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Playing the sound of a distressed baby animal was a sure way to lure in the mother. The same could be said towards a student and their mentor.
Heroes were always so protective of their fledglings, as if they didn’t toss them out into the real world with nothing more than school lessons drilled into their heads and a pat on the back. As if their life wouldn’t- couldn’t be snuffed out the second a villain took a whiff of that vulnerability.
Shirakumo should’ve known all about that first-hand.
The kid in question was right below Aizawa, following the trail he left him like a hound with a scent. He was cautious as he stepped into the warehouse, each step careful and quiet against the industrial walkway. Aizawa hovered over him, hiding in the metal canopy, letting the shadows conceal him. It was a little disappointing as he watched the kid. He was good, strict in how he moved, and wise as he silenced every footstep, but he had yet to look up.
It would get him killed one day.
Aizawa followed the kid as he moved, slinking across the beams, his own feet sure and steady like he was bred for the high places of a concrete jungle. The kid was none the wiser as Aizawa lowered himself onto the next beam right above his head. If Aizawa reached out, he was sure he would be able to touch the mob of wild purple curls that stuck upwards on the kid’s head.
He resisted the urge. There was no need to end his fun so soon.
“It looks clear,” the kid said, pressing a finger against his ear where a communicator was tucked away. “Yeah, I don’t know. I was sure I saw something.” The kid sighed and rolled his shoulders, the capture weapon around them slipping until several loops fell down his arms. As if by habit, the kid plucked at a curl of the weapon and thread it through his fingers, fidgeting.
“Yeah, I’ll meet you out front.” Whatever was said on the other side had the kid laughing, a short playfully bitter type of laugh, one that sounded rebellious. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine, Dad .” And with a roll of his eyes, the kid hung up, removing his hand from his ear. He stretched lazily, pushing his hands up into the air, his fingers a ghost touch away from Aizawa. “Such a worrier.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Aizawa said, focusing his quirk on the kid.
With a startled yelp, the kid turned, eyes wide. The reaction was slow, tardy compared to how cautious he was earlier.
It was a second too late as he reached for his capture weapon. Aizawa already had his in hand as he pounced from the beams, wrapping the length of cloth around the kid’s ankle, and pulled.
The kid fell with a walloping clang, the walkway vibrating under his weight. Aizawa landed next to him, silent, focused. He pulled on the cloth and dragged the kid underneath his gaze.
“Next time, look up.” He couldn’t help the maddening grin as the kid looked up with a pained, terrified shine in his eyes. And then the smirk split across Aizawa’s face as a determined glee found its way into the kid’s eyes. “You want to fight me?”
The kid moved. It was clever, or it would have been if Aizawa didn’t see it coming. It was an old move Shirakumo used.
With a flick of his wrist, the kid threw his own capture weapon towards Aizawa’s face, blinding him from the kid’s movements. From behind the white blur in front of him, a fist soared through the air, aiming for Aizawa’s nose.
Cute . Like a kitten pouncing on its mother, honing its skills. Harmless, and undeniably cute.
With a graceful step to the side, Aizawa dodged the hit. And then in one glide, he moved into the kid’s space, the pair of them dancing on the gangway, the kid clumsy as he stumbled back.
“Let’s see what else Shirakumo taught you.”
It was perhaps a little unfair to herd the kid back, lunging at him before he could even think of his next move. But any other villain would have eaten him alive and spat him out. He was lucky Aizawa liked the play with his food.
The kid flipped backwards, trying to put space between them.
Aizawa rushed forward on quick feet, pushing the kid back, earning himself a frustrated grunt.
A powerful kick cut above Aizawa’s head as the kid jumped up, figuring if he couldn’t put space between them on the ground, then gaining the upper ground would put him at an advantage.
Aizawa pursed his lips, impressed. Maybe the kid wasn’t entirely useless.
He gave chase.
Running across the metal structure beams, Aizawa realised the kid was fleeing to the high windows, eager to escape.
Landing behind him, Aizawa flung out his weapon, wrapping a loop around the kid’s ankle. And pulled.
But the kid turned at the last second, knife in hand, and plunged it downwards, shredding through the capture weapon, cutting himself free.
It was a move he himself had taken years to master.
The kid hightailed it towards the window.
“Not bad,” Aizawa muttered, reeling in the broken end of his capture weapon.
The kid was almost to the window.
Aizawa shot forward, closing the space between them. The kid let out a cry, his legs pounding as he pushed himself closer to freedom.
That wouldn’t do.
Aizawa pivoted his body, throwing his weapon outwards and looping it around a beam. Pulling with all his strength, he catapulted himself through the air, soaring over the kid.
Skidding to a stop, the kid halted as Aizawa landed in front of the window.
The kid raised his forearms, blocking the hit. He raised his knee at Aizawa’s stomach, but the older man used the momentum to push himself up and over the kid. With a quick kick to the back of the knee, the kid stumbled, falling down and scrambled to keep his hold on the beam, or plunge to the warehouse floor below.
Aizawa dove, pushing a knee between the kid’s shoulder blades.
“Breathe. You’re panicking.” Aizawa leaned forward and lectured into the kid’s ear.
It was a mistake.
The kid’s head snapped back, connecting with his nose. Blood burst from his nostrils as Aizawa fell back, bringing a hand to cushion the bleed.
The kid twisted and flipped onto his knees. He levelled Aizawa with a glare.
Wiping away the blood with the back of his hand, Aizawa couldn’t help but chuckle at the kid.
“Why are you laughing?” The kid snorted, his nostrils flaring.
“It’s like Shirakumo simply replaced me with a younger model. He even gave you my scarf.” Aizawa smirked. “I wonder if he found another Mic.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the kid snapped.
“You will.” Aizawa bolted forward, ready to end this.
With a practised move, the kid sprung forward, reacting rather than stumbling like he had previously done.
But it didn’t help him.
Aizawa landed a flurry of blows, knocking the kid back with every punch. He didn’t let the kid have a single second to breathe.
Desperately, and entirely sloppy, the kid struck forward, his fist coming within inches of Aizawa’s cheek.
Aizawa grabbed it before it could connect.
“You’re losing your head.” He twisted the wrist and pinned the arm against the kid’s back, earning a startled yelp of pain in return.
He kept him there. The kid struggled. Wheezing. Whimpering with frustration. Balancing on his toes. His arm straining in Aizawa’s hold.
“Is this really all you have?” Aizawa tutted. “Try again.”
He kicked the kid in the small of his back, and let go of his arm. Thankfully, the kid wasn’t entirely useless and managed to keep his footing. He twisted around, adopting another fighting pose, threading his capture weapon through his fingers.
A bead of sweat rolled down the kid’s temple.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Aizawa’s quirk flared to life again. If it intimated the kid, it didn’t show aside from the narrowing of his brows.
“You should have used your quirk a lot earlier than this.”
Surprise crossed the kid’s face. No doubt trying and failing to use his quirk.
“It’s a good quirk. If you can get your target to respond to
you.”
He stalked forward.
The kid took a step back.
“Aside from you?” The kid growled.
“Aside from me.” Aizawa grinned back.
The kid searched over his features, eyes darting as if he would find the answer he wanted written on Aizawa’s face.
“You didn’t answer my earlier question.”
Aizawa took the space between them. The kid had nowhere else to go as he pressed himself up against a closed door.
“Who are you?”
“A friend of Shirakumo,” Aizawa said, reaching forward. The kid slapped his hand away. He could hear his panicking breathing through the mask around his jaw.
“He’s never mentioned you before.”
Aizawa laughed. The kid flinched.
“That doesn’t surprise me. You don’t drag your skeletons out of the closet.”
The kid blinked at him. Confused.
“Don’t worry, your mentor will arrive soon and tell you all about it.”
“Wh-?”
Aizawa pounced.
But the kid flung himself off the gangway, throwing his capture weapon around a metal beam and swung across the warehouse.
Aizawa watched, amused and surprised the kid could move so fast.
“Loud Cloud! Someone’s on my tail!” The kid yelled into his communication device. “I need hel-.”
Aizawa crashed into the kid, sending them spiralling towards the ground.
The kid struggled. Kicking. Punching. But Aizawa kept a tight hold on his uniform.
“Let go! We’re going to fall!” The kid screamed.
“Not if you escape.” Aizawa cocked an eyebrow as Shinsou grappled with his own cloth, desperately trying to throw it out towards the beams above them.
Aizawa grabbed the length before it could snatch.
“Fuck!” The kid yelled before snapping his teeth down on Aizawa’s arm.
In a moment of surprise, Aizawa let go, wincing as the kid’s teeth dragged along his skin.
With his good arm, Aizawa flung himself down into the ground, hissing as he landed awkwardly, the landing sending a shock straight through his body, the wound burning at the force.
The kid wasn’t so lucky, barrelling straight past Aizawa, smacking hard against the floor. With a solid thud, the kid rolled before skidding to a stop.
Aizawa took a step towards the limp form, curious if he had taken it too far and killed the kid. Shirakumo wouldn’t be impressed if Aizawa killed his pupil.
But after a second of waiting with bated breath, the kid’s chest rose before shuddering with a choked gasp of pain.
“How many ribs did you break?” Aizawa asked.
The kid pushed himself into his hands and knees, whining as his limbs shook.
“You prioritised escaping me without thinking about how you would safely land.” Aizawa strode towards the kid.
The moment his shadow looked over him, the kid froze, his breath hitching.
“Any other villain would kill you right here and now.” Aizawa crouched before the kid, grabbed a fistful of purple hair and lifted his head to meet eye to eye.
A bead of blood ran down from the kid’s head, disappearing under his mask. But still, even injured, the kid glared at him, fear thick in those angry eyes.
Aizawa reached forward and plucked the commutation device from the kid’s ear. He could hear a voice buzzing through the device, shouting for the kid.
“You’re lucky.” He grinned. “You’re not my target.”
He put the device into his ear.
“MindJack! Are you there?! Answer me, kid! Shinsou!”
Aizawa smiled at the desperation in Shirakumo’s voice. It had been a long time since he heard that baritone voice.
“You should keep a better eye on your pup, Shirakumo.”
The line went quiet.
And then, there was a whisper in his ear.
“Shouta?”
“Don’t keep me waiting.”
Aizawa plucked the device out of his ear and crushed it under his boot, satisfied as it crunched into little plastic pieces.
It was cruel to let Shirakumo stew, but he could almost imagine him racing towards the warehouse, a flurry of thunderous clouds storming towards where he waited.
But Aizawa didn’t want the night to end so quickly. He could be just as unpredictable as a rain cloud too.
“Do you think I make him angry?” Aizawa asked with a grin, still keeping a grip on the kid’s hair.
But the kid wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he was staring at the communication device, or rather the pieces of it, with a destroyed expression on his face. A drop of blood rolled over the bridge of his mask.
Aizawa reached forward and pulled the mask down. Without the mask, the kid truly looked his age, with a smooth jaw and baby fat cheeks. Aizawa tutted at the sight.
It was then the kid’s eyes darted up, the true fear of the situation making his pupils dilate.
“Even after everything we went through, he still believes in using children to fight for the Commission.”
The kid tugged his head back, but Aizawa kept his grip firm.
“You know nothing about Loud Cloud,” the kid growled.
The hero name made something inside Aizawa’s stomach twist painfully. He tightened his hold on the kid, earning a pitiful moan.
“Your loyalty will get you killed one day.” Aizawa snorted as he pulled a length of his captured cloth. “Now give me your wrists.”
The kid glared at him, his lip curled in a sneer.
Aizawa huffed, rolling his eyes.
Teenagers.
In one quick move, Aizawa yanked on the kid’s hair before throwing him onto the floor. Following the yelp, Aizawa sat on the kid’s back and twisted his arms back.
“Get off me!”
“Don’t make me gag you.” Aizawa bent the wrists and looped his capture weapon around them, tugging them tight. The kid bucked and swore, wiggling, his fingers opening and closing into claws.
“Fuck! Get off!” The kid all but snapped at him, kicking out, even though Aizawa was out of reach.
“Dramatic.” He stood, placing a boot on the kid’s back to keep him down. “Pipe down, your mento-.”
The air changed then. It almost fell like static. A charge that tickled his nose and left an ache in his joints. Just like before a storm.
A million goosebumps ran up his arms at the sudden change.
Aizawa bent over and grabbed the back of the kid’s collar, dragging him to his feet.
“Looks like he’s faster than I remember,” he said to himself, casting a watchful eye over the warehouse.
The temperature dropped, sending a chill through them both, the kid trembling under his grip.
He could taste Shirakumo’s quirk on his tongue. The smell of rain and thunderstorms oh so familiar.
He was close. Too close that every instinct told him to run. And his gut was never wrong.
A scuff of a boot sounded to his left.
“Been a long time,” Aizawa called out.
But Shirakumo didn’t step into the flickering lights of the warehouse, and instead kept himself concealed in the shadows. It was so unlike his sun cloud disposition. He didn’t remember the hero not rushing in to help a wounded child.
Well, he had one of those on hand.
“This one yours?” Aizawa grabbed a fistful of purple hair, yanking the kid’s head up to face his teacher.
Predictably, Shirakumo stepped out of the shadows, bō-staff in hand, and a hardened look on his features.
“Let him go, Shouta.”
A grin split across Aizawa’s face.
“Come get him.”
It was like a clap of thunder. Shirakumo charged, bō-staff raised high before he swung down, the blow missing by centimetres as Aizawa threw the kid aside and ducked.
“Why are you back, Shouta?” Shirakumo yelled, throwing himself forward with a well-placed fist. Aizawa kicked out, using the momentum of the punch to flip backwards, creating space.
“Fifteen years, and you finally decide to show up again!” Shirakumo’s voice wobbled, just for a second, before he reined control. “Why now? Why attack my student?”
Before he could even reply, a cloud exploded in front of his vision.
But he knew this trick.
He stepped back.
And as he predicted, Shirakumo had levelled the room with a thick layer of fog.
Scanning the room, even the kid had vanished into the fog, no doubt snatched away by Shirakumo.
“I needed to meet with you,” Aizawa said, looping his capture weapon onto a beam above him. And ever so gently, he climbed up until he was perched above the fog. But even still, it was too dense to see anything in it.
“You could have asked instead of kidnapping my student!”
Shirakumo’s voice came from the right.
“And give you time to conjure up a plan to capture me?” Aizawa snorted.
“I wouldn’t.”
A bitter laugh broke from Aizawa before he could keep it back.
“You’re a hero. A dog of the commission.” Aizawa prowled across the beam, his eyes locked on the fog, looking for a flash of bluish-white hair.
This time it was Shirakumo who laughed. Though, it was far more amused than his own.
“Do you really think that?” Shirakumo asked. “You were once a hero student too.”
There.
A flicker of cloud-like hair. One second it was there, and the next it melted into the fog.
Poised, he shifted, preparing himself to leap into the fog.
“Are you really going to make me fight you?” Shirakumo asked, and Aizawa spotted him again, standing in the fog, facing him. There was a stupid smile on his face. “I don’t want to fight my best friend.”
Aizawa pounced.
But something solid slammed into him.
Aizawa twisted, grabbing the scruff of the kid’s uniform. The kid kept a lock on him as they both fell, hurtling once again to the floor.
“Cloud!” Shirakumo yelled with a click of his fingers.
But instead of splattering onto the concrete, the pair landed on a soft cloud. It took Aizawa’s breath away to feel it again, the moist softness that somehow never got his clothes wet.
But he wasn’t given time to take comfort in it or let his school day memories take over. No, the kid was still grappling with him, yanking at his uniform like he was a child playing tag.
“ Mindjack !”
“I got him!”
“I told you to go!”
Aizawa heard Shirakumo’s footsteps close in, a stern tone to his voice. It brought a chuckle out of him, causing the kid to watch him in confusion.
“There’s a reason he told you to leave.” Aizawa grabbed the kid’s wrist and bent it back until his fingers let go. His other hand came forward, clawing at Aizawa’s as he continued to bend.
The kid cried out.
“Shouta! Stop!” Shirakumo burst from the fog, his face pinched in worry. “He’s a kid!”
“You brought him here. Not me.” Aizawa twisted the wrist until it cracked.
Shirakumo tackled him before the kid even screamed, slamming him into the nearest beam. Aizawa went with the flow and let himself be pressed back.
“You didn’t come all this way to hurt some kid, Aizawa!” Shirakumo shook him, almost snarling into his face. It was a far cry from his usual spring-rain disposition. Aizawa liked it far more than he thought he would. “Answer me one final time. Why are you targeting me?”
Aizawa leaned forward, his lips brushing against Shirakumo’s ear. And whispered two little words into his ear.
Instantly, he was let go as Shirakumo stumbled back with a gasp. Fear, hope, and disbelief flashed across his face as he searched Aizawa for the truth.
“No.” Shirakumo shook his head. “He’s dead. I saw-. You were there too.”
Aizawa fixed his capture weapon that had wrapped around his throat.
“Have I ever lied to you?” He asked flatly.
Shirakumo swallowed hard, his eyebrows drawn into a frown.
“How do you know this?”
“Saw it first hand.”
Shirakumo paled.
“You saw him?”
“What’s left of him.”
Shirakumo tugged at a cirrus strand of hair, looping the mist-like loop around his finger before smoothing it back.
“How’s it possible? He died. We went to his funeral.” Shirakumo began to pace, his hands fidgeting, plucking at his jacket before bopping clouds in his palm.
“The thing you fought at the USJ-.”
“You know about that?” Shirakumo asked. The kid wobbled up behind him, uncertainty on his face as he watched the exchange with childlike caution and curiosity.
“Yes. And the creature you fought, there’s more.”
“We’ve watched the news, old man.” The kid snorted. “We all saw the No.1 hero and Hawks fight against one. We know there’s more out there.”
Aizawa narrowed his eyes at the kid. The kid barely shrunk back behind Shirakumo, but he did bring his broken wrist closer to his chest as if to hide his weakness from sight.
“Shinsou, hush.” Shirakumo plopped a hand on top of the kid’s purple mop.
“The ones at Hosu, and the rest you’ve seen are hardly a threat. It’s the one at the USJ you have to worry about.”
“All Might defeated that Nomu. He’s locked up in Tartarus.”
Aizawa sighed.
“Not him. The one that flanked Shigaraki’s side.”
He saw the second Shirakumo understood, horror filling those sky-blue eyes.
“The nomus are modified people. Like freaky Frankenstein monsters. But they used to be real people…” Tears welled in his eyes. “Shouta…”
Aizawa nodded his confirmation.
“I need your help.”
“Loud Cloud, he just-.” The kid protested.
“Yes.” Shirakumo’s expression grew serious, silencing the child with a pat on the head.
“The hero commission won't like you teaming up with me,” Aizawa said, leaning back against the beam.
“I don’t care.”
Aizawa snorted, before standing in front of Shirakumo.
“They will.”
“Let them. I won’t lose him again.”
“You might. There’s no guarantee he’s alive in there.”
Shirakumo’s eyes darkened.
“We’ll save him this time. We won’t let Hizashi die twice.”