So, I'm basically falling asleep at my keyboard, but I was so excited to finish this chapter up and give it to you guys, so I hope you enjoy it. If you want, I recommend re-reading the first few paragraphs of Chapter 2 to give this first scene even more reason to crush your heart.

Remember... blah blah blah... tumblr... ibelieveinahappilyeverafter!

Enjoy!

"Snowball… I did something very stupid." There was a loud, echoing meow from the cat in his lap that near vibrated the air, Hizashi absently realizing that Snowball was getting to be bigger than some small dogs. It was comforting, more than anything, to have that heavy weight pressing him down and pinning him firmly to the moment. "It's stupider than when I decided to become a villain."

The cat settled back down in his lap for a long nap, Hizashi staring down at where his fingers were buried into dense white fur. The longer he stared, the more it felt like there was a delay between his fingers and the way they were scratching at the purring cat. "I did something really, really stupid…"

It had been a joke or, perhaps more accurately, it had just been another part of the game. A silly little game of hero and villain. Aizawa had been more accurate than he had realized. It had been easy, in the beginning. Easy to play along to the silent hero and the loud villain. A way to garner attention by having a hero defeat him night after night. That was how it was supposed to go.

Present Mic was supposed to get louder and louder until the entire world could hear his screams, but instead he just got quieter and quieter, words only loud enough for one person - for one hero. Hizashi had just ran along with it because it was fun, and it didn't harm anyone. Present Mic flirted, Eraserhead rolled his eyes, and at the end of the night, it was just an exaggeration of the admiration he felt when he realized how much of a hero Aizawa really was.

So when did that change? When did loud flirtations turn into soft admiration that he couldn't even hide from himself? When had Eraserhead's short temper turned into an endless patience? When had those prickly glares turned into hidden smiles that Hizashi worked so hard to earn? When had his plan of getting attention changed into only getting Aizawa's attention?

"I really screwed this one up, Snowball." Hizashi curled in on himself, as if making himself smaller would somehow make the pain feel less. "I wasn't supposed to actually care about a hero."

Countless months of being chased, long nights of running around like children without a curfew, stolen moments where truth was given freely instead of forced out, endless seconds where softer looks were traded for warm smiles, and a heartbeat's worth of care traded between each moment and the next every time eyes met.

Yamada Hizashi knew well what this feeling was. He had never felt it as strong as he did now, but what else could it be? Whenever he was around him, Hizashi found his shaking hands slowing like all his nerves were being sealed away, his heart calming like the beats of a worn lullaby, and his words falling still and silent in the realization that they weren't needed. He had known the stirrings of this feeling when he was younger and didn't know the world as well, but now a comfortable thirty-one, he knew this… was real.

Hizashi was honestly in love with the man known as Aizawa and no one could warn him otherwise. Every waking thought seemed to be filled with that rough, quiet, and kind man that was always quick to save those who needed it. It was like Hizashi could think of nothing else these days.

"Oh, Snowball." Hizashi pulled his knees up and sucked in an unsteady breath, flinching when a hard, scratchy tongue licked at his cheek, worried meows tumbling through the air a moment later. "I really screwed this all up, didn't I?"

After all, a villain in love with a hero?

What a joke.

::

"Oi, oi, take it easy, here. I was just in the neighborhood and got a bit curious!" Present Mic raised his hands and looked away with a little click of his tongue. "It's like you lot can't tell villains apart, these days."

"Way I hear it, you're not much of a villain these days, Present Mic." At the rough growl, Hizashi tried to figure out just how he had ended up in the situation he was now trapped in. "More of a vigilante, I hear. Is that what you are, wannabe hero?"

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to call people slurs?" Hizashi drawled, shoving his hands in his pockets and trying to look like he was unaffected by the guns that were being aimed at him - at least, the guns that weren't already being aimed at the group of civilians pressed against the wall. "You know this is a shit bank, don't you? They don't even carry large amounts of cash."

"Why don't you shut your mouth, hero, before someone gets hurt?" The ringleader of the group, or at least, Hizashi assumed it was the ringleader, sounded one step away from crazy.

"How boring. It's nothing but a bank robbery," Hizashi pouted, moving around the room with casual boredom. The guns remained trained on him and Hizashi did his absolute best to not show how scared he was. If it was between him and the terrified people who had just gotten off a late shift, though, at least he knew his way around a fight. "Ah, well, I suppose a hero will show up eventually."

"Maybe we should leave it, man," one of them muttered, a man with a mutant quirk that looked like it could be a snake or some other kind of reptile. "This guy's managed to keep up with Eraserhead." It was pathetic how Hizashi felt himself perk up at just hearing the man's hero name.

"The way I've been hearing it, the two are working together and Present Mic is just some undercover cop or hero that's been getting information on all of us. He's the reason the streets are so empty, these days." Well, he had given a helping hand with his radio show and that Trigger case, but that was about all.

"Oi, oi, wasn't I just saying how there was no need to insult me?" Hizashi kept his tone lax and uncaring, trying to play up like he wasn't scared of anything they could do to him. It was one thing to go up against a couple of gang members in an alleyway, but it was another to do it in a place where he couldn't use his quirk and there were guns aimed at him. "C'mon, we're all villains, here."

"What do you even want?" The one over by the tellers was shaking, finger pressed against the trigger of the gun rather than the guard. If Hizashi wasn't scared before, he was now. Dealing with bank robbers was bad enough, but it was another matter entirely when some of them looked like they had never used a gun in their life before. "If you're after our money-!"

"Hey, hey, no worries," Hizashi raised his hands again as a gesture of peace, working his way to where a terrified bank teller had been putting money in a duffle bag. "If you've heard of me then you know I'm not interested in money and I could give less of a shit about getting a share of it."

Twelve civilians with one of them being a girl that couldn't be older than seven or eight. There were two tellers, one tied up and the other shaking and looking between Hizashi and the man who had been talking. The windows were broken, so that was one thing that could work in their favor, and… ah, there it was. An emergency button under the teller desk that would call the police to the bank's location in a heartbeat.

"As for why I'm actually here, well." Hizashi shrugged, going over to the teller and knocking him to the floor before kicking him in the chest where he should be most protected. He couldn't kick him too lightly, but he did his best to be as gentle as possible, mouthing a 'stay down' when the man's eyes caught his. "I already said, didn't I?"

Turning back to face them, Hizashi let his fingers brush against the button quick as a flash, pressing it down before giving his best 'villain smile.' "A hero will show up here, eventually. Might as well have some fun with them when they do."

If it was one thing Hizashi could do, it was make himself seem harmless. He had years of practice in making himself seem like he couldn't hurt a fly, and he had just as much practice in playing a room when he needed to.

"Hey, hey, c'mon, listeners, you're talking to Present Mic! I'm the Voice Villain out to show those heroes just why they can't go around acting as high and mighty as they do!" Good. All their attention was on them. "I want to show this world just why this system is as broken as it is, yeah? No need to worry about me stepping on any of your toes, that's for sure."

A tense few minutes passed as the ringleader kept a careful eye on him, instructing the others to gather up all the money and get ready to leave. It was a race against the clock, now, and Hizashi knew that they were running out of time. "-and make sure to take a few of these ones. They'll make good shields, if nothing else."

"Aw, c'mon, man, that'll only piss 'em off even more." Hizashi leaned against a wall and crossed his arms, trying to calm his racing heart as one of the thugs moved towards where the girl and someone who looked like her mother were crouched. The mother looked like she wasn't about to go down without a fight. "'Sides, if you get caught with just the money, it's less time than having a hostage with you."

"Why the fuck do you care? You're just here to fight some heroes, aren't you? Or is it true what they're saying about you being some undercover hero?" Fuck. How long did it take for police to respond to a bank robbery?

"Trust me, I'm the furthest from a hero you can get." They were too enclosed. One shout from him could bring down the whole damn building if he wasn't careful.

"Yeah, well-" The sound of sirens drowned out the words, and Hizashi knew he made a mistake when he felt the relief flash across his face. "I fucking knew it! Fuckin' get rid of him and let's get out of here! Grab the kid, too!"

"You do know you're a walking cliché, don't you? 'Grab the kid?' How much worse can you get?" Think, think, think. His quirk was only good for screaming, but maybe he could just do something like whistle? Shit, there was no time to figure something out like how to use his quirk for good.

"Mommy!" The shriek of the little girl rang out across the room and Hizashi felt his feet move before he could even think to stop himself, body ramming into the thug who had picked her up, loosening his grip. There was the sound of a gun firing and Hizashi felt the vibrations and physical force of something slamming into his shoulder before he felt the pain of it.

Stomping down on every urge he had to scream, Hizashi gave a good kick to the downed thug's head to make sure he would stay down before pushing the girl back into her mother's arms. He then met the eyes of the leader of this mess, gun aimed at him and ready to fire again. Hizashi couldn't say he had ever been shot, before, and he knew that as soon as the adrenaline ran out, he was in for a world of pain and trouble.

Right now, though, there were people behind him who had done nothing wrong and there was a little girl crying and sobbing. Hizashi knew the type of person he was and, for as much shit as he had gone through, he had never been able to stand the sound of children crying.

As he had told Eraserhead, he was a villain… but he wasn't heartless. "That's the best you got?" This was nothing. After every damn thing in his life, this was nothing. "I fight with pro heroes every night and I've been through a lot worse than you and your gang of children. So, I'm gonna ask you one more time. Is that the best you got?"

He made sure to put just enough of his quirk into his voice to shake the room and have the others stumbling. He made sure not to waste the moment as he moved forward.

It was one thing to fight thugs and gang members in dark alleyways where he was the only one with a chance of getting hurt, but it was utterly terrifying to fight in an old building against people with guns who weren't afraid to use them on innocents who didn't deserve fear like this.

One of them was already down, though, and there were only four altogether. A well-placed punch and kick knocked down another one, and a tackle prevented a bullet from being lodged into his spine from the third that was soon rendered as unconscious as the others.

"I'd say it was a pleasure, Present Mic, but it really wasn't." Too far. He was too far away, and he was exposed, and had it all really led to this? Ah, Aizawa was going to be so disappointed…

The shot rang out, Hizashi froze, and the pain… never came. Slowly, as if looking would somehow cause the bullet to resume its pace and hit him, Hizashi looked and saw the gun was aimed at the ceiling with a familiar grey cloth wrapped around the arm that held it.

"Well, well, fancy seeing you here, hero." Hizashi was pleased to see that Eraserhead was wearing the goggles, but the pleasure very quickly vanished when he felt the glare that was turned on him. He was definitely in trouble.

::

"What were you even thinking?!" Trouble, Hizashi realized, had not even begun to describe the last hour of his life. "You could have been killed." Aizawa had shown up right on time to deal with the last thug, but what happened after was a nightmare that made Hizashi almost feel sorry for pro heroes.

It took an hour, Aizawa, and every civilian and teller inside the bank to convince the police that Hizashi hadn't had any part in the robbery and that he had ended up trying to save them all. The police only grew more pissed when they couldn't even take him in over quirk abuse since Hizashi hadn't used his quirk in the fight - at least, not really.

An hour of talking to the police, dealing with civilians, letting his shoulder be looked over and patched up, and trying to avoid Aizawa, though, ended with Hizashi trapped against the back of an alleyway as the man he had been avoiding tore into him. The only highlight of the night was the little girl and her mother who had thanked him and then… called him their hero.

"Are you even listening to me? Do the words you could have died mean nothing to you? You were shot and-"

"Eraser." Hizashi was shaking. He needed to get out of there before he let anything slip with a mixture of pain meds and an adrenaline crash. "I don't know what you really think about me, but I couldn't just stand there when a little kid was crying."

"Which is why you should have left the building immediately and called the police - you could have left after you pressed the alert, even! Instead you stayed and almost got yourself killed for it!"

"Hey, by the time I realized how fucked up it all was, I was already stuck there, okay! Leaving would have only been more suspicious and I was trying not to let anyone get shot-"

"Great job with that one," Aizawa snorted, nodding to where Hizashi's shoulder was still stinging. The pain was only getting worse, and Hizashi wasn't looking forward to when the pain meds wore off. "From the testimonies, it sounds as if you basically ran in front of that bullet."

"It's not like I was trying to get shot." It was close enough to the truth, anyways. He had known that they wouldn't hurt the girl when she was going to basically be a shield for them, but… She had cried and he had just…

"Then why-" It was the same question over and over, but there was really only one answer, wasn't there?

"My body moved on its own before I could think." For the first time that night, Aizawa was quiet. Hizashi wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, though. "I don't know why, Eraser, I just… She screamed and I was moving before I even thought about it."

There was a long enough silence that Hizashi almost thought Aizawa had left before he heard a soft, quiet question that had him drawing a blank, "Mic. Why are you a villain?"

Slowly raising his gaze, Hizashi stared at the man. Aizawa stared back, a complicated expression on his face that Hizashi couldn't even begin to describe - it wasn't anger, though. It wasn't anger, and that was the part that was scaring him.

The question had been asked so softly and so seriously and Hizashi didn't have an answer. He used to know the answer to that question, back when he had started and had been trying to change things, but now?

Hizashi had wanted to get back at the heroes for how they never cared about the villains that weren't big and flashy. That was why he had done this. That used to be why he had done this. Heroes never helped the kids that were lost in the shadows and Hizashi had wanted to prove that all heroes cared about was their fame, but then…

Then Eraserhead had happened. Then Aizawa had happened. Present Mic's hero had ended up being an actual hero who did his best to help others in whatever way he could and didn't seem to care one bit for fame or the media. He was pretty sure Aizawa's hero persona could never be talked about again and that would please him more than anything.

Hizashi had wanted to get some aggression out because the whole damn system was so broken, but then it had changed. First it was just proving everything everyone had ever said about him, then it was about having fun without the consequences, then it was helping a bit here and there if he felt like it, and then it was about seeing Aizawa as much as possible, and then…

Why was he a villain? It was such a stupidly simply question, and yet the answer felt like it didn't exist.

"I…" Could he really be called a villain when he had taken a bullet for a little girl without even hesitating? "I… don't know."

Was he really a villain?