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After her run-in with Eraserhead (Eraserhead!!) and her subsequent freak-out, she started getting much more cautious in her patrols. Everyday policemen were one thing, but a seasoned underground hero was something entirely different. If he caught her, she was done. A small-time vigilante would be no trouble for someone like him; she would know, having stalked every mention of him online ever since she discovered him.
It was, what, six or seven years ago now? The foster home she had been staying in was located in a run-down apartment complex, and she was stuffed into a room she shared with three other girls. The only good thing about it was that her bunk was right next to the window. It was one of the worst homes she had been in to date, one that made her wear a muzzle for everything except sleeping and eating. She had been rubbing the soreness out of her jaw and watching the city night around the apartment to pass the time, seeing as she wouldn’t be getting to sleep for hours yet, when she saw him.
At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, but she had always been able to see good in the dark, so she kept watch on the shadow leaping across the rooftops below. She couldn’t see much of him, other than dark hair, darker clothes, and some sort of-scarf? Rope? Wrapped around his neck, but she knew a hero when she saw one. Who could blame her for watching him greedily from her fogged window?
He lept another roof, turning midway to send the scarf sailing down into the alley below, and she watched in breathless excitement as he engaged with a criminal, scarf floating around his head and flying out to fight his opponent. It was barely a minute later before he had them bound on the floor, and the hero pulled out his phone to call the police. She watched as he turned to check on the victim, laying a hesitant hand on their shoulder to comfort them, and then she was obsessed.
She scoured the internet for him, going deep into forums and hero news sites to soak up any information on him like a sponge. She didn’t find much, but what she did find fascinated her. Underground Hero: Eraserhead. Quirk: Erasure-erases the quirks of those he looks at. Fighting with a scarf she now knows is called a capture weapon.
She didn’t even know underground heroes were a thing.
No other hero she knew of could even come close to the way she admired him; not even All Might, which was strange for a seven-year-old to say (not that she ever really said much of anything, anyway). She appreciated All Might, of course, and admired him to an extent, but Eraserhead was the exact type of hero she wanted to be: not seeking fame or fortune or even really acknowledgment, but saving people just because it was the right thing to do. Putting the same amount of thought and care into saving someone from a burning building as saving someone from an assault in a dark alley.
He was a true hero, in her opinion, and she wanted to be just like him.
So while having him hunt her vigilante persona wasn’t exactly ideal, it was fascinating to see him up close. Granted it was usually while he was trying to tie her up and drag her to jail, but she was getting pretty good at dodging the capture scarf by now.
That, or he was going easy on her, for whatever reason.
He didn’t come after her on every patrol; she patrolled almost every day and it seemed he actually had days off, but they saw each other a couple of times a week at least. At first, the only words they exchanged were orders to stand down that were met with taunts and scathing remarks. She never attacked him, only tried to get away, which seemed to puzzle him. It really shouldn’t after her blurted confession during their first meeting, because even if he chased her for hours, keeping them both distracted from work, she would never take a swing at her hero.
That was the norm; at least until one cloudy night.
Her day had been, to put it lightly, the fucking worst. For whatever reason, the kids at school today had been extra vicious. Her desk was covered in venom, so much that she didn’t even bother trying to scrub it all off before class started. It got her a few snickers but it was nothing she wasn’t used to. She thought that would be the end of it until lunch when three of the nastiest bullies cornered her in the courtyard where she ate. She tried to ignore them until one of them threw dirt on her lunch, ruining the only meal she might get that day, depending on how pissed her fosters were today.
They only laughed at her crestfallen expression, and suddenly she just wanted to fucking scream. They hadn’t gone as far as to fuck with her belongings until now, and lunch was the only meal she could always count on as the school was required by law to feed her. Her fosters weren’t. The rage bubbled up even faster than normal, faster than she could fight it, and she glared up at the bullies as she opened her mouth to scream some obscenity at them that might cool the burning in her stomach.
Only for them all to flinch and back away as soon as she opened her mouth, which was just the icing on the fucking cake.
She almost wanted to laugh at the looks on their faces as they ran away. It’s like I’m a wild animal. She thought incredulously. They push and push until I bite back and then they run away with their tails between their legs. She scoffed, fighting the choking bitterness rising in her throat as she threw her ruined lunch away.
Her classmates left her alone for the rest of the day, but she was right in assuming her day would only get worse. She got sent to her room with an empty stomach and a bruised jaw when she asked for food, and ended up leaving for patrol an entire hour earlier just to escape the static in her head. She threw herself into her work viciously, prowling for danger almost like the animal everyone thought she was. She tried not to take out her frustration on the criminals she fought but she was aware of just how hard some of her hits turned out, and she wanted to cry at how she was just proving everyone right.
It all came to a head when she saved a mother and daughter from a sleazy group of guys who were almost definitely trying to buy the kid from her mom. She made a point to break the lead guy's nose before sending him off to round up the cops to arrest him and his buddies that were currently snoozing on the concrete. After finding out that the two lived only a ten-minute walk from where they were, Siren escorted them home.
“Wait, please!” The mother called as she turned to walk away. She hesitated, glancing back to see the woman fly into her house, returning a few moments later with a tupperware. “Please-I just,” She stuttered, before taking a breath. “I’ve heard of what you’ve been doing around here. Helping people, saving people. You saved one of my friends from getting mugged and then my daughter and I tonight.” She thrust the tupperware into her hands, the bottom of it still warm. “It’s-it’s just leftover takoyaki from our dinner yesterday, but I’d like to pay you back for all that you’re doing around here. Heroes rarely patrol these parts and it’s nice to know there's someone looking out for us.”
Hitoshi felt her eyes watering almost immediately. She had been given food before and it’s always very nice, considering she didn’t get to eat enough as it is, but this woman had no way to know that takoyaki was her favorite, and after the day she’d had, the simple act of someone gifting her her favorite food as thanks for the good she was doing was going to make her lose it.
“Thank you.” She managed to rasp, sketching a bow before fleeing into the night, hurrying to take note of the area so she could return the tupperware later. She put a few blocks between her and the house before climbing up to the rooftops, barely managing to set her gift down carefully before she collapsed into silent sobs. Her jaw and stomach ached but her heart was full, and there were so many emotions roiling inside her that she could think of no other way to let them out other than to cry.
She couldn’t remember the last time she cried like this. When her parents gave her up the day her quirk manifested? The first time a foster forced her into a muzzle? It had been years since she allowed herself this particular weakness, and it showed in the way her chest was heaving, tears never ending, burying her face in her hands even though it made the bruise mottling her jaw throb.
She didn’t know how long she sat there and cried, until-”Siren?”
She jerked her head up, seeing Eraserhead standing only a few steps away, hand outstretched. His expression was as stoic as always but there was a softness about him now, jaw no longer clenched, eyes half-lidded and watching her with something approaching concern. She didn’t let it soothe her, staggering to her feet as she hastily wiped at the uncovered portion of her face.
Even as she backed up a step she knew it was pointless; her legs were shaking and she had a killer headache. She wasn’t running anywhere in this state. He seemed to follow her train of thought, staying where he was and raising his other hand. “It’s alright,” He rumbled, his voice gruff and familiar from the dozens of times they had bickered between runs. “I’m not going to try to capture you.”
She scoffed, not even caring about how wrecked her voice was from sobbing. “I think you can understand why I can’t take you at your word, Eraser.” She rubbed at her cheeks again, the action unbelievably childish but she couldn’t find it in herself to care how she looked in front of him. Eraser had seen her eat shit more times than she could count at this point; it was honestly a miracle he hadn’t caught her yet.
He didn’t reply, just standing there for a moment before raising both hands to his scarf. She pivoted, bunching her muscles in preparation to run, before he took the scarf off with both hands and tossed it at her feet. She stopped, staring down at the capture weapon in shock, before looking back at him. He just shrugged, looking strangely smaller without the scarf about his neck, and tucked his hands into his pockets. “Keep it on you for now. As proof I’m telling the truth.”
She continued to eye him skeptically. While it’s true he could still capture her without the scarf, it would be more difficult and give her more chances to escape. The scarf itself could be a trap, but from what she’s read on the forums and observed from her own run-ins with him, it didn’t seem like he could control it unless he was touching it. She watched him for another moment. He didn’t flinch or fidget under her assessment, just waited patiently.
Hesitantly, she bent to pick up the scarf. It was heavier than she thought it would be, but still strangely light. She thumbed the material of it for a minute, feeling the ridges of some sort of flexible metal woven into it. She wasn’t particularly interested in the intricacies of weaponry herself, but this was Eraserheads capture scarf. She had a million questions that she held back, not deluding herself into thinking he would answer any.
Finally, for lack of a better idea, she dropped it around her neck just like he usually wore it, but it was a little too big for her. A few coils slipped down to her shoulders and upper arms, and the front of the scarf basically covered everything her mouth didn’t. It smelled like...coffee, lemon, and was that...kitty litter? Did Eraserhead have cats?
The material itself was strangely soft, and she tucked her face into it as discreetly as she could manage, but a soft huff from in front of her told her she wasn’t doing as good of a job as she thought at hiding it. Her face burned but she made sure most of it was covered so she didn’t further embarrass herself in front of her idol.
She looked up from where she was twisting her hands in the material of the scarf to see Eraser watch her for a moment, his mouth barely quirked on one side before he turned and sat down on the edge of the roof as she had been only moments earlier. He slouched forward, hands hanging down between his knees, tired eyes scanning the city below. His eye bags were almost as bad as her own.
She watched him for another moment, making doubly sure that he wasn’t going to attack the minute she lowered her guard, before shuffling to sit back down, still keeping a foot or so between them so he couldn’t grab her easily. They were silent for a bit, her shoulders tense, waiting for the moment he brought up her breakdown, but he just continued on in silence while she played with the scarf, nose buried in a scent that was quickly calming her down whether she liked it or not.
Finally, after almost ten minutes just sitting in silence, he spoke. “What’s that?”
She jerked slightly, turning to see him gesturing at the bright orange tupperware sitting between them. She had forgotten about it, and it was no doubt cold by now, but that didn’t matter. She loved takoyaki at any temperature.
“Uh,” She stuttered, a bit uncharacteristically for Siren. “I walked a woman and her daughter home, and she gave me some leftovers as thanks.” She carefully didn’t mention the act of vigilantism that she did just before walking them home, but with the look Eraser cut her she figured he knew what had happened anyway.
As if summoned by talking about it, her stomach rumbled, and she was viscerally reminded that she hadn’t eaten anything today and spent the last few hours fighting criminals. She threw an embarrassed glance at Eraserhead, who still had that tiny smile as he looked between her and the tupperware. She thought about putting it off, but she didn’t know how long she’d be sitting with Eraser and she really was fucking starving.
Whatever. He already saw her sobbing and smelling his scarf like a creep. Eating wasn’t too much of a stretch.
She reached over and cracked the lid open, mouth-watering at the savory smell released from it. She extended the container over to Eraser. “Do you want one?” She knew she could probably eat them all herself, but she didn’t want to be rude. He shook his head as her stomach grumbled again. “Seems like you need it more than I do.” He muttered, looking back over the city.
She wanted to laugh. You have no idea.
He stayed silent as she basically inhaled the takoyaki, and she had to fight tears again at the taste of her comfort food. How long had it been since she had homecooked takoyaki? She didn’t want to start blubbering in front of Eraser again so she tried to eat quickly, scooping up every bit of the food until the tupperware was empty and setting it back down between them.
Eraser didn’t wait so long to talk this time. “Nasty bruise you got there.”
She did her best not to stiffen, slipping on Siren’s near manic grin and tucking all remaining vulnerability behind it. “You do know what I do around here while you’re not chasing me, right?”
He turned to look at her fully, and it was like he was looking right through her, past all her vigilante defenses and masks and right down to her barest self. For a crazy second, she thought he could see her real identity, but she mentally slapped herself for being stupid. She had shown him enough tonight; he didn’t need to see anything else. She couldn’t afford to slip.
“A criminal did that?” He asked, like he already knew what she was going to say and already didn’t believe her.
“Yep. Nasty fucker.” Her grin didn’t falter, nor the teasing lilt her voice had taken on as Siren’s personality developed. She couldn’t be more different from silent, submissive Hitoshi.
Or maybe Siren was who she really was, and Hitoshi was the mask.
He looked just as disbelieving as she thought he would, but he didn’t push. Odd. She thought he’d be itching to find out whatever he could about her; all the better to catch her. And yet he hadn’t tried to grab her once since finding her here, even handing over his main weapon as insurance. It didn’t make any sense.
“Why aren’t you arresting me?”
He looked back at her, eyes flicking to how she sat cross-legged, hands still fiddling with his capture scarf, twirling the ends around her fingers.
“You’re not doing anything for me to arrest you for.”
She gaped at him, before letting out a giggle entirely against her will. It was unlike her usual laugh with the mask on; when Siren laughed, it was loud, boisterous, and slightly mocking at whoever was on the other end of it. This giggle was genuine, lighter, and probably the first time she had truly laughed in a while.
“You’re a weird one, Eraser.” She told him, climbing to her feet. He smirked back at her, standing up with a bit more groaning and knee-popping than her. She scooped up the tupperware, tucking it into her jacket so she could return it to the woman’s doorstep. She turned back to Eraser, watching him watch her.
“I know you said you weren’t going to chase me tonight, but…” She grinned, this time a bit more authentic at how much she was about to piss him off. “Precautions.” With that, she slipped off the capture scarf and chucked it over the edge of the roof to flutter to the ground below. He’d be able to get down and get it, but by the time he got back to the roof, she’d be long gone.
The look he gave her was drier than the Sahara and she gave him back a cackle as she ran towards the far end of the roof. “Bye, Eraser!” She called.
She pushed off the ledge and barely heard the response in the middle of her jump.
“Bye, Siren.”
~
At first, Shouta was confident that he had the vigilante Siren figured out.
Vigilantes weren’t exactly rare, but it was uncommon for one to make as many waves as this one did. Everything about them was unclear, from their motivations to their fighting style to even their quirk. Hells, the police didn’t even know about them until they caught them in the act and were able to put a name to all those dazed criminals who showed up at police stations to immediately confess their crimes. Nobody actually believed them at first, because someone just walking into a precinct and admitting to a crime while obviously under the influence of a quirk was shoddy reasoning at best, but after a quick run-through with Naomasa, all were verified to be true.
They were all stumped. It was obvious none of them came in of their own free will, but when questioned the criminals all admitted they could remember nothing about how they got to the station, their last memories being committing the crime they were turning themselves in for. The victims were long gone by the time they made it to the scene, so for a while, all they could do was wait for the next criminal to confess and try to wring out any information they could.
Shouta had his theories. He had seen some weird shit in his twelve years as a pro, and while this certainly wasn’t the weirdest, it was one of the more mysterious cases. The criminals being caught seemed to have nothing in common, no relation to each other other than committing crimes. Even their records didn’t match up; they got everything from first-timers to seasoned pros. The only pattern Shouta noticed was that they were all sent into custody around the same time frame at night, and it mostly overlapped with Shouta’s patrol.
So it was either an underground who didn’t want to get paid or a vigilante.
It took nearly a year before he heard the name for the first time, not in the precinct, but whispered in the streets. Siren.
He had originally thought the mystery vigilante had some sort of confession quirk or persuasion, but the name fit the bill enough that he immediately called Naomasa, who set him on the case eagerly. There was nothing Shouta loved more than a good case (jelly packets, his cats, and Hizashi came in a close second) and he had gathered all the information available within a week.
Siren normally operated from around 10 pm to around 3 am, with some fluctuations here and there. Their route spanned a good portion of the lower urban district in Mustafu; notably labeled a high crime area. They were mainly recognizable by a purple hoodie, bird mask, and bat.
The residents in Siren’s route were remarkably tight-lipped about their resident vigilante, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Siren was their hero, plain and simple, and if the police records were to be believed, they had been protecting this area for a year at this point. All the information he had been able to glean had been from eavesdropping rather than actual questioning; the citizens closed ranks and weren’t keen to give him any upfront help.
Not that that’s ever stopped him before.
It wasn’t like Siren wasn’t doing good work; they were. Most criminals sent their way were completely unharmed, and those that were hurt were only a little bruised up. Siren didn’t seem to have a message or creed to impart like other vigilantes; they didn’t seem to want any acknowledgement at all. In fact, if it weren’t for word of mouth from civilians (and a few criminals, though those were harder to track down for obvious reasons), Shouta didn’t think they’d even know Siren existed in the first place.
But vigilantism was still illegal, and they had obvious proof of Siren’s quirk usage, so they had to be arrested. It’s the job.
His first encounter with the infamous vigilante left him unimpressed to say the least. Siren didn’t even hear him coming, and barely managed to dodge his first swing. It was the next part of the interaction that left Shouta off-kilter, and was probably the reason Siren managed to get away in the end.
Siren was a teenage girl, he was almost completely certain. No older than his first years.
He tried to catch up to her but had no luck, and he readjusted his course towards the precinct once he realized it was hopeless.
A teenager. The most infamous vigilante in Mustafu, responsible for almost 100 criminals being put away, was a fucking teenager.
On the outside, he was as stoic as ever, but on the inside, he was reeling. At first, he thought Siren was just doing all this for kicks; that they were some bored 20-something with a death wish or the kind of recklessness that would get them killed anyway. A thrill-seeker, maybe. But none of those theories accounted for Siren being a child.
It was obvious she had skill, for how new she was. All records show that she had only been at it for a year, and it wasn’t hard to see that she didn’t have much training before she took to the streets if any at all. Naomasa was flabbergasted. Hizashi was wracked with worry. Shouta was too, even if he wouldn’t admit it. Most of their first years barely knew how to throw a proper punch if it didn’t relate to their quirk, which was still an option with Siren, but he wasn’t convinced. Siren’s quirk was almost definitely mentalist, and it was safe to assume it didn’t give her any boosts during combat.
This means she was mostly out there winging it, which was a pretty terrifying thought for a 15-year-old with no training.
Shouta was dead set on catching her after that. He had seen too many children die in his career, and after meeting her (and hearing that he was her favorite hero, which he did not smile about while recounting it, Hizashi is a filthy liar) he was determined that Siren would not be one of them. He would catch her and knock some sense into her himself, and drag her by her ear to her parents.
That was the plan, at least, until he found her crying on a rooftop.
It was obvious that something was wrong, no matter how much Siren wanted to brush it off and hide behind that cocky mask of hers. She had been crying; not the quiet, reserved type of crying either. She had been crying in a way that screamed despair, great heaving sobs, hiding her face in her hands in the way someone only does when their life is falling apart. The sight of it left him speechless.
As did the giant bruise across her jaw, and the way she inhaled the food gifted to her like she hadn’t eaten all day. With how skinny she was, he wouldn’t be surprised if that was true. Alarms were ringing in his head but he didn’t say anything for now. He’d interacted with victims of abuse before; charging in and demanding answers would do nothing but make them distraught and make them run. He’d need to gain her trust to get her to tell him anything.
He didn’t realize he had no further intention of arresting her until he was tossing his weapon at her feet and sitting with her.
When she wrapped the too-big scarf around her, twisting it through her fingers and burying her face in it like she wanted to hide from the world, it sent a roil of emotions through him and made his throat tighten. Shouta would be the first to say he wasn’t a touchy-feely guy; Hizashi sometimes joked that emotions made him break out in hives. He was exaggerating, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. Shouta rarely wasted emotions on people he didn’t truly care about. Obviously a short list.
But Siren was a child, a fact becoming increasingly more obvious with the way she scrubbed the tears off of her cheeks, curled up with his scarf and twisted it nervously between her fingers.
She was throwing up red flags left and right, and Shouta thought of the way Siren stayed to check on the victims, whispering soft words of comfort and encouragement. He thought of how she went out of her way to walk home the ones who didn’t feel safe, supporting the ones with shaky legs, even escorting them as close to the hospital as she dared if they needed it before disappearing into the night to find the next person that needed her.
He thought of the way she was sobbing into her hands when he found her, curled into herself as if trying to shield herself from the world. The way she almost started crying again while eating the takoyaki someone had gifted her, the simple act of kindness tearing her down. The way the bruise turned her skin nearly purple, how someone hit her so hard it almost certainly hurt just to talk.
As he managed to coax a genuine giggle from her, the sound different from any other time she laughed mockingly at him, he thought quietly to himself that he would do whatever it took to save this girl.