Paths Of A Hero
Summary: Hero or Vigilante? What is the difference? It used to be black and white, a boundary so sharp cut that many have found themselves in pieces just for approaching it. So why is it blurring now, as Eraserhead tries to keep his head low while unwittingly gaining 20+ kids, at least three Pro Hero friends and seems to have caught the eye of All Might himself, all the while his past is persistently trying to catch up to him?
"It's my capture weapon."
That strangled whisper was the only sentence that rang out in the elder's home while they did their best to calm the man down. Toshinori, still reeling from the fact that this man had known Yagi Toshinori when he'd been faced with All Might, immediately found his mind focusing on this piece of information even though he had no idea what to actually do with it.
Was it a confirmation on Eraserhead's identity?
Best not to jump to conclusions.
Besides, the man needed their attention now. The retired Hero had looked so strong when he'd first seen the man that his current state came as quite the shock. It took them nearly half an hour to finally calm him down, Yamada-kun having at some point wandered off to get the man some cold water and a blanket while Tsukauchi and Yagi reassured him that everything was alright.
When the man was finally calm and didn't look like he'd have a relapse into that panic attack, Tsukauchi dared to ask him to elaborate.
"Fifteen years ago, a UA student from General Education came to my work lab on the first day of the semester. He'd introduced himself as Aizawa Shouta and explained his plans to win the Sports Festival in order to join the Hero Course. He'd said he wanted a weapon that would work well with his Quirk, something that would help him keep his opponents far away if they're mutant types or help him bind the ones he can take down in close combat. He'd sounded so sure he'd win that I immediately asked him what he had in mind. That was the first time I've received a challenge in as long as I've been making support items."
"We are aware of Aizawa Shouta's fate, if you don't wish to relive those moments," All Might offered, only to get incredulous looks from his two companions.
Kronos, opposite him, snorted. "Never done a questioning before, have you, All Might? Every detail matters. If you've come all this way just so I can tell you about a tattered piece of cloth, you shouldn't have come at all. You've just caused me emotional turmoil and reawakened my mourning."
Toshinori flushed, feeling greatly chastised. "I apologize."
The man just snorted again. "Anyway, I kept seeing the kid practically every day in between his bouts of self-training so we can hash out the details. He had some very specific requirements for his support item. It was so simple in style yet the way he'd imagined using it was for defense, offense, detaining criminals and mobility. The more I listened to him, the more fascinated I became. The boy was completely driven by logic. He knew what he wanted. He'd even researched how he could get it. Together, we worked out all the possible kinks and, finally, I'd started working on this almighty support item. The result is the capture weapon whose piece you've brought me. A long scarf-like item, made of a special steel alloy woven with carbon nanofibers. Flexible, agile, heat and electricity resistant, fire resistant, water resistant, heavy enough to throw around but light enough to carry it around one's neck like an ordinary scarf, strong enough to be practically unbreakable and cuttable only to a specifically made knife, also requested by Sho-kun. Hard enough to fight with but soft to the touch so it can be used in rescue without harming the victims. And in perfect conjunction with a secondary telekinesis Quirk."
"Eraser doesn't have telekinesis," Toshinori heard Yamada mutter to himself from his side but decided to ignore it for now.
"It was harder to make and took longer than I expected, which is why I loved it all the more. Had to miss most of the Sports Festival just so that it would be done for when Sho-kun moves on into the Hero Course. If you know his fate, then you know it never happened." The three men tensely nodded, not interrupting. "That night, I fought with my all to save Sho-kun, but I simply wasn't enough. That bastard managed to gouge out my eyes and injure me enough that it was quite touch and go where my future mobility was at stake. Could have ended up paralyzed. I would have gladly accepted that fate, if only it meant those fuckers would have kept searching for Sho-kun."
Toshinori winced at the betrayal, rage, bitterness and venom in the man's voice. He tried to drown out the grief he heard. He's better off not realizing just how much this man regretted not being enough to save a student he'd clearly been fond of. Perhaps this hadn't been the smartest idea.
"When I'd recovered enough, I cleaned out my work space and left UA. Settled in here, mourned as well as I could. Tried not to hate Nezu, whose own paws were as tied as my hands were by the Commission. Lived a civilian life."
"When you cleared out your lab, did you perhaps take the capture weapon with you, or did you leave it behind? Sell it?" Naomasa asked, no doubt using his Quirk this whole time to tell if and when the man might have not been telling the truth. So far, the answer seems to be a big fat zero, which was good.
"I took it with me, of course. It was meant for Sho-kun and was literally the last thing of his that I had, even if it was never his. Do you realize I've never had children of my own?" He gestured around at his own house. "Not even a partner. I'd always thought I'd die alone. No family, just a few close coworkers that might have been friends. Then Sho-kun came and I saw him as my own son. I treated him as much. I think I was a father figure to him, too. Despite our short time together, we were close. Would you have left behind your only reminder of your only child, now dead? I don't think so."
"Then can you explain to us how your capture weapon seems to have ended up in the possession of a Vigilante?"
Kronos' face shuttered, for a moment, before he replied. "A few days after I settled here for good, someone broke into my house and stole it. It's not like I'd kept it in a safe or something. It was just lying around there. Could have been mistaken for an ordinary scarf. Nothing else was taken, though. Just that. Someone had known what they were after and had taken it. I have no idea who, though. I had no idea someone besides the two of us knew about it!"
"You say you have no idea who could have taken the weapon," Naomasa repeated and Toshinoari immediately tensed up. If Naomasa asked someone to repeat something, it means his Quirk caught a lie.
The old man hesitated for a second before sadness settled over his face. "I have no idea, but I have had hopes." Hopes that it had been Aizawa, no doubt. "But now, I have other hopes, ones that go along the lines of 'I hope he hadn't taken it'. Because whoever it was that may have been using my capture weapon, if you have a piece of it, then that person is definitely dead."
"I assure you," Present Mic said in a surprisingly cold and sharp voice. "That Eraserhead is very much alive."
Kronos paused at that. "Is that his name? Of this Vigilante you'd mentioned?"
"Yes."
"Oh." Kronos' face had this devastated expression on it for a second before he forcefully cleared it of all emotion. Toshinori felt for him. He'd done much the same after his mentor's death. "There's no way Aizawa Shouta would ever settle for a name like that."
"Eraserhead didn't name himself," Yamada replied to that, but the retired Hero just shook his head.
"I said settle, not come up with. Thanks for getting my hopes up, only for them to crash land. Now, if that is all, I'd like you all to leave me to mourn all over again in peace. You know the way out."
They didn't need more of a dismissal. "Do you think he was telling the truth?"
Naomasa shook his head mournfully. "Yeah, he was telling the truth. Though I have noted that he may have suspicions on who might have known about the capture weapon besides him and Aizawa Shouta and it is true that he'd hoped it was him who had taken it. Probably had thought of it as a sign that the boy was still alive, that he hadn' failed him. Must be hard, living with that guilt."
"I feel bad now," Toshinro had to admit. "Like we've reopened an old wound that may have only recently begun to heal."
"I'm more worried about what the NPSC and HPSC will do with this information," admitted Yamada-kun.
"I'm more worried about the implication that Eraserhead had gotten his hands on the capture weapon through utterly illegal means," the detective in their group countered. "Eraserhead's been hiding behind loopholes in the law for years now. If we have a single solid piece of evidence, we'll have to charge him. And things appear to be stacking up."
"Eraser would never actually do something illegal. We can't even prove if he has a Quirk! Eraser's always been good at hiding everything he does and how he does it out on the field. He leaves incident reports, sure, but he's never specified why people's Quirks suddenly stop working. For all we know, it could be that he talks them into believing their Quirks don't work!"
"You think he's convinced people to think he has the power to take away Quirks? Like some sort of psychology trick?" That sounded fascinating. Although too roundabout for someone so blunt and straightforward. Though, as unlikely as it may sound, it wasn't entirely impossible. Eraserhead was smart enough to use his opponents' minds against them. He only needed to say one suggestive thing and the mind would eat it up and convince itself and the body that it was true.
But then, the footage from USJ came to mind. Only a few cameras had survived, but it was enough to see portions of the fight. Eraserhead had never been close enough to one for it to catch if he'd said anything, except at the beginning, when he'd told Thirteen to protect the students. They can't tell if he'd said anything, so he might have, although with all that moving around, Toshinori wasn't sure if he'd stayed still enough to properly catch his breath, let alone chitchat.
And Shigaraki had been able to use his Quirk.
Kurogiri, too. That's how they escaped.
Shit. This was just getting more and more complicated. The more they thought they found on Eraser, the further they were from finding out any actual facts. It's like Eraserhead was actively leading them on faux trails when it was clear the man himself couldn't be bothered by what the police and the Commissions were up to. He probably won't even care until they find out his actual identity, but even that's questionable. Changing your appearance isn't very hard and Naruhata's known for having all sorts of dealings, including forged identity specialists. Eraser could just skip town and start anew. Change his image just the tiniest bit and go back to being a Vigilante. If he's bothered by that much, anyway.
"It's not off the table," Yamada-kun says with a shrug. "Look, my dudes. Compared to me, you two are novices when dealing with Eraser, especially you, Yagi-san. It's been fifteen years and no one's ever found a single solid fact about Eraser. We don't even know if black is his actual hair color! Facial recognition is no help, either, because those goggles cover his eyes, the bridge of his nose, his eyebrows and his cheekbones, all key points for the software. His hair covers a lot of his face so we don't even have a proper face and head shape to put in and his chin is more often than not buried in the capture weapon. Eraser moves around, he never stays in one place but revisits places at a random schedule. Naruhata and Tasomiya are just special in that he goes there more often and that things are all the more difficult for anyone searching for Eraser there because those people are fucking grateful for all he's done for them. He's not your run of the mill Vigilante. Eraser doesn't fool around. He's never left any DNA behind, he's never made a mistake."
"Didn't the Nomu draw blood at USJ?" Naomasa suddenly asks and Toshinori feels sick just remembering that day. The literal puddle of blood he'd found Eraser in, Nomu standing over him, ready to end him in an instance. "I think some was sent to the labs, along with Nomu's. Actually, All Might, I have something to talk with you about outside of Eraser's case."
"Huh?"
"It's serious," was all the detective said and Toshinori nodded, wondering what it could possibly be. "In the meantime, we all need to write a report on our ... 'findings'." A heavy sigh came from the man. "This is seriously ridiculous. Why now? Eraser's been out on the streets with no more than halfhearted efforts to bring him in for over a decade and yet now they want him arrested? I don't trust this. The Hero Commission seems to be up to something."
"You think the NPSC is in on it, too?" Warily asked the younger of the blonds.
Tsukauchi just shook his head. "No, we're all tools, here. At least that's the feeling I'm getting. This seems to be about Eraser directly and I don't know who he is or what he's done to garner their attention, but I kind of don't want the Hero Commission to get their hands on someone like Eraserhead. I just have a bad feeling about it."
"Why do you think that is?" The Number One Hero asked of his friend.
"You know Hawks is taking orders directly from the Commission on a daily basis and has been doing so for years, since the day his Hero training started?" Both blonds nod at that. "He's like their own personal puppet. He has no life outside of what they allow him to have. And he's been spotted trying to recruit Eraser more than once."
"Eraser never mentioned it to me," Mic commented. "Although there was this short span of time when he refused to come anywhere near me or Nem. We thought we did something to make him angry."
"He was probably just trying to make certain you're not the Commission's pawns."
"That would imply Eraserhead is actively in a standoff with one of the most important government bodies in the country," Toshinori pointed out, not really liking the thought of it. It could lead to an unsatisfactory conclusion that Eraserhead might actually be a national enemy and he didn't want to even think that.
"That's not even important. Why would they want him? Remember, this was before we even began speculating that he might have a Quirk-stopping Quirk. Why him?"
They all fell silent at that, neither blond knowing how to answer Naomasa's reasonable question. The silence stayed with them even when they got back into the car that would drive them back to UA, where Yamada and Yagi had plenty of work cut out for them as the students prepared for their week-long internships. Once they arrived, Yamada waved them goodbye as he rushed to meet up with Kayama, the two of them getting into a cab and no doubt going to check on Ingenium.
Toshinori's actually very much pissed that Eraserhead's the one being hunted and focused on when the Hero Killer: Stain was running around, hurting or mutilating Heroes in broad daylight. The latest incident in Hosu has greatly affected Iida-shounen. All Might wasn't close with the boy, but it was obvious, his change in behavior.
They should be focusing on catching an actual villain instead of pursuing a man who's never done anything other than help them.
(He remembers Eraser being on pretty good terms with Ingenium, friends, even. He wonders how the Vigilante was taking all of this, when he could not even comfort his friends or take comfort with them like how Yamada and Kayama were doing for each other. He wondered if Eraserhead will risk it to check up on the man in the hospital. He'd braved the Sports Festival and still managed to escape; a hospital should be easy peasy for him.)
"What is it that you wished to discuss, my friend?" All Might asks after he leads Naomasa into an empty office. These were generally used for one on one parent-teacher meetings or if students had questions. Teachers generally did their work in the teacher's lounge, except the homeroom teachers, who had their own offices and could do their work there instead. Power Loader was often forced to take that route because his new protege, Hatsume Mei, knew no concept of personal or appropriate time and the man didn't want to bother others on their hard earned breaks. Sensoji stuck with his office, too, but that's because he's never quite managed to fit into the camaraderie that always fills up the teachers lounge when they were all there.
That and he and Midnight seem to have a bone to pick with each other.
The only other staff member besides Nezu and Recovery Girl that has a space of his own was Hound Dog, though Yagi doesn't see much of him. That might change, now that things are getting heated between the League of Villains and Stain's most recent activities.
"I know this may be distressing to you, my friend - and hell, I shouldn't even be bringing this to you with the case still open and investigation ongoing, but I had a feeling this was just something I had to inform you about, All Might." The graveness in Tsukauchi's voice let All Might know just how serious this is. A bad feeling settled into the pits of what was left of his stomach. "It's about that guy you've fought at USJ, Nomu." He shuddered just remembering that guy, that creature. It had been like he wasn't human at all.
"What about him?" He asked warily and wearily, already knowing there was no way he was going to be able to relax after this. Not for a long, long while, if ever.
It turns out he was right, as the nightmare Tsukauchi has discovered unfolds before him.
He knows what this means; there was only one explanation.
He'd failed. He'd fucking failed, goddamn it.
All For One still lives.