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

Ready, Set, Go!

Hitoshi Shinso was extremely excited for the Sports Festival. Before, he was looking forward to it as a chance to finally prove himself. Now, he was looking forward to winning, or at least standing on the podium.

He wasn't stupid. He knew that Kacchan—who's name he'd finally figured out was actually Bakugo, but Hitoshi liked Kacchan better anyway—hadn't taught them everything they needed to know in order to catch up to him. Todoroki probably had, but that wouldn't matter much against his quirk. Point is, Hitoshi knew that he hadn't improved enough over the course of two weeks to win a hand-to-hand fight against "class 1-A's Big Three", as the class had taken to calling Kacchan, Todoroki, and Michi. But he was good enough to hold his own in a fight, and he had his secret quirk still, thanks to Michi.

At first, he'd been worried that intentionally hiding his quirk would make him look more 'villainous' during the festival, which would hurt his chances of transferring, no matter how well he did. Eventually, though, Michi had won him over. The kid's advice was sound, and Hitoshi found that he trusted him, regardless of how many questions he had about his past.

And oh, he had a lot of questions.

They would have to wait until after he made it into the hero course, though, because he couldn't afford any distractions if he wanted to wipe the competition like he planned. No time to worry about what the hell was going on between him and Kacchan, or why certain Brainwash commands didn't work on him, or why he was so disappointed that they didn't work...

So many questions.

Back to the present, Shinso was—as always—struggling to pay attention to his teacher. This time it was from excitement and anticipation rather than, you know, being asleep. He reviewed the past festivals in his head, making predictions and trying to plan against certain quirks. He came up with as many different potential activation requirements that he could fake as he could, so he wouldn't run out and get discovered. He'd make sure that a few of them were the same, though, to cause more confusion when some students had the same ideas.

The festival was tomorrow, and he could tell that he wasn't the only one that was excited. None of his classmates really hoped to get transferred like he did, but they were still anxious to test their mettle against each other and the hero students. His teacher, Present Mic at the moment, didn't bother to try and make them focus; he was looking forward to it just as much, and he kept getting sidetracked from the lecture.

As soon as class ended, the sports festival was all anyone was talking about. Hitoshi quickly got up and made his way to the Secret Lab—well, the support shop. Michi was rubbing off on him, and he didn't know how to feel about that.

When he walked in, Mei was distracted with a very fancy-looking boot. He cocked his head to the side, trying to figure out what it might do. As soon as she noticed he was there, she abandoned the project and immediately grabbed the necklace on the desk next to her.

"Hitoshi! I got your voice distortion gear right here. You have no idea how hard it was to make it a pendant necklace, just saying. It would have been way easier to just make it a mask, but that would have made it pretty obvious your quirk was voice-related, huh?" She'd basically pounced on him, and he had to wonder why she was feeling him up when he wasn't even there to ask her for any more gear.

"Thanks, Mei," he said, trying to extract himself from her 'measuring'.

"Oh, no problem!" she exclaimed. "You'd better practice. It can make your voice sound like someone else's, and it can make it sound like it's from a different direction. You'll have to hide your mouth while you use it, though, or you'll get found out."

He nodded. "This is amazing. I'll make sure to put it to good use. Before I leave, what were you working on?"

"These babies are my propulsion boots for Battery Boy!" she said proudly, holding them up for him to see. He scratched the back of his head, confused.