Chapter Text
The best part about working at night was the quiet. Cool air rushing over your skin as you leap across rooftops. Looking up and seeing the soft light of the moon and stars instead of the glaring beams of the sun. The calm that settles over the city as the majority turn in to sleep in preparation for the next day. The way even the sound of the nocturnal crowds lulled.
Shouta had always preferred the night, though it was a small factor in his choice to become an underground hero. No, the reason he chose the darker side of heroics was to help the parts of society that most forgot. That and to keep his quirk effective by keeping it out of the spotlight.
Then there were the worst parts about working at night. There were many crimes that only happened under the cover of darkness. Nauseating, gritty things that much of society would rather not acknowledge. Trafficking cases, human experimentation, child abuse… The list goes on. Shouta wasn’t unaffected by these cases, but he’d learned to stomach them until he got home, able to process them in the comfort of his partners’ arms. Able to cry if he needed.
Suicides, when they didn’t happen in the privacy of someone’s home, tended to happen at night. Maybe because that’s when the people around them were asleep, allowing them to sneak out and make their attempt without interference. Heroes interfered though if they managed to find them in time. Traveling via rooftops, Shouta usually came across the ones trying to jump.
He didn’t know how to talk to people like his partners did. He wasn’t soft or good at cheering people up. People often assumed that he was emotionless or coldhearted since he didn’t express himself very well. He was awkward and struggled to understand irrationalities. Still, he did his best to talk people down and get them some help. He blamed himself when he failed.
It was even worse when they were young. Children suffering enough in life to resort to this sort of thing… It was heartbreaking to know society was failing them so badly. It also forced him to face his own past when he was very nearly in the same situation.
So coming across a child on the edge of a building was enough to send his heart plummeting.
When he landed behind them, he made sure to make more noise than he usually would. He didn’t want to sneak up on them and risk startling them off the ledge. They didn’t react so he called out to them. “Hey, kid?”
The child turned and Shouta quickly analyzed them. They were an older kid, maybe a young teen. They had black hair, bright red eyes, and wore a loosely tied yukata. Dark red bandages wrapped their arms and legs although they seemed to be decorative. Lastly, a kitsune-style mask in the shape of a rabbit rested on the side of their head, leaving their face exposed.
“Can you come away from the edge?” Shouta asked, ignoring their odd outfit for now.
With a confused expression, they looked between him and the roof's edge. Then their face lit up in understanding. “Oh! I wasn’t gonna do… that. I swear! I was just stargazing.”
Their voice was definitely that of a young kid. “Okay. But I’d still like you to get away from the edge. It’s not safe,” Shouta replied calmly. Jumpers can and have lied to him before about their intentions. Regardless of what the kid claimed, he wasn’t leaving them there.
“It’s safe for me,” the kid told him. “I can’t uh… And also I can do this!”
Shouta watched as the kid began to float, hovering a few inches off the roof. What were they going to say before that? Can’t what? Well, it didn’t matter right now. His priority was getting the kid away from there. It’d be best if he could get them off the roof entirely. “I’d still feel better if you were away from the edge. In fact, let's go back to the ground. Where are the stairs?”
Looking around, the kid shrugged.
“How’d you get up here?” Shouta asked with a sigh.
“Flew,” the kid answered. So they could fly, not just hover.
“You know, public quirk use is illegal,” Shouta pointed out.
Frowning, the kid started to mutter to themselves. He couldn’t make any of it out.
“Just let me escort you home, okay?” Shouta tried. At least if he brought the kid home, he would know they were safe. “You really shouldn’t be out here this late.”
“No, thank you,” the kid said with a slightly panicked expression before vanishing into thin air.
Running to the edge, he looked into the alley below to ensure the kid hadn’t jumped or fallen. The alley was empty. The kid was just… gone.
“What the fuck…?” Shouta whispered to himself, looking around the roof. He activated his quirk just in case it was some kind of invisibility or transformation quirk. Nothing changed, so the kid likely teleported. But the kid’s quirk was flying, right? Then how did they teleport too?
After that, he decided to call in and end his patrol early. He needed a nap.
“I’m telling you, they just vanished,” Shouta told one of his partners, Oboro. Their other partner, Hizashi, was at his radio station to pre-record shows for the school week. Shouta and Hizashi were both teachers at UA when they weren’t doing hero work. Or radio shows, in Hizashi’s case.
“But you said they had a flight quirk,” Oboro argued, pointing his fork at Shouta. “Which is it?”
“Both,” Shouta insisted. “I saw them do both. What kind of quirk would connect those?”
“Maybe a… spatial quirk?” Oboro guessed. Shouta took a bite of his onigiri and considered that. Manipulating space probably could enable someone to both fly and teleport. It wasn’t a bad theory. It just didn’t feel quite right. And then there was the kid’s weird outfit.
Shouta sighed tiredly. “I’m going to keep an eye on the news and obituaries just in case they did lie to me about trying to jump. But with their outfit… I almost wonder if they’re a new vigilante.”
“Yeah, a themed costume in the middle of the night is more of a hero thing. Unless they work at a local theater,” Oboro suggested. “We could check the area for plays with kitsune in them.”
“I’d rather just watch the news or see if I run into them again,” Shouta replied.
“It’s up to you. They’re your mystery kid,” Oboro shrugged.
There was nothing about the kid in the news or the obituaries. At the very least, it seemed the kid was being honest about not intending to jump. That soothed his worries a little bit. And since he wasn’t seeing them around again, he hoped that meant it had been a one-time occurrence.
Of course, he jinxed himself by thinking that.
A little over a week had passed when he stumbled across the kid again. Standing over an unconscious man behind a flower shop. They were attempting to take the man’s pulse, though they seemed unsuccessful if their panic was anything to go by. When the man groaned and rolled onto his side, the kid seemed relieved. Even if the man still wasn’t waking up.
The flower shop had a broken back window and Shouta could see cash scattered on the ground. It wasn’t hard to guess what had transpired here. An attempted robbery that the kid somehow stopped. “Vigilantism is illegal too, you know,” Shouta said flatly.
Startled, the kid took to the air, floating a few feet off the ground. “I’m not a vigilante!” the kid exclaimed, holding up their hands defensively. “I just scared him while he was trying to climb out! When he fell out of the window, he hit his head. I swear!”
“You have a costume and a mask,” Shouta pointed out. “No regular civilian would wear those.”
The kid reached up to gently touch their mask. “I don’t wear it on purpose. It just kind of came with… well…” Their hand dropped to their side. “I’m not a vigilante.”
“You weren’t trying to jump. You aren’t a vigilante,” Shouta repeated. “Then what exactly are you doing out here at this hour? Go home, kid. The streets aren’t safe for children at night.”
“Shouldn’t you probably tie this guy up before he wakes up?” the kid asked, deflecting. They gestured to the man on the ground. “He obviously did crimes so you should arrest him.”
Shouta sighed in frustration but moved to restrain the criminal. He called dispatch to get someone sent out to pick the robber up. Then he turned to the kid.
The kid… who was gone. Again. Damn it.
Unable to leave the criminal to go search for the kid, he decided that he would now be keeping a more active eye out for them. Vigilante or not, that kid shouldn’t be out here this late.