was. This had never happened before. When he possessed someone, the body’s mind went to sleep. The only one that could control its movements was him . But the body had moved on the command of the hand villain. 

Granted, he knew the second that he’d seen this body, this ‘Noumu’ , that it wasn’t human. He’d seen plenty of quirks that gave people inhuman appearances but there was just, something about this being that lacked the spark of humanity. It felt more like a monster or creature than a human. 

Perhaps that was why the body didn’t respond to him in the usual way. Maybe this creature had been conditioned to take orders, so without the consciousness that Danny suppressed during overshadowing it was still able to move and do things. 

“What’s… happening?” He faintly heard Tsuyu ask with a trembling voice. Midoriya scrambling up from where he’d fallen, to pull Tsuyu away from the creature. 

Danny opened the creature’s beak to reply but the voice was wrong… the body had teeth and a tongue, but the voicebox must have been different because it only let out a weird kind of low shriek. Hm. No communication then. But the speed of the creature meant he couldn’t even slip out for a moment to explain what he was thinking. 

He had to hope that his classmates would figure it out and that the villains didn’t do something that would make Danny slip his control. After all overshadowing wasn’t exactly like putting on a coat, it was like wearing a blanket around your shoulders while upright, if you didn’t keep holding onto it, it’d slip off. 

The hand villain shrieked with rage as the Noumu only juddered after the order. The fog villain hummed and seemed to observe, trying to figure out what was going on. 

“Shigaraki, I believe this is the work of one of the students’ quirks. I saw a black and white blur head towards the Noumu shortly before it started to defy you.” The fog villain speculated. “And it seems the eye colour has changed too.”

The hand villain, Shigaraki slowly got to his feet scratching rapidly at his neck and observing with a tilted head. 

“Huh. You’re right, Kurogiri. But it’s not… Noumu, come here!” Danny had to slam the breaks again, with the creature jerking yet again under Danny’s control. “See, it’s not perfect control. I wonder…”

Then Shigaraki lunged, running towards them yet again and Danny prepared to fight him but as Shigaraki got closer “Noumu, kill the brats!” 

The order had Danny slamming the breaks as hard as possible. No. This body will not kill anyone while Danny was still here. Unfortunately, that meant he was unable to fight the man and instead he felt the slow crumbling of the arm that Shigaraki dug his fingers in as he repeated the order. 

With the fiery burn, the orders that Danny had to continually abort, and the focus on protecting the classmates behind him, he couldn’t think of what to do. He had to keep control of the Noumu, but it was starting to hurt even when he didn’t usually experience the body’s pain, did that mean that whatever was happening to the body was going to happen to Danny too?

But he knew the second that he let go, Tsuyu, Midoriya and Mineta would be in trouble. He could feel how fast this body was, how strong it was, if it was turned on them they would be dead in an instant. 

The body’s right arm was almost entirely disintegrated by the time there was an almost deafening boom near the entrance, and Shigaraki’s head snapped to it, his focus stuck to it falling silent in waiting. 

Danny wanted to take the opportunity to shove Shigaraki away with the other arm, but the pain was so overbearing that it was taking all that Danny had to keep hold of the overshadowing. He was vaguely aware of the booming voice of All Might, but not enough to understand what was happening. 

He noticed the wind rushing past him, and heard his classmates’ startled but not pained noises behind him and Shigaraki reel back as if hit, finally letting go of the Noumu’s arm by the time that the decay reached the shoulder. 

Danny half wanted to laugh and sob through the pain, this felt almost exactly like the electric fire that raced through his left side as he recovered from his accident. Now it was even, hopefully this time didn’t actually affect him like the other did, considering this wasn’t his body.

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Izuku barely knew what was happening anymore. His heart was beating a million miles an hour, and had been ever since he’d seen that black swirl. He managed to get Asu— Tsuyu and Mineta safely out of the shipwreck zone at the cost of a finger, but since they’d found their way to the plaza things had been so terrifying he’d barely been able to hear over the rushing in his ears. 

He’d been so convinced that Tsuyu, Mineta and him were all going to die by Shigaraki’s and the Noumu’s hands. His forearm still ached with something that wasn’t quite a break but something more significant than a deep bruise. 

Now as he’d been carried to one side of the plaza with his classmates he tried to figure out what just happened. Black and white blur. Okay, who’s costume was black and white in the class? Kaminari, Ojiro, Sero and Danny. 

Putting aside quirk abilities, Kaminari wasn’t fast enough, Ojiro’s costume was more white than black and Izuku thought he saw primarily black, Sero didn’t seem quite bold enough to run into a situation as it was, but Danny…

Danny’s quirk was phenomenally versatile that Izuku wouldn’t be surprised if it was Danny’s doing. When Izuku had asked the American about his quirk, he’d explained it as ‘pretty much anything a ghost typically does’ and couldn’t really explain much outside of that, listing off a few of his abilities. 

It had been a wide range that he had almost infuriatingly not gone into depth with. Though Izuku usually reigned in his frustration when studying quirks, for some reason Danny’s almost complete lack of knowledge of his own quirk bugged him more than it should. Maybe it was because it was so powerful that if Danny just trained with it consistently he’d be able to be almost as unstoppable as All Might!

In the list of Danny’s abilities he’d mentioned ‘overshadowing’ but he hadn’t been all that eager to explain. He’d diverted back to explaining some of his other abilities. But, ghosts could possess people couldn’t they? Was that what ‘overshadowing’ was? Was that what Danny was doing to Noumu? 

“All Might! I think Danny’s doing something to hold back the Noumu. I— I punched it with my full power and it didn’t make a difference. Whatever Danny’s doing he— He saved us.” Izuku passionately explained, wanting to help Danny but unsure how. 

He heard a pattering of feet and breathing but no one around. “It’s true sir!” Ah, Hagakure. “Me, Todoroki and Danny were sent to the landslide zone, then when we got here they were in trouble and Danny just flew into that thing.” 

All Might was silent for a moment considering the information. “Thank you, I shall make sure that Young Danny comes to no harm. You four should take Aizawa with you to safety, go to the entrance, the other students there are helping Thirteen.”

“I’ll help you.” Todoroki interjected, side eyeing the two villains who were watching the group. “If that monster is as strong as you, I’m not sure you’ll be able to fight off the warper and the disintegration villains without unnecessary trouble.”

“No,” All Might insisted, holding a hand up to Todoroki. “Do not endanger yourselves further. If you see an opening while staying back, very well, but prioritise evacuating to a safe distance. More backup should be arriving shortly.”

“Tch.” Shigaraki scoffed in annoyance. “Strategising in front of your enemies? I knew the number one wasn’t all that, but I didn’t think you were an imbecile too.”

Before All Might could react, a portal opened up below the noumu, Izuku could hardly keep track of all the juggling that suddenly went on. Both in awe and terrified by the fact that Kurogiri could juggle a being that had to be close to 500kg, the villain made it look so easy.

All Might was fast, but even still the warping was faster and it only took a few seconds of juggling for a blur to fly out of the noumu and almost smash into the floor if All Might hadn’t charged forwards and caught Danny. 

With Danny exorcised from the Noumu, Kurogiri put the monster back upright. It was impossible to see Shigaraki’s face underneath the hand but he could almost hear the smirk when he ordered “Noumu, kill All Might.”

Izuku’s heart almost leapt into his throat when All Might struggled to block the fist while also protecting a barely conscious Danny in his arms. It was too dangerous for them to interject, but thankfully All Might managed to fling Danny as gently as he could away from Noumu. Tsuyu was quick and managed to grab him with her tongue to slow the fall somewhat but it clearly still winded Danny some by the oof! he let out. 

By the time that Tsuyu managed to pull Danny to them, he had passed out. Izuku couldn’t blame him, his right arm was covered in almost iridescent blood. Depending on how taxing the possession had been, it might have been a bit too much.

With both Aizawa and Danny now needing to be taken to safety, Izuku didn’t have the option to stay and watch like he wanted to. While Tsuyu and Mineta carried Aizawa, Hagakure and Izuku carried Danny between them, both doing their best not to jostle his arm. 

Izuku tried his hardest to get the fight going on behind him out of his mind. All Might would win, he always did. But… But…

He was halfway up the very long steps when he finally allowed himself to look back as there was a loud splash followed by a thunk rang out. It had been much longer than any other All Might fight that he knew of, but even from here Izuku could see how haggard and hard the battle had been for his mentor. There were ice patches, with Kirishima and Kacchan there too, so they must have helped at some point. 

It almost looked like everything would be okay, but there was a sense of dread starting to crawl up his spine as Izuku noticed the faint steam emanating from All Might. He’d— He’d already pushed his time limit way beyond what he had, if it suddenly gave out right now while Shigaraki was within reach…

Izuku didn’t realise that he was sprinting down the stairs until he almost fell down them.

After all, there was someone in trouble and he had to help.

Chapter Text

To say Hitoshi was panicking would be an understatement.

The day had started off well, he finally got together a flyer for Kirika-san’s job at the cat café, and he’d been approached by a neighbour to catsit for them. Their cat apparently wasn’t good when it came to staying elsewhere, but had asked him to feed them twice a day. It was a simple task, feed them once before school and once after. Maybe once they got comfortable with him, the neighbour would consider him their official cat sitter.

But then, not even an hour into their classes, an alarm rang through the school. It was sharp – similar to the alarm from the other day, but ever so slightly different. Present Mic straightened up and immediately gathered the class up and began to lead them to an evacuation area. 

Other non-hero staff members took over supervision for Present Mic and Hitoshi watched with concern as the hero bolted off to somewhere else. 

It couldn’t be the news breaking in again, there hadn’t been a single reporter outside the UA gates since the incident. Considering Principal Nedzu had gone practically feral raking the news stations over the coals, and All Might had told the reporters he was very disappointed in them, it was unlikely they’d return. Especially not so soon. Something that was hilarious to think would be taken seriously, but considering the Number One was the pinnacle of hero society, it was actually incredibly effective. 

As Hitoshi looked around the evacuation area for the first years, he counted the classes by their uniforms. It was hard to make out the subtle differences from far away, but he managed to count all but one of the heroics course classes and something in Hitoshi’s gut squirmed. 

Danny had his class field trip today.

In an attempt to ease his nerves, he loitered near where some of the staff were gathered. While a few were left to keep the students under control and not panicking, there were two groups doing neither. One group had walkie talkies and were talking at a rapid pace, seemingly trying to get on top of the situation or coordinating. He wasn’t close enough to hear them, but couldn’t get closer either or his eavesdropping would be too noticeable. 

He was, however, close enough to the second group that seemed to be gossiping amongst themselves. From what he could understand it made his blood run cold. 

A large group of villains managed to bypass all the school’s defences and attacked a class, All Might had gone ahead of everyone, but the alarms had been down for a time before they finally got word. And there was no telling what harm had been wrought in the mean time. 

Hitoshi barely managed to refrain from whipping his phone out and calling Danny immediately. The only class that could be attacked would be his, but it would be useless. Danny never had his phone with his costume. He didn’t like to risk that it could be broken during their hero practicals, he’d told him. 

All Hitoshi could do was bite his lip and stew in agitation being unable to do anything but wait. 

It was a single thought that made him realise that Kirika might not know yet, and he whipped out his phone to call her. She didn’t pick up, but he knew that it wasn’t guaranteed. Instead he left a voicemail. 

“Kirika-san, something is happening at UA, and Danny’s class is involved I think. If you know anything about what’s happening, please let me know. I’m— I’m worried about him. Bye.”

A few of the other students in his class gave him a curious look, but didn’t pay him much mind. He wasn’t sure how long went by before he picked his phone up again to call Kirika. He was pretty sure that he left a decent amount of time between calls. By the third one, he was going to give up and wait patiently when it finally picked up. 

“Shinsou? What’s up? Aren’t you in—”

“There’s something happening at UA, and I think Danny’s class is involved. You’ll probably get a call from the school, but it’s big. All the students are in safe zones, but Danny’s class isn’t here and all the heroes left. It’s serious.”

“Crap. Okay, I’m gonna go tell my boss I’m dipping for an emergency. Keep me updated on your end, and I’ll let you know when I get news on Danny, yeah? Stay safe, kid.”

Hitoshi let out a thankful sigh, a small bit of tension leaving him. “Thanks, will do. If you see Danny before me, tell him he’s a jackass for worrying me.”

Kirika barked out a laugh that was only vaguely strained. “Oh don’t worry I’ll be saying the same thing to him on my own behalf, but I’ll pass the message on. Text your sister. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Hitoshi is in the middle of finally sending a text to Yume that took him far too long to compose when his phone vibrates in his hand. He’d barely registered seeing Kirika’s contact picture before it’s to his ear. He doesn’t even get to say anything because Kirika starts speaking the second that the line connects. 

“Someone just called from UA. Danny’s hurt and is getting treatment at UA, I’m on my way. The villain attack is over now, and they’re in the middle of securing the campus. I asked if you could visit but the person I spoke to wasn’t sure. I’ll let you know when I know how bad it is, all I know is that he was one of two students hurt, but his was more serious.”

Hitoshi had barely managed to suck in a sharp breath or get his thoughts together to reply before Kirika managed to end the conversation. 

“Thanks for the heads up, gotta go. Stay safe.”

Of course. Of course Danny got himself hurt. His wonderful friend who got so many rescue points in his exam, the one who stood up to the injustice that was people’s treatment of Hitoshi, of course he would get hurt. Likely from protecting someone no doubt. 

“Idiot.” Hitoshi hissed under his breath, worry twisting his tone into something venomous he doesn’t actually mean. Better to get it out of his system before it has the chance to hit his loved ones. 

“You better be fucking okay.”

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Kirika never thought she’d ever be frantic with worry over anyone else if she was being entirely honest with herself. She’s rarely had anyone that she was so close to to be frantic over. She’d been too young when her parents died to really remember them, they’d passed away when she was a toddler, she was sure. Even now, over twenty years later she still didn’t know how they died. 

The only things she had to remember them by were last names she rarely used and two wedding rings she kept on a necklace under her clothes. Watanabe Kazuki and Imahashi Emi. She had bare knowledge of their quirks, only enough to know how they had combined into her own. 

Her mother, Emi, had a minor quirk that allowed her to search history for information, giving her the memories as if she had witnessed it herself. It had apparently taken a lot out of her depending on how long ago the information she wanted was, not to mention she could only view the history of the area she was standing in. A fun party trick to see how an area developed, or see if someone had done the dishes, but too costly for anything super useful. 

Her father, Kazuki, had a quirk that gave him knowledge of alternate universes. He would often find himself viewing those universes if he concentrated hard enough, or, sometimes when he slept. It was an interesting quirk, but considering there was no way to prove it, nor influence the events he saw, most thought it was just as bad as being quirkless, or that he was trying to fake having a quirk at all.

She’d been given elements of both with something entirely new from herself. The portals were her own unique aspect of it, but her mother’s side allowed her to play with time when she wanted to, and her father’s had let her portals access alternate universes. Due to the seemingly random nature of quirks she hadn’t really known what her quirk could do until she was nearly ten when she’d finally found out about its true nature. 

And being a lonely, out of place nine year old given the ability to travel without any restriction? Of course she used her quirk as much as she could. It had taken her over a year just to finally get back to her original universe, and then she’d had a label slapped on her foster file. 

“Runaway risk”. Which wasn’t technically fair. She’d left after an argument as if she’d stormed out the house, only to find that the house had disappeared behind her after she’d slammed the door. She hadn’t meant to run away. But she didn’t deny that it had been what she wanted at the time. 

Of course, just like when people label kids as troublemakers when they weren’t meaning to be, she’d effectively decided “oh you thought that was me running away? Watch this.” and proceeded to run away everytime she felt like it. 

No one knew exactly how she was running away, of course. She hadn’t been dumb, she knew that teleportation quirks were one of the most coveted of all, they were powerful and heavily monitored. Because even if the ones with the quirks had no desire to do bad things, they were also a great target for quirk trafficking. And that didn’t even consider the sheer unique travel options either — it’d be on par with a time travel quirk. 

So the first lie she ever told about her quirk, knowingly, was that it banished things to space.

It wasn’t a far-fetched lie considering her portals were fuchsia gates that sparkled like starlights and cosmic dust, so a lot of people began to treat her as a garbage disposal if she ever deigned to prove it.

Though the fact that she only ever had to worry about people targeting her for her quirk while she was in her home universe certainly did sway her decision to leave as frequently as she did. Through her various travels she’d picked up a lot of habits and skills that were definitely not legal, partially out of necessity at the start of everything, during that year or so she’d been unable to get home, but also because it was just fun. 

She’d been fourteen when she realised she had no reason to actually stay in her home universe, and that had been the last time she’d run away from foster care. By the time she’d gotten sick of hopping from place to place, she was seventeen and was able to put together enough cash to get a decent fake ID, not bothering to enrol with any school. 

She chose Kamiya as her first fake name so she ended up getting attached. There was a revolving list of names she used for her various backup safe houses, and even more fake IDs she had squirrelled away. She never made lasting connections that weren’t skin deep. 

Kirika was alone, and she liked it that way. 

So of course, she had been completely blindsided when she found herself caring for the boy she’d been forced to kidnap. 

She’d gotten very sloppy over the years, she wasn’t exactly sure where she had slipped up enough to put herself on his radar but somehow Locksley had been observing her enough to know what her quirk could do. One of her apartments had been broken into a week or so before he cornered her, so she could guess that he’d found some things that could under no circumstance be from this universe. 

It had been almost petrifying to be seen for what she could do after so many years. She was twenty four years old and yet in his presence she felt as small as when she’d first gotten her quirk. He hadn’t used his quirk on her then, but with the few bits of information she could find he was very capable of backing up all threats he levelled at her. 

So when he’d told her to find a universe where powers were something you gained rather than something you were born with, she’d obeyed. She didn’t know how many of her safe houses he knew about, nor any of the fake names she used. But despite her rocky start in the Quirk Universe, she felt at home there. She felt the most settled in her skin when she was there, so the idea of evacuating herself and everything she owned from there and never returning made her skin crawl. 

If she just did what he wanted, what did it matter? Yeah, she loved her home universe, but she wasn’t an active participant in it. She didn’t care who was top dog, or have a stake in the perpetual battle of heroes vs villains. She wouldn’t be giving the win to Locksley if she got him what he wanted, just… supplying a weapon, it was up to him how effectively it would be used. 

Of course, everything went to shit when she actually did get the bastard what he wanted. She hadn’t expected him to forget about her existence when she gave him what he needed, after all, her quirk was just too powerful to let go of. But the near instant order to kill her had been unexpected. 

The fact that her kidnapping victim had saved her from death was also unexpected. 

Another unexpected thing was her getting attached to him. 

The kid was a persistent burr on her skin, he was only in this whole mess because she’d pulled him into it, so it was her responsibility to take care of him. Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to give him the hollow care she’d received from her foster parents, when she had been given the bare essentials and expected to look out for herself. 

The kid had been pulled from a loving family, if a bit dysfunctional. Her source had been weirdly content to tell her the things she needed with barely any prompting. Only looking at her through red eyes. Though she’d tailed him for a week to make sure she had the best opening to nab him, she’d tried not to absorb the full details of his life. Tried not to notice the love and care that his friends and family gave him. 

Tried not to think about the fact that just to be more comfortable in her own life, she’d have to uproot a kid’s. 

So she got a lot more attached than she’d wanted to Danny. Which meant when she heard about the attack on UA, she was almost entirely taken off guard by the overwhelming fear. 

It wasn’t Locksley, she knew that, he’d always operated with stealth, there would be no way he’d be as bold and attention grabbing as to attack UA. But hearing that Danny was seriously injured made her almost too frantic to take public transport. 

But by the time that her frantic energy was getting to be too much, she was already over halfway there. Which led to the painful experience of almost vibrating in place stood on the train waiting for her stop. She’d never personally taken the route she was going, but she had made herself know it if only so she knew where Danny went. 

She wasn’t the only adult in the guest parking area when she finally rushed there, practically sprinting from the station. There were many others fussing over students, with others coming in. She hadn’t been told the logistics of it, but she could guess that a majority of students wouldn’t be able to leave without some kind of adult picking them up. She didn’t let herself linger on the other students though, her gaze zeroed in on what had to be a hero. 

“Excuse me, I’m Kamiya Kirika. My cousin Danny was injured and I was told to come here.”

The hero looked at her and asked for a form of ID, which she gave without much fuss. Of course, they just had a villain attack, their security would be as air tight as they could make it. The only thing that could possibly hint to her IDs being fake were if she showed more than one of them at a time, all of them perfectly backed up with fictitious paperwork she’d planted.

“Follow me, Kamiya-san. I’ll escort you to the Nurse’s Office.” 

As they walked, the hero told her about how while Danny’s injuries were serious they weren’t extreme or life threatening to be rushed to hospital. They had been within the school’s nurse’s ability to deal with herself, thanks to their quirk. The hero said a lot of other things, but it was clear that they didn’t know everything about Danny’s current condition, so a lot of it went in one ear and out the other. Mostly platitudes really. 

The hero knocked on the door and ducked their head around the door. “Recovery Girl? Fenton’s guardian is here.”

“Ah, send them in.”

Kirika made her way in, not noticing the hero’s departure, her gaze flitting around the room. 

She hadn’t really been able to register what UA looked like during her escort but she’d gotten the impression that everything was much larger than needed, but no expense had been overlooked. While the Nurses’ Office did look a lot like the nurses’ offices that Kirika had been in, it more resembled a hospital room in her opinion. 

It didn’t help that in the back there was a drawn curtain around one of the beds that Kirika’s gaze was drawn to. 

“Ah, you must be Kamiya-san? I’m Recovery Girl. I’ve been treating your cousin’s injuries.” 

“Is he alright? What happened? How bad is he hurt? Where is he?” She barely managed to make her words coherent, she could only hope it didn’t come across as too frantic. God this was so far out of her comfort zone, she felt as if she was lightyears away from this planet. 

Recovery Girl was a very small old lady, but had no trouble jumping down from her chair and making her way towards the curtain. “He’s okay now. I will admit, we were rather concerned when we first found him, but I was able to get his injuries under control. He’s sleeping now, mostly a combination of quirk exhaustion and the effects of my quirk I’d wager.”

The woman used her needle-shaped cane to push aside the curtain to reveal Danny, laid there in bed. 

It was… surprisingly hard to see Danny laid in a hospital bed. There were no wires or monitors hooked up to him, which suggested his condition was very stable, but there were deep bruises under his eyes, the pallor of his skin more washed out than usual. 

He was in a patient’s gown, with bandages covering nearly his entire right arm, the limb wrapped tight to his body to limit movement while unconscious. It was a good call considering Danny had always a tendency to sprawl when he slept, his body trying to take up as much space as possible even if he never fell asleep that way. 

“What happened?” She asked again in a hushed tone, instinctively trying not to wake Danny. She usually would look at the person she was pressing for details, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Danny. 

The nurse sighed, checking on Danny’s wrapping before stepping back and urging Kirika to a nearby chair, which she reluctantly took. 

“I don’t have all the details, but apparently he used his quirk to possess one of the villains.”

“Overshadow.” Kirika found herself cutting in and correcting. “He doesn’t… doesn’t like it being called possession, he calls it overshadowing.”

The nurse nodded and continued without annoyance. “He used his quirk to overshadow one of the villains, he’d done so to protect some of his classmates and the ringleader turned his quirk against the villain to disintegrate their arm. Though I’m not exactly sure how the quirks interacted, he’ll likely scar, but with surgery and various skin grafts it might lessen the appearance. Thankfully, there weren’t significant damage to the muscles, so he should retain full functionality.

“He’ll still need to take care, even though I’ve given him stitches on the deeper areas, he’ll still need to avoid pulling on the wound. I’ll be able to give him a few more healing sessions with my quirk and within a week or so he’ll be fully recovered. He just needs to avoid using his right arm is all and he’ll be okay.”

He’ll be okay. The words made something that was knotted tight in her chest loosen. Danny would be okay. She closed her eyes and let out a relieved sigh, letting out tension in her body with it. 

“Thank you.” She bowed slightly to the doctor. “I’ll make sure that he follows your orders. Is that everything?”

Recovery Girl nodded in both acknowledgement and confirmation. “Yes, he should be free to go home once he wakes up. Make sure to change the dressings frequently, you can cover it with cling film for showering, though he could probably be fine with just a regular sling, I’d recommend keeping his arm in the immobiliser sling as it will prevent tugging his stitches. Especially during sleep.”

“I understand.” Kirika nodded, making a mental note. She hadn’t had any experience with Danny when he was ill or injured but she hoped he wasn’t going to be a handful. 

“Other than that, he’ll be okay. I imagine that U.A. will give the students time off to recover, but when he comes back I’ll give him another healing and hopefully I’ll be able to remove the stitches then, though it might take another session after that. I’ll give you my number so you can contact me if you have any concerns, and I will keep you updated. If he ever gets hurt on UA grounds in the future, I’ll also contact you directly too.” 

“Thank you,” Kirika repeated, she wasn’t exactly sure what to do now. “Would it be alright if Danny’s friend in school visited too? He was rather frantic when he heard what happened.”

Recovery Girl softened slightly, and nodded. “I’ll have a staff member escort him up here, but he’ll still have to be signed out by his guardians or emergency contact.”

“Of course, he’s Shinsou Hitoshi from 1-C.”

Recovery Girl left shortly after that, and Kirika sat contemplating the situation as she watched Danny rest in unconsciousness. 

Damn it. She really hadn’t intended to get attached but here she was anyway. The title of cousin may have just been a cover story originally, but she hadn’t realised just how much she thought of the kid as a family. Someone she treasured dearly. One thing was for sure, she was never going to say any of this to the brat.

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When Danny woke up, he felt groggier than usual. If he ever woke up under his own volition without an alarm or being woken by something, he usually found himself just staring and belatedly realising he was awake. This time when he woke, it was as if he was swimming through thick sludge and fighting to open his eyes and start comprehending his surroundings. 

He was so slow to wake that he didn’t realise that his eyes were open until he finally manage to grunt and his entire body felt as if he had slept on concrete. He wanted to stretch but he felt disconnected from his body somewhat. 

“Hey look, Sleeping Beauty is awake.” he vaguely heard Shinsou quip, but the words took far too long for him to comprehend their meaning. When they did, he struggled to glare at the blur of purple hair by his bedside. 

“Wh’ hap’n…” Danny murmured, barely having the energy to speak. 

“You and your class got attacked by villains, you ended up getting seriously injured when you overshadowed a villain. You’re okay, but you’re on a fair amount of pain meds.”

That would make sense. He always had a hard time when it came to medication, over the counter stuff didn’t work very well for him any more, but he must have been given some of the more intense painkillers. 

He also vaguely remembered the attack. The pain he felt when the hand villain had used his quirk on the thing he was overshadowing. It was… definitely something that shouldn’t have happened. Then again, though Danny wasn’t ever physically there in a body when overshadowing, he had to fit somewhere . 

Logically, it would be easiest to control others if his limbs were in the same positions as the body’s, meaning that his arm would have been where the Noumu’s arm was. And since Danny didn’t consciously control where his limbs were situated when overshadowing, it would make sense for his arm to be affected. 

A spike of panic rushed through him as he remembered looking at the disintegrated arm that had remained after Shigaraki had let go.

“‘y arm?” Even with his panic, he barely had the strength to emphasise the urgency in the question.

“It’s okay.” Kirika spoke, drawing Danny’s lazy gaze towards her bright pink hair. “You’ll likely scar, but there won’t be any permanent damage. When you’ve healed up, you’ll have full functionality again.”

That was a relief. With how much pain he’d been in, he was afraid his arm had been lost. Still. His right arm had been the one without any kind of scarring, it was gonna suck that he had scarring on both of them now. Definitely something he wouldn’t be able to hide easily from his family.

“I’m texting my parents.” Shinsou seemed to tell Kirika. “They’ll be here soon, so we could give you guys a lift. Better than having Danny try and walk home.”

“I could do it…” Danny weakly protested, stretching what he could but it ached terribly. No doubt he would be moving slowly and stiffly. If he wasn’t so exhausted he might’ve tried to fly instead of walk, but it was out the question. 

“Is everyone else ‘kay?” he asked instead of responding to Shinsou’s eye roll at his protest. The last he remembered was the nauseating swirl of movement while he tried to hold onto control of the Noumu. He remembered seeing more of his classmates there and dreaded to hear what happened. 

“Everyone’s fine, dumbass.” Shinsou replied without looking up from his phone. “Only one other student got hurt and apparently that was just because his own quirk broke his bones. The teachers were worse off, except All Might, but they’ll recover with time.” 

Midoriya, then. He hoped the guy didn’t get too injured, other than maybe a broken arm he didn’t seem to have any other broken bones but a lot could have happened while Danny had been knocked out. 

He’d have to catch up with them later. And with that, the last of his worries faded and he found himself drifting off. 

“Hey, don’t fall asleep you jerk. We were just about to take you home. Don’t make us have to carry you out.”

Shinsou’s protests fell on deaf ears as Danny quickly dove into sleep.

Chapter Text

It was odd, recovering from the USJ attack.

The students had been given the next day off, less out of consideration to their students after a stressful event and more so to give them time to increase security. Though Danny didn't doubt that the students were also a concern, he'd been visited by Nedzu and All Might in the flesh to reassure him that they were keeping the student’s safety at the forefront of their minds.

Kirika had been awkward with the two most notable Pro Heroes in their home, she'd endured for about ten minutes before she'd skedaddled with an excuse that she needed to head to work and talk with her boss. Though it might have been true, she probably could have called him rather than going right that second. Still. Danny wasn't nearly as nervous.

It was a touch awkward though when Danny was trying to be a good host and make sure that they both had enough tea, but All Might had been insistent that Danny not push himself and so had prepared the tea himself. It was almost comical seeing the Number One Hero's massive bulk in the kitchen, preparing tea while stood next to Danny's box of All Mighty-Os cereal.

Still, the goal of the visit seemed to just be to apologise directly to Danny and his guardian for his injuries and to thank him for his help in subduing the noumu. They let Danny ask a few more questions about the whole attack, such as what happened to the rest of his classmates and how bad people's injuries were.

There wasn't much information that they could give him regarding the villains, they said they were looking into things regarding the Noumu, but confirmed that it seemed to not have any sense of free will during the time it was in custody. Danny was more upset to hear about the injuries his teacher and Midoriya had gotten though.

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.

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Danny

they've left you can stop hiding at shinsou's now

Kirika

…did the kid text you to tell you i was here

Danny

no but i knew you would be too lazy to walk to work when you could just call your boss instead

be careful you don't run into them on your way up <3

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The wrappings of his arm and the sling he had to constantly wear were very annoying. And also painful in the way he wanted to scratch it, but the gauze prevented that. He'd dealt with arm injuries before, usually, he would heal from those in no time though. Literally. He’d accidentally broken his arms during a few fights before and had had to put one of his arms in a brace. He’d always managed to hide it for long enough to heal, or the occasional ectoburn.

But with the sling and the limited movement, he ended up getting in a lot of practice with his telekinesis. It had somewhat fallen to the wayside since his arrival since he had less opportunities for laziness. Rather, a more accurate reason was that he had time and energy to actually move or retrieve the kind of stuff that he used his powers on.

It was just annoying to do anything with his dominant hand out of commission. He'd go to do something like he usually would only to falter when he realised the problem. At least it would give him an excuse not to write notes for the next week or so. Maybe Yaoyorozu or Iida would be willing to give him their notes.

Going back to school felt… odd. He was certainly more hesitant around the school and Shinsou was also reluctant to separate from him. He told Danny that he would just take a nap in his classroom until Danny was let out to walk home together. Danny appreciated it and knew it was more for Shinsou's peace of mind than anything else.

When he got in, he was the centre of attention.

"Danny!" Hagakure cried, alerting the class to his presence from her seat right next to the entrance.

"Dude!" Kaminari exclaimed, barely restraining himself from getting out of his seat. "You're okay!"

"You were pretty messed up dude, we couldn't even text you to see if you were okay." Jirou remarked, looking up from her phone.

Danny made his way to his seat slightly sheepish at being the focus. It seemed that he was the last one to class and he'd come in while everyone was talking about the incident.

"Ah yeah, I'm fine. My arm is a bit messed up, but after a few sessions with Recovery Girl I'll be all good I think. It was caused by some weird quirk interaction." Danny shrugged with one arm.

"What did you do anyway?" Mina asked worry in her voice. "I mean, the guys who were at the plaza told us what happened but it wasn't all that clear what you did."

"Thank you, Danny." Midoriya bowed in his seat and looked at him with such deep gratitude Danny wasn't sure what to do with it. "If it weren't for you, me, Tsuyu and Mineta would probably be dead."

Danny's felt the tips of his ears burn with embarrassment at how genuine Midoriya’s gratitude was. He looked at where Tsuyu was sitting and she nodded in agreement, bowing slightly as well. "A-ah it's alright. I wasn't really thinking, but I'm glad you were alright. I heard you got pretty injured after I passed out."

Midoriya smiled sheepishly. "Ah, yeah, I ended up breaking both my legs doing something stupid right before the teachers showed up. It wasn't a big deal, since the villains left immediately afterwards. It was  just, ah, painful."

"So what did you do?" Hagakure asked, leaning forwards from where she sat on Mina's desk. "Because I didn't really see what happened, just that you flew into that noumu thing."

Danny winced slightly. He knew he'd have to explain it eventually, but he'd kind of hoped he could keep that one a little bit more under wraps. But… if he could test the waters somewhat. See how his classmates reacted to that power of his, then he could maybe use that to get Shinsou to let them help in their plan for the Sports Festival.

"Well, y'know how my quirk is kinda, well, stupidly versatile? I didn't exactly go into depth about all I can do, but one of the things I can do with my quirk is the ability to sort of… possess people? I don't like to call it that, I call it overshadowing because it's not quite as violent as possession sounds. Anyways, I can phase into people's bodies and control them. The person goes to sleep and it doesn’t have any adverse effects, I always thought it would be a pretty handy way to get villains to stop whatever they were doing. I’ve never actually used it against others against their will until then though, it's, ah , a bit uncomfortable when people hear about it."

"That… actually sounds badass." Jirou nodded in approval. "Also super powerful, so what happened was basically you yoinked a powerful weapon from the villains and said 'nah you're not using this'."

Danny laughed. "Basically. It didn't work all that well, and the main villain, Shigaraki I think, used his quirk to disintegrate the Noumu’s arm and since I was possessing it at the time…"

There was a sharp intake of breath around the class. "Dude, what . How do you have an arm still?" Kaminari asked.

In response Danny shrugged with his free shoulder. "I mean, my arm wasn't technically tangible at the time, but as I said, weird quirk interaction. My arm didn't really get disintegrated, but it did crack the skin and take a few layers off. And since my whole arm is covered in stitches, I'm in this immobiliser sling until it heals so I don't tug on them too much."

"Sounds rough, dude." Kirishima but in from the seat in front of Danny, abandoning all pretence the class wasn’t shamelessly focused on their conversation. "Glad you're okay! Do you think you'll be healed in time for the sports festival?"

"I better be." Danny sighed. He really wasn't sure what he'd do if he wasn't, he would probably try to participate regardless, if he was being honest. Less to get attention for himself and more because he needed Shinsou to be in the hero course now more than ever.

Danny had managed to stop his classmates from getting killed by taking out the noumu with possession, but Shinsou's quirk would be just as powerful if not more since he could use it on more than one person and didn't need to actively puppet the people he controlled.

"Everyone! Morning homeroom is about to start!" Iida suddenly called and ran to the front of the class. "Stop talking and take your seats!"

Considering Hagakure had sat back in her seat as Kirishima started talking, the instruction was largely unnecessary.

"We're already in our seats." Kirishima replied with slight amusement.

"You're the only one who isn't." Kaminari tacked on.

Iida hurried back to his seat and grumbled in frustration, hilariously.

"Who'd you think is gonna teach homeroom today?" Mina asked, swirling on her chair as they waited for homeroom to start.

"Well…" Midoriya started. "Aizawa-sensei is in the hospital, so—"

Just then the door to the classroom rolled open and in the flesh, with every inch of skin covered in bandages, was Aizawa-sensei.

"Morning."

Of course, that started an uproar from the class, considering the man was still far too visibly injured to be back in class. Instead of doing anything to calm them, when the bell rang Aizawa-sensei calmly asked them if they were done and back to class they went.

Danny was a bit more obvious with his recorder for classes to get better sound, but he also attempted to write with his left hand. He was sort of ambidextrous with everything except writing, he could manage it was just never his first instinct. He’d never really been forced to write left handed though, so maybe he would come away by the end of week somewhat better at left handed writing. 

…He was still going to ask Yaoyorozu for her notes. If only for Shinsou’s sake. Yikes. 

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.

.

Before they were let out for lunch, Aizawa-sensei stopped Danny and Midoriya. 

“Are we in trouble, sensei?” Danny asked, thinking about the fact that he’d never been asked to stay back unless he was in some sort of trouble. He couldn’t think of anything both he and Midoriya could be in trouble for together , but it was better to ask just in case.

“No, you’re fine. I’ve just been asked to talk to the two of you about the Sports Festival. The staff has agreed to hold it the same as usual to not show weakness, but because you two were the most injured of the students we wanted to know your thoughts on it.”

Danny blinked, somewhat surprised by the consideration but thankful for it regardless. One of the biggest things that unnerved both Kirika and him was the fact that the Sports Festival was going to be televised to the entire nation. Danny’s name, face and ‘quirk’ would be shown to everyone without any kind of security clearance. It was already dangerous when UA clearly had a target on its back, but even worse when Danny knew without a doubt that he’d already had one on himself. This would just give Locksley a lead. 

He looked to the side and saw Midoriya considering the question too, also slightly surprised. He put his hand to his mouth and thought, slight muttering coming from him as he thought. It was kinda endearing, but Danny already had an idea or two. 

“Well, one thing that concerns me is that we’ve already been targeted by villains, whatever we showcase will be seen by them, they’ll know our quirks and will know how to beat us. Not to mention our names, and the names of our quirks. I’ve only seen one or two past festivals but it doesn’t really help that the quirks are also explained in detail.” 

Going over the past couple festivals had been part of helping Shinsou to prepare. It had been a fascinating experience really, Danny had always wondered what a superpowered sports competition would be like and it had been radically different each year. The quirk explanation though definitely put him on edge. 

“It’s also not really fair to those who rely on their quirk to be kept secret either. I get you have to balance the fact that it’s a televised event so you have to keep your audience entertained but it’s sort of like announcing what people are going to do next, y’know?”

“I…” Midoriya spoke up slowly as if these issues had never really occurred to him but he was surprised on his own thoughts about it. “I actually… agree with Danny. I know that the Sports Festival for us hero students is about starting to build our name and tell the world we’re here, but especially broadcasting our quirks and names sounds a bit too dangerous.”

Aizawa nodded slightly. “I agree with you two. It’s always been my opinion that UA places more focus on the entertainment factor of the festival over the safety of the students. I will give your opinions to the staff, but if either of you have any thoughts on how to go about these issues I will also pass those on.” 

Danny looked at Midoriya, he knew that they could probably come up with some good suggestions. 

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.

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Shouta’s whole body ached. He got constant flak from every medical professional he’d seen since the attack for trying to go back to work before he was fully healed, but he knew he would never be able to relax. He’d never been good at letting other people do his job for him, which is what a substitute would be doing for his class if he didn’t teach himself. 

It also sucked because being so injured meant he couldn’t even use his sleeping bag for his cat naps either, so he was in an even worse mood than he would be if he was just dealing with the pain. Still, he could endure just a bit longer to sit in on the staff meeting concerning the sports festival. 

Normally, they would have announced the sports festival to their classes today, but with the attack, they wouldn’t be doing things as usual. With some ideas from Danny and Midoriya, hopefully Shouta could finally correct some of the things that he disagreed with about the sports festival. Those two had come up with a lot of good ideas, not all of them could be implemented and some were impractical but that’s what this staff meeting was for. So they could discuss the sports festival this year. 

“Looks like we’re all here! I’ll get straight to the point then,” Nedzu chirped from his seat, having just arrived on the shoulder of Yagi. “This meeting is to discuss and consider ways to further secure our students safety during the sports festival. I had Aizawa-kun ask both Midoriya and Danny their thoughts on the matter, so let’s start there! Aizawa-kun?”

Shouta nodded slightly. “Midoriya initially had no concerns, but Danny voiced his thoughts on how UA firmly had the attention of the villains who could be watching them, he felt uncomfortable with how much of our students we showcase to the public. Especially concerning their names and the full details of students’ quirks. Hearing this, Midoriya agreed with Danny. They both had some ideas about how to mitigate these problems, and I fully agree with them. Something needs to be done, otherwise we paint targets on our students’ backs.”

“Hm, they are valid concerns.” Nedzu nodded. 

“But the sports festival is all about showing off what our students can do, isn’t hiding that against the spirit of the event?” Vlad offered with a slight scowl. 

While the 1-A and 1-B class rivalry was something that had always been around even before Shouta attended UA, Aizawa had never encouraged it. However, he did have a dislike of Vlad, mostly because they had almost the exact opposite opinions on anything. A decent teacher and hero otherwise, just their teaching styles and personalities often clashed. Maybe if this year’s brats stayed long enough he might encourage it if only to take Vlad down a peg. 

“At the end of the day, the priority is an event for the students, not for the general public. I think it might be possible to alleviate some of their concerns if we do it right.” Nemuri nodded slightly at Shouta.

“What were the little listeners’ suggestions, Eraserhead?” Hizashi asked, not giving his opinion just yet. They’d had this argument nearly every time the sports festival came around, so he was more open to hearing Shouta’s concerns but he was also the announcer for every single sports festival, so he was often front and centre when it came to entertaining the public. Whatever they decided, Hizashi would likely be the one to primarily enforce it.

“They gave a number of suggestions, a lot of them aren’t practical, or too much of a change to what usually happens, but the one that I think is most likely to be implemented is the part of not using student names.”

“It’s possible.” Ishiyama hummed. “What would you suggest in place of student names? For the second and third years, using hero names or other aliases would be rather simple but first years don’t choose their hero names until after the sports festival.”

“Not to even mention the other courses who have no intention of going into the hero course.” Majima interjected. “I know a lot of the general education kids want to try and prove themselves, but my support course kids are passionate about what they’re doing.”

“For the hero course we could move the hero names forwards by a week, it wouldn’t be too much trouble. As for those who don’t have hero names or don’t want to use an alias we could use seat numbers, such as Danny who suggested the idea would be A-12.”

“I agree with Aizawa-kun’s suggestion.” Yagi spoke up, surprisingly. “A lot of my work has been looking into quirk trafficking and the less information we display about our students and their quirks, the safer they are on a whole. Especially with so much attention on them, the best thing for their safety would be avoiding talking about their quirks.”

“Hm…” Hizashi hummed in thought, likely trying to figure out how he’d commentate that way. It would probably be a challenge, but he was good at that kind of restriction when in front of a microphone or camera. It was when there were none around that things slipped. 

“How would pro heroes know about the students’ quirks for the internships, though? I’m all for safety, but this is also to introduce them to the hero community.” Vlad reminded them. It was a somewhat valid point this time, the students would need direction in the form of internships and the list of heroes that were available to those without offers were somewhat limited.

“Perhaps we could supply pro heroes that wish to offer internships some kind of informational packet that they receive along with the forms for internships?” Nemuri suggested. “That way the heroes get the information they need, and protect our students at the same time.”

“These are good suggestions,” Nedzu nodded. “While the Sports Festival being televised is a great boon for our status, financial resources and to give opportunities to our students, the festival would not take place if not for the students themselves. As such their safety must be a priority. We have already discussed the safety arrangements in a previous meeting, so I will not rehash that, however I will consider our best options in terms of keeping student information private and I will inform you via email by tomorrow. Our next order of business will be the events themselves…”

Shouta found himself relaxing slightly. While it was almost impossible to figure out how Nedzu was feeling on any one subject, it was clear that he would seriously consider the proposal. Something that Shouta had been trying to get into motion since he became a teacher. He was lucky now that his first year sports festival was so long ago that people didn’t remember it much. 

It helped that for a while the main focus of the sports festivals weren’t so much on the first years. Even then, his combat style had changed drastically over the next decade or so. But if anyone connected Eraserhead’s quirk to that of his first year self, they would know his legal name. If all went well with this safety measure, it would likely become standard.

It was hard to keep concentrating on the meeting when Shouta’s foremost concern had been addressed. This was all stuff that he didn’t really need to be present for, and Shouta was tired and in pain. He could not wait to recover from his injuries, they were highly inconvenient. He couldn’t even properly pet Princess.

Though… he probably did need to look for someone to help him take care of her for him.  With how injured he was, he unfortunately couldn’t keep up with all that she needed. He loved his sphynx rescue cat dearly, but being unable to use his hands and the awkwardness of keeping his bandages dry, he just wasn’t going to be able to keep up with her grooming. 

He’d ask his friends for help, but Princess for some reason hated Mic, so if he tried to bathe her she’d likely take his eye out. Nemuri had been kind enough to come by the other day to dress her one of her jumpers so she didn’t get cold, but it was somewhat out of the way to be consistently coming by just to dress his cat. The only reason Princess hadn’t starved was due to her automatic feeder, but it was starting to run out.

Luckily he’d seen a notice in the cat cafe he occasionally visited about a catsitter that might be able to look after his cat. Until the bandages on his arms came off at least.

Chapter Text

Hagakure: GUYS

Hagakure: GUYS!!!!

Hagakure : I JUST HEARD THE BEST THING!!!!

Hagakure: this is like. top tier gossip. you better all be present.

Jirou: ooo i love a bit of juicy gossip

Kaminari: spill that tea girl

Ashido: i will literally cry if you don’t tell

Danny: ????

Hagakure: good you’re all here

Hagakure: so y’know how sometimes i strip and hang out in restricted areas of ua

Kaminari: …………..no…….

Jirou: lol ye its hilarious

Danny: does nedzu know you’re doing that? after the break in then usj it could be p suspicious behaviour…….

Hagakure: dw hes known since the first day. i wanted to make sure i knew my way around w/o looking suspicious or dumb so i wandered around. nedzu saw me bc his senses are better than humans apparently and knew i was there.

Hagakure: he said i can do it until the staff notice and if i hear anything suspicious i have to tell him. he has cameras and microphones around the school but i’m an extra layer of security and also a test for the staff if they don’t realise im there apparently nedzu is gonna dock their pay everytime they miss me lol

Hagakure: good training, i get gossip and i can catch anything suspicious lol so all in all great thing

Ashido: so nedzu was legit okay w you running around naked in a high school???????

Hagakure: no!!! my parents managed to work out a deal w the support company that made my hero suit and commissioned some underwear w the same material/properties bc they knew i wouldn’t hesitate to strip if i wanted to

Hagakure: gonna be w/o pocket money for some time but ye

Jirou: the gossip????

Hagakure: oh yeah! thanks jirou!!! anyways. get ready to throw a party bc i heard midnight on the phone to some parents. apparently they wanted to withdraw a hero course student from ua bc of the usj attack.

Hagakure: obvs im like omg i hope its not anyone from our class and then i hear midnight say

Hagakure: “of course mineta-san, i’ll talk to principal nedzu about your concerns”

Jirou: mineta’s going??? oh thank fuck.

Ashido: that is a BIG juicy bit of gossip and i am half tempted to throw a class party lol

Danny: this is the best news of my life. this means there’ll be a free spot in our class.

Kaminari: i drink respect women juice by the gallon but uh why are you so excited danny????

Danny: how would you guys feel abt helping during the sports festival to fill that space?

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“Thanks to UA increasing security due to the USJ attack, the school has decided that students will be using aliases or their seat numbers to protect student identities.” Aizawa announced at the beginning of their hero theory lesson. 

“Sir! Does that mean we’re picking our hero names today?!” Uraraka cried, both excited and nervous.

“While I recommend you use this opportunity to choose your hero names, because this will be your first introduction to the world, there will be still other opportunities. That being said, we’ll be using the next forty minutes to workshop your names. I am unqualified for this so…”

“So I will guide you!” Midnight proclaimed loudly as she burst through the classroom door, startling Hagakure in the seat closest. 

Aizawa sighed. “Yes. You have to decide on your aliases and announce them to the class. Remember these will be the names you will be known by to the nation, you must be willing to go by this to whoever watches.” 

“And that’s why Eraserhead here can’t help you pick which is best.” Midnight cheerfully contributed to which Aizawa grunted in agreement.

“Uh… How come?” Kirishima asked, slightly confused.

Midnight playfully rolled her eyes and answered with a smile. “He didn’t pick out his hero name, Present Mic did, and he never learnt to respond to it because he just used his real name. Mic found out after a couple years as pros and started calling him that instead of his name. Right, Eraserhead?” 

Though Aizawa was completely covered and his eyes were near impossible to see, Danny saw the man roll his eyes before starting to shuffle out the classroom. “Remember to give me the list of their aliases.”

“So! Any questions?” Midnight asked as she turned back to the class.

Danny hesitantly raised his hand and when called on he spoke. “What if you don’t want to pick a hero name just yet?” 

“Well the default that the staff decided on was to be your seat number. For example, you, Danny, would be A-12. Kendo Itsuka, who is 1-B’s class president, would be B-05. It’s a relatively safe way to refer to you all, without giving out sensitive information. This way if any of you intend to go into underground heroics, you also won’t have to advertise your quirk or skill sets. Keeping an ace up your sleeve as it were.” 

Danny felt so much relief at this. There wasn’t much he could do with his face, but in this he would have a good alternative. There was no way he would be giving his real hero name, and he would genuinely rather die again than go by Inviso-Bill. He needed to be as anonymous as possible. It probably wouldn’t work, but he was already planning to sabotage his place in the tournament to make sure that Shinsou got in. Hopefully he wouldn’t make a big enough splash to get any attention.

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Danny spent the rest of his time helping his friends out with their aliases. Mina was bummed she wouldn’t be able to use Alien Queen, it did rule as a name but Midnight said that it was licensed so they couldn’t use it on television. Jirou had originally wanted to use her quirk name, but after Midnight advised against it for security reasons they had to think of something else.

It was actually more difficult to try and think of a plausible sounding reason for Danny to go with the default name. The excuse he ended up on was that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go into underground heroics or not, so would rather not cut his chances for that too early. Also that he wasn’t comfortable with choosing a name in a short time. 

He wasn’t sure if any of them actually believed him but they got back to deciding the others’ hero names. In the end, Danny found he quite liked them.

“Okay, we’re going in seat order. Hagakure, you’re up.”

“Prisma!”

“Midoriya?”

“Deku.”

“Aoyama?”

“Starlight☆!”

“Iida?”

“Ah. A-04. I am… undecided.”

“Uraraka?”

“Uravity.”

“Ojiro?”

“Kangarū.”

“Ashido?”

“Cy[ph]er!”

“Kaminari?”

“Chargebolt!”

“Sero?”

“Cellophane.”

“Kouda?”

“A-Anima…”

“Kirishima?”

“Red Riot!”

“Danny?”

“A-12.”

“Jirou?”

“Auxiliary.”

“Todoroki?”

“A-14.”

“Shoji?”

“Tentacole.”

“Asui?”

“Froppy.”

“Mineta isn’t here, so, Bakugou?”

“King Explosion Murder.”

“Yeah, you’ll have to have A-18. Yaoyorozu?”

“Genesis.”

“Tokoyami?”

“Tsukuyomi.”

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“So! Where we going?” Kaminari asked  as he finished retying his shoelaces after he’d tripped over them earlier.

“Well, me and Shinsou always go hang out at the cat cafe my cousin works at before we walk home together. He lives in the same apartment building we do and my cousin gets off work in like an hour. We do our homework there. It’ll be a good place to hang out and plot.”

“You told him we were coming, right?” Jirou asked dryly.

“And let him try to weasel out of getting help from people other than me? Uh, no. He’s gonna be a stubborn bitch about it for like a day, then he’ll cave. He already kinda likes you, he’s just got a stick up his ass because he got ostracised growing up because of his quirk.”

“Yikes, that's rough.” Mina hummed. “I mean I kinda got made fun of as a kid because I couldn’t control how much acid I secreted, so I kinda understand there.”

“Mhm. He used to be told his quirk was villainous so he’s always cagey about it, but he wanted to be a hero. It’s just not a quirk that really helped him when up against robots. Got super close to getting in though, I think.”

“Oof. I get that! I don’t think I’ve been called a villain to my face, but people always thought I’d be a world class thief. Y’know since they couldn’t see me.” Hagakure nodded in understanding. “I think I only got so much because I found this metal pole and I just went to town destroying robots. They had thermal vision though, so I wasn’t able to sneak up on them. Pretty sure I just got lucky!”

“Oh here we are!” Danny announced, pointing to the Cozy Corner Cat Café. He smiled a little seeing Kirika by the door and a head of purple hair at a table. 

“Oh, Danny. Are these your friends?” Kirika asked, looking a little surprised at the number of people with Danny. This in turn made Shinsou whip his head round to them so fast the cat he was cuddling meowed in protest at being jostled.

“Yup! We’re gonna go talk with Shinsou. Guys this is my cousin, Kamiya Kirika. Kirika, this is Kaminari, Ashido, Jirou and Hagakure.”

His friends gave their greetings, and Kirika greeted them in turn telling them to call her Kirika before telling them she’ll come to their table to take their orders soon. Danny was surprised that Shinsou hadn’t given up on cuddles and vacated the building while they were talking, but it could have been because he had a cat on his lap. Not that he knew Danny would also bring them to his apartment. Could have been either.

“How dare you.” Shinsou hissed at him with a glare.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Danny grinned. “Anyways, we come with good news! Hagakure, tell my dearest friend, Shinsou, the good news you heard yesterday?”

“Ooo okay! Hi again! Well sometimes I strip and hang out in the staff areas—”

“Wait what?”

Danny leaned over and whispered. “She has invisible underwear, don't worry.”

“And I heard Midnight talking with a parent of a hero student, and they wanted to pull their kid out of UA because of the attack! And that student was our super gross classmate, Mineta. He actually sits right next to Danny in class.”

“Yeah it's a nightmare, I’ve taken to just wearing an ear plug on my left side so I don’t have to listen to him say gross things about the girls in class.” Danny grimaced. “His comments might’ve made it onto those recordings of class I made.”

Shinsou made a face, likely remembering the comments in question. “Yeah, he might be why I’ve just been reading the notes.”

“Yeah, you seem cool and Danny said you’re trying to get into the hero course. He asked if we wanted to help you in the Sports Festival. If it doesn’t sabotage us, I’m in at least.” Jirou shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant about being disappointed she wasn’t able to attract one of the nearby cats to her.

“Yup!” Kaminari grinned. “A friend of Danny’s is a friend of mine, he’s a cool dude.”

Shinsou narrowed his eyes at him. “Really? You don’t even want to know my quirk?”

“Quirks aren’t everything?” Kaminari blinked at him. “I mean if you wanna tell us, cool, but like. My quirk makes me go stupid if I overuse it, I basically fry my own brain.”

Shinsou looked torn between bewildered and concerned at that statement, so Danny saved him the trouble of figuring out how to respond. “Remind me to talk to you about your quirk later, I have an idea.” 

“Oh, cool, I’m always up for some tips.”

“You guys were pretty chill about what I told you about my quirk the other day.” Mina and Kaminari looked slightly confused, so Danny elaborated. “Y’know the overshadowing part, with the noumu?”

“Oh! Yeah, it sounded cool. You single handedly saved Midoriya, Tsuyu and Mineta by overshadowing that villain. I mean, it sucks about your arm. But that part of your quirk is pretty badass and great at stopping villains.” Mina smiled, happily. 

“Mhm!” Hagakure piped up, her gloves gliding over a cat perched on her lap. “It was so cool. You should use it against villains when you go pro a lot.”

“Really?” Shinsou said, raising an eyebrow at their reactions. “Then, who wants to volunteer to help me show you my quirk?”

“Ooo! I volunteer!” Kaminari enthusiastically grinned and raised his hands.

“Go over to Kirika-san and give her this note, then come and sit back where you are now.” Shinsou ordered, that glint in his eye made it clear he was using his quirk, passing over a scrap of napkin with something written on it. Without question, Kaminari stood up and followed the orders, his face blank as he did what he was told.

The five of them watched Kaminari follow the order blank look on his face. It was probably pretty funny, since Kirika looked back at them all when she got the note. She looked at it and snorted, giving a single nod then going back to work. Kaminari managed to not trip over anything and sat down. When it was done, he blinked back to awareness.

“Are you gonna show it? What do I need to do?”

Jirou let out an impressed whistle. “Okay that was cool.”

“What? What happened?”

“How’d you activate it?” Mina asked, with wide eyes and a smile on her face.

“I need a response to something. Hey, you’re Kaminari, right?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Untie your shoelaces.”

Kaminari leaned over and did just that, blinking back to awareness as he sat back up. “So, did you like, forget my name?”

“No, you just were my example twice. Still want to help?”

“Sure! Not sure how I’m helping, but yeah.”

“What’s its limits?” Hagakure asked. “Can you make him say stuff?” 

“Nah. Hey Kaminari?”

“Yeah?”

“Repeat after me: Danny owes me for this.”

Kaminari stayed blank faced at the order, before Shinsou released him.

“Huh. Well, that’s still a very useful quirk, even if you don’t do anything with it. Clearly it makes them stop in their tracks.” Jirou nodded in respect. 

“Um. I’m not against still being an example but whaaat is your quirk man?”

“It’s called brainwashing.” Shinsou shrugged, trying to be nonchalant when it was clear to Danny he felt awkward and didn’t like the conversation. “If someone responds to something I said, I can make them follow my orders. I told you to go up and give Kirika a note a little while ago.” 

“Ooooh that sounds so cool! It’s like a verbal version of what Danny can do!” Kaminari grinned.

Shinsou looked at him oddly for a moment and took in their expressions. Well most of them, it was still hard to read Hagakure. No matter how much she managed to express in her body language, there wasn’t much she could do when she wasn’t actively saying something.

“You guys… seriously aren’t freaked by it?”

“Nah, it’s cool. Incredibly powerful, I can see why Danny thinks you’d make a great hero.” Jirou nodded. 

“He’s… talked to you guys about me?” Shinsou asked, giving Danny a side eye. Danny felt his ears go warm and he focused on giving the cats attracted to him attention. It had been a normal amount!

“Yeah, he pretty much begged us to help. He said it would mean a lot to you both if you got into the hero course.” Jirou nodded again, proving she was a snitch who couldn’t be trusted with anything.

“Really?” Shinsou turned more to Danny, who’s ears heated up more.

“What?! I think you’re cool and the only reason I’m in UA is because I wanted to go to the same school as you, the only reason I’m in the hero course was because you wanted to be too. You’re gonna be a great hero, and you know I don’t care about the sports festival. We need numbers to help you train, it didn’t hurt to ask!” Danny defended himself.

Shinsou smiled slightly. “Thanks.”

Danny grinned widely at his friend.

“You, uh, really want to help? Danny didn’t like, pay you to help, right?” Shinsou asked, turning back to the others.

“Nope, I think it’s great! I won’t throw away my chances, but I can at least help you train right?” Hagakure chirped. “I don’t really have anything I can do to train my quirk anyways.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Jirou shrugged, twirling an earphone jack around her finger. “I’m not allowed my support gear, so there’s nothing much I can do with my quirk.”

“I don’t wanna overdo my quirk training and fry my brain too bad for the festival.” Kaminari shrugged. 

“I still have a suggestion you can try, but later.” Danny cut in, quickly.

“Oh yeah, of course. Still, I wanna help out man! You’re cool, it’ll be fun to have you in 1-A.”

“Same! I mean, I’m working on my skating still, and my capoeira needs some fine tuning, but I could train with you guys. It’ll be fun!” Mina grinned.

“I promise I didn’t pay any of them to help.” Danny reassured. “Look, we’re not sabotaging ourselves to help you, and it won’t be like we’re giving you the spot.  You still have to impress Nedzu, right? We just wanna help you do that.”

Shinsou looked at them for a minute before he let out a sigh. “Okay. I… thanks.” 

“Oops.” Kirika’s dry voice sounded from above him when he felt something wet slip down the back of his shirt. 

Danny sprang up and wriggled to get it away from him. He heard his friends and Kirika laugh and the sound of a high-five while Danny made everything but the whatever intangible so it dropped to the floor. It was a wet slice of cucumber.

“The kid asked me to in his note.” Kirika said when Danny looked at her with a betrayed expression. “So, you guys want anything? I can take your order.”

After the group finished ordering and Danny finished grumbling, they started to make some training plans. Things went much smoother than Danny had expected, Shinsou managing to relax with his interactions after Kaminari got up to use the bathroom and tripped on his shoelaces. 

It probably helped that Kaminari laughed when it was explained what happened to him. Shinsou hadn’t done anything too objectionable, but Danny knew a lot of people would have blown a gasket at the harmless prank if it happened to them. The fact that Kaminari had shrugged it off easily, likely reassured him.

It was going to go great. He was looking forwards to the Sports Festival after all.

Chapter Text

Today was the day. 

There was nothing more that Hitoshi could do to prepare, this was it. He’d slept surprisingly well last night, and as such he had a bit of time for existential dread before he got up. 

His dread was swiftly dulled when he felt his new favourite cat snuggle up to his face, purring as she kneaded his messy hair, digging into his scalp. It was somewhat painful, but overall, surprisingly relaxing. 

Hitoshi took a deep breath and carefully let it go, reaching up to pet the sphynx cat. It really was fortuitous timing getting such a wonderful client, right when his stress levels were the highest they’d been in a while. He would have to ensure he stayed on good terms with him, because if he didn’t get to look after Princess again he would be devastated. 

The cat in question had been dropped off by a heavily injured man, clearly unable to keep up with her daily maintenance in his condition. It was clear that she was adored quite a lot by the very long conversation about her care, and the clear reluctance to leave her. 

She was apparently a rather picky cat about who she would like. Unlike every other cat that Hitoshi catsat for, she didn’t automatically prefer Danny. In fact she was ambivalent towards him, and seemed to prefer Hitoshi over everyone else besides her owner, if not him then Yume. Everyone else seemed to be tolerable. It had been funny seeing Danny pout at not getting snuggles from a cat in a sweater. He shook his head, trying to keep himself on track. Because today…

Today was the day. 

The Sports Festival. 

This was the day that decided his future, his last chance. Sure he could still potentially transfer to the hero course next year, but it would be even harder to catch up to the point where UA would almost never do it. Not unless their hand was forced or they were overwhelmingly impressed with what Hitoshi could do. 

It was practically impossible. So. Last chance.

“Wake up!” Danny shouted from the side of his head, making both Shinsou and Princess jump. This made the cat whirl, swiping at the head poking out his wall and hissing at it. Hitoshi felt vindicated.

“Thank you, my brave protector.” He scratched under her chin, starting her purring again. To fend off another attack by Danny, Hitoshi sat up and scooped the cat into his arms. She went with no objection, manoeuvring herself to a more comfy position, rubbing her head on his shirt and continuing to purr.

“I don’t think I’m a fan of this cat.” Danny complained from where he’d fallen backwards and decided to stay where he fell.

“Well, she’s my new favourite. I am going to beg her owner to let me look after her every chance I can get.” Hitoshi remarked, not even looking down at his best friend and heading to the kitchen.

His mom chuckled and ruffled his hair. It was a rare day when both his parents were home and had the whole three days of the Sports Festival off to spend time with him and Yume. It was nice, he’d become much less lonely with Kirika-san and Danny living in the same building, but it was nice they had put him and Yume before work for once.

“Ready for today?” his mom asked with a kind smile as she plated out breakfast. Mom and Dad had clearly gone all out and had prepared a number of dishes for today’s breakfast, considering they were also feeding Danny and Kirika-san it made sense. It was still rare to eat breakfast with either of his parents.

Hitoshi wrinkled his nose. “I don’t feel like it, but there’s nothing else I can do. So I’m at that point where I’m so worried I’m numb to it.”

“Oh boy, I know what that’s like.” Dad huffed from the sink where he was washing up the pans and utensils they’d used while cooking. “If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know, honey.”

“Thanks, Mom, Dad. You guys got your tickets?” Hitoshi asked, reluctantly putting Princess the Angel down on her deluxe cat bed, since he couldn’t cuddle her while eating. 

The bed in question was very comfortable, as in he could probably sit on it for twelve hours doing his homework and it would still be comfortable. Hitoshi had actually looked up the make to get one for himself but it was worth more than triple Hitoshi’s monthly allowance. And he got a hefty amount in comparison to other kids, his parents dedication to their well paying jobs did help in that department on top of his catsitting job.

“Yup!” Mom cheered bringing the last of the plates to the table. “I am going to laminate ours afterwards to put it in the scrapbook. There’s no way we won’t be excited to think back on this day. You’re going to do great.”

Hitoshi felt his ears burn scarlet as Danny smirked at him from where he lay on the floor. He could just tell that Danny was smug that his family believed in him as much as he did. He fought back the urge to march up to him and kick him in the stomach. 

Mom frowned at the table. “Yume! Breakfast is ready! Danny, dear, would you go and fetch Kirika-chan for me? She must have slept in.” 

“Sure Mrs Shinsou-san!” Danny cheerfully agreed before phasing through the floor. If he hadn’t gone invisible and done this many times before, Hitoshi was sure that their lower floor neighbour would have hit him with many brooms every time. 

He’d gotten hit the first time he did it and caused a stir. It was absolutely hilarious. Normally he would have worried that kind of behaviour would get them reported to the landlord, but Danny had managed to smooth it over after the woman had stopped shrieking. He was pretty sure the only reason neither of them got reported was because the woman had been under the impression it was an accident and that he’d never do it again, however… she just hadn’t caught him again yet.

Ah, well. Seemed that Danny was in a mischievous mood, no doubt he’d scare Kirika-san awake too. 

(He did. Danny showed up to breakfast with a red mark on his cheek, apparently Kirika had panicked and threw her alarm clock at him.)

They quickly wrapped up their breakfast and they all headed down to the Shinsous’ car. It didn’t technically have six seats, so Danny gleefully volunteered him and Hitoshi to sit in the boot so they didn’t have to squeeze three people in the back. Hitoshi had been against it but with his parents amenable to the idea and the drive only ten minutes…

Needless to say, the ride to UA was very bumpy. He knocked against Danny half the time they went around a bend, but it was also incredibly thrilling. It didn’t help that Danny’s childish laughter was drawing a few chuckles from Hitoshi too. It eased his nerves so much that he had almost completely forgotten about the Sports Festival until Mom stopped the car. 

“Alright boys, we’re just around the corner from UA. We have to keep driving to temporary parking, so out you get.” Mom called, followed by the boot being opened by Yume who was pouting slightly. She’d clearly wanted to join, but three in the boot was definitely too much. 

“Don’t worry, Yume, you can sit in the boot with me on the way back.” Danny offered, which got Yume to smile in agreement. Hitoshi appreciated it, he’d probably need some time to decompress afterwards and if he could just sit in the back seat and just space out during the ride home he’d be happy for it.

Yume hugged Hitoshi before he could leave. “You’re going to do great.” She told him, squeezing tight. 

Hitoshi smiled into her hair and hugged her back. “Thank you.”

.

.

.

Danny and Shinsou parted ways going to their respective classrooms. It was still technically a school day, it being Thursday, so they still had to do registration. Danny didn’t like having to separate from Shinsou at any point today, he’d managed to get him out of his own head with the ride in the boot to school but Shinsou very easily slipped back into pessimistic thoughts if not being actively encouraged. 

“Yikes, Danny, whats up with that red mark on your face?” Jirou asked with a raised eyebrow as he headed to his seat. 

“I scared Kirika awake this morning and she panicked, ended up throwing her alarm at my face.”

“Couldn’t you have phased through it?”

“...Don’t talk logic to me, Hagakure.”

“Hey, it’s your face that’s gonna be on live television broadcasted throughout the nation. You’ll have to deal with that mark.” She shrugged. “I’m lucky, no one can tell if I have a bad hair day.”

Danny eyed the pink hoodie she was wearing underneath her blazer that had been pulled up. It was likely her attempt at making sure that people knew she was there rather than let her gym uniform blend into everyone else’s. 

“Isn’t that going to be hot?” Danny asked instead. He didn’t envy her struggle, to be a spotlight hero as she wanted to be, she needed to gain attention. But to show off and fully utilise her quirk she needed to be able to be very flexible with her appearance on a moment’s notice, so no temporary dye or any kind of body paint. 

“Maybe! But I have a backup!” She pulled the hood down and whipped out a baseball cap putting it on and fiddling with the back of it, presumably pulling her hair through the loop. “It’s a little less obvious, but it’s still better than anything else.”

“Fair. And don’t worry, I have a similar solution.” He nodded and pulled a medical mask out of his blazer pocket and slipped it on. It had been one of the few Japanese culture things that Danny appreciated, that if people seemed the slightest bit sick and they were in public they would wear one. Because of this, it made great identity camouflage while also concealing any injury. 

“That definitely helps.” Jirou nodded. “You said you were thinking about going underground too, right? That’ll help with keeping your face under wraps too.”

“Right?” Danny grinned. Kirika had been very apologetic when it happened, but when Mrs Shinsou-san suggested it, they’d looked at each other with the same delighted realisation. She’d still been very uncomfortable that Danny’s face would be on television, but with this it would be much harder to recognise him especially if he was determined not to stand out at all.

“Oh! Danny!” Kaminari brightened as he walked into the classroom. “Dude, your advice? I am thanking you again from the bottom of my heart.” He mock bowed deeply as he walked to his seat. 

Danny took off the mask and slipped it back into his pocket with a laugh. “All I ask is you don’t use it on me.” 

“Noted. Seriously. Thanks for the heads up. Definitely would have crushed me with guilt if I made you lash out from a trauma response. Also this new technique will absolutely help me with not hitting you by accident.”

“Good thing that you skipping out on our training was productive at least.” Jirou snarked, playing with an earphone jack. “You would have been depressed you missed so much bonding for no reason. We have personal and unique high fives with each other now that you don’t know.”

Kaminari looked at her with a betrayed expression and Danny fought to keep his expression neutral as he nodded along in agreement. “ No… ” He whispered in horror. “Do I get to learn them?” 

“Nope! You weren’t there when Shinsou created it, so you don’t get to know!” Hagakure chirped. She may have had no visible tells of lying, but unfortunately she was not very good at hiding the glee in her voice.

“You’re messing with me!” Kaminari cried, prompting the three of them to laugh. 

“Ooo what we laughing at? Is it Kaminari again?” Mina slid into the classroom just as the bell rang, huffing slightly making it clear that she’d run to class.

Kaminari pouted. Thankfully for his dignity, all laughter and conversation was swiftly killed when the door slammed open and Aizawa appeared in the doorway. He looked around at the way the whole class ran to their seats and sat down. 

“Good, you’re all here. I won’t bother taking attendance. Get changed and meet me outside, I’ll take you to the class’s prep room.”

“Sir!” Sero called out, clearly hesitant to ask but apparently Aizawa not noticing an empty seat had been the last straw. “Uh, where’s Mineta? He hasn’t been here for a while…” 

“Ah. Apparently coming face to face with villains so soon in his hero training was too much for Mineta, so he pulled out of UA and transferred to another hero school since the school year had just started.” Aizawa shrugged, skillfully ignoring the pleased thrum that went through the class at the news. “Get changed. Meet me outside.”

.

.

.

Mina loved her new friend group. It was a lot different to her middle school friend group, but that was mostly the personalities of her friends. She didn’t really have any guys in her friend group back in middle school, and her friends had all been the ‘girly’ types of girls, whereas Hagakure and Jirou weren’t as stereotypical. 

That is to say, she didn’t have any preference over which group she preferred just that they were notably different. She loved her current friends very much. She also occasionally joined Kirishima’s friends with Kaminari, because Bakugou was hilarious sometimes and his interactions with Kirishima was great. Sero was nice to talk to as well, but he was mostly just a dependable guy who also hung around with a lot of the class.

Helping Danny’s middle school friend, Shinsou, out with training for the sports festival had been fun. She hadn’t really noticed before but their friend group (what she’d affectionately nicknamed internally as the ghost gang) had something of an empty space that Shinsou slotted perfectly into. He bounced snarky comments with Jirou, teased and relaxed entirely around Danny, and was deadpan to Hagakure’s sunny comments. 

But even still, he was almost hesitant to fully step into the group. As if he didn’t want to get burned by whatever his head was telling him. Which, Mina completely understood! A lot of people saw her as a social butterfly and assumed that she’d always been popular with her classmates. 

In fact, it had taken her a while to develop her confidence and it had not been easy to find an environment where she could be herself in either. Though acceptance within society in terms of appearances had made great strides in the past few centuries, it had also remained the same in places. 

After all, it wasn’t often that people had abnormally coloured skin, black sclera and horns that weren’t all related to her quirk. Part of it was, the pigment of her skin was affected by the acid she secreted but her sclera and horns were all the result of quirks mutating genetics back in her family tree. 

She’d been made an outsider when she was tiny because of her appearance. Which is why she was so vehemently against bullying and stood up to it whenever she could. She also tried to befriend the people who were bullied and help improve the environment around them when she could if they weren’t interested in friendship. 

The Sports Festival prep had been fun . She always enjoyed hanging out with Danny, he was a cool guy and despite not having a drop of Japanese upbringing he spoke it so perfectly she wouldn’t have been able to tell he was foreign from his voice alone. Aoyama was half French and had spent the last ten years in Japan, yet he still had an accent and messed up phrasing or pronunciation. 

She’d wanted to know what America was like from a native, but he always seemed so sad and somewhat awkward when the topic came close to what his home was like. She respected it though, after all, they had only just become friends just about a month ago. They had three years to get to know each other. 

By the time the festival came around she was positively buzzing with anticipation for it. She wanted to stand out, but she also knew that she wasn’t going to step over Shinsou to do so. She could afford to help him get the attention of the people he needed to, after all UA would hardly be impressed with Shinsou if they just let him win.

Walking into the stadium after Present Mic had announced their class felt electrifying. She had watched the event every year with her family, cheered on the students who participated and even one year managed to score tickets to see it in person. And yet here she was walking out and being on the other end of it. 

She could hear Present Mic explaining some of the changes to the Sports Festival this year as the classes filed in and took up position. But she couldn’t quite pay attention to it, she was too busy trying her hardest to see if she could spot where her family was going to be in the stands, but it was just too big to even see the closest face.

“And now! Time for the player pledge!” Midnight announced with the snap of her cat-o-nine tails. 

There was the clamour of admiration for the hero. She was always a popular umpire for the event, which Mina agreed with. Midnight was a fun teacher, but she never pulled out her whole heroic persona in class considering their ages. On television though, it would be interesting seeing the differences in how she acted. 

“Representing the students is the one who scored the highest in the Heroics Entrance Exam! Our highest scorer in the last decade - A-12!”

Mina had to think for a moment and try to figure out who A-12 was . There were three students in the class that didn’t pick a name, Danny, Todoroki and Iida. She would have quickly thought through it but movement caught her eye and she turned to look at Danny who had gone a couple shades paler under his mask. Oh.

“Yikes.” Kaminari whispered and patted Danny’s shoulder in a consoling manner. “Good luck, man.”

“I think this is a tradition exclusive to Japan.” Danny hissed quickly. “Someone tell me what to say, quick!”

“Just say something about doing our best. This is the least memorable part of the festival.” Jirou quickly helped. “If you need help just ask Midnight.”

Danny nodded slightly and made his way forwards. Mina expected him to lower his mask for the microphone but he didn’t. With the angle it was hard to see his expression, but just looking up at the screens around the stadium helped with that. He looked scared for a moment longer until he took a deep breath.

“I pledge that we, as UA students will work hard and do our best to show off what we are made of during this festival. But I also pledge that it’s not just the hero students you should pay attention to, we are all competing in the festival. Let’s show you what all of us at UA can do.”

Danny finished with a nod and the crowd erupted into cheers. Mina caught the smile and a wink that Midnight send Danny before she ushered him back off the stage before using the microphone for herself to announce the next part. 

“Was that good?” Danny nervously asked when he got back to them. 

“It was great Danny! Look the rest of the students aren’t glaring at us as much as they were when we first got announced.” Hagakure enthused. 

Now that she mentioned it, she did notice a few of the other classes looking surprised and caught off guard by the mention. She found where Shinsou was stood with his class and grinned at him giving him double thumbs up. He rolled his eyes at her, and focused back on Midnight. 

“An obstacle race, huh…” Jirou murmured after it was announced. 

As they walked over to the start, Mina noticed that Danny was leading them to where Shinsou was walking. Mina had originally thought to go ahead herself, but she could stick around the group for a little bit if she was needed to help out.

“What’s our plan, Shinsou?” Danny asked, bouncing slightly. “You know I could probably pick you all up and fly us to the end.”

Kaminari raised an eyebrow at him. “All five of us?”

Danny thought about it for a moment. “Hm, probably if you were all able to hold onto me.”

Sometimes Mina forgot how powerful Danny was. Part of it was because he never dedicated himself to their practical classes, he paid attention but he was never in a rush to go all out or be very determined to win. Though they hadn’t had much opportunity to go all out, Danny never seemed to even approach his limits. 

It was a little scary to think about sometimes, if she was being honest with herself. 

Luckily for everyone, Shinsou shook his head at the suggestion. “I have a feeling that UA will target the highest placing students. We should coast by for now, we don’t need to bring unnecessary attention on us. That being said…” Shinsou was momentarily drowned out by the countdown starting.

Mina started to get into good position to take off running, seeing Kaminari doing the same but they were stopped by Shinsou narrowing his eyes at the people in front and raising his hand to stop them. She wasn’t sure if she should listen as the race began, but found herself staying in place regardless. 

It turned out to be a good idea, considering the massive crush of students trying to pile through the tight gap. Ohhhh. 

“Danny, can you get us through that?” Shinsou asked. 

Danny nodded, spreading his arms out. “Everyone grab hold of me, don’t let go until we’re through.”

Mina grabbed his wrist, watching as everyone else in their group followed his direction. Then, the most peculiar sensation washed over her. It felt like the crisp cold air of a mid-winter’s night, it prickled over her skin in a way that made her worry the feeling would turn painful as it always did when she touched something that cold for a while. But it didn’t. The sensation clung to her skin, refreshing and brisk but not painful or unbearable. 

It was even weirder when they started to move through the crush of people. She couldn’t really describe the feeling of walking through people. It felt somewhat like a lucid dream, something so unbelievably wild to witness that she just couldn’t react to it. It likely helped the panic that they were also invisible. 

When she looked at Danny she could vaguely see an outline of him, with a similar effect on their group but it was eerie looking back at the people they walked through who shuddered and looked around for the source of the feeling. They sometimes even looked right at where Mina should have been but their gaze never focused on her. 

Suddenly, it gave her much appreciation for Hagakure. 

Finally however, they broke free of the crowd of people and Danny suddenly dropped his quirk. The people just behind them that had started to free themselves from the group shrieked in surprise and fell over trying to stop from ramming into them. 

Shinsou gave them no time to pause and gave them all shoves on their shoulders to get them to keep going. 

If Mina was being honest with herself, the obstacle course from there started to blur together. While their group generally stayed close, they didn’t work together much after that. They dealt with the zero pointers in their own ways, with only Hagakure and Shinsou getting help from Danny to phase past them. 

The gorge was a bit trickier, and Danny hovered by them in reassurance to catch them if they fell. Mina wobbled a bit, but got through fine. Danny had to catch Shinsou, Jirou and Hagakure once each, but they were still in a decent place all together. 

It was only when they got to the minefield that they used Danny’s powers again. They all reached forwards and grabbed him again, this time he didn’t bother with making them invisible but they were intangible making them immune to the mines as they ran through. 

The peculiar feeling of earlier still ran over her, it wasn’t quite as intensely cold as before but it did let Mina know what the saying as cold as the grave meant. 

Danny was visibly flagging by the time that they passed the minefield though, which made them slow down. None of them wanted to rush off in front of him considering he was practically the reason they did as well as they already were. 

They weren’t nearly the first ones there, but when they finally passed the finish line, Mina joyfully looked at the rankings. 

“Seventeenth, A-12; Eighteenth, C-07; Nineteenth, Prisma; Twentieth Auxiliary; Twenty first, Cy[ph]er; Twenty Second, Chargebolt!” Mina cried, the first one to catch their breath. 

“Woo!!!” Hagakure panted from the floor, raising her arms in celebration.

Kaminari groaned from where he’d sat himself on the ground. “Why am I the last of the group?” 

“You tripped the most in that last sprint.” Jirou panted, her hands on her knees. The only ones who stayed standing were Mina, Jirou and Shinsou. Danny had also collapsed to the second they were finished and out of the way of the finishing line.

It was partly true. When they had officially gotten past the mines, they’d all let go of Danny and ran on their own. Danny had however, been under Shinsou’s quirk still and hadn’t been let go until he was the first of the group to get over the line. 

“We all did great though!” Hagakure tiredly enthused from the floor. “Especially you Danny, couldn’t have done it together if it weren’t for you!”

“Thanks.” Danny weakly accepted the praise. “I don’t think I could have kept the intangibility if Shinsou hadn’t controlled me for the minefield. I was getting tired by then.”

Shinsou rolled his eyes, clearly the one most out of breath of the lot but refusing to let it show. His satisfied expression however, let Mina know that he was happy with how everything turned out. 

Now they just had to wait for the first event to be finished and they’d find out what the Sports Festival had in store for them next…