Aizawa would have very much liked to use the departure of his students to their first Foundational Hero Studies to catch up on some much needed sleep, but Nezu decided that it was an excellent idea to entrust Japan's future heroes to the greatest muscle-headed moron in the industry.
He would begrudgingly admit that All Might was excellent at his job. His civilian casualties and property damage were nearly zero despite the sheer potential for collateral damage his Quirk had, his kill/capture ratio for villains was the lowest out of all of Japan's top heroes, and he spent remarkably little time showboating despite having a face and personality practically begging for cameras and microphones.
But entrusting him to teach students? Having twenty impressionable, still-developing young minds trying to emulate his complete disregard for personal safety? Especially after finding out that he had spent the last five years living without half his stomach - and didn't that quite nicely explain the lack of press appearances - Aizawa felt his hair going gray.
So, instead of getting some shut-eye or reviewing dossiers for the next serial killer Nezu asked him to track down, he spent the morning spying on All Might's class.
All Might did it to him the day before. It was only fair he did it back.
Aizawa wanted to scorn the 'Teaching for Dummies' book poking out of All Might's back pocket, but the rational part of his brain told him that it only showed that Toshinori was taking the initiative to learn how to do his new job properly. He really wanted to give him flak for reading his entire lecture off of note cards, but he could hardly fault the initiative he took to prepare. When Toshinori panicked at getting asked a simple question about the random selection of the activity, Aizawa snorted at the way he fumbled for an answer, but at the same time, random selection was about the most logical way to pair them up when how they would interact was largely unknown.
Aizawa nodded with grudging respect as All Might clearly and concisely laid out the rules and teams for the exercise. For a moment, Aizawa thought that All Might had everything handled.
Then All Might announced the first two pairs to face off against each other. And when he didn't immediately change his mind seeing problem child shrink in on himself, or explody-boy planning said problem child's murder in graphic detail, Aizawa sighed and resigned himself to watching the entire class.
On the bright side, he would get to expel Bakugo today.
As Aizawa filled out Bakugo's expulsion form, leaving the 'additional details' box blank until he had specifics, he kept an eye on the villain team as they bickered over what preparations to make. Then the round started, and explody-boy immediately abandoned his objective to make a beeline for problem child. Aizawa made a mental note to go over the incident with the Iida and help him learn a little flexibility. It wouldn't do to have him think he needed to control everyone around him to get the job done properly.
Explody boy met problem child, and sparks instantly flew. Aizawa cursed the lack of audio, but the first minute of silent footage alone gave him plenty of material to work with. Excessive violence, high risk of mutilating a fellow student, signs of abusive behavior - same year and school, clear signs of bad history between them, and that whole Quirkless bit, he'd have to ask for pictures of problem child's arms - and there went a load-bearing wall, clear disregard of his surroundings with life-threatening implications. AIzawa filled the box to the brim. He couldn't give Nezu any room to wriggle out of this expulsion, after all.
Despite his clear panic, problem child made a good show of dancing around explody-boy's attacks. It also made explody-boy a lot angrier. He popped the pin on his grenade gauntlets - Nezu better not have approved that - and oh look at that, he got to add attempted murder to the list. He would have to scrawl it in tiny print in a corner. Or he could get a second form. He might get a reaction out of the rat if he brings in one form with a laundry list of complaints, then as an afterthought, oh, here's the second form for trying to kill a fellow student. With the lethal costume design you approved.
While Aizawa was savoring the thought of Nezu flustered for once, a sudden explosion rocked the building. Aizawa was readying lectures on student endangerment for All Might, but a second look at the classroom showed All Might staring at the wreckage, without the students in tow.
Aizawa looked back at the building. As the dust settled, problem child panted heavily, cradling a broken arm, and the entire ceiling above him was blown out. Aizawa was halfway to the building when he heard All Might announce that the Hero Team had won, and that? That made his blood boil.
Sure, blasty-boy tried to renovate the bottom floor, and problem child with it, but problem child decided it was a fantastic idea to redirect an explosion up an entire multistory building and use the wreckage as ammunition for Ochako's Quirk. Points for creativity, with deductions for self-endangerment, endangering his partner, opponents, any bystanders, and the objective until he'd assign a negative score. And an expulsion.
But worse than all of that, was All Might actively encouraging that behavior in front of his entire class. That star-spangled idiot could've said that the collapse prematurely detonated the device, or spooked the villains into setting it off. Instead, he gave the entire class a green light to make whatever suicidally stupid decisions they thought would get the job done. Level a building? No problem. Collapse a bridge? Why not, that's what auto insurance is for. Set a street on fire? The potholes needed patching anyways.
Aizawa took a deep breath. He could run damage control later. Right now, he had two students to expel. After all, he could hardly call out blasty-boy on wanton property damage and classmate endangerment without doing the same for problem child. So, he brought out form number three and got to work, while keeping half an ear on the class.
"And that is why Iida is the MVP of the activity."
Aizawa blinked. He half-expected problem child to get that honor, or maybe vomit girl. Maybe that idiot did have a few brain cells rattling around in there somewhere.
Then he rewound the conversation, and nope, moneybags had the brain cells today. At least someone will be a good influence on his students.
"Bakugo, Midoriya, your behavior was reckless, and you could have easily hurt each other and your partners. If you ever do it again, there will be consequences. Am I clear?"
Aizawa's pen froze. He ground his teeth and glared at Japan's number one hero. One of his students had just tried to kill the other, and he had the audacity to brush it under the rug, without so much as a slap on the wrist or sending them to bed without supper?
Aizawa looked back at his expulsion forms. He could hardly hand them in now, when All Might had resolved the matter on his own. All Nezu would do is replay that exact audio clip and put his forms in the paper shredder.
So, if he couldn't get the students expelled, he'd have to do something about the teacher first.
Aizawa waited until the other groups were done and the students had all filed out. He slammed the door open. Toshinori jumped and coughed up blood.
"Jeez, Aizawa-san, you gave me a shock. Thought one of the students had come back."
"You should have expelled them."
Toshinori blinked. "Beg your pardon?"
Aizawa laid the forms on the table. "If you hadn't settled the matter, I'd have both of them packing their bags."
Toshinori went pale as he looked them over. "Both of them? But - Aizawa-san, it's only their second day."
"That's no excuse. Their behavior was unacceptable, and you know it."
Flipping to the second page, Toshinori coughed again. "Murder? Aizawa-san, isn't that going a bit far?"
"You tell me. How many pieces do you think Midoriya would be in if Bakugo had hit him with that last attack?"
"He wasn't in any danger, I would have intervened-"
"Did you?" Aizawa raised an eyebrow. Toshinori firmly met his gaze and said, "Midoriya had it handled."
"That's an awful lot of faith you were putting in someone with so poor a control over their Quirk that they break bones every time they use it, to say nothing of the clear poor history between them and Midoriya's insecurities. Had he frozen up, he would have died, and you didn't see fit to intervene because you thought he 'had it handled'."
Toshinori met his gaze without standing down.
"If that truly had come to pass, that would be my failing, not theirs."
"Doesn't change the fact that one of them tried to use lethal force."
"They are children, Aizawa-san. Mistakes happen."
"Heroes are not allowed to make mistakes." Aizawa was seething as he held his pen with a white-knuckled grip.
"They aren't heroes yet."
"But they will be. Will you say they are 'just children' when they level an entire building on their first patrol, or kill a hundred bystanders using an all-out attack in a cramped area? Our job is to weed out the children too irresponsible to become heroes. If you can't do that, I suggest you go back to what you're good at, All Might."
Toshinori shook his head. "If that was our job, we wouldn't graduate a single person. No one starts out as perfect heroes. Our job is to teach them to be better. And if you can't teach Bakugo how to rein in his anger and treat others with respect, then maybe you should go back to what you're good at, Eraserhead."
For a moment, Toshinori watched him, as if daring to argue the point. Aizawa, lacking any comeback, settled for glaring down at him.
"Now, if you'll excuse me," Toshinori said, wiping blood off his chin, "I'm going to try to catch Bakugo-shonen before he heads home. I have a job to do, after all."
Toshinori pointedly swiped the expulsion forms off his desk, crumpled them in his hands and tossed them in the garbage bin. Droplets of blood mingled with the still-damp ink that had rubbed off on his hands as he shut the door behind him.
Once All Might had left, Aizawa took the forms out of the garbage and smoothed them out. The ink had smudged, but the page declaring Bakugo's attempted murder was still legible despite the flecks of blood smeared over the words. He could still hand it in. He could tell Nezu to go to hell, that those two need to leave regardless what All Might says, that All Might was an incompetent buffoon with no grasp on reality and a firm lack of pragmatism borne of being too strong for the world to prove him wrong.
What would it accomplish? Aizawa's not naive enough to believe his word carries more weight than the number one hero of Japan. God forbid All Might decide to use it as leverage to end his teaching career. Or maybe even his hero career.
Maybe Toshinori wasn't pragmatic enough to recognize a lost cause, but Aizawa was pragmatic enough to bide his time. Bakugo had already slipped up once, and the lack of punishment would only encourage him to do it again. And when he does, Aizawa will hand in the expulsion form with All Might's blood on it and show the hero how wrong he was.
In the meantime, Aizawa intended to catch up on his sleep. Clearly, his fatigue was getting to him, because it definitely wasn't Toshinori's accusing tone, the words 'it's our job to teach them' echoing over and over, making him feel like the world was spinning out from under him.
A/N: I'm honestly surprised that Bakugo didn't canonically face consequences for what's at best a close brush with manslaughter. Dude's waving more red flags than a semaphore convention.
Chevalier Lecteur: "I much prefer him picking from Gen Ed after expelling his whole class over him just not having a class that year like in other FFs."
Bardothren: in all honesty, I'm not sure what inspired me to write this fic, but if I had to give this story a goal, it's to more deeply flesh out the kind of character that offhandedly expels an entire class. Just one of the worldbuilding and character building details in the series that rubs me the wrong way.
Oh, and to crank up the sass and sarcasm up to eleven. I've been having a blast with his dry, sardonic inner commentary.
Korrd: "Welp, Aizawa is showing himself to be just as irrational as his canon self. I don't care if he thinks he does everything "rationally," the fact of the matter is that he is one step short of being the poster boy of the MLA.
Can't wait to see how he explains away everything he does."
Bardothren: yup. Definitely not defending Aizawa in this one. While he has his own reasons for doing things and believes he's doing right by his students and the public, it doesn't change the fact it's a flawed methodology. As for being an MLA posterboy, he's almost the inverse, given how he values more subtlety and 'weaker' quirks due to his own history with a 'weak' and 'useless' quirk.