Hero Names and Hope

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Two hours.

That's how long Aizawa was yelling at me for. Two hours straight of lectures on the importance of resting when you're injured and reminders of how I had just promised him I would stay out of trouble. It was awful.

They brought in Recovery Girl to help heal me once I had regained some of my energy, and luckily enough for me, she was able to help convince Aizawa to let me be discharged, rather than my guardian's personal preference of making me stay there until the end of the year. He was still grumbling every five seconds about it, but apparently not even the great Eraserhead could withstand the combination of my stubbornness and Recovery Girl's chastising.

But there was no way I'd be staying there any longer than I had to. I had slept for over a day since I had originally fainted after Stain's attack, and when I finally did wake up, I was pretty much only allowed to lie in that hospital bed and stare at the ceiling for hours on end. So, when it was hinted at that I might be allowed back outside under the excuse of going back to school, I wasted no time in taking advantage of it, and soon enough, I was dragging Aizawa through the rain and back to the hero school.

I let out a content sigh and slipped into my empty seat in the classroom, stretching my limbs as I did. I had forced Aizawa to leave extra early today for fear of him changing his mind, so now I was the first one here -- not even Iida had made it in before me. Then again, he was probably still going through some stuff. Thinking back on it, I did feel a tiny bit bad about all that stuff I said to him. Don't get me wrong, I didn't regret calling him out on his hypocrisy and stupidity in the least. Still, though, the guy had just gone through something pretty traumatic, and I probably could've been a little nicer in how I phrased it.

Before long, the classroom had completely filled with my excited classmates chatting away about the Sports Festival and their newfound fame -- all of which I had completely ignored in favor of texting Shinso. Apparently, the gen ed students had found out that today's lunch would be my favorite, and he wanted to let me know. According to him, I had become an honorary gen ed student, so he was allowed to give me updates from their scarily accurate group chat about the school.

"Morning," Aizawa grunted as he entered the room, effectively quieting the entire class in an instant. I put my phone back in my pocket and leaned my chin against my hand boredly as Tsu commented on Aizawa's sudden lack of bandages on his arm. I couldn't help chuckling at the memory of the little old lady shoving the much taller man down in the chair beside my hospital bed as though he were nothing more than a temperamental child and finishing his treatments in one go. Maybe I had just imagined it, but I could've sworn she winked at me when she said that if he had the energy to yell at me, he had the energy to heal his injuries. "Anyway, we have a big class today on hero informatics," Aizawa continued, causing me to perk back up.

The mood of the classroom shifted in an instant, the students of the almighty hero course panicking like a bunch of deer caught before a freight train as they immediately assumed the teacher was referring to a pop quiz. I had to slap a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing when I saw Kaminari, who looked like he had just found out he was about to die in the next thirty seconds, and Kirishima, who greatly resembled that one lactose intolerant friend who just downed three milkshakes before realizing they forgot their lactaid at home.

Quickly, I moved my hands from my mouth to my ears. I had made the mistake of not protecting myself from the overly-loud class's collective shout -- something that really shouldn't have been possible without any sort of rehearsal -- once before, and I was never going to make that mistake again.

"You need codenames. Time to pick your hero identities," Aizawa finally finished monotonously after allowing the suspense to build for well over a few seconds. Seriously, I'm almost positive he did it on purpose just to mess with them.

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