A Hero's Dirty Work (Villain Deku / Vigilante Deku au)

Electrified

Denki Kaminari winced as he fried yet another robot. It didn't hurt as much as it used to, but so much electricity coursing through your nerves still wasn't pleasant. To make it worse, he was getting pretty close to his limit. Coherent thought was getting harder, and pretty soon he'd be reduced to a helpless, gibbering mess as his brain short-circuited.

He felt himself slipping and paused for a moment, closing his eyes to focus. He didn't go through everything he did just to fry his brain a couple minutes into the exam. He managed to get a hold of himself, opening his eyes and sprinting through the streets, looking for more enemies. 

He'd been doing well, but he'd admit that he hadn't been the smartest with his power. There was this girl in his battle center, Kyoka Jiro, that had gotten his attention, and he just might have gone overboard to show off when he knew she could see him. He turned a corner and grinned to himself when he saw her again, temporarily immobilizing a robot with a vibration blast before using her extendable earphone jacks to press a button on the back of its neck, deactivating it.

Unluckily for her, three more of the higher level ones burst out from inside a building all around her, pelting her with bits of debris. His first thought was, well, it's just a test. I should see how she does, it could be cool. Then he remembered his dad telling him about this part of the exam.

"You won't die, but they have Recovery Girl on site so they won't hold back, either. If you slip up, you could end up with some broken bones."

He really did not want to watch the punk rock girl that he'd just decided he liked get any bones broken, so he broke into a sprint. He reached the first robot just as they all converged, sending a carefully controlled wave of electricity to short circuit them without shocking Kyoka. Unfortunately, the power expenditure sent him just over the edge, and he felt a familiar fog settle over his mind.

"Thanks!" he heard Kyoka say, sounding like she was far away. "It was Kaminari, right?"

"Yay," he said, giving her a thumbs up with what he knew to be the dumbest expression ever on his face. "Yay."

She burst into laughter. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"Yay!"

"Okay then," she said, drawing out the 'o'. "I'll be seeing you, I guess." She ran off.

He had one more coherent thought through the haze.

Dammit. Well, so much for that.

*                *                *

By the time he came to himself, he was sitting on his couch back home. He grabbed his head with a groan, and his mom poked her head into the room. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm back to earth," he said tiredly. "I don't know how well I did, though. I shorted out sooner than I should have."

"Oh really?" she asked curiously. "How come?"

Kaminari sighed to himself. His mom loved talking about this sort of thing, and she would figure it out no matter what he said. Might as well just tell her. "Well, there was this girl—"

He was cut off by her excited squeal, and he winced as the sound exacerbated his headache. "Finally! Oh, there's something special about this one, isn't there? I like her already."

"You haven't even met her," Denki said, confused. What was different this time? Although he did have a tendency to fall hard and fast for certain girls, it didn't happen very often. And his mom hadn't reacted this way to any of his other crushes.