Chapter Text
There are many things Shouta hates in this world.
He hates not being able to get enough sleep and not having a proper sleep schedule. He hates the problem children getting into trouble. He hates the HPSC and the way they made life for the Underground heroes especially hard. He hates it when Nezu cuts his supply of the roasted coffee beans that he specifically imports. He hates hearing Mic’s loud voice early in the morning and late at night. He hates Midnight for getting him to apply for a fucking teaching job. He hates his students’ self-sacrificial behavior that he fully blames All Might for.
Shouta hates a lot of things.
But the one thing Shouta hates more than anything is seeing his students hurt and in hospital beds.
Midoriya, Iida and Todoroki all have the dubious pleasure of consistently seeing Recovery Girl, and so do Yaoyorozu, Jiro and Hagakure. Shouta hates every second of it. His other students visited the nurse less often—usually for the minor twisted ankles and deep bruises gained through Heroics training.
Bakugou, despite being the temperamental jackass of a student who looked like a hooligan on any given day, was ironically one of the most responsible students in his class.
Seeing his student now in the hospital bed with a slash across his nose, a deep cut on his back and impalement injuries in his torso, Shouta feels a thousand years older. He had wanted both Midoriya and Bakugou to stay far away from trouble and had thus placed them both on house arrest and yet—
And yet, trouble somehow finds Bakugou again; this time right in the middle of cleaning the Common Room.
Six hours ago, Midoriya had called him, crying and sniveling, and explained how “Kacchan had collapsed and there was a lot of blood” and how there was “no attack”. How it “could have been a secondary contact quirk or a targeted quirk” and had then proceeded to ramble the entire time it took Shouta to reach the Dorms. The students had stood far away, with ashen faces and clutched arms, from Bakugou. Midoriya, Yaoyorozu and Kirishima were the only ones next to his fallen student, applying pressure on the wounds and perhaps saving his life.
Shouta had immediately gotten his student to Recovery Girl where the two adults found the extent of the three gruesome injuries—injuries that were not supposed to exist on high school students. The old lady had healed his back, had performed emergency surgery on the stomach and applied stitches across his face.
Nezu had been informed about Bakugou.
While Bakugou was in surgery, Nezu and Shouta, livid, had searched through the entire Student Registry to find a quirk that could remotely cause injuries to this extent.
It was now 9 o'clock in the evening and Shouta had cancelled his patrol for the night about 2 hours ago.
If he ever found the person who did this to Bakugou he would strangle the bastard with his bare hands and take pleasure as the light in their eyes died out.
Or he would try to, before Bakugou Mitsuki inevitably got her hands around the bastard first, another thing Shouta is rightfully worried about.
Bakugou Mitsuki and Bakugou Masaru had informed the school that they would be out of the country for the next three weeks for a show, the very same day. He had hoped to get into contact with them the moment Recovery Girl took Bakugou, but both of their phones were unavailable and continued to be unavailable. This was a disaster in the making and Shouta had no one to blame.
Bakugou Masaru and Mitsuki were not people you poked for fun. Mitsuki-san was the proud model turned designer who had fought her way to the top of the Modelling crop with her admittedly useless quirk in a world full of cut-throat opportunists. Bakugou Masaru, despite his deceptively meek behavior, was a ruthless businessman and owner of his own fashion label, established at the tender age of 24. He had then proceeded to make world-wide waves in the fashion industry.
They were both very strong people who had seen the worst humanity had to offer and still rose to the top.
It was only given that his student—their child—was just as strong as they were.
They had gone toe to toe with the HPSC after the Sports Festival, threatened to file at least 20 lawsuits and had dug up similar cases and made such noise that the HPSC quickly and quietly conceded to everything they demanded. Shouta could respect that. Shouta could respect anyone who brings the HPSC down a peg.
A rustle brings Shouta’s attention back to his injured student. Red eyes blink at the ceiling and. Shouta has never seen them this lifeless.
“Bakugou?”
The eyes move to the left and struggle to focus and Shouta moves to be in direct view of his student.
“S—sensei?”
“Do you remember what happened?” Shouta asks carefully.
“What day is it?”
The question startles Shouta, but he replies anyway.
“It’s the third day of your house arrest—what are you doing Bakugou? You should lie down—”
The strangled noise that Bakugou lets out as he starts to sit up has Shouta scrambling to help him up.
“No. No time.”
“There is plenty of time. Rest, problem child.”
Bakugou sits there, chest heaving with every pained breath he takes and Shouta is once again struck with helplessness.
There is an urgency to Bakugou’s movements that Shouta can’t begin to understand but will damn well try to.
“Where’s my phone?” he asks looking frantically around and wincing.
Shouta hands the phone to him.
“Sensei, I would like to meet Principle Nezu. I would also like the meeting to include Tsukauchi-san, the police officer from Kamino and the USJ, and preferably Sir Nighteye and Jeanist as well,” Bakugou says, panting slightly.
“You are not in a state to meet anyone, Hell Child. You were under the influence of an unknown quirk that caused life threatening injuries, this is not the—"
“Section 7.”
That stops Aizawa short.
“You are a student. You don’t have the right to invoke Section 7—” Untrue. Bakugou did have the right, Aizawa knew.
“Section 7, Sub-Section 3 of Article 342 of Emergency Law.” Damn it, he hates Bakugou’s studious nature especially now when used against Shouta.
“Okay.”
“Sensei, I am going to call in Jeanist.”
“Okay,” Shouta gives in easily knowing a battle lost when he sees one.
Shouta scrutinizes the kid and concludes that Bakugou was serious about this in the same way he was serious about being the number one hero.
“Call Jeanist first, I will call the others after. Do you need his agency’s number—”
Bakugou was already tapping in the number and Shouta resigns himself to hearing the one-sided conversation.
“Shi—Jeanist. Thi—this is Bakugou—"
“Yes. Fucking fine. Are you ok—”
“Can you drop by UA? Now?” Way to go, kid. Make it seem like you're in danger here, why don’t you.
“No, I am not in danger.”
“Eraserhead is here with me.”
Bakugou’s eyes meet his and he hands the phone over to Shouta.
“Jeanist. This is Eraserhead.”
“Eraserhead. How does that child have my personal number? I don’t remember giving that to him.”
“I don’t know either. There is something strange going on here.”
“Oh? Strange enough that he wants an injured Pro-Hero?”
“He’s also asked me to bring in Tsukauchi-san and Sir Nighteye. He wants to hold a meeting with Nezu.” He is met with silence on the other end as Jeanist processes this info.
“That’s the perfect number for—"
“Sorry to cut you off, but yes, it is.”
“Okay then. I will be calling Tsukauchi and we will get there preferably within the next two hours.”
“I thought I had to convince you with more info,” Shouta states wryly. Info Shouta conveniently doesn’t have.
There is a soft chuckle on the other side.
“If it were anyone else, yes. But Bakugou-kun is not someone who’d waste someone’s time. If it is what I think it is, then I’ll need to be there physically anyway. I’ll be there soon,” Jeanist replies, before hanging up.
“Jeanist will be here in the next couple of hours. He says he’ll call Tsukauchi,” Shouta says, giving Bakugou his phone back.
“Okay,” his student replies quietly.
“I’ll let Nezu-kouchou call in Sir Nighteye.”
Bakugou nods and just as Shouta excuses himself to make the call, Recovery Girl bustles in, looking drawn.
“You should’ve called me the moment he woke up, Aizawa-kun,” Recovery Girl reprimands as she sidles up to Bakugou’s bedside.
“How are you feeling, Bakugou-kun? Any pain, do you need more pain medication?”
“I’m fine, baa-san.”
“I don’t believe you for a minute there, shounen. I know All Might, so that does not work on me,” she chides.
She carefully removes Bakugou’s bandages and Shouta holds in a gasp.
The wounds on his stomach are almost healed, the wounds that Bakugou had to have surgery on are an angry pink that depict wounds that are nearing the full healing stage. Shouta moves to the other side of the bed to take a look at his student’s back. The wounds there are similarly healed and an angry pink scar takes the place of the slash. Recovery Girl in the meantime removes the bandages on his face and neck. The injury there is the only one that looks a little raw.
“Do you always heal this fast Bakugou-kun?” Recovery Girl asks.
“Not with multiple injuries this fucking bad.”
“Are you feeling tired, maybe like you do after a healing session from me?”
Bakugou nods.
“Then we can say the quirk that caused this is meant for scarring not for endangering the life of the person,” Recovery Girl states as she applies the bandages back to Bakugou’s face. “Good thing, you don’t seem as vain, Bakugou-kun.”
“Yeah, good thing I’m not,” he grumbles, lowering his eyes.
“I would like to give you one more healing session for the night Bakugou-kun, but you already seem exhausted. So, I will give you that healing session tomorrow after you recover some stamina.” With that the Recovery Girl steps back away. “I assume you will be taking care of him, Aizawa-kun?”
“You have my word, Recovery Girl,” Shouta answers readily.
She merely nods and heads out. Shouta takes a good look at his student and decides what the old lady said was true. His student is now relatively better than before. His color’s improved, so has his breathing. He also seems to be in much less pain than earlier.
“Just how badly are you hurting now, Bakugou?
“On a scale of 1 to 10, maybe a 2. I already have a higher pain tolerance than most people,” Bakugou says.
“General soreness, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Rest up, I’ll come back after calling Nezu,” Shouta says, walking out already and pulling out his phone to call Nezu. “I’ll get you some juice.”
Nezu answers on the first ring. “Aizawa-kun, I have already called in Sir Nighteye. He should be here around the time the others arrive. Bring Bakugou-kun to my office to discuss things.”
“Will do.” He hangs up and turns around to go back when he senses more than sees another student. All the Class 1A students had been forced to stay in the dorms after the incident, with Midnight and Cementoss standing guard. Theoretically, no one should be able to get out. Shouta should be impressed that his student actually managed to get out and get all the way out here after curfew.
“Aizawa-sensei?”
“You shouldn’t be here, Kirishima,” Shouta sighs. He’d expected Midoriya to pull this stunt, not Kirishima and yet, he’s not as surprised as he should be.
“I just wanted to know how Bakugou is doing. He was bleeding so much and—”
Shouta turns just in time to see teary red eyes overflow. Kirishima stood there—shoulders hunched and his hair falling in waves now that it’s out of the spikes. His redhead student just stands there ready to be reamed out for breaking curfew especially after today. But Shouta can also understand—empathize—with Kirishima. Seeing a friend collapse, feeling useless and unable to do anything. He is intimately familiar with it.
He sighs and goes to place a hand on top of Kirishima’s head. He thinks of something to say and decides there really isn’t much to say in this situation until they know what happened.
“We are investigating. We will do everything in our power to keep you all safe, Bakugou included. Right now, Bakugou’s out of danger. He woke up a few minutes ago and Recovery Girl also checked on him a few moments ago. His injuries are healing well. No, he is not allowed visitors.” Shouta cuts him off before Kirishima can even open his mouth.
His student lowers his head to the side, biting his lip to keep from demanding to see Bakugou. He roughly wipes the tears away with the back of his hand and stares up at Shouta, eyes filled with determination and a hardness Shouta hasn’t yet seen in Kirishima.
“You’ll stay with him right, Sensei? You’ll be here?” the redhead demands.
“I promise to stay with him. So please go back to the dorms and make sure the rest of the problem children stay in the dorms,” Shouta orders.
“Okay, Sensei,” Kirishima salutes and turns to run back.
“And no running in the corridors.”
“Yes, Sensei!”
Shouta shakes his head at the retreating redhead. He goes to pick juice from the nearest vending machine and walks back inside, only to see his blonde headed problem look heartbroken. Or Shouta assumes its heartbreak because Bakugou, his most pig-headed child, looks on the verge of a breakdown, clutching at his chest with shaking hands, a look of abject misery on his face.
The moment Bakugou notices him, every hint of emotion is drained from his face. Shouta feels heartbroken at that.
The juice packet can wait.
Nezu’s office was usually just 2 minutes away from the Infirmary. The journey there took an additional 10 minutes as Bakugou, hellbent on walking, required frequent stops so as to not further exhaust himself.
The moment they entered Nezu’s office, Bakugou walks straight to the cupboard on the side, a cupboard Shouta knows carries extra notebooks and stationery—how his student knows that, he doesn’t know—to pull out a notebook and a pen.
Nezu meets Shouta’s gaze and there’s an unspoken question there that Shouta both can’t answer and doesn’t know how to.
“Bakugou-kun,” Nezu calls, when Bakugou sits down on the sofa gingerly and starts writing down who knows what in the notebook.
Bakugou hums—rare—but doesn’t look up to meet Nezu’s gaze.
“Is there a reason for this meeting, Bakugou-kun?”
“I’m not going to go through this shit twice, better wait for the others to arrive.”
“As you wish,” the principal concedes.
Shouta goes to boil water for tea.
In the next 1 hour and 45 minutes that pass, Shouta drinks 4 cups of tea, Nezu drinks 10 and Bakugou absently drinks 5 juice boxes, single-mindedly writing into the notebook, cursing and staring blankly at the wall every once in a while.
In the meantime, Shouta finishes up 2 review documents, 5 more reports and does a good job of being a productive underground hero.
He shifts slightly when he notices 3 sets of footsteps and turns to the door. Their guests arrived together then.
The moment the door opens, Bakugou looks up and then back down into his book, continuing with the writing.
“What is this emergency you called me here for Nezu-kouchou? Is it All Might? Where is he?” Sir Nighteye, the notorious All Might otaku, asks immediately upon entering and is immediately soothed with Nezu’s platitudes about All Might’s health.
The current number 3 hero, however, moves directly to stand in front of Bakugou. Face tinged with concern, he tilts Bakugou’s face up to meet Jeanist’s and Shouta has to stop himself from moving at the raw expression on Bakugou’s face.
His general expression twists and a second later it’s all gone. He shakes off Jeanist’s hand and heaves a suspiciously wet sigh.
“What happened to your face, Bakugou-kun?” Jeanist asks quietly.
“S’ what I called you here for,” his student replies.
“Okay then Bakugou-kun, I think it’s time to start the explanations now,” Nezu begins.
Bakugou looks up and meets each gaze and Shouta sees no other emotion in them except for maybe slight determination.
“I invoked Section 7,” Bakugou begins.
“A child invoking Section 7,” Nighteye scoffs.
“Why don’t you all be seated?” Nezu cheerfully says.
Tsukauchi who’d been standing next to Shouta’s perch observing the crowd gathered, moves over to sit next to him. Jeanist takes up the space next to Bakugou and Nighteye sits with Nezu at the table.
Bakugou leans forward with a wince and carefully pours tea for the visitors, handing a cup to Jeanist first.
“Thank you,” Tsukauchi says as Bakugou hands off the other cups. “Bakugou-kun, I assume you know the meaning of Invoking Section 7 and the consequences for invoking it as a prank?” Tsukauchi asks, face utterly blank as he pulls a recorder out of his jacket.
“I invoke Sub-Section 8,” Bakugou says firmly, looking into Tsukauchi’s eyes.
Tsukauchi places the recorder on the table without turning it on. Bakugou then picks it up to make sure it is off, pulls out the batteries. He hesitates, the hand not holding the recorder sparks. He shakes his head before setting it down.
Nighteye looks on with the distaste of a man who’d been interrupted from important work, but the rest of them are at least somewhat familiar with his student to keep an open mind.
Tsukauchi had become familiar with Bakugou due to the USJ and the kidnapping. He’d sung nothing but praises for Shouta’s student after the kidnapping when Bakugou despite being shell-shocked had written down all the things he’d seen there along with the description of the villains.
The police officers at the scene hadn’t asked Bakugou to do it, but Bakugou sat down and did it anyway. Shouta, Nezu and Tsukauchi had arrived in the middle of Bakugou’s frantic report writing, they could do nothing to stop him. The report had been written with shaking hands and the officers had urged him to stop countless times, but Bakugou refused and by the time he’d reached the end, tears had been streaming down his face which he’d wipe away carelessly with the back of a hand. His parents had arrived sometime in that hour. They had taken one look at Bakugou and looked resigned. After the report had been shared, they thanked the police for keeping their son safe until they’d arrived, bundled him up and took him home—his father’s arm draped carefully around him and his mother moving in front of them clearing the path.
His student’s work ethic had scared Shouta that day.
Jeanist had called Shouta at the end of the internship week to rant in a very Jeanist way, at Bakugou’s people’s skills and stubbornness and the pride his student possessed all the while praising him for all the other tasks he’d finished without complaint and exceptionally to boot.
“You can start, Tsukauchi-san.”
Tsukauchi nods and begins, “Please state your name and age for the audience.”
“Bakugou Katsuki.”
“Age, Bakugou-kun,” Tsukauchi urges.
“I was 32”—a sharp intake of breath— “years old as of 3 hours ago.” His dynamite of a student answers, looking straight into Tsukauchi’s eyes. Tsukauchi, bless the man’s poker face or curse it, merely inclines his head and continues.
“How were you injured?” Tsukauchi gestures to the hospital clothes Bakugou’s still dressed in.
“I got this,” a gesture to Bakugou’s face, “when I was 27 years old. The injury to the back, I got it when I was 25. The one to the stomach? I will get it next April.” Shouta sees Tsukauchi’s eyes twitch.
Shouta feels a headache coming at the answers. Has his student finally snapped? Was this his fault for not noticing?
“But you have these injuries now?”
“A quirk accident.”
“If it is as you say, then whatever quirk accident that happened today, does it mean you’ve taken a glimpse into the future?”
“I don’t have a glimpse of the future,” Bakugou says—Shouta breathes a sigh—before continuing, “I am from the future.”
Thick, tense silence takes up the air in the room. Silence that grates on Shouta’s nerves and makes him want to snatch his student by the back of his collar, like he would an errant cat, and hide him away.
“This is nonsense. There has never been a record of temporal incidents or quirks in Japan,” Nighteye points out. “If this is a joke, it’s a very bad one.”
Shouta has to take several deep breaths before letting himself speak. But still it was Tsukauchi who asked, “Is there anything you can say to prove that you are from the future?”
“Good question, Officer. Exhibit A,” Bakugou says, reaching into his pockets to pull out what is a long chain with two silver-colored rings, placing it on the table.
“Exhibit B,” he points out, pulling out what was a phone from his other pocket—the phone sleek enough that Shouta couldn’t see the outline of it in the baggy hospital pants.
Tsukauchi picked up the rings using gloves he pulled from nowhere and examined them.
“There is an inscription here: it says ‘KE BK 21 Apr’ and—and the year is about 12 years into the future,” Tsukauchi says, glancing up at Bakugou.
“Let me see,” Shouta says, picking up his own set of gloves and looking at the inscription on the rings.
There right there on the underside of the ring was that inscription and another that said ‘Eine Ewigkeit mit dir’. He’d have to look into what that means.
“These are wedding rings, men’s rings at that,” Shouta comments, studying the material and the overall shape. They were beautiful in an abstract way to Shouta, with scratches on the sides but nothing that would detract from the beauty.
“You got a problem, Sensei?” his student baits, as Nezu picks up the phone from the table.
“Can you unlock this, Bakugou-kun?” he asks, passing it along.
“Unlock it yourself; the code is 16201004.”
It unlocks and Nezu quietly squeaks and assures, “I will only look into the gallery and if any folders are password protected, I will not try to access them.”
“Whatever.”
This was a breach of privacy in the utmost sense and Bakugou is one of his most private students.
“Don’t look at me like that sensei. Every photo that can be seen on that phone is approved for the media. The rest, the more intimate ones, are password protected in a folder that’s hidden that can only be accessed by another password. It’s not a breach of privacy.”
“That’s a lot of protection, Bakugou-kun. Can’t say that I disapprove,” Nezu says, clicking through the photos.
“Glad you approve,” Bakugou replies bluntly.
Nighteye shifts to look at the pictures as well and then they both come over to Shouta and there Shouta catches a glimpse of his students—his students and how they look in the future. In the majority of the photos, it’s Kirishima—bigger, taller and built like a tank.
There is Asui—still shorter than most of her classmates—eating a cherry. Ashido—grinning maniacally—holding a camera. Shouji with a scar on the side of his face holding up what looked like a drunk Monoma, Ojirou and a floating dress—Hagakure—caught in an eternal dance movement, Aoyama hoarding cheese and cocktails at a function, Tokoyami looking directly at the camera with a peace sign and Hawks draped on his back, and so many more. There are also ones with Shinsou in the very far background and several with Todoroki, Uraraka and Midoriya. Then there are photos of billboards with the faces of Class A plastered on them.
It’s like looking into the future. It is looking into the future.
These photos are all time stamped and it only proves that his student had been sent back. The backgrounds of the photos vary from battles to balls to gyms and community centers. There is a specific photo with a community center opening, with Ashido and Kirishima smiling these huge smiles. Shouta instinctively mimics with his own small smile.
Shouta is happy his students hadn’t lost their ability to smile.
It was a lot of information to process.
There was now a heaviness in the room, now that it is tentatively established that his student was from the future.
“Say, you are from the future, how did you end up in the past?” Nighteye asks for the first time after everyone was presented with the evidence.
This question, however, brings life back into his student. His eyes narrow with a rage—a cold sort of rage Shouta never knew Bakugou was capable of.
“A teenager with a fucking hero complex decided that I had to live—not that I was dying, just paralyzed, mind you—and that they would only send me one day back to prevent the Level 3- a fucking Level 3, can you believe that? I’ve taken care of dozens of those on my own—disaster and teenagers, yes? You have stress and hormones and fucking abysmal quirk control—which, of course, stress only makes worse—and in that process one day became 17 years,” Bakugou snarls with a smile on his face; that looked more like a sneer.
It’s the first time Bakugou looked closest to how he was 10 hours ago. This only made Shouta realize just how much his student changed in the course of an evening.
No one in the room says anything to that, the rest all stuck on the words ‘Level 3’. His student was taken down during a Level 3? Shouta wants to bang his head against the wall. Level 3 is never hard for a top 10 hero. Shouta assumes he’s Top 10—no, Shouta knows Bakugou is Top 5. There was no way his ambitious student would settle for something less.
“It was an implosion quirk that destroyed some parts of my spine. Eijirou’s heart, fuck, Eijirou’s heart was imploded by the same villain. Hardening didn’t matter to fuck. We were off duty helping with evacuation on the flyover after the attack started and that was all we were going to do—heroes were already coming in—but they had to recognize us and attack us,” Bakugou murmurs quietly, voice breaking a little at Kirishima’s name. That’s what it was then—the scene he’d walked into in the Infirmary.
“Why weren’t you fighting back?” Nighteye asks.
“Maybe because I have an explosion quirk and we were standing on a flyover that, if I fought on, would collapse, cause property damage and kill various people underneath it? You take your fucking pick, Sir.”
“The injuries? How did they come about?” Nezu asks.
“International Quirk Law, Section 35 Sub-Section 4, classified. But you have high specs, yeah? I’m sure you can figure it out,” Katsuki replies flippantly. And Shouta feels a chill run down his spine at the look in his student’s eyes that warned them not to say a word about the quirk.
“Yes. I am sure, I can figure it out,” Nezu agrees quietly.
“You lost Kirishima in the fight?” Shouta asks finally. That’s the only thing in his mind now. His student had seen his husband die and then had been paralyzed, only to be sent back to the past by a teenager. And now, his student—former student? Shouta doesn’t care for semantics—is 16 again, with injuries that will scar.
This was trauma. Losing a spouse? Shouta can’t even fathom what that would feel like. Maybe it’s the same as losing a friend?
“I know that look on your face, old man. Don’t think too much about it, these things happen.” That was the kind of sober response Shouta never wanted to hear from any of his students, much less Bakugou.
And something must have shown in his face because, Bakugou once again says, “I know it’s hard to hear Sensei, it’s okay. I am back here now, maybe we can prevent some of the shit from happening and probably save a bunch of lives in the process. I’ll deal.”
“Are you certain we should change the timeline?” Nighteye asks.
“Forget about that question for a moment, Bakugou-kun,” Jeanist implores, turning slightly to look at Bakugou—the concern practically pouring out of him. “What do you need?”
A thousand emotions flit across Bakugou’s face before it settles on something fragile.
“We can get to that at the end, shishou.”
Jeanist masks the surprise much better than Nighteye and Tsukauchi do. Shouta, however, isn’t surprised to hear that in the least
He goes back to the photo that is currently shown on the phone, it’s a group photo of the entire class. All of them are older with various scars that show how they’d survived, with big smiles on their faces and Shouta has to mourn two children now.
“You really should cut the shit, sensei, all of your students are alive.”
Shouta has to think just how bad he must have looked for Bakugou to read his mind and there’s a breathy chuckle that brings his focus back to the others.
“He’s known you for a lot longer, Aizawa-kun,” Nezu nods at Bakugou.
“Yeah, yeah, know you plenty,” Bakugou responds, eyes softer, sadder, fonder.
“Back to your question, Sir, I am changing the timeline. These next 2 years are fucked up on epic proportions and I don’t want us all to go through that shit again,” Bakugou answers finally, looking directly at Sir Nighteye.
“Are you certain you are not in a loop-back? Is it possible for you to vouch that for every change you make you are not erasing something from the future you are coming from?” Nighteye asks.
“That is a legitimate question, Bakugou-kun,” Nezu agrees.
“I know what a loop back feels like, this isn’t it. We are making an entire new branch of a timeline. I am 100% certain of it.”
Another thing Shouta does not want—care—to think about. Tsukauchi and Nighteye exchange glances and Jeanist just closes his eyes.
“Can we know why you think so, Bakugou-kun?” Tsukauchi asks.
“There are a lot of neutral forces at work here. If something like Sir suggested happened, let’s say, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you. The memories I have would’ve long been destroyed. The scars would’ve been healed.”
That is the last thing Shouta wants to hear. Forces that can breach UA’s walls and erase memories and scars, Shouta shudders and looks to Nezu, who merely nods.
“You are acquainted then,” Nezu asks, knowingly.
“Unfortunately.”
“What should we call you Bakugou-san? You were a pro-hero,” Tsukauchi trails off.
Bakugou turns to look at Jeanist, then. He looks him straight in the eyes and says, “I found a name, a wish as you mentioned. I call myself ‘Dynamight’ after dynamite and All Might.”
“That’s a good name,” Jeanist approves.
“You called it a fucking dud,” Bakugou counters.
“Oh, what did you fully call yourself, Bakugou?” Jeanist asks, voice concealing a lot of mirth, eyes dancing.
“Great Explosion Murder God, Dynamight,” his student says with a look of complete seriousness.
Shouta sighs at the name and Jeanist looks to the heavens for more help.
“No wonder you called it a dud,” Nighteye says, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips.
“So, Dynamight-san, what information can you provide us with?” Tsukauchi asks, bringing the conversation back on track. “Or better yet, what is your plan to deal with the League?”
“Bakugou’s fine. I don’t care about the League. All I care about right now is killing All for One,” Bakugou answers succinctly.
The tension in the room thickens to the point of disbelief.
The fact that his student talks about killing a villain—so casually, at that—makes Shouta wonder how badly he’d failed at his duty to protect his children. Killing, or even talk of killing a villain, is taboo in the Hero Society. It is done but never spoken of.
In the time it takes for them to adjust to the words, Bakugou once again goes back to writing the book. He finishes an entire page before looking at the others.
“We can think about killing that fucking menace to the society later, but for now I need you to look at the this,” Bakugou grumbles, giving the notebook to Nighteye.
“This is about the Shie Hassaikai case that we received just yesterday,” Nigteye says looking at the first page of the book.
“It is. It’s a report on how the case went in my timeline, how to prevent casualties and such,” Bakugou responds.
“This looks like an official report of the mission?”
“That’s because it is,” a look of complete disbelief. “Eidetic memory, Sir.”
Shouta never knew this fact about Bakugou. This is insane. Shouta has entered a parallel dimension that is fucking with him. Karma for all the times he’s failed.
Eidetic memory with everything Bakugou went through meant his student was a mess. Shouta should lock his student up in a psychiatric facility and throw away the keys.
“You are not locking me up, Sensei,” Bakugou reads his thoughts again, far too easily. This is getting annoying if Shouta has anything to say about it.
“I am fine. I have, no, had, a therapist. I just need to get back in touch with them,” Bakugou says.
“You willingly went to therapy?” Jeanist asks, pleasantly surprised.
“You put me into mandatory therapy once, at 20. I didn’t like those shitheads, so I decided to search for someone on my own and came into contact with the lady,” Bakugou admits. “Better someone I chose, than those idiots.”
“I am glad you went to her,” Jeanist says.
“You also taught me some alternative methods that worked,” Bakugou says, with his head cocked to the side, eyebrows raised. Jeanist’s eyes widened, when he finally understood what Bakugou meant—an inside joke?
“Relax, I was 21 when you brought it up. Eijirou was my partner. I wouldn’t ever let anyone do that.” The ‘not even you’ could be heard loud and clear.
Jeanist coughs, “I am glad.”
“Never thought I could ever fluster you, Shishou. Maybe I should talk about sex more often,” Bakugou says, eyeing Jeanist with an absolutely demonic look. Tsukauchi coughs and Jeanist looks disgusted by those words.
“I really don’t understand the human need for talking about intercourse,” Nezu adds his own statement.
Nighteye lets out a chuckle, disguising it poorly as a cough, but Bakugou grins at the man.
“Don’t think I’d fall for that twice, Bakugou-kun,” Jeanist warns, eyes narrowed.
“Eh, I had to at least fucking try.”
Shouta pinches the bridge of his nose to stave off the headache—that was quickly turning into a migraine.
“We are not talking about sex, you are sixteen,” Shouta sighs.
“But I am 33, married and fucking older than you,” his student protests.
“I don’t care.”
“Uh-huh. Keep fooling yourself, Sensei.”
“Just go through that notebook,” Shouta tiredly urges.
Section 7 of Article 342 of Emergency Law: In case a person, civilian, hero, young, old, comes across information potentially damaging to society, they are allowed to ask for a meeting to explain the situation with the highest ranking Pro available, a police officer of good name, an institution of the country that is linked to Heroics with a Hero Agency that has a good standing. This can be done with just the mention of the Article and section.
Sub-Section 3: Any person—regardless of gender, age, religion, quirk status, mutant nature, caste, race, financial stability and sexual orientation—is permitted to invoke Section 7.
Sub-Section 8: A safety measure for the invoker to prevent the invoker from being harassed for the information. This can mean protection from any and all people, including the government.
International Quirk Law: Any country with no laws for certain Quirk incidents—accidents or otherwise—would yield to the International Quirk Laws.
Section 35 relates to temporal quirks and their effects.
Sub-Section 4: The description of the quirk—and the quirk user, if worked out—should remain unknown to prevent harm to their person.