Chapter Text
Prologue ~
High school activities don’t normally get televised.
High school activities that get televised don’t normally reach international audiences.
High school activities that get televised and reach international audiences don’t normally show someone largely considered to be one of the most upstanding Pro-Heroes of our day chaining up a 14-year-old child like a feral animal to a podium for not wanting an award.
A child. For saying no.
I have to turn off the TV. It's too much. Too much. Too raw. Too similar. They put a child on a podium with chains, after pitting them against each other like gladiators in the Colosseum, and then act surprised when 14-year-old children don’t know when to quit. Where the boundaries are.
Lost in thought all I could hear is the ringing in my ears from the silence in the room when the video ends. What should have been an odd if not solid program about Pro Hero training in another country to pass the time and catch up on the latest All Might news has turned into an existential crisis. What are Pro Hero’s if not people who protect the children? And guide them? Even criminals wouldn’t have been lashed to a pole for public mockery like that in this day and age…
I lean back on the couch, staring into the dim light of the room as my thoughts swirl. Only the itching of my healing wounds under their bandages snaps me out of it.
Before I would have been too busy to let my mind spiral down the increasingly dark train of thought.
Before I would have had a plethora of distractions, work and otherwise to occupy my mind.
Before my body was healing and my mind had endless time and no distractions…
But now all I can focus on is the terror in the eyes of a child halfway across the world, who looked like he was begging for help, for a hero, and none of the heroes there could see it.
I sigh and close the laptop. But I can still see it. A desperate child struggling in front of heroes, the public, and the world. Lashed like a dog to a pole for entertainment. It’s almost poetic in how disgustingly poignant a social commentary it is. He won the festival and got an award while being treated like a feral animal in the same moment. The parallels to dog fights won’t stop haunting me.
To raise a child up on a literal pedestal while lashing him like a beast… The social commentary was almost too on the nose to even believe. If not the terror in the child's eyes I would wonder if it wasn’t protest art of some sort.
Did no one else see what I saw? Am I projecting? Is this what the counselors I was assigned to spoke about trying to create causes where there are none to feel useful while I am too injured to work?
Maybe… Maybe…
But those desperate eyes…
I look down at the bandages around my body. More mummy than a woman right now. And more cripple than hero if the tabloids are to be believed… And yet. You don’t need to be an active pro-hero to be a teacher. Or even a good teacher to be a teacher if what I just witnessed is anything to go by.
I sigh again and look around my house. Silent and still in a way I never let myself be before being so injured. An absurd idea takes hold. It’s outrageous… surely someone else would have seen it. Someone closer who cares about those kids. I’m not even in Japan! But if there is one thing my grandpa always told me…
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good folks to do nothing,” I mutter to myself.
Oh, Grandpa, you may have only been quoting old cowboy movies at me, but did you ever realize that would push me so far? One throw-away line and now…
Well…
I wonder if UA would find being the former number 1 Pro-Hero from the United States to be sufficient qualifications…
CH 1 ~
As it turns out being a former #1 is enough to get you on a visa, help you immigrate, and even have a job lined up in a new country, but the wheels of bureaucracy only turn so fast without bribery and frankly, I’m not that rich so it's the waiting game for me.
When I learned the UA kids would have internships I thought that was my best bet. I don’t need to teach all the kids to reach out to one child who seems to need someone on his side. Unfortunately, the immigration process to Japan didn’t share my vision of the timeline I wanted to play out so I wasn’t able to get my offer through to the kid quick enough and he got snapped up by another Hero.
Treating this as my own personal assignment to myself, I decided to organize things the way I would before a mission. Bakugou Katsuki (and upon investigation possibly other students) would be the client victim and I would be the Hero assigned to give a child prodigy the backup needed to grow up into a functional adult, and ideally a good hero. Because no matter how skilled he is a child.
Oh, he’s got the capabilities. Anyone with eyes can see that. But when you start so skilled from the get-go more people want to push you down. There is a sense of satisfaction people get watching someone like him get pushed down. He is the opposite of an underdog and the Sports Festival made it clear to anyone who watched with an open mind that the crowd was thirsting for him to be ‘brought down a peg’ no matter how far that ended up going…
That's the thing about growing up with skills beyond your peers. No one guides you, or teaches you, and the higher the bar you reach the higher they raise it. All the while everyone stands around waiting to see you fall. And you know if you do fall they won’t be there to help you up, so you reach and reach; a vicious cycle.
I sigh. I am too young to be this melancholy but the counselor says introspection and paradigm shifts happen with trauma so maybe I can let this one slide.
So having missed the chance to offer the boy an internship was a bit of a dent in my plans but not insurmountable. Plus he went to Best Jeanist who, for all I can tell, is a good hero and a more gentle touch than many others. I wonder if he will help the boy and if my entire trip to Japan is just me overreaching.
I close my notebook and look out the window. My house is nearly ready to be mostly sealed up for the time being. Almost everything is packed up to move or just for safekeeping while I’m gone. The paperwork is done. Visa’s in order… But was I too hasty? Does some random kid across the world need my help, or is this some weird Pro-Hero savior complex? It's hard to know anymore.
Moving across the kitchen to stare out to my backyard again I wonder if this is the right thing to do. Is it hubris? Is it healing? I catch the sight of the scar across my throat, one that should have killed me, in my reflection in the window. It's harder to look at myself now. When my own image doesn’t match my memories or my ‘mind's eye’. Though honestly, I haven’t recognized myself out of my hero costume for a long time…
Here, distorted in the window, with the beautiful soft colors of green and blue beyond the glass to make it seem more like a dream than a reflection I can almost see myself. But seeing Lenora instead of Shieldair is still not something I’m used to, or honestly like.
Grandpa always said, “Happy people don’t become Heroes. They become public servants or doctors or teachers… Heroes are broken people with something to prove.”
“Well the joke on you grandpa, I’m going to be a teacher and I am definitely still broken…” I tell my reflection. He might not be here to hear it but I am sure he would roll his eyes.
Melancholy and possible regrets aside, it’s too late now. The paperwork is done, and I have nothing tying me here. At least in Japan, I can get away from the memories. Hopefully way fewer sad looks and pitying glances too.
With another sigh I go back to the couch and ease myself down, stitches still running tight across my skin in a way that makes sudden movements painful. Settled again I picked up the files the principal of UA had sent me. It takes a certain level of neuroticism to become #1 Hero, and if I can’t do that then at least I can turn all that energy towards being the best damn teacher I can be. It seems that Eraserhead fellow needs some help if his colleagues are willing to pull the stunts they did at the sports festival…
And I might be motivated by seeing myself in one child in particular but that doesn’t mean I am going to let the rest slide by. These kids need something, and I am not so egotistical as to think I am what they need but I hope I can at least get the ball rolling in some ways. At the very least my reputation is mostly intact and that can command its own sort of pressure on adults who would otherwise behave so poorly.
I mean honestly… Literally chaining the “Winner” to the First Place podium… Not letting a child refuse a school award and ‘punishing’ him for violence while rewarding him for victory… if this were a book it would be an English teacher's wet dream. Sometimes a blue wall is just a blue wall but this… I don’t think anyone could have intentionally planned such a social commentary if they tried. And that's what truly scares me.
It just happened. Unplanned. A perfect storm of events and permissive attitudes trusting Heros to always be ‘right’ even if their behavior is objectively wrong. “All Might makes right I suppose” I muttered, flipping through pages. And despite such a public display, there was no response from UA. Nothing about the child they publicly humiliated. I don’t know if it's negligence or malice but honestly, the result is the same.
Switching my gaze back to the youtube comments from the UA Sports Festival video it's clear that boy has been branded with a scarlet letter. And the fact that Japan's #1 Hero and public sweetheart All Might was the one who did it? What should have been a school event and a learning moment will likely become that boy's most career-defining moment. The comments under the videos are disgusting and I realize…
Whether or not it's right for me to step in for a child halfway across the world, it's clear no other adult is doing it. I switch again to UA’s various social media and see no updates, no defenses for their students. Not a word. Not from his parents, not one teacher, no one is speaking out for a little boy being lambasted across the internet. Maybe if they had stepped in right away this wouldn’t have gone so far, but they didn’t. Now anything they do will be too late, people will remember the rage and the cheering and gloss over the fact adults, Heros bound a thrashing child to a pole as a public spectacle for having the audacity to fight violently in the tournament they set up, and win only to not win the way they wanted… Now his face is splashed across the internet for the world to mock, and those defending him for being a child are drowned out.
It only took a quick Google search to learn this isn't the first time he was captured, and trapped like that. I have to imagine that his teachers knew. The sludge villain incident comes up easily enough with his name, and All Might was even there. But it seems no one made the connection to how that could affect him. Or worse maybe, no one cared… But the terror in his eyes was real and no one helped him down from that podium. No one took off his chains.
My eyes trail down to his file. I feel like he is a twisted mirror of my own young self. Pushed so high on a pedestal just so we are an easier target for people to hit, but if you start strong god help you if you show weakness.
No. Even if I’m wrong and he doesn’t need me, at least I know that I need to go and make sure with my own two eyes. I was never one for hesitating, the twinging pain across my body reminds me of that with every breath. I didn’t hesitate then, and I won’t now. If All Might won’t put his reputation behind that boy to fix what he broke then I will.