MHA: GAMER PATH

Chapter 141: Parent's Day Arc (2)

~Third POV~

[After School, UA Highschool, Staff Room, Japan]

Shota Aizawa made a point of living his life rationally. In other words, cutting out all that was unnecessary, extraneous, or wasteful. Accordingly, he had no preference regarding food and clothing because time spent fussing over such things was time wasted.

His hair was long and unkempt, and his outfits were all identical or, at the very least, indistinguishable from one another. In his eyes, the only point of eating was to nourish oneself, or he mostly subsisted on nutrient jelly.

Clothing and living spaces that emphasized form over function and comfort were absurd to him; cooking elaborate meals and caring where the ingredients were grown or processed was nonsensical.

Unfortunately for Aizawa, the world was full of the extraneous as he picked up the phone, calling in a calm tone, "Hello? This is your son's homeroom teacher, Aizawa. Do you have a moment? No, Fumikage isn't in any trouble. I'm actually calling about the Parents' Day we're holding next week. Yes. There's something I'd like to discuss."

It was after school in the staff room. As inimitable as the great UA was in many respects, the staff room made it look like any other high school. The teachers' desks were grouped by class year and department, and the shelves lining one wall were stuffed with files and books on education.

The one thing that set UA apart was its faculty, every member of which was a professional hero. While Aizawa gave Fumikage Tokoyami's family a summary of the events to come, sitting on his left was the R-rated Hero: Midnight, who fiddled with her trademark weapon, a whip.

She seemed to be wearing bondage gear that revealed every curve and contour, but underneath that was, in fact, an ultrathin bodysuit. Midnight's titillating appearance routinely flustered male students with even the remotest interest in the opposite sex.

Across from Midnight sat the bulky, angular Cementoss, who was preparing the next day's lesson plan for his contemporary literature class. He was showing a textbook to and asking advice from his colleague, No.13, a teacher dressed in a spacesuit.

To the side, Ectoplasm enjoyed a break with a cup of tea, which the eerie, pitch-black teacher sipped through his large white teeth. These heroes in full costume would hardly come off as educators at a glance, but this was an everyday scene in the staff room at UA High.

Incidentally, class 1-B's homeroom teacher, Vlad King, was patrolling the school grounds, Snipe was overseeing the marksmanship club with Lady Nagant, Power Loader was helping Support Course students test their inventions, and Present Mic was away from his desk in the bathroom.

*Click*

Aizawa ended the call and stared at the paper in front of him, a list of his students' names and contact info, with checked marks next to those whose families he'd already reached out to, muttering to himself, "…looking forward to your cooperation next week. Goodbye, then. Alright, Todoroki next."

After checking off on Tokoyami he tried Todoroki next. But nobody at the Todoroki household was picking up as he thought, 'Not home, perhaps?'

Aizawa waited a few rings before hanging up and checking Todoroki's emergency contact, a cell phone number belonging to the boy's father, the Hero Endeavor. For all Aizawa knew, Endeavor could be on the job, but as 1-A's homeroom teacher considered his options, a voice spoke to him from behind, "Something wrong, Aizawa?"

As Aizawa explained, it was All Might in his true form, staring at the No.1 Hero bluntly, "No… I just couldn't get ahold of anyone at Todoroki's house."

After that, All Might tried calling Endeavor but kept on making mistakes in how to talk to the stubborn man, which abruptly ended the call if it wasn't on the topic of hero work. Finally, Aizawa decided, having been annoyed, stating, "Never mind. I'll just send a fax straight to Endeavor's agency."

Aizawa, realizing he should've handled it this way from the start, took the Parent's Day handout over to the fax machine, causing All Might to be depressed, as Present Mic showed up in a cheerful mood, "Wow! Two seconds later, I'm back from the toilet, and already there's blood!"

All Might slinked off, clearly not crazy about being depressed but also about what was sure to be another long lecture, and Midnight cheered him on with a half-hearted, "Good luck."

Heroes or not, the teachers were still civil servants at the beck and call of their superiors. Mic then looked at Aizawa, asking curiously, "Oh, faxing something? Wonder when that's gonna fall out of style!"

Mic's attention had shifted to Aizawa, whom he now closed in on. The former was like a bad cold the latter couldn't shake, going back as far as their days as classmates at UA, Mic glanced at his colleague's fax, saying, "Ahh, contacting the parents, huh? Homeroom teachers have got it rough."

Aizawa merely replied stoically, "I suppose so."

Despite his answer, Aizawa didn't actually think it was all that rough. Reaching out to the families like this was a necessary part of the job, after all, but going out of his way to explain that to Mic would've crossed the line into irrational territory.

None the wiser that Aizawa had intentionally tried to cut the conversation shot, Mic went on and suddenly remembered something, "Hey, hey, how's that thing coming along?"

Aizawa, not looking, asked, "What thing?"

Mic replied bluntly at Aizawa's lesson-making, "The big hostage situation!"

Raising an eyebrow, Aizawa slowly explained, answering Mic's question, "Oh. That. Well, we've…"

Without waiting for Aizawa to finish, Mic puffed out his chest and shouted in an excited tone, "I've come up with a hot idea! Somebody stops me, I'm so clever! Hey! Teachers! Wanna hear my frosty-cool plan? Everybody says 'yeahhh'!"

But instead of the resounding 'yeahhh' that Mic sought from the Hero Course faculty, all he got was a 'Sure, sure, what now?' from a visibly annoyed Midnight.

Mic, feeling offended at being ignored again, asked in an optimistic tone, "I know this crowd can do better than that!"

However, the Hero Course Faculty bluntly said, "Don't count on it."

Midnight raised her hand with as little enthusiasm as possible and said, "How about the nosebleed seats?"

Cementoss questioned, now paying attention, "Oh, does he mean us?"

Ectoplasm, enjoying his tea, muttered, "I would prefer silence."

But No.13, being the optimistic nice person, replied, "Aw, let's hear him out, at least."

No.13 tried convincing Ectoplasm to put down his tea and play along while Mic continued explaining, "First! Holding a big group hostage means you gotta make'em stay put, right? And my [Voice] is the perfect tool for the job!"

Aizawa raised an eyebrow at this as he asked stoically, looking annoyed, "This is what you were getting at…?"

But Aizawa's hushed exasperation was drowned out by Mic's bloviating. Present Mic's Quirk, [Voice] gave his voice a range from soprano to bass and made it loud enough to be wielded as a weapon as he explains excitedly, "I'd gather those hostages behind closed doors and give'em a front-row seat to my explosive live show! It'd break their hearts and their eardrums, knocking'em out cold! Any hardheaded heroes who came along to save the day would also get brought to their knees by my sweet voice! Go, go, heaven! A foolproof plan, wouldn'tcha say? Well?"

Aizawa started to say to the smug Mic, "No. Listen here…"

But this time, he was cut off by Midnight's languid dissent as she said, "Eh? I say you're just too loud. It's enough to make a gal lose interest in a hurry."

Present Mic was confused as they argued with him, saying, "Huh? What's wrong with being loud?"

Midnight explained in a casual tone, nonchalantly explaining to her colleague, "Personally, I prefer it when someone holds back in silence until it all comes leaking out in a nice moan."

No.13, who was likely blushing under her costume's helmet, asked embarrassingly, "Midnight, do try to contain yourself."

Midnight pouted lightly as she pointed her pen at her, continuing her conversation with Present Mic, "Such a prude, Thirteen. All I mean is that it ought to be done smarter, not louder."

Cementoss nodded his head, agreeing, pondering the idea out loud, "You have a point, I suppose…"

But Mic wasn't having any of it. Then proceeded an argument between the two of the ideas they suggested.

"What's wrong with my plane? This is one listener who's dying to know!"

"Knocking them out cold is all well and good, until they regain consciousness."

"In that case, I'd just keep the noise coming with an all-night live show!"

"That's not all, though. Bursting their eardrums, really? No. With my Quirk, I could keep the hostages in place and even send their would-be rescuers to dreamland."

Midnight's Quirk [Somnambulist] allowed her to release a soporific scent into the air, an effect said to work better on men than on women, as she proclaimed proudly, "Nice and peaceful, and nobody needs to get hurt."

But Ectoplasm raised his head and took issue with Midnight's approach, bluntly saying to her, "Peaceful…? Seems unnecessary, given what we're discussing. Because taking hostages still counts as a crime, and whoever heard of a peaceful crime?"

Midnight pouted as she rebutted Ectoplasm's claims childishly, "But we wouldn't want to actually hurt anyone!"

However, Ectoplasm replied bluntly, placing his own idea for the hostage situation, saying to her, "Naïve, No.13. However, my clones are the perfect solution in this case, as I could have them stand guard. One clone for each hostage."

Hearing the conversation, Aizawa tried to say to them, "Actually, I don't think…"

But Aizawa went unheard again as Midnight argued back as she explained her point to her colleague, "Hmph. What if one of the hostages had a strong Quirk and just blasted past your clones? Putting them all to sleep still seems like the strongest option."

At this, Cementoss's beady eyes glinted as he bluntly said to the group eyes on him as he explained honestly, "Strongest? I'm afraid I can't agree with them. In our world, you can't toss that word around unless you're talking about All Might. He could round up the hostages and bind them in an instant. Not to mention he'd blow away any and all heroes trying to save them."

As the teachers yapped and imagined All Might's turn to the dark side, Aizawa still couldn't get a word edgewise as he thought, annoyed, 'Annoying…'

He decided to forget about his gregarious colleagues for a second and get back to the task at hand. Although Aizawa was no stranger to reining in unruly students when they dared to interrupt his lessons, he knew that unruly coworkers were best ignored as he picked up the phone, continuing his work, "Hello? This is Katsuki's homeroom teacher, Aizawa. Do you have a moment?"

The others left Aizawa to his calls, and the debate raged on between them. Each discusses how their Quirks would be useful in doing crime from a hypothetical standpoint as a sense of humor.