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There were many perks to having a hero parent. Oh, of course, there were the disadvantages, too: unpredictable working times, tons of missed events and holidays, the frequent injuries they came home with, the half-boarding private school…
On the other hand, Hitoshi was barely fifteen and already in possession of a provisional hero license.
It came in handy, occasionally.
Hitoshi’s future was pretty set in stone, at that point. He’d apply to the hero schools, of course, and he would be accepted into most of not all; His academic record would make sure of that.
He’d attend one of them -- or not, depending on if the HPSC wanted him to go through personalized training -- and then he’d debut as a hero shortly after graduation.
Then, all that’ll be left to do is climb the charts, settle comfortably somewhere in the top twenty -- top ten if he got lucky -- and spend the next twenty years or so saving lives and being a great hero.
Voila, the recipe for success.
As such, he didn’t think much of it when the HPSC summoned him, sending out the message through his mom the day before he was set to attend Ketsubutsu.
“Seems like I’m going to go the private route again,” he even said, grinning up at his mother.
She didn’t seem amused. Then again, she never did.
“Don’t fuck it up,” she warned him, bee-lining straight for the bathroom, still wearing her hero uniform. That meant a bad day, Hitoshi thought, the smirk sliding off. On good days, she would shower before leaving the Commission's headquarters. “Your father and I put way too much effort and money into your education.”
“Yes, mother,” he nodded, waiting for her to disappear before fistbumping the air.
Fucking up? He was nailing this!
***
So maybe he was not nailing it.
Hitoshi didn’t really care about UA, not with how much focus they put on “strong quirks” (not to even mention the televised tournaments), but he knew that they famously started their school year a day earlier than all the other schools. As such, Hitoshi felt pretty justified in his assumption that HSPC wanted him to go private when they summoned him at the last minute.
He hadn’t been expecting to be given a mission.
A special mission, which landed him a spot in UA’s General Education class (general education! Who did they thought he was?) and a terse instruction to find any potential information leaks.
Hitoshi wasn’t sure why the Commission was so sure there was an information leak, but he wasn’t going to question it.
***
The night of the USJ, his mother wasn’t happy.
“This is exactly what you were supposed to prevent!” She yelled, as if he was an experienced hero who trained in espionage. “What have we been paying for, all those years? Your school hasn’t been cheap!”
It also taught Hitoshi about the correct cutlery to use when eating a lobster. Not exactly a useful skill in his current position.
The house fell quiet when his mother left for her patrol, the silence ringing in his ears.
***
The Commission didn’t care if he won the Sports Festival, as long as he still gave them the information on how the other students acted behind the scenes.
His mother, however, expected him to be the best.
“You’re a disgrace,” she hissed into his face right after his match against Midoriya, having been one of the heroes able to watch from the stands. “Millions of yen, wasted on your useless ass. You could have used your win to transfer into the hero class, you know that? You blew it now, congratulations!”
She left in a huff. Hitoshi had no doubts she would not be returning to the stands.
All he wanted was to curl down somewhere and cry in peace, but he couldn’t do it in public. He barely made it two steps before getting stopped again.
“Shinsou Hitoshi,” a voice called. Mentally groaning, Hitoshi took a deep breath, turning around to face whoever had a complaint against him.
It was Eraserhead.
Eraserhead was talking to him.
“Y-yes? Sir?”
“You rely on your quirk too much,” the hero said, the words like knives plunging into his chest. “Your fighting skills are essentially non-existent. You’re not going to become a hero like that.”
Hitoshi clenched his jaw. “I know that,” he hissed. Of course he knew that, but no martial art was offered at his middle school, and he knew better than to try and figure it out alone.
(He tried asking his mom once. She took him to the mats for three hours, and declared him a lost cause afterwards.
“I’m paying your teachers to deal with this,” she said.
Hitoshi didn’t ask again.)
Don’t meet your heroes they say, and he never understood it before, but-
Eraserhead looked at him, considering.
“Come to Gym Gamma tomorrow after school,” he said, and turned around to leave.
“What?”
“You can start getting up to speed,” the hero waved his hand. “Less work for me when you join the class.”
….Hitoshi really needed a place to cry in, pronto.
***
The training with Eraserhead was grueling. Hitoshi was covered in bruises, he felt pain in muscles he didn’t even know existed and he was even more tired than usual.
It was also the best time of Hitoshi’s life.
The man was harsh and never pulled his punches (well, the metaphorical ones; Hitoshi was pretty sure he was pulling the literal punches, or he’d have spent half the lessons unconscious) but it was… Encouraging, somehow?
It motivated him to train and study better than any of his mother’s threats ever did.
***
His new class offered him a very peculiar welcome, if Hitoshi could even call it that.
“Are you a pervert?” A girl asked the second he stepped foot in the room.
Hitoshi blinked. “No?”
“Opinion on this?” Another person asked, pushing an open porn magazine into his face.
Where did they even get that from?!
“Ew, no,” Hitoshi slapped it away. “What is wrong with you all?”
There was a tangible sigh of relief cursing throughout the classroom.
“I told you he was nice,” Midoriya said quietly. Hitoshi stared at him in shock, though it didn’t really show on his face. That’s a rather ringing endorsement from the boy who only interacted with him once, and Hitoshi had Brainwashed him for most of that time.
“We had to make sure Aizawa-sensei didn’t replace the purple pervert with another purple pervert,” the first girl said, blush on her cheeks as she smiled sunnily. That was the gravity girl who almost beat up the explosions guy, wasn’t it?
…Hitoshi discreetly leaned away.
Then the actual lesson started, and Hitoshi had come to realize that the introduction was a fair representation of the chaos that was the daily life of 1-A.
And also that Eraserhead -- Aizawa-sensei -- had been tuning down his own brand of weird when training with Hitoshi.
***
He almost forgot about the mission. Hitoshi was still sending in the reports, of course, but there was never anything new to report. He even suggested somebody using a spying quirk from the outside, which seemed to funnel the attention away from him.
For now, Hitoshi could focus on his studies.
***
The Commission was furious about the fiasco with the summer camp, but they couldn’t blame Hitoshi; the only ones who knew where it was supposed to happen were pro-heroes. Those were a bit out of his jurisdiction.
At least, Hitoshi thought they were. However, when UA implemented the dorms system and Aizawa-sensei himself came to ask for Hitoshi -- and all of his classmates, and all of the 1-B kids, too, and basically every student ever, he wasn’t special -- to live in the same building as him at the rest of the teachers…
The Commission decided Hitoshi could spy on all of them, too.
It was fine.
***
Aizawa-sensei was really concerned with Hitoshi’s sleeping schedule. And his diet. Hitoshi’s attempts at reassuring him (“That’s what I’m used to eating!”, “But this is already more sleep than I got at home?” “Why would I cook, that’s a waste of time, instant noodles were invented for a reason”) the man only seemed more worried.
Like he had any room to talk, honestly.
The hero spent a lot of time talking with Hitoshi in the common room at the weirdest hours of the night.
The Commission sent Hitoshi a commendation. Apparently, Aizawa-sensei was looking into his parents, trying to see if there was anything wrong back at home. Whatever Hitoshi was doing, he was to keep doing it.
Hitoshi would have been touched at the concern if it didn’t mean Aizawa-sensei was setting himself up for inviting a spy into his house.
Well, even more of a spy than he already had.
***
When Aizawa-sensei gave him the big speech about how he would always be there to support Hitoshi no matter what, and he’d help him with anything, Hitoshi could do nothing but cry.
Aizawa-sensei seemed to have been expecting that.
***
He offered Hitoshi to stay at his apartment during the break, with Mic-sensei and all their cats. Something about a temporary guardianship, considering his parents were out of the country on a mission.
Mission the Commission specifically scheduled to fall on the break.
Hitoshi knew what was expected of him.
As much as he wanted it to be real, as much as he wanted to reject the offer to protect Aizawa-sensei… He accepted.
***
The commission was overjoyed. The application was, of course, fast-tracked.
***
Hitoshi’s room was much smaller than the one he had back home, and it was obviously a repurposed guest room.
But it felt homier than anything did. Before, the closest he got to this feeling was the room back at the dorms.
***
The break only lasted a couple of weeks, but it was still long enough to fall into a sort of schedule with his new guardians.
They seemed to have quite a lot of free time, now that the school wasn’t taking up a large chunk of their days. Hitoshi would spend hours playing with the cats or doing his homework, or helping Mic-sensei grade the english tests or pestering Aizawa-sensei with questions the hero would always answer…
But mostly, Hitoshi spent his time trying not to think about the mission.
***
It worked, for a while. He kept sending the same reports back; Nothing happened, nothing suspicious to report, only answering the questions they asked him directly and which could be double-checked from the outside.
Life, for a while, was good.
Hitoshi could almost get used to having a decent pair of parent figures in his life.
***
Then, the day before the next school break, he found out Aoyama was the traitor.
***
He hadn’t sent the report in. Hitoshi… Didn’t have the time. Yes. He needed to pack, and everything…
Who was he kidding? Hitoshi had no idea what to do.
On one hand, he had to report this. Not only was this the only reason for his presence at the UA, leaving it unreported meant putting his classmates in danger!
On the other hand… If Hitoshi told the Commission he found the traitor, they would pull him back.
Pull him away from everyone.
***
Aizawa noticed something was wrong. Of course he did.
“You can tell us anything,” he offered at lunch. Hitoshi didn’t respond, but the man still made himself available in the sitting room, grading the tests. An activity he had outright announced as “the most interruptible of his chores” in a past instance.
Hitoshi tried to focus on his textbook.
Then there was cooking, and dinner, and tidying up afterwards and-
Aizawa put his hand on Hitoshi’s shoulder as he was finishing up drying the dishes.
“Something’s eating at you,” he said, his dark eyes intense as he held Hitoshi’s gaze. “I worry about you.”
Hitoshi couldn’t stand it, tears welling up in his eyes, hands shaking.
He dropped the plate.
Aizawa barely glanced down before refocusing on Hitoshi, his expression concerned.
Pulling back, Hitoshi ran back to his room. If he had stepped on any pieces of the ceramic, he didn’t notice.
He pulled the mattress up, threw the bags off from the top of the wardrobe, gathering up everything the Commission had given him, everything he could easily access.
Arms full of incriminating technology and evidence, he went back to the kitchen. The ceramic was already gone from the floor, Aizawa and Yamada talking quietly, turning back when they heard Hitoshi come in.
Hitoshi dropped everything on the table.
There was no way the two heroes didn’t recognize it as coming from the Hero Public Safety Commission.
“Aoyama is the traitor,” Hitoshi added, the final nail in the coffin. “I was supposed to go to Ketsubutsu. This was… This was a mission. I- It was all…”
Yamada was the first one to move, stepping towards Hitoshi. He flinched, eyes closing and shoulders hunching.
But no hit came. Instead, arms wrapped around him, pressing him into the leather of his jacket gently.
Hitoshi choked, refusing to cry, even as gentle hands threaded through his hands.
“They send you in with those?” Aizawa asked, the tone of his voice making it clear what he thought of Hitoshi’s gadgets. “How much training have they given you? In espionage, because I know you didn’t have a single martial arts class before the Sports Festival, you can’t fake incompetence that well.”
Pushing himself away from Yamada -- who would not let him go -- Hitoshi craned his neck to look at Aizawa.
“Why would I need training?” He asked. “I was supposed to be just a kid in high school. Just… With some tools.”
He could see the two of them exchanging a glance.
“Group hug first,” Yamada said firmly. “You can sicc Nezu on the HSPC later.”
Hitoshi blinked in confusion as Aizawa dropped the tech he was holding, approaching them and joining the embrace.
“I- What’s happening?” He asked, lost.
“We’ll handle this, Hitoshi,” Aizawa said, his arm pressing into the back of Hitoshi’s neck, the other sneaking behind Yamada’s back. “You don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“But… But I lied to you!”
“You’re just a teenager who was mistreated by the Commission,” Yamada said. “That being said, if you want to reverse the guardianship transfer, we’ll do that.”
Hitoshi could hear he was on the verge of crying and it was making him feel bad.
“But, Hitoshi,” Aizawa added dryly. “You’re not that good of an actor.”
“Well, then,” Hitoshi said with false confidence, trying to relax into the hug. “If you insist. No take-backs!”