#i want to improve this chapter and i aim to rewrite it when im further in the fic but not rn

[aro-aizawa]

Locked Out - Chapter 5

A Danny Phantom / My Hero Academia Crossover, set mid season 2 and pre-canon respectively.

[Chapter 1]  |  [Chapter 4]  |  [On AO3]

A/N: sorry about how long it took me to update, this chapter fought me and i don’t really like it but i just wanna get it over w lol

“I’m home.” Hitoshi called as he entered the apartment and locked the door behind him. He turned and threw his keys onto the hall table, landing in the dish he was aiming for on the first try. He barely had time to do a victory little fistbump celebration before a body was racing down the hall and almost tackled him as they slid into him. 

“Toshi!” 

“Hey Yume, you feeling better?” Hitoshi smiled, hugging the eleven year old back before letting go and making his way into the kitchen, knowing his sister would follow. 

“Yep!” Yume grinned, “I coincidentally started to feel better after my third period ended, but it wasn’t worth walking all the way to school by then.” 

Hitoshi laughed. “You’re going to have to make up that test tomorrow, you know that, right?”

“Yeah, but I crammed today to get that extra knowledge in my brain. Plus I got to sleep in, it’s not like I do this every single time I get a test. Just when it’s overwhelming, y’know.” The girl shrugged and hopped up to the stool at the breakfast nook. “How was school for you?”

“Hm,” Hitoshi hummed as he inspected the fridge for what they’d have for dinner. “It was weird, there was a new student.”

“Really? This late in the year? Why?” 

“Not sure, but he’s from America. He’s…an interesting guy.” Hitoshi commented, turning his nose up at their dinner options before deciding they’d get takeout tonight instead of cooking, he grabbed an apple then closed the door and faced Yume. “He decided to sit with me at lunch because he was tired of everyone badgering him.”

Yume snorted. “That is a mood. Did you sit in silence, or did he talk to you?”

“We talked a little, I warned him to stay away, he said he didn’t care about my quirk, then he took a nap.” Hitoshi furrowed his brows. “He’s a little weird, but…he stood up for me when people told him to stay away from me. So maybe he’s not bad.”

Yume perked up. “Please tell me that you’re going to make friends with him. Pleeeeease!!” She playfully hit the counter repeatedly as he demanded. 

Hitoshi laughed. “I dunno, Yume. I’m not gonna make him, but if he decides to hang out with me more then I’ll at least make an effort, how about that? As long as you don’t skip any more school for at least the next school year, that is.”

Yume pouted. “For the next month, and you invite him over when you do befriend him.” 

“Done.”

The restaurant was somewhat busy, the bustle of talk surrounded him in a comforting way, scrapes of cutlery and chopsticks against dishes, the sound of drinks being prepared. The atmosphere was nice too, it wasn’t too bright nor too dark in the large room, with enough wall decor for there to be enough places to stare at and not get bored. 

It was the perfect place to sit and do classwork in Danny’s opinion. 

He never usually did his homework the day he got it set, but he needed to figure out where he’d need to cram to be able to pass as from this universe. His teachers had each given him a copy of the syllabus, and annoyingly he found that most of the stuff was either in line with what he was currently failing back home, or things he had absolutely no experience with. Not enough things he was familiar with and grasped well.

It was looking like he’d have to fill all that spare time he thought he had, with actually. Doing? Schoolwork? A baffling idea to say the least. Jazz would be proud. Maybe when he got home, he’d manage to improve his grades and surprise everyone by getting Bs in his classes. Wait no— that would be too high an expectation. Maybe C+? 

His musings were interrupted by a glass of soda being placed on the table. “Here you go kid, how was school?” 

Danny looked up at Kirika and had half the mind to smirk. Her uniform was very much not her usual style; white dress shirt with a black bowtie, black waistcoat, skirt, tights, and shiny mary jane shoes. The restaurant was mostly western themed, so the clothes matched, being the most stereotypical waitress uniform outside of a diner waitress. 

He’d also been enjoying watching her serve some of the other tables. The best one had been the next table over when Danny could literally see her eye twitching as she tried to take their order, her smile tense and almost maniacal. He’d had to go to the bathroom to laugh loudly at that without provoking her. 

“It’s so hard to tell. Almost everyone in school wanted to ask me invasive questions, and my homeroom teacher tried to talk to me like I was stupid at first. But I also got peace at lunch when I sat with a social pariah, and I think I’m gonna try and befriend him. Didn’t make any cultural blunders yet, so there’s that. But the schoolwork is gonna kill me.”

Kirika snorted. “Yeah, school does that to you. But keep up with it kid, even when you get back. I never went to high school and look at me now, I am staying right here trying to avoid table ten with a five year old who keeps looking me in the eye and spilling their drink on the table just for me to clean up.” She said with a tight smile, ignoring the call of “waiter!” that came from the table in question.

“Would it give you extra time if I ordered an appetiser?” Danny asked with a laugh, wondering about the lack of high school, but knowing now wasn’t the time to go into it.

Kirika pursed her lips and debated. “I’ll get you a salad, that way you’re still hungry when I clock out and we have dinner here.” She said, writing out the order on her notepad before heading towards the kitchens. 

Danny rolled his eyes, it was better than nothing, he could munch while working he guessed. 

It wasn’t until someone sat in the seat opposite him that he realised he’d gotten so absorbed in his work, that he’d blocked out the rest of the world. A quick glance at his phone showed that he’d been focused for well over an hour and a half, he’d almost finished his bullet point list of things that he’d need to study organised into two neat sections. One for things he was familiar with, and another for Kirika to explain and help him understand. 

Speaking of which, Kirika had sat down and put two plates on the table, shoving Danny’s work aside to clear some room. “Here you go, eat up.”

“Thanks,” Danny said, feeling slightly weird as he came out of his hyperfocused haze. It was also so weird coming out of it, the world just didn’t quite feel real and it was all overwhelming as his senses slammed into him as one. He also noticed that the salad Kirika had ordered for him sat uneaten on the table, so Danny tucked into the burger, noticing how hungry he was. 

Danny ate silently, but faster than he usually would, his body needing the extra food to make up for the hyperfocus from before. He listened to Kirika talk about her day, and almost spat out his food when a table tried to get her attention and berated her for not doing her job. Kirika stared at the guy with the most dead look and told him in a ‘polite’ voice that she wasn’t working at the moment. 

As they left, Danny suggested that if he kept coming to the restaurant after school, she should probably bring a change of clothes so she can change out of her uniform when they stay to eat. Kirika wrinkled her nose at that, one oddity about her that Danny learned was that she didn’t like carrying bags. She’d usually just use her portals to grab things from her apartment directly instead of packing bags to carry. Another thing that she was struggling to adjust to. 

When they got home, Danny really didn’t want to do more school work, but he knew he had to make sure that there wasn’t anything stupid in the curriculum that he’d get strange looks to not know anything about. So as they sat down in the living room (with Kirika flopping on the couch face down), Danny asked if they could go through the list. 

Kirika groaned loudly at that, too tired from all the work she’d done today and Danny commiserated with that. Without speaking, it was mutually agreed that they’d do that later after they wind down for a while. After a few minutes, Kirika stood up and went into her bedroom for a while. 

Danny was half expecting her to not come back out and was about to turn the TV on to have a look at the local news, when Kirika came back with a box. 

“Wait, is that a Nintendo Wii? You guys have the same consoles? Does Nintendo exist in this universe?” 

Kirika laughed. “Yeah, it’s a little different though. As in, to me, your Nintendo consoles are flipped. Like those mirror tracks in Mario Kart? That but with literally everything on the console.”

Danny stared at her. “I think that might be the most heartbreaking thing you’ve ever told me.” He said in a wobbly voice. He hates those mirror tracks so much. 

Kirika had to pause in setting up the console to cackle loudly, it went on for a while before she got a hold of herself and finished setting it up with a shake of her head. It didn’t take them long before they had a working console, and she threw him a remote. 

Danny almost choked when he saw that the game was called ‘Luigi Kart’. He turned to her slowly and she grinned wide and sharklike. “You know how Mario is the main character in your universe? Here’s, it’s Luigi.”

“I…I do not know how to process this.”

The next day at school, Danny had arrived early to class. It was still weird how there were no interruptions to his day, no ghosts sneak attacking him in the night, nor any attack where he’d have to dash out of school and flake the rest of the day, trying to pretend that he hadn’t. But he needed a little bit more time to go over all the things that Kirika had told him about the Quirk Universe (different from Ghost Universe, it made Danny feel better to name the two) that he’d need to know for school. 

There weren’t massively concerning things. He knew the bare minimum details now that could be passed off as ‘I don’t really care about world events’, or ‘I didn’t pay much attention to the news then’. Not ‘Wait there were multiple wars around the globe that overhauled society completely within the same time frame?’. 

Which was…yeah, Danny wasn’t really surprised to hear that there had been a decade long period where wars reigned when quirks first appeared en masse. Wars were always waged when people wanted something of someone else’s, whether it be land, money, power, eradication or subjugation. If suddenly people had all these superpowers… of course someone would use it if they had the lack of morals to start a war. 

Thankfully, from what Danny could grasp though the world had been at war, it was generally just countries being at war within themselves. Like the whole world decided that they’d each have a civil war. Some countries’ whole political structure got overthrown because of the outcomes of those wars. It was…fascinating learning about these things. 

It was absolutely overwhelming, the amount of things he’d be expected to learn in such a short amount of time, but it somewhat felt like uncovering the creator of a video game had made a whole world building encyclopaedia about the game world and it was thicker than a phone book. 

Except way more interesting because in fiction, no matter how detailed, there would always be a layer of…neatness? Things were both way too tidy but way too messy, as if someone had painted a brilliant photorealistic landscape, but when they came to drawing the sky they drew a sun in the corner with a crayon and called it a day. 

But anyways. Back to the present. Danny was now to his knowledge, caught up on what he’d have to learn, and it was frankly a scary amount. Again, good grades were not going to be expected, nor would he try to achieve them, but he wanted to get a decent grade. He was used to barely coasting by back home when all the subjects and background behind them was familiar, but that wasn’t something he’d be able to get away with here in the slightest. To coast by he’d have to work harder than he had ever done before. 

It was refreshing though not to have his classmates swarming him, many gave him weird looks and kept their distance but Danny would take that any day of the week. He tried his best to follow along in class and take as many notes as he possibly could, but he was pretty sure that he failed. At some point he decided to take the risk and just record the lessons with his phone, in the hopes that it’d help him if he missed something during his note-taking. 

When lunch finally came, he wanted to cry with relief, his brain felt fried and he was absolutely looking forward to a quiet lunch with Shinsou. Thankfully he didn’t have to rush after Shinsou, Danny seemed to have been able to pack up at the same time as him, and caught him as he left the classroom. 

They didn’t speak as Danny fell into step beside him, but Danny did make a note of the students that continued to gossip and give them both judgemental looks and expressions. Maybe he’d get in trouble for quirk usage, but he missed using his powers to prank Dash…it would perhaps relieve some stress by exercising that particular skill set again. 

Shinsou led him back to the spot they’d gone to yesterday, and though it would be easier to use his powers to float up the wall, it had been kind of fun to jump it like he’d done yesterday. As they sat on the wall, and pulled out their lunches, Shinsou visibly hesitated before addressing him. 

“You’re…Fenton, right?” He asked cautiously, as if he was worried that Danny wouldn’t respond. 

“Yep, I prefer to go by Danny though. But I also understand that there’s cultural things, so people’ll usually call me by my surname. Feel free to call me whatever, but if we’re gonna hang out at lunch like this a lot, I’d really prefer Danny. I won’t call you by your first name unless you ask me to, though, Shinsou.” Danny clarified, one of the first things that Kirika had taught him about Japanese culture was that. It was definitely different to what he was used to, but he could understand it enough to respect it. 

“Uh, okay then. Danny.” Shinsou replied hesitantly, testing out the name. “You sure you want to keep hanging around me? Those whispers today were not kind. You can still dodge them though if you leave.” 

Danny had to fight the groan that overtook him. “I am sure, and don’t worry about the whispers. I am not against using my p— quirk to prank the hell out of them all. I used to do it all the time back home against the bullies. I think my first target is gonna be the girl I sit next to - Aoki? - it’s getting cold so it’ll snow soon, I like to make snow fall on people if they walk underneath a roof or something.”

Shinsou snorted. “You willing to get caught? That’ll get you in trouble.” 

“Dude, not if they don’t see me.” Danny turned to Shinsou with a grin, waiting until the boy looked at him to turn himself invisible. “They won’t even know I’m there.” 

Shinsou raised his eyebrow, “You can use two parts of your quirks at the same time?” 

Danny made himself visible again, and took a large bite of his sandwich, nodding. “Invisibility isn’t very tiring, neither is flying, but intangibility can get a bit iffy depending on how big the thing is that I’m trying to phase. Phasing things through stationary things is easier than phasing stationary things through moving things though. Not sure why. Also it’s a struggle to keep things being phased through things for a long time, so I try to keep it to short time periods.” 

It was so weird openly talking about his powers to someone who wasn’t Sam, Tucker or Jazz. Even with Kirika it was only slightly okay because she knew what his world was like, usually without any powers. She’d visited it occasionally before she’d nabbed him apparently, so she was familiar with his world. But she was still part of the Quirk Universe, so powers were generally the norm for her. 

Shinsou pursed his lips. “How many powers can you use at the same time without exhausting yourself?” 

Danny hummed. “You know I’m not that sure. I think the most I’ve done is…three? But those are the things I’m best at, like flight, invisibility and telekinesis. They’re usually all low energy separately, so putting them together isn’t super tiring in short bursts.” He paused a second, not wanting to come across as bragging. “Tell me about your quirk, I’m more interested in it than I am talking about mine.”

He didn’t miss how Shinsou seemed to close himself off slightly at the suggestion. Shinsou shrugged. “Not much for me to tell, if someone responds to me I can tell them what to do. Even if it’s just an exclamation or noise of acknowledgement, if it's in reply to me, I can control them.” 

“Okay but can you use your quirk over the phone? Is there any way to break it outside of your control? Are people more resistant to things they morally don’t agree with? Can you make them do something that you don’t know how to do? Can you make someone do something that you know how to do but they don’t?” 

“That…is a lot of questions.” Shinsou blinked. 

Danny shrugged in return. “I thought about my abilities for possession a lot, and tested a few aspects out with my friends back home, but some of the answers were inconclusive. I was wondering if you had different limits than I do, or more benefits to it. We can talk about something other than quirks if you want.” 

Shinsou was quiet for a while, the two eating in silence before he spoke up. “How come you joined so late in the year? I mean, it’s not even between American school years.” 

“Oh, yeah well my parents are scientists, they got this big opportunity to do an extended research project for anywhere between a few months and a couple of years, so they’d be too busy to look after me. My sister would be too busy with college, so I got shipped over to stay with my cousin.” Danny shrugged, happy with the excuse that he’d had a galaxy brain revelation over last night. “It’s a good thing I’m fluent in Japanese, otherwise this would be a lot harder.” 

“Huh.” Shinsou replied. “I bet. What’s your family like then?” 

“Well my parents are scientists, we live in Illinois, a state in the midwest of America. The town we live in is small, but I’ve lived there my whole life. My sister, Jazz, is older than me and in her final year of high school, she’s a genius and is on track to be super successful in her studies, and get a lot of scholarships. So she’s independent enough to stay on her own. My cousin frequently travelled, so she used to visit all the time. I grew up learning Japanese from her, she’s older than me though in her twenties so she’s responsible enough to look after me from my parents’ point of view so it made sense.” 

Danny had briefly told Kirika the newly updated cover story this morning, but she’d been too tired to really process it other than giving him a solitary thumbs up, before she downed her death-by-caffeine concoction. 

“You never visited here?” Shinsou asked curiously. 

“Nope, first time staying here. My family whenever we went on vacations were more the ‘take a road trip’ kind of people, or camping kind of people. It just makes more sense for my cousin to come visit the four of us and tag along with our holidays than the four of us going through the ordeal of flying over. My parents especially are a nightmare for packing anything. What about your family?”

If Shinsou was bothered by how sharing the conversation was, he made no indication, simply putting away his finished bento and starting to doodle in a small notepad. “My parents work a lot, like, a lot a lot. So I mostly just look after me and my little sister Yume. It’s fine, I guess. I’m not super close to my parents, but they’re not complete strangers. It’s usually pretty quiet around my place, but we look after our neighbourhood cats when people go away, though, so it’s not empty.” 

“Are the cats cute?” 

Shinsou looked slightly surprised before he smiled slightly and pulled out his phone. “I take a lot of photos of them - here. This one is Tamago and her sister Tofu, I haven’t seen them in a while but they’re my favourite…” 

Danny hadn’t been expecting to spend most of lunch looking at cat photos but he did. He groaned when the bell went. 

“Not a fan of school?” 

“I’m. So stupid. My brain is going to explode, school is so much harder here and I struggled back home with my grades. If I flunk out, pray for me.” 

Shinsou snorted. “I’ll tutor you before it gets that far.” 

Danny whipped his head around and looked at Shinsou with wide hopeful eyes. “You will? So you’re accepting that I’m sticking around?” 

The boy wrinkled his nose up a little at the words. “Well, it’s not ideal but if you’re not gonna leave me alone, I might as well help you.”

Danny fistpumped and grinned. “Great, well when we do, let’s make a day of it! You can hang out at my apartment, or we can go to an arcade or something. It’d be nice to hang with a friend again, I…uh. I’m kind of missing my friends if I’m honest. So making a new one, is always a good thing in my books.” 

Shinsou paused for a second, blinked at the words and gave him a small smile in return.