There is a time and place to take a nap. The middle of an Akuma attack is neither of these.
Opia Belmonte was desperately trying to wake his lab partner, Veronica, from her weird sleep schedule before the monster could reach their classroom so they could properly hide, but it wasn't doing much good. Neither of Paris's favorite superheroes had shown up, and he was really questioning their timing with most other attacks. Was every other time just a fluke? He couldn't dwell on that, though. Veronica had to move and hopefully not knock over their tube of calcium hydroxide on the way. She'd kill him, he was sure, if she got something dangerous on her while passed out.
The slamming of a door down the hall made him more desperate, and in a burst of adrenaline, grabbed Veronica around her waist and dragged her down to the ground. Between two cabinets on the floor of a Chem lab was not the safest place to hide, but he didn't know where else to go. Maybe listening to music during a lab when his lab partner was narcoleptic was a bad idea. It's an easy way to miss directions, at least.
The door burst open, and he held tightly to Veronica. If anything, she could be a human shield.
"Ms. Opia Belmonte?" A small voice asked, and he cringed before peaking out from behind the cabinets.
Ladybug was standing in the doorway, looking around. He waved to get her attention.
"Oh! Your teacher asked me to find you! She said she must've missed you while evacuating. It's best if you come out now, school will be postponed until tomorrow for everyone to recover."
"Okay, can you help me with my lab partner? She's asleep." He struggled to stand and hold Veronica at the same time. Ladybug rushed over and carried half her weight to help him out of the classroom.
The akuma had been a student from another class down. He didn't know them, but apparently, they had quite a grudge against their Literature teacher. The day after the attack, they weren't in school.
Protocol called for all akumatized civilians to go through police screening and a therapist session. If anything, the social sciences had become a top career to go into in Paris, France.
It didn't help Opia with his problem, though.
A new school year, a new classroom, and yet, still the same old pronouns.
He thought Spain was bad with misgendering? At least he had a few friends who saw him as another guy. So far, France was a big disappointment.
The superheroes were cool, but if they weren't spouting equal rights as well as crime-fighting? Forget it.
Opia snapped the strap of his binder against his shoulder as he walked across a bridge. He was pretty sure it had a lot of meaning to some people. There were locks covering the railing. At this point, he couldn't really care less. Other people didn't matter if they didn't care about how to address him.
He sat down and ran his hands through his light brown hair. Maybe he was overreacting.
Some middle-schoolers ran by, laughing and jumping around as they teased each other, and he smiled. Kids were pretty great, at least. Big open eyes, taking in the world for the first time, it was a time like that when he found out who he was. It was a different time, a different place.
The locks on the bridge railing dug into his back as he sat up straight, an idea coming to his mind. An idea like this was something he could get behind. He snapped his binder strap against his shoulder and stood up again. There was a volunteer sign-up in his high school activities office, hopefully they were still open. If not, he had a plan for tomorrow.
They were open. There weren't a lot of volunteering opportunities at the time, but there were some, and there was the one that really mattered.
Every year, he remembered a few volunteer high-schoolers would go to various junior high schools to mentor a class or two.
There were five openings left, out of seven.
When Opia left the office that day, there were four left.