iv.

"Have no fear," He says, the words come from his mouth. From his throat, but they don't feel like his, too deep, too crass. There's weight on his shoulders that feels like a universe. "for I am here!"

_

Shutsu is traumatized when he leaves the principals office. He can still see those black, beedy, eyes watching him. They tingle his head, make his fingers twitch.

"Shit Eraserhead, he's terrifying." Shutsu murmurs. "He's worse than my brother."

"Brother?" Eraserhead tilts his head.

"Yeah. My brother. My brother who tried to lock me in a vault. My brother who tried to take over the government. My brother who was a vigilante when I was, like, seven."

Eraserhead snorts. He doesn't believe, but that's alright, Shutsu knows he wouldn't believe himself either. Who locks people in vaults anyway? His brother, apparently. Weirdo.

(.. His brother who could steal quirks, his brother who twisted the world around his thumb―his brother who he hasn't seen in a long time. His brother who, despite all of his fears, he still loves.)

"I still can't get over the fact you called him a rat in a cracker." Eraserhead mutters.

"Eraser," Shutsu mourns. "he laughed. Get clearly got the reference. He told me not to poke him."

"I don't get your jokes, Hizashi isn't this bad." Eraserhead puts his head in his hand. "Anyhow, we'll be working together, so that's Aizawa-sensei to you."

Shutsu grins, and it feels like a new beginning. "It's lovely to work with you, Aizawa-sensei!"

It feels like hope.

_

"Just smile, yeah?" His mouth is wrong again, his lips are too big, and the words taste like copper, his hair is pulled back roughly, his hands are covered in white gloves. "Save them with a smile, I'm going to save them with a smile."

_

Aizawa-sensei expels just about half the class when Shutsu is teaching for his second year. He's halfway through his teaching degree at the time.

Shutsu has the mind to chuck himself out the window after that, because that was going to get him fired―or it would have if the bastard of a man didn't just re-enroll all of them without telling Shutsu.

He was already packing your his Yuuei sanctioned room (there were a total of twenty―one per teacher if ever needed. They were like safe houses) when Aizawa-sensei said that they'd need to plan the lessons for the year.

(He'd almost thrown up from the fear curdled in his stomach. The sick in his mouth at the thought of everyone leaving again, at the thought of going back to the way things were before. He wouldn't be able to stand the paranoia; he wouldn't be able to think straight, because he knows that every year that passes, the less people are willing to help him, quirkless as he is.)

The incident passes. 

_

"It hurts," These dreams are becoming commonplace―saying things with someone else's mouth. Blonde hair falls over his face, his knees are buried in the dirt, grappling sticks. Shutsu breathes out with lungs that aren't his. His vision dots black and he clutches a chest that is not his own, his mouth tastes like sandpaper. "fuck."

_

Hype around hero schools get more intense every year, Shutsu can tell. After he finishes getting his degree, get becomes Aizawa-sensei's―or, well, Aizawa-san now―official assistant. Which basically means that he does about everything that falls under the category of supervision while Aizawa-san pretends to sleep.

His students are anxious and hard-working, they all do well at the rescue drills with thirteen. They'll all become great heroes―though he's not too sure about Sensoji-kun (who chose the hero name Mister Blaster). Though, he has improved his self confidence. He's stepped off his high-horse to the earth.

Staying with the class through the next three years is still strange.

This class graduates and so do the rest. They become evenly split between rescuing and aboveground heroes―though some do go underground. The ones that are too quiet, too presise―the ones that want to get the job done more than they want to inspire hope or anything of the like.

_

"Guess this is it," He sounds so young, he feels so frail and small; he feels like he did before. He hates that word, small, like you matter anymore in the universe when your over two-hundred centimeters tall. "I never did graduate."

_

His third class isn't that bad. They're young, he realizes. Or maybe he's just getting old. He's turning twenty-nine soon―Aizawa-san is three years behind him. Really, he's closer to Kayama-san in age. She's nice, but she reminds him of Kero in a way that makes his head spin.

Their personalities, of course. He doesn't remember everything, but he's sure that Kero's hair wasn't purple-black - it was probably brown. Unnatural hair wasn't as prominent back then.

Shutsu doesn't like thinking about that though. He wonders how Ayū is doing, he wonders if she had children too. He wonders if she looks like her mother.

(He wonders if she was hurt like her predecessor was, he wonders if she had anyone save her.)

Shutsu smiles at her, but they don't talk much, not until she tries.

"Hey, Furukawa-san." It's the end of the school day when it happens. Kayama-san isn't Midnight, she's changed out of costume and she wears her hair in a low hanging pony tail.

"Oh, hey Kayama-san." Shutsu rubs the back of his head. "Uh, how are you?"

"I'm doing pretty great. Say, you've been hanging out with Shouta for a while, you might make his husband jealous."

Shutsu blue-screens for a second. "He's married? Who'd marry the legal equivalent to Batman?"

Kayama-san snickers. "I don't know what that means, but I one-hundred percent agree."

Shutsu groans because nobody ever knows what he's talking about. The DC universe was a travesty― it was a mess that kept getting messier until it got shut down because the government actually had heroes. Legal heroes, so those stopped being produced to curb vigilante activity.

"Oh, then how do you know about them."

"I'm a three-hundred year old time traveler, my brother is the original villain, and I was a vigilant in my younger years after my brother forced a quirk upon me to feed into his ideation that I need him, then I escaped the vault I was locked into."

"Fine," Kayama-san says. "keep your secrets."

"By gosh golly," Shutsu grins, ever so slightly. "you caught me in my schemes."

Kayama-san grins back, and it isn't her normal, sultry one. It isn't her soft, placating one. This one is real, and she looks like a shark. "Good thing I'm a hero, villain. I'd probably kill you otherwise. I'm not merciless, after all."

"Oh Kayama-san, mercy is not the absence of cruelty, it's compassion."

"Oh, I know that one! Where's that from again?"

"Human expectations toward polite mannerism with strangers, Shigaraki Hitoka."

Kayama-san snorts. "Man, I haven't heard that name in ages."

"Really? I had to memorize it."

And he did, his father might've been a drunk deadbeat who tried to run off one too many times, but he was still smart. Mania must run through his veins, though, because only his brother got that bit.

"Who put you through that suffering?"

"My, uh" Shutsu says. "father."

"Well," Kayama-san says slyly. "your father sounds like a prick."

Shutsu can't disagree, because, well, "He was."

_

"Oh shit, shit," Shutsu's throat is sore, and he gets the awful feeling something is wrong. Wrong like a two-headed snake, or a smooth cactus. "I'm late!"

_

After a while, Nedzu let's him prod at the entrance exam―and he's been doing it for five years when something in him shifts.

It's like a piece of himself is slotted into a new body. It's like experiencing those dreams, but in real life.

So Shutsu daydreams―he floats past the skyline. Drifts past reality into the unknown, because it's much quieter up there than anywhere else. His eyes sting vaguely, and his arms tingle. Then they burn, and it's like he's falling apart, legs sewn to the asphalt while he jumps past the horizon. His arm is on fire, like Dabi sent a wave of heat his way, or like Himiko stabbed him after suppressing the urge to drink the blood he got her. He's on fire, like the first time he used One for All and broke the wall in his vault.

Something in him screams, but it's stuffed out, because his brother is holding him again. His mind goes eerily calm, placated.

Shutsu excuses himself to go to the bathroom.

He throws up for the rest of the day.

Aizawa-san asks if he's alright, and Shutsu doesn't answer.

_

"No―you won't win." His face is starting into his brothers. Red meets purple (because his eyes aren't green, because he's in the body of a stranger he kissed in a backalley), warped and distorted, his hair is even lighter that Shutsu remembers it as. Stark white instead of greyish. "Someone will stop you!"

_

Rewatching the entrance exam over the next week and recording his video thing for Hagakure, Shoji, Monoma, Akito, Hatsume, and Setsuna is migraine inducing.

He'd normally play music, but all of his favorite artists are gone. Freaking, everyone. There are some old records of his favorite American songwriters like girl in red. Other than that, though? Nothing, just a gaping void. He scoured the internet for hours in search of them.

He just came out blank though. It makes him a little sadder, so he tries to go out―he usually never has time, or money, to go to his favorite restaurants. His brother and him always did like the Yagi's, they were nice. If not a little unstable because of the world falling apart. Sweet family, really.

They closed their family owned place about a decade ago when someone tried to set the place on fire.

(The news said it was because they were quirkless, all of them. Everyone in every generation was quirkless, and―people don't take kindly to the quirkless.

Really, he's had a license for the past four years and the Commission is still trying to take it away.)

Shutsu still gets angry about it, but he covers it up. It's a good skill. Acting, he means. It runs in the family, too, Hisashi always knew how to charm people, how to make them see that he was right, no matter what. He inspired fear and awe in equal folds. Shutsu inspired rebellion.

Back when they still went to school, before their mother started going sporadic, and his brother started getting really possessive, Shutsu used to go against everything. He made speeches to a select few people and a plan. In his third year of elementary, Shutsu started a protest with the rest of his class against the teachers for failing one of his classmates because she had sharper teeth and black nails (Tami-san, he thinks)―even when she got the same answers as his brother, who was notorious for his top grades.

He won, of course. His brother yelled at him for days because of it.

Shutsu wonders if he'd still remember that incident among the rest of them. The fights and the arson or murder that came with it. It was usually Shutsu doing the arson and Hisashi doing the murder.

(The difference is that Shutsu always made sure the buildings were empty, get always made sure that they were used by people worse than his brother, and he always cried after. He wonders if his brother cried after he killed all those people―he wonders if Dabi cried after he burned, wonders if he can cry. Himiko could, but she never liked too. She'd say that nobody wanted a sad friend.)

In any case―Shutsu can't really skip out, and he already has the script. He just has to record them, after the meeting they have today. Something about a new teacher, the one that surveyed the entrance exam with the rest of them.

Delaying any cause for action, he jumps from his bed and skitters through his room. The closet isn't really a thing, so he uses the drawers instead.

(He never liked closets, not after.. well. Not after that. The vault he means.)

He gets dressed in a collared shirt, a sweater, and black pants. Sure he could use his hero (vigilante!! vigilante!! he didn't change it) costume, but this was a teaching job, and nothing was going to happen.

He thinks of the world on his flimsy shoulders. He thinks of Hisashi when they were smaller, before his brothers hair turned white.

The lights overhead burn onto the black of his shoes, even though they aren't reflective. Just ratty sneakers, because the red ones he used to wear all the time are always out of stock.

Another thing that disappointed him immensely in his time three-hundred or so years in the future. Shame, really.

Shutsu, in all of his misery, stumbles into the staff room. The clock says he's late, but Nedzu sets all the clocks ten minutes late. The only one willing to subject themselves to Nedzu this long is Recovery Girl, and Nejire, because she doesn't know how to not ask questions. In any other case.

Shutsu is surprised to see a rail-thin blond man that looks half a second from falling over. His cheeks are hollowed out, his body looks like it's been caved in by a meteorite. It looks like he's going to cough up his lungs―oh. Would you look at that, there's blood falling from his lips. Lovely.

Nedzu isn't doing anything so it's either a test or he shouldn't say anything because it isn't an actual problem.

"Bro, are you good?"

Blond scarecrow man is not in fact good, he learns, when the man coughs up more blood.

"F," He says. "in the chat. For that disaster. Does he need an ambulance? Do I need to call one-one-nine?"

(There's a horrible feeling, looking into those eyes. He reminds Shutsu of Dabi. Broken and battered, but wishing for good, and he wonders if―)

"Oh! Furukawa-kun, welcome."

"Nedzu-sama." He acknowledges. "Uh. Hi. Furukawa Arakan, nice to meet you."

"I'm Yagi Toshinori, young man."

"Oh, Yagi, like, uh Yagi Himawari?" That was her daughter, he thinks.

"Ah, yes. My grandmother, I believe." He runs the back of his head. He believes wrong, if Shutsu has the timeline right, anyway. It's great-grandmother.

"Ah. I see."

There's a kind of stillness in the air, and Shutsu counts to ten, and screams. "Yamada-san (as Present Mic)!" on queue of him entering with Aizawa-san.

"Furukawa-san! Good to see you. You've been stuffed in your room doin' those papers, right?"

Shutsu wants to snort. "Yeah."

"They call me a workaholic."

"That's 'cuz you are, Aizawa-san (as Eraserhead)." Shutsu says back.

Yamada-san is about to say something, but Inui-san (as Hound Dog) and Kasoku-san (as Snipe) slouch in. Kayama-san (as Kayama-san) walks in, and they match.

"Twinsies." She says, sounding like she just came from the dead.

"Yep!"

"Kami. How does he have this much energy. I know you haven't slept or had coffee."

"I'm used to not sleeping for days. I mean, the only ones who cared were the ones I basically adopted for, like, three months."

"That's.. so sad."

"Alexa, play" Shutsu grins.

"!" Nedzu interupts, and they all devolve into a small depression. "Now, this is Yagi Toshinori otherwise known as All Might and―"

"Wait!" Shutsu stops, for everyone involved. "You mean to tell me that this toothpick of a person. Who looks less healthy than I did at seven, is the number one hero?"

"Yes."

"But he's a Yagi!" Shutsu says, warily.

"Yes."

"He's a Yagi." Shutsu not sure Nedzu-sama heard, so he repeats it. Firmer, this time.

"I see no quarrel in this."

"Nedzu-sama, Yagi's are quirkless. Like, continually. They've always been quirkless."

"It was a mutation," Yagi says. "I'm an anomaly."

"Y'know," Shutsu says, looking into Yagi's eyes. "if quirks didn't just pop up out of thin air, then I wouldn't believe you. It's more likely someone gave you a quirk than you just randomly developing one. But, like, whatever. Also, he's going to be teaching, when did you get your degree?"

All of the teachers turn to Yagi now. Yagi who fumbles over his answer.

"De.. gree?"

Aizawa-san groans. "You wanted to give a man with no self-preservation, time-manegment, or experience, a group of chaotic children who will take everything he says to heart, even if he doesn't know?"

"He's very intelligent―"

"Intelligence has nothing to do with it." Kayama-san grumbles. "Furukawa-kun's also smart, and he's got experience dealing with kids, and he still tried to get a degree even when he didn't have to. All of us got degrees."

"You all seem like you don't want him working here, now why's that―"

"The press." They all say, simultaneously.

"I- uhm, I can get a degree while teaching, right?"

"I mean, yeah? That's what I did―but you'll be stuck as assistant. And it'll take four years. You can assist me, because Aizawa-san would kill you when you did something inevitably stupid, trust me. Kayama-san is like a lightswitch, and the rest of them only work alone." Shutsu tacks on. "Besides, I teach Heroics, and I have a feeling that's the only class you wanted anyway."

Yagi ducks his head, but it's not fast enough to hide the red creeping up his face.

"Are we good, Nedzu-sama?"

"Yes."

"Good. I need two shots of vodka―"

"You don't even drink, Furukawa."

"Yeah, yeah, Aizawa-san."

(All Might follows them, reluctantly, like he can't quite place where he's supposed to be. He's not really here to teach一he's here for something, something selfish and destructive and undoubtingly herioc, Shutsu thinks. Something worthy of the moniker All Might.)

_

"I did it." The voice mingles, his eyes are green this time. And he sounds so sickeningly familiar it hurts him down to the very core because, well. "I got in."