Threads of Fate

by ConstellationBrotherhood

Maria is a simple girl with a simple way of life: exercise her quirk when no one is looking, and go anywhere she wishes to with her self-made friend by her side. She never had a need to really connect with human society ever since running away from home… But all of that changes when her friend suggests moving back to Japan, their country of origin.

2. Chapter 2: Silver Lady

"This neighbourhood has been consistently robbed during the past week?"

Of all the reasons Aizawa could think of being flagged down for, he hadn't expected something this irrationally petty.

" Yes! " The man who had called for him, who had introduced himself as Miya Jurou, was fairly unremarkable in appearance, sporting a portly figure and a mop of black hair that seemed constantly glued to his forehead by a sheen of sweat. Perhaps he was aware of this to an extent, and he was making up for it with all the bluster packed in that one word. "Didn't you hear me the first time?!"

The unnecessarily booming volume made Aizawa wince. "Shouting is irrational. I can hear you perfectly fine," he grumbled, waving down the increasingly crimson man before he could do something stupid. "But I need you to start from the beginning, and explain calmly this time."

Much to his dismay, Miya seemed to have stopped listening after "beginning", judging from the vein bulging anew on the side of his neck as he began ranting exactly like he had a minute prior. "I told you, I was coming back from work early 'cause one of my neighbours heard something in my house, and I live all by myself, so I obviously had to go check it out! I wasn't going to take any chances! And when I got back home," He gestured furiously at his own place of residence, "I found out that my kitchen had been raided! And it's not just me! Nearly everyone else in this goddamn neighbourhood had this mystery thief pawing through their pantry, but for some reason, this… this guy keeps coming back to my house! I don't know why, but I've had enough! I want him to stop!" he yelled, both hands gripping his hair like he was trying to hold onto the remaining shreds of his sanity.

Aizawa felt an eye twitch. For once in his life, he found himself wishing that Hizashi was here, if only to foist this civilian off onto the boisterous, perpetual sunshine of a man. But too bad that he had to choose this day of all days to not pester Aizawa, leaving him to suck in a calming breath as he finally got out the one question that had been plaguing him since the beginning of this encounter.

"Have you tried notifying the police about this?" Aizawa asked with forced calm. "They are better equipped to deal with petty thieves like this."

"Of course I have! They're the first ones I went to, but they're completely useless!"

The pro hero narrowed his gaze at the man's visage. Nothing about his countenance or passionate words indicated an outright lie, but Aizawa didn't let his guard down just yet. He knew civilians had the tendency to cling onto even the worst exaggerations a stressed brain could concoct. "And what did they have to say about the incidents?"

The man threw his hands up in the air. His lips were pulled back as if he wasn't sure whether to show a grimace or a mirthless grin. "That there was nothing they could do! Said they couldn't find any evidence of a break-in, that, that there was no fingerprints or anything like that. Then they told me to ask around if…" At this point, Miya ran a hand down the side of his face, looking disgusted with the mere memory. "They told me to check if it isn't just a neighbour's kid pulling a prank on me. A kid. Feh, can you believe that?!"

Aizawa swallowed back a sigh, desperately wishing for the umpteenth time that he had thought to wear a watch today. Normally, he disliked wearing trinkets on account of them getting in the way of hero work, but as he watched Miya rave on while swelling with mounting indignation, it was all he could do not to fish out his phone to check the time, lest he set Miya off even more.

"Well then, do you have any proof that someone is breaking in? Other than verbal accounts from your neighbours," Aizawa clarified as the man opened his mouth.

"Yes! Yes! Here." He fumbled around with something in his pocket before fishing out what appeared to be a tangled bundle of wires and jagged glass shards. "Look at this."

Miya dumped it onto Aizawa before he could properly process what he was looking at. It was only thanks to his many years of pro hero work that Aizawa barely caught it between his fingertips, before it could slip through the grated drain under his feet. He shot a half-lidded glare at the civilian (which went unnoticed) before squinting down at the mystery object. It was… "A camera?" he murmured, carefully thumbing through the mess.

"Yes!" Miya said. "After the police wouldn't help, I set up a hidden camera to catch the thief in the act two days ago, but it got smashed! It didn't even get a glimpse of that scumbag!"

"And this thief only takes food? No valuables, no money?"

"Yes."

"But no one has seen this person at all?"

"Nope," Miya sighed.

Aizawa lapsed into silence, absentmindedly fondling with the broken camera as he mulled over the information he had. By all rights, this was a simple case of theft that should be the local police's problem instead of his, but something about this incident was insistently nagging at him. Why go through all that trouble to conceal their presence, to the point that no one has seen even a hair of them, only to steal food and nothing else? The effort put forth here felt too much for the perpetrator to be a mere homeless man desperate for a meal, yet the stolen goods was too meagre to paint even the most amateur villain as the culprit.

'Hmph. Seems like this isn't as petty as I thought it was, after all.'

"Is there anything you can do?" Miya asked anxiously when a minute of silence passed. "I'm at my wit's end here, and I don't know who else to turn to!"

After another glance at the broken camera in his hand, Aizawa finally came to a decision. "I can help you catch this thief," he said aloud. Miya's face lit up. "But in order to do that, I'm afraid I may need your cooperation."

"Of course, I'm willing to do anything!"

The pro hero nodded. There was a tiny voice at the back of his mind whispering that Miya might be a bit too willing to help, but Aizawa brushed it off. If he wanted to be done with this sooner than later, he'd have to make haste. "Good. First, I'll need to borrow your house…"

=0=

The plan was simple.

Once Miya got over his initial shock at what Aizawa was proposing, he became more or less receptive to the rest of his plan, although the consequences of letting this thief get away did not go unsaid. "This had better work," the man warned, wagging a finger in Aizawa's face. "If I lose anything because you're using me as bait—"

Irritably, Aizawa waved the finger away. "There will be no problems if you follow my instructions. If you're done wasting time now, hurry up and get into position."

The grumbling man stalked off, and Aizawa hastened to get himself in a vantage spot between two houses opposite Miya's, perched atop a roof and hidden behind a satellite dish. Keeping his gaze fixed on Miya's residence, he could make out the man entering his house and leaving after several minutes, making a big show of locking his front gate before crossing over to the same house Aizawa was hiding out in, staying hidden behind a wall. He gave Aizawa a brief thumbs-up.

So far, so good. He returned a minuscule nod before shifting his gaze back to the house. If what Miya had told him was accurate, early afternoon should roughly be the time for this thief to strike. He had initially wanted to catch the thief in the act himself, but when Miya had mentioned his quirk — "Flytrap" — in an offhand comment about his many failed attempts at catching the thief, Aizawa found it too useful to pass up on.

Minutes crawled by. The sun's rays burned down on his back, pricking his skin, but Aizawa didn't move so much as a muscle, lest he blink and miss the thief. Miya was similarly still in his position behind the wall; he didn't even look like he was breathing much. 'At least he's invested in this,' Aizawa thought. 'But how long are we going to have to stay like this?'

A second later, he got his answer.

From his perch on the roof, a minute movement in the corner of Miya's house caught his eye. Squinting, Aizawa could faintly make out the grassy ground rippling unnaturally, and while he was too far to see the exact sequence of events occurring, he could make out a small figure wriggling out of the ground. 'Gotcha.'

Aizawa kept himself tense, ready to move at a moment's notice. Whoever the thief was, they pressed their head against the wall for some reason, staying still for several seconds before abruptly falling forward into the house.

'Now!'

Aizawa sprang into action, jumping off the roof and running at full speed towards the spot that the thief had broken through. It was unfortunate that he had been too far to be able to identify the exact quirk being used — Phasing? Disintegration? — but it didn't matter. One leap over the front gate, he raced towards the last place he had seen the thief, where nothing looked out of the ordinary. No signs of forced entry, no signs of life, nothing, but that didn't stop him. There was a window looking directly into the kitchen area, and through it Aizawa spied a cloaked figure hunched over the plate of fruit that Miya had left out on purpose. Their bottom half was a whirlwind of stringy material that kept them hovering above the ground; they most likely were aware of the Flytrap quirk in use, or at the very least, had suspicions.

The thief didn't react to Aizawa lifting his bangs with one hand, back facing him as their head bent low to presumably eat the fruit, but the moment his eyes flashed red, they toppled forward with a yelp as their body abruptly returned to normal. Head banging against the marble kitchen counter, the thief dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks.

Aizawa wasted no time sliding open the window (which Miya had so helpfully left unlocked for this purpose) and perched himself on the edge as he silently observed the thief that had been tormenting the neighbourhood for a whole week.

Small. That was the first thing he noticed; their childlike frame stuck to the floor on its side, fully wrapped in a worn coat as it thrashed about with reckless abandon and gave high-pitched whines, not unlike a trapped animal. He could see brief flashes of curly hair as their head tossed about, but beyond that, it was impossible to tell age or gender.

"Hey! Quit it. You won't be able to use your quirk so long as I'm here, so I suggest you save your energy," Aizawa barked, finally grabbing the thief's attention. They whipped their head around, the flimsy hood falling off to finally reveal their face. What he saw made his normally stoic front falter for a second.

The thief wasn't childlike. They were a child. Or more accurately, she was a child, with eyes wide as saucers that stared up at him with wild panic, puffs of laboured breaths escaping her agape mouth. Her forehead had a diagonal gash cutting across it (most likely from her earlier fall) that had rivulets of blood trickling down, plastering her brown locks against her sallow skin in the sticky liquid.

The sight sent an automatic pang of sympathy through him. Aizawa had to push it down a second later, though, in order to let his more objective side take over the situation when the girl began struggling again. "Hey, hey, stop that. You're just going to hurt yourself," he chided, carefully hopping off the window sill. His feet thankfully remained free from Miya's quirk; perhaps the civilian had anticipated him entering the premises and left the spot beneath the window free from his Flytrap. Slowly crouching down, he placed two fingers on the girl's neck, pressing down until she had no choice but to still herself. Vividly green eyes stared up at him with naked suspicion.

"You're not getting up from there any time soon, so keep still," he repeated in a bland voice. The girl glared at him, lips pulling back like a rabid dog as she let out a surprisingly deep growl. "Stop. None of that, unless you don't want me to help you get out of there."

Her head drew back, looking somewhat uncertain but not entirely void of suspicion.

"Only your cloak is stuck to the ground, right?" The girl glanced down at herself, then she perked up in realisation. "Exactly. So if you'll let me help you, I can help you sit up and tend to your wound."

He didn't wait for her response. The moment he grabbed her by the armpits, he could feel her tense up under his grip, but he didn't let that slow him as he pulled her up and out of her cloak. The task was easier than expected, thanks to her lightweight frame— almost alarmingly so, but all thoughts about that fled his mind the moment he got a good look at the girl half-curled in his arms.

Stick-thin frame. Clad in a dirtied white dress. Bandaged stumps where arms were supposed to be. Combined with the still bleeding gash, the whole image was the epitome of "pathetic", and he couldn't help himself; Aizawa let his eyes blink shut, cutting off the effects of his quirk. "What happened to you?" he murmured, one hand reaching down to examine the smudged bandages. Or at least, he tried to, but the moment his fingers grazed the rough surface of the gauze, the girl's head jerked down with sudden aggression. He barely managed to snatch his hand away before her teeth snapped around empty air.

"Hey, no biting!" he snapped.

"Don't touch!" The squeaky voice suddenly piping up made him raise an eyebrow in surprise, but he was soon occupied with preventing the girl from flinging herself out of his arms and making her injury worse. "Don't touch!"

Aizawa tried to quiet the girl down, but she kept chanting those two words in a petulant fit, ignoring him entirely. Finding himself running out of options, he quickly fished out the only thing in his pocket — a plain handkerchief — and pressed it against the gash. Her screaming was cut off with a pained yelp.

"Ssshh." Aizawa didn't have the first clue as to how to calm a hysterical child — especially not one as young and frail-looking as this one — but he had no choice but to follow his instincts and tighten his arms around her, rubbing one hand up and down her back while keeping the other firmly on her forehead. "Breathe. You're going to be okay."

The girl's muscles remained taut in his grip, but thankfully didn't try to squirm away again even as she shot him a look of resentment. "Hurts."

Both eyebrows were raised now. "Are you pouting at me now?" he asked in disbelief.

The girl's cheeks somehow puffed out even more, sunken as they were, and Aizawa couldn't help letting a snort slip out. "Of course it hurts. That's why I'm trying to help you," he said gruffly. The girl looked taken aback by this. "If you could stop fighting me on this, then I can bring you to a doctor and have that looked at. I need you to trust me on this."

"… Really?"

"Yes. I won't waste my breath making promises I can't keep, that's irrational," he said.

Aizawa thought that he had made himself clear enough, but the girl only seemed even more confused than ever. Her eyes darted between his face and the window behind him, her cracked lips pressed tightly together as she stared unblinkingly at him, seemingly contemplating something.

Eventually, the stretching silence began to wear on his nerves. "Well?" Aizawa asked again, eyes narrowing. "I don't have all day. You have two choices: come with me, or deal with the police, by which anything they decide to do will be out of my hands. What's it going to be?"

He probably made it sound worse than it actually was; it wasn't like the police could actually do anything to a child like her worse than placing her in foster care or under a guardian, but his words seemed to have done the trick. Her eyes widening, they darted to the window once more before settling on him. The girl's expression turned resolute, and she opened her mouth…

"Did you catch him?!"

The front door flew open with a tremendous bang, causing both Aizawa and especially the girl in his arms to jump. Miya stalked into the kitchen, and Aizawa realised too late that he had completely forgotten about the civilian.

"So that's the guy, huh?" Miya yelled. With a crisp snap of his fingers, he dispersed the effects of his quirk and began storming towards the girl, who squeaked in alarm and tried to press herself into Aizawa. "You little…! Do you know the stress you caused me this whole week, brat?!"

The girl was full-on panicking again, whimpering and scrabbling to crawl away from the clearly furious stranger. Crap! Aizawa wrapped an arm around her in a vain attempt to soothe her, feeling her frightened panting against his chest. "Miya-san, wait!" he warned as his eyes began to glow red again.

It happened quickly. Before Miya had a chance to heed his words, before Aizawa could fully activate his quirk, the girl sucked in a deep breath and bellowed:

"BEATRICE!"

It was then Aizawa realised that the girl wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the window — at someone — behind him.

By the time it clicked in his mind, there was a tremendous ripping noise behind him. Something pierced through his clothing and into his back, pricking the skin like a needle. Aizawa tried to twist around to face the attacker, abandoning the bloodied handkerchief to grab his capture scarf, but a strange numbing sensation began to crawl up his spine. His body slumped forward against his will. "Damnit…"

Miya yelped, stumbling back onto his rear and gaping at something behind him. "Wh-what's that?!" he screamed, pointing a shaking finger at it. "Get out! Get out of my house!"

"Bebe!" the girl cried out in a watery voice. Aizawa felt himself being shoved to the side, his head colliding hard against the wooden floor without resistance. The girl jumped off his limp body and into someone's arms.

"You."

Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he felt an absolutely palpable wave of fury slam into him, but it was useless when his limbs still felt too leaden to move. He heard a subtle shift of movement behind, and his breath hitched. Was he really going to die like this? Back turned, unable to see who his attacker even was? 'Damnit, move! Move!'

His body didn't respond. There was a step taken towards him, and his heart dropped, but then an intervention came from the most unexpected of sources. "Bebe, let's go! I don't wanna stay here anymore!" the girl's voice yelled.

The footsteps halted. "What? But that man, he did this to you, didn't he?"

"I just wanna go, please! My head hurts…" Her voice cracked near the end.

Another shift. "… Alright, baby. I'll get you somewhere safe, okay?"

The reassuring coos were so close to him, so infuriatingly close, and yet he couldn't do anything to stop them as the voices receded into the distance. Miya stared after whoever had left, trembling like a leaf, and he didn't move a muscle until Aizawa managed to get through gritted teeth, "Miya-san… Get… me up…"

"Huh? Oh! Oh, um, right," Miya muttered distractedly. He inched towards Aizawa, keeping a wary eye on the kitchen window as he carefully lifted the pro hero up like he was a bomb about to detonate. "Should I, uh, call an ambulance or…?"

Aizawa winced as his spinal cord burst into a firestorm of prickling, his arm shooting back to gingerly probe the area. At least this meant that whatever he was injected with was already wearing off. "No need," he grunted, kneading away the irritating sensation. "I… I can manage."

To prove that, Aizawa forced himself to his feet, one shaky hand gripping onto the countertop for support. His muscles were screaming in protest, especially his back, but he eventually got himself back on both feet. The first thing he did was check the wall behind him. Before, he heard something akin to the sound of ripping threads, but the only thing to have been ripped open was the kitchen wall. Aizawa, in mute disbelief, stepped forward and ran a hand along the jagged edges. A giant rip ran from top to bottom of the wall, so violently torn through like paper. He remembered the stringy whirlwind beneath the girl from before. 'Is this caused by the same quirk?'

Only one way to find out. "Miya-san, tell me everything that happened," Aizawa said, making the other man jump. "Who was that?"

"I, uh…" Miya cleared his throat. "Erm, there was this… silver lady? I-I think she turned the wall into string? And she tore through it, took the kid, and r-ran."

His brows furrowed. "Silver lady? What do you mean by that?"

"Ah… I-I don't know. Not sure if it was even human, to be honest," Miya admitted, his shoulders slumping. "It sounded like a woman, and she was all silvery. I don't know what else I can say."

"What about clothes? Any distinctive features?" Aizawa continued to press for more information, but Miya didn't seem capable of producing anything else substantial. No eyes, silvery cloak, slender figure… Given the existence of mutant quirks, that wasn't much help at all.

"Um… Eraserhead, right?" Miya spoke up when Aizawa didn't speak up for a full minute. "Was that a… a villain?"

"I can't be too sure without talking to them for a while longer," Aizawa replied. There were just too many possibilities; mutant quirk using a child as bait, a case of kidnapping, this "silver lady" being nothing more than an illusion, etcetera. "I need to track them down…"

Aizawa stopped over to scoop up the abandoned cloak and bloodstained handkerchief.

"And this should help me do that," he finished.

"But what if they come back?" Miya insisted. The man's attitude was a far cry from fifteen minutes ago; he still looked terribly shaken up by this "silver lady", trembling, gripping and releasing the hem of his shirt. Aizawa couldn't find enough of a care in him to calm him down, though. Not after Miya caused this entire debacle. "What if they want to finish the job?!"

"They won't." He didn't know why, but Aizawa felt fairly confident in his assertion. "And even if they do, it only makes it all the more important to make haste and find them before they find you." He nodded at the ruined wall. "You'll have to bear with that for now. I'll try to keep you in the loop, but I can't promise that it won't take long. Now, if you'll excuse me."

Stepping around the stammering man, Aizawa made his way out of the house, tightly holding onto the only things the little girl left behind: the tattered cloak, and the handkerchief he had used to staunch her wound. A glance at the horizon told him that it was already mid-afternoon. If he could make it back to UA, then perhaps he wouldn't be too late to recruit the one quirk perfect for tracking a person down.

=0=

"Are you sure this is the place, Ryo-san?"

The Hound Hero gave a sharp jerk of his head. "Of course I am! The child's scent leads here." "Here" referred to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city, its yellowing, rusted walls and dilapidated windows giving it an ominous vibe against the sinking sun. The front entrance was laid wide open, probably due to the doors being eroded and eaten away by the elements. "But why did you ask me for help and not the police?" Hound Dog barked, giving a vicious scowl that was only partially hidden by the muzzle he wore. "UA can't have its faculty members leave school grounds whenever they please for one missing child! There is security to consider, you know!"

"I know that," Aizawa said irritably. "I already explained that it would have taken more time for the police to track her down. Time she might not have, may I remind you, considering that she fled with a head injury."

"And I suppose that's why you requested I follow you as well?"

Aizawa nodded at the third member of their impromptu rescue party: Recovery Girl. She stepped up towards the warehouse, eyeing Aizawa with a hint of mirth in her smile. "I always knew you had a soft spot for your students, but I didn't think you'd go this far for one that's not even yours," she chuckled, patting his leg as Aizawa bristled defensively. "Now, now, enough of that. There is a little girl in there that needs our help."

He frowned. "Yes, well… I also mentioned that there is a second person in there. I'm not sure what her quirk is exactly, but she may have a weapon on her. Some kind of a short-term muscle relaxant, maybe."

Recovery Girl raised an eyebrow at him. "You're not sure?"

"No. She got me from behind, so I didn't get to see her. All I've got is that she's a 'silver lady'," he said flatly, the quotation marks palpable in her words. The other two traded confused glances, which he ignored. "Which is another reason for why I needed you," He nodded at Hound Dog, "as backup just in case she turns out to be more dangerous than we thought."

Hound Dog grunted in acknowledgment. After a quick scan over the dark interior of the warehouse, Aizawa cautiously made his way inside, with Recovery Girl behind him and Hound Dog bringing up the rear. The interior of the warehouse was just as dreary as the exterior, if not more so. Stacks and stacks of cargo boxes lined the ground in an erratic pattern, with unidentifiable debris littering the ground beneath them. The only sound to accompany the trio was the crunch of glass under their feet. Beyond that was silence so heavy and tangible that it could be sliced apart with a knife.

Aizawa kept himself on high guard. He didn't wish to have a repeat of earlier events (his back still had a phantom ache from before), and with how dim their surroundings were despite the glaring sun rays filtering through the mouldy windows, it wouldn't be hard for this Silver Lady to ambush any one of them.

Or it would have been, had he asked anyone else other than Hound Dog to accompany him for this case.

Hound Dog's head snapped up in an instant, as if hearing something that neither one of his colleagues could. Lips pulled back so far that the gum was visible, he growled, "Don't move!"

Aizawa instantly halted, gripping his capture scarf tightly. He barely registered Recovery Girl hanging back as he tried to see what Hound Dog was seeing. There, perched on the tip of a shelving's steel support, was a figure barely visible against the murky background. All Aizawa could make out was little flashes of movement around the main figure, but the silvery glint was enough for him. This must be the Silver Lady.

"'Don't move'? Funny, that should be my line," a woman's voice hissed from high above. "Why are you here?"

Aizawa decided to take the initiative and stepped forward. "We don't mean any harm. We just want to check on the girl and patch her up, then we will be on our way."

A derisive scoff could be heard, and the figure leaned forward. "Right. Did you also not mean any harm when you cracked her head open?"

Aizawa felt his breath catch in his throat. When the alleged Silver Lady had leaned forward, the sparse rays of sunlight threw its features into visibility, and the first thought to cross his mind was, 'Huh, Miya-san wasn't joking about it being silver.'

The figure staring down at them all was humanoid in shape, and that was about the most human feature he could credit it for. What he had seen flashing in the darkness turned out to be its hair, alive and writhing about like a nest of live snakes, and it lacked any eyes, having emerald green patches of… skin? Stretched over where its eye sockets should have been. Its skin seemed to be entirely silver, covered by a layer of gold-and-white material that wrapped it from head to toe. Like clothing, but not really. Despite having no eyes, it somehow managed to express its disdain anyway as it stared them all down.

"Well?!" the Silver Lady roared, slamming a fist against the steel beam. It barely rattled. "What say you?"

Every single strand of its hair turned to aim at them— all needle-like, Aizawa noted with some apprehension. Still, he couldn't leave a scared, injured child here with a clear conscience, as much as he didn't want to admit that out loud. So he tried again, "Like I said, we want to make sure she's okay. We have a medical professional here," He gestured at Recovery Girl, who waved in turn, "and if you let us, we can heal her."

"Tch. As if I would believe your lies. I know your kind." Its laugh was not pleasant to the ears. "You just love to play hero and take down people you label as villains, don't you? Even if the crime is something as small as depriving a pig from a few morsels…"

"That's enough!" Hound Dog snapped, his muzzle straining to contain the ferocious snarl beneath it. "There's a child that needs medical attention and you want to sit up there and act all haughty? For what? Is this asinine superiority of yours worth that girl's wellbeing?!"

Its hair flared outwards, fury twisting its face into a gruesome sight. "Leave now, before I make you!"

The Silver Lady didn't give them a chance to respond before it suddenly lunged forward, hair-like extensions ready to rip into flesh as it dove straight towards them. Hound Dog and Aizawa responded in kind, the latter whipping out his scarf and ready to restrain it when—

"STOP!"

—a little girl darted between them.