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Denki’s tablet was missing.
Which, you know, that was… fine. It was just a tablet. It’s not like there was anything really special about it. Or important. Or… anything.
But, well, he couldn’t find it. And it- well, it wasn’t anything really special, but it had some sentimental value, and he needed- okay, so it had a super specific layout that he’d spent hours creating and a special insulated case that his parents had paid a lot for so he could be sure he wouldn’t fry it while he was at UA and he couldn’t find it.
He’d already checked his room and the common room and then all the places he never would have expected in the common room and he was checking his room again even more thoroughly but it still wasn’t there. Had he left it on campus? He tried to avoid putting his special tablet in his backpack or taking it anywhere, but he always felt calmer with his tablet, so he might have taken it to school at some point and then forgotten about it? He couldn’t remember bringing it anywhere, though. But he struggled to remember most things on a good day, and today was not a good day.
A sharp knock on the door startled Denki out of his panicked spiral, and Jiro’s voice called, “Dude, are you okay in there?” through the door.
Jiro. Jiro’s room was just across the hall from his, and she must have heard Denki completely turning his room upside down for his stupid tablet. His breath hitched and tears pricked at his eyes, but Denki resolutely dashed them away, slapping his usual ditzy smile on his face and yanking the door open.
“Oop, sorry if I bothered you with the noise!” He chirped, shooting Jiro a double pair of sparkling Kaminari brand finger guns! “Just misplaced something, you know!”
Jiro looked less than impressed. “Your room is a mess, Denki. What’s wrong?”
“My room?” Denki glanced over his shoulder and realized with a wince that she was right. He’d emptied his drawers, swept everything off his shelves to move them forward a bit, and even ripped the blanket off his bed, and all of it was sitting in a jumbled pile in the middle of the floor. “Well, you know I’m not very organized!”
Somehow, Jiro managed to look even less impressed.
“I can hear your heartbeat,” she deadpanned. The ‘you idiot’ was implied. Heavily.
“Oh, yeah, um… Ican’tfindmytablet,” Denki blurted, cringing. “I know- it’s not, like important, yeah, I can, um, I’ll look a bit quieter, sorry to both-”
“Stop,” Jiro said, and Denki stopped mid-word. “You can’t find your tablet?” Jiro curled up her jack in a way that Denki recognized as focusing her hearing only around herself. She was… she was listening to him.
“Yeah, I- I looked for it, I swear I did! But I just… can’t find it.” It sounded stupid when he said it out loud. “It’s really not a big deal, though. I’ll just, um, look again.”
“Your tablet,” Jiro clarified, “the one with the fancy case and all those recordings on it, the one that you use to calm yourself down when you have a nightmare or are panicking about grades or accidentally zap yourself.”
“Um. Yeah.” He did have a lot of recordings on his tablet. Recordings of his friends and family assuring him that they were safe and he was safe and everything was alright. And Nezu-Sensei had let him connect his tablet to UA’s security system, just a little bit on the periphery, so he got alerts when anything was going wrong and he had an app that would tell him if there were any issues anywhere on campus. But it wasn’t really a huge deal.
“Your comfort item,” Jiro insisted.
“I- I guess?”
“Okay,” Jiro said, and pulled out her phone. Denki blinked at her. Okay? So, they were good? And Denki could go back to searching for his tablet? But then… why was Jiro still standing in his doorway?
“Um,” Denki started, but was interrupted by his phone, which was sitting on his desk, one of the few things saved from his purge.
“Pichu!” his phone chirped, and then “Pichu-pichu! Pi-chu! Pichu!”
“Um, hold on a second,” Denki said, hurrying back to his phone. It continued to chirrup cheerful ‘Pichu!’s at him, and he swiped it off the desk and frantically turned it on. His phone ringtone was Pikachu voicelines and anything urgent like Hero alerts was shrieks of ‘Raichu!’, but the Pichu soundbites were for his text tone. Why in the world was he suddenly getting so many texts?
It was the Class A group chat. Denki fumbled with the screen, carefully holding his Quirk back as he scrolled up to his oldest unread message. An invite to track his run from Iida at the beginning of the day, and a response that both Bakugou and Tokoyami were doing so. A dozen memes Mina had sent a few hours ago when she’d been trying to do her math homework. A message from Jiro just a minute ago, marked with the ‘important’ flag and reading ‘Denki can’t find his tablet whos helping’.
After that, the chat was flooded.
GlassBonesPaperSkin: I can check my floor!
Purrrrple: Omw home can run a quick perimeter sweep
Gravity_Whomst: gtng strtd n grls rms
And they just kept coming. Kirishima, Mina, Sero, and Shinsou were expected, Iida and Yaoyorozu practically duty-bound, and Uraraka, Tsu, Midoriya, and Todoroki not really a surprise. But even Tokoyami was answering. He was saying something about the darkness being brighter when it was shared, but Denki was pretty sure that meant he was helping.
Koda sent a thumbs up and a magnifying glass emoji.
It’sDynaMIGHT: Quit leaving your stuff everywhere, Sparky. It better not be in the kitchen, or you won’t get to eat.
Cake Boss: He means were helping look
More and more, Shoji and Aoyama and Hagakure and finally Ojiro, and every single person in the dorms was helping to look for Denki’s tablet.
The onslaught of Pichu voicelines slowed, and Denki glanced up from his phone to stare at Jiro.
“This- this is too much,” he spluttered, “It’s just- I mean, it’s not that important, and- I can find it myself, really, I don’t- I don’t mean to inconvenience everyone just because I…” The Bakusquad had been working on self-positivity, so Denki didn’t say out loud that he was stupid. He was pretty sure Jiro heard it anyway.
“Come on,” Jiro said, and she grabbed Denki’s wrist in a grip that he easily could have slipped out of with their recent grapple training. He didn’t, and instead let Jiro drag him down the stairs as she rapidly typed one-handed on her phone.
“Here,” she said, stopping in front of Aizawa-Sensei, who was dozing sprawled over the couch in one side of the common room while Shinsou, Hagakure, and Tokoyami stealthily searched the area.
“No, I really don’t need to bother Aizawa-Sensei, it’s nothing-”
“This is not about the tablet,” Jiro said bluntly, and flicked out an earphone jack to prod at Aizawa-Sensei’s shoulder.
“Mphwadoyowan’,” Aizawa-Sensei grumbled.
“Aizawa-Sensei, Denki lost his tablet and thinks it’s not important enough for anyone else to get involved because he doesn’t want to ‘inconvenience anyone’.”
Sensei actually opened his eyes at that, pulling his arm down his face and staring Denki down with both his real and prosthetic eye. It was the solid gold eye he used for Hero work, the one that let him kind of see when his Quirk was activated, and though it had no internal bits like the pupil or the white part, it somehow looked even more intimidatingly focused than Aizawa-Sensei’s regular, actually working eye.
“Really, it’s not a big deal,” Denki defended weakly, “I don’t- I’m sure I can find it myself, if I just look harder.”
Aizawa-Sensei blinked slowly, then dragged his arm completely off his face and begrudgingly sat up. Denki could hear his joints creak as he moved. Aizawa waved him over tiredly, and Denki reluctantly trailed away from Jiro.
“You lost your tablet,” Aizawa-Sensei repeated, and Denki nodded dumbly.
“The yellow one, with all the recordings on it.” Denki had been almost the same color as Kirishima’s hair when he’d gone to ask Aizawa-Sensei for a recording, and he’d had to take Mina and Bakugou with him, but it was one of the ones he listened to over and over, more than most others. Aizawa-Sensei was just inexplicably linked to safety in his mind.
Denki nodded again.
“And you think it’s not worth it to bother anyone else for help.” Okay, good, more easy questions. Denki could answer that one without speaking, too, and nodding was easy.
“So, if Tokoyami lost or broke his nightlight, do you think he shouldn’t bother anyone else for help finding it?”
Denki shook his head hard. Tokoyami’s nightlight was important! It helped him maintain his relationship with Dark Shadow, and it made him feel safe even at night, and it would be awful if he lost it because Denki knew that Tokoyami had painted the nightlight himself and it was incredible.
“Okay, what about if Shoji lost his mask? Do you think you it would be too inconvenient to help him look for it?”
That was another easy one. Of course, Denki would help look! Shoji’s mask helped him feel comfortable in his own skin, and while he’d stopped wearing it all the time in the dorms, Denki knew that Shoji never felt fully secure unless he had it on his person. Just in case. Not to mention, since Shoji’s head was shaped so uniquely and his mask fit so snugly, he’d had to sew it himself, and while he could make another one, Denki knew that Shoji’s pattern – which he’d perfected over half a dozen attempts and mockups – was actually still at his parents’ house, and he’d have to find a way to get it to UA before he could even start making a new mask.
“So,” Aizawa-Sensei began, and Denki recognized that tone of voice. That was the tone of voice that meant that by the time Aizawa-Sensei had finished this thought, Denki’s entire worldview would have shifted. “If you don’t think it’s a bother or inconvenient to help Shoji and Tokoyami find an important Quirk-supporting comfort item if they misplace it, why should you be any different?”
And that- that was not an easy question. The first response, the one that Denki was so used to giving, was that he was different because he was always different. He was stupid, and it was his fault he’d lost it, anyway. If he’d just kept better track of it, then this wouldn’t even be an issue.
“Because,” Denki fumbled, “um, because…”
“There isn’t a ‘because’,” Aizawa-Sensei provided. “You aren’t any different. You can’t find an important emotional and physical comfort item, so everyone else is helping you find it.”
Denki opened his mouth, then closed it again. People kept telling him that. They kept saying that he wasn’t an idiot, and he shouldn’t call himself stupid. But his grades were always terrible and he- okay, he did alright in practical Heroics training, but it wasn’t like he was top five or anything. Except for the past few weeks, but that was only because they’d been doing close-combat stuff like grappling that Electrification was really useful for.
And- and he didn’t just know stuff like Bakugou or Midoriya or Yaoyorozu did. He didn’t memorize rulebooks and he couldn’t rattle off all the tiny details and weaknesses of someone’s Quirk just by looking at them once, and he just wasn’t smart, okay? He wasn’t smart. Not like other people. So, it was probably his fault. Right?
Then again, Denki felt a whole lot less like crying now than he had twenty minutes ago.
His phone, still dangling dangerously from mostly limp fingers, went off again with a chipper “Pichu!”
Denki glanced at the screen.
It’sDynaMIGHT: You’re lucky your tablet’s not anywhere near my kitchen, Sparky. Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes, and whoever finds the stupid tablet gets served first.
NoneForY’all: Does that apply to me
Denki glanced up to find Aizawa-Sensei typing rapidly with one hand while the other was still wrapped around Denki’s shoulders
It’sDynaMIGHT: Only if you can find it, Old Man.
NoneForY’all: Bet.
Denki choked on nothing, coughing into his sleeve to try to muffle his laughter. Aizawa-Sensei? Just? Said? Bet? Denki couldn’t breathe.
Aizawa-Sensei dropped his phone and stuck two fingers in his mouth, whistling loudly in three short, sharp bursts. A few people turned to look at him, but then immediately returned to their now much more frantic searching. Aizawa-Sensei settled lower on the couch, not even attempting to get up, and that was when Denki realized that he wasn’t wearing a prosthetic leg. He currently could not stand. How was he planning to find Denki’s tablet?
That question was quickly answered as three cats darted around the edge of the couch and jumped up onto the coffee table, sitting at the edge in a neat line.
They were all mismatched, one giant orange tabby, one stubby-legged calico, and one lanky and solid black, but they all looked at Aizawa-Sensei with ears pricked and tails twitching.
“I need you to find something,” Aizawa-Sensei told the cats like he was commanding soldiers. “It’s a tablet, about this big-” he gestured with his hands “-in a yellow rubber case that’s covered in stickers. It smells like ozone, chocolate, and him.” He jabbed a thumb at Denki.
“If you find it before a human does and get it to either me or Kaminari, you win, usual stakes. No breaking anything or hurting anyone. Understand?”
All three cats nodded, tails lashing, and Aizawa-Sensei commanded, “begin.”
The calico and black cat both instantly bolted, but the giant orange doofus managed to trip over its own paws and sprawl dramatically on the floor under the coffee table. Denki understood that on a personal level. When it stood up, it shook its head so hard its ears flapped, then lashed its tail hard.
The giant orange cat split into two relatively normal-sized white-and-orange cats. They were white at the bottom with orange tabby on the top, like someone had dumped a bucket of orange paint on them and hadn’t bothered to make sure it went all the way down their legs and to their belly.
Each one shook their head and lashed their tail, and suddenly there were four small cats, each mostly white with dappled splotches of orange on their backs and head. Again, they split, and once more, until there were sixteen teeny tiny cats that were almost entirely white except for a few tiny spots of orange around their ears or at the end of their tail.
“They’re…”
“Like tiny cat marshmallows?” Aizawa-Sensei provided.
It was such a bizarre thing to hear in his teacher’s typical tired, bone-dry deadpan that Denki had to do a double take.
“I- I guess,” Denki said, then realized that actually, yes, ‘tiny cat marshmallows’ did perfectly describe the teeny housecats that immediately scattered in a dozen different directions. The spots of orange even kind of looked like roasted golden-brown bits.
“So,” Aizawa-Sensei said, “have you come up with a reason why your important support item is any different from Tokoyami’s or Shoji’s?”
“I’m just not as good as them,” Denki admitted in a rush, “I’m, you know… not smart. So it was probably, um. Probably my fault, anyway.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Aizawa-Sensei said sternly. “I thought you were a UA student.”
“I am!”
“And a member of the Hero course, in fact.”
“Well, I guess- yeah.”
“What makes you think UA would accept anyone but the best into the Hero course?”
“Uhh…”
“You’re smart, Kaminari,” Aizawa-Sensei said, bluntly honest and all the more impossible for it. “You’re clever, you can come up with plans on the fly like no other, and you have an innate understanding of your Quirk and how it works. Sometimes, you struggle with academics. But that doesn’t make you stupid. Neither does misplacing something every now and then, even something important. It’s not an unnecessary inconvenience or a bother for your friends to help you find something that’s important to you. They’re doing it because they want to help you, and you need help.”
And that’s what Heroes do, Denki realized. He was friends with Heroes, and he… well, he was certainly trying to be a Hero, and that was what Heroes did. They helped people who needed it. And, well… Denki was a person. He knew that much. So maybe… maybe Aizawa-Sensei was right, and Jiro was right, and all his friends who were helping him were right. Denki was pretty used to being wrong by now, so it would make sense if he was wrong about this, too.
So… yeah. Okay. Yeah. Denki needed to stop having big emotional conversations with Aizawa-Sensei. The man didn’t even show his own emotions, but somehow Denki always came away feeling like his life had been completely overhauled.
This time, he also came away with a tiny cat marshmallow chewing on his sock.
“Um,” Denki said.
“She’s found something important,” Aizawa-Sensei interpreted, “but she’s too small to move it. Follow her.”
So, Denki heaved himself up off the couch and followed the cat marshmallow. It led him up six flights of stairs to the roof, where three more catmallows were waiting at the base of the door, and when Denki opened it for them, they all sprinted outside across the roof. To the blanket that he’d left up there this morning when he’d gotten up early to watch the sunrise, energy jittering in his veins and anxiety creeping through his bones.
Denki’s tablet was sitting on the blanket, clear as day, and the catmallows were circling and sniffing and yowling at him, and Denki hurried over and reached through the pack of catmallows that had grown from four to seven to pick up his tablet. He turned it on, and looked at the familiar lock screen. It was a class picture from right as their decorum had started to fall apart and Bakugou had muttered something insulting about the photographer and Iida had started lecturing him and Tsu’s tongue was sticking out a little bit more than usual and Kirishima was trying to stifle his laughter and Mina was repeating Bakugou’s comment to Yaoyorozu who was already going pink and Jiro and Shoji were also both passing it on to everyone sitting around them and All Might looked dismayed and Aizawa-Sensei looked like he wanted to stop existing for a little bit. And it was his tablet. He’d found it.
Tears sprang into his eyes again, and again Denki dashed them away. He reached for his phone, and typed a blurry ‘found it’ into the group chat. His phone immediately started shouting ‘Pichu!’ at him, but Denki was busy scooping up the blanket and making sure all ten of the catmallows were following him as he closed the door to the roof and started down the stairs again.
Denki practically sprinted down the stairs, surrounded by a veritable flood of catmallows, and he burst into the common room out of breath as the rush of tiny kitties scattered around him like a breaking wave. Practically the whole class was in the common room, and they all turned to the door when Denki burst through it. Urged by some inexplicable instinct, Denki held up the tablet like it was Simba, and the whole room erupted into cheers.
“Well?” Bakugou demanded over the excitement. “Who got it?”
“Um,” Denki glanced down at the last few catmallows that still lingered around him. When Koda used his animals to succeed, they ruled that he took the win, not the wildlife, so logically, it should be- “Aizawa-Sensei.”
“What!?”
“He didn’t even move!”
“Kaminari.”
Denki dragged his gaze away from the chaos to find Aizawa-Sensei looking at him over the back of the couch. “Who won?”
“Uh, you did?”
“The cats, Kaminari.”
Denki flushed. “Um, are the white and orange ones… one cat? Because I can’t tell you which one exactly.”
Sensei nodded and shoved himself to his feet. Foot. Foot and cane? Denki wasn’t entirely sure.
He limped around the side of the couch and into the kitchen, where Bakugou had just finished dishing up the first serving of whatever he and Sato had been making.
The instant he sat down, he had all three cats at his feet, paws up on his legs, meowing insistently. Well, the black one, the calico, and at least a dozen of the catmallows.
“Ohmygosh, Sensei, your cats are so cute!” Hagakure squealed, momentarily distracted from the ongoing fight for hot food. Her words distracted almost everyone else, though Sensei, as usual, seemed impervious to their excitement.
“Put yourself back together,” he told the catmallows sternly, “and bring me the box.”
Pretty much the whole class gasped when the catmallows started leaping into each other and fusing back into larger cats. Denki could hear Midoriya mumbling something about exponents, which made Denki’s head hurt just thinking about it.
The last catmallow – still hanging around Denki’s feet – joined the party, and in only a few seconds, they had melded into eight, then four, then two, and then finally the one huge orange tabby. The second it had formed back up, the orange cat darted for the door. Denki watched it disappear through the cat flap with a distant sort of curiosity.
“What are their names, Sensei?” Mina demanded, on her knees practically under the table and currently getting chewed on by the calico.
“That one’s Missy, short of Missile Launcher,” Aizawa-Sensei said without an ounce of emotion in his voice, “the black one is Baby, short for Baby Demon.” The orange one reappeared with the handle of a sturdy plastic container gripped in its mouth, and Aizawa-Sensei hesitated.
“What about that one?”
“Her name used to be Little Bastard,” Aizawa-Sensei said cagily.
All of them knew for a fact that Aizawa-Sensei would not call a cat ‘Little Bastard’ in front of Eri.
“What’s her name now?” Mina pressed, sensing weakness. Unfortunately for her, Aizawa-Sensei had never felt weakness a moment in his life.
“Present Mic renamed her Bakugowo, because it means the same thing,” he answered ruthlessly.
Bakugowo chose that moment to trip over her own paws and almost faceplant on the floor. She meowed mournfully and stared at Aizawa-Sensei with dark, pleading eyes.
“I can’t stand up, Bakugowo, figure it out yourself.”
She did, eventually, figure it out herself, and Denki couldn’t tell whether he wanted to watch the cat’s obvious glee as Aizawa-Sensei retrieved a treat stick from the box she’d been carrying, or Bakugou’s slowly-reddening face as he tried to decide whether he should be thrilled or furious.
As it was Bakugou, he inevitably defaulted to furious.
Denki shrugged, snagged a bowl of noodles for himself, and scampered away to the other eating area. Not his problem, this time.