Chapter Text
It was no secret that new villains would arise after the defeat of All for One. There was a cycle; a villain is defeated, someone pities them, decides to follow in their footsteps, and then boom: new villain on the rise. Almost like a resurgence, if you will. Names, motives, shit, even heroes change, but that pattern never does, which was why the silence had started to bother Aizawa, not that he was complaining, of course.
On paper, fewer villains meant fewer attacks. Fewer attacks meant fewer injuries, and fewer, well, all of that, meant fewer of his students risking their lives before even being granted a diploma. But in practice, he’d learned a long time ago that silence wasn’t good.
Saturdays were Aizawa’s least favorite day of the week. Obviously, he enjoyed time off; that wasn’t the issue. Some weekends he’d lie sprawled on the couch catching up on the weekly episodes of his favorite tv shows. On other weekends, he could be convinced to go out, maybe to a bar or something along those lines, depending on the day. Despite his duty as a pro hero, he’d always felt like he was lacking.
Other pros had meaningful lives; Present Mic held a radio show; All Might inspired probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of people worldwide. Aizawa, though? He’s just the Erasure hero. He doesn’t inspire people, nor did he ever put on a show for civilians. He spends his time teaching the youth of Japan to make up for these shortcomings, with a hidden bonus of having less free time to himself to be depressed and lazy. So now, rather than staying home and eating chips, he spends his Saturday nights huddled in his UA office, grading his student's homework.
“Shouta!”
His eyes fluttered shut, body tensing at the familiar voice. “Yamada, what have I told you about barging into my office?”
“Sorry, dude, but I had to show you this.” Shutting the door behind him, Yamada brought an iPad over to his long-time friend, despite the thickness in the air.
“Nezu wants to implement a new course, quirk counseling. He said it was a student's idea. I was thinking, probably someone in your class, maybe Midoriya or—“
“Yamada.”
“Maybe Ochako, she’s been practically silent in English recently, but to be fair—“
“Yamada,” Aizawa’s hair looked a mess, falling in his face as his trained eye locked onto the man across from him, a glint of red shimmering on his cheekbone. “Get to the point.”
Hizashi’s voice cut off mid-syllable, the sound dying in his throat as if it had been yanked away from him. His hand flew up instinctively, fingers brushing his throat. It only lasted a few seconds. When Erasure loosened, he sucked in a breath and kept going as if nothing had happened.
“—as I was saying,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse before he pushed it back to a decent volume, “maybe we could figure out what Nezu’s thinking, right? Like, what he’s aiming for with this whole setup. Y’know? Go all detective mode. Like back in high school?”
“And why would we want, or need, to do that?”
Hizashi’s eyes followed as Aizawa wrote on a student's paper, red ink underlining the mistakes. He quickly shook his head, looking back up.
“It’d be nice,” he muttered, playing with the zipper of his black leather jacket. “With what’s coming up this month, I think—“
“Hizashi,” Aizawa cut in, not looking up from the stack of papers, “I don’t want to talk about this. I have grading to finish and classes to plan, and so do you.”
Hizashi leaned forward, determined to get him to agree, “You’ve been grading all day, man. If not, at least let me buy you a drink. I heard Stargazer’s Lounge just opened back up.”
“You know I don’t like to drink anymore, especially during the school year, and I’m busy.”
“Please, Shouta? You don’t even have to stay long; an hour is all I’m asking for. Just get out of this office for one hour.” Yamada’s voice softened slightly.
The moments of silence felt like hours to Mic, but Aizawa had already checked out of the conversation. His hand supported his head as he continued to circle papers with red ink.
“Alright then,” Hizashi sighed, but his friend’s pen never paused. Leaning back in the chair, he let his energy drain out of his posture. “Got it.”
Aizawa’s eye flicked up for a moment, curious about the change in his friend's attitude, but he didn’t say anything.
Hizashi smiled anyway, “Grading. Planning. Hero stuff. Very sexy stuff if you ask me, but I’ll spare you the lecture.” He tapped his fingers against his own knee, pushing himself up from the chair. “Tell you what, I’m not going to fight you on it today. I’ll leave you all depressed and emo,” he added, lifting a hand in surrender. “But I’m not dropping it. Next time, you’ll be dragged out of here by yours truly, ya dig?”
With an almost smile, Shouta nodded, acknowledging as his friend shut the door behind him. Years ago, he would collapse in his hands out of pure exhaustion. Probably sighing or weeping in self-pity. (Figuratively, not literally. Aizawa had always seen crying as a waste of energy). But the man knew that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. So, like any other day, he returned to his students’ papers, one after the next.
It wasn’t long before the clock had turned from two to seven, as the bright afternoon sun began to set behind him, painting his office into a deep amber. His harsh shadow cast onto the papers in front of him, making it difficult for him to see without a lamp. He knew he should’ve invested in one of those when Mic told him to.
On the corner of his desk lay the stack of papers his best friend had brought him, on behalf of his boss, Nezu. Aizawa stared at it for a moment before reaching his hand out.
Quirk Counseling.
At least the idiot took his iPad.
His eyes dragged along each word, not forming real sentences. Since his time at UA, he’d always been involved in something: fighting villains, teaching students, but as he was sitting reading Nezu’s proposal, he couldn't tell a soul anything he had just read.
As he scanned each page, he almost missed the notification popping up on his phone screen.
PROS
Keigo-
There seems to be some sort of disturbance off Kamino St. Someone checking it out? 6:58pm
Rumi-
Isn’t that the cop’s job? 7:00pm
Yamada-
? 7:00pm
Keigo-
Said they might need backup. Anyone willing? 7:01pm
Aizawa's thumbs hovered over the keyboard, debating whether or not he wanted to pretend he hadn't seen it. It wasn't like him to ignore helpless citizens, and he knew that. But Kamino Street wasn't exactly setting off any alarms, and there were dozens of heroes in the city more qualified to chase ‘disturbances’ than he was.
Tsunagu-
Headed that way. Any idea of what's going on? 7:03 p.m.
Keigo-
I couldn't tell if it was something violent or quirk-based. 7:04 p.m.
Even though he'd never admit it aloud, some of the tension eased from his shoulders as his grip loosened his phone. Jeanist can hold his own.
His phone buzzed again, but Aizawa ignored it. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, pressing the pads of his fingers against his temples and allowing his eyes to shutter closed.
When he opened them again, his gaze caught a photograph tucked between a stack of papers and a half-empty coffee mug. The corners of the photo had curled over time:
One person looked annoyed to be there, another was grinning so hard it looked painful. The final friend’s arm was thrown over both of the others’ shoulders.
For a moment, his mind began to wander into the old memories. His gaze lingered on the photo longer than he had wished, allowing him to realize he could no longer pinpoint how long it had been since Oboro died.
His phone lay buzzing on the edge of his desk, snapping him out of his memory-ridden mental spiral.
+819012345678-
Decided to stop by. Definitely some quirk action here, might be beneficial for some more help out here. 7:15 p.m.
Aizawa (you)
On my way! 7:15 p.m.
He didn't bother to take the long route to Kamino. Before his body fully registered against the impact of landing, his boots scuffed the asphalt in a clean slide. His eyes scanned over his immediate surroundings, analyzing anything that felt out of place.
To his surprise, the street looked normal. Not only were there no ‘disturbances’ in sight, not a single hero was at the scene.
Have they already cleared it? Was I that slow?
Shouta quickly rose to his feet, gripping his metal scarf as he took careful steps closer to the alley behind Kamino.
The alley was like any other: overflowing dumpsters, garbage lying on the ground, an occasional mouse scurrying by.
Even after going through many battles, and even a war, nothing could stop his heart from pounding in his chest. His cold sweat beaded on his forehead as he continued to creep along the alley.
It was a shame he didn’t check his phone before advancing further into the scene, as his phone stared back at him in big bold letters: LTE No Service Available. Well, shit. His screen faded black as he dropped it back in his pocket. Interference quirks weren’t impossible, but they weren’t necessarily common. His scarf began to dig into the skin of his palms when his grip tightened around the material, but that was the least of his worries. Kamino was never this quiet.
As he inched closer, he felt as the ground beneath him shook as a violent strobe of violet passed by the alley.
Bingo, his lips curled into a smirk.
Dust and debris kicked up as he lunged towards the scene. His eyes locked the hero’s handling the situation, assessing where he needed to be. Before he could make a move, though, his shoulders filled with an unfamiliar tension, forcing his feet to plant the ground in balance.
“Shouta?”