Lightning Serenade

Chapter 1: Pilot

A/N: Hi and welcome! If you've come back to re-read, welcome back and I love you immensely. If you're just joining us now, feel free to comment/review/etc. I try to reply a lot, even if it's a new comment on an old chapter! I would love to hear your predictions, theories, headcanons, and general opinions about my work! Also, constructive criticism is welcome! If you find any holes or inconsistencies, please let me know!

Revisions are being posted as of May 2, 2023, so if you are re-reading and see some details that you think you missed the first time around, you might not have! They might be new additions! Nothing I added changed the story as a whole, just made it more well-rounded! Please enjoy!

Trigger Warnings for this fic in general (not necessarily this chapter, but bound to pop up at some point): inpatient mental health treatment, restraints, forcibly injected drugs, misdiagnosed schizophrenia, hallucinations, coarse and vulgar language, broken foster care system, stabbing, references alluding to rape and threats of rape (pretty tame and in much later chapters, doesn't actually get anywhere, and nothing happens on-screen, but I still want the warning to be here early on instead of just in the chapter preceding the content), discussions of plans for suicide, mentions of past suicide of mentioned characters that were never on-screen

Wow, okay. That sounds like a lot when it's all written out, but I don't think it really goes all that hard. A lot of these things are just mentioned or only last a chapter or two, but I did want to cover all my bases here, just in case!

Spoilers for this fic in general (not necessarily this chapter, but bound to pop up at some point): A character's identity and quirk details,

Trigger Warnings for this chapter: Inpatient at a mental health hospital, restraint, forcibly injected drugs, schizophrenia diagnosis, hallucinations, strip search

It was common knowledge that you could use the voices in your head to find your soulmate, or rather, that your soulmate was the cause of the voice in your head. Even a dunce like Kaminari Denki could gather that much, but the details had to be explained multiple times before he felt like he actually understood.

He asked his parents why he didn't hear anything, and they explained that the soulmate voices will come later, and you can only hear them when they're singing. Denki thought that was weird but ultimately accepted it. He didn't make the rules, of course; he was hesitant to ask why in fear of that exasperated look coming across their faces again when he just wouldn't give it a rest. So, he forced himself to accept that answer as it was and not seek out more detail.

When he heard the voices for the first time, he was ecstatic, but also overwhelmed. No one had told him that he would have two overlapping voices at the same time, both singing different songs. As soon as they both appeared, though, they were both gone. It was disorienting, and the experience knocked him over as he was changing for gym class at school. It took him a while to get his balance back. Recovering from the effects of his lightning quirk—that he was finally getting the hang of, he was proud to say. Having two voices suddenly jolt through his mind only to stop just as abruptly? That left him out of it for longer than usual, but he didn't think he could be blamed for that.

Denki was understandably upset when he was taken to the nurse's office and reprimanded for using his quirk when he was not allowed to, and how many times do I have to tell you? He had tried to argue that he didn't use his quirk, but no one bothered to listen. Denki slumped down into the chair, wrinkling his nose in distaste at both the antiseptic smell of the nurse's office and the unsurprising trend of ignoring what he has to say. The nurse had called his parents and told them about him becoming disoriented from using his quirk, yet again, and interrupting his studies. He couldn't stay focused on being mad at the nurse for long, though, because the excitement at hearing his soulmates' voices kept pushing its way to the forefront of his mind.