Fanfic / Dirty Little Secrets

Class 1-A

Moment of truth, Shinso. How much are you willing to lie to him?

—Chapter Seven

Dirty Little Secrets, by Tumblr user unintentionaloracle, is a My Hero Academia fanfiction.

The plot takes place after the sports festival arc and follows Hitoshi Shinso when he finally gets a chance to transfer into the Hero Course thanks to Minoru Mineta's disappearance. Unfortunately, it appears he may have inadvertently caused the seat to open up himself through careless use of his Quirk.

Shinso's efforts to fix his mistake before anyone finds out are the main focus of the story, with secondary romantic plots focusing on Eijiro Kirishima/Katsuki Bakugo and Hitoshi Shinso/Shoto Todoroki.

The first chapter of Dirty Little Secrets was posted on February 3rd, 2018 and it has updated consistently every Saturday, with previews posted on Wednesdays. The first eleven chapters were uploaded to Archive Of Our Own on April 15th, where it will update on the same schedule as Tumblr.

On April 25th 2018, instead of a screenshot from chapter thirteen the author posted a ficlet called The Conversation as a preview. It showed the events of Monoma’s party from (mostly) Bakugo's POV, including the conversation with Kirishima in the closet, and Bakugo’s realization that he has a crush on him after they kiss.

On May 16th 2018, (instead of a screenshot from chapter sixteen) the author posted another ficlet called As Your Friends as that week's preview. It covered events spanning between chapters eight and fifteen of Dirty Little Secrets, and recorded the good-intentioned but semi-disastrous results of Shinso and Todoroki's friends figuring out that they like one another.

On June 29th 2018, the author posted one more ficlet called His Hero as that week's preview. It covers Aizawa's POV of the events before and during chapter 17 through 21 and after, and learning of Shinso's deception.

After completing the fic on July 1st, 2018, the author later posted two fics taking place in-between Dirty Little Secrets and another "full-fledged sequel": Date Night Chronicles on July 26th 2018, which covers the first dates of Shinso and Todoroki, Bakugo and Kirishima, and Yaoyorozu and Jirou's first dates on the same day, and "S Is For Victory" on August 29th, 2018, detailing that universe's version of The Final Exam Arc for Sero and Shinso.

The Author has announced the next fic will be called "Out In The Open". It's unknown when it will start being posted.

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Dirty Little Secrets contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Todoroki, but just his father.
• Accidental Kidnapping: Sort of. Shinso ends up as clueless about where Mineta is as anybody else. Could lead to Accidental Murder.
• Accidental Pervert: Subverted. Shinso bumps into Mina on his way to class, but she understands that it's a mistake and laughs it off, even cracking a joke about the trope.
• Almost Kiss: As things heat up between them, Shinso and Todoroki share a sweet moment and a near-kiss before Shinso's guilt about Mineta gets the better of him and he runs off.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: They love him, but Shinso's parents love to talk about his crushes and childhood nickname.
• Ambiguous Situation: Played for Laughs when it comes to the question of what precisely caused Bakugou to break out of Monoma's brainwashing. Everyone involved in the incident has a slightly different take on what happened.
• Ascended Fanboy: Shinso is a huge fan of Eraserhead, so being assigned to 1-A and having him as his homeroom teacher is a dream come true, though that doesn't stop the embarrassment he feels over his prototype costume being obviously based off of Aizawa's, especially with the capture scarf.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed; Mineta may have been a jerk who deliberately hit Shinso's Berserk Button, but Shinso doesn't feel like that justifies causing his disappearance. Especially when he fears it might have led to more than that.
• Avoid the Dreaded G Rating: Averted, because the author censors her characters with innocuous words starting with the same letter.
• Bad Powers, Good People: By making Shinso (with his villainous Quirk) the main character, Dirty Little Secrets takes a passing theme from the show and makes it one of the focuses in the work. An aversion of Bad Powers, Bad People.
• Beach Episode: Chapter eleven sees the characters head to the beach for swimsuit fun.
• Beta Couple: Out of all the background relationships, Bakugo and Kirishima get the most focus. However, their relationship is hampered by Bakugo treating him horribly after the party, straining their friendship.
• Blessed with Suck: Turns out the Mind Control aspect of Shinso's Quirk comes from his father, who naturally emits a scent others find attractive and makes them open to his suggestions. Unfortunately, this can spark off fights, especially when too many people are affected at once. And he can't turn it off; the best he can manage is dampening the scent manually.
• Brainwashed: With Shinso's Quirk, this was inevitable. Mineta's disappearance turns out to be as a result of being brainwashed.
• Bridal Carry: A good way to rescue classmates from simulated dangers. Even when it's Todoroki carrying Midoriya past Shinso, it doesn't keep the main ship from making Deku the Third Wheel.

• Cheer Them Up with Laughter: When Kirishima is feeling down because Bakugo keeps brushing him off, Shinso and Sero invite him to riff a bad movie with them to cheer him up.
• Costume Porn: Many chapters focus largely on Shinso's ever-evolving hero costume.
• Dark Age of Supernames: Bakugo continues to struggle to get his edgy hero names approved.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Though they're not officially dating, just bringing Shinso to his house is enough for Todoroki to piss off Endeavor. Not only is Shinso a transfer student who couldn't initially get into the Hero Course with a Quirk he doesn't see as powerful, they're the same gender.
• Deadly Training Area: Most of the classes shown in detail involve high-tech and very dangerous arenas, including one where a building almost crushes Bakugo.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: While musing over how he needs to push himself in order to catch up with the rest of 1-A, Shinso starts monologuing out loud until Aizawa interrupts.
• Disability Immunity: Shinso's father gives off a scent that attracts others to him, enabling him to order them around. As it so happens, his mother doesn't have any sense of smell, rendering her immune.
• Disappeared Dad: Sero's father is mentioned to have left a long time ago.
• Disproportionate Retribution: As payback for Shinso using his Quirk on him, Monoma decides to copy his Quirk and use it to sell Bakugou out to Ryuunosuke, forcing him to let him and the mind syncer learn all his secrets. He also hopes to use whatever they learn this way to humiliate him.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Kaminari thinks that Shinso's gay friend from General Studies Takeshi Nakamura is a girl. Beer Goggles are to blame.
• Dungeon Bypass: Bakugo attempts this during the Hostage Rescuing exercise, smashing and blasting his way through the walls.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Monoma's first appearance in this fic has him coming up to Shinso and several members of 1-A in order to crack cruel jokes about Mineta's disappearance.
  • Ryuunosuke is first overheard protesting as he's pulled away from the younger students, insisting that he needs to learn how to 'market' them.
  • When Endeavor first meets Shinso, he takes a moment to pull him aside and threaten him, warning him not to 'corrupt' his son.
• Everyone Can See It: Shinso and Todoroki's interest in each other is blatantly obvious to all of their friends.
• Fights Like a Normal: Shinso is hindered not just by the fact that he's transferring from another class, but also because his Quirk isn't physically combat-oriented.
• Flaming Hair: Endeavor, a literal Fiery Redhead.
• Foil: Ryuunosuke, a member of the Business Course whose Mind Sync power lets him read a person's mind. While Shinso is well aware of how his own Quirk can be seen and works to avert Bad Powers, Bad People, Ryu has absolutely no sense of personal boundaries and will gleefully force his way into someone's head over their protests in the name of figuring out how to 'market' them.
• Freudian Slip: Monoma gets a Deer in the Headlights look after casually commenting on how Bakugou thinks he can get by on his power and good looks.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Shinso has to choose between keeping his seat in class 1-A and confessing that he accidentally sent Mineta away. Later, this manifests as Shinso having to choose between starting a romantic relationship with Todoroki or confessing that he's been dishonest, possibly at the cost of a classmate's life.
• Gay Best Friend: Averted. If anything, Sero is the Straight Best Friend.
• Gay Guy Seeks Popular Jock: Kirishima does a poor job of hiding his interest in Bakugo, who is so far in the closet he's in Narnia.
• Great Detective: Averted. Not only are the main characters trying to solve the mystery of Mineta's disappearance children, the adults working on it aren't getting very far either for some reason.
• Grilling the Newbie: The process happens a few times, rather than a single mass incident.
  • Members of class 1-A question Shinso's transfer on his first day in class, mostly confusion about Mineta being gone.
  • Later, Todoroki grills the newbie on his own, saying they wants to figure Shinso out.
• Has a Type: Kirishima. Sure, someone else would treat his heart more gently, but who's manlier than Gast—er, Katsuki Bakugo?
• Heroic Build: On his way to Class 1-A's beach outing, Shinso notes that his training has started to yield results for his physique.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Todoroki. Of course, this is because he's An Ice Person, stemming from Elemental Eye Colors rather than his personality. Shinso spends a lot of time staring into them.
• Jumping on a Grenade: During a mock bomb disposal exercise, Sero nearly does this for Shinso before the latter forces Bakugo to do so instead.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  Sero: "You know, it's kinda weird that all this relationship crap seems to be coming up. Like someone else is in charge of our lives now or something."
  Shinsou: Or Mineta's absence upset the order of things."
  Sero: "Dude, don't joke about that! With him gone I get the brunt of the suffering!"
• Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone: After being subjected to weeks of oblivious flirting, Mina arranges for most of class 1-A to plan and then not show up for a beach trip so that Shinso and Todoroki can spend some time alone together.
• Meaningful Name: Like the canon characters, the original characters have names that use or reference Japanese words related to their Quirks.
• Moment of Weakness: Shinso has spent his entire life having his motives questioned, and therefore tries to only use his Quirk in ways that won't harm others. However, he reaches a breaking point when Mineta points out that he could use his Quirk to force girls to date him and uses his Quirk in an arguably villainous way.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Bakugo is frequently the exception when Shinso is discussing his friends.
• New Transfer Student: Shinso.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When Shinso's Quirk first manifested back in preschool, he used it to stop a bully from picking on another kid. Rather than being thanked or praised, he was told how creepy his power was, and the bully's mother filed a complaint against him.
• No Social Skills: Due to others rejecting or avoiding him due to his Quirk, Shinso struggles with things like small talk.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Shinso has to cope with a lot of this. To make matters worse, while others draw a connection between his discomfort and the circumstances surrounding his promotion to 1-A, they tend to assume that he's just upset at unintentionally benefitting from Mineta's disappearance, rather than the deeper fears concerning the incident that he's nursing.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While the Hostage Rescuing match between the Green and Yellow Teams isn't shown, it's mentioned in passing that the victorious team pulled off a maneuver that had to be seen to be believed.
• Omniglot: Mrs. Shinso's Quirk lets her speak any language she hears. However, she can only retain knowledge of two languages at a time.
• Secret Handshake: Arguably Shinso and Bakugo's habit of flipping each other off whenever they see each other, since it's Played for Laughs. Becomes a Chekhov's Gun when Bakugou failing to flip Shinso off causes him to realize that he's Not Himself.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Todoroki knew Shinso brainwashed Mineta.
• Superhero School: Much of the fic takes place in U.A. High.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Bakugo and Shinso, when they train together to improve despite hating each other's guts. Arguably this also includes their mutual pact to keep each other's dirty little secrets.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Averted for Mineta; several of his classmates try to investigate what happened. Kaminari is hit especially hard, blaming himself for inviting him to the party in the first place.
• The Matchmaker: Once Mina discovers Shinso likes Todoroki, she will stop at nothing to see them together, even going so far as to trick them both into going to a beach trip with the whole class that everyone but them ultimately bails on.
• The Nicknamer: Bakugo continues this tendency, promptly dubbing Shinso 'Lavender Hair' despite that being the wrong shade. Shinso returns fire with his own nicknames, like 'Meat Shield'.
• Trophy Child: Todoroki's father Endeavor both pushes his son to do things that will bring him praise, like setting up an amateur investigation into Mineta's disappearance, while discouraging things that he believes will reflect on him negatively, like spending time with Shinso.
• Unabashed B-Movie Fan: invoked Shinso bonds with his new classmates over a So Bad, It's Good movie The Dead Reef Cruise.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The whole plot gets kicked off when a member of the Support Class with a Placebo Quirk uses his power to convince a girl that she's drunk. Said girl has an Empathy Quirk, causing others at the party to feel as if they're drunk... Including the guy who can cause blackouts when he hiccups...
• Wham Line: “It’s okay, Shinso. I already know you accidentally brainwashed Mineta...”
• What Did I Do Last Night?: After attending a party, Shinso discovers that he's Missing Time due to Takeshi's Blackout Quirk. This becomes an issue when he realizes he might be responsible for Mineta's disappearance... And as he wasn't the only one affected, he's not the only one struggling to piece together what happened.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: The scenes where Support Course students design costumes and gadgets for the heroes, despite being written and released before the English release of canon material confirming it, answer this question.
• Wild Hair: Shinso.
• Wild Mass Guessing: In-Universe, Mineta's disappearance results in its own tangle of theories and speculations.