Chapter Text
Billy held the paper, stared at the Kanji for “Citizenship,” and debated on what to do.
If someone asked Billy where he would be at the age of forty-five, he’d have probably said something along the lines of fighting besides the Justice League - like he always did - had been doing since he was ten. But children hardly hold the answers to the future, and even with the Wisdom of Solomon backing him, Billy would have never guessed that by the age of forty-five he would be the last hero to hold the mantle of the Justice League. It wasn’t that his comrades were dead - some were - it was just that the rest couldn’t fight the good fight anymore.
The Justice Leaguers were old, and while Billy had been the youngest of the founding members, he wasn’t exactly a spring daisy anymore either.
It didn’t help that a villain going by All For One came out of the woodworks either. Nor that said villain had gotten it into his head that Captain Marvel was One For All. It was like Black Adam all over again, except the villain was worse and had powers that Billy could never dream of getting, but somehow, -by the power of the gods- they were nearly equal.
Captain Marvel gave as good as he got, but in the end, All For One got away, and Billy Batson was down a lung and left with a hole in his chest.
Thirty-five years ago, Billy would have said he’d still be fighting the good fight at the age of forty-five, but not even magic could fix the hole in his side, and while Captain Marvel could still fight with the best of them, Billy felt himself struggling to contain all of Shazam’s powers like he once had.
It was upsetting, but it was true.
His health was steadily declining, and his magic no longer felt quite as right.
Once Dick learned of his injury the man insisted that he retire.
So Billy had.
He quit his civilian job and put all his efforts into being Captain Marvel… of course, that really wasn’t what Dick meant - but, well - Billy rarely thought before acting. That was something he left up to Captain Marvel who had Solomon’s Wisdom backing him.
Of course, that was hardly a good excuse anymore - he wasn’t ten- as the Wisdom of Solomon was now shared between two of his forms.
Anyway, the past was the past. Yes, Billy quit his civilian job first, but eventually he also retired from the hero biz…
At least that’s what he told the once Boy-Wonder and even the world when he gave a small speech. And for a while, retirement was relaxing. He got to visit his old haunts and have as many movie marathons as he wanted, even got to visit Uncle Dudley’s grave, but after the first month it was boring, and he really needed a change in scenery.
Which brought him to staring at the registration form.
Billy wasn’t even sure why he hadn’t filled it out yet. It wasn’t like he couldn’t read the Japanese characters, and wasn’t he supposed to have the courage of a Gryffindor?
Billy sighed, running a hand through his greying hair. He should dye it. Focus, Billy. Focus! Eyes on the prize. All you have to do is fill out the paper, move to Japan, and be a hero again. The hand dragged across his face and he picked up his pen.
Name: William Joseph Batson
Birthdate: January 24
Age: 45
The questions were mundane at first, and then it got into all the nitty-gritty details like it was asking for a full background check. Which Billy supposed is precisely what it was. Still, Billy breezed through it.
Two sections stumped him though. It wasn’t like Billy could put that he’d been on the streets since he was seven or that he never actually got a formal education.
And why the hell were superpowers called quirks in Japan anyway? And why did they need to be officially named? That was weird. Billy briefly thought of all the Flashes and how it was easy labeling their power as super speed, but then take someone like Superman, and it got complicated. The form didn’t want a list of abilities it wanted a name for all those abilities combined.
Humming, he went back to the first section that stumped him and read over the questions that asked for his former guardian’s names and what schools he’d gone to. He was just about to leave the section blank when an idea came to him and a tiny smirk lifted a corner of his mouth. He printed another form and instead of writing William Joseph Batson, he wrote Yagi Toshinori in neat Kanji.
A secret identity for the secret identity. Why not? And it was easier this way. Yagi Toshinori was an old identity Batman made for an undercover mission, and those papers were as good as legal, not to mention they didn’t have as many holes as Billy’s actual documents did.
Billy eyed a strand of greying hair. Guess, he had to dye it after all.
- A year later -
Billy - it was Toshinori now - was pretty sure he couldn’t have picked a more unique place than Japan. The entire population was filled with meta’s, and Billy couldn’t help but be amazed at the variety of powers he saw displayed each day.
You’d think that in a city full of meta’s the crime rate would be worse than Gotham, but Japan had its own team of heroes that patrolled the cities and made Japan one of the safest countries in the world. And ok, yes, the crime rate in Japan was actually worse than Gotham. But with heroes on every street, the villain’s barely had time to cause any real harm.
Billy was pretty sure there were more heroes in Japan than there were members in the Justice League. And that included the different branches and every hero that joined.
Japan also had hero schools. Which Billy had mixed feelings on.
On paper a hero school was good, but the wisdom of Solomon couldn’t help but point out all the ways such a thing could be used to a villain’s advantage. If Batman were still alive, the man would have undoubtedly pointed out all the possible security breaches, and Superman… Billy shivered to think of what the man would have done. Billy’s own experience with the man wasn’t all that positive once Superman discovered Billy had been fighting crime since he was seven. And now that he was older, Billy could see how it was upsetting. So while the hero schools were great, it also posed several problems.
Billy chuckled at the thought of asking Dick to hack into one of the popular hero schools. The man would have had a riot, no doubt. His shoulders shook. Dick would have probably added one of his prank programs to the school’s system too. Aging hadn’t affected Dick’s maturity at all.
Feeling an itch in his throat, Billy sighed, laughter immediately dying before he had a coughing fit. He didn’t want to cough up a gallon of blood right now.
“Shazam,” he whispered, and lightning struck.
Where Billy stood was now All Might. His costume was completely different from Captain Marvel’s. It was still red, but instead of the famous lightning bolt on his chest, there was just a simple circle on his chest and shoulders. His white cape was also gone, replaced by a blue one without a cowl. Like this, with this costume and blonde hair that stuck up to resemble rabbit ears, All Might looked nothing like Captain Marvel.
It also helped that he started casting shadows. He guessed that had something to do with true form, but he wasn’t about to complain. Dick would come out of retirement if he learned what Billy was really up to in Japan.
When he returned home and switched on the lights, he yelped.
“Sh-it!” He almost said Shazam.
A rat was in his apartment.
It was drinking tea.
It was wearing clothes.
The rat was HUGE.
It was also ignoring him, which- what?
Billy peered into his apartment, edging himself along the wall while still keeping the rat in sight. Was this a setup? Glancing around a wall and spotting no one else in the adjacent room, Billy turned his full attention back to the rat.
It was still drinking tea. Billy wasn’t even aware someone could drink tea that loudly.
It felt like an eternity before the rat finally did something, placing the cup on the table with a loud sigh.
This had to be some joke. Billy’s eye twitched.
“You’re finally home Yagi Toshinori.”
“…”
“I guess you’re wondering what I am. Have you seen this adorable little guy, you think? What species is he? Some people would say bear but look at my face and tail. Some would say mouse but look at my ears and paws. Well, wonder no more, for I am a rat.” He stuck out a paw. “I’m Nedzu.”
“Um…” Was this guy for real? Nedzu had the whole fear factor going for him up until he opened his mouth. Artemis would have him beat if this was an interrogation. Billy choked down a laugh as he took the paw.
“Have seat Yagi-San,” Nedzu gestured to another chair like this was his office and not Billy’s kitchen. “Now that we have been acquainted there is much I want to discuss. Like how you managed to get proof of graduating from my school when I know for a fact that UA has never taught a Yagi Toshinori.”
“W-what do you mean? Of course, I went to UA.”
“Who was your teacher?” Nedzu asked.
“Gran Torino,” Billy answered.
“Class?”
“1-A.”
“Best friend in school?”
“Uh, I was a bit of a loner. Look, what’s this all ab-“
“What’s your quirk?”
“I don’t have one,” Billy answered, but as soon as those words slipped from his lips, he knew he said something wrong. The Wisdom of Solomon pinged in the back of his mind.
“That’s interesting,” Nedzu hummed something dangerous. “You see, it’s impossible for a quirkless student to be in heroics.”
“What?”
“That’s exactly what I said. You see, you either have a quirk or you hacked into our systems. The first scenario is highly unlikely - administration never makes mistakes - so that mean’s you hacked into our systems and I want to know why and how.”
“Uh..”
“Cat got your tongue?” Nedzu teased.
Billy crossed his arms and let the Wisdom of Solomon guide him.
The snippets of conversations he caught on the streets and things he read in the past year came to him with crystal clarity. And Billy blinked at the rat with black on blue eyes as he analyzed every nuance about Nedzu, coming up with thousands of conclusions and filling in blanks.
“You’re right,” Billy said not a second later. “I didn’t graduate from UA.”
“Ooh?”
Billy refused to expand on his answer and raised a brow. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a smirk on Nedzu’s face. Was the rat pleased?
“Was that all?” Billy asked after a while. He could taste a bit of blood in his mouth and wanted nothing more than to kick the rat out.
“You didn’t answer my questions. I wanted to know why and how you hacked the systems.”
“A friend hacked it. He thought it would be fun,” Billy said.
“You’re lying.”
“Maybe,” Billy agreed, and this time Nedzu did smirk.
“Your case is an interesting one,” Nedzu admitted. “We take these types of things very seriously, so when I found the breach and did a lot of research on Yagi Toshinori. Born in Tokyo to an American woman and a Japanese man. When no quirk showed up, moved to America at the age of five but returned to Japan to enter UA. Graduated with a 3.0 and was fairly average. Decided to take a job in America after graduation at Wayne Corp, and now you’re back again, nearly thirty years later.”
“I’d say welcome back,” Nedzu went on. “But you’ve never been here to begin with. I must say, you have an excellent hacker friend, but I highly doubt he thought hacking was fun.”
“I never asked if he enjoyed his hobby,” Billy shrugged, and then because the Wisdom of Solomon was pushing him to ask, he added, “I highly doubt you came here just to confirm that your systems were hacked.”
“No, I did not.”
“Then ask.”
“I want you to join my staff, All Might.”
Billy didn’t even miss a beat and didn’t bother to ask how he knew about All Might. “That was not a question.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t a request either.”
“Would you agree if it was?” Billy got the feeling that Nedzu would have raised a brow if he had one.
“No,” Billy said.
“Then let’s make a deal,” Nedzu bargained. “You became a teacher at UA, and I won’t expose your secret identity.”
“What identity? Didn’t you just confirm that Yagi was a fake?”
“I did, didn’t I?” Nedzu smirked as he took out a stack of papers. “But are you not Yagi Toshinori, right now? There must be a reason you’re Yagi Toshinori and not someone else.”
So he didn’t know Billy’s true identity. Still, the rat was sharp and Billy remembered Nedzu’s quirk was called High Spec.
“What’s in it for me?” Billy asked.
“Besides the fact I won’t expose All Might’s identity? I won’t search for Yagi’s former identity.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“I get a new teacher.” Nedzu flattened the paper on the table. “All you need to do is sign.”
Billy did not touch offered pen, only stared flatly. “I could be a villain.”
“My gut tells me otherwise,” Nedzu said.
Billy’s nonexistent gut was also telling him that there were no ulterior motives, and the Wisdom of Solomon told him to accept the offer.
But a teacher? Billy?
The Justice League would have laughed.
He was getting bored though, and didn’t he come to Japan for a change of pace anyway? Billy sighed and picked up the pen.
“Who exactly are you hiring?”
“Yagi and All Might are both qualified,” Nedzu said, and Billy felt eyes scanning his body. “Some teachers go by their hero names and teach in costume, other’s teach in their civilian forms, but students know that all of our staff are heroes. It’d be interesting to see what hero they think you are.” Nedzu’s eyes landed on the spot just below Billy’s heart. “Gastrectomy?”
Billy growled
Nedzu smirked.
Billy was beginning to hate that look.
“All Might will teach.”
“Excellent. I’ll boil another pot of water and we can discuss your syllabus.”
It turns out All Might was in the running for Number 1.
Billy was speechless when that little tidbit was revealed.
“It’s only been a year! How is that possible? I haven’t even taken down a super villain yet.”
“UA will sponsor you. It’ll be interesting having the Number 1 teach at our school.”
“That’s why you wanted to hire me?”
Nedzu gave the room a deadpan look and gave air quotes, “I haven’t even taken down a super villain yet.”
The staff gave each other incredulous looks. Just how powerful was All Might?