Chapter Text
Shouta’s brutally interrupted from his nap at three in the morning, when his work phone starts blaring from his nightstand and he damn well knows it’s an emergency.
Grumbling, he does little more than sit up, throwing the covers off - making a mental note that Hizashi isn’t in bed - and grabbing the phone, hissing at the brightness before accepting the call. While he tries to hide the sleep raspiness from his voice, it might not work. “Eraserhead here. What’s the issue?”
Because there’s always an issue.
There’s a sigh on the other line - damn, he hadn’t even looked at the caller ID. A cursory glance says it’s Detective Tsukauchi. “We’ve apprehended three villains in the last hour. As two of them fall under your jurisdiction, we decided to alert you as soon as possible.”
That piques Shouta’s interest, putting the phone on speaker, so he can get up and grab his jumpsuit off the floor. Looks like he’ll be suiting up, after all. “And the third villain…?” Tsukauchi wouldn’t mention the third if it had nothing to do with Shouta.
It prompts another sigh. The detective must be overworked, based on the tiredness of his voice, the way he must’ve been on the clock since noon. “The third villain falls within their same classification, and, aside from being the same age group, was apprehended while fighting the other two.”
That is interesting.
Shouta only has two active cases that might fit here - the first being the curious case of Shouto Todoroki, the son of the number #2-turned-#1 hero that disappeared off the map at age 14, the same day Endeavor was admitted to a hospital for frostbite and an icicle freezing his entire throat.
The man’s voice barely pulled through.
While Shouta’s spent many hours - two years now, actually - working on that case, and discovering a plethora of things about the Todoroki family and what happened behind closed doors, he shelves the thoughts in lieu of focusing on his other active case. The phone call is still ongoing as he throws his capture weapon on.
He grunts acknowledgment, and Tsukauchi knows well enough to be quiet for a minute or two.
The other active case he has didn’t turn into a villain case until a year ago. Izuku Midoriya, the missing quirkless son of Inko Midoriya, a single mother who’d been nothing but adoring to her kid (if a little neglectful, he’d found), disappeared at age 15, after being accepted to his dream school of U.A.. The police originally filed it as a runaway, but there was no reason for a kid who’d just gotten his dream fulfilled to run. Then, a year later, Midoriya had been seen with supposed green lightning encircling his figure in a street fight with a gang. He’d won.
(Izuku Midoriya also disappeared two months before Katsuki Bakugou attended U.A., before being kidnapped and killed in action by the League of Villains. He wasn’t one of Aizawa’s students, but Vlad still doesn’t talk about it.)
So, they’re curious cases indeed.
Once Aizawa has his shoes on, he returns his attention to the phone call at hand. “You have Shouto Todoroki and Izuku Midoriya in custody?”
A pleasant, if a bit grim, hum. “Yes. They were battling in an abandoned mine.”
“Have they said why?” All business, now. He’s Eraserhead, and he’ll live up to his hero license.
“No, they haven’t,” Tsukauchi says, and before Shouta can ask, he continues. “As said, we also have another villain in custody. He’s got a mask on, but he’s extremely violent and unwilling to talk. We’re working on identifying him now.”
“Do you know anything about him?” Shouta doesn’t like the sounds of a blood-bath, blow-out fight between three villains, let alone teenagers at that. They’re supposed to be at home, fucking around and doing something illegal like vandalism, not murder.
“He calls Midoriya Deku and his quirk has something to do with explosions since he’s been popping them off all night until we got him restrained.”
Hm. Interesting. It sounded a little too familiar, but Shouta wouldn’t think of it.
Instead, he thanks Tsukauchi, and says that he’ll be at the station in twenty minutes, give-or-take a couple of minutes.
_
“Have they spoken at all?” Shouta says, his face hidden in the fabric of his capture weapon as he stares through the two-way mirror, at Izuku Midoriya.
The three villains had been put in separate interrogation rooms, although according to Tsukauchi, it isn’t going well. Even without restraints, the third villain is restless and relentless, keeps spitting out as much vitriol as he can get away with, and Shouto Todoroki’s routinely stated that he isn’t speaking without a lawyer.
Just great.
Tsukauchi shakes his head, and Shouta was right, in his presumption that the man hasn’t slept. He’s got developing eye bags worse than Shouta’s, his hair is mused from running it through from stress, and he’s favoring his right side rather than balancing properly. “No. The most we’ve gotten is demands for a lawyer and from Midoriya, specifically, a request to speak with All Might, of all people.”
“Isn’t he…?”
“Retired?” Tsukauchi hums. “Yes. He has been for years now, I’m certain you remember.”
Shouta does. It was national news. A child’s death was overlooked for a hero’s retirement, and Shouta lets the bitterness get to him every once in a while.
“Interesting,” Shouta says instead.
He stares through the two-way mirror, at the boy. He isn’t a man, not yet, he’s still just a boy. A very, very angry boy by the looks of it; green hair is matted down to his forehead with sweat, unkempt and wild, and he’s glaring murder at the table in front of him, tapping his leg incessantly. There’s blood streaking down the side of his face, but Shouta can’t identify where it’s coming from, and there’s a slash across the non-descript black hoodie he’s wearing, revealing pale, scarred skin.
Interesting indeed, he thinks to himself.
Without so much as stating that he’ll do so, Shouta approaches the door. This kid looks like he’s been through hell and has the anger to pay for it, and Shouta wants to know why. He understands the rage - he does. He was a teenager once, too, in a society that fails more often than it succeeds.
Pinpointing the source of the anger will make him easier to talk to, and Shouta isn’t going to call Inko Midoriya after two years and tell her that her son is a heartless, ruthless killer with one account of murder and three accounts of assault under his belt. That’s not even counting the things they haven’t caught him in the act of.
Shouta eases the door open, careful to be slow about it - Midoriya tensed up at the slightest movement, and Shouta knows, instinctively, that he’s dealing with a cornered animal here.
(Or a frightened child. Both apply. He shouldn’t humanize the enemy, he’s been told many times. He’s been a pro hero for years, upwards of more than a decade, sometimes that’s just what he needs to do.)
“Izuku Midoriya,” Shouta says in a way of greeting, closing the door softly behind him, and slowly walking toward the chair opposite Midoriya.
The boy says nothing, but his eyes track every one of Shouta’s movements.
Shouta pushes his capture weapon down, just a little, to let Midoriya see more of his face. “You haven’t demanded to see a lawyer yet.”
That’s usually the last thing any pro wants to bring up - a lawyer - but damn, Shouta’s an underground hero with an infamous reputation for a reason.
Midoriya doesn’t answer or respond, again.
Shouta sighs, more to himself than anything. “My name is Eraserhead.”
This time, Midoriya answers, by lifting his gaze to match Shouta’s, tilting his head to the side. There’s almost a grin painting his lips, one scarred from time and time again of being split open. “No.”
He says it so quietly, so softly, that Shouta almost misses it.
At that, he raises a brow. “What do you mean, no?”
“Your name,” Midoriya says, louder this time, leaning back in his chair. The handcuffs binding his wrists together clink against the metal table. “ Eraserhead. That’s not your real name.”
“Certainly not.” This kid is confusing him, but this isn’t the worst Shouta’s ever dealt with, and so he’ll allow Midoriya to dictate the flow of conversation.
“You keep it private for security reasons,” Midoriya continues, “and it’s not on record. Undergrounders don’t answer to an agency, but you get paid anyway. You’re vigilantes on a payroll.”
“Heroes with a license,” Shouta corrects, although he’s interested in where Midoriya is going with this.
“Same thing, isn’t it? Either way, you don’t follow the law,” Midoriya hums, his smile only widening. “You could murder a man and no one would ever know. They wouldn’t care, either. Do you have blood on your hands like me, Shouta Aizawa?”
His eyes widen.
How the hell does this kid know his name?
His silence prompts Midoriya to continue, holding his hands up only to lean his head forward and set it in his hands, the metal cuffs jingling. “Heroes for hire, I know all about you. Quirk: Erasure. It’s very unique, you know. There’s no one else on this planet that can erase someone’s quirk, with as little drawback as you do. You can take away someone’s entire identity in the span of a second and return it just as quick.”
“I… suppose you’re correct,” Shouta says, his voice caught in his throat like his lunch probably is. There’s one video of him on the internet, from when he was young and dumb and not careful enough to avoid the cameras.
That couldn’t possibly be enough for Midoriya to know this much about him.
“I know I am.” Shouta didn’t like how casual Midoriya was about all this. “Why do they have you on my case, anyway? I don’t do much damage with my quirk, anyway.”
Shouta knows the answer to this, at least. “You can.”
“I know that, too. Who said I wanted to hurt people?”
“Nothing other than the death you caused, ” Shouta says, gaining his footing for a second time. The kid is smart, and he knows enough about Shouta that he’s certainly known who’s been in charge of his case.
And then he was fighting with Todoroki…
Shouta isn’t going to breach that topic just yet - he wants Midoriya to drop his guard, just the slightest bit. The slight hesitancy will be all Shouta needs to get the information he wants.
Still, Midoriya’s face darkens, lips curling into a scowl. If anything, it makes the blood soaking his forehead more prominent. “I didn’t hurt anyone. That man was a monster.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that it’s murder.”
“I did what I had to do!”
This is his opportunity. Shouta seizes it immediately, leaning forward, into Midoriya’s space. “Is that why you were having a brawl in an abandoned mine today?”
Midoriya jerks back, and it’s his turn for his eyes to go wide. “I didn’t say anything about that.”
“Then tell me. Were you going to kill them, too?”
No, he wasn’t. Shouta can tell that much just by looking at him. He wasn’t intending to kill anyone, just by the way his eyes immediately lose their haunted depth. It’s so strikingly, obviously clear, at that moment, that Midoriya is only seventeen, and - and -
Shouta sees himself in Izuku.
He sees an angry, angry kid, who believes the ends justify the means. He sees an angry, angry kid, sixteen years old, whose best friend died in a preventable building collapse. He sees…
A kid.
He sees a kid, not a murderer, not a villain.
“No!” Midoriya huffs out, still. “No, of course not!”
“Then why were you brawling with them?”
“Because they’re going to get themselves killed!”
That implies familiarity. Up until this point, Shouta’s been under the impression that his cases had nothing to do with each other, but that implies that Midoriya knows Todoroki, even to the point of fighting him so he didn’t hurt himself. Counterproductive in the long run, but still. Info is info, and logic is logic.
“Oh? And who is they ?” Midoriya’s let himself get worked up, although that’s entirely Shouta’s fault - it means he’s more loose-lipped, and Shouta will accept the heightened emotions for this.
Actually, he’s pretty sure he sees tears in Midoriya’s eyes. Oh, God, he better not cry, Shouta has no clue how to comfort a crying child.
“Kacchan and Todoroki-kun!”
So they’re friends, then? Shouta can’t say he’s ever fist-fought his friends because he was worried about them - the thought has crossed his mind, but he’s never gone through with it, as tempting as it’s always been.
Shouta asks just that. “So you’re friends with them, then? Who’s Kacchan?”
Midoriya sighs, shaking his head. He’s completely lost the composure that defined him at the beginning of the interrogation - Shouta knew he was getting to the kid, but this is… a lot. A lot. “You’re getting in my head. Stop doing that.”
“Can’t help it, kid.”
At that, Midoriya scowls, but he stops looking so tense. “Yes, you can. The door is over there.”
“And prison is a couple miles out,” Shouta says in a deadpan, and God, all he sees in front of him is a child that is angry and misguided and he doesn’t know a damn thing about him, but… “You shouldn’t go there. If you did what you think was right.”
“I know I was right.”
“Murder isn’t alright, no matter what happens or who did what, kid,” Shouta says, but his words feel hollow even to himself. He remembers, he remembers. He remembers the burning rage, he remembers the need to justify, he remembers.
(And he remembers one late night, standing in an alley with blood on his hands, shaking, eyes wide but unseeing. All he could do, then, was call Hizashi, and Hizashi picked him up. They’ve never spoken about that night since, but sometimes Shouta wonders what he must’ve thought.)
Midoriya opens his mouth to speak, but Shouta cuts him off, entirely not thinking about what he’s saying. “But you still don’t deserve to be thrown in the prison system. You aren’t going to juvee, you’re going to prison. And you don’t deserve it.”
This time, Midoriya offers a sardonic smile, much closer to the grin he’d given Shouta earlier. “Can’t change that, now can we?”
“We can,” Shouta says, although this wasn’t his intention coming into this room and he hasn’t got the slightest clue on how to solve this. “You don’t think you’re the first kid that fashioned themselves a vigilante, do you?”
There’s some truth to that. Shouta always planned on being a hero, but until he got his provisional license, he didn’t care if it was legal or not.
Midoriya’s brows raise, perhaps in shock, but he stays silent, to let Shouta continue.
“Neither you nor your friends deserve prison for vigilantism. You’re kids.” (And that’s all Shouta can see, kids, kids, kids.) “You’re still school age. You applied for U.A., didn’t you?”
“And I got in, too,” Midoriya scoffs. There’s a gleam to his eyes, though, like he’s very, very curious about the offer he’s about to be given and is trying his damnedest to stifle it.
Shouta has to say he agrees. “Rumor has it your friend Todooki would’ve gone to U.A. too.”
“Kacchan did go,” says Midoriya, conversationally. “You know, I think he’s the only dead kid on the school’s record. The fall of All Might, was it? Aren’t we calling that Kamino Ward?”
Shouta’s blood runs cold for a second time.
“Katsuki Bakugou,” Shouta says, in a low whisper, the loudest he’s sure his voice will go.
Midoriya hums. “Turns out the heroes didn’t save him but the villains didn’t save him, either. Guess he ended up in the mud like the rest of us, huh, Eraser?”
Shouta’s looking at Izuku Midoriya, Shouto Todoroki, and Katsuki Bakugou. He’s looking at a runaway mystery turned villain, the son of the number one hero with a grudge burning him alive, and the boy that supposedly died under Dabi’s flames at Kamino Ward.
“And we’ll drag you out,” Shouta says resolutely, his voice hardening as confidence returns. “U.A.. There’s a program there that can help you.”
There isn’t, but now that Shouta’s said it, he’ll make damn good on the promise that it will exist.
“Elaborate, Eraser,” Midoriya says, after a moment or two of silence.
So, Shouta obliges, making the details up as he goes. “We’re a hero school, that much you know. According to your mother, it was your dream school. We train hero-hopefuls, but they come to us, and we have to teach them everything. But you, you. You already know how to fight, you already know how to win. You know what you have to do.”
“Even if it has to be tweaked a little.” Ah, the scowl is back. Shouta’s wondering if the other kids are this expressive.
“Even if you need more of a moral compass,” Shouta corrects. “You wouldn’t go to prison. Your files would be sealed. You’d live on-campus at U.A., three meals a day. You’d graduate high school. You’d have options.”
“And the only option currently isn’t an option at all.”
“Observant.”
Midoriya rolls his eyes. “I’m well aware. I’d need to talk to them before accepting your offer.”
Shouta hums, nodding his head. “I can arrange that.”
_
Shouta does arrange that, and he arranges a couple of calls with Nedzu while Todoroki, Midoriya, and Bakugou all talk, having been led to a single interrogation room. Midoriya had made it out like they were all close friends, although Bakugou sticks to the edges of the room and snarls whenever one of them tries to talk to him, and Todorokiu just seems confused.
Understandable. They haven’t contacted Endeavor yet, out of principle. He’s obligated to know, as Todoroki’s parent, but the loophole provided by Todoroki’s current presumed dead legal status is good.
They talk, and talk, and talk, and at the forty-five-minute mark, he interrupts their conversation by entering the room.
Bakugou stays by the door, arms crossed and scowling - he edges away from Shouta if anything. Todoroki is instantly on guard, and there’s ice still melting off his skin, notably his neck; it must not have disappeared when his quirk was nullified by the handcuffs.
Midoriya, at least, doesn’t seem startled by his presence. He is, of course, the only one that has spoken to Shouta before. “We’ll accept your offer,” he says immediately.
Shouta can’t wipe the look of shock off his face quickly enough.
So, naturally, Midoriya continues.
“We have conditions, though,” he says, confident and defiant, arms crossed and mirroring Bakugou, all down to the glare. “We aren’t going to play your hero game for the hell of it. Todoroki is not to be contacted by Endeavor under any circumstances or we’re leaving. You aren’t to treat us differently because of our past.”
“Reasonable demands,” Shouta says, because they are. He hadn’t expected the bar to be that low, but then again, these are kids, kids that have been on their own, kids that have been mistreated, kids that think fighting in an abandoned mine until blood is drawn is the proper way to care for your friends.
Midoriya nods. “Good. And we have one more condition.”
“What is it?”
“That our friends are given the same offer,” Midoriya says, his voice oozing a smug satisfaction. If Shouta doesn’t accept, then they know he doesn’t really care about them; and if he does accept, then he’s creating what is, well, a plethora of villain kids in a hero school.
But they’re just that, kids, and so there’s no hesitation when Shouta hums his agreement. “Then you have a deal.”
_
Midoriya gives him a list. The kid said it had the names and professions of everyone that he wants to offer a place in the newly-founded program, that Nedzu is working on completing the paperwork for while Midoriya, Bakugou, and Todoroki are in holding.
Tracking down each individual is Shouta’s job. It’s another way of Midoriya giving him a test of trust - if he doesn’t put the effort into finding them, then Midoriya and the other two won’t trust him. It’s that simple.
It’s a short list, all things considered.
Ochako Uraraka. Thief.
Hitoshi Shinsou. Information broker.
Momo Yaoyorozu. Arms dealer.
Eijirou Kirishima. Enforcer.
Himiko Toga. Assassin.
Denki Kaminari. Hacker.
Mina Ashido. Villain. (Don’t tell her I said that!)
Hanta Sero. Enforcer.
Tenya Iida. Vigilante.