Jesus christ I didn't even realize we went over 70k words. We're not even past the school arc yet. To my fellow binge-readers, take breaks and hydrate!


- Chapter 14 -

Deliberation


Megumi examined the faint, horizontal scar on her right palm. She could still feel the sting of the needle and thread that one of the paramedics had used to patch it up. There was barely anything left of the injury, most likely due to the rope-climbing calluses that had thickened the skin of her hands.

Almost half a month had passed ever since Aizawa had announced their plans to attend a summer training camp in the woods.

With the excitement that such news brought, everyone had been studying as hard as ever.

Well, maybe not everyone.

She knew for a fact that some of her classmates would rather fantasize about their future trip than do any actual work. After all, wasn't the most important challenge of exam season the procrastinator's urge to cram a whole semester's worth of knowledge in one night? It was a tale as old as time.

And Megumi was one of those people.

Frankly, studying was quite possibly the last thing on her mind.

While most of her classmates were battling with their studies, she had been battling with an issue far more sinister than the education system.

Her first kill still haunted her sleep. One way or another, his face would appear in her dreams to remind her of her first failure as a hero. Sometimes he would show her a horrifying rendition of what she had done, while other times she found herself chatting with him over a cup of tea.

In true fashion for a dream, nothing he said ever made sense.

And yet, as if the dream version of her knew something she didn't, she would reply back. For the life of her, Megumi could never make out what they were saying.

Whenever she brought the teacup to her lips, her mouth would fill with a handful of small, white pills. In the end, unable to spit them out or swallow them, she always woke up with a distinct choking sensation clawing at her throat.

Those godforsaken pills.

They had been at the forefront of her mind ever since she had shoved a fistful of them into her costume pocket, before hiding them among her iron supplements.

She didn't know what had possessed her to do that. It had her scared shitless in the event that the police would demand to pat her down prior to her talk with the detective. Thankfully, none of them had really cared enough to sully their hands with the human remains on her person.

The sheer mental blow she had received as a result of her internship experience had haunted her for many days to come. However, school was a demanding mistress, and Megumi found herself mellowing out with each day she spent in class, surrounded by the triviality of high school life.

In a way, it was idyllic. As stubborn as her dreams were in refusing to let her forget, they were also useful in helping her slowly digest the events that had transpired.

There was also the fact that she had found an interesting hobby to divert her attention away from unsavory thoughts. Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with school, and even less with making friends.

Those disgusting little pills she had snatched into her possession had to have come from somewhere. And she was adamant about finding out where exactly that might be.

She already had a sneaking suspicion that she would not like the answers she would get, but she was positively itching to confirm her uncertainties.

The Original had hardly been a model student, so what was the harm in Megumi shirking some of her studies in favor of more important matters? Some days after school, she would pay a visit to the seedy internet café she had discovered in the midst of Shibuya station.

The Shibuya ward was busy and crowded enough to sweep you off your feet if you weren't careful enough, but it was nothing Megumi couldn't handle. Colby had been faced with similar crowds in the rougher parts of New York whenever she'd been sent on work trips. The Original, not so much. Even if she had, some of her memories still appeared quite cloudy.

During her internship with X-Less, the police officers she'd been introduced to didn't always don their uniforms. One of them had shared with her that going undercover was a lot more than simply dressing up in civvies (what they called civilian clothes).

He had told her that the most difficult part was reigning in the nerves. Street smart outlaws could smell your fear from a mile away, like sharks out for blood.

Megumi didn't consider her own situation as dire as an undercover mission, but she couldn't just waltz into a shady area looking polished enough to warrant getting mugged. The most she could do was a dark cap, a hoodie, and some decently shoddy sneakers she had found in a second-hand store.

The computers at the internet café were hardly peak technology, but that hadn't stopped her from assisting Secretary Jia. Unfortunately, she had lost all trust in her own PC as soon as she saw the state of her personal belongings a few days after returning home.

They were gone. The bullet points, paragraphs, and charts she had scribbled into her notebooks about her quirk, its limitations, and drawbacks, the searches she had conducted prior to the Sports Festival – the maids had thrown them all out while 'cleaning up'.

That explained why mother had been acting so cold. She had made her dutiful maids snoop around her stuff after realizing how often she holed up in her room. That opportunistic cow. It was a textbook breach of privacy, one that Colby had often listened to her friends vent about on occasion.

Thankfully, Megumi did not have the habit of keeping a diary.

Would you look at that, so there was some merit to internalizing all her emotions until they exploded out of her at the worst of times!

Her browser history hadn't been tampered with, but she wasn't about to sit around and find out if it would be. Besides, what if something happened to her computer while she was out at school? All her projects would be gone, everything including her quirk research and school papers. Sticking to a USB that she could carry around seemed like the smartest thing to do.

The clerk sitting at the front desk of the café barely looked up at her when he exchanged her 500 yen for a ticket worth an hour. She slinked into one of the cramped, private booths, two rows behind a group of men having a gaming tournament. Going by the prevailing stench of sweat mixed with various flavors of cup noodles, they had been there for a long time.

The first thing she did was wait for the Windows Vista logo to finish loading. The next thing she did was search the website on which most criminal profiles were published for the public to see. No wonder people with arrest records found it hard to land a job after prison – that shit stayed with you until the day you perished.

Unfortunately, she had not thought as far ahead as to ask for the identities of all the thieves they had encountered that night. Nor were there any news outlets that had reported on the chase that had occurred. Stuff like that happened so often that it tended to fly under the radar.

In contrast, the news of Endeavor catching Stain had dominated the media for weeks. Megumi would rather have the Hero Killer's grotesque, misshapen face on front covers than have Endeavor's conceited mug scowl down at the camera.

It was hard enough coming to terms with Todoroki's strangely chummy behavior as of late, seeing his abusive dickhead of a father everywhere was annoying at best and anger-inducing at worst.

Yes, Todoroki had changed. No, she was not up for a 'talk'. So what if it made her look like an asshole? The least he could do was leave her alone. His hurtful words and actions toward the Original were not something she could get over so easily – for the Original was as much Megumi as Megumi was Colby.

Or was it the other way around? She really couldn't tell sometimes.

In any case, the stress she experienced due to Todoroki's frequent violation of her personal space in the hope of a conversation was also a deciding factor in her desire to clear her head with mindless tasks. Those mindless tasks just happened to be a bit… questionable.

Try as she might, there was little to no information about the unidentified pills sitting pretty at the base of her school bag. The furthest she got in her quest was a search page full of Chinese websites. Megumi did not know a single lick of Mandarin. It was a frustrating dead-end.

Every time, it was the same disappointing result. She was starting to consider locking Seiichi in the basement to masquerade as his likeness at the rich cram school he attended. He had been receiving Mandarin lessons since elementary, had he not? No harm in missing a few sessions.

It wasn't like he had any friends who would notice his absence. Come to think of it, Yuka didn't have any either. And neither had the Original, considering her terrible friendship with Todoroki. They had been like a three-point triangle of friendless siblings. Megumi wondered if they ever sat down to make a loner-pact or something because it was ridiculous that all three of them had turned out anti-social in some way or another.

Who was she kidding? With that woman as a mother, there was no wonder any of them had developed sociable personalities.

The light in the booth dimmed. The small button on top of the door turned red, signifying that her time had expired. Megumi begrudgingly left the internet café with no new insights into the little investigation she had set out for herself.

On her way to the train station, she briefly stopped in front of a boutique. She turned her face this and that way, scrutinizing it in front of the fancy mirror they had put up for display. One of her hands came up to pry open one side of her mouth. Her canines and premolars greeted her in all their pointed glory.

She made a face, closing her mouth and tentatively running her tongue over her teeth. They had already started bugging her whenever she attempted to eat. The fear that she would get overzealous while eating and end up chopping her tongue off was very real and very distressing. At least they weren't affecting her speech.

Megumi continued on her path, sullenly kicking a rock or two into the gutter. 'Maybe I should invest in a Mandarin dictionary or something.'


It was the middle of June. Exams were practically peeking over the horizon.

"Okay, I'll start with an easy question." Megumi droned out, leaning on one hand tiredly as she scanned through the math textbook in her other hand. "If BH is perpendicular to AC, solve for x the length of BC. How would you do it?"

Mina stared off into empty space, looking like all her brain function had been shut off as soon as Megumi had uttered the word perpendicular.

A whole minute passed, her expression turning increasingly vacant.

Megumi fought off the drooping of her own eyelids, hiding a yawn behind her hand. It didn't seem like she was going to get a response anytime soon, so she slowly rattled off the answer. "BH is perpendicular to AC, so ABH and HBC are right triangles. Find tan and HC, apply Pythagoras to HBC, then solve for x and substitute HC."

Her pink friend brought her head down on the desk and groaned. "I don't get it! On which page are the answer keys again?"

"Oh, I made up that question. It was the easiest I could think of." She flashed a smile, turning the textbook around to reveal a bunch of worded math questions. "These are much worse. I thought you would appreciate something simple."

Pure, unadulterated dread rolled off of Mina in waves. Tsuyu shrugged, turning her notebook around to showcase her sketch of Megumi's question. "If you need a visual, I got you."

Kaminari jeered from his seat in front of them. "Ha! What have you been doing during math class, Mina?"

"Did you not score a six on the last test?" Kirishima remarked from beside him. The blonde boy's grin immediately flatlined.

"A six out of a hundred." Megumi drawled out.

"It's perfectly okay not to have an aptitude for math, Kaminari!" Iida said, his glasses flashing in the light. "Some people simply do not have the attention span for problem-solving!"

"That is not the consolation you think it is," Jiro cackled under her breath.

At the very front of the classroom, Bakugo had already started grumbling about their loudness. With every passing minute, his indistinct mumbles intensified, followed by aggressive scribbling, erasing, and page-turning.

Self-study periods usually had the opposite effect of their intended use. Megumi liked to take advantage of them by catching up on much-needed sleep. Mina had been uncharacteristically eager to practice math, but that seemed to have evaporated into thin air after ten minutes into their revision session. Similar to Mina, Kaminari was among the students who liked to believe that vaguely listening in on lessons with chicken-scratch notes was enough to pass exams.

To be fair, Megumi had the unfair advantage of being decently good at mathematics and sciences. Modern Japanese literature, not so much. As for English… she hadn't forgotten how to speak it, per se. It was just that the Original had rarely spoken it, so her tongue did not have the muscle memory to pronounce words the way a native speaker would.

That had bummed her out pretty badly. Especially when her final goal was to move out of Japan entirely. There was no way she would pass up the opportunity to visit the United States if it ever presented itself. It wouldn't be the same country that Colby had left behind, but the fact that it existed in this universe at all instilled a distinct sense of homesickness in her.

"What even is a diagonal intersection?" Mina moaned out defeatedly. "A depression of 30 degrees? Why is the angle depressed?"

"Maybe it lost custody of the kids in the divorce," Tsuyu joked, reenacting the separation of two corners with her index fingers.

Kaminari was now leaning over the textbook as well, the agitated furrow of his brows continuing to deepen the longer his eyes scanned over the questions. "Why is there a triangle in the triangle?"

"That's a rectangle…"

Megumi scratched the back of her ear with her pen, holding in a sigh. Her expression was a variant of quiet resignation. "I'll be back… I need my exercise notebook. We'll revise the terminologies first."

Mina and Kaminari were obviously visual learners, so she would probably have to go the extra mile with pizza analogies. Kirishima looked much more invested in the Nintendo DS that Sero had whipped out, so Megumi didn't really think he planned on joining the little study circle that had formed around Mina's desk.

She approached her own desk to rummage in her bag for her desired binder. Then, unprovoked and out of nowhere, Bakugo kicked her in the back of the knees – which almost made her fold backward like a lawn chair.

"Tell your morons to tone it down with the Stupid, it's giving me a headache!" He asserted. "Besides, trigonometry? That's the lousiest topic ever to start with."

Megumi looked incredibly offended. Not because he had been lying in wait to kick her in the shins though. "Lousy? It's the easiest one! Without knowledge in trigonometry, the geometry and unit circle chapters would suck."

A borderline disgusted expression crossed his face. "In what world are any of those easy starters? No matter how you look at it, algebra and radical expressions come first."

"Algebra?" Now she was sporting a grimace of her own. "That's like… eighth-grade stuff."

"What the hell are you on? It's in the syllabus."

"Well, trigonometry is better to start with, that's where we get the most marks. At this point, algebra is just going to confuse them, especially if they can't solve worded problems."

He tsked in condescending disapproval. "Might as well start them off with additions and subtractions if they're so dumb!"

Ever since Megumi had first woken up as… well, Megumi, she had been hesitant and unsure of how to interact with most people in her class. Now that she had spent a decent amount of time being stuck in the same room as them, she was a lot more confident in socializing.

She wasn't as intimidated by certain explosive personalities as she had initially been. As loud and brash as he was, Bakugo didn't seem like he had learned to interact any other way. He would bark, but he would not bite. After all, his position as a UA student was on the line. He knew that he couldn't get away with bullying anymore. He was like a defanged cat who had no means to threaten you, other than to swipe and hiss at you uselessly.

She was pretty sure he still didn't know her by name, going by his prevalent use of sarcastic nicknames.

Above all, his sudden and spontaneous outbursts only seemed to happen when he needed some sort of attention. He must have realized that no one in UA would coddle or praise him for his quirk, unlike the admiration and envy he had received in elementary and middle school. So he made up for his lack of cuteness with overconfidence and obnoxious competitiveness.

He was not some villainous mastermind that she had to cower away from. The only person who had to worry about a grenade being shoved down his pants was Midoriya, but knowing him, he probably had a self-written handbook of anti-Bakugo countermeasures.

As high-maintenance as he was, Bakugo was still a better desk neighbor than Todoroki. Yeah, he had a strangely violent way of starting conversations, and yeah, the explosions he threatened people with had singed her hair once or twice, but at least the ink in her pens didn't freeze up!

Megumi brushed off his complaints with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I could do that. That's a great suggestion actually – "

Bakugo looked like he was ready to burst a blood vessel. "You better do that in the library or something, I don't want any whining while I'm trying to study! Those dimwits are a lost cause anyway."

"I wouldn't call them a lost cause, that's a bit harsh – "

"Do you really think they've retained even a single brain cell of information about basic arithmetic?" He furiously pointed at the back of the classroom.

Kaminari was in the middle of sticking his pinky finger in his nose while holding his index finger outward, on which he was balancing a prawn cracker through electric voltage. Mina observed his party trick with sincere fascination.

A disappointed silence fell over Megumi when Kaminari accidentally fried the prawn cracker with his electricity, unwittingly inhaled the ashes it resulted in, and sneezed into Mina's face with no holds barred. Her pink-haired friend let out a disgusted noise, tugging at Tsuyu's blazer in the hopes of receiving a tissue.

…Okay. Maybe Bakugo did have a point. But she wasn't about to tell him that, since he was being a dick about it.

Besides, wouldn't he be tutoring Kirishima in a few weeks' time? So much for labeling their classmates lost causes. Maybe Kirishima was just a special case for him since he would be the first ever person who reached out to Bakugo for help.

She would have loved to continue the banter (there was no denying that the blonde boy was a great source of entertainment, akin to an angry wasp stuck in a glass container), but Megumi's attention was caught by the sharp, curved horns standing outside the classroom. Suddenly, the drowsiness that had been making her yawn throughout the day vanished into thin air.

"Yeah, I'll bring them to the library next time," She muttered hastily, before swinging her school bag over her shoulder in its entirety and making her way out. Bakugo gave her his infamous death glare and grumbled out a few expletives after her, but returned to his studying.

Megumi made sure to brush off the shoe prints that her temperamental classmate had left on the back of her socks. She handed her exercise book over to Tsuyu before snaking her way out the sliding doors and approaching Tsunotori. The pony girl didn't seem like she had been waiting for long, her hands clasped behind her back as Megumi approached.

One thing about Tsunotori was the fact that she was not as quiet nor as much of a goody-two-shoes as her appearance suggested. On many occasions, Megumi had seen her laugh and joke around with 1-B students, but she usually tended to clam up whenever 1-A happened to be in the vicinity. Be that as it may, she had not told anyone about their unbidden encounter during the internships – yet.

(Otherwise, Megumi knew for a fact that Monoma would not pass up the chance to heckle her into a state of murderous annoyance.)

Thus, she had decided that she needed to do something about Tsunotori, before the pony girl decided to air out any… undesirable information to her classmates.

What best way to do that than using good old bribery?

She had weaseled her number out of some general course students, who knew some business course students, who knew a support course student – who had the 1-B student saved to his contacts. Then, she had sent her a text message indicating that she wanted to talk formally, and asked what Tsunotori wanted from her to make that happen.

It had taken her a few days, but she had answered after all. And her request was much tamer than Megumi thought it could have been.

Tsunotori's expectant eyes widened in excitement when Megumi pulled out two limited edition Blu-rays of Winland Saga. She squealed unintelligibly, visibly holding herself back from jumping up and down. Almost reverently, she accepted the Blu-rays into her awaiting hands, feeling out the hardcover art with the tips of her fingers. A gasp made its way onto her face.

"Are these," She whispered, her accent coming through. "The original, Japanese versions?"

Megumi nodded her head in confirmation, sticking the transaction receipt onto the Blu-Rays.

Tsunotori looked like she was going to faint.

Colby had been a proud manga connoisseur and coupled with the wealth that Megumi could siphon out of her trust fund, she was virtually unstoppable. It was too bad that she had no time for anime and manga given her circumstances, but at least someone was benefitting from the purchase.

"Now that we're friends…" Megumi stressed, hoping Tsunotori wouldn't catch on to her political usage of the word.

Unfortunately, she did. Independent of the awe she regarded her Blu-rays with, the 1-B student leveled a stony expression her way. She hugged the DVDs to her chest, turning away slightly as if ready to flee the scene.

"When you first saw me, you laughed, then asked me which horse stable I escaped from."

'… Excuse me, what.' God, what the FUCK had the Original been doing? She might as well have been a Disney villain.

"I'm very sorry about… that."

The pony girl regarded her with slight skepticism, alternating between glancing at her gifts and at Megumi. She seemed to conduct a minor inner monologue in the confines of her mind, going by her silent demeanor. Then, she looked like she had come to a satisfactory conclusion.

"I do not forgive you, but I will take this as a sufficient apology. Do not expect me to convince anyone else of your remorse! And we are not friends. I only tried to help you that time because my mentor was present."

Megumi was fine with that. It was more than she could ask for. In fact, she did not even want to know how many of these inflammatory remarks the Original had made, to whom they had been uttered, and how they would be affecting her in the future, but at least she knew her situation wasn't unsalvageable.

"You haven't told anyone about that day, right?" Megumi probed, double-checking whether the corridor was empty before she did so.

Tsunotori shook her head. "No. I do not even know why you are so skittish about people knowing. Not everyone can handle dead bodies. Tsuburaba said Monoma pissed himself because some guy's brains got shot out during a reconnaissance."

Oh. Not the answer she had been looking for. "Okay… but have you told them about how that man… You know, when you were helping me out that day. About how he died?" Megumi tried to inquire further. Something was telling her they were not on the same page.

Tsunotori made a thoughtful noise and tilted her head quizzically. "No. My mentor told me it was a suicide under duress. Did it not literally happen in front of you?"

That was not at all what had happened. Evidently, the pro-heroes had decided to simplify the issue and spare both themselves and the police force additional paperwork. Megumi had been under the impression that the pony girl was aware of what had transpired on that day, but apparently not. No wonder she hadn't told anyone – she didn't know. And for a hero course student, finding someone unresponsive and covered in gore was hardly gossip material.

Megumi could not believe that she got interrogated for three godforsaken hours just for them to sweep that whole shit under the rug because the news wouldn't make it to the headlines. They hadn't told anyone, really? Not even the pro-heroes who arrived later on?

X-Less must have been beyond frustrated trying to piece together what had happened, only to be ushered away and told to check on his apprentice. There had been no security cameras in the area either, so they most likely went with the cause that sounded the best.

They must have assumed that the criminal, realizing he was losing in the chase and already mentally unwell from the lifestyle he led, decided to end it all with a quick ring out. She would have been seething if it weren't for the fact that she had spent a whole three weeks trying to recover from that experience and she wasn't intent on returning to that kind of headspace.

So, her gift to Tsunotori was not perceived as bribery, but as a token of apology instead. Megumi had been stressing out for absolutely no reason. Why did it feel the slightest bit disappointing?

They were both startled when 1-A's classroom door slid open, revealing Todoroki. He appeared equally as stumped to find the two of them gathered in a corner, looking like they were in the midst of an illegal deal.

"Sorry. I thought you stormed off, so I was about to bring you back in. The bell hasn't rung yet."

Just then, the bell rang to signify that classes were over for the day. Voices entering the corridor started to amplify, the muted sound of chairs scraping against the floor coming from within classrooms.

'Impeccable timing.'

A borderline smug expression grew on Megumi's face as she closed her bag shut and flipped her short hair out of the way. "Unnecessary, but whatever. See you later Tsunotori!"

The pony girl barely returned her goodbye with a wave, still clutching onto her Blu-rays possessively. Todoroki simply looked back and forth between them in utter confusion.

A wail arose from within the classroom. "Why are there liters and meters in this question and why is the solution not a number?"

"OH SHUT UP ALREADY," Someone screamed, and that someone would also have to scrape off the charred parts of his desk later on.


Aizawa rubbed the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the headache that was threatening to form behind his dry eyes.

This year's batch of first-years proved to be difficult. It was hard having to keep his class from destroying each other and themselves, while actively guiding a student from general studies into preparing for a possible transfer to the hero course.

He scribbled 'inattentive and distracted' under Airashi's name, flipping through her yellow-marked folder as he did so. Recovery Girl seemed to have deemed her quirk a bit lacking. The only other two students in his class whose folders were graced with a yellow mark were Aoyama and Koda. At least they behaved somewhat mellow in conduct.

He didn't even want to think about his red-marked students, one of which happened to be Midoriya, and his brazen disregard for safe quirk usage. Tokoyami seemingly posed a lesser threat, due to his self-imposed sense of restraint regarding Dark Shadow.

Airashi however… he still wasn't able to pinpoint whether he should be worried or not. She didn't have any observable physical abnormalities from which they could determine anything about the state of her quirk, not to mention she could still control her chains decently well. If it weren't for the striking pallor of her skin and the blood that had gushed out of her face at the very end of her match in the Sports Festival, her quirk's constraints would have gone unnoticed.

It must have been her knowledge of these limitations that held her back from being proactive in training exercises when she first came to UA. It had been fairly irritating when coupled with her attitude at the time, but at least her unwillingness to participate was explainable.

She had improved a lot ever since the USJ incident. Though, in the past few weeks, she had the audacity to sleep with her eyes open in class and think he wouldn't notice. Her seat was quite literally at the very front, in one of the most visible spots.

Maybe she could have gotten away with it if she still sat at the back. Alas, if she was ready to switch to the front, then she should have been ready to make the effort of looking alive during homeroom.

He knew that his students had vastly different experiences during their internships, which was to be expected. Internships were crucial to the hero course because students had to realize from early on that their paths would diverge someday. Not all of them would have the same choices and decisions to make.

That had been made especially evident when he had received a phone call at the ungodly hour of 5 AM, by All Might no less, explaining the events that had reportedly transpired at the whole shitshow that was the Stain arrest.

Three of his boys had gone ahead and thought they could take on the Hero Killer by themselves as if that monster hadn't killed grown-ass men with years of hero experience under their belt. Again, Midoriya had been at the forefront of another major incident. It was no wonder All Might watched him like a hawk.

The rest of 1-A had their own troubles to deal with as well, though maybe not to the extent of what Iida, Midoriya, and Todoroki had gone through. He had been dropping hints during homeroom that they were more than welcome to make use of the school's guidance counselor, but only Mineta had taken him up on that so far. Apparently, he now sported a mild phobia of women after his internship with Mount Lady – which was hardly noticeable, given that there was no change in his perverted nature.

It was hard to track the progress of all his students when most of them were scattered in different cities and municipalities, but he had a general gist of all their internships through the evaluation papers he had given them as post-internship homework. Some of them had a tendency to embellish their accomplishments, which had been both parts amusing and exasperating to read.

Airashi's report had been surprisingly impersonal. It was worded in a way that he would have wholeheartedly believed the writer was a professional researcher conducting a clinical trial in a controlled environment. Every experience was categorized, summarized, and cited, with vocabulary that was fairly elementary, but used in a way that made the text seem vaguely threatening. So much so that he had to consider whether she had made a business course student write it, but he dismissed the thought.

She had mentioned an unfortunate encounter in her report, detailing an event that Aizawa had personally witnessed many times in his profession. Almost every hero was faced with this situation at least once in their lives, and it usually tended to be a proud milestone among rookies. However, Airashi gave no indication of feeling anything akin to pride or the sort, which Aizawa saw as a good sign concerning her approach to heroics.

This was the exact reason why he was against the usage of robots in the entrance exams. In terms of real-life confrontations, they just didn't provide a realistic precedent for the everyday crimes that heroes face.

As traumatic of an experience as it tended to be, Airashi showed no outward signs of PTSD. He assumed that she had suffered a normal stress response right after the event, but it hadn't developed into a more serious condition than it had the potential to. She expressed no sudden bouts of anger, sadness, or worrying levels of disassociation. That was a good thing. Mental fortitude was of utmost importance to a hero. Airashi was unwittingly showing a high affinity for the high-stress situations that she would have to face on a regular basis in the far future.

Although, he would have to keep a watchful eye on her. Just in case her experience had mental repercussions that weren't outwardly discernible. He couldn't force her into verbalizing any negative emotions that festered beneath the surface. As the homeroom teacher, providing therapy was not within his scope of duties. They had Inui as their guidance counselor, and he was more than competent in his field of expertise despite his rough appearance.

All Aizawa could do was observe his students, make sure they were safe, and give out advice when needed. He couldn't baby fully grown teenagers who would be facing the absolute worst that the world had to offer in a few years' time.

Aizawa tucked Airashi's folder away, feeling around on his desk for the next one. He was sure he had reviewed almost all of them already. Now, who was next? Ah, right. Hitoshi.


A/N:

I relate to Mina and Kaminari on a spiritual level. Who is 'x' and why are we looking for them? (shoutout to analyzemath dot com, I do not understand math and I never will)

Aizawa is so hard to write because I realized while going through the manga that he doesn't... appear? During the whole Stain business? Mans really just said yeah, good luck with that! To be fair he was probably just busy sorting out Shinso's training and scheduling 1-A's practical exam format with the other teachers. We know that he monitors students' behaviors for future reference, so Megumi should be in the clear for now since she isn't psych-ward-worthy (yet)!

I promise I don't hate Todoroki. I like him a lot actually! But Megumi doesn't, so it's going to take a bit longer for them to warm up to each other.

Megumi is definitely lonelier than she lets on, and it's partly of her own doing because she refuses to confide in others. She's surrounded by people but doesn't trust them enough to express her real thoughts. If you feel like her friendliness comes off as artificial sometimes, that's because it is! I'm glad you guys like my portrayal of her turmoil, and I appreciate your thoughts and feedback, I don't find them backseaty at all :)

There's a reason why I haven't gone in too much on Colby's life, but it's correct that Megumi felt fairly detached. Up until her match against Todoroki she was determined to take a more passive role in future events, but that ended up not being her main priority anymore when she realized she had more important things to worry about than some story plot.

I actually wanted to incorporate Tsunotori a lot sooner in the fic, but then Tsuyu and Mina happened. Writing is so weird because you end up in directions you never really thought about before putting your thoughts into words. Even the doodles I have of Megumi are so much more different than how I initially conceptualized her in 2019.

Thank you so much for reading! Have a great day as well, and see you next time!