Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Anyone caught your eye so far, Shota?” Pro Hero Midnight, better known to him as Kayama Nemuri, fellow teacher, and life-long friend annoyance, asked from where she’d draped herself all over the arm of her chair. How she managed to look so languid and comfortable in that position was a mystery he’d accepted he was probably never going to solve, given that they were all sitting in the same unforgiving, plastic chairs.

Save for Present Mic, who was down in the testing site with the examinees, the whole of the staff of UA were assembled in their viewing room, Nedzu at the helm. Every teacher was responsible for tracking the progress of and grading several of the UA hopefuls in each iteration of the exam, aided by Power-loader’s camera-drones.

Undoubtedly, Nedzu would go back over the footage for every candidate, after preliminary grading was done, just the thought of which gave Aizawa sympathetic eyestrain. Every year there were thousands of applicants just for the hero course, alone, even disregarding the recommendation students’ separate exams, but Nedzu took no chances with the future graduates of his school.

For the most part, Aizawa saw what he had come to expect year after year: kids with strong quirks taking robots apart messily and everyone else ducking for cover. Sometimes there’d be one with a more complicated quirk who managed to persevere with some clever applications of their quirk. Sometimes, there’d even be an applicant with some obvious martial arts training, or one who had enough situational awareness to realise they weren’t the only person around and manage to scrape some rescue points, usually by pulling another examinee out of the way of one of their more reckless peers.

That last one had actually happened the year previous, a boy called Togata Mirio with a permeation quirk only managed a handful of combat points, mostly by tricking the robots to run into each other, through him, but made enough rescue points just by pulling others out of the line of fire to make it into UA, anyway. His quirk control was currently abysmal, but if he could get it under control…he’d be terrifying.

The reason rescue points were so heavily weighted in comparison to combat points was that with thousands of competitors all knowing they were competing for just thirty-eight seats, and just fifteen minutes to do it in, the pressure to self-prioritise was immense and every member of the staff were aware. In that timeframe, just slowing down enough to shield a competitor from a flying piece of rubble would be a major demonstration of selflessness and heroic service, in other words, exactly the kind of future hero that UA was built to nurture.

All of which means that his answer to Nemuri’s impish question and wiggling eyebrows was a foregone conclusion, “Yes.”

For once, every last member of the staff were ignoring their own designated screens to watch the feed that Nedzu had gleefully thrown up on the large, central monitor where a boy with white hair, kneepads and a determined expression was single-handedly breaking the exam.

At first glance nothing much seemed unusual, his movements were fluid and he leapt at the robots without hesitation, but that could be explained away with experience in a dojo or a youthful sense of invulnerability.

Or both, probably both. Teenagers.

His take-downs were clever and clearly thought out, using the environment in interesting ways, and he clearly had plenty of experience with parkour or possibly gymnastics with the way he was running up the sides of buildings just to come back down on-top of the larger robots but even with all of that, he was still only accumulating combat points relatively slowly, his quirk unsuited for the exam.

What was breaking the exam were the rescue points he was racking up like his life depended on it.

The examinee, in between methodically destroying the robots with eyebrow-raising efficiency, considering he was doing it quirklessly, was taking the time to drag his fellow examinees to safety, either from the bots or their peers, heal them and then point out a weakness that they might be able to use to take down more robots and gain more points.

He even pointed out to one kid with a short-range telekinesis quirk that while the robots themselves might be outside her quirk’s weight-capacity, they were made of tiny pieces that could be, perhaps, jostled from the inside if her quirk didn’t need line-of-sight.

Even setting aside the absolute bogglement of having a such a powerful healing quirk, one that was obviously either instantaneous or near enough that the difference didn’t matter, and using it on his fellow examinees (Aizawa really did not envy Nedzu having to figure out how to award those rescue points) the kid was still stopping so often to help his competitors that it was going to completely break the structure of the exam.

Unlike combat points where they were awarded per downed robot and had a maximum value of 3 per ‘bot, rescue point allocation started at 20 points per incident and that was meant for incidentals like an examinee pushing another out of the way of something. If the examinee was endangered by their heroic actions the points awarded became 40 per incident, and if they were potentially life threatening the allocation skyrocketed up to 60 per incident.

(Ridiculous in his opinion, to encourage the more reckless young fools so blatantly but that was beside the point.)

But all of that was under the assumption that any one of those, especially the more extreme variations, might only happen once per exam. This bouncy kid with an overpowered healing quirk was intervening in the 20-point range once every five seconds.

The disbelieving silence was broken when Recovery Girl spoke up suddenly,

“He’s got a bigger injury to deal with just around the next corner. I have my med-bots on stand-by just in case but I’m curious to see the limitations of that quirk.” She had a hand raised to her ear, where the small army of monitor-bots could report injuries to her.

The old healer was peering intently at the screen, and the other teachers followed her gaze, save Nedzu, who had never looked away in the first place. Recovery Girl was right, the white-haired kid flipped off a streetlight and the lizard-quirk mutation boy with a broken arm came into his view.

No hesitation, the healer broke into a dead sprint across the broken pavement, in the process further reinforcing to Aizawa the idea that the kid had some kind of parkour or free-running experience, no one else could navigate such a broken landscape that fast and not face-plant, toward his chosen patient. Vlad King had had third-years who would struggle to move at that speed across similar conditions.

Civilians probably wouldn’t have noticed it but the room full of Pro Heroes definitely clocked how the kid was keeping watch for danger as he approached, a good habit to have but certainly unusual to see in teenagers. Too many Good Samaritans tried to intervene in a situation and ended up in danger themselves, and needing to be rescued as well.

In short order, he’d arrived at the downed examinee, done a field assessment that had Recovery Girl nodding in approval and was reaching out to put a gentle hand on the broken arm.

Nedzu hurriedly had the camera zoom in and just managed to catch a slow white-blue glow shining out from under the healer’s hand. As soon as the glow started, the bone was straight and the swelling gone, as though the injury had never happened in the first place. He adjusted his grip, hauled the other examinee to his feet, pointed out a cluster of bots for him and ran on past to another cluster further away.

Nedzu let out a mania-edged cackle, tea splashing over the side of his ever-present teacup. The sound sent every battle-instinct that Aizawa had gained over his career in professional heroics into danger-mode. A brief glance around showed that everyone, save Recovery Girl, had had the same reaction.

The school Healer leaned across to Nedzu’s screen and tapped away until she found the file for the white-haired headache still galivanting around his testing area. She hummed to herself for a moment then read the file aloud for the whole room’s benefit.

“Akashi Tatsuya. Quirk: Day’s Grace, an indiscriminate healing quirk with the caveat that it will not function on wounds gained more than twenty-four hours before healing. Accomplished in the Musutafu Junior Martial Arts Tournaments of the past couple of years and an experienced free runner. Good grades, scored well on the written exam.”

Aizawa mentally matched that up to what he’d seen on the observation screens, nodding in approval to himself. This student at least would be sure to take his future in heroics seriously if he was already this prepared. But that quirk… Healing quirks were rare and treasured, especially by the heroic’s community.

Most healing quirks, already a rarer subtype of quirks than anything excepting erasure quirks, were targeted in scope of application; they usually only affected injuries or tissues of a certain type, or they only sped up natural healing, resulting long-term implications still included and unavoidable, or they countered infection or poison or a million other very specific possibilities.

Indiscriminate healing quirks were one in several million, literally. It was statistically relevant if more than one was born every decade and they had two in the building. One, just starting his heroics career and already causing migraines, and one reading out her future student’s file to the room.

Akashi Tatsuya. Future Pro Hero, healer and omnipresent headache, new UA heroics exam record holder, even disregarding how Nedzu was going to deal with including use of a healing quirk on fellow examinees into the marking criteria, the record, previously All Might’s, was his. Eraserhead felt a wide, even-toothed smile, affectionately referred to by Hizashi as the ‘Totoro-look-of-doom’, break out across his face.

This kid, he thought, watching his future student (Vlad could fight him) back-flip off walls in his haste to get to an injured examinee, has potential.

Chapter Text

As always, the mad scramble to reach endangered civilians before the Nomu do sends Izuku’s heartrate through the roof. Flinging himself and his team, shielded by Black Whip, through the sky at speeds that would shame a fighter jet, ready to save lives, to be heroes, definitely is not helping on that score.  

Sometimes his team is himself and one or more of the veteran heroes who survived Shigaraki’s opening gambit and stayed the course, that kept pushing through adversity in the vastly different world they now lived in. More often, though, it was his old classmates that ran with him outside UA’s walls.

Those veteran heroes were preciously few in number and dwindling all the time. Some were lost to the Nomu or the League, giving their lives to protect either the vulnerable or their teammates but more were lost to their own minds and hung up their capes, sometimes literally, joining the ranks of civilians needing to be protected, unable to cope.

Izuku found he couldn’t rightly blame them for that reaction, not with the world as it was, though the vestiges definitely had stronger opinions on the subject, but he also couldn’t deny that every time someone bowed out, it only put more pressure on those still fighting, who were already nearing physical breaking points.

Yaomomo was constantly emaciated, Kaminari was almost always recovering from quirk-burnout, Shoto oscillated from burns to frostbite by the day and even dear, precious, too-young-for-this Eri was constantly pushing her quirk to the brink, saving them all from otherwise mortal wounds.

There was not a single hero in the school who didn’t owe the 12-year-old their life. But even with all of the sacrifice, pain and effort that everyone was putting in, they were just barely meting out a stalemate against Shigaraki and All for One’s forces.

It had gotten to the point where there were not enough active heroes to both guard UA itself, the lone oasis on this side of Japan, and to go out and bring others to safety. It was Hitoshi who had asked whether there were any civilians who would be willing to stand guard over UA in the heroes’ stead, while they were either outside the Walls or sleeping.

Several civilians volunteered to be given training for their quirks, so they could act as UA’s rear-guard, as it were. Among them, a middle-aged man with a five-finger-activation quirk that made whatever he touched disappear, named Ino-san.

The superficial similarity to Shigaraki’s quirk had led to him being ostracised by several of the growing civilian population of UA, so he was more than happy to escape their eyes for extended periods of time and stand guard, if the heroes needed him to.

His reasoning was not an uncommon sentiment among the Guardians, either. Most of them had highly destructive or lethal quirks that were ‘too extreme’ or would be ‘unmarketable’ in the hyper-competitive, highly publicized, former heroics industry but were rather perfect in a semi-apocalypse scenario. After all, against the over powered, shuffling corpses that made up the Nomu army, extreme lethality not only didn’t have to be avoided but was the goal.

And so it was, their civilian volunteers would guard the ‘home-front’ and the heroes would continue to bring as many civilians to safety as they could. Ino-san would have happily continued to blend-in as just another UA Guardian, doing his part, being largely unremarkable, if not for this day’s events.

Today’s rescue was particularly fraught, they had received word, via Kouda’s pigeons, that there were several civilians attempting to cross the city toward UA, they’d been stealthy, they’d been smart but their luck had run out and they were being set upon by a wandering pack of Nomu.

Ino-san’s brother was rumoured to be among them. Needless to say, the heroes were pushing their bodies and quirks to their limits to reach them before it was too late.

It was too late. The remaining civilians were shuffled to safety but the elder Ino-san had been killed protecting the party.

When they told him the news, Ino felt like his head had been stuffed full of cotton. The words didn’t compute. He couldn’t have told you what his face had done in that moment but Hero Deku himself approached him, the tears he was known for making his eyes shine.

Somehow that did it. That little detail of a veritable stranger on the verge of crying in public over the death of his brother brought him back to the present. It also brought his attention to the towering rage lurking behind the grief.

This is how they thank him for stepping up when their own comrades abandon them? When he gives up sleep and free time to stand guardian over their recovering fellows and the judgmental civilians who only see his quirk and not him? They are All Might’s own students and Deku was his personal protégé, they have sworn to carry on his legacy and live up to the memory he left behind and they demonstrate this by not saving his brother?!?

Unthinking, uncaring, just numb to anything but rage and grief, he puts his hand on the hero in front of him, all five fingers down, and activates his quirk before UA’s Last Hope could do anything more than blink at him in surprise.

Ino is tackled to the floor and away from where Deku once stood but it’s too late. Just like it was too late for his brother.

Midoriya Izuku is gone.

                                    ``` ``` ```

Izuku falls through darkness for what could be a moment or an eternity, listening to the vestiges shriek in his ears, loudest of all Toshinori.

The eighth holder of their shared power sounds terrified that Izuku will be joining them too soon. Over the screaming and his own shock, he can hear the ghost of the only father that was ever worthy of the title beg of the universe not to take him, “so far before his time, my boy is barely twenty, far too young, please…”

All of a sudden, it stops. Or maybe he stops, and he blinks open his eyes, disorientated. When had he closed them?

A woman with short blue hair is crouched over him, calling “Tatsu! Tatsu, honey! Can you hear me?”

Izuku carefully sits up, and everything feels off. He reaches for One for All’s comforting strength and nothing comes, almost causing a panic attack right there on the grass, but it’s interrupted by the woman scooping him up off the floor and into her arms.

It’s shocking for a couple of reasons, chiefly that she was physically capable of just cradling him like a child, maybe she had a strength quirk? But All for One stole most of those in the early days of his reign to hand out to his Nomu and underlings, how could this woman still have hers?

He stays silent as she fusses over him, still dizzy and disoriented by everything and just generally feeling like he’s been Hitoshi’s quirk practise minion for inadvisable lengths of time. Apparently, he collapsed and worried her? Who was she? She doesn’t seem hostile at least but without Danger Sense he’s a bit hesitant to fully clear her, either.

She walks away from the little patch of grass, and it finally clicks. He’s smaller that he should be. Much smaller.

He listens. Waits. Holds in the half-panicked mutter-storm that wants to erupt and discerns that his name is Tatsuya. Apparently, she had brought her son (him?!?) out to the park to play with the other young children in their neighbourhood when one of the little boys had tripped and broken his arm.

She was calling out to him because when he went to help his friend up to go and find the adults suddenly the boy’s arm was healed. When he made skin-contact he had started screaming, clutching at his own arm (though no damage is visible when he checks it) before passing out, scaring the life out of the blue-haired woman who is apparently his mother.

The various adults seem to be taking his ‘amnesia’ as a given thing with the shock he has just had and he’s grateful because he’s honestly too confused by this whole situation to put up a convincing act.

Research when they return home tells him that they’re also in the past, which honestly should have been obvious to him already, sue him, this is bizarre, because people were outside without fear, the way they were before All Might fell.

He’s actually of an age with his own, previous, self. Midoriya Izuku 1.0 would be happily running around after a Kachan who was still a good friend, no quirk yet in sight, less than a year younger than him. They’d even be in the same year at school, which will make protecting his class much easier, since he’ll be at school at the same time as them.

Even if he hadn’t spent a not insignificant amount of time studying the intricacies of quirks in his last life, and therefore knew that chronological quirks only ever work in one direction, just as a basic rule, he gives up on returning to his first timeline (or dimension or whatever is happening here) fairly quickly for two very simple reasons.

One: the things (or people) that Ino-san used his quirk on disappeared forever. No exceptions. Even when tracking quirks were employed, whatever he used his quirk on was simply gone. And two: given that there have been no reports of Nomu falling out of the sky to wreak havoc upon the citizenry, despite him witnessing Ino-san tag multiple of the creatures with his quirk, he must assume that the place and/or time that Ino-san banishes the targets of his quirk to, are inconsistent. Even finding Ino-san in the present day and asking him to send him back will not guarantee a successful trip.

He allows himself to mourn his family friends for one night, before he forces himself to focus on the plan going forwards. He has so much fore-knowledge, could prevent so much pain and death but as much as he wants to run out the door and go rescue Tenko Shimura, or Hawks or even Shoto, if he moves now, it will decrease if not eliminate his ability to affect change later. He could save a precious handful of children from smaller hurts now or he could save the lives of millions later.

He ran what amounted to a resistance movement in the face of a very real apocalypse, he was a Pro Hero in the worst possible time to be one. He is unfortunately used to weighing the balance of two bad options and making that choice.

Callous as it may seem, agonising as it feels, everyone involved does survive until the age where he will realistically be able to help them and if he tries something now, in this tiny 4-year-old body he can barely pilot and no One for All, he could-

No One for All…

No vestiges…

No (literally) ground-breaking strength…

No manoeuvrability unmatched by anyone but the fastest hero in the country, Hawks…

All he can do is heal!

How is he going to protect them?

Cutting through the mounting panic is the expression he knows would be on Aizawa-Sensei’s face if he ever dared to ask those questions aloud in his presence.

Eraserhead had turned their whole class into some of the most capable fighters alive, with or without their quirks. He himself had no offensive power to speak of, only an ability that evened the playing field, and even then, it only worked if the quirk he was erasing was an emitter type.

In response to being told ‘cool quirk but you’ll just be a liability’, he’d turned himself into all the offensive power he’d needed, and he’d taught his students to be just as self-sufficient.

Izuku’s new quirk- well he supposed it was Tatsuya’s now- will still be helpful in heroics, just look at how vital Recovery Girl and later Eri were. Sure, he doesn't have One for All’s earth-shattering power anymore, but that just means he's going to have to get creative.

After rigorous testing back at the quirk clinic, the parameters of Tatsuya’s quirk are known: he can heal any injury, his own or others', but only if the injury had taken place within 24 hours, any longer and his quirk refused to take effect.

Also, as he had experienced with the little boy from the park’s arm, apparently he’s called Haru and they’ve known each other since diapers, in exchange for the healing he suffers the pain affecting the injured party, condensed. For example, Haru's arm had only been broken for less than a minute when Tatsuya healed him, but in the moment that he had skin-to-skin contact with Haru, Tatsuya experienced roughly sixty seconds worth of pain in one second.

The quirk doctor only realised this aspect of Tatsuya’s quirk when they had him heal a grazed knee from the previous evening and the pain sent the little body Izuku was inhabiting crashing to the floor. Hours of barely-there soreness and irritation condensed into one second of agony strong enough to steal his balance before he could assert his legendary pain-tolerance over it. 

He’d learnt from Hawks’ experience with the current Hero Commission about the dangers of too powerful quirks and so instead of downplaying his hurt as was his instinct, he had allowed himself to bawl into his mother’s knee like a real four-year-old would have after such a shock. Consequently, he’s not shuffled into training early, and he’s not made to work at any health clinics ahead of his time at UA.

He will step into the hero world, his class by his side, an unknown, a surprise. All the better to protect them, protect everyone.

They name his quirk: Day’s Grace.

``` ``` ```

But as they say: Man makes plans and God laughs.

Despite his best attempts at subtlety, Tatsuya has always been intelligent, studious and analytical, never mind that he’s already learnt everything he’s learning at school when he was a primary schooler the first time ‘round. He’s not a small child and acting like one, especially one who must convincingly age and develop and learn is a bit beyond the scope of any latent acting talent that has yet to fully manifest in him.

And yet, knowing what’s coming, he also can’t afford not to stretch every night, eat well and study anything he can think to study before just in case society collapses again. As he ages, he asks his mother to put him into parkour and gymnastics classes, martial arts, anything he can and while all the adults around him definitely seem surprised they don’t jump to the admittedly outlandish conclusion that someone else has reincarnated into the body of the child they’re watching grow up.

 His teachers and his mother notice how bored he is with his classwork, especially when they compare the enthusiasm he shows his extra-curriculars to what he manages in the classroom and discuss possibly moving him up a grade. However, they don’t want to give a ten-year-old an anxiety attack by taking him out of classes for an impromptu exam, and Tatsuya has proven himself to be an anxious perfectionist at the best of times, so they wait.

They wait for the end of the year when the whole school is in exams and have the proctors hand him end-of year papers for the grade above him. It’s all so simple to him that Tatsuya, preoccupied as he is desperately committing everything he was ever taught by quirkless fighters (Aizawa-sensei especially) to memory, more than a little terrified he’s going to forget and have to start from scratch once he’s old enough that doing strength training for his body isn’t patently ridiculous and/or actually damaging, along with everything he has to remember that he doesn’t dare write down, honestly doesn’t notice that the problems are harder than they should be.

He finds out later, during an interview with the principal, his homeroom teacher, his newhomeroom teacher and his mother, that he scored top of the class across the board (to plan, got to make a good impression on UA, after all!) but for the grade above his, which is emphatically not what he was aiming for. There is absolutely no reason that he should stay in his current grade, relearning material that he clearly already knows, and so, despite his protests he’s moved from graduating from grade 5 into 6, to grade 7: straight into the beginning of middle-school.

Just like that, his plans for the next four years go up in smoke, he’ll be separated from his class, they’ll never know him as a peer, only a Senpai…

Wait a minute, maybe that’s better…

As much as he’d come to adore Mirio-senpai and the rest of the big three, by the time they’d met 1A, the need for a mentor figure was almost gone, they’d already latched onto each other too tightly to really let anyone else in, even to help. With the benefit of hindsight, they really could have used a dependable anchor to weather the storm of their schooling with who wasn’t one of the teachers.

He doesn’t have One for All this time around, he can’t be the front-liner he was, but maybe he can be a support pillar?

Keep 1A and his first ‘self’ from burning out too soon, getting too tired, jaded and hurt to keep persevering?

Buy them enough time to grow into themselves a little more before they must shoulder the weight of society all over again?

Yeah, he can make this work. Plus Ultra!

Chapter Text

“Another year, another step down the road to insanity~” Mic half sang, as they strolled down toward their respective homerooms. The warning bell for the first day had rung and it was time to face the music, both literally and figuratively when you had the Voice hero: Present Mic, around.

As deliberately irreverent as these impromptu little ditties of Mic’s always were, Aizawa felt that there were rings of truth to them. Afterall, nothing but madness came from attempting to corral superpowered teenagers through the worst of their puberty and into adulthood. Just the thought of the chaos this year’s class of first years were already shaping up to be had him sure that his eyebags were deepening in real-time.

They split off to head down separate corridors once they reached the first years’ wing; Mic heading toward General Studies class 1C, and Aizawa toward Heroics class 1A. He whipped out his most eye-catching sleeping bag, in Present Mic’s signature garish yellow, of course, from the air vent above the door to his classroom, slid into it and made his way in, caterpillar style.

It was time to test the perceptiveness of his students.

``` ``` ```

Aizawa was underwhelmed.

He knew they were excited and no doubt nervous with this being their first day at UA, the premier hero course in the country and one of the best on the planet, and were probably feeling a little superior over having gotten in. Never mind the fact that as an underground hero a large portion of his job was being unnoticed, but there’s a very simple reason Aizawa had chosen the eye-melting-yellow sleeping bag: it’s difficult to miss.

He was also wiggling into the room in it, after having heaved the door open, both of which were movement cues that he would hope they could register and respond to.

And yet…nothing.

No, wait, one of them noticed the strange man on their classroom floor…

Of course it’s him out of all of them.

Akashi Tatsuya, newly minted record holder for the UA Entrance Exam, was staring right at him from his place seated at his desk. When the staring continues, Aizawa raised an eyebrow at his student, causing the white-haired boy to look away in what seemed to be embarrassment.

Interesting, usually the ones with quirks that powerful were too arrogant to be bashful at this age. That bodes well, even if it might also just be first-day jitters.

After about three seconds of determinedly looking anywhere but at him, Akashi glanced back and then pointedly flicked his eyes toward his still oblivious classmates. Aizawa’s brow wanted to rise once more, but he restrained the impulse and instead shook his head at his student who nodded in acceptance, agreeing to wait for Aizawa to announce his presence, personally.

He gave the oblivious teenagers another 30 seconds to stop socializing and realise that their teacher had arrived, on their own merit. He used that time to tune in to the raucous and gauge the personalities of the youths who would be in his care for the next three years.

Once again, he’s underwhelmed but honestly, that’s par for the course with teenagers: for the most part, they’re just kids with all the naiveté that brings. No one comes out of the womb embodying the perfect Heroic Ideal, and it’s Aizawa’s job to mould them into the best heroes they can be, he knew that, but some of what he was hearing had the potential to be very concerning.

Making up most of the chatter were the usual greetings and friendly overtures, with some bragging about their ranking on the entrance exam thrown into the mix. There was also some loud exclamation over the mysterious record-breaker’s identity, theorizing about what his quirk must be to have broken All Might’s record so soundly, apparently unknowing that the subject of their conversation was seated just a few desks away.

(Nedzu had giddily announced that just as how the severity of the danger corresponded to the amount of rescue points that were awarded, the severity of the injury that was healed would correspond to the points awarded as well, the categories being: small, serious, and life-threatening. Each category was worth 20, 40, and 60 points, respectively. Aizawa seriously doubted that Akashi would ever be unseated as the new record holder.)

Some of the conversations however… Two of his students were ignoring the room to flirt at each other, annoying that it happened in a classroom, but he’d survive, some were texting, headphones in and all, again, impolite but they’d learn, but what was giving him pause was the noisy conglomerate near the windows at the front of the room.

They seemed to be in the process of forming a clique around the common ideal of ‘inherently heroic’ quirks and that their own possession of quirks that they roundly agreed met the group’s approval was an indication of their superiority over other, lesser, hero students. If talking themselves up made the brats feel more confident, and talking amongst themselves was all they did, he would grudgingly let it lie and allow the real world to teach them better once internships happened, but those seven students would have to be watched for quirk discrimination and possibly bullying. Just in case.

Aizawa shed his sleeping bag behind his desk, stood up and cleared his throat as obviously as he was capable of. The texters looked up, the chatters simmered down, and the flirts were elbowed into paying attention to the world outside of themselves and each other.

Notably, the seven at the front of the room, closest to him, how did these little fools even survive the entrance exam if they’re this oblivious, didn’t even pause in their discussion of which quirk was better for catching villains: super strength or some type of durability. After a full 3 seconds of waiting for their attention, he flared his quirk and they let out shocked exclamations before realising that the whole room was waiting for them to notice that the teacher had arrived.

Aizawa didn’t give them time to react and start making noise. He just kept glaring with his quirk engaged even as he started speaking.

“Now that I have your attention,” he let the red glow fade from his eyes, “that was a truly pathetic response time. I have been in this room for several minutes already, class has started. If I had been a villain sneaking in here or if you had been out on patrol as heroes all bar one of you would be dead.”

He threw a sports uniform down onto the desk in front of him, helpfully dropped from a vent by Nedzu, always a chaotic enabler whenever the smallest opportunity arose, out of the students’ view. Time to see what the heroics industry’s fresh meat was made of.

“Time is precious, kids, let’s not waste any more. Put these on and meet me on the training field. We have a lot of work to do.”  

``` ``` ```

Thirteen minutes.

He and the Akashi kid had been waiting together on the field for thirteen minutes for the other nineteen teenagers to arrive. And still nothing. The kid beside him had joined him before two full minutes had passed!

Where were the rest of his class?

A tentative, “Maybe they’re lost, sensei?” from his lone responsible student interrupted his teeth grinding, soon enough to save him a dentist appointment. He appreciated it, his teeth were already under constant fire from his coffee addiction and really didn’t need the extra strain but surely it was a justified response to this situation.

Luckily, he was saved formulating a reply when, in dribs and drabs, the rest of his class meandered onto the field in no visible hurry. They were still chatting as they came to a halt in front of him, Akashi stepping away to join them in facing him. He noticed some of the looks thrown the healer’s way, but either the kid himself was oblivious or he had a well-developed poker face.

Looks or not, though, they were late enough starting the exercise already. He’d meant it when he’d said that time was precious, and hypocrisy was not a virtue he aspired to.

“Finally. Your response time needs work, countless civilians could have died in the fifteen minutes it took you to get down here.” Most of them looked at least a little cowed but he saw more than one of his students roll their eyes. He made a mental note of who they were and carried on.

“Here at UA, teachers are given absolute freedom to shape our students into world-class heroes. This is your starting line in achieving that. To find out exactly where that is, we’ll be having a quirk and physical assessment.”

The usual excited murmurs that that always inspired started up but quietened back down quickly enough when they saw he had more to say.

“Sawamura,” a large young man with a gorilla mutation stepped forward, “you had the highest villain point score in the exam, how far could you throw a ball in middle school?”

“Not using my quirk’s enhanced strength, my best was 62 metres, sensei.”

“Try it with your quirk,” with that, Aizawa stepped back and gesture the teenager onwards, this would hopefully set the tone for the rest of the class.

Usually, he’d have the outright highest exam scorer do this demonstration, or failing that, one of the recommended kids but this was a year for compromise it seemed. Obviously, Akashi’s quirk wouldn’t help him here, he’d only have his (not unimpressive) ingenuity to get a better score, and for once bothrecommendation students were in the same boat.

Tanaka’s quirk gave her command over high-pitched sound waves capable of shattering eardrums or even glass that could (and no doubt would) be debilitating to face in combat but was useless for a ball toss, and Asahi could create 3D optical illusions on a massive scale, which would be excellent for both villain-capture as well as calming civilians but again was no help here.

So, Sawamura and his gorilla-strength it was.

The boy wound up, tossed, and the ball went flying off out of sight. Several seconds later the reader in Aizawa’s hands blipped a confirmed 550 metres.

The class gasped and gossiped and, as always, there was one voice exclaiming ‘how cool’ it was that they would be using their quirks and ‘how fun’ this would be. As if fun had any place in an industry as unforgiving as heroics, or any place at all when lives were on the line.

Time for the curveball then.

“You think this will be fun, huh? This is not a game. I have only three years to turn all of you into heroes and each of you are going to spend every moment of that time learning how to act like it. But since you’re not capable of taking this seriously, here’s a challenge for you all: the student with the lowest overall score will be judged hopeless and expelled.”

Silence, then, from the students who did not immediately sober up and start to look determined, comes whinging, not even outrage, whinging. Honestly, every year it was always a toss-up whether he actually followed through on his ultimatum, but this year was not looking promising.

“Enough of that. The terms are simple, you want to stay: show me what you’re made of.” And so, it begins.

                                   ``` ``` ```

First was the 100m sprint. As expected, those with augmentation-type quirks had significantly higher scores than those without, who were left to depend on whatever athleticism they’d managed to build. From the looks of it, most of his class would need to make serious improvements on that score, even the students with natural advantages were mostly succeeding by virtue of their quirks, performing far below what they could be capable of.

The only standouts from that assessment were Aida who transformed into her ‘pixie’ form and flew down the track, achieving the class’s highest score and Naosugu who came in dead last as apparently being a nigh-indestructible living gargoyle did not come with great capacity for speed. That could be a cause for concern in the future, but he was already all but certain Naosugu’s plan for combat was just to tank hits, rather than trying to dodge them.

What was much more concerning was that if a student didn’t have an obvious quirk advantage, they seemed not to be pushing themselves as hard as they could. Almost giving up before they started, knowing that they couldn’t win and not bothering to try because of that. That attitude would not fly at UA, let alone out in the real world.

There were exceptions of course: Akashi, Tanaka and Asahi were each sprinting down the track, gaining impressive scores for not having a quirk advantage, and even Nobara was clearly running at her top speed, even if she was much slower than he’d like to see. But that still left a solid half the class who saw that they didn’t have ‘the right quirk for this’ and gave up before they’d started. And this was only the first assessment.

Aizawa needed coffee.

The afternoon continued in that vein, those with a quirk advantage carelessly scoring high but not as high as they could have with training or effort, and the rest of his class either straggling behind or actually deigning to push themselves as the recommendation students, Nobara, and Akashi were all doing.

Though with their quirks both being entirely non-physical Asahi and Tanaka were never top ranked in any of the tests, their natural athleticism meant that each of their cumulative scores were several ranks from the bottom of the leader board, closer than not to the middle of the pack, causing gusty sighs of relief from both of them.

Nobara was just below Tanaka in the rankings, having a much lower standard of athleticism but having used her minor telekinesis quirk to boost her score in both the grip strength, and the ball toss tests. The girl just about melted in relief when she saw her place in the rankings, still panting from the long-distance run that she had barely completed.

Akashi though, Akashi was the highest ranked of the four, number 3 overall, and for a class with an unusually high proportion of strength enhancer type quirks, that was an achievement, even as much as it was an indictment of how much room for improvement was present in the rest of his class.

After his high score in the 100m sprint, he’d scored well in the pull ups and the toe-touch, no doubt his gymnastics training at work there, placing him solidly just above the middle of the pack each time but after those events were completed, he’d started to get creative.

For the long jump into the sand pit, he’d fallen into a tumbling pattern and vaulted clear across the sand and onto to grass behind it, only scoring below Aizawa’s lone flight-capable student, Aida.

In the grip strength, instead of trying to squeeze the reader closed with his hands, he’d just placed it on the ground and stood on it with his full body weight, gaining a much higher score than he otherwise would have and edging into third place for that test.

For the ball toss, he’d unlaced one of his shoes and turned the freed laces into a makeshift slingshot and tossed the ball a whopping 220m, still far behind Sawamura’s enhanced throw but nonetheless squarely inside the territory of those whose quirks were suited for that test.

If Aizawa didn’t know any better, he’d say that Akashi had known what the test would be in advance and had planned accordingly, but Nedzu had not alerted him to any known relations of Akashi’s to have attended UA who could have told him, so he was forced to shrug it off. The final two tests, the side-steps and the long-distance run, were the only ones that Aizawa saw evidence of Akashi’s quirk in use.

The kid was obviously as fit as Aizawa could realistically expect from a teenager, at this age over-training could be more harmful than anything else, but by the last two events everyone was running out of energy and feeling muscle-burn. Which is of course exactly why he does the two endurance tests last, no better time to get results when his students are already reaching a breaking point before they’ve even started.

The signs were subtle, just a faint white-blue glow intermittently washing over Akashi’s arms and legs during the tests, but the effects were much less inconspicuous. In both the side-step and the run, Akashi outlasted the entire class.

A single student ‘won’ both stamina-based tests and could have kept going afterwards. Usually, whoever ‘won’ the first test was too exhausted to give a decent showing in the next. (Another reason they were both last to be completed and one after another.) And yet Akashi’s only real competition had been Yagami and his energy stockpile quirk but after having used it as muscle-augmentation for the whole afternoon, his stockpile was too depleted to put up much of a fight.

Before that moment, when he’d first seen the glow of Akashi’s quirk, Aizawa actually hadn’t been aware that Akashi could use it on himself, let alone that it was nuanced enough to deal with symptoms of fatigue such as lactic-acid build up and muscle-strain, and was not restricted to more overt injuries. Definitely useful, but unexpected as not even Recovery Girl could use her quirk on herself.

All that to say: while his student’s use of his quirk was well-controlled and clever, and his solutions to the tasks were creative, he had still been at a natural disadvantage against the quirks of his classmates and he hadn’t just beaten them on his own merit, but also because most of them seemed to have chosen to call Aizawa’s bluff and cruise through the entire exercise.

How fortunate then, that the last place finisher was one he’d been warned about by Nedzu. Tadashi Kazunari had a powerful electrum quirk, capable of causing blackouts and acting as a human taser against enemies, a quirk seemingly hand-crafted for the UA entrance exam, all he had to do was activate it and any electronics in a 3m radius around him would shut down.

He’d cruised through the entrance exam so much that even with his quirk advantage, he was only on the top ten leader board by virtue of a 2-point difference between him and number 11. Clearly, he’d expected the same trend to continue here, instead of completing seriously he’d been joking around on the side-lines and making comments about his fellow students that Aizawa knew Midnight would have several things to say about, likely at volume.

To be entirely fair, more than half of the class had been goofing off as well, Tadashi was hardly the lone culprit, but Tadashi had the poor luck of being the one in last place in this assessment and he had been warned of the consequences for that ahead of time.

“Tadashi, you’re expelled, go see Nedzu to sort out the admin. They rest of you, get changed and go home. Come back tomorrow prepared to take this seriously or don’t come back at all.”

Instant uproar and denials followed that, as expected, but he just turned away and waved them off, throwing a reminder over his shoulder that the teachers at UA had total freedom and that the power to dismiss students was included in that.

And so began the thinning-out of 1A.

``` ``` ```

The new class of nineteen, hidden time-traveller included, were notably less rambunctious the following homeroom. Especially after Tadashi-kun failed to materialise and the class was forced to accept that their teacher really had thrown out one of his own students, before the beginning of the first proper day of classes.

They hadn’t even survived orientation day intact as a group of twenty and only a certain white-haired healer had known to expect it.

With the benefit of foreknowledge, Tatsuya was aware that this was the year that proved just how ruthless Eraserhead could be with expulsions. Rumour amongst the upper years had had it that not one of the original Class 1A had survived to second year, though whether Aizawa-sensei had really expelled all twenty of them or they had dropped out or even if another teacher had been the one to authorise the expulsion, no one knew for sure.

All that was certain was that the reason Aizawa was free to take on their Class 1A, was that he had had no more students to guide through their second year, for one reason or another, all twenty were gone.

Of course, Tatsuya was aware that his presence in the class would change things, and he certainly had no intention of either dropping out or performing so poorly that he was expelled, but that did make him wonder who would oversee 1A next year, since Aizawa was not going to be available.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried.

As a collective, Class 1A had spent that first week after the fateful orientation day imitating door mice outside of class time and throwing their all into every class exercise. But slowly, the looming threat of expulsion began to wear off and the level of effort being put into classes dropped significantly.

Outside of lesson time, Sawamura-kun’s clique, formed on orientation day and solidified since, were causing problems within the class. With their collective belief that the best (and only) type of quirk fit for heroics was something suitably All Might themed: strength, durability and/or overwhelming offensive power, finding out that the upstart who had dared to not only beat their scores in the entrance exam to come in first but who had also beaten All Might’s record by a mile, had no offensive power at all… They were all rather offended by the situation, put it that way.

For his part, Tatsuya was largely unbothered by the hostility all but radiating from seven of his classmates. He knew his score would be a shock once people found out what his quirk was, as had happened following the quirk assessment test.

Of the other three students who had been taking it seriously, which, as an aside, he still couldn’t believe, weren’t they all here to be heroes? Anyway, only Nobara-san had been interested in talking to him afterward, apparently wanting to thank him for helping her in the entrance exam, the more things change the more they stay the same, and she had asked about his quirk.

He had explained it to her, how it was a healing quirk with a time-limit and had jokingly admitted that it meant that he had negative offensive power and that was why he’d trained his body so hard to compensate. They’d actually been having a pleasant conversation when one of Sawamura-kun’s group had stormed up to them and demanded to know how he had beaten All Might’s record with “such a wimpy quirk.”

He'd started explaining about the rescue points and the whole group of them had stormed off. He was honestly having flashbacks to a middle-school-aged Kachan, with that indignant response to any kind of challenge to All Might’s superiority, but well, he’d dealt with it once and he could do it again.

For some of them, they were just arrogant and too sure of their own importance and power, (it’s reallylike looking at a middle-school aged Kachan) and after having watched his own arrogant powerhouse pull a decent hero out of the depths of his superiority-complex, with good friends and teachers who didn’t just bend to his will because he had a powerful quirk, he was simultaneously bored by their antics and weirdly nostalgic. Certainly not as impressed by them as they so clearly wanted.

Which didn’t end well, of course: these proto-Kachans formed a pack, and they singled him out. For a multitude of loudly expressed reasons, including not having an offensive quirk, like them, not being part of their little clique, for his white hair, for whatever they thought would get a rise. They were constantly trying to get him to express any care whatsoever for their opinions, both during break times and during class. Had they already forgotten orientation day?

The boy who had been expelled, Tadashi-kun, had given Tatsuya strong Mineta vibes, and hadn’t seemed to care about the assessment, either. So, Tatsuya wasn’t honestly that sad to see him go, but he really couldn’t wrap his head around how his new classmates had moved past the whole event so quickly. Nevertheless, he was hardly going to be the one to instigate another seven expulsions, especially not when he knew just how much better they could grow to be.

Having worked with an actual teenage Kachan in an actual apocalypse situation he just ignored the constant baiting and tried to work with and around them in team exercises as necessary. It was just business as usual for him, he’d survived Kachan, Monoma and Captain Celebrity in his time and he was notgoing to risk his place at UA, from where he could prevent the future he was sent from, over a few entitled kids who, following past patterns, would eventually grow out of it.

He just hadn’t anticipated Aizawa-sensei’s response.

``` ``` ```

“That’s enough, I think,” was all the principal had to say when Aizawa brought Akashi’s plight to his attention. He hadn’t expressly needed the principal’s approval to expel bullies, the school’s policy was very clear, after all, but the approval and additional legitimacy would definitely not be a bad thing when expelling seven hero course students all in one go.

As he had half-expected after orientation day, the seven-man clique that had formed up around Sawamura had taken their small-minded views on so-called ‘heroic quirks’ and had started inflicting them on the rest of the class, with their primary target being Akashi. That the exam’s top scorer seemed largely oblivious to and otherwise unbothered by these failed attempts at intimidation and bullying was beside the point.

The point was that bullying, ineffective or not, was expressly prohibited at UA, moreover, quirk discrimination was, if not exactly illegal, still solid grounds for a lawsuit or seven. And everyone knew it was happening. Everyone.

By the end of the first week of school, Aizawa had had to field concerned inquiries from literally every teacher his class had had as well as Lunch Rush who ran the school’s cafeteria. At first, the faculty expected Akashi to come to them and complain, but as it became more and more clear that he wouldn’t Aizawa took the case straight to Nedzu, who supplied him with both security footage evidence and pre-filled expulsion paperwork for his seven bullies.

He brought idiot teenagers 1 though 7 as well as Akashi, his not-so-secret favourite, who apparently was all too willing to be in entirely avoidable pain and was categorically incapable of asking for help from adults, into one room to discuss the situation.

First, he asked whether Akashi wanted to tell him anything, to no avail, so he moved onto a pre-prepared slideshow of clips from the security cameras and witness statements from every teacher who had taught his homeroom that all painted a rather ugly picture of the clique on his office’s couch. He simply informed them that bullying in any form was intolerable at UA and that Nedzu had processed their expulsion paperwork already.

“Get out of my office.”

The seven were stunned silent for just long enough for Aizawa to shuffle them out the door before the apoplectic eruption of wounded teen egos. He closed the door in their faces sharply and turned to one of his most inscrutable students, interested in his reaction to this turn of events.

Akashi just looked pleasantly surprised, certainly not grumpy at his teacher going over his head on this, which Aizawa had been half-expecting to be his reaction.

Aizawa had to supress a smile as he addressed his remaining student directly, pleased that the kid seemed to be able to accept help, even if he was unable to actively seek it. That would be something to work on in the future, but they could tackle that another day.

“Heroes need to save themselves too, sometimes. Don’t let anything get that far again, come to me next time, Problem Child.”

(Unbeknownst to Aizawa, the impromptu nickname had sent Tatsuya into warm feelings of nostalgia. The gruff care of someone he had known as a protector even in a more and more dangerous world, along with the familiar nickname that he had now earned two lifetimes running. Though exactly how that had happened was a question for the ages…Or not, he liked to think he was at least a little more self-aware than when he really had been a first year, by now.)

``` ``` ```

After losing seven students in one go, the ‘thinning-out of 1A’ was gaining momentum. Class 1A was now eight students down and it was only the second week of classes. Unfortunately, twelve would become six after only two more weeks.

Aizawa-sensei announced the reason for their absence from Monday homeroom was that they had been caught underage drinking and arrested over it, over the weekend. The school had washed their hands of the whole mess, not wanting the bad PR, and had summarily expelled all six involved, as well as several Gen Ed students who had been there with them.

Less than two hours later in English with Present Mic, Aizawa-sensei reappeared and all but dragged the class flirts out of the room by their ears. They never saw either of them again. They found out later that the two had been ‘behaving inappropriately’ on school grounds (Aizawa-sensei looked like he was craving the sweet release of death when he had to announce that).

There was a beautiful, fragile peace for a whole week before the principal himself appeared to escort the two recommendation students to his office while his whiskers were twitching, which in his first life, Tatsuya had come to associate with danger. They never saw them again, either, though they were later told that Tanaka-san and Asahi-kun were from the Hero Commission and older than they looked.

Reading between the lines, it seemed like they had been sent to infiltrate the school and spy on Nedzu’s movements, but like Hawks, they’d had no say in the matter. The two were sent into witness protection to hopefully eventually testify against the commission and its practices.

And then there were two.

``` ``` ```

Aizawa was almost resigned when he got the call. Maybe the powers that be had finally realized that they had allowed him to be a teacher and had decided to rectify the situation by giving him a class of students who he would be forced to dismiss, one way or another.

By some miracle, both Nobara and Akashi had survived their tumultuous first term, Sports’ Festival included, and were now on their very first internships.

There had been a stir at the Festival when the crowd realised that Hero Class 1A had been whittled down to just two students, there were some among the audience who had cried foul over having less hero course students to root for, but for only having two of them by that point, and he would deny this until his dying day, they had done him proud.

Nobara, in particular, had improved in leaps and bounds since the start of the year, her fitness-level and creativity in how to use her quirk both flourishing under all but one-on-one time with not only her teachers but with her lone classmate, also. Akashi’s learning curve had been slower but that had been more because of how high his skill and knowledgebase had been when he had started. Best of all, he didn’t lord his academic or physical prowess over his classmate and was always willing to train with her.

Their teamwork by the time the Sports’ Festival happened was a sight to behold.

In the first round they had worked individually, both gaining decent scores but neither topping the leader board. But in the second round, historically a team event, they, a pair against teams of three and four, had decimated the competition.

They’d had competitors who had better suited quirks, or who were perhaps more skilled than either of them at one thing or another, but the team cohesion was, at best, extremely basic. Compared to Aizawa’s duo, who seemed to be on the same brainwave for the entire event, the other teams seemed to be flailing right into each other’s path every other second.

Their two-man team came in first in the second round and Present Mic accused him of smiling about it. Lies and slander.

The perennial tournament bracket forced them into direct competition for the first and only time of the festival. They faced each other in the second round of matchups, and though Akashi won, it was obvious to all three of them, himself and his students, that is, just how much Nobara had improved since the start of the year. She held up better than anyone else in the festival had managed against Akashi, and when he went on to win the tournament bracket, he dragged her up onto the podium with him.

Aizawa had definitely not been smiling. Shut up Mic!

They’d reviewed internship options and had both chosen ‘local’ options, meaning that both their internships would take place with UA faculty, Akashi, predictably, with Recovery Girl, learning how to be a healing hero past just what his quirk allowed him to do, and Nobara, under Vlad King, as his method of control over his blood-whips was similar to her method of telekinesis and he could help her with quirk control.

Aizawa, for his part, had just been enjoying a week of relative peace, with semi-regular updates from his colleagues about his students’ progress. Apparently, despite never working in a hospital setting before, Akashi was seemingly unbothered by the (literally) bloody, awful situations that healers found themselves responsible for managing. Nor was he visibly displaying the expected symptoms of quirk backlash, which could only mean that he was suppressing them, which had worried every member of the faculty already aware of the situation.

On the first day of internships, Recovery Girl had called him out of the blue and had spent the first ten minutes of the call berating him for not telling her about the consequences of Akashi using his quirk. Somewhere in the tirade, he’d picked up that apparently Akashi suffers the pain of the injured party when he heals and once the elderly nurse had paused for breath, he’d hurriedly explained that he hadn’t known, the kid had never said.

That took most of the wind out of her sails, but she had said that, when requested, Akashi had explained his quirk, how it worked and the cost of it. She was not impressed that Aizawa had just never asked how his student’s quirk worked and had instead just taken its power for granted.

“All you had to do was ask, Shouta-kun! The boy loves talking about quirks!”

Other than his student’s worryingly high apparent pain tolerance, though, the internship seemed to be proceeding well, even when they had left the hospitals and moved to active triage situations, trailing after other Pro Heroes and acting as support for them, though away from the combat. Apparently, the problem child was unflappable in the face of panic and full of the kind of righteous martyrdom that made Aizawa tired just thinking about it. Fine.

This phone call on the other hand, was most certainly not fine.

Nobara, his least problematic student of the whole year was in hospital. Ironically, it was the very hospital that Recovery Girl and Aizawa’s other student had spent the first two days of internship week, in.

He’d been informed in loco parentis, until they could get a hold of her guardians, that she was in a serious but stable condition after pulling a projectile, a loose spine from a villain with an echidna quirk, out of the path of civilians, only to then be hit by another one directed at her in her distraction.

She’d undoubtedly saved lives, and Vlad had had the villain restrained in blood binds seconds afterwards, but the hospital was requesting that Recovery Girl (or possibly her intern) return to the hospital to heal her, as the damage was significant.

Aizawa, coming from UA which was really just around the corner from the hospital, beat both healers there and therefore witnessed Akashi work to convince Recovery Girl to allow him to heal his classmate. He watched as she was grudgingly worn down by his arguments and finally conceded when he pointed out that while her quirk relied on the patient’s stamina, his did not, which would be better for Nobara’s currently delicate health. He could heal her all in one go.

The two of them disappeared into her treatment room, and came back out less than a minute later, followed by Nobara herself. His student was covered in her own blood but otherwise no worse for wear, the massive gash in her side gone like it was never there.

Unfortunately, that was where the good news ended.

After such a shock only days into her heroics career, Nobara made the decision that the life of a Pro Hero was something she’d have to think about further before pursuing it again. She switched courses to support, that she had already passed the entrance exam for at the beginning of the school year, where her telekinetic quirk would also be an advantage. It had been her back up plan if she didn’t pass the heroics exam.

On one hand, Aizawa was truly glad she was carefully considering a career in as dangerous a field as heroics was, too many went in expecting to be a classic comic book hero and learned the hard way that the world was not a fiction where the heroes always won. On the other, he was also sorry to see such a promising student go, but maybe the world hadn’t seen the last of the Handwave Hero: Jostle, time would have to tell.

For the time being, Aizawa resolved to focus on his lone, remaining student. Akashi was an impressive quirkless fighter already, to say nothing of all his other skills but with three quarters of his first year now going to be either one-on-one lessons directly from Pros or the continuation of his ‘in house’ internship with Recovery Girl, they could make him a force to be reckoned with.

Aizawa may be down to just one student, but he was keeping this one, and he was going to be great.

Chapter Text

“Morning Sensei! Ready for a new year?” Came the voice of her mentee, echoing off the sterile tile surfaces of her med bay. Life was definitely more interesting with Akashi around, the new second-year running headfirst into trouble at every opportunity, usually accompanied by the trio of chaos that Nedzu had seen fit to name this year’s Big Three.

Otherwise, the heart-attack on legs that she called an apprentice tended to split his time with the students of his sister class, the newly christened 2B, or with any one of the staff for a private class, being the only member left of the former 1A, or with her, completing his ‘in house’ work study.

Lacking any classmates of his own to have group-work orientated lessons with, when such an exercise was happening, Akashi would alternate between joining it as a regular heroic’s student, playing the rouge element, injected into an exercise by Vlad or Eraser (or Nedzu) to cause disruptions, or serving as a battle-field onsite medic.

After all, in a hero school where concepts like ‘pacing yourself’ and ‘moderation’ were habitually pushed aside in the name of the school’s infamous motto, he was never without patients to practise on.

“Speaking of a new year,” She addressed the boy as he rounded the final corner and into the med bay’s office, “Do you think Aizawa will manage to send us any patients before the end of orientation day? Or do you think he’ll wait for the first heroics class for that?”

Purple-grey eyes glinted at her in amusement from under his mop of white hair for a moment before he responded, “You’re not worried that he’ll expel them before they get to that point? He might be looking to continue the trend.”

Recovery Girl huffed, Aizawa’s actions of the previous year had become something of an urban legend within the school, and from that, a running joke that everyone referenced. The fact that more than half of his class had left or been forced out in ways beyond his control was largely being ignored in favour of teasing him about how he had ‘only kept his favourite around’.

This, again, wasn’t entirely fair, as Akashi had become a favourite of most of the staff, an easy thing to do when they spent regular one-on-one time with him and he was likeable, besides, but no one cared about things like ‘fair’ or ‘even’ if it meant getting to tease Eraserhead about something he couldn’t truly argue with.

She turned away from the cheeky child and sorted through the small mountain of files that had been dumped on her desk by one of the admin bots. She collected about half of them into a stack and wandered away towards the filing cabinet, leaving her student to grab the rest and trail after her, still snickering a little.

One by one, they went through the file of every new UA student, across all four courses and flagged medically relevant information, before fitting them into the cabinet. At least with Akashi around she had someone who could easily reach the top shelves, even if he was no bastion of human altitude himself, he still towered over her 115cm height. Before Akashi she’d had to employ the use of a foot stool.

When the warning bell rang, she sent him off to homeroom and the commencement speech with 2B. Aizawa’s first years were never in evidence there, too busy completing his quirk assessment test. She knew several of the staff were curious to see Akashi’s reaction to Nedzu’s characteristic long-windedness, as he had missed it the previous year.

She wondered if Aizawa had bothered (or remembered) to tell his lone second year that he’d be acting as a student-teacher for the new first-years, to ‘give him a wider range of experiences’ supposedly. The real reason was probably closer to needing to find something for his student to do after Akashi tested out of several of his core classes at the end of his first year.

Probably not, knowing the man. Well, she was sure that it would make for a lovely surprise either way.

``` ``` ```

Akashi returned from the commencement speech smiling to himself, which Recovery Girl raised her eyebrows at but didn’t question further, and scrubbed in. He had barely been with her for ten minutes when Toshinori’s boy poked his head in the door with a sheepish expression on his freckled face.

“Ah, sorry to bother you, Recovery Girl, I- that is-” The words sputtered and died and the dear looked like he wanted the Earth to swallow him, an expression that she was very familiar with after two years of Tamaki. Wordlessly, he just raised his hand at her, and she saw that his right pointer finger was swollen and covered in black and purple bruising, almost certainly broken.

She waved him in from where he was anxiously hovering in the doorway and trotted over to the smaller X-ray machine. One scan proved her correct, the child had managed to break his finger before even the first day of classes. Aizawa had a lot to answer for.

Akashi surprised her by wordlessly reaching past her shoulder and making contact with the younger boy’s hand. Usually, they would debate whose quirk to use in any given situation, especially when that situation arose outside the formal times of Akashi’s work study, before one of them would perform the healing.

Cutting her off before she could comment, however, was their patient descending into what she could only describe as a mutter-storm. Between the wide-eyed blinking in her intern’s direction and the enraptured examination of his own hand, she assumed that the boy was ‘geek-ing out’ over Akashi’s quirk. Assumptions were the best she could do with the deluge of jumbled together words taking the place of true, intelligible speech.

Her intern, for his part, just looked bemused and maybe a little nostalgic, along with something else she couldn’t quite parse but Toshi’s boy managed to inadvertently cut her off, again, by asking, “Senpai, you have a healing quirk?’

Which she would have thought had an obvious answer, but never mind her.

 Akashi took a long moment to answer, seeming very far away, but luckily managed to snap out of his reverie soon enough that the younger boy had only just started to look demoralised at the silence, rather than totally dejected. She suspected that Akashi would try to play off his distraction as shock at the sudden quirk babble, and perhaps that would fool the first year in the room, but she saw more in her boy’s expression than what just being stunned by a barrage of questions could have caused.

(Somewhere out there, wherever his first family was, Tatsuya-who-was-once-Izuku could just hear that his friends were laughing themselves silly. His own younger self had just had a quirk rant about him. Even by his standards, this was a new level of weird.)

Her intern seemed to rally and spent the next few minutes tolerantly answering questions about his quirk, indulging the first year’s enthusiasm like an adoring older sibling. Maybe shoe-horning her student into having pseudo students of his own wouldn’t be such a disaster after all, heaven only knew that Akashi needed more connections in his life than his current situation provided.

Other than the staff, who had to maintain some professional distance as well as half-the-school’s worth of friendly acquaintances, the denizens of his sister class included, who he knew and liked but still had only shallow relationships with, her intern was a very solitary figure, not prone to letting people in.

The one exception had been Nobara, but she knew they had drifted apart after the girl had embraced her new path in the support course. The current Big 3 were always eager to include him in their mayhem but being a year separate had naturally thinned-out any opportunities to interact.

She knew that she wasn’t the only one who worried about Akashi’s isolation, self-imposed or not. Teaching alongside Aizawa and Vlad would hopefully force him to make connections with the students in his care, as well as give the first years a hyper-competent, and infinitely more approachable, third instructor.

Still mid explanation with Midoriya, her intern glanced up at her and then pointedly swept his eyes around the room in silent question of whether there was anything she needed his help with, still left to do. She just smiled and waved him off and he started shuffling the still babbling first year out the door.

Just as they rounded the corner, she heard Midoriya ask, “Wait so it isn’t really a healing quirk, it’s a chronological quirk that produces a healing effect?”

There was a long, pregnant pause, and then, “Kid, do you know how many industry professionals, quirk specialists all, have not figured that out? And you did. By yourself. Without me having to explain. As a first-year hero student.”

“…”

“Wow.”

Oh dear.

``` ``` ```

Izuku was buzzing. He was so excited and nervous and everything about their class’s first real heroic’s lesson that he was going to vibrate hard enough to slide straight off his skeleton. And then Kachan would yell at him for making a mess and explode something with his quirk and then-.

“Hey Deku, you ok?” A question from his left cut into his spiralling. When he looked over, he saw that it was Uraraka-san, leaning across the desks between them. She looked a little nervous too, but she was obviously either handling it better than him or was just much better at hiding it.

He hummed back his agreement, not wanting to burden her with his own nerves and wondered how this class was going to go. Aizawa-sensei had told them that they would have a different teacher than him for heroic’s today, that the main instructor for every heroic’s class would rotate based on which aspect of the heroics they were focusing on, as different heroes had different strengths.

Apparently, today they would also have a student teacher-aide, one of the upperclassmen though he wouldn’t be there for every class. It had not escaped anyone’s notice that Aizawa also hadn’t actually told them who the teacher in question for today’s class was, yet.

Izuku had a suspicion, though, and if it was true, he was going to expire on the spot. All Might had said that he was going to be taking up a teaching position at UA, but Izuku, probably the biggest All Might fan in the country, with all of the obsessive fan-knowledge that came with, knew that All Might had never been accredited as a teacher. So, he couldn’t possibly be teaching one of the regular subjects and that only left the heroic’s classes as an option. 

But surely, they wouldn’t ask the Symbol of Peace, the country’s Number 1 Hero to teach the first years? Right? Surely, he’d only be working with the third years, almost pros already, not novices still years away from their full licenses. But then why would there be a need for a student to be a teacher’s aide unless the teacher in question was a novice in the role?

Izuku had so many questions and the not-knowing was driving him up the wall.

At that moment, the warning bell rang, and his classmates settled into their seats around him. There was a knock on the door and with still no teacher in sight the class collectively paused for a long, indecisive moment, before Iida-kun called out, “Please come in!”

The door opened to reveal a boy in the hero course uniform, who walked up to the front of the class and smiled at them. It took Izuku a moment before he recognised him as Recovery Girl’s intern but when he made the connection, Izuku couldn’t stop himself from excitedly greeting him.

“Akashi-senpai! Are you going to be the teacher’s assistant?”

Akashi-senpai was just opening his mouth to respond when a rushing sound came from the corridor, like a strong wind had somehow started up indoors. Izuku noticed how Jirou-san and Shouji-kun winced at the sudden noise when the door was slammed back open, banging into the wall behind it, and a very familiar figure entered the classroom to stand next to their upperclassman.

“I AM HERE! ENTERING THE ROOM LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!” All Might boomed.

With the few braincells left that weren’t busy fawning over his mentor’s dramatic entrance, he thought he saw Akashi-senpai fighting down an amused smile. He didn’t get long to wonder on that, however, because All Might had started talking and Izuku had to give him his attention.

“Well young students, I have returned to my alma mater to help shape the next generation of heroes and today that journey begins!”

1A gave a cheer at that, even Kachan breaking into an eager (if sharp-toothed) grin. All Might seemed pleased with their enthusiasm, iconic hair tufts standing at attention.

“I believe in learning on the job! So today we will start with battle scenarios! But first, to be a hero you must dress like one, look here!”

As All Might gestured, the lower half of the left wall of the classroom retracted to reveal twenty, gleaming, silver cases, no doubt containing their hero costumes. Thoughts of having their senpai give a proper introduction faded from Izuku’s mind as he and his classmates rushed to grab their cases.

He was really going to be a hero!

``` ``` ```

Toshinori had seen many things over the years of his heroic’s career.

Both things that made him question how much good individuals could really hope to achieve in a world as dangerous as theirs, but also things that reignited his hope and faith that true heroism, true goodnesswould keep on rising to face adversity. As difficult as it was to remember some days, he knew the world had still spun before he took up the mantle of symbol of peace, and so it would continue even after his injuries and waning quirk forced him into retirement.

As much as it felt like he was Atlas, holding the weight of the world on his back, unsure how to set down his burden before it crushed him, sights like today’s, the joy and determination in his boy’s successor’s eyes, as he wore his hero costume for the very first time, reminded him that there were others who would carry on protecting, carry on being heroes, even after his time ended. His colleagues, both in the school and in the wider heroic’s community, would take the strain until Young Midoriya and his generation were ready to bear it, Toshinori was sure.

Watching these bright and shining herolings as they learnt and grew was a precious gift, and Toshinori was determined to do right by them. Though his experience as a Pro Hero was immense, few enough heroes were physically capable of continuing to serve into their fifties, after all, he understood that in teaching he was an absolute novice. So, when Eraserhead had mentioned that his sole second-year student, and hadn’t that been a shock, needed more classes to fill his timetable and was a capable, proven mentor, already, of course Toshinori had agreed to have a teacher’s assistant.

His only reservation was that the closer proximity to him may lead to the student finding out about his time-limit, something that he did not want known outside of his successor and the faculty. Recovery Girl had just huffed at him and told him that her intern, another surprise, was perfectly responsible and as a healer was already very well versed in the ‘restricted information’ song and dance.

With her seal of approval, he had tentatively given the all-clear for the second year to be informed. Recovery Girl had arranged to have Akashi-shonen meet her in the staff lounge and activated the soundproofing that Nedzu had long-since set up. The rest of the staff were present at their desks and were doing their best to be unobtrusive but were also clearly paying attention.

The lad had taken one look at his teachers’ attempts to look like they weren’t watching the proceedings, then glanced at the lit symbol on the wall that indicated the privacy measures were engaged, and had then given his hero form a once over before looking down at his mentor and asking, rather flatly, “Is this another private healing inquiry?”

Toshinori almost lost his grip on his hero form as he choked, and behind them he could hear Aizawa tiredly berating Hizashi over the quirk-loud ‘HA!’ that had just shaken the room. Recovery Girl just looked amused as she shook her head at her student.

“Nothing like that, there is just some sensitive information that you need to be aware of before you start teaching with All Might, here.”

At her cue, he dropped his hold on his current form, shrinking in a puff of steam. To his credit, Akashi-shonen only allowed his eyes to widen slightly as he witnessed the number one hero deflate like a sad balloon animal. Toshinori had been expecting shrieking if he was entirely honest. That was the usual reaction, as his successor had so ably demonstrated when they first met.

However, all the second year did after a long, pregnant pause was look him up-and-down again and ask, “Are you sure this isn’t a healing consult?” That set Present Mic off again and Toshinori allowed his lips to twitch upwards in amusement before he clarified.

“No, Akashi-shonen, though the offer of assistance is appreciated, I have been informed that my injuries are incompatible with your quirk.” At the boy’s tilted head Toshinori sighed and glanced at Recovery Girl to take over her intern’s explanation.

She obliged, “The injury was first inflicted years ago, and damage has been accumulating ever since. You would have been in primary school at the time, far beyond the one-day time-limit of your quirk.” Toshinori thought she had more to say but she paused there and looked closely at her student.

Recovery Girl must have managed to read distress in her intern that Toshinori couldn’t see, because she closed the distance between them and swatted Akashi-shonen’s shin affectionately.

“Listen to me, Akashi,” the old healer waited until her apprentice met her eyes, the whole staff room now dead silent and staring, everyone feeling the weight of the woman’s words. For all that All Might himself was considered a veteran Hero, Recovery Girl was an elder in the heroic’s community, with a wealth of experience almost double his own. She was infinitely valuable not just for her quirk, but for her sage wisdom.

When she spoke, if you had any sense, you listened.

“As a healer, as a hero, there will be those beyond your power to save. You need to find a way to live with that, or it will tear you to pieces.” Recovery Girl reached up to pat her student’s cheek twice before regaining her normal posture. She gestured at Toshinori behind her, gaze still locked on her intern.

“You were not brought here to heal All Might, just to be aware of his condition so that the two of you can work together to teach the heroic’s classes. Due to the injury itself and the damage it has resulted in, All Might is only able to maintain his ‘hero form’ for a handful of hours per day. Outside of class time, such as when planning or discussing lessons with you, he will appear as he is now.”

Akashi nodded, hummed, and then quirked his head sideways in thought. Absently, Toshinori noticed Aizawa settling into a ready stance and Recovery Girl’s expression growing wearier. He found himself both apprehensive over what the second year was going to say next and bemused at what must have happened the previous year to have two veteran Pros visibly acquiring stress lines at just the thought of their student thinking with that expression on his face.

A healer (The Healer in some circles) and an underground hero brought low by a lad not tall enough to reach Toshinori’s collarbones. If laughing wouldn’t trigger a sudden and violent eruption of blood, then he would have already joined Hizashi in mad cackling.

Akashi-shonen glanced between his mentor and Toshinori before settling on looking at him.

“Your injury is causing more damage as time goes on, All Might?” Toshinori settled on wordlessly nodding, given that the young healer seemed to only be looking for a confirmation of an already settled theory. He was about to reassure the student that he was used to his symptoms, and could handle them, when Akashi-shonen continued.

“Sensei is correct, I cannot heal the precipitating injury,” everyone in the room could hear a ‘but’ coming, “but,” there it was, “I will be able to stop your condition from deteriorating further.”

Predictably, Recovery Girl understood her intern’s precise meaning first, protesting, “I told you Akashi, we did not bring you here to heal All Might! To accomplish what you are suggesting you would have to use your quirk on him every day from now on and all you would achieve for it is holding his health at a stalemate! As I’m sure you can imagine, the damage to his body is significant, enduring that kind of strain-”

“Sensei I’m going to see him almost every day, anyway, and my quirk is instantaneous, it’s not like I would be going out of my way to do this,” the boy started in a conciliatory tone, almost like he was begging his mentor to see reason and go along with his idea.

“Besides, I wouldn’t be doing this forever, it’s just until someone with a quirk capable of fixing the damage is found!”

Recovery Girl started shaking her head, but her intern was on a roll, saying, “I find it seriously difficult to believe that not one quirk in existence is capable of healing him, but let’s say that is actually the case, how long do you think it would realistically be before someone with the right quirk was born? With the rate that quirks are evolving, maybe five years at the outside? That’s nothing! All Might deserves to live and live without pain and if I have to play human life-support machine long enough for him to reach the day that that is possible then I am going to do it!”

Silence rang loud in the staff room for a long moment, the wide-eyed teachers allowing their usually composed student to bring himself back under his own control. Akashi-shonen managed it, a few meditative breaths after his impassioned rant, and Toshinori found himself locking eyes with the young healer as a faint pink dusted Akashi-shonen’s cheeks.

“Only with your consent, of course,” the boy said in a much more measured tone, managing to only look slightly abashed at his outburst.

Toshinori found himself impossibly charmed. Though logically he knew that there were many people in his life who cared about him and worried over him and the state of his health, sometimes it felt as though those worries were all over All Might the Hero’s capacity for continued service, not really for the man underneath the hero who naturally suffered the same hurts.

Not since Nana passed had he found someone who wanted to protect him from something as simple as pain. Not when that was supposed to be his job as the hero. And yet this child…

Aware that even in his ‘smaller’ form he was well over seven feet and how startling it could be when he moved unpredictably, Toshinori slowly crouched down in front of Recovery Girl’s student, bringing them to the same eye-level. It seemed like no one else in the room could be so much as breathing, with how still the air had become. In his peripheral vision, he could feel Recovery Girl staring daggers at him, warning clear in her eyes but his focus was on the teenager in front of him.

“Akashi-shonen, you are going to be an incredible healer, and a hero to match,” Toshinori started in the warmest, most sure voice he was capable of. It was easy. He was being entirely honest, after all, so he did not have to fake sincerity here.

The boy’s breath hitched a little, but he made no other response so Toshinori continued, “I want to make it clear that my health is my own responsibility, and not something you should stress over. Your mentor is correct: the line between selfless, heroic action and martyrdom may be a fine one but it is one every hero must find for ourselves, over the courses of our careers.” He knew he still struggled over it, even at his age.

He waited until the boy nodded reluctantly at his words, aware of Eraserhead’s laser focus on their conversation. Maybe Akashi-shonen’s homeroom teacher had been aware how vexed of an issue this was for his student.

“With all of that understood,” he raised his eyebrows significantly at the boy, punctuating his point, “and with the additional understanding that of course you may retract your offer to help at any time, and I do mean that, Akashi-shonen, I will not be offended or hurt by you choosing to take care of yourself, I would much prefer it, in fact, I would consent to you using your quirk on me.”

Akashi-shonen looked about ready to burst into relieved tears and Toshinori had to wonder at the strength of his reaction. He might have thought that the boy was just expressively emotional as a standard, like his successor, or his honorary niece Melissa, but the reactions of the staff room as a whole and Recovery Girl and Aizawa in particular, told him differently.

All context clues pointed to this being out-of-character behaviour for the second year, and One for All or not, Toshinori would not have survived this many decades in as dangerous an industry as heroics if he were blind to such things. Maybe he as All Might had saved the boy when he was younger? Or a loved one of Akashi-shonen’s? A need to repay a life-debt would probably be enough for a reaction strong enough to overcome regular behaviour.

Resolving to think more on the subject later, possibly after questioning Nedzu for any information that the principal might have, Toshinori reached out to grasp the hand that Akashi-shonen had extended to him. At the moment of skin contact, blue-white energy washed over him in a gentle wave, lingering on his torso for a breath longer than the rest of his body before fading.

There didn’t seem to be any great change, other than having the strain of the day vanish, like he could have gotten out of bed just the moment before. He felt like he hadn’t had his morning coughing fit, followed by all the meagre hours of hero work he could manage. There was no miraculous recovery, he could still feel the void where his organs should be and feel the itch of old scar tissue on top of them, but today’s smaller hurts were gone.

His self-assessment lasted until he saw a familiar twitch in the young healer’s hands, like he was resisting the urge to claw at his own sternum. Toshinori knew it well, he made the gesture several times a day. Horror crashed through the blond all at once. The child could feel the injuries he healed! At least it seemed like a momentary phenomenon, even that much had guilt welling-up inside him.

Akashi-shonen must have known what the toll for using his quirk would be, no other explanation made any sense, and in light of that Toshinori knew he had to set his guilt aside, if only so as not to disrespect the healer’s choice and effort on his behalf. It was easier said than done.

It took several minutes of worried clucking from Recovery Girl, before the student was allowed to retreat out of the staff room and out of their sight. She turned to him to look him over, that same warning from before in her eyes, one that he now understood.

It said, “hurt my boy and you answer to me” and Toshinori now knew it extended to allowing her intern to cause himself harm in the name of someone else’s well-being. A sentiment that he could more than understand now with a mentee of his own, he dreaded the day villains (or even the more ambitious of his peers) realised how much he cared for Midoriya-shonen because he knew what his own response would be. Still…

“You were right, Shuzenji, Akashi-shonen is a trustworthy, honourable young man.” That statement, along with using her name, seemed to take the wind out of Recovery Girl’s sails long enough to allow him to explain that refusing Akashi-shonen’s aid in that moment, would have been disrespectful but that he in-no-way expected his new teacher’s aide to continue the healing.

The old healer seemed less sure that her student would be warded off but relented. For his part, Toshinori had truly just wanted to encourage that burning, protective spirit that he saw in the lad. It was so like his own boy’s heroic spirit, but it was also more tempered by experience, where Midoriya-shonen’s was still coloured by a naiver mentality.

The difference a year could make!

With a lack of blood in his mouth and hope for the future in his heart, Toshinori sat down at his desk, silently marvelling at the lack of pain from his abdomen and turned his seat around to pick Eraserhead’s brain for ideas for his first heroic’s class.

``` ``` ```

Katsuki wanted to snort as he looked at some of the disasters of costumes that his new classmates were wearing. Even if they didn’t immediately look like a costume store had thrown up on them, not one of them was wearing anything designed to help them be heroes. Not even the legacy students who should know better!

Creation girl was going to break her spine if she fell wrong with that shelf on her back. All the girls were in heels like they were walking down some red carpet instead of going into combat where footwork and agility were literally critical to keeping themselves alive.

Endeavour’s kid with the ice quirk of all things (he could already picture the quirk rant that Deku was going to have, high-pitched muttering and all, though that was a hell of a mutation) looked like an abominable snowman reject with all the fake ice and glowing left eye. Impossible to move in and would screw with his vision, seriously, who designed that thing?

Ingenium’s stick-in-the-mud brother had gone for plastic armour which he was sure would either bend or melt under Katsuki’s explosions, let alone the kind of heat that the idiot’s own exhaust pipes must generate.

He was 90% sure the invisible chick was naked.

Deku was in a green bunny suit and a mouthguard, which, Katsuki honestly didn’t even have words for. Last he knew the nerd had still worshipped the ground All Might walked on, and yet he offered thisembarrassment?

The only one, other than him of course, who didn’t look totally brain-dead was Monkey Tail in his Gi. Still had no visible armour or protective support gear, but at least it would be something he was used to fighting and moving in, going by the black belt cinching it shut.

If this was what the best hero course in the country was capable of, then victory would be easy. Katsuki had been hoping for a challenger to keep things interesting, but if his classmates were this unprepared for heroics then his victory was already assured. As always, it would be up to him to show the teacher, in this case All Might himself, why he was going to be the best hero there ever was.

Other than the idiots who he shared homeroom with and All Might, there was the white-haired guy that Deku had called Senpai, back in the classroom. Hobo-sensei had already told them that one of the upper-years would be helping with some of the heroic’s classes, so Katsuki guessed that this was him. He didn’t look like much, especially standing next to All Might, but to have the free time in his schedule to be a TA, he had to be far ahead enough to have tested out of UA classes.

Testing out of classes to graduate sooner and go Pro earlier was something that Katsuki had researched the hell out of. It would be the perfect addition to his perfect Origin Story, graduating early from the best hero course in the country as no one else had ever done before. But there was a simple reason it had never been done before: it was school policy that every pupil of UA would complete a full three years on campus.

You could test out of individual classes, even whole subjects if you were far enough ahead, but the gaps in your timetable would have to be filled with either new coursework or internship time. Obviously, of those options any sane member of the hero course would opt for internship time, so either this guy was too stupid to be allowed outside or he had tested out of so many classes that extra internship time still wasn’t enough to fill out his schedule.

Either that or he was so far behind that there was no point in trying anymore and he was being phased out of the hero course altogether, but with the way that Teach had been willing to toss someone else out on day one if they were incompetent, Katsuki would be willing to bet that the former possibility was the right one.

Someone who had flown through the hardest heroic’s curriculum in the country might just be a worthy stepping stone on his path to greatness, someone to challenge Katsuki to reach greater heights, if his classmates were slacking off. He would still win, of course, but he knew that to reach his full potential he needed a worthy wet-stone to polish his talent on, to sharpen himself against.

Katsuki was just wondering what the upperclassman’s quirk might be, with no outward sign it would have to be either emitter or transformative and his colouring didn’t give any clues, either, unless the white hair meant something, but even then, it could be dyed, when All Might announced that this would be a team exercise. Like that rubbish meant anything but that a hero was too weak to stand on their own like All Might himself did.

Was the number one hero looking down on them? On him? After he had won the entrance exam? Or were they supposed to realise the futility of teamwork on their own and that was the real lesson?

All Might had better not just be pandering to the extras in the class who would be useless alone by making everyone pair up! Katsuki had come to UA because it was the best and therefore it would make him the best, and he was not going to be slowed down because All Might wanted to treat all his students the same when they obviously weren’t!

Katsuki ended up saddled with the android-Ingenium extra as the villain team (he was here for hero training) for this farce of an exercise. They had to guard a paper-mâché bomb of all things until the timer ran out or until all the heroes were incapacitated. Obviously, Katsuki knew which option he was choosing, his ‘teammate’ could do as he liked while Katsuki won the exercise for them.

The sole saving grace of the whole thing was that their enemies for the battle trial were Deku and that round-faced girl with the floaty quirk. One quirk almost useless for combat, being wielded by a moron with no martial arts training wearing heels, and Deku, enough said.

Glasses, who had apparently decided to stay in the room with the bomb and guard it in case someone slipped past Katsuki, wouldn’t be waiting long for their win, at least. This was going to be the easiest victory of his life.

``` ``` ```

The damn nerd had lied.

Deku had been lying to him all their lives and laughing at him behind his back! Had been looking down on him! No one manifested a quirk that late, it wasn’t possible! But that last punch had torn a hole straight up through seven stories of reinforced concrete and had blocked enough of Katsuki’s last explosion that the nerd still had his arm, even if he had fainted right after.

Katsuki wasn’t registering anything, a hollow ringing in his ears and a surreal look clouding everything around him as he tried to adjust to two massive paradigm shifts right in quick succession. The first was Deku finally unleashing the quirk that he had hidden from Katsuki their whole lives. Deku, useless, quirkless, Deku, had a quirk. That was Earth-shaking.

The second paradigm shift was so much worse though, it tore at Katsuki’s sense of self like nothing else ever had, not even Deku’s suicidal actions somehow saving his life from that villain extra last year.

He, Bakugou Katsuki, future number one hero, had lost. He had lost. Katsuki had lost to Deku. Nothing about that made sense and he was stuck staring at the crumpled form of his enemy, still in his stupid green bunny suit, trying to wrap his head around it all.

Vaguely he could hear armour clanking as bootleg-Ingenium made his way down the stairs, eventually coming into view with an unconscious gravity girl in his arms. Upon seeing Deku in his unconscious heap, the armoured extra sped forwards and knelt in front of Katsuki, beside Deku, checking him over. All Might’s voice came over the speaker then, for the first time since announcing Katsuki’s failure their team’s loss.

“Iida-shonen, while your actions to care for your classmates are heroic and commendable, please do not worry. Akashi-shonen will be there to help Midoriya-shonen and Uraraka-shoujo in just a moment.”

The TA was coming? Was he going to direct the med-bots or something? Any musing was cut off when the person in question came skidding around the corner and into the room. Idly, Katsuki noted that he hadn’t heard him approaching when he had heard Glasses. Granted, one of them was in full medieval cosplay and one was just in the UA sports uniform, and his ears were never at their best right after using his quirk, but the discrepancy tugged at his awareness, just enough to pull him out of the fog of losing to register his surroundings better.

The white-haired boy moved straight past Katsuki to kneel over Deku and gravity girl, both unconscious on the ground, checking over them quickly. He set both his hands on Deku’s arm, the burned one not the broken one, and a glow passed from him and onto Deku’s injuries. The nerd’s eyes were fluttering open as Akashi repeated the process on gravity girl.

All their injuries, most of them serious, gone in a moment and both ‘winners’ were sitting up and looking around in confusion.

“Hello there, you two! I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself before, I’m Akashi Tatsuya, of class 2A and your teaching assistant for some of the heroic’s lessons.”

A healing quirk, it had to be. How had this extra gotten so far in heroics with a healing quirk? So much for a rival for Katsuki to test himself against, this was an embarrassment almost equal to having allowed Deku into the UA hero course. Maybe he really was being phased-out into Gen ed or something, somewhere where his shiny, feel-better quirk would be less totally out-of-place.

The up-jumped nightlight turned to face him and Glasses and asked them whether they had any injuries. As if he was such a weakling to have been hurt by Deku! He just grunted a negative, while Robocop fell over himself to lick the boots of one of their ‘Senpai’ as if this utter disgrace was their better in anything with a quirk that useless in combat.

Back in the control room, All Might led the discussion of the exercise, or he was trying to, at least, the stuck-up creation girl ended up doing most of the talking but All Might let it go without challenge, so Katsuki decided to be magnanimous and let it slide too. The decision to make Glasses the match’s MVP had Katsuki grinding his teeth but after somehow losing to Deku he could grudgingly admit that he could have done a lot better.

With Nightlight around, Floaty and the nerd were able to join in for the after-action discussion, instead of having to receive All Might’s teaching comments after treatment in the school’s med bay. Deku stuttered his way through an almost incomprehensible explanation of his actions during the trial and Floaty chimed-in her input whenever the stuttering got too insufferable.

Approximately three millennia later, All Might finally cut into Deku’s babbling and changed the subject away from a ‘battle’ that Katsuki would prefer to never so much as think about again. But he knew he would have to, if only to make sure it never happened again. Then, the Nightlight extra introduced himself to the rest of the class and explained that they would be seeing him around either as a teacher’s aide during All Might’s lessons or in the school’s med bay, where he was apparently studying under Recovery Girl.

That, at least, explained why UA hadn’t kicked him to the curb, if they were training him up as Recovery Girl’s replacement. Heroic’s training could be dangerous, they would need a healer on staff, and to be allowed to use his quirk professionally, especially on heroes who had special legal protections, Nightlight would need a hero license. As much as a part of Katsuki raged at the idea of such a useless quirk being allowed to get the same license as him one day, he knew that there wasn’t anything he could do about it for now.

Maybe when he was the number one hero, he could make it so that only heroes got hero licenses and healing quirks got a different kind of quirk-use license, instead of getting hero licenses by default? Something for the future, anyway.

The rest of the battle trials passed mostly without incident, with Nightlight only having to step in after the sparkly French guy in yet more medieval cosplay almost tore open his own stomach lining with the backlash of his own quirk. (How was this the best heroics course in the country if losers of that calibre made it past the entrance exam?) Or when the snowman extra gave Monkey Tail and the invisible chick the beginnings of frostbite by freezing the whole building.

That show of power had Katsuki paying close attention, noting how the ice only seemed to come from Endeavour’s Brat’s right side, the side with ice-white hair. Could the fire-red hair on his other side have similar implications? But then why wasn’t he using it? Against their classmates, just the ice was enough firepower, useless as they were, but firepower that was actually fire would have helped Icyhot in Hobo-sensei’s quirk evaluation, it might have allowed him to overtake creation girl for first in the rankings, so why wasn’t he using it? Was he looking down on them? On Katsuki?

It seemed like All Might only planned to have them facing the pairs they had been assigned to at the start of the class, so a direct confrontation would have to wait, but Katsuki swore to himself that he would teach the bastard not to look down on him. Hobo-sensei was taking them out to a more remote training field later in the week, maybe Katsuki would have his chance to prove himself then, not just against Icyhot, but that Deku’s win had been a fluke and nothing more.

He huffed a laugh under his breath, considering the irony of now hoping that Nightlight would be there, for that class. After all, if the healer was present then he could really go all out against Icyhot, and Deku, and anyone else stupid enough to try him, with no one able to say that he was ‘being too aggressive’ or was ‘causing too much damage’. As if that was something that heroes should be fretting over when they had villains to defeat!

Bring on the next battle trial, Katsuki would prove he was the best!

Chapter Text

Watching as his first years, less than two weeks into their heroics training ran for their lives for the exit, the Space Hero: No.Thirteen’s quirk already engaged and ready to defend them from the swarming villains, caused a roaring tide of grief to rage against the already well-established continent of wrath housed in Aizawa’s soul. Grief for the knowledge that these were children under his care being exposed to mortal danger, so far before they were ready to face such a thing, and howling, near-blinding wrath at the villains responsible.

The popular reaction, when people met Present Mic and himself was to label Mic, loud, expressive, Mic, the emotional one and him as the anthropomorphic stone wall, just far less animated than Cementoss managed to be. Though as anyone who had known the pair of them for any significant length of time could tell you, Aizawa felt just as strongly as his extroverted friend, he was just usually quieter about it.

Mic liked the whole room to know exactly what his mood was at any given moment; it was part of what made him such an entertaining personality at events and on his radio show. Aizawa, on the other hand, kept his emotions to himself for the most part, only displaying them when they hit critical mass and bubbled over. He’d been a Pro for too long to let his emotions control his actions in an active engagement, that way lay only an early headstone, but he was sure that the ranks of villains he was tearing through could feel the towering rage he knew was bleeding through his control and onto his face and into the power behind his quirk.

He landed hits that broke bone and caused concussions with no remorse, flexed his capture weapon with the experience of a lifetime of training, and deflected quirk attacks, flaring out his own quirk all the while. His eyes burnt demonic red, with both his quirk and with eyestrain as he held the hoards back. He kept them away from his kids.

It would be too cruel to let dreams end halfway, after all.

A way to the right of him, Akashi was putting his gymnastics training to good use as he bounced off villains’ shoulders and used that momentum to send them flying. Aizawa couldn’t take his focus off his own fight for long enough to either perform a proper assessment or, as he would much prefer to do, order his student back up the stairs and out of the building with the rest of his students but Akashi seemed to be holding his own.

White-and-blue flickered and blurred in Aizawa’s peripheral vision as his second year struck his own blows and evaded retaliatory hits, dealing with the onslaught with his signature unbreakable composure, purposefully leading the fight away from his kouhai and toward Aizawa with each step, where they could battle as a team, rather than as two individuals. Somewhere underneath the frothing waters of the terror and fury, Aizawa could feel pride warming his chest, and when Akashi managed to drag the epicentre of his battle close enough to the whirlwind of chaos surrounding him, that warmth bloomed into something that felt like the precursor to victory. 

Objectively, the situation was still terrible: Aizawa and Akashi were battling what felt like every two-bit thug that had a reason to be in the city that week, his first-years were trapped in the building and being guarded by a Pro whose specialization was not combat but rescue-relief, and the two clear ringleaders of this entire misadventure and that eerily still, bird-headed giant behind them like some kind of body-guard hadn’t even deigned to join the chaos, yet. But now he had his the Problem Child in his reach and by his side (and occasionally bouncing off his back like it was a springboard,) and the two of them were known to make the team synergy of Akashi and Nobara’s Sport’s Festival performance look quaint and amateurish.

Fully geared-up in his hero costume, Akashi was a whirlwind of blue and white, and silver accents, the caduceus drawn dark, large, and stark across his shoulder blades. Between the colouring and the helmet, the homage to his mentor’s old costume was obvious, but the shape of it was much more like Aizawa’s own, complete with a stocked utility belt carefully positioned so that it couldn’t get in his way in a fight, and lined with light-weight body armour; the costume alone said clearly that while Akashi may be a healer, he was also a combatant, and he was proving how true that was now to everyone in view.

Aizawa had been aware of some tension in his class regarding Akashi’s presence and knew from Vlad that portions of 1B were reacting similarly to having a teacher-aide without an offensively orientated quirk. Aizawa had no sympathy for their complaints, he’d known it was only a matter of time before one of the more sensible brats put two-and-two together and realised that their ‘weak and powerless’ Senpai was a force to be reckoned with, and was that much more terrifying because he didn’t have a quirk to do any of the legwork for him, he had to be dangerous on his own merit. Akashi wasn’t born like this; he could have easily become a doctor or even a support hero if he had wanted to stay out of the fight. Becoming dangerous enough to be on the frontlines like this was a choice and one that said more about Akashi than any quirk he could have been born with.

Despite the current situation Aizawa felt a smirk creep up over his face without his permission. He had a sudden longing to see the reaction-faces of some of the self-perceived hot-shots in his class at their Senpai’s current display. Aizawa was sure they would be memorable.

As the battle wore on and the adrenaline took over, Aizawa’s felt his perception of how much time had passed start to blur. How long had they been here?

How long until the school noticed they were under attack? Somewhere during the chaos, the teleporter villain who seemed composed of black mist had slipped away, presumably to harass his students, and he could only hope that No.Thirteen could handle him long enough for the first years to escape and get help.

Neither of his phones had a signal, and Akashi had managed to gasp a report in his direction that the communication system in his helmet was also being blocked by something, so the only way that the school would know that Aizawa’s class had been ambushed by villains (on school campus) would be if someone managed to physically escape and sound the alarm. He and Akashi were making significant progress through the thugs, but backup was never a bad thing, especially when they had vulnerable first years behind them.

Aizawa’s musing was cut off by Akashi yelling out a warning to him, and he saw the pale-haired man with the hands all over him had entered the battle and was making a beeline for him. The lower-level criminals noticed too and backed off to let Aizawa’s new contender through, moving away to join the dozen or so remaining enemies clustered around Akashi. The villain crouched low into a fighting stance with his hands extended in front of him, like he was preparing to reach out and grab.

The hands were the danger, then.

Faster than Aizawa was expecting, the younger man struck out towards him, fingers reaching and obviously seeking to make contact. The underling who got too close to one of those hands proved why, when he accidentally got in his boss’ way and was disintegrated for the offence. Aizawa immediately snapped his quirk back on and engaged the villain. The pale-haired man’s quirk alone was too dangerous to not engage with his own quirk going, despite the eyestrain he was already pushing himself through, and the villain’s total lack of care that he had just ended a life said that this was an experienced killer, unphased by death.

He would not hesitate to kill again.

For the sake and safety of his students, who Aizawa could hear were still in the building causing explosions and related chaos (he was thankful for it, it meant they were still fighting, still alive), Aizawa knew he could not afford to go into this fight with anything less than all his defences engaged. Doing otherwise would be suicide.

The villain was fast, and slippery, a difficult fighter to predict in a way that spoke of informal training by way of many teachers, but he was so focussed on landing a lethal blow with his hands that Aizawa could safely discount him using his legs as weapons, leaving him with only two limbs to dodge instead of four.

The spread of his fingers was interesting, too, because only people with 5-point touch-activation type quirks would ever fight like that. Fingers were (usually, quirks muddied the waters) too easily broken, jammed, or dislocated to risk spreading them in a fight, even combatants with open-handed martial arts styles kept their fingers close together as an extension of the palm. Spread fingers were usually a target and an indication of a lack training but if a quirk-effect could or would spread from them, then targeting them became a bluff and a trap.

They exchanged blows which were blocked or dodged for what felt like an eternity against the strain of keeping his eyes open and his quirk activated, but that couldn’t continue forever, especially not with the three students who had just washed up at the other end of the plaza and seemed to be debating their next move. Drawing attention to them could have deadly consequences, but Akashi had to be nearby, maybe Aizawa could subtly alert him to the situation? Send him to hurry them along to safety and get himself out of the line of fire in one fell swoop?

All of this spun at dizzying speeds through Aizawa’s head as his duel continued, but that millisecond of inattention cost him. He blinked, his quirk dropped, and in that split-second the villain lunged at him, too fast to dodge. Somehow the villain had figured out his tell; the younger man had been waiting for his hair to fall back down! That must have been when he had been standing back at the beginning, he’d been analysing their fighting styles and quirks-

Blinding pain cut through everything else as the arm under the villain’s vice-grip screamed at him. Looking down at it, the elbow of his costume had turned to dusk and flaked away, followed by the skin, which cracked and broke away under the villain’s vice-grip, until the muscle and part of the bone was visible. Aizawa stared at what was happening in horror-fuelled shock before instinct kicked in and he was fighting to get out of the villain’s grip.

With as long as the villain had had contact with Aizawa, there had been time to turn him to dust already, based on what he’d done to the other villain. The only reason Aizawa was still alive was that the younger man was enjoying his pain, and he could get bored of that at any moment.

The villain grinned toothily at him from behind the severed hand on his face, lazy killing-intent shining in his eyes and Aizawa knew what would come next. Or so he thought, because apparently even a year of Akashi’s antics hadn’t enabled him to predict his second year bodily throwing himself into the fray and latching onto Aizawa’s upper arm, centimetres from the hand about to cause Aizawa’s death, and activating his quirk.

The reassuring white-blue glow that heralded Akashi’s quirk washed over Aizawa, healing his arm, soothing his eyestrain, and leaving him feeling like he hadn’t just gone a round with every two-bit criminal in Musutafu. The villain watched in confusion as his enemy used a quirk on an ally rather than to attack him, but confusion on his face soon broke into to disbelieving rage when he saw the results. Rather than lash out at Akashi directly though, he reactivated his quirk on Aizawa’s arm, obviously looking to end the hero before the healer could reset the damage a second time.

For his part, Aizawa thanked his lucky stars that Akashi hadn’t let go of him yet when his elbow started to burn again as it disintegrated under the villain’s touch, and that his student was so quick on the uptake. Hurriedly re-activating his quirk as well, Akashi’s glow settled over the new injury, healing it, before having to heal it again as it was re-disintegrated again, and then again, and again, and again an excruciating cycle of destruction/healing/destruction/healing/destruction/healing.

The switches between which quirk had control were eventually so fast that Aizawa could not feel the change, but he knew the battle of wills of perfectly opposing forces was continuing from the growing strain around his student’s eyes and the snarl that ripped out of the villain’s mouth at being denied a victim, rage visibly mounting. When it boiled over and the villain sprung at Aizawa’s student directly, Akashi was unable to properly dodge, needing to have been the last one of them touching Aizawa to leave him with his arm intact.

They rolled away along the floor, grappling and kicking up dirt as Aizawa was beset by the few remaining grunts that Akashi had abandoned in his haste to get to Aizawa when the villain had first gotten a hold of him. Newly refreshed by his student’s quirk and full of a brand-new rage at these walking obstacles getting between him and his student, who was currently fighting the deadliest villain in the building aloneafter saving Aizawa’s life, he mowed through them at record speed, bodies flying in all directions.

Just not quite fast enough to stop the villain, who had just had his nose (and probably his pride) broken by a 5’5 healer not old enough to drink, screech,

“Nomu! Kill the cheater brat!”

And his student, panting but unharmed, in the middle of flicking sweat-soaked white hair out of his eyes as his signature glow washed over himself to deal with the battle-fatigue, vanished in a spray of blood and viscera, the massive bird-creature in his place.

*** *** ***

Katsuki had asked the universe to give him a fight so he could prove he was the best, and while it had delivered, even making sure that the Nightlight extra was present to witness his victorious return to combat superiority and deal with the clean-up, this was not how he had thought the day was going to go.

For starters, rather than the stuck-up Ice Prince or Deku or one of the other extras, he was dealing with random mooks so generic they could have fallen out of one of the nerd’s video games. They didn’t even seem to have a plan beyond ‘break into UA and try (and fail) to kill some hero students!’ And that was another thing: he wasn’t fighting them on his own, but with the smiley, shark-toothed extra with the rock-skin quirk.

Obviously, Katsuki did not need the help, the invading idiots were so weak even Deku might survive them, and he was the future Number 1 hero to boot, but they had ended up in the same ‘zone’ of the USJ building and his classmate with the terrible dye-job had just been following him without getting in his way as they fought through the crowd of pathetic extras masquerading as villains, so it wasn’t so bad. Nothing like Deku’s stalking, anyway.

The fake redhead was a decent fighter, nothing on him of course but ok, and their quirks complemented each other. At least, Katsuki didn’t have to worry about accidentally blowing him up while he was blowing up the idiots, which was more useful than anything he’d seen so far from the rest of their so-called ‘peers’. If Katsuki didn’t already know that he would be rejecting sidekick applications when he went Pro, he was going to stand alone and powerful like All Might did, then he might have considered Shark-tooth as sidekick material.

But speaking of sidekick material, what the hell had been with the Nightlight extra and hobo-sensei’s fight, back there? Katsuki was sure that the healer had said that he was apprenticing under Recovery Girl, but the way that he had moved with the Caterpillar said otherwise, had he lied to the class? Or was he somehow taking two internships at once and one was underground with Eraserhead? Because that level of battle synergy did not appear overnight.

The two of them had been tearing through the crowd of villains faster than Katsuki could believe, especially once they were close enough to be fighting as a pair rather than as two individual heroes. For Teach that almost made sense, his quirk may not be physical, but he could turn off other people’s quirkswhich made him a menace to villains, and he was a Pro already anyway, but Nightlight? The idiot was in the hero course with a healing quirk of all things, not only was there no potential for damage further than what he could manage with marital arts, if he used his quirk by mistake mid-fight, he could end up healing the villains he was supposed to be fighting.

There was absolutely no cause for the guy to be as effective in combat as Katsuki had seen he was, it made no sense! They had to get back to the plaza and soon so that he could shake some answers out of the guy.

But first, Katsuki and Shark-teeth had to dispense with the latest round of delusional mooks rounding the corner of the fake apartment building and rushing at the pair of them with glory in their eyes. Katsuki could barely refrain from rolling his.

They thought they stood a chance against him? It was almost a good thing that they were stupid enough to attack them in a school, Katsuki (and the dye-job loser) would have the chance to teach them properly.

*** *** ***

“Shigaraki Tomura, one of the students managed to escape.”

The teleporting mist villain seemed to be studiously ignoring that the man he was reporting to was in the middle of cackling maniacally and had blood running down his exposed face from his obviously broken nose. He also hadn’t questioned the sudden repositioning of the muscle-bound bird-monster which had just turned a child into a blood-splatter in front of them, something that Aizawa found he couldn’t bring himself to look away from, no matter how loudly his instincts screamed at him that taking his eyes off the villain calling the shots was just asking for death or dismemberment.

Or disintegration, considering the villain in question’s quirk.

Aizawa noted distantly that he might be in shock.

He hadn’t been this frozen in the field since his own UA days, but Akashi had just-

He had been-

And now-

The villain was still laughing.

Chesty, mocking whoops of laughter at ordering the murder of the hero student who had defied him (and rearranged his face), like this was the funniest thing he had ever seen. And suddenly Aizawa found that he had deeper reserves of anger left to use, unknown to him before this exact moment. Every last ounce of them singing to him of copying his late student and breaking a few dozen of this Shigaraki’s bones.

The three little first years, Aizawa could make out two heads of green hair bracketing a purple one, must be Midoriya, Asui and Mineta, who had seemed to be hyping themselves up to run into to danger had been shocked still and silent by the sudden and violent death of their Senpai. Their stillness was keeping them safe from the villains for now but how long would that last? He needed to get them out of here.

Them, and the other first years he had just noticed starting to crowd around the edge of the plaza, the dinner-plate sized eyes told him that they’d seen the result of the bird-creature’s actions, too.

But before he could leap at Shigaraki, or the deranged villain could respond to his subordinate, Aizawa caught an eruption of blue-white light in the corner of his eye, and stopped dead in his tracks, because the blood on the floor was glowing.

For one breath no one moved, even the ambient cackling cutting off to stare at the light, before Shigaraki was screaming again about cheaters and Aizawa felt his heart restart in his chest, realising in that moment that he had all but stopped breathing when Akashi first went down, because the light (the glowing, bloody remains of his student) had coalesced into Akashi in his hero suit, blessedly, miraculously, alive, and already staggering away from the beast who had turned him to pulp.

Aizawa wasted no time, flinging out his capture weapon at his student and pulling him out of range faster. The hulking beast still standing in the crater that had formed under it, made no attempt to pursue, thankfully. At first, Akashi had seemed disorientated, blinking rapidly and unsteady on his feet, but now he appeared to be shaking that off and looked ready, with his feet back on the ground. (Later, Aizawa would question him, would demand answers that they both knew were desperate confirmations that Akashi was ok, but for now, they had a job to do, and they both knew it.)

Shigaraki looked to be having a full-blown melt-down over Akashi’s impromptu resurrection, and the misty portal villain was occupied trying to calm him down. The duo was interrupted, mid-word and caught off guard, by Aizawa sending out his capture scarves to bind Shigaraki, while glaring the villain’s quirk into submission. Akashi ran straight at the teleporter, a dead sprint that turned into a parkour challenge, as he dodged the misty portals the villain littered his path with.

Simultaneously, they brought their opponents to the floor: Aizawa, with his scarves restraining Shigaraki from touching anything, thereby negating his quirk, and using another loop to gag him to stop him from summoning his Nomu, who seemed to only act when given direct commands thank everything. Akashi, rather less elegantly, by tackling the mist villain to the ground, holding down the only solid part of him as Aizawa settled his gaze on the mist villain to prevent the creation of any more portals. The Nomu was still inert, standing silent and unmoving in the crater it had made, but the heroes knew that could only last for so long. They weren’t out of danger yet.

The various students surrounding the plaza chose that moment to run towards them, which had Aizawa’s stress levels rising once more. The battle may have looked over, to the untrained eyes of his younger students, but he and Akashi were now stuck restraining two of the three major villains, with one still not dealt with. A ticking time-bomb that could move faster than Aizawa was able to track, that had already killed one of his students (even if temporarily) and now his first years were in its sight.

On the other hand, their being so close let him see for himself that none of them were badly hurt. It worried him that only six of the however-many of his students that had been teleported away from the exit had made it to the plaza, but the ongoing sounds of battle from several of the zones said they were still alive.

He saw Akashi flick a glance in his direction, one that said he had ideas and wanted to implement them but didn’t want to step on Aizawa’s toes as the senior hero present. The kid had been making that expression more and more as he settled into the role of teacher aide, and while a small part of Aizawa knew it came from a place of respect for him and the other staff, a significantly larger part of him knew that it also came from a place of low self-esteem which he hated to see in Akashi.

The kid was so bright and caring and good, always striving to learn and grow and help everyone around him do the same. Aizawa wanted to find the person (or people) who had convinced Akashi that he would never be enough, that self-sacrifice was the only way, that his failure was so inevitable that everyone else was already planning around it, as his student seemed to think sometimes…

Aizawa wanted to find the perpetrators and have a chat, a long, serious chat, before which he planned to leave them in a locked room with Recovery Girl for the real scare.

Anyway, Aizawa nodded briefly to give Akashi the go ahead and watched as his student started ordering the first years into action with the same startling efficiency that had had Akashi serving as a teacher’s aide more often than just when Yagi was taking the class. The kid was a born mentor, already better at coaxing action out of these teenagers than several of the staff, Aizawa included.

“Bakugou and Kirishima,” Akashi waited for a response from the first years before continuing, which came, to Aizawa’s surprise. Getting Bakugou to participate in anything was usually like pulling teeth, but the blond was staring wide-eyed at Akashi like he’d never seen him before, and on anyone else’s face Aizawa would label that expression as respect, and not even the grudging variety.

“I need you to take over keeping this villain pinned, there’s only one place where he’s solid, come here and I’ll show you.”

The hand-over went off with no issues, even with Kurogiri trying to use the opportunity to escape. The mist villain had just started to make one portal and Bakugou was on him, explosions popping out a warning against his metal shell, finally allowing Aizawa to blink before refocusing.

“Todoroki, Mineta, I need you to contain the villains that Aizawa and I have already dealt with before they wake up and start causing problems again.” Todoroki nodded silently and was about to walk away when Akashi stopped him and continued, “You both have range as an option, use it, we don’t know who’s just playing possum and besides we don’t want to get any closer to the Nomu than we have to. Just make sure your quirks don’t hit it.”

Mineta was whimpering at the thought of voluntarily going near the villains, but after seeing how cool and heroic everyone else had looked, and wanting to look the same, he shuffled forwards, sticky quirk balls in hand.

Akashi continued over to Midoriya and Asui, already looking at him and waiting for instructions. But he hadn’t even started speaking when Midoriya lost control of his filter and all the quirk questions and observations he’d made since the start of the fight came flooding out. At first the starry-eyed babble was incomprehensible gibberish, but it eventually coalesced into words discernible to human understanding.

“Akashi-senpai you can heal yourself too! That’s so cool! What-“

Midoriya was interrupted by the massive skylight-domed roof above them breaking inwards as All Might made his entrance, trademark smile nowhere to be seen and looking more wrathful than Aizawa had truthfully ever seen him. He’d had no idea the human Labrador could make that face, but Aizawa could recognise that it was the same anger and outrage that he had been riding the wave of this whole time: outrage at these villains for daring to attack their students.

All Might spotted their cluster and the villains that they were obviously the wariest of and hurried forward. Aizawa was still preoccupied keeping Shigaraki immobile and silent, with his scarves as well as keeping Kurogiri contained with his quirk, so he jerked his head in Akashi’s direction to send the No. 1 to his second year for a sit rep that wouldn’t risk the lives of everyone around them with a moment’s inattention from him.

Aizawa could hear his student hurriedly wrapping up his directives to Asui and Midoriya, (“Not the time kid! Quirk questions later!”) before turning to face All Might.

Akashi had never really acted his age, he didn’t act out for attention like teenagers were prone to doing, he didn’t flinch at the type of scenes he was called to as both a (provisionally) licensed hero and as a healer who could reset otherwise hopeless injuries like they’d never been there, and he responded to being handed responsibility like a veteran who was used to the weight of the world on his shoulders, but as Aizawa’s student craned his head back comically to look the country’s top hero in the face, and calmly lay out the situation and urge him to go to each of the zones to rescue the remaining first years, Akashi had never looked less like the unsure heroling he should have been. He projected the kind of confident assurance and command that had All Might nodding and moving off without a word of protest, soon joined by the rest of the faculty that had arrived in All Might’s attention-grabbing wake.

As the students were retrieved from the zones and the defeated villains were collected and contained, Akashi made a point to approach each newly rescued first year and heal them, wiping away the whole event’s strain and visibly earning himself their gratitude as he went. Even the pricklier of Aizawa’s students were cooperating with his second year.

Recovery Girl, standing in All Might’s shadow, by Nedzu, Aizawa and a newly healed No.Thirteen, eventually called her intern over. Going by his expression, Akashi seemed to be under the impression that Recovery Girl wanted her own sit rep, but Aizawa was certain that the interaction was going to go rather differently.

Akashi jogged over to them, pushing his hair out of his eyes, and making an effort at disguising his fatigue, but after a year with him, not a single member of the faculty was fooled, even All Might looked dubious after having watched Akashi use his quirk twenty-two times in quick succession on each of the first years, Aizawa and No.Thirteen. Their second year pulled up in front of his mentor and opened his mouth to greet her when his shins met her cane at a speed that belied her age. He looked at her with big, disbelieving purple-grey eyes, only to shrink guiltily at her loud order of,

“Sit down before you fall down, child!” and the ensuing worried tirade.

There were muffled snickers coming from all sides as his younger students took in the scene. It was obvious that they’d started to imprint on their upperclassman, no doubt having grown to view him as some unstoppable, un-killable Pro in the making, especially the six who had witnessed his resurrection personally. There was real awe in their expressions as they looked at Akashi, and Aizawa was glad to see them setting aside quirkist ideals to take in the reality in front of them, but all of that burgeoning hero worship only made the current scene funnier: the brave and bold young hero brought down by the stern words of a tiny, old woman a third of his height.

Recovery Girl bustled around with her kit and pulled out a portable blood pressure cuff and reader, tutting over the results coming out of the machine attached to the teenager now sitting at her feet. Surprising the on-lookers, she freed her student from the cuff, before putting it on her own arm and waving the reader at him.

“You healed yourself didn’t you, foolish child, look what it’s done to your blood pressure! Look at what your antics have done to mine.” Akashi made a valiant but ultimately failed attempt at keeping a straight face, the corners of his lips twitching upwards at Recovery Girl’s dramatics.

“But Sensei, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here for you to complain at!” Came his overly bright response, almost like Akashi was playing at whinging at his mentor. Tone aside though, that was way too casual a reference to his near-death-experience for the listeners’ comfort.

“Your hair is already white, child, don’t give yourself a matching heart-condition!” Again, a reference to something that the listeners did not like.

Eventually, Recovery Girl had cleared her mentee health-wise, stating that he would just need rest and limited quirk use for the next few days, an easy ask as Aizawa had no doubt that the principal was already planning on closing the school to update security. Victory or not, this whole situation never should have been allowed to happen in the first place.

The students, Akashi included, were shuffled back onto the bus they’d arrived in less than an hour previously, accompanied by Recovery Girl, No.Thirteen and Aizawa himself, while the rest of the faculty escorted the three major villains and their small army of grunts into the waiting hands of the police. The class managed about thirty seconds of blissful quiet before predictable cacophony erupted and they all began yelling over each other about their experiences in the USJ.

Aizawa could hear Midoriya excitedly grilling Akashi on the finer mechanics of his quirk from four rows away, and Bakugou declaring that he “beat those extras’ asses!” from the other end of the bus. As glad as he was that all of them were alive and well enough to be rowdy, he was nursing a headache the size of Russia and the teenaged screeching behind him wasn’t helping.

Aizawa sunk lower in his seat, this was going to be a long ride back to campus.

Chapter Text

Coming back to school the following Monday had a distinctly off-kilter feel, like the ground had been tilted off its axis just slightly. Just enough to be wrong but still seem normal. Everything looked the same: all Izuku’s classmates were still there, and Aizawa-sensei was still sleeping away the time before the bell rang, but the air in the room was charged with unspoken tension.

Were they really just going to carry on with classes like nothing had happened? Even if the villains had been arrested and taken away, they had still been attacked on the grounds of the top hero school in the country! Akashi-senpai almost died, and they were supposed to just carry on learning algebra?

Izuku made eye-contact with Uraraka-san and saw her agreement in the scrunch of her eyebrows. Looking around, everyone seemed on-edge in the same way, like the fight-or-flight mentality that they had been forcibly shoved into in the USJ was still burning at them to move, almost a full week later.

At first, he had thought that the tension had fully burst in the bus trip back to campus, when everyone had exploded into noise and all of them found themselves yelling over each other in delayed panic, unable to stop. Izuku had thought that would be the end of it. Sitting here, now, though… the tension was far from gone, it just didn’t have a target. Yet.

In a move unprecedented in their class so far, all twenty of them were seated, silent and staring at Aizawa-sensei before the bell rang to signal the beginning of class. With a sigh, their teacher finally sat up in his bright yellow sleeping bag and faced them. No one said a word for a long moment before Aizawa heaved a more resigned sounding sigh and spoke.

“Good morning. Initially I was going to tell you that the fight was not over yet, as a lead into the discussion around this year’s Sports’ Festival, which will be going ahead, despite recent events.”

At that, the rigid silence the class were strangling themselves in relaxed, just enough to let some of them make intrigued noises, before settling again, “but given the situation, I feel that would come across poorly. Instead, we will be speaking briefly on the USJ incident to set any worries to rest, then moving on. Questions?”

Yaoyorozu-san cautiously raised her hand and Aizawa-sensei called on her.

“Sensei, the Principal said the school would be closing to upgrade security, but the villains only broke into the school with a teleportation quirk. How has that been managed? The police told the media how the attack happened, what if another teleporter tries to copy what they did?”

Are we really safe here? Was the question everyone could hear her dancing around. Before the USJ, an attack on UA was such a ludicrous idea that no one ever thought anyone would dare. Attack the school of two thirds of the top 3 heroes in the country? Madness. But now that it had been done, and done successfully, no matter that they didn’t manage to kill anyone, they still broke in, what was to stop anyone else from trying?

And now the school wanted to host the Sports’ Festival? Have the eyes of the world trained on them just waiting to witness another attack? Izuku couldn’t understand it, how could this be a good idea? He knew he was spiralling, and catastrophizing but he just couldn’t stop, and for once he wasn’t alone in his anxiety, he could feel it wafting off his classmates, too, like a toxic gas. Izuku could still see Akashi’s blood-splatter when he closed his eyes. That could have been any of them so easily.

Aizawa-sensei swept his eyes over his class and rose to his feet. He bowed to them, causing more than one person to gasp. Most days, their teacher ignored the social convention of hair brushing, and now he was formally bowing at them?

“The USJ attack should never have been allowed to happen, and on behalf of the staff I apologise that it did,” Aizawa-sensei rose from his bow and continued, “but there is a lesson to be learnt from this: hero work is dangerous, kids. It is not fun, and it is not a game. Treating heroics like it is a game can be deadly, and sometimes heroics is deadly, anyway. You should not have had to learn this lesson so early, but there is no going back now.”

Aizawa-sensei was never unserious, exactly, but his dark eyes had never bored into them like they were doing now, totally focused and alert. Izuku had only seen him like this in the USJ, as Eraserhead. This was not their homeroom teacher speaking to his students now, this was the Underground Hero speaking to heroes-in-training about the realities of his field, and it was obvious.

“As heroes, we train and improve to not only protect the defenceless, but also to keep ourselves safe on the job. There is no such thing as guaranteed safety, but as our students you have my word that UA will protect you, as teachers and heroes, not only by defending you, but by training you to protect yourselves.”

This was definitely the most words Izuku had ever heard from his reticent homeroom teacher in a row, and even then, Aizawa-sensei was still blunt. There was no denying that it helped, though. Izuku could feel his shoulders settling a little from where they had been hiked up around his ears, and he could see his classmates losing some of the tension they had been carrying. Somehow, their teacher addressing them plainly instead of with ‘comforting’ platitudes had the room’s ambient worry dissipating to bearable levels. Still…

“That said, I thought some of you might benefit from seeing that he’s alright yourselves, so come in, Akashi!” And in response, the door opened inwards to reveal their white-haired whole and unbloody Senpai.

``` ``` ```

Whatever anxiety had remained in the room after his speech vanished with Aizawa’s second year’s appearance. Midoriya and Kirishima, the most expressive of the six who had witnessed Akashi’s brush with death, looked especially ready to collapse in relief at seeing their Senpai alive and well. Aizawa waited for Akashi to greet his younger students before addressing them again, because he did need to talk to them about the Sports’ festival before he surrendered them to Mic’s clutches for English and accompanied Akashi to Heroic’s with 2B.

“In regard to your original question Yaoyorozu, Nedzu is personally working with the best support engineers on the planet on that very issue. If there is a way to safeguard an area from teleportation quirks, they will find it. Otherwise, the school’s security measures have been boosted five-fold, which I’m not able to elaborate on, other than that there will be a vastly increased presence of Pro Heroes on campus during the Sports’ Festival this year.”

Aizawa took in how he had the whole room’s attention, every one of his students listening intently as he went on to explain just how vital the 3 Sports’ Festivals were to students in the Heroic’s department. The kids had just 3 chances to impress the world across their whole tenure at UA, and while most of the focus was usually on the third years, this year his and Vlad’s homerooms’ year group would be under equal if not greater scrutiny than the students on the verge of going Pro. Knowing the colourful personalities in his class, it would probably be best not to point that out, though.

“This is not an opportunity that any future hero can afford to waste. In the next two weeks between the Sports’ Festival and now, you will have regular classes in the morning, but open time in the normal Heroic’s class time to do your own training with access to UA’s training facilities. Some must be reserved, and it’s first come first served, so make that a priority if you are planning training that you will need specialized equipment for.”

Low murmurs made their way around the room, friend groups leaning their heads together to start strategizing how best to train. Aizawa only really had one more announcement to make, so he let the mutterings go on long enough to allow possible questions to be raised. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the Sports’ festival was so religiously watched by middle-school-aged hero-hopefuls that the general procedure of events was well known, there were only two questions.

Aizawa called on Aoyama first, who asked whether support gear would be allowed, his quirk’s secondary effect of sparkling lights appearing around him as he spoke. (Aizawa had heard Nemuri laughing about it in the staff room with Mic, apparently it made Aoyama looked like he had stepped out of a ‘shoujo dating-sim’.)

“For the hero course: only specifically requested and approved support gear. Basically: unless your quirk causes you direct harm without your gear, it will not be allowed,” he neglected to mention that this rule was only for the hero course; for everyone else, support gear was fair game. They would find that out in the first round, anyway, especially if Power Loader’s complaining about the ‘mad genius’ in his class was to be believed. Aoyama nodded at his answer, seeming relieved that he would not have to go without his belt and risk damage to his stomach, Bakugou on the other hand looked disappointed that he couldn’t bring his grenade gauntlets.

The only other student with their hand raised was Asui, and she made a point to look deliberately between Aizawa and Akashi, who was still standing by the door, obviously directing her question to them both. It wasn’t actually a class where Akashi was officially serving as a TA; he was really only here to settle the first year’s nerves, but Aizawa let it slide out of curiosity at the question possibly needing Akashi’s input, and the sure knowledge that his student wouldn’t mind.

“Ribbit, I was wondering if either of you had any advice for how we should be training for the ‘Festival, or what you think we should focus on? Ribbit.”

Aizawa had clocked Asui as a student who had her head on straight on orientation day, and this was proof that he’d been right. Surprisingly few students ever thought to ask the teachers for their advice for how they should prepare for the Sports’ Festival, despite knowing that the teachers run them every year, they watch them every year, they break down their students’ performances in them every year, and as alumni, a majority of the staff had participated in them as students themselves.

Technically, Aizawa was supposed to be impartial and make sure that his students received the exact same information as Vlad King would be giving 1B next door, no more, no less. Just as technically, he had an extremely knowledgeable upperclassman in the room who wasn’t rostered to be here, and so any advice or information that Aizawa’s class might receive from him would not be anything other than a coincidence and more importantly: not Aizawa’s fault.

Akashi read that from him in a glance and obviously had to supress a smile as he stepped toward the centre of the front of the room and addressed Asui’s question. Aizawa half suspected the resulting answer, knowing Akashi, but by the reactions of his first years, he was clearly alone in that.

“As important as it is to spend time honing your quirk, I suggest you don’t slack on training other skills.”

“Like what?” Came the uproar from a solid third of his class, and Aizawa barely refrained from shaking his head at them. There was so much more to heroics than just quirk use. They would learn, and some had already started to cotton-on after the USJ.

“Quirkless fighting, martial arts, free-running, communication, teamwork practice because there’s always one event out of the three that’s teamwork based, reviewing the tapes of previous sports’ festivals for ideas and clues as to what the events are going to be ahead of time… that sort of thing.” Akashi paused for breath after that litany, some of the first years looking a little wide-eyed. Others were looking vaguely mutinous, but Akashi quickly continued before they had the chance to voice any real protests.

“It’s all well and good to be able to throw the full strength of your quirk at someone in the tournament bracket. I know it’s what everyone pays attention to, and it looks cool so people tend to focus on it. The tournament bracket is also almost always the third event for the first years, so it is something worthwhile to prepare for, but you have to make it there, first, and the first two events always have, if you’ll excuse the pun, quirks to them.”

There was some muffled groaning from the more ‘cringe-prone’ students, to use Mic’s radio terminology. To be fair, the pun was pretty terrible, but with that one bad joke (and it’s less than enthusiastic response) Akashi had tested to make sure people were actually listening without ever having to ask. The students were also now going to be constantly reminded of the so-called ‘quirks’ that tended to pop up in the first two rounds, and be more aware of them as a result, all from a bad pun. Aizawa silently reaffirmed to himself that Akashi was terrifying, and that Mic was a fool for believing otherwise.

“So, all that to say: diversify your skillsets as much as you can, because you never know what you might need to know, or need to know how to do. You can specialise your skills after you have a variety to choose from, not before.”

As Akashi wrapped up with a rundown of training fields and equipment that would be most helpful for his class, Aizawa found himself more and more amused by his second-year’s monologue.

“Did you get a teaching degree when I wasn’t looking?” Aizawa couldn’t keep himself from asking, only mostly joking. Akashi looked more than a little bashful at that as he surrendered the floor back to the actual teacher of the class. If Akashi had had any less self-control, Aizawa suspected he’d be blushing.

Aizawa turned back to his first years and addressed them himself.

“Basically that, Asui. Though, I’d add that if you need practise partners for any of this hypothetical training and you need someone who you won’t be in direct competition with, your upperclassmen are your best option.”

He levelled a stern look at his students, wanting them to have every opportunity they could but needing to be clear on this.

“Do not make nuisances of yourselves.” Everyone deserved to be able to set boundaries (even if privately Aizawa thought that some people would benefit from letting their walls down occasionally. It wasn’t hypocrisy if he acknowledged it.) “Most of your seniors are already busy with both school and work studies but I’m sure at least one of them would be happy to help, since he has a little more free-time available.”

In unison, a sea of eyes swung from Aizawa’s face to land on Akashi’s. Aizawa’s second year didn’t really do shock, surprise or dismay where others could witness it, another one of his student’s idiosyncrasies that worried him, but he had also known Akashi long enough to recognise the repressed signs of his student’s emotions when they appeared, and the subtle straightening of his spine told Aizawa enough.

“Can you teach all of that Akashi-senpai?” Asked Ashido, grinning and clearly sensing blood in the water. Emotional intelligence of that calibre was sure to serve her well in her future career.

Akashi didn’t get to respond before Aizawa was cutting in with, “Yes, he can.”

“Sensei-“ Akashi hissed at him, before being cut off again by Midoriya who almost launched out of his seat in excitement.

“Senpai is an incredible quirkless fighter! You should have seen him up close at USJ! He was right there in the thick of it with Sensei! They looked like a real hero team!” For some reason, Akashi looked exasperatedly betrayed, like he’d been ratted out by an annoying younger sibling. They must have gotten closer than Aizawa had realised.

“He also holds the current school record for quirkless free running,” Aizawa helpfully put in, recognising Akashi’s face as one he wore when he was building up an argument in his own defence and needing to intercept it. Predictably, with his protests foiled, Akashi crumpled like a wet paper bag in the face of aggressive positivity aimed at him.

“Alright! Fine!” Akashi burst out, his ears bright red. It was a peculiarity in his student that had taken most of the previous year to realise, but for some reason (and Aizawa hated every explanation that his years in the Underground offered) Akashi, who was utterly unmoved by aggression or scorn, absolutely could not handle compliments. Especially when they were objectively true statements that he couldn’t just brush aside or downplay. They knocked him off his feet (metaphorically, unless Mirio was around) every time.

Akashi wrestled back some composure and managed an only slightly strained, “I’ll make a schedule for a set of after-school workshops in different skills but so you know, I’m opening this up to 1B, too. I’m their teacher’s aide as well, and I am supposed to be impartial, you know?”

The pointed side-eye in Aizawa’s direction was unnecessary.

``` ``` ```

The UA Sports’ Festival ran for three chaotic days, one for each year level. The third years started the whole circus off with a bang, then the second years competed to win the attention of prospective mentors, and finally the first years arrived to demonstrate the raw talent and potential that UA would be shaping into the next generation of heroes. While the staff ran themselves ragged organising the whole affair all three days, all most of the students had to worry about was the single day that their year would be competing. For the rest of the week, they were free to train or rest or watch the rest of the festival.

In his first life as Izuku, Akashi had watched the Sports’ Festivals religiously; it was the one time of year that his geeking-out over quirks became moderately socially acceptable, since the quirks of the new up-and-coming heroes were all anyone at school would talk about for a solid month whenever one happened. In fact, the only Sports’ Festival Akashi could remember missing before joining UA himself, was the one that took place during his ten-months-from-hell training montage with All Might, back before first year. It had been the whole reason that Mirio was able to surprise Akashi with his quirk when the Big 3 had (will? Technically they hadn’t done that yet) introduced themselves to 1A.

With how quickly Shigaraki and the league had managed to destroy all sense of normal in the original timeline, the Sports’ Festival that should have occurred during in his second and third years at UA, never happened. By the time that they should have been competing for second-year mentorship, UA was less a school and more a refugee camp in what was quickly spiralling into an all-out war against All for One’s forces. One that was still potentially on the horizon in this new timeline, no matter that Shigaraki and Kurogiri had been captured in the USJ. Akashi seriously doubted All for One would let them just sit in custody when he had a quirk that could literally just summon them back his side at any moment.

Honestly, Akashi was surprised that it hadn’t already happened, but then perhaps it had, and the knowledge was being supressed. That was the disadvantage of not being the Ninth holder this time around: no one told him anything. Akashi had reassured himself that he would know one way or another in two weeks’ time, (if Hosu was a Nomu-riddled disaster again during internship week, then they had been freed, if not then either they were still in custody and his ability to predict events was neutralised, or they had been freed and were going to be behaving differently from then on and his future-knowledge was useless anyway,) and tried to put the matter out of his head.

He had another festival to win.

Unlike most students, Akashi was doing more over the three days of the festival than just competing with his year mates and then calling it a day. As Recovery Girl’s apprentice, he was kept busy in the infirmary, healing students who had over done it in the name of Plus Ultra.

First, they had the third years, who historically had the fewest number of injuries, compared to the first or second years. With their superior quirk control, accidents happened less often, but when injuries did happen, they tended to be more serious than those that appeared in the younger students’ competition, because they also had the ability to throw significantly larger and more powerful attacks at each other than their kouhai. In the third years’ day of the Sports’ Festival, any hits that landed counted.

Statistically, if a student was going to break a bone, it would be a third year. Statistics that Akashi himself had thoroughly broken along with most of his bones when he had competed in his first Sports’ Festival as Izuku. Current Izuku was in all likelihood going to repeat Akashi’s mistakes, with Akashi having been unable to explain how the kid should be using his quirk without raising suspicions on why he knew so much. Though at least with him around Izuku’s arm shouldn’t end up permanently weakened, and he could prevent his younger self from having to endure chronic pain as a teenager. Small mercies.

During the second years’ day of the festival, Recovery Girl was on her own in the infirmary for the only time that week, to be fair to Akashi as he competed so he didn’t have to be working at the same time. Akashi had been asked by more than one member of the staff if he had wanted to compete at all, since he already had a work study placement, but he had been firm in his refusal to bow out.

There were a few different reasons for not taking the easy out and spending the day with his mentor, and Akashi knew she would be questioning him on them during the first years’ tournament, when it was just the two of them. There were some he could share with Recovery Girl, like how much it would have meant to him growing up to see someone succeeding in a heroics course without an offensive quirk, or that he didn’t want to let Aizawa-sensei down by not representing 2A but the most important reasons were ones he knew he could never share with her, because they were due to his fore-knowledge as a time-traveller.

As much fun as he had had during the tournament, solo-repping for 2A, finding out-of-the-box solutions for the challenges and facilitating quirk synergy in his 2B teammates in the second round with some of the analysis that he did for fun, anyway, culminating in his win for the second year running, he knew that the whole set up was deeply unfair to his actually second year level peers. There’s a visible skill-gap and showing that off to the world was earning him no favours in his sister class. It was the reason that even after a year he only had friendly acquaintances in that class, instead of true friends. They could be professional or cooperative, but after daring to beat them last year and coming back to ‘rub it in’ that he could win against traditionally strong hero course students without an offensive quirk, again, this year… He was not the most popular person in his year level.

Of course, what only the second year in question knew, was that of course there was a skill gap, Akashi had (briefly) been a Pro-Hero before he had come back in time, and the time-period he came from was not kind to slow learners. Akashi had eventually determined that the best decision out of poor choices was to respect his year-mates by refusing to hold back against them. Both because Plus Ultra was the culture of the school and all but engraved in his bones by this point, but also because his classmates, present day, and his original classmates, now his kouhai, would improve faster, be harder to kill safer, if they were pushing themselves to compete with someone so far above their skill level.   

Akashi could bear his year-mates’ jealousy and resentment if the competitive drive to improve it generated kept them alive, gladly. Besides, with their day of the ‘Festival over, the world’s attention was refocusing on the first years and Akashi already knew that this year’s first year Sports’ Festival was going to be one to remember.

``` ``` ```

By silent mutual agreement, almost the entire cohort of UA’s first year heroic’s classes were present in the Sports’ Festival stadium a full day early, all to watch one specific person compete. The various teachers that they had passed had raised their eyebrows at the forty-odd first years actually making use of the seating that was always reserved for the student body, as it usually sat empty, with students only interested in their own day of the festival.

The first years were joined by a trio of third years, one of whom was recognised by some of them as the winner of the third years’ tournament the previous day, Togata Mirio. The third years also seemed surprised at the growing number of arriving first years, but refrained from commenting, which Katsuki was reluctantly grateful for. He just picked a seat with a good view that was as far away from Deku as he could manage and sat down.

It was bad enough that his parents knew that he was going to be ‘voluntarily’ spending time in close proximity with the idiots that he shared a homeroom with, let alone the 1B extras, just to be able to see Nightlight win again, anyone trying to make him verbally acknowledge it was liable to cause one of his bigger explosions. Katsuki was self-aware like that. Not that anyone else here had any room to talk, but still.

At first, when Nightlight had announced that he would be putting together ‘training workshops’ for them, Katsuki had been tempted to scoff, because what kind of Hero didn’t know how to train? But purely out of the need to finally corner the guy and make him explain how he was as effective as he was in battle, because if the guy was that competent in a fight with a healing quirk of all things, then imagine what Katsuki could do with that knowledge, Katsuki had gone along to the first workshop.

It was an obstacle course/jungle gym time-trial exercise, no combat at all. Quirks were allowed, and it was one person through at a time but that was it. Katsuki was about ready to set something on fire with judicious application of nitro-glycerine when the white-haired extra had explained the activity, knowing that he had given up valuable training time for this, less than two weeks before the Sports’ Festival. Maybe sensing Katsuki’s imminent eruption, Nightlight had called on him to set the benchmark time through the course.

It had been more difficult than Katsuki had thought it would be going in, the tight, abrupt corners forcing him to do portions of it without his quirk which slowed him down, and at the end there was a steep rock wall that he had had to blast himself up, instead of climbing, because he had fallen off an up-jumped monkey bar earlier into water and couldn’t keep a grip on the handholds. In the end, his time was just over four minutes, not too bad, he had supposed. There were a handful of times where obstacles seemed to come out of no-where and it had cost him time. But if he had found that so difficult then some of the extras might not finish at all.

Akashi offered him a towel, and then turned to the rest of the extras who had turned up, most of 1A and a handful of 1B and said, “Having seen Bakugou complete the course, does anyone want to guess what the purpose of the exercise is?” There were a smattering of responses ranging from ‘athleticism’ to ‘adaptability’ but the answer that Nightlight was looking for came from the ponytail chick with the creation quirk.

“Situational awareness, Akashi-senpai. If Bakugou-kun had noticed the obstacles earlier, he would have been able to either plan around them or dodge them more effectively. Without it, he was left to react in the moment, which he did well, but the task was more difficult than it could have been, because of it.” Grudgingly, Katsuki had to admit that fit with his evaluation too, but he still didn’t see how this was worth anything.

“Great answer, Yaoyorozu! Now I know some of you must be wondering what use skills built in an obstacle course would be in Hero work, right?” Nightlight questioned the whole group, but with a glinting side-eye at Katsuki that said the extra had been aware of Katsuki’s opinion of this whole ‘exercise’.

The Nightlight continued, “Simply put, situational awareness will keep you alive on patrol. If you have been followed by a villain or even a member of the press, you want to know about it, if the criminal you have in custody is planning to escape, you need to have noticed, and if a papier mache bomb is being dangled over your head by one of your Senpai to make a point on situational awareness, it’s good to remember that looking up and not just around is important.”

As one, the gathered first years looked up to see a massive fake bomb hanging from the ceiling above their heads. There was no way that had been there the whole time and none of them had noticed! Right? In any case, the whole group of them were soon completing the obstacle course with much higher enthusiasm, constantly on watch for new tricks their Senpai might pull.

Every time Nightlight put on another ‘training workshop’ the number of first years in attendance grew, until the entire cohort of both classes were reliably attending every one, and every new workshop was themed around a skill that Katsuki had honestly never imagined would be as important to Hero work as Nightlight made it obvious they were. Quirkless free-running? Essential for navigating difficult terrain when stealth was too important to risk with his explosions if he didn’t want to fall flat on his face and possibly off a roof. Basic first-aid? What if you were alone on the battlefield, far from the healers and a civilian was dying in front of you, or you yourself needed help? Communication? Coordinating in a crisis would not only have the villains detained faster by having the best quirk match up possible set up in an ideal location, but could mean saved lives in a rescue scenario. Nightlight was relentless.

What was so much scarier, though, was the knowledge that one guy, a student just one level above themknew so much. Nightlight was ahead of his year mates, they knew that, but surely there was only so far ahead it was possible to be. Were all the second years like this? What must the third years be like? They had to know. All of which culminated in the impromptu assembly of first years gathered in the ‘Festival stadium to watch the second-year competition.

It was a massacre.

Even after having trained with Nightlight for most of the previous month, the vast majority of classes 1A & 1B, Katsuki included, were still unprepared to see their Senpai absolutely mulching his competition. Even the students with more classically heroic quirks: super-strength, telekinesis, projectiles of all descriptions and so much more, were unable to keep up with Nightlight, let alone stop him. Nothing seemed to faze him, and he made it look easy.

At one point during ‘Capture the Flag with Quirks’ Nightlight had been fighting some guy from another team, while dodging projectiles from at least two other people and he was still talking his teammates through combining their quirk effects into making some sort of inescapable mud pit as a defence for their flag. It was absurd. If Nightlight wasn’t still visibly waiting on a growth spurt, it would have been more than believable that he was a teacher in disguise, the difference in technical skill was that great.

Obviously, he mostly fought quirkless, but they also saw him run straight through a hail of quirk-made projectiles, the projectiles visibly ripping right through him to no effect, watched him jump from ascending platforms several stories high with no hesitation, and many other normally death-defying stunts that had the whole crowd, with its high density of heroes, flinch, and gasp. He just kept swanning on by, glowing a soft white-blue as he systematically continued making his year-mates regret getting out of bed that morning.

Unsurprisingly, Nightlight ended up winning the second-year tournament, with Katsuki hearing Deku’s excited babbling over the roar of the crowd even at this distance. Figures seeing Nightlight succeed with no offensive power would be exiting for the nerd. He heard Pinky break into the monologue to ask, “Senpai’s quirk is kind of OP, huh? He’s basically an immortal healing machine!”

Only to be shocked still by the nerd’s reply of, “He can ‘heal’ objects, too! I asked him after the first Workshop!” Which made some sense now that Katsuki thought about it, if Nightlight couldn’t ‘heal’ objects then the uniform he’s wearing would be hanging off him in strips by now, with everything he has put it through or put through it. Never mind at the USJ where that Nomu thing had turned their Senpai into a blood puddle, presumably ripping his hero costume to shreds in the process, and yet it came back intact and unstained during his resurrection stunt. Katsuki felt like an idiot for not noticing!

Speaking of idiots, he vaguely heard the Pikachu rip-off yelling about how ‘broken’ that quirk was, and Katsuki had to admit the moron wasn’t wrong for once. Nightlight’s quirk was OP in its own way, like a 1-up in a video game, but it was OP for a doctor or an EMT, not so much for a hero where strength in combat was essential to not being a liability. With everything they had all just seen from Nightlight, as well as in the now infamous ‘Workshops’, Nightlight had seen that truth for himself and refused to become a liability.

Katsuki could respect that.

``` ``` ```

Shuzenji sighed as the next wave of students were sent into her infirmary for healing by her apprentice who was just outside the door performing triage. None of these students were moving on to the next round, nor were they grievously injured, so their healing fell to her, instead of Akashi. Having spent all the third years’ tournament day on-call with her, and then all yesterday competing, her apprentice deserved a break and she had been more than willing to wave him off as he arrived that morning, but the stubborn thing had insisted on staying, and helping her.

As a compromise, outside of a potentially debilitating injury, he was only going to be healing students who were continuing in the festival, instead of leaving them to suffer the fatigue that came with the use of Shuzenji’s own quirk. If they weren’t moving on, then her quirk would more than suffice, and she seriously doubted anything too outrageous would happen in the first-year tournament of all things. (Less than two hours later she would regret even thinking those words).

For the first round of the day, the first years had had to clear an obstacle course where they were also allowed to sabotage each other with their quirks. The Todoroki boy had decided that meant he was allowed to freeze everyone’s feet to the floor. Interestingly, not one of the hero course students were caught by the trap, while almost everyone else had been. The boy’s classmates in 1A, Shuzenji understood, they would be starting to get used to his tactics by this time in the school year, but it was odd that all of 1B had seen the attack coming in time to dodge as well; they should not have known him well enough to predict that move yet.

Normally she would suspect foul play from Vlad King, his playful rivalry with Eraserhead getting out of hand (again) and giving his students information on the members of 1A, but the proud smile on her apprentice’s face made her reconsider who might have taught the first years how to keep watch for obstacles so well. The ever-present class rivalry also seemed less volatile than what she was used to seeing at this point in the school year, which would align with her burgeoning suspicions concerning the first years and Akashi.

Todoroki’s ice gambit ended up being so effective that only two non-hero-class students made it into the second round at all, one from General Education and one from Support. She also noticed that Toshi’s boy made it to first in the first round, only to immediately be met with the consequences of being on the top, poor dear, but for now she had frost nip patients to attend to.

By the time that Shuzenji next had a moment to look up at the screens showing the on-going tournament, the third round of challenges were well under way. She had already had to heal the student from General Ed, Shinsou, who had come to her covered in bruises and with a broken nose, and allowed Akashi to fix Midoriya’s finger, which apparently, he had broken on purpose to escape Shinsou’s quirk. Toshinori’s recklessness must be catching. Todoroki had also sent her yet another patient on the verge of hypothermia, and Aizawa’s student with the electric quirk had managed to shock himself into a stupor.

The situation that Shuzenji had looked up in time to see end, seemed to be a pseudo commercial, on behalf of the lone Support course student, and Ingenium’s younger brother as her unwilling assistant. At least no injuries came from that round. After that, Shuzenji and Akashi only had to treat exhaustion and minor cuts and grazes for the rest of the first round, though the final round had worried her for a moment before the boy with the explosions quirk had blasted the several tons of concrete shards about to crush him, away.

After a short intermission, in which both healers had their lunch and had tea together, the infirmary quiet and calm in the way it almost never was, Akashi caught her eye and said, “Sensei, I think I should be down in the arena for this next fight.”

At her raised eyebrow, he explained, “I’ve seen something of a one-sided rivalry starting between Todoroki and Midoriya, and considering how destructive both their quirks are…”

Shuzenji considered that for a moment before acquiescing. Both Midnight and Cementoss were on the field with the competing first years, and their whole purpose for being down there was to prevent the students from going overboard, but if Akashi’s instincts were telling him that he was needed, then she was loathe to stop him. The worst thing he could be was overkill. Shuzenji thought all of this but settled on just reminding her mentee to stay out of danger himself. He grinned at her, young and bright and thankful, so different from his usual calm, purposeful determination that it took her breath away, and vanished out of sight before anything else could be said.

Her boy had the heart of a healer, and the strength of a hero; there was nothing she had found that made him happier than just helping people. Toshinori might think his successor was destined to take the world by storm, but when it came to apprentices, but Shuzenji knew who she was far prouder of.

``` ``` ```

“I hope you realise just how lucky you are, young man! There is not one other healer on the planet who could repair your arms save my apprentice! Left to anyone else, you would be undergoing surgery right now!” Recovery Girl’s tirade continued, gesturing emphatically at the damning X-rays of Izuku’s arms, especially his right.  

The X-rays had been taken by the med bots that had rushed over to him where Izuku had landed after he finally convinced Todoroki to stop holding back and use his fire. Izuku only half remembered a white-haired blur sprinting toward his crater, shoving the med bots out of the way to reach him faster. The moment that who he now knew was Akashi-senpai made skin-to-skin contact, the agony radiating out of both his arms with every heartbeat, and the pounding in his aching head, disappeared in a now-familiar wash of white-blue light.

Between one second and the next, he was standing up, head clear and perfectly fine, the throbbing in his arms just gone, and being led away by the med bots as Akashi raced across the scored terrain of the tournament stage toward Todoroki.

Izuku’s Senpai seemed oblivious to how Present Mic and Eraserhead up in the announcers’ booth were explaining to the crowd that Akashi, “Who you may remember as yesterday’s winner, folks!” was Recovery Girl’s apprentice healer, as he healed Todoroki’s (much less severe) injuries. Though he doubted that Akashi-senpai was as unaware as he seemed, given the contents of the Workshops, but that was all Izuku got to see before he was hustled out of sight and into his current predicament: being lectured by Recovery Girl, herself.

Eventually, the diminutive woman seemed to run out of steam and turned away to fuss over Kirishima, who was being wheeled in after his match against Kachan. Weren’t they supposed to be the final second-round match up? Had Recovery Girl really been yelling at him for long enough to completely miss three whole fights? Izuku would have to watch the recordings back to see how they went when he got home.

Finally released from Recovery Girl’s indignant clutches, Izuku turned to leave the infirmary and nearly collided, head-on, with Akashi-senpai himself. The only reason they avoided running into each other at all was Akashi whipping an arm out to brace himself on the doorframe. They both froze in place for a long moment. Izuku noticed that the second year was staring at him and was about to ask why when Akashi-senpai started speaking.

“Hey Midoriya, I’m glad I caught you. Can I walk you back up to your class? We need to talk.” Izuku wondered if he was going to get lectured by another healer on his use of One for All, but he nodded his acceptance, anyway.

He didn’t mean to keep causing trouble, and he definitely didn’t want to keep breaking his bones! He just didn’t know how to use One for All! All Might made it look so easy, and he had already told Izuku that using it had never caused the kind of damage that Izuku had experienced. Izuku didn’t know what he was doing wrong! And then there was everything with Todoroki, and holding back when the other boy was finally using his full power would have been so rude!

Bracing for impact for another reaming-out over his general failure at, well, everything really, left Izuku unprepared for Akashi to ask, “Have you thought about giving your arms a break – no pun intended – and using kicks more in fights?”

Which- what? But also…All Might had never really been a kicker, so it hadn’t really occurred to Izuku, but legs were stronger than arms, weren’t they? Too much power for his arms, might be ok-ish in his legs. Akashi-senpai had picked up on something that not even Izuku, who held the quirk, and All Might, whose quirk it had been for decades, had thought of. Woah, Izuku’s Senpai was so smart!

“Also, I know Sensei would have already read you the riot act over your injuries, but, kid, getting that badly hurt over something like a school competition is just irresponsible.” That cut into Izuku’s euphoria more than a little, but now that he was out of the heat of the moment, sheepish agreement was starting to flood him. Akashi-senpai wasn’t done, however, “You would have permanently crippled yourself,” Izuku’s Senpai said bluntly, “and you might not have been able to be a hero at all after that.”

Horror cracked through Izuku at that; heroics had been his dream since he was old enough to wantthings. To have his own actions make it impossible, would have been devastating. Suddenly attempting to hold back tears, so he wouldn’t flood the corridor and drown them both, Izuku looked away from Akashi-senpai in shame.

The older boy kept talking, seeming to not want to end their conversation on such a bleak note, “You need to find another way to use your quirk, Midoriya, before you do permanent damage to yourself and I’m not there to fix it.  because one of these days, I might not be. Try thinking outside the box.”

Izuku looked back up with wet eyes, to see that they had arrived back at the 1A seating section, no one had noticed them yet, but Izuku wouldn’t be surprised if Jirou-san or Shouji-kun had heard at least part of their conversation. At least, if they had, they were doing a good job of pretending otherwise. Akashi waved him forward towards his classmates with a confusing departing sentence.

“I’ll leave you here, then. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go talk to Midnight-sensei about the potential PR consequences of chaining up teenagers like rabid animals on international television, bye!” Before disappearing back into the gloom of the backstage tunnels with an oddly sharp smile. Weird.

``` ``` ```

By the time Akashi got home to the flat he and his mother shared, he was ten different kinds of exhausted, but even after so long in the past, sleeping surrounded by strangers was just not possible for him, so he couldn’t nap on the bus, as he would have as Izuku. Luckily, a gentle reminder to his arts teacher had been enough to bring Midnight-sensei to her senses, and when Bakugou loudly declined to accept the first-place medal, she just announced that their first-year winner was unavailable for the medal ceremony for personal reasons. Akashi did not have energy for anything more difficult than that.

Stopping Kachan’s vilification by the media had been one of his major objectives today. It was always a balancing act, because every little change by him caused other changes by that happened independent of him, down the line. Akashi had to find the middle path between changing things for the better, but not completely de-railing the timeline, (if he hadn’t already, with Shigaraki and Kurogiri’s arrest). Healing his younger self had also been on the list, as well as finding a moment to speak to Shinsou to offer tutoring, to help get him into the heroic’s course as soon as possible.

That last objective had gotten derailed, with how busy the infirmary had been during the day, but he had already resolved to reach out some time in the next week, while the hero students were all off campus on internships. After letting himself in and greeting his mother with a quick hug, Akashi allowed himself collapse onto the couch for a nap, knowing that sleep that night was unlikely to be uninterrupted. Iida had still withdrawn from his final match, and that had only happened in the original timeline because of Stain’s attack on Iida Tensei.

Sure enough, what felt like less than a minute later, but what the oven clock confirmed had actually been almost three hours, the shrill ringtone of his mother’s phone woke him, Aizawa-sensei on the other end of the line. Akashi’s mother was white as a sheet as she handed her phone to him, slumping down next to him on the couch as he sat up properly to listen to his teacher.

“Akashi, I’m sorry to be calling at this hour, let alone after the week you’ve just had, but Pro Hero Ingenium has been critically injured past the limits of even Recovery Girl’s quirk. The doctors have said that without help he is unlikely to survive until morning, let alone be in a condition to ever return to hero work, and your mentor believes that your quirk may be his last hope.” Akashi was already standing to go and start packing a bag before Aizawa-sensei drew breath to continue his spiel. His mother followed him off the couch but diverted her path into the kitchen to put his dinner into Tupperware for the journey.

“Ingenium took the injury on patrol just over fourteen hours ago. Meaning your quirk has less than ten hours left until he cannot be healed by it.” Aizawa-sensei continued over the speaker as Akashi rushed to change, throwing his phone charger, his wallet, and a change of clothes into an overnight bag while he listened. He wished he could have prepared earlier, but his mother would have noticed, and he really didn’t have a good explanation for why he was prepping a go-bag. Akashi was so caught up in his head that he only realised that Aizawa-sensei had paused when he started speaking again to ask, “Akashi, can you hear me?”

“Sorry Sensei! Yes, I can hear you, I’m just throwing a bag together!” He hurriedly said into the phone.

There was an almost imperceptible relieved sigh before his teacher’s voice continued, the shadow of hesitation that Akashi had not even noticed was haunting his teacher’s tone, now missing. “Ingenium is in the hero wing of Hosu City Hospital, I know your family lives in Musutafu-“

“I can catch a train, maybe? Mum doesn’t have a car, and a bus might not get me there in time…” Akashi cut in absently, suddenly missing the freedom of movement that came with One for All with a fearsome ache of an intensity that he hadn’t felt in years.

“No, Problem Child, please do not board a train at this time of night, Mic and I have a car, we can pick you up. Tell your mother that we will escort you to the hospital and to a hotel room overnight, then we’ll drive you home tomorrow, at a civilized hour.” …That may have been a miscalculation on Akashi’s part, Aizawa did not sound impressed. He decided discretion was the greater part of valour and handed his mother her phone back to let Aizawa-sensei fill her in on the plan himself.

By the time the adults were finished with their conversation, Akashi had a decent bag together, and the two teachers were turning the corner onto their street. He hugged his mother goodbye and was about to race out the door when she stopped him to brush his hair out of his eyes and look down at him seriously. She said nothing for a long moment, seemingly grabbing for the words she wanted.

Before, “Just…take care of yourself, too. Ok?” She waited until he had nodded his assent before letting him head out the door to his teachers’ car. They had a long journey ahead of them, and Akashi had a hero to save.

Chapter Text

Out of the many things that worried Aizawa about the student in the backseat of his car, Akashi’s tendency to lapse into silence with almost all sense of his presence disappearing, was one of the milder examples. And didn’t that say it all. Over the last year and change, Aizawa had noticed that this state came out most often during travel, especially if Akashi was tired or feeling less than totally safe.

His student would withdraw from the world’s perception but keep a constant watchful awareness that Aizawa knew he was not responsible for teaching the kid, even as much as it was a core skill all Underground heroes picked up. The pervasive silence and lack of patented Healer Smile of Reassurance told Aizawa that it was exhaustion rather than anything more worrying that had Akashi melding into the car-seat cushions, and while exhaustion was still better than the alternative, Aizawa had to tamp down on a flash of guilt at dragging his underage student out of bed in the middle of the night when he should have been able to rest.

But Tensei was dying.

Iida Tensei, better known to the world as the Engine Hero: Ingenium, was a grown man who had pursued a career in professional heroics knowing the risks and understanding the realities of their profession. He couldn’t not, not after they lost Oboro. Tensei had been doing his job, a run-of-the-mill patrol, unfortunately timed so that he would miss his little brother’s first performance at the Sports’ Festival, when he had been attacked by a serial-killer notorious for targeting heroes specifically. And now Tensei was dying, and his only hope was the teenager stubbornly not napping in the back seat of Aizawa’s car.

Mic, along for the ride in the passenger seat, was not sleeping either, despite the hour but he hadn’t just spent all three days’ worth of Sports’ Festivals constantly using his quirk, even when he wasn’t directly competing, himself. Akashi looked ready to drop with good reason, but Aizawa had learnt the futility of trying to get the kid to prioritise himself when he didn’t want to after more than a year with the boy.

Aizawa doubted the brooding was particularly meditative or restful, and more than once during the journey he had debated trying to draw Akashi into a conversation, only to be left drawing a blank for what to say every time, but luckily their three-hour transit was coming to an end, as they closed in on Hosu City Hospital. The three of them piled out of Aizawa’s car and hurried into the facility.

They should still be a healthy handful of hours within Akashi’s time-limit, but none of them were willing to risk something going wrong at the metaphorical eleventh hour, whether it be a technical failing trapping them in an elevator for hours and sending them past the time where Akashi’s quirk was effective, or the serial killer who started this mess making a surprise appearance to make sure that help never arrived and his victim really died, the two Pros were taking no chances. Aizawa had Mic lead them through the maze of corridors that made up the sleeping hospital, as he covered them from behind, always making sure that Akashi was kept between them.

Their second year clearly recognised what they were doing but didn’t protest. He was mature enough to know that his teachers did not think he was defenceless, that this was appropriate caution, even in the blue-lit halls of the Hero ward of a hospital, considering there was a serial killer on the loose capable of murdering Pros and Akashi was the key to robbing him of his victory saving one of his victims. All Aizawa’s student did was keep a careful watch himself and helpfully stayed right where Aizawa could easily keep an eye on both him and their surroundings.

Aizawa knew that when Recovery Girl had to travel to a patient, instead of having them brought to her to be healed in the safety of UA, she had an escort. It was standard practise for healers with powerful quirks since they were such valuable targets for villains. Even healers with their own hero licenses had escorts when on duty; no one was invincible, and it was better to have prevented a tragedy than to have to clean up the aftermath of one.

Though she was still formidable, and Aizawa would never say it aloud in her hearing because he valued his shins, Recovery Girl was more vulnerable than when she was younger purely due to her advancing age, so she rarely did field work at all, these days. For Akashi, she had made an exception, to allow him to get a feel for how those situations would work, how the heroes they were accompanying would treat them simultaneously as allies to be trusted and resources that needed to be protected.

All hero students learnt how to fight, defend, and protect, but as a healing hero, Akashi had also needed to learn how to let himself be protected, which the boy had struggled with more than any other skill or challenge that UA, or the wider world of Heroics, had presented to him to date.

It had taken multiple conversations with his mentor, as well as the Principal and, interestingly enough, Power Loader, for Aizawa’s student to find some level of acceptance at being shielded by his fellow heroes until the moment they needed the abilities only he had, and Aizawa knew Akashi still found it uncomfortable on some level, even if he had outwardly made his peace with it. These days, Akashi adapted seamlessly to either being a front-line fighter, a stealth operative, or combat medic, responsible for the welfare of civilians and his fellow heroes, and Aizawa was honestly prouder of that progress then any skill Akashi had walked into UA already having mastered, because it proved the kid was still willing to meet challenges head on and learn from them. And the kid would be safer.

Mic led them straight to the room Tensei was being treated in, after a blessedly uneventful journey, and they opened the door to a room full of frantic Iidas and barely less frantic medical staff, all desperately trying to keep Ingenium alive. Aizawa had known the Iidas since he was Akashi’s age, in UA himself alongside the hero on the hospital bed, and this was easily the most stressed he had ever seen Tensei’s parents. The Engine Hero: Celerity, veteran of the heroic’s industry, better known to Aizawa and Mic as Iida Tengen, seemed to have aged a decade in the hours since his eldest son was attacked.

Wasting no time, Akashi stepped out from behind Mic, and straight into ‘Healer mode’, bypassing the fretting family with reassuring looks in their direction as his mentor gave him a report on Tensei’s condition.

Knowing well how her student’s quirk worked after more than a year with him, Recovery Girl cut straight to what the injuries were, how they had been treated so far, and how long ago they had been inflicted. Akashi nodded along with her, running his eyes over the displays of the monitors in the room, obviously wanting to assess the injured hero’s condition for himself before activating his quirk.

Aizawa stepped back to watch his second-year work, half-listening to Tenya rapidly explaining to his parents about his Senpai’s quirk, with something other than the devastation and poorly hidden rage, on his face, that had dominated his expression since the teenager had arrived at the hospital and first seen his older brother’s state. Aizawa could still see the edges of that rage at what a villain had dared to do to the brother Tenya idolised, but for the moment it was buried beneath something else. It looked like trust. It looked like hope.

The healers finished their rapid-fire debrief with the hospital staff, and Akashi stepped within touching distance of his patient as everyone else backed away slightly to give him room. As the young healer made skin-on-skin contact with the hero on the hospital bed, and Tensei’s injuries disappeared like they had never been inflicted, every monitor in the room ceasing to blare with angry red or orange indicator lights, the glow that signalled Akashi’s quirk in action lit the room with its usual soft white-blue light.

After a year in the school’s med bay, and periodically venturing outside it to various training grounds to deal with injuries too delicate for transport, Akashi’s signature glowing quirk effect had become synonymous with healing and recovery at UA. It had become one of the running jokes of the staff room that at this point they could line the halls of the school with white-blue LEDs and placebo their students into feeling better. Watching as his student saved yet another life, and healed a broken spine just for good measure, Aizawa wondered how long it would be before the rest of the world found the sight of Akashi’s quirk just as comforting as UA had learnt to. Like All Might’s smile in a hopeless situation.

Watching Tensei rise from what could have been his deathbed to join his parents and younger brother in profusely thanking the healer who had saved his life and hero career, Aizawa couldn’t help but think, what was Bakugou’s nickname for Akashi, again? Nightlight? It was fitting.

``` ``` ```

Tenya did not think he had ever been this relieved. Suddenly there was air to breathe in Tensei-nii’s hospital room which had been choking him for the long hours he had sat there, helpless, not wanting to see his invincible older brother so close to death but also unable to look away in case something happened, and he did not see it. Looking away from his brother, not being there for him had allowed a monstrous villain to do this in the first place, so how could Tenya chance it here?

And then Akashi-senpai arrived, and Tensei was breathing under his own power, was moving his legs, was sitting up and talking. Tenya had no memory of leaving his chair to get to his brother’s bed side and crash into his side for a hug, but Tensei-nii’s arms were around him, as strong and sure as they had ever been, and they seemed to signal the return of Tenya’s own ability to breathe and talk and cry. Their parents, always loving but usually just as reserved as Tenya, joined him in holding their oldest son and weeping tears of relief at his miraculous recovery.

Recovery…

At that moment Tenya realised that they were all being terribly rude to the hero student who had just returned Tensei-nii to them, and he wiggled his way free of the group hug to find his Senpai his hero, the saviour of his brother’s life, talking quietly with Aizawa-sensei, politely letting Tenya’s family have their moment. Wiping the moisture from his eyes, and the fog from under his glasses, he made his way back across the room and bowed at the waist to Akashi-senpai. Tenya wished he had his mother’s way with words, or his brother’s ability to relate to people easily, but he hoped his absolute sincerity came across enough to be understood as he thanked his Senpai for saving his brother’s life.

Tenya felt a hand, smaller than his own but just as strong, gently easing him out of his bow. Akashi-senpai just smiled at him gently and seemed to be about to speak when Tenya’s parents, and Tensei-nii himself, walking under his own power like he hadn’t spent the last day just barely clinging to life with a broken spine, crossed the room and pulled the healer into another group hug, with Akashi-senpai at the centre. Tenya’s Senpai seemed startled, but he seemed to relax after a moment, accepting that the Iidas’ gratitude was just too big for words. His parents still spent long minutes after the hug dissolved effusively thanking Akashi-senpai and the rest of the healers, doctors, and nurses, but privately Tenya thought he might never be able to thank them all enough, especially Akashi-senpai.

His attention was caught by Akashi-senpai himself asking, “Iida-kun, you must be exhausted after everything today, would you like me to heal your fatigue?”

It took Tenya a long moment to respond, more than a little dumbfounded that his Senpai was offering more healing, as though he had not just-

Wait, ‘Iida-kun’? Akashi-senpai called him ‘Iida-kun’, as though he still had to maintain the ‘proper’ distance for a Senpai-kouhai pair, after what he had just done for Tensei-nii. That would not do at all.

“Akashi-senpai! I would much prefer for you to call me by my first name!” Tenya knew he was being too loud, from how his exclamation had caught the attention of the entire room, who had previously been caring for a nurse that seemed to have suffered a fainting spell. Tenya had honestly not noticed, it seemed not even Akashi-senpai’s infamous Workshops were up to the task of breaking though his current preoccupation. 

Trying to modulate his volume to be lower, now hyper conscious of both the room’s attention and the fact that it was the middle of the night, he continued, “You saved my brother’s life, Senpai, I would be honoured to have you as a close friend.”

Akashi-senpai blinked a couple times before smiling warmly back at him and responding, “Call me Tatsuya, then, Tenya.”

Any further conversation was prevented by Aizawa-sensei ushering Akash-Tatsuya, and Present Mic-sensei who had come with them, out the door and away to find a hotel room for the night. Well, the restof the night, in any case. Dawn must not be too far away, by now. Tenya turned away from the door to look back at his family, once again whole, after they had come so close to losing a piece of it forever.

With Tensei-nii back to perfect health, and already signing discharge paperwork, the poor nurse who had collapsed was being carefully placed onto the newly vacated hospital bed. Luckily, she woke soon after Tenya’s teachers and Tatsuya had left and seemed unharmed by the fall. She seemed embarrassed to have fainted but explained that it was just backlash from her quirk.

“You were using your quirk?” Mother asked, curiously. Tenya had not noticed any indication of quirk use, but he had been so focussed on his brother and then Tatsuya, he was unsure whether he had simply missed something.

“Only passively, Iida-san,” the nurse began, “My quirk is diagnostic in nature. Basically, if we were to suffer a power-cut while your son, or another patient was being monitored, then I could take the place of our equipment. It’s only that…”

“You feel what your patients feel? As part of how your quirk processes the information it receives?” Cut in Recovery Girl in an arched tone, as though she already suspected the nurse’s answer.

The nurse looked startled by that leap in logic, but nodded in agreement, obviously about to ask how the veteran healer could have known that, before Recovery Girl continued.

“My apprentice’s quirk is very similar. To heal, he must first comprehend the damage in its entirety, which manifests as him experiencing the pain of the injured party.” Horror flashed across Tensei-nii’s face at that information, but he was prevented from speaking by the elderly healer patting his leg and saying, “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Ingenium. Akashi knew the situation and chose to heal you anyway. Do not disrespect his choice with misplaced guilt, now.”

Tensei-nii nodded a little shakily and returned to his paperwork, while Recovery Girl turned back to the nurse on the bed with a knowing expression, “Was it Ingenium’s state that shocked you, or that of my apprentice in the moment of healing?”

The young nurse met the aged healer’s eyes and spoke more solemnly, “It was Akashi-kun. It was as though he felt Ingenium’s entire injured experience in that one moment. His heart rate actually stuttered, his blood pressure skyrocketed and every one of his nociceptors lit up! I don’t-” her breathing grew uneven, and she had to take a moment before she could continue, “I don’t understand how he wasn’t screaming.”

Tenya felt the floor drop out from under him and knew from his parents’ expressions that they were feeling the same. Recovery Girl was right in that Tatsuya had made his choice knowingly and the thing was over with now, and they had Tensei, whole and hale, a state of affairs that Tenya would not trade the world for, but still… How could they ever thank Tatsuya enough?

``` ``` ```

With his odd schedule, as far as classes went, Akashi was not exactly an uncommon sight in the staff room, but usually he arrived accompanying one of the teachers, or appeared in response to being summoned. Akashi was not in the practice of turning up unannounced to speak with them, so when her mentee poked his head in the door unexpectedly, Shuzenji and Aizawa, as his primary instructors, moved over towards him.

“Aizawa-sensei! Recovery Girl-sensei! I wanted to talk to you about internship week if you both have a second?” Akashi looked a little nervous, which was interesting, he knew he didn’t have anything to fear from either of them, so what could this be about? Most of the staff, Shuzenji included, had assumed that Akashi would be spending internship week with her, like he had done the previous year, but from the nerves she could see her boy supressing, he must be planning something else.

Shuzenji exchanged a loaded look with Aizawa, who was clearly thinking along the same lines, and they stepped outside the staff room to join their student in the corridor, beyond. As they waited for Akashi to explain himself, Shuzenji took in her mentee’s stiff shoulders and sighed. Was the lad really so worried about offending her by something as simple as choosing a different internship for the week? Silly boy, Shuzenji thought fondly.

“A-ah Recovery Girl-sensei, I was thinking that maybe this internship week I might study under someone else?” Shuzenji carefully maintained her most neutral expression, if only to keep from laughing at the poorly hidden trepidation in that ‘announcement’.

Luckily, Aizawa picked up the conversational ball and asked for them both, “That’s fine, Akashi, I’m sure you can put your studies under Recovery Girl on hold for the length of internship week, but who were you thinking of interning under?”

Seeing how totally unfazed his teachers were at his decision, Akashi continued with more confidence in his voice and less tension in his shoulders. “I was actually thinking of shadowing Ingenium, Senseis.” Probably seeing their raised eyebrows, Akashi explained, “I wanted to get some experience as a healing hero without you shielding me, Recovery Girl-sensei,” the lad looked bashful, and clearly still wary of causing her offence, but she only nodded along.

“And I know there are always security concerns when we’re out in the field, so I thought Ingenium, if he agrees, might be best because not only is Hosu absolutely crawling with heroes at the moment,” because there was a serial killer on the loose, but Akashi still had a point, “but also because Ingenium himself has… a strong personal motivation to keep me safe in particular.”

A delicate way of phrasing the level of gratitude the whole Iida family had for Shuzenji’s apprentice. Outside of UA, the Iidaten Hero agency was probably the safest place in the country for Akashi to spend internship week, Pro-hunting serial killers be damned. Another exchanged look with Aizawa said they were in agreement and telling Akashi that verbally had her student almost wilting with relief.

Ridiculous child.

After sending Akashi off to eat something before classes resumed, Shuzenji and Aizawa returned to the staff room to find their co-workers all looking at them curiously, obviously wondering what their student needed. Shuzenji let Aizawa explain in his typically succinct way as she thought over the whole interaction. The reasons Akashi presented for wanting to study under Ingenium specifically made perfect, logical sense, but Shuzenji knew her student. There were other motivations at play here, even if the ones he had spoken were true, too.

Sharply, she wondered if Akashi might just be feeling protective over ‘his’ first years as they journeyed out into the world as heroes for the first time, with at least two of them going to spend internship week, legally unable to use their quirks or fight without provisional licenses, in the same city as a known serial killer. Still, she suspected that even that might not be the whole story, but if her apprentice had chosen his internship location with his Kouhai in mind, well, she was much less surprised that he had decided so abruptly to participate in one.

``` ``` ```

Izuku breathed out a sigh of relief after the chief of police left Iida-kun, Todoroki-kun and him alone in the office of Ingenium’s agency that they had been reprimanded, and then thanked, in. Credit for Stain’s arrest would be going to Ingenium himself, to save the three of them from the legal fallout of their fight, which Izuku wasn’t unhappy about, but his anxiety really could have done without Chief Tsuragamae’s lecture.

They hadn’t seen Ingenium himself yet, the Pro Hero was still busily at work in the city coordinating the clean-up of the mass Nomu attack that had happened alongside their battle with Stain, but Gran Torino had already come by to yell at him, and they were expecting the arrival of Ingenium’s other intern for the week any minute. Endeavour also had yet to make an appearance, which Izuku was privately grateful for.

No one in class 1A had been surprised when Iida-kun had chosen to join the brother he was so proud of for internship week, especially not after news of Ingenium’s brush with death, courtesy of the Hero Killer: Stain, broke. It made perfect sense. What had surprised the class was when Akashi-senpai had asked Iida-kun (while calling him Tenya, which no one had had the courage to ask about yet) if he would mind asking Ingenium if the hero would consider him for an internship with Iidaten Agency.

Iida-kun had lit up and had called his brother right then and there to ask. Ingenium must have agreed on the spot because Iida-kun had barely finished asking the question before he was looking back at Akashi-senpai with a smile and a nod of confirmation. It was one of the few real smiles any of them had seen from Iida-kun since his brother had been attacked.

Izuku had known that Iida hadn’t handled the hero killer’s attack on Ingenium well, but he had thought it was mostly lingering worry. His brother was fine, now, after all. He’d been healed with no lasting damage, which was more than could be said for most of Stain’s previous victims. Izuku didn’t see Iida-kun’s anger building, couldn’t identify it in time, not the kind of blinding rage that could drive his extremely strait-laced friend to try to kill the hero killer mid-Nomu attack, and his friend had almost died because of it.

 Izuku had intervened just in time to prevent Iida-kun’s murder, and then Todoroki had saved them both. The Pros, sidekicks, and Akashi-senpai, following behind a stressed looking Ingenium, had arrived soon after they had defeated the villain. Akashi-senpai flat out ignored the bound and unconscious serial killer to sprint right at them, first going to Native, then Iida-kun, then Todoroki-kun and finally Izuku himself.

Their Senpai’s face was totally unreadable, Izuku couldn’t tell if he was upset at them for running off, relieved that they had survived an encounter with the hero killer, or whether he was even thinking about their actions at all. With the Nomu-crisis, it was more than possible that the older boy’s thoughts were miles away from their small pocket of chaos.

Speaking of chaos…

One moment they had been standing in relative quiet as the adult heroes fussed around them and the villain they had defeated, and the next Akashi-senpai, who had yet to move away from their cluster, was shoving Izuku out of the way of the claws of a flying Nomu. Izuku had hit the ground hard, and it had taken him a moment too long to realise that Akashi-senpai had been carried off by the creature in his place.

The heroes were yelling, trying to pursue before the creature got too high. The Nomu must have had Akashi-senpai in a vice-grip, talons digging into him, because the healer was lit up with his own quirk even as he fought to free himself. Despite all of that, somehow the one to rescue Akashi-senpai had been the hero killer: Stain, himself. Stating bluntly, “I have no quarrel with healers, this child is not one of the false idols the cancerous growth of society has grown to worship," before making a terrifying speech about ‘fake heroes’ and passing out, standing up.

It had been a long night.

As if he had been summoned by Izuku’s thought’s, Akashi-senpai himself opened the door to the meeting room they were still in and gestured for them to follow him. Their senpai said, “First things first: I’m glad you’re alive. I know you acted with heroic intentions last night, but if things had gone even slightly differently, we would be preparing four funerals right now, and I need you to acknowledge that.” Akashi-senpai did not look back to watch his words land, but Izuku felt their weight, anyway. He could tell that his friends felt it too.

“In other news: clean up continues, and since none of you are injured, you will be reporting back to your various mentors to help with their tasks.” He paused for a moment before coming to a stop and turning to face Iida-kun directly.

“All three of your mentors are facing investigations on how and why last night happened,” Iida flinched, and Izuku sympathised, he hated the idea of causing more trouble for Gran Torino, “and I know about the gag order, so this will be the last time I reference your role in last night: Tenya, what on Earth were you thinking?”

“Tatsuya…” Iida started, and Izuku abruptly realised that the first-name-basis situation went both ways, “You saw how injured Tensei-nii was, you felt what that villain did to him-”

Iida implored, only to be interrupted by Akashi-senpai’s exclamation of, “And I healed him! Ingenium is fine, Tenya! But you could have died! Why?”

Izuku’s revelation that Akashi-senpai was the healer responsible for Ingenium’s recovery, a detail that had never been released to the public but now seemed obvious, was completely derailed by Iida’s uncontrolled shout of, “BECAUSE HE STILL HURT TENSEI! AND THAT ALSO HURT YOU!”

There was a long moment of silence as Akashi-senpai gathered his thoughts, clearly thrown. 

“You went after a serial killer because I chose to use my quirk to heal your brother?” Akashi-senpai asked in an incredulous half-shout. Izuku couldn’t blame him, getting revenge for an adored older brother was one thing, but finding out that his friend had not only risked ever being able to be a hero with a vigilantism charge hanging over his head, but also his life to avenge Akashi-senpai?

“…Yes?” At least Iida-kun sounded tentative about the confirmation. Hopefully that meant he wouldn’t do this again?

“You are explaining this to your brother, by yourself,” Akashi-senpai said flatly, though something in his posture read as ‘shaken’ to Izuku. “I did not heal your brother only to have your family lose you, to the same villain, less than a week later, out of a misguided sense of revenge for me.”

“That’s fair.”

``` ``` ```

Since the Hosu incident, Aizawa had noticed that Akashi was spending more and more time with the first-year heroic’s classes, especially 1A. In the aftermath of that disaster, Todoroki had finally stopped holding himself at arm’s length from his classmates, and the new quintet of chaos that was Asui, Todoroki, and the original trio, Midoriya, Iida and Uraraka, seemed more than willing to assimilate their Senpai into the group as well.

Between the Nomus and Stain, Hosu City was in shambles, and Akashi had ended up spending the second half of his internship week working alongside his mentor, after all, when she was called from UA to help the city recover. Aizawa’s first years who had been in Hosu at the time had come out of the experience, with a more realistic view of heroics as a career than some third-year graduates had. Midoriya had also returned with a new understanding of his quirk that was resulting in far fewer broken bones, which was another positive. (Mic said he sounded sarcastic when he reported that, after 1A’s first exercise back from internships, buy why wouldn’t Aizawa be happy about his teenage student finally gaining the quirk control to avoid grievous bodily harm?)

Less than two weeks of settling into 1A’s new normal, with frantic end-of-semester exam prep happening all around them, and Akashi consistently acting as an oasis of calm in the non-stop freneticism of Hero school for Aizawa’s first years, one that even the more reserved of the class knew that they could go to with questions, or for help with the curriculum, before the peace shatters. For how this year was going, that might have just been a record, Aizawa caught himself thinking, dryly.

Recovery Girl spoke clearly over the school’s PA system, and Aizawa could hear her voice ringing out across campus, clearly unwilling to risk her student missing her announcement by something as simple as Akashi having deviated from his timetable and not being in the place she projected her message. It was immediately obvious why.

“Akashi, I need you at ground Alpha, Sector 7, immediately. Grab someone with a speed quirk and get them to run you here, our patient has minutes.”

This was a day where Akashi had been acting as teaching assistant for 1A and he’d jumped to his feet when he heard his name, the few students between him and the exit clearing a path. By the time that Recovery Girl had finished speaking, he’d made it past Aizawa and was opening the door and asking, “Alpha’s roughly a straight shot from here, yeah?”

“Yes.” The part of Aizawa’s brain that never left the underground noticed that his first years were tense, on-edge, and watching their exchange like a tennis match.

Akashi was clearly turning possibilities over in his head before landing on the same conclusion as Aizawa, before requesting, “Can I borrow Iida?”

“Yes. Go.”

Aizawa’s second year turned to the youngest Engine Hero, a hero family famous for their speed, especially on straightaways. “Tenya, how fast can you run 3 kilometres?”

To his credit, Iida put his own obvious curiosity aside and answered his Senpai; all of them hyper-aware of the time-pressure, “On my own, about two minutes but with a passenger-”

Akashi cut him off, “You won’t have to worry about my weight. Uraraka, I need you to use your quirk on me, count to… let’s say 80, to be on the safe side, then release it, ok?”

“Ah, yes, Senpai!” The girl dove past her friends to join Akashi and Iida in the doorway, hand out-stretched and ready.

“Good. Let’s go.”

Uraraka tagged Akashi with her quirk and released his gravity. The healer took a firm hold of Iida’s shoulders and they went rocketing off down the corridor to save a life. A cacophony of teenaged curiosity and excitement erupting in their wake, with endless speculation about the injury Aizawa’s second year had been summoned to heal. The only students who weren’t indulging in the rare opportunity to create noise that Iida’s absence created, were Asui, Midoriya, and Uraraka, who were concentrating on getting the timing right for the latter to release her quirk.

Slowly, order returned to the classroom, with the students asking if that happened often. Aizawa had to raise his eyebrows at them as he pointed out that emergencies were happening all over the world every minute, and with Akashi’s quirk being indiscriminate in target he could theoretically never stop responding to alerts.

There were those (the hero commission) who would indeed like his underage student to be permanently on the clock/on call and Nedzu was currently fighting an uphill battle against both them and an upswing in public sentiment that UA should ‘stop cloistering the new healer away and let him heal’ as though Akashi was a full pro and not still a high schooler himself. With how few people (comparatively) watched the first-year Festival before this year, not many people outside UA knew about Akashi, but that was until they saw him reset Midoriya’s injuries like they were nothing in the tournament bracket.

Nedzu was managing to way-lay many of the demands by pointing out how ‘limited’ Akashi’s abilities were, with their strict time-limit, and thankfully no one but the most dedicated of online sleuths had manage to put UA’s apprentice healer, and Ingenium’s miraculous recovery together, but Aizawa was starting to wonder how long that would last. All Might was dying because he took too much upon himself over the course of his heroics career. Aizawa would not watch that happen to Akashi.

Half an hour later, with the class still refusing to return to the planned lesson because, “It wouldn’t be fair to continue without Iida-kun, Sensei!” brats, a shell-shocked looking Iida wandered back in, eyes wide but unseeing behind his glasses, followed closely by an Akashi whose whole front was absolutely saturated in blood. Neither of them spoke, Akashi just gently guided Iida back to his seat, grabbed his bag from behind Aizawa’s desk and calmly walked back out to go and change, causing another uproar in his wake.

No classwork happened for the rest of that period, despite Aizawa’s best efforts.

Chapter Text

Looking out at his class, fidgeting nervously in their chairs as they waited for their exam results, Aizawa felt a swell of fond amusement. Teenagers would always fear exam scores, it seemed, even when they had already persevered through much worse in their short time as hero students. Serial killers, inhuman multi-quirked monsters, and villains with God-complexes, alike, had nothing on the sheer stress an examcould cause a hero student.

Ashido and Kaminari in particular were sweating buckets, as they waited for him to announce the scores, and Aizawa could tell that still-mending ribs were the only thing keeping Midoriya from vibrating with anxiety at his desk.

The end-of-semester exams were always a challenge for UA students, regardless of course of study, but this group of first years had been given a true trial by fire, an exam an order of magnitude more difficult than what was normal for students still so early in their heroics course. Traditionally, final exams for first years would only ever include robots, a way to mark their progression from the entrance exam, but with how the world was changing around them, and with his first years somehow constantly in the middle of everything, UA had chosen to push their students, for their own safety. They would survive be ready for the coming storm, Aizawa would make sure of it.

Rather than use the standard exam of basic battle scenario with robotic opponents that the students either had to defeat or escape, the teachers had served as the exams’ ‘villains’, as they did in the upper years’ exams. Not only were human opponents more unpredictable, but they could tailor the exams to force the students into confronting individual-specific challenges. In the first years’ case, they were confronted by their weaknesses, be they mental, physical, quirk-related, phobia-based or social in nature.

To win, and therefore pass, each of Aizawa’s (and Vlad’s) class were presented with a disadvantageous situation and had to overcome, whichever weakness Principal Nedzu had identified and chosen to target. The ‘class idiots’ faced the genius, the powerfully quirked recommendation students faced the teacher who could turn their quirks off, so on and so forth. For the most part, his class had risen above the challenge and eked out a win, even if for some it was by the skin of their teeth. The few that hadn’t managed had still shown they had plenty of potential, but from the racketing-up nerves he could feel choking the classroom, Aizawa could tell that some kind of reassurance was in order.

Without any further ado, Aizawa hit the button on his remote for the projector and displayed the final results. Before Kirishima, Sato, Sero, Ashido or Kaminari could start to mope, Aizawa announced that even the students who had failed the practical were coming to the summer training camp. With that, his whole class cheered, and started planning a group outing to get the supplies they would need.

While they were preoccupied making noise, it seemed the consensus was a Sunday trip to the local shopping centre, Aizawa noticed Akashi slip into the room. His second year moved to stand beside him, and together they watched the kids act like kids for once. Before the class could gather their collective scattered attention and realise that their Senpai had entered the room, Aizawa spoke to his second year in an undertone, intended for just the two of them.

“Have you decided whether you’ll be accompanying Snipe and 2B, or joining us? You could even join the third years and Midnight and Thirteen if you really wanted to. I know Togata and his triad of chaos would love to have you along, you don’t have to follow me to the first-year camp, just because I’m still your ‘homeroom’ teacher.”

Akashi looked back at him seriously, no hesitation in his eyes, “I’d prefer to come with you, Aizawa-sensei.” His face softened slightly, the corners of his mouth hitching up, “I’m curious though, why did you ask? You could have just told me which camp I would be attending, it’s not like I would have argued…”

Perhaps seeing the raised eyebrow Aizawa was directing at him, Akashi sighed quietly and admitted, “I know you’ve noticed how my year-mates and I don’t really get along, but it would have been fine!” Akashi ploughed on before Aizawa could point out that making his student uncomfortable for no purpose for the better part of three weeks would not have ‘been fine’, but Akashi continued before he could put that into words.

“I’m just surprised that coming along with the first years was an option, I guess. I’m glad! Don’t get me wrong, they’re great and I’d love to spend more time with them, but wouldn’t it make more logical sense to send me with the third years, since Recovery Girl-sensei is going with them, too?” There was a wispy tone of incredulity in Aizawa’s student’s tone, like he thought the situation was too good to be true and now that it was here, he was having a hard time believing it.

He must have wanted to accompany the first years something fierce if even this much of it was visible. But Akashi had once again done what Akashi was prone to do and instead of asking for something, he had allowed the situation to resolve without his input, prepared to deal with the fallout but unwilling to take the first action, not when it was for his own benefit. Problem child.

Akashi was also seriously underestimating the staff’s collective soft spot for the young healer, if he really thought that they would separate the boy from the new friendships he had been building, after a full year of near isolation, just in the name of more healer training. (In all honesty, with Midoriya around he might have more healing to do with the first years, than the third years. New year, new Problem Child, it seemed.) But Aizawa couldn’t just say that Akashi had been given a choice about which training camp to attend because the staff wanted him to make friends, people already accused him of favouritism toward UA’s youngest healer. Instead…

“Problem Child Senior,” Aizawa began, absently noticing that his younger students had noticed their Senpai’s arrival sometime during their conversation. More observational training was already planned for the camp, but Akashi’s Workshops had given the first years a solid foundation, already.

“Upgrade!” Akashi chirped at him, also clocking the audience, and playing along with their tried-and-true overtired, grump-Sensei and peppy, eager-student performance. It wasn’t untrue, which was part of the reason it worked so well, but it was over-exaggerated, meant to keep a listener’s attention on their ‘comedic dynamic’ instead of the actual contents of their conversation. So far, only Mic had called them out on it.

“Shut it. You’re coming on the camp with us as a field medic, but you’ll have your own training regimen too. You are not slacking off just because you’re with the first years. Also, because this lot are the biggest group of trouble magnets this side of…you.”

“Thanks, Sensei.” Muffled giggles echoed around the room at Akashi’s tone, but as per usual, they were so focussed on it that the confirmation that Akashi was coming to camp with them had flown over most of their heads. It would sink in later, hopefully far from Aizawa’s classroom, where he wouldn’t have to deal with happy loud and overexcited first years.

“Shut. It.”

``` ``` ```

As blue fire seared across the night sky and set the whole forest ablaze, Tatsuya felt a sickening swell of guilt. The thunderous roar of Dabi’s infamous blue flame, as it sent trees crashing down and smoke into the air, almost drowned out Aizawa-sensei’s barked commands for all of them, the six students who had failed their practical exams, and Tatsuya, himself, to stay inside the lodge with Vlad King.

To stay where it was safe until he could return with the other first years.

The other first years who were in potentially lethal danger again.

Lethal danger that Tatsuya had failed to prevent.

The only thing keeping him moving was the knowledge that the six first years under his (and Vlad King’s) care were not as safe as Aizawa-sensei was assuming. In the wake of the first timeline’s summer camp disaster, in the long hours before he was allowed to leave his hospital bed, his class had clustered in his treatment room and talked about their ‘test of courage’ experiences. Kirishima had spoken at length about the clone of Dabi’s incursion into the supposedly safe camp lodge.

The attack had forced them to abandon the only ‘safe’ place in the whole forest, leaving them outside and vulnerable. Easy pickings for the Nomu and other Dabi clone waiting in the shadows.

Not on Tatsuya’s watch.

When the League member casually strolled into the classroom that they’d been promised was safe and squared up with Vlad King, Akashi ripped the fire extinguisher off the wall and unloaded it on the villain, temporarily extinguishing the blue fire and letting Vlad King get close enough to land a hit. To the shock of everyone else, the villain started melting away, but Tatsuya just ignored what he knew had been coming was already racing for the door, he’d had enough of sitting on his hands for one night, his classmates needed him.

Dabi’s arrival should have meant that the attack was already well-underway. His younger self might have even found his way to Todoroki and Kachan, by now, they might have lost Kachan already, even.

The guilt at being unable to prevent that happening to his childhood friend of his first life made his stomach cramp and roil. If Tatsuya hadn’t spent so much of his second life dealing with the backlash of his new quirk, he would already be vomiting into the blackened grass. When it came to Day’s Grace, the pain was bearable, after his experiences with One for All pain was old-hat, but the… wrongness of knowing another body, of experiencing life in another body long enough for his quirk to learn how to heal it, let alone what he felt when using it on inanimate objects… even after a decade with this quirk, it took all the composure he had learnt trying to keep a resistance against All for One alive, to keep his reaction off his face every time he used it.

Behind him, Tatsuya could hear the remedial class students and Vlad King, charge out of the lodge after him, but at least with Dabi having gone down as quickly as he had, the building was still upright, undamaged, and most importantly, not on fire. They would have a safe place to bring the first years back to, after this was all over. Vlad King looked ready to protest any of them leaving the lodge, but before Tatsuya had to remind the worried teacher that Eraserhead had given the students permission to use their quirks, and Tatsuya himself had a provisional license, Awase Yosetsu stumbled out of the forest with an injured Yaoyorozu in his arms.

Tatsuya bolted past Vlad King and was already activating his quirk before the others reached them. He knew, having been told by others and even by watching recordings of his quirk in action that he emitted a blue-white glow when healing. Tatsuya had never actually seen it in the moment himself, always totally consumed by the flood of information from his quirk. The exact structure and composition of whoever he was healing, the damage to that structure and accompanying pain, how it should be, and the knowledge that pounded on the walls of his mind that he shouldn’t know this, this wasn’t him.

Blinking back to himself, a breath later outside his head, Tatsuya looked down at Yaoyorozu waking in Awase’s arms, totally unharmed. The boy looked ready to cry with relief and exhaustion, seeing her blink up at him, and Tatsuya knew that if the first year started, he would be joining in, though not out of relief. In the first timeline, Awase and Yaoyorozu had only survived the chainsaw Nomu because it was called away. It had been called away because the mission was complete. Kachan and Ragdoll were already gone.

Again. He failed again.

You still have students to heal, he sternly told himself. You knew this was a possibility when you didn’t protest spending the Test of Courage in the lodge with the remedial students.

You have work to do. You can’t fall to pieces yet. No one wants to see that anyway, it’s bad for morale.

Tatsuya firmly pulled himself together, and healed Awase. The kid may have been less injured than Yaoyorozu, but that just meant he wasn’t on death’s door. Yaoyorozu was set on her feet, and the group turned in time to meet Kendo, sprinting out of the forest, gas mask on, and her giant hands full of her classmates, either unconscious from the gas or in the case of Tetsutetsu, bleeding from Mustard’s bullets.

Tatsuya wasted no time, barking out orders to the group of first years around him, for once not waiting for approval from Vlad King-sensei.

“Kendo, bring them here. Sato, give Yaoyorozu some of your sugar packages, even with my quirk she’s out of calories. The rest of you are keeping watch. With the fires still burning our night vision is unreliable, we won’t see someone coming until they’re right on top of us and the forest is full of villains.”

Tatsuya reached out to heal Tetsutetsu, not even pausing to help the boy up before healing one gas victim after another. The backlash of his quirk washed over him, stronger and more insistent each time as he gave himself no respite. Tatsuya pushed through it. How could he rest when there were people to save? How could he stop when he had failed to prevent this?

Tatsuya had finished with the victims of Mustard’s gas and was healing Kendo, still-giant hands covered in scrapes and bruises, when the next wave of injured teenagers broke through the trees. The first years looked ready to wilt with relief upon seeing their growing circle of able-bodied defenders and Tatsuya, himself, ready to heal.

Four more of Mustard’s victims later and the remainder of the Wild Wild Pussycats made their way into the clearing, several unconscious villains between them. Between patients, Tatsuya looked up to see Yaoyorozu creating proper restraints, Monoma at her side listening carefully to her instructions as she talked him through using his copy of her quirk.

Just as Tatsuya was seriously contemplating getting up to go and find their stragglers, the ones who were still in the forest to find, in any case, the shell-shocked group of injured teenagers, and a bitter-faced Aizawa-sensei, stepped into the light of their defensive circle. Sans Kachan.

Even though it had been calculated, even though it had made logical sense to not insist that he be in the forest the night that there just-so-happened-to-be a massive villain attack when Aizawa-sensei had asked him to assist with the remedial classes, that would have made anyone justifiably suspicious, let alone the chronically sceptical Eraserhead, looking at the faces of the younger versions of his friends, devastated and pale, Tatsuya didn’t think he would ever be able to forgive himself for it. His actions may have preserved the timeline’s predictability, and his own ability to make meaningful changes down the line, but the agony of failing to protect his class, hurt worse than his quirk had ever managed.

In this life, or his last.

``` ``` ```

Summer camp had started so well, too. Maybe that should have been a sign, but in the moment Aizawa had just been relieved that he and his students had survived the bus ride with the sanity they’d had, at the moment of boarding, intact, and not thought to question miracles. Predictably, the re-realization that their beloved Akashi-senpai was joining their training camp had caused a ruckus, across both first-year classes, funnily enough, but order had resumed in time for Vlad and Aizawa to shuffle their excitable charges onto their respective transports and start the four-hour trip to the Wild Wild Pussycats’ property.

Of course, the students of Aizawa’s bus, sans Akashi, were booted out several kilometres early to make their way on foot, but that was just semantics.

Over the past week, Aizawa had seen massive growth from his students, Akashi included as he worked through his own training regimen, interspersed with the occasional calls for his help as the resident healer as the students stubbornly pushed (or were pushed in some cases) past their previous limits. He had also seen the two classes intermingling in a way that usually didn’t start to happen until second year, but Akashi had laid the groundwork for inter-class comradery in those Workshops of his, and his merry band of overachievers had taken their Senpai’s advice and run with it.

The students in remedial classes were having classes in lateral thinking and analysis, so that the next time UA threw them into an exam that they had to reason or experiment their way out of, they would be better prepared. ‘Observational skills’ also made a come-back as a lecture topic, to the loud cries of ‘Workshop Part 2! Electric Boogaloo!’ from Ashido, Kaminari, and Kirishima. Teenagers.

Akashi had also let his guard down enough to participate in the exhausted shenanigans that Aizawa’s class got up to after their days of training. He would cook with them, and talk and laugh with them, easily bridging what remained of the 1A-1B divide as he managed to drag students with similar interests from the separate classes into group conversations with astonishing ease. If Aizawa wasn’t intimately familiar with Akashi’s quirk, he might have thought it was mindreading with how easily he found students with common interests across the classes, like he had somehow known all along that particular students would make great friends if they only ever started talking.

When the first years inevitably started asking Akashi questions, Aizawa watched as his student’s guard rose again, he was still deflecting the focus of conversations he was a part of onto other people. Despite their best efforts, Akashi held off answering any personal question posed to him, much to the first years’ dismay. The closest that Akashi came to directly answering a question directed at him, this one about his quirk, was by starting a mildly destructive treasure hunt with one of the strangest openings Aizawa had honestly ever heard.

There he was, the pride of the UA hero course, holding up a recently stepped-on terracotta pot, and asking Pro Hero Ragdoll, “Ragdoll-san, would you like to know what it feels like to ‘be’ a pot?”

The collective screech of, “What?” Came from at least ten mouths, including Ragdoll, herself. Aizawa, who had long experience with Akashi’s antics, had some idea of where this was going.

“Please correct me if I’m wrong, but your quirk works by sensing the ‘weaknesses’ of any living individual within the range of your quirk, correct?” Ragdoll nodded dazedly, and Aizawa could see Midoriya’s green head nodding effusively from behind her. The other Pussycats looked a little surprised at Aizawa’s student knowing a member of their group’s quirks so well, but they didn’t interrupt.

Akashi continued, “Unlike with your quirk, for mine to work I have to be touching whoever I’m healing, or in this case, whatever I am mending. Once I do that, though, to learn how to repair whatever is broken I get to ‘be’ who or whatever I’m healing for a brief moment, as part of an information transfer.” Ragdoll was nodding along, and going by the growing sparkle of excitement in her eyes she had some idea, now, of where this was going.

Akashi concluded, “If I fix something and you are focusing your quirk on me in that time, you should be able to… share the experience of being a broken pot, I guess, with how you sense the state of things.” Behind them, the growing number of first year watchers looked intrigued at this quirk of quirk synergy. Midoriya, a self-purported quirk enthusiast, looked ready to vibrate into his component atoms with questions and excitement.

Obviously taking Ragdoll’s massive grin as permission to continue, Akashi held up the broken little pot, probably a casualty of the chaos of dinner preparation.

“Ready?” He asked her, one more time.

Ragdoll only nodded, obviously activating her quirk, and zeroing in on Akashi. In the moment before Akashi activated his own quirk, Ragdoll frowned, and Aizawa was about to interrupt and ask what she’d sensed, before her face transformed into vaguely repulsed wonder. All too soon, it was over, and Akashi was setting the newly repaired pot back on the ground.

“Oooooh that was weird, definitely cool! But weird!” The Pro Heroine looked Aizawa’s student over with an assessing eye, a shade more concerned than Aizawa had expected with how nonchalant Akashi was. Her chipper voice did not waver, though, as she checked, “You alright, there, Kitten? I imagine that must feel strange for you, too.”

Akashi brushed aside her well-hidden concern and countered with, “Did you want to ‘be’ anything else while we’re at it? Whatever we use will have to be recently damaged, though…”

Before Ragdoll could politely deny Aizawa’s second year, Kirishima cut it with a loud exclamation of ‘how manly’ it was of Akashi to offer, and that, “We can grab-and-break some stuff for you two to use! No Problem! Come on, guys!” Before charging off into the shrubbery in search of things to destroy, followed by almost forty heroes-in-training.

The dents in some of those trees from the resulting mad rush, were still evident even as the forest burnt down around them. Aizawa found himself tracing over one of them as he watched Akashi, all business and unflappable calm, regrow Shouji’s lost arm, heal Uraraka and Asui’s cuts and blood-loss and move to Midoriya’s side to heal the damage that the reckless child’s own quirk had done to him. The first years shifted around him as he moved through the centre of their defensive ring, like satellites orbiting a moon, or planets orbiting a sun, taking their cues from him as he all but radiated self-assurance and control.

Aizawa knew his second year too well to believe it, but the kids deserved to have a pillar to lean on after tonight’s fiasco, if they found it in Akashi rather than one of the Pros present, so be it, especially if Akashi benefitted from it too. Their young healer would not allow himself to break down if his Kouhai were looking to him for guidance, and Aizawa could admit that they needed Akashi too much to give him time for a well-deserved moment of panic, anyway, even as guilt ate at him for the thought.

Tonight had been an unmitigated disaster, with one confirmed kidnapping in Bakugou, and one all-but-confirmed kidnapping in Ragdoll. Every single student that had been out in the forest had been injured, even if Akashi was dealing with that as Aizawa stood back and planned, and their futures as heroes were in jeopardy because they had been forced to fight villains before being issued with their provisional licenses. Aizawa’s own license was in jeopardy for giving them permission to engage.

Cutting into his spiralling thoughts of the future consequences of the night, was the sound of low, gasping wheezes. Akashi had already healed the poison-gas affected students, and any smoke-inhalation damage should have gone with it, so the sound was unexpected enough to cut into Aizawa’s thoughts. Even more unexpected, though, was the sound coming from Akashi.

As the glow of his quirk faded and he stumbled back a step from a newly healed Midoriya, the wheezing stopped but Aizawa had already closed the gap between them and so was close enough to hear his green-headed student asking his senior if he was ok, and to hear Akashi’s response. Aizawa knew just how high his second year’s pain tolerance was, what it took to force him into acknowledging what his quirk cost him. Quiet gasping for Akashi meant anyone else would be screaming their way into unconsciousness.

“I have brand-new sympathy for Recovery Girl,” Akashi stated blandly. Midoriya blinked at the non sequitur, but Akashi cut off any response by aiming his next words right at the first year. “Kami, kid. I’m surprised you’re awake and talking. How did you make your bones explode from the inside out?”

Midoriya’s stuttered apologies were cut off with the exhausted-exasperated, “What,” that made it out of Aizawa’s mouth without his permission. Problem Child Junior had managed to casually one-up his previous bone-breaking to the point that Problem Child Senior was reacting to pain in public. Wonderful. Now all tonight needed was another scheme from the Principal to switch out his Death Wish coffee for decaf, and the trio of omens of the incoming apocalypse would be complete.

Seemingly recovered, Akashi turned to look at him with determination blazing in those purple-grey eyes. It seemed that the provisional Recovery Hero: Day’s Grace had a plan, and for once he wasn’t asking for permission, only for support. Aizawa was glad to see it.

Akashi’s plan was simple. Have the heroes take credit for the villain take-downs to spare the students’ futures just like Hosu, and with his quirk they could even make it believable.

With Akashi’s intervention, by the time the EMTs and local police arrived and the story inevitably broke containment and reached the press, there was not a single injury to be seen to or reported about. Not even on the villains, he had had Yaoyorozu make sedatives and villain-suppressing equipment and administered healing to them as well once they were all secure. Akashi had Pixie-Bob use her Earth-flow quirk to set the forest to rights, leaving only traces of the villain’s quirks or her own, with none of the other Pros having physical quirks.

Though on another night the Heroes may have balked at the idea of destroying evidence like this, here, the teachers of UA and the members of the Wild Wild Pussycats were in agreement: the students had not only lost one of their number in this villain attack on their summer camp where they should have been safe, but they also had all been injured too. The adults would not allow the hero commission powers that be to take this as an opportunity to hamstring UA by charging forty hero students with unregulated quirk use in a life-or-death situation and destroy the futures of those hero students in the process.

The authorities, and more importantly the media, found no evidence of quirk use on the students’ part, nor excessive force, nor student injuries. Officially, the students had followed procedure to the letter and left the fight to the Pros, who then handled the subsequent takedowns with efficiency and no lasting damage. By most metrics, UA succeeded in keeping their students safe, and they did it in a ‘palatably heroic’ fashion. These sorts of games were why Aizawa had gone underground at the first opportunity.

The only thing the media really had to yell about was that there had been a villain attack in the first place, and that a teacher and a student had been taken. UA’s own public relations team had taken up the baton at that point to put the finishing touches on the story the media received. Aizawa was sure that Nedzu had a field day protecting the reputation of his school, especially given the excellent springboard that Akashi’s set up had given them.

 To the public, it looked like the villains were summarily defeated, without excessive force, by the Pro Heroes only and that the only reason it had not been a complete rout was that the villains possessed a Warper, who snatched two people out of over forty as a consolation prize while being forced to abandon his co-conspirators.

There were still demands for UA to find the missing child, but by and large faith in heroes, and in UA in particular, was still holding strong. Which let Aizawa escape the monotony of a press conference of all things, with the Principal alone being enough to console any remaining hard feelings toward the school, thank everything. Planning Bakugou’s rescue was time-consuming enough without having to deal with reporters.

There were only two significant interruptions to the whirl of meetings with police, informants, and other Pros that made up the rescue-planning operations.

The first was Akashi, thankfully no longer looking quite so dead on his feet after almost single-handedly salvaging the summer camp disaster, coming to tell him that his first years were planning their own, very illegal, rescue after everything that UA as a whole, and Akashi in particular, had done to both keep them safe and preserve their futures as heroes. Aizawa was knocked out of his usual mental state when preparing for an op, and straight into anger, even as he silently acknowledged this as proof that while they might have managed to maintain the public’s faith in heroes, they had obviously lost the students’, if they were planning something so foolish. Something to rectify later, once they had Bakugou back, for efficiency of course.

The second interruption to rescue-planning Aizawa created himself. He gathered his class at the school, Akashi a half-step behind him, and laid down the law.

 “If Akashi hadn’t told me about this and you’d gone through with your plans every one of you would have been expelled, regardless of whether you went or not, and I would have a class of one for the second year running.”

“But Sensei-“ One of his students tried to protest, and for once Aizawa didn’t care to look and see who it was. They could have died. If All Might was right and the attack on the camp had something to do with the villain that had caused his injuries, then the Top Ten would struggle to face them. Aizawa, himself, was only going as a representative of UA, and someone who could slow the villain down if All Might’s injuries caught up to him, mid-battle. He honestly hoped he wouldn’t be needed.

“No. If you didn’t go then you knew about it and you were aiding and abetting vigilantism. Which is a crime, Problem Children.” He glared them all into submission for a moment, quirk engaged and hair defying gravity, before asking, “Yes, Ashido?”

“Is Senpai going?” Of course they would ask that. Never mind that Aizawa had protested the idea as soon as it was raised, only to be overruled. No doubt the irascible brats would take it as an ‘unfair’ double standard, to torment him with, on top of the horrifying reality of throwing a teenage healer into this level of danger just because his quirk was useful.

“Against my best judgment. He has his provisional license, so legally he can come along but he will only be acting as a field medic. He will be going nowhere near the villains, am I understood, Problem Child Senior?”

“Yes, sir.” There were stirrings in the class at that nickname and a suspicious twitching of Akashi’s lips that suggested the brat was fighting a smile over Aizawa’s mother-hen impression perfectly justified worry. Akashi could deal with it. Aizawa was not regaining one of his kids students in this farce only to lose another.

``` ``` ```

Every ounce of Toshinori’s being begged him for rest. Every muscle was trembling, his one lung ached at being forced to breathe the dusty air of the crater that was once the Kamino ward. His hero form had already failed, sacrificed to protect Aizawa as he led Young Bakugou to safety, under the force of the blow All for One had sent at their retreating backs. The world saw Toshinori as he truly was, now: a tired old man, one foot in the grave, stubbornly holding back the monster Quirked society had created.

Even as that monster jeered at him for it.

To Toshinori’s dismay, All for One barely looked affected by their battle, though admittedly the lack of face made his expression difficult to parse, but the Bogeyman was still standing tall, proud and uninjured, while for Toshinori just staying upright was a herculean effort. The monster knew it too.

Even as Toshinori panted and tried to gather the wisps of One for All remaining in him for one last rush, one last push, one last punch, the villain activated five more quirks and his right arm bulged and distorted horrifically, tearing through his suit jacket as though in metaphor for the monster finally shedding all notions of civility to face him as the abomination he truly was. A butcher, made of greed, hate, and cruelty, who had fallen so far that the murder of Nana Shimura was not enough evil to visit on the woman who had defied him, a demon who would steal her grandson and corrupt that innocent child, turning him into a murderer as well.

The villain was beyond contempt, beyond redemption, and Toshinori was the only one standing between All for One and the world, between this king of nightmares and Toshinori’s own young successor.

The old Pro dug deep into the core of himself, almost ignoring the villain approaching with the assurance of victory in his steps and hate, black and choking written into the line of his raised, mangled arm. He clawed desperately through himself for the wisps of Nana’s One for All’s fading glow, collecting every last glimmer of the torch passed down to him from his own mentor, and that he, in his turn, had passed on to Young Midoriya to nurture and grow. Every last starlit-drop of power left in him flowed into his right arm, and he faced his destined enemy, determined to end the threat there and then, where it could never kill, harm, or poison children ever again. End it before the monster could touch his boy.

When the villain who had been the death of every one of Toshinori’s predecessors swung at him, he dodged past the attack and swung his own fist down like the hammer of God. All his Might is one final blow.

Goodbye, One for All. Good riddance, All for One.

“UNITED STATES OF SMASH!” Toshinori’s last punch as All Might caused a twister of wind and sent everything in a hundred metre radius of them flying back. As the dust settled, he kept a careful grip on the shattered respirator of his enemy. This time they would either have a body to autopsy, or an inmate to imprison, Toshinori honestly could not bring himself to care which it was, no more sneaking off into the shadows to menace society at some terrible future date. Despite Aizawa’s beliefs, Toshinori wascapable of learning from his mistakes.

Though with All for One defeated, his body was now reminding him that he had just battled the most powerful villain in existence, with only the embers of a quirk and a shell of a proper body. Society had been shaken enough for one night, watching him fall would shatter any calm that his victory had won back for them. The sooner the EMTs reached him now that the threat was vanquished, the sooner he could collapse into an ambulance bed, out of sight of the news helicopters, without causing a panic.

Blue and white smeared across his spotty vision, condensing into the form of his young teaching assistant in his hero costume. His young teaching assistant who had just run across the desolate field of battle, managing to reach him before the EMTs could, and no doubt causing Aizawa heart-palpitations in the process. Quirk or not, this horror-show was no place for a child, and Toshinori was about to order him away, out of grabbing distance of the Quirk Thief, the most dangerous villain to ever live, when the boy side-stepped the crumpled heap of the monster on the floor and latched onto Toshinori’s left hand.

In a wash of blue-white, the arm he had broken in his last punch healed, his knuckled smoothed over as though they had never been bleeding, and the broken rib that was making his poor remaining lung work twice as hard as it already did, finally stopped screaming at him. On instinct, Toshinori searched himself for the comforting strength of One for All, returned to him once more, despite knowing it would be futile. Young Akashi had been holding his health at a plateau for months now, but it had never affected the slow loss of his quirk.

With One for All, there was simply nothing to heal. He had had a finite amount of power left, and now he had used it, there was nothing to be done. Every time Young Midoriya used their shared power and made it his own, Toshinori’s own fading reserves diminished, and he would not have it any other way.

With renewed energy, Toshinori pointedly shuffled the young healer back and away from the downed form of All for One, putting himself between them. Truthfully, Toshinori was not totally sure that the villain was even still alive (and a small, bitter, decidedly un-All Might part of him didn’t care to check) let alone a danger to the lad, but he was taking no chances. All for One would not be the cause of any more pain, any more death. He was Here and he would not allow it.

Young Akashi moved without protest, and together they took in the destruction around them. It looked like a meteor had crashed into the city, leaving nothing but broken rubble, with the three of them left standing alone at the epicentre of the wreckage. There had to be hundreds if not thousands of casualties, even more injured, and an uncalculatable amount of damage to property. Even as he kept part of his attention firmly fixed on the prone form of his enemy, slow meditative breaths from the healer behind him caught his attention.

Toshinori considered whether Young Akashi was simply dealing with the result of his sprint across the no-man’s-land to reach the combatants, or even breathing his way through the shock of healing him, but the deliberate rhythm of breaths sounded wrong for either of those options. They sounded preparatory, like the lad was hyping himself up for something. Surely the boy knew better than to heal the villain, in such a precarious situation?

“All Might, if you could fix this,” Young Akashi gestured all around them, “would you?” Toshinori was hesitant to blindly agree, when he did not understand the reason behind the question. Of course, he would fix this disaster if he could, but it was not a choice he could make. Not one anyone could make. There were objects destroyed and lives lost in numbers that had not been seen since before he became the Symbol of Peace, never to be returned. Not even at the height of his power could he have fixed this. Ended the battle sooner and prevented some of it, of course, but he couldn’t repair it. That wasn’t in his power.

Perhaps the boy meant it hypothetically? A child seeking comfort from a Hero when the world had been turned on its head. For how put-together Young Akashi was, it was all too easy to forget just how young he was. Though this sudden vulnerability seemed out-of-character, Toshinori could not hold it against the lad. If he needed some whimsical ‘what-if?’ style comfort after the events of the night, Toshinori would oblige him, and in that spirit, he answered Young Akashi’s question, “Of course, Akashi-shonen. I would do everything in my power.”

The boy nodded more determinedly than Toshinori was expecting, a fire sparking to life in those young eyes. Ignoring Toshinori’s growing confusion, the young healer crouched and put both his hands flat against the ground. Toshinori realised just how not-hypothetical Young Akashi’s question had been a moment later as the entire prefecture, now just a crater, lit up.

Instead of the normally soft, white-blue glow, this looked like a small sun had come into being right in front of them, the lone dark spot as far as the desiccated battlefield stretched being All for One’s resting place. The paramedics and other Pro Heroes who had been cresting the crater to join their trio, staggered back at the light, turning away, and having to blink away sunspots.

When Toshinori regained his faculties, he looked around them in shock, not able to believe what he was seeing. The three of them, All for One in his crumpled heap of medical equipment, Akashi kneeling on the ground panting and clutching at his head, and Toshinori himself stood between them, were on the sidewalk of a street that had been rubble moments before. The ambulance vehicle now had roads to reach them, rather than having to rely on what had remained of the broken pavement, but now it also had buildings to navigate around. Even the streetlights had been repaired, merrily illuminating the three of them, as though they had never been destroyed.

Most incredibly, there were people stumbling out of buildings left and right. Civilians who had been caught up in the chaos, unable to flee before All for One broke the Kamino ward. People who were deadand were now not because there was just enough left of them to be affected by Young Akashi’s miraculous quirk. Toshinori could feel tears running down his face and he could not bring himself to care. They were alive. All these people that he had failed to protect were alive.

In one act, Young Akashi had saved more lives than most Pros manage in a lifetime. Toshinori’s relief and pride were not helping to slow the tears sliding down his skeletal face, but for the life of him he could not stop them.

The hero of the moment was still on the ground, seemingly unable to raise his head. Toshinori desperately wanted to check him over after such a massive display of power, one that was obviously taking a much steeper toll than what his regular use of it caused, but taking his attention away from the defeated villain would risk all their lives, newly ‘resuscitated’ civilians included, and Toshinori doubted Young Akashi had enough energy for a repeat attempt. Fortunately, the other Pros managed to make it to their position before Toshinori could do something foolish.

Endeavor and Gran Torino reached them first, Eraserhead and Kamui Woods, close on their heels. Though he probably wanted to stay and watch over his student, Eraserhead accompanied Endeavor as the surly Flame Hero took away the broken form of All for One. This finally freed Toshinori to reach down and help Young Akashi up from the floor.

Finally face-to-face with the young hero who had done what he couldn’t, Toshinori found himself at a loss for words. Dazed purple-grey eyes met his, and he felt his concern rise in him once more. Young Akashi’s quirk had its price, the staff of UA all knew that, but usually Recovery Girl’s apprentice was able to shake off the effects in moments. Here, Toshinori had barely set the lad back onto his feet before he had to reach out again to stop the boy’s knees from buckling.

Distantly, he could hear Gran Torino barking down his comms that medical attention was needed for the hero student on site, but his attention was captured by sleepy eyes focusing on his face. A breathed-out, “Sorry All Might, catch,” being his only warning before the boy in his arms became total dead-weight. Panic choked his lung, and nearly stopped his breath before he found a pulse beating resiliently under the skin of the child he was now totally supporting the weight of.

Even in his ‘skinny’ form, scooping the small figure of UA’s junior healer into a bridal carry was no hardship. Young Akashi had already healed him, he was fine, now it was the lad’s turn to be fussed over by the medics. Given the lack of injury, Toshinori was mostly sure that this was just a case of severe quirk exhaustion, but he would allow the boy to be checked over just in case.

They found Aizawa and the paramedics at the same time, with the former seemingly struggling with the same immense, wonderous pride that Toshinori was feeling, and the concern that the paramedics were freely expressing as they bustled around. Though Toshinori was sure that Young Akashi would be in for the lecture of his life upon his awakening, whether by way of his mother, his homeroom teacher, his mentor, or all three, the young man had achieved the ultimate goal of any full-fledged hero today: a hero saves, whether that be lives or hopes or dreams, a hero saves, and that was exactly what Young Akashi, the Recovery Hero: Day’s Grace had done here.

Toshinori would make sure there was at least one exclamation of praise coming his way, along with all the worried lectures. Young Akashi deserved it.

``` ``` ```

Kachan led the charge down the hospital corridors towards Akashi-senpai’s room. Not everyone had managed to make it to come and visit their Senpai, Todoroki for example couldn’t come with the chaos that Endeavour’s ascension to No. 1 Hero had caused, due to All Might’s sudden and highly public retirement, but Izuku couldn’t imagine waiting anxiously at home for term to start again to see Akashi-senpai for himself, and he knew that most of his class felt the same.

For Kachan, Izuku imagined it had more to do with Akashi-senpai being a part of the Pros’ rescue operations to save him, or maybe even plain curiosity at how on Earth the second year had managed his now infamous feat to reset the Kamino ward. Izuku wasn’t too sure, but with the high temper Kachan was obviously in, he was not going to be the one to ask.

Iida-kun had politely inquired at the reception of the Heroic’s wing of the hospital which room Akashi Tatsuya was in, and now they were counting the door numbers to find him. They hadn’t been expecting Akashi-senpai to be in the Heroic’s wing, honestly, Izuku was sure that you were only supposed to be treated in a Heroes’ ward if you had your full license, even a provisional license like the one their Senpai had shouldn’t’ve been enough. Apparently, they had made an exception.

Izuku found he wasn’t surprised.

When they found the right room, the first years were surprised to hear voices coming from inside, indistinguishable through the heavy door. A man and a woman, maybe?

Iida-kun was about to knock when the door opened and a woman stepped out, stopping in front of them. She had familiar purple-grey eyes, which she blinked at them for a moment before smiling tiredly. Maybe Akashi-senpai had told her about them?

She nodded towards the door and said, “He seems to be waking up again, now, though I think your teacher has some choice words for him before you’ll be able to speak to him.”

The woman, Akashi-senpai’s Mum? brushed past them without another word, heading towards the near-by vending machine. Izuku and his classmates just shrugged at each other and crowded into the doorway of their Senpai’s hospital room. The other speaker, the man, was instantly recognisable without the door in the way.

Aizawa-sensei, in all his yellow-sleeping-bagged glory was glaring fire-and-brimstone at the form of Akashi-senpai on the bed, clearly waking up. Eyebrows crinkling in discomfort, and white hair a mess against his pillow, Akashi-senpai had never looked so human. So much like one of them.

When those distinctive purple-grey eyes finally blinked open, he seemed to take only a moment to process that he was in a hospital bed. Izuku supposed healers would be the most familiar with their current surroundings.

“…Did I really faint into All Might’s arms on national television? Please tell me I dreamt that.”

Izuku heard Kaminari-kun stifle a snort at that, but Yaoyorozu was taking pity on their Senpai before anyone else could say anything, with a simple, “I am afraid so, Akashi-senpai.”

The groan that the healer on the hospital bed let out was low, pained, and devoid of hope, and had more than just Kaminari-kun giggling.

“Well, crap. Goodbye cruel world! Sensei is going to have my guts for garters-“

“So there is a brain in there somewhere,” the warning rumble of their teacher’s tone would have had 1A straight into battle stances in any other circumstance, but here… they were just trying not to laugh loud enough that they’d be kicked out of the hospital before they’d even gotten to say ‘hello’.

“Problem Child your actions-”

In a suicidally brave move, Akashi-senpai interrupted their teacher, mid-sentence. Izuku was sure the funeral would be well-attended. “No offence, Aizawa-sensei, but I was talking about Recovery Girl. She’s much scarier than you.”

“…Honestly, fair enough.”

Pfft. Yeah, they’d be ok.

Chapter Text

“That’s right Sayo, we’re here live at the residence of Akashi Tatsuya, UA’s healer! Since Kamino, he’s all anyone wants to talk about, but unfortunately, he has not been present at any of the UA press conferences so far, with Principal Nedzu repeatedly saying that Akashi-kun was ‘unavailable for comment’. We here at Daily Media know how curious our audience is and are determined to satisfy! Hopefully, we’ll be able to speak to Kamino’s saviour, here, and finally hear from him directly.”

The orange-haired reporter on screen stopped filling time, babbling with the newscast-version of vamping, as they staked out a minor’s home for a soundbite, when several vehicles stamped with the Hero Commission insignia pulled up in front of Akashi’s apartment building. She visibly brightened at the development live on air, and took off to question the Commission agents, her cameraman hot on her glossy high heels.

“Excuse me! Excuse me, Ma’am! Ishigami Momoko, Daily Media, do you have a statement? Why are you here at the home of the Healer of Kamino?”

Much to Aizawa’s disgust, the commission agent getting out of the car seemed only too happy to speak into the microphone being shoved in her face. She held herself like one of Nedzu’s handpicked media liaisons, perfectly at home in front of the growing crowd of news crews, professional and poised, even as she waved the other agents ahead of her and toward Akashi’s house.

“We are here this morning on behalf of the Heroic’s Commission of Japan, to offer our brave, young healer the opportunity of a lifetime for any aspiring hero: the privilege to study heroics directly from the Commission. There, he will be able to learn more efficiently, with lessons tailor-made for him, and graduate with his full license earlier than would otherwise be possible, allowing our young hero to go out and heal as he has so clearly already shown he is ready for, with his actions at Kamino.”

She took a breath, instigating a moment of pause to let that sink in before continuing.

“At UA, he will still be restricted to his provisional license, and the attached limited service-hours, for another full year at best. While the prestigious hero school must be thanked for producing such a promising new healing hero, there can be no doubt that one-on-one lessons would accelerate Day’s Grace’s pace of study far beyond those produced by a classroom environment.”

The reporters took a moment to digest all of that before clamouring for more details. The only thing the Commission agent, still nameless, said in reply to any of the inquiries could be boiled down to ‘UA is squandering the potential of a hero student, so we will be taking over and treating him like the full-fledged hero UA is refusing to acknowledge he is’ in vague, flowery, non-answers. Approaching Akashi directly was a bold move, especially after Nedzu had been blocking their attempts to access and claim the second year in the weeks since Kamino, but obviously the hope here was that doing so in front of the press might pressure the healer into agreeing to leave UA.

Aizawa tuned back in to the continuing broadcast as the agent stepped away from the sea of cameras to join her co-workers at the Akashis door. The first reporter was exclaiming into the camera about ‘what an honour’ it was to have the Hero Commission itself interested in a student, and ‘how wonderful’ it was that this was all happening live where the public could see it rather than ‘behind UA’s walls!’ Aizawa was far more interested in the interaction in the background of the camera frame, than the reporter’s incessant babbling, where the form of Akashi-san, his student’s mother, could be seen opening the door to the Commission agents.

Akashi Kiyomi did not look overly surprised, or pleased, to see the agents on her doorstep, but she graciously invited them inside, regardless. It was probably too much to hope that their student was conveniently absent from his home at 8am on a Saturday during school break, and able to avoid the confrontation, but Aizawa found himself wishing for it.

The Principal, seated in his high chair at the head of the table in UA’s conference room, as always, switched across several local broadcasts, and two national news broadcasts, all airing the Akashis’ front door. The whole country, heroes, civilians, villains, everyone, now knew exactly where to find the underaged wielder of what had to be one of the most powerful healing quirks on the planet, minor protection and privacy legislation be damned.

And the Hero Commission was circling.

And All Might’s reign as society’s stabilizing force as the Symbol of Peace was over.

Panic was not strictly speaking something Aizawa allowed himself. There was simply no room in his schedule for the wasted time and energy that panicking caused. It was far more logical to spend the time planning or training or sleeping, taking whatever action was necessary. Sometimes panic was tempting, though, especially when he was more Aizawa-sensei than he was Eraserhead.

Stress, on the other hand, was an old friend, and one that had him wrapped in an inescapable vice-grip. It wasn’t entirely illogical either; Aizawa was well within his rights to be stressed over the country’s sense of safety being flipped on its head overnight, especially when it seemed like all the fall out and consequences for it were poised to drop squarely at his student’s feet, where they were the least deserved.

Ahead of the new term, Nedzu had called a staff-wide meeting to plan and prepare. The media’s, and broader society’s, reaction to the events surrounding Kamino had already been a planned topic of discussion, but the news crews currently laying siege to the Akashis’ residence had accelerated that timetable.

The internet was positively frothing with wild speculation and rumour over what had reallyhappened at Kamino, why it happened, who the villain was, and most relevantly: what it all meant for the future. The whole country was desperate for answers, obtained willingly or otherwise. Between UA, All Might, the Hero Commission, Tartarus, or Akashi Tatsuya the hero student, there was one person on that list who was far less protected, and so was currently being bombarded by the worried public.

This turn of event was just the newest in a long line of televised impositions on their student.

A particularly vocal part of the internet had chosen to focus their attention squarely on Akashi, in the aftermath of Kamino. Through some unholy combination of plain curiosity, hero-worship of the variety that had Pro Heroes summoning security, and unfortunately accurate deductive reasoning, it had all come out. The mysterious record-breaker of UA’s notoriously difficult heroic’s exam, the healer responsible for robbing Stain of his final victim, ultimately leading to his arrest and the end of his reign of terror, the two-time winner of UA’s Sports’ Festival andthe Healer of Kamino, were all the same individual.

The internet’s reaction was apoplectic.

Most were praising the second year, making connections between All Might’s final actions as a hero, and Day’s Grace’s extremely public debut. His quick response to heal what ‘the villain who ended All Might broke’ had permanently associated Akashi with both the whole Kamino event and All Might himself. One comment that had been circling more and more was from the reporter who had been in the helicopter hovering above Kamino, reporting the historic event live.

Her words were, “It was as though the healer was saying, ‘it’s ok, I’m still here, everything will be alright.’ All Might may be stepping down, but his heroic spirit continues in his student.”  Admittedly, Aizawa could see the parallels, no one who knew him could doubt Akashi’s ‘heroic spirit’ or his ability, shared by the now retired No.1, to keep hope alive, but the internet had gone hog-wild with the comment and his second year hadn’t known peace since.

And that was before the Commission stuck their nose in. Live on TV,  after beating their heads against Nedzu’s stalwart defence of his student. Aizawa’s stress was definitely justified.

Unfortunately, not all of the attention Akashi had attracted was positive. With All Might’s true condition revealed to the world, and with Akashi’s true power as a healer revealed alongside him, there was a contingent of All Might enthusiasts who were asking why the ‘incredible, young healer’ had not healed All Might. Why should Japan, or even the world, lose their Symbol of Peace if there was a healer who could undo tragedy of the scale of Kamino?

A particularly unscrupulous journalist, already being sued by UA, had found and released the answer in the form of Akashi’s official quirk description, including the quirk’s time-limit. Even worse, after being accosted by a hospital worker concealing a camera while leaving the hospital, Akashi himself had tiredly revealed that All Might’s injury had happened far beyond the time limit of his quirk, and so was incompatible.

The sentences, “I would have been in primary school when All Might was originally injured, and I didn’t actually meet him until the start of this school year. After even a day my quirk refuses to take effect, after more than 5 years? It’s well beyond my limits,” had single-handedly broken heroTube for days.

Aizawa would call it all a powder-keg about to explode, if they weren’t already obviously well past the moment of ignition. Instead of rushing to defuse the metaphorical bomb that the whole situation had become, it was more that the explosion had already happened, caused an electrical fire, and now they were just trying to stop other people adding gasoline.

The dorms could not come quickly enough.

Back on screen, the commission agents were visible, leaving their student’s apartment. Their expressions were all carefully neutral, but Aizawa suspected that they were concealing looks of frustration. Akashi Tatsuya was one of the most stubborn beings alive, and he had inherited it all from his mother.

Aizawa had more experience with the younger Akashi, but he had seen the way that they would both compromise and accommodate and diplomatically work to resolve conflict, right up until the point where they wouldn’t, and from then on, they were immovable, unyielding. If the Commission agents had run afoul of this particular Akashi family trait, Aizawa could imagine their irritation. Even if he found he couldn’t find any sympathy for the people trying to poach his second-year.

Principal Nedzu spoke, “Aizawa-kun, have you had any contact with Akashi-san or her son, since his release from hospital?” He leant over his clasped paws to peer in Aizawa’s direction, all of his attention away from the screen.

Mic chimed in before he could reply, adding his own question, “How’s the little listener handling the spotlight? He’s had Public Relations with Nem, of course, but there’s nothing like the real thing.”

Aizawa let out an exhausted sigh, because Akashi-san had called him personally to ask about the same thing. Apparently, the Problem Child, true to form, was projecting an immovable air of calm control, and kept insisting that the scrutiny wasn’t bothering him. Worse, his mother thought he was being mostly honest, and she of all people could reliably see through her son’s facades.

Attention of this kind was wearying for Pros, mostly because of the hypervigilance it tended to create. Akashi was observant as a default, there was no conceivable way for him to have missed just how closely he was being watched, and even staying inside would not have given him a reprieve, with what felt like the entire internet theorising about him at all hours.

No, the only way he could be more-or-less unaffected by his new infamy was if he had already been practicing a similar level of hypervigilance, long enough for it to become his baseline.

Just thinking on it made the concerns he usually tried to put aside about his student rear up. Even if a certain supernatural level-headedness was expected from healers, the absolute lack of panic of UA’s healing apprentice was extremely concerning.

Akashi could stare down the most gruesome and hopeless of injuries without flinching, he shrugged off disregard but was stunned silent by earnest compliments, he was apparently so used to pressure, and looking out for danger, that this kind of scrutiny was nothing out of the ordinary to him… To say nothing of the fact that he was able to endure the agony of using his quirk with nothing more than some laboured breathing in the worst of situations.

What had happened to his boy student? What had they missed? Anything resembling the level of abuse or exploitation, for his quirk or otherwise, that could have caused this should have been found by Nedzu long ago, and Aizawa knew the Principal had looked. The only thing they were sure of was that his mother was not responsible, but that was a small comfort. A young teenager couldn’t possibly be this used to pain and trauma naturally, surely there must be something?

Aizawa realised that he had been silent for too long when Nedzu subtly cleared his throat, and belatedly answered them both, “Other than a confirmation that he and his mother had reached home safely, I have not heard anything from Akashi, himself, since I saw him at the hospital. Akashi-san, on the other hand has reached out, concerned that her son has not been concerned about the country collectively losing its mind and deciding to focus on him as it does so.”

Three long blinks later and Present Mic was out of his chair and gesturing at the now silenced news broadcast wildly. “What do you mean, not concerned? With this happening?”

As amusingly bug-eyed as Mic looked in that moment, Aizawa wasn’t laughing. He was concerned too, but Mic was not going to help anything if he deafened them all in his incredulous shock. Aizawa’s hair rose as he pre-emptively cancelled his friend’s quirk.

“All of this…and he’s just…fine?” Nemuri asked, disbelieving. The surprise on all of his co-workers’ faces was quickly souring into worry, no doubt following the same line of thought that had Aizawa acquiring grey hairs in real-time. But if Nedzu couldn’t find whatever Akashi was hiding from them, the only hope they had was Akashi himself ever letting his walls down enough to tell them.

There was nothing they could do but support him, so all Aizawa replied with was, “Yes. Apparently, he’s just fine.”

``` ``` ```

No matter how many of them Toshinori was involved in, hostage situations never became easier to handle.

Through Young Akashi’s efforts, he was as healthy as he had been at the start of the school year. Quirkless once more, and still missing multiple organs, but the lad had been single-handedly holding his decline at a stand-still.

Even after Kamino, which should have literally shaved years off his life-expectancy, Toshinori was no worse for wear. He could still help to guide his students and try to be a stable presence in society, if in a decidedly less bombastic way than he had as All Might.

He had expected some of his fans to be less-than-impressed by his new method of keeping the peace. As Endeavour, the new No.1, proved, even some of his heroic coworkers were bemused by the truth of his health and his smaller form. Toshinori had failed, however, to factor in just how far certain ‘fans’ would go for those that they idolised.

For many, All Might had stood as an unassailable beacon of strength for their entire lifetime, and unfortunately there were those among their number who could not accept the new reality of the situation; that the hero they had perceived as some sort of demigod, unbeatable and untouchable, was really just a middle-aged man with severe health issues.

Health issues that had no known cure, quirked or otherwise.

Young Akashi had paid the price for their fanaticism.

In the final days before the students were due to move into their new dorm system, Recovery Girl’s young apprentice had been volunteering at the hospital closest to UA. Even if he was bearing up unaccountably well under the focused eyes of the nation, Young Akashi was sensible enough not to take unnecessary risks with his own safety.

After that appalling breach of privacy from the media that had advertised the boy and his mother's home address, it was safter for them both not to linger at home. Young Akashi had moved into the second-year dorms early, in the same building as 2B would be, and Toshinori had heard that his mother was staying at a friend’s house for the time being.

Rather than relax behind the safety of UA’s walls, Young Akashi had been determined to carry-on healing, while he still had time before classes started again. The hospital he had chosen was predictably thrilled to host him; a healer of his calibre was no small matter. Several of the staff were even familiar with the second year, having met the previous year.

Toshinori had been told that Young Akashi had had his very first internship there, for the same reason: they were within walking distance of the safety of UA. Security was of upmost importance, and the hospital had been given strict instructions to contact the hero school at the first sign of trouble.

Aizawa-kun had pushed a panic button, equipped with a GPS tracker into Young Akashi’s hands, and sternly told his student to, “Use it, Akashi. I’d rather respond to a nothing-scenario than miss an attempt on your life.”

And yet, here they were. Toshinori in full view, Aizawa-kun, in full Eraserhead attire, hiding in the shadows, and a squad of police cars just around the corner, all waiting for the self-proclaimed No.1 All Might fan to return their stolen student.

By all accounts, it had been a normal day at the hospital for Young Akashi. He had arrived in his heroic’s costume, signed in, and set to work. After a full day of using his quirk or helping the nurses with care-duties in cases where his quirk was not applicable, he had signed out and left the building.

As security protocols dictated, Young Akashi had alerted UA that he would be walking back to the school and was expecting to be there shortly. Less than two minutes later, Young Akashi activated his panic signal.

That was the end of their contact with their student.

What had happened next had been pieced together from hospital security camera footage and eye-witness accounts. In the car park of the hospital, Young Akashi had been stopped by a man with dark hair, and no obvious mutations. The footage had no sound, and no one had been close enough to hear the conversation, but the man’s body language could best be described as desperate, and Young Akashi’s grew more-and-more tense as the man went from grasping at the front of his own shirt to lunging in an attempt to grab the healer’s arm.

Having reviewed the footage, Toshinori could make out the moment where Young Akashi activated his panic signal, but his accoster had clearly missed the movement, continuing to attempt to grab onto their student. When his efforts proved useless, and after finally seeming to notice the crowd gathering on the hospital’s doorstep, the man brought his hands together in a clap and the recording broke off into static.

After speaking to the witnesses, the heroes learned that Young Akashi’s kidnapper had held the hospital itself hostage, with some kind of Earth-moving quirk. They reported about how the young healer had tried to stall for time, knowing help was coming, but the man had responded by threatening to shake the hospital apart with his quirk if the student did not follow him there and then. Young Akashi capitulated, and the man drove him away in a stolen car.

Eraserhead and Present Mic had reached the scene moments later.

UA had received a demand from the kidnapper that afternoon, with instructions for All Might to come and collect his student in person, at noon the following day, at the local park, or the healer died. Toshinori was more than willing to accommodate that request, especially if this was some convoluted plot against him and his student had been caught up in it. If they wanted All Might’s attention they would have it, but the Principal had urged caution.

Young Akashi’s tracker was still live, but it was moving constantly, in erratic patterns. Either it had been discovered and discarded, or the man responsible was travelling with no rhyme or reason to throw them off. Frustratingly, the best option for Young Akashi’s safe retrieval had been to set up the ambush at the park, rather than try to intercept the moving target.

Thanks to Principal Nedzu’s efforts, they had discovered the identity of the culprit, one Kurayami Shintaro. He was an All Might fanboy to shame Young Midoriya or Sir Nighteye, and one of the voices of the internet who was unable to cope with the new status quo. He had made several posts, full of excessive punctuation, blaming Young Akashi for All Might’s current condition.

Toshinori was horrified.

Nevertheless, they had a student to retrieve. Worries had started to rise when no car appeared to be on the path to the park, as noon approached, but at 12:00pm precisely, the ground split open at Toshinori’s feet. Kurayami shot upwards and away from him, not unlike Young Mirio being expelled from the ground, and casually tossed the convulsing form of his student into his arms.

Out of the corner of his eye, Toshinori noted that Eraserhead had Kurayami trussed up in his capture scarves as soon Young Akashi was out of his grip. Erasure made the Underground Hero’s eyes burn a demonic red, and Toshinori was sure that the capture scarves were bound tighter than strictly necessary, but he left Aizawa-kun to it.

Toshinori was far more pre-occupied by sprinting as fast as his remaining lung would let him at the ambulance they had brought with them. He was aware that Young Akashi could heal himself, but he had to be awake and able to concentrate to manage it. Judging by the state of the child in his arms, seizing and unaware, Young Akashi would need outside help.

Once again, he cursed the immoral behaviour that had grown adults who should know better publishing private information, especially of minors. It was too much of a coincidence to believe that Kurayami had ‘accidentally’ found a way around Akashi’s abilities only shortly after his quirk profile had been published by that journalist.

As he rushed past them, he could hear Aizawa-kun harshly questioning Kurayami. Demanding to know what he had dosed Young Akashi with, only for his answer to turn Toshinori’s blood to ice with the gasped-out words (Aizawa-kun really did have those scarves wrapped too tight) of, “T-trigger. Should make ‘im fix All Might. If the little bastard won’t do it ‘imself, ‘e will now.”

That was all the warning anyone had before Young Akashi’s eyes burst open for the first time, glowing a blue-white so bright that the normal purple-grey was completely overtaken. The gentle glow that usually originated in his hands, was peeling off of him in arches of light, not dissimilar to Young Midoriya with Full Cowling activated.

They were almost to the paramedics, bare feet away, when the undirected energy seemed to realise it had a target, and Toshinori had to grind to a halt and take a knee as it sunk in to him.

Loathe as Toshinori was to admit it, the villain, for what else could he be for knowingly exposing a child to this much pain, had gotten what he wanted that sunny afternoon in the park. By any metric, despite the heroes’ efforts, he had ultimately won, because Toshinori could feel his body changing. Healing. At the cost of the teenager shaking apart in his arms.

Young Akashi’s miraculous terrible quirk was forced to heal what years of injury, chronic pain, surgeries, overwork and of course, missing organs had done to a body under the stress of regular One for All use. Young Akashi screamed, high pitched and agonised, convulsing in All Might’s suddenly less-frail arms, and the noise only petered-out when he ran out of breath and suddenly fell alarmingly still.

EMTs swarmed the pair, some hovering over the restored, at least in body, Symbol of Peace, but most flocking to the teenager, attaching blood-pressure cuffs, heart-beat monitors and covering him in a shock blanket. They seemed to know that pain medication would do nothing for the lad, already. Perhaps they had read his now-public quirk description.

The commotion caused by Young Akashi’s blood pressure read out, alone, had Toshinori’s newly strengthened heart threatening to beat out of his chest.

Young Akashi was totally unresponsive to outside stimuli for the journey back to UA in an armoured vehicle, only showing signs of awareness as he was gently lifted out of the van and carried past the schools’ gate. Toshinori idly noticed that it rose behind them. Clearly the Principal was taking no further chances today.

His mother met them at the Recover Girl’s office, brushing her son’s white hair away from his face, as soon as he was settled in one of the beds. Under her hands, he was gently coaxed into responding to her and sitting up to blink at her, exhaustion and pain for once perfectly visible on his face.

Akashi Kiyomi waited until her son had fallen back into an uneasy slumber to recover from his ordeal before acknowledging any of them. Even then, it was a silent look of leashed fury. Words were too small for her feelings at her son being stolen out from under UA’s watch and subjected to pain severe enough to leave him bedridden, all in the name of healing a hero whom he had already been going out of his way to help.

“I hope you’re all satisfied,” was all Nedzu was able to prompt out of Akashi-san, her voice like ice.

Toshinori felt like using his brand-new stomach to vomit all over Recover Girl’s office at the mere suggestion that he was happy with any of this. He was restored, in body if not in quirk, and never had he imagined he could feel so much grief for what should have been a miracle.

“I know you wanted something like this to happen.”

``` ``` ```

Tatsuya felt terrible.

It was never easy, bearing the quirk of his second life, but his experience under Trigger was far beyond anything he had felt from it before.

As Izuku, he had known, in an abstract way, that his mentor had suffered horribly due to All for One and the injuries the supervillain left him with. Injuries that had eventually killed him. In this second chance to save everyone, as Tatsuya, he had known what All Might was struggling with day-to-day, after healing him so consistently.

It had still failed to prepare him for the full weight of All Might’s pain.

His quirk in this life had always fascinated him. After ‘waking up’ as Akashi Tatsuya in that playground mid-quirk manifestation, Tatsuya-who-was-once-Izuku had spent long hours theorising on how he could use it to help him prevent the future he had returned from.

The strict one-day time-limit, in particular, had always intrigued him. Why a time-based limit and not some kind of energy stockpile? Why was it contact-based instead of transmitted along literally any other vector? Why 24 hours specifically?

His mum’s quirk was chronological too, but she could only re-wind damage to objects by 30 seconds. Useful for un-smashing dropped crockery or removing stains from clothes, but a far cry from the utility of his quirk. She ‘saw’ the structure of things as she fixed them, like he did, and had used that easy understanding of how things were constructed in her job as an architect.

He had asked, once, what his father’s quirk was. She never talked about him, and his memories as Tatsuya started in that park, so he had no recollection of the man, personally. It had always just been the two of them. As Izuku, Midoriya Hisashi had abandoned them after learning that his son was quirkless, but as Tatsuya, he had never known a ‘father’ at all.

His mum (so different from Inko, stubborn, where his first mother had been anxious, supportive, where Inko had worried for him, but with that same protective fury that said that anything coming for him would go through her first) had only closed her eyes for a long moment and told him that his father had a simple healing quirk: he could force wounds to close at a cost to his stamina. Her tone said plainly enough that that conversation was closed, and he had not brought his curiosity over his father up again.

A healing quirk and a chronological quirk that, together, made an overpowered chronological healing quirk. His mother may not have said the words ‘quirk marriage’ but sometimes Tatsuya wondered. After spending so many years in Shoto-kun’s orbit, suspiciously well-suited quirk matches always caught at his attention.

All of that aside, he now finally had an answer as to why he had the hard limit of 24 hours in which to heal a patient: the toll.

Even within his time-limit, the pain and the wrongness-pressure of the dysphoria he incurred were severe enough that he doubted a child who hadn’t grown up as Kachan’s quirkless punching bag, before then inheriting a quirk that routinely broke his bones, would be able to use it on anything but the most minor of injuries. Presumably, ‘Akashi Tatsuya’ had existed in the original timeline, but Tatsuya-as-Izuku had never come across him or heard mention of his quirk. Maybe that was why.

Trigger may have forced his quirk into overdrive to surpass his limit, but just because healing 5 years of trauma was suddenly and temporarily an option for his quirk, did not mean he was guaranteed to survive the experience. A second dose would almost certainly be lethal. Recovery Girl had been very clear on that.

He had been seizing, his blood pressure had read at 180/120, a hypertensive crisis, and to add insult to injury the whole mess had set off the worst stress cold of his life, either of them. Worse, instead of the gentle comradery they had had as they guided the first years through their heroic’s classes, All Might now looked like guilt was eating him alive every time he laid eyes on Tatsuya. Recovery Girl had been more worried by the first two than Yagi-san’s mental state, but Tatsuya didn’t have anything else to do but worry, trapped as he was in this thrice-forsaken nurse’s cot.

The end of his miserable boredom came in the form of Aizawa-sensei, opening the door for several adults that Tatsuya didn’t recognise. His homeroom teacher wordlessly ushered them in and stuck his head back out the door to call down the hall, “Five at a time, we won’t be long,” in his usual, exhausted tone.

His mysterious visitors were each holding what looked to be small gifts: flowers, cards, books and the like. Tatsuya was sure that he did not recognise any of them, but they were all looking at him expectantly. Luckily, Aizawa-sensei answered his unasked question before he had to admit that he didn’t recognise these people out-loud.

“Akashi, the scene at the park was public enough that word has gotten out that healing All Might almost killed you, and left you on mandatory bed rest,” his teacher began in his usual, almost offensively blunt, way.

“Certain members of the public,” he gestured at their guests, “have decided to use the time that you are stationary, to thank you for healing them. You have a line forming outside.”

Aizawa-sensei paused before continuing, not long enough for Tatsuya to really digest that, but enough that he was capable of processing words, again. A line of people?

“You are recovering. Tell someone if you need a break, and anyone left over can come back another day.” Aizawa-sensei’s tone brooked no argument, and luckily the visitors didn’t look offended.

And so it began, group after group of people coming in-and-out of his room in Recover Girl’s office, all there to see him. As it turned out, most of them were ‘resuscitated’ victims of the Kamino ward incident, which explained why Tatsuya knew none of their faces. He’d been too busy fainting into All Might’s arms on national television to really take in the newly resurrected civilians of Kamino in the moment.

In his first life as Izuku, he had spent so much time in hospital beds that if his friends and family had hovered over him every single time he was in one, they’d never get anything else done. By the end of his first year he could have rebuilt the whole nurse’s office, brick by brick, from memory, he had stared at the walls and ceiling for so long, left to his own devices.

But here, as Tatsuya, as the Recovery Hero: Day’s Grace, he had almost constant company. From his senpai the Big 3, and his former classmates, now his kouhai, to his teachers, and his former patients, so many people took the time out of their day, just to sit with him.   

All these people who he had helped, directly or indirectly, who would not leave him to suffer alone. (As the leader of the resistance against a supervillain, in near-hopeless circumstances, he had learnt to keep his composure, to suppress the Midoriya family river-tears, but he could feel them attempting to make a come-back, the longer people spent at his bedside, just because it was kind.)

In a quieter moment, when it was only Aizawa-sensei and him in the room, his teacher asked a question that sounded as though the man had been sitting on it for some time.

“Why do you try to act ‘fine’ when you’re not?”

Tatsuya was taken aback, it wasn’t like he didn’t know that his teacher cared about him, but usually he left the ‘illogical’, more emotion-driven conversations to others. His Sensei must have been more stressed by his reaction to the Trigger, than he had thought.

That was always the danger of projecting a constant air of calm & collected, Tatsuya supposed, it took people off guard it you suddenly weren’t.

Still, his teacher had asked a question, and he had to reply. The problem was, he didn’t really have an answer outside of ‘it’s a habit from my past in the future as a twenty-year-old Pro-Hero version of your first-year student with a different name and quirk, in a supervillain apocalypse,’ which would not go down well.

Tatsuya eventually settled on, “What else am I supposed to do?”

Aizawa-sensei did not look pleased by that answer, either. The hunch in his shoulders read as frustrated to Tatsuya, but the crinkle between his brows and the softness to the curl of his hands, revealed his concern.

“You’re human too, kid. You are barely half-way through second year and you’re already responsible for saving more lives than most Pro-Heroes manage in a lifetime.” Aizawa-sensei was strangely adamant about this. Where was his sense of Plus Ultra?

“But-” Tatsuya tried to explain how it had always been the case for him. He had never been allowed to be a ‘normal’ hero, held to ‘normal’ standards. If he wasn’t striving for No.1, he was failing, wasn’t living up to people’s expectations of him.

Not as All Might’s successor, the Ninth, the one chosen to inherit the quirk, and not as Recovery Girl’s apprentice, the healing hero, permanently set apart by that fact, alone. Tatsuya only made it one word into his rebuttal before being cut off.

“No. No ‘buts’. My hellions idolise you, so if not for yourself, then for them, stay down and let yourself heal. Let us take care of you. If you shrug this off, they will never learn that prioritising their own health is ok. They will work themselves to death, just like All Might was on the path to, and we won’t be able to stop them.”

The silence echoed in the med bay for a long moment, unbreakable and holding its own weight. Tatsuya had honestly never considered… In his mad rush to protect everyone that he had failed in the first timeline, had he been harming them in other ways?

Eventually, he spoke, voice a little shaky despite himself, “That’s dirty, using the kids’ well-being against me.”

Aizawa-sensei looked entirely unrepentant.

“If I have to resort to pushing your medic buttons to get you to take care of yourself for once in your life then so be it, Problem Child Senior.”

Tatsuya eased-back into his pillow with a gusty sigh. He couldn’t remember when he had sat up straight, but it suddenly didn’t seem as necessary to hold onto his pin-straight posture.

“Fine… pass me my water?”

“Of course.”

``` ``` ```

Recovery Girl had finally consented to free Akashi from her med-bay, and Aizawa’s sole second-year was chomping at the bit to get out of the room and go and see the first years, who had settled into the dorms while he had been resting. Aizawa was more than a little surprised that the boy had stayed in his cot for the whole Recovery-Girl-ordained rest-period, but maybe something from their frank conversation had managed to make it through Akashi’s exceptionally hard head.

Aizawa couldn’t get the sight of Akashi seizing in Yagi’s arms out of his head. The scream.

It had not been easy to watch his second-year student suffer the consequences of healing years’ worth of trauma, either in the moment, or afterwards. In the face of that, Aizawa was glad that his ridiculous class of hell-raisers were up to their usual antics, and that Akashi seemed to find their chaos amusing.

They could all use a bit of light-hearted fun.

On the day of Akashi’s release from Recovery Girl’s clutches, it happened to be Yaoyorozu’s birthday. The whole class adored their vice-president and had thrown a small party for her in the common room area of the dorms.

Aizawa and Akashi entered the room to cheers, which they waved off to stand by one of the walls, with Yagi, not wanting to interrupt. Despite Aizawa’s efforts, they were all soon dragged into the hubbub, anyway, after Ashido exclaimed that they should make a list of birthdays to hang up on the wall, so that no one was missed. Especially since, now that they were all living together, they could make sure that everyone had a birthday party.

Yagi happily volunteered his birthday, and Iida dutifully added it to the newly created whiteboard. Akashi wandered over to look at the board, abandoning Aizawa to Ashido and Kaminari’s wheedling about sharing his own birthday. After Iida wrote down a couple of names, and their attached dates, in order, as Aizawa had expected from him, Akashi took a closer look at one name in particular and hummed, sounding contemplative.

Thankfully, that pulled Ashido’s attention off of him, leaving him with only Kaminari to deal with. The pink-skinned girl bounced over to her Senpai and looked curiously at whichever name had caught his attention.

“What is it, Senpai?” Ashido asked, excitedly, “Oh! Are you birthday-buddies with Midoriya, or something?”

That would be an interesting coincidence, but it wouldn’t explain the impish smirk that had bloomed on Akashi’s face for just long enough for Aizawa to see it. It had been swallowed back down into Akashi’s signature ‘gentle-calm,’ but Aizawa had definitely not imagined it. What was that about?

“No, actually. I’m ‘birthday-buddies’ with Bakugou-”

Predictably, Bakugou interrupted him, “Hah?!? Like hell you are!”

But just as predictably, Akashi took no notice at the sudden barrage of ‘offended’ explosions, and continued, “-but I’m pretty sure Midoriya has the same birthday as one of the third year’s Big three: Togata Mirio.”

“Oh, cool!” Came Ashido’s enthusiastic cheer.

Nodding to himself, Iida resolutely added Akashi’s name to the wall, right next to Bakugou’s, despite the blonde’s continued grumbling and hands that popped with small explosions. When he went to write the year down, though, Akashi stopped him, commenting absently, “You don’t need to put the year down next to the date Tenya, it’s no different, after all.”

The uncomprehending second of silence held until Yaoyorozu, herself, generous slice of cake in hand, broke it.

“But Akashi-senpai,” the birthday girl began, “that cannot be right, that would make you our age, in our year, not second year.”

Aizawa’s walking migraine just shrugged idly, still turned away from them and looking at the whiteboard. Only bothering to say, “Nah it’s right. I just skipped a year in primary-”

Akashi was cut off mid-sentence by Aizawa’s capture-weapon snagging him and bodily dragging him over to his Underground-still teacher, who raised a (hopefully) menacing eyebrow. Akashi could be difficult to scare.

“What?” The teacher breathed at his trussed-up student, in a tone that Principal Nedzu had once phrased as ‘an admirable deadpan’, eyes boring into Akashi’s own.

The student in question just wrinkled his eyebrows knowing full well that Aizawa never read the student files and feeling so ready for chaos and replied in a faux confused tone, “I thought you already knew? I know it’s in my file somewhere, and I was literally your only student for most of last year…”

All Might, in his infinite wisdom, chose that moment to pipe up with, “Young Akashi, that would mean that you were 14 last year, when you achieved your provisional license, yes?” To which Akashi simply nodded, still wrapped in the capture weapon and seemingly in no particular hurry to extract himself, internally revelling in the chaos he’d just caused.

All Might continued, sounding as if he had aged ten years between questions, golden bangs drooping slightly, “Are you then aware that you have, in all likelihood, broken Hawks’ record as the youngest license-holder?”

Akashi, still looking entirely innocent, just nodded again before saying glibly, “I was wonderingwhy Midnight-sensei never brought that up in PR class, but I suppose if she really didn’t know…”

Aizawa just let out a low moan of exhausted despair behind him, already dreading the repercussions of this, sure to follow. He couldn’t even rightfully be angry with his sole second-year either, more’s the pity.

Akashi was right in that Aizawa really should have known. But he didn’t, he hadn’t thought to check the age of his student of all things, and now he had a second-year who was actually younger than a fifth of his first-year class…

He had a second-year who’s younger than a fifth of his first-year class. Spirits have mercy.

Apparently, no metaphysical forces were in the mood to make his life easier, because at that moment the rest of his hellions seem to have had the same epiphany as him.

In unison, half his class screeched, “YOU’RE OUR AGE?!?”

Asui, instead of joining in on the screaming, just tapped her lips with a finger thoughtfully and said, “Ribbit. You’re actually younger than four of us, me included, ribbit,” like she didn’t know that her words would send his class of excitable hellions into hysterics all over again.

Sighing, Aizawa just took out his phone to text Midnight, letting her know that Akashi would have new material for her, when classes resumed, and to be prepared.

Chapter Text

A common question Hawks was asked in interviews, was, “What do you love most about heroics?” Usually, he’d pull out a charming anecdote about saving some small child, or about the joy of knowing he could help others, but while he did love those things, the simplest answer would always be flying. The freedom to soar like he knew in his hollow bones he was meant to do.

The quirk restriction laws and individuals with mutation quirks interacted in interesting, and poorly legally defined, ways. For the vast majority of Japanese citizens, quirk ‘usage’ was prohibited in public spaces, but how would that be applied to people with hair made of vines, or with the upper body of a killer whale, or, of course, wings? People who were their quirk.

The general rule of thumb Japan had settled on, was that as long as the individual did not use their mutation ‘as a quirk’, that is, beyond what someone without that particular mutation quirk could reasonably achieve, they were not in breach of the law.

Of course, as anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together could realise, many mutations had super-sensory aspects permanently ‘on’ as a default or were naturally shaped so differently from ‘quirkless standard’ that ‘normal’ just wasn’t an option. No arrest would ever happen if someone with a canine quirk was able to smell their neighbour’s curry, or if someone with a reptilian quirk dropped a tail due to injury, it would be morally bankrupt and, mor convincingly for some, career suicide, but under the strictest view of the law, such things were technically legal.

As someone with two massive, bright red, feathery limbs on his back, and as someone who had grown up in a criminal’s home, as he had, Hawks had a vested interest in maintaining his right to use his quirk.

Heroics was gratifying, and a life choice he was glad to have made, but having the indisputable, legal allowance to use his wings and fly… Well, that singular motivation made up the difference whenever doubts set in about whether life as a hero, especially one with such a unique relationship with the Heroics Public Safety Commission as he did, was worth it. Flying was peace itself, where long practise met instinct and exhilaration, and where he was finally totally free.

It was also when and where he did his best thinking, and he had a lot to consider at that moment.

Even as his sidekicks alerted him to incidents across Fukuoka, and his feathers kept up a constant surveillance of his surroundings through the vibrations in the air, most of his attention remained on the orders that had come down from the HPSC, through his handler, that morning. The order to begin his own investigation into UA’s provisionally licensed healing hero, whom the internet had dubbed the Healer of Kamino. The order to take him on as a work studies intern.

Breathe in. Vibrations in the air consistent with gunshots two blocks South of him. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Alert the Agency. Send eight secondaries ahead of himself to get the civilians out of the way. Three primaries hog-tie the villain, and a feather sword takes out the gun. Incident resolved. Breathe out.

The Commission wanted Hawks to make a public connection to Day’s Grace, through a work study, for his media profile’s benefit. They had ordered him to form a personal connection between the two of them, to use Hawks as a proxy, a mouthpiece, to sway the highschooler away from UA’s influence.

Hawks had had to sit through a rant, and more irritated requests for a status update, courtesy of his handler, over this teenager than he had over his absence from the Kamino incident and the League of Villains investigation, combined.

Breathe in. Eagle-Eye reported in that there had been a development in the missing-child case they were working on. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Authorise back-up for them from one of their detective contacts. Breathe out.

One of the kid’s friends in that seemingly cursed first-year class, had made a social media post about how Akashi had broken Hawk’s own record for youngest provisional license holder, and that last feather on the pile of downy fluff had been the last straw for the Commission’s patience. The HPSC were extremely displeased over both Akashis’ continued refusal to have the hero student train under them directly, but they were incensed over having their chosen, home-grown hero overlooked in favour of someone firmly in UA’s camp. Again.

Hawks could triumph over every hero in the country, in strength and popularity and cases solved, exceptUA’s indomitable, star graduate, All Might. With All Might stepping down, there had been a power vacuum to fill among the top heroes, the perfect opportunity. All the Commission had to do was make sure that the accolades, and the spotlight, fell onto the correct head. And then the people had chosen a teenager studying at UA to pin their hopes on and their plans imploded spectacularly.

Breathe in. Motorcyclist speeding in a school zone below and to the East of him. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Four feathers in each wheel to puncture the tires and bring it to an immediate stop, two to transport him to a nearby officer, nine to stop the group of first graders from stepping onto the road an into his path. Breathe out.

UA, and to a lesser extent the other hero schools, were easily the biggest threat to the power the commission held over the Heroic’s industry as a whole. They were headed by a creature who could outsmart the rest of the country combined, who held no love for their methods, and who Hawks privately believed that the Head Commissioner viewed as her own arch nemesis. A younger, more naïve him had foolishly assumed that ‘crime’, ‘villainy’ or ‘corruption’ would have been the Heroic Public Safety Commission’s nemesis, rather than the principal of the country’s top hero school, but he’s learned better.

They were crying blood over society collectively ‘choosing’ their own, next, symbol, when the decision should have been an obvious one, and one they’d been planning for ever since All Might had first started reducing his patrol hours.

Endeavour had only ever been 2^nd, and now 1^st in the rankings to stir up a protest in Hawks’ favour. To make him, the HPSC’s chosen operative, the ‘underdog’ and the hero to root for. Judged fairly, the Flame Hero should never have made the top 5, let alone be right behind All Might for the best part of 2 decades, with his unfortunate tendency for property damage and bystander-injury.

Even with Hawks’ own personal biases from when he’d been a kid, he knew objectively that Endeavour was far from the hero, the man, that he had once idolised.

The big man had a bad case of hyper-focus, when there were villains involved. The public had been toldthought that Endeavour’s notorious work ethic had let him keep the edge over Hawk’s own vastly superior popularity polls, but really it was all a polite fiction engineered by the Commission, who ran the ranking system to create maximum sympathy and reliance on their own chosen hero.

They were not taking having all of that up-ended by the actions of a teenager not under their influence well at all.

Breathe in. News helicopter had spotted him. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Time to put on a show. Retrieve all feathers and flare the wings impressively. Cheery wave and then dive back into action. The picture of Heroic Focus. Breathe out.

Hawks thought back to the video conference with the principal, where he had made his offer of an internship for the healer as both the number 2 hero in the country, and more importantly as one who specialised in speed, with known super sensory abilities. UA was justifiably on-edge after Day’s Grace’s kidnapping that the whole country had heard about by now, desperate to keep the kid safe, but Hawks knew that was a factor that could work to his handler’s advantage.

With the abilities his Fierce Wings gave him, Hawks would be able to sense any inbound trouble long before it could reach him and his intern. He alone could have them out of danger, and the perpetrator in custody, before any more unpleasantness could occur, never mind his small army of sidekicks and support staff. If the kid had to be out and about, and he did for a proper work studies experience, then there was no safer place for him than under Hawks’ wing.

The principal seemed to appreciate the pun, even if the Underground Hero beside him had looked even less impressed than he had before.

There was no way the marsupial hadn’t been aware, or at least suspicious that Hawks had been ordered to offer Akashi a work study, but interestingly enough, the principal had agreed on his student’s behalf. The provisional hero Day’s Grace would be joining Hawks for the semester’s work study period.

Breathe in. Soar high over the city, alert but free. Breathe out.

It was sure to be entertaining.

*** *** ***

Aizawa was in a terrible mood. He knew he was in a terrible mood because even Mic was keeping his distance, choosing to do his marking at his desk rather than on the couch next to him and leaning into his space, as he usually would be doing.

Term was back in full swing, his kids had their licenses, even if for some of them it had been far too close for comfort, and they could legally defend themselves if the second half of the year followed the pattern of first semester. Please, he found himself begging of mystical forces that had never answered before, let this semester be boring.

With provisional licenses, came the opportunity for work studies. Aizawa had protested the idea. Aizawa had been outvoted. Akashi had been on work studies as a first year with his Provisional, and despite Aizawa’s arguments that that had been a special case and that his first years had already had enough villain encounters for their entire school career, the precedent had been set.

His excitable hellions had scattered across the country, eager to gain experience and exposure, but at least all of them had so far chosen heroes that Aizawa had had cause to vet in the past and they were all in the clear. Akashi, by contrast, after a summer of more or less responsible decision-making, had chosen to defend his title of Problem Child Senior, and had agreed to intern with a known Commission asset, far from the protection of UA.

His student had pre-empted the discussion that the staff had been trying to organise, regarding both the media’s and the HPSC’s reaction to his heroic’s debut, by coming to them himself shortly after being allowed out of the nurse’s office and convening an impromptu staff meeting right there and then in the staff room.

It had been a good thing overall, the kidnapping and recovery time had delayed an already overdue discussion, but Akashi taking the lead in the conversation had allowed their student to lay out a solid argument for throwing the Commission some kind of bone, before they did something desperate, that would never have gotten off the ground if Akashi didn’t have the reigns of the resulting argument in his grasp.

Quite literally that following afternoon, Hawks had emailed a request for a video call with both the Principal and “Akashi Tatsuya’s primary instructor.” The call had been an internship offer for Akashi, complete with a rehearsed-sounding list of reasons why it would be beneficial for a second-year heroics student to accompany the new No.2 in the country, specifically. Never mind that the students should be chasing after the heroes for internships and not the other way around.

Oh, the Winged hero had started the meat of the meeting with a sympathetic sounding mini-speech about how “terribly unfair” it was that circumstances had conspired to rob a hero student of their work study opportunity, due to security concerns. The little diatribe even had the benefit of being true, much to Aizawa’s frustration. The following assurances that Hawks and his agency were more than capable of keeping one healer safe, irritated him even more so for the same reason.

If Hawks had been anyone else but firmly the Commission’s man, not something the public or even most Spotlight heroes were aware of, but generally known among Underground heroes, he would be an ideal choice for an internship for Akashi. As it was, with tensions between the HPSC and UA at an all-time high, Aizawa had been all for rejecting the very idea. This plan would have Akashi temporarily relocated to Fukuoka, Hawk’s hometown, for almost a month, far from UA, and in the pocket of the Commission’s pet hero.

Even if he wasn’t, Hawks was the new number 2, in the most unstable time that society had seen since before All Might had first donned the mantle of the Symbol of Peace. Adding in a work study student to what must already be an extremely busy schedule, was just adding one more time commitment for the man. How much time could he realistically be willing to devote to an intern?

Perhaps sensing Aizawa’s imminent eruption through his whiskers or his terrifying grasp on human body language, or perhaps just needing a moment himself, Nedzu smiled politely at the number 2 hero and asked for a short period with the call on HOLD, so that they could ask Akashi’s opinion before agreeing to anything. Hawks acquiesced, looking disappointingly unbothered considering the havoc his offer was wreaking on Aizawa’s sense on calm, and Nedzu paused the line.

Aizawa held in his torrent of objections and went to fetch his student.

Akashi, waiting just outside of Nedzu’s office, looked up at Aizawa when he opened the door. Recovery Girl, seated just beside him, looked up at him too, calculations visibly spinning behind her eyes. Neither spoke, just made significant eye-contact with each other and followed him back into Nedzu’s office.

“So, what does Hawks want with Akashi?” Recovery Girl asked, as soon as everyone was seated. Akashi himself just tilted his head to echo her question.

Nedzu answered before Aizawa could, with, “Our new Number 2 Hero, has made Akashi a work studies offer. He assures me that he and his agency are capable of ensuring Akashi’s safety, for the duration.”

Akashi had been silent for a long moment, and Recovery Girl, the Principal, and Aizawa had waited for their student to collect his thoughts. Akashi was sensible, he was observant, there was a decent chance that he’d already realised the non-standard relationship between their new Number 2 hero and the Hero Commission, and he was well aware of the commission’s desire to poach him…

And then he had agreed to throw himself into the metaphorical lion’s den, just to buy them all some breathing room from the HPSC. Problem Child Senior, indeed.

To Hawks’ credit, they were three weeks into the work study with no calamities yet in sight. Aizawa had kept an eye on the situation, even as most of his attention had been absorbed by the developing case of the Shie Hassaikai, with his first years somehow right in the thick of everything, once again.

The pair, usually accompanied by at least one of Hawks’ many sidekicks, were constantly on the move. They raced from crime, to distressed civilians, to heroes in need of back up, solving issues at a pace that would have been unbelievable if Hawks’ moniker was anything but the Fastest Hero, or had Akashi been any less worryingly competent.

When the work study had first been agreed upon, the issue of transport came up. Hawks usually flew between the situations that he responded to, but obviously that wasn’t an option for the healer.

Akashi had immediately shot down the very idea of being carried, either directly, or by telekinetic feathers, and had instead spent that afternoon in Power Loader’s workshop, finding his own work-around. He emerged, hours later, victorious.

Between the two of them, as well as Nobara, and Power Loader’s own resident Problem Child, they’d created a support item that functioned like Aizawa’s scarf but it unspooled from Akashi’s upper forearms. The material could be bandage-like or adhesive, as Akashi needed, and could reel-in on command.

They’d created the unholy lovechild of his capture scarf and Sero’s Tape-dispenser quirk in support item form. Wonderful. In any case, Akashi used his reels to travel or contain villains like he’d been born with them, more than able to keep up, and had spent the weeks of his work study swinging around in Hawk’s wake like the fictional pre-quirk hero Spiderman.

Plenty of his students were making the news over the work study period, debuting before the world left, right, and centre. Kirishima’s Unbreakable defence was the first but by no means the last, but the only one he ended up watching with his students was, of course, Akashi’s.

When ‘Kamino’s healer’ and the new Number 2 were spotted together, it had initially caused a stir, but that had mostly died down, especially from national news outlets. Aizawa’s students hadn’t heard anything from their Senpai since he had left for Fukuoka, but the Problem Child had kept in contact with his mentor, as well as Aizawa, himself. They were well aware that the month had been blessedly free from supervillain encounters, but apparently peacetime had run out, and someone had finally crawled out of the woodwork to challenge the new Number 2 in his home city.

One average afternoon in the 1A common room, news coverage cut abruptly from a report of traffic conditions in one of Mustafu’s busier suburbs, to an ongoing battle between two of Hawks’ sidekicks and a villain whose quirk Aizawa recognised from the current nation-wide watchlist. Unusually illusive for someone whose quirk was summoning giant glowing constructs that were shaped and moved like jellyfish, he’d been on the underground’s radar for almost two years. Irukandji.

If the League of Villains hadn’t been the snowflake that started the never-ending avalanche of supervillains that seemed hell-bound on battling his first-years, Aizawa imagined that this villain would have been assigned as priority target for Eraserhead the hero. The villain’s quirk was deadly by default, and he was known to accept assassination contracts, usually high paying, exactly because his quirk was so difficult to counter. Erasure could have managed it, of course, but with the chaos at UA this year with the League, and now the developing situation with the Shie Hassaikai, Aizawa honestly had not had time, and the investigation had been left to others.

The current events were not inspiring much confidence in those ‘others’’ investigative abilities.

The jellyfish may not be ‘real’, but their venom definitely was, and most frustratingly, it did not affect the villain whatsoever. He could just stand in amongst his creations, and ‘tag’ anyone who got too close, taking them out of the fight with a single touch of the stingers and littering the pavement with downed civilians, and, as they watched, one of the sidekicks, leaving the remaining woman to radio for backup and dodge the stingers as best she could.

Just as one of them had managed to corner her, putting her in a position where she couldn’t dodge without risking more civilians behind her, the same grim expression on her face that Aizawa remembered All Might wearing in Kamino as he tanked a hit that would have levelled city blocks to protect the one woman behind him, a sea of red rushed past the camera, distinctive crimson feathers flying everywhere.

Hawks’ mastery over his own quirk was always fascinating to watch, knowing that the young man was directing every single feather individually, juggling hundreds of them, without misdirecting even one. Under his control, they swept the injured away from the fight and toward the arriving ambulances, before evacuating the block of any remaining civilians, and then returning to the hero’s wings, as though they’d never moved in the first place. A conductor and his scarlet symphony.

The cameraman centred the frame on the Number 2, feather swords drawn, and wings mantled dramatically behind him. And of course, right next to the Winged Hero, perfectly in view of both the camera and the villain, was Aizawa’s student, clearly planning on jumping into the fray right behind his mentor for the month.

Thankfully for Aizawa’s blood pressure, reason seemed to re-assert itself in his second-year, and he peeled away from Hawks’ side to work his magic over the injured civilians, and the downed sidekick. Hawks, having almost as good a quirk match-up for this villain as Eraserhead himself, with his speed helping him avoid the reaching stingers and their venom, and individual feathers letting him fight at a safe distance, split off from his wings and harrying the villain into a vulnerable position, he had the villain subdued before Akashi finished making his rounds with the victims of the jellyfishes’ venom.

As his class of excitable hellions exclaimed over Hawks’ victory and the brief appearance of their missing Senpai, and the news moved on to cover some other topic, Aizawa begrudgingly had to admit that suspicious links to the Commission or not, at least Akashi had chosen a competent mentor for work studies. One who was likely to return their young healer to them, alive and well.

*** *** ***

Tatsuya had known from the start that Aizawa-sensei would hate that they were allowing the Commission any leeway, but he also knew that his ornery, overprotective teacher would come to see the sense in it. They had to allow the HPSC some kind of win against UA and Nedzu in particular, after Tatsuya had accidentally one-upped their ‘home-grown’ hero, before they did something reckless.

Society’s faith in heroes had been tested almost past the breaking point, and while the institution of the Commission itself was deeply flawed and immoral, the last thing the country needed was the rioting and unrest that had been in the future he was trying to prevent.

More than that though, Tatsuya knew that this change in the Commission’s focus could and probably would wreak havoc on his ability to predict future events. In the first timeline, they had had Hawks infiltrate and investigate the League, and then the Meta Liberation Army. In other words, they had their ‘pet’ hero focussed on the villains. Here, they had lived up (down?) to Tatsuya’s worst expectations of them and proven themselves to be more concerned with losing the spotlight and public favour, than in foiling villainy. More obsessed with power than justice.

The HPSC had had their trained operative investigate and try to convert a hero student instead of the S Ranked villains still at large.

Tatsuya may have inadvertently stolen Hawks’ moment in the sun, with the whole Kamino mess, but they had not handled the situation with any grace whatsoever, sacrificing what could have been a critical information-gathering position out of wounded pride. (He’d known healing Kamino was reckless, but he just didn’t have it in him to leave the city broken, when he could fix it. Even knowing it would push the limits of both his quirk and his tolerance for pain. Plus Ultra and all that.)

So, they had Hawks acquire him as a student, to bring him under their influence.

Originally, the Number 2 would have been mentoring Tokoyami, while embarking on his infiltration of the Underworld, eventually ‘killing’ Best Jeanist, and having his wings destroyed by Dabi. Hawks was trained in infiltration and had a powerful super sensory quirk. In any other situation the information he’d gain from the mission would have been invaluable, but with the MLA’s vice grip on everything digital preventing the hero from passing on information, Hawks’ mission had been doomed to failure from the start, something that they’d only put together in hindsight.

With the Meta Liberation Army’s infiltration of the HPSC alone, all of the villains that Hawks had been trying to engender trust from, had already known his history. Both the personal, private things that the hero had never trusted anyone with, and that he was a trained undercover operative.

Without a known spy in their midst, Tatsuya suspected that the League, and the MLA, would move according to a different timeline than the one he remembered. Between Kamino not actually being lost, Best Jeanist being allowed to continue hero work uninterrupted, society’s faith in heroes still holding strong, and now the major diversion of the Commission’s, and by extension Hawks’, attention allowing the villains a freer rein, Tatsuya’s ability to predict future events was crumbling.

Even with the major diversions of Shigaraki and Kurogiri’s dual arrests at the USJ, and Kachan not being vilified by the media at the Sports’ Festival, the timeline had stayed mostly intact and predictable.

As expected, All For One had used that mouth-sludge-summoning teleportation quirk to free his underlings in the wake of the USJ, though it had had the follow on effect of enraging the villains beyond what he remembered from the first timeline, and the trickle-down effects from their following interaction with Stain in that state had almost cost Ingenium his life, instead of just his legs.

With Kachan, though the media had been appeased, the villains had obviously still thought they saw a kindred spirit in the mouthy blond and had taken him anyway. Tatsuya thought he prevented that. He should have prevented that.

With the diversions from the original timeline of the present, Tatsuya knew he couldn’t count on his future knowledge for anything past this point.

He had been assigned as a support role in this, second, life, able to build those on his side up but not able to take the kind of direct action that he could have as the Ninth. Fortunately, the major event that had become his target to change, that should alter everything that comes after it, pulling Japan back from the brink just soon enough to prevent the future he came back from but far enough into the mess that the heroics system would still be on a path of change, should be right around the corner.

Here’s hoping that all Tatsuya’s little changes, helping where he could to support his the heroes, to build them up, would be enough.

*** *** ***

With the villain in custody and local police ready to take over, Hawks eased into the familiar rhythm of assuring civilians and checking over the area with his feathers, cataloguing both public sentiment and any property damage that his sidekicks might have caused during the fight.

Breathe in. No vibrations from under rubble to indicate trapped civies. Breath out.

Breathe in. The rumble of the ambulance vehicles was growing more and more faint as they left the scene. Breathe out.

Reconnaissance that would have taken a whole team of people hours, done in moments as his feathers relayed information back to him.

For once, Hawks went through the rigmarole of villain take-down paperwork, himself, instead of pawning it off to one of his many sidekicks. Hawks knew that it was not a rational reaction, feeling guilty for not intervening sooner in the fight and saving them from injury, nor would doing his own paperwork for once help them recover. In fact, knowing his student for the month they were probably already fine, but there was a part of him that was insisting that if Hawks had been less distracted by said student, he would have been faster and they never would have had to face the villain at all.

Breathe in. Reassemble the wings, each feather slotting into its place, and prepare to launch off to the next job. Breathe out.

Akashi’s temporary inclusion in his agency may not have been his idea, but Hawks could honestly say that he had enjoyed the past month. The kid was clever and committed and easy to work with, which he had been expecting from Recovery Girl’s personal student, but he hadn’t been expecting just how easy it was to talk to healer.

Hawks was professionally charming, and he knew it. He’d been explicitly trained to be someone you wanted to be friends with, wanted to like, but Akashi had that presence too, apparently all-unknowing, the one that said you were safe with him, that you could rest easy while he was there to protect you. Hawks was the Number 2 hero in the country, he was used to being the protective presence in the room, not having it directed towards him.

They had chatted easily over their time together, feeling each other out, and very aware that the other was doing the exact same thing. Akashi had surprised him by putting his metaphorical cards on the table early on: the kid had flat out told Hawks that he, and Hawks had to imagine UA by extension, were well-aware that his work study offer was a front on behalf of the Commission, and that he would not, under any circumstances, be moving from UA.

His handler would have had an attack right there and then if she’d heard, either outraged or incredulous or both, but the kid had picked a moment just between the two of them, high up in the air, mid-swing between buildings on those bandage-tape support items of his, to tell him. Hawks had been the only one in earshot, no handler or hidden microphone in sight, and he was able to nod at the kid and carry on like nothing had passed between them, with one less weight on his shoulders.

He may have always wanted to be a hero and have not cared what the HPSC would ask of him in return, but he also didn’t have any interest in placing anyone else in their care, either. Especially unwillingly or unaware. (Later he would wonder how the kid knew to be so sure that he wasn’t as much the Commission’s Man as the HPSC thought, how he knew Hawks was safe, but ultimately put it down to Nedzu’s frightening competence.)

With the air cleared, and expectations waved away, they had been able to find comfortable ground as a two-person team. Hawks was still the kid’s superior, of course, and a few years older, but between Akashi’s general dependability, their mutual but unacknowledged Atlas Complexes, and his student’s complete inability to act his age, the kid felt more like a true hero partner than a trainee, or even a sidekick. He wouldn’t go so far as to call them friends, another one of their shared traits was the ability to be extraordinarily friendly without confiding deep personal details, but it was probably the closest he’d ever come to having one.

Eventually, Hawks broke free of his thoughts and the paperwork he had had his nose stuck in, and actually looked around for the healer in question, realising that he hadn’t felt the now-familiar pattern of Akashi’s speech-vibrations in the air since he’d re-assembled his wings. Akashi knew that he was supposed to stay near him, it was one of the terms he and UA had come to regarding the kid’s safety, and he was normally pretty good about that, but Hawks’ feathers couldn’t find him anywhere in his immediate vicinity.

Hawks was deeply alarmed for several long moments, claxons of warning ringing loud in his head that ‘Kamino’s healer’ would be a tempting target for multiple criminal organisations.

An underage healer who could heal anything, even himself, with no in-built defence mechanisms? If there was ever a person that would catch the eye of quirk traffickers, it was Akashi. Or even those who nominally followed the law, really, with how desperate the HPSC was to have control of Akashi’s quirk. It was no small miracle that the one time so far that the boy had been taken, the villain had given him back.

Luckily, before Hawks could work himself into a panic, or further chew himself out for allowing his guilt over letting his adult sidekicks gain a few unnecessary bruises cause him to lose track of his vulnerable, underage student, Albatross, the sidekick that they had arrived in time to save, called out to him.

“The kid’s fine, boss! He’s got the rest of the Agency with him!” Hawks let out a quiet sigh of relief, before tilting his head questioningly at her. She had known him long enough to know what his next question would be.

It would take a significant force of villains or government agents to pose a risk to Akashi if the remainder of his sidekicks had really converged on his intern, but he would really prefer not to take chances. Forget the Commission and their need for power plays, if UA’s little healer was harmed or God-forbid taken on his watch Nedzu himself would be after Hawks’ head.

Sure enough, she continued, “They’re heading to the Uni hospital, where the ambos have been taking all the victims of this guy’s quirk. They’ve set up a specific Ward for them, so they’re all in one place, but the way the paramedics were talking, the doctors are battling to keep them alive.” She didn’t need to elaborate that as soon as the kid had heard that prognosis, he’d headed straight for the patients in need of help.

At least Akashi had had the foresight to take some protection, even if he had still run off without his supervisor to an unsecured location. The kid had self-preservation instincts in there somewhere, they were just routinely shoved aside in favour of protecting literally anyone else, first. Someone ought to remind Akashi that martyrdom was only useful in the short-term, and that taking chances with himself now might mean he never has the chance to help everyone that he’s so desperate to later, but that wasn’t Hawks’ job.

For all their other questionable habits as far as training child soldiers went, the Commission at least made sure that Hawks was aware of his value to society. By constantly reminding him of all the resources that they had poured into making him what he was today, and his responsibility to measure up and honour that, but still.

He knew his worth lay in being a growing, continuing, guiding light of heroics, the indomitable Winged Hero, who could never be brought down. Akashi had made a memorable entrance into Heroic’s Society, but it wouldn’t mean nearly as much as it could have if his light was snuffed out before he even finished high school.

Hawks took off with a nod to his sidekick and soared towards the hospital off the Nanakuma Line, the Fukuoka University Hospital. An old hospital that had been around since the pre-quirk era. As he flew, he commed ahead and one of his support staff happily confirmed that Hawks’ wayward student was alive and well and performing his usual miracles.

The officers who had accompanied the newest victims in the ambulances to the hospital greeted him cheerfully as he touched down on the helipad, ushering him towards the correct Ward. Hawks arrived just in time to see his intern finishing up with an older man who looked like he had been in the cot for longer than the others. Hawks was no doctor, the parade of beeping machines didn’t mean much to him, but even to his eyes the man’s breathing seemed more laboured, and his face sweatier than most of the other victims.

The worn expression and wheezing breaths disappeared under the power of Akashi’s quirk, but if Hawks’ niggling hypothesis was right, then they were about to run into a bigger problem. Namely, the final three patients in the room, all eerily still, covered in machines, ostensibly being treated, but notably left be in the far corner of the room. Out of the way.   

Akashi made a beeline for the nearest of the three of them, either so deep in his Healer-mode concentration that he hadn’t noticed the segregation, or just uncaring about whatever reasons the hospital staff might have had to de-prioritise the three so obviously, but before he could reach them, one of the nurses stopped his journey across the room with a hand on his shoulder. Hawks’ intern looked up at the man, the question of why he was slowing Akashi down clear on his face.

The nurse sighed, “They were poisoned twenty-nine hours ago, I’m afraid. Nothing you can do.”

Hawks was going to have a stern word with the investigations team in his office, because today was the first he had known that Irukandji was in his city. Either they had missed the movements of a known hitman, movements obvious enough to land civilians in a public hospital suffering from a known, easily identifiable quirk, or they had failed to share that information and that breakdown in communication had caused today’s incident. There had better be a fantastic reason for whichever one it was, because at this rate it was going to cost three innocents their lives. Though…

“Do you have a quirk-poison specialist on staff?”

Akashi was clearly on the same brainwave that Hawks was. The villain’s quirk was lethal but not unbeatable, as Akashi himself had proven today, but for whatever reason the venomous quirk effect had to be countered by another quirk, traditional antivenom was empirically ineffective.

Hawks also was not going to hold out hope that the hospital had access to someone with the appropriate quirk. If they did, Akashi wouldn’t be standing at the foot of the bed of three people on death’s door, having a tense discussion with an obviously exhausted health professional.

Surprising Hawks, the man replied, “We do actually, but they’re currently out of the city, and will take more time to return than we believe they have.” His voice had dropped in helpless frustration, relaying that tidbit of truly unfortunate timing.

Akashi looked like he was mentally sorting through possibilities, obviously unwilling to accept that as the end. It took a moment, but the provisional hero obviously decided on something, resolve settling over the planes of his face, the gaze of those purple-grey eyes, unyielding.

“The remaining patients are beyond the time-limit of my quirk. I may not be able get rid of the cause of symptoms, but I should be able to manage them until your expert gets here and neutralises the poison.” And by that Hawks assumed his intern meant that he would be re-setting the patient’s states as far as he could, repeatedly, to buy them time.

“You’re going to-” Stuttered out the nurse, sounding disbelieving. Hawks had had almost a month to desensitise himself to Akashi’s unique approach to the UA school motto. This poor man hadn’t had any of that time.

“Yes. I’m going to play life-support machine for our last three patients. It takes a quirk to battle this quirk, so traditional life-support will not be enough to save them. I can buy them some time but tell your specialist to hurry.”

And there they wait, Akashi sitting between the three beds that had been dragged close together. All three remaining patients were within his reach, with the feet of the beds pointed toward Hawks’ intern.

Even as fatigue made its presence known in shoulders that were gradually slumping, and tension grew around his jaw, Akashi stubbornly pushed through, reaching out intermittently to touch one of the victims, having them glow under his quirk before releasing them and changing targets.

It was obvious to Hawks that his intern was not to be distracted. He found himself settling by the wall nearest the door, wings flared out slightly behind him as he tuned-in to the vibrations caused by movement or speech in the air around them, keeping a careful ‘eye’ out for them both. His sidekicks should have secured the area, but there wasn’t any harm in being overcautious.

Akashi knew what he was doing, but the situation was far from sustainable. Every time he finished healing one of his patients, the monitoring systems of the machines of one of the others blared a warning that the patient’s vitals had dropped. The hero student was just keeping up with it, maintaining the balancing act, but this clearly couldn’t go on forever.

Akashi’s quirk was not made for any kind of sustained usage, it was a one-and-done type emitter. Something worked between the parameters of his quirk, in this case the time-limit, or it didn’t. Akashi was approaching the problem from the side and while usually Hawks would approve of that kind of thinking in a prospective hero, here it just seemed like his student was accumulating quirk backlash with little to show for it.

Eventually, some twenty minutes later, when Akashi was starting to sag visibly in his chair and Hawks was levering himself from the wall to call the exercise off, the absent Dr. Arakawa entered the room at a run and set the patients to rights. Akashi wasted no time, finally able to heal them without the quirk-made venom constantly undoing his work from before a point where he could have undone it.

The kid finally allowed himself to just slump for a moment, body language screaming of relief, before pushing himself onto his feet and staggering over to Hawks.

After that massive undertaking, there was no way they were going back out on patrol. Akashi would faint mid-swing or something and he would have to face Nedzu’s wrath. Instead, he gently but firmly hustled the weary teenager out of the hospital and into one of the cars that his sidekicks used to travel.

“Good job kid but that’s enough for today. Let’s head back to my agency for dinner, we earned it!”

*** *** ***

It would just figure that Nighteye had scheduled the raid on the Shie Hassaikai the afternoon that Akashi was due back at UA. After not seeing his student in person for a whole month, when he finally returns from his internship in Fukuoka, Aizawa ends up missing his return by a matter of hours. Typical.

If Asui, Uraraka, Midoriya, Kirishima and his third-year miscreants hadn’t been so preoccupied by being a part of such a major hero operation so early in their careers, Aizawa was sure that he would have been subjected to aggrieved whinging about missing Akashi’s return. As it was, the raid to save Eri, and bring down Chisaki and his Eight Bullets, had their collective attention in a vice-grip.

That careful determination to stay focussed on their task was a valuable skill in heroics as well as life and it served in students well during the raid.

By the time the whole ordeal was over, none of his students were dead or dying, though Mirio was seriously injured, it wasn’t life-threatening, and that was more than Aizawa could say for the majority of the veteran Pro Heroes.

While Aizawa knew that part of that had been his coworkers doing their utmost to keep the children under their care safe, he also privately believed that it was because his kids students all knew the costof an injury. It was impossible not to understand when you spent time in Akashi’s orbit, the second-year was a walking demonstration of how much effort healing took and a living incentive to be a little less reckless, to take better care of themselves.

Unlike Recovery Girl’s quirk, whose only cost was fatigue of the patient, Akashi had to relieve every wound he healed, and Aizawa’s students were well-aware. Especially after Kamino and All Might’s healing, they knew the price of their Senpai’s quirk. Without any discussion that Aizawa was aware of, the entire first-year cohort of hero students had unanimously agreed that though injuries in heroics and training were unavoidable in their entirety, unnecessary risk-taking was no longer allowed.

Aizawa had seen Kirishima and Ashido stop Kaminari from overloading himself, watched them escort their friend to the support department for a solution that wasn’t just ‘push through it, Plus Ultra!’ He had watched Kendo prevent Setsuna from splitting herself up past her limit and causing tissue damage, and he had heard Jirou suggest sound-proofing gear to Bakugou because his own quirk ran the risk of deafening him. Most incredibly of all, was when Aizawa had witnessed Midoriya poke his head into the staffroom and ask Yagi for help controlling his quirk.

His white-haired Problem Child was teaching everyone around him self-care just by virtue of being someone no-one wanted to cause pain, because they all knew that if they were injured, Akashi would ultimately be the one who suffered for it. If that meant that they had to prevent their own pain in the moment, then so be it.

Aizawa had joked half-heartedly about pushing Akashi’s ‘medic-buttons’ to activate his self-preservation instincts during the healer’s stay in the Nurse’s office after healing All Might under the influence of Trigger, but he had honestly not expected the strategy to work so well in reverse. Yes, Akashi could be gentler with himself because he knew that his recklessness caused emotional pain to the students who looked up to him, but the students, with no pointed commentary from Aizawa, had looked at the situation and decided that they didn’t want their own recklessness to cause Akashi pain either.

Which brought them to now, crawling out of the rubble of the previously intact subterranean Yakuza complex, now broken open all the way to the surface, where the paramedics were already swarming over the injured Pros and Police officers.

Not a single one of his first years was wheeled away in an ambulance needing rapid treatment, sirens blaring, not even Midoriya after that ridiculous sky-battle where he had been throwing around enough power to cripple himself. Amajiki and Mirio both needed medical attention, and everyone had cuts and bruises, but compared to the Pro Heroes involved with the operation, all of whom, save Ryukyu and himself, needed urgent medical attention, the students’ condition was pristine.

Rock Lock had been rushed to hospital for emergency blood transfusion, and possible spinal damage. Fatgum was dangerously underweight and had shuffled his interns with him into the ambulance ride to the hospital to keep them in his sights. Nighteye had been impaled through the chest by one of Chisaki’s massive earthen columns and was confounding the poor medics over his continued existence on this side of the veil. Aizawa could have told them the man was stubborn enough to forestall death, but no-one had asked his opinion before loading the dying hero into an ambulance and tearing away.

He left Ryukyu, the forensics team, and police chief to debrief, and gathered the remaining students into one of the police vans. They all needed to be debriefed before they could return to UA, and that may as well happen at the hospital where the rest of their raid team was being treated. Appearance of wellness or not, he wanted his students to be checked over by some of the ER staff, as well as potentially have the chance to say their goodbyes to Nighteye, if he passed.

Though, with an injury so obviously life-threatening, taken by a Pro Hero in vague proximity to UA, Aizawa suspected that he might have the chance to see his the Problem Child today, after all.

*** *** ***

Tatsuya entered the Heroics’ wing of the hospital at a dead sprint, with Recovery Girl following in his wake as fast as she could. The head nurse had called UA for them immediately after being briefed on Sir Nighteye’s condition by the paramedics in the hero’s ambulance, but with such a massive injury every second counted, as they both knew well.

In the first timeline, Sir had only lived long enough to see Mirio arrive at the hospital in his own ambulance and speak to him briefly. Despite the length of time since he had lived this event originally, Sir’s final farewell to his student, and the smile he died wearing, were both still crystal-clear in Tatsuya’s mind.

Mirio had been a wreck afterwards, newly quirkless and grieving his mentor, and so had All Might, ready for a reconciliation between friends that came too little, too late.

Back then, no one had been able to help. Dear little Eri, now finally free once more, had been too raw, damaged and untrained, her quirk might have been able to save Sir, but as out of her control as it was, the risk was too great. While Recovery Girl definitely had the control and practise over her quirk that Eri was missing, with Sir’s exhaustion from the hours-long engagement with the Shie Hassaikai, using her quirk to heal him would only drain the last of his stamina and kill him faster.

But now, he was here. Sir was the first death Tatsuya-as-Izuku had seen up close. He was not the last. Never again would All Might and Mirio have to feel that helpless agony.

There were armed police officers guarding the hall of rooms housing those who had been a part of the raid on the Yakuza, and one of them reached out to stop him from sprinting past them and into Sir’s treatment room. Tatsuya ripped his provisional license out of his pocket and shoved it at the officer’s face.

He did not have the time to waste with this, Sir did not have the time. Luckily, the officer was quick on the uptake. Realisation, followed closely by relief, spread across the man’s scaly face and he nodded as he waved Tatsuya past their protective blockade.

Tatsuya resumed his sprint, making a beeline for Sir Nighteye’s prone form on its hospital bed. As he passed, he made a note that, just like last time, Aizawa-sensei had gathered everyone well enough to stand in Sir’s treatment room, to bear witness and hear the hero’s last words if the reaper arrived before the healers did.

Interestingly, Tatsuya didn’t see as many injuries on his Kouhai as he had expected, compared to how things had gone in the first timeline. Kirishima, in particular, didn’t look like he had tried to tank quite so many hits from Rappa. Hopefully that meant that Fatgum was alright.

Dismissing the thought for now, because he could only heal one patient at a time and Sir was so far past ‘critical’ that Tatsuya genuinely wondered if the man had a secondary quirk of some kind. His torso looked like it contained more earthen spike than organs, he really shouldn’t still be breathing.

As much as he wanted to just slap his hands down on the nearest patch of healthy skin and heal this mess, the rush of information about his patient that came with activating his quirk was always easier to contextualise, easier to bear, if he didn’t rush in blind. With that in mind, he stopped at the hero’s bedside and addressed Sir’s care team, relieved to see that he actually recognised three of them and knew one by name.

That was ideal, they knew his quirk and what he needed to best do his job. Yuzuki-san, in particular, had worked with him on multiple occasions before, though he hadn’t seen her since before the training camp.

Anticipating his questions, she started talking, “Akashi-kun! Oh, thank goodness, Sir Nighteye is in a critical state, the stone pillar he was impaled on destroyed his stomach and half his left lung, shredding majority of his diaphragm. We have him on oxygen and are breathing for him.”

Tatsuya hadn’t been able to process the tragic similarity to All Might’s wound the first time he had been presented with Sir dying in front of him, too caught up in the moment. Now, after one lifetime of crisis after crisis, and a second of emergency room after emergency room, he had the mental space to see what All Might must have in this moment. The friend he had lost to arguments and stubbornness, lost permanently to death from a wound that that friend had once predicted would eventually kill him. And in the end Sir hadn’t been wrong.

“He’s losing more blood than we can keep up with on the rapid-transfuser, it’s no small miracle that he’s still alive,” Yuzuki-san continued, oblivious to Tatsuya’s revelation, but thankfully forcing him to re-focus.

“Is anyone else critical?” As he remembered, other than Sir, only Rock Lock had been in immediate danger. He had ultimately survived, as had everyone else, but that was no reason to assume, when it could cost a life or a permanent debilitating injury if he didn’t respond fast enough.

“Budgeting out your energy? Makes sense but there is no need, everyone else will pull through.”

Just like before then, at least in the broad strokes. Tatsuya would have to see about speeding up their recovery time once he was finished here.

“Good. Ok, here we go-” He was prevented from making contact with Sir’s skin by the man himself, a weak grip on his sleeve stopping him just in time.

“I-I cannot allow…this,” Nighteye wheezed out, drawing an unsteady breath through his oxygen mask. “I will not be the cause of your pain. I will not be the cause of anymore- any more pain, today. Your quirk is…miraculous but I know the c-cost.”

Tatsuya was dumbstruck for a long moment. Sir may have seemed at peace with his death in the first timeline, but he had always put that down to the hero wanting to shield Mirio from the tragedy of it as much as he could. Protecting his student, even on his deathbed. All Might had done the same.

A patient could refuse treatment. It was a protected right of theirs and it had been since long before quirks existed, but this was the first time anyone had ever refused to be saved by him. It felt like a rejection of everything Tatsuya had ever striven for, as he was now, or as Izuku, before. Sir Nighteye’s options were accepting Tatsuya’s help or death, and All Might’s best friend was choosing death.

Was he just doomed to be rejected by Sir in every lifetime? He had been so hard on Izuku, so dismissive, so obvious in thinking that Mirio was the more deserving of the two to carry One for All. Could he somehow sense that Tatsuya and Izuku were one-and-the-same and was dismissing him all over again?

One of Yuzuki-san’s coworkers stuttered out a protest, along with most of the heroes standing behind him as he spiralled. Curiously though, All Might and Aizawa-sensei were not protesting, or at least, if they were it was drowned out by the more vehement protests coming from the members of the Nighteye agency. That tiny discrepancy, and the care for him that it indicated allowed Akashi to kick his brain back into gear and respond.

There was surely no way Sir could know about his past in the first timeline, right? That would be crazy. No, he’d said something about not wanting to cause pain? Maybe he could use that wish to talk Sir down from martyrdom. Mirio still needed him.

“That’s noble, Sir Nighteye,” he began, thankfully sounding much calmer and in control than he felt, “but the situation is clear: without my intervention specifically, you will die.”

Unfortunately, Sir was a stubborn man and powered through the no-nonsense tones of the Healer Voice, as Recovery Girl had told him it was called after the first time he had talked down a hero about to do something reckless and they had actually listened. There was a very argumentative set to his eyebrows that said this was a hill he was prepared to die on. Literally.

Sure enough, the dying Pro somehow found enough breath left in his remaining lung to state “Even still, I cannot-“ before Tatsuya had to cut across his words, frustration bubbling.

“Are you really willing to cause them pain?” Akashi asked sharply, the weak reaffirmation breaking away under his volume. The dull roar of the gathered heroes, Pros and students alike, was finally shocked to silence.

Before Sir could start arguing again, knowing how little time they had until the hero passed, and painfully aware that if the man did not rescind his decision to refuse treatment and he died Tatsuya wouldn’t be able to help, he capitalized on the momentum his question had bought him.

“Your death will cause the occupants of this room and, I’m sure, many others, terrible pain. The pain of having lost you, especially when it’s preventable! Are you really going to leave Mirio-senpai alone like that?”

The wounded hero on the bed beneath him jolted in instinctive protest before looking accusingly up at him, aware he was being played and helpless against it anyway.

“I won’t lie, this is going to hurt, but every second that you delay this, that hurt multiplies. If you’re honestly concerned with making this easier for me, sooner is better.” Tatsuya still didn’t have the faintest idea why his reaction to using his own quirk was such a stumbling block for Sir, especially because in this life they had never met before, but if the hero needed reassurance before giving his consent to be healed, then so be it.

Tatsuya was here and Sir Nighteye was not dying this time.

*** *** ***

Mirai slumped, defeated in the face of Akashi’s vehemence, and immediately regretted it when the spike through his chest shifted with the movement. His gaze drifted to his people, worried and guilty and teary and none so much as Mirio. He settled soft eyes on his dear student who was looking back at him with desperate ones.

Mirio was the future of heroics, Mirai was sure. He was a sun that would shine as brightly as All Might had in his prime, strong and brave and kind, so kind. He would have been perfect for One for All, the ideal successor, but Toshinori had chosen Midoriya.

Looking at the boy now, tears streaming down his face, just like Mirio, the two of them holding onto each other, holding each other up, holding each other together… He was a fool. Children, they were all just children, caught up in the petty squabbles of adults, pitted against each other, meant to be opponents, rivals, when instead they had clearly bonded and become friends.

Mirio was a light, but Toshi’s boy was too. Just as stubborn, just as brave, and just as kind as Mirio, as Toshinori himself. In his arrogance, in his hurt at the perceived rejection of his student as the Ninth, he had caused Midoriya pain, he knew that. Mirio, so sweet-natured but so utterly unyielding when it came to what was right, had personally taken Mirai to task over how harsh he had been with Midoriya.

And then the mission, where he had taken a mortal wound, where they had saved little Eri, where they had defeated the Shie Hassaikai, and where Toshinori’s successor had proven to Mirai for the second time in less than 6 months that his foresight was not infallible. The first, of course, being Toshinori’s restoration, which directly went against his 7-year-old vision of All Might being killed in battle due to his diminished physical health.

And then the healer responsible for that paradigm shift himself had raced to Mirai’s bedside, determined to take on more pain to heal him physically, as though he hadn’t already rescued Mirai’s whole sense of hope by snatching All Might away from the hungry jaws of fate. It was too much.

Akashi had a point, however. As strong as he was, Mirio was still very young, and at the moment, very vulnerable, with his quirk ‘permanently’ erased. Though, Mirai was sure a cure could be developed with time, Chisaki was crime-boss, not a chemist. His sun still needed time to grow before he could light up the whole sky as Mirai knew he one day would.

He looked back at the young healer waiting above him and nodded his assent.

Mirio needed him, nothing else mattered.

The white-blue glow of Akashi’s quirk, infamous since Kamino and synonymous with healing online since, spread out of the second-year’s hands and down into Mirai. It was a matter of moments before it was over, but for the room full of anxious onlookers, Mirai himself, and a few other nurses that came to poke their heads in and witness their favourite hero student do what he did best, it seemed like a small eternity before Akashi eased back, tension written into his frame. Mirai, previously on death’s doorstep, sat up and reached out to guide the young healer to sit on his bed while he got his breath back, earth-spear nowhere to be seen.

The nurse, Yuzuki-san apparently, fussed over the 15-year-old much to his audible dismay as the other heroes swarmed the bed. Mirio, Midoriya, All Might and Bubblegirl were tearing up in relief and every last one of the room’s occupants looked ready to drop from stress, even if some hid it better.

That was two life-debts he now owed UA’s youngest healer, potentially three, if his continued presence kept Mirio safe. On his honour, he would find a way to repay the boy for the wonderous gift of life he and his dearest people still had to enjoy. He knew both his young interns adored Akashi, perhaps the boy would enjoy investigative work? If he did, he had an open invitation to Nighteye Agency, and Mirai would make sure Akashi knew it.

In the meantime, it looked as though the young healer could use a rescue from his fussing nurse friend, and the tearily grateful heroes from his own agency, and the students. Ah, a hero’s work was never done.

At that moment, Recovery Girl entered through the doorway, flanked by her usual bodyguards, and immediately ordered them all back to their own treatment rooms. The tone was eerily similar to the tone that Akashi had wielded so deftly at Mirai, and he distinctly saw Eraserhead stifle a smile at the similarity between teacher and apprentice.

Now completely healed, indeed it felt as though he had only just gotten out of bed to start the day, not run a massive raid against a powerful villain organization before taking a pike through the chest, he followed everyone out of his room, towards their own, wanting to see them settled. As he went, he overheard Mirio strike up a conversation with Akashi, voice still slightly wet sounding, but no longer so agonised, now that he wouldn’t be losing his mentor and his quirk on the same day.

“Kouhai, the nurse knew you on sight?” And Akashi had clearly recognised not only her, but most of her coworkers. Most curious when Mirai knew that outside of special cases, the lad tended to haunt the hospitals much closer to UA’s protection than this.

“I make it a habit of dropping by pretty regularly, they’ve gotten used to my face.” By the way Aizawa stiffened up ahead of them, he hadn’t known that, and he wasn’t amused. Maybe Mirai’s first act in repayment of his debt to Akashi could be talking Aizawa down from a lecture? If he offered to tutor Akashi on ‘thinking ahead’ and the ‘consequences of his actions’ Aizawa might leave the subject to him. After all, who better than someone who knew the future to teach those lessons?

“You’re something else, you know that?” Mirio continued, oblivious to Mirai’s plotting. It could not have more clearly been a compliment if he had stated so.

Mirai approved.