Chapter Text
Heroes, as a whole, were the most irresponsible wastes of oxygen to walk the face of the planet.
They used their might and wits for the public's safety and welfare, and heroes were responsible for saving hundreds of thousands of lives. It was the honor and privilege of people like her to support them in all their heroic struggles. This was their lot, what her own powers entitled her to in this big wide world.
Heroes, as a whole, did not understand the concept of minimizing collateral damage.
Sidewalks? Pointless.
Roads? For plebians.
Streetlights? A fancy word for a baseball bat.
Manhole covers? Nifty new things to throw at someone.
Windows? Unnecessary.
Filing your paperwork? Clearly not worth their time.
Using the correct form for collateral damage estimation? That was for the lower rank heroes.
If Tousha Chiyoji could be blessed with never seeing another member of the top ten on the Hero Billboard Chart, she would die a happy woman. Unfortunately, this was not to be. No, Chiyoji would forever be relegated to the front lines of the Musutafu City Police Department Head Office. She would be the first person to hand over and receive any and all documentation and witness statements that the police needed from the heroes.
At least she would be if the heroes could ever be bothered to fill it out correctly.
Best Jeanist was a wonderful soul, and if more pro heroes could be like him then Chiyoji would die happy. Well, as long as you ignored his tendency to wear jeans up to his nose, rant for hours about things that had no use in a professional setting, and use up all of his clothes and run the risk of Chiyoji needing to remember what the proper form for public indecency was.
But if there was one human being on the planet that Chiyoji would be perfectly fine with falling off the face of heroism and retiring to let more responsible heroes like Eraser Head and Best Jeanist rise up in the ranks... it would be Endeavor. The return of All Might to the peaceful city of Musutafu had him rapidly rising on her list of people who should also retire for the sake of the city itself.
Oh, Chiyoji didn't necessarily want them dead. She did understand that they performed a vital function in stopping villains, and as a peaceful citizen of Musutafu she rather liked not having villains around.
This noble pursuit, however, seemed to coincide with an alarming amount of collateral damage. Damage that she paid taxes to fix. Damage that she needed to account for. Damage that the heroes had never stopped even once to consider would become someone else's mess.
Why couldn't more heroes be like Eraser Head and Best Jeanist? It was a question that had haunted her for far too many sleepless nights and would have no definitive answer.
The bright smile of the blonde giant in front of her, eyes all but blacked out under his massive eyebrows, did not make Chiyoji properly smile back in return. "Mr. All Might, if you could please sign the forms. Here, here, and here. I'm going to need your hero license number here, and a concise statement on the incident here." She tapped the tip of her black manicured nail on the relevant fields, a forced and professional upward twist of lips stretched across her face as she smiled without actually smiling at the man.
She may have to be professional kind and chirpy, but that did not mean she needed to lapse on the basic concept of paperwork. All Might could stand to adopt a more useful professional persona.
Less smiling, more brain matter between his ears. The vapid laugh he gave cemented her opinion on her first-ever meeting of All Might. "Of course, good citizen! I will have the paperwork returned as soon as possible!"
She tittered professionally at him. He chortled back.
Chiyoji would not be seeing that paperwork back in a timely fashion.
All Might left in a flutter of American flag spandex and primary colors, and Chiyoji let the smile melt off her face like snow in a forest fire. She clicked her tongue when the lobby was finally free of him. One leg stuck out just far enough to toe open the bottom drawer of her desk with one shiny pleather shoe, and she bent sideways to grab one long magnet from its questionable depths.
The little strips had been intended for some conference room's giant whiteboard, but Chiyoji had appropriated them before any of the detectives could even see them. Philistines wouldn't know what to do with the strips or board if Chiyoji made them a how-to guide.
She held it between her fingers, the nails on her fingers glowing faintly as she scowled. All Might appeared on the strip in bold red English letters, a little image of his face at the end. She turned her chair with the slide of her other foot, the heel of her sensible leather shoe closing the drawer with a satisfying bang.
Chiyoji turned her attention to The Board. Not just any board, this was The Board of Worst Offenders, the people that Chiyoji hated the most in her entire life. There were no numbers on The Board. No, instead all she had was a series of magnet strips with hero names and faces, arranged in an order that made no sense to the casual viewer.
From Endeavor the literal flamethrower and worst human being alive all the way at the top to the mystical unicorn-like existence of Eraser Head at the very bottom, The Board of Worst Offenders was a thing of legend at the Musutafu station.
Carefully, Chiyoji nudged a few strips down with her nail before she slapped All Might into place. Just a hair above Endeavor and a few inches above Miruko, and she had no doubt that he would overtake Endeavor soon in terms of sheer collateral damage done to her city. The threat All Might presented to her workload would be nigh unmeasurable without The Board.
She clicked her tongue and spun back around, clicking her nails rhythmically across the fake wood veneer. "Of course. Of course, All Might moves here. God damn it."
To her left, her fellow front desk paperwork jockey made a sound that could charitably be called a strangled laugh. "You know he just wants to help. He is rather good at saving lives."
Her coworker was a wonderful man. Just on the wrong side of fifty, his hairline already receding enough for him to consider a lousy combover as a viable hairstyle, her fellow technician was a portly man who gave off just the right vibe of competence and maturity to get his job done. Chiyoji both hated and loved him because he was the only reason she had a job in the first place. This is the man who taught her that her Quirk could be used for so much more than slapping impossible graffiti in places and adding to her gang's jackets.
Musutafu was her city and heroes tended to ignore the carefully wrought social undercurrents that made her city so great. It didn't matter if you were a stupid teenage bosozoku riding their motorcycle at half the speed limit or some grandmother trying to figure out how to cross the intersection before the lights turned green. A hero could and would still destroy the extremely necessary city infrastructure, sometimes while people were still using them and expect that other people would clean up their mess for them.
Chiyoji turned her chair around just far enough to look at the man who had saved her life so very long ago, without any property damage to speak of, and blinked at him. "Respectfully, sir, All Might can go save lives in some other city."
Officer Kumoyama snorted and rolled all eight of his eyes. One of his six arms reached out with a stack of blank paper in her direction. "Well, Chiyo-chan, you know what to do."
She sighed and took the paper with a scowl. She'd had enough practice with her Quirk to flip through the stack with her eyes closed, the tip of her nails brushing against each sheet with an ethereal glow, and the rapidly growing smell of burning paper began to permeate the lobby as she flipped through the warming stack.
Chiyoji handed the pile back, the images of the standard Hero Collateral Damage Estimates package burned straight from her mind to the pages. Out of courtesy and the ease of years of practice, Chiyoji had even taken the time to fill the fields in properly with all of All Might's information. She blew on her nails to cool them and spun back around to paste another professional smile on her face.
"Hello and welcome to the station. How can I help you today?"
Children were wonderful. Children didn't commit the same levels of casual property destruction that made Chiyoji hate heroes with every fiber of her paper-pushing being. This particular child, however, had an air about him that made Chiyoji fear for his future. Her fingers itched for another magnet strip, but she kept her professional smile pasted on.
Green hair and a face that looked like he had seen the greatest thing of all time. Which, if Chiyoji spared two seconds of brainpower to contemplate, was probably because the child had encountered a fleeting glimpse of All Might. His freckles were as adorable as his smile was bright and Chiyoji could feel the paperwork looming on the horizon. He all but minced his way to the front desk like a child concerned with displeasing the adults around him.
"I... I want to report an incident? With a villain."
Chiyoji felt the smile on her face freeze as she tried very hard not to blink. "Of course." She carefully slid a blank piece of paper from the pile next to her across the desk, pinning it down with her nail. One glowing nail later and the form in question bloomed out across the page. "I'm going to need your statement here, any witnesses listed here, your contact information here, and your signature at the bottom. Please also provide your guardian's information here."
The boy looked more excited at her Quirk than at the form she slid in front of him and the pen she slapped down on top of it. Which, was understandable in the face of seeing someone casually using their Quirk, but this was her job and she had the provisional license for it. No police officer in their right mind would arrest someone who could make their lives that much easier with a thought and a piece of paper.
Her fingers burned just a little bit, and her nails were beginning to lose their ink-black tone. She'd probably need to suck on some kid-friendly markers during her next break to keep her pigments topped off. But the sun was setting soon and that meant that her shift was just a little bit closer to being over and she was a little bit closer to going home.
The boy muttered to himself while he filled out the form she had given him, and Chiyoji turned her attention to the more important aspects of her job. Traffic citations and letters did not fill themselves out. Or, they didn't until Chiyoji was hired on part-time as a lowly technician by a then much younger and less bald Officer Kumoyama.
He had sat her down at a desk and told her to undo the damage she had caused Musutafu City. In the spirit of her knowledge and willingness to get certified as a notary public, Tousha Chiyoji had become the world's most overqualified copy machine.
So she sympathized with the kid, she really did, when faced with the harsh reality that was police paperwork. That didn't stop her from making him fill it out. If the boy wanted to entangle himself in the affairs of heroes then he could learn the consequences of their actions. Teaching children was the responsibility of the older generation, after all. And Chiyoji was always delighted to take the truly deserving under her wing.
The boy looked like he was almost done.
Chiyoji gave him a smile that would cut diamonds. "Please remember to fill out the back as well, sir."
His tearful nod was enough to make her ratchet up her professional chirp. "Thank you for your cooperation."