Archive of Our Own ^beta

Oboro laughed easily at Hizashi, who scowled at him performatively, mid-rant about how no he was not crushing on Aizawa-san, he was not engaging in juvenile pigtail-pulling, and he did not even somewhat appreciate the new transfer in their class. 

“Hey, Tensei!” Oboro called, waving. Tensei waved back as he vanished into Class 2-B's classroom, and Hizashi gasped in overdramatic offense. 

“Hey! I’m trying to talk to you!” 

“I’ve heard it a million times already,” Oboro chuckled, “I think at this point I could say it with you, word for word.” 

“’Boro!” Hizashi whined. 

“’Zashi,” Oboro mimicked, sauntering through the door into Class 2-A's room. Instantly, the lighthearted air vanished. In no small part thanks to the glowering, ice-cold glare from the tangled knot of angry vibes that was their newest classmate. 

When he’d first shown up, Aizawa-san had been fascinating to Oboro. He had transferred in from the Support course of all places after winning the Sports Festival in a landslide. He fought with pure skill, with no enhancing or supporting Quirk, and he was good at it. Even directly after his transfer, he could beat any member of Class 2-A in Quirkless sparring, and most of them in Quirked. 

Oboro had tried his best to make friends with Aizawa-san. He was cool! Really good at Heroics, good grades, and he just looked cool. He made the school uniform look cool! Honestly, he was probably too cool for Oboro. 

That was probably why Oboro had struggled so much to make friends with him. Not to mention, Oboro was openly friends with... well, everyone, but specifically Hizashi, who... really didn’t like Aizawa-san. And the feeling was mutual. 

They’d both already gotten detention for fighting each other outside of class, and judging exclusively based on how they glared at each other literally all the time, Oboro didn’t think it would be the last time. 

Either way, every time Oboro had tried to befriend Aizawa-san, he’d been rebuffed with a cold, ‘I have more important things to do’ or ‘That sounds like a waste of time’ or ‘I hate your best friend and I’m too cool for you, so I’ll never hang out with you and you should give up already’. Okay, maybe that last one was only implied, but it was heavily implied. 

Oboro held in a silent sigh and dropped into his seat, doing his best to shrug off the frigid glare that Aizawa-san was splitting about thirty-seventy between Oboro and Hizashi. Oboro had a lot of practice by this point, and Aizawa-san's glare slid off him like water off a duck’s back. Okay, maybe like water off a seagull or something. Something slightly less hydrophobic than a duck. Oil off an owl’s back? Clouds off a mountainside. Like approximately thirty percent of a cold glare off of Oboro’s indomitable good cheer. 

Yeah, that one sounded right. 

Overwatch-Sensei slid the door open, striding into the classroom with a clipboard and a stack of papers in hand. She stepped up to the podium and tapped the papers on the wood. 

“For Practical Heroics today, we’ll be having a guest participant,” Overwatch-Sensei started briskly. “Some Heroes have had a minor Quirk accident and have ended up approximately twenty years in the past. Specifically, our time.” 

Whispers immediately erupted throughout the class, excitement mingled with trepidation. They’d only ever had guest Heroes once or twice before. Oboro wiggled in his seat with excitement. Whatever happened, it was going to be fun. He wondered who it was going to be. 

Probably Hizashi. Hizashi was going to be a great Hero, better than anyone else, and he also seemed like the type to get caught in wacky time travel accidents. Or, ooh, maybe it would be him! What would it be like to see himself in the future? That was a weird thought... 

“You’ll change into your Hero costumes and report immediately to Ground Beta,” Overwatch-Sensei said, neatly cutting through the whispers and speculation. “You’ll discover your opponent there.” 

Opponent? Were they going to directly go up against this future version of a classmate? Oh, that was going to be so cool! 

Oboro rushed through getting dressed so fast he almost forgot his staff. He snagged it at the last second and rushed to catch up to Hizashi, who had somehow gotten ahead of him despite the giant bulky speakers he was lugging around on his gloves. 

Aizawa-san, of course, was in front of literally everyone, already standing tiredly at the entrance to Ground Beta when Oboro and Hizashi caught up. 

Despite his apparent perpetual exhaustion, Aizawa-san spared the energy to shoot them both positively scathing looks. 

Rude. 

“Listen up,” Overwatch-sensei called, and the milling, disorganized class all clumped together in front of her. “Your goal in this exercise is to find and detain all Villains on site without being captured yourself. In this case, that means anyone that looks like an older version of you or your classmate. Wrapping their hands in capture tape will count as detaining, regardless of Quirk availability. Teaming up is permitted and encouraged. All other rules are standard combat training guidelines. Any questions?” 

There were a few – fishing for information on their opponent, clarifying rules that only potentially applied, and in one case questioning of the wisdom of mixing people from different times – but the questions quickly subsided, and Oboro bounced on the balls of his feet, waiting for the starting signal. 

With little fanfare, Overwatch-sensei gave it. 

There were no countdowns in the real world, as Oboro and his entire class had learned at the entrance exam. The instant Overwatch-sensei's hand fell, Oboro was booking it for the gate. 

The whole class spilled through the open gate and quickly split off into their usual smaller groups. Oboro jogged through the streets of the false cityscape with Hizashi at his side, clouds drifting around them both as he mentally went through the Quirks of their classmates, trying to figure out what they needed to look out for. 

“How do you think we’ll find them?” Hizashi asked, scanning the windows of the buildings around them. 

“Probably, Ashioto will track them down or Jishin will drive them out of wherever they’re hiding, and then we’ll have to follow the sound of the conflict,” Oboro said, working to tint his clouds a darker blue-gray that both blended better into the gray buildings and would make any white clouds from a possible older version of him stand out. 

And then, the air erupted with sound. 

Not a specific sound, like the distant rumbling of shaking buildings or someone’s shouted war cry, not even the by-now-familiar sounds of a fight. No, this was a shrieking, hissing, howling, roaring, piercing sound that slammed through Oboro’s eardrums and made his brain rattle in his skull, a sound so loud and furious and forceful it was almost pressure, squeezing like a fist around his eyes and yanking on his very nerves. 

Just as quickly as it had started, the sound cut off. 

Oboro’s ears rang. His eyes ached and his skin felt prickly and too tight. He gasped desperately, and he could barely even hear his own breath. 

“What,” Oboro wheezed, “was that?” 

Hizashi’s hand appeared in his vision, and Oboro realized that he had collapsed to his knees, limbs shaking and weak. He accepted Hizashi’s hand up and tottered onto quivering legs. 

“That,” Hizashi said slowly, smiling a small, almost bitterly amused smile, “was me.” 

That couldn’t be true. Sure, Hizashi was loud, but Oboro had heard Hizashi’s scream before. It was loud enough to hurt his ears, loud enough to make him falter and stagger maybe, but it wasn’t that sort of smothering, impossible, all-encompassing force that had just made his brain rattle in his skull and turned his limbs to jelly. 

“The Quirk counselors say that with practice and experience, I’ll get a lot louder as I get older,” Hizashi explained, “and that I’ll be able to do more with my voice.” 

“Like that?” Oboro asked skeptically. 

Hizashi shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.” 

A tingling creeping feeling slid up Oboro’s spine. That... was a terrifying thought. If it was true – if it was really Hizashi, or an older version of him – who had done that, then... well, he would certainly be a formidable Hero, and Oboro was glad, not for the first time, that Hizashi had chosen to be a Hero. 

“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.” 

Oboro jumped, startled by Aizawa-san's familiar biting tone. He turned, trying to catch sight of him, but Aizawa-san himself was nowhere to be seen. 

“The last thing we need is Yamada getting any louder,” Aizawa added darkly, and this time Oboro followed the sound of his voice to find him clinging to the side of a building, maybe three stories high, with his hair falling like a curtain around his face as he glared down at them. 

“At least I've got proof that I actually became a Hero,” Hizashi snapped back, and Aizawa scoffed and rolled his eyes. 

“This is a waste of time,” he said, and started back up the side of the building. 

Oboro watched him go and couldn’t help but be impressed by the other boy’s skill. He was climbing a building! Fast! Without handholds or a Quirk or even a rope! That was so cool! If only he wasn’t so much of a jerk about it. 

“Come on,” Hizashi said, “that shout didn’t affect me as much as it did you, I think I know where he’s at.” 

“Awesome,” Oboro agreed, shaking off his distraction. 

“Look up there,” Hizashi said, and pointed to the roof of a building about three blocks away. It was pretty far and with the sun behind it, but with his goggles blocking out the sunlight, Oboro could just barely make out a humanoid silhouette perched on top of the building. 

“Looks about right,” Oboro agreed, “I can’t see him very well, though.” 

Hizashi shrugged. “We’ll see him better once we’re closer, yeah?” 

And that, Oboro had to admit, was true. “Let’s go, then.” 

Oboro formed a cloud beneath him and offered Hizashi a hand up. “Keep an eye on adult-you. If he looks like he’s gonna start screaming, tell me and I’ll drop us off.” 

“Deal,” Hizashi agreed, settling onto the cloud next to Oboro. 

Oboro started them off at a little faster than a running pace, keeping close to the ground so if they fell nothing too bad would happen. 

They covered ground quickly, with Hizashi watching the older version of him just in case. Right as they got to the base of the building and started going up the wall, Hizashi cursed. 

“Keep going,” he said, hurriedly standing on Oboro’s cloud platform, “I’m going to try something.” 

Oboro moved the cloud a bit closer to the wall so he could grab it if needed, but kept them moving up. 

Hizashi took a breath so deep it sounded like a bellows, and Oboro clapped his hands over his ears and braced himself. 

Sound. Two warring sounds, one from the Hizashi standing beside him and the other from the Hizashi perched on top of the building. They crackled and clashed like two opposing waves, and Oboro felt his bones shudder and the water droplets in his hair turn to steam and ice at the same time. 

As did the water droplets in his cloud. 

Oboro swore and reached out desperately for the wall, scraping his hands on the bricks but managing to snag the edge of a windowsill. His shoulder protested the sudden stop, but it didn’t dislocate. 

Fortunately, as Oboro’s Hizashi lost his footing – and therefore his concentration and voice – the older Hizashi stopped screaming. Oboro managed to catch Hizashi as he fell, and that was when his shoulder decided to pop out of position. 

Oboro gritted a curse out between clenched teeth, his shoulder screaming from the weight of holding both himself and Hizashi. 

“I’m good,” Hizashi said hurriedly, clutching at the wall, “let go, I’m supported.” 

Oboro did so gladly, replacing the hand on the windowsill with his uninjured right hand instead. The two of them hung there for a moment and took some time to catch their breath. 

“Well,” Hizashi observed breathlessly, “that didn’t work.” 

“It kind of worked,” Oboro corrected, bracing his toes against the wall and hauling himself up onto the windowsill. “I was still thinking, but it did some strange things to my cloud.” 

Hizashi grunted in acknowledgement, following Oboro through the window he’d managed to pry open and spilling into the building after him. 

The inside was pretty much empty, since the building was just a prop for the cityscape, but there was a floor that wasn’t hanging several stories over the bare street, so that was a nice plus. 

“Okay,” Oboro said, starting off through the building, “there’s probably a roof access door at the top. I’ll take us straight up the elevator shaft, it’ll be basically the same as going up the outside wall, without the risk of getting screamed down. Sound good?” 

Hizashi didn’t respond, so Oboro glanced over his shoulder curiously. No Hizashi. 

“Hiz- Present Mic?” Oboro called, “where’d you...” 

Oboro turned around the corner and found Hizashi sitting on the ground, apologetic and embarrassed, his wrists bound together with capture tape and his speakers discarded on the floor next to him. 

“...go,” Oboro finished with a sigh. 

“Sorry,” Hizashi said, chagrined. 

“How’d he get down here so fast?” Oboro wondered.  

Hizashi only shrugged. “I didn’t even see him. You think he’s gone back upstairs?” 

“That, or he’s decided to hunt me,” Oboro huffed. “Bye, ‘zashi.” 

“Good luck!” Hizashi called as Oboro darted back towards the elevator shaft. 

He would need it. 

Oboro kept his head on a swivel, clouds drifting around him to hopefully detect and rebuff any surprise attacks. He made it to the elevator and started to dig his door override key out of one of his many pockets. Where had he put it? 

There was a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye, and Oboro startled, gaze darting up to flicker around the empty hallway. He formed a few more clouds, circling around him in a shield. He hadn’t yet managed to form a fully spherical shield, but he could make one with very few, narrow holes. 

Oboro went back to searching his pockets just in time for one of the clouds to explode, transforming into a whirling storm of white that blinded Oboro. 

He lashed out blindly with his staff, but with his shoulder injured he could only attack with one hand, and the staff was easily deflected and rerouted away from his attacker, who struck at Oboro’s wrist with a hard jab of his knuckle, yanked the staff out of his grip, and twisted both hands around his back to loop them together with a tight – but not too tight – loop of capture tape. 

In whole, the motion took less than five seconds, and as Oboro’s vision cleared he found himself kneeling on the ground, hands bound in capture tape and staff set off to one side. 

Just in time to hear the echoing clanking of someone climbing up the elevator shaft. 

After a moment, the doors propped half-open and Aizawa-san slipped through, snatched Oboro’s staff off the ground with barely a second glance at Oboro himself, then returned to the empty shaft. 

Oboro scowled at his retreating back. Somewhat spitefully, Oboro hoped the older version of Hizashi kicked Aizawa-san's butt. 

With a brief struggle, Oboro managed to get his hands in front of him instead of behind, and then he awkwardly clambered to his feet and trudged back to where he’d lost Hizashi. Hizashi himself was gone, but his speakers were still there. 

Oboro shrugged and picked the speakers up with a cloud that he set to trail behind him like a lost puppy. He created another one under his feet and awkwardly settled crisscross on the fluffy white platform. 

When Oboro emerged from the building, Hizashi was already half a block down the street. 

“Hizashi!” Oboro called, and he turned and glanced over his shoulder. “Want a ride?” 

Together, the two of them made it to the entrance gate, where Overwatch-sensei cut the capture tape off their wrists and marked them as unsuccessful. Almost the entire class was already there, sitting on the ground or leaning against the wall of Ground Beta. Oboro set his cloud down on the ground and joined Jishin in leaning against the wall. 

“Well, that was a disaster,” Ashioto observed bluntly. 

“You can’t know that,” Oboro protested, mostly out of obligation, “Aizawa-san-” 

“Is on his way out right now,” Ashioto interrupted, and sure enough, Aizawa-san pushed through the gate with a scowl, a red mark on his face that would bloom into a beautiful bruise and thin trails of blood drying under his ears. His hands were lashed together up to his elbows. 

“That’s all sixteen,” Overwatch-sensei said, “if you’re injured report to Recovery Girl, otherwise return to the classroom for debriefing. Aizawa-san, that means go to Recovery Girl.” 

Aizawa-san scoffed and glared, but turned on his heel and stalked away towards Recovery Girl’s office. Oboro winced, realizing he’d have to follow him. 

Hizashi retrieved his speakers from Oboro’s cloud and started back to the lockers to change, waving goodbye to Oboro, and Oboro returned the gesture. Then, he offered Heshioru a ride on his cloud to Recovery Girl. 

Fortunately, they made it in and out of her office before Aizawa-san – walking alone without the speed boost from Oboro’s cloud – made it there. Oboro quickly changed back into his uniform and headed to the 2-A classroom, where almost everyone was waiting. The last few trickled in, and Overwatch-sensei hesitated for a moment, checking her phone, then pulled the door open. 

A tall, blonde man stepped through the door. Even without his previous experience, Oboro would have clocked in an instant that he was a future, older version of Hizashi. 

He was dressed almost the same as Hizashi’s Present Mic gear, black leather jacket, pants, and boots with blue headphones and a dark red belt. But this older version had clearly had the time to perfect his costume. The jacket was studded with spikes, and he had shoulder and elbow patches that looked like they doubled as armor in addition to being fashionable. His glasses and headphones were both wider and more ostentatious, and somehow his hair was about twice the length but still gelled up in a huge swooping monstrosity. 

Most notably, though, was that this older version of Hizashi had ordinary fingerless gloves, without the loudspeakers built into them. Instead, he had a giant bulky speaker around his neck, braced on his shoulders and bracketed by the impossibly high popped collar of his leather jacket. 

“HeLLOO, listeners!” old-Hizashi grinned the same broad, too-wide grin that Oboro was used to, the one that showed you just how much of his face Hizashi’s mouth took up. “That was a rockin’ good time we just had, but let’s dig into it and talk about the nitty-gritty details, yeah?” 

“YEAH!” Oboro’s Hizashi shouted, so excited that he barely kept a hold on his Quirk. 

“Loving the enthusiasm there, mini me!” old-Hizashi grinned, “but I really mean it! Get ready to take notes, kiddos, we’re gonna be putting the ‘exhausting’ in ‘exhaustive’!” 

And somehow, despite being Oboro’s crazy-smart but also crazy-scatterbrained friend, old-Hizashi was... good at this. When he’d said they were going to talk about the nitty-gritty, he’d meant it. He led each student through their experience in the scenario, what they’d thought and done and what had been the consequences of it, and it all seemed so natural when old-Hizashi was walking him through it. 

Oboro didn’t feel like an idiot for making poor decisions, but he could acknowledge that they were poor decisions, and he was taking notes on not just his own performance, but everyone else’s, too. Ashioto underestimating her opponent because she assumed she knew what she was getting into, Jishin’s confusion at an unexpected side effect of his Quirk – which had actually been old-Hizashi shaking the building with his voice – leading him to hesitate and lose both momentum and awareness of his surroundings, even Heshioru’s habit of hurting himself to enhance the strength of his Quirk, sometimes to debilitating degrees. 

It was incredible. Hizashi should be a teacher for sure when he was older. 

“Now, we’re mostly done,” old-Hizashi said, “but I have one more question for the whole class.” 

Oboro looked up from his notes curiously. 

“I wasn’t alone today,” old-Hizashi said conspiratorially, “I had one companion, another classmate sitting in this room. Who can tell me who it was?” 

Silence. Even Ashioto didn’t raise her hand. 

“Okay,” old-Hizashi said, performatively tapping his chin, “let’s make this easier; who can tell me anything about my friend? Anything at all. Even just a guess. No wrong answers.” 

Someone behind Oboro must have raised their hand, because old-Hizashi pointed at them seemingly with his whole body. Even Hizashi's dramatized, forceful, broad motions had seemingly developed in this older version of him. They were less abrupt and chaotic and more... focused. Still sweeping, whole-body gestures, but they were fluid and directed, like a dancer almost. 

“I think it might have been Shirakumo?” Heshioru suggested tentatively. 

“What’s your reasoning for that?” old-Hizashi asked, barely skipping a beat. 

“Um, my eyes were covered by something soft, white, and cold,” Heshioru said, “I think it could have been a cloud? One of the stronger barrier ones, though.” 

“He did burst through my cloud shield,” Oboro mused, “it could be an older version of me.” 

“I thought I saw Shirakumo’s goggles, too,” Jishin piped up, “I didn’t really think about it at the time, since everything was so dusty, but it looked like the same shape.” 

Oboro’s Hero costume goggles were a very distinctive shape. That would make sense. 

“Let me give you a hint,” old-Hizashi said with a secretive grin. “My companion is already in the room.” 

Oboro immediately looked behind him. All he could see were the familiar faces of his classmates, and Overwatch-sensei standing at the back. He narrowed his eyes at Chidjimu. Her Quirk, Shrink, would let an adult version of her take on the size of a teenager, but her face still looked the same, not suddenly much older, so he tentatively ruled her out. For now. 

Nobody else looked suspicious, either, and while there was a guy in 2-B with a chameleon Quirk, there was nobody that could hide in plain sight like that in 2-A. 

“Here’s one more hint,” old-Hizashi said, his grin growing. “You listeners ready? He’s not hiding. He’s napping.” 

No. Surely not. Oboro could feel every single person shoot glances at Aizawa-san. Oboro could believe that someone like him became a Hero – just look at Endeavor – but there was no way in a million years that Aizawa-san and Hizashi would willingly work together. 

Aizawa-san himself looked like he had swallowed a lemon. And someone had just offered him another. 

“I can see you all thinking it,” old-Hizashi grinned a grin that reminded Oboro a bit too much of Nezu-sensei. “Someone’s going to have to say it.” 

Resigned to his fate, Oboro raised his hand. 

Old-Hizashi grinned at him invitingly. Inviting in the way that a spider invited a fly to its lair, or a cat invited a mouse to its cardboard box. Inviting like a pitcher plant. Inviting like the future version of a good friend trying to convince you to say the stupidest thing anyone had ever conceived. 

“Was it Aizawa-san?” Oboro asked. 

“Aizawa?” Old-Hizashi asked. “What’s your reasoning for that?” 

This was torture. Why was Oboro friends with Hizashi? He should break that off before Hizashi got like this. 

“My Quirk was acting up,” Oboro realized, recalling his platform vanishing from underneath him and the strike blowing straight through his cloud sphere, “and, well... you said he was napping.” 

Nobody dared look at Aizawa-san now. 

“He’s certainly pretending to,” old-Hizashi said, glancing at something under the desk in front of him and shifting slightly, “but he’s been awake this whole time. How long have you been pulling that trick, anyway, Shouta?” 

That name, Shouta, was like a livewire down Oboro’s spine. He knew in a vague, distant sense that Aizawa-san's name was Shouta. They had announced him at the sports festival, and Oboro had thought it was impressive that someone without a Hero name – and therefore not from the Hero course – had made it to the final round. 

But the idea of anyone calling Aizawa-san by his given name felt... kind of wrong. 

The idea of Hizashi – even an older, future version of Hizashi – doing it was unfathomable. 

“Kick me again, I’ll feed you your directional speaker,” a distinctly familiar voice said from under the desk. It sounded rougher and deeper, clearly several years older, but Oboro had become familiar enough with Aizawa-san's scathing comments and blunt threats to recognize it in an instant. 

A hand appeared on the desk, and then another, and then the head and shoulders of a man who looked simultaneously just like Aizawa-san if he ever became a real Underground Hero like he was aiming for, and also like he’d been homeless and living on the street for the past four years. 

The older Aizawa had the same tired, vaguely irritated look as the younger one. He was just as slouched and unimpressive, but Oboro could see the way his baggy black jumpsuit obscured his figure while also tucking panels of armor and hidden pockets away beneath it. There was a huge fluffy white scarf draped over his shoulders that looked bizarre when contrasted to his general serial killer vibes. 

Oboro snuck a glance at Aizawa-san, already braced for the pride and gloating that was undoubtedly going to be on his face. Instead, he found... shock. Disbelief. Skepticism. 

Honestly, Oboro was still surprised as well. The idea that Aizawa-san and Hizashi would willingly work together was hard to wrap his brain around. 

“Your performance today was disappointing,” old-Aizawa said tiredly. “Only one person even made it to Present Mic’s position, and none of you were anywhere close to seeing me. At this point in your training, you’ve been working on direct combat and keeping yourself, your allies, and any potential civilians safe in dangerous situations. You should now begin focusing on identifying what the threats exactly are and where they’re coming from, as well as being prepared for unexpected complications in the middle of already tense situations; things like ambushes and natural disasters can still happen in the middle of a preexisting fight.” 

Beside Oboro, Hizashi raised his hand. 

“Yamada,” old-Aizawa sighed. 

“Who made it all the way up?” Hizashi blurted. 

“Who do you think,” old-Aizawa grumbled, “he’s the only one with any serious injuries, and he was already on his way up the side of a building when you ran into him. That’s another thing you should be able to figure out from context. You’ll be starting your internships soon, and you won’t be able to just spontaneously get answers to your random questions; you need to be able to extrapolate that information on your own.” 

“Fifteen minutes,” old-Hizashi interjected, seemingly for no reason. 

Old-Aizawa grunted in acknowledgement. 

“Any more questions?” old-Hizashi put in, apparently taking the stage from old-Aizawa, “About anything, not just the scenario today.” 

Every single hand in the room was up in the air in record time. 

The questions were rapid-fire, asked and answered as quickly as possible as time rapidly ticked away. 

A lot of them were variations on ‘what am I like in the future?’. Some people struggling to pick Hero names, some trying to unlock new parts of their Quirks, some curious about their rankings on the Hero charts. 

A few questions were expertly evaded by both older counterparts of their classmates, some were answered directly, and some were given a half answer that still somehow revealed a wealth of information. Oboro could hardly parse it all, but he had to get his own question heard. 

He was briefly derailed when Ashioto raised her hand and asked what was wrong with old-Aizawa's scent, and why it didn’t match Aizawa-san's. 

Ashioto’s Quirk let her trace people by a unique trait that she described as most closely matching a ‘scent’ but that was really more like an aura. It clung to places they spent a lot of time and things they considered valuable, and changed only very slowly and gradually. 

“Your Quirk relies on both the mental and physical makeup of the person you’re focused on,” old-Aizawa said bluntly. “A drastic change in lifestyle, physical circumstances, and even their connection to you can change someone’s perceived scent. In this case, you most likely detect me differently from him because he’s a classmate who doesn’t like you and I’m a teacher and full-fledged Hero who has nothing against you. There’s also the physical element, where he’s only sixteen and mostly healthy, and I’m pushing thirty-five and crippled." 

Dead silence. 

Oboro’s arm dropped out of the air, and he gaped at old-Aizawa. What. What!? 

Old-Aizawa reached up to brush his hair aside and revealed that his right eye was crossed by a huge, knotted scar that cut down from his eyebrow to his cheekbone, bisecting another smaller sickle-shaped scar over his cheek. His eye underneath the scar was solid gold. 

“Quirk-boosted prosthetic eye,” he explained blandly, sticking his hand in his huge gray scarf to pull out... Oboro’s goggles? “It’s designed to interface with my Hero work goggles and allow me to retain an effective range of vision while working.” 

“When-” Aizawa-san gasped, and Oboro realized that he was pale and too-still, staring wide-eyed at the older version of him and his solid gold false eye. 

“Few years ago,” old-Aizawa said, “it was worth it. Don’t worry about it.” 

Aizawa-san swallowed thickly and nodded, but didn’t look away from old-Aizawa's eye even after it was covered again by hair. Oboro didn’t blame him. Imagine looking at yourself twenty years in the future and finding out that you were permanently crippled. That was a chilling even to think of. 

But now, with the goggles and everything, Oboro had to know.  

“When did you guys become friends?” Oboro blurted, “You and Hizashi and why are you using my goggles?” From the corner of his eye, Oboro briefly caught Aizawa-san finally glancing away from old-Aizawa, eyes flashing with challenge. 

“You gave me the goggles,” old-Aizawa said like he thought Oboro was being an idiot. “As for being friends with Hizashi...” 

“Give it a week,” old-Aizawa decided at the same time that old-Hizashi said, “We're not friends.” 

There was a brief pause. 

“I’m just saying,” old-Hizashi said, holding his hands up defensively, “I feel like ‘friends’ isn’t really a strong enough word. I’d say something closer to husbands.” 

Old-Aizawa sighed and rolled his eyes, opening his mouth to speak- and then the bell rang to symbol the end of class, and the two of them vanished without so much as a ripple in the air. 

Oboro’s mouth was open for some reason, and he felt like he should be shocked into denial about something but he... couldn’t remember what. From the other side of the classroom, Aizawa-san glanced at him. 

His glare didn’t hold the same ice that it usually did. Like, about seventy percent less ice, and he wasn’t even pointing the rest of it at Hizashi. Maybe he was finally softening to Oboro, and they could be friends after all! 

Oboro closed his notebook – which was open on his desk for some reason, even though the bell had literally just rung – and shot to his feet. He’d have to catch Aizawa-san before he got too far. 

He was sure this wouldn’t take too long. A few days, maybe a week, and he’d have it in the bag!