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Aizawa doesn't have the words to express how he feels about his Hell Class. Nor the time and energy to bother trying.
They're exhausting, primarily. There's more than that to them, so much more, but there's a reason his eyebags have impossibly grown in the last year and a half, and at least ninety percent of that is because of his twenty hellions. (The other ten percent is his daughter and husband but at least he's legally obligated to them- well, more directly legally obligated than he is for his class.) They're up at all hours of the day and night, often several of them at a time, and Kami knows what they'll be doing. Problem Child, Bakugou, Uraraka and Kirishima are the four that can be usually found at the gym out of hours, whilst Satou and Aoyama both stress-bake. He can always tell who it was by how much edible glitter is involved. Some of the kids will put the telly on - no volume, just blue light flashing through the living area - or sit with a lamp on and a book or sketch pad or knitting needles in hand. A lot of them drink tea or hot chocolate, and he can't lock the coffee away from them unless he wants to face a week's heckling calls of 'hypocrite' at every possible opportunity (speaking from bitter, bitter experience - he'd gotten even less sleep that week than usual), and so it's never a surprise to hear the quiet rumbling of the electric kettle when it's dark outside. On top of their night-time wanderings though, there's also their day-time shenanigans, and Aizawa frankly isn't sure which are worse. On one hand, there's the amount of paperwork that the class' destructive tendencies lead to, however that's contrasted by the logic of wanting a bunch of overpowered teenagers to actually get a healthy amount of sleep.
Yeh, these kids are exhausting.
Even just watching them is tiring. For kids less than eighteen months into their heroics education, they have all gone above and beyond in the truest ways. It began in their first hour, when not a single one was expelled during the Quirk Apprehension Test, and only escalated rapidly with the clusterfuck that was the USJ. (And oh, how his scars still ache. Day in and day out, in fact. He wakes up seeing a wide mouth crumbling under pale fingers, to see green curls crushed in a mess of blood and grey and a dark fist, to see almost nothing but his own blood yet still managing to look at the blurry figure of the villain trying to kill his newest class.) It hasn't slowed down since. There's been revenge plots and late night fights and exams where things went wrong, when relationships were misinterpreted, and that isn't even considering the continued assaults of the gradually-dwindling League of Villains. The hero's stressed, but he's hitting a point where it almost feels comfortable to be so het-up. He's not sure what relaxation is anymore, really.
His hellspawn don't seem to have ever known. Sure, they insist upon organising self-care days and game afternoons and movie nights for themselves, going on trips or visiting their parents, but they're vigilant. Regular text check-ins, a self-imposed buddy system, wariness of any outsiders - from their sister class to new villains that try to attack - all of it screams paranoia, and unfortunately it's well-earned. Because they were thrown into heroics head-first, bloody and bone-jarring, then left to sink or swim. They did neither. They built themselves a fucking boat, comprised of steel-conviction, kindness-sails, determination-blueprints, and they learnt to sail the damn thing, side by side and back to back, smiles in place that started as grimaces but grew into toothy things, half feral and half soft, and dammit they're growing up so fast, so hard.
These children, these warriors, wrap the words "Plus Ultra" around them like armour and charge forwards, into the bloody world that has torn apart people far more experienced than them, and they come out damaged and bent but never quite broken.
They come out together.
It would be purely impressive if it wasn't so terrifying. If it didn't give their teacher sleepless nights of checking camera feeds and creating tailored exercise plans and lying in bed, trying not to think about every danger they have and will face. The media at first tried to tear the class, and their school, apart. But then the cockroach-tenacity of the League became obvious to every single person in Japan; the hideous power of their mastermind and their seemingly endless resources, how they targeted 1-A in particular but never fell short of throwing other cities, other organisations, into chaos. In comparison to some of the other places targeted by the League, UA has fared more than well. (That doesn't stop them having to employ three new therapists; from investing in stress balls and safe rooms and star lights for the bedrooms of children-adults-heroes. It doesn't stop Aizawa from haunting his hellions' hallways, offering hugs and water and a quiet word or silent shoulder.) And the media notice that.
They see how the Hell Class orbit around one boy, a child with a sun-bright smile, gleaming freckles, and a mess of curls, a young hero with square shoulders and scarred hands, and they follow the story. The students that the villains tried to stop but couldn't. The heroes-in-training who take their charisma beyond school walls and spend equal time raiding yakuza bases in broad daylight or helping cats down from trees. The media, vultures that they might be, stop circling and settle down, ruffled feathers smoothing as they begin to follow the tidbits placed by his Hell Class. The passing comments of a burning father, of an armoured legacy cut short, of being the underdog that forced their way up, or the reformed bully. With less guidance than Aizawa would truly like, his kids spin a web of half-truths and wide smiles, and it garners them respect and sympathy and trust, people founding relatability in the youth of teenagers and like-mindedness in the maturity of young adults. It's a delicate balance, a Russian roulette, and beneath Problem Child's leadership they thrive.
That isn't to say that Aizawa doesn't still try to look after his kids, because he does. The rest of the world might not know it, but they are still children in so many ways, and he will fight - has been fighting - tooth and nail and glowing eyes to protect that. It's not the same as shielding them from the world, because that would be impossible for at least a dozen varying reasons (his own logic, their insistence upon taking on a dozen adults' burdens each, the exposure of the UA Heroics course, so many things, and all of them so different, so unaccountable-) but it is preserving what childhood he can for them. It's convincing Nedzu that bringing a vetted travelling fairground onto one of UA's peripheral areas is a good idea, and to let all of the students mingle there across a long weekend, screaming and snacking and laughing with their friends; it's keeping the eighteen-plus films and video games out of their grubby gremlin paws, because they see enough violence in real life; it's teaching them how to make the perfect pot noodle, only to let Bakugou chase them all out of the kitchen because it's apparently not real food, and then all sneaking back in after dinner to teach them how to make even more perfect hot chocolate, squirty cream and all.
It's a conflict, to be a Heroics teacher. It's a fucking war to be the Hell Class' homeroom and Heroics teacher. Aizawa is constantly pulled in opposing directions, having to prioritise mental or physical health, having to deal with the immediate crises rather than longer-running, underlying issues that still need addressing months into their first year or even second. There's no rest for the wicked, and apparently he very much must have been wicked, because it's never-ending.
Yet he wouldn't change it. Or, well, not parts of it at least. He knows, with a marrow-deep surety, that if not for the traumatising events that had forced his kids to fly before even being able to truly contemplate fledging, that they would not flinch at dark shadows shifting, at pale hands near their faces, at chains rattling or air vents rasping. Without all of these awful things, there wouldn't be cuddle piles in the common room, wouldn't be so many inside jokes and conversations in a single glance, and Aizawa himself wouldn't have a daughter that is so bright and beautiful and brilliant that she's surely sunshine incarnate, his own Cheshire grin in tow or not.
So perhaps it's selfish, or sentimental, or just plain-old illogical, but he can't completely hate what the world has done to them all. (It's pragmatism in it's truest sense, on all of their parts. They make the best out of the worst. The Hell Class find joy and safety and home in each other, facing a world stacked against them, and so what if they have nightmares and triggers and scars; it means nothing in the face of having each other.) He can't hate that their potential has been proved time and again, only that it has been proven in situations outside of his control, and he can simply be grateful that there had been twenty faces coming out of the other side, blood-stained grins and all. Well technically they had lost one, but a lanky kid far too much like Shouta himself had replaced the awful creature, and everyone had been far happier for it, so it was no great loss only a few months into the first year. Conversely, their continual bloodshed has been a great loss, but it too has been something made into a strength. For every drop of blood his hellspawn lose, every tear and sweatdrop, they seem to triplicate their dedication to Heroics and each other, and the teacher can only try to match that.
(He manages to. Indubitably and undeniably so. There's a reason that he is the only adult the class regularly turn to, a reason that he's dragged into group trips and photos and cuddles, or asked to come and watch just more spar, Sensei, pretty please? There's a reason that they love him.)
His kids, his little heroes, have hearts of the purest gold, and maybe the world is trying to stain them with rust, corrosive and bitter, but that won't work, not on gold like them. Not when he has them, and they have each other. Their hero will make sure of it.