specific tw: food/eating, chronic pain, anxiety. see masterpostfor genre + general tw.
notes: god i missed this fic
you sit on the edge of your bed – the one at yamada and aizawa’s house, not the one at your foster family’s house – and stare at the piece of paper in your hand. your phone is in your other hand, open to the contacts page. your favorites – your mentors and amanatsu-chan – hover at the top of the list. everyone else in your phone is either your foster parents or someone you’d done a school project with.
you don’t really want to call him – talking over the phone is just asking for a dry conversation that cannot be easily escaped. texting him is awkward but… less so. and not contacting him is worse, because if he gets in and so do you, you’ll have to see him every damn day, knowing you effectively ghosted him before you even talked.
you type midoriya’s number into a new contact and send a quick text.
specific tw: food/eating, chronic pain, anxiety. see masterpostfor genre + general tw.
notes: god i missed this fic
you sit on the edge of your bed – the one at yamada and aizawa’s house, not the one at your foster family’s house – and stare at the piece of paper in your hand. your phone is in your other hand, open to the contacts page. your favorites – your mentors and amanatsu-chan – hover at the top of the list. everyone else in your phone is either your foster parents or someone you’d done a school project with.
you don’t really want to call him – talking over the phone is just asking for a dry conversation that cannot be easily escaped. texting him is awkward but… less so. and not contacting him is worse, because if he gets in and so do you, you’ll have to see him every damn day, knowing you effectively ghosted him before you even talked.
you type midoriya’s number into a new contact and send a quick text.
you: hey, it’s [surname], from the exam
you plug your phone in to charge and lay down to take a nap, exhausted after the exam, when your phone buzzes on the floor next to your bed. your mattress is on the floor – it’s comfortable and you’re not going to fall very far out of it – so it’s easy to reach your phone. the screen glows with a text message. how the hell is he awake after getting nearly his entire body healed? shouldn’t he be practically comatose?
midoriya: oh hi!! this is midoriya!
so many exclamation points. anxiety. pleaser. you brush the unnecessary thoughts away and unlock your phone to open the message. several more pop up.
midoriya: you already knew that tho, sorry
midoriya: did you still want to tell me about your quirk?
midoriya: it’s okay if you don’t!!
jeez, he types as fast as he talks.
you: yeah, i can still tell you abt it
you: tomorrow work for you?
you pull the quilt further up to block the light coming from the window behind you. your head sinks into the pillow; your head hurts. the bright screen is making it worse. it feels like your brain is six feet outside of your skull, raw and exposed in the open air. your neck aches.
midoriya: yes! tomorrow is great! i live in musutafu, so if you do too, and if you want, we can meet up? i really don’t have anything to do while i wait for UA to release the results (;´・`)>
the kaomoji is cute. it makes the corner of your mouth twitch. the idea of seeing someone you don’t know well, however – that makes your skull nearly crack. you say yes anyway.
you: sure. i live in musutafu too
well, at least for the week while you wait for the results. no point heading back if you’re going to be attending school here. (not that you want to head back. being here is much easier.)
midoriya: great!! i’ll text you tomorrow about it ヽ(´▽｀)/
you turn on do not disturb and put your phone face down on the floor. your head fucking hurts, the bones in your fingers feel like they’re vibrating and grinding each other into dust, and you’re going to sleep. hopefully it’ll go away if you sleep.
—
aizawa is slumped over his bowl of rice and egg, but neither you nor yamada, presumably, is worried about him face-planting this morning – his grip on his chopsticks is good enough to indicate that he is, in fact, awake. yamada is eating at the speed of light in order to get to the radio station on time – not that he’s ever late in the first place.
you stare down at your bowl of tamago gohan. “hey, uh…”
yamada pauses and nods encouragingly, still stuffing rice into his mouth. aizawa turns imperceptibly towards you.
“do applicants get points for rescuing other applicants on the exam?”
aizawa is trying not to smile, or at least you assume he is, because he shoves his face down into the capture weapon he’s already wearing.
yamada looks blankly at you, chewing.
“yeah,” says aizawa, and shoves some rice into his mouth.
you go back to eating.
yamada chews faster and swallows in a hurry. “you’re not supposed to tell them that, shota!” he hisses, like it’ll do any good.
aizawa shrugs. “they already knew. illogical to lie to their face.”
“it’s not lying if i don’t say anything.”
“omitting information.”
“omitting information that they are not supposed to have!”
“omitting information,” aizawa says, firmer.
“and they say i’m the loudmouth?”
“cheap shot.”
“still scored.”
aizawa huffs – he’s not really annoyed – and turns to look at you. “why?”
“i saw someone at the exam only rescue people – they didn’t get any points from the robots.”
aizawa nods and eats some more rice. “they’ll be fine.”
yamada gets up to put his dish in the sink, “but don’t tell them that.”
“sure.” good thing you didn’t ghost him, then, since you’re probably going to end up in the same school.
your phone has a few texts waiting for you when you get back to your room after washing the dishes.
midoriya: i’m basically free all of today – we could meet at the takoba beach park?
you: okay – i can take the 4 pm train
midoriya: okay!! ill meet you at the station at 4:15?
you: see you then
you put your phone back down and crawl under the covers for another nap. your hands still feel like the bones in them might explode.
—
the train is mostly empty, so you sit in the back – you can see all of the doors from there – and put in one earbud. you leave your phone on do not disturb again, with only aizawa, yamada, amanatsu-chan, and midoriya’s notifications allowed. those are the only people you’ll need to talk to today.
the more rural and suburban areas of musutafu open up as you leave the city – more space, less places for people to hide, fewer people in the way. not quite as rural as your legal residence, though.
you can see him through the window of the train as it slows, waiting on the platform. he has his backpack on – which looks a little poorly proportioned on his broad frame – and a stupidly big smile. his expression actually hurts your stomach a little bit.
the doors slide open and you step off.
“hi!” he waves and you raise your hand in response, then shove it into your pocket.
“hi, midoriya.”
he looks at you, and you want to look away. neither of you speak, and neither of you look away.
“midoriya, the beach? how do we get there?” you prompt, finally ripping your gaze away, the silence too aggravating for you.
“right, right, yeah, uh, just follow me? i’ve been going there since i was a little kid and i spent a lot time there this summer so i know the way really well!”
you walk beside him. “i have one question, before you start asking me things.”
he nods way too quickly.
“actually, two. one – why do you want to know so much about my quirk? two – did you score any points on the exam yesterday?” you fix your gaze ahead, but you’re still watching for his reaction, which will hopefully be unguarded, since you’re not looking directly at him.
midoriya chews on his lip and walks a little faster. “for the first one, it’s because i find quirks really interesting! i’ve been analyzing them since i was a kid because i wanted to be a hero, and i really liked watching the fights and the news clips and, and, ah, i uh, didn’t get any points. no.”
“did you apply to the support department as well? they’d probably like to have a quirk analyst.”
“no, i didn’t. i really wanted to be in the hero course…” he tangles his fingers in his hair. “it probably sounds ridiculous. but i did really, really want to. i thought that maybe i’d have a chance.”
you hum. “maybe you still do.”
he whips around fast enough to break his neck, “what? but i didn’t– i didn’t get any points, i didn’t get any of the robots except that giant zero pointer that broke my arm! it would be stupid to keep hoping, you know? even if i passed or did well on the written exam…” he stops walking, looking at his feet. “even then, i need to accept that i won’t get in. i didn’t get any points on the practical, and i need to be realistic about it.”
you’re not sure if he’s telling you or himself, but a smile tugs at the corner of your mouth, and you look at him from the corner of your eye. “but they never said admissions were based on points, so you still have a chance, right?” you leave out the part about rescue points.
midoriya laughs, bright and clear, sudden, and it burns like chlorinated pool water in your sinuses. he claps a hand over his mouth and then drags it down his face like he doesn’t know what to do with himself – he probably doesn’t. there’s a long silence as you start walking again, and he jogs to catch up.
you’re in step again when he almost trips over one of his feet in a sudden fit of excitement, apparently done processing (mumbling) and ready to launch into a rant.
“i might have a chance, i, i might actually have a chance. i can’t believe it, how did i miss that? that makes so much sense, though, because they just said we could gain points, not that it actually mattered how many you got… oh my god–”
“we’re here, midoriya.”
the waves, crystal blue, lap gently at the beach. it’s the afternoon, but the beach is relatively empty and calm, not crowded with people. or crowded with the piles of garbage that had washed up there. “this is much cleaner than i remember it being.”
just like last time, he follows your conversation jump without issue. “yeah i, i kind of spent the whole summer cleaning it?”
“nice. i’m sure the whole community appreciates it.” you have to actively work to make sure it doesn’t come out flat. you’re not entirely sure it works. you really do mean it, you think.
the compliment or the tone must set off some kind of alarm in his head, because he’s immediately waving it off. “no, no, no one knows i cleaned the beach! it was a personal project and it’s – oh no, now you think i picked this spot to brag about cleaning the bea–”
you kick some sand at his shoe, hands still in your pockets. “midoriya. i don’t think that. it’s fine.”
“really?” you’re quiet, and he slowly un-pretzels his arms from around his head. “oh, uh. okay. good!” he nods to himself. his smile slowly comes back until it feels like the sun is blazing full force in your face, bright enough to make you look away at a bench that happens to be to your right. it’s in the ocean grass right before the sand begins.
“we could sit over there?”
midoriya nods again and you sit down on the bench, one knee pulled to your chest. he sits next to you, cross legged, shoes on the bench, and pulls out a notebook and pen. the sun glows marigold on the white pages.
he scribbles your name down at the top and turns to you, “do you have a hero name yet?”
you rest your chin on your knee. “i haven’t picked one, no.”
he beams, and it feels like you’re in front of a solar flare. “that’s okay! i can help you come up with plenty later, if you want! or if you already have some ideas but you just don’t know which one to pick, i could help you with that too.”
you wait a few seconds to see if he’s done talking – this rant isn’t an anxiety tangent, so no need to interrupt it. “sure.”
“so, can you just manipulate energy in your surroundings? or produce it? or store it? can you absorb any energy at all, no matter the form?”
he writes as you respond.
“it has to… i have to use my physical body as a conduit in order to manipulate it. i can’t change it without it passing through some part of me. and i can store that energy, and i’d assume every form, although i haven’t tried nuclear, and for safety’s sake i won’t try it.”
midoriya keeps scribbling, apparently unphased by the nuclear comment. he pauses and taps the pen against the page, humming. “but what about sound, or light,” he mutters, the tapping speeding up, probably keeping time with his thoughts. “you can’t really touch those forms…”
“yes you can.”
he stops tapping his pen, blinking at you.
“if you can hear it or see it, you’re touching it, or more accurately, the energy is touching you. same thing with heat – if i can feel the heat from a fire, i’m touching the edge of that energy source, which means i have access to the whole thing.” this is starting to feel oddly like a quirk counseling or training session.
“is there a limit? to the amount of power you can hold? do you have to release it? what happens if your quirk gets canceled or you turn it off while holding energy – wait, wait, can you even turn your quirk off? does it work that way? what about turning off the absorption and the storage separately? can you do that?” he’s practically vibrating, pen blurring in his hand as he switches between writing and tapping the pen on the page.
you wish you’d brought a notebook, just to keep track of all of the questions. you grab at them, trying to keep them all centered in your mind until you can get through all of them. you lunge for the topic in general instead. “yeah, i can hold onto it – the more energy there is, the harder it is to hold onto. like dropping soap in the shower. if my quirk is cancelled, the energy dissipates. so far that’s been harmless.”
you have no idea how he can keep writing without looking at the page. he’s looking at you instead, beaming.
“and what about turning your quirk off? can you?”
“yeah, but i prefer to leave it on and just… intentionally not absorb anything.”
he turns to you and you can feel the next question that’s coming – why? doesn’t that lead to symptoms of overuse? – so you reroute the conversation.
“i have some questions for you, midoriya.”
you can see the way he mentally stumbles, tripping over himself as the momentum of the conversation shifts in an unexpected direction. “you have questions for me? about me? me?”
what he means is what could there possibly be to ask about, to know about him. a terrible sense of familiarity curls in your gut, so you abruptly swerve away from the quirk questions. you won’t reduce him to that, even if that’s what he’s reduced himself to, or perhaps what he’s beenreduced to.
“why do you want to be a hero?”
“it’s been my dream since i was a kid. and recently it’s become someone else’s dream for me, too, so i can’t let that person down!” he clenches his fist and smiles like he’s facing something down. it’s a childish kind of joy, one that should look out of place on a soon-to-be-hero’s face, but he wears it well.
you cock your head, “but… why is it your dream? it just being a dream isn’t a reason.”
“it’s my goal to save people, both from villains and from the possibility of villains. i don’t want anyone to be worried about being a victim,” he says, simply.
you nod and rest your chin back on your knee. “who’s your favorite?”
“all might! he’s just… i want to be unbeatable like that, so that way no one has to worry, so that people will see me and think ‘i’m safe now.’ i want to make people happy and safe, and he does that really well!”
he beams at you in the afternoon sun. “what about you?”
“my favorite?” you pull your other leg up onto the bench and turn to face him, mirroring his cross-legged position.
“yeah, your favorite!” he’s still holding his notebook and pen, but he’s not tapping or writing anymore. just waiting for you to answer, focused.
a smile cracks across your face, barely unrestrained. “eraserhead, present mic. but gang orca, fat gum, ingenium, joke, and midnight are close behind.” they’re all great to hang around. sakamata-san sucks at monopoly, though.
“they’re all really cool, yeah! have you met any of them? i was really lucky and got all might’s signature a few months ago.” he flips his notebook to a different page to show you.
“why am i not surprised that he signs in all caps?”
midoriya beams even brighter at that, laughs, and it stings a little less in your lungs than the first time. you have to force yourself to pick the conversation back up and not let it drop into the quiet white noise of the waves.
“yeah, i’ve met all of them, actually.” at yamada’s saturday game night. nemuri and emi are always there, and tensei used to bring kid’s games when i was small.
midoriya almost throws his notebook in his excitement, hands flying around again. “you met all of them? how?! they’re all so busy and their agencies are in completely different places! some of them don’t even do signings, so there’s no way you could have met them without either looking for them in their patrol areas or seeing them by chance, but that’s a lot of heroes to just see by–”
you reach out and take the pen out of his hand. his jaw snaps shut. he plays with the corner of one of the notebook’s pages, staring down at it instead of looking at you like he was before.
“sorry,” he says, quieter, slower. “i know that all the talking and mumbling to myself is annoying and creepy.”
you hand the pen back. “it’s not.” he looks like he gives himself whiplash from how fast he looks up.
“it’s not annoying,” you say it again, shrugging. “i just… i could explain it to you if you just ask. no need to wonder about it.”
he clutches at the pen with both hands, holding onto it tightly. he chews his lip again. “you’d answer? i know i’m asking a lot of questions. i don’t want to be a bother!” he lets go of the pen with one hand so he can wave rather frantically.
“if you were being a bother, you would know.”
midoriya’s smile comes back, not full force, wobbly and nervous, mercury knocked slightly out of orbit, bright and unsteady. he shuffles so that he can sit facing you. “so… then how did you meet them?”
you twist the truth as it rolls off your tongue. “one of them is my mentor.” two. “i met the other pros through them.”
he looks so incredibly excited that you worry all that energy will tear his body apart. “oh i have a mentor too! i can’t tell you who it is, so you don’t have to tell me who yours is, that would be unfair. do you think everyone at UA has a mentor? is it common?”
“i don’t think so, at least not for first years.”
midoriya slumps back against the arm of the bench. “oh, that’s a relief! at least i have a little less catching up to do, then.” he sits up fast enough that he almost falls off the bench. “i don’t mean that i’m ahead of everyone! i did not mean to come across that way, i just meant, uh.”
“you meant the gap you’re trying to cross is smaller than you thought it was for a second.”
he nods and relaxes again. you study him for a few seconds.
“you’ll catch up,” you say. he will.
midoriya looks at you like there are stars in his eyes, shining, glossy, probably because he’s tearing up. “i hope you’re right. there’s a lot riding on you being right.”
“i’m always right.”
he laughs. this time it doesn’t sting at all. “i hope you’re right about that, too.”
“you’re always hopeful, it seems.”
“i try.”
that makes you laugh through your nose. he glances at you when you do, and you see his smile melt into something soft, thoughtful. hopeful.
reblogs and comments are very much appreciated!! ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* main taglist here,series taglisthere. back to gt&h masterpost.
pairing + wc: parental erasermic + reader, midoriya izuku x reader in future chapters just not in prologue; 3.7k
specific tw: discussions of human trafficking + child abuse by villains, mention of foster system, mentions of death, mentions of chronic pain, collapsing buildings. see masterpost for genre + general tw.
notes: i’m rlly happy to be re-releasing this w gender neutral reader + some minor tweaks to the style! <3 pls enjoy!
your chamber is cold, dimly lit, and soundproofed. there’s very little for you to draw energy from, but there’s no worry of you getting too cold – the faint lights, far above, are enough for you to generate heat using your quirk. just not enough for you to get out, and just enough to make you strain as you force your quirk to keep running.
sensei stops outside your chamber – you can feel the buzz of electricity in his cells, and you press your tiny hand to the wall, trying to figure out exactly where he is on the other side of the one-way mirror. the warmth of your hand drags against its cold surface, a blur of barely-there fingerprints, the lines of your palm smeared with the motion.
pairing + wc: parental erasermic + reader, midoriya izuku x reader in future chapters just not in prologue; 3.7k
specific tw: discussions of human trafficking + child abuse by villains, mention of foster system, mentions of death, mentions of chronic pain, collapsing buildings. see masterpost for genre + general tw.
notes: i’m rlly happy to be re-releasing this w gender neutral reader + some minor tweaks to the style! <3 pls enjoy!
your chamber is cold, dimly lit, and soundproofed. there’s very little for you to draw energy from, but there’s no worry of you getting too cold – the faint lights, far above, are enough for you to generate heat using your quirk. just not enough for you to get out, and just enough to make you strain as you force your quirk to keep running.
sensei stops outside your chamber – you can feel the buzz of electricity in his cells, and you press your tiny hand to the wall, trying to figure out exactly where he is on the other side of the one-way mirror. the warmth of your hand drags against its cold surface, a blur of barely-there fingerprints, the lines of your palm smeared with the motion.
you stop when sensei is directly in front of you. the buzzing in his cells sings to you. you press closer to the mirror. there’s another pocket of electricity, but it feels odd, shifting; sensei is probably talking to that man with purple fog over his face. but you’ll never be able to hear them, not with the way your chamber is insulated, so you walk back to your bed, in the back corner of the room.
it’s starting to get warmer in the chamber, so training will be soon. you’re only allowed large quantities of energy when they know you’re going to use them up.
but hours pass, and the chamber is too hot, your whole body buzzing as the energy tries to jump out from under your skin. maybe it’s a new training exercise, a new way to push the limits of how much energy you can absorb. either way, you have to keep drawing it in, or it’ll get too hot.
you fall asleep and wake up sweating, skin crackling, and the air smells humid and warm and full of ozone. it’s hard to breathe, it’s so heavy – your lungs keep trying to hold it in, extract every last drop of energy from it. you have to force yourself to exhale, hard, like sensei taught you.
there’s light cracking through your skin, but you register it only faintly, too focused on grappling with the twisting, writhing mass of energy and trying to force it to stay in the center of your body.
but it’s not staying still – every time you push down on a wave of energy trying to escape in one direction, it just pulses out in the other. maybe, if you just let a little bit of it go, you’ll be able to hold on to the rest of it?
you hold your arm out, intent on discharging a small sound wave – but the cracks on your arm, the light energy seeping out of them in wisps, it scares you, and suddenly that ball of energy is tumbling out of control.
the wave of kinetic energy ripples out of you and slams into the walls of your chamber – they splinter with a deafeningly loud sound, folding and tearing like wet paper into the chambers next to yours, and the one-way mirror shatters into millions of tiny shards. but it doesn’t stop there – the entire building is shaking, and you can hear the other mirrors shattering and see the other walls crumbling throughout the warehouse. and then the ceiling comes down on top of you.
–
shota gets the call at six in the morning. or rather, he gets the call, but hizashi picks it up, because there’s no way in hell that anything is waking him from the dead of sleep on his day off.
except hizashi, who just shakes him awake and hands him the phone, saying, “it’s for you, babe. something about an explosion.”
“eraserhead speaking.” he wants to complain, but he knows it’s not the operator’s fault, and he knows there’s a reason they called him in on his day off.
“we need you to suppress some kind of explosion quirk in the warehouse district. there’s a collapsed, sorry, still collapsing building, and some fire and electricity issues. the fire department is dealing with the parts of the building that are burning, but there are people trapped inside, and the heat signatures indicate that one of them – a child, judging by size – is causing uncontrollable explosions, which are making it difficult to get anyone out. cementoss is currently stabilizing the building.”
“i’ll be there as fast as i can.” he can’t find it in himself to complain anymore.
as shota swings himself across the city on his capture weapon, rapidly approaching the warehouse district, he can see a plume of smoke billowing against the orange of the sunrise. he stops on top of a building and uses a nearby lamppost to lower himself to the ground.
the collapsed warehouse is smoking, and steam is rising off of it in the early morning light, but it is thankfully no longer on fire. cementoss is fusing cement slabs together in an effort to keep it from caving in further, and infrared hero, aptly named infra (hizashi calls her “heat seeker”) is intently watching the building. shota approaches her for debriefing.
“it was hard to see, earlier, with all of the fire interfering, and it’s blurry because of the heat retention of the concrete, but there are at least twenty people inside, half or more of which are children. there’s someone close to the center of the structure who is periodically letting out bursts of heat, and who we assume is also producing some kind of kinetic shockwave.”
“and cementoss has constructed a pathway so i can extract the person without disturbing the rubble and crushing other victims?”
“yes–” infra starts, and is abruptly cut off when the building rumbles, the ground shuddering along with it, the pavement near its base fracturing. “yes,” she pauses, eyes narrowing, “but you might want to wait while cementoss deals with whatever might’ve come loose just now.” she hands him an earpiece so she can direct him to the source of the explosions.
shota stands there, watching the wood and cement and metal smoke and steam, until cementoss gives him the go ahead.
he picks his way through the rubble, listening carefully to infra’s directions. sirens wail in the background, and broken glass crunches under his feet, but he can hear children crying through all of it. shota moves faster, pulls his goggles over his eyes.
infra tells him to stop and look down and to the right. all there is is a pile of debris, and it makes his heart leap into his throat. he starts digging through the chunks of cement, using his capture weapon to pull away particularly heavy or sharp pieces and to keep any large ones from falling. he has to work quickly, or risk getting hit by whatever quirk is hiding under there.
it only takes a few seconds, and then he’s looking down at a child – maybe seven years old, a little kid, curled up in a ball with their arms around their knees. there’s fissures in their skin with light pouring out of them, ashes in their hair. their eyes are glowing a terrifying, brilliant white – shota activates his quirk, hair floating up, and all the light evaporates from that tiny little body, they just look like a normal, scared kid.
it hits him that they really should’ve sent someone who was better with children. maybe gang orca. well, he might as well bite the bullet.
“i’m eraserhead. what’s your name?”
“[surname].” the kid looks up at him, face blank except for a slight frown. “what did you do to me? where did it go?”
shota offers his hand, and they take it, standing up. “where did what go?”
shota doesn’t have an answer.
he leads them out of the rubble, and thank god for the fact that they’re following – he really does not want to deal with a kicking, screaming kid in the middle of an unstable structure. the sunlight glints off of warped rebar, sharp and threatening. he tugs the kid slightly behind him.
“the energy. your hair went up and it went away.”
he has no fucking idea. “you’re right, it went away.” sometimes, telling kids that they’re right is the fastest way to get them to be quiet. surprisingly, it works.
they follow silently, gripping his hand with their tiny, slightly chubby fingers, until they finally get out of the rubble maze. now that the exploding kid is out, it’s safe to extract the other victims.
he crouches down in front of them, still holding their hand. “i’m going to leave you with the medical team, okay? they’re gonna check you over and take you to the hospital, if needed. i have to go get the other people out of there.”
except when shota stands up and tries to move away, they aren’t letting go. he tries stepping away again. it doesn’t work. it’s not just that they’re not letting go, it’s that he can’t break their grip – which is ridiculous, they’re a child, and their hand doesn’t even encompass his, meaning there’s a point where it should, in theory, be easy to break their hold.
theory isn’t holding up.
“you need to let go, or else i can’t get the other people out.” maybe he can guilt them into letting go? thankfully the other heroes on the scene are already digging through the rubble for the other victims.
they shake their head furiously, making some of the ash in their hair fly off. “no, sensei said i have to stay here. i can’t leave.”
shota resists the urge to drag a hand down his face. he really wishes tsukauchi was already here. “this is a school?”
“yes.” they nod solemnly.
“but this is the warehouse district.”
they stare at him. he tries breaking their grip again. they squeeze his hand tighter, and shota hears one of his joints crack.
“you can tell the police about the school and sensei when they get here, but you need to let go. i have to do my job. besides, your sensei is still in there, and i need to go rescue them.”
they cock their head, but loosen their grip a tiny bit. “no, sensei isn’t here. he left with the man who makes purple mist doorways. i think all the teachers left. i felt it, when they disappeared.”
felt it? grip strength? explosions? he can think about whatever the hell is going on with this child’s dangerous, wack ass quirk later. “okay, but the other students are still in there.”
“no,” they scrunch their eyes shut, grip tightening. “i can’t feel them. except amanatsu-chan. no one else is there.”
shota has a horrifying thought about heat signatures and dead bodies. he motions infra and one of cementoss’ sidekicks over.
“where is amanatsu-chan?” he asks, making eye contact with the sidekick, who is paying very close attention to the kid.
“she’s right next to where i was. in the room to the right, ‘cause she’s a month older than me.”
he turns his back to the kid and looks at infra. “that is the only person we need to rescue right now. everyone else is probably dead, according to them.”
infra looks toward the building, scanning. “the heat was probably trapped by the collapsed structure, and the fire made it difficult to see, but now that some of the rubble has been moved and the fire has been put out… there is only one heat signature that could possibly belong to someone who is alive. everything else… not even hypothermic bodies get that low.”
the sidekick rushes off with infra to guide them.
shota drags the kid along with him to the ambulance, which is now useless, with the exception of the two kids, and sits with them while the medical team looks them over. they still won’t let go of his hand, but he could break their hold now, if he needed to. if he wanted to.
he doesn’t.
—
they get the kid to the hospital, only with shota riding in the ambulance next to them, but they’re fine, and so is the other kid – a little girl. the only reason they decide to take the two kids to the hospital in the first place is because there’s nowhere else to take them, and they really, really need to see a quirk specialist. the other kid had some kind of odd, controlling speech effect, and he cannot, for the life of him, figure the first kid’s quirk out.
he leaves them with the quirk specialist, whom both kids use the sensei honorific for – they do that for every nurse and other adult, too – and goes back home to sleep. it’s almost the afternoon, but he doesn’t care. it’s his day off, damn it.
—
fuck that quirk specialist. he and hizashi are going to have to help the kid manage their quirk, according to his medical advice. thankfully, cementoss and tiger are more suited to the second kid.
he picks the problem child up from the train station in civilian clothes, hizashi next to him, cap pulled down to hide his face, hair half-down and not in that ridiculous cockatoo style. the kid’s brand new foster parents give them their phone numbers.
hizashi smiles at the kid and takes their hand, obviously completely forgetting that he’s not dressed as present mic. he does that around kids. “what’s your name, little listener?”
“[surname].” they turn to shota and blink accusingly, like he was supposed to tell hizashi.
“your first name, though?” hizashi prods, and shota laughs quietly through his nose.
“six.”
he stops laughing.
hizashi laughs awkwardly, his complete opposite, and definitely trying to smooth the situation over. “well, do you want to be called something different?”
their eyebrows furrow, and they reach for shota’s hand; he lets them. fine, they can hold both of their hands, dammit.
“is that allowed?”
hizashi gives him a look, one that means what the fuck. “yeah, yeah that’s allowed.”
“i think [first name] would be fine then.” they nod, like it’s an important decision.
“okay, [first name] it is, then. can i call you [first name]-chan, little listener?” hizashi says, starting to walk in the direction of their home. honestly, shota forgot that people use that honorific for children. he tries to avoid them in rescue missions; they’re uncomfortable around him, find him unnerving.
[first name] nods again. “mhm.”
“great! you can call me yamada-sen–” shota activates his quirk to tell him to shut up without actually telling him to shut up in front of the kid.
“no sensei honorific,” he mutters, thinking of the warehouse.
“you can call me yamada. that’s aizawa, kay?”
they nod again.
great, he’s training a child.
—
turns out they don’t need much training. the email from the quirk specialist explained that they could absorb energy and then manipulate its form, but it did not explain the frankly worrying level of precision they had.
they’re standing in the park, across the street from their hero-specialized apartment complex.
“i’m going to scream, kay? and you’re going to try to absorb it, and then we’ll see what you can do.” hizashi is still holding the kid’s hand, fifteen minutes after they’ve gotten back from the train station. shota is starting to worry that he’s getting attached. who is he kidding – of course hizashi is attached.
“aizawa will shut your quirk off if it’s too scary.”
they nod, already frowning in concentration. hizashi steps back and screams “HELLO!” at the lowest level possible. it still makes the grass ripple and the leaves on the trees shimmer. the kid just giggles, unphased, eyes glowing, and the grass and trees behind them are completely still, undisturbed. their control is disturbingly tight.
“again!” they shriek, relaying every bit of hizashi’s volume, and shota has a sickening thought about the types of bonding activities this kid had in that warehouse. training is playtime, to them.
all the pieces fall into place; the blacked out, confidential police reports, the inability to locate biological parents, the overpowered quirk, the ridiculous level of control for a child, sensei, the other children, the number six. quirk trafficking. all for one. collecting successors. his stomach turns.
he jerks back to the present as hizashi laughs and complies, yelling “HELLO!” again. shota can see the worry and caution seeping into his stance, though. they’ve been together long enough that he knows they’re both having the same thought, because hizashi isn’t stupid, and he’s seen every ugly little thing the world has to offer.
this time the kid doesn’t yell back, just holds out their hand. “wanna see what i can do?”
shota gets ready to activate his quirk, and hizashi nods.
their hand bursts into flame. shota’s hair flies up on reflex, a familiar burn in his eyes. the fire goes out, and a blast of light spirals off of their skin and dissipates into the air.
they all try several times more. [name] sends electricity crackling across their arms, drills a hole in the ground with a push of kinetic energy, makes their whole body glow with light, lifts a rock that no child should be able to lift. not once do they seem scared, not once do they hurt hizashi or break anything they don’t mean to.
they don’t need help managing their quirk. they need an outlet. (they need parents).
—
the years pass quickly; he and hizashi get teaching positions at UA, he expels and re-enrolls hundreds of students, works the streets at night. hizashi runs his radio show and works as a daylight hero and teaches english. they train [first name] every weekend, until the kid occupies the spare room at their house and the cats almost like them better than shota. [name] stays with their foster family during the week, and hizashi says he misses them, and shota wishes he could say different. (he doesn’t).
they watch the way they avoid going to their teachers when they need help, avoid going to their parents, and only ever come to them, shota and hizashi. shota thinks they have issues with trust, hizashi says they have issues with authority. shota worries about what that means they see their mentors as – authority figures they can trust. (it doesn’t worry him at all).
they crush exams and don’t talk to other kids, and hizashi and shota only know this because hizashi tries to make dinner table conversation about the kid’s classes and friends, and [name]’s answers are noncommittal, “i’m near the top of the class, okay?” and “i don’t really have any.” they proudly tell them that they punched someone in the face for bullying another kid. they ricochet wildly from sullen and silent to laughing obnoxiously loud. hizashi worries for their social development, shota tells him that they can’t go to parent teacher conferences, because they’re not the damn kid’s parents. (they are. [name]’s foster parents don’t go.)
they get sick after training some days, staying an extra day instead of traveling by train, just lying in bed while their quirk makes their whole body hurt,because it was cultivated for power, not for compatibility with the human body. hizashi calls their parents, who call the school, and he makes them tea with honey and lemon. shota sits in their room with them and the cats. the next day, after they leave, hizashi will say, “it’s just the weekends, but it feels like we’re raising them,” and shota will say, “we’re not.” (they are).
he teaches them how to use a capture weapon after they beg for months. they’re terrible at it. they keep trying. they get better, and they like heroes in black costumes and they listen to english music, and they want to be just like them, and they’re loud and sharp and sarcastic and competitive and sometimes quiet and kind, and it doesn’t make him cry into hizashi’s shoulder at night, it doesn’t. they don’t have a kid. they don’t. (they do).
—
they want to take the UA entrance exam, and shota wants to throw himself in front of a bus. he tells hizashi as much.
“shota, you can’t just expect them to be a civilian. they want to be a hero.” he’s doing his hair, yelling from the bathroom so shota can hear him from where he’s laying in bed, wondering how much longer he can stay there until he has to get up and go teach the brats.
“it’s dangerous, and they’re a kid, hizashi. kids always want to be heroes, it doesn’t mean they have to be.”
“first of all, they’re almost an adult, UA is a college. and even if you still think of them as a little kid, they have training, two mentors, and a burning desire to save the entire world. good luck stopping them. and it’s not like we haven’t been encouraging them for their entire life by giving them said training!”
“but it’s dangerous!” he sits up and slaps the quilt.
he hears hizashi sigh and sees him stick his head back into the bedroom. “they’re in too deep to stop unless they suddenly hate heroes. plus, we literally teach kids how to be heroes. you literally are a hero. you have no room to talk. none.”
“but those kids are–”
“less well-trained? not our kid?” hizashi raises an eyebrow as he cuts him off.
shota shuts his eyes and lays back down. “fuck.” he wants to go back to sleep. “they’re not our kid,” he adds, as an afterthought. it makes his stomach twist.
“sure,” says hizashi, and goes back to doing his hair.
—
“kid,” you hear aizawa say, and you look up from your homework. it’s a saturday.
“yeah?” he’s standing in the doorway, holding a flat, white box, like the kind fancy clothes come in.
aizawa shuffles in and sits on your bed. he pats the space next to him, “sit.”
you set down your pen and sit next to him, cross legged, in your pajamas, eyeing the box. he puts it on your lap and you lift the lid off; inside is a pile of black fabric, one long, thin strip, with threads of metal glinting in it.
“you’ll need it for the exam,” he says, and stands to leave.
you clutch the cool, heavy fabric to your chest, knowing it’s the ticket to your dream, your chance to prove yourself. “thank you.” thank you for believing in me.
“don’t mention it.” of course, kid.
reblogs and comments are very much appreciated!! ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* main taglist here,series taglisthere. back to gt&h masterpost.
