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Shouta has just gotten comfortable in his sleeping bag when the alarm goes off. He flies out of it, the sound alone enough to send him into fight mode, fearing that it's another attack on the school and it takes him a second to realise that it's the alarm for an internal emergency at the school.
What a ridiculous life he's living, that the school he works at even has that distinction, but there's nothing to be done about that.
Now that it's clear that it's an internal issue, all the teacher's hover, waiting for the system to tell them where to go, but instead, Nedzu's voice rings out over the comms.
And that, too, is worrying indeed.
Nedzu normally never reacts to internal alarms because they tend to be little scuffles between students, or a hero student having gone too hard on their training and needing assistance in the gyms, or—on several occasions—Power Loader's lab blowing up, which are all in all incredibly boring for Nedzu.
This seems to be different.
"There's a highly volatile conflict in the courtyard and I request all teacher's at hand to go and apprehend the perpetrators. Recovery Girl is on the way, as is the police and ambulances, but we need a second first-aid team in hallway 45-c until they arrive."
It's the Business course first year's hallway, Shouta thinks as he sprints off towards the courtyard, Hizashi just barely behind, while Vlad and Nemuri take the opposite direction, to look for the medical emergency.
"Never boring with this lot, huh?" Hizashi laughs out while they sprint along the hallways, and Shouta has to agree as he jumps out of the window on the second floor, using it as a short-cut to get there faster.
He has to agree, yes, but he can't say he likes it, especially because he's absolutely, one hundred percent certain that this pertains his hell class.
And if they have made a ruckus that needs two medical teams and warrants the police, he's going to expel all of them.
The first thing he hears running out onto the courtyard, apart from a murmuring crowd is a bunch of explosions and that's it.
His class is gone. Shouta is sick and tired of dealing with them and their hormonal, posturing bullshit and he mentally rearranges his upcoming schedule to fit all the free time he's now going to have.
At least until he fully steps into the loose circle the other students have gathered in because the first thing he sees is Sero, wrapping his hands around a throat that loses too much blood if the growing pool underneath the body is anything to go by.
And then everything comes to a screeching halt when he notices the purple hair on the head connected to the throat Sero is apparently desperately trying to hold together.
"What the fuck," Hizashi breathes out next to him and Ashido whips her head around, tears spilling down her checks.
"Stop him, I think he's going to kill them," she chokes out and before Shouta can take a step, Hizashi is already off, towards the sounds of the explosions, leaving Shouta to deal with—
"What happened?" he snaps out as he rushes to Hitoshi's side, hoping that the wobble in his voice isn’t too obvious.
Hitoshi, who is pale and still and still losing too much blood, laid out on the ground.
"Those bastards slit his throat," Sero tells him with a nod towards the explosions that are finally tapering off. "There was someone with a minor healing quirk, so we fixed his windpipe but—" Sero trails off, clearly uncertain and Shouta forces all of his feelings on the matter aside.
He can't see his kid like this right now—he needs to pretend that this is someone he doesn't know, or he's not going to be of any help here.
And it's obvious that his students need help.
"They beat him up first," Kaminari helpfully chimes in and it's only now that Shouta takes in the bruises on Hitoshi's face.
"Sero, can you hold it?" Shouta asks, unwilling to make the boy move his hands because he seems to have a pretty good grip on Hitoshi's throat and with all the blood already on the ground, it's entirely possible that he could die, should they need to switch him out.
"Yeah," Sero gives back, his voice wobbly but his grip doesn't falter and Shouta nods at him, a moment before Bakugo rushes to them.
"How is he?" he asks, and Shouta briefly checks him over but he seems unharmed.
"Unclear. The attackers?"
Bakugo scoffs and sends a glare that speaks of murder over his shoulder.
"All three are out of commission," he dismissively says and Shouta doesn't even want to know what kind of damage he did to them.
It's deserved anyway, a small part of him thinks.
"Out of my way, out of my way," Recovery Girl's voice suddenly rings out and Shouta has never been so glad to hear her.
"Slit throat, probably injuries from being beaten up all over," he quickly sums up for her as he makes space and she leans over Hitoshi, taking everything in, before he carefully puts a small kiss to his forehead.
His stomach drops out when she pulls back after a second with a worried look on her face.
"He doesn't have enough stamina for me to heal anything. You," she snaps at Sero, who looks up at her. "Can you hold it until the ambulance gets here?"
"I—yeah," Sero gets out and he seems about as desperate as Shouta feels.
"What do you mean, he has no stamina? There must be something you can do."
"He's exhausted and he passed out. There is not much I can do about any of this, I'm afraid," she gives back and then hobbles off to where Hizashi is screaming a few feet away.
Shouta hopes that whoever did this is in much the same condition as Hitoshi, but he doesn't allow the rage to take hold, not yet.
That will come later, when he knows that his kid is not going to die.
"Don't you die on me," Bakugo mutters, as he crouches near Hitoshi's head, reaching out to push a hand through his hair, in a gesture much softer than Shouta thought him capable of. "Don't you die, you just got here."
Shouta feels helpless, absolutely useless as he sits there and has to watch his student hold his kid's life together and he thinks he would much rather fight a thousand villains than ever doing this again.
"What happened?" he asks, and there is so much more of the helplessness in his voice than he would like but his kid is on the ground, possibly bleeding out, with an injury so severe it might just take his life and there is nothing Shouta can do about it.
"Fuckers beat him up," Bakugo says, keeping his hand in Hitoshi's hair. "Saw it from the window."
He nods over to the building and a quick look up there reveals that one of the windows is completely busted.
"We saw them while on our way to get lunch," Sero chimes in, his voice remarkably steady for the situation he's in. "We rushed to get down, but then—"
"One of them pulled out something long and white and put it to his throat," Bakugo takes over. "I busted out the window, but it was still too late."
"They had a knife?" Shouta blurts out because what kind of student at UA carries a goddamn knife like that around with them but Bakugo shakes his head.
"Didn't look like it, but it must have been sharp anyway. Troll doll went all still under it. If it was just a pipe or something dull, he would have fought back harder."
Shouta has to agree with that assessment, because with everything Hitoshi went through, he knows when to fight back and when to stop and hope for the best and this seems to be the latter.
Before Shouta can ask anything else, a flurry of activity breaks over them when the ambulances and the police arrive.
Hitoshi is whisked away to a hospital, while his students are whisked away by Tsukauchi and his people and for a moment Shouta is left standing alone in the courtyard, unsure what to do.
But then he spots Hizashi at Tsukauchi's side, spots the heap of students on the ground who must have attacked Hitoshi and he realises with a start that there's no way he's going to keep himself in check if he stays so he steals away and follows the ambulance that took his son away.
~*~*~
Hitoshi has just gotten back from surgery when the door to the room flies open.
Shouta's head snaps up, expecting Hizashi to stroll in and he's completely taken off guard when it's Bakugo instead.
"Tsukauchi done with you already?" is the first thing Shouta blurts out and Bakugo shrugs.
"Like it's hard to get to the truth with his quirk," he dismissively says and comes to a stop next to Hitoshi's bed. "How is he?"
"That minor healing quirk saved his life," Shouta starts with, because without it, he would have suffocated, that much everyone is certain of. "They nicked the artery which is why he was bleeding so much and they got one of his vocal cords, too. The doctors put everything back together, but—"
Until they deem Hitoshi healed enough and he speaks no one knows how it's going to turn out.
"Fuckers. Should have burned them to a crisp," Bakugo viciously mutters under his breath and Shouta looks at him.
"What's the situation at school?"
Shouta would much rather ask Hizashi about this, but since he isn't here yet, Bakugo will have to do.
"It's a mess. Did you know the principal has cameras installed everywhere?" Bakugo asks, an accusing tone to his voice as if it's Shouta's personal failing that Nedzu can keep an eye on everyone.
"Not really. I thought he might," he admits because how else would the rat know half the stuff he does, but he never cared much about it.
"Would have been nice to know before the parents got to me," Bakugo grumbles on and Shouta frowns.
"Whose parents?"
"Of those fucking cowards who attacked him," Bakugo gives back with a jerk towards Hitoshi. "They arrived awfully quick. Wanted to press charges against me for excessive use of force."
"But?" Shouta prods because if that happened, Bakugo wouldn't be here yet.
"The principal chimed in, and conveniently had a recording of everything at the ready," Bakugo sighs out as he drags over a chair to sit at Hitoshi's bedside.
Shouta feels unmoored by the entire situation—not just Hitoshi being here, with a pristine, white bandage around his neck, but Bakugo being here as well.
He feels useless and helpless and completely out of the loop and the fact that Bakugo has to fill him in doesn't help at all.
"There was a second victim. Well, first, time-wise, given how Hitoshi stepped in to stop them. Got their attention and then dashed off towards the courtyard, probably to find help. One of them has a quirk that diverts attention away from him in a certain radius, so no one really noticed."
"The knife?"
"Bone, actually," Bakugo says with a sneer. "And the third had a minor strength enhancement quirk. Real fucked up group, if you ask me."
"What about the first victim?"
"Too hurt to talk." Bakugo actually almost sounds happy about it, and Shouta wants to scold him for it, but he understands.
If those three already hurt someone like this, and then almost killed Hitoshi, there is every justification for Bakugo to have used as much force as he did.
Probably felt good, too, in retrospect, and Shouta can't deny that he would have like to get in a punch or two as well, even though those are just students.
They still almost killed his kid.
"One of those bastards still could talk and that detective clocked everything as lies, so I'm probably getting off easy, especially with the recording. I'm still suspended until Tsukauchi or a court makes a decision."
Bakugo sounds awfully unruffled for someone who hasn't missed a single class this entire school year, but when Shouta spots how he looks at Hitoshi, he thinks he understands.
"How are his attackers?" Shouta wants to know and Bakugo gives him a feral grin.
"Hurt as hell," he happily says and Shouta should scold him for it, but he can't find it in him. "They had to be admitted to the burn unit."
So Bakugo might still be held responsible for excessive use of force but Shouta doubts it's going to stick, no matter how much the parents press the issue.
He's a hot-headed student with a volatile, destructive quirk, who had to see his friend's throat getting sliced.
A slight loss of control in these circumstances it not out of the question.
"Thank you," Shouta says, and Bakugo blinks at him in confusion. "For sticking up for him. For protecting him."
Bakugo clicks his tongue at that.
"I was too late and Sero was the one who actually saved his life, so save your thanks for him," he grumbles out but Shouta spots how pleased he is anyway.
Hitoshi is probably going to lose his mind a little bit over the fact that someone stepped in for him and despite the situation they are in, Shouta finds himself grateful for the fact that Hitoshi got himself some good friends.
"Can I stay?" Bakugo asks and Shouta lets out a small sigh.
"He's not supposed to wake up for a while," he admits but Bakugo only shrugs.
"I have time now."
That much is true, if he's suspended for now and sitting at someone's hospital bed, waiting for them to wake up is always a little bit easier if it's done with company, so Shouta nods.
It's not how Shouta wants to spend his time, not really, because he can think of a million other things he'd rather do than be in a hospital because Hitoshi got hurt, but it could also be worse.
At least he knows his son is going to survive and that he has found himself some good friends.
And that means a whole lot to Shouta.