A Mother's Touch

Chapter 13

"Could I get one black coffee and one chai latte please?"

"Alright, coming right up."

The loud sounds from the people in the cafe drowned out Aylee's tumultuous thoughts. It was a nice distraction for the time being and she relished in the sweet scent of coffee and freshly baked pastries. Lost in her own inner ramblings, the woman failed to notice that her order was ready and waiting. The busy barista cleared her throat to gain her attention. Aylee's lips formed into a sheepish smile as she quickly took the two drinks from the barista's hands. "Sorry and thank you!"

She walked over to the table with Aizawa sitting with his eyes closed and his sleeping bag half-zipped up. She placed his cup near his sleeping face to gently rouse him from the land of dreams. The strong caffeinated fumes somewhat revived him and allowed his eyes to crack slightly open. The zipper slowly opened and a lone hand emerged from the yellow cocoon. His eyes remained half-lidded as he took a long first gulp of his essential liquid fuel. Aylee thought she heard him murmur a reverent hallelujah under his breath but she couldn't be quite sure.

"Now that you resemble an actual functioning human being, let's get down to business." Aizawa scoffed at her insult and continued with his wake-up routine. Is it really a routine if it's just caffeine?

Aizawa reached beside him and tossed a thick manilla folder on the wooden tabletop. A picture of an unsmiling teenager Shoto was paperclipped to the top corner of the file.

"Is this his school file?" The hero teacher flipped open the file while taking another sip from his ceramic cup. "No. I did this for all of my students before the start of this school year."

"Ok, I'm going to ignore that absolute major invasion of privacy, just this once. I will compliment your information-gathering and organization skills though. It's very thorough. But, after all of this is done, we're going to talk about these files' existence in more depth."

Shouta quickly changed the subject, as if he could really distract her from lecturing him. "Are you sure Todoroki will be ok without you for this meeting?" Aylee nonchalantly waved her hand in the air and said, "Don't worry, I bet he's having a blast with his babysitter." She was so sincere that Aizawa almost wanted to believe her.

~ Back at UA ~

A tense battle of wills and wits is taking place. Two players, one table, a deck of cards, and a fierce feeling of competition in the air. In one corner we have the number 3 pro hero, Hawks, confident and smug in his strategy. In the opposing corner, is the cutest little peppermint and Aylee's favorite person in the world (self-proclaimed), Shoto Todoroki.

Peeking over the top of his cards, sharp hawk eyes clash against his opponent's. Shoto's heterochromatic eyes intensely glare right back in effortless retaliation.

"Do you have any twos?" The boy starts the game off with a bang.

"Go fish." Shoto huffed in annoyance and picked up another card from the stack of cards in between them.

Gold-slitted pupils flashed in satisfaction as he asked, "got any fives?"

"Go fish." Hawks lazily pulled another card from the deck.

"Do you have any threes?" Hawks reluctantly gave over 3 of his cards and ultimately lost the game a couple of rounds later. Most embarrassingly though, it was not for a lack of trying.

Though, with his victory over a long-time enemy came frustration. The two-toned-haired boy laid his head face down on the table and loudly groaned in discontent. "What time is mom coming back? It's been forever!" the boy whined into the wooden table. Hawks throws down his losing hand and sighs. "It's only been 30 minutes, bud," he says in slight disbelief. The boy opened his cold grey eye to glare at his bodyguard through his disheveled bangs. "Well, you're bored too, " Shoto points out the obvious and Hawks couldn't deny that he missed seeing the brunette as well. But he was the adult in charge here. Right?