Ties that Bind

by Mirrond

All Might left his home that evening hoping to find a successor. Instead he found his old lover (that he thought died years ago), discovered that he has a son, offered him his quirk... and adopted a few additional children. After all, the best answer to All for One being a stepfather to your son is becoming a stepfather to his children, right? [Dadmight or Dad for One? Yes.]

3. Chapter 3: Problem Child

Yes, the name of the chapter is probably a spoiler, as you now know who'll be introduced to you. Then again, it happens in the first sentence, is it really a spoiler then? Hard to say. Also I forgot to refer to some of the reviews after chapter one in chapter two, so now I'm going to do a more thorough reply to them all. Bear with me, folks. The chapter isn't going to escape anywhere.

Ynozarg - Thank you! I'm kinda satisfied with it as well, no idea where it really came from. It just kinda came to my mind. Huh.

Detrametal - OH YES, LOOK FORWARD TO IT. :D

dvd181 - :D

GenuineSeeker20K - Yep. Absolutely. And it's not all. There'll be more. Nedzu is in for the best years of his life, and this timeline is clearly rigged by someone in his favour. Your comment actually reminds me of one fanfic (no idea about the name, and it wasn't that good if I remember it right) where 1-A was in a timeloop doing crazy things, and only by loop ~100 they realized that Nedzu is in the loop with them, he just had too much fun watching their shenanigans to come forward with it.

TheGreatBubbaJ - Thank you!

RandomReader867 - :D

Trixuny - I never really wrote omake, but trust me. Nedzu is yet to realize the depth of his happiness. Then... yes, then the time for the omake will come.

Gowithebeat - :D Hopefully this opinion will stick until the end!

odorsloth - Well, I can only hope that I'll live up to this :P

Shade1968 - You wanna know the fun bit? You're right. There is/was a third story, where Izuku basically looks at heroes and villains and goes 'f_k them' due to certain bits of his past going significantly worse than in Cure to Evil/Ties that Bind. Except, I've dropped that bit as I think that I wrote myself into a corner and I didn't exactly like the ideas for the future. There is a theoretical replacement - another fanfic that's currently on hiatus at about 9 chapters -where Izuku is technically a vigilante but that's because I made the entire cast be born during the Dawn of Quirks and heroes simply aren't a thing yet. Fair chance that I'll end up writing it again once I get somewhere with the Ties that Bind.

And now... onward to the newest chapter!

(***)

Eraserhead is having a blast. Well, in his own terms. The best part of marrying Ms. Joke is that she knows when he is reaching the end of his patience and is ready to step in in order to deflect the attention from him.

So he is currently in the same room as Present Mic and Midnight (everyone is wearing their casual clothes, this is late evening and they aren't working right now), but somehow, just somehow, Emi has taken the attention of his friends off him and he is just existing there. In the background.

He filters the noise of the conversation out of his head, sets up a self-imposed mental command to wake up when he hears his name or his hero name (or if something explodes), and is doing his best to fall asleep with his eyes open.

But then he gets a phone call. And he hates those. He pulls out a phone and sees that it's one of the newest contacts he has on it.

All Might, the probably-in-a-few-months fellow teacher is phoning him. He is in the area, and Nedzu gave them each other's phone numbers (plus some general introduction) in case All Might needed some investigative help or Eraserhead needed some brawn. They didn't thus far, and so All Might was happily punching out villains in the area of the UA, with only some passing meetings while he was preparing to take up the job.

What happened now?

"Who is it, Aizawa?" Emi leans closer towards him, probably curious at who could be phoning such a cryptid as Eraserhead. Literally 90% of possible callers were in that very room (which happened to be the home of Eraserhead), drinking just slightly and… doing whatever people were doing when they were together.

Eraserhead stopped caring about that ever since he hit his daily human interaction limit.

"All Might is calling me." He replies and Emi makes an OMG ALL MIGHT face that makes Aizawa look just so incredibly tired.

"Turn on the speaker!" Emi says quickly. "I want to hear him!" Eraserhead groans and he sees Nemuri and Hizashi going silent and eyeing him curiously as well.

Alright. Here goes nothing.

"What is it, All Might?" Eraserhead does his best to not sound inviting at all. It's his time off, he could be taking a nap! Then again, he could be taking a nap at any point of the day. Which is why he dislikes being called by people.

"Aizawa, would you like to adopt a child?" All Might asks and Emi somehow does a spit take because she took just the right time to drink her beer. Eraserhead is staring at the phone like it grew horns, and said that it's a demon that wants to join Eraserhead's class to learn how to be a proper sadist.

"Sorry, that was a strange thing to ask." All Might corrects himself before Eraserhead says words that he would (or wouldn't) regret. "Could you do me a favour? I need the Recovery Girl with everything she needs to do a field medical check-up and an obduction, two or three liters of human blood of whatever blood type and probably some medicines for Hayes-Wilczak Syndrome. In front of the UA in… an hour. Just without Nedzu knowing."

"All M… Yagi." Eraserhead takes a deep breath. "What have you done?"

"It's… quite hard to explain, mmm..." All Might replies and he sounds almost apologetic. "But it might include an accidental kidnapping of the Number Three Hero." Eraserhead can feel himself going slackjawed. Present Mic stares at him from the other side of the table. Midnight looks like she just instantly went sober and was deeply regretting it.

"Well, good for you that I think that Thunderbolt is a dick." Eraserhead replies finally. "Can I come with Ms. Joke, Present Mic and Midnight?" He may as well make this evening actually memorable.

(***)

The Recovery Girl was less than happy as she was about to go home. But Eraserhead managed to get to her in time. Besides, they shared the opinion on Thunderbolt (although his involvement was something that she learned only after they left the UA, since the resident Rat God of Evil could overhear them on it).

Twenty minutes later a car arrived, driven by Detective Tsukauchi. Who, frankly speaking, looked like a soldier that had just emerged from the trenches after three years of gruelling and mentally taxing total war.

"Do I even want to ask?" Eraserhead says while he is loading into the car and taking over the front seat.

"No." Tsukauchi replies, while staring blankly into space in front of him. They both ignore the fact that the car (it's not a big one) ran out of seats and absolutely no one wanted to be left out on whatever was happening, leading to Recovery Girl landing herself on Ms. Joke's lap. Shuzenji was the smallest of them all, after all. "But you will find out soon enough."

His driving is way more recklessly suicidal than Aizawa remembers. It's like he wants to die, really.

(***)

They stop in front of a rather unassuming residence in an even more unassuming (if not straight boring) ward in Shizuoka. Eraserhead doesn't remember ever being near it, really. And he has no idea who might be living here.

Recovery Girl picks up her tools from the trunk, Midnight is tasked with carrying the bloodbags and the medicines, Present Mic is handed a stack of documents by Tsukauchi, and then they are all led by the detective towards the door.

The detective knocks, and after a few seconds it opens. Just enough to let them see All Might in his hero form (but civilian clothes) standing behind them, maybe a bit too large for them. But at least not noticeable by the neighbours.

"You are here!" He shouts and Eraserhead can feel his ears hurt. "Please, come in!"

They do so. They find themselves in an anteroom with All Might and an unfamiliar green haired woman approaching her forties.

"I'm sorry for calling you out on such short notice!" All Might thunders. His ability to keep the volume down diminishes even further in his hero form. "Please, let me introduce the owner of this residence. Her name is Inko Midoriya." She does a dignified curtsy. "She happens to be my wife."

"Wait, you have a wife?!" Midnight asks first. Of course that's what picks her interest. "I mean… everyone thinks that you are… uhm… alone?" It's almost hilarious to see how thoroughly NOT lewd she is off work. Especially the baggy clothes makes her look weird once you actually realize who she is.

"We've decided to keep that part a secret." Inko replies. "My husband has a lot of enemies, and besides, I don't exactly enjoy the attention of the press." Eraserhead's opinion on All Might actually rises after this. He managed to hide being married from the vultures? Despite his common… bumbling behaviour? And being the most popular person in the country? Hats off. "Now, however, we got into a bit of a crisis that we decided that we can't deal with on our own."

"It includes Thunderbolt, yes?" Eraserhead asks and Inko nods. "What exactly happened?"

"I think it's something to talk about in the living room." Inko replies. "Just… before we enter, you need to know something. This is a bit more people to find out than I thought, really." All Might shrugs with an apologetic look on his face. "But… one of the reasons for the secrecy of our marriage is that I'm actually a retired supervillain."

Eraserhead - and not only he - has a brief WHAT moment, but she doesn't let them vocalize it.

"As a result, we've made a decision that neither of us do any work in our home or anywhere near it." She continues. "It's a bit of a neutral zone for us and our acquaintances, and we expect you to respect that."

"Okay, that's just… something." Eraserhead replies and groans. "What sort of villains are we talking about?" There is obviously someone in the house right now, even if you exclude All Might's wife.

She doesn't have time to answer.

"Inko, my dear! Those cookies you made for the guests are absolutely deeeelightful!" They all hear a voice coming from the deeper part of the house. Right before they all get to see Mr. Compress, one of the most wanted men in the country and a double S-rank villain in his signature villain outfit, enters the anteroom like it is completely normal. "Oops. Am I interrupting something?"

"If you came in thirty seconds earlier, before I explained the neutral zone thing, I'd interrupt your heartbeat." Inko deadpans in the resulting silence. All Might looks just slightlyintimidated. Mr. Compress lets out a panicked squeal and vanishes from the room. Eraserhead looks at Detective Tsukauchi, who, once again, looks traumatized.

"I was his best man." Is the entire answer for the unspoken question that he gets.

(***)

Three minutes later Eraserhead has to admit that the cookies truly are delightful. The only real negative is that he can see Mr. Compress sitting on the chair in the same room as Eraserhead without, apparently, the possibility for Aizawa to arrest him.

And he isn't touching the part where he can clearly see the Hero Killer - the man who beat up and ruined the careers of a two-digit number of heroes - clad in All Might's merch clothes (including a really atrocious T-Shirt and even worse glasses) standing next to not just the unconscious Thunderbolt, but also two other heroes that he doesn't recognize. Drinking what looks like a strawberry smoothie from an All Might-themed cup.

He can feel his sanity slowly cracking and he realizes that if something isn't done, he will end up looking like Tsukauchi. Just how many unspeakable horrors did the poor detective see? Does Eraserhead even want to imagine the wedding? Especially after the off-handed mention that Compress organized it?

"So, can we please start the explanations?" Eraserhead wants to go home. And he is doing his best to ignore how thoroughly entertained Emi clearly is. Mic is mostly shocked, and Midnight is… Eraserhead has no idea what she is. Recovery Girl in the meantime is an enigma wrapped in secrecy and covered in a camouflage of mystery.

"I believe there is someone else we'll need to ask for those." Inko announces. They are all sitting around a coffee table. "Izuku! Please come in."

Few seconds later a kid (just slightly younger than the recruitment age for the UA, with messy green hair and freckles) runs into the room. His eyes quickly scan everyone sitting around the table and then…

"Omigosh!" The kid is absolutely beaming at them. "Eraserhead, Present Mic, Midnight, Ms. Joke and Recovery Girl!" Eraserhead stares at him, how did he instantly recognize them all?! No, All Might had to tell him who was coming, right? Kid's eyes took that moment to dart towards All Might. "Dad, can I… can I ask them for autographs? I know it's not the time, but..."

"We'll talk about it once we deal with the… situation." All Might replies, but not before exchanging glances with Inko and his wife nodding slightly. "Now, could you please tell our guests what exactly happened?"

"Oh, ok!" Izuku straightens up, takes two or three deep breaths and starts talking. "For a while now I was cleaning the Takoba beach from junk as a part of the training for the UA entrance exam. With my dad, and sometimes my uncles." Does Eraserhead want to ask who those uncles are? Probably not. It's bad enough that he just learned who is going to be his next problem child. "I at some point noticed that there was a child my age living in the junkyard. He was obviously a runaway, and a small-time villain but it really wasn't their fault, so I decided to try to help them, and…"

Eraserhead raises his hand to interrupt the stream of words.

"They were a villain?" He asks, and the kid loses maybe half a second to start answering that.

"Err, yes." He replies. "I suspected it so, I browsed the Hero Network data under my dad's supervision and I found a string of small robberies in the area done by someone similar looking, with some form of mind-control quirk. But it was never money, just stuff like food or medicines. I wanted to see if this is more of a necessity than anything to them, and the food thefts clearly ended after I began to leave food on the beach after training."

"I see, please continue." Eraserhead replies, hiding the fact that he was just kind of impressed. A fourteen year old kid identifying a villain (even if small-time) like that? Not bad. Not bad at all.

"I decided to get to know him better without calling the heroes or child services to figure out what or who he is hiding from." Izuku continues. "I… uhm… kind of figured out that it would be best if he actually asked to get helped? I think that it was going quite well, and I learned a lot of things and I think that he started to trust me, but then today happened. I was cleaning the beach with my uncle… uhm, Compress, acting as a truck driver."

Eraserhead is really not digging into the part where the son of the Symbol of Peace has one of the top supervillains act as their nanny. Who the hell is Midoriya Inko?! Judging from the occasional glances that Midnight is giving her, Eraserhead isn't the only one who wonders.

"That's when I saw the kid running back into the junkyard." Izuku continues. "Right after that I saw Nightshade, Red Wing and Thunderbolt enter it after them." The Number Three Hero and two other heroes following a small-time thief? That's… that's going to be pretty bad, isn't it? "I got worried, so I asked Mr. Compress to follow me and we went after them."

Eraserhead can only hope that Mr. Compress wasn't in his villain outfit because his assessment of Izuku (Midoriya? Yagi?)'s intelligence would drop significantly.

"When I arrived, I saw Nightshade trying to beat that child and another one his age to death with a riot baton, while Red Wing was watching and Thunderbolt was playing on his phone." Izuku says, and Eraserhead would have choked on air, but years of being an underground hero taught him how to deal with things both messed up and unexpected. Thunderbolt, the Number Three Hero, was doing WHAT? While someone was beating a kid to death over some small-time theft? "I tried to make them stop doing that by bluffing that I was recording the whole thing and it was streaming to my dad, who is All Might's personal assistant, and I think it was going quite alright, but Thunderbolt tried to attack me, and… my uncle, technically, ended up kidnapping him and the other two heroes." Izuku concludes his tale. There are a few long seconds of silence that clearly makes him uncomfortable and he decides to stop it by adding something. "We've… also brought those children here and patched their wounds, but they are not in good shape, so dad decided to involve the Recovery Girl."

"I'll leave you to deal with Thunderbolt." Recovery Girl announces. Despite three heroes lying unconscious on the floor, she has other things to do. "I'm going to take a look at those children. Where can I find them?" Soon she, Inko, and a lot of blood bags disappear from the room.

"Alright, so let me get this straight." Eraserhead decides to take one for the team, since Mic, Emi and Midnight were just so unbelievably useless. "You, the son of the Number One Hero, were training on the beach, with one of the most prolific supervillains in the country acting as your nanny. You decided to save some runaway kid living on said beach, which led to you seeing three heroes, including the Number Three Hero, commit a blatant case of heroic brutality if not a downright murder attempt on two children. So you proceeded to intimidate them, and when it didn't work, you… kidnapped them?"

Izuku looks down, but he honestly feels more shy due to standing in front of the people than in remorse for what he did. Then he nods.

Definitely a problem child.

"And why didn't you tell anyone about the fact that you identified a villain responsible for a string of thefts?" Eraserhead asks and he can see Tsukauchi nod a bit.

"Well, I… did?" Izuku replies, scratching his head a bit. Is it some sort of a nervous tick? The movements are a bit odd. "I told my parents. Dad wanted to call child services, but after I pointed out what I learned, he decided to let me try to help."

The heroes in the room stare at All Might, who is just a bit startled by it.

"L...let him talk before accusing me!" He promptly shouts, and Izuku jumps up a bit. He feels… rather jumpy, in general.

"Errr, I found out that the kid I was seeing on the junkyard had a mental quirk from the police records." Izuku says quickly. "I knew that he looked like he hadn't slept in a few days, so I figured out that he has Hayes-Wilczak Syndrome, and…" Eraserhead once again raises his hand.

"Quick explanation for those who don't know." Aizawa says. "So, most of us. What is that Syndrome?" The Recovery Girl looked at him really strangely when he told her to bring the medicine for it. And he had never heard about it.

"Uhm, err, it's a rare quirk disorder when one's mental quirk refuses to fully shut down, and keeps the brain's activity up at all times." Izuku promptly stammers. "It makes you unable to sleep unless you eat up a lot of sleeping pills. There are dedicated medicines, but the disease is rare, so they are hard to get. Not something you can steal from a pharmacy. So I decided that if the kid from the junkyard was living there despite knowing he has the Syndrome, there was a high chance that he was hiding from someone. Most likely his own family. And considered it important enough to, err, risk his own life. I… wanted to find out before making dad phone the child services. If his family was abusive to him, I didn't want to be the one to make him return to it."

That was a rather thoughtful approach. Kinda unlike All Might, really? Izuku Midoriya spent weeks if not months trying to figure out how to help a kid that he met on the street, despite knowing that he was a villain. And then jumped in front of the Number Three Hero to save said villain (who clearly didn't deserve to be beaten up for what he did).

Eraserhead nods with approval. Just a bit. Not strongly enough for anyone to notice. He isn't going to play favourites, even if there is a chance that the child in front of him wouldn't pass the entrance exam and thus wouldn't be a problem to him. He does glance towards Tsukauchi though.

"I can confirm that everything he said was true." Tsukauchi promptly replies. "Which means that we are now going to have to deal with the fallout." He sighs. "We can't exactly make it public that Izuku is All Might's son, nor the fact that Thunderbolt was done in by Mr. Compress accompanying Izuku, and I'm ninety-nine percent sure that he recognized the quirk or will at least be suspicious of it."

"So, what do you propose?" All Might asks promptly.

"I can find a way to jail Nightshade and Red Wing." The detective replies. "They have no substantial backing, but unless we have an actual, honest-to-god recording of Thunderbolt standing there while a kid is beaten to death, the Hero Public Safety Commission WILL rescue him. Worst of all, if I try to involve all three at once, Nightshade and Red Wing might get rescued by association." He takes a few sips of the coffee and continues. "My suggestion is to have those two jailed, and let Thunderbolt go… after some proper corrective talk from All Might. Probably some 'you will retire or I will find you and teach you what the word pain means' thing?"

"Oh, I think I can work something out." All Might smiles in a way that Eraserhead had never seen. It's… intimidating, really. And slightly scary. "But we still need to figure out what to do with the children. We brought you here mostly for that." 'You' as in Eraserhead and the other heroes, obviously. Tsukauchi's usefulness clearly ended, and Recovery Girl was doing something else. "Izuku might have an idea to present to you." He motions his son to start, with a beaming look of paternal pride on his face.

"Yes!" Izuku straightens up a bit. "Err, basically, I knew his quirk for a while, and I learned what hers is like… today, and they are really, really cool and I think that they would make for awesome underground heroes! And they are young enough to try to apply to a hero school! He even mentioned that he wanted to do that, before… err, bad things happened to him. They just need someone to give them a chance, and… address their medical issues, and…" He looks at All Might for help, since he is clearly not seeing what he hoped to see on their faces.

"I agreed to involve Present Mic and Midnight because, frankly speaking, we might need some more teachers in that." All Might finally says. "Izuku has an interesting idea on how to deal with it, and I think that I'm on board with it, but realizing it might require some additional leverage in front of Nedzu."

(***)

They are still debating the proposal (mostly working out the details, because everyone in the room is on board, just with varying degrees of doubt) when Shuzenji returns to the room with Inko Midoriya tailing her.

Shuzenji shows not a trace of it on her face, but Eraserhead had known her for years. Recovery Girl is out for blood, and it's not for the transfusion. Midoriya Inko looks calmer, but something in her green eyes make Eraserhead's blood go cold.

"Aizawa. Tsukauchi." She announces. "I want you to do your absolute utmost to send Nightshade to jail for as long as possible. And then do the same with every member of those kids 'families' that you can find." She lands herself on the armchair.

"That bad?" Tsukauchi replies with a question.

"Worse." Recovery Girl replies promptly. "He has three broken fingers, two broken ribs and a concussion. She has second degree burns on a lot of skin. And that's just the most recent damage. I'll need to break and set her bones again properly, because she had her arms broken by someone, apparently Nightshade during an earlier meeting, and she clearly received no medical attention after that so they healed wrongly." Eraserhead can hear her fingers tapping on the table. "They are both malnourished, and that's NOT recent. They didn't eat even nearly enough for years. There are also the medical issues to consider - if Izuku Midoriya didn't decide to try to help them, neither of them would have survived the winter." There is a faint sound of her tongue clicking. "And considering what I managed to get out of them, they both knew about that but considered it a better option than returning to wherever they escaped from."

"Well, shit." Eraserhead says. "Looks like it's time to ruin someone's life." Emi nods furiously. Mic adds a (way too loud) YEAAAH, that Midnight promptly joins. "I think we're also in agreement about what we do about those kids, yes?"

Emi elbows him. Discreetly. It still hurts.

"Let's adopt them, Shou." She says, and he stares at her like he just met her.

"We haven't even seen them yet, Emi." Eraserhead manages to reply, while Inko, Izuku, All Might, detective Tsukauchi and Recovery Girl are staring at them weirdly.

"That's great! Think about it, no bias concerning their looks. Or quirks." She replies with a bright smile. Way too bright.

All Might clears his throat. Eraserhead decides to, once again, take one for the team. He is used to how useless Mic and Midnight are in moments like these.

"Honesty for honesty." He tells All Might with a blank face. "We got married a few months ago." Tsukauchi's look of pity is just sad. Aizawa turns to face Emi. "My answer is no. We aren't adopting them. I'm not budging on that."

(He unconditionally surrenders to her twenty minutes later.)

(***)

They are about to leave the building (with those kids clearly shocked by the gentle treatment and a promise that they will not be returned to whoever they escaped from), when they see someone else. Or, to be exact, Emi does. There is a six or seven year old girl with white/green hair, wearing a set of black pajamas, staring at the guests from the doorframe. With a Gang Orca plushie in her hands.

It's almost after midnight, so it's a bit late for her to not be in bed.

"Oh, hello there!" Emi coos just a bit, because that girl (despite her slightly intimidating glare) is just super cute. "My name is Emi. What's yours?" The attention in the room shifts to them.

"Aiko." She replies promptly. Emi decides that it's a cute name. It means love child, after all! Then the girl puts her hands up and shows her six fingers (while almost letting her plushie fall to the floor.

"Oh, so you are six years old." Emi replies with her brightest smile.

"No." Aiko shakes her head. "I committed six murders."

The silence in the room is total. Save for the sound of All Might coughing out a lot of blood. Inko goes pale in horror.

"Your birthday ends your previous year of life." Aiko announces, completely unshaken by the silence. "When my seven-year-old self was born, my six-years-old self died. I killed it to grow stronger and take its belongings for myself. That's murder. And robbery. And probably identity theft." Then she yawns. "I'm sleepy. Goodnight!" And she walks out of the room.

"What. The. Hell." They all hear Present Mic's terrified whisper.

(***)

Three days after the event, Thunderbolt suddenly announces his retirement in the media. He cites undefined medical problems, and says that he needs to focus on his civilian life. He uses his money to buy a small and generally unassuming countryside cottage. Where he promptly retires, after selling all of his belongings that didn't fit inside. And donating most of the money to the charity groups focusing on helping victims of quirkism.

Eraserhead didn't get to see whatever 'corrective talk' All Might gave him. So he grew curious. What had that much effect on the corrupt hero? What broke him so utterly, that despite being a gloryhound with a nice backing in the Hero Commission, he just RETIRED? Completely, thoroughly and irreversibly.

So, against himself, he phones All Might. He picks it up after a few signals.

"Aizawa?" All Might sounds almost cheerful. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted to ask what you told Thunderbolt." Eraserhead replies. "You clearly terrified him, and I want to know how. For reference, let's say."

"Oh, you know." All Might replies, sounding a bit surprised by the question. "I learned a lot of things in the United States. A hero needs to learn many skills, not just stick to one skillset, right?" Oh, Eraserhead knows that very well. "I'm skilled in tracking, trapping, survival, sewing, fishing, CIA enhanced interrogation techniques, cooking…"

CIA what?

"I might have mentioned to Thunderbolt one of the things from the list." All Might adds. "I might have also mentioned how furious I am at him attacking my de facto nephew. And that Star and Stripe, the United States Number One hero, owes me a favour. Oh, and also the part where it's really easy to just vanish mysteriously when you managed to irritate the Number One Hero AND the CIA. And that Star and Stripe is a drinking buddy of its current director." All Might chuckles into the phone. "Well, is there anything else you want to know, Aizawa?"

(***)

Twenty years earlier, in America.

"So..." A trainee asks. "Can I, like, give that training mannequin a white wig and paint his eyes red? For... reasons."

Seven hours later.

"Do I want to know..." The higher up visiting the training center asks. "...why is that trainee accusing the mannequin of killing someone named Nana while waterboarding and beating him up?"

"Probably not." The instructor replies. "But I like his enthusiasm and creativity."

(***)

It is my honest belief that it was rather therapeutic to All Might, ngl. Also you're gonna have to wait for a few more chapters to realize what will now happen to Himiko and Hitoshi (except for them obtaining rather cool adoptive parents). Unfortunately, when it comes to explaining what the hell's wrong (or right) with Aiko... well, let's just say that I estimate the great reveal about the nature of her quirk around the Shie Hasseikai arc from canon. Near its conclusion, in fact.

And no, chapter 38 (that I wrote yesterday) is right before the Provisional License Exam. In the meantime, enjoy her shenanigans and attempts to terrify everyone in the vicinity.