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shouta spots two green bunny ears first, peeking over the hedge as he turns around the corner into their agreed place of meeting. it was quiet, given the time of the night, and mostly empty except for the three figures huddled together under a tree at the corner of the park.
the underground hero tucked his face into his scarf to hide a the twitch of his lips at the sight of the kids perking up at the sound of his purposefully heavy footsteps approaching. he watched them tense up like feral little kittens bracing themselves for a fight before dissolving into excitement once they realized it was him.
“eraser!” the boy wearing the green hoodie with bunny ears chirped happily as he bounded over to greet him. he was met with the weight of an underweight 16-year-old vigilante slamming into his front in a hug before beaming up at him with bright green eyes. izuku had forgone his mask tonight, so had the other kids and his heart fluttered in his chest at the show of trust.
shouta thought about how far they’d come. the first night he had stumbled upon an injured izuku on the roof, he had to fight of a feral ochako and hitoshi who thought he was out to arrest the vigilante while he was indisposed. it was his first official meeting with the vigilantes that he had heard so much about from a very tired tsukauchi for weeks at that point. he wasn’t thrilled that his guess of the trio being young adults had been off by a good few years younger.
after their initial encounter, shouta learnt that bunnie, siren and hoppip were the human embodiment of chaotic justice and that they had imprinted onto him like orphaned ducklings.
a few things became very apparent, very fast. first, was that they were eraserhead fans. more so, bunnie and siren who looked at him with stars in their eyes and alarmingly, knew a little too much about his hero persona than he was comfortable with. secondly, these kids only had each other and his initial comparison of them to orphaned baby ducks had been a tad too accurate.
however, these two facts combined did not mean they gave him an easy time earning their trust. all three kids were flighty and incredibly protective of each other. shouta could only try his best to look out for those troublemakers from a distance, only swooping in when they but off more than they could chew. otherwise, just like taming feral kittens, he let them come to him at their own terms.
siren had been the first to approach him, putting shouta under his quirk to verify his intentions. once he was satisfied, he released his control but didn’t run away to put a safe distance between them like he usually would. instead the scrawny vigilante stood stubbornly in front of the hero, glaring with eyes that didn’t quite manage to hide their fear, as if waiting for shouta to spring forward and arrest him. get mad. yell.
shouta never did, and eventually the young vigilante huffed and disappeared into the shadows.
a few days after, came bunny who bombarded him with a wave of questions on his quirk, style of combat and mechanics of his support gear. shouta had patiently answered each question the boy had, acutely aware of the older boy watching over them from a distance.
two weeks later, shouta bumped into hoppip entirely coincidentally. he found the girl humming as she sat on a dumpster in the alleyway beside a convenience store. she looked to have a bag of food that had been thrown out, either gone bad or leftovers. the girl had tensed up at the approaching figure but relaxed just a little when she recognized the shouta and proudly showed off her haul for the night.
shouta ended up taking the kid to eat at a small 24/7 ramen place, something in his chest hurting as he watched the kid gratefully ate a warm meal with tears in her eyes. he made sure the girl brought back some takeaway for her friends.
it took months before they trusted the man with their names, and even longer for him to learn the faces behind those masks.
he could not describe how proud he was that now, his kids were comfortable enough to initiate physical affection like touch starved puppies.
shouta snapped back to the present as his two other kids came up to them. he immediately noticed that they were carrying an air of anticipation underneath all their excitement for whatever they had planned for tonight. they hadn’t told him much, only that it was really important and he could not bail on them unless someone was actively on fire or dying. preferably both.
“alright, alright. what did you hellions wanted to tell me before you three vibrate out of your skin,” shouta asked teasingly. his attempt to break whatever the strange tension in the air was only had the kids tensing up further and subconsciously huddle closer to each other.
“well, um,” ochako started, eyes nervously glancing over to her friends as she continued. “we didn’t really know how to ask. o-or how to make it official, um, legally.”
“and we didn’t really know if you’d want it either! we definitely wouldn’t force you to if you didn’t!” izuku blurted out in a nervous rush, cutting off the girl’s voice trailing off. “it- we don’t expect to agree if you don’t want to. in fact, we don’t want you to agree if it’s out of obligation or pity or-“
“okay, alright,” shouta interrupted gently to soothe the green haired boy, recognizing that he was starting to spiral with how fast he was rambling. even hitoshi and ochako looked like they were working themselves up. “breathe, kid. i-“
“we want you to adopt us!” it was hitoshi who yelled it out, his lavender eyes wide as though surprised at his own words. like he didn’t mean to say it. and yet… he didn’t take it back. izuku and ochako didn’t correct him either. clamping his mouth shut, hands finding his siblings’, hitoshi stood his ground, even though everything in his stance screamed that it took every strand of restraint in his body not to bolt.
shouta had all but frozen. his brain blue screened, shut down and rebooted.
he must have stayed silent for too long because the kids erupted into a panic.
“it’s okay if you don’t want to! or can’t!” hitoshi tacked on quickly, hands waving frantically as though to physically bat the idea away.
“we- we won’t take it personally or anything. promise!” ochako pitched in, doing her best to sound brave even as her voice wavered.
“y-yeah! but…” izuku chimed in, even as his voice cracked and big, sad green eyes clouded over with tears as he forced himself to continue as he shook.
“but could we call you dad? please?”
the voice of his youngest kid barely came out as a whisper. shouta’s heart broke at how small and scared his usually loud, sassy kid sounded and it was enough to break him out of his trance.
his hands shot out to corral the three children into his arms. he felt them jolt in surprise but he couldn’t bring himself to care. he just needed the kids- his kids in his arms. needed them to know that they were his and come hail or high water, nothing in the world would ever change that.
he held them a little closer when he heard telltale sniffles muffled into his shirt and his kids held onto him just as tightly.
“you’re my kids,” he said when he finally found his voice, even as it sounded like he swallowed glass. “you can call me whatever you want.”
oh, they were definitely crying now.