Work Text:
Shinsou Hitoshi focuses on the capture weapon in his hands. He swings the strap in his hands over the cramped area above the tree branch and carefully… carefully… It snags on the target branch overhead!
He moved to pull himself up the length of binding cloth with his muscles screaming. I can do this, I can do this.
He is in the air and pulling at the cloth. The timing it takes to get everything right is occupying more of his mind than he wants to admit. He wants to prove that he is capable of this.
One hand over the other he pulls and flips with the momentum. He shifts his weight, and he leans forward into the swing. Shinsou grins at the ease of the motion. He pulls the material in his hand and has a fraction of a second to sense as it snags along something it should not.
There is the smallest moment to think, Oh shi- As all that energy that went into the swing pulls up short and for one sickening moment he feels his stomach drop out as gravity claims its due.
Shinsou hits the end limit of the capture weapon with a lurch and then he begins to fall.
With a thud that reverberates through his diaphragm, Shinsou lands hard and all the wind leaves his lungs as he lands hard on his back.
After, several wheezing attempts he draws in a breath. His capture weapon, previously wrapped over the tree branches overhead, now twisted and turned over on him in improbable knots.
How did it get tangled over him like this?
He lets out a frustrated and exhausted moan as he tries to find where his limbs begin and the cloth of the capture weapon ends.
Aizawa Shouta leans against a tree in the clearing. Wearing his black jumpsuit, there is a slight difference to the teacher’s appearance. His normally unkempt black hair is tied up in a hasty knot. Unshaven face scrunched into a frown as he watches the boy struggle to untangle himself for the umpteenth time.
Shinsou asks, not expecting a response, “You took five years to learn this capture weapon. What makes you think I can make any progress in such a short time?”
In, the last couple months Shinsou trained alongside the underground hero and class 1A’s homeroom teacher. Shinsou was surprised when the teacher had reached out to him to study and try to learn the capture weapon and try to test into the hero course.
It was two months after the sports festival. The teacher offered to train the general studies student, and he had been more than a little baffled at the offer.
“I failed the entrance exam for the hero course and the sports festival, why would you give me this chance?” Shinsou had asked the teacher.
Aizawa-sensei had rubbed his eyes and looked like he should catch up on sleep, not offering to do extra training with an overreaching general studies student after school.
After a long silence the teacher replied, “The entrance exam only considers those with flashy quirks. Some need an extra amount of... refining before they are ready to see action.”
“So you don’t-” Shinsou starts, but doesn’t know how to phrase his question.
“Don’t what?” Aizawa-sensei asks curtly.
“You don’t think my actions during the sports festival were...” Shinsou gulps, “... Villainous?”
Aizawa looks at the boy, really looks, before he answers. “Some of us have quirks that are not make for combat and shows of strength. Some of us have to rely on every trick and tactic we can think of to get done what needs to get done and get out alive.”
Shinsou draws up short at that. It wasn’t the answer he expected, but it makes him think long and hard about the approaches to hero work.
He thinks about the crowd saying that his quirk seemed like something that a villain would do. Then he thinks about his classmates’ reaction to his involvement in the sports festival…
Aizawa-sensei answers his original question, shaking him from the memory.
“I took five years to learn because I was alone. I had to learn from scratch and had no one to check on technique or methodology.” Sensei looks up into the trees as if he can see past into the sky. “I have nearly fifteen years' experience using the capture weapon, now. I can teach others what I’ve learned from it.”
Shinsou finishes disentangling his limbs from the weapon and sets himself in an upright position. Aizawa ignores his struggle and continues.
“People like us need to be able to handle things on our own when things fall apart.” He looks down and meets Shinsou’s eyes. “Otherwise, they end up dead.”
Shinsou stills at that and lets the gravity of that statement sink in. Not for the first time, he wonders what the underground hero had seen and lived through. Had he lost someone to those circumstances? It didn’t seem like the caution someone gained leading a light and carefree career.
“Keep up your training,” he says firmly. He adds, not unkindly, “I hope you know I don’t waste my time on lost causes.”
Shinsou supposed it might sound harsh to some ears. But he found it oddly encouraging. They had been training at odd times for months now. Shinsou knew it wasn’t a threat to drop him, but an acknowledgement that the teacher had invested his time where he thought someone needed it.
Shinsou nods and picks up the capture weapon intending to start again. He thinks again to the sports festival the reactions of some of his peers to his quirk. Those that knew him, his general studies classmates had a different tune than the rest.
Wow! Shinsou, you could use that skill to stop a hostage situation... That could come in handy... Those villains wouldn’t know what hit them!
Gathering himself up he grins at the eraser hero. Aizawa-sensei nods, looking satisfied that his point had been made. Shinsou wondered, if all this extra training paid off how he could ever thank the teacher for taking a chance on him.
It took all kinds to make a hero and Sensei was definitely one of a kind.
He looks up the stern hero and thinks, If a someone so serious and rather spooky looking can make it as a hero, maybe I can too!