Chapter Text
Yagi: I understand you want to learn more about it, but I don't really know.
Izuku: That's okay, Mr. Yagi!
Izuku: However, would it be possible for me to shadow, or at least, sit in with some of the Techs? I understand how busy they must be, but I think it would help me get it a lot more, and while I am there, I can also learn how to best foward information to them, watch them in action, as well as maybe take some notes on how to apply Technician knowledge into my own heroics in the future! It would be like my quirk notebooks, but applied to a completely seperate side of heroism!
Izuku: Besides, Amatsume was telling me that every hero should know how their technician operates behind the screen and while I sadly won't get to work with her, or at least not for a long time as a hero, I think it would be important due to my quirkless status and such, to learn all that I can regarding the world of heroics, especially behind the curtain.
Yagi: ...Young Midoriya, if you think Ms. Amatsume is cute, you could just say so.
Izuku: ...
Yagi: She's a bit too old for you.
Izuku: ....
Yagi: I'll see if there is a slot in your schedule that aligns with hers.
Izuku: You could've just said no.
"Heroism didn't start as an official system. Arguably, it wasn't an official system for the majority of the existence of quirks if you define it as something in which the government has a hand in." Midnight's expression was one of relaxed confidence, a storyteller on a familiar stage. "In fact, if you follow artistic trends and literary works, you'll find that the trend for heroes being loose cannons from their agency, or secret works with the government only emerges within the last century, as a response to the structuring and bureaucratic implementations into an otherwise natural response people had to things getting worse."
Izuku sat at the edge of his bean bag chair, which was uncomfortable, but it felt like the appropriate response to the lecture. Even Mr. Yagi was paying full attention, gangly limbs throw over each other, blue eyes focused on the professor.
"No, heroism started because people want to help."
There was a level of gentleness in the way she said it, like Midnight had been trying to believe the statement as much as teach it. That people wanted to help.
All his life that was all Izuku wanted to do. Help.
"And now, due to quirks, they could. The first heroes we know of, according to records, began their activity mainly as public servants without masks, simply using their powers for good. However," she added, as if knowing the swell of pride in Izuku's chest had grown from that sentence alone, "it didn't initially go well. Of course, a lot of people were happy to have heroes, the stuff of legends, walking among them. But quirks came into the world at a tumultuous time, and the response at times was violent rejection."
"I heard, uhm-" Izuku snapped his mouth shut. Midnight, however, simply gave him a knowing nod, and he continued. "I heard, or read, I don't really remember which, that it was then that people began throwing on costumes. As a way to hide their identities."
That answer got him another encouraging smile.
"Not just to hide their identities. More important than that-" she paused, did a little snort that somehow was still dignified, and continued "-at least to me, is the fact that those costumes turned them into symbols."
Izuku couldn't quite help the way his eyes darted to Mr. Yagi, to the Symbol of Peace, bony hands folded over his knees, a far off expression writ across is face. It wasn't quite a smile, just a small upturn of the lips, and a softening of the eyes, but it spoke to something his mentee couldn't see.
"While heroics are important on the ground, both when it comes to villainy, and civil acts, it is important to understand that, in a sense, our main purpose is to serve as examples." Midnight tapped elegant fingers along the tabletop, a small thoughtful pout on her lips. "Perhaps beacons might be a finer word to use. Point is-" the heroine pointed to Izuku, confidence oozing from the gesture "-we are meant to inspire people to follow in our footsteps, to know it is okay to be good!"
That was the part that caught the hero-to-be-hopefully-maybe. Nervously, but what wasn't nervous about him anyway, Izuku raised his hand.
"I get the, uh, the rest, but why would people know it's okay to be, well, good? I thought people always want to be good."
It wasn't Midnight who answered him, however.
"They do, but it isn't always easy," Mr. Yagi began, "to know you can. A lot of people feel they will be judged, or hurt, if they are good." It was hard to know what the old hero was feeling, often. He wore his heart on his sleeve, never really hiding his feelings when he was with his smaller form, but the layers of complexity, of decades of heroism made the actual emotions difficult to parse. "Even just back in my day, some people still felt that helping would put them in danger, that villains or simply those predisposed for it, would harass or harm them. As heroes, we show them, by being there, bright and flashy, that it's alright. That we're here to help, same as they are."
It was hard, sure. But Izuku had been around the man for months now, almost every single day, learning from him. The gentle contentment on the old hero's face was something special.
The fact that they kept saying 'we' also didn't escape Izuku. It made him want to cry, and he would, later in his room, where he had space to freak out. Maybe he'd text Mirko about it, but that would be weird, because even if she was nice, she was an adult, and would she find it weird? Probably, but he really needed to tell someone, and he supposed he could tell his mom but that would be a bit embarrassing.
"Exactly. And while our costumes might look a bit silly at times to some, the fact that they are bright and iconic-" she mimicked snapping her whip with a grin "-sticks more in people's psyche, and reassures them when they see it. Sorry for the jargon, hon, but essentially, since our colours and shape language is so stark, it tends to stick more prominently in people's minds, and when exposed to even things that just resemble us," Midnight explained, as she gestured to a part of the décor with All Might's signature colours and patterns, "people tend to feel reassured. Because they know there are people out there to help."
It made sense. Hell, in many ways, it was what Izuku wanted to be, what he promised All Might he'd become, in some fashion. But that was the issue, wasn't it?
“I, well, it’s just-“ The words jumbled together in his mouth, too complicated and simple all at once. Nothing was quite working. "-how do you do that? How do you become a symbol?"
Izuku didn't meant to say those words with the weight that he had. It honestly sounded like a plea, like he was desperately asking for the cure to a disease he'd been suffering from for all of his life.
In a way, he was. Not his Quirkless status, no matter how much people tried instilling him with that idea. No, the disease he'd been doing battle with since he was a child was hopelessness. It sank deep into his bones, even as he pushed beyond it, nibbling at his thoughts, at his aspirations. Mr. Yagi's help, and everyone else's at the agency and beyond, had certainly curbed the symptoms, but the root cause still writhed just out of sight.
"I don't- I know I'm Quirkless. And weird. And frankly, I haven't been any kind of normal since, I don't even know," the teenager blurted out, flustered and out of breath. "And, I don't want to seem ungrateful, or mean, or anything! But heroes, they-"
How could he even describe it?
The knot in his throat, clogging with grief so old it felt like a part of him? How could he tell Midnight and Mr. Yagi the weight that he felt? Even the fact he felt weight at all was childish in his mind. Here were heroes, much older than him, who had fought evil and won, who had seen the darkness of the world and still smiled. And here was Izuku, complaining, because he was a little broken.
But it didn't lessen it. No matter how much he rationalized it, the weight of being like him, of knowing others did too, didn't go away. The statistics and the forums and the sting of words and burns and fists. It didn't go away.
That was the thing with grief too.
"Heroes don't reach everyone. And I don't blame them. I don't think I could, even if I wanted to. There are so many people in the world, I can't expect all of them to be reached," he admitted, and that alone ached. Both heroes were now looking at him, but he refused to look up, to face judgement quite yet. "But I want to. I want, I want to reach the ones like me, who didn't have anyone else. Who looked up at heroes and, even just normal people, and thought they were lesser. When I was a kid, I realized not all men are created equal, but that doesn't-" Izuku balled his hands in his lap "-mean that they shouldn't be helped."
It was too much, he knew. Not the sentiment, but of course Izuku would make it dramatic, blow it out of proportion, all of that.
Maybe Kacchan was right.
"You know," Midnight began, far closer than she'd been before, "I have had a lot of really smart students. I won't belittle them to raise you, because some of them got to where you are with little help, or simply lacked the words to verbalize their beliefs."
Izuku looked up, and found the heroine crouching down in front of him, a smile somewhere between tender and proud.
"But it is rare to find someone who knows what it means to be a hero the way you do."
The wet against his cheeks was a distant thought at best, dwarfed by a moonbeam of wonder. Or maybe it was pride. Or maybe relief.
Bony fingers gently squeezed his shoulder. "I told you before, Young Midoriya, that you were right to want to reach those that we can't." Mr. Yagi looked at him, blue eyes full of determination. "And you will. You will reach them, with us at your back, until you outpace even the rest of us."
"I don't think I can, uhm, outpace you. Either of you," Izuku added, glancing at Midnight.
The heroine didn't answer right away. Her face turned thoughtful, and then she stood to her full height, a low hum in the back of her throat. Right before he could muster up the nerve to ask her to elaborate on the humming, Midnight's hands found her cocked hips and she spoke. "Yagi, you're planning on having guest mentors, right?"
That was not what either of them expected, hero and fanboy staring slack jawed at the woman. Mr. Yagi recovered faster than Izuku however. "Yes. In fact, I had already contacted some old friends and-"
"Great! Consider me booked," Midnight declared, throwing her mane of hair over her shoulder. "How free are your Wednesday afternoons? Around 5:30PM or so?"
What.
"What?"
"I'm just saying, professor-" Izuku fumbled with the notes he'd been putting together "-if the problem with quirk classifications throughout the centuries was their hyper-specificity, and in the modern times, they are too broad to be of much use, why not find a middle ground?"
Midnight, or Professor Midnight, or Professor Kayama didn't snort. She did, however, blow air out her nose, and give him a look that Izuku had been learning meant that he almost got it. "I'm glad you caught that, but I was getting to it. We do actually have classifications systems that are in the sweet spot of complex enough to capture the diversity of quirks, and narrow enough to not lose purpose as a classification system. But," the professor quipped with a flourish of her hands, "those are mostly used within the hero world, and scientific fields."
"My dad uses one, yeah." Izuku moved the flashcards to the correct order, cringed, and then adjusted them again. "But why doesn't the public use them?"
"Because to most people, it is a bit meaningless. Quirks, over the last few decades, have paradoxically become something both deeply personal, and incredibly iconic." Professor Kayama peered over Izuku's shoulder at his notes and grinned. "Legally speaking, quirks aren't meant to be used outside of the home, or in specific circumstances, but they are also incredibly central to society, which leads to broad knowledge being required, while specific one that isn't regarding one's own quirk being relegated to unnecessary trivia."
"But why wouldn't they want to know? Quirks are so important to most people, it would be fair to assume they'd want to know about them more."
That got him a little nod. "A fair assumption. But, let me ask you something: why is the sky blue?"
"Uh?"
"You see it everyday, and you decide whether or not to take an umbrella outside due to it. The sky is important, and can tell us a lot about the world, even if we don't realize it, but you don't even know why it is blue, right?" the professor tapped her nose. "Because knowing why it is blue isn't important to your day-to-day life. It's not the best example, I know," she admitted, shrugging, "but the point is, people don't usually look into what doesn't interest them, or they don't find relevant. The sky is blue, because you can see it is, and because people told you that colour is blue. Present Mic, for example, is an Emitter type, because most people don't particularly care to know that he is technically someone with a Mutant-Feature-Emitter, or that in some technicalities, his quirk is primarily classified as an Enhancer."
The speed at which his pencil dashed across the notebook could've only be rivalled by All Might in his prime. It wasn't as if he didn't know some of those classifications already, from debating his dad's papers and a handful of discussions he'd had on forums, but it was still interesting, to hear them from his newest professor.
Newest was perhaps a bit of an overstatement.
After the declaration the heroine had made, followed by a few papers being passed around and yet another reshuffling of his schedule, the lessons had begun in earnest. That had been nearly two months ago, and while it only left them with 10 lessons under their belt, it felt like way longer for Izuku.
Professor Midnight was different from the others. Mr. Yagi's earnest passion, Ms. Yono's deliberate guidance, even Mirko's laid back fervour, they all made the lessons with them fly by, making them less like a classroom, and more like conversations. The R-Rated heroine was a professor at one of the highest rated universities in Asia, and a hero all at once, and it showed.
Every single lesson had a main point, and half a dozen others that were snuck under the main one. Every question that Izuku had was answered thoughtfully, with research to back it up if he dug further.
Primarily, they had been focusing on history, starting not from when heroics started, or even when quirks did, but all the way back. While that wasn't uncommon, since people still learned history in school, there was such a major emphasis on the rise of quirks and the societal shifts that occurred due to it, that the rest of history sometimes got glossed over. By certain teachers anyway.
But Professor Midnight? She focused on the spiderweb of consequences that was history, going over the rise and falls of empires, how people lived, how the art people made reflected the culture that raised them, and how all those details led to the current tense. She had told him of mythological epics, of buried cooking pots, of kings that drank poison to avoid assassination, of the whitewashing of history, of the wonders and terrors that people were capable of throughout history.
She also indulged Izuku's questions, about quirks, about being a woman in heroics, about anything really.
Her only payment, aside from the one Mr. Yagi had forced her to take, was for Izuku to listen well, and do specific exercises that she asked of him. They weren't physical exercises, not like his training.
"Speaking of enhancing things," the heroine said, sitting against the sofa, legs crossed elegantly, "did you do your quasi-meditation the last week?"
"I, uhm, tried? I mean, I did it, but I am a little bad at it," Izuku admitted sheepishly. "Just feels weird, I guess. Being so aware of my own body."
The heroine adjusted her glasses, and gave her student a curious look.
"I don't know, it's weird to feel myself." Izuku struggled to find a way to put the gnawing feeling of discomfort into words that wouldn't concern his professor. He'd tried explaining it to his mom once, a few years ago, about how he didn't like the way he looked, or how things felt, but she'd freaked out. Not a bad freak out, she wasn't mad. Just presumed he was sick, or wanted new clothes, and yeah, the figurine he got in the end of their impromptu running around session was really cool, but it still didn't erase the discomfort. "Sorry. I, I will, am still trying, professor."
The look only got more intense. Hell, if Izuku didn't know about [Somnambulist], he'd assume that Midnight, Professor Midnight really, was trying to peer into his mind. Mind readers were rare though, or at least, in the sense that people meant mind readers. Reading about the subject when his dad had mentioned it offhandedly, he'd found that due to the inner complexity of people's brain, and the general internal language and mental associations people use when thinking, actual mind reading is incredibly difficult. Not impossible, but it requires a completely different physical structure and-
"Where do you feel the weirdness?" she suddenly asked, voice soft and patient.
"Where?" Izuku asked dumbly.
"Yes." Professor Midnight unfolded her legs, delicate as ever, and leaned forward, flannel bunching up as she moved. "Discomfort tends to sit somewhere. Did you notice where it could've sat for you?"
He didn't, obviously. Izuku had been too uncomfortable to think of where the uncomfortableness sat. So he shrugged, hiding between raised shoulders, lips drawn thin.
"That's okay. Really," the heroine insisted "it takes awareness of the fact to know of it's importance."
"Like the classification of quirks," Izuku muttered.
"Exactly." Midnight wasn't like his other teachers and mentors. There were no extended silences in her class, so before the teenager could unfurl the knot of anxiety in his chest, the professor continued, "And it's because of the refraction of light against air, and the wavelengths."
It didn't even take him a moment. "Blue is the longest?"
"Close to shortest actually. But yes." With an elegant swoop of her arm, Professor Kayama, or Professor Midnight, or just Midnight, because she was still a hero he deeply respected, pointed down to his notes. "On that note, let's move on to a very blue period of history, the Age of Discovery."
Blink. "Why is it a blue period?"
"Lots of ocean."
Ah.
"And I do mean lots of it."