Minor warning for chapter content
Very brief mention of a child sex trafficking ring that Shouta dealt with previously in his career, no explicit details of it is brought for various reasons but it is there.
Shouta realized he was certainly freaking Hizashi out when he wasn't home passed out on the couch after patrol for the fifth time that week.
The fact his phone was now on the ground after it vibrated off the bench, he had put it on the gym's bench for the same reason it fell off of it, how could it not from with how much Hizashi and Nemuri were blowing his phone up.
There were even a few mis-calls and unread texts from Tensei Shouta was sure.
Shouta also knew that he was not doing anything to make them feel better by ignoring them and taking his anger out on a punching bag.
But he wasn't mentally in a place to reply anything good to them right now.
He couldn't exactly tell them that he was dealing with the fact that Oboro is still alive but trapped by the quirk stealing boogie man that had intended to kidnap him instead of Oboro.
No, he knew what kind of reaction each of them would have if he just came out and told them.
Hizashi would lose his mind, probably have a crying fit, Nemuri would join him and then drag him to have a bender with her because neither of them would be able to handle all of this completely sober.
Then once they finished with that, they would be demanding to know everything and tearing up the streets to find Oboro so they could free him and kick All For One's ass to the moon and back.
Tensei on the other hand would probably be the most reasonable, shocked into silence for a while before securing his baby brother and demanding all of the details from him.
Which Shouta wouldn't be able to do.
Tensei was too earnest and limelight to be able to keep everything under wraps.
Not bad things for a person to be, and if this wasn't a case he was so personally invested in, he wouldn't mind bringing him in.
But Shouta couldn't risk making any mistakes this time around.
Midoriya had explained everything about Oboro's situation to him once he calmed down.
From his best friend becoming what was called a Nomu, and that he now had a... body roommate in the form of Kurogiri, to the orders around the two of them that they had to follow because of some kind of compulsion quirk.
Another reason why Midoriya hadn't read him into the mission earlier.
There were 'protocols' should they run into him or the others, a protocol that would bury Oboro deep in unconsciousness until they were out of contact with Kurogiri and then Kurogiri would be forced to report to All For One how they got in contact.
Which would expose their only way to kill All For One and probably get Oboro killed for real since he was too much of a loose end.
Even texting wouldn't work since the paranoid old bastard had thought of that too.
Hence why Shouta avoided the rest of his group in order to sort out his own feelings on this matter, so he could come up with a half decent excuse for them that would be believable.
Mainly by punching the stuffing out of the large swinging bag instead of prowling the streets for even the slightest hint of Oboro, but that was a much healthier coping mechanism than anything else he had.
A few busted knuckles were better than the alternative of running himself into the ground.
Though not by much admittedly.
He paused from his punching to glance up at the clock and saw it had been at least an hour since he started, he sighed and let his head rest on the bag as he took a minute to breathe.
Sweat rolling down his body and the bag's cool surface helping him just a bit, though he should take a break to drink something, even if his arms would be screaming at him for continuing to use them after such a heavy workout.
"It's not coffee but it's not surgery either, Sho." the blue-eyed devil he'd been thinking of said, offering one of his grapefruit soda cans.
A soft smile on Tensei's face.
Shouta wasn't the only one in the gym, it was a private gym for professional heroes of all branches, so he wasn't the only one here by a long shot.
And frankly he was too focused on punching the lights out of the bag and ignoring his phone to realize Tensei had entered this part of the gym.
Shouta huffed, moving to lean on the bag and look and Tensei properly with his arms crossed.
"The fuck are you doing out of Tokyo?" Shouta questioned with a raised brow.
Tensei huffed back "Well between waiting for you to come around with both Hizashi and Nemuri blowing up my phone, or taking a couple days off to show Tenya around my old stomping grounds and talking with you... " Tensei responded shrugging his shoulders with a lopsided grin.
Shouta rolled his eyes and took the soda, cracking it open and began to drink it, frigid cold.
Tensei was right, between the two idiots calling at all hours of the night or taking a couple of days off to try and talk with him, the choice was obvious.
"Then where's Jr?" Shouta asked once he looked around more carefully and noted that Tenya wasn't here.
"He's moved past following me around like a duckling years ago Sho. I dropped him off at the museum since he wanted to see one of the traveling exhibits. He's got his phone on him if anything happens." Tensei answered with a chuckle.
Shouta gave a 'mpft' back.
"You mind telling me what started the, what is it now? Cold war ?" Tensei asked softly, clearly not willing to pry if he didn't want to talk about it.
Shouta sighed, moving to sit on the bench he put his phone on, Tensei sitting on the bench right next to him while Shouta rubbed the back of his neck.
"Work shit." Shouta muttered after a moment of thought before taking another sip of the grapefruit soda.
"Oof, really? Geeze, I don't think I've seen you, shut down like this over work since... It isn't 'that' bad is it?" Tensei tentatively asked, not wanting to say it but Shouta knew what he was talking about all the same.
He had been helping bust a child smuggling ring in his twenties, it was his first job undercover, but they hadn't realized that said child smuggling ring was also a child prostitution ring until he was given a couple hours with one of the bosses' 'favorite' kid as a reward.
He actually gotten pretty drunk after the case was done and wouldn't talk to them for nearly a month until Tensei and Isamu ganged up on him.
Which brought to mind the other reason Shouta had been pissed after his little debrief.
Sasaki was very lucky that Shouta did not have the time to had over to the prefecture his office was at and that Shouta did not know where the man lived, Shouta would not have been nearly as kind as Midoriya had been.
Though he absolutely would have forgone sleep to castrate Sasaki if he had laid hands on Togata and make sure his body was never found afterwards with a little help, Nezu owed him for not telling him about Oboro.
Even if it was for Oboro's protection the Rat would feel guilty enough to help him cover up murder right now.
"No, not that bad. Just something that's personally fucking me up mentally." Shouta assured tapping his head.
"Will damn, must still be bad if you're actually saying it out loud instead of pretending nothing's happening beyond the normal universe shenanigans." Tensei replied looking a bit shocked.
Shouta supposed he couldn't blame him for that, it was an old joke between the group that Shouta's Irish heritage was why he bundled all of his feelings away in the hope that one day it would just blow him up and that he wouldn't have to deal with them.
He still cursed himself for letting them talk him into taking that ancestry test, he was only a fourth Irish and they still snickered when he worn green when they thought he wasn't looking and insisted on dragging him out for a beer on St. Patrick's day.
Shaking his head Shouta focused on keeping Tensei from asking more questions he couldn't answer.
"Can't say anything, one of Nezu's deep shit cases." Shouta admitted, which was absolutely true and he signed the appropriate NDAs for being aware of a civilian deep cover case that Midoriya was in.
Tensei nodded and patted him on the back, not needing more information since he understood Nezu too.
"Kay I got it Sho, I'll tell Hizashi and Nemuri to back off too." Tensei promised.
Shouta's shoulders slumped, slightly relieved.
He didn't like leaving the house and only came to the gym for the punching bag, and to avoid the two of them questioning him about his sour mood.
"Will it need a lot of groundwork on your end? I can talk with Hizashi about coming to stay in my apartment over here for a while." Tensei offered, making Shouta huff.
"Not physically demanding for me, there is no need to uproot the Cockatoo." Shouta said turning the offer down, though he was thankful that Tensei made the offer at all.
"In that case, since you don't have school over the break, what do you say to joining me and coming to meet Tenya?" Tensei suggested, wanting to get his mind off of whatever was going on in his mysterious mission.
Shouta raised a brow at him.
"Didn't I meet him years ago? Pretty sure I still have the scar from it too." Shouta pointed out, holding up the pants leg where the faint tiny markings from an old bite.
Tensei shoved him playfully with a chuckle.
"He was barely a year old then! And you haven't seen him since we graduated, even if I talked about you Tenya doesn't remember you." Tensei told him.
"Come one, it will just be for a couple of hours, we can go to that cat cafe you like.~" Tensei said teasingly, waggling his eyebrows at his clear bribe.
Shouta rolled his eyes.
"Fine... but you're paying, Legacy case." Shouta agreed standing up and heading for the showers.
Tensei must have called the rest of the group while he was cleaning himself up, cause Nemuri and Hizashi had stopped messaging him by the time he came out and he joined Tensei in the sports car he was driving around in.
Shouta couldn't absolutely swear to it, but he was fifty percent sure it was the same one Tensei 'borrowed' during their second year and took all of them joy riding in.
He wouldn't put it past him since he doubted Tensei's parents would notice if Tensei took his grandmother's car for a week, Tensei was the golden child after all even if they weren't around as much because they were wrapped up in their careers.
Not that he'd ever say that to Tensei's face these days, his friend had to basically raise his baby brother himself while juggling school and hero work, with weirdly supportive parents that were never there for anything but appearances.
At least Tensei had his grandmother back then, though as Tensei took a sharp turn Shouta had to wish that Tensei hadn't taken after her when it came to his driving.
The whole family were a bunch of fucking speed demons.
How they weren't stopped for speeding he didn't know or care, just glad they made it to the museum in one piece and as soon as possible.
"You okay there Sho?" Tensei teasingly asked, already out of the car and leaning on the passage side of the car.
"Fucking. Speed. Demons." Shouta hissed smacking Tensei's face away from him, which Tensei had the gall to laugh off as he dragged Shouta out of the car.
Once inside it wasn't that hard to find Tenya, the boy was almost the spitting image of Tensei.
Well, if Tensei had red eyes, glasses and a stick up his ass.
"Sir! How could you come to such a respectful institution without making sure you were properly dressed?" Tenya exclaimed, going right over to him and had one of his arms chopping the air for some reason.
Shouta merely gave the boy the stink eye back.
Sure, he was in a heavily stained tank top, sweatpants and combat boots that all clashed with each other, but the brat didn't have to be so loud about it.
"Do you make it a habit of telling strangers they look like shit?" Shouta questioned back, making the boy sputter.
"T-that, I was not- I merely mean to," Tenya stumbled trying to string a sentence together but stopped when Tensei, the laughing bastard, put his hands on Tenya's shoulders.
"Don't worry Ten-Ten, Sho is just pulling your chain," Tensei assured the boy through his chuckling then looked Shouta dead in the eye "He knows he looks like crap." Tensei added and Tenya sputtered again.
"Nii-San how could you say that about friend?" Tenya questioned, looking utterly lost after catching on that Shouta and Tensei knew each other.
"It's not an insult if it's true kid. I have to look this way for my work kid." Shouta cut the boy off before he went onto some kind of rant.
"I often work undercover and looking like a narc would be a fast way to get my ass killed in duty, no one making a back-alley deal looks twice at the drunk bum passed out on the ground." Shouta further explained, shrugging his shoulders.
"R-right, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you or your important work, Sir." Tenya apologized bowing nearly at a uniform angle.
Shouta tsked.
"It takes a lot more than that to get under my skin brat, my problem is that you thought telling me you thought I looked bad outweighed your common sense to think about why I might look like shit." Shouta corrected and the boy stared up at him baffled, and a bit pink for being called a brat.
"Not everyone is rich like you brat, and there is a lot of reasons someone wouldn't look their best, and unless you have a second quirk along with those engines in your legs, then you can't know what crap someone else is going through." Shouta pointedly told the boy.
"I could have just dragged myself out of bed for the first time after massive depressive episode and wanted to cheer myself up by coming here, only to have some random kid accost me for the way I look? Can you really not see why that's wrong?" Shouta questioned with his arms crossed.
Looking properly shamed, the boy nodded with his tail all but tucked between his legs.
"The only reason I'm asking you these questions is because Tensei told me you plan to become a hero yourself, and heroes need to know better than to judge someone out loud like that." Shouta informed the boy.
"Okay Sho, that's enough teaching off the clock." Tensei told him wrapping an arm around Tenya's shoulders.
"Now, let's all go to the cat cafe like I promised Sho." Tensei said deflecting, to leaving.
"You better get me coffee mochis Legacy case." Shouta told Tensei not even bothering to look behind himself and just started walking on to Tensei's 'borrowed' car, knowing the two were following him.
As long as he got some cats, he'd deal with Tensei's kid brother and the stick up his ass.
As earnest as Izuku tries to be about Tenya, whether or not he has some condition that affects him (i.e. like ocd) and he can't handle things being out of place, he's still shaming people for how they look/act, so who better to tell him off than Shouta? Walking disaster of a cat lord that needs more sleep.