Work Text:
The principal walked the length of the table waiting for the last of his staff, predictably All Might to join them. With suspicions of a traitor getting worse, they needed to prepare to have suspects and needed to be able to handle them. And with kids from all sorts of backgrounds, one could easily be forced to play traitor. So Nezu had come up with a plan to make sure everyone knew what to do if they had a suspect. Detective Tsukauchi was even visiting to go over the plan, as he had volunteered when asked to help.
"So now that we're all here, we will be going over how we will be handling suspects, in our suspicions of there being a traitor," Nezu starts sitting down at the head of the table.
"Shouldn't we be comin' to you?" Snipe asked crossing his arms.
"While that's a good first step, the reporters on the first day showed how under prepared we are to deal with internal issues, so we will be running a drill for the staff," Nezu explains earning a couple raised eyebrows from his staff.
"So is one of us going to pretend to be the traitor or something?" Mic asked trying to figure out what his boss had in store.
"No, for starters, considering the risk it would be to try recruiting an established hero I doubt the League would have risked it. They would still want to be as close as possible to All Might, their target, so we can assume the traitor is in the hero course, and most likely a first year with the group both being new, and wanting as many chances as possible," I explain to them.
"Not to mention a 2nd or 3rd year would have higher risks of getting caught early on, if they were recruited before UA, or telling on them after," Aizawa adds.
"Exactly, it's also most likely someone in your class, they have been the most targeted. Hence, we'll be using a student from your class for the drill,"
That certainly gets a reaction as the group started throwing questions at me.
"We don't know the traitor's reasons, they could be getting tricked, threatened, or exploited, so we need to do any investigations with care. Or worse, traumatize a kid who isn't even doing anything. So we need to have a plan on how to investigate suspicions without letting them know or traumatizing them,"
"Which one of my brats are we using?" Aizawa asks, muttering about getting a headache.
"Midoriya Izuku,"
"Nezu, is it really necessary to bring Young Midoriya into this?..." All Might asks with an nervous chuckle. Midnight raises an eyebrow and she's hardly the only one to find All Might's concern interesting.
"Technically no, but I can think of no better candidate. Midoriya is a bright young mind but and I do apologize for outing this, he is your personal student. This means he already knows a lot of stuff he can't share, will know about things his classmates won't, and end up involved with a lot of classified information. Thus he is a perfect example of why this needs to be treated with care, as he could very easily be mistaken as a suspect. He also got his quirk abnormally late, which led to certain issues, that I will deal with later, so he is very understanding even when he shouldn't be, regardless if he finds out, we can explain the situation and he'll most likely just be happy he helped. Outside of being All Might's protege there's only one other thing that could be considered suspicious, I've already looked into it, if there is anything the rest of you have concerns about, bring it to All Might or myself, and we'll look into it if we don't already know,"
All Might looks like he's trying to hide in his chair as Eraserhead stares him down. "Would you happen to know why he's breaking his bones every time he uses his quirk?" Already sensing that All Might was responsible for the kid's reckless use.
"He… got his quirk abnormally late…?" All Might answers though it sounds more like a question.
"Define 'abnormally late' " Aizawa demanded.
"Try the entrance exams…."
"Excuse me? You want to repeat that?"
"Nezu you said it was put in his file?" The hero asked feeling the murderous energy coming off of the younger.
"It is, Aizawa has a habit of not reading them until a few weeks in and it slipped my mind," Nezu stated, while none of his staff or the detective believed that it slipped his mind.
"Those things are filled with bias and I have requested that disabilities, trauma triggers, and medical issues be sent to me via email. I almost expelled the kid for goodness sake, you told me about Aoyama's stomach issues, and one of the support kids diabetes, how did this get missed?"
"Technically his late manifesting isn't a disability, medical issue, or trauma trigger. And while I'm certain he has triggers, he has none listed, most triggers are only ever recorded from villain attacks and even then they are extremely under-documented," Nezu defends before getting back on topic. "There is only one thing that wasn't explained, I have looked into, and have concluded that it's just an impressive oddity. However, while I am more convinced by his innocence, the real traitor might be using him to gather information about both his classmates and heroes quirks, he is able to create professional level analysis with ease, and both thinks they are incredibly basic, and is very open, not to mention eager to share, to anyone who is willing to listen,"
"So what's the plan, because I know you didn't just call me out here to discuss it?" Tsukauchi asks.
"This Friday, you will be coming back here, the story will be that you were reviewing the USJ footage with the staff. Toshinori will invite Midoriya to talk and have lunch in the staff room, Aizawa will be grading papers in the corner, should anything go wrong. Tsukauchi will enter the staff room to grab something, and Toshinori will invite him over, mentioning Midoriya's analysis books and that you were interested in hearing about it. Your goals will be to find out how he does his analysis, who all he knowingly shares with, if any of them have ever gone missing, his thoughts on the USJ attack, and anything you wish to add. Cameras will be on so that the rest of my staff can review the procedure,"
—
“Young Midoriya, think you could join me for lunch?” All Might asks, getting the attention, of Midoriya and his friends.
Midoriya blinked before quickly agreeing, saying goodbye to his friends and going off with his mentor. “Is there anything you needed to tell me, did I do something wrong?” he asked once that they were out of earshot.
“No, you’ve been doing great, my friend is working with Nezu today, and if there’s time, I was wondering if you’d be willing to show them your notebook. I mentioned them to him, and he said they sounded impressive,” All Might told Midoriya the predetermined lie, be it a bit awkwardly, but based on the light in Midoriya’s eyes, he either didn’t notice or paid no mind to it.
Entering the staff room, Eraserhead was already there grading papers, on the other side of the room, but Midoriya would instantly be in sight should anything went wrong.
“Is it us alright for me to be here?” he asked glancing to Aizawa.
“It’s alright, we should just keep it down to be respectful,” All Might assures him as they sit down.
Seven minutes the detective came in, to collect his jacket, All Might calling him over to get a look at the notebooks. Midoriya blushing slightly in embarrassment handed over the current notebook, 14.
“So you’ve written 14 whole notebooks on quirks?”
“Yeah, I started when I was really little, even before I was, mis diagnosed, I still have them, but it was only really my mom, dad, Kacchan, and his parents. Outside of my dad, I’ve redone them a few times,” the only lie being the mis, in misdiagnosed.
“Really? How come you haven’t redone your dad, assuming your comfortable sharing,” Tsukauchi asked, tacking on the ending.
“Oh, he works overseas, he only comes back for about a week every year, but we email each other a bit,”
“Well I’m sorry to hear he can’t be around more. You mentioned a Kacchan, that’s Young Bakugo right? Did he used to help with them,”
Izuku nods “Up until we were about seven and he kept hearing the adults call it creepy,”
“Creepy, why would they think that?” All Might genuinely asked
He shrugged “I never followed anyone home or anything, but I guess I comb through footage, and pay closer attention than most. I don’t get what the fuss is, it’s not like they’re anything special,” Tsukauchi paused hearing that, no lying, Izuku genuinely didn’t see how impressive his notes were.
“Most people don’t like feeling watched, I would just make sure I’m not sharing other people’s entries without their permission in the future,”
“Really? I don’t know who I would share it with, I only really get to talk about it with my mom, and most of the time she isn’t really paying attention,”
“Well, UA has a wide variety of students, and your notes are impressive, maybe you could try asking them when you take notes, make them part of the process,”
“You really think so?”
Tsukauchi nodded.
“Well it shouldn’t be too hard to ask my classmates, but I won’t be able to do it with most pros,”
“Oh yeah, book 13 was all about heroes right?” Yagi asks putting them back on track.
“Most of them are, but with me being here at UA I thought it might help me make friends with my classmates…”
“And you still have all of these notebooks?”
Izuku nodded “I’m only bringing my current one to school, they mean a lot to me and I don’t want to misplace them,”
“Have you misplaced any before?”
“No, but sometimes the other kids… they’d like to get rough with them, once or twice they played keep away with them… cause they thought they were creepy and that they were doing a good thing…”
Well that answered the mock traitor questions, but opened a lot more about the boy’s previous schools.
The detective pretended to check the time, saying he had to go and told Midoriya he was impressed by his notes once more before getting up. Midoriya Izuku had been cleared of all ‘suspisions’ of being the traitor, with ever noticing he was being investigated and they had avoided directly or indirectly harming the boy. Nezu would give him a small amount of extra credit at the end of the year for helping the staff. And now the staff could go over the drill if they had any suspicions.