Lily and I were getting ready for our meeting while Aizawa and Vlad were talking about how they were splitting the USJ for today. Lily and I spent the whole week preparing to discuss our concerns about how the school really handled the students and really wanted to vocalize how all the staff has to be held accountable if anything occurs with the students. It wouldn't matter if it were an on-campus or off-campus issue. So far, the Pro Hero Hound Dog, Ryo Inu, the head of the UA's counseling department, seemed very behind our school plans. We just needed to discuss it with the rest of the counseling staff and Nezu.
"I'm sure they'll agree with it. I mean, they agreed to your idea about a counselor per class instead of one counselor per year." Lily patted my back while I mumbled over my speech. It was a bad habit I gained from All Might, and I'm guessing Midoriya got the hang of it when I hung out with the class yesterday. Love that.
"I know it seems like I have Nezu wrapped around my finger, but I am literally going to go up to my boss, and ex-principal, who practically raised me, and tell him that I think he sucks at his job when it comes to students' mental health." I scratched the back of my head. Maybe I should've opted to wear my hair up instead of curling it for this meeting. On the other hand, Lily was wearing a creme pants suit with her hair wrapped in her signature bun. "I feel like I am being ungrateful and a huge hypocrite." I pushed my hair back and wiped my palms on the shorts of my suit.
Lily looked more concerned about the other staff members watching us, "Okay, I know I'm a counselor but please pull yourself together. Aizawa and Vlad look like they're about to run and get you water and a ventilator." I spinned in my seat towards the two men to see them staring at me. Welp this is embarrassing. I simply waved awkwardly and turned back to Lily, "We're not talking about you, we are talking about the current students. Nezu will understand that. And you can always use your time in the U.S. as a way to back up our argument and not have to bring up your time living at U.A. It is as simple as apple pie."
I just blinked at her. "You did not just use, 'It is as simple as apple pie.'" I motioned my fingers as air quotes and made a high pitched North Carolina accent to emphasize the phrase. She simply nudged me and laughed. "I hate baking. Whoever thought baking was easy needs to reevaluate everything." I shook my head, my nerves finally dissipating once the topic switched over.
I checked the clock to see if I still had time to spare. Sadly I didn't so I packed up my stuff and told Lily to start walking over to the meeting room. I passed by the two teachers, Vlad gave us two thumbs up and Aizawa just nodded. "So, explain to me why all the male staff at U.A. are so attentive to you." She smirked.
"It's mainly Present Mic. But since you asked, most of them we're U.A. students at the same time I was. So they knew me before I became the self-confident pro you see before you today, that is still afraid of their mouse principal that is like two feet shorter than her." I gave a fake chipper tone.
"Why are you so intimidated by Nezu anyways?" Lily's honey brown eyebrows scrunched creating a crease between them.
"Simple answer. He took me in when my mom couldn't take care of me. The real answer, he thought it was funny to be the staff member in charge of my final exam in my first year at U.A. and it wasn't fun." I visibly shook in my suit.
"Wait, is it that time where you thought you and Iris were up against robots but instead it was..."
"YES! And I don't want to talk about it." I looked over at her with pleading eyes. "I mean it. I can talk about a lot of things, that is not one of them."
"But it's not even the worst thing to..."
"Doesn't matter, I don't like talking about it." Lily just shrugged and kept walking without pressing me further. She's right, it isn't the worst thing to happen to me; it's more just an embarrassing story that I don't like because I seriously underestimated Nezu that day. I really hope he hasn't done that to any other students after that. Once we hit the door to the meeting room, we were met with Hound Dog and no Nezu.
"Where's Principal Nezu?" Lily asked as she opened the door for us.
"He's giving All Might a lecture about how a teacher needs to prioritize his students." Ryo rubbed his eyebrows, "So, the meeting has to go without him."
I raised my eyebrow, "Wasn't the point of the meeting for him to not be here? What did All Might do?"
Ryo looked just as annoyed as we did, "He went around saving people this morning so he ran out of time and needed to recharge. So Nezu wanted to talk to him because he felt that it was more important."
I smirked a little despite being annoyed at the slight hypocrisy, "I can see it now, All Might on the couch at the teacher's lounge while Nezu brings out the tea and starts talking about the meaning of being a hero and a teacher." I did a slight impression of Nezu's mannerism causing them to laugh along. "If anything, he could've just passive aggressively brought All Might along to the meeting so he can hear us lecturing." Then it hit me. Aizawa asked me and Thirteen is we wanted to join him in training the students at the USJ tomorrow. "Shit. Aizawa is going to piss when Toshi isn't in class. Let me text him really quick since no one else is here yet." They simply motioned me to do so while they got seated. Lily even grabbed my bag with my laptop and tablet for me.
Hey, Aizawa.
Toshinori went out using his quirk this morning and wasted his energy again. He might not be able to come in for the beginning portion of class. I'm sorry, I barely found out because Nezu is with him and not at the meeting. Tell the kids I said, "Hi." and that I wish them a good day! Please don't be mad at the big guy okay, I'm sure he feels really bad :)
Message not delivered
That's weird. Maybe he has his phone off or something. Oh well, Thirteen will probably catch him up to speed about Toshinori. I noticed the other counselors were showing up so I made my way inside quickly and let the meeting start.
Things were going smoothly until all of a sudden the internet connection stopped working and Lily's powerpoint froze up on the screen. Ryo and I were struggling to fix it when all of a sudden, Iida ran into the meeting room gasping and slightly heaving. "Iida? What are you doing here, this is strictly for U.A staff..."
"There are villains attacking the USJ! I ran into All Might and he told me to go and alert as many heroes as possible." The tall boy flailed his arms in chopping movements despite needing to catch his breath. "I am sorry for the interruption but I am assured that you understand the importance."
Hound Dog stood up and ordered everyone to head to different school areas to make sure it was just the USJ that was infiltrated. I put my hands on the boy's armored shoulders, "Hey, hey, its going to be okay, take deep breaths. Did you tell other staff?"
He nodded finally catching his breath, "I told Nezu and some of the teachers, they are heading there as we speak."
I nodded with him, "Okay, relax; we're a school full of pros; we'll make sure everything turns out fine." I pulled off my blue blazer and my heels.
"What are you doing, Ms. Montoya?" The boy looked bewildered.
"I'm heading to the USJ and I can't really run in heels." I smiled and held my shoes up and then started rushing over there with Iida following close behind.
"But what about your suspension?"
"To hell with it, you students are more important." I kept straight ahead when all of a sudden I was lifted off the ground, "Um, Iida what are you doing?"
"Sorry, Ms. Montoya, I am not trying to be inappropriate, it's just that I'm faster and they're attacking my classmates and my teacher." If it weren't a dire situation I would've told him to put me down but this boy was running on pure adrenaline so he probably was going to be a lot faster anyways.
I simply nodded, "I admire your determination about helping but once we're at the USJ I want you to just get as many of the students out without running into any villains. Your safety is most important." I honestly don't think the fifteen year old heard me while he was running.
We finally met with the other staff with Nezu at the USJ. The bright relieved faces on Class 1-A's face made my heart sink. "Sorry we were late students." Nezu spoke up. I turned to Iida and the boy looked so proud of himself that he was able to help get us here. I observed the whole place and saw every inch of it in shambles. I couldn't really see where Toshinori was, but I guess it was where the smoke was located. Great that means he's running out of time. Sero and Sato were holding up an injured Thirteen. I looked down to see Asui and Mineta carrying a broken Aizawa. Fuck. I turned to Mic, and he looked almost as furious as I was feeling. Directions were given to the student while the teachers began to fight. First to step up was Snipe shooting all the way to where All Might was. Guessing he was shooting a villain that was fighting him. After that it was Mic with his voice quirk. The villains didn't know what they had coming in for them. I went down as fast as I could to the kids and Aizawa as the rest of the staff followed in suit of Snipe and Mic. I grabbed Aizawa out of their arms and laid him down for a second to analyze him. His face busted in, and his arms and legs were broken. How are you going to recover from this one, Sho? I looked up and the students, "Shoji, you think you can carry Mr. Aizawa out of here?" He nodded and moved his six arms to situate Aizawa comfortably on him. "Okay, all of you start heading up now into safety, okay? Is anyone else injured?" For the students that were with me they all seemed fine. "Okay, good. I am going to help the other staff and find the rest of the class. Please get out of here and try to be safe. You guys did phenomenally, and I'm extremely proud at how well you are handling this situation." I smiled and gave them a quick nod before following in after the chaos. I have to go find Toshinori before he loses his time.
I shouldn't be using my quirk, but I don't really care right now. I decided to channel some of my energy into my legs and make a huge leap into the middle of the USJ in between All Might and some blue haired villain with hands all over his body. There was a purple ghostly figure behind him with glowing gold eyes. I pushed Midoriya out of the way while I noticed that Kirishima, Bakugo, and Todoroki were all a few feet away from the scene. "Who are you? You don't look like a pro? You don't even have a suit." The blue haired villain croaked out, he was bleeding from Snipe's shot.
I gave him a simple smirk once I started hearing more bullets flying through the air, "You don't need to know." I used an old quirk I gained years ago that I had so much trouble wanting to use it. I created a large amount of clouds to hide All Might, Midoriya, and I while the villain was failing to dodge the bullets coming at him. The clouds were dense enough to protect all of us from any last minute chances of an attack. The ghostly figure wrapped around the boy as he fell to ground, I tried my best to come after it but I just flew threw while they both disappeared. So much for being useful. I groaned as I watched the borrowed cloud quirk start to fade as well as All Might's muscular form. He was telling Midoriya that he saved him and kind of praised him for nearly getting himself killed which I didn't really appreciate but I couldn't really say anything about at the moment.
"Midoriya!" We all turned in the direction of the sound, it was Kirshima in his Red Riot suit running towards us. "Are you okay?"
I was getting ready to use the cloud quirk again when Cementoss came to the rescue and blocked the redhead for me with his cement quirk, telling him that everything was okay and that to go with the other students. I admire the compassion the student had to go check on his classmate, and I was able to tell that Toshinori was impressed by it as well. I sighed, "You really need to just let me and the other heroes handle things, Toshinori."
Midoriya looked stunned. "AAAAhh... IIIIII... ahhhh?"
I walked up to him and rested a hand on his shoulder, "News flash kid, all of us teachers know about All Might's situation. I actually knew for the whole ten years. I also know you have One For All. Congratulations and my condolences, because that quirk is going to be hell to learn." I chuckled, "It's okay, though; you'll have me to help you with it though. Now I am going to go help other students get escorted out of here, you want to help while Cementoss sneaks Toshi out of here?" I raised my eyebrow. The boy still stunned with his mouth hanging just simply nodded and followed my lead.
We managed to grab the rest of the students and I was about to escort them out when Kayama stopped me. "I'll get them out, you need to go to the hospital with Aizawa."
I raised an eyebrow, "What do you mean I have to go?"
"Nezu lied and said that you two were engaged so that way you can have access to his room and keep the students updated with his condition while he's recovering."
I blinked. He couldn't have just said that I was a colleague from the same agency as Eraserhead? I just nodded and she pointed me in the direction of the ambulance. "Please make sure my kids are okay while I'm gone."
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Beep. Beep. Beep. Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop. Sitting in the hospital room with a just barely stabled man laying unconscious in bed was starting to eat away at me. I had to stay in the waiting room as both Aizawa and Thirteen were in the ER undergoing surgery. Thirteen was out first and was conscious, so I was able to talk to them and check on them while waiting for news on Aizawa. All I had to do was tell them that I was from U.A. and show them my hero license and school I.D. and they let me in. I don't understand why Nezu had to lie about my relationship to AIzawa. Toshinori's friend Detective Tskauchi had a partner of his come in and watch over the both of us and another cop to look over Thirteen. "Yeah, no they're both stable, the students have nothing to worry about. Hey, you want to say 'Hi' to your counselor while you guys have me on the phone?"
I gave a short hello and told them everything was fine and explained that I was made Aizawa's emergency contact since we're partners at the school and how I would keep them updated. Afterwards, the detective left the room to continue talking to Tskauchi about the case. I just stayed sitting beside Aizawa's left. The poor guy was practically mummified. The doctor told me that his quirk might have been affected by the attack. But aside from that the rest of him should be perfectly fine after a period of resting and healing. I'm just relieved that he's alive. I had to go straight to the hospital, I didn't even know I left my phone in my blazer back at the meeting room. Given that Lily doesn't actually fight as a pro and is only allowed to use quirk due to her counseling job, I'm hoping that she got my stuff while she was calling the police and ambulance. I chuckled. Really that's what I'm worried about right now?
I never really felt comfortable in hospitals. Just never had a good memory with them. Which is ironic considering my mom is a doctor. Hospitals reminded me of all the times I thought I was going to die. And now, I'm here seeing one of my first friends ever almost die. My grandfather must be laughing in his grave watching me right now. Heck, I'm laughing at myself right now. I tried hard to be a symbol of hope for people, and I'm not even doing that because of my stupid suspension and I'm holding back on my quirk. If I was... no. Nope. I will not be blaming this on myself. I was having a normal day, I couldn't have expected this. Scanning over Aizawa, I kept following how his chest rose and fell and matched my breathing to that to calm my thoughts. You would think you would be over all that, Mai? I am over it. Today was just a setback.
What would happen if Aizawa couldn't use his quirk anymore? Would he even be upset? When he was a kid he was always insecure about his ability to be hero because his quirk was a combat based quirk. But even so, his quirk gave him an advantage against villains because he could stop their quirk and be able to make it an equal fight. So without his quirk... would he go back to that insecure kid, or would he just make his peace with it?
I didn't know I was crying until the detective came back and gave me the tissue box from the table next to the window and I felt the tears repeatedly hit my hands in my lap. "Thank you."
"I'm sorry about your fiance. At least he's alive though." I simply nodded. At least he's alive. "Do you need to use my phone to call someone for you? In case you need clothing or anything?"
I shook my head and sniffed, "Detective Tsukauchi is a friend of mine. I'm sure he'll grab some stuff before he comes to the hospital to talk to you in person. But thank you."