Shouta was peacefully enjoying a well-deserved nap in the space under his desk in the administration office when someone nudged his feet, cracking open one eye ready to glare at whoever had dared to wake him Shouta saw Isamu kneeling in front of him, Shouta sighed closing his eye "Yes Isamu?" he inquired wondering why Isamu was trying to wake him.
"It's time to grab your kids Shouta, I need to go get the USJ ready." Isamu told him and Shouta groaned letting his head hit the wall with a soft thunk, the blonde huffed bemused "Rough night? Have you found anything to make up for it?" Isamu teasingly asked and Shouta scowled "No? Don't pout about it Shouta, I haven't found anything more than what Nezu said." Isamu sympathetically told him, and it did make Shouta feel a tiny bit better hearing that.
Isamu was mainly in the information dealer bracket of Twilight heroics so if he was finding bupkis Shouta felt less like a failure on his end, unzipping his sleeping bag Shouta crawled out from his napping spot and ran a hand through his hair to straighten it out "Want me to come around after work to help you get some sleep?" Isamu offered and Shouta felt a wave of anticipation at the thought.
"Yes, I'll make spring rolls for the next week if you'll knock me out for the night." Shouta promised and Isamu grinned "If you are making them then you got yourself a deal, Shouta. Eight o'clock for dinner like usual?" Isamu asked offering his hand and it was Shouta's turn to scoff. "Say that a little louder why don't you, I don't think Nemuri heard you." Shouta said letting Isamu pull him to his feet, knowing that if Nemuri was there he would never hear the end of it.
Isamu's grin turned into a smirk and taking advantage of Shouta not yet having a steady footing pulled him in close via an arm wrapped around Shouta's waist. "Aw… don't want your friends to know about little o' me, I'm hurt Shouta." Isamu mockingly told Shouta consequently making Shouta frown "Get your hands off of me Himawari." Shouta spat back, activating his quirk.
Isamu chuckled letting him go, since Shouta's quirk was active Isamu lifted his face, so Shouta got a glimpse of his brown eyes before Isamu left shaking his head, why did Shouta's former Senpai have to play with him like that? It wasn't good for his heart and all the caffeine he downed on the regular was already bad enough for his health.
"Well, well~ wasn't that a nice little show." Nemuri purred and Shouta whirled around to see Nemuri standing at her desk with a shit-eating grin on her face * Fuck.* Shouta screamed in his mind, he already had enough on his plate Shouta did not need Nemuri butting into his love life or lack thereof and try to play matchmaker with him.
"And here I thought you were going to spend the rest of your life as a miserable cat-lady, but here you are having something going on with Himawari-Senpai? Ooh, how scandalous of you Shou~" She tauntingly said with a giggle more fit for a schoolgirl than a grown woman "He doesn't mean it like that, and you know it Nemuri." Shouta growled at her swiftly turning away and burying his face in his scarf cursing every deity he knew for having her of all to have seen that.
"So you say… but I've never known Himawari-Senpai to play around like that and he definitely doesn't flirt, I think he's more serious about this than you know Shouta." Nemuri pointed out trying to peek at his face making his face redder "Shut up!" Shouta snapped back stomping out of the room to find his students, he didn't need her getting his hopes up.
Shouta sighed relieved to be off the bus and waited for his class to step off and form an orderly group of some kind, as expected of the kids they grouped up with their friends rather than by class number, and once he was sure that all the kids were ready, he cleared his throat causing the kids to quiet down.
"Come on hellions, we have people waiting on us." Shouta informed them and led them like a group of ducklings over to where Ito (Bullet Jacker) and Isamu were waiting for them by the entrance of the USJ, the normal bit of oohing and awing from the first years upon seeing the building happened as expected "Alright brats, welcome to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, who here have plans to or has considered becoming a part of rescue heroics?" Ito questioned getting about four raised hands.
That was the average number for a heroics class, but the fourth student was Miyake and that was a bit surprising, Miyake's strength was above average, and he could probably make it pretty far in any of the fighting-oriented branches and given his large size and speed the idea of the boy aiming for rescue work just hadn't been Shouta's first thought of him.
And given the looks from the rest of the students he wasn't the only one to be surprised by this knowledge as even Amajiki seemed to be taken aback despite being the closest to the tall boy, upon seeing Miyake's raised hand Hado gasped "You want to be a rescue hero Miyake-Chan?" she exclaimed, and Miyake tilted his head in what Shouta has come to know as an expression of confusion.
"Yes, I plan to be a rescue hero. It is the only branch of heroics I can see myself in." Miyake answered, if Miyake wanted to be a rescue hero, then good for him, if Miyake figured out what he wanted to aim for when most students were still just getting a feel for where they fit in the different branches then that was okay, less work for Shouta and the other teachers.
"Okay, brats that's enough squabbling. As I'm sure you all know heroics, regardless of branch, aren't fun and games, even for mascots and idols. Heroes are often only depicted by using their quirks to aid others or defeating some villain but that is a very small portion of what heroics entails." Ito said her arms crossed "The most important thing about heroics is to protect civilians, our ability to use our quirks to guard and protect civilians first and foremost is what separates us from other forms of government-run organizations like the military and police, but this duty comes with a far greater responsibly on each of you to master them." The woman sternly told them.
"More often than not you will find that your quirks will be useless or make you a complete liability and training will only meditate that to a certain point, and perhaps your quirk isn't all that powerful in the traditional sense but that doesn't it can't be dangerous, quirks are tools and can easily be used to harm people just like any other tool if someone is creative enough." Ito stated and Shouta couldn't help thinking that she would know that better than most.
Ito's body had multiple scars from a villain whose quirk allowed them to impress symbols into anything including people and she had no shame in displaying these scars even going as far as to change her costume to do so, and her own quirk 'Type Wyrm' at first glance would only label her as a hacker at worst but with the right systems, she could easily destroy thousands of lives with a press of a button.
"Today instead of training you to sharpen your quirks as weapons we shall be honing a far more important way to utilize your quirks, as tools to save those in peril, hence why we are here at the USJ to practice the basics of rescue protocol in various situations and to aid your homeroom teacher and myself is our coworker." Ito informed nodding her head to Isamu, the blonde shuffled forward a bit.
"As I'm sure some of you know, I am formally known as the pro-hero Mastermind, you all will refer to me as Master-Sensei during class, I'm an expert in rescue work so I will be supervising all of your rescue training from this point on." Isamu introduced himself, being his usual and very serious self and wasting no time launched straight into his safety lecture "Before we get started, we will go over the ground rules of safety for this kind of exercise."
Shouta having heard this first-year safety pitch hundreds of times before allowed himself to tune it out and his gaze traveled over his remaining students' hero costumes, apart from Mineta and Haya all of them had chosen to wear their costumes despite his warning that they should consider whether their costumes would hinder them, and he knew the only reason the two hadn't brought their costumes was because of technical issues with theirs.
This year's group had the best costume pass rate with most of the problems being fixable or easily removed, something that was a miracle given Ito's high standards for costumes and being first years wasn't a valid excuse to the woman when it came to dangers in a costume's design, often only a fourth of a classes costumes didn't need to be completely overhauled.
"And with that, I think we're ready to go inside to get your training started." Isamu said with a snap of his fingers which caused Shouta to focus again and the doors to the USJ opened seconds later, leading the class inside Shouta glanced at the six zones before standing off to the side as Ito and Isamu separated the class up into six groups.
The first pair was Amajiki and Mineta in the Ruins zone which he was curious how the two would end up working together, Amajiki was a ball of anxiety with legs and Mineta was a lot like him at their age, so he wasn't sure he was going to be the most sensitive to his classmate's nerves because he had no tack when he was the boy's age.
Amajiki was shaking like a leaf as he stood beside the pinkette as Isamu took them aside to where the two were going to start "The ruins have an unstable structure so you'll need to be careful moving around in the buildings, your objective is to find as many of the civies as you can and bring them here as safely as possible in five minutes." Isamu instructed pulling out his phone.
"Start." Isamu announced starting a timer and Mineta ran out with Amajiki fumbling for a moment and tripping over his skirt before following his partner into the wrecked city, as soon as Mineta was within reach his arm stretched out and grabbed the tipped over lamppost then pulled himself off the ground and went flying.
Mineta's quirk allowed the boy to move through the cityscape with some ease since he could move like a cartoon character, Amajiki was able to follow on foot by making his legs into a rabbits' as well as a pair of ears likely to hear whatever Mineta was trying to tell him, it was a point in their favor that the two were trying to communicate for the rescue and recovery.
Amajiki was an odd case for Shouta, hero course students could be shy and some did have anxiety conditions but Amajiki had the worst case of it from what he could see and he didn't want to know how paranoid the boy might become when he was off his medication, but watching the boy hop around ears twitching in different directions as he moved around looking for the rescue bots Shouta could see the beginning of a decent hero.
Both of the boys would need to work on their social skills, but Shouta would have to be an idiot not to see how hard they had worked to make their mediocre quirks into something useful in the field, neither of them were brash either and moved rubble as cautiously as possible, rescuing a total of four androids and bringing them back to Isamu and Ito to look over.
"Amajiki, you need to work on carrying civilians back, if this one was a real person their neck would have snapped from the lack of support. Mineta, you were moving too hastily and need to be more careful when it comes to moving through wrecked infrastructure as you can have no idea how stable anything is just from looking at it." Ito criticized pointing to one of the robots' necks.
Amajiki had his eyes locked onto his feet and nodded his head accepting the advice with a trembling lip while Mineta looked away but didn't argue over it "Understand? Good. We're moving on to the Landside zone." Ito told them marching onto the next area, the next two students were picked, and Shouta sighed when quite predictably Hado caused a landslide and one of the androids were "lost" in the wake of it.
She and her partner Matthias were both scolded on the importance of taking a few moments to make sure the area was safe, and Shouta didn't envy his students for being on the other side of Ito's lecture, the two O' Collins girls did well consider their quirks weren't quite suited for the mountain zone, but the next two, Haku and Nakano did rather poorly in the Conflagration dome, so Isamu had to give impromptu lesson in treating burns.
Coming up to the Flood zone it was Miyake and Haya's turn and as soon as Isamu gave them permission to begin Miyake in what Shouta was feeling was going to be a theme for the boy told Haya to get on his back and jumped into the water, the boy took the girl all the way out to the boat before diving to search for robots while Haya got to work freeing a lifeboat attached to the decoy boat.
Shouta could see the plan the two had made and had to admit it was sound, but he was a bit concerned about the water making Miyake sluggish since it was kept at brisk temperatures, the unease was for nothing as throughout the five minutes for their rescue Miyake hadn't slowed down at all and managed to retrieve all five bots that had been spread out.
"Using the lifeboat to ferry the victims' back was a good choice and keeping yourselves to your self-appointed roles a fair decision, in the future you won't be able to rely on someone else to have a good quirk for moving through the water so you'll need to figure out how to deal with such situations by yourself Haya, Miyake while you did well you'll need to work on being more cooperative with your plans." Isamu informed the two "Yes Master-Sensei." The two said.
"Miyake do you need a towel? I brought some hand warmers and there are some blankets in the central plaza if you want to warm yourself up." Isamu offered since the boy was drenched and was probably going to get sleepy from how cold he must be, the boy shook his head "No thank you Sensei, my costume has waterproof heating and cooling systems so I shall be fine." Miyake explained pointing to rings on his tail before walking back to his spot beside Amajiki.
*Huh, the kid put in more thought then most when he made his costume.* Shouta thought wondering if there were other things in the boy's costume to aid him, Shouta never paid much attention to his students' costumes unless they had a requested item that needed approval (ex. throwing knifes), if their costume was rejected during the examination, or needed adjusted (ex. wrong material)
And after the last three of his students finished being soaked in the Downpour zone Isamu and Ito brought everyone back to the central plaza to help the student get familiar with the items stocked in any first aid kit and teach them some simple things to treat surface level injuries since the impromptu burn training took up the time they'd would've spent going over the basics, given they wouldn't need him for much else Shouta signed to Isamu 'I'm going to take a nap in the bus, call if you need me.'
The blonde gave a slight nod and once Ito had the kids' full attention signed back to him 'Go ahead Kitty, you need all the sleep you can get.'
Shouta didn't waste a second and using his hard-earned stealth left the USJ unnoticed and unfolded his travel sized sleeping bag trying to convincing himself he didn't feel any weird fluttering in his stomach from Isamu calling him that, his mind was just fucking with him after what Nemuri said and once again he found himself cursing past-Shouta for letting Hizashi pick his sign name.