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Not many people realized it, but Shinsou was a stubborn person. He got set in his ways very easily and refused to budge. In fact, his becoming a hero could be traced back to his stubbornness. A boy at his middle school joked about him becoming a hero with his brainwashing quirk and other kids joined in on laughing at the idea. Of course, after it was over, the boy slapped him on the back and said, “You know I was joking, right?” but there had still been laughter in his eyes and a mocking tilt to his lips.
And that was when Shinsou decided, at thirteen-years-old, that he was going to become a hero, and nothing was going to stop him.
His parents supported his dream as best as they could. They were a little awkward and unsure about it, but they’d never spoken badly about his quirk. Sometimes, he got anxious that they did when he was in bed or at school, but his mother always reassured him that they would never. It was his quirk. He’d been born with it, and there was nothing to be done about it. He had only used it on them a few times shortly after it manifested when he couldn’t control its activation, but it had always been on accident.
It hadn’t been fun or cool. He hadn’t told them to give him sweets or clean his room or take him to the movies. No, he’d cried, like a baby, because it was like his parents were gone.
They were right there, but they were gone from their bodies, vacant and blank, and it had terrified him. He’d thought he hurt them forever. No matter how much he screamed and cried or tugged on their hands and clothes, they just stood there unless he said certain words. He asked his mother to hold him, and she did. He asked his father to talk to him, and he said, “Hitoshi.” It was only when he grew desperate and upset enough to kick his father in the leg that he snapped out of it and return to normal.
Although they were supportive of him now, he knew they were leery of his quirk at first. They had to be. It might not sound like much, but a four-year-old with the ability to brainwash adults was dangerous. They took him to a quirk specialist so they could figure out the details and, after a series of tests, it was determined that his quirk was activated when someone responded to him, but he had to essentially turn his quirk on. As a child, he didn't have any control over it, so it happened at random – to his parents, friends, even teachers. Luckily, at the time, it took only minor physical shocks to wake a brainwashed person out of a trance, but it still put his parents in a hard position.
Shinsou didn’t want people to fear him. He didn’t want to be seen as bad, although everyone referred to his quirk as such. “Just because your quirk is bad, doesn’t mean you are,” one well-meaning but idiotic teacher told him in primary school. Those words had rested in his mind for a long time, even after he applied to UA. He couldn’t shake them.
All he could think about was that his quirk was bad – everyone thought it, including his parents, even if they told him multiple times that it wasn’t – and that meant there was something wrong with him. Even when he decided to give his all at the Sports Festival and use his quirk to the best of his abilities instead of shying away from it, he was worried about how people would perceive him. His classmates would hate it, no doubt feeling like he’d used them instead of doing work himself, and his teachers might be unsure about the application of his quirk in hero works.
And what of the pro heroes? What of the public? What would they think of his quirk? How would they react?
He wanted to become a hero so damn bad that it hurt sometimes. He’d gotten all the way to the one-on-one tournaments, but he could’ve done more. Even without using his quirk, Midoriya was stronger than him. The moment he was punched and shoved out of the arena, he realized his mistake: he’d relied too much on his quirk because he was desperate to prove that it was good. Midoriya, with his strong (but destructive quirk) had relied on himself. If he had really been serious about winning instead of just trying to prove people wrong, he should’ve trained more.
So when Aizawa approached him after and offered to give him personal lessons, it was a dream. Shinsou hadn’t thought something like this would ever happen. He’d vaguely known about the hero Eraserhead, but there wasn’t a lot of information about him on the internet since he worked underground. As a kid, he’d researched and soaked up any news about heroes with mental quirks like his. There weren’t a lot, but the ones that did exist instantly became his favorites. To find out that one was a teacher at UA had been shocking and exciting.
But training was hard . He’d known it was going to be difficult, but this was almost more than he could handle. Hell, sometimes it was too much for him. Some nights, he crashed in bed without eating dinner, only to wake up hours later with a painfully growling stomach demanding to be fed. Some mornings, he woke up so sore that he struggled to simply get out of bed, using hot water from the showers to soothe his aching muscles. Shit hurt , and Aizawa never went easy on him either, although he at least always stopped before Shinsou could get hurt or sick.
He knew he couldn’t rely on his quirk alone, especially since it was mental, but he’d had no idea how complicated everything was. Being allowed to use the same capturing scarf that Aizawa did was super cool and thrilled Shinsou, but holy shit was it difficult to manipulate. How many times had he tripped himself up, caught himself in trees, and fallen flat on his face because of it?
That was where he found himself now. A combination of all three failures had ended with him dangling upside down from a tree, wrapped up in the scarf, with the side of his face pressed against the grass. Just when he thought he might’ve got the hang of it – snap! – it wrapped around his leg and arm, and he went crashing. He hung there, silently fuming over his incompetence, as Aizawa wandered over to him.
“This is stupid,” Shinsou muttered into the grass.
“You did better that time,” Aizawa told him, “but you still lose focus of what’s behind you.”
“Yeah, because I’m just barely managing to work with what’s ahead of me!” The scarf was complicated. It seemingly had a life of its own. He had no idea how Aizawa controlled it with such ease, but it was like trying to wrangle a long, thin snake that had no intentions of being held. Shinsou groaned. “I’m never gonna get this, am I?”
Aizawa considered him. “Giving up?”
That old stubbornness flared in Shinsou’s mind. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.” With a few tugs on the scarf, it smoothly slipped from the tree, but Aizawa held onto it so that Shinsou didn’t crash completely to the ground and slowly lowered him down. “You’re thinking too far ahead. You have to focus on what’s going on right now. Your movements forward will depend on what you did just before.”
“So I gotta look back in order to go ahead?” Shinsou rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky. He should probably get up, but the rope had pulled painfully on his arm, and he didn’t want to admit how much his shoulder hurt. “Seems convoluted to me.”
Aizawa let go of the scarf and pocketed his hands. “Sometimes, a fight is determined after the first move, even if it goes on for longer.”
Shinsou’s eyes flickered to Aizawa. The scar on his pale face stood out frankly. When he had jumped into the fray at the USJ, he had surely known that he wouldn’t be able to take out all the villains. He could hold them off and perhaps knock some of them unconscious, but there was no way he could win, no matter how determined and strong he was. Winning hadn’t been his goal. Buying time, keeping the focus on him instead of his students, prolonging the inevitable and taking a few villains out – those had been what he wanted to do, and he’d done it. That took a lot of guts – and a whole lot of stubbornness too.
“Why are you helping me?” Shinsou asked. “You never said.”
“Because I was weak like you once,” Aizawa told him simply. His words were like a punch to the gut. Aizawa? Weak? Shinsou couldn’t picture it. There was no way Aizawa had been anything like him. “I wanted to become a hero, but I thought I wasn’t capable. I beat myself down until it seemed impossible.”
Despite his shock, Shinsou managed to ask, “What changed?”
A strange look flickered across Aizawa’s face, but he turned away before Shinsou could figure out what it was. “Someone believed in me.”
Oh. Shinsou stared at him, unsure of what to say. His parents might’ve supported his dreams and he now had friends that wanted him to succeed, but he wasn’t sure if any of them actually believed he could become a hero. However, if Aizawa hadn’t thought him capable of becoming a hero, he wouldn’t have wasted his time on Shinsou. Instead, he was using what little free time he had to help him, push him forward, guide him to fulfill his dream. So many people might’ve thought him a lost cause but not him. Shinsou smiled in determination and got back to his feet. Better not let him down then.