Chapter Text
Their main problem, admittedly, was lack of communication.
This wasn’t an overlooked flaw as much as it was by design.
The thing is, it was one thing to know in theory that Denki and every person in his class were going to be a traitor to themselves and to society, and another thing entirely to acknowledge it. It was much easier to pretend that everything was normal, they were all your average high school students, as average as the country’s finest hero school students could be.
So they walked in every morning, greeted each other, wondered aloud what they would be doing in class, and complained about homework.
And very much did not address the fucking massive elephant in the room.
Denki thought they weren’t doing too bad overall, especially since their main job at the moment did seem to be just pretending that everything was fine. Denki was a big fan of not having to actively do nefarious things. Besides, Sensei had talked often and long about how he planned to destroy hero society with them, but he’d never really, well, given them instructions. So if there actually was something they were supposed to be doing, this was on him really.
Maybe they were just the face of the movement. Like models in a TV commercial. Denki’s brother had landed a shampoo commercial with one of the biggest beauty brands in Japan once and had bragged about it for weeks. Wait till he knew about the movement Denki was representing.
Whatever their role was, everyone seemed happy to keep up the anonymous, unspoken, agreement they had all come to.
Unfortunately, this could not last forever. And interestingly enough, the thing that did finally bring them all together and acknowledge the situation was none other than Izuku Midoriya.
Also known as: the only person in their class who wasn’t a traitor.
Or rather. Izuku Midoriya, and a distinct lack of a Monoma Neito.
Alright, it wasn’t completely accurate to say that none of them had ever acknowledged The Situation before. They just hadn’t talked about it before in class, or at school, or in text messages, or any place or time that wasn’t when Sensei would call to meet with them.
Denki still thought this wasn’t a bad move regardless, to be honest. Everyone was new at this whole traitor thing. What, did Sensei want them to blow their cover? Clearly this was just a matter of being cautious and being good traitors. Model traitors. If that was a thing. What did they have to talk to each other about anyway? Oh yea, I got into this mess because I had no quirk and my parents decided to contact a scary bogeyman to acquire one for their son. Now I have to "pay off the debt" and also he's implanted a failsafe bomb on me so that I stay loyal to him. How about you? Do you have a remotely activated dormant bomb on you too? What a joyful conversation for everyone involved.
Despite the whole ignoring situation, there was one person who they all were familiar with, whether or not they wanted to be.
And that person was Neito Monoma.
Denki had ended up in class 1A, Kirishima was in 1A, Jirou was in 1A, Ashido was in 1A, as were Sato and Sero, two people Denki himself did not know, but Jirou was familiar with.
Presumably, everyone else in the class were also traitors.
Monoma was not in class 1A.
Monoma was fucking fuming.
Denki was pretty sure literal steam would be coming out of his ears if it weren’t for his need to look presentable in front of Sensei, but even then, it was close.
“I tried everything sir.” Monoma was saying. “I made my case and did my best to get them to move me to class 1A, but they would not budge. Obviously, I could not explain the real reason I require being moved.”
“This is…an unfortunate situation,” Sensei began slowly. “I had planned for and pulled strings for all of you to end up in the same class. Everyone else in 1A is one of ours though, yes?”
To Denki’s side, Kirishima stepped forward. “I have a list of all the students in the class right here, sir.”
Monoma jumped in eagerly as Sensei took the paper. “I took a look at it earlier, Sensei. There is one student I do not recognize. I believe he is a normal student who took my rightful spot.”
Sensei didn’t even bother reading the paper, and now that Denki thought about it, because really, he avoided thinking about Sensei as much as possible, could the man even read? He had no eyes. Maybe he had a quirk that let him read without eyes.
“I’ll deal with the extra student.” Sensei said dismissively. “Just tell me his name.”
“Izuku Midoriya.” Monoma answered promptly.
Denki waited for him to say that he would deal with it in one way or the other, that he would get rid of Midoriya (poor kid, Denki had only just met him but he seemed sweet) and have Monoma back in their class and they’d all live happily ever after in traitor hell.
Instead, Sensei stilled. “Izuku Midoriya, you say?”
“Yes.”
Sensei appeared to mull that over for quite a bit. “Change of plans,” he announced. “What happened was unfortunate, but the Midoriya boy will have to remain in the class. It is too risky to try to take him out.”
“What?”
Sensei ignored Monoma, turning to Denki, Kirishima and Iida, still standing to the side.
“I assigned you a backup leader. Let them know they are your new leader now.”
“What??” Monoma’s voice cracked.
Monoma stayed back to plead his case with Sensei, futile, really, though Denki admired his guts for trying that. His tendency to be a massive kiss-ass with Sensei meant he had more leeway though, and was probably part of the reason he’d gotten the role of class leader in the first place. Literally nobody else cared that much about being class leader, or about being a traitor at all. Or so, Denki assumed.
He didn’t know for sure.
Because nobody was fucking talking about it.
Meanwhile, he had a different problem on his hands.
It was quiet on their way back home.
“So uh.” Denki broke the silence. "About the backup leader.”
He tried for a joke. “I sure hope you guys remember who that is supposed to be because if not that would be a problem.”
Silence.
Ah.
“Kirishima? Iida?” He tried.
Iida was sweating.
This was going to be a problem.
Iida ended up being the one to bite the bullet and end the unofficial vow of silence by creating a class group chat without Midoriya, and impressively managing to corral most of the class to show up at the meeting spot and time he had picked.
“We need to talk about our leader,” Iida began. “By a stroke of fate, our leader, Monoma, has ended up in class 1B by accident, and a random student by the name of Midoriya Izuku, who is not involved in this, has ended up in our class. We are gathered here to discuss who our new leader will be.”
Denki did not understand why this conversation couldn’t have been had in the group chat itself.
“We cannot have paper traces of our betrayal,” Iida told him very seriously. Alright. Denki didn’t think meeting in the park just outside UA was the height of discretion either but he would pick his battles.
“I thought we were just going to continue ignoring this situation.” Asui said mildly, to popular assent and Bakugo’s confusion.
“What situation?” Bakugo asked.
“Exactly.”
“As much as I would like to keep our silence, as it could be vital for us to remain undetected, we need to address a problem that has come to light.”
Todoroki pitched Midoriya as a leader, who quickly racked up votes in favour until Iida intervened before they could adjourn the meeting and never talk about this again. He told them they couldn’t elect someone who wasn’t even a traitor to lead their cause, along with expressing that they were not electing a leader themselves and did anyone remember who the backup leader was. Honestly, Denki was of the opinion that Iida himself could be backup leader with how he was taking control of the situation, but Iida had given him a disappointed look which reminded him so much of his mom that he had promptly shut his mouth.
The following thirty seconds were a pretty good recreation of the walk back from Sensei’s, just with more people, before Jirou spoke up.
“Oh wait, I know who it is.”
___
Hitoshi was having a fantastic day.
Oh, that was heavy sarcasm, by the way.
The last thing Hitoshi wanted was to be semi kidnapped by a guy he had met maybe seven times (that number was too high to give the impression they were strangers he was trying to convey but that still didn’t mean they were friends), dragged non suspiciously down a hallway to have a non suspicious conversation in a broom closet.
“So how have you been?” Kaminari asked casually.
Hitoshi gave him a dead eyed stare.
“Get to the point, Kaminari.”
“Okay okay cool. So like, Monona isn't in our class, and as you know he’s supposed to be our leader, which is a problem. And you’re the backup leader so-are you eating a sandwich?”
“This is my fucking lunch break and I’m spending it in a broom closet.”
“Fair enough. So anyway me and some of the other guys were talking and we were wondering, would you like to be the leader?”
Hitoshi did not want to be the backup leader.
He didn't even want to be involved in this whole thing, and had mentioned it, on many occasions. Unfortunately for him, Sensei seemed to find his back talking amusing and to his dismay, Hitoshi had been named backup leader.
He’d thought they’d all forgotten about it, in all honesty. After he’d failed the entrance exam (which had been on purpose, not that anyone believed him when he tried to tell them that) Sensei had offered to help him to pass the exam, and Hitoshi had no doubts he’d done the same for other people too. There was no way fucking Mineta and the invisible girl had made it in on their own.
He’d taken the exam anyway just so people would know he was interested in the hero course, but he planned on making it in his own way, by proving himself at the Sport Festival.
He was not going to lead villain class 1A.
Kaminari was still staring at him expectantly.
Other people seemed to think otherwise.
“I’m not in your class either,” Hitoshi said flatly.
“Yea, but since neither of you are in the course, we thought we’d ask one of you. And we like you more than Monoma. So.” Kaminari shrugged.
Hitoshi silently cursed whatever gods may exist for giving Neito Monoma such a rancid personality they preferred Hitoshi’s best attempts at coming off as an asshole to him.
“I don't want to be your leader!” Hitoshi hissed. “I don't want to be part of this! I’ve told you before!”
Kaminari raised an eyebrow. “Okayyyyy,” he said, dragging out the word. “So I guess that's a no?”
“Yes, it's a no!” Hitoshi flung his hands out, forgetting he was in a closet. The closet doors opened abruptly, startling a passing girl.
“Is someone in there- oh,” Her face was surprised at the two of them, then morphed into understanding, then mild embarrassment.
“It’s not what it looks like.” Hitoshi blurted out.
“Yes it is.”
Hitoshi was going to murder Kaminari.
“He’s a traitor!” he hissed. “They’re all traitors!”
The girl gave them a look that could roughly be translated to ‘yikes’ and walked away quickly and too late did Hitoshi once again realize how that could be interpreted.
“I didn’t cheat on him, I promise we’re just working things out.” Kaminari called after her cheerfully. Motherfucker. Hitoshi glared at him.
“What? It gave us a cover.”
Hitoshi was still going to kill him.
___
Denki called a second bush meeting to inform everyone that Shinsou had unfortunately said no, to much disgruntled muttering. He felt mildly insulted.
“You’re welcome to go convince him yourself if you want.”
Sero reproposed electing Midoriya, his reasoning being that Midoriya had given him a cupcake for his birthday today and that was very sweet, to which Satou chimed in that hey he had also made Sero a cake.
“Do you want to be the leader, Satou?”
“No?”
Dead end after dead end.
The good news was that eventually someone remembered they did have a backup backup leader.
The bad news, well.
They had to hold a third meeting to figure out who would go talk to the backup backup leader. Which lead nowhere. So they had to draw straws, courtesy of Yayourozu. Denki got the shortest one.
Which was why he found himself being the one to go talk to their backup leader once again.
He honestly didn’t mind that much but given he had been the one to go talk to Shinsou, he felt like he should’ve been excluded from this draw. It was a matter of principle.
The others said it didn’t count because he had volunteered to go talk to Shinsou.
He raised his hand to open the door to the room he’d been told their backup backup leader was in and proceeded to be thrown backwards into a student, who hit another student who hit the wall.
Ow.
Mei Hatsume stared at him from behind large goggles. “Hi!”
This was going to go over well.
Shockingly, Hatsume also said no, and Denki returned from his quest thankfully with all his fingers still attached to his body and three small flying gadgets that only played the same song over and over. Hatsume had said something about free samples and brand image.
There was an air of exasperation about the leader discussion meeting bush. At least Bakugo had stopped showing up, Denki couldn’t imagine his temper lasting long enough for this without nearby bushes being exploded, and their meet up spot was unconvincing as it was. This was an after-school club at this point.
At the very least, they had all gotten more comfortable talking about the situation.
Class Leader Discussion
Tokoyami: why sensei would choose a backup leader and a backup backup leader that don’t even want to be leaders is beyond me
Sero: i mean have you met his successor
Sero: he has bad taste in choosing stuff like this
Tokoyami: who?
Sero: you know the guy with the hands
Tsuyu: well that sure narrows things down
Sero: with hands on his face
Tokoyami: i have no idea who you’re talking about
Hagakure: sensei has a successor?
Yaoyorozu: guys we still don’t have a leader
Kirishima: any chance we got a backup backup backup leader?
Alas, they did not.
“How did Midoriya even get in this class?” Kirishima asked them the following day at lunch. He had been fighting a losing battle against identifying any ingredient in the soup they had been served, and seemed to have found a new topic to pass the time. “I thought Sensei planned this meticulously.”
Denki shrugged. “He did seem surprised. I guess it’s possible that some things slipped out from under his control,”
“I mean I'm not opposed to it, besides the whole finding a leader headache thing. He knocked out Monoma and is really sweet. Still weird though.” Kirishima turned to Bakugo, who was glowering silently at his food. “Hey you’ve been weirdly quiet lately. You and Midoriya are friends, aren’t you? Do you know how he got in?”
“He took the fucking entrance exam like the rest of you extras. How else.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I ain’t telling shit.”
He shoved a spoonful of rice into his mouth and that was that. Denki exchanged a helpless look with Kirishima.
Iida announced that they should ask Sensei who the leader was, which seemed like a good idea to Denki if one really wanted to die. Asui asked for clarification on what the leader was supposed to do and nobody really had an answer to that besides shrug and “communicate with and meet weekly with Sensei I guess.”
“Communicate what.” Tokoyami muttered. “He never tells us anything important.”
“Frankly, I don’t think he cares who the leader is.” Ashido said, propped up on one of Sero’s desks. They had moved the meeting spot from the bush to Sero’s house while his parents were away, to solve this thing once and for all.
“I don’t think he can even recognize us individually.” Denki added. The amount of times he’d been confused for Aoyama or Ojiro on account of them all having blond hair was frankly insulting, though he was willing to give Sensei a pass on account of not having eyes. At least he’d never been called Bakugo. Still.
Yayourozu sat crossed legged on the carpet, eyebrows creased in thought. “I think we can pick our own leader inside the class at this point.”
“Any volunteers?”
Everyone in the room visibly grimaced.
Class Leader Discussion
Iida: As our leader, backup leader and backup backup leader are all not in the class, I and the others who have gathered at Sero’s house have decided we will take turns being the leader
Shouji: Is that allowed?
Yaoyorozu: it seems so, yes
Shouji: oh cool
Sato: that was surprisingly anticlimactic
Kirishima: Iida you and Yayourozu have been really great throughout this whole thing. Are you sure you don’t want to lead?
Iida: absolutely not
Yaoyorozu: oh no thank you
Denki: I went to talk to both Shinsou and Hatsume so little credit for me
Bakugo: kaminari do you want to be the leader
Denki: no
Bakugo: then shut the fuck up
Denki: so are we going to go back to pretending all of this never happened
Ashido: nah
Tsuyu: i like this
Tokoyami: it is nice to have someone to talk to about this whole thing
Denki: nice
Denki changed the group name to “We’re all going to hell”