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Questions were a part of the job.
Questions had to be asked, answered, pondered, etc. He would ask questions and students would answer. His students would ask questions and he would clarify to the best of his abilities.
Questions were a main part of being a teacher, however, some questions are left with no direct answer, and one just needs to wait for pieces to fall into place. There were several things that Aizawa wondered about, things that came up at the beginning of the school year and are seemingly finding their answer today.
Aizawa had given his class a simple assignment. It was not very big and would act as a filler between the current chapter and the next. Class 1-A had to look into an event that personally inspired them to do good. Burnout was common amongst the hero community, and looking for a reason to keep going was essential in helping heroes find motivation.
The students had to present in front of the class. Iida went first. Unsurprisingly he talked in great length about some of the heroic things he had witnessed his brother had done. Kaminari went next. He went into detail on how he discovered that he could charge phones, when a friend’s phone died, and she needed to call her parents. Soon everyone had gone except Midoriya.
Midoriya was a curious student, in the sense that he was quite unlike any student Aizawa had before. Midoriya was almost expelled on the first day of school, and Aizawa would have gone ahead with the expulsion if it weren't for Midoriya’s intelligence and unearthly determination. Still, Midoriya was a huge question mark in the eyes of Aizawa.
The student jumped from his seat and walked nervously while fiddling with his papers as he made his way to the front of the class. Aizawa mostly expected to hear him talk about AllMight. The kid was not quiet when talking about his biggest fixation. Midoryia cleared his throat and began to present his assignment.
“Um… I had always wanted to be a hero ever since I could remember. This event did not encourage me to be a hero, but it encouraged me to take my first steps to become one… my analysis notebooks”.
This grabbed Aizawa’s attention. Midoriya’s hero analysis was well known to the students and faculty of UA. Midoriya was smart and strategic. It showed in how he handled the USJ incident, and how far he made it into the sports festival. He still had a long way to go, more experience and to hone in his reckless and downright self-sacrificial tendencies, but he was leagues farther than most hero students, especially when it came down to analysis. Admittedly Aizawa was curious about why Midoriya grasped on to analysis. Most people, especially those with strong quirks focused on the physical part of hero work. Midoriya’s fascination was not unheard of, but it was uncommon.
Aizawa continued to listen, albeit more closely.
“I guess I should start with the fact that my notebooks were first started to find someone. A pro-hero saved my mom and I during an armed robbery at the grocery store. I was about four years old a the time. Mom needed some ingredients for dinner. I remember being excited because she was going to be making my favorite Katsudon. The store was empty. We were the only people in the store other than one employee who was stationed at the checkout. My mom grabbed what we needed and we headed over to pay for our things. All of a sudden the cashier screamed, and my mom dropped everything she was holding. I looked up to where they were both looking and saw a gun pointed at us”.
Midoriya paused. Aizawa took this time to look around at the rest of the class 1-A. Everyone was fully engaged in what Midoriya was saying. Even Bakugo was hanging on his every word like this was the first time he was hearing this story.
“With shaggy hair and an unkept beard, stained clothes, and a pungent smell of alcohol and cigarettes, the man was incredibly ragged and seemed to be unstable. He looked around the store before locking eyes with me. He quickly lounged at me at grabbed my arm, pulling me close against his body and holding the gun to my head. He was yelling and I could tell my mom was screaming, but I could not make out a single word they were saying. The only thing I could hear was the sound of blood rushing in my ears. Then a blur rushed in from nowhere. Before I could even comprehend what was going on I was back in my mother's arms and the robber was apprehended.
That blur was a pro-hero.
After the police came, the hero came over to my mother and I and asked if we were okay. My mom cried while thanking him. I was still in shock so all I ended up doing was asking for a picture…”
Midoriya chuckled to himself a little. His classmates smiled a little. It seemed to Aizawa that Problem Child had always been a hero fanatic.
“The hero was taken back, but surprisingly he obliged. He never gave me his name though. My notebooks started out analyzing every hero in hope of finding him. They were written in crayon originally. I brought some of them if any of you are interested um… so… anyways, I figured out soon enough that analysis is important for hero work, and if I went to help people like that pro-hero I needed to be good at it, so then my analysis was about becoming a better hero. uh anyway, that's the end of my story”.
Midoryia blushed as he scratched the back of his neck. The rest of the class only stared for a brief moment before bursting with loud excitement.
“Enough,” Aizawa stated. He stared at his class until they stopped talking and then said, “If anyone has any questions please speak one by one”.
Kirishima was the one who spoke next. “Dude that story was so manly! What happened to the bad guy?”
“Oh! Um… there was a news article that came out later that said he was charged and went to prison, for any specific things related to him I’m not sure”.
Momo raised her hand. Midoriya looked her way had she spoke, “I wanted to ask if you ever found the pro-hero you were searching for all this time?”
“Yes I did. It took a very long time. I finally figured it out when I was in middle school. The hero was an underground hero, so not a lot of information was known about them”.
“Who was it? I need to know!” yelled Mina.
As this last question filled the air, the bell rang.
“All right class is over” started Aizawa. Mina pouted, but Aizawa continued, “I will see you all tomorrow. Your homework for tonight is to read through chapters ten to twelve in your textbooks”.
Aizawa sat at his desk and watched as the students of class 1-A packed up their belongings and shuffled out the door. Soon everyone left… or… no… wait… one student was still in the room. He looked over at Midoriya who looked like he was trying to gather enough courage to talk to him.
“Come on Problem Child I don’t have all day”.
Midoriya jumped and immediately became flustered before making his way to his teacher. He was holding something in his hand. He lifted it to show him.
One thing that always bothered Aizawa was the fact that Midoriya recognized him on the first day of school. He was an underground hero. No one recognized him. People only really know him now that the League of Villains has attacked the school so many times, and the many statements he has made to the press after. Of course, Midoriya was a hero fanatic, and that could explain it, but that never really felt right. There was something about Midoriya that Aizawa could not quite put his finger on.
Gazing at the photo, everything became clear.
Eraserhead was still new at being a pro-hero, just graduating from UA a few years before. It was a still night. Not much going on in terms of activity. Eraserhead let out a long sigh. Looking at the time he noticed that he only had a few minutes left of his patrol shift. He decided to walk one more time around before switching off to the next person on duty.
Eraserhead was walking when he heard a scream cut through the once-silent street. He ran in the direction of the sound. Coming up to a small grocery store, Eraserhead saw a man dressed in black reach and grab a small child and pull a gun to their head. Without a second to lose, Eraserhead drew his capture weapon and rushed in the doors. He threw the fabric over the man, covering his eyes and looping around the arm that held the gun. Eraserhead pulled back, knocking the criminal over towards him, and snatched the gun from their hand before shifty tied them up with his scarf.
Eraserhead just finished tying up the man when the police arrived, the cashier called them when he was apprehending the criminal, and left the rest of the arrest to them. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his own heart.
“That was close,” he thought to himself. Thinking of the child who could have been killed, he looked around and found the the find frozen with his mother holding him for dear life, crying. It was clear that the kid was still in shock. Eraserhead made his way over to the pair and kneeled in front of them.
“Are you two okay?”
The mother, who had green hair, and a pink cardigan, continued to cry while thanking him profusely. “Thank you! Thank you! You saved my son! Thank you!”
Nodding, Eraserhead turned to the child and asked him if they were alright. It took the child a minute to fully register that someone was talking to him. The child was no longer frozen and a light returned to their eyes as they looked around them and then at the hero in front of them. Then the weirdest thing happened.
“Can I have a picture of you Mr. Hero?”
Eraserhead was so taken aback by this seemingly out of nowhere question that he had said yes. He was an underground hero and a relatively new one at that. People did not ask him for photos, especially children who just came out of shock, but the kid’s face, full of tears and tiny little freckles, he just couldn’t say no.
So a picture was taken with the mother’s phone. The mother smiled while taking the photo, relief in her face.
The photo, with pro-hero Eraserhead kneeling down with a kid with wild green curls, freckles, and the same bright smile standing next to him, looked worn but well taken care of.
Aizawa looked up when Midoriya started to speak.
“It took a bit of time to find you. When I did I could not really find too much about you. It was surprising to find out that my homeroom teacher was the pro-hero I was searching for. The one that saved my life.”
Midoriya met Aizawa’s look with a determined gaze and a smile. “You inspired me to take the first steps in becoming a hero and you continue to inspire me every day in class Mr. Aizawa. Thank you for saving me and being my teacher.”
Aizawa huffed and the corners of his mouth turned upward slightly. “No problem kid, but I was just doing my job”. Aizawa ruffled Midoriya’s hair.
“To be honest, that moment helped me to stay motivated to keep doing my job. You and all your classmates inspire me every day. I can’t wait to see what pro-hero you will become.”
Midoriya left the class with a huge grin on his face. Aizawa watched him go before gathering his belongings and heading toward the teacher’s lounge. He had revisited that memory many times throughout the years. Back then he always wondered if he was cut out to be a hero, but that kid had helped him be confident in saying yes.
Midoriya was a student who left Aizawa with the most amount of questions he’s ever had as a teacher, but he is also finding that Midoriya has also helped him answer them. He never thought he would see that kid again, but he is more than happy that he has.
They both inspired each other to keep doing good.
Questions are a huge part of being a teacher. Not all questions have a direct answer. Aizawa learned that sometimes an answer is more than worth the wait.