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Yamada Hizashi loved all three of his jobs for different reasons. He loved being a pro hero and being able to fight villains and protect civilians from harm. He loved being a teacher as he could help kids grow and feel supported as they learned so they could become amazing people once they graduated. And he loved his radio show, being able to reach out and encourage listeners, be someone attainable they can reach out to when they need help. That’s why his agency has a 24/7 help line. He wanted to be able to reach as many people as possible.
That’s part of why he has call in sessions on his station. To be more reachable and let people call in when it isn’t an emergency. He does these sessions every night he’s on air so that calls don’t flood in and overload his tech team.
So yeah Hizashi loves his jobs, but sometimes balancing three jobs can cause his schedule to be a bit hectic. Such as having to be on air the night before this year's entrance exams at UA. Exam day is always a busy day of herding student hopefuls around and then going over video feeds and looking for any people who earned resume points and then voting on how many points they receive for said action. So staying up late is not the most ideal and Hizashi is tempted to end the call-ins early and set up a music queue for the rest of the time and head home early. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done this and his fans always support his need for sleep when he does this and yet he’s hesitant. One of his regular callers hasn’t called for three weeks, and this particular caller usually calls once a week like clockwork, more if a discussion topic prompts them. Once is happenstance, twice is a pattern, three is enemy action. Though in this case Hizashi doesn’t know what or who exactly the enemy is. He has no why, he just knows the kid hasn’t called in a while and Hizashi is worried.
The first time they called they were just a little thing, nervous and full of stutters asking questions about how his quirk worked. Over the next four months they called, always with questions for Hizashi, sometimes about his quirk, sometimes about a specific fight or just what his favorite food was. The kid was always sweet and polite as he stuttered through his questions and Hizashi loved those calls. Eventually the kid started to stutter less, seemingly gaining more confidence, at least when it came to calling in.
After a bit Hizashi asked what to call the kid. The kid had seemed to panic and waffle as they tried to come up with something. Before the hesitant answer of “you can call me Genesis.” Hizashi was thrilled with the name and asked if it had a meaning to which Genesis said it did but refused to elaborate on besides a quiet “it hints at my quirk” Hizashi didn’t push it further as Genesis’s quirk seemed to be a sensitive subject, even with all the talks against quirk descrimination he’d done.
Then “The Incident” as it was dubbed by the tech crew happened. A caller joined and tried to sprout some quirkest bullshit listing ‘evidence’ and trying to make a case to the listeners. Hizashi shut him down as quick as he could and ended the call. After apologizing he took the next call, which happened to be Genesis. What he wasn’t expecting was the kid to go off, tearing apart the ‘evidence’ of the previous caller. He went ten minutes straight stating statistics, studies, and even using public figures in comparisons to get his point across. The entire time talking as fast as humanly possible while still being comprehensible and not once stuttering.
Hizashi was proud.
Right after he apologized for taking up so much time but Hizashi waved him off and told him he did good. He could hear the baffled shock like he never got praised for anything before.
So yeah if that didn’t scare the kid away he wasn’t sure what could. Their last call had been normal. Shouta said he was being illogical worrying about it so much but Genesis had been calling for six years, Hizashi had been able to hear as he grew and matured over that time so it wasn’t illogical ShOuTa. He was attached, and worried something happened to his the kid. He wasn’t the only one either, a couple callers asked if he had heard from Genesis and the tech crew were worried for the little listener as well.
Sighing internally and turned his mic on again as the song that was playing ended.
“Well listeners I’ll give a few minutes then I’m going to say goodbye and leave you all a bit early since I have a busy day tomorrow, so if anyone got anything they wanna say now's the time!”
Hizashi waited a moment before he got the signal that a call was being patched through. “Hey listener! What can I do for ya?” he greeted as soon as he heard the line connect.
“Hey Mic”
“Genesis!” Hizashi cheered “It’s been a bit since you called, we've all been wondering where you’ve been!”
There was a sheepish chuckle “Sorry about that I’ve been busy so I haven’t been thinking of questions to ask lately. I didn’t mean to worry anyone.”
“You’re fine Genesis, just glad you’re back. Now do I get to know what made you too busy to call?”
“Oh uh, I’ve been preparing for the UA entrance exam.”
Hizashi started to vibrate with excited energy. If the little listener went to UA he’d meet the kid in class and maybe get him to guest on the show sometime. “That’s awesome Genesis! What course were you shooting for?”
There was a pause before a deep breathe and then “the hero course”
Hizashi beamed “You’ll use that brain of yours to save a lot of people little listener.”
There was a pause before a quiet “what if I fail?”
“Even if you fail you’ve already won because you tried in the first place. Do you know how many want to apply to UA but didn’t because they were scared? So many but you, you’re still trying.”
“But what if I don’t even have a quirk?”
The voice is so impossibly small at this point, full of fear and doubt it breaks Hizashi’s heart slightly. Hizashi now understands Genesis’s hesitance to talk about his quirk or in this case the lack of one.
“You have a dream and you’re still reaching for it no matter what anyone has said to you, if that doesn’t make you worthy I don’t know what does.”
“What if I let everyone down?”
“So what? I’ll still be so fucking proud of you, and I love you so much. I can’t wait to watch you become the world’s first quirkless hero.”
There was a sniffle on the other end of the line, “Thank you Mic, you’re the first person to believe in me.”
“Of course Genesis, now get to sleep you need to be rested to kick ass tomorrow, and don’t forget to use that brain of yours, go plus ultra with it.”
“Alright I will, thank you, for everything.” with that Genesis hung up.
Hizashi took a deep breath. “Well Listeners I’m going to take my own advice and get some sleep I’ll be leaving you with some tunes! Present Mic signing off.”
Hizashi was vibrating with energy as he looked at the screens eyes scanning for the mop of green hair from the auditorium. Hizashi is used to getting no response when he calls out to test takers due to them being stressed out of their minds. So when he heard a single voice that he recognized call out yeah he honed in onto the sound and grinned wide sending finger guns his way with the thought ‘found you little listener.’ (He was not thrilled when Tenya nagged at Genesis but he couldn’t show favoritism so he called the attention back to him).
As the doors opened he saw a blur of green shoot forward towards battle center D while all the other examinees stood frozen. “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? THERE ARE NO COUNTDOWNS IN REAL LIFE!” that got the rest of the examinees moving. Casting his eye back towards Genesis he saw him drive the pole of a stop sign through the head of a one pointer, a three pointer seemed to have fared the same fate. As the kid struggled for a moment to get the sign he paused before a grin that Hizashi could only describe as maniacal spread across his face.
Hizashi watches as the kid ducks around a three pointer and strikes the back of the head, hitting the small power switches hidden there and the bot shuts off. Grinning wider Genesis starts making quick work of bots ranking up points quite nicely. Hizashi isn’t surprised to see Shouta eyeing the kid. Only a handful of students have ever noticed the switches, but every one that has and had passed the exam since Shouta started working at UA has landed in his homeroom and become a highly respected Underground Hero.
Hizashi glanced at some of the other screens but kept glancing back at his kid. Then Nezu released the zero pointers and all hell broke loose. Genesis had been racking up points along the outskirts but at the commotion moved towards the center. Genesis froze at the sheer chaos, debris and screaming fleeing examinees.
Genesis made to follow at a calmer but still swift retreat from the zero pointer when he whirled around and sprinted towards the robot. Hizashi was torn at being proud the kid wasn’t a panicking mess and pissed because that is a robot the is bigger than the buildings Genesis why??
Then the why came into view, a different examinee was trapped under a pile of rubble directly in the path of the zero pointer. Genesis skidded to a stop and shoved the sign under the piece of rubble. Genesis said something to the girl and pulled down on the sign using it like a lever lifting it enough for the girl to crawl out of. Once she’s clear Genesis released the sign and picked up the girl like she weighed nothing and booked it towards the city entrance.
They’ve already made it a good ways by the time the buzzer sounds. Genesis sets the girl down carefully and once she’s on the ground she touches her fingers together in a pyramid like shape. There’s a pause before she starts barfing rainbows, Genesis rubbed her back and held her hair as she emptied her stomach.
Recovery Girl makes her way to the two and once the girl is done hurling, kisses the girl on the forehead, her leg glowing green, then she passes out. Genesis then carefully lays the girl on the stretcher held by med bots and watches as they make their way back to the infirmary.
After a few gummies and a pat on the back Genesis starts to make his way out of the center ignoring the stares from many of the other examinees.
There’s a moment of silence in the observation room as the heroes digest what they just witnessed.
“I call dibs on the bush kid.” Shouta states calmly from the back of the room.
“Oh fuck off Aizawa!” Kan throws back “It isn’t even your year to pick first”
“He noticed the switches, speaking of, I want the invisible one as well.”
“Fucks sake” Kan grumbled, it was a sore spot for Kan that as an underground hero Shouta was better suited to help pretty much any student who would notice the switches and as such get them in his homeroom.
“Now now once we distribute points and have the rankings you two can discuss choices.” Nezu interrupted the bickering. “Now then let’s get started.”
Hizashi stared at the screen indicating the top ten examinees of the year. It took the rest of the day to scour through testers, watching for rescues and voting on points for the student but they had them.
1st: Midoriya Izuku-33 villain points-45 rescue points Total: 78
2nd: Bakugou Katsuki-77 villain points-0 rescue points Total: 77
3rd: Kirishima Eijirou-39 villain points-35 rescue points Total: 74
4th: Shiozaki Ibara-36 villain points-32 rescue Total: 68
5th: Kendo Itsuka-25 villain points-40 rescue Total: 65
6th: Iida Tenya-52 villain points-9 rescue Total: 61
7th: Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu-49 villain points-10 rescue points Total: 59
8th: Tokoyami Fumikage-47 villain points-10 rescue points Total: 57
9th: Yosetsu Awase- 50 villain points-6 rescue points Total: 56
10th: Uraraka Ochaco-28 villain points-25 rescue points Total: 53
Hizashi couldn’t help the grin on his face, he would’ve been proud no matter how the kid did but the kid went and got first, against a bunch of kids whose quirks, in a lot of cases, were perfect to use against robots, and he came first.
Well he did tell him to go plus ultra.