The number of still living people who knew that Toshinori was actually quirkless and that One For All was a transferrable quirk that could be passed on numbered less than a dozen. The real secret was safe, and would remain safe.
While he was waiting, Torino began cataloging as much information about the Midoriyas as he could see. The apartment was reasonably sized, but everything in it was top of the line, with a large black refrigerator, marble countertops, and an oversized flat-screen television visible through the hallway in the living area. They didn't want for money. Did her salary cover that? There were family pictures showing a husband, but the kid was tiny in all of them.
"Divorce?" Torino thought to himself. "Alimony or child support plus her salary would explain the apartment, but not the pictures. There's no such thing as a no hard feelings divorce. Dead or working overseas, then. Presumably overseas, two salaries would explain the furnishings, and international cooperation in the private sector is big these days. An absent father figure. We'll have to work some more fun and confidence building activities into his training schedule."
Torino had helped himself to two more cups of tea from the pot sitting on the table by the time Inko returned. She had made several other phone calls after the first one, and what little he could catch of the conversations had him guessing that she had called UA as well as a few people at her law firm. Which was perfectly fine by him. Toshinori's identity was falsified by the Hero Commission and the Japanese government itself, there was nothing incriminating to find. If a deep dive into the paperwork was what was needed to make this work out in Midoriya Izuku's favor, then Torino was more than willing to let that happen.
"You're telling the truth, at least as far as I can tell," Inko admitted, pouring herself another cup of tea. "But I will be doing a background check on both of you."
"That's perfectly fine!" Torino said cheerfully, "I'm glad you care about your son this much. There's a lot of folks out there these days who would probably just be happy to get their kids out of their hair for a few more hours a day." Inko's expression softened.
Torino finished off his cup of tea before setting the cup down into it's dish and pushing it off to the side. "Now then, let's talk about the actual reason I'm here. Since you're a hero lawyer, you're probably already aware that if all Toshinori and I cared about is just helping your son pass his exams or find his quirk, that we don't really need to communicate with you to do it. There's no law against helping local kids out of the kindness of your heart, and if there was, we'd be arresting small time heroes and youth counselors in droves. So if that's all we actually cared about, we wouldn't even be talking with you."
"The thought had crossed my mind, yes." Inko said dryly. Torino grinned.
"I figured as much. That's why you were suspicious. So here's the thing. Toshinori is a fantastic guy, and I love him to pieces. He's got a heart of gold, he really does. But he's also kind of a gorilla, and if I left everything up to him, he'd have the kid hauling tires up and down a beach for ten months before giving him a pat on the head and saying good luck with the entrance exams. And while your boy definitely needs to get in shape, I think you and I both know that there's more to getting into a good school than just muscles."
"I'm aware," Inko said somewhat coolly, sipping her own tea while Torino continued to speak.
"So when Toshinori tapped me for help, I did a bit of legwork and looked up some of your son's school records. My hero's license is expired, but my PI license has not, so I have the authority to request that information. They show an average student who has a long record of delinquency and being a troublemaker, and I'm going to be honest with you, that's pure horseshit. I spent yesterday afternoon talking to your son while he was doing his workout routine, and he's one of the brightest kids I've ever met. And unless I've grossly misread his disposition, he's more likely to cry over swatting a fly than loiter in parking lots after hours picking fights with other kids. That's the real reason I'm here. I want to help the kid study for the exam and foster his mental growth, but to do that, I need know what level he's actually on academically. And five minutes of speaking with your son was enough for me to realize that the school was lying."
The frustrated look on Midoriya Inko's face marked the beginning of an hour long conversation that Torino wished he could say shocked and surprised him. But truthfully, it was about what he had suspected. Yes, she knows her son is being bullied and held back. No, she can't actually prove it, because there's no physical evidence of sabotage or tampering. If she had anything to work with at all, she could sue the Aldera Board of Education into the ground, but proving bias is an uphill legal battle, especially against the quirkless, and without real evidence that her son's grades are being tampered with, there's no case to be made.
As far as bullying goes, without literally catching the kids in the act, there's no proof of one-sided bullying and discrimination, nor is there proof of inappropriate quirk usage. Because everyone involved is a minor, the rules are different. Scratches, bruises, and scuffed clothes is just "kids being kids." Under modern Japanese laws about underage delinquency and inappropriate quirk usage, accusations of anything worse than mutual roughhousing become Izuku's word against the word of his bullies and teachers. She had gone that route before, and it lead to parent-teacher meetings where she had to sit and listen to teachers blame Izuku for the problems he was experiencing.
Eventually, Izuku stopped complaining about what was happening, even though what he was experiencing was clearly still going on. Kids are not smarter than their parents, even if none of the kids understand that, and it broke her heart that he was trying to keep this from her because some part of him had given up and just wanted to hide it all. As though the person who kept buying his school supplies and had to sign all of his report cards wouldn't notice how often things were destroyed and how his grades never improved past mediocre when all he ever did was study.
She had tried to get him to talk to her about it on several occasions, but he always lied and made excuses for the people doing this to him, and it always ended in tears for both of them. In the end, Inko had stopped asking, just like how Izuku had stopped telling. And she hated it.
Yes, she had considered different schools, but private schools can accept and reject applicants entirely at their discretion, and all of the ones she had applied for had rejected Izuku. Nobody said it was because he was quirkless, but they didn't have to. When Izuku aced their mock placement exams but still got passed over in favor of other applicants with worse results, it was obvious why.
Yes, she had considered transferring him to a different public school, but every school she had researched had track records of similar problems, so transferring him would just be putting him in the exact same situation he's already in, but with total strangers and a longer commute.
None of this surprised Torino. But even if it wasn't surprising, he was still allowed to be disappointed and upset on the kid's behalf. The anger and sadness coming from Inko was palpable, and Torino was old enough to understand that she probably didn't have many people she could confide in about her frustrations. Raising a quirkless child had never been easy, not in Torino's lifetime. But it seems as though with every passing year, the discrimination got worse and worse.
At the rate things are going, he wouldn't be surprised if there was a resurgence of the old anti-quirk 'purity' cults and crime organizations that the heroes of his generation had fought so hard to snuff out. Historically speaking, only 10% of the population needed to actively rebel to topple a government or stage a successful revolution, and even with the population of quirkless rapidly dropping, they were still far more than 10%. And the population of mutant quirks, which often experienced similar discrimination, was significantly higher than the population of quirkless. Their society was creating the very outcasts and rejects that would go on to become tomorrow's villains and criminals. It was a broken system, and anybody with any sense could see that the status quo couldn't last. Torino wished he had the answers Izuku's mother was looking for.
But even though he may not be able to save the system, he didn't believe it was too late to save Midoriya Izuku. And that's exactly what he was here to do. He let Inko vent, and as the visit went on, he steered her in the direction of Izuku's personal achievements and hobbies. Torino knew the kid was smart, he had already proven himself to be leaps and bounds beyond all of his peers and even most adults on the beach. But Torino was fishing for something specific. He wanted something he could use, a measuring stick to try and understand just what he was working with. Hobbies that could be exploited and become part of the boy's training.
Adults may try and keep their business separate from their pleasure, but children were different. You have to keep them engaged in their education, or else you would lose them. Torino understood that. And it didn't take long before Inko introduced him to what rapidly became the highlight of his evening.
Midoriya Izuku's quirk analysis notebooks.
Sorahiko Torino had been in the hero business for a long time. And he had seen just about every type of genius there was. He had seen kids who were almost as strong as some pros without having any formal training. He had seen heroes and villains whose birth-given fighting instincts were so good that they made people with years of training look like idiots in comparison. He had seen people who could learn new skills in weeks and months when it would take normal people years to accomplish the same. He had seen inventors and support heroes who could make just about any gadget you could imagine out of trash and spare parts. He had seen pro heroes with quirks so odd and downright weird that nobody in their right minds would have bothered to try and do anything with them, but through creative thinking and determination, they had managed to turn what most people would consider joke quirks into highly refined and intimidating weapons.
Hell, truth be told, he was one of those last kind. Plenty of people had told him that being able to shoot air out of your feet was useless, especially since it wasn't strong enough for sustained flight and never could be. He had come back a few years later and roundhouse kicked most of those people in the head.
And for all the criticism he leveled at Toshinori, even Torino had to admit that he was a genius of his own, though not in the traditional sense. When Nana had inherited One For All, it had screwed up her own quirk, Float, so badly that she couldn't use it properly for nearly a year afterwards, and it took her almost as long to acclimate herself to the point where she could throw a punch with One For All without breaking an arm. Toshinori, ascended gorilla that he was, could use the quirk at full power from the moment he got it, even though his version was over twice as strong as Nana's. And he was so damn good at fighting that he never needed to learn anything beyond some intermediate boxing and akido. A small amount of professional training to point him in the right direction was all it took. All Might was a physical genius who had gone almost directly from zero to hero with no real intermediary step between.
Torino had seen just about every kind of genius out there. And he knew what kind of genius Izuku was. Izuku was the kind of genius who inspired disbelief in people who saw his work. Like a musician who had no formal training or understanding of how to write and structure music, but could still compose beautiful songs purely by ear. Or a cook who could sit down with no real designs or ideas in mind, but simply go with the flow and create incredible dishes purely by taste without any apparent effort. That was the kind of genius Izuku was. He was a true natural, a virtuoso, living his life at the intersection between talent and intuition. He was the kind of genius who didn't even realize how brilliant they were because to them, that sort of brilliance was simply normal.
Torino could tell just by skimming his notebooks that the boy had no formal training in any kind of professional shorthand or abbreviated note taking. His writing wasn't encoded or written in cipher, and he didn't use any of the formatting or notation systems that professionals in the analytics and analysis industry made use of. But even as rough and visibly untrained as it was, his work was already at what Torino would judge to be a professional level.
Izuku's notes included quirk analysis, costume critique, breakdowns of various support items and utility gear, as well as sketches and blueprints of entirely new original gear. He had extensive notes on possible training avenues to explore to shore up weaknesses and refine a hero's approach to various situations and common problems. He brainstormed alternate costume designs as well as revisions for support items. He even included statistical observations of what equipment a given hero used most often in their fights. Izuku had literally counted every single bullet the pro hero Snipe had ever publicly fired and included a bullets-expended-over-time and average-ammunition-spent-per-fight breakdown as part of his analysis of the man. Why? So he could make what his notes called an informed suggestion on a better version of Snipe's standard utility belt.
Many of the boy's peers would probably consider that level of detail creepy, and many contemporary heroes would think it unnecessary or redundant. But Gran Torino knew it for what it was. That kind of observational power and obsession with detail was a dangerous weapon, more powerful than any quirk. Any hero with a lick of common sense would want that sort of tool in their arsenal, and he would be damned if he allowed such a talent to rust away and be unused.
And the kid had a ruthless streak that the retired hero found himself approving of. After all, you had to understand how to disable or take down someone before you could make suggestions on how they could improve themselves, and the kid was brutally honest and efficient with his observations. The old hero was impressed with the boy's ability to contrive ways to disable or work around the quirks of famous heroes and villains with nothing more than what could be found in your average hardware store. The old man laughed when he saw that. He couldn't help himself. How many of Japan's top 100 knew that they could theoretically be beaten by a couple of kids willing to spend their allowance on some slingshots, metal piping, and zip ties? Not enough, in his opinion.
All of this, and Izuku was still just a teenager. He would be starting into what was effectively his real education in a year, what would have been very late high school or early college in the old days. Put in the context of his age and how much this was clearly just a hobby of his, and Izuku's notebooks were more than just impressive. They were shocking. Professional hero agencies and private hero legacy families paid small fortunes for the kind of in-depth analysis that this kid was doing for fun in his spare time.
The kid wasn't half bad at drawing, either, at least in Torino's humble opinion. Izuku had included hand-drawn pictures with all of his notes, and while his style was a little sketch-heavy, all the major and minor details were present, and Torino could recognize the people he had drawn at a glance. Their costumes, postures, equipment, and even their faces were all accurate to life. As somebody who couldn't draw a circle to save his soul, the old hero was honestly impressed.
Outwardly, Torino was more than willing to compliment the kid's work and tell his mother what an asset he was going to be to the hero industry with a bit of education under his belt. He told her all the things a worried mother wanted to hear, and used the notebooks as an example of how the kid could still live his dream and work with heroes even if he decided later that becoming one himself just wasn't in the cards.
Internally, however, the old man was doing backflips. As far as Torino was concerned, the world of heroics had too many flying magical gorillas as it is. All Might in Japan, Crusader Gold in Europe, Captain Celebrity and Star and Stripe in North America. The list goes on and on. He didn't know how Toshinori managed it, but he somehow chose a random kid out of millions and ended up with a successor with an actual brain between their ears. 'Presumably through sheer dumb luck,' Torino thought to himself. And Torino wasn't going to let this opportunity go to waste.
The world didn't need another All Might. It needed somebody who was better than All Might. It needed someone who could surpass him. And that's exactly what Sorahiko Torino was going to make sure Midoriya Izuku did. And they would start by cultivating his mind and making sure he didn't fall into a rut of solving all of his problems by punching them harder. Because that's the kind of hero All Might was, and God bless her soul, it was the kind of hero Nana had been as well. But the kid could do better. He would be better.
With Inko's happily given permission, Torino used his phone to take pictures of all the notes and hero sketches in the few notebooks they had looked through. He was already coming up with a list of people he wanted to show them to, as well as hobbies and activities he was going to suggest to Izuku to help him cultivate his talents. Inko was practically gushing about how proud she was of her son's studiousness, and the old hero didn't blame her. He wasn't an academic genius and neither was she, but they could both still recognize what her boy was.
As the conversation started winding down and Torino began helping her clean up the table and put away the notebooks, he seized the opportunity to ask her a very important question that he had been considering ever since he first spoke with the boy on the beach. It was one of the real reasons he had come today, and it was something he needed parental consent for.
"Mrs. Midoriya, have you considered pulling your son out of Aldera and finishing his education with homeschooling?"
The green haired woman sighed. "Yes. Homeschooling was one of my last resorts, but my husband's salary alone wouldn't be enough to support us both. I thought about that a long time ago, but I can't afford to stay home and teach him. We would lose the apartment if I did, and this place is already a compromise."
The older man nodded. "That's understandable. However, these days there are a lot of other alternative options for homeschooling, even ones that are geared towards the idea of busy hero parents who have kids that are hero hopefuls themselves. There are some very reputable online courses that let students progress at their own pace. Many legacy hero families opt to use them if their situations make their children attending physical schools awkward."
The retired pro handed the housewife their dishes before continuing. "You aren't a pro hero, and your son doesn't have to worry about paparazzi or being harassed by the media. But he clearly has issues with bullies and negligent teachers, and like most hero parents, you have a time intensive job you can't just walk away from. Why have him spend ten more months at Aldera if he doesn't have to?"
Inko finished putting their plates in the sink before turning around. She had a good poker face, but after talking with her for so long about her son's problems, Torino could see a glimmer of hope shining through the cracks.
"Tell me more about these online courses."
The old hero smiled.
The next day of training happened to be on a Sunday, and without school getting in the way, all three of them met up after lunch. Torino was privately hoping that the kid wouldn't be going back to school on Monday at all, but that entirely depended on how fast the paperwork could be pushed through.
As Izuku got started on cleaning the beach, Torino cleared his throat and held out his hand. Toshinori looked at him, confused.
"The plan, Toshi," Torino said impatiently. "Show me the schedule you've put together."
The blonde's eyes widened before he scrambled slightly, patting himself down until he found his copy of the American Dream fitness schedule. He handed it over, and Torino hummed as he flipped through it.
"Not bad. The diet's correct. You're teaching him the right attitude with the cleaning up the beach thing, I like that. Too many glory hounds these days. Though we should probably get the kid a pair of work gloves and a good set of boots, this place is filthy. The muscle training is on-par, if he keeps to your bulking and conditioning schedule he'll be pretty close to peak strength for a young man his age in ten months."
The grey-haired hero considered the paper for several long moments, deep in thought, before looking up at Toshinori. "Pretty good. I like it. I'd give this a 70 out of 100 for quality."
"Only 70?" the taller man said somewhat incredulously. "That's a barely passing grade! What did I lose points on?"
The shorter, older man shrugged. "You lost ten points for each of your mistakes, and you made three of them. Your first issue is that this is all bulking and endurance training. This is basically a schedule for a 17 year old you, Toshi, and while I'm sure the kid would be over the moon at the comparison, he's not you. He needs some flexibility and agility training as well."
"That focus on bulking is necessary, though!" the blonde protests. "It's a minimal doubling at every transfer, and I've exercised the stockpile so much more than anyone else has because of my career! I've been a pro for 40 years, Torino! Muscle size and muscle density aren't the same thing, but he needs both to make this work. If he's not at or near peak size and density for his age when I do the transfer, the first time it activates might kill him!"
"I agree, which is why I'm not editing the strength training or his diet. You're on the money with all of that. But you've just got him jogging during his cardio days, and that's honestly a waste of time. Core is important and so is endurance, but there's other ways to exercise that besides running."
"I know your feelings on that, Gran, but we don't have time to do anything else. Signing him up for ballet or martial arts won't see the biggest benefits, not in ten months. And parkour is too dangerous when he's starting from nothing, you know that as well as I do. He can't afford to suffer serious injuries while he's building his body up like this."
"Very true. Ballet, fencing, kendo, and other martial arts all give big long term benefits, but ten months won't be enough to make them worthwhile for the time investment they demand. But there are other ways to build agility, core, and endurance besides running, and I've got some thoughts on ways to get that done and also make it more fun for him. You have to remember that he's a kid, Toshi, not some thirty year old trying to reinvent his life. Sprinkling in some fun activities that still count as exercise is important for motivation and morale."
Toshinori sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Fine, so I lose 10 points because of 'just jogging' for cardio. What happened to the other 20?"
The older man rolled his eyes. "You lost 20 points because you forgot that he's taking the damn entrance exam for UA, you gorilla. Your schedule is great if you were just planning on making him your apprentice or sidekick or something, but UA has a written exam portion that the kid has to pass, and then depending on whether or not he gets in by recommendation from one of us, he's either got to place decently well in a giant obstacle course racing other kids with quirks, or he has to fistfight robots for points in whatever test environment the rat has decided to cook up this year."
"Yes, that's true, but One For All will help him with both practicals, no matter which way he-"
The shorter man interrupted him by reaching up and slapping the sheaf of papers against the side of his head. "Not if you give him one of your hairs the day of, you idiot! You know better than to expect him to be able to use it like you could, I know you're not that irresponsible. But what does that leave him with if you take One For All out of the equation? You're throwing him into the exam with no skills, nothing to rely upon, no real training or anything! Just a bunch of brand new muscles with no clue how to use them! And that's assuming he doesn't use One For All at all! What happens if he uses it in the exam and cripples himself? Do you really think they'll pass some kid who puts himself in traction trying to get through an obstacle course?"
Toshinori's face paled as he realized the implications. He sucked in a sharp breath. Oh. Oh no. He really hadn't considered that, had he?
Gran Torino sighed. "You have to think these things through, Toshi. It's not just you out there anymore, throwing punches and taking on all the risks yourself. He's a kid. He's your kid. Well, our kid now, after all this. We can't risk him like that, and we can't gamble with his exam either. That's part of what being a teacher means. You have to think about the welfare of the kids you're teaching. You can't just take their safety for granted, your actions on their behalf have consequences."
Toshinori clenched his fist and looked at it, contemplating the difference between his skinny arms and frail hands and what they used to be. What they were like before the injury. Before he was forced onto a mostly liquid diet. Before he had to scramble to put together a meal plan that could be digested with no stomach and only half his intestines, but would still let him do hero work for at least a few hours a day. Gran was right. He couldn't let anything like what happened to him happen to Izuku. He was a boy. That was his boy out there, dragging radiators and tires up and down the beach. If he couldn't get this right with even one teenager, how could he possibly take on an entire class of them?
This wasn't just training for Izuku, he realized. It was training for him. He was going to be a teacher at the most prestigious school for heroics in the eastern hemisphere in just ten months. He was going back to his alma mater, and he was expected to have something worthwhile to share with the next generation. Even if the only thing he could teach them was how to not make the same mistakes he had. He had to be ready. Izuku was his entrance exam, and he had to pass it with Plus Ultra flying colors.
He unclenched his fist slowly and looked down at the older man. "Should I wait, then? The day after the exam?"
Torino rubbed his chin, thinking. "Maybe? It depends. If we can push him a little bit harder on the strength end, we might be able to get him to finish the beach and his bulking a few days earlier. But it's going to be close. Ten months really doesn't give a whole lot of wiggle room. As wild as it may sound to admit this, having his quirk manifest during the exams may not be the worst thing that could happen. Recovery Girl will be there, and she can heal almost anything as long as the patient has the stamina to fuel the healing. And UA has the resources to call in other healing quirk doctors and nurses if need be. Ripping off that bandage during an official UA exercise on school grounds is definitely safer than if we did it here or in some abandoned warehouse somewhere. Though that still begs the question, could he activate it for the first time in the exam practical and still impress the faculty enough to make it in?"
Torino crossed his arms and sighed. "The bottom line is this, Toshi. Do you think the kid can pass the UA entrance exams without a quirk?"
The older man held up his hands to cut off the blonde as he started to protest. "This isn't about him being a hero, Toshi! Of course the kid can be a hero. Even back in my day, there probably could have been a quirkless hero if somebody had tried hard enough. There's so many newfangled support gadgets these days that I'm pretty sure we could get a trained orangutan to qualify for a hero license. But I'm not asking if he can be a pro, I'm asking if he can pass the exam. What do you think?"
The lion-maned blonde watched as his protégé ran up and down the beach, carrying pipes and bits of scrap metal to the parked truck. He thought about it.
"The… the obstacle course, maybe. But the general exam? I'm not sure."
"I docked you 10 points for each mistake you made." Torino held up one finger. "You lost 10 for missing opportunities with his cardio and endurance. We could have him do airsoft, rope swinging, rock climbing, or half a dozen other things that would build cardio and endurance the same way but also teach him useful skills and would count as fun activities for him to help him unwind."
"Wait, airsoft? You want him to learn how to use firearms?" Toshinori said incredulously.
The older man rolled his eyes. "Of course I do. The only reason I don't use them is because I'd need some kind of vision or auto-aiming quirk to hit anything moving at the speeds I do. I honestly don't know why all you new wave heroes hate them so much, back in the day practically every hero had some kind of gun on them. And even if he doesn't choose to use one, he still needs to know how they work, because if he goes pro somebody is going to shoot at him at some point.
"Besides," the old man said, jabbing a finger at the taller hero, "aren't you supposed to be the big American export around here? Since when do you hate guns?"
The blonde huffed indignantly. "I'd use support gear and weapons if anybody could make some that don't break as soon as I touch them. It was hard enough getting suits and shoes that don't explode every time I move!"
Torino privately felt that was more Toshinori's fault than the fault of any equipment the support companies came up with, but he knew better than to argue the point. Toshinori had been bareknuckle boxing evil into submission for almost fifty years, he wasn't likely to change his ways now.
The older hero held up a second finger. "Moving on, you lost another 10 because there's almost no time in this schedule for him to study ahead for the written exam. The kid is smart, I know he's smart. I talked to him about Garaki's theory yesterday, and he knew the man's scientific papers better than I did. And you need to see his notebooks, I'll show you some pictures I took after we drop the kid off tonight. But even if he's a genius, he still needs to study. He can't just guess the answers."
The last finger came up. "And you lost the last 10 because you haven't accounted for building up any kind of skillset that would actually help him pass the practical. Were you banking on him pulling the quirk out like some sort of miracle solution, or something? Maybe he activates the quirk in the middle of the exam, and maybe it works out in his favor. Maybe he can use it perfectly just like you. But that's a lot of 'maybes,' and it would be foolish to count on that happening. He needs at least some beginner level sidekick skills if he wants to run the course or do some sort of robot battle free-for-all. And that has to be incorporated into his training. We can't just throw him raw into a melee and expect him to magic his way out of it with a passing score, quirk or no quirk."
The older man turned to face Toshinori. "Like I said, this is a great plan if you're making him your apprentice or sidekick. Getting him into UA? A 70 is the best I can give you."
The taller man sighed before nodding in acceptance, his unruly lion's mane of golden hair bobbing in the cool breeze coming off of the sea. "That's fair. Will you help me do this right?"
"Of course I will," the retired pro huffed indignantly. "That's why I'm here."
Torino was impressed with Izuku. And while the young man did not know it yet, actually impressing the old pro was notoriously difficult. Back when he was a teacher at UA, Sorahiko Torino had possessed a similar reputation to Aizawa "Eraserhead" Shota. Both men had similar reputations as teachers among their students, and equally high standards to which they conducted their classes.
The primary difference between the two? Aizawa considered expulsion from UA a mercy. As a modern underground hero, he had seen many friends and youths be crippled or outright killed due to inadequate training or having the wrong attitudes about fighting crime and conducting hero work. Any time he judged a student to be likely to get themselves killed, he would expel them to "save" them. The man had, rather infamously, expelled an entire class of heroics students just last year, because none of them had taken his warnings and instructions on how to behave seriously. Anyone who was judged to not be taking the heroics course seriously was someone who had "no potential." And anyone with a potential of zero would be expelled. That was Aizawa's method. He instilled discipline and motivated his students to improve through fear.
Sorahiko "Gran" Torino, by contrast, had never expelled a single student from UA during his tenure as a teacher there, nor had he ever threatened to expel anyone, either.
This was not an act of mercy.
Rather, Torino had a reputation for being a slavedriver, and he had earned it. Anyone who he deemed to be lacking in areas he considered important for their development and education as a hero would be rehabilitated personally by him.
Not enough discipline? He made them stand for their classes while holding full water buckets at arm's length. Slacking off on physical training? He'd make them run a fighting gauntlet against their own classmates, one at a time, with no breaks. If the offender actually managed to finish it, they'd run a gauntlet against the teachers next. Arrogant students were forced to dress up like clowns or mascots while attending all of their classes. And anyone caught bullying others or lording their quirks over other students would be forbidden from using their own quirk in any exercises or training until further notice, taking them from the top of the pecking order straight down to the bottom.
In Sorahiko Torino's mind, there was no such thing as cruel or unusual punishments. A true pragmatist, he believed in doing whatever it took to get the job done. Stupid people had to be motivated to educate themselves. The weak had to be pressed to obtain the drive to overcome their limits. The arrogant and haughty had to be broken, and the meek and cowardly needed to be pushed and provoked until they snapped and bit back. In his mind, normal people could afford to have these flaws. But not heroes, and not anyone aspiring to be a hero, either. Heroes had to be better. They didn't have the luxury of choosing, not when people's lives were on the line.
Torino had never expelled a single soul as a teacher at UA. But he held an unbroken record for the highest number of voluntary transfers out of the heroics course that he oversaw. Transfers out of UA were practically unheard of, and voluntary transfers out of UA's heroics course into other education tracks were almost equally unheard of. Anyone who made it into the top rated school in Japan wanted to stay. UA was one of the best heroics schools in the world, easily ranking in the top three. And anyone who made it into one of the two Hero Course classes also would have to be crazy to want to leave. There were only 40 seats maximum on the Hero Course per year, 18-20 per class, with slight flexibility for unusual situations. Being educated there was a privilege among privileges. Being kicked out of Heroics and sent to General Studies or some other course was considered a punishment and a serious internal threat to misbehaving students. Likewise, the scramble for UA students to prove themselves and earn their spot in the Heroics Course was a very real internal contest.
Torino had never expelled anyone. Not a single student. But every other Heroics teacher in the history of UA combined could not match the number of students who voluntarily transferred out of his Hero Class. Far from Aizawa's aloof and detached methods, his logical ruses and mercy expulsions, Sorahiko Torino made his education methods personal. He took pride in figuring out exactly where the lines were for all of his students and turning up the heat until they voluntarily jumped over them. Anyone who didn't like being pushed was free to leave. And many did.
The ones who remained went on to become pillars of the hero community, not just in Japan, but worldwide.
Most heroes retire in their mid-thirties after between ten or twenty years of being a pro. So Torino had fallen into obscurity in recent years as the vast majority of people he personally taught retired and got out of heroing. But not too long ago, the name 'Gran Torino' would send shivers down the spines of most of the top pros in the nation, because many of those people were former graduates of UA who had been taught personally by the man.
Some trauma stays with you.
All Might and Endeavor, the number one and number two heroes of Japan, were both old enough to have been a part of that generation. They were actually quite old by the standards of active pros. And Gran Torino still scared the both of them, though Todoroki "Endeavor" Enji would rather die than admit it.
Often, Torino's students didn't know if it was better to disappoint the Jet Hero or to please him. Displeasing him would mean remedial classes and rehabilitation training, which no one wanted. But pleasing him would mean he would have even higher expectations for you going forwards. It meant surprise tests, pop quizzes, extra lessons, and more.
The challenges that come with impressing Gran Torino were something Izuku would learn first-hand in the coming year. And he would get his first taste of it there, on that beach. Because it isn't normal for a teenager to know enough about quirk theory and the history of quirks to know who Garaki Kyudai even was. Let alone be able to hold an intelligent discussion about his papers or the life story of Destro.
Most teenagers would have become confused if you tried to explain the singularity to them. Not only did Izuku already know about it, but when he found out that One For All would be a singularity quirk, his first instinct was to look for paper and something to write on so he could start taking notes.
Torino was convinced that the kid would have pulled on a lab coat and started doing experiments with Toshinori on the spot, if he'd had a lab to use. Or a coat to wear.
And there was nothing normal to begin with about his hero analysis. That kind of talent with detail and observation was more dangerous than any conventional weapon.
Torino knew he couldn't push the boy physically, at least not any farther than he was already being pushed. He knew Toshinori well enough to know that the kid's exercise regime would be air tight even before he demanded to see it. There is a limit to exercise and how fast you can build your body, and exceeding it doesn't help more, it just hurts you and ruins your progress.
But even if he couldn't push Izuku physically, he certainly could push him intellectually. And he was already planning to. Homeschooling, a customized curriculum with accelerated courses in the areas he showed talent in. They would have to give him some tests to figure out his exact placement as a starting line, he'd need parental permission for most of what he was considering. Once the boy had a solid foundation, he might even rope Nezu into this.
An intelligent successor for One For All. Would wonders never cease?
Gran Torino was not the only one in the hero business with a fierce reputation. Nezu was also a feared name, and rightfully so. He was one of the extremely rare animals to be born with a quirk. His quirk, High Spec, just so happened to make him one of the most intelligent beings on the planet. He was born in captivity in an Australian biomedical testing facility, and had to sabotage his way out when the researchers realized he was a quirked animal and did not want to let him leave. Over the next ten years, every researcher who experimented on him while he was confined there turned up dead in scrupulously clean accidents that Nezu was far away from and had solid alibis for.
Afraid of what a quirked genius animal with a grudge against humans might do if left alone, the Hero Public Safety Commission and the Japanese and Australian governments decided to chain him, not with physical bonds, but with obligations and legal responsibilities. They pushed a hero license onto him and put him in charge of UA as it's principle. The hero license created legal avenues to severely punish him for misusing his intelligence quirk, and they assumed that granting him custodianship over a massive international hero school would serve as a distraction for him while also keeping him in clear view and limiting his ability to cause trouble.
It was a good plan, in theory.
In practice, it did almost nothing, except give Nezu a seat at the table of politics and power, which both the safety commission and the governments involved have regretted doing ever since.
Sorahiko Torino was not afraid of Nezu. They had a cordial relationship of mutual respect and understanding. But Torino was fairly unique in that regard. People who had a friendly relationship with Nezu were few and far between. People who were not afraid of him were almost impossible to find. Nezu was a radical, uncontrollable element in international hero society. He was a creature widely considered to be a serious, legitimate threat-risk for taking over the world one day out of sheer boredom.
Today, Gran Torino was an obscure name in the circles of active pros. But most his former students were still alive, they were just retired, or still working but in a limited or reduced capacity as advisors or consultants. If any of them were to find out that the old man was teaching again, they would have become concerned.
If they knew that he had effectively agreed to take on a personal student, they would have become worried.
If they knew that the kid had impressed their former teacher the very first day they met, they would have become afraid.
And if they knew that Torino was planning on involving Nezu in the boy's education?
If they had known, most of Torino's former students would have abandoned their retirement gigs and fled Japan for a safer and more stable area of the world. Like an active warzone, for instance.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, none of them knew any of that. So Sorahiko Torino was left to ponder and plan the future of Midoriya Izuku's hero education in peace. And like a deep water tsunami that was still far out at sea, the tiny ripple that would herald the coming chaos went unnoticed.
Torino was pleased. The paperwork had gone through without a hitch. The kid wouldn't be going back to that hellhole of a school on Monday. For the next ten months, he would be pursuing his education at his own pace. A pace that the retired pro was quite sure would turn out to be much faster than any of his previous teachers had ever expected or would be willing to give him credit for.
Doing his education more efficiently and at his own pace freed up more hours in the day. Hours to relax. Hours to build up the boy's confidence and repair the damage that a broken and negligent system had done to him. Hours to teach him important skills that would help him in the future, both in the UA entrance exam and beyond.
Hours where Torino could unapologetically use the boy's freakish talent for analysis and quirk theory to terrorize people in the hero industry for sport. In his humble opinion, most of those glamor-obsessed idiots had it coming.
His contacts in the police really were going to skin him when they found out what kind of talent they had missed out on. But he was already planning on an olive branch. He could get the kid involved in cases as a consultant, teach him the ropes of how crime was actually handled by the professionals. And, naturally, he wouldn't be telling the kid that these were real cases or actual crimes until later. Why spoil the fun early? It would help give the kid a much-needed ego boost to do a classic magician's reveal and tell him that actually, he's been helping the police catch criminals for months, so he needs to have confidence in his skills.
Torino gave the paperwork a final once-over before nodding to himself, satisfied. Everything was in order, and Midoriya Inko had signed off on it. From here on out, they could start working on building the kid into a real hero.
This was the starting line.