A/N: I only just realized that I never cross-posted this from AO3! *derp* There's currently 5 chapters, I'll be uploading them all fairly quickly, and just fair warning: IF YOU STAN ENDEAVOR DON'T BOTHER READING CAUSE THERE IS NO ENDEAVOR REDEMPTION HERE.
There may be some abuse victims who like to see an abuser become a genuinely good person, and learn from their mistakes.
I am not in that category.
Child abusers should die. Redemption unnecessary. You fuck a child up for life, you don't DESERVE a happy ending.
I also hate Mineta as a character, as a girl he makes me intensely uncomfortable. I have yet to address him in-fic, and am considering just pretending he never existed to begin with.
So if he's your favorite character, probably also don't bother here.
Beyond that, thanks for checking out the fic! Hope you enjoy!
Someone's feeding the strays around Shouta's apartment. It's not unusual in itself, it seems like half a city's worth of stray cats camp out all around these streets, it's why Shouta moved here, but it is unusual that he hasn't seen any sign of the person.
It's possible that between his latest batch of problem children, and the long hours he's been pulling on a human trafficking case that he's just missing them, but something in his gut says that even if he was fresh he wouldn't find any sign of his mysterious cat-feeding neighbor.
He's learned to listen to his gut, after so long working in Underground Heroics.
So he borrows some cameras from the school with Principal Nedzu's permission, and sets them up where most of the cats congregate.
The cats get fed.
Absolutely nothing shows up on the camera feeds.
Or, rather, food shows up without any sign of how it got there.
He doesn't even see it floating anywhere, which rules out Hagakure-chan.
The cats keep getting fed, Shouta's mysterious neighbor keeps not showing up, and as both his jobs get more and more demanding, Shouta stops worrying about it.
Three days later, the entire human trafficking ring he'd been hunting turns up dead. The evidence for their crimes is printed out and left in a neat stack before the corpses.
Six terrified children huddle close together in the boss's office, where they've been waiting ever since they made a desperate phone call that brought the police out and Shouta along with them.
Preliminary investigation says the traffickers were killed with a combination of some sort of lightning quirk and a sword.
The stray cats clamor at his door for food when he gets home, but Shouta's exhausted and doesn't (quite) realize what happened. He feeds them in an exhausted stupor, collapsing into bed as soon as he extricates himself from them.
The next morning, when he gets ready to head to the school, there are no cats screaming at his door.
They've been fed, he knows, without even checking his cameras.
Six steps down the hallway, he remembers the night before.
A vigilante is feeding my cats. He thinks, dazed, and he already wants to go back to bed.
It's a complete accident, when he stumbles over his vigilante cat-feeder.
He's a few streets away from his apartment, walking a woman home after she gave her statement - he doesn't have to do it, but they know each other a bit from when they'd run into each other taking stray cats to the vet, and she found a new kitten that she thinks might have a quirk and Principal Nedzu has a vested interest in that sort of thing so-
They turn the corner onto her street, and he gets only a quick glance - black hair, male, teenager, maybe older than his own kids but not by much-
And then he's gone, a flicker so quick it nearly leaves an after-image that quickly fades before the evening sun.
A cat mewls plaintively, poking at the half-filled bowl in offence.
"Aww, do you want some food?" Amiya-san coos, crouching down to scratch the cat behind the ears, and Shouta realizes she never even saw the teenager.
Of course it's another problem child, he grouses to himself, because these days everything seems to come back to kids.
There should be a rule against vigilante mass-murders also being children.
Maybe he can convince Principal Nedzu to make one.
He tries not to wonder why traffickers as he gets ready to go back home, but he's seen enough of the darkness of humanity to already have a good idea.
The traffickers were targeting children, after all.
Somehow Shouta thinks that 'revenge', while the obvious motive, isn't quite right.
He has no idea what else it can be though.
He doesn't report anything.
Not yet.
He needs a name at the very least, is what he tells himself.
More people turn up dead, more evidence printed out and neatly stacked before their corpses, more children making statements to the police.
With or without their parents.
It is, apparently, not just human traffickers.
If anything, Shouta begins to think the targets are child groomers. A father who hit his kid was overlooked in favor of his brother, who was a bit more interested in other things - according to Aika-chan, he was just teaching her to be a 'proper housewife'.
Shouta doesn't feel as bothered by the murder as he probably should, but Aika-chan was so earnest, asking who could teach her right if her uncle was dead and-
No, he's not bothered at all.
She's been moved in with her mother's parents for now, and an investigation into her mother's death has been launched, her father's entire family also under observation, but Shouta can't help but wonder at the distinction.
In what world is hitting a child okay, but sexually harassing them isn't?
His vigilante's drawn a line, and Shouta doesn't understand its placement.
He wonders how the vigilante found out about Aika-chan. About all the children, really.
It's not like one man abusing his niece has an entire organization with dozens of members for information to leak from.
Three more cats in his neighborhood have developed quirks too.
He wonders if it's related.
Or maybe it's the vigilante's quirk they got wrong? The lightning's rather unmistakable, but it was only that one time with the traffickers - he could have had help. Maybe his quirk is something to do with animals, cats, and he's using them to spy?
Shouta should report it, but…
The Commission would probably take away the cats as part of the investigation, and never mind how much he wouldn't like that, Principal Nedzu would throw a fit.
Shouta likes his ability to sleep in the staff room too much to take that risk.
That's all it is.
The press finds out about the vigilante eventually, of course.
Shouta's amazed they kept it quiet for so long, though that may be more the vigilante's doing than himself or the police. The boy's very… subtle.
Or as subtle as a room full of corpses can get, at any rate.
Six more cats have developed 'quirks', and Amiya-san is starting to get worried.
Shouta's going to need to do something soon, if he doesn't want it reported.
With the press report though, comes danger.
Shouta's not really surprised, two weeks later, to find signs of a fight at their next neatly-made stack of papers.
When you tell a scumbag that people like him are being hunted, most of them wise up.
The fight doesn't show any sign of the vigilante being injured, though there's a lot of scorch marks.
The power grid is also down for the entire block.
Shouta's reconsidering his vigilante's quirk again, and he's not sure he likes the possibilities.
The press of course, makes a very big deal of it, and suddenly he's removed from the case.
Or, not perhaps 'removed', but there's certainly a big clamor for one of the limelight heroes to take over, someone loud and flashy who will give them press conferences and updates instead of just dropping off reports to the police and walking away.
It's been a while since Shouta had to interact with a limelight outside of UA.
He'd almost forgotten how annoying it is to have them steamroll into his cases, ignore all his notes and experience, and tell him to scram.
Steampunk clearly doesn't recognize him as Aizawa Shouta, UA teacher, and he could play that up, use the school's prestige to stay on the case, but…
Well maybe this'll free him up to investigate on his own.
Steampunk's a good hero, but even a fool could tell he's not the kind of person who should be working a case like this. The kid's too subtle, and limelights are awful with subtle, barring a few exceptions.
Kami-sama he hopes his own problem children have learned at least a thing or two from his logical ruses.
Underground Heroes would have things so much easier if the limelights knew at least the bare definition of subtlety.
Either way, he cedes the case with (almost) good grace, and goes back to his apartment. Maybe if he stakes out the feeding grounds himself, he might find his newest problem child.
The second time he stumbles over his vigilante cat-feeder, it's quite literal. He's rushing out the door, it's bullshit-o'clock in the morning, there's been an emergency alert on the hero network, and he stumbles over the boy as he tries to leave his apartment.
He rolls to his feet, spinning around, and meets glowing red eyes framed by black hair.
Shouta gets home, exhausted and dead on his feet from that emergency call, to find a package on his doorstep, a blank envelope left on top.
Something about the doorstep, about the package, about- about the emergency alert, just feels important, but for the life of him Shouta can't figure out why.
He was so exhausted, being woken up by the alarm, he doesn't even remember getting to the station.
He feels even worse now, so he just goes to unlock the door, already kicking the package closer to it when-
"I didn't lock it?" he asks, squinting suspiciously at the easy-turning handle.
Shouta's no longer quite so certain it was exhaustion that had him forgetting his entire trip to the station.
He calls Hizashi, then stuffs the phone back in his pocket as he eases open the door.
He doesn't say anything, and thankfully his coworker doesn't either, as he carefully sweeps his apartment.
No one's in.
Nothing looks like it's been disturbed.
The three cats who live with him mewl contentedly though, so he knows someone came through.
Normally Sakura at least would be begging for scraps, if she goes more than three hours without being personally fed.
It normally works out with his insomnia, and it's not like she can't just eat out of the bowl, but she's a very social lady.
The way she rolls over, chirruping as she bares her belly, tells him someone's fed her and recently.
He kicks the package the rest of the way in and shuts the door. Puts the phone on speaker and tosses it to the couch.
"Got an unaddressed package," he says as he carefully picks it up and carries it to the table, "gonna open it and see what it is. Someone fed my cats."
Hizashi curses, calls him names, and demands he waits for a bomb squad.
Shouta ignores it all, carefully opening the package.
It's a box of medical supplies.
He tells this to Hizashi, just to get him to stop panicking, and picks up the blank letter.
Your cat's a bully. Sakura, right?, it says, written in pink.
Somehow, Shouta gets the feeling the message means more than what it says. He reads it off to Hizashi, but neither of them have any good ideas as to what it means.
Shouta hangs up before his coworker can worry at him anymore, and takes the supplies back to his bathroom.
Now that he's looking through them, he can tell some of his stuff was used.
Used and put back precisely how he left it.
It's a little unsettling, but…
Shouta's worked with enough abused children to know that sometimes they just do that without thinking.
If your parents don't know you touched anything, they can't punish you for it.
It's uncomfortable to be on the other end of that sort of behavior, but…
The fact that his newest problem child felt safe enough with him to inform him of what he took like that makes Shouta feel… not better, really, said problem child is still murdering people, but.
Well.
It's just nice to know that his vigilante isn't afraid Shouta's going to hurt him, is all.
Shouta starts by leaving med kits around the areas he knows his problem child uses to feed the cats.
It takes a couple tries to find a place the cats can't reach them, because it seems like half the cat population in his neighborhood can walk on walls now, but he manages eventually.
Once he's sure the supplies don't get touched by any overly-curious four-legged strays, he starts to leave other things.
He gets the feeling his problem child doesn't have a home, so blankets and clothes and winter layers get left behind too. He doesn't leave food, one because the cats will probably get creative for it and two because if his vigilante can feed a neighborhood's worth of cats he'd better be able to feed himself or Shouta's going to be having words with him-
He also leaves notes asking if the vigilante wouldn't mind not murdering people, surely he can just turn them in-
The notes get left behind.
Shouta gets the feeling they are being read and then deliberately ignored, but it's hard to say for certain because they're always exactly how he left them, looking completely untouched.
When he stuffed one into the next basket of medical supplies, he found the cats using it as scrap to play with.
He still gets the feeling it was read before it was dropped to them.
In class, Todoroki-kun asks if the vigilante has killed any heroes.
It takes Shouta by surprise, though he doesn't show it. Just gives a vaguely-interested hum, waiting to see if his student will elaborate.
He doesn't, but The Problem Chil- no, he should use Midoriya-kun in class, even if he's right he doesn't need Midnight telling him off again for slipping-
Midoriya-kun answers in Todoroki's stead.
"That's a good point! Some heroes, when they have kids, they push those kids to be heroes too right? Does the vigilante consider that grooming, or is it different somehow? It can't be a purely s-s-sexual thing, b-because of Tamaki-kun…" Midoriya trails off, blushing and uncomfortable, and Shouta sighs.
These kids, honestly.
Todoroki-kun's question doesn't leave him though, and in a fitful night of insomnia Shouta writes the letter that is probably his biggest (best) mistake:
He reiterates the question and Midoriya's follow-up, and asks for an answer.
Three days later, with no sign that his letter has ever been read, he opens his door to find a teenager covered in fresh burns.
In the background, the news reports Todoroki Enji's death.
The papers left before his corpse were tragically burned in an accidental fire, but copies were found at three different police stations.
Another copy is held in shaky arms, quickly dropped as the teenager falls into Shouta's chest.
He treats the burns as best he can and carefully re-orders the report.
He reads it.
He doesn't think he regrets leaving that letter half as much as he should, even as he curses himself for a fool.
How many months has he looked Todoroki Shouto right in the eye and never once realized it was a scar-!
Midoriya knows, a quiet part of him realizes.
Bakugo does too, he thinks after another moment.
His explosions always are more force than heat, when he's fighting Todoroki.
Shouta always assumed it was because breaking Todoroki-kun's stance made it harder for him to control his ice.
Now he wonders.
He glances over at a groan from his patient-slash-problem child, and finds Sakura batting at the kid's hair.
Eyes slit open, a faint red glow peeking out before fading away to leave black eyes blinking up at him.
"Well, Problem Child," Shouta starts, because he needs this kid to know exactly what he is, "since I'm now an accessory to murder you'd better be giving me a name to call you by."
Confusion, hesitation, fear, all flicker through the teenager's eyes, before they go blank.
"Uchiha Sasuke."
"Aizawa Shouta." he responds, just as dry, and the kid nearly cracks a smile.
By nearly, really, it's more that his eye twitched, but Shouta's sure he read it right.
He sighs.
"When was the last time you went to school?" he continues, because really, at this point he'd like all his problem children in one place, thanks.
That flicker of fear disappears entirely, replaced by typical teenage panic.
Shouta grins at the kid, a little too wide, just to make sure he knows he's screwed.
Uchiha Sasuke gulps, and Shouta does his best to sound very magnanimous as he says, "It'll wait until your burns are healed, of course."
Now what to say to Principal Nedzu… the rat will likely realize what happened immediately of course, but he's fairly sure that won't be an issue if he presents it right...