Chapter Text
Hitoshi first noticed it when Midoriya walked in — the unbalanced gait as he bounded across the gym with a just-a-touch-too-wide smile on his face.
He looked stiff, but ultimately not injured enough to cause him to lose the seemingly ever-present smile he donned, even if it was strained.
The second sign was a sharp breath during warm-up stretches.
Hitoshi should have said something then, but he didn’t want to risk it with how skittish Midoriya had been since he got to the gym.
That was the third sign, not that he caught that until later.
The green-haired teen had been opening up over the past few months, but suddenly pulled away shortly after the Kamino incident.
Which, really, would have been reasonable, if it had happened right after Kamino and not days after the fact, and most notably around teachers.
That was all to say that Hitoshi probably should have said something before blood began seeping through Midoriya’s shirt in the middle of their sparring session.
With a startled sound, he jolted to a stop, shooting back a few steps and throwing his hands up to call the match.
“Midoriya, your side!” He yelped, staring at the growing dark spot across his training partner’s blue tank top.
He hadn’t done that, had he? There was no way he had, which meant that somehow Midoriya had come in with an injury bad enough to split open and start bleeding from at least a few hours ago.
“Kami, I need to- I need to tell someone. I’ll- I’ll get Recovery Girl.’
Hitoshi spun on his heel, prepared to run across campus to the nurse’s office to drag her out to Gym Gamma when green sparks filled his periphery and a grip like a vice seized his arm.
“You can’t.”
Well now Hitoshi felt like he should be checking himself for a head injury because there was absolutely no way Midoriya was bleeding all over himself and saying that he didn’t need medical attention.
“Midoriya, you’re bleeding a lot. You need to see Recovery Girl.” Hitoshi dragged his hands through his hair, eyes locked on the bloodstain as Midoriya gingerly lifted his shirt to reveal drenched bandages wrapping his torso.
He sucked in a breath, stepping closer unconsciously. Hitoshi knew what a home job looked like, and this was definitely it. Not that it looked bad. Rather…it looked a little too good for comfort — a testament to Midoriya’s experience — but the way the gauze wrap went the extra half a torso’s length around to tape in the front for easy securing was a giveaway.
“Can you grab my first aid kit?” Midoriya nodded toward his backpack. “It’s under my school supplies.”
Numbly, Hitoshi complied.
He should be getting help, right? Why wasn’t Midoriya letting him get help? It was different here, wasn’t it?
“Kacchan told me he wanted to talk last week,” Midoriya began after a long moment, silent except for the click of the first aid kit that seemed far too well-stocked for a school med-kit where there was literally a Pro Hero school nurse with a powerful healing quirk, and the snip of bandages and medical tape being cut off, bagged, followed by a new set being measured and snipped with practiced ease. “And he ended up fighting me.” A quiet, angry sigh spilled from the normally upbeat boy’s lips as he wound the bandage around himself carefully.
“I said no. I said I didn’t want to fight, that we were already going to get in trouble for breaking curfew — but I couldn’t not go, I mean it’s Kacchan, and he would’ve dragged me out if I didn’t go willingly anyway, so I thought at least this way I could go on my own two feet. And, well, I wanted to help. I…I’ve only ever wanted to be his friend” Midoriya’s lower lip wobbled and his eyes filled dangerously. “Then he started firing off his explosions, and I knew that even if I didn’t fight back he wouldn’t stop, and that it wasn’t the sort of thing I could help him with anyway, except by being a punching bag, since he doesn’t know how to use his words to talk about his feelings, which I don't want to be anymore…so I did, but we got caught. We were both pretty banged up, but Recovery Girl said that healing naturally would teach us a lesson, so she didn’t heal us.”
Midoriya fell silent, trying to muffle his sobs as the tears he’d been so steadfastly holding back began to fall.
“I didn’t want to fight him. I said no. And I got three days of house arrest. That goes on my school record as a first offence, and I’m playing catchup on three days of all of our classes.”
And that was horrifying, no doubt, but Hitoshi’s mind had been snared by another comment.
“You said Recovery Girl refused to heal you?”
Midoriya sniffled a little as he nodded, taping off the end of the bandages, peeling off latex gloves and securing both them and the bloody bandage in a ziplock biowaste baggie with an uncomfortable level of absentminded ease.
“Yeah, after the Sports Festival she said she wouldn’t heal any more quirk-induced injuries, which is really all you get in the hero course, so I’ve been patching myself up after class. I, um, wasn’t sure if she was serious so I’d held off on testing it out, but when she decided not to after the fight at Ground Beta, I knew for sure.”
“And that’s why you’re injured right now?”
Midoriya blinked his big doe-like eyes as he nodded, entirely uncomprehending of the reason for Hitoshi’s concern.
“A medical professional is refusing you treatment?”
Again, Midoriya nodded — slowly this time, like he didn’t understand why Hitoshi kept asking.
“You were threatened and attacked which resulted in injury, and the medical professional who saw you said that they would not only not treat those injuries but also said they wouldn’t heal you in the future?”
“Shinsou-kun, you’ve said that like three times now. I don’t understand why you keep repeating it.”
And kami, wasn’t that just awful? Midoriya had been so conditioned to believe that this treatment was acceptable that he didn’t see the problem.
“I’ve been patching myself up since elementary school anyways, so it’s not like I’m not getting any treatment. Medical professionals — especially at private institutions — aren’t legally obligated to treat people. It’s called the no duty rule. That’s how they get away with having “no quirkless” clinics and why quirkless mortality rates are so high in the hours and days after a villain attack. Besides, this isn’t leftover from the fight at Ground Beta; I just wasn’t careful enough with my stretching today. Iida-kun got me in the ribs with his engines during training, is all. Aizawa-sensei let me leave class to go patch myself up, too.”
Hitoshi frowned, but yielded the point. He was pretty sure Aizawa-sensei had let Midoriya leave class to get treatment from Recovery Girl not a shop job in the locker room, but forcing the issue wouldn’t do any good with someone like Midoriya. He would have to go about this another way.
“I’ve got plenty of experience treating injuries myself, so pass me the gauze.”
That earned him a watery smile and an exposed back.
Hitoshi bit his lip to keep quiet.
Midoriya had a burn scar. Not many, thanks no doubt to his burn-resistant skin, but there was one particularly stark one despite it, on his left shoulder, with rough, rounded edges where they curled over the top and down his scapula and sharpened jagged bits around the rest, like someone had grabbed his shoulder with something hot in their palm.
Hitoshi had exactly one guess as to who that was, but he didn’t comment on it. He was quite sure that mentioning it wouldn’t help the situation. Instead, he finished the wrap and taped it down securely in silence.
“Sorry, Shinsou-kun, but I don’t think I should keep sparring today,” Midoriya told him softly, still facing away from him.
Hitoshi hummed in agreement, letting his head thump forward to rest against Midoriya’s unscarred shoulder with a sigh.
Midoriya let his own head drop back to lean against Hitoshi’s shoulder in return, to which Hitoshi responded by carding his fingers through dark green curls. A rumbling purr started up, and Hitoshi huffed a laugh as he felt it radiating out of his friend’s chest from where he rested on Midoriya’s shoulder.
Midoriya batted at Hitoshi’s hand halfheartedly, a token effort at best, so Hitoshi continued.
It would be good for them to destress for the remaining hour that they’d booked the gym for.
“Tell me more about Emitter type quirks,” he murmured after they’d both flopped over onto their backs, hands brushing just against each other. He personally had no interest in quirks beyond that Midoriya did, but he and Todoroki had been practising for this very moment.
Midoriya chirruped, turning his head so his cheek rested against Hitoshi’s shoulder, nose just brushing against the juncture of Hitoshi’s neck when he breathed.
“Well, officially, there are eight subtypes. On legal documentation, people with Emitter quirks are labelled 1 and then their subtype letter, which is ranked from most to least common. Emitters are number 1 because they’re the most common quirk type — by a lot, really, but they redo the classifications every decade, so the lower ranks switch sometimes. The subtypes are A. Elemental Manipulation — which only covers the main four elements, B. Mental — which includes quirks like yours, sensory enhancements, and quirks like Aizawa-sensei’s, C. Telekinesis — though this isn’t only simple telekinesis, but also includes specific item-kineses, such as Botanokinesis — ah, that’s the ability to control plants. There was a push when this subtype was being named to go with psychokinesis, but ultimately they went with the older term, since some are more of a convincing the target to move than simply moving it, as in the well documented Wind Hero: Zephyr from Greece, who once said that moving the winds was more like wrangling a group of toddlers than picking something up, the way most telekinesis users report. Currently, Kaminari-kun’s quirk falls under this category. It’s messy though, since he can take and store it as well as control its flow.”
His words were quiet and cautious, even as they came faster and easier than they had when they were talking about why he was injured. Hitoshi would take whatever wins he could get.
“D. Elemental Creation is what Todoroki-kun has, which is pretty interesting, especially considering that he has two elements that he can control. I would argue that it’s more likely to be a thermodynamics quirk than a true elemental creation one though, but I haven’t gotten to test it yet. We were going to a few day ago but…”
Hitoshi could fill in the blanks. But my old bully wanted me to come out for a one-sided beatdown after curfew and then I got house arrest for self-defence.
“Well, do you think he’d mind if I tagged along? I know he’s getting better about using the fire side, but he’s still a little wary of it right? Maybe I can help, if he wouldn’t mind.”
Izuku’s head snapped around to look at him so fast Hitoshi was surprised he didn’t break something.
“Would you really? He does have quite the mental block on it, you know? I’ve noticed that his fire side is much weaker than his ice side, even at ‘full strength’, which shouldn’t happen, even if he hasn’t been using it for years. Quirks don’t atrophy beyond their earliest presented state, after all, and I think it would be good to give him a little bit of a boost since he’s been so willing to play along with my requests to take notes when we test your quirk’s limits.”
Hitoshi pointedly didn’t tell Midoriya that he and Todoroki had been doing a little practising on their own to make sure they could keep improving when Midoriya was busy, so he didn’t feel too bad about having to prioritise himself for once, so he knew for sure that Todoroki had a mental block on his quirk, but neither had been willing to try and budge it without Midoriya present, nodding instead.
“Type E is what Uraraka is, right?” He added, bringing Midoriya back around to quirk subtypes.
“Mhm! Natural Phenomenon Alteration. It refers to things like gravity, like Uraraka, or, say, mass alteration, like Mr. Compress. I didn’t get a lot of time to check out his quirk, but it really was fascinating. He was able to harmlessly compress the mass of at least one person into a marble form. Uraraka’s is obviously amazing as well, and honestly I think hers is closer to inertia alteration than true gravity nullification, since when she slapped me when I was falling during the entrance exam, I stopped. Just that hit wouldn’t have been enough to stop me unless there was another component to it than just gravity nullification. I’d love to test it more, but everything’s been happening one after another, so I just haven’t had the chance to ask if she’d be willing to try a few things out.”
Hitoshi suppressed a snort. everything’s been happening was a bit of an understatement, but he got the point.
“You should have her tag along some time too. Might be nice to give you the chance to watch as I spar with other people. Aizawa-sensei said that only sparring with one person’ll give you bad habits.”
Midoriya hummed, grimacing a bit at the mention of their teacher.
Technically, they weren’t supposed to be doing their lessons without him, but it wasn’t their fault the man wasn’t around to be alerted of their plans for the afternoon. Sure, Hitoshi didn’t look very hard, but that he tried at all was enough for an excuse. Midoriya was uncomfortable with the man at the moment, and Hitoshi really had learned more from his friend than Eraserhead. The pointers the man had given him were helpful-ish — his lessons in getting a capture scarf that could work for him were invaluable, but Midoriya had taken the inaccessible information that Hitoshi had been given for workouts and meal plans and turned it into something Hitoshi could actually do at home, before the dorm system had been implemented. He thought it would be better to just stick to what worked, but Eraserhead was the authority figure, so Hitoshi had to at least play nice, even if he wasn’t very happy with the man at the moment. He’d been great when Midoriya had been attacked by Stain, but the absolute fumble that was exercise behind out-of-reach paywalls, and then again with Midoriya and Bakugou’s fraught relationship being ignored each time really dampened the hero-worship.
“Type F is Creation, like Yaoyorozu’s quirk,” Midoriya continued, oblivious to Hitoshi’s thoughts. “It’s only as high on the list as it is because the other types are seriously rare, and because there are other ‘non-true’ creation type quirks like being able to grow your hair rapidly at will, or something like that, which get lumped into this subtype. It’s not a ‘true’ creation type because you’re not really creating a whole new thing, but rather speeding up a process, but it still counts. It’s also difficult because you can’t create something from nothing, even if, in Yaoyorozu’s case, her lipid cells are incredibly dense, so it takes less of them in order to produce things. Otherwise, she’d have a hard time producing much of anything at all given her size, especially when you factor in the kilocaloric density of some of the object’s she’s produced.”
Hitoshi nodded like he was still understanding the whole rant.
He had about…75%? He didn’t entirely understand Yaomomo’s dense lipid cells, or kilocaloric density, but the rest made sense. He curled his fingers through Midoriya’s hair, sending off another round of purring before Midoriya let off a warning chuff and Hitoshi retracted them with a grin.
“Next comes destruction quirks, like No.13 and Shigaraki. Matter can also not be truly destroyed, so there has been suggestion to merge creation and destruction into one quirk category of ‘matter alteration’, but I think that would be inefficient. Type H is healing, which only comes around every 1 in 300,000 people or so, including everything from bone production, self-healing, healing of others’ injuries, viral manipulation, and hormone production alteration. I’ve met medical staff with almost all of those, and it was really fascinating how they applied them, though it does bring up the question of ethics in quirk use for work. If you allow it, you can help more people, but you also raise the pressure for people with so-called suitable quirks to go into that field, whether they want to or not, and against people with quirks that wouldn’t help them in the field, but if you don’t, you might not be able to save the people who need it — especially with the ever-growing individuality of the human body.”
“So, catch twenty-two?” Hitoshi asked softly.
Izuku hummed. “Well, I don’t think it’s bad exactly, to have people be allowed to use their quirks to help them work, but it seems silly to force people into only doing things that they’re ‘suited’ for. Quirks can be used in so many ways, you know? So what if someone has the ability to produce bony structures? Why do they have to work in the medical field? They could be an amazing sculpture artist with a quirk like that, or even a costume designer. Especially if they could change the bone density. Think of the possibilities! Corsets with ‘real’ whale bone instead of synthetic, a chef able to make bones with fresh marrow for soup stock. A museum would kill to have them in order to help make models for fossils to display to the public without having to expose the original to bright light and humidity. And that’s only if they want to use it for work. They can be plenty skilled at tasks without using them, you know?”
Hitoshi hummed. That was just like Midoriya to think about, wasn’t it? Midoriya, who looked at Hitoshi and didn’t see the perfect quirk for a villain, but a quirk for a hero, able to be applied to about a dozen different situations right off the top of his head.
“And then the rarest of them all: Emitter type I, spatial-temporal. This encompasses quirks impacting space, time, or both. Originally, I’d thought that No.13’s quirk was a spatial quirk, but it’s actually a destruction type. Real spatial-temporal quirks would be things like warp or foresight,” Midoriya mumbled, head still resting against Hitoshi’s shoulder and fingers still brushing just against his own.
“You said officially.”
The question is there, but indirect enough to let Midoriya ignore or redirect it if he didn’t want to explain.
Instead, Midoriya flushed — cheek warming enough to be felt through Hitoshi’s thin t-shirt.
“I, um, I may have come up with an alternative system to use for my notebooks. It, um, well it made it easier for me to memorise the entries…just in case.” The last bit was mumbled, but Hitoshi didn’t find it shameful. If anything, it was even more impressive. Midoriya had come up with a whole new quirk categorization system in order to be able to easier memorise entire comprehensive analyses of heroes’ strengths and weaknesses.
“Will you tell me about it?” Hitoshi asks softly.
Midoriya lifted his head to stare at him for a long, heavy moment. Hitoshi smiled back — no teeth, since Midoriya said that made him look like Aizawa-sensei, and he wasn’t trying to creep his friend out.
Then slowly, painstakingly, Midoriya leaned away from him and toward his backpack, pulling out one of The Notebooks.
Hitoshi held his breath, immensely grateful that Midoriya wasn’t a telepath since he was screaming at the top of his mental voice, already drafting the text he’d send to Todoroki later.
“I, um, I always put it on the first page, in case…” he trailed off awkwardly, grimacing.
In case anyone ever showed an interest, Hitoshi filled in easily.
“Can I see it?”
And fuck, Midoriya let him.
Hitoshi took it gently, one hand splayed across the book’s spine and another holding the pages down.
It was…comprehensive, to say the least.
Emitter, Heteromorphic, Transformation, and Quirkless were the same, but Other had been discarded and Stockpile, Enhancement, Quirk Affective, and People Affective were all new. The old categories that remained were also all modified and notated with clarifications. Hitoshi had never considered how quirkless people were quirkless, even though he did know that inheriting a quirk factor was different than inheriting a quirk.
“Ah,” Midoriya laughed sheepishly. “Growing up…the way I did,” he mumbled, “I took an interest in quirk studies, but um, I saw that quirklessness was entirely overlooked, beyond studies showing ou- their decreasing numbers and high mortality rate. Ah, but all the information was there and applicable from studies about quirks, it was just never covered in studies itself. Probably because quirklessness is pretty heavily stigmatised, so it would never be sponsored with grants or private funding.”
It wasn’t fair, but neither was the world, and they both knew it. Instead, Hitoshi scanned the rest of the chart before his eyes caught on one subcategory.
“Can uh,” Hitoshi felt his heart in his throat, thickening his swallow as he skimmed his fingerprints over the yellow bubble that spelled People Affective “Can you tell me about this one?”
Midoriya’s smile was soft and knowing. “Of course, Shinsou-kun. In my model, there are three further subtypes to the subtype People Affecting: Voluntary, like Midnight’s quirk Somnambulist, which can be released at will, Involuntary or Radius quirks which are ‘always on’, so to speak, like Empathy, or the most common — not that it’s common either — form of telepathy, which is activated through proximity, and then Conditional quirks like yours, which have activation conditions which need to be met before you can activate it at will or involuntarily, like a contact-based quirk. I read about someone who projected their emotions upon contact, so they had to wear a one-piece jumpsuit under their clothes to prevent accidental contact. Quirks that affect people are really uncommon, you know? I could, um, if you wanted — but don’t worry if you don’t, it’s totally fine-”
“I can’t tell you if I want to or not if you don’t ask the question,” Hitoshi laughed, dipping his head to catch his friend’s eyes for the briefest of moments.
“Do-you-want-to-see-your-entry?” Midoriya blurted, eyes squeezed shut and already leaning back.
Hitoshi bluescreened.
There was no other word for it.
First, he’d found out that Midoriya had been self-treating his injuries for months now. Then Midoriya had let Hitoshi see The Notebook. It was already far more progress into personal lives than he’d expected to make today.
But now Midoriya was offering to let him see his entry on Hitoshi?
Shit, he had to reply.
“Yes!”
Midoriya lit up, scooting closer so their thighs pressed together wow Midoriya had really nice thighs and flipping through the full pages until familiar purple waves and tired eyes stared tiredly back at him.
Shinsou Hitoshi: Future Pro Hero , proclaimed the title.
He blinked. Swallowed hard.
Shinsou-kun’s quirk Brainwashing is a People Affecting Conditional quirk. It is a call and response for a sentient subject*. There is likely a secondary radius-based empathy component to his quirk in order to help his quirk activation criteria be met.** He will become an Underground hero, specialising in one-on-one takedowns and potentially interrogations***, in conjunction with Twilight heroes.
His fighting style focuses on speed and dexterity which favour short fights. The ability to calm victims and halt combat will make him an exceptionally effective Underground hero, no matter whether he decides to focus on rescue, reconnaissance, or combat.
It would be favourable for him to learn Eraserhead’s capture weapon for an equaliser with mid and long-range fighters due to the lack of common knowledge about it that traditional weapons would have. It would also be ideal to come up with a false condition for his quirk to activate in order to maximise effectiveness.
*Would the quirk work on an animal? Does the intelligence of the animal matter (ex: Nedzu? Dolphins? Dogs or cats?) If an animal is controlled, can Shinsou still take control? If yes, would it be of the animal or the person controlling the animal? — potential test with Kouda)
**People-affecting quirks are often seen to have a degree of secondary empathy in order to help achieve the relationship needed to use the quirk (see: Midnight’s ability to correctly identify a person’s gender identity and sexuality during battles regardless of external appearance in order to target which villains she should use her quirk on and which she should subdue with physical combat — more information in her entry)***Can answers be compelled? Higher functions such as calculations cannot (see Training Notebook for more), but can simple knowledge? Does Shinsou-kun need to know the answer, can he simply think he knows the answer, or is his knowledge base entirely unrelated? Can he invoke a false response? Can he implement subconscious suggestions? If not, quirk registry should be updated accordingly. Entry will be updated with information as learned.
Hitoshi stared.
Future Pro Hero… Shinsou-kun will become an Underground hero
“You uh,” he broke off, clearing his throat. “You really think all this?”
Midoriya blinked, tilting his head in question before realisation dawned.
“You’re going to be an amazing hero, Shinsou-kun.” Then he grinned shyly. “I do want to check on those questions, though. They’ve been on my mind for a while, but I wanted to get you into shape to be able to keep up with the class before we really worked on your quirk.”
Hitoshi let out a barking laugh, unable to stop himself as the tension split clean down the middle.
“I, uh, think we should call it for today, but when are you free for next session?”
Midoriya hummed thoughtfully, tipping his head back to scrunch his nose at the ceiling of the gym. “Probably Thursday? We have an English test tomorrow, and a hero ethics essay due Wednesday that I’ve been putting off. Does that work for you?”
Hitoshi ran through his schedule quickly. He had training with Aizawa-sensei tomorrow, and the same test, then an alternate version of the hero ethics assignment to turn in to Aizawa-sensei on Wednesday. He was almost done with the ethics assignment, but he’d been putting off revising for English all weekend.
“Yeah, that works. Do you want to book the gym or should I?”
“I’ll do it.We’ll be in the quirk training room for strength quirks, but we will need Aizawa-sensei for that one, so um, if you don’t mind…?”
Midoriya cast him an apologetic yet hopeful glance. Hitoshi hated that he felt he had to ask, both that Hitoshi would say no and send him off to a teacher he was so clearly afraid of and that Aizawa-sensei had failed to earn Midoriya’s trust.
“Yeah,” he said, swallowing the barbs that sat under his tongue. They wouldn’t help here. “I’ll ask him on the way back to the dorms.
Then he handed The Notebook back like it was precious — because it was. Was to Midoriya, of course, but was to him now too, kind words scrawled out with objective reasoning behind them, making it all the more believable — and leaned over to snag the edge of his bag with his fingertips, dragging it closer without pulling away from the place where his thigh was flush against Midoriya’s before they trudged to the entrance, Hitoshi’s muscles protesting wildly.
It was quiet while they changed their shoes at the door to the gym, sweaty clothes clinging to their backs before they set off toward the dorms, setting sun glaring at them from the horizon.
Midoriya had trusted him today, both with The Notebook and with his injuries, and Hitoshi would keep that, even if he was sure that Midoriya wouldn't like the way he was planning to handle it. The no duty rule was bullshit, and looking at the careful way his friend carried himself to avoid reopening his injuries, he knew that Midoriya would never see how wrong it was unless someone changed it for him. But that was fine. That was what friend were for.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13rL-Y_0RKB9RvbZda_cBIXYPG6FNMsdu/view?usp=sharing
(in case the link in the end notes doesn't work)