Seven Bridges Road: An Erasermic Fanfic

Part 4 The Good and the Bad

11

"How is that even possible! It's like it defies gravity!" Oboro said as they walked down the hall of the medical floor of the building that was currently acting as their prison. "How do you get it to do that?"

"It's not easy but I've mastered the art." Mic said. "I blow-dry it upside down with a healthy amount of hair spray, then I brush it up and back with quick-setting hair gel."

"You must go through a lot of gel." Oboro observed.

"Yeah, I do!" Mic said with his usual enthusiasm. "Eraser is convinced it's going to give me brain damage someday."

"Someday?" Aizawa muttered.

He and Mic were in their hero costumes, and while Aizawa's hero costume wasn't that different from his usual look, Mic had spent years cultivating his unique hero presence. It was so different from his normal appearance when he had his hair down or back in a bun, that he could have some anonymity when he wasn't strutting around like a peacock.

Oboro was dressed in a hoodie and sweatpants. He and Mic bounced off each other, both balls of energy, while Aizawa walked along beside them, seldom speaking but enjoying their conversation. It was very similar to their dynamic during their school days.

As they walked past an open hospital room of one of the revived civilians, two little girls rushed out into the hallway, squeaking at each other in hushed tones and bouncing in excitement.

"That's Present Mic!"

"It is! It's him!"

Hearing them, Mic turned around and smiled. "I'll catch up." He said to Oboro and Aizawa, walking back down the hall towards the amazed girls and kneeling down to chat with them. He was a pushover for kids, always had been.

"We should hurry up." Aizawa said to Oboro. "Detective Tsukauchi said that kid should be waking up soon."

"Yah, okay." Oboro said. Looking back over his shoulder as Mic took off his speaker and let one of the girls try it on. "Is Yamada...famous now?"

Aizawa actually laughed. "He's popular, for sure."

"Like, how popular?"

Aizawa sighed. "As Heroes go, Mic is relatively well known and popular enough, but he isn't in the top charts or anything. As a performer, honestly, that is where he shines. His radio show, which features some pretty adult content, reaches half of Japan. His podcast has been translated into four languages and is available in twelve countries. He is the announcer for pretty much every major event, and has done voice work on some of the more recent major anime movies. He has gotten so well known that he is even sought after in other countries. That's how we spent our honeymoon in Paris, he was asked to be a guest announcer for some big wig art opening."

"But...he's also a teacher?"

"And a pro hero, yea." Aizawa said. "He actually took the teaching position to force himself to slow down. He was getting burnt out."

"That's cool I guess." Oboro looked down, a wave of pain temporarily covering his face.

Aizawa noticed, but chose not to say anything. Oboro's ideas of what the future held for him had all been crushed. He wasn't just mourning the loss of twelve years of his life, the loss of his mother, and the loss of the life he had. He was also mourning the loss of dreams, and coming to terms with the fact that his friends and family had built lives entirely separate from him.

"So, why did you become a teacher?" He asked Aizawa.

"Entrapment." Aizawa shrugged. "Kayama submitted an application on my behalf, despite me telling her I was not interested. But...Mic got the English Teacher job, and being on the same schedule would mean we could spend more time together. We hadn't been dating for long, so I decided it wasn't as irrational as I thought."