Chapter Text
Things don’t go back to normal, because that’s probably not even possible, to be honest.
“You student-taught a class of well-known baby gremlin Heroes,” Yuki points out via video call, already graduated, installed in the UA teacher dorm full-time and wreaking untold havoc in her role as a traveling Science teacher. Next year, she’ll probably get a Homeroom class of her own baby gremlin Heroes, and then the world will end, most likely. “And then you helped them fend off an invading team of villains. Like, I don’t know what you were expecting life after that to look like.”
Masahiro knows that, objectively. It’s just that his fears of being clocked, of being seen, and analyzed by eyes that he can’t read the intentionality of don’t go away with one lonely act of courage. He’s not magically cured of the greenish fear that curls inside his blood like acid just because he managed to use his powers to throw a single (poorly executed) punch. Part of his work this extra semester of classes, outside of completely re-working his Capstone essay at zero hour of his academic career like a champion, is finding a specialist to assist him channeling his Quirk in more productive ways. Masahiro is pretty sure this was Principal Nedzu’s suggestion, even if he can’t recall a definitive moment when Principal Nedzu actually suggested it. Masahiro mentioned to Aizawa in their semi-regular emails back and forth since Masahiro’s student teaching that he’s going to need tips on how to manage conversations with Principal Nedzu upon his actual assignment to UA.
Aizawa’s response to this was a single-sentence email, which read: The tip to managing Nedzu-conversations is to accept that you will never be able to manage these conversations. `
So. That’s promising.
But even though things don’t go back to normal, Masahiro himself is so spectacularly unremarkable that even starry-eyed Education Track freshman stop approaching him after a few weeks. The events of his time student-teaching at UA lent him a temporary aura of interest. At first, people approached him and Yuki with questions, with curiosity. And when Yuki was there to field it, people left satisfied. But then, Yuki graduated and left for UA, leaving Masahiro behind to his extra semester of classes. And Masahiro’s tendency to fumble answers, or to shut down completely into overwhelmed non-responsiveness, drove most of the still-curious away. He still gets the occasional question. But mostly, he gets whispers when he walks by, and that’s doing absolutely nothing for the twanging, acid-bright ribbons of his Quirk that want to escape his hands at any moment.
“You are remarkable, though,” Yuki likes to point out, and then trap Masahiro in place while he tries his instinctive attempts to escape nice words. “Like. Masahiro. You punched a villain in the face and through a wall. You survived and thrived under the notoriously crazy Aizawa-Sensei. Once, when we were twelve, I watched you re-route a burst of your Quirk energy through sheer force of will because you withering the plants I’d bloomed would have ‘made you sad’.”
“Please stop,” Masahiro begged, squirming under the weight of Yuki’s restraining leg. He has so many inches of height on her, but she has the power of her determination to make Masahiro believe nice things about himself. “Please. I’m going to get hives.”
So, even if things don’t go back to the way they were, people are mostly content to leave Masahiro alone to his studies and his Capstone writing and his sweaty attempts to answer the occasional question someone dares to ask. It’s not peaceful, but it’s peaceable enough, and Masahiro thinks that he might actually make it to graduation without making any further waves on his college campus.
And then, in the final twenty minutes of his “Pedagogy of Heroics Instruction” seminar on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, the lecture hall door bangs open mid-‘best utilizing curriculum to strengthen Quirk understanding’, and two little heads appear around the wooden frame like a herald of doom.
Masahiro has one, single, windblown second of shock to numbly process ‘that’s Uraraka’s head’ before the head question grins like a shark, and then bellows down the hallway, “MASAHIRO-SENSEI! GUYS, WE FOUND HIM!”
“Booyah,” cheers the second head, which Masahiro belatedly realizes belongs to Kaminari.
“Did you take the bus here,” Masahiro hears himself ask from somewhere far away, calling out the assorted bullshit of Class 1-A already muscle memory even after only five weeks with them. “Are you cutting class. Did you break into this building.”
He doesn’t even bother putting question marks at the end of these sentences. That would be a pointless exercise.
Also from somewhere far away, Masahiro recognizes that the lecture hall has fallen silent. That even the professor is staring at Masahiro in confused alarm. It’s understandable. The kids are in street clothes; aren’t always immediately recognizable outside of their Hero costumes or class uniforms.
What is immediately recognizable is the silhouette of today’s apparent chaperone, a tall and spindly shadow in the classroom doorway that commands just as much presence as he did when he was muscled and massive.
As Masahiro feels every ounce of blood leave his face, his cognitive functions sent spinning away to very distant lands, he hears someone in the classroom hiss out, high and frantic, “Is that All Might?”
Masahiro can’t feel his toes. Or his fingertips. Of the frenetic whine of his Quirk, which’s he locked down on total instinct.
“Uraraka,” All Might says, low and filled with good humor. “Kaminari. I believe we’ve interrupted Masahiro-Sensei’s class.” All Might bows a little in the instructor’s direction. “Our apologies. The students were anxious to see their Masahiro-Sensei again.”
The instructor makes a noise like a long-used squeaky toy caught in the death throes.
“We didn’t break into the building,” Uraraka announces. Everything about her sentence implies ‘but I could have—mere mortal locks cannot contain me’. “We’re on a field trip.”
“So this is, like, a college classroom,” Kaminari adds, eyes darting around curiously, talking at his normal pace of ‘aggressively caffeinated typewriter’. “Wow. Bet if I sat in the back Aizawa-Sensei couldn’t hit me with chalkboard erasers when I fall asleep.”
“Actually,” says a new voice, and then Midoriya’s fluffy green head appears around All Might’s side, all overbright eyes and wide smile. “Aizawa-Sensei’s stats indicate that he could hit you with a chalkboard eraser from an entire building away. So I don’t really think there’s a classroom big enough for you to hide your desk-napping, Kaminari!”
“Eh,” Kaminari says, apparently resigned to his forever-status as ‘chalkboard eraser target’.
“Fucking nerd,” adds a lower, gravely voice. Bakugou appears on Midoriya’s heels, as he often does even though he’d immolate the first person to suggest it out loud, a veritable storm cloud of a teenager who fears neither death nor All Might. This is evidenced by the way he jams an elbow against Midoriya’s ribs and says, “Shut up, shitty Deku. You’re so loud.”
“How many did you bring with you?” Masahiro numbly asks All Might (All Might, the eternal #1, the Symbol of Peace, standing right here in Masahiro’s lecture hall and staring him right in the face).
All Might does an exhausted kind of head count. This is very relatable. Class 1-A consists of 20 students. Theoretically. Aizawa liked to say that at any given moment, the number of them could multiply exponentially. Masahiro didn’t understand what that meant until the first time he was assigned to check in on their Dorm after school hours, and suddenly there seemed to be 200 students to wrangle instead of the agreed-upon amount.
“Six,” he says. “I think, six?”
An unspoken tremor goes through the classroom. It’s the bone deep terror, shared between two people who know exactly what 1-A are capable of, having clocked that there are only currently 4 children in attendance, and are now sharing the same thought of ‘oh shit, we’re missing two, where are they and what havoc are they wreaking’.
Masahiro’s terrified understanding of this only grows into actual alarm bells when Midoriya blinks his big, baby animal eyes around the room and says, “Huh. Where did Todoroki go?”
“Their classroom teacher just let them go?” whispers one of Masahiro’s classmates. “Away from class, on a bus, in the middle of a school day?”
All Might flashes a warm smile at Masahiro’s whispering classmate. Explains, good-naturedly, “I believe their classroom teacher’s exact words were ‘get these six gremlins out of my classroom before I capture-weapon them to the ceiling to stop their whining for their Masahiro-Sensei’.”
Masahiro’s classmate lets out a dying-squeaky-toy sound of her own. Masahiro feels his skin flush red, warm and pleased, in spite of the fact that a decent chunk of Class 1-A is here, in the hallowed halls of higher education, which is in no way equipped to handle the chaos that accompanies them like some kind of fairytale curse.
“I know it’s incredibly rude,” All Might continues at Masahiro’s instructor. “I just needed to borrow a moment of Masahiro-Sensei’s time. I didn’t mean to interrupt your lesson. Please; continue. We can wait until you’re done.”
“Can I participate in the rest of the lesson, All Might-Sensei?” Uraraka asks in the sugar-sweet tones of someone who will listen for exactly five seconds, and then start intentionally toppling long-held academic principles. Masahiro wonders if she and Yuki have spent any meaningful time together yet. What it means for the world once they do.
Faintly, in the tones of someone who doesn’t even remember what a ‘lesson’ is in spite of having a PHD in advance pedagogical practices, Masahiro’s instructor says, “No, I…I think we were done. Done for the day.”
There’s still fifteen minutes on the clock until class end time. The professor stopped mid-point. But Masahiro is not about to remind the instructor of this—not when the other alternative is letting Uraraka invite herself to lesson. Not that Masahiro wants to bar her from learning. Not that Masahiro thinks he even could. Mostly because the instructor already looks like she might lose her grip on sanity, and Uraraka’s involvement would do nothing to improve that particular situation. Aizawa is her homeroom teacher for a reason, and it’s mostly because he was able to stare her dead in the face when she said ‘Aizawa-Sensei, if I learn math super well, does that mean I can calculate the exact amount of force needed to break noses with my kitten heels’ without flinching.
What follows the dismissal of class is a brief interlude of Masahiro’s classmates approaching All Might like some kind of wonderstruck, drifting cloud of admiration. All Might handles this with the grace and warm-natured good-humor of long practice.
Of course, this leaves the students of 1-A unattended, which they immediately take advantage of. Masahiro is totally engulfed, at various rates of speed (Uraraka and Kaminari are there immediately, Midoriya follows shortly after, and Bakugou drags his feet over to billow at the edges of their group like he doesn’t want to be there, which…Masahiro doubts that Bakugou can actually be sent anywhere he doesn’t want to go, but the trick to him as a person is never pointing out that his presence in your space is actually voluntary). Todoroki is still lost in some as-of-yet undetermined place (Masahiro imagines they’ll pinpoint his location shortly, either by the sounds of explosions, or people fleeing the total devastation of his deadpan responses). And there’s still one student unnamed and also unaccounted for. Masahiro doesn’t know which one, but in terms of ‘total chaos factored’ it actually doesn’t matter.
“Masahiro-sensei,” Midoriya sings out. “You’re okay!”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?” Masahiro asks back. He did miss them dearly; seeing them again fills his heart like gentle morning sunshine. But Masahiro refuses to allow the fondness swelling inside his chest show on his face. This is also a tip Aizawa gave him, and explains the man’s total lack of facial expression 98% of the time. Masahiro is not nearly as good at it as Aizawa; he suspects that his face betrays everything he feels, and that Uraraka is using this as an excuse to be totally unapologetic about her presence here today.
“I mean,” Kaminari says. “The last time we saw you, Teach, you were still wrapped up in bandages from punching a villain in a face and getting rocked into a wall.”
“Badly,” Bakugou mutters. “Badly punching a villain in the face.”
“Your hand’s okay?” Midoriya continues, all earnest sweetness. His eyes are very large. This is a particular ability of his, and one that Masahiro suspects Midoriya doesn’t even know to be Quirk-levels of effective.
Masahiro presents his hand for examination. There are scars; there always will be. The sudden surge of using his Quirk after so many years totally repressing it led to a burst of power that battered his hands, scorched some of his nerve endings. Masahiro can’t bend his pinky fully in half anymore and he suspects he’ll never be able to again.
But these are Hero course students. Which means they don’t fret and freak out and yell about ‘acceptable working conditions’ like Masahiro’s classmates did when he returned to campus after his time at UA. Masahiro found their reaction extremely off-putting. Like his insides were recoiling from it. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why until Yuki helped him puzzle it out.
“It’s different,” she said, alone in her apartment later that night, nursing bandages of her own from barring the classroom door before the villains could get to her own students while Ectoplasm was out of the room. “These weren’t…these kids didn’t scream or cry or even get visibly scared. Mine would have blown the door down and gone to fight had I not threatened to tie them up by their ankles with pretty, pretty flowers if they tried for it because not all of them have Provisional licenses. Yours did go, no questions asked. We’re told, as teachers, that we’re supposed to protect our kids. But that looks different with kids like these.” Yuki held up her arm, cut deep from wrapping vines around her biceps and straining to keep the doors closed against battering arms and feet and Quirks. Those would scar, too, Recovery Girl said. Masahiro wonders, he really does, when studying his own soon-to-be-scars, how Principal Nedzu knew this about them when selecting student teacher candidates. “Protecting these kids doesn’t mean ‘no hurts’. It means we minimize the damage as much as we can, while knowing that we can’t protect them from everything, and it’s hard for some people to understand that difference.”
It’s true, Masahiro reflects. Midoriya alone, as he studies Masahiro’s hands with concern but not distress, has more scars at fifteen-years-old than many adults will accumulate in their entire lifetime. It’s hard, as a teacher, to consider your own hurts when you know that your students’ scars will outnumber your own.
“Aizawa-Sensei says you’re coming to teach at UA,” Kaminari announces, all bright and crackling excitement. “Like, full time.”
Masahiro gives him a tiny pat on the shoulder to remind him to calm down a little, lest he accidentally fry the lecture hall’s electronic equipment. Masahiro’s Pedagogy professor is a brilliant woman who quails in the face of technology more difficult to operate than a standard projector. The University has apparently been threatening to update the lecture halls with technologically advanced whiteboards for a while now, and Masahiro fears his professor’s implosion should Kaminari hurry that process along with his Quirk.
“I have to finish my own classes first,” Masahiro reminds him. “And submit my Capstone essay. And then Principal Nedzu needs to interview me properly. So, nothing’s assured yet. But it is my goal, yes.”
“Like your entire student teaching experience wasn’t a job interview,” Bakugou sneers. “If Principal Nedzu didn’t want to hire you, you never would have gotten twenty feet from the school.”
Sometimes, Masahiro remembers how he thought, during his very first day with Class 1-A, that Bakugou was acting up because he didn’t understand the academics of the Hero Track and was embarrassed about it. Remembers how—after one attempt to check a paper which resulted in a blistering rebuke that took off entire layers of metaphorical skin—he realized that every one of Bakugou’s answers was correct and that bad temper, for him, was a personality trait without any real root cause.
“Thank you for your support,” Masahiro says with a gentle smile, because he knows this about Bakugou now, too. How to dig underneath the blister-fire of his words and find the real meaning.
“Will you work with us?” Midoriya asks.
“That’s for Principal Nedzu to decide,” Masahiro explains. “It depends on open positions.”
But Masahiro has his suspicions. Yuki was given the traveling Science teacher position for Year 3 students, which meant she was able to continue working with the students she’d had during her student teaching. And, when he was at UA, Cementoss audibly announced that he was looking for a reduction in his traveling History teacher duties, in order to more evenly split his time between his Homeroom students and his Hero patrols.
“You like History, don’t you, Masahiro-Sensei?” Masahiro remembers Principal Nedzu asking, during their initial meeting. “I believe your college transcript shows a strong preference toward supplementary classes of that nature.”
“He knows everything,” Masahiro remembers blurting out to Aizawa one night, fifteen hours into a ten-hour day and deeply crazy with it. “Just…everything.”
“Mmhmm,” Aizawa agreed, with the placid tones and quietly crazy eyes of someone who knew this already, and has long since come to terms with it.
“It was Principal Nedzu who requested that I come see you,” All Might explains, having gently dispatched the last of his devoted fans and drifted his way toward their group.
Standing in All Might’s immediate presence, Masahiro immediately feels small. Not in a bad way—Masahiro knows all too well what it feels like to be bad-way small in the presence of others, words shriveled up by fear, quiet vocal cords rattling together like strips of jerky with no way to force anything past them. Stoppered up by anxiety, trapped inside your own skin, and so unable to contribute in any kind of present, purposeful way that you shrink as a result.
But, with All Might, Masahiro’s ‘small’ means ‘able to be protected’. In spite of the fact that, in All Might’s present form, he’s entire inches shorter and far lankier than even Masahiro and his ever-present elbows and knees. It’s an aura, or an energy, that just rolls off of All Might in waves. ‘I am here, and I will protect you—no matter what I currently look like’. A certainty, Masahiro supposes. All Might seems incredibly certain, even in the way he carries himself, and that is deeply bewildering for Masahiro, who has never been certain of anything save for his own ability to mess things up.
Masahiro tries, to the best of his ability, to muster up some kind of coherent response. He still sounds like a slowly deflating balloon when he manages, “Oh, I…really? What for?”
He can see Uraraka smirking sympathetically at him in the corner of his eye. But, as Aizawa once said, ‘Don’t acknowledge it. Ignoring the attitudes won’t make them go away, but it will make it so that you can believably claim innocence ten years from now when outraged officials are coming our way demanding to know what the hell we taught 1-A to make them like this.’
Masahiro has preemptive pity, sometimes, for the people who will have to deal with 1-A in their terrifying, final-form, adult capacity. He also has doubts about Aizawa’s attempts to claim unawareness—Masahiro has seen some of the man’s personal records, after his time at UA. He knows things now. Aizawa might not be teaching his students behaviors directly, but things are definitely being picked up regardless. Things might be being put down on purpose, but quietly enough to maintain plausible deniability.
“Principal Nedzu mentioned that you were looking for a tutor in better controlling your Quirk,” All Might explains. “I asked if he considered my services acceptable enough.”
Masahiro has a single, airless second to process that All Might is here because apparently All Might is going to work with Masahiro directly on managing his Quirk.
But he doesn’t get more than a single second to process this, Quirk just starting to pop in his chest like tiny, agitated fireworks, because three things happen next in rapid succession.
- There’s the sound of a small, contained explosion somewhere in the immediate vicinity
- Uraraka says, “Oh, found Todoroki. Was it a bad idea to leave with Hagakure, do you think?”
- And Midoriya beams, all shiny-bright earnestness, and says, “All Might’s been working with me, too, Masahiro-Sensei! We’ll get to work together—won’t that be fun?”
Masahiro gapes at everyone assembled, brain fully blue-screened and headed toward total shutdown, hands cradled protectively against his chest.