Chapter Text
Hitoshi sat down and leaned back against the whitewashed brick of the mall shop’s storefront, tugging Kaminari to lean against him before the other boy could collapse completely.
“Didn’…didn’t think you really saw stars,” Kaminari slurred. Hitoshi snorted.
“You’re in the hero course and you’ve never been punched in the face?”
“No’ like that. He broke my face.”
Hitoshi twisted enough to catch Kaminari’s chin and tilted his head to the side to survey the damage. It looked even worse than it had in the store, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Kaminari’s cheekbone was broken. “Yeah, he rattled your brains pretty good.”
Kaminari groaned, letting his head flop against Hitoshi’s shoulder. “Gonna be even stupider now.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Hitoshi tried to reassure him, patting his arm. Kaminari’s blond hair was tinged pink with blood from the gash across his eyebrow and his eye was already swelling shut. Another inch or two to the right and the bastard shopkeeper would have broken his nose. “Hey, come on, stay awake,” he added, jostling his friend’s shoulders.
Kirishima and Bakugou were still dealing with the shopkeeper inside the store. Aizawa was on his way, hopefully with reinforcements and medical aid. Hitoshi hated not being able to help with the confrontation, but he was the only one of the four without his provisional license and Kaminari couldn’t be left alone right now.
“I thought I passed today,” Kaminari moaned. “Kiri said…said I looked fine.”
“Yeah, you looked fine,” Hitoshi replied. He wasn’t quite sure what Kaminari was babbling about, but that didn’t matter. He just needed to keep him awake. “Besides, I think he just didn’t like your pin.”
All of class A had them, and class B had started wearing them, too. They were the UA logo in the pink, blue, and white stripes of the trans pride flag. Hitoshi didn’t know why the hero course were all wearing these pins, but he wanted to know where they got them. They were cool and subtle and maybe whoever made them had some ace designs, too.
“Where did you guys get those, anyway?” Hitoshi asked when Kaminari seemed to be losing focus. “The pins, I mean.”
“Huh?” Kaminari’s shaking fingers reached up to brush the pin on the collar of his shirt. “Y’rozo made ‘em.”
“Oh. That, uh, that was nice of her.”
“Yeah.” The blond drew the word out, his hand falling limply into his lap. “Everyone wears ‘em. It’s nice.”
“Stay awake, Kaminari,” Hitoshi gently pushed him upright, grimacing at his friend’s pained moan. “Class B wears them too, right? Is it a hero course thing, or can you hook me up with one?”
Kaminari clumsily reached for his collar, and Hitoshi stretched across him with a laugh to push his hands away. “I don’t want yours; I want one of my own. Maybe she could make it in another color?”
“Oh.” Kaminari’s hands dropped away from his pin and his shoulders sagged. “So…you don’t like this one?” There was something in his voice now, some hint of pain that went deeper than the bruises on his face.
It clicked in Hitoshi’s mind then. There had been rumors—he’d mostly ignored them, because he didn’t have time to focus on idle school gossip—that at least one of the students in the hero course was trans. Then one of his classmates, Fujino, had been expelled for bullying, and someone claimed they’d last seen him with Bakugou, Kirishima, and Kaminari. Kaminari never went home if he could help it, and he didn’t change in the locker room with the other boys.
And he said he thought he passed today….
“I like this one,” he said, trying to plaster a reassuring smile on his face. It felt wrong and stiff, like he was using unfamiliar muscles. “I really like it, Kaminari, really. I just thought maybe…well….” He’d never wanted to make friends at this school. He’d wanted to prove that he had what it took to be a hero, that he wasn’t just a miserable freak with a villain’s Quirk.
But some people had dug their way under his skin anyway, so maybe it was okay to have a couple of friends. Maybe.
He tugged on the chain around his neck that he kept hidden under his shirt and pulled out the simple pendant to show Kaminari. One of his foster siblings had given it to him, back in middle school. It was a round metal disc with stripes of black, gray, white, and purple across it, a little chipped from everyday wear.
“I was hoping she could make something like this,” he admitted quietly.
Kaminari slumped against his shoulder. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Hitoshi tucked the necklace back under his shirt. “Hey, don’t go to sleep.”
“I know,” Kaminari whined, slurring a little over the words. “He broke m’ face.”
“Not all of it,” Hitoshi said, trying to reassure his friend. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and twisted his head to see a familiar black-clad figure hurrying toward them. “Hey, Aizawa’s here.”
“Huh?” Kaminari raised his head and squinted past him. “Hey, uh…Za…Zaw…hi, Dad.”
Aizawa rolled his eyes as he crouched in front of the boys. “What happened?” He directed the question to Hitoshi while he examined the injury to Kaminari’s face.
“Guy in the store went nuts, said he didn’t like Kaminari’s ‘kind’ in there,” Hitoshi explained. Kaminari hissed in pain and pulled away from Aizawa’s probing fingers, but his teacher wouldn’t let him go. “He just kept shouting, caught us off guard. Kaminari tried to say something, and that’s when the bastard hit him.”
“How many times?” Aizawa had pulled a penlight out of one of his pockets and was flashing the light into Kaminari’s eyes. His lips thinned at what he saw there, dark eyes meeting Hitoshi’s for a moment.
“Just once. He had something in his hand, or his hand changed form. I saw something that didn’t look like skin, but he moved too fast for me to identify it. Bakugou and Kirishima are restraining him.”
“Good work.” Aizawa tucked the penlight away and rested his hands on his knees. “Kaminari? You with us?”
“D’d I call you Dad?” Kaminari asked. Hitoshi frowned…he was slurring more and sounding more confused by the second, and that couldn’t be a good sign. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Aizawa said. His expression had softened into a reassuring smile—probably more successful than Hitoshi’s attempt. “We’re gonna get you some help, okay?”
Kaminari moaned, slumping against Hitoshi again. “If I move ‘m gonna barf,” he muttered into Hitoshi’s shoulder.
“That’s okay. There’s a paramedic coming to get you, so you don’t have to do anything.” He turned his attention back to Hitoshi. “Can you stay with him? I’ll check on the others.”
Hitoshi gave him a lazy salute, but he knew Aizawa wasn’t fooled. He still had his arm around Kaminari, and he wasn’t complaining about the blood and drool currently soaking into the sleeve of his shirt.
Aizawa rested a hand on Hitoshi’s shoulder as he stood up, towering over them for a moment. “I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time,” Hitoshi called as a pair of paramedics rounded the corner, pushing a gurney between them. “We’re not going anywhere.”
…
Shouta stalked through the front door of the shop and took a moment to survey the room. It was a small storefront with several displays of graphic t-shirts, the ridiculous kind he often saw his students wearing. He’d known Kaminari and Kirishima were planning to drag Shinsou out to the mall to “update his wardrobe”, whatever that meant, and it looked like Bakugou had gotten pulled along with them.
Currently, Bakugou was standing with his arms folded, narrowed eyes focused on the man pinned to the floor under Kirishima’s knee. Kirishima had both hands around the man’s wrists, holding his arms behind his back.
“Everything all right in here?” Aizawa drawled.
“Oh, hey, Mr. Aizawa!” Kirishima smiled up at him from the floor. “Everything under control.”
The man thrashed in Kirishima’s grip. Bakugou’s lip curled in disgust, and he stretched one hand out as small explosions crackled along his fingertips. “Try it.”
The man stilled, but he’d managed to twist around to glare up at Aizawa. “You know these thugs?” he demanded.
Shouta crouched down next to the man, studying Kirishima’s hands. It looked like his student had hardened the skin on his hands so that the man couldn’t escape his hold, and he was holding just tight enough to immobilize him without causing significant injury. “Good work,” he said quietly, praising his student’s skills.
He didn’t need to look to know that Kirishima was beaming. “He’s got some kind of hardening Quirk, but I think it just affects his hands. Is Kaminari okay?”
The man’s wrists looked reddened from Kirishima’s hold, but Shouta couldn’t see any real damage. Nothing compared to what had happened to his student. “He’s got a concussion and some broken bones. We’ll know more once he gets to the hospital.”
Beneath Kirishima’s knee, the man twisted and snarled. “Freak.”
Kirishima’s nostrils flared, but he took a deep, steadying breath and kept his eyes focused on the man’s wrists. “Are the police coming?”
“They were right behind the paramedics,” Shouta replied, checking over his shoulder. Shinsou had stepped to the side, and a male paramedic was propping Kaminari up on the gurney with a bag in front of his face. Shouta winced…throwing up with a broken cheekbone had to hurt like hell.
“The police?” the man shouted. “You’re a hero, aren’t you? All I did was protect myself from that…that pervert. I had to do something! Kids come in here!”
“Yeah, they do.” Shouta leaned down on his elbow to get closer to the man’s face. “My kids come in here. You just hit one of them.”
“That wasn’t a kid, that was a—”
“Enough.” He looked up at his other students. Kirishima’s face was almost as red as his hair, his arms shaking from holding his strength back. Bakugou was eyeing a rack of cheap-looking T-shirts, flexing his hand as sparks crackled off his fingers.
“Eraserhead?” They were saved from further confrontation when a uniformed police officer leaned through the doorway. “Do you require assistance?”
“These thugs—” the man began, but Shouta cut him off.
“This man assaulted one of my students and left him severely injured. UA will be pressing charges.”
“Of course, Sir.” The officer was already pulling a set of Quirk-inhibiting handcuffs off his belt. “I can take it from here, son,” he said as he knelt next to Kirishima.
Shouta let the officer handle things, stepping out of the store when he saw that Kaminari was being strapped onto the gurney. “You guys good to go?”
Kaminari looked small and scared, with gauze taped over the gash on his forehead and a collar strapped around his neck to immobilize his head. Shouta took his hand when he reached out, smiling down at his student.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he promised. “They’ll take good care of you, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Kaminari was trying to shake his head. “I can’t go to the hospital.”
Shouta leaned in closer, resting a hand on the uninjured side of the kid’s head. “Sorry, Kaminari. You’ve got a head injury, so that means hospital.”
“They’ll call my parents.” His voice was a frightened whisper as his gaze shot over to the paramedic before looking back at Shouta beseechingly.
Blowing out a sigh, he glanced over his shoulder at the store, where the officer and his partner were waiting to haul the shopkeeper out as soon as Kaminari was out of sight. They’d be taking statements from Kirishima and Bakugou next, and even with provisional licenses they still needed a supervising hero or teacher to be present.
“Can we hold off for ten minutes?” he asked the paramedic. Hizashi would be here soon, or at least one of the officers who usually worked with the school. Someone who could supervise the other boys while he went to the hospital with Kaminari.
But the paramedic was already shaking his head. “We have to go, Sir. I’m sorry.”
Shouta sucked in a breath through his teeth and focused his attention back on Kaminari. “I have to stay here until someone else can take over the scene, but I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Make sure they register you with your provisional license, not your student ID. No one can question that.”
Kaminari was still hanging onto him. “Please?”
He gently brushed a hand through his student's hair, mindful of his injuries. “I’ll be there soon.”
“I’ll go with him.” Shinsou was on the other side of the gurney, one hand resting on Kaminari’s arm.
Hesitating, Shouta looked between his students. Shinsou gestured toward his collar and nodded, and Shouta realized he was wearing Kaminari’s UA pin. “Provisional license,” he repeated, pointing to Shinsou. “I’ll see if someone from the school can meet you there.”
“I’ve got it,” Shinsou replied. He gently pulled Kaminari’s hand away from Shouta’s, grinning down at his friend. “We’ll be okay.”
Shouta stepped back as the paramedics all but shoved him away, watching as they pushed the gurney down the mall corridor toward the exit.
Then he turned back to the store, to his waiting students, and to the man who’d assaulted one of his kids.