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The police officer had grabbed Izuku and shoved him against the car. Izuku squirmed against the man. “Let go of me, asshole!”
“You’re coming with us to the station, you fucking null.” The officer grunted as he felt cool metal clasp his hands shut.
In front of him was All Might, obviously in his true form, who appeared to be in the same position. “Aizawa is gonna kill us.”
The duo was thrown into the back of the police car.
—
It was supposed to be Aizawa’s relaxing Sunday off. Emphasis on supposed.
He groaned as he saw All Might’s contact glow on his phone screen as it rang. He never called unless something was up. Begrudgingly, he answered the call.
“Yes, All Might?” he grumbled. “What is it?”
“Aizawa, I’m in a bit of a predicament right now.”
Aizawa sighed. The older man always seemed to be getting into some kind of trouble. “God, what did you do?”
“Young Midoriya and I have been, well…” There was a pause before he continued his sentence.
“…Arrested.”
“You’ve been what?” It took the man a bit to process what he just said. He couldn’t believe this. Aizawa really should’ve quit when he still had the chance. “Of all the shit both of you have pulled, this one really takes the cake.”
“I’ll be there in 20,” he grumbled, hanging up before All Might could speak again.
All Might or not, he was sending that man six feet under.
—
Aizawa made his way to the front desk of the police station. He approached the officer up front.
“I’m here for Izuku Midoriya and Toshinori Yagi.”
A look of dread fell upon the man as he mentioned their names. “Oh, you’re here for those two?” The man snorted as he searched for their files. “You’re a new one, haven’t seen you pick them up before.”
“This has happened before?” Aizawa grit between his teeth. The more he learned about this situation, the more pissed off and concerned he seemed to get.
“Their charges always get cleared somehow, so they only get dealt with as first-time offenders,” The man grunted. “Always a pain in the ass, those two.”
“They’re fuckin’ menaces — green bean over there punched an officer, twice!”
“Midoriya did what?” The officer only gave him a small shrug. Getting arrested was something that he deemed plausible for the Problem Child, after all, the boy had a history of breaking the law for the greater good, but punching an officer? It was so uncharacteristic of the boy.
The man then went over the list of charged crimes for each of the two, his blood pressure rising after each one. As soon as he paid the bail, an officer was called over and directed him to the cell where the two were held.
He saw the two sitting on a bench behind the jail cell. All Might seemed unaffected, his expression made it look like this was just a minor everyday inconvenience for him. Midoriya had a scowl on his face. A scowl. It reminded him of Bakugou, who was probably where Midoriya learned it anyway. With a twist of a key, the jail cell flew right open.
“Sorry to bother you with this, Aizawa,” All Might apologized sheepishly as he walked out of the cell with Midoriya. “Usually Naomasa deals with this sort for us, but he’s currently far up north on a case.”
Of course, Tsukauchi was in on this. He only grumbled in response, choosing to ignore the two as he gestured for them to follow him to his car.
He wasn’t going to yell at them here, no, he was going to yell at them in the privacy of his own car, where he could strangle the living hell out of them. On the way out of the station, he heard some officer mutter something at them, which agitated the two, but he was too angry to care.
All Might awkwardly slid into the passenger seat, and Midoriya sat in the back. The moment the doors closed shut, he turned to face both of them, letting out every word he held in.
“Failure to disperse after being declared an unlawful assembly, trespassing on government property, resisting arrest, and assaulting multiple police officers!” Aizawa restrained the two with his capture weapon.
Aizawa tugged his scarf around All Might, “Yagi, you’re fucking All Might, for god’s sake — you cannot be pulling this shit and enabling a student, nonetheless!”
He turned to Midoriya, pulling on the scarf. “And you, Midoriya? Don’t think you’re off the hook. You only have your provisional hero license! Do you want that to be revoked? After that shit you and Bakugou pulled at Ground Beta, I thought that would be the worst of your shenanigans, but by God was I fucking wrong!”
“And to think that this apparently isn’t even your first time being arrested!”
“Aizawa, we have a completely, er, well, mostly reasonable explanation for this—” All Might choked out.
“Explain what?” Aizawa fumed. “If you two were anyone else, I’d have you fired and you expelled.” Aizawa glared at each one of them as he referred to them.
“Principal Nedzu is actually aware of this,” Midoriya interjected. “He calls it good for ‘civil engagement’”
“Of course, the rat does,” Aizawa muttered to himself. He supposed that if Nedzu was in support, there was at least a sliver of reason to it. “Fine, give me your explanation, and it better be good.”
“They weren’t wrong about the assault charges,” All Might tugged on the end of the scarf sheepishly. “But it was within good reason.”
“We were initially peacefully protesting,” The older man went on to explain. “It was a protest for quirkless rights, but it escalated, as per usual.”
Aizawa’s anger dissipated slightly, his surprise evident on his face. Quirkless rights were considered a ‘controversial’ topic, even though he found that to be ridiculous. Advocating for quirkless rights was seen as much more radical compared to causes for those with mutant quirks. While the two of them were certainly kind-hearted people, he didn’t expect them to be so radical. Of course, not that was a bad thing. Being an underground hero somewhat radicalized Aizawa.
“Quirkless rights?” He loosened his grip on the scarf as he looked at the two tirely. “I understand the cause. Look, I even get the need for violence. But if we’re being realistic, this could have negative effects on Midoriya’s hero career. The charges for protesting can easily be swept under the bus, but assault? Considering this is repetitive, it could jeopardize his provisional license and future career, even with the charges being dropped. You know how the HPSC can find their way around the law if you do something they don’t like.”
“I can’t just stand by and do nothing,” Midoriya stated firmly. Aizawa saw as the boy’s jaw clenched tight, “Quirkless people aren’t even considered humans under the law.”
Aizawa recognized the anger in the boy’s voice — it was the same kind of anger that he sees come through when the boy is protecting others. He’d seen it at the USJ, the training camp, and most recently, the Shie Hassaikai raid.
“They want a reason to arrest me? Then I’ll give them a reason to and punch them square in the face as they deserve.”
Midoriya glared right into Aizawa’s eyes. “They release tear gas, and shots are fired on innocent, peaceful crowds who just want to be seen as people. As a hero, I want to make the world a better place. What’s hurting the world isn’t just flashy villains but also systematic oppression, so I’ll be damned if I don’t stand with these people in their march for equal rights, violent or not.”
Aizawa leaned back in the driver’s seat. They were still parked outside the police station. He could see the officers still bringing in protesters from the march. A lot of them were young, mere teens. He even saw a child.
“What I don’t get is why.” Aizawa retracted his scarf from the two entirely. “There are so many human rights issues in Japan, in the world. There are many other causes you could choose to back up, more ‘palatable’ ways to advocate. So why are you risking your neck out there for this?”
Realistically, people can only advocate for so many causes. It was more effective to centralize your effort into a few. Aizawa figured this had to be personal in some kind of way.
Midoriya fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. Almost nervously, the boy asked, “All Might told you how I was a late bloomer, right?”
The car fell silent. For a moment, Aizawa was confused and wondered where he was going with this. What relevance was there in that he got his quirk late?
Then the realization hit him. Yeah, the boy was a late bloomer — as in he’d been living as quirkless for 15 years prior. He remembered that All Might had told him about it a couple of days after the school year started, something about the boy being too shy to admit it himself. Aizawa had assumed that Midoriya had been simply embarrassed about lacking experience and needing extra help, but it didn’t register that it may have been because of his previous status as quirkless.
Suddenly, the memory came back from the police station with that officer who called out something at them as they left. ‘Fuckin’ useless nulls,’ the man had muttered.
Aizawa recognized the name he’d called the two of them. It was a derogatory term directed at quirkless people. The man had been talking about Midoriya.
“It didn’t help that I have the biological markers of being quirkless,” The younger boy brought Aizawa back out of his head.
“It was some weird, rare genetic match-up — I inherited the physical body of someone quirkless while still inheriting the genetics of the quirk. I had the power, but not the body to sustain it, which is why it only manifested after working out a ton to wield my quirk’s power.” Midoriya had gotten lost in his quirk ramble.
“It’s somewhat like if Ashido wasn’t resistant to her acid or Kacchan to his explosions, hence why I always broke my bones at the start of the year.”
The boy had realized he’d gone off on a tangent, smiling sheepishly at him.
“I was the same case as Young Midoriya, which is why I’m so keen on guiding him,” All Might followed up. “I know you dislike my favoritism, but I can’t help but see my younger self in him — I see you do the same with Young Shinsou too.”
Aizawa opened his mouth to protest his claim about Shinsou, but he quickly shut it as their looks made him realize that he wasn’t going to win this argument. Not that All Might was quite wrong either.
“My point is, we both faced immense discrimination growing up, Young Midoriya more than me,” All Might went on. “That’s why we protest — to make sure what happened to us doesn’t happen to other quirkless people in the future.”
“When you’re quirkless, you have your classmates turn against you. They bully you, telling you to kill yourself and leave spider lilies on your desk,” Izuku gripped the hem of his shirt tight. “And the teachers? They’re the ones who enable it — telling them how weak and fragile the quirkless must be because they’re unevolved."
“If establishments find out that you’re quirkless, they have the right to refuse service, which also includes hospitals and orphanages.” All Might spat bitterly at the last part. “I was homeless for almost a year after my mother died because no one would want to take in the quirkless kid.”
“Not to mention the stupid quirkless IDs they make you carry around.” Izuku pulled up his old one. He no longer had to carry it around anymore, but he always kept it with him as a reminder of what he faced and where he came from. “I might have a quirk now, but that doesn’t erase the 15 years of discrimination and bigotry.”
“And with the last embers of my quirk gone, I fear I may fall back into that same discrimination from decades ago,” All Might added.
Aizawa was aware of the discrimination the quirkless faced, but to hear about it happening to his own student, his co-worker. It had put things into perspective for the man. There’s so much social injustice that he hears as an underground hero that he’s been almost desensitized to it. This, however, pulled him to reality, that actual people face these struggles, people that he knew.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize what struggles you faced sooner, Midoriya.” Aizawa apologized to the boy earnestly. “As your teacher, it’s my job to care for you, which includes inferring that you must’ve faced heavy discrimination.”
“Not just with you, either, but with other students as well. I’m well aware of the discrimination those with mutant and villainous quirks face. I suppose that I should be bringing attention to these issues in class.”
A smile grew on Midoriya’s face at the mention of that. “A lot of people in our class would appreciate that,” Midoriya nodded. “There are a handful of people in our class who have been wanting a lesson on quirk discrimination for a while.”
“Ah, I’ll start planning that then. I suppose you could help me on the quirkless section for information on that.”
“So, Problem Child, I have to ask — why’d you punch that officer?” He looked at Midoriya with curiosity.
“Officers, plural,” Midoriya corrected. “And they deserved it for calling us fucking nulls.”
“Language, Midoriya.”
Beside him, All Might snorted with laughter, “You should’ve heard what he said to the officers.”
“You can’t be calling me out when you were just cursing us out.” The younger furrowed his brows.
Aizawa smirked as he turned the wheel towards the road, “Not if you can’t prove it.”
—
“Oh, and Yagi?”
“Yeah?”
“You better pay me back that damn bail.”
“Fuck.”