Summary:
Todoroki Shouto and the effect he's left on people: Shinsou reflects, Aizawa reviews, Bakugou thinks, Izuku worries, and Fuyumi plans. Oh, and other people plan, too.
Notes:
Recommended Listening & Chapter Title From: Tidal Wave by Owl City.
I wish I had covered all my tracks completely cause I'm so afraid
Is that the light at the far end of the tunnel or just the train?
Lift your arms only heaven knows, where the danger grows
And it's safe to say there's a bright light up ahead and help is on the way
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
He has dirt on Todoroki now, technically, but what the fuck is he supposed to do with it?
Hitoshi picks at his food, not really seeing it. That hadn't been his intention when he'd followed golden boy Todoroki and that other heroics kid into the hallway, but it's happened and it's done. And Hitoshi doesn't know what to do with the information.
Because apparently golden boy Todoroki has his own problems, and Hitoshi doesn't know if he should laugh or cry. Either would be preferable to the pressure building up in his chest, seizing his heart and squeezing his lungs at the fact that there is so much of a power difference – of an experience difference – between him and the heroics course. He doesn't want to think about Todoroki's calm voice, unruffled and placid, like the words coming out of his mouth hadn't affected him.
Like he'd lived with what he'd been describing for so long that it's just become the new normal to him.
And, yeah, on the surface and out of context the conversation had just made Hitoshi angrier. Of course the heroics students were doing so well – they got all of the support they needed and more for their dreams. Todoroki had been trained by the Number Two Hero, for god's sake; after that kind of personalized training every night for eight years, no wonder he has such fine control over his Quirk. No wonder he talks like the Festival had been nothing but a warmup for him, because it had.
Except Hitoshi has learned to read someone by their voice by sheer necessity. And Todoroki hadn't been proud or bragging of his training; he'd been weary.
Hitoshi puts down his spoon and goes to chug his glass of water. It doesn't drown out his own mind repeating what he'd heard: I broke bones. I broke ribs. Doctors were called to my house because the son of Endeavor couldn't be seen going to the hospital.
And isn't it sad that that part's the one that Hitoshi understands the most? It's almost like the group home, he thinks. Sending a kid to the hospital brings unwanted attention, so of course they'd sweep it under the rug.
No wonder Todoroki had been able to snap himself out of the Brainwashing, even if it had taken him a little while. Most likely there'd been some injury, old enough and extensive enough, that the medic's Quirk could only do so much to heal when there's newer injuries from the first two events to manage. He'd called it bodily awareness, though, and he'd admitted to having to snap himself out of 'something similar,' and that makes Hitoshi curious.
Almost idly, just to himself, he wonders if he could ask Todoroki what that something similar is. If one person can do it without the help of an outside force, then it means that anyone else with similarly strong will or knowledge of the technique can, and that's a weakness that Hitoshi can't leave alone if he wants to become a hero.
Not to mention that Todoroki is the first person to ever tell him that he should go into rescue. That implies he – son of Endeavor, star of Class 1-A, first place finisher in the U.A. Sports Festival, potentially not-so-golden-boy – thinks that he, Shinsou Hitoshi, can become a hero.
The world had tipped off its axis after that match and hasn't quite righted itself since. Hitoshi cranes his neck here at lunch to try and catch a glimpse of Todoroki, but the guy hasn't changed his behavior towards anyone at all after the Festival. He still stays at his quiet table with his group of friends. He takes the corner seat with his back to the wall and the three-fourths view of the cafeteria.
Hitoshi can almost see him where he himself sits, in his own corner table with no one else, but that's the beauty of such a crowded space: anonymity, or at least as close as you can get to it.
And almost a week after the end of the Festival, he'd thought that'd be it. Done, capice, Hitoshi's blown his first chance to get noticed and move into the Heroics course, and the next – two out of three, and isn't that terrifying – comes around next year.
Except that invisible heroics course girl – he thinks her name is Hagakure, people yell it enough during lunch for some reason or another – comes up with that hulking tall tentacle-armed heroics course dude right before lunch is over, sits down at his table with him, and extremely politely demands Hitoshi's phone.
And Hitoshi isn't dumb, okay? He knows how this goes. They're going to take his phone and smash it to pieces, because he's the kid with a villain Quirk and they're heroes if they take away one of the ways he can hurt people. It never works if he tries to explain that he can't Brainwash someone through the phone; they never believe him. Trying to fight back will just get him beat up, and Hitoshi had paid attention before the Festival when he'd been scoping out the competition and afterwards when he'd seen them in action: tentacle-arms hits fast and hits hard, and Hagakure just fights dirty.
So Hitoshi turns over his phone, expecting to never get it back, and is extremely surprised when Hagakure just fiddles around with it until she gets to the contacts list.
"I don't think we ever properly met," tentacle-arms says, and even with that mask he somehow comes across as apologetic. What the fuck. "My name is Shouji Mezou, and this is my classmate Hagakure Tooru."
"Shinsou Hitoshi," he manages to reply, because like hell he's gonna antagonize the guy who has half a head on him.
"Alright, there we go!" Hagakure says afterward. She angles Hitoshi's phone so that she's – what – taking a selfie? For tentacle-arms? But the guy doesn't even look resigned, he acts like this is the most normal thing in the world when Hagakure snaps a pic and taps away at Hitoshi's phone and sets it as a profile pic for his own contact.
Okay. Okay, then. The world has gone insane, and Hitoshi is kinda gonna miss the fact that his class had wished him well after his tournament fight with Todoroki.
But they leave Hitoshi with his phone in hand and, apparently, two more contacts and access to a group chat.
He thumbs it open carefully, half-convinced it's a prank, but it's not. It's a legitimate group chat. It even has people chatting in it even now, welcoming him, asking how he's doing, commentating on how Hagakure and Shouji have 'finally gotten Shinsou-kun to join.'
Hitoshi recognizes these names because he'd done his homework on 1-A before going to their classroom to throw down the gauntlet. This isn't all of them, but it is a good chunk of them, maybe a quarter, maybe a little more.
What the fuck. What the fuck.
Many students have passed through U.A.'s halls, and although they don't teach everyone that ends up in the top ten, it's a fact that the current Number One and Number Two are both U.A. alumni. But even with the reputation of only taking the best of the best, it's rare to have a Quirk user who is as self-aware as Todoroki Shouto.
Even the name gives Shouta a headache. If he'd had his way he would have expelled the entirety of 1-A at the beginning of the year, but to his eternal regret the entire class – well, maybe except one – seems to be made of legitimate hero material; and Todoroki is not an exception.
He is a curiosity, though. Shouta hasn't lived this long as both an Underground hero and as a U.A. teacher – though the last part has been weirdly perilous these last few weeks, gods – without honing a fine instinct of what Hizashi lovingly calls a "bullshit radar." According to it, Todoroki Shouto should be at the top of the class in all respects.
Except he isn't. Yaoyorozu is first in academics overall, and though Todoroki dominates some classes – All Might and Hero Fundamentals and the insanely fine control that Todoroki has over his own Quirk, at the age of fifteen, comes to mind – he doesn't outright show it. Ectoplasm has come to Shouta more than once, frustrated beyond belief where he's running up against what he'd called a blank wall.
"I can tell he's bored in class," he'd said, gesturing helplessly at the rows of perfect scores with a neatly penned Todoroki Shouto on top. "He's tutoring the back of the classroom more than he is paying attention to me. But whenever I ask him to take the placement tests, he gets just enough wrong that I can't justify him moving up. That can't be coincidence."
Shouta had hummed and pawed through the quizzes himself. They're on polynomials and rationals because this is a Heroics course; the accelerated mathematics and science classes are for the Support students. He doesn't envy their instructors their own bunch of hyperactive children with minds that are too smart for their age. "Let me guess. He gets exactly half wrong?"
"Yes," Ectoplasm had hissed, masked eyes narrowing.
So Shouta's not the only one keeping an eye on Todoroki. It doesn't help that the boy's father is Endeavor, who is both an alum but also the most un-heroic hero, in Shouta's opinion, that U.A. has produced. The man is callous, aggressive, the epitome of the belief that might makes right.
Which makes some sort of backwards sense why Todoroki would come to Shouta and ask him for help in convincing his own father that he would be better off interning with another agency. Shouta can only imagine their house dinners or family gatherings, where an intimidating man like Endeavor might steamroll over his wife and children even unintentionally, just by sheer virtue of his force of personality.
But it's the way that Todoroki'd had his spiel ready when Shouta had asked for the reason why – the way that he'd flinched and hunched in the position that protects the head and neck from spinal injury, with such instinctive quickness that Shouta had half-thought he was hallucinating a street kid in the place of a U.A. student – that catches his interest.
That keeps his interest.
(He'd been interested since the USJ Incident, since Todoroki had been the one to throw himself at the Nomu very clearly beating the shit out of his teacher, since he'd been the one who'd almost gotten disintegrated at a villain's hand, but this – this is different.
Power Loader had mentioned more than once about how Todoroki's analysis of Hagakure's heroics costume and its lack of armoring had been entirely correct, which confuses Shouta – what kind of fifteen-year-old, fresh off the high that is Heroics at U.A., thinks about that kind of thing?)
Endeavor has been teaching me since I was seven, Todoroki had said. That's pretty normal among the legacy hero families, especially the ones who get in on recommendations, or those with the money to send their kids to afterschool Heroics prep classes. Shouta tends to be harder on those students just because they can take it, they have the well of experience and developed technique to fall back on, and Todoroki had certainly delivered.
But he'd also had a very cohesive and well-delivered argument on why not to continue learning from the man who'd been teaching him for eight years.
All Might thinks Todoroki is one step too close to the line between a hero and a villain. He'd cited the ice coffin, the hypothermia, the absolutely unflinching way Todoroki had fought in his matches. But what he doesn't get, and what Shouta knows from his own experience growing up, is that a student doesn't usually devolve into a panic attack from a raised hand at head height without very good reason.
Endeavor's private life is well protected, as part of the Hero Commission's policies for top ten heroes. It makes it hard for reporters to follow them home, break into their house, or harass their families and friends. There are ways around them if someone knows how, but the very act of it puts the hacker on a watchlist. And Shouta has better ways of digging up this kind of information anyway.
He rolls his shoulder, grunting at the twinge – ah, chronic pain, he can't wait until he can get home and sleep with the heating pads – and pulls out his files for his homeroom. Some student's folders are thicker than others, for those who came with particularly large amounts of paperwork from their elementary or middle schools.
Todoroki Shouto's is the thinnest of them all. Shouta's had to create a folder for the kid instead of printing out the one he'd inherited from previous teachers, and doesn't that say everything? He wonders, for a moment, what it would take to track down Todoroki's homeschool tutors and shake out an actual progress report from them – English, mathematics, it doesn't matter at this point, Shouta is four weeks in and getting increasingly desperate – but he sets the thought aside when his phone pings.
It's Best Jeanist. Shouta hadn't graduated with Hakamata Tsunagu or been in school at the same time as him – he's almost five years younger than the Number Four Hero – but the local U.A. and Pro Hero networks are tightly intertwined. They have a group chat, for god's sake.
Hawks for two of your students, huh? Jeanist has texted when he checks. He'll do fine, I wouldn't worry about it. Your students may end up discouraged though.
Which tracks with what Shouta knows of Hawks. He hadn't lied to Todoroki, the Number Three is the one whose agency he has the most confidence in convincing Endeavor with, but Hawks has a reputation with the media. Hawks also has a reputation with the circle of local older heroes, which includes the U.A. teachers and some of the local top ten who gossip like grandmothers in the supermarket.
(Hizashi would tell him he's being too hard on them, but Shouta thinks that the man can't talk until he stops rising to Midnight's bait and Thirteen's gentle but firm conversational hand.)
For now, Shouta texts Hakamata back and then sets his phone aside.
So Aizawa Shouta can't do anything above the table. Eraserhead, however, is an Underground Hero who still has contacts in the area and has the weight of the U.A. and local Hero Networks behind him.
For all that he's an aggressively talented student, Todoroki is also a flight risk. Shouta is going to have to be slow and careful with him, else he misstep and lose all the trust that Todoroki has shown him in bringing his concerns about the internship to his homeroom teacher. Maybe Hizashi can help, or Nemuri; anybody that knows how to handle a reclusive and easily startled student with the occasional panic attack.
Or, no. Maybe not Hizashi or Nemuri. Both are loud and vibrant, and although he's watched as Todoroki was folded successfully into Hagakure's social group there's a difference between a peer being friendly and an authority figure being loud. Shouta picks up his phone to send a quick text off to Thirteen instead, and debates pulling in Hawks for a conversation before the internship. Would it help? Would it hurt?
On the one hand, Hawks would be briefed on what to avoid – not that Shouta's list is comprehensive in any sense of the word right now, but at least it'd be better than going into it blind. On the other, Hawks is a Commission hero through and through. He hadn't graduated from U.A., and even Hakamata struggles on the best of days to get through to him.
Shouta hates not having enough information to act on, but there's nothing for it. Anything that he can get will be second- or third-hand, even if it's under the table; the bulk of it, the truth of it, has to come from Todoroki. All he can do right now is wait and observe.
In the meantime, he has other students to worry about, and one particular gen ed kid who deserves better than the hand he's been dealt.
(Later, Aizawa Shouta, homeroom teacher of the Hell Class that is 1-A, will think back on this moment and be filled with the urge to smack himself for thinking he could afford to wait.)
Yeah, okay, so the half-and-half bastard beat him. Just means that he has that much work to do, because god, that had almost been humiliating, except Katsuki's not the only one that Todoroki fucking rolled over during the Festival.
Todoroki went to fucking town in the fucking Festival, and Katsuki has never felt the difference more keenly.
Even Deku had lost to him, and he's been making eerily fast strides lately. He's been learning and putting that sharp mind of his to good use, and it makes some small part of Katsuki proud even as he wishes that Deku'd keep his head down. Nails that stick up get hammered down, and he's had a hard-enough time trying to keep Deku from getting hammered when he'd been Quirkless and in middle school.
Now he's got a Quirk and in high school, and it's even worse. Katsuki would pray to god if he thought it'd help. Which is the only reason why that when Kirishima asks him if he wants to go out this weekend with what feels like half the fucking class, including Deku, Katsuki says yes.
He's only going because somehow Icyhot is going, and Katsuki has half a mind to just follow him around on his daily routine to figure out how the fuck he deals with this shit. This, of course, being the publicity that's come post-Festival. Also because he has nothing better to do when the hag's kicked him out of the house for the week, and Mina had been all but harassing him, the guy in the class that no one likes –
Okay, so Katsuki has somehow agreed to going. The outing, of course, turns into a clusterfuck the moment they step foot outside of school grounds.
For some reason there's the reporters, of course. They'd started at the beginning of the school and only gotten worse after the USJ attack. Normally Katsuki brushes them off and shimmies himself through until they get the memo and let him pass, because he knows his mother and he knows what she'll say if she thinks he's being violent even if he's just defending his own right to his own fucking space.
Except they don't go after him this time. They go after Icyhot, or at least they try to. It makes sense – the guy's the winner of the Festival, yadda yadda. Katsuki tries to ignore it and grabs Sharky's elbow to make sure he doesn't get stampeded.
Fucking Icyhot doesn't do shit about the reporters though, even when he's got five of them shoving microphones in his face and yelling about statements. He goes blank, eyes staring over their heads in the classic I'm not paying attention look, and just… waits.
Or, no. He's not waiting. He's frozen, like he's some ice sculpture that he's made of himself, and his breathing is speeding up. Katsuki notices this because he's halfway out of the crowd and looking back, trying to see where the rest of the idiots are, and there's a disembodied school uniform hovering over Icyhot's shoulder and waving an arm. Fucking Handyman is there too, but his height and looming isn't doing shit.
They're all stuck, because they're all polite fuckers who don't know how to shove reporters out of their faces, and Katsuki is only two steps away from being grounded but like hell does that matter right now.
"Oi, get the hell back."
It takes some of the reporters by surprise – Sharky tries to grab him by the shoulder – but Katsuki shrugs him off and stomps back over to where Icyhot and his groupies are. The damn reporters make way for him, as they well should.
Katsuki grabs Icyhot by the elbow – he's not an idiot, he's noticed the way the guy doesn't like being touched on the shoulders, and Katsuki had recognized that because he does it – and starts pulling him away. All the while he's got half an eye on the reporters because they're slippery little shits, always trying to take pictures or get statements.
But eventually Handyman and Invisible Girl and even Sharky get with the program, and they escape the extras. Katsuki lets go of Icyhot's elbow when they get far enough away and stuffs his hands into his pockets instead.
Icyhot drags in a breath like he'd just gone diving underwater and has now come up for air. "Thank you," he says quietly, and Katsuki is about to respond to that when Invisible Girl crashes into Icyhot – wait, no, pulls him into a hug – and pulls out a phone.
"Those terrible people," she hisses, and the sheer viciousness dripping from her tone has Katsuki smirking. Ah, finally they're showing their claws. "I'm gonna find out all their stations and have Momo-chan or Iida-kun block 'em from campus."
"Isn't that a teacher's prerogative?" Handyman asks. He's got eyes on the ends of his arms now, no doubt paying attention to the group of reporters they're leaving behind. The rest of the fucking class is supposed to meet them at the shopping district, and Katsuki joins Handyman in making sure no one is trying to fucking tail them.
"Yeah, but they're just gonna tell us that we're overreacting!" Invisible Girl puffs up. "That's what the teachers at my middle school said when I –"
And then she shuts up, because she's not an idiot. There's a period of awkward silence before Icyhot sighs like it hurts him and loops his arm through hers to pat her hand. "I think Aizawa-sensei might listen. And it's illegal for them to be trespassing, anyway."
But something's been bothering Katsuki for a while, because he's been paying attention to the guy that he needs to surpass in order to become Number One. "You deal with that shit a lot?" he asks, and kicks a rock down the street when Sharky turns to look at him, eyes wide. "'cause you didn't do shit to get yourself out of it."
Sharky starts berating him but Katsuki doesn't listen; he only has eyes for Icyhot, who looks up. Those different colored eyes both widen and have the same expression in them – then they narrow.
Invisible Girl is practically vibrating by the time Icyhot admits, "Yes."
"Well then." Katsuki cracks his neck, thinks about it a little.
Not more dangerous, Icyhot had said. More deadly. And then Deku had said something about how Endeavor had come to find him before the match and – not threaten. Commentate? Said something that had set him off muttering murder under his breath, and Katsuki might be a bastard but he's a bastard with morals, damn it.
"Yo, Invisible Girl, you got any names for those news networks yet?"
"Almost!" she replies, because she's efficient. It's one of the things that Katsuki appreciates the most about her. "I'm sending the list off to Momo-chan soon, and then they'll take care of it."
"Nah, put it in the group chat." Sharky looks over, surprised; Katsuki gives him a grin and adds, "If they're getting this bold then it needs t'be a class-wide announcement, yeah? Class Rep can't say shit if it's a public service announcement."
And, glory be, Invisible Girl is on the same wavelength as him and picks up what he's putting down.
So it goes that Katsuki goes into the shopping district with a marginally better mood. It's a good opportunity to observe his idiot classmates, and he takes it with both hands.
Somehow, thank god, nobody comes to attack them. No reporters come up to them and ask privacy-breaking questions. No well-meaning parents or strangers who think they're entitled to their lives come by. Katsuki's still checks the placement of his knives and survival gear three times even though he knows where every single knife, multitool, paracord, and lockpick is.
At the end of the inane shopping trip, in which the girls seem to buy weapons, support gear, and clothing in equal measure while the rest of the class gawk over the newest tech, Icyhot presses a hairclip – something small, thin, could be used as lockpick if it's bent enough out of place – into Invisible Girl's hands. She says something bubbly back and puts it in her hair. It looks a little odd, nothing but air between a floating hairpin and a floating set of clothing –
And then Katsuki realizes, that's where Invisible Girl's head is. There's the physical proof. It's very disconcerting when it's just a floating school uniform or shirt and pants with nobody that's wearing them, but the hairpin draws eyes to where her skull must be, and it's proof that there's somebody piloting the clothes.
Icyhot sees people as they are, in the same way he'd seen Katsuki the entire time they've sparred up until and including the Festival as more than just the violent bastard his mom tries to make him out to be, and Katsuki doesn't… know how to feel about it.
Izuku doesn't know what to do.
A lot of things are stressful right now! The Sports Festival is over, but now they've got to pick a place to do internships and Izuku's been handed the name and contact information of a man that All Might, the Symbol of Peace, shakes in his shoes when talking about, and that's really scary! Kacchan is doing better now that he's allowed to spar with people during school hours instead of having to pick fights after school, and that's good! But there are a lot of things going on and Izuku can't handle all of them, and Deku the hero in training certainly can't.
It's not like there's a lot that he can do, anyway. Iida-kun's brother is in the hospital, and Izuku had thought they were friends but it's not like they're good friends, and it's like Kacchan all over again: there's only so much that Izuku can do when his friend is refusing to talk about it. There's only so much that he can do when he's refusing to admit that something is wrong.
(Kacchan still refuses to admit that anything is wrong, and that's a problem that Izuku's been trying to solve for the last ten years, and – he's digressing.)
So Izuku keeps watch, meets Uraraka-chan's eyes over Iida-kun's head when the latter isn't working, and almost drops all his notebooks when during a very nice conversation post-class Todoroki-kun says, "My condolences."
The class doesn't stop or grow quiet, but it's a near thing. Only Shouji-kun's glare over the top of his mask keeps the rest of them talking, and it looks like to one side of the classroom that Kirishima-kun is holding up most of the conversation. But even Kacchan has looked up from his self-assigned worksheets that he uses to keep ahead of the curriculum, staring at the back of Todoroki-kun's head.
Who doesn't look away from Iida-kun. Iida's jerked his head up, likely not understanding why Todoroki-kun of all people is wishing him well when everyone had been careful not to say anything to Iida-kun. Ingenium is an Aboveground hero, after all, and he's beloved even while out of his hero costume.
And then Todoroki-kun says, "My brother's dead. I know it's not the same thing, but…"
Iida-kun starts sputtering. His glasses are shiny, Izuku can't look at his eyes or see his expression and tell if he's about to cry, and he stands up from his seat, Uraraka-chan right on his heels, and –
And Iida-kun inhales, nose sniffly, and says, "I appreciate the sentiment, Todoroki-san."
Because it's pretty obvious what it is. Class 1-A are heroes in training, they've had powerful Quirks their whole lives, they're the cream of the crop of Japan only outmatched by other top heroics course high schools like Shiketsu. Of course they pay attention. Todoroki-kun and his awkwardness at the beginning of the year had been pretty obvious, and now that Izuku's looking back on it he's pretty sure it's because of all the fuss that'd been made over him.
(Izuku might have twenty or so internet articles about the son of Endeavor bookmarked on his phone; so what? Hagakure-chan had been right, Todoroki-kun values his privacy, and there's no better way to keep tabs on what the media is doing illegally than following said media.)
But Todoroki-kun pays attention, too. Izuku's pretty sure there's a conspiracy going on amongst a quarter of the class because he's tangentially in on it. The girls are pretty tight-knit, even if they float amongst the others, and after that conversation in the stadium hallway during the Festival –
Well, Izuku's had the blinders pulled off. He's talked to Endeavor, Number Two Hero. He has notebooks filled front to back about all his classmates and their Quirks, and Todoroki-kun isn't an exception, and Izuku would have loved nothing more to throw Todoroki-kun's in the man's face and tell him about how he should be proud of his son when his is a Quirk that is leaving behind frost on his skin even with his incredible fine control, let alone what fire would do as a side-effect –
Iida-kun scrubs at his eyes; Uraraka-chan hovers at his shoulder, hands outreached like she'd been mid-hug attempt. Todoroki-kun blinks like he's surprised, before he –
He sits down at Iida-kun's desk, dragging over Tsuyu-chan's chair to do so. He doesn't say anything, though, just sits there and watches with – something on his face, Izuku isn't sure. But it looks… not angry. Not confused either, like Todoroki-kun had been a lot before USJ.
"Do you mind if some of us visit your brother?" Hagakure-chan asks when the silence threatens to drag on. And then the class is in an uproar again, because yeah, that's actually a good point, a classmate's brother is in the hospital and they hadn't gone to visit or done anything to cheer Iida-kun up.
Under the bustle – they'd just gone out to shop as a somewhat-class last weekend, but they hadn't picked up anything for Iida-kun, argh – Izuku sees Todoroki-kun lean in to talk with Iida-kun. They're both quiet, which is normal for Todoroki-kun and is the new normal for Iida-kun after the Sports Festival.
But whatever Todoroki-kun is saying seems to cheer Iida-kun up, so Izuku lets that go and tugs his chair closer to where Uraraka-chan is sitting and making hissed plans with Ashido-chan about a surprise visit with flowers and stuffed animals to a certain hospital room.
If there's one thing that the world seems to eternally do, it is underestimate Todoroki Fuyumi.
She doesn't understand why. She's kept her father's name, even though it had pained her to do it, and people take one look at it and think about Endeavor and then try to suck up to her, like she has nothing in her skull between her years. Fuyumi had kept her brothers together after her brother died, she's kept them sane and alive in these last few trying years. She knows when someone is trying to emotionally manipulate her because her father does it all the time.
She's out of that house, now, and one out of her two brothers is as well. It's the last brother that's giving her trouble.
Not that Shouto could ever be trouble. Sometimes Fuyumi worries, not because Shouto is a bad kid, but because he doesn't… fight back. And oh, god, that's a horrible way to put it, but that's what all the child psychology classes she'd taken while getting her teaching certification had emphasized. Kids like to push the boundaries to see where they are, and that's a normal part of growing up.
Her youngest brother has always stayed within Father's bounds. Fuyumi is the one who'd had to get him that first public transit card, had talked him into sneaking out of the house to visit a corner store at 10PM just because they could. Father leaves him access to money so that he can order in what he needs, but that's traceable and that's a line that can be cut at any point.
Fuyumi is the one who tucks cash into her brothers's go-bags, all painstakingly saved up money from work-study jobs that she funnels to them because she's been college-age and older for a while now and she has a support network she can lean on if she needs someone to spot her for groceries. Natsuo accepts it because he's not an idiot.
Shouto sneaks it back to her, sometimes, and that's the most frustrating thing. She's worried that he doesn't have anything conventionally fun. His false back closet has textbooks about neurology and mathematics and astrophysics and only Shouto knows what else, and Fuyumi is proud of her brother, she is, but that –
That scares her.
Were they any other family, Shouto would have gone to schools with accelerated mathematics and science courses; Fuyumi is sure of it. Shouto might have even graduated early. He would have gone to the top universities in the country, because he'd shown her one of the papers that he'd been reading once, titled If gravity isn't a force, how does it accelerate objects? (Advanced), and she hadn't been able to understand a word of his hesitant explanation about it.
But Shouto understands that kind of math and science. Fuyumi doesn't remember a time when her little brother's eyes hadn't been too-knowing, even as a kid. If he'd even wanted a heroics-tangential job he would have gone into the supports course, but Fuyumi rather doubts that. Her brother seems like he should be one of those people in the old documentaries, a scientist or mathematician or engineer who sends astronauts into space.
In some other softer, kinder universe, maybe. In this one, he is Todoroki Shouto, son of Endeavor, and Fuyumi has never wanted to punch her father in the face more.
At least his new high school teachers seem nice. The attack on the USJ had been the only thing on the news that entire evening, but Shouto had texted her back after midnight and only given her a mild heart attack at the tardiness of the reply. She'd been looking into Aizawa Shouta before that, but after that very public and very traumatic experience of a villain attack at a school, where they were supposed to be safe –
So maybe Fuyumi had gone a little overboard in shaking her network of connections until information fell out. She has more than what Natsuo and Shouto both think she has, after all. Her old roommates and classmates from university are there, true, but she's at an elementary school teaching kids with Quirks. With the rising number of villain attacks in everyday life, everyone who teaches public school is looped into the local Hero Network. By local and government law, the school she teaches at is a SAFE Point where kids who get lost in villain attacks or separated from their parents can stay and be picked up from.
And the local heroes she'd all carefully dropped Aizawa's name to had turned up mixed information on the Pro Hero Eraserhead. Some of them hadn't known who she was talking about; others knew, and had only praise to sing. Some had rumors, which she hadn't mentioned to Shouto because he deserves a mentor and an authority figure who's stable, not a scruffy old man who lives off of jelly packets.
And, yeah, some of the rumors had been unkind. They'd been the usual spiel about Underground Heroics that Fuyumi have heard about – both arguments, for and against – for years now. How it's dangerous to give people a license to subvert the law, they should be transparent about their work like the rest of the Pro Hero world, they're stepping on law enforcement's toes, the whole works.
But some of those heroes in the Network had pointed her in the direction of the message forums discussing Underground hero sightings, and Fuyumi had picked up the rest of her information from there.
Her contacts had come through with the man's teaching certifications, too, of which Fuyumi had been surprised to see quite a few famous program names. One of her friends had even gotten her the man's letters of recommendation – for both the certification programs and his job at U.A. – which Fuyumi is mildly sure through illegal means, but it's for Shouto. She refuses to feel bad about it.
The letters had just reinforced what the message board and the overwhelming majority of the Hero Network says. Eraserhead doesn't leave a job half-done. He had the lowest civilian casualty count for the district. If you need someone who can take care of a matter quietly and discreetly, ask for him.
That, combined with the rumors about the U.A.'s principal – a giant white rat who has large scars, and Fuyumi is an elementary school teacher, not an idiot; she knows what the bio research labs on her university campus had done with their rats, as humane and as kindly as they'd tried to treat them – had made her decision.
Her brother will be mortified when he finds out what she has planned, but that's fine. She is the eldest, which gives her the right to plan nice things for Shouto even if it embarrasses him. And after the way he'd called her right after the Festival, when any other winner would have been breathless with happiness and her little brother had been breathless with fear and panic –
Fuyumi has a lot of plans.
"Are you sure you want him?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Can you imagine the looks on their faces? Especially when they realize who's joined us! The one with the explosions will be a good fit, but he will be the real coup de grace."
"He is the son of a pro hero. He will be hard to convince."
"Ah, but you see, that would be the joy of it. You saw him during that Festival – an ice coffin! Hypothermia, straight from his hand! He's ruthless."
"He is pragmatic."
"It's only a matter of time until he slips up, and then the heroes won't want anything to do with him. They'll –"
"- suspend him. Why is he in that school? Why did U.A. do nothing?"
"He is the child of Endeavor. What else did you expect?"
"How is the Number Two doing? Any response from his Management team?"
"Reports indicate he's continuing to train his son. Why, did you want to pass along a note?"
"No. But the handlers over at Hawks's agency did mention that he'll be interning with them next week."
"Ah. The perfect opportunity, then. If U.A. won't suspend him for such reckless endangerment and behavior, then obviously we will need to take him in hand ourselves."
"Legacy children are strong, after all. And think of the narrative!"
"A son following in his father's footsteps – of course, with the Commission's blessing."
"He's a first-year student. The timing is perfect, and with him interning with Hawks…"
"That Quirk is strong. Maybe it's a good thing that damn rat has been stonewalling us these last ten years. He won't be expecting us to bring Todoroki into the fold."
"He thinks we've given up."
"He's a fool."
"We'll have to move slowly."
"That's fine. After all, this is an opportunity we can't afford to lose."
Notes:
Eijirou: ...Todoroki, bro, that was the manliest attempt at expressing sympathy I've seen from you!!
Eijirou: Also, Todoroki, what the fuck??
I have a lot of thoughts on Bakugou Katsuki's canonical parents/home situation, too. Canonically he is very quick to pick up things and also seems to be self-taught on how to fight, as well as how to propel himself with his explosions into something approaching flight. That kind of experience has to come from somewhere, and with two parents who are in the fashion industry and who also yelled at him post-canon kidnapping - well. Kids don't learn behaviors from nowhere.
On a lighter note, a couple of keen-eyed readers noted in Chapter 5 that the person who eavesdropped in the hallway might not have been Bakugou in this fic. Kudos to you!! :D
My headcanon is that Hagakure is the Gossip Godmother of Class 1-A who knows Everyone and Everything. She doesn't often impart her knowledge, but when she does you know her information is good. Kirishima, on the other hand, is in basically All the Group Chats Ever: he's goofy, lovable, and the local Bakugou Whisperer. Everyone wants him in their chats.
Aizawa Shouta is a homeroom teacher, which in Japan (and thus in the context of BNHA and this fic) is a very specific role with very specific responsibilities. He's trying his best. Which isn't to say he's infallible - something that I'll dabble with in this fic. ;)
Class 1-A can't actually visit Iida Tensei since he's under guard and also in the ICU still, but they do send their flowers and stuffed animals to Ingenium's hero agency, joining the massive pile of goodwill gifts there.
That article about gravity is a real article written by a physics PhD who studies general relativity.
Also I didn't manage to stuff it into this chapter, but I just want everyone to know that after Hagakure Tooru's disaster of a hero costume, Power Loader went through everyone's costumes for safety ratings.