Lightning Strikes the Heart

Chapter 3: Shaking off the Nightmare

WARNING!!!!! GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF PANIC ATTACK AT THE END!!! PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU THINK IT MIGHT TRIGGER YOU!!!!! I'LL PUT A *WARNING!!* WHERE IT STARTS AND A *WARNING END!!!* WHERE THE PANIC ATTACK ENDS!!!!

December 6, Wednesday Morning, 5:30 am

Early Wednesday morning, he got a text from a contact on his burner labeled ⚡️💩. When he woke up at 5:30, he looked at the phone and grappled with the urge to throw the stupid thing across the room again.

Spring's Mall, Saturday, 2 pm, 2nd floor Hot Topic.
Don't be late.

"Fucking asshat," Kaminari grumbled as he texted back.

Fine.
Have you found out anything about Princess?

His leg jostled on the bed as he waited anxiously for an answer. It'd been 4 months since Kamino and All For One's capture. Four months with absolutely no idea where she was....damn it all, what the fuck was taking him so long to answer?!

Finally, his burner phone vibrated. He opened it quickly, his hands slightly shaking. Reading the text, he felt short of breath–and the need to punch that motherfucker in the face.

No.
Do your fucking job and maybe we'll get somewhere, you useless piece of shit.

He threw the phone across the room, barely resisting the urge to scream at it. But he had Koda on one side and Iida on the other–he didn't want to startle Koda (poor guy was already enough of a nervous wreck as it was) and disturbing Iida, at this time of night, with the words he wanted to scream? Bad idea all around. The uptight class pres would never let it go and would probably doggedly ask questions he didn't want to answer.

So he sat there in his bed, head in his hands, breathing deeply, in and out. Getting pissed at that moron would do nothing but make his day even crappier. You'd think, after almost eleven years of this bullshit, he would've gotten used to it by now. Eleven years ago... He shook his head. Going down memory lane wouldn't help him at all.

After he'd calmed himself down, he laid back down and pulled the covers up. He had 2 more hours of sleep he could catch and he wasn't going to turn that down.

________________________________________________________________________________

"Yo, Kaminari!" Kirishima called as he walked into Mr. Aizawa's class. "What's up, bro?" Kaminari waved back at him and sat down, stifling a yawn. "Didn't get much sleep?" Mina asked beside him, giggling. "Let me guess, spent the whole night playing a game on your phone?" Sero smirked, leaning forward to look over Jirou's shoulder, who was steadily ignoring them. Kaminari grinned sheepishly and shrugged. "You got me." They'd probably die of shock if they found out he'd really been reading Ernest Hemingway in untranslated English all night Monday. And after those texts this morning, he couldn't get back to sleep for the life of him and was completely awake those last two hours before class. Thank god he'd gotten static resistant sheets from the school or he would've resembled a human burrito come morning, with all the nervous electricity he was generating.

Kirishima smiled at him. "Well, just don't forget the study group tonight. I doubt Bakugo would take 'I stayed up last night playing games' as an excuse to miss it." Kaminari laughed. "Definitely not." Right then, Mr. Aizawa walked into class and the group sat back in their seats. Leaning against his hand, Kaminari was only half-listening to the homeroom teacher as he thought back to the text he'd gotten that morning, but had been entirely too distracted to pick apart.