Chapter Text
“Ma’am. I’m sorry but I can’t help you.”
Aizawa Shouta has seen this time and time again. The panic in the person’s eyes, hands twisting and wringing their sleeves, and the utter, unsupressable shock in their slack jaw as the male officer at the front desk shoots them down. It just goes along with the person’s history - their homelessness.
“Are you really refusing to file a missing person’s report? A child’s missing person’s report?”
the distressed woman demands.
Shouta’s seen this woman before, in fact, he visits her camp often. Ms. Tsuni is a motherly figure to the lost children of the underground. He always sees her either herding or being followed by two small children. The youngest of the bunch just turned five. The oldest, and newest member of the makeshift family, couldn’t be more than twelve. None of the three children are with her now.
As common as it is for a homeless individual to turn themselves in for a petty crime in order to find a warm place to sleep, he’s never seen her in the police station. The woman’s face red from willing herself not to cry.
The officer sighs, “I can’t let you fill out a missing person’s if you aren’t the child’s legal guardian or a mandatory reporter.”
“I - I am! Or used to be. I was a teacher before!”
Who unfortunately lost her job to a giant of a villain falling on the elementary school and forcing dozens to file for bankruptcy when they couldn’t find work elsewhere.
When Ms. Tsuni first shared her story with Shouta, he felt almost guilty. Like it was his fault that he had two jobs, and his husband had three, and other Pro’s also had secondary living expenses as if he - and everyone else - snatched the work from her grasp. However, when he proposed employing her for light house cleaning, she turned him down.
These children need me , she had said. No one else will care for them if I leave them here.
In that aspect, he couldn’t agree with her more.
“Used to be just won’t cut it, Ma’am. Unless you can contact the boy’s real mother and get her down here, my hands are tied. I’m sorry.”
A boy, Shouta thinks, skulking out of sight in the breakroom threshold. There are only two boys out of Ms. Tsuni’s pack. The seven year old and the newest addition with wild green hair.
“He’s a runaway,” Ms. Tsuni insistes. “If I give you a description, can’t you at least look through open missing children’s cases to see if they match? Here, I can even look through all the missing posters and point him out if you don’t want to.”
So it’s the oldest - the camp’s longest staying runaway.
Shouta hums into his styrofoam cup, sipping down the stale burnt brue. He’s relieved the one who’s missing isn’t the seven year old, but his shoulders don’t completely relax and the scowl on his face doesn’t lift. There’s still a child unaccounted for. Age doesn’t always come with street smarts.
From his view point, watching from the breakroom to the right of the front desk, he can tell the officer and Ms. Tsuni are on their last thread of patients with each other. They’ve been going in circles ever since the woman marched in five minutes ago demanding to fill out a report, and Shouta doesn’t need a screaming match just before the end of his shift. He gets enough shouting at home.
Shouta throws away the rest of the terrible coffee and steps out to interrupt another one of the officer’s bullshit excuses as to why he can’t help. “Ms. Tsuni.”
The woman’s head snaps his way. An air of surprise settles into relief when she sees him. She takes a deep, calming breath when she speaks, “Mr. Eraserhead, please tell this crap-bag of an obviously donut loving officer that I have every right to fill out a missing child’s report , especially since this child’s been under my care for almost two months now.”
Her determination to not curse even when no children were in sight would be amusing in any other situation. Instead of thinking of the hilarity of her insults, he thinks of the fact that she actually can’t fill anything out and how unfair it is.
With a vague gesture to the stiff waiting chairs lining the back wall, he says. “Care to sit and explain?”
Ms. Tsuni throws a final glare at the officer - an officer who’s thanking Shouta through his eyes - and strides past the tired man. Shouta follows after her, taking the chair to her right and adjusting into a comfortable, yet attentive, position. If there’s one heroic skill Shouta didn’t learn through rigorous training or experience on the job, it’d be his ability to read people. Every tick, twitch, syllable, and tone, he can usually guess what the one he’s examining is thinking or feeling.
Sitting there with Ms. Tsuni, simply sharing space before she speaks, he can feel the agitated mess of nerves buzzing throughout her being. She can’t sit still, wringing her hands, licking her lips. When he pulls her hands apart, she picks at the scabbed, flaky eczema on her inner wrist and goes back to twisting her fingers. She’s angry - he can see it in the subtle dip of her right brow - and under that anger is unquestionable worry for the oldest boy of the group she calls her ducklings.
“He didn’t run away,” Ms. Tsuni says with such conviction, he’s almost convinced.
“How do you know?” Shouta questions. He keeps his face and tone natural, trying not to let his gaze flicker to her hands. She iching her wrist again.
“You know him, Aizawa. You’ve met the boy. He’s happy with me. With us. Tell me one reason why he would leave without saying goodbye.”
It’s true, he’s met the boy, but he would hardly say he knows him. It’s obvious he’s a runaway, but Shouta doesn’t know the reason why. The boy has secrets - he’s pretty sure Izuku isn’t his real name - and a Hero is probably on the top of the list of individuals he won’t admit them to.
Instead of humoring her comments, he drives the conversation elsewhere. “How long has he been missing?”
He can feel her relief that someone is finally asking the right questions. “Last night. Just before dark. I sent him out to the corner store to get a few packs of instant ramen and water.”
Shouta made a mental note to drop off more supplies to the camp community before next patrol. He hands her a tissue from the small table top to the side and she thanks him as she presses it to her now bleeding wrist.
“What time of day would you say?”
“Oh gosh. Around six-ish, I think.”
He notes the time on his watch. It’s three in the morning. Nine hours since the boy left for the corner store.
She must have sensed his confusion because she immediately follows with; “I couldn’t come sooner because the Ducklings wouldn’t go to sleep. They are worried about Izuku. I had to get Mrs. Niko to tire them out before coming.”
Mrs. Niko is an elderly woman living in the camp with a calming Quirk. Perfect for putting worried little minds to sleep.
“Izuku didn’t run away.” Ms. Tsuni steals herself again, determined to make her point absolutely clear. “Something is wrong. I can feel it in my bones.”
The woman’s Quirk is a simple light emitter type that comes from her palms like fireflies. This is nothing more than a mother's intuition.
And Shouta would be stupid not to heed her warning.
“I’ll look into it,” he says as he stands. He’s learned not to promise anything.
“Thank you,” she gives a small smile as she rises as well.
“Can I walk you back?” Shouta asks and suddenly his body feels more rickety with just the thought of going anywhere that isn’t to bed. However, it’s still dark and Shouta doesn’t want to come back tomorrow with two children at the front desk pleading to find their surrogate mother.
“I'll be alright. Besides, you look like you’re going to collapse any minute now.”
“I don’t mind.”
Mr. Tsuni smiles with a sigh. Patting his arm with a gentle palm, she says, “Go to home, Aizawa.” and leaves the station.
Shouta does just that with a quick farewell to the officer behind the counter and a brisk walk to his house on the other side of town. It hadn’t been a particularly hard night until he went to the station to fill out last minute reports of tonight’s petty crimes.
Izuku - the boy with no known last name - isn’t where he’s supposed to be. Or, at least isn’t where he’s expected to be. The boy that hardly talks is gone. Now, laying in bed with his husband who didn’t stir when he crawled under the sheets, the worry settles in. All of Ms. Tsuni’s concern consumes him like a weighted blanket because the woman is right.
Izuku wouldn’t run away from the life he found with her and the others at the camp. His bright smile whenever someone thanked him for running their erran or when he played with the children is proof of that. He made a home in the short school bus he shared with Ms. Tsuni and the two young ones. He became so attached that he almost punched Shouta when they first met. The scruffy Hero only tried to check in with the woman and pass on more supplies throughout the camp. All of that and so much more was testament to Izuku never voluntarily leaving.
There is just one more thing Shouta has to do before closing his blurring eyes. He pulls out his phone from under his pillow and emails Detective Tsukauchi.
Requesting Amber Alert. First name, Izuku. Estimated age, 12. Green hair. Green eyes. Freckles. Red shoes. Black backpack. Last seen 6pm last night walking to the store on the corner of 5th and 27th downtown.
It isn’t as if he sleeps well to begin with. From being a teacher and an underground Hero, any chance at clearing the bags under his eyes is sorely missed. He’s simply too busy. Last night - three o’clock this morning - was one of the few times he actually had the time to sleep in, and he did nothing but toss and turn until eleven.
Shouta was stuck in an awful sense of half consciousness where his body wouldn’t move but his mind was still active. All the way until sunrise, he couldn’t stop thinking about the boy with green hair and bright - yet guarded - eyes. Their first meeting had been anything but welcoming - filled with bared teeth and wide swings. However, after that, as Shouta’s trips to the camp became more natural to the boy, he slowly tried inching near him, to figure out why the boy was suddenly there. As if he just appeared out of nowhere.
And when Shouta tried looking for missing person’s reports with the same description as the child, he might as well have been a ghost.
No one was looking for him.
It didn’t take long for his greetings to be returned with a subtle nod and a shy smile. The boy’s persistent weariness was obvious, but with the young Eri and Kota greeting the Hero with wide smiles of their own, that weariness started to dwindle. Shouta’s new interest to get to know the stranger found him visiting the camp every other day and it paid off two weeks since their first meeting. The boy no longer shuffled away when Shouta stood beside him within arms reach, his eyes no longer bounced anywhere and everywhere to avoid his gaze, and it was then that he finally formally introduced himself as Izuku. The monumental breakthrough was when the boy actually started answering simple questions without too much hesitation.
(Shouta learned quickly which questions to avoid - Where did you grow up? What’s your Quirk? If you need help, where did you run away from? All of which earned him no answer and the boy avoiding him for the rest of his visit.)
Through Izuku’s answers, Shouta learned something important about him: his speech and pronunciation of almost every word in the dictionary were distorted. Jumbled like a toddler’s. And as Shouta rolls out of bed with a growing headache, he wonders, if Izuku was grabbed, would he be able to scream for help?
It seems the only good thing to come of his Sunday morning worries is the detective’s reply. Izuku’s description has been dispatched to every officer and other underground Heros within the county.
The first twenty-four hours to any kidnapping is critical and he’s already lost so much time. It’s because of this Shouta doesn’t like making promises to find someone’s family member or friend; but, that doesn’t stop the glimmer of hope from blooming as he sips his fist dose of caffeine.
~~*~~
To Officer Yagami, tonight’s patrol is the same as every other. Cruising down the same streets, peering down the same allies, and warding off the same homeless individuals trying to climb through abandoned building windows. In the slums of Jaku City, there’s never anything new and unusual.
When he first heard the amber alert over his dispatch radio, he tried - truly tried - to find any young man fitting the description, hoping to find some excitement in his night. That was until two hours rolled around and he realized the person of interest is from Musutafu, another city more than two hours away. While it isn’t impossible to catch a night train out of Musutafu, Yagami seriously doubts the boy is capable enough to board the train going the furthest from where the alert is registered. Plus, the night train from Musutafu to Jaku City stops running at seven. Unless the boy has a speed Quirk, he doesn’t think making that train is possible.
So, tonight - close to twelve-thirty - is just another boring night.
Yagami trails another street over, sighing as he makes the same turn for the third time since his shift started. His only saving grace is the biggest to-go coffee he could order at the twenty-four hour cafe a few blocks down. He picks it up, takes a long sip, and almost spits it all over his steering wheel as he peers down an alley filled with scuffed cardboard boxes and large garbage bins.
There, poking out from one of the boxes towards the start of the alley, are a pair of red hightops. The shoes aren’t the only thing that make him stomp on the breaks and put the cruiser in reverse to get a better view. The pant legs wearing the shoes are covered in blood.
Yagami parks the cruiser, leaving it running, and grabs his heavy police issued flashlight. Clicking it on, he starts down the alley illuminated by a single street light casting an ominous orange glow. Like a spotlight on the shoes.
He quickly sweeps the alley, searching for a sign of someone else lurking in the shadows, then steps further in. He calls loud and clear, “Hey, you.”
Closer now, his flashlight trails from the shoes, up the bloody legs and has to crouch to shine the light into the box. There, still as a corpse, is the exact description of the boy from the amber alert laying on his side facing the officer. However, he’s covered head to toe in blood. His hair is matted with red, hands and face covered to the point where Yagami knew he had freckles but couldn’t make them out. Beside the body, a long knife is also covered in flaking red.
“Hey, you okay?” Yagami says, and hesitantly taps the flashlight to the boy’s thigh.
Blood covered eyelids snap open and Yagami is met with wide green eyes staring straight at him.
The boy lunges for the knife and the officer reels back. The suspect oddly yells as he swings the long knife at the officer, stabbing the air and threatening to attack. Yagami gets to his feet and his stun gun is immediately in his grip, pointing steadily at the attacker.
“Drop the knife!” Yagami yells. He doesn’t want to shoot the kid.
The boy only continues yelling.
“I said drop it!”
Bloody knees tuck in the box, the boy's body rising. Knife still stabbing.
Yagami pulls the trigger, prongs shootout, pierce the target and sends clicking electricity into the small boy in the box.