Chapter Text
Shouta was quite familiar with the phenomenon of cats constantly trying to get through any doorway they were not allowed through. Even if they didn’t want anything on the other side. Even if they were just going to turn around and come back into the old rooms they were allowed into, they always wanted to get into forbidden places.
Now, Shouta understood.
Over the past few days, Shouta had built himself a mental map of the Shie Hassaikai underground facility. It was a veritable labyrinth, not least because Overhaul – and possibly a few of his allies – apparently sometimes reshaped whole areas, putting walls in new places and moving the doorways that connected rooms.
But the purposes and general locations of the rooms mostly stayed the same, and Shouta now had a decent understanding of where everything important actually was. He just had to keep up with the constantly shifting routes to get there. There were several well-guarded exits that actually led outside the compound, but the stairs that led up to them were always moving around and changing shape. The exits – and, as far as Shouta could tell, everything on the ground floor – never moved.
In his time in the facility, he’d also become somewhat familiar with the Eight Bullets, the primary executives of the Shie Hassaikai.
Tengai Hekiji, the one Shouta had met on the first day, was the most reasonable and calm of the entire group. If he didn't know better, Shouta would have said that Tengai was some kind of monk or priest. He was so level-headed and calm, he seemed bizarrely out of place among others like the hotblooded Rappa Kendou and perpetually intoxicated Sakaki Deidoro.
Second to Tengai was Hojo Yu, who almost matched Shouta’s own serious, straightforward outlook. He went about it a bit more violently than Shouta tended to, though.
Hojo always smelled like blood. Most of the Eight Bullets and Overhaul himself – not that Shouta willingly got close enough to tell – smelled like blood. The only exception was Sakaki, because any other scent he might have picked up was completely disguised by the overpowering reek of alcohol.
It left Shouta on edge in the way the League of Villains never had. Even in the first two weeks, before Dabi’s Quirk meltdown, he had been wary and alert, but not quite truly paranoid.
Now, he was paranoid.
The walls, he was sure, moved sometimes. It felt like everywhere Shouta went, there were eyes on him.
As both a teacher and a solo Underground Hero, Shouta had developed a sixth sense for when someone was watching him. Sometimes, it was obvious. Like when Overhaul tracked Shouta’s path across the room with a vaguely offended look on his face. Or when Tengai watched him saunter closer with no emotion in his face but a subtle sort of hope in his eyes, like he expected that someday, he might be permitted to pet Shouta without getting his hand clawed open. Even the longing eyes of Katsukame Rikiya as Shouta gave him a generous two-meter berth.
After the first time Katsukame had managed to touch him – and promptly sucked Shouta almost completely dry of what little energy he had – Shouta had elected to keep quite the distance between them.
There were also the other members. Not Eight Bullets, but subordinates of the Shie Hassaikai. They had few defining features, all wearing the same dark clothes and with faces covered in unimaginative dull brown masks, but everywhere he went there was someone there, lingering in the room, watching him through the mask they probably thought was hiding their attention.
The only place Shouta had found a tiny measure of solitude was inside the room the Shie Hassaikai had offered to Twice. It was small and a bit cramped, and Shouta knew for a fact that the little black ‘screw’ in the air vent cover was actually a button camera, but under Twice’s bed, there was nothing and no one who could see him.
Unfortunately, there was also nothing he could see or do.
Shouta had spent probably too much time poking around the facility. He’d even run into Mr. Compress a few times, coming in to visit with Overhaul’s doctors, who were working on getting him a functional prosthetic. He already had a sleek metal arm made of interlocking plates and bars. It looked a bit too fiddly and steampunk for Shouta’s preference, but it fit Mr. Compress’s dramatic personality to a tee.
Hopefully, Mist was doing well enough with the League members that he was looking after. When Shouta had given him that quick crash course, he hadn’t expected it to be so immediately applicable. But Shouta had needed to be the one in the thick of the conflict with the yakuza. He had the experience and the intelligence to know what was going on, and in a pinch, there was a decent likelihood that he’d end up as a full-sized meter-tall deadly wildcat with his human knowledge to back up his physical power. Plus, it was better to have more information than less. Shouta never knew when anything he learned here would be useful in the future.
Either way, among his exploration, Shouta had run across exactly three doors that he had not been able to get through. One he was pretty sure was the old Yakuza boss’s office. It was on the ground floor instead of underground as most of the other important rooms were, and through the generous crack between the door and the floor, Shouta could see the edge of a desk and a traditional page of decorative calligraphy on the wall. It also smelled like paper and dust. Not the dust of Shigaraki’s Decay or any kind of Quirk biproduct Overhaul might produce, but like the old, settled dust of a room that had gone unused for too long.
The second door Shouta had concluded was an emergency exit. Nobody ever went through it, but the door never moved, and there was an incongruous glass ‘EXIT’ sign over it that he’d thought was a trick at first.
The third... well. He had his suspicions about the third door, and he didn’t like them one bit.
In his time, Shouta had experienced a lot of persistent cats. Cats who wanted treats, cats who wanted pets, cats who wanted only to irritate him.
Cats who wanted to get through doors they really shouldn’t go through.
Shouta had not left this door in seven hours.
Not even a Quirked cat could possibly compare to the dogged persistence of an Underground Hero fueled seventy percent by spite and stuck in a housecat’s body.
Chronostasis, whose real name Shouta still hadn’t managed to catch, appeared at one end of the hallway. Shouta barely even reacted, slumped on the floor just beside the door with the tip of his tail twitching. Chronostasis returned his apathy and smoothly fitted a key into the lock and turned the handle on the mystery door.
The key turned with the doorhandle, which meant that the door could likely only be unlocked with a key, and not a knob on the inside. Shouta tucked that information away in the back of his head as he stood and stretched up into a languid arch before sauntering around the edge of the door.
Despite his casual air, Shouta was laser focused. He took in and processed information in a snap. Usual things, like the visual appearance of the room he was entering, but also things unique to Heroes and things unique to cats. The room had narrow dimensions, cold tile floor, pale blue walls, a bed in one corner and a dresser in the other, and no handle at all on the inside of the door. It smelled of laundry detergent and disinfectant and the faint but unmistakable scent of blood and medicine. There were boxes pushed up against the floorboards, what looked like children’s toys, dolls and stuffed animals and coloring books, all in their original, untouched packaging. There was a little girl kneeling on the bed, fear on her face and pain written in every line of her body.
Before Shouta could catch any more than that, he was sidling up against the wall, sitting silent and motionless between a huge fluffy stuffed elephant with a price tag still clipped to its ear and a doll with half a dozen accessories packaged in bulky cardstock and plastic.
In situations like this, people saw what they expected to see. Chronostasis knew what this room looked like, and Shouta’s presence was only a few days old in his subconscious. Even if he happened to glance in Shouta’s direction, Chronostasis wouldn’t see him. His brain would fill in Shouta’s presence as another stuffed animal among the scattered toys and other enticements.
Chronostasis had entered the room with a thin plastic case, which Shouta watched him open with slitted eyes. It was full of needles and syringes, one of which Chronostasis carefully prepared before brusquely unwinding the bandages that wrapped up the girl’s arm, pulling her arm towards him to reveal the hollow of her elbow, and sliding the needle through her skin.
Shouta watched the syringe fill with dark blood as the little girl on the bed visibly bit back tears, and he tamped down hard on the writhing fury that threatened to spill out of his chest.
Now was not the time to pick fights. Even as a big cat, Shouta couldn’t assure the safety of himself, his students, and now this new variable of the little girl, and so he wouldn’t risk starting a fight that didn’t need to be started. But oh, how that furious creature in his chest seethed, and if it weren’t for the necessity of staying still and silent to avoid detection, Shouta likely would have already had his teeth in Chronostasis’s throat.
After what felt like endless, patience-fraying hours, Chronostasis capped his syringes and settled them back in the case, wrapped new bandages around the girl’s arm with tight, efficient motions, and walked out of the room as swiftly and confidently as he’d entered.
The door shut with a click, and Shouta let out a slow breath.
The little girl had curled up against the wall as Chronostasis left, drawing her knees to her chest and cradling her head in her arms, shaking with silent sobs. She didn’t see Shouta unfreeze and slink away from the wall, stretching briefly and flicking his tail.
He hesitated for a moment, then concluded that the best and most efficient way to determine how the girl would react to him was to trigger that reaction directly.
“Hello?” Shouta called softly, by now used to the ‘nyaa’ that came out instead of words.
The girl startled, her head shooting up so fast she almost smacked it against the wall. She stared at him with huge red eyes, like she’d never seen anything like him before.
Maybe she hadn’t.
Shouta pushed that thought out of his mind, because dwelling on it too long would make him furious enough to transform, and he was trying not to scare the little girl. Instead, he tilted his head at her and nyaaed softly again, taking two steps closer to the bed.
She gasped, then clamped her hands over her mouth, still staring at him with eyes full of wonder and shock.
After a moment, she moved her hands away and whispered, “kitty?”
Shouta took that as a cue to jump up onto the bed and pad easily over the bedspread to where the girl was sitting against the wall, watching him with wide eyes.
He bumped his head against her leg, and she started to reach towards him. Then hesitated, her hand freezing in midair. Shouta propped his front paws up on her leg and flicked the tip of his ear against her hand. Just a gentle brush along the curve of her palm. If she had a dangerous five-point Quirk, he didn’t want to activate it unintentionally.
The instant the fluff at the tip of his ear brushed her skin, the girl flinched away, jerking her hand back like she’d been burned.
“I’m gonna hurt you,” she gasped, pulling her hands away and pressing them to her chest.
She hadn’t reacted to him butting his head against her leg, so either her Quirk was based on skin contact or specifically from her hands. Or she labored under the impression that she was the sort of person who naturally hurt small creatures a lot, but that seemed unlikely.
Either way, Shouta could work around her worry. He gingerly clambered onto her lap, careful to avoid touching any of her bare skin. She watched him with eyes full of awe, hands still clasped to her chest even as she gazed at him wonderingly. The loud purr practically sprang into his throat, and Shouta settled into the steady vibration and flicked his tail against the girl’s leg.
Slowly but surely, as Shouta did nothing but lay still and purr, the girl started to relax. She dropped her hands to her sides and leaned back against the wall, though she didn’t take her eyes off of him.
She looked at him like he was something rare and amazing, something unbelievable, like if she even dared to blink, he would vanish into a shadow of a dream.
That look made Shouta’s heart ache for her, and he flicked his tail and purred harder.
After a moment, the little girl tentatively lifted her hand. She kept her hand balled into a white-knuckled fist held away from him, but gingerly touched her wrist – still covered in bandages – to his spine. Shouta curled his tail around her wrist as she pulled it away, and she gasped in delight.
“Soft...” she marveled quietly, tentatively pressing her other wrist to his back as well. Shouta took that as his cue to stand up in her lap, bracing his front paws against her shoulders and rubbing his head against her chin.
She froze as he moved, then tentatively wrapped her arms around him. Shouta curled his tail around her arm – tiny, thin arm, so young and small, even compared to Shouta’s cat body – and purred harder.
They sat there together for what felt like hours, Shouta moving nothing but his flickering tail as the little girl slowly gathered the courage to run her bandaged arms down his back, then brush his fur with her uncovered wrist, then the back of her hand, then finally a feather-light touch of her fingers.
When nothing happened, she grew bolder, tentatively sinking her hand into his fur, and Shouta willed himself to be cuddly and soft and comforting. Apparently, he was doing something right, because the girl relaxed with him in her arms, tucking her nose into his fur and letting out a low hum of contentment.
Gradually, her grip went limp. Her head began to nod, dipping down to touch his forehead with her chin, and Shouta merely flicked his tail and twitched an ear, settling deeper into her hold. He didn’t want to move and risk waking her up.
On the other hand, he also didn’t want to fall asleep himself.
Shouta lashed his tail again, harder this time, trying to snap himself out of his own doze. After several days of not feeling anywhere near safe enough to sleep properly, he was fighting a losing battle against his own exhaustion and the dim lights, still room, and soft, even breaths of the little girl holding him.
He could hear her heart in her chest, beating steadily against his sensitive cat ear, and her breath ruffled the fur on his head as her chin dipped towards her chest. Her arms were still wrapped around him, hands buried in his fur, knees drawn up slightly to hold Shouta in her lap, and three weeks ago he would have died from shame in this position, but now he was almost glad. Glad that the little girl had something she could hold onto. Some minor comfort in whatever hell her life was.
So, Shouta stayed awake and vigilant, doing no more than flicking his tail and twitching his ears to keep himself that way. It was a battle, with exhaustion dragging at him, but it was a battle he’d fought and won many times before, and he would win it this time, too.
Shouta was still and silent for hours, time that slipped slowly away as he waited, aware and listening. For footsteps in the hallway that slowed at this door, for voices that might refer to the little girl, for anything that might even possibly register as a threat.
And for hours, nothing came. Footsteps passed outside, muffled and quiet enough that he was sure he wouldn’t be able to hear them with human hearing. The occasional snatch of conversation, most of the words unintelligible through the heavy door.
Finally, the little girl began to stir. She shifted, grip tightening on Shouta, and clenched her eyes tightly shut, then snapped awake with a stifled jerk, almost hitting her head against the wall.
“You’re going to hurt your neck, sleeping in a position like that,” Shouta said dryly. By that point, his own spine felt compressed, tense and unhappy from being held in the same position for too long.
The little girl shushed him nervously, drawing him closer to her chest, and Shouta went silent, listening. There was nobody in the hallway, but he wouldn’t be surprised if this room was being monitored by audio or video.
“You should go, kitty,” the little girl whispered, barely audible. Her words were somewhat belied by the tight grip she still had on him. “They’re gonna come for me soon. If Aniki finds you with me, he-” she cut herself off, lips wobbling and whole body trembling, eyes glistening with barely held-back tears.
Shouta suspected he knew how that sentence ended, anyway.
“So, you need to go,” the little girl ordered, voice shaking. “Go hide, or- or go back wherever you came from, okay, kitty?”
She pulled away, fixing him with a heartbreakingly desperate red-eyed stare, and Shouta nodded easily.
In general, Shouta avoided saying things that were not true. Not only was he good friends and essentially coworkers with Naomasa, who there was no real point in lying to anyway, but in most cases, lying just wasn’t the most logical course of action. Unless he was hiding classified information or trying to teach his students a lesson, Shouta avoided telling lies.
He did make some exceptions, though.
Besides, he wasn’t even saying anything, so you could argue that he wasn’t necessarily telling a lie. It would be a ridiculous, semantic argument, but you could argue.
At the moment, though, Shouta was slithering out of the little girl’s arms and retreating under her flimsy low-slung bed. He blended into the shadows there, peering out from underneath and listening intently.
After only a few minutes, Shouta heard footsteps slow to a stop outside the door. The key jiggled in the door lock, and Shouta went completely still, his eyes barely slitted open as he watched the door swing open. He could only see the newcomer from the knee down, and less as he approached the bed. He wore dark pants and black boots, spotlessly clean in keeping with the Shie Hassaikai’s operating procedures that bowed to Overhaul’s germophobia, but the hems of his pants were worn and threadbare, and the toes of his boots were scuffed, the laces so frayed and broken that they didn’t fit into a double knot anymore.
“Come, Eri,” the newcomer ordered. His tone was strict and commanding, and the little girl, presumably Eri, said nothing in return, only sliding quickly off the bed and hovering at the man’s side. The two of them turned and walked towards the still-open door, and Shouta slunk hastily after them, slipping through the door right before the man turned around to close it.
He let go of Eri’s hand for a moment, fighting with the key that was apparently jammed in the lock, and Eri curled and uncurled her fingers, glancing at Shouta with tears swimming in her eyes. Her gaze flicked from him to the man still fighting with the lock to the long, daunting corridor stretching away from them. Shouta pressed himself against Eri’s legs and looked up at her, trying to somehow tell her with his eyes that he would protect her. No matter what happened, he would be there for her. Nobody would hurt her on his watch.
Either she had somewhat understood what he was trying to say, or she took strength from his mere presence, because she sniffled quietly and blinked the tears out of her eyes, staring forward as the yakuza member grabbed her hand again.
“Stupid cat,” he muttered, aiming a kick at Shouta that missed by about a meter. Shouta shot him a dark look and slipped away to walk on the other side of Eri. He had a feeling he was about to see exactly why there was a little girl in the middle of the yakuza compound, covered in bandages and kept in a room that couldn’t be opened from the inside. And he knew he wouldn’t like it.