Two of a Kind - Bibliophile109 - 文豪ストレイドッグス (2024)

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Shouta was never close to his mother’s side of the family: with old money and a history of producing politicians, the Tsushimas were never happy with their little girl’s businessman husband, and the dislike transferred seamlessly to Shouta himself. He only really remembered a few family dinners in his childhood: faded memories of formidable grandparents, a snobbish aunt and uncle, and one small cousin who watched from the corner and never said a word.

“Don’t mind Shuji,” Shouta’s mother said once, when she spotted him staring. “He’s never been normal, you know.”

Shouta had blinked, alarmed at the blatant rudeness.

Later she’d explained in an undertone: it was due to little Shuji’s odd nature that they were still in touch with the Tsushimas at all. His grandparents wanted to keep their options open in case he proved unsuitable as an heir, and apparently Shouta seemed “normal enough to stay in the running”.

Once Shouta won a spot in the hero course at UA, of course, all contact was cut: apparently a quiet, strange boy was more suitable than one who brawled like a commoner on live TV. Distracted by classes, friends, and work experiences, Shouta was more than happy to leave the Tsushimas behind.

*

In the early years of his underground career, Shouta met Shuji again, though he hardly recognized the lanky fourteen-year-old he found smoking on a rooftop during patrol.

He’d made his way to the rooftop stealthily, trained to approach potential suicides with caution, but the quiet voice that rang out took him by surprise.

“There you are, Shouta-nii-san. How kind of you to join me!”

If the use of his first name was a shock, the familial honorific was absolutely baffling. Shouta abandoned the stealth approach and backed up rapidly instead, squinting at the potential threat. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, don’t worry so much,” the teenager laughed, stepping casually into the light. “It’ll give you wrinkles, don’t you know?”

The boy was, upon closer examination, dangerously thin but covered it well with a bulky black coat draped around his shoulders. He was also covered in bandages, wrapped around his head and peeking past the sleeves and neck of his white dress shirt. Shouta was alarmed enough by the boy’s appearance that it took a few seconds to place the familiar dark eyes and drawn face. “Shuji?”

The boy’s eyebrows shot up, then he grinned delightedly. “Aww, you do remember me! How’s life with the bigshot heroes treating you, oni-san?”

“How’s life with the bigshot rich people treating you?” Shouta shot back reflexively. His mind was racing—surely this couldn’t be the silent little boy he remembered. But the ages matched up, and the bizarrely formal clothes fit what he knew of his uncle’s family.

Shuji, because it had to be him, smirked and spun around, arms spread wide and one hand still holding a smoking cigarette. “I don’t see any rich people here, what are you talking about?” he asked slyly.

“Did you come all the way from…” Shouta racked his memory for a moment, “Yokohama just to find me?” He sounded incredulous, but Shuji was clearly not surprised to see him. Dear lord, if this was some sort of rebellious teenage adventure…

“Maybe I did. It’s just so hard to find interesting people to talk to, you know…”

Shouta frowned, irritated, and then some part of his hero training clicked back into action in his mind, reminding him of all the red flags that he’d picked up on earlier. “Is there a reason you’re searching out your pro hero cousin in the middle of the night?” he asked carefully, watching what he could see of the boy’s bandaged face. The logistics of raising allegations of abuse against the Tsushimas were already whirring through his head, giving him a pre-emptive headache.

But Shuji just laughed. “Oh, no, I usually try to avoid pro heroes, to be honest.” He didn’t say it with the snobbish tone his parents would have used; instead it sounded teasing, like there was some inside joke Shouta wasn’t in on. “You’re the lucky exception, Shouta-nii-san! I had to meet the only relative I have who’s got such an exciting job.”

Shouta tilted his head. “So are you here because of or in spite of my job?” He asked dryly.

Shuji’s smile didn’t fade, but his eyes darkened a little, catching the shadows of Mustafu at midnight. “A bit of both, I suppose. I mean…” he hesitated. “Would you mind if I asked you something?”

What question could possibly have brought a young teenager to a rooftop in an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night, Shouta wondered? “I guess you’re already here, so you might as well,” he said, waving for the boy to continue and trying not to sound intrigued.

Shuji shifted and tapped his cigarette absently. “Well, I was just wondering,” he said, suddenly awkward. “Are you… I mean, would you say…” He stopped, frustrated. “Does your work make you happy?” he finally asked, spitting the words out quickly as if to get it over with.

“Huh?” Shouta asked, caught off guard. “What do you mean?”

Shuji’s cheeks turned pink. “You know. Running around on the streets or whatever, fighting people, all that stuff. Do you enjoy it? Is the… adrenaline rush, I guess, enough to make everything worth it?”

Shouta stared. Had he been accosted in the middle of patrol to offer career advice? “I can’t tell if you’re being genuine or just trying to accuse me of being a thrill seeker,” he said slowly.

“I’m being serious!” Shuji protested, offended. He opened his mouth again, then closed it around the cigarette as though to keep himself from blurting something else out.

“Then I’d say,” Shouta said, thinking carefully, “that my work is valuable to me for lots of reasons. I know it’s cliche, but people really do become heroes in order to save lives.”

Shuji looked up at him expectantly; that clearly wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

“But ‘running around on the streets’, as you called it, doesn’t hurt either,” Shouta admitted. “I won’t deny that it’s nice to get that adrenaline rush, you’re right. I never would have been happy in a desk job.” Perhaps Shuji was looking for something more exciting than to carry on the family political legacy.

But no, that wasn’t quite what Shuji was looking for either. “How does it make you feel, though?” he asked, and there was something almost desperate there.

Shouta frowned. Shuji seemed incredibly pale in the moonlight, with a dark bruise under his visible eye and that absurd black coat draped over him like he was hiding from the world. What was he hoping to find here?

Shouta remembered the silent child he’d seen all those years ago, sitting lifeless in the corner, watching the world go by without him.

“It makes me feel alive,” he said, putting all of the sincerity he could muster into the words.

Shuji scrutinized his face, and Shouta suddenly felt self-conscious of his three-day stubble, unkempt hair, and the enormous bags he knew sleep-deprivation had painted under his own eyes. But despite it all, he didn’t take back his answer; at the end of the night, it was true.

“All right,” Shuji said finally. “I believe you. Thanks, I guess.” He relaxed a little, and Shouta realized how tense the boy had been before.

“Look, kid,” he said, “do you need a place to go? Because I could—“

“Oh, no,” Shuji waved him off, “don’t worry about me. I have somewhere—two places to go, really,” he added, looking off towards the edge of the building thoughtfully, “but I think you just helped me pick one.”

Shouta tried to protest again, but Shuji was already slipping away down the fire escape. “Bye, Shouta-nii!” he called brightly. “Don’t forget to call!”

“I don’t have your phone number!” Shouta protested, but all he got in return was a laugh echoing up through the buildings and into the sky.

*

A week later, he googled the Tsushima family on a whim. The most recent mention was from a few years ago—an obituary. Beloved public servant, wife and son killed in house fire.

He wouldn’t hear from Shuji again for four more years.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

"Hey Shouta," Hizashi called when Shouta arrived in the UA teachers' break room. "You've got an assignment from WitSec!" He waved an envelope with a bright red CLASSIFIED stamp.

Shouta groaned. "I thought teaching at UA was supposed to get us out of programs like that." The extra responsibility of a teaching position at a hero school came with very few perks, but that was one of them: he was supposed to be exempt from the special assignments heroes would sometimes get from the government. "When did that get here?"

"This morning, when you were napping in your cocoon and waiting for the little hellions to show up," Nemuri supplied. She paused from touching up her nails to give him a careful finger wag. "I'd open that now if I were you, because last time I took one of those jobs it was only a few hours' notice."

"I'll just tell them they've made a mistake," Shouta muttered, snagging the envelope from Hizashi and ripping it open to go through the contents.

A familiar face stared back at him on the front page of the assignment brief.

"Oh hell, is that Shuji?" he said, alarmed.

Hizashi leaned over to peek at it—against regulations, but none of them much cared about those. "It says they're calling him 'Oba Yozo'," he read. "Don't tell me you know this guy?"

"I think he's my cousin," Shouta muttered, flipping through the pages. "The one that supposedly died alongside his parents in a fire when he was ten, but then I ran into him on patrol a few years ago. Never did figure out what happened to him."

"Oh, that Shuji," Nemuri said. "Yeah, I remember. Should have guessed Witness Protection would have something to do with it."

"It looks like he requested me directly," Shouta said, reading through the case details. "Long-term assignment, though they don't say how long exactly…"

Cases from WitSec were always sparse on the details; often they worked as intermediaries for some other branch of the government, so the people handling the case didn't even know anything about their charges beyond an assigned pseudonym and a list of groups to avoid. Shuji's file was exceptionally slim, though.

"When are they dropping him off?" Hizashi asked, bouncing in his seat. "I want to meet baby Aizawa!"

"First of all, no," Shouta said firmly, pointing at Hizashi, "and second, it says they're dropping him off a couple hours before classes end. Rude."

"We can take over your afternoon classes if you want," Nemuri offered. "Assuming you're not kicking this guy to the curb, that is. You are technically not required to accept things like this, personally requested or not."

Shouta ran a hand through his hair. "No, I'll take the job," he said, kind of hating himself as the words left his mouth. "But I'm not leaving early just because some idiots in the government can't read a schedule. The kid can survive without a babysitter for a few hours."

"Right," said Nemuri, unconvinced.

In the end, Shouta took them up on their offer and headed home early after all. It was just because he didn't like the idea of someone bumbling around in his apartment without any ground rules being laid down, he told himself; he certainly wasn't curious or worried about Shuji, whatever his friends seemed to think.

He had about ten minutes to tidy up before Shuji and his handler arrived. He dumped half a dozen coffee cups in the sink, walked a few pizza boxes out to the trash bins, and then cleared out the guest room of all Hizashi's forgotten belongings. Shouta could just feel himself getting exhausted as he worked. Was he really going to let some kid move into his life indefinitely, cousin or not?

The doorbell rang. Shouta sighed. He could always tell them to find a new hero to supervise the kid later, he supposed.

He opened the door.

“Shouta-nii!”

There went any doubt that this was indeed his cousin.

An older, balding man stood next to Shuji and tsked disapprovingly at him. “Now, now, Oba, don’t forget the point of this. I had to pull a lot of strings to get you assigned to him, you know.”

Shouta felt vaguely insulted but couldn’t quite articulate why. “Are you from WitSec?” he asked bluntly.

The man turned away from Shuji, looking somehow surprised to see Shouta standing there. “Me? Oh, no, I’m just here to give ‘Oba’s case a personal touch. Give you the rundown, you know.”

Shuji sulked. It looked natural on his face, for all that he was now older than Shouta’s third-year students; he’d reached a height that was almost intimidating, and filled out considerably compared to the last time Shouta saw him, but he was still very much a teenager. “You’re not going to make me look bad to Shouta-nii, are you, Taneda-san?” he whined.

Taneda tsked again. “There’s taking you at your word, and then there’s being an idiot, Oba, and I’m no idiot. I’ll tell Eraserhead everything I think he needs to know, no matter how you feel on the matter.”

Shuji gave Shouta a considering look, and for a second he looked much, much older. Then the boy huffed and pushed past him, a duffle bag slamming against the doorframe and nearly hitting Taneda in the shoulder as he went.

Shouta stared after him, and then turned back to Taneda with a raised eyebrow. “Not a typical witness protection case, I take it?”

“You could say that,” Taneda said, rubbing the back of his bald head awkwardly. “Ah, but perhaps we could discuss it inside?”

They entered the apartment. The door to the guest room was closed when they got there; clearly, Shuji hadn’t had any trouble finding it.

“Are you going to make me shake you down for answers, or do you actually have an explanation?” Shouta asked Taneda, taking a seat on the couch.

“I can tell you some things,” Taneda said, looking ruffled. “But it’s a rather delicate situation, you know!”

“Delicate how?”

Taneda glanced towards the closed door, then leaned forward. “Well, for starters,” he said quietly, “I wouldn’t say this is witness protection so much as… frankly, Eraserhead, we needed somewhere to put him. The cogs of the government can only turn so fast, et cetera, and we have a lot of work to do with this one.”

Shouta frowned. “If no one’s after him, why not just stick him in an apartment by himself somewhere?”

“Oh, there are definitely people after him,” Taneda said heavily. “But we’re interested in keeping an eye on him, more than just keeping him safe. You’ll be asked to send in weekly reports for a while, I’m afraid.”

Shouta’s eyebrows shot up. “What did he do?” he asked incredulously. “He’s… what, eighteen?”

Taneda looked startled for a moment. “Dear lord, is he really? I suppose he is, you’re right… My apologies.” He laughed a little. “It’s easy to forget, sometimes. But don’t worry about what he’s done; no one will remember any of it by the time we’ve all done our jobs.”

That sounded incredibly ominous, but Taneda said it with such finality that Shouta knew he wouldn’t get any more out of the balding man. “What should I be worrying about, then?” he asked instead.

Another glance at the door, and Teneda dropped his voice even lower in volume. “In general? Self-destructive behavior, more traditionally destructive behavior, violent tendencies… I don't really expect him to make trouble, but to be honest we’re not sure exactly what we’re dealing with. One of my men wrote up a profile, but he was reluctant to get too detailed for a number of reasons.” He hesitated. “I can tell you he’s been through something difficult recently, though. My agent recommends you keep an eye out for suicide attempts.”

Shouta’s mind flashed to the last time he’d met Shuji, and how he’d thought the boy was going to jump off the roof at first. “I’m really not equipped for that,” he said, alarmed. “I have two other jobs, Taneda-san, I can’t handle a suicide watch when I’m out of the house more than half the day.” The idea that it might be necessary made him feel a little sick, though he pushed it aside to deal with later.

Taneda waved him off. “No one expects you to keep the man alive, Eraserhead, you’re not his babysitter. He’s not a plant. We just want to know where he is, what he’s up to, and if he tries to leave.”

“And what if he does leave,” Shouta asked flatly. “Do you expect me to sit back and watch while he tries to off himself, and then intervene if he tries to go for groceries?”

The other man gave him a hard stare. “You don’t have to keep him from leaving, you just have to tell us if he does. Please try to remember,” he added pointedly, “that I know rather more about him than you do, no matter what your relation is. I don’t expect you to understand my priorities, but I do expect you to accept them.”

Shouta’s lips thinned, but he nodded once.

“You were chosen for this job under the assumption that you’d be able to act impartially,” Taneda continued, more relaxed now, “but I suppose I can’t stop you from trying to… mother him if that’s really what you want. I seriously don’t recommend it, though.” The corner of his mouth twitched a little.

“Thanks,” Shouta said insincerely. “Is that it, then?” He stood up, not waiting for an answer.

Taneda stood up too, brushing his clothes off like Shouta’s couch was going to give him fleas. “That’s it. Just keep in mind that he wants to be here, Eraserhead. He asked for this; we’re not the bad guys.”

"I never said you were," Shouta said, and showed him the door.

Standing in the empty living room, he stared at the closed door to the guest room for a few long minutes. Then he went to the kitchen and started cooking a late lunch.

He might as well welcome his new guest properly.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Shouta saw more of Shuji the day he arrived than in the next two weeks put together. After a token effort at socialization that first day, Shouta had gone to bed feeling hopeful that Shuji would settle in comfortably, and yet it seemed that was the end of Shuji’s willingness to engage.

Shouta sometimes heard him come out of the guest bedroom—now Shuji’s room—to use the restroom, or rarely to take food from the fridge; if Shouta had food on the stove, Shuji might emerge to dish himself a bowl and then hide away to eat it. Shouta couldn’t get more than a few words out of him at a time, just quiet acknowledgements when they happened to pass by each other. He watched Shuji’s skin grow paler, the bags under his eyes grow darker, and his frame shrink until he was as dangerously skinny as he’d been at fourteen.

If Shouta was home, he tried to keep note of any appearances Shuji made and check in when the boy had been quiet too long. But any intrusion into his bedroom was met with a dead-eyed, resentful stare, and Shouta couldn’t bring himself to disturb the quiet very often.

Shuji was reminding him more of the silent, cowed child he’d seen at family dinners than the outspoken teen he’d met four years ago, and it put a bad taste in his mouth.

*

Two weeks after taking in his cousin, Shouta had had enough.

"I dunno, Eraser," Hizashi said through a mouthful of chips at lunchtime, "he is a teenager. Isn't this pretty normal for them?"

"He hasn't left his room since he got here, Mic," Shouta said in exasperation. "He'll come out when I cook something, but I think he'd literally starve if he didn't. And even then, he's hardly eating anything. Does that sound like any of our students to you?"

"Ugh, I wish the third years would hole up in their rooms more often," Nemuri said in disgust. "Remember when—"

"Don't remind us," Hizashi and Shouta chorused.

"But seriously," Hizashi continued, "don't you think it's possible that he's just avoiding you, in particular? Maybe he doesn't want to face his awesome cousin Shouta after you found out how sketchy he is."

"I have no idea how sketchy he is, because they wouldn't give me any useful information," Shouta pointed out. He poked at his bento, disgruntled. "Even if that is why, it doesn't make me any less worried about him. He's been here for two weeks and I still haven't seen him without a layer of bandages from head to toe! I'm starting to think they're tattooed on." Wondering about those bandages had kept him awake more than once, when he really couldn’t afford to lose the sleep.

Nemuri and Hizashi looked at each other. “Okay,” Nemuri decided, “we need to intervene here, Mic. You free after classes today?”

“You know it, listener!” Hizashi crowed. “Operation Meet Baby Aizawa is a goooooo!”

“What are you talking about.” Shouta eyed his friends suspiciously, and fought to keep his lips from twitching.

“Well, you obviously can’t stop worrying about him, and we wanted to meet him anyway, so clearly we need to come over and cheer him up!”

“What makes you think you can do anything about it?”

“Oh, come on, I’m great with teenage boys,” Nemuri rolled her eyes.

“And I’m cool enough that he’ll have to like me!” said Hizashi optimistically.

Shouta sighed, but their cheery attitudes were already lifting his spirits; it wasn’t that much of a stretch to think they might lift Shuji’s as well. “I guess it’s worth a try. But you’re buying dinner,” he warned.

“Deal,” they chimed in unison.

*

“Hey, Shuji, could you come out?” Shouta called when they got home a few hours later. “We have guests.”

After a few minutes of rustling behind the closed bedroom door, Shuji’s head peeked out. “I think it goes against the principle of this whole thing if you go around giving my name to people,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Hizashi and Nemuri.

“In theory, maybe,” Shouta answered, “but I trust these two with my life, and with yours if necessary. Can you please just come out and say hi?”

Reluctantly, the boy opened his door the rest of the way and came out into the living room. He wore long sweatpants and a worn hoodie that looked like they’d been slept in, and a slightly rumpled layer of bandages beneath that. His hair poofed around his face like it hadn’t been brushed in days.

“Present Mic,” he said, nodding at Hizashi. “Midnight. Nice to meet you.” He didn’t sound especially pleased, but he didn’t look upset either so Shouta would take it.

“Awww,” Hizashi cooed, “He looks just like you, Shouta! Look at that, with the bandages and the hair… Hey, kid, have you seen his Eraserhead outfit? Because—“

“I’ve seen it,” Shuji said, a ghost of a smile gracing his face. “Be honest, does he ever wear anything else?”

Nemuri laughed loudly. “Oh, you’re a keeper, alright. Okay, how about you join us for dinner and we embarrass Shouta by telling you all the dumb things he did in high school?"

Shuji hesitated; Shouta noticed his eyes flick between the two other pro heros and pause on Nemuri's inner thigh where he knew she kept a stiletto blade. Then he shrugged and nodded, looking for all the world like he hadn't just been scanning them for weapons. His body language opened up in a way that looked terrifyingly natural.

"Sounds fun," he said, smiling a bit more. "But maybe I could freshen up a bit first? If you're comparing me to him," he jerked a thumb at Shouta, "then clearly the situation is desperate."

That sent Hizashi and Nemuri into hysterics, and Shuji excused himself back into his room gracefully.

The heroes gathered in the kitchen to confer.

"You didn't tell me he was charming," Nemuri hissed. "Why would you keep that to yourself, Shouta?"

"That was almost the longest conversation I've had with him," Shouta admitted. "And he's never put in an effort like that, certainly never offered to 'freshen up'." He didn't venture an explanation, but he knew what was coming…

"Awww YEAH!" Hizashi cheered. "We were right, a little dose of Midnight and Mic was all the listener needed!"

"You're just excited because he made fun of me," Shouta rolled his eyes.

“Well, obviously,” Nemuri rolled her eyes right back, “but that just shows that he has good taste! Speaking of which, what should we order for dinner?”

They discussed food options and settled in around the dining room table, eventually pulling out homework or case files to go over when they heard the shower start. The three of them were comfortable working near each other in a way that had carried over from high school study hangouts, and Shouta let himself relax into the quiet chatter.

A while later, Shuji emerged wearing a white button-down, black vest and cream dress pants. It reminded Shouta of the formal outfit the boy had worn on that rooftop all those years ago—a lighter version of it, perhaps.

“Looking good, listener!” Hizashi gave Shuji a double thumbs up. “Though you didn’t have to get dressed all fancy for us, something comfy like you had before would’ve been a-okay!”

Shuji looked nonplussed. “I only have one pair of pyjamas, sorry.”

They took a moment to process his wardrobe distribution.

"Oh, Shuji, honey," Nemuri shook her head, "we'll have to take you shopping sometime, you need some casual hang-out clothes stat."

He smiled wryly, sharp eyes darting up to meet her gaze. "Well, my schedule is wide open, I suppose." He hesitated. "I'd rather you didn't call me that, though. Not really a fan."

"Call you what?" Nemuri asked, startled. "Honey?"

"No, 'Shuji'. That hasn't been my name for years."

"Oh, sorry," she said, a little taken aback. "Would you rather we call you 'Oba'?"

He studied her. "No, I'm not a fan of that one either. I guess you can call me Dazai." He said it not-quite-casually, clearly watching to see their response.

Nemuri blinked, mouthed the new name a few times, and then nodded firmly. "Alright, got it! Do you mind if we still call you 'Baby Aizawa' sometimes, though? Because that's pretty hilarious, not gonna lie."

"I was never an Aizawa, though," he protested, at the same time Shouta said "But it's inaccurate!"

Nemuri and Hizashi cracked up.

Shouta noticed how relieved Shuji—Dazai?—looked when they accepted his request without a fuss. "Do you want me to call you that too?" he asked, figuring he should approach the topic directly. "I've been calling you Shuji for weeks now, and I didn't notice that it made you uncomfortable."

The boy shrugged. "It bothers me less with you, probably because you met me way back when I still used that name. It's a little weird, though."

Shouta tried to imagine living in a world where being called by his birth name would feel 'weird' and couldn't quite manage it. He resolved to call his cousin 'Dazai' from then on, though; just because it bothered him less didn't mean it was fine to keep using the old name.

Dazai (was there a first name to go with that?) gave his input on dinner options and Hizashi ordered the food. Then Dazai’s interest caught on one of the case files littering the table.

“You’re investigating a bunch of pharmacy robberies?” he asked, picking up the file without waiting for permission.

“Yeah,” Nemuri said, “it’s weird because none of the drugs they’ve taken have been sold on the street as far as we can tell, even though it’s the kind of stuff that would be popular.” Her hand twitched, probably itching to take the file back, but it would be hypocritical to insist on keeping it confidential when they’d already thrown out protocol for Dazai once.

“Hmmm.” Dazai flipped through a few more pages, then set it down. “Is there any new gang activity in the area?”

Nemuri raised her eyebrows, then looked to Shouta for an answer. He thought about it for a second, intrigued about where Dazai was going.

“Not new activity, no,” he said slowly. “But a couple of groups near the north side have gone quiet recently. They’re not known for being involved in the drug trade, though,” he added.

“But their competitors are,” Dazai said, raising an eyebrow even though it wasn’t a question.

“I guess,” Shouta shrugged. “What are you suggesting?”

Dazai rolled his eyes and sauntered over to the kitchen cabinets. “The quiet ones are probably planning to flood the market,” he called. “They’ll work together and undercut prices enough to drive the established sellers out of business once they’ve got enough stock. Of course, I’m not personally familiar with the gangs involved, so there could be another explanation.” His tone indicated that he rather doubted it, though. “Does anyone want something to drink?” he asked smugly, then opened Shouta’s cabinet and grabbed a couple glasses without waiting for an answer.

Nemuri made eye contact with Shouta. They couldn’t carry out entire conversations with just facial expressions, they weren’t that close, but Shouta could still read the look on her face here: so this is what it takes to get him out of his shell, huh?

Just great. Shouta foresaw himself breaking confidentiality on a lot more cases in the future.

At least the kid was smart.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

“Never have I ever,” Hizashi slurred slightly, “turned down an interview.”

Shouta and Nemuri booed, taking swigs from their glasses.

Dazai raised his eyebrows but just swirled his cup without drinking. They’d started him out on sparkling water at the beginning of the game, but at some point he’d grabbed a bottle of sake out of Shouta’s cupboard once they’d all gotten tipsy enough to let it slide.

“I don’t know why they even try to interview the undergrounders,” Shouta muttered. “Waste of time all around.”

“At least you don’t have to deal with the paparazzi creeps,” Nemuri said unsympathetically. “Dazai, shoot.”

Dazai mimed taking a headshot with a finger gun, got a few laughs, and then took his turn. “Never have I ever arrested someone,” he announced. “Legitimately, at least,” he then added, getting a slightly perturbed look on his face.

The three pro heroes groaned and downed their drinks again. “When have you arrested someone illegitimately?” Nemuri asked. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

It wasn’t the first tidbit Dazai had dropped during the game. He’d thus far denied:

1. Attending high school (the teachers were appalled)
2. Traveling to Canada (how he knew Nemuri had been there was anyone’s guess)
3. Driving a car without crashing it (the caveat worried everyone)
4. Assembling his own furniture (sickeningly, he mentioned Ikea by name and then seemed excited by the idea)
5. Owning a pet (he’d seemed conflicted on this one)

“There’s not always a story,” Dazai insisted now. “Sometimes you just need people to believe you’re authorized by the government, simple as that.”

“I think that’s illegal,” Shouta pointed out reluctantly.

“Lots of things are illegal, and I’ve done most of them,” Dazai said, rolling his eyes and hiccupping. “Why else would they budget so much time just to wipe my records clean?” He was clearly indignant about the time frame.

Shouta felt a stab of alarm at Dazai’s words, but the alcohol made it easy to push it down; he just had to keep reminding himself of what Taneda had said. We have a lot of work to do with this one. No, the other thing. Don’t worry about what he’s done. Yes, that was right. Shouta didn’t have to deal with whatever the boy was talking about, because it was being taken care of. And it was probably fine anyway, he thought, in fact—

“Never have I ever been arrested for vigilantism,” he said as clearly as he could manage, and stared hard at Dazai.

Dazai looked surprised and then grinned frighteningly. “I’ve never been arrested at all, don’t you know? I’m not an amateur.”

“Never have I ever committed an act of vigilantism,” Nemuri said quickly, catching on. Shouta wasn’t quite sure that was accurate for her, but he wasn’t going to argue when they were so close to answers.

“Define vigilantism,” Dazai fired back.

“Uh,” Shouta said, racking his muddled brain for definitions he’d memorized in class years ago. “Putting a stop to criminal activity… using a quirk, without a hero’s license,” he came up with eventually. It sounded right, even if the wording was a bit off.

“Really?” Dazai said. “In that case, I suppose you’ve caught me.” He was definitely amused now, but he took a drink.

Belatedly, Hizashi and Shouta followed suit, and Shouta spotted Nemuri take a quick sip like she hoped they’d miss it.

“I knew it,” Shouta said under his breath. He already felt better about Dazai’s supposed criminal history—everyone knew that vigilantism didn’t really count, anyway.

“Never have I ever slept in a class I was supposed to be teaching,” he heard Hizashi say, and he picked up his glass again, giving his friend the middle finger.

That night Hizashi and Nemuri slept sprawled across the couches in the living room, and in the morning Dazai ate breakfast with them.

*

After Hizashi and Nemuri’s intervention, Dazai seemed like an entirely different person. No longer would he spend hours alone in his room, ignoring Shouta’s attempts to socialize; now it was Shouta who was being pestered, and it happened all the time.

Case in point: Shouta finished up his night patrol at 4 AM and slipped back into his apartment, already picturing the comfort of his mattress, when a voice called out from the darkest corner of his living room.

“Shouta-nii! I’m glad you’re back—do you have time to go over a few of these reports with me? I had a few thoughts about the conclusions you drew, and I’d like to ask about proper organizational structure as well.”

Shouta blinked, eyes blearily trying to peer at the source of the offensively cheery voice. “Whaaa?”

A light flipped on and Dazai swiveled to face him, comfortably settled in Shouta’s favorite recliner. “Your reports,” he said patiently. “Could we go over them? I’ve been waiting for a while.”

“It’s four in the morning.” Shouta blinked some more, trying to adjust to the sudden illumination after hours in the darkened streets of Mustafu.

Dazai glanced at the wall clock. “I suppose it is,” he agreed brightly. “Do you have somewhere you need to be? I assumed this was a good time to catch you, since it’s unusual to schedule appointments at this hour.”

Shouta took a deep breath and prayed for patience. “I have an urgent appointment right now, as it happens. With my pillow.”

Dazai looked scandalized. “You’d place your pillow above your own cousin? Do I mean so little to you, Shouta-nii-san? Don’t you want to show me the ways of a law-abiding hero?”

A week ago, Shouta would have examined Dazai’s face to check for any genuine hurt. However, this was far from the first time Dazai had asked him about cases in the last week, and not the first time he’d tried to use their relationship as an argument; also, it was four in the morning and Shouta’s patience was thoroughly used up for the day.

“Right now I’d place my pillow above my own mother,” Shouta said. “You can ask your questions tomorrow, preferably when the sun is up.”

“Don’t you mean today?”

“No,” Shouta growled, “I mean tomorrow. I’ve earned a twenty-hour break from your pestering. And you need to stop going through my papers without asking.”

“Sure,” Dazai said agreeably in a way that Shouta knew meant he had no intention of following through. “Have a good sleep, then, Shouta-nii!”

Really, he should have predicted that Dazai’s next round of questions would come precisely twenty hours later, waking him up at midnight on a rare night off.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

"What is this?"

Dazai looked up from where he was seated on the living room floor and beamed at Shouta. "I thought you taught teenagers, Shouta-nii, don't tell me you don't recognize the PlayStation 81?"

The thing Dazai was unwrapping did indeed appear to be the same gaming console he'd caught a few students sighing over lately. “Sure, but where did you get it, though? You’re not supposed to leave the apartment.”

Dazai rolled his eyes. “I assure you that there’s not a single person, including Taneda, expecting me to hold to that. I thought the deal was just that you had to keep track of when I do leave.” He dove into the packaging again instead of waiting for a response, and pulled out a power cord with a cry of triumph.

“Well, where’d you go then?”

“Not telling. The source of my lovely new prized possession will have to remain a mystery.”

Shouta considered pushing the issue, but decided against it; Dazai was probably just trying to get a rise out of him, and anyway it was hardly that mysterious. He’d probably just walked down to the nearest electronics shop.

“Let me know next time you have to leave,” he said instead. “I’m supposed to keep you safe, remember?”

Dazai ignored him. He’d gotten all the various wires and cords connected for the new gaming console, and soon enough the TV showed a setup screen.

“Do you need the wifi password?” Shouta asked, but Dazai apparently had already memorized it. Funny, Shouta didn’t remember ever telling it to him.

Shouta left Dazai to it and started making an early dinner. Maybe he could watch Dazai play while working on his lesson plan later—he’d never admit it to his students, but he was curious what all the fuss was about.

Everything was covered in blood, and before Shouta’s eyes, another body fell to the ground.

“Yeah, suck it,” Dazai muttered, smashing the trigger buttons on his controller.

This was the third game Dazai had played of the first-person shooter, and though it wasn’t really Shouta’s area of expertise, he could tell Dazai was improving at an alarming rate. Adjusting to the controls, probably.

“Hah!” Dazai threw down the controller and did a happy dance. A victory animation scrolled across the TV before the player stats appeared; Dazai’s username, FreeMackerel, clearly had the best numbers by far.

“Nice job,” Shouta commented.

Dazai spared him a glance. “Oh, that’s nothing,” he said dismissively. “That was just making sure I won’t embarrass myself.” He pulled up the console menu and typed another username into the friend request search bar. Shouta saw him bite his lip for a second, and then submit the request.

Dazai set the controller down, apparently willing to watch the motionless screen and wait instead of starting another game.

A few minutes passed. Shouta turned back to his lesson plan, adding in a few bullet points for his “prioritize the civilians” lecture.

Dazai was still waiting.

Shouta wondered if he should intervene—even if this was someone Dazai knew would accept his request, there was still no guarantee they’d see it anytime soon. But just as he opened his mouth to tell his cousin this, a notification ding sounded from the TV.

FlyingSlug has accepted your friend request.

Dazai fistpumped and snatched his controller up again, shoving a headset on with the other hand. In seconds he was connected to voice chat.

“Chibi!” He cheered in greeting.

On the other end of the chat, Shouta heard a male voice let out a stream of vulgarities that carried on without pause for breath, long enough that he was impressed with the other person’s lung capacity and creativity.

“I missed you too,” Dazai chirped when the invectives petered out. “Did you at least appreciate my goodbye gift? I put an awful lot of thought into it, you know.” When the cursing started up again, Dazai muted the mic for a second to whisper to Shouta, “I blew up his car.” He seemed quite pleased with himself.

Belatedly, Shouta wondered if he should be putting a stop to this.

Dazai seemed thrilled, though. Even as the conversation continued—bickering might be a better word for it—they started up a round of that same shooter game Dazai had been warming up on earlier. For all his problems with Dazai, apparently FlyingSlug didn’t have any objections to teaming up with him, and if Shouta had been impressed by Dazai earlier, the team performance blew that out of the water.

“I’m just saying,” Dazai said a few minutes into their second game, “that car lived a good life . She saw adventure, she visited the four corners of Yokohama, she killed at least a few people with sheer jealousy. And then she died for a good cause. We should all be so lucky! Oh, catch that guy coming from your eight-o-clock—“

“Got him. And I suppose that cause was enabling you to run off to play videogames in the Caribbean all day while I’m stuck cleaning up your messes?” The voice retorted. “Sasha didn’t deserve that!”

“Oh please,” Dazai said, sounding insulted. “I’m not exactly retiring here. And I’d never move to the Caribbean, can you imagine the tan lines?”

They fought in silence for a few moments, punctuated by the ratatat rhythm of simulated gunfire.

“Maybe you should.”

“Eh?” Dazai exclaimed. Shouta thought it might be a sound of surprise. “Don’t tell me Chibi wishes sunburn upon me! That would be so cruel!”

“Don’t be an idiot, you waste of bandages. You know what I mean.” The voice hesitated. “Maybe you’d be better off staying away from Yokohama. Now, anyways.”

Dazai’s character paused onscreen, hidden behind a low-poly wine rack. “Chibi really is cruel,” he said softly. “I suppose he doesn’t want to see me again. After what I did to Sasha, I suppose I can’t blame him…”

“You know that’s not what I meant, stupid mackerel. The car has nothing to do with this. Can you honestly say you want to see him again, after everything that’s happened?”

Onscreen, Dazai’s gunman stayed motionless for a few more long seconds. Then he carefully sidled left until he could peer out a window, and started methodically taking headshots at the dozens of enemies in the plaza below. Shouta didn’t dare turn his head to look at Dazai himself.

“Chibi really doesn’t know me at all,” Dazai said finally, “if he thinks I don’t fantasize about our next meeting every time I close my eyes.” There was something ugly in his voice.

“Maybe I’m the one who would rather let bad blood lie, then.”

“Oh, Chuuya,” Dazai said. Like a switch had flipped, suddenly he was all cheer again. “It’s not all bad blood, is it? Or you wouldn’t have accepted my friend request!”

“Oh, don’t give me that,” the other—Chuuya—replied instantly, accepting the shift in tone without a fuss. “You knew damn well I’d accept when you sent it. As if I’d give up the chance to insult you and your awful aim again.”

They eased into their back-and-forth again, flawlessly decimating their online opponents as they did so.

Shouta quietly gathered his lesson papers up and retreated to his bedroom. It was good to know, he supposed, that Dazai had at least one friend left from his missing teenage years.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Dazai had been completely distracted by his new gaming console—and the access it provided to his friend Chuuya—for a few days. For those few days, Shouta was blissfully spared from his cousin’s constant interrogation about hero work, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought to provide entertainment sooner. Eventually, however, Dazai pulled himself away from the TV to reassert himself.

“I want a field trip.”

Shouta closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose for a long ten seconds. Then he turned his head just enough to bring Dazai into his peripheral vision. “Why are you telling me this,” he asked flatly.

Dazai didn’t seem deterred at all by Shouta’s tone. “Come on, Shouta-nii! You’re my illustrious tutor in the ways of heroism, shouldn’t you be more proactive with my education?” He leaned in at an alarming angle until his face was directly between Shouta and his stack of graded papers. “I know you’re going out tonight. Take me with you!”

“Absolutely not,” Shouta said automatically.

Dazai pouted. “It’s not like you’re going on patrol, though. All you’re doing is visiting the police station. I can do that without a hero license, so what’s the problem?”

There was no reason for Dazai to know Shouta’s schedule, but Dazai always seemed to know it anyway. “The problem is that you’d be leaving the house, and potentially attracting attention,” Shouta said, “which is counterproductive to your presence here.”

Dazai smiled innocently. “Well, I’m determined to leave the house tonight, one way or the other. If you take me with you then at least I’ll be supervised,” he sang, leaning in close to Shouta’s face.

Shouta pushed his chair back in disgust. “Fine, just—get out of my face, please .” He was used to a certain amount of personal space, but Dazai seemed determined to make up for years of being an only child by crossing any boundary he could find. “I’ll introduce you to Tsukauchi, ok? He’s—” safe, reliable, reasonable, a good influence—“trustworthy.”

Tsukauchi had also participated in the rehabilitation for a couple of vigilantes in the past. On the sly, of course, since the official stance of the government on vigilantism didn’t allow for things like ‘rehabilitation’.

Dazai backed away obligingly and looked amused. “Well, if Shouta-nii trusts him, I’m sure I can trust him too!”

“Great,” Shouta said, a little warily; he hadn’t missed Dazai’s almost-sarcasm. “I’m leaving in half an hour, make sure you’re ready.”

He didn’t think that would be an issue—Dazai had taken to wearing formal clothing at all times since he’d stopped sulking in his room—but Dazai nodded rapidly and skipped off in a hurry.

*

“Wow,” Dazai said later, twirling around in circles. “It’s so much smaller on the inside.”

Shouta hummed an assent, smiling despite himself; one of his favorite parts of teaching UA students was seeing their reaction to hero agencies, police stations, and other ‘off-limits’ areas once they finally gained access. For young heroes, there was still some magic left in the places that were long-since commonplace for him.

“It’s a lot more crowded than you’d think,” he said, stepping out of the way of a harried-looking secretary with a bin full of papers. “Come on, Tsukauchi’s office is this way. And don’t touch anything.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dazai smiled.

They made their way to Tsukauchi's office, with Dazai twisting his head this way and that as they walked.

Shouta entered first, and Tsukauchi started to greet him with a smile, but when Dazai came through the door behind him the detective looked startled.

“Eraserhead, who’s this?”

Shouta prepared to give the official story on Dazai, knowing Tsukauchi would see straight through it. “Ah, this is—"

"Oba Yozo," Dazai cut in smoothly, offering his hand for a handshake. "I'm Aizawa's new roommate, and he's been nice enough to show me the ropes since he found out I'm studying for my license."

"Oh really?" Tsukauchi asked, raising an eyebrow and smiling slightly. "I'm not surprised he'd offer, he's always been a teacher at heart." Somehow, there wasn't even a flicker of suspicion in Tsukauchi's eyes when Dazai gave the false name.

"Yeah, he’s a softie,” Dazai grinned, catching Shouta’s eye.

Shouta ground his teeth.

“So what prompted the move to Mustafu?” Tsukauchi asked. “Where did you live before you moved in with Eraserhead?”

“Tokyo,” Dazai said promptly. Again, Tsukauchi gave no sign that he registered a lie. “My old apartment was just barely affordable when we had two people pitching in for rent, and then last month Takei finally moved in with his girlfriend. Aizawa-san’s cheap in comparison—well, anything in Mustafu is, really.”

“Well, welcome to the city,” Tsukauchi nodded. “I’m sure you’re kept busy studying for the licensing exam, but feel free to give me a call if you need any help. It can be difficult to get started in the hero business, especially if you didn’t go to a program for it in high school, but there are resources if you know where to look.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it,” Dazai said earnestly.

The conversation turned to the paperwork Shouta was here to pick up, but as they discussed the details of the case, Shouta mulled over the new information about Dazai in the back of his mind. Apparently his cousin was immune to the living lie detector; he’d never given much thought to Dazai’s quirk before, but he wouldn’t have guessed it would be another cancellation type.

Shouta knew from experience that the ability to nullify quirks was invaluable. It was the kind of thing that attracted a lot of unwanted attention, and too many organizations would see it as an asset to acquire at any cost. He wondered if that’s what had happened to Shuji and his family, all those years ago. One rarely became a vigilante without some sort of personal impetus, after all.

Towards the end of the conversation, Dazai—who had been staring out the office windows into the hallway—suddenly jumped. “Could I go grab some water?” He asked, eyes flickering between Shouta and Tsukauchi.

“Go for it,” Tsukauchi said, looking like he might laugh. “Water cooler is down the hall and to the right, I’ll send Eraserhead after you in a minute. It was good to meet you, Oba.”

When Dazai left, Shouta made a questioning sound.

“Oh, let the boy have his fun,” Tsukauchi said, chuckling. “He just saw Hawks walk by, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t manage to snag himself an autograph.”

“Hawks? That kid who made it into the Hero Charts’ top ten this year?”

“That’s him. Only 18 years old, can you believe it?” Tsukauchi shook his head. “There’s overachieving, and then there’s whatever the hell that guy has going on.”

“Hmm,” Shouta said thoughtfully. When Tsukauchi gestured for him to elaborate, he said, “He and Oba are the same age, that’s all. I wonder if they would be good for each other.”

Now Tsukauchi looked really interested. “I don’t know, is Oba really in Hawks’ league? He doesn’t even have a license yet, after all. And what’s his quirk, anyway?”

Shouta blinked, cursing internally. “Uh, it’s… I’m not sure.” He’d feel bad giving away the game after Dazai had so smoothly prevented him from being caught in a lie earlier (and how had Dazai known about Tsukauchi’s ability, anyway?) but he wasn’t in the habit of thinking his way around a lie detector.

“Wouldn’t happen to be a cancellation type, would it?”

Shouta winced, and then leaned back in his chair roughly. “What gave it away?” He asked the ceiling.

Tsukauchi had a smug look on his face at the tacit acknowledgement. “Nothing he said registered as a lie, but you were lying when you called him ‘Oba’. And you’re not exactly the type to take on a roommate without a good reason. I didn’t realize you had a little brother, though.”

“I don’t,” Shouta said quickly. “Off the record—and I mean that very seriously—he’s my cousin. Got himself into Witsec for something, requested me for his protection detail, and now he won’t stop badgering me about teaching him to be a hero.”

“Interesting. Do you think he’ll make it?”

“With a cancellation quirk—assuming that’s what it is, I haven’t asked him—I can’t imagine the license exam would fail him outright. He’s plenty smart, but the physical side might be an issue. I can’t exactly picture him in combat right now.”

Tsukauchi smiled knowingly. “I’ll bet you have a training plan in mind already, don’t you.”

Shouta refused to admit that he’d already asked Nedzu for permission to use the UA facilities next week. “I should go grab him,” he said instead, gathering up the paperwork and standing.

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead. See if you can arrange a play date while you’re at it.”

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Hawks was a big believer in his job. He figured that was pretty common in his profession—if you couldn’t believe in heroes, what could you believe in?—but it wasn’t so commonplace that he could take it for granted. He believed in being a hero the way some people believed in religion: with the kind of fervor and dedication that led to lots and lots (and lots and lots) of work.

Even now that he was an active duty hero, he still spent a four-hour chunk at the start of each day training with his handlers at the Hero Commission. They helped him boost the skills he still struggled with, like complicated rescue scenarios and dodging interview questions. They also drilled him on recent developments in the hero scene, the kind of things that you had to pay attention to stay up-to-date with. Regulations that got passed, articles to be concerned with, villains on watchlists. He was drilled on dossiers until he could recite them in his sleep.

All of which is to say that he recognized Dazai Osamu the moment the man walked up behind him in the hallway.

He’d just dropped off a purse-snatcher he’d caught on patrol, and was grabbing a drink from the office water cooler as he usually did. It was part of the image—the personable hero who wasn’t too good to come down to earth and chat with the commoners on occasion. (Okay, that’s not how Hawks thought of it, but it’s sure how his handlers made it sound when they talked about this particular strategy.) No one else was actually in the area at the time, so he took a traitorous second to catch his breath and just focus on rehydrating.

Naturally, that’s when someone rounded the corner.

Dazai Osamu: dangerous criminal with a quirk negation ability. Second in command of the Port Mafia, reigning extralegal organization in Yokohama. Known to use lethal force on a whim. Extremely intelligent and manipulative. Approach with caution.

He’d memorized that more than a year ago, along with the picture of the man before him now. But instead of taking action with the lightning-speed he was known for, he froze. A month or so ago, he’d been given an update.

Dazai Osamu acquired by Special Abilities Department, now considered an asset not under HC control. More information necessary: observe, do not engage.

So Hawks blinked his eyes and steeled himself to observe, not engage. Except Dazai Osamu was clearly planning to engage whether Hawks liked it or not.

"Oh my gosh, you're the Sky Hero: Hawks!" Dazai Osamu gushed, taking one of Hawks' gloved hands in his own and shaking it energetically. "I'm such a big fan. Seriously, making the top ten at your age? So cool!"

Hawks stammered out a standard 'thank you', too taken aback to keep up his usual polished delivery. This was the ruthlessly intelligent criminal he'd been warned about? This man, who couldn't even get his hero title right? No, it had to be an act.

"It's the 'Wing Hero', actually," he clarified once his mind recovered a little. "And, um, what's your name?" Maybe if he played dumb this could still be salvaged. He remembered warnings from his handlers that this man was one of the few that he didn't have a chance against in a one-on-one fight and barely kept from shuddering.

Dazai Osamu grinned at him, shark-like."You can call me Oba," he said. "At least in public. Speaking of which, I think there's a conference room open down here." He tugged Hawks down the hallway.

"And why are we going to a conference room?" Hawks asked, trying not to show the panic that was rapidly growing inside.

"To get paper for an autograph, of course!"

They passed several police officers who, hearing this, gave them amused looks.

Before he knew it, Hawks was practically pushed through the door of the conference room and his hand was finally released. He shook it out a little—it didn’t hurt, but he felt like he’d been attacked somehow anyway. Emotionally.

“I’m not sure we’ll find paper in here, sorry,” he said, turning around. “Maybe we could try—“

But when he looked back at Dazai Osamu, the other man was pushing the door closed, no trace of the earlier mania left on his face. Hawks’ words got stuck in his mouth.

“Now,” the man said, “What does the Hero Commission want with me?”

Hawks said a word his handlers would have whipped him for and winced reflexively.

“Oh, there’s no need for that kind of language,” Dazai replied. “I’m sure we can resolve this peacefully, after all. As long as you tell me why you’re here.”

In contrast to the sing-song he’d used before, Dazai’s speech was now calm and even. Hawks’ feathers rippled, a shiver he wasn’t quite able to catch.

“A peaceful resolution sounds nice,” Hawks said carefully. “I’m not sure you have anything to be concerned about, though, uh—” He paused, not sure whether there was any chance he could keep playing dumb.

“You can call me Dazai. I know you recognized me.” Dazai leaned against the closed door, arms folded. His hair cast dark shadows on his eyes.

Okay, then. “Well, Dazai, as far as I know the Hero Commission doesn’t want anything with you. You’re not on our wanted list anymore.”

“And am I supposed to believe that it’s a coincidence that the Commission’s prodigy is passing by, on the first time I’ve left my safe house in weeks?” Dazai asked scornfully.

“It is, I promise!” Hawks said, frantically waving his hands. “I was just dropping off a purse-snatcher, they don’t know you’re here at all!” He realized he was backing up and forced himself to stop moving.

Dazai’s eyes narrowed. “And if they did know I was here, what would they tell you to do?” He asked faux-casually.

Hawks considered lying, saying they’d want him to leave Dazai alone and ignore him. He thought better of it. “They’d tell me to observe you from a distance,” he admitted. “Which is clearly a lost cause at this point.” He gestured between the two of them to illustrate.

“Yes, quite,” Dazai said wryly. He examined Hawks for another long moment—Hawks tried not to feel like a rat in a cage, or perhaps under a microscope—and then seemed to relax. “Well, alright, I suppose I believe you.”

“Oh, thank Kami.”

“And since you weren’t supposed to encounter me here, there’s no reason for you to tell your superiors that you did.”

Hawks nodded rapidly. “Definitely not. They’d probably have me doing sleep deprivation training again as a punishment for not spotting you before you spotted me.”

Dazai winced. “I hate doing that. Do they give you mental tasks or physical ones to test performance?”

“Physical,” Hawks said automatically. “Sparring or obstacle courses, usually, unpredictable difficulty so I never know what’s coming.” He normally wasn’t supposed to mention specific training methods his handlers used, but Dazai was clearly familiar with this one so maybe it was alright. And officially, this meeting never happened, so really, did it matter what he said?

Dazai made a hum of acknowledgement. “I usually had to do anatomy drills or memorization exercises,” he said. “For the record, it’s inevitable that performance will decrease; there’s no proof that they can train it out of you.”

Hawks made a face. “Yeah, I figured. That’s why it’s punishment, and not real training. Don’t want to kill too many brain cells with exhaustion.”

Dazai contemplated him for a moment. “Say, Hawks, you wouldn’t happen to be an orphan, would you?”

“Pardon?”

“It’s just that I’m in the market for one. That’s why I left Yokohama—be a good person, save the orphans, all that. I know of a few back in the Mafia, but frankly I think they’re happier if I just leave them alone. You seem like you might need saving, though.”

“Uh.” Hawks felt like the conversation had turned from threatening to bizarre. “I’m… not really? It’s complicated. Probably not an orphan, though. I don’t exactly have parents anymore, but they’re not dead.” Why did this matter?

Dazai hummed again. “I’ll leave that for future review, then.”

“What would you be saving me from, anyways?” Hawks asked. “I’m the same age as you, not exactly Little Orphan Annie.” He hoped he was using the reference right—it had been a while since he’d been drilled on American movies.

“I don’t know,” Dazai said dismissively. “Boredom? Stupid training regimens? The clutches of the government? What would you like to be saved from?”

Hawks tilted his head. “I’m in the business of saving people, not being saved!” He reconsidered. “But, like, if you wanted to save me from work I wouldn’t say no.”

“And how would I do that?” Dazai asked, amused.

“By taking care of crime before I get to it, obviously,” Hawks suggested. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with someone with hundreds of counts of murder to his name. He sat down on the conference room table, wondering if he could just skip the rest of patrol and go home for a nap after this.

“Nice try,” Dazai grinned. “But I’m not looking to steal your spot in the hero rankings. It’s underground work for me, I’m afraid.” He glanced at the door. “Ah, could I get that autograph now? Eraserhead’s coming.”

Hawks looked around the room. There was still no paper to be found.

“Maybe if we can find a printer—“ he started, but Dazai was already pulling out a sharpie and rolling up his sleeve.

“This will do,” he said, brandishing a bandage-covered arm. “Try to keep it small, okay?”

Hawks stared. “Isn’t that unhygienic?”

“No. Now, please.”

Hawks signed the bandage.

The door opened and Eraserhead poked his head through. “There you are,” he said, looking relieved. “Oba, I thought you were going to the water cooler.”

“I was,” Dazai said, sounding unconcerned. “Then I met Hawks and we left.”

Eraserhead grimaced and didn’t push, apparently used to Dazai’s evasiveness already. “Hawks, it’s good to see you. I hope he wasn’t bothering you too much.”

“It’s never a bother to meet with fans,” Hawks said, a bit dazed.

“Right. Well, we should go." Eraserhead paused, looking pained. "But," he said eventually, "look out for a message from me, okay? You could join us for dinner sometime.” He looked supremely uncomfortable making the offer.

“Oh, that’s okay, really,” Hawks said hastily. “I’m totally fine—“

“It’s no problem,” Eraserhead said with gritted teeth. “Come on, Oba.”

The older hero whisked Dazai away, leaving Hawks staring after them and feeling like a hurricane had just come through.

“Eraserhead, huh,” he said to himself. Interesting association for the man with quirk negation.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Shouta sat in front of his laptop and glared at the screen. A blank document glared back at him.

The weekly reports to Taneda’s people hadn’t been a problem at first; when Dazai had simply been languishing in his room for days on end, it had been simple to write a brief summary of his activities. Charge spent the day in bed staring at ceiling. Charge spent concerning amount of time in the bathroom. Charge ate breakfast without prompting today, a real milestone in my professional opinion. It had been almost reassuring to share the details of Dazai’s behavior when those details made Shouta worry more than he’d admit; at least then, someone else might share his concern.

But now that Dazai was actually up and about, interacting with the world, Shouta felt less like a caretaker giving a behavioral analysis and more like a tattletale.

Outing to local law enforcement office on Friday was productive, he typed, and then backspaced. Shouta had a productive meeting with Tsukauchi that day, sure, but Taneda’s people didn’t care about that. Supervised outing to local law enforcement office resulted in positive interactions. Was that specific enough? Hell, but Shouta hated paperwork. No other excursions to report, he typed, deciding to move on.

Charge’s mood seems improved by recent entertainment acquisitions. That PlayStation was nearly always on now, and Dazai could be heard chatting with his friend at the oddest hours. Shouta had only had to put his foot down once, when he’d been awoken by one side of a heated debate at 4 AM, and even then he’d reined in his temper when he’d seen the incongruously soft look Dazai had worn.

He typed a few more tidbits into the document, speeding through in an effort to get it over with. When it seemed sufficient, he hovered over the button to export it, hesitated… and then clicked back into the editor to add on one last line.

Educational excursion planned this week for training and enrichment purposes. Multiple pro heroes will supervise.

*

“I can’t believe people actually get up this early,” Dazai complained.

Shouta sighed. He’d opted to drive rather than ride the train this morning, on the principle that it was better for keeping Dazai under the radar; he’d forgotten that it meant he’d be trapped in a small space with the boy for ten minutes straight.

“I’m not exactly pleased to be awake either, kid,” he said, “but that’s because I had patrol last night. You could have gotten a full eight hours and then some, what’s your excuse?”

“Actually,” Dazai said primly, “the ideal amount of sleep varies by individual, but for my age bracket it averages at around nine or ten hours, not eight. A schoolteacher should be aware of this, Shouta-nii, I’m truly disappointed in you.”

Shouta groaned. Despite the early hour—only an hour before he usually taught homeroom, but still unpleasant—Dazai was in full form. “Your schedule is empty. You could have gotten eighteen hours of sleep if you wanted.”

“Sounds festive,” Dazai said happily. “But really, Shouta-nii, if you’re tired too then I don’t see why you didn’t schedule this for later. Midnight would be far more reasonable, don’t you agree?”

“I assume that by ‘Midnight’ you mean the time and not the person,” Shouta said dryly, “but I have to disagree with you either way.”

Dazai shrugged dramatically enough that Aizawa couldn’t miss it even though his eyes were fixed firmly on the road. “You can’t be right all the time, I suppose.”

He was quiet for a moment, then spoke up again. “Do you know what I think? I think you just love your job soooo much that you couldn’t wait to get back to it—”

“And we’re here!” Aizawa announced, interrupting Dazai’s outlandish claims. The teacher’s parking garage was emptier than usual at the moment, but he spotted Nemuri’s minivan and Snipe’s motorcycle among the vehicles there. “Hurry up, punctuality is vital in hero work.”

They made it to the second-years’ gym and met Midnight and Snipe already there. This was the gym with a shooting range and padded sparring ring, where interested students usually started weapons training; since this required close supervision, there were also weight machines and running tracks to occupy the rest of the class. All told, this building had more variety in its training facilities than most others on campus.

“Aww, you’re just as adorable as the last time I saw you,” Midnight crooned. This was the first time Dazai had seen her in her full hero regalia, since she usually changed clothes at the end of the school day, but he didn’t seem flustered or impressed at all. “Snipe, come meet the kid!” She called.

Dazai smiled winningly at the hero marksman.

Snipe stared back. “Aw, crud,” he said, “he really is a kid, isn’t he? Why don’t we just toss him in with the third years and be done with it?”

Dazai’s smile gained an irritated edge.

"He has a point, Eraserhead," Midnight crooned. "Isn't this nepotism? Giving baby Aizawa special access to UA resources and all."

"Not an Aizawa," Shouta and Dazai said simultaneously.

A squeaky voice interrupted Midnight before she could debate this. “UA has always supported heroes-to-be on their journey, and I see no reason young Dazai should be any different!”

Shouta winced, and Dazai turned around slowly. Principal Nedzu, of course, had decided to join their training session.

“However,” the little rat-bear-dog person continued, “I think we can all agree that Dazai’s needs are… significantly different from the average UA third-year student. Today’s purpose is simply to assess those needs, nothing more.”

Nedzu seemed cheerful as ever, but Shouta heard the warning loud and clear. Dazai wasn’t truly welcome on UA campus, not yet at least. Shouta wondered what the principal was looking for.

“Well, let’s get started, then,” Snipe said, clapping his hands together. Dazai looked away from Nedzu reluctantly. “I’d say we don’t have time for a real endurance test, but you can give it a go at a mile run to warm up, how’s that sound? Stretch up, then one lap around the track.”

Dazai’s eyes widened in apparent horror at the idea, but he obediently bent to touch his toes before launching into a jog.

Shouta shook his head, watching him go. “First thing to do is teach him to stretch properly,” he said. “That was just sad.”

“I’m sure he knows his limits,” Nedzu said, no longer projecting a false cheer. “Though that doesn’t mean you have nothing to teach him, Aizawa. On the contrary, I’m confident he could learn a great deal from you.”

Aizawa ignored the cryptic statement. “I’m hoping to see where he stands in combat today. A physical training regime is simple, but if I don’t know how he fights then I don’t know where to focus our efforts.”

“I’m guessin’ you asked me here to see if he wants to pick up a weapon?” Snipe asked. “Makes sense, if you’re trying to get him through a licensing exam soon. He sure doesn’t look like he’s got the stamina or build for close combat.”

They watched Dazai make his way back around the track, chatting idly about their students as they waited. Eventually Dazai peeled away from the track and came to a stop, forehead slightly sweaty but not otherwise tired.

Snipe checked his watch. “Just about 11 minutes,” he said. “Not awful, and it looks like you know how to pace yourself. Reckon you could do another few laps like that?”

Dazai looked appalled, but a glance towards Shouta and Nedzu had him shrugging unenthusiastically. “Yeah, probably,” he said. “If I’m under duress.”

Snipe snorted. “Well, there’s no need for that now,” he said. “You’re not hopeless, we can move on from there.”

“Let’s talk about combat,” Shouta took over. “I know your quirk has some similarities to mine, but could you give us a description? The specifics are always important.”

Dazai’s eyes flickered between the three teachers and the principal. “Sure,” he said, nonchalantly. “It’s a quirk nullification ability, range of touch.”

“Passive or active? Do you have to consciously choose to use it, or could you nullify a quirk by accident?” Midnight asked.

“It’s always on. I don’t go around touching people accidentally, though! Perish the thought.” Dazai flung a hand against his forehead dramatically.

“Is that why you’ve got all those bandages covering you?” Snipe wondered, and Shouta tensed. He wondered the same, but he hadn’t brought up the bandages since Dazai had showed up on his doorstep because he didn’t like to think what other reasons there might be.

“The bandages are functional,” Dazai said, neither confirming nor denying it.

“And what do you call your quirk, Dazai?” Nedzu asked, speaking up from where he’d been watching quietly on the floor. “I can’t imagine you share dear Aizawa’s naming sense, though ‘Erasure’ would certainly be an accurate name by the sound of it.”

Dazai blinked, and his voice went flat. “It’s called No Longer Human.”

The teachers pondered this for a moment. “On the principle that… you’re suppressing quirks, and quirks are what make us human?” Midnight wondered. “Because that’s, um…”

“It’s an interesting name,” Nedzu said quietly.

Shouta shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t known what Dazai called his quirk, of course, but he really wished Dazai had had the sense to come up with something different in front of Nedzu, the quirked animal who’d faced far too much discrimination in his life already.

“Well, I didn’t pick it,” Dazai said lightly. His dark eyes were fixed on Nedzu in a way that made Shouta want to step between them. “But I rather doubt that that’s the logic behind it, if indeed there is any.”

Something unreadable passed between them, and after a few moments Nedzu nodded slowly.

“Ok, but if the quirk is always on then that means you're essentially immune to any quirk that might be used against you in combat," Shouta said, determined to move on. "And I assume you prefer close range fighting, since the range is touch-based?" He was a bit doubtful, considering what he'd seen of the boy's performance so far.

Dazai shook himself a bit. "Ah, Shouta-nii, one rarely has the opportunity to be picky with the circ*mstances of a fight," he said. "I can handle myself at close, mid, or far range, of course!"

“Okay, sure, kid,” Snipe said indulgently. “In your opinion, though, do you work best as a close quarters or ranged fighter?” If it was close quarters, they would have Midnight teach him how to use knives or some sort of baton; if it was at a range, Snipe would take over.

“I work best as bait,” Dazai said promptly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Bait,” Dazai repeated, sounding condescending. “It’s where I get myself captured, annoy them until I’ve got the information I need, and then call down the wrath of the gods once I’m done. Comprendez-vous?”

Shouta couldn’t believe someone could sound so snotty while outlining the stupidest plan of attack he’d ever heard. “Sorry, kid, but ‘call down the wrath of the gods’ sounds a bit unlikely based on your, ah… current physique.”

Dazai startled a bit. “Ah, but that was my old plan, of course. I used to work with a partner, you see. Wimpier than myself, I assure you, but on a bad day he could make Suribachi City look like a minor accident.”

Shouta stared. Dazai looked fond when he said it, as though Suribachi City hadn’t been the largest-scale disaster since the advent of quirks. More than a decade later and it was still unexplained, though the common assumption was that a child’s quirk had manifested violently, killing said child in the process. That was the incident that had launched concerns about the Quirk Singularity—because if it had happened once, why not again?

For the first time, Shouta wondered what the hell Dazai had been up to for the last few years. He knew what vigilantism usually involved, and city-leveling partners were not part of the formula. You weren’t just stopping muggers in alleyways, were you?

“I suppose,” Dazai said now, “that I’ll have to adapt my usual strategies now that I’m on my own. It’ll be best to start at mid-to-far range, and come in to close quarters once I have the advantage.”

Snipe, who’d been staring incredulously along with the other teachers, coughed politely. “Not so fast. Let’s see how you do in sparring, and check how good your aim is; then we might come up with a training plan and strategy for you.”

Shouta looked back and forth between Dazai, who still had a condescending little smirk as though he was simply indulging them by being here, and Snipe, who looked appropriately skeptical about the abilities of a boy who had apparently only ever worked as support for a much stronger teammate. Then he thought to look down—and there was Nedzu, who had an entertained expression and the posture of someone who was deeply interested in the proceedings.

This was going to be a disaster. Shouta was almost looking forward to it.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

“Don’t worry, honey,” Midnight smirked, “I’ll go easy on you.”

“I’ll bet you go very easy,” Dazai smirked right back.

Shouta looked on in horror. He was familiar with Midnight’s… schtick, but seeing his baby cousin respond in kind was just wrong.

Dazai and Midnight were standing at opposite sides of a padded sparring ring, the sort that they’d put students in until they knew how to avoid hurting each other. Normally it was just for quirkless fighting—but then, a fight between these two would end up quirkless no matter what.

“And… begin,” Snipe said, playing timekeeper again.

Dazai immediately began backing up towards the edge of the ring, gaze fixed on Midnight like he expected her to explode. She followed him, closing the distance, and aimed a kick at his knee when she was just barely in range.

Shouta winced. He was sure she could pull the kick if necessary, but a blow to the knee could do serious damage.

Dazai avoided it, though, sidestepping around the circumference of the ring quick enough that Midnight had to work to catch up with him again.

“Playing hard to get, huh?” she asked. “That won’t get you far, sweetheart!” She backed away from the edge enough to trap him between her and the ropes; either way he went, she’d be able to reach him.

Now that Dazai couldn’t just avoid her, she sent a barrage of punches and kicks his way, fast enough that it made Shouta nervous on Dazai’s behalf. Dazai ducked and swayed back and forth to avoid most of them, only deflecting a few with his hands and arms; Midnight definitely managed to hit Dazai directly a few times from what Shouta saw, but he didn’t show any signs of pain so she must have been pulling her blows after all.

Dazai stepped forward suddenly, his first attempt at an attack. He grabbed Midnight’s arm mid-punch and pulled her towards him. When she resisted, he used the momentum to carry him further forwards instead; his free hand grabbed her other arm at the shoulder, while his left leg jerked up to hit her in the stomach with his knee.

“Ouch,” Snipe said in sympathy, and Shouta agreed with him—but Midnight was hardly out of commission.

“Nice try, kid,” she said, slightly out of breath, and then she wrapped her leg behind his and toppled him over. Dazai was pinned on his back in seconds, Midnight leaning over him suggestively.

“Match goes to Midnight,” Snipe called out.

“You sure about that?” Dazai shouted back.

Shouta spotted it before Midnight did: Dazai’s right forearm was pinned down by Midnight’s knee, but that put his hand in perfect position to sneak a knife out of her boot holster. He held it twisted to point at the top of her calf—right where her boot ended. If Dazai jerked his wrist right, he could sever tendons or maybe even an artery before Midnight could do anything about it.

“Cripee,” Snipe muttered. “Sorry, uh, match goes to Dazai then? I thought this was supposed to be unarmed only…”

“You never said that,” Dazai said cheerfully, dropping the knife as Midnight let him up. “And I’m not the one who brought the knife into the arena, you know.”

The way he said that made Shouta immediately convinced that Dazai had weapons somewhere on his person as well.

“Well, I didn’t know we were signing up for foul play,” Midnight pouted. “I could’ve gotten my whip out, made things interesting.”

“Let’s try that again,” Shouta said, not ready for another round of innuendo. “No weapons this time. Dazai, we want to see how you fight; try not to spend so much time avoiding the fight. That’s good for real-life situations, but not so much for a demonstration, got it?”

“Got it,” Dazai said.

“You got it, sensei,” Midnight said, winking obnoxiously and making finger guns.

Dazai watched her do this and looked offended suddenly. When they went back into the ring, he turned around and blew a kiss to the ‘audience’ and batted his eyelashes, waving as though to an invisible crowd of admirers.

“Dear kami, they’re competing,” Shouta whispered.

“And start,” Snipe called out again. Beneath the mask, Shouta just knew he was grinning at Shouta’s pain.

Up in the ring, neither fighter moved immediately this time; instead, after a few moments Midnight rolled up her sleeve and sent out a wave of her quirk gas.

Dazai didn’t fall unconscious from it, of course, but as the two of them disappeared from view it became obvious what Midnight’s intentions were: if neither of them could see, Dazai would have a lot harder time avoiding her.

“Did I not just say that the point of this is so we can see Dazai fight?” Shouta complained. “Nobody listens to me.”

Snipe, Nedzu and Shouta backed up a few dozen feet from the sparring ring to avoid being caught in Midnight’s quirk as it spread out.

“Well, he’s obviously fought in close quarters before,” Snipe said. “He knew what he was planning from the start in that first match, don’t you think? And most people would have been caught off-guard with that knee to the stomach. Not every hero is up to Midnight’s caliber in hand-to-hand.” He meant it to sound encouraging, Shouta was sure.

“I guess he handled himself okay, all things considered,” Shouta conceded thoughtfully. “At the very least he didn’t get hurt, and I was waiting for it to happen the way Midnight was going after him.”

“That,” Nedzu spoke up finally, “is where you’re wrong, Aizawa. I’m certain that Dazai has at least a few bruised ribs from Kayama’s attacks.”

Shouta blinked, looking back at the ring where they could just make out the sound of more banter and blows through the fog. “I know she managed to hit him a few times before the end,” he said, “but he didn’t react like they were hitting at full power. Surely he would have said something.” But he didn’t really doubt Nedzu; he knew better.

Snipe whistled. “Kid must have a hell of a pain tolerance, then,” he said. “He get that from your side of the family, Aizawa?”

“I don’t know where he gets that from,” Shouta said, troubled.

*

Dazai won the second round with Midnight.

"I don't know how he did it," she said once the two of them emerged from the fog, "because no one has trained to fight blind the way I have. Fighting in that mess back there—“ she gestured at the sparring ring, still heavily obscured, “is where I excel, Shouta! But somehow he took me down when I wasn’t expecting it.”

She wasn’t making an effort to be obnoxious anymore. Now she was treating Dazai with a mixture of regard and irritation, like she really couldn’t figure out how he’d beat her and she didn’t like it.

“I’ve trained blindfolded before,” Dazai said when they all looked at him for an explanation. Obviously, his tone said.

“That’s impressive, mate,” Snipe said, looking Dazai up and down like he was trying to decide if he could bring himself to respect the spindly-looking kid. “I guess your strengths are in close-quarters combat after all, eh?”

Dazai rolled his eyes. “I’m tired of this, give me a gun already.”

Snipe startled. “Hey, now, wait a minute—“

“We do not generally,” Nedzu spoke up, “allow students to use guns at UA… until they’ve proven they won’t be a danger. To themselves or others.”

Dazai met Nedzu’s gaze. “I’m not a student,” he said evenly. “And I’ve been using guns for years. I assure you I’m perfectly capable of hitting where I aim, and I’m not aiming to kill, Nedzu-san.”

“That’s… kind of a low bar when it comes to guns,” Snipe said weakly. “I mean… you can cripple people for life if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s also bad, you realize. Like, you could very much go to jail for that.”

Snipe would know, of course; while his quirk guaranteed that he’d hit his target, there was no guarantee he’d hit where he wanted. He usually only dared aim for villains’ weapons or articles of clothing around their extremities—like shoes or watches—unless another person’s life was directly in danger. Even then, Snipe’s license had been called into review more than once.

“I’m aware of the damage guns can do," Dazai said. "I can avoid maiming as well.”

“But—“

“Look,” Dazai interrupted, “are you people trying to see what I can do or what I’m willing to do? Because there’s obviously going to be a difference there.” He kept his voice light, but there was definitely an edge in it.

Nedzu kept scrutinizing Dazai, and for a moment Shouta thought things might turn sour. He had a nasty taste in his mouth already—why the hell has he been using guns for years? He’s a teenager!—but something felt important about Nedzu’s approval here. Even if Shouta still didn’t know why it was in question.

“I suppose,” Nedzu said finally, “that there is too often no difference at all. People tend to get so caught up in what they can do that they forget to consider whether or not they should. A great man once said that, and I find it holds true more often than not.”

“I won’t forget,” Dazai said quietly.

Nedzu blinked, and then nodded firmly. “Take us to the shooting range, then, Snipe.”

“Great,” Dazai said, suddenly cheerful again, “because one of those things I can do is hit a bullseye at a hundred meters…”

Snipe started to scoff.

“With a pistol,” Dazai finished.

Snipe froze. “No way.”

Dazai smiled lazily. “Wanna bet? I hold a record in Call of Duty, you know.”

“Video game skills do not transfer, kid. Five hundred yen.”

“Deal.”

*

Dazai won the bet, of course.

“Well,” Nedzu said brightly, “it seems young Dazai was correct in his assessment! He will fight effectively both at a distance and in close quarters, which means there’s really only one logical mentor for him at this point in time.”

Shouta sighed. He really should have seen this coming.

“Aizawa, feel free to use UA facilities for his training as desired. I expect good things from you, Dazai. Don’t disappoint me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Sensei,” Dazai replied, sketching a little bow towards the diminutive creature.

“And come by my office sometime, Dazai. I’d love to discuss literature with you—perhaps we’ll start with Crichton, yes?”

What have I done? Shouta wondered.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

The first week of training his cousin before and after school, Shouta learned that Dazai was terrifyingly competent with firearms and had at least basic proficiency with any martial arts style Shouta threw at him. But knowing the moves wasn’t going to get Dazai anywhere without the physical strength to execute them, and mere speed alone wouldn’t always be enough to compensate.

So for the time being they were going back to the very basics: lifting weights and using exercise machines.

After a week of this, Shouta called Mic in for a consulting session.

“The thing is, listener,” Mic said conversationally while Dazai caught his breath after a session on the treadmill, “There are all kinds of heroes out there, and every hero has a different specialty. You can be a rescue hero like Thirteen, with her black hole quirk to help excavate disaster areas quickly; you could be a support hero like Boost, who gives a power-up to every team he works with; you could even focus on civilian management, and coordinate evacuation efforts during attacks the way Soothe does.”

“And you don’t necessarily need a specific quirk for any of those things,” Shouta interjected. “Though it can certainly help.”

Dazai grinned, wiping his forehead. “You can also be a limelight hero and focus on the big takedowns, right? Maybe I could do that, you know. Give Hawks a run for his money…”

Shouta blanched. “What I mean is,” he backtracked quickly, “it’s important for a hero to be versatile. That doesn’t mean you should spend all your time in an area where you’re at a disadvantage.”

The truth was, Dazai’s quirk would be invaluable in most big villain fights, just as Shouta’s was. Heavy-hitting villains simply weren’t prepared to lose their quirks unexpectedly. But everything else about those fights was horrible for them. Both had limited range and could only realistically affect one person at a time; both were fairly vulnerable while actually using their quirks, whether because of decreased visibility or close proximity. Most damningly, those fights tended to be televised.

The element of surprise was important to Shouta’s work, but that wasn’t why he’d chosen to work underground. There had been no choice at all, really, because no matter how useful Erasure was, no one wanted to root for someone who could take away their quirk with a glance. Or a touch.

Shouta had been willing enough to stay out of the limelight. But he wondered how much worse it would be for Dazai—Dazai, who apparently couldn’t turn his quirk off at all, who already wrapped his skin with bandages like touching someone else was unthinkable.

Before he could say any of this, Dazai laughed. “Oh, I’m just kidding, Shouta-nii! Obviously I won’t be working like that. I’ve already been handpicked for an agency in Yokohama, after all.”

“WHAT?” Mic burst out, nearly deafening Shouta, Dazai and the few third-year students working out on the other side of the exercise room.

Shouta cancelled Mic’s quirk automatically, but he was startled too. “You’ve already got a job lined up?” He asked incredulously.

“Of course!” Dazai said cheerfully, a devilish glint in his eye that told Shouta he knew exactly what reaction this would elicit. “A very respectable low-light agency, with a focus on detective work. You can’t get away with the flashy stuff in Yokohama, you know.”

Shouta did know. Yokohama was well-entrenched in organized crime; any heroes who started to make too much noise there were inevitably encouraged to leave. ‘Low-light’ agencies, which didn’t bother with the extreme secrecy of underground but still tried to avoid the media, were pretty much the only hero presence to speak of.

“I’ve heard of a couple agencies in Yokohama,” Shouta said casually. “Where are you headed?”

“That would be telling,” Dazai said, turning away primly. "It’s not an official hire yet, anyway. I’ve never even met the director.”

“But you say you’ve been handpicked?” Mic asked, confused.

Dazai shrugged. “Taneda recommended me; he says it’ll be a good fit, and I’m inclined to agree. I’ve been reading up on their work.”

“So what kind of work do they do then?” Shouta asked, deciding to ignore for the moment the way Dazai was yet again refusing to answer his previous question. Dazai liked to talk a lot without saying anything much at all.

Dazai smiled. "Detective work, like I said, Shouta-nii! They investigate crimes and locate criminals that the police can't handle."

Shouta traded a glance with Mic. That was a pretty generic description of hero work in general. "So they do lots of investigations?” Shouta tried. “Recon, research, that kind of thing?"

Dazai shrugged and nodded.

“That does sound like a good fit for you,” Shouta admitted. “Brains over brawn, and all that.”

Dazai adopted a wounded look, but it wasn’t all that convincing when, in the workout clothes they’d finally convinced him to wear, his noodle arms were clearly visible under the close wrapping of bandages.

“So have you done much work like that before, listener?” Mic asked, with a slightly pitying look. “What are your usual methods?”

“Poke around and find out,” Dazai said immediately. He leaned back against the wall of the gym, as if to distance his noodle arms from their detractors.

Ugh. Shouta was going to have to teach this kid from the ground up.

“Okay, tomorrow we start covering proper investigation procedures,” he said, “and how to do research legally. I’ll track down my lesson plans for that unit.” And some supplementary material besides—because somehow, Shouta got the feeling that Dazai would need a bit more handholding than his usual students when it came to following the law.

**

“Hey, Chuuya,” Dazai said cheerfully into his headset when they got home, “let’s commit some crimes.”

They opened up Grand Theft Auto Online.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

There was all sorts of value to be found in video games. They could teach strategic planning, as players decided to prioritize certain skills or tackle obstacles in a particular order; they could teach money management, for games with in-world currency; there were probably other applications, but to be honest the papers he’d read on the subject were rather dull and he’d rather get back to actually playing rather than just reading about it.

What Tomura enjoyed most about video games was the chance to crush his enemies.

At the moment he was playing in a two-team battle arena: not his usual preference, but Sensei wanted him to start learning teamwork, and—just like with those research papers—when Sensei suggested he did something, he did it. He didn’t bother to mention that this was the kind of game where, despite being on an online ‘team’, you mostly just did your own thing and killed as many of the opposing players as possible. It was fine; he’d carry this ‘team’ to victory without ever learning any of their names.

He’d already gone through a few games, and—like in all the first person shooters he played—he dominated the battlefield with ease. Okay, once or twice someone had edged him out of the MVP spot by getting more kills or fewer deaths than he had, but just barely, and those ones were obviously using cheat codes of some kind.

This game was different though.

“I can’t believe this,” Tomura announced. His voice was calm, but his hands were shaking. “These two are—using aimbots, or they’ve got telepathy quirks, or something. There’s no way I’m losing this badly.”

The opposing team was largely composed of the usual noobs, barely worth the electricity to animate their avatars, with two glaring exceptions. Somehow these two were clearing the map, over and over again, taking out everyone on Tomura’s team with coordinated attacks and winning rounds in a fraction of the time it usually took Tomura.

One of the two had sniped him within seconds of respawning, for the last ten respawns in a row. He was going to murder them.

“Kurogiri,” he called, and now the rage was making his voice shake. “Turn on the computer. I want you to find everything there is to know about the PlayStation users FlyingSlug and FreeMackerel.”

*

“Nice one,” Dazai commented, seeing Chuuya set off a grenade and catch six enemy players in the radius.

“ Eh,” Chuuya responded, “not much competition today. I’ve gotten half a report written since we started this round.”

“You shouldn’t multitask, Chibi! Don’t you know it’s bad for your health?” Dazai exclaimed. He himself was holding a sandwich between two fingers on his left hand, losing the ability to hit a few buttons but gaining the ability to eat away from Aizawa’s judging eyes.

“Yeah, right,” Chuuya’s response came back, and Dazai could hear the eye-roll. “Oh, there on your left, that asshole just respawned again.”

Dazai headshotted INeedAHand for the eleventh time that game and smiled.

*

“Uhh… Shigaraki Tomura?”

“What.”

“I didn’t find anything on FreeMackerel, but the username FlyingSlug has been used in international competitions. They won the ESports Global Co-op for the last four years, in fact… as part of a team with user FallingMackerel.”

“…What are the chances this is someone else?”

“I’m afraid it seems unlik—oh, come now, that makes the third couch destroyed this week!”

*

Eventually Tomura calmed down. It was necessary, given that he was absolutely unwilling to concede the game to his new enemies without a fight; he was beginning to understand that sometimes destruction now could actually prevent him from being destructive in a different, more satisfying way later. It was the same reason he’d trained himself not to destroy his controllers.

Unfortunately, all the restraint and commitment in the world wasn’t enough to secure him a victory.

“This is unacceptable,” he seethed, pacing around the bar furiously after the final round finished in a scathing defeat animation. “There’s no way they should be that good. But official competitions screen out cheaters, there’s no way they’ve got an extra buff under the table…”

He was beginning to confront the unpleasant reality that, even in his favored field of video games, there were people out there who were just better than him. It felt like a hole eating away at his ribcage, gnawing at him the way the absence of Father did when Sensei was punishing him.

“Now,” Kurogiri began awkwardly, “you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself, Shigaraki Tomura. They likely have… more experience, or perhaps professional training.”

“Don’t condescend, Kurogiri,” he said furiously, scratching at his neck. “I should be good enough, I’ve worked for this, what do the two of them have that I don’t?!”

Then he paused. “Two of them,” he repeated. “They worked together, of course! That’s cheating, right? It’s not fair to have—partners, that’s just out of line! No one else does that!”

Kurogiri sighed deeply. “Do you recall what your Sensei wanted you to learn from this game?” He prompted.

Tomura racked his brains, and then froze. “Teamwork,” he breathed, wondering if it could be that simple. “Do you mean to tell me that this is what teamwork looks like? Just… covering each others’ backs, and… and winning?”

“It certainly can work like that,” Kurogiri said diplomatically.

“I can’t believe this,” Tomura declared, mind still spinning. “Why wouldn’t Sensei just tell me it could be this useful? I’ve wasted so much time without implementing this strategy!”

But as he said it he knew it was a mistake. Of course Sensei had told him it was useful—he wouldn’t recommend something that wouldn’t help Tomura later on, after all. And Sensei knew the proper order for training. He shouldn’t doubt Sensei like that, he knew better.

Tomura shuddered at the thought and resumed pacing. "I need to learn this," he muttered. "I need to prove I'm ready for it. But how the hell…"

He thought for a minute, scratching absently at the skin near his left ear.

"I need a team," he decided. "That's the only way. Not a bunch of noobs, either. And besides that… I need to study from the best."

"What do you mean by that?" Kurogiri asked worriedly.

Tomura felt a dark smile stretch his lips. He walked back over to the TV, picked his controller out of the dust pile that used to be a couch, and sent out two friend requests.

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

"Is that a trick question?"

Shouta looked at Hizashi, baffled. So far, Dazai had been acing their quiz on investigational methods. He'd flawlessly explained standard procedure for using criminal informants, recited the decision in a landmark undercover hero case word-for-word, and demonstrated his deductive abilities by correctly guessing the quirks of three different criminals from their mugshots alone. Yet suddenly he looked baffled and suspicious.

"No, not a trick," Hizashi said now, frowning a little. "Uh, here it is again—'You've just captured a suspected accomplice in a homicide, but you don't have enough evidence to convict anyone yet. What do you do?’"

Dazai frowned harder. "Let him go, I guess?" he tried. "I'm not sure what you're looking for here." He shifted in his seat on Shouta's living room couch.

"You don't have enough evidence to convict anyone yet," Shouta emphasized pointedly. "And you can legally hold someone for up to eight hours without a full warrant."

"I know that," Dazai said immediately. "But torture is wrong."

Shouta heard Hizashi choke, and he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow himself. "You choose to let your suspect go… because torture is wrong. Why the hell did you jump straight to torture when you haven't tried, say, asking questions yet? Interviewing them? Taking a statement, maybe?"

Dazai frowned. "That's the kind of thing police do. You said I captured them, not that the police did."

Shouta felt a dull pain behind one eye. "As heroes, we work with the police," he said slowly. "If you just captured the suspect, I assume they are now in police custody, understand?"

Dazai frowned harder. "So do I, ah, take them straight to the nearest police station and just hand them over? Or tie them up and phone in the location on a tip line?"

"You, sir," Hizashi spoke up again, still sounding a bit incredulous, "are clearly thinking like a vigilante. Hero agencies have established relationships with the precincts in their operating area. In fact, by the time you've captured someone, one of the support staff at the agency has probably already given the police your location. If they're not immediately on-site, they will be soon."

Shouta was glad Hizashi had chimed in, because he could feel an eyelid twitching with the way Dazai was so baffled by the concept of working with the police. Worse, he kept hearing Dazai's voice echo in his head: 'torture is wrong, torture is wrong….' Somehow, Dazai had sounded like a child reciting something he'd overheard from an adult: singsong, proud of himself, but not really understanding it.

That's ridiculous, Shouta thought. Anyone with a brain could understand that, and there was no doubt that Dazai had a brain.

It was pretty weird that he couldn't think of another way to get information out of a suspect, though.

Despite Dazai’s sputtering, Aizawa did eventually invite Hawks over for dinner.

“He’s a good influence,” he’d told Dazai firmly, using the same argument that he’d used to justify a visit to Tsukauchi. “And it’s important for heroes to have connections throughout the industry. And he’s the same age as you.”

When his cousin still looked unconvinced, Shouta pulled out his trump card. “Honestly,” he said, rubbing his forehead a bit for effect, “I’m worried about him. You don’t reach his position without an insane amount of work, and I can’t imagine he takes a night off to just eat dinner and relax very often. We’re doing him a favor with this.”

Dazai had given him an unimpressed look, but conceded the point.

Now the winged hero was at Shouta’s dinner table, picking at teriyaki chicken with his chopsticks and wearing a press conference smile. It didn’t manage to conceal the unease coiled in his short frame.

“So, Oba,” Hawks said halfway through dinner after half an hour of small talk. “How exactly are you and Aizawa-san related?”

Shouta tensed up. “Oh, we’re not,” he said immediately. “He’s just renting out a room—where’d you get that idea?”

“Ah, I’m sorry for the mistake!” Hawks said, waving his arms dramatically. “I suppose I assumed, since the two of you do look rather alike. Something about the hair, maybe.”

Dazai scowled at that. Shouta couldn’t imagine why—it wasn’t like Shouta hadn’t combed his hair before dinner. (He tried to catch his reflection in the fridge briefly, to double-check this.)

“If we have anything in common,” Dazai objected, “it’s surely our shared love for children’s educational programming.”

“Your—what?” Hawks asked, taken aback.

“You know, the cartoons! The kind that will go over basic hiragana and repeat it over and over again until a child learns how to spell ‘bed’ or ‘hot’? My favorite is the one with the agency of superpowered puppies, but Aizawa prefers the magical ponies—”

“That is absolutely not true,” Shouta interjected.

Hawks collected himself and started laughing. “Aww, you mean you don’t like the ponies after all? I bet you’re a fan deep down, you just don’t want to admit it.”

“He’s a softie at heart,” Dazai confided in a mock whisper. “We’ve got at least ten stray cats around that he feeds every time he leaves the apartment.”

Shouta frowned severely. That was a blatant lie—he’d only counted seven or eight, and anyway how would Dazai know?

After that, Dazai and Hawks kept up a steady stream of banter as they ate, only most of it at Shouta’s expense. They finished up the meal in relatively good spirits, so he supposed it counted as a success. At least he’d gotten the two eighteen-year-olds to act their age.

When they'd all eaten their fill, Shouta stood up and waved the others out of the kitchen. "I'll clean this up, don't worry about it," he insisted when Hawks made to clear his plate. "You two go get to know each other a bit more. Chat about your favorite TV shows or something."

He really did mean to tidy up the dinner mess and let the boys chat. But he'd also expected them to hang out in the living room, where he could keep an ear on their conversation.

Instead, Dazai led Hawks straight through the living room and into his bedroom. Hawks offered no audible protest.

Shouta froze, one hand still reaching out to grab a dish across the table.

Had those two… already gotten to know each other that well?

Doubtful that his cousin or Hawks would do anything truly inappropriate, he still felt the need to go supervise. At least from a distance. So Shouta carefully set down the stack of dishes he was carrying and quietly walked into the living room, until he could make out the muffled voices from beyond Dazai's closed door.

At first he couldn't pick out any words. Then Hawks exclaimed, clearly enough to carry, "What the hell is that on your wall?"

Shouta winced and scooted a little closer to the bedroom. He knew exactly what Hawks was talking about.

"How quickly you forget," mourned Dazai. Shouta could practically see him clutching at some pretended wound in his chest. "That is my memento of our time together! Proof that fate declared our paths would cross! A talisman of our connection—"

"It's my signature, written on a used bandage," Hawks stated flatly. "Why is it tacked to your wall like a banner?"

"Because I love it," Dazai declared.

Silence prevailed for a few moments. Shouta clasped a hand over his mouth to hold in his laughter.

It wasn't eavesdropping to listen a little longer, Shouta reasoned. Just enjoying the show his dinner guests were so thoughtfully providing.

"Interesting," Hawks said eventually, sounding more suspicious than uncomfortable. "I could always sign an actual piece of paper, you know, Dazai."

Shouta blinked, not sure he heard that right.

"Keep that quiet," Dazai told Hawks sharply. "As far as Aizawa knows, you still think my name's Oba."

A shiver of unease ran through Shouta's spine. Some was because it felt odd to hear Dazai refer to him by last name. Most was because the joking atmosphere had disappeared.

Dazai and Hawks, it appeared, were keeping secrets.

“I could call you Shuji if you like,” Hawks suggested at a slightly lower volume. “You know, since you’ve apparently invited me into your bedroom.”

“Just try it, Keigo.”

“What was that?” Hawks asked, sounding slightly stunned.

“You’re hardly the only one who can do a bit of research. I suppose tracking down my name wasn’t too hard for you, all things considered—knowing I’m connected to Eraserhead must have made it simple.” Dazai was clearly put out, and so was Shouta. All the hard work put into Dazai’s cover story was overcome so easily? “Back in Yokohama, there was only one man who could’ve made that connection,” Dazai continued, “but no one there had your little advantage.”

“Hmm.”

There was a while where no one said anything. Shouta felt pretty confident that there weren't any inappropriate shenanigans going on by now, but he was too busy processing the idea that Hawks apparently knew Dazai's vigilante persona. He stayed where he was.

"So," Hawks said casually, "does Eraserhead know that you killed his aunt and uncle?"

What?

Dazai just laughed. "You have been doing your research! Unfortunately you're just a bit off-target. Would you believe me if I said I didn't do it?"

"I really doubt you were completely uninvolved," Hawks said dryly.

"That's true, the Tsushimas were nowhere near as important as they liked to think they were," Dazai sighed dramatically. Like he wasn't discussing the death of his own parents. "I can't say I particularly cared that they were gone, to be honest, but no, I didn't kill them. Cross my heart and swear to die," Dazai promised.

"There was nothing accidental about them getting trapped in that house fire."

"I didn't say it was accidental, I said that I didn't do it, Hawky, keep up."

"Who else would want those particular people dead?" Hawks asked incredulously.

Shouta was wondering much the same thing himself. Despite Dazai's nonchalant attitude to this questioning, Shouta still thought his original theory might be right—that the Tsushimas had been killed in order to get to their son. But who?

"I did say," Dazai said,"that there's only one person in Yokohama who knows I'm connected to that family. Take a wild guess."

"... Ah,” Hawks said after a few moments of thought. “Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. Sorry about that."

Shouta wondered desperately what Hawks had just realized. But when their conversation turned to different video game titles and Dazai's recommendations for a console, he retreated back to the kitchen, curiosity almost unbearable and still unsatisfied.

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

Shouta might be in over his head.

He’d been investigating the criminal landscape in Yokohama ever since he overheard Hawks and Dazai chatting after dinner a few days ago. It should be a piece of cake—as an underground hero, he’s used to gathering information about gangs, dealers, factions, smugglers, and even yakuza. He was familiar with the whole spectrum of criminal organizations, or at least he’d thought he was.

Yokohama didn’t have gangs. Not the kind of gangs Shouta was used to, anyway. Reports of ‘gang activity’ to police databases were limited to gaggles of teenagers graffitiing vulgarities along the sides of buildings. There were a few known groups that liked to haunt areas of the slums, looming over passersby but never really doing any harm.

Yokohama didn’t have factions, or territory disputes, or any sort of power struggle that would indicate multiple parties vying for resources or reputation.

And all of Shouta’s research indicated that this was for one terrifyingly simple reason: Yokohama, the port city that took up a decent chunk of the eastern coast, was under the undisputed control of one single organization.

Shouta was used to all sorts of criminal organizations, but the Port Mafia was on another scale entirely.

How does a vigilante even operate in a city like that? Shouta wondered.

As he researched further, he found that the criminal activity in the city tended to go in one of two directions: unusually subtle, or excessively violent. There were the usual gambling rings, brothels, fight clubs and such, but none of them attracted police attention—or rather, the reports that made it into the system were carefully dismissed in a way that spoke of systematic corruption.

And then there were the murders. What Yokohama lacked in inter-gang violence it made up in executions, or so Shouta concluded from the police reports of washed-up bodies. Two shots to the torso and a crushed skull: a pattern that would be unusually gruesome anywhere else, but showed up with alarming regularity among those associated with Yokohama's lowlifes.

This was the city Dazai had come from.

Shouta pushed away from his computer after another lunch period spent researching in the staff room. He hadn't eaten yet today—the thought of his cousin ending up like one of those bodies, mutilated and floating down the river for defying the all-powerful Port Mafia, had ruined his appetite.

The room was nearly full with his colleagues, still eating or chatting away, and Shouta wondered how many of them were familiar with the looming menace of Yokohama.

"Say," he spoke up, figuring it couldn't hurt to ask. "Has anyone here ever been to Yokohama?"

Chatter started to die down, and he took note of the various reactions. Most were curious but not wary; Present Mic and Midnight gave knowing looks; Snipe looked uncomfortable, likely at the reminder of his lost bet with Dazai. But there, at the table near the door—Shouta spotted a flinch.

Bingo.

He pinned the suddenly-uncomfortable Cementoss with an expectant gaze.

"Oh, haha, Yokohama?" Cementoss asked awkwardly. "Isn't that the Port—the, uh, city with a really big port?"

"Yes," Shouta agreed, and narrowed his eyes. "Also the hometown of the Port Mafia. You've been there?"

"Not really," Cementoss protested. "I mean, I've passed through, but that's not really the same thing…"

"And what did you do when you were 'passing through'?" Midnight asked with amusem*nt. "Clearly it made a bit of an impression." She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

"Ew," Cementoss said immediately. "Ok, fine, but I'm not supposed to talk about it, ok? I mean, it's not like I signed an NDA, but… it feels weird. That place is weird."

The entire room was paying attention now, attracted to this tidbit of information like sharks sensing blood in the water. This smelled like gossip, and pro-heros were notorious gossipers.

“So what’d you do there?” Power Loader asked.

“Well, I was called in to help clean up the wreckage of some buildings, open up a couple blocked roads, the usual, you know. Weirdest building collapse I’ve seen in my life, because there were no signs of any heat that would’ve gone along with an explosion—but anyway.” Cementoss shook his head, like he was embarrassed to be caught rambling.

“The people who called me in were super nervous the whole time, like they knew they needed the help with clean-up but they weren’t terribly happy about having me there. Looking over their shoulders and such. And eventually I noticed—took me a while, since the area was absolutely wrecked—there were a couple guys in suits just watching me work. Not all of us, but me specifically. And the people I was working with just told me to ignore it.”

“Who were you working with?” Shouta asked.

“Pro heroes,” Cementoss said frankly. “A local agency. And the local firefighters, and the local police department. No one looked thrilled that the guys in suits were there , but none of them did a thing about it either.”

“So what, the entire city is in cahoots with this ‘Mafia’?” Midnight asked. She sounded intrigued; Shouta supposed there was something salacious about the idea of suited criminals looming over heroes in broad daylight.

“Not working with them,” Present Mic disagreed. “Just too afraid to stand up to them, maybe.”

“I don’t know,” Cementoss said, shaking his head. “I got the impression that they were more afraid because I was there than anything else. Like if they’d stuck to Yokohama natives for the clean-up then they’d have been fine.”

“I can’t imagine living somewhere that hates outsiders that much,” Midnight said thoughtfully. “I wonder why.”

“Maybe it wasn’t because he was an outsider,” Shouta suggested. “Was anyone else using their quirk at the collapse site? Or were you the only one with something useful?”

“I don’t think there was anyone—wait.” Cementoss frowned. “Actually, someone did show up eventually. A hero student, I’d guess, pretty young-looking. Redhead. Some sort of telekinesis, I think? They sent him to handle the bigger pieces of metal when I couldn’t get it all with my cement.”

Shouta frowned. That was pretty impressive; he’d seen Cementoss at work, and though he couldn’t manipulate metal structures directly, he usually had no trouble moving them by shaping concrete underneath. The fact that this supposed hero student could move things too heavy for Cementoss… was very interesting. Shouta had a hard time believing he wouldn’t have heard about a student with that kind of strength, no matter where he lived. “And the mafia guys were fine with the kid?” He asked.

“I don’t know, man, it was three years ago,” Cementoss said, and threw his hands up. “Maybe. I guess. I don’t remember them hassling him, at least.”

“Why are you asking about Yokohama, anyway, Eraserhead?” Power Loader asked.

Shouta shrugged. “I’m renting a room out to a hero hopeful right now, says he’s got a job lined up at a Yokohama agency if he can get his license. I’m curious what he’s getting himself into.”

What he didn’t say—but everyone knew—was that hero agencies didn’t recruit anyone without a license except for vigilantes. No one called him on it, though. (They all knew that the only good vigilante rehabilitation programs were the quiet ones. Anything that got the Hero Commission’s attention was doomed to fail.)

“Well, good luck with that.” Cementoss stood up. “Personally, I’m worried enough about our students when they aren’t headed to work somewhere run by an insanely powerful crime syndicate. Have fun getting him ready for that.”

The other teachers voiced their general agreement and dispersed for the start of afternoon classes.

Shouta thought about Cementoss’s ominous words as he walked back to his classroom. The problem, he reflected, wasn’t getting Dazai ready for Yokohama. The problem was that Dazai had already been exposed to Yokohama and all its insanity, and Shouta still couldn’t picture exactly what that meant.

*

When he got home, Dazai was hard at work in Shouta's office, the printer whirring away busily.

"What are you up to?" Shouta asked warily. He reached out to grab one of the recently printed papers from the stack that was building up, to get a closer look.

Dazai slapped his hand away immediately. "Absolutely not, those need to stay in that order exactly. You'll mess it up."

"What am I messing up?"

"My project from Nedzu," Dazai said with a satisfied smile. "He told me to get Snipe to stop requesting more guns from the school's supply funds."

Shouta blinked. "And… how do these stacks of paper fit into that?"

"It's the requisition form, of course! Or, to be more precise…" The printer lurched to a stop, and Dazai grabbed the final paper from the top of the stack. "This one is the requisition form."

Shouta looked at the next paper in the pile, and then lifted that one by the corner to peek at the third. "Looks like they're all the same form, kid. I don't see a difference."

"If I made it obvious, it would be too easy. Look further down, though!" Dazai shifted his weight from one foot to the other in anticipation.

Obligingly, Shouta split the stack in half to check a paper in the middle. This one had the same basic visual structure as the requisition form on top, but the words had changed—skimming through, Shouta saw the beginnings of a contract involving disarmament and an oath of nonviolence.

"How many of those does Snipe go through?" Shouta asked weakly.

"Nedzu says he gets about fifty in his inbox every week," Dazai responded happily. "There's no way Snipe actually reads the form every time. And I made the changes between each one subtle enough that he won’t see anything right away."

"Was this your idea?"

"Nedzu and I brainstormed for a while." Dazai carefully reassembled the stack, tapping the edges to even it out. "We have a bet on how far he'll get before he notices."

"A bet," Shouta repeated numbly.

Dazai nodded. "If he signs the very last one, he agrees to a shirtless photoshoot with the Mustafu Animal Shelter!"

Maybe Shouta didn't need to worry about Dazai being exposed to Yokohama's insanity after all. It seemed like Dazai and Nedzu were plenty insane all by themselves, without a single mafia member in sight.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

Shigaraki Tomura was prepared.

He’d trained until his muscles were sore. He’d studied strategy and game theory until his eyes refused to read anymore out of protest. He’d gone recruiting on villain forums for people who shared his interests and were sympathetic to his cause.

And he’d finally gotten a friend request accepted.

“Don’t you think you’re taking this a bit too seriously?” A scratchy voice came through over his newly-purchased headset.

Tomura realized he’d been muttering and cut himself off self-consciously. “No,” he snapped, “this is an important step in my education. This is necessary for the cause. If we can’t crush our enemies in this game, how can we expect to crush them in real life?”

He felt he was being generous in using ‘we’ there; what he really meant was that he, Tomura, would be doing the crushing. His new teammates were simply the newest bludgeoning tools he’d acquired, and he wouldn’t think twice about switching them out if necessary.

‘Dabi’, the scratchy voice, huffed in disagreement but didn’t argue.

“I think it’s sweet!” Player Three chimed in. Tomura chose this one for her youth, since all the gaming articles talked about how Kids These Days were raised on video games and violence (a winning combination in his opinion). “Tomu-chan keeps chasing these guys because he wants to see them bleed. I’m sure they’ll look really pretty when we’re done with them!”

Definitely a check mark on the violence there, but Tomura could do without the saccharine attitude, he thought privately. ‘Toga’ had performed well in their team games so far, though.

The loading screen finally resolved into a game lobby, and Tomura felt his lips stretch into what Toga would probably call a ‘bloodthirsty grin’. “Now, remember,” he told them, “we have good equipment, and we have the advantage of numbers here. This should be an easy victory—”

Then he stopped.

“Uh, about those superior numbers,” Dabi said.

“Do you think his mommy ever taught him how to count?” Toga stage-whispers.

It took him a moment to identify the feeling vibrating his bones as panic.

“Why,” he said slowly, “are there three of them?”

*

“I’m so glad you could join us, Hawks!” Dazai chirped into his headset.

“Uh, thanks,” Hawks replied awkwardly. He was used to being the glib one, keeping up a steady stream of charming nonsense to please the crowds and the cameras—but there was only room for one of those in a conversation, and Hawks had no delusions about who would win if he challenged Dazai in that particular arena. Where Hawks had training, Dazai had complete and utter self-confidence.

“I dunno why you bothered inviting him, it’s not like we need a third player,” another voice grumbled over the headset, making Hawks jump a little in his seat.

“The other player on the line is my dear friend Slug,” Dazai continued in the same cheery tone. “He could crush you like a bug without even breaking a sweat, so be polite!”

“Um.” Hawks would be insulted at the estimation of his abilities—he wasn’t a Top Ten Hero for nothing—but he couldn’t help but think Dazai was being perfectly truthful. “Nice to meet you, Slug.”

“Ugh,” Slug grumbled over the headset. “If you can call that idiot Dazai, you can certainly call me Chuuya.” He paused. “Nice to meet you, I guess.”

The game loaded, and Dazai cooed. “Awww, our little hand-themed fan found himself some friends!”

“Serious?” Slug Chuuya asked, though he could see the other three-player team in the lobby as well as the rest of them could. “Hah. Not like it'll do him any good.”

“It might make him feel better about his inevitable defeat,” Dazai offered.

“Dead is dead, I don't care how much you channel the power of friendship.”

“I mean, maybe the other two are really good?” Hawks suggested doubtfully. He'd been told about the user who'd been trying to get a grudge match against Dazai and his friend; apparently Handy_Man420 had been thoroughly defeated in the past. Hawks didn't know how talented Dazai was—sure, he could shoot well in real life, but the skills didn't exactly transfer—but this guy had already proven to be inferior.

Chuuya and Dazai broke into synchronized scoffs at his suggestion.

“Make no mistake, Hawky,” Dazai said, “this team was doomed to lose from the moment they requested a match against us. We're just making it official.”

“Why'd you bother accepting, then?” Was this some sort of ego trip, Hawks wondered? But no—boundless confidence, that was how Dazai carried himself. He wouldn't go out to crush someone just to prove he could, right?

“We accepted because this idiot—hand dude, not Dazai this time—has been sending us a dozen friend requests a day for the last week,” Chuuya said. “Clearly he has a problem, and you know what our policy is there.”

“Recommend mental health resources?” Hawks asked without much hope.

“Nope, we mess with them!” Dazai said. If Hawks could see his face, he bet it would have that creepy smile on it.

Hawks took a moment to reflect on his Heroic Principles, considered everything he knew about Dazai, and sighed internally. He couldn't get on Dazai’s back for this without being a hypocrite, because if anyone should be gently directed towards a therapist or mental health facility, it was probably Dazai himself. And here Hawks was playing videogames with him instead.

“Fine, whatever,” he muttered. “What's one more, really.”

“I'm so glad you agree. Chibi, be a good dog and connect our voice chat to the other team, won't you?”

*

The soft sound of a microphone connecting broke through the rapid-fire back-and-forth of Tomura’s team like a baseball through a window.

“Did they just—” Tomura started, but ended up gaping soundlessly instead of finishing.

“I think they did,” Toga said. “Hiiiiii, guys! Can you hear us?”

A voice nearly as cheerful as Toga’s came through the headset. Onscreen, the username Free_Mackerel flashed to indicate the speaker.

“You're coming through loud and clear, Team B! The marvels of modern technology never cease to amaze. And may I ask who I'm speaking with?”

“Team B?!” Tomura screeched, finding his voice again.

“I'm Toga, nice to meet you!” the girl continued, unconcerned with the extreme insult they'd just been dealt. “The super-intense one is Tomu-chan, and our third teammate is Dabi-kun!”

“Nice to meet you, Toga-chan!” the other player exclaimed. “You can call me Mackerel, and I'm working with Slug and Tweety-bird.”

“Hey,” a second voice protested. Tomura forced himself to check the username—Fierce-Wings-103. Hah, clearly this person jumped on the Hawks bandwagon too late to get a good username.

“Yeah, yeah, let's get on with it,” the other party’s third player groused. “This isn't a freakin’ meet-and-greet. We gonna kill each other or what?”

Tomura felt an instant kinship with this... Slug.

“Yes, let's,” he agreed. “Time to prove who the real Team B is.”

They started the game.

*

“Hey, you guys aren't half bad,” Mackerel said.

“We're losing,” Dabi pointed out.

“Yeah… Maybe more like three-quarters bad.”

Tomura growled.

*

“So are any of you guys injured right now?” the girl Toga asked hopefully.

“I'd say less injured and more scarred for life,” Dazai responded promptly.

“Hmmm…” She thought for a bit. “That could be ok! It's prettier if there's blood, though.”

“Definitely a different visual effect,” Dazai agreed.

Hawks wondered what the story was behind this young girl, that she and Dazai got along so well. Maybe it said just as much about Dazai, come to think of it.

*

“I'm going to find you,” Tomura growled, “and I'm going to rip off your fingers one by one if any of you headshots me one more time.”

“Oh, gross,” said Slug, “so that's for sure a hand fetish then? Got some weird violence kink too, or what?”

Tomura disintegrated his controller. He cursed and ran up to the shelf beneath the TV to grab another one, but it didn't matter—onscreen, his character died for the fifteenth time in a row from a shot to the head.

*

“You know,” Dabi observed, at a point where there wasn't much shooting going on, “That Tweety guy really isn't doing much. I'm not sure I've seen him this whole round, actually.”

“I'll Tweety you,” Hawks said, and sniped him from the tower he'd been perched in for the last ten minutes.

*

“Come on, you can do it, Tomu-chan! Team B is counting on you!” Toga encouraged. Both she and Dabi were already out of lives for this round.

“We are not Team B!” Tomura howled.

“That’s the spirit,” Dabi called through the mic. “Careful, I see someone on Team A just picked up a grenade.”

*

At the end of the game—Tomura had set it for twenty rounds, the maximum possible for team-versus-team—they'd lost by a significant margin. But it was still a smaller margin, he had to admit, than when he'd fought the Slug-and-Mackerel duo by himself.

Maybe there was something to this teamwork thing after all.

“Same time next week,” he ordered when the scores went up at the end, before the crushing sensation of defeat could get to him.

“Oh, I don’t know, I’ll have to check my incredibly busy schedule—”

“Shut up, Mackerel,” the Slug ordered. “Birdie and I have actual jobs, we can't promise to show up. And who do you think you are, making demands like that? Don't you know people have lives, you weirdo?”

“Awww, that's my slug alright,” Mackerel cooed. “You can kill a man with your pinky finger, but you're still worried about playing truant. Adorable.”

Tomura felt vaguely insulted on the Slug’s behalf.

“Keep that up and the next person killed by my pinky finger will be you,” Slug snapped. “No promises on another game, I’ve got to get out of here and I’ve got better things to do with my time than schedule playdates with noobs.”

There was a beep as he disconnected.

“Alright, bye Team B!” Mackerel called out, unbothered by his partner’s threats. “Nice to meet you, Dabi-kun, Tomu-chan, Toga-chan!”

He and Tweety-Bird disconnected as well soon after.

Tomura and his teammates sat in silence for a few moments.

“I wonder if we should’ve used fake names too,” Toga said after a while.

“Eh,” Dabi said dismissively, “what’re they gonna do, look us up? Don’t worry about it, kid.”

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

Shouta got off the train at 9:35 am on a Wednesday morning, miles away from his classroom at UA. He’d requested a day off from teaching in order to deal with a case, and Nedzu had obliged with a knowing tsk.

Dazai didn’t know he was here. But Shouta didn’t trust Dazai to give him straight answers, so his only choice was to go right to the source. Yokohama, after all, was only a couple hours away by train.

The main police station was a squat, brownish building. A few miles east, five obsidian skyscrapers loomed high in the sky, and Shouta imagined that if he’d gotten here earlier they’d have cast the entire police station into shadow.

When he approached the front desk, he knew better than to ask about the Port Mafia. Instead he took a different approach.

“I need access to your records,” Shouta told the girl at the front desk—and she was just a girl, barely any older than Dazai himself. “Anything to do with reported vigilante activity in the last four years.” He didn’t flash his hero license, since he remembered Cementoss’s story about how he’d been treated as an out-of-town hero. Fortunately, he also had a police badge issued to him for undercover work.

She took the badge and scrutinized it, clearly noting the Mustafu area signifier, then handed it back. “I’ll see what the boys in the back can find,” she said suspiciously, and then directed him to a chair by the wall to wait.

Shouta pulled out his phone and pretended to be absorbed in a mindless game while he waited. In reality, most of his attention was focused on the police officers he saw beyond the front desk: he watched as they chatted with each other, typed away at computers, or made calls from their desks.

It looked like any other police station he’d visited throughout his career. But when someone finally came out from their records room, they had an unfriendly expression and a single, slim file to show for the half-hour wait.

“Here’s what we came up with,” the officer said. “Not a lot of vigilante activity around these parts. This file can't leave the office, no pictures, no quirks.” Then he dropped the file on Shouta’s lap and walked away.

Shouta rolled his eyes. He was familiar with the standard file policy, of course, but they seemed to prioritize getting him dealt with quickly rather than explaining and enforcing it. The Mustafu station would have shut him in a room with an officer while he read.

He thumbed through the file there in the lobby, not hoping for much that could be useful.

Incident Report No. 856390571

Reported 4 April 21XX By Tamura Azumi

Date of Incident: 3 April 21XX

Category: Unauthorized Quirk Use (dropped), Child Endangerment (dropped), Petty Theft (upheld)

Witness Statement:

I was sitting in the park next to 3rd Station, having a picnic with my boyfriend, when someone stole my purse. I was too shocked to do anything but yell and watch him run away.

He ran down the sidewalk, I guess so he could disappear into an alleyway, and on the same sidewalk there were another couple people walking that way. Looked like an older dude in traditional clothes, and a kid with him.

The older guy just stepped aside, but the kid put himself in the middle of the path and faced the thief.

I didn't hear what he said—the kid, I mean. But all of a sudden the thief looked really scared, dropped the purse. He shouted something like “How did you know that?”

I ran up at that point, because if he'd dropped my purse I wasn't going to let him just grab it off the ground again. And I saw the kid reach out and grab another wallet out of the thief’s waistband, and one from a jacket pocket, before he could even try to stop him. I don't know how he even knew they were there, because I sure didn't.

Then he said something like “I know where you live, don't try this again, Mr. Haneda.” He knew the guy’s name, somehow.

And I'm just standing there, holding my purse with a death-grip, hoping this kid doesn't get himself attacked because he thought it was ok to use a—a mind reading quirk, or something, on this criminal. And I looked over and I saw that the older guy, who's got to be the kid's dad, was just standing there with his arms folded, looking all proud.

And then they just walked away, no calling the police or anything, and the older guy patted the kid on the back like he'd done a good job? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got my purse back, but there's something not right about encouraging a kid to act like that. He could've gotten hurt, and it's illegal too, right?

I just hope someone tells them to cut it out. I've never heard of any vigilantes in Yokohama, and I don't want to start now.

Investigating Officer's notes: Ms. Tamura’s purse was stolen by one Haneda Yakumo, according to security camera footage and another brief report received shortly after Ms. Tamura’s.

The father she observed was f*ckuzawa Yukichi, head of the Armed Detective Agency, and the “kid” was 22-year-old Ranpo Edogawa of the same agency. No charges will be brought against either individual at this time.

Shouta rubbed his chin. A couple of off-duty heroes getting involved in a purse snatching wasn't exactly helpful to his investigation, but it was an interesting look at the kind of crime the people of Yokohama were used to.

He set the folder down and glanced back into the lobby, then did a double-take.

A teenage boy was standing in front of him, arms crossed, glaring fiercely at him. He had shoulder length black-and-white hair, very little eyebrow, and the kind of black coat Shouta would expect to see in a crime noir movie from pre-quirk times.

“Can I help you?” Shouta asked politely. He wouldn't be able to stand up quickly with the boy in the way, and he readied himself to use his capture weapon on the chance that it was deliberate.

“Yes,” the boy spat out. “You need to leave. Now.”

Shouta blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

He'd half-expected to be driven out of the city if he made too much noise during his visit. But he'd imagined faceless men in sunglasses and suits, not a pasty-looking sixteen-year-old.

“Get out of Yokohama,” the boy reiterated, heedless of Shouta’s surprise. “Whatever you think you're investigating, I don't care. You need to get out if you value your life.”

Shouta realized that, at some point, the police station had gotten quiet. He glanced behind the boy and saw that the officers were all deliberately looking at their computer screens or papers, seemingly deaf to the threats being issued only half a dozen meters away. The front desk was empty, receptionist gone.

“Are you sure you want to be talking like that in a police station, kid?” he asked anyway. “Because that sounded like a threat.”

“Not a threat, just a promise,” the boy said darkly.

Shouta sized him up. “Don't make promises you can't keep, then.”

For the first time the boy smiled. “It's not my promise, hero. I'm just delivering the message.”

Shouta wanted to laugh, but something stopped him: a black sliver of void, razor-sharp, hovering just below his chin. Pointed at his neck.

His instinct was to flinch away, but he held himself still through sheer willpower. The blade was coming from behind the boy, emerging from his back in a way that made it look like part of the black coat he wore. It crackled menacingly with a dark energy that could only be the product of a quirk.

As Shouta sat, frozen, the boy stepped forward until their knees were nearly touching and snatched the file folder out of his hands.

“I'll take that, thanks,” the boy said.

He headed for the door, the void-like tendril still stretched out to Shouta’s neck.

“Hang on,” someone called. The young receptionist had returned, and her eyes fixed on the folder in the boy's hands. “You're not supposed to take those off the premises—”

Shouta saw it happen in slow motion: another tendril of black energy emerged from the boy's back, darting toward the woman, tip sharpened into a knife-blade.

There was no choice. He activated his quirk.

His hair floated up, his eyes burned red, and the boy's void-like tendrils vanished.

He felt the crackling energy by his neck disappear as well, and he jumped to his feet to position himself between the boy and the receptionist.

The boy didn't move to attack, though. Instead, the moment his quirk was erased his mouth gaped open like he'd been hit in the gut. He started looking around, wild-eyed, and then fixed his gaze on Shouta.

“Dazai-san? Are you—do you know Dazai-san?”

What the hell, Shouta thought. He knew this was his cousin's hometown, but he hasn't expected anyone to connect that to him, and certainly not that quickly.

“I don't know who that is,” he denied.

“But your—I mean—no, it can't be. No one else—”

His stammering trailed off, but he still looked like he'd seen a ghost.

“I have to go,” the boy said abruptly. “Just—don't make trouble. We warned you, alright?”

He bolted out the door.

In the silence that followed, Shouta brushed himself off and turned to check on the receptionist behind him.

She was already being swept into a hug from the police chief, an older woman who glared at Shouta from over the girl's head.

He held his hands up. “I'll see myself out.”

And he would—but he wouldn't leave Yokohama quite yet.

As long as he was here, he might as well check out that detective agency.

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

Before Shouta had come to Yokohama, he’d done a bit of research. Not on the Port Mafia or vigilantes, since he’d already exhausted the available online information for those topics; Yokohama hero agencies, however, were a matter of public record. And it turned out there was only one hero agency in Yokohama that claimed to specialize in detective work.

So after leaving the police station, he walked through a shopping center, ducked through several back entrances and side streets to lose any tail that might be following him, and then he took a train going the wrong way through the city.

Eventually he found himself standing at the bottom of a several-story building, looking up at the windows near the top.

“Admiring the architecture?” someone asked.

Still on edge after his encounter with the boy at the police station, Shouta whirled around.

A woman leaned against the lamppost, arms folded and wearing a severe expression. He assessed her quickly—short hair, skirt and heels, not overly muscled but he got the impression she would be formidable in a fight anyway. Her hair was pulled back on one side with a golden butterfly hair clip, an oddly childish detail compared to the attitude she was projecting. She tapped her foot impatiently and narrowed her eyebrows a bit more as she waited for him to respond.

“I’m going up,” Shouta said defensively, holding his hands in front of him. He hadn’t realized how long he’d been staring at the building, but it probably wasn’t a good idea to loiter on the street when he’d already been warned off by the local underworld.

“That’s great,” the woman said, striding forward. “So am I.” She brushed past him, headed for the doors.

Shouta frowned, but followed her. At least it didn’t seem she was another member of the Mafia, here to follow through on the or-else he’d been promised; but if she was indeed a member of the Armed Detective Agency, her attitude didn’t bode well for his chances at getting answers.

They passed through the bottom-floor cafe and into the stairwell in silence.

“So what business do you have up here?” the woman asked eventually. “Most people who come to the Agency are scared and helpless, and you don't really look the type.”

Shouta grimaced. Maybe she hadn't pegged him as a hero, but it sounded like he wasn't as subtle as he'd like to be regardless. Fortunately, he did have a story prepared.

“Not scared or helpless, but I'm definitely too busy to take care of this myself,” he said offhandedly. “Not that it's urgent, but I've been putting this off for years now.”

“Putting what off?” She asked, stopping at the top of the stairwell and standing in front of the door, trapping him in.

He raised his eyebrows. “Investigating the deaths of my aunt and uncle,” he said.

She held his gaze for a few moments, then sighed and opened the door, gesturing for him to enter.

*

More than a hundred miles away, a boy dried his hands at the bathroom sink and began winding a new set of bandages up his arms. He moved deliberately, overlapping edges with careful precision and securing with medical tape when necessary. Normally he couldn’t afford to take his time—but Dazai Osamu happened to know that his cousin was on some mission outside Musutafu for the day. For once, he could relax in guaranteed solitude.

A buzz sounded through the wall from his bedroom, and he frowned. That was a burner phone, the only kind he bothered to keep on vibrate. And Dazai Osamu only kept one burner phone nowadays.

He cleaned up in the bathroom and went to investigate.

*

“Absolutely not.”

Shouta stared at the young man in disbelief. Judging by the childish clothes, the numerous candy wrappers scattered about, and the intelligence he’d seen in a brief flash of green eyes, Shouta assumed this was the licensed hero Edogawa Ranpo from the report he’d read. He’d hoped for quick answers and useful information. Instead he was being stonewalled.

“I have a perfectly legitimate request,” he said again, annoyed at the need to repeat himself. “Are you a detective agency or not? Can you really get away with ignoring every request that comes to your doorstep?”

Edogawa snorted. “We don’t ignore every request, obviously. Just yours, Eraserhead. I’m not giving you another excuse to stick around and poke your nose into other people’s business.”

Dammit. Shouta didn’t know why he bothered being surprised that they knew his hero name, at this point. It might as well happen, with how odd the whole city had been already.

“Eraserhead,” the woman—Yosano—repeated scornfully. “Who the hell picked that name out? Do you turn pink and clean up pencil dust?”

“No, he cancels quirks,” Edogawa said before Shouta could come up with a fitting retort. “And he’s running around this city with no discretion whatsoever, the idiot. Don’t indulge him.”

Something about that caught Yosano’s interest, however. “Cancelling quirks, huh? You wouldn’t happen to have any relatives, would you?”

Shouta groaned. Just his luck that every damn person he’d run into in this city would know of his cousin. “Like I told you,” he said anyway, “I’m here about my aunt and uncle. Who were murdered.”

“No, you’re here to pry, don’t keep trying to make excuses. If your cousin wanted you in on all of Yokohama’s dirty little secrets he would have told you himself, and he clearly hasn’t.”

“Cousin,” Yosano repeated thoughtfully, seemingly immune to Edogawa’s annoyance. “I honestly didn’t see that one coming.” She hesitated, then looked at Edogawa with a meaningful eyebrow-twitch.

Shouta waited, hoping that someone would finally see fit to clue him in on something helpful.

“Absolutely not,” Edogawa said again. “You’re all trying to sabotage me, that’s what’s happening here.” He stuck his bottom lip out in a pout, then snatched a sucker out of a drawer and popped it in his mouth with relish.

“How are we trying to sabotage you?” Shouta asked, exasperated.

“Yeah,” Yosano chimed in. “If anything, we’re just allowing this idiot—” she waved at Shouta—“to make his own mistakes. He’s a grownup, he can handle it.”

The condescending tone, Shouta thought, was a bit much coming from a pair of heroes at least five years younger than him.

“You’re sabotaging me because if someone follows the idiot back home, they’ll find his roommate,” Edogawa said sternly around the sucker. “And if his roommate kicks the bucket then I lose my best shot at working with someone that can keep up with me.”

Shouta frowned. “I know how to lose a tail, I’m not an idiot.”

Edogawa rolled his eyes. “I dare you to say that again when you see who’s waiting for you outside.”

“Excuse me?”

Yosano looked worried now, heading to the window and peering down at the ground several stories below. “Ugh, you’re right. Maybe we should have the President take him back—”

“No, no, this is fine, if he’ll just hurry up and leave then this might actually be the best-case scenario.” Edogawa spun around in his chair. “But you really do need to go, Eraserhead—”

“I came here to get information,” Shouta interrupted him, raising his voice a little. He couldn’t stand the way these two insisted on talking over him, or talking like he wasn’t there. “Clearly you know more than you’re saying, but if you’re not willing to share then you can at least do what I came here to ask you to do.” He looked back and forth between them, not sure which would be more likely to cooperate. “Look into the deaths of my aunt and uncle. Since apparently I can’t be trusted to stay in Yokohama to do it myself.”

Yosano looked at Edogawa. Edogawa glanced at the window and huffed frustratedly. “Name of the family?”

Shouta smiled. “Tsushima.”

“I need you to promise me two things—first, you’re going to leave immediately after I tell you who killed them. And second, you will think twice before sharing that name with someone again, got it? Especially in this city.”

Shouta winced. “Fine. You already know who killed them?” He couldn’t even muster up the energy to be annoyed.

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

Edogawa made eye contact with Yosano and something wordless passed between them—a request for permission, perhaps, because she grimaced and waved a hand in a go-ahead-I-guess motion.

Edogawa turned back to Shouta. “Mori Ougai killed the Tsushimas. Or at least his men did.”

Mori Ougai. Shouta repeated the name mentally, committing it to memory. “And who is Mori Ougai exactly?” he asked, half-expecting the answer that came.

“The head of the Port Mafia, of course,” Edogawa smiled. “Now get out.”

*

At the bottom of the stairs again, Shouta reviewed the information he’d gained:

• Dazai’s quirk was extremely recognizable, or even notorious, to the point that when people saw Eraserhead in action they thought of Dazai.
• Members of the Port Mafia, assuming that’s who sent the teenager after him in the police station, were not exempt from this. In fact, the sickly-looking boy had seemed to respect Dazai, judging by the honorifics.
• Edogawa Ranpo was terrifyingly intelligent. And he seemed to think Dazai would be able to keep up with him.
• The Port Mafia killed Dazai’s parents.

He paused to consider that last one. Dazai had suggested during his conversation with Hawks—yes, the conversation Shouta had eavesdropped on—that only one person knew that Dazai was once Shuji Tsushima. Apparently that person was the head of the Port Mafia, who must have personally ordered the murders of Dazai’s parents.

That didn’t bode well for Dazai’s safety.

For the time being, though, he figured the best thing he could do for Dazai was to follow Edogawa’s advice and make absolutely certain he wasn’t followed back to Mustafu. With that in mind, he cracked open the door to the stairwell and peered out into the cafe beyond, scanning for anyone that might be suspicious.

“You are damn lucky that Akutagawa came straight to me,” a low voice said right by his ear.

Shouta jerked back and tried to shut the door, but some overwhelming force yanked it back open. The handle ripped out of his hands and he stumbled backwards. He immediately shot his capture scarf out, but a red glow overtook it; suddenly he was pinned against the wall by the shoulders, unable to shake himself free.

A shadowed figure stepped into the doorway, briefly silhouetted against the light of the cafe, and at first all Shouta could make out was a halo of red around the face. Then they stepped forward, and he realized it was a boy in his late teens: stocky, well-dressed, impressively muscled. He had bright red-orange hair pinned beneath a fancy hat, and he looked supremely annoyed.

“If you weren’t related to that waste of bandages, I’d say you were an idiot,” the boy said. “But I guess you’ve just got no common sense or survival instincts.” He grinned sharply. “Somehow I always end up cleaning up Dazai’s messes.”

Chapter 17

Chapter Text

Shouta hung from the wall in the stairwell, pinned by his own capture scarf, for a solid five seconds before he managed to activate his own quirk.

It wasn’t that he forgot what his own ability was; it was more that after the day he’d had so far, the sight of one more teenager trying to get the better of him was just too much.

Eventually he pushed back the urge to roll his eyes for long enough to pull at his quirk factor, and as his eyes burned the red glow around his scarf disappeared. He fell to his feet and shot the capture weapon forward again, unwinding it from around his neck as he did so—it wouldn’t do to be pinned so easily again.

Even with the strange quirk erased, the boy sidestepped Shouta’s scarf easily and then grabbed it as it flew past. He yanked it, probably intending to rip it out of Shouta's grasp.

The sheer, quirkless strength was shocking, but Shouta held on. It ended up dragging him forward with the scarf, despite his efforts to dig his feet in, and he found himself pulled out of the stairwell and into the light of the cafe.

“Would you quit it?” the boy snapped. “You're making a scene, and it’s not like I’m trying to kill you here. The suicidal bastard would probably be pissed, and I’m not dealing with that right now.”

Shouta took in the scene within the street-level cafe quickly: none of the workers remained in the main room, but there wasn’t any sign of a struggle. Perhaps they’d been bribed to stay out of the way. If they were anything like the rest of the civilians in this city, it probably wouldn’t have been hard to convince them.

“Who are you talking about?” he asked suspiciously, trying to decide if it would be wise to let go of his capture weapon entirely before he had to blink.

The boy scoffed. “The stupid mackerel living your garage, who else? Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that he’s gotten attached.” He released his grip on the capture weapon pointedly as he said this, taking a step back and crossing his arms.

Grudgingly, Shouta called his scarf back and blinked at last. When the redhead didn't take the chance to use his quirk again, Shouta relaxed a little.

“Alright, how do you know our mutual acquaintance then?” he asked. Suddenly he had a realization. “Wait, did you call him mackerel?”

“Yes,” the boy said with a scowl. “Because he's slimy like a—”

“I thought his gamer friend would be older,” Shouta interrupted. “Deep voice and whatnot. But I guess he does call you ‘chibi’, so I shouldn't be too surprised.”

The boy's face turned purple, clashing violently with the red of his hair. “It's like you're his twin,” he muttered. “What the hell.”

So this was the person behind FlyingSlug who argued with Dazai late into the night. Shouta really was surprised to realize he recognized the voice, but he had an ulterior motive in taunting the boy. If there really was any violent intent there, he'd uncover it quicker by being rude than by playing nice. And Dazai's friend or no, Shouta didn't mind the idea of a quick, clean fight after a day filled with veiled threats and passive-aggressive remarks.

“Should I be worried that he's been corrupting the youth?” Shouta asked, adopting a condescending tone. “Hey, chibi, how old are you anyway—”

“Shut up,” the kid said angrily. “My name's Chuuya, you can damn well use it.” He kicked at the ground, leaving a dent in the cafe’s tiled floor. “And don't think I don't know what you're doing,” he added darkly. “I was Dazai's partner for years, I can tell when someone's trying to get themselves punched in the face.”

Shouta raised his eyebrows, watching the boy closely for any lingering signs of aggression—but no, ‘Chuuya’ seemed the type to be aggressive by default. He didn't show any more signs that he was about to attack, though, so Shouta reluctantly wound his scarf back around his shoulders.

“Well, Chuuya,” he said, “I'd love to know what kind of person could put up with Dazai for that long. Any pointers?”

The boy laughed, a barking sound that bounced off the walls of the cafe. “You know what, Eraserhead, I'd love to have a conversation about Dazai. Let's take this somewhere a little more private, though, shall we?”

*

Private turned out to mean a rooftop halfway across the city, more than fifty stories up and barely shielded from the wind by a protruding elevator hub.

“First things first, you’ve been making an ass of yourself today,” Chuuya said, folding his arms and throwing Shouta a judgemental stare.

“How so,” Shouta asked flatly.

“Because you’ve been running all over the city trying to find information on Dazai instead of asking him whatever you want to know,” Chuuya said pointedly. “You do live with the man, so at the very least that option ought to win out for sheer convenience.”

Shouta grimaced. “Is it ever convenient to get answers from Dazai?” he asked, crossing his arms to match. “He doesn’t really seem like the type to give me a straight answer.”

“Of course not, but it’s still the decent thing to do,” the boy said. “And he probably would have warned you off looking for answers in the wrong places.”

“The wrong places, as in the entire city of Yokohama?”

“The wrong places as in anywhere the Port Mafia might catch wind of it.” He strode forward, getting in Shouta’s face in a way that—for anyone a bit taller—would have counted as looming. It was still intimidating without the extra height. “You’ve got no clue how lucky you are that I’m the one that came for you, because if you got taken in for interrogation I guarantee you’d regret stepping foot in this city.”

Shouta took a step back and regretted it immediately. “I’ve been captured by criminals before,” he said defensively. “I think I’d manage ok, thanks.”

“You’re hilarious,” Chuuya said, unamused. “Look, I get it. You’re just like your cousin, you know that? He pulls this kind of stunt all the time, and I’m damn sick of it.”

“What ‘stunt’?”

“The stunt where you think you want to know what kind of trouble he’s running from, so you try to stir up trouble yourself. He used to get captured all the time—drug rings, ex-military sickos, gangs, you name it. Easy enough to get info from the inside, right?” Chuuya sounded—not angry, exactly, but bitter.

Shouta remembered what Dazai had said about his methods, what felt like months ago. “I get myself captured, annoy them until I’ve got the information I need, and then call down the wrath of the gods once I’m done. Comprendez-vous?”

Chuuya, he realized, would be the ‘wrath of the gods’ in that scenario. Shouta wondered how many times he’d watched his partner get knocked out and dragged away.

“So maybe you weren’t trying to get yourself captured, but you sure as hell weren’t trying all that hard not to, either,” the boy continued. “And you thought you’d get some information out of it—learn something about Dazai or something about Dazai’s enemies, it’s all the same, right?”

Shouta kept his face impassive, but Chuuya’s words were hitting home with precision that belied his generally brash attitude. Shouta had been half-expecting the Port Mafia to show up—the only surprise had been that it was a sickly-looking child rather than someone more intimidating. And hadn’t he ignored the warnings to leave, despite knowing he’d attracted the wrong kind of attention.

But when it came down to it…

“I’m responsible for keeping Dazai safe,” Shouta said, when it became clear that Chuuya was done. “And I don’t know how to do that when I haven’t got a clue what he’s running from. So are you going to be helpful, or not?”

Chuuya sighed, kicked a pebble with the toe of his boot, and watched it sail off into the distance wreathed in the red glow of his quirk. “Look, Dazai really doesn’t need protecting from anything in Yokohama,” he said frankly. “As long as you don’t actually lead someone back to his doorstep, I’m sure he’ll be fine. If I were you, I’d focus on protecting him from himself.”

Shouta frowned, a sinking feeling rising in his stomach. “What do you mean?”

Chuuya frowned. “Come on, he’s been gone for nearly six months now. You can’t expect me to believe he hasn’t tried to off himself in your bathtub yet.” He sounded calm when he said it—dispassionate, like he was commenting on the weather.

Shouta flinched. “He most certainly has not,” he protested, “why would he? Is that something he’s… done before?”

Chuuya snorted. “You’re kidding. You’ve met the man, you really think all of those suicide jokes are just jokes?”

“I’ve never heard him make a suicide joke in my life,” Shouta said through numb lips.

Chuuya’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ve never heard him go more than ten minutes without one,” he countered. “Is he really that serious about pretending to be a hero?”

“Why would he be pretending.”

The words hung in the rooftop air.

Chuuya bit his lip, and then sighed. “Look, maybe he really has changed. Got better, cheered up, whatever. But I wouldn’t freakin’ count on it, okay? He used to have a - a reference book, you know, with all the different ways someone could commit suicide. Bastard read that thing front to back more times than I could count. And—” he cut off abruptly.

Shouta watched his cousin’s friend chew on his cheek for a minute and remembered the night he’d met Dazai on the rooftop of a different building, miles away. Does it make you happy? Dazai had asked, with an odd kind of desperation that was still vivid in Shouta’s memory four years later.

Hell. Taneda had warned him to look out for suicide attempts when Dazai had first been dropped off at his apartment. He’d kept an eye out at first, but Dazai had mostly just seemed lethargic in those initial days—and then he’d done a complete personality shift, cheered up, and Shouta had just been relieved. Had he been missing warning signs this whole time? He couldn’t think of anything, and yet Chuuya seemed certain.

“Just keep an eye on him.” Chuuya’s voice sounded tight now, tense. “I’m not there to check on him anymore, so you’d better do it for me. Got it?”

Shouta nodded silently.

“Good,” Chuuya said, and the brief glimpse of vulnerability disappeared with a roll of his shoulders. “Don’t let him get too comfortable, either. I had to put up with his antics for years, and I’d hate to see him let loose on someone who won’t fight back.” He offered a hand to Shouta and smirked. “I’ll tell you all the best ways to annoy him on the flight back to Mustafu.”

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

There was a bottle of cornerstore wine sitting on Shouta’s windowsill when he and Chuuya touched down on the fire escape outside his apartment.

“That’s… not mine,” he said, pointing at it cautiously.

“Of course it’s not,” the redhead muttered. “Hey! Mackerel!” He started pounding on the glass of the window, heedless of the way the bottle started wobbling on the edge of the sill. “C’mon, you waste of bandages, open up or I’ll—“

Shouta grabbed the bottle just in time, as Dazai threw the window open.

“About time,” Chuuya sneered. “You can’t possibly think that this swill is worth a trip to Musutafu, much less babysitting duty.”

“Excuse me,” Shouta protested under his breath. He’d gotten used to Chuuya’s personality on the flight over, so he knew the boy didn’t really mean it as an insult.

“Ahh, Chibi, I’m afraid the swill will have to suffice,” Dazai said grandly. “For that’s all Eraserhead stocks in his cabinets—and it’s his ransom I’m paying, after all.”

“That’s definitely not from my kitchen,” Shouta objected.

Chuuya made a disgusted look. “You can’t honestly tell me you made a special trip to get that, Dazai? And here I thought you could sink no lower.” As he spoke, he slipped through the window, Dazai stepping neatly out of the way just in time.

“Manners, Chibi,” Dazai chided. “What would Kouyou say if she knew you were insulting the quality of a gift?”

“She’d ask if the gift deserved the insult,” Chuuya said. “And it does.”

They moved further into the apartment, still bickering, and Shouta climbed through the window after them. He used to come in this way more when he was younger—nowadays, with his teaching job on top of underground hero work, he preferred to be lazy and use doors when possible.

“But really, Chuuuu-ya,” Dazai was saying when Shouta caught up with the two boys in the kitchen. “You ought to stay for dinner! Doesn’t my dog miss eating scraps from his master’s table?”

Shouta raised his eyebrows.

“Ugh, like I would ever want your scraps,” Chuuya said, scoffing. “Most people need more than just canned crab in their diet, you know.” He slapped Dazai’s hand away when Dazai tried to poke him in the forehead.

“Well, this isn't my kitchen, is it? And Eraserhead, bless his heart, doesn’t seem to have discovered the wonders of canned crab yet.”

“You might as well stay,” Shouta interrupted. “I suppose a hot meal is the least I can offer for the ride home. Go ahead and start some rice cooking, will you? I need to freshen up.”

He left the two boys bickering in the kitchen—apparently despite having lived with Shouta for who-knew-how-long, Dazai still didn’t know where he kept the rice cooker.

Shouta wondered if he’d regret leaving the boys to their own devices for a few minutes—but then, this might be the best chance for a distraction he’d get in the near future. Dazai never left the apartment, not without Shouta as an escort.

And when Dazai was paying attention, he’d never let Shouta look through his room.

*

When Shouta had first moved into this apartment, right after taking the teaching position at UA, he’d planned to use the second bedroom as an office for paperwork and grading. But furnishing the other rooms had taken priority, and then Midnight had left a futon there for when she or Hizashi stayed over, and by the time Shouta had actually bought himself a desk he’d gotten used to working in the comfort of his bedroom.

The room had still been mostly empty when Dazai arrived, and not much had been done to improve it since. Two piles of laundry lay on either side of Dazai’s futon, and Shouta honestly couldn’t tell which was clean and which was dirty. A long tan coat hung in the open closet, along with a couple of dress shirts and pants, and a duffle bag sat on the closet floor mostly-empty. There was no desk, nightstand or wardrobe of any kind, and the floor was covered with crumbs.

Shouta would blame the room’s messy state on Dazai being a teenage boy, but he knew that Shuji would have grown up with housemaids and cleaners to keep his things orderly. He’d probably never learned the housekeeping skills required to maintain a clean room. Shouta didn’t feel any particular need to correct this—after all, he’d grown up with housemaids too, and he’d turned out fine. The mess wasn’t that bad, really.

The lack of furniture he should probably do something about, though, come to think of it.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Shouta looked around the room for somewhere Dazai could possibly be hiding a book like the one Chuuya had described. If Dazai truly read it over and over again, he’d probably still have it with him now—and he couldn’t think of any easier way to confirm the redhead’s warnings.

He couldn’t go digging through the laundry piles—not only would that be unsanitary, but Dazai would be sure to notice. The duffle bag was possible, but it was pushed nearly to the back of the closet, not somewhere convenient for frequent access. Shouta poked his head in the closet anyway, to check if there were any books stowed on the shelves. No luck.

There was only one place left that he could reasonably check before Chuuya and Dazai got suspicious of his absence. He lifted up the edge of the futon to peer underneath—

Disappointment mixed with the rush of success in his stomach. A small book lay beneath the head of the futon, cover emblazoned with a stylized coffin. The Complete Guide to Suicide.

He knew he was running out of time, but he grabbed the book and looked it over. It was in reasonably good condition for how much it had clearly been used, with pages that had been dog-eared in the past and a slightly-broken spine.

Shouta flipped open to one of the pages with a crease in the corner.

Cobra bite : The most famous case of suicide by snakebite is of course Cleopatra of Egypt; though the details are contested, the bite of an asp would likely have been sufficient to end her life. The lethality of this method depends on the variety of snake as well as the availability of antivenin. Some potential options are listed below with a summary of contributing factors, though the suicide enthusiast is encouraged to do their own research before selecting a snake for their attempt…

There was a list of venomous snakes taking up the rest of the page. Shouta was disturbed by the casually didactic attitude the book took towards its subject matter, but far worse was the note scrawled in the margins.

(4.10.2XXX) Mamushi snake bite to left leg - induced unconsciousness, but awoke approx. 7 hrs later in Sensei’s operating room. 4 days recovery time, lower than average—suspect prev. exposure to neurotoxins has reduced the effectiveness.

It was the same handwriting that Shouta had found littering his case files as of late, pointing out connections or mocking the investigators that compiled the evidence. The date on the note was two years ago; his cousin would have been sixteen. He thought he might throw up.

He couldn’t throw up in Dazai’s room. That would just make everything worse. He carefully placed the book back where he’d found it, scuffed his shoes on the way out to hide any footprints in the layer of crumbs on the floor, and crept across the hall to the bathroom.

Dazai and Chuuya were expecting him in the kitchen, and it wouldn’t do to make them wait.

*

Dinner passed in a blur.

He knew he should pay more attention to Dazai and Chuuya, try to learn more about their relationship, figure out if the redhead was really as trustworthy as Dazai seemed to think. The back-and-forth cycle of jabs and jokes made his head spin when he tried to follow it, but he didn't try that hard.

Every time he looked at his cousin, he was stuck imagining the boy reading that book. Or worse, imagining whatever circ*mstances might have led to the suicide attempt he'd read about. Had Dazai just gone off into the wilderness in the hopes of provoking a wild snake somewhere? Had he found one illegally, on the black market perhaps?

And he couldn't look at Chuuya without wondering if the short redhead had been the one to find Dazai afterward. The note had mentioned waking up on an operating table—surely someone had taken Dazai to get medical attention.

He pushed the thoughts away as best he could, but it was a relief when the meal was over and Chuuya announced he'd better be leaving back to Yokohama. “For work,” he said, carefully casual in a way that made Shouta reluctant to ask for specifics. (Even though Shouta was curious what kind of work called someone in this late in the evening.)

“Well, thanks for the ride, kid,” Shouta said gruffly, standing up from the table. “I owe you at least a few more meals, so don’t be a stranger.”

Chuuya snorted indelicately. “Don’t worry about it, if anyone owes me it’s Dazai. I gave up a long time ago on getting that debt paid.”

Dazai clutched at his chest dramatically, but Chuuya ignored him with an air of longsuffering. “Anyways,” he continued, “I’d better not spend too much time down here in Musutafu—people will get suspicious.”

He grabbed his hat from the rack in the entryway, threw a few more insults at Dazai, and left out the window the way they’d arrived.

Shouta collapsed on the couch as soon as the redhead was gone. It had been far too long of a day—which was saying something, since Shouta was used to juggling two intensive jobs. He knew if he tried to do anything about Dazai right now, he’d handle it poorly. He was hardly prepared for an intervention.

Dazai clearly had his own plans, though. When Shouta looked up, the boy was standing in front of him, arms folded.

“So, Shouta-nii,” he said lightly. “What were you up to in Yokohama?”

Shouta considered the question and almost gave an honest answer. Chuuya had been right, after all: Dazai probably deserved at least a chance at answering his questions, even if Shouta doubted the boy would say anything helpful.

He decided against it.

“I don’t know, Dazai,” Shouta said instead, “what were you up to in Yokohama?”

He went to his bedroom without waiting for a response. By the look on Dazai’s face, there wouldn’t have been one anyway.

Chapter 19

Chapter Text

The morning after Shouta’s trip to Yokohama, he knocked sharply on Dazai’s door until the boy woke up and opened it, grumbling fiercely.

“Get dressed,” he told his cousin. “We’re going to school.”

Dazai squinted at him suspiciously. “Ah, I think Shouta-nii is confused,” he said. “You’re the teacher, not me, remember?”

“I’m not confused. You’ll be shadowing me for the day.”

Now Dazai looked even more suspicious. “Surely you don’t mean to take me to your classes with you—Nedzu will have a fit.”

Shouta had thought that Dazai and Nedzu got along worryingly well, all things considered, so he wasn’t sure where Dazai’s doubt came from. “Nedzu approved it,” he said anyway. “You don’t have free run of the campus, so don’t get too excited. You go where I go.”

Dazai frowned. “Why do you even want me to follow you around all day?”

“Because it’s time for you to get some practical experience in heroic employment,” Shouta said briskly. “Also, I have an odd number of students right now and today we’re doing a partnered exercise.”

“You’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Shouta smiled, making sure to show all his teeth.

Dazai grimaced and closed the door in Shouta’s face.

Shouta hadn’t been joking—of course, normally he’d deal with the odd numbers by picking a deserving student to participate in the exercise twice.

He wanted Dazai at school with him because yesterday evening he’d found a book full of suicide methods under Dazai’s bed, with every indication that the boy had tried out a good number of them. After that he didn’t especially want to leave his cousin alone all day.

…Dazai didn’t need to know that was his reasoning, though.

Eventually Dazai emerged from his room wearing his usual formal clothes. Shouta disapproved of them, but the boy had already shown he could exercise reasonably well in a dress shirt and slacks so he held his tongue.

“Let’s go,” he said instead. “I need to pick up some gear from Power Loader’s workshop before class starts.”

*

Shouta’s homeroom class fell into a hush when he walked in with Dazai, fifteen seconds before the final bell rang.

“Settle down,” he said wryly. He waved a hand at Dazai. “This is Mr. Yozo; he’ll be shadowing me today and helping out with our afternoon exercise. If you have any questions, don’t.”

He’d gone over behavior guidelines briefly with Dazai before they’d arrived at the classroom, but he hadn’t really expected any of it to stick. He pretended not to notice Dazai doodling on the chalkboard behind him as he collected homework, levelling an unimpressed stare at any students who made the mistake of giggling. Then he turned the rest of the period over to Sakuma Susumu, their class president, and settled back in his chair hoping for a nap.

He was still tired from the previous day’s adventure, so he faded into near-unconsciousness gladly.

He was jerked out of his sad attempt at slumber by an unusually loud burst of giggles—which wouldn’t normally get his attention, except that it was accompanied by the soft click of a door closing.

He groaned and sat up, surveying his students suspiciously. They all quickly looked away from the classroom door.

“He just left, didn’t he,” Shouta said tiredly.

“Mr. Yozo, um… asked where the restroom is,” Sakuma told him cautiously. “We figured it was fine to tell him?”

“You’re fine,” he said wearily, because of course they wouldn't think anything of giving bathroom directions to a fellow teenager. Dazai might be a little older than them, but the excessively formal clothes he insisted on wearing made him look younger than he really was, like a kid playing dress-up. He’d probably played on their good natures to make an escape attempt—

Or maybe he really had needed to use the restroom.

“I’m just going to check on him,” Shouta said anyway. Perhaps it was ridiculous, but he’d spent half the night listening for the sounds of Dazai moving around, and every time the boy had shut himself in the apartment’s bathroom he’d felt his heart skip into double-time.

His words prompted more giggles from the kids for some reason, but he ignored them and speed-walked out of the classroom.

There were bathrooms at the end of the hall from his homeroom, and sure enough he found Dazai there: perched on the edge of the sink, playing some game on his phone.

“Ah, Shouta-nii,” he said, looking up. “You took ten seconds longer than I predicted.”

Shouta glanced around the bathroom quickly, but fortunately it seemed to be empty. “Don’t call me that in public,” he said anyway. “Are you done here?”

“Ah, so impatient…” Dazai muttered, but he obediently followed Shouta back into the hallway.

Shouta debated saying something as they walked back; he was sure that Dazai hadn’t really needed to use the bathroom, but had the boy only left the class to provoke him? He hated feeling this paranoid.

He’d hate it more if something happened to Dazai, if Dazai happened to Dazai, when he could have prevented it.

When they returned to the classroom, the students erupted in laughter and Shouta felt a headache start to form.

He turned to the front of the classroom and saw for the first time what Dazai had written on the chalkboard behind his desk:

Science Class w/ Mr. Yozo!

Theory: Eraserhead-san is stalking me.

Hypothesis: If I leave to go to the toilet, then Eraserhead-san will follow me.

There was a little doodle at the bottom: stick-figure Dazai sat on a crudely drawn toilet, and stick-figure Eraserhead was pounding on a closed door.

He turned around and saw Dazai still in the doorway, basking in the students’ amusem*nt. Sakuma, the poor girl, looked genuinely concerned—he saw her look back and forth between Dazai and Shouta, fingering her phone and biting her lip.

“In case you need it clarified, I am not stalking Mr. Yozo,” Shouta said, sighing heavily. “It’s school policy for visitors to the campus to be escorted at all times—something I told you before we got here,” he added pointedly, looking at Dazai. “With that in mind, I’d appreciate it if you’d stick close for the rest of the day. I don’t want to have to dump you in Present Mic’s class.”

“What does he teach?” Dazai asked, sounding intrigued.

“Right now? Gen-ed homeroom,” Shouta said drily. “I shudder to think what havoc you’d wreak on those kids. They’re not prepared for your antics so try to restrain yourself, okay? For all of our sakes.”

The class made an oooh-ing sound. Shouta ignored them and settled back in his chair—but this time he made sure to turn it so he could keep an eye on Dazai for the rest of the period.

*

Susumu followed Eraserhead-san and the mysterious Yozo-san to lunch.

It wasn’t like they didn’t know she was there. Eraserhead-san had eaten in the cafeteria before, on rare occasions, and he didn’t seem to mind company when he did so. So she made sure to get in Lunch Rush’s line close behind the two of them, and trailed after them when they headed to a table in the corner.

Confidence is key, Ironwrought, she told herself firmly. A hero can’t be afraid of her coworkers. Or future coworkers. She pulled out her most cheerful smile and sat herself down on the bench opposite the two dark-haired men.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything, Eraserhead-san!” she said brightly. “But I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself to Yozo-san earlier, and I wanted to see how he likes UA so far.”

Eraserhead grunted and waved for her to go ahead; Yozo-san raised an eyebrow. She took it as an invitation.

“I’m Sakuma Susumu, the class president for 3A this year. I’m hoping to specialize as a rescue hero, especially for urban catastrophes. It’s a pleasure to meet you!” She stuck out her hand.

Eraserhead looked like he was going to protest, but Yozo-san grinned and took her hand before her teacher could say anything.

When Yozo’s hand touched hers, it was like the cafeteria winked out of existence.

Everything was still there, of course—she could still see the tables around her, hear the clink of silverware from other tables—but she couldn’t sense any of it with her quirk. No gentle tug from the metal tray by her hand, waiting for her command; no hum of background noise from the sea of tables and chairs behind her; no whisper of knives and forks in students’ hands, the kind of movements that she’d usually keep tabs on in the back of her mind. She flinched, looked at Eraserhead-san, but his eyes stayed dark. Whatever had happened to her quirk, it wasn’t her teacher’s doing.

Then Yozo let go of her hand, and the world rushed back in.

“Ah, sorry about that,” he said, smiling wide and showing off a dazzling set of perfect teeth. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. Not many people have passive quirk awareness, Sakuma-san! Very cool.”

“Thanks,” Susumu said on autopilot, mind racing. “That was your quirk, then? Touch-based nullification? That’s so rare…”

Slowly, she turned to stare at her teacher.

“Whatever you’re thinking, keep it to yourself,” Eraserhead-san said immediately. “And you keep your hands to yourself, Yozo, for goodness’ sake.”

Her teacher and the so-called ‘Yozo’-san began bickering with an ease that spoke of lots of practice, and Susumu watched them with slowly widening eyes.

…Eraserhead-san has a brother?

Chapter 20

Chapter Text

“Hmmm, Eraserhead-san… Why does this say that “an ethical decision should never be based on intuition”? I thought heroic types were all about those gut feelings.”

“…What are you looking at?” Shouta asked warily. Around the classroom, his students for this period looked up, listening to the exchange with interest.

“Oh, and here you say that it’s ethical to attack a villain even if it makes him decide to kill all of the bystanders… That’s very weird, Eraserhead-san…” Dazai turned a page of the packet he was holding and made a disapproving sound.

That sounded familiar. “Hang on, is that the answer sheet for next week’s exam? Where’d you get that?”

“Ugh, and you seriously think the answer for question 20 is ‘D’? I would have thought—“

Dazai’s remaining words were cut off when Shouta launched across the desk to try and strangle him. Beyond the teen’s protests, he heard the scratches of pens as his students hurriedly wrote down the answers Dazai had revealed.

*

“Oh dear.”

Shouta looked up from the papers he was grading. After the last incident, Dazai was confined to a spare desk by the window with only a stack of blank paper and a pencil to entertain himself. Shouta had invited him to take notes on the class material, since he was apparently so interested in it.

But now, for some reason, the window was open. And Dazai was peering out of it with a mildly concerned expression.

“What did you do,” he growled.

Dazai turned around and held his hand up to his chest in mock-offense. “I didn’t do anything!” He protested. “The planet Earth, on the other hand, seems to have decided to get up-close and personal with your stack of graded worksheets. How awful!”

Shouta gaped, and then quickly looked back at his desk. But the worksheets he’d been grading—even the ones he’d finished and added to the pile less than a minute ago—were no longer there. Instead, the pile had been replaced with the stack of blank paper he’d given Dazai.

“But really, this does mean less work for you,” Dazai continued on blithely, ignoring the way Shouta’s face was rapidly reddening. “Because it would hardly be fair for you to keep grading the papers you have left over there! Honestly, Eraserhead-san, I think the planet did you a favor—“

This time Shouta used his capture weapon.

“Would you all excuse me,” he addressed the class through gritted teeth. “It seems Mr. Yozo would be better suited to an elementary-school classroom. Under the circ*mstances, though, Ectoplasm’s remedial math class for first-years will have to do.”

His students watched him drag a struggling Dazai out of the room with wide eyes.

*

By the time Susumu and her class saw Eraserhead again for Heroics, the entire school knew about ‘Mr. Yozo’.

Not that she’d spread her theory around—no, she’d been good and held her tongue, and no one else seemed to realize the boy was related to Aizawa-sensei at all. Instead, the rumors were all about Yozo’s absurd exploits.

He’d ‘lost’ assignments and lesson plans for all of the heroics classes, setting back the curriculum by at least a week. When they moved him out of the heroics wing, he apparently organized a vulgar chant among the first-years, teaching them via passed notes and paper airplanes. Midnight’s Art History class was traumatized by the experience of watching Yozo and their teacher debate each other; the few willing to discuss it only said that Yozo had a surprising knowledge of art and a competitive streak when it came to embarrassing the students.

Now they were out on Ground Beta, and Aizawa-sensei looked more frazzled than Susumu had ever seen him.

“Today’s exercise,” Eraserhead said, fixing his scariest glare at nothing in particular, “is focused on communication. You’ve each been given an earpiece to use. Put it on.”

Susumu and her classmates obeyed hurriedly. They all knew he wasn’t mad at them, but it still triggered a deep-seated unease to see their sternest teacher in this state.

“Good,” Eraserhead said unhappily. “Now, I’ve divided you all into pairs for this exercise. When I announce your partner, go ahead and find them. Sakuma, you’re with Yozo.”

Susumu winced. Another teacher might have waited to the end of the list before announcing who got paired with their disruptive visitor; Aizawa-sensei didn’t believe in drawing unpleasantness out unnecessarily. She obediently went to stand next to ‘Mr. Yozo’, peeking a sideways glance at him through her bangs.

He wasn’t bad-looking, really, though she felt dirty thinking something like that about Aizawa-sensei’s little brother. Yozo had much sharper features than Aizawa, and baby-smooth skin that she bet had never even met a razor. His hair showed signs of curling at the ends, the same way Aizawa’s did when he left it down. And their eyes… well, their eyes were the same color, at least.

She’d never seen Aizawa-sensei look at her the way Yozo was doing now.

“Pleased to work with you,” he murmured, and a shiver raced from her toes to her neck in record time.

Up front, Eraserhead finished announcing pairs and moved on to describing the exercise. “Today we’re doing a stealth mission,” he said, flipping over a whiteboard he’d rolled out at the beginning of the class. It now displayed a rough sketch of a building floor-plan, full of halls and small rooms. “You and your partner will search this building for a package of interest—a green briefcase, hidden somewhere in one of the rooms. You have ten minutes to find it, while avoiding the security drones that patrol the halls. If either of you is spotted, or if time runs out, then you’ve failed the mission.”

Susumu’s Vice President, Kudo, raised his hand. “Sensei, is that floor plan accurate?”

Their teacher shook his head. “Not entirely. You’ll often have to work with unreliable, second-hand information in the field. I had Present Mic draw this after wandering around the building for about eight minutes.”

Susumu noticed that Yozo was staring at the board. She hoped his memory was better than hers—she could remember vocabulary or history facts fine, but a maze like the one in front of her was beyond her capabilities.

As usual for exercises like this, the students gathered in an observation room while they waited for their turn. They weren’t allowed to see the camera feed, since that would help them learn the layout ahead of time; instead, they listened to the current team’s comms while Eraserhead gave commentary on what they did wrong or right.

Yozo sat quietly while they waited, which surprised Susumu. He’d caused so much havoc throughout the school already today—what had changed?

(She pushed the odd look he’d given her, and the nearly sultry tone he’d used, out of her head. It was irrelevant.)

Finally it was their turn. They went down to wait by the exercise building’s only entrance; standing outside, it just looked like a featureless concrete block except for the door they’d use to get in.

“Okay,” she said, shoving away her nerves. “We need to split up or there’s no way we can find the package in time. Do you want to go right or left once we get in?”

Yozo raised an eyebrow. “Lady’s choice,” he suggested.

Susumu felt her face warm. “I’ll go left, then, I guess,” she stammered. “Uh, keep your comm on and report anytime you see one of the security drones, okay? If we can keep track of their patterns it’ll be a lot easier to avoid them.”

“Whatever you say,” he smiled at her.

Ugh. She just knew her flush was getting noticeable. Why did he have to be so… attractive? It wasn’t just that he had a pretty face, though that was part of it; something about the way he moved and talked was inexplicably captivating. She’d never been the type to get flustered over a boy before…. Her friends up in the observation room were probably laughing at her right now.

The bell sounded, and they entered the building.

*

“All of the rooms on the far left are empty,” Susumu reported a few minutes later. “Moving into the central fork. How’s it going on your side?”

“No luck so far, unfortunately,” Yozo’s voice came through the comm. “I saw a security drone heading in your direction, Sakuma—you should probably get ready to duck into a closet again soon.” She heard the soft thud of a door closing.

Susumu refrained from commenting on Yozo’s use of her name over the communications channel. Properly speaking, they should keep things professional during an exercise like this; any of her teammates would know to call her IronWrought and nothing else. But Yozo wasn’t really in the hero course, so he couldn’t be expected to know, right? And anyway, he didn’t have a hero moniker of his own to use. She’d have to call him by name, so it was only fair that he be allowed to return the favor.

“Got it, Yozo,” she said, slipping into a nearby room and closing the door behind her. “How close are you to the back hallway?”

“Hmm… just a few more doors to check,” he hummed. “I’ll let you know if the coast is clear once I get there, Sakuma, just hang on.”

She shifted in place, tapping her foot by the door nervously.

He didn’t say anything.

After a full minute of waiting, she spoke up again, unsure of how close he was. “I don’t sense anything nearby, so I’m going to come back into the hallway. I don’t want to waste the rest of our time.” She felt antsy, not knowing how much time was left; presumably Yozo had just gotten distracted, right?

“Don’t leave the hallway, Sakuma,” Yozo said immediately. “Just because you can’t sense the drone doesn’t mean it can’t see you—these long hallways mean they can cover a large area at once.”

“It’s been too long since you saw it,” she argued. “If it was headed my way I would have sensed it by now. We’re running out of time.” She started to twist the doorknob.

“Sakuma-chan, wait.”

She froze.

Yozo’s voice turned soft. “Sakuma-chan. Susumu. Please wait, I… I have to tell you something.”

She felt her heart pounding in her ears, her fingers stuck to the doorknob like they’d been superglued there. “W-what?” She asked, trembling.

His breath was loud in the comm channel. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Susumu… Do you think…”

She blinked rapidly. “Yes?” she squeaked, a couple octaves higher than normal.

He paused, and then breathed out sharply in what sounded like amusem*nt. “Do you think you can sense the drone now?”

All of a sudden his voice was dry and sarcastic, nothing like before.

“What?” She asked, trying to grasp the tone shift. “I mean… uh…” And then she realized that, at some point while she’d been dazed by Yozo’s intimations, one of the security drones had indeed entered into the range of her metal sense. Just as Yozo had predicted.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said coolly. “Don’t worry, while you’ve been stuck in that hallway I’ve covered the rest of the rooms in the center. No need to get yourself caught now, IronWrought.”

She felt tears well up at the sudden scorn.

Yozo found the briefcase with a minute and a half to spare. Susumu spent the rest of the exercise trembling in that same room, trying not to cry.

Chapter 21

Chapter Text

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Shouta said.

He’d done his due diligence beforehand: breathing deeply, counting down from 53, pacing until he thought he could manage a calm facade. But now that he had Dazai alone in the hallway, none of it was enough.

“Oh, please,” Dazai said dismissively, “don’t get all defensive at me now. I know she’s your teacher’s pet or whatever, but she needed to learn to keep her guard up eventually.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t even that mean about it.”

Shouta gaped. He would have described Dazai’s treatment of Sakuma Susumu as cruel , or perhaps manipulative if he felt like being generous (he didn’t). Even if Dazai had intended it as a lesson—and Dazai’s totally-unconcerned demeanor suggested the boy was telling the truth—it was an incredibly harsh lesson.

“I’d prefer that you stay away from my students if that’s your idea of helping them learn,” Shouta said. “The poor girl is probably sobbing her eyes out now. She’s going to be paranoid about flirting now. Why the hell did you think that was acceptable?”

Dazai frowned and looked closer at Shouta. “Making her paranoid was the whole point,” he said, like it was obvious. “She’s got the makings of a good hero, but not if she’s always making googly eyes at every nice stranger she runs into.”

“I would hardly call your behavior today ‘nice’,” Shouta said, putting up air quotes. “Even excluding the incident just now.” Despite himself he could feel his temper cooling off. His cousin had a bizarrely twisted idea of what education looked like—he’d add it to the list of things that didn’t add up.

“Sure, well, that just makes it worse,” Dazai said with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, if you want me to stay away that’s just as well. Today was fun and all, but I don’t think I’d enjoy babysitting duty on a permanent basis.”

And now Shouta fell short.

Just moments ago he’d been regretting bringing Dazai to campus during the school day. Now he remembered his reasoning—after what Chuuya had told him, after what he’d read in Dazai’s horrifying little book, he couldn’t imagine leaving his cousin alone in the apartment all day.

“I mean, certainly you won’t be allowed to partner with Sakuma again,” he backtracked rapidly. “Maybe you could spend a few days with Midnight’s classes again, actually, I heard you two got along well…”

Dazai’s eyes narrowed. “No, no, that’s quite alright,” he said, and where he’d been perfectly relaxed talking about how he’d tried to teach Sakuma a lesson, now there was an edge to his voice. “I really don’t know how you do it, Shouta-nii, but after all the excitement of today I need at least a week of recovery. Ask again in five to ten working days.”

Dazai didn’t look tired at all, but he was watching Shouta very closely.

Shouta shifted uncomfortably. He had a choice here—he could push the issue, come up with some new reason for Dazai to be required on campus, and ultimately just make Dazai more suspicious. Or he could let it go.

Dazai had survived this long without constant supervision. Shouta dug his fingernails into his thigh out of sight and said, as casually as he could manage: “Ah well, I guess academia isn’t for everyone. You’ll have to report to me what it feels like to get a full night’s sleep.” The words were bitter on his tongue.

They drove back to Shouta’s apartment in silence.

*

That night, Dazai didn’t come out of his room for dinner. Shouta didn’t mind the extra space, necessarily; before his cousin’s arrival, he’d lived alone and liked it. But it did remind him of those early days of Dazai’s stay, when he’d seemed more like a ghost than a teenage boy.

He resisted the urge to haunt the hallway by Dazai’s door.

Shouta left late for his nighttime patrol, and found himself brooding when he should’ve been monitoring the streets. The urge to parkour back to his apartment and check on his cousin was like an itch in the back of his mind—it distracted him at vital moments and made him fight clumsier than he normally would. After taking a sloppy punch to the jaw and getting his lip split open, Shouta was ready to throw in the towel early.

Was he really going to let his concern for Dazai get in the way of his hero work? Shouta paused, halfway up a fire escape. His cousin was important to him, of course, but so were the people of Musutafu.

“He’ll be fine,” he muttered to his reflection in a nearby window. “He hasn’t done anything in the last few months, things are no different now.”

But they were different: Shouta knew to be worried now. Maybe Dazai wasn’t in any more danger, but Shouta’s split lip was a good indicator that things couldn’t go on like this for long.

His earpiece crackled just as he started climbing for the roof again.

“Calling all responders patrolling near 155th, we’ve gotten reports of an armed robbery of the Bank of Musutafu branch there. Police are requesting immediate assistance.”

Shouta looked down at the street sign below him and groaned.

Alright then. Just a bit longer.

*

Dabi wasn’t sure how he’d gotten into this situation, but he wanted out.

“I really don’t think my quirk is a good idea here, guys,” he called back to his three companions hovering in the doorway.

“Don’t be a weenie,” one of them called. “And hurry up, I can hear the sirens.”

Dabi muttered an expletive and took aim at the bank vault locking mechanism. They liked to claim these things were quirk-proof, but everything melted or caught fire eventually.

Sure enough, the metal mechanism glowed red-hot and then started to deform.

“Freakin’ finally,” the ringleader of the operation jeered. “Alright, yank it open and let’s get out of here.”

Dabi kept one hand shooting fire at the lock and dug out a crowbar from his backpack with the other. “Thanks for the help,” he sneered, though he doubted they were paying attention enough to catch the sarcasm. Think about the money, he told himself. Brand new staples for your face, doesn’t that sound nice?

Sometimes his life was pretty pathetic, actually.

With some judicious application of force he was able to pop the vault door open. Unfortunately, that was about the time that the smoke alarm went off.

“What the hell is burning?” He heard one of his teammates ask.

“Other than my skin?” Dabi looked inside the vault. “Um.”

“What?”

“I told you it wasn’t a good idea.”

There was a moment of silence as they all tried to figure out what he meant.

“You set fire to the MONEY?”

“Hey now,” Dabi raised his hands up. “The melting metal set fire to the money, thank you very much. And I told you it wasn’t a good idea!”

“Shut up, idiot, grab anything that’s not on fire yet!”

That’s about when a scratchy voice came from the no-longer-guarded doorway.

“No offense, but it looks like you people should just give up now.”

Dabi turned. Standing between them and freedom was an exhausted-looking Pro Hero, who seemed about as happy to be there as Dabi was.

*

An hour later, Shouta was finally finishing up with the bank officials who had showed up—at three in the morning!—to interrogate him about what had happened to their money.

“None of it was stolen,” he said for the hundredth time, “and the fire was put out as quickly as possible. If you have any more complaints, I’ll ask you to direct them to my agency representative.” His ‘agency representative’ was a voicemail inbox that got periodically emptied every six months.

“But you didn’t catch the perpetrator,” one man huffed, sounding childishly petulant in a sharp contrast to his neatly pressed suit.

“I caught most of the perpetrators,” Shouta reminded him. “And the one who got away looked like he was on death’s door. I doubt any of us will have to worry about him again.”

“But—“

“Sir,” Shouta interrupted, “I have to wake up in three and a half hours for my next shift. You can stick around here arguing amongst yourselves all you want, but I intend to go home and sleep.”

He ignored their protests and launched himself onto the roof of the neighboring building.

The truth was, Shouta reflected as he ran across the city, he reallyshould’ve been able to catch the fourth bank robber. None of them had used especially powerful quirks, and he’d dealt with much worse in his years of being a hero. He was just off his game tonight, so to speak. The persisting distraction combined with his earlier injuries to make him sloppy.

There was nothing for it; in the morning he’d have to take drastic measures.

Hizashi and Nemuri would know what to do about Dazai.

Chapter 22

Chapter Text

Hizashi and Nemuri traded looks, then turned back to Shouta. “You’ve got it bad,” they chorused in tandem.

“I don’t know what that means,” Shouta said.

“It’s like the paternal version of an unrequited crush,” Nemuri said sympathetically. “You’re clearly worried for this kid, but he’s obviously not going to put up with your blankets-and-cocoa routine.”

Shouta flushed. “That was one time,” he muttered under his breath. “And the student had frostbite.”

Hizashi shrugged. “Nem’s right, though, you gotta admit. The little listener isn’t your student—and I get that he’s family, but you’re not his parent either.” He patted Shouta on the shoulder. “You’re gonna have to tone down the mama bear instinct, Sho. Be more sneaky.”

Shouta pursed his lips, looking thoughtfully at his friends. “Sneaky… I can do sneaky.”

*

He left Dazai at home, unsupervised, that first day after The Incident. Dazai saw him off to work that morning with an inappropriate level of cheer, and only the thought of his impending consultation with his friends let Shouta leave him behind without snapping.

After school that day, Shouta made a rare stop at his hero agency.

The general public didn’t think much about underground heroes, but those who knew of their existence assumed they worked alone. After all, a hero agency scheduled press conferences! They handled media appearances! They coordinated team-ups with other agencies, and helped strategize for the big, well-publicized takedowns! An underground hero had no need for any of that.

What an underground hero did need was help with paperwork. Aizawa’s agency, shared with more than a dozen other underground heroes, handled everything from evidence requests to arrest records, and every once in a while he had to show up and actually sign the damned things.

“You're not gonna like this one, boss,” said Mikhail frankly. The blond was holding a slim file folder, labeled with a sticky-note bearing the name Eraserhead; Aizawa recognized a new mission briefing when he saw one. But instead of handing it over Mikhail kept a firm grip, even when Aizawa reached for it.

“Why won’t I like it?” Aizawa asked. The night was young, but Aizawa no longer was, so he sunk down into the lone chair across from Mikhail’s desk to conserve energy.

Mikhail grimaced, tapping his fingers on the file folder compulsively. “I don’t read your mission briefings, of course. I haven’t opened this file at all.”

“Of course not,” Aizawa said seriously. “So what’s it say, then?”

Mikhail glanced down, opened the file, thumbed through it. “Officially, it’s a jewelry thief that’s been tearing through Musutafu for a couple days. Always taking just enough to annoy the wrong people, never taking enough to get the attention of any of the Big Guys. There’s a probable next target identified.”

Aizawa frowned. “And reading between the lines?” He thought he saw where this was going, but he let Mikhail continue.

“Reading between the lines, they’ve got a quirk that makes them almost impossible to capture for anyone except you. And their targets have all been near your patrol path.”

“Trying to draw me into a trap?”

Mikhail flipped through a few more pages, grimaced, and then flicked the folder closed and pushed it across to Aizawa. “That would be my guess. Not that I’ve—“

“Not that you’ve seen the file, yes, I know. The Hero Commission requested me specifically?”

Mikhail shrugged. “They might not have meant anything by it. Or maybe they noticed the same thing I did, but they realize you’re still the best bet to take down whoever this is. Could be malicious, too.”

That was always a possibility, with the Hero Commission. He was too valuable to lose, but in their eyes that meant he was also too valuable to leave to his own devices. They’d be happier if he was on their payroll. Or in the hospital.

“Hmm.” Aizawa took the folder and tucked it into his bag. “I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks for the heads up.” He headed for the door.

“Want any off-the-books backup for this one?” Mikhail offered abruptly before Aizawa got there. “I could pull a few guys. Nightshift doesn’t have anything big going on right now, and neither does Phoenix.”

It was an uncharacteristic offer. Mikhail managed more than a dozen heroes out of this office, but Aizawa had only ever seen the others in passing. They tended to keep to themselves; Aizawa, spending his days in a classroom full of children, was one of the better socialized undergrounders. And that was saying something.

“That’s alright,” he said. “Thanks though. I’ll be careful.”

Famous last words, he thought. He pushed the idea away.

He would be fine.

*

The thief’s next target, or so the Hero Commission had predicted, was a high-end antiques shop that lay just on the edge of the ‘rougher’ part of town.

Half the jewelry stores in the area had been robbed the night before, and the other half had been targeted two nights ago. As one of the few stores left with any inventory to speak of, this shop might have been overlooked because it wasn’t in the ‘jewelry’ section of any directory. But Shouta—and the Hero Commission—suspected otherwise.

Shouta wasn’t the only person watching the premises, naturally. A private security team had been rented for the night, and a light in one of the back windows told Shouta that the owner was holding his own vigil as well. None of them would be able to do anything, though. All the preparation in the world couldn’t stop a ghost.

I swear I was ready for him, one night guard’s testimony said. As soon as he showed up I blocked the door, got ready to grapple him… But when his bag was full, he just walked right through me and onto the street.

Other reports held similar accounts. I pounced on him and ended up crashing into the table behind him, one woman with a cat quirk had said. My weapons couldn’t touch him, said a third report. He walked through walls. He walked through bullets. He didn’t even leave footprints behind.

Their only hope, so the mission briefing claimed, was Shouta.

*

The average person could only handle about three hours a day at peak productivity. Shouta was no exception; he got by with two jobs only because he carefully hoarded his energy, napping whenever he could and half-assing the things that he judged could take it.

So he wasn’t exactly lazing about during his stakeout, but he wasn’t constantly scanning the streets around the antiques shop either. It wasn’t until the security alarm yowled into the night that he jumped onto his feet, peering over the edge of his rooftop and down at the scene below.

As soon as the alarm was triggered, scores of policemen and hired security alike swarmed into the street in front of the shop’s glass front. Shouta was privately impressed by the numbers. Mikhail had, as usual, circumvented Shouta’s wishes and found him backup anyway.

“Eraserhead, where are you? We need your eyes on the target,” a voice called out in his ear. He’d been patched into the police communications channel for the night’s efforts, and he recognized Tsukauchi’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Does anyone have eyes on the target yet?” Shouta asked back in an undertone. “Not many people know about my ability, but if the thief is one who does then he’ll scatter the moment I make an appearance down there. I need to know where to look before I reveal myself.”

There was a pause, presumably as Tsukauchi spoke to someone else. “He’s still in the building,” came the answer. “Gathering things up into his bag. If you hurry you could make it to the doors before—“

“He would just escape deeper into the store and break my line of sight before we could capture him,” Shouta shook his head. “We stick with the original plan. As soon as he comes out he’ll be in optimal range for my quirk - and if he doesn’t go through the front door, I can reach him quicker from up here than anywhere else.”

The building Shouta was perched on, naturally, was the antique store itself. He’d weighed the risk of revealing himself to the target too early against the advantage of being centrally located, and eventually decided it was worth it to hide himself in the shadows near an AC unit. Tsukauchi had wanted Shouta hidden in the mass of security personnel instead, but had been overruled.

“Alright,” Tsukauchi said, too professional to argue over the comm channel. “Get ready, then.”

Below, the assembled security personnel and officers slowly spread out, most remaining in front of the doors while a few moved to cover the building’s sides and back. Shouta knew from the reports he’d read that this was a scene that had played out all across the district the night before. The thief wouldn’t be worried by the guards. In fact, the odds were good that he would walk right through them.

“He’s moving towards the front,” Shouta heard. “Almost—wait—no, he stopped at another jewel display.”

It was another several long minutes before Shouta heard from Tsukauchi again. “Okay, he’s tying the bag up. About to exit.”

Shouta half-sat on the lip of the roof, ready to activate his quirk and equally prepared to jump down to the ground if needed.

A black-clad figure with spiky hair came into his view, walking nonchalantly towards the center of the assembled security.

Shouta flexed that invisible muscle somewhere inside him—within his brain, or perhaps entwined with the ocular nerves—and felt his eyes burn. Below, the figure stopped. Looked up. Met Shouta’s gaze with unnerving accuracy.

“Now,” Shouta said into the earpiece.

The guards nearest the thief fired, not with bullets but with a lurid pink crowd-control gas based on Midnight’s own knockout formula. Shouta kept his quirk activated. He wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever, especially not with the gas that was quickly clouding his view, but he didn’t need to. Just a whiff of this gas and the thief should be unconscious before his well-stuffed bag hit the ground.

The thief was eerily still while the gas poured out into the air surrounding him. Shouta watched until he couldn’t anymore.

For a moment there was silence. The security guards and officers below, now wearing gas masks that they’d donned on Shouta’s signal, backed away from the cloud of sedative.

Something wasn't right.

“Eraserhead,” Tsukauchi said.

“I saw.”

He had his own gas mask on already. Shouta hooked his capture weapon around the AC unit he’d been sheltering behind, swung down and landed directly in the center of the gas cloud. He should have made contact with a body on the way down—he’d aimed for right where the thief had been. Instead he landed on hard concrete.

The thief should have collapsed into unconsciousness upon the slightest breath of sedative. Instead he’d stayed upright, staring up at Shouta as the gas surrounded him. Like he wasn’t even affected.

Shouta searched the area, pacing in circles, until the cloud dispersed and it became clear there was no point in continuing.

The thief was gone.

Chapter 23

Chapter Text

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you here today.”

“Um, no we’re not,” said the little one in a schoolgirl uniform. “Cookies are a good enough reason, Tomu-chan!”

The older one (‘Dabi’, as if anyone would ever believe that was his real name) just looked back at Tomura and opened his mouth obnoxiously wide before swallowing a snickerdoodle whole. The holes in his cheeks started bleeding, and Tomura wondered morbidly if he’d ever accidentally eaten a staple.

“The cookies,” Tomura said stiffly, “are just an opening gambit to win your affections.” He’d asked Kurogiri to cook some the night before, and the shadowy bartender had nearly cried from joy. Tomura didn’t usually ask for cookies anymore now that he was basically a grownup, but it was different when he needed them for a plot.

“You can just ask us to hang out, you know,” the little one told him. “Cookies are great, but you are too!”

Tomura looked down at her. She was beaming up at him, but the thick coating of crumbs around her mouth sort of undermined her claim.

Her cheeks were still chubby, and Tomura didn’t think it was just because they were stuffed with Kurogiri’s baking. Had he ever been this young and squishy-looking? He doubted it.

“I dunno, man,” Dabi said. “I’d say the cookies were vital persuasion. You’d better talk fast before the effect wears off.” He smacked his lips pointedly.

“So you are wondering why I gathered you here!” Tomura said triumphantly. “Well, I’m pleased to say that it concerns a mutual… acquaintance of ours.”

The little one tilted her head. “Kurogiri?”

“He’s not your acquaintance yet, you just met him two minutes ago.”

“Dabi?”

“Dabi’s right here, I didn’t bring you here because of something to do with him!” Tomura shook himself, frustrated. The girl didn’t throw him off nearly so much when she was just a voice in his headphones. “It’s something concerning a mutual enemy.” There, that should do it.

His two guests stared at him, nonplussed.

“Ugh. We need to work on our team communication skills, you know that?” Tomura itched his neck resentfully. “We’re here because of something to do with Slug and Mackerel.”

They made gratifying noises of comprehension.

“I had the IP addresses from our last game tracked. Two of them were behind a firewall—” no need to admit that he didn’t know which two—“but the third is here in the city. And we’re going to find him.”

*

“We should have brought the cookies with us,” Dabi complained.

He and Toga had gone along with Tomu-chan Shigaraki’s plan, but Dabi at least had doubted it would amount to anything more than wandering. Instead the younger teen had pulled out a gps app and plugged in a set of honest-to-goodness coordinates. They’d meandered around half the city trying to get close with the train system, but somehow they actually ended up at their goal.

“Yeah, and some nice milk,” Toga added. “It’s so hot.”

Dabi wasn’t sure how he felt about working alongside a kid and a sixteen-year-old, but he had to admit that the cookies had done their job. He was always a fan of free food.

The chance to potentially mug a presumably-rich Esports champion wasn’t bad, either.

First, however, they had to wait for their target to actually leave his apartment.

“What about Tweety-bird?” Dabi eventually asked, apropos of nothing.

“Huh?”

“Tweety-bird, from last time. You said this was about Slug and Mackerel, but there were three IP addresses, right?”

Shigaraki grunted reluctantly.

“I bet the new guy was the one with the crap cybersecurity, that’s all I’m saying. Watch, the first guy to walk through that door will be wearing a second-hand Hawks t-shirt.”

He could tell Shigaraki didn’t like the idea. Smirking, Dabi settled back against the wall of their chosen stakeout location and watched their self-proclaimed leader fume.

*

An hour into their watch, Dabi made Shigaraki go buy them drinks from the nearest corner store.

Just over an hour after that, they started to see children filing down the street as the schools let out.

Dabi side-eyed Toga.

“What?” She asked, pouting.

“Today’s a school day,” Dabi pointed out, leaving the rest unsaid. He gave her uniform a meaningful glance.

Toga grinned. “It sure is!”

Shigaraki ignored them both.

*

Just as Dabi was getting ready to beg off and go apply ointment to his everywhere, someone walked towards the apartment.

He was dark-haired, tall, a bit disheveled. Definitely late-twenties at the youngest. He carried a briefcase, wore black clothing with a scarf despite the weather, and looked like he would be scowling if he wasn’t too tired to make the effort.

“Guys. Guys,” Shigaraki whispered excitedly. “See that? Do you know who that is?”

“Tweety-bird,” said Toga.

“Eraserhead,” said Shigaraki, twitching with delight.

“The guy who tried to arrest me on Tuesday,” said Dabi. Then, “Wait. Who’s Eraserhead?”

*

Eventually, after they’d watched the man slouch into the apartment they’d been watching for hours, the three of them conferred.

“I can’t believe you almost got arrested by Eraserhead!” Tomura told Dabi. “That’s so cool!” He was a little jealous, but he knew that expressing jealousy was bad for team cohesion.

The little one giggled. “Well, I can’t believe he almost got arrested by Tweety-bird. That’s so embarrassing!”

Dabi shook his head frantically. “No, no, I take it back, that was not Tweety-Bird. He was way too grumpy. That’s gotta be Slug, right?”

Tomura stroked his chin, inwardly lamenting the lack of a beard. “Hmm, they did say that Slug could kill a man with his pinky finger. That totally fits Eraserhead, you’re right. Good thinking, team.”

Dabi looked relieved.

The little one didn’t. “Hang on, but how would Eraserhead have time to be good at video games? Isn’t he busy with… hero work?” She made a face.

Tomura couldn’t let that stand. “He works at night time,” he told her, “doing the real kind of hero work. None of that posing-for-cameras crap. And did you know that all his patrol routes are through the poorest parts of the city? He helps the people who actually need it—”

“Oh, ok,” said the little one, who didn’t look properly impressed in Tomura’s opinion. He wished he could remember her name so he could tell her off properly. “But if he works at night, where was he just now? He sure looked like he was coming home from work. And he wasn’t nearly bloody enough for it to be exciting work, like beating people up!”

Tomura thinks about it. “Maybe… he was off at a video game meeting.”

Dabi snorted, and Tomura glared at him.

“What’s a video game meeting?” The girl asked doubtfully.

“I dunno, some kind of meeting for people who are good at video games. It happens all the time,” Tomura invented. “Actually, this is a video game meeting right here! That’s what we’re doing right now!”

“I think at this point it’s an Eraserhead Fan Club meeting,” Dabi grumbled. “So does this mean we can’t mug him?”

Tomura rolled his eyes. “Of course not. I’d love to see you try. You really would get arrested this time.” He stroked his chin again. “We might be able to peek in through the window, though…”

*

Dabi protested. The little one egged him on. Tomura didn’t pay any attention to either of them. He appreciated their usefulness in group tasks—like, for example, a stakeout where the slightest lapse in attention could mean missing their target—but this wasn’t just a team building exercise anymore. This was about Eraserhead.

He slunk over to the apartment building across the street from Eraserhead’s and started casually climbing the stairs. Somewhere near the top level would give him a perfect view into Eraserhead’s third-story apartment.

He'd appropriated a cigarette from Dabi’s coat pocket; his plan, if someone saw him, was to pretend he was going up to the roof for a smoke. This was foolproof. Tomura was a villain, even if Sensei was still training him, and smoking was against public health recommendations so no one would question it.

Once he got to the top floor of the building, he ran out of stairs and had to start wandering around looking for the roof access. Dabi and the little one caught up with him just as he started to consider breaking into an apartment and threatening the occupant for directions.

“Hey, Shigaraki,” Dabi drawled. “Don’t you think you’d better be a bit sneakier if you’re gonna stalk a Pro Hero?”

Tomura flinched. Sensei always told him he didn’t properly appreciate the value of stealth, but he’d always figured it didn’t matter when he could destroy anything in his way. But… he didn’t want to destroy Eraserhead! That was ridiculous. He wouldn’t even be able to if he tried.

Dammit. He hadn’t put any skill points into the one stat he needed today. Tomura scratched his neck slowly, and then turned to Dabi.

“How would you get to the roof, then, if you’re so clever?”

Dabi gave him a deadpan stare and pointed to the nearest window. Through it, Tomura saw a fire escape with metal stairs leading upward.

Tomura stared for a couple seconds, and then grinned. “I knew it was a good idea to bring you guys along! Great teamwork, you’re the sneaky one from now on.”

He slapped the glass with one hand, fingers spread wide, and basked in his teammates’ impressed whistles for a second as the window disintegrated. Then he led the way onto the fire escape.

If his phone’s nav system was correct, they’d need to cross over to the opposite side of the roof to get the best view of Eraserhead’s apartment. Tomura wished he’d brought a pair of binoculars - even at this angle, it would be hard to see much.

As though conjured by his thoughts, the first thing he saw when he reached the top was the binoculars.

Then he saw the person holding them. A lithe figure, clothed in black, with spiky hair. Crouched low. Focused on the building across the street.

Tomura’s eyes widened.

Someone else was already looking into Eraserhead’s window.

Chapter 24

Chapter Text

Dear Eraserhead.

—

Shouta drove to school alone on Friday. It was the third time that week that Dazai had declined to come with him for training; he tried not to feel like he’d ruined all the progress he’d made with the boy. For some reason things had soured between them after he’d brought Dazai in for the training exercise with his class.

Did Dazai not get along with other kids his age? Had Shouta reacted too harshly to Dazai’s treatment of Suzumu? Had Dazai, perhaps, noticed Shouta becoming overprotective?

He worried that it was that last option. Dazai had never taken kindly to Shouta’s attempts to look in on him, those first few weeks when he’d lounged around the guest bedroom in a depressed fugue. Recently the boy had been like a whole different person—but maybe there was still some resentment. Some sort of reluctance to accept concern.

—

I’m writing to you on a matter of extreme importance.

—

He didn’t know what to do about Dazai anymore. He’d researched best practices for mental health crises, read dozens of articles titled ‘How to Help a Suicidal Loved One’, and bothered Hizashi and Nemuri about it until they’d tactfully suggested to him that perhaps he’d better consult a professional. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t know how to help Dazai; it was that Dazai wouldn’t let him.

Every conversation he’d tried to start had been deflected with jokes or outrageous nonsense. Beneath the comedic veneer, though, he could sense Dazai turning icier with every false start. The boy clearly knew that Shouta was trying to start a sensitive discussion, and he wasn’t about to put up with it.

The problem was that he couldn’t talk to Dazai. The problem was that Dazai wouldn’t stop talking long enough to get a word in edgewise. The problem was that he was beginning to doubt if Dazai had been honest with him even once in the entire time they’d been living together.

—

There is someone watching you, and I do not believe they have good intentions.

—

Shouta had other things to worry about, of course. He’d been dragged in every direction on his nightly shifts, with fruitless stakeouts and false sightings each night since the jewelry thief escaped capture. His class was finally getting caught up on their work, but that meant more grading to do. And he’d had an ominous conversation with Nedzu to top off the week.

“Be careful with your recent investigations, Aizawa,” the rat-bear had told him during their meeting on Wednesday morning. “Yokohama is no place for a hero to go wandering around alone.”

Shouta had raised his eyebrows a little at that. “I know firsthand that there are hero agencies there,” he said.

Nedzu had frowned. “Not investigating the Port Mafia, there aren’t. Do be careful, won’t you? It would be a shame to lose you so early in your career.”

—

They know who you are. They know where you live. And they may not be working alone.

—

The threat of the Port Mafia wasn’t his biggest concern right now, but that said more about how busy he’d been than anything else. He’d barely had time to even think about what he’d learned from Detective Edogawa—that their leader had killed his aunt and uncle. Dazai’s parents.

The poor kid had to know more about it than Shouta did. If it had happened like Shouta suspected—if they’d been killed in an attempt to get to a powerful nullification user—he couldn’t imagine how that would make Dazai feel.

It was no wonder the boy had changed his name. Nor, Shouta realized, was it any wonder that he was hiding some serious self-destructive tendencies.

So as Shouta pulled into the UA parking lot, ready for one last schoolday before the weekend, he could only hope that nothing else would go wrong this week.

Just one day with minimal chaos, and maybe time for a nap after class. That was all he asked for.

—

Take every reasonable precaution, and beware of a ghostly figure in black.

—

When he got to his classroom, his heart sank. Nemuri stood just outside the door, tapping her foot with a rare furrow in her brow.

“What is it,” he asked wearily.

She hesitated, then handed him a folded sheet of paper. “Someone left this in your mailbox last night.”

—

Sincerely,

A Fan

—

“...You’ve got to be kidding me.”