Chapter Text
The television’s low volume gave the room an uncanny buzz. All of class 1-A sat around the common rooms of their dorm, dozing off or looking around idly. It felt like everything had been at a standstill. They had all agreed to hang out, to play games, or watch a movie or something else. Just to do something, anything, to make them feel less bad about everything that’s happened. None of them really knew what they were doing, and half of them were still processing the mess of it all.
“Okay, why’d we all agree to come down here if we were gonna do jackshit the whole time?!” said Bakugo, looking around at his classmates. They all looked.. empty? Scared? Like they all had a piece of them that got thrown away.
He lowered his tone. “Look, I know we wanted to get our minds off the whole battle but all of us sitting here doing nothing doesn’t work.”
“I... just… being on the frontlines sucked,” said Denki from the other side of the room, his voice echoing amongst the built-up tension. “Why did they put me there? To take out one guy with an electric quirk? I was scared! I didn’t know if you guys would be okay!”
“I agree,” Tokoyami murmured, “I had to go in to save Hawks and it was… mortifying.”
“And the plan with that weird giant! What if it didn’t work? We’d be gone!” Toru shouted out, rubbing her arm.
The entire room shuddered at the mention of the beast. It had caused them so much harm and for so many people to still get taken down in the chaos.
“Okay this’ll sound like a dumb question,” Sero said, picking at the tape on his elbow, “but why do we keep getting dragged into stuff like this? I mean some of us have fought the League like five, six times already?! And we’re barely done with our first year of school.”
Agreeing chatter was blooming amongst the students before a rather loud statement from the class representative.
“It’s our job as heroes. Even if we’re only first years, villains don’t just wait until we graduate to hurt us. We have to be able to handle what we can right now.” Iida sat back down and looked around at his classmates.
“But… could we handle that?”
The students looked back towards Momo, whose darkened eye bags and tear-stained face created a contrasting image to her usually collected-looking self.
“Iida, I understand your sentiment, but… we’re kids," Momo continued. "I mean, some of us had our first villain encounters before we even got here! Were we ready then?”
Bakugo looked over to Midoriya, who had been twiddling his thumbs the whole time, not saying a word. Meanwhile, Mina gave a small, knowing look to Kirishima, who had not been one to mention his middle school encounter.
“And then the USJ attack, five days into our attendance here.” Momo felt like it was chipping away at her. This whole mess. It was for everyone.
Sato added on to his classmate’s statement, “And our training camp, and-”
Bakugo popped off a small explosion in his hand. “Let’s… not bring up that next one.”
All of the students kept listing off their experiences, both personal and things they went through as a group. Mentions of them almost dying themselves. Watching their friends and mentors getting thrown around like they were nothing.
It all came to a stop when Iida raised his hand in the air, somewhat effectively extinguishing the talk of his classmates.
“Alright, alright. I understand. I’ve always been taught that a hero always fights when they can, and us as heroes in training have gotten our chance to accomplish that. But you are right, all of you are. The heroes put us in far over our heads, knowing full well that they were doing so. I apologize.” He bowed before sitting back down in his spot.
The room fell silent once again. There was nothing anyone could say. What do you say after fighting valiantly in a war that you didn’t know you were going to fight? Watching your friends get battered and bruised, your teachers losing their fights in your name?