A Precise Note Chapter 20 - Winners

UA Academy

April 4th, 20xx

Someone's here before me? 

Aizawa was suspicious. A statement which was the equivalent of pointing out the greenness of grass, the blueness of skies, or the whiteness of clouds. The Most Paranoid Pro-Hero was always suspicious of something or someone, and it was for good reason. Experience had taught him it was better to be suspicious of the most mundane things and be proven wrong than the inverse.

Without fail, he was always the first member of UA's staff to arrive at the academy, by virtue of the fact that he lived on the Academy grounds in a special dedicated quarters. No one else, as far as Aizawa knew, ever bothered showing up at UA at the crack of dawn. No one was that excited to be a teacher.

The Pro-Hero stalked down the hallway. The hallway held the infirmary, the Principal's office, and the staff room. However, there was a new office, recently added at the entrance of the hall, and it was in front of this new office that Aizawa found the newcomer.

A blond man with slicked-back hair, dressed in a neat-fitted dark business suit and a pair of round spectacles, stood in front of the door. He was fiddling with an object, atop it. A name plate. The man hummed a tune to himself, and Aizawa recognized it as a sea shanty from a Gang Orca Pirate O’s cereal commercial.

“Perfect!" The man clapped his hands and took a step back to identify his work. “There," he placed both hands on his waist. “Wouldn't you say this looks just great?"

Aizawa blinked. He knows I'm here?

Before the Pro-Hero could speak, he heard another voice and saw another man approach. Identical in every shape, way, and form, the second man even wore the same clothes and had the same posture.

Twins? Brothers?

“If the bar for greatness is ankle length, perhaps."

“Don't be a spoilsport," the first man said. “I think it fits just fine. Guidance Counselor. Guiding young hearts and minds, what could be better?"

“From couples therapy to hormonal teens. Oh, joy. We’re certainly moving up."

“It was time to move on. Broaden our horizons, experience what life has to offer."

“It’ll cut into our other ventures.”

“Oh, come, now. It isn't like we need money."

Aizawa had heard enough. He made his presence known, narrowing his eyes as he made snap judgments of the man in front of him. The two men in front of him. The one on the left brightened up with a wild smile as soon as he saw Aizawa, while the one on the right closed off and immediately went on guard.

“Hello there! I wasn't aware that anyone else would be here so early. Although Principal Nezu did mention there was a hero who lived on campus. You must be Aizawa Shota, then?"

Aizawa flicked his gaze between the two men. “You are?"

“The new Guidance Counselor, Bubaigawara Jin," the man said with a flourish. “Though for a while I went by the eponym name, Twice." Jin pointed. “This is my better half."

The worst half snorted. “He's not buying it. Look at his eyes. He’s scanned the place for an exit four times, his hands are primed to move as swiftly as possible to restrain us if need be, and his posture is guarded. He thinks we're up to no good," the other man crossed his arms. “You're Eraser Head. They call you the Most Paranoid Pro Hero."

Aizawa didn't bother denying it. “You've heard of me."

“I'm looking at you," the man pointed. “Bags underneath your eyes tell tales of sleep deprivation, and that jitter in your right hand leads me to wager a caffeine addiction. Barely sleeping, instantly on guard against strangers, I don't need to be a Sherlock to figure out you're a paranoid person. I'm not about to tell you how to live, but if you intend to be around young, impressionable students, that level of paranoia will rub off on them. Though I can’t say I like it, if they’re going to be heroes, a healthy level of paranoia is something to have.”

Aizawa faltered. Was he being praised or reprimanded?

“What did we discuss about giving your snap judgments to people?"

“We were hired to be the Guidance Counselor, weren't we?"

“First, we don't counsel people who don't ask— "

“We both know this guy here is never going to ask."

“Second, we were hired to counsel the students.”

Aizawa pursed his lips. “…Am I missing something?"

“Forgive us, Aizawa-san. A minute, please," Jin approached his 'worst half' and took a deep breath. Without any rhyme or reason, he walked into him, rippling like liquid, before vanishing and leaving only one.

“There we go," Jin craned his neck.

He'd become a different person. Aizawa could tell from the man's new posture and expression that something had changed.

“A pleasure to meet you, Aizawa-san. I am Doctor Bubaigawara Jin, UA's newest faculty member, a part-time Pro Hero and licensed medical practitioner. My card."

Aizawa collected it reluctantly. He ignored his instincts, screaming that the card could be a bomb, or a trap, or some sort of device meant to kill and incapacitate him. The card was white and decorative, there were numbers attached, an address, a name, and a long, long list of titles, accreditations underneath that name. MBBS, PhD, PsyD, MD, MS, MA, BSc, BA…

Is this meant to be a joke? No, Nezu wouldn’t hire a fraud.

Aizawa glanced over the list of accreditations and then looked up at the neatly-dressed, blond man in front of him. The man looked no older than he was, give or take maybe a year.

Does he have a quirk that makes him long-lived? Is he older than he appears? No, just now….

“I know the question that usually comes when people see my card and try to guess my age. I'll give you the answer, Aizawa-san."

Jin brought out another card from his hand. Then, he performed a sleight of hand, and another card emerged. Then another, then another, and on and on until there was a full stack of his cards lined up perfectly in his palm.

“Your quirk lets you duplicate things?" Aizawa asked. “Duplicate anything? Even yourself?”

Aizawa’s mind went to the words he’d overheard. Couples Therapy. Creating a perfect clone of your spouse, how would that help? Perhaps, they would vent out frustrations they were afraid to, and destroy the clone afterwards to gain a sense of catharsis?

Doing this for both parties would it allow them to vent their grievances? Or perhaps there was some other method at play? What other method could—

Wait.

Having doppelgangers of your lover could lead you to do things you always wanted, but did not want to do, out of fear of cheating or judgment. Such as if one always wanted a threesome, but didn’t want to share their spouse…

It would be a very effective ‘therapy’ indeed.

“That’s useful,” Aizawa admitted. “Very useful.”

“It is,” Jin replied. “When I was a student, my homeroom teacher would slip me a few bills to create a clone of her, just so the clone could teach in her place while she, overstressed and tired, slept in the janitor’s closet. Classmates of mine would pay me to create clones of themselves to attend class while they skipped out on school. One of my classmates happened to be the son of a very influential figure in the construction business, and after he accidentally let slip what he’d done, I was approached by several different construction companies wishing to sign me exclusive contracts as a one-man construction crew.”

Jin clapped his hands, and the cards compressed back into one. “Tokyo Universal Studios found out about me during a job when they saw dozens of identical construction workers working on set, and rushed to sign me on when I was fifteen. My quirk saved them millions on extras, stunt-doubles, and crewmen. Perhaps you've seen some of my work? The army of Imperial Windtroopers in Revenge of the Fifth, and the gruesome sequences in Bushido IV: Shindeiru are amongst my favorites."

Aizawa nodded. “The mass decapitation scene. It hit the news. The director was taken to court to prove that people weren't actually killed."

“Aina-chan still laughs about it today," Jin chuckled. “She says being sued to prove that her fiction was truly fiction was the highest compliment in her life as a filmmaker."

Aina-chan? The man casually referred to Yamazaki Aina, one of the most renowned Japanese Directors in modern history, as Aina-chan, without a care in the world. 

A successful self-made man, huh?

Individuals with invaluable and useful quirks were praised by society, lauded, and many of them were even egged on to become heroes. Quirks which allowed people to do things like create explosions or ice or fire would draw ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’, much less a quirk that allowed one to be in two places at once, doubling their productivity and time.

Just the ability to double the number of first responders in a crisis would make him invaluable to any Hero Agency.

There was no world in which Bubaigawara Jin could be anything but a successful man.

With a quirk that could duplicate anything and anyone, unless his friends, schoolmates, and teachers were all blind, deaf, dumb, or outright mentally deficient, it was statistically impossible. Anyone with an iota of common sense would understand the sheer value of his quirk and give him advice on how best to maximize its usage for profit from the moment he first unveiled it as a child.

With such a quirk, he could and would be financially secure for life.

So why is he here?

Aizawa analyzed him from head to toe.

Unless he’s not really here.

Aizawa started to suspect the man in front of him was still, yet another clone. If the clones could clone themselves, it was not out of the realm of possibility that the real Bubaigawara Jin was on some private island, getting a tan, and sipping martinis out of a coconut.

He only sent out another clone to take on Nezu’s request. Why wouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he? As a man who could be in a thousand places at once, what did he really have to lose by accepting? This was, basically, to him, another passive income stream.

“That reminds me, Aizawa-san, the Principal did mention you could use my aid.” 

Aizawa gave the man a cool stare. “He did?"

“Reportedly, you have issues with individuals constantly targeting you and are worried they may target your students. Therefore, if there were two of you, one, constantly at UA Academy, and another one, elsewhere, performing standard hero work in the public eye…” he trailed off, with a knowing look.

A doppelganger to draw attention… focus assassination attempts on that one…

It would, indeed, make his life just slightly more bearable.

“Are you offering this to just me?”

“On the contrary. Principal Nezu paid in full to allow my services for any and all members of UA Staff who have difficulties juggling their personal and professional lives. Twice per month, pun fully intended, I am granted permission to lend them such services as well.”

It sounded almost too good to be true. He could clone the teachers and have those clones teach and take on their duties, giving the staff time off to pursue other ventures?

Nezu being this considerate? That’s not a good sign.

Whenever Nezu showed significant kindness, it meant there was something coming that necessitated such kindness and generosity. Was it because someone had probed a weakness in his Quirk? No, that couldn’t be. Nezu had hired Bubaigawara Jin before that incident.

Whatever the reason, it made Aizawa uneasy. 

“Your doubles, how long do they last?”

“Indefinitely.”

Aizawa froze.

“Until receiving harm equivalent to a broken bone, that is,” Jin clarified. “Of course, I can only make two copies of a thing at a time, and it requires having the exact measurements and specifications, down to the finest detail.”

Aizawa pressed his lips together. “And the copies…”

“Are perfectly identical. They will possess your memories, experiences, and yes, Aizawa-san, even your Quirk.”

Aizawa’s breath hitched in his throat.

“You can disable the quirks of others, as I take it?" Jin continued. “I’m told you do a lot of work aiding children whose quirks go rampant in hospitals. With my aid, Aizawa-san, you can help more children whilst easing your burdens.”

Aizawa could not help but look at Bubaigawara Jin in an entirely new light. 

“You have no problems with my quirk?"

Jin shook his head. “Though I understand many individuals consider their quirks a fundamental part of themselves, and depriving them of parts of themselves, even temporarily, is terrifying and degrading, I am not amongst them."

Jin smiled at him. “With the amount of good you have done, and the amount of good you continue to do, I have no reason to fear or be wary of you. I know more than anyone that Quirks, while greatly influential on one’s life, are not entirely responsible for who a person becomes. What one chooses to do with their Quirks will always be what defines them."

There was even a part of Aizawa that felt appreciation. There was a slight release of tension in his shoulders, yet there was the subtle addition of a hidden weight nonetheless.

Does he truly believe that?

Aizawa was beginning to understand why Nezu had chosen Bubaigawara as the school counselor. It was not correct to call him a naïve man, but he was, without a doubt, an optimistic one. The sort of person who searched for, and chose to see the good in people first and foremost.

Even if there was little to be found.

However, there was a nobility to it. A nobility to that optimism. Bubaigawara was far nobler than he, who immediately assumed the worst intentions of others.

“Now then, Aizawa-san, about that tour…?"

Bubaigawara Jin… Aizawa let the man ahead, leading the way for the tour. What an unusual man. 

XXXXX - A Precise Note - XXXXX

UA Academy

Class 1-A

April 4th, 20xx

“There are only two kinds of people, Hitoshi. Winners and losers. I’m sick and tired of being a loser, and I won’t have my son be one as well.”

“You have to learn to take from others, Hitoshi. Just because you wouldn’t eat a tiger does not mean a tiger won’t eat you. This world feasts on the weak! It swallows them whole! You have to be strong! Strong! You have to be a winner.”

The classroom was silent. He was the first person to make it there, standing at the state-of-the-art security doors, which had a glowing sign above that read: Class 1-A.  

The desks were sleek, polished, with a scent that hinted at the possibility they were brand new. The floors, the tiles, were pristine and white, enough that his own reflection could be seen on them. There was not a chalkboard, but a whiteboard, with a carton of clean markers kept on the side. There was a projector that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room, there were sprinklers placed in strategic places in the ceiling, a fire extinguisher affixed to a wall, and beside a red fire alarm.

The walls of the classroom were adorned with motivational posters of heroes. All Might, being the most prominent amongst them, with quotes such as “I Am Here” and “Plus Ultra” written in big, bold, blue and white and red and yellow letters.

Shinso’s gaze swept over the empty classroom, towards the desks, and found his designated seat at the front of the class. Arranged according to examination score, Shinso sat and steepled his fingers, boring a hole into the teacher’s desk in front of him, the whiteboard, the brightly painted walls, and the room itself.

Am I a winner?

By entering into UA Academy, some would qualify him as a winner. By scoring fifth place in the exams, many could consider him a winner. Despite that, staring at the four seats to his right, the seats which were positioned for places fourth-to-first, Shinso questioned if he had truly ‘won.’

It was not the first time, he questioned it. Deciding to be a hero, to use his powers for the sake of good, rather than as his father intended, rather than as the man trained him, there was almost no day he did not question it.

A month after his father learned of his quirk, after the messy fall out with his mother, the drinking, the arguments, the yelling, the man told him to get into his car and drove them somewhere in the dead of night. They had driven to a portion of the city he had never seen, filled with colorful lights, bright signs, with drunkards and salarymen stumbling about with slackened ties, untucked shirts, and vomit-stained suits, with women in high heels, fishnet stockings, and short gowns.

The man had taken him into the back door of an establishment for adults and entered into a room, where a woman in a silk gown lay on a large heart-shaped bed, a woman whose eyes widened as soon as she saw him, and she shot her gaze towards her father with disgust.

“A kid? You better have a good explanation or—”

“Shut up. I didn’t pay you for that. You’re here for my son to practice his quirk.”

“Practice? What sort of quirk would—”

“Hitoshi. Use it.”

As a child whose will, whose freedom, whose life and livelihood was entirely at the whim of his parents, refusing or disobeying his father was not a thing that registered, consciously or otherwise. Using his quirk, watching as the woman’s expression went dull, as his father walked around, and observed, slowly, as he took out a notepad, began to write how long the quirk lasted and what it did.

Practice, his father called it. One needs practice to grow. He told him that few would volunteer willingly to let him use his Quirk on them, to be at his whim and mercy for the sake of his growth.

He started with cheap prostitutes, then his father took him to the Wards, and found the suffering and destitute. Handing over a few wads of cash or bread and provisions, and they would stand and let him ‘practice’ as they wished. His orders were always simple. Dance, move, tap your feet, touch your shoulders, elbows, and toes, jump, spin—

When his father slapped the prostitute, he learned that a strong enough impact or jolt could snap one out of the effects of his quirk.

When his father asked him to tell the beggar to stab himself, he learned his orders could make others hurt themselves.

When his father told him to order a vagrant to run as far as he could, and keep on running, he learned how long his brainwashing lasted, and that it could function even when the victims were kilometers away.

Pushing and refining the limits of his quirk, Hitoshi suspected his father’s goal was to train him for something big, but then, he had not known what.

He never suspected what his father meant when he told him: You have to be a winner.

“The lab? Why the hell is the lab the first place you want to check out?”

“I’m interested in the facilities, Kacchan. I have a project I’m working on. Remember? I told you about it.”

“Izuku, I swear to god, I can’t keep track of half the nerd shit you talk about daily.”

“That’s another swear, Kacchan.”

“No, the fuck it isn’t. Saying shit isn’t a swear. Shit is shit. A swear would be something like—”

There was a pause.

“I said fuck just now, didn’t I?”

“Twice.”

“Fuck!”

“Three times, Kacchan. You’re going to be broke at the end of this.”

Two voices approached the classroom. The first, he did not know, but he recognized the second voice immediately. It was the voice of the extremely irritating bastard who'd almost deafened him with explosions and vulgar swearing during the exams. He glanced up, just as the doors slid open, and the blond delinquent stepped in, grumbling and mumbling under his breath.

They made eye contact.

"Look alive, Izuku," the boy’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Someone’s here before us. Oi, who are you?”

Several answers came to Shinso's mind. An insult rested at the tip of his tongue. Silence was his preferred response.

“Wait, I remember," he pointed. “Hitoshi Shinso."

Hitoshi didn't even have it in him to hide his surprise.

“Seventy-one, twenty-five, thirteen."

It took a second for it to click. My test scores?

The vulgarian marched up to him, and, with a weird, twisted expression, he extended his hand outwards. “Katsuki Bakugo," he said. “Eighty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty-three."

The boy was testing him. Evaluating him. The name-drop, extended hand, and mentioning of scores were not intended to be a casual introduction.

“Second place?" Shinso said. He took the hand. The boy's grip hardened down on him immediately, and he gave him a perplexed look.

“You fucked up," he said. “Your written score was the third highest, but your hero eval was the second lowest. That means the pro-heroes saw you do lots of shit but felt you weren't cut out to be hero material. You don't look like a fucking idiot and can't be one since you aced the written test."

The boy in front of him glared. 

“So how the fuck did you screw it to make those bastards think you ain't cut out for hero shit?"

There were very few moments when Shinso found himself at a loss for words. This moment was one of them. The delinquent in front of him wasn't menacing. No, he wasn't even trying to be. His anger, to Shinso's utter bafflement, seemed to stem from the fact that Shinso himself had somehow failed to live up to expectations.

“Kacchan, swear—”

“Just keep a bloody tab open, damn it!”

Hitoshi gave the boy a cool look.  “My scores are none of your business."

The delinquent snarled. “Like hell they aren’t," he squeezed his hand. “Those exams were bullshit tough. You know it. I know it. If we're here, sitting in this classroom, that means we're fucking aces. We aced the toughest UA Exam ever fucking written. You know what that means? It means we're already a cut above every fucking graduate of this school. It means we're about to make history."

The boy let go of his hand. “I'm gonna be the No. 1 Pro Hero, and there's no fucking way in hell I'll let anyone who's associated with me be anything less than the best of the best. So that fuck-up had better be a one-time thing. You got it?"

Hitoshi couldn't believe the words he'd just heard. His mind pieced them together, and the picture they painted had been so abstract and absurd that he was having difficulties understanding how anyone could say any of that, let alone believe it.

The blond boy reached into his pockets for change, tossing them behind him. Despite tossing them randomly, each of them flying in varying directions, the other boy with him caught them all out of the air with a graceful, almost preternatural movement. 

The graceful, green-haired boy shook his head. “Kacchan, you sure you can keep this up?"

"I said I was going to try to swear less!" The delinquent snapped at the boy. “I'm fuc— fudging trying, aren't I?" He grumbled. “What the hell are you planning on doing with my money, anyway?”

“I have a lot of dates planned.”

“Huh? You were serious about that?”

“I always tell you the truth, Kacchan, it's just you rarely believe it.”

Hitoshi focused on the second boy. Now that the vulgarian delinquent was quiet and wasn’t drawing his attention, he blinked several times as he saw the green-haired kid. The boy appeared as though he had stepped out of a model magazine. Or perhaps, someone acting in a movie about vampiric quirks, with all the encompassing glitter.

The boy was toned. Unlike the delinquent, however, the musculature was almost hidden. You had to look to see it. Hitoshi was unusually unnerved. For a second, he contemplated whether the boy had undergone plastic surgery, but then dismissed it.

He'd won the genetic lottery, as far as Hitoshi was concerned. A face like that would bring nothing but blessings and compound already innate fortunes. 

The boy noticed him looking, and he approached with a polite, yet confident smile. A  smile that almost disarmed him.

“Don't mind him, Shinso-san. Kacchan is just trying to spur you on."

"Oi! I didn’t ask you to be my mouthpiece!"

“This is a new school, Kacchan. You don’t want people to have the wrong impression of you.”

“Let them think whatever they want," the delinquent crossed his arms. “Words are fucking cheap anyway. My actions will show them."

“Swear word.”

"God damn it!"

The delinquent pulled out his wallet and handed a crisp bill to the green-haired boy, who took it with a large smile. Hitoshi could tell, from the manner they referred to each other and the way they spoke to each other, that the duo were friends. Close friends.

“By the way, Shinso-san, I didn't introduce myself," the boy said. “I’m Midoriya Izuku."

Midoriya Izuku. 

The boy before him was famous. There was no one, not a soul, who did not know the name associated with the one and only perfect score.

First Place.

In what was now officially declared as the hardest Entrance Exams in UA history, an examination which sent dozens of wide-eyed, eager children back home to weep into the skirts of their mothers, there had been an applicant who defied all odds and common sense, and managed to attain a perfect score.

Hitoshi couldn’t help but feel a sense of wrongness. The first and second place examinees were close friends. They had likely been friends for a long time. Was it a case of winners attracting and surrounding themselves with winners?

Formal and handsome, confident and graceful, if their lives were a TV show, the boy in front of him would be someone too good to be the protagonist. The showrunners would refuse, simply because he appeared, on the surface, far too perfect.

Except Shinso knew that there was no such thing as perfection.

“Shinso Hitoshi," he introduced himself formally. “You're the one with the perfect score."

“I am."

Shinso hadn't expected that. False modesty was all the rage, so much so that he'd half expected the boy to wave off his accomplishments or smile and be humble about it. There was none of that to be found. 

The boy's eyes shimmered with light as he said those two words: “I am."

A shudder ran down Shinso's spine as he stared again into the dazzling green eyes of Midoriya Izuku.

The sound of footsteps drew him from his thoughts as another individual approached the classroom. With thorny, vine-like hairs, she was garbed in their school uniform, but there was a steel ornament dangling from her chest.

The ornament was a depiction of a single hand in steel. One hand, and only one hand, outstretched, as though bestowing something or as though taking something. It was a symbol he had seen multiple times on fliers being handed out by black or white-robed missionaries in between malls and on train stations, a symbol he had seen on internet pages, archives, and emblazoned in places of crosses and rosaries.

The vine-haired girl wore it proudly upon her chest. Her gaze, stern, frozen, chillier than the alps, swept the room as she glanced at them all, before stopping on Midoriya Izuku.

From there, the frozen peaks of those alps melted, and her eyes widened into bright, girlish, glee.

"Ah, M-Midoriya-san. I see you made it!"

She realized, then, her voice had been too loud, her surprise and excitement too earnest, too obvious. She pushed aside a lock of her vine-hair behind her ears, and warmth had crept unto her neck, embarrassment spreading as blood did to her cheeks.

As though he, Hitoshi, was not in the room, and as though the vulgarian was also not in the room, her eyes set upon only Midoriya Izuku, and her voice spoke with a softness and cordiality he doubted she would reserve for anyone else.

Midoriya Izuku smiled as though such an occurrence was common. He, Hitoshi, a person to whom girls would never speak a word of due to fear, and a person who thought he had accepted that fate, felt a itch in his throat.

Entering UA Academy, placing fifth in the entrance exams, he thought he was a winner.

He was wrong.

Being able to change someone's entire disposition, to have them brighten up immediately upon meeting his gaze, to be excited in his presence, rather than wary, scared, or cautious—

That was what it meant to be a winner.