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Aizawa Shouta was exhausted. He and Yamada had been jumping through mindscapes for hours, waking up his kids one by one.
He’d had to convince Uraraka to leave her perfect life, with her parents living in luxury and all her friends learning in peace and happiness. Her heartbroken expression when she found out that it was all a dream still haunted him.
Yamada had held a sobbing Ojiro after they had managed to convince him that the danger he felt he was in wasn't real. It had been heartbreaking.
The less said about Todoroki’s mindscape the better.
Now the both of them stood outside Midoriya's mindscape preparing themselves to enter.
'Well' said Yamada, trying and failing to keep up his usual exuberant demeanour. 'At least after we manage to wake up Midoriya we can use his help to wake up All Might. I bet it would be much easier to convince Yagi that whatever he is seeing isn't real with his kid's help."
Shouta's lips quirked up at the thought of Yagi's continuous denial of one Midoriya Izuku being his kid.
He took a deep breath, preparing himself to see maybe another perfect world from which he had to drag another one of his students from or maybe an amalgamation of his students biggest fears
'On three?' He asked Yamada. Yamada's lips twitched up to an almost smile ' One, two..' Shouta pushed the door.
The first thing that Shouta noticed about the place were its walls. The place looked like a crumbling prison,with one steel locked door off in the far corner and its tall looming walls giving a person an acute sense of claustrophobia even though the room seemed to stretch out forever. The room was lightly decorated with small knick knacks lying around in an attempt to make the place look more homely.
“Looks like it's another nightmare” Shouta muttered lowly looking around in slight discomfort and horror.
“Is that a vault door?” Yamada asked, sounding horrified.
Shouta stared and wondered what exactly caused the problem child’s worst nightmare occur in a vault.
Suddenly, they both heard a voice yelling in the distance causing both of them to stiffen. They both turned to each other and then began stealthly moving towards the direction the voice originated from.
The more they moved the more Shouta could make out who the voice originated from. It seemed to be Midoriya yelling.
As they continued moving forward a huge room began coming into view in the distance. The walls of the room were falling apart and the room itself seemed to be furnished with the most mismatched furniture Shouta had ever seen in his life. There were 9 chairs all arranged around a circular table. All the chairs seemed to look like thrones of various shapes and colours and the table looked like someone had tried to recreate King Arthur's round table without ever actually seeing a table in their life.
There were 8 males and 1 female seated on the chairs. They all seemed to be holding a bunch of colourful cards with strange symbols on them. The shortest figure seemed to be yelling at one of the males with a bun. Wait-
“Is that Midoriya?” Yamada asked Shouta, sounding confused.
Shouta was confused too, if this was a nightmare, why was the problem child sitting with a bunch of strangers holding a bunch of strangely coloured cards.
“That's not all,” Yamada continued “Yagi is here too” he pointed at the tallest figure at the table that shouta hadn't noticed before. It was All Might! But also not. Yagi looked much healthier and maybe a few years younger than he usually did and was his hair on fire?
“There is no way that Third has so many draw fours!!!” Midoriya yelled pointing at the man with the bun (Third?)
Third(?) grinned “Y’all are just mad that I have natural talent.”
A man with a high collar ,who looked like he was imitating Best Jeanist, nodded “Ninth is right, there's absolutely no way that you can have four draw fours.”
Third laughed “You’re just jealous that I’m on a winning streak”
Another man, who looked eerily like an older version of Bakugou but with a scar on his face sighed “I've been in the void for so long I'm just numb to this now.”
Everyone else started grumbling and the game continued but from the place where he was crouching Shouta could hear the bald man with goggles,who he swore he had seen before, whisper to Yagi “Next time he pulls out a draw four you hold him down while I search him, I'm sure he’s cheating.”
Just before Yagi could answer, Shouta heard a loud gasp from his side. He turned to look at Yamada, and saw him staring at horror and pointing at the men sitting on Midoriya’s immediate right. Shouta turned to look at the man and was horrified to see that the man looked like a cleaner, neater version of Shigaraki Tomura
At Yamada’s gasp all the 9 members immediately turned to face them, all of them tensing up as if to prepare for a fight
“Whoever is there, you have one chance to come out” The Shigaraki look alike said, authoritatively.
Shouta and Yamada shared a look and slowly walked out from behind the crumbled piece of wall that they were crouched behind.
Midoriya and Yagi gasped.
“Aizawa and Yamada sensei, what are you doing here!?!? Midoriya asked them, looking very confused and concerned.
“And also why are you here?” Yagi asked looking at them worriedly
Shouta had to hand it to Midoriya, his impression of a younger Yagi was very spot on. In the mindscapes of the other students the people in there were passably lifelike but they seemed to lack the subconscious behaviours and micro expressions of the real life counterparts from which they were based.
But this Yagi has the exact same micro expressions and nervous ticks that the real Yagi exhibits.
Aizawa was about to explain the situation to Midoriya and maybe beg him to wake up when he was interrupted by the only woman in the group.
“What proof do you have that you are the real Aizawa Shouta and Hizashi Yamada?” she said, looming over them menacingly, her biceps bulging and looking like they could crush Shouta’s head with barely any effort “How do we know that you both aren't just a trick sent by him to trap Ninth and Toshi?”
Shouta has no idea who him is but the way that all of them seem to be eyeing each other and re entering battle stance he knew he had to diffuse the situation before it got violent.
“Problem child, no Midoriya, listen to me” Shouta said, speaking quickly “What is the last thing you remember before you showed up here?”
Midoriya squinted and seemed to be thinking hard “We were shopping, I think? All Might, Uraraka, Todoroki, Ojiro and I had gone to the mall. We had just finished up and were about to meet up near the coffee shop and then…”
Yagi suddenly spoke up “There was a kid. They looked 4, maybe 5 years old? They said that they were lost and that they couldn't find their mother. We were trying to calm them down.”
“Yes,” Shouta said “The kid had a quirk manifestation and used it on the five of you. Their quirk traps you in your mindscape and plays hallucinations to keep you there. You are dreaming problem child, this isn’t-”
“Oh I already knew that this is a dream” Midoriya said suddenly, smiling brightly at Shouta.
“What!!?!!?” Yamada spluttered. The rest of the people, minus the Yagi hallucination, looked very amused.
“Problem child” Shouta said slowly “If you know this is a dream then why haven't you woken up!?!”
“I can wake up?” Midoriya says, having the gall to look surprised.
Shouta sighed and rubbed his head. He should have figured that Midoriya’s dream would be the most complicated. Speaking of Midoriya’s dream,
“Midoriya” Shouta says gesturing to the crumbling, weirdly furnished prison cell “Where’s the perfect life you don’t want to leave? Is this it?”
The bald man with goggles barks out a rough sounding laugh “Ha! This? A perfect life? Not likely. Some of us consider this purgatory.” A white haired man with a scar along his eye and the Best Jeanist cosplayer nodded solemnly to this.
“Then where’s the horrible nightmare?” Yamada asks furtively, looking around in an attempt to catch sight of anything that might be lurking along the walls.
The Shigaraki look alike points to the vault door at the side of the room “We keep him in there.” he says, smiling confusedly. “It wouldn't do to see his ugly mug every time we try to relax” The Bakugou look alike cuts in crassly.
Now that Shouta looks at the Shigaraki look alike better he can see that the man doesn't look that much like Shigaraki, in fact his eyes are eerily similar to Midoriya’s, right down to the white pupil and the shade of green.
Shouta sighs again and pinches his nose, trying to fight back an oncoming headache. “You know what, I don’t have enough energy for this.Problem child since you,for some god forsaken reason, already know that this is a dream. Can you please wake up so we can just get this whole thing over with.”
Midoriya turned and shared a look with Yagi and the rest of the people before turning back to Shouta.
“Sure Aizawa sensei” he said smiling “Er, how do I wake up?”
Aizawa stared at him, not really comprehending what he was saying. The other students exited their mindscapes the moment they became aware that they were in their minds and not awake. He had no idea how someone who had already known that they were dreaming stayed in their mindscape in the first place let alone how to get out. Thankfully the Yagi dream bot seemed to have an idea
“Young Midoriya, why don't we just concentrate really hard on waking up?” he said, sounding very much like the real Yagi
“Ok All Might” Midoriya said. The entire mindscape seemed to glow a little before the floor dropped beneath Shouta and everything went black.
Shouta woke up blearily in the UA infirmary. He could hear Yamada groaning next to him, also waking up from trapaising around their students’ minds. He slowly sat up and rubbed his eyes. He turned and saw that both Midoriya and Yagi were also waking up from their quirk induced slumbers.
“Thank you for reminding us to get out, Aizawa kun” Yagi says to him, smiling. Shouta squints at him
“Yeah, if you hadn’t told us to wake up All Might and I would have still been playing Uno” Midoriya said grinning sheepishly
They both turn and smile at each other.
‘Wait a minute’ Shouta thinks slowly to himself, his sleep addled brain sluggishly processing information and putting together thoughts ‘We never even got to Yagi, how-?’
….
…
..
.
“YOU WERE THERE TOO!?!?!?!?” Shouta and Yamada yelled pointing at Yagi
“Oops”