Chapter Text
Shouta Aizawa starts to yawn in one world and finishes it in another world.
“Um.” He says, looking around curiously. Hmmn. Summoning circle, check. Not that it’ll hold him, but it could inconvenience him a little. Fae kid holding a tome, presumably on demon summoning, arm dripping blood still, looking surprised for some reason. Ah. Maybe his casual clothes? Also, are those iron bracelets? No wonder the kid resorted to blood instead of just offering a bit of power. Ah, and a deportation circle with a green haired demon kid crouched in it. Typically those happen when the parents find themselves abruptly in a warzone and want to keep their kid safe. That means the fae kid has good intentions, being the designated ‘person who will help’. Though given the bracelets and that he’s resorted to demon summoning…not good signs of his own situation. “I see.”
The indigo haired and indigo-and-purple-swirled winged fae startles. “Oh, um. Are you a ‘parental demon’? Did I do this right?”
“Interesting criteria.” Shouta observes. “I’ll take care of the kid, though. Are you willing to let me out of the circle?”
The fae kid startles again and promptly draws his foot through one of the chalk lines. “Of course. Sorry to bother you, I just didn’t know who else would help. And the orphan mistress, well…” He lifts the book in demonstration. “This is hers. She’d definitely bind him in a contract that wouldn’t be good for him.”
Shouta’s eyes narrow as he steps out of the circle. Is that a shadow of a bruise on the kid’s face? He takes the fae kid’s chin between his fingers and tilts his face to get a better look. Fuck. He’s not leaving this kid here either. “You live with humans? How do they treat you?”
The kid’s purple and white eyes widen comically. “Uh. Yeah? I’m an orphan. They treat me pretty well, I guess? The orphan mistress trusts me to take care of the younger kids when she’s gone, like she is today.” Then he blinks. “Um, what price do you want for helping him? I can’t exactly offer my soul since fae don’t have any. But something else? I’ll pay if I can.”
He doesn’t need payment for this and fae definitely have souls, even though he’s not the species of demon that deals in souls, but what the kid doesn’t know will help him save the kid. “You. And that book. What’s your name?”
Names are a big deal for fae, so he doesn’t expect an answer, but the wide-eyed kid offers it with only slight hesitation. “Hitoshi. The book isn’t mine, though?”
“That’s exactly why I want it. The human obviously can’t be trusted with it.” Shouta lets go of his chin and strides over to where the green kid is still crouched, observing them, and picks him up. He walks back to Hitoshi and reverse summons all of them to his home plane, absently sending out a wash of power that erases both circles and burns the spilled blood clean. Best that the humans not have clues as to what happened. They’re much less likely to look for an apparent runaway fae kid than they are to leave them alone if they figure out what really happened.
A moment later, the only sign that something happened there is the faintly smoldering residue of spilled blood.
~
Hitoshi staggers, more startled by the transition between worlds than off balance.
“SHOUTAaaaaa! You got summoned again!?” Hitoshi whirls to see a golden haired and gold-and-white-ripple-patterned winged fae with a crest like a bird in his hair, staring at them. “Shouta? Those are kids.”
“I’m aware.” The black haired demon says, eyes glowing red. “You’re too loud. You’re going to scare them. Go find the metal cutters, please?”
The blond’s gaze drops to Hitoshi’s arms and an unpleasant expression crosses his face for a split second. “Got it. I’ll be right back.”
The black haired demon, Shouta apparently, sets down the little green haired demon. “Let’s get that cut cleaned and bandaged.”
He draws Hitoshi over to a room that turns out to be a fancy bathroom with an actual commode that flushes and a sink that runs water without needing to be pumped first and pulls out prepacked medical supplies. First he washes off the drying blood and then he dries the skin with a soft towel, apparently not bothered by the fact that he got streaks of blood on it.
“Um. Is that kid going to be okay on his own?” He asks nervously, doing his best to hold still under the attention.
“Oh him? He’ll be fine. Midori demons just grow slowly. He’s probably about the same age as you are.” Shouta tells him. “Though I do need to find out his name.”
“Oh. Um, what’s that?” He asks as Shouta squeezes a tube that has some kind of clear salve in it.
“Antibiotic. No point in getting a serious infection if you can avoid it.” Shouta explains.
Apparently he takes good care of his property, then? Though Hitoshi is still startled that he’s apparently not the first fae who has sold themselves to the demon. “Can I ask who the blond is?”
“Hizashi? He’s my husband.” Shouta says easily, putting a bandage that apparently has sticky parts so it doesn’t need to wrap around multiple times.
Hitoshi gapes. “Uh. What?”
Shouta glances up at him, lips quirked in amusement. “And you’re my son. It’s not too hard to understand, is it?”
“I- I- What!?” Hitoshi stammers, his world view knocked akilter. “How? I thought you were going to eat me, not adopt me!”
The demon grimaces. “Humans. Always making up strange tales. Even if I did eat people or their souls, which I don’t, I wouldn’t harm a child. You did specify a parental demon. Oh, you may as well forget anything the humans taught you about non-humans. It’s probably extremely wrong, nine times out of ten. And they can be very cruel. Keeping a fae in silver chains is one thing if you want to keep them trapped, but iron bracelets? You’re lucky you’ve never tried to use your magic directly with those on. You could have given yourself severe iron poisoning or literally burned your wrists into a useless mess. We’ll be taking those off as soon as Hizashi gets back with the metal cutters.”
Hitoshi looks down at the metal bracelets. “I didn’t think they’re that bad? They put them on when I couldn’t quit activating my magic accidentally. They don’t hurt or anything.”
Shouta glances up again, in the middle of tidying up the mess from bandaging Hitoshi. He agrees in a neutral tone, “Yes, I suppose they would suppress accidental magic.”
“You can’t take them off.” Hitoshi concludes a little sadly. “I have no control over it and I’ll be able to make you do anything if it activates.”
“No, they’re coming off. If you want a magic suppressant, there are plenty of more humane methods. That don’t put you at risk of serious harm.” Shouta contradicts him firmly and finishes tidying up, tossing the towel in a laundry hamper. “Let’s go see if Hizashi has found the metal cutters yet.”
He trails after him, a little overwhelmed. None of this makes any sense.
~
Hizashi comes back, holding the metal cutters by their plastic grip, to find the little Midori demon left alone. The kid is examining the bookshelves curiously. “See anything good, little listener?”
The kid jolts and looks around at him wide-eyed. “Listener? You’re Present Mic of Put Your Hands Up radio!”
“Right you are, little listener. You can call me Hizashi. And who might you be?” Hizashi is taken aback to be recognized so easily, but it’s happened a couple times before with particularly dedicated fans.
“Izuku.” The kid pouts. “I’m not little!”
“No? Then how old might you be?” Hizashi asks, genuinely curious. Not all species of demons age at the same rate, even if they all are effectively immortal unless killed.
“How old do you think I am?” Izuku retorts.
“Well, if you were fae, I’d say you are nine, but you’re a demon, so I don’t know.” Hizashi elaborates.
“Nine!” Izuku squawks in offense. “I’m fourteen! Nine. Is that why Hitoshi was talking to me like I’m a baby?”
Hizashi grins. “Most likely. He’s probably only met other fae or humans before.”
“He lived with humans.” Izuku tells him. “My mom’s deportation circle dumped me next to him and he was so worried about their reaction to me that he summoned the oth- Er. Shouta to help me.”
His brows raise. “A deportation circle? Those aren’t common.”
Izuku looks away. “All Might was fighting a soul stealer demon and their fight basically ran over our village. I don’t know if Mom survived.”
Ouch. The probability of survival in the middle of a fight like that is…low. But they can check and find out for sure. Ugh. It’s a good thing that the soul stealer breed of demons is so rare. They give all demons a bad name just by being themselves.
“Are you taking care of me now? Or are you going to take me to an orphanage? Shouta said he was going to ‘take care of the kid’, but I think he only said that to get Hitoshi to cooperate.”
And doesn’t that question just break his heart!
“Listener. Izuku. Shouta doesn’t lie. This isn’t the first time he’s brought home kids, but it’s the first time he hasn’t said up front that you’re only staying a few days or a couple weeks. I admit, I didn’t expect him to bring home two new sons, but I can’t say I’m unhappy about it. We both love kids. Did you know we’re both teachers at UA?” Hizashi says reassuringly.
Izuku whips his head around to stare at him. “UA!? Really!? Then Shouta’s a hero, too?”
“That’s right! Have you heard of Eraserhead?”
“No.” Izuku shakes his head. “But I know all the spotlight and twilight heroes, so that must mean he’s an underground hero and he’d be upset if I did know who he is!”
“Spot on.” Shouta says, startling Izuku again. “You found the cutters? Good. Let’s get that iron off of him.”
“Right! Nasty stuff, iron.” Hizashi agrees instantly, moving over to the fae kid. “So, Hitoshi, right? Let me see your wrists and I’ll get those off in a jiffy.”
“It’s not really necessary.” Hitoshi demurs.
“Speaking as someone who has scars from wearing an iron muzzle, it’s absolutely necessary. Come on. Wrists. Let’s see them.” Hizashi contradicts.
Hitoshi lifts one wrist reluctantly, but holds still as Hizashi snips one side and then the other, the halves falling to the floor with metallic tings. Then he lifts the other one and suffers through it again. As the metal hits the floor this time, the boy asks, “Are you going to hurt me?”
Hizashi draws back as if struck. “No! Why wou-?”
His mind goes blank and fuzzy and he’s dimly aware of Hitoshi proceeding to freak out. Then Shouta reacts and the blank fuzziness is gone like a brief dream.
“Why would you think I meant to hurt you?” He continues, honestly a little hurt by the accusation.
Rubbing his wrists as if they feel funny without the weight of the iron bracelets, Hitoshi says, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. Um. Because my mother asked the humans to raise me if she didn’t come back, because the other fae would just kill me. The orphan mistress said it was because I’m an orphan. They found my parents’ bodies in the forest a couple days later.”
“No worries, listener. That sounds more like your parents ran afoul of someone pretty powerful, but unwilling to interact with humans. Fae don’t kill their orphans.” Hizashi explains.
Hitoshi pauses in rubbing his wrists. “They don’t?”
“Nope! The only time kids get killed is if there’s a nasty little coup or if their parents piss off someone both powerful and ruthless.” Hizashi says reassuringly. “Fae are a lot more likely to adopt stray children than humans are.”
“Huh. Okay.” Hitoshi says half to himself.
Hizashi claps his hands together, making the boy flinch a little. His son! “So. Rooms. The two of you will have to share a room until we can get a couple junk rooms cleaned out, which will probably take at least a couple days.”
Hitoshi blinks. “I’m fine with sharing. I’ve never had a room to myself.”
Izuku beams. “Yay! I haven’t ever had a sibling to share a room with. It’ll be fun!”
Shouta makes a small gruff sound that only practice allows Hizashi to recognize as a laugh. “Then we’ll convert the guest bedroom into your room and clean out one of the junk rooms for a guest bedroom. If you change your mind later, it’s a simple fix.”
“Yeah! That sounds like a great idea! Here. I’ll show you where the room is and then we can all go shopping for essentials.” Hizashi volunteers. “Oh! And hero posters and the like, if you want.”
“All Might!” Izuku says instantly, then droops at the reminder and says in a more subdued tone, “And Present Mic and Eraserhead.”
“Aww. That’s sweet of you, listener.” Hizashi ruffles green curls in appreciation.
“Since when do they make wanted posters of heroes?” Hitoshi asks slowly.
Hizashi snaps his fingers. “Ah! I knew I was forgetting something! Hitoshi, the demon world is different than the human/fae world. For one, it’s about 200 years ahead in technological advances. You probably noticed that the bathroom is super nice, right? That’s common here, not considered fancy at all. Also, heroes aren’t just people who take down bandits and wyverns and the like. Here, they’re like regular law enforcement, just with magic. And combining the two professions has made heroes SUPER popular. So they make and sell merchandise for people who love heroes. So you’ll see hero merchandise everywhere. Most kids love heroes.”
The fae boy blinks a few times, then nods. “Okay. Who is Present Mike and Erase Head? And All Might?”
“Well, I’m the hero Present Mic. And my darling husband Shouta is the underground hero Eraserhead. Underground means he works at nights when reporters and cameras aren’t everywhere. And All Might is the number one hero in our country.” Hizashi explains easily.
“Number one blockhead, you mean.” Shouta grumbles, following them down the hall.
Lips twitching up in amusement, Hizashi retorts, “Just because he’s not an intellectual doesn’t mean he’s stupid, Shouta. You don’t have to like him, but you do need to admit that he keeps crime low.”
He ignores the wordless grumbling from his husband. Hizashi knows that Shouta’s grudge is halfhearted at best. They both know it’s not All Might’s fault that his long ascendancy as number one hero passively promotes stereotypes about powerful physical magics being the best for heroics.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Notes Section:
For the sake of ease, the demon world geography is the same as the IRL map of the world, whereas the human world is several medium sized continents, all loosely connected by strings of islands of various sizes. Every teleportation spell has ‘land’ as a location specifier built in, so no one drowns or lands in a volcano. Soul stealer demons were the pioneers of inter-world transportation and it was a lot of ‘fuck around and find out’ involved. You can imagine what happens when you forget to specify things like ‘not in an ocean, volcano, desert, etc’ when switching world maps. So there’s more than one reason the soul stealer breed is an uncommon species.
The human world has humans, fae, shape shifters, dragons and a couple other things. Technically the demon world equivalent are the different demon species. It’s a coincidence that the demon world word for ‘person’ is the human world word for ‘demon’. Since a large percentage of demons with ‘known names’ in the human world are soul stealer demons, demons have a scary reputation. The demon world also has every known species from the human world, generally from other species being summoned and subsequently rescuing the sacrifices that are still living when they get there. They’re a low percentage of the population, but not uncommon to see.
For instance, All Might is part sound fae and part justice demon. So he’s blond but his wings are red and blue with a ripple pattern. His power is a kismet combination of both sides of his heritage rather than a passed on power.
The soul stealer demon he was fighting when Izuku’s village got demolished is AFO, a lawbreaking soul stealer demon who has evaded or murdered multiple generations of heroes, including All Might’s mentor. That fight ends in AFO’s death, for real. Soul stealing demons are allowed to take souls in the human world within certain restrictions, but if they break those restrictions or start taking souls in the demon world, the sentence is usually death. AFO has earned his death sentence multiple times over. He killed his own brother because his brother kept freeing his ill-gotten collection of souls to reincarnate. (Soul stealer demons don’t eat souls or anything, they just collect them, like some might collect figurines. The problem is that being collected stops them from being reincarnated.) All Might is severely injured by the fight and retires to part time work as a hero and takes a position as a future teacher’s aide at UA on the advice of his sidekick Sir Nighteye.
Tenko Shimura still dislikes heroes, but he’s never been AFO’s successor, because he’s not the right type of demon for that (he’s an air demon like his grandma, so he can float like a dandelion seed, haha). Instead, he’s a grumpy civilian with vigilante tendencies.
Shouta: Sees kid who looks like he’s in an abusive situation. “This is mine now.”
Hitoshi: Genuinely treated well and confused. The iron bracelets were as much for his peace of mind as they were for the human villagers’ peace of mind. It was the only solution they could think of. The faint bruise is actually from a younger kid accidentally elbowing him in the face when he picked him up.
Izuku: Okay, the fae kid is probably older by a few years, but I’m not a little kid! Also, he’s helping, so I’ll just observe.
The book is actually very thorough and details ways to avoid summoning soul stealing demons by accident. It’s a bit expensive, but not prohibitively so, and it’s fairly common to find in the human world. (A knowledge demon got pissy and wrote it and then demanded thereafter that every human who summoned her had to spread copies as part of the price of her cooperation. Some of the people who summoned her were rich and influential, so it worked pretty well. Hitoshi just didn’t have time to read it thoroughly, since he was in a hurry and has never picked the book up before in his life, so he’s still under some common misconceptions.) The orphan mistress does have a few demons that she has contracts with, but they mostly run errands for her. A couple of them are very grumpy, though, which leads Hitoshi to assume that they’re unwillingly bound in a contract.
Hitoshi: Suddenly in another world that is effectively 200yrs in the future tech wise and has an ‘everyone has magic’ culture instead of the ‘important people and magical species have magic’ culture that his world has.
Izuku: I have a sibling now!
Important to note: While their parents were friends, at some point Katsuki’s parents moved away and the two didn’t grow up together. They will meet at UA. Katsuki is a rather arrogant fire demon, who figured out how to make explosions vs regular fire.
Also Izuku: My new dads teach at UA!! I get to go to UA!!! Hitoshi, we get to go to UA! Isn’t it great!?
Hitoshi: What’s a UA?
Is Inko dead? Not even I know.
Both kids will be allowed to take the recommendation exams and have the regular exams as back up if they aren’t chosen. There’s always an additional two spots open for teachers’ kids in the hero course, but that means nothing if they don’t impress the examiners. Hitoshi will need to study his ass off if he wants a prayer of passing. Izuku will have to up his physical performance significantly.
Hizashi: I finally have kids! I’m SOOOOO EXCITED!!!! One of them is even a fae like me!
Also Hizashi: Wait. You mean you’re not nine?
Also Hizashi: Oh no! My fae kid is scared of me!
Also Hizashi: LET’S GO SHOPPING!!
Shouta: Only because the kids need clothes. Hitoshi especially.
Hizashi is a sound fae. Sound fae have a ripple pattern like sound waves on their wings and tend to be in the light blond to golden range. He’s from the human world originally, having led a good life as a noble before some humans caught him, tortured him, tied a too tight rope around his throat, gagged him with an iron muzzle and sacrificed him to summon Shouta. Fortunately, they did a shitty job at cutting his throat, only nicking the artery instead of cutting through it, so Shouta was able to save him. (Shouta is forever and always his hero.) Shouta lectured the humans about demons preferring non-blood sacrifices the whole time it took him to free Hizashi of his bonds. Then he asked what they summoned him for and he told them that they needed a knowledge demon for that and appropriate sacrifices would be rare or expensive books if they wanted to get anything in return. The humans were appropriately chastised and spread the knowledge of how to do successful summonings (minus people-sacrifices) around a bit. Shouta then allowed Hizashi to live with him until he could adapt and within that timespan they fell in love and got happily married.
Hitoshi is a hypnosis fae. Hypnosis fae have a swirl pattern, some more distinct than others and tend towards the blue to purple range for colors. His parents were noble fae, but a relative of his father’s coveted the title and she was powerful enough to have scared nearly any other fae in the clan into turning Hitoshi over to him to be murdered. She figured that either his parents left him in a cave where he’d starve to death or he was with the humans, where he’d be out of her way. I was originally going to have Hitoshi’s situation be abusive, but decided against it partway in. His humans do believe fae are soulless, but they also know they can’t lie, so they consider him harmless.
Shouta is a nullifier demon. They can erase active magic that isn’t internally focused as well as magic traces. Nullifier demons aren’t very common, particularly in Japan, and most of them choose to be common civilians rather than going into heroics or villainy.
Izuku is a midori demon, meaning he can control plants and plant growth. They are a breed not commonly found in large cities, as they tend to gravitate towards areas where they are free to use their magic. Midori demons get their magic late, so he’s only had it a few months and he’s terrible at controlling it other than not using it. The village he grew up in had primarily midori demons, so he’s honestly confused about other species’ aging rates. Despite his small size, he’s mentally and physically 14 and thus eligible to take the UA exams.
The demon world and summoning/deportation spells all have automatic language translation built in, although that’s mostly for common words and gets glitchy with more esoteric words. So Hitoshi will eventually have to learn the local demon language (Japanese), just as Hizashi had to a few hundred years ago. Hizashi actually teaches human language for people who want to learn as well as English. He loves languages.
I’m not sure if this needs a second chapter or not. Opinions will be noted. Though either way, I don’t intend for this to be a long fic.