Chapter Text
Shouta sat in the living room of his apartment, glaring at his case files. About a year ago, this new vigilante team popped up. After four months and no progress, the police assigned him to the case. It’s been six months and he was no closer to knowing anything about them.
He’d run into them a few times as they were leaving scenes, sure, although finding them in the first place was next to impossible. They were small but never spoke, leaving him in the dark about their possible ages. He couldn’t even figure out what their quirks are since they never used them in front of him.
Picking up a stack of blurry surveillance photos, he scanned each one for any clues. The outfits they wore, unfortunately, covered everything down to their hair. He suspected that both were female based on their builds but he couldn’t be certain. Especially if they were kids.
That was another suspicion of his. The police team that had investigated, as well as numerous heroes that had run-ins with them, insisted that they couldn’t be kids. But being a teacher of kids training to be heroes, he knew what they could be capable of. He wasn’t about to rule it out.
An alarm on his phone went off, letting him know that it was time to get ready for his patrol. Since he dedicated his entire patrol solely to looking for them, he’d started stumbling upon them more frequently. He spotted them twice just in the last week. They always vanished before he could get close to them. He had a pretty good chance of seeing them again tonight.
“Izu, wake up,” Himiko prompted, petting his green curls. “The sun has set. It’s a new night.”
“No, Iko,” Izuku grumbled, curling further into her side.
“This was literally your idea. If you don’t get up, you’ll feel bad about all the people we could have helped,” she warned him. Sure, she’d feel bad too but her brother had a bleeding heart. He’d be so much more distraught.
He stirred at that, sitting up and stretching. “Breakfast?”
“We still have some granola bars that the one lady gave us,” Himiko smiled, happy that she didn’t have to say ‘no’ today. Food wasn’t always easy to come by.
“We need to find more bandages tonight,” he told her as he started eating one of the granola bars. “Something for infection too, if we can.”
“Let me see,” she instructed, holding out her hand. He gave her his left one without a fight. Lifting the fabric strip he had wrapped around his hand, she could see the tell-tale signs of infection in the bite wounds. “You’re down a hand then. You can’t bite this.”
“Like I need both,” he replied dismissively.
“Where are we going tonight?” Himiko asked, moving the fabric back over the wounds.
“That one neighborhood with the run-down playground,” Izuku answered after a moment.
Shouta could not believe his luck. Just across the street, on a fire escape, was the vigilante team. This is the closest he’s ever gotten and their attention was on three men harassing a pair of girls. With their focus elsewhere, they hadn’t noticed him on the rooftop yet.
One of the vigilantes stripped, mostly hidden behind the other. He saw a flash of blonde hair. They pulled something out of the clothing they had removed and brought it to their face, which was still out of view. After a moment, they grew in size, and even a new outfit had appeared. What the fuck? The vigilante, who now looked like a police officer, slipped off the fire escape and approached the men.
They were trying to deescalate, he realized, taking in their body language. Clearly, they had a transformation quirk and they were relying on the hope that a police officer would deter any violence. Sure, it’s a crime to impersonate an officer, but it was probably the least problematic way they could save people. It explained why they had such a low conflict rate.
He couldn’t hear what they said but the men didn’t seem keen on walking away. When one of the men lunged for the officer-disguised vigilante, the one still on the fire escape ripped off their glove. For a second, he saw a strip of white covering their palm before that was ripped off too. In the next second, they lifted the lower half of their mask to bite the heel of their palm.
Red erupted from their hand and towards the men. Without even leaving the fire escape, the second vigilante was able to quickly take them down. The red substance was fluid, possibly their own blood, and prehensile. It moved like a series of whips or thin tentacles, grabbing the men and throwing them against the nearest wall. The men were knocked unconscious upon impact.
The shapeshifter vigilante checked them over before giving the other one a thumbs up. The red whips withdrew back into the vigilante. They wrapped a white strip of fabric around their palm before pulling the glove back on. Then they gathered up their partner's clothes and climbed down from the fire escape to check on the girls they rescued.
They were going to be leaving soon, Shouta realized abruptly. Quickly and quietly, he scaled down the building he was on, taking advantage of the fact that the vigilantes were distracted by the girls. As soon as he was within range, he threw out his capture weapon and activated his quirk. As his weapon wrapped around the shapeshifter, grey sludge began melting off of them.
The sludge melted away to reveal a young girl. Now, he suspected that they were kids. Or rather, teenagers. But the girl was far younger than he had expected. When the second one reached for their glove, Shouta turned his quirk on them. They seemed to understand what had happened to their friend’s quirk so they didn’t bother finishing the action.
Shouta was sure of one thing. He was not taking children in for vigilantism. “Please, don’t hurt them! They saved us,” one of the girls pleaded.
“I won’t,” he assured them before motioning to the knocked-out men “Call the police about these guys.” The girls nodded and followed the instruction.
Shouta led the kids to the privacy of an alley since he was fairly certain the girl was naked under his weapon. He released her, keeping his eyes on the other one, and transferring his bindings. He restrained the hands of this one to their sides so that he wouldn’t have to keep using his quirk.
It didn’t seem like either one would run off while he had the other. “Get dressed,” he instructed the girl before reaching out and pulling the hood and mask off the other one. Shouta blinked a little in surprise. He had thought they were both girls but this one seemed to be a boy. One that looked even younger. And furious.
Fury turned to fear when a police car drove past the alley, siren off but lights flashing. Glancing back at the girl, Shouta could see that she was dressed minus the mask and gloves. “We’re going,” he said gruffly, tugging on his capture weapon to direct the boy. Neither said anything. They simply followed him down the alley and away from the police.
They trailed a few steps behind Shouta, the capture weapon acting a bit like one of those child leashes. “What do we do?” he heard the girl whisper.
“I don’t know,” the boy hissed. “This is Eraserhead. ” And if that didn’t pique Shouta’s interest. People didn’t often know who he was, being an underground hero and all. It was even rarer that children knew him. Had they spotted him one of the other times he saw them and looked him up?
“You’re both coming with me because while I will not turn children in to the police, I also will not leave you here to continue doing whatever you're trying to accomplish,” Shouta told them.
“We’re saving people!” the girl squeaked indignantly.
“Without a hero license or proper training,” Shouta retorted easily.
“We have training!” the girl argued. Shouta looked over his shoulder to give her a flat look.
“Not the kind of training he means,” the boy interjected before Shouta could respond. The girl quieted down, apparently less eager to argue with her friend. Interesting. It appeared that the younger one is in charge of their dynamic.
Shouta led them to his home without another peep from either one. He briefly wondered if this counted as kidnapping. But then again, if kids this young were out doing this nearly every night, it’s unlikely they have parents. Or at least not parents that care to check up on them.
They got a few perplexed stares from people that they passed but it was the middle of the night. There weren’t many people out at this hour and those who were minded their business. Without any fuss, he got them to his apartment and sat them down on his couch.
“Stay,” he instructed as he pulled out his phone to call in his backup.