Jpx099 - Not all of them, I believe, but you can expect most to have at least a cameo. Yes, even Mineta gets one, but he isn't namedropped.
Fencer029 - Worst case scenario I'll end up borrowing quirks of canon characters that are quirkless here. Like, say, Present Mic's. Don't worry about the characters :P I have a lot of them.
The Archivist of Nyx - Great to finally have you here :D
(***)
"So…" Mei asks. "... what'cha doing?"
Izuku stops working on his laptop. He is sitting by the wall of the Special Course building, reading through something. There is peace, calmness and a forest in front of him. It really calms his nerves.
"I get the feeling that I heard that line somewhere." Izuku thinks for a second. "... Phineas and Ferb?"
"Yep." Mei admits. She looks surprised at him realizing that. "Shino keeps saying that she relates to Candace Flynn, for some reason. Apparently, she ended up watching it after some US soldier recommended it to her during the war."
Well, enjoyment of foreign cartoons is one thing to pick up during the wartime. Probably one of the least bad. Izuku himself only checked it out because there were one or two episodes (including the Marvel crossover) that included superheroes, but he ended up watching the whole thing in the end.
"Well, to answer your question, I got a message from Assistant Commissioner Mera." Izuku replies. "I have to agree with Aizawa that he is good when organizational affairs are involved. Aizawa had him look through everything we've established thus far, and I just got a list of ideas for improvements."
Aizawa and Principal Sasaki, at this point, were certain that neither Keigo Takami nor Yokumiro Mera were leaking intel to Overhaul. Both of them were also reasonable enough to realize that certain things they couldn't share with their subordinates.
Izuku was still 99% sure that Hawks told his Quirk Suppression Squad about everything. But they weren't saying anything to outsiders. They wouldn't do that. Especially not when Aizawa was involved. He would vocally disagree, but he was a part of their family at this point.
His wife, after all, was the person who threw the training grenade that made Hawks bolt through the window and attain his nickname. Miss Joke wasn't part of the SAT anymore, but she was still part of the family. And so was Aizawa by extension.
Mei sits by the wall next to him. It's almost surprising to see her just trying to hang out with him like that. Instead of designing things, constructing things or… well… doing the relationship things.
"Anything interesting?" She asks. Izuku beams back at her.
"Actually, yeah!" He says. "Sure, one or two things are impractical, but that's because of Mera not knowing certain things. But most are very interesting. One actually involves you a bit."
"Oh?" Izuku can see the glint in her eyes. She realizes that her involvement means creating things. "Tell me more."
"Basically speaking, we've kept our information network a bit… separated." Izuku replies. "We have a lot of tablets and some computers, like my laptop…" Thanks to Hatsume Industries funding them, or, well, Mei doing that technically. "... but what's the point of having to send regular updates to people? We should just establish some centralized database, and have well-protected apps to access it."
"Oh!" Mei claps her hand. "It makes perfect sense! I can house it in Kyoto, away from Overhaul. And get some really talented programmers to make it super-secure!" She actually realizes that she can't do all of that on a reasonable timeframe and will delegate. Izuku is slightly proud.
"Wouldn't that cost… like… millions?" Izuku replied questioningly. Mei shrugged.
"C'mon, considering what sort of mess the country is in, we can safely assume that police and heroes countrywide will end up using that network. Instead of trying to adapt what's left of their current systems." Mei replies. "Having it be OUR network might mean long-term income. We might actually add some degree of secure communication between the members and branches to that." She suddenly switches back to thinking about functionalities. No more surprisingly lucid CEO talk. "Maybe even have something in it to work as an electronic badge, sort of. We'll probably need some dedicated communicators for maximum security, so…"
"Mei, slow down!" Izuku says, and she freezes. "You were speaking so quickly near the end that I could barely understand you." She realizes it wasn't anything bad and smiles at him. He smiles back. He likes her smile, even if it's typically maniacal. "We should have that talk with Aizawa, Hawks, and probably Principal Sasaki. Oh, and Maijima."
She gives him a thumbs up and snuggles closer to him.
"So what's next?" She asks. Izuku is still a bit surprised by it.
"You… you know that the rest isn't about inventions?" He asks. Izuku wants to get to the bottom of this, if possible.
"I know, I know." She agrees with him. Almost wistfully. "But… look, I kind of… I love you. Like, a lot." Izuku blinks at her a few times at that unexpected confession. It's not the first time she uses those words, just… it still somehow came out of the left field. "I'm just… I mean…"
"Mei, take it slow." Izuku quickly says. She is clearly confused about something, and it's often best to give her a hand when that happens. "Like speaking to investors, remember?"
"I can't dumb everything down THAT much, remember?" She grins at him. Then takes a deep breath. "Alright, so basically, I've realized that relationships are a bit more complicated than I thought. So not just, you know, sex and working together on things."
Izuku thinks recent weeks made him mature a lot. He doesn't even freak out when she drops the s-word. He isn't yet at the point where he'd manage to casually drop that word himself, but… there is progress.
"So, I'm like… trying to figure out those other bits." She says. "So, like, just hanging out together? Dating, I think? It's super confusing." She admits. "I mean, I'm done with work for today, so…"
"So you just wanted to hang out with me?" Izuku concludes. She nods. "Well, I'm grateful, happy and honored that you want to do that, just… you know that this isn't mandatory? I love you the way you are. You don't have to change anything if you aren't comfortable with it."
He really means it. Mei had a long list of oddities, but he really didn't care about that. He loved working alongside her; he loved seeing the happiness in her eyes when she was narrating to him her new ideas for the babies; he loved the looks she was giving him when they were alone (he knew she loved him, and that was… nice, reassuring, not something he was used to in his life, something that he never expected to happen really).
Mei was just herself. Izuku had his own oddities (superhero fanboyism despite being a superhero, chief among all). He had (although he was slowly winning against it, especially since Ryo Inui was involved) that social anxiety of his and complete lack of experience when relationships were involved. His body was really weak, and was only going to grow weaker. But she ignored all of that. Izuku reciprocated.
"I know, I know." Mei sighs. "I just kinda wanted to find out how it feels to do stuff like that. I mean, I have a boyfriend, the love of my life that I'm eventually going to marry…" Izuku manages not to choke at the M-word being thrown around, because he really didn't think that far. "... but we weren't even on a date! It's weird. Right?" She asks. She genuinely asks. With just a hint of confusion.
Seriously, he has two girlfriends now. How is he going to… well, now that he thinks about it, the civilization as they know it will probably collapse for a decade or two. Even if they all survive that, he could as well just marry them both. It's not like someone's going to arrest him for that.
"Well, I beat you there, Mei." Izuku admits. "I have two girlfriends. And I wasn't on a single date in my life, either." If you exclude buying Mei a takeaway McBurger that day when they met Aizawa Shouta the first time. But Izuku thinks that it genuinely doesn't count.
Mei digests it for a second or two. Finally, she asks.
"Izu, be honest with me." She says. On her face, confusion that's almost adorable. "Are we weirdos?" Oh God, this was hilarious.
"Mei, I'm a superhero." He replies when he stops laughing at that. Mei kept looking at him strangely the whole time. "And you are producing gear for the superheroes while supporting a war effort against supervillains in a prefecture that's way away from where you live. We're both eighteen years old while doing so. Yes, we're total weirdos, but it just means that we fit each other."
She grins at him. Then she leans towards him, resting her head on his shoulder. She looks relaxed.
"Well, I'm alright with being a weirdo when I'm one with you." She says. Well, way to make him almost cry. It's… well, romantic, actually. And he is really weak to things like that, as already established. Way too emotional.
"Likewise." Izuku replies. Then he makes a decision. "You know, if you really want to, we could… like… go on a date."
She perks up. Her head is no longer on his shoulder. Instead, her eyes are studying him up close.
"You think so?" She asks. "Where? When?"
"Well, I think I have an idea for where, but I'd like to keep that a secret." He replies. He'll have to ask Sosaki-san secretly what sort of engineering museums Mei didn't visit (just in case she visited any). The rest was having Eclipse act as their taxi there. "As for when, well, in a few days. My schedule has been super packed recently, but I'll make some space for that."
"Awesome." She grins at him. "Take Tsuyu on the date too, you know? I don't want her to feel all lonely."
Well, neither does Izuku. In his opinion, making Tsuyu feel lonely after all she went through should be classified as a crime against Mankind. And Frogkind too. He didn't retire here for work before he made sure that Uraraka (and Kayama-sensei) were around to keep Tsuyu company.
He'll have to figure something else out. Because let's be real, having two girlfriends is weird enough. Going on a single date with the two of them would be even weirder (plus, no way he can find something they both will enjoy, they are simply too different).
It's for the same reason Izuku is deeply happy that Mei isn't impulsive and crazy enough to suggest any… different… uhm… group activity. Izuku would nope out instantly. Not only would it be way too exhausting (even with his quirk helping him not to cry out of pain after the deed), but also… Well, what's the point of doing 'it' with a girl when you have to split your attention between her and someone else?!
It might have been Izuku's long-term disbelief in his chances of obtaining a girlfriend, but… when you have one, then COMMIT. Fully. Bedroom or not. His current relationship arrangement only worked because of their peculiar living and working arrangements. And because they were all weirdoes, to be honest.
"I'll figure something out." Izuku says. Mei stares into his eyes for several long seconds. Clearly thinking something over.
"Fine!" She settles on agreement. "So, what else is in those proposals?"
Despite Izuku's earlier insistence that she doesn't have to do that, she clearly wanted to do that. Well, fine. If so it is, Izuku will oblige.
"The most important bit is probably Mera's suggestion about certain changes to the hero's classification." Izuku says. "Mostly twofold. First is redefinition of what superheroes and sidekicks mean, the second is adding additional subcategory to the heroes akin to what we already de facto have with underground heroes."
"Hmph." Mei hums something non-commitantly. "What subcategory?" Surprisingly enough, she starts from the latter.
"Basically speaking, Mera pointed out that there are much more people willing to help others than there are people willing to fight criminals in order to help others." Izuku replies. He thinks that it's an excellent idea, and it shows. "So he suggests creating a category for heroes who either do not want to fight villains or have quirks that are simply not very useful in that. The name he suggested is 'Support Heroes'."
In Izuku's opinion, this subcategory would be threefold eventually (well, more like two and a half fold, really). On one hand, heroes focusing on the rescue. On another, people who could legally use their quirks in whatever business they were running (like Witch and her mushroom farm, apparently). And those who combined that.
So, for example, the future Eri if she decided to be a healer after realizing Chiyo Shuzenji's dream of getting her to attend a medical school - she could apply her quirk both in the field and in a hospital, after all.
It's not just Izuku's opinion. It's Mera's as well. He actually points that out in his proposal. Izuku agrees that it's a reasonable prediction of the future evolution of support heroes.
"So, someone like me." Mei realizes that. "And Arsenal."
Momo finally picked her hero name two days ago. Took her a while. Izuku isn't fully sure if it's' a good one, but it certainly fits her power. In Izuku's opinion, Tokoyami's new hero name (Blackwing) is cooler, but… oh, well.
"Aye." Izuku admits. "In all honesty, I'd expect Ochaco to be mostly into that as well. Although this ties into the second important of Mera's proposal. Basically speaking, he points out that we have too many superheroes."
"I thought that having a lot of those was sort of the point." Mei asks, clearly confused. Well, that's what happens when you are messing up with terminology. "Having a lot of them, I mean."
"No, superheroes as in heroes that aren't sidekicks." Izuku quickly corrects it. "We were having a rather stopgap definition of superheroes being combat-oriented heroes. The point is, we're all getting rather intensive self-defense and even gun handling training. For example, Jirou might not not have a combat-oriented superpower, but she can kick someone's ass without it."
She might have been small and unassuming, but she was scarily fast. And she had a knife now. A pistol too. For self-defense, yes. And she wasn't yet at the point in the training where she could use the pistol freely. For now, it was something like 'don't pull it out until the hero agency authorizes you to do it'. But having it was a good way of intimidating some random thugs.
Many people have guns nowadays. Not all people have guns nowadays. And even some of the gun-toting ones didn't enjoy going against someone who was armed, even if their enemies were outnumbered. Accidents happened.
"Mera suggests limiting the term superheroes to what passes for powerhouses among us." Izuku continues. "So basically, every branch would be a superhero or two for supervillain deterrence and serious fights, and a handful of sidekicks doing commissions for police or fire department, or even working alongside them almost as a part of them."
It honestly felt like some version of feudalism, at least to Midoriya. But it made sense in the context.
Potential positive that Mera mentions is that the superhero would be allowed to hone their power in relative peace (at least once the system would be officially established) while having the sidekicks to actually earn money for the branch operations daily.
Defiant isn't called into combat very often, after all. If they were all going to be paid per intervention, he would go around hungry. The Metahuman Network was already working similarly, with some powerhouses not really doing much aside from fighting and patrolling where fighting was likely to happen, while people like Earworm and Hijack were doing the legwork.
Not to mention, having some combat-oriented sidekicks would allow a superhero to cover more ground.
"So, for Takoba, you would be a superhero." Mei concludes. "While Kirishima, Ashido, Uraraka and Tsuyu would be sidekicks. Kirishima mostly working as both a more lightweight fighter and as a part of the local Special Operations Unit, together with Ashido. Uraraka with the fire and rescue departments. Tsuyu as a diver and water rescue. Right?"
She misses a few people, like Arsenal. And Eclipse, who is certainly a superhero material. But he was actually a bit surprised at how quickly she figured the rough gist of it. Almost as much as he was surprised by how much Hawks was interested in working with Kirishima. And Ashido, too, once she got her hero outfit.
It was a standard bodysuit with some ability to resist bullets included. In mostly black colour, with just a hint of dark pink here and there. Although it was also acid-proof. Mei also, after watching Spiderman movie with him, added a wrist launcher that allowed Pinky to fire acid bullets (or beams) from it.
Her acid at maximum strength could practically unmake matter. It didn't exactly behave like normal acids, in fact - the corrosion was almost instant and quiet when you focused on that. Takami pointed out that being able to make instant holes in the walls (or even digging under something, with enough time) are both useful powers to have in his line of work.
In Izuku's opinion, Kirishima asked him to find something for Pinky to do. She was slightly backseated, mostly because they were waiting for her hero uniform for weeks. And her boyfriend knew well enough that keeping her with nothing to do wasn't helpful to her road to recovery at all.
"Yeah, that would be right." Izuku agrees with her. "In all honesty, our current list of superheroes according to this classification includes me, Eclipse, Amplitude and Tornado. Blackwing and Split might get there with some more time and work." He was doing some really nice progress, all things considered. She… well, she really needed to prove herself.
"So, pretty much the equivalent of an S and SS-Rank villains, right?" Mei asks. Izuku blinks at her a few times. "I mean, we know of Overhaul, Dabi, Mustard, Carnage and Kurogiri. Five and six are pretty similar numbers." Oh, yeah. Numbers brought her attention to that. Makes sense.
Underground heroes were probably going to operate independently, mostly. Just with connections to regional hero agencies. Shinsou was already something of an Izuku's 'special jobs man' at this point. Izuku was pretty certain that if he was going to open up a new hero agency, he'd have Hijack work on that again. Same if he wanted to make some serious inspection of some agency after some fuck-up.
The superhero/sidekick system among them would be less pronounced, if pronounced at all. Blackwing was probably going to officially graduate into non-underground heroism, too. So the whole thing was a mess.
"Well, it still needs to get accepted." Izuku admits. "Mostly because sidekick sounds diminutive, so I'm not going to randomly make people from superheroes into sidekicks. So I'll have to suggest it during the next joint meeting. But in general terms, you are right."
Mei nods. She seems happy at being right.
"Say…" She suddenly speaks, while Izuku is still basking a bit in her smile. "... is there a similar look on my face when I talk about my inventions?"
"Huh?" Izuku blinks at her a few times. This came out of nowhere.
"I mean, you look so passionate and happy when you are talking about stuff like that." Mei says. "And I absolutely can't divert my eyes from your face right now. You seem to have something similar going on with you when I talk about my inventions, so…"
He chuckles. This is… well, she is honestly asking. This makes it not just romantic but also incredibly, incredibly adorable.
"Yes." He replies. He doesn't know what face he is actually making right now, but her description of it sounds like what he thinks about her when she is deep into her engineering fit. "There is an identical look on your face when you talk about your babies. And it's really hard not to stare at it."
His answer was the correct one, at least judging from the rather lengthy period of making out that followed.
Aizawa promised them at the beginning of their cooperation that eventually he was going to check up on their lodgings, in order to make sure that no. Defiant is bullshitting him about the Metahuman Network's quality of accommodations.
Eventually, he reminded Izuku of this promise. Izuku had no real alternative to preparing the Metahuman Network's headquarters for an unexpected inspection.
Covering the windows (already mostly boarded) with drapers and hiding everything that could be potentially used for identifying the location of the place. Or anyone living inside of it, except for those that Aizawa already knew. Having Mei inspect Aizawa to make sure that he wasn't carrying any localizer. Ensuring that Hijack wasn't there, or he'd probably do something dumb. Normal things.
They also didn't include the mostly unused two upper floors in the inspection. Izuku preferred Aizawa to suspect that they were hiding something (dunno what, Izuku wasn't devious enough to figure that man out) to him knowing how many floors the building truly has.
He wasn't devious, but he was cautious.
The basement was out for the same reason. Seeing it flooded would make him realize too much. Especially if he saw a connection to the sewers that it had.
The inspection lasted for something close to thirty minutes. Aizawa was intimidatingly scarce in words, but it seemed that they passed the inspection. Then he left, returning to his precinct through Eclipse's warpgate.
"So…" Sasaki, naturally, phoned him. How he caught the wind of the inspection was anyone's guess, really.
No, wait. Aizawa informed him about it beforehand. For once, it wasn't Sasaki's apparent omniscience at play. What a surprise.
"They weren't lying about accommodations." Aizawa replies. "It's honestly like one of your boarding houses, just co-ed and with covered windows."
"Defiant appears to be better at organizing things and leading people than we expected, I guess." Sasaki admits. "And our assessment of his skills as a leader was already quite high to begin with."
Aizawa admits as much. Defiant was a bit too… chaotic to do well in something as organized as a police force, in his opinion. Doing the paperwork would probably kill him slowly. Being (sometimes) unable to help someone because of the regulations and laws would do that quickly.
But as a leader of an organization that was significantly less regulated (and probably slightly illegal), he was good. Right man in the right place, all things considered.
"I agree." Aizawa decides to say that aloud. "Especially as he did all of that while starting with pretty much nothing. Although I suspect Hatsume helped him a lot."
"Yes." Sasaki replies. "So, did you figure out where the headquarters are? I can believe in a lot of things, but not in you, a police officer, not trying to find that out. Even if you wouldn't get to use that knowledge for anything."
Aizawa realizes that Mirai Sasaki knows him dangerously well. It's worrying. At least when you aren't one of his graduates. Then him knowing you well is a perfectly normal if still slightly unsettling thing.
"Defiant and the other kids are cautious and smart." Aizawa says after a few seconds of silence. Thankfully, no one from the police gets to see him actually praising someone. That would be odd. "But I'm a veteran police officer. Several stories high. The basement most likely flooded, judging from how much damp air was exuding from it. No sounds of traffic or general city life coming from outside. So, a large building, most likely by the river, and almost certainly in one of the abandoned districts. I also know that they boarded the windows and I know how many of them are on the front wall of the first two floors. I'll have the headquarters' location within a day or two."
"But you're not planning to do anything with that." This wasn't a question. More like a (very well) veiled threat.
"No, I'm not." Aizawa replies. "Having those kids police trust the police is crucial to them working with us. And without them, well. Hawks is good and he can probably mow through most of the known supervillains easily, but this is mostly because Defiant managed to properly dissect their quirks. Even if you exclude the whole part of how incredibly useful the Network members are, we need his expertise if we want the Quirk Suppression Squad to not get massacred by the next supervillain Overhaul recruits."
Unfortunately, there were no quirk analysts for hire out there. Defiant and his little brain trust (that apparently included Alchemist, Eclipse and a new hero, Arsenal) was the closest thing they had to that. That was something that they couldn't lose. Or the results would be horrible.
"But I'll feel better knowing where they are." Aizawa adds. "Just in case something really nasty happened to their general vicinity. You can never know nowadays. Naturally, only the council members will be privy to this knowledge."
"Very well." Sasaki agrees with him. "I think this is reasonable."
(***)
This is my take on how the standard hero agency structure [hero as the head, then some sidekicks] originally started. It's pretty much a feudalism, yeah, but in this particular set of circumstances it makes sense. Also some new hero names, Aizawa proving that he might not be a superhero but he beats them all up in practical experience, and rare Mei fluff. Hope you all are satisfied ;)