Higari walked into the breakroom and took off his helmet, shaking his head before he ran a hand through his sweat drenched hair then slumped down on a couch with a sigh.
The month leading up to the sports festival was the worst time of the school year.
Aizawa was the only person outside of the support department who seemed to understand that.
Probably because other than Ishiyama they weren't as involved in the process as they were.
Thank god Nezu gave them over time for all the hours they put into this or he definitely would have quit long ago.
"Want some water?" someone asked and Higari blinked turning his head.
Midoriya stood there with a bottle of water in hand, one that looked very cool and refreshing and that he'd very much like to drink right now thank you very much.
Higari took the bottle from the boy and quickly unscrewed the cap, then against proper health advice started to chug the water in it, getting halfway through it before he stopped and let out another sigh feeling so much better.
Hunching forward Higari rolled his shoulders, getting a few pops when he did, relieving some of the pressure in his body "Thanks Midoriya." Higari told the boy before taking another sip, the icy water somehow chilling his entire chest which felt so damn good at the moment.
"It's no problem Maijima-San, I've got some steamed bamboo with mashed potatoes inside too." Midoriya offered and Higari perked up even more.
"Really?" Higari asked and he beamed once Midoriya revealed four small shoots of Bamboo, taking them Higari happily started munching on them "Did Nezu-San tell you to bring these for me?" Higari guessed, it wouldn't be the first time as the Principal had done so.
Midoriya blinked "Eh? No, I just saw you were stressed and knew your quirk had a mole rat factor." Midoriya answered surprising him.
"How'd you know?" Higari questioned, since that fact normally completely slipped pass people.
Midoriya tilted his head "Well, the tunneling you do is the most obvious, as are the claws, your other physical traits don't stand out much, the photophobia and the natural curve in your spine leading you to hunch forward can be passed off as other things. But the real give away was the only time you don't eat vegetation it was a bone paste I've bought for one of my students before." Midoriya listed off.
"Huh," Higari commented "Did the mask key you in on the Photophobia?" Higari inquired glancing at his mask, it probably wasn't as subtle as he hoped it would be now that he thought about it.
Midoriya rubbed the back of his head "Yeah, it was one of the things, your hair was another." Midoriya answered pointing to his bangs, which were covering half of his face.
Higari just nodded as he had a mouthful of bamboo at that moment, huffing after he swallowed "Wish most of the kids were that observant." Higari couldn't help grumbling letting his head fall to the side.
"Is the Festival prep really not going that well?" Midoriya asked.
Higari chuckled a bit "Yeah, no." he replied running a hair through his hair, resisting the urge to tug it "Anyone tell you what we do for it, yet?" Higari asked back, Midoriya shook his head and he sighed, putting down the last bamboo shoot.
"Okay, each course does take part in putting together the festival, Business course handles the marketing, nothing that big, mainly designing the tickets and the boxes they use when they sell concessions during the festival." Higari explained.
"General Studies gets to pick the games we play in between the second and third round, and the Support course makes most of the stuff for it depending on the year.
The first years aren't that experienced so we only let them put together the pre-made booths for the game and work on some of the wiring.
The second years can work on the screens we use and double check the first year's work.
Third years help us put together the parts for the bigger tracks, like last year's YBR." He further elaborated for the boy.
"And naturally all of us have to watch over everything they're doing, on top of making sure they're doing their regular school work, and then we have to do the stuff they can't." Higari added leaning back on the couch shoulders slumped as he mentally thought about everything else he still needed to do.
Midoriya gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder "What about the Hero course? I mean, I know they are probably training for most of the month, but what about the actual prep for the festival?" Midoriya asked and Higari scoffed.
"Diddly-squat, they do their thing during the festival and the big-wigs don't want us 'distracting' them from putting their all into the big day so they just spend the time training, which is important mind you, but I definitely understand why the kids from the other courses didn't like me all that much back then." Higari answered.
He really pitied the support course teachers back then, they didn't have people like Ishiyama and himself with quirks to help them build the events, if the rumors were right about the events being rigged in advance back then Higari sure as hell wouldn't blame them.
"Do you really have to rebuild all sixty of the events each year by yourselves? That's insane!" Midoriya exclaimed.
"Huh? Kami no! Triple the rate for holiday pay or not I'd sooner quit, fuck that." Higari spat back before covering his mouth, once he realized he'd cursed.
Midoriya sighed and waved him off "It's fine Maijima-San, I'm used to people cursing, my mom still has a video of me as a toddler repeating after my auntie and she could make a sailor blush with her language." Midoriya assured him.
Higari coughed to cover up a snort, the idea of a smaller Midoriya happily cursing up a storm was a very funny thing to him.
"Right, there's no way we could do all of that in just a year obviously, much less a single month. We just have to remake six of the ones used last year, each year only does two big events and we don't have to do much for the one-on-ones except make sure the field is clear and the lines won't come off easily." Higari clarified for the boy.
"I, think I get it?" Midoriya replied uncertainly and Higari sighed understanding the boy's confusion, he didn't quite get it either when it was first explained to him.
Reaching into his pocket Higari pulled out a box of screws that were for the YBR he was working on earlier and placed them in two circles of ten.
"Okay Midoriya, imagine each of these are one of the twenty events, this one being the first events and that one being the second ones, we only can do one for each of the years so they are picked at random like this," Higari said grabbing one screw from each circle and put it in the middle.
"The unused ones remain untouched so they can be used next year with only a little maintenance from us and we just have to rebuild the ones we did that year, rinse and repeat for each year." he added and Midoriya's mouth opened with an 'oh' then he nodded.
"Still that's a lot of work for you guys, and you're still expected to do your hero work while this is going on right?" Midoriya questioned and Higari breathed in causing a slight hiss with his teeth.
"Yeah, to be fair though I'm the only active hero in the Support department so the others have more free time than me, and we do hire on a couple extra people to help us out with this." Higari answered rubbing his neck.
Midoriya frowned at that and he seemed to want to say something in response to that but couldn't quite form the words, but since he was still quite young and with a round face just made him look like he was pouting which was sort of cute.
Higari found himself wondering why he was so anxious around the boy before, like him snapping when they first met had initially made him weary of him but Midoriya just seemed to be pretty nice if a bit overly concerned for others.
"Thanks for worrying about me Midoriya," Higari told the boy reaching a hand over to ruffle the boy's hair, causing Izuku to blink a little startled but he leaned into it "But I'm just complaining about problems I'm making for myself." Higari said hoping it would ease some of his junior co-worker's uneasy feelings.
Midoriya pursed his lips but his shoulders slumped and he sighed "Okay... I'd probably be a hypocrite if I said anything about it." Midoriya conceded.
Huh, is this bemusement what Haruki-San felt whenever he asked after her? If so he felt way less offended by her wheezy chuckles and head pats.
How else was he supposed to react to Midoriya being so cute as he worried over him burning out?
One of his alarms went off and he clicked his tongue "Well, looks like I have to hop back to it, thanks for talking with me for a bit and the bamboo Midoriya." Higari said reaching over for his helmet, carefully placing it back on and giving the boy a wave before leaving the breakroom.
Higari wasn't sure what he'd done that day, but he must have somehow done something to piss off the same deity that constantly messed with Aizawa day-to-day.
Since in the middle of the day he'd been called out to help dig people out of a sinkhole, thankfully it was in between classes and Nezu assured him he'd find a cover for his remaining classes, and Higari didn't have the time to worry about it and get to the sinkhole in time to get the trapped people out.
And of course, once he was on sight that ass that nearly blinded him when he first tried to get his provisional license was there and he had to work with him.
Fucking great.
Especially since said ass hadn't seemed to grow up and caused the tunnel he was built to collapse while they were inside.
Higari was so going to tell Nezu, he might be intimidated by the mammal more often than not but Nezu wouldn't let something like that slide, and that would do more than a report to the HPSC would.
So, it took another three hours to get everyone out there than it should have, and then he had to be seen by the paramedics for being light-headed and as annoyed by it as he was he actually needed it.
Particularly because he was so focused on digging a second stable tunnel out of the pocket he didn't notice the lovely four-inch gash in his left leg.
Fun.
He was already looking forward to Shuzenji-San's lecture on taking better care of himself, one he wouldn't be able to avoid since he'd need her to speed up his healing for him to continue the sports festival preparations on schedule.
So, by the time Higari was released from the scene it was after school had let out for the day and he hoped whoever had to watch his gremlins didn't walk away with a limp today like he would.
He loved his kids but he couldn't deny his gremlins were more than a handful most days, regardless of whether they were chaotic online or in person, they usually caused too many explosions to not be feral gremlins.
And knowing his kids, they were still at the school and the poor sap was probably still trapped watching his gremlins and whatever craziness they were getting up to.
With this in mind Higari wasn't expecting to come back to anything good when he returned to the school, wanting to relieve the sub as soon as possible he headed straight to 1-G but paused when he was about to open the door.
Mostly out of habit, but then he realized that something was wrong.
It was way too quiet.
Opening the door Higari blinked and ended up staring at his empty classroom.
Oh, Kami where are my gremlins?
"Maijima-Kun," someone called and he turned around to see Haruki-San behind him "Are you looking for your class? They're down at Studio six." she told him before motioning for him to follow her.
"Wha- Why are they down there?" Higari questioned, he'd been sure to lock that studio since that was where he had put the robots that needed repaired for next year's exam until he could fix them later.
"They're watching your sub put together some of the bots." Haruki cooly answered as they walked, as if that was supposed to make him feel better.
"Do they at least have someone else to keep an eye on them to keep them from-" Higari tried to ask but Haruki-San shushed him with a wheezy chuckle.
"He didn't need one." she assured him and Higari tried to protest this, hasn't she met his gremlins? But she laughed again "You'll see Maijima-Kun." she told him holding her hand over where a mouth should have been on her face.
Higari unable to argue just trailed after the woman over to the studio and wondering if his substitute had a quirk that let them keep the kids in line.
However, nothing could've prepared him for all of his gremlins contently watching as someone was fixing the wiring in one of the two-pointers, mainly because he'd never seen the whole lot of them so quiet.
"Okay, now that I've patched the connection for the tail laser, let's move over to the- Ah! Maijima-San your back." the sub stopped when he noticed him and Higari realized far too late who the sub was.
"Midoriya!?" he exclaimed very much taken aback by the boy standing there in a pair of overalls and an oil-stained T-shirt that said 'Original' on it for some reason.
"T-time kids, confer and trade notes." Midoriya called his as he jumped down from the two-pointer and went over to them cleaning his hands with a rag from his pocket "I'm glad you're back Maijima-San, I thought you would've taken longer after seeing Recovery Girl." Midoriya commented.
Higari, hung up on the fact his kids were being so well behaved, stammered a bit but then Midoriya's eyes went down to his leg and he must've clocked his wound.
"Maijima-San," Midoriya flatly said and Higari suddenly felt like he was going to be scolded "Have you not gone to see Recovery Girl yet?" Midoriya questioned and it was paired with a very effective teacher's stare that made him squirm.
When he didn't say anything Midoriya took a deep breath in and pinched the bridge of his nose "Haruki-San, please take Maijima-San to Recovery Girl, I can handle the kids for another hour." Midoriya told them before turning back around.
"Mido-" Higari was about to protest but Midoriya whipped around and gave him a disapproving look that shut him up.
"No." Midoriya cut him off then continued to go back over to the two-pointer, clapping his hands to get the kids attention once again "Alright, as I was saying kids," Midoriya started but Higari didn't get to hear the rest since Haruki-San picked him up under his arms and he was dragged out of the studio.
Briefly Higari wondered how Midoriya had tamed his gremlins.
And if Midoriya was willing to share some tips with him later.
Outtake.
Izuku: So what'd you do with 1-G after I left?
Mido cleaning off some motor oil: Took them to watch me put the entrance robots back together.
Izuku *blinks*:... Since when could you build robots?
Mido *Shrugs*: Asked Nezu for a booklet, we should take up robotics once break comes up, it was pretty fun.
Izuku: Huh, noted.