Chapter Text
It started with a bang.
No, that would be massively underselling it. A bang is for mischievous alley cats, a bang is for minor scuffles between drunkards Shouta is responsible for breaking up, a bang is even for a gunshot that can take someone off the field permanently. This was no bang, it feels wrong to even label the noise a boom.
The noise is of course loud, and with the way every head in the model city whips towards the epicenter, it is obviously much louder there. The sound alone is deafening but no amount of noise could compare to the feeling. His heart stuttering in his chest, his throat constricting into itself, his stomach rolling with the quick-appearing taste of iron. He swears he can even feel the waves of air being displaced by the falling building and he’s safe, tucked away in the viewing tower. He doesn't, of course, and doubts any of his coworkers feel what he does, after all, none of them have had to deal with the aftermath of a falling building, especially as young as he had. A few controlled breaths later and he’s tuning back into his coworkers yelling over what had caused the destruction of an entire four-story building which is a fair question seeing as the zero pointers still have over a minute before their release.
“What the hell was that?” Vlad demands, standing up as if it will give him a better angle of any of the dozens of screens.
“I have a theory,” Nezu says half-minded while typing away at his keyboard. He brings up multiple cameras from testing center C where clouds of dust and debris are still settling in place of the building that should've been standing there.
“Was it that kid with the explosion quirk?”
“No, he’s in testing center E but there are a number of quirks that could have done this.”
“I don’t believe it was a quirk.” The chimera pulls up a shot on the largest screen, one that is zeroed in on a student who appears to be hopping in place and shouting something which leads Shouta to believe this was a planned attack and a successful one at that. “Examinee 2942. He has zero villain points and though we’ll have to review the footage I haven’t seen anything that would award rescue points. Instead, he has been in and out of the stores across the city.”
Nezu fiddles with his keyboard for another moment, rewinding the footage which allows All Might, or Yagi as he’s come to know, to speak up in the absence of an explanation. “Why would he be going into any of the stores?”
“There are plenty of quirks that require outside aid so the testing areas are modeled exactly after what a city would be like. There’s running water, functioning fire alarms, electricity, and anything else you can think of. The stores aren't all stocked year round though, usually it's just for the entrance exams.” He answers, eyes, like all others in the room, still locked on the screens.
“And by everything he means everything," Nemuri, who is sadly his best friend, adds in. "A few of us petitioned the board a few years ago to have the school partner with a handful of food kitchens and now we donate the perishable foods every year after exams are over.”
“I did not know that.”
“That’s not surprising, it’s not well advertised. The board thinks people will riot if they find out how we use the school's funds. It’s illogical seeing as we only started donating since the food was going to waste otherwise,” Shouta actually huffs. Unnecessary food waste is one of the few things he will openly admit to being salty about.
“If you’re finished we can continue,” Nezu says, though not as a passive-aggressive way of telling them to shut up, the creature rarely stops inquiries after all but rather urging them to finish their conversation. It's not needed though as there isn't much more to say on the subject.
“Go ahead,” - “Of course.”
“Good, now if I could direct your attention back to the big screen. There are multiple shots of examinee 2942 entering a garden supply store and leaving with the same brand of fertilizer.” He zooms in on a still of one of the bags and beside it pulls up the brand’s website. “It’s heavy duty and used almost exclusively in commercial farming,”
Maijima leans forward in his seat and steals their employer's big reveal with a surprisingly blank voice, “Which, unlike widely accessible fertilizer, contains high levels of ammonium nitrate. When exposed to an ignition source the ammonium nitrate rapidly decomposes into water vapor and nitrous oxide, the ladder of which is highly explosive when heated.”
“Woah woah woah so you're saying he made a fertilizer bomb?!” Vlad demands.
“Indeed, though we will have to bench any further discussion until after the exam. Right now it’s time for the real test to begin.” The rodent hybrid grins as he slams a paw down on a big red button (the size and color only serving to further the dramatic effect) unleashing further chaos upon all testing grounds.
It's five days after the entrance exams when the upcoming first-year staff once again meet. Classes had only been dismissed an hour prior but in an effort to get letters out sooner they can't wait until the weekend for this meeting which just means he and most of his coworkers are exhausted, himself and Vlad most of all. He really doesn't know what people are feeding their hero-hopeful kids these days but whatever it is makes them incredibly hyper all the time.
A muffled clap brings a bit more order into the room and Nezu finally addresses them all. “Welcome staff. Please make yourself comfortable, as always we’ll be here for a while.” Shouta picks a seat next to his husband and settles in, sipping at his large mug of coffee he'd filled in anticipation as his coworkers fill the other seats in the room. Snipe nods to him and takes the seat to his right which he appreciates. The man is quiet and when he does speak it's often to the point. He can’t say the same for most of his coworkers or any of his friends.
Once the group has settled Nezu speaks again. “Over the past few days a handful of vetted professionals graded all three thousand one hundred nineteen written entrance exams and reviewed hundreds of hours of footage to calculate the points of all those who passed. This year we had ninety-six prospective students fit the minimum requirements for acceptance into the hero course but unfortunately, we are limited to our thirty-six spots so in accordance with the old saying the best men, and women, won." With the click of a button, a series of names pop up on the room's large television. "In addition to class placement this year we have quite a few concerns to discuss as well as medical accommodations that must be upheld."
"First and foremost we have an interesting pair in first and second place. Both boys scored a large number of villain points and villain points alone. In addition first place, one Midoriya Izuku almost beat the current record for the most points scored during the physical exam although if we account for the written exams he successfully beat out All Might."
"What did he do to get that many hero points because I can't be sure but I'd assume Yagi got at least a few rescue points."
"You are right to assume that but there is a simple answer to your question, strategy. You see Midoriya is examinee 2942 and the building he destroyed held a portion of the final wave of robots. The collapse awarded him all 98 of his villain points while he barely had to lift a finger." Nezu looks all too eager at the prospect of having a student in his school that strategically blew up a building but for once Shouta isn't bothered by the creature's maniacal laughter. Instead, he is busy throwing the name around in his head, had been since he'd first heard it. Midoriya. He feels like he should know who that is but can't place where from and the uncertainty makes something inside him churn.
Uncaring of the itch in his mind, Maijima moves the conversation along, “Damn, I just thought the kid wanted to cost us thousands of dollars or experiment with explosives without consequence.”
Hizashi's eyebrows furrow in thought and Shouta suddenly remembers he never told the man what had happened during the exam. “Wait the building came down in area C; I thought the boy with the explosion quirk was in area E. Did we have two participants with some type of explosion quirk?”
“You would think but no, Midoriya made his own bomb.”
“A fertilizer bomb.” Nemuri chirps also way too happy about a massive bomb being made on UA campus.
“Shouta what the hell?" his husband slaps his arm which, with his strength actually stings, "Someone made a fertilizer bomb and you didn’t tell me?”
“We felt the explosion in the box, I didn’t think I needed to tell you something exploded when you were actually out there.”
“I assumed it was a quirk, not a homemade bomb! Why does a kid even know how to make a fertilizer bomb? What’s his quirk?”
Everyone turns from Hizashi's scene to Nezu who is grinning in a way Shouta knows means trouble for someone, usually him. Never let it be said that the chimera wasn't a gossip at heart because instead of giving an answer he takes the time to unnecessarily straighten out the few papers in front of him before placing them perfectly square before himself. “He doesn’t have one.”
The already quiet room immediately silences itself and all its occupants stare dumbly at the creature. “Say that again?”
“You heard me right. You are all looking at the first quirkless member of UA’s heroics course.” At the creature's gesture everyone looks at the tv now showing a blown-up picture of the boy. Curly black hair, emotionless expression, freckles spread across his nose and round cheeks along with a handful of small nicks. The kid looks both exactly how Shouta would expect of someone who had to fight the world as the boy likely had and completely different. Not only that but his face looks so vaguely familiar which causes the itch in the back of his mind to scream.
“Well, damn.”
It’s late that night, trying to fall asleep in his husband's arms when the name comes back to him, poking his brain over and over like a kid on a sugar high except this kid is telling him to remember and for the life of him he can’t remember what. The insistent thought makes him restless. He doesn’t flail but he does shift repeatedly to try to get in a position his brain will agree with. It doesn’t work in anything except for causing Hizashi to stir so eventually he slides out from under the covers and into his slippers then out of their bedroom. If he can’t sleep he might as well do something productive rather than just wake his partner.
He silently shuffles into his office and drops into his soft but supportive chair. Booting up his computer he decides to start where the trail begins: Midoriya Izuku, a soon-to-be UA student. Seeing as the kid was assigned to his homeroom, because of course he was, Shouta had access to his file. At first, the information isn’t anything new, name, age, quirk (n/a), then it gets to his guardians which is just listed as a group home for boys a step away from juvenile prison in either direction. With the following notes, it's not surprising the kid was in such a home. His Junior High record states he was often late—though never absent—, attempted to cheat, and got into altercations with other students on a semi-frequent basis. Nothing bad enough to get him blacklisted from UA, but definitely something to look out for though he suspects that no matter if the claims are true or not, discrimination has a big influence.
Seeing as he is only a teacher, the file information is lacking other than his past school’s reports so he moves on to search engines. He starts simple by first looking up the kid's name. The name yields no results which is incredibly odd seeing as that means he has no social media at 15 years old, at least not under his given name. From there he broadens his horizons to the name he recognizes: Midoriya. That yields results though by the time he finds what he’s looking for in said results it may have been faster to find and ask the kid on his first day. Despite the large pool he does start scrolling, looking through dozens of social media accounts, awards, newspaper clippings, anything attached to the name Midoriya. So engrossed in his work he barely even registers the time passing though it obviously does pass as the office door suddenly opens revealing a fresh out-of-bed Hizashi.
“What are you doing up?” Shouta asks.
The blonde squints at him and his expression makes him think it's not due to the man's lack of glasses. “Shouta, it’s six in the morning, what are you doing up?”
“Shit is it really?” He looks at the time and sure enough it’s just after six.
“Yup.” Hizashi walks around the desk to plant a kiss on the top of his head. “So what's got you up? Midoriya?”
“Yeah, I recognize the name but I can’t place why. It’s bothering me.”
“Alright well if it’s this irritating I’ll help you look but for now you should take a nap before classes. You don’t need to give your students a heart attack right before they graduate.” Hizashi leans down for another kiss and this time Shouta reciprocates the action.
“Mm thanks, ‘Zashi. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Shouta ends up getting just over half an hour of sleep before he’s woken up to a cup of coffee made just the way he likes it, which is a way Hizashi usually insists against. It’s by far not the worst night's sleep he’s ever gotten but if he gets his “sugar with coffee” out of it then he won’t say a word about it.
For the rest of the morning, he is far too lagged to think of anything besides the task at hand which is teaching a bunch of morning people. He doesn’t have the time or mental capacity to think about the name Midoriya until he’s finally given the chance to stop for lunch. Forgoing what a normal person would do during a lunch period Shouta starts by getting onto his computer and continuing his search which of course draws the attention of his nosey friend. He really does know how to pick them.
“Whatcha looking at?” Nemuri whispers right next to his ear as she looks over his shoulder. “Midoriya? That’s bomb kid, right? Why are you looking him up?”
“I’m not, just Midoriya. I know the name.”
“Now that you mention it, I’ve thought the same,” Nemuri says absentmindedly. “It’s like it’s right at the tip of my tongue but I’m not actually thinking of anything to say.”
“Exactly and that’s starting to piss me off.”
“Okay then let's figure this shit out.” She moves to her desk diagonal to his own and slides into her seat. “I bet I can find out where it's from first.” Nemuri smirks and cracks her fingers before aggressively and obviously competitively typing away.
Hizashi walks up to their group of desks with a bounce in his step and a smile across his face. “Oh, are we looking now?”
“I guess so.”
The blonde slides into his own seat and gets right onto his computer. “Alright but I’m even more lost than you two so I’m not making any bets.”
“Aw, you’re no fun.” Nemuri pouts but quickly perks back up to continue her search. “So do you have any idea where you might remember the name from?”
“I would assume a case, something big from at least a few years ago but I did a lot of big-ticket raids when I was younger so the list is long.”
“Please don’t say ‘when I was younger’ you’re making me feel old,” Hizashi whines.
“You are old. Newsflash: nobody has used the word hip unironically in almost a decade,” Nemuri snaps back.
“I hate you.”
“With a burning passion, I’m sure.”
Shouta listens as the two bicker light-heartedly while they spend the rest of their lunch period aiding him on some search that will likely end up being fruitless but right now he doesn't think of that, only about how he's happy he has people in his life willing to go through thick, thin and random internet searches for him.
It's Sunday afternoon two days later when their front door slams open, putting him on edge up until he hears the scream, “Shouta!” at which point he groans.
He lets his head fall onto the back of the couch and returns the woman's yell, “For the love of god, learn to knock.”
“Later.” Nemuri turns into the living room having not even bothered to step into her house slippers, the ones they got specifically for her habit of coming over often and often unannounced. The look on her face is serious, something he’s only seen on her a handful of times they’d worked together in the field, once when a student went too far in a sports festival she was refereeing, and another time during a major training accident. Other than those handful of instances, Nemuri is often insufferably energetic and happy-go-lucky in her own sultry way which means she and Hizashi often entertain one another at social events and allow Shouta to stand quietly nearby and roll his eyes at whatever they are going on about. It also means that times like this cause his nerves to instantly be on edge.
“What’s wrong?” He sits up straight, ready to leap into action if need be.
“I know why we couldn't remember the name. Midoriya. The last time any of us heard it was probably over a decade ago but then it was because of Midoriya Hisashi.” The name clicks in his mind and suddenly many other things follow in its place.
“Inko’s boyfriend.”
She nods and begins to pace on the other side of the coffee table. “Right. They’d only been dating a few months when Inko got pregnant and had Aizawa Izuku but then that bitch kicked you out and I know you haven’t kept up with them after that so I checked and they got married 12 years ago. Both Inko and Izuku changed their last names which made him-”
“Midoriya Izuku." The name feels like a weight on his tongue and that feeling only spreads when it leaves his mouth. "My brother.”