Hizashi is not a fan of school meetings.

Most of the stuff they go over is pretty boring; like the initial impressions of their classes or what school supplies they'll need, and he has to focus on what everyone is saying while trying not to vibrate out of his chair.

He kind of wishes Thirteen could take their helmet off for these meetings, so he could at least see their mouth moving.

The same goes for Snipe, and Hound Dog, and Power Loader...

It'd just be really cool if he could make out what they were saying easier, okay?

It would also be cool if, other than the typical school stuff, they could talk about things that are a bit more lighthearted. Like, don't get him wrong, the stuff they talk about is super important! But their day-to-day lives as heroes are already full of so much shit, it wouldn't hurt to talk about something nice for a change.

Maybe at their next meeting he could pitch a pizza party for the students.

He'd do it now, but Hizashi knows that this meeting is actually really important, and he doesn't want to get them all sidetracked. As it is, they're already discussing today's USJ field trip, and this year's upcoming Sports Festival.

"So, how'd your class do getting first dibs on the USJ, Eraser?" Vlad asks, not so much annoyed as he is resigned, since class 1-A always went to the USJ before 1-B.

"It went fine," Shouta answers him, clearly bored. He's looking at Yagi with something like annoyance, though, and Hizashi can understand. All Might was supposed to show up to help teach today, after all.

And he very much did not show up.

Yagi, despite being in his puffed-up All Might form, shrinks a little under Shouta's glare.

Nevertheless, Shouta continues, "They all performed about as I'd suspected they would. Somehow, Midoriya managed to break his foot, and Bakugou did more property damage than he did rescue training. If it becomes a habit of his—as Monday's battle trials seem to suggest—I'll have to have a talk with him."

Yagi, for some reason, blinks in surprise. "How much damage did Bakugou-shounen do?"

"Enough that I'm starting to think Cementoss deserves a raise," Aizawa answers flatly. Then, "...He leveled half of the Ruins Zone."

Hizashi whistles lowly, eyebrows raising.

Meanwhile, poor Thirteen puts their face—er, visor—in their hands. "He seemed quite happy to destroy that section of my facility..." they mutter.

"Your class seem a real handful this year," Snipe chimes in. "Glad I don't have ta' deal with them yet."

Hizashi huffs a laugh. "There might not be any left for you to deal with by the time Aizawa's done with them," he says, cheekily elbowing Shouta in the side with a grin. All he gets is a halfhearted glare in response.

Actually, it's pretty impressive that Shouta hasn't expelled a single student yet. Hizashi was positive that at least one of them would have been thrown out the door by now.

And he means that literally.

That one time Shouta physically threw an errant student out the classroom door with a shout of 'EXPELLED' is a memory that Hizashi cherishes.

"This class seems to have some potential," Shouta mutters with a shrug, ducking his face lower into his capture weapon. "Regardless, I'll have no problem expelling them if they don't work for it."

"We wouldn't expect any less from you, Aizawa!" Nemuri laughs.

It gets a few extra chuckles from around the room, until Nedzu clears his throat to quiet them.

Immediately, all attention is on Nedzu.

"Well then, now that we have gotten everything out of the way, I'd like to move on to why I called this year's first staff meeting a few days early," he says cheerfully.

Hizashi already knows the reason why, but as always it catches him off guard how carefree Nedzu can sound over something so serious.

Maybe he's not the right person to be thinking that, though.

"While criminal activity outside our gates isn't something I would normally bring up, seeing as this involves a member of our staff and what appears to be several of UA's students, I felt it prudent to make sure everyone here was properly informed."

"Is this about the incident that happened yesterday, Nedzu-san?" Thirteen asks.

"Indeed, it is." Nedzu pulls his laptop closer to type on, and soon an image appears on the large projector screen behind him.

Specifically, the uncanny Eraserhead-lookalike apprehending a civilian outside of UA's gates.

"I know many of you are already aware that an individual appearing to be Aizawa-kun was spotted outside our front gates yesterday," Nedzu says, his cheerful tone shifting into something much more serious. "I have been made aware that, sometime after this, the civilian he took was handed over to the authorities... without his hands."

Without his hands?

Hizashi swallows thickly. "Are you saying... he..."

"Removed the civilian's hands, yes."

Holy shit.

Shouta looked like he was about to be sick, and the rest of room didn't look like they were faring any better.

"Good lord..." Snipe mutters.

Meanwhile, Shouta quietly asks "Are they still alive...?"

Thankfully, Nedzu nods.

"They are, and are now being treated in a high security facility due to some concerning information that Detective Tsukauchi was told by the doppelganger. Despite their injuries they seem in good health, though I have been informed that they are being quite..." Nedzu tilts his head with a peculiar frown. "...Combative."

"Well, geez, I bet anybody'd be a little rowdy if they just got their hands lopped off," Snipe huffs.

"We have more troubling news, I'm afraid," Nedzu tells them, which, what the hell? What could be more troubling than someone's hands getting cut off?

Nedzu switches from the gate footage to a much lower quality CCTV video, showing a nondescript street. On it, they watch as Shouta—Shouta's doppelganger—is approached by a small child, who he promptly picks up and walks off with.

If possible, the real Shouta pales even further.

"Shortly after Aizawa-kun's doppelganger was reported to have handed over the civilian, he was spotted taking a second victim; young Kibarashi Ami was reported as missing by her babysitter yesterday evening, and has not been seen since."

Horrified, Nemuri whispers, "You don't think he...?"

"We don't know for sure yet," Nedzu says, uncharacteristically somber. "The motives of this individual are still unknown to us, along with the other possible doppelgangers."

Nedzu turns to Hizashi then, and says, "Yamada-kun, you encountered Aizawa-kun's doppelganger on Monday morning, yes? What was your impression of them?"

"My impression?" Hizashi echoes, pointing to himself. Nedzu's ear flicks.

"Yes, you are the only one of us who has directly interacted with this doppelganger."

"Ah, well..."

Admittedly, Hizashi finds himself taken off guard considering, well, everything. And now everyone is looking at him expectantly, which isn't exactly out of the ordinary, people look at him all the time! But after just learning that someone who looks exactly like his husband mutilated a man and then kidnapped a child, Hizashi is feeling off kilter.

"Honestly... at first I thought he was just straight up Aizawa." That seemed like a good enough place to start.

Hizashi glances sidelong at Shouta, before going on to say, "He looked pretty beat up, from what I could tell. It didn't seem like he wanted to hurt me, though. He just looked... afraid."

Terrified, actually.

Putting on his own serious face, Hizashi leans back in his chair.

"The weird thing is, he knew something that only the real Aizawa could've known. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but it sure ain't good."

"Are you saying that the other one is the real Aizawa?" Cementoss asks.

At the same time, Vlad crosses his arms with a huff, and mutters, "Two Aizawas... now there's something we don't need."

"Wow, thanks," Shouta mutters back.

Nemuri gets them all back on track, saying, "No, the real Aizawa was here with me in the staff room. Yamada was late that day, remember?"

"Oh, yeah... I remember," Hizashi groans.

To himself, Hizashi quietly wonders if maybe... there is no one 'real' Aizawa.

That idea is a bit of a longshot though, and they clearly don't have enough information here to make even an educated guess. All they know is that some kind of quirk is obviously involved.

At least they've got Nedzu on their side. He probably knows more than he's letting on, knowing him.

In fact, Nedzu only looks more thoughtful now, and it's a look that Hizashi knows means trouble. The rat's eyes flit to Shouta. "Aizawa-kun, you saw what you suspected to be another doppelganger on Monday, yes?"

"I did," Shouta says. "They looked like Shinsou Hitoshi; a first year student from the Gen Ed department. This one looked older though, and he had a capture weapon like mine."

"Did they seem dangerous to you?" Nedzu asks.

Shouta shakes his head. "No. He actually seemed... friendly, before he seemed to realize I wasn't who he thought I was. Come to think of it, he may have thought I was the other Aizawa."

"And he fled just as quickly, yes?"

"As soon as he saw who I was, yeah. He took off."

"Hm..." Nedzu looks down at his laptop, typing something up faster than any of them could ever dream of accomplishing.

"I believe I may have discovered one other doppelganger," he eventually says, and the projector screen behind him changes again, this time to show a shaky video that was clearly taken from someone's phone.

The sight makes Yagi gasp and cough for some reason, while Nemuri asks, "Isn't that Midoriya-kun?"

It is.

Though it was blurry, the video clearly showed a dirty-looking Midoriya standing next to two crying high school students, before the lookalike dodges Death Arms lunging at him just in the nick of time. The camera pans to show Midoriya hopping over rooftops and into the distance.

"This video was also uploaded on Monday," Nedzu informs them, rewinding the video so he can pause on a semi-decent frame of this Midoriya doppelganger.

"He attacked those kids?" Snipe asks.

"It would appear that way, though the accounts vary." Nedzu shakes his head.

"Needless to say, I'd like all of you to remain on high alert for the time being. Watch out for any odd behavior from your students... and from each other."

Somberly, everyone nods.

It's pretty shitty, Hizashi thinks, that they now have to suspect each other and their own students of being doppelgangers. He doesn't like it one bit.

Under the table, he quietly reaches to take Shouta's hand.

Shouta squeezes his hand in return.

"If you do notice anything out of the ordinary, please report it to me immediately. That is... ah."

Nedzu trails off. He tilts his head at his laptop, reading something over and leaving them all in suspense since none of them can see the screen. Something... shifts, in Nedzu's posture, but Hizashi can't be sure.

With an unreadable expression, Nedzu looks up at all of them.

"I've just received word that Aizawa-kun's doppelganger has been taken into custody."