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Nezu picked up the papers that Shouta had set down before him, letting them fall through his paws to settle on the desk surface and even out. "All of them?" he asked.
"None of them show potential," Shouta said.
"You realize I cannot do this," Nezu said, "The commission will not allow it. You know that things have been precarious ever since All Might's death. Japan simply cannot afford to lose an entire class of future heroes."
Shouta shrugged. "What the commission wants is not my concern. I know my trade. I'm sure this needs to be done."
"Are you?" Nezu asked, but he reached for a pen to sign off on the forms.
"Can I go?" Shouta said. There was a chair opposite Nezu's desk, but he remained standing. He hoped that this would be a brief meeting.
"They'll be reinstated," Nezu explained, as if Shouta had not known the procedure already, "I'll give them to another teacher."
Shouta nodded. "Since I won't have the duties of a homeroom teacher, I'll help teach heroics. Or whatever course you prefer."
"Or you could take them back," Nezu said, looking up from his work, "You do this to crush their dreams, so they understand that they aren't invincible. I enable you because I understand the value of this lesson. But they will come back, and someone will have to be there to help them pick up the pieces. Someone has to show them how to build a life after tragedy."
"Yes," Shouta said, turning to leave, "And I can't teach that."
Crouching at the edge of a roof, Shouta looked down into the alley below. The ground was flowing in spirals, like a puddle with boots splashing through it. It was too dark to see details, but he was certain this was the villain who robbed the grocery store earlier today. He took a deep breath. Normally it didn’t take him long to catch a target, so tracking this one through the sewer had been particularly frustrating. He was looking forward to turning them over to the police.
The ground pooled together, spooling up into a vaguely human form. For just a moment, Shouta allowed himself to smile. Then he hooked his weapon around the railing behind him and dropped down into the alley. The villain heard him land and looked up. Shouta activated erasure, darted forward, and cuffed the villain's wrists. For a moment they stood there, the villain looking confused, Shouta panting from his brief exertion.
Then Shouta blinked, and the cuffs fell through the villain's arms.
Before they hit the ground Shouta had already pulled himself back by his scarf, avoiding the hand that reached to grab him. He landed on his feet, farther down the alley. This villain would need a different kind of containment—his capture weapon probably would fare no better than the cuffs had.
His enemy stalked forward, slowly and deliberate. Erasure still held them quirkless.
On the other side of the alley was an empty dumpster—Shouta had seen the trash collectors just yesterday. He raced to it, jumped on top and felt around the backside of it until he found a handle. Quickly, he tied one end of his scarf around it. Then he turned to erase the villain again, and a wall of slime closed over his face.
Most of Shouta's mind was consumed with the suffocation, the desperate need to escape and to see and to breathe—but there was a small part still free to berate himself for his stupidity. He had turned his back on the villain to set up his trap. He had broken his line of sight, and now his eyelids were pressed closed.
Suddenly the muck jerked away. Shouta erased the villain, and the spindly arm of sludge they had stretched out collapsed to the ground again. There was a boy standing to Shouta’s left—civilians always watched when they should run. Eyes locked on the villain, Shouta jumped down from the dumpster and ran across the alley. By the time he reached the wall he was running backward to keep his head turned. The villain had darted forward toward the civilian, who still stood frozen.
Before the villain could take a hostage, Shouta grabbed the dangling end of his capture weapon and pulled down with all his weight. It leveraged around the railing of the building above like a pulley. The empty dumpster he had tied it to flipped up and landed over the villain, trapping them.
The boy lowered his arms from his face, eyes blown wide. Shouta reached down on his belt and hit the button that summoned the police. They would be able to come and collect the villain. That left him free to deal with his newest problem.
“Are you Eraserhead?” the boy said, pulling a yellow backpack off his shoulders and reaching down to rummage through it. Now that the fight was over, Shouta could get a better look at him. His hair was dark, but his clothes were bright—solid red shoes and a deep teal hoodie. He wore a disposable mask even though he didn’t sound sick. That was unfortunate. This kid had better not think himself a vigilante.
Pulling out a notebook, the boy held it up toward Shouta. “Can I—if you have time, would you sign—“
Shouta grabbed the boy by the arm and dragged him toward the mouth of the alley. The kid might be an idiot, but he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. It would be better if he was gone by the time the police got here.
“Wait—wait!” the boy said.
Shouta stopped, sighing.
The boy put the notebook away, closing the backpack and settling it back on his shoulders. For the first time, Shouta noticed the objects in his other hand—a can of hairspray and a lighter.
“What is that,” Shouta said, pointing.
“Oh—that’s my fire breath!” the boy said, holding his hand up so Shouta could see what he had better.
“That’s cute,” Shouta said, as dismissive as possible. The kid had thought to fake a different quirk, one that could be used in combat without identifying him. This whole thing was premeditated, and it needed to be shut down.
The boy hunched his shoulders, tilting his head just slightly toward the overturned dumpster. “It worked fine on that guy.”
Shouta felt a jolt as the pieces clicked together. The villain had jerked their hand away from his face, like it had suddenly become a hot stove. He hadn’t had time to stop and consider it, but he could see the full scene now in his mind—the boy rounding the corner and aiming his makeshift weapon at exactly the right moment.
“How did you find me?” Shouta asked. Had this child just happened to appear right when he needed help, or had he waited out of sight the whole time, not wanting to interrupt unless it was necessary?
“I’m um—well, I’m really pretty good at finding hero fights,” the boy stammered, “I like to watch, because I think that heroes are really cool and talented and there’s so much there for me to learn when I watch them in action, and their patrol routes are usually the same so—“
“You were following me,” Shouta said.
“I mean, um,” the boy said, twisting his free hand in his hoodie pocket, “Is that bad?”
For a long moment, Shouta didn’t answer. Normally words came to him simply, without real thought. They came in the same way now, but too quickly, too varied to make his choice easy. How long did you tail me without being noticed? Do your parents know where you are? Your clothes make you easily identifiable. You have more skill than your appearance lets on. Tonight you got lucky. You would have been kidnapped if I was slower.
Tonight I got lucky. If you weren’t here I could have died.
“You can tell me to go away if I’m bothering you,” the boy said, voice cheerful even as his shoulders sagged, “I don’t want to get in your way.”
The words were so earnest that Shouta almost laughed. He had nearly been fooled. For a moment he had imagined this kid as his old self—someone jaded and wrung out, but still ready to sink his desperate nails and teeth into each opportunity as it flew by. But this child was not crushed by small disappointments. He was willing to back off, to stop chasing Shouta’s help without prompting. He must think his goals would float down to him on their own, no matter what he did. He had never been blindsided by tragedy, by the cold turning mechanisms of the real world.
“Go home kid,” Shouta said, “I don’t want to see you out here again.”
The boy nodded. Then he turned and ran down the street, footsteps growing fainter and fainter as he made his way along the sidewalk. At this rate he would be long gone before the police arrived.
Shouta sighed as the weight of his words settled down on his shoulders like cold rain. He stood in the alley, listening to the thumping of the villain in the dumpster and hoped he had been hard and bitter enough to inoculate against too much dreaming, against stronger and deadlier disappointments.
He would do anything to prevent children from becoming like him.
Two months later Shouta stood outside a cafe, slowly drinking a disposable cup of black coffee. Sometimes after his patrol he liked to watch the morning streets, to remember that there was still a world of daylight where happy people walked.
In his other hand he held the crumpled paper that had been slipped under his door last night. Someone wants to kill you , it read, the letters of each word cut out from something printed. That was the whole message. It was the funniest thing that had happened all week. A real assassin would not have sent a warning. This arts and crafts project probably came from a low level thug with a flare for the dramatic—the absolute best kind of villain in existence. Shouta was almost looking forward to their inevitable confrontation.
He took another sip of his coffee, only to discover that his cup was empty. Sighing, he tossed it into a nearby trashcan, stuffed the letter back into his pocket, and began the slow trudge back to his apartment.
There was a feeling that came to him sometimes, like ice in his stomach, when his landing almost missed the edge of a roof or his cats walked too close to his coffee on the edge of the counter. Probably it was his passive perception, curdling unnoticed until it felt like precognition. It didn’t fit comfortably enough under the blanket of rationality for Shouta to acknowledge it. That had not kept him from learning to obey it without question.
So when it came on him suddenly, two steps away from the coffee shop, he stopped and looked around. That was how he saw the light glinting on the end of the rifle, the man standing in an alley across the street, hands steady as he held it aimed. Their eyes locked.
Shouta erased him—maybe he had a quirk that helped him find his target. Then something dropped on the man from above, knocking him to the ground. Shouta was already running across the street, racing to get the jump on his attacker before he recovered. A car swerved around him, honking, but he made it to the alley.
Two people were struggling on the ground. The man Shouta had seen yanked on his rifle, trying to pull it away from the vigilante child whose arms were wrapped tightly around the other end. The man raised his fist to strike him, but Shouta caught the villain in his capture scarf and pulled him back. He lost his grip on the gun. Before he could recover and attack, Shouta grabbed his wrists, cuffed them around a nearby lamppost, and stepped out of range of his feet.
Shouta stopped for a moment, breathing heavily. It had not been a full minute since he had spotted the assassin. There was still no time to think. Rushing back into the alley, Shouta knelt down by the prone form of the boy.
“I’m sorry!” The boy sobbed, one hand still clasped around the barrel of the gun. He was conscious, but he made no move to stand up. His mask was gone. There was blood on his face.
“Don’t move,” Shouta said, placing one hand gently on the boy’s shoulder as he scanned him for other injuries. There had been no gunshot, and there was only a little blood. While the assassin may have hit him while Shouta ran across the street, that couldn’t have done much damage. Most of the boy’s injuries would have come from his own attack—the only thing he could have jumped down from was the roof of the building behind them.
“I tried,” the child blubbered, his words running together. In the light, Shouta could see that his hair was green. “I wanted—I was going to—I tried to warn you. But maybe you didn’t find the —the letter in time, or it wasn’t very clear—I didn’t figure out a lot of details and—“
“You sent a letter,” Shouta said, closing his eyes for a moment. This was not the time for a more visual show of frustration. “Kid, I get that you don’t want to go to the police, but you could have just told me.”
“You said,” the boy whispered, “You said you didn’t want to see me.”
“No,” Shouta said.
“You said that,” the boy insisted, wincing as he tried to roll onto his side.
Shouta pushed his shoulder back onto the ground. “I don’t care if I see you. I wanted you to quit breaking the law. But don’t worry about it now. Stay still until the ambulance comes.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “No—I can’t—I can’t go there! Please, you can’t take me to a hospital! I have to go, I have to get away!”
Shouta opened his mouth to respond but no words came out. Normally he would not have hesitated. But this was the second time that the kid had saved his life. And he had other underground contacts. He understood the need to avoid notice.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Just answer me first. When you landed, did you hit your head?”
“Huh?” the boy said, startled. “Um, I think not—not really. I landed on—um, I hit his head. The other guy.”
Grabbing his shoulder, Shouta lifted him a little from the ground and checked for bleeding. It didn’t look like the kid had a major head injury. It should be alright to move him.
So Shouta hooked his other arm under the kid’s knees and stood up.
The boy startled, grabbing on to Shouta’s shirt. “What—what are you—“
“I told you,” Shouta said, hurrying down the alley, “Hold still.”
The boy stopped fidgeting, probably realizing that Shouta was helping him to escape the police. The other end of the alley opened up onto a backstreet. Shouta turned right, toward his apartment. It was a good thing this had happened so close to home.
“Wait,” the boy said, clutching harder ar Shouta’s shirt, “I left my backpack on the roof.”
Quickly, Shouta set the boy down against the wall. Then he looked up. The building has a simple decorative edge along the rim, knobs just wide enough for his purposes. Making a loop with his capture scarf, Shouta threw it over and pulled himself up. Finding his footing on the edge, he scanned the roof. The backpack was on the other side, propped up against the gentle slope. Edging across as quickly as he dared, Shouta grabbed it by one strap and slung it over his shoulder, wondering what kind of incriminatory evidence was inside. He would have to wait until they made it somewhere safer to search it.
When he made it back down to the alley, the kid was standing, still leaning against the wall. He didn't put weight on his right foot.
"You aren't very good at listening to instructions," Shouta said.
The kid had the grace to look a little sheepish. "Can I have my bag," he said, reaching out a hand.
Shouta handed it over. "Put it on," he directed, hoping he would be heard this time, "Then I'll carry you on my back."
"I'm alright," the boy said, slipping the bag over his shoulder. He took one step forward and immediately fell over.
Shouta caught his shoulders before he hit the ground.
"Okay," the boy said, gripping Shouta's arm, "Um, maybe you could take me just a little ways."
Crouching down, Shouta put the boy's arm over his shoulders and leaned forward until he was under his weight. Then he stood up, hooked his arms under the boy's knees, and booked it in the general direction of home. They had already stuck around for far too long.
"Thanks," the kid said, quiet.
Shouta wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
The apartment was only two blocks away. Shouta huffed up the stairs to his landing, fiddling in his pocket for the key. It was a little difficult to turn it in the lock without dropping his burden, but he managed to fanagle everything correctly. He closed the door behind them, turning the deadbolt. Something inside him unknotted itself. There was still work to do, but they were safe for now. He could take a minute to breathe.
"This is a really elaborate safehouse," the kid said, shifting slightly on Shouta's back. "I thought that kind of outpost would be all bare-bones, but there's so much stuff on the counter. It feels really homey. Do people stay here all the time? Do you share this place with other underground heroes? Do you think we'll run into any of them?"
Shouta decided to ignore all of these questions in favor of depositing his charge on the couch. As the boy slipped off his backpack, Shouta grabbed one of the back supporting cushions and set it up against the arm of the sofa.
"Put your feet up here," he instructed.
The boy looked at him. "Wait—I forgot to take my shoes off when we came in."
"Kid," Shouta said, "You hurt your foot. I'm trying to stop the swelling."
Too exhausted to argue the point any further, Shouta turned and walked back into the kitchen. Reaching into the cabinet, he pulled out the bottle of ibuprofen and a glass. Then he reached down to rinse off the cup in the sink. He didn't know when it had last been washed.
From the other room, the boy hissed in pain.
Shouta looked over his shoulder, trying to observe without being noticed. The boy had one shoe off. He sat stiffly at the edge of the couch, one arm curled around his side.
“How did you land?” Shouta said, forgetting that he had meant to be subtle.
The boy startled, looking wildly around. “Huh?”
“When you fell on that man,” Shouta said, drying off the glass on the towel that hung from the oven handle, “Where was the impact?”
"Oh," he said, gaze finally settling on the kitchen. He sat up a little, gesturing vaguely at his chest. "Here I think? But I kind of knocked him over and kept falling, so my foot hit the ground too."
Shouta nodded and turned back to the sink and filled up the glass. He carried that and the bottle back into the living room and set them down on the coffee table.
"What's that," the kid said.
"I need to figure out how badly you're hurt," Shouta said. "Can you take off your hoodie?"
The boy nodded, but he only got the hem up a few inches before he stopped, wincing.
Shouta knelt down next to him, reaching out his hands. "Let me do it."
For a moment, the boy just looked at him. Then he un-hunched his shoulders, held his arms out a little from his chest. "Yeah, okay," he said, "That makes sense."
Shouta grabbed the hem of his hoodie and worked it up over the shirt underneath, careful not to jostle. The boy didn't sound like the procedure caused him any pain, but it was unclear if that meant much. He had made no sound on the way here, and his weight would have been on his chest the whole time Shouta had carried him on his back.
Once he had the hoodie over the kid's head Shouta sort of folded it and set it down in his lap. As soon as he had it the kid reached for his backpack, unzipped it and stuffed the hoodie into the main pocket. He hadn't quite been quick enough. Shouta still saw the middle school uniform that had already been inside. The sight of it made his insides do a funny little flip, so Shouta decided not to think about it right now.
Setting one hand on the kid's shoulder, Shouta turned him back to face him. "I need to feel your ribs now. If one of them is very broken, then we are going to the hospital. I don't want you to die of a punctured lung."
"Oh," the kid said, face paling. "I um, don't want that either. But can't you just call an underground contact to come and heal me? Don't you have connections to people with healing quirks or something?"
"No," Shouta said, and began running his fingers over the child's chest.
He knew that this should have been done with an x-ray, that he wouldn't be able to feel a fracture unless it was drastic. But the kid's chest was not visibly deformed, and he hadn't been coughing up fluids, so there was a good chance that this wasn't enough of an emergency to need immediate attention. Also, Shouta did the same thing to himself sometimes, when he slipped and landed hard, to find out if he could go home and sleep before he sought help. That was all he was looking for now. He needed to know if this child had enough time to sit and talk, either for Shouta to convince him to come clean about everything, or to feed him an appropriate cover story. They were going to the doctor eventually, no matter how this turned out.
The kid gasped, and Shouta pulled his hand back. He hadn't felt a major break, but he had already known there would be bruising at least. Any kind of pressure would hurt.
"Am I—I'm not gonna die, right?" the kid said.
"No," Shouta said, handing him the glass of water, "I don't think so. Are you having trouble breathing?"
Distracted by the question, the kid took the water from Shouta's hand. "Um—it kind of hurts, if I take a really deep breath."
"Don't breathe really shallow, even if it hurts not to," Shouta said, grabbing the bottle of ibuprofen and engaging in combat with the child proof lid. "And tell me if the pain gets worse."
The kid blinked. "Is that drugs?"
"Yes," Shouta said, plopping one of the pills into his palm. Then he turned the bottle around so that the kid could read the label.
"I don't want to take that," the kid said, "I don't want to not feel it if I'm in pain because what if I think I'm fine already and then I move around and hurt myself?"
"Easy," Shouta said, "Don't move around."
"But I—"
"This will also help with the swelling," Shouta interrupted, "It's not just to make you feel better. It will actually make you better."
The kid bit his lip pensively, but he slowly reached out his hand and took the pill from Shouta's hand. Satisfied, Shouta went back to the kitchen and pulled all of his ice packs out of the fridge. Then he opened the drawer with the kitchen towels and grabbed a stack. With his arms full, he went back to the living room. The kid still had his feet on the ground, but he seemed to have actually swallowed the pill. Shouta would take his victories where he could.
Walking around the couch, Shouta took the other cushion off the side and set it against the other arm. "Sit sideways," he said, "If you hurt your ribs then you shouldn't lay down—but you are going to put your foot up.”
"Right," the boy said, like Shouta had asked him to finish a plate of slimy vegetables, but he scooted over to the place Shouta had pointed and did as he was asked.
"What's your quirk?" Shouta said. He picked up one of the ice packs and began wrapping a towel around it.
"Oh—hang on," the boy said. He grabbed at the top of his backpack, but the angle was all wrong for him to lift it.
"I've got it," Shouta said, placing the wrapped ice pack into the child's open hand. Then he unzipped the backpack and began pulling out the contents—the hoodie, the school uniform, a can of spray paint.
"That's it!" the boy exclaimed, pointing at the can, "That's my quirk! Disguise!"
"What happened to Fire Breath?" Shouta asked, a little annoyed at this distraction.
The kid shrugged. "I ran out of hairspray, and I figured my mom would notice if I took another bottle. I was gonna save up my allowance and get another one, but I keep losing money at school and—"
"Okay, okay," Shouta said, gesturing with his palm like he could physically restrain this onslaught of words, "I really need to know what your quirk is."
"Right," the boy said, "Sorry. Um, so after you told me to stop following you I started following other people—mostly other underground heroes at first, but then I started meeting other people who run around at night. There's this one guy Ta—wait, I shouldn't tell you his name."
Shouta nodded—he couldn't blame the kid for keeping contact confidentiality—and the movement jerked his gaze down to the open backpack. There was a wallet inside.
"So there's this guy a couple of years older than me, and he's a street artist. He's really talented—he's been teaching me about color composition, and repetition of texture within a piece and—okay but that's off topic, um, he gave me that spray paint to practice with.”
There was a window behind the couch. As he spoke, the kid began absently tapping on the glass with his fingers. His gaze was fixed somewhere near the corner between the wall and the ceiling. “Anyway, I got to thinking—that maybe other heroes wouldn’t be so nice if they didn’t want me to follow them. And there were sometimes other sort of sketchy people that I would see, and follow them or overhear their conversations—that’s how I knew, um, about today.”
While he was distracted. Shouta opened the wallet. His school ID was encased behind a clear plastic partition. Midoriya Izuku, age 14. Shouta almost laughed at the recklessness of it. Quietly, he closed the wallet again and slipped it into his pocket.
“But anyway I was thinking that I needed an excuse. If someone turned around and saw me I needed to be doing something sort of bad but not really bad and also really unrelated to whatever was going on. And having the spraypaint—it was easy to start drawing anytime—and I had a reason to run away if anybody—“
“Kid,” Shouta interrupted, “I need to know if you used your real quirk for vigilante activities. You could be arrested for that, so we need to come up with an appropriate cover story.”
“Oh,” the kid—Midoriya—said, looking slightly shocked. “That’s—that’s really kind of you. But you don’t need to worry. I didn’t use a quirk like that. I um, actually I don’t have a quirk.”
“You don’t have a quirk?” Shouta demanded.
Midoriya scrunched up his shoulders. “No.”
Shouta stood up. “Then you didn’t do anything illegal. Vigilantism is a crime specifically for unauthorized quirk use. So is there something else you’ve done? Is there something incriminating in your backpack? Why shouldn’t we go to the hospital?”
“No!” Midoriya yelped. “I don’t want to go there!”
“Why not?” Shouta said.
Midoriya looked away. “Because then my Mom will find out.”
“Ah,” Shouta said. That was an easier issue than he had been anticipating. Suddenly, he remembered the other ice packs. He began wrapping them in the towels he had brought and handing them to Midoriya one by one.
Midoriya stacked them on the couch beside him.
“Okay,” Shouta said. It came out a little more petulant than he had intended. Forcefully, he picked the ice packs and placed them where they were supposed to go—around Midoriya’s foot and side.
“Sorry,” Midoriya said.
“You have to stop this,” Shouta said.
“I’m sorry,” Midoriya insisted, “I know I’m probably making this take longer than it should, and you’re already—“
“No, not that.” Shouta said. “You need to stop running around at night.”
Midoriya bit his lip. “I—I can’t do that.”
Shouta crouched down until he could address Midoriya at eye level. “Is someone threatening you?”
“What!” Midoriya blurted. “No!”
“Is there something going on at home that you want to get away from?”
“It’s not anything like that!” Midoriya insisted, waving his hands wildly. The movement jostled him, and he winced.
“Okay,” Shouta said, keeping his face carefully blank. A denial at this stage might just mean Midoriya was too scared to explain the details. “Can you help me—help me understand why you have to do this then.”
“It’s like,” Midoriya said, fiddling with the hem of one of the kitchen towels, “It’s like water.”
“Water,” Shouta repeated.
“One time my Mom forgot she was making rice,” Midoriya said, “She just had a pot of water boiling, and she was on the phone, and it kept boiling until it spilled everywhere. It got all on the stove and into the burners and onto the floor, and you couldn’t touch it to clean it up because it was still so hot.”
Shouta nodded, wondering if he looked sufficiently interested. To be totally honest, he was getting a little tired of all these rabbit trails. He didn’t mind rambling in general, but this was a bit of a situation, and the delay in resolving it grated on him. Luckily, he had interacted with enough informants to know better than to interrupt. That would only make the conversation take longer.
“Everybody has this idea of the kind of person that I am. I’m supposed to—to be comfortable. To stay safe, and simple, and mostly out of the way. And that’s really not so bad. A life like that is—well I guess it’s the goal. It’s not that I don’t like peace! But there isn’t peace right now. Ever since All Might died, there’s been so much more criminal activity. I feel like I see bad things happening all around me. And so—if I’m going to be safe and happy, then I have to ignore it. I have to ignore the other people who are in trouble. And doing that makes me feel like I’m going to boil over.”
Shouta rocked back on his heels, considering. “That’s a noble impulse. You should help people who are in trouble. That’s not a reason to not go to the hospital.”
“My Mom will cry and then try to make me stop,” Midoriya said.
“And she’d be right to do so,” Shouta said, “There are more constructive ways to help people—you could consider a career in—“
“I can’t wait that long!” Midoriya said, “There’s so much school before I can get a job in anything useful! I knew there was somebody who wanted to kill you! I wasn’t gonna go do ten years of school about it! Please, you’ve got to understand—I don’t want to explode. I feel like I’m going to explode.”
“Why not?” Shouta said, “If you break down then the people in your life who care about you will notice that something needs to change. If your Mom really cares about you, then she won’t love you any less if you stop being perfect, if you show her the real difficulty you’re having. She can help you find a more constructive outlet. She can wait for the water to cool, and wipe it up, and then she’ll have an empty pot and a stove available again.”
“That’s,” Midoriya said, like each word was painful to pull out, “That’s what I’m scared of. That they’ll find a way to make me stop caring so much. That there won’t be any of me left after.”
Shouta swallowed. He had come this far easily, driving the conversation by the central points of his convictions. But he did not immediately know how to respond to this.
"And I know I'm in the way!" Midoriya blurted, "I know I'm not doing any good. I think maybe you should just arrest me, because if I'm locked away I can keep caring and keep trying to do things and I just won't be able to get anywhere. I can be safe and quiet like everyone wants. My Mom would be happier even—she loves me so much—she wouldn't be happy if I got all sad and dried out inside. I could send her letters probably, and—"
"I have to make a call," Shouta said, standing up to stride back into the kitchen. He was incredibly angry—at Midoriya for creating a situation that systematically broke down every logical plan he brought to shore it up—at the universe for putting him close enough to get involved. Snatching his phone from the counter, he turned it on and violently pressed in the passcode, then the phone app, then the phone number. He held it up to his ear, listening to the ring sound from the other end.
He was angry at himself, for caring when it had only ever caused him pain.
Nezu picked up after the third ring. "Aizawa! Can I help you?"
"I hate you," Shouta spat, keeping his voice too low to carry, "And I hate your stupid quirk. For once in your miserable rodent life would you just be wrong about one thing! Would that be too much?"
"I'm sorry," Nezu said, though he didn't sound apologetic, "Is that a hint of emotion I detect? Aizawa, this is fascinating! You're always so reserved!"
"I need you to send Recovery Girl to my house this afternoon," Aizawa managed.
From the other room, he heard the window slide open.
Shouta sprang around the corner, catching the phone between his face and shoulder as he threw his capture scarf. It caught around Midoriya's arm and yanked him back onto the couch, away from the open window he had been leaning for.
"Midoriya Izuku," Shouta demanded, "Were you really about to jump off a building again ?"
Midoriya winced, grabbing at the back of the couch for balance. "Who told you my name?"
Shouta reached into his pocket, drew out the wallet, and threw it down onto Midoriya's lap. "Your ID is in the front pocket. Do you want every crime lord you tail to know who your mother is?"
All of the color drained from Midoriya's face. He grabbed the wallet, mouth open, but no sound came out.
"When can Recovery Girl get here?" Shouta said into the phone.
"Her schedule is free after lunch," Nezu said. There was a dangerous hesitance in his voice, like he was working out a puzzle.
Midoriya blinked up at Shouta. "That's—she's—she has a healing quirk!"
"You," Shouta said, pointing down at Midoriya, "Is your school expecting you? You won't make it there today."
"I'll send them an email from my Mom," Midoriya said, reaching down to pull a phone from his backpack.
"Aizawa," Nezu said. Shouta could hear the smile in his voice. "Is that a child with you?"
Midoriya overbalanced, and Shouta had to jump forward to keep him from falling into the coffee table. Belatedly, Shouta realized that he should have released Midoriya's arm from the capture scarf.
"From your Mom?" Shouta said, trying to settle Midoriya back onto the couch without jostling him. Nezu would still be there in a moment.
"I have a fake email for my Mom that I use for my school and a fake email for my school that I use for my Mom," Midoriya explained. He had grabbed his phone when Shouta wasn't looking, and was quickly drafting an email. "It controls the flow of information. Mostly I just copy and paste, but sometimes it's useful to—"
"Great," Shouta said, standing up again. "Nezu—what were we saying?"
"Let me see if I understand correctly," Nezu said, "You have an underground contact who was recently injured. You want Recovery Girl to come and heal them discreetly so that they can continue to assist you in your underground work."
"Yes," Shouta said.
"Recovery Girl will not do this unless I convince her to, or else you would have just called her."
"She doesn't like to come out on weekdays," Shouta said, "And this isn't attached to a pending case."
"You're developing a relationship," Nezu said, "You are planting the seeds of kindness now in the hope that it will lead to a larger good in the future."
"I know how to do my job," Shouta said, "You don't have to explain it to me. I've been forming contacts for ages."
"Aizawa," Nezu said, "You are mentoring a child. You called me because I have been trying to get you to do exactly that. You know that I enable you. You know that I will convince Recovery Girl to keep this quiet for you. Well done!"
Shouta said nothing. He couldn't deny it—if he did, Nezu would revoke his help. And he was starting to feel a little bad for getting angry with him.
"Recovery Girl will be there at two," Nezu said. Then he hung up.
Shouta pulled his phone away from his face. His breaths were still heavy from jumping around the counter.
"I got the day off," Midoriya said, "So we had better not be going to the hospital."
"We're not going to the hospital," Shouta said, resisting the urge to slam his face against the nearest wall. "Midoriya—I would like to make a deal."
Midoriya cupped his chin in one hand. "What kind of deal?"
Shouta sat down on the ground. It didn't feel right to loom over Midoriya for this conversation, and he was too spent to consider dragging a chair over. Then he tossed his phone forward onto Midoriya's lap. "Make a contact," he said, "Put your number in there."
"What!" Midoriya said, eyes blowing wide, "Why?"
"Because I'm not in the habit of heeding vaguely threatening letters. Listen, I'm not going to tell your mother what you're doing, but only if you follow some very specific parameters."
"You’re blackmailing me," Midoriya said.
“No,” Shoura said, even though that was exactly what he was doing. "Let me explain. You need to tell me everything you learn right away. If I tell you that someone is too dangerous, then you listen to me and stay away from them. I want you to text me when you start a patrol, and when you get back. If you have the time, text me before you do anything that feels even remotely dangerous."
“That’s a lot of reasons to text you,” Midoriya said, “What if I forget to text you one time? What happens if I mess up and text you about something that turns out to not be dangerous? Won’t I bother you?”
“That’s irrelevant.”
Midoriya bit his lip. “But you told me to go away.”
“That was to keep you alive,” Shouta said, steadying himself against the arm of the couch. “You would be safest if you stayed home. But since that isn’t currently an option, I’m taking alternative measures. You bothering me never came into it. You made that up.”
“You’re—are you—you’re helping me?” Midoriya said, looking vaguely stunned. “Why are you helping me? Isn’t this illegal?”
“Technically, no,” Shouta said, “But that won’t stop the police from finding something else to accuse you of if you cause trouble. You’re going to have to get very good very quickly.”
“I will,” Midoriya said, hands curling into fists, “I’ll get more experience. I’ll figure out how to—“
“Do not,” Shouta said, “Do not try to figure this out on your own. I did not spend my entire life training for this task specifically just for you to ignore me.”
Midoriya fell silent, looking vaguely stunned. Shouta had not meant for his words to come out like that. He had intended to say only that he had experience in underground hero work, but he could not restrict the scope of his words now, not when he was also a high school teacher for this subject specifically, not when Nezu had spent their entire professional relationship pushing him in this exact direction.
Something warm and soft brush against his hand—the black cat that lived here was emerging from under the coffee table, coming up to Shouta like she expected attention. Shouta ignored her. He was busy just now, and people in his business tended to take him less seriously when he was holding a cat.
“Wait,” Midoriya said, “Isn’t this a safehouse? Who feeds the cat?”
“Yamada,” Shouta said, “The maid. But you’re getting off topic. Your backpack is yellow. That’s the color most likely to catch a human eye. Do you take this same backpack to school?”
“I can’t work with you,” Midoriya said, “I’m a liability. I’ll get you hurt.”
“You saved my life,” Shouta said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes, “Twice. You’re an asset. Get a different backpack.”
“What?” Midoriya gasped, “Really? But you sent me away—I thought I was in your way!
“You have guts and good instincts,” Shouta said, “But you’re fourteen. You’re lacking in life and trade experience. That makes you sloppy. Sloppiness gets people killed. I sent you home because it would be a waste if you didn’t live long enough to reach your full potential.”
“I have—good instincts?” Midoriya said. He looked near to tears.
Shouta shrugged. “You trailed me without being caught, which is more than most of my coworkers can accomplish. In both encounters I’ve seen, you waited until your opponent was distracted to intervene, which means that you’re patient and you recognize your own limitations. You know that people are going to underestimate you, and you’ve weaponized it. I bet your outfit is childish on purpose. Your tools look inconspicuous. You seem to—Midoriya.”
Midoriya was bawling. He had cried a little when he fell off the roof, but not like this. Both his hands were clasped over his mouth, trying unsuccessfully to stifle the noise. Snot dripped down onto his fingers. He didn't seem in much of a state to listen to more analysis of his techniques. Shouta sighed. Then he reached across the coffee cable for a tissue box and held it out where Midoriya could reach.
Grabbing a tissue, Midoriya wiped at his face. Then he bent forward, hunching over onto himself. His breaths grew more and more uneven, and Shouta suddenly remembered his injuries.
"Kid," Shouta said, "You've got to calm down. You're going to hurt yourself."
Midoriya gave no indication that he had heard this instruction.
Jumping up, Shouta hurried back into the kitchen. He opened the fridge door, pulling out a thermos. He remembered what he had put inside of it—green tea, with honey. It would be cold now. Heading back to the couch, Shouta unscrewed the lid and poured it half full of tea. He had a feeling it would spill if he went any higher.
Midoriya was still curled over, sounding absolutely miserable. Shouta put the thermos down on the coffee table. Then he pushed against Midoriya's shoulder just enough to get him to unfurl and lean back against the couch arm again.
Midoriya looked at him, lips moving slightly, like he wanted to say something but couldn't get the words out. Grabbing his hand, Shouta placed the thermos lid inside, curling his fingers around it. Midoriya must have understood—he brought his other hand up to clasp the cup and raised it to his lips, trembling with the effort. He took small sips.
Shouta watched him carefully, but he didn't accidentally inhale any of it. And it did seem to be working. Shouta had learned this trick ages ago. He wasn't the kind of person to offer comfort to strangers. When a civilian was crying unhelpfully, he always handed them his water bottle. Drinking steadied your breaths.
Midoriya finished drinking and held the cup out for Shouta to take. Then he yawned. There were still tears in his eyes, but he wasn't sobbing violently anymore.
"Did you sleep last night?" Shouta said.
"Um," Midoriya said, sniffing, "Not really, no."
"You should sleep then," Shouta said.
Standing up, Shouta closed and locked the window. Then he strode across the room and grabbed the throw pillow from the armchair, then the blanket draped across its back. Moving back to the couch, he set the pillow against the window so Midoriya could rest his head against something without lying all the way down. Then he shook the blanket out and spread it over him. It probably wasn't the most comfortable setup. Were kids better or worse at sleeping than adults?
"Do you need—" Shouta started, then cut off. Midoriya was already asleep.
Shouta's shoulders relaxed a little. This was good. He wouldn't have to talk for a while, if he was quiet. The cat came out from under the coffee table again, and this time when she rubbed against his legs he picked her up. There was something unsettling him, something that had gotten buried under the nonstop events of the morning. But now everything was quiet.
Creeping back toward the kitchen, Shouta set the purring cat on the counter. Was he really going to enable a vigilante? A child vigilante? He knew he was doing all the right things, but he couldn't understand how he had come here. This kind of life was dangerous. Wasn't it his job to keep people safe?
There was ground coffee on the shelf above the mugs. Shouta pulled a bag down and began scooping it out into the coffee maker. It was because Midoriya had seemed so unhappy. He was doing this so that he could be happy. And that was it, wasn't it? His real goal had always been to enable others to find joy. Safety was usually a prerequisite for that accomplishment. But in Midoriya, the two had been at odds. Shouta had picked one.
Slipping the scoop back into the coffee bag, Shouta closed the lid on the coffee maker and the lid on his thoughts. He was growing dangerously close to the things his friends said about his own extremely practical life choices. It was enough for him to accomplish his goals. He didn't need anyone to worry if he was miserable. He would just bury this down with all the things he planned to think about some other time.
That same sense of foreboding washed over him again, but in a different quality. Shouta could feel some other time hanging over him, like a child about to jump him from a roof.
He decided not to think about that either.