Chapter 5: Winds of Change Stoke this Flame
Getting stabbed was every bit as painful as Izuku imagined it would be, and he was pissed at himself for letting it happen.
It hadn't even been a quirk. The drug dealer could change colors, that was all. It was an easy fight. Izuku had been wrapping braided cuffs around his wrists when the man yanked a hand free and pulled a switch blade out, blindly stabbing behind him.
Izuku had the misfortune of being too close and too small.
(One day he'd get a growth spurt. One day).
The blade caught him in the side, just under his ribs.
Before the pain hit, Izuku's main emotion was disbelief. He'd been out fighting for over two years, and he'd never had a serious injury. A few sprained ankles from bad landings, but that was it. He'd let himself get cocky because of it.
Then the pain hit. Blinding white fire racing up and down his side.
The drug dealer pushed him away, stumbling a few feet before bolting down the alley.
Izuku put a hand to his side, feeling the wet stickiness there. He lifted his hand, looked at the dark red blood coating his fingers.
That…wasn't good.
He fell back against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting. It hurt. Not even the worst of Katsuki's explosions had been this painful.
And he'd never felt the same kind of fear he felt now when Katsuki blasted him. The fear now had tight claws around his heart, squeezing and choking him.
This was bad. What should he do? He was supposed to keep pressure on it, right? But fuck, that hurt, too.
His eyes watered. He tried to focus on facts and think logically. Stab wounds usually meant hospital. If he went to a hospital, they'd figure out who he was and everything would be over.
If he didn't, he'd be dead.
Oh god, he was dying. Fourteen years old and bleeding out in an alley, with no one he could call for help. No mothers or best friends were waiting for him to come home. No one would even know he was missing for a few weeks, depending on how long it took Mrs. Ishiyama to notice he hadn't been back to the apartment. He'd been so careful to keep himself isolated so no one would know who he was, that now there was no one to care that he was dying.
Eraserhead might, if only because the hero apparently did nothing else in his life besides chase Izuku down every night. The guy probably wouldn't know what to do once Alley Cat was gone.
Izuku tilted his face towards the night sky. He could signal the pro again. Eraserhead always seemed to be around somewhere. He'd make sure Izuku got to a hospital.
A hospital meant everything was over, though. There was no way his father wouldn't find him there, once his name was in an official system somewhere.
But he really, really didn't want to die, and he didn't want to be alone right now.
His bloody fingers fumbled with his lighter, and it took a lot more energy to focus on controlling the fire than normal. He watched the fireball spin in the air until he lost concentration, and the fire dissipated into nothing as it fell back down.
This would either work, or he'd be dead. Even if it did work, it might lead to his death later. For now, he'd done all he could.
Xx
The heart attack didn't go away. There weren't any more flashes or hints of fire to guide him, and his anxiety was skyrocketing.
It reached new heights when he finally found Alley Cat, sitting back in an alley with no criminals in sight. "Alley Cat?"
"You came," he said, voice soft. He'd been crying, his mask wet with his tears, and his hands were pressed against his side.
And that was a lot of blood on them.
Aizawa dropped down on his injured side and reached for his meagre first aid supplies. "What happened?"
"Stabbed. It was stupid, I wasn't paying attention." His words were slurring, and Aizawa had a feeling the only reason this kid was upright was because he had the wall behind him.
"Let me see," he said, already moving the hands out of the way. He tore the hole in the hoodie wider so he could see it, biting back curses. It wasn't a long cut, but he couldn't tell how deep it was. It definitely shredded a lot of muscle, though, and the pain had to be intense.
He did what first aid he could, pressing gauze tightly against it and ignoring the hisses of pain. "I'm taking you to the hospital."
"Can't," Izuku shook his head, fresh tears soaking his mask. "Dad will find me. Can't."
That answered some of Aizawa's old questions. He gently gripped Izuku's chin and forced him to make eye contact. "Will your father kill you if he finds you?"
Izuku nodded.
"Okay. Then I won't let him find you, I promise. But you need a hospital."
"He'll find me," Izuku muttered, closing his eyes and shaking his head.
"Not with me around," Aizawa promised. "Do you trust me?"
It was asking a lot, considering their relationship. But it only took a few seconds for Izuku to nod.
Aizawa gathered him in his arms immediately after that. The kid wasn't that heavy, but he wasn't as light as Aizawa had feared, either. He'd been getting regular meals, which was one heavy weight off Aizawa's shoulders.
It had been replaced with about a hundred twenty pounds in his arms, but he'd take what victories he could get.
One of the perks of being a hero was that when he rushed into the closest emergency room and started ordering nurses and doctors around, they listened to him.
The kid's mask was in his pocket, taken off before entering the building. The poorly bleached hair was a shock, since he'd been expecting green curls. He huffed, somewhat proud of the kid for hiding himself.
Aizawa would handle hiding him now. He put Izuku in witness protection, so his files were classified and the team caring for him was sworn to secrecy. He'd asked Nedzu to send him the proper paperwork for that, and he'd deal with it all later, once he was sure the kid would live through the night.
Izuku had still been awake when placed on the gurney and rushed into surgery, but he hadn't had any idea what was going on around him.
Aizawa kept himself distracted as long as he could, doing everything possible to make sure Izuku's presence here would never be known to outsiders. Once all that was done, he collapsed in the waiting room chair and texted his husband.
Shouta
Found the kid. We're at the hospital.
He was freaking stabbed.
It took a minute for the response, and belatedly he realized he'd probably woken his poor husband up. He forgot sometimes that normal people liked to sleep at night.
Yamada
oh shit how bad is it
is the little guy going to be okay
Shouta
Hard to say. There was a lot of blood.
He didn't want to come to the hospital.
He was worried his father would find him and kill him.
Yamada
Damn. So we were right he's not on good terms with Dragon
Aizawa's thumbs hovered over his phone. There was so much he wanted to discuss, but a lot of what they did going forward would depend on what Izuku told them when he woke up. Without his full story, it was hard to classify him as a victim or a villain, and therefore impossible to decide the proper course of action.
Shouta
I'm not telling the police I've found him until I talk to him.
Hizashi took a few minutes to respond, and Aizawa could imagine him trying to figure out how to respond to his decision.
Yamada
You know I'm with you no matter what you do, but are you sure?
Shouta
I just want to talk to him first. He's only a kid.
Yamada
Okay. Good luck. I love you.
Shouta
I love you too
An email came in, the paperwork he'd asked for from Nedzu. He spent half an hour getting it filled out by the appropriate people, and by then Izuku had been moved to a private room.
He was outside the door in ten minutes when he heard, a doctor waiting for him.
"You're the one who brought him in?" she asked.
Aizawa nodded. "Is he okay?"
She smiled. "He'll be fine. We gave him a blood transfusion and stitched up the gash. His muscles got the worst of it, no organs were punctured or torn."
That was honestly better than Aizawa had been hoping for.
"The anesthesia will wear off soon, if you want to wait for him to wake up, but he'll need rest."
"Thank you," Aizawa nodded.
She checked her clipboard. "And I understand he's a top secret patient?"
"He's in witness protection." It might not exactly be the truth, and it certainly wasn't official, but the staff here didn't need to know that.
"Alright. Let me know if you need anything."
He thanked her again and then finally went inside. Izuku, somehow, looked even smaller without his mask and hoodie. His curly hair had grown out over the last two years, making a fluffy halo on the pillow. The bleaching really was terrible, and he hadn't done it in a while. His green roots were clearly showing, making his hair a messy patchwork of blonde, orange, and green.
Aizawa fell into the chair and texted Hizashi again to let him know that Izuku would be okay, and then he messaged Nedzu to ask him to find coverage for his classes the next day.
Nedzu promised it wasn't a problem and asked to be kept in the loop, reminding Aizawa not to hesitate to reach out if he needed help.
It was an odd thing to remind him of at this moment, since Aizawa was clearly reaching out as needed, and he wondered what plans that principal was creating.
Xx
Izuku didn't know where he was. This was probably bad, but his head was kind of fuzzy and his panic seemed to have taken a vacation.
"Kid? You awake?" someone asked.
He blinked, and Eraserhead came into focus. The yellow goggles he usually wore were draped around his neck. He looked…tired.
"There you are." Eraserhead's voice was softer than he'd ever heard it before. "How you feeling?"
"What's happening?" Izuku's voice was raspy, his throat completely dry.
Eraserhead handed him a cup of water before he answered. Water had never tasted so good.
"Do you remember getting stabbed?"
Oh, right. That was a thing that happened. Izuku winced and reached for his side. "Yeah. That hurt." He had a vague memory of Eraserhead showing up and carrying him somewhere, but he didn't remember anything after that.
Eraserhead snorted. "I bet it did. You're at the hospital."
Ah, that made sense. And here was his panic, returning from whatever vacation it had been on.
"Your father's not going to find you. Your file is being treated like witness protection."
Well, his panic didn't unpack its bags yet, but it was in the door. "You don't know him like I do."
Eraserhead conceded that point. "Maybe not. But I have been protecting people a lot longer than you, and I've got a lot more resources. He won't touch you here."
Izuku wasn't really pacified by that answer. But he was hooked up to a bunch of machines and had a painful hole in his side, so there wasn't really much he could do about that. "Are you staying here?"
"Do you want me to?" Eraserhead sounded surprised, though not much of his facial expression changed.
It took a moment for Izuku to get his thoughts in order again. "I still feel like he'll find me. And I can't fight right now." He didn't add that the thought of being alone again felt like a crushing weight that would suffocate him. It was probably the result of whatever drugs were in his system right now, but he didn't feel like the vigilante single-handedly protecting the city at night for the last two years. He felt more like the kid who had to run through the sewers so he wouldn't get shot.
"Then I'll stay." Eraserhead didn't make a big deal out of it, which Izuku appreciated. "I have some questions I want to ask anyway."
"Why I became a vigilante, right?"
Eraserhead nodded. "Among others, but we can start there."
Izuku shifted, trying to get comfortable. It was a lost battle, and he settled back against his pillow with a sigh. "To be honest, it was kind of an accident."
He ended up explaining everything, why he'd run away, how he'd fooled Mrs. Ishiyama into renting her basement to him, how he'd tricked gangs and stolen money from them, all the anonymous tips he'd given the police.
Eraserhead dragged a hand over his face at that. "Of course the tips were from you. That makes so much sense. You sent the tip about your father's meeting that night, too, didn't you?"
Izuku nodded, clutching the sheets in his lap. "That reverse drug…if the black market creates a commercial version, it's going to hurt a lot of people."
"It would," Eraserhead agreed. "You did the right thing trying to stop it. But I still don't understand why you didn't go to the police when you ran away."
Izuku winced. "I'm not…I don't really…Dad always taught me they couldn't be trusted. And I felt like if I did, then no matter where the police tried to put me, it would leave a trail he could follow."
Eraserhead sighed and went quiet for a while.
Izuku leaned his head back, exhaustion creeping over him. "What's going to happen to me now?"
"I'm still working that part out. For the most part, as a vigilante, you didn't really break that many laws. You didn't use your quirk that often, and that's the main offense of vigilantes. Other than that it's not really illegal to be at the right place at the right time."
That didn't do much to answer his question.
"For now, you're going to sleep. I'll be here."
Anxiety still churned in his stomach, but exhaustion overtook him and pulled him under inky blackness.
Xx
Considering Aizawa had basically guessed half of Izuku's story, he shouldn't have been surprised by anything he heard. But it still angered him that Izuku had been through all of that, and that he'd felt like he had no other options besides surviving on his own while he tried to dismantle his father's black market empire.
The surprising parts of the story were how Izuku got money, and the fact that he did have a real roof over his head. How Mrs. Ishiyama didn't know she was harboring a runaway teenager was beyond him, but he'd seen stranger things.
After Izuku fell asleep, he texted an update to Hizashi, and then he stepped over to the window to call Nedzu.
It was four in the morning, but the principal picked up anyway, sounding far too chipper for any time of day. Aizawa relayed Izuku's story, and Nedzu listened in silence.
"I admit, I'm surprised you haven't turned him over to the authorities, yet," Nedzu said when he finished.
Aizawa looked back at him. "Kid's got a point that whatever the authorities do will leave a trail Dragon can follow. If anyone can figure out a way around that, it's you."
"Indeed. The boy almost needs a fortress to protect him."
"Why do I feel like you already have a plan?"
"He's done very well as a vigilante, wouldn't you say?" Nedzu asked instead of answering.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "We can't let him keep doing that."
"Of course not! But imagine what he'd be like as a hero."
Oh no. Aizawa was starting to see where this was going. "How in the world is enrolling him in one of the most public schools a good place to hide him?"
"He'd be surrounded by heroes, and I don't think it likely Dragon would target UA."
"But you're still willing to turn the school into a potential target just to get your paws on this kid?"
"Be honest with me Shouta, how many of your students would be able to avoid you for almost two years straight like this?"
Aizawa didn't dignify that with an answer, because the truth would only help Nedzu's argument.
"We can work on a disguise for Midoriya. His enrollment can be considered a type of parole because of his age and circumstances."
"You really think this is a good idea?"
"I do. From what you've told me, he has the proclivity to help people simply for the sake of helping them. That's something we can't teach."
Aizawa took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. He wasn't a religious man, but he prayed that something would give him strength to handle the next few months.
"And think what his other options will be if we don't bring him to UA," Nedzu added.
Which.
Low blow, principal.
Aizawa sighed and rubbed his forehead, turning his gaze to Izuku sleeping peacefully. "He might not even want to go."
"I'm sure you can convince him," Nedzu said.
The principal had more faith in him than Aizawa likely deserved. "I'll talk to him when he wakes up. How should I spin this to the police?"
"Just tell them you're taking him into your personal custody because of a case you're working on."
"Did you have this all planned out already? How do you have these explanations ready so fast?" He understood the principal had an insanely high intelligence, but it still threw him off when he realized how far ahead Nedzu had planned sometimes.
"I'm always planning for everything," Nedzu said happily. "I need to get some paperwork sorted before class, but I'll see you later!"
Aizawa said goodbye and put the phone back in his pocket before sitting down again. The chair wasn't comfortable, but he'd slept in worse places. And he was definitely going to need sleep to handle the next few days.
Xx
Izuku didn't wake up again until sunlight hit his face. He glared weakly at the hospital window, willing the shades down in his mind.
That, unfortunately, wasn't a power he had, and the shades stayed up. He relented and turned his head the other way, but he couldn't fall back asleep now. Little by little, the last dregs of sleep faded away.
He was alone in his hospital room. He thought he remembered Eraserhead saying he would stay, and he wondered where the man had gone and how long it had been, and if he was coming back.
He wondered, too, whether or not police would be here to arrest him.
A nurse popped in to check on him, and seeing he was awake, promised food would be there shortly. She gave him the remote for the T.V. too, and Izuku turned it on if only so the noise would distract his anxiety.
Food arrived before Eraserhead, and he picked at it, finding he didn't have much of an appetite. His anxiety had twisted his stomach into knots; there wasn't any room for food.
Eraserhead finally stepped in some time later, looking aggravated and exhausted. "Good, you're awake."
"Is everything okay?" Izuku asked.
Eraserhead waved away the question and sank into his chair. "I'm dealing with the paperwork side of things. But before I go any further, I need to discuss something with you."
"Oh, okay."
"How do you feel about enrolling at UA and training to be a real hero?"
Izuku blinked. Had he heard right? There was no way this was being offered to him, it had to be some kind of trick. He was the son of a villain. He'd been a vigilante, which is illegal, for the last two years. There was no way the most prestigious hero school in the country would accept him.
"I can't, can I?" Izuku asked. He played with his chopsticks on the edge of his plate. "Why would a hero school want me, with my history?"
"Short answer, because you impressed the principal."
Izuku's mind reeled. He'd impressed the principal of UA? How? What did he even do? "What's the long answer?"
"We feel it's the safest place for you right now. We'll enroll you under an alias, but you'll be in one of the securest places in Japan. Any villain would have to be insane to target UA, and they're not likely to succeed." Eraserhead paused, judging Izuku's reaction to that.
Izuku didn't know how to react. Everything he'd done…and they wanted to protect him?
"Look, the fact of the matter is, you became a vigilante because you saw people needed help. None of the criminals you left for the police were ever badly hurt, and only a handful of them ever had burns. For a fire quirk, that's damn impressive. Not to mention, you stayed under the radar so well you avoided a pro hero actively searching for you for almost two years. Most of my students wouldn't even be able to pull that off."
"I got lucky," Izuku said. "Especially in the beginning, when you didn't know who I was. I could just take off the mask and my hoodie and you'd run right by."
Eraser dragged a hand over his face, muttering something Izuku didn't hear. "You used the resources you had available to you. It's not your fault I didn't see what was right in front of me."
Izuku relented, though he still found it hard to believe he'd impressed anybody.
"Forget about the why and the how for now," Eraserhead went on. "Do you want to go to UA?"
Izuku smiled. He could feel excitement building in him, despite his fears that this was a trick. "That's all I've ever wanted."
"Then that's settled." Eraserhead leaned back in the chair.
"Am I really going to go to UA?" Excitement was overtaking everything else in him. He'd be jumping on the bed if it didn't hurt so much.
"Yeah, you are."
"Oh, man, this is unbelievable. I thought for sure I'd ruined my chances. I mean, I'm not even in school right now, so how…" Izuku's thoughts came to an abrupt halt.
Eraserhead raised a brow, too, picking up on exactly what Izuku's revelation had been. "You're going to have to work hard academically to catch up."
Izuku nodded. "I'll do whatever it takes." If it meant he could still follow his dreams and go to UA, he'd do practically anything.
Xx
It was a lot of phone calls and paperwork and coffee, but after three days Aizawa had everything taken care of. Izuku was cleared to leave the hospital, and he took the kid back to his apartment to pack up his things and say goodbye to his landlady.
It was a relief to see the apartment. It wasn't the cleanest place, but that was because Izuku was a teenager, not because he was living in a hovel. They'd stopped to pick up a small suitcase for Izuku, which Aizawa had assumed wouldn't be enough. It depressed him to find out it was. Izuku had enough clothes for a single week, and not a lot else. His belongings easily fit in the small suitcase and a beat up yellow back pack.
Izuku handled his landlady, spinning some tail about getting expelled from school and introducing Aizawa as his father. Mrs. Ishiyama berated him and then told Aizawa to take good care of Izuku, which he tried not to take offense at.
And then it was a two hour train ride, and Aizawa relished in the fact that he wouldn't have to do this commute anymore.
The more nerve-wracking part of all this was yet to come, though. Izuku would obviously need some place to stay during all this. Nedzu had been trying to sway the board of education on a dorm system for a few years now, but they weren't ready to commit yet. And besides that, Izuku needed a legal guardian.
"Naturally, you're the best choice as you know him best," Nedzu had said in one of their discussions.
Aizawa had protested. He and his husband had agreed no kids. It was too dangerous in their line of work, and with their jobs and responsibilities they couldn't guarantee a kid's safety.
When he brought up the crazy idea with Hizashi, his husband had pointed out all the ways in which Izuku worked around their fears. He was older, for one, and didn't need constant care. He already knew how to look out for himself.
Most damning of all: Aizawa was already attached to him.
He didn't even know when it had happened, but as soon as Hizashi said it he knew it was true.
So while Aizawa worked out the details with Nedzu and the police, Hizashi set up the guest bedroom. It had been the cat room until now, and hopefully it didn't smell too bad. According to Hizashi, the cats weren't happy to see their cat trees being moved.
Izuku walked stiffly beside him. His side was mostly healed, but the muscle damage would take a little longer to repair itself. He knew better than to complain, though.
"We're almost there," Aizawa said. He rolled the suitcase behind him, the backpack over his shoulder. It wasn't like he was going to let the kid injure himself more carrying his own stuff.
"Thank you for letting me stay with you," Izuku said, again.
If he said it one more time, Aizawa was going to start a collection jar.
"I told you, you don't need to thank me. Between four cats and Hizashi you're never going to get a moment's peace, anyway."
"I'm sure they're wonderful," Izuku said.
"You haven't met Disco. He bites anything that moves."
Izuku reserved his judgements after that.
Aizawa led him to his front door and shouldered it open. School wouldn't be out for another hour, so Izuku had some time to settle in before Hizashi got there.
He barely made it past the entranceway before the cats claimed him, and seeing him on the floor surrounded by Aizawa's four cats did funny things in his chest. The fond warmth he usually associated with his husband wrapped around him.
"Ouch! I guess you're Disco, aren't you?" Izuku asked the white cat at his side.
Disco pawed at his arm.
Aizawa shook his head. "You found Disco. The fluffy gray one is Maestro, the fat ginger is Patrick, and black and white one is Mo."
Izuku beamed and said hello to all of them individually.
Aizawa felt like he should be recording this for Hizashi, but his hands were full so Hizashi would have to settle for Aizawa recounting this to him later. "I'll give you the tour."
"Right!"
It wasn't like the apartment wasn't self-explanatory. The living room and kitchen were straightforward, the two main rooms right off the entry way. Aizawa pointed out his bedroom and the office, the main bathroom, and then Izuku's room.
The room still felt like a guest room more than anything. Hizashi had somehow gotten rid of the cat smell, and the bed was freshly made, but it lacked any personal details to make it Izuku's own. That would come with time, though.
Patrick and Mo had already made themselves comfortable on Izuku's bed, and the kid went to pet them immediately.
"You're free to use pretty much everything in the house," Aizawa said. "I'd prefer it if you didn't go somewhere without telling us first, and your curfew is ten."
Those were all the rules he needed to give a teenager, right?
"Okay."
And now the awkward part. "I'll let you settle in." He felt like he needed to watch the kid unpack, but all that hovering wasn't good for either of them. He took a shower instead, peeked in briefly to see the suitcase unpacked and the kid playing with the cats, and then got started on dinner.
It was going to take some getting used to.
Xx
Izuku liked Aizawa's home. He liked the cats and the sense of family he got from it. It was nothing like his childhood home, but it had the same simple comforts to it that his basement apartment had lacked.
He liked Hizashi, too. The man was loud and full of smiles, and his presence made both Izuku and Aizawa relax. He detailed his day teaching over dinner, which kept all of them at ease.
It was a good home. Izuku hadn't realized how much he'd missed one.
He also hadn't realized how bad he'd gotten at social interaction. He didn't know what questions to ask Hizashi to keep the conversation going, he felt awkward hanging around both men after dinner, and if they ever brought up a topic that wasn't vigilante or UA related, Izuku had nothing to contribute to it.
Life was so much easier when he was only worried about patrols and intel gathering.
After dinner, he retreated to his room to do just that, hooking up his laptop and spending a few hours on the usual sites. It became his routine most nights, when Hizashi didn't drag him out for movie nights.
Day two of his stay, they took him shopping for more clothes. He protested that he had enough, but Aizawa flat out told him, "Either you pick what you want or I'm just throwing whatever into the cart."
Hizashi nodded. "He will. And they will be the worst things this store has to offer."
So Izuku slowly picked out some clothes and a new pair of shoes. He'd gone through sneakers horrifyingly fast as Alley Cat. Turned out that riding fire in regular shoes wasn't good for the rubber.
Hizashi also dragged Izuku to a hair salon a few days later. "I don't care what you want, but please let someone fix this mess."
Izuku blushed and hunched his shoulders. He'd been meaning to bleach it again for a while, but it was such a hassle, and he always did a terrible job, so he'd just kept pushing it off.
The poor stylist nearly fell over. He had to close his eyes and hold his hands in a prayer in front of him for a few moments. "Okay. There's nothing we can't fix. Just tell me what you're thinking."
He trimmed it almost down to the green shoots, and then the stylist properly bleached it all. He talked through the process, pointing out all the mistakes Izuku had made doing it himself and teaching him how to do it properly in the future.
It was the best Izuku's hair had looked in literal years. He was surprised how much of a difference it made in his confidence.
Not that he went anywhere else that first week. Aizawa and Hizashi gave him a week to stay home while the two of them went to teach classes, and then they started dragging him along. He stayed in the teacher's lounge all day with homework packets to start getting him back up to speed academics wise. It was apparent rather quickly he was well below the level he should be at, and it was disheartening to think about how much studying he'd have to do to pass the entrance exam.
Teachers came and went throughout the day, happily saying hi and talking when they had the time. They tutored him in whatever subject they taught, which was the only reason he grasped some of the concepts. Principal Nedzu often came in to talk to him, and even after a few weeks of this, Izuku still didn't know what to make of him.
He begged Aizawa to let him watch the hero course students train, but the man steadfastly refused. Number one, he wanted Izuku to focus on his own studies so he could catch up and enroll for the next school year. Number two, he didn't want Izuku to be a distraction for his students. Number three, he wanted Izuku's presence here as secret as possible for as long as possible. So no mingling with the other students.
These were all reasons Izuku understood, but he couldn't help longing to see them all training.
On weekends, when no one else was around, Aizawa and Hizashi brought him back to the gyms and let him train with his quirk. Power Loader designed arm braces with built in flame throwers for him, so he didn't have to carry around lighters anymore, and he gleefully played around with the extra firepower. The more fire he had, the more he could do with it.
Aizawa whistled one day when Izuku made a cage of fire around Hizashi that didn't burn the man. "So all your time as Alley Cat with cheap dollar store lighters, you were actually fighting with one hand tied behind your back."
Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, grinning. "Kind of. Those also run out of fuel pretty fast if I'm not careful, which was why I tried not to rely on them. Plus, I didn't want to hurt anyone."
Hizashi poked the fire bars. "Yeah, but you can make it not burn. How are you doing this?"
"I couldn't when I first started as Alley Cat. It took a lot of practice to control what it burned."
Aizawa shook his head at him. "You're the only person I know who makes a fire quirk less destructive."
Izuku took it as a compliment. Aizawa started training him in better hand to hand, working on his agility and speed in particular.
Before Izuku knew it, the months slipped by.
Xx
The kid was awkward. There was no getting around that. Two years as a hermit had not done wonders for his social skills, and sometimes Aizawa wondered if he hadn't actually picked up a fifth cat.
He'd even seen the kid slide a practice test Ectoplasm gave him off the teacher's lounge table, maintaining eye contact with Ectoplasm the whole time. It took several seconds of stunned silence before Izuku realized what he'd done and apologized, claiming he hadn't slept well the night before.
Aizawa knew he hadn't, he'd heard the kid scrounging around the kitchen at three in the morning, but the incident had been hilarious and he'd had to duck out of the room to laugh.
His social skills worried Hizashi more than him. Aizawa had no doubt Izuku would adapt to his classmates when his year officially started, and considering their relationship he didn't find it that weird that Izuku preferred to stay in his room most of the time.
He'd have been more worried if Izuku showed signs of not listening to their rules, but the boy started passing on tips he figured out about the underground pretty early. Aizawa didn't think it likely Izuku would attempt to play vigilante again, not when he didn't know the city as well and there were so many pro heroes already around.
The nightmares bothered Aizawa more. Izuku didn't wake up screaming or anything, but there were plenty of nights Aizawa had heard Izuku stumbling around when he should have been sleeping, or nights when Aizawa came back late from patrols and found Izuku sitting on the couch and staring into the darkness.
Izuku never wanted to talk about it, and once he realized Aizawa had noticed him, he'd pretend to go back to bed. It was concerning, but if Izuku wasn't ready to talk then there wasn't much Aizawa could do to help. He couldn't force the kid to accept help.
Time slipped by. There were five months until the new school year, and Izuku was busy cramming most of a middle school education into that time. He was driven and never complained, for which Aizawa was grateful. Aizawa couldn't handle whiny kids.
Izuku was technically exempt from the placement tests, since he'd be enrolled in UA regardless. But Izuku asked to take all the tests anyway so he could see how he measured up against his future classmates, and all the faculty agreed they were curious, too.
He did better on the written part than they expected, landing a solid score that would have gotten him accepted at least into the gen ed classes. The practical he blew away, using his fire like a spear and manipulating it from a single point to pierce robot after robot. When the zero pointer entered the field, he rescued a girl who had fallen behind and speared the zero pointer through the head.
For the faculty who hadn't seen him as Alley Cat, it eased their doubts about the boy's acceptance into the school. Aizawa sat a little straighter with pride watching him.
Izuku was still relieved to receive the formal acceptance letter under his fake name, and he nearly passed out when he learned All Might would be a teacher this year.
Hizashi made katsudon for dinner that night to celebrate. Izuku got teary at the sight.
Aizawa had no idea how such an emotional child had been a vigilante for two years. Sometimes, it didn't seem like the kid in front of him was the same one who'd mocked him as he ran out of Aizawa's reach.
"I can't thank you enough for giving me this chance," Izuku said, rubbing his eyes. "It's always been my dream to go to UA, but once I realized who my father is…"
"You're not your father," Aizawa stated. "You've proven that over and over."
Izuku smiled at him. "Thanks. I just wish…actually, he'd have applied this year, too, I think."
"What's that?" Hizashi asked. His hearing aids weren't often able to pick up Izuku's mumbling.
"Oh, sorry, I was just thinking my best friend would have applied this year, too. Katsuki Bakugou."
The name rang a bell in Aizawa's head, and he excused himself from the table to check the class list he'd received that day. He walked back to the kitchen, still looking at the file. "Well, turns out he did. And the two of you are in the same class."
"Really?" Izuku brightened considerably.
Hizashi looked a little more worried. "Do you think we should talk with him ahead of time?"
Aizawa nodded. "I'll call him tomorrow." They couldn't have Bakugou accidentally revealing Izuku's secret, after all!