Chapter 9: Dadzawa's Number One Headache
Notes:
I was going to say something about reaching 1,000 hits, but then we hit over 2,000 before I knew it (and over 100 kudos!!) I just want to say thank you guys so much for clicking on my story and sticking with it. Your comments mean the world to me and the support you guys keep on giving me just makes me so happy.
Sooooo, I wanted to do something for y'all and thought what could be better than a back-to-back update??
I hope you enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Shouta sighed as he dragged away the three thugs that the problem child had been fighting. When he had passed where they were it had taken him a moment, but once he caught a glimpse of the kid's eyes, he knew exactly who it was. Those eyes were impossible to forget.
He didn't even know how the kid had managed to piss off three random guys so much that they were pointing a gun at his head, but what really bothered him was how calm he was when he showed up.
He had been patrolling and heard some scuffling and decided to check it out just in case. That was when he caught a glimpse of the kid's tell-tale green curls and the three guys threatening him with a gun. And the kid had just sat there, as if waiting for them to pull the trigger, like he didn't care.
But that couldn't be the case…right?
The station doors slid open as Eraser approached and Tsukauchi was not surprised to see three unconscious criminals being carted around by a very tired looking Aizawa. He stepped away from his desk and joined his friend as he lugged his cargo to the interrogation rooms.
"Hiya Eraser, nice catch of the day."
"They're not my catch actually."
The statement surprised Tsuki at least a bit, but not nearly as much as Eraser's mood. Usually, the underground hero was reserved and apathetic but tonight he just seemed annoyed and tired, more so than usual.
Tsukauchi jogged to keep up and looked Aizawa in the eye, "What's up? Did someone try to offer you hobo money again?"
"Wha-no."
"Then what has you so pissed?"
Eraser waited for Tsuki to open the door to one of the interrogation rooms and then left the three criminals to two other officers who were standing nearby. "Remember that kid I was talking about the other night, the one who was roof jumping?"
The detective thought for a moment, even though he knew exactly who they were talking about. He just liked to tease his friend and cause him as much trouble as he causes him. "Oh yeah…you mean the one that you swore you'd never run into again? Did you tell him hi for me?"
"It didn't come up." Eraser gave him a tired look (although that was really just his default expression). "Anyway, I found him fighting these guys in an alley."
"Didn't you say he was just a kid? Against these three…he must have some guts."
"Oh, he has something alright. When I showed up, he had a gun pressed to his head and the kid didn't even flinch."
This was new. Usually, Aizawa wasn't one to get attached too quickly, but from what Tsukauchi could tell, this kid had him caught like a worm on a hook. It was interesting to watch, "Where is he now?"
"I left him in the alley."
"Alone? And you expect him to just sit there like a good child?"
"Well, I'm pretty sure that I scared him enough for him to stay put, but even if I didn't, the universe seems to want to make me suffer and will probably keep on putting him in my path. So it's only a matter of time until I see him again, most likely getting himself into another fight, but ya know-"
The detective smiled to himself and held in a laugh, "Well it looks like you've got your work cut out for you. Children are a lot of work, are you sure you're ready to be a dad?"
"I'm not a dad. I am a teacher and hero and it's my job to protect people, he just so happens to fall under that category and is a child."
"Sure, sure, just keep telling yourself that." This time he couldn't help but start laughing at the glare he was getting from him friend who started walking away. "And I'm serious! Tell him I said hi, maybe bring him by the station sometime."
"Oh, I'm sure you'll be seeing him soon one way or another."
Shouta exited the station after filling out some quick paperwork and began to make his way back to the alley that he left that kid in. There was no way that he was still there, right? But what if he was, what was he going to do? If Eraser was honest, he hadn't thought this far, the only things he really had thought of were protecting the kid and getting those thugs away from him.
He wished that the universe didn't have a sense of humor, because even though he had just met the kid, he knew that he was going to be a handful and one that only he could deal with.
When he got to the mouth of the alley, he saw a bush of curly green hair sitting cross legged on the ground humming to himself.
Wow, the kid actually-I'm not that scary, am I?
"Hey," Aizawa called out.
Izuku's head shot up and he looked at the hero who had come back just as he had said. That was a new one for him. "Oh, what's up Eraser?"
"I would've thought that you would have run by now."
"Eh, I've got nothing else better to do and this alleyway is peaceful."
Shouta's brows furrowed, "You mean the alleyway that you were just fighting three thugs and being threatened with a gun in?"
"Yep."
Wow. Yeah, definitely a handful. "What have you been doing while I was gone?"
The kid hummed, still sitting on the ground when Shouta joined him. "Nothing really, just thinking I guess."
Aizawa could count on one hand how many children he had met that were as low maintenance as this one appeared to be. He was saying that in the maybe thirty to forty-five minutes he was gone, he just sat here alone with nothing to do or look at and just thought? "That sounds lonely."
"Yeah," He let out a singular huff of a laugh, "But I dunno, I'm just kinda used to it at this point."
Well, that didn't sound good. No child should ever have to be used to being alone. Where were this kid's parents? Shouta wanted to ask, but something told him that that was a very sensitive subject and that he should tread lightly. So, he filed that away for later and just settled for being with the kid instead. "Me too. Being an underground hero can get pretty lonely, but I make sure to surround myself with people that I care about and trust so that I don't ever feel too alone. It's nice to know that you have people that you can fall back on when everything gets to be too much."
Izuku stiffened slightly but tried his best to not show it. He knew how observant Eraserhead was, so he doubted that he had missed the change, but he didn't say anything so there was that. If Izuku was honest, he hadn't ever really thought of Eraser as the type to have friends, but he guessed that everyone had to have someone. It's not good for people to be alone and have to deal with all of the crap life dishes out by themselves.
"I didn't take you to be the friend type."
This won a small chuckle from the hero sitting beside him as he tried to hide his slight smile in his capture weapon wrapped around his neck. "That's fair. I guess I'm really not, but as I got older…I realized that I couldn't do everything alone. And some people are more tolerable than others, but of course those aren't the people that I've found." Eraser rolled at his eyes at what Izuku assumed to be the thought of some of his friends. "What about you, do you have any friends?"
Shouta instantly knew that he'd messed up. As soon as the question left his mouth the kid's face darkened and whatever sense of comfortability they had was lost as the kid shut down.
"I'm sorry I didn't-"
"I should go." It was like a slap in the face. When the kid spoke, the words were robotic and cold. He left no room for argument and Aizawa was too thrown back to even try as he watched him leave the alleyway with no other words.
Eraser cursed under his breath and rubbed at his temples. This was going to be a long journey with this kid, wasn't it?
It wasn't until two nights later that Shouta caught glimpse of that troublesome green hair again. It seemed as though the kid had given up on trying to keep the hood that was way too big for his head up.
Eraser would often find himself actively searching for his newest problem child, even without meaning to. He continued to patrol the same area and kept to the roofs and alleys where he knew he would most likely find the kid getting into a scuffle or running away from a fight.
It was a week until the kid started talking to him again. Which was a good thing, Aizawa was beginning to get worried that he had seriously touched a nerve, but one night when he was roof jumping, he heard a young voice taunt him from below. He jumped down to where he was and as soon as he touched the ground the little gremlin was saying some comment that he knew would push his buttons. Shouta thought that he probably did it to distract from the criminal that was unconscious behind him, but he was honestly just happy that he was hearing the kid's voice again.
The next couple of months continued like that. Eraser would patrol and run into the problem child getting into mischief. The two would talk and hang out for a bit, before they went their separate ways. In their free time when the streets were supposedly crime free, Shouta would train the kid.
It wasn't his first choice, but after watching him risk his life every time he went out due to inexperience and sloppy form, Eraser decided that if he was going to continue to see this kid, he might as well teach him how to not die properly. (Ironic)
Three months after he had met the kid was when he finally made his official debut. Honestly, with the number of times Shouta found him fighting random criminals in alleyways, he was surprised he wasn't found out sooner, but one-night Aizawa was perching on a roof looking out for some trouble and or his gremlin and heard commotion to his right followed by police sirens.
When he arrived at the scene, the kid was facing off with a criminal with some sort of skin armor quirk in the middle of a busy street. The kid barreled towards the criminal and tackled him to the ground. How he had managed to do that with how small he was, Shouta didn't know. The two went down and rolled a bit until the kid was sitting on top of the criminal punching and punching until he finally knocked him out.
By that time the police had arrived, and the kid scrambled away before he could be caught, not before some videos and pictures were taken, however. That was how Serpentine was born. Apparently, a reporter had witnessed the entire thing and had talked with some witnesses and decided to name this new vigilante.
Shouta thought that the name was pretty accurate, when he saw the kid, the only thing that really stood out were his startling green eyes and the way he moved so fluidly even though he was clearly still inexperienced. Not to mention how slippery he was when he wanted to be.
Oh, and how could he forget, those obnoxious red shoes. He had only ever seen the kid in one pair of shoes, did he not own any others? Maybe some that weren't as loud and noticeable?
The night after when he met up with the kid, he was freaking out. According to him the guy he had knocked out on the ground referred to him as Serpentine and mentioned the article that the kid quickly read through when the job was done. It surprised Eraser just how opposed he was to being known, most vigilantes he had met wanted to be seen and noticed, especially younger ones.
"Hey, hey-" Shouta attempted to try and calm the kid down, but he was too far gone at this point to do anything but listen.
The kid paced back and forth, a constant stream of muttered words leaving his mouth as he moved, "What am I supposed to do? I wasn't even supposed to become a vigilante, but I guess that it was inevitable with all of the fighting I've been doing lately but does that even count? Well according to everyone else I am now an official vigilante and that means that I'm a criminal and that can't be good because the law is good most of the time and I'm going against the law that's there to protect people but I'm also protecting people so what does that even mean at this point-"
Eraser really tried his best to follow all that he was saying, but it got difficult at times because he tended to back track and contradict himself. It was only logical considering this was probably his actual thought process at the moment and thoughts aren't exactly the most coherent and easy to follow things.
After another few minutes of constant muttering, Aizawa had finally had enough and moved to stand in the way of the kid's pacing. He almost didn't notice the person standing in front of him until he nearly ran into him and cut off his stream of words as he stumbled back.
"Kid. You've got to stop."
The kid's eyes saddened, and something flickered in them before Shouta could tell exactly what it was. "I-I'm sorry. I know that my muttering is annoying and creepy, it's just a nervous habit that I've always had, and I thought that I had it under control, but-I'm really sorry if I made you uncomfortable or irritated by it, I'll make sure to not-"
"Woah, who said that I was upset with you?"
"I-" The kid paused as if to really soak in what Shouta just said and looked back at him with confused eyes, "You mean you're…not upset with me? You don't find me annoying or anything?"
Eraser just looked at the kid for the longest time. This was a completely different person than he had known for the past couple of months, it was as if he had two sides of his personality and certain circumstances brought out each one. It actually reminded Aizawa a bit of the time when the kid had freaked out or shut down around him. Usually that was a coping mechanism and a result of trauma, and that didn't sit right with Eraser.
"No? That doesn't-why would I-" Shouta stopped. This was obviously a sensitive subject and if he dug too deep the kid might shut down again. He had to be cautious and treat this with care. "What I meant was that you've got to stop worrying. Yes, people now know who you are, well relatively at least, and that might not be exactly how you wanted things to go, but there's nothing we can do about it now. It is illogical to harp on things that we cannot control, it will only cause us more problems rather than solving them."
"Oh…"
"And as far as the whole vigilante thing goes, what did you expect to happen when you go around beating up criminals without a license?"
The kid looked down and Shouta could see the faintest trace of a blush under his black face mask, "I was hoping to stay invisible, you know, just take criminals down from the shadows and without bothering anybody."
"Well, I hate to tell you this, but that's almost impossible to do. You were going to be figured out sooner or later."
"Yeah, but now everybody is labeling me a vigilante and sure I was doing acts of vigilantism, but now it's, I dunno…real." The kid sighed and rubbed the sides of his temple as if fighting off a headache. Hah, serves him right for being such a headache for Shouta.
This whole situation was strange and Aizawa was really trying his best to take it slow and one step at a time, but he was getting irritated with walking on eggshells. That wasn't who he was, but he also didn't want to drive the kid away.
Gah! Such a headache…
"If it bothers you so much then why not just get a proper license?"
Suddenly the kid's head shot up and his eyes bore into Shouta's. "No." His eyes steeled as the word left his mouth.
"What do you mean 'no'?"
The kid didn't break eye contact as he began to back away slowly and Shouta didn't realize what he was going to do until he started sprinting away from him and calling back to him as he ran. "I'm sure you've got that one for me, right?" And then he was gone.
Notes:
Sooo, what do you guys think about Izuku's new vigilante identity???? I love it and OMG it took me so long to figure out what he would be called or if he would even have a brand, but here we are.
I also hope that you enjoyed Aizawa's pov in this chapter. I love writing in third person so that I can switch up the pov's whenever I feel like it, I dunno writing in different character's perspective just makes me happy. So be ready for some other character pov's!!!
I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter and please let me know your thoughts!
Thanks for reading