wrecking_yard

[( Some things you just can't be paid enough for. <strike>also maybe don't try to double cross someone with a vengeance demon living in their head.</strike> )

I managed to sleep through part of the lunch break, and almost made it to sleeping until Mic brought food back up. Unfortunately, not even a lot of morphine keeps me from starting awake at unexpected sharp sounds, and a knock on the booth door before the handle rattles is definitely unexpected.

Got past security, didn't set off other alarms. Either they had a way to fool the thermal and motion sensors, or they have or can spoof a student ID badge - would have to be student, the booth door would've opened for a faculty badge. I'm debating if I should open it or let Mic get back and handle it. There's not much reason for one of the students to be up here, and I'm not in any condition to defend myself if someone's trying a security breach; if they're determined enough that door and the booth walls won't hold forever, but forcing entry would draw attention...

"A-Aizawa-sensei?"

....It's Mineta. I turn the chair, debate getting up, decide against it, and unravel part of the wrapping on my arm to open the door instead. Mineta does look up at that in confusion as he ducks under it, but doesn't comment, just squints at me. "A-are you okay?" Kid's been swinging between turning up the volume on his normal antics and anxiety balling since the USJ attack; he was the least mentally prepared for it of the class, but he did make a good showing of himself even with that.

"Eh." The mess I'm wearing is partly to hide how wrecked I still am and partly a way to cheat when I shouldn't be that mobile. "Getting there."

"I uh. Didn't mean to freak out the paramedics...." He's fidgeting, fussing, and looking everywhere except at me.

I just sigh. "They've dealt with people using quirks for first aid before. It kept me from bleeding out more than I already had. It was a good idea... just tell them you need to ride along to remove them next time."

He flinches, looking up sharply. "Next time?!"

He's way too high strung for the amount of energy I have right now. "Fighting villains and disaster rescue will all involve dealing with injuries. Having a way to stop bleeding until a wound can be properly tended can save lives, but the paramedics will need to know that they can't remove them without your help." I sink back into the chair. "I ended up getting drug all the way to the operating room once, keeping someone's intestines inside their body. Would've died if I hadn't been there."

He wobbles, looking visibly queasy at that. At least he's got time to either adjust to the idea, or rethink his career plans. After a minute or so, he swallows hard, and forces himself to look up at me, making some nervous gestures at all of the bindings.

"I-i-s. Ah. Is it always - like that? Fighting villains and everything?"

"Mmmnnnhhh." Things are still hazy and floaty enough that trying to gauge takes effort. "No. That was....unusual. Last time I saw something that bad was ..... Sky Egg incident maybe?" It's the last big planned and coordinated assault that I can think of. It's not something where you can really rate things against each other - this was much more tightly planned than the Sky Egg assault, much better coordinated, but that was also a larger scale attack that got rushed because we'd interrupted the preparations, involving a lot more people, at least in terms of civilians and heroes. Not sure the weird flying explosive suicide bomber proto-Nomu count as people.

Mineta gives a huge sigh of relief. "I don't think I could take another one like that."

"I'm sure they're not done...," I mutter quietly; he definitely hears, freezing again and giving me a boggled, terrified look. The leaders of that attack got away, and were definitely not the actual overall ringleaders.

"I thought I was gonna die..."

"Yeah, so did I," I mutter tiredly, and he looks even more panicked. Crap. "Not at the start, I mean. Figured I'd get hurt, that was a shit situation to begin with, but all I had to do was keep enough of them busy to give all of you time to escape or breathing room to defend yourselves until backup got there. Didn't think I was going to die until Tomura and his pet decided to jump me and I realized I couldn't really do much to fend off the big guy."

The panicky boggled look has a weird sort of horrified awe now. "How are you so calm about it?! There wasn't even - it was like you didn't even blink when the big guy started hitting you, you just kept fighting..."

I'd like to just rub the bridge of my nose or scrub my face with one hand, but it'd take too much effort and even with the morphine it does hurt a little to move. "Well, it's always the same. If you don't fight or do something, you die, and so do a lot of other people probably. If you turn around to fight and do whatever you can, then you might die or get hurt, but if you know how to use your quirk and how to handle yourself, you can probably do something to stop it; you won't come out as bad, and even if you can't stop other people getting hurt entirely, you can make sure it's a lot less bad than it would've been."

He's been panic jagging and perfectly happy to show it since ... actually the middle of the attack, going by the videos - he did great at sucking it up and going along when the other two came up with a plan, he's just going to need a lot of work to be able to go into anything on his own initiative, and I'm not actually sure he really thought through the job he was aiming for. "Mineta? Why did you want to become a hero?"

He shifts, self-consciously, and gives me a gauging look; I'm just tired and even drugged up, can mind tone to keep it as level and non-confrontational as possible when I'm dealing with a student who's still terrified of me. "Uh. I dunno, I've kinda always been treated like a joke, and if I can be a big hero, then people will be looking up to me instead of laughing at me, maybe I'll actually get girls...."

At least he's honest. It's actually pretty common for "fame/money" to be among people's actual personal goals for going into the business, and most of the time with students that're aiming for that, they get cagey when they're asked because they know it's not Pure Altruistic Good Motives... But generally the more important part of the end result is if they manage to get the basic morals and why someone like All Might gets looked up to. "People look up to heroes because we're the ones putting ourselves in danger to get others out of it, or to stop whatever's causing the danger hopefully before it can hurt anyone. Villain, disaster, whatever. How would you've handed the robots from the entrance exam if they'd just showed up one day, out of nowhere, rampaging down a crowded city street?"

He shrinks, looking more uncomfortable, and mumbles, "About the same."

He took out a respectable number. Most of his engagements started with one of them spotting and targeting him and him throwing his orbs at it in a panic, albeit with good enough aim to hit joints and other places where it would sabotage them enough for them to fall over. "Well, if you want people to look up to you, you're going to need to work on acting in spite of panicking, because you need to be running toward the danger, not away from it."

He's just staring at me confused. "You're not telling me to not panic?"

I make a noise. If only he could see the inside of the head of half the pros when shit goes wrong, honestly. "Look, when those portals started opening, about half my train of thought was a lot of profanity about how bad that situation was. It's not that you're not afraid when you walk into something like that, it's that you know what you need to do and have training or experience for how to do it until stepping up and doing something feels like the best way to do something about the fear. You saw how Midoriya turned around to handle things, right?" He nods. "And it doesn't take much to tell that Midoriya's having screaming panic attacks most of the time when he's doing stuff like that. The more he gets used to turning around and doing something and it working, the less obvious it'll get."

It does seem to have helped; he's still kind of jittery but he's actually thinking it over and seems like he's less eyeball deep in an anxiety attack.

We really need a therapist or five on staff.

"The other thing is, if you want people to look up to you like All Might?" He stops, blinking at me. "You need to be someone they can look up to. I'm not saying you need to be some kind of perfect paragon of Good, but you need to think about how you're treating other people and what they want and how they're feeling. Girls aren't going to flock to you if you aren't treating them well, and you'll get smacked less if you aren't pissing people off over stupid shit."

He freezes with a high-pitched noise, and he's doing his version of the shifty fidget that usually happens when someone starts theorizing that I have a secret mind reading quirk, which means he did something recently to piss the girls off that I haven't heard about yet.

"You've got three years to work on all of that." And it's going to be a long three years.

There's a soft knock at the door before it opens - less a request to enter and more an alert that someone's there - and Mic slides in with a tray, sidestepping around Mineta in surprise with a little exaggeration. That's where Mineta actually seems to realize that he isn't actually supposed to be up here, and also looks at the clock, his jumbled "something something bye" too fast to be intelligible as he's vanishing out the door, leaving it to click shut behind him on its own weight.

Mic's still staring at the door after he vanishes while he's handing me the soup container and a couple other containers. "He OK?"

"Wanted to check on me and still rattled from the USJ. Kid's a ball of anxiety with no idea how to deal with other people." I'm taking a minute to poke at the cut fruit. "Gonna have my work cut out for me with him." It's a good class year, really; they're all capable and none of them are really digging in on bullying or anything too awful to wrangle. Hell, I'm pretty sure most of my other classes wouldn't have have made it through something like the USJ in their first week without casualties, and definitely not managed to cooperate that well when thrown around randomly.

And he's giving me one of those obnoxious knowing grins. "Awww, this early and you've already got a little brood of ducklings!"

I do have enough energy to flick a chunk of melon at him.