Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If there was one thing that Shouta hated, it was brats with wasted potential.

Sure, he was only a few years out of U.A. And sure, that meant he was seen as a rookie kind of hero, newly minted, only there for some action. Never mind the fact that he had one of the highest arrest rates in the underground community, everyone just focused on the fact that he was barely out of his teens.

Well, it wasn’t like he became a hero for the recognition, anyway. So what if some of the older heroes in the underground circles didn’t like him, fine. Nothing much that he could do about that, or even wanted to. He just wanted to save people. And that was exactly why he was facing this current dilemma.

Shouta sighed, and carefully adjusted his scarf, all the while carefully staying hidden in a tall tree. He was just trying to get a stray cat out of the tree- silly thing couldn’t get back down- and while he was up there, he happened to be in the perfect position to watch as a group of children surrounded another kid. Who was alone. And clearly outnumbered. And trying to get up, while surrounded by a group of bullies.

Shouta could have stayed out of it, could have pretended that he’d never seen it, and could have been on his merry way. But. That wouldn’t be very heroic, would it? Shouta gave a near-silent sigh, and jumped out of the tree, landing neatly behind the group of brats. They all jumped, the spikey-haired blond one closest to the kid being bullied, whirled around and stalked over to him, adopting a (very poor) fighting stance.

The blond brat snarled up at him. “Who’re you, fuck face?” Shouta almost rolled his eyes at the brat’s horrible attempt to be intimidating, but he restrained himself. “I’m nobody, kid. Why are all of you ganging up on him?” he asked, giving a nod towards the brat on the ground. The pointy child in front of him scowled, and his two flunkies (because that was obviously what they were to this kid, seriously) jeered. “We’re puttin’ him in his place ‘cause he’s a useless, quirkless Deku,” the blond porcupine growled, hands sparking.

And wasn’t that something. Shouta couldn’t resist rolling his eyes at that bold statement, while silently fuming on the inside. He could practically hear Hizashi’s voice telling him no, Shouta, they’re just kids, they don’t know any better, leave ‘em be, yeah? Only, these brats were clearly so full of themselves, like nobody had ever told them they were wrong before, and the ash-blonde spikey-haired dandelion brat held a smirk so full of confidence that Shouta wanted to smack it off his face.

Wait, no. Bad Shouta, he could be arrested for hitting a child in public. Better to just scare them off, then. Shouta glared at the kids, allowing his quirk to come to the surface. The two flunkies (one with some kind of a wing quirk, the other with some kind of finger-lengthening ability) stared at him in horror, before bursting into tears and running in the opposite direction from him. Shouta knew very well that with his glowing red eyes and floating hair, he made quite the terrifying picture, especially to younger brats. Good to see he hadn’t lost his touch.
The pint-sized dandelion brat hadn’t run, but he was staring at Shouta with wide eyes, probably wondering why his quirk wasn’t working. Shouta grinned eerily at him, and the pomeranian boy tripped over his own two feet in trying to get away from him. Shouta let his quirk drop, making his way over to the brat that was still on the ground.

“You alright, kid?” Shouta asked gruffly, while trying to wrack his mind for anything that might be useful in dealing with a small child when actively trying to not scare them. The boy nodded, wide-eyed, and scrambled to his feet. Shouta absentmindedly noticed the freckles, large eyes, and wobbly smile the kid had, while making a mental note to get himself a haircut soon, because if his hair looked anything like this brat’s, he probably only looked like a very intimidating hedge. “U-um,” the bush-child (Shouta wasn’t great with nicknames, okay) stammered out.

Taking a deep breath, the kid shouted at him, “DO YOU THINK SOMEBODY QUIRKLESS COULD BE A HERO?” The offspring of a weed whacker and grass clippings looked up at Shouta with watery eyes, shrinking back from him, as if expecting to get hit. Shouta groaned, and crouched down so that he was eye level with the kid. “Listen, brat, because I’m only going to say this once,” he said softly, said brat looking at him with the watery eyes of Bambi. “My quirk only lets me cancel the quirks of others, so those bullies,” he nodded in the vague direction that the pomeranian and his hench-children had run off in, “couldn’t do anything to me without their quirks.

“However, if I went against somebody who was better in hand-to-hand combat than I was, then I would lose, whether they had a quirk or not. Understand, kid?” The green brat was looking up at him with stars in his big eyes, hanging on to Shouta’s every word. Shouta stood up, vaguely uncomfortable with the amount of hero worship the kid was giving off towards him- not that he really cared, because that would mean he cared about what this freckled brat thought of him. And fuck what Hizashi said, he did NOT have a soft spot for tiny children and cats (okay, maybe the cat thing was semi-accurate).

“Quirk or no quirk,” Shouta called back to the brat as he strode away, “if you train hard enough, you can do anything, even become the first quirkless hero.” Okay, maybe he was exaggerating a bit, but really, what was he supposed to do when this very small and impressionable child was looking at him with hope? The kid sniffled a little, and started to cry, but wiped away his falling tears (and thank whatever bastard god that was looking out for Shouta for that, because he could NOT deal with tiny crying children, he could hardly deal with Hizashi and Nemuri and Tensei).

Shouta didn’t stick around to find out what the kid was going to say next, because he saw the wretched cat that had gotten itself stuck in a tree and started this whole mess. It was on the ground, running after something, and Shouta nearly tripped over his own scarf to chase after it. He didn’t, of course, not because he had an audience watching him leave, but because he was just that cool, thank you very much. He just helped a kid in trouble, that was all, he didn’t need to look cool or anything for the green puffball. And, alright, maybe the kid seemed to have potential, after all, he kept on picking himself back up, even when the odds were so clearly stacked against him.

Besides, Shouta mused as he finally caught up to the nasty furball of a cat, it was just a one off thing. It wasn’t like he’d be seeing or saving any other brat in the foreseeable future.

Chapter Text

It was very much NOT a one off thing.

Scowling, Shouta shot a sharp glare at his brand new shadow. The blonde bully that Shouta had scared off a week ago was following him around, acting very much like a bad ninja. The brat was hiding behind trees, crouching behind random fire hydrants, and even ducking into a nearby store to attempt to avoid his attention. Shouta would have laughed if he wasn’t so annoyed, actually.

He was an underground Pro, for crying out loud. His whole thing was blending into the shadows while stalking his own prey. And this kindergartener- preschooler?- thought that he and his very noticeable blonde hair would be able to stalk him properly, without being noticed? Hilarious. Or, it would have been, if the kid’s presence wasn’t so irritating. While he wasn’t really trying to hide at the moment, it was always an irksome feeling when somebody was stalking his every move.

Shouta turned and walked into a dark alleyway, his scowl deepening even further when the blonde followed him. Shouta silently slipped his capture weapon from around his neck and tossed one end around a broken pipe jutting out from one of the alley walls. Pulling himself up, Shouta carefully balanced on the broken piece of metal, eyes scanning the entrance of the dead-end alley.

Sure enough, the pint-sized stalker came barreling into the opening between the two buildings with all of the subtlety of a raging elephant. The angry terror spun around, breathing heavily, clearly angry that his quarry had been lost. Shouta almost fell off his perch when the brat started cussing him out, calling him all sorts of names.

“Jerky hobo man!” “Brainless fuckwad!” and “Useless weirdo!” were just a few of the highlights. The kid was practically howling his insults, but Shouta wasn’t really impressed by the level of creativity of the insults. He had been called much worse by villains, although this was certainly the first time that he had ever been so directly insulted by a child that couldn’t have passed their sixth birthday. (Well- look, he’d never been the best at the whole ‘age’ thing, okay? It was a miracle that he was able to remember his own age and date of birth, let alone guess how old some random brat was.)

Grabbing his capture weapon from around his neck once more, Shouta sent one end flying down from his seat on the metal pipe towards the loud gremlin. The scarf wrapped around the kid, and before he could even blink, Shouta had hoisted the brat up to eye level. Shouta couldn’t hold back a small snort when he finally got a good look at the brat from up close.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the extremely loud and flashy hair of the spitting mad bully. It was ash-blonde and had a pointy-ish look to it, but after seeing it up close, Shouta was willing to bet that it was actually quite soft. Next, looking at his clothes, it was obvious that he came from a well-off family, with high quality fabrics on every article he was wearing. Shouta almost felt some kind of second-hand embarrassment from his own shabby clothes compared to the kid’s, but he quickly squashed down that errant thought.

The blonde’s face was contorted into what would have looked like a vaguely threatening sneer on an adult, but simply made the kid look like he was constipated. He was clearly trying to seem threatening, but as Shouta dealt with villains every other night, the brat would really have to up his game if he was trying to frighten him. Plus, tied up in his capture weapon as he was, Shouta wasn’t feeling all that threatened by a kid who could barely move his legs.

“Why have you been following me, kid,” Shouta prompted bluntly, not even having the energy to ask the brat a proper question. Instead, the words were barked out of his mouth like an order. The kid hanging from his grasp flinched back from his tone of voice, but plastered a haughty, smug look onto his face. Shouta really wanted an excuse to smack this brat.

“Isn’t it obvious, ya old fart? I’m tracking you down ‘cause you’re a bad villain, an’ beating up the bad guys is what heroes do!” The blonde gave his little speech with such certainty in his eyes that it took Shouta aback. He sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose to try and dissuade the headache he could feel beginning to build.

“I’m not a villain, kid, but to be honest, you don’t seem all that heroic to me,” Shouta grumbled back. The pocket sized porcupine’s red eyes squinted, and his hands started to spark from their position within Shouta’s scarf. Shouta stared at the kid, unblinking, allowing his quirk to rise to the surface. With his quirk, the familiar sensation of dry-eye and his hair floating up from his neck were brought to his attention, but he pushed them to the back of his mind in order to carefully observe the brat’s actions.

As soon as Shouta’s quirk took effect, the sparks coming off of the kid’s hands pattered to a stop. The boy widened his eyes to rather comical proportions, and started thrashing in the scarf, spouting off curses loud enough to attract attention from the passerby. Shouta quickly manipulated his scarf into covering the brat’s mouth in order to force him to be quiet. The feral problem child was seriously starting to remind him of another loud blonde in his life that he absolutely despised (not really, though, Shouta just liked to lie to himself on that front).

The kid kept on kicking and fighting, still trying to yell if the muffled noises coming from his wrapped-up mouth were any indication. Shouta was suddenly struck by a sense of familiarity, although it took him a moment to decipher it. Oh. Oh no. Shouta was struck with the sudden urge to tear out all of his hair, but he was a professional hero, so he held down that urge as best he could. Regardless, he was still quite sorely tempted.

The little pomeranian brat had potential. A different sort of potential from the green problem child in the park, the one the blonde had been bullying. The walking hedge had been getting up, even when he was clearly outnumbered. Whether it was out of bravery or necessity, Shouta didn’t know, but it was still impressive. On the other hand, the problem brat in front of him was still struggling, but he was wrestling with Shouta’s scarf as if he wanted to strangle his captor with it. It was simultaneously amusing, confusing, and mildly insulting. Shouta hated it.

Hoping that both the kid and himself were up to date on their shots, Shouta loosened his hold on the kid’s mouth. The kid coughed, glaring at him, and looked just about ready to bite Shiuta’s nose off (Shouta was REALLY hoping that the kid had all his damn shots in order). Before the brat could open his mouth, whether for more insults or the whole biting thing, he couldn't tell, Shouta raised a hand, effectively shutting the kid up.

“Do heroes beat someone up for being a ‘deku’?” Shouta asked the kid seriously, blinking and allowing his quirk to fall into its dormant state. “Do you see All Might walking around, flaunting his quirk in every alley? Do you ever see him trying to hurt somebody, just because they don’t have a quirk?” At his last words, the kid finally gave a reaction, a small flinch, but Shouta saw it.

“You don't,” Shouta continued, knowing that he held the blonde’s attention. “What you were doing at the park to the other kid, when you were hurting him. That wasn’t hero-like at all, was it?” The brat, slightly calmer than he had been when he had been captured, gave a miniscule shake of his head, eyes fixed at a point over Shouta’s shoulder. He could read body language like a book, and at the moment, the kid was hanging on to his every word, even if he didn’t seem like it. He had the feral child right where he wanted him, so Shouta allowed the capture weapon to loosen its hold around the brat’s torso.

Lowering the kid down to the filthy alley floor, Shouta jumped down from the pole. A startled yelp came from the brat below him, causing Shouta to raise an eyebrow from his hold on his capture weapon, his feet about a meter from the brat’s own head. He jumped the rest of the way down, kanding lightly on the balls of his feet, giving the small pomeranian in front of him a baleful lookover. The brat sputtered and flushed a bright red.

“Listen here, brat,” Shouta started, not even pausing when the living dandelion looked at him with rapt attention. “If you want to be a hero, actually try to help those around you rather than trying to push them down.” The kid looked down at his feet, almost remorseful looking. Seriously, it was like the kid had never been told off for his actions before. The kid looked up at him and asked, “How?”

Shouta sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache building up in his head (again). Seriously, what was it with brats and causing him grief lately? He bluntly replied to the boy, squinting through his pinched eyes. “That’s up to you, brat. You’re not All Might, and you’re definitely too young to be any other hero. That’s why you have to make your own path. Got it?” The tiny cretin with red eyes glared at him, and gave a single nod. Shouta, already knowing that he was going to regret all of his past and future actions, added one last piece to his previous statement.

“You have potential, kid. Stop wasting it.” Not waiting to see the reaction his final words had invoked (and oh, wasn’t THAT a serious case of deja vu), Shouta turned on his heel and started walking towards the opening of the alleyway when the brat yelled out to him. “What’s your name supposed to be, hobo man!?” Shouta sighed, and muttered “Eraserhead” in response, chancing a glance back at the blonde boy.

The kid looked at him with wide, glittering eyes, a huge smile, and-

Oh. Oh no. Shouta knew that look. It was the same look that the green haired gremlin had given him at the park, after Shouta had told him that he could be a hero. The Eraserhead Fanclub had earned another member, hadn’t it? He was an underground hero, for fuck’s sake, he shouldn't have to deal with this kind of bullshit!

Fuck. If Nemuri, Hizashi, and Tensei ever found out about the pomeranian brat, or the green problem child, he would never hear the end of it.

Chapter Text

There was a child in a tree. There was a CHILD in a TREE.

And it couldn’t have been the green sparkly-eyed problem with a bad case of hero worship, which probably wouldn’t have been that much of a hassle for him to deal with. And of COURSE it couldn’t have been the blond pomeranian brat, now that Shouta had earned his grudging respect. No, it just had to be a new problem child for him to rescue. Out of a tree, no less. Why was this his life, again?

Giving an exasperated sigh, Shouta made his way to the base of the tree, catching the attention of the brat stuck on one of the higher branches. She watched him warily as he came to a stop at the base of the tree. For a moment, they simply stared at the other, both unblinking. Shouta gave another long sigh, unwrapping his capture weapon from around his neck.

“Do you want me to get you down from there, kid?” The girl flinched at his sudden words, before slowly nodding. Shouta wrapped an end of his scarf around the branch just below hers, and carefully hoisted himself up. The tree limb creaked a bit under his weight, but it held, so Shouta turned his attention back to the tiny child in the tree.

She had green hair that very nearly blended in with the canopy of leaves the tree held. Her eyes were large and wary, tracking his every move. Up close, Shouta noticed that she had some almost frog-like features, including a very large mouth. He made to move to her branch, but stopped when he saw her flinch.
“I’m going to come up next to you, is that alright?” Shouta gruffly asked the kid, silently panicking. He wasn’t used to talking nicely to children, no matter how much he spoke to his so-called ‘friends’ who had the collective emotional maturity of a bunch of toddlers. His only other interactions with actual children were usually saving them during villain attacks, or kids bothering him in the park when he was trying to nap, or-

Shouta was trying very hard not to remember a green-eyed problem child who kept picking himself up from the ground, even when the odds were hopelessly against him. Or how a blond pomeranian brat had struggled against capture with sparks in his eyes. Those children were clearly outliers. He was not going to allow himself to think of those brats. Nope. Never.

Shouta was shaken out of his stupor by the frog-child giving him a nod to his question, scooting herself over to make room for him. He hoisted himself onto the branch next to her, twisting a bit to get a good seat. The branch creaked ominously, but Shouta ignored it- he had larger things to worry about at the moment. Turning, he eyed the girl next to him, who was chewing her bottom lip as she looked towards the ground.

“Hey,” Shouta said to the girl, eliciting another flinch. Keeping his body language open, he unlooped pieces of his capture weapon from around his neck, showing them to her with open palms. “I’m going to tie one end of this around you and lower you to the ground, alright?” The girl nodded again, moving closer to him.

Shouta was trying to be slow and steady with his movements, but he didn’t like the way the branch was bending under their weight. Best to get the kid off the branch as fast as he could. He wrapped an end of his scarf around the stomach of the brat, carefully supporting her weight as he did so. The frog wrapped her hands around his scarf (were his hands that small at that age? Shouta doubted it) and hung on tightly.

Carefully, slowly, hand over hand, Shouta lowered the kid to the ground, braced against the tree to take her weight. The branch he was sitting on creaked ominously under his weight, but he didn’t go any faster. If there was anything he was good at, it was being patient (unlike the idiots he called his friends, who wouldn’t know patience if it hit them in the eye. Nor did they seem to have any practice in the art of subtlety, for that matter). Carefully, slowly, hand over hand, Shouta kept feeding the length of his capture weapon through his hands until the kid's two feet hit the ground.

She stumbled a little on impact, but immediately started to unwrap his capture weapon from where it rested around her. Once she was done, she looked up at Shouta, clearly expecting him to do something. He made quick work of the bundle in her arms, pulling it up to rest in its customary loops on his shoulders. Measuring another length of it into his hands, Shouta crouched from his sitting position on the tree.

There was a loud cracking noise, and the branch fell out from under him. The frog child let out a hoarse croak (wow, she really was like a frog, Shouta hadn’t just been imagining things), and the brat made an aborted movement under him, as if to catch him (foolish child, she couldn’t possibly support his weight, not on her own, she was simply too small). Fortunately, Shouta had been expecting something like this to happen.

Spinning around in midair, he launched the pre-measured length of capture scarf from his hands into the air. As it snagged a much sturdier branch than the one he had been sitting on, Shouta crouched as his shoes came into contact with the bark of the tree trunk, allowing his legs to absorb most of the impact (thank goodness he hadn’t fallen on his ass again, like what had happened the last time he had tried a maneuver like that). Letting a few handfuls of fabric slip through his hands at a time, he safely made his way down the tree.

Shouta landed on the ground a few paces away from the frog child, looking over his shoulder at her (he hadn’t crushed her, good, that would make his job a lot harder than it had to be). The girl was stumbling towards him, eyes wide with some emotion that had Shouta reeling backwards, it was so strong.

Well, reeling back metaphorically speaking. His capture weapon was still around the tree, and if he tried to move with it there while he was still attached, he’d probably end up stumbling over his own two feet like some prepubescent brat who just had a growth spurt. Or, worse, he might look like Hizashi, who had basically zero hand-eye coordination, which should honestly be a real embarrassment for him, wasn’t he supposed to be a pro hero- wait. Focus, Shouta.

The little green frog was looking up at him with eyes full of worry, something that didn’t make sense to Shouta. He had just rescued her from the bad situation she was in, right? There shouldn’t have been anything else, and their surroundings looked safe enough, so why was she worried? (Yes, he was looking around the two of them from the corner of his eye to search for potential threats, and yes, he was probably just being paranoid, but he was still a hero, and he wasn’t stupid enough to ever let his gaurd down, thank you.)

Having reached him, the girl grabbed his arm and croaked, “Are you alright, kero?” Shouta blinked, not expecting those words (also, croaked? Damn, she really was a frog). He huffed, responding to her by saying, “I’m fine, kid. How about you? You hurt?” The girl shook her head, clutching his arm tighter. “What were you doing up there anyway, kid?” Shouta watched as the girl blushed at his question, clearly embarrassed about something.

Still flushed, the girl looked up at him to respond. “I was looking for a toy that my little brother threw into this tree, kero.” She held up a small toy frog (or a toad, they all looked the same to Shouta) that she had fished out of her pocket. Continuing, the little tree gremlin said, “Our parents are looking after him now, so I climbed the tree to get it back, kero.” Shouta looked up the tree at the branch that had snapped under his weight. “That’s a long way up,” he said, appraising the girl in front of him. She was staring down at her feet and clutching the hem of her dress with both hands, having let go of Shouta’s arm.

“I-I couldn’t get back down on my own, kero,” she stammered out, not meeting his gaze, “s-so thank you for your help, kero.” Shouta let out another huff at the girl’s timid behavior (and no, it was definitely not a huff of laughter. Absolutely not). Glancing at the piece of his scarf still wrapped around the tree, he decided it wasn’t really worth going through the effort of detangling, so he grabbed his knife from his waist to chop off the offending piece.

Slicing through the length of capture weapon to his knee, Shouta tucked the frayed edge into the (now significantly fewer) remaining loops resting on his shoulders. Stowing his knife, he knelt down, waiting patiently for the brat to look up at him. And, well. Shouta was nothing if not patient. And quiet. And a chronic insomniac. And a sucker for cats. And naps. And small children who were clearly in some kind of conspiracy with each other to make him lose his precious sleep. Seriously, what was with his recent streak of finding small brats with ridiculously annoying levels of potensial that was oh-so-clearly being wasted?

Slowly, the girl began to look up at him. Shouta quickly arranged his face into a (preferably) non-threatening expression. It seemed to work, because the girl didn’t flinch at the sight of him, simply stared, still clutching the toad (frog?) toy in her small fist. (Seriously, though, why were the brat’s hands so small? Maybe as a side effect of her quirk? Why else would they be so pint-sized, even for a little kid?)

“You were trying to save me when the branch fell, weren’t you?” The lovechild of Kermit the Frog and an actual human nodded her head, still looking at Shouta with eyes that drilled into his (apparently) bleeding heart. “That was an illogical thing to do,” he scolded, looking her in the eye. “You could have been hurt from the branch, and even if you had caught me, you wouldn’t be able to hold me.” Shouta was trying to tone down his language and usual levels of harshness he used when speaking, because he was speaking to a child, not a villain (or any of his ‘friends’ after they woke him up from a nap, because really, what kind of monsters did that kind of thing to a sleeping man).

Apparently, he was unsuccessful in speaking gently, as the small frog’s- tadpole’s?- eyes started to water and her lip wobbled. She was still staring at Shouta, though, which was making him slightly uncomfortable. Actually, no, scratch that, he was panicking, he didn’t deal well with people crying normally, how was he supposed to deal with a child crying of all things, he was not paid enough to deal with this, oh shit, fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuck-

Doing the only thing he could think of, Shouta kept on talking, somehow retaining his normal bland tone throughout his words. “It was, however, rather admirable that you jumped in to attempt to help someone, even though it was a total stranger.” ‘Jumped in’, really? Shouta had to refrain from smacking himself in the face at his choice of words, considering that the kid in front of him was likely at a very impressionable age. Instead, he kept talking, letting random pieces of knowledge filter into his words (as if he was a teacher. Like that would ever happen).

“The next time you want to save a falling person, you need to make sure that you’ll be able to take their weight. If you can, slow them down before grabbing them; that way, it’ll be easier on the both of you. Less of a chance you’ll drop them by accident.” Why was he doing this, exactly? He was rambling. Shouta was rambling. Shouta did not ramble. (The memory of the third year’s graduation party where Tensei had spiked the punch, leading Shouta to become a blubbering mess, was quickly ignored. They couldn’t prove anything, Shouta had burned all of the pictures from that day, he’d made sure of it.) But-

The kid was looking directly at him, staring with watery eyes. However, the kid seemed to be taking in his advice seriously. Besides that shock to his system (which was a surprise, it wasn’t like Nemuri ever listened to him), the small frog didn’t seem to be in danger of crying anymore. Wow. Thank- actually, no, gods were useless, they hadn’t given him a break from meeting random brats, screw those bastards. Thank Nezu. (Shouta’s old teacher might as well have been a god, in Shouta’s opinion; it certainly couldn’t hurt to treat him as such. The rat was still terrifying, even if he were to be on the other side of the planet.)

Standing, Shouta stretched his arms over his head, doing a lazy sweep over the perimeter. Shouta caught sight of a car being chased down by some speed hero in a flashy costume, who was clearly not going to be able to catch up. Idiot. It would be much more logical to cut the car off, not chase it around in a futile attempt to overtake it. This was why he was an underground hero. (Well, that and the media. Shouta hated the media.) The daytime pros were just so wearing.

“I have to leave, kid,” he said gruffly to the brat, ruffling her hair as he passed. “Are you a hero?” Frogger asked as he walked towards the commotion to supply backup to the moronic daytime pro who was clearly failing his job. “Maybe,” Shouta supplied, distracted by running through his mental map of the city to find a good spot to cut off the car chase.

Turning back to the kid, about to speak, Shouta’s words failed him, because that sparkle in the tree frog’s eyes as she looked at him certainly wasn’t there before. Unfortunately, Shouta had seen it before. On another certain green child. And on an explosive blond. Both of whom he had promised himself not to think about, and yet here was another brat who was just like the other two that he’d run into. God- wait, no, they’d never done anything for him, Nezu-fucking-dammit.

Shouta gave the small-fisted tadpole (her hands were really small, alright) a simple nod. He swung from his (much shorter) capture weapon to the top of an apartment building. From there, out of sight of anyone on the streets, he let out a furious string of curses that, had it been within earshot, would have made even the R-Rated hero Midnight blush. Scrubbing a hand down his face, Shouta groaned in frustration before jumping around the city on the rooftops to find the incompetent hero from the car chase.

Why did he keep finding himself in situations where he ended up with a problem child emotionally attached to him? Perhaps Nezu was actually a god, if only one that was making him suffer for his twisted entertainment.

(In the distance, a small creature who could not be classified as neither a dog, a mouse, or a bear, cackled hysterically at his desk.)

Chapter Text

Shouta bit back a curse, trying to tone down his usually foul language, as there was a child present.

Shouta had just been minding his own business (he actually was) when a black haired boy had barreled into him. From above. In a near-empty parking lot. Where there were only three cars, a lamp post, and the occasional passerby. And the child had decided to land on Shouta, of all places. Not near him. On top of him. (Either Shouta was getting rusty, or the kid had literally flown out of nowhere. He decided to believe the second possibility, because the first would just be plain embarrassing.)

Fortunately for the kid, Shouta was a trained pro with extremely fast reflexes. If he hadn’t been, the both of them probably would’ve ended up extremely hurt, at the rate the kid was going. As it was, Shouta had barely enough time to extend his capture weapon to the lamp post directly above him, twisting to catch the flying gremlin on his front, while leaning back and letting his scarf drape loosely around himself.

He finished his actions not a moment too soon. In doing so, a split-second before the child hit Shouta, his scarf twisted around the lamppost that he was aiming for. When the kid barreled into Shouta's chest, pushing him backwards, the loops of the capture weapon that had fallen slack around the rest of his body tightened, causing Shouta to land lying back in a hammock of his capture weapon, swinging gently above the hard concrete.

Shouta did a quick scan over himself, noting that he had escaped with only a couple of scratches. And a crick in the muscles of his neck. Wincing, Shouta moved a bit, shifting so that he was sitting on the loops of his capture weapon, rather than lying back on them and putting weight on his neck. (He had issues, okay, sue him, the life of a pro hero wasn’t as cracked up as the media made it out to be, especially as an underground pro.)

Sighing, Shouta decided he could no longer delay the inevitable. Meaning he had to check on the gremlin who had gotten them into this situation in the first place. Glancing down, he was met by a pair of wide eyes staring at him, closer to his face then he thought they would be. Flinching back, not used to having people in his immediately close personal bubble, he gave a curious glance over the brat in his arms.

The kid looked alright, if a little shaken. Although, he had just rammed into a random person in a near-empty parking lot, only inches away from hitting the ground, so that was to be expected. He had choppily cut hair, only reaching shoulder length. Wide eyes contrasted his pale face, his mouth open as he stared up at Shouta. His most notable feature were his elbows, which were oddly large for a child- or anyone, really.

With a raised eyebrow, Shouta realized that the flying menace’s elbows weren’t only abnormally sized, but they also had a weird shape. They almost seemed cylindrical, with thin openings on each of them. And- was that tape coming out of one of them? What was this kid, some kind of pre-quirk era discount Spider-Man?

Looking back at the kid's face, Shouta jolted back from him again as the brat grinned up at him with a triangular smile, even closer to his face (and even further into his personal bubble). (If that was how Shouta looked when he smiled, he might actually owe most of his old classmates a sincere apology, because by Nezu that grin was terrifying.)

“That was so cool, mister!” the gremlin yelled from his seat, far too close to Shouta’s ear for his liking (at least he wasn’t as bad as Hizashi). Raising his eyebrow (he was really doing that a lot these days, wasn't he), Shouta carefully lifted the kid off his lap, before standing up himself, grunting on account of his legs being numb. (How much did the spider child weigh, it felt like he was extremely dense for his size, geez. Was it the elbows that made him so heavy?) The kid was still babbling at him, heedless of his new position.

“How did you do that with your scarf? Is it sticky? Are you a hero? You look kinda funky, but still super cool! You’re so cool!” At his last comment, Shouta barely repressed a snort, because really? Him, cool? What the hell. Setting the brat down and grabbing a piece of his scarf, he haphazardly tugged at it. The capture weapon slipped off the light above him, falling into place around his neck. The boy was still grinning at him, eyes going even wider as he watched the capture weapon nestle around his shoulders.

“How’d you do that? I wanna try that! Can you show me how? My tape always gets stuck on stuff, and my parents hafta’ cut it off, so-” ''Kid,” Shouta said gruffly, holding up a hand to stop the brat’s non-stop questioning. “Slow down. One thing at a time.” The kid (thankfully) shut his mouth, looking at Shouta with glittering eyes. Shouta rubbed at the sore muscles of his neck, already not liking where this was going. “Yes, I am a hero. No, my scarf is not sticky. I used it to catch us with years of training and practice.” And mistakes, and through weathering the laughter of his classmates when they had to cut him out of a tangled web of his own capture weapon. In the end, though, they weren’t laughing when he used it to single-handedly kick all of their asses during the third year graduation exams.

The kid pouted at Shouta (actually fucking POUTED at him, somehow looking like one of the stray cats that-wait, focus-), and crossed his arms over his chest, and whined, “That’s too long, mister! I wanna learn it now!” Shouta shrugged, unsympathetic. (Maybe it was a bit of the built-up pettiness from his own time of struggling with his scarf taking over him, but Shouta just could not bring up any energy to feel sorry for the flying tape gremlin who had crashed into him.) “Then you’ll have to find a teacher, kid.”

“Then you can teach me! Please?” Shouta blinked, barely preventing himself from asking the kid why the fuck he would want to be taught by a homeless-looking man who hadn’t washed his hair for the past three days. (Contrary to common belief, Shouta was actually aware of his appearance. He just didn’t care enough to do something about it, much to the moans and complaints from Nemuri.) “Absolutely not. I don’t have the time to teach somebody about their own quirk, much less the patience for it. Ignoring the fact that I don’t have the proper licensing that any professional quirk trainer needs to have in order to legally train someone through the nuances of using their quirk, I would make a terrible teacher.” The kid just blinked at him, clearly not understanding a single word of the legal jargon that was coming out of Shouta’s mouth.

Shouta sighed, already knowing that he was about to regret his next sentence. (Not like that had stopped him, recently. He was still completely inclined to blame Nezu for each and every one of the problems that had recently arisen in his usually monotonous routine, all of which somehow revolved around tiny children.) “From what I saw before you hit me, the angle of your arms were off. You need to have the place where your tape comes out pointing to the place you want to go, or to a point in between you and your destination so you can swing to it. Because your tape is sticky, you don’t have to worry about wrapping it around things like with my capture weapo-scarf. Like my scarf.”

The kid looked at his elbows and stared at Shouta, mouth opened wide. “I don’t?” Shouta nodded to the gremlin, eyeing the piece of tape still trailing from his elbow. “You can just stick your tape to the middle of a ceiling and swing to the other side of a room, depending how long it is.” Shouta paused, frowned, and added, “And you definitely need to work on your landings. I won’t always be there to catch you.” The kid was still staring at him. Then, with a grin, he cheekily asked, “So does that mean you’ll still be there sometimes to catch me, mister hero?”

Shouta snorted, a twitch coming from the corners of his mouth. “We’ll see, kid.” The child pouted at him again, clearly put out at being referred to as a kid. Or he could somehow tell that the grin threatening to find it’s way onto Shouta’s face was completely at his expense. Meh, made no difference either way. It wasn’t like he’d be sticking around the brat for much longer anyways. Speaking of which-

“Where are your parents?” The boy blinked at him, before his eyes comically widened, spinning around as if he had only just noticed that he and Shouta were the only people in the parking lot. Shouta could barely stop himself from face palming at the sight, settling for pinching the bridge of his nose instead. The problem gremlin turned back to him, lip wobbling, eyes glistening with tears. Shouta sighed-he was starting to grow soft. “C’mon, kid,” he said gruffly, offering his hand to the brat. “I’ll help you look for them.”

The choppy-haired troublemaker’s quivering lip split into a huge smile, unshed tears all but forgotten. Scrambling to Shouta’s side, the kid grabbed his hand, squeezing it tightly with his own. Shouta’s heart did NOT almost melt from the blind trust the kid was showing to him. No. Absolutely not. (Not again.) Keeping his strides short enough that the kid didn’t have to run to keep up with him (it was only logical, he didn’t want to have to drag the kid along with him, that was all), Shouta started walking in the direction the brat had come flying from. Two minutes later, he found a harried looking man who looked exactly like the lunatic brat grinning at his side.

“Is that yours?” Shouta asked, pointing at the worried man. The kid blinked, and then grinned even wider (how was that even possible?). “That’s my dad!” Letting go of Shouta’s hand, the kid made it two steps before he stopped, turned around, and leaped up to hug Shouta’s waist (quite the impressive feat, considering the kid barely reached past his knees). “Thank you for saving me and helping me find my dad, mister hero!” Too shocked to do much else, Shouta awkwardly patted the boys’ head before he let go, running up to his father, who had a relieved smile on his face as he scooped the boy into his arms.

Shouta felt a strange pang in his chest before it disappeared as he watched the scene unfold. Annoyed, Shouta started the trek back to his shabby apartment. Not only was his neck sore, and he had an apparent chest injury (probably one of his ribs (again)), but that brat had somehow wormed his way onto Shouta’s short (but steadily growing) list of ‘Brats and Problem Children With Potential.’ He groaned, mentally kicking himself for being distracted enough to allow such an annoying situation happen. (He had been distracted by an advertisement for a new Cat Cafe in the area that had been attached to the lamp post. Like HELL would he ever admit to that, though. Nezu was probably playing some kind of massive cosmic joke on him by exploiting his weakness for small and adorable creatures.) (Shouta pointedly ignored the comparison his mind drew to a freckled problem child, a blond pomeranian brat, a green-haired tree frog, and now a scruffy, dark haired tape gremlin of a child.)

Chapter Text

Fuck it, Shouta was moving to the other side of Japan. At least then, he might stop running into small, irksome, potential-wasting brats . (Although, technically, the last one had run into him .)

This time, it wasn’t actually Shouta’s fault. Or the kid’s, for that matter. It had started when Nemuri decided to be bothersome and force him to socially interact with the rest of his so-called ‘friends’ because he was apparently being ‘a grouchy old man who’s going to end up as an old cat lady because he never went anywhere.’ Nemuri’s words, not his, obviously. He was fine with being an old man with nothing but cats for company. (His group of ‘friends’ were just a massive bag of cats, anyway, so it wasn’t like it would be all that difficult to make the switch. In fact, it might even be an improvement.)

Shouta could survive just fine without talking to his coworkers in a social setting, thank you, but going along with Nemuri and her forcibly aggressive socialization was the safer alternative to whatever she might pull as revenge. (That blind date she had set him up on after he had refused one of her karaoke night invitations had been absolutely disastrous, even if Nemuri had disagreed on the matter.)

Allowing Nemuri to drag him to a bar, the two of them had met up with Hizashi and, surprisingly enough, Tensei, who Shouta hadn’t seen around much, seeing as he’d recently opened his own agency. Tensei had seemed haggard, the bags under his eyes showing prominently under the dim lighting of the bar (Hizashi was, sadly, his normal self, meaning loud and obnoxious). After securing themselves a table, Nemuri dragged Hizashi off to the bar to flirt with the bartenders, leaving Shouta to stare at Tensei, who was practically dozing off.

“What’s the matter?” Shouta asked after a full five minutes of staring at Tensei, who was almost falling out of his seat. Tensei had jolted at the sound of his voice, blinking rapidly and gazing at Shouta with a blank look on his face, a line of drool connecting his mouth to his hand, which had been propping up his head. “Huh?” he said blearily, clearly having not heard what Shouta had said. Shouta rolled his eyes at the stubborn bastard, who was clearly too much of an idiot to use his day off to get some rest, instead overexerting himself to the point where bags were forming under his eyes like dark bruises. (Shouta pointedly ignored his complete and utter hypocrisy regarding the subject of bags under eyes. If looking like a greasy, underfed racoon was a sport, he would be the world champion.)

Tensei yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. “I asked if you were alright, Tensei,” Shouta patiently said, glancing back to the bar to make sure that the two loudmouths who put the ‘extra’ in ‘extraverted’ weren’t going to try and sneak up on him. (It had happened before, usually when they were drunk, but Shouta was always paranoid.) Tensei gave a sigh, drawing Shouta’s attention back to him. “Not really, Shou,” the blue-haired man admitted, running a hand through his navy locks. “I’ve had so much on my plate with my agency opening this past month, it’s all the paperwork and everything, but what’s really been slowing me down lately is looking after Tenya.”

Shouta cast around for the name, placing it with the infant that Tensei had never shut up about for weeks once he had been born. “Your little brother, right?” Nodding his head, Tensei had craned his neck towards their idiots (mostly Tensei’s, though, Shouta didn’t want to have responsibility for anything that they did tonight), watching as Hizashi laughed his ass off as Nemuri somehow managed to flirt with three of the bartenders at the same time. 

“Don’t get me wrong,” Tensei turned his head to face Shouta, “Tenya’s the best little brother a guy could ask for, but his quirk came in pretty recently, and our parents are down in Tokyo for disaster relief, so I’m the only one right now who can take care of him, even if I have a giant mountain of paperwork to get through by Saturday. And it’s not like I can fill out damage reports and entertain a hyperactive toddler at the same time, so...” Tensei shrugged his sagging shoulders and spread his hands out, palms facing the ceiling, as if asking ‘what can you do?’

Shouta, not thinking about his words, impulsively blurted out “I could watch him for a while.” Tensei stared at him, his eyebrows nearly shooting off his forehead. Shouta grimaced, immediately wanting to take his offer back, but then Tensei grabbed his shoulders from across the table to pull him into an (extremely uncomfortable) awkward hug. 

“Shouta, you are the literal best, what would I do without you, you are a fucking angel, oh my gosh-!” Tensei wailed and sobbed into Shouta’s shoulder. That had been really awkward to explain to Nemuri and Hizashi, but they had started hugging him as soon as Tensei had, between relieved bouts of sobbing, explained Shouta’s oh-so-generous offer to watch his little brother for him. Hizashi especially was in tears, crying at how ‘nice’ Shouta was being. The blond was obviously drunk off his ass (like the lightweight he was), because Shouta didn’t do nice . It was only logical to assist one of the only pro heroes that he could actually stand to work with.

That was how Shouta found himself knocking on the Iida family’s door early Friday morning, trying to ignore the pristine white walls that made his hero outfit look even shabbier than it already was (he needed to get a replacement soon). Tensei swung the door open, decked out in his full hero costume minus the helmet and boots, barely muttering a strangled “Oh thank Nezu you’re here” before grabbing Shouta’s wrist to pull him through the doorway. Barely having enough time to switch his work shoes with the provided indoor slippers and to ponder over the fact that Tensei also apparently saw Nezu as some kind of god, Shouta’s wrist was seized once again by a frenzied Tensei. Shouta was smart enough to recognize the panic his friend was in (unlike other certain nuisances he could name), and since he valued his life, he allowed the man to babble and ramble about his little brother’s needs and disliked foods as he rapidly pointed to the emergency numbers on the fridge, which included contacts such as the Team Idaten agency and Tensei’s own number written neatly in blue ink. 

Running past Shouta to the door, Tensei turned around and said, “Also, he’s a little shy around strangers, so don’t worry if he doesn’t warm up to you right away!” Grabbing his helmet from the stand next to the door, Tensei stuffed his feet into his shoes, shouting a strangled “GOODBYE TENYA I LOVE YOU BE GOOD FOR SHOUTA” before he was out the door, running down the streets to his Agency. Snorting, Shouta shut the door from where the frazzled dumbass had left it wide open. It was just like Tensei to panic over every little thing regarding his brother, and then immediately forget to shut the door on his way out. And he was running to his agency, rather than driving like any normal person, which would have probably been a lot faster, anyway. 

Idiot.

Turning, Shouta wandered into the living space, taking note of the furniture placed around the house (which somehow all matched the other pieces, and they matched the style of the house. What, did the Iida family just buy the place pre-furnished? Actually, that sounded like something they would do). 

“Tenya?” Shouta called, looking around for the kid. “You here?” 

A rustling noise came from the hallway leading to the bedrooms, a head of blue hair poking around the frame to see into the living space. Shouta noted absentmindedly that the kid had glasses, unlike his older brother and father. He must have gotten it from his mom, then; Shouta vaguely recalled meeting her once, and she had worn the thickest pair of glasses he had ever seen before. Poor kid, having to deal with that at such a young age. (He had a certain level of sympathy reserved solely for people with poor eyesight and shitty eye conditions, his own dry eye making his life terrible.)

Crouching down to the kid’s eye level to make himself seem less threatening (what was he supposed to do instead, smile at the brat? No way in hell, his smile literally gave his classmates nightmares, he didn't want to deal with Tensei’s kid brother crying if he didn’t have to), Shouta carefully made sure his voice wouldn’t come out as his usual scathing, dry tone (again, not wanting tears before he had been with the brat for even five minutes).

“Hey, kiddo, you Tenya?” The kid visibly jolted, and adjusted his glasses as he hurriedly came out from behind the door frame, revealing himself to practically be a carbon copy of Tensei if it weren’t for the glasses. So the eyebrows were hereditary, Shouta had always wondered- wait, right, child to look after, not to look at and wonder if Tensei secretly had an identical twin that got hit with a quirk that turned him into an infant. Dammit, now that the thought was in his head, he was never going to be able to get it out any time he looked at his friend.

“Y-yes,” the boy shouted, giving a very formal bow and startling Shouta out of his thoughts, “I am Iida Tenya! My brother said that a friend of his would be looking after me today! It is very good to meet you!”

Barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes at the formality dripping from every pore of Tenya’s body, Shouta rose out of his crouch, wincing when his joints cracked. (The Underground scene was aging him way beyond his years, before he knew it he would be falling into naps at every given opportunity to catch any bit of sleep he could- not that he didn't sort of do that already.) Walking over to the (still bowing) little copy of Tensei, Shouta ruffled his hair, causing the boy to straighten up and blink at the adult owlishly.

“Call me Aizawa, kid,” Shouta wasn’t just going to give a literal child his personal name so easily, it had even taken Hizashi a good couple of months of going to arcades and generally becoming such a large fixture in Shouta’s life that he couldn’t imagine a world without the loudmouth for the blond menace to get past the social barrier that was his family name. “Is there anything you want to do?”

Ten minutes later, confused and completely unsure as to how he got there, Shouta sat on the floor in front of the couch with Tenya, watching some news channel playing on the television.

“You sure you don’t want to watch cartoons or something, kid?” Shouta tried, confused by Tenya’s full enrapturement to the report on the weather for that evening. Didn’t kids usually like cartoons, or at least prefer them to things like the literal weather? (Unless they had a weather quirk, or wanted to be a forecaster or something, but still. Not all that common for a five year old.) Also, why were they sitting on the floor when there was a perfectly good couch right behind them? This was going to be hell on Shouta’s already aching joints.

Tensei’s little brother shook his head, his eyes locked onto the screen, which had switched to an overhead view of traffic near a train station. Shouta noticed offhandedly that it was near Tensei’s agency headquarters, and made the mistake of saying so out loud. “Your brother’s agency is near that station. Team Idaten, right?”

The miniature version of one of his closest friends (they were really more of obligations at this point, with Nemuri’s shenanigans making him go grey before his time, and Hizashi giving him a headache and tinnitus every time he was in the presence of the blond man for a prolonged period) lit up, tiny chest puffing out in a clear sense of pride. “When I grow up,” the boy proclaimed proudly, his gaze landing on Shouta (were those actual sparkles in the brat’s eyes? Ew, no), “I’m going to become a hero just like my big brother!”

“Not a bad goal,” Shouta allowed in the face of the kid’s enthusiasm. “Ingenium is an excellent hero, and he always makes sure that the civilians are safe before anything else. He’s got an agency to fall back on, and his sidekicks are all people that he can rely on. Heroes can’t do everything alone, so it’s important that he’s got people he can trust around him to help.”

Shouta was jolted out of his clinical analysis of his coworker (alright, he might have been a bit over the top, but it was in front of his friend’s kid brother, he had a hunch that Tensei wouldn’t be that mad at him) by a loud gasp from the pint-sized engine to his right. Leaning back a bit from the kid’s sparkling eyes (too bright, Shouta needed his eye drops because that look was just too brIGHT-), he raised an eyebrow at the brat in front of him, bemused at his actions.

“He’s so cool, isn’t he?!” With that declaration, Tenya started off into a babbling rant about how amazing his big brother was, and how brave, selfless, and strong he always was on television, and how Tenya was going to be almost as cool as him when he was able to go to UA just like his big brother. Shouta had plenty of practice pretending to listen to people and making appropriate noises in appropriate places, so the numerous “hm”s, “ah”s, and “I see”s he gave made it seem like he was completely enraptured by the miniature rant coming from the pint-sized engine without actually absorbing any of the information. 

(It was a skill honed through many one-sided conversations with Hizashi and Nemuri, respectively, that allowed him to do this. It could actually be useful when he was going up against certain villains that would just not shut up when he was trying to take them down, making sure that he wouldn’t be distracted by their words while still paying enough attention to make sure they weren’t revealing anything of actual importance to him in a fight, such as their evil plan. Villains did that a lot, actually, it was starting to get a little concerning. What, did he look like someone that would appreciate the talking that they did incessantly about their plans to kill this-prime-minister or about robbing bank-on-street-a? No, he did not appreciate it. Ever.)

The brat only ran out of steam sometime before lunch, and Shouta managed to get a blissful thirty minutes of quiet, before he made the mistake of giving the brat orange juice which caused him to go on another hour-long rant about how ‘cool’ and ‘strong’ and ‘amazing’ his older brother was. (At that point, Shouta was honestly sure that the kid’s quirk was actually being a motormouth, the engines that were just visible on his legs notwithstanding.)

When Tensei finally, FINALLY got back to the house, Tenya practically launched himself to give his bewildered brother a hug, and Shouta mentally swore to himself that he’d never babysit any child ever again.

(He babysat Tenya at least twice more before he actually told this to Tensei and therefore never had to look after his kid brother again, after the pint-sized engine had tried to make him pretend to be All Might so the brat could be his brother to play Heroes; despite the many instances that he regularly swore off children and inevitably ended up finding another one that followed him around anyway, Shouta absolutely drew the line at pretending to be a giant blond dumbass that regularly caused copious amounts of property damage, paperwork, and too many migraines to count for the Underground community.)

Chapter Text

Shouta was patrolling one evening (you know, doing his job, unlike SOME people he could name) when he heard a shout.

Redirecting his capture weapon to the sound, Shouta prayed it wasn’t another mugging. It wasn’t like he minded the quiet night he had so far been having, he was just bored because he hadn’t dealt with anything but muggings for the past week. Maybe if he was lucky, it would be someone that was startled by a cat he could pet. 

Shouta arrived in a park, and it took him a second to remember why it seemed familiar. It was the same park where he had once saved that tree frog girl with the tiny hands (yes, he was still hung up on the hands, okay? They were just so small). In fact, there was a bunch of strange noises coming from the area of the tree that he had saved the kid from. Ugh. Nezu had better not be behind this somehow, and it had better not be a frog child again.

A voice cut through the gloom. “Cease this behavior at once, Dark Shadow!” 

Shouta blinked. Okay, definitely not a cat, unless someone really didn’t know how to name their pets (shut up, Hizashi, Mochi is a perfectly respectable name for a cat, thank you). Probably wasn’t a frog either, but the voice was definitely high-pitched enough to be a child. And also probably not Nezu; the rat bastard was either much more subtle than this, and you wouldn’t even realize it was him until it was too late, or he was as obvious as possible, all the better to see the hope drain out of the eyes of his prey when they realized that he had been toying with them all along.

Alright, Shouta might be slightly scared of his old teacher. Slightly.

(From the office of an animal that was not a rat, a dog, or even a bear, a series of high pitched giggles could be heard, reaching through the near-empty halls of the greatest hero school in the world. A nearby janitor shuddered; he had no idea what had set off the chimera-mouse this time, but he didn’t want to stick around to find out.)

Another shout came from the voice- actually, it was really more of a squawk than anything else. “Dark Shadow! We are only out here because of you, and you waste this time of night on chasing a four-legged beast? For shame!”

“But Fumi,” another voice said (whined, really), “I’m hungry!”

“Then consume an apple for sustenance, which we have in our home! Stop dragging me out here to try and eat the local wildlife!”

Alright, Shouta should probably step in. He could admit to being curious if the second voice he could hear was actually serious about eating whatever animal had crossed their path, but unfortunately couldn’t do that, being a hero and all. He also couldn’t allow a child to walk around at this time of night without an adult. (He was ignoring the memory of Hizashi and Nemuri calling him a softie after the second time he had babysat for Tensei’s kid brother. He was not soft, he had just been helping out a coworker that he could actually tolerate. That was all.)

Shouta came out from his previous place behind a large tree (no, he didn’t know the name of it, he definitely hadn’t ever tried to figure out what kind of trees that cats liked to climb the most), which had hidden both him and the voices from seeing each other, and he blinked at the scene that had appeared in front of him. There was indeed a child, seemingly a perfectly normal one if it hadn’t been for the fact that his head was a literal bird head. Like, with a beak and everything, black feathers doing nothing to distract from his disgruntled expression.

The other, deeper voice that Shouta had come from a… shadow? Bird? Whatever it was, it was colored a dark purple, its yellow eyes glowing as it stared up a tree (it wasn’t actually the one that Shouta had saved the frog girl from, good, THAT definitely would have Nezu’s paw prints all over it). It was somehow coming out from the bird-headed boy’s stomach- oh, so the shadow bird was a quirk, most likely a sentient one if the conversation Shouta had overheard was any indication.

The boy hissed, shaking a rather large flashlight at the quirk, which whined again. “Honestly, Dark Shadow, you are embarrassing me! What if someone came from the shadows to see this spectacle?”

Shouta would deny this to his dying day, but he had always been something of a slight troll. The first time that Hizashi had seen him smile, Shouta looked him dead in the eye and said, “No one will ever believe you.” For an entire week after that, he had gotten to watch the blond pest tell everyone in their class that he had seen a smile from him, only for them to think he was lying. And so, when the bird boy -the chick?- had laid out such a perfect invitation, he couldn’t really resist. Plus, the kid shouldn’t really be outside this late at night, so he really had it coming.

“What do you think you’re doing here, kid?”

There was a loud squawk, and the kid whirled around to lay eyes on Shouta, clearly startled by his sudden appearance. Shouta couldn’t have stopped his smile (the one that Nemuri had once labeled as ‘nightmare inducing’) from spreading across his face even if he wanted to. The purple quirk let out a high-pitched screech, and attempted to hide behind its bird-headed wielder.

The crow boy (look, he had black feathers, and the only bird that Shouta could actually recognize on sight was Hizashi, who’s ridiculous hair made him look like a particularly stupid cockatoo) bowed in his direction, looking very embarrassed.

“M-my apologies,” he stuttered. “We did not mean to disturb you, spirit of darkness.”

Shouta nearly cackled at the boy’s words, but managed to restrain himself. (Barely.)

“I’m an Underground hero, kid, not a dark spirit.” Shouta looked down at his outfit (black, black, and oh look, more black). “But I can see where you’re coming from. Now, what are you doing out here at this hour?”

Suddenly, a bunch of chirps came from the quirk that was still cowering behind the boy, and Shouta switched his attention to it.

“Fumikage, Fumikage,” the bird shadow crowed (ugh, accidental pun). “It’s trying to escape! Quick, let me catch it!”

“Stop that, Dark Shadow!” Fumikage, apparently, yelled, shaking the flashlight at his quirk again. “I have told you already, stop trying to eat the animals in the park! We have things for consumption at home!”

A gray and black smudge dashed by Shouta’s feet, and he squinted to make it out. “Is that a raccoon?”

“Yes,” the crow boy grumbled, and Shouta had a feeling that he was blushing under all those feathers. “I am afraid that Dark Shadow prefers to stalk the animals in these parts rather than simply content themself with apples when they are feeling peckish. Even though they do not need to eat, they still insist on bringing me out here at this hour to feed their imaginary hunger.”

“The little animal started it!” Dark Shadow wailed, its eyes seeming almost comically large and watery as it spoke, clearly very upset that its prey had escaped.

The boy glared at his quirk, getting over his embarrassment quickly. “One more word out of you this evening, Dark Shadow, and there will be no more Revelry in the Dark for an entire week!”

Shouta would admit to being very confused, but the brat clearly had his quirk well in hand, if the cowed looks it was sending him were any indication. He was also a bit bemused at the kid’s earlier words, because seriously? Calling his quirk ‘peckish?’ He and his quirk were both literal birds, he didn’t get to use those kinds of jokes unless he was prepared to have them used against him in return. (Hizashi had learned that lesson the hard way, but he had definitely learned it.)

The boy’s flashlight suddenly flickered and died out, and Shouta took barely half a second to adjust enough to see the kid’s shoulders hunch up to his shoulders as he took in a large breath.

“Oh, no,” the kid whispered, voice full of fear, causing Shouta to be on alert. He almost whirled around to put himself between the kid and whatever threat it was that he hadn’t seen, but he stayed still as a rumbling noise came from right in front of him.

“Fumi,” Dark Shadow growled, somehow growing in size , what the fuck. “You should have let me eat the little animal.”

The boy fell as some part of his quirk tangled around his legs, and landed on his hands and knees. “You need to run!” he shouted at Shouta, eyes wide with fear. “Quickly, before Dark Shadow gets any stronger!”

The quirk’s yellow eyes glinted, and its beak-like mouth curled into a menacing grin. “I’m hungry, Fumikage!”

Alright, that was enough of that. Shouta activated his quirk, and could feel his hair floating in the air as Dark Shadow vanished from view. The bird boy- uh, Fumikage- stumbled to his feet, and his eyes were wide as he looked at Shouta. He winced, the kid was probably scared of his silhouette and red eyes, not to mention that his quirk had just vanished, but he couldn’t deactivate his quirk until the brat confirmed something for him.

“Is your quirk going to come out again if I stop canceling it?”

The brat- Fumikage, dammit, Fumikage, he had to stop calling every gremlin child he came across a brat in his head- started shaking his head. “N-no! Dark Shadow gets stronger in the dark, but cannot come out unless I let them!”

Shouta considered that, dropping his quirk. The kid had probably brought the flashlight along with him in order to keep his quirk from going berserk like it had. It hadn’t escaped his notice (nothing really ever did, he was a damn Underground hero for Nezu’s sake) that the kid had never taken the beam of light off of Dark Shadow for even a second, not even when he had been startled by Shouta’s sudden appearance.

The bird boy was calming down now, picking up his flashlight as he glanced back at Shouta. Smart kid, gathering up his resources while keeping the largest threat in the area in his sights. Obviously had good control over his quirk, uncontrollable outside factors notwithstanding, and-

NO. Not again! Shouta almost groaned in exasperation, but kept himself quiet. The bird brat had potential. (And yes, he absolutely was going to be called a brat in Shouta’s mind from now on just for causing this reaction in him, yet again!) Why, oh why, did Shouta keep on running into small children with no actual connection to him whatsoever that had potential?!

(He ignored the fact that it had been about two years since he had last run into any pint-sized menaces, anyone that was middle-school age or younger was clearly part of a plot against him.)

He cleared his throat, squashing his thoughts under the thought of how much paperwork he was going to have to do for this evening, as well as getting the brat home. Ugh, he really didn’t want to file an incident report on this kid, it would probably follow him around for the rest of his life, and Shouta would probably feel guilty (ew, emotion) about maybe ruining this kid’s future. He knew better than most how quirks like his own and the kid’s were seen, and even if ‘villainous’ quirks weren’t actually a thing, an incident report on the brat’s record would definitely only hurt him in the future.

Well, Shouta hated giving himself extra paperwork, and he did work with vigilantes on a semi-regular basis. He had no problem bending a few rules every now and then, and it wasn’t like he had become a hero to just make people’s lives more difficult. (Except for villains. Which was a given.) Besides, the kid had potential, and Shouta loathed when potential was wasted.

“I think it’s about time for you to get home, kid,” he said in what Hizashi called his ‘talking-to-cats’ voice. “It’s not safe for you to be walking around at this hour, even if you’ve got a friend with you.”

The boy blinked, and his feathers puffed up as he let out a gasp. “No one else ever calls Dark Shadow my friend! You truly understand the Revelry in the Darkness, don’t you? I never thought that I would meet another being of darkness this evening! Underground hero, sir, what may I call you to summon you by?”

Shouta had absolutely no idea what kind of books this kid was reading, but he didn’t look scared of him, so it was probably fine. He didn’t understand anything that came out of the bird brat’s beak, either, but it was probably fine. (He was very, VERY much ignoring the way that his eyes sparkled. He would have his crises of adding another child to the five-member ‘Eraserhead Fanclub’ some other time. It was probably fine.)

“...Shouldn’t you be getting home?” Shouta asked, not really willing to give this very short child (who had a very large, very… interesting vocabulary) his name. “Seriously, though, don’t come out this late without an adult, alright?”

The boy nodded, and he made to walk out of the treeline, before he paused, and he spun his head around to look at Shouta so quickly that he almost thought the kid turned his entire head around like an owl. The brat’s eyes were wide.

“We don’t have to tell my parents about this, right?”

Shouta regretted wishing for something to occupy his night other than a mugging. Really, he did. He definitely wasn’t amused, at all, at the bird kid’s question. He also didn’t think that his quirk was actually kind of funny with it’s -their?- obsession with trying to eat the raccoon (if it had been a cat, though, it would be a very different story). And he definitely wasn’t comparing this brat (and his quirk) to a few other wide-eyed half-pints that he had run into at some point or another.

Really. He was being very professional about the whole thing, and absolutely did not smirk in amusement when he escorted the kid home.

(Somewhere, somehow, Shouta just knew that an oversized chimera-rodent was laughing at him. He just knew it.)