Disclaimer: I do not own My Hero Academia/Boku No Hero Academia, or any other property in this work that I did not make myself.

A couple that will go down in legend

Chapter thirty: I mean he's not my son, but he IS my son

Shota Aizawa was walking back from the grocery store one day in the late afternoon, sometime after classes at U.A. were over for the day. The underground hero was not alone in his walk back from the grocery store; following along closely behind Aizawa was Eri, a young girl that U.A. had taken in as of recent events. The role of caregiver for Eri had been given to Aizawa, who the young girl with the (currently very small) horn had taken something of an attachment to. It goes without saying that at this point, Eri was Aizawa's foster daughter.

"Well, Loukar," the underground hero thought as he carried a brown paper grocery bag in both arms, a hint of amusement in the words that he thought, "It looks like you aren't the only one with a foster kid anymore."

Eri looked up at her foster father with a look of curious wondering in her eyes. "Hey, papa," Eri said, drawing Aizawa's attention, "What are you thinking about?"

Aizawa, who if he were being honest to himself was still not quite totally used to the idea of being a parent, even if it's a foster one, had a mildly embarrassed look on his face. "I…was just thinking about an old friend of mine who had a foster kid, is all."

The horned girl looked up at Aizawa in silence for a few moments before she gave a smile. It was a small one, but it was still there nonetheless; it was also very much adorable. "Oh, you mean sort of how like you're my papa now?"

The underground hero nodded once in confirmation, thankful that he didn't have to explain a lot to Eri while they were out in public. Something else that Aizawa didn't ever want to have to do out in public was run into one of his students from U.A. randomly in the streets, but that's what ended up happening when he and Eri turned a corner and nearly bumped into a mid-teens boy.

However, said mid-teens boy ended up being Hitoshi Shinso, one of the few brats of Aizawa's that he could say was okay. In fact, the brainwasher was something of a protégé to Aizawa, as he had trained him in his fighting style, as well as how to make use of much of the same tools that he had used in his ongoing career as a pro hero. The only thing about all of this that Aizawa could consider to be a downside was that, for some odd reason, Shoto Todoroki had somehow gotten it into his head that Shinso is his (Aizawa's) son.

"…Midoriya did warn me about Todoroki's habit of seeing connections that aren't really there," Aizawa thought as he and Eri stopped and recognized that it was Shinso that they had bumped into. It was then that the underground hero got a good look at Shinso; the brainwasher was wearing his typical civilian/casual outfit, but to Aizawa's piqued interest, he was also wearing a pair of sunglasses, even though it was partly overcast right now, thus there was no need to be wearing sunglasses.

"Oh, Aizawa-sensei," Shinso greeted, his tone sounding the same as always. …To the casual observer, that it. Although Eri picked up on nothing and was in fact a bit amused to run into the teen that her papa had taken an interest in training, said papa himself was able to right away pick up on subtle hints in his protégé's tone. Hints that had set off at least one alarm inside Aizawa's head. Aizawa knew that something was up.

The underground hero, never one to ignore the alarms in his head when they went off, proceeded to get to the bottom of what was going on with his protégé, using his being Shinso's teacher as a cover to start up a conversation with Shinso to find out what it was about the brainwasher's tone that had set off those alarms. "The sunglasses, Shinso." Aizawa's tone gave Shinso no room to argue, and he seemed to have realized that. "Take them off. Now."

Shinso gave a resigned sigh as he reached up to the ear pieces of his sunglasses, grabbed them, and slowly pulled his sunglasses off. Aizawa had a dreading feeling about what he was going to see, but even when said suspicion was confirmed, he couldn't help but go a bit wide-eyed in shock. Similarly, Eri gave a surprised gasp when she saw what her papa was seeing; the horned little girl's first action was to run up to Shinso and throw her arms around him as high as she could reach so that she could give him a hug.

"Hitoshi." Aizawa's tone, although calm, did let slip a hint of concerned worry as he gestured to his right eye with his free hand, doing so in a way to point out that there was a lot of discolored bruising around Shinso's own right eye, although there was some bits of white cream smeared over some of the bruised area. Additionally, the right eyelids were somewhat closed, fluttering a bit between being fully closed and fully open, a sign that the bruised eye was still in pain a bit.

The brainwasher, with a bit of a guilty look on his face as he slipped his sunglasses back on, stood there as his mentor asked, "What happened?"

Shinso let out a bit of a resigned sigh as he dug his hands into the pockets of the jacket he wore. "…To be honest here, Aizawa-sensei, you're the second person who's seen this. The first was Sakaki when she applied the ointment to ease the sting of the bruising around my eye." Letting out another sigh, Shinso said, "I'm…not exactly comfortable talking about it, or the events that led up to it."

It was bad enough for Aizawa that one of his students had just very recently lost a parent, and potentially to the same group that is targeting said student herself. But the underground hero would be damned if he let another one of his students, especially one that he had put so much effort into no less, suffer as well. Without warning, Aizawa walked up to Shinso, handed the grocery bag that he had been carrying over to him.

"You're coming with me and Eri right now," Aizawa declared, giving his protégé no room to argue, "Also, contact Yamamaya if you can, and tell her to meet us at U.A." Shinso, with a bit of a surprised look on his face (if his eyebrows arching up a bit were any indication of that), ended up walking along behind Aizawa and Eri. The brainwasher's body language told an observant eye that he seemed a bit cowed by some of his experiences from the day so far.

…But there was also a hint of hope in Shinso's posture. After all, this was Aizawa-sensei who was taking charge here. If there was anyone who he could count on to fix things here, it was the underground hero himself.

Shinso, with Eri on his left, sat on a small sofa in the teacher's lounge over at U.A. as they watched something that Aizawa had put on for Eri. A few minutes after the Claymation movie began playing, Aizawa looked over when the door leading into the teacher's lounge opened. As such, Aizawa saw a mildly confused looking Hizashi walk in, leading a worried-looking Sakaki Yamamaya along behind him.

Jerking a thumb over his shoulder, Hizashi said to his co-worker, "Yamamaya said that Shinso and you called her to come here for something?"

"Thank you," Aizawa replied as he got up from the table he sat at, walked over to the open door leading into the teacher's lounge, and closed it.

Hizashi, as well as Sakaki, were a bit confused by Aizawa's actions, although the look on the fat cat girl's face showed that she had some idea what was going on. "…Hitoshi told me that this has to do with you seeing the bruising around his right eye?" Sakaki asked more than said, "Is he going to be alright, Aizawa-sensei?"

"Shinso," Aizawa said without answering Sakaki, turning to face where the brainwasher sat on the sofa and getting him to turn to face him. "Have you reported what happened to the authorities yet?" A hint of suspicion entered the underground hero's expression. "…Or does the bastard who hurt you have you too scared to act against them?"

Shinso looked down at the floor, a look of resigned guilt and shame in his eyes, not that they could be seen since he still wore those sunglasses. "…I've reported him multiple times in the past, but he always gets off in quick order. And every time he does, he's worse."

A chilling air settled on the room, even though there was no breeze coming in through the closed windows. "Hitoshi, I know that you couldn't tell me what happened when I helped to take care of your bruised eye," Sakaki said, "But surly you can at least trust the senseis here, can't you? I mean, both Aizawa-sensei and Hizashi-sensei are pro heroes. There's a lot that they can get done to help you with whatever's going on."

"At one point, the pro hero Crust came in when the bastard was reported," Shinso said, ruefulness in his tone. The brainwasher turned to look away from everyone else. "He was, both at the time and still is, one of the top ten pro heroes." Shrugging his shoulders, Shinso went on, "Even then, the bastard still got off, and he was worse than ever when he got his hands on me after that. What he did was part of why I was absent for that one seven day period shortly before the tournament between U.A. and Vulcan."

Sakaki shivered a bit out of fright over what her boyfriend was talking about, what his words were implying. Eri, partly due to her age and partly due to being distracted by the Claymation movie that was put on for her, wasn't paying a lot of attention to what was going on. But for Hizashi and especially Aizawa, they both could very clearly see the signs Shinso is currently displaying for what they were.

The brainwasher is a victim of domestic abuse.

"Shinso." The firmness in Aizawa's tone made Shinso flinch slightly, but he calmed down right away when he realized that not only was it Aizawa who was talking to him, but that looking at the underground hero, he saw that there was a look of concerned sympathy on his face, a look that told him that Aizawa was truly sorry for what had befallen him. There was also a hint of determination in Aizawa's eyes, determination that he acted on when he continued on with what he was asking of his protégé.

"Who did this to you?" He gestured to the bruising around Shinso's face.

"My father."

A grim look of confirmed suspicion appeared in the underground hero's expression.

…

Acting right away, Aizawa got into contact with Detective Tsukauchi to file a domestic abuse report, then he informed Nezu of what he had just gotten from Shinso. Aizawa was so wrapped up in his fury of what had befallen the brainwasher of 1-A that he had failed to notice that the quirked animal principal of U.A., in a very rare moment indeed, sounded shocked, a sign that his usually present demeanor had faltered upon hearing of what Aizawa had gathered.

Things were soon moved to Nezu's office, but not before Aizawa paused the Claymation movie he had playing for Eri since he had to take her with him. As Aizawa and a notably disgusted-looking Hizashi went over what exactly to do with Nezu, the door to the office opened, and in walked Tsukauchi, the police detective who is close friends with Toshinori Yagi (aka friggin' All Might). The former symbol of peace himself followed along, and Tsukauchi explained that he asked him (Toshi) to be here for this.

"You…you've got to be kidding me!" Toshinori practically exclaimed; he was so riled up by what he had been informed about what had been going on with Shinso that the former number one pro hero shot up into his muscle form for a few seconds. Pounding the surface of Nezu's desk with a strong fist, the temporary return of All Might looked absolutely furious, especially since he wasn't smiling. "How could something like this have gone on for as long as it has?!"

"It's not uncommon for victims of domestic abuse to be afraid to speak up about or against their abusers," Aizawa pointed out, drawing multiple pairs of eyes to him. He gave a resigned sigh as he proceeded to explain things as Toshinori deflated back to his true form. "I also got it that since Shinso's father ultimately goes back to abusing Shinso after every time he's reported, the boy's started to believe that any effort to put an end to his suffering will ultimately be pointless."

"It won't be pointless!" Sakaki declared defiantly, drawing everyone's attention to her. The look of firm, serious determination on the fat cat girl's face made it clear that she intended to protect her boyfriend from whatever may threaten him, even if she has to go up against his own father so she can carry out said promise. "No way am I going to just stand by and do nothing while some abusive asshole beats Hitoshi for no damn good reason! If I see that sorry bastard take even one step towards Hitoshi, I swear I will-"

"Yamamaya." A bit surprised when she heard someone call out to her, Sakaki stopped mid-rant and turned to see where Aizawa, who had called out to her, stood next to Hizashi. "There is no need for you to go so far like that," the underground hero informed his student, "The others here and I will handle things concerning Shinso's father." His expression softened up just a bit, a sign that he understood full well where Sakaki was coming from. "Shinso, however, will still need the support of people who will help him overcome his trauma. If you want to do something for him while he's going through this hot mess, then stay by his side and just be there for him."

The fat cat girl looked a bit stunned by what her homeroom teacher was telling her. Still, he made a valid point on how the teachers and other adults ought to handle confronting Shinso's father and see to it that he gets what's coming to him. Turning to face Tsukauchi, Aizawa asked when is the soonest they can expect Shinso's father to be brought in, to which the detective replied by saying that he took the appropriate actions the moment he got the information from the underground hero.

Indeed, by the time that Nezu began thinking of what is to be done with Shinso while his father is dealt with by the law, Tsukauchi got a call telling him that Shinso's father had been arrested just now, and was being brought in. An investigation was currently being launched into the Shinso domestic abuse case, with a few notable pro heroes pitching in to help out. From all that Aizawa and Hizashi were seeing, this case had to be in the bag, had to be a slam dunk.

…So why was Aizawa filled with a feeling of dread, emanating from the pit of his stomach?

"You've got to be kidding me!" Aizawa exclaimed angrily the next morning, a few minutes before the first classes of the day at U.A. Hizashi, along with a mildly frightened-looking Nemuri and a shocked-looking Sekijiro, watched as Aizawa, with a look of fury that all of the other present U.A. staff members did not think possible of their dark-dressed co-worker, shouted into the phone that he was using at the time.

Hizashi, Nemuri and Sekijiro watched on for a few more minutes until Aizawa ended the call, giving off a frustrated, exasperated sigh. Aizawa got up from where he sat at a table in the teacher's lounge, walked over to a wall and, in a surprising move, punched the wall as hard as he could manage while angrily shouting, "FUCKING DAMNIT!" at the top of his lungs. He was so enraged that he failed to notice that he scraped the skin on his right hand knuckles, as well as partly break at least one smaller knucklebone.

Luckily for Aizawa, Recovery Girl, who also watched on with a look of surprised shock as he had his enraged fuming, was also in the teacher's lounge, and a quick use of her quirk brought Aizawa's right hand back to peek condition, healing all damage. Although the physical pain that had affected Aizawa was healed, the raging storm of emotions that filled the underground hero at the moment was by no means similarly calmed. None of the other U.A. staff members had ever recalled seeing so much anger radiating from Aizawa, nor see it radiating from him in so loud and passionate a manner.

After Nemuri was able to get him to calm down, Aizawa proceeded to explain that, despite what all had been done the previous day, Shinso's father was able to get out of holding by paying bail. From what he had been told by Tsukauchi, due to the circumstances as well as how things ended up being put down when all was reported, there was nothing much that could be done when the brainwasher's father paid bail to get out of holding.

And that, as horrified as Aizawa was when he was informed about it, isn't even the worst part of the phone call that he just got done having with the aforementioned detective; no, the worst part was when Aizawa was informed that Shinso's father was arrested a few hours after he had paid bail to get out of holding. The abusive man was arrested the second time in that day because, after he had just gotten out on bail for domestic abuse on his son, decided to track down said son and, blaming him for getting him arrested, proceeded to straight up physically assault Shinso.

The underground hero's protégé was alone when his father got to him, and was on the receiving end of what was by far the worst beating that he had ever received from his father. Shinso fought back, but that only fueled his father's wrath, made him beat on the brainwasher worse. When he was asked by his co-workers why Shinso didn't try using his quirk to incapacitate his abusive father, Aizawa explained to the others that Shinso's father has a quirk that makes him impervious to other quirks that would affect his mind in any way, such as brainwashing; the abusive man's quirk also blocked mind reading and the like, but that's beside the point.

However, Aizawa pointed out a few good facts about the incident last night that happened after Shinso's father made bail; the abusive man, despite being immune to his son's quirk thanks to his own quirk, only had an immunity-bestowing quirk, which had no direct use in straight-up combat, going for him. Shinso, having been trained extensively under Aizawa's tutelage, was able to put up enough of a fight to go toe-to-toe with his father.

Additionally, near the end of the fight, the father and son pair had made enough noise that Sakaki, who was coming over at that time to see Shinso to check up on him, heard what was going on, had heard her boyfriend cry out in angered fury as he clearly sounded like he was in a fight, quite possibly for his life. The fat cat girl shoulder-rammed the front door open and, after she saw that Shinso's father had clearly gotten out, ran up and tackled him.

Sakaki's momentum as she charged at Shinso's father, backed by her considerable weight, resulted in a devastating tackle that threw Shinso's father to the floor, leaving him momentarily stunned. To make sure that the man wouldn't get up while Shinso called for the police, Sakaki turned so that her back faced where the abusive man laid prone on the floor and simply fell on him in a way that had her rather large, plump rear end squish down on him; his arms were also pinned under his own body, so he couldn't use them to push Sakaki off. Shinso's father was unable to get up from where he was pinned on the floor, not with a little over four-hundred pounds of teenage girl sitting right on top of him.

This didn't change the fact that Shinso, due to how much of a beating he had taken, had to go to the hospital for treatment. The brainwasher was still there, and according to the doctors he would have to miss classes at U.A. today. Sakaki, who had gone to the hospital because this was her boyfriend that's being talked about here, stayed the night and was currently on her way to U.A. from the hospital as Aizawa spoke to his co-workers. He got this from Tsukauchi, who had met Sakaki at the hospital to get a statement from her, since she was involved technically.

"Luckily for her, Yamamaya isn't being charged since she has a provisional license and was acting to stop an act of domestic abuse slash physical assault," Aizawa said to Hizashi, Nemuri and Sekijiro, "I don't know about any of you, but I intend to get more from Yamamaya about what all had happened last night when she gets here."

"I agree, Aizawa." Sekijiro crossed his arms over his chest as he gave off a gruff huff. "What that boy of yours in your class went through is by no means anything that he should have gone through. Hell, no one should ever have to go through hell like that."

"He's lucky that his little girlfriend came by at the right time," Hizashi remarked, "Things might have gone more south for the little dude otherwise." The others all nodded in agreement with the cockatiel-haired pro hero, although Aizawa was by no means in any mood to think about all of the messy business of 'might have gone more south'. In fact, if the underground hero's going to be honest, all he wanted to do right now was fine Shinso, give him a hug, and tell him that he's sorry for what had happened, sorry that he had failed him in such a manner.

"I guess that I owe Toshinori an apology," Aizawa thought when he suddenly had enough clarity to think properly, realizing that he know knew, to an extent, where the former Symbol of Peace came from when it comes to Midoriya.

Aizawa, after he finished teaching his classes for the day, went to go see his protégé at the hospital. The underground hero allowed Sakaki to come along as one, he knew full well how much she cared about the brainwasher and that she would be a comforting presence to Shinso, and two, Aizawa had no choice but to bring his foster daughter Eri along as well since he couldn't find a sitter to watch her in the meanwhile, and Sakaki could fill the role when Aizawa needed to talk to Shinso alone.

Aizawa got it that the relationship (for lack of a better word) between Shinso and his father had been going on for pretty much as long as the brainwasher could remember. Apparently, Shinso's late mother had died during childbirth, and as what sadly happens on occasions where a mom dies giving birth to her child, the child that is birthed is blamed for their mother's passing. That was the main driving point of all of the physical abuse Shinso had received from his father over the years; it didn't help at all that Shinso's father was also an alcoholic that drank heavily. All that the drinking did was fuel Shinso's father's irrational fury and abuse towards his son.

…Well, former son, that is. As it turned out, Shinso's father's act of beating the boy enough to send him to the hospital was not only the worse incident of his abuse to Shinso yet, but it was also the final straw. As Shinso's abusive father was currently sitting in a jail cell awaiting transport to a prison for quirkless criminals and those with quirks not dangerous enough to call for imprisonment in a prison designed for quirked persons (such as Tartarus), legal work was being done to strip him of his parental rights; indeed, by the time Aizawa first stepped foot into the room at the hospital where his protégé was recovering, Shinso's father was, as far as the eyes of the law were concerned, no longer Shinso's father.

Aizawa, when he learned of this, was beyond relieved to hear that the law finally got its act together for Shinso's sake. But at the same time, the underground hero realized that the boy no had nowhere to call home, as even the dorms at U.A. were but a home away from home for the students of Japan's top hero high school; the brainwasher couldn't live there forever, not that he was going to, nor was this even the point that's being discussed right now.

Aizawa knew that, for the proper development of Shinso, he was going to need as stable of a home to return to until he could do things on his own. This was a topic that the underground hero went over with Hizashi, Sekijiro and Nemuri after he returned from seeing Shinso at the hospital just a few moments ago. During the meeting, Nemuri passingly made a joke about how Aizawa could just adopt Shinso himself, saying that the two of them were so similar that they might as well be father and son.

It was right as he was preparing to grill the eighteen only hero for sounding like Todoroki that Aizawa was struck with the best idea that he could come up with.

The next day at U.A., the students of class 1-A and class 1-B were all gathered in the same large classroom where the joint math exam was held a short while ago; they were told by Aizawa, Sekijiro and a few other teachers that there was a big announcement regarding how things would be proceeding at U.A. in light of recent events involving the actions of that criminal mercenary group, as well as the recent murder of an innocent civilian related to one of the hero course kids. As such, since the changes were going to affect all fifty of them, they all had to be brought to the same place so all of them could be informed all at once.

Izuku, as he talked with his friends Uraraka, Tenya and Todoroki, looked around a bit in the big classroom, noticed that something was a bit off when he counted only twenty-four 1-A students. "Hey, why is Shinso absent?"

"He was absent yesterday as well, as according to Yamamaya when I asked her Shinso was at the hospital recovering from being assaulted by his father," Tenya remarked, drawing shocked looks out of Izuku, Uraraka and especially Todoroki.

The dual natured-quirk boy went as wide-eyed as he could, and looked to be about to say something in a calm tone that barely held back a raging storm. However, before he could get one word out, Todoroki was cut off when Aizawa entered the large classroom, accompanied by the missing Shinso. Aizawa instructed Shinso to wait with the other students while he himself went to the front of the large classroom to wait for the other teachers to arrive.

Spotting the green-eyed boy, Shinso walked over to him. "I…assume that you guys had heard from Sakaki by now about what happened to me?"

"Shinso." Todoroki spoke in a calm tone that held back vast swaths of fury, a tone that the brainwasher was able to pick up on and thus turned to give Todoroki his full attention. "Where can I find the bastard who abused you so that I can grab him by his balls, flash-freeze said balls as if they were dipped into liquid nitrogen, then shatter them into oblivion in my grasp?"

"In jail," Shinso replied with something of a smirk. It was a smirk that came from a mix of amusement over his ex-father's ultimate fate and what Todoroki said he intended to do if he were to ever come across the abusive man himself. Gesturing to everyone he was talking to, Shinso went on, "Yeah, he's currently sitting in jail, awaiting transport to prison where he will be held while awaiting trial for all of his bullshit over the years."

Izuku and the others looked relieved to hear that the law was being served here. Jerking a thumb over where Aizawa stood in the front of the classroom, the brainwasher went on, "Also, part of why I arrived at the same time as Aizawa-sensei was that after my ex-father was legally stripped of his parental rights to me, I was taken in by Aizawa-sensei. He's my foster father now."

Izuku and his friends looked a bit surprised to hear that their homeroom teacher had taken Shinso in, after all that the purple-haired boy had been through. Izuku, seeing the look on Todoroki's face as the bi-colored boy raised an index finger while looking like he was fit to say something, immediately had his drop whatever it was that he was going to say.

END, CHAPTER THIRTY

Author's notes;

Well, that takes care of that. In all actuality, real life cases of domestic abuse really gets me heated. I cannot begin to describe how it angers me when I hear of a parent having physically abused a kid, a lover abusing their other, and other such cases where one person strikes another repeatedly even though logically such actions should never have taken place at all. It goes without saying that such cases ought to be reported when and where they occur. Many people out there seem to overlook just how much power a simple call has, how much good it's capable of doing.

…But I'm just rambling on there. This chapter is meant to show what the teachers of U.A. are willing to do for the sake of a student in trouble, and I tried to end it on as bright of a note as I could manage. Anyway, the next chapter will see decisions made in the previous chapter start to take effect. In fact, the beginning of next chapter picks up a few moments after the end of this chapter, as Aizawa's still waiting for some of the other teachers to show up before they could go over new changes that are being made.