Beast Speaker, Monster Tamer

80: Fighting a Flasher

The day started bright and early with Midoriya's apology to the class the moment he stepped through the door.

"I'm sorry for causing trouble, everyone!"

Steam just about billowed out of his nose, amusing the students but bringing a long-suffering sigh out of their teacher.

"Now that Midoriya is back, we'll go into more detail about the work studies," Aizawa said.

Elise sat up, intrigued at this extra tidbit of information. After it was revealed during the opening ceremony, Aizawa had been tight-lipped about the work studies, only giving a short explanation before clamming up and instructing them to wait.

"Please come in," her teacher said to the closed door. "We'll have people who experience it firsthand to tell you about how these are different from the internships."

The door rolled open, and three students strolled through. Leading the pack was a burly blonde, then a girl with swooping periwinkle hair, and finally a slouched, elvish boy.

"The three third years of U.A. who stand at the top of all U.A. students, also known as the Big Three."

The importance placed on the students drew Elise's attention as she regarded the trio. The blonde exuded a bright confidence, back straight and shoulders squared as he smiled at the class. The girl winked when she saw Elise looking, while on the other hand, the purple-haired boy did not lift his gaze from the floor. Each of her classmates had their thoughts to voice, and the trio waited patiently for them to finish.

"Okay, can you please introduce yourself briefly?" Aizawa asked. "Let's start with Amajiki."

Shyness and reservation in the lanky boy vanished into an intense focus aimed at the class. Despite her classmates being off-put by the sudden change, Elise spotted the way his frame trembled. He exchanged quiet words with the other two in front that Elise was too far back to pick up, and then flipped around to face the wall.

"I want to go home..!"

"Eh?!?!?"

That was the first and loudest thing the class heard from him, the boy remaining closed off from them and not turning around. His friend affectionately teased him, "Oh listen Amajiki! That's called having the heart of a flea. This is the flea, Tamaki Amajiki. And I'm Nejire Hado. We were asked to talk to you guys about work studies. But although..."

She trailed off as her attention strayed to Shoji, stopping midway and approaching him.

"Hey, hey, why are you wearing a mask? Are you sick? Trying to look cool?"

The boy stuttered and leaned back, beginning to form an answer. But he didn't get far before Hado left in pursuit of another student.

"Oh my! You must be Todoroki, right? Right?"

"That's..."

"Ashido, if your horns break off, will new ones grow in? Can you move them? Well?"

She sought out student after student, asking curious questions about some of their unusual features.

"There's so much I want to know about all of you! It's so strange!"

With Hado's antics distracting most of the class, Elise was the only one to see Aizawa slowly activating his quirk, his short temper running out as he exchanged words with the blonde. Nejire's impromptu morphology session was interrupted by the student as he leaned forward with a loud 'hey!'.