Beast Speaker, Monster Tamer

60: Broken Promises

"Elise Wing and Katsuki Bakugou have been located."

Later on, if anybody accused Shota Aizawa of breaking traffic laws as he rushed from he school, he would vehemently deny it. But he himself knew that once the call came, it was him who left everyone in that U.A. meeting room and arrived at the police station. However, it was a nasty surprise when he walked in only to see the loud ashen blonde and no brown-haired Pokémon girl in sight.

"Where's my other student?" Aizawa demanded, glaring at the two police officers monitoring the room. "You said that both of them have been found. Where is she?"

They winced, one of them looking away to scratch his neck. "Uh."

The other officer coughed awkwardly. "I-I'm not sure how to tell you this but..."

Aizawa scowled at them, irritation flaring up into full-blown anger. Leave it to his luck to get two incompetent rookies to make it even harder than it already is. The man was ready to snap at them when Bakugou spoke up.

"She's in the hospital."

Bakugou's sentence doused the black-haired man in ice-cold fear as he switched his attention to the boy, sitting hunched over the table in the room. "Where?"

"South District 2nd Hospital," the first officer nervously supplied. "We were notified that she was in the middle of an operation."

Operation?

What the hell happened in the time that they were gone from his reach? What the hell did these kids go through while he was busy gallivanting with reporters, answering the same questions phrased a hundred and one different ways instead of being out there rescuing his wards, those he promised to look after?

(A broken promise pulsed in his chest raggedly, like jagged planks of a wrecked ship cast upon unforgiving stones.)

"Please give us a moment," Aizawa told the officers stiffly. Both nodded and slipped out without a word. With that, he pulled out a chair and sat down next to Bakugou. "Tell me what happened. Everything."

And Bakugou did. He told of waking up restrained in a chair, All Might and the other heroes raiding the bar, and the culmination up to All For One and the rescue group by Midoriya and the rest. In between, Aizawa heard about the nitty-gritty detail of the villain's actions and their treatment of Elise which lead to her being rushed to the hospital. The hero didn't realize his face was twisted into a snarl until Bakugou finished and shifted nervously, glancing away from him. Aizawa clenched his eyes shut, inhaling before letting out a tremendous sigh. He had never felt so tired before. Hero and teacher work was never easy on him, especially when it came to the younger parts of society, and this year's class blended the line between everything. His promise to the girl rang bitterly in his mind.

"Thank you for telling me." Aizawa gritted out.

"What will happen now?"

The teacher sighed again, massaging the bridge of his nose. "We get you home. I go see Wing and her family gets notified. If we can, we get heroes stationed around the hospital she is at and both of your homes. And then I deal with the class."

Bakugou was silent as he mulled over the man's words and Aizawa sighed, standing up.

"Let's go. I'm sure your parents are waiting for you at home."

The blonde boy followed him quietly and the teacher had never seen him so still before. Aizawa regretted that things had amounted to this.

***