It's official. Shouta is going to murder All Might.
"You had them do battle trials? Without learning basics? With no lecture about what they're gonna do?" Shouta seethes.
"W-Well…" All Might—or Yagi Toshinori, as he's in his civilian form—stutters out awkwardly. Shouta isn't done however.
"With no preparation, without basics of combat, with no idea what they're doing and techniques of what they could do, with no concrete ideas thrown their way and no meaningful criticism of their actions either!"
"Actually—"
"You can put your 'actually' up your ass. Bakugou and Midoriya could have brought the building down on each other with one careless explosion or power outburst and you didn't stop the match!" His eyes are glowing red, his quirk activated, his hair levitating menacingly.
Yagi shakes in his seat. Good.
Shouta isn't quite done with him yet however.
After battle training comes Maths during which they're all tired but not tired enough to be non-functioning.
Ectoplasm, their maths teacher, complains a little about the fact that they have such an important lesson right after Foundational Heroics, but not for long, they have things to do after all.
They all take a short placement test, just to see if everyone is vaguely on the same level, and Hitoshi feels like he did alright.
Ectoplasm begins to lay out theory of some mathematical concept, not wasting any more time than necessary, but Hitoshi begins to zone out thinking about what happened during the previous lesson.
His team won, mostly thanks to Yaoyorozu, but their teamwork was spotless regardless. Everyone agreed. She made booby traps, he placed them around the building.
He even had some snacks for her, because apparently she forgot to request some with her costume. Low blood sugar is dangerous, that's why he'd requested some for himself.
Anyway they worked quickly and efficiently, and within the few minutes they had, they managed to fortify the bottom floor of the building, and other floors while the 'hero' team went through the traps.
They covered the whole building with them… and not a minute later the buzzer sounded, signalling the end of the exercise.
All in all it was good. Didn't teach them much, but was ultimately harmless.
All Might… clearly wasn't in his element while teaching. Oh well, they both would be learning something from it, he guesses.
Ectoplasm calls out his name, and he snaps his attention back to the blackboard, quickly calculating the answer to the question, and answers.
Ectoplasm gives him non-judgmental but very aware gaze and moves on to write another part of the equation on the board, as Hitoshi's cheeks burn with shame.
Okay, maybe he should actually focus on the lesson.
Next is science with Structure-All, and he is thankful for an introductory lesson instead of jumping right into it.
Structure-All reads with his fingers, as his sight is compromised. He keeps his hands firmly on the braille reader in front of him as he explains how their lessons will go in detail. He also informs them that they can still raise their hands to get his attention, as he's capable of sensing it, but in the same breath asks them to tell him their names one by one because he's essentially face-blind despite his quirk.
The class complies without a murmur of complaint, and Hitoshi smiles, knowing that he found a good group that was willing to accommodate for disabilities.
And then the lessons end, and he starts packing… but the class has different ideas than packing or going home. Aside from the explosive blond. He packs and goes immediately, despite many of their classmates near begging him to stay. He sends a quick text to Kusunoki-san to tell her he'll be in the facility later than assumed, and receives an equally quick 'ok' reply.
And then he goes to mingle.
Red-haired boy named Kirishima, from what he hears the pink-skinned girl call him, is going on about how manly it was for Midoriya to sacrifice his whole arm to win, when he approaches. The boy stops briefly, to look at him, then smiles.
"Heya there! Thought you were gonna go like Bakugou!" Kirishima is loud, but not unpleasant. He'd describe him as vibrant if he had to. Hitoshi doesn't detect any apprehension or the like in his voice.
"And miss the first opportunity I had to talk to people I'm hopefully gonna spend the next three years with?" he asks, grasping his heart in mock offence. "Never."
People around him laugh, and he smiles knowing his joke landed.
"Only if Aizawa-sensei doesn't expel all of us tomorrow," tape guy—he thinks his name is Sero—says. "Man's scary."
"Eraserhead can be scary, I admit, but he wouldn't expel someone who has potential," Hitoshi fully believes his words. Okay, maybe not fully, there's an inkling of doubt because… "Having said that, he has the highest expulsion rate among all teachers in UA. So… Sorry Yaoyorozu, you were wrong yesterday," he says with an apologetic smile, and the girl gasps.
"But— No, he wouldn't expel someone on the first day, would he?" she asks, bringing a hand to her mouth in thought.
"He would. He once expelled a whole class on the first day because they weren't up to his liking." He shrugs when he sees questioning gazes on himself. "It's public information I found on some Internet forum while looking up information on surviving UA." Various 'oh's can be heard, and he gives them another apologetic smile. "I'd suggest not slacking. He really can boot any of us off at any point simply because he finds us lacking."
The door opens suddenly, and he feels the attention suddenly shift from himself to Midoriya, who appears in it. He looks disorientated, and, more importantly, has his arm in a sling. Hitoshi narrows his eyes at that. Was Recovery Girl not present or something?
"Oh, Midoriya is here!" Kirishima exclaims, needlessly loud. "Good work today!" He steps closer to Midoriya, who takes a step back in turn, and oh wow Hitoshi wasn't even aware one simple movement could make the alarm bells in his head ring so loudly. "Man, I don't know what you were saying during the match, but you were fired up!"
"I can't believe you fought evenly with Bakugou who was second in the entrance exam!" Sero adds. Midoriya looks… lost. Like he's not computing the compliments.
"You did a good job dodging!" The pink-skinned girl says.
"You guys did that in the first match, so the rest of us had to give it our all too!" The tall, thick-lipped guy says. He doesn't remember his name.
His whole attention is on Midoriya regardless, because the guy looks more and more ready to fall apart with each second. He's about to step in and take some attention away from him, when he finally relaxes a minuscule amount as the sparkly blond says "You were far from elegant, but—" and gets interrupted with pink-skinned demon repeating her words.
"I'm Kirishima Eijirou! We're all going over the training right now."
"I'm Sero Hanta!"
"I'm Aoyama Yuu—"
"I'm Ashido Mina! You did a good job dodging!" she… for some reason repeats herself for the third time.
From behind her a frog-like girl tilts her head to the side and introduces herself too: "I'm Asui Tsuyu, call me Tsu-chan."
"I'm Satou!"
Midoriya looks overwhelmed, but happy, so Shinsou just shoots him a welcoming smile, and waves. He can introduce himself another time.
"Um… Er…" Midoriya is making an awful lot of nonsensical noises, his arms raised in a placating manner, and Hitoshi's thoughts immediately go to wander about why exactly he's acting like that, with such a powerful quirk. He knows it's destructive so the guy probably couldn't use it much, but it doesn't seem to be so useless as to land him in the bullied category.
"Hey, Shinsou, your staring is stressing Midoriya out, just come over here and introduce yourself!" Kirishima says jokingly, and Hitoshi throws his head back and sighs loudly.
"But I don't wanna moooooooove," he moans, but obediently walks forward and smiles at Midoriya. "Name's Shinsou Hitoshi. For the sake of my nerves, if not for your health, try to not destroy any more buildings while you or other people are in them, will you?" Midoriya laughs nervously, slightly taken aback, but nods.
"You're all too loud," raven-headed boy complains, sitting atop his desk.
"Tokoyami-kun!" Iida approaches him in stiff steps, holding his arms at ninety degree angle. "The desk is not a chair!" He starts gesticulating wildly. "Get off immediately!"
"It's not a big deal, is it?" Jirou says, rising a brow.
"Wh—" Iida starts, clearly appalled by her annoyance.
"What's with those hands anyway?" the, uh, O-something tail-man teases.
Iida slumps. "You people…" He straightens and starts chopping the air with his right hand. "I can't condone actions that disrespect the desks the great people who are our upperclassmen once used!"
"You're too loud," Tokoyami hisses out, once again.
"Iida, not to disappoint you, but pretty sure those desks are replaced like, every half a year," Hitoshi snorts. "What do you think keeps them in such a good condition, huh?"
Iida slumps once again, defeated.
The door on the other side of the room opens and Kaminari and Uraraka emerge, holding a stack of notebooks each.
"Hey, Uraraka, wanna grab a bite to eat sometimes? What do you like?"
"Um, mochi— Wait Deku-kun!" Kaminari slumps defeated, as the girl's attention is immediately stolen by the broccoli guy, and Hitoshi snickers. "Recovery Girl didn't heal your injuries?"
"Oh! Uh, it's because of how much stamina I have, and…" he trails off and gasp, looking at something behind Hitoshi. Following his line of sight he notices Bakugou's empty desk. Hm. "Um, Uraraka-san, more importantly… Where is Kacchan?" Hm.
"We all tried to stop him, but he went home just now without saying a word!" Uraraka replies.
Midoriya immediately turns around and legs it. Everyone looks at each other, confused, but no one has an explanation for his behaviour.
Hmmmmmmmmm…
Shouta collapses on the chair opposite to him and sighs a bone-deep sigh that doesn't promise anything good. He tilts his head back and sighs again. Hizashi kinda expects him to sigh for a third time, but he refrains and finally opens his eyes to look at him.
"I'm gonna need to look into Midoriya's unrestricted file," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, both in annoyance and some sort of defeat. "Probably Bakugou's too with what he's done."
Hizashi's almost too afraid to ask for a clarification.
"They blew up a building fighting each other." Well, that was certainly among top ten sentences he's heard today.
"When?" He doesn't need to ask 'where'. If they caused actual destruction outside of school setting Shouta would expel them immediately.
"During Foundational Heroics class. All Might didn't stop them in time." There's something unsaid in that, but Hizashi doesn't press. If it was important, Shouta would tell him. "And now I'm going to need to supervise all his classes, because the moron clearly isn't fit to be teaching."
Oof.
If that was Shouta's opinion than All Might must have done something really egregious.
"Want me to go with you to the principal?" he offers as a way to lessen Shouta's ire.
His husband nods slowly, hesitantly, as if he's thinking it over. "You should request seeing Shinsou's unrestricted file." …or he's thinking that. Great.
"On what grounds? Has he… done something?" he asks, worry lacing his tone as he imagines what his… most probably let's not kid anyone—son could have done with his quirk if he was even a little careless.
Shouta instantly picks up what he's putting down. "No, nothing particularly dangerous. He doesn't use his quirk unless he absolutely has to, and when he does he's sharp and precise. He hasn't used his quirk in this exercise at all, but he made sure his partner wouldn't be the only one doing the hard work. His performance was nearly flawless, he could communicate a little more but otherwise… I saw no problems with what his team did." Shouta is thorough in his explanation, knowing exactly what to say to calm Hizashi down. "But, if you really want to know on what grounds you could ask for his unrestricted file… Tell Nedzu the truth."
"No…" he immediately says, then thinks it over. "He… probably already knows if it's the truth, doesn't he?"
"Yep." Shouta pops out the word and sighs. "If anyone can tell you anything with a complete degree of certainty it's Nedzu."
Hizashi mulls it over, humming a distressed note that makes Shouta chuckle.
"I don't wanna," he murmurs, and Shouta laughs even louder.
"But you should."
"I'll… I'll think it over."
Hitoshi comes back to the facility worn out but happy.
When he enters, Kusunoki-san is already waiting for him, holding a package he's been expecting for weeks.
He perks up seeing it, and it must be very well visible, because Kusunoki-san sighs. She hates him for that, but they both know he'd refuse to sleep without wearing one to bed. He takes the package from her hands without a word and opens it to check if the muzzle is the correct size. It appears to be the same model, off to a good start. He takes it out and puts it on his mouth. It's a bit looser than his current one, exactly what he was going for, and thus far satisfied he puts it back in the protective case.
Kusunoki-san watches him with carefully neutral expression. He knows her opinion on this, and she knows his opinion on this, and they both know his therapist's opinion on this. She lets it go.
"How was your day?" she asks instead of starting an argument they've had a dozen of times.
"All Might is a bad teacher, let me tell you," he answers jokingly, giving her his day pass.
They continue talking for a long time, courtesy of the fact he doesn't have any homework assigned to him yet.