Chapter Text
Izuku is never meant to be a hero.
He’s quirkless, working part time to make up the gaps in his mom’s pension plan. She has stage four cancer, and a combination of complications and stress means she has to stay at the hospital. Thankfully, the pension is fairly generous, which is definitely needed as his father stopped paying child support as soon as he moved to America. The longer she remains in the hospital, the farther out of reach his dream becomes, and the more hopeless his situation feels.
He clings to the little joys in his life. He transferred out of Aldera Junior High into an online school, so he could pick up more shifts at Mew’s Muffins. He continues to run around the city and chase heroes, as it’s great exercise (which he needs to be doing now that his school is online, as his mom often reminds him). He keeps up with his journals and analyzing heroes, as it's the one consistent source of happiness in his life. His mom even encouraged him to take a class on ciphers at the local library, since it’s free and a hobby that “doesn’t put him in danger” like hero chasing.
Well, jokes on both of them, because if he hadn’t been chasing Ingenium, he wouldn’t have picked up the envelope that changed the trajectory of his life. The seal of the hero agency had been broken, and enclosed was a written analysis of the hero, the villain, and a couple of battle strategies. The letter had been signed by Asai Kagayaki, and when he’d done some digging, he found out that she was a professional analyst for Ingenium’s agency.
Izuku is never meant to be a hero, but he could be a hero for the heroes.
He hikes his bag over his shoulder and steps into the hospital, holding a take out cup filled with warm tea. Every Friday, he has a tradition where he visits his mom right after his shift and brings chai tea with him to cheer her up.
“Hi, Miss Hananaku!”
At his greeting, the older lady looks up from whatever paperwork she is working on and smiles at him. “Hello, Midoriya. Here to see your mother again?”
Izuku can’t help but smile back. While doctors and nurses mostly ignore him, he always got a kind greeting from the secretary working at the front desk. “Yep!”
He bounces on his toes as she types something into the computer. “There we go, all checked in. You remember where to go, right sweetie?”
“Of course, thank you!”
“You’re welcome, young man. You have a good day now.”
“You too!” With a wave, Izuku spins on his feet and hums a little tune as he enters an elevator.
He keeps it up, even as he gets dirty looks from some of the staff around him. Whenever he visits, he makes sure he keeps his spirits high; some part of him believes that if his mom is happy enough, she will be cured.
“Hi mom!” He grins as he enters the room, letting the door gently close behind him. He leans forward and lets his mom grab his cheeks, pull him close and press a kiss to his forehead. It's tradition.
“Izuku!” She smiles back at him, and then carefully takes the drink from his hands, taking a sip. With a satisfied hum, she turns away to set the tea down, before she bundles him into a hug. “You know you don’t need to bring me anything.”
He basks in the hug, soaking up the warmth he feels. “I know, but I want to.”
She lets him go reluctantly, and picks her tea back up while Izuku scoots a chair closer and sits down. His mom’s hair has thinned out from the treatments, and she is still pale, but the tea brought some more color to her face. Her eyes are bright and the bags under her eyes seem lighter than last visit, and he hopes that means she is getting better.
“Well, I appreciate it very much. You are doing such a good job, I want you to know that.”
He does his best to blink away the tears that gathers in his eyes. No matter how much she says it, he tears up every time. “Thank you, mom.”
“No, thank you, Izuku,” she says, having set down her tea to hold his hand. “Now, you tell me about your week.”
He starts rambling, never letting go of his mom’s hand. About the new career he found, how the cats are doing at Mew’s Muffins, how he is still caring for the plants and the new podcast he started listening to after he finished the last one. He listens to her ramblings about the new show she started watching, how she feels like she is getting better, and how she thinks one of the nurses has a crush on a doctor.
He treasures these moments with his mom every week. For a few hours, the outside world doesn’t matter; they just make each other happy.
It took two weeks for Izuku to get over his nerves and finally put together an analysis. He chose to analyze Midnight, since she’s a fairly visible hero who is also a teacher at U.A.; he can pull together all his notes from the past few years and hopefully get constructive criticism for his work. After he wrote and organized a multi page essay in Japanese that he was satisfied with, he then encrypted it in a cipher that was a mix between a running key and a four square (and he may have gotten carried away but he was having fun). Once he was done he manually shredded the paper in plain Japanese, and then boiled the shreds in water and poured that into the grass in a nearby park.
His worried overthinking was passed down from his mom to him like the shittiest family heirloom.
Thankfully for his anxiety, the drop off goes smoothly. He wears a mask and covers his green hair with a giant hoodie, and walks into the post office like he is supposed to be there. He shuffles up to the counter, asks for the green manilla folder to be deposited in Midnight’s P.O. box, and leaves.
The poor post office worker drinking out of a giant mug tells him, “Midnight wants me to tell you guys have got to stop dropping off essays the night before the due date.”
Kayama Nemuri, the pro hero Midnight, is this close to popping open a bottle of vodka.
It’s 2 on a Sunday, and she’s grading papers through a pounding migraine. The notification from her phone that something was dropped off in her P.O. box did not help.
Maybe Shouta was onto something when he docked points from students that submitted their papers after 22.
She decides to go and fetch the essay, hoping the fresh air would alleviate the headache. She pulls her hair up, tugs a black coat over her ducky pajamas, and slips on a pair of ratty sneakers that she’s had for forever. Deciding to keep her reading glasses on, she plops her phone and keys into her pocket and leaves the dorms.
When she steps outside, the cool night air immediately soothes her pain. The walk is pleasant, refreshing, brisk and exactly what she needs to lift her spirits after leaving red marks all over her students’ papers.
She gives a tired nod to Yoshimora (she’s been there often enough to know the night shift’s name) and slogs to her P.O. box. The student had placed it neatly in a green manilla folder, although it looks like there are about twenty pages inside, which is definitely over word count.
Her jaw drops when she opens the folder. That’s not an essay.
She thinks she's drunk at first, flipping through the pages. It's written in latin letters, jumbled up into nonsense and- were those greek characters? Sketches of Nemuri’s hero persona and equipment were scattered throughout, all neatly labelled in the same weird cipher. At the end (or beginning) is a cover letter, thankfully written in plain Japanese.
To Miss Midnight,
Hello, I am Dekiru! I’m a new analyst trying to get into the industry, but I’m not attached to an agency and I don’t have connections. So I’ve sent an analysis of you, your quirk and fighting styles, for free!
The analysis is encrypted with a unique cipher I came up with specifically for analyses (I got carried away with it, sorry). Hopefully someone at your agency or U.A. can crack it, or I can rewrite it in Japanese to deliver it in person. This might take some time as I have destroyed the original copy for safety reasons.
Feel free to respond with feedback, I’m aware there could be mistakes or oversights. I’ll be using the P.O. box XXXX in Musutafu. (Right now I only deal in paper, I don’t have the funds to get a secure system.)
Thank you for your time,
Dekiru
P.S. Please don’t think I’m being weird or creepy, there (understandably) isn’t a lot of information about being an analyst available online and this is the best idea I had.
She closes the folder and tucks it under her arm, waving goodbye to Yoshimora as she leaves. As she walks, she pulls out her phone and opens up the group chat.
U.A. Teachers and Company - 2:35
Too Much Perfume (Midnight), Lie Detector (Tsukauchi) and Giggles N Shit (Ms Joke).
Too Much Perfume: holy shit
Giggles N Shit: ✨spill the tea sis✨
Lie Detector: is this a serious holy shit or a non serious holy shit
Too Much Perfume: no its /srs
All Might Jr (Nighteye) is online.
All Might Jr: What happened?
Too Much Perfume: i get a notif of a dropoff in my po box at 2
Giggles n Shit: po box
Too Much Perfume: shut
Too Much Perfume: anyways
Too Much Perfume: i open it to find a folder w 20 pages of nonsense
Too Much Perfume: and a letter sayin that its encrypted analysis from a new analyst
Lie Detector: who’s the analyst?
All Might Jr: And why not email this to you? Especially if the papers are already coded.
Too Much Perfume: said they’re Dekiru
Too Much Perfume: and that they didnt have a safe computer
All Might Jr: Do you know what the cipher is?
Too Much Perfume: no
Giggles n Shit: arent u the art teacher
Giggles n Shit: shouldnt u kno that shit
Too Much Perfume: i saw goddanm greek letters
All Might Jr: WHAT
Nedzu is online.
Nedzu: Greek characters you say (✿◕‿◕✿)
Giggles n Shit: u summoned him
Nedzu: (‾◡◝)
Too Much Perfume: y not at this pt
Too Much Perfume: ill give it to u when i get homhfldasjfklsdhfklasdhf
Giggles n Shit: ???
Too Much Perfume: walked into a pole :(
Nedzu: Please watch where you’re going (；′⌒`)
Nemuri rolls her eyes, pockets her phone and picks up the pace. When she pushes open the door to the teacher’s dorms, Nedzu is waiting for her, sitting on a couch with his paws in his lap. She hands the folder to her boss, rubbing her forehead as the headache starts back up. She is not looking forward to going back to grading.
As she meanders back to her apartment, she hears her boss flipping through the papers. “Fascinating!”
“Have fun, boss.”
“Thank you! By the way, you should take some sort of painkiller for your migraine.”
She grumbles, trudging up the stairs. She’s absolutely going to get herself some vodka.
It takes four days for Nedzu to get back to her.
She is lounging on her couch, taking a break from the endless toil of grading by watching a few episodes of The Real Housewives of Yokohama (it’s a guilty pleasure). Her ball python, Tamamen, is wrapped around her neck and shoulders, and in between bites of popcorn she gives him little pets on his little head.
And then she hears a knock on the door.
“Come on in!” She grabs the remote and pauses her show as Nedzu opens the door. Unlike in the school buildings, where there is always a chance that Nedzu will pop out of the vents in the general vicinity, he will knock on doors in the dorms, which everyone greatly appreciates. In his hands is a stapled packet of paper, and he sets it down on the side table, a fair distance away from herself and Tamamen.
“Thank you for bringing this puzzle to me,” her boss starts chattering as she flips through the packet. “It was fascinating to pick apart. The cipher was clearly created by a student, but the talent shines through. A few tweaks and it could be unsolvable.”
Nemuri’s eyes widen as she flips through the pages. The report is broken down into various sections, from questions and theories to ideas for improvement to costume and support item suggestions. Strengths, weaknesses, ways to exploit and counteract those weaknesses, and even ideal missions for the R-Rated hero to be on.
“Wow.”
Nedzu nods. “Dekiru was correct to encrypt their analysis, especially with the medium. I would love to meet them and pick apart their brain.”
She frowns and flips back to the photocopy of the letter. “They aren’t confident in themselves. If we spring a meeting with you on them, it’ll probably scare them, or they’ll think we’re messing with them.”
“My thoughts precisely. You should write back to them, request some more reports. Perhaps some of the other teachers?”
“Yeah, I can do that.” Nemuri turns off the TV, stretching and preparing to get up as her boss starts to leave. “What are you going to do?”
The grin Nedzu gives her sends shivers down her spine. “Solve this newest puzzle, of course!”