that’s what he thinks, when he sees a scene down on the street, a few civilians and what looks like an entire gang of villains bearing down on a figure on the dimly-lit street.
and then he gets close enough to recognize the figure, and he thinks, shit, again, but with more feeling.
he doesn’t know what they’re doing off campus at this hour -- any hour that’s late enough for aizawa to be on patrol is too late for his students to be wandering, in his opinion -- and he’s going to be angry about that later, but for now, there isn’t time to do more than, with only a moment spared to assess the situation, surge forward, running along a telephone wire and leaping down to land with a slight skid next to jirou, eyes flaring red, capture weapon at the ready.
it’s a handful of thugs with quirks he hasn’t had time to observe, and this initial entrance is the only element of surprise he has; it’s not his ideal combat scenario. but that doesn’t matter right now. jirou doesn’t stand a chance on their own, and he’s not going to let one of his students get hurt again.
the numbers aren’t too much for him. this is, as far as he can tell, an opportunistic attack; they’re hardly on the level of a coordinated organization of villains, and they thought they’d have an easy time with one teenage hero-in-training. but it does mean that countering them takes all his focus, and he doesn’t have time to deal with unexpected elements, which is why he cuts jirou off with a shout. it’s harsh, he knows, but there’s no time to care in combat, and right now his priority is keeping them out of the way, both to save them from more harm and to stop them from making more work for him.
it’s a dirty fight. he has to fight in close quarters, which doesn’t really give his capture weapon its best opportunities, so he aims hard and turns the enemies’ motions against each other when he can, taking advantage of the fact that there are too many of them for them to coordinate easily in a tight space. his mind is racing, focus laser-tight because it has to be: through watering eyes, he makes use of his quirk at unpredictable intervals, stalling a quirk for only a second or two when an attack was about to be made, enough to throw them off their balance, and then switching it to the next biggest threat. it’s a razor’s edge brand of strategy, keeping just ahead of them, and it isn’t perfect; he’s bleeding from several places by the time he has a few of them on the ground, and his right arm is getting hard to move freely.
so of course that’s when one of them manages to evade him long enough to circle around towards jirou.
inwardly, aizawa curses; he sees it happening out of his peripheral vision, but if he makes a go for that one, he’ll just get overrun by the two still on him. he needn’t have worried, though -- he hears jirou react, feels the pulse of their quirk, and uses the distraction to kick one villain in the head, sending him falling like a sack of bricks, and spin the coils of his capture weapon around the other until they can’t move.
he looks up, locks eyes with jirou, who quickly drops their gaze, voice shaking as they apologize. tears turn to sobs as the shock of what just happened washes over them, and aizawa frowns, stooping to jab the temple of the villain wrapped in his capture weapon with his elbow so that their eyes roll back in their head. just in case. “not here,” he says shortly to jirou, taking his phone out. he calls in the incident -- thankfully one of the watching civilians had already phoned the police, and there’s a unit heading towards them that’ll be here in a minute. good. normally aizawa would stay and keep a watch until the police get there, but if he does that then he’ll be drawn into talks about it, asked to give details, and he doesn’t feel like hanging around that long. he’s got a student to look after, and jirou’s been through enough without having to deal with the police.
so he dumps the unconscious body of the one villain out of his capture weapon, recoiling it around his neck, and then walks over to jirou, offering a hand. “come on, we’re getting out of here. can you walk on that leg?”