The Greatest

03

Saturdays aren't usually very eventful for me, I usually spend it studying or just chilling at home because I’ve finished my homework. I occasionally go out with Mum, whether she’s dragging me out of the house to go have coffee with her or we go for lunch. That’s only if she gets time off work. Or I sometimes go to study with the BakuSquad and we go to the mall for lunch. And then there’s training with Master Fu and the rest of the active miraculous holders. That comes up quite a bit.
I got up from the couch and went and stood in the kitchen and checked the charge on my phone - 98% - and went to grab out the milk from the fridge and a tea bag from the cupboard. My phone started ringing, I put down the milk and tea bag and answered it. “Hello, Kaminari Denki speaking.” I said, “Denki, can you be in Paris in the next ten minutes, we have training.” Master Fu said on the other end. “Cool, I’ll just flick Max a text.” I hung up and flicked Max a text and ran to the door, got my shoes and grabbed my hoodie from the back of one of the chairs in the dining room and made it back to the kitchen just in time to see a pixelated portal appear.
I stepped through into Max’s room, gaming posters littered the wall, he had his set up opposite his bed and his wall next to his bed had a picture of a video game character that I didn’t recognize.
He closed the portal and de transformed, we left his house and began walking down the street. “Are we in a normal place?” I asked. “Well duh, where else would we go to train?” Max replied. “Right.” I answered as we turned the corner and saw the news crew. I took my phone out of my pocket, it automatically changed to the time and date since it recognized that I was in Paris. It was currently 5pm.
“You keep your location on?” Max asked me. “Yeah.” I said, “can’t your friends see that on snap?” He asked. “Yeah I do. My snap location is jailbroken so I can move my bitmoji around, I just leave it in Japan so no one suspects a thing.” I explained. “And here I thought you an idiot” Max laughed. “Haha.” I replied sarcastically as he opened the door to Master Fu’s shop and we walked in and immediately up the stairs. The training room was off to the right and all the curtains were black out and closed. I saw Adrian, Mari, Alya, Nino and Luka there.
“Where were you when we went skating?” I asked. “Busy.” He replied and I shook my head. I went and lined up with the rest of my friends and picked up the wooden staff beside me. Master Fu stood in front of us holding a wooden staff, identical to ours.
“Now, today, you learn to fight with one of these, to enhance your overall performance.” He told us. He believed that training us in our civilian forms would make us better in our hero forms and help me with training at UA so I didn’t just have the aspect of using my quirk well, but I could be agile as well. He twirled his staff, only using one hand. “I want you to attempt to repeat this. And once you can do it, we can go from there.” Master Fu said. I held my staff in my right hand, that being my dominant hand and slowly used my fingers to move it around in a circular motion.
I dropped it.
I picked it back up and tried again and watched Master Fu’s finger movements to see how he did it and I tried again. It honestly took me about half an hour before I could do it without dropping it, but I was still going slow. Adrian was way ahead of us in this because his main weapon was a staff and he’d just learnt to go with it, he was also strangely good at everything. It was very unfair. I dropped it.
Fuck. I thought to myself and Master Fu picked it up. He held it out towards me. “When a leaf falls from the tree, it does not always hit the ground, but if it does, it does not stay there. It gets back up and flys away with the help of the wind.” He said and took the staff from his hand and I tried again. When the next half hour had passed, I could do this at a reasonable pace and by an hour and half I could do it quite fast. “Now.” Master Fu said, we all stopped and he smiled, “time to learn how to use this in combat.”

***

Sitting atop the eiffel tower, we watched the day turn to afternoon. It was about 10pm here and 3pm there. Four hours of combat training was utterly exhausting but it was fun. “Honestly, if we were allowed to drink I’d be buying us wine.” Adrian said. “Not all of us here are wine Mums.” Luka laughed. “I’m not either, but at least we look classy.” Adrian said, turning back to admire the view. We were sitting by the barricade with our legs dangling between the bars. “I should head back.” I said, looking at my watch. “Nah.” Alya laughed, nudging my arm with her elbow.
“It’s what? 3pm for you?” She asked. “Yeah, and it's 10pm here.” I said, looking up at the sky. “And the stars.” Mari said, “no shit.” Nino replied, putting on his headphones and turning up this music.
“I wonder what he’s listening to?” Luka asked. Alya picked up his phone and nodded. “He’s listening to Jagged Stone.” She said and we all nodded. “What’s your curfew Alya?” I asked. “9pm.” She turned to me and laughed. “Your sister is going to lose her shit.” Luka told her and she swatted the air. “It’s fine.” She replied.
My phone buzzed and I looked at the screen. It was Mina. I sighed and opened my contacts and brought up her message.

Mina👽
Dude, where are you?

I sighed and texted back.

Out, why?

Mina👽

Study group was supposed to be tomorrow but Sero told me to tell you all that it’s tonight at 4.

Shit.

I’ll be there.

I turned towards my friends and stuffed my phone in my pocket. “I need to go.” I said, “No!” Alya called. “I have study group with my friend from school.” I told them. Luka tapped Max on the shoulder who looked up from his book and nodded. Max and I  began to walk down the eiffel tower. It took about fifteen minutes to get down and then we dropped into his place. He transformed into Pegasus and opened up a portal.
“Thanks mate.” I said, “yeah, see you next time.” He told me and I stepped through and I was suddenly back in my living room. I grabbed my bag from upstairs and packed my books and pencil case in and came back downstairs and turned the TV off, picked my phone up again and headed to Sero’s house.

***

It took me about half an hour to get to Sero’s house on foot. The exterior of his house was wooden slats that had white paint scraping off; he had a big deck that led to a ranch slider which went straight into his lounge. I knocked on the door and his Dad opened it. “Hey Kaminari, are you here for study group?” He asked, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Yeah.” I replied and he stepped away from the door and allowed me to walk through.
I followed him in the lounge into the kitchen which connected to the hallway, Sero’s room was the first on the right and I walked in and saw them sitting in a circle. Sero on his bed next to Jirou who was in the middle of him and Mina. Bakugou sat in a wooden chair next to Kirishima who sat cross legged on the floor. I went and sat next to him. “Hey guys.” I said and took my bag off and took out my books. “We were about to wonder if you were coming.” Kirishima said, “I’m not that late.” I said.
“That’s gotta be your theme song but in a sentence.” Jirou laughed. “What are we working on?” I asked. Mina laughed, but with a sarcastic tone. “Calculus.” Bakugou said as he leaned over towards Sero so he could help him. “Fuck.” I said under my breath. Mina looked up. “Kaminari Denki, did you just curse?” She asked me. I realised that nobody in the BakuSquad apart from Jirou had heard me swear. “He swears all the time, you guys either aren’t for it or you aren’t listening.” Jirou smiled.
“Bro.” Kirishima said, punching me in the arm lightly. “I would expect that type of language from Bakubro but never you.” Kirishima told me. “I don’t swear around you guys, only Jirou and my other friends.” I said, “other friends? You have other friends?” Sero asked. “Yeah.” I said, not bothering to elaborate. “You haven’t mentioned them before.” Bakugou commented. “Because it never came up.” I sighed. And they just left it at that.