Chapter Text
Izuku… wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It was late, his brain was tired after a three-hour consultation with Kirishima’s agency and he just wanted to get home and eat his Konbini dinner in his hotel room in peace, but here he was venturing down a dark alley way towards what he was hoping and praying weren’t some of his first-year students.
“I want to preface this by saying I'm not mad, I'm just very disappointed.”
The three fifteen-year-olds whipped around in varying states of shock. The one closest to him turned so fast her long white hair flew up and got caught in her mouth, making her sputter and flail to spit it out. Behind her, one kid had moved past surprise and was moving quickly into begging for forgiveness, while the other resigned himself to his fate and tucked his head down, pink curls falling into his face.
Izuku cocked his head to the side, observing the teens for a moment before reaching into his jacket pocket. “You're all going to be running drills with Aizawa till you're begging for expulsion, I swear.” He whipped his hand out, a throwing knife leaving his grip with deadly precision and pinning the fourth and final figure in the alley to a brick wall. “Okay, now I’m mad. Didn't we teach you never to take your eyes off the target?”
The young adult gently placed his bag of takeout on the alley floor, sending up a silent prayer that this was one of the less-grimey side streets, and approached the cluster of dark-clothed individuals. The three students parted like the red sea, letting him pass through them and approach the possible criminal currently pinned by his coat sleeve to the wall.
“Look, man, I haven’t done shit, I don’t know why these crazy kids started attacking me-”
“Do yourself a favor and shut up. Masaki, explain to me why you chose him as your target.” Squinting, Izuku tried to perform his own assessment of the other man. Scuffed sneakers, the bottom hem of his jeans chewed up from dragging on the pavement, some dark stains on his knees and the cuffs of his jacket, nothing jumping out immediately. Something poked up out of his mess of matted hair, perhaps evidence of a mutation or transformation quirk?
His student squeaked, wringing his hands as he moved to stand at Izuku’s shoulder and blocking out some of the scant light entering the alleyway. “Ah, Mr. Midoriya, um. What are you doing in Tokyo? I thought you were working on a case with Dynamight and Red Riot this week?”
“ Report, Dreamer.”
“Right, yes sir. We- that is, Miyuki, Yūki, and me, came across this villain trying to sell drugs to someone. The buyer, uh, got away from us, but we were going to bring him to the police for questioning!”
It took everything in Izuku not to drop his head into his hands and groan. Instead, he took a deep breath, held it for three seconds, and looked back at the drug dealer in question. Said man froze, staring back at Izuku like a deer caught in headlights, free hand groping around in his jacket pocket. They both paused for a moment, watching each other, before the man quickly jerked his hand out and swung it towards Izuku. Instinctually he jerked back, pulling his head back and watching as the blade of a box cutter cut through the air in front of him.
“Should have just kept walking, man,” he tried to growl out, grip on his weapon wavering slightly.
Content enough with the space he’d earned for himself, the dealer reached up and tried to yank out the knife pinning him to the wall. He tried once, twice, stared incredulously at the blade embedded in brick, then dropped into a crouch as Izuku moved forward to crush him up against the wall. Cutting his losses, the man wriggled out of his coat and left it hung up in its impromptu hook.
Izuku took a step back, assessing the situation. Due to his own lapse in judgment - in his defense, he was not prepared to be fighting, and had only brought his usual weaponry and very little to restrain a perp - the man was both unrestrained and armed. In addition, he had three students at his back that would serve as liabilities, as well as restricting the type of… force he could use. On the plus side, now that his forearms were exposed and they had shifted a bit, their stretch of the alley was illuminated and confirmed the theory of a mutation quirk. The man had white and brown banding on his arms. Combined with the velvety stumps protruding from his scalp, Izuku was pretty sure it was a simple mutation quirk; easy enough to combat, but that wasn’t discounting some secondary transformative or emitter aspect -
He stepped to the side, letting the stab that would have hit his ribcage pass him by harmlessly, reaching out and grabbing the man’s wrist as he overextended and tilted precariously. Izuku squeezed gently, feeling bones and tendons groan under his grip.
“Is this your first time trying to stab someone?” he asked, genuine curiosity coloring his tone. “This is actually a good learning moment, students. See here, his weight is all on the front leg. He’s off balance, and I can just do this-” Izuku kicked his foot out, connecting to the side of his knee and buckling it. Using the grip he had on the man’s wrist to control his fall, the two lowered to the ground together. “-and now I’ve got him in a pretty solid pin, make sure you’ve always got control of the weapons in the field.” He paused for a moment, pressing down on a tendon and making the man drop his blade. He sputtered, spitting out a few curses and rude comments about Izuku’s mother, but quieted down when his face was pressed to the hard asphalt beneath him. Izuku tossed the weapon to the side, listening to it skitter across the pavement. “Remember what I was teaching you kids about different types of restraints and holds?”
After a few seconds of silence Izuku looked up, an eyebrow raised. His three students were staring at him, in various states of surprise. He rolled his eyes, shifting and resting his knee on the man’s back, pulling one arm into an armlock and folding his wrist up towards his neck. The man grunted, squirming weakly against the hold.
“Conductor, what type of hold am I executing here?”
Seta blinked, brushed white hair out of her face, and blinked again. Izuku nodded at her, willing to wait as long as it took for his students to come to their senses. Really, what were they thinking, freezing up at the first unexpected thing? For everyone’s sake he hoped this was the first and only action they were seeing tonight.
“Oh, um, that’s a… a hammerlock, right?”
“Glad something I’m teaching you stuck,” he quipped, “since evidently the vigilante laws I was trying to hammer into your skulls didn’t.” All three of them flushed, shuffling their feet and looking away from him. Izuku chuckled, reaching into his back pocket and fishing out his cellphone. With a whistle, he caught Kawanoe’s eye and tossed the device to him. The boy fumbled, bouncing it between his hands in his effort to keep it from falling to the ground. Once he had a proper grip on it, Izuku bobbed his head in his general direction.
“Signal, call 110. Let them know we have someone here that needs to be charged with aggravated assault with a weapon. Do you know what street we’re off of?” The boy shook his
head silently. A brief glance at the other two students got him no further results, so Izuku pried the man’s face out of the pavement to ask.
“Why the fuck would I know? Why would I tell you? You piece of shit, when I get my hands on you-”
“One of you kids can look on Moogle Maps so you know what to tell the responder. And let them know the situation is being handled by a bystander. Don’t self-incriminate, know your rights and all that.” He paused, thinking over what he just said. “Should I really be giving my students that type of advice? I don’t want to encourage this type of behavior but I also can’t let any of my students get arrested for being stupid. Shouta would literally never let me live it down…”
“Um, Mr. Midoriya?” Kawanoe interrupted his muttering. One hand had come up to cover the microphone as he addressed his teacher. Izuku pressed his lips together, trying not to flush as he realized his mouth had been running away from him again. “They’re asking about the ‘bystander’ and if they’re okay, what should I say?”
With a put-upon sigh, Izuku shifted his weight and reached his hand out, beckoning. The pink-haired boy shuffled forwards, eyes flicking down to the suspect repeatedly before he made it within arms reach. As soon as the cellphone was passed on he scuttled back to the far wall of the alley, picking at his cuticles until Masaki swatted at his hands.
Izuku tucked the phone up against his ear, pinching it in place with his shoulder. He’d wanted to avoid identifying himself to the police - plausible deniability, lack of evidence, all of that - but it would most likely go a lot smoother if he just handled the communications.
“This is Midoriya Izuku speaking, what can I do you for?”
“Hello sir, the other person said you had the suspect restrained? I just wanted to ensure there weren’t any injuries and that the aggressor wasn’t a threat to anyone at the scene. Your wellbeing is the priority, so don’t try to be a hero!”
A disbelieving scoff slipped out before Izuku could stop it (he wasn’t insulted, he wasn’t , it was just some twisted type of irony or something that those were the words they chose to use).
The body pinned under his thrashed, energy renewed now that he thought the one pinning him was distracted. His bucking almost worked, throwing Izuku’s weight further up and onto his shoulders. He was able to get his knees under his hips and was threatening to roll over. Distantly, Izuku heard one of his students gasp and take a hesitant step forward. Not looking up, he shook his head once.
“No one’s gotten hurt, far as I’m aware, and-” he grunted, one hand coming up to hold the phone more firmly as the other shifted its grip. A foot braced against his upper spine, a twist of his hips, and Izuku was rolling the both of them. The man’s back slammed hard into asphalt, winding him, and Izuku pushed him a half rotation more, wrapping his legs around his now-forcefully-straightened arm and locking them in place. “-I’ve got him pinned pretty good. He's about to get his shoulder dislocated if he keeps fu-freaking squirming. ”
The situation once more under control, Izuku looked back up at his students. “Hey, Dreamer. Same question as Conductor, what hold am I using now?”
The black haired boy seemed to have come to accept his teacher’s unhinged behavior and just cocked his head. “It’s an armbar, right?”
“Ding ding ding!” Izuku smiled up at his student. “Sorry,” he said back into the phone, the responder having gone oddly silent on him. “I’ve been teaching these kids a couple different restraints this month and figured this would be a good learning opportunity!”
The line is silent for a few more seconds. Izuku can see two of his students dragging their hands down their faces, and the man pinned underneath him pauses in his stream of curses and threats to silently Judge™ him.
“O-of course, sir. Um. Police are on their way, would you like to stay on the line?”
“Ah, no need! We’ve got this all handled here, don’t want to clog up the phone lines!”
He’s able to hang up the phone after another minute of exchanged pleasantries, only torquing on the arm in his grip twice when the repeated death threats got a bit too gruesome for current company.
“You know,” he started, slipping his phone back into his pocket, “you kids never did tell me how you ended up in this alley with an alleged drug dealer. Care to share?”
Masaki and Kawanoe scuffed their feet in the dirt, avoiding eye contact, while Seta seemed suddenly very interested in something caught under her fingernail.
“I’ll tell ya,” the man in question piped up. “These three brats dropped down from the fuckin’ sky saying they were part of that ‘Blind Eye’ vigilante group, talking ‘bout how they’d ‘clean up these streets.’”
“Goddammit,” Izuku cursed, free hand lashing out to punch the ground. Everyone but him flinched as the asphalt buckled a fraction, some pebbles knocked free and digging into his clenched fist. “Now I owe Shouta 5000 yen. We aren’t even based in Tokyo, why are you trying to join those guys? They’re all a bunch of clout chasers anyway- I’m getting off topic.”
In the distance, growing steadily closer, Izuku could hear police sirens. “Alright, before the cops get here: you are not vigilantes. You were not trying to become vigilantes. You are students who were in the wrong place at the right time and never used your quirks on the suspect. Understood?”
“What about me?” Izuku was getting really tired of this guy interjecting in his conversation with his students.
“Do you want to be conscious for the cops? Yes? Then I’d suggest shutting up.”
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A large, steaming cup of black coffee slammed down on the laminated desk surface. Some of the scalding hot liquid sloshed out and pooled on the to-go lid. Izuku’s forehead followed suit, making contact with the messy table top with a ‘thud’ that almost echoed. From the desk beside his own, Aizawa Shouta held out one hand, not even looking up from the laptop screen he was squinting at. Without peeling his skin from the desk, Izuku slapped a few bills into his palm.
Five minutes later when Izuku finally gathered the strength to lift his head and get started on his work, his drink was nowhere to be seen. Halfway across the campus, Yamada reached up and fiddled with his hearing aid, face scrunched up at the sudden ringing he was hearing. Beside him, silent and smirking, Aizawa sipped a cup of coffee.