Dynamite And A Laserbeam - Redux

Vol 7 - 8: Soul Theory With Sugimoto-Sensei!

[Beta read by: Doc43Souls]

Aizawa stepped into the classroom with a tired grimace as he overlooked his students. The class of now 16 students stared at him with fresh faces and rejuvenated expressions. However, despite that, there was an underlying feeling of uneasiness, and Aizawa didn't have to think twice as to why that was.

Instead of there being 20 full desks, there were four that were vacant, and one of those vacant desks was something of a burning reminder that, regardless of age, heroism had its risks. Death being one of those risks.

And unfortunately, a week ago, Tenya Ida had to learn that risk the hard way, when he was killed by an unknown villain who had aided The Hero Killer Stain in escaping after Ida had encountered him and had narrowly defeated him. If it wasn't for that unknown villain—who was apparently a Vampire, which was just oh so lovely for his already bad headache—then Ida could have still been alive.

From that day forth, things changed, and as a result, three students from his class dropped out of the hero course. One by willingness, and the other two by force of their parents. Aizawa saw it as an annoyance more than anything. Jirou Kyoka had the right to drop out for her own reasons, most likely of inadequacy to her other classmates—that wasn't even mentioning how her parents were murdered by someone, there were probably a lot of mental health issues she was struggling with because of that, and the idea of dying because she went to a hero school probably didn't help matters and most likely influenced her decisions. Had he been in that same situation, he would've probably done the same thing, so he wasn't bitter about it.

The other two, however, he was bitter about.

The parents of those two children, that being Hanta Sero and Koji Koda, had to have known the risks of allowing their children to be heroes in the first place, but when the going got rough, and when the harsh reality of making that choice showed up, suddenly they weren't "ready" to be heroes.

It was pathetic. At least, in Aizawa's perspective, it was. And, it was a waste of his time. That was not to say that Sero and Koda had no potential—quite the opposite really—but because their parents held them back from doing what it was they wanted to do, there was a chance that potential would be squandered.

He hoped that in the future, those two would take another crack at it, or apply to a different Hero School and live out their dream of being heroes. He was disappointed that he couldn't be their teacher anymore. However, he would keep a lookout for The Tape Hero: Cellophane and The Petting Hero: Anima if they ever showed up again. It was the least he could do.

Regardless of that, Aizawa had a class to teach. Today was important for numerous reasons, the key of which was that today was the start of a new class that had been quickly added to the curriculum. That class being: Supernatural Creature and Ability Knowledge 101, and it was taught by Yoshimura Sugimoto, the head of The Japanese Branch of The Speedwagon Foundation.

Because of the class's quick installment into the curriculum, it meant that homeroom would be shorter from here on out. Instead of having 30 minutes at the beginning of the day, he now only had 15 minutes to debrief his class on what was going to happen, and that was if he was lucky.

While it wasn't exactly beneficial, he was still in the classroom with them all day, and that was all that really mattered—even if he was asleep most of the time. He trusted his class to act professionally, and they have proved him right in that judgment for the last two months.

Hopefully, it will stay that way.

"Good morning, class," Aizawa greeted dully, earning the typical "good morning" from everyone. Absently, he glanced at the fourthmost seat in the front row and frowned. He couldn't help but feel partially responsible for what happened to Ida, even if what happened to him wasn't his fault physically speaking. Metaphorically speaking, however, if he had just paid attention to the boy's mental and emotional state, instead of viewing it from an analytical angle, Ida could still be alive.