he’s sitting by himself, alone at his table instead of joining any of the tables populated by the other hero students. or by any of the gen ed students, for that matter. which is a shame -- he has the potential to make double the friends, with connections to two courses like that, and you’d think his near-win in the sports festival would have people flocking to him, but...well, he doesn’t seem super receptive to it, hizashi guesses, and maybe that’s thrown people off. he’s barely said a word, even to hizashi, who’s tried to say hi a couple of times now in between class changes.
anyway, there’s no reason he should be sitting alone, even if he’s shy! if hizashi had just transferred, he wouldn’t want to be stuck alone in a class full of people he didn’t know, especially if he felt awkwardly singled out because he’d entered the class under different circumstances than the rest of them.
clearly, aizawa shouta needs a friend. and hizashi...hizashi is already fascinated by him. it’s no real wonder he couldn’t get into the hero course on first try, with those robots as opponents, but it’s only a testament to the fact that they clearly need some better screening of applicants. with a quirk like that? obviously he deserves to be a hero.
hizashi hadn’t formed any hard and fast expectations about the sports festival. he’d been excited about it along with the rest of the class, but you never really know what to expect, with the randomized challenges, do you? still, he has to admit -- when he got to the final stage, he started to think that, hey, maybe he could actually win this thing. not to brag -- and he’s not bragging, it’s not really a point of pride, not when the real pride comes from his work to control it -- but his quirk isn’t really something most people can withstand when he lets it loose. in a one-on-one fight, he can incapacitate most anyone as long as he can start screaming before they have a chance to attack him.
but -- but instead, very first round, he’d found himself facing a kid he didn’t know, a kid from the general education department. and he wondered what kind of quirk this kid had, to get this far, and then the whistle blew, and he opened his mouth to yell, and he...
his quirk was gone. he felt the moment it disappeared; he felt the power building as he filled his lungs, was ready to let go of the careful grip he kept on it, and then -- as his opponent’s eyes flashed red -- it just...wasn’t there. his power was gone, a squeak instead of a roar, and he was left standing there dumbfounded, totally defenseless. before he knew it, the kid was up close and knocking him backwards and he was on his back out of bounds.
it was crazy. and like -- yeah, disappointing, definitely, because he’d kind of been picturing himself as the one standing over his defeated opponent listening to the crowd’s cheers, but -- that wasn’t the part that stuck with him. so he’d lost, that’s okay, he deserved to lose against a quirk like that.
but the quirk itself...hizashi didn’t know there was such a thing as a quirk that erased other quirks, but he watched aizawa do it again and again against the other opponents. and a part of him kind of just -- can’t stop thinking about that moment, the way it felt. so much of hizashi’s life has revolved around his quirk. he’s always aware of it, every time he opens his mouth. it’s never not been there, a kind of pressure in his brain, ready to rush in when he speaks. he knows how to hold it back, now, knows how to stop it, but it’s still there, straining to be let free.
until it wasn’t. just for a few moments, the pressure was gone. the space his quirk took up was empty. he could scream as loud as he wanted and it’d just be....a scream. not earth-shattering. not deafening. just a regular voice.
and it was scary, obviously, like, it took away his entire ability to defend himself, left him vulnerable, without a shield for the first time ever. but also -- also, even as it was happening, after the initial confusion, there was a part of him that felt...relieved.
there’s a lot to unpack there, and he doesn’t know how he feels about all of it. but what he does know is that aizawa shouta’s quirk is really interesting, and aizawa himself is probably really interesting too, and hizashi?
hizashi is going to be his friend.
he plops himself down opposite aizawa, taking out his bento. “i’m yamada hizashi!” he probably knows that already, but hey, never hurts! “congrats again on the transfer! and getting so far in the sports festival! not that you had any trouble, you totally had me beat from the start. your quirk is really cool, you know that? i mean, wow, i’ve never had my quirk just disappear like that, that was -- wow. also, you’re really strong. you must’ve been training for a while to be that strong, right? i need to work on that, i’m a noodle without my quirk, obviously. also, uh--” probably should’ve asked this one first, you got too excited, hizashi. “--it’s cool if i sit here, right?”
