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Shouta had fallen into a light doze before they reached their apartment; he went through the routine of taking off his costume and navigating toward the bed with only a sliver of awareness.
Hizashi followed in his wake, picking up pieces of equipment and putting them where they belonged. He petted the cats that came to check on him, filled two glasses with water – not enough hydration, but better than nothing – and made his way to the bedroom.
Shouta couldn’t have been bothered to turn on the light and, frankly, neither could Hizashi.
He sat down onto the edge of the mattress, listened to his love’s deepening breaths, and stared at the patterns on the wall cast through the curtains by the streetlight.
“Why now?” he breathed almost soundlessly into the darkness.
The day had been hard, and far too long, and included at least one casualty by the time they had vacated the premises – but Shouta, Hizashi, Nemuri and their students were all going to be alright, so he should have felt fine. Good, even.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about what he had finally put together (he hadn’t meant to, hadn’t tried to, but he couldn’t actually stop his brain from working).
Midoriya. Deku. The Problem Child Shouta loved to agonise about.
Midoriya was ‘considered’ quirkless until he was – what? Fourteen? Fifteen? Like they didn’t do a barrage of tests nowadays to determine who was latent, who had some sort of invisible quirk, and who was well-and-truly quirkless.
They did DNA tests – Hizashi’s cousin had had one done for her kid, who turned out to be, hilariously, an echolocator. Only she had been echolocating since before she had clear memories, and assumed that everyone ‘saw’ like her.
Kids of four or five not being able to articulate their experience, or not being able to distinguish their experience from some arbitrary baseline, was natural and expectable.
According to Midoriya’s file only an x-ray and some CT scans were referenced for the ‘initial diagnosis’, but Hizashi would have bet that there had been a DNA analysis, and someone had expunged that from the system to make the whole story a little more believable. ‘Oh, poor single Mum, couldn’t afford complex testing, whoops, turns out the boy was a one-in-ten-thousand case of a vestigial little-toe joint despite quirk factor, ha-ha.’
Not terrible, far as historical revisionism went, and it probably only seemed so flimsy to Hizashi because he was too close to the situation. Because he had watched All Might’s decline and Midoriya’s initial struggles; because his friends and colleagues and husband went about acting super-sus (with husband actually outright citing confidentiality).
The only thing Hizashi knew-knew was that the was an SS-rank villain who took Ragdoll’s quirk, and that he had some sort of (at least) second-generation beef with All Might. A third-generation beef with Midoriya now.
“We’re going to lose,” he said.
Shouta went from dead-to-the-world to hyperaware. “Wha-?!” He sat up.
“We’re going to lose,” Hizashi repeated, feeling lightheaded. The world spun around him.
“What the- Did you have a nightmare?”
Hizashi shook his head, and then raised his hand, palm-out, toward his gradually-growing-scared husband.
He needed to think. He needed to put it together. His mind had detected something somewhere, but he wasn’t sure what he had seen. What was it? What did he subconsciously connect that made him feel like they were on the losing side?
“Wait,” his mouth said with minimal input from his brain. “Gimme… a minute…”
Before Shouta had become aware of All Might’s secret, there were four people (that Hizashi could identify) who knew. Midoriya’s secret, right? The Secret of the Quirk and the Vengeful Supervillain. There was Yagi himself (of course), Midoriya (hopefully the kid had been told, please let it be so), Recovery Girl (presumably?) – and Nezu.
Nezu, who didn’t believe in things like privacy or confidentiality. Who hired Yagi despite the glaring lack of a teaching licence or anything resembling teaching experience.
Of course Nezu knew – it was the only reason to hire Yagi. U.A. didn’t need Yagi. Yagi needed U.A..
And Nezu shouldn’t have cared; he certainly wouldn’t have helped Yagi out of sentiment.
So, he knew.
Shouta had eventually figured it out – or been told – so Shouta could start helping Midoriya – now that Midoriya had been damaged for life, to the point of at the very least chronic pain and fucked-up fine motor control, but possibly a full loss of use of his arms.
Instead of being told right from the beginning so the kid’s entire shitfest of a first term could have been prevented by a competent teacher and an individualised lesson plan as it should have been.
Had Shouta asked Nezu why he wasn’t told earlier? What would have been the reasoning? That it was need-to-know? Shouta needed to know, clearly. That it was Yagi’s secret? Bullshit, it was Midoriya’s now. That Nezu couldn’t have known that the humans would fuck it up?
Bull-fucking-shit. Nezu had been the Principal of a high school for a decade, and before that spent years as a teacher. He knew damn well the humans would fuck it up.
So, unless he made a huge mistake – and Nezu didn’t make mistakes (besides, if it was an honest mistake, he would have told Shouta after Midoriya’s first clusterfuck) – Nezu had done this intentionally.
Nezu had intentionally nerfed All Might’s successor, and it was as fucking easy as smiling and nodding when Yagi’s PTSD-induced paranoia made him beg to keep Midoriya’s recent ‘quirk emergence’ a secret.
That was the method and the opportunity.
And the motive?
Nezu kept saying that he hated humans. He made it into a gimmick – a joke, almost – and inserted it into a conversation every once in a while. They didn’t call him on it, because they were second-hand embarrassed for the torture other members of their species had committed upon the Principal, and Shouta didn’t call him on it because…
Because…
“Why don’t you ever say anything when Nezu proclaims how much he hates humans?”
Shouta blinked. And blinked again. He shook his head, but kept watching Hizashi like he suspected there was some strange quirk at work here, or that Hizashi had finally lost his marbles.
Which was possible.
Actually, it was preferable.
Hizashi hoped that this was just a nervous breakdown, and that his two-o’clock-conclusions would turn out incorrect and entirely baseless.
Shouta shrugged, apparently having decided to humour his crazy husband. “I don’t like humans either.”
Right. For Shouta it was a non-issue. A statement of fact. He had possibly never considered what it might imply about Nezu’s motivations (even Hizashi hadn’t done that, because he was awed and respectful and honestly a little scared of his boss).
“If he hates humans, why is he controlling the most prominent school for future heroes?” Hizashi asked, hoping that he could not lead Shouta down the path of his logic – if he couldn’t, that meant that his logic wasn’t sound and he might actually be able to sleep again.
Shouta took a moment to seriously think about it. “I assume that he wants to oversee that the people with the greatest power and influence will meet a set of standards?” He rubbed his eyes. “What’s this about, ‘zashi?”
“If he hates humans, why does he care about human elite? We’ve watched his work for sixteen years, babe; he’s doing little to nothing about quirked animals. All his effort goes into controlling U.A..” And changing it. For the better, it seemed – the institution had certainly grown a lot more popular, and wealthier, and the number of their alumni that were charting in the Top Hundred was unprecedented, but…
But the Pro Heroes in the Top Hundred were the popular ones. Not the good ones, or the most effective ones, or the ones hugely successful in their respective niches… or even people like Hizashi who tried their best at several things, and made the world a slightly better place (if Hizashi said so himself). It was people like Endeavour and Hawks and Miruko and Best Jeanist. Sociopaths and egomaniacs and violent arseholes.
Prosperity was well and good, but where did Nezu find near-unlimited sources of money?
Nowhere legal, certainly?
“What…” Shouta paused and swallowed. “What are you saying, ‘zashi?” His eyes were wide, and his hand clenched like he was trying to hold onto something that had turned into thin air before he could grasp it.
Hizashi put his arms around himself. Was it cold? He felt cold.
“He’s making changes that look good. That are good, sometimes, in the short run. But in the long run… babe, you can’t tell me he couldn’t have changed the Entrance Exam if he really wanted to? He’s pushed such shit through the Board that we know he’s got them by their balls-”
Nezu’s blackmail cache was more-or-less an open secret.
“-and if he didn’t do it, it means he doesn’t want to. So for the past what – twelve years? eleven? – at least since he became Principal, but probably longer – he’s been amassing powerful, violent quirk users, getting his hooks into them, training them up to be Top Hundred Pro Heroes, and sending them out to strengthen the system that we know is rotten to the core. That’s what he’s been doing. That’s what he’s got us doing.”
“You think that Nezu is the traitor,” Shouta concluded.
Hizashi sniffled. Oh fuck.
Oh fuck, Shouta was supposed to laugh it off, or dismiss it as unbearably stupid. He wasn’t supposed to look just as terrified as Hizashi felt. He wasn’t supposed to see the logic of it.
“He hates humans,” Hizashi said. “He can’t destroy us – but he can maneuver us into destroying ourselves.”
Nezu couldn’t involve himself physically in any altercations. He couldn’t even be recognised as someone dangerous to people, since that would directly lead to a physical altercation. He had to remain behind the scenes until at least the point of no return – but ideally forever.
“With a quirk like High Specs – how else would he go about it? It just… makes sense.”
It made perfect sense.
Shouta looked up, eyes sliding over the walls and ceiling, like he was searching for any hidden recording devices. “…are we running?”
“It’s too late anyway,” Hizashi replied, swallowing hot tears. He opened his hand when Shouta reached for it and they threaded their fingers together.
He was an idiot. Why – why couldn’t he have kept it all to himself? Held his mouth shut?
If Nezu needed them neutralised, by morning they would be at the very least declared villains, but most likely they would never have a chance to say anything to anyone ever again. He wondered if their phones even had signal anymore.
“I love you,” Shouta said softly, just in case.
Just in case Hizashi was right.