Chapter 4: Cat and Mouse
He gave in to the name eventually. A young man in the middle of a panic attack during a mugging calmed down when he realized who Izuku was. The mugger, on the other hand, immediately tried to run away.
There was a lot of power in a reputation. Being recognized as someone who could help gave him a warm feeling inside, similar to what he felt when he used to imagine being a pro hero. This was the whole reason he wanted to be a hero. He wanted people to feel safe when he was around.
Was it a bad idea to paint the outline of a cat head on the back of his sweatshirt? Probably. There were downsides to being recognized so easily, too.
Did he do it anyway?
Yes, yes he did. The green wasn't that noticeable, in his opinion, but it was there.
There was just something immensely satisfying about not needing an introduction when he dropped into the middle of a bad situation.
There was also something terrifying about people paying attention to him now. A couple of times, he'd felt like he was being followed on the way home from his patrols. He always managed to lose his pursuer, usually by taking several fast turns and pulling off the hoodie and mask. They only had to get lucky once to catch him, though.
Time moved on. His thirteenth birthday came and went, and he spent the day digging up any current information he could find about Dragon. Unfortunately, most of Dragon's operations were too much for him to deal with personally, so he had to send his findings to the police as another anonymous tip.
Afterwards, he flopped back on his bed. It had been nine months, and he was no closer to taking his father down than when he'd started. Even if he ran into his father right now, he wasn't sure he'd have the strength to beat him.
He held his hand over his face, clenching and unclenching his fists. He worked out every day, and he'd put on about ten pounds of solid muscle since this started. He knew he was physically stronger, but his quirk felt the same. He was no better at using it now than he had been before.
That wouldn't do. There had to be some way to use it that he wasn't thinking of, some technique that would give him an edge against anyone.
The main reason his quirk had stagnated was because he was afraid of hurting people when he used it. It was fire, and he didn't see a way around that. It wasn't like he could make it solid, or anything.
…could he?
"If I control every atom in the fire, maybe I can harden it. That would give me way more options when I'm fighting."
He jumped up and grabbed one of his hero notebooks, turning to a fresh page and starting to plan. It was going to take a lot of training to pull this off, but the possibilities it could create…
Xx
Really, Aizawa wasn't even sure how Alley Cat had become his problem. Just because he was the only hero to have seen the guy didn't mean he was the only one who could find him and catch him. Not to mention, Hosu city was crawling with heroes and sidekicks and was a stone's throw away from Nurugi.
So what if he was curious? He had a million and one things to do, and it was a two hour train commute.
Actually, he'd just expelled his entire class this year, so maybe he had more free time than usual right now.
Was this Nedzu's way of punishing him for expelling an entire class? This was probably Nedzu's doing.
He stood by his decision to expel the whole class. None of them had the brain cells to live to see twenty-five, and he was not putting their early deaths on his conscience.
Patrolling was better than grading, at any rate, even if this commute was hell.
Two months into this new project, though, he was starting to wish he was home grading. He'd yet to see hide or hair of Alley Cat. He'd stumbled into the aftermath of some of his fights, but the vigilante was long gone, every time.
How the hell did he move so fast? Was it his quirk? Were they wrong about his fire quirk? Fire was usually flashier.
He was going to beat his head against the wall. This vigilante didn't make sense.
Nedzu was laughing at him somewhere.
With a loud sigh, Aizawa stood up from where he'd been crouched on a roof. Break time was over. No matter how unhappy he was with his current assignment, he still had a job to do.
Xx
Aizawa was going insane. How was a vigilante this good at avoiding him? It had been another month, and the closest he'd gotten was a few lit up alleys in the distance. That was it, and it was barely solid evidence that Alley Cat had even been there.
The tied up criminals were the real proof.
It frustrated him to no end. He'd been patrolling these streets for three months, how had they not run into each other by chance yet?
"Are you sure you're trying?" Hizashi asked him over dinner one night after Aizawa ranted about it again.
Aizawa scoffed. "You think I'm commuting two hours one way just to sit on my ass all night?" He hadn't expected this assignment to last so long, otherwise he might have requested an apartment nearby.
Hizashi tapped his chopsticks against his bowl. "No, but you're usually better at getting into an opponent's head than this."
"I barely know anything about this guy. No one does, that's the problem."
"There's got to be a way to reach him," Hizashi mused. "Maybe you could ask for his help in the paper?"
"We could not set up a more obvious trap if we tried," Aizawa stated. "He's not dumb enough to fall for something so simple." He glanced at the clock, hating his life a little more when he saw he needed to get going. His train would be leaving soon.
Hizashi kissed him goodbye at the door. "You've got this, Sho. Remember to think like him!"
Aizawa rolled his eyes. What did the man think he'd been doing all this time? He'd been trying to figure this guy out for three months, but it was impossible to tell what he'd do when he didn't have enough information.
Two hours later, he was still thinking about it as he settled his goggles over his eyes and started one of his typical routes.
How could he anticipate someone's next move when he didn't even know the game they were playing?
He frowned. That wasn't quite accurate. Alley Cat's game was simple: capture petty criminals.
Maybe he should focus less on what Alley Cat was doing and more on the people he kept capturing.
He adjusted his route. Alley Cat didn't have a rhyme or reason to where he captured criminals, his appearances happened all over the sketchier parts of town. Aizawa had been focusing his attentions there as well, but he'd focused on finding Alley Cat.
What would happen if he focused on finding Alley Cat's targets before he did?
It was embarrassing how well his new strategy worked. And he called himself a pro…maybe Hizashi was right, maybe he hadn't really been trying before.
He arrived to the fight late, so he stayed back and watched Alley Cat take down two muggers. The muggers were scrawny, not even worth a fight, and Alley Cat whipped out his weird braided cuffs and bound them together.
When Alley Cat stepped back, Aizawa stepped forward and lashed out with his scarf.
Alley Cat yelped when Aizawa yanked him back.
"You are a hard man to find," Aizawa stated. Could Alley Cat even be called a man? He looked tinier than most of Aizawa's students.
Alley cat gave a nervous laugh. "Good to see you again, Eraserhead."
Why did this guy sound like he actually meant it? He understood what was happening, right?
"Alley Cat. You're under arrest."
"Ah, thought so. Could I not be under arrest?"
What?
Did he really…
Who just straight up asks…
"It's not…negotiable," Aizawa finally replied.
"Alright then," Alley Cat said, shoulders drooping as he walked closer to Aizawa.
This was going too well. He didn't like it.
He kept a tight grip on his scarf as Alley Cat stepped closer, in case the guy's plan was to loosen it enough to break free.
Alley Cat stopped in front of him, cocking his head. "Aren't we going? Although, we probably shouldn't leave those guys." He looked back at the muggers he'd captured. "I haven't called them in yet."
"I'll call them in on the way." Warily, he turned to walk towards the street.
Alley Cat came along like a dog on a leash.
He had a plan. Aizawa didn't know what it was, but he definitely had a plan.
"So I guess you're the one that's been following me the last few weeks?" Alley Cat asked. "I admit I'm kind of relieved it was just you."
Aizawa glanced back at him. Someone had been following him?
First of all, Aizawa was annoyed someone else had been able to routinely find Alley Cat.
Second of all, Aizawa wasn't aware of any other heroes working this case, so who the hell was it?
"It wasn't me."
With the full mask and hood, it was hard to read Alley Cat's expression. His eyes looked troubled at the admission, though. "Oh."
"Don't worry, you'll be safe from whoever it was once you're in a cell."
Alley Cat's laugh was dry and sarcastic.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, making it back to the main road. Aizawa was looking forward to passing Alley Cat off to the police and surprising Hizashi by coming home early. Working all these night shifts out here was starting to put a strain on their relationship. He only really had a chance to see his husband at dinner.
Of course, because he thought things in his life were going well for once, it all came crashing down around him.
Someone screamed for help.
He and Alley Cat both froze on the sidewalk, heads whipping back at the side street they'd just passed.
"Eraserhead," Alley Cat started.
He cursed and took his scarf back. "You better not run off, you hear me?"
He didn't have time to weigh the pros and cons of doing this. That kind of scream meant lives were on the line. Alley Cat had helped in the Reverse demonstration, so Aizawa could trust he would want to help here.
Running down the side street, he was the one struggling to keep up with Alley Cat. The guy may have been a head shorter than him, but he was fast, Aizawa would give him that.
"This way!" Alley Cat said, rounding another corner.
They found a man with knives for fingers over a bloody and unconscious girl.
"Get the girl!" Alley Cat yelled, charging at the man.
Aizawa almost protested. A sweatshirt was shitty protection against a bunch of knives. But then the guy was juggling fire balls in his hand, and Aizawa had to prioritize right now.
He was already on the phone by the time he reached the girl, relaying their location to proper authorities and doing what he could for the girl. She had two stab wounds, and as he looked her over she started waking up. Probably passed out from shock, then, but she'd pass out again real soon if he didn't stop the bleeding. He pressed gauze against her stomach and checked in on the fight.
Alley Cat seemed to be holding his own. He didn't use fire in massive, flashy displays, which was a nice change, Aizawa had to admit. It was tamer, far more controlled than most fire users bothered with.
He wondered why that was.
He was about to erase Knife-Hand's quirk when Alley Cat used his fire like a whip, latching onto the man's wrist. It pissed Aizawa off for two seconds, thoughts about unnecessary harm and hero laws racing through his head, but then he realized Knife-Hand wasn't screaming.
The fire wasn't burning him.
Alley Cat used the anchor point to launch himself at Knife-Hand, landing a solid kick to man's chest. Knife-Hand stumbled back, and Alley Cat pulled a bracelet off his own wrist and deftly tied it around one of Knife-Hand's wrists, ducked under a swing from the other hand, and then grabbed it and tied that one up as well.
Knife-Hand lunged, and Alley Cat sidestepped out of the way, swinging one leg up and around in a painful ax kick on Knife-Hand's head. Knife-Hand didn't get up again.
There were pros who couldn't have handled this more professionally than that. Aizawa hated himself for being impressed.
"Is she okay?" Alley Cat asked.
"She's in shock, but paramedics are already on their way," Aizawa said.
"Oh, good," Alley Cat said, looking visibly relieved.
His eyes cut across to a fire escape.
"Don't even think about it," Aizawa threatened.
"About what? How you wouldn't be able to chase after me right now because you're giving someone first aid?"
Aizawa narrowed his eyes. The damn bastard caught his bluff.
"You might be able to run right now, but I will find you again, and I will bring you in."
"Yeah, probably. But until then, I've got some things to do, okay?" He waved and leapt for the fire escape, scaling the stairs up to the roof in twenty seconds flat.
And all Aizawa could do was sit there and watch, because if he took pressure off this girl's bleeding stomach she might not live through the trip to the hospital.
"I cannot believe the nerves on that guy," Aizawa grumbled to himself. That mocking wave was going to haunt him. It infuriated him that Alley Cat could act like they were work buddies.
What infuriated him more was the fact that he'd had him. He'd literally had Alley Cat all wrapped up in his scarf like a freaking present.
He glared at Knife-Hand. "This is your fault."
Needless to say, he did not get home early that night, and he was not happy about it.
Xx
After that encounter, his luck started changing. He glimpsed Alley Cat more and more, but the vigilante had some kind of disappearing trick. The second Aizawa lost sight of him for more than ten seconds, he was gone.
It was driving him up a freaking wall.
Alley Cat was on the lookout for him now, and Aizawa was never able to sneak up on him again like that first night. He'd give a mock salute and then be off running through back alleys, and Aizawa would always lose him.
It was starting to hurt his pride as a pro.
There was no way a random vigilante should have been able to avoid him for almost half a year.
His mood was worse than usual today, too, because it was a full year since he'd been shot. A full year since a child had gone missing. For the most part, Aizawa tried not to let these things get to him. Heroes couldn't save everyone, no matter how hard they tried. But losing kids always hurt worse. Maybe it was because he'd been shot the same night, but Izuku Midoriya hurt more than usual. Aizawa couldn't get him out of his head.
He still remembered the surprise on the kid's face when Aizawa hurled him out of the way. It was the only glimpse of his face he'd seen in person, and the only reason it stayed so clear in his memory was because of the hours he'd spent staring at the picture in the missing person's report. Izuku Midoriya had such a childish innocence to his face, it was hard to imagine him having any connection to the black market.
That just proved you couldn't judge a book by its cover.
A burst of light on his left drew him back out of his musings, and he nearly tripped over the edge of the roof. But there, spinning in the sky, was a fireball. It hovered there for a solid five seconds before falling back down to the street below.
Alley Cat? It had to be him, but that wasn't anything like his usual fighting style. He tended to avoid flashy displays that gave away his location.
Aizawa was already moving. Alley Cat wouldn't give away his location without a good reason. He knew Eraserhead was around somewhere, and he was asking for help.
Aizawa wasn't one to neglect a call for help.
He dropped down into an alley, carefully bouncing off the walls on his way down to lighten the fall. Alley Cat was pinned to the wall, some kind of brace or cuff around his wrists. His fingers twitched wildly, throwing fire around his attacker to fend them off. Another one was already unconscious on the ground, and Aizawa spotted a third shaking themselves off and getting back to their feet.
No wonder the kid needed backup. He usually relied more on his hand to hand, and that had been stripped from him against three opponents. The fire was his last line of defense against them.
And it wasn't going well.
The first attacker, a woman with some kind of melting quirk, burst through his flames, accepting the damage to her fur trim coat. Her hand reached for Alley Cat's face, a manic grin on her face.
Alley Cat used the braces to hoist himself up enough to try and kick her, but her hand grabbed for his leg instead. Not that it did anything, because Aizawa had already erased her quirk.
She turned to him, snarling, and he shot his scarf out at her, pulling her towards him as he raced forward. With her quirk still erased and hands bound at her sides, she was helpless to stop the punch across her face.
The follow up kick might have been overdoing it, but Aizawa had been in a bad mood before he'd even found them. She wasn't unconscious, just dazed, which was enough for him to leave her and go after the last guy.
He needed a few seconds to rest his quirk, but the last guy was already unsteady on his feet. He could draw things in the air and give them solid shape, which explained the braces pinning Alley Cat. His concentration was shot thanks to whatever hit Alley Cat landed on him, so it didn't take long to subdue him, either.
Unfortunately, once the guy decided tied up in an alley was a good place for a nap, the braces keeping Alley Cat from running off dissolved.
"I wasn't sure you'd come, thanks," Alley Cat said, rubbing his wrists.
"Don't think you're off the hook that easily," Aizawa said, gathering up what was left of his scarf. Most of it was keeping the three attackers tied up, but he still had plenty left to add Alley Cat to the collection.
He threw a loop at Alley Cat. A fireball shot down from above to knock it aside.
That explained where the fire went, then. It was all hovering over their heads, ready to be called on when Alley Cat needed it.
The back of Aizawa's mind wondered if Alley Cat couldn't actually conjure his own fire, like Endeavor did, and if that was why it wasn't as flashy. He didn't have that raw firepower, so he had to be strategic with what he did have.
The rest of Aizawa focused on throwing his weapon again and getting closer.
Again, Alley Cat knocked it aside with a fireball. "Sorry, Eraserhead. I do appreciate you saving me, but I can't go to the station with you." He did look slightly apologetic. Or as much as he could when all Aizawa could see were his eyes.
"I don't care about your schedule," Aizawa stated.
Alley Cat laughed. "Yeah, I know. I'll see you next time!" He waved again, that stupid, mocking, childish wave, and stepped onto one of his fireballs, which flattened into a solid disk beneath him, and rode it like an elevator up to the roofs.
If Aizawa hadn't seen it, he wouldn't have believed it.
Fire wasn't supposed to do that, what the hell?
By the time he shook off his shock and erased Alley Cat's quirk, the guy was close enough to the roof to jump for it. The nearest fire escapes were too far away for Aizawa to catch up to him before he pulled his disappearing act, and he had three dazed criminals beside him that needed to be dealt with.
He didn't know what crime they'd been committing, but he was especially pissed at them. Only because they teamed up three against one, against one much smaller kid. Not because he didn't want to see Alley Cat hurt. Alley Cat was a vigilante, the guy Aizawa was giving up his home life to track down.
If he was a little rougher dragging these criminals to the nearest police station, then that was his business. If he snapped at an officer asking why it was taking so long to track down Alley Cat, then no one else needed to know.
If it took until the two hour commute home for his heart to finally stop racing, then that was because it was a normal night. It had nothing to do with seeing Alley Cat pinned like that. Of knowing that when his back was literally against a wall, Alley Cat turned to him.
It didn't mean a damn thing. He was a hero, he saved people, even dumb vigilantes who should mind their own business.
That was all Alley Cat was. Just a dumb vigilante tinier that half of the high school students he taught, who really had no business fighting so many much larger opponents.
And waving goodbye to him like that! Aizawa hadn't seen the smile because of the mask, but he could see it in Alley Cat's eyes. Those big green eyes that he knew from somewhere. He'd never figured out where.
He slouched in his seat on the train, mood growing worse. Why'd this have to happen tonight, when his mood was already so sour? It wasn't bad enough to have so much of his mind focused on a case from a year ago, now his thoughts were jumping from what few facts he knew about Alley Cat and trying to fit in what he'd learned tonight.
That fire quirk, it wasn't anything like he'd ever seen before.
Something tickled the back of his mind, a random fact he couldn't quite recall. He frowned, trying harder to call it to the front of his mind. All he got was the mental image of Izuku Midoriya's school picture.
Great. Now his mind was going to bounce between two tiny midgets.
Who both had green eyes.
And hadn't Izuku Midoriya had a fire quirk in his file?
He bolted upright in his seat. Was it possible? The timing matched up. Alley Cat's first credited captures started after Midoriya had gone missing. Midoriya had been wrapped up in his father's operations, so it would make sense for him to know about people in the black market.
But he was twelve. Thirteen by now, maybe, but that wasn't any better. He was a kid, what the hell was he doing going around like a vigilante?
Given who his father was, maybe that question already had an answer.
God, was this why he hadn't been able to stop thinking about Midoriya all year? Had he been putting the pieces together all along without realizing it?
No one would blame him, who would expect a twelve year old to be a vigilante? But that explained his size, and his voice.
But still, a twelve year old? He had trouble believing it. He could just be seeing what he wanted to see.
The second the train doors opened at his station, he was out the door and storming down the street back home.
He had research to do.
He barged into his house more forcefully than he meant to, slamming the door and barely kicking his shoes off.
His noisy entrance did not go unnoticed by his sleeping husband, who yelped so loudly something glass and breakable shattered. The man himself shot into the hallway a moment later, ready for a fight, only to have Aizawa blind him when he turned on the light.
"Calm down, it's me," Aizawa said.
"Shouta?" Hizashi put a hand over his heart and leaned against the wall. "You gave me a heart attack, what's going on?"
Aizawa brushed past him into the office. "I think I figured something out."
"About Alley Cat?" Hizashi followed behind him, lurking in the doorway while Aizawa yanked open the filing cabinet.
The answer seemed obvious to Aizawa, so he didn't deign to respond.
"Shouta, talk me through it."
"I'm looking for a file," Aizawa said, which also seemed obvious, but it didn't take much mental power to answer, and he was still mostly focused on sifting through the files.
"I can see that!" Hizashi groaned. "I hate when you get like this."
"No you don't," Aizawa stated, more out of habit than anything else. He finally found the file he wanted, a disappointingly thin folder labelled "Reverse Drug." Anything related to the case went in here, and since Izuku Midoriya had been there that night, it was where he'd put the missing person's report.
He dropped the file open on the desk and pulled the last page out. Izuku smiled up at him from the page.
Aizawa used his fingers to cover everything but Izuku's eyes. And, yeah, those were definitely the same green eyes. "Dammit. I wanted to be wrong."
Hizashi peered over his shoulder. "You think that missing kid is your vigilante?"
"Yeah. Fuck, he must be against his father, that's why he's doing this."
The adrenaline rush started fading, and he leaned back against Hizashi. His mind was reeling with this revelation.
"Okay, this is good, you can work with this," Hizashi said, running a hand up and down his arm. "But, wow, is he really that young?"
"I knew he was young, he only claimed to be a recent graduate, but I didn't think he was this young," Aizawa said. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back on Hizashi's shoulder.
Hizashi wrapped both arms around him. "It's going to be okay. You're on the job, after all."
Aizawa hoped so. The kid had gotten himself into quite the situation earlier. If Aizawa hadn't been patrolling, the kid would probably be dead right now.
And what was the kid doing when he wasn't playing vigilante? Where did he sleep? How did he get food? Was anyone taking care of him?
"Come on, we're going to go lie down for a while," Hizashi said.
"I'm not sleeping after this," Aizawa stated.
"I didn't say sleep," Hizashi said, tugging on Aizawa and pulling him to the bedroom. "I said lie down. It's too early to call anyone about this and you need time to process. And I want my morning cuddles."
Aizawa huffed, hiding the smile tugging at his lips, but he relented and let his husband drag him to the bedroom. The cats had claimed their pillows, but they were easily shooed off.
Hizashi held him close, running his fingers through his hair.
Later, Aizawa would talk with Nedzu and see if he had any ideas about all of this. He'd call the police department and report his suspicions, and hopefully they'd be able to find Izuku Midoriya. Although, considering the kid had been able to hide for a solid year, Aizawa wasn't hopeful.
For now, he'd enjoy his husband's presence.
"By the way, what did you break when you woke up?" Aizawa asked.
"Uh…"
Xx
After the night Izuku had called for help, Eraserhead was relentless in chasing him down. The man seemed to be behind every corner and on every rooftop.
So what if Izuku had needed backup one time, the man didn't have to be this worried about him. He'd managed almost an entire year just fine on his own!
Izuku's paranoia grew so bad he actually took two weeks off from patrols, focusing instead on tracking his father's movements.
Mrs. Ishiyama noticed him around a lot more, and she kept asking after his health. He had to lie and say he'd been suspended for fighting, which made her cluck her tongue at him. But she did make dinner for him, so he couldn't be mad.
He'd been getting tired of his burned cooking. His mom had always made it look so easy, but he overcooked just about everything. Whenever he tried to experiment with spices, he always regretted it, creating absolutely terrible concoctions. Katsuki would be so disappointed in him. His friend had gotten into cooking when they were eight, after a teacher suggested it might help with his temper to have a creative outlet.
It hadn't, but Katsuki had taken to cooking like a fish in water.
During his little vacation, he stockpiled all the current information he could find about the black market, hacking into all sorts of websites and venturing into dark spots on the web. He passed on some info to the police, but mostly what he found was basic info he kept for his own records.
His father seemed to have recovered his reputation and then some from the attempted arrest a year ago. The name 'Dragon' was still used like a threat in the dark web. Izuku wasn't able to pin down his new base of operations or what his next deal would be, but he didn't expect to stumble across that on a random website.
He wasn't even sure what he'd do if he had the information.
He had stumbled upon the bounty Hiroki had mentioned months ago, and he grinned when he read the information listed on it. All of it was inaccurate. It claimed he was two feet taller than he was, that he had a flower quirk, and that his suspected whereabouts were some seventy miles north of Nurugi.
He wished he had a way to thank Hiroki and everyone else protecting him.
Two weeks of research was all he could stand, though. There was a voice in the back of his head screaming that people needed help, and he wasn't answering it. He could only ignore that voice so long, and his nightmares were getting worse. He'd had them off and on all year, his imagination twisting that night into what it could have been and using what he'd seen as Alley Cat as inspiration. Adding in some paranoia while he hid in his apartment didn't help.
Finally getting out to patrol again was a good feeling. He'd missed it.
The overly alert senses…not so much.
His paranoia was warranted, though. Eraserhead found him again that very night. Izuku barely had enough time duck around a corner before the stupid scarf snagged him, and then they were on a mad dash through the city.
"Aren't there people who need saving?" Izuku yelled back. Why was this guy so obsessed with him?
"Yes, including you," Eraserhead said.
"Saving from you, maybe," Izuku muttered. He wanted to use his quirk to get up on the rooftops, but he wouldn't have the element of surprise this time. Eraserhead would never let him get so high.
He had to settle for a fire escape like a normal person. At least on the stairs, Eraserhead couldn't use his capture weapon.
Izuku bolted across the rooftop, aiming for the street side of the building. He summoned a fireball from his lighter and threw it ahead of him, leaping from the roof onto it and sailing across to the other side of the street.
"Midoriya!"
Izuku faltered on the new rooftop, turning around before realizing he shouldn't. If Eraserhead had had any doubts before, Izuku just erased them all by responding to his own name.
Eraserhead stood on the other building. It was too far of a gap for him to cross, and he knew that, knew that by the time he made it back to the ground and crossed the street, Izuku would be long gone.
"It's actually you?"
Izuku had pretty thoroughly proven that point.
"You don't have to keep running, let me help you!" Eraserhead shouted.
Help him? Help him with what? Handing him over to the proper authorities and putting his name all over the system? Lighting a neon sign over his head and leading his father right to him? No, thanks.
"There're people that need it more than I do," Izuku replied. Then he turned away and jumped down the other fire escape, disappearing into the side streets with Eraserhead calling after him.
He didn't have the heart to go out on patrol again for another week, hiding in his room like a coward.
When that voice got too loud again, the one berating him for leaving all those people to suffer, his temper flared. If Eraserhead wanted to waste all his time chasing after Izuku, fine. Izuku would change his patrol routes, start venturing into other parts of the city, maybe even into other cities nearby. He'd become a damn cryptid and keep himself far, far away from the pro hero.
And he'd make sure he never had to call for backup again.
Chapter 5
"There're people that need it more than I do."
Aizawa had so many questions. He wanted to chain that child to a chair and demand the full story. And then he was going to keep that child there so he could have some peace of mind that he wasn't getting in over his head again.
Unfortunately, said child seemed hell bent on never seeing him again. Aizawa had been getting closer to capturing him again, figuring out his patrol routes and the areas he seemed to focus on. But ever since that night when he revealed he knew the face under the mask, Alley Cat had made himself scarce. Aizawa hadn't even glimpsed him in the following month.
It was like he'd taken two steps forward and a massive slide backwards.
The police were on the alert for Izuku Midoriya, but whatever hole the kid had found to hide in, he wasn't coming out of it. Aizawa hadn't expected any different, but he'd been hopeful.
He just wanted the kid to be okay. He had a second chance to save this kid, he wasn't going to fail again.
If the damn kid would just let him find him again…
It took almost two months for their paths to cross again. Aizawa even got his scarf wrapped around him. He had him.
Then the brat burned his hand and ran off with Aizawa's scarf.
Hizashi didn't stop laughing for days. Every time he looked over at Aizawa and saw him without the scarf, he burst into giggles all over again.
(The scarf was left in front of the police station a few days later. It included a note saying sorry, signed with a little cat head).
The situation didn't improve over the next few months. Some nights were closer than others, but most of the time Aizawa patrolled the city without even seeing a sign of him. A week or two would go by without a single sign of the vigilante, not even a criminal left in an alley for the police to collect. Whenever the days stretched on like that, Aizawa worried something had happened, and he prayed he wasn't about to find a child's rotting corpse in the trash.
But Alley Cat always turned up again sooner or later.
Crime rates in general were going down in the city, which was reason enough for the stretches of silence. Cities with a hero present tended to see this effect after a while. It did not impress Aizawa, this wasn't a hero, he was a vigilante and he was a child.
It was not impressive.
Much to Aizawa's displeasure, he still hadn't caught Midoriya by the time the new school year started and he was back to teaching full time again. He had to shorten his patrol hours to fit in a decent amount of sleep somewhere, and the long commute became his lesson planning time. It was often naptime as well, because no matter what Aizawa did he never seemed to get enough sleep.
At least his current class wasn't completely hopeless. He'd only expelled one kid so far.
But he was starting to wonder how much longer he could keep this up. When they called Aizawa in to capture Alley Cat, no one had expected it to take this long. A few months, maybe, but he'd been chasing this guy around for over a year now. The commute was draining him, the lack of time at home was cutting into what little time he had with his husband, and he was starting to think it might just be better to let someone else take over the case.
Giving up the case felt too much like giving up on Midoriya, though, and he wasn't willing to do that.
There're people that need it more than I do.
That line still haunted him, four months later. Izuku hadn't said he didn't need to be saved. He'd implied he didn't deserve it.
Everyone deserved to be saved, even child vigilantes out way past their bedtime.
He was out past his bedtime. God he was tired. Trying to juggle teaching again while still doing this was pushing him to new levels of exhaustion. If not for Hizashi forcing him to lie down sometimes and the naps on the train, he'd be a walking zombie.
He owed his husband so much when this was all over. The thought was even clearer now, as he checked his phone on the train before he started patrol.
Hizashi
Since we're both off tomorrow, what do you say I hop on the train over to Nurugi in the morning. You can catch some sleep at the station there and we'll spend the day looking for little Izu
This was why he loved this man. He understood Aizawa down to the basic fundamental levels, and he was willing to give up his day off wandering a random city for him.
If they weren't already married, Aizawa would propose over text right then.
That night was a quiet one, with no sign of Alley Cat. He crashed in the local police station's break room, catching a solid six hours before Hizashi text him again to let him know he was almost there.
Aizawa met him at the station, indulging in a tight hug before separating. He didn't like PDA, and he didn't want the media coming after them and asking questions about their personal lives. He wasn't well known, but Present Mic had a dedicated following and was pretty recognizable. Even the hug was pushing his comfort levels a little bit.
The smile Hizashi had afterwards was worth it.
They wandered the town, checking out the places kids usually hung out in now. They showed Izuku's picture to some shop owners and asked around the mall, but no one acted like they recognized him. The results weren't surprising. If Izuku was that easy to find, he'd never have lasted this long.
It wasn't exactly a date night, they were both wired and on alert all day, but it was the most time they'd spent together in a while. Aizawa made sure his husband knew how much it was appreciated when they made it home.
Xx
Aizawa could come up with plenty of reasons why he hadn't been able to catch Alley Cat yet, even though he knew who was under the mask. He didn't have as much time, and a lot of the time he did have kept being reassigned to following up on anonymous tips about gangs and other criminals. Midoriya had been raised by a villain and probably had a host of skills and resources they were unaware of, not to mention the outright determination to avoid capture at all costs.
As the months dragged on, Aizawa started seeing less and less of him. The kid was still active. Criminals were still tied up with those braided cuffs and left for police to find. It was the only reason Aizawa knew he was still alive sometimes.
The few times he did see him, Izuku was quick to disappear. Aizawa never managed to get his scarf around him again.
The two year anniversary of Izuku's disappearance came and went. Aizawa wasn't one to drink away his problems, but he came real close that night. Hizashi brought home a kitten instead and Aizawa did not let go of it for several days.
The pictures his class took of a kitten hiding in his scarf during school were all edited. They couldn't prove anything.
Honestly, chasing after Alley Cat sometimes felt like he was trying to chase down a stray cat. Too much sudden movement and he bolted, wary around strangers, didn't like being held.
It was a shame an open can of tuna probably wouldn't coax him closer.
It wouldn't, right? Aizawa had been at this long enough he was willing to try anything.
He stood on one of his favorite rooftops, eyes scanning over the city for flashes of light. Sometimes this strategy paid off, and he was able to sneak up on Alley Cat. Sometimes he never saw anything.
The kid had never called for backup again, and Aizawa wondered if that was because he truly never needed it or because he was just stubborn. If that was why there'd be gaps between Alley Cat sightings, because he'd been too injured to go out for a week or two.
That was why, when he saw the fireball launch into the sky and hover there for a few seconds, his heart almost stopped. Alley Cat had made it clear he wouldn't rely on Aizawa again. What kind of trouble had he gotten himself into that made him break that resolve?
Aizawa practically flew over the rooftops to find out.