Chapter Text
Aizawa Shouta looked over his class of 14 kids with his usual deadpan expression. This would probably be a good year, all things considered; he had only had to expel 6 students, and it didn’t look like he’d have to expel any more, which was always nice. Still, the email he had gotten from Nedzu, following up on that teacher’s meeting over the weekend, had him extremely annoyed.
Apparently, in the interest of the alumni, students, and board members, UA would have a yearbook and the teachers were all tasked with getting candid shots of their students to put in a spread, one for each class, and frankly, Aizawa had never heard anything more tedious, droll, and frankly, illogical.
“Congratulations,” he said dryly, “you’ve made it to the second week of classes, which means I’m probably going to keep you.” He eyed one of his students who was texting on his phone and made a mental note that he would have one more spot open.
Wait a minute, he just had a great idea.
“And as such, I can announce the year long project that will be worth a significant portion of your grade.”
They all tensed and he grinned into his capture scarf. Arguably the favorite part of his job was making the kids squirm and actually take things seriously.
“Most of you are unaware of this, but I am an underground hero. We specialize in subtlety and undercover work, or sneaking around to get information that the daylight heroes and police then use to make large scale raids. Or we just do that ourselves under the cover of night. As such, despite the fact that most of you will become spotlight heroes, I like to reinforce these skills in you so that one day they save your lives.”
They looked nervous. Good.
“For this assignment, you are all going to be like underground heroes. Everyone in this room besides yourself is an enemy operative. Your other teachers are enemy operatives. You have to complete your mission without anyone noticing, but you have all year to do so.”
“Sensei,” the girl in the front row, Yamato, raised her hand, “what is the mission?”
He slumped, eyeing her. “Since this is only an assignment, it’s pretty simple. You have to take pictures of your classmates without them noticing.”
They all hesitated before relaxing. “Wait,” that was Takeda, the boy in the back, “that’s it? We just have to take pictures?”
He raised an eyebrow at the teenager. “Without people noticing. If your classmates notice and call you out on it, you have to delete the picture. If the teachers notice…” He paused for dramatic effect, looking each one of them dead in the eyes, “then you will be expelled.”
They mostly paled, no one daring to protest, and looked at the six empty seats.
He wasn’t really going to expel them, probably, but he really didn’t want his coworkers to find out he was pawning his responsibilities off on his students or they would never let them hear the end of it.
“You need one photo per classmate, yes you can double up. The person with the most quality and diverse photoset will get extra credit on any test of their choosing. You have until the end of the year but don’t take that as an excuse to slack off. Now, onto the rest of homeroom…”
He watched in satisfaction as his students gulped in fear.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to do this inane yearbook thing after all.
~~~~~
The first student to approach him about the assignment was actually Yamato, the girl who sat in the front. He liked her quite a bit as a student, since she paid careful attention, asked intuitive questions, and really seemed determined to do her best.
Her quirk, Sticker, made it so she could touch something and that area would stick to the next thing that touched it. Interesting and didn’t seem particularly useful for heroics, but she had some interesting applications and had done well in the entrance exam. The adhesive was fairly strong, and robots literally ripped themselves apart. It would wear off after an hour, or she could will it away, thankfully, and all in all, Aizawa was extremely satisfied with her progress and ideas.
So when she came to him a week and a half later, asking for stealth training, he only hesitated a little before agreeing to give her some tips, at the very least.
He watched her put the same enthusiasm into it as she put into everything and found himself rather amused when she walked off with a new determination, eager to put her skills to the test and get pictures.
Of course, with his stipulation that the teachers absolutely could not find out what they were doing, it really limited the amount of pictures they could take during school hours. Lunch and training were pretty much the only times they could reliably not have to worry about other teachers seeing and getting them expelled, but if they were being blatant about it, he did raise an eyebrow at them and they slipped their phones away in shame.
By the time the first term came to an end, Nedzu sent out another email saying he wanted to see everyone’s progress on the pictures and could only pray his class had already gotten some good ones so he wouldn’t be empty handed.
Nemuri would mock him so hard if he had no pictures after a whole semester.
“Class,” he intoned, “it’s time for a check in on your assignment.”
“What assignment, Sensei?”
He looked the poor foolish boy who had spoken dead in the eyes and said nothing. The kid blanched and squeaked out, “Oh! That assignment!”
“Anyway, please email me the photos you currently have by the end of the day. You only get points if you have at least ten unique photos.”
He saw some students pale and he almost rolled his eyes. They had an entire term, ten photos wasn’t that much to ask. Anyone who had been slacking would just have to work extra hard today or risk his wrath. Some of these kids desperately needed the extra credit he was so graciously offering for this assignment so really they should be trying harder.
Several of his students sent in things as expected. There were a few blurry photos, some people didn’t have ten, one person only sent in three and actually said “please don’t expel me,” like that would do anything for them.
Yamato managed to surprise him with 23 unique photos, most of them rather good as well.
Takeda wasn’t half bad either, with 14 of his own photos, most of them having more than one person in them, and all in all, he was pleasantly surprised. He saved all the best ones to his phone and slouched his way to the meeting.
“It’s so hard!” Nemuri was thrown back in her chair, completely dramatic, and Hizashi was consoling her. “I tell them it’s for the yearbook and they just get so uncomfortable! It’s so hard to take good pictures when they just look so awkward! Ugh, Zashi, look at some of these poses, they’re awful.”
Hizashi nodded solemnly, looking through the photos and wincing. “Yikes, those are pretty bad. Here, look at mine, they aren’t as bad but they aren’t pretty either.”
Nedzu officially called the meeting to a start, and each person gave a brief synopsis of how hard it was to take photos of their students.
“Well,” Nemuri sighed, “at least we have more pictures than Sho.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Oh please,” she rolled her eyes, “you never stopped calling this illogical. If you don’t put this off till the last month I will honestly be surprised.”
He silently unlocked his phone and opened the photo album, eyes never leaving hers, before he slid his phone across the table to her.
She flipped through them, eyes completely wide.
“Sho, what the actual fuck?”
Her neighbors quickly leaned over to look at them and Snipe swore. “This is ridiculous, how are you getting pictures that good.”
He just grinned.
Of course, he wasn’t going to lie to them, but he wasn’t going to tell them either. Let them believe he was simply a god among men and far better than them at taking pictures. Sure, he could be using his underground skills, and that’s what they’d likely assume, but he really didn’t want to bother with that because honestly this was stupid and also a hassle, one he did not want to deal with.
His coworkers begged him for his secret, but he refused to budge, sipping his coffee and grinning at them.
Yeah, this was the best way to do it.
~~~~~
The end of the year came with great success. He only had to expel two more students, and it wasn’t even related to the yearbook assignment, just them being poor students who didn’t have what it took.
Yamato, class president, passed out the yearbooks to the class of twelve and they grinned, celebrating their success of the year, signing each others’, and then they went to the class spreads.
“Wait a minute,” Takeda muttered, “that’s my photo.”
Everyone curiously turned to the spreads and they all blinked, pointing out their own photos, before, almost in unison, they all looked up at him.
He grinned behind his coffee mug.
“Sensei,” Yamato said hesitantly, “was this the purpose of the assignment?”
“Yes. You all did very well. Three of you will be getting extra credit.”
The class paused before Takeda narrowed his eyes. “Hey, who got this picture of me during training, I just want to talk.”
Someone fessed up with a grin and Takeda went to smack them over the head with his yearbook, clearly not happy with the funny shot, and the class broke out into laughter, people pointing out photos they had taken and laughing together over the stories people had about trying to get the pictures.
And if that year had an increase in underground heroes when they graduated, well, Aizawa certainly had nothing to do with it.
~~~~~
Nedzu’s whiskers twitched. He had known of course, from the moment Aizawa decided to pawn his responsibilities on his students, what was actually going on, but he saw no need to inhibit the man’s fun. In the end, they had a marvelously successful yearbook, with class 1-A having by far the best spread, so Nedzu wasn’t going to bring the methods to question.
Indeed, it was rather fun to watch the students' attempts. At the beginning of the year, they were caught by their classmates incredibly often, leading to many deleted pictures, but they did slowly get better. He knew they were likely to continue the practice in their future years, especially since Nedzu was of the opinion that keeping the same homeroom teacher for three years was beneficial to the students, so they would have plenty of time to practice!
He was curious to see how long it took the other teachers to catch on to the frankly ingenious method of picture gathering.
Ah well, there was always next year.