Chapter Text
He’s glaring at a particularly distasteful selection of soup cans in the grocery store when somebody catches his eye. Not because he sticks out all that much, but because he does the complete opposite, and Aizawa Shouta knows somebody trying to make their presence smaller when he sees it.
The dark clothing makes it difficult to get a read, but Shouta’s keen observational aptitude isn’t notorious in the underground circles for nothing. It’s evident in the way that his shoulders are pinched around his neck like a puppet on strings; the way that he hugs himself into his hoodie, ragged and worn thin at the elbows like they'd been scuffed against the ground one too many times; that he wants to exist here entirely undetected, and it has his brain ticking.
It almost works, too. Amongst the sea of post-work patrons milling around the grocery store, nobody gives the child lingering before the flower stand so much as a second glance. A child, because he’s much too small to be anything else. A child that is entirely unremarkable in every way and yet there is something about him that, to Shouta, has him sticking out like a sore thumb.
“Sho?” The line crackles and Shouta wrinkles his nose, internally cursing the terrible signal strength on this street. It’s as if someone had taken TV static and crammed it down into the phone.
“I’m here,” he returns. “I think I’m losing you, Zashi. I’ll see you at home.”
“Ju-- ner-- see--”
That low, warbled buzzing suddenly fluctuates in volume, before the screen snaps to black like a whip being cracked. Startled, Shouta pulls the phone away from his ear. Never has it done this before -- not even when Hizashi had accidentally broken his previous phone with his quirk after laughing too hard at a cat video -- and his stomach throbs because something about this doesn’t feel right at all.
“‘Zashi?” he tries feebly. “Can you hear me?”
At the flower stand, the child finally chooses a bundle of pastel hydrangeas. He inspects them; strokes their bicoloured petals; twists and turns them in his palms, running the pads of his fingers over the rough ridges in their stems; considering them with meticulous methodicity, as if they have to be nothing short of perfect. In the next moment, so suddenly that it was as if a switch had been flipped, his head snaps in Shouta’s direction.
And then he disappears.
The phone screams and gets so hot that Shouta is forced to drop it. Apparently, his hadn’t been the only one that had spontaneously combusted, for there’s a crescendo of noise as everybody else in the vicinity does something similar, dphones and watches dropping to the floor like flies. Those that stoop to pick them up again wince and draw their hands away, the tips of their fingers singed by the surface temperature of their devices. The kid had slipped through the air and left a trail of electronic destruction in his wake.
His eyes flit to his feet. The screen hadn’t shattered upon hitting the floor, but it’s producing thin, curling wisps of smoke from its crevices, the insides smoldered beyond repair. The noxious smell of fish stinging his nose tells him that the electrical components are fried. It doesn’t bother him as much as it should, though, for only one coherent thought clarifies itself to him; “what the fuck?”
The hydrangeas are lying in the spot where the child had once been standing. Some of the soft pink petals had been ripped out, but the bundle is otherwise unscathed by the ordeal. Shouta picks them up and clutches their stems as if holding them will teleport him to wherever the Hell that kid had disappeared away to.
Definitely a quirk, but what that really means, Shouta has no idea. Is it teleportation or is it inducible invisibility? What kind of quirk lets somebody disappear off-the-cuff like that, while simultaneously frying every cellular device in the surrounding area? It probably doesn’t affect whatever he’s holding seeing as he’d left the flowers behind, so how did his clothes disappear with him? Alternatively, was leaving the flowers possibly intentional?
All of this and more cycles through Shouta’s mind as he wades through an ocean of weary onlookers to reach the checkout and pay for what he’s already got in his basket. The extent of their shopping list is in no way fully accounted for, but he’s got bigger fish to fry right now, and Hizashi has cooked more out of less before.
>><<
“I don’t follow,” Shouta deadpans.
“You know I trust you with everything in me, Eraser, but you shouldn’t meddle here.” Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa rarely looks as serious as he does now, and Shouta regrets telling him the location of that grocery store. “The perpetrator is the Commission’s problem. It’s nothing you should be concerning yourself over.”
“The Commission is… they’re manhunting a child?”
Something dark flashes across Tsukauchi’s face. “Stay out of it, Eraser,” he reiterates. “Please.”
>><<
It takes him all of two minutes to disable the attacker. Shrouded amongst the shadows cast into the alleyway by the streetlights, he’s straddling a woman and whispering honeyed threats into the crook of her neck, and he barely has time to react before Shouta knocks him unconscious with a boot to his head. His skull makes a resounding crack as his steel toecap connects with his jaw and sends it into the concrete at a sickening velocity.
“Are you okay?” he murmurs to the woman as he pulls the zip ties taut around the criminal’s wrists. If the brute force he puts into it is unnecessary, well, nobody has to know. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
There are filthy scuffs in her grocery store uniform and ladders have been shredded in her tights where the material must have caught on the concrete. Shaky as she is, she appears otherwise unscathed. “He didn’t,” she confirms. She gazes at him unsteadily from where she’s propped herself up against the wall. “You-- you got here just before…”
And she just trails off, after that. With a decent idea of what she was going to say anyway, Shouta doesn’t push for elaboration; just shoves the criminal into the dirt with the heel of his boot and pulls out his phone.
Only, there are glitches skipping across the screen, and he drops it immediately. “You again, huh?”
The woman blinks. “Uhh. Who?”
“Stay here. I’ll be back.” With a final, hefty kick to the side of his skull, Shouta ensures that the assailant is well and truly out of commission before he stomps around the corner, capture weapon poised, to get a look at the street.
It’s late enough that the city takes on the look of an old photograph, everything doused in familiar shades of grey, and yet Musutafu -- a city that never sleeps -- is alive with lights and music. Traffic from the main road rumbles a low hum and there is boisterious yelling from outside of a bar ringing against the walls. Footfalls knock through puddles and the passing chatter is unassuming, each bystander unaware of the gravity pinning him down. Charcoal eyes comb through the heads littering the pavement. No one is catching his eye.
And then he sees it -- the boy standing in the neon gaze of a convenience store’s flickering window sign, shoulders hunched against the bitter wind, ragged sneakers tapping impatiently as he stares out at the road.
Detective Tsukauchi be damned; there’s absolutely no way he’s letting the kid slip away from him this time. The innate feeling that something is very, very wrong with this child grips him and that is not something he tends to ignore. With a newfound determination, he adjusts his grasp on his capture weapon and wallows through the ocean of people milling about between them, his eyes glued to the boy with a feverish sort of ascertainment, as if losing sight of him for even a second gives him too large of an escape window.
“Hey, kid--”
And that’s all he manages to get out, because the very second that the boy is aware of his presence, he’s rotating on his heels and bolting. Nobody parts to let him through and yet he seems to slip through the crowd seamlessly nonetheless.
There’s a commotion from somewhere behind him and Shouta just sighs as he watches the man he’d apprehended earlier stumble out of the alleyway with his hands still bound, bowling pathetically into the sea of people who pass by. Maybe he’ll get luckier next time.
>><<
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Shouta whines, letting himself flop bonelessly into the couch.
“I hate to say it, Sho, but I’m with the Detective on this one.” Hizashi, looking comfortable in his Present Mic hoodie and paint-stained sweatpants, offers his husband a slow, sympathetic blink through rectangular lenses. The coffee he palms smells faintly of caramel. “You should leave this to the Commission. You don’t know anything about this.”
“I know that they’re hunting down a child,” Shouta refutes, irritated that Hizashi isn’t levelling with him.
Voice an unwavering anchor, Hizashi doesn’t let up. “You don’t, though,” he points out.
“Zashi…”
“You need to consider everything that the Commission is, Sho. They’re just as much of a crime investigative organisation as they are the idiots who dole out the provisional hero licenses. As unethical as it sounds, they’ve been known to use kids in undercover work before. You might be messing up a lot of important stuff if you stick your nose in. Besides, Tsukauchi clearly knows what’s going on, right? You know Tsukauchi wouldn’t stand with the Commission if they were doing something really shady.”
And the fundamental rift between daylight and underground heroes has never punched him harder. Hizashi clearly puts more faith in the Hero Public Safety Commission than Shouta does. Something about it -- an organisation created so as to maintain the balance of influence between heroes and regular members of society; something that sits above everybody else with their fists plunged in sheer, unrelenting, systematic power -- just feeds the roots of corruption at its very core, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.
Call him paranoiac, sure, but Shouta is a seasoned underground hero who sees a lot of the dark, twisted turmoil that society hides under the grooves of modernity. Corruption can cast shadows across those cracks and he refuses to let himself become blindsided by it. He places the right to free-think atop a very tall pedestal.
Despite this, he’s aware that Hizashi has a point. The Commission does what they’re supposed to do and that isn’t something he likes to admit. They protect. They maintain balance. When it comes to the Commission, there’s always the possibility that interposing without knowing the whole story could put a lot of important hero work at risk. Trying to investigate just what is going on with the mysterious child in front of that flower stand is probably more trouble than it’s worth. Right?
… right?
“Promise me that you won’t, Sho,” Hizashi pushes, placing two firm hands on his shoulders. “Promise me that you’ll leave it alone.”
Running his tongue thoughtfully over his teeth, Shouta searches his husband’s face for any sign of-- well, anything that could explain the uncharacteristic chill in his voice. His eyes flit past him, to where Hitoshi is loitering in the kitchen, chewing slowly on a spoonful of rice and observing his parents with mild interest.
“Okay.”
Hizashi squints. “Sho.”
Shouta’s eyes soften and his cheeks blow out, and he inclines his head towards his doting husband with a candid, “okay. I promise.”
>><<
It’s two months later and Shouta knows he’s there before he even sees him.
The crackling communicator is an immediate tell. Reflexively, he tugs it out of his ear, abandoning it onto the concrete beside him. The phone had gotten extremely hot very fast the first time this happened and there is no way he wants that baking his brains.
From where he perches on a nondescript rooftop, charcoal eyes pick through every head weaving through the crowds below. Not that he’s sure of what he’s even looking for, because he isn’t; he’s never seen more of the kid other than his ratty hoodie and the approaching promise of the evening chill means that everybody else is donning something of the sort, too.
He’d wholeheartedly promised his husband that he wouldn’t meddle in the Commission’s business, but that day in the grocery store all that time ago sticks to the forefront of his mind like wet mud, and he can’t bring himself to forget the kid who had caught his eye trying to hide away from it. It almost makes him feel guilty before he remembers that this is a child, and even when it's not supposed to be anything to do with him, he has every right to worry when it comes to his endangerment. It's not only his job as an underground hero, but simultaneously his duty of care as a citizen.
The minutes roll by like the tide and he’s beginning to think that he’s missed his chance. With a dejected sigh, he straightens up, scooping up his capture weapon from where he'd left it lying just a few meters from his feet. Maybe it's just a coincidence; maybe his communicator is just feeling his age. They don't exactly last forever when they're under so much stress on the job, after all, and it's probably time he gets a new one fitted anyway.
It’s as he’s teetering on the edge of the rooftop in preparation to leap across to the next that he notices it; the subtle shift in the air; the soft scuffle of feet scattering loose gravel across the concrete behind him. He spins to face them with honed, instinctive reflexes, his capture weapon looming, hand itching for the dagger sheathed in his belt, and--
--the cap of an aluminum baseball bat is digging into his throat.
It’s ice-cold on his skin and that's what catches him off-guard. Fortunately, it isn't pressing hard enough to impair his breathing. His eyes slide down the barrel, across the ghostly hand gripping the handle, and finally to viridian eyes that stare him down with the intensity of a thousand suns. He’s angry -- very, very angry, and Shouta struggles to understand.
“I know they put you onto me,” the boy snarls. “Stop following me.”
Everything about him is dangerous and raw, like a caged animal putting up its final fight. He's standing his ground, though, with his chest heaving and hands quivering even as they're poised for defence, and it has hot bile crawling up Shouta's throat because fuck, that's the stance of someone who is well and truly cornered. Even when they're standing on the vast, empty space of the rooftop, the kid feels stuck.
“I’m not following--”
“You are!” The exclamation is thick with fear as it rips out of his throat. “They all are! All day, every day, everywhere! All of you never-- they-- they never--”
And he whines, then; a very real, shaky exhalation that exudes animalistic distress and terror. The steely resolve is beginning to fray at its edges. The baseball bat twitches where the cap presses into the flesh of his mandible. “Just--” He chokes on bated breath, like it’s a solid mass in his throat. “Just leave me alone. I-- I didn’t-- I wasn’t trying to find all of that.”
“Kid,” he tries, holding up his hands placatingly. “Kid, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit.”
There are a billion and one flaws in the kid’s defensive stance -- his feet are angled inefficiently; he’s inclined too close to his opposition and leaving himself wide open to an attack -- and Shouta knows that this could be over in seconds. There’s nothing stopping him from aiming a palm just below his chin, throwing his head back and pinching those nerves clustered at the top of his spine to send him sprawling across the concrete.
But he looks into the swirling inferno of those viridian eyes and does not see a two-bit criminal he needs to subdue. Right now, he is not faced with somebody inherently evil, but someone who wholeheartedly believes that they are fighting for their life, and that thought has dread skittering up his spine like a spider.
“I want to help you,” Shouta says gently.
“No,” the kid bites, “you want to kill me.”
And that's when Shouta's heart jumps into his throat, because something is very dangerously wrong here, and there is absolutely no doubt that it has something to do with the Commission. There's nothing villanous to him -- no, everything about this kid, from his cracking voice to his spindle-shanked frame swamped by ragged clothing, screams 'frightened, traumatised child who found out something he shouldn't have and is just trying to survive', and there's no way in Hell he's going to skim over this without doing his own digging.
Years of working with kids and adults alike has given Shouta the keen ability to read people by their body language, facial expressions and the subtle inclinations of their voice, but this kid, admittedly, is stumping him. Mistrust leeches off him like a bleeding wound and it’s very clear it’s terror that brings this anger, but there’s something else in his grinding teeth and wide, owlish eyes and Shouta struggles to place his finger on it.
“I-- I thought you-- you of all people…” The boy is blinking rapidly, shallow breaths wheezing through unhealthy lungs, and Shouta knows that he’s close to flagging. “I thought you’d understand.”
Understand what? Questions burn his tongue, but he doesn’t bend. Whatever delusion this kid is drowning in, a heart-to-heart on a rooftop isn’t going to trounce it. No -- what he needs more than anything in the world is some real help, and if that means roughing him up so as to get him to stand down, then so be it.
The kid sways dangerously, then, and Shouta immediately takes advantage of that. He clasps his hands around the barrel of the baseball bat and pushes it into his chest, sending him stumbling backwards across the loose gravel scattered on the concrete. The intention had been to put him onto the floor, but the kid had caught himself. “I don’t want to fight you,” he tries. “Just let me get you help. You need help.”
“You’re just like the others!” A burst of anger spurs the boy forward like an exploding hosepipe and Shouta barely has time to adjust his footing before the metal pipe is impelling him backwards again. Underneath the soft pools of moonlight splitting the clouds, Shouta can see him struggling to stand upright. “I didn’t mean-- I thought I could--”
It’s then that the kid clamps his jaw, exhaling frustration, and he shakes the baseball bat as if he were refamiliarizing himself with the weight in his palms. It’s an unconventional choice of weapon -- a wooden one would pack much more of a punch than something lightweight and hollow like the aluminum ones -- and the customary rubber gripping is missing, but Shouta doesn’t peg him as someone who had a particularly wide variety of options. It’s probably something he picked up from the street.
Shouta loops his capture weapon around his knuckle and sends it towards the bat in hopes of disarming his opponent, but he’s not fast enough; the boy stumbles out of the firing range, clearly aware of his intentions if the way he shields the bat with his body is any indicator. Viridian eyes flit around and Shouta can only will that he doesn’t pull off another disappearing act.
Maybe approaching this from a new angle will inspire cooperation. “Can we just talk, kid?” he says, maintaining a steady posture. “I can’t say I know what you’re talking about, but I want to understand. I can’t do that unless you talk to me.”
The boy’s lip curls into a snarl. Shouta can see he’s going to bolt -- he naturally brings the baseball bat closer to him and the balls of his high-top sneakers swivel on the gravel as he starts to change direction -- and doesn’t hesitate to utilise his capture weapon while he’s got that momentary upper hand.
The cloth snares his waist and the underground hero tightens it into place. With a scream so fearful that it pinches at Shouta’s heart, he tears at the binding with broken nails, thrashing around in an impotent attempt to free himself. It’s hard to watch, and Shouta has to remind himself that this is for the greater good.
“I’m sorry, kid,” he says. He really is.
But the boy doesn’t seem to care for any kind of feeble apology; just continues to writhe as Shouta reels the capture weapon back towards him, panting and groaning. The baseball bat makes an ugly grinding noise as hollow aluminium drags across the concrete.
His chin rolls against his chest and he starts to lose his fight. The grip he has on the baseball bat wavers finger by finger, as if he doesn’t have the strength to hold onto it properly anymore. Their scuffle is well and truly finished, now, because even if Shouta were to risk releasing him, he isn’t sure that the boy would have the energy to go anywhere anyway.
Nevertheless, he isn’t stupid enough to underestimate even a child. Teaching has taught him that much. Shouta drops down onto his haunches to get a better look at the kid and sees bruised cheekbones and freckles smattering pale skin like constellations against an inky sky. Childish; so painfully childish, and it tugs at his heart. Tufts of dark hair stick out from underneath his hoodie and Shouta is about to pull it away from his face when he feels it; the subtle shift in the wind; the crack of something cutting the air; and he catches the baseball bat moments before it shatters his skull.
The kid’s eyes are open again and they’re angrier than ever.
“Nice try,” Shouta says, smirking good-naturedly, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to be faster than that.”
For but a moment, everything feels still. A slow, unsteady smile dimples the boy’s cheeks and creases the corners of his eyes. “Okay.”
Everything goes white, and Shouta is thrown into dangerous, swirling black.