Chapter Text
The dull throbbing in his head was the first thing that greeted Izuku Midoriya as he roused from unconsciousness. It was a feeling he was – unfortunately – extremely used to after being hit in the head one too many times throughout his life, but especially so since he became the pro hero Deku nine years ago. Even without a diagnosis, he knew he was healing from a rather nasty concussion and he was glad for sleeping through most of it.
He’d worry about his friends’ concerns for his health and wellbeing later; he knew they’d have something to say about his injuries like always… and probably call him a ‘moron with no self-preservation skills’, whatever that meant.
Before he could even open his eyes, a kind, older voice was talking to him, the sound tickling the back of his mind as a memory he couldn’t quite recall. “How are you feeling, dear? Do your arms still hurt, or your head? What about your chest?”
Izuku groaned lightly as he tried opening his eyes, but the bright light surrounding him seemed to narrow right onto his retinas causing them to burn. He immediately shut them again, screwing them closed to completely ward off the light. “M-my head hurts a little, but my arms and chest seem fine, th-thank you.” Honestly, he hadn’t even noticed the dull aching in his arms, the numb feeling the same one he usually got when he’d broken the bones in them multiple times, but it was a pain that was second nature to push to the side so that's what he did. “Wh-where am I?”
“I think the better question to ask is ‘who are you?’” That voice, too, was strikingly familiar with its peppy tone, and Izuku so wished to open his eyes to see who exactly they were, but that burning pain when he’d tried the first time was still too fresh to tempt him to try a second time. He’d hold off for now.
He’d developed a scarily accurate sixth sense for danger over the years; it was extremely useful for when he was patrolling as it made finding crime much easier than others found it, but it was also useful right then. Not one of the people in the room – because he could tell by each person’s breathing pattern that there were at least four other people with him, possibly five – screamed ‘danger’ to him, so he felt comfortable enough in leaving his eyes closed for the time being.
“I… I’m surprised you don’t recognise me: I’m the pro hero, Deku,” he whispered. The more he talked, the more he realised how dry his throat was. As if summoned telepathically, a plastic straw prodded at his lips urging him to open them. It was bliss as he sucked down the cool, refreshing water, and he promised he’d pray to whichever angel sent him that gift as soon as he found out who it was.
“Deku?” The voice was confused, which confused Izuku even more than before – he was the Number One Hero in Japan (and had been for the last five years), so why was it that these people didn’t recognise him? If he were an Underground Pro like his old sensei, then that would make sense, but he wasn’t, not anymore. Maybe he had been in the first three years of his career, but he'd branched out into the limelight. Yes, he still conducted underground missions on the regular, but he was now officially a Daylight Hero. Maybe he wasn't in Japan anymore? Even if they were all speaking Japanese... Never mind. “Okay, Deku, would you mind telling us your civilian name?”
“Um, sure… but it’s public knowledge, you know?” When no one spoke, he sighed, trying for a second time to open his eyes. It went better than the first time – someone must have caught his screwed up eyes as the lights had been dimmed significantly – and his vision was just mildly blurry as he stared up at the white ceiling. “Um, well, I’m Izuku Midoriya…”
There was a shuffle of feet near the end of the bed – almost like someone was nervously shifting – at his response, but no actual words were spoken for almost a minute. It was a completely new voice that broke the tense silence, and he felt tears come to his eyes at the sound. “Try again; Izuku Midoriya is a kid in my class.”
“Sh-Shouta?” Izuku whispered questioningly, twisting his head slightly to the right where the voice had come from. “Shouta, i-is that you?”
The man looked tense from what he could see, but that was normal for his ex-sensei. He was slightly annoyed his vision hadn’t cleared up enough to read his eyes – the only part of Shouta Aizawa that would ever give any indication to the man’s true feelings – but he had a feeling the tears welling in his eyes would get in the way anyway. “It is, but I don’t know how you know my name, let alone why you think you can address me so familiarly.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” Izuku was confused – he’d known the man for twelve years and had worked alongside him as a Pro Hero for nine of them; they were a little bit past last name status if you asked him. Besides, he’d never voiced any complaints before. “I-I’ve called you Shouta for eight years now…”
“Bullshit; I don’t even know you.” His voice was harsh; it was a tone he hadn’t used on him since his first year when he kept running into trouble and breaking all his bones. It brought back memories of the USJ, of Stain, of the Summer Training Camp, and of the Shie Hassaikai Raid from all those moons ago. He’d smile at the memories (despite the lingering trauma both he and his classmates still had from them) if the situation weren’t so confusing.
“But, but you… I’m so confused; Shouta, you were my homeroom teacher when I attended UA twelve years ago. Do you not remember me? You… you called me Problem Child; you still do, sometimes.” Shouta didn’t reply, but Izuku could see he was more tense than before, which wasn’t his intention at all.
“I have to agree with Shouta on this one, I’m afraid,” came the second voice, it’s tone still that same perky tone as before. “I do not remember another student by the name of Izuku Midoriya attending this school apart from the one currently in Class 1-A.”
“I’m in UA right now?” Izuku’s memory clicked onto who the voices belonged to at the knowledge, and this time he did let a small smile through. “Principal Nezu, a-and Recovery Girl? I thought you sounded familiar. I’m guessing we’re in Chiyo’s office then, yeah?”
“We are, dearie,” Chiyo Shuzenji – Recovery Girl – replied, her voice the same soft tone as before. He could still hear the surprise in her tone at the use of her first name despite how she tried to hide it.
What he was more concerned about, though, was how his colleagues didn’t recognise him, and insisted that there was a boy with the same name in Class 1-A when clearly he was a twenty-seven-year-old who’d graduated years ago. “I don’t understand; I graduated nine years ago, a-and I’ve been working as a Pro Hero ever since. I’m even the Number One Pro in Japan and have been for the past five years. I’m not… I’m not making this up, am I? I mean I always thought it was a dream to make it to the top spot, and that it was all thanks to Toshinori that I even had a shot in the first place, but everything felt real enough. I’ve broken my bones enough times to know I can definitely feel pain, but – wait, maybe I’m dreaming now? It’d make sense considering my friends don’t seem to know me… wait, speaking of friends, where are they? Has anyone heard from Shouto? Or Ochako or Tenya? Even Kacchan should’ve said something by now…”
“Well he certainly mutters like Young Midoriya…” The comment was whispered, barely registering in Izuku’s mind, but the familiar (and long-since used) name ground his world to a halt.
“T-Toshinori?” His voice wavered, the tears that had been held at bay before finally leaking down his face.
All Might was there. He was there, and alive, and he hadn’t seen the man for six years.
“Um…”
“Oh my God…” he blubbered as he raised an aching arm to his face to wipe away his tears. He was stopped, however, by the yanking of a chain on his wrist. He was wearing quirk suppressant cuffs, and the knowledge made him nauseous – no matter how far they were willing to take a joke, they knew not to cuff him after that mission that went south in his first year as a Pro.
His breathing began quickening and deepening, and more tears began to fall as panic rose up in his chest.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t move.
He couldn't-
“P-please don’t–” he whimpered, yanking on the cuffs desperately as he tried to suck in breaths, “Please don’t hurt me again, please, I-I’m b-begging you–”
“Deku?”
“Please!” he screamed, thrashing in the bed in a desperate attempt to get those fucking cuffs off his wrists he didn’t want to go back to that room he didn’t want to be tortured anymore please don’t hurt me–
“Hey! Deku! Shit, someone help me pin him down – I think he’s having a panic attack!” the voice was faint in his ears, and most of the words his brain automatically filled in, but the meanings evaded him. “Where are the God damned keys?!”
The feeling of his cuffs falling off his wrists was like finding an oasis in the desert, and he could finally breathe– It took him a while for his heartrate to slow down and for his breathing to even out, and it was only halfway through the process that he realised his hand was being held to a warm chest – Shouta’s chest – before he clutched the material under his hand tightly. The steady thump of the man’s heart under his fingers eased something inside him – Shouta was alive, Outlaw didn’t get to him – and made the calming process much easier.
When he’d finally calmed down, he noticed everyone else in the room had crowded directly around his bed, almost like they had all leapt to help him. He’d find it strange if it weren’t for the fact they were all heroes except Tsukauchi, who he should’ve realised would be there a bit earlier than he had.
“I-I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t – I just – it was my first year on the field – I was – they –” he stuttered out, his thoughts racing despite his wishes to just forget. He used his free hand to wipe the salty tears from his face, only to come into contact with the hood-mask he normally wore with his hero costume. Without a second thought, he grabbed one of the ears and pulled it backwards, the fabric sliding over his face and hair as it came off.
His dark green hair was slightly damp from sweat making it extra curly, and the freckles on his flushed cheeks became visible. Izuku heard a gasp come from the blonde hero right in front of him, but he pushed it to the side as the memories of that time flashed in his mind.
“Just breathe, okay?” Shouta’s voice was softer than before – much softer – and he didn’t know what to make of it.
After taking a deep breath, he tried again. “In my first year after graduation, I was put on a raid with Shouta to take down one of the remaining League hideouts, and, well… things went wrong,” he sighed, taking another deep breath as his eyes flickered between the people still crowding around him. “They didn’t find me for three weeks, and the League of Villains didn’t exactly like me much. I’ve never been able to use cuffs, let alone be cuffed, since – it just takes my mind back–”
He forced himself to stop before he wound himself back into another panic attack, but he could tell the others in the room understood him. Apologies were clear in their eyes, alerting him to the fact that his vision was finally clear.
He scanned each of the members of the room starting from the left. Chiyo looked the same as she did before she died - wait, died? - three years ago, and so did Toshinori. Nezu looked the same for as long as he’d known him, and Tsukauchi looked less worn out than he remembered. His eyes trailed to Shouta last and he paused. “What happened to your scar?”
“My scar?”
“The one under your right eye – from the USJ? Back when I was a first year, remember?” Multiple things didn’t add up – the fact Chiyo and Toshinori were alive was the biggest thing, but also little things like how people looked younger, and how there was a first year with his name, and Shouta didn’t have his scar– “Holy fuck.”
The memories came back to him in a flood.
Things had been going well when Deku got the call: there had been a sighting of the Banishing Villain: Outlaw in the middle of the Musutafu mall. The police had been chasing the man for the past year – with Deku and Eraserhead as the leading heroes on the case – yet they had never had such a strong lead to follow before. They wasted no time in gearing up and running over to the location with Shouto, immediately ordering any civilians they met in the mall to evacuate; it wasn’t safe to stay there, especially not when the fighting would inevitably start.
Outlaw was a strange villain: he never made demands, he never joined an organisation, and he never damaged the city. The only thing he did was murder the occasional person which, for villains of the time, was a rather minor crime to commit . No one knew what his quirk was, exactly, but they knew that it was a five-finger touch-activated quirk; Eraserhead, therefore, was the best hero for the job of catching the man with the least casualties, and Deku’s analytical mind and familiarity with the Underground Pro made him the perfect partner for the case.
They’d brought Shouto along to help with rescue and stabilising the infrastructure if necessary, but in the end they mainly needed him for backup; Outlaw had brought along friends… twenty of them, all of them top-class villains.
They hadn’t seen them coming; they had all been hiding out on the mall’s second floor when the trio had arrived in the main plaza to meet with Outlaw, and had descended on them when the man gave them his cue. It had been an ambush, and they had walked straight into it. The only good thing to have come from the situation was the few minutes before the major fighting.
It's a good thing that villains are notorious for talking.
“Welcome, heroes, to my party; I’m so glad you received my invitation! And oh look, you brought along Shouto, too! How… exciting,” he grinned manically, the intricate white and black half-mask he wore allowing the heroes to see it as clear as day. “Now then, you may be wondering why I decided to call you here… Well, I – just like everyone else in Japan – love our Number One Hero Deku, and I wanted to show him that love!”
Outlaw was wearing a pristine white shirt underneath a blood red waistcoat, which Deku found highly ironic – it looked like his shirt was stained with blood… Actually, that was probably the reason why he wore it. He was a wanted murderer, after all. Deku would call it genius except for the fact that a black waistcoat would probably hide the stains better, but who was he to judge? To match, he wore black dress trousers, brown leather shoes and black leather fingerless gloves. If the heroes had to say anything about his outfit, it would be that he definitely dressed for the occasion.
Eraserhead scowled as he adjusted his capture weapon so it sat more comfortably in his hands, his fingers wrapped around the cloth in the same intricate position as it had since his time as a student at UA. “What do you want, Outlaw?”
“Oh Eraserhead, were you not listening to me?” He placed a hand on his chest in fake hurt. “For shame… I want to show dear old Deku just how dear he is to me. I even rented out a venue for our party!”
“This isn’t your normal way of doing things,” Deku spoke up, his hands clenching into fists as he took in his surroundings. There was bunting and a few groups of balloons dotted around the circular space, most likely the villain’s idea of decorations for his so called 'party'. “You’re not normally this… extravagant. Is there a specific reason for this?”
“Oh, I’m so glad you noticed, my dear!” the man squealed, his amber eyes shining in delight. “It’s to celebrate your fifth consecutive year as the top pro, of course! What better way to celebrate is there than having a party?”
“You… make a good point,” Deku agreed, but his two comrades could hear the tension in his voice. They didn’t know that the man was infatuated with Deku; if they knew, he never would’ve been put on the case. “What were you thinking of doing in this… party then, Outlaw?”
“Oh, honey,” the man sighed, and Deku had to hold back a shudder at the blush he could see consuming the villain’s cheeks, “I’m so glad you asked! I’m going to tell you all about my quirk, of course! And then…” his face shifted completely to the same manic grin as before, “I’m going to give you a gift.”
“A gift?” asked Shouto, speaking up for the first time.
“Ah yes; I’m going to give him a live demonstration of how it works!” he giggled, bowing dramatically. “Only the best for our Number One, wouldn’t you agree Shouto? Eraserhead?”
The two stayed silent as the man straightened up and began laughing madly, their teeth gritted and hands clenched. Deku watched on in horror as he realised his plan: he was going to use his quirk on Eraserhead and Shouto.
“Now then, as promised, let me tell you about my quirk,” he started, his right hand coming up briefly to ruffle his chocolate brown hair. “My quirk is called Judgement; it is a five-finger touch-activated quirk that allows me to judge my victims. It only works, however, if I touch skin. Once touched, my victim’s body will begin to pixilate and break down for five minutes until they are completely erased from this world. Then, the judgement process begins.
“Because of the nature of my quirk, I’m somewhat of a God, but that doesn’t mean I get to choose where someone goes; another being – someone even higher than myself – decides that. I don’t know the full details, because even I have limits, but where someone ends up is entirely dependent on who they are as a person.
“Their two paths from when they are pixilated are either death or exile to some other land. I don’t know where those places are exactly, except that they're all different and no one goes to the same place as another, but I know each of my victim’s outcomes. Oh, and in case you were wondering, ninety-seven percent of my victims die!”
“N-ninety-seven percent?” Deku stuttered out. “How are you so sure?” He didn’t know what to think of Outlaw’s quirk; something that powerful, something that law-defying, shouldn’t even exist, let alone be in the hands of a villain. For someone to have the power to determine whether or not someone is worthy of living… that's phenomenal. No wonder he seemed to have a God-complex.
“Well,” the brunette drawled, as if the answer was obvious, “out of the one-hundred people I’ve used my quirk on, only three people have been exiled. You do the maths.”
“Oh my God…” Shouto whispered, his face taking on a slight green tinge at the thought. This man, this monster, had killed ninety-seven other people… They knew he was wanted for nine counts of murder - the normal kind where the victim's bodies are found - but to know there were ninety-seven others he'd killed? Without anyone even realising? Holy shit...
“Oh, don’t get so hung up about it!” Outlaw yelled, his tone angry and sharp compared to the almost-pleasant lilt it had before. “It’s not a big deal! I needed one-hundred test subjects to calculate my percentage; it was all done in the name of science! True, I might have been able to do my calculations with twenty-five or fifty people, but the data is more accurate when done with a bigger pool of subjects, right?”
“You… you insane bastard!” yelled Deku, his eyes lighting up a toxic green as similar-coloured lightning began to crackle around his body. “How could you do that to those people?!”
“I didn’t know them,” Outlaw replied flippantly, “It's my duty as a God amongst men to judge those deemed unworthy of living. And besides, I can only do and be the best for you, my darling Deku. You should be aware of just how much thought and planning has gone into this encounter today! And with that…” he smirked, his body bending into the most insincere yet sincere bow Deku had ever witnessed, “let’s get the party started, shall we?”
At those words, all twenty villains that had been hiding in the shadows of the second level jumped out and bombarded the three heroes.
It had been chaotic.
They had managed – through sheer determination and spite – to wrangle all twenty villains into unconsciousness, leaving only the mildly scraped Outlaw as the last one standing. Their own bodies, however, had taken a huge beating, rendering Shouto and Eraserhead practically useless. Only Deku was standing despite a major concussion, two broken arms and a couple of broken ribs.
“Just how I planned it, wouldn’t you agree, Deku?” he whispered, yet somehow his voice carried straight into the Number One’s ears. “Just how I wanted this to go. This was just as the Gods decided!”
Within the blink of an eye, Outlaw was directly in front of Deku, his hand outstretched to touch the skin of his jaw, and all the hero could think was oh shit, the target wasn’t them… it was me as five fingers caressed the bare part of his face.
“No!” the hoarse, strangled yell of Eraserhead rang out through the open space, and Deku knew there and then that the other man was just a few milliseconds short in activating his quirk.
He was going to die.
But that didn’t matter for the minute; all that mattered was stopping this man, this villain, from killing anyone else. With a flash of his quirk, Deku brought his broken arms up around the man still gently caressing his face and scowled. “You may have sealed my fate, but I won’t let you do the same to anyone else!”
It didn’t matter that his arms were smashed in at least three different places– he’d been through much worse as a child – as he gripped the still smirking man tightly around his waist; he still lifted him over his shoulder and slammed him head first into the concrete behind him, knocking him out instantly. His quirk fizzled out as a wave of nausea from the movement passed through him, and he turned his head to the side to throw up on the ground.
“Izuku!” the other two heroes shouted, and Izuku turned his wobbly body to face them. A small, sad smile lit up his face as he took in the two people before him. He’d known them for the same length of time – one as a fellow classmate and the other as a teacher at first, and then both as comrades-in-arms for nine years after. He’d been through a lot with them; they’d bled together, cried together, laughed together… he’d been through so much with them…
Shouta turned his vermilion gaze onto Izuku, concern crystal clear in his gaze. “My quirk should stop his from working if I look at him, so you should be–”
“I… I don’t think it’s going to work this time, Shouta…” Izuku whispered back as a sharp pain began to pulse from his toes. “I… I think this is the limits of your quirk.”
“No!” shouted Shouto as he struggled to move closer to his best friend. “No! Y-you can’t – you can’t die here, Izuku! You can’t!”
A tear rolled down his cheek as he watched matching tears well up in both of the usually stoic men’s eyes. “Don’t cry, g-guys,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “J-just think about everything we’ve been through together. D-don’t let our memories die, and I never will either…”
“I-Izuku…” Shouto sniffled, finally pulling himself to his feet and staggering up to Izuku. “P-please d-don’t g-go…”
“Oh Shouto, you know I w-wouldn’t if I had the choice…” he whispered. He raised his mangled right hand to the boy’s left cheek and let his thumb wipe off the tears running down his scarred skin. “I’d stay here with e-everyone forever if I c-could, but there was always the chance of us d-dying when we became heroes.”
“P-Problem Child…” Shouta’s voice was even worse than Shouto’s. Izuku always knew that man felt things too deeply; he’d just hoped he wouldn’t have to confirm that by dying. “I-I’m so s-sorry…”
“Shouta, it’s not your f-fault; you’re only human.” He helped the older man stand up before pulling both of them into his arms. “P-please don’t blame yourselves… please.”
They were silent for a few moments, save for the occasional sniffle, before Izuku pulled back. “I-I need to call my m-mum…” He looked down at his feet, urging the other two to do the same, only to see that all the way up to his thighs had already pixilated and disappeared. “I don’t have l-long left.”
The call was… painful. His mum’s sobs echoed over the phone, prompting Izuku to break down into sobs, too, but they got across what they wanted to say before he hung up. Next, he called the class group chat that they’d had since their first year, everyone picking up straight away despite it being the middle of the day on a Wednesday. That call was even worse, with multiple people sobbing and/or cursing, until Katsuki spoke up.
“Deku… Izuku , I’m sorry for e-everything.”
“Oh, Kacchan,” he replied, tears streaming down his face even with the huge smile those words produced. “I f-forgave you years ago. L-look after my mum, o-okay?”
“Of course I w-will… I-Izuku, you w-will always be my Number One Hero, okay?”
“Th-thank you, Katsuki… thank you.” He cut off the call then, the quirk finally reaching his arms and no longer allowing him to hold the phone up to his ear.
Shouto and Shouta knelt on the floor, cradling his head in their laps, watching as his body became just a head and shoulders, the black and green pixels of his body disappearing a few seconds after leaving his body. Their tears were constant, and they didn’t bother wiping them away.
“Don’t be upset,” Izuku whispered softly as his shoulders pixilated, leaving only his head and neck. “Don’t think of this moment when you think of me. R-remember the g-good times, okay?”
“O-okay…” they croaked out, their hands resting gently on the hood of his costume, trying their best to memorise everything about him that they could.
“I… I’ll miss you both…” he whispered, his mouth finally disappearing. His eyes focused on theirs as he felt his face float away, only one thought echoing inside his head as he completely vanished:
No matter what, I’ll find you guys again. I’ll never leave your side; I promise.
“–eku? Deku? What’s wrong?” The sound of Shouta’s voice – not his Shouta though, oh my God, he’d have to start calling him Aizawa again – broke through the haze in his mind, and it was only then he noticed the steady stream of tears flowing down his cheeks again.
“I…” He didn’t know what to say as he wiped his cheeks clean; they didn’t believe him when he told them his name, so why would they believe him if he were to tell them he’s from the fucking future?
“Young Deku, are you alright?” came All Might’s booming voice, immediately alerting Izuku to his predecessor’s state. His concern for the man’s health outweighed his mental functions, apparently, as he opened his mouth and let spill something he probably should have kept quiet about.
“You can drop into your smaller form, Toshinori; you don’t have a lot of time as you are so please don’t waste it on me.” The silence in the room was stifling, and Izuku sighed in annoyance even as the blonde man heeded his words and dropped into his smaller form with a cloud of steam. “I really need to work on shutting my mouth, don’t I?”
“Perhaps,” agreed Nezu with a smile, his beady eyes focusing on Izuku’s freckled face as a blush overcame him. “Although, I think in this case your words have actually helped you out some. I do believe we may have come to a similar conclusion as to where you’re from?”
“If you mean from the future then yeah, we have,” agreed Izuku as his eyes flickered over to the bear-dog-rat man. “I was with Shouta again on another case. The villain’s name was Outlaw, and the only thing we knew about his quirk was that it’s touch-activated. There was a call telling us he was in the mall, so Shouta, Shouto – Shouto Todoroki, that is – and I rushed over to get him. As villains do, he rambled and told us all about his quirk.”
“Was it some kind of time quirk?” Nezu asked, and the greenette could tell only by his years of exposure with the man that he was excited for his tale.
“No; his quirk was called Judgement. When he touches someone’s skin, his quirk takes effect, breaking down the victim’s body into pixels until they vanish completely.” He grimaced slightly, phantom pains from the quirk wracking his body. “Then, he said they are judged to either death or exile, meaning the victim is thrust into another ‘place’. He said only three people out of the one hundred he tried his quirk on were exiled, and yet somehow I managed not to die…”
The room was silent for a moment until Tsukauchi spoke for the very first time. “True; everything he has said from waking up has been true.”
Izuku sighed, his body finally letting go of the tension he had unknowingly been holding onto. “Thank you, Tsukauchi.” He looked over everyone in the room again, taking in how they seemed to relax some as well. “I don’t think my mind could take everyone hating me if you said I was lying.”
“Are you in pain? That quirk sounds like it’d do a number on your body,” Chiyo asked as she grabbed a few energy gummies from her pot, handing them over to him gently. “I mainly focused my healing on your head and ribs, but I can give you another intense round of healing now since it’s been eight hours since you arrived.”
“Eight hours?” he muttered, a sad look crossing his face as he thought about his friends and family back in his own time. “God, I hope Shouta doesn’t keep blaming himself…” he muttered, surprising Aizawa.
“Why would I blame myself?” he asked, mildly curious, before a deadpan expression took over. “Besides, Chiyo asked you a question; it’d be rude not to answer.”
“Ah! S-sorry, Chiyo! I’m fine, really – my arms are a bit numb but that’s normal for me by now, hah…” he looked down at the scars littering his right hand, memories of how he received each one flooding his mind. “My Shouta… he had a concussion probably as bad as mine, and he was a few milliseconds short in activating his quirk when Outlaw went to touch me. Even when he looked at him, his quirk didn’t erase; I don’t want him thinking it’s his fault when it’s not. We couldn’t have known this outcome would happen…”
“Did you tell him not to blame himself?” Aizawa asked, his arms folded across his chest in what Izuku knew was a self-conscious manner.
“Of course I did!”
“Then he won’t.” Izuku didn’t believe the man, but he wouldn’t say anything to save Aizawa his pride.
The group of six continued talking for almost half an hour about how he got there, what happened when he arrived (apparently he’d materialised in the middle of the PE field while Aizawa was dismissing his class after their first quirk assessment), and anything else Izuku deemed okay to mention. He told All Might about him becoming the Number One Pro, telling him he never had the chance to in his time as he’d died before he’d made it. It was highly emotional with both men crying in happiness and pride, and Izuku was sure Aizawa had a headache from the sheer intensity that he rolled his eyes with but that was his problem. He outright refused to tell them anything about future events though – he just said he’d decide on what they needed to know depending on the necessity of that event taking place or not.
“What should we do with him, then?” Aizawa was the one to bring up the elephant in the room in the end; he didn’t belong there, not really, but there was nothing they could do to send him back. He was there to stay, and he could do a lot of good for a lot of people. The only problem was that if certain people found out he was from the future – the Hero Public Safety Commission, for example – he’d be hunted down and used for his knowledge. While that didn't sound so bad on paper, the reality of his situation would be worse than if he'd actually died; he knew what those sons of bitches did to Hawks back as a child and all the way into his mid-twenties until they were finally overthrown by his class.
But Izuku refused to remain in the dark; he was a hero, God damn it, and he would continue to be a hero until he died.
“Well, I think he’d be able to provide UA with the most help considering he is so closely tied with everyone here,” Nezu spoke up, and despite everyone’s scepticism, they knew his words rang true. They might not know him, but the twenty-seven-year-old knew them very well. “I think you should become a teaching assistant for Class 1-A!”
“What?” came Aizawa’s deadpanned response, and Izuku had to smother his mouth to stop the laugh threatening to escape. “I must have misheard you; what did you just suggest?”
“Midoriya will become your teaching assistant!” Nezu beamed.
“Ah, maybe you should call me Izuku or something just so you don’t confuse me with your time’s me,” Izuku muttered, but it was drowned out by Aizawa’s words.
“Why is he being stuck with me?”
“Well Shouta, he knows the students in your class well, and he’s familiar with you,” Nezu supplied, his black eyes boring into Aizawa’s own steel grey eyes. “Besides, he can be extra protection for the kids just in case something goes wrong.” He hadn’t forgotten what the greenette had said about Aizawa gaining a scar whilst at the USJ, and he strongly suspected it had nothing to do with a training accident.
“Fine,” he eventually agreed, his face buried in his capture scarf in an effort to hide his pout. “But he has a point about not calling him Midoriya; I already have one of him in my class. And anyway, if you don’t want people knowing he’s from the future then he shouldn’t have the same name as someone else who looks identical to him.”
“True,” agreed the principle as he placed a paw on his chin. “You’ll also need a new hero name for your new licence – you cannot use the one you have already, after all.”
“The name or the licence?” Izuku grumbled, but the rat did have a point. His card was issued three years from then, which meant it wasn’t actually valid yet. And his time as Deku was over – it was his child-version’s mantle to take up now, and not something he should keep. “Hmm, I’ve never really given hero names much thought – I’d pretty much decided on my hero name after Ochako told me Deku could mean ‘I can do it’, so…”
The room was silent for a while before Izuku’s beaming smile drew a round of silent questions in the form of concentrated stares aimed directly into his eyes.
“I’ve got it,” he decided. He knew what he’d be called, and it fit his situation well. “I’ll keep my first name – my mum gave me my name and it’s all I have left of her – but I’ll change my surname to Hinata. As for my hero name… I think I’ll go with Janus.”
