Trigger warning - panic attacks
She'd thought that arriving so early would let her avoid the crowds, but as she neared UA it was obvious that there was some sort of commotion building at the gates already. Shouting, shoving, the metallic glint of camera equipment... those aren't students.
Era approached the back of the mob, blinking the heaviness from her eyes and blearily assessing the situation. She repressed a wince at a particularly loud shout from the man nearest to her, allowing her face to set into a grimace instead as she began to push through the crowd.
This was the second day that the media had swarmed the UA gates, and it was beginning to grate on her nerves. If a few reporters "accidentally" received an elbow to the ribs or a sharp kick in the shins as she squeezed by, well, it wasn't as if they didn't deserve it.
A microphone was shoved into her face, startling her back a few steps. She hadn't heard the fucker approach, already deafened by the roaring crowd. Era tried to pull away, but was barred by a tangle of limbs and jostling bodies. A growl rose to the back of her throat as the reporter holding the microphone shouted down at her.
"You! Are you one of All Might's students? How is he doing as a teacher?"
"Do your fucking research," Era snapped, weariness tempering her tone with a hardened chill. "I'm in Gen Ed, All Might doesn't even teach me. Get out of my fucking way."
"Hey, kid, calm down, I'm just asking a question. Is this the kind of attitude that UA is teaching its students?"
It was becoming increasingly difficult to restrain the slow-boiling anger that bubbled in her chest, but she grappled with it desperately as it tried to twist and writhe from her grasp.
"I'm sorry," she ground out, still trying to shove past the insistent reporter. "What I meant to say was, would you please get out of my fucking way?"
The crowd was closing in around her, suffocating her in the press of thrashing, violent motion. I can't breathe. Era was drowning, her lungs flooded with acrid water that reeked of sweat and stung with salt. Walls closing in can't breathe can't—
She felt her breaths beginning to come in short gasps, hands trembling at her sides before she balled them into tight fists, digging crescent moon furrows into her palms with sharp pinpricks of pain that grounded her, for the moment. Again, Era attempted to shove past the microphone and through the rest of the crowd. At the fringes of her vision, she could just make out the UA gates. Almost there, almost there—
"Hey, kid! Don't walk away from me, I just want a statement, okay?" A hand closed around her wrist, and Era froze.
Walls closing in can't breathe can't breathe—
Her throat closed, chest tightening as if her ribs had slid together into a complex interlocking pattern that weaved through flesh and organs. The hand at her wrist tightened, began to pull, and Era stumbled backwards with it. Can't breathe can't breathe can't—
Breathe. Era tried, sucked in heaving mouthfuls of hot air, but it burned in her lungs and seared harsh brands across the inside of her stomach. Breathe, breathe, breathe but she couldn't, the hand was vicelike around her wrist dragging her back, back, back into the sea of writhing bodies with no faces, never faces, in the dreams the faces all blended together in a screaming mass of your fault your fault your fault and there were more microphones in her face, more hands that touched and tugged and tore slashed ripped at flesh and laid bare pale-white bone—
Words buzzing at her ears, all digging into the folds of her mind, scrabbling for purchase and leaving bloody furrows in their wake. Walls closing in can't breathe can't breathe can't breathe can't—
A new hand found itself pressed between her shoulder blades, urging her away from the grasping and the tugging and the can't breathe can't—
And Era stumbled free, through the UA gates.
Three seconds. She would allow herself three seconds.
One...
Era clutched at her throat with a shaky hand, fingers tightening in sharp spasms against the soft flesh. Can't breathe. Her lungs swelled with desperate, shallow gasps of air that pressed sharply against her ribs with stabbing pain, as if she were breathing knives.
...two...
The pale memory of hands ghosted across her body, cruel fingers twitched around her arms even as Era itched at her wrists and found nothing there but her own scars. Twisting wrenching grinding—
...three.
Breathe. Era did. It creaked and rattled in her chest, but it was steady. She forced her shoulders back, drove the tension from her twitching fingers, smoothed her face into her customary stony indifference. Breathe.
There was still a hand at her back, lightly guiding her through the gates. She pulled away from it as she sorted herself, tucking loose items into the boxes they'd tumbled out of and shoving those boxes exactly where they belonged: out of her reach. The hand didn't follow, and she was glad for it, even though its loss left a persistent itch where it had been lying a moment before.
"Don't harass my students. If this continues we will be forced to notify the authorities."
Era stiffened against her better judgement, and she forced the tension from her body once more as she shot a cautious glance over her shoulder to stare at the speaker.
Eraserhead stared right back at her. Arms crossed, eyes underlaid by dark circles, mouth pressed into what at this point she assumed must be his default expression.
Never let it be said that Era backed down from a challenge. She held his gaze with a safe, cool disinterest, tugging at the straps of her backpack and giving him a curt nod before turning to retreat into UA proper. Fuck. Why did it seem like the pro only turned up when it would be most inconvenient for her, in particular? And what the hell was that, anyway? She wasn't his student. She wasn't even in the Hero Course; she was as far from his responsibility as a UA student could be.
Embarrassing. What an obvious weakness. The whole ordeal left a foul taste in her mouth, like rancid meat. The only saving grace of the situation was how quickly she had recovered her footing, and the fact that Eraserhead would be unable to leave his post and follow her into the building.
She was growing soft. That situation should not have sent her spiraling as it did. Stupid, stupid, stupid, but easily remedied. She would just not allow it to happen again, simple as that. Even if she had to play at being normal, at average and plain, she still would not allow anyone in this school or beyond its grounds to see the weakness that lurked just beneath her skin.
The plan. She needed the plan; needed it for the money, for the security, for the threat of falling out of practice. If she didn't keep her reflexes honed, what was to stop her from freezing in the face of a real threat? She needed to go back to her roots, to remember why she could not fail. Failure is suffering. She could never forget that.
All through class, alongside the usual exhaustion fogging up her brain, Era was distracted by a nervous energy that left her tapping fingers against her desk and scratching pale lines into her arms. This was a bad idea. A really bad idea. Or was that just her own cowardice rearing its ugly head again? I am not weak.
Era didn't even register the embarrassment at answering a question wrong yet again, letting her thoughts drift the instant she sat down again. She was competent with a disguise, and she'd hustled dangerous people before. She could lie, cheat, read the intent of others in the quirk of their lips and the shift of their shoulders, and if it really came down to it Era could be an adept escape artist when a situation went south. Besides, as her stomach pangs were keen to remind her, she really needed the money. This was the most efficient way to get it done.
And she couldn't deny the appeal. School rushed by faster than it ever had before, but even as she walked towards the cafeteria Era was still fixated on the thrill of it all. There was only so much that jumping from rooftops could do, and the idea of walking back into the criminal underbelly was a tantalizing one. Finally, a chance to put her skills back to work. The constant grind of schoolwork and grades that barely scraped passing were beginning to wear on her, and she could really use a fucking win for once.
The shrill call of a bell ripped through the entire building, locking Era in place as her muscles tensed painfully. The entire hallway stilled, students staring at each other with shock and bewilderment, before a robotic voice echoed across the facility.
"Warning. Level three security breach. All students please evacuate the building in an orderly fashion."
Silence. The rippling tremble of stones before an avalanche.
Then her world was noise and pain and the ceaseless mass of faceless bodies pushing against her from all sides, tossing her like foam-tipped waves on a storm-tossed sea and fuck fuck fuck there she went again with the walls closing in and the can't breathe can't breathe but it wouldn't stop, there was no reporter digging nails into her skin it was just shifting skin and jostling limbs and panicked screams that echoed down the hall in a way that was oh so familiar in just the wrong ways, everything balancing on a knife's edge of here and now and walls closing in can't breathe can't breathe can't—
Era blindly shoved through the crowd, short gasps drowned out by the ceaseless screaming, make it stop make it stop, and as sharp knees and elbows jabbed into her skin she could feel the faint blossom of bruises, sharp pricks of pain that left her stranded in walls closing in and knives beneath the skin and fuck, fuck no, she was just spiraling again, over and over and over again because there is no escape little bird and no no no she couldn't, she couldn't go back there, not now with exhaustion tugging at her limbs and hunger clawing at her stomach she couldn't she—I can't I can't go back please—
Weakness, weakness—there was nothing she could do, though, lost in the endless crowd and the ceaseless shouts and the pushing and shoving and she couldn't. Fucking. Breathe.
She didn't know when she'd been shoved against a wall, when she'd begun to slide along it. All she knew was that her hand somehow managed to grasp salvation: a door. An escape. Run away, run away, run run run run run—
Scrabbling at the door with what she'd admit was pure desperation, Era managed to slip inside and slam it shut behind her, stumbling into pure, blissful darkness.
And she really did stumble. She barely managed to stagger her way towards a corner at the far end of the room, trembling limbs catching and snaring at scattered furniture. Collapsing into the wall, Era slid down it until she could wrap her arms around her knees on the carpeted floor, tucking her head to her chest and bringing her shoulders up as far as they would go to stop that god forsaken noise.
It was muffled, in the room. Screaming, shouting, raw panic filtered in through layers of wood and drywall. This was not better.
Then it stopped. Silence, just as deafening as the sound, twisting, tearing, turning screws into her skin but no noise no noise never noise because I can't give them the satisfaction.
What did it matter? Everyone had a breaking point; she'd always scream, in the end.
This room was cool and dark and quiet. The wall was hard against her back, but the carpet was soft enough to remind her that it wasn't a cell. Still, shapes stirred in the shadows, the sinister warning of worse to come; and Era knew that there was always worse to come.
It was quiet. She liked that. Shivering, clutching at her own skin hard enough to leave sickly bruises and crimson lines, Era didn't care to think much further.
She didn't know how long she sat there, trembling in a spiral of walls closing in and can't breathe can't breathe and knives beneath the skin but she did know that her chest was aching and her head felt as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it when the door finally opened and Eraserhead stepped in.
Because of course. Of course this was Eraserhead's office.
Even this deep into the spiral, there was a distant fragment of her brain that could still register the irony of a situation. With this, that fragment shrugged on its coat and left the entire fucking building.
She would allow herself three seconds. Three seconds before she pulled herself together and faced the mess before her.
The mess she'd created for herself, by being so fucking weak—
One...
Stupid, foolish, childish, naïve, you'll never be more than what you are little bird—
...two...
Bodies pressing in on all sides I can't breathe please I don't understand—
...three.
I tried, I tried, I didn't know, I'm sorry I'm sorry I didn't know please stop I'll be good this time just—
...three.
I don't want to do this anymore I can't do this anymore it hurts I can't, you can't, why—
...three.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry I won't do it again, I swear I won't do it again, voice screamed hoarse nails filed down to bloodied nubs, please just let me—
Three.
Please just let me die.
She can't.
She can't handle this, right now, and that weakness curdles her blood but she just fucking can't.
The door closes, and for a blessed moment Era thinks that maybe, just maybe, Eraserhead had had much the same thought and decided to leave her alone.
If only she could be so lucky.
She heard him walk across the room, heard the creak of his chair as he sank into it. Heard the rush of her own blood in her ears, the quickened hammer of her own heartbeat as it tried its damnedest to shatter her ribs from the inside, the shuddering gasp of every breath that stabbed its way into her aching lungs—
Was he saying something? That, she couldn't hear. No, no, no she needed to hear that; she couldn't miss instructions. She needed to... if she didn't listen, if she didn't do as she was told then that would be an automatic failure and failure was—
Cautious hands on her own, gently prying them away from where they had been scoring red marks across her face. Era opened her eyes—when had she closed them?—and saw a frowning Eraserhead kneeling in front of her.
He was talking. She needed to—she needed to—why was he frowning? Was he angry? Upset? At her? Fuck, fuck, fuck what had she done, it must have been something, there was a misstep or an oversight that was her fault, if only she could be better, if only she wasn't so broken then they wouldn't have to fix her over and over and over and over and—
"Era. Can you hear me?"
They never called her Era. That was hers. They didn't allow anything to be hers.
She could hear him. Never speak unless spoken to, but always answer when asked. Do you understand, little bird?
Era forced her head into a jerky semblance of a nod, and hoped it would suffice.
"Okay." He took a deep breath, and she found herself envying him for that. Stupid. It was her own weakness that—
"Can you talk to me, Era?"
She needed to answer. If she didn't then that would be disobedience, and disobedience was just as good as failure, and failure is—
"No," she croaked out past the rasp in her throat, harsh and burning as if she had been screaming. Era didn't know if she had been screaming. That didn't unsettle her as much as she thought it should, but the fact that she thought it should at all was enough to put her on edge.
"Okay. That's fine." It didn't sound fine. It didn't sound fine at all. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't—
"Stop. It's okay, kid. You don't have to talk." Had she really said that out loud? Everything was slipping, as if the world had been sharply tugged half a step to the left, leaving her to stumble along in hazy confusion as she knocked clumsily against desks and chairs and shelves and—
"Just listen to me, okay? Can you hear me? You just have to nod, if you can."
She did. She had to. Eraserhead let out another long breath and released her hands from his grasp, letting them fall back into her lap.
"Focus on me, and my breathing. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Nothing else matters, right now. All right, in..."
His chest swelled with air, and again Era felt that pang of envy because how did he make it look so easy? It was as if it were natural to him, while for Era it seemed like every fucking second she was reminding herself to breathe, had to force herself to remember or she'd forget and end up passed out on the asphalt. Fuck, she was so fucking stupid. All of this over one fucking alarm, and for what? Whatever chaos was going on outside had clearly passed by now, or Eraserhead wouldn't be wasting his time on her. A waste. That was her, in a nutshell. Wasted time, wasted potential, wasted space—
"You're not breathing, Era."
That wasn't quite true; her lungs still heaved with shuddering breaths, ribs creaking with the effort. And yet, and yet she hadn't been able to follow even a simple instruction, was she really so useless that—
"Era. Focus on me. You're safe. Nothing is going to hurt you, here."
That was fresh, considering who was sitting in front of her. Era let out a wheeze of laughter, fingers itching to scratch at her wrists, if only to banish the phantom weight of cuffs digging into her skin.
"I'm serious. Nothing is going to happen to you, and nothing is going to hurt you. All you need to think about now is breathing."
"I can't—" Pathetic, she sounded pathetic.
"Yes, you can," he said simply, reaching down to gently grasp her hands in his once more, prying them away from where they were clawing at her wrists hard enough to draw blood. "You're strong. You can do this."
Heroes lie. All the time.
And yet. Wouldn't it be nice if, just this once, he was telling the truth?
Era breathed. That first rush of air, though it stuttered in her chest, was sweeter than anything she had ever tasted. It was soft, and fresh, and free.
She did it.
"Good. You're doing a really good job. Just keep breathing with me..."
She did, and it was good. Everything fell away in bloody layers: the walls closing in, the shouts and the bodies, the failure is suffering... Nothing else mattered. It was only the air in her lungs and the reassuring grasp of his hands on hers, grounding her to the present.
The present, where she was currently coming down from a spiral in front of fucking Eraserhead.
Three seconds. One... two... three.
Breathe. She did, and this time the air wasn't so sweet as it was painful. But still, air was air.
Era withdrew her hands, clenching them into fists before letting them rest awkwardly at her sides. She tried to keep her gaze level, but there was nowhere to look but him and his suffocating pity. Instead she let her eyes stray to the side, focusing on a nice, blank wall.
Be normal. Why did she seem to be so awful at such a simple task?
"You okay?" asked Eraserhead, and fuck he sounded so tired. Era almost felt worse for disrupting his day than she did for making such a complete fool of herself.
"Yeah," she said, wincing when it still came out all raspy. "I'm fine. Sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry for." He straightened from where he knelt, and Era's joints ached in sympathy at the audible crack of his bones. "Is this a common occurrence?"
"No," Era lied. "It's just been a long day, I guess. I really am—"
"If you say sorry again, then I actually will get mad. Was it the alarm?"
Walls closing in—Era just barely failed to repress a wince. "Yes."
"All right." He sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Maybe you should consider talking to—"
"I'm probably really late to class," said Era hurriedly, rubbing the feeling back into her legs before standing up as well. Wobbly, but functional. "It's—shit, what time is it, did I miss—"
"You should—" Cutting himself off with another sigh, he instead walked over to his desk and scribbled something out on a piece of paper before handing it to her. "Here, just give this to Hizashi. He shouldn't give you any trouble. If he does, talk to me."
Era reached out to grab the piece of paper a little numbly, not bothering to point out that she most certainly would not be approaching Eraserhead ever again, not on school grounds at least. She stared down at the slip, nose wrinkling.
"I'm—" She paused at his glare, unsure if she was hallucinating the red tinge to his eyes. "...thank you, Eraserhead-sensei. I will not inconvenience you again."
A third sigh, long suffering. "Close enough. Go to class. Talk to a therapist."
Era choked, unsuccessfully disguising it as a very brief coughing fit. Hastily excusing herself, she beat a long overdue retreat.
Halfway down the long, empty hallway, Era paused to sag against a wall, letting the cool surface seep into the ache at her temples. She carefully held up the slip of paper, letting her confusion pass across her face briefly before banishing it once more. More difficult to dismiss, however, was the kernel of warmth it left in her chest; almost enough to replace the hell it'd been through over the course of the day.
"He does not care about you," she hissed to herself, crumpling the paper in her hands. "No one is kind without purpose. Get a fucking grip."
The rest of the day passed by in a blur, thank god. Era couldn't handle another fucking disaster. As their last class ended, all she could think of was getting to her apartment and throwing herself into bed. The fact that she was even considering sleep was the true measure of how shit this day had been.
She felt worn, like a pebble sanded down at the bottom of a riverbed, stuck in grime and mud and drowning in a constant rush of water. It was a struggle to keep her footing as she walked down the stairs of UA's front entrance, but Era would not look weak again. Not today.
"Hey, Suzuki!"
Era snapped to attention, eyes darting towards the sound while her hands instinctively reached for her blades, spasming back into a relaxed position at her sides when she saw Uraraka waving frantically from further back along the path. Allowing herself a sigh, she paused and waited for Uraraka to catch up, along with Midoriya and Iida.
"Uraraka," Era said by way of greeting, nodding towards the three students. "You can call me Era, it's okay."
"Sorry, Era, right. I feel like I haven't seen you in forever!" gushed Uraraka breathlessly. "That alarm was crazy, right? I thought I was going to get trampled! How've you been?"
Like she needed the reminder. "Fine. Things are pretty routine."
"We totally never set a time for our study session, you disappeared so fast—"
"Sorry, I guess I have a lot on my plate right now," said Era quickly. Midoriya tilted his head to the side.
"Is it school? Then that's all the more reason to study together," he said brightly.
Era resisted the urge to let her teeth clack together with a snap of her jaw, instead shooting them what she hoped was a sheepish grin. "You're probably right."
"I'm actually free right now, what about you Deku? Tenya?"
"Oh, yeah, I mean—" began Midoriya, before Era cut in.
"I actually have a few errands to run tonight. Raincheck?" Her voice came out a little harsher than she'd have like, tangled up in the acidic burn of I don't have time for this that crawled along the back of her neck.
"Of course!" Uraraka fumbled for something in her pocket, pulling out an obnoxiously pink smartphone decorated with cartoonish stickers of stars and ringed planets. "We should totally exchange numbers though, you ran away so fast the other day that we didn't get to."
Era bristled at that, because she did not run away, she had made a tactical retreat from the enemy. Running was reserved for serious matters, for hopeless gambits and bloodied feet. Running was desperation. Era wasn't desperate, not here. Not yet.
Or are you? Soft and crooning at the back of her mind. Poisonous. You've already shown him weakness. He knows how pathetic you really are. Are you not desperate? Things fall apart so quickly, little bird. Especially, it seems, when you're involved.
Shaking away these thoughts, she reached out for the phone anyway and stared down at the blank contact information. Era didn't... have a phone. Not for things like this, anyway. She had her burners, the ones she used to contact the police and, occasionally, call for some takeout. And she had her personal phone, the one she'd fished out of a dump through dumb luck and had spent a lot of time and effort refurbishing into something useful. That one had some notes, key info and programs set to run in worst case scenarios, a police scanner to let her know what crimes were in the area, several pirated subscriptions to news outlets about heroes and villains alike... She couldn't just be handing out that number to anyone. Then it would be just as good as a burner, and she'd have to smash it up and toss it in the river like the rest.
In the end, Era hastily tapped out one of the cheap flip phone numbers that she actually remembered. She'd just keep it on hand for texts to Uraraka, and to whoever else would expect her to reply. Normal students had a phone and used it to text her classmates. Suzuki Era was normal. She had to be normal, especially after today.
"Awesome!" said Uraraka as Era handed the phone back to her. "I'll just send you a text real quick—"
"Sorry if I don't respond right away. I accidentally left it at home today," said Era hastily.
"No prob, just text me back when you can." Uraraka tucked the phone back into her pocket, and Era felt the tension ease from her shoulders at how easily she swallowed up lie after lie. They would have died—"This is going to be so fun! Let us know when you can meet up, okay?"
"Right."
They left as quickly as they had arrived, and Era found herself standing in bemused silence as students rushed past her in their haste to get home.
"Right," she said again, cracking her neck and forcing the tension from her shoulders. She stepped forward to join the crowd, thoughts drifting back towards her plans for the night.
Sleep. A deep, long-awaited sleep. Then a feast of any food she had left. She was going to need her strength for the next night, when she walked into whatever meeting place she managed to dredge up from her spotty memory.
There would be no more failure. Era would remember what she was and what she was meant to be when she was finally able to stretch her wings and fly, bird that she was. One night, that was all she needed. Just one night in her element, stretching the muscles she hadn't used in quite a while. Clearly, that was where her deficiency stemmed from.
Besides. She really could use the money.
***
Shouta hated the press. Hizashi and Nemuri could poke fun at him all he wanted, but the fact of the matter was that they were nothing but an inconvenience; vultures hovering over all of their shoulders, waiting for a chance to swoop in when they were already down.
How his more popular friends got anything done was beyond him. The fact that Hizashi managed to deal with his day job, his teaching, his position at the radio station, and this media circus was a testament to his unshakeable perseverance. Shouta really didn't have it in him.
As it was, that morning he'd barely been awake enough to deal with their nonsense. If they wanted a soundbite from All Might they could go track him down on their own time; outside of school hours. Still, it was a good thing he'd been posted there. He had a high opinion of his coworkers—well, most of them—but he wasn't sure if they'd have caught the way Suzuki Era froze up in the crowd.
Now, sitting at the desk in his dimly lit office, he couldn't help but sigh into his hands. It wasn't like he'd been any better. He'd thought it must have been a one time thing; a lot of kids panic in crowds, and she'd only frozen for a moment. The ease at which she recovered was actually... unsettling. It was as if she had flipped a switch, and suddenly everything was fine again.
And therein lay the catch, didn't it? Because it wasn't fine. It so obviously was not fine that Shouta was honestly surprised no one had caught it earlier. Or maybe they had, and hadn't bothered to follow up on it.
Or maybe, came the thought, unwelcome, she's just a very good liar.
Scowling into his hands, he peaked between his fingers at the door she'd hurried through a moment before. As if she was running away.
Shouta could understand embarrassment. He thought it was foolish, an illogical emotion that only hindered progress, but he understood it; being a high school teacher, it was impossible not to come in contact with it on a daily basis. Shouta knew what embarrassment looked like, and if that's what Suzuki Era had fled in, he would know.
That child had not been embarrassed. Or, maybe she was, but there was some underlying emotion that he couldn't quite catch, and it nagged at him like a stone in his shoe. Because, though he couldn't quite identify the reaction, there was something about it that Shouta instinctually didn't like.
This did throw a wrench into all of his theories, but at the moment that wasn't exactly his biggest concern. Though she might not be in his class, she was still a student at UA. Still a child. And the fact that her clear issues had somehow slipped through the cracks was frankly inexcusable; it would need to be remedied.
The situation with the alarm was a mess. From what he'd heard, the hallways had been packed enough to cause bruises, and the hysteria had been so unchecked that people were in danger of being trampled underfoot. He frowned, rubbing at his tired eyes. Yet another problem that would need to be fixed. Such mass panic was irrational.
Back to the problem at hand, though: he wouldn't blame any student for having a panic attack in that situation, and usually he wouldn't think anything of it past calming them down, but... the way Suzuki had reacted was extreme. Especially in conjunction with the incident at the gates, he was beginning to find patterns that otherwise wouldn't have been apparent.
It was a good thing he had crisis training, or he might not have been so effective. Shouta hummed, dropping his hands to the computer and mindlessly booting it up. Did All Might have the same training, he wondered? It would be good to make sure. As far as he knew, all underground heroes went through some amount of training in counseling and crisis relief, as they were far more likely to deal with one-on-one cases. It was a useful skill to have as a teacher, and from how the "Symbol of Peace" acted around his students Shouta seriously doubted he had any real experience with children at all, nonetheless troubled individuals.
Again, he was getting distracted. Frowning at his computer screen, Shouta found that he had absentmindedly pulled up the file for Suzuki Era yet again.
While he was here, he might as well check. He scrolled through briefly, but his frowned deepened at he didn't find any records for mental health or therapy sessions.
There were aspects of her attack that made him think she had some underlying trauma; the specifics of that were anyone's guess. And with nothing registered on her forms... Shouta cursed beneath his breath, closing out her file. She wasn't even his student. What was he going to do, make a house call? Check in with her family? That wasn't within his authority, and likely never would be. Because, though he had been considering extending the offer after Hizashi's recommendation, Suzuki Era could never join his class.
If that was how she reacted to a crisis, she couldn't be a hero. Not without some counseling first, anyway. Nothing shameful about it, but the field would be far too stressful for her, and she was liable to get someone else hurt if she panicked and froze up.
Which led him to yet another issue... the identity of Sparrow. Suzuki had been a prime suspect, although if he was being honest that was more on intuition than pure deduction. Perhaps, in his eagerness, he had latched on to the first possible suspect and then twisted the facts to support his theory? It wasn't in character for him to act that way, but it was possible.
He'd seen Sparrow jump off buildings, fight street thugs, get shot. She'd never panicked like that. In fact she'd always seemed... calm. The only time she'd been on edge was their conversation on the rooftop, and she certainly hadn't froze like Suzuki did. Even when she'd been shot, she was able to keep a clear enough head to tell him about her quirk... and to escape when his guard was down.
If Suzuki wasn't Sparrow, then he'd be right back at square one. And with this whole new host of problems that Suzuki herself had just revealed, the work before him was becoming unwieldy.
Sighing, Shouta pulled out his phone. He really hadn't wanted to involve Hizashi in this; the man had enough on his plate already. But Suzuki was his student, so technically she was his responsibility and, honestly, Hizashi was already going to kill him for keeping so much hidden for so long.
So he'd bring Hizashi in on this... and no one else, for now. He didn't need to cause a fuss about a hunch that, honestly, he wasn't so sure about anymore. If Suzuki wasn't Sparrow, then there was no one else in UA that could reasonably fall under suspicion. And, if they really were two separate people, that just meant one more problem child for him to deal with. Joy.
Well, this certainly wouldn't solve itself in a night. Besides, Shouta had work to do. There was homework to grade, a lesson plan to write, and a long night to prepare for. If he got any sleep before class tomorrow he'd be impressed, but he wasn't counting on it. He was finally closing in on a few mid-tier villains, a case he'd been working on with the police for months, finally coming to an end with what would hopefully be several successful arrests. All he needed to do was gather just a few more key bits of evidence, and then the police and some fellow pro heroes could come in and handle the rest.
He'd have to scope out the place first. Then that night-long stakeout would be followed by class, which in turn would be followed by yet another night-long infiltration and eventual arrest.
Fuck. And he got on Hizashi's case for working overtime. At least this effort was finally bearing some fruit. Hopefully. Everything else on his plate seemed a little inscrutable at the moment, but if there was one thing Shouta was good at it was catching criminals, and that's exactly what he planned on doing for the next couple of nights.
At least he wouldn't have to worry about problem children and concerning vigilantes. It would be a nice change of pace.
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Plot twist - she faked the panic attack and it was all a ply to get aizawa to stop suspecting her