#yosuke looking on like the proud mother/father/brother figure that he is for the team

[daily-hanamura]

[r95irth]

me : hey, we could draw the next part of the doodles-comics tonight !

Brain : no, I drew and animated all day at work I don’t wanna. 

me : Okay...then, what about writing the next part of our current fic ?

Brain : it implies being sit in front of computer right ? Our back hurt for month, I just want to lie down. 

me : okay then video games in bed ?

Brain : Yeah. 

*ends up writing a whole scene that has nothing to do with anything and spends two hours sitting with her back hurting*

me : WHY ???

brain : I DOn’T KnOW JuST DO As I SAY !

So here; gift. 

“As you all know, heroes business is oversaturated. There are too many heroes on the market and it’s hard to make your own name. Now that the policy of the hero business is team work, since the fall of All might, this is even truer than before. You might all hope to become the next Deku, but there a thousand who dreams like you, and only one get the spot.”

Well, thought Satoru ; that was harsh. True, yes, but still. It wasn’t because it was the truth that it was worth saying ; especially to a bunch of teenagers who were currently studying in hero course. But he supposed that this “teacher” was somewhat special. She wasn’t even a teacher, just a ex-hero that UA invited to help supervise on the mental health of it students on regular basis apparently. If someone asked Satoru about it, he would say she did a terrible job.

Peacemaker, as it was her ex-hero name, and the only name that most of the student could pronounce right, looked as f she had just came out from the hospital, with the right part of her face paralyzed. Her face was awfully scared, and she was missing half of her right ear, and scalp, and missing her right leg. She introduced herself, days ago, by saying “this is what happen when you go fight alone against a bunch of villains and you loose”. The dark tone of her lessons was already here. But there was always a moral, a point, behind each one of his session. So Satoru waited for this one.

“What i mean by that, resumed Peacemakers, as she used her cane to support her body’s weight, is that it’s really hard for new heroes to distinguish themselves. You need to have something special to really stand out and succeed.”

Most of the students in class nodded as she gave them a printed piece of paper. Well except Lazare, who sneezed right into it and looked with pure disgust as he saw the mess he had made.

“What makes you special can be your talent, your quirk, or your looks, let’s be honest here, explained Peacemaker with a sigh, as she handled him a new piece of paper. -But, if i were you, i would rather bet on more...easier to control, particularity. Anyone has any idea of what i’m talking about ?”

“A special move ! Immediately stated Yosuke, proudly. -Like Satoru’s “All is one” move !”

Satoru blushed at the mention of his name, and even more when he heard the “name” that his classmates gave to his special move. It sounded like All might and Izuku’s quirk ; even if they didn't’ know, he did, and so all of his parent’s friends. It was awfully pretentious to even think he could come close to their level !

Though, Peacemakers didn’t seem to be chocked by that and simply half smiled.

“This is indeed a way, but you will, luckily, all get to develop your own special move during the three years you will spend in UA. As you will develop your quirk. So you will all be at the same “virtual” level once you graduate. So. How will you stand out among your peers ?”

Silence followed, as students looked at each other puzzled. Satoru frowned, trying to find the solution, but, sincerely, he had no clue at all. What made a hero popular ? Surely, looks and charisma. But that was not always true. All might wasn’t that good looking, neither was Izuku. Yet they all rose above the rest and earned the number one spot rank. Power ? Surely, but lot of heroes had quirk that were just more...not powerful but showy, than their. Yet they were outshined by such a simple power as “super strength”. Not that Izuku’s power was lame -Satoru would dream to have something close to that- but it was certainly not original nor flashy. It was the way they used it that-

Oh.

“How your use your power ?” He said to Peacemaker.

The ex-hero stopped, and stared a moment at Satoru, before nodding with her half-smile:

“Close call, but no.”

Well. he tried. Some whispers behind his back made him realize that every one of his classmates were counting on him to find the answer for them, and that they just gave up. So did Peacemaker, probably; because she explained :

“It is principles. A line of work : a sense of purpose, call it as you want it. Whatever floats your boat. And this is what i want you to think about for next lesson. You will write down an short essay on what kind of hero you want to be in the future.”

She pointed the piece of paper she handled, on which there were only a couple of questions like “how do you want to be viewed ?” ; “do you have a motto ?”  and such. probably to help student figures out the image they wanted to build.

It didn’t.

***

“What kind of hero i want to be?”

The question kept coming back and forth as he stared at the plain ceiling of his room. The deadline was coming closer and closer and Satoru was still unsure of himself. He asked his dad and mom about it, through phone call...but their answer didn’t help much, well...Mainly because it sounded :

“I wanted to be hero worth of respect, unlike my father at the time” or “I wanted to unite heroes under one flag so that our peace symbol would never crumble again”. Outdated, great, admirable...There were many way to call those reasons, but Satoru couldn’t say it was his own.

Why was he even in the hero course? He thought immediately, as doubt made his way to his brain. Immediately, he answered : “To become the greatest duo of hero with Mahô” but again, it sounded fake. It wasn’t his reason, it was their. And Mahô wanted to be a hero for a whole different reason on her own.

“I want to be a hero that makes miracles ! One hero that, when you see them enter the fight, you expect them to turn the tide, one that make you want to get up and fight again because you know you can do it if they are here !”

Which was very Mahô’s. And also very brave and cool, he wished he could have thought of that before. She could probably do it, unlike him. When he was beside her, he certainly felt that way, and sometimes, when they fought together during Kirishima’s duel club, he certainly felt like he was doing miracle with her. Heck, she even managed to make Endeavor see her as a serious opponent in their fight during the festival ! If someone could achieve this, it was probably Mahô. But not Satoru.

But again, was it the kind of hero he wanted to be?

“URGH ! THIS IS SO COMPLICATED!” He screamed into his pillow.

He decided to stop complaining without any chance to get over it, and left the bed. Surely, someone would be willing to help at the common area. After all they needed to return the paper for tomorrow first hour.

Satoru didn’t expect to find half of his class B...and half ot class A, stucked and stressed together, screaming about that damn essay.

“She said Short essay, but what is short exactly ? was panicking Kahei, writing frantically.

-I don’t know, i would say, one page ? Answered Kino with the face of someone who hadn’t sleep for days.

-I know, what about you use your power to turn into the me of ten years in the future, so he can say to me what’s his motive, suddenly asked Arya.

-For the last time Arya ; that’s not how my power work, i’m still me when i turn into your future version!

-Yes but then you have dreams about the future, right?

-And in the extreme case you’re lucky i dream about this subject specifically, when do you find the time to write your essay ? While we eat breakfast tomorrow?”

Arya groaned as her head hit the table, drawn back to reality.

“So many people are clueless about it?”

This realization made him feel a little bit better, but he definitely pushed aside this selfish satisfaction : he shouldn't be happy about his classmates’s troubles. (But he kind did anyways). Instead of taking a seat in the middle of the storm, he sat in the couch, where people watched the mess from distance. Tsubaki, his friend, was among them.

“You already did the essay ? What did you write?”

Silently -as always- His friend pulled out of his pocket a folded piece of paper. All Satoru could read on it was:  “I want to be a silent hero”.

Well. That was short. He sure hoped for Tsubaki’s sake that it would not be graded.

“I wrote that i wanted to be a hero my little brother would be proud to call his brother, i hope it’s okay, it sound a bit lame…” Added Goro, suddenly appearing behind Satoru’s back.

His heart leaped in his chest. Dang. He wished the boy could stop doing that. But unfortunately he seemed quite good at appearing out of nowhere ; despite the fact that it was Kyouji who had the astral projection / ghostly quirk, not the bunny boy !

“I don’t think so, th-that’s cute of you...It sounds like my papa’s reason to be a hero...” He explained, as he looked away, feeling his blush reaching his ears.

Goro grinned. And gods, what his smile made to Satoru’s heart, that was embarrassing. He tried to think of something else, in vain.

“Thanks Satoru it’s nice to cheer me up, but it lacks a bit, you know...mondial feel to it, right ?”

Among the working student, Max suddenly stood up, screamed, spilling wax all over, and his fire growing dangerously. Then he sat back silent as if nothing happened.

“This is scary, simply stated Goro.

-Don’t talk about world around Max...His mother is a diplomat, she kinda put pressure on him about how the world will interpret their every move. It’s like a trigger word for him, Satoru explained.

-This is scary, repeated Goro.”

He couldn’t agree more. Satoru started working, though, as his homework would not be done by itself -unlike mahô’s. Some only had redaction problems related and found it difficult to put into words their ideas, and he helped them a bit. That was simple, easy, he did that a lot when Mahô thought about her next enchantment.

Ume wanted to be a hero that made everyone thinking their worth her time, which was such a wonderful idea. But she had troubles to find the right word and it took them half an hour to write it down.

Takashi, though he had a clear vision of what he wanted to be like, was too eager to put example rather than give a clear statement. In the end, they decided on this : “A model hero ; an example of morality”. Which started an argument between him and his step-sister - and gave a reason to satoru to gently step away.

At one point, he offered his classmates a gigantic brainstorm, hoping it would help everyone who, as him, just didn’t know what to do. It ended up in a mess.  When Mahô came back from her special training, at 10:30 PM, they were still on it. And when she returned from her bath, none of them had made any progress.

“Wow guys you’re just too tense, just write whatever comes to your mind, i mean it’s supposed to come from the heart right ?” She said as she took a bit of what was left of the diner.

“You’re right Mahô, you’re totally right! This is so obvious, why didn’t i think of it sooner?”

Yuu stood up, looking dead serious and determined as she took her pencil and brandished it like a sword.

“I’m gonna be a cupidon hero ! The protector of the lovers, the instigator of the greatest love stories ever ! I will make every one and-

-And what you’re gonna make the villains kiss and apologize like children ? Mocked Kahei.”

That didn’t end well; the two girls almost fought right here and now. While Mahô just laughed and said : “Sound cool : i didn’t know you could do that as a hero !” which was, somehow an hasher remark. At least from Satoru’s point of view. Finally, Yuu decided to indeed go for this, adding just a part that sounded like Ume, about giving helping people who felt all alone and unable to love. It might be only a desperate chance because she was tired and done and just wanted to go to bed at this point, but Satoru still found it pretty great. It fit the lovely girl he knew.

The common area was getting lonelier and lonelier, as his classmates found their reason, bullshitted their essay or just simply gave up. And before Satoru knew it, he found himself be almost alone, with only Mahô and a couple of others who were playing video games on the couch. Damn, he wanted to join them and forget this essay : but he couldn’t. His only asset in UA were his grades, he couldn’t afford to get a bad mark.

“I don’t know why it’s so hard for you, don’t you already know what you want to be? asked Mahô, as she enchanted her pencils and papers so it could do her other homework while she slept.”

“I’m not as confident as you, you know…Mahô.

-Well, i will be confident enough for both of us then.

-This isn’t something we can do together. I mean, yeah i want to be a your partner and become the greatest hero duo ever, but myself ? I don’t know. You need two great hero to make a duo, not one and a half !

-Why are you even talking about us? Sure i invited you in my dream when we were kids, but you wanted to be a hero back then, right ?”

Silence. Mahô’s face lost all its color as she looked shocked.

“You didn’t?! Did i force this on you?”

She seemed so lost, Satoru immediately tried to comfort her, and words spurted out of his mouth before he realized :

“No of course not! I wanted to be a hero of course ! But i couldn’t believe someone like me could ever achieve that alone!”

Mahô sighed in relief, and immediatly found back her smile as she whispered :

“Soooo- why did you want to be a hero back then?”

Satoru shut up. He didn’t know how much she manipulated him in order to get this embarrassing confession -and he doubted she even did it on purpose. But yet…Yet it worked.

“I suppose...i wanted to be like Shouto.”

Mahô nodded vigorously.

“Yeah ! We both want to be like our dad, right? That’s a given, they’re so awesome!”

Satoru nodded, another thought running through him. Yes they were : but what made them awesome in their eyes? What made them want to be like them? For once, the answer came easily.

“He picked me up. He gave me a place when i was the world didn’t have one for me.”

He remembered the moment as he sat in the police interrogation room, where Naomasa explained him that Satoru didn’t even exist in regard of the law, because he had no birth certificate. Back then he thought it was stupid : he was there, so how could the world deny even his own existence? Shouto reached for him, and made sure that he saw him and cared. Shouto saved him.

But how many people were like him, back then? Like Big Mother and Death-pair? Thinking that they had no choice but to follow the path in front of them? Thinking that the world didn’t want them? When tomorrow held nothing for you, and you didn’t have even one bit of curiosity or care about what the future could hold. He knew how dreading this feeling could get, how desperate it got, when you wished nothing, hoped for nothing, only surviving, existing but with no purpose. To the point, that one day, you would just wish you could even stop doing that.

Who would save them, then? Shouto couldn’t adopt every lost kid in the world. Neither could he. And some of them were adults already, like big Mother and Death-pair were. He couldn’t give up on them just because they were older, right ? It didn’t sound right or fair. They deserved a place. Everybody deserved one.

He rose his eyes and met Mahô’s, bright and proud, as if she knew that he had found his answer.

One day, they will be a duo. She was sure of that, Satoru still had doubt, but he had decided a long time ago to trust his friend. His confidence wasn’t as reliable as her. But she was also too rash and often forgot details. She liked to go past her limit, and sure she wanted to save people; but she liked fights too much. She would never care about such tiny details as care about her opponent, or people that were not in front of her. That would be Satoru’s job. He would. It would be his role, his place in the duo.

With a bit of a smile, he started to write down the first sentence of his essay :

“I want to be a hero that will save everyone, even villains and people forgotten by society.