After a week of tireless work, media scrutiny and a not-insignificant amount of aid from the Principal's connections and his unimaginably large bank account, (the full size of which was known only to the Principal himself), the Ultra Academy for Heroics was finally ready to be officially reopened, and with it, All Might felt he was as prepared as he was going to be, to teach his very first class of combat.
And though he'd never admit it to his colleagues - for the faint fear of them finding him to be too childish to do his job - he realised that he was quite looking forward to it.
But before he could get to any of that, he first had to go and collect his favourite student from his least favourite teacher.
That wasn't exactly true, he had to admit. Gran wasn't his favourite teacher - that was a position that would forever belong to his Master, Nana Shimura - but Gran was, by and far, the teacher he'd had that had frightened him the most.
As a teacher, even as relatively inexperienced as he was, he also knew that he wasn't supposed have a favourite student and that he was supposed to treat them all equally, but as he was certain that he was treating them all equally, and Melissa continued to be his one and only goddaughter and the only child of his best friend, he wasn't going to bother pretending that she wasn't his favourite.
Melissa Shield had, partially by her own requested, been left at Gran Torino's tender mercies for an entire week now, and other than a single text each night, which was the only confirmation he had that she was even still alive, they'd had no communication with each other.
He just hoped that Gran had taken in easier on her, than he had on his younger self.
He could feel how tense his arms were and how his breaths were sitting heavily in his chest, in a way that had nothing to do with his lingering injuries, even as he gently pulled his truck into a stop, parking up outside of his sensei's old house, and he fought back the urge to sit there and shiver.
Even now, after forty years of being the world's Number One Pro Hero, after becoming the World's Symbol of Peace and Justice that he'd promised himself and his Master that he would become, Sorahiko Torino still managed to frighten him.
Like All Might had now become, Gran Torino had once been a teacher at U.A., in fact he had been his own homeroom teacher during his academic tenure, but unlike most other teachers throughout the world, who saw the provision of education as their calling or their responsibility, Gran had joined U.A. for with singular purpose:
To train him.
He hadn't been All Might at the time; only the gangly Yagi Toshinori, wielding a borrowed Quirk that only three people even knew the existence of. Nana had passed the Quirk onto him, before continuing to work as a Pro Hero, drawing attention away from him, not only to help keep the secret of One For All safe, but also because she'd decided that he needed a high school education and then get a licence to become a real Pro Hero. Gran Torino had, somewhat reluctantly, gotten his teaching licence and joined the teaching staff, in order to make sure that he was being properly trained, appointing himself as his homeroom teacher, heroics teacher and personal combat instructor.
It had been the most harrowing three years of his life.
Gran Torino could very much be described as a carrot-and-stick teacher. If you did what he said, when he said it, he'd give you the carrot.
Disobey and you got the stick.
And the stick meant you would suffer.
Through description alone, his current batch of colleagues might've compared Gran's teaching style to Eraser Head's, and having read through his history since he'd joined U.A., Toshiori could understood why Nezu had once made the comparison, but having not only met Eraser Head, but also seen his teaching style up close and in person, he found that he couldn't agree less.
Aizawa was a master of misdirection. He lied, misled and manipulated the class until they were no longer certain if what they were doing was what they were meant to be doing. They'd barely been in his class for four months now, yet they were already independently examining his every word and action for hidden clues and additional context.
This, he knew, was what Aizawa wanted to see from them.
He wanted them to be prepared for every encounter they could have in the field to go sideways; for the villains, the civilians and even the police to lie to their faces; for every friend to be a foe and every foe to act as a friend.
Aizawa wielded the threat of expulsion from the Heroics Course as his primary weapon; disobey and he'd simply remove you from the Heroics Course and replace you with someone else. Japan had no shortage of hero hopefuls, and Aizawa would be content to keep you out of his classroom until you either chose to go somewhere else, gave up on the course altogether, or as he considered to be the least likely, you managed to earn your way back in somewhere down the line.
Conversely, not once in the three years that he'd been a teacher at U.A., had Gran Torino ever felt the need to even threaten to expelled a single one of his student, in fact, as far as Yagi knew, Gran had never even threatened to kick someone out of the classroom - he hadn't had to.
He'd made them want to quit instead.
Speak out of turn, speak rudely or speak in a manner unbecoming of a hero, and you got the weights to hold until your arms gave out.
At which point, as you lay on the ground, your arms now shaking from exertion, Gran would cheerfully stroll over and tell you that you were now halfway through the punishment.
And if you abandoned that punishment, you would have to start again at the beginning.
Disobey Gran's instructions in the field, ignore his warnings or abandon your comrades, and you had laps to run until your legs gave out from under you.
At which point, as you lay on the ground, your legs now shaking from exertion, Gran would cheerfully stroll over and tell you that you were now halfway through the punishment.
And if you abandoned that punishment, you would have to start again at the beginning.
Gran was remarkably consistent like that.
Gran wasn't interested in your physical toughness; 'any idiot can punch another idiot', as he was fond of telling him - and you never knew when a Quirk was going pop up that rendered your physical strength worthless to fight back against - but what Gran was interested in, far more than any other attribute, was your mental toughness.
Gran Torino could have cheerfully beaten any and every student he'd ever taught black and blue until he got bored of them, if that was what he'd wanted, but instead, he'd chosen to break them mentally.
He'd set a physically impossible challenge, and when you hit the point where your body gave out, he'd tell you that you were at the halfway point; and then, the real lesson began.
In heroics, when the going got tough, you had two options:
You could quit.
Or you could get back up.
Students had quit, new students had taken their place and those new students had quit as well.
There was a reason why you'd simply never heard of any of All Might's old classmates or how their careers as Pro Heroes had gone - there simply weren't any.
Gran Torino had ran them all off.
And this was the very same man that he had sent his beloved niece and successor to; a man from whom she'd not only taken lessons in physical combat and the use of One For All, but also had to cohabit with.
Something told him that Gran cared no more about your personal feelings than he had forty years ago, and spending a week with someone like that; someone who was physically prepared to break you; was practically a lifetime.
He was cut out of his worried musings when the passenger side door to his truck was wrenched open and his niece practically threw herself into the seat, already dressed in her school uniform.
"Melissa! How are-"
"Drive", she whispered, turning to face him with a pair of wide, bright blue eyes, "please just drive".
For once, Toshinori decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and instead of interrogating on how her weak had gone, he simply shifted his truck into gear, pulling quickly and cleanly away from the house, before anything more could be said.
In his rear view mirror, he caught sight of a figure standing on the doorstep, and when Melissa pressed him later, he would deny that a mere glimpse of his old teacher, and not his sense of restlessness, was the reason his hands were shaking.
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Given that he had been in contact with all of his friends during the time that their school had been closed, Izuku had felt comfortable with the idea that they were all okay and that they knew that he was okay.
Which was why he was so surprised when the first thing Togeike did upon seeing him standing on the platform, was to push her way off the train and throw her arms around his chest, squeezing him as tightly as she could, even pressing her face into his chest.
"You're okay", she murmured.
"Of course I am", he chuckled, trying to push an element of bravado into his voice, "you've been speaking with me all week, haven't you?"
She pulled back to look him in the eyes, "It's not the same".
That much was true.
Izuku had wanted to see all of his friends while they were all out of school, but just like his own mother, none of their parents had wanted any of them going very far, for any length of time, and so they'd been stuck to calls - and even then, Izuku had missed most of the video calls, while he'd been at the hospital.
"No", he agreed softly, "it's not".
They stood there for a moment, still hugging each other, before someone standing behind him cleared their throat, and they both snapped their gazes to the side, where they found an older gentlemen wearing a train conductors' uniform, his Quirk giving him solid purple skin looking at them with his lips quirked up in soft amusement, "While this is all very touching, young man, you and your lady friend are blocking the train".
Turning back around, Izuku felt his face flush bright red - and a quick look at Togeike's confirmed that she was doing the same - as a car full of passengers were watching them hug each other, while they impatiently waited to be allowed to disembark.
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While his greetings with Agoyamato and Asa were less of a public spectacle, the two of them were no less enthusiastic. Both of them were quick to step up and take turns hugging him and Togeike, though they both protested when he returned the favour by lifting them both cleanly off their feet. They stood there for a few minutes, exchanging more hugs and nothing words in greeting, before they finally separated and together, they began the short walk up to U.A., as Izuku finally got to tell them about the email he'd received during yesterday's breakfast.
It had been from Sir Nighteye.
The Sir Nighteye!
First, he thought that it had been a mistake - an email meant for someone else at U.A. - perhaps it had even been meant for Mirio and had accidentally been redirected to him by mistake, given how similar sounding their names were, as his brain worked to steadily ignored the fact that, not only did U.A. not have student email addresses, but even if they had had them, Mirio was his given name, and not his family name, which was Togata.
His second thought had been that the email was a fake - some form of scam, given that phishing and whaling attempts using the names of Pro Heroes were now as common as any other type of electronic scam, but after actually reading through the contents of the email, Izuku couldn't find a fault within it: spelling and grammar were both perfect; there was no attachment containing a virus; and the domain name was a perfect match for the one used by Sir Nighteye's Agency website.
Then, he actually read the email.
It was an offer for an internship.
Not a hero course internship, which naturally, he wasn't qualified to take, given that he wasn't a hero course student, but a normal internship with his agency as an office assistant.
By title alone, it sounded like a boring offer, just working in an office for a few hours each day during their summer break, but the job description also said that it could be extended based on his performance and it was very clearly talking about assisting Sir Nighteye in how he ran his office and his investigations.
If he was going to be a journalist one day, he couldn't imagine a better man to learn investigation techniques from than the best Pro Hero investigator in the world.
"That does sound cool", Agoyamato admitted, trying to keep the faint tones of his jealousy from infecting his voice, "is that for the summer?"
"Yeah, it'll be my summer work placement", Izuku confirmed, "I know it's a bit early to already know what we're going to be doing-"
"Hey, if I got offered something like that, I'd be all over it".
"Yeah", Togeike agreed, as Asa simply nodding, humming her own understanding, as they finally reached the extra-wide gate that marked the entrance to U.A. and the single student access point to the legendary U.A. Barrier.
Ahead of them, a long black sedan was pulled up to the kerb, the door just beginning to open as they rounded the corner, revealing the head of lavender hair that Izuku had grown accustomed to working with. He felt his friends' pace slow, and he saw Asa shoot him a concerned look from the corner of his eye, but he decided to ignore it for the moment, not letting his own pace slow, before raising his hand in greeting when Shinso looked up and met his gaze.
He stilled for a moment, catching his gaze, before he gave him a single, deliberate nod.
By the time his friends were finished gawking at the idea of Shinso being polite, the other boy had already made his way inside, but Izuku just grinned.
Shinso might've been a bit, (okay, a lot), stand-offish, but he'd known he'd find a way to get him to come around.
He still had a lot of work to do, but after fighting that Humanite creature together, Izuku was a lot more confident in understanding how Shinso thought, and now more than ever, he was certain that they were going to be friends.
Whether Shinso liked it or not.
====== ===== ===== ===== =====
"Get out", he whispered.
His fragile sense of peace had been destroyed.
A week of utter silence had arrived.
For nine glorious days, (five workdays and two sets of weekends), his home away from home had been a truly safe space; it had been free of the general chaos that came with his job, of the incalculable number of stupid errors, reckless mistakes and just general chaos that came with the supervision of sixty individuals who didn't understand the term 'restraint'.
Or the phrase, 'less is more'.
And that was just the First Year students.
The Support Labs had officially reopened at exactly seven o'clock that morning, and with, Majima no longer had the ability to kick out whoever he wished without a good reason. He would to have been able to say that his students all possessed the good and common sense to make a slow return to the school, to let him settle back into his role as teacher and supervisor, and yet, he wasn't surprised to find six of his First Year Support Course students standing at the threshold once he opened.
Why couldn't they have waited a day before trying to drive him to an early grave?
The Second and Third Years needed less supervision, which meant that other, non-hero teachers should be able to supervise them with relative safety, freeing him up to be more hands-on with the stupidly reckless beginners.
And the worst of his stupidly reckless new students was - without any doubt in his mind - Mei Hatsume (Future CEO Hatsume Industries).
The girl treated the safety regulations like they were impolite suggestions, his guidelines like they were playful hints that she could feel free to ignore and any form of work instructions like its mere existence was offensive.
She as also, to his ever-growing irritation, proving herself to be a genius among geniuses.
U.A. only took the best of the best, but even at that level, it was clear that Mei Hatsume was on a level above their peers. Given time and growth, Majima was already confident that she would surpass him as a support technician and be spoken of in the same breath as the likes of David Shield, and even then, he felt she had the potential to surpass him.
That was, if he didn't decide to expel her first, for all of her safety violations.
The labs were built to withstand a lot, but Hatsume seemed to think that any new attempt at invention - he flatly refused to join her in referring to them as her 'babies' - that happened without at least one explosion happening was a marked failure.
And in addition to her being one of the six Support Course students at his door this morning, he'd also been slightly surprised to find Katsuki Bakugo joining them.
He'd shown up with all of his plans for Sentinel One project and demanded that Majima show him where he could set-up and start working.
Instead, Majima had needed to inform Bakugo that, despite the many objections he had to his own skill level and readiness, he was not going to sign off on him doing independent work without any form of ongoing supervision. He wasn't a full-time Support Course student, he was behind in his reading materials, and he was far too inexperienced at design and support work to be left to his own devices for any length of time, and as a result of all that, he was going to be pairing him up with another student, who would be responsible for overseeing his work and no amount of foul-mouthed cursing was going to have him change his mind.
If anything, it had only made him more sure of his decision.
The kid really had a mouth on him.
Majima's thought process had been relatively simple: if he took the, clearly volatile, young man and forced the explosive young woman to monitor his work, then surely, the young woman would be forced to act in a safer manner to look after her new charge and the young man would be forced to slow down and explain his designs, where he would then have to learn how to do things properly.
Or better yet, safely.
It hadn't worked out that way.
After introducing Bakugo to Hatsume and informing her that 'no', this wasn't optional, he'd done his best to keep an eye on them from across the room, giving them space to bond, where he'd hoped that his brilliant idea would take root and prove himself, once again, to be a genius.
It had taken them seventeen minutes to cause their first explosion.
They weren't even supposed to be working on anything.
"Get out", he whispered to the pair of them, pointing at the door, his patience levels dangerously low, "you can come back when classes start".
"But-"
"But-"
"Out".
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There was a sense of nervousness that sat across the classroom, as each of them took their seats. From Aoyama in the first seat, to Yaoyorozu in the twentieth, nearly everyone was tense, as they waited for the arrival of their homeroom teacher.
Then, at the exact moment the bell rang, signalling the start of the new school day, the door was pulled open, and a walking mummified Egyptian stepped inside the room.
For a moment, the class held its breath, half of them were already assuming that they had a substitute, who was either from Egypt or hand some form of bandage-controlling Quirk, but it was Ida, who noticed the familiar hairstyle sticking out of the back.
"Aizawa-sensei?"
In response, the mummy grunted, and the class realised that their regular homeroom teacher had returned.
"What a pro!"
"So you're feeling alright, Mr. Aizawa?"
"Can you really call that 'alright'?"
Aizawa cleared his throat, the class falling silent in an instant, "My well-being doesn't matter", he told them, "what matters is that recent events have made it apparent that an element of your training is lacking".
"You mean-"
"Quiet", he told them all, and Kaminari's jaw snapped shut with an audible 'click', "your Quirk Assessment with me was designed to show you your immediate limits. You had a physical training class with All Might near the beginning of the year - this was designed to help you understand new ways to move and use your Quirks. Your introduction to Rescue was meant to start teaching you better control, but given what you all went through, and how the media coverage from this will generate additional focus on this year's Sports Festival, we've decided to move up one of your future lesson sets…"
Aizawa trailed off, and after a moment of silence, Asui raised her hand, "So, what are we…"
"I am coming through the door… like your Combat Instructor…"
Dressed in his Modern Age attire, All Might appeared.
He wasn't smiling.
His eyes blazed with his power, as he looked out over the sea of young faces he was responsible for.
Who had almost died because he wasn't there.
"Since the beginning, heroes have had but one goal", he told them, "save the people, and since the beginning, one task has always existed that has been a necessity to saving lives: fighting back the forces of evil".
"Today", Aizawa took over, his voice no less grave, "your normal classes have been suspended. Today", even bandaged, they could feel the strength of his glare on their faces, "you will attend a morning safety briefing, change into your hero costumes and report to Training Ground Beta. Today", the air in the room grew heavy, "you have your first practical lesson in combat".
"Indeed", All Might's tone was no less grave, "today, you will bring all the power of your Quirks to bear, all the skills and support equipment you can use is available to you, but be warned, because this is serious and should any of you treat this as a game, you will not be invited to return".
His words hung heavy in the air for a moment, but not even they could stem the growing sense of excitement in the air, as Class 1-A began to look around the room at each other, small but growing grins on their faces, each of them eager to prove themselves in the eyes of the world's greatest hero.
"Now, onto the theatre, where you will have your safety lecture… because the real work is about to begin".