Chapter 14: Astrometric Detection
As promised, Izuku tracked down Shinso the next day to introduce him to Yaomomo so that he could get a head start on the hero course subjects. He had pitched the idea to her the night before over a video call, and she had been surprisingly receptive.
"It would be nice to have a full class again," she had observed. "We always have an extra person when doing exercises. As long as we don't end up with another Mineta—and I'm confident you wouldn't befriend someone like that— I think it's a great idea."
And that was how Shinso unofficially joined class 1-A. Izuku was confident he would make it official by the end of the semester.
Nedzu-sensei had cryptically told him that as long as Shinso proved himself worthy, he would approve the transfer. That left only one person.
Izuku brought it up with Aizawa-sensei during their training session after school.
"So, I was thinking about getting someone to take Mineta's spot."
Aizawa-sensei grunted, which was his way of saying, "I'm listening."
Izuku continued his aerial yoga as he spoke. "He has an amazing quirk, one that would be great for heroics, even if he couldn't get in because of the entrance exam being biased toward physical quirks." That was a sure-fire way to get Aizawa-sensei on Shinso's side.
"There are other ways," his teacher said, much to Izuku's surprise. "Other students without physical combat-oriented quirks got in. What makes him special?"
Izuku considered what direction to take from there. Well, when all else failed. "I like him?"
"You are too young to be dating."
Izuku blushed furiously. "That's not what I meant," he protested, quickly righting himself as all the blood rushed to his head. When he saw the twinkle in his teacher's eye, he realized he'd been teasing Izuku. "Sensei!"
"In all seriousness, what's got you so fixated on him? You like most people, but not enough to ask me to move them into the hero course."
"Like I said, he's got an amazing quirk, but it's also a quirk that scares people." Like yours, he didn't say. Aizawa-sensei would be able to read between the lines. "Unlike other people in the exams, his quirk didn't help him at all, since it can't be used on robots."
"That wouldn't have stopped you."
"I'm…different. Shinso can use his quirk to become a hero. I know it," Izuku insisted. It was unfair to compare the two of them. Izuku had had the support of the entire UA staff and years to train physically. Shinso hadn't.
"I met him once before," he admitted quietly. "Back before I came to UA. He saved me. That's how I know he can become a hero. That's why he deserves to become a hero. Sensei, he helped me even though he knew he would get punished for it. He wasn't allowed to use his quirk there. They…they muzzled him, but he still helped me anyways." Perhaps it was wrong of him to spill Shinso's secrets like water, but they were Izuku's secrets as well.
He didn't even realize that he was shaking until he felt Aizawa-sensei's strong hand on his back. "Easy. No need to get worked up. It's in the past now."
But was it? Was it in the past for Shinso?
"Let's see how he does in the sports festival, huh?" Aizawa-sensei said. "You're probably right about him, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't have a test of his own. I know I wouldn't have wanted my place in the hero course handed to me. I knew I belonged there after I beat up all my classmates. Let him do the same."
Izuku laughed, the sound bubbling up in his throat and spilling out despite the strange suffocating sensation wrapped around his neck. "He doesn't have nearly enough practice beating people up to do that."
"Then, I guess you'll just have to help him."
*
Aizawa watched Izuku walk into the passages in the walls with worry etching new wrinkles into his face.
It had only been days since the USJ, and Izuku had been asleep for most of those days, but already he was trying to go back to normal. It was good for a hero to be resilient, but Aizawa still worried.
It bothered him, too, that Izuki had his secret exposed to two of his classmates. Perhaps there would be a day when Izuku was comfortable sharing his secret with friends, but this was far too early. Izuku still wanted to keep his quirk hidden. He didn't even want to consider using it. Having people know about it couldn't have made him feel good.
Aizawa was also worried about Izuku's refusal to even try to learn control. If anything, he had thought that the events at the USJ would make Izuku eager to sort out how to deal with his quirk in case another emergency like that came up. Instead, Izuku was more insistent than ever that he wouldn't be using his quirk.
On top of all that, Izuku was already trying to overwork himself. Aizawa was kind of glad that he was still injured so he could make Izuku do yoga instead of a strenuous physical activity. He recognized that anguished despair driving him to do better. He had been the same after the accident during his second-year internship. Nothing like tragedy to make a person work harder.
While Aizawa wanted him to work hard and compete in the sports festival, he didn't want Izuku pushing himself so far.
He knew Kurose was dropping by Izuku's room or the support labs, whichever place the kid ended up sleeping, almost every night to make sure he was actually sleeping. The first day after Izuku woke up, he'd cried a lot over Aizawa and Kurose, which only made Kurose worry more about him.
Maybe a new friend would be a good way to take his mind off the attack.
Not that Izuku didn't already have great friends. He was the shadow member of the Big Three and getting close with Yaoyorozu. He'd befriended pretty much all the girls since day one by taking care of their costumes for them. Aizawa didn't think anyone in his class disliked the green bean, except Bakugo, and that continued to be a very complicated matter. Having that dumpster fire of a relationship thrown into his class felt like settling down to watch a drama that was already in its third season. He had no idea who the main characters were or what their history was or why anything that was happening was happening at all. It didn't help that Izuku tended to be tight-lipped about his life before UA.
Speaking of the secret life of Midoriya before he came to UA, exhibit B had finally shown itself. Shinso Hitoshi, one of many Gen Ed students who had tried out for the hero course and failed the entrance exam.
From Izuku's description of the kid's quirk, Aizawa could understand why Shinso failed. It was the reason he himself failed after all. But, he also didn't think that in itself was enough of a reason to transfer him to the hero course, and Izuku understood that.
More interesting to him was the snippet of backstory he had gotten. "He saved me," and all the horrible consequences that befell the other boy because of what he did for Izuku.
Aizawa knew that Izuku had been orphaned and staying in some kind of home. That had been one of the first things they learned about him. What had Nedzu said, "I have reason to believe he was being mistreated?" That was one hell of an understatement if what Izuku said of Shinso's treatment was true. No good person or institution would allow a child to be muzzled. Aizawa shuddered to think of what might have happened to Izuku in a place like that. If he knew Nedzu, though, there was nothing more to be done to the place.
In all honesty, Shinso did interest him, although he would wait until the sports festival to see if Shinso really had the drive to make it into the hero course. He could empathize with the boy, also having one of those quirks that people just tended to assume were villainous by nature.
He wondered if that was why Izuku had been drawn to both Aizawa himself and Shinso in the first place.
It was his secret hope that one day Izuku would stop being so afraid of his own quirk. He wanted nothing more than for Izuku to finally be free of the suppressants and the dampeners and the fear that latched onto him like parasites. If asked, Izuku wouldn't admit to any of that. All quirks were amazing in his eyes, even the villainous ones, except his own. He could talk for hours about how great Erasure was and how useful it was for stopping crime, and then turned around and refused to use his own quirk or even try to master it.
From Recovery Girls' reports, Aizawa knew that Izuku's quirk factor was damaged, and he probably had very little control, which had to be terrifying, but he could do so much good with a quirk like his if he used it well. He would be a great hero regardless of his quirk, but Aizawa couldn't help thinking he was holding himself back.
Being around Shinso, someone with an equally undesirable quirk, might be good for him. Perhaps all Izuku needed was to see another quirk that people called villainous doing good.
He would see how it went. If Shinso couldn't make it in the sports festival, then that might be the end of that. Aizawa rather hoped he made it through.
*
Of all the dumb things that could have gone wrong on his first high school field trip, getting attacked by a group of villains was probably one of the worst.
Katsuki wasn't against beating up villains, but he'd been stuck dealing with a bunch of goons most of the time. Izuku had gone up against the real villains—didn't he know his fucking limits?—and gotten fucking beaten to shit for his trouble. Katsuki only caught a glimpse of him before he was taken away, but Izuku hadn't looked good. He'd been glowing and some shit, hit by a quirk that hadn't been used against any of them.
It pissed Katsuki off that Izuku had gotten there before him. He should have waited for Katsuki to come with him, or literally anything but going in on his own. Katsuki ignored the voice in his head that said he would have done the same thing.
It annoyed him. Izuku may have been adamant about them not being friends, but that didn't mean Katsuki was going to let him run off and get himself killed. Who was he to decide he wasn't Katsuki's friend anyways. They were friends. The universe had decided it. Izuku didn't get to just decide they weren't.
Then everyone decided to be all hush-hush about whatever was going on with him, and Katsuki couldn't get an update on his condition beyond "he's not dead," which wasn't what he was looking for,
The weekend passed with Izuku in some random hospital recovering from a shitty villain attack instead of paying Katsuki's parents the visit he had promised them. Telling them that the reason Izuku couldn't come was because he was in the hospital didn't exactly set them at ease.
And then, the nerd came back to school, smiling like nothing had happened. Sure, he was sitting out of training because of head trauma and all that, but he was as cheerful as ever, and the rest of the extras decided to just go along with it.
Even worse, Izuku was even harder to get ahold of than before. Anytime he wasn't in his seat, he disappeared like a wisp of smoke in a hurricane. Katsuki couldn't seem to find a good time to talk to him about rescheduling the visit.
Waiting outside the school again like lovesick girl waiting to confess to her crush in some shojo manga was out of the question. Asking the first time had been embarrassing enough. Sure, he had the nerd's number, but it was weird to text him about this. It needed to come up naturally in conversation, and preferably Izuku would bring it up first so Katsuki wouldn't seem like he was obsessed with getting Izuku to come over to his house again, because he wasn't.
Katsuki hated this.
Izuku should have been his best friend. Asking him to come over to hang out should have been as natural as breathing.
Ideally, he would have sat down to eat lunch with Izuku, or something like that, they would have had a normal conversation and Katsuki would have been able to steer the subject in the right direction, but none of the extras were leaving Izuku alone.
Frog Face and Ponytail and the goddamn Big Three who should have better things to do, even fucking Half'n'Half had suddenly decided that Izuku's lunch table was prime real estate.
By Wednesday, Katsuki was ready to bite a chunk out of the side of his glass of water from pure frustration. Fortunately, Shitty Hair decided it was class bonding day and that they all needed to eat lunch together. He and some of the other extras moved a bunch of tables together. Katsuki took the opportunity to snag the seat next to Izuku.
"You wanna tell me what actually happened at the USJ?" he asked, because conversation starters weren't his forte.
Izuku looked over like he'd just noticed Katsuki was there. "I think you'd know better than me, considering I was unconscious for a decent chunk of the fight."
Katsuki huffed in annoyance. "I mean what happened to you. You were already down when I got there."
Izuku started to eat his food, his face set in a neutral expression.
"Well?" Katsuki demanded. "Just fucking tell me." He didn't like being kept in the dark like this.
With a sigh, Izuku set down his chopsticks. "I thought Yaoyorozu already told the class. I had head trauma. That was what happened."
Katsuki narrowed his eyes. Izuku was looking at him straight on and entirely too honestly for Katsuki's liking, like he was trying to convince him he was telling the truth, which obviously meant he wasn't.
"What about the quirk you were hit by?" That was what Katsuki really couldn't understand. They'd had to do the test thing after they left the USJ, and which they still hadn't gotten the results for. That meant there was something going on. Whatever had happened to Izuku, it wasn't just fucking head trauma. No one else had ended up like that.
"It wasn't anything to worry about. I'm fine, now."
"What'd you do before IcyHot got there?"
"Got my head bashed in." Izuku picked up his chopsticks again.
"Bullshit," Katsuki said, slamming his hand down on the table. "One of the villains was out already. I saw it. What'd you fucking do to it?" The villain IcyHot had frozen over, the one that had been dead when the ice thawed, and not from anything any of them could have done to it, just what had Izuku done to it? How strong had he become to have beaten the villain that the hand fucker thought was going to fight All Might? It didn't make sense. How?
The chopsticks in Izuku's grasp snapped. "Oh," he said absently. "Excuse me." He rose from his seat and walked off, not to get another pair of chopsticks, but out of the cafeteria entirely.
That ticked Katsuki off. He pushed himself out of his own seat to chase after him, but when he got out into the hallway, Izuku was already gone.
He was back in time for class, but he wasn't done avoiding Katsuki. Aizawa sent some of the extras off to talk to him, but Katsuki wasn't sent over, so he just had to glare at them from across the gym and try to figure out what they could have been talking about.
He didn't understand.
*
Hitoshi couldn't deny that he was kind of glad to see Midoriya drop by his classroom after school on Wednesday. He wasn't about to waltz up to the 1-A classroom and ask for him.
"I made a workout schedule for you," was the first thing Midoriya said as he plopped the sheaf of papers down on Hitoshi's desk. "Asking you to start working out with us right away was kind of dumb of me, last time, so I figured I'd fix that before I pushed you to do too much. There's stuff in there that you can do on your own, and some dietary suggestions. I don't know much about your quirk, yet, so there's nothing for quirk training, but I'll give it to you once I have more information."
Hitoshi flipped through the pages of charts and spreadsheets and lists of high protein foods. "Why are you doing this?" he asked, tearing his eyes away. It made no sense to him that Midoriya was putting so much effort in. Sure, the other boy had said he was going to help Hitoshi get into the hero course, but this was plus ultra behavior. It was excessive.
Hitoshi didn't know how to handle someone being this nice to him. He didn't know how to reciprocate the kindness, didn't know if he could. Midoriya, against all expectations, had no ill intentions toward Hitoshi in the slightest. He was just that good. When would he realize that Hitoshi wasn't like him and couldn't give anything back?
"Because I want to," Midoriya said, like the paragon of all things good in the world that he was. "It'd also be kind of nice to train with someone with a non-physical quirk. So, don't think I'm being purely altruistic. I'm really looking forward to training with you. Not that I don't want you to train with your quirk. We can do that, too."
"I don't expect you to help me train my quirk," Hitoshi told him. Opportunities to use his quirk were few and far between, but Hitoshi was sure he could manage. The sports festival would give him plenty of opportunities to show what he could do.
"But I want you to," Midoriya said with a frown.
Hitoshi wasn't sure that he had heard that correctly. "You…want me to use my quirk on you?"
Midoriya nodded. "I want to figure out how it works. Brainwashing is super versatile, and I know it activates by answering a question, but I still don't know how exactly it works. Like, are people unaware of what they're doing when they're under your quirk, or can they remember anything? What kinds of things can you make people do? Can they access their skills or use their quirks if you tell them to?"
"I…don't know," Hitoshi admitted. He'd only really ever used his quirk to get people to stand down or go away. Beyond that, he had no idea what it was capable of. It was curious that Midoriya already knew this much about his quirk, but Hitoshi supposed that came with being Nedzu's protégé. "You're not going to tell any of your classmates about my quirk, are you?"
Midoriya already knew his activation requirements. He could sabotage Hitoshi easily if he wanted to. There was nothing to lose by taking him up on his offer.
"Why would I do that?" Midoriya asked, like he hadn't even thought about it. "It would be totally unfair, and also a huge breach of privacy. So, are you up for it?"
"Are you sure about this, though?" Hitoshi had to double-check, "You're fine with me using my quirk on you?"
"Yeah," Midoriya tilted his head to the side as if to say, 'why wouldn't I be?'
They walked down to the gym together. The Big Three were there again, but this time, Midoriya made no move to join them. "You're still recovering from before, right? There's no use pushing yourself too hard. Besides, I want to work on your quirk."
Shinso quirked an eyebrow. "What about your friends?"
"They'll be fine," Midoriya assured them. "I already told them I was planning on working with you privately today. They also got kind of mad at me last time cuz they found out I wasn't supposed to be doing anything difficult."
"Why?" Hitoshi asked with a frown. Was Midoriya not allowed to be at the gym? Was Hitoshi not allowed to be there?
"USJ," Midoriya said, as if that explained it.
It was much smaller than the main room, big enough to work out in but not to spar in. There was a mirror on one wall and a rack of weights on another. Several yoga mats and some padded mats for gymnastics were piled in another corner.
"Okay, now we can practice," Midoriya announced cheerfully. "Ask me a question. I want to know how it feels, so just have me do something and then release it."
They were jumping right into it. "Then, can I brainwash you?" Hitoshi asked. In all his years of living, Hitoshi had never taken control of someone like this. It generally involved a lot more baiting, and anger, and yelling, until that felt like part of his quirk activation requirements. He had to make people lose their cool so that they would answer him. It was a violent way to use his quirk. This, though…this felt different. Instead of kicking the door down, the door was being opened for him.
"Yes."
Midoriya went slack as Hitoshi's quirk took control. Hitoshi wasn't a mind reader, but he generally got some kind of feedback from those he brainwashed. He'd feel their emotions as they struggled against his quirk. He didn't feel anything of the sort from Midoriya. The strain he had come to expect with using his quirk, like a weight pressing on his brain, wasn't there in its usual force.
"Sit down," Hitoshi ordered. Midoriya promptly sat down on the floor, not even moving his feet as he folded his legs underneath him. It was uncannily graceful, like Midoriya was a piece of origami going back to its folded shape after being unfolded. Hitoshi released his quirk.
"Whoa!" Midoriya exclaimed. His pupils were back in focus, blown wide. "That was so weird. It was like I was there, you know, but I wasn't doing anything." He wasn't even paying attention to Hitoshi, instead pulling a small notebook and pen out from his pocket and jotting down whatever it was he was rambling about. He was going too fast for Hitoshi to follow, so he just waited there, until Midoriya shoved the notebook into his face. "I made you a list of commands I want you to try on me."
Hitoshi squinted at the list. "You want me to tell you to punch yourself in the face?"
Midoriya shrugged. "I'm curious."
Midoriya was like no one else Hitoshi had ever met, that much was sure. The lengths he was willing to go to…
"Okay, are you ready?"
"Yep!"
Hitoshi started at the top of the list. "Um, lick your elbow."
Midoriya tried to lick his elbow, but without success. "Okay, you can stop now," Hitoshi said, once it became clear that Midoriya was going to keep trying no matter until he managed to do it. "Um, tell me your name."
"Midoriya Izuku," Midoriya answered tonelessly. It was kind of freaky, hearing him speak without any emotion in his voice. Hitoshi had only known him a few days, but Midoriya had struck him as the type of person who had boundless energy. He didn't sound right without it.
"Tell me my name."
"Shinso Hitoshi."
This next one was kind of weird. "Tell me my shoe size." Midoriya didn't respond, so Hitoshi moved on. "You need to find out what my shoe size is." Midoriya still didn't respond.
"Don't remember that I told you to find out my shoe size," was the next command. Hitoshi didn't honestly think that one was going to work. His quirk was brainwashing, not memory alteration.
Finally, the last command. Hitoshi knew that pain would wake those under his control, and it didn't even have to be a lot of pain. There was no need to make Midoriya punch himself in the face. "Pinch yourself," he ordered.
Immediately, Midoriya pinched his arm and woke up. "That was…different," he said. "It felt different from last time. But, we know you can set a goal for people to work toward, with the elbow thing. And, you can make them answer questions, but only if they actually know the answer. You can also make people inflict pain on themselves. I wonder what the limit is. You know how your body won't let you bite off your finger. If you told someone to bite off their finger, would they do it?"
"We are not trying that," Hitoshi said. God, just thinking about it made him sick to his stomach. He wasn't sure he wanted to be able to make people do that.
"I wonder if you can make people do tasks that require like thinking or motor control. Okay, next, ask me to tie my shoes, and then have me write something in my notebook."
They went back and forth like that for nearly half an hour, Midoriya asking Hitoshi to give him strange commands and recording the results. They discovered that Hitoshi getting hurt didn't drop the Brainwashing, that he could order people to attack him—Midoriya apologized for slapping him afterward—and that he could order people to fall asleep, which seemed extremely unfair to Hitoshi. They also tried recording his voice, but it didn't have any effect, which meant Hitoshi wouldn't be able to Brainwash himself to sleep. Darn.
"Doesn't it feel weird?" he asked the other boy when they were taking a break for Midoriya to take notes.
Midoriya looked up from his notes. "Hm, weird? Maybe. It kind of just feels like I'm dissociating, you know? It's not like you're asking me to do anything I don't want to do, though. Maybe we should try that."
Hitoshi was starting to feel the effects of using his quirk so much. It wasn't as bad as usual, but the strain was still there. "You wanting to do it kind of defeats the purpose of making you do something you don't want to do. Whatever you pick you'll have already agreed to," he said, a little more impatiently than he meant to.
Midoriya wilted a little, which made Hitoshi feel like an asshole even though it was far from the worst he had been to another person. "You're right. You'd have to come up with something on your own and not tell me beforehand."
"And you're just okay with that? With me making you do something you don't want to do?"
"Well, yeah. You're not going to make me do something that would actually hurt me." Midoriya shrugged like it was no big deal. "I'm curious about it, too. It's just like truth or dare."
Hitoshi had never played truth or dare, but he had heard of it, and thought it was stupid. He didn't voice that opinion to Midoriya, however, only nodded like he understood.
He brainwashed Midoriya again and sat there lost in thought for a minute or so, wracking his brain for something he could ask Midoriya to do or tell him that Midoriya wouldn't want to do. People normally asked about crushes or dared people to kiss other people during truth or dare, but he didn't feel comfortable with that. Besides, who was there in the room other than him? No thanks.
Hitoshi couldn't think of any dares that were possible within the confines of the room and did not involve him losing his sanity, so that was off the table.
Truth, then. He could work with truth.
"Why are you really working with me?" he asked. Midoriya remained silent. Hitoshi frowned. Right, it had to be a command. "Tell me why you really want to work with me."
"You have an incredible quirk and you'd be great in heroics. Also, I know that you have the heart for it."
That was…surprisingly wholesome. However, Midoriya wasn't resisting at all, which was kind of the point of the test. "Tell me, did you really recognize me from somewhere else?"
"Yes."
"Tell me where." Hitoshi was curious about this. He didn't think Midoriya was lying to him about recognizing him. Unless his con game was just that good and he'd come up with the plan on the spot when Hitoshi went to the 1-A classroom, then the hug had been genuine. So, where did he know Hitoshi from? And why wasn't he scared of him?
"Musutafu West Home for Children."
That didn't narrow it down much. Hitoshi had been young when he was in that home. He hadn't had any friends there, either, that anyone would remember him kindly.
"Tell me how we met."
Hitoshi felt the first sparks of resistance from Midoriya but he pushed on. If Midoriya didn't want him to know, perhaps there was something there.
"I was eight years old. You were the same. My mother had just died. I was sent to live in the home. You slept in the bunk beneath me. I had a nightmare the first night I was there, but you told me it would be okay. My second day there, I was cornered at recess by some of the other kids. They just wanted to rough me up because they'd heard I was quirkless. You stopped them."
Hitoshi's skin prickled as he remembered. It had been the last time he'd dared to use his quirk at that home, and one of the more brutal punishments he'd received. He didn't think he'd ever live down the laughter and the sound of pictures being snapped that he'd had to endure at school the day after that.
"I saw you the next day. You were muzzled. Because of me."
Hitoshi released his control, breathing heavily from the feedback he was experiencing from Midoriya, the suffocating guilt that the other boy was feeling. "You were the quirkless kid," he realized. "The one who ran away." Hitoshi had gotten into fights with the other kids all the time, and subsequently punished for it, at that home, so it wasn't so much the fight that he remembered. He remembered the boy who had cried in his sleep his first night. He remembered someone who wasn't scared of his quirk. And he remembered how no one at the home had given a fuck when the kid had disappeared in the middle of the night.
There were times when he wondered if he should have run away, too, but he'd never managed to get up the courage, and then the home had been closed and he had been sent to a different place.
So, yes, he remembered the green-haired boy with stars in his eyes who had cried like his heart was breaking the first time they met and now smiled up at him with the same stars in his green eyes.
Midoriya nodded. "You were a hero to me back then and I never even got to thank you. So, I was just happy to see you again back in the classroom."
There was something that was bothering Hitoshi, though. "If you're quirkless, what are you doing in the hero course? How the hell…?'" Hitoshi clenched his hands at his sides. "How the hell did you manage to pull that off?"
It made no sense. Hitoshi had stood no chance of making it in without being able to use his quirk. What made Midoriya different? And the more insidious thought: if Midoriya had made it, why hadn't Hitoshi been able to do the same?
"How did you make it past the robots without a quirk? There was no way!"
Midoriya's eyes widened, a look of pity dawned on his face that made Hitoshi squirm internally. "I took the recommendation exam," he said. "Although, I don't think my physical scores were what got me in."
Right, he was the principal's personal student. Hitoshi had seen the evidence of Midoriya's intelligence first-hand. Midoriya had been able to make up for his lack of a quirk with his intelligence.
"Of course. Those stupid exams don't test anything other than brute strength. You wouldn't have been able to make it through the general entrance exams either," Hitoshi said, mostly to himself. There was no way he could have made it through, that either of them could have passed that stupid, biased exam.
"Why would you think that?" Midoriya sounded genuinely curious.
"You don't have a quirk. It would be impossible."
Midoriya shook his head vigorously. "There's ways to get points even without a quirk."
"So you think you could have passed?" Hitoshi didn't mean for the sarcasm to lend such an edge to his voice, but he didn't apologize. What points were there for someone without a physical quirk?
"Well, it wouldn't be fair if I took those exams."
"See, this is exactly what I meant. They aren't fair to everyone. Some people don't even have a chance of passing," Hitoshi said. he took to pacing the room, feeling uncharacteristically agitated.
"Let me finish," Midoriya said calmly. "It wouldn't be fair because I designed most of those ways to get points, so I already knew the optimal route."
"You…you designed the objectives? What?" That made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
"It was my support course portfolio," Midoriya explained. "I applied to the support course as well as the hero course. I'm dual enrolled."
Hitoshi wished he could be mad at Midoriya. He really did. Here he was, someone who had succeeded where Hitoshi had failed, who got into not one but two of UA's most competitive courses, whom the principal had decided to take under his wing. But, he just couldn't. He couldn't even be jealous, because what was there to be jealous of? Hitoshi didn't particularly want to be in the support course, and he definitely didn't want to be the principal's student. All that was left was the hero course, but without a quirk, Midoriya would have to work harder than anyone else to keep up. How could Hitoshi be jealous of that?
In all the years of name-calling and abuse because of his quirk, Hitoshi had never wished he didn't have his quirk. He had power. It may have scared people, but that was better than being treated like he was less than the dirt beneath people's feet. He had always had a way to fight back, always had the knowledge that he was treated poorly because of his power. Midoriya had none of that.
A bitter laugh bubbled out of Hitoshi's throat. He felt completely and utterly pathetic.
"I'm sorry," Midoriya said. Those two words were so completely unexpected that Hitoshi stopped his laughter to look over at Midoriya.
The other boy's head was lowered, his curls tumbling into his face and hiding his eyes. He was fidgeting with the bracelets on his wrists.
"What for?"
Midoriya shifted from one foot to the other, one red shoe tapping against the ground. "When I made the objectives, you couldn't use your quirk on any of them. I was trying to open the exam up, so more people would be able to show off what they could do, but I guess I didn't do such a good job of it." He sniffed and looked up at Hitoshi with red-rimmed eyes already brimming with tears.
Fuck. Hitoshi was not qualified to deal with this. He ruffled a hand through his hair and tried to will his frustration away. He wasn't mad at Midoriya. Midoriya didn't design the whole exam. That would have been a huge problem in itself. He designed the objectives, which were separate from the combat robots. Granted, Hitoshi hadn't been able to use his quirk to complete the objectives either, but he could see how they catered to someone without a non-violent or stealth quirk. He could see that. He was still kind of pissed. It wasn't like Midoriya could have done much. As long as the exam format was robots, Hitoshi's quirk would have been of no use to him.
"I wanted to make it so that anyone could make it in, even if they were quirkless," Midoriya said sounding miserable.
And fuck it, Hitoshi couldn't take it anymore. "Don't blame yourself," he said through gritted teeth. "You could have passed quirkless, right?"
Midoriya sniffed loudly. "Well, yes, but I knew—"
"Then there was a way to do it quirkless." It was a heavy thing to admit, that there was a way he could have made it into the hero course, that perhaps his failure was in some part his own fault. Hitoshi didn't want to dwell on it. Midoriya was a genius, that much was obvious. He shouldn't compare them.
It was more than awkward, just standing there while Midoriya wiped his tears away. Hitoshi tried to look anywhere but at him, but there wasn't much to look at. Just the bare walls of the room.
"We should probably keep going," Midoriya said once he had himself under control again.
"You want to keep going?" Hitoshi had just made him cry. Midoriya should have been done with him.
"Well, I wanted you to make me do something, and I don't know, I wasn't against telling you that…that I was quirkless and all that, so I didn't get an answer."
Hitoshi frowned. Midoriya had resisted him, albeit minutely, in answering him. It wasn't what he was used to feeling from other people, but it had been there. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"Yeah. I want to see what the difference is when I don't want to do what you tell me to. So, brainwash away!"
Once Midoriya was under his control again, Hitoshi had another long pause. He already knew some of the stuff about Midoriya that he knew he himself would be uncomfortable sharing, like the fact that he was quirkless and that he had been in foster care. Those were the touchy subjects. He couldn't really think of anything that wasn't incredibly and uncomfortably personal to ask Midoriya.
What about something Midoriya wasn't supposed to tell him?
The whole school knew that the USJ had been attacked and that class 1-A had been involved, but the details of what had actually happened had been kept secret. Like everyone else in the school, Hitoshi had seen how beat up Eraserhead was, but the rest of the class hadn't shown any signs of serious injuries.
Midoriya had said something about not being allowed to strain himself because of the USJ.
It was a sneaky thing to do, but Hitoshi was curious about what had actually happened. He wasn't going to tell anyone, anyways, he reasoned. He wanted to know at had happened to Eraserhead. It would be fine.
"Tell me what happened at the USJ," he ordered.
For the first time since they had started, Hitoshi felt real feedback from his connection with Midoriya. The other boy was resisting him. That was what they had wanted. Midoriya wanted Hitoshi to force him to do something. He was supposed to be resisting. It was the whole point. Hitoshi ignored how wrong it felt. After all, people always resisted.
"A group of villains teleported into the USJ in order to kill All Might. They had a jamming quirk that prevented us from calling for aid. Eraserhead-san went to fight the villains on his own, leaving us to escape with Thirteen-san. The warp villain called Kurogiri interfered. He began warping us to different areas of the USJ. Todoroki made a wall to protect us, but then he was warped away with Hagakure. We decided to make a run for it while Thirteen-san distracted the villain, but he was able to redirect her quirk. Myself and Shoji went back for her. We, along with Koda, Tokoyami, and Tsu, were separated from the main group. After Koda and Tokoyami were warped, Shoji took Thirteen-san and Tsu and I distracted the villain. I wanted to tear him apart—"
"Shinso-kun, I believe that is enough. Please, drop your quirk," a voice came over speakers that Hitoshi hadn't realized were there.
"I was only able to hit him once with my knives before…" Midoriya trailed off as Hitoshi released him, eyes widening in realization.
Hitoshi didn't blame him. That was…definitely something Midoriya didn't want to tell him. It was surprisingly dark for such a ball of sunshine, but then again, they had been attacked. Of course, Midoriya would have fought back.
"Shinso-kun, what you just did was entirely inappropriate," the speakers said.
Hitoshi swallowed hard. He knew it had been, but he had done it anyways. He didn't know who was on the other end of the speakers, but he was in deep shit.
"Nedzu-sensei," yeah, he was fucked, "don't blame him. I asked him to do it."
"You didn't ask him to compel you to reveal classified information. Had I not stopped you, think of what else you might have said."
Midoriya paled, which if anything only made Hitoshi more curious. Did it get worse? What else had happened at the USJ? At the same time, it made him feel like a massive asshole.
"I'm sorry," he said bitterly. "I won't ask anything like that again."
"I should think not," the principal said. "I will leave this as a warning as you seem to have a good idea of when it is appropriate to use your quirk, but know that if you try to poke your nose where it doesn't belong again, I will not hesitate to take action."
The threat made Hitoshi's spine prickle, but he nodded, then remembered that Nedzu wasn't there to see it, so he said, "I understand," to nowhere in particular.
"Good. And Izuku, please be a little more careful. If you wish to something like this, perhaps it would be better to have someone else around in case, so that Shinso-kun does not accidentally order you to do something that both of you would regret."
"He didn't know," Midoriya said, gesturing at corner of the room above the mirror. "You can't be mad at him for asking me to tell him something I shouldn't have when I told him to do it. You can't be mad at him for not knowing it was like that."
"That is precisely the problem. Shinso-kun does not know what he should be avoiding. He may continue to make these mistakes, through no malice on his part."
Midoriya paced the room, running his hands through his hair as he walked. "I'll be careful, so can we keep training with him?" he asked, stopping to make puppy dog eyes toward one corner of the room before resuming his pacing. He was starting to give Hitoshi a headache…more of a headache…with how much he was moving around.
"Bring him to our lessons if you wish to do any more tests of this questioning kind. I must admit, I'm a little intrigued myself about the potential applications of Shinso-kun's quirk, however, that does not mean you should practice unsupervised. I'll let you get back to your training. Just no more questions of that kind." The speakers went dead, and Midoriya huffed in their direction. There was a smile on his face that ruined the image of annoyance he would have otherwise painted.
"Sorry, Shinso, I didn't think about the kinds of things you shouldn't have asked me before I asked you to do that. I already told you I'm Nedzu's student, so I do know a few things that students aren't supposed to know, and there are things that happened at the USJ that shouldn't get out for safety reasons." Midoriya smiled at him without a trace of anger for how Hitoshi had pushed his boundaries. If anything, he looked scared. The way he wasn't meeting Hitoshi's eyes, like he had just realized how scary Hitoshi could be. That didn't sit right with Hitoshi.
He used to appreciate how others looked scared around him, because it beat having them bullying him. Not many people at his middle school had tried to beat him up after the first few times when he had shown them. The fact that people were scared of him meant that he was strong, even if his strength was perceived to be villainous. He would take that strength and become a hero with it. With a quirk like his, it was as easy as breathing to bend others to his will. He had always had to force them. He had almost forgotten in that split second with Midoriya that he didn't have to, that Midoriya wasn't going to leave him bloodied and bruised in an alleyway if he didn't force him to obey.
He had just met Midoriya, and already Hitoshi had gone too far. He should have stopped when he got feedback. He should have asked something else, like for an embarrassing story or literally anything that wasn't fucking classified.
Real smart, he chided himself. The one person who isn't freaked out by your quirk and you go and do this to him!
"Shinso, are you feeling okay? You didn't push your quirk too hard? I should have taken into account that forcing someone to do something would be more strenuous. Do you want to lie down? I can get one of the yoga blankets. They keep some in the cabinet—"
"It's fine," Hitoshi cut off the nervous rambling. "Are you…are you fine? I didn't mean to, I shouldn't have done that." Fuck.
Midoriya blinked. "I asked you to do it, Shinso. I made a mistake not giving you parameters. If anything, I should be apologizing for getting you in trouble with Nedzu-sensei. Besides, I didn't say anything too damning."
You admitted to stabbing a man in self-defense, Hitoshi thought, and okay, that wasn't damning, but he wasn't sure he would be fine with anyone knowing the many times he had used his quirk in self-defense, and that wasn't nearly as hard core as stabbing someone.
"Are you sure you're fine, though?" Midoriya's forehead was all scrunched up as he looked at Hitoshi. "You're squinting. Are the lights too much?"
Hitoshi sighed. "Yeah, the lights are bright. It's normal, though. It's just what happens when I use my quirk." He thought he'd gotten pretty good at hiding the signs of his quirk-induced migraines. It was no good to let people who might have wanted another go at him know that his quirk could be overloaded if he used it too much.
"Let's take a break, then," Midoriya said, already heading toward the door. "Lie down. I'll turn out the lights and get you a blanket. Do painkillers help?"
"They do. Thanks," Hitoshi said as Midoriya popped out of the room. He pulled one of the gymnastics mats out to use as a mattress and flopped down on it. Only when he was sprawled out on the soft surface did he realize how truly tired he had been. Using his quirk generally gave him a migraine pretty quickly, but the repeated use with Midoriya had tired him out as well.
He didn't hear the door open, but Midoriya announced his presence with a soft chuckle. "At least take off your shoes," the other boy said as he tossed a gray yoga blanket over to Hitoshi.
Hitoshi rolled his eyes, but slid his shoes off nonetheless before spreading the blanket out and tucking himself in.
Midoriya turned out the lights and sat down on the mat, making it sag a little under his weight. It was still light enough in the room, due to the light coming in under the door and reflecting off the mirror, that he could see his movements but not enough to bother him. Midoriya nudged his shoes into place, then laughed softly to himself.
"What is it?" Hitoshi asked. He wasn't planning on sleeping, just resting. He didn't think he would be able to fall asleep even if he wanted to.
"It's just, you wear a size 30."
"What's so weird about that?"
"Nothing, you're just really tall."
"Jealous?" Hitoshi asked with a smirk.
Hitoshi should practically feel Midoriya shrug. "Maybe. I think I could fit both of my feet in one of your shoes."
"What are you? Cinderella?"
"Maybe," Midoriya said, and Hitoshi kind of wished he could see his face so he could know what kind of expression he was making, because there was something in his tone that said there was a story behind that word.
"I really am sorry, about asking you that stuff," Hitoshi said. In the dim gray light of the room, he felt oddly vulnerable and close to Midoriya.
Midoriya lay back on the mat. Hitoshi thought he would shrug off the apology again. "It's fine," Midoriya said. "That was the point. To make me do something I didn't want to do. But, Nedzu-sensei is right. That could have gone wrong too easily. No offense, but everyone has things they don't want to say, you know?"
Hitoshi knew. His head was full of things that couldn't be said. Shouldn't be said. He had a troubled past, but so did Midoriya. Even his earlier questions could have led down a path that Midoriya didn't want to go down.
"So, um, maybe steer away from the deep questions from now on." Midoriya laughed nervously. "At least I got to feel what it was like."
"What was it like?" Hitoshi wondered. He'd brainwashed people many times, but he'd never gotten a chance to ask for feedback. His quirk was creepy, he knew that, but no one was leaving detailed reviews for him to figure out how his quirk affected them.
Midoriya hummed thoughtfully. "It was like I had my hands on the controls, but someone else had their hands on top of mine. I could still feel things, but I wasn't the one moving. I felt like I could do something to stop it, but I couldn't. Any signals I sent didn't go through. It was like that for the earlier questions, but I guess I didn't mind because I wasn't trying to do something other than what you were guiding me to do."
"Huh." He didn't know why, but Hitoshi had been expecting something a little more…violent. Was that the word? Like taking over the person's body completely.
After what was probably around half an hour, Midoriya stood up and stretched. "I have to go now," he announced. "I have after school lessons with Nedzu-sensei. You can stay, though. Just make sure to leave before the gym closes. Maybe set an alarm in case you fall asleep."
Still half-dozing, Hitoshi nodded. He didn't notice when Midoriya left, too busy sleepily turning on an alarm. The other boy was already gone when Hitoshi pulled his head out of the covers. The light from the door opening hadn't even bothered him.
*
"Do you blame yourself?" Nedzu-sensei asked, once Izuku had settled himself into his seat in the office to begin work on his analysis.
Izuku paused, the point of his pen hovering above the surface of the notebook. "Sorry?"
"For Shinso-kin not being in the hero course," Nedzu-sensei clarified.
Izuku shifted in his chair. He wiggled the leg tucked beneath him until it was comfortable while he thought of what to say.
In a few words, he did blame himself for where Shinso was. If he had just done his job better, if he had found a way to open the hero course to mental quirks, if he had done something for Shinso who had helped him instead of running away…
"Isn't it my fault?"
Nedzu-sensei took a slow sip of his tea. Before he spoke, he carefully locked eyes with Izuku in the way he did when he set a question that he expected Izuku to think through on his own, "Why do you think the entrance exam is designed the way it is?"
"The robots are capable of measuring a student's physical offensive capability, with the exception of the zero pointer, that prompts students to demonstrate their ability to accurately assess a crisis situation. You implemented rescue points to cater to those intending to become rescue heroes, and also because the nature of heroics demands that heroes look out for their teammates and civilians caught in the line of fire."
"But why use robots? Why not have applicants spar against current students or teachers?" Nedzu-sensei pushed him.
"I don't think that would be a bad option," Izuku said, "but only as an alternative form of testing if the student can't properly show off their capabilities against the robots. The main benefit of using the robots is that students with destructive quirks who have not properly trained will be less likely to injure someone. They also provide a uniform experience that is the same for every student. The downside of course is that students with mental quirks or quirks that directly affect other people are unable to show off their skill. The addition of the objectives opened to pool to stealth-based quirks, which aren't very affected by the human-robot conundrum, but students with mental quirks are still at a disadvantage. In addition, those proficient in hand-to-hand combat are unable to properly show off their talents without a quirk to augment them."
"Right," Nedzu-sensei said. "Your objectives were an excellent addition. Now, tell me, how do you think someone like Kayama-san became a hero?"
"She was recommended," Izuku said with a frown.
"So, why do you think things are the way they are?" It was half a question, half a challenge for Izuku to unravel Nedzu-sensei's thought process.
"The general entrance exam finds those with quirks that can be trained with more general exercises," he began slowly, thinking of the training they did in class. There was still a decent amount of individual training, but at some point, they all had to learn to cover large distances using their quirks, and fight, and manage a disaster. "The recommendation exam is meant to find those with more unique quirks that require more individual support to utilize but that can be extremely useful." Although, that system was not always used for that. Take Todoroki for example. He had a simple but powerful quirk that would have allowed him to pass the general exam with no problem. For him, it was more about connections. Yaomomo, while her quirk was more on the unusual side requiring extensive individual training, would also have been able to pass the general exam without issue. The girl from 1-B who got in on recommendations was a better example. Being able to disassemble her body was incredibly useful in heroics, whether for rescue or intelligence. It could also make her a formidable opponent. However, it required her to learn entirely different ways of fighting and moving.
"And the sports festival is a safety net to catch anyone with the combat skills and suitable abilities who wasn't recommended and couldn't pass the general exam," Izuku finished. The system was flawed in his opinion, but it did have logic to it. Nedzu-sensei hadn't been the one to implement it, although he had introduced changes to it over the years, such as the objectives most recently.
"That certainly is correct, Izuku." Nedzu-sensei nodded. "Do you think it's fair for the last category of students?"
"No," Izuku said decisively. "They're at a disadvantage in terms of support provided by the school when the sports festival rolls around. Also, regardless of whether or not they perform well, their transfer is dependent on a spot being open in the hero course to begin with. I do agree that it is the optimal environment for most who would have slipped through the cracks to show off their capabilities, but with the disadvantages imposed, it simply isn't fair."
Nedzu-sensei chuckled softly in his own special way, which some might have called a maniacal cackle, but Izuku had learned to recognize as a sign of good humor. "You're thinking too narrowly, Izuku," he told him. "Hero school isn't the only path to becoming a hero."
Izuku knew that of course. There were programs for rehabilitating vigilantes, and also mentorships. The latter were closer to an apprenticeship of sorts. Not all heroes were permitted to have apprentices, and not many wanted them. Where interns and sidekicks were employees who would be learning things on the job, apprentices learned everything directly from their mentor. It was a huge commitment, and also a huge responsibility. Mentors were legally responsible for the actions of their apprentices until the apprentice got a license of their own.
The point was, apprentices were few and far between. They were only slightly less rare than a Gen Ed student winning the sports festival and being transferred to the hero course, which was to say, the odds weren't great.
Nedzu-sensei knew he knew this, so Izuku stayed quiet to hear what his mentor had to say.
"The dark horse students who perform well in the sports festival but not in the entrance exams, like Aizawa, are most often those suited to underground heroics. The sports festival is an opportunity to get scouted. Aizawa is an exception, as I thought he would benefit the most from training with other students with powerful quirks to enable him to make the best use of his own quirk. Underground heroics works very differently from spotlight heroics, as I'm sure you know. The community is much more close knit. The majority of underground pros began as apprentices, and apprentices are much more common in the underground due to the unique skillset. Aizawa likely hasn't told you this, but what he's been doing for you has been similar to what an underground mentor does for their apprentice." Nedzu-sensei took a loud sip of his tea, and Izuku felt his face heat up in embarrassment.
After living around Aizawa-sensei for so long and spending so much time talking to him, he thought he had a pretty good grasp on underground heroics. There weren't many other sources of information on the underground, as they tended to stay out of the media spotlight and information on them was kept under wraps. Still, it was evident he had a lot left to learn.
"There's no need to feel ashamed," Nedzu-sensei said gently. "This is the kind of information that only those in the community know. Even other pro heroes don't know what goes on with the underground sometimes."
But, Izuku should have known. He'd been watching heroes, from afar and up close, for the better part of a decade, and he'd always loved underground heroes. He wanted to be one, but he still didn't know how their world worked. Despite hoarding every scrap of information he came across and every tidbit Aizawa-sensei dropped him, he came up disappointingly short. It wasn't Nedzu-sensei's fault either. Their relationship as teacher and student was a unique one. Nedzu-sensei had told him a great deal about the kind of work that underground pros did, because Izuku had asked about it. Izuku had never thought to ask about their social structures, or how they got into underground heroics. He'd kind of just assumed that they went to hero school like other heroes. That assumption was a mistake on his part.
In hindsight, of course, it made a great deal of sense that underground heroes took apprentices. Izuku couldn't imagine Aizawa-sensei teaching class 1-A the things he had taught Izuku. General stealth perhaps, but not something like lock-picking and the best ways to perform a thorough search without leaving a trace. Those were lessons that came with the sparring and parkour and weapons training. Underground heroics required a different skillset than spotlight heroics. They were more likely to infiltrate and go undercover, they covered the night patrols in out-of-the-way areas, and they were often involved in investigating crimes rather than just stopping them. They were the ones who found information that allowed for the huge raids on criminal organizations that made the news by working with informants and information brokers in the darkest corners of the underworld where no spotlight pro would ever be seen.
There were some pros who worked both spotlight and underground, like Midnight-san, although Izuku had only discovered that by chance. She did an excellent job keeping the fact that she worked as an underground pro secret. That was the kind of hero Izuku wanted to be.
"Then, do you think Aizawa-sensei will be taking Shinso as an apprentice?" he wondered aloud.
"That I cannot say. I strongly suspect it will depend on how he performs in the sports festival. If you continue to work with him, that shouldn't be much of a problem."
Izuku frowned as a new thought occurred to him. "Would he transfer to the hero course if Aizawa-sensei decided to train him?"
"His transfer to the hero course will not be contingent on whether or not Aizawa takes him as an apprentice. He can be one or the other or both or neither," Nedzu-sensei said. "Do you think he would benefit from being in the hero course? Aizawa is a competent mentor, as I'm sure you can attest."
"I think he would. After all, he needs to practice using his quirks on opponents who will be resisting, and he'll have to be able to survive a fight until he can get them under his control. The hero course will give him the opportunity for that training." That was the logical reasoning Izuku had. The emotional side of him just said that he wanted Shinso in his class. He liked the other boy. For all his rough exterior, as prickly as a hedgehog, Shinso had a good heart.
"Mm, yes, and you know him," Nedzu-sensei said slyly. So he did know! "I remember. His was one of the cases that was instrumental in shutting down that awful place." He frowned at nothing in particular.
Izuku wondered if the place he ended up was any better. "Can you…look into him?" he requested. Was it crossing a line? Perhaps. Shinso had already accused him of stalking, so he might as well do it. Besides, he would be doing it for a good reason. He wouldn't even have to see any of the details. He was just asking Nedzu-sensei to tell him the gist of what he found. Totally not an invasion of privacy.
Later that night, Izuku reviewed his notes from the training with Shinso, notebook held above his head as he lay in bed. He had a good idea of what Shinso could do with his quirk, and the extent of the actions he could command. It was fascinating, the way he seemed to hijack the brain's command center while leaving areas of fine motor control and acquired skill and even memory free to operate under his commands. It was like he was superseding his will and nothing else. Izuku flipped back to some of the earlier pages to read through the earlier entries.
The notebook fell from his hands and landed on his face.
What did I just read?
He didn't remember writing down the order for him to forget everything about the shoes. He didn't even remember being told to find out Shinso's shoe size. It was there in his handwriting, and Shinso had checked it off, so he must have given the command.
And Izuku had. He had checked Shinso's shoe size, and Shinso had been too out of it to register.
Shinso could modify memories.