Mind Games - Chapter 41

Chapter 41:

May all the gods and demons above and below help me, but my worst fears were confirmed the very moment I stepped inside the classroom.

It was full of teenagers.

Worse, they were wearing uniforms.

Which, by the way, I hated.

Not the design of it, no. Visually, it looked pretty slick, I had to admit. And it took some skill to include green and red in a design and not end up looking lie a walking Christmas tree. The gray blazer with green accents tied the slacks into the whole design very nicely and I enjoyed the polished brass buttons both in front and on the epaulets. Given the white undershirt, the red tie actually gave the otherwise-drab outfit a much-needed burst of color.

As far as school uniforms went, at least it wasn't the mono-black post WW2 throwback gakuran. There was simplicity and then there was laziness.

So I didn't hate the design.

I just hated wearing the damn thing.

Neck ties and I were never on speaking terms at the best of times. I could count the occasions I'd worn one on a single hand, really. Blazers were... well, they were alright, I guess. UA's was admittedly one of the least-constricting versions I'd worn and allowed for a good range of motion while retaining a sturdy feel to it. The slacks fit alright, but their pockets – as with almost every pair of the things I'd ever fucking owned – were just too damn small. They also rode up in weird places, but that was pretty common with the things, too.

Oh, and the socks were awful. Just... I think they were these locally-sourced wool things. Part of me wondered if these were just the winter set, but the rest of me didn't care.

In contrast I was wearing a set of thick black urban camo gear that could nearly double as army fatigues, boots I could kick down a reinforced door with, and enough gear to comfortably assault a doomsday cult's dug in compound, all of which had been secured at my belt and various straps on my arms and legs that had stylized boot-prints on them, same as the large one on my back.

To make matters worse, I'd pulled up the bottom part of my face guard, modeled after the menpo of a Samurai's helmet with snarling demon fangs. The actual headpiece and eye-guard I'd tucked away in my backpack out of a desire to at least pretend I wasn't being an edgy anti-social asshole with a chip on his shoulder looking to intimidate my entire peer group.

Almost all of whom turned to look at me with wide eyes as I lazily sauntered into the room, found my seat, and dropped my backpack on the desk's hooks before slinging my bow's strap onto the chair-back.

The ambient noise of the room died to almost nothing during that slow walk to my desk. And it continued to be utterly silent as I reached into my back and pulled out a shitty light novel that was barely better than the online stories I used to read. It was somewhat of a prop, but I needed something to kill a little time here and there.

Also, it took my mind off the godawful stench in the classroom.

Seriously, did someone drag a fucking head shop into UA?

Then the whispers started.

“Holy shit, that's the guy! The guy from the entrance exam! Bootstrap!”

A deer heteromorph, tittering in excitement.

“Duuu~uuude, who the hell is he kidding, walking in like that?”

A guy with light blue skin, parts of his body occasionally transitioning to water and back again.

“Look, I don't give a shit about that guy. Is it the rabbit who's stinking the room up? Because I'm about to throw hands with the bozo who is.”

That one was a white-haired girl – almost silver – who looked authentically pissed off and about to commit some violence, unlike...

“No one asked you, bitch. Ugh, I mean, does he think he's better than us? Just cause he has a costume?”

A 'tough girl' type, male haircut, chip on her shoulder, her hair floating in an unreal breeze.

“Ugh, people like him piss me off! It's like... they get a little famous and it all goes to their head!”

A guy, phantasmal miniature figures sitting on his desk with various archaic weapons as he sneered with black teeth.

“Shouldn't someone say something? He's going to get us all in trouble if the teacher's in a bad mood the first flippin' day.”

This one was a girl, fairly nondescript, looking anxious and furtive.

“Yeah, that's right! He can't just waltz in here not wearing a uniform!”

A classy boy in an elaborate hairstyle, too many charms and emblems on his bag for my taste.

There was more muttering, but that was the gist of it. Whereas the entrance exam had jumped people from different schools and communities together, blending a group of people from all across Japan (or further, in some instances) and relaxed social mores by avoiding a strict dress code...

The classroom environment was something else.

Here, conformity was king and social norms was his queen.

And, in their defense, I could get behind the criticism. I was deliberately triggering people, after all, and intentionally setting myself outside of and above the normal strictures of 'how things worked.' I probably wouldn't like it if some rich and/or famous snob decided to waltz into my high school with designer clothing rocking a bad attitude either.

But they were hero students. They were here to learn how to be heroes, public servants, and law enforcement. They needed these lessons. I had a hero license, I had a job at a top-rated agency, and I was doing real work that had a legitimate impact on the world already. I was only here to assuage the concern of Fuyumi and Enji that I was adequately socialized and Himiko could function without me holding her leash.

As the now-ancient meme went...

'We are not the same.'

So as much of a dick as it made me look in the short term, I would save myself an infinite amount of grief and petty schoolyard politics by drawing a clear and undeniable line between myself and everyone else in the room.

“Where's your uniform?”

I hummed, lazily looking up at the large-muscled teen standing in front of my desk, noting the open and more concealed stares among the rest of the class. Some were looking on in trepidation, others in anticipation.

“You have your UA rulebook?” I asked in reply, my eyes going back down to my light novel and lazily flipping a page.

The pocket-sized book was set on my desk with slightly more force than necessary. “Uniforms are required to be worn at all times while on campus, outside of physical activities requiring gym suits and practical courses for hero work.”

Which, yes, was the relevant rule, but not the entirety of the exceptions. Support personnel, for instance, had a variety of approved protective gear they could select from and the rules were pretty lax about whatever they wore underneath that. Blue collar, as always, didn't give a shit as long as you could do the work.

“Subsection Seven,” I stated blandly.

There was a moment's pause, then the heavily-muscled black, spiky-haired teen grunted and flipped the book open. There was a moment of silent consideration as he likely skimmed for the part I'd indicated. “Exceptions to the uniform code to be granted in the event a student has a full active hero license and is employed by a recognized and registered Japanese hero agency.”

I reached into my waist pouch/pocket for the second time that morning and flipped my wallet open, exposing the two-part ID.

Which was actually a funny story, because it had been a pain in the ass to find a good wallet that actually suited my purposes. A lot of Japanese wallets were built to hold too many coins for my taste, first off, so they were more like miniature purses instead of American style stuff. More than that, I just didn't like the accordion design. I'd almost ended up ordering something from overseas before I'd found a shop that sold custom work.

Himiko had insisted on coming with me and asking an attendant intricate questions where I couldn't overhear, so at least I knew what I was getting for my birthday in a few months. Or, at least, I knew it was probably going to be something from that shop, they sold a wide variety of things.

At any rate, I flipped out the doubled ID holders, showing off not just my hero license, but also my national ID, my Endeavor Agency verification card, and a type of hero-specific passport card Japan issued for people who had to access foreign embassies within Japanese borders. I'd made a horrible mistake in just getting it because the agency offered it and subsidized the fees as well as giving me a tiny pay hike, but that was another story.

After several long seconds of silence, I flipped it closed, then slid the wallet back into the pouch at my waist.

“Just because you can flout the rules like this, doesn't mean you should,” the student before me tried to rally. “You're flaunting a privilege that the rest of the class doesn't have.”

“It's a right which I earned,” I rebutted bluntly. “And, as another student, it is not your place to seek to enforce your interpretation of school rules. If you see a problem with my conduct, I encourage you to seek out a school authority and take the issue up with them.”

There was another pause.

And then a shift from his posture, moving from confrontational solution-oriented to confrontational aggressive-demanding. There wasn't really a great way to translate the change, but I fundamentally understood it as someone who'd decided that saving face in front of their classmates, proving themselves correct, and maintaining their pride had become more important to them than resolving the matter previously was.

I wasn't even sure if he, himself, understood he'd swapped to a different goal.

Cutoff discussion, break train of thought, shift context.

“What's your name?” I asked, snapping my book shut and looking up at him.

The black-haired teen blinked, stiffening slightly as he met my gaze, a shiver racing up his spine that he pretended he didn't feel at the glint of the demon-snarl of my mouth-guard. “What?”

“Your name?” I asked again, leaning back in my chair slightly and realigning my body-language. Hunched over reading like that instinctively fed into the idea that I was covering a vulnerability and, therefore, weak enough to assert dominance over. By rearranging myself, I'd changed the entire script. “I'm Bootstrap, Licensed Hero working for the Endeavor Agency. My superior indicated that I was socially-maladjusted and requires me to be here to prove that I can positively interact with both my peer group and with the public at large.”

I could see the aggression in his stance catch on the sand I'd poured between its gears, grinding the entire process to a halt. He blinked again.

I dipped my head, and the sitting-bow jogged his cultural instincts. “Ah-right, I'm Kenzo Gumi. My quirk is Rubber Body. I absorb kinetic energy from strikes and throw it back at my opponents.”

“That reminds me of Fat Gum,” I stated with a nod. “You've got a strong quirk.”

His shoulders dipped a little at my observation and he crossed his arms in a defensive motion. “Everyone always says that, but I don't like being compared to him. Some guy who eats way too much and doesn't care that he presents himself as a huge blob while pretending to be a hero? That just isn't what I want to be.”

I frowned behind my mouth-guard.

Around us, in their distant orbits, the students in the classroom all seemed somewhat surprised that the object of their collective offense hadn't been verbally berated and humbled for his offense.

“Fat Gum is one of the best heroes you can be compared to, even if he's not quite in the top ten,” I told him bluntly. “He runs his own agency independently and has for several years now, he's active in charitable organizations providing food for the needy, and is genuinely happy to help people whenever and wherever he can. Being a hero is more than a job to him, it's a calling, and you should respect that.”

Gumi shook his head. “I just can't accept a guy who doesn't present the right image of what a hero should look like having a quirk that's so close to mine.”

My gaze swept over him again, briefly, taking in the freshly-starched look of his blazer, slacks, and even his tie, the flawless white of his undershirt, and the precision-cut of his gelled hair. I'd thought for a moment it'd been natural – because anime – but the scent of too-much hair care product had wafted towards me, indicating a deliberately-cultivated style that was, I believed, intentionally evocative of an anime protagonist.

“No matter what, a hero always has to be ready to represent what a hero truly is to everyone around them,” he continued, grinning a grin that looked more natural than it was, “that's the first duty of a hero: to make the people believe in them!”

I opened my mouth to reply, trying to resist the urge to go full sidereal on this child-

“A noble, if illogical aspiration,” the shaggy, disheveled hobo-worm stated as he pulled his upper body off the floor. “With an attitude like that, the only inspiration you'll be is a cautionary tale of someone who couldn't perform to the same degree their image promised.”

I could feel the instant disgust in Gumi upon seeing the pro hero that was to be our teacher. “Who are you?”

“I'm your homeroom teacher,” Eraserhead replied bluntly, unzipping the sleeping bag in a smooth motion. “Now get your gym uniforms on. We're going to have an assessment test to see if you belong here. Meet me outside on Field A as fast as you can.”

“What the-is this guy serious?”

Tough girl, again. The second, not the first. Silver-hair just looked aggravated.

“Is he really our teacher? I thought we were supposed to get heroes teaching us?”

Deer-girl, looking around for someone to tell her what to do.

“...did someone swipe my fucking blunt?”

A pink-haired rabbit heteromorph, blinking owlishly and appearing just to wake up from his daze.

“Yeah, I don't recognize him... is this some drunk janitor or something playing a joke on us?”

One of the bland kids – not that I didn't think they weren't a unique person unto themselves – but in a world of crazy mutant quirks and superpowers, a baseline human could be a bit nondescript.

“Hey, aren't we supposed to have an entrance ceremony? What's going on with this weirdo?”

A... person... I couldn't pin down a sex for this one, but they looked younger than me, irritated, with a shock of black hair and a digital screen mounted on their arm. Some kind of computer?

I stood up, “You want me in my gym uniform, Eraserhead? Or will my costume suffice?”

He barely spared me a glance, “If you think you can perform in that, then fine. Get going, I'll be timing you on how long it takes you to get ready.”

Then he was gone.

There was silence in the classroom as the various students looked at each other owlishly.

Then I started moving for the door, because obviously.

“Where are you going?” Gumi asked, making me pause and turn halfway to the door.

“Our teacher just told us to come down to the field for an assessment,” I stated, cocking my head oddly. “So I'm going down to the field.”

“That wasn't our teacher,” Gumi stated, shaking his head and putting his hands on his hips in a way that I'd bet good money he'd copied from an anime protagonist or a super sentai performer. “That was obviously some member of the custodial staff. There's no way UA would employ someone who cares so little for how they present themselves as an educator! Think of the standard that sets!”

“Y-yeah, he's right!”

“We should go find a real teacher and report him!”

“I bet this was some kind of test or something! Maybe we get failed back to the gen ed class if we follow him!”

“Oooh~ like that scene in the Sidekick Studies anime! Dude, I love that show!”

I blinked, looking around at the class in mild disbelief.

...dawg, you serious right now? Like, fer realz?

“That was Eraserhead, he's a veteran underground hero,” I stated, raising my voice to ride herd over the entire class of twenty students. “He's a successful hero who's been employed by UA since he graduated. His status as a teacher at this school is a matter of public record and you can look up both those and interviews with the man.”

I could see a few wavering even as Gumi shook his head. “Then you do as you think is best, Bootstrap. I can't stop you from making this mistake, but I will compel you to use better judgment in the future so as to avoid the embarrassment you're about to suffer.”

Bruh.

How do you breathe?!

“That's your answer?” I asked, shaking my head at his firm expression. “Okay, look. You're all idiots and you deserve what's going to happen if you don't show up. Still, it's my duty as a hero to try and save you from yourselves. So I'm going to head down to meet our homeroom teacher. I don't care if you listen to my advice, but remember this if nothing else: Being a hero means you'll have no one to blame but yourselves, no one else's judgment to fall back on when you're in the field alone. Don't follow me or this guy because you can't make your own decision.”

My gaze bored into the students and I took some solace in the way several of them flinched from it. “Make your own decision, abide by it, and live with the consequences.”

Then I turned and walked out.

“Alright, everyone! We haven't elected a class president yet and I won't be assuming the role, but let's line up and make our way to the auditorium-”

As Gumi's voice trailed off into the distance, I shook my head and began moving for the field.

At this stage, my field of fucks was well and truly barren. I had none to give and could not be bothered to plant a new crop at the moment.

Part of me, admittedly, had always wondered exactly how bad a class had to be to in order for Eraserhead to actually fail them. Objectively speaking, passing the entrance exam wasn't an easy feat. If you had the skill, talent, or luck to pass that test, you had the potential to make a good enough hero. Not even UA guaranteed you a spot in the top fifty heroes, after all. Even the best hero school in Japan produced some kind of meh graduates who eventually dropped out of the career, but could leverage the UA name for a lateral move to other fields of employment.

Kaminari Denki, for instance. Call me biased, but I don't think he'd realistically amount to all that much in the long term. No shade on his quirk, it's just a question of motivation.

The point, though, was that I couldn't really imagine an entire class of people so dense, so stupid, so unmotivated as to completely fail out of Eraserhead's class. Even if someone treated his little test as a game, they'd still be motivated to beat each other at it, right? There was a fundamental spirit of competitiveness in people who got even this far in this fucking career. I doubted that the Aizawa we saw in the show would just drop the entire group of teenagers who'd actually put in the work to pass the entrance exam.

But I was man enough to admit I'd been proven wrong.

If anything would piss off the man who'd watched his best friend die in a glorified training accident turned villain attack, this was it. A bunch of self-righteous little shits who decided not even try because this was a school environment and they could whine to an adult instead of taking responsibility for their own decisions.

“Dear gods, I think I'm actually on Aizawa's side about this,” I muttered, shaking my head. “And I normally think these all-powerful teacher stunts are bullshit. Christ.”

In hindsight, I could have circumvented this entire fiasco, but... well, I didn't really think it was necessary to use my ability to read the near-future to manipulate my classmates into surviving their first day of school. And, really... it wasn't. Those kids needed an attitude adjustment. I still wasn't sure if this was the correct way to go about it, but... I wasn't the teacher here. This wasn't my responsibility.

That was my rationale behind my original strategy in the first place.

I had better – more important – things to do than actually participate in a social hierarchy.

I shook my head and kept walking, in short order finding myself standing in front of Aizawa.

Our mutual dead-eyed gaze bored into the others' across the ten feet between us.

“Good speech,” he commented idly, rolling his shoulders.

I blinked, then nodded. “Right, you've got the classroom bugged. Of course.”

He smirked. “Even with the least-impressive group of students I've received in the past few years, I'm not about to leave twenty volatile teenagers high on their own egos completely without supervision.”

I stared at the man for a long moment, then raised an eyebrow. “Learned that the hard way, didn't you?”

The man's dead-eyed stare intensified and I caught a glimpse of a memory. Aizawa himself, standing in this very field, watching in disbelief as the classroom he'd just left exploded with pressurized confetti. As quickly as it had come, though, it was gone. In the wake of the vision, I was deeply curious for the full story, but also knew that the answers to my questions would only draw me deeper into a circle of madness from which there was no escape.

Mental note, never consider becoming an educational professional in this world.

“The same way most lessons in this career are learned,” Eraserhead confirmed, then sighed deeply.

I looked over my shoulder. “Well, you'd know better than I would, sir. Anyone else coming?”

He made a show of looking at his watch. “They've got three minutes to get out here. After that, I'm expelling them either way.”

I shrugged, unwilling to make an issue of it. I'd done my part and tried to kick some sense into the idiots. I'd intended to be the insurmountable obstacle to inspire them, honestly. A bit like Todoroki Shoto had been in the original timeline. An intimidating, but not impossibly powerful ace who would set the bar for everyone else. It was just my bad luck and their short-sighted stubbornness that had flipped my strategy on its head. Instead of setting myself up as something to inspire during Aizawa's test, I'd made myself into an outsider who had virtually no influence on the class as a whole.

That would have changed if I'd been given a chance to demonstrate my skills, but it didn't look like that was going to happen.

I had a thousand strategies to deal with anything that a class of teenagers could throw at me. The only thing I was unprepared for was them deciding to take their ball and go home.

“You don't seem very surprised,” Eraserhead commented, then elaborated after I made a questioning hum in the back of my throat. “That I'm going to expel your classmates if they don't show up. Most of my students are shocked when I tell them that's a possibility.”

“I work with Flame Snake,” I shrugged, as if that explained everything.

Aizawa snorted, looking simultaneously displeased and amused. “That little shit.”

“I mean, Endeavor did file a request for you to participate in quirkless CQC training,” I pointed out.

Aizawa rolled his eyes. “I'll think about it.”

Then, the heavy footfalls of a small cluster of teens was heard.

“Man, this better be the place,” a voice that sounded like its owner been born 'done with this shit' called out, and I turned. The figure who'd spoken was a lanky pink-haired teen with two large fluffy pink rabbit ears. The gym uniform was baggy on him, but I read an ample hidden strength in his frame.

“Dude, they're tight there, stop bitching,” the silver-haired girl from the class stated, sighing, “and stand downwind! You smell like a forest that went sour and I didn't even know that was a thing.”

“It's medicinal!” He shouted back.

“U-uh... please stop fighting?” The tall, statuesque blond girl with brown stone-like horns jutting from the sides of her head asked timidly. She was walking with a slight hunch, trying to minimize her impressive figure even as she adjusted her large glasses. “Can't we just be happy we found our way here? Sakae-chan was such a great help!”

The ghost-pale petite teen was the last of the group, trailing slightly behind due to their short stride. Even watching their gate, I couldn't entirely pick out a physical sex, getting indicators for both. They blushed and reached up to scratch at the shaggy black waist-length mop of black locks. “I-I just had a map of the school downloaded, it wasn't a big deal.”

Aizawa clicked his tongue and sighed before raising his voice. “Well, I guess five is better than one. Still, this means I can't go back to sleep. So I guess we might as well get this assessment over with.”

He reached down to his feet, where a basket full of baseballs was resting and selected one before tossing it to me. “Now, unlike the illogical curriculum of public schools, you'll be using your quirks on this assessment. First we'll be doing a ball throw...”

~~~

Hitoshi's first day of school! It's here! It's happening!

It's a lowkey disaster!

Is anyone really surprised?

Okay, I hope everyone has fun with this chapter. Next update that's going to be out will be Butler Boy. Also, I'll have the Awesome Tier poll up tomorrow night. I wanted to hurry and get this chapter done before anything else.