Chapter Text
Midoriya hadn’t come back until the assessment was over, arm re-wrapped in bandages. His Dad asked his friend to stay after school so he could finish the tests. He’d glanced over at Hitoshi right after. Ah, so he wanted him to stay after too. Probably so they could have a ‘conversation.’
In the end nobody was expelled. “It was a logical ruse, to get you all to do your best.” That was a lie, he knows that if his Dad had decided any of them had no potential, he would have expelled them on the spot. Regardless, everyone sighed a breath of relief on not being expelled. Everyone except Midoriya. He knew he was going to have to finish the tests later, and he wasn’t out of the fire yet.
They collected the syllabus from the classroom and waited inside until the rest of the students cleared out. Uraraka, and surprisingly Iida, cast them worried glances as they exited the classroom. Bakugo shot Midoriya a glare as he left.
“We’ll be having a conversation later, Deku.” Midoriya quailed under the glare and nodded. Hitoshi glared back. He’d need to try and convince his Dad to expel Bakugo, preferably sooner rather than later. If he could get Midoriya to let him anyway.
When the classroom finished clearing out, his Dad relaxed against the podium for a moment, sighing. Nobody spoke, letting the moment of quiet hang until their teacher broke it.
He glanced over at Midoriya. “So. You have a quirk?”
Midoriya nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Dad tilted his head slightly, face betraying none of his thoughts. “You mentioned your mom didn’t believe you had one. Want to explain why?”
Midoriya shrugged. “It’s a bit hard to prove you can see ghosts when you’re nine, sir.”
Confusion colored his Dad’s tone, but didn’t reach his face.“...Ghosts? What do ghosts have to do with bone shattering strength?”
“The bone shattering is a more recent development, actually, sir. That's what happens when I’m not careful anyways.” There was something off about the way Midoriya was talking, about the way he was holding himself...
“What does it look like when it's not shattering your bones?”
“I was using it during the rest of the tests, actually. Though, there is a different kind of backlash, but it doesn’t physically injure me. For all intents and purposes, it's just a strength quirk.” Oh. Midoriya was being cold . He doesn’t think Hitoshi’s Dad will believe him about the ghosts, and it showed in how he’d slyly redirected the conversation mostly towards the super strength portion of One For All.
“...What kind of backlash?” Midoriya went quiet. Hitoshi nudged his friend’s shoulder.
“If you want, I can take over for a bit?” Midoriya was probably emotionally and physically burnt out, after breaking his arm over whatever his Dad had said. He’d rather not have his friend try and navigate the weirdness of this quirk with all that sitting over his head.
Midoriya nodded slightly and almost whispered. “Please.”
Hitoshi nodded. His Dad raised an eyebrow. “Midoriya quirk is a bit weird. It's not easy to explain in a way that makes sense, really.”
His Dad crossed his arms. “And you think you can explain it better than him?”
Hitoshi shrugged. “At this point? Maybe not ‘better’ so much as ‘easier to understand.’”
His Dad leaned stiffly back against the podium again. “Go ahead then.”
Hitoshi took a breath. Midoriya probably wouldn’t want him revealing that 8 other people had this quirk before him, right? And the bit with All For One too. Yeah, probably not. “Right, so Midoriya’s quirk, until he was 14, was literally just seeing 6 specific ghosts. Like he said, it’s a bit hard to prove you have a quirk where you can see ghosts where they can’t actually physically interact with the world at large. He figured out he could use them to feed him information though, which is how he proved they existed to me initially.”
He watched his Dad’s face carefully for any reactions, but it was as blank as it always was when he was trying to get information. “And the super strength?”
“When he was 14, the ghosts revealed that they could... lend him their strength. Something about them not wanting him to get hurt before he had self control. Unfortunately, without fine-tuned control over how much he’s using, said strength would probably explode his limbs.” He gestured at Midoriya. “Earlier, that was about, I’d say, 40%? Right now he can use about 1% without getting hurt. The more he trains, the more he can use, theoretically.”
There was silence for a moment, and his Dad closed his eyes, presumably thinking. “...Midoriya said something about a different kind of backlash.”
Shit, he was gonna have to explain Henshin, wasn’t he? Midoriya tapped his shoulder, getting his attention. “I can explain this.” Hitoshi blinked, but nodded.
“Shinsou said I can see 6 ghosts, and while that's not wrong, there is a 7th. I just don’t really get to see him. When my quirk manifested, something went weird, and we got all tangled up in each other’s heads.” Midoriya’s hands fidgeted in his lap, nervous. “So, sometimes there's a little spillover. Usually it's manageable, a memory here, a feeling there. Stuff like that.”
Midoriya is understating it, as usual, but that's probably for the best here honestly. Hitoshi knew his Dad probably wouldn’t care, but he also hadn’t thought his Dad would say anything to make Midoriya so upset either. Worse comes to worst, Midoriya can explain the ‘blurring’ later, right?
“When I use O- the strength part of my quirk, we kind of, blur together? We stop being separate people, kind of. We're just in such perfect sync where his thoughts are my thoughts and vice versa.”
His Dad nods once. “That’s not what you meant though, is it?”
Midoriya shook his head. “No, the ‘backlash’ happens when I stop using it. It takes a bit to reorient, being different people again, and a lot of the time I’ve got a few more memories from him to sort through. We have a few ways of dealing with it, but the longer I use it, the longer it takes to reorient. Rapidly turning it on and off again during the tests earlier was weird, and I didn’t really have the chance to reorient between tests, but we didn’t want to find out what would happen if I left it on for the entirety of the test.”
His Dad shifted slightly against the podium. “So, the backlash is this disorientation?”
Midoriya shrugged. “More or less.”
His Dad sighed. “Alright. We’re gonna go down to the field again and finish your tests, but you’re gonna take the time to reorient before we move onto the next one.”
Hitoshi blinked. Midoriya and him shared a look, before turning back to his dad. “That's it? I kinda thought you would have more questions, or ask me to prove the ghosts exist, or call up a mental hospital or something.”
His Dad raised an eyebrow again. “Did someone do that before?”
Midoriya raised an eyebrow in return. “Nine year old with an unprovable quirk, who’d already been diagnosed as quirkless? What do you think an adult would do?”
“Kid, that's illegal.”
“They didn’t do it, just implied heavily that they would if I kept talking about my quirk.”
His Dad glanced subtly at the window. The sun was getting pretty low in the sky. He frowned slightly, as if dissatisfied with the sun itself. “...We’ll be talking more about that later. If we don’t get down to the field soon, we won't be able to finish before dark.”
Midoriya stood, clearly ignoring the first part of that. “Okay.”
His Dad slid the door open, and they started down the hall towards the field.
------
Izuku finished up his quirk assessment test, and came in 13th, roughly in the middle of the class. Not bad, for only using 1%. Could be better though, was the problem.
“Midoriya,” called Aizawa-sensei, “You’re not expelled. Congrats.” He paused. “Don’t go around telling people that Hitoshi is my kid, got it? Or that he’s Hizashi’s kid either.” Shinsou, who’d been with them and basically watched him like a hawk to make sure he was properly oriented before letting them move on to the next test, nodded in agreement.
“He won’t be getting any special treatment. Neither will you, but you are going to be getting quirk counseling at some point.” Izuku grimaced a bit. You’re fine, ninety-nine times out of a hundred you don't blow up a limb, you don't need to see a quirk counselor. He didn’t have much of a choice though.
“This is non-negotiable, Midoriya.” Aizawa-sensei said, tone as inscrutable as always.
Izuku sighed with reluctance that wasn’t entirely his own. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
------
Shouta was going to be busy for a bit. Setting up quirk counseling, and possibly therapy if Midoriya was really dealing with a dead person’s memories, as well as six others ghosts who just ‘hang around’ as Hitoshi had later elaborated, was a decent amount of paperwork. It was probably for the best though. If his mother had really just ignored his quirk, he would need it.
He also needed to talk with Hitoshi about… This whole mess really. Hitoshi and Midoriya were close, so it’d make sense that he’d tell Hitoshi about his quirk. But neither Midoriya or Hitoshi had told Midoriya’s mother, or, as far as he could tell, any adult really. Which made sense for Hitoshi. Even now he was still fairly wary of adults, and the trust he had in both Shouta and Hizashi was hard won.
But as far as he knew, Midoriya didn’t have any reason to distrust adults in the same way. The problem with that statement was the ‘as far as he knew’ part. He’d looked up the statistics for quirkless kids soon after he’d first met Midoriya, but he’d never really been around the kid long enough to get a good read on him. Before today, anyway.
Midoriya had bandages on his arms when he’d come out of the locker room.
He pushed the thought away. He’d talk with Hitoshi first. Jumping to conclusions wouldn’t help anything.
He made sure to make noise as he walked down the hall. Hitoshi never said it, but he didn’t like being sneaked up on. He knocked twice, gently on the door. The muffled sound of a chair rolling back and a few footsteps preluded the door being opened.
Hitoshi frowned slightly when he opened the door. “Oh, Dad. What do you need?”
“We need to talk about Midoriya.” Hitoshi looked surprised for a split second before collecting himself. Ah, so he had an idea of what he was talking about, perhaps.
Shouta stepped away from the door and gestured for Hitoshi to follow him to the couch. Neutral ground. Hitoshi flopped onto the couch and tried to look relaxed, but there was a tension in his shoulders that was telling. “What about?”
“You knew he had a quirk, Hitoshi.” Hitoshi frowned at nothing in particular for a moment.
“He had a few reasons for not wanting anyone to know, at least until he got into UA.” Midoriya had mentioned something about being threatened for talking about his quirk, but...
“Even once he got the super strength part?” His son shrugged and crossed his arms.
“I mean, when he first started using it he barely had any to use. The ghosts didn’t want to risk him blowing off a limb, and the percentage he could use it at was less than 1. It won't be much of a difference until he gets to, we’re guessing 5 or 6 percent? And unless he wanted to shatter his bones like he did today, there's no way anyone would have believed him.”
Shouta hated to say it, but Hitoshi had a point. He hadn’t even realized Midoriya had a quirk until he’d done that. And if he’d been anywhere but UA, he’d have been looking at months, possibly years of recovery time from an injury like that. But…
“You believed him though.”
Hitoshi scoffed. “Yeah, because I got to know him before the ghosts decided they wanted me to know. Even then I made him to prove it to me.”
Oh. “Still, if he could prove it to you, he could prove it to anyone. So why didn’t he?”
His son grimaced slightly. “Are you kidding? He was diagnosed quirkless. Anybody else would think it was an elaborate set up. Only reason I believed him was because I knew how to check for cameras. Even then it still took a few weeks for me to be fully convinced.”
“About the ghosts or the super strength?”
Hitoshi blinked. “The ghosts. By the time Midoriya got the super strength, I’d already known about the ghosts for a few months. Though he did have to convince me of that too.” Another slight grimace. Shouta can understand why. He probably felt guilty for not trusting his friend.
“You could have told me. Or his mother, preferably. He could have gotten counseling before going to UA.”
Hitoshi shook his head. “His mom already knew about the ghosts. She just, didn’t really believe him. Every time he so much as mentioned it, she got this weird look on her face, like he was embarrassing her by talking about it in front of me. And when he told her about the super strength bit, about 2 weeks ago now, apparently he had to lift their kitchen table to prove it.”
Shouta nodded, feeling his mouth twist slightly in distaste. Midoriya Inko had been nice enough the few times he’d briefly met her, but he knew that he couldn’t judge someone on that alone. The second time Midoriya had visited, dropped off by his mother, she’d taken a few moments at the door to whisper to him about her son’s quirklessness.
What he’d originally taken as a mother looking out for her son, “My son is quirkless, so please make sure they don’t play too rough? I don’t want him getting hurt.” shifted slightly in the new light.
She hadn’t signed her son up for quirk counseling, and she hadn’t even acknowledged any of the potential issues that could come from being surrounded by dead people. And she’d needed him to prove the super strength aspect when he did admit to it.
“...Everyone thought he was quirkless. Including his own mother.”
Hitoshi nodded. “Yeah.”
He wasn’t sure he liked how the picture was looking.
He sighed, quietly. “On a scale of one to ten, how likely do you think your friend needs therapy?”
Hitoshi snickered bitterly. “In my opinion? A ten. Getting him to agree to it would be a whole different issue though.”
Shouta didn’t bother holding back his own grimace. “Great, another problem child. Just what I needed.”
------
Hitoshi knew Midoriya would be pissed at him if he just straight up told his dad about Bakugo. He’d briefly considered doing it earlier during the conversation on the couch, but had decided against it.
Regardless, he wasn’t sure how Midoriya had convinced himself all these years that Bakugo could be a hero. Whatever Midoriya saw, Hitoshi wasn’t seeing it. And he was sure that the bully would be immediately expelled regardless of how much potential he had if it came down to it.
You don’t let bullies become heroes.
Unfortunately, Midoriya still wouldn’t let him tell his Dad about Bakugo.
Fun-Sized Eraser:
Midoriya
Just let me tell my Dad about Bakugo
You’d never even have to see him again, come on
Bones Are Haunted:
No
You promised you wouldn’t tell
Fun-Sized Eraser:
I won’t unless you say I can, but really dude?
I had been hoping he was secretly this really nice but misguided dude and what do I get instead?
An unrepentant asshole
Bones Are Haunted:
And I’m still saying no
Hitoshi clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction. He’d kind of been hoping he could convince Midoriya, but he wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Fun-Sized Eraser:
Fine
But if I get any reason during classes to get him expelled that aren’t related directly to you, I’m telling. Also if my dad figures it out on his own, I’m not saying i’ll tell, but i’m definitely not covering for Bakugo
Bones Are Haunted:
As long as you keep me out of it, fine
You won’t get anything though
Considering Bakugo looked like he’d been about to run out and fight Midoriya during the softball pitch earlier that day, Hitoshi was pretty sure Midoriya was wrong. Bakugo looked like he had a temper that matched his quirk, short fused and explosive. Hitoshi was sure that with a few careful words he could rile Bakugo up enough to cross a line. He wasn’t exactly sure he wanted to face the consequences first hand though.
He’d seen Midoriya with fresh burns over old burns over even older scars enough to know he didn’t want a matching set.
------
“Kid, come on, just let Shinsou tell Aizawa.” Third was lying across the arms of his rolling chair across the room, despite the fact that he couldn’t technically interact with it. “ If he really deserves to be a hero, then he won’t get expelled for it anyways.”
Izuku wrinkled his nose. He wished it was that simple. “No, most people would look at Kacchan’s actions and just call him a villain. I don’t want him to be labeled like that.”
Third scoffed. “What, like how they labeled you a ‘quirkless freak?’ I can understand not wanting someone else to go through something like that, but honestly I don’t care if the Bakugo bitch goes through it. Maybe he’d learn a little humility if he finally got a taste of his own medicine-”
Nana appeared, slapping a hand over Third’s mouth. It was too late now though. The damage had already been done.
Izuku sat upright on the edge of his bed, hands clenched into trembling fists and One For All flickered dangerously close to the surface. “Are you kidding me, Third?! How can you just-”
Izuku shoved his face in his hands as he tried to get a hold over himself. It didn’t help that he could feel that Henshin was in agreement with the other ghost despite his attempts at keeping his feelings to himself.
“I-I don’t care how horrible he was to me, I wouldn’t want anyone to go through that!” He took a harsh breath before pulling his face out of hands to look Third dead in the eyes.
“You know why people become villains in the first place, don’t you, Third? A powerful quirk that everyone else is afraid of, enough marks on their record, and everyone uses it as an excuse to be cruel towards them. And then they feel justified in whatever actions they do because of how they were treated!”
He stood, and he could feel Henshin’s sudden understanding alongside his own fury. “Do you know why I need Kacchan to be a hero, no matter how cruel he is to me?! Because he would be so much worse as a villain!”
Third frantically waved his hands in front of him in a placating manner, alarmed at seeing Izuku so furious. “Kid, there's no way the Bakugo brat would become a villain, he's too much of a hero fan to-”
He jabbed a finger in Third’s direction. “You can’t be sure about that! How would you feel if he did end up a villain after thinking that!”
Izuku took a breath, and the anger seemed to leave him in a rush, leaving him feeling cold, empty, and… afraid.
He stared down at the floor, drained. “...Everyone has their tipping point, Third, and I’d rather not help Kacchan reach his.”
“... I hadn’t even thought about that.” He couldn’t see Third’s face, but his tone held… Something. He wasn’t sure what though, and he didn’t want to meet Third’s eyes.
Izuku sniffed back tears. “Yeah, well, maybe you should have.”
There was a pause. “...Alright, Izuku. Sorry we pushed you.”
Izuku didn’t respond. He didn’t think he could even if he wanted to, his throat choked with silent tears.
“...We’ll be here if you need us. Goodnight, kid.” He felt the ghosts disappear and let out a sigh, despite knowing full well they weren’t really gone.
He wasn’t going to sleep well tonight, he knew already.