Chapter Text
Aizawa Shota was a logical person. Every decision he made was free of as much bias or emotional reasoning as possible, or so he liked to tell himself. Something as inconsequential as someone’s age had never stopped him from awakening them to the harsh realities of the real world; but the child in front of him was giving him pause. The kid stood no taller than Shouta’s shoulders, and despite the disembodied hands covering his face and limbs, he could clearly tell that the blue haired villain couldn’t be older than his own students. Remnants of baby fat still clung to his cheeks and the all-black ensemble the kid wore underneath the hands — were they fake?— Shouta wasn’t sure he wanted to know, was clearly too large for him, drowning him in fabric. Shigaraki Tomura had broken into the USJ facility earlier that month along with several hundred lackeys, a teleporter that had escaped capture, and a horrifying bird-monster with multiple quirks that Shouta was trying not to think about. Capturing the kid hadn’t been all that difficult, he was skilled, but inexperienced in combat.
“Alright, let’s get started,” Shouta sighed, sliding into the uncomfortable metal chair in the interrogation room. “Legal name?”
“Go fuck yourself.” Shigaraki growled.
“I’ll just put down Shigaraki Tomura for now.” If that wasn’t the kid’s name the police would find it eventually. “You trespassed on U.A. property with intent to harm, along with nearly a hundred other criminals, I would like to know why.”
“To kill All Might.”
“You made that clear. Again, why?”
The kid tilted his head, not unlike a puppy, “because I hate him. Y’know this isn’t how interrogations are supposed to go.”
“How are they supposed to go?”
Shigaraki shrugged, “I don’t know, I expected more yelling, maybe a good cop, bad cop routine. Like in the movies.”
Shouta sighed again. He didn’t want to be here. The kid sitting across from him in the painfully cold room, in an uncomfortable chair identical to Shouta’s, was facing a list of charges longer than Shouta was tall. He was hoping without hope that there was something more to this entire situation.
“Well this isn’t the movies. Now, you hate All Might. Let’s start there. I don’t really blame you for that, I hate him a little bit too, he’s a horrible teacher, and resembles a golden retriever more than a man, but attempted murder isn’t really a great way to solve your problems.”
Shigaraki didn’t even attempt to stifle his snort, “you’re pretty cool, y’know that Eraserhead?"
“You mentioned it,” Shouta said coolly, and the kid had. In the middle of the fight at the USJ Shigaraki had paused multiple times simply to comment on how ‘cool’ Shouta was. Even when the kid’s giant pet bird-thing had been bashing Shouta’s head into the pavement.
Speaking of that, Shigaraki’s eyes seemed to be focused on the scar just below Shouta’s eye, he looked sheepish, almost guilty, “um…I’m sorry about your eye, and your bones. I really didn’t want it to go that far.”
Shouta stared blankly at him, “you were trying to kill the number one hero.”
Shigaraki rolled his eyes, “you know what I meant. You’re cooler than All Might. Only All Might was supposed to get hurt.”
“
You tried to kill one of my students personally.” Shouta growled, failing to keep steady and with the mental image of Shigaraki reaching out for Asui’s face flashing in his mind.
“Did I?” Shigaraki smirked, a glint of mischief shining in his eyes between the fingers of the hand still attached firmly to his face.
It took Shouta a moment to decipher what exactly it meant, “You knew I would save her.”
“Duh.”
Shouta pinched the bridge of his nose, “alright, I’ve got to go talk to…somebody.” Shouta quickly left the room, striding down the hall and into the monitoring room.
***
This whole debacle hadn’t started in the Musutafu police station, actually it had started a day earlier with a student of Shouta’s knocking on his classroom door an hour after they should have gone home.
“Come in,” he grumbled from where he was lying underneath his desk, bundled in his sleeping bag while grading ethics essays.
To Shouta’s surprise it wasn’t Iida or Yaoyorozu arriving to report on class rep things, or even Kaminari or Ashido there to beg for extra credit. It was Bakugou. Bakugou, who’s demeanor had lost its usual abrasiveness; instead his shoulders were hunched in on himself, and his eyes swept erratically side to side, as if he was worried he was being followed. Yet he still wore his signature scowl, stomping into the classroom, a weird mix of furious and terrified.
“I need to talk to you,” Bakugou proclaimed, planting himself in front of Shouta’s desk, clearly with no intention of leaving until he addressed whatever it was he was there to speak about.
Shouta was alarmed, to say the least. Bakugou had been his student for less than a month, but even he could tell this was wildly out of character. Shouta quickly slid out from underneath the desk, shedding his sleeping bag. His hands moved to his capture weapon reflexively. “Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing life-threatening Teach, chill.” Bakugou shifted from foot to foot anxiously, “I’m worried about the nerd.” He blurted suddenly, stumbling back as he said it. His hand made an abortive move, as if to cover his own mouth.
Shouta had a difficult time masking his emotions, what exactly had happened to get his student worked up like this? “Who exactly is ‘the nerd’?”
Bakugou growled in frustration, “you know, the nerd! Deku! Midoriya! Whatever you wanna call ‘im.”
Shouta blanched, anything involving the number one problem child was bound to be exhausting, and possibly destructive. “Is he hurt?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know, hobo bastard! I’m just here to tell you I’m worried. Aren’t teachers supposed to do something when someone says stuff like that?”
“Bakugou, are you worried for his safety?”
Shouta’s student scowled at the floor, his eyes flashing through several emotions before settling on something resembling fear and regret and desperation Shouta hoped to never see on another student’s face ever again.
“Yes. Something’s happening, something big, but I fucked up, after All Might’s training exercise at the beginning of the year. And now he’s never gonna tell me what’s up, honestly I don’t think he even would have before that. I’m a fucking shitty person, that much I know. But the nerd has something going on and he’s gonna get himself hurt.”
Bakugou went on to tell Shouta a very interesting story about a small, timid, quirkless teenager. A teenager that had somehow become a muscled, quirked, bone-breaking problem child, and the number one hero’s favorite in less than a year.
***
“Aizawa, what are you doing?” Tsuckauchi asked as Shouta swung the door of the monitoring room open to reveal the detective and Skinny Might sitting behind a pane of two way glass watching as Shigaraki fidgeted in his chair. “The kid was just starting to talk.”
Shouta bypassed Tsuckauchi entirely, “What the hell is going on?”
All Might startled, “what — what exactly are you talking about?”
Shouta’s eyes narrowed, “I’ve done some of my own digging on you Yagi Toshinori, and a lot of things don’t add up, and ever since the USJ something has been even more off about you than normal. One of the most important things in my line of work is making rational decisions, free of bias and emotion, but sometimes you’ve really just got to trust your gut, and mine is telling me you know more about this than you’ve let on.
“You’ve been having private lunches and training sessions with one of my students, whom you clearly favor above the others. You have a quirk, without a name, without an expressed function, a quirk eerily similar to that of the very same favorite student you’ve been having lunch with. Said favorite student went into the entrance exam quirkless, and came out with a quirk. You poorly dodge seemingly harmless interview questions. You have a secret Yagi. But most importantly, there’s a kid in there, a villain, yes, but still a kid. And ever since he’s been brought in you’ve barely been two steps behind looking like you want him dead. So I’m going to ask this once, and only once. What the hell is going on?”