Oswald scowled as he stood in front of the counselors' office, mostly in an attempt to see if he could worm his way out of this if he glared at the door long enough.
Unfortunately, the door was still there and he grit his teeth as he reached up to knock at the door, he very much did not want to be here and would much rather be waiting for Jiki and lizard breath in the classroom but apparently you have to do therapy after villains drop a building on you.
It was great that U.A. had such a nice little system but him and shrinks don't mix.
The last shrink he saw kept trying to gaslight him about the woman his dad married, and the school shrinks were alright if a bit lazy and unhelpful, so he really wasn't looking forward to this even if Miyake said that the shrink here wasn't that bad.
Apparently, Miyake had been having sessions with him all four days he was out of school.
He would have been back sooner but his dad had returned to help the woman watch over him so he was trapped with his family for all four days, four days of pure hell since he couldn't even retreat to the basement and had to sleep in the guest room in between his parents and the woman's demon child.
If he didn't know how to turn off his ears by remaking them he would have been scarred for life by what he would have heard going down in either of those rooms.
"Come in." a voice called through the doors and Oswald begrudgingly entered the room, and upon seeing it he would have to reluctantly give U.A. some credit for having a counselor's office not look like a counselor's office.
Because while there was a couch off to the side it was covered in a floral pattern instead of the classic red couch and there were more than a few bobbles and ink splat pictures spaced around, it was a mess over all but a refreshing far cry from the sterile-looking offices he was used to.
Behind the worn desk was Hound Dog looking just as Miyake described over text, in costume minus the muzzle he wore and his hair a touch more untamed than in his marketing pictures and he wasn't sure how that had been accomplished.
Hound Dog sniffed the air then motioned him to come closer "Come on in, and please sit Oswald-San." Hound Dog requested and Oswald would have to give him some more credit, he had remembered what Miyake had said about preferring his first name.
Glancing around Oswald chose to slump down on the couch instead of the chair across from Hound Dog, and put his head in his hand, Hound Dog stared at him but said nothing about where he chose to sit down.
"I suppose you have already heard of me from your friend Miyake." Hound Dog guessed and he grunted back.
"Yep." he added.
"Well then, I suppose you'd like to just get into it then Oswald-San?" Hound Dog asked.
He humfed crossing his arms "Might as well, want me to talk about last Sunday, right?" Oswald questioned and Hound Dog nodded.
"Alright, it wasn't the best day to start with, I overslept cause I was up late and had to scramble to get my shi- stuff together to head to the mall, it's like a three hour ride away by train." Oswald told him, neglecting to mention that it was the woman's forcing him to do her house work that caused him to have to put off his doing his homework until much later which was what caused him to be up that late.
"I wasn't having the best week already so I was hoping goofing off for a couple of hours would get my mind off of it, most of my friends were already there waiting for me, lizard breath was the only one not there because some idiots decided to crash their villain fight into a train station." Oswald bitterly recalled.
"So, we all went in without him with me being Jiki's designated buddy since Miyake asked me to stick with him in his place." Oswald continued to tell him.
"Designated buddy?" Hound Dog questioned.
"Yeah, Jiki is pretty anxious and normally Miyake sticks around him so he can like hide behind him, but I guess I'm a close second since he likes eating my hair and all." Oswald replied moving his hair a bit to distract himself from how oblivious he was to just hold onto Jiki's hand the whole time.
It was a wonder Jiki didn't pass out once he realized what Oswald had done.
"I see, please continue." Hound Dog encouraged.
"Well, not much happened before the attack, we just walked around for a bit and went to a few places, Hado bought me this little keychain of BJ." He responded showing the little chibi Best Jeanist, though one of its eyes got scratched off during their escape which only made him like it more since he planned to paint a little eye patch on it.
"And when the attack happened?" Hound Dog prompted.
"Well, I was getting myself a drink so I wasn't with the rest of them in the arcade and got forced out with the wave of people before I knew what was going, when Hado, Haya, and Togata finally came out I asked them what was going on and where Jiki was. They told me about the villain attack and thought that Jiki was with me, we quickly realized that we couldn't find him anywhere and all freaked out." Oswald said, crossing his arms again.
That split second, he realized that Jiki was still inside had been the most terrifying in his life and he couldn't breathe until he found Jiki in that closet.
"I had taken advantage of the panic to get back inside and made my way back to Jiki, he was hiding out in a closet and we just hunkered down there for a bit, until some dumbass decided to throw a villain right where we were hiding, so we had to scramble around to avoid that mess." Oswald commented with a scowl.
"But the idiots had destabilized the building and I had to push Jiki out of the way so he wouldn't be hit by a stray attack that broke one of the support beams, lost a leg for it but I can regrow things like that so better me than him ya know." Oswald told him, his eyes briefly falling to the leg he had regrown and felt that oh so familiar twinge in his stomach, one he knew like the back of his hand at this point.
"I suppose, but that shouldn't make the loss any less important, you still lost a part of yourself in a very traumatic way." Hound Dog pointed out and Oswald scowled at him feeling his stomach twist on itself from his words.
"With all due respect, I won't think about it that way. I get enough Body dysmorphia as it is, and I don't want to start crying over every bit I lose of myself Sir." Oswald responded gripping his arms, steadfastly ignoring the way his leg spasmed when he did.
One of his eyebrows went up but he didn't address it "Of course, please continue Oswald-San." Hound Dog implored.
Oswald tsked "Not much happened after that, Jiki remembered he had a cell phone and called up Aizawa-Sensei while the two of us kept trying to avoid the heroes fighting around us, had a couple more missed calls before Sensei arrived and pulled us out of there." Oswald recounted with a shrug, his mind going back to how close they were to crushed by the rock monster guy.
"Got treated by the medical people there, then stayed at home with the, family until today." Oswald said finishing the whole thing off "I've talked about it, happy now?" he asked, tapping his foot from his impatience.
"For the first time talking about it, yes. I'd like to talk with you about again another time but there are a couple of other things I'd like to ask you about today Oswald-San." Hound Dog answered and Oswald held back the urge to throw his head back and curse.
"Fine, what else do you want me to say?" Oswald questioned.
Hound Dog took a second before he spoke again "I've looked over your file and if you'd be willing, I'd like to hear how you currently view your family." Hound Dog requested.
*The fuck?* Oswald thought, how did this turn from him and Jiki almost dying to the crazies he had to live with?
Either seeing, or possibly smelling his confusion like Miyake warned him Hound Dog straightened up "From your file I can see the names of a couple of family therapists, normally that says there is some kind of problem in the family unit and your second emergency contact is listed as your step-mother it isn't too hard to theorize where the problem could stem from." Hound Dog explained.
"And while the past therapists were kind enough to leave some of their… notes, I would much rather hear about this from you." Hound Dog told him.
Oswald scowled and sunk deeper in the couch "Right, sure you do." he muttered under his breath, wasn't the first time a shrink told him that only to try and gaslight him and about his dad and the woman.
"Oswald-San, I know you are uneasy with me. However, I'd like to assure you that your parents won't have any influence over these sessions. I want you to tell me how you feel without fear of repercussions because there aren't any." Hound Dog said.
Oswald raised an eyebrow at that and huffed "Oh yeah? So, if I wanted to call that woman who married my dad a trashy bimbo and say that I just want her to drop dead in a ditch that would be fine?" Oswald pointedly and very aggressively asked.
Hound Dog's ears twitched just a bit "I would prefer that you would give a touch more explanation and context for something like that but yes you can say that here." Hound Dog confirmed with a slight nod.
Oswald stared at the man for a moment, trying gauge whether Hound Dog was being serious and if he should spill the beans on his family or backtrack hard, deciding he was fucked either way after that comment he might as well keep going.
His mom and aunt would take him in if he got pulled from U.A. and Miyake wouldn't snitch on him considering he was pretty sure Miyake's dad was part of a gang or something.
So, he relaxed a bit and put his head back in his hand. "Well, I don't know if my family wasn't trash but the first couple of years were alright I guess, still had my mom and aunt Trinity around but I started noticing how weird my dad was when I was around three." Oswald told him.
"Wasn't until I was four that I figured out he was cheating on my mom, not sure for how long but my half "brother" is only two years younger than me so I know they were together for a while. Things were a bit tense after that since I lost a lot of respect for him but then that legalized walking disaster ruined everything." Oswald spat.
"Walking, disaster?" Hound Dog inquired frowning slightly.
"Endeavour. You know, the number two "hero" that gets away with burning buildings down left and right, and has definitely got away with mass murder? Yeah, him." Oswald replied making Hound Dog frown, but Oswald pushed on "When I was five, he burned down the factory my mom and aunt worked at almost killing them both, and absolutely killing everyone else in the factory."
"That, is quite an awful thing to happen." Hound Dog commented, clearly having trouble staying neutral as he said it given Oswald could see his fingers were pressed against the desk.
"They survived by the skin of their teeth, but because they both had taffy quirks like me and they ended up permanently fused together, and if that wasn't enough my dad, the pillar of faithfulness decided to divorce her at the same time she was trying to recover from all of that." Oswald commented shaking his head, he still didn't know how his dad got almost everything in the divorce knowing that.
"And mom didn't fight him, wasn't really capable of it since she was trying to relearn how to live after becoming conjoined twins with Aunt Trinity, who was made blind by the same fire. Which was why dad ended up getting custody of me, and why I ended up living with him, that unbearable smug bitch he was cheating on mom with, and the half-brother I apparently had." Oswald said his fingers digging into his palm.
"And if that was it, maybe living with the whole rotten lot of them wouldn't be that bad. But my dad tried to lie to me about mom being dead from the fire, he was a shitty liar so I didn't believe him but I lost any shred of respect I still had for that man. That woman was constantly jumping my dad so I have learned far too much about their sex life, the kid they had also became this spoiled whiny brat that is just as much of a pervert as his mom." Oswald ranted leaning forward rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"Naturally I didn't take all of that well and they took me to a bunch of shrinks to try and make me play "happy family" with them but that sure as hell wasn't happening, I can't stand living with the whole lot of them but there's not much I can do and I'm just waiting for my eighteenth birthday so I can finally get out." Oswald told him leaning back again.
"And that's basically it for my family drama." Oswald commented off-handedly and raised an eye to Hound Dog "Pretty fucked right?" he asked.
Hound Dog didn't say anything, and Oswald couldn't quite read his face because the dog-like muzzle threw off how his face looked.
"Yes, that isn't the average home situation Oswald-San." Hound Dog eventually answered.
Oswald huffed rolling his eyes "Yeah, tell me about it..." Oswald admitted quietly under his breath.