#we can only guess on all the (absolutely deranged) things we’ve seen/read/heard over the years

[k1nky-fool]

In Loving Memory

Part 1/?

Shouta Aizawa x OC

Rating: Teen (this is subject to change chapter to chapter)

Warnings: not beta read, bad spur of the moment choices, one character's existential crisis seen from an outsider's point of view, and purposely bad fashion sense.

Taglist: I'm dropping this in a discord channel too, so hi my dudes! And if you want to be tagged in future chapters, feel free to send in an ask, or PM me!

Author's Note: I really just want to make sure I get this chapter out. Because I want to have a small platonic one-shot with my OC Shizune Kiokuro and Mirio Togata for his birthday tomorrow that's set after the Overhaul arc. For angsty bitter sweet reasons. I should have that out tomorrow.

He felt a little bad for it. To be fair she had walked in wearing something that just threw him into a fight or flight response. She looked absolutely unhinged and deranged. Shouta could relate, but it made him activate his quirk immediately. He thought he had better control than this, and he managed to catch himself before anything major happened and before anyone could notice. But the woman had frozen in place and looked around like she was trying to find the source of whatever had caused the strange feeling.

Her eyes caught Shouta's and she looked him up and down with tired eyes. She shrugged him off and sat down in a seat at the table. He figured she was the new hero course third year hire after the last Investigations teacher retired.

This new year would be quite a lot. Several new teachers were joining the UA staff this year, including but not limited to All Might, and whoever this jarring woman was. It was enough to have Hizashi here to fill the role of obnoxious staff, but now there would be All Might?

Then there was this woman with a neon green mohawk and she's wearing an orange, green, and purple bowling shirt tied into a crop top, hot pink jean shorts and… are those fucking Crocs? Shouta himself couldn't be bothered to care anymore, but it was unusual that he was the only one seeming to notice something this bizarre.

"As many of you have heard, we are welcoming Toshinori Yagi to our staff this year, but All Might is not our only new addition. We also have Kiokuro Shizune joining the third year staff." Nezu happily introduced.

Everyone turned to see Shizune and she smiled brightly. Now it finally seemed that everyone was noticing her. A few teachers looked at her with disgust. Some were staring in surprise. Others just weirded out. Shizune, for her part, just chuckled at the wide array of reactions until everyone had gotten their eyeful and looked away.

None of the previous reactions stayed on their faces. And nobody bothered to look back at her. That much was odd. At least Nemuri would look back a few times and whisper about it to whoever was sitting next to her.

For the rest of the meeting, nobody looked back at her, as though she had completely faded into the background of an arcade floor someone had vomited every slushie imaginable onto. There wasn't much meeting to focus on beyond the full class files that every teacher was given at the beginning of the year. Shouta wouldn't be bothered to read it. He didn't want to have any preconceived notions about any of his students before he met them. They would have to make their first impressions count.

Shouta kept finding his gaze back at Shizune. She just sat there like a clown, tilting her chair back with a bored expression on her face. She didn't seem to think anyone was paying her any attention.

The exact second Nezu dismissed the meeting, she was gone. He wasn't going to bother talking to her, but the speed in which she was already out the door was almost impressive. But the less time he had to spend getting to know her the better.

He had a lot of work to do before his students showed up in class next week. He got back to his computer and started up. He hated the paperwork, but he had known what he was in for when he started.

"Say, Aizawa." Fucking Nemuri. "How do you think All Might's gonna fit in here?"

"He can worry about that himself."

"Oh come on, you don't even wanna know why he's suddenly decided to teach classes?" She asked. "I mean, the number one hero suddenly settling down to teach some brats? Gotta be the most bizarre thing we've seen."

"He wasn't the most bizarre thing about that meeting." He sighed. "Go home, Kayama."

"Oh? What was the most bizarre thing about that meeting?" She asked.

"Either you're blind or just stupid. Go home." He said again.

Suddenly Nemuri was all the more confused. "What did I miss?"

"The clown in the corner." Shouta deadpanned. "You'll get along well."

"The hell are you talking about? Are you ok?" Nemuri reached for his forehead, but he leaned out of the way.

"I'm fine. You can leave."

"Alright, fine." She shrugged off. "I'm going."

Finally, quiet. He liked being the only one in the office no matter how late it was. Being the last one here was worth it.

At least he wished he was the last one here. Meandering steps that thudded ever so softly on the floor. He didn't even bother to look up, knowing the colors on their shirt would give him a headache.

"Evening, Kiokuro." He acknowledged. It would be worse if she didn't know he was here.

She stopped dead in her tracks. Not saying a word. A beat of silence went by before she said anything. "How the fuck did you do that?" Her voice quivered.

"Do what?" He still didn't bother to look up at her.

"How did you know it was me? You're not looking at me." She asked.

"Your crocs make a dumb swishing sound on the floor. Your steps are quick and soft because you don't weigh a whole lot. And you walk around like you're not heading anywhere in particular, so you make strange noises, but over a large surface area. Not in a straight line." He explained like she should already know this. "I remember how you walked into the meeting."

Shizune stomped over to the side of his desk and forced his chair toward her. Fine. Guess he's not getting any work done. He finally conceded to looking up at her.

She still wore the outrageous outfit from earlier. However, her expression was one of complete fear as her eyes frantically searched his face. "Are you fucking with me?"

"What?"

"People don't remember me, Aizawa." She said, "How the fuck did you know it was me without looking up and keeping me in your line of sight?"

"What are you talking about?"

She took a step back, seeming to think something over. "My quirk." She began. "When I'm in your line of sight, you know me, you see me. But the second I'm not in your line of sight, you forget me. It is impossible for people to remember me without looking at me. If I'm not being looked at, I don't exist to anyone but myself."

"You're a stealth hero." He noted.

"Yeah. I'm the perfect stealth hero." She snapped. "So how the hell do you remember me?"

Shouta stood up, glaring down at her. "My quirk is to erase quirks."

"Oh.. you're Eraserhead." She noted. "That must have been what I felt in the meeting room. Why did you feel the need to erase my quirk the second you saw me?"

"Your shirt gave me a headache. My first thought was that it was a threat." He deadpanned.

"Oh… well that's kind of the point… but that means that it never got the chance to lock onto you. Which means the next time you looked at me, there was nothing to remember, because you hadn't forgotten. Wait then that means…" Shizune paused.

"Yeah, good luck with that." Shouta shrugged off, leaving her staring off into space. "Go home, Kiokuro." He called back as he closed the door behind him.

-X-

It was another week and a half before he had seen her again. Only two days after classes had started. He didn't want to be here, especially not while there were still students in the classroom.

Shouta had come to collect the uniform reports that All Might had left behind. All he had to do was take them down to the support department, then he could go home. But Iida, Midoriya, and Ururaka were staying late on a Friday afternoon, cleaning the classroom. They were almost done by the looks of it.

"Hi, Mr. Aizawa!" Ururaka greeted. He gave her a wave, going straight to the podium where All Might said he left the reports.

His stomach jumped when a knife flew past his face. His scarf was activated immediately, and wrapped around the assailant's wrist. But it was in vain. They had taken his scarf in their grip and jumped into the air, spinning and pulling him toward them. In one move, they kicked him back into the wall.

He grunted in pain, but his eye caught the obnoxious colors of his attacker.

"Mr. Aizawa!" Midoriya was up and ready to fight, but Shouta held up a hand to stop any of the students from attacking her.

They all waited for him to do something, so he just stood against the wall as she held a knife to his neck, staring her in the eyes. "You kids can head out. Ms. Kiokuro and I have something to discuss."

"But Mr. Aizawa, sir…" Iida began to protest, but must have come to a different conclusion. "Of course. Let's go." The other two followed him out of the classroom. They wouldn't remember this, and Shizune would be safe.

"Alright… you got me alone, now what do you want, Kiokuro?" He grumbled.

She bit out a laugh. "Now, you see- hmm honestly I-" it took her a brief moment to gather herself, and he probably would be more comfortable without the knife at his neck. He lifted his hand to move it away, but she kept it in place. "Ah, yes." She nodded. "You are driving me insane."

"That's unfortunate. Can you get the knife out of my face?" He asked.

"No." She pushed him again back into the wall. "Listen here, fucker-"

"My name is Shouta."

"You are officially 'fucker' until we figure this out." She commanded.

"Great. I could think a lot better if you took the knife out of my face."

"Shut up." She ordered, but let out a breath in annoyance. Shizune resigned to putting the knife back on her belt. "Alright, look… I really want nothing more than to go on about my life and forget you exist, just like everyone does for me."

"Then do it."

"Now, that's the problem! I feel safe knowing that there is nobody that has any memory of me. But you-! You." She laughed, pulling the knife out of the wall and holding it back at his neck. "Every time I think I'm safe, I'm reminded that you remember me."

"Why the fuck-"

"I don't trust you, Shouta." She hissed. "I don't trust you with the memory of me."

"Why don't you?"

"Gee, I don't know. Maybe because I don't know you? Or because there's no reason I should trust you?" Shizune argued. "Really it's because you're not special."

"Well clearly I am." He said. "Because whether you like it or not, I do remember you. And there's no way to fix that."

"Now, Shouta, that's the wrong answer. Because I can fix it by beating it out of your head, and I can then rest easy knowing that there's nobody in the world that will ever find out." She said.

"But you're not going to do that." He figured. "You could have killed me when you first attacked me. Even in front of the students, it wouldn't have mattered. But you're a pro-hero."

Shizune let out a sigh and took the second knife away from his face. "So what can I even do about you, Shouta?" She began pacing the floor, rubbing the buzzed sides of her head. "I can't just leave you with my memory because I tried that for a week and it's driven me insane. I can't sleep knowing someone could be thinking about me, even if you physically couldn't care less if you tried. It's not a matter of if you are or aren't, it's a problem that you can at all."

"Alright, calm down, Shizune." He noted that in this little squabble they had somehow come to a first name basis and that novelty wasn't wasted on him. Very few people got this far, let alone in such a short amount of time.

"It's not easy to calm down about this. It's been almost fifteen years since I've had to trust someone with the memory of me." She was going to start rambling if he let her keep going.

"It's ok. Don't worry about that yet. Now, tell me why again you don't trust me." He said.

"Because I never trust anyone. You're not different, you're not special. But as of a week ago, you are the only person on the planet that knows who I am." She explained.

"Alright, so we've established that you don't trust me any more than everyone else. Which is understandable. I met you a week ago." He followed along. "But since I do remember you, and we don't have a way to fix that beyond extreme violence, we need to figure something else out. You said there was no reason you should trust me. In the event of someone having memory of you, what would make you trust them with that information?'

Shizune thought for a second. "I need to know that person won't tell others about me. I need to be a complete secret."

"That's great, because I don't want to talk to anyone about you." He deadpanned.

"But how can I be sure that you won't be convinced by one of your friends to talk about me? How do I know that Yamada or Kayama can't ask the right question to get you to talk about me?"

"First, I'm an underground hero, just like you. If you don't want anyone to know about you, then nobody will know about you." He promised. "And second, I don't even want to tell them about myself, let alone make an effort to tell them about you."

"Fair enough…" She shrugged. "But I still don't know you. For all I know you could be lying about this."

"And for that, we'll have to trust each other." Shouta figured. "How about I give you a piece of information about me that I don't want people knowing?"

"You would do that?"

"I don't want to, but it's fair. I'd be essentially letting you hold me hostage." He explained. "If someone ends up knowing about you in any way that you haven't given them, then you have this information to do what you want with."

Shizune looked him up and down. "What makes you think I need something true to do that?"

"You don't, but this is supposed to be a gesture of trust."

"Oh yeah…." She remembered. "You do realize it'll have to be something genuinely secret. Something you would literally rather die than have other people know about."

"Which is the issue. I don't think there's anything I would have a problem with other people knowing."

Immediately Shizune lit up with a wicked smile across her face. His students should be glad he doesn't smile like that. "I bet I can find something."

"I will bet you can't." He deadpanned. "Not that I think your investigation skills are lacking, there's just nothing for you to find."

"More mysterious men than you have said that to me and been so. very. wrong." She chuckled, taking a step closer to him. He didn't like the sound of that, but if it meant she could find something that would make her less of a lunatic, then he would let her investigate.

"If you're that confident in yourself, then you have my permission to poke around in my life until you find something." Shouta allowed. "But I don't think you needed my permission in the first place."

"Eh, I don't stalk people unless I need to for work." She shrugged. "I'll see you around."

Shizune was gone, but once again, there was no change in Shouta's memory of her. If she could find something that he cared so heavily about, he wondered what it would be. What would an outside investigator determine to be the most important part of his life?