-Shouta's POV-

The entire time that Shinobu was telling that story to her mentee, I had stopped myself from jumping down there and interrupting her story, and found myself having to walk away to avoid confronting her in front of her student as soon as the story was done. Her motivations for being a hero went against my morals and what I believed a hero should be. Don't get me wrong. I still had a lot of respect for Shinobu, but that kind of thinking can lead to people being hurt or even killed.

Though I know it's highly irrational, I felt a bit hurt and betrayed by her shallow motivation. When you let someone close to you, it's inevitable that they will disappoint you or hurt you even if it's unintentional, which is a major reason as to why I don't typically do relationships or let people close to me. So right now, I felt hurt and irritated that I had let myself become so attached to the silver-haired heroine in such a short amount of time.

By the time I snapped out of my mental scolding of myself, I realized the time. It was getting close to patrol time, and the last thing I needed was to be late because of her taking up all of my concentration.

-Time skip to the patrol, on a rooftop (Still Shouta's POV)-

We were now staking out a supposed drug deal that was supposed to be happening in the Kamino Ward. It had been nearly 2 hours since we had settled into this position on the rooftop, and I had yet to say a word to Shinobu. To most people, that would seem perfectly normal and part of my personality, but Shinobu was different. I would normally at least ask her how she was doing or insist that she treat the black eye or split lip she had acquired since the last time I saw her. While I did notice these things, I found myself too irritated from earlier to comment.

If her focus was in the right place, she might have been able to focus enough to avoid those. Yes, those thoughts are unfair to her and highly irrational, but at the moment, I didn't care. If these feelings were going to make me act irrational and get close to her, I'd let them be irrational and push her away for now. After all, I didn't know if I could handle all of these emotions that came from romantic feelings for another person.

"What's wrong, Eraser?" Shinobu's soft, lyrical voice asked, using an abbreviated form of my hero name since we were both in our hero costumes. Not wanting to let myself break at her soft tone and no doubt worried chartreuse eyes, I answered while continuing to watch the men below us.

"Why did you become a hero?" I asked, my voice much more accusatory than I meant to let out, and I saw her features darken to a less concerned and more stoic expression.

"You shouldn't eavesdrop on my mentoring sessions," she responded, her voice quiet but hardened in a way that attempted to hide emotions, but some seeped through. She's angry? Betrayed? Well that's two of us.

"You shouldn't be telling motivations like that to an impressionable student."

"And why is that?"

"Your goal is the kind that's irrational and gets people killed."

At my last reply, Shinobu was silent, which wasn't uncommon for her, but there was something different about this silence. There was a tension in it that was typically absent from her quiet demeanor.

"...what do you know about my motivations?..." she finally asked, her voice thick but still barely above a whisper after a couple of minutes, her gaze now also trained on the happenings below us. Another car had pulled up. It looked like if anything was going to happen with this supposed drug deal, it was going to happen soon.

"I know you'll never accomplish it. You have a quirk that most of the public would see as villainous. You can't control what people think. To believe otherwise is the peak of irrationality," I responded, my tired blunt voice that I almost never use with her coming back full force, "Heroes should be motivated and dedicated to keeping people safe, not selfish whims."

I heard a gasp and managed to see just a flash of the pain my words caused Shinobu on her face before it was immediately replaced with a blank expression as she stared into the alleyway below us. Now, I felt bad for how I worded things. Yes, my ideals and morals stayed the same, and I did believe what I said to be true. But at the same time, I was hating myself for talking to her like that and upsetting her. But I refused to back down. I needed her to see the problem with her motivation before it got her or someone else injured or worse.

Deciding to chance it, my gaze drifted to the silver-haired heroine to my left only to see her large, usually vibrant green eyes, appearing dull as her gaze stayed focused on the scene below us. Her face was blank, but there were tears streaming steadily down her freckled porcelain cheeks. I can't take seeing her like this dammit.

"Shinobu," I called out gently as I reached my hand out to wipe a tear that was falling down her cheek. To my surprise, she jumped back and shot a glare at me before turning back to the alleyway, her eyes narrowing.

"There. The drug deal happened. There's 5 down there. I'll out the senses of the left 3 before knocking them out. You can handle the other two," she ordered before jumping down and putting her plan into action, giving me no time to think or object to her plan.

Shinobu was silent in her descent, and I scrambled after her, my brain and heart at war after seeing how she had jumped away from my touch. Had I really hurt her that bad? I'm trying to protect her! I just don't want her holding onto a thought process that could get her hurt! Ironically, while thinking this, I was not as careful with my descent and ended up landing on a beam on the way down a bit too loudly, alerting the drug dealers below.

Despite my blunder, Shinobu managed to knock out 2 of the perpetrators by the time I landed and cancelled out the senses of the two that were now attacking me as well, giving me the upper hand and allowing me to knock them unconscious without too much trouble. I turned to thank her for the assist. What happened next seemed to move in slow motion for me.

"SHOUTA!" Shinobu yelled, not activating her voice quirk, but her voice was panicked, confusing me as she tackled me pushing me a couple of feet. As I looked up to see what the heck her problem was, my eyes widened in shock at the villain who was holding the hilt of a knife that was now lodged to the hilt into Shinobu's left thigh, and she let out a blood curdling scream of pain.

Fury filled me as I jumped to my feet and grabbed the villain with my capture weapon as he pulled the knife out of Shinobu's leg. Not wanting to try and knock him out for fear that I would go overboard and kill the bastard, I settled for tying him up with the other drug dealers as I called the police who were already on their way thanks to this being in collaboration with them. After ending the call, I turned to the villain that was still conscious, an evil smirk on his face as he watched Shinobu writhe on the ground in pain.

"What the hell did you do to her?" I demanded angrily, keeping my distance from the bastard, torn between wanting to comfort Shinobu and needing to keep an eye to make sure this piece of shit didn't escape.

"It's my quirk. I am able to create a poison from my cells that inflicts excruciating pain in waves for at least 24 hours," the villain explained with a sadistic smirk, "It's like being tortured. Those without a strong mind or inhumanly high pain tolerance end up in a mental hospital for the rest of their lives with ghost pains. If you let me go, I can give her the antidote. I can mutate my cells to cure the poison as well."

Looking back at Shinobu briefly to see her whimpering made me consider his offer as I turned to look at him. There's no way he was trustworthy, but I couldn't let Shinobu be tortured like this. What if she can't handle it and has to get institutionalized? She's such a strong and kind person… And Hizashi would be crushed… I can't let her suffer like this. My thoughts were cut short by a familiar kusarigama whirring past my head and embedding itself into the brick wall right beside the villain's head.

Seeing the now slightly nervous look on the face of the villain, I turned to see Shinobu limping towards us, her eyes seeming to glow with determination even as she would wince and grit her teeth.

"Listen well, you sick son of a bitch. I may end up losing my mind, but we will not negotiate with you. I am a small price to pay in order to prevent others from ever having to feel this pain," Shinobu growled through gritted teeth as she got right in front of the villain before backing up and turning to me. My eyes widened as I noticed her lose consciousness. I shot forward and caught her in my arms, the silence in the alleyway after her words only being cut off by the sirens of the incoming police cars.

Song: If I Killed Someone For You by Alec Benjamin