Nezu hummed to himself as he read through a blog written by a quirkless girl a few years ago, it had not painted a happy picture of her life and frankly speaking Nezu wasn't sure why it hadn't been in the news yet given how easy it was to find.
However, it probably would not surprise Midoriya-San, the dozens of positively toxic messages and threats sent to the girl for being publicly quirkless online likely wouldn't shock him either.
Looking through just a few similar articles only further showed the blatant hate towards the quirkless community.
Nezu was quite aware of the general distaste people seemed to hold for the quirkless but this was far more... potent than he expected it to be.
It was no wonder why so many articles were written about Hawks' first interview with Yamada, openly being in favor of quirkless people was a far more risque topic than he understood.
Midoriya seemed to be right about how easy it was to find the true facts about quirkless people if you knew the right places to look.
And speaking of the boy, Nezu had looked more in depth in the boy's history and his information, starting with his government file and the first part of it lined up with what he expected.
Name: Midoriya Izuku
Known alias: Deku-Sensei
Quirk status: N/A
Birth date: July 15th 2359
Blood type: O
After that though, his tail flicked from irritation as he reached Midoriya's schooling records, because according to all his records from five to his single day of middle school spoke of a head-strong and envious boy that was a serial liar with poor grades who'd do anything to get his peers in trouble.
Now he could see a young Midoriya being head-strong since he had spared no expense when he argued with Deatharms about protecting his young charge, and maybe the boy was a touch jealous of his peers back then, but the transcripts from eight and up described him as nothing short of malicious gremlin out to ruin his classmates lives and futures.
And the boy in them was far removed from what Midoriya was and he'd ultimately consider it completely hog's wash but this wasn't the first time he had seen such blatant record tempering.
Aizawa, arguably his finest student to grace the halls of U.A, was nothing short of a monster that abused his classmates with his quirk, incredibly violent, and cheated his way throughout it all if you were to believe his middle school teachers' notes and records.
But even Aizawa's record would come second to Midoriya's, which was impressive in some sick way given how long Aizawa's file was.
Nezu could read between the lines however and easily concluded that Midoriya was severely bullied and perhaps he could have fought back sometimes and had all of the blame pushed onto him by biased teachers, and that his grades were unfairly lowered by said teachers.
Nezu would've liked to have a strongly-worded meeting with the Aldera line of schools however it would seem that someone had beaten him to the punch there.
Truly an unfortunate series of unrelated events that plagued the teachers there, why it was no wonder people started saying the buildings were cursed after they mysteriously burned down a couple years back.
Midoriya's college experience seemed to fair much better though Nezu couldn't find out much about it since the grounds Nezu was sure Midoriya's online courses were connected to had a student privacy policy that let students choose whether the institution would neither confirm nor deny the students existence outside of immediate family.
Which would've been a pain if Midoriya hadn't been so generous to list his degrees for him, and what a collection it was.
Quirk theory was an interesting choice since most quirkless people would be quite jaded over quirks in general no doubt, and a teaching degree wasn't that outlandish since the boy seemed to be quite involved in his students' lives and wanted nothing but the best for them.
Science and Biology could be an extension of his quirk theory degree since he himself was fairly interested in the topic after getting invested in quirk theory.
But structural engineering? Oh that was unexpected but fully welcomed, Midoriya could certainly advise the students about how to avoid grievous damage to buildings and property.
And then knowing law on top of that? Yes Nezu was never more certain about offering Midoriya a teaching role at U.A, oh if anything Nezu was disappointed he hadn't come up with a more convincing pitch when he offered the job in the first place.
It had been nearly three days since they spoke and other than Midoriya's promised break down of why he believed himself to be a stoat, one that was dead near one-to-one with what had happened to him in the lab barring one major exception, though he doubted anyone would guess about that happening to him, much like he intended.
Nezu was right though in believing that Midoriya was firmly within the ten percent, it was completely undeniable, the ten percent were always capable of things that would shock him and Midoriya had managed to do just that three times over within an hour.
Managing firm and unquestionable control over large criminal groups through simple charity and human decency wasn't ever a factor he considered because of how outlandish it was, then the boy exposed the fact All For One was still alive and Nezu knew that Midoriya knew far more than he revealed at the meeting.
And though it was only a half formed theory upon seeing Midoriya in the news he had confirmed he was also Aizawa's little problem child breaking up fights in Yaizu, all by threatening them with his ire with it being effective enough to render career criminals powerless.
All things that made Midoriya the most interesting person he has had the pleasure of meeting in years, and he knew there were even more mysteries surrounding the boy waiting to be unraveled, such as his ability to be in multiple places at once which was likely aided by a student of his or an employee, but which kind of quirk was it?
Midoriya Izuku was turning out to be less of a set of puzzles and more like a rubik's cube he had yet to complete, and it was thrilling him to the point of waiting anxiously for the boy's reply.
Him , anxious.
It was such a foreign feeling, the only other time he could remember feeling it was back when he first escaped the lab he was being experimented on.
And the feeling only became more intense when he received an email from Midoriya that day to meet him at a certain high end restaurant after school ended for the day, the boy hadn't let on whether he planned to take the job or not and Nezu wasn't quite sure what he'd do with himself if he couldn't get Midoriya to agree to work with him.
Because those in the ten percent were normally rightfully weary of him and the only one who wasn't regularly napped in his office to avoid other humans, Aizawa was the person he was closest to as far as he could remember and that was mostly due to how his brain registered the man as one of his kits after personally looking after him since he was one of his students.
Midoriya however, and Nezu might be reading far too much into this, saw him as an equal.
There was something about looking at a human's eyes that you could tell how they saw you, and most people merely saw him as a quirked animal, intelligent yes... but an animal all the same.
Aizawa was probably the only human he had meet that acknowledged him as something more than that before Midoriya, who living up to his status in the ten percent didn't seem to see a difference between himself and Tsukauchi, a fact that had thrown him off at the time since Midoriya hadn't had the same past teacher-student like relationship which had afforded him such a thing with Aizawa.
And the restaurant Midoriya asked to meet him at was further proof of that, The Underbrush was a restaurant that targeted predatory quirked people, one that wouldn't have much for Midoriya in the slightest since most of it's menu was mainly composed of raw or live 'food', so the choice had to be purely made for Nezu's sake.
Nezu had made sure to arrive promptly to The Underbrush five minutes early and Midoriya was already waiting for him inside, the boy was sat at a private table in the VIP section contract in hand.
"Nezu-San." Midoriya greeted with a bow of his head.
"Midoriya-San, I believe this is about my offer to you yes?" Nezu replied bowing in turn before he sat across from Midoriya.
"Yes, I've had this looked over by a few lawyers and I've been told it is quite a good deal for me." Midoriya answered flipping through some of the papers.
Nezu nodded silently motioning for him to continue since he could tell there was more to it.
"And after thinking about it, I would like to work at U.A, but I have some conditions." Midoriya told him, his hands folded on the table.
"Oh, what kind of conditions Midoriya-San?" Nezu inquired repressing the need to wag his tail.
"Your contract was quite fair to me, so I only want a few things but I wanted them in writing before I'll sign anything." Midoriya casually replied with a dismissive wave of the hand.
"Such as?" Nezu pressed.
Midoriya leaned back in his chair "Well firstly I won't be stopping the work I already do now and since a good portion of my students are connected to, criminal activities I want it in writing that this won't be used against me, I can't be forcefully used against them, and that I have you permission to continue my work in the red-light districts as I see fit." Midoriya answered.
Nezu smiled and nodded "Consider it done." Nezu responded.
"I'd like the ability to expel any of my students regardless of year or how long they've attended if I think they are unfit to continue in the hero course." Midoriya added and Nezu couldn't help it when his tail started swaying.
"That will be more than do-able." Nezu told the boy, such a request having only been made once before by Aizawa when he came to ask for a job, mostly as a false request to be dropped for leverage later on but Nezu had gladly given it knowing Aizawa's judgement was fairly sound.
"And lastly, when entrance exams come up again I want the ability to give any one applicant to the hero course a single point towards their physical exam before it starts." Midoriya asked and Nezu blinked taken aback.
He had heard no shortage of how the exam he made was utterly unfair to anyone without a powerful and or flashy quirk, Aizawa was sadly one of them but he hadn't had anyone ask for the ability to merely sift the points in someone's favor.
"May I ask for the reason for your last request Midoriya-San?" Nezu inquired, rather curious.
Midoriya's eyes flicked away and down "The world isn't fair Nezu-San and more often than not that means certain people slip through the cracks. One point on an exam won't be much and you can call it whatever you like, representing endorsement or even great potential, and they might not get in even with that single point added to their score but I think we both know how sometimes a single point could be a world of difference to the right person." Midoriya explained waving his hand dismissively at one point.
Nezu stared at Midoriya for a minute before he found words "That will be harder to get... but ultimately possible Midoriya-San."
Midoriya sighed then threw him a smile "Midoriya is fine Nezu, and if you can get me all of those things I'll be happy to sign, once a lawyer double checks it of course." Midoriya said and Nezu dared to think Midoriya was being playful with him.
Nezu released a few pleased chirps "I'll have our legal team hash out the details as soon as possible Midoriya." he cheerfully told the boy, rather excited to the possible conversations he could have with the boy once his employment was fully secured.
Nezu was ready to bid Midoriya his adieus when a waitress came over with two plates, one of some kind of soup that smelt of beef and the other of dead mice, and he stared at the them astonished.
Midoriya bashfully thanked the woman and nervously rubbed the back of his neck "Apologizes Nezu, I took the liberty of ordering for you before you got here, I thought you'd like to have something to eat while we talked since there were a few theories of mine I'd like your opinion on." Midoriya explained.
Nezu blinked staring at Midoriya and found... nothing, there were no ulterior motives he could think of for the boy to want to keep Nezu's company any further than he had.
Midoriya had already secured all of his requests and they didn't need to talk about whatever theories he had in person, much less now and over a meal that would be considerably unpleasant for Midoriya himself.
As if reading his puzzlement Midoriya shrunk in on himself a touch "Sorry, I probably should've asked if you already had plans, or at least waited for you to order for yourself since I wasn't sure if you prefer live prey or not." Midoriya apologized again muttering the last part as he absent mindedly stirred his soup.
"I prefer non-living prey." Nezu commented his mind still reeling slightly from Midoriya's intended plans.
Because as far as he could gather this whole meal was genuinely just so Midoriya could spend a little time getting to know him personally.
Something Nezu could not recall ever happening in his life.
He had gone to a lot of dinners lobbying for his right to be considered a person back when he got himself freed but those were hardly about getting to know him in earnest, and he certainly wasn't invited to any social events outside of practical reasons.
Suddenly he didn't think he was reading too much into Midoriya's behaviour, the boy genuinely saw him as a person... an equal.
Midoriya let out a relieved sigh with a hand on his chest "Oh thank god, right um so, I've been looking into the physics of hermit-shell quirks and thanks to one of my students I think I've found-" Midoriya went on to tell him about what his theory.
And in that second Nezu's mind concluded that Midoriya for whatever reason, wasn't put off by his presence, if anything the boy was relaxed around him.
As he ate the first mouse off his plate he had already decided that he would be pulling strings to get Midoriya's requests in a new contract as soon as possible.