Motivation (Rewrite)

​ꜰɪᴠᴇ

Was a little busy yesterday between work (on that 9-5 grind, hell yeah) and other stuff, so whoops, have a chapter a day later than usual.

This covers most of the old chapter seven, as well as like... half of chapter eight. Except with hella more words. Enjoy, kids.

"I got in," Kazue said blandly as soon as he pushed open the door to his father's office, the ripped envelope containing the acceptance letter in his left hand and the accompanying hologram device in his right. While he hadn't bothered to watch the latter, fully intending to take it apart and examine the internal mechanisms, he had read the letter and was free to toss it through the air.

Katashi caught it easily with one hand, the other still on his keyboard as he finished typing. A few seconds later, his eyes moved from the screen to the logo stamped on the front of the envelope.

"Class 1-A," Kazue continued, all the information he had on the hero known as Eraserhead flooding through his head. He'd done his research on both of the homeroom teachers as well as the rest of the first year instructors after the entrance exams, information gathering vital to ensuring he could fly under the radar. Well, as much as one could in the hero course, at least.

"I'm proud of you," his father smiled briefly, something he hardly ever did when he was in the company of those he was close to. "Well done, Kazue."

Kazue's eyes widened momentarily at those words as he silently deposited his backpack beside the couch and took a seat. That was... new. Kimura Katashi, telling his son he was proud of him out loud? Despite their occasional differences, Kazue knew that it was already implied and had been that way as long as he could remember. Which was a while. It was unnecessary, and neither father nor son tended to voice anything deemed as such.

And yet... he'd said it anyway, even if Kazue had made only a sliver of progress toward being able to use the other half of his Quirk. At this point, he'd very nearly given up on quelling the energy drain with how often and randomly it occurred, particularly if it was at school. Sleeping in class had never been easier.

"Uh, thank you," Kazue replied awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand while he tried and failed to think of something else to add. So he changed the subject. "They emailed me the rest of the forms and they'll probably need your signature."

"Alright, well, you'd better get started on that, then," his father responded, frowning slightly as he skimmed through a stack of paperwork on his desk and began jotting down ciphered notes on his pad of notebook paper. "Then when you're done..."

"Yeah," Kazue nodded, squinting slightly as he read the sheet from across the room and upside down. It wasn't a new cipher from the looks of it, but a rather old one, which meant he'd have to dig through his memories to remember what each substitution meant rather than figure it out from scratch. "I'll take care of it all before I go home."

The following two months or so leading up to the start of the next school year was treated as any other, save for self-appointed time dedicated to disappointing Quirk training. Amplify worked just fine, and Kazue had made it a habit of boosting the three heroes at the agency before their patrols, but Diminish remained stubbornly unchanged. If anything, the frequency of the drains only increased to every few hours without consistency.

While Kazue didn't mind all his energy being drained in class, he hated wrestling with the current of green so he wouldn't pass out in the middle of work. Beyond that, he wasn't particularly looking forward to the episodes once he was in high school. The academic classes, sure, fine, but the heroics-related ones? Kazue would prefer not to have an episode in the middle of, say, a combat exercise.