Tsukauchi Naomasa smiled lightly to himself as he read the last of the messages in the new group chat as conversation died off. It had been a good distraction as he waited for the time to leave to meet Yagi to arrive for the much needed conversation, but he could only allow it to distract him for so long. He had work to do after all.
"Texting a secret girlfriend?"
Naomasa looked up to a smiling Tamakawa Sansa in his office doorway. Well, the equivalent expression to a smile that Sansa's feline face could produce anyways. Naomasa raised a brow in response. "What led you to that conclusion, Sansa?"
"I came in to you grinning at your phone, so what else could it be?"
Naomasa rolled his eyes. "For your information, I was added to a Hero network group chat made for the purpose of keeping everyone involved on a case I am assisting in on the same page."
"I doubt you would be smiling like that if it was just a chat for a case." Truth. "You sure that you're not smiling because someone caught your eye?"
"Sansa, the only people in the chat that aren't married or literal children are Eraserhead, Nedzu and Sir Nighteye. I'm pretty sure."
That caused Sansa to frown. "Children? Should they be included in something that will likely contain presumably sensitive details on the case?"
"Sir Nighteye added them with the thought that since the boys already know all the details there was no point in not including them. For multiple reasons, Sir doesn't trust one of the boys to not have accidentally hidden information that could assist in the building of the case. The most important reason being he sustained a critical injury during the incident in question and chose to decline to mention it. Thankfully he was already in the hospital when he collapsed or we would have been dealing with a dead body instead of just a scatter-brained fourteen year old with a severe lack of both self worth and self preservation." He paused before adding, "And a frankly terrifyingly high pain tolerance."
"Should we be concerned about how he developed a pain tolerance level like that?"
"Nedzu is looking into that. Given that he certainly didn't develop it from his home life, we suspect the schools he has attended are the primary source of possible abuse."
"What makes you so certain that the family isn't involved? Normally you wouldn't write them off that quickly." Truth.
"Not normally no, but given that the boy in question is Quirkless and evidently had been the victim of suicide baiting for at least the past year at school, it is likely the other students, the staff or possibly both have been contributors to the possible abuse."
"I am not hearing a reason for writing off the family yet." Truth.
Naomasa considered what he should say. "I have spoken with all the family members in close physical contact with the kid and they have been cleared of suspicion."
Sansa nods at that. "They all passed your Quirk? You could have just led with that." Truth.
"Unfortunately that is all I can really say about the family. Anything else and the kid might accidentally end up with an even larger target on his back then he already has."
"Damn. I feel bad for the kid already." Truth. "Do you need me to do anything to help?"
Naomasa shook his head. "Not right now. There are some people I need to handle talking with personally before we can start looking at bringing people in."
Sansa nods in acceptance. "Well, keep me posted. You know I am always interested in helping out." Truth.
Naomasa internally winced at the redundant reading from his Quirk but just openly smiled and waved Sansa away. "Will do."
And now he was alone in his office again. Looking at the time, he should probably head out to the café down the street he was meeting Yagi in. It annoyed Naomasa that in order to truly get answers from Yagi about what he had done the day of the incident, he would have to pretend that everything was still the same between them as it had been the last time they had met. But that would be a lie.
Naomasa, as a rule, hated to lie if he could help it. It was likely a side effect of growing up in a family of lie detectors. He had often been jealous of his sister Makoto when they were younger because, unlike both her and their father who their Quirks had come from, he could not turn his off. So long as he was in the same place as or could both see and hear a person, he would know the moment they lied.
It was a Quirk that had burned many bridges in his life. Something he had never understood was why people got mad at him for it when they lied to his face. It was not like he had ever hidden the nature of his Quirk from anyone. Even the criminals he spoke to in his line of work were always informed because, morally speaking, hiding his Quirk was a lie he had no intention of telling if he could help it.
So why was it that his friend for nearly a decade now was trying to lie to him. More than anything else about the case, that fact bothered him the most. It spoke of a man who, at least on some level knew what he did would be seen as wrong in at least Naomasa's eyes but had the man felt truly guilty he would have tried to avoid Naomasa so as not to be caught in his lie. The way Yagi had spoken with him on the phone seemed to imply that the man thought that by filing the report himself, he had hidden what he had done from the detective.
Naomasa spotted Yagi shortly before reaching the café, the man in question just ahead of him about to open the door. "Yagi."
"Ah, Tsukauchi! Excellent timing my friend!" Truth. He still considered Naomasa a friend then. They would have to see if that was still the case by the end of this conversation.
Naomasa met him at the door. "Afternoon. Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice."
Yagi pulled the door open and gestured for the detective to enter first, smile on his face. "Of course. I am always happy to make time to have coffee with a friend." Truth. "Do you want your usual order? I can pay." Truth.
"No, I think I might mix it up today. You go ahead and put your order in, I need a moment to decide." Naomasa probably would have been fine with his normal order of a plain coffee with just a splash of creamer but the stress of how this conversation would go and how the case had already progressed made him crave something stronger. After allowing Yagi to finish placing his order, he joined the short line himself. By the time his order had been placed and collected, Yagi had found a quiet table in a back corner of the café.
"An expresso? You must be feeling stressed about your current case." Truth. "Did you just call me for a chance to vent?"
Naomasa sighed. Where to begin. "It wasn't just that, but, yeah, I wanted to talk about my current case."
"I'm all ears my friend." Truth. "How can I help?"
"First I need to ask you a few questions. That alright?"
"Of course!" Lie. Naomasa would have caught that one even without his Quirk with how the man had suddenly tensed and the way his smile changed to become fake.
"I can already tell that this is going to go well," Naomasa deadpanned before shaking his head. " I already noticed the report that you went out of your way to file yourself so don't worry, I was already planning on asking about what you tried to hide from me. But we will come back to that. Please try not to lie again, Yagi. Does the name Midoriya Izuku ring any bells?"
Naomasa watched as tension shifted to embarrassment and then to confusion. "Ah, no I don't think I am familiar with the name." Truth. So he didn't even bother to find out who the kid even was that he had spilled his secrets to. Stupid but good to know for sure.
"What about Sasaki Inko?"
Naomasa watched Yagi take on a puzzled frown. "What does Mirai's sister have to do with the case? Did something happen to her?"
"In a way. Are you aware that she has a son?"
A look of understanding dawned on Yagi's face. "I had not been." Truth. "I presume that Midoriya is the name of her son." Truth.
Naomasa nodded. "Sir Nighteye contacted me, oh geez, I guess it was only yesterday morning, about going to interview his nephew for a case."
"The case must really be bad if it seems like you have been working on it for longer than that." Truth.
"Given that the kid is currently in the hospital after walking around with a shattered rib cage for close to half a day without anyone noticing until he just collapsed, I would say bad is an understatement." Naomasa downed the last bit of his espresso and grimaced.
"Oh dear! Is he alright? What even happened?"
"According to him, you did." Naomasa watched as Yagi jerked back with a look of horror, sputtering in his shock. Before the man regained his ability to speak, Naomasa continued. "Let's get everything on the table before you start trying to explain your thoughts on the matter. The day before yesterday, you didn't actually lose track of the Villain you had been chasing but caught up to him as he attacked his first victim of the afternoon. After freeing the boy you not only then failed to ensure the health and safety of the victim but tried to abandon the boy at the scene of the attack. Next, when you found yourself several meters up in the air with said victim, you tried to shake the boy free in midair. I think it is a safe assumption that you lost the Villain at that time who had only been loosely contained in an old empty soda bottle. Following that, you landed on a roof, proceeded to crush the dreams of a fucking child and then abandoned said kid up there. Additionally you told that very same child what amounts to a state secret and never even bothered to try to figure out the identity of the child. Yagi, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, what the actual fuck were you thinking?" It had taken Naomasa all his self control to keep his voice at an even level to not be overheard as his anger that he had been stewing in for the past 24 hours caught up with him. Naomasa felt a twisted sense of satisfaction as the man sat across from him only grew paler and paler.
After a few moments, Yagi seemed to finally collect himself enough to try to speak. "It sounds really bad when you phrase it all like that." Truth. Naomasa only stared at him and gestured to continue. "Up until my secret was revealed I had been so focused on getting away as to not let myself be seen as my time ran out, that I failed to consider what my actions would do to possibly harm others." Truth. "I really should have thought about getting the boy's name at the time." Truth. "I hadn't realized until later that I failed to do so." Truth. "The boy's question caught me at a bad time so I admittedly was harsher than I needed to be, but I thought it best that the boy knew the truth about just how dangerous heroics as a line of work could be for someone like him." Truth. And there it was.
"Someone Quirkless you mean."
Yagi seemed to relax at the remark, taking Naomasa's carefully neutral tone as a sign of agreement. "Of course." Truth. "Without power, it would be incredibly dangerous to even consider it!" Truth.
Naomasa sighed and just held his face in his hands for a moment trying to regain mental equilibrium. "Sir is going to throw the book at you for this, you realize that right?"
"What? I don't understand why would- Ah, well shit." Truth. Naomasa could hear the exact moment the man realized who that the Quirkless kid he had so readily written off was.
Naomasa lifted his head to level his gaze with his former friend, because honestly there was little chance the man would be able to come back from this in his eyes. "Exactly. You have no idea how lucky you are that the boy was Midoriya. Setting aside Sir Nighteye's wrath heading your way, there are a few things I need to make sure you are aware of. First are you aware of our nation's rate of suicide for the Quirkless due to Quirk discrimination much like you yourself just admitted to doing?"
"I didn't-"
Naomasa cut him off. "Yes or No, Yagi."
Yagi lowered his gaze to not meet Naomasa's eyes. "No." Truth.
Naomasa pulled out his notepad from his pocket to read off the statistics that he had written down earlier. "Of the roughly the 20% of our current population that are currently Quirkless, close to 93% percent are over the age of 50. Of the remaining 7%, the vast majority are under the age of 16. Quirklessness is not disappearing from the gene pool at the current rate just from a reduction in the number of births, but from systematic eradication. The Quirkless born now are dying in acts of hate crimes and by suicide at a rate that is franking horrifying." Lowering his notes, Naomasa stared the man in front of him down. "Midoriya was lucky enough to be born both to a good family and with a stubbornness that has pushed him forward towards his dream regardless of what others might say about him. If he had not, there is a chance we would have been having a completely different conversation right now about a boy you abandoned on a roof to die."
"It hasn't really gotten that bad has it?" Yagi's voice was weak and shaking with disbelief.
"It is honestly probably even worse. Crimes are not always filed when they involve Quirkless individuals making the accusation or when they go missing. I would like to say that no one in my own department would do such a thing but I would be lying to myself. Pain tolerance levels like the sort Midoriya has don't just appear from nowhere. The kid is so good at tuning out pain from his injuries that he never even realized you broke his ribs when you saved him."
Yagi's head snapped back up. "I really…?"
Naomasa nodded his head. "Your Texas Smash was the only force he encountered that afternoon that could have caused him that much damage. The Villain was quickly ruled out as a potential cause because of the other boy he had hospitalized."
Yagi ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't realize that the Smash had struck him so hard." Truth. "He was moving around so quickly and easily, I never considered he might have been hurt." Truth.
Naomasa felt himself relax a bit at that. The fact that the man had genuinely thought the boy unharmed at least helped explain why he never called for emergency services for the boy. "Yagi, procedure exists for a good reason. There is a good chance you could lose your license for this if Sir finds more instances of this sort of thing. That was a textbook case of heroic neglect."
Yagi nodded sadly in understanding before letting out a sigh. "Perhaps I should take this as a sign to step back sooner rather than later. I had hoped that I would be able to find and train a successor before stepping down from my spot as number one but maybe continuing to hold off was a bad idea." Truth.
Naomasa only nodded before checking the time. "I need to head back. If it makes you feel better, you are not Sir's only target. It is possible that if you actually retire and give both him and his nephew a formal apology for this, he will drop the case on you in favor of just giving you the cold shoulder."
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention my friend." Truth. And wasn't that sad. "I'm not sure what I would have done if the first I heard about this was when Mirai was raking me over the coals in front of the Commission." Truth.
Naomasa sighed and shook his head. "Don't thank me for this. This conversation was more for Sir's benefit than yours. While the hope had always been that the cause for some of your worst actions on Wednesday was just a result of momentary stupidity in your hurry to hide before you changed back, we had no way to be sure. Still I have one more question before I head back. Do you really think it is impossible for someone Quirkless to be a hero?"
Without a moment's hesitation the hero answered. "Yes." Truth.
---MiM-MiM-MiM---
Mirai slammed the phone back down on the hook. This, right here, was the whole reason that he had always used a generic office phone and not one of his limited edition All Might ones. The small act of violence often had done him wonders over the years when he needed to get his frustrations out about a call before he had to speak to someone else.
The conversation with Tsukauchi had not gone well. Mirai had been still clinging to the desperate hope that maybe the conversation between Tsukauchi and Yagi wouldn't confirm his own fears. Hope that had already been weakened by the discovery that the man had already actively discouraged the dreams of a bright young girl becoming a hero because she too had been born Quirkless.
Mirai wanted to scream in frustration. He couldn't stay here in this office littered with the man's face. He wanted to toss his cabinets full of the stuff out the window and let Izuku set it alight.
Mirai had always more or less considered himself Quirkless for all intensive purposes. Foresight was only useful for an hour once in every 24 and the hero had never made a habit of using his Quirk frivolously. If he was honest, he maybe used his Quirk once a month if even that. Yagi had always known this so how was it that he was hero material in the man's eyes but Izuku and Melissa weren't. Had all he ever been to the man just a useful Quirk? Just a tool to use?
Mirai stalked out of his office, heading for the front door of the agency. He was going to take the rest of the day off and go back to Musutafu to visit his family before he hurt someone in his current state.
"Sir?" Mirai stopped and took a deep breath before turning to face Awata Kaoruko, aka Bubble Girl, at her desk near the front door.
"I am removing myself from the office for the remainder of the day before I can take out my anger on one of you. Could you see to it that all of my All Might collection is boxed up and stored away where I wont see it?"
Awata's jaw dropped. "Sir, what on Earth happened?"
Mirai paused to weigh the pros and cons of what to say next before coming to the realization that now that Izuku knew who he was as a hero, it was just a matter of time before he came to visit Mirai in person at the office. "The short version is that All Might crossed a line that he will never come back from in both my eyes and that of my family. My nephew is currently stuck in a hospital bed because of that idiot and the man apparently hadn't even realized that he had really done anything wrong until a detective, who was a mutual friend of ours, read him the riot act a little while ago." Mirai pulled off his glasses to run his hand over his face. "Like I said, I need to remove myself from the office for the rest of the day."
When he turned his gaze back to Awata, he was met with the poor girl's look of shock and horror. "How…?" She trailed off holding her hand over her mouth before seeming to refocus. "Right, consider the All Might mech as good as gone. You saving it to destroy with this nephew?"
Mirai shook his head. "Tempting but no. Come hell or highwater, All Might is going to retire soon if I have anything to say about it, so a lot of that junk will be worth holding on to until after then when the value of everything increases. I can put the money to better use."
Awata nodded at that. "I forget how much some of that stuff is worth sometimes since I see it all the time." Mirai was amused to watch as she seemed to quickly make a note to invest in All Might merchandise to resell later. "Is there any chance you would let me see a picture of your secret nephew before you go?"
Mirai made a big act of sighing and pulling out his phone. He opened up his photo gallery to the most recent picture on it that he had taken just the previous day of Izuku in the hospital bed laughing playfully holding up his arms to shield his face with Katsuki trying to smack him with his own pillow from the other bed. "I hope I don't have to tell you which of the two he is."
Awata let out a squeal of excitement as she took the phone from his hands. "He looks so much like a mini you! A few highlights and a bit of gel and the two of you would be twins!"
"Izuku takes rather strongly after my sister as far as looks are concerned but he does have his father's freckles and general build. He most strongly resembles my brother-in-law in habits and interest in Quirk analysis."
"So who is the other kid with him?"
"The son of my sister's best friend. The two boys are more likely to refer to each other as their cousin then they are to just call each other their best friend. Since they were caught up in a Villain attack on the way home from school on Wednesday, they have been impossible to separate without causing them to panic."
Handing back his phone, Awata frowned. "Poor kids. Are you going to go visit them then?"
"Most likely."
"Well in that case, you can tell them I am hoping they get well soon!"
Mirai gave the young hero a smile. "I will be sure to pass the message along. I'll see you tomorrow." With that the hero left the agency in a slightly better mood than he had before. Now he just had a train to catch.
---MiM-MiM-MiM---
Aizawa Shouta sighed as he stretched at his desk. The main problem with his decision to try and expel his entire homeroom class was all the extra free time he had that he was still required to be on the campus grounds for. He only had the next two weeks to make it through until the Sports Festival where he would be able to pick and choose his students from the other courses to replace his now missing class. Contrary to popular belief among the students at UA, Shouta did actually like teaching much to his annoyance about the fact. It was extremely frustrating how smug Nemuri always got about it when another member of staff pointed it out.
After all, he only took the job in the first place because the heroine had volunteered him for the position without his permission. Still, as much as he would vehemently deny the fact, Shouta liked kids. Which is why he was a bit annoyed that apparently the wall between his older brother and their nephew had been lowered. Yesterday, he had received a call from Inko about the chaos that had been going on which had been like a knife to the gut. All these years they had tried their best to keep their distance from one another to prevent something just like this from happening. They had done everything right and Izuku had still nearly died. The thought still made him feel sick.
"Shou? Are you okay?"
Shouta turned to meet the worried eyes of his best friend at the desk next to him. Less than a year after he had started teaching, Yamada Hizashi had followed him like always to take over teaching English. Shouta turned to check that they were actually alone in the room before giving a small shrug. "Not really sure. I told you what happened yesterday and nothing has really changed since then."
Hizashi frowned before opening his arms wide in an invitation. One that Shouta reluctantly leaned forward into. Face buried in the blonde's leather jacket, he continued. "I don't know what to do. It was like 'Boro all over again. I had no idea it had even happened until it was already over."
Shouta felt a hand carding through his hair as he began to dryly sob. "He's okay Shou. You have that picture on your phone as proof of that, yeah? And now there is no reason you can't go and see the little listener in person."
They just sat there, Shouta clinging to his friend like a lifeline, until the phone on Shouta's desk began to ring. Shouta jerked back fast as the realization of where he was hit him. Embarrassed, he turned his face so Hizashi couldn't see it as he picked up the line.
"Aizawa."
"Sorry for startling you Aizawa, but I thought you could run an errand for me in regards to the investigation into young Midoriya's schooling." He hated when the Rat did that. While Shouta knew there were cameras all over the school that the chimera had free reign to access, the reminder that moments like the one he had just had were not even remotely private from Nedzu still bothered him.
"I'll be there in a minute."
"Nedzu?"
Shouta nodded as he stood up away from his desk. "He's helping with the investigation that Mirai started. Apparently he needs help with his part."
Hizashi shot his friend a soft smile. "If you need any help, you know where to find me."
Shouta nodded before turning and beginning the short walk from the room to Nedzu's door. Like almost always, the door opened before he could even consider knocking.
"Ah, Aizawa, please close the door behind you. We wouldn't want to risk being overheard now would we?"
"Something change in the case since we talked earlier?" While Shouta would never openly admit it, it was times like this that he was glad to have suffered through the madness that had been his adoption as one of Nedzu's personal students back when he himself had been attending UA. When Nedzu claimed something or someone as his own, he would protect them as territorially as any of the animals that made up his messy genetics would have protected their own burrow or nest. Those same protective drives had been what made the chimera such a good teacher and now principal despite his obvious disdain for the vast majority of humanity. If anyone understood where Shouta was coming from in hiding his family to try to keep them safe, it was Nedzu.
Once the door had closed, Nedzu had spun the computer monitor on his desk so that Shouta could see it. "I have done some digging into everything I could legally have access to without the issue of a warrant and even that small amount is less than encouraging. It appears that your nephew's education is actively being sabotaged by his teachers though I suspect that if he was asked about it he would admit to already knowing. Over the course of the past year and a half, young Midoriya has been actively protesting by submitting nonsense to be graded in an attempt to create a record of the history of his work not being properly graded. Most interestingly, his English papers he has been assigned since his protest started have been replaced with him copying large passages wholesale from the English novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and his latest history paper was a letter he directly addressed to me."
Shouta could feel his eyebrows shoot up as he leaned a bit closer to read what Nedzu had pulled up for him to read. It was clearly meant to be a history assignment based on the title of the paper, but the vast majority of the paper was clearly not written on the assigned topic.
Nedzu, I don't know if you will ever actually read this but I figured it wouldn't hurt to write even if you don't. I know that you or at least someone on the staff of UA will review the files on any student attempting the entrance exam to check that they meet the standards of one of the top schools in the country and I highly suspect mine at first glance just won't. My grades have been held at barely passing for a few years now by my teachers regardless of how well I actually complete an assignment or do on a test that is graded in house. Additionally, I suspect they may have put marks on my record to say I pick fights with other students which is completely ridiculous. The only person I would ever even consider actively provoking would be Bakugou Katsuki who, despite his short temper due to the nature of his quirk, would never actually fight me given that we are practically family thanks to our mothers. The so-called fights, if they are based on any actual physical conflicts, are just cases of the other students attempting to "put me in my place as a Quirkless freak." Anyways, I hope that this short letter to you will turn out to be an unnecessary precaution on my part but my parents have always spoken of the benefits of being safe rather than sorry.
After that the paper continued on with presumably the assignment until randomly in the middle of a later paragraph,
P.S. I read on your website that Present Mic teaches English. He mentioned once on his show to being a fan of some PQ English works of fiction so he may find my papers for my English teacher entertaining.
That made Shouta snort in amusement. He had known for a few years that Izuku was a fan of Hizashi's radio show thanks to both Inko and later Izuku himself from the thank you he received for the themed radio that Hizashi had shoved on him to send to Izuku when he was younger. Still, the fact that Izuku had apparently chosen a Pre Quirk novel to plagiarize for his English essays specifically because he hoped that one of his favorite heroes would enjoy reading it was…cute. Hizashi would probably freak out when he found out that his "Little Listener" had done so with him specifically in mind. "So what did you need me to do?"
Nedzu flashed Shouta a fanged grin. "I was hoping you could approach the school about letting young Midoriya attempt to test out of his year placement with the offer that they would be able to outsource the testing itself to our own staff here at UA. While it is currently unknown how he will do on such a test at the moment, given the intelligence that he has displayed by enacting this plan of his to create evidence of educational misconduct on the part of the school staff leads me to the belief he will rise to the occasion."
"Have you spoken to Inko about doing this? If Izuku tests out, he wouldn't be going to school until he starts at UA next year."
Nedzu offered a tilt of the head in a gesture of his confusion. "You don't want him to take one of the empty sets in your class this year then?"
Shouta sighed and shook his head. "Between his current lack of real physical training and Quirk status, I doubt any of the future class 1-A would treat him particularly well for getting in with so little effort when they would have just had to earn their spots by way of the sports festival. Besides, he would still be too young to get his full Hero license if he graduated with the current class."
Nedzu gave Shouta another smile. "That is true. Does this mean you are considering approaching him to train him before his entrance exam?"
Shouta just shook his head. "Mirai already mentioned planning on offering for him to train alongside Togata Mirio during his second internship. Besides, unless he intends to use a capture weapon like my own, Mirai would be the better teacher if for no other reason than scheduling. If I tried to take over his training, either my sleep would suffer even more or I would have to start dropping patrols."
"Ah, and we wouldn't want that. Alright, here is the letter that I need you to run down to Aldera Junior High. If you just so happen to stumble across more evidence for the case…"
Shouta's face twisted into his wild grin. "I will keep my phone recording while I am there." Suddenly a thought hit him. "What should I say is the reason for us wishing to assist with the testing?"
Nedzu waved his paw in a vague gesture. "Given that this is your nephew, I believe that I should leave that up to you. Just know that UA will fully back your claims, whatever they may be."
---MiM-MiM-MiM---
Shouta was not very impressed with Aldera from the first look at it. The building was painfully average in both design and size but showed the beginning signs of a decline in recent upkeep. The planters near the front of the school were beginning to become overgrown enough to start overhanging onto the surrounding walkways and there was litter in some of the more out of the way places that the janitorial staff had clearly decided wasn't worth the bother to collect yet. But it would be best to hold off on judgment just yet. The decline in care for the grounds could just be the result of one lazy worker.
Shouta pulled out his Hero ID and held it up to the camera near the front door and pressed the doorbell to be buzzed in without saying a word. There was a small clicking noise as the door unlocked with little fanfare. Pocketing his ID, Shouta pulled the door open and walked the short distance over to the administration desk. The woman behind the desk pulled a bit of a strange expression as she seemed to take a proper look at him. "I'm here to see your school's principal on behalf of mine from UA about one of your students."
The eyes of the woman in front of him widened in surprise. Shouta absently noticed her nails dancing through a handful of different colors as she pressed the intercom on the desk in front of her. "Principal Akuan, there is a Hero from UA here to talk to you about a student."
"Send him back."
The woman gave a small gesture to the door behind and to the right of the desk. "Through that door. His office is the one at the far end of the hall."
After giving the woman a small nod he headed back. He opened the door to the Principal's office to see the man's face flickering through a mess of different emotions before settling on confusion at the sight of Shouta. Giving a small sigh realizing the issue, Shouta pulled out his license once more to show to the man. "Pro-hero Eraserhead. I am here on the behalf of Principal Nedzu in his current mission to steal one of your students for himself." Shouta put away the license to pull out and hand over the letter the Rat had given him to hand it over.
As much as the idea did not sit well with him personally for Nedzu to sink his claws into Izuku, Shouta suspected it would not take long with the interest the Rat had shown in him already. Had he just been interested in him just due to the case, he most likely would have not just offered to possibly wave the entrance exam for the kid. Still, he had to suspect that perhaps something the Rat had found during his less than legal snoopings, because who was he kidding, of course the Rat would have started looking into things farther while he waited for the warrant to make his search of the school's camera actually legal, had caught his eye.
Akuan's confusion seemed to only deepen as he read over the letter, eyes skipping around as if to double check that what he had just read was correct. "Are you sure he has the right student? Midoriya Izuku?"
Shouta nodded. "He was brought to Nedzu's attention yesterday under currently confidential circumstances. From what I understand Nedzu believes the boy's current grades might reflect a boy that is bored by classes far below his current level and not a true reflection of his intelligence."
That transformed the man's confusion to shock. "Are you sure? The boy was medically diagnosed as Quirkless."
Shouta frowned at the blatant Quirkism that the man had just given. "You don't need an intelligence based Quirk to have a higher than average IQ, it is just rarer."
The man seemed to actually consider Shouta's words as he turned back to the letter. "If we agree to work with UA on this, what would we need to do on our side?"
"If you agree, then sometime next week, Midoriya will be pulled from class and taken to an empty classroom where I, or another, UA staff member will proctor a series of written assessments that will be able to determine what year of schooling he should really be in. I would have a room set aside Monday if possible given how excited Nedzu seems to be about the whole thing. Just give the number at the bottom of the letter a call when you have that arranged and I am sure Nedzu will send the tests out the same day."
Akuan reluctantly seemed to accept that this was in fact happening. "I will see that Midoriya's teachers are notified and have the room set up by the end of the day."