Chapter Text
The universe has favorites, Hitoshi Shinsou is not one of them.
The cheering roared around him as he stared up at the sky, trying to catch his breath after he got the wind knocked out of him.
He had lost, he had lost to Midoriya, he had lost his dream. He didn't know what to think as he lay there, he wanted to cry and curl up in a ball and to never have to face the world again.
But alas the time came where he had to get up off the ground of the sports festival arena. Dusting himself off, he could feel the ache in his back starting to fester.
Well that's going to bruise he thought as he stretched his back to try and relieve the ever growing pain.
He turned to Midoriya who was smiling at him.
“Good match Shinsou, you did great,” Midoriya says to him in a much too cheery voice for Shinsou's liking.
He took a deep breath before responding. He just had to keep his facade of confidence up a little longer and then he could go and sulk somewhere quiet in UA’s courtyard, then he would have to go home– he shuddered, Hitoshi didn't want to think about going home right now.
“Yeah whatever, I'll get onto the hero track, get certified, and become a better pro hero then any of you.” he snapped back
He then proceeds to pull the brain washing stunt with Midoriya.
Stupid, stupid, why did you brainwash him? Everyone already thinks you're going to take control of them when they talk to you, why did you have to re-enforce that narrative?! he thought to himself as he walked out of the arena.
Sighing, he headed to the locker room to change out of his gym clothes and collect his stuff. Hitoshi really didn't want to change with everyone else and he didn't plan on coming back into the stadium, preferring to hang out elsewhere on UA property for the rest of the event.
He did just that before heading out of the stadium, head down, praying that no one would notice him; That was false hope considering his match just happened and his fluffy purple hair wasn't exactly subtle. As he walked he pulled out his earbuds and plugged them into his phone.
Blasting his music in his ear probably wasn’t the best thing for his hearing but he didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts right now, opting to block out the rest of the world with mildly depressing music. *cough* Mitski *cough*
Hitoshi settled down in one of the far corners of the campus, leaning against a tree he closed his eyes and drifted into a light haze of sleep.
He was awoken a while later by loud cheering that came from the stadium. He assumed they were nearing the finales of the sports festival judging by the cheering and the time. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that all he had to eat today was a protein bar and an apple. It wasn’t a lot for most people but then again, Hitoshi wasn’t most people, everyone around him liked to remind him that they thought he was the scum of their society. hence the wide berth everyone gave him when he walked out of the stadium. He actually managed to snag a bigger breakfast than normal. The food seemed to have disappeared by now, and his stomach was aching for more, but he knew that what he had in the morning was all he was going to get for the rest of the day.
He rubbed his eyes trying to get rid of the fuzziness, partly from sleep and partly from his quirk. Hitoshi had started to have mildly fuzzy vision after a specific instance of quirk overuse when he was six. He could still see perfectly fine, but especially when he used his quirk his vision would blur for a while. He did admit that his everyday vision was probably worse than the average and he had tried to bring this up to one of his foster families, but that didn’t go over very well. By that he means he was told to stop faking and trying to get attention followed by a slap to the back of the head.
Oh yeah, that was another thing, Hitoshi didn't have parents. His dad died in a car crash when Hitoshi was three, and his mom abandoned him a couple weeks after he got his quirk, when he was four. His mom decided she didn’t want to deal with the shame and dangers of having a kid with a mental quirk, much less a brainwashing quirk, so she dropped him off on the doorstep of an orphanage and left.
From there, Hitoshi had lived in the orphanage for a short period of time, then spent the next 11 years hopping from one terrible foster or group home to the next until he ended up at the one he's at now. He has been there for a couple months now and well, it wasn't any better than the other homes he's been to. It’s nowhere near the worst, but is far from good.
He scoffed at the thought of the last time his social worker had put him in a good home, and well frankly, he didn't think she ever had. Sure there were less bad ones but never “good.”
Hitoshi sat up and winced at the pain in his back, Damn Midoriya you didn’t have to slam me so hard into the ground, he thought begrudgingly. but he knew that the happy ball of sunshine that is Midoriya, could have killed him with the power that he held behind one finger.
Which was apparently enough to break out of his mind control, something no one else had ever managed to do. He didn't know what the fuck Midoriya was, but he was not a person to be reckoned with, Hitoshi could tell. He looked around and noticed his vision had finally cleared up to its normal fuzziness, which again, wasn't all that bad, just a little less than average.
His phone had died a while ago, he assumed when he was asleep, so he was finally left alone with his thoughts.
My dream of being a hero is gone, there's no way in hell they’ll let me into the hero course with that performance. All he had to do was beat a couple of the hero course students and he would at least have a chance.
A chance. well that's something I definitely don't have now, there's next year's sports festival but I’d be too far behind to ever keep up. He was numb inside at the thought of what to do next, he had no clue. his plan was to make it into the hero course, age out of the system, become a pro hero and then give a big fat “fuck you” to his mother, the foster system and everyone who had ever doubted him, which was a lot. But those dreams were shattered now.
They were right, they were all right, I am never going to be a hero. he thought in an attempt to accept the gut wrenching truth. As much as he wanted to believe it was still possible, there was no logical way that he could think of that would get him on the track to being a hero. He wanted to believe he could do it, he wanted to believe that the universe would deal him a decent hand of cards but it didn’t. It never did and Hitoshi had learned at the ripe age of five, to not depend on anyone else and to not wish upon stars that would never come, that thing would go his way.
Hitoshi let a slightly sad smile push its way onto his face as one of the stray cats, that wandered onto campus, came trotting up to him. The cat pushed his head into the purple haired teens chest as it climbed onto his legs and curled up in a ball of purring gray fur.
“Hey Cosmo, I see you're as needy as ever, or maybe you can just tell that I’m contemplating if life is worth living even more than usual.” he chuckled wryly.
he sighed, was he really telling a cat about how much life sucked right now. Yes. What else are you supposed to do, talk to a human? he thought indignantly with a scoff. “Oh well, cat snuggles can’t make everything better but they sure as fuck help,” he murmured to Cosmo, who now had his head propped up on Hitoshi’s torso.
Whelp, if I do nothing else in my life at least I was a cat pillow. he huffed in amusement at the thought. but deep down it wasn’t so much of a joke, deep down he was splitting at the seams and he didn’t know how long he could last until he hit a breaking point. Right now he had nothing going for him, no one on his side, no one to turn to, nothing to latch on to; that's all he really needed, something to look forward to, some sort of illusion that if he could just hold out for today and then tomorrow and then the next, that it would all figure itself out in the end.
He knew that it was a lost cause– I know I'm a lost cause
he had given up on that false sense of security that those thoughts gave him, but in the moment, sitting in the sun with a purring cat on his lap, he let himself think that as he drifted off into another daze of sleep and a purring cat.
Aizawa POV
Aizawa watched as the only general education kid made it to the 1vs1 battles. He was impressed, he barely saw gen ed kids make it this far, and if they did they had flashy, physical quirks. He didn’t know what Shinsou’s quirk was but he guessed it was either an emitter or mental quirk, he hadn’t seen anything yet so Shinsou’s quirk either went unnoticed or he hadn’t used it yet.
Aizawa didn’t know much about the purple haired teen other than he seemed confident, a little cocky and determined to win. The kid had this board expression the whole time but Aizawa knew from years of being able to read even the slightest twinge of emotion, that it was just a mask. Aizawa could tell that there were other emotions going through his head, Eraserhead was much the same.
From the fact that Shinsou was trying to compete with the hero students, it was safe to assume he was trying to win and hoped to be offered a spot in the hero course. It wasn’t uncommon for gen ed kids to try, but rarely did he see them make it this far. Hizashi sat beside him in the announcer booth, hyping up the fight between Shinsou and Midoriya.
As the round started neither of them made any move, Shinsou just started talking to Midoriya, egging him on, he looked like he was getting frustrated as the greenette stayed unusually tight lipped.
“The hell is this kid doing,” he mumbled to Hizashi.
“No idea, but it's a pretty boring fight so far,” the blonde murmured back.
Shinsou kept talking, and Midoriya seemed to be getting progressively angrier. until Midoriya shouted something back at Shinsou, and then Aizawa’s problem child went blank. Aizawa watched as a Cheshire grin spread across Shinsou’s face. Aizawa looked at the frozen Midoriya, it was like the greenette’s brain had been shut down. He didn’t know what this kid's quirk was but if he had to guess, he would say it was a mental quirk, maybe a paralysis, hypnosis or mind control.
He watched as one of the strongest, most determined kid’s in his class turned and started to walk towards out of bounds, blank white eyes as emotionless as before. Midoriya was one step away from crossing the line when suddenly a large gust of wind shook the stadium. Through closer inspection, Aizawa could see that two of his fingers were swollen and broken, as well as the fact that Midoriya had escaped whatever hypnosis he was under before.
His eyes were back to life and he was moving away from the line that marked the boundary, and heading towards a very shocked looking Shinsou. Aizawa saw as Shinsou's surprised face morphed into panic and then was swapped out of sheer determination. The gen ed kid was clearly not expecting Midoriya to be able to break free from him and was quickly put on defense. Midoriya then in turn, flipped him over his shoulder, like he did with Bakugou on the first day of training, and out of bounds.
If Aizawa was being honest with himself he kinda wanted to see Shinsou win, not that he would ever admit it out loud or to himself, but he had a small soft spot for students who had mental quirks and were put in gen ed because of the biased entrance exam. Shinsou seemed to get his bearings after a few seconds, but stayed laying on the ground as he seemed to go through the first 4 stages of grief, landing on depression, but as soon as the emotion had slipped onto Shinsou’s face, it was replaced by his usual board expression before walking out of the arena.
“Sho, that kid is so much like you! He even has that “I’m-too-tired-for-this-shit” attitude. Sucks he didn’t make it farther though, he would’ve made a great hero student,” Hizashi exclaimed.
“Well the entrance exam is biased towards mental quirks, and from what I can see, that’s what Shinsou has, probably some sort of hypnosis or mind control” Aizawa grumbled
“Yeah, I'm curious how Midoriya got out of his hold,” Hizashi said as he looked at the teenager who was still standing in the arena.
“He used his quirk, I assume the force of it was enough to break Shinsou’s quirk, but how he was able to activate his quirk is beyond me.” Aizawa replied absent-mindedly.
“...Whatcha thinking about?” Hizashi said with a knowing smirk.
“I’m always thinking about something,” he argued.
“You're more distracted all of a sudden, it's obviously not the normal things that preoccupies your mind.”
“It creeps me out that you know those sorts of things,” Aizawa gave him a blank stare.
Hizashi grinned “Perks of knowing you for fifteen years and being married for five, I always know what's happening in my dear husband's brain.”
Aizawa just rolled his eyes fondly. “I was thinking about Shinsou and how unfair it would be to let potential hero material go to waste, after all he's more qualified right now than a couple of my students.”
He was thinking of Mineta and how much he would love to get that kid out from under his skin, but until he did something inherently wrong he could only wait to see if he would pan out into a good hero.
“With some training he could try again for the hero course,” he said, half to himself.
Hizashi’s grin widened, “Sho, you should train him! And then he can transfer into your class if he seems to be a good fit, it's perfect!”
“Zashi, I don't know anything about the kid,” he argued.
“At least go talk to him and see if you would train him and if he would want that! Come on it’s a good idea” his husband was practically bouncing in his seat.
“Fine I’ll see if he's still on-grounds once this is done, and IF I find him and talk to him and I decide I want to, I’ll offer it to him” Eraser sighed, defeated.
“Yayy!” Hizashi cheered, spinning in his chair,
“You're so much more excited about this than I am, you wouldn’t even be the one training him,” Aizawa grumbled, Hizashi just laughed.
Once the sports festival was pretty much over and Hizashi said he would be fine on his own since he was doing most of the announcements anyways, Shouta decided to walk around campus and see if Shinsou was around, and if not, oh well, he didn’t mind going for a little walk to get away from the craziness that is the sports festival. He walked around the building a bit and collected some stuff he needed from his classroom. After that he went outside and wandered between buildings and anywhere on campus.
He was about to turn around and head back to finish marking some test, when he saw a fluff of purple hair sticking out from behind a tree. Figuring he had found the kid, he went around to the other side of the tree. And to his surprise he saw Shinsou leaned up against the tree, asleep, with a cat curled up in his lap.
What the fuck?, where did he get the cat?
Shouta debated in his head whether he should wake the kid up or not, on one hand Shinsou did look like he needed sleep. Up close he could see how dark his eye-bags really were, they almost rivaled his own. In the end, He decided against letting the teenager sleep and kicked his leg a couple of times to wake him.