Actions

Work Header

crushing another player or playing with your crush?

Summary:

Midoriya Izuku always loved playing games. His favorite title is and would always be The Era of Might I, so when the sequel was released, he lost his shit and dragged his friends to play with him. And they agreed. It was hard not to when most of them have a crush on the oblivious boy. It’s a shame that Izuku is so dense.

[college au with a lot of gaming and pinning, dekubowl aka MMO misadventures with Deku ]

Notes:

It's time to jump the bandwagon of multichapter fics. Say hello to my hilarious baby.

Big thanks to Tara for being awesome beta ♥ to CJ and Shu for supporting me and for D. to helping with the title. Naming stories is the worst. Seriously.

Dictionary is at the end notes♥

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: beginnings

Chapter Text

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

 

When the news about the release date for the sequel of the gaming masterpiece, the best title among all of the MMORPGs ever created - The Era of Might II was made public, Midoriya Izuku went crazy. He couldn't stay in one place too long as he was so high on endorphins.

He loved the first title. It was his reason for existing! He had played it for as long as he could remember. He grew up on this title. He begged mom and his stepdad for money to upgrade his computer so he could have good gaming equipment to improve his performance and be able to see the word of The Era of Might with good resolution.

The Era of Might was the game that helped him realize that he wanted to make games in the future to bring happiness to others. It was the title that pushed him into attending the university with the best degree for game developers. It was hard to get there but Izuku was super determined. Needless to say, he was also super sentimental over that title. He owned tons of merch. He even cried when he heard that news, his childhood friend Kacchan teased him for that.

Truth to be told, Kacchan also loved the title but he wasn’t as open and crazy with his love as Izuku. Don’t take him wrong Katsuki Bakugo wasn’t hiding his hobby. When he got asked, he answered and rubbed it in your face that he was better at the title than you could ever be. And Izuku always argued with Kacchan about who was the better gamer between them. It was hard to decide because they used to pick different classes, impossible to compare fairly.

In The Era of Might I Izuku played brawler and Kacchan was a fire mage. There was really hard to compare them because the mechanics of playing their classes were different.

Izuku must admit that Katsuki was a good DPS, he could burn everything that was on his way with tons of his spells and he never got to the point of running out of mana. Never, not even at the beginning. But on the other hand, his character didn’t need to kite and dodge opponents’ attacks, and waving auto attacks between spells was easy. It’s a piece of cake to deal tons of damage when you can stand still and cast powerful spells.

Izuku on the other hand was always tanking opponents and hitting them with various weapons. Knuckle-dusters and his big two-handed sword with golden incarnations were his favorites.

When the recruitment for beta testers for TEM II got opened both friends signed in. Only Katsuki got lucky enough to be picked among all of the participants. Izuku was so jealous that he hung out at Kacchan’s place every time the blond was playing. At first, it was met with yelling and cursing but after a few unwanted visits, Katsuki got used to that (it was more annoying to chase Izuku away) and he let Izuku stay and watch. Katsuki’s flatmates didn’t mind.

Izuku was always welcomed there because as Mina Ashido said, he could tame the wild Blasty. It wasn’t anything impressive, Izuku knew Katsuki long enough to know how to dance around Kacchan so he wouldn’t get his head bitten off. It took Izuku ten years of practice. He was incredibly proud of himself!

During Kacchan’s beta tests Izuku took countless notes. TEM II was different from the first title. They added a few more classes and subclasses to make it more interesting and to allow more personalization of the character’s skill sets for the chance to create a more unique gameplay.

Everyone could play the way they most wanted to. As in the first game, you could pick every weapon you wanted and change it at a whim until you reached the 10th level when you were forced to decide upon the main class and the corresponding weapon. It was a nice tactic to allow players to try different stuff to find the playstyle that suited them most.

There was also a quiz that was made to help people who were still undecided. Based on your answers it presented you a few class options and subclass routes that would work best with your game approach.

Izuku loved that, people behind this title were so dedicated! They thought about so many players. Old gamers could pick something fresh and newbies got enough help to make their first steps in a new world without an ounce of worry.

Izuku wanted to reach their level. With enough hard work and determination, he would succeed for sure. He was proud of a few projects he had already made. Despite them having poor graphics he was praised for the plot and mechanics.

 

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

 

“Ka~achan,” Izuku said, dragging out the vowels so that his childhood friend would finally notice him. They were chilling in Katsuki’s room. The blond was doing his homework and Izuku crashed on Kacchan’s bed (it was super comfy) to play Animal Crossing (and annoy Katsuki). He liked to play at the blond’s place. And it was much closer to his university than from his flat. Don’t take him wrong, he loved the place he shared with Ochako and Shouto but sometimes he was so tired of commuting.

“I’m busy nerd,” the blond hissed but turned nonetheless. He put a bookmark into his textbook, that was a good sign. Izuku wouldn’t be killed today. “What do you want? I’m not going to check how cute your villagers are. I know you love Raymond but he is just a cat and I already saw him in maid dress. Like ten times.”

“Rude. Don’t you dare to speak about Ray in that manner!” Izuku coughed to compose himself after his short moment of outrage and started again. It wasn’t the time to get annoyed. Kacchan was always teasing him for playing Animal Crossing, so at this point, he should get used to it, but it was always hard to keep his composure in check when his friend was mean to Izuku’s animal friends. “Do you know what character class you’ll pick in TEM II?”

“I know but I’m not telling,” the blond smiled smugly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Come on, Kacchan! I don’t want us to play the same class, so spill the beans!” Izuku pleaded making big puppy dog eyes. He put his switch away and clasped his hands together, shaking them. “Pretty please!”

“Okay, fine. I got a nice item promised from the beta so I’m gonna play gunner.”

“That’s awesome! Although I thought you’d rather pick an alchemist.” The green-haired boy tilted his head.

“Nah, too many sorry extras will pick that brand new class. I’ll just pick good ol’ DPS.”

“Kacchan,” Izuku started because it was really suspicious. As far as he remembered, Katsuki hated gunners from the bottom of his heart since that class appeared in TEM I, so there was no way that he would agree so quickly to pick that class despite all of the hatred.” What did they promise you as a reward for this beta testing? It must be something super-duper good for you to pick a gunner.”

“Could you stop being a clever shit for five minutes straight?” The blond cursed. “ Good beta testers, not the shitty randoms that miraculously got in, could pick rare, even ultra-rare items. And there was bazooka there. I snatched it before anyone else could.”

Katsuki was so serious when he was saying that, that it was hard not to laugh. “ You sold yourself so easily.”

“Shut up nerd.”

“Sorry, Kacchan but it’s so funny to imagine your character carrying a bigass bazooka and above your head, the name King Explosion Murder being displayed. It’s just freaking hilarious! You’d get famous in no time!”

“It’s Ground Zero now.”

“O! The breeze of the fresh air! Why the change?”

“I wanted a fresh start without all of the extras spamming my DMs because they knew me from different games.”

“Oh. Right. Your streams are super popular.” Izuku nodded in understatement. When he was watching Katsuki’s gameplays the blond always had tons of viewers. Some were nice and were watching them to actually enjoy Katsuki’s gameplays other were just mean and were complaining about blond’s anger issues, or just trolling, in general.

“Yours is more popular, nerd. Mine is full of shitty extras that want to talk shit about me so I’m burying KEM to give GZ a fresh start. “

“Clever! Nothing less than expected from Kacchan!”

“And you, who are you going to pick, Deku?”

“Oh, I thought about someone to heal the party,” Izuku said a bit unsure of himself.

“Ha?! Why would you do that? You are good at kicking monsters’ asses so why stand on the sidelines to heal some sorry players who couldn't keep their health bars at a good level?” It must piss Katsuki off because he got up from his chair and sat beside Izuku.

“TEM II seems to be harder than the first game. There will be many dungeons and bosses to conquer and a good healer is essential. And you know how hard it is to find someone trusted and skilled.” Izuku said quietly. He moved a bit trying to make some distance between him and Katsuki if blond decided to get angry at him for such a confession.

The blond sighed “Are you still referring to that one disaster of a boss fight that almost wiped out our party?” When Izuku nodded, he continued,” It wasn’t your fault that that shitty player lied about having good magic res set and being so sure of their healing skills! It’s not your fault that they got killed because they didn’t jump out from boss’ aoe and behaved like the noobiest noob would.”

“I know Kacchan, but…”

“No buts,” the blond pointed his finger at Izuku’s chest. ”Games are for fun, so if you would be forcing yourself to play a class that you may not like, what’s the point?” Katsuki said seriously. He gently moved his hand to grab Izuku’s head and turned it in his direction. It was unfair, now there was no way for Izuku to avoid his gaze.

“I’m curious about being a healer,” Izuku managed to say without stuttering.

“Why? They are useless.”

“Not in TEM II.”

“Ha?”

“Didn’t you read all of the updates?” Izuku sighed, it was so Kacchan.

“I read the essentials about the classes that actually deal damage. Not some shitty clerics running around in frilly robes with shitty wands in hand.”

“Thought so, “ Izuku said, and gently released himself from Katsuki’s touch to reach for his backpack. He fished out one of many notebooks from there. “Look, I wrote down all of the potential subclasses you can take for a cleric, that more or less make sense,” he said, opening his notes to the right page.

“Your handwriting is as shitty as ever,” Katsuki teased him, leaning over Izuku’s shoulder for a better look.

“Not the point, look here,” Izuku said, pointing at the detailed notes he spent so many hours making. He analyzed everything. He dug out every possible piece of information available to form the best strategy. All of the cons, pros, and potential synergy were listed in color-coded notes. From what Izuku gathered TEM II didn’t restricted players to pick one from certain “fitting” subclasses. You could pick whatever you wanted but the catch was that it was a permanent choice. There was no way to change it in the middle of the game like there was with the first game. Although it was a logical assumption that some of the subclasses were better than the other when it came to synergy with the main character class.

“You never like to play it safe, do you? “ Katsuki laughed reading Izuku’s scribbles about subclasses that were circled in red. “You really are something else. I’m excited to start the game with you!”

“Same, Kacchan!”

 

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

 

Both Izuku and Katsuki managed to convince their friends to start playing with them. Izuku was more cheerful and encouraging in his approach and he won even the heart of his high school friend who was currently working his way through a degree in law - Iida Tenya. It was an achievement even Katsuki was impressed by. The blond never thought that Glasses would do something for fun, and yet, he created the account and picked a knight to play. It was super in character for Tenya.

Katsuki on the other hand was downgrading his flatmates, teasing them that they wouldn’t be good enough to start a game. And, well. It worked. All of them bought the game and made the characters to show Katsuki that they were more than he expected. The rivalry between the members of the self-proclaimed Bakusquad would never stop amazing Izuku.

Doing stuff out of spite wasn’t Izuku’s preferred method of solving things but, well, as long as it worked he had nothing against it. As they say, the more, the merrier, and it was always funny to explore the game’s world with friends.

 

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

 

At the end of the first week after the game release, Izuku and Katsuki got nice, although a bit dysfunctional, guild members to play with.

There was Uraraka Ochako, Izuku’s flatmate majoring in machine building. She looked like the cutest girl you ever saw but could also kick your ass like there’s no tomorrow. She picked the mage that specialized in light and gravity spells. It was a perfect character for crowd control. Ochako was a bit lost with how to name it so she went for something simple, Uravity. Although there was a little tiny (not really tiny) problem. The girl complained that she was getting sick when she was overusing some of the spells because the effects were making her dizzy. Arguments that she could turn those effects off were pointless.

“I can’t turn them off, my character won’t look cute if I do it!” the girl complained and all of the reasonable arguments were pointless. They would never win.

Todoroki Shouto was another of Izuku’s flatmates, actually the owner of the flat they were living in. He was aspiring to be a doctor and the fact that he found some free time to goof around with a bunch of other young adults to play the game was giving Izuku so much joy. He was hopping around their apartment like an over-energized bunny since the day Shouto agreed to play with him. Shouto never played any MMORPG but his siblings did. Especially Shouto’s elder brother Touya and that was the reason Shouto knew the basics. Shouto, as per usual, was super straightforward with his approach to various things. He named his character using his given name (it was a miracle that the name wasn’t already taken) and picked the class easy for beginners - mage. His elements of choice were ice and fire, although he only collected fire spells without meaning to use them.

“Rare spells work like in The Era of Might I and when my brother decides to play I want to snatch all of the best spells before he got the chance to learn them.” It was meant to be payback for all of the times Touya wiped the floor with Shouto while playing Mario Kart, but well… it was just weird. But who was Izuku to judge his friend? He was an only child, he would never understand sibling rivalry.

Asui Tsuyu was another interesting addition to their team. The girl picked a summoner and instead of using all of the strong beasts available, she picked frogs as her familiars. Because they were adorable. Period. That’s an amphibian biologist for you. She even named her character Froppy.

Shinso Hitoshi was yet another essential teammate in Izuku’s guild. Hitoshi was a friend from University. The boy was studying graphic design in games and they often worked together to help each other in finishing projects. TEM I had glorious world’s designs and seeing for himself how they updated it in the sequel was the main reason the purple-haired man had agreed to play. He was a newbie but he wasn’t afraid to learn how to play a more complicated character like an assassin. They had a hard time brainstorming a name suiting the character but in the end, at 2 am while working on a project and drinking one too many cups of coffee, Izuku got the brilliant idea to name Hitoshi’s character Enigma. And it stayed.

Players Katsuki recruited were a wilder bunch.

There was Kirishima Eijirou who wanted to play tank without wearing the upper part of the armor because it was super manly (it was stupid but Izuku stopped Katsuki from pulling Kirishima down to earth in such a brutal way). After some good convincing, Eijirou decided to wear armor but only if it was red because he needed to live up to his character’s name, Red Riot.

Ashido Mina picked the new class already despised by Katsuki. Izuku didn’t know why it was so bad to pick an alchemist. For him, it was an interesting character with many roads for further development. The girl, as the true chemistry freak she was, wanted to play a character who would attack with acid and she wanted to make it happen as fast as possible. As for now, she was restricted to some weird mixtures and daggers. There was a silver lining that she played as an alchemist. She could make tons of potions for them! Mina couldn’t make up her mind for how to name her character, so she decided to buy a name change ticket and play one week as Alien Queen and another as Pinkie, and after that decide which name she liked most.

Kaminari Denki, the flatmate Katsuki wished death upon most often, was playing as a fire mage. Denki read somewhere that if you leveled up your fire magic ability enough and fulfilled some ridiculous quests, you could unlock electricity as your main element. And Denki decided to take a risk to create a character suiting the name, Chargebolt.

The last person being the main part of their playing group was Sero Hanta. He wanted to play a character that would give him tons of fun, so Izuku recommended hunter. It turned out to be a good choice. Sero loved using the crossbow and setting traps, especially sticky ones, it quickly became his favorite in-game pastime.

Oh! And Izuku picked a berserk healer while Katsuki was a gunner maining cannons.

It’s also a funny story about how Izuku got forced to become the guild master to free another player called Eraserhead from that duty. Eraserhead created the guild so his friends Midnight, Present Mic, and Loud Cloud would finally stop annoying him. (They were already listed as guild members). But that’s the story for another time.

 

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━