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Chapter Text

The winter before Denki’s first semester at Yuuei, he almost kills the interdimensional ninja who accidentally teleports into his recyclable bin. In his defense, Denki hadn’t been expecting someone to jump out of his garbage while he was throwing away evidence of an allowance purely spent on ramune and Pokémon cards. So early in the morning too! It was only natural that he let off enough voltage to kill a small pod of whales. Self-defense, of course.

After he stops screaming and gets up from his embarrassing slip on the morning frost, he realizes he might have killed some random dude. Creep or not, Denki can’t be a cold-blooded assassin so young! Yuuei would never take him after killing a man, forget trying to pass the entry exam. He’d spend the rest of his high school career in jail! 

“Ohhhh man, I’ve killed someone. I can’t go on the run so young! With only 500 yen left of my allowance too…”

“Hey, kid, I’m not dead-“

“Maybe I can steal my mom’s motorcycle? Hm, yeah, I can live with obaa-chan in Yokohama…”

“Why am I in a barrel?“

“Wait, no, I don’t have a license. Mom’ll kill me if I trash her ride. Can 500 yen rent a bike?”

Bundled up plastic with Pikachu’s face on it goes soaring out of Denki’s trash bin perfectly aimed at his forehead. Surprisingly, it hurts a lot for plastic. It’s then that he realizes, no, those are not death rattles, and yes, the disembodied voice coming from his disposal is still alive. He dodges a deadly ramune bottle attack. Fortunately for Denki and his endeavors to not be slain by his mother, the trash monster is alive and kicking (rather aggressively). 

“Thank goodness, you’re alive!”

He can feel the trash monster’s disappointment radiating from where he stands. “I’ve been alive.”

Denki laughs to himself nervously. “Really? I could’ve sworn I used like at least two hundred thousand volts…”

He gathers himself to peer over the side of the bin expecting to find an extra crispy human-sized bacon when all he finds is a mildly ruffled-looking teenager with no face. Or well, a singular bruised eye, Denki can’t really tell under all those masks. But he’s pretty sure he can’t be that much older than him despite that cool white hair. Or sort of white. Even beneath the trash Denki can smell of copper yen and see faint red smudges trickling from his forehead.

Yeah. Definitely not jam. 

The only sign of his quirk doing anything remotely electrifying is his nest of bloody white hair that defies gravity making him wonder if he hit the guy with his quirk at all. His hair stands on end so at minimum Denki gave him a nasty poke of static. What his quirk doesn’t do though is give people black eyes. Or bloody concussions.

…He thinks.

“Hey, hey, why’re you all beat up, man? Bullies? You in a gang, aniki?”

The garbage gremlin’s hand reaches out from the bin to hover over his shoulder and Denki isn’t afraid but the hair on the back of his neck still stands on end. It’s then that he sees a familiar crackle of electricity flickering over both of their bodies. It was enough to kill someone who wasn’t him, but just the right amount to only make Denki’s teeth chatter and his mouth taste like battery acid (a nostalgic experience he had to thank his four-year-old self who thought eating batteries would give him a power up). 

It’s then that he hears a creaking sort of groan behind him, like an old door opening or a tree in a monsoon. When he swivels around, it’s just in time to see something directly out of Little Shop of Horrors. Its winding branch-like tendrils thread over the both of them. Before he can truly comprehend the horror of watching an eldritch being morph from man to alien-plant-monster in the midst of devouring him whole, the electricity that surges over his goosebumps skin condenses. 

It’s over before fear even becomes a thought and a pulse of light flashes in front of him. His eyes instinctively close before spots can appear. After that, all he hears is the whistle of a thousand birds in a thunderstorm and the truly chilling sound of flesh being cauterized. 

When he looks up, it’s to see the guy yanking his arm out from the overgrown tree-alien-thing. Denki tries not to gag as what he prays is tree sap seeping from a gaping hole in the monster’s chest. The thin ferning of scarred lighting that he’s become familiar with knowing his quirk in all its awe and horror stretches from the empty in the weird Audrey II looking creature. And maybe Denki was a little slow but it was only then that he realized the lightning came from the guy in the trash can and not himself. 

The tree monster demon alien thing slumps over to start melting into a mush of plant matter and grassy-smelling sludge slowly trailing into a storm drain nearby. Still covered in alien tree guts, the garbage gremlin uses Denki’s arm to pull himself up, rustling around until his shock of white hair finally pops out of the trash can. 

“So are we in Lightning Country, or what, kid?”

No matter how many times Denki calls his mysterious savior Hero-nii, he denies his herodom in lieu of proclaiming himself a ninja. Denki gets it, no one can say he isn’t good at reading people. And if his soon-to-be fellow hero course peer is undercover, he can definitely count on Denki to read between the lines and stay quiet. He could seriously come up with a better cover story than “ninja who accidentally tore a hole through space-time fighting a sentient plant” though. 

The only thing believable about him was that whole story about getting home to warn his superiors (definitely the Hero agency he’s interning at) about said venus flytrap stealing a kouhai’s DNA. In Denki’s expert opinion, reading between the lines told him that a super secret Villain was doing illegal quirk experimentation. Hero-nii gave up trying to correct him by then so it was basically confirmation. Apparently, his kouhai was the only person alive with his quirk (he was sure Kamui Woods had the same power, but hey Denki’s no quirk expert, elementals like them were hard to come by) so he had to rest up and open up a new portal soon. 

As Denki half guides and half pulls him up the stairs of his apartment building he mumbles on about “sha-ku-ra exhaustion” when he’s lucid enough. He talks about it in the same way Denki does about quirk fatigue so he just assumes that, like Denki, he has just shorted out his brain and is mixing up his words. It takes his new hero student buddy an embarrassing amount of time to realize Denki is taking him to a secondary location (nonmaliciously, of course) before he asks.

“Where are we exactly?”

“Uhhhh, Saitama?” 

Hero-nii’s blank stare at the prefecture name makes Denki want to melt through every floor of his apartment building until the core of the Earth burns him to a crisp. This was literally so embarrassing. Right, why doesn’t he just say Earth at this point? No duh, they’re in Saitama.

“I mean, this is my apartment! My mom had a morning shift at the hospital and my dad’s probably at the University by now so don’t worry about your secret identity, Hero-nii. You can stay in my room while you recover.” Denki rambles mortified and props him against a wall while he rummages in his pocket for his keys. Hero-nii vaguely nods in some odd direction with a glazed look in his eye, rubbing the weird silver-plated headband that slumps into his vision. He gets up to stumble a little too close to the edge of their apartment building, leaning over the railings to gaze at the busy street below. A winter wind whips around them suddenly and reminds Denki to keep digging for his keys somewhere in his pocket. Ugh, he hates the winter.

“Hey! We’re like, fifteen stories up, maybe don’t try standing yet?”

But the guy just keeps looking across the cityscape like he’s never seen skyscrapers before so Denki is half sure he hasn’t heard him and is absolutely sure he has a concussion. 

“Look, I get that you’re undercover and all but maybe we really  should go see my mom at the hospital or something-”

Hero-nii pushes his body weight off the guardrail to go back to leaning against the wall. “No, no hospitals.” 

Denki can’t help but frown a bit but there’s never been a person he couldn’t wear down in time. A jingle from his jacket pocket means a soon-to-be dip under his kotatsu. Success! 

“Well, I have a portable heater and some quilts my obaa-chan made. It shouldn’t be too bad, winter is almost over, but still. What’s your name anywho, Hero-nii? I’m Kaminari Denki!”

As Denki finally unlocks his front door to lead them in, his guest mumbles behind him. 

“Ka-what now?”

“Kakashi.” He sort of stumbles as he shuffles off those open-toed nonwinter friendly sandals of his but catches himself on the doorframe into their apartment. Denki is pretty sure he gets blood on his dad’s Doraemon house slippers, but he would kind of feel bad yelling at a guy who looks like he just crawled out of a grave. Or garbage, technically. “Hatake Kakashi.”

Denki is halfway through tearing open a fresh cheap pair of guest slippers with his teeth but still manages to shout with his mouth full of plastic. “Kakashi? What, like a scarecrow?” 

Okay, listening to himself he realizes he is completely unintelligible. He spits out the wrapper and tries again. “Your parents named you ‘scarecrow in a field’?”

It garners the tiniest twitch in Kakashi’s black eye. “Your name literally means lightning twice.”

Ouch. “…Touché.”  

He leans down to place dollar store house slippers with dog print at Kakashi’s feet. He looks oddly elated about stepping into them (he literally just widens his eye but still) making it the most emotion he’s seen on his face so far and weirder than the plant monster ordeal he just went through. He takes back what he thought about Kakashi’s parents earlier- their naming skills were spot on. Donned with dog slippers and his earlier sort of eye smile nowhere to be seen, Kakashi stands ever so still in the middle of his genkan blankly as he waits for Denki. A scarecrow indeed. 

“Don’t tell my dad you said that. My mom would probably find it hilarious though.”

As they both step up out from the genkan , Denki ushers his half dead guest to their living room where a toasty godsent kotatsu sits waiting for them. Despite Kakashi’s protests that he’s fine, Denki wrangles him under the sheets. He’ll just pretend not to see him sigh in relief to preserve his pride. Right, ‘not cold’ Denki’s ass. 

“Okay, stay here, I’m gonna get my mom’s first aid kit.” Denki ducks out of the room. “Try not to bleed out. Or die. Or pass out.”

Kakashi blinks before dazedly sending him an awkward nod. Oh, man he is totally going to pass out, isn’t he?

When Denki runs back, his arms full of gauze and antiseptic, Kakashi isn’t passed out over the kotatsu like he’d thought he’d be and Denki silently cheers. He then carefully decides that, no, Kakashi doesn’t have a concussion, and no, please don’t stitch yourself back together, Kakashi, we literally can just use glue and gauze- where did that needle even come from?

Long story short, Kakashi halfheartedly tries to bite him when Denki goes for his face coverings so he just ends up giving him a medical mask, some gauze, and whatever he finds in the clean laundry on their couch before burying his head into a bunch of pillows under the kotatsu for five minutes. When Kakashi kicks him and Denki resurfaces from his warm, pillowy prison, Kakashi is drowned in one of his father’s old Doraemon sweaters and his face his covered in gauze and a medical mask. Less scarecrow, more mummy this time. He then throws his absolutely disgusting plant-alien gut covered Hero clothes at him and promptly falls half asleep curled up in the bowels of the kotatsu like a fussy lap dog. 

Denki understands why his mother comes home so tired from work. Patients are The Worst. “You have somewhere I should call to say you’re okay? Sorry, I feel like I kind of kidnapped you.”

Kakashi pokes back out from under the table and frowns a little (as much as one can frown under all that cloth over a face). “This is the most amateur kidnapping I’ve ever experienced.”

Oh, wow, after all that doctor-ing and suddenly he’s throwing jokes? Denki deadpans, completely fed up. “My bad, I’ll work on my kidnapping skills right away.”

But Kakashi just has that blank scarecrow look on his face leading Denki to believe maybe… he wasn’t joking. No, no, Denki’s not gonna mull over that. Everything is okay. Everything is great! Denki has not  had a traumatizing experience this fine winter morning. 

“You don’t happen to also have a teleportation technique, do you?” 

Denki vaguely remembers Kakashi mumbling on about teleporting ocular quirks (a bloodline something something , according to Kakashi but he also had been mumbling about dimension hopping so Denki is on the fence about taking everything he says at face value even though he’s pretty sure he doesn't having a concussion). “Oh, is this for your case with your Hero agency?”

“Right. My case.”

“Well, there might be people somewhere with teleportation quirks? I know it’s rare though. I mean, if you want to look up something on my phone, you can but-”

“Look up?” Kakashi cocks his head to the side. Denki tilts his own. They stare for a moment and he starts to get nervous. Oh, he’s really not joking. 

With all the patience of his mother dealing with one of her regular dementia patients, he calmly pats his head like a dog before wondering midway through the action if Kakashi would be offended being treated like so and try to bite him again. But Kakashi actually starts sinking back under the kotatsu again, his shoulders all limp so Denki counts it as a success. Mama would be so proud. Or try to recruit him into her hospital scheme again. Ack. He removes his hand. 

“Kakashi, I’m starting to think you really might have some sort of head trauma-”

He gets interrupted. “Oh, right. Look up. Definitely. I know what you’re talking about, I’m just messing with you.” 

Kakashi holds his hand out expectantly. Denki relents but not before suspiciously eyeing him out once more. 

“...Try not to short out my phone. That’s my second this month.”

“Mm.”

And he slumps under the kotatsu to fiddle with his phone. He holds it upside down. Denki thinks something shows on his face because when Kakashi looks up he quickly flips it right side up. 

“Well, when you’re done, just leave it on the table. Don’t stay under the kotatsu too long- you’ll bake yourself.”

“Mm.”

“...Are you gonna take a nap?”

“Mm.”

Ah, he’s lost him. Denki sighs and dims the light to go back to his breakfast in the kitchen. “Okay, goodnight, er, morning, Mister Hero!”

“Not a hero.” His uncovered eye winked twice.

Denki giggled to himself. “Right, right. Not a Hero. I gotcha, Mister, er, Kakashi.”

Or maybe he was just blinking. You know, it was really hard to tell with that mask of his. But it was fine because it was very mysterious. In Denki’s opinion, secret identities we’re cool. He was definitely going to add that to his list of reasons for becoming a Hero. 

“Mm. Night, Denki.” Kakashi’s eye tilted into a crescent shape. No, yeah, that was definitely a smile. 

Chapter Text

“Denki. Why is there bloody gauze in the bathroom trashcan.”

Oh. Kakashi was familiar with that time of voice. Less question, more command. But Kakashi wasn’t Denki and so he didn’t have to follow that order so he sank further under the soft hot table and dozed languidly. It was like hugging a katon. Without the whole burning flesh part, of course. 

“Mama! Uhhh, well, don’t freak out-”

“Do I have a reason to be freaking out, Kaminari Denki?”

“Oh, wow, we’re going straight to full names already?”

Ah, it seemed his nap was over. He hadn’t recovered as much chakra as he wanted but it was enough to walk around without keeling over or revealing village secrets in his confusion. As much as he wanted to fall asleep under the heavenly table bed, he wasn’t one for abandoning allies in enemy territory. And from extensive expereince running from healers, allies and enemies alike, they weren’t to be trifled with. 

Raising from under the table slowly, he settled into seiza and dipped his head in greeting. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, Kaminari-sama.“ 

Because certainly with the sealwork on this katon powered table, they had to be some rank of nobles. Earlier he had checked every inch of it to find hot coals or a seal etched into the wood to no avail. It was sort of baffling. It must of cost a fortune and years work from some artisan. Shinobi would never have the time or patience for something as domestic as that. 

Yet instead of cold rage or the condesecision he usually gets from nobility, Madam Kaminari seems to relax. It’s embarrassing to say but he gets caught off guard for a second long enough for her to get close. 

“Oh, you poor thing! Let me help you up- no, no there’s no need for such formal greetings. No honorifics either. Denki, why didn’t you bring him over to the hospital?”

Kakashi wonders if Madam Kaminari has the same kekkei genkai as her son, somehow mastering lightning speed as he finds himself suddenly off his knees and settled back all tucked and cozy under the katon sealed table bed. He’s not arguing though. 

“Oh, that is some nice wound care… Hm, it seems like just a cut…”

Usually, Kakashi fights shinobi healers tooth and nail when he’s finally dragged to the hospital by one of his fellow ANBU- he’s not completely incompetent with medical jutsu, he can stitch himself shut, thank you very much. But Madam Kaminari has warm hands. Soft, and rumbling like a thunderstorm. Familiar in some way. He decides not to bite her. She was a lot less rude than her son. 

“It really wasn’t that bad, Mama, I’m not so bad where I can't clean a cut with a first aid kit-”

“Oh, so we’re out here doing first aid but we still refuse to go into healthcare-”

“Honestly, Mama, this is ridiculous-”

“Are you calling proper medical care ridiculous?”

“What? No! I’m just saying-”

Kakashi takes this time to scrounge around for the phone Denki lent earlier. It also had to be another piece of noble bought sealwork since the last time Kakashi checked, the phones back in Konoha had to be charged into the wall and didn’t contain miniaturized libraries. He’d ‘looked up’ as much as he could about this new dimension and wanted to utilize the sharingan as much as he could. But he’d probably reverse all the good that nap did recharging his chakra if he used it any further. Instead, he planned on interrogating Denki. After all, he seemed open to sharing intelligence when he’d given him refuge this morning. 

“He’s from Yuuei! They’re doing like… a peer mentoring program. He got messed up a bit after training the day he was supposed to come over.”

Yuuei? A lot of the information he’d fished through mentioned it often. He wondered if Denki attended this academy.

“Kaka-senpai here has an electricity quirk too!”

“Lightning.” He corrected. 

Madam Kaminari was pushed out of her tirade and suddenly her gaze was fixated on Kakashi. “Hm?”

Suddenly, Kakashi felt like prey. Or a very small puppy. “I have a lightning… quirk.” 

He paused for a second. “Ma’am.”

Madam Kaminari finally seemed to remember Kakashi was lounging under their magic table. 

“Well, aren’t you a polite young man! Where are my manners? I’m Kaminari Risa, Denki’s mother. I’m also a registered nurse at Saitama General Hospital so if you start to have any blurred vision, nausea, pain and the like, let me know, honey, and-”

“Mama, he’s fine!”

“Hush, Denki.”

Kakashi tries to remember all social niceties and politeness Kushina-nee tried to hammer into him and Minato all those years ago. He’s sure all he and his sensei got from her were bruises but, hey, part of politeness according to Kushina was not saying zip about it. From Madam Risa’s soft smile and open posture, he thinks he passed a hidden test of some sort. He feels like a genin again. “Thank you for the hospitality, ma’am.”

“Ahhh, my Denki has friends now! I’m glad you came to visit, even if he was raised in a barn.”

Denki squeaks in, offended. “Mama! I have friends! And I’m, like, totally polite!” 

Madam Kaminari just smiles and pinches his ear. Denki yelps. “We’re trying to manner him up quick, sweetheart. Now, have you eaten?”

Denki looks over his mother’s shoulder with the sort of desperation shinobi have at the feet of the death god. Oh. This is a interrogation. Kakashi ceases his fiddling with the sleeves of the weird blue jacket Denki threw at him earlier today and bullshits with all the bravado of a T&I veteran. “This morning.”

A twitch. “Is that so.” Oh, she’s good. 

“Yesterday.” Ah, he said that out loud. A compulsion technique? Did he not have enough chakra to see through a genjutsu?

Madam Kaminari whips around to Denki who stares at Kakashi with a resigned sort of betrayal in his eyes. Kakashi coughs and glances back at the hems of his jacket, staring at the weird earless, blue cat plastered on its front. How interesting! “Denki! You had this poor boy sleep over after his internship and didn’t even offer him food?”

“Wh- he came out of nowhere! How was I supposed to know he’d- the agency would mix up the dates?”

“And this house is a mess, you should’ve told me we’d have guests over!”

Madam Kamainari then vanishes into the kitchen, the curtain noren flipping wildly behind her. As Denki nurses his wounds, Kakashi takes this time to pass his condensed phone back to him. “Does your mom work in interrogation?”

“Dad totally tells her she should’ve gone into private investigation or something. That woman is like a bloodhound. She can smell bullshit from a mile away.”

Oh, maybe that’s why Madam Kaminari seemed so familiar. Kakashi rubs his own nose through his mask. He could agree, smelling things like emotions made work as a shinobi a lot easier. 

“Healers are scary.”

“For real.”

A deep, well of fear driven camaraderie swells between them in silence.

“...You like miso soup?”

“...Is there eggplant?”

“Y-Yes?”

Kakashi gets up to march to the kitchen, pushing Denki forward as his shield against the house’s current matriarch healer. Denki simply sighs and lets himself be pushed along. As they enter the kitchen, the smell of soybean paste and a voice wafts through the clang of pots and pans on the air. Kakashi looks through a window and realizes that he’s slept through what must have been an entire day going by how the sun is in a similar place from the time he walked into the Kaminari household. 

“So, you’re Kakashi, then. What an odd name.”

Hearing his name, his eyes immediately find another soul in the room sitting at a table drinking what Kakashi smells to be cold tea and a copious amount of sugared honey. His nose wrinkles at the sweetness- still sensitive from exhaustion. In comparison to Madam Risa, who looks like a female version of her son, (or technically Denki is a male version of her) Lord Kaminari’s genes seemed to have passed on a single streak of black hair to Denki. 

In front of him, his hands move up and down on Denki’s shoulders as he sighs. “Dad. You named me Denki. You named our dog Mr. Inu-zuma. You of all people can not be serious-”

“The kid has a point, Kaze.”

“Is that anyway to treat your dear old father? Your poor husband?”

Kakashi should’ve felt a little put out in the middle of such a domestic scene but something in him dragged him to sink into a nearby kitchen stool, a still warm quilt cradled into his neck. Denki flops into a seat next to him, absentmindedly scooping miso into a dark clay bowl and placing it in front of him. Denki’s father, Kaminari Kaze, he assumes pushes a plate of fried eggplant towards his bowl. Madam Risa hovers behind him to place a tray of a fluffy yellow looking bread on the table as well. Approaching from the back didn’t set the hair at the back of his neck off like it should but Kakashi felt too warm and tired to analyze that reaction. And there was eggplant in front of him. What was a shinobi to do other than fall for such a genjutsu?

“I made fried cornbread, too, dear.”

Kakashi has half the mind to mumble a thanks as he sips at a divinely noble serving of miso. 

Denki shoves a pair of well used chopsticks into his hands. “You’re supposed to be a history buff! There isn’t one emperor whose name you like in all those textbooks?”

Madam Risa sits across from him rolling her eyes at her husband with a small grin. “Well, naming a dog Nobunaga would be a little pretentious wouldn’t it?”

“Kakashi!” Denki points his own chopsticks at him. “What would you name a dog!”

Madam Risa offhandedly pushes them down with a mumbled ‘pointing chopsticks is rude’. Lord Kaminari’s dark eyes settle on him with all the pressure of an oncoming storm and its like Kakashi is struck by a sudden bolt of honesty. The Kaminari clan must have some kind of compulsion power, falling for a genjutsu twice in one day can’t be possible. 

“Um, I named my pug ‘Pakkun’?”

Two blonde heads- Denki and Madam Risa– swivel to look at him in horror. Lord Kaminari nods in approval. 

Denki flicks at the neck strings of his jacket. “I can’t believe you named your pug, ‘pug-kun’.”

Lord Kaminari, seemingly done with his breakfast, starts to stack his dishes neatly. “Denki. That’s a little rude, don’t you think?”

Next to him, Denki just sniffs as he shoves another piece of cornbread into his mouth. “Bullied. In my own house.”

Lord Kaminari sniffs in the same manner and Madam Risa picks a crumb of cornbread from his wool looking jacket. “Technically, I own the house.”

“Technically, Fumi-obaa-san owns the apartment complex, dad. ”

Madam Risa, with all the stern threat Kakashi has known from healers cuts between them like a scalpel. “Okay, okay, doesn’t your class start in a hour, my love?”

The look of betrayal Lord Kaminari held looked exactly like Denki’s own earlier. “Are you throwing me out of my house, my dear?” 

A solemn nod. “It seems I am.”

A heartfelt gasp. “My own wife, a betrayer! I demand divorce.”

Madam Risa swishes her miso around, lazily, the most minute twitch on her lips. “Oh no. You know, I hear our dear classmate Takeshiro Mimi is still single. What ever shall a single divorcee do?”

“No, wait, she’s prettier than me!”

“Oh, woe is thee, my poor ex husband.”

Lord Kaminari rises from his seat, straight out of the myths like some scholar god. The scene reminds Kakashi distinctly of Icha Icha: Noble Divinity . He straightens his clothes and adjusts his glasses before kissing the back of Madam Risa’s hand. Noble indeed.

“I shall toil the long and arduous day to win your affections back, my star.”

Madam Risa’s expression looks away in an attempt to look bored but there’s a tiny giggle and smile that she can’t hide as she bats his shameless groveling away. “Hm. Prove yourself worthy, brave one. Shoo.”

He’s out of the door like a flurry of wind and Kakashi just sits there stunned as Madam Risa also gets up to throw on a jacket over what he assumes is a hospital uniform. 

Denki nudges him from the side and Kakashi wonders if his bewilderment shows because he seems all to glad to give him the run down. “Dad’s a professor at the university. I say it’s all the books, he can be pretty… dramatic.” 

“Does that happen? Often?”

“Oh that bit? Yeah, they do it every morning.” Kakashi takes his last bite of eggplant and mourns. Denki continues on, oblivious to his woes. “Personally, I think it’s the Jane Austen. Dad loves his English literature. I’m more partial to Hemingway, though.”

He has no clue what that means. 

“Why are you looking at me like you’ve never read Pride and Prejudice before?” Kakashi makes to reply, Denki backtracks and shoves his own untouched eggplant under his mask effectively shutting him up. He wont argue though, Kaminari Kaze’s fried eggplant was fantastic. “Oh shit, wait. Shhh! Act natural. If dad finds out, you’ll have to learn a second language, who knows if you’ll see the light of day again?”

Madam Risa, who had stepped out of a side room to put herself together for work appears back in the kitchen, a lanyard in hand. She once again slowly crowds into Kakashi’s space in a way that he doesn’t find the slightest suffocating. She points to his head, asking permission and he begrudgingly leans forward, pulling his quilt higher up over the bottom of his face to hide from the scent of her ocean breeze perfume while she gently prods at his wound and checks his pulse.

“I have a diagnostic quirk, honey, is it okay if I use it on you?”

“Yes, ma’am…” He mumbles. 

“You’ll feel a small tingle, but I hear you have a similar quirk to my Denki’s so you may not feel anything, really…”

She’s right. The only feeling that washes over Kakashi is warm, something he’s not sure comes from the homey air of the Kaminari household, her quirk, or remnants of the fire table bed. It’s definitely better than the clinical iciness of regular Konohan healers. As much as they are prided on being the ‘nicest village’, Kakashi, like Madam Risa, could smell through most bullshit. But she didn’t feel like that at all. 

“As I thought. Your body seems to be directing enough energy to correcting your superficial wounds. You’ll be okay physically within a week or two.” Kakashi could roll with that. Cut that healing timeline down to a couple of days and spend the rest of the week figuring out this new side of Obito’s gift, he’d be back home before he could be labeled as AWOL. 

Madam Risa steps away, more solemn than her diagnosis would warrant. “But this might be the nastiest case of quirk fatigue I’ve seen in a while.”

Chakra exhaustion. Now that was something Kakashi couldn’t bullshit his way through. And from the looks of it, the only true Konohan like healing quirk he’d read up on were extremely rare. The nearest case being, again, at Yuuei. 

“Yo! Whose your homeroom teacher, kid? Don’t worry I know my rights, it’ll be an anonymous email. I’ll sort all this misconduct out in a jiffy.”

“Shhhh, he’s not supposed to talk about the Hero stuff, Mama. You’re gonna get him in trouble!”

Kakashi was pretty sure the whole concept of a secret was to tell no one about it, but sure. 

“Tch. Those Heroes starting so young, exploiting kids. You better not come home so beat up when you start Hero training, Denki.”

“ Mama !” 

“I’m telling you, this Hero business is some nasty stuff. I’ll always have a place open at the hospital- we could always use an accurate defibrillator or someone to monitor nerve connectivity, the human body’s more lightning than you think-”

“Ughhh, not this again.”

“You know your aunt works in rehabilitation- I hear electrotherapy is getting pretty popular nowadays-”

“Goodbye, my dear mother! Don’t you have patients to save today?”

She pinches his cheeks. “Alright, I’ll stop embarassing you in front of your cool new Yuuei senpai .”

Madam Risa, seemingly done packing up her things to go to work turns to him. Rather than feeling small like he did when he first met her, with a stomach full of food and what he assumes is one of her mother’s famous quilts around his shoulders, he only feels warm.

She places a hand on his shoulder, something that doesn’t even register as a threat in his brain. “Kakashi, dear, I hope you’ll take me seriously as a medical professional when I say to not do anything strenuous for a while. All you need is enough rest. My Denki knows enough about quirk exhaustion to give you the proper rundown so don’t let him talk you into some fighting nonsense-”

“He knows , Mama!”

Denki pries him from her hands, exasperated and starts physically pushing his mother towards the door. It’s rather graceful in the way she pretends to go along with it. Of course, she cackles the whole way there. “I love you! Have a nice day you two!”

When the door slams behind her, only Denki and Kakashi are left in the apartment. Looking down at his clay bowl, he has to restrain himself from licking the bottom. “You all talk a lot.”

“And you don’t talk much at all.” Denki grinned. “That’s why I think we’re gonna be good friends, Kaka-senpai! I’ll talk enough for the both of us.”

It hits Kakashi then who exactly Denki reminded him of, why it was so easy to follow him back home to his house, meet his parents, eat his food, fall asleep under their table like a dog…

“Ne, ne, ne, Kakashi. Say, if you’re going to be staying in Saitama for your case, do you like, maybe, possibly…” Denki twiddles his pointer fingers together, a spark snaking across to meet the other every so often, reaching and waning like taffy. A nervous habit. “Have some time to teach me some of your cool lightning stuff?”

He’s loud and blonde. His parents are embarrassingly in love and would take in a random stray without a single thought. It’s surprisingly easy to say what he does. 

“You have a dojo?”

Denki looks up in shock, but still scrambles to his feet to grab a coat and a pair of keys. “N-no, but there is a park nearby! C’mon, c’mon, before it gets too cold-”

He sighs, sadly placing his very empty dishes at the sink before following Denki who is half running and half tripping to the door. Kakashi, who is now not loopy off of chakra exhaustion and lucid enough to comprehend the magnitude of the village, or well ‘city’ in Saitama, tries not to get distracted as Denki pulls him down his building and through streets. He of course memorizes everything about this big, new world as Denki talks his ear off about Heroes and the like, which to his understanding is this dimension’s equivalent of shinobi. His nose still burns from overstimulation, the sharp metallic smokeyness of the city nothing like Konoha’s mild greenery.

When they arrive at the park, Kakashi takes his first breath of clear earthen air since landing in Denki’s dimension. The peace lends him a little more awareness to feel his chakra paths before recoiling instantly at the absolute wreck his impromptu vacation left them. Denki fishes him out of his thoughts with a cheer. 

“Okay! So what are we doing first?” Denki assumes a faux fighting pose, throwing a couple punches at an invisible villain. “Lightning arrows? Thunder cannons? Plasma lasers?”

Making ‘pew pew’ noises, he almost trips over his own feet demonstrating a high kick that he obviously had no clue how to do. It was a little endearing. Startlingly familiar to another eager, loud, blonde. He shook his head. Best not to start that now. 

“No. We’ll start simple. How’s your taijutsu?”

Denki was a teammate now and Kakashi had a strict no abandonment policy. If he was going to be stuck here for weeks, he might as well get comfortable in the hole he’d dug himself into.

“My what jutsu?”

Kakashi starts to wonder how infinitely patient Minato-sensei must have been to put up with the little shit he had been during his first bell test.

Kakashi is the absolute most lamest guy he’s ever met and he hates him. 

Well, not really, someone that cool and distant ranks pretty high on Denki’s scale but still. He’s been beaten up for what he feels have been hours. He’s pretty sure this classifies as torture, or at least some level of child abuse.

“It’s almost like you’ve never thrown a punch before.”

Denki, who is sprawled out dying on the floor, can barely raise his head but he does to glare at Kakashi entirely out of spite.

“ I haven’t. Because I have a perfectly good long range emitter quirk, you absolute psychopath!”

“Well, for a long range specialist, you kind of suck at it.” Then as an afterthought tossed out an overly rehearsed, “No offense.”

Still offensive. Denki didn’t know what his Mama was talking about, but Kakashi was certainly not polite. 

“Disregarding all the PT I’m gonna put you through for now, let’s see more of this long range emitter quirk in action then.”

Denki couldn’t help but laugh, no matter how bad his lungs protested. “Haha, funny. That was a trick question, right?”

Before Kakashi’s impromptu punching bag session, Denki had given a little light show enough to show Kakashi the gist of his quirk without triggering the sensibilities of any nearby law enforcement. Kakashi stands, unwinded and bored like he hadn’t just asked Denki to break the law. Or well, to break the law some more. “I thought you wanted to learn ninjut- about lightning quirks?”

“Kakashi, I can’t just shoot electricity everywhere, I’m in the middle of a park!”

Kakashi sniffs, lazily observing the park with his one good eye. A couple walking by meets his bruised face framed by bloody gauze and his medical mask. They give Denki (who is the one on the ground, mind them) the dirtiest look known to the known universe and immediately turn the other way. Kakashi doesn’t even look fazed! Denki knows it doesn’t look very good with how mangled he seems and thinking back to what his mother said about resting, a small, tiny part of him felt a little guilty. But not guilty enough with the way Kakashi still managed to send him to the ground multiple times. Look closer, you nosy strangers! This was obviously a senior beating up his poor short kouhai and not the other way around! 

“Why not, it’s not the biggest training ground I’ve seen but-“

“Unregistered quirk usage is illegal, and I mean, I know everyone does it but like, I’m trying to stay out of any trouble before my Yuuei exam, you know?”

He knows right? “…Right. I was testing you.”

Okay, so he was not, in fact, testing him. But Denki wasn’t all that caught up on Quirk Law either so who was he to judge? “Of course.”

“So where do you usually train your quirk then?”

Denki looks around at the few people around them. It was early in the morning and they were idly secluded from the busy streets but if random judgemental couples could find them sparring here… “Well, not a public park at least. There’s a few abandoned buildings I go to, the rooftop of our complex sometimes, but I usually try to stay away from places connected to the grid line. Don’t want another citywide power outage.”

Kakashi who’d started pacing around a tree aimlessly, almost trips on one of it’s roots. “City- what's the highest voltage you’ve gone to?”

Denki uses his fingers to estimate. “Maybe around 2 million volts?”

Kakashi stares at him long enough for him to get uncomfortable. “2 million volts.”

He liked distracted tree pacing Kakashi better. “Yes, 2 million- why are you making me repeat myself?”

“And you just let a live current strong enough to power a small nation for a year through your entire body?"

“Why do I feel like I need to phone a friend for this question?”

“Through your brain? Your vital organs? Your bladder, your heart?”

“My quirk literally comes from my body, where else is it gonna-” 

“Is there a limit? When do you hit cha- quirk fatigue? What happens if you use too much?”

“I can usually do 2 million multiple times as long as I don’t do too much at once. Gaging amperage is easy, making sure a current doesn’t kill somebody. Voltage is so hard though, how are you supposed to know how much work is needed to go a certain distance?”

“So you’re still trying to go long range when you suck at long range?”

“Look, man, I feel like a broken record at this point.”

“So you basically never run out of reserves? You’re just shit at control?”

“Yes! It just goes everywhere and I short out!”

“Then why don’t you just stick to close range?”

“I have an e-mi-tter quirk, Kakashi. Emitter. As in it emits things. Outwards. Why would I do short range?"

Kakashi pokes the middle of his forehead hard enough to leave a dent. Denki hisses. “ Jerk !”

He does it again. “Stop that.”

“Your reserves are endless. And you use it all at once. You could- how- why-“ Denki keeps batting Kakashi’s poking fingers away. “Are you sure your last name isn’t Uzumaki?”

“Wrong weather phenomenon.” Denki rubs his reddening forehead. “And anyway, all this quirk talk is making my brain hurt. Leave that to the short outs.”

Kakashi crosses his arms and chides. “Denki, Denki.”

“What?”

“I’m telling you to punch it.”

“It? Punch what?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“…You definitely hit your head.”

“It could take less than a single ampere to kill someone. The number of volts don’t matter, you can make millions and you’ll be touching them. You could basically just use your quirk forever.” 

Just to be a little shit he asks, “Well, what about sleeping-“

Kakashi pokes him again. Douche. “Unimportant. Look, what I’m saying Denki, is the solution to your shit control, your constant power outages, black outs, quirk fatigue-“

“I’m feeling really great about myself today, thanks, but go on.”

“-is to stop focusing on trying to aim at something in the distance and just get closer to it.”

Denki deadpans. “...And then punch it.”

Kakashi nods solemnly. “And then punch it.”

Denki can’t help but think back to the morning before, about Kakashi’s condensed ball of pure electricity. It felt the way blowing out Saitama’s power grid had, like forcing himself to lock himself in his room when there was a storm outside when all he wanted was to go to the roof. Denki couldn’t help but want. “Is that how you do your lightning bolt Detroit Smash?”

Kakashi scratches at his medical mask. “Why do you keep saying made up words?”

Denki shoots back. “Why do you act as old as you look? Method acting much?”

Kakashi covers his white mane of hair and glares. “It’s natural. Besides, old people are scary. No one can live that long and not be terrifying.” 

He says that like having people be scared straight of you should be a compliment. 

“Fine, you’re so smart, how do you do it then?” Denki finds the strength to sit up in a way that doesn’t look lame and Kakashi settles down into a squat before sitting down next to him. He holds his palm out, looking as if he expected a sort of reaction before awkwardly putting his hand down again. Right. Quirk fatigue. Mama would kill him if she found out Kakashi had been using his quirk so quickly after burning himself out. She had always given Denki his own earful of it during his own frequent short outs. He was sure it wasn’t easy watching him zap himself oblivious over and over since he was a kid. Denki would take anything Kakashi had to say at this point, even if he had to figure it out through Kakashi’s usual bouts of deciding to be unuseful. 

Kakashi, seeming to realize he couldn’t summon a static shock if he tried, gives up to simply tell Denki a rundown. “To review, if we run voltage with an amperage of more than a single ampere-“

Ugh, not physics class again. WIth his white hair, Kakashi even  looked like his last science teacher. Impatient, he interrupts, hoping his mother doesn't jump out of nowhere to lecture him on manners. “Yes, but how?”

Kakashi sighs, just staring at Denki before he tries again, a little more thoughtful this time. “You manipulate your cha- electricity so that it pools in a single area of the body instead of wasting it through the rest of it and shorting out. Specifically, in the palm- and by turning it counterclockwise blah blah I’m Kakashi and I’m saying words Denki definitely can’t understand without a powerpoint blah blah -“

Despite his best efforts, Denki feels his brain fog up. 

Kakashi seemed to sense that simply talking about using his quirk without having his own available as an example would make teaching him about it impossible. “...When exactly did you say this exam of yours was?”

“The beginning of March.”

“And right now it’s…?”

“Middle of January?”

“Okay. So you have around…”

“Two months.”

Denki is starting to understand what he’s getting at. 

“So you’ll be around then?”

Finally, the frustrated tension between them fizzles out like a weak current. The tiniest crinkle of Kakashi’s eyes appear, what Denki is starting to recognize as how he smiles. “I guess so. My cha- the quirk exhaustion will take awhile to get back from- especially since I can’t see my regular heal- doctor.” 

Denki is sure with Kakashi deciding to hang around for a no longer fake Hero sort of internship he could convince him to ask his mother for help, although if he doesn’t live in the area and his family doctor is elsewhere, Denki wonders how this mentorship thing will work. 

Kakashi coughs but before Denki can think of asking him if he’s okay, theres an unsettling embarrassed look on Kakashi’s face that makes Denki want to run for the hills. “And I think that maybe, possibly… that the plant guy isn’t completely dead.”

“…What.”

Kakashi brandishes one of his Mama’s best mason jars to reveal what he assumes is a slimy piece of the plant monster, which for one, is batshit and gross, and two, is very much not dead by the way it twitches and convulses.

“What.”

Kakashi laughs for the first time since he has met him which would’ve usually sent Denki into a fit of accomplishment but now all he wants to do is hit the guy. “Who would’ve thought? Not everything can be solved by a densely packed orb of pure plasma.”

“What!”

Chapter Text

Despite popular belief, Kaminari Denki is not an endless battery supply. Kakashi didn’t seem to care by how long he’s had Denki running laps though and despite all the rudeness he’d exhibited to Denki without care, he seemed to be taking the whole ‘resting’ thing to heart. Each lap drove Denki further and further into a spiral as he watched Kakashi’s lazy lounging on a park bench that served as his start and finish line. 

After the third or fourth lap, he’d had enough. Stopping in front of Kakashi, his head in some novel with an obscured title seemed to ignore Denki as he stood in front of him blocking the mild winter sun. 

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Because right now this Hero training is booorrring.”

He doesn’t even look up from his leafing through his stupid book. “Hm. Run the lap again.”

Denki is sure he could set him on fire and the guy would simply keep on reading as he miraculously found a way to put it out. “You know, I’m starting to think the only teaching method you have is make someone run a mile.”

“Two miles.”

“Oh wow. Two miles this time? Who would’ve thought constructive criticism works? What a switch up!”

That garners him an annoyed twitch. He almost got him that time. “Three.”

Okay, so the plan was slowly tumbling down a hill from Denki. Not that there was ever a plan to begin with, he’d just spotaneously decide to do it so now he’s gotta roll with it. But he’s nothing if not persistent, he can certainly come back from this blunder! “Hey wait- you know I’m joking right? You’re not going to actually make me-”

“Five miles, then.” Oh my god, Denki, shut up. 

Denki, does not in fact shut up and instead finds it the perfect time to do damage control on Kakashi who isn’t even looking at his super important secret books anymore. “You know what? I’m sure this is the best teaching method to ever method-“

Kakashi looks like he’s about to assign him and entire marathon. Denki takes this cue as the mercy it is and starts to run off. 

“Okay, okay! I’m going!”

“Wait.”

He looks back, the tiniest hope that maybe, just maybe Kakashi will get his head out of his lame books and teach him that cool lightning punch thing he did the day they met. Instead, a band of velcro weights appears in Kakashi’s unrepentant, evil hands. Denki cursed his own arrogance. This is what he got for trying quippy banter on a geriatric teenager. 

“On second thought, if this training exercise isn’t enough of a challenge for you, we can always try out my friends routine!”

Then with a smile, he ties each weight to Denki’s baby deer ankles and pats him on the back like he hasn’t just written Denki’s Villain origin story. As Denki starts to tread off, stumbling over himself every few steps, he vows in his head. He’ll learn that lightning punch if it's the last thing he does, if not for the sake of his Hero studies, then to murder Kakashi for his transgressions. 

The sun is nearly a memory in the sky by the time he gets back, heaving over his feet. As he pants into the ground at Kakashi’s primly crossed feet where he sits regally on a bench, he barely feels the winter air. 

“You’re… the worst… teacher ever…” Denki collapses on his back, The cold frosted grass of the park melting into the back of his shirt but he can’t bring himself to fidget. It would be nice if he could actually feel his back to be honest. 

“Hm, an extra mile sounds pretty good to me.” Asshole. 

Denki grovels for the sake of his numb, frostbitten feet. “You’re the best, Kaka-sensei. A true saint among teachers.”

Kakashi has the audacity to give him the cheesiest thumbs up in existence and congratulate him like he can take credit for his poor student’s work. “I suppose I can let my darling pupil rest for a moment.”

Fuck this guy. “Thanks so much, Kaka-sensei.”

“Wow! You’re mom’s gonna be so proud when I tell her the PT taught you quirk control and manners.”

He really isn’t to blame when he tackles Kakashi to the ground. Fugue states are ever so hard to come out of of course. 

At the end of the week, Denki’s leg muscles had been reduced to a state that would have even sickly Victorian paperboys appalled. Kakashi seemingly sick of the cities and hitting a wall investigating whatever he did when he snuck out of the comforts of Denki’s guest futon. He didn’t act very subtle when he gave him off days and slept at his ‘comfortable house in Saitama’. If he wanted to spend the nights investigating the plant villain, he could just say it. Denki wasn’t a silly little kid anymore, he was going to be a Hero. Even if he wasn’t all that good of a sidekick or backup yet, Denki could still totally play lookout. 

Kakashi had asked Denki for recommendations on places with large trees nearby and Denki had opted for Tokorozawa Forest. He assumed that even if Kakashi was going to spend the day looking for the plant guy in his natural habitat, Denki could at least clock in some sightseeing. 

Or that was Denki’s plan until they had got to the forest and Kakashi stuck him up the largest tree there and told him to get out somehow. 

If the whole almost getting eaten by a sentient plant didn’t have him resenting nature then, he certainly loathed it now as he trudged through groves of prickly weeds and wet, snowy mud. In frustration, Denki tried to kick a tree in his petulant rage and ended up tripping on a tree root down a hill. He’d pettily chalked the incident up to vengeful sentient trees causing the tumble but had been a lot more docile after that.

As the days of the same ‘escape the big scary forest’ and impromptu ambushes filled with traps of Kakashi’s devious making and only a handful of kunai he’d been given to defend himself, Denki slowly found his body moving before his mind would tell him. And judging from the glint in Kakashi’s eyes he’d expected this startling level of competence. Denki still couldn’t comprehend how what started as torturous regret and survival became routine.

Simply dodging Kakashi’s devilish barrage of kunai and traps turned into Denki being the one to learn how to track Kakashi down in the forest. His Bambi-like bumbling and heavy steps soon turned quick and silent. The forest no longer an obstacle but an advantage. His tree climbing was met with less falls and easily translated to his and Kakashi’s late night 7-11 runs over the Saitama rooftops. 

The day Kakashi regained enough energy to show him the smallest ways he could weave lightning into his skills, Denki could barely recognize himself. 

The smallest sparks send electricity arcing through his trails of strategically placed kunai. Currents through his legs had him running face first off of cliffs in the beginning but once he started to really understand Kakashi’s exasperation with him using insane amounts of energy for the smallest things, Denki found that he could run miles forever with just the tiniest charge. The high was hard to come down from and some nights Kakashi had to drag him back to his mothers kitchen to wait until the twitching stopped and shove twenty miles worth of running food down his throat before she came home. 

Lightning was everywhere. In the air, catching on the gasses and argon. It was sparking in his throat when they climbed up mountains to train, the nearest storm a mile away. Buzzing in the city were a million voices on radio waves, in konbini OPEN signs, in car lights, in pockets- he could understand Kakashi’s feral need to be out. In the heart of the forest, the only electricity he needed to feel was his own. There were tiny irrigation channels waiting to be filled beneath his skin, in the brain impulses, lightning sparking between neurons and chemicals, beneath anyone’s skin if he tried hard enough-

It was then that his quirk had gotten a little too large for him. 

But time was starting to feel short, too short and exams were soon and Kakashi had been wasting so much time on him and still hadn’t gotten to teach him that move. The one that- 

“I think that’s enough for today.”

Denki jerked forward, mid electric power sprint. The suddeness had him nervously directed current away from his heart. It wouldn’t do to give himself arrhythmia. “But-”

Kakashi’s voice was a steely, cold thing that Denki couldn’t help but flinch at. “Denki. Enough.”

Denki wondered if all this energy he was putting into this would ever be enough. He felt himself sit onto the wet forest ground, panting at the sunset tinged air. It was getting late and Mama was probably expecting them. 

“Despite what I said at the beginning of all this,” Kakashi mussed up his unruly, electrified hair, “You can, in fact, run out of battery.”

Denki felt how far he could go if he wanted to, the lightning was right there, at his fingertips! Even if his lungs burnt, even if his legs spasmed, as long as he hand the thrum of the electricity in his chest, he could do it. “But Kaka-sensei-”

“The body can only work as hard as the energy that’s put into it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, I get it-”

“And do you? Do you have the energy, Denki?” 

“I really want to get this move down though-”

“Do you?”

“I just-”

“Answer the question.”

“If you just-”

“Kaminari Denki. ”

“Fine! I’m a little tired!” Denki drags a hand down his cheek, his whole body a sweat damp mess. “...I guess."

Kakashi goes quiet. Uncomfortably so. There’s a weird shaky tone in his voice when he speaks again. “I’m trying to teach you lightning, Denki. Not my bad working habits.”

“You’re not that bad.”

“Denki, we’ve been here for more than ten hours.”

It’s then that he finally feels the chill in the air as the sun creeps below the treeline. His socks are wet, his feet are achy. He feels tired. He looks at Kakashi. He looks tired. “Oh.”

Kakashi stands still, reminiscent of the first time they met. All blank and scarecrow like. He wavers on words uncharcateristically, carefully deciding what to say. “So. Points for you, I guess. Part of working in a team is knowing yourself. Even when you don’t want to see it. After all, the team is only as strong as it’s weakest link.”

Denki nods. “And I’m weak.”

Kakashi’s voice goes high, strangled almost scared in a way that- well, he’d actually never seen Kakashi afraid before. Denki immediately decided that he hated it. “No!”

Adjusting his tone, he repeats. “...No. You’re not.”

Turning Denki around with his hands he confidently presents their secluded training field in the forest to him. 

“Could a weak person really do all of this?” The landscape before them is marred by gashes of lightning scars jagged in the earth, wooden targets with perfect bull’s eyes, and intricate lines of electrified wire cords and traps woven expertly in the nooks and crannies of the forest. Months ago, Denki could barely jumpstart his obaa-san’s kei truck without blowing the battery to bits.

There’s a small satisfied spark in his chest that he can’t ignore. He kicks the muddy snow at his feet, mumbling, suddenly embarrassed at his little outburst. “I don’t know, you’re the expert.”

“Denki.”

He blows his wet fringe out of his eyes. “...I guess not.”

“Growing is a slow thing.” Denki didn’t agree but still walked over to the hollow of some tree where he’d stuffed his training duffel and slung it over his shoulder. Kakashi definitely felt the silent disagreement by the way he failed to look happy that Denki was packing up. 

“We’ll pick this back up some other day.”

“Okay, I guess.” Denki shrugged and tried not to sound like a whiny kid.

Pausing his walking Kakashi sighed and looked back at where Denki was following him. He seemed to think about something for a moment and started to walk ahead again. Quietly, he spoke as if he was simply remarking about the weather. “I’ll teach you how to use my tanto tomorrow.”

Denki wasn’t too proud to admit he stumbled and ate snow at his words. Spitting out mud, he scrambled to catch up and throw himself over Kakashi’s shoulders, sending them nearly careening off a cliff. Denki screeched. “Your ninja sword?”

Kakashi rolled his eyes, acting like he immediately regretted telling him this but his eyes were crinkled slightly from where he could see the profile of his face so Denki knew they were okay. “Yes, my ninja sword. As long as you’re in bed by nine toda-”

Denki was already pushing him away to sprint and get on the next train home. 

“And you better eat all the leftovers too! Denki! Denki, I’m talking to you-”

The day Kakashi brings Denki out of Saitama to a beach near Tokyo, he falls to his knees and cries. 

“Kaka-sensei! You really do love me! I thought I would spend the rest of the summer as a gym rat. How did you know that I needed a beach episode for my training arc?”

Kakashi’s eyes are blank. Confused. Denki should sober up but a man can really, really hope. 

“What the hell is a ‘beach episode’?”

Denki sobs louder. 

Apparently, Denki has become an absolute menace when it comes to team exercises and Kakashi, being the team player advocate he is (that hypocritical lone wolf) plans to hold a training exercise using buoys in the ocean. According to him, Denki could stand using his work in the water with out shortening out but if the hypothetical teammate were to be in the water with him they would certainly be fried. All important things but Denki really couldn’t care at this point. He wanted his summertime visit to the beach. But there were no sand castles and tide pools, no blow up floaties and shave ice, no beach towels and swim short tans- just him short circuiting Kakashi’s homemade scarecrow dummies while he got eaten alive by the riptide when he wasn’t looking. Denki tries to drown petulantly after a couple of hours of pruning in the salt water but Kakashi unamusedly pulls him out like a wet cat everytime. 

“Hm. I think we need to run this exercise one more time.”

“You’re the worst, Kaka-sensei.”

He holds out his hand and Denki thinks he’ll do his usual hair ruffle but instead he finds a nose full of salt water and a mouth of seaweed. Instinctively, he wants to resurface but instead he just holds his breath and goes limp. Like a charm, Kakashi gets closer in what he assumes is panic. Denki decides to strike then and yanks at whatever of Kakashi he can find to pull him down. When he resurfaces, he spits water into Kakashi’s face victoriously. He’s sure they both look like a wet dogs now but the petty struggle was absolutely worth it.  

The training exercise devolves into them squabbling in the shallows like a bunch of feral strays and for the first time today, it feels like an actual day at the beach.

Denki is being punked. “I’m doing what now?”

Kakashi shrugs. “Petting stray dogs. Reading. I don’t know, what do you usually do to relax?”

This is a trap. There’s a mutated plant organism hiding in his closet. There’s a booby trap full of kunai ready to fly at him as soon as he presses any button. There is no way Hatake ‘why else would you go to the beach if it wasn’t for training’ Kakashi would give him a rest day. It just wasn’t possible. 

“When the trap seals go off, can you at least make sure to aim the itching powder away from the bed? I’d appreciate it-”

Kakashi flicks his forehead. “This isn’t a trap. I’m really telling you to do find something to do.”

He then rummages through his waist pack and he braces himself for the catch. But instead of a paper bomb or a surprise kunai, all he retrieves are boxes of lightbulbs. One looks like the kind that you would put on strings of Christmas lights, another is little larger like something his might find in a electric toy, and from they they get larger and larger. 

“Are we doing home renovations today or something? Is that something Heroes learn to do?”

Kakashi’s poker face shows nothing as he hands Denki one of the largest lightbulbs. Denki falls into a bean bag cushion as Kakashi pushes him aside to rummage around the room. When he returns, a copy of his super important book that he always reads when they train is in his hand (or Denki trying to hit him while Kakashi stands there bored more or less). The wild part is when he places the novel into Denki’s other hand. 

“Wait am I finally allowed to see what this is even about? You’re not even fazed by me punching me all those times- what the hell are you even reading that’s soooo important-”

Denki flips to the first page.

Kimiko’s bountiful, flowing hair was like a wisp on the wind. In the moonlight, Lord Hito couldn’t help but remember the first time they met under the same moon a lifetime ago. She turned to him, her silver eyes like swimming pools of an everstill lake-

Denki shuts the worn book ever so softly and looks back to Kakashi. Slowly, he asks. “...Kakashi are you reading cheesy romance novels everytime I try my very best to fight you?”

Kakashi goes back to comparing different sizes of lightbulbs like he hasn’t even heard him. That little- Denki raises the book ready to hurl it with all his budding kunai throwing accuracy at his face when Kakashi crosses the room in an instant, looming over him. Sucks for him, he just made Deni’s target bigger and easier to hit. 

“There will not be a single tear or dent in my limited edition Icha Icha. I know where you sleep.”

“Oh my god. The gap moe. I’m done. I’m done and you’re going home-”

“Look, just because Jiraiya-sama wrote the female lead as a Mist shinobi and not a noble lady from Fire country this time doesn’t mean-”

“Wait, what? There are hot ninja ladies in this? Sign me up! Gimme-“

After Kakashi wrangles his precious limited edition novel from Denki’s hand (who would’ve thought the guy would have a hobby other than knives and petting stray dogs) he finally explains why Denki has a romance novel in one hand and a lightbulb in the other. 

“So you want me to keep this bulb alight while I read? That seems easy enough.”

Kakashi’s eyebrow twitches. Denki feels accomplished- he’s gotten Kakashi to show emotion almost everyday now. Whether those emotions were anything other than annoyance and exasperation didn’t matter. “This lesson is about focus. On the battlefield, youll be dodging, fighting, saving people and the like. You’ve got to juggle all this while still controlling your quirk. This isn’t a game Denki, you could kill people.”

Denki wants to crack a joke about how Kakashi inherited his mother’s lecturing skills but his words resonate too much for him to brush them off. After years of scares of shocks too big when he was angry or excited and electrical burns becoming infected or someone’s last, he supposed in this way, he and Kakashi knew eachother. 

“Right. Sorry.” And he held out his hand to gently grab Kakashi’s Icha Icha. The guy was taking the time out of his Hero life to help Denki out- the least he could do was take it seriously. And Denki knew he could, he knew he would, especially when being a Hero had become something so close and attainable. It wasn’t too hard to imagine himself one day graduating from Yuuei and working alongside Kakashi for real. Not just as some annoying high school intern but an actual fellow Hero. The childish dream was less about refusing to tread his parents path or choosing the default Hero track now and more about becoming this person that Kakashi seemed to see in him. 

And so, Denki lit up the lightbulb and began to read.

An eardrum shattering crack echoed through Denki’s room for the tenth time today. He had quickly made his way through the larger lighbulbs you’d find in lamps and fluorescent lights but reading such a frustrating novel with a tiny Christmas lightbulb in one hand had to be impossible. 

Another shrill crack sent shards of colored plastic onto his lamp and he hissed. “Kaka-sensei, you liar! This isn’t hot and risqué! This is all just lame make out scenes and confessions under moonlight.” 

Kakashi sits on another beanbag cushion with his own copy of Icha Icha in his lap and the same Christmas lightbulb he’s had since he sat down. It sends an impossible amount of fury through Denki just watching him. His own lightbulb shatters in his palm once more. 

“It’s not lame! Kimiko-chan is brave going after Hito-sama! The confessions are romantic! Ro! Man! Tic! And the makeouts are… are…”

Kakashi goes a startling shade of red and Denki’s anger fizzles out instantly, making his lightbulb go out as well. He sighs, Kakashi can be such a hard ass one moment and a total ditz the other. He still debates tearing his cheesy romance novel fantasies to bits though. 

“Look. I’m just saying I bet you could find a million other romance manga out there that are a million times better.”

“Manga?”

Denki straightens up at what seems like the perfect opportunity to get out of training. He brandishes his phone and jumps onto Kakashi’s beanbag, smushing them together. Kakashi rolls his eyes and takes up more that half the seat. Denki digs his fingers into his ribs and forgets Kakashi isn’t ticklish because he’s just too cool for that. “Oh, Kakashi. My sweet summer child. My pure white lotus. Let Denki-nii introduce you to the wonderful delights of pirated manga websites-“

They don’t really do much training the rest of that day when Kakashi discovers the shoujo genre. And although Denki is covered head to toes in filament and glass, he thinks he can call this day a success. 

“In my opinion, you should have started with Mariner Moon.”

“Maybe after I finish Vegetable Basket . Tohru is funny.”

“Funnier than Kimiko-chan?”

Kakashi refuses to look at him. He knows he’s right. “I wouldn’t have expected you to have a intellectual taste in literature. Especially after dissing Kimiko-chan.” 

“Hey, hey, that’s unfair! This is like a totally different type of smart who said book smarts and poetic aptitude had to be mutually exclusive? I’m plenty well read and poetic. Hemingway is my jam. Ask dad.”

“Well, I’m your dad’s new favorite child so-”

“Shut up, you’re just mad that my recommendations are better than your crappy romance novels. I’m just thankful you’re reading tastefully now instead of whatever that Icha Icha nonsense is-“

A chill goes down Denki’s back and Kakashi’s eye smile takes on a new unsettling feeling. “How has your kunai work been going? Getting any faster at dodging?”

“I was joking- wait no, put away the knife, Kakashi! Icha Icha is good! It’s brilliant, please we just finished training- AH!”

The week before Denki’s exams, Kakashi takes him back to the forest. This time, the winter frost is little more than a memory. In the air there is a low buzzing that settles on his skin. Looking towards the sky, a misty sort of gray and the foliage around them dewed wit the first few rains of spring, he realizes intimately the reason why he was dragged here this morning. 

He looks toward Kakashi and an understanding passes between the both of them. 

“You’ve gotten pretty good at that lightbulb exercise.”

“Are we finally learning, you know…” Denki mimes an explosion as he punches the air with his fist.

“Technically, yes-”

“Hell yeah!”

“But first I wanted to go over another exercise with you-”

“Aw, man.” Denki slumps. 

Kakashi flicks one of his ears halfheartedly. “I’ll still teach it to you, but with how the exams usually go each year, it doesn’t look like it’ll be the smartest route for you to go.”

“Hey! How do you even know what’s on the exam?”

“They basically do the same variation of the physical test every year. It’s not exactly secret. I know how to Oogle things.”

“Oogle… don’t you mean-” Denki stops himself, shaking his head. “Why are you such an old man?”

“Anyway.” Kakashi deflects that question pointedly. “You can’t exactly Chidori every robot you come across, you’d short out before the end of the exam. It’s also not something you get on the first try.”

“Watch me.”

“Denki.” Kakashi warns. 

“Kidding! Sorta.”

That earns him a glare but Denki, brimming to the top with excitement would need more than a disapproving glance to erase the elation he feels in this moment.

“I was actually planning to teach you something hypothetical.”

Okay, consider the elation evaporated. It was like Kakashi could read his mind. “Kaka-sensei, if this is another lesson on physics, I’ll say again that despite having electricity as a quirk I have no clue what I’m doing 90% of the time-”

That earns Denki a rolled eye and a flick to the back of his head. “No, it has physical applications. It’s just..”

Kakashi absentmindedly twirls a kunai in one of his hands, something Denki recognizes as a nervous habit. “I haven’t really managed to do this- can’t hold 2 million volts of energy after all. But what it could be, is less hypothetical for you. I always wondered if there was a method for working up to Chidori instead of just attempting it over and over until- well. You’ll see.”

This conversation feels serious. And with his exams so close, the wild, aimless energy that Denki felt racketing his body the last few months quiets. Condenses. Evolves. 

Denki nods. “Okay. I trust you. Where do we start?”

Kakashi smiles slightly as he looks towards the sky and the familiar static they both share comes to life between them. “It starts with a storm and a mountain…”

Kakashi is late. 

It’s more than common occurrence that Denki usually writes off as another point to add to his ‘Reasons to Beat Kakashi Up With a Stick’ list. But when this sort of thing happens, Kakashi will appear sooner or later so he doesn’t worry too much. Yet, this is the first time he’d been late the week before the exam. Maybe Denki was just feeling paranoid with the date so close, but Kakashi had been here on time every single day this final week. 

Shaking his head, Denki fluffs his pillow and folds and unfolds his blanket for the tenth time, and he finally decides to give up and assume that Kakashi forgot about today’s training and went home already. He then crawls under his sheets and flicks his phone on to get his nighttime scrolling in before he passes out. Or that was the plan until he rolls off his futon in shock. 

The Saitama Yokai Vigilante Strikes Again? Click Here To View The Newest Clip Of The Infamous “White Wolf”!

The MeTube clip loops over and over of a masked man with a familiar shock of pale gravity defying hair. The only bar against Denki’s impending panic attack is the thick porcelain mask in the shape of a canine that hides Kakashi’s face from view. That false calm shatters into a million pieces as he watches week old clips of Kakashi throwing kunai at a group of quirk traffickers, another of him using metal cord to tie up a guy mugging a bank worker, a GIF of him brandishing a short sword, another of smoke bomb, blurry images of him running over rooftops in moonlight, and finally the most recent video from today gets recommended to him. 

He doesn’t even notice when Kakashi tumbles into his bedroom window. 

“Sorry, I got a little side tracked with a dog I saw on the street. He was stuck in a tree and-”

“Hatake Kakashi.”

He jolts from sitting at the window sill, suddenly aware of Denki’s mood. He straightens out seriously and makes his way over to sit on a chair. Thinking back to everything, it all becomes kind of obvious. The smoke bombs, the old timey langauge, the sword, the kunai… Denki is actually quite certain the guy told him about being a ninja the first day they met. He just hadn’t taken it seriously since- well, who would’ve taken a declaration like that seriously! He only felt stupid now because the Kakashi he’d met in that garbage can would have never cracked a joke so soon. 

“You’re a ninja,”

“Yeah?” Kakashi looks confused. Like a harmless puppy. It’s hard to stay angry. “I mean, I thought we went over the whole shinobi from another dimension thing a while ago.”

“You were joking.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You’re a interdimensional ninja.”

“Yes.”

“To be honest, that’s lowkey the coolest-” Denki mentally slaps himself. “No! I’m supposed to be mad! Mama’s gonna kill you.”

“Not my mom.”

“She is now. You’ve eaten her food and this is the underworld. You’re trapped like me now.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Dad’ll lecture you, he’ll be so sad you didn’t tell him you’re a walking history textbook.”

“Sorry?”

“Wait- that’s not the point. The point being- you are the most unsubtle ninja in existence.”

“Bold words from someone who failed their last infiltration test.”

“You idiot, how many times have you been caught on camera? Thank god you had that yokai mask or it would’ve been over! You can’t-” 

“Oh.”

“Oh? Oh? That’s all you have to say? And what about to today? With the konbini down the street?”

“In my defense, I meant to Kamui myself away when the the tow truck was being thrown at me, and it was basically halfway crashed into the snack aisle before I teleported so the whole thing ended up-”

“You black holed Yamada-oji’s store!”

“...It’s still a work in progress. Besides, I left a year’s worth of money for the damages.”

“And where exactly did you get said money?”

“...Not an animal abusing billionaire…?”

“I’m gonna pass out.”

“Okay. Wrong answer. Let’s start over. I won it scamming loan sharks at a pachinko casino.”

“I’m going to throw up and cry.”

“Uhhh, okay, so there’s this guy. And hypothetically he’s a drug lord who’s left his wallet unattended after you beat him up-”

“I’ve been harboring a criminal! In my bedroom!”

“Technically, vigilante.”

“A criminal who steals my Mama’s cornbread and bends my limited edition Pikachu cards-” Denki should have seen the signs. Kakashi’s antics didn’t scream of douchebag teenager, it was pure villainy. 

Kakashi coughs. “Vigilante-”

Well, if Kakashi is going to behave like an unruly child, Denki will treat him like one. “You have five seconds.”

“Five?” He tilts his head- it’s kind of pathetic and disarming. No! Remain strong Denki!

“Four. Three-” Kakashi’s shoulder’s slump. Denki wants to apologize immediately. 

“Oh. Oh, you’re starting now. Right. I’ll just-” He loops a finger over his ninja hitai-ate Denki now realizes to reveal a blood red eye. A very ninja looking shuriken spins lazily in his iris and Denki feels double stupid. Kakashi blinks a little before a messy, jagged portal starts peeling at the fabric of reality in his bedroom. The space around the hole pushes and pulls at the air like it can't decide which way to break the laws of physics and Kakashi half steps into a portal before he freezes to step backwards and places 500 yen into Denki’s hand. “Change. I went through your wallet for the convenience store. Sorry.”

Denki will die before he apologizes to him. “TWO! ONE!”

“Okay, bye!” And the portal swallows Kakashi hole before collapsing in on himself. It warps and wanes and is honestly the coolest thing Denki has ever seen in his life. A ninja with a lightning and secondary teleportaion quirk. Ha. The universe truly had its favorites. 

Denki faints onto his futon and screams into his Snorlax patterned pillow. 

When Kakashi lurks back in through his window around midnight, Denki flips over on his futon to stare at him. All he does is stare back and it’s suddenly a competition of not blinking for a minute and tearing up on both ends (totally not just Denki’s end). Eventually, Kakashi looks away and bows his head a little before he leaves a foiled pack of Pokémon cards and a ramune bottle by the head of his bed before lurking to his own corner to spin in a few circles and lay out on the guest futon.

What is he, a dog? Ugh, Kakashi is such a handful. 

“…Did you eat.”

“No.”

More silence. 

…Fuck it. 

Denki rummages under his pillow and throws an orange and a bento box at Kakashi’s corner. He of course catches it midair because he’s annoying and he’s Kakashi and he’s a total show off. 

“I’m still mad at you.”

“Right.”

“Teach me that move I saw on the news tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Stop smiling.”

“I don’t smile.”

“This isn’t me forgiving you.”

“Of course not.”

“Wash your dishes after.”

“Hm.”

They both sit in comfortable silence together staring at the ceiling from their respective futons. Those glow in the dark sticker stars were mighty interesting. Denki has never been the kind of guy to filter his thoughts though and he gives in. 

“Are you like, immune to poison then?”

“Why would I be immune to poison, Denki.”

“I don’t know! You’re a ninja, isn’t that like a ninja thing?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

More silence. Denki hates it. God, couldn’t they just get past this awkward stage? Kakashi was still a hardass who read cheesy romance novels and Denki was still suave and ever cool. “What we’re you doing fighting villains anyway?”

“I was trying to find someone who’s seen that plant guy and some seedy sources get me caught up in some things where I can’t just not do anything.”

“Hm.” Denki turns his head from the ceiling to look at Kakashi. “I could help-“

His voice is unyielding. “No. It’s fine. What you’re doing now, it’s more than enough.”

“I’m not even doing anything?”

Kakashi doesn’t budge. “You are.”

Traying a different route, Denki fishes. “Well, where have you been staying then if you’re not from this dimension? Do you really have a place to stay in Saitama when you’re not crashing here?”

The glow in the dark stars start to regain Kakashi’s interest. After a small bout of silence, he replies. “Ah, no. There’s this dog shelter I really like and-“

Denki throws a pillow at him that Kakashi has the grace to accept with his face instead of catching it like he normally would. “What! You’ve been sleeping in a dog house? Kakashi, you weirdo, just stay here. I mean you’re sleeping over most days anyway…”

“Really?” The genuine uncertainty in his voice sparks outrage in Denki’s gut.

“Drop the politeness, if you can raid our fridge for leftover cornbread, just live here already.”

Instead of replying, Kakashi reels Denki’s pillow back at him at full force. As he splutters, Kakashi gets up, an empty bento box and orange peels in his hand, and he pauses in the doorway to quietly mumble.  “You know…” 

He fiddles with the noren in front of him . “You’re good people. You and your parents.”

As Kakashi ducks out of the room towards the kitchen, Denki quietly replies at his retreating back. “…I think you’re good people too.”

Chapter Text

It rained the day of the Yuuei entrance exams- Eijirou would know, it ruined the carefully crafted pompadour he had chosen specifically to do cool Hero things in. 

It was also memorable because the person he’d decided to stand next to waiting for the ten-minute battle exam started cackling the second the first raindrop hit. In a sea of distraught voices, such as himself, the blonde kid had been the only one completely relaxed and grinning. How manly. 

Eijirou had been working all spring break on learning to talk to people and this guy who laughed like All Might in the face of the exam of their lives was the perfect person to start with at his potential future school. The whole having friends thing had been a mission assigned to him by his moms and Eijirou was going to ace it if it was the last thing that he did. But before he could say anything he was beaten to the punch.

“Yo, blondie. What’s with the evil laugh, you know something we don’t?” A tall, lanky guy with shoulder-length straight black hair stepped forward. 

The still giggling blonde who had been sticking his tongue out catching raindrops startled. “Uhh, I just like rain?”

The black hair guy that Eijirou had been standing next to turned to his left slightly to look at him. They shared a glance and a nod.

Bullshit. 

Eijirou blew a strand of his own wet black hair out of his mouth. He should really invest in hair dye, if it weren’t for his shark teeth and red eyes, he wouldn’t stand out much from the guy next to him. At least he had those huge built arms and elbows going for him. “You got a water quirk or something?”

The blonde’s eyes narrowed in mischief, his grin more shark-toothed than Eijirou’s own. In spirit, anyway. “Something like that. What’s your name anyway? I’m Kaminari Denki, we might be classmates one day!”

Fueled by his infective electric energy, he grinned back just as wide and held his out for a fistbump. “Kirishima Eijirou.” 

“Sero Hanta.” The voice to his left said. Sero looked towards the sky and then back to Kaminari in front of him. “Denki you said? I think I get what’s going on. Pretty lucky, hm?”

“Maybe.” Kaminari's grin seemed to say something different.

He wondered if a random rainstorm in March really was a lucky omen. 

As the crowd began to trickle slowly towards the gates of the Training Ground Beta, their conversation continued. “Hey, you don’t happen to shoot web fluid out of your elbows, do you?”

Eijirou suddenly saw the resemblance. His build and the way he’d seen Sero pull strands of tape from his elbows nervously while they had been taking the written part of the exam. And of course, the t-shirt he wore with a giant spider emblazoned on its front. Sero grinned. “You guys know Spiderman?”

Eijirou spluttered, his love for Heroes, even if they weren’t as cool or manly as Crimson Riot, surfaced. “Do we-? Bro, he’s got to be the coolest American Hero out there since Superman-“

A voice cut through the crowd’s nervous chittering and echoed from the back of them all. “Your time begins now.” 

There was a man dressed like a college student during finals week, bedraggled and eyebagged. An oversized white scarf hung around his neck with what looked to be a pack of grape jelly tucked into it. He yawned and then started to walk away from the gates, which had opened as he spoke. He kept talking even as he walked away. “I’m not saying it again, waste your time for all I care. I’m going to take a ten-minute nap…”

Eijirou squeaked in a totally manly way. “That quick? Are we already-”

If Eijirou didn’t have the quirk he did, he would have been pummeled under the frantic feet of a hundred desperate teenagers. Pushing forward to start running himself, he realized that Sero had already begun swinging away, his tape looping around a building before he disappeared from view. As for Kaminari, well, nothing was left of his presence in the crowd except the minuscule way the hair on his arms pointed in one direction.

Eijirou felt his quirk start to crystallize and he grinned. It wouldn’t do to be outmanned by those two! He had a lot of catching up to do.

In the last meaning minutes of the exam, following a pack of one pointers into a collapsing building hadn’t been the smartest move. And despite his stone-hard quirk, he didn’t want to find out if he was invincible to tons of rebar and concrete falling on top of him. Not that he would be getting a choice in the matter since as soon as he punched the last robot into the wall, chunks of the ceiling started coming down and Eijirou couldn’t decide whether to harden further to take the damage or cancel his quirk so he could run out faster. His indecision might’ve been fatal had a strand of sticky tape not curled around his waist and yanked him out through the door to the building. 

"Whoo, I would've been a goner. Thanks, man-"

Which is why he freezes. Because as he gets heroically saved by Sero, it backfires on his savior when a stray piece of rubble hits him from the side, sending him to the ground. 

"Crap, crap, crap. Stay still, I can move this. I can-"

Sero jolts under the rubble, looking away from him. "Behind you-"

As his panic leaves him half pulling Sero from the rubble and also trying to punch automatons away from them, a flash of yellow moves past him so quickly that if Eijirou didn’t feel the static in the air, he would’ve thought it had been the wind. A solid thunk comes from in front of him and Eijirou watches as who he now recognizes to be Kaminari Denki from the beginning of the exam wreathed in a perfect arc of electricity. Another thunk sounds and Eijirou watches as Kaminari sends out what looks to him are little ninja throwing stars and small knives in quick succession in front of him. Each one lodges perfectly into the heads, eyes, and joints of the oncoming mob of automatons. Eijirou silently thanked the guy for his efforts but as the robots kept closing in on him and the injured person in the street, he couldn’t help be wonder if his moms would be mad he’d died during a school test. 

As if sensing Eijirou’s doubts, Kaminari looks back at him and Sero who he is still trying to dig out of the rubble, and smiles. He sends his last throwing star out and it lodges at the last robot in front of him. “Don’t worry, this’ll only take a second.”

And the air goes white with static, as Kaminari makes a carefully pointed finger gun at a kunai sticking out of the ground. Eijirou is distinctly reminded of pachinko machines and how a pinball will hit a bunch of different pegs before landing somewhere as arc after strand of electricity branches between one robot to the next. It happens in an instant yet with his life flashing before his eyes, it feels so slow as all the automatons simultaneously seize up and collapse onto the ground twitching and caught in an endless circuit of traded electricity.

Eijirou, finally able to dig out Sero’s leg without fighting off robots, rose to his feet. Kaminari grinned at the both of them.  “See! That wasn’t so bad-”

The wall in front of them shattered. 

“...I kind of jinxed it didn’t I.”

Eijirou silently agreed but gave him a reassuring smile. He tried to help Sero stand, an arm around his back but his snail-like stumbling told him that they wouldn’t be able to move fast enough. 

In the wreckage of the blown apart wall, what Eijirou had thought to be a single three pointer turns out to be the foot of something much, much larger. Following the hunk of metal upwards, its silhouette casts a shadow over them, even blocking out the steady sheet of rain that had been coming down since the beginning of the exam. 

Just as he feels himself start to panic, Kaminari retreats to their side.

“Okay, so I can cause a distraction with something that was hypothetical but I did it once now so it’s sort of not hypothetical anymore? Anyway, I know I can do this but you gotta promise to be nice when the aftermath comes!” Then with all seriousness, Kaminari held out fist.

Sero snorted from over his shoulder. “Dude. Even if I wanted to fistbump you, my arm is fucked, my ankle probably is too, I've lost my left shoe, and we’re about to be crushed to death by giant robots."

Yeah, that basically summed up Eijirou's own thoughts. Kaminari blinks and looks around. Is facing certain death a daily occasion to you? This guy lowkey freaked Eijirou out. 

“Right. Fight robots, fistbumps later.”

Kaminari leaned forward to help Sero onto Eijirou’s back. Kaminari then squeezed his shoulder and gave another sunshine grin and Eijirou couldn’t help but give him a shaky one back. He didn’t completely understand what was going on but looking at Sero injured between them, it was like in this instant they understood each other perfectly and his apprehension evaporated. How heroic! How manly!

Present Mic’s voice reverberated through the testing arena ominously. One minute remaining! 

Eijirou knew that he had more than enough points to stand out, or well, he hoped he did. But what he couldn’t stand was leaving Sero here stranded in the middle of a testing field where adrenaline run, hormonal teens were throwing their powers left and right without a care in the world, and a robot army on the horizon. It would be unmanly to do anything else but help! 

He adjusted his hold on Sero’s knees digging into his ribs and he turned a little red. Eijirou hoped he wasn't getting a fever from all this rain and rigorous testing- he didn’t know how to do first aid yet!

“On my mark, you run.”

The massive zero pointer loomed ever closer to them and Eijirou instinctively tensed up but he nodded anyway. “Okay. I trust you Kaminari!”

Kaminari has a shaky but genuine smile on his face. He gives the two of them a cheesy thumbs up before running towards the mob of robots. Instead of crowding him and Sero, the shiny zipping lightning streak around them was much more interesting.

Sero huffs, his breath ruffling the hair at the back of Eijirou's neck. “If that crazy idiot lives after all this, I’ll treat us all to dinner.”

Eijirou would eat an entire restaurant out after this ordeal. He snorted. “Deal.”

Slowly, the mob starts drawing away, creating a sliver of space for them to make a break for it. At their feet, a small kunai left by Kaminari crackles with a small charge that has their hair standing on end before it fizzles out. Sero tightens his grip on Eijirou's back. “I guess that was the signal?”

Eijirou shrugs but starts running. Hopping over broken glass and other hazards, Eijirou slowly makes his way down the street away from the zero pointer and the hoard when he looks over his shoulder hoping to see Denki. Amidst the chaos, it would be a miracle for anyone to find him but an unsettling chill runs down his slide and he freezes.

What was a tiny afterthought through the whole exam had Eijirou’s entire attention now. He has to steady his grip on Sero as he blinks what used to be a light drizzle of rain and is now an entire hurricane threatening to drown the entirety of the Training Ground Beta.

Squinting, he can barely see Kaminari, his body a yellow streak weaving through a crowd of one and two-pointers, wildly at the feet of the zero-pointer. Looking closer, he seems to run back towards the building they had crawled out of and ties what looks to be a winding cord of metal wire off at a large piece of concrete. It’s then that Eijirou realizes when Kaminari completes what he does- the distance he and Sero are at right now will not be far enough from the wreckage.

As he runs faster, yelling at passing fellow exam takers to move out of the way and get inside, the storm above them condenses into something vengeful. His previously water straightened hair started to rise and Eijirou knew hell would break loose any second. Ducking into a building and treading to the top with Sero on his back was easier than he would've thought, the adrenaline and impending sense of doom fueling him. On the rooftop (in hindsight he could admit was not the best place to be in a thunderstorm, but hey, he trusted Kaminari not to kill him at least), he can see a tiny Kaminari below start to slowly draw a wicked-looking blade out of seemingly thin air. 

Eijirou blinks and it only takes a second for Kaminari to leave his vision, becoming nothing more than a streak of lightning stretching from the ground to the shoulder of the zero pointer. During his climb the zero pointer tries to catch Kaminari's afterimage at his feet, successfully getting tangled in the tripwire at its ankles. When it stumbles, the buildings around them rumble and shake hard enough that he almost takes himself and Sero off the rooftop. 

"What the hell is this guy thinking? That thing's worth nothing."

At Kaminari's height, he loomed over the entirety of Training Ground Beta, steady as he perched on the shoulders of the giant robot. With one downwards cut of the blade in his hands, a jagged arc of electricity reached down from the heavens and struck them. And with his sword, holding a literal lightning bolt in his hands, it suddenly condensed into a pure aura of white plasma. It was bright enough that Eijirou had to shut his eyes, only able to hear whistling in his ears, the static of a thousand birds in the wind.

He barely understood what had happened until he noticed the giant gaping hole in the head of the zero pointer and Kaminari safely tumbling onto the rooftop of a nearby skyscraper, flicking debris off his blade before twirling it into a sheath. From both their respective rooftops, Kaminari seems to notice them and starts to wave excitedly like he didn't just destroy a robot the size of Tokyo Tower.

The carcass of the massive robot started to tip over and Sero used his quirk one handedly taping himself to Eijirou's back in a panic. The amount of electricity running through the zero pointer was enough to send it careening into the crowd of robots below it, taking out what had to be half the automatons in the arena. Eijirou crystallized his hands and buried them into the concrete wall edge of the rooftop just before a shockwave sent thousands of shards of glass shattering from nearby skyscrapers and an earthquake rumbled up the frame of their own building. 

His ears start to ring from the massive explosion that followed. The silence afterward was cut by the voice on his back. Sero crowed from his piggyback ride. “Holy shit, he just annihilated half the city!”

A sound that rang shrill directly into Eijirou's already ringing ears. Finally feeling the stress of running for his life and almost dying via robots and electrocution leaving his body via his esophagus, almost twists Sero off his back and over the edge of the building when he throws up.

Sero winces. "...Sorry."

He hopes he didn’t hit anyone.

When Denki trudges back through the gates, he zeroes in immediately on Sero and Eijirou under the medical tent. Despite the absolute tatters his clothes are in, Denki grins and holds both his fists out. The electrical burns ferning all across what's left of his jacket and the random bolts and screws from the carcasses of his robot foes in his hair don't help. But for some reason, Eijirou just feels Denki has an air around him that you can’t help but trust, even despite his reckless nature and obliviousness to how much of what he can do is incomprehensible to the majority of humanity. Even in an age of Quirks and Heroes.

Eijirou absently wonders if Denki’s electricity translates to electromagnetism because both he and Sero are returning his fist bumps without hesitation. A small part of him, an animalistic instinct to run from predators told him that Denki was dangerous as they come. Eijirou made to nervously congratulate him on what was probably the first place marking, expecting some measure of confidence or arrogance. But Denki cocked his head to the side and stepped into his space.

Tensing up for something, Denki simply reached into the lining of his burnt jacket placed and what looked like Sero's left shoe in his hand. He grinned, throwing up two thumbs. “Oowayyyy~!”

Sero and Eijirou freeze. Recovery Girl who has been following behind him for a while now speaks up.

“Apparently, Mr. Kaminari here used a little… too much lightning. He’ll be fine within the hour.”

As she left to heal others, Denki continued to grin and held his hands out for fist bumps. Sero and Eijirou couldn't help but return them- but not without doubling over wheezing and laughing through tears. In hindsight, even if it was for a second, Eijirou felt phenomenally stupid for regarding Denki so lowly, especially after he’d gone out of his way to protect them. The guy played in the rain like a kindergartener and asked for fistbumps mid-battle. And now he was standing here mumbling in gibberish with no sense of danger in his head. There was no dimension in this universe in which Kaminari Denki could be classified as dangerous to anyone other than a Villain. 

"I can't believe you found my shoe- who even does that?"

It makes Eijirou almost trip on his laugh while they herd Denki down the Yuuei stairs. They try to be serious though, when they start to panic about how they were going to get the guy home, only finding a charred phone in his pocket. It's then that Denki decides to come to, the fog fading from his eyes. They still can’t help but laugh at the switch between the lightning god of the entrance exam and the Denki who runs into walls and asks for fistbumps. Once Denki realizes they're laughing at him, they get mildly shocked for the broken promise of ‘being cool about it’ but Denki takes it all good naturedly. 

Sero can’t help but ask. “Where’d you learn all that anyway?”

“A ninja.” Eijirou snorts grossly.

“I’ll get it out of you somehow-”

“I’m being serious!”

Sero looks in front of them at the few stragglers left from the exams and he sees two people his fellow exam takers had spoken the most about while he was waiting in the medical tent to be healed. 

“Hey, floating girl!”

A guy with green hair and half his body covered in bandages perks up as the girl with pink cheeks and a round face turn towards them.

“We’re gonna go out for dinner! You wanna come? We could be classmates one day, you know. You can even bring your boyfriend-“

A cacophony of shouts fill the air. “He’s not-“

The green kid squeaks. “She’s not-“

After a chorus of their mumbling and panicked excuse, the green-haired kid walks backward almost tripping down the stairs. “I have to go see All Mi- I mean. All my family wants to celebrate tonight. Sorry! Maybe next time!”

And he runs off, leaving the poor girl behind. She, on the other hand, composes herself, thanks them for the offer, and politely walks off. 

Denki crosses his arms. “Hm. You think he’s got a secret ninja trainer too?”

Eijirou is going to die. He’d never laughed so much or this hard in his entire life. 

Sero whines, slinging his arms around the two of them. “Dude! Just tell me what your training regimen is!”

“I told you, he’s a ninja. He fell from the sky and agreed to take me as a pupil because of my winning smile and stunning intellect-“

“That’s how I know you’re messing with me, man.”

“Bro, we just met and you’re insulting me? Rude.” 

“Anyway, I’m starving. You guys like pastelle ? My dad’s making them.”

Eijirou felt warm despite his rain-soaked clothes. “Yeah, that sounds great!” 

“I just got hit by lightning. Pretty hunger-inducing stuff.”

Sero grinned back, laughing. “Dinner’s on me then!”

Eijirou didn’t know what he was so worried about, starting the new school year. Maybe finding friends would be easier than he thought.

Chapter Text

The day Denki receives his entrance exam results is also the day Kakashi opens his first official portal. Granted, it closes within two seconds but it’s definitely an improvement from Kakashi’s previous attempts that usually ended up with him bisecting semi trucks or ending up in the Bahamas. So when they get home his Mama and Dad have prepared a mighty feast complete with eggplant and southern delights to celebrate Denki’s acceptance and Kakashi’s so called ‘internship’ as Denki put it. 

Kakashi has become somewhat of a staple in their household and he wouldn’t be surprised if one day found Kakashi’s baby pictures next to his own in his father’s wallet. Next thing he knew, obaa-chan would be coming down from Yokohama to visit her strapping young grandson and his little brother.    

Following his letter, Kakashi starts putting him through more independent exercises and despite Denki’s excitement, he’s quick to tell him not to get too comfortable since he got accepted. Getting into Yuuei was the easy part. Staying there was the reason for all his training.

So while Kakashi was off doing more of his plant monster hunting, Denki trained. Because somehow he just knew if he took an unscheduled off day he would know somehow. He joked about Kakashi inheriting his Mama’s BS detector techniques via Kaminari osmosis but the longer he knew him, the more certain Denki was that the guy might actually be part bloodhound. 

The day he walked through those giant UA doors, he was determined to make a good impression to his homeroom the moment he got there. Enough to blend in, enough to pass but not stand out…

“Hey, aren’t you the guy that got second place? I heard you summoned a hurricane!” A girl with pink hair announced his arrival to the entirety of the classroom. So much for quiet.

A gaggle of teenagers crowded over each other to look at Denki as he sat down in a seat nearby. He hoped he didn’t shock anyone in his nervous spiral. There were a lot of people. 

Another blonde stepped up from his side, staring down at Denki in his seat. He gulped.

“You got second place.” Why did this feel like an interrogation? Denki hadn’t gone over the T&I part of training yet! “Fight me.”

His first day and he already was making enemies. This was the complete opposite of Kakashi’s teamwork conversation. 

A floating pair of gloves pointed their fingers at Denki. “Hey, your quirk is totally like that electric hero Striker! Who’s your favorite hero anyway?”

“Uh, I don’t have one?”

The pink girl, Mina, if the crowd of voices were right, spoke up. “Pft, yeah right. Everyone has a favorite. Fess up.”

“I mean, All Might’s pretty cool…?” That makes the green-haired kid from the exams pop up.

Sero pokes his shoulder without heat. “Cop out! Hey, you already know mine, it’s only fair.”

Denki cranes his neck backward and rolls it around slowly, observing the people walking past them. Straightening out, he then stage whispers with the utmost subtlety. “Okay, so hypothetically, there’s this vigilante-“

A booming voice echoes behind his head and reverberates around the classroom. “MY FELLOW STUDENTS, IT IS COMPLETELY UNHEROIC TO IDOLIZE CRIMINALS WHO OPERATE OUTSIDE THE LAW-“

The angry blonde next to him tuts and pushes himself away from Denki’s seat, scowling at the noise. “For fucks sake-“

Sero groans. “Of course you would say that, your brother is a Hero!”

“THAT IS A COMPLETELY FALSE ASSUMPTION.”

The green-haired kid, Midoriya, he thinks, pipes up. “Brother… oh, you’re right! He looks exactly like Ingenium.”

In the years of his adolescence, the only true friend he’d managed to make was a single interdimensional ninja which a lot of people could say didn’t count. So as Denki sat in the midst of a crowd of classmates who were as loud as he was, confused as he was, dreaming of the same future as a Hero as he was- well, Denki could see that changing in the future. 

“You can’t be here.”

Kakashi looked down at his feet, patted his torso and legs, and turned back to Denki. “I don’t know, I feel pretty ‘here’ to me.”

There was a Kakashi-shaped hole waiting for him in the desolate parts of Ground Beta. His next period wouldn’t start for another fifteen minutes which was plenty of time to dig a grave, especially when you could move at the speed of lightning. 

His interdimensional ninja teacher turned vigilante could not be standing in Yuuei, Japan’s largest school for budding Heroes, filled to the brim with law-abiding citizens. It had to break some law of physics, it had to be physically impossible. Something must be on the verge of blowing up on campus. 

“Hey, Denki! What’s going on?”

The voices of a few of his classmates walking down the hall toward them nearly sent him into a coma. At least it was just Sero, Midoriya, and Bakugou. Denki could deal with three people. Everything is fine.

Sero came to a halt in front of them, his curiosity obviously peaked. “Oh, is Denki showing you around or something?”

Kakashi shrugged. “Yeah, he told me there were buildings here you could blow up if you wanted in your free time.”

Sero has his classic poke-the-bomb grin on now, and when Denki says poke-the-bomb he actually means Bakugou. Though one could argue they were synonymous. “Oh wow. Bakugou, I think you found your soulmate.”

“Get fucked, Scotch Tape.”

Denki thinks that’ll be the end of it and he could subtly push Kakashi in the opposite direction of his classroom. Of course, it’s then that the rest of 1-A decides to walk down the hall to their homeroom and Midoriya decides to use that crazy secondary observation quirk he denies having. He should’ve seen it coming in hindsight. It had to be those freckles, Denki didn’t stand a chance.

“You know, you look kind of familiar.” Midoriya’s words have several more of his classmates start to look over at Denki and his definitely not wanted vigilante sensei. “Have I seen you somewhere?”

Denki’s immediate thoughts are news broadcasts and crime forums of Kakashi’s telltale white shock of hair peeping over his porcelain yokai mask. Things he knows Midoriya worships dearly. Sero slings an arm over his shoulder. “Yeah, Denki, who’s your shadow?“

Before he knows it, panic is moving his mouth. “Ka-“

Denki chokes on his own spit in his panic of almost outing Kakashi’s supposed to be super secret identity. But when he stops coughing, it’s like every single possible name starting with the kana 'ka'  he can think of fizzles out.

“Ka?” Uraraka cocks her head to the side and she does that thing where she taps the pads of her fingers together when she’s worried. It might be just as adorable as Kirishima’s shark teeth. Denki is surrounded by too many pretty people. What kind of ambush was this?  

Help, help, help! He looks at Kakashi and mentally screams at him in a frequency only a dog could hear. Maybe it’s his imagination (probably delusional desperation) but it almost feels as if a string of electricity connects their neurons to let Kakashi mind read him for this single task.

Kakashi nods. Thank goodness.

“I’m his long-lost half-brother!” What. What? Kakashi, what the fuck.

The shit-eating eye smile Kakashi has on his face seals his fate. Denki will commit a murder tonight. He should’ve left him in the garbage all those months ago. But reaching out to strangle the guy who’s supposed to be your darling half-brother would probably be suspicious so Denki just refuses to help as Kakashi makes wide eyes at his now half-brother accomplice. Don’t give those puppy dog eyes, you ass! He hopes his morse code blinking says something along the lines of: You put us in this hole together, nii-san! Now make like a dog and dig!

“I’m Kaminari Sukea.” 

The instantaneous pandemonium that erupts from his classmates is to be expected but Kakashi looks back at him like he’s never encountered energetic, impressionable children before. They crowd forward and prod and ask questions like the nosy people they are, fawning over how tall he was, or how he looked like a supermodel even with the mask, and wow how can you be so calm and suave, Sukea? Denki, why did you tell us you had a cooler older brother?

Kakashi does that thing where he stands still in one place expecting people to get bored of him which of course does the opposite effect. You’re not an actual scarecrow, you idiot! Girls love the cold, distant pretty boy with a secret past! What did he think was going to happen? 

Kakashi’s eyes clearly scream: help. 

Denki hopes his convey: I’m not fixing this soap drama BS, what’re you looking at me for? Plus Ultra, keep going!

Giving up on backup and being abandoned by his teammate, Kakashi tries to look lazily amused as dips his head in greeting but Denki can see his fingers twitch like he wants to twirl a kunai. “Nice to meet everyone.” 

“Yeah, this is Sukea! His mom lives in the country and he came here to visit me so um, don’t tell anyone he’s here because…”

A side glance. Kakashi nods minutely. “Our father doesn’t know I’m here.”

Ahhhh. A tragic past shared between brothers. What a basic plotline, nii-san. Maybe he shouldn’t have let him read all those shoujo manga.

“Yeah! That jerk!”

Jirou smells blood in the water, that piranha, “Kaminari, I thought you liked your dad-“

“Wow! You’re like, crazily built, dude. Very manly! Are you on the hero track too?” Denki could marry Kirishima on the spot right now, what an absolute bro. The rest of his classmates, but mostly Kakashi, on the other hand, could learn to do a guy a solid.

“Mm, no, I don’t believe in heroes.” Kakashi busies himself and picks what Denki hopes is the imaginary blood of his enemies off his fingernails lazily. He wonders if he should risk shorting out the school bell system and making a strategic retreat. 

“Oh. I get it, very punk.” Denki is sure his friend has literal stars in his eyes. Kirishima, bless his soul, seems to revel in befriending standoffish introverts and continues on with that cute shark grin of his. Denki relaxes ever so minutely. Kakashi can be mature, Kirishima is an excellent conversationalist, everything’s gonna be fine and Denki can go back to babysitting Kakashi infiltrating Yuuei if they just ace this meet and greet with his bubbly, persistent friends… 

Mina pokes in curiously. “So you work out then? What’s your training regiment?” 

“Vigilantism.” FUCK.

“HAHAHA! My brother’s got some really funny jokes but it looks like class starts in a bit, I better go walk him out now so bye-“ 

Denki aggressively starts pushing Kakashi out of the nearest door despite knowing that Kakashi is 100% letting him do that since the absolute lunatic is a slab of pure steel. Denki is definitely getting kicked out of UA. Aizawa is going to come any minute because Kakashi thinks he’s hilarious, Kirishima’s morals are harder than his unbreakable quirk, and Denki is going to have to sell himself as a human phone charger or worse- work with his mom because is going to be expelled-

He kicks Kakashi hard enough to bruise but he still stops in the middle of the doorway to shout back. “See me on the news tonight at eight, hero kids! I’m robbing a billionaire today.”

Sero rolls his eyes. “I can see the resemblance now. Denki keeps trying to convince me he was trained by a ninja.”

Eijirou just takes it good-naturedly. “You’re funny! See you around, Denki’s brother!”

…Bless their hearts, Denki loves his friends.

Not caring if Kirishima and Sero genuinely think his brother is joking or has the grace to play pretend like the two of them are, he doesn’t stick around to find out. As Denki and Kakashi arrive in a hallway far enough from people to be sure, Denki sinks to the ground in a squat. He was going to throw up. Or cry.

“Denki? Hello?”

“No. Denki isn’t home right now, you jerk.”

“...Alright.”

Pulling his head from between his knees in his despair, Denki repeatedly wacks the backs of Kakashi’s shin trying to get him down to his level. Obviously, it doesn’t really do much to the shinobi to be realistic but if Kirishima can have the grace to not question him, Kakashi can read the room and pretend to fall down. 

“I really do have to rob a billionaire today, though, so if we could wrap this up-“

Denki channels enough electricity into his fingertips to broil a medium-sized water buffalo, Kakashi of course simply pokes him in the ribs to redirect the current back at him.

“Or maybe we should have a lesson review on what closed circuits do-“

Jerk, jerk, jerk! Denki can’t believe he thought he was cool at one point-

“Are you trying to bite me now? Rude.”

“Perish. Atomize. Dissolve.”

“Wow, you really sound like that explosion kid, right now. Excellent take.

“Jerk, what about those lying skills of yours? You totally suck.”

“The best lies contain the truth. Besides, it was kind of funny-“  

Denki’s not going to class today. He’s gonna run away to obaa-chan in Yokohama because now this whole ordeal is a thousand times more embarrassing than it already was. The guy has the gall to flick Denki on the forehead as he manages to pick him up by the scruff of his uniform like some puppy. It’s terribly emasculating and lame but Denki really can’t feel his legs and he has to get to class soon. The complete despair was totally his fault though, it was only fair that he had to deal with Denki’s mental breakdown. It was inevitable living with Kakashi.

“Okay, fine, I guess I can not commit crimes for a little while-”

“You could also not commit crimes at all.”

“Such a big ask for such a little brother.”

“Who’s your little-”

Denki would’ve tried to fight him in the hallway if it weren’t for students and teachers alike staring at the two of them squabbling in the middle of the hallway weirdly. Could no one in this entire school mind their own business? What was up with that?

“Get whatever stupid Yuuei files you need and go Kaka-nii, you’re causing a scene .”

“Oh, am I embarrassing you? Sorry, I didn’t notice, I thought you enjoyed my company-”

It’s just his luck when the emergency bell goes off not even a whole minute after Kakashi leaves. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be a successful month of school without a major traumatic event occurring. Which is exactly what happens. And Denki is sure he’ll think of some clever joke to deal with the day later but in the moment? He panics. 

Villains in the greatest Hero school in the country. Who would’ve thought? Denki’s Mama couldn’t hear about this happening. She would sue Yuuei for all they were worth, dad wouldn’t even be able to calm her fury. Denki felt extra lucky getting separated from the rest of his class too. Not that he meant for that to happen. Could you really plan to get chased by a Villain?

To make matters worse, as he scrambles through buildings and different unforeseen disasters in the dome, he realizes that there is zero chance of losing the nightmarish amalgamation when it croons. “ Little wolf. You SMELL like the Wolf .”

Like that wasn't the scariest thing Denki's ever heard in his life? He could smell him? No thanks. And wolf? What wolf, Denki doesn’t even have a dog anymore! What-

He takes a crucial moment to peek around a corner to look at the Villain, and he means really look. From a glance, it was a bulky mass of purple with a face like a toucan. But the way its skin shifted every so often, the way its limbs elongated to pull itself across the grounds of the USJ. The pale splotches of pale green and white and the roots growing out of its side, almost like branches of a tree. Reaching and waning and growing…

Denki gagged. He forgets that he’s supposed to be hiding when he whispers to himself. “You’re the plant monster. From the garbage. The one that…”

Kakashi is looking for. The one that's supposed to be rotting in the sewers. 

The monster’s head spins around to peer at him, a second film flicking over its eyes like a reptile. “Yessss. YESSSSS. You know the Wolf, The WOLF!”

Denki scrambled back, suddenly feeling cold. And the monster stalked forwards to follow, trilling in the back of its throat as it tilted its head at Denki. Denki is terrified, but he can’t freeze, he knows even if his body tenses up, in his mind Kakashi’s voice telling him that fear is a mind killer. It’s a certainty that he’ll die here today if he can’t push his own terror back, there’s a sliver of chance if he gets up. If he finds his classmates, his teacher, a Hero, someone. 

If he fights back. 

Denki can feel his breaths shallow and uneven and forces himself to take in a deep, slow gasp of air and hold it as the monster creeps closer to him. Exhaling shakily he reaches to his waist where Kakahsi’s spare tanto sits under him thrumming with lightning. 

“Y-you want Kaka-nii?” Denki gets to his feet shakily. “You’ll have to get through me.”

And his tanto is unsheathed with one clean movement towards the junction of its shoulder and the rest of its arm. With his blade cutting clean through its shoulder like butter, he reaches with his other arm, sun hot plasma condensing and spinning in his hand, threatening to spark the air around him and wreathe the entire dome in electricity. 

But Denki can’t let it, he can’t short out now. He needs to guide the current away from his heart, from his brain. The voltage doesn’t need to be high, just the amperage. He doesn’t need to reach so far, he needs to be calm. Denki’s thoughts immediately jump to Kakashi, his stillwater face, his lax stance. Like a predator- like a wolf. 

A fresh set of calm washes of Denki and he can feel the smallest channels of electricity start to pool in his hand. He’d only ever done this move with help from Kakashi or thunderstorms but in this moment he knew exactly what he was capable of. What Kakashi had seen when he chose to teach him. 

His hand cuts straight into the monster’s chest and Denki miraculously realizes he hasn’t blacked out. The large mass of muscle and plant matter slumps over in his arm limply and Denki pushes as hard as he can to unlodge himself before he gets trapped under its weight. Stumbling back, covered in plant viscera Denki falls onto his back heaving, part exhaustion, the other adrenaline and delayed terror. 

He did it. Holy shit, he actually did it. 

He laughs, or cries, Denki really can't tell anymore. He can barely feel his legs so he starts to prop himself up with his gunk-covered hands sticking to the grass beneath him. Denki feels himself hyperventilating again which makes him sick but he knows if he vomits right now he’ll get covered in even more gunk. Which would suck so he tries to get reins of his breathing once again.

His relief is broken when he starts to hear heavy, wet breathing from behind him. Coming from what should be the remains of whatever the Villains had obviously experimented to create. Cold, sickening realization goes down Denki’s spine when he remembers. Kakashi had done the same thing to this beast and it hadn’t done a thing. 

“Silly LITTLE wolf.” Flesh starts to pull back together with thin roots stretching across the hole in its chest to start filling the emptiness in its torso. The arm Denki had cut off on the ground began to twitch again and begin pulling itself back to its main body.

So. Denki might really die today.

But before the zombified plant demon can reach him, he feels the air around him shift, his vision of the creature in front of him going warped and smudged before his entire vision is encased by black. He catches the slightest glimpse of a vast grey landscape but as soon as he feels himself steady, he is immediately pulled backward by familiar hands. Instead of fighting the iron grip, he goes limp and buries himself into it. 

Kakashi’s steady hands pull his face closer to his own. “Denki, Denki breathe. Did it touch you, are you okay?” 

Kakashi’s stupid secondary teleportation quirk always made him sick. He was tired, gross, hungry, and terrified but that didn’t matter anymore because Kakashi was here. 

“No. No, I’m fine.” Denki chokes out a heaving breath.

“It’s the adrenaline. You’ll be okay. You don’t look like you were hurt…”

Denki stumbles to get up, Kakashi a comforting presence holding him tightly by his elbows. Blinking away the rest of his vertigo, in the distance he can see where he had been alone amidst a sea of buildings. Or what’s left of it, anyway. His eyes can’t help but find the area where he’d been cornered. There’s just a crater there now. He pulls on Kakashi a little tighter. 

“Damn it, that's why I haven't been able to track that thing, they split it into…”

Kakashi’s voice sounds like its muffled and underwater. The monster isn’t anywhere near the crater it made anymore. Looking towards the center of the USJ where Aizawa-sensei and a handful of his other classmates were. The other one of those purplish-white-green beasts was nowhere to be scene, just the calming figure of All Might standing amidst all the smoke and debris. From the front doors, he could see the steady trickle of various Heroes start to flood the arena, small-time Villains scattering. Lost in the chaos, he saw the remaining circle of Villains, dangerous ones who had teleported him and his classmates around the USJ start to disappear into the purple haze he had earlier. The retreat was a relief on part for his class but watching from the corner of his eye at Kakashi now unable to go after them after searching for so long tears at him.

“Denki. I have to go. I- I’ll see you this weekend. Saitama.” And he cuts his hand through the air, barely looking at him, a shaky jagged portal lightning up the empty space and steps into it. Gone.

Denki hopes he sees him again too, especially after catching the flighty look in Kakashi’s eye. 

If Denki is lucky, he sees Kakashi once or twice a week. He can’t exactly feel frustrated with the decreased frequency of visits at all. Especially when Kakashi slinks through his window at odd hours of the night, always looking like he did when they first met. Like he had just been freshly pulled out of the garbage. No offense, Kaka-nii. 

When Denki does see him, and he’s not passed out on the guest futon after being out searching for the League for a few days, he and his parents shove an obscene amount of homemade food down his throat. Kakashi, too tired to pretend he doesn’t need to eat and his vehement adoration for his parents’ food, never wins. With this, at least his Mama can lecture him on predatory Hero practices and his dad will mumble grumpily about the dangers of overworking yourself. He hopes Kakashi is even half awake for any of that.

But in the weeks that precede the Yuuei Sports Festival, he has not seen hide or hair of the guy for days and his worry and the sick feeling in his stomach wondering when Kakashi will come back can’t even be shared with his parents, still under the guise Kakashi has been accepted into some Hero internship. 

It’s not surprising that during his first solo fight where he doesn’t have Sero or Eijirou to snap their fingers and get his head out of the clouds, Shiozaki from Class 1-B smacks the absolute shit out of him. Man, Kaka-nii is gonna be intolerable when he sees a recording of the event. There’s only one thing he thinks of before he blocks out:

God, does he hate plants.

When he opens his eyes, the ceiling of the Yuuei infirmary and a loud voice greets him. 

“About time, I thought you put your own stupid ass in a coma.”

On the bed parallel to him sits Bakugou Katsuki in all his angry glory. Denki has the distinct instinct to start running away but his legs spasm with the aftershock. “That’s not very nice, Bakubro.”

“Don’t faint then.” Right. Denki will have that in mind for the next time he decides to pass out unexpectedly.

“Hey, I’ll have you know my opponent was really strong-“

Bakugou clicks his tongue. It’s super bitchy and judgemental but Denki sort of likes him that way, the way one might like the antics of a tiny, biting pomeranian. “You could’ve taken her. I’ve seen you level buildings.”

Denki tries to shift in his bed to face Bakugou more directly but with his numb legs, fails miserably. It’s a little embarrassing, especially with the unimpressed look Bakugou gives him the whole time. “Well, electric types are notoriously bad against grass types so-“

“Don’t fucking quote Pokémon at me.” Bakugou has the luxury of sitting up while he says this. Lucky guy. “Besides, that’s bullshit.”

Um, no? Doesn’t Bakugpu realize he’s talking to a guy with hundreds of hours logged onto his copies of Pokemon games? “I'm pretty sure Pikachu is weak against Bulbasaur so-“

Bakugou looks moments away from finding a stethoscope to strangle him with. “Not that. You threw the match. You got distracted.”

Denki's knee jerks. “I did not.”

“You did. You losing was fucking dumb.”

Ouch. Way to kick a man while he was already down in an infirmary bed. Denki bets the guy kicks puppies in his free time too. “Well, sorry I’m stupid I guess.”

His eyes roll, but surprisingly not in a malicious way. Bakugou almost looks frustrated. Exasperated? “You’re not stupid, you’re just a dumbass.”

“That literally makes no sense.”

“You know what I mean.”

Denki hates being around so many emotionally stunted people. He missed Eijirou so much. That guy was a godsend amongst everyone in 1-A. “Bro, I really don’t. So are we gonna continue with this frankly sucky heart to heart or can I have my recovery nap from this embarrassing ordeal?”

The face Bakugou makes is frankly really out of character and super hilarious. He wonders if he got put in the infirmary for hitting his head too hard because the childish gagging noise he makes has him wondering if he’s loopy off of pain meds or just hit his head too hard. “I don’t do that gross pity bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about whatever’s got your head in the clouds. You fucked up the festival. Get unfucked and fight me properly.”

Well, that was sweet? Mean? Someone really needed to put a translator on this guy. “Wow, you’re really good at pep talks, Kacchan.”

“Call me that again and I’m blowing you up.”

Okay, he definitely meant for that insult to be weak. That was basically condoning Denki talking more. “Aw, I love you too, Bakubro.”

“I hate you, Dunceface.”

It hits him that they are the only two people left in the infirmary room and the usual cheers from the festival above them are awfully tamed. Almost quiet. He wonders what time of the day it is. How long was he passed out? “Wait. Why are you in the infirmary anyway?”

“No reason.”

“Oh no, if I have to be interrogated, so do you.”

Bakugou throws a sheet off himself, revealing battle torn pants and a scorched jacket. “I’m leaving-“

“Yeah right, Recovery Girl would hunt you down and drag your unconscious body back in an hour. Fess up.”

His eyes, dart, defensive and angry, ready to lash out at him. He looks… disappointed. Embarrassed. Angry. But not at Denki. “I’ll smother you in your sleep.”

Oh. 

“Did you lose your match, too? Damn, what’s up with that? The grading system? The pressure? Did your idiot of a brother not show up to your match too?”

That earns Denki the familiar crackle and pop of his quirk. “Does my face scream ‘please share your shitty personal trauma with me’ today?”

“Oh, you got hot gossip, Bakubro? I kinda shocked my legs numb so I’ll be here a while- hey where you going?”

In his tattered clothes, he starts to stalk to the door, barely even registering him as he passes by. Rude. “That’s it, I’m leaving. Recovery Girl can drag my dead body back if she wants.”

“But what about spending time with your most tolerable classmate? You unlocked my sad backstory, don’t you want the exclusive content?”

“You're the most intolerable person I’ve ever met. Die.” Which was Bakugou speak for ‘I appreciate your presence in my life to a great extent’. As he walks out the door, he throws an angry command over his shoulder.

“Rematch this weekend. Ground Beta. Show up.”

Denki ignores the implied threat and decides to focus on the fact that Bakugou wants to willingly hang out with him. Or well beat him up under the guise of training but hey, Kakashi did the same thing too so this was a usual occurrence for Denki. 

He shook his head. Denki was going to train with Bakugou Katsuki if it was the last thing he did. Who needed moody interdimensional ninja in their lives anyway? Certainly not Denki. 

“We can even get lunch after- Bakugou? Bakugou, wait, help me up, I wanna get out of here too-”

The day Kakashi returns to Saitama, Denki whacks him with a copy of Icha Icha, thinking he’s a robber who climbed up his fifteen story building in his post-study binge haze. When he blinks away the grogginess, he starts to realize how stupid that sounds. Kakashi and his red cheek don’t look amused. Denki is just glad his first reaction was to grab reading material as a weapon and not the copious amounts of kunai that Kakashi left lying around. Denki feels horrible. “Oops.”

Kakashi doesn’t even have the heart to glare, he just throws his go-bag down and lands face first into a beanbag chair. He must be tired if he couldn’t even dodge an Icha Icha slap. Denki feels double horrible.

“Denki.” Pulled out of his thoughts, he finds Kakashi’s raised head looking towards his desk. Denki looks back to see his computer open to the Sports Festival footage, his embarrassing defeat in all its 720p glory. He snaps the screen shut and looks to the ceiling, hoping to spare himself the lecture.

Kakashi just looks sad. Disappointed. Like a kicked puppy. Yup, here we are again, feeling triple horrible. Trying to brush it off, Kakashi ignores him and presses on mumbling into his beanbag cushion guiltily. “I got caught up. I meant to see you fight, really I-”

Denki groans and pushes himself onto the beanbag cushion with Kakashi to smother him with a pillow. “Don’t care. ‘Mm glad you’re okay.”

He pokes his ribs and Kakashi doesn’t even pretend to jolt. Unacceptable. “You were gone for so long this time, what if you died? I’m getting you your own phone, you jerk. Doesn’t make sense to call you if you’re just gonna steal mine…”

“But you were excited about it.”

“It’s okay. It’s important you find that guy right?”

He drags a palm down his face, somehow not disturbing his masks. “Yeah. All I’ve been finding are clones lately. The original is still hiding somewhere.”

Denki goes silent, a thought that’s been plaguing him for months rising to the surface. “Kakashi, you’ve been doing this alone for months. You’re spread too thin and I’m not useless anymore, you made sure of it.”

Months of training and drills sit heavy between them. Denki is prepared to get rejected and be forced to bring out his notes app of sixty-seven bullet point reasons on why Kakashi should bring him along on his vigilante-ing. “Let me help.”

Kakashi doesn’t say a thing for a moment. He then sighs and rummages around for his go-bag. “A crime lord owes me a favor in Hosu. He might be able to forge some internship papers by this weekend.”

And from his travel bag pulled out a pristine porcelain mask that Denki at first thought was Kakashi’s own wolf one but a closer look at the lining of the design said otherwise. 

“No way! You’re gonna let me help? Kaka-nii you won’t regret it, I promise.”

Kakashi buried himself back into the beanbag chair exasperated as Denki gushed over his very own yokai fox mask. He slips his own wolf mask over his eyes and slumps back, exhaustion unseen on his covered face but plain in the stiffness of his shoulders. 

“This is gonna be so cool! I have my own vigilante mask!” Denki gasped. “A secret identity.”

“You seem pretty excited for a guy who flunked the Sports Festival.”

Denki’s joy goes down in flames. Mournfully, he turns to Kakashi clutching the mask to himself. “You’re gonna put me through hell aren’t you.”

Kakashi tips back his wolf mask, his grin a terrifying thing. “All my teaching. Gone to waste. Remedial lessons are only fair.”

Why was he saying ‘remedial lessons’ in the same way he said T&I?

Long story short, Hosu was one hell of a trip, and the White Wolf was apparently spotted with a sidekick and his own porcelain fox mask. The whole fighting zombie plants wasn’t better than the first time he’d done it, but hey ‘Yellow Fox’ was a sick moniker. Not everyone could boast a debut as a vigilante, now could they?

Dunceface arrives late to their rematch- yes it’s a rematch despite them never fighting against each other during the festival. Why? Because if Dunceface hadn’t fried his brain cells that day, Katsuki would’ve fought that bufoon because obviously Sparky and Icyhot were the only competent rivals he had in this class. And if one of them was going to refuse a fair fight (he’d corner Salonpas one day) he’d half to intimidate the other.

And Katsuki was patient despite popular belief. But with that short circuited brat being almost half an hour late, he was reaching his boiling point. He had things to do today.

“Hey! Kacchan!”

Katsuki pulled out of a stretch. “You’re late, Dunceface. You wasting my time?”

The idiot smiled nervously as he tossed his bag somewhere to start warming up. “Sorry, I was just finalizing some things with Ka- Sukea about my internship.”

“Sukea? What, your jackass brother?”

Sparky had a stupid, happy look on his face. Gag. “He is kind of a jackass, isn’t he?”

Well, that didn’t sound like someone who was having a spat with their brother. “And what, he just happens to be a Hero?”

“Er, something like that. Sensei just signed off on it.”

“So what, you two have the same quirk then?” 

“Yup! He’s gonna teach me some cool new tricks! I’ve even got a new Hero uniform.”

“I thought you were pissed at him.”

“Hm? Oh, I was being dramatic. We’re good now.”

Katsuki was going to kill him.

“Hey, why are you looking at me like that? Hey, hey- wait lemme change into my training clothes first, I just bought this jacket!”

This idiot deserves it. All his scrambling and moping during the festival for what? He’ll go for his jacket first, its only fair after he was semi manipulated into dealing with his family drama. First Icyhot and now him. What was next? He becomes licensed as the Therapist Hero? Absolutely not. Unacceptable. 

So of course after fifteen minutes of the greatest stress-relieving battle Katsuki has ever had, their teacher comes rushing in erasing their quirks just as the fight starts to pick up yelling about unauthorized brawling. Katsuki isn’t an idiot. Training grounds are called training grounds for a reason- you train on them. What the hell were they doing to break any obscure fucking rules? If fighting your teacher wouldn’t get him expelled he would’ve started one in spite of his temporary quirklessness. 

“We’re training. These are training grounds.”

“Bakugou. Kaminari. You’re free to train on campus grounds. But you’ve leveled half this city.” Aizawa’s hair stands on end and the constant thrumming of the fuse of Katsuki’s quirk melts away somewhere deep he can’t dig out. “What part of that is training?”

Sparky scratches the back of his head, a cloud of concrete dust coming off in clouds. Half of his jacket sleeve is gone. The sight sets off fireworks and a healthy amount of satisfaction in Katsuki’s gut. Get fucked, Dunceface. 

“Covering the basics of civilian safe building demolition?”

Katsuki can’t help but snort at that. 

Aizawa finds it less funny. Killjoy. “Why do I even bother? Detention. Both of you.”

Katsuki’s mouth moves automatically. “Fuck-“

“I’ll advise you not to finish that sentence, Problem Child.” 

Fuck you. He glares and hopes his face says his thoughts for him.

Aizawa rolls his eyes and walks off exasperated. Katsuki would call that a successful message received. 

Sparky psts at him and stage whispers. “There’s a mountain forest that I usually throw lightning at. You down?”

Dunceface may piss him the fuck off but he does make sense sometimes. “What the fuck are we waiting for then? Give me your Suica card, we gotta go look at train times-”

Katsuki will beat him one day. It’s inevitable. But for now, he’ll milk this dumbass, his idiot vigilante brother, and their training secrets for all they’re worth. Dunceface is asking for it, being almost as bad as Deku and Salonpas at keeping secrets.

Chapter Text

By the end of the summer, Kakashi had lost his frantic, workaholic air and only mildly drove Denki crazy with his constant, unsubtle harping. Obviously, if the guy was feeling less stressed about this whole League of Villains experimentation on plant monsters from another dimension thing enough to to worry about him, then Denki’s work as a sidekick was doing well. He only almost got stabbed, like, once. 

It annoyed him knowing that Kakashi was probably smug that the day Denki was slated to go on their school’s summer training camp, he was going to be off in cool places fighting cool Villains.  

Yet, waiting outside of the gates of Yuuei, he finds Kakashi leaning on campus walls twirling an odd three-pronged kunai around his finger.

“Yo! Ka-” Denki coughs. “Sukea-nii! What are you doing here?”

Kakashi ceases his fidgeting and catches the blade midair and pushes off the wall with his feet. He flips the blade, hilt out with a deft motion, and shoves his other hand in his pocket.

“You left this.”

In his hand, a kunai sits in his palm. But instead of the normal single-pronged ones he had come to find in odd places around the house, a three-pronged one sits there instead. 

The seals around its hilt are yellowing, announcing its age, but the glint from its edge tells Denki that age has nothing to do with its effectiveness. 

“Uhhh, looks cool? None of my kunai look like this though.”

“I know. I’m loaning it. For good luck.”

“Oh!” Denki brightens taking the blade in hand and giving his own few test flips. A gift from Kakashi was always cool. The tanto strapped to his back was always going to be his favorite though. “Thanks, ‘Kea-nii!”

“Take it with you everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Or else the good luck will curse you for one thousand lifetimes.” Kakashi’s usual bullshit goes in one of his ears and out the other but he still gives it one more twirl before tucking it into his waistband.

“Aye, aye, captain!”

Kakashi’s singular visible eye twitches. Denki giggled a little. He really did look like a pirate. Denki takes a moment to look over his shoulder to find the rest of his classmates slowly making their way to the bus as well, with a handful of them standing near Denki, curiously peering in on their conversation.

“Hey! You’re Denki’s brother!”

Kakashi slings an arm around Denki when he comes to a stop in front of the bus and gives his best-eye smile to the rest of his classmates. He throws up a three-fingered salute. “Yo! Just here to drop off a few things my darling brother forgot to bring.”

As he slumps lazily on one arm, using Denki’s shoulder as a resting place. Uraraka and Mina’s faces go cherry red. Midoriya stumbles a little, almost tilting face-first onto the pavement but Bakugou yanks back by the collar of his shirt, an exasperated scowl on his face. That summer heat was no joke. They should probably start boarding the bus before they started to bake out here.

Herding him away, Kakashi leans down to whisper to him, his cheery persona gone. “Be careful.”

Who knew what a mother wolf Kakashi was? Denki pushed his face away with a laugh. “Aren’t I always?”

The look on Kakashi’s face couldn’t have more vehemently said a resounding no. Denki rolled his eyes, steadying his bag over his shoulder before walking towards the bus. Before boarding he tossed his last words to Kakashi over his shoulder. “What could possibly go wrong?”

As much as he moaned and whined, the summer training camp wasn’t as grueling and laborious as he thought it was going to be. After Kakashi’s months of lazily lounging on a beach chair watching him run marathons daily and throwing him into oceans and forests and lightning storms on top of mountains expected to survive- Aizawa-sensei’s surprise of being thrown off a miniature cliff was small fish compared to his usual daily routine. If anything, this summer training camp could be chalked up to a free vacation. And Kakashi wouldn’t even have to know! What a steal!

At the end of the day, he drifts listening to his fellow classmates softly toss and turn from the day’s aches and pains. Going over the day in his head, he thought back to earlier that morning when Kakashi saw him off for the summer training. The way the girls and some of his peers in his class crowded him like sardines. It was really weird, they’d acted like fan groups around the Top Ten Heroes. Or like, fangirls with idol groups. It’s almost as if…

Denki tangles and trips himself in sheets as he shoots up from his futon to shout. “Holy shit! They think he’s hot!” 

Wait. “I thought he was kind of hot!” 

Obviously not anymore. You couldn’t live with a guy who was annoying as Kakashi for long and not immediately want to start strangling him in your sleep. But Kirishima’s shark grin? Uraraka and her nervous finger tapping and Midoriya’s distracting freckles? Denki screamed into his blanket. Before he could dive further into his crisis, a pillow comes soaring across the room to hit him so hard he falls back into his bed. 

“Fucking - can you shut up?”

“Bakubro, I’m literally having the biggest crisis of my entire life-“

“Have it in the morning. Go the fuck to sleep before I make you sleep.” It’s so dark, even the moon doesn’t show Bakugou’s face but Denki can feel his glare. Somewhere. Menacingly. “Permanently .”

Denki shivers. 

“Bro, you know that I know that your love language is death threats and attempts at bodily harm right?”

Ever the saint, Midoriya’s voice whispers in what he assumes is His Royal Highness, Emperor Bakugou approved noise level. 

“Kaminari, Kacchan has a really strict sleep schedule so-“

Denki feels another projectile whizz past his ear to thump at his left. 

“Who the fuck asked you, Deku?

Oops. Okay, so not Bakugou approved volume then. But before they can get into their usual cats and dogs, Denki takes one for the team. 

“Oh, oh! I'll ask! Hey, Midoriya, is it true that Kacchan needs the beauty sleep of an obaa-chan? Is that why he’s got that resting bitch face? Is it, like, an acquired thing from lack of sleep or did he just come out of the womb like that-“

A pitter pattering of footsteps echoes in the darkness, each one closing in on Denki. The thought of a murderous Bakugou Katsuki chasing him down in the dark on all fours is enough to make Denki screech like it was Sadako that was crawling after him that night instead. 

The series of explosions that can be heard from Boy’s Cabin A isn’t enough to make him regret the greatest pillow fight of his life. It only took closely evading certain dismemberment via nitroglycerin after all. 

It turns out that Kakashi was right- there is such a thing as amateur kidnappings. 

Denki didn’t think much of the day, he assumed he’d do more PT exercises suggested (commanded) by Kakashi and Aizawa’s keen interest in his independent choice in training schedule (he begrudgingly approved it when he couldn’t find a single thing wrong with it). After a long day of threading lightning, he’d assume he’d cocoon himself in his sleeping bag and curse the waxing, long days of this summer school trip in his dreams. What he didn’t expect was being ambushed on his way back to said sleeping bag with his friends and fighting three consecutive villains back to back. He might have miscalculated Kakashi’s lecture about environmental awareness because one moment, he was running through trees in a burning forest and the next he was being pulled out of a top hat like a rabbit.

He sits politely next to an uncharacteristically quiet Bakugou who should’ve been a cup or two of nitroglycerin away from setting the both of them on fire. There is a sort of silent understanding between the both of them though. Denki talks his head off garnering the ire of their captors who keep trying to tell them of the Villainy of society and the purging of Heroes while Bakugou does his logic-ing and plotting. He thinks Bakugou is scarier like this, all quiet and pensive. He can’t wait until they have a plan to escape so he can go back to his usual shouting. 

Not that Denki isn’t doing his own analyzing! He sees things too amidst the star show he’s putting on. The cheap rank alleyway smell. The hallway in front of them and the back door behind to their right. The fact that they weren’t so deep underground that the TV across the room wouldn’t have a signal. The absolute fumble of a decision that they would put someone who could manipulate said electrical signal from where he is. 

That is, if he got these stupid quirk inhibitors off somehow. 

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t too amateur of a kidnapping. But still, they were arrogant enough to leave any sort of electronic device near him, even if he couldn’t use it in his state. After all, it would only take a second with radio waves traveling at the speed of light-

“You know, I’m always down to meet fans, but even this is a little overboard.”

“Do you ever stop talking? Spinner, gag this one, the Explosion kid was a better pick.”

Denki knew that Bakugou had spent a lot more time unconscious- probably something to do with his nitroglycerin messed up blood pressure but he was no expert. Maybe that had something to do with his sudden bout of mutism. 

Or maybe he was scared. And maybe Denki was too. He was sure his mother would’ve had a better explanation. He distantly hoped that he’d see her again. 

Focus, Denki. The morbid thought shook his persona a little. A voice reminiscent of Kakashi whispered in his mind. Denki shook his head and smiled again. 

“You up for round two?” It earned him a short laugh from the masked guy with two voices. 

Denki on the other hand, had a lot of experience going in and out of consciousness from years of running debilitating currents through his brain. A couple of months with Kakashi teaching him how not to rewire his brain every time he used his work wouldn’t shake the habit anytime soon. Thankfully. 

So in the middle of someone trying to gag him, he’d done what Kakashi would have.

A reptilian person with layers of bloodied bandages wrapped around his hand instinctively stepped backward as far as he could from Denki. Spinner, he assumed. “The little brat bit me last time!”

Denki stuck his tongue out. Loser. 

The punk looking guy with the piercings, Dabi, he remembers the blonde girl calling him, pushes Spinner forward. Dabi looks super cool and really hot doing it- both literally and figuratively. Denki had watched him twirl little spirals of fire spouts in the palms of his hands earlier and Denki had to yell at himself earlier that it had to be against the law to simp over villains. Especially so soon after having a bi crisis literally a couple of hours ago. “You’re being dramatic. Go.”

Denki wasn’t too sure of that. Running his tongue over the gums of his teeth he was pretty sure he felt a scale or two lodged in there. Gross. 

“I don’t know what you were thinking, man. I think they’re both feral. You should’ve left the Sparky kid behind at least.”

Denki frowned. “Hey! Only Bakubro can call me that.”

The magician looking guy, who pulled him out of a hat, twirls a couple of marbles around. “Our sources tell us he’s vigilante sympathetic. Might even be involved, and we know he has connections. Shigaraki thought he’d be useful.”

Denki finally picked out the gunk from his teeth and spat. If Spinner hated him before, the way he sneered at him like he was some sort of demon child definitely solidified it. So much for first impressions. Oh well. “Say whaaaat? Vigilantes? Never heard of ‘em.”

“My finger he almost bit off would be useful. Look at my hand and tell me I can spin a blade right now!”

“You know, I really liked you in TMNT.”

“I’m a lizard! Not a turtle!” 

“Kick rocks, Donatello.”

Spinner brandishes his sword shakily with his other hand. “I’m gonna stab him, boss.”

Yikes, tough crowd. Time to backpedal. Denki laughs shakily trying to yank at his bonds when a tall girl from the back pulls back at Spinner’s shirt a little, Magne, Denki thinks. “He’s fifteen, Spinner. You telling me you weren’t a little shit at fifteen too?”

“Toga’s fifteen and she isn’t a little shit!”

“Toga also tries to stab us with straws in our sleep so she can ‘drink our blood like a juice box’. Redefine what ‘little shit’ means to you.”

A voice rises above all of them. “Enough. Release their bonds. If we want them to talk to us like equals, we have to treat them as equals.”

Spinner hisses. “Shigaraki-”

Dabi cuts in and pushes the man with the doubled voices forward. “Twice. Spinner. Go unlock them.”

Twice Number One shrinks. “What? But you saw what that one did to Spinner-”

Twice Number Two cackled. “Yeah! Let’s see what these little shits are made of!”

Dabi rolls his eyes. “Go.”

By the gnarly grin on Bakugou’s face, it looks like they’re both on the same page. For Super Villains, these guys were idiots. 

It’s an easier thing than he would’ve thought, when both of them are released. In sync, he hears the telltale sound of a nitroglycerin powered explosion and the sound of bones cracking when he elbows Spinner in the nose- poor guy, Denki took his finger bones and his face bones in one night. He twisted out of the remains of his bonds. While Spinner curled on himself, holding his face, Denki took the opportunity to alleviate his long sword from his waist. A katana was basically a longer version of the tanto right? 

“HAHA! Eat shit you ninja turtle wannabe!” Yeah, Bakugou, you tell ‘em! What a bro. “I sat here all polite listening to your speeches pretending I give a shit about your problems. Become a Villain? I’m gonna be the best Hero in the world, you stupid second rates.”

Denki twirled the blade, feeling the balanced weight. Kakashi’s tanto was definitely better. But this would do.

“Kakashi-sensei is a waaaay cooler ninja than you man. No offense.”

“Is that what the White Wolf’s name is then?”

Oops. 

Denki takes this as a cue to cut the lights and send a shock hopping from one Villain to the other. With a well placed smoke bomb, they are too busy coughing and heaving as Bakugou pulls Denki to cover as a flurry of quirks surrounded them. Feeling the electricity of the building around he twists free of Bakugou’s hold and starts pulling him along instead. He resists until Denki hisses exasperated. “I know where we’re going !”

Leading them through the darkened building, feeling the distant electrical waves of what feels like a radio station in Kamino Ward, he sends an impulse on radios, phones, computers, billboards- anything that could get attention to their location. As they run towards what Denki thinks is the entrance, he nervously grips Bakugou’s wrist. 

“Uhhh, listen, Bakubro. About earlier, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t say anything about Ka-”

Bakugou stopped dead in the middle of the hallway, sending Denki almost flying into a wall. He swiveled to the sound of his voice. “Don’t tell me shit about your vigilante brother, dumbass, I’m gonna have plausible deniability when I leave this cheesy ass lair !”

It was sort of sweet, in a weird violent way? But also scary since Denki was pretty sure he hadn’t explicitly told him anything about Sukea and Kakashi being one and the same. Maybe he had a secondary observation quirk instead of Midoriya? 

Then Bakugou was raising his leg, Denki thought to kick him in the face but it went sideways instead and a metal door was blown apart behind him. Oh, yeah. Somebody definitely heard that. 

When they got outside, the cool nighttime air was a blessing compared to the rank heat of the League’s hideout. For good measure, he sent a lightning bolt careening into the sky like a flare.

All in a day's work, he could really go for hotpot after experiencing his first kidnapping. It was some pretty draining stuff. He and Bakugou are met immediately by the sight of a handful of Heroes in various states of relief and disbelief. It seemed his radio broadcast did its job especially when All Might’s face comes into view. All of it is almost enough to make him cry. 

“Young Bakugou! Young Kaminari! Thank goodness, you two-“

Then a chill travels down the back of his neck, making Denki still instinctively. To his left, a gag comes from Bakugou and from his mouth, a dark black sludge bubbles out. As the dark sludge surrounds him, Denki is hit with the same sick feeling. The pull of it almost feels like Kakashi’s own Kamui. Denki can see why Kakashi hates training that stupid secondary teleportation quirk of his so much. Before he and Bakugou are completely teleported away he curses in his head. 

Denki knew that epic escape plot was way too easy.

When the earth beneath his feet solidifies again, he can’t help but heave whatever messed up teleportation quirk had left in his mouth. Through his sick, he could hear Bakugou gagging and cursing just the same.

“Ah, apologies for the rude mode of transportation, Bakugou. Kaminari.” A velvety voice intoned over the remnants of sick noises from the Villains and themselves. 

Oh. This was a boss fight, wasn’t it? In front of him, a tall menacing figure in a suit with a warped face had his hands clasped primly, as if he was apologizing for something as inconvenient as rain. Stumbling to his feet, Kaminari steadies his grip on Spinner’s katana and inches toward Bakugou. 

Ignoring his creepy speech to Shigaraki behind them, his eyes find to the final boss’ side a familiar creature. Instead of another plant-warped Nomu, the white-green figure of the original creature he had seen when he and Kakashi first met.

“Ah, so you know Zetsu?”

Denki startles, bumping into Bakugou. He doesn’t even get angry, if anything he strays closer as well. It’s okay, they can be not afraid together. 

“He’s been quite integral to creating perfect Nomu clones. I could never quite get the regeneration factor quite right.”

Denki knows his rights! And Bakubro isn’t a snitch, apparently, so he’s not gonna confirm shit. Denki reserves his right to remain silent.

It’s like the universe hears his call about not answering implicating questions when the next moment, a mirage of red, white, and blue comes from the sky, blowing the All For One creep through various buildings. Denki and Bakugou take this as a signal to get the hell out of dodge. 

Around them, the Villains start to crowd them but they're a lot less intimidating than that All For One dude who has serious beef with The Number One Hero (a can of worms he’s not even going to try to understand) or Zetsu and all his freaky plant warping. He could take a schoolgirl and a shitty magician. Right?

“Shut up and cover me, Dunceface.”

“We could die and you won’t even call me by name, Bakubro? Didn’t we just go through an epic traumatic event together?”

Dabi steps forward, seemingly their very first challenger, and what Denki had only seen as little fire spouts in the palms of his hands grew to the size of a building. Last time he checked, Bakugou was also a fire type and Denki didn’t think the whole ‘fight fire with fire’ thing would work in this situation.

Before Denki could get into saying his prayers, a shuddering crack came from the earth below them and as a massive fireball coalesced into a searing orb, a wall of mud rose to meet it, sending flames licking around its edges harmlessly. In front of him, in all his showoff glory, stood Kakashi in his wolf mask who simply rolled his shoulder and yawned for effect. A small part of Denki wondered how he had found them so fast.

Bakugou took a second to punch him in the shoulder. “What the fuck, I thought your brother had an electricity quirk!”

Denki whined back, just as confused. “I thought he had an electricity quirk too!”

Toga squeaks in front of him, face pink, now completely distracted. “Your brother is the White Wolf?”

Bakugou pulls at his hair, talking to himself. “No one in our class better have a Villain as a sibling. I swear all of your secrets are fucking stupid.”

Dabi sneezes. Kakashi takes the opportunity to blow an entire ocean's worth of water over the battlefield sending the Villains floating away from each other quite comically.

Denki will be having words with Kakashi after this. Not saying you were an interdimensional ninja was one thing, but being the Avatar? Come on, could he get any cooler? Save something for him!

“I’ll be right back!”

“What? Sparky get your-”

“I promise!”

Bakugou, distracted by the now waterlogged chick with the knife, didn’t say much after Denki who ran to follow Kakashi now deep in a battle with Zetsu. Hovering over the corners of their fight, he started to draw electricity into the tips of his fingers. Kakashi, as if sensing him looks his way and makes a subtle sign with his hands. Denki steels himself and nods, Chidori coming easily to him as breathing now.

Feeling the spike of ozone in the air, Zetsu turns towards him hissing. Zetsu opens his arms wide, arrogant. Denki doesn’t waver as he steps forward with the katana to meet him, he just made his job easier for him. The weird feeling of Chidori instantly vaporizing something that wasn’t a training log or a building was something didn’t think he would get used to ever. It’s just as disgusting as the first time he used Chidori on something that wasn’t an inanimate object. He gags exaggeratedly as he feels Zetsu’s laughs moving his arm through his body. 

"I hate plants. You're pretty gross man."

“You fool, you truly think a little lightning can stop me?”

Denki grinned, all teeth. “No. But he can.”

Kakashi takes to the epic entrance Denki set up for him like a weird plant monster to Villainy. To be plain, he’s really cool and skilled at dramatic entrances. Zetsu doesn’t see it coming until the last second when Kakashi lays his hand on the flat of his shoulder blades and some sort of inked scrawl courses over his skin like a plague. The thick lines swirl into intricate circles Denki can’t look at directly without getting dizzy and Zetsu writhes in their grip.

“I will not be sealed again! Do you think this will hold me for long? I am a being of pure-”

Kakashi wraps strips of paper talismans with the same circle designs around Zetsu’s mouth, successfully shutting up his poor loser Villain defeat speech. Denki steps back, pulling his arm from the main body Zetsu, assuming Kakashi has got it from there. Disgusted, he tosses Spinner's second-rate blade to the ground and wipes his hand on his shirt. The way he mummifies the plant guy with increasingly more complicated designs, Denki still can’t bring himself to think that it's overboard. 

In front of him, he sees the tiniest silhouette of Best Jeanist and Mount Lady jumping into the fray.

He pushes Kakashi behind some rubble to avoid being seen as he throws open a portal, the air slipping cleanly apart. It barely rippled except for the slightest shimmer of unsettled space when you looked at it a certain way. It was the fastest and most seamless portal Kakashi had ever created. Denki could see the look of elated surprise on his face too. But the voices getting closer and closer behind them ruined what should’ve ended with Denki tackling Kakashi with a not hug and then going out to eat meat buns at the nearest 7-11. 

There were villains behind him. Heroes in front of them. A plant alien. And a vigilante ninja wanted by all of them. They could all go through the portal but then what? Risking Kakashi’s reputation and being wanted by Heroes for kidnapping him? Destroying Denki’s own by being associated with a lawbreaker? Denki leaving his friends behind to deal with the League and going against everything that Kakashi had taught him?

Denki could hear the rumbling scorch of Endeavor and the Heroes ahead of him and behind them, the maniacal laughter of All for One and his League. They couldn’t have been too far if he could hear them so clearly but they might as well have been inches away. Too little to choose from, too close. 

Too little time.

The word was the easiest thing in the world to say, even if every part of him screamed not to. 

“Go.”

Kakashi froze, they both were frozen. They both didn’t know what to do so one of them would have to say it. “What?”

“You need to-“ Denki took a breath, his words going faster than he meant them to. It was hard to breathe, the adrenaline barely separable from his own panic. “You should go.”

Denki settled, his mind going blank and quiet. He looked at Kakashi, his voice steady and sure. “I’ll be- we’ll be fine. I have what you taught me, the authorities are on their way, and-”

He looked at Zetsu, beneath the layers of ink and paper talismans writhing and twitching, hours or seconds from coming loose of Kakashi’s carefully laid seal work. 

“And you can’t afford to have him free again. You-” Denki swallowed, determined not to cry. He didn’t care, it was better to have him gone, he wanted him gone. He recited all the times Kakashi stole his wallet, had eaten his food, put him through grueling training-

Bought him ramune to apologize, patted his head, showed him how to be strong. Denki shook his head. 

“You need to go home.”

Kakashi inhaled and Denki couldn’t help but look at him and wish he hadn’t. He didn’t think he’d be able to forget the confused, wounded look on his face. “Denki, I can stay.”

It would’ve been selfish to agree and take his words for what they were. It would be malicious to pretend he hadn’t watched for days during his trainings at Kakashi dozing in trees like second nature. To pretend that he hadn’t noticed the moments when Kakashi ceased to view him as Denki and found some ghost to find in him. There was someplace that he came from. Someplace that had probably spent weeks looking for him as much as Kakashi had spent searching for them. 

The destruction around them, Kakashi’s own voice, everything in this moment said another thing. They both knew they didn’t have time for this dance and game. But Kakashi was selfless and he was loyal and stubborn as a dog. So Denki would have to do it for him. The jerk.

It was almost victorious- having the last laugh and the stupid shocked look on Kakashi’s face when Denki pushed him. As the portal instinctively shut, Kakashi usually only able to hold them open for half a minute at most, the field was silent, almost gravelike. 

But Denki had promised he’d be okay and he could mope later. 

Steeling himself to run to back Bakugou up, he turned his head towards the sky and its gray, almost black clouds swirling overhead. Beneath his skin a familiar rumbling ran marrow deep, ready to spark on a whim. 

After all, what was a storm without lightning?

Chapter Text

…in a shocking turn of events, two prominent UA students who made the solo fight headlines during the renowned school's Sports Festival (link), Bakugou Katsuki (15) and Kaminari Denki (15), were abducted early yesterday morning…

Swipe.

…the Saitama native vigilante ‘White Wolf’ is still nowhere to be seen despite his integral part in the confrontation against the League of Villains…

Denki sighed. Swiped again.

…authorities still not transparent about the involvement of Villain All for One and Zetsu’s roles in the attack on Kamino Ward and search and rescue for citizens of the city are still underway…

Swipe, swipe, swipe.

…with the sudden retirement of Former Number One Hero All Might, now recognized as one Yagi Toshinori from Tokyo has left the citizens of Japan in uncertainty and fear…

Denki flicked out of Chirpper. Still no posts of Kakashi anywhere. 

He opened his contact information, Kakashi's profile picture of him in a dog print hoodie. Countless unanswered texts had sat on his phone for almost a month now. After their Hosu internship, he wasted no time in getting Kakashi an old sturdy Nokia. Not only because Kakashi was an old man- but anything less than a phone that could survive nuclear fallout wasn’t the phone for an interdimensional ninja… he was very active. If fighting yakuza and falling off of buildings could be considered ‘active’.

He knew Kakashi could go no contact for days on end sometimes but even if locking up that plant guy in his own respective dimension took a while, surely it wouldn’t have taken this long? He refused to start wondering if Kakashi couldn’t come back, or worse didn’t want to. 

What if that was the last time he’d see him again?

His phone buzzed and he lept up scrambling to his flashing inbox. He collapsed back onto his bed when he saw the name card.

-

Bakubro: Stop moping. Fight me at ground delta

Me: dude we r literrally banned frm there 2

Me: and im 1000% NOT moping 

Me: >:(

Bakubro: Then the forest you took us to that one time

Bakubro: Come downstairs

Me: dont you have a weeknd visit w/ ur parents 2day ???

Bakubro: My moms going to have to drag me back home if she wants to see me so bad

Bakubro: Shut up and come

Bakubro: I made food

Bakubro: Seros gonna eat your plate in five min

-

Denki groaned, kicking back his sheets. He was not throwing a tantrum. He was just healthily expressing his emotions. The mandatory meetings with Hound Dog were a lot more tolerable than Aizawa’s suspicious looks every time Denki had so much as breathed. He knew Bakugou wouldn’t snitch but he was 76% sure that his interview with Detective Naomasa had been less than stellar. He hadn’t talked half the time, leaving Bakugou to expertly create loopholes around the poor guy like the total homie he was while Denki feigned quirk fatigue, but still. He was sure his homeroom teacher could just smell through his act. That guy was on the same level as his Mama and Kakashi. 

Kakashi. 

Denki doesn’t miss that jerk. As if he would spend a month of his time moping around thinking about some dumb interdimensional ninja who couldn’t even operate a phone properly. 

“Denki.”

Though sometimes, it was almost like he could still hear his voice even now.

“Denki.” To his right Kakashi stood next to him exactly how he was before he’d left a month ago. Save for the big bulky cloak he was wearing now. Wow, was Denki that far gone? Hallucinations? Hound Dog wouldn’t be happy to hear that new development-

Hallucination Kakashi poked him on the forehead. “Ow! You jerk, I-“

Oh, that hurt. Could hallucinations hurt?

“Oh my god, wait. Are you real?”

An eye smile. “I don’t know, I feel pretty real to me.” He then raises a single hand.

“Yo.”

“You fucking jerk, where were you! I missed you!”

When Denki goes to hug Kakashi, he’s stopped by an abnormal lump that Denki just realizes is beneath Kakashi’s oversized beige cloak. From his neck, a tiny tuft of yellow hair pops out and gazes at Denki blearily. 

“Is that… a clone of me?”

“Why would I have a clone of you, Denki.”

Denki thinks to the craziest things he’s encountered so far knowing Kakashi. Aliens, dimension-hopping, zombies. Cloning feels like the next big step. But saying that aloud felt dumb so Denki shrugs. “I don’t know! You tell me.”

“YAH!” The little Denki clone raises his fist in the air, effectively hitting Kakashi in the chin. From the darkening bruises under his chin in various stages of healing, he thinks this is a normal occurrence. 

The kid scrambles under Kakashi’s collar and a tiny lump travels his way down Kakashi like a tree. He flips up the bottom edge of his cloak to peer up at Denki and he stomps his foot.

“I’m Uzumaki Naruto! Imma be a cool shinobi like Kaka-nii! Believe it!”

Denki can’t help but pick him up by his armpits and spin him around like in Lion King. He presents the little guy to Kakashi excitedly. 

“AHHH! He’s loud and blonde! Just like me! Oh my gosh, Kaka-nii did you get me a clone brother because you missed me too?”

“Why the hell-”

“Shhhh! You can’t swear in front of him he’s a baby.”

Baby Naruto chirps from his arms. “I’m not a baby. I’m a shinobi.”

It’s the cutest thing he’s ever witnessed. “Of course you are. Oh my gosh, I’ve always wanted a little brother!”

From Kakashi’s back, another rustle catches his attention. A brown pair of eyes meet his. “You got me two little brothers?”

Kakashi sighs but the crinkle of his eye tells him that he’s enjoying this too. “This is Tenzo.”

That name sets off a Ctrl-F off in Denki’s brain. “Like the tree kouhai?”

Tenzo leaves the shelter of Kakashi’s cloak to step closer to him. “Kakashi-senpai told you about me?”

“Yeah. He said you were totally cool.”

The kid looks back to Kakashi, stars in his eyes. Kakashi can’t look at Denki like he’s just confessed his deepest, darkest secret. It’s what he gets for being away for so long. Goodbye, cool and distant persona. Hello, mushy older brother. 

“Kaka-nii stole me! The Madam was mean and I was really hungry so he took me to eat ramen and now we’re on a vacation to meet you!” 

“Is that so?” Denki better not be holding a stolen child right now.

“Yeah. Kakashi said you were a shinobi and a hero. So you’re gonna have to be my nii-san too.” Denki guessed he could forgive Kakashi for abduction, especially when the fruits of his labor were so sweet! He pinched Naruto’s cheek and in response, the little fox tried to bite him. Just like Kakashi! So cute!

Naruto scrambled away to investigate the rest of his room. Denki then grabs a jacket and his wallet he makes his way to the door of his room. “Well, c’mon, I gotta do Mama’s grocery shopping. More eyes would help. I’m going home for the weekend so we have to make something to bring back.”

Kakashi holds Naruto upside down by a leg. He tries to bite him too. “I saved you in front of national television. ”

Denki crosses his arms. “And? Who would know that it’s you?”

“That pomeranian guy. The green kid. Probably most of 1-A. I mean I wasn’t exactly trying to be subtle-”

“Okay, okay. We’ll go out the window.”

Denki takes this chance to open the latch with a flourish to get Naruto’s and Tenzo’s attention. “Are we all ready for today’s lesson in wall walking?”

Tenzo sniffs, his head held high, and bolts out to show his expertise in the matter. Naruto cheers and tries to follow until Kakashi catches him midjump. He tosses him over his shoulder without much fanfare and Tenzo giggles as they start making their way down. The walls of Heights Alliance have been reinforced with metal so thanks to Yuuei’s paranoia, Denki can now wall walk via electromagnetism. Kakashi’s eyes flash. He’s impressed. Nonchalantly, Denki shakily steps out and continues to talk even though he’s internally screaming. He’s only done this twice before- but he’ll be damned if a ten-year-old can wall walk but he can’t.

“Anyway, here, you hold the list, stop arguing you’ve been gone for a month. She’s gonna be pissed if you show up empty handed. Hurry, before curfew ends and someone sees us-”

Denki’s got an orange in hand and Naruto in the other when his phone buzzes as they leave Musutafu General store. Naruto pats him to be let down and Tenzo, who had self assigned himself as the resident Naruto watcher trails after him wreaking havoc. Kakashi walks beside him holding their bag of groceries as they pass by a nearby park settled next to a train station. Denki takes this time to check his phone.

-

Bakubro: Where did you go your light is off

Me: sorry dude not gonna stay @ dorms 2nite, im going home for the wkend

Bakubro: Finally

Bakubro: Tell your brother the next time he pulls this shit I’ll beat him myself idgaf if he’s a criminal or not

Bakubro: Youre lucky Aizawa already did room checks

Me: thx 4 covering 4 me !! ill drag kk to training w/ u tmrw <333

-

Leading them into the park, following the flock of pigeons Naruto’s currently enamored with he asks. “So, what took you so long?”

Kakashi shifts his bag over to his other hand. “It’s a long story.”

That’s not the important part really. What Denki really wants to know… “Are you staying?”

Kakashi went a little quiet. He looks away to watch Naruto and Tenzo in the distance. “They haven’t had the easiest go.”

Denki settles himself down on a bridge to watch them too and can't help but laugh a little as Naruto keeps making a break for it and the way Tenzo will sends out little vines to plop him back where he started. Denki thinks he can make an exception to his list of plants he hates. Kakashi plops down too, setting their bag down. Nervously, Denki lies back and tosses the orange in the air like a ball. Up, down, up, down. 

“So you’ll stay for them?” Up.

“I think this world will do good for those two.” Down. 

“You think?” Up. 

“It did for me.” Down.

Denki catches it, hearing the rare emotion in Kakashi’s voice. Denki gets up on his elbows but Kakshi still stares straight ahead on the bridge, watching the train tread on the tracks below them. Kakashi kicks his feet over the ledge, turning to look at Naruto and Tenzo running circles around a tree. It must have been nice for Kakashi to see. It didn’t take a genius to see the shy, distrustful way they stuck to him like glue. Or the thin gauntness of Naruto and the tiny scars littering Tenzo’s spindly, tree-like arms. Denki goes back to throwing his orange into the air.

“I have some loose ends to clean up. It’s kind of a mess back in Konoha with the whole Zetsu thing.” Up.

“Right. How’d that go?” Down.

“Evidently, he’s from the moon? And has been keeping an old friend of mine captive. One who’s supposed to be dead.” Up.

“Aliens and zombies. I mean, what’s new?” Down.

Kakashi snorted. The way the conversation ebbs and flows around the heart of it suddenly has Denki’s next words falling out despite himself. He catches the orange midair and sits up to face Kakashi properly, the worry he held in his chest simmering for almost a month finally bubbling over. 

“Are you really going to stay? Are you actually okay? Why’d you come back to see me? Why-” Why Denki when there was a Naruto or Tenzo around?

Kakashi flicks his ear, making Denki’s orange hit him in the nose.

"Ow, you jerk!"

“Well, obviously, I was hoping that all my annoying little brothers would get along. I like seeing them all together.”

Oh.

Denki looked toward his palms, the ripe orange he’d been tossing around. The near evening lighting bathes it in a sunset color. Determined not to tear up and cry like a total weirdo, he sinks his nails into the divots of the orange with a gusto. The acidic juice of the citrus fruit trailed down his wrist and stung at the training cuts along his arms but he paid no mind to it. He carefully pulled the white flesh of the rind from the soft slivers of bright orange fruit beneath until he was satisfied with his work. It was then that Denki held out a palmful of orange slices to Kakashi in the summer air, pretending as though he was observing a bird or plane passing overhead. 

Kakashi took the half and split it again, waving Naruto and Tenzo over to sit down. And as they ate handfuls of orange slices over the bridge where the train rumbled below them every so often, Denki held onto Kakashi’s words. Even minutes or hours later, when the sun went down under the Shizuoka skyline and they wiped their hands dried sticky with orange juice on their pants. Watching little Naruto skipping across the pavement cackling with Tenzou chasing after him, he hoped, knew that maybe he felt the same. 

“You wanna go eat some soup?”

“With eggplant?”

“Mmhm.”

“Okay.” Kakashi flicked an orange seed into his hair before ruffling it and pushing him down to get up. “Let’s go home.”

Denki sat on top of the bridge watching Kakashi walk away long enough for him to start to get lost in the dusklight. Maybe brothers smelled like dog hair and oranges. Maybe they bent your Pokemon cards and stole the last piece of cornbread. 

“Yeah.” Denki smiled, sweet and sour between his teeth. “Home.”