When the Stars Align

Chapter 1

~~

- Early February -

Shouta didn't know how to feel about the situation at hand.

When Nezu had called him a couple of days ago to relay a message from the Hero Public Safety Commission (HPSC) asking if he could be present for an important meeting the following week, he was ready for the worst.

He expected to be berated, told he was doing a shit job at preparing the next generation of Hero's. It would sting a little, of course- he took his job very seriously- but he would gracefully accept the criticism and work harder. At the very least, if his teaching abilities weren't the thing to be talked about, he was expecting some long, drawn out meeting about the new policies and lesson plans the Commission had made that he must implement into his class effect of immediately.

It would be a pain, a new mental strain he would be placed under in order to adhere to figureheads higher up the food chain than he. Cynicism often gripped at the edges of his understanding when new things like these happened, years of hardened Hero work and loss turning him into a pessimistic person that longed for an end to the cycle of violence he had unknowingly signed himself up for all those years ago.

He straightened up, however. Realized that there were far more important things to take care of than dark thought processes that would be abandoned in a couple of days time when work piled up on him precariously. Shouta was a Hero, for crying out loud, even if he was unmarketable to the public.

His main interest was to help, to offer a guiding hand, to make sure the mistakes he had made in the past would not be repeated. Whether he liked it or not, the HPSC helped the most in this regard. For as dry as those in charge were, they had been around far longer than he, had witnessed tragedies and unspeakable horrors and yet still worked to process through the wreckage of said disasters in order to find the best way to help Japans civilians.

The organization was created for this sole purpose, for the purpose of providing fair laws that would help govern the powerful and the powerless, laws that were meant to prevent catastrophic events from ever gracing the country again...

If the Commission and its many rules were to be ignored, Hero society and society as a whole could no doubt crumble.

So Shouta had gone to the meeting, weary as he was that he would be the only one in attendance, with the intent of holding his head high and his expectations low. If something had to be added in order to ensure the proper growth and stability of the next generation of students, he would gladly do what was asked of him. If he was asked to improve his quality of work or, God forbid, resign, he would do that as well.

What he wasn't expecting, not in the slightest, was you.

Shouta had locked eyes with you the minute he stepped into the meeting room. You stood behind the president of the HPSC, arms crossed behind your back and head held high. You looked like a soldier, ready for a fight or for a command to be given to you, though your downcast eyes told another story. What that story was, he wasn't sure.

You couldn't have been any older than sixteen, if he had to guess.

As the President invited Shouta into the room, smiling easily in his direction, he was still looking over at you. He had heard rumors of the Commission taking in students of their own and picking hopeful youths from off the streets with promises of grandeur, had never personally seen it as he was far to busy a man, but this drove the point home. You were obviously taught under them or still in the process of it if his estimation of age was correct.

As he sat down, the President slid him a manilla folder, beckoning he open it to look at the contents inside. Opening it revealed your file, small as it was.