Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shouta stares down at the red B5 Campos notebook bemusedly and wonders why this hasn't happened before, in his years of teaching. One of the reasons he likes the brand is because they're ubiquitous; most of his students use them which means it isn't anything noteworthy that Shouta carries one around at all times too. Trading his with a students' on accident was, at least theoretically, inevitable.

However, they're well into the semester and Shouta’s notebooks get increasingly less likely to be mistaken for composition books for homework as term goes on. Another reason he likes them is because they're cheap, so he feels less bad about subjecting them to terrible treatment, stapling and gluing things into them when expedient, tossing them into his sleeping bag without a care for how much they will be knocked around in there, taping them together as they inevitably fall apart towards the end of each semester. Hizashi had tried giving him nice ones, when he started teaching, but in the end they'd both agreed that a normal composition book would be a far better fit for purpose.

The book Shouta is looking at looks like one of his. It's beat to hell, taped at the binding, thick with extra notes and glued in paper, post-it flags sticking out of every side but the bound one, covers in the process of disintegration held together with tape. The main difference is that instead of saying 'Class 3A, term 3' on the front, this one just says '#37',

He hopes the handwriting will tell him whose it is and that it was a straight switch, since he really doesn't want to go out on a hunt to get his own book back - he will if he has to, the information in there would be dangerous in the wrong hands, but he writes it in code Nezu helped him develop, so if it is with a student that ought to be enough to keep them out of it.

He opens it to the first set of pages… and stares. There on the page is a detailed sketch of Yaoyorozu in her hero costume, with some differences. It’s a better costume, for one - it covers her more and seems to be designed to open strategically, rather than just leaving all of her skin exposed. There is more armor, a diagram on the next page of the armor design - it looks like a combination of chainmail and kikko plates, allowing for dynamic openings wherever Yaoyorozu might need them, a kusazuri skirt down to her knees that would let her create things from her thighs but still providing some protection. The notes on possible materials are advanced enough to be over Shouta’s head. There’s one more spread of pages on Yaoyorozu - it’s a design for a computer strapped to an arm, to replace the books the girl tends to depend on, the beginnings of software design down the page before there’s a note about the rest continuing in ‘the laptop’.

He’s been too distracted to study the handwriting but the next page reminds him he needs to find out whose this is; there’s a frankly terrifying analysis of Midnight’s quirk across the next few pages, questions Shouta has never asked her despite being her friend and colleague for years. There is also the beginning stages of a design for what looks like a timed release storage device for her quirk.

There are more analyses of his students, some on students in other years, a couple of pages on a recent fight LeMillion had with the Yakuza - one he barely survived, Shouta knows, and the author has clearly inferred as much, though the information wasn’t made public - a few sketches that look more like the owner draws as a hobby and not only for work, though Shouta notes that the pictures almost always include a costume upgrade or two.

Then he flips the page and there’s a sketch of Uraraka, another horrifying page of analysis on her weaknesses - he’s particularly concerned with the number of ideas on just how her hands could get maimed - not that he hasn’t thought of them himself, but that is why his notebook is in code. At the end there’s a reference - a hastily made note of a scientific paper on five-point contact quirks, one that’s recent and Shouta has been meaning to read; they keep running into Shigaraki and he’s got Uraraka in his class - but the most interesting part of the note is that it’s written in the shiny magenta ink he knows Uraraka herself loves and uses when taking notes. There is yet another sketch on the next page, this time of gloves. They’re armored, but designed to leave her fingerpads free. It’s not very detailed, but when he folds out the piece of paper that’s been stapled to the opposite page he discovers why: It’s a printout from the design labs; an actual design for the gloves, the type that can be sent to manufacture.

The design is… better than good. The way they’re armored will support Uraraka’s usual fighting style but will also allow her almost full dexterity, if he’s reading the page right. They’re designed to work with her other support items, there is a particular note - this time in Uraraka’s ink and handwriting on needing grip strength for her grappling hook wire - and Shouta can only hope Maijima is on top of patents and intellectual property rights for his kids because, well, he wants a pair. He can see Hizashi wanting a pair. He can imagine a lot of underground heros wanting these, anyone who regularly scales a wall, even anyone who regularly throws a punch. The rest of the notebook is mostly further thoughts on the gloves, lots of detailed diagrams of armor and notes on potential materials.

The final page in the book is a sketch of the gloves reconfigured to work with Kaminari’s quirk, Kaminari’s handwriting easy to recognize amongst the otherwise neat shorthand the owner of the book uses. The owner’s handwriting is niggling at him - he’s probably had them as a student for Law & Ethics, but that doesn’t exactly narrow things down - but then he realizes he’s being stupid and finds the manufacture specs page again. Those printouts have names on them which will tell him who probably has his own notebook.

And there it is, at the top of the page, making his heart sink, because he won’t be getting those gloves; at least not until they’re marketed and he can buy them himself. Probably at a markup, too.

Dated three weeks before, submitted by Midoriya I.

He remembers now; earlier today he’d come upon Midoriya and Kaminari in his classroom between lessons, gathering things into a loose pile that Midoriya could carry back to the Support Department, his bag having split apart at the seams. Shouta remembers having been impressed at the sheer amount of stuff the kid had clearly been carrying, and slightly annoyed that the explosion of things had reached underneath the teacher’s desk, where his destination, AKA his sleeping bag, had been.

This is going to be awkward.

+++

Midoriya’s expulsion had been the first time Nezu had argued against his decisions for his class. Shouta had been annoyed and refused to reconsider - the kid had years to figure out how to use his quirk and hadn’t bothered to do so, then turns up in Shouta’s class and breaks a finger instead of an arm, expecting to be rewarded? Yeah, no, kid hadn’t been worth his time; he’d be a liability in the field with that quirk and that attitude and Shouta hadn’t balked, even when All Might himself had asked him personally.

Midoriya’s expulsion had also been the only one where the dismissal ‘didn’t stick’, so to speak. The kid had ended up transferred to the Support Course - not that there’s anything wrong with that - and All Might had scaled back on how many classes he was planning to teach in order to train the kid personally, using UA facilities. In general, Shouta has always considered that end result a bit of a bonus.

He’d expected the kid to use the first year Sports Festival to come for 1A with blood in his eye, but to his surprise, that hadn’t happened. Instead, the kid had done well, but not well enough to get into the tournament round. The second and third year festivals had been much the same - always a good showing, always turning up with impressive support gear, but unlike Power Loader’s explosion gremlin, Midoriya has never placed in the top sixteen.

Shouta had not been particularly surprised that the kid did well in the support course. He’d been booksmart enough, according to his written test results, and the support course includes students with a variety of specialities; support items, analysis and strategy, emergency medicine, investigations - there’d be plenty of space for Midoriya there, he’d thought, and maybe the kid would eventually learn to control his self-destructive quirk, with some help from All Might.

He’d been a little surprised - and a bit alarmed - when his students started referring to the process of getting support items as the Mei-Midoriya-Maijima pipeline. He’d worried that the kid might hold a grudge, that perhaps A class would get slower responses to their requests than B class, but it hasn’t been a problem so far - well, with the exception of certain students, but Shouta has stressed to his students that their coworkers will hold their life in their hands often enough and to respect them - if his students don’t listen, that’s their own fault.

Midoriya had attended the standard Law & Ethics course Shouta teaches every class in second year, and he’d been perfectly pleasant, if distant. He’d turned in adequate work, never put himself forward in class, and avoided direct communication with Shouta like the plague, to the point where Hatsume usually collected his papers at the end of classes to turn them in for him. Hatsume herself, however, made no secret of the fact that she detested Shouta from day one and had only avoided being downright disrespectful because Midoriya had stopped her. The rest of the class had never behaved any less than impeccably, but it’d been obvious to Shouta that if it came down to an argument, they’d not exactly be on his side.

Last year’s lessons with 2H had been his most uncomfortable experience teaching thus far, and he thinks they were all probably relieved at the end of the year that they’d never have to see each other again, the support course only having one course in Law & Ethics. It’d been an unpleasant surprise at the beginning of this year when he’d found Midoriya in his 3rd year course on Applications of Law in Heroics, but at least this time he’d not been followed around by a glaring Hatsume or a classroom full of students who liked to pretend their teacher was some sort of information dispensing robot. Shouta has never minded his reputation as a strict hardass, but 2H had been exhausting to teach.

There had been one exception, a day towards the end of term when the students were presenting final projects, where the class had come in excited but Shouta had realized immediately it had nothing to do with him. No, the kids were excited for Midoriya’s presentation, and they’d been right to be - Shouta has been trying to think of a way to get the kid in to deliver his blistering takedown of quirkism in all forms as part of this year’s second grade lesson material.

The irony that it’d be easier if Shouta hadn’t dismissed Midoriya from the Hero Course because of his uncontrollable quirk isn’t lost on him.

+++

The Support Course dorms in Meadows Residence are smaller than the Hero Course Heights Alliance buildings, since the Support Course accepts fifteen students per class at the absolute maximum, and because, for some reason, nobody in the Support Course cares about keeping the genders separate. The inefficiencies of having so many unused rooms in Heights Alliance have always struck Shouta as ridiculous, but the school board has always demanded “propriety” for their heroes to be. Turns out propriety can be expensive.

Shouta is directed to Midoriya’s room by a scowling Kurosawa Iwako, making his way to the third floor, finding Midoriya standing in the doorway to his room, leaning up against the lintel, Shouta’s analysis book open in his hands and a mild smirk on the kid’s face.

“Let’s see,” he says, and Shouta suddenly realizes that with the intellect on display in the book he himself is holding, the kid might have cracked the code. He’s proven right when the kid’s next words are his, read from the book directly. “Bakugou continues to improve, in fighting skills and in his softer skills. Now if only he could be cured of his case of Main Character Syndrome, he might be considered a well rounded hero by the time he graduates.”

Midoriya snaps the book shut, looking up at Shouta, and this might be the first time the kid is meeting his eyes in three years. “I was just about to text Nezu for your number when Yamaguchi told us you were on the approach.”

He holds the book out, then pulls it back when Shouta reaches to take it. “Why haven’t you tested if Shinsou’s quirk works through a person he’s controlled yet?” he asks.

“What?” Shouta asks, feeling his hackles rise.

“Shinsou’s quirk. If he’s controlling a person, can he use that person to initiate the call-and-response aspect of his quirk? It doesn’t look like you’ve even thought of it,” Midoriya says, wiggling the book in his hand. “It doesn’t even have to be unwilling control - if he’s working in a team, for example, the team could use strategic banter to disguise where exactly the mind control is coming from.”

Shouta’s mind is whirling. Midoriya is right - he hasn’t thought of that.

“It’s just a thought,” Midoriya says, holding the book out again, this time allowing Shouta to take it with numb fingers. “Have a good night, Aizawa sensei,” he adds, after pulling his own book out of Shouta’s grasp, and he’s turned around and in the process of closing the door when Shouta finds words again. He wasn’t expecting to find… well, these words, but they're okay.

“I’m in the middle of teaching the 2nd year students issues in ethics,” he says, and Midoriya looks over his shoulder, eyes wide. “Your project last year, on quirkism - would you be willing to do a guest lecture?”

Midoriya looks surprised and then thoughtful. “Send me the schedule for the class, and the ideal weeks for it. I’ll see what I can fit in,” he says. “You’ll have to see if Nezu will sign off on the extra credit.” The door closes behind him.

He’s on his way back to his own apartment at the teacher dorms when a thought strikes him and his steps falter.

The notebook he’d ended up with had been labeled #37.

Are there 36 more of those in Midoriya’s room?

+++

Nezu is happy to sign off on it and Midoriya somehow finds the time to teach all 11 classes in second year about quirk discrimination. He's damn good; factual, to the point, but not afraid to yank on heartstrings if he feels like it’s warranted. He doesn't lose his temper with anyone, even if some of the students seem to be doing their best to make him mad with their arguments; instead he breaks the arguments down until even the most stubborn of his students have to agree that they're unsupportable, and he does it with an absolutely terrifying smile.

The last class - incidentally, this year's 2A - is the only one that breaks his equilibrium, and it almost breaks Shouta's, too. Fortunately, Suzuki Rin manages to hold on until after class, but she comes up to Midoriya as the other students are gathering their things, and manages to force out, in a choked voice Shouta has never heard from her before, something he barely hears but there's enough to piece together a terrible narrative; a quirkless older sister, a thirty story high-rise and spider lilies. Midoriya holds her while she sobs into his shoulder, his face set in an expression of such soul-deep pain that Shouta wonders who in his past has a similar story.

She thanks him, afterwards, and Midoriya holds her by the shoulders, stares into her eyes and tells her not to thank him for this, to never thank him for this, that this is how it should be and that he will never accept gratitude for trying to make it so. She nods at him, once, and Shouta rather thinks she's leaving the class with a new set of goals.

They walk back to the teacher's lounge afterwards. It's the least Shouta can offer; Midoriya needs to wash up, probably change his jacket.

The silence becomes oppressive, and Shouta, almost unwillingly, starts the question.

"Who…"

"I don't think that's any of your concern, Aizawa sensei," Midoriya says firmly.

Shouta closes his mouth and keeps his questions behind his teeth.

Chapter Text

Two weeks later he runs into Midoriya in the gym. The teacher's gym. In the middle of the night.

Midoriya is not supposed to be in here, but he's hardly the first third year student to get access to this gym granted by a teacher - Shouta himself has given Shinsou and Tokoyami access this term - and the general rule for teachers is to pretend not to see anything and go about one's own business. That's the whole point; for the students who need it to have somewhere to go when the kids' own gyms are too social for their needs.

So Shouta doesn't look in the direction of Midoriya's treadmill as he sets his own for a light warmup, ignores him as he wraps his hands to work on the heavy bag for a while and would have continued to ignore him if Midoriya hadn't come up to him as he's getting ready to lift, asking politely if he needs a spotter.

Shouta is half tempted to tell him no since Midoriya doesn't even like him, but the truth is that he's here to get out of his head and if he has a spotter he can go heavier, push himself a bit harder, and he needs that more than he'd like to admit.

The goddamn Shie Hassaikai thing has turned out to be a damn hydra of a case with no end in sight and they're in the waiting stages right now to see if Bubble Girl will recover or not - it's impossible to tell what variety of bullet she'd been shot with from the serum inside, they can only tell once the quirk comes back… or when it doesn't.

It doesn't help that his kids are involved. He's never wanted to hug a student more than earlier tonight, after Kirishima put himself between the Yakuza and Asui, a serum-filled bullet bouncing harmlessly off his side.

"Thanks," he says to Midoriya and the kid just nods and helps him set up, spotting him wordlessly for his sets until Shouta's muscles burn almost as much as his eyes.

After, they sit on separate benches in the weight area, Midoriya idly doing arm curls with one of Shouta's discarded weight plates like it is nothing - and Shouta can't help but notice that the kid has bulked up since that day in the training grounds when he broke his finger.

Somehow that's the mental image of Midoriya that's stuck with him, and how incorrect it is has never been more evident than right now, with the kid in basketball shorts and a sleeveless top, all the skin that's on display stretched tight over corded muscle. He's almost distracted enough to be startled when Midoriya speaks.

"There's human DNA in the serum in the bullets," the kid says, and Shouta wants to know how he knows that but the support department thinks privacy is a buzzword and secrecy a challenge, so he doesn't actually want to know. He might be forced to report the kid if he finds out.

"Chances are that the effects of the bullets are directly correlated with the quirk of the person who owns that DNA," Midoriya goes on. "As I am sure you know, any quirk capable of directly affecting other people's quirk factor are considered to be class-A quirks, along with some other categories of quirks. They're considered unusually dangerous, and therefore, when such quirks are registered, a sample of DNA is taken for… evidence."

Midoriya's tone is mild, his face carefully neutral, but there is a tightness around his eyes, betraying his opinion of the matter.

"So you're saying…" Shouta asks. He's too tired for mind games and if the kid thinks they haven't already run the DNA they have against every possible database, he’s not as smart as he pretends to be.

"The quirk in question is unregistered," Midoriya says without hesitation. "There's a number of possibilities for how that could come to be the case, but most of them involve either a lot of work and luck staying off the grid, the involvement of people from outside Japan, a late in life freak quirk mutation or so on and so forth."

Okay, so not mind games. This is going somewhere.

"Seems complicated," Shouta says, taking a swig of water from his bottle.

"Mmmm, very," Midoriya says. "The government works very hard to make sure to close all avenues to the possibilities I mentioned. And it's almost impossible to operate in normal society without getting caught if you try to get past them."

"So… Occam's razor?" Shouta asks, and watches Midoriya smile faintly.

"Oh, the simplest explanation is the worst," he says. "Backroom and darkweb chatter indicates they started trading on the idea of the bullets around five-ish years ago. Three or so years ago they started to see some success."

"So that's when they found the person with the quirk," Shouta thinks out loud.

Midoriya tilts his head and looks at him from under the fall of his dark green hair. There's something haunted in his gaze, and a moment later, Shouta's heart slams against his ribcage as he gets it.

"That's when the quirk developed," he breathes. "There's a kid out there."

Midoriya's crooked half-smile looks hopelessly sad. "Somewhere between eight to ten years old, most likely. Look into people with children born eight to ten years ago who suffered… quirk accidents, maybe even disappeared altogether, or died. The very worst end of the scale. Birth of the child is probably registered but if they're… where we think they are, they're hardly attending school as they should be, you know? Look into parents with A-class quirks but also time manipulation, healing quirks, illusionist type quirks and growth and decay quirks. Previous connection to the Yakuza might narrow the field but that's conjecture on my part, so definitely discard it if necessary."

"Goddamn it," Shouta whispers. Now that Midoriya has walked him through his thought process it seems obvious and a part of him wants to tear out of here, leave Midoriya with the mess he's made of the weight room, call Tsukauchi, turn up at the police station sweaty and gross from his workout and demand that everybody jump on this lead - but he knows how these things go. Databases aren't all that they're cracked up to be and the team desperately needs sleep.

"I agree," Midoriya says, before leaning across the space between them and catching Shouta's right hand in both of his.

Shouta's heart maybe slams into the other side of his ribcage at the gesture.

"You've broken skin. There’s bleeding," Midoriya says, inspecting the hand. "You didn’t do a very good job of wrapping it."

"I tried but… was in a bad mood when I came in here."

"Understandable," Midoriya says, "but if I know Shuzenji sensei at all, she won't heal this because she'll consider it self-inflicted, so you should disinfect it as soon as possible."

"I'll get to it," Shouta says. This latest discovery makes him want to lift more weights, feel the burn some more, make it really punishing.

Midoriya snorts. "Yeah, I've heard that one often enough," he says, standing up, not letting go of Shouta's hand. "Come on, get."

He finds himself unusually compliant as he's towed to the changing room where Midoriya unwraps his hands and washes the split knuckles in the sink. His hands are big, rough and calloused from the support labs, but they're gentle as he dries Shouta's right hand off around the injury, before disinfecting and bandaging his fingers lightly. Shouta's so tired. He hopes at least Kirishima and Asui are sleeping but he'd not be surprised to see them tomorrow looking like they've stolen Shinsou's eyebag look.

He doesn't know what to say. Not to any of this. Midoriya doesn't like him, justifiably so, but that's not evident in the way he handles him at all. Instead, Midoriya laughs at himself when he realizes that he's effectively made one of Shouta's hands useless for the task of cleaning up after a workout and Midoriya, rather than leaving him to figure it out with a plastic bag on his hand or something, instead bullies Shouta out of his clothes and into the bathing area, sits Shouta down on one of the stools and operates the shower head himself, letting Shouta's one good hand take care of washing his body but takes over when it comes to the hair. It's a good thing heroics tend to kill any body consciousness - Shouta hasn't felt it since his first year and Midoriya is clearly fine.

The strong fingers on his scalp feel magical and Shouta is reminded of nothing so much as Hizashi, before they split up ages ago, demanding Shouta wash his hair. Apparently Hizashi had the right idea, who'd have thought it?

Midoriya doesn't make a big production of it, though he uses his hands to direct most of the water away from Shouta's face at least, for which he's grateful. His eyes hurt enough, shampoo would have been a terrible addition.

"I'm going to use the Sento," Midoriya says, "but if you want help drying and dressing, I can do that first."

"I think I'm going to use it, too." Shouta says, before he can think better of it. He should leave; go to his room, lay awake trying to sleep, worried about his kids even while he knows they're safe and sound on campus, let Midoriya get what he needed out of this visit to the gym, but he's angry and selfish and Midoriya has also just given him an entirely new heartache to contend with.

"Sure," Midoriya says. "Let me set you up with some protection, then I'll wash and come join you." Instead of a plastic bag, Midoriya double gloves his injured hand before securing the whole thing with a spare hair elastic, claiming this is a ‘support department standard’ and extracting a promise from Shouta to keep the hand away from the water.

Midoriya finds him in the shallow end of the warm pool ten minutes later. The kid has clearly washed his hair, it's braided away from his face and pulled tight in a bun at the top of his head to keep it out of the water, and the kid sighs in pleasure as he slips into the warmth of the water beside Shouta.

"Since I'm technically sneaking in," he says, "it always feels too awkward to say anything about it, but I'd really appreciate it if you could tell Cementoss that this part of the pool, right now, is just perfect."

Shouta snorts. "Yeah, you and everybody else," he says. "He went to an Onsen in Fukuoka over New Years and came back with this design, I thought he was going to implode from embarrassment what with the pornographic noises Nem made when she tried it out the first time. Also, you should tell him yourself - he might set this up in your communal baths if he knows you like it, next time he's around."

Midoriya huffs a laugh. "Okay, sold," he says. "Kurosawa is working on something for him anyway, in that case we might even have some leverage to get him to set it up sooner rather than later."

"You guys have co-ed baths?" Shouta asks curiously, ignoring the fact that they're currently in one themselves.

"We did a vote and we all wanted the bigger space for all of us, even if it was a co-ed situation," Midoriya responds. "We have swimsuits. We even wear them most of the time. The showers are obviously separate."

At least that's something. The warm water is scrambling Shouta's brains - at this rate, he might need to ask Midoriya to carry him home, which… he'd have said before tonight that it was a terrible idea, but for some odd reason Midoriya isn't treating him like he's holding any sort of a grudge, and if he was still angry last year when he was taking Shouta's course, he's clearly since gotten over it somehow. Shouta is even pretty certain that Midoriya is here because he wanted to tell Shouta about his conclusions regarding the bullets, rather than needing the solitude of the teacher's gym. And how Midoriya had known to be in the gym when Shouta himself stumbled in is an issue, in and of itself, that he will not be tackling tonight.

"You liked the gloves," Midoriya says, snapping him out of his daze. Midoriya has tilted his head to the left to look at Shouta's hand, encased in latex and out of the pool.

"What?" Shouta asks dumbly.

"The schematics were folded incorrectly," Midoriya says, flippantly, smiling at him. "Would you like to test a pair for me?"

"Yes," Shouta says, his mouth operating entirely independently of his higher brain functions, disarmed by that smile and this whole situation.

"I'll catch up with you for personal specs in a day or two," Midoriya says, leaning contentedly back in the water and closing his eyes.

Midoriya does end up helping Shouta dry, dress himself, and get home, though it mostly takes the form of gentle bullying when Shouta zones out, either in exhaustion or thought. Somehow he's not surprised to find Yagi waiting for them with chamomile tea when they enter the teacher's dorm, and Midoriya leaves at some point, but the former symbol of peace seems to have learned at least as much from his pupil as his pupil has learned from him, and somehow, despite wanting to stay up and brood, Shouta ends up in his bed.

The sleep he eventually gets is restful enough.

+++

"Maijima," Shouta calls from the entrance to the man's lab, hoping not to startle him into an explosion. That has happened before.

"Aizawa," Maijima says, looking up. "I'm just going over patent paperwork and while Hatsume's might be explosive on principle, you're fine to come in. What can I help you with today?"

"One of your students asked if I'd like to test a prototype," he says. "I wanted to make sure it was something you knew about."

Maijima snorts. "Midoriya offered you the gloves, didn't he?" he asks, leaning back in his chair. "It's either that or the jetpack and you don't seem like the sort to want to fly."

"No, it's the gloves, I just want to make sure they're approved for testing," Aizawa says.

"They are, and you won't be the only one testing them," Maijima says. "Don't worry, Aizawa, Midoriya is a professional, even for you. Maybe even especially for you."

He huffs into his scarf, feeling a bit wounded by that last comment. "I'm sorry for being a bit apprehensive, considering last year's course. And Midoriya wouldn't be the first student to hold a grudge."

"He doesn't," Maijima says, startling him. "Hold a grudge. I believe that's the entire problem, actually. The class hates you because he doesn't."

Shouta stares at him, struck dumb.

Maijima sighs, and leans back in his swivel chair, facing him.

"Shouta," he says wearily, and the first name catches Shouta's attention, as it is meant to. "One of these days, probably soon," he says, looking up at Shouta, eyes tired, "you're going to realize that one of the great blunders in your career as a hero was passing up the opportunity to train that boy when you had the chance. When that happens, my door will be open, and I'll have a bottle with your name on it. Now, I have patents to sort, and I'm sure you have somewhere more… heroic to be. You can trust Midoriya, he is very determined not to hold your mistakes against you. Keep your eye on the rest of them, though."

He swallows, throat dry as he walks away from the support lab. That's going to be a lot of students that'll spread out across a lot of companies.

Chapter Text

It's situation normal all fucked up, as usual.

The villain of the day has some sort of transposition quirk, and his current favorite trick is to trade concrete with something easily breakable, with predictable results.

Shouta is on evacuation, at least for now. The villain isn't somewhere obvious, far too clever to be out in the open, so until Shouta has someone to aim his eyes at they're stuck playing whack-a-mole.

Also, the villain has a friend. It's a mutation quirk so there's nothing Shouta can do about the fact that there is a Hippopotamus-man in the middle of the street laughing maniacally, pulling down buildings when his hidden friend tells him to, foundations suddenly made of glass or gypsum or plasterboard.

"Kusanagi incoming, five minutes out," he hears on the general channel in his left ear.

He breathes out and tries not to let on that he's glad to hear the name. His scarf can do a lot of work but Kusanagi's quirk is basically like a levitating version of his scarf, as far as he can tell. That'll be useful for evacuation.

Kusanagi is new on the scene and doesn't have his full license yet: he has the interim type the commission grants young heroes who have passed the full license exam but not graduated from a hero course or the equivalent yet; they're allowed to act on their own, but they are expected to defer if a more experienced hero turns up. Kusanagi has been working in Musutafu for a couple of months now, in Nighteye’s agency, and he's got a good head on his shoulders. Last week he'd managed to set up a situation where two serial muggers tried to rob each other, ending with both of them in police custody. The entire police department had been in stitches at the hilarity.

"Kusanagi, this isn't your area," Tsukauchi says. "How come you're so close?"

"I was having dinner with my mother," the young man responds.

"We can handle this, you know," Tsukauchi says. "This isn't a level 1 threat."

"Oh no," the voice says. "She was asking about girlfriends. With all due respect for your quirk, sir, compared to her your interrogation tactics don’t even rate." Shouta can hear the giggles from the team he's currently leading on the open channel in his right ear.

Tsukauchi sounds a little choked. "You sure?"

"Oh yeah," the young man responds. "If it wasn't bad form, I'd thank these guys. What's the situation, sir?"

"Let me see… I'm putting you with Eraserhead, if that's okay, Kusanagi?" It's unusually inquiring, for what really should be a rhetorical question, but Shouta doesn't have time to think about it.

"Sure, Kusanagi replies. "What channel, and who else is in the mix?"

Shouta cues his left ear communicator. "Eighteen, me, the local team Idaten and Minerva."

"Switching to eighteen," Kusanagi responds.

"Switching you to monitoring," Tsukauchi responds.

Shouta's right ear crackles. "Hi Kusanagi," a bright voice says. "I'm Ito, your monitor for tonight. Welcome to channel eighteen."

"Happy to be here," the man says, sounding a touch breathless. "Inbound in two minutes, sitrep, please?"

Shouta is ridiculously relieved when, 107 seconds later (he will get the exact time from the recording afterwards) Kusanagi runs in, just as they've lost control of a five story building which hasn't been fully evacuated yet. Kusanagi turns up wreathed in green lightning, shoring the whole damn building up on his shoulders for a second before gently lowering it down onto a side in a way that means the civilians can walk or crawl out, rather than have the whole structure crashing around them.

They work in tandem with Idaten and Minerva, and Shouta is beginning to wonder about Kusanagi's quirk - he's displaying strength far beyond normal, but he's also got the black tendrils and the ability to levitate, and maybe there's a cohesive quirk that can explain all that, but Shouta certainly can't - when suddenly, Kusanagi stiffens at Shouta's side before tapping his ear twice.

"I see him," he breathes, both next to Shouta and across the general chat. "I can get Eraserhead up there."

"It's the two of you's call," Tsukauchi says, immediately. "Sitrep ASAP if you require any involvement of anyone else."

Shouta follows the gloved finger of Kusanagi pointing towards the fire escape of a highrise that has remained unscathed, so far.

"You need to stay down here," Shouta says, doing a quick glance of the surrounding buildings, all of which are slipping and sliding as if drunk, their sturdy foundations switched out for god knows what. Kusanagi is their only heavy hitter strong enough to literally put buildings in their place.

"Oh sure," the man says, and his voice sounds like he's smiling. Shouta can't see it, of course - Kusanagi wears a full face mask and goggles, so he could be grimacing in disbelief for all Shouta knows. "I was planning to toss you."

"... what?"

"I can toss you up to that level, even higher. Then you can use your scarf - see that AC unit there? That should give you an anchor. Use your quirk on him - alternate eyes should be fine for a while, he's very exposed and very stuck on that fire escape if we aim you properly - and as long as you've negated his quirk, the chaos should abate. He's all the way up there, skulking around, I'm guessing he's not a fighter. Worst case scenario, I toss Jetstream here up to your position early and she'll arrest him."

One of the girls from the Idaten agency grins at him, eyes bright.

"What makes you think he won't just unleash on all the buildings around us while he can see me in the air?" Shouta asks.

"Oh! It's a five point contact quirk"" Kusanagi says. "And those have their own limitations, especially when activation is delayed! Have you read Benesov and Morigawa's article from January? Anyway, the faster we can hinder him from using his ability on whatever else he's touched around here, the better."

The other hero sounds sure of himself, and yeah, he's been meaning to read that goddamn article, but he's not a man with an abundance of free time. He's not sure how he feels about being tossed like a baseball, but it's the best plan they've got, so when Kusanagi laces his fingers together like he's planning to give Shouta a boost to reach a high shelf or something, Shouta takes a deep breath and steps up.

The resulting flight is a few seconds of screaming exhilaration, and Shouta is just going to ignore that it was him screaming. Kusanagi had aimed perfectly, and he'd known exactly how to utilize the capture weapon, and in the end, Shouta had sat on the villain for five minutes, alternating eyes until Jetstream, as promised, had been boosted up to their position to put quirk suppressing handcuffs on the idiot.

It'd been a good win, and Shouta always likes it when he gets those.

+++

Shouta is staring at the picture on his computer screen when Midoriya next finds him. It’s become a bit of a habit for the past couple of days, ever since Tsukauchi sent him the four files - and hadn’t that been a kick in the gut, there’s four children missing out there who fulfill their rather specific criterias - that the police had winnowed down as possible originators of the anti-quirk serum.

They’re all pretty certain that they’re looking for Takahashi Eri, though. Her mother, Takahashi Chihiro, Chisaki Chihiro before her marriage, has left the country and lives in Australia, but there are no records of her child leaving with her, and she’s avoiding all attempts at contact. There are no records of her child for the past four years, full stop. Neither are there any of her husband, Takahashi Yuuichirou. Chisaki, however, is a familiar name to anyone who knows anything about the local Yakuza.

The picture they have is from nursery school; a little girl with short, silvery hair in pigtails, bright red eyes and a tiny bud of a horn on the side of her forehead. She’s smiling at the camera.

“Is that the kid we thought might be the origin of the bullets?” Midoriya’s voice says from behind him, making him jump.

“We think so,” Shouta says, turning around in his swivel chair and looking up at Midoriya, who is holding a clipboard and boxes of… gloves?

“Tsukauchi told me you had a lead on her identity,” Midoriya says, sitting at Hizashi’s desk before reaching for Shouta’s right hand with no explanation. “I hope you find her soon.”

Shouta is amused as the kid just flattens the borrowed hand out across the clipboard before making a quick outline with a pencil, then whips out his phone to take a couple of pictures.

“Here, test this one,” the kid says, fishing a turquoise leather glove out of the box and handing it over. “You have relatively small hands for your height, that’s a seven.”

“I think I might be insulted,” Shouta says, before pulling the glove on as instructed.

Midoriya snorts. “Oh come on, the myth about a correlation between hand size and dick size is bullshit. Besides, I saw your penis in the sento, you don’t need to worry. How does it fit?”

From two rows behind him come the distinct sounds of Nemuri trying to not have an aneurysm. Shouta studiously does not look in her direction.

“The palm is too small but I think the fingers would fit. Why is it turquoise?”

“We got all our test-fitting gloves from department store lost-and-found baskets,” Midoriya explains. “Our selection is eclectic.”

Shouta tries on a couple more gloves before finding one that fits, well, like a glove.

“Perfect, that’s your right hand,” Midoriya says, and then he’s leaning over to grab Shouta’s left hand to repeat the process. “It’s more common than you’d think to need different sizes for the same person,” he explains, as he inspects the fit of a wine-red glove with a critical eye. “Especially in heroics, especially for heroes who use their hands a lot - you think you use them equally but there’s almost always a leading hand and that can mean a small size difference. Since we’re manufacturing to spec anyway, it doesn’t make any sense to not take it into account.”

“Interesting,” Shouta says. In his peripheral vision he can see Nemuri has entirely given up pretending she’s working - unless he’s much mistaken, she’s holding her phone up to take a picture. He uses his free hand to send her a one-fingered salute.

“Yep,” Midoriya says. “Your left hand is slightly narrower than your right. What bones have you broken in your hands? Any other injuries that I should take into account? Carpal tunnel? Also, I’m going to need you to authorize me to look at your Patrol and Mission reports for the past two weeks - it’ll give me an idea of what you’re out there doing,” he says, and he’s smiling faintly when Shouta looks back at him.

“Uh,” he says, trying to think if there’s anything classified from the past two weeks. The only case he can think of is the one the kid seems to be knee deep in anyway.

“Also, can I join 3A tomorrow for Foundations of Heroics? I have new support items for Uraraka and Kaminari. I’d go through Maijima sensei, but since I’m here, I figured I might as well ask. Unless the lesson isn’t suitable for that?”

He finds himself agreeing readily, earning another small polite smile. He’d been planning to run a hostage rescue simulation, but he could use an extra week to plan it, he thinks.

"Okay," Midoriya says while packing up. "It'll be a week or two to make them up for you, send me or Tsukauchi the authorization for the paperwork, and email me if you think of anything extra you need for them. I'll see you tomorrow in heroics."

"Midoriya," he starts as the kid is standing up to leave, "if you know Tsukauchi well, how come you told me about this?"

He waves a hand at the computer screen, still displaying a picture of a 3 year old.

Midoriya looks at him with faint amusement. "I've been trying to get Tsukauchi to step back from either the League of Villains or the Shie Hassaikai case for a while now, the man is ridiculously overworked. He has more than enough on his plate, and I knew what happened with Eijirou and Tsuyu earlier in the day, so I figured you'd be restless and motivated." He shrugs. "You claim to be pretty invested in stopping children from getting hurt. You've made that stance abundantly clear to me, after all. Plus, I thought you'd be a great guinea pig for the gloves. Now, I need to get back to the labs before Mei's latest project hits critical mass, so unless there was something else?"

Shouta’s phone pings just as Midoriya is leaving the teacher’s office, and he’s somehow less than surprised to find a picture message from Nemuri. The way the picture is framed makes it look like something other than glove fitting is going on, makes it look almost like a romantic encounter with Midorya holding his hand, and he shoots her a dirty look when she starts laughing out loud at him. It's particularly bruising, what with Midoriya's clear dismissal of his best intentions.

He wonders how loud she’d laugh if she knew this is the second time this week Midoriya has just… grabbed his hands and done what he felt was necessary. He has an inkling it’d be louder than her giggles right now.

He stands up to go find better coffee than the teachers' office can provide and tries not to get angry at the way Nemuri cackles as he leaves.

+++

“Goddamnit, Sparky, no,” he hears from the other side of the gym, and then there is a slightly pained yelp.

By now, he knows his kids enough to know when to run, so he rounds the corner at a leisurely pace, before stopping as he takes in the scene.

Bakugou is looking apoplectic - which is standard, to be honest - and he’s not supposed to be here anyway, Shouta will have to ask about that.

Uraraka is glaring at him from where she’s hanging by one hand off of a cliff Cementoss had made as a part of the training area. She’s wearing her new gloves, making it look easy, clearly somewhere in the middle of the testing process.

Midoriya had, just as he’d come into sight, landed a flawless backflip, which he’d executed to avoid Kaminari’s new whip, while Bakugou had clearly stood his ground and gotten clipped by it.

Shouta pinches the top of his nose between his eyebrows and wonders what he did in a past life to deserve this, before remembering that the current situation is a result of choices he’s made in this life.

“Denks,” Midoriya says, laughing breathlessly, “I told you I’d teach you to use it, and I’ve spoken to Kayama sensei, once you’ve got the basics down she’ll help - please, you’re not Indiana Jones yet.”

“It’s so cool,” Kaminari says, looking less than apologetic. “And I wasn’t expecting Explodo Boy there, though I should have - he turns up to be a turd whenever you’re here.”

Shouta is almost shocked. Bakugou isn’t popular, but he has a loose friend group of people who seem to be able to tolerate him - Kaminari is a member of that group.

“Whatcha say, Sparky,” Bakugou predictably explodes. “Wanna go a few rounds?”

“Nope,” Kaminari says, popping the p and giving Midoriya and Uraraka a grin filled with mischief. “You’re s’posed to be beating on Kiri, anyway, I’m the one who’s getting familiar with new gear. You should scram before Aizawa sensei - who is right there, by the way - says anything about it.”

Bakugou opens his mouth to say something but clearly thinks better of it when he spots Shouta exactly where Kaminari had indicated he’d be.

“Fucker,” he growls instead. “Useless fucking Deku,” he adds, before walking away, though he makes a point of shouldering past Midoriya with some violence as he does it.

“What’s his problem with you anyway?” Uraraka asks idly. “I’m starting to feel it, by the way, but the grip is still great. Want me to keep hanging out?”

Midoriya snorts. “Yeah, hang on for as long as you can, the fingertip covers need the test, for your safety as much as my curiosity,” he says, looking up at her before twisting to look at Kaminari. “Do not electrify it yet, Denks,” he says sharply and Shouta is close enough to them now he can see the whip isn’t like one of Nemuri’s leather ones - this one looks like corded fabric and wire, and wait… if it’s made to be conductive… that’s ingenious.

“Don’t mind Katsuki,” Midoriya is saying to Uraraka, looking up at her and assessing her hold on the edge of the cliff. “He’s got a pretty awful case of…” he looks over and meets Shouta’s eyes, mouth twisting up in a slight grin, “Main Character Syndrome.”

He looks down, sharp eyes assessing Kaminari. “Now,” he says, “I believe I promised you some training with a whip. My Wednesday evenings are free enough - gym theta. You up for it, or should I take it back for all our safety?”

Much to Shouta’s surprise, Kaminari kind of gulps.

Chapter Text

Kaminari’s new whip is indeed made to be electrified, and is made of similar stuff to Shouta’s own capture weapon - he can see it becoming an excellent tool once Kaminari is proficient with it but it will probably be a while until that happens.

Shouta’s opinion of Midoriya goes up a little more when Kaminari turns up to his next Foundational Heroics class without it, explaining that he’s not allowed to use it in training or battle until Midoriya gives him the green light. The most impressive part of this is actually that Shouta knows the whip is already in Kaminari’s hero gear case - the kid’s methods of persuasion must be formidable indeed if they were enough to convince Kaminari to leave it there.

He finds out what they were when he runs into Midoriya in the teacher’s kitchen well after classes are done for the day, an enormous goose egg on his forehead, a blueish bruise bleeding green down his temple.

“Sorry,” the kid says, “someone forgot to restock the icepack freezer in the student lounge again, and this is starting to throb. Shuzenji sensei is teaching me a lesson about ‘self-inflicted’ injuries for like, the thirteenth time this year, so she’s refused to heal me until tomorrow morning.”

“You did this to yourself?” Shouta asks curiously as he squeezes past the kid to get to the hot water dispenser to make himself some coffee - he has about an hour’s worth of grading left and he’ll need the caffeine if he’s planning to not fall asleep at his desk again.

“Eeeeeh,” Midoriya says, giving him a ‘so-so’ gesture with the hand not clutching the ice pack to his forehead. “Sometimes, the best way to teach people to be responsible with their gear is to let them hurt someone else with it a little. I let Kaminari get me with the whip when he was training with it last night.”

Shouta frowns. “Recovery Girl should have healed that, though. I may not agree with it, but I have seen Maijima do the exact same thing.”

Midoriya snorts. “There is a whole lecture on the method and how to execute it properly taught to the support students in second year, Aizawa sensei. And Recovery Girl is just making a point - she healed some training injuries for me this weekend so she was less than happy to see me yesterday. It’s fine, she’s promised to heal me tomorrow morning so I can get on with my weekend.”

“I imagine with the way your quirk hurts you, your training injuries can get quite extensive,” Shouta says idly, looking up when Midoriya makes a surprised huff of laughter.

“Sensei,” he says, “that hasn’t happened since about two months into first year. I can use it just fine, these days - it was just a matter of figuring out how to distribute the effects through my body. I consistently use around 60% of my power now without any risk of injury to myself, I can go higher but then my bones start creaking and Shuzenji sensei gets really pissed.”

Unease curls at the back of Shouta’s mind but Midoriya is still talking. “No, I got injured in training on Sunday because Maijima sensei had a lot of work and thought it would be a great idea to outsource the production of some practice grenades. It might have been fine if he hadn’t asked Meimei. Recovery Girl had words. And that was just the grenades - she was not happy about the building falling over either.”

“What kind of training are you doing, then?” Shouta asks, hiding his grimace behind his coffee cup, because the only Sunday training he knows of where a building might fall over is the non-mandatory Hero Student training run by All Might, Vlad and Nezu out in ground Sigma once or twice a month. He’s stressed to his class that it is non-mandatory and that he thinks their training regime is intense enough without it, but he knows a few of his students have attended when the mood strikes them. Midoriya, however, is not a Hero Student.

Midoriya is staring at him, eyes wide and dark, before he suddenly laughs out loud, leaning back against the windowsill on his side of the kitchen.

“Oh, I get it sensei,” he says, looking at Shouta with mirth like he’s done something particularly stupid. “You thought you’d stopped me.”

Shouta’s mind screeches to a halt.

“You thought you’d tell me I couldn’t be a hero and expel me, and that’d be that,” Midoriya grins at him, wide and with teeth. “I’m sorry, Aizawa sensei, but All Might himself couldn’t stop me. Ten years of my life being told every day I couldn’t be a hero - often with extreme prejudice - didn’t stop me. My own mother not believing in me didn’t stop me.” He laughs again, sounding unconcerned.

“It hurt, you know. At the time. I’d gotten in, I thought I had a chance, and then I turned up that first day, expecting things to be different because this is UA, but it was just more of the same.” He shrugs and smiles a little wider, meeting Shouta’s eyes, and the worst part - the very worst part - is that he doesn’t sound bitter, or annoyed, or even wry.

“You wanted to stop me. I get that - everyone has always wanted to stop me, you’re no different from anybody else on that score, and I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to be. And just like everybody else who has tried you couldn’t stop me either. So what kind of training am I doing? Hero training, sensei.”

Shouta stares as Midoriya opens the freezer to return the icepack he’d borrowed, before the kid hoists his backpack up onto one shoulder, glancing at his watch. “I have ten minutes to get to Nezu’s office, so I better go. Have a good evening, Aizawa sensei, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon for Law.”

His coffee is cold by the time he shakes himself out of his shock, and he decides that just this once, the grading can wait.

For the first time in his teaching career he feels like playing hooky because he doesn’t want to go to class tomorrow.

+++

He's called in for a raid with Nighteye Agency that Saturday. They've found a Shie Hassaikai facility, in the middle of well-to-do Musutafu of all places, but Nighteye's quirk had indicated that the gang was in the middle of moving their operations elsewhere. They are going in almost blind - but they can't afford to wait, either.

There's scores of heroes on the scene and some of them have Shouta's students in tow. He nods at Uraraka and Asui as he passes by them where they're conferring with Ryukyu. They'll at least be outside, on containment - Kirishima, with his far-too-useful quirk in this situation is on Shouta's own team, along with Fatgum and Suneater. Nighteye and Kusanagi will be with them as well, plus some assorted police and Shinso, since he's Shouta's own intern. Their goal, as a strike team, will be to secure a central lab Nighteye is reasonably certain he can lead them to.

It goes off the rails almost from the start. The Yakuza either knew they were coming or were paranoid enough that they have been expecting the worst all this time, and so when the police attempt to serve a warrant all hell breaks loose.

"There's something here to protect," Kusanagi says as they fight their way through twisting underground tunnels - literally twisting - all they can do now to stick with the plan even as it falls apart around them. "Something we don't know about," he goes on, before catching a man Mindblank throws at him with his capture weapon, efficiently knocking him out with a fist to the temple.

"Focus, Kusanagi," Nighteye says, and the young man huffs a laugh.

"I am focusing, Sir," he says. "I'm trying to say that if they're really ready to leave this place behind, they wouldn't be fighting so hard, they'd be cutting and running. There's something here that's valuable to them, that they haven't gotten out yet. We need to push forward." He whirls around, intercepting another of Shinso’s throws with the heel of his boot, the man going down like a sack of potatoes. The two younger heroes are working very efficiently together, Shouta notes.

"I'm with Kusanagi," he says, punching out a yakuza thug before looking around to see if anybody needs the assistance of his quirk. "Whatever they're protecting we might capture if we're fast enough."

There's yelling coming from an adjoining corridor, and then Fatgum has taken over Shinso and Kusanagi's fight with the last two yakuza in this part of the base, muscling in like he does sometimes when he knows his special talents are needed.

"Suneater, Red Riot and I will make a wall," he says, his grin slightly feral as he smiles back at the rest of them. "Run."

Kusanagi sounds like he's grinning too as he turns towards the side of the hallway.

"Actually, I heard a rat, I believe. Let me make it easier for you," he says, and his hand sparkles green as he punches the wall.

Shouta is about to protest, but then the goddamn wall spits out a reedy looking little man in a plague doctor mask, Shouta activates his quirk immediately and suddenly their environment is static again.

"Mindblank," Kusanagi says, and Shinso catches his meaning straight away.

"Where's the boy?" he asks threateningly, stepping up to the guy with intent.

It has the desired effect. "What boy?" the man asks, reflexively, and Shinso has him. "Make a wall," he says. Shouta lets go of Erasure and a wall springs up between them and the incoming horde of henchmen.

They all breathe a quick sigh of relief before Kusanagi straightens back up. "Now we run," he says, and Shouta can see Sir Nighteye suppress one of his pleased little smiles.

They do end up leaving their brawlers behind to fight the occasional Yakuza as they move forward at speed, but with Mimic having closed off the main tunnel access behind them on Shinso's command - before he'd been unceremoniously quirk-cuffed, tied up and left in a closet - all the fights they're finding are relatively small skirmishes.

What they discover in the end is just what Nighteye described; a central lab and production facility, clearly in the final stages of disassembly. The reason they were fighting so damn hard is obvious, though - temperature controlled cabinets line one side of the room, and they're filled with finished product.

"Kusanagi," Nighteye says sharply. "Close off any ingress point."

"Got it, sir," the young hero says before ducking out into the hallway they'd come through. There's an almost sonic boom, the sound of concrete giving way, and then Kusanagi is back, striding towards the other exit.

Shouta has to agree - they can't let the Shie Hassaikai get their product back, now that they have it. If they have to seal themselves inside this lab for the next couple of days, it'll be worth it.

There’s another loud boom from the other direction before Kusanagi comes back into the room, immediately zeroing in on a computer terminal in the middle of the lab.

“Hello there, pretty,” he says, sitting down in a rolling chair in front of it, fingers already flying over the keyboard before looking up at Shinso.

“Mindblank, if I find you some footage, how much do you think you’ll need to emulate a voice?”

Shinso looks thoughtful. “Depends on what you want me to say,” he says. “Not that much for barked one-word orders. More if I’m going to talk for any length of time.”

Kusanagi looks over to Sir Nighteye. “There’s a general intercom system, I noticed speakers for it. If this computer is connected to the same network, I can hack into it. I was thinking something along the lines of “product secured, scatter. Whatever voice you think would be most useful, Mindblank’s voice transformer is mostly to get people to respond to him for his quirk, but it can absolutely be used to fool a bunch of goons into giving up.”

He turns to face Shouta. “The wording can probably use some work,” he says. “You’ve probably got the most experience, out of the four of us, with what a Yakuza leader might say to convey that message.”

He huffs a laugh at something on the computer screen, before looking at Nighteye again. “I’m in their system, so tell me who to imitate and I’ll see what video files I can pull.”

It’s a clever plan and it works like a charm, once they’ve pooled their knowledge and figured out what message they want to send, Shinso’s voice steady as he imitates someone going by the name ‘Chronostasis’ telling the Yakuza in the compound that their mission is a success. It leads to mistakes, many mistakes, as the Yakuza turn tail to run, and Shouta can almost hear the way Tsukauchi must be groaning about all the paperwork associated with so many arrests at once.

It does mean that they’re stuck in the lab for hours, the police don’t make it all the way down to them until it’s well past midnight, but the lack of sleep is worth it, Shouta thinks when he reads the stats Tsukauchi has texted him when he wakes up Sunday morning.

1758 bullets, 239 of those the permanent type. Hopefully, their scientists will be able to do something with that. At least they’re off the streets. 62 arrests, too, that's nothing to sneeze at.

He’d crashed in his room in the 3A dorms after making sure all his kids were safe and properly debriefed. He'd been too tired to go back to his own place and he’s almost grateful for it when he wanders into the kitchen in search of coffee - clearly, with the number of 3A students involved in the raid, Iida has taken it upon himself to organize the post-mission-crash party. This means that Sero takes one look at him and starts setting up the espresso pot, while Yaoyorozu pours him a cup from the carafe of the drip machine to tide him over.

“Good morning,” he says to Shinso who is sitting at the breakfast bar, communing with a coffee cup all his own.

"It is, isn't it?" Shinso says. "All that stuff off the street, a lot of arrests, and apparently that computer was a treasure trove of information, too."

Shouta hadn't known that last part. He shoots Shinso a questioning look and his intern smiles tiredly. "I got a text at four AM that was mostly emojis," he says. "He managed to quarantine it quickly enough that almost all of the data was saved."

"You guys worked well together," Shouta says. It's an understatement. Even despite three years of on the job training with Shouta, other heroes don't necessarily know how to treat Mindblank in the field. Watching Kusanagi and him play off one another yesterday had been a pleasure.

They should be around the same age, Shouta thinks. Maybe the up and coming generation of heroes will be less apprehensive about mental quirks and more willing to consider skills rather than focusing on just physical quirks all the time.

"Thanks, sensei," Shinso says. "It was pretty cool to work with him in the field."

That's when Sero deposits an enormous coffee cup of many espressos in front of him, and Kirishima turns up with a giant plaster on his forehead catching everyone’s attention, so in lieu of an answer Shouta just reaches out and ruffles Shinso's hair.

+++

He's working late on Tuesday night - he'd taken most of Sunday off, exhausted from the early morning start on Saturday and the late night they'd had waiting to be extracted from the Shie Hassaikai lab, so he's got a little bit of catching up to do.

He's the only one still remaining in the teacher's office, and the cleaning staff had bid him good night almost two hours before, so he's surprised when Midoriya wanders into the little pool of light cast by his desk lamp. He looks exhausted, even more exhausted than most of his kids who went on the raid, and Shouta wonders what kind of training schedule he has, if he's aiming to finish both the Support Course and the Hero Course to get a Hero licence. All Might had taken over training him and his quirk personally, and he'd never taken All Might for a particularly hard taskmaster, but the kid looks like he's about to fall asleep standing up.

He's got a case under one arm, a clipboard in his other hand, and he yawns as he drops down into Cementoss chair in the row in front of Shouta, swiveling around to sit facing him.

"Sorry," he says. "Project came up, I haven't had a lot of rest for the past couple of days.

He puts the clipboard down onto the edge of Shouta’s desk, and the first thing Shouta notices is that there's a USB secured with a paperclip to the clamp.

"This," Midoriya says, unbending the paperclip to unhook the USB, "contains the user manual for your new support item. Read it. I am not above confiscating the gloves if you don't."

"And how would you know if I don't?" Shouta asks, accepting the USB and for lack of better things to do with it, plugging it into his computer.

"There'll be a pop quiz when you least expect it. If I have reason to suspect you haven't read it, I'll send MeiMei to administer said pop quiz."

Shouta snorts. "Does Hatsume know that Maijima uses her presence to scare the rest of the faculty into doing what he wants? And now you?"

"She revels in it," Midoriya says tiredly. "Now, since you're not a student and I have faith that you'll actually read the instructions, here's the release form for the gloves. I'm going to need you to stamp and sign it."

Shouta opens the drawer of his desk to find his Hanko, before reaching over to tip the lid off of Hizashi's inkpad on his desk, pressing the seal into it before putting it to the paper where Midoriya indicates.

"Okay," Midoriya says, pulling the box out from under his arm. "Here are your new gloves. I am going to go sleep for at least forty hours, so I've canceled the usual Wednesday gym hour where I take people through using new support items - but if you read the manual, you should be fine to try them out, and I'll see you in gym theta Wednesday next week, okay?"

"I'm not a student," Shouta says bemusedly, though he pulls the box closer, unclasping the lid to look at his new support gloves. "You can't require me to come to your gym hours."

"Nope," Midoriya says. "But you just signed a contract with a support student agreeing that you'd assist them with further development of the item in question. If Wednesdays don't work for you, that's fine, but we will be having that training time sometime soon, and if I think you're dodging me, I am not above siccing Maijima sensei on you, and as previously discussed, he's not above sending MeiMei. Now, you were my last stop for the evening. I am going to bed."

The kid takes the clipboard back and turns on his heel, walking off. He's almost at the door when Shouta calls out to him.

"Are you alright? You look like shit."

Midoriya's shoulders slump.

"I spent around 40 hours in the past few days creating a forensic document archive from a seized computer, and most of the remaining time wishing that I could just delete what I found out of my brain. No, Aizawa sensei, I'm not alright. But I will be, hopefully, with some time and distance and sleep. You should get some sleep, too, you've been here for almost 14 hours."

And with that, he disappears out the main door, leaving Shouta to wonder how Midoriya knows how long he has been here.

Chapter Text

The gloves are incredible.

Shouta reads the manual, because like the rest of the faculty he lives in mild fear of Maijima's explosion gremlin - an even bigger feat in his case since Shouta has an explosion gremlin of his very own - and is pretty impressed with what he reads.

And then he wears the gloves on Friday night patrol.

He takes out a few muggers, one (attempted) rapist, meets with a vigilante contact who likes to toss shuriken to say hello, scales three buildings and gets around by way of his scarf and a lot of parkour. The difference in grip alone would have made the gloves worth it - it almost feels like the gloves are coated with glue, but they let go exactly when Shouta wants them to.

He's almost surprised at the first punch he lands that night, because he can barely feel it. Whatever shock-absorbent magic has been woven into the plating over his knuckles has taken the hit and dissipated it, while delivering a much harder blow to his opponent than just his fist could manage.

He was already impressed so what happens on Saturday just clinches it.

Sure, letting yourself "get caught" is a valid interrogation strategy when your suspect is hostile and if handled correctly it can yield a wealth of information. The annoying thing is, Shouta hadn't intended to get caught. He’d actually been minding his own business - for once - when the asshole who ‘caught him' had come across him on the roof and picked a fight.

The thug could’ve just left, Shouta thinks, irate. If he’d just turned around and gone back downstairs, Shouta would never have known the idiot is with the Shie Hassaikai. Shouta can run with events as they unfold, though; he’s good at that, and they can always use more information on the Yakuza.

This is how Shouta finds himself hanging off the edge of a seven story building by the fingertips, a villain's shoe grinding down onto his hand.

It's ridiculous. The villain is monologuing, because he's so convinced he's got Shouta on the edge of death - which is a reasonable assumption on the face of it - while Shouta is, to borrow a phrase from Uraraka, just hanging out. He can barely feel the strain from holding on and while the villain stepping on his hand means there's some pressure, it's not even uncomfortable.

Shouta is a terrible actor but he will do his best when faced with a golden opportunity like this.

When he surprises the idiot by swinging himself up and over the edge of the roof once the monologue has started to get repetitive, using the momentum and the fact that he's coming in low to knock the villain's legs out from underneath him, the look of shock on the man's face is priceless.

+++

He hadn't had the occasion or the inclination to really test the advanced capabilities of the gloves during his weekend patrols, so Shouta makes his way towards Gym Theta on Wednesday, hoping that it won't be filled with students. It shouldn't be, as far as he knows: from his class only Kaminari and Uraraka are working with new gear, though from classroom chatter it sounds like the girls finally held some sort of intervention for Yaoyorozu to convince her to get a better costume. She could do a lot worse than Midoriya's design, he thinks, but he won't tell her that - figuring that out is Maijima's job.

Recalling Midoriya's notebook #37 jogs his memory and he stops by his room on campus to pick up his notebooks on 3A to lend to the kid. Shouta would normally never hand his analysis over, but Midoriya had sent him a rambling message in the middle of the night a couple of days ago, about a breakthrough with someone named Sakurai, something about LeMillion and armoring Hagakure, and while the gist of the message was a little garbled, Midoriya had also stressed that he has a document safe and Nezu-created safety protocols in his room for his own analysis work and that he'd treat Shouta's with the same care.

He's always been uncomfortable with how exposed Hagakure is and he does have three years of his own notes on her quirk and progress. Midoriya is trustworthy, Nezu has assured him of as much - apparently the Principal has taken Midoriya on as a personal student in the last year, which is slightly terrifying, Shouta is wondering if they should start a support group - and based on his experience with the gloves he's betting if anybody could figure out invisible body armor, it'd be the kid.

Theta is one of the smaller gyms on campus, mostly just a big practice hall with a tall roof and a few Cementoss-built structures around the edges of the gym floor. It'd been a sparring gym when Shouta was a student but Support has taken it over in the past couple of years, mainly using it for testing and training for people with new support items.

From what he’s gathered from his students Midoriya holds court every Wednesday, going over new gear and working out ideas with those he’s designing for. Shouta supposes there could be other Support students using the space for the same purpose at the same time, but when he makes his way inside the building the noise level from the hall tells him it’s probably just Midoriya tonight.

He skirts the cement structures around the edge of the training room floor, listening to the sounds in the gym. The distinctive crack of a whip means Kaminari is here, working with his new support item, and he can hear a few calls between him and a female voice - Uraraka. It sounds like Uraraka is providing a moving target for Kaminari to try to hit.

Just before the main space comes into view, though, Shouta hears a third person - clapping and calling out something sarcastic about Kaminari's aim being shit. It's what distracts him enough that he doesn't quite take in what he's seeing until it's too late. He wants to turn around and leave but there's three students here who would have awkward questions - Midoriya's even expression means he's probably cottoned on to Shouta's problem immediately.

Uraraka is hanging in midair, using the airjets built into her costume to maneuver despite being in zero gravity. Kaminari is standing at one end of the practice arena, whip laid out before him in a long straight streak, indicating he'd just tried to catch Uraraka with it - and by his side is Midoriya, dark tendrils bursting from his hands, one of them curled around Uraraka's ankle. It’s an immediately recognizable quirk, especially to Shouta, who has worked with him before.

Kusanagi.

The fourth student, Awase of 1B breaks the awkward silence.

"Right," he says, hopping down off of the ledge he was sitting on. "Is Sensei our final glove-buddy? I really want to test out the blades."

+++

"You didn't realize it was me," Midoriya says, at the end of the night. "I thought as much but tonight it was pretty obvious." He's testing the fit of Shouta's gloves, having sent the three students on their way a few minutes before, but he'd wanted to talk to Shouta specifically.

It makes sense. Eraserhead is an active hero, using his gear - while the students have training and work studies, by any measure, Shouta is Midoriya's main tester.

He wants to know who else knew - if he's been making a fool of himself in front of his colleagues and students - but he won't ask that question, not for love or money.

Midoriya, the kind, observant soul he apparently is, answers it anyway.

"It’s not a secret," he says, “but we’ve not made it particularly obvious. And I'd imagine you're a busy man, far too busy to watch things like non-mandatory training sessions and students who are not in your class. I doubt anybody has talked about me enough that it became obvious you were out of the loop. I won’t say anything about it if you won’t." He shrugs, before his hands guide Shouta's into one of the positions Midoriya has spent the past two hours teaching him and the three kids who are testing for him. Two seconds later, a tiny blade pops out of the glove at Shouta's wrist - it's hooked, perfect for cutting restraints.

Midoriya pushes it back into place with a finger. He's wearing his own pair of the gloves - Kusanagi's gloves, Shouta is kicking himself for not noticing - before he looks up and smiles disarmingly.

"Anyway, the original idea for these was for Uraraka, to protect her hands, since she needs all five fingers, with the fingertips exposed. Awase’s quirk is also five-point, so he was a natural candidate for testing them, too. Then I started branching out and added Kaminari, because dealing with his electricity and conducting it properly is an interesting project - and then I figured I might as well see if they'd be useful for heroes whose quirk doesn't directly involve their hands, so if you think of anything I could add to them, for you or anybody else, please tell me. Also I need at least one more tester - I was thinking of Hitoshi, do you think he'd go for it?"

Midoriya is bending his hand into another shape while he's talking, waiting for the blades installed over the knuckles to pop out before he moves Shouta's hand again, and seconds later they retract.

“Speaking of,” Shouta asks, suddenly reminded of a question he’d had, the first time he’d worked with the kid on a case, not that he’d known who he was. “How did you know that the Transposition villain’s quirk was five-point?”

“Hmmm,” Midoriya says. “It’s quirk science. There’s been a recent article… I told you about it, didn’t I? That night?” He’s kind enough not to continue with ‘just before I threw you like a frisbee’, for which Shouta is grateful.

“I haven’t gotten to it,” Shouta admits. “This is a busy time of year for third years and their teachers.”

“Ah, of course,” Midoriya says, huffing a laugh. “The gist of it is that five point quirks spread out concentrically from a central point of touch, and there were other factors slowing down the villain’s quirk that night, enough that the effect was observable with the naked eye if you knew to look for it. It was also a lot more precise than line-of-sight quirks tend to be. He chose his targets. We were lucky that when we found him, he wasn’t in a position to run around to touch more things - five point quirks are hard to fight when they’re in use because their holders are often able to massively affect the field of battle. Apart from quirks like yours - which have limited applications when you can’t establish line of sight on the villain - the most efficient way to fight a quirk like that is to take out the hands, specifically to dislocate the thumbs, or break the wrists. Removing a finger, while brutal, works too, though the quirk tends to adapt to that in time. Hence,” Midoriya says, flexing Shouta’s hand back and forth for him as if to demonstrate, “armored gloves.”

He looks up to meet Shouta’s eyes, and he’s momentarily staggered by the kid’s sharp focus, the way Midoriya is smiling wide and bright, the sheer intelligence in his very green eyes. He’d been wrong on this one - very wrong - but he’d made his decisions with the information he had at the time. He couldn’t have known.

"Shinsou would probably love a pair of these," Shouta says, keeping his voice even with some effort - it's taken some effort all night. "If you want to try working with another quirk that focuses on the user's hands, you might want to try Bakugou."

Midoriya flinches but it's clear he could've hidden it if he wanted to. He's letting Shouta see his reaction, and Shouta is reminded of the Principal calling Midoriya trustworthy - Shouta can't decide if this makes him more or less so. He feels a little bad for ruining the kid’s earlier excited mood, even if he didn’t intend to.

"I don't design for Katsuki," Midoriya says, voice flat. "He's made it very clear he wants to be a hero without any help, much less mine, and I don't waste my time on pointless projects."

"Nobody can become a hero without any help," Shouta says, letting Midoriya move his other hand through the motions.

"Don't I know it," the boy mutters under his breath, before looking back up at Shouta. “You already wore them on patrol,” he says. “Tell me everything.”

+++

Shouta is supervising 3A’s free study period - from his sleeping bag - when he hears the noise of approaching footsteps coming down the hallway. They’re loud, someone is running in boots, and then the door to the classroom is wrenched open, a bang signaling the door hitting the doorjamb at the end of the track.

“Eraserhead,” Midoriya - no, Kusanagi - says, “Uravity, Froppy, Red Riot and Mindblank. We’re moving out in five. Suit up, debrief en route.” He’s already dressed in parts of his costume, his case under one arm, and Shouta wonders what set of circumstances could’ve possibly led to this - but it’s got to be the Shie Hassaikai case, based on who he’s asking for.

He reaches up to hit the red button under his desk, releasing the students’ hero costumes from the wall, glad to see that those requested are already waiting to grab their cases and run to change as soon as the rack slides out, and Midoriya jumps out of the way to let them past him just as Shouta frees himself from the confines of his sleeping bag.

“Iida, Yaoyorozu,” Shouta says, heading out the door himself, “the office has been notified with the emergency gear release, you’re in charge of the rest. We’ve run drills for this and I’m counting on all of you to continue acting as professionals, now that we have a live situation.”

It’s not uncommon during third year hero studies, as the students begin their transition to working as heroes, for this to happen. This is why there is an emergency gear release button, why there are changing rooms on the 3rd year heroics floor, and why they run biweekly drills to get the kids used to the possibility of a call to arms in the middle of the school day.

All of Shouta’s students can get into most parts of their costumes in less than three minutes, and have learned what items to leave in their cases to be put on as they get underway or while mustering at a secondary location. All of them have been put through repeated drilling of call-outs for anywhere from one to all of the students, so they can also learn that if they’re not the ones asked for, their job is to get out of the way.

Apart from the early costume malfunctions and a couple of instances of people running into each other in the doorway, they’ve always gone smoothly.

Until now.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, DEKU, you freak?” Bakugou growls, standing up so fast his chair bounces off the table behind him, before he almost vaults over Shouji’s desk to get at Midoriya. Fortunately, whatever reaction he’s having was slower than that of the relevant hero students, so while this is inexcusable, at least he didn’t delay anybody out the door.

“Bakugou,” Shouta barks. “We will be talking about what disciplinary action the school will be taking as a response to your behavior when I get back. Until then, in-school and in-dorm suspension. Iida, I trust you to notify the office.”

He shuts the door on Bakugou’s angry expression, just as the kid opens his mouth to scream something, turning to look at Midoriya, who has a curious look on his face. He looks almost… wistful.

“I don’t know what’s come over him,” Shouta finds himself saying, almost involuntarily.

Midoriya sighs, and for just a moment, his shoulders slump a little. “I do,” he says. “It’ll be interesting for him, for the first time in our entire school careers together, to face some consequences.”

From down the hallway come the sounds of Shouta's students running back towards them, and Midoriya straightens his back, takes a deep breath, and takes charge.

Chapter Text

“You saved a lot of lives today,” Shouta tells the younger man, handing him a wet wipe.

Midoriya takes it with his left hand before looking at it quizzically. It’s clear he’s not looked in a mirror since the end of the mission.

“There’s blood,” Shouta explains when Midoriya meets his eyes. He passes a hand over the left side of his face to indicate where the spray has dried on the kid, mixing in with his freckles.

“It’s not mine,” Midoriya says, before starting to wipe it away.

“I know,” Shouta says. “He’s out of surgery. Uraraka got to him fast enough and they think Eri’s quirk did enough to keep him stable. The surgeon thinks he might have a limp, but he’s going to survive.”

Midoriya sighs out a breath that sounds like he’s been holding it for hours.

“You hear that, Eri?” he asks, squeezing the girl sitting next to him in the row of hospital chairs. “The other hero you met, Sir Nighteye, he’s going to be fine.”

She’s been all but grafted to his side since the end of the fight, and Midoriya has refused to leave hers. She’s finally stopped shivering and hasn’t lost control of her quirk for hours now, but they’re heading into the part of her hospitalization where there will need to be tests, so the hospital staff has asked both of them to be on hand for that.

“I didn’t curse him?” she asks in a small voice and Midoriya laughs. It’s a little forced but she probably can’t tell.

“Of course not,” he says, giving her another squeeze and waiting until she looks up. “You’re like a fairy princess. Your magic helped him. Thank you.”

“Kai said it was a curse,” she whispers.

“Kai was a dummy,” Midoriya says.

Shouta thinks of Chisaki Kai, coming at them like something out of a horror movie, and is rather amused with Midoriya’s summation of the situation.

“He certainly was,” Shouta agrees, happy to see the little girl brighten just a bit, before he catches sight of Recovery Girl coming down the hallway with some hospital doctors in tow.

Midoriya clearly notices the look on his face, does a quick sweep of the hallway, and then moves to kneel in front of Eri, looking up at her with a bright smile.

“Hey, listen,” he says softly, and Shouta sees Recovery Girl stop her retinue of specialists just before they can reach them. “You’ve been so amazingly brave, Eri,” Midoriya continues. “We are all so impressed. We really want to keep you safe, and I promise that everybody just wants you to be happy from now on, okay?”

She nods, but she can clearly tell there’s a ‘but’ coming. “But,” Midoriya says, and he takes her hands in his when she flinches. “Kai wasn’t very nice, was he?”

“Dummy,” she whispers, and Midoriya giggles.

“Dummy,” he agrees. “And dummies aren’t very good at taking care of children.”

That’s an understatement if Shouta has ever heard one but considering Eri has surely noticed the group of doctors standing just off to the side and hasn’t shut down yet, Midoriya is doing a good job with his approach.

“All of those people are really smart, and really kind,” Midoriya says, pointing at them. “That’s Recovery Girl, she’s one of the kindest people I know. She has a quirk a little bit like yours… it can take people's injuries away. If you ask her nice, I'm sure she'll tell you how she uses it and help you figure out yours. She just wants to check a bunch of stuff now, just to make sure you’re okay. She’s really smart, too, so she’s probably going to do a bunch of really smart things, and even if they might be a bit scary, all she wants to do is to make you better, understand?”

Eri, to Shouta’s amazement, looks over at the doctors, before looking at Midoriya again. “You promise?” she asks, voice so soft he can barely hear her.

“I promise,” Midoriya says, and holds up a hand, pinky stuck out and bent. “Do this,” he shows her, and when she hesitantly puts her hand into the same position, he hooks their pinkies together. “I pinky-promise. That’s the most serious kind of promise.”

“Okay,” she whispers and Midoriya gives her one of his genuine smiles, making Shouta feel like it’s far too bright in here.

“Okay,” Midoriya says, standing up and picking Eri up like it’s nothing, swinging her around which elicits a sound that might, eventually, become a giggle, before striding towards Recovery Girl and the doctors. “Where to first?”

+++

"You're really good with her," Shouta observes. Midoriya is smiling and waving at a nervous Eri through the glass of the observation room window while she's getting set up for an X-ray. "Any siblings?"

"Nah," Midoriya says, still smiling. "My parents decided not to try again, after me. I have no idea what I'm doing, really."

Shouta huffs a laugh. "I wouldn't have guessed that, you're doing great. I was thinking we'd have to call in Midnight for most of these tests to keep Eri asleep."

Midoriya drops the smile as Eri lies down on the bench and closes her eyes. "It might have been kinder," he says, "but it wouldn't have been right. Eri has never been allowed any agency over herself, we have to be careful to let her make these choices now if it's at all possible. We can't take away five years of trauma but we can give her the chance to be brave."

Shouta sighs. "What a quirk," he mutters. "And what terrible luck to end up with these monsters. She might have been better off without one."

Beside him, the young man stiffens. "You only say that because you don't know what it's like, growing up quirkless," Midoriya says sharply. "Trust me on this one; when you're powerless you never have to go very far to find a monster - bad luck has nothing to do with it."

Before he can respond Midoriya is smiling again, and Shouta looks through the glass to see Eri, pale and shaking but sitting up and giving Midoriya a hesitant look. "I'm going to go give her a hug," Midoriya says, and strides out to reappear in the examination room, arms out as he approaches Eri, clearly giving her the option to refuse. Shouta isn't surprised when the girl almost jumps off the bench when he's in range and Midoriya catches her, holds her tight and closes his own eyes as Eri hides her face in his shoulder.

+++

There is a minor hiccup during a blood draw and Shouta has to use Erasure to shut down Eri's quirk, but the phlebotomist is delighted to find herself de-aged five years and happy to explain to Eri about the car accident she was in three years ago that had left her with chronic pain - until now. Eri looks bewildered but pleased and Midoriya's smile is genuine when Shouta returns to the examination room after they're sure her quirk is back under control.

"I suggested to Recovery Girl and the Hospital Administrator that maybe they had people on staff who wouldn't mind going back a few years," he says. "Glad it worked out."

"That was clever," Shouta says. "It lets her see her quirk as a good thing."

"Yeah," Midoriya says. "And it gives her the idea that if she can control it, she can help people. She'll need to learn, it looks like there's a power buildup element to her quirk, you can see how the size of her horn changes. She can't just not use it."

"You know a lot about quirks," Shouta observes idly. In the examination room, the phlebotomist is leading Eri around to show her the equipment. Both of them have more of a pep in their step than they did before Eri's quirk went haywire.

"Yeah," Midoriya replies. "I've studied them from a young age, enough that I tested out of most of the quirk analysis classes at UA. I think that's part of why Nezu took me on."

Shouta doesn't want to dwell on that, so instead he asks a question he's been mulling over now that he’s worked with Midoriya a few times, now that he knows Midoriya is Kusanagi. "So what about yours, if you don't mind me asking. I can’t figure out how it works?”

Midoriya huffs out a chuckle. “You’re not the only one,” he says. “I’m a medical mystery. It’s like the powers that be felt bad about my growing up quirkless and decided to overcompensate. I think the current reigning theory is that I can tap into and channel power in strange and unexpected ways, something about my neural pathways not being designed for quirk use and that’s why there’s no one set way for me to operate it.” Midoriya shrugs. “I’ve had to beat the F-classes off my case ever since I entered UA. Sometimes there have been literal sticks involved. It’s why I know Shuzenji sensei so well - well, that and my crazy mutant quirk that hurts me on occasion - but mostly because I’ve had to report half the medical track students to her.”

A mutant quirk? That certainly explains some things.

“So wait, do they think you’ll find new and interesting ways to break yourself?” Shouta asks - it sounds like a handful of a quirk, no wonder he can relate to Eri so well.

"We think it's leveling off as I get older," Midoriya says. "Brain aging, that sort of thing. Even if something new shows up, I'll deal - I'm getting better at not breaking myself." His mouth twists into a wry grin. "I wouldn't complain, even if my quirk is a bit difficult. I'm just happy to have it, I couldn't have become a hero without it."

"Nonsense," Shouta responds. He's worked with the younger man a few times now, and the most impressive things he's seen him do have nothing to do with his quirk, even if it's a powerful one. "You took down Overhaul without a quirk, I had Erasure activated. Not to mention that we found him because you managed to hack his computer system, after you figured out that they were using a child’s quirk to make the bullets, and don’t forget that none of us would have known the most efficient way to neutralize him if it wasn't for your research."

By the end of the raid both of Overhaul's thumbs had been dislocated, courtesy of Nighteye and Shouta himself, and the villain's quirk had been patchy at best, but he'd still given them a hell of a fight. It'd been Midoriya who had jumped in, finally, not caring that he was getting into Erasure's area of effect, breaking Overhaul's right wrist and stabbing the man with one of his own quirk-erasing darts, and it'd been all the more impressive because he hadn't needed his superstrength to do it.

There's an odd coughing noise from beside him and Shouta looks over to see Midoriya staring at him, eyes wide and somehow… hurt?

"I'm just telling it the way I see it," he says, hoping Midoriya will stop looking at him like that. He remembers that look. He's seen it once before, and he can't figure out why it's made a reappearance now, especially since he'd just paid him a compliment. "You clearly have the determination to overcome any obstacles the rest of the world tries to put in your way," Shouta adds, thinking about tacking on a 'sorry', because if he'd known then what he knows now he wouldn't have made the same decisions, but he doesn't - it'd be insincere. He’d had no way of knowing Midoriya could get this far. He'd had nineteen other students to think of at the time, all of them with reasonable quirk control.

"Excuse me, sensei," Midoriya finally says after a long, awkward silence, voice barely above a whisper. "If someone needs me, I'll be in the restroom." He slips out of the observation room without looking back, and Shouta barely sees him in passing for the rest of the day.

+++

It takes him three days. Three days where Shouta walks around with an ominous sense of impending doom, a persistent niggle in the back of his mind telling him he’s missed something important, forgotten about something crucial.

It makes him testy. He tries channeling it into a grueling training session for 3A, but even that isn’t enough to dispel the weird feeling that something is about to go off the rails.

He’s making his way to his on-campus apartment in the early evening, after a long afternoon of grading papers, when he comes across a group of three students. They’re on the other side of the courtyard from him but he can still hear them, especially because two of them are shouting.

“... none of your business, Suzuki,” a boy yells. “Stop putting your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

There’s a loud scoff, and Shouta looks over to see Suzuki Rin kneeling next to a first-year student, helping the girl gather her things from the ground.

“Speaking of noses that don’t belong,” Suzuki says, voice measured, “what’s yours doing anywhere near Akiko-chan, hm?”

“Oh come off it,” the boy says. “We were just having a bit of fun.”

“Ah, I see,” Suzuki says, standing up and pulling the younger girl with her. “I wonder if this was Akiko-chan’s idea of fun, though. I wonder if it’s Ectoplasm sensei’s idea of fun.”

The boy sneers. “What, you’re going to tattle to our homeroom teacher? Don’t be so sensitive, Suzuki.”

“I,” Suzuki says, voice crisp, “am going to report quirkist bullying, Nishiyama. If not liking bigots makes me sensitive, then so be it, I’m sensitive and proud of it. Come on, Akiko-chan, let’s see who’s still in the teacher’s office.”

Shouta thinks for a moment about turning back to make sure there’s someone for them to report to, but it’s still early enough and he hadn’t been the last to leave the office this time - there should still be teachers around - so he moves on instead.

Good on Suzuki, he thinks to himself. He remembers from the special lesson on quirkism that it’s personal to her - she’d had a quirkless older sister who had taken her own life after a lifetime of bullying. Midoriya had spoken to her after the class and she’d cried on his shoulder - Shouta remembers the expression on his face, the thousand-yard stare. Midoriya had comforted her, encouraged her, spoken to her like he knew how she was feeling, and…

Shouta’s steps falter as the realization washes over him like a tidal wave, all the puzzle pieces tumbling into place around him. A mutant quirk, hard to control. Bakugou’s weird anger issues when it comes to him, his persistent use of the word 'freak'. Midoriya’s firm insistence that Shouta was just the last person in a long line of people who didn’t think he could become a hero. So many hints and Shouta didn’t see it.

Hell, Midoriya had straight up said it at the hospital; he grew up quirkless. Shouta had been too curious about the quirk he now has to register it properly.

There’s no ‘other’ person in his past with a similar story to Suzuki’s sister.

It’s Midoriya’s own story.

Chapter Text

He finds Maijima in the third year labs, which also serve as his main office, supervising what looks like a free research period. The other teacher barely glances at Shouta’s face before getting a referee-style whistle out of his desk and blowing it loudly enough to stop all activity in the room.

“Breakdown drill,” he announces and the students groan. “Come on, you know the rules. If you’re all out of here in less than three minutes I’ll set up extra lab time next week. On top of what I’ll set up to replace this period.”

There’s a mad scramble as the students do whatever they have to do to secure their work for the evening. Two students swing by Maijima’s desk to tell him that they’re working on things that will require chemical disposal, and that they’ll email him the details. Hatsume Mei is almost the last person out of the room, not because she had a lot of things to take care of but because she’s too damn busy glaring daggers at Shouta, and Shouta, right now, can’t say he really blames her.

“This about Midoriya?” Maijima asks softly, pointedly pushing a rolling chair towards the side of his desk, giving Shouta a look until he collapses into it, nodding miserably.

“Fucking finally,” he hears Hatsume grumble, and Maijima barks out her name sharply.

“Sorry, sensei,” Hatsume says. “I know, I need to mind my language.” She doesn’t sound particularly sincere, but she is at least somewhat chastened.

“Get out of here,” Maijima says tiredly after a moment has passed.

Shouta waits until the sound of footsteps has faded from down the hall before he asks. “You don’t discipline them for language like that?”

Maijima has taken the helmet off and pulled a bottle of whisky and two glasses out of the bottom of his desk. He runs a hand through his red hair and sighs, looking over at Shouta as he uncorks the bottle and starts pouring. “I don’t discipline them when they’re right,” he says.

Shouta, despite himself, bristles at that.

Maijima takes one look at him and snorts, before sliding the glass across the tabletop towards him, fast enough Shouta has to work to catch it before it falls off the edge. "Stop it with your angry cat impression, Shouta," he says mildly. "My kids are support, not hero course students. Unless they make it really big, nobody will ever just take their word for things - they'll have to fight to be heard, often against the heroes they're doing their best to protect and help. I teach them to stand up for themselves. She's got a point and you're only angry because you know it."

The flavors of the whisky soothe his ire some; it's a good bottle and Shouta wonders if Maijima has stocked whisky this nice in all his various desks, just in case.

"I don't see how I could've known, Maijima," Shouta says, taking another sip, slouching deeper into the chair. "I made my decisions with the information I had at the time."

Maijima's eyebrows lift into his hairline, before he puts his own glass down. "That's Higari to you, right now," he says, before reaching down, doing something at the bottom of the desk Shouta can't see. There's a beep and then a swoosh of a drawer opening and Higari roots around before pulling out a student file, flipping it open and setting it down on the desk, before turning it 180 degrees and sliding it across to Shouta. "Take a closer look," he says, leaning back and picking his glass up again.

It's Midoriya's student file - the teacher's file, the same one Shouta had started the school year with three years ago. He can tell because at the very bottom of Midoriya's overview page is a note in his own neat handwriting, his red seal stamped next to it. He doesn't need to read it to know what it says - he always writes the same thing; the date, followed by; "recommended for immediate dismissal."

"Higari," he groans, "there's nothing here I haven't seen."

"Be that as it may," Higari says, brown eyes calm and focused on him, "you're here because you finally figured out something new, something that made you doubt this decision." He taps on the page next to Shouta's seal. "And I think I know what it was. So take a closer look, at this file you've already seen, and tell me you'd made note of all the information it gave you at the time. I'll be waiting."

In the context of what he's just realized, there's just one thing it could be. Shouta scans the page, despite knowing precisely where to find it: in the same line as the 'Quirk Type' field, to the right, the usually unimportant; 'Date of Quirk Registration' and 'Date of Last Registry Update'.

Midoriya's two dates are the same. That's not all that uncommon. What's uncommon is… well. Everything else about the date listed.

"That can't be right," he all but whispers, staring at it. It can't be. And he missed this? He did, his fucking seal is at the bottom of this very page.

"Flip three pages," Higari says, obviously aware of what Shouta has found.

The three pages are paperwork detailing Midoriya's expulsion from the Hero Course and his transfer to Support. The page Higari means for him to look at is an email printout.

Higari, writing to Nezu, politely requesting any additional details on Midoriya's quirk registration. Nezu, equally politely, providing said details. Someone, probably Higari, has highlighted the word 'Quirkless' and the date Nezu has confirmed as accurate in blue highlighter. There's an untidy scribble in Higari's handwriting underneath the sparse printed lines: 'Refer to Hound Dog for immediate counseling, consult for quirk counseling ASAP."

"That's…" Shouta says, words stuck in his throat. He takes a sip of the whisky to collect himself and to hopefully unstick them. "This date is after the entrance exams."

"It is," Higari says. "Eight days after the entrance exam Midoriya took, and passed, to be precise."

'Grew up quirkless' Midoriya had said. Shouta had thought his quirk had come in late. After the conversation at the hospital and his realization just earlier, he'd thought it'd perhaps been very late.

The latest age Shouta has ever heard of a quirk coming in is nine. He isn't even sure he has the mental framework to understand a quirk coming in at fourteen. "I'm a medical mystery," Midoriya had said, and yes, there had been a certain twist to his expression, but Shouta had thought he'd been talking about his weird as hell quirk, not… whatever this is. He'd been thinking he'd made a mistake not accounting for a late bloomer who might have had reservations about using a superpowered quirk that hurt him, as opposed to the usually enthusiastic four-years-old reaction most people experience when they develop their quirk on time.

Fourteen? That's… well outside all parameters Shouta had considered possible.

A snippet of conversation floats out of his memories, Midoriya telling him he'd stopped hurting himself two months into his first year and if that's true… if that's true that means Midoriya managed to get a handle on his ridiculous power in five months. Considering the quirk control some of his students had after ten years of work, that’s not just impressive, that’s phenomenal.

"Oh fuck," Shouta says, wide eyed, still staring down at the page in front of him. Midoriya can't have had… any of the things Shouta had been expecting him to have had, when he landed in Shouta's class, the time to train his quirk being just the tip of the iceberg. Do quirk consultants for fourteen year olds even exist? He broke both legs and an arm in the entrance exam - if that was his introduction to his quirk, not training with it until he came to UA was the responsible thing to do, because who knows what else he could break? Medical support for quirk development is set up for young children, not teenagers.

Was… was the time Midoriya broke his finger during the baseball throw the second time he’d used his quirk?

Shouta looks up at Higari, aware that he probably looks as crestfallen as he feels. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?” he breathes, and Higari looks at him evenly, just tapping the student file on the desk between them. He doesn’t say ‘you should’ve known’; he doesn’t have to. Shouta should’ve, he had the file, but Shouta tries not to read student files too carefully - he’d wanted to avoid unconscious bias. Oh, the irony.

“Why didn’t Midoriya tell me?” he asks. Midoriya isn't the first student he’s expelled, he wouldn’t have been the first to try to argue his case. He hadn’t, though, and Shouta’s heart sinks when Higari just laughs.

“Shouta,” he says, “it took months for Midoriya to stop jumping when I said his name. You think a kid who spent eleven years quirkless in the public school system is going to trust a teacher he’s never met before with that sort of thing, let alone argue with him? On his first day of High School?”

’You’re no different from anybody else on that score, and I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to be,’ Midoriya had said, that day in the teacher’s kitchen a few weeks ago, matter of fact about how he’d hoped UA would be different for him, how it’d hurt him when it wasn’t. When Shouta wasn’t.

Shouta puts his head in his hands, overwhelmed, and hears Higari pull the cork out of the bottle again and pour him more whisky.

+++

“There’s one thing I don’t understand. Well, many things, clearly, but one thing that comes to mind right now,” Shouta says, later, after he’s finished his second measure of whisky while wallowing in his guilt, Higari kindly leaving him to it to make sure his students did a proper job of securing their workbenches and nothing is about to explode.

Shouta has leafed through Midoriya’s student file, noting that if he were still in 3A, he’d be top of the class, even despite his ridiculous workload, that Vlad King has clearly been the one to coordinate his hero course studies with All Might and that Midoriya has spent time training with the B class, that Midoriya is getting great feedback on his work with Nezu, as his personal student. He’s been so blind - but all this still leaves him with a question.

“Hmmm,” Higari says, pouring them a third measure. Shouta doesn’t even try to stop him - he’s resigned to feeling like an idiot in front of the other man tonight, might as well get drunk, too.

“He could’ve pushed for a transfer back,” Shouta says. “Clearly, he wants to be a hero, has always wanted to be a hero, even if his quirk came in later than should be possible. Shouldn’t he want to be in the hero course? I couldn’t have stopped him - I wouldn’t have stopped him, if he’d pushed for it, with everything - he’s gained control of the quirk, he’s got excellent grades… he could have placed much higher in the Sports Festival, right? At least the 2nd and 3rd year.”

“He’s never requested a transfer,” Higari says, tapping the file. “He’s been very happy with his hybrid course, whenever I’ve spoken to him about it. And yes, he could’ve won the Sports Festival. All three times.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Shouta says, pondering. Maybe the whisky is affecting him and there’s a rational explanation he can’t see.

There’s a snort from the door. Shouta turns to see Hatsume Mei standing there, backlit by the light in the hallway, her expression hard to decipher because of it.

“Sorry, sensei,” she says. “I figured you booted us for reasons but I didn’t think you’d still be here. I left my fidget bracelet.”

Higari waves her inside. “Hurry up and get it, then,” he says, and Shouta feels a little weird about a student catching them at this, but Higari just picks up his glass and lifts it in Shouta’s direction before taking a sip. “Support course students,” he explains, “tend to hang around the labs a lot, and late into the evening. They’ve caught me at all manner of things, and I them. Hatsume here is one of the worst offenders when it comes to being where she’s not supposed to be - her and Midoriya, actually.”

“It’s because we love our work,” Hatsume says from further into the classroom. “And we’d never tattle on you, Maijima sensei, we like you too much. You understand us.” There’s noise as she rifles through a drawer, clearly one with a lot of metal objects inside.

“That’s also why Izukkun doesn’t want to transfer,” she adds before slamming the drawer shut as if to emphasize her point. “He doesn’t want to go back to A class, he prefers to remain in your homeroom, because you wanted to teach him. Aizawa sensei didn’t. It makes perfect sense to me.”

She walks closer to them and when she steps into the pool of light thrown by the desk lamp Shouta can see that she looks furious.

“Hatsume,” Higari starts warningly.

“No,” she says. “No, sensei, you can give me detention every day for the two months we have until graduation, I don’t care. I’m saying this.” She turns to Shouta.

“You,” she says, pointing a finger at him, “do not understand anything yet, if you’re still asking stupid questions. Izukkun isn’t just a late bloomer. It’s not just a mutant quirk that is hard to control. He was diagnosed quirkless at the age of four. Do you even know what that means? At four years old, he was told he had no chance. No choices. No worth. You expelled him and told him it’s because you didn’t want him to get hurt - well, you were ten years too late, but go off, I guess.”

She’s crying, Shouta realizes when she moves to cross her arms, the light catching the tear tracks down her face. “Izukkun is the most hurt person I’ve ever met in my life,” she goes on. “And yet he still wants, more than anything else, to help people. The way he talks about his past, there wasn’t a day went by someone didn’t fucking abuse him in some way. He tries to laugh it off, like it’s funny - like it’s hilarious that he was beaten up in school almost every day while the teachers looked the other way, or that people on the street yelled slurs at him, or that his guidance counselor in middle school told him he should aim to be a garbage collector. Garbage collector! Midoriya Izuku!” She laughs, but it’s a wet laugh that is wrenched out of her, full of ugly, sharp emotions. Shouta doesn’t know what to say - not that he gets the chance to say anything before she keeps going.

“And the thing is, he's not angry at them. He’d help them, if they needed him. He’d lay down his life, because he’s too damn good for this world and most of the people in it - and you expelled him from the hero course because his quirk hurt him, Aizawa sensei. Ten years, he had no choice - the world hurt him, constantly - and then, somehow, miraculously, he gets a quirk that hurts him when he uses it, you think that’s going to matter to him? Izukkun choosing to hurt himself for the sake of getting the chance to help people wasn’t a weakness.”

It’s like taking a body blow, Shouta thinks. He’d rather go ten rounds in a boxing ring with All Might with his hands tied behind his back than this. He glances over at Higari and sees the other man is pale, too, clearly some of this is new to him, but he hadn’t been the one who’d made the decisions. Shouta had been. He’s accepted, lately, that maybe the decisions were wrong, but he’d thought at least his reasons had been sound, if flawed because of lack of information. It smarts to have a student tear that notion apart so thoroughly.

Hatsume has just pointed out, with unerring clarity, that what he knew or didn’t know never mattered. Midoriya has his own reasons for wanting to be a hero, and Shouta should have asked him about them, rather than judge him on two performances in physical exams and a presupposition of what his quirk means.

It’s too late now.

Hatsume is still crying, but she’s standing firm, holding her head up high, and Shouta can barely meet her eyes.

“You know,” she says, voice shaking, “we should all count ourselves lucky that he never lost the determination to become a hero, because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.”

Shouta thinks of all his time traversing across the roofs of Musutafu, all of the shoes he’s found neatly lined up, the rare times he’s been able to catch someone, Suzuki’s sister jumping from a thirty story building, and wonders if Midoriya ever got to that point.

“Do you know if he ever…” Higari asks, voice strained. He’s shaken, too.

“Oh no,” Hatsume says. “I don’t mean suicide. That would have been a tragedy, of course, a fucking enormous loss to the world, but no.” She turns her gaze on Shouta, the crosshairs in her eyes moving, like she’s zooming in. “Who would you say has been the most effective villain in the past few years?” she asks, changing gears, catching Shouta off guard.

“The League,” he says.

“No,” she says, “they’re the most destructive, sure, but that’s not what I meant. The most effective, in terms of recruitment, popular opinion, that kind of thing.”

“Stain,” Shouta says without hesitation. It’s been three years and he still has followers.

“Why?” Hatsume asks.

He hates to admit it but it’s the way the world works, sometimes. “Because while he was a psychopath, he had a point.”

Hatsume just looks at him evenly, and the understanding of where she’s going with this trickles down Shouta’s spine like ice water.

He hears it when Higari gets it, too, a sharply indrawn breath, before the other man whispers what Shouta is thinking. “He would have been terrifying.”

“Worse,” Hatsume says, and she’s not crying anymore, Shouta doesn’t think - she’s implacable, like people get when they know in their bones they’re on the correct side. “He would have been right.”

He thinks of the possibility - if Midoriya had been pushed far enough - that sharp mind working with the League or the Yakuza, even on his own; Midoriya is relentless, clever and charismatic. Hatsume is right, they’re goddamn lucky it didn’t come to that. There’s plenty of villains out there with backstories less harrowing than what Hatsume has just told them. And that was just the bare bones of it, just what she needed to get her point across. There is more, Shouta is sure.

“People yelled slurs at him on the street?” he asks, mind still reeling.

“Oh, he thinks that’s fine,” Hatsume says acerbically, walking back to her bench and rooting around before pulling out a pack of tissues, wiping her face quickly. “It was worse when they spat on him.”

“Fuck,” Shouta says feelingly and Hatsume huffs.

“Fuck indeed,” she says. She sounds suddenly exhausted. “So, Maijima sensei,” she says, coming back and stopping in front of the teacher’s desk. She’s squared her shoulders and looks like she’s ready for anything. “How many detentions will I be serving?”

Higari looks at him and Shouta looks away, running the hand that isn’t holding his whisky glass for dear life - and cramping, at that, huh - through his hair.

“Maaa, Maijima sensei,” he says, “you said you don’t discipline them when they’re right.”

The other man sighs and leans back in his chair. “We’ll be talking about this, Mei, understand?” he says tiredly. “My office, tomorrow after lab is done. No detentions, though, I don’t think.”

“Yes, sensei,” Mei says before looking over at Shouta.

“Don’t tell him you’re sorry,” she says. “Izukkun. He hates being told sorry, I’m sure you can figure out why. Besides, he doesn’t think you did anything wrong, so it’d be unnecessary, just don’t hurt him again.”

She slips out of the room quickly, closing the door behind her, leaving the two of them sitting with their thoughts.

It’s Higari who breaks the silence.

“Well,” he says. “I’m glad we already had the liquor out.”

Shouta throws back what he had in his glass so Higari can pour him another measure. It burns, all the way down.

+++

Chapter Text

Shouta is still feeling the aftereffects of drowning his sorrows with Higari when he meets Shinsou for their regular Thursday evening sparring session two days later. He would have taken the night off if he didn't want to talk to his student about Midoriya joining them before he offers it to him.

It’d been Higari’s idea, something he could do to help Midoriya instead of apologizing, since Hatsume has banned him from doing that - not that Shouta is altogether sure he can stop himself from going into a dogeza the next time he sees the younger man. Which will be tomorrow morning, during 3rd year Law. Better not, Midoriya is very unlikely to appreciate it, Shouta thinks, and he’s fucked up quite enough with him already.

No, it’s probably better to offer him something that would actually be helpful, and according to Higari, Midoriya is good at hand-to-hand but nowhere near as good as Shouta, and instructors are apparently thin on the ground when the student could break them in half.

“How would you feel about adding someone to these sessions?” Shouta asks Shinsou between spars, after drinking deeply from his water bottle and surreptitiously taking a painkiller, though he thinks Shinsou probably noticed. Shouta is sloppy today, too, and Shinsou is generally observant, there’s no way he’s not paying extra attention.

“Depends on who it is,” Shinsou says, wiping his face with a towel. “If it’s Bakugou, then no.”

Shouta snorts. “Hell no,” he says. Considering what he’s learned recently, he’s got suspicions about Bakugou. Shouta has two months left where he has any authority over him, and he won’t be wasting any of that time on teaching him extra hero skills - the kid doesn’t need them anyway. Bakugou’s first anger management session with Hound Dog is also tomorrow morning - not that Bakugou knows this yet. That’ll be a fun conversation, too.

“I was thinking about Midoriya,” he says.

“Oh,” Shinsou says, before sending Shouta a rare smile. “Finally.”

“...What?” Shouta asks, feeling a little faint. Hatsume, he could understand. Shinsou… what does Shinsou know?

“I’ve been telling him to ask you for months,” Shinsou says. “Might even be a year by now. He’s been making excuses. I think he thinks you don’t like him.”

“I…” Shouta says, lost. “He doesn’t like me. He’s got good reasons, too.”

Shinsou chuckles. “You’re wrong, he likes you just fine. Waxes poetic about your fighting style all the damn time. Has ideas about your capture scarf - mine too, for that matter.”

Shinsou drops down to sit in the grass of the outside training field they’re using, and after a moment’s hesitation Shouta joins him - he’s too slow to be any good as an opponent for Shinsou tonight, and Shinsou is kind enough to give him an out without saying anything.

“Shinsou…” Shouta starts, wondering if Shinsou knows, if he should admit to this, but… “I expelled him from the Hero Course on the first day of classes three years ago.” He says it fast, like he’s ripping off a bandaid.

Shinsou stares. “Oh,” he says, before falling back into the grass and throwing an arm across his face. “That is a good reason not to like you,” he says, before laughing quietly. “Wow. And here I thought Midoriya couldn’t possibly be any nicer than I already thought he was. Man’s unreal. He was my first friend at UA, too.”

“What do you mean?” Shouta asks. He’s not sure why that would be relevant.

“Sensei,” Shinsou says, rolling over and lifting his head up onto his palm to stare at Shouta, “you expelled him, then added me to 1A after the Sports Festival. I’m in his seat.”

“It’s your seat,” Shouta says weakly. “You earned it.”

“Sure,” Shinsou says, “but it was his first. I’ve been resented for less valid reasons. By the way, that punch, in my match with Aoyama, back then… guess who taught me to throw it.”

Shouta winces, because he hadn’t known that. “Yeah,” Shinsou says. “He came up to me a few weeks into first term and asked me what my plan to get into the Hero Course was. First person my age since kindergarten to want to be my friend. I wouldn’t have gotten into 1A without him.”

This gets worse and worse. How does it keep getting worse?

“I was very rude to him,” Shinsou goes on. “But he’s like a tick. He decides he wants to be your friend and before you know it, he’s under your skin and fucking stuck. I think it’s one of his extra quirks… functionally, he’s got like, four, I think. Five if super-friendship is really a quirk. It kind of has to be, even Monoma likes him.”

“Wait,” Shouta says, curious despite himself. “There’s the superstrength, the black tendrils…”

“Blackwhip,” Shinsou informs him.

“... the levitation…”

“Float.”

“... maybe an intelligence quirk?”

Shinsou snorts. “No, he doesn’t have one of those. You’re missing Smokescreen. He’s still working on that one, doesn’t use it much. It’s exactly what it sounds like.”

“And then super-friendship,” Shouta says, after a long silence, wondering about the dynamics A class would have had if Midoriya had remained. They’re all friendly enough, and there are some close friend groups, but they haven’t pulled together as a whole the same way B class has.

“If you doubt me, you clearly haven’t seen any of the footage from Sunday training,” Shinsou says, smirking at him. “He can pull the craziest shit by getting people to work together. I’ll ask Yamaguchi if he’ll let me send you an invite to the server, you can have a look - he edits everything so some of that footage is like, pure cinema.”

“It’s not…” Shouta starts, but Shinso rolls around and sits upright, staring at him.

“There’s sparring vids on there, too. Be a good idea for you to watch some of those, if you’re inviting him to next week - since clearly that’s your plan. If you expelled him, I can see why he wouldn’t ask you. What’s changed?”

Shinsou really is uncomfortably observant, Shouta reflects. He’s very proud of that, and also a little annoyed knowing that if he doesn’t just tell him, Shinsou will probably figure it out in a few days.

“I didn’t realize he was Kusanagi,” he sighs. “I found out just before the last raid, the one where we found Eri. It changed… some things.”

Shinsou is laughing silently at him, Shouta can tell from the way he’s shaking.

“Mmmmm,” Shinsou hums, voice unsteady with mirth. “And by ‘some things’, you mean ‘your mind’?”

Shouta doesn’t say anything, and predictably, Shinsou breaks out into audible laughter soon enough.

“Man,” he says, “you don’t fuck up often, but when you do you don’t do it by halves.”

“I’m still your teacher,” Shouta reminds him.

“Two more months,” Shinsou says, giggling at him. “Then I can technically drop the honorific.”

“Don’t remind me,” Shouta sighs. “That’s all the time I have to maybe start fixing this.”

Shinsou stops laughing. “You’re an idiot,” he says, after staring at him for an uncomfortably long time, and Shouta wants to reiterate that he is still, in fact, the teacher here, but then Shinsou shakes his head. “You really think Izuku would just… stop wanting to learn from you when he graduates? Wait… you think I will stop wanting to learn from you when I graduate?”

“I won’t be your teacher anymore,” Shouta reminds him. Shinsou looks at him like he’s lost his mind.

“I mean, if you don’t want to be,” he says, suddenly sounding uncertain. “I know I’ve still got a lot to learn from you. I don’t think Izuku will feel differently if you give him a chance.”

“No, of course I want to be,” Shouta says. “But you’re already looking forward to dropping the honorific,” he tries to tease back.

Shinsou lets out a breath. “You know,” he says, “I was thinking about something different. I was thinking onii-san. If you’d be okay with that.”

Shinsou is right, Shouta is an idiot.

He’s been feeling like that a lot lately. At least this time, the feeling warms his heart a little. Despite his mistakes, he gets it right sometimes.

“I’d be alright with that, yes, Shinsou-kun,” he says.

“Hitoshi,” Shinsou says.

“Brat,” Shouta replies, and Shinsou huffs a laugh at him. “In two months,” he says.

“Got it,” Shinsou says, before climbing to his feet, gathering up his bag and water bottle. “Go have an early night, sensei. I’ll see about sending you that link. I’ll look forward to seeing Midoriya here next Thursday.”

“Might have to change the time to fit him in,” Shouta says.

“We’ll work it out,” Shinsou replies. “Good night. Onii-san.”

‘Not a total fuck-up’ Shouta thinks to himself as he watches him go.

+++

He’s planning to ask Midoriya to hang back after Law class the next morning, but he doesn’t have to - Midoriya is clearly waiting to talk to him.

“Hey,” Shouta says, wondering what he has to say. The mystery is solved when Midoriya brings up his backpack and pulls out Shouta’s stack of analysis notebooks.

“Thank you for the loan,” Midoriya says, handing them back. “Me and Sakurai are working on better armor for LeMillion, and coming at the problem of quirk-specific armor from the direction of Hagakure-chan’s issues has given us some new things to think about. I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind, I also took a look at your analysis for Yaoyorozu-san, too - Kurosawa, Yamaguchi and I are collaborating on her new costume and support items.”

“I liked the one you sketched in notebook 37,” Shouta says. Midoriya blinks at him before he remembers the incident that started - all this.

“I’ve improved on it in 43,” Midoriya says. “37 was a bit old - I had it with me because I was working on the gloves with Denks that day.”

“How many are you up to?” Shouta asks, curious. He wishes he had a reason to borrow some of them - he still has two months to improve Class A’s performance.

“I’m on 44,” Midoriya says. “I tend to think best through a pencil, so while most of the actual design work now happens on the computer, they’re a way to capture my thoughts in the early stages.”

“Hm,” Shouta says, wondering how to change the subject. “I was wondering if…”

Midoriya starts talking at the same time. “Listen, about Meimei…”

They both fall silent, before Shouta waves Midoriya to continue. He’s not sure he wants to know what Midoriya has to tell him about Hatsume.

“Sorry sensei, I don’t know what went down,” Midoriya says after a beat of silence. “She told me not to worry about it, but she was really upset when she came back on Tuesday night. Maijima sensei called her into his proper office after labs on Wednesday, I don’t think they realized I was still there when they got a bit loud - I didn’t hear much but well… the phrase ‘no way to talk to a teacher’ was used.”

Shouta sighs. He’s not getting off to a great start, here. “Let me guess,” he says. “The only teacher Hatsume might be disrespectful to, enough to warrant a talking to from Maijima is…”

Midoriya blushes. “You, sensei. And that means it was probably about me. Sorry.”

There’s a long silence. Shouta wonders how exactly to say what he wants to say.

“I’m sorry,” Midoriya says. “Meimei is a bit… protective.”

Shouta is beginning to think he might have an idea why Hatsume put a blanket ban on apologies. Midoriya is nervous, but that was his fourth ‘sorry’ during this conversation.

“I didn’t make Hatsume apologize to me for what she said,” Shouta says. “You shouldn’t either. I needed to hear it.”

“Um,” Midoriya says, looking startled at that.

“On that note,” Shouta forges ahead, “I was wondering if you had Thursday evenings free. I train in hand-to-hand with Shinsou during that time and Maijima mentioned you were in the market for an instructor who is not intimidated by the fact you could probably snap them like a twig.”

“I… wouldn’t want to impose, sensei,” Midoriya starts, but he sounds hopeful.

“It wouldn’t be an imposition,” Shouta says. “Shinsou is all for it and considering graduation is in two months’ time, I don’t know what any of our availability will be afterwards. It’d be beneficial to him as well to set you two up as sparring partners, in case I’m not around to train with either of you.”

“Is this what Meimei was…”

“Yelling at me about?” Shouta asks, smiling a bit when Midoriya blanches. “No, not as such. And she didn’t really yell. She showed admirable restraint in fact, considering she was right and I was wrong.”

Midoriya stares at him, taken aback. He’s a far cry now from the confident young man Shouta has come to know these past few weeks, and he doesn’t like it. Midoriya deserves that confidence - he’s clearly worked hard for it - but some things need to be said, and it’s probably best to get the rest of them out.

“I was wrong to expel you,” he says. “I didn’t have all the facts, and instead of working out what the problem was, I judged you unfairly based on my own biases. I regret it. I’m just glad that you’ve managed to become the hero you are despite my worst efforts. You’ve done plenty of good work already, and I’m sure you’ll continue to do so, but Maijima did say you are looking to learn more hand-to-hand. It’s something I can offer, and I do want to support you. It doesn’t hurt that it would be beneficial to Shinsou, too.”

“He means a lot to you,” Midoriya says.

“I see a lot of myself in him,” Shouta says honestly. “He told me you helped him before the Sports Festival. I didn’t know that. Thank you.”

“He took the Hero Course exam,” Midoriya says, voice low. His knuckles are white where his hand is curled around the strap of his backpack. “He had a transfer request in from day one. And his quirk is awesome but - I thought maybe he could use a friend who knows a little bit what it’s like. When nobody believes in you but you.”

Shouta’s inner fifteen year old self is yelling obscenities inside his head. Hatsume had told him, but Midoriya is standing in front of him like a ghost from his own past, and it’s all he can do to bite back the meaningless apologies on the tip of his tongue. He knows how he himself would have felt about them.

“I believe in you,” he says instead. “Might be a little late, but I do.”

Midoriya looks up and smiles at him, and it’s bright and easy, unfairly easy, considering what Shouta put him through.

“Thank you, sensei,” he says. “That means a lot, coming from you. What time on Thursdays?”

Midoriya is about to walk out, after they’ve hashed out the time and location for next Thursday, when it occurs to Shouta that maybe after all this… he can just ask.

“Midoriya,” he says, just as he slides the door open. “Any other observations?”

“Huh?” Midoriya asks, looking back in slight surprise.

“Turns out Shinsou can use people he’s controlling to initiate the call-and-response aspect of his quirk. Any other observations?”

Midoriya’s eyes widen in surprise, before he smiles back, looking delighted. “I’ll put together a file,” he says, grinning, and Shouta blinks a few times, wondering if Midoriya’s genuine smiles are somehow quirk-powered.

Chapter Text

It’s his weekend off and he doesn’t have much planned. The Shie Hassaikai case has, for the past two years, had a bit of a habit of taking over any and all free time; now that it’s wrapped up with the gang leaders in prison and Eri safe and living with All Might and Sir Nighteye - and hadn’t that been a trip, discovering those two live together, Shouta had not seen that coming - he’s not sure what to do with a free weekend.

Shouta sleeps in late and goes to his local cat café for lunch, since Hizashi canceled on brunch - they schedule it regularly, but they’re both so damn busy it’s a miracle if neither of them cancels, so it usually only happens every other month. It’s probably for the best, this time; Shouta is still trying to figure out a way to tell his friends the details of what he’s discovered in the past few weeks, and he'd rather not be the cause of Hizashi getting slapped with another "public quirk use" notice.

Also, if he tells Hizashi in a better controlled environment, the glass bill is likely to be significantly lower. They’ve all learned the hard way not to tell Hizashi exciting or upsetting things in places like restaurants or coffee shops, and at least two fine dining establishments in Musutafu have banned him from the premises entirely because Voice and fine stemware do not mix.

So now he’s home a little after one on Saturday afternoon, instead of out. Mornings with Hizashi tend to spin out into afternoons with Hizashi, sometimes even evenings with Hizashi and Nemuri. He could've used the distraction, is all. He's got no idea what to do with his time and he can't go to sleep yet. Well, he could, but then he’ll be awake in the middle of the night and then he’ll probably end up going to work. He deserves time off.

Out of habit he opens his email, but there’s nothing urgent; the League is lying low and he’d received the monthly update on schedule last week, no news on that front are probably equivalent to good news.

There’s an announcement from a secretary of the court about a prison sentence for someone Shouta caught on patrol a few weeks back, an email from his Hero Commission liaison which boils down to “take some time off already” - he’s pretty sure Ito san writes it out every time, but it might as well be a scheduled copy for how regularly he receives it - and an email from Nezu about entrance exam grading. There's nothing he needs to do anything about.

There are two interesting items in his inbox, though; one of them from Midoriya, with a subject line that reads “Observations, 3A”, and another one from Shinsou, no subject line, but he can see some of the text in the preview. Shinsou had said something about “pure cinema”, right? That sounds like it might be fun for a Saturday afternoon.

The email includes a link to a dedicated support student server, as well as login details to a guest account set up for him by Yamaguchi Yuu. Midoriya has mentioned him, and Shouta remembers him from teaching in their second year - some sort of technology quirk. He's the one Shinsou says edits the videos.

"There's a stickied post," Shinsou's email says, "with a list of the 25 most popular training videos and links to them. Start there. The sparring compilation there is good, but here's a link to the thread where all the sparring video links go in chronological order. Start with the most recent ones and work your way back, if you're interested - any old spars that were noteworthy are in the compilation already. Have a good weekend!"

Why would there be a top 25 list, Shouta wonders, logging in, and finding what Shinsou calls a sticky post immediately. It's titled "The very best of Ground Sigma Sundays, edited by Yours Truly, Yuu Yamaguchi." The date stamp of the post is from six months ago, though the first post when he opens the link says it'd been edited two weeks ago.

Shouta stares at the list, reading over the names of the videos in slight surprise, noting that they're ordered by view count. The names are clearly full of in-jokes and pop culture references, but he thinks he might still have an idea of what to expect when he opens the top video link, titled "All Hail Our Amphibian Overlords" and sends it to play on his TV screen. Asui is a strong fighter, after all, and excelling in a training exercise isn't unusual for her.

Two hours later he sits back, stunned. He had… not been prepared for that. That had been something else. That… that had been mayhem.

He's almost gleeful when he opens the next link. It's titled "The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway," and Shouta can't wait to see whatever hell Todoroki unleashed on Ground Sigma to warrant that description.

According to the names, video number three has Hawks in it. He's not sure how they've managed that but he can't wait to watch it. After this one, of course.

+++

Monday morning's Foundational Heroics finds 3A and 3B assembled in Ground Theta. Shouta had spent the rest of the weekend on his sofa, after a brief excursion out to the nearby MiniStop for popcorn, because his viewing material called for it. He'd also emailed Vlad King, and for the first time in three years, feels like he's on the same page with his co-teacher.

Vlad had been more than happy to scrap a standard battle exercise for something more involved, and he's standing beside Shouta right now, smirking.

"Next Monday," Shouta says, "we'll be running a joint exercise. The objective will be determined by the villain team, in cooperation with us. The villains will have seven days to prepare their strategy. The heroes will have overwhelming numbers but will have no advance information. Asui," he says, and watches one of his most dependable students look up at him, a light in her eyes like she knows what might be coming and she can't wait. Shinsou is standing right behind her, grin splitting his face.

"You're the villain team leader. Your choice of five from either class, though try to pick from both."

"Shinsou, Monoma, Shouji and Honenuki, kero," she says immediately. From beside her, Uraraka, who was there that Sunday and has clearly realized what's up, makes a desperate noise.

"You can pick a fifth," Vlad reminds Asui. He’s not even trying to hide that he’s delighted.

"I don't need a fifth," she says. "Unless I can pick from other courses?"

"You can ask if they're available," Shouta replies, glad that his capture scarf makes it easy to cover up the grin he’s sporting. Looking over the class, it's obvious who was there during that exercise and who wasn't. He knows next Monday will be a free period for 3H - though that doesn't necessarily mean Midoriya will be free.

"And if they're not?" Asui asks.

"Pick someone else," Shouta advises.

Asui taps her bottom lip with a finger and smiles slyly at him.

Next week is going to be interesting.

+++

3A's schedule on Tuesday mornings is a bit loose. Shouta expects the kids to be in the classroom and working, but it's not set for any particular class. He's shoehorned guest lectures in there, used it for drills, even used it for the dreaded 3rd year sex ed lectures, early in the school year. By now, though, it mostly serves as a free-study period, occasionally overtaken by something else. It's a popular time slot if his students happen to need to attend to something else on campus, including sessions with the business and support departments, which are par for the course, this late in the game just before graduation.

Which means Shouta doesn't expect anything in particular when he hears the classroom door sliding open that morning. It's the gasp from the class that clues him into the fact that something is happening.

He looks up and finds himself staring at the girl in the doorway. She's not exactly familiar but at the same time he knows exactly who this is: she's been in his classroom for three years now.

"So I spent the morning down in support," Hagakure says, voice a little shaky. Her hair is gunmetal grey, chopped into an uneven bob at chin length, and her eyes are a dark violet. Her features are fine and her cheekbones high - she has a mole, just underneath the corner of her right eye. Ojiro is standing up, staring at his girlfriend like he's never seen her before - which he hasn't.

"Toru-chan," Ashido breathes, the first person to say anything, and the smile on Hagakure's face might be one of the most incredible things Shouta has ever seen.

"They had invisible fabric down there for my new costume that eats light," she says. "And turns it into energy! But guess what!" she twirls. "When there's really no light, and I focus, I can turn it off. And when I'd turned it off once, well… Ta Da!"

It's pandemonium after that, Ojiro all but bowling Hagakure over, half the class yelling questions, Hagakure flickering in and out of sight as her concentration wavers.

It'd been in Midoriya's email, the one Shouta finally read Sunday night, with ideas for 3A's quirks. He'd theorized Hagakure just needed a moment without constant light bombardment to figure out how to turn her quirk off. He'd noted that he was working on it with Sakurai, and all the observations from Shouta's own analysis that supported his theory.

He should probably intervene, he thinks, watching the chaos unfold in his classroom, but when it comes down to it, they work hard. They're on track. They can stand to lose half a Tuesday morning to being happy for their friend.

+++

Wednesday evening he finally corrals his friends into his apartment for dinner - and plotting. Well, Shouta is hoping he can convince them to plot. After they yell at him.

It's been a while since he's seen Tensei in person but now that team Idaten has expanded and opened offices in cities all around Japan, the man is busier than he ever was as an active hero.

He'd feel a little bad about getting him involved but Tensei has sounded increasingly bored in his emails over the past few months. Shouta has no doubt he's good in his new role, but he sounds like he could use a little bit of havoc. Especially if he's the one causing it.

Shouta has just the thing.

But first, the yelling.

He wasn't wrong to make sure this conversation happened on UA grounds where nobody is likely to object to quirk use: Hizashi breaks what little remains of Shouta's glassware and one pane in the window of his front door before he calms down, once Shouta explains what he'd done.

Shouta himself, never much for apologizing, especially not when he’s disappointed his friends, is on the couch holding his head in his hands while Hizashi yells at him, not really feeling up to stopping him, especially not when he hears the small quivering note in his best friends’ voice; it hurts more than the words themselves, and the words are plenty hard to hear.

“How could you?” and “After all the work you put in!” he’d expected.

“Would you have expelled me?” he’d somehow… not expected. The thought is horrifying.

It's Tensei who finally barks at Hizashi to quiet down, wheeling over to the couch and demanding for Shouta to look him in the eye. He's really not expecting the slightly quirk-powered backhand, and Hizashi breaks another windowpane before things quiet down again.

"Shouta…" Nemuri starts, but Tensei waves at her and she stops, looking uncertain.

"I'm not supposed to talk about this," Tensei says. "And I can tell you're sorry. But you should know… Midoriya was the one to take Stain down. They played it like it was heroes and their interns, and since they only publicized Endeavor, everyone assumed. The truth is, Midoriya was with his mentor in Hosu that night and went to look for Tenya when he realized he wasn't where he was supposed to be.”

Shouta looks up, startled. He’d known the Hosu situation had been a mess and that he didn’t have the whole story. This was not the piece of the puzzle he thought was missing.

Tensei holds his gaze. “Midoriya found Stain standing over Tenya with a sword aimed at his heart, sent out a distress call and held his own against a serial killer for five minutes before anyone else arrived, saving my brother and Native in the process. And when that creature attempted to carry off Todoroki, Midoriya and Stain were the ones to react fast enough to save him. You'd be down two students if it wasn't for him. Maybe more - Stain is a fountain of information and he likes Midoriya.”

"Three," Shouta says, voice hoarse. "I'd be down three, Hitoshi got as far as he did in the Sports Festival because Midoriya helped him train for it."

There's a long silence and then Tensei slumps back, losing some of his intensity.

"So," Hizashi speaks up, "now that you know, what are you going to do about it?"

"He's going to join me and Hitoshi for hand to hand training," Shouta says. "And I thought maybe you'd all help me out with a plan?"

Nemuri has been mostly silent so far but she finally relaxes, slumping into Shouta's side on the sofa. "A plan?" she asks. "That sounds ominous, but fun. Let me guess - you want to do a Sunday training."

Tensei perks up, and Hizashi looks interested, so Shouta launches into what he's come up with so far.

+++

Dark, beady eyes stare at him from over Nezu’s preferred teacup. Shouta has never understood how the Principal can stand to use the dainty little things - Shouta has tea with him once a week but he brings his own mug.

“Sunday training?” his boss says, sounding interested. “I didn’t think you were interested in involving yourself with those, Shouta-kun. You were rather opposed to the idea, even if you were somewhat instrumental in how it came about.”

Shouta sighs. “You know,” he says.

“It is rather difficult to miss it when Hizashi-kun is upset in one’s general vicinity,” Nezu agrees genially. “Or what he’s upset about.”

Shouta puts his mug down and bows his head. “I know,” he breathes. “Sensei…” he adds, voice desperate despite himself, and he hasn’t called Nezu ‘sensei’ in years, but he feels like all the other times he was called into this office when he attended UA. “I wish you hadn’t allowed me to be so foolish,” he says.

“We all make our mistakes,” Nezu says, putting his own teacup down and leaning forward on the table. “And to be honest with you, I am not sure if not telling you isn’t one of mine. Midoriya’s quirk situation is unique - this could all have been avoided if I’d pointed you in the right direction to discover that before the first day of school. You should know I recommended explaining the issue, after that first day, but by that time the damage was done. As I was advocating for trusting you, it was clear Midoriya wouldn’t. So we found another way. He is a rather remarkable young man, isn’t he?”

“I’m glad he’s succeeded despite me,” Shouta says, picking up his tea again and taking a sip. “He’s joining me and Hitoshi later for sparring.”

“Excellent,” Nezu says. “Nighteye and Mirio-kun have done their best, but you’re the specialist, so I am glad he will be in your capable hands. Also, they’re neither of them in the shape to train, these days. Now, about Sunday training.”

There’s a familiar glint in Nezu’s eyes; one that means Shouta is about to have more work. Somehow.

“I am glad you’d like to assist,” Nezu says. “Especially now, since I have had the notion for a very long time that the Sunday training sessions might be… opened up, shall we say. Now that Midoriya’s situation has given me the chance to set them up and get them into regular rotation as a feature in the Hero Community I see no reason not to continue hosting them, for all who wish to attend. We have often, you and I, discussed how unfortunate it is that our students graduate from these hallowed halls of ours and believe they have nothing further to learn - and how lamentable it is that no school has seen fit to provide the opportunity for their graduates to continue to sharpen their skills.”

So many words to tell Shouta he’s about to have a lot more work. And Shouta can’t say no - they have had these conversations, often.

“I’m going to need someone else with me on this,” he says.

Nezu smirks at him. “Young LeMillion’s full recovery is going to take a little longer than originally thought. He’s also expressed interest in studying for a hero teaching license - for which he will need a sponsor, as you know. He’s already assisted with some Sunday sessions so he’s familiar with that work.”

Shouta sighs and leans back in his chair. “You realize if LeMillion is my TA, the next set of Class A students is going to have chronic whiplash. I really don’t think he’s going to be emulating my style.”

“It’ll be good for them,” Nezu says. “Will teach them to work with all kinds of people.” He’s about three seconds away from starting to cackle. Shouta knows when he’s been beat, so he thanks Nezu for the tea and runs.

It only occurs to him when he’s back at his desk that he hadn’t received a straight answer from the rat about whether he can organize a Sunday session himself. He’s wondering if he dares going back when the email notification with the date - five weeks out - pops up in the corner of his screen.

So much more work.

Chapter Text

Thursday night he finds Midoriya and Hitoshi already warming up in grounds Epsilon, the two of them trading barbs across the grass as Hitoshi leads Midoriya through the warmup routine Shouta taught him.

He watches for a minute before they notice him, happy to see that the dynamic he'd noticed during the Shie Hassaikai raid is still in effect. Hitoshi is still reluctant to ask direct questions, in general, but he doesn't hesitate with Midoriya, and Midoriya seems to be making a game out of responding or not.

Midoriya notices him first, jumping to his feet and smiling at him.

"Hey, sensei," he says cheerfully. "Isn't it typical that I've spent almost three years wanting to fight you, and the first time I actually am supposed to, I'm really disinclined to hit you?"

Shouta blinks.

Midoriya takes one look at his face and laughs happily. "You sent Katsuki to anger management," he wheezes out between chuckles. "I'm thinking about baking you a cake or something. Actually, I am better with support gear - come see me if you want to talk about your capture scarf."

Nobody is supposed to know about other students' therapy status. Shouta is a little concerned, before Hitoshi coughs out a snort.

"Don't worry, sensei," he says. "Bakugou didn't get outed, as such. 'Splodey decided to discuss the matter with Izuku here, very loudly. In the cafeteria."

"Well," Shouta says, after he's digested that information. "I'm sure I can help you overcome your reluctance to hit me. Finish your warmup."

Training Midoriya turns out to be a uniquely bruising experience, not just because he's strong, fast and agile and clearly, despite his claims to the contrary, not actually inclined to take it easy on Shouta. At all.

No, while Shouta is already planning a very long, very hot shower in his near future, he becomes aware almost straight away that the most significant injuries he's likely to acquire today will be to his pride.

Midoriya is a dream to teach.

Not to knock Shinsou's relentless determination or his drive, of course, but Midoriya is enthusiastic and focused, and barely halfway into their training time his analysis skills come into play, combining things Shouta has just taught him with moves he already had. By the end of their session, Midoriya has managed to land two hits on him, one of which would have propelled him halfway across the grounds had it been quirk powered.

Worse, Midoriya takes one look at Shinsou struggling with a move that’s been giving him a hard time, manages to iron out the kinks and has Shinsou pulling it off nine times out of ten by the end of the evening. Shouta wonders if it’s just Shinsou he can do this for, or if he’d be able to help the rest of Class A. It’s probably the latter, he thinks, staring as Midoriya goes sailing through the air again, now that Shinsou has figured out how to throw him.

Shouta tries not to regret things, but he’d like to know if, in some alternate universe, there is a version of Class A where Midoriya stayed in their midst, and if they aren’t all the better for it. Probably, he thinks to himself, before sighing and calling time on the lesson before Midoriya can return the favor and throw Shinsou. Shouta has firsthand knowledge of just how far Midoriya can throw, after all.

Though there hasn’t been even an inkling of his quirk all night. That’s interesting; Shouta has seen the videos and knows that by now Midoriya can integrate it seamlessly into his fighting style, even at a level low enough to not hurt his classmates.

Asking about his quirk is likely a bad idea, Shouta thinks, but if they’re going to keep doing this, it’s a bandaid probably best ripped off as soon as possible, so Shouta can know what the younger man is thinking and what his limitations are.

“Oh yeah,” Midoriya says when he mentions it, “we were already warming up when you came, I forgot to tell you. I wanted to learn without bringing quirks into it just yet - I’m pretty good about keeping it turned off or toned down, but it does have a mind of its own sometimes, so I’m wearing one of these.”

He pushes up the sleeve of his workout shirt and shows Shouta a slim cuff circling his wrist, made of a dull reddish metal.

“Wait,” Shouta says, grabbing his hand to have a closer look. “Is that the new type of quirk canceling cuff? You can afford to wear one of these for training? Tsukauchi’s department only managed to get two of them.”

“Um,” Midoriya says and brings his other hand up to twist the cuff around so the clasp faces up, fingerprint scanner catching the light making Shouta blink before he stares at the label embossed underneath it: ‘Hatsume Industries’.

“Hatsume-san invented these?” he asks, surprised - they don’t seem like her style.

Midoriya snorts, and Shouta looks up at him. He’s a bit red in the face, and Shouta suddenly realizes he’s still holding his hand. “No, MeiMei doesn’t go for this kind of thing,” he says. “I invented them. They’re only expensive right now because I’m only able to make small batches. Here,” he says, pressing his index finger to the scanner and the clasp clicks open, “you can keep this one.”

Shouta is startled enough to let go of his hand - which he should have done ages ago - and stare as the cuff comes off, before Midoriya strides over to his bag and digs out his phone and some sort of electronic cord, connecting the two.

“Hey, I’m heading out,” Shinsou calls from the gate, and Shouta looks up, surprised again, to see his student give him a cheeky grin and a wink. ‘What’s that about?’ he wonders.

“Thanks Izukkun, I’ll see you tomorrow for that meeting?”

“Hmm, yeah, I might be late, please tell Tsu.”

“Will do,” Shinsou says, giving Shouta a pointed look he doesn’t understand the meaning of at all, and then he’s gone. He gets no time to think about how strange that was before Midoriya is calling him over, and this time it’s his hand being grabbed, fingers pressed to the screen of Midoriya’s phone one by one. There’s a tiny purple light on the cuff, blinking fast, as if to indicate acceptance.

“The clasp locks as soon as it’s closed,” Midoriya explains. “You can use any finger of either hand to scan it open, but if you want to use your index finger, you’ll have to scan it twice.”

“Why’s that?” Shouta asks, surprised, watching as Midoriya works his phone before grabbing his other hand and starting on those fingers.

“Strategy,” Midoriya says. “If someone forces you to scan it open, they almost always start with your index finger - depending on the situation, it might give you the chance to fight back. If not, if you’re unconscious or something, it can be explained away as a glitch. The scanner is sensitive so if you get a new scar through a fingerprint we’ll need to update it, just so you know - though your gloves should stop that, hopefully. Here,” he says, and then the cuff is around his wrist, closing with a click.

Shouta has experienced quirk canceling cuffs before. They always feel far more constricting than they actually are, and most people share his opinion; there’s an almost buzzy ache in their head or wherever their quirk mainly manifests. This one feels like nothing - just a bracelet. He tries to activate his quirk, and it’s there - there’s no awful hollow sensation, like usual - but it doesn’t respond.

“Try opening it,” Midoriya says, and Shouta presses the index finger of his other hand to the scanner, feeling a small flicker of panic when nothing happens, before he remembers and moves to scan it again. The clasp pops open without any issues.

“It was important to me,” Midoriya says, disconnecting the cord from his phone and winding it up before handing it to Shouta, “that they not be unpleasant to wear. I was thinking about them more as personal items rather than restraining devices - though of course they work that way, too. I made them because quirks can be all manner of things, and sometimes it’s convenient for the person with the quirk to be able to turn it off without effort. Sure, the police can use them, but I originally came up with the idea because Mirio - LeMillion - kept falling through the floor whenever he had a nightmare. And since his room was above mine at Nighteye Agency, that got annoying fast.”

Midoriya looks up and smiles, shrugging. “I was really happy about having put in all that effort when we found Eri,” he says. “It only took me a few days to make one in her size, and she wears it a lot, when she doesn’t want to think about her quirk. Hagakure has one, now, though she figured out the quirk-off switch on her own, but apparently it takes a lot of focus, so the cuff is convenient. I’ve donated a bunch to hospitals around the country - quirks going off in surgery is a massive risk, that’s another reason these were important to me. My mother is a surgical nurse.”

“How is Eri?” he asks, picking up his own bag and getting out his water bottle, trying to work out how to say what he really ought to - even if he really wants to accept the cuff. “I haven’t seen her since last week.”

Midoriya shoulders his own bag and somehow they fall into step towards the gate, both making their way towards the side of campus that has student and faculty housing.

“She’s doing much better,” Midoriya says, sounding pleased. “Mum moved in with Toshinori-san and Mirai-san to help out. Considering Mirai-san is still on bedrest, Mirio-senpai is in recovery and physical therapy and Toshinori-san is… well, you know,” he huffs out a laugh, “poor Tamaki-senpai tried his best, but it was total chaos, Eri was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m kind of relieved, they’ve been dancing around this thing between the three of them for ages, and the house is nice. Five minutes’ walk from the UA front gates, too.”

That was… a lot of information. Shouta is not sure how to respond to that.

“Anyways, sorry, that’s all family drama,” Midoriya goes on, not noticing that Shouta flinches. Is Midoriya effectively All Might’s step-son? Did he really boot All Might’s step-son from the hero course? He has reservations about All Might and he doesn’t care what other people think, but he knows a bad look when he sees it.

“Eri has really bonded with Mirai-san and Mum. Nezu is going to help us evaluate what little education she’s received, and Hound Dog is coming for dinner sometime soon so he can get a sense of her, and help us find a therapist. We’ll need your help when we start training her quirk, so I hope you meant what you said to her at the hospital about being there for her if she needed you.”

“Of course,” he says reflexively. “I’ll bring Mic, too.”

“Oh?” Midoriya asks, sounding curious.

“Voice is finicky as all get out,” Shouta just says. “It was a nightmare to train. He’s halfway through a Quirk Counseling degree. What I mean is, he’ll be significantly better at helping her than I will.”

He has a visceral memory of the three of them, Oboro sitting up a tree with one of his clouds at his back like a pillow, reading a book while Hizashi screamed himself hoarse and Shouta stood by, watching, ready to stop him in an instant. Remembers Hizashi testing out the range of his quirk, falling to his knees when he’d gone too far, clawing at his own throat as Shouta ran up, quirk active. Remembers the red of his best friends’ blood as he spat it out onto the sand of the training ground.

And Midoriya, though he didn’t know it, in that same training ground, eyes blazing in challenge, his finger broken.

It’s too late for blame, but that doesn’t stop Shouta’s self recriminations.

“Oh,” Midoriya says brightly. “In that case, if Present Mic is available, that would be great! It won’t be until the summer - at least you’ll be on break from teaching.”

Shouta snorts. “If you think UA teachers get a break just because there’s no students, you don’t know Nezu as well as you ought to, being his protége.”

“Being his protége, I am sure I can convince him to give you a break,” Midoriya says, grinning slyly at him. “He rather likes Eri, after all.”

They’re halfway towards the point where the path diverges depending on whether you’re going to student housing or the faculty dorms, and Shouta, as much as he doesn’t want to, should really address the situation. It feels like a somewhat natural point to change the subject, since the thought of Eri being taught world domination is only slightly less frightening than the idea of Midoriya being taught the same.

“So,” he says, holding up the slim band of the quirk canceling cuff. “Hatsume Industries?”

“Oh, yeah,” Midoriya says. “It serves both our purposes rather nicely. I’d prefer to keep my two personas separate for the time being, and MeiMei is happy to front the company and have my hero-endorsement. Sakurai is our third partner, but she’ll be entirely off the record because of her quirk. Next time I upgrade your gloves they’ll probably have the logo on them - somewhere subtle, I promise.”

“You’re going to upgrade my gloves?” Shouta asks, startled. He’s worn them for a few months now and he loves them - he’s not sure updates are necessary.

“We come up with new stuff all the time, and eventually they’ll need maintenance anyway,” Midoriya says, waving him off. “Nothing drastic, unless I think of something awesome and you approve.”

Shouta sighs, not sure Midoriya has grasped why he’s so surprised. “Midoriya-kun, by the time the gloves need maintenance, you’ll have graduated. At that point, I should pay for them, and I don’t know what your pricing is going to look like, especially if you’re planning to use cutting edge materials already.”

Midoriya stops walking and blinks at him. “Aizawa-sensei,” he says slowly, “you’re testing them. Of course you won’t have to pay for them. Until maybe a few years down the line, when we’ve streamlined production and stuff. Don’t worry about that.”

“That’s not… Midoriya. I can’t accept a gift from a student. The gloves are one thing, for now at least, but this?” he holds the cuff up again. “I certainly can’t accept this.”

Midoriya stares at him for a long moment before sighing, shoulders slumping slightly. "I guess we're having this talk, then," he mutters, before grabbing Shouta’s elbow and pulling him off the path, around a copse of trees, to where there is a bench overlooking the city and further out, towards the ocean.

"Sit," the kid says, before doing so himself, Shouta almost ending up in his lap since Midoriya is still holding his arm. "Is this because you tried to expel me?"

"I did expel you," Shouta protests.

"It didn't take," Midoriya replies. "We'll get back to that. Are you refusing the gear because you tried to expel me? And if you are, is it due to some misplaced guilt or is it because you still don't think I can be a hero, or a support hero?"

"Misplaced…" Shouta starts before the rest of the words register and he curses to himself because of course this is how Midoriya takes his concerns. It's entirely reasonable, too.

"First," he starts, "it shouldn't matter to you what I think. At this point, I've got no right to an opinion, nor do I deserve it."

Midoriya opens his mouth and Shouta holds up a hand to stop him.

"Let me finish. Second, you are already a hero, so not only have you proven that you can become one, asking what I think is entirely moot. Third, I believe I told you last week, when I offered to train you in hand to hand, that I have faith in you as a hero. I know talk is cheap and you have no reason to believe or trust me, but I wasn't lying, I do. Hell, I've worked with you, I've gone into the field with you, I've gone into the field with your gear, I let my students into the field with your gear. If nothing else, believe that."

Midoriya huffs a laugh. "You done?" he asks. "Are there more points coming?"

"Not for the time being," Shouta says.

"Okay," Midoriya says. "Thank you, then. I'll take your word for it - and your actions, I suppose, though you're damn lucky if you never have to go into the field with someone you don't trust. As to the question I actually needed an answer to right now - why don't you want the gear?"

Shouta groans. "There are rules, Midoriya."

"I know," he says. "I'll bring the paperwork to the teacher's office tomorrow, it'll be another official-tester situation. No rules broken. You know as well as I do that Maijima would have my head if I didn't do these things properly, so that's not what you're worried about. What is the actual reason? Because all I'm coming up with is the misplaced guilt."

"It's hardly misplaced!" he replies, exasperated. "I was a fool, and I made myself an obstacle, when that was the last thing you needed."

"Ah," Midoriya says, sounding amused. "So that's what Hatsume told you. I suspected, what with the training and the talk from the other day, but I wasn't sure."

"I should have…" Shouta starts.

"Stop that," Midoriya says before sighing and twisting to look at Shouta. "You had nineteen other kids to think of, and you didn't know about me."

"I could've," Shouta protests. "I should've read the files better."

Midoriya shrugs. "Maybe. But that's neither here nor there, now, and things have worked out. We figured out a way for me to train as a hero anyway, and I love support work. I was so focused on the hero department back then, I never would have gone into support if it wasn't for you trying to expel me. I mean, at first it was just so that I had classes to attend and a course to graduate from, but I dare anyone to spend a week in MeiMei's company and not end up making something. If only to protect yourself from the shrapnel."

Shouta sighs. "You are entirely too reasonable about this. Most people would detest me."

"And how would that help, exactly?" Midoriya asks, voice level. "Don't get me wrong, I was very angry at you for a long time, sensei, but at the beginning of this year I decided that I wanted the support hero license, too. At the heart of it, do you know what support heroics is all about?"

"I have a feeling 'support' is not the correct answer, here," Shouta says and Midoriya huffs out a laugh and gives him a light shove.

"No, it's not. Heroics is about saving people, sensei, but support - it’s about saving heroes. About stopping heroes and civilians from getting hurt. Harm reduction." His lips twist in a wry grin that hurts to look at, especially because it's sincere. "And that's what I've always wanted, ever since I was little - to stop people from getting hurt. Our reasons, when it comes down to it, are not that dissimilar."

"You know," Shouta says, and he has to work hard to keep his voice steady, "Maijima told me expelling you would one day be one of my greatest regrets, not because it was the wrong thing to do but because I deprived myself of the opportunity to teach you. He was right."

"You're teaching me now," Midoriya says, his eyes bright. "And I'm eager to learn."

A little bit of the weight that's been pressing down on Shouta’s shoulders ever since he figured out how badly he fucked up lifts at that, and he can't help it, they're sitting too close; he slumps slightly into Midoriya's shoulder. He's surprised when the younger man responds by wrapping an arm around him but there's something incredibly soothing about the gesture - Midoriya's hold is firm and he feels steady, in a way Shouta himself hasn't felt since… since Oboro died. It’s nice.

"You fight quirkless," Midoriya says, after they've sat like that for a while. "Did you know I recognized you, that first day? You Erased Katsuki’s quirk and I knew immediately who you were."

"You did? Most people don't - it's not like I'm in the rankings."

"You fight quirkless," Midoriya says again, and Shouta suddenly gets it. Oh. Oh.

"Fuck," he whispers, and Midoriya tightens his grip around his shoulders. Hatsume was right, he is the best of them.

"I'm not telling you to make you feel bad," he says, voice soft. "I'm telling you because… I understand what that's like. It's why I decided I wanted the support license, too. One day, there's going to be a Quirkless hero, and I am going to be behind them, one hundred percent. Until then - I'm working with heroes like you." He moves his arm from around Shouta, instead putting his hands on his shoulders and turning him so they're eye to eye.

"Aizawa sensei," he says. "Take the gear."

"Okay," Shouta says, because there’s nothing else he could say, and is rewarded with another of those probably-quirk-powered smiles.

"Thank you," Midoriya says, before letting go of Shouta’s shoulders and standing up. "I'm going to go shower," he says. "I'll see you tomorrow for law. Have a good night, sensei."

He walks off, leaving Shouta still sitting on the bench, the night somehow colder, after all that.

He gives himself ten minutes to wallow in what could have been before he stands up and makes his way to the faculty quarters to fetch a bottle of whisky he'd bought on a whim earlier in the week.

He owes Higari a drink.

Chapter Text

Shouta can almost feel the discontentment creeping down the hallway outside 3A’s classroom. It’s Friday afternoon, and he wants to go and eat a decent meal for once before going home to sleep - he’s assigned to the Precinct tomorrow to go over cases and paperwork, which is bound to be mind-numbingly boring, so he’s not really in the mood to baby-step a sullen teenager through a tantrum.

Bakugou chose his moment badly. Shouta, were he feeling more generous, would have moved the conversation along at speed, refused Bakugou’s inevitable request, and gotten the whole affair accomplished in 5 minutes. Yes, it would probably be 5 minutes of somewhat intensive shouting, but Bakugou is not as unstoppable a force as he thinks himself to be, and Shouta is still his teacher. It’d have left Bakugou fuming, and probably all the more convinced of his position - allowing him to save face for a time, at least. He has faith in Hound Dog succeeding with him eventually.

Shouta is not feeling generous. It doesn’t help that while he hadn’t overindulged with Higari last night, they did share a couple of drinks and it’s been a long week and Shouta is both dehydrated and over caffeinated.

In short, he’s feeling just the right sort of mean to give Bakugou the reality check he so desperately needs, even if it’ll take him longer.

Thankfully, he’d begged an enormous cup of coffee off of Lunch Rush before coming back to the classroom to close it up for the weekend.

“What’s this about, Bakugou?” he asks as he sits down at his desk, starting his computer.

“You know,” the kid says, low and angry. “Therapy bullshit.”

“Ah,” Shouta says, taking a sip of his coffee.

The silence stretches out long and awkward while Bakugou waits for him to respond further and Shouta waits for Bakugou to make a better argument for his case than ’Therapy bullshit’

“I don’t need fucking therapy,” Bakugou tries again.

The classroom computer takes forever to turn on, but the password prompt has finally come up, so he types it in while Bakugou sits and fumes opposite him. “I disagree,” Shouta says mildly, when Bakugou looks like he’s about to lose it.

“I’m not weak!” Bakugou roars at that, slamming his hands down onto Shouta’s desk, emphasizing his point with a small explosion that leaves scorch marks on the tabletop.

When the noise dies down, Shouta lifts both eyebrows and gestures Bakugou towards the cleaning station by the door, watching in amusement as the kid huffs and stomps over to get the wipes that they’ve discovered work extra well on soot and what scorch marks can be wiped away - it’d been a bit of a trial and error process, but with Todoroki, Kaminari and Bakugou all in his homeroom, they’d had plenty of opportunities to figure it out.

“Yes you are,” Shouta finally says, when Bakugou is done wiping down the evidence of his tantrum.

“Wha…” Bakugou sputters, thinking back to the statement Shouta is responding to before he predictably explodes again - though he keeps his hands away from the table this time, at least. Probably doesn’t want to have to wipe it down again. “What do you mean I’m weak?”

“Precisely that,” Aizawa says, taking another sip of his coffee, and opening Bakugou’s student file on the - finally operational - computer, before turning the screen so Bakugou can see him open his semester evals file. “You’ve received these twice every semester since starting at UA, that makes for seventeen evaluations total, as of right now. Let’s go over the latest one again, shall we?”

“What’s that got to do with anything…” Bakugou shouts.

“To summarize,” Shouta goes on, “your physical fitness is exemplary. Your ability with your quirk is excellent, your adeptness in battle and exercises is very good, you’re mentally robust and your tactics and strategy are sound. There is much to recommend you as a hero. However,” he says and moves to the next page of the document, using the mouse to highlight a section.

“You chafe under authority, though you have learned to respect leadership structures in the past three years. Your ability to operate in a team is amongst the lowest in the class. It has been repeatedly noted in your file that other students prefer not to have you on a team they’re on because of your attitude and behavior. They trust your skills and abilities - but despite acknowledging those, they would not consider you a valuable teammate. You don’t like to empathize with others. Your volatility has been brought up frequently, and your inability to self-regulate your temper. The section may be called ‘things to improve’, but those are weaknesses, Bakugou, and I have brought them up in every evaluation meeting we’ve had for the last three years.”

Bakugou looks like he’s about to blow up - which he well might. It won’t end well for him if he does, though, Shouta will see to that.

“Normally, with weaknesses of this nature, we try to guide students towards self improvement, rather than impose it on them. I have attempted to explain the problem to you for the past three years. It was my belief that you’d eventually figure it out yourself - it was my impression that these issues were not so bad that they’d pose a danger to you or others in the field. I thought you’d have time to figure it out as you matured into your role. However, a recent incident led me to believe that I may have been inaccurate in that assessment; hence, therapy.” He drinks more coffee, watching as Bakugou tries to get himself under control.

The kid fails, not that Shouta was really expecting him to succeed.

“I KNEW this was about fucking Deku,” he explodes. “I knew it. What the fuck did that little twerp tell you?”

“I don’t know to whom you’re referring,” Shouta says. “Who is Deku?”

“Midoriya fucking Izuku,” Bakugou yells.

“Ah,” Shouta says. “You call him ‘Deku’? Why?”

“Because that’s what he is! He’s a quirkless, useless freak!”

Shouta sits back in his chair, staring at his student. This… this is interesting. Clearly, there is more there than he knows, but he’d expected Bakugou to be smart enough to at least hide some of it.

“Bakugou,” he starts, voice low, “Midoriya has told me exactly nothing about you, apart from implying you’d rather not work with him, which is no issue, that happens all the time. What concerned me enough to mandate visits to Hound Dog was an incident that occurred in this classroom a few weeks ago, where you went against protocol during an unscheduled emergency callout. The incident did involve Midoriya, or rather, Hero Kusanagi, that is true, but it was your deplorable and unprovoked conduct at the time that prompted me to revisit some assumptions and refer you to mandatory therapy and anger management to work out what are clearly some serious issues.”

For what it’s worth, Bakugou is trying to get a hold of himself. He’s not doing a particularly good job of it, but he’s trying. Shouta drinks his coffee and waits for his response. It’s slow in coming, so Shouta decides to prod him a bit.

“It’s interesting to me that you’d immediately jump to the conclusion that Midoriya is somehow responsible for having sent you to therapy. I don’t know much about your history, but it is clear to me you have one - I haven’t forgotten you tried to use your quirk on him on the first day of school, you know.”

“Look, I was surprised to see him, that day, okay?” Bakugou snaps. “He’s been a fucking nuisance for most of our lives, always trailing after me, writing whatever shit in those notebooks of his, saying he was going to become a hero when there was fucking no way he could. It pisses me off that he’s still trying, you know?”

Shouta doesn’t know, especially since Midoriya isn’t trying - he’s succeeded.

“Bakugou,” he says, “Midoriya has an A-rank provisional license, same as you. I’m aware his quirk came in extremely late, but he certainly has one, and he uses it well in the field. I’ve worked with him, he’s good.”

“How?” Bakugou yells. “How the hell did he manage that? I’ve been to some of the Sunday training exercises, so I knew he was still trying, but fuck, sensei, he’s always been hopeless. I thought you saw it - you fucking expelled him for it!”

Shouta’s heart sinks into his stomach. Bakugou’s opinions might not be laid at his feet, but Shouta has certainly not helped matters.

“He managed it the same way every hero manages it,” Shouta replies. “Hard work and training. If anything, he had to work harder than most, since I made the colossal mistake of expelling him.”

“So what,” Bakugou says, looking furious, “sending me to therapy is going to fix your mistake, somehow?”

“Bakugou,” Shouta says, sighing. “I’m sending you to therapy because you need therapy. The situation with Midoriya may have brought it to my attention, but there is no denying that you need to work on yourself. You are two months from potentially graduating, and you can’t go around as a hero calling people useless - you shouldn’t even be thinking it. And that is without even touching on your quirkist prejudices, which are a far more serious matter that must be addressed.”

“Potentially?” Bakugou spits. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I will hold you back if you show no progress in your work with Hound Dog,” Shouta says. “I will not allow a student to graduate if I think they’re at risk of getting themselves or others killed for whatever reason, and if you can’t work on a team because you can’t respect other people, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. There’ll be a mistake, and it won’t even matter if you’re the one who made it; it’s going to cost - you or someone else.”

Bakugou rears back as if he’s been slapped.

“What,” he says, low and furious, “the fuck. Now you’re talking about holding me back - what, to fix your mistake?”

Shouta chuckles humorlessly at him.

“No,” he says. “You’re missing the point. Bakugou, what I am trying to tell you is this: some mistakes can’t be fixed. Sometimes they’re irreversible, sometimes they’re just too enormous, sometimes it’s been too long since you made it when you notice that you fucked up.” Bakugou blinks at the swear word.

“Sometimes, the best you can do is mitigate the consequences of your mistake, and as much as you try, you’ll never succeed completely. You’ll just have to live with them, and try to learn from them. I’m not sending you to therapy to fix a mistake I made, Bakugou - I’m trying to stop you from making a similar one, with potentially deadly consequences.”

Bakugou stares at him, and Shouta thinks maybe - just maybe - he got through to him a little.

“You’re not going to let me stop going to therapy,” Bakugou finally says.

“No,” Shouta replies.

“And you won’t let me graduate until… what?”

“I get a report from Hound Dog that says you’ve at least internalized some of the work he has you doing.”

The kid nods sharply. “Okay,” he says. “I still think this is bullshit, but okay. You’ve… been a decent teacher, so I guess… fuck.”

“You’ll be a better hero for it,” Shouta says, ignoring that his student swore. “I promise.”

Bakugou’s shoulders slump. “Right,” he says. He swings his backpack off the floor and up onto his shoulder, before walking towards the door. He stops just before he opens it, though.

“How do you know,” he says quietly, without turning around, “if you’ve made a mistake? Like, not an obvious one?”

Shouta doesn’t huff a laugh, but it’s a near thing. “If you’re asking yourself that question,” he says, “then you probably have.”

+++

It’s been a good week and Shouta is in a good mood as he makes his way towards training field Epsilon which he’s been using with Shinsou - and now Midoriya - for Thursday hand-to-hand practice. He’s about an hour late, which is not unusual this late in the school year - so many students, so many make-up tests, so many extra credit projects, so much panic. He’s looking forward to a good workout.

He rounds the small turn in the path and stops to stare.

Rather than try to work on hand-to-hand without Shouta, the two young men have clearly decided on basic weapons’ training - Shinsou is working with his capture scarf, but Midoriya has swords.

He’d known, from footage of Sunday training, that Midoriya can fight with a blade, but that had been a battle exercise. This is something else.

The blades flash as they catch the light - one katana, one tanto - and Midoriya’s form is impeccable as he flows through katas, even despite Shinsou’s best efforts to impede him.

Shouta isn’t much of a swordsman himself. He knows the basics, and like Shinsou is doing now, he’d practiced using his capture weapon against a variety of armed opponents, but he can tell Midoriya is skilled.

He opens the gate to the practice field, and the noise of the hinges squeaking catches the attention of the two fighters. They both stand down, looking over, and Shouta is almost sorry to see them stop.

“I didn’t know you’d trained in kenjutsu,” he says to Midoriya, watching as the younger man blushes a little.

“It just sort of happened,” he says. “I’ve found it’s excellent reflex training, though, so I’ve kept it up. I’m decent at bojutsu, too.”

“If you want to continue…” Shouta says, but Midoriya is already by the bench where he’s left his stuff, putting away the blades.

“Me and Shinsou can work on that some other time,” he says. “I want to learn that heel hook you caught me with last Thursday.”

+++

By the end of the night they’re all collapsed into the grass by the benches, drinking water and cooling down.

“Monday was fun,” Midoriya says, grinning up at him and Shinsou from underneath the fall of his hair. He’s bent over his leg, stretching out the hamstring, his back a graceful curve.

“I didn’t know Monoma could copy Tsuyu’s camouflage,” Shinsou says, laughing. “I thought Kirishima was going to have an aneurysm.”

“He’s been working on copying aspects of mutation quirks,” Midoriya says. “It’s expanded his options in a fight considerably.”

“I’d say,” Shouta says. “Was it really necessary for Honenuki to collapse the bank building?”

“That was Tsu’s shout,” Shinsou says, smirking. “She’s surprisingly mercenary when she gets the opportunity.”

“Bakugou was still inside,” Shouta says, despairing of them.

“A bonus,” Midoriya replies instantly, reaching out a fist to bump Shinsou’s. They’re unrepentant, obviously.

“Yaoyorozu’s new costume is shaping up nicely,” Shouta says, changing the subject, since clearly, trying to have a conversation about ‘reasonable force’ is a dud.

“I’m glad you like it,” Midoriya says. “We’re working on some ways for her to diversify her fighting strategies, too - she’s great to work with, game to try almost anything. She wants to have more short-range and mid-range methods in her arsenal, so we’re working on that.”

“She’s been so frustrated by her costume for such a long time,” Shinsou puts in. “So I can imagine that now she’s working with people who aren’t just going to slap her in as little spandex as they can possibly get away with, she’s having a much better experience.”

Midoriya grumbles something under his breath about idiots who should have been ‘Mineta’d’ long ago.

“The kusazuri skirt already proved its usefulness,” Shouta says. “Shouji hit her on the thigh with his escrima stick and she barely flinched.”

“Right?” Midoriya says, throwing his hands up. “Armor is important! It’s nice to look good and all that, but heroes need to consider that they can also get hit and their costumes need to account for it! You can’t just go out there expecting nobody to ever land anything on you - it’s impractical.”

“Here we go,” Shinsou says, grinning widely.

“You’re one to talk, mister can-you-figure-out-a-way-to-armor-these-sweatpants,” Midoriya says, smirking back.

“Hey, sweatpants are comfortable,” Shouta points out, watching as Shinsou’s grin turns devious.

“Ah yes,” Midoriya says acerbically, “because that’s what all heroes want to be in a fight. Comfortable.”

They pack up as Midoriya and Shinsou trade barbs in what is clearly a well-worn argument, Shouta interjecting every now and then just to see how they’ll respond. The discussion of armor takes them out of the training field and most of the way towards where they’ll part for the evening. It tapers off into a conversation on just how badass Yaoyorozu’s costume is going to look - they’re going for a modernized samurai warrior sort of aesthetic, and Shouta is pleased to know that his student will be safer now.

This is what Midoriya had told him support is all about, he thinks. Keeping heroes safe and reducing the harm when they aren’t.

“So, are you going to give her a sword?” Shinsou asks, sounding interested. “It’d fit the look.”

“No,” Midoriya says. “I took her to see Akaguro-shishou to see if she has the… he calls it the touch for it… but she doesn’t. She’s great with a bo staff, though, and we’ve got some other ideas we’re working on.”

They’re at a place in the path where they can either go towards the residential areas on campus or the main building, and Midoriya stops. “This is my stop,” he says, sighing. “I better go close up the labs and make sure nothing’s on fire, or Maijima sensei will have my hide when he comes back.”

“How is that going?” Shinsou asks, sounding amused.

“It’s going,” Midoriya says, voice dark. “Don’t ask. I’m pretty convinced Maijima sensei must be watching the cameras and laughing his ass off.” He waves a hand and walks off before Shinsou - or Shouta - can ask him anymore.

“What was that about?” Shouta asks Shinsou as they walk onwards to the residential buildings.

“Maijima sensei is at a weeklong conference in Osaka,” Shinsou says. “He left Midoriya and Hatsume in charge of the labs. Said it’d be good practice for when they get Hatsume Industries up and running.”

Shouta stares at him. “He’s… getting his revenge while they’re still his students, isn’t he?”

Shinsou grins. “Midoriya came to the same conclusion roughly four hours in on Monday.”

Oh dear. They’ll be lucky if the school is still standing by the weekend.

Chapter Text

He’s packing up the next day, ready to leave for the weekend, when a tired voice startles him out of the routine of sorting papers to be shredded, closing down his computer and locking his desk.

“Help,” Midoriya says. He looks tired and a little panicked about the eyes, and he’s leaning over the staff room counter to look at Shouta, like he’s the last thread of sanity left in the world.

“What?” Shouta asks, startled.

“I may have made an error,” Midoriya says. “And Maijima sensei is in Osaka.”

Oh, right. He remembers what Shinsou told him last night, but… if this has something to do with the labs, why him?

“Listen,” Midoriya says, “I would have asked Midnight first, because that would have been easiest - just uncover an arm or something, stick it into the lab for a bit, close the door real fast and wait until there’s two thumps, voila, but… she’s not here. So you’re my next best option, because in theory, Yaomomo should listen to you, and as her homeroom teacher, it’s probably okay for you to just throw her over a shoulder and carry her off to the 3A dorms. I’m hoping.”

That sounds alarming.

“What’s wrong with Yaoyorozu?” he asks, standing up and following Midoriya as he leads them towards the Support Department wing.

“Scientific fervor,” Midoriya says darkly. “Like I said, I made an error, I didn’t know it would turn out like this. I don’t think they’ve slept for the past three days based on the number of coffee cups and empty Monster Energy cans in the lab, and I am getting seriously concerned that they’ll end up creating fissionable materials in an unshielded facility because it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Shouta picks up the pace. “Yaoyorozu doesn’t drink caffeine,” he tries.

Midoriya gives him a look. “She does now,” he says.

“Can we start from the beginning?” Shouta asks.

Midoriya sighs. “So, Yaomomo’s quirk is that she can use her body to create anything, as long as she understands its molecular structure, right?”

“Right,” Shouta says.

“You’ve met my classmate Sakurai,” Midoriya says. “Her quirk is called ‘molecular structure’, and gives her the ability to understand the molecular structure of any material.”

“Oh,” Shouta says, starting to see where this is going.

“Last Wednesday, I found out that they’d never been introduced, which I thought was crazy, but in hindsight was probably entirely intentional and most likely involved some very careful maneuvering on Maijima sensei’s part. Except he’s in Osaka, and he didn’t tell me, and I am going to put salt in his tea every day until graduation.” Midoriya glares up at a security camera, as if convinced Higari is watching.

“So of course I introduced them to each other, and now it’s been three days and I can’t make them stop, and the last time Sakurai went on a science bender like this she came back to the dorms after something like 90 hours of work talking about how Beethoven’s 9th symphony tastes like oranges. She’d also blown up an autoclave and shorted out the mass spectrometer, so if we could avoid that, that would be excellent. Even if she did invent three different types of polymer as a result.”

Shouta snorts. “So what, you want me to stop them?”

Midoriya sighs. “Ideally. Worst case scenario, you pick up Yaomomo, I pick up Erika, and we carry them to their respective dorms and lock them inside.”

“Isn’t Hatsume supposed to be helping you with this?” Shouta asks curiously.

“She is,” Midoriya says grimly, “but which part of the explanation I just gave you sounded like matters might be improved with the addition of MeiMei? I’m curious.”

Okay, yeah, that’s a fair enough point.

“She should be helping you with the project as a whole, though,” Shouta says.

“Oh, don’t worry. We’ve worked out a fairly equitable arrangement,” Midoriya says. “She’s doing great, she keeps the labs running.”

Shouta eyes him suspiciously before asking, “Then what’s your job?”

Midoriya smiles grimly. “I stop the labs running.”

There’s a loud, resonant ‘kooooomfffff’ sound from somewhere up ahead, and Midoriya picks up the pace even more, Shouta following right behind him.

+++

It’s past midnight on a Sunday and Shouta is losing a fight.

Saturday patrol had been unusually hectic and he’s exhausted. He’s supposed to be off by now, the early Sunday morning crew taking over, but hero work isn’t exactly the type you can clock off from on the dot, no matter how much Shouta would sometimes like to.

Stitcher is a good vigilante - careful, meticulous, and almost never crosses any lines that might ruffle the Hero Commission’s feathers. She is in the game to reduce violence in the red light district, something Shouta very much respects, and she is a great source of information on the seedier side of town.

A few weeks ago, she’d caught wind of a human trafficking operation - not unusual, considering her ‘area of expertise’ - and had called in Shouta for assistance in shutting it down. They’ve done this kind of thing a number of times, and perhaps that’s made them complacent - or perhaps it’s the fact that the human trafficking operation was just a side operation for a much larger drug smuggling ring. In any case; they’re surrounded.

“Press the button,” Stitcher bites out, and Shouta thinks she must be running out of ammunition - there’s enough guys on the ground groaning and looking like pincushions to have severely depleted her stores of senbon. The ground around them is littered with shuriken, Stitcher had even thrown a goddamn kunai earlier in the fight, hitting a guy in the eye. She’d saved Shouta’s life in doing so, so he’s hardly going to fuss, but…

He presses his emergency button two times and hopes whoever shows up isn’t going to make a fuss either. He can’t remember who’s on patrol in the area at this time of night, but some heroes are uptight about vigilantes, and considering Stitcher and him are outnumbered enough they’re forced to fight dirty, the scene of the altercation isn’t a pretty sight.

It’s a minute or two of violence, him and Stitcher back to back fighting off what feels like an entire gang of thugs, before Shouta sees a sparkle of green light out of the corner of his eye, then a flash as a blade is drawn.

“Good evening,” says a familiar voice. “I see you’re having quite the palaver, Eraserhead.”

“Welcome to the party, Kusanagi,” Shouta says. “Lethal force is authorized but not particularly recommended.”

“Understood,” Kusanagi says, and proceeds to throw himself into the fight. He’s using a wakizashi and Blackwhip, and Shouta wishes he wasn’t actually in this fight, that he could just watch, because the way he uses the sword as a distraction is both ingenious and hilarious. It catches the light, so it’s big and flashy, and Midoriya uses it to draw attention from whatever he’s doing with his other hand - frequently using Blackwhip to toss people around, occasionally throwing a mean left hook to knock the thugs out. It’s brutally effective and with all three of them the fight is over in minutes.

“Wow, kid,” Stitcher says watching as Kusanagi finishes off their last opponent with a heel hook before slamming the man into the ground - and that was Shouta’s heel hook, which he’d taught the man just last week, which for some odd reason is absurdly pleasing to Shouta. “I don’t think I’ve seen anybody use a goddamn sword as a red herring before.”

“That’s why it’s effective,” Kusanagi says. “Stitcher, correct?”

“Um,” Stitcher says, straightening up. “Are you going to arrest me if I say yes?”

Kusanagi snorts. “No,” he says, looking around before raising his hand to point. “Wait for me and Eraser in that alley, we’ll have to brief the police when they arrive. There’s enough dumpsters in there to make for excellent cover from ground level. With any luck we can join you in half an hour or so.”

Stitcher hesitates for a brief second, looking at Shouta, who nods. He doesn’t know why Midoriya wants the vigilante to wait, but he’s not about to argue, and the sirens are coming closer.

When the police arrive, the first cruiser disgorges Sansa, much to both his and Kusanagi’s relief, if the way the younger man’s shoulders ease is any indicator. Sansa is nothing if not competent, and they’re used to working with heroes.

“This the case you were working on, Kusanagi?” the detective says, striding up to them. “You’re not normally the type to start an all-out brawl to sort out an investigation.”

“Maaaaa,” Kusanagi says. “I think I was working the same case as Eraserhead, but from the other end, and we were on a collision course. The gang decided to confront Eraser and since I was looking into their activities, I was the closest and first to respond.”

He turns to Shouta. “I was working a drug operation in the red light district, and had just caught wind of a human trafficking element.”

Shouta shrugs. “I had an informant working with me on a human trafficking ring, we’d just realized that it was a side industry for a drug operation.”

Sansa shakes their head. “Was the informant the one with all the pointy things?”

“Perhaps,” Shouta hedges. Sansa turns to Kusanagi.

“I saw nothing not commensurate with the seriousness of the situation the two found themselves in,” Kusanagi says, and it figures the kid would pick up on Nighteye’s talent for diplomatic doublespeak.

Sansa sighs. “I assume your respective agencies have your briefs?”

Shouta and Kusanagi nod in tandem.

“Right, get out of here,” Sansa says, looking nonplussed. “You’re both over time, come in for debrief tomorrow, say… 12:00.”

“Yes detective,” Kusanagi says, and Shouta just nods again.

Stitcher is waiting for them in the alley as promised. She’s taken off the mask she fights in, and there is blood trailing down her temple.

“Come on,” Kusanagi says. “I have a place nearby where we can get patched up and have a cup of tea.”

Shouta is somehow entirely unsurprised when Kusanagi leads them through a couple of back alleys and into the grounds of the local temple. He is a little surprised when Kusanagi pulls out a key and unlocks the door to the small attached monastery, herding the two of them in through a small genkan and into a kitchen area.

The overhead light turns on, and Shouta looks up to see a very old monk standing in the other doorway to the room.

“Oh,” the man says, “It’s you, Lilypad-kun.”

“Giyu-sensei,” Midoriya says, smiling, having pulled off his mask. “Sorry for bringing friends, but on the upside, I’m pretty sure the drug runners you told me about are out of commission for the time being. I was going to borrow some of your tea and use the first aid supplies I stashed.”

The man takes the three of them in with an evaluating gaze. “If you need the first aid supplies, do your friends need civilian clothes as well, or should I get out the guest futons?”

“Civvies,” Stitcher says. “That would be nice. I don’t live that far from here.”

“I wouldn’t mind crashing,” Midoriya admits. “It’s a long way back to UA and I effectively pulled a double shift just now.”

Shouta thinks about walking back to UA, but Midoriya is right - it’s at least an hours’ walk, and catching a cab in this part of town at this time of night is nigh on impossible. And he needs to be at the local precinct at noon tomorrow. “Futon,” he says, watching as the monk gives them a sharp nod and turns around in the doorway.

Midoriya has walked over to a rolling suitcase up against a wall and pulled out a tote of first aid supplies, carrying it over and dropping it between them.

“Right,” he says brightly. “There were a lot of bladed weapons in play in this fight, so let me fix you up. Stitcher, let me see your head first, since you’re heading out. Eraser, make some tea, if you’re up for it and don’t mind?”

Shouta sets up the kettle and digs out a box of tea, delighted to find a jar of instant coffee as well - it’s hardly luxe but it’ll do him for right now.

“Thanks, ow,” Stitcher says, and Shouta turns around from sorting mugs to find Midoriya carefully applying a butterfly bandage to a cut on her forehead.

“No worries,” Midoriya says, smiling. “I’ve actually been meaning to ask Eraser to introduce us, I know you’ve worked together before.”

“Oh?” Stitcher says, sounding interested. She’s taken off most of her gear, and now Midoriya is inspecting a wound on her bicep with a furrowed brow.

“This will need stitches,” Midoriya says. “But only a few. If you don’t mind, I can do them for you.” He looks up as Giyu-sensei arrives with two rolled up futons under each arm, nodding in gratitude before turning back to Stitcher.

“Sure, kid,” she says, a little amused.

“I’ll be right back with some clothes,” Giyu-sensei says, moving briskly out of the room again while Midoriya stands up to come to the sink to wash his hands.

“You bleeding from anywhere vital?” he asks Shouta idly. He’s brought antibacterial soap from his kit with him - clearly the kid is well prepared.

“No, just scrapes and a twisted ankle,” Shouta says, just as the kettle boils and he busies himself with sorting drinks.

“There is an icepack in the freezer compartment in the fridge,” Midoriya says. “We shouldn’t wrap it up for the night, if we’re crashing here, but I’ve got wraps for tomorrow.” He’s back with Stitcher, opening a suture kit.

“So,” Stitcher says, distracting herself as the kid starts to work on her arm. “You wanted an introduction?”

“I’ve got a colleague,” Midoriya says, “who is looking to add more… pointy things, to borrow a term from our detective friend… to their repertoire of fighting skills. Due to certain circumstances with their quirk, small throwing blades like senbon and shuriken would make for ideal weapons, but there aren’t that many people around who can assist with that sort of training. Also, just evaluating whether they have the knack for it would be best, before we put a lot of work into a skill that might not ultimately be useful. Akaguro-shishou suggested I find you.”

Stitcher jerks in surprise, and then hisses when Midoriya’s needle probably stabs her deeper than it needed to go.

“Akaguro-shishou,” she says slowly, before laughing out loud. “Oh, of course. How is the old coot?”

Midoriya smiles faintly. “Better, but bored.” He stills for a moment and looks up at Stitcher. “I could put you on the list, you know. If… you know.”

“As a repayment for helping out your colleague?” Stitcher says, her eyes sharp and evaluating.

“No,” Midoriya says. “I’d do it even if you don’t. But you know what I’d need.”

Shouta has officially lost track of the conversation they’re having, but he trusts Midoriya, and he trusts Stitcher enough to fight with her at his back, so whatever it is can’t be that bad.

Giyu-sensei comes bustling in with bedding and clothes in his arms, and Shouta finds himself unceremoniously hustled out of the room and into a nearby bathroom to change out of his hero gear and into a sleep yukata that is butter soft from repeated washings.

He comes back into the room to find Stitcher washing up in the sink before she breezes past him to go change in the same bathroom, while Midoriya waves him over to where he’s sitting, first aid supplies around him, drinking his tea.

“I can do this myself,” Shouta protests, but Midoriya grabs his hand and yanks him down to sit, and at some point while Shouta was changing he must have retrieved the icepack from the freezer and wrapped it in a teatowel. The coolness on the swelling is soothing.

Despite the many, many bruises and scrapes, Shouta’s only real bleeding injury is a fairly shallow puncture wound to the forearm, which Midoriya wipes down with antiseptic, before judging it small enough that it’d be best to let it breathe overnight.

“I have bruise cream,” Midoriya says, after letting go of Shouta’s arm, handing him a tube from his first aid kit. “You put it where you think you need it. I’m going to go change.”

He clambers to his feet, gathering up a sleeping yukata identical to the one Shouta is wearing and his still steaming cup of tea.

Stitcher slips through the room, wearing sweats, holding a couple of plastic grocery bags that probably hold all her myriad gear. “Thanks kid,” she says as Midoriya graciously diverts to escort her to the door.

“We’ll be in touch,” Midoriya says, and Stitcher is a fairly dour person, in Shouta’s experience, but the smile she shoots at the younger man is genuine and bright.

+++

He doesn’t usually sleep well in new places, so he’s not surprised when he wakes up early. He is surprised that he apparently slept through Giyu-sensei coming through the kitchen and making tea - he’s opened one of the side panels of the room to the early morning light and is sitting out on the engawa with a pot of tea on a tray at his side. Shouta can see he’s got extra cups, so rather than risking waking Midoriya, he decides to assume the monk has already made enough tea for anyone who might want to join him.

He can cope with tea, this once.

“Good morning, hero-san,” the old man says when Shouta steps out of the room behind him. “Perhaps you could close the panel? If we might have a discussion, we should let Lilypad-kun sleep through it, ne?”

Shouta could have sworn he made no sound, and the man didn’t twitch, but he doesn’t exactly have home field advantage, here. He closes the panel and sits down beside him.

“Help yourself,” Giyu-sensei says, waving at the tray. “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

“It’s a little early to say,” Shouta says, pouring himself a cup. The dawn light is gray and there’s morning mist in the air - it might get warm as the day progresses. The engawa looks out over a large local graveyard, the angular planes of the tombs and monuments looking harsh in the faint light. It has rained in the night sometime and everything is dampened, darkened.

“Maaa, forgive an old man,” Giyu-sensei says. “It is a beautiful morning since my local area is going to be free of drug running thugs today.”

Shouta huffs. “I take it you called in Midoriya?”

“I did just ask him to speak on our behalf to the local police,” Giyu-sensei says, “but I was not surprised when he took the matter upon himself. It’s in his nature.”

“How do you know him?” Shouta asks. The younger man is an enigma, and Shouta has burned so many bridges when it comes to him, he rarely feels like asking for information is something he should venture.

“He used to live quite close,” the old man says. “We were his local temple. And,” he raises a gnarled hand to point, “do you see that big vase over there?”

There’s a big glass vase at the gate, fastened to it with a red ribbon. It’s got a few tulips in it, and the sign above it says “Flowers to remember a dear one.”

“It’s for donated flowers,” Giyu-sensei says. “We actually set it up because of Lilypad-kun, but it’s been a success overall. He used to turn up at the graveyard gate with bunches of red spider lilies to give away. Said he’d been gifted too many - as if there’s any proper reason to gift mourning flowers in any quantity to a ten year old.”

Shouta breathes out. Takes a drink of his tea. Remembers Suzuki sobbing into Midoriya’s shoulder about helping her sister carry all the damned spider lilies home from school, because she’d get scolded if she threw them in the school garbage bins.

“I’m quirkless, you know,” Giyu-sensei says. “Wasn’t all that uncommon when I was a young one. Three others in my class. I’m not sure if Lilypad-kun knows - he’s never asked. He’s too good to ask those questions.”

“He’s a good man,” Shouta says, not sure what else to say to that.

“Mmmm,” Giyu-sensei hums. “That he is. I’m not surprised he got into that school of his, even if I find the whole thing a bit ridiculous.”

Shouta can’t help himself. “How so?” he asks, mildly. He wonders if Giyu-sensei knows anything about Shouta or his history with Midoriya.

The old man harumphs.

“I understand it’s a job,” he says. “And you need to learn skills for a job. I know that’s what the training is about. But… hero school. As if you can teach someone to be a hero.”

“Well,” Shouta tries to be delicate, because a response is expected, but he wants to hear the old monk’s genuine thoughts, “hero schools do seem to bear that out.”

Giyu-sensei snorts indelicately at that.

“Not you too, hero-san,” he says. “Tell me you don’t conflate skill with ability, ability with potential, or potential with character.”

“I don’t think I follow,” Shouta says, a little surprised at the vehemence.

“Lilypad-kun didn’t need to go to school to learn to be a hero,” Giyu-sensei says. “Lilypad-kun has been a hero in his own way since the moment he understood the nature of inequality between people, and given that he was diagnosed quirkless… he has always had a more intimate understanding of unfairness than most. A ten year old, unjustly scorned by his fellows for something out of his control, doesn’t turn his own personal tragedy into a kind turn for other people unless they’re already a hero, hero-san.”

Shouta takes a sip of his tea, to avoid having to answer. It tastes like ash in his mouth.

“It is peculiar,” Giyu-sensei says, “this system we have. Skills are important and valuable. The more skill you have, the more ability you have to help, after all - and the more ability you have to help, the higher your potential to do so. And good is good, no matter how or why - but I mourn that we seem to have lost sight of the fact that the cornerstone of all of that is heart. In this world of heroes and villains, it’s easy to lose track of the fact that perhaps the bravest thing you might ever see is a twelve year old boy standing in the rain, offering mourning flowers to a funeral procession for a shopkeeper that had barred him from his shop for years for no good reason. To his daughter - his classmate - who, I’d wager, was the reason he so often had so many to give, on other occasions.”

“I…” Shouta says, but his voice is strangled in his throat.

“He bought the flowers himself, that day,” Giyu-sensei goes on, implacable. “Because she was his classmate, for all that was worth to her. And after two years of standing here giving away the flowers other people gave him for spite, he knew how much it meant to so many to be offered a token of kindness to carry onwards if only for a little while.”

The older man chuckles, and leans over the tray, picking up the heated teapot and pouring himself more. Shouta is struck speechless but nods numbly when offered a refill.

“Forgive the musings of an old man, hero-san,” Giyu-sensei says after taking a deep drink of the tea. “Perhaps this is all nonsense. I’ve watched Lilypad-kun grow in skill and ability and potential since he started going to that school, after all. But I must confess, it is my greatest hope that hero school has not succeeded in teaching him anything about character. On that score, he had very little to learn, and much to unlearn, if under the incorrect instruction.”

Shouta makes a mental vow - to himself, to Hatsume Mei, to this unexpectedly frank old man, to Maijima, to Midoriya - to remember this moment. In just over four weeks he’ll have new students. He has a lot to think about.

“I don’t think you have to worry about that, Giyu-sensei,” he says. “And I know for a fact his homeroom teacher considers it his main mission to teach him to value himself more.” Now that they see eye to eye, Higari has told him about the all-out war H class has been waging on Midoriya’s lack of self worth for three years.

“I hope you’re right,” Giyu-sensei says. “In twenty years, when he’s changed the world, let’s meet again for tea on this engawa and discuss it, ne?”

Shouta eyes the man beside him. He’s old, and even if Shouta can’t tell just how old, he’s still a little dubious.”

“Forgive me, Giyu-sensei,” he says, “but in twenty years…”

“Hmmm, you are correct,” Giyu-sensei says thoughtfully. “Let’s make it ten, that’s going to be enough for him, isn’t it?”

Shouta huffs a laugh. “We can stick to twenty,” he says. “But let’s meet here in ten and call it a progress report.”

The old man holds out a hand and Shouta shakes it, finding the other man’s grip firm and unyielding.

“It’s a deal, hero-san,” he says.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Aizawa sensei,” says a familiar voice from above him. It’s been a couple of weeks since that investigation gone bad with Stitcher, and Shouta has met Midoriya for Thursday night training, but the kid seems to be incredibly busy - justifiably, since he’ll graduate from two tracks.

“Hey, Midoriya,” he says, looking up from the files on his desk in the teacher’s office. He’s exhausted himself - teachers of graduating classes always are, this time of year - but he still catches a strange look flashing across Midoriya’s face.

“Nezu asked me to deliver these to you,” he says, voice oddly flat, and then he puts a stack of files down onto Shouta’s desk. Student files. Next year’s 1A. His third chance to shape the heroes of the future.

“Oh, that rat bastard,” Shouta breathes. Having Midoriya deliver these is a twist of a knife Shouta wasn’t quite expecting.

“I don’t actually think there’s all that much rat in there,” Midoriya says idly. “I mean, his genetics have been spliced all to hell, but rat is not a huge part of his DNA, I don’t think.”

“What?” Shouta says, caught off guard.

“Mmmm,” Midoriya says. “I mean, there’s all manner of genes in there, but I think when he asks if he’s a dog or a rat or a bear he’s prevaricating. I think he started out as a Japanese Marten.”

Shouta laughs. Midoriya has just dumped a bomb on his desk, it figures he’d be entirely focused on something else.

Or not. Midoriya is eyeing the stack on the desk like he’s well aware that he’s just been used to deliver a message that has nothing to do with the actual files.

Shouta sighs and pulls them closer, looking at the name on the top one. ‘Umino Eimi’ he reads.

“You don’t want to read them,” Midoriya says quietly from where he’s standing at Shouta’s desk, watching him.

“Ironically enough,” Shouta says, “I find that in most cases, forming my own opinions prevents me from bias.”

Midoriya snorts. “In most cases,” he says.

Shouta sighs again. He’s been doing that a lot during this conversation. He imagines he’ll be doing that a lot as he works his way through the stack.

“So essentially what you want is to somehow find out only the information you need, and only when it’s relevant, but you don’t want to cloud your judgment with irrelevant information until you’ve formed your own opinion,” Midoriya says. His voice sounds… coaxing?

“Exactly, but as I am frequently reminded,” he nods at Midoriya, “I can’t know what’s relevant information without having all the information.”

“What if you didn’t have to have all the information,” Midoriya says, oddly emphasizing and - he can’t be…

But he should really have dropped the files off, made his point and left. He’s still standing here, which has to mean…

“Midoriya,” Shouta says slowly, meeting the younger man’s eyes, “do you think you could…”

Midoriya bends over his desk and picks up the stack of files. “I’ll send you preliminary analysis in a couple of days. Watch your inbox.” He thunks down a small box with some sort of electronic device onto Shouta’s desk, before flicking him a USB, which Shouta catches on instinct.

“And thank you for volunteering for the Paperless UA Pilot Project,” he adds, smiling wide enough to show teeth. “That’s your security key for the server, and its associated reader,” he says, nodding between the two items he’s saddled Shouta with. “If you have any questions, Yamaguchi is leading it, and he’ll be working here next year.” Then he turns on his heel and walks away.

Sekijirou, the only other staff member still in the office this time of night, is laughing like a maniac at his desk.

“Oh shut up,” Shouta mutters, turning back to his computer.

After a moment spent trying to remember what he was doing before Midoriya’s bombshell he suddenly realizes something and navigates over to an empty tab, typing ‘Japanese Marten’ into the search bar.

He gets half a second to go ’huh’ at the images his search brings up before his screen explodes in digital confetti and a small animated Nezu pops up in the corner with a banner that says ‘Oh, you’re clever!”

Rarely ever in his life has Shouta felt so threatened.

+++

"You two are becoming predictable," Inui Ryou growls from the door to Maijima's 3rd year classroom.

Shouta startles and watches as Higari looks a little shamefaced at the school counselor. The contrite look on his face is somewhat ruined by the fact that he's still holding his whisky glass.

"Oh, for…" Ryou says, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. "You look like I caught you having sex in the bushes by the perimeter. Which is a look I am uncomfortably familiar with as is, given my nose and my frequent security sweeps, so stop that."

Maijima coughs. "Inui-senpai," he says, "we weren't expecting your company."

"It's Ryou," the man says. "And in that case, it's a good thing I brought my own glass, isn't it?"

Shouta recovers first. "Of course," he says, pouring a measure into the glass plonked down in front of him as Ryou goes to drag a third chair over to the teacher's desk. He's glad this is one of his bottles, considering he thinks he might know why the man is here.

"Three years," Ryou says, sighing, as he sits down on the one unoccupied side of Maijima's desk. His chair is backwards so that he can rest an arm on the chair back, and so that his tail doesn't get squished. "Three years, and none of us noticed that a student had a barely functioning self-concept."

Shouta winces. "That bad?" he asks, wondering how he didn't pick up on it. Bakugou always seemed so self-assured.

"Don't blame yourself," Ryou says. "He's very adept at covering for it, and he'd chosen a method for doing so that gave him extra camouflage. In fact, considering you were the one to send him to me, please give yourself a pat on the back. He'd have gotten through my exit interview, easy - I hesitate to throw around terms like genius but that is a very clever young man."

"I sent him to you for anger management and because I suspected he'd been a bully in the past," Shouta protests. "I let you know about the quirkist beliefs because when he was trying to get out of anger management he said some concerning things."

"Don't sell yourself short, Shouta," Ryou says. "You're the first person to call him on his bullshit. The circumstances don't matter - that kid has been getting one up on everyone else in his life for years, and you were the one to finally tell him enough. Besides, whatever you told him when he was trying to get out of anger management made him think, and that broke him."

"I didn't mean to…" Shouta says, startled.

"He needed it," Ryou says, finally taking a swig from his whisky glass. "You did good, Shouta. Kid's been lying to himself all this time, you tell him a truth that hits home - that'll rock him. You probably saved his life, in the not-so-long-run."

"Who are we talking about?" Maijima says into the silence that falls after that proclamation, filling all their glasses from the bottle Shouta brought him for what is fast becoming a weekly habit, though mostly they stick to one drink - not so tonight, obviously.

"Bakugou Katsuki," Shouta says, voice sharp with pain. Maybe he was the one to finally get Bakugou help but… three years. He wishes he'd seen it sooner. Another facet to his mistake - he probably would have noticed if Midoriya was constantly around. He hopes he would have. "I think he bullied Midoriya in middle school."

Maijima snorts. "I wouldn't be surprised," he says. "That would explain a lot. Especially Hatsume's life's goal of, and I quote, 'to blow him up in a way that sticks'. I had to get Midoriya to intervene during first year, which was… rough on everyone."

Ryou huffs. "Y'all can talk," he says, taking a sip from his refilled glass. "You weren't the ones who have had Midoriya Izuku in regular therapy for the past three years, talking about his issues, and never putting together 'Kacchan' and 'Bakugou Katsuki'. In hindsight, he was very careful not to give me enough pieces of the puzzle so I'd realize."

Shouta sighs, taking a sip himself. "What's Bakugou's… prognosis, I suppose?"

"He'll be fine," Ryou says. "Needs work. He'll graduate with his peers, but under a medical caution on his hero license. I'm passing him on to a friend to work with. Relevant to you, Shouta - I'm giving him two days off, with another two in reserve if he asks for them… and he is not to go home for what remains of the semester, little as it is. We're working with him to get him into his own accommodation as soon as possible - a couple of classmates have stepped up either to help him or because they themselves also want out of their homes, so that's on track."

"Understood," Shouta says. "Anything I need to know about the family?"

"Nah," Ryou says. "Just some very unhelpful attitudes, nothing awful. And Shouta - he'll be a wonderful hero. You've taught him all the skills and he remembers all the lessons. Once he lets your teachings sink in for real - he'll be a credit to you."

"I hope so," Shouta says. "I still wish I'd have seen it sooner."

"Of course," Maijima interjects. "We all have situations where we wish our eyes had been opened sooner, to what we needed to know - but there's nothing we can do about those. All we can do is our best with what comes after. And hope to do better next time."

Shouta leans forward to grab the bottle to refill their glasses, before putting it down, picking up his own drink.

"To next time," he says, raising the glass. Maijima smiles at him and lifts his own, murmuring 'next time' under his breath. Ryou just clinks his glass in solidarity, and then they all drink.

Shouta has ideas about next time.

Chapter Text

Midoriya's analysis of his incoming class is a wonder.

This is his third batch of first years and he's never been this prepared, and yet he's never been so uninformed either. Midoriya hadn't even included details of everyone's quirk in the overview he'd made. Instead, he's focused on things Shouta should be aware of before he runs a quirk assessment test, and each student had an edited video of their best moments in the entrance exams attached to their file.

There's also a note with that first email that states that Shouta will receive further analysis 'at reasonable intervals', which tells him that Midoriya probably has split all his work into segments to make Shouta's life easier.

He feels a little bit bad for the amount of work and tells Midoriya so after a Thursday night sparring session. Shinsou has made himself scarce again - Shouta isn't sure what's up there - and so it's just the two of them ambling back to their quarters.

"I mean, the video editing alone must have taken you…" Shouta tries, while Midoriya smiles and shakes his head.

"Actually," Midoriya says, "That was all Yuu. He owes me a lot of time, so it was no trouble."

"What do you mean he owes you time?" Shouta asks curiously.

"I was actually hoping to talk to you about that," Midoriya says. "I realize Mei has perhaps somewhat skewed expectations, but support students have a variety of talents, not all of which lend themselves to mad binges of innovation or lab explosions."

"I've been led to believe you've had a number of lab explosions yourself," Shouta shoots back.

Midoriya scratches the back of his head. "Yeah, I sometimes get ahead of my good sense," he says, wryly. "Mei, though, her good sense was surgically removed at birth so…"

Shouta huffs.

"Anyway," Midoriya says, shooting him a side glance. "Yamaguchi Yuu has caused exactly six explosions in his time at UA."

"Seems low," Shouta comments.

"Mmmm," Midoriya hums. "Until you learn that he exploded five microwaves and one rice cooker."

Shouta blinks. "How do you explode a rice cooker?" he asks, startled.

"We still haven't figured that out," Midoriya says. "My point is that Yuu has certain talents and exactly none of them lend themselves to housekeeping. Except ironing, if you ever need a perfectly ironed shirt, Yuu is your guy."

"So when you say he owes you time…"

"All of my class ended up with a time trade system, where time spent on chores was measured and tradeable," Midoriya says. "Most people took care of themselves but… mum had to work a lot, when I was growing up, so I was the most adept person around. I've done a lot of cooking. Some cleaning. A bit of laundry. And since Yuu is hopeless at most domestic tasks and I don't need that many shirts ironed, he owes me some work time. His quirk is data manipulation, so doing stuff like making individual vids for next year's 1A isn't hard for him."

Shouta digests that for a while before realizing he missed a point.

"So why were you hoping to talk to me about that?" he asks.

Midoriya smiles at him. "Because he's going to be your colleague next year," he says. "And despite all the time he owes me, he refused to add the time he'd spent editing next year's 1A entrance exams to our tally because he knew it mattered to me that you have that information, and why. Yuu is a good friend, and a good friend to have, but he's not good with people. I thought I'd build him some bridges, see where they'd lead him."

Shouta thinks about it for a little bit. "If I tell Nemuri," he says slowly, "he'll probably never want for friendly colleagues. He won't have a moment's peace but…"

Midoriya grins. "Thank you, sensei," he says.

He melts into the darkness when the path splits a second later and Shouta looks after him, allowing a slow grin to spread across his face. ‘A good friend to have,’ Midoriya had said, and Shouta smirks to himself as he walks the final steps to the teacher’s barracks. His team for the Sunday training session he’s been planning is made up mostly of UA staff - but there’s room for one more. A key player, so to speak.

+++

Preparing for graduation is always a drag, and Shouta is stuck in the office during yet another weekend, nobody around to commiserate but the other 3rd year teachers who have the same workload for the same reason.

Shouta is deeply mired in going over graduation details, this time working on what he considers the banalities, though he knows it matters to his kids, so he can’t mind too much. The class had unanimously voted Yaoyorozu as their speaker, so she’ll give the A-class student address, and Jirou has agreed to sing, with backing from the band that has apparently been active ever since the year one school festival. It’s Shouta’s responsibility, though, to time them and make sure they can keep to schedule, and Yaoyorozu is longwinded.

He’d been planning to go to the cafeteria for lunch, but he’d gotten stuck on a detail in an Excel organization document and when he’d looked up next, it’d been past serving hours, so his stomach is growling, and he’s debating the merits of going to find a konbini lunch versus just getting this done and going back to his apartment to eat.

He’s yanked out of his thoughts when someone puts a bento down at the corner of his desk, wrapped in a plain gray furoshiki with a faint leaf pattern in white.

“Here, Toshinori forgot I was going to bring him lunch and went to the cafeteria. Your stomach sounds like you’ve not eaten in days.”

Shouta looks up, startled, to find Sir Nighteye standing above him, leaning on a crutch.

“It’s Inko’s cooking,” Nighteye says, smiling faintly. “She’ll be disappointed if it isn’t eaten, you’d be doing me a favour, really.”

“I couldn’t possibly…” Shouta says.

“Oh, please,” Nighteye says. “I’ll tell Inko you refused, it might tip her over the edge when it comes to her annoyance at you - and you don’t want that to happen, trust me.” He looks faintly haunted.

Shouta starts putting together pieces in his mind - Nighteye lives with All Might and Midoriya’s mother and… okay. Yeah, that might not be…

“Are you sure she wouldn’t be more annoyed if she found out I was the one who ate it?” Shouta asks, but pulls the bento closer to start unwrapping it. Knowing it was intended for All Might explains how mild everything inside is, but as he picks up and eats a piece of fish, he finds it succulent and perfectly seasoned, and as he tries more things he realizes that Midoriya Inko can really cook.

“She knows you were trying to protect him,” Nighteye says, pulling up a chair to sit on the other side of Shouta’s desk. “And the Midoriyas are a very understanding, forgiving lot. I mean, she forgave me,” he says, smiling self-deprecatingly, nodding at the bento.

“What did she have to forgive you for?” Shouta asks, curious.

“Same thing as you,” Nighteye says pleasantly. “Rushing to judgment without having all the facts.”

“Well,” Shouta says, “I’m not sure you could have done that on the same scale I did.”

Nighteye smiles with half his mouth. “I don’t know,” he says. “Did you also manage to break the heart of your oldest friend in the process, and in addition betray the very values your protége holds most dear?”

Shouta thinks of Shinsou and Hizashi and sighs. “I came close,” he admits.

“And yet, what matters to them is that we took steps to fix our mistakes when we realized we’d made them,” Nighteye says. “Took you a bit longer than me, admittedly.”

The expression on his face would be called a grin on anybody else, Shouta’s pretty sure.

“I didn’t get most of the information until this late,” he grumbles.

“Timing doesn’t matter,” Nighteye says. “Actions do. And I’ve always believed that what a man does when he’s been humbled shows you what’s truly in his heart. I was lucky enough to acquit myself well, and I think you’ve done pretty good, too.”

For lack of anything else to say, Shouta says, “Thank you.”

“Mmmm,” Nighteye says, getting to his feet. “You’re welcome. Give the bento things to Toshinori when you’re done.”

“Please convey my thanks to Midoriya san for the meal,” Shouta says. “I lost track of time and missed lunch, this has given me a second wind.”

“Of course,” Nighteye says and bows slightly. “Oh, and Aizawa?”

Shouta looks up, startled at the sudden steel in the other man’s voice.

“LeMillion, my protegé, is looking forward to working with you next year.”

Aizawa swallows. Right.

“I am looking forward to working with him, too,” he says. “But we might have some issues because our styles will undoubtedly be very different.”

Nighteye grins at him - no denying it this time, it’s fully fledged and shows teeth.

“Mirio has plenty of experience working with difficult people,” he says.

Ouch. “I will endeavor to be as non-difficult as possible,” Shouta says.

“Excellent,” the other man replies. “I’m sure you’ll get along. I will convey your regards to Inko.”

“Of course,” Shouta says, staring down into his bento as the other man walks away. It’s a testament to Midoriya-san’s fine cooking that Shouta eats the rest of the bento after all that.

Also, he might be just the slightest bit scared. A woman who so obviously has Sir Nighteye’s regard, who’s moved in with him and All Might, and produced Midoriya?

There are villains less scary than that thought.

+++

Shouta's Sunday training session turns out marvellously, if he may say so himself.

There'd been plenty of hints dropped in the information packet his 'villain' team put together, so the students had been wary enough to notice that it wasn't going to be as simple as a basic robbery, but even so, they'd not been expecting a spy in their midst.

After Hizashi and Tensei had 'kidnapped' Yamaguchi, the hero team had focused far too much on getting him back - a futile effort, considering that Yamaguchi had been delighted to work with his soon to be coworkers as an inside man on the heroes' side - and so they had almost entirely missed the massive bank heist Shouta and Midnight pulled off far away from the standoff Snipe and Higari had been orchestrating to divert everyone's attention.

The only casualty on the villain side had come, surprisingly, from Yaoyorozu, who had reacted with surprising speed when she'd realized that the standoff was a smokescreen and had taken out Higari with a well-aimed senbon she'd peeled off her arm. Shouta is going to have words with Stitcher, he swears to god.

Higari is still muttering about being 'fucking poisoned' and had shot Shouta many, many dark looks until Shouta had pointed out that Midoriya is responsible for Yaoyorozu's new skills with throwing weapons, and the poison is probably the work of Sakurai.

There had also been shuriken. Next time Shouta has a mission that takes him into the sewers, Stitcher is coming with. He has to admit to himself that it's a good strategy for Yaoyorozu, though. She's never going to be a frontline fighter - but he's always been of the opinion that options are good, and considering Yaoyorozu's quirk, lightweight throwing weapons give her an edge if she has to defend herself. It's not like she'll run out of ammo like Stitcher sometimes does.

After the exercise is over, Midoriya comes over to the villain team, looking grouchy but in a good-natured, performative way, punching Yamaguchi in the shoulder.

"You bastard," he says, sounding deeply offended, though his expression is more of a pleased smirk than anything. "I trusted you."

"More fool you," Yamaguchi says, giving Midoriya a small grin and a poke in the forehead. "You know I'm switching teams - I just jumped the gun a bit when given the chance."

"Yeah," Midoriya says, looking over Yamaguchi's shoulder at Shouta, eyes crinkled in amusement. "I guess I only have myself to blame, I was the one to tell you to try to get to know your future coworkers."

Nemuri slinks over and throws an arm around Yamaguchi. "He's ours now," she says, sounding pleased, and Midoriya nods, smiling.

"Good," is all he says, before walking past them to where Shouta is standing with Hizashi and Tensei.

"I guess I should have listened to Hitoshi and Kaminari," he says, smirking, hands in his pockets. "I thought they were being paranoid but they kept telling me that the plans we could figure out were in no way sadistic enough to be all you had up your sleeve."

Shouta lifts an eyebrow. "Tell both of them that I'll round up their scores on a test of their choice," he says, and Midoriya laughs.

"I will tell them," he says. "Good game," he adds, holding out his hand for a shake. His grip is warm and firm, his hand callused, and Shouta might have held on for a second too long before he realizes and lets go.

When Midoriya walks away, Shouta hears Hizashi chuckle behind him, low and amused, and he turns around to his best friend, wondering what is so funny, but Hizashi refuses to tell him.

+++

Graduation day dawns bright and clear, and Nedzu is delighted to be able to have the ceremony outside, despite the season. Shouta just hopes the weather holds, but considering the absolute deluge he'd had to deal with last night at the end of his patrol, the skies should be empty of water for the time being.

It's bittersweet, sending his students out into the world to take it on. Shouta has taught them, molded them and protected them - has given them every tool he can think of to succeed - but as of today, they're no longer his responsibility. He can only hope he's done enough for them, even if it took him some time in some cases. Dynamight growls at him as he accepts his certificate of completion, but for Bakugou, that was a positively friendly noise, so Shouta says nothing of it.

It gets even more bittersweet afterwards, when Shouta has sat down, listened to Yaoyorozu's speech and Jirou's singing, after watching the Gen Ed students graduate and listening to an excellent speech from a young man he knows is Shinsou's friend.

He knows what's coming, Higari had warned him, and so he watches as classes F through H file across the stage to shake Nedzu and their teachers' hands, and isn't surprised when Midoriya remains on stage to give the Support Course graduation speech after everyone else has made their way to their seats.

Midoriya is not in costume, and Shouta supposes that's in the interest of keeping his two identities separate. Most of the hero students who are planning a limelight career are in their gear, or at least some of it, and most of them requested that they'd be called up by Hero Name. The graduation ceremony isn't broadcast like the sports festival, but there is a feed available on the website and it garners some interest, so the kids had to decide ahead of time what they wanted for their first introduction to the wider world as a full-fledged hero. Many of them have reputations already, so being in costume made sense. It'd only been students like Shinsou who were called by name and were in civilian clothing for the ceremony, not interested in announcing their presence or their hero identity, at least not yet. Shinsou had looked great in the suit Shouta had given him, after many weeks of campaigning to be allowed to buy it for the kid.

"Good afternoon, everyone," Midoriya opens with one of those sparkling smiles. "Since most of you don't know my name, I'll start with introducing myself. I'm Midoriya Izuku, and I am graduating from class H, as well as the Hero Course." There are murmurs of surprise in the crowd - taking two courses is rare, and one of them being the hero course even more so.

"I'd like to thank all of you for coming, and all of those who are watching the feed as well," Midoriya goes on, unperturbed by the chattering. "Your support is valuable to us, as future heroes and as students of this great institution."

Something prickles at the back of Shouta's mind, some sort of sixth sense, a premonition, and he grabs Hizashi's hand in reaction. Hizashi gives him a surprised look, but Shouta just nods his head up at the podium in answer. Something tells him this isn't about to be some trite farewell speech.

"In some ways, today marks the start of our journey as heroes," Midoriya continues, voice clear and strong. "But in many other ways, important ways, today marks the end of another journey. As of today, no one can ever tell any of us that we cannot become what we wish to be, not anymore. Today, we can say we have achieved our dream."

Shouta might not be breathing. Hizashi is squeezing his hand hard.

"And make no mistake," Midoriya says, voice still genial but there is an edge of steel there, and the crowd shifts in unease. "The vast majority of us were told, at one time or another, that our dream was not to be. Our detractors had various reasons for their doubts - some of them valid. After all, becoming a hero, support or otherwise, costs a lot of money, money some of us didn't have easy access to. Not all quirks are suitable for the work - at least not unless you have the imagination to figure out your own path. Some quirks cause their wielders issues that may seem insurmountable. Some of us had even steeper hills to climb."

Midoriya takes a deep breath, glancing down at the podium before he looks up again, face serious. "And yet, we all have one thing in common; we got here. And here we are, today, knowing that we've done what so many believed we could not. Today we know our dreams were not worthless, that our doubters were wrong. Today we are heroes. _All of us._"

On Shouta's other side, Nemuri grabs his free hand.

"And as heroes, in one way or another," Midoriya goes on, "I would like to call on my fellow graduates to remember to not just be heroes to those in peril, but also to be the heroes we needed when we were at the start of our journeys. I would like to call on those who support us today to remember that nobody becomes a hero without a dream, and that the next time a child tells you of their impossible ambition, that they are now where we were as children - where most heroes were as children."

Shouta's deathgrip on his friends' hands must hurt.

"I would also like to call upon my fellow graduates to remember that there are more insidious evils than villains out there, and to find ways to fight with more than just our quirks. That all of us can fight those battles, not just those of us who carry the title of _hero_." Midoriya continues. "Villains can be caught and convicted, but poverty, inequality and prejudices are harder to counter - let's keep in mind as we take this next step on our journeys that we have an opportunity few others possess, to take on some of the more common issues out there, to stand for what we believe is right, to speak up and be heard, because of who we are. After three years together at UA, I have faith in all of you; it has been my pleasure to be your classmate and I hope we can continue working together as colleagues. If you ever need my help, just listen for explosions - that'll be Meimei, she'll know where to find me."

There's an almost palpable relief amongst the audience as the graduates break out in giggles and Hatsume jumps out of her seat with an indignant, "Hey!"

"Seriously, though," Midoriya says, smiling at the audience. "It's been an honor. I know I am proud of all we've achieved together in the past three years, and I hope we will continue to achieve things we can be proud of as we go into the future. Just remember - we've been handed an opportunity to shape it. Let's make it better, yeah?"

There's a moment's hesitation, and then Uraraka jumps to her feet, fist raised, shouting "Yeah!"

The rest of the graduating classes follow her example, jumping to their feet and clapping or giving their own affirmations, as Midoriya smiles, bows, and makes his way off the stage.

"Hell of a speech," Hizashi whispers in Shouta's ear as Midoriya is greeted amongst his fellow students with handshakes and backslaps.

Shouta just nods, staring at where Shinsou is embracing Midoriya, before holding him at arms' length and giving him the one finger wag, probably telling him off for using the leaving speech to make a point.

"He's going to be a hell of a hero," Shouta replies, and while the regret is still there, it's tempered by conviction. He will always regret how he treated Midoriya, but he's going to do great. Shouta can tell.

And he can't wait to work with him more.