Era

25

Era had never been so mortified in her entire life.

There were moments where she'd fucked up, yes. Moments of failure and weakness and swift punishment for her transgressions. But those were always tinged with the bitter taste of pain and disappointment, as well as the harsh glare of one of her handlers. This was... this was just twitching fingers and shuffling feet, blood rising to her face as she resolutely looked anywhere but at Eraserhead.

Pull yourself together.

Why did he even care, though? He doesn't. He doesn't care. There's no such thing as free kindness, bird.

That was fine, but what did he have to gain? What was the play, the job, the catch? If he'd pressed her, if he'd leaned into those swelling memories he could have pried anything out of her. A name, a crime, a confession. She'd have told him anything; so why did he pull her out of it?

Trust. Era could have snorted at the thought. Like she'd ever trust a pro-hero. But why was it necessary for him to build trust with her, as his student? Wouldn't it be more efficient if he fostered a healthy respect? Fear, even? That was how it had been with her old teachers, with their biting words and vicious fists, and they'd taught her quite effectively. She'd never forgotten a lesson.

Perhaps he was just a different kind of teacher, one who was weaker and unable to rely on such tactics. Argus had been like that. Argus never hit her, hardly even spoke to her, just stared silently from a corner of the room as she worked through her stealth exercises. And Era knew that Argus wasn't weak—why would Phoenix keep him around otherwise?—but he certainly wasn't the kind of person who could maintain an intimidating presence.

One could say that Argus barely had any presence at all. There was a reason he was charged with her stealth lessons; the man was a fucking ghost when he wanted to be.

But Eraserhead—well, she supposed he was Aizawa-sensei now that he was actually teaching her one-on-one—was no Argus. The man could intimidate his students into a subdued silence with a single glare, could glower a villain into submission without lifting a finger, could radiate an aura of unease by standing there and doing nothing. He should have had no trouble inspiring the appropriate amount of fear. In fact, with his gruff persona Era suspected that this use of kindness in order to build some sense of trust would be more difficult than simply going about it the right way.

Even Argus had never been kind. Argus had just given her an absence of pain. He was an effective teacher because his clear and overwhelming skill spoke for itself, and made it impossible to ignore his lessons.

Aizawa-sensei was skilled too. He could have just relied on that to back him up, so why did he talk her from that spiral?

None of it made sense. And then the man had to top it all off with his talk of her former teachers, how they'd trained her incorrectly... was he insane? Were her own talents not blindingly obvious? Era would have been dead many times over if it weren't for those valuable lessons and the steel-tipped boots that enforced them.

Well. Maybe not dead. She wasn't sure what would have happened if she'd died before her quirk kicked in. No use wondering about it now.

Thankfully at that moment the door cracked open and snapped her from that line of thought. Shinsou peeked his head through, warily scanning the gym.

"Is everyone alive and unstabbed?"

Scratch that. Not thankfully. Era's jaw clenched painfully as she remembered the last time she'd spiraled on a training mat, her fingernails digging into her palms as she forced herself to match the dry humor in his voice. "Hilarious. It was one time."