Work Text:
Izuku liked to run. Well, more accurately, he liked to jump. But often, jumping and running come hand in hand for him, as he races across the rooftops in the mornings and evenings, because he's not actually lying when he tells his mother that he's going for runs when she asks where he goes so early (and so late, but she doesn't know about that part). He's just... not running on the ground.
He's afraid to dabble in vigilantism, used to be afraid to leave the house at night not only because he needs to sleep to keep up his stamina, sleep is important to that after all, but also because most crime happens at night and he's afraid to get caught up in it.
But through slowly shifting his runs to being earlier in the morning and later in the evening, he's been feeling out what the best times to run are, when there's not many people out to wonder why the hell a kid is running around on the rooftops, but also not much crime creeping out of the shadows yet. He's figured out the perfect times - he goes out closer to it being daytime when it's the weekend because crime seems to spike slightly around that time of the week - to go for runs, and run he does.
In the morning, he gets up early to go for a run, and then he'll come home, shower, and get ready for school, eating a quick but calculatedly healthy breakfast on his way out the door. He needs to keep fit, so he did research and found out what he would be best eating if he wants to build more muscle and push his quirk to the limits.
...It may or may not be illegal to be running around using his quirk in public areas, but it's so hard not to. It's literally a part of him, constant, not something that can be turned off, he's pretty sure. Enhanced muscles in his legs that seem to make them specially designed not only for jumping higher and running faster, but also to increase shock absorption of landings, as well as slightly bigger lung capacity for when he pushes himself to his limits. At least, that's what the quirk counsellors and doctors told him. It's a subtle mutation quirk, unlike those of people with ram horns, rock skin, tails, wings, claws, etc.
And yet for some reason, despite having a quirk and it being on his records, the entirety of Aldera had somehow gotten it into their heads that Izuku was quirkless.
Which... it kind of makes sense. The first doctor who Inko took him to after his quirk 'failed' to manifest had 'diagnosed' him quirkless, yes, but Inko had had her suspicions about the man's licenses, so she had taken Izuku to a different doctor to be sure. The new doctor proved the last one wrong with a few actual tests, and explained that Izuku was most likely born with his quirk, but it was so subtle because he had to work with it to make it anything more than unremarkable, because 'it's a muscle, not an instant light beam that could be summoned with a thought,' according to the second, actual doctor.
Four-year-old Izuku was advised to go on lots of walks with his mother, to slowly increase his stamina and slight endurance but not to push it, and when he got old enough he could start working on increasing his leg strength with basic exercises that some athletes do.
Except the problem is that Izuku went back to kindergarten after that day, disappointedly telling Kacchan they couldn't start training together yet (playing heroes and villains) because his quirk wouldn't be ready for a long time, and one of the other kids, who probably didn't have the most open-minded parents, had overheard, assumed Izuku was lying, and started the rumour that Izuku was actually quirkless, faking a quirk, and it stuck.
That rumour even managed to tear a rift between him and Kacchan, who was so easily influenced by the 'wisdom' of fellow four- and five-year-olds at the time.
The problem was, it didn't go away. Many of those same kids followed into the same schools as Izuku, and spread the rumour around the classroom before he could even have a chance to make a first impression that wasn't 'quirkless kid.'
The progress he was making with his quirk at the time was so minute even he barely noticed it, which didn't help with his self-esteem and motivation. Depressed at age ten. Yippee.
But Inko was an absolute angel, and supported him through it all. She got him part of a swim team because that also would help with his leg strength and it did, and she got him better running shoes for his jogs. He didn't need custom shoes because no extra toe joints, that should prove he's not quirkless, but of course no one else believed him, he has more respect for quirkless people than anyone else apart from his mum, because despite having a quirk he experiences the kind of discrimination the quirkless do, and he has so much respect and empathy for them.
They have to be so strong, even if far too many of them hold too much pain to hold the will enough to live past high school, which makes him so sad, because he's met some quirkless people, and they're all so nice, if often closed-off and quiet.
After forcing himself to ignore the bullying at school all day, Izuku will go home, put his stuff away, grab a snack, and turn on the TV. He'll watch hero news for a while, scribbling away in his notebook about quirks and fighting styles and even just the way they move casually and what that might mean about their confidence and personality.
When his mum gets home, he'll help her make dinner, and they'll chat about their days while cooking and eating, enjoying each others' company. He doesn't tell her about the bullying, he's never talked about how everyone at Aldera thinks he's useless. The teachers of course pretend he's a normal student when it comes to meeting with Inko, but despite the teachers of Aldera knowing Izuku's not quirkless, apparently with such a useless quirk he may as well be. And so, they turn a blind eye to the bullying happening before their very eyes.
After dinner, Izuku will go out again, for another rooftop run until around the time crime starts to increase for the night.
Even though he knows not to get involved, he... he wants to help with people in trouble anyways. But he's not... he doesn't know how to fight. He's agile, sure, and fast, but he doesn't know a single thing about throwing a punch (and on the flip side of the coin he knows far too much about receiving them).
He does know, however, that if he were to start taking self-defense and combat classes, he would be more suited to one that involves more kicking, because of his quirk.
He's heard of vigilantes, people who break the law to fight crime without a proper license allowing quirk use, which are always interesting to hear about - what are their motives for it? Why didn't they just apply to a hero school or for a license or was there a reason they couldn't, why why why?
But Izuku would be woefully unprepared to handle fighting crime, he needs to train more, get into a hero school and learn. He still has so much more to learn. He's not ready.
Yet.
UA would look at his files. They'd see he has a quirk before they ever heard the rumours that he didn't.
It would be fine.
Hopefully.
Today was probably one of the worse days for bullying. He was shoved and jostled in halls all day, insults spat at him left and right, and when he'd got to class that morning there were quirkless-directed slurs and suicide baiting scrawled across his desk and a spider lily laying on top like a cherry on top of the cake of a hell day.
Suicide baiting? What the actual hell?! gritting his teeth, Izuku puts the spider lily to the side and sets to work cleaning the words off the desk before the teacher arrived.
He did not finish before the teacher arrived.
He got in trouble for 'vandalising school property,' and the spider lily went unacknowledged despite it being in plain sight.
Izuku can't wait to get out of Aldera.
Kacchan, while not the worst, was the most consistent tormentor, ego boosted by his fawning classmates, and if Izuku so much as tread too close to him in any way shape or form he was either shouted at (the usual from Kacchan) or if the blonde was mad enough, an explosion aimed his way.
It was after lunch - people trying to steal his bento packed with a meal good for building muscle and providing energy - that his shoes got stolen in the locker rooms as everyone was changing for P.E., and he couldn't find them. But he didn't want to be late, so he walked out anyways, and got dress coded for not wearing shoes, sent to the principal's office where he was given detention.
Unfair. Phys ed is his favourite class of the day, where he can actually be active at school - he always has too much energy, that's probably the one thing Aldera is ever right about with him - and here he is missing it because someone stole his shoes. And he'd made the mistake of wearing his good running shoes today, so he's extra upset about that.
After the end of the school day, he dodged people trying to tread on his toes protected only by socks in the hallways, and Kacchan's sparks aimed in his direction, as he headed to the locker room in low hopes he might find his shoes stuffed somewhere he wouldn't easily be able to reach.
Strange, and also illegal, how the teachers barely cared if any of the other students used their quirks in the halls or classrooms, but if Izuku did anything more than useless and unremarkable, he was scolded for showing off and being reckless. If he ran faster than his peers in gym class, he was accused for tripping up others as he passed them so he could get ahead. The other kids even faked tripping to blame it on him if they realised he was passing them. Everything. It was all, apparently, his fault.
Izuku's probably the only one the teachers actually bother to discipline for quirk use.
Like the way black cats are unfortunately believed to be bad luck to have one cross your path, it seems Aldera believes that having a 'quirkless' kid in their classes was a bane and a curse. A burden.
And no one will believe him when he tells them he has a quirk.
Running is his only escape, when he takes to the rooftops after school to clear his mind. Aside from using it to build up his quirk, called 'Leap' even if everyone thinks it's a fake name, fake quirk, fake useless good-for-nothing- he uses the morning runs to mentally prepare for the day, and the evening runs to clear his head and calm down so he can sleep at night.
His shoes were dumped on the bench when he gets into the changing rooms, except, he's confused.
They have to be his shoes, it's the same style, same treads on the soles, except he's so confused, because they're red.
His shoes aren't red. They were yellow, his favourite colour. Like his backpack.
Were. When he goes to inspect the shoes closer, he finds a note shoved inside one of them.
'Stop pretending you have a quirk, you'll always be a null.'
At the very least, it's not Kacchan's handwriting. Kacchan doesn't pull stunts like this. And for all his ex-childhood friend will call him a useless Deku, he's never heard the word 'null' come out of Kacchan's mouth.
Izuku stands there for several minutes, staring at the note, and then at the red shoes.
They... they dyed them. They didn't dye them well, but they are now undeniably red, not a trace of yellow remaining except in slightly more orangeish patches where not enough dye was applied.
Izuku knows why they dyed them red. He did lots of research into the way quirkless people lived because the discrimination is awful, and he wanted to know if there were any quirkless heroes (there were none in Japan, sadly), but he knew about the shoe company that made custom shoes for quirkless people. Due to protocol and the government, every pair was made a bright, obnoxious red. In theory, or rather the given public reason was so quirkless people could be identified and prioritised in disaster situations, but all the shoes really did was paint targets on the quirkless people around those who knew what those shoes meant.
Izuku didn't think anyone in Aldera gave enough shits about quirkless people to know what the shoes meant, but evidently someone must have found out.
He knows no one here went to learn that information for the same reasons he did. The only reason his bullies probably searched up stuff about quirkless people was to find out the statistics of quirkless teens' suicides to taunt him with.
He can manage with it, though, but he learned not to stand up for himself because that gets him injured, and then Inko has to spend her time patching him up, and asking questions and he doesn't want her to worry, so she doesn't know how bad Aldera really is, about how Kacchan isn't exactly his friend anymore.
He only has one more year left of Aldera anyways, he'll be fine.
He'd just told Inko that someone dyed them for a prank, that he doesn't mind, it's okay it was all in good fun, because she doesn't know what the colour means. He doesn't know how she doesn't know, or maybe she didn't connect the dots because she doesn't know everyone thinks he's quirkless, she thinks the rumours faded away thanks to Izuku pretending everything was fine, but she didn't know so she wasn't worried or upset, so it was all fine.
It was fine. He didn't need new shoes, he lies and says he's fine with the colour (he'd find a way to bleach them or dye them to a darker colour later, he'll just say he's experimenting, Inko's no stranger to that).
And time goes on.
November comes, and the nights and mornings start to get chillier. Izuku takes to leaving the house for his rooftop runs dressed in an insulating, dark green jacket and nice, warm jogging bottoms of the same colour, both almost black but definitely green when compared to black, and thicker socks.
At some point, he starts wearing a beanie and digs out an old scarf from the closet. It's thin and ridiculously long, way to big on him, he has to loop it several times around his neck and tucks the ends in to keep from tripping on them. It had been a thrift store find a few years back, and was probably hand-made by someone who just didn't know when to stop knitting. Either way, it's long and old and quite faded over time, the pattern of maybe-red and maybe-pink long since gone pale.
But it was warm, kept his face and neck covered, kept the cold away from his mouth and nose so the air he breathed on his runs didn't hurt his lungs.
He hardly realised it, but he had started staying out longer, later, not noticing that although did not see much else around or below him, focused solely on running and not slipping on icy patches of rooftops - maybe he should get spiked grips for his shoes - but his runs, specifically the nightly ones, did not go unnoticed.
He did not realise it, until one night he left the house in his shoes still dyed red - he never had gotten around to fixing it - to go on his run as usual on a mid-January evening. He did not realise it until he'd gotten a little too wound up in his thoughts as he goes rushing over rooftops like a bat out of hell, leaping and running and jumping and hopping and landing and trying not to slip on the slippery spots.
He stops for a breather at some point, and checks his phone, 11:39 PM.
That's later than usual, even with his recent late running nights. He's usually home by eleven at latest.
He needs to go back home now.
Izuku spins on his heel, ready to jump back to the first building on his route back home, when he freezes in place, eyes locking onto dark figure crouched on a rooftop several buildings away.
He can't tell if it's facing him or facing away, but he's never seen anyone else out on the rooftops at night.
But he has... he has seen evidence, because he'll often come across bootprints on the rooftops on frosty nights, and once even a very large skid on a particularly icy roof that looked like someone took a nasty wipeout, he hopes whoever that had been was okay-
The figure is gone. Izuku blinks for several moments, wondering if he actually saw it.
Okay, he's really got to get home, he needs to sleep.
He turns and jumps onto the next building, falling into the easy rhythm of running and jumping and landing and repeating.
It's a peaceful rhythm until he realises he's not alone. When he jumps from one roof down to another two stories below, he's mid-fall and prepared to land as he sees, in the unbroken ice of a puddle next to where he lands, a dark figure rush to the edge of the building and look down at him. Some odd sort of tendrils rise up and around it, writhing in the air.
It scares Izuku. He lands beside the icy patch and keeps running with a stumble, only this time, it's not his definition of 'jogging.'
No, he picks up speed and sprints, racing across the roofs and clearing street-wide gaps with a single bound.
A glance back after one such jump reveals the figure - no, his pursuer - has no trouble with the large gaps either, simply wrapping a tendril around a streetlight or something else to be snagged with its tendrils to swing across with terrifying grace and speed.
Something about it... almost seems familiar, but that is very much drowned out in Izuku's mind with all the panic, especially once he realises that somewhere along the way, he'd strayed from his path home.
But he does feel slightly relieved at that, because it means he's not leading his pursuer back to his apartment. They don't - won't - know where he lives.
He's been training his quirk. He can outrun the figure chasing him. He has to. Adrenaline-fueled, he angles himself to run along the edge of buildings that go alongside a street, until he reaches an intersection. Without hesitation he jumps, crossing the gap but he doesn't hesitate when he lands, nor does he push himself up from his crouch to propel himself forward, no. He twists in place and is pushing off in another great jump less than a second after landing, going suddenly perpendicular to his original trajectory, leaping across another street-wide gap to land on the corner opposite from where he'd first jumped from.
And he sees the figure still after him when he chances a look back, albeit slightly further behind this time, he's doing it! He just needs to keep acting unpredictably, pulling stunts he can do but would slow his pursuer down.
That glance back was his downfall. Literally.
His foot hits an icy patch just as he's about to jump, and so when he pushes off, it slips out from under him and instead of going forward and up, he goes forward and down over the edge of the roof.
Believe it or not Izuku has never fallen off of a building before. He's always careful on his runs, mindful of every possible hazard, except when he's being chased by an unknown figure who isn't letting up their chase-
So, being a kid who's experiencing his first time falling off of a four-story building, he panics, and a scream slips free into the still and chilly night. In a split second, he throws his arms out to try and grab something on the other side of the alley that he's about to get a harsh introduction to the floor of, and feels his hand snag on a metal bar. A fire escape!
He latches on and swings himself under the fire escape even as his arms scream in protest with the sudden, sharp strain of abruptly taking all his body weight at momentum, momentum that he uses to swing his feet up to hook into the metal ladder and presses himself into the wall and the shadows, because the pursuer had to have heard him scream but maybe he can hide-
Izuku flinches when a dark shape drops past him, passing less than a metre away and landing lightly on the floor of the alley.
Shouta was not impressed. Tsukauchi had contacted him that there was someone running around on rooftops at night, scaring the criminals back into hiding without actually fighting, really only by just existing. Which means they can't technically be arrested for vigilantism, but he wants to find out who this is, because the reports that describe the glimpses of the person said that they were dressed like him, right down to the capture scarf.
Impersonating a pro hero? That hasn't happened to Eraserhead before. He's seen it happen to other heroes, mostly limelight pros, but this was a first for Shouta.
Being the first time, he wanted to handle it himself. Besides, with the skill for traversing the rooftops the Impersonator was said to possess, he may be the only person who can catch them anyways.
And so begins the search. The sightings of the Impersonator make up a semi-complete circuit they apparently make, though there's a good third of it missing so no one actually knows where they come or go from. Regardless, the known route the Impersonator takes overlaps with Shouta's own usual patrol route for a good several blocks before straying away again, so Shouta decides to wait out around that area, knowing he will be rewarded eventually.
And it pays off. He watches the Impersonator, in dark clothing and a pale scarf...
What the hell? It looks like an actual scarf, doesn't even look like the same colour as his capture weapon! And they're wearing a hat, too, Shouta doesn't wear hats, and those clothes are not even black! Black clothes aren't that hard to get!
It's like the Impersonator isn't even trying, Shouta thinks exasperatedly as he watches them stop on a rooftop a few buildings away, pulling out a phone and stiffening at whatever they see.
He's not expecting it when they turn on their heel and freeze in place as their gaze apparently locks onto him
They just... stand there. Did they even see him at all? Frowning, Shouta decides to start his approach, and moves to a different rooftop. The Impersonator doesn't move again until they seem to literally shake themself out of it a few moments after he moves.
...Huh.
And then they run, and Shouta follows. He doesn't want to activate Erasure yet until the Impersonator is within his capture weapon's range, doesn't want to lose the element of surprise and the disorientation that will come from erasing someone's quirk, giving him the chance to catch them.
(No, he isn't worried that it's their quirk they're using to be so fast across the rooftops, and erasing it suddenly would make them fall when he's not close enough to reach them. He's holding back activating his own quirk from rationality, not concern. What makes you think otherwise?)
They almost give him a heart attack when they jump off a building to land on a much shorter building two stories below, because that's not a drop even he could make without his capture weapon, and they didn't even reach for their scarf (makes sense, it's not a capture weapon) yet they're completely fine and moving fast across the rooftops.
No time to slow or they'll actually lose him. The gain quite the distance on him when they pull a stunt of jumping two street-widths in a row with complete ease to abruptly change direction, and Shouta is working to catch up but he's not sure he's succeeding, when he sees the Impersonator trip.
His first thought is to be faster, closer, so he can take the opportunity to catch up to them.
His second thought less than second later is just panic, because they disappear, flailing, out of sight over the edge of a building.
The same moment he hears the scream shatter the silence that had blanketed the chase of the night.
Shit, shit, shit.
He moves faster than he probably ever has before, and drops into the empty alley a moment later-
The empty alley.
...The empty alley.
How? This is the alley they fell into, he's sure, he didn't overshoot or undershoot, it was this alley-
Turning slowly, he takes everything in, there has to be something amiss. Are they hiding? There's not really any places to-
The faintest sound of shifting movement catches his ear and draws his gaze upwards to meet terrified green, the Impersonator clinging to the underside of the fire escape like a spider, and for a moment Shouta wonders how on earth they managed to get to that position in such a short amount of time.
It's a different question that he voices aloud, though.
"And how, exactly, do you intend to get down from there?"
Izuku ends up back on the rooftops, only he's bound at the wrists and ankles and sitting against the roof access door, while his pursuer sits across from him on an air conditioning unit, holding the other ends of the metal-feeling fabric that restricts his movement.
His pursuer sits across from him and his pursuer is Eraserhead.
Eraserhead had just stood there patiently until Izuku had been unable to hold his grip on the underside of the fire escape any longer, and then caught him before he hit the ground, tying him up and hauling him to the roof to talk.
Or at least, Izuku thinks it's supposed to be a talk. Eraserhead isn't doing much talking. Izuku is only being kept from breaking down in nervousness by the sheer awe of his hero fanboy side going into hyperdrive at the sight of one of the most interesting pro heroes he's ever heard of.
His fourth favourite hero (the three before him being All Might, Mirko, and Present Mic in that order).
"You didn't put much effort into your impersonation of me."
Impersona- What?
"What?" Izuku echoes his thoughts, confusion sinking deeper.
Eraserhead stares into Izuku's soul with a stern, dead-inside look. "Impersonating a pro hero is illegal."
It takes several more moments for Izuku to manage anything coherent, but he wants to clear this up as fast as possible, so the first thing he says is "but I'm not impersonating you?"
It's more of a question than he meant it to be, but confusion shifts inflection upwards at the end.
"You're not?" Eraserhead blinks, grip on the capture weapon not loosening, but... shifting.
"I'm not," Izuku confirms. "I... Sorry."
"What are you doing, then?"
The question, at first, confuses him. His brain really isn't working tonight. "What am I doing... on the rooftops?"
"And so late at night," confirms Eraserhead.
"I was running."
That, apparently, is not entirely the right thing to say. Eraserhead's eyes narrow, "from what?"
"Nothing!" Izuku yelps out. "Well- from you, tonight, because you were chasing me, but usually I'm not running from anything. I just run because I can, because exercise isn't the same if I do it on- on the ground because I don't get the jumping in, and- and there isn't time to do it during the day, so I do it at night so I can still train my quirk and-"
His quirk.
Izuku snaps his mouth shut, breathing sharply through his nose. Eraserhead's eyes have narrowed, but aren't glowing red yet. A good sign? Or bad?
"Your quirk-"
"Public quirk use is illegal, I know," he interrupts in a rushed breath, "but it's not something that can be turned off, it's a mutation. The muscles in my legs-"
Eraserhead is not looking at his face anymore.
Eraserhead is staring at his shoes.
Izuku's red shoes. Nervously, Izuku shifts his feet a bit closer to himself, drawing the underground hero's eyes back up to him.
A hero would undoubtably know what red shoes are supposed to mean. And by Eraserhead's suspicious glare, he's probably finding that things aren't lining up between Izuku's shoes and the fact that Izuku was talking about a quirk.
A quirk that sounds awfully faked in a situation like this. It's nothing Izuku can prove here, not really.
The thought does pass his mind, a little too late, that he could have claimed no quirk use at all, faked quirklessness easily, except the idea of doing that makes his gut twist in a way he doesn't like, so he pushes the thought away.
"They used to be yellow." He blurts out in a panic, because Eraserhead hasn't said anything since Izuku interrupted him, and it's starting to panic him. Eraserhead startles, it's subtle but still, Izuku managed to startle a pro hero-
"My- my shoes. They were yellow when I got them." He clarifies quickly, catching the momentary confusion in Eraserhead's eye.
"I- I guess- well, I know some of the other kids at my school still think I'm faking a quirk, they still don't believe me even though it is registered so they kinda took it upon themselves to, to..."
Izuku trails off; Eraserhead's dark expression bringing his rambling explanation to a halt. "I... y-yeah." He looks down, at the binds around his wrists and ankles, at his shoes, the rooftop, anywhere that isn't the glowering hero.
"What's your quirk?"
"Hu-huh?"
"What's your quirk." The man repeats, and if Izuku weren't half-panicked for a lot of reasons as he lifts his head again, he'd think Eraserhead sounded patient. Gruff, but still patient.
"I- it's called Leap. It's a mutation, my leg muscles are enhanced for running and jumping, and my lungs too, but it's also all just muscles, so I have to actually exercise to get it to be anything useful. It's- uh. It's why I run?" The last part comes out more of a question than he intended, but he'd been rushing for a way to stop talking before he annoys Eraserhead.
"Hm." The hero in question grunts slightly, either in skepticism or acceptance of the explanation, and Izuku nearly jumps out of his skin when the binding scarf around his wrists and ankles slip away, coiling back into place around Eraserhead's shoulders, who watches Izuku blink in shock for a few seconds with an unreadable expression.
"A few more questions, kid." He sighs, leaning forward on the AC unit, elbows on his knees. "One, and one I should have asked earlier. What's your name?"
"Mi- Izuku."
"Hm," thankfully, the hero doesn't push for a full name. Izuku is glad, he doesn't want his mother to get in trouble because of him, "and how old are you, kid?"
"Uh, I'm- I'm thirteen." Izuku stammers. His palms are sweaty with anxiety, and the brief thought of I'm glad I can't make it explode like Kacchan crosses his mind for a second.
Eraserhead narrows his eyes. "And do your parents know you're out?"
Izuku glances away, worrying his lower lip between his teeth without really realising it.
A heavy sigh. "You should be at home, kid."
"...I know, sir." Izuku mumbles, ducking his head slightly.
There is a rustle of fabric as the hero stands. "Come on, then."
"Huh?" He looks up, confused. Eraserhead is looking back down at him, hands in his pockets. "You're going home, and I'm going to make sure you actually get there."
Oh.
He's going to escort Izuku home?
Pro hero Eraserhead is going to walk Izuku home.
"Ah, there's really no need for that, sir! I can get home on my own safely, I've already taken up so much of your time, I'll be okay, I won't even go out on any more night-time runs, I swear! I didn't mean to impersonate you, mister Eraserhead! I'm very sorry!" He yelps in a breath, making a valiant attempt at scrambling to get to his feet, waving his hands frantically and trying to bow apologetically all at once, which really only results in nearly getting a face full of the rooftop he'd been sitting on, if it weren't for the firm, steadying hand that lands on his shoulder.
"Breathe, kid." Is all the hero says, at least until Izuku is stood upright and balanced and actually using his lungs again. Then, it's "I'm walking you home because I want to make sure your guardian isn't knowingly letting their kid go out at night, alone, to run around on icy rooftops, and because I want to make sure you actually get home."
"O-oh." He looks down, digging the toe of his shoe into the rooftop. "Okay. My mom, uh, she doesn't know I run at night. I'm usually back long before now anyways."
"Then we better get you home." Eraserhead remarks gruffly.
The hero makes them walk along the sidewalk, on the ground, even though it would be so much faster if they went by rooftop. Izuku understands, Eraserhead doesn't want him running off or something, or probably slipping on the frost too, but it still makes the silent, slow (in comparison) walk that much more awkward.
At least if they were going by rooftop, Izuku could focus on the running-jumping-landing instead of sweat nervously in the stiff, uncomfortable silence.
Surprisingly, it's the hero who speaks first.
"How do you know my hero name?"
"H-huh?" Izuku startles, glancing up and almost stumbling on his next step, but thankfully doesn't trip. "What do you mean?"
"Earlier, you called me Eraserhead. How do you know who I am?"
"I study heroes." Izuku tells him honestly before he can think through what he's saying. "There's not much on you online, but some forums do have some blurry screenshots and witness accounts of you, and your quirk is really interesting but I have wondered if it will even work on me since Erasure doesn't work on mutation-type quirks, so would it have no effect or would it erase the excess strength in my legs, and is it only erasure? Because in the few pictures there are of you some of them show your hair up while your eyes are glowing, which is a tell for your quirk being active, right? So there might be some kind of residual hereditary telekinesis quirk too of some kind, because your scarf also floats when you want it to, so there's a good chance that could play into how easily you move over rooftops and fight with it, and you're probably finding this really creepy, I'm so sorry-"
Under the scarf, Eraserhead's mouth is a thin line, and his eyes are calculating.
"Kid," he says, "Izuku. Be honest. Do you write any of this down?"
Uhm. "Yes? I have a few notebooks-"
"Ecrypt it."
"What?"
"Write it in code, if you're not already." Oh, he's serious. "Analysis is a good skill to have, but a skill that can be dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. If you're writing it down where anyone could get their hands on it, at least make sure only you can read it.
"Most people don't figure out the tells for my quirk aside from my eyes, nor the fact that I can manipulate my capture scarf like that. That kind of stuff can often mean the difference in whether a villain or a hero wins a fight, if it's the villain who has the information and can figure out how to counter my attacks. For both your safety and mine, kid, encode those notes. I'm serious."
The thought of villains using his notes to take down the heroes he wrote about feels like a gut punch.
All those times I misplaced or forgot one of my notebooks somewhere, at the library or school or- what if a villain found it before I could get it back? What if-
"-id? kid!"
"I'm sorry!" He blurts, startling back from the hero standing in front of him, hand hovering near his shoulder but not touching. He feels sick. "I'll- I'll stop writing, I don't want anyone to get hurt! I'm sorry!"
"Kid, no, that's not- I wasn't telling you to- Izuku. Kid. Breathe." Eraserhead's sharp voice cuts Izuku off, and wow it feels really weird to hear his own name coming out of a pro hero's mouth. "I wasn't telling you to stop writing."
"What?" Izuku's voice is small, scared. He's hugging himself, hands around his upper arms as he shrinks in on himself. He doesn't remember when he stopped walking, but Eraserhead's still here.
Of course he's still here. He's walking Izuku home. The hero sighs.
"I never told you to stop writing, only to be safe about how you do it." He says, sharp but not angry. "Analysis is a very good skill to have in a lot of careers; police work, quirk counselling, hell, even analysis can be it's own job-"
"Or a hero?"
Crap, he hadn't meant to say that...
"Or a hero?"
The kid's voice is small, and he's not even looking at Shouta. He's looking away, at the ground.
Shouta pauses, regarding the kid.
He hadn't meant to panic him about encoding the analysis notes.
There are a lot of things he doesn't like about this situation, especially about the stuff the kid, Izuku, had mentioned on the rooftop during their talk.
'My shoes were yellow when I got them...some of the other kids at school still think I'm faking a quirk...'
The way the kid talked about it, he probably knows what red shoes mean. So do the classmates mentioned, if Shouta were to hazard a logical guess.
He's careful not to let the kid see that he grits his teeth slightly, not liking the puzzle pieces he's been given.
'I study heroes.'
'I don't want anyone to get hurt!'
'Or a hero?'
"Yeah, kid," Shouta says before the silence stretches too long that the kid would take it for a no, "analysis is useful in a hero's line of work."
"Really?"
The kid is looking at him now, green eyes glowing with a hesitant hope in the streetlamps, pale knitted scarf wrapped warmly around the lower half of his face. (It's almost laughable now, that anyone could mistake this kid for Shouta.)
He thinks back to how the kid called his sharp observations 'creepy,' which is probably not something the kid would have thought up to call it on his own.
Shouta breathes, a subtle deep breath before he can be certain he won't sound pissed off when he affirms, "I have no reason to lie, kid."
The kid opens his mouth to speak, closes it, opens it again, and stumbles out a very hesitant question that makes Shouta really regard the kid.
"Could I... could someone like me- someone without a really strong quirk, be a hero?" He whispers out, gripping his arms tightly but, to his credit, meeting Shouta's eyes steadily.
"Kid, I know you said you recognised me but do you really understand who you're talking to?" Shouta says dryly, raising an unimpressed brow under his hair.
The kid visibly wilts. Even if he's not very obvious about it, he still looks down, an expression on his face that Shouta doesn't like.
Well, shit.
"It wasn't a no."
In an instant, the kid's eyes are back to him, hope and delayed realisation (now the kid is understanding what he meant by his words) in the green. Shouta sighs.
"Let's get you home, and then we'll talk."
Midoriya Inko is a small, soft woman who is very deeply alarmed to find out her son has been going out at night to run around on rooftops, especially in winter with the ice as a hazard to slip on.
Midoriya Inko is also very firmly kind. Despite it being a little past midnight, she ushers Izuku inside and then Shouta, asking what tea Shouta likes and not really giving him much chance to decline before he's in an armchair in the living room with a mug of tea in hand, sitting across from the kid and mother on the couch.
And from there, they talk. Inko scolds her son for about thirty seconds before pulling him into a tearful hug, during which Shouta politely looks at the carpet under the coffee table until the conversation is back to involving himself.
Looking back on that night, even in years from then, Shouta still won't entirely understand how he ended up all but officially adopted by the Midoriyas.
Of course, it didn't all happen overnight. It happened because Shouta agreed to teach Izuku a code for his analysis notebooks, which the kid let him look through a couple, including the one with the entry for Eraserhead.
It happened because on one of those days, he showed up with a minor injury from patrol the previous night under his sleeve, only for Inko to clock it in seconds and insist on patching him up and, and she made him stay for dinner too.
It happened because Shouta and Inko eventually agreed to let Izuku go for a night run one night a week, so long as Shouta was with him and Izuku didn't attempt any vigilantism (not that he had before, but better put that rule down to be safe).
It happened because somewhere along the line, Izuku ended up admitting everything about his school to Shouta - the bullying, the discrimination, the dying of his shoes, the goddamn suicide baiting, everything the kid hadn't told his mother because he hadn't wanted to worry her.
Of course, Izuku had refused to tell Shouta exactly which school he went to, but that was easily worked with by asking Inko and, as soon as he had the name of the place, calling The Rat with all the evidence Izuku had given him, knowing Nezu would investigate and not like what he found.
(Shouta hadn't liked what he'd found, when he'd tailed the kid to school and witnessed through the windows from his perch across the street as students relentlessly bullied his kid and the teachers did nothing to stop it.)
Izuku wasn't impressed that Shouta had gotten Aldera Middle School shut down, but was more worried about what would happen to one of the other students, 'Kacchan' than anything else.
Shouta wasn't exactly impressed by this 'Kacchan,' Bakugou Katsuki, but Izuku insisted that Bakugo had never done nearly as much against Izuku as other students had, and was very insistent that 'Kacchan' was going to be a great hero.
Shouta wasn't so sure about that, but considering Bakugou was aiming for UA, all Shouta would have to do is make sure the brat gets into his class, and then he could judge on whether the kid was really the hero material Izuku claimed he was.
Izuku would be there, in his class. Shouta had already decided it, the kid was determined to be a hero his own way, and even if the kid wasn't his kid it would still be the exact kind of determination Shouta wants in his class.
Two years later, Shouta watches his problem child launch a softball nearly seven hundred feet with a single kick, and hides a grin under his scarf.
He doesn't bother hiding the proud look in his eyes, though, knowing that Izuku is the only one in the class that can read his expressions at this point in the year, and besides.
Why would he hide it from Izuku?