Chapter Text
Omoi Sakkaiju stared at the ceiling.
“What happens when the world ends? Would we still be standing? What would you do with the time you have left to you?”
“Hunger. I hunger for f l e s h.”
“Cinnamon raisin toast and butter… With a splash of honey… That’s what we should do for breakfast.”
“Socrates said a foolish man fears death. Do you fear death, Omoi? Should we chase it, just like he said?”
“Give me a big meaty bone so I can c r u n c h .”
“Or maybe that’s too Western. Maybe some egg over rice? Do you like egg over rice, Omoi? You eat it so much, I guess you do, but do you really like it?”
“We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names.”
“I want to crush a s k u l l .”
“We could have some pickled vegetables with it… Will Mom and Dad let us have pickles? We should just have them anyway. Anarchy. I think anarchy is the answer.”
Omoi took a deep breath in, let it go, and sat up to swing out of bed. The voices continued, chattering away in their head, and they opened their dresser drawer to pull out a pair of running leggings. In the darkness of their room, they changed, pulling on the leggings and snapping them around their waist.
“Wait, what are we doing? Are we going for a run?”
“It’s midnight, why are we going for a run?”
“Will we k i l l something on the run?”
“No,” Omoi snapped, their voice loud in the quiet of the room, and they internally cringed, because they weren't supposed to engage with them. Engaging with them gave them more form and substance, and they couldn’t have that.
With a deep breath in, they pulled on a sports bra and oversized hoodie that came down to their mid thighs, and then they got into their closet and pulled out a pair of running shoes. Socks went on, and then their shoes, and they opened the window and slipped out of it. They fell down to the concrete and picked up a steady jog, and the voices whispered again.
“Yes, running opens the soul to nature and the great outdoors,” Socrati said, and Omoi took a deep breath in and let it out as their legs stretched out in the autumn chill. Their parents probably wouldn’t care that they were out this late, but they needed to make this quick. They ran straight for a building and hopped up, scaling the windows there and coming out on top of the roof, and then they kept running, falling into the stretch and burn of their muscles. The edge of the building came up on them, and they flung themself across the gap, landing hard on the next building and coming up in a roll.
They didn’t know when they started this. Maybe six months ago? It just seemed like a way to run away from the voices. They generally quieted down when they were doing this, so long as Omoi kept his eyes moving and not straight forward. They liked to look around. It was basically enrichment, and Omoi hated that they had to do it, but they did it nonetheless.
A line of laundry was coming up, and they ducked between the sheets on the line, only to come up on the edge of the building too fast. They dropped and spun, grabbing the edge of the building, and it bit into their palms, and they braced before they flung themself across the gap, landing hard on the opposing window and scaling it in smooth motions.
“Yes, stretch your body to its limit,” Socrati hissed, and he always had the most to say. Omoi swung their leg over the side of the building and rolled on top of it, and then they bounced to their feet and started running. The wind whipped past them, and they slid smoothly over an AC unit and hit the ground.
It was easier this way. They didn’t have to think when they ran, they only had to react. The world was a lot less big and scary when they were running around this concrete jungle, and they just had to focus on their breathing and the burn of their muscles and the sting of their palms. It was uniquely freeing. They loved it, they hated that it was necessary, they wished they were sleeping, they were sleep deprived and exhausted at school, but it was…
It was fine.
Everything was fine, they thought as tears stung at their eyes.
Everything was fine.
.
.
.
.
.
Shouta first caught sight of the kid three months ago. They were a blur of a blue hoodie, leaping off a ten story building like they weren’t afraid of death, and he had a heart attack before they landed safely on the opposing windowsill and scaled to the top of the next building.
They were tiny. Absolutely fucking tiny, and they couldn’t tell if they were a boy or a girl. They had red hair in a mess on their head and red eyes that glowed in the darkness, reflecting light in the same way a cat’s did, and he hadn’t been able to get close enough to tell them to go home. There were other things to worry about, anyways, like rising crime rates and fewer and fewer underground heroes to patrol Musutafu. He was averaging thirty arrests a night, without a sidekick to help, and he was getting beat up more often than not.
It was getting dicey out here, and he didn’t have time to worry about one kid out past curfew. There were actual villains out here.
Even so, he had to stop. He had to, because the kid was sitting at the edge of a building, crying, and, well.
Shouta had a soft spot for troubled teens.
Shouta approached the kid silently, and the kid didn’t notice his approach. They were too busy sobbing their eyes out, ineffectually wiping their tears with the backs of their hands, and he came up next to them and sat down. They startled, looking at him with wide, wide eyes, and he tilted his head at them.
“Long night?” he asked, and they sniffled. They were at the snot point of sobbing, and he reached into his utility belt to offer them a package of tissues. They took it slowly, and he tilted his head. “What are you doing out here, kid?”
“I’m just… running,” the kid got out, and then twitched, their eyes going unfocused. He really could not tell if they were a boy or a girl, and he couldn’t tell their age. They could be anywhere from ten to thirteen, based on the face, but their build was tiny and petite.
“And crying?” he asked, and they sniffled loudly.
“Are you a pro?” they asked wetly, and he pulled his license out of its spot on his utility belt and offered it to them. They took it with careful fingers and flipped it over, reading his name there. “E…Eraserhead?”
“That’s me,” he said and took it back to tuck it back away in his belt. “What’s your name, kid?”
“O… Omoi Sakkaiju,” the kid replied, and he raised his eyebrows. Hell of a name.
“What are you doing running the streets at this hour of night?” he asked, and they swallowed.
“I… It’s my quirk,” they mumbled. “It keeps me up.”
“Yeah? What’s your quirk?” he asked, and they were silent.
The seconds ticked past, and he realized he wasn’t going to get an answer out of them. Alright. That was fine. The kid had a difficult quirk. He had met plenty of kids like them, and he wasn’t going to judge them for it.
“Alright. Why are you crying?” he asked, and fresh tears slipped out of their eyes. Wrong question, then. He didn’t even know why he was doing this, but he couldn’t leave a kid to cry their eyes out on the top of a building. There were lines.
“When I was little, they thought I was Quirkless and crazy,” they whimpered, and ah, a late bloomer then. “I never thought I could be a hero, but then I found out I wasn’t crazy and I… I thought maybe… there was a chance… but there wasn’t. There wasn’t.”
“Why not?” he asked, and they hiccuped.
“Because my quirk is…” they trailed off, and he waited patiently. They stood, and he watched them carefully, ready to lash out with his capture scarf at a moment’s notice. “I need to go home.”
“Can I walk you there?” he asked, and they shook their head no.
“I can make it on my own,” they said with a slight smile. Yeah, he was going to shadow them, just in case. He didn’t trust them on their own.
They took off, still with tears streaming down their face, and he let them get a headstart before he took off after them. He had met a lot of kids like this, kids with unfortunate quirks that didn’t think they could make it. It was hard every time, and he felt for them. It wasn’t easy to have a “villainous” quirk, and he knew that. He had barely survived middle school, and that was the hardest time. Middle school was hell on earth, and he wasn’t sure how old this kid was, but he thought they might be in middle school.
He trailed them for a long time, making sure to stay out of sight, out of mind, and finally came to a halt when they crawled into a first floor window in a lavish apartment building. Middle to upper middle class, then. The kid was clean, with a patched hoodie with a rip in the shoulder, and their clothing looked old, but that was fine. They were probably just attached to it.
Shouta watched the window for a while, and didn’t leave until the kids drew the blinds shut. He had a feeling he was going to see them again. They seemed to be using parkour at two in the morning as a coping mechanism, and gods only knew he’d had worse coping mechanisms. He really had.
Shouta turned away, and dispatch buzzed in his ear.
“Robbery on xxx and xxx, plant store,” the pleasant female voice said, and Shouta pulled a face. A plant store? Seriously? Of all the places…
With a quiet curse under his breath, he took off across the roofs, hating his life in that moment.
At least the kid got home okay. He had been a bit too far back to stop them if they fell.
They really were a little daredevil, though. Fucking hell.