Chapter Text
“The line from villain to hero is one you’re never going to cross.”
A third year Midoriya gritted his teeth at the new HPSC president. “But I’m set to graduate from a quality hero school. I’ve passed the licensing exam. I’ve done everything right to make up for my criminal background.”
“And while I know our last president told you that would be enough… he was removed from office for a reason,” he responded with a sly look.
Midoriya had to bite back a scoff. “Right, removed. I’m sure that’s what happened to him.”
“See, this is what I’m talking about.” The president leaned forward onto his desk, lacing his fingers in front of his face. The way the light reflected off his perfectly oiled back dark hair was beginning to annoy Midoriya. “If you would just stop being so antagonistic towards what this organization is trying to accomplish, then maybe your history as a villain wouldn’t be such a huge obstacle to you obtaining your license.”
“You mean going on TV and supporting how you’re demonizing villains or propping up flashy heroes.”
“Exactly!” the president exclaimed with an easy smile, and Midoriya’s eyes widened at how readily he admitted the commission's schemes. “A former League member supporting the HPSC? The whole ‘villains have hearts too!’ crowd would have nothing to say against us.”
This time, Midoriya couldn’t hold back his scoff. “That’s never happening. What this organization is trying to accomplish is completely against my beliefs.”
“Beliefs.” The president dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “Those are more for people who like starting a ruckus, aren’t they?”
“Only if those beliefs are different from what’s expected,” Midoriya muttered.
“And that’s why you’re never becoming a hero.” The president picked up a red X stamp and raised it over Midoriya’s license rejection reconsideration papers. “Sorry, but you just don’t fit into the world we’re trying to build.”
“Wait.” Midoriya grabbed his wrist before the stamp could land. The president raised his eyebrows as the teen took a deep, shaky breath. “I’ll stop trying.”
The president’s eyes gleamed, and he tilted his head. “Trying what?”
“To be a hero. I’ll stop all my efforts of becoming some sort of symbol. I won’t support what you do, but that’ll give your opposition less fuel.”
A lump rose in Midoriya’s throat as he said the words, while the president just smiled. “Well, I can see the appeal in that.”
“But I want something in return.”
Midoriya looked the president firmly in the eyes, pushing down the part of his heart that was screaming at the thought of giving up on being a hero. The president set the red stamp aside.
“Let’s hear it.”
Nezu poured tea and offered it to Midoriya, and though the lack of choice used to be somewhat unnerving, now it was a comforting consistency. “I must say, you’ve held a variety of professions these last seven years!”
He glanced down at the work experience section of his resume. He knew he hadn’t really needed to bring it - Nezu had been the one to offer him the job, after all - but an interview was still an interview. The section had a long list of positions at quirkless support organizations and villain rehabilitation centers, particularly the one at Might Tower. The longest lasting job he had was as an assistant to Detective Tsukauchi.
“You’ve tried to get the closest to being a hero as you can without a license,” Nezu said, a hint of remorse in his tone.
Midoriya’s deep breath turned into a sigh. “Yeah. None of them felt quite right. I mean, not that I wasn’t happy helping. It just… wasn’t enough, I guess.”
“You felt like you could be doing more,” Nezu concluded.
He nodded. “And one of the cases I was working on with Tsukauchi, we haven’t made any progress on in months. So your offer came at the perfect time.” He narrowed his eyes. “Which was probably on purpose, wasn’t it?”
Nezu only widened his grin. “I like to stay up to date on several of my favorite students’ lives! They just don’t always know it.” Midoriya gulped. “So, you believe you might finally find satisfaction in this job?”
He looked down at the long list of failed attempts on his resume, the corner of his mouth pulling into a slight grimace. “I don’t know. Even when I was a villain, being a hero was what was right for me. And I can’t prove to people it’s possible for someone to work past their mistakes and become something better, when I’m stuck not allowed to become something better. It just-” he let out a sharp sigh, “it feels like I’m filling a bucket with steam and calling it full.”
Nezu’s smile was small and understanding now, and he looked down at the tea in his paws. “Well, while you wouldn’t be able to prove to all people that kind of change is possible, you would be able to prove it to a few. And those few could go on to make a big difference in the world, much like how your classmates have become role models of what it is to be a true hero in today’s society.”
Midoriya puffed a small breath out his nose. “You really think I’d be able to have that kind of influence on a class?”
“I’d say so! The lessons you taught here as a student on how villains operate certainly left their mark on 1-A, and Aizawa found them valuable enough to have you as a guest teacher several times!”
That brought a small smile to Midoriya’s face. “That’s true. And you said some of the students would be villains, right? How many?”
“Due to the experimental nature of this class, there will only be ten students in total,” Nezu explained, pulling out a few papers and sliding them over to Midoriya. “Of those ten, five will be villains.”
On the papers, Midoriya read about the rules and procedures of the experimental villain rehabilitation program, including the villain selection process. He noticed several parallels to his rehabilitation experience at UA, after he’d turned himself in. It appeared Nezu had used that as a base to work off. With a nod he said, “I have a few notes, but that’s for another time. Overall, yeah, this looks good.”
“This also means you’ll have a longstanding influence on the exact kind of people you’re trying to help - people just like how you were.” Nezu tilted his head at him.
Midoriya kept his eyes on the papers, though he was no longer reading them. He’d worked with villains before, in all different stages of reformation. But no one this young, and never this long-term. Not to mention the connections he could form with the hero students.
Maybe this job would be different.
He gave Nezu a small but confident smile. “This sounds like a class I’d like to give a shot.”
“Fantastic!” Nezu clapped his paws together and chuckled. “It seems this interview became me trying to convince you to take the job, instead of the other way around!”
Midoriya laughed too. “Whoops.”
“I’ll get you on track to acquire teaching credentials, so you’ll be all set for our little experiment by the time the school year starts in the spring.” Nezu gave him a smile that was a little sharper than his others. “After all these years, you’re still my guinea pig!”
He rubbed the back of his neck with a nervous grin. “Hope this experiment goes as well as the last one, then.”
“Do I even have to ask if your interview went well?” Uraraka asked with a small smirk when her husband entered her office in her joint agency.
Midoriya snickered as he walked around her desk. “You were right, Nezu never wasn’t going to hire me.”
After bending down for a quick kiss, he leaned back against her desk, and Uraraka tilted her head at his expression. “You seem a bit more hopeful for this one. Do you think it’ll be like when you taught at UA, when we were students?”
He gave her a small shrug. “Guess I’ll find out. It’ll obviously be a little different, ‘cause I’ll be teaching kids younger than me, who I don’t know as well. I just hope I’ll feel like I’m making a difference.” He looked her in the eyes. “Nezu will be using my class as the first trial run of a villain rehabilitation program.”
Uraraka raised her eyebrows. “So you’ll be working with kids… like you.”
He nodded. “Like how I was, yeah. I mean, it’ll be a mix of hero and villain students, but yes.”
She rested her hand on top of where his hand was placed at the edge of her desk. “I already know your influence will be a good one.”
An appreciative smile spread across his face. “I hope so.” He tapped the area beside a small stack of paperwork sitting in front of her. “Looks like you had more incidents during your patrol today. Want me to do that paperwork for you?”
“You’ve been doing all my paperwork for me for the last week!”
His smile widened with a laugh. “I like helping!”
After seeing he’d be a lot happier doing all the paperwork than she would be, she stood up from her chair with a small mutter of, “fine… thank you. But that means dinner’s on me.”
“Alright, got it,” he chuckled, sitting down in her chair. “Besides, this makes your work simpler and less strenuous. So that makes giving up my time worth it, ‘cause you’re the one doing the real hero work and helping-”
She gave his shoulder a light shove, and her frown made him hesitate before picking up a pen. “Don’t you dismiss all the people you’ve helped too. Whether it’s making sure quirkless people get the support they need, or talking it out with unsure villains, or helping Tsukauchi with a case he’s stuck on, you’ve helped people. While you may not be a hero in the traditional sense, you’re still a hero.”
He clicked his pen. “Wish it felt that way.”
Uraraka clenched her jaw, and she was ready to argue further, even if it was a conversation they’d circled through several times already. She didn’t get the chance though, because Mina popped her head into the office. She grinned at the sight of Midoriya doing Uraraka’s paperwork.
“Hey, can I get you to do my paperwork for me too?” she snickered.
He shook his head with a smile. “Get Shinso to do yours.”
“Nah.” She waved him off as she walked the rest of the way into the room. “He’s helping Kirishima with a drug busting operation right now, it’s going well though!”
After spending their first couple years after graduation as sidekicks, Uraraka and Mina gave opening their own agency a shot. It had been small and burdensome at the start, but over time they found their footing, and the freedom of running everything themselves was rewarding.
That freedom also meant they could decorate the agency however they wanted. Bit by bit, they’d added several space-themed decorations, ranging from big things like dangling star lights, to small things like pens with planets on them.
Like the pen Midoriya had in his hand.
“That means Hitoshi should be back by tomorrow,” Mina continued. “We still good for Thursday?”
They both nodded, and Mina cheered. Uraraka gestured for her to continue with a lopsided grin. “Is that all you came in here for or…?”
“Oh right! Midoriya!” He looked up from what he was writing. “There’s someone they need your help interrogating at the police station!”
His head fell to the side. “This is the third person this week, and it’s Tuesday.”
“...well you always manage to get through to them, so they kinda sorta want your help again. And uh,” she gave the paperwork an apologetic glance, “they said it was time-sensitive. Sounds like they’re trying to catch this guy’s buddies before they escape.”
Midoriya let out a small sigh, before looking to Uraraka, who patted his back. He stood up and said, “looks like dinner’s on me.”
She shook her head. “Let’s make it together, how about that?”
He smiled and nodded. “Alright.”
As he left the office, Mina called out, “and this time you can’t spend an hour talking to our two sidekicks about their quirks and fighting styles!”
“I won’t have to, because I gave them a notebook on all that this morning!”
“You better not scare our very first sidekicks off!!”
Midoriya left the agency with the light feeling of laughter in his chest. Though his life wasn’t quite where he wanted it, he couldn’t deny the people in it were amazing.
“News has come in on the villain Deku, sir.”
The president looked up from the article he was reading on Gentle Hero and La Brava’s surprisingly high approval ratings. He gestured for the agent to enter and tilted his head. “Well, what is it?”
“He’s…” the agent placed some papers on the president’s desk. “He’s applied for teaching credentials in heroics.”
The president raised his eyebrows a little. “That’s what he’s trying now, is it? Well, it’s not in disagreement with our deal, though… usually heroics teachers are either current or retired pros. That, combined with his history, would be enough to deny him those credentials.”
“Would you like me to send the order, sir?”
The president thought for a moment, before dismissing the idea with a shrug. “Nah, like I said, he’s keeping up his side of the deal. Not much of a point in denying him this, though it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep an eye on his teaching. Actually…”
He opened up a drawer in his desk and flipped through a few files, before pulling out one. After briefly reviewing its contents, he handed it to the agent.
“This person is perfect for the job. Let them know they’ve got a mission at UA coming up.”
“Izuku, it’s past midnight,” Uraraka scolded, walking up to Midoriya’s makeshift office, which consisted of a bunch of papers and notebooks strewn over a large chair in the living area. “And you do realize there are like, three tables in this apartment you could use.”
He rubbed the back of his neck with a grin. “I started this here, so I didn’t want to move.”
She gave him a fond sigh. “Well, you can finish whatever this is tomorrow, because right now you should be moving to get some sleep. Don’t you have that meeting with Nezu tomorrow morning?”
“Yeah…” he stood up from the chair, “I just wanted to figure this out.”
Uraraka glanced at all his papers. “And what exactly is ‘this’?” He picked up one of the notebooks and tapped its title. “Lesson plans? Izuku, you don’t even know who your students are going to be yet!”
“I know, but-” he flipped open the notebook, running his finger past some of the notes he’d made. “Five villains and five heroes. That’s a different class dynamic from anything I know or anything I can study!”
“You were a villain in a class of heroes, surely that gives you some pointers,” Uraraka said, and she pursed her lips when he started pacing across the living area.
“Yes, but I was a cooperative villain willing to change and accept people, at least after some time. What if some of these villains are stubborn and don’t want to listen? Not to mention there are an equal number of heroes and villains. That’d be enough to split the class in two if connections aren’t formed between the two types of students, so then the question becomes how do I connect them? I have to design lesson plans that teaches heroic essentials, while being aware of the villain perspective, in a way that encourages interaction between-”
His sentence broke off so he could make a small sound of surprise, finding Uraraka’s lips brushing against his. She pulled back and gave him a small smirk, hand still holding the side of his head. “You were mumbling.”
He laughed a little apologetically, before turning to face her fully and looping his arms around her waist. Tilting his head forward, he let their foreheads bump together. “You’re right. I’ll have plenty of time to work on this later. Thank you.”
“So that means you’re gonna get some sleep now…?”
The distance between their mouths closed and they kissed. Short and sweet, but meaningful, and they separated smiling.
“Now I’ll get some sleep,” he grinned as he stepped back.
“Good,” she said, her smile satisfied. “Besides, wouldn’t want Nezu getting mad at you for not being fully awake during a meeting with him.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled. “Especially since that meeting is for going over the students I’ll be teaching.”
“So, why don’t we start with the hero students!”
Midoriya flipped through the ten files, skimming the names of the hero students. “Well, at least one of these students I already knew about beforehand.”
Eri walked into the classroom with a smile, her thumbs tucked under the straps of her backpack. This was the moment she’d dreamed of ever since she understood what a hero was.
She was the first to arrive, and when she looked around for some indication of where she was supposed to sit, she found none. She chose a seat in the front row, beside the window.
Her feet couldn’t stop tapping as she waited for the rest of her classmates to arrive.
“You’re one of the most qualified to give her the guidance she needs on her quirk,” Nezu said as he placed her file to the side, and Midoriya nodded. “Of course, there are other students you’ve influenced too.”
“Hey, I don’t have that strong of a quirk either,” said a boy with wavy brown hair, placing his hand on the shoulder of a boy with saucers in his hair. “But someone I look up to told me I can still be a hero, so that means you can too!”
The second boy smiled as they entered the classroom together. “I’ve had the same happen to me, but I don’t know, guess I still get doubts.”
“Well, that’s part of why we have classmates, right? To encourage each other. What’s your name?”
“I’m Dai,” he said, and the boys chose seats next to each other in the middle of the classroom. “What about you?”
“Katsuma.” He sat down in his chair with a sigh of relief. Maybe making friends wouldn’t be as difficult as he thought it would be.
Midoriya smiled at the two boys’ names. They’d both be in for quite the surprise when they found out he was their heroics teacher.
He flipped to the next file and raised his eyebrows a little. “It looks like there’s at least one more familiar face here.”
A girl with green hair pulled into low pigtails peered around the doorframe into the classroom. What were the chances she’d end up in the exact same classroom as her big sister!
Satsuki pushed down a tremoring breath as she stepped inside, and she chose the first seat she saw - right at the front and by the door. She panicked a little when she realized there might be a seating chart, but after giving the room several rushed glances and finding no indication of a seating chart, she let out a breath of relief.
She shook her head. This wasn’t a time to be all worried and anxious; this was her time to become a hero! Just like Tsuyu.
“That leaves one more hero student,” Midoriya said.
“This last one is rather interesting!” Nezu exclaimed, and Midoriya looked up warily. It was debatably a good thing when Nezu found something interesting. “There’s a pair of siblings in your class. The Akai siblings - Sukina and Yasei.”
Midoriya frowned down at his files. “But I only see Sukina listed here as a hero student.”
“Exactly.”
Sukina strided into the class like she’d invented the very air her classmates were breathing. Every pale red hair of hers was pulled back and controlled in a ponytail, but despite her carefully crafted demeanor, she couldn’t help the competitive edge that crept into her smile.
She chose one of the seats in the middle of the front row, before immediately opening her bag to take out a pencil. She had to show everyone just how prepared and eager she was.
When she looked up from her bag, however, her pencil clattered to the floor.
“Yasei! What are you doing here?!” she spat, her previous composure vanished. She sprang up from her chair so fast it almost fell over.
The boy in the doorway didn’t have a much better reaction, practically growling at his sister. His messy, dark red hair obscured most of his eyes. “Walking into class, obviously.”
“Not my class. There’s no way you’re here as a hero student.”
He pointed to a red band around his upper arm. “Yeah well, I’m not.”
“So Yasei is one of the villain students,” Midoriya deduced, turning to the villain files. “I’ll have to keep an eye on both of them.”
“There’s actually one villain student in particular I’d prefer you keep an eye on,” Nezu said, tapping his paw beside a name. “His background is the most blurry out of all the rehabilitants we’ve chosen, not to mention the risk of his quirk.”
Midoriya frowned, but then he hummed in understanding when he read the file of the student Nezu was talking about. “Yomite Kamau.”
“Both of you, shut up before you make my migraine worse,” an icy voice cut into the siblings’ heated conversation.
All the students looked to see a boy waiting behind Yasei, with white hair and a crescent shaped device around his forehead that was held in place at his temples. He had the same red band as Yasei, who he gave a light shove so he could enter the classroom.
Yasei probably would’ve retaliated, if there hadn’t been something so creepy and unnerving about the boy.
Kamau chose the seat the furthest away from everyone as he could.
“I’m assuming you’ve done something to limit his quirk?” Midoriya asked, and Nezu nodded.
“The device he’s wearing should block most of his ability, though a feeling of unease might still linger around him. Moving on, however! There’s another student who may require special attention.”
Yasei huffed as he took a seat a couple places behind his sister, when a new, cautious figure stepped into the classroom. She had long black braids, and eyes that fell on each seat with a careful consideration, as if calmly debating each one’s possibility of killing her.
When she took another step into the classroom, Katsuma called softly, “hey, you can sit here if you want.”
Her eyes widened a little, before she reevaluated the seat next to him. Katsuma relaxed a little when she stepped forward and accepted his offer. She was the first person who hadn’t immediately chosen a seat or been too intimidating to ask over, and it would’ve been embarrassing if she refused.
Then he caught a small gesture out of the corner of his eye, from her hands.
‘Thank you.’
“Koroi Mirushi resulted in a boy at her school being hospitalized, and when taken in for questioning, she refused to say why she attacked him. No one quite knows why, however, her selective mutism may be a factor.”
Midoriya raised his eyebrows a little. “So I’ll need to use sign language with her.”
“Yup! And that leaves two villain students. Next is Kigu Akisu.”
Akisu didn’t know if she was nervous because she’d told herself over and over how nerve wracking this moment was going to be, or because of normal fear. Either way, she was a bundle of jitters when she entered the classroom.
Though she had her gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, strands of it kept falling in front of her face, so she miscounted the number of students in the class a couple times.
“Hey, you can sit here if you want.”
It took all of her willpower not to teleport away when a girl with white hair and a horn on her head spoke to her. She immediately tried getting her heart rate to slow down, and the girl who’d spoken gave her a look of mild concern.
“Yes! Sure! Thanks!” Akisu exclaimed before that concern could worsen.
This was why she preferred to stick to the shadows.
“The last student… I’d like to apologize in advance for the trouble you’ll have with him.”
Midoriya clenched his jaw, and his grip on the file became rather tight. “This would’ve been one of those things you warn someone about ahead of time.”
“Whoopsies! The complexities of human connection and emotion - you can’t expect me to predict everything!”
He’d ended up in the exact room he’d been trying to avoid, and he wanted to make sure everyone knew how much he hated it.
Kota pulled his cap more firmly onto his head, pushing his spiky black hair down to hide his eyes a little. With a sneer, he entered the classroom and said, “so which of you were actually dumb enough to be here voluntarily?”
He was very careful not to make eye contact with Eri, who he knew without looking was giving him a saddened, disappointed gaze.
Kota never got a response, because behind him, someone sighed.
“Izumi, please take a seat.”