Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Thank you! Please come again!”

Dabi ignores the cheery parting from the clerk as he walks out of the store, more concerned with trying to juggle the grocery bags in his arms than engaging in meaningless societal small talk. He curses Compress under his breath as he moves down the sidewalk, dodging clueless civilians and lingering rainstorm puddles as he goes, for foisting his usual responsibilities off on Dabi in favor of fucking off to who knows where for who knows how long. Unfortunately, despite being easily one of the most recognizable of their group Dabi is the only other one of them that can be trusted to keep to the fucking budget while also able to slide under the radar enough to move freely out in the open.

It’s still cold enough out that he can get away with a high-collar jacket and a facemask, and the late winter sun shining down overhead explains away the sunglasses—at least while he’s outside. The clerk probably thought he was some hungover university student as he’d shuffled around their store with his glasses on despite all the side-eyed glances the handful of other patrons there threw his way. Dabi is happy to let people assume away as he makes his way down the streets and alleys of Roppongi, heading for the rendezvous spot that will take him back to their base. It’s just past the business lunch rush, but early enough that the schools haven’t let out for the day yet, leaving the streets mostly empty aside from bumbling tourists and the occasional local out on their own business. He shuffles the groceries in his arms so he can slide his phone out of his pocket and call for a pickup when a figure slides out of the shadows of the alley across from him.

Now, if asked, Dabi will swear up and down that for once in his life he wasn’t actually looking for trouble. Which, considering his track record, sounds fake as fuck but it’s true. For the life of him Dabi can’t figure out exactly how he got into this situation.

Well actually that’s a lie. But really, what would anyone expect when fucking Geten of all people comes barreling out of nowhere swearing vengeance against him in the name of Re-Destro? For Dabi to not pass up a chance to grind the ice bastard’s hooded face into the dirt?

He hasn’t seen any of the PLF in almost a year after the heroes raided their bases and crippled the organization. While the bulk of their forces fell in the raid the League slipped away as Machia tore through what was left of the city and those that hadn’t gotten rounded up and thrown in jail had scattered like rats. Dabi hasn’t heard a peep since.

Frankly he’d been relieved to wash his hands of it. Him, a lieutenant? Yeah fucking right. He’ll take the psychopaths in the League any day over those Meta Liberation freaks. Laying low until everything had blown over had been easy in the wake of All for One's scheming—no one had the time to search for a handful of villains with thousands of convicts roaming the streets. There was the question of their fearless leader while the dust was still settling, but the world doesn't know about that little bit. All that matters is the crusty fucker made it through with his head more or less screwed on straight.

So anyways there he’s standing, arms laden with Spinner’s protein shakes, Compress’ stupidly specific cereal brand, Toga’s matcha ice cream, and a frankly absurd amount of raw meat along with a handful of other food items that had been requested, and there’s Geten racing at him calling him a traitor to the cause, blah, blah, blah.

In broad fucking daylight no less.

Dabi does not get paid enough for this shit.

He has to abandon his groceries to avoid the wave of ice slicing towards him. Around him people have already started to scream and run the opposite way. Dabi ignores them and stares at the scattered food left in the wake of Geten’s attack instead, mouth pulling into a frown. 

There had been eggs in there damn it. Does that little twerp have any idea how fucking expensive eggs are right now?

Well, it wasn’t exactly a question before but now Dabi really is going to turn the parka freak to ash. 

A second wave of ice comes crashing at him and Dabi lunges out of the way. As he scrambles upright he rips off his face mask and shucks off the jacket he’d been wearing to cover his scarring. He takes one of Compress’ marbles out of one of the pockets in his pants, his duster materializing as he heats his hand to the point the quirk is forced to release. He avoids an ice spear that’s hurled at him and pulls the coat on so it settles comfortably on his shoulders, listening to the whir of the hidden mechanisms inside the bracers as they start working to cool his body.

Geten growls in frustration and Dabi answers with a smirk that he knows is sending the former lieutenant’s blood pressure through the roof. It used to be his favorite pastime back at the Villa, figuring out what he could do or say to get the villain to lose his shit. For being the one with the literal fire quirk, Geten had a far shorter fuse than Dabi.

“Where has all that fire gone?” he goads, white hair whipping in the wind generated by his attacks. “I always knew you were too weak to win against me in a fair fight. My meta ability is clearly superior.”

After all, the last time they seriously fought they were interrupted when Gigantomachia tore through Deika before a victor could be declared, and they both know that while Dabi can melt Geten’s ice just fine, unlike his opponent his quirk has a very fine line between burning his skin and cooking him alive from the inside.

“Clearly,” Dabi mocks, twin balls of flame igniting in his open palms, “you need a fucking reality check.”

Obviously he hadn’t done a good enough job knocking that ego down during their PLF days. It’s just as over-inflated as it was back at the family gatherings where Geten used to crow about how amazing his quirk was to anyone willing to indulge him.

Unfortunately a heavy rainstorm that moved through the area earlier this morning means that there’s more than enough water for Geten to turn into all the ice he could ever want. He sends a wave of it hurtling towards Dabi. It breaks apart as Dabi responds with a stream of flames to melt it, the pieces not reduced to hissing steam reforming into spikes that rain down in an icy torrent.

A muffled cry snags his attention as he releases another wide-spread surge of blue flames to meet it, lightning strikes of pain skittering up his damaged nerves as his quirk begins to take its toll, his eyes darting to the side and landing on a kid pulling herself from the wreckage of a car behind him. She cries out for her mom as she tries to run and collapses instead, likely separated from her in the initial panic and too scared to leave the relative safety of the car until the danger was too great for her to stay put. She’s got a bird mutation of some kind with the delicate feathered wings puffed up and quivering over her shoulders. Hummingbird maybe, considering the metallic green-blue shimmer to them.

They flap weakly as she tries to stand, and without sparing the child a glance Geten sends a rush of ice spearing directly in both of their directions. Dabi moves without thinking, flames extinguishing as he scoops the kid up into his arms and rolls, unconsciously adjusting his hold to tuck the wings safely to her back so the bones don’t snap in two when they smack against the concrete. The ice clips his side as it barrels past and Dabi feels the telltale snap of his ribs. He chooses to focus on the fact that the kid is unhurt when he unfolds his arms rather than the disturbing feeling of pieces of bone sawing against each other as he tries to breathe around it. At least he’s not choking up blood, so he doesn’t have to worry about a punctured lung. Yet.

“Get out of here,” he growls as he drags her to her feet. She looks up at him with wide purple eyes as he stands and squeaks out what might have been a thank you before running away, small wings fluttering against her back to try and push her just a little bit faster.

“Those too weak to protect themselves have no place in a meta society,” Geten preaches from his stupid ice floe in the sky above. “Once Re-Destro is released only those with strongest abilities shall—” 

Dabi rolls his eyes and staggers to his feet, the growing heat in his head making him lightheaded. “Spare me the bullshit and just fucking die already.”

Time begins to move in fits and starts as their fight escalates. Dabi’s injuries make him slow, forcing him to increasingly rely on his flames to counteract Geten’s ice. The heat in his head ratchets up until he can feel himself growing delirious with it, the smell of his own flesh burning making his empty stomach turn as the remaining functional nerves in his arms shriek in agony. Geten manages to pin him between two walls of ice that he reinforces just as quickly as he melts it, and if Dabi doesn’t stop he’ll either burn up or die from heatstroke at this rate.

Like fuck he’s going to be taken out by fucking Geten of all people.

Over his dead body.

So when the heroes finally decide to show up and do something about the two A-ranked villains duking it out in the middle of the street Dabi is mildly relieved. Mildly, because it’s not like they’re there to help him and he’s still stuck in all this stupid ice.

Having been interrupted mid-monologue—which Dabi has been dutifully ignoring for the sake of his own sanity at this point—Geten fends off the heroes for a few minutes before deciding that it’s better to live to fight another day rather than get overwhelmed and taken into custody. Dabi, even through the fog of heat boiling his brain, whole-heartedly agrees with the sentiment.

He’s nearly out when without warning his flames are snuffed out.

“What do we have here?” Dabi’s head bangs painfully against the ice behind him as it snaps up. His staples tug his skin as his lips curl back into a snarl when he picks out Eraserhead from the gathered heroes that hadn’t gone racing after Geten. 

Fuck, he’s so screwed.

If looks could kill Eraserhead would be nothing but a smear of ash on the pavement under his feet, but instead he appears unfazed by Dabi as he meanders over to him, hands slung casually in his pockets. It’s only the piercing red stare that gives him away, the hard set to his jaw that gives any indication of his actual emotions. 

“Eraser,” Dabi growls. Fuck, his head is pounding.

“Problem villain,” he returns. “Funny running into you here.”

“Hilarious,” he says flatly. Is he slurring already? God he can barely hear himself over the blood roaring in his ears. He’s so hot . Even with his quirk erased there’s still steam coming up from where his bare skin is touching the ice, burning him even more before it escapes into the air. Eraserhead is saying something but he can’t concentrate enough to understand it. All he can feel is the heat trapped under his skin, cooking him from the inside out. 

You’re weak, his father’s voice hisses in his ear. Defective.

“‘M not,” he mumbles, trying to push the voice away. “Not weak.”

Someone’s calling his name. His head lolls to the side, trying to make sense of the people all crowding around him, faces swimming and blurring together. It makes his stomach roll uncomfortably and Dabi just barely keeps himself from retching. He thinks he hears something about a hospital and instinctively recoils.

“No, no hospital,” he says, stringing the words into what he hopes is a complete sentence. He can't go back there. Not again, not again.

It's been three years sleepy head!

Whatever is said next is lost to Dabi as he falls unconscious, the ghost of a little girl following him into the dark.

.

.

.

Awareness comes back in stages.

There’s an unfamiliar ceiling above him when he opens his eyes. Soft cotton sheets under his fingers. Somewhere behind him is the quiet beep of a machine. It takes him a minute to identify the familiar noise, but when he does ice floods down his spine as his memories of the fight come back.

Look who’s finally awake!

Fuck. Fuck.

In a rush of animal panic Dabi tries to sit up, only to bite back a startled cry of pain as he nearly dislocates his shoulders in his attempt to fling himself out of the bed. His gaze is drawn down to his arms and he finds both his hands have been cuffed to the railings of the bed. He’s been forced into a hospital robe, leaving what parts of his patchwork skin that aren’t wrapped in bandages on full display. The glint of medical staples poking out from underneath the gauze has him breathing out a sigh of relief. Dabi flexes his arms, feels the warped scar tissue tug familiarly underneath, and allows the certainty that this body is still his own to settle in his chest and chase away the lingering anxiety.

Once he’s centered again he focuses back on the handcuffs, assessing them with narrow eyes. They’re normal handcuffs, flimsy metal he can melt through in seconds. Yet when he tries to activate his quirk nothing happens. 

“The fuck,” he mutters, twisting and tugging his wrists, trying to call up even a hint of his flames and still failing.

“I see you’re finally awake young man.”

Dabi jerks his head to the other side of the room where a little old lady has just walked in through the door. Behind her Eraserhead slips inside. He leans against the wall with his hands crossed over his chest, face half-way buried in his capture weapon as he stares Dabi down with tired bloodshot eyes. Despite the way the man looks ten seconds from passing out the hard look he gives the villain as the old bat walks up to him tells him that he better behave or else. 

Well, jokes on him considering the state he’s in right now. At this rate grandma here could probably snap Dabi in half without breaking a sweat. 

“You had a very severe case of heatstroke,” she informs him, looking down at a clipboard in her hands that probably has whatever medical notes she’s made on it. Fuck, she probably drew some of his blood while he was out so the heroes could finally ID him. Fuck. “As well as some serious burns on your arms and back.”

“No kidding,” Dabi deadpans. Not like he wasn’t there or anything. Not like he hasn’t had to live with burn scars covering most of his body and a broken quirk since he was just a kid. 

“You should be grateful,” Eraserhead says from the wall. “The only reason you’re alive right now is because Recovery Girl was able to cool you down before the effects were irreversible.”

“My hero,” Dabi drawls, sarcasm dripping from every word. Eraserhead narrows his eyes.

If she’s upset he isn’t getting on bended knee for her Recovery Girl makes no indication of it as she fusses over him, taking his temperature and checking his breathing and what not. It gives him a moment to think. Recovery Girl isn’t just some run of the mill doctor at your local hospital. She’s the best of the best, and as far as he’s aware works exclusively with UA.

He looks around the room as she clicks her tongue in distaste after checking his lungs. He can only imagine how scarred they must be after so many years of smoke inhalation.

It’s a small private room with only his bed and a few other miscellaneous pieces of furniture and medical equipment inside. There are two doors, one which the heroes entered from and another that he assumes leads to a bathroom, and a window on the wall to his left. It’s been closed and the curtains drawn so it’s impossible to see what’s going on outside. He had assumed that after he passed out they’d have brought him to the closest hospital, but maybe… 

“Where am I?” he asks, directing his question at Eraserhead. 

The older man sighs. “While we considered it, based on the severity of your injuries and the security level of the closest available facilities it was decided to bring you to UA.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in. Dabi blames it on the lingering heatstroke.

“What?” This has to be a joke or something. He kidnapped one of this guy’s students, is a major figure in a villain group that has threatened the rest a dozen times over, and yet they brought him here? “Are you insane?” Fuck, and Dabi thought Toga was the craziest person he’d ever met.

“It was logically the best course of action,” Eraserhead defends. From the tired slope of his shoulders Dabi wonders if this conversation is one he’s had a lot over however long the villain has been unconscious. “Considering your quirk and connections, none of the medical facilities around are equipped to securely contain you or prevent a possible break out. At least here we can keep you and the threat of those who’d try to free you contained far better than a hospital or jail cell until we figure out what to do with you.”

After all, what better place to keep watch over a well-known villain than a school crawling with top-notch heroes? Even if individually he could possibly take them on and win he’d long exhaust his flames before he could clear a path through the mob and get out. 

Dabi leans back against the bed, as much as his cuffed wrists will allow, and schools his expression. “You’re not worried about the League trying to break me out?”

“Right now we have the police running interference,” the hero dismisses. “As far as the public is aware you’re being kept in their custody. There are very few people who know the truth.” He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “If that fails and your true location is discovered we have taken the necessary steps to minimize the risk to our students and the public.”

Dabi narrows his eyes. “You planning to use me as bait to draw them out?”

It’d be what Dabi would do if their roles were reversed. The heroes have been trying to get their hands on the League for years now, and this is the kind of golden opportunity they won’t get again. Dabi knows those dumbasses, how stupidly protective they’ve become of their own. They’ll come charging in guns blazing to get him back. If the heroes leak the right kind of information they’ll walk straight into a trap and it’ll be all his fault for getting caught.

“Oh dear, looks like I’ll have to adjust your medication,” Recovery Girl says. The words distract Dabi from his spiraling thoughts and the anger choking his lungs long enough to look down at his wrists and find a bit of smoke leaking out. Huh, so his quirk isn’t being erased right now, just suppressed. His eyes follow Recovery Girl as she fiddles with an IV bag hanging over his head that he hadn’t noticed before. He continues to follow the line down and, well, guess that explains the tube taped to his hand. Wonder how long it took her trying to find a vein on his arm that wasn’t fucked to hell before she gave up.

His eyes slide back over to Eraserhead, dark satisfaction curling in his chest at the disconcerted look on his face with the emergence of his quirk pushing through the drugs.

“When I get out of here,” he says, letting his voice go rough and rasping, “you’re going to wish you had just let me die.”

The hero’s eyes are as hard as flint. “We’ll see about that.”

Dabi is going to raze this whole school to the ground on his way out.

And Eraserhead will have no one to blame but himself.

As nice as the thought is though, as the days pass the truth is that Dabi doesn’t really have many options available to him right now. He’s drugged up to the gills with quirk suppressant and whatever else they’re feeding him through the IV stuck in his arm, not to mention handcuffed to the damn bed with nothing around to pick the locks with. 

He wants his coat back.

He hadn’t expected the cold, but maybe he should have with his quirk out of commission. The sudden absence of blistering heat that he’s lived with for over twenty years throws him more than he expected.

Over the years the bits of skin he can still claim as his own have grown cold to the touch while at his core he continued to burn hot. A poor insulator for his quirk gifted to him by his mother that none of them realized until it was too late. But now with the flames snuffed out the ice creeps down into his veins and he can’t stop shivering. Judging by the look on their faces the heroes aren’t expecting a fire-quirked villain to start regressing into hypothermia, but the old lady is the first to recover and snap into action before he can slip into a coma and die.

They can’t risk altering the suppressant and giving the embers of his fire a chance to rekindle, so instead the heroes pile a mountain of heated blankets on top of him and bring his body temperature back up to something closer to normal.

Recovery Girl comes in at least once a day after that to check on him, almost always exclusively accompanied by Eraserhead. Sometimes it’s another UA hero that Dabi vaguely recognizes, but they don’t stick around long. She uses her quirk on him in short bursts that leave him groggy and lethargic for the rest of the day, but feeling marginally less shitty afterward.

At one point the principal himself deigns to visit him, and Dabi isn’t honestly sure if it’s his quirk or if the strange creature sitting in front of him isn’t actually some sort of fucked up animal. He doesn’t say much as Recovery Girl bustles around, complaining as she goes about everything wrong with his body. Yeah, he knows it’s fucked; no he doesn’t need an itemized list of every individual fuck up.

The principal stares him down with beady black eyes and Dabi stares right back. Eventually he blinks, nods to himself with a breathed interesting, and then shuffles on out with a thank you to Recovery Girl as he goes. Dabi doesn’t know what the fuck that was about, and he doesn’t really care to find out. 

For the most part Dabi lets the heroes do as they please around him. It’s not like he’s in a position right now to do otherwise. He wishes there was a TV in here, or at least a radio. Something to pass the time that he could also use to keep track of the League. They’re all probably losing their damn mind right about now.

The only time Dabi outwardly reacts to Recovery Girl’s poking and prodding is when she tries to redo his staples. Considering up until this point he’s been rather apathetic about the whole situation the sudden change is enough that Eraserhead is threatening to wrap him up in his capture weapon, hair floating above his red eyes even though Dabi is being pumped full with some of the strongest quirk suppressants on the market.

“I’ll fix them my damn self,” he hisses.

“My hands are very steady you know,” she says, like that’s the reason he doesn’t want her handling a stapler around the delicate seams of his skin. There’s only two people in this entire country Dabi would allow to staple him and one of them sure as shit ain’t the little old lady in front of him.

“I don’t give a shit. You try it and I’ll kill you myself.” 

“Is it important to do this right now?” Eraserhead asks. He’s released his quirk but the ends of his capture weapon still hover above his head in warning.

Recovery Girl makes a frustrated noise of exasperation. “Those staples are the only thing holding that boy together.” She gestures towards his bandaged arms, which she has been carefully re-wrapping every few days. “I’ve found a number of them either dislodged or melted into his skin from his fight during my inspections. If they’re left alone as they are there’s a chance of infection.”

Eraserhead eyes his scars speculatively. “Couldn’t you heal them?” 

Recovery Girl is shaking her head before he’s even finished the question. “His body is only strong enough to withstand my quirk for so long right now. The length of time it would take me to heal enough of the damage his body has sustained to even get to them would be too long. It’s better to treat it now as it is.”

She’s right of course. If Dabi wasn’t chained to this bed and barely allowed to go to the bathroom he would have started picking out the staples days ago. He’s not exactly a fan of the idea of being taken out by sepsis of all things, so he’s meticulous with cleaning them and making sure the seams in his skin are as healthy as they’re ever going to get. Leave it to the heroes to throw a wrench into even this part of his life.

“Like I said, I’ll take care of them myself,” he grits out. The handcuffs rattle against the bed rail as he shakes his wrists, soft bandages rubbing against cold metal. Recovery Girl had wrapped them on the second day when she realized he was rubbing his wrists raw against them and leaving a bloody mess all over the blankets. Dabi hadn’t even noticed since the nerves under the scar tissue have long since shriveled up and died. 

There’s a long silence as Recovery Girl and Eraserhead look at each other, a silent conversation playing out that Dabi can't read. Finally he sighs and his capture weapon slowly returns back to its usual position coiled around his neck.

“Fine, but you’ll have to be supervised,” he says, words final. Dabi is willing to put up with the annoying audience though if it means he can finally do something about his staples.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

It is decidedly not fine having the two of them gawking at the mess of scars along his body as he's released from his handcuffs and allowed to remove his shirt.

At least there’s a level of clinical professionalism in Recovery Girl’s gaze. Eraserhead is a different story, staring him down like he can read his life’s story in the sweeping purple of his ever-spreading scars. It’s entirely too invasive, and he can feel his skin crawling as he picks at loose and melted staples and pulls them out one by one. Like hell he’s going to let them know discomforting it is though, so he schools his expression and focuses solely on the task at hand.

The act of stapling himself back together is familiar if nothing else, and he lets himself fall into the steady muscle memory repetition of it. If he tries hard enough he can pretend he’s back in his shitty apartment sitting on the edge of his cracked toilet or in the League’s even shittier hideout. Fuck, he misses the bar. If only All Might hadn’t smashed a hole through the wall.

When he’s finished he feels a bit like an exposed nerve as his skin stings with shiny new staples. He allows the heroes to cuff him back to the bed with barely a fuss. He’s always exhausted after stapling himself and for a moment thanks fuck that they aren’t in an actual hospital because he doesn’t know if he could stand scratchy sheets right now. 

Dabi falls asleep while the two of them are still standing at the foot of his bed.

As the days continue to plod on he’s begun to wonder what the heroes actually plan to do with him. At some point he’s probably going to have to be arrested for real and thrown in the bowels of Tartarus never to be heard from again if the League doesn’t get to him first. They’ll probably make him cell mates with Kurogiri. Yet despite that here he is, stuck in one of UA’s private recovery rooms for nearly two weeks—he doesn’t count the week that he spent unconscious—and nothing’s happened to him. Recovery Girl continues poking and prodding and lectures him about how he needs three full meals a day when he’s been barely getting through one and Eraserhead watches on with inscrutable eyes.

What he’s looking for Dabi doesn’t know, but like fuck he’ll give it to him. 

It looks like he’s been mulling something over though these past few days and Dabi is irritated enough with himself and his situation that it only drives him further up a wall.

“Just spit it out already.”

Eraserhead looks up from the folds of his capture weapon at the villain. “Excuse me?”

“You fucking heard me.” He’s going to regret starting this conversation. Eraserhead is smarter than a lot of so-called heroes out there. He’d never to be able to piece everything together without some assistance of course, but like fuck he wants to help the man paint a better picture of him. Still, Dabi adjusts himself against the mountain of pillows Recovery Girl has steadily been adding to help support his shitty body and stares Eraserhead down. For once she’s not here, off dealing with something somewhere else that he isn’t allowed to know about.

For a moment it looks like he’s going to play dumb and pretend he doesn’t know what the villain is talking about. Then he sighs, a wave of tired frustration washing over him.

“I can’t seem to wrap my head around you,” he admits. “Your actions, not all of them are logical.”

“Didn’t think villains had to be logical,” Dabi retorts sharply. 

“No,” he agrees. “But usually there’s at least a thought process that’s understandable. A man is broke and about to lose his home, so he robs a bank. Someone catches their partner cheating and beats them or the cheater in a fit of rage. There’s a logical progression between their thoughts and actions.” Eraserhead narrows his eyes. “So, what does it say about a villain that kidnaps a teenager and yet risks his life to save a little girl?”

Fucking shit, they saw that? Dabi hadn’t thought there were any heroes on the scene until well into the fight.

“I was off duty when the fight broke out,” Eraserhead says, probably reading the surprise on his face that he wasn’t able to hide fast enough. Could have fooled Dabi since he hasn’t seemed to change his outfit once since he’s been here. “My first priority was evacuating the civilians so I couldn’t immediately engage, but I saw what happened with the kid. How you protected her even though it meant taking part of the hit.” 

The handcuffs rattle on the bed rail as Dabi instinctively tries to reach for the massive bruise Geten’s ice had left on his side. Despite his broken ribs— finally healed just the other day after Recovery Girl’s latest quirk session—Dabi knew that he had gotten lucky taking only a glancing blow off that attack. If it had hit him head on the ice probably would have sheared right through him. Eraserhead tracks the movement with a flick of his eyes.

“Kid was in the way,” he grunts as he slides his gaze over the hero’s shoulder, like that’s some sort of explanation. Maybe it is. Fuck.

“And was Bakugou?” the hero presses. “Was he in the way?”

Dabi glances back and away again. “Something like that.”

That definitely hadn’t been one of their finer moments. Fucking Shigaraki and his stupid ideas. Dabi had known from one glance that the kid was never going to join them. He’s driven, sure, almost to a terrifying degree, but all that anger and focus is towards becoming a hero. If that hadn’t been clear then the utter loathing and hatred in his eyes whenever he looked Shigaraki’s way should have been.

Well, he'd learned his lesson all right.

“I always thought there was something off about your attack on their camp,” Eraserhead continues. “So many high-ranked villains against two pros and a bunch of students? And yet no one died.”

“So little faith in your students, Eraser,” Dabi mocks.

“I trust my students,” the hero defends with a shake of his head, “but as their teacher I also know their limits. Seasoned Pros would have trouble taking on an opponent like Moonfish or Muscular, let alone a bunch of kids.”

“Not my fault they chose shitty opponents.”

“Perhaps,” he acknowledges with a tilt of his head, regarding the villain with shrewd eyes. “And yet it’s believed that you were in charge of the entire operation. You don’t strike me as the type to just go in blindly and wing it. I wouldn’t doubt it if you’d done research on all my students. Which means you didn’t warn them to stay away from ones they might have difficulty with.”

Dabi is careful to keep his expression blank. Eraserhead is right in that he hadn't warned the rest of the Vanguard at the time about their opponents, but he's working the wrong angle. They had been there on Shigaraki's orders, but Dabi had been running his own little test on the side. Really the heroes had done him a favor even if they don't know it.

Unaware of his thoughts, Eraserhead continues on. “In addition to that you kept your fire contained to the forest and only came after me. There were still plenty of kids left in the woods, you could have made much shorter work of them and created a much bigger statement rather than going after a Pro.”

“I didn’t feel like wasting my time on some hero wannabes,” Dabi responds. “It was only logical to go after the biggest threat there.”

He could have of course. His quirk excels at long range with multiple opponents and those kids running around in the woods had been just that, a bunch of kids. They would have been easy enough to dispose of. But that would have defeated the point of the test. Shigaraki might have been obsessed with whittling down the heroes' numbers and making headlines, but Dabi had been playing the long game well before he joined the League.

At the time he'd been concerned with competency, with gathering his pieces and exploiting them to his advantage. The fact that Moonfish and Muscular lost against a handful of students only confirmed that they hadn't had what it would take to get Dabi across the finish line.

The other part to it had been that he wasn't fucking stupid. Eraserhead is dangerous in a way that other heroes aren’t. He might not have a flashy quirk but he’s a capable fighter, someone adept at both long and close range combat, and has an actual head on his shoulders. He’d rather go up against All Might than get pitted against the underground hero in a fight.

There’s a moment of silence between the two of them, Eraserhead sizing him up and Dabi glaring right back at him, half of him silently daring him to voice what conclusions his mind is turning over his head while the other hisses for him to just leave already. 

“In each recorded fight we have of you, there is little to no civilian collateral,” the hero continues eventually. “Which suggests that you make a concerted effort to keep your quirk from harming anyone who hasn’t already been deemed a target. I imagine part of that is due to the nature of your quirk, among other considerations.”

“Who knows?” he drawls. Dabi resists the urge to pick at the staples in his hand.

“Something tells me that your case is going to be unnecessarily troublesome.” He tugs his capture weapon a little further up until it's almost brushing his nose, leaving only his dark eyes visible. “If we hand you over to law enforcement I’ll lose jurisdiction and I doubt you’ll tell them anything useful. I’ve spoken to the principal and our police contact and they both agree that it’s too much of a risk to move you when considering the League. However, we can’t just keep you locked in this room indefinitely.”

Even as he says it Eraserhead looks like he’d very much like to keep Dabi tucked away out of sight and out of mind. “Which is why starting at the beginning of the week you’ll be accompanying me to my classes.”

“Are you joking?” He studies the hero’s face for any signs that the guy’s bullshitting him and annoyingly, horrifyingly, finds nothing. He’s completely serious and Dabi laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. “You are insane holy shit.”

“I can’t keep missing class just to babysit you,” Eraserhead says, sounding very close to complaining. He appears unamused by Dabi’s trailing chuckles. “This allows me to keep an eye on you and do my job.” 

He turns to leave only to pause with his hand on the open door. “I expect you to be on your best behavior,” he throws over his shoulder before closing it behind him.

Fuck, him around a bunch of kids he’s threatened to kill multiple times? What’s Eraserhead thinking? Maybe it’s some sort of test for his students, or maybe he thinks Dabi will slip up and reveal something damning that the hero can use to nail him to the wall. He’ll just have to be disappointed then.

He’s still chuckling to himself when he realizes who, exactly, comprises Eraserhead’s class. 

Oh that bastard—

Chapter Text

If the ground could just open up and swallow him whole right now, Dabi would really appreciate it. 

He supposes he should just be thankful that they don’t try to fit him into a uniform. They don’t give him his coat back, which is honestly the only thing he really wants right now, but they do give him fresh clothes to change into. They don’t quite fit; the jeans are an inch too short while the black shirt he’s given could hang halfway off his shoulder if he rolled his neck just right. It also bunches at his wrists and catches on some of his staples not covered under the bandages Recovery Girl still insists on, but it’s better than the hospital scrubs he’s been forced to wear for the past few weeks.

Dabi isn’t sure if the heroes just scrounged around their own closets for clothes to donate, raided the school’s lost and found, or just grabbed whatever they could from the closest thrift store or goodwill, but like fuck he’s giving the clothes back now.

Eraserhead comes to collect him looking like he’s just rolled out of bed with a coffee cup clutched in a death grip. Perks of being an underground hero he supposes. Considering the hours he keeps himself he can unfortunately relate.

As Toga would say: it’s a whole ass mood.

Recovery Girl comes bustling in after looking infinitely more awake and alive than either of them. She checks him over one last time for anything that might force her to keep him here and finding nothing too pressing carefully slides out his IV. Since he doubts they’ll just let him walk around freely with his flames he assumes they have another way of suppressing his quirk.

She turns around and starts fussing with something behind him. Eraserhead is the one who steps forward and unlocks his wrists. He has about five seconds to enjoy the freedom before there’s a new pair of handcuffs being slapped on. Dabi stares down at them, noting the smooth white aluminum casing linking his hands together.

He’s never had the pleasure of being cuffed with these before but still recognizes the quirk cuffs from the rare times Endeavor used to indulge his childish curiosity and let him play around with a similar pair when he was little and his mother would bring him and Fuyumi to visit their father at his agency. They’re exclusively carried by Pros and the police to help them restrain criminals with volatile quirks. Considering he's an A-ranked villain with a fire quirk hotter than even Endeavor's Hellflame he can't quite blame them for using it.

He gives them a quick test, tugging on his quirk despite the fact that the drugs in his system have completely smothered it. Just as he thought, nothing happens other than a blue light on the cuff around his wrist flickering red. As he pulls what little heat he’d managed to scrape together back under his skin the light changes back to a steady blue. Must be an indicator of an active quirk then.

“Don’t even think about breaking those,” Eraserhead tells him as he watches him twist his wrists. They’re deceptively thin and padded on the inside which is unexpected. Either these were designed with Dabi’s delicate skin in mind or it’s a feature that all of them are built with. “They’re expensive and I’d rather not have to pay for a new set. Plus they’ll send out an alarm that will alert me and then I’ll have to go through all the trouble of arresting you again.”

“Duly noted.”

“In addition to the cuffs,” Recovery Girl says, turning around to face them again. “I’ll also be administering a concentrated dose of quirk suppressant.” Because of fucking course they don’t think he’s restrained enough with just the handcuffs. There’s a syringe in her hands and Dabi just barely holds himself still under Eraserhead’s warning glance as she comes over and injects him. 

“Each dose will last about forty-eight hours,” she informs the two of them, glancing at Dabi before turning fully to look at Eraserhead. “I’ve cleared my schedule for the mornings so that he can come here and receive the next one. It’ll also allow me to rebandage his wounds as necessary and perform short healing sessions.”

Eraserhead nods in understanding. “I’ll make sure to get him there.”

They leave Recovery Girl shortly after and as the hero leads him through empty halls Dabi takes the time to get a lay of the school.

Despite all the trouble the League has caused for them they’ve never gone as far as touching foot on the school grounds. He can only catch glimpses from the windows they walk past but the campus is larger than he expected. Sprawling lawns of grass crisscrossed with walking paths and a courtyard or two. There’s a few clusters of buildings and Dabi idly wonders which ones are the dorms he heard about being built on the news all those months ago. 

“Ground rules,” Eraserhead says ahead of him, drawing his attention away from the window. “You don’t go anywhere without me or another pro. You don’t talk to my kids, you don’t deliberately intimidate them or antagonize them. You’re there to sit and look pretty while I do my job.”

“You think I’m pretty Eraser?”

“I’m married,” he replies with a huff. Which, huh, didn’t peg him as the type. Dabi doesn’t know whether to pity Eraserhead or his partner as he tucks the unexpected information away. Never know when it might come in handy.

They stick to the edges and shadows as they leave the building housing UA’s medical facilities. The grounds are mostly empty, the majority of the student body already ensconced in their classrooms awaiting their teachers, and the few stragglers left are too worried about getting to class on time to pay attention to their surroundings as they race by. They enter a new building and pass through an empty hall before coming up to a classroom door and stopping. Dabi can hear muffled voices from behind the wood, a few voices rising above the din into something almost intelligible. The hero turns to face him and Dabi can see just how serious he is.

“Stay here,” he instructs. “Don’t come in until I tell you to. And don’t fuck with my students.”

Dabi waves his cuffed hands as the final bell chimes overhead. “Where would I go?”

Eraserhead gives a short nod before entering the classroom, leaving the door cracked behind him before any of his students can catch sight of the villain. Dabi takes the moment to school his expression as he listens to the hero giving an abbreviated synopsis of the last few weeks. He’s one of the most wanted villains in the country, the League of Villain’s left hand and a former lieutenant of the PLF. He can more than handle a bunch of up and coming baby heroes.

“The situation is unprecedented, but we believe our actions to be necessary,” he hears him say through the cracked door. The voices behind the door swell in confusion but Eraserhead waits for an ebb to keep speaking. “Until the investigation has been resolved he’ll be under UA’s watch. His quirk will be suppressed at all times and he will be accompanied by myself or another teacher.”

“But Mr. Aizawa, who is it?” he hears one student ask. Dabi can see Eraserhead sighing, probably asking some deity for strength, before he turns his head and stares the villain down.

“Come in,” he says, already sounding resigned to his fate. Dabi would have loved to just slam the door open and waltz in like he owned the place, but with his hands cuffed in front of him like this he has to settle for kicking the door open with his foot. He stomps into the classroom, back straight and eyes narrowed even despite the cuffs. Despite the situation he’s found himself in he’s got a reputation to uphold. There’s a moment of complete silence as twenty some odd kids stare at him and he glares right back.

Then all hell breaks loose.

“Wait is that—”

“Oh my god—”

“Oh what in the fresh hell—”

Without warning there’s an explosion, quite literally, and a student hurtling through the air at him with a war cry. Dabi can only stand there and blink as the kid is wrapped up in seconds, the small sparking explosions coming from his smoking palms snuffed out. He turns his head slightly to the side to see Eraserhead standing at his desk, hands wrapped up in what parts of his capture weapon aren’t restraining his student, eyes red and hair floating as he stares down his student.

“Bakugou, calm down.”

Ah, right. The kid they kidnapped. Dabi couldn’t quite recognize him underneath all the white cloth. Looks like he’s as volatile as ever. Despite the order and temporary loss of his quirk, Bakugou struggles against Eraserhead’s capture weapon as it holds him up in the air above his fellow classmates’ heads.

“Holy shit,” one of them whispers. 

“Are you kidding me?” Blasty spits. “He’s the one staying here? He fucking kidnapped me!”

“Sorry about that,” Dabi says. By the dry look Eraserhead gives him he doesn’t sound very sorry. Which, fair, he isn’t. The angry blond doesn’t seem to think so either as he renews his battle to free himself and launch himself at the villain. 

“We’re well aware that Dabi has a history with this class and particularly students like you, Bakugou,” the hero addresses. “However, it’s too dangerous to move him with the League likely searching for him right now.”

“So is he going to bait for the rest of them?” another student asks.

Dabi gives her a sharp grin that has her already pale skin turning white. “Not by choice kid.” 

There’s a screech of metal against tile as the first row collectively pulls their desks away from him. His grin grows. Good, they should be scared of him.

“Stop talking,” Eraserhead reprimands, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers against his forehead like he’s trying to stave off a migraine. Now that he’s no longer looking at his student Bakugou’s hands start to pop again, but with the capture weapon holding him still there’s little he can do. 

“Sit,” he orders, pointing at the swivel chair he must have pushed aside earlier to restrain his student.

“Yes, sir,” Dabi mocks as he swaggers over to the chair—as much as he can with his wrists handcuffed in front of him anyways—and drops himself in it.

The hero turns back to address his wayward student. “I’m going to release you now. If you attempt to attack Dabi again, I will have to consider moving you to Class 2B for the duration of his confinement here.” His eyes sweep out over the other students. “That applies to everyone else as well. You may also request the change if you do not feel comfortable with this arrangement. I’ve already discussed it with Vlad and he’s agreed to take any additional students.”

With that he releases Bakugou back to the ground. The kid stands there for a moment, red eyes narrowed at Dabi and probably considering the merits of just ignoring his teacher and trying to attack him again. With a huff he spins on his feet and walks back to his smoking desk, smacking his palms against it with a hissed curse as he dumps himself into his chair. Smart kid.

The villain mostly ignores Eraserhead as he goes about his lecture. He’s not particularly interested in understanding the ins and outs of heroics. Hasn't been for a long fucking time. Whatever they learn here doesn’t mean shit on the streets anyways, but they’ve probably already started to understand that. Really, these kids should be fucking thanking the League for opening their eyes and showing them how shitty the world is despite there being so many heroes running around.

He keeps his focus mostly on the stray staple he’s been picking at on his hand, but it’s hard to ignore twenty sets of eyes boring into his skull. Bakugou is the easiest one to read of course, and Dabi is infinitely entertained when he deigns to meet his eye and smirk against the full force of the kid’s anger, but all of them are staring at him when they think he isn’t looking. Even fucking Shouto in the back, who he’s been doing his damnedest to avoid, is watching him too. 

Fucking hell, why’d it have to be this class he got stuck with.

He never thought he’d be grateful for Present Mic bursting into the room and announcing the start of a new class, but that means Eraserhead’s class is done which means he can leave. The blond hero barely spares Dabi a glance as the two of them walk past, already gushing to his students about how much of a blast class is going to be today. He feels for their poor eardrums. 

Eraserhead times their movements to the rhythm of the student body again, bringing him through empty halls and into yet another building, this one housing a massive cafeteria, likely so the hero can grab breakfast. With all students in their classes right now there’s only a handful of teachers there taking advantage of their own breaks to eat like they are. Dabi allows himself a coffee when the hero shuffles the two of them into the food line and turns to ask if he wants anything to eat. He’s then led through neat lines of tables and benches towards a more secluded corner of the sprawling room where there’s seating hidden away behind a support pillar. Dabi doubts it’s for his own sake, but he’s content to follow along as it keeps the looks some of the other heroes shoot at the back of his head at bay.

“Well, that certainly could have gone better,” Eraserhead grumbles as he picks at his food. Dabi offers a noncommittal grunt as he sips his coffee, relishing the hot burn going down his throat and chasing the ice away as it warms him from the inside out.

“The next class I help teach is their advanced heroics course this afternoon.” The hero looks up at Dabi from his breakfast. “Since you’ve probably researched all their quirks, I’ll allow you to watch them.”

Dabi raises an eyebrow. “Why bother?”

“Consider it an experiment for the both of you,” Eraserhead answers. “My students have already been put in situations where their opponent knows about their quirk. So far that’s been mostly limited to fellow hero-course students from other schools trying for their license permit. However, they also have to be prepared for the inevitability that villains will know how their quirk works too, especially if they choose to be daytime heroes and not go underground.”

Fair point. Dabi had gotten all the information he’d needed on Eraserhead’s students just from footage of the Sports Festival and talk show commentary that had focused on the up and coming UA heroics class. If he could do that, anyone with an internet connection could as well.

“What’s in it for me?”

“You’re a follower of Stain aren’t you?” the hero asks. He sits a bit straighter in his seat, eyes taking on that harder flint-edged look. “Or at the very least, his ideals appeal to you.” It’s not a question Dabi’s expecting to hear. 

“Among other things,” he answers eventually. Witnessing Stain go about his work certainly expanded his views, made him realize that while he was working on killing his piece of shit father that he could take out the rest of the trash while he was at it. Dabi will easily admit though when push comes to shove he’ll get rid of anyone in his way, Stain-approved or not. It’s been the cause of a lot of arguments between him and Spinner, fanboy that he is, when he tries to persuade Dabi that not every hero is scum. He's yet to be convinced.

Surprisingly the hero doesn’t try to pry, simply nodding to himself as the tension held in his shoulders carefully unwinds by degrees. “What I want is for you to watch these young heroes, and ask yourself if they’re ones that Stain would have approved of.” 

So what, he’s supposed to judge these kids and see if they’re worthy of Stain’s approval? What a weird request to make. Then again, he’s starting to realize that Eraserhead is a weird fucking dude, so maybe it all makes sense.

“Fine but only if I get something out of this too.” Dabi smirks around his coffee at the deadpan look the hero gives him. “For good behavior.”

“What do you want?” 

“My coat.”

Eraserhead arches an eyebrow. “Worried about your big bad villain rep?”

“Hardly,” Dabi says with a scoff. He’s a patchwork frankenstein held together by staples and spite. He doesn’t need a piece of clothing to make him more scary, though it definitely helps complete the look. Giran is good at knowing what his customers are searching for and Dabi has been excellent for business long before he got mixed up with the League. 

“Don’t know if you forgot or anything, but as long as I have these,” he knocks one of his cuffed wrists against the table, “and you keep loading me up on suppressants, my body can’t regulate my temperature for shit.”

“I’m aware,” he says mildly. “So you’re cold then?”

He picks at the frayed end of his shirt sleeve with one hand, the other still leaching heat from his luke-warm coffee. He wonders vaguely if this is how Fuyumi feels all the time with that arctic quirk of hers. “Fucking freezing.”

Eraserhead considers him for a moment. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The afternoon takes forever to come. Most of the hours in between classes Dabi spends watching the teacher grade papers. Which has the potential for entertainment when the hero puts his head in his hands muttering about his students’ dumbass answers, but for the most part is extremely boring. Dabi is itching for something to entertain himself with, something to burn, and his exposed cuffs flicker between blue and red enough for Eraserhead to notice and give him a look.

“Bored,” is all the answer he’s willing to give. He has to know about the dozens of arson cases attached to his name. Some people have hobbies like knitting or reading or playing an instrument. Dabi likes to set stuff on fire and watch.

“Just my luck, another pyromaniac,” Eraserhead mutters, more to himself than Dabi as he focuses back on his papers. 

So time passes kind of like that until the older man pulls himself up from the couch and tells him they’re leaving. He isn’t happy about being surrounded by a bunch of kids again, but it’s something new and that’s almost enough to make up for it. Just like Dabi promises he’s on his best behavior around the kiddies as they meet them inside a gymnasium that is freakishly larger than it should be. 

He really fucking wants his coat back.

He listens with only half an ear as Eraserhead talks with his students. Apparently they’re in the middle of close combat exercises. Considering his body’s constitution and his quirk, Dabi has personally always favored long range.

“Up until today we’ve been having you practice without the use of your quirks,” their teacher instructs. “Today we’ll be switching that up. Learning how to handle an opponent without being able to access your quirk is important, but it’s equally important to learn how to fight up close with your quirks in mind. During your spars today I want you to figure out if and how you’d like to incorporate them into your attacks.”

“But sir,” one of the students speaks up, glasses flashing as he raises his hand into the air, “Shouldn’t we refrain from exercising our quirks with a villain in our midst?”

“An excellent point Iida, but as Dabi would likely tell you himself, he’s already aware of most of your quirks.”

That certainly gets their attention. A heavy silence falls over the students as their teacher's words sink in. A few of them dart anxious eyes over Eraserhead’s shoulder at him. Dabi doesn’t say anything per say, but the shark grin he gives them is probably pushing their arrangement.

“No way,” one of them murmurs.

“How could he know about that though?” another voices. She’s one of few that’s held on to most of their composure at their teacher’s revelation, her ponytail falling over her shoulder as she looks between her teacher and Dabi. “Most of us have never fought him before.”

Eraserhead sighs and adjusts the folds of his capture weapon. “That’s true. However, one of the drawbacks of attending such a well known school as UA means that you all receive more attention from the public than other hero students do. You’ve already experienced the effects of this firsthand during your provisional licensing exams in both your first and second years.”

“Yeah, it's really unmanly the way everyone keeps ganging up on us,” the redhead admits. 

“And they know all of our quirks from the Sports Festival,” the blond next to him commiserates.

“Unlike other schools, UA televises their Sports Festival. That means that every year our hero students get to show off to the public how much they’ve advanced with their quirks.” Eraserhead doesn’t sound particularly happy about it. Dabi doesn’t doubt that he’s probably advocated in the past for making the event private like the rest of the hero schools. “In addition there are talk shows and other programs that postulate about upcoming students and their quirks. Not everyone who watches them has good intentions. Some villains will watch the festival and other commentary in order to pick out future heroes that might give them problems later on. Information brokers also regularly sell illegally obtained information about heroes' quirks and their personal lives on the black market.”

By the looks of it, none of the students have realized how much of their lives are already out in the world without their consent. Dabi can’t really relate. Even as the firstborn son of the Number Two hero, he and his siblings were isolated from the public. Now Todoroki Touya is nothing more than another skeleton Endeavor buried beneath the floorboards of their house. Anyone who might’ve once cared has long since forgotten him and moved on with their lives.

Not even the League knows the whole truth about him, or at least he hasn't flat out told them. He's sure they've put together enough to get an idea of his past—even if they don't know the specifics they've been together too long not to pick up on the little things—but they haven't asked just like he hasn't asked about Shigaraki's hands or Toga's parents. There are some things you just don't talk about, that you don't need to talk about, to understand.

“So we could run into villains that already know how our quirks work?”

Eraserhead nods. “It’s a very real possibility that will only get more common the further you advance in your careers. That’s why while you’re here we continuously push you to improve your quirk, so that if you do come across that kind of villain you’re prepared to handle the situation appropriately.”

“Still doesn’t explain why Patchwork here has to watch us,” Bakugou snaps. 

Dabi leans forward a little. “Scared you’ll choke if someone’s watching?”

“You wanna fucking go?” the boy snarls, arms flexing by his side and palms starting to pop. The redhead and blond from before are quick to jump up from behind and restrain him before he can do anything rash. 

“Chill man, you don’t want to get stuck with Monoma do you?” Blondie hisses.

Dabi can almost see the gray hairs multiplying as Eraserhead glares back at him. He holds up his hands in surrender, biting back a smirk until he’s turned back around to face his students. 

Right. Good behaviour means no needling the brats.

“Dabi is here because he needs to be supervised, and it adds a sense of realism to this simulation. Instead of treating your partner like a trusted classmate, fight them as if they’re a villain.” 

With that the students reluctantly break off into pre-assigned pairs and scatter across the gym floor. Despite knowing better his eyes still stray to Shouto off to the side, watching as one arm becomes encased in ice until it forms an armor of sorts over it while his other arm goes up in flames. 

He can still remember coming home after he’d woken up from his coma and finding Shouto collapsed on the floor as their father loomed over him, fire blazing around them while Endeavor pushed and pushed and pushed—

Bitter rage crawls up Dabi’s throat, choking him as he tries to swallow it down. 

It’s not fair. Touya’s nails claw at the grave soil above his head. That’s supposed to be me.

Across from Shouto, Bakugou bends and stretches out his legs, a feral grin spread over his face as he eyes his competition. The spar starts and Dabi is rooted in place, unable to look away as he tries to breathe through the ugly seething mass that’s long carved out his heart and made a home for itself in his chest. Not here, he tells himself. He can’t afford to fucking lose it right now.

Shouto has improved since the last time they saw each other, but it only makes sense. He is Endeavor’s masterpiece after all. He’s had everything he could ever want since he was four years old. Perfect quirk, perfect body. All of their father’s love and attention. Yet despite all of that, it’s clear he’s not comfortable getting up close and personal with his opponent or his quirk, especially against a person like Bakugou. His movements are stiff, stilted and despite the capabilities of his flames Shouto shies away when the brat gets too close to them.

Bakugou’s feet barely touch the ground as his explosions propel him this way and that. It seems like all Shouto can do is use his ice armor to defend himself against the flurry of precise explosions that rain down on him.

Bakugou makes it look effortless, but in the same way Toga twirls her knives, Dabi knows there’s hours and hours of training behind each attack. Shame he’s so dead set on becoming a hero, they could’ve used a quirk like that in the League.

Shouto seems to figure out that he’s worrying too much about burning his classmate than figuring out how to go on the attack, but even decreasing the output of his flames doesn’t help swing any momentum in his favor. With an unexpected sweep of his leg Bakugou has Shouto on the ground, one hand on his chest pushing him down and the other aimed right at his face. Yet instead of fighting back his flames go out and the ice sloughs off instead, conceding the fight.

“The fuck was that IcyHot,” Bakugou complains as he gets off his brother and to his feet, crossing his arms over his chest as he watches his classmate sit up. “You barely fucking moved at all.”

“Sorry.” One blue eye flickers his way before dismissing him.

Dabi is holding himself so tight his limbs are shaking with the effort. If his quirk wasn’t being actively suppressed one touch would have him lighting up like a goddamn supernova. Touya howls with rage as he turns in his grave and Dabi has to fight not to wrap his hands around Shouto’s scrawny neck and shake. 

That’s what replaced me? Dabi wants to ask, wants to scream. This is the son you couldn’t look away from, Endeavor?

Perhaps sensing Dabi’s impending meltdown Eraserhead swoops in and drags the villain to the other side of the gym so he can watch other students spar. Dabi fights to get himself under control, his cuffs flickering blue-red-blue even if he can’t feel the accompanying flames under his skin. The green haired kid is the only one who seems to notice and realize what that means, so caught up in staring at his wrists that the blond brat that had held Bakugou back is able to tackle him to the ground and grapple him into submission with the aid of what looks like an electricity quirk.

By the time the lesson ends Dabi has smothered everything under a thick layer of apathy and a healthy dose of disassociation. He stares blankly somewhere over the kids’ heads as  Eraserhead speaks. He goes over some general tips and pointers to help his students and offers to give them a more in-depth analysis of how they could improve themselves if they want to meet privately before dismissing the class. 

With that the school day is over. Dabi is expecting to be locked back up in his room inside the medical wing, but first Eraserhead takes him back over to the cafeteria to try and force some food in him considering he only had a coffee for breakfast and skipped lunch since the hero was too busy grading to realize the hours slipping away. Dabi manages about half the meal before giving up and feels a bit like a petulant child that won’t eat his vegetables with the look he's given.

Whatever, he’s already got most of the League on his case about his scattered eating habits, he doesn't need this hero worrying about him on top of that. 

They return to his office afterward for a few hours to do some more grading and lesson planning. With little to entertain him and his stomach half-way full Dabi lets his mind wander as he naps on and off in his chair.

It's funny really. All he'd wanted as a kid was to go to UA and become a hero just like Endeavor. If things had been different, if his genetics hadn't damned him from birth, he would've been just like these starry-eyed brats. He'd have never fallen in with the League, would've never had his eyes opened to how fucked the world really is. Instead he would have been thrilled to follow in his father's footsteps and let his ambitions slowly squeeze the life out of him with a smile on his face. He would have happily driven himself into the ground, over and over again, just to please that man.

It’s not fair.

It's late when Eraserhead stands from his chair and stretches with a soft groan. He assumes he'll finally be brought back to his room, but instead the hero surprises him by leading him across the grounds towards the edge of the campus where a row of buildings cuts above the dark treeline.

Dabi nearly walks right back out the door when he sees Eraserhead’s students sprawled out in what’s very clearly the common room of their dorm.

“You’re kidding,” he says tonelessly, glaring daggers into the hero’s back.

“Good behavior, remember,” Eraserhead reminds him before he turns to deal with the uproar their arrival has caused.

“Oh you can’t be serious,” Blondie complains from the couch, throwing his hands up in exasperation. 

“Unfortunately I am.” At least Eraserhead sounds as unhappy about the arrangement as Dabi feels. “Up until now Dabi has been recovering under Recovery Girl’s care. Now that he’s relatively healthy there’s no logical reason to have him occupy a bed that could go to an injured student.”

“I guess,” the girl with phone jacks hanging from her earlobes mutters, “but still…”

“I know it’s not ideal, but this is the easiest way to keep an eye on him. Dabi will only have access to this floor and the sixth floor where he will be roomed next to myself.”

“Wait wait wait, we have a sixth floor? When the hell did that happen?”

“It’s considered an attic of sorts,” Eraserhead explains with tired patience. “The rooms up there were meant to accommodate an overflow of guests, whether they be other students or Pros that needed a place to stay while they were at UA. That’s why it wasn't mentioned when you first moved in. I’ve had my belongings brought over and will temporarily move in so I can keep an eye on Dabi.”

He gives the students a few minutes to mull that over. There’s a lot of resignation in the slopes of their shoulders, but Dabi can promise them that he’s not about to spend any more time around here than he has to. He eyes the massive TV against the wall currently playing some sort of foreign soap opera. Spanish maybe? Well, maybe he’ll lurk around a little, if only so he can get caught up on whatever the fuck has been going on while he’s been held captive.

He'll have to put those plans on hold though as he’s led away from everyone and towards an elevator. 

“Might as well show you where you’re staying,” Eraserhead says as he presses the button for their floor. Dabi thinks he just doesn’t want him hanging around his students, which, fair. Dabi doesn’t particularly want to stick around them either. The only reason he’s been able to stand Toga for so long is because the psycho’s grown on him like mold and he’s long since learned how to block out her crazed ramblings.

There’s not much to his room when Eraserhead shows it to him. Not that he’s exactly expecting anything, and god knows he’s used to worse, but it feels a bit plain for belonging to the most prestigious hero school in the country. Just a bed that Dabi’s feet are probably going to hang off the edge of pressed into the far corner and a desk against the left wall, an accompanying chair and table lamp with it. There’s a bookcase pushed up against the desk but its shelves are disappointingly empty.

That, and his coat folded up on top of the bed sheets. 

He ignores the hero watching him as he picks it up and smooths the supple material beneath his fingers, subtly checking it for any alterations as he goes about his inspection. He wouldn’t put it past the heroes to put a wire or bug somewhere on it. Despite being by his side all day he's not sure when Eraserhead was able to pull whatever strings he needed to get it here. Maybe while he was napping, but either way it doesn't matter when the end result is being held in his hands. 

Eraserhead leans against the door frame, arms folded over his chest. “A deal is a deal. Considering we couldn’t find anything troublesome with it anyways I don’t see the problem with returning it to you. We’ll work on finding you some proper clothes later.”

“Thanks,” he manages to bite out. It’s annoying having to thank a hero, but he did follow through on his end of their agreement so Dabi supposes it’s not the end of the world. He was taught manners at some point, he just chooses not to use them.

“I’ll grab you in the morning before class starts. We’re six stories up and I’m right next door, so don’t try anything stupid like crawling down the side of the building.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Eraserhead rolls his eyes. “I suppose that’s the best I’ll get out of you.”

With a stilted good night the hero closes the door. Dabi listens for the distinct sound of a lock clicking into place and then a few more moments for muffled footsteps to fade down the hall and the distant ding of the elevator as it opens. As soon as it closes he tears the room apart as best he can. The handcuffs make it awkward and strain the seams at his wrist as he tries to maneuver around them but he ignores the sharp warning of his staples pulling against his skin. He searches all over for even a hint of a camera or wire or anything that might mean the heroes are watching him. He isn’t stupid. They’ll use every advantage they can to find something to incriminate him or the League any further. 

After what feels like hours he sits down on his overturned mattress with a huff. There’s nothing he can find, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing here, just that they’ve hidden it well. Despite that Dabi knows he has the upper hand now.

Those idiots gave him back his coat.

He bites back the knife-sharp grin tugging at his lips as he turns off the light. He returns to his bed and gathers his coat up into his lap. He’s fairly confident at any rate that if there are cameras here they aren’t equipped for the dark. Still, he turns his back to the room at large, hunching over to create a small pocket of perceived safety. In the soft gloom of the room his fingers find the small button hidden under the seam of his collar. With practiced ease he wiggles it free and opens the flap sewed in underneath to pull out what’s nestled inside.

The pale moonlight filtering in through the window cuts over his shoulder and washes the small feather in his hand black as he twirls it back and forth between his fingers. 

He laughs when it begins to twitch.

Chapter Text

Shouta has a few minutes when he comes back down after locking Dabi in his room for the night before his students descend on him.

There’s a part of him that’s anxious about leaving an A-ranked villain unsupervised so close to his students, even behind locked doors, but he reminds himself that in his state he’s more than capable of containing any kind of escape or attack the villain might attempt. Dabi is a lot of things, but he isn't stupid. Shouta can trust that he has a firm grasp of the situation and his place in it, and will act accordingly until he can afford not to.

But that’s a worry for later. Right now he has twenty kids to calm down before they work themselves into a panic. Despite the hour everyone is still gathered downstairs, loosely grouped around the couches that surround the TV. They’ve had to shoulder so much at such a young age. Part of him blames himself for that, sees it as a personal failure for putting them in situations they shouldn’t have had to face so soon, but he’s also so incredibly proud of them and how they’ve come together against those odds.

Still, the League is a ghost that has haunted his students for two years. No matter how strong they’ve grown, they’ll likely always see them as the boogie man hiding under the bed. Now he has to ask them to live alongside one of those nightmares until Shouta’s suspicions can rest.

It’s a lot to ask—too much his colleagues have argued—but there’s just something about Dabi that he can’t let go of. 

Most of the League is an open and shut case. Even Shigaraki’s life has been partially fleshed out thanks to All Might’s revelations during his fight with All for One and Midoriya's connection to the villain through their quirks, but not Dabi. It’s like one day he just sprung into existence in the aftermath of Stain’s capture. There’s been discussion among the heroes that Dabi might be like Kurogiri, a nomu created by All for One’s doctor, but Shouta has never completely bought into the theory. Dabi is too wild, too driven by his own ideals, where Kurogiri is submissive and uncaring about the fate of anyone aside from Shigaraki Tomura.

Even if he is, it doesn't change anything. Shouta can’t let this opportunity slide past him when he knows this might be his only chance to drag some answers out of the villain. The rest of his colleagues aren’t particularly happy with the arrangement but they trust Nezu, and Nezu trusts Shouta’s intuition enough to allow for this little experiment in his school. 

Now he just needs his students’ blessing.

Shinsou is the first to notice him, head cocking to the side as he watches him come over to the couches. Out of all his classmates he appears to be taking this the best. Part of that is likely due to his relative lack of experiences with the League compared to the others, and the rest is thanks to Shinsou himself. Mentoring him this past year has taught Shouta that he’s more the type to sit back and listen before reacting no matter what the subject might entail. Very little ruffles him. It’ll be an asset to him when he graduates and moves to the underground scene. Down in the underbelly of society keeping your cool keeps you alive. 

His attention on Shouta eventually registers with Midoriya, who has been talking to him in bouts of nervous chatter alongside Iida and Uraraka. He stiffens as he notices his teacher, which in turn alerts Bakugou—who despite being on the other side of the couch surrounded by his own friends has stretched out his leg enough to have one foot shoved under Midoriya's thigh. With the two problem children focused on him it only takes about a minute before the rest of them have stopped talking and turned around to look at him.

They wait for instructions, for wisdom, for whatever they’ll need to get through to tomorrow. 

“I’m sorry.”

It’s not what they’re expecting to hear, Kaminari is outright gaping at him while the rest stare at him with wide eyes, but Shouta means it.

“In the interest of complete honesty,” because his students deserve that much, “Dabi’s continued confinement at UA was at my own personal request, despite knowing your histories with both Dabi and the League as a whole.”

He knows some of his students still have nightmares about what they saw during the war. Shouta has them too, nightmares where he’s forced to blink while Shigaraki has his fingers wrapped around the neck of one of his kids, nightmares where the amputation didn’t work and he feels every inch of Decay as it eats through him until there’s nothing left. So many of them almost didn’t make it home. So many of them never did.

“Principal Nezu has agreed to my proposal, but before we go any further with this I also want your permission as well.”

Iida already has his hand raised. “Sir, why make such a request of the principal?”

“Yes,” Yaoyorozu concurs. She straightens in her seat, pulling away slightly from Jirou pressed against her side. “I’m also confused as to what we could gain from keeping a notorious villain such as Dabi here rather than having the police handle things.”

Shouta sighs and pushes away the urge to tug the ends of his capture weapon up. “I understand your concerns. To answer your questions, first would someone remind us of the Nature vs Nurture Theory in relation to villainy that was covered in your Hero Ethics course last semester?”

Midoriya, with that encyclopedic brain of his, immediately pipes up. “The Nature vs Nurture Theory debates the importance of an individual's personal experiences versus an individual’s innate qualities. In terms of villainy, the debate centers around if the people who we see become villains were born with innate qualities that predispose them to villainy, or if their environment and personal experiences push them there. There isn’t a clear consensus at the moment, but Japan historically leans towards the idea that people who become villains because it is in their nature, rather than villains being created as a product of their environment and external stressors.”

“Very good Midoriya,” Shouta praises. Midoriya subtly preens as Shouta turns his attention to the rest of the class. “With that in mind, I would like to pose a question to all of you: is the villain Dabi someone who was born evil, or created?”

“Obviously he was born like that,” Bakugou scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest. A few of the other students nod in agreement. “He’s a total psychopath.”

“You don’t know that,” Shinsou argues. There’s a flurry of half-formed protests from the rest of the class but he doesn’t take back his words. He shifts in his seat, fingers picking at the ends of his own capture weapon. Seems like he’s picked up Shouta’s bad habit of playing with the folds of it when he’s uncomfortable.

Bakugou’s hands pop with warning sparks. “Hah? You wanna fucking repeat yourself?”

His fingers tighten on the fabric and when he speaks his voice is uncharacteristically harsh. “Maybe no one wants to be a villain, but have you ever stopped to think that they might not have had a choice about it? Or that they think it’s the only choice? Or that they did have a choice but couldn’t see it because all their lives they’ve been told they’ll never be anything but a villain because of their quirk or how they look? Maybe Dabi was someone like that.”

Shinsou is subtly shaking with the force of the emotion put behind his words. Midoriya gives the boy beside him a soft mournful look. “Shinsou…”

That quiets the class better than any reprimand Shouta could give. Several of them glance away from Shinsou, unable to meet his eye. Whether from the Sports Festival during their first year or just having had him as a classmate long enough most if not all of the class is aware of the basics of Shinsou’s past. Shouta knows from mentoring the kid for months that it goes further back than being bullied for having a quirk most of society deemed villainous, knows the rough neighborhood he comes from and has inklings about the things he had to do to scrape by. He’s not in the habit of punishing kids for their past though, let alone what they might have had to do just to survive.

He’s here now, training to be the best hero he can, and that’s all that matters as far as Shouta is concerned. 

“Shinsou is right,” he tells them after giving his student enough time to recompose himself. “Often the reasons why villains behave the way they do are more complex than we assume. Even the League of Villains, despite having committed many atrocities over the years, has a set of beliefs and ideals that drive them to carry out these acts. As heroes, it’s just as important we stop villains as it is for us to figure out why they’ve fallen into villainy in the first place. When we do that we can work to prevent others from going down the same path.”

There’s a general grumble of subdued agreement from his students. Shouta knows that it’s a difficult concept to grasp, one that they might not truly understand for years, but it’s important to start that conversation. Heroes are meant to stop villains, that is the role society has created for them. It’s an important task, but it’s a reactionary role. If Shouta had his way, heroes would be taking a more proactive role in order to prevent the creation of villains in the first place, but rehab facilities and clinics don't get your face on the evening news the same way a big villain take down does.

How many lives could have been saved if people like Shigaraki hadn’t been allowed to slip through the cracks? If society hadn’t rejected Toga Himiko and Bubaigawara Jin for aspects of their quirk and personality beyond their control, or brushed over the wishes and concerns of the thousands of citizens that ended up being swayed by Destro’s ideals? 

He gives them a moment to soak it all in before hitting them with his next question. “With this all in mind, what do we know about Dabi?”

“Well he does have a powerful fire quirk,” Asui says, finger pressed against her chin as she tips her head.

“Plus he’s got all those nasty scars,” Mina adds, face twisting. “Like, I can admit it helps pull off the edgy goth look, but like also ew .”

“I kinda wonder how he got those.” Kirishima runs a hand through his spiky hair, his expression uneasy. “Like, at first I thought it was makeup or something but seeing him up close today… those aren’t fake are they?”

Shouta shakes his head. “No, his scars are very much real.”

“Do you think he did it to himself?” Uraraka asks in a hushed voice, like she’s afraid Dabi will be able to hear them discussing him even six floors away. She crosses her arms tight to her chest, mouth pulled into a frown somewhere between disgusted and horrified. “But who would do that to themselves?”

“Should he even be able to burn himself?” Sato questions. “I mean, Todoroki has a fire quirk and it doesn’t seem to hurt him at all.”

Predictably the entire class turns to stare down their resident dual-quirked classmate. Todoroki seems flustered by the sudden attention, tipping his bangs to hide his eyes as he searches for an answer. “No that’s not it. My body is more resistant to my flames, but if I push myself too hard I can still burn.” Despite his eyes being hidden there’s a troubled twist to his lips they can still see. “I… my flames are much cooler than Dabi’s. If I tried to create flames that hot, they would probably burn even me, even with my ice quirk trying to keep me from overheating.” 

“It’s not very common, but there are recorded cases of a person’s body being unable to tolerate their quirk. Perhaps his body isn’t suited?” Yaoyorozu muses.

“In that case, if he burns himself every time he uses his quirk, that could explain it!” Hagakure poses, the sleeves of her shirt waving in the air.

“But wouldn’t he try to limit using his quirk then? Like, if it does cause him to scar, wouldn't he try to keep it to certain places?” Jirou points out. Beside her, Hagakure's arms lower uncertainly back to her lap. “It’d make sense to see scarring on his arms, and maybe even his legs, but his neck? Under his eyes?”

“God his pain tolerance must be insane,” Kaminari whines, shuddering. Kirishima and Sero wince in sympathy. 

“Okay, but what if the scars are from an accident or something?” Ojiro proposes, having kept quiet for most of the conversation.

“Yeah, but what kind of accident would it take a guy like that, who’s probably well aware how much it hurts himself to use his quirk, to burn, like, half his body?” Jirou argues.

“So what, you think someone did that to him?” 

That stops the conversation right in its tracks, everyone going silent as they let the idea sink in. Nature vs Nurture. At first Shotua had assumed, like his students, that the scars might have been an aesthetic choice, something superficial to help boost his image as a person not to be messed with. In the few brief encounters he’s had with the villain he’d never had the chance to consider them any closer, and it had appeared at least from the way Dabi fought that they didn’t bother him enough to be a major hindrance in battle.

After two weeks of watching Recovery Girl wrap and rewrap bandages and witnessing the true extent of the damage while the villain had stapled the pieces of himself back together though he’s had to amend his earlier assumption. With the way he’s seen Dabi use his flames the places the scarring is expected hardly accounts for the sweeping swaths of purple everywhere it actually is.

Shouta can’t rule out an accident, but in the weeks Dabi has been here he hasn’t been able to find a single incidence of someone being treated for burns that severe in any hospital in the country in the last twenty years despite digging through every record he could get his hands on. Which leaves three options: the scarring wasn't initially as bad but has worsened over the years due to the nature of Dabi’s quirk and he hasn’t sought proper medical attention for it, the damage done to his body was that bad to start and the person who treated Dabi—perhaps even stapled him together the first time—was a back-alley doctor who wouldn’t have reported to any reputable organization, or that someone covered the incident up so thoroughly that Shouta may never find out what truly happened.

Out of all of them Todoroki and Bakugou seem the most troubled by the revelation. Shouta watches as the blond stares down at his open palms with a distant look in his eyes, sneaking glances over at Midoriya, who’s gone unusually silent on the other end of the couch.

Shouta has an idea of what that might be about, has seen the dull white starburst scarring splattered on his shoulder and across his collarbone between all of the hospital stints, but he trusts All Might’s declarations that while they’ve got a lot of history they’re trying to work through it. Considering he’s been mentoring the both of them since their fight at Ground Beta during their first year and they’ve managed to shape their rivalry and personal relationship into something much less toxic he’s inclined to allow the man to keep doing whatever it is he’s doing.

Todoroki on the other hand has gone ashen and waxy. He’s carefully touching the edge of his scar, ghosts dancing in his eyes as he stares down into his lap. That’s much more concerning since Shouta doesn’t have any sort of frame of reference to apply to the reaction. Todoroki is rather quiet and aloof for a kid his age, uncomfortable in most social situations.

Shouta has always thought of the social awkwardness as a result of having grown up as the son of a well-known hero such as Endeavor. When he was young it would've still been pretty common to have the children of high-profile heroes kept at a distance, isolated even, from the public for their own safety. It’s fallen out of practice in recent years, but not soon enough for a kid Todoroki’s age. Clearly their conversation has brought up some bad memories and Shouta resolves to keep a closer eye on him.

“So if… if someone did that to him, maybe he became a villain to get back at them?” Uraraka voices tentatively. 

“That’s one possibility,” Shouta says, deciding now is the time to take control of the conversation. “The truth is we know little to nothing about Dabi aside from his quirk. Even his real name and reasons for joining the League are still just conjecture. Considering the scale and severity of Dabi’s known crimes, it’s an easy conviction for the police. There’ll be no need to dig deeper when what they already have will throw Dabi away for the rest of his natural life. If we were to hand him off to them now we’d never learn the truth behind those crimes, which is why I asked the principal to allow us to detain him inside UA in the hopes of changing that.”

“To stop the next Dabi from being created,” Tokoyami murmurs. 

Shouta nods. “Exactly. This is a unique opportunity that we likely won’t get again. The League is unaware of Dabi’s location and if it becomes discovered we have put into place several measures to hopefully capture the remaining members without any harm to the students here. In the meantime we’ll have the opportunity to observe the villain and possibly learn more about his past and motives.”

“Sounds kinda like we’re spies,” Kaminari jokes, clearly trying to lighten the mood, but he’s technically right.

“That’s not a bad analogy,” he agrees. “There are missions I’ve taken in the past where I’ve been tasked to infiltrate a gang or criminal ring that the police needed help building a solid case against.” 

“That’s so badass,” Sero murmurs. 

“Part of that process involves choosing a mark and using them to ingratiate yourself into the larger organization,” Shouta continues, ignoring the starry-eyed looks some of his students are giving him. They probably wouldn’t be looking at him like that if they knew some of the things he’d had to do to gain entry to those organizations, the things he’d had to let slide for the bigger picture to take shape. “Naturally, there are some deviations in our case. If we assume Dabi to be the mark and the League to be our targeted organization, we’re already working at a disadvantage since he knows about us and recognizes that we’re trying to extract possibly damaging information from him about himself and the League.”

“So how do we get him to slip up?” Yaoyorozu asks.

“It will be difficult,” Shouta acknowledges. “And time-consuming. Usually, I’d have months to get a contact to trust me enough to invite me into the larger group. Sometimes longer depending on how complicated the case is. However, we have no idea how much time the League will give us before they realize where Dabi is and try to take him back.”

He takes a deep breath. He hopes they’ll agree to his proposal, but he won’t force any of them to do anything they aren’t comfortable with. What he’s asking is a lot for anyone. Most don’t have the stomach for covert ops, or the fortitude to go undercover for long spans of time and still come back out the other side. Even most day to day interrogations of villains caught during a hero’s patrol are left to the police rather than falling elsewhere.

“I wouldn't ask this of you if I didn't think you could handle it.” He looks at all his students, making sure to meet their eyes. “While I will be the one to ultimately deal with Dabi, my intention for this class is to watch him and try to catch any clues that I might miss. If we all work together I believe we'll be able to gain valuable information about Dabi and the League, but the decision is yours.”

There, it’s all out in the open now. Each of them will now have to make their own choice. He’ll honor whichever outcome they choose.

“If you think I’m scared of some two-bit villain you’re crazy,” Bakugou snaps, speaking up for the first time since Shinsou shut him down. "Bastard owes me some answers after that shit they pulled in Kamino."

His outburst seems to inspire the others, all of them nodding and voicing their assent. 

“No way are we going to let you deal with this on your own,” Kirishima declares, flashing him a shark-toothed smile. “It wouldn’t be manly at all.”

“We’re a team,” Yaoyorozu says with a nod and a soft smile that belies the steel lacing her spine. “That includes you Mr. Aizawa. All you had to do was ask.”

These kids.

Shouta can’t wait to see what they do next.

He clears his throat, giving into habit and dragging his capture weapon up until it’s around his nose. “I appreciate the support. Now, let’s make a plan.”

.

.

.

Keigo is close to losing his goddamn mind.

The only reason he hasn’t yet—can’t really—is because the League has already collectively lost theirs. He's the last line of defense, the only thing holding them back from taking a wrecking ball to society and swinging it until they can pry their arsonist from its bloody broken fingers. 

If he has to live with this tangled ball in his chest that makes it hard to even breathe much longer though, he might just take the first swing himself.

It’s a trap, it has to be. Dabi’s arrest and subsequent disappearing act is too convenient to point towards anything else.

Keigo hadn’t known about the fight until well after it had concluded, several prefectures away with his sidekicks tracking down an illegal quirk trafficking ring that he’d first gotten wind of from Shigaraki. Typically their leader didn’t care that much about most gangs and criminal rings unless they were starting to encroach on League territory, but he did take an exception in regards to children, whether they were being sold for their body or their quirk. Shigaraki’s vague orders to deal with it left plenty of room for interpretation.

Toga and Dabi liked to get particularly creative when sent out, Keigo a silent guardian above to make sure no one escaped. This one is just a little too far outside the League’s range though, and too close to home for the hero’s comfort, so he’s running this operation through more official channels. He’s performing a similar role here with his sidekicks, but the outcome for the criminals will be much more merciful by society’s standards. 

When he does hear about it, hours later after slapping cuffs on over a dozen people and safely seeing some of the victims to a nearby hospital, he flies as fast as his wings can take him to the closest police station to the incident.

There’s a flurry of action in the station, but not the level Keigo expects from suddenly having to house an A-ranked villain. He knows upon walking in that Dabi isn’t here since the strength of the vibrations from the small feather hidden in his coat haven’t changed, but he still asks around to get a sense of what happened.

He’s discreet about it but the police are unusually vague on the details. The first few officers he talks to are able to give him a basic rundown of the incident, but don’t seem to know anything about what happened to the villains after the heroes showed up. The higher-ups on the other hand are all shifty-eyed, constantly trying to change the subject whenever Keigo starts to press.

It’s suspicious as hell.

He flies all around the city, all of his senses tuned towards his missing feather, desperation beginning to claw at his chest when he realizes that Dabi isn’t here.

Almost three weeks later and Keigo still doesn’t know where he’s been taken. Officially the police claim to have the villain in their custody, but he’s used his hero license to bully his way into every station he can find and knows Dabi isn’t there. Trying to sweet talk the detectives into giving him more information is a waste of time too. They’re barely being kept in the loop as it is. They’re just following orders—the bigger picture is above their paygrade. All the heroes involved in the takedown are small-time locals not worth the League’s interrogation, and while the report he’s able to get his hands on only lists the barebones of the incident from what he can tell Geten was the one who did all the work for them. The heroes only came onto the scene to essentially mop up the mess. The hospitals, both villain and civilian, are all dead ends too.

For the first week he’s convinced that the Commission has something to do with it. It wouldn’t be the first time they made problematic villains conveniently disappear, and they’d definitely know how to hide him from Keigo’s sharp eyes. He’s gotten sloppy lately with his reports, leaving out more than he should, his excuses for his slow progress and minimal observations lacking the proper attention he’d normally give them.

He'll admit to being lulled into complacency, too caught up in early mornings with Twice and Toga’s peals of laughter as they dance around each other with knives sharp. Video game marathons with Shigaraki and Spinner, lamenting with Compress on bygone days and the strangeness of this new generation despite being only a handful of years older than most of them, marveling at how everyone's jagged edges all seem to fit together.

Given that, it’s entirely possible they’ve read between the lines and correctly assumed they’ve lost their double agent. That this is his punishment for thinking he could ever break free of the golden cage he's been locked in for as long as he can remember. 

He wakes up in cold sweats from nightmares where he watches helplessly as Dabi is strapped to the same metal table Keigo is placed on when they have to prune his wings or pluck out his crest, the President standing over the villain and looking up at him with dead eyes.

We’ll pluck him from you too, Hawks she seems to taunt. We’ll take him from you just like everything else in your life.

Keigo is half out of his mind when the Commission requests his presence for an in-person debrief, the first one they’ve asked of him for months now. Despite the hurried preening and the makeup he slaps over the dark bruises beneath his eyes he knows he looks like a hot mess when he lands at headquarters and walks inside. His motions are just a bit too manic, his smile a bit too sharp. Too bird-like. Too much like a predator desperate to sink its claws into something.

Still, Hawks is a man too fast for his own good, raised and forged by the Commission into a dagger that they could stab at the heart of their enemies. He was trained to be faster and smarter, more cunning and ruthless than his predecessors. He’s capable of wearing whatever mask he needs in order to complete his mission, all the while hiding behind a charming smile and carefree attitude.

Keigo has been playing double agent for almost two years now. He knows how to manipulate an audience. So he stops outside his handler’s door, takes the moment to settle himself and slips from Keigo to Hawks.

He opens the door.

Most of the meeting passes in a blur, but one thing sticks with him as he dutifully answers every question about his performance and progress with the League. 

The Commission doesn’t have Dabi.

In fact, they have no fucking idea where he is either. It’s subtle of course, they’d never just up and admit that they’ve lost track of one of Japan’s most notorious criminals, but as his handler presses for details on where the hero was during the fight between Dabi and Geten, what the League’s current plans are, if Dabi had any safehouses or associates the Commission wasn’t previously aware of, it becomes more and more clear.

The relief that floods through his veins is like heroin. It makes him lightheaded for a moment, enough that he has to flare his wings subtly behind him to steady himself, though that could also be because he’s been subsisting on coffee for the past week and his blood sugar has finally hit rock bottom.

Normally his handler would notice something like that but they’re so preoccupied with their missing villain that for once they’re not analyzing him within an inch of his life for the smallest defect. Dabi would be mad at him for neglecting himself like that, particularly with his high metabolism, but things like food and sleep mean nothing to the instincts screaming at him to get their arsonist back within the safety of his wings.

Once the Commission has realized the same thing as the hero they let him go with a warning to let them know the minute he finds Dabi. He flies right past his agency and apartment, not stopping until he’s plummeting through the skylight of the League’s newest hideout that they keep open for him. The landing is rougher than usual, his knees buckling a little as he staggers forward, but it hardly matters when Toga and Twice are right there, already peppering him with a million questions as they casually slip their arms around him and support him until his legs are steady beneath him.

Braced between them, Hawks slips away and Keigo falls back into place. 

Everyone is relieved that the Commission doesn’t have Dabi, but if they don’t, and the police don’t, then who does?  

Despite the turmoil his personal life has nosedived into, Hawks is still a pro hero. That means he still has patrols, has to sign autographs and pose for pictures with fans and smile like there’s nothing wrong. It’s exhausting having to deal with them when all Keigo wants to do is to search for Dabi, but he has to keep up appearances. So instead he uses the patrols as an excuse to search his own city top to bottom, and when it's clear the villain isn't in Fukuoka he blatantly uses his position as Number Two to get heroes in other cities to take him on joint patrols under the guise of inter-agency cooperation.

After his shifts he returns to the League to mark another city off their list, an ever-expanding map of red as they continue to investigate. It’s dangerous staying with them for long stretches of time, but he can barely stand the emptiness of his own apartment. Here he’s surrounded by people just as desperate as him, which is, not good, but comforting in its own way. At least it allows him to keep any more of them from slipping through his fingers. 

Shigaraki insists on a buddy system. The whole League is put on lockdown until they’ve gotten a handle on the situation. No one is allowed to go out on their own anymore, even Keigo. On solo patrols Toga shadows him under the guise of people she’s taken blood from. When he’s on joint missions with other heroes, Compress switches places and marbelizes himself so that the hero can carry him around in his pocket while he flies.

He’d really like to know how he still manages to get a signal inside his marbles since he’ll periodically text the League updates in the groupchat while he’s patrolling, but he hasn’t worked up the courage to ask yet.

In return he works one of his feathers into everyone’s outfit. Toga turns her small feather into an earring, while Compress threads his own through his hat. Shigaraki’s feather finds its way between the seams of his coat and Spinner ties his into his hair. Twice is a bit of a challenge, but eventually they decide to turn it into a bracelet of sorts that can be hidden underneath the wrist cuffs he wears. It still doesn’t feel like enough—Dabi was wearing his after all and look at what happened—but it settles some of his baser instincts. They are after all a part of Keigo’s flock so it makes sense to mark them as his. 

It’s late when he comes back from his patrol. It was supposed to just be a standard sixteen hour shift, but just before he would have been in the clear to return to his agency there’d been a last minute bank robbery and the robber just had to take hostages and cause a scene. He had been stuck flying above the bank and relaying any changes to the police below as they looked up his information in the public registry database and tried to bargain with him for what felt like hours. Then more heroes arrived, a bunch of baby-faced newbies with their hero licenses still bright and shiny and just itching to take down their first villain. 

Their over-eagerness threw the man into a complete panic and Keigo had to take control of the situation before it spiraled into chaos. Keigo had barely enough time to crash through one of the windows at terminal velocity and pin the robber down with his feathers before he’d had a chance to harm any of the hostages, the newer heroes bursting through the door moments later. Considering two villain fights earlier in the day had cost him a good chunk of feathers and that the police hadn’t received the information on his quirk yet, it was sheer luck that he didn’t have something that could have posed a risk to Keigo or hurt any of the civilians during the brief exchange.

Irritated, he’d been two steps from just slapping cuffs on the man and taking to the sky but then there were reporters hounding after him and the heroes who’d caused him all that unnecessary trouble in the first place wanting to get a chance to talk with the number two hero, so Keigo had to stand there and smile and nod and pretend that the feathers at the base of his wings weren’t razor sharp the entire time.

He stumbles through the main space and towards his room now, only managing to remember to take Compress out of his flight jacket at the last moment. He tosses the marble into the air and watches the villain emerge from it in a flash of light.

“It was lovely flying with you,” Keigo can feel the air whistle past the feather pinned into his hat as Compress twirls it in his hands before placing it back on his head with a little extra flourish, “as always.”

He offers his own goodbyes, mumbled and possibly slurred with exhaustion, before shuffling into his room. Well, it’s Dabi’s room technically, but they’re a joint package these days, so mi casa es su casa and all that. It’s not one of those hotel quality rooms the League had when they were in charge of the MLA with the king-sized beds and ensuite bathrooms, but it’s not a complete shithole like Keigo has seen with some of their other hideouts.

Most importantly, the sheets still hold some of Dabi’s smoky scent, and after going through enough motions to strip himself down to his compression suit he buries his nose into the worn fabric as he lays down on his stomach. His wings spread over the bed, a hollow pit forming in his stomach when they don’t find a familiar body to drape themselves over.

Keigo hasn’t slept more than a handful of hours since Dabi was taken and he doesn’t imagine tonight will be any different. He tries anyways, if only so he won’t fall asleep into his coffee tomorrow morning while he writes up an incident report of tonight’s patrol, grounding himself in the fading scent of their sheets and consciously making an effort to soften his feathers and relax. One of them doesn’t seem to be falling quite right but he's too tired to reach back and adjust it. 

Keigo has been running his wings ragged lately and hasn’t been able to sit still long enough for a proper preening so it’s to be expected. He's lost a fair amount of feathers from his past couple of patrols but if he doesn’t do something about it the remaining ones will deteriorate too much for him to fly on and he’ll be forced to grow a new set in. Considering how it’ll impact his patrols for at least three or four days and leave the Commission on his ass he should ask someone for help.

Toga or Compress maybe. Twice gets worried about accidentally yanking his feathers out on the off-chance he starts splitting, and there’s just enough predator-prey instinct ingrained in him and Spinner that neither of them feel comfortable with the arrangement.

Shigaraki has only touched his wings once in the time since Keigo gained enough of Dabi's trust to be brought back behind the curtain. Considering it was to make sure he knew what would happen if he betrayed the League he didn't exactly want him anywhere near his wings afterward in those first few months.

But that was before. Before Keigo deceived them and brought the heroes crashing down on the PLF. Before he had to pick up the shattered pieces of his life afterward and glue it all back together. There's a level of trust there now that they've been building bit by bit, an understanding, enough that if Shigaraki asked he wouldn't refuse the offer. He won't though, even despite having a better hold on his quirk now. Keigo knows all too well the lingering trauma that's rooted too deep to completely remove.

Tonight feels like it might be one of his better nights. He’s just starting to drift off, but the feather is more of a thorn in his side than he bargained for. The vibrations are weak, barely there really, but still feel off when compared to the rest of his feathers. Keigo is half tempted to shed them, but decides to blindly reach back with a grumbled curse instead, fumbling around with his feathers in his search for that one particular annoyance. He can’t seem to reach it though and now it’s starting to genuinely bother him. Still half-asleep he fully sits up, drawing his wings around so he can access them better, and starts combing his fingers through the soft red.

Keigo is a hell of a lot more awake when he realizes that his remaining feathers are mostly tucked into place. He’s quick to reach for the League; the strong and steady vibrations he finds telling him they’re all within close reach.

Which means—

In an instant everything drops away as he focuses on the irregular vibrations. He keens as the phantom sensation of a soft brush runs from barb to tip. 

Dabi.

Behind him his wings shudder, every feather vibrating as they rhythmically sharpen and soften and tear up the sheets underneath. For weeks all he has been able to make out of Dabi’s feather was that it was still tucked into his coat. No movement, no change in temperature, nothing. The distance is too great for him to interpret more than what his feather is in direct contact with so it’s impossible for him to get a sense of where Dabi is. What he can feel is heat calloused fingers twisting the tip gently between them, the ice-touch of his skin trickling through as if his feather was pressed against a cool glass of water.

Where Keigo’s brain screeches. He talons dig into the bedding, the question beating a tattoo against his ribs. Where where where .

He holds himself perfectly still, waiting to see what Dabi will do next. He’s so focused on the feather and the skittered feeling of what might be laughter against the barb that he almost misses the soft tap tap tap of the calamus against something solid. The vibrations are faint, but there’s a familiar rhythm to it. It takes Dabi repeating the motion before it clicks.

K-E-I

Because of course the asshole knows morse code of all things. Keigo had to learn it as part of his training in order to send and receive covert messages through his feathers but he's never told anyone about that. He has no idea how Dabi knows it too.

Maybe he should teach it to the rest of the League since they all have one of his feathers now. That way if they’re in a tight spot or can’t communicate through normal channels they’ll be able to tell at least one other person about it. Of course, this opens up a whole new way for Toga to tease and annoy him, but that’s a price he’s willing to pay.

He’s too far away to manipulate his feather, so there’s no way to write a message back. He just has to hope the villain knows he’s listening.

There’s another set of taps, more deliberate this time, and Keigo holds his breath as he translates the dots and dashes into letters in his head.

What he gets is… not what he expects.

U-A

.

.

.

Sometimes Dabi is glad that he died before he could experience much of middle school or high school life. Not that he had exactly died back when he was thirteen, but at least it had gotten him out waking up at the crack of dawn only to sit through six and a half hours of mind-numbingly boring lectures.

Living as a villain has only fucked up his sleep schedule even more with the hours he keeps these days, and Keigo is just about as much as a morning person as Dabi when he actually allows himself to sleep longer than an hour or two, so it’s not like having the hero in his bed has improved his habits at all. How Shouto—who from his spotty memory is even less of a morning person than he is—has successfully been doing it for this long he’ll never know.

Still, despite the ungodly hour Eraserhead wakes him up at, he feels better than he has in weeks. More settled. He has his coat back and with that comes Keigo’s feather. The damn thing wouldn’t stop twitching all night and a few times he almost sliced his hand on it as it sharpened and then softened without warning. He’d managed to get his message out though. He doesn't actually know if Keigo knows morse code or not, but if anyone would it’d be that overachieving bird. 

Natsuo is the one who’d thought it up and taught Touya and Fuyumi when they were kids. He used to be constantly tapping messages against his legs or over his arms when he was afraid that the sound of his voice would summon their father. Touya in turn had mostly used it when training up at Sekoto had gone badly and his throat was too inflamed by smoke inhalation to speak.

He didn't talk much back then.

Their sister had preferred the gentle brush of cold fingers to convey everything she needed to say, but she could understand her brothers and sometimes that was enough.

He idly wonders if they ever taught Shouto as he drapes his coat over his shoulders as best he can, feather safely hidden back under his collar.

Eraserhead takes one look at the overturned state of his room when he comes to collect him, then at him, and sighs. Without asking he disconnects the chain between the two handcuffs. Huh, Dabi didn’t know they could do that.

“I expect this room to be clean by tomorrow morning.”

“No promises,” Dabi says as he follows the hero out the door, sliding his newly freed hands into the arms of his coat as he walks. He might not even be here by the end of the day.

Well, no, he still expects to be here for a little while at least. Last thing he wants is for Keigo to come in here guns blazing and throw his career down the drain. Annoying as his hero status as Number Two is, it’s given the League the inside track and Dabi would hate for all the good intel they’re able to get from that to disappear. Plus, he knows that even if the damn bird hates the fame and fortune that comes with his position he loves being able to help people. No matter how nice of a look vigilante is on him he can still reach more people as a hero.

This early in the morning Dabi can’t work up the energy to be bothered about the twenty pairs of eyes on him when he and Eraserhead walk off the elevator. All he cares about is the sound of coffee percolating from somewhere within the kitchen. He mindlessly makes his way towards it, the hero's students parting like the Red Sea for him. How thoughtful.

Their teacher isn’t far behind and one of his students helpfully hands him two coffee mugs before scampering off to join the rest of their classmates in staring at Dabi like he’s a new exotic animal exhibit at the zoo. Aren’t they supposed to be more scared of him? Whatever, he’s too tired to care.

He pours as much coffee out as will fit in the mug he's given before placing the pot back on the warmer, habit making him stick the handle out to the left rather than the right since Spinner always pours his coffee after Dabi. It makes Eraserhead pause for a moment as he wanders away from the machine to lean against the counter, clutching the cup in his hands like the fucking lifeline it is.

His lips curl as he watches the man pour an obscene amount of sugar into his coffee. It’s nothing close to the monstrosities Toga prefers but it’s still disgusting to watch. For Keigo it depends on the day: sometimes he drinks it straight black like Dabi and other times he comes in with something that looks like a fucking rainbow and probably tastes like one too.

“Gross,” he mutters, bringing his coffee up to his lips and taking a sip.

“You should see Mic’s,” Eraserhead says, giving a little shudder and a shake of his head. Dabi can only imagine the bastard coffee that a guy like Present Mic would prefer and hides a shiver of his own.

He’s still not fully awake when Eraserhead herds both villain and students off to homeroom. He’s directed to sit in the same seat he had yesterday and spends the next hour or so slowly becoming more aware of his surroundings as the caffeine kicks in.

Mostly he realizes that the kids are barely paying attention to their teacher. Instead they’re all looking at him, though not with the abject fear they had the other day. Well, it’s still kind of there, and Bakugou still looks like he’d like nothing more than to grind Dabi’s face into the floor tile, but it seems more tempered than the other day. Now that he’s essentially quirkless and being supervised by their teacher they must think that he’s harmless. Fucking hell. He’ll have to do something to remind them otherwise. 

But maybe later, when he’s actually awake and doesn’t have Eraserhead looming over him.

He rubs his fingers over the inside collar of his jacket right where he knows Keigo’s feather is.

Fuck, he can’t wait to get out of here.

For the most part he’s been tuning out the hero’s lecture—the guy’s talking from a goddamn sleeping bag for shit’s sake—but he dials right the fuck back in at the end when he hears himself mentioned. 

“Considering the unusual situation we find ourselves in and our conversation last night, I’ve decided to frame our on-going lectures in a more practical style.” Eraserhead has unzipped himself from his sleeping bag and is now standing behind the podium, placing his arms down and leaning his weight against them. “This will also apply to your advanced heroics course going forward. Pending approval, sometime in the next week or so rather than meeting here for homeroom and hero ethics we’ll be meeting at Ground Theta.”

The kid with the tail raises his hand. “Is Ground Theta like Gamma or Omega?”

“No,” Eraserhead says with a shake of his head. “Although Theta is a specialized training ground like the others, it’s tailored towards a different aspect of hero training.” Dabi goes stiff in his chair. The intentional vagueness of the hero’s words has alarm bells ringing all over. “Usually, you wouldn’t be allowed inside until your third year or if you had already decided to pursue a different style of career, but we’re making an exception in your class' case.”

Great. This place just keeps sounding better and better. The students break into hushed whispers but any ensuing conversation is cut off from a knock on the door. A second later Present Mic sticks his head in.

“What’s up little listeners? You ready to rock out to some English?”

The villain narrows his eyes, seriously doubting that the timing of the entrance wasn't intentional. Obviously whatever they want to discuss with the students isn’t something he’s allowed to know about. But it’s not like he can lurk outside and eavesdrop, and considering how he carefully phrased his words back when he was talking to his kids Dabi doubts Eraserhead would give him a straight answer if he asked.

All he can do is glare daggers at the back of the hero’s head as he follows him out of the classroom, his thoughts spiraling and uneasy.

Chapter Text

Keigo has to be careful how he goes about this.

He hasn’t told the League yet about Dabi. He’s not unconvinced that Shigaraki won’t dust the entire school to the ground at this point, and he just knows Toga and Twice will mount some absurd rescue mission that he’ll have to end up swooping in to save them from.

Compress, at least, would be a voice of reason and able to help him corral the rest of the League. Spinner too. He just can’t risk it though. Not yet. Not until he’s gotten a better picture of the situation.

Which is why he’s perched in a tree branch thirty feet in the air at three in the morning just outside UA.

Could have been later if Shigaraki and Spinner had pulled another all-nighter with their video games like they had suggested earlier in the day. It’s not unusual for the two of them, but there’s been a marked increase in them, enough for even Twice to notice. It’s the only distraction that seems to work at keeping Shigaraki from scratching his neck into a bloody mess though, and Keigo can only spend so much money on first aid supplies before the Commission starts poking into his finances.

Thankfully they ended their session sometime around one in the morning and by two both of them were out cold. Keigo will have to make sure to sneak back to the League before dawn though. Twice always likes to watch the sunrise out on the roof with his first cigarette of the day. 

For now he closes his eyes and focuses on the vibrations from Dabi’s feather. It’s tucked back inside the small pocket sewn into his coat which muffles things a bit, but now that he's closer he can feel everything more clearly. From the gentle rise and fall of it Keigo assumes Dabi laid the coat out over himself before falling asleep. The hero finds himself matching the steady rhythm, tension draining from his shoulders as his wings droop slightly. If he lets his mind wander just enough he can imagine himself in his feather’s place, ear pressed against Dabi’s scarred chest.

Dabi would definitely kill him if he realized Keigo was out here, with or without backup. He’d probably bring him back just to kill him again if he found out that he’s pulled some strings and is patrolling around Musutafu alongside some of the more local heroes.

He could always use the excuse that it’s part of his reconnaissance—and it is technically—but he won't lie and say that the draw of being close enough to comfort himself in the steady heartbeat he can feel through his feather isn't a big part of it too. He might've even tried to catch a little nap of his own if it wasn’t so cold out and he didn’t have to worry about the heroes patrolling beneath him.

Keigo always senses them long before they arrive from the feathers he leaves scattered in the woods around him but it’s still risky with heroes like Hound Dog snooping around. Shigaraki isn’t happy about the change in patrols putting him so close to UA, but all Keigo has to say is that it’s orders from the Commission and he backs off with a snarl about how he should just dust them instead.

He opens his eyes and takes in the imposing wall separating him from the school, feathers shuffling and fluffing up to try and conserve heat. At first glance the answer seems easy enough: just fly right over and whisk the villain away. The reality isn’t nearly as simple.

UA is a modern day fortress. No one gets in or out without permission. There are no exceptions to this rule. Keigo doesn't know the exact schematics of their security layout, but he wouldn’t doubt that there are hidden sensors built in around the campus that would catch even him high above. Despite how the news pundits love to complain, the heroes on the other side of that wall take the safety of their students seriously.

What that means is that Keigo can’t go into this half-cocked. He has to find a reason to be invited inside and allowed to stay long enough to extract the two of them without anyone finding out about his involvement. 

Well, it won’t be the first time Keigo has had to go undercover and infiltrate an opposing organization. Hell, it won’t even be the first time he’s had to lie and keep a mission from his fellow heroes. He just never thought there’d come a day when he’d go undercover for the sake of a villain.

If only the Commission could see me now.

Then again, they never really saw him in the first place. Only imperfections needing to be fixed.

After all, what use did they have for Keigo, when they could have Hawks instead?

He sighs, shaking out his wings as he stands. Fifty yards away his feathers detect movement. Two heat signatures he determines. The one with the unsteady gait he assumes to be Ectoplasm with his prosthetics. The vibrations from the other are harsh, irregular. Probably Hound Dog. Which means it’s time for Keigo to leave.

He calls back his feathers and with a parting glance at the dark building rising up on the other side of the wall he takes to the skies. 

.

.

.

It is too damn early for Dabi to be awake right now. 

He fights back a yawn that threatens to rip his staples and blinks long and slow. Fuck Eraser for waking him up at the ass-crack of dawn and fuck Eraser for not giving him the chance to even have coffee before herding him out the door and throwing him at Midnight. He’s going to get back at the bastard once he can scrape together enough energy to get off the couch he’s currently slouching into.

It’s a comfortable couch, he’ll give the heroes that. Much better than the one back at the base that Toga and Twice dragged back after finding it on the side of the street waiting to be taken to the dump. No matter how he sprawls on that one there’s always a spring digging into his side. At least they’ve had it for long enough that he can no longer tell which questionable stains are from the previous owner and which are from Shigaraki and Spinner spilling soda on it during their gaming marathons. 

Midnight is sitting cross-legged on her own couch across from him. She brought him to one of the teacher lounges, though which building they’re in is anyone’s guess. Dabi was too busy trying not to trip over his own sluggish feet as he was unwillingly dragged across campus to pay attention.

It’s a small space, not much more than the couches and a few bookshelves pressed against the wall. A couple stray sunbeams slip through the blinds partially drawn over the windows that stretch nearly from floor to ceiling on the opposite wall of the bookshelves, softly illuminating the space. Dust motes glitter above the surface of the coffee table between them, and Dabi watches with detached interest as Midnight scrunches her face at the lesson plan she’s holding in front of herself with one hand and scratches the butt end of a highlighter against her temple with the other.

She’s bundled up in a thick turtleneck sweater and leggings and it’s—weird, seeing her out of uniform. He’s used to seeing Midnight in her hero costume, or lack thereof as it were. It feels a bit like when he walked in on Magne and Toga having a girl’s night and saw Magne with makeup on for the first time. It makes him want to stop and do a double-take. 

“Admiring your handiwork?”

Dabi, currently indulging in the gentle heat of the early morning sun on the back of his head, blinks lazily. It takes him a moment to realize that Midnight is directing her question at him rather than the papers she’s been mumbling to, and a moment longer for the sounds to register as actual words. 

“What?” Not the most eloquent response, but it’s the best he’s capable of at the moment without any caffeine. 

Midnight has barely said two words to him since Eraserhead handed him off to her. Not in any deference to the ungodly hour of the morning or any recognition that Dabi isn’t awake enough to actively participate in a conversation though. No, the thinly veiled look of anger in her eyes and the bitter twist of her lips when she’d accepted him from the other hero had told Dabi everything he needed to know about how shitty his morning would be. Most of the heroes he’s come across while stuck here have given him similar looks, and he’s idly wondered in his sudden abundance of free time if Eraserhead was less successful in arguing his case to his coworkers and more so in quelling the majority of dissent with a red-eyed stare. He supposes it doesn’t really matter how he went about convincing everyone to go along with his plan when the end result is the same for him.   

“I thought even villains knew that it’s not nice to stare at a lady.”

Dabi hadn’t been staring at her, not intentionally at least. There’s not much in the room to stare at really. She just so happened to be in his line of sight. Well, he supposes he had been looking at her hair, but that was only him trying to decide if it was a mechanical pencil or a pen pinned through the messy bun her hair is pulled up into.

Dabi rolls his eyes and slouches a little further into the couch, the collar of his coat riding up against his cheek as he burrows down. He tips his head to more firmly press against the part that hides Keigo’s feather.

If she’s going to try to provoke him into an argument this early in the morning by accusing him of shit he didn’t do he’s going to be a brat about it. “Don’t see any ladies around.”

Midnight narrows her eyes, and Dabi just knows he’s not going to like whatever comes out of her mouth next. 

“No manners at all. Didn’t your mother raise you better than that?”

Dabi can’t help the way he flinches. That’s a low fucking blow, and the searing glare he sends her lets her know just how much he appreciates it as he flatly replies, “She didn’t.”

At least Midnight seems to realize her misstep, falling awkwardly silent when the villain doesn’t rise to the bait. She doesn’t offer an apology and Dabi doesn’t ask for one.

He’d brushed over it before in his initial assessment of the hero, but now that she’s brought it up he takes a moment to examine his apparent handiwork. He can only assume Midnight is referring to the scars on her face; one that starts just below the outer corner of her right eye and carves a messy line across her cheek before hooking into her upper lip, drawing the corner of her mouth up just slightly into a permanent little half-smile, and a second smaller one that cuts through her left eyebrow and disappears up into her hairline. If there are more then they’re hidden from sight beneath her clothes.

Personally, Dabi has seen worse. Just this morning, actually, when he caught his own reflection in the mirror after taking a piss.

They lapse into an uneasy silence. Midnight refocuses on her papers and Dabi closes his eyes in an attempt to pretend like the other hero doesn’t exist. He’d gotten good at that sort of thing during their PLF days when he had to sit in the same room as Geten and not reflexively try to light the little shit on fire every time he opened his fucking mouth. 

The quiet stretches and while it’s nice to rest his tired eyes Dabi is too irritated to relax any meaningful amount. He wishes he could take Keigo’s feather out, just to have something to focus on other than the occasional scritch of Midnight’s pen that sets his nerves on edge. Instead he settles for cracking one eye open and casting his gaze on the bookshelf closest to him. There are dozens upon dozens of books all crammed together on the shelves with no discernible organization that Dabi can comprehend. He stretches himself over the armrest of the couch, ignoring the eyes on the back of his neck as his fingers skim the titles and select the first one he can grab.

He holds back a snort when he realizes that it’s a translated version of Pride and Prejudice. Fuyumi had her own copy when they were kids, a gift from their mother for her birthday. It was one of her favorites—Dabi can still remember her dragging it around everywhere, always waxing poetic about it to Touya, who had been the only one among their siblings who ever entertained her long winded rambles. Even if it was only ever temporary the sound of her voice, light and vibrant, made Touya feel a little less like a ghost haunting the halls of a mausoleum.

Dabi gently thumbs the corner of the cover, long-buried memories teasing at the edges just out of reach, as he settles back into his previous position. If he was alone he’d read aloud to Keigo’s feather. Keigo doesn’t have the patience to read himself, but he loves the sound of Dabi’s voice. There’s been more than one late morning or lazy afternoon with Keigo lying against Dabi's chest, eyes closed and the edges of his wings brushing the carpet as Dabi ran the fingers of one hand through what feathers he could reach while the other carefully held a book, voice rasping as he made his way down the pages. 

He hides a faint smile against Keigo’s feather as he cracks open the book. Dabi isn’t much for romance novels, but Keigo goes soft and sappy every time someone chooses a rom-com for movie night. Maybe when this whole mess has blown over he’ll read this to the hero.

Dabi falls into the rhythm of the story easily enough, and with something to hold his attention he’s able to let Midnight fade into the background, unimportant and irrelevant. That is, at least, until he hears her grit out, “Sorry.” 

By the way her entire face is twisted like she’d just bitten into a sour lemon it clearly costs the hero to apologize, even if it’s half-hearted at best and they both know it. Dabi can only assume it’s to assuage her own sense of guilt, and finds himself burying his face back into his book in a futile attempt to dissuade Midnight from a second disastrous attempt at conversation. 

Alas, for some godforsaken reason, she decides she hasn’t dug herself deep enough.

“Did she…” Midnight wavers for a moment, trying to choose her words delicately. “Did she… you know…”

She fades there, losing confidence to finish her question, but from the way her gaze lingers on Dabi’s scars he can easily finish the sentence. Did she hurt you?

Dabi can’t help the ugly little laugh that tears itself from his throat. "She would've had to actually look at me to do that."

Midnight keeps her mouth shut after that.

.

.

.

“I don’t approve of this.”

“Didn’t say you had to.” Shouta levels Intuition with a tired glare that she returns with a quirk of a lip and amusement in her eyes. “Relax Eraser, you did come asking for my help after all.” 

“Yes,” Shouta answers patiently, irritation curling on the edge of his words, “but this wasn’t what I had in mind.” He stands to the side and watches the hero as she crosses from one end of the floor to the other, a small bag slung over her shoulder.

The dorm is empty right now, all of its occupants preoccupied elsewhere with classes. Dabi has been left in Nemuri’s care this morning. He should be off preparing for his next class, but here he is supervising instead. 

Intuition, as usual, brushes off Shouta’s concern. “You worry too much. I just want to get an idea of what your kiddies are like before I meet them.” She pauses at one of the bookcases lining the wall for a moment before reaching into her bag and pulling out a book and placing it on one of the shelves that’s slightly above eye-level. It blends right in with the other books but if he were to open its pages he’s sure he’d find the paper cut away just enough to hide a small camera inside.  

“You could just talk to them,” he says with a sigh.

“Yeah,” she agrees with a shrug. She steps back, gives the bookshelf a once-over before humming to herself and moving on, throwing him a grin over her shoulder. “But this is more fun.”

Shouta doesn’t consider bugging his students' dorm without them being aware fun, but then again despite both being underground heroes he and Intuition are very different people. She’d wanted to put cameras inside the students’ rooms too, but in that respect he’d put his foot down and refused to budge. Dabi’s room had been agreed to for obvious reasons—the police had hidden a microphone inside the recess of the ceiling light when it was decided to house the villain in the dorms, however, Intuition insisted there was room for improvement—but his kids were out of the question.

He’d already had to grudgingly give up their school records after Nezu twisted his arm and been forced to agree to allow her to surveil the students for a few days before their first official meeting at Ground Theta next week, but he could at least control how far that stretched. 

Surveillance on a potential criminal is one thing, but these are his students. Watching the hero hum under her breath as she sets up microphones and cameras around the first floor feels like a breach of privacy and trust that’s been given to him.

Still, Intuition insisted and Nezu agreed to it so he has no choice but to go along with it despite his reservations.

UA has several specialized training grounds, but Theta is unique in that it's geared towards the grittier aspects of hero work. Shouta will need access when the time comes to interrogate the villain, and in the meantime he hopes to introduce the students to some of the techniques and skills he'll be employing. In return for all of that, Intuition has bullied her way onto Dabi's case and into Shouta's class. If there was a better way to do this he would but Intuition is one of the best in her field. Theta is Intuition’s domain more than anyone else’s and he has no choice but to respect the position that grants her.

Hizashi was put in charge of explaining the basics of Theta to the students after he took the villain away and the general scope of what they’ll be trying to do inside the building which will be Dabi's eventual interrogation. He’s sure they’ll expect some sort of surveillance to be set up for the villain, but he doubts they realize they’ve been included in Intuition's schemes.

He’s confident that they’ll work hard, but theory and practice hardly ever go hand in hand. Not even Shouta knows what might happen and that’s an intimidating prospect when you’ve got twenty kids relying on you.

Dabi knows that something’s up. He’s been watching the hero’s every move and even if he doesn’t look it he’s been paying attention to his words too. He might not know exactly what Theta is right now, but he knows it’s nothing good as far as he’s concerned.

As his gaze follows her Shouta quietly sizes Intuition up in his head. It’s been a while since he’s seen her. Only a year older than him she’s pretty in a plain sort of way. Short mousy brown hair cropped in a bob and dark eyes. She’s the type of person you wouldn’t notice missing from the crowd.

The type of person you’d never consider a threat.

Her quirk makes her ideal for infiltration and interrogation. Particularly in the early days of his career when he was still trying to find his footing and needed to rely on a more experienced hand, occasional team ups were unavoidable. More often he’d run across her when she was brought in by the police on high-profile or particularly difficult cases. She's the failsafe when normal methods come up short. 

He’s hoping that reputation holds out for this too. 

“Come on Eraser, loosen up a little,” Intuition cajoles. “Don’t you want to know what little dirty secrets your kids have been hiding from you?”

“Not particularly.” Shouta has a long, long list of suspicions about his students, but unlike his colleague he knows when not to pry. He supposes it’s a natural consequence of her career. She can’t see the lines anymore, or if she can she doesn’t care to honor them when they stand in the way of her goal.

He watches her tape a listening bug just under the edge of the couch. Each spot she picks for her equipment is chosen with care and purpose, and Shouta thinks that if any of his students manage to find even a single one of Intuition’s bugs he’ll rubber-stamp their grades for the rest of the semester.

“Still a kill-joy I see,” she says with a put-upon sigh. She faces him as she straightens up, hands resting on her hips. “And here I thought I’d finally be able to crack that enigma of your’s.”

“You already know all my secrets.” Not that Shouta has tried all that hard. Heroes like a challenge, and Intuition is no different. Worse probably, in some ways. If he rebuffed her at every turn, tried to shut her down and keep her from prying, it’d only serve as fuel for her curiosity. So he doesn’t.

There are some things he won’t talk about—some things he either can’t give up or doesn’t want her holding over his head—but he gives information that in other circumstances his daytime colleagues would have to pry from his chest with relative ease. Just in the hour he’s been supervising he’s already told her bits and pieces about Eri and Shinsou, small anecdotes on a few of the students when she asks, even about the kitten Hizashi plans to adopt and surprise him with that he thinks Shouta doesn’t know about.

More readily he directs the conversation towards Dabi since that’s why he’s involving her in the first place and shares his thoughts on what the villain’s life might have been like before he took up with the League. 

Quirk burns present differently from regular burns. Either from the chemical makeup of the fire the quirk creates or the sheer unnatural heat some of them generate, the wounds created don’t follow the common injury patterns of more conventional burns. Some of Dabi’s scars are undoubtedly a byproduct of his own quirk, but the rest? The rest Shouta suspects might have come from an outside influence, and by the state of the villain’s patchwork scars he imagines there was repeated exposure. 

So he was likely abused then, either as a teenager or a child. Shouta is uncomfortably aware that Dabi displays some of the same behaviors exhibited in adults who’ve experienced long periods of mistreatment. Following statistics leads to the logical conclusion that it was from someone he knew.

There’s a bitter taste in his mouth when he considers the likelihood that the abuse came from one or both of his parents. He can’t possibly imagine what would motivate a parent to harm their child, and then to further turn pattern into habit. 

Even worse is the idea that it might have come from a hero. Shouta isn’t naïve, he knows that not everyone in the industry is who they say they are. Publicly, they’ll all say everything they do is in service to the people, but in reality daytime heroics is one big popularity contest. Do well enough and you’ll score yourself brand titles and modeling contracts and movie titles and gods knows what else they'll throw at you. 

Dabi is a follower of Stain, which means that part of his actions are motivated by the concept that there are fake heroes in society that no one refuses to acknowledge or deal with. So he deals with them instead. Add to that years of trauma and abuse possibly suffered at the hands of someone meant to save and help others, and Dabi’s actions suddenly paint a very different picture. It doesn’t absolve him of the death and destruction he’s caused, but it does lend an understanding to the thoughts driving those acts.

Fucking problem villain.

Once Intuition is satisfied with the first floor Shouta leads her up to Dabi’s room. She spares a moment to place a camera out in the hallway, but the bulk of her attention is focused on the room itself. If anything she’s even more meticulous than she was downstairs.

Students are one thing, but this is another.

This is work. 

He’s thankful that Dabi heeded his order and pulled his room back together after that first night. There are still clear signs that someone lives here from the messy sprawl of the comforter thrown haphazardly over the bed to the pile of clothes he and the other teachers had managed to scrounge up and give as suitable alternatives spilling partway out of the closet onto the ground, but at least they can walk across the floor without tripping over anything.

Most of the clothes are various shades of gray and black, though curiously enough the garish yellow hoodie with the red cartoon chicken Hizashi had thrown in there for kicks has found its way draped over the end of the desk chair rather than the trash like Shouta had assumed.

Intuition takes one look at the recording device the police initially put in the room, laughs, and throws it in the trash to be replaced by her own equipment.

By the time she’s done it’s almost time for him to head across campus for his next class.

“Alright, alright I’m going,” Intuition lilts as he all but pushes her out the front door. She spins down the steps and dances back a few feet, eyes never leaving Shouta. A grin curls at the edge of her lips. “Can’t wait to meet your kiddies, Eraser.”

Shouta, as always, refuses to rise to the bait. “Goodbye Intuition.”

He waits until she’s well and truly disappeared before he allows the strain in his shoulders to ease, a gusty sigh escaping. Dealing with the underground hero is always something of a balancing act, but he’s more worried about the day he becomes comfortable around her than the ones that leave him restless and wary.

Chapter Text

Shouta hates teacher meetings. Mostly because they always devolve into pointless bickering amongst his colleagues and he has to sit there and listen to them when he could be doing something more productive with his time. Like napping.

He hides a yawn behind his hand, jaw cracking on the exhale, and blinks slowly.

Fuck, why’d this one have to be so early in the morning. He could still be sleeping right now.

Shouta knows his fellow teachers are all daytime heroes and don’t really understand the life of underground heroes like himself, but sometimes he wonders. Beside him Hizashi shoots him a look that’s both amused and sheepish around his frappuccino before turning his attention back to Vlad and Cementoss, who’ve been arguing about their classes’ conflicting training times for the past ten minutes. Shouta, who despite now having a villain under his care had his husband stay in the dorm for the night to watch Dabi while he worked the graveyard shift last night into the current morning and has only had a grand total of forty-five minutes of sleep before having to get up for this meeting, is ready to crack their heads together with his capture weapon just to get them to shut up.

How do they have that much energy? Shouta feels like he’s running on low power mode barely managing to stave off an inevitable shutdown.

Nezu, bless his mousy little heart, claps his paws together and immediately gets the two of them to be quiet. “While I admire your ability to advocate for your students, I believe this is a discussion that can be tabled for the moment.” The two heroes sit back in their seats, eyes cast down and mumbling out apologies. 

See, this is why he lets the man get away with perching on his shoulder and using his capture weapon like his own personal blanket. 

“Getting back to the main purpose of this meeting: Eraserhead, tell us how Dabi has been lately.” 

He tilts his head enough that he can see the principal out of the corner of his eye. “He’s been unusually cooperative,” he answers. 

“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing,” Nemuri says, raising an eyebrow.

Shouta closes his eyes and sighs. “It probably means he’s plotting something.”

The only thing Dabi has made any sort of fuss about in the weeks he’s been here was his coat. And once it was given to him he shut right up, which in his experience means something’s gone wrong.

Powerloader had gone over the piece of clothing with a fine tooth comb and found nothing suspicious while the villain was still unconscious, yet the hero is tempted to snatch the coat right back from Dabi. Even now there’s a vague unease hanging in the back of his head with the villain out of his sight, despite knowing Thirteen currently holds the keys to his room and is perfectly capable of defending themself should he try to escape.

“Speaking of the League,” Nezu says, directing his attention towards All Might at the other end of the table. “How have the police’s efforts gone?”

“It appears they’re being cautious,” All Might replies with a sigh. “Feeding them rumors about possible locations and transports through either official lines or the use of informants doesn’t seem to be enough for them to act on. Either they have a way of telling that the information is fake, or they’ve already cut their losses and won’t bother to come after Dabi.”

Cementoss raises his hand slightly. “And the blood sample Recovery Girl was able to grab?”

All Might runs a hand through his wild hair. “The analysis is taking longer than expected. Naomasa is still trying to find a lab not tied to the Commission that is willing to run the sample off the books. Until then we’ll just have to wait.”

“Do you think Dabi might’ve gotten a message out to the League and that’s why they’re lying low?” Hizashi asks.

Shouta shrugs as he considers his husband’s words. “It’s always possible.” It would certainly explain the blasé attitude he’s been getting from the villain lately. Hopefully whatever Intuition’s cameras and microphones pick up will give them an idea of what’s going through the villain’s mind.

“Actually, we believe that Dabi has managed to contact the League,” Ectoplasm speaks up. Everyone’s gaze snaps to the hero. “The reason we asked Nezu to call this meeting is because someone has been watching the school,” he continues before glancing at Hound Dog.

“I picked up a scent by the fence,” Hound growls. He gnashes his teeth against the muzzle around his face as his temper flares. “They’ve been watching the Class 2A dorm.”

Shouta stiffens in his seat as the hero devolves into rasping growls and snarls. 

He’s definitely awake now.

Underneath the table Hizashi places his hand on his thigh and rubs smooth circles against the soft material of his pants with his thumb. The contact grounds him enough that he doesn’t immediately do something stupid like go off and hunt down whoever has been stalking his students. 

“Hound doesn’t recognize the scent,” Ectoplasm picks up when it’s clear the hero is too worked up to speak properly. “And we’ve yet to get a visual on the intruder despite picking it up several nights in a row now. It's too faint for him to pick up much, but he's said there's a musk to it, like fur or feathers.”

“Do you think it’s that new vigilante that we heard about awhile back?” Nemuri murmurs, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms over her stomach. “The one that went around slashing up all those people about seven months ago? They’ve gone quiet lately but I heard from a contact of mine that residue from Dabi’s flames has been found at some of the crime scenes and that there’s speculation they’ve joined up with the League.”

“Naomasa says that his quirk is only conjecture right now,” All Might cautions. “Based on the wound patterns they think it was made by some sort of claw or talon, but none of the victims have been able to accurately describe their attacker so they haven't ruled anything out." He pauses for a moment, mouth twisting into a troubled frown as his brow furrows. "However, according to the medical examiner that’s been assessing the cremated body found at one of the scenes there is a definite link between the residue there and samples collected from previous encounters with Dabi, so it is possible they've joined forces.”

“Bird mutations aren’t that common. Maybe we could ask Hawks—”

“No,” Shouta says firmly. “We agreed that no outside heroes could know about Dabi.”

The last thing they need is the Commission finding out about Dabi. Hawks might be the Number Two but Shouta doesn’t trust him, not with how intrinsically tied he seems to be to the organization.

“I believe the less people who know of Dabi’s true situation, the better,” Nezu agrees. “In the meantime we’ll tighten up security around the campus. I want reports after every patrol whether you find anything or not.” He casts his eyes around the table and makes his next words firm. “As for our mysterious intruder, do not engage until we can get a better idea of their quirk. Simply watch them and note anything you find relevant. Once we have a better understanding of the situation we can form a proper plan of attack.”

It’s a sound strategy, though some of the heroes look uncomfortable with the idea of sitting back instead of fighting off whoever the trespasser is. There’s a part of Shouta that understands, the part that cares for his students and would do anything to protect them. He’s also a hero though, an underground one at that, and he’s learned over the years how to be patient.

Whoever has their sights set on his students will inevitably slip up somewhere along the way.

Shouta will be waiting for them when they do.

They go around in circles for another hour or so before Nezu finally calls an end to the meeting. Shouta has about half an hour after to pull himself together before he goes to gather his students and lead them across campus.

At first glance, Ground Theta appears to blend in with the rest of the more standard academic buildings on campus. Even as he corrals his students and leads them inside none of them seem to realize what they’re walking into as they chatter amongst themselves.

Dabi has been left behind in Hizashi's enthusiastic care for the remainder of the morning. Considering the glare the villain shot him as he was foisted off on the freshly-caffeinated hero, he wasn’t amused by his choice in babysitters. Seeing as he’d come back from his meeting to find that the shit hogged all the coffee this morning, Shouta considers it a fitting revenge.

Besides, the villain will be brought in here soon enough. More important right now is preparing his students for the ramifications of that eventuality.

He finds his gaze straying back to Shinsou as they move down the hall. Aside from himself he’s the only other one here that’s been inside Theta. It was on Shouta’s recommendation to the school council that his student be allowed to start coming here and sit in on select upper-classman lectures beginning his second year. 

As it stands now, up until a student’s third year the Heroics Course focuses almost exclusively on classes and electives that favor a career in daytime heroics. Very few hero students choose to go underground so it makes sense to structure classes on that model. Shouta can’t really fault them for that, but with students like Shinsou that have made it clear they don’t plan to follow the same path as the majority, finding a schedule that will allow him to graduate on time and prepare him for the realities of being an underground hero is challenging.

Shouta is bending the rules a bit in his student’s favor to give him the tools he wished he could have had at his age. He doesn’t know if any of the other students have noticed yet, or if Shinso has told them about his extra classes, but they’ll certainly become aware of it in their third year when his schedule truly divests from the rest of his classmates. 

It’s interesting to watch him. The further they go inside the more comfortable he appears. It’s subtle—he wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s a hop in his step—but he can tell the constant tension in his shoulders has eased. There’s a confidence budding through that he hardly ever sees elsewhere.

Shouta can admit that he felt similarly when he was younger and walked these same halls. These days though he can’t put his guard down the same way his student is able to. The heroes that run this building are all exceptional and respected in their fields. However, there’s a reason he prefers to deal with daytime heroes like Hizashi and Nemuri, just as there’s a reason why underground heroes tend to work alone.

Shinsou will learn in time. For now he can let him have this moment.

The classroom Shouta leads them to is rather generic looking, nothing to draw the eye or hint at what’s to come next. His students all filter into the room and without prompting take up an almost identical line up to what their seating arrangement back in their normal classroom would be.

Intuition is already here, sitting behind her own desk facing the classroom. The projector has been lowered behind her and Shouta has a sinking feeling in his stomach as he lingers by the door. 

“Eraser!” Intuition beams at him and he can feel the answering tug of his mouth into a frown. “Long time no see!”

From the sea of students settling in beside them he hears one of them whisper, “Oh shit, looks like Ms. Joke has some competition.”

Shouta would very much like to remind his students that he is happily married, but since he never actually told them in the first place he supposes he’ll let it slide. Not that he would necessarily deny it if asked point blank—he’s not ashamed of it and god knows Hizashi would scream it from the rooftop if Shouta gave him permission to do so—but he’s a private person by nature and not exactly one to wax poetic on his love life. So he just… hasn’t told them. Well, Shinsou knows but that’s because the kid more or less lived in their apartment over the summer while Shouta was training him in preparation for his transition to the hero course. 

Considering she was at their wedding at both his and Hizashi’s request, Emi is well aware Shouta is off the market. It doesn’t stop her from taking advantage of his students’ ignorance though, never failing to tease him about it with the whole let’s get married Eraser! routine. 

Where the idea of him and Emi has him rolling his eyes in fond exasperation at his students’ imagination, the concept of him and Intuition together has something like bile pressed against the back of his throat.

He can tell Intuition hears the comment from the way her eyes dart to the side and then back, the corner of her lip curling with the beginnings of delight, and decides to shut that down before she can run with it.

“Good morning,” he drawls. Intuition’s lips pull into a pout that he ignores as he turns away from her to face his students. “Everyone, this is Pro Hero Intuition. She is the main administrator of Ground Theta and has graciously allowed us access to their facilities. In addition she’ll be cooperating with our investigation and will be introducing you to some of the concepts and skill sets we’re hoping to develop while you’re here.”

He gives the students a minute to excitedly whisper amongst themselves and cast anticipatory looks towards the other hero before his own gaze strays to her. Intuition takes the silent invitation for what it is, smiling like a cat that’s about to get both the canary and the cream as she turns her attention to the students.

“Thank you for the wonderful introduction,” she says, words dripping saccharine sweet. Shouta barely stops himself from rolling his eyes as he settles against the wall, wishing for his sleeping bag left back in his classroom.

Wishing he could be anywhere but here to be honest.

“Normally this building is restricted to anyone who isn’t a third year student, but considering your… unusual circumstances I decided to make an exception. After all, fellow heroes should help each other out when they need it.”

Shouta barely keeps himself from snorting. Maybe the daytime heroes around here buy into that plus ultra school motto, but it doesn’t extend very far beyond UA and it certainly doesn’t reach the shadows of underground heroics. Her words do their job though. Several of his students are nodding along to her words and as a whole the group relaxes with the idea that she’s helping them out of the goodness of her heart. Seeing that every hero they’ve met inside UA’s walls has only wanted to help, that it’s what they’ve spent the last two years training towards, why should they question it?

“As for what I’ll be teaching you, well.” She trails off, a suggestive lilt in her words and that sinking feeling in his stomach is back as she gestures to the projector screen behind her. “The explanation can get a bit dull, so I figured I’d show you rather than spell it all out.” Her eyes slide to Shouta. “Eraser, would you be a dear?”

Shouta bites back the urge to grab his students and leave. He wants to warn them, wants to prepare them for whatever mind games the hero has in store for them. Instead he reaches over and flicks the lights off as requested. An air of anticipation settles over his students as the projector kicks in, bathing the screen in dull off-white for a moment.

Then the video starts.

“Alright, alright what are we playing tonight?”

He can see the confusion sweep over their faces as Ashido’s voice rings out light and teasing. Though his angle isn’t good he glances at the screen and finds it playing a tape from one of the cameras that had been stashed near the couches. By the placement he’d guess it was one that Intuition had hidden in the bookcase. The recording shows his students all gathered around the couches, some sitting on the floor. They're all dressed in their pajamas and the soft yellow glow from the overhead lights and darkened windows suggests it's well past lights out—not that it's really all that enforced. 

There's an awkward, stilted kind of silence hanging over them. A few times someone will glance up at the ceiling, though Shouta can guess that's not really what they're looking at.

"Are you sure we should be doing this right now?"  Jirou asks. She looks around hesitantly, fingers nervously fiddling with one of her earjacks. "You know, considering?"

"That's why we definitely have to!" Ashido claims. "No way am I gonna let that asshole scare me out of my home."

"I agree,"  Iida says. "Despite our circumstances we cannot allow this villain to crush our spirits. As heroes in training we must persevere through any obstacles we might face!"

"God, it's too late for me to understand big words."  Kaminari groans dramatically. "My poor brain."

Shouta can see the tension easing as his classmates laugh and roll their eyes at his antics. He hides a small smile under his capture weapon and makes a note to go a little bit easier on Kaminari for a while.

“We could do Uno,”  Uraraka hesitantly suggests from between Asui's legs as the girl braids her hair above her.

“No way,”  Bakagou snarls. “You bastards always hoard your damn draw four cards and then use them all on me.”  The outburst earns another laugh from the group and a there there from Kaminari beside him as he pats his shoulder. 

“I don’t think we replaced the last deck you exploded anyways,”  Midoriya says with a grin from his perch on the arm of the couch beside Todoroki.

“I still have my Monopoly board,”  Yaoyorozu offers, only to immediately garner a chorus of distraught and wailing refusal from the other students. 

As far as the scene is concerned there’s nothing compromising about the recording being shown, no big secrets or dirty laundry being aired. And yet it makes it all the more unsettling. The temperature in the room has dropped, a horrified silence hanging over his students as they watch themselves laugh and goof around. At one point Kirishima wanders close to the hidden camera as he goes to the kitchen to make a bowl of popcorn for the group but doesn’t notice as he passes by. Present-day Kirishima makes a choked sound from his desk. 

The video continues on for a few more minutes before cutting to black just as the students are starting a round of Sorry. Shouta hasn’t even turned the lights back on yet before Bakugou explodes. 

“What the hell was that?” he shouts as he rockets to his feet. Shouta thinks he’ll have to use his capture weapon to restrain him again but the blond stays where he is, no doubt thanks to the tight hold Midoriya has on the back of his jacket, halfway out of his seat with scarred fingers twisted tight. Despite the outburst, Intuition is unfazed. She grins in the face of the barely leashed anger directed at her.

“This is my job,” she tells them.

“You’re supposed to be spying on Dabi, not us!” Kaminari protests.

“What can I say, I’m an equal opportunity spyer,” Intuition tilts her head and her next words are accompanied by a sly smirk. “And it's not like any of you have anything to hide, right?”

The silence in the room is deafening. Her smirk grows into a full-fledged grin and Shouta thinks of that saying about inches and miles. "If I’m going to be letting you run around my building and teaching you how to do my job, I think I have the right to learn a little about you first wouldn't you say?”

“Like that shit tells you anything,” Bakugou scoffs. He appears to have grudgingly acquiesced to Midoriya and is sitting back down in his seat again.

Intuition raises an eyebrow at his students. “It tells me a lot actually. Let me ask you something: do you think villains just spend all day plotting mayhem and murder?”

Some of his students avert their eyes.

“Even villains have to eat. Some of them have friends, a few of ‘em even have families.” She cocks her head to the side. “Y’know, according to some members of the former Liberation Front that were captured and interrogated the League used to have game nights once a week. Makes you wonder if they ever played Uno or Monopoly.”

That has more than a few of his students gauging Intuition with wide-eyes and gaping mouths. To be fair, trying to wrap his mind around the idea of the most dangerous villain group in Japan having a game night breaks Shouta’s brain a little too, and he’s more than aware of how startlingly normal villains can appear outside of the vile acts they commit. Every time he bears witness to it is a sobering reminder of how villains are just people who’ve gone down the wrong path.

Intuition sweeps her hand towards the screen. “This is the basis of how most underground heroes approach their cases. We watch our targets for however long it takes, whether that’s through hidden cameras and microphones or in-person meetings, and use the information gathered to find the weak link. If you want to uncover every last one of Dabi’s secrets, you need to learn how to read him, how to pry just right so that everything spills out, and in order to do that you need to watch him. Don’t just watch when he lights someone on fire, watch what set him off in the first place and how he reacts afterward, how he interacts with the people he lets get close to him, figure out what makes him laugh and what makes him cry.”

She brings her hand back, crossing her arms over her chest, and Shouta can feel the impossible weight of her gaze bearing down even though it isn’t being directed at him. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end as she says solemnly, “Figuring that out is the difference between an arrest and a body bag.”

A heavy silence hangs over the class. Shouta knows they’re back in those awful weeks following Jaku. Back in the endless scrolling lines on the television listing the number of deceased that they had managed to identify, the flurry of hero resignations that book-ended every news segment. The waves of funerals held off because society was teetering on the edge of a cliff and none of them could afford to slow down long enough for grief to catch up when there was more and more work to be done.

Maybe if they’d had someone like Intuition on the inside…

“Even if that’s the case, what was the point of recording us?” Yaoyorozu asks, her voice achingly quiet. “You could have shown us footage from an old case and still made your point.”

“Probably,” Intuition admits with a careless shrug. Shouta knows it’s anything but, that she uses emotions to manipulate her audience to dance to her tune the same way he uses his capture weapon to restrain an enemy. “But what can I say, I'm pretty nosy." 

The sudden attitude shift gives his students whiplash. Even Shouta is left a little unmoored despite being more prepared for the change. 

Intuition is speaking before they can pull themselves together enough to start to protest. “If you don’t like my methods, feel free to leave and find somewhere else to interrogate your villain. I promise you that you won't find anyone better than me, or a facility better than this. That’s not ego, that’s just fact.” She pauses a moment, lets her words sink in. By now Shouta has turned the lights back on and his students look to him to rebuff her.

Regrettably, he can’t.

Intuition is a woman fascinated by the human condition, almost obsessive in her drive to find what makes a person tick. She'll press all the wrong buttons, just to see what happens. Yet these traits are also what makes her such a damn good hero when they're pointed in the right direction.

Shouta hides his frown in the folds of his capture weapon as he leans away from the wall and draws his students' attention. “As I said at the start of this, your participation is entirely voluntary. This includes what we do here in Theta.” He makes sure to soften his next words. “There is no shame in admitting that you’re not comfortable proceeding further.”

There’s a tense silence as his students take everything in. No one gets up and leaves though. The mood of the room shifts yet again, and Shouta watches that familiar determination and dogged conviction that has both motivated and been the bane of his existence these past two years settle in. 

If they can make it through whatever Intuition throws at them, they’ll make it through anything.

The hero notices the shift in his students as well. A grin curls at the edge of her lips, the beginnings of a challenge brewing in her eyes. “Well then,” she says, “if everyone’s decided, let’s begin.”

.

.

.

Two days after their introduction to Theta, Shouta is called into Nezu’s office. By the way he’s sitting at his desk when he walks in, paws pressed delicately together, he’s not going to like whatever he has to say.

He doesn’t.

Because according to the principal Hawks, of all people, is coming and staying on campus for the foreseeable future. Hawks, the Number Two hero, who’s tied to the Commission in ways Shouta doesn’t fully understand but doesn’t like either way. 

Shouta crosses his arms. “I thought no outside heroes were going to be brought in on this.”

“And I still stand by that,” Nezu says, calm but firm. “However, I received word from his agency that he's interested in participating in our lecture series about search and rescue heroes and lending his expertise to the hero classes.”

“Can’t he just get a hotel while he's here?” Shouta counters. “It’s not like he doesn’t have the money.”

It’s too convenient. Not even a week after reports of someone stalking the school and suddenly a Commission-backed hero is knocking on their front door?

Shouta had initially assumed it was the League watching them, but this new development has his previous theory on uneven ground. Then again, Hound had said the scent had smelled like feathers, and what better way to evade such a skilled tracker than to take to the skies?

“Hawks has agreed to be housed alongside our staff in the teacher’s apartments, which I believe we can both agree is a fair distance from the student housing,” Nezu says. It’s an olive branch of sorts, one Shouta will grudgingly take since in the grand scheme of things he doesn’t have a say. This is just a courtesy more than anything. The principal is under no obligation to explain his decision. “Thirteen in particular is excited to have him on hand to teach a few rescue classes for the students.”

He watches Nezu lean back in his chair with a sigh, head tilting so he’s looking past the hero and instead out the large window to his left. When he speaks there's a quiet weight to his words. “I understand your hesitation. I’m not unaware of what the timing of this request might mean. However, we ask all of the top heroes if they’d like to come and participate in special lectures and classes throughout the year. Out of everyone we ask we might get one or two. Part of that offer includes housing since some of the heroes we call on come from distant cities and require a place to stay. This is the first time Hawks has agreed to anything of the sort and I can’t simply allow the opportunity to slip past despite our present circumstances. It’s possible he has ulterior motives, or perhaps it’s a genuine offer. Either way it wouldn’t be fair to the other students or faculty to refuse him.”

Shouta is more than aware of all of this. He knows it’s a selfish request and he’s already been selfish enough forcing his fellow heroes and students to live alongside a known villain.

Still.

“You’re playing a dangerous game here,” he tells him. One wrong move and they could have the Commission breathing down their necks. And god knows how the cameras love to follow Hawks around. All it would take is one stray photo to ignite a media storm that would probably cripple UA.

Kamino was bad enough. If it ever got out that they were secretly housing a notorious villain alongside the students, there would be no recovering. Not from a scandal of that size. The only reason Dabi has gone unrecognized so far is because they’re taking advantage of the fact that the Hero Course is already almost entirely segregated from the rest of the campus thanks to the differences in their curriculum and the location of their dorms and training grounds. They’ve also reshuffled the schedules of Class 2A so that they can move Dabi around while other classes are still in session. Hawks is, in Shouta's opinion, an unnecessary risk to the delicate balance they've been able to strike so far.

Nezu’s nose crinkles, mouth quirking up just slightly. There’s a gleam in his eyes that unsettles the other hero, makes him think of circling vultures.

“Those,” he says, a purr in his words, “are my favorite type.”

Shouta is dismissed not long after. As he’s walking back towards the dorms he realizes that he never asked Nezu when Hawks would be arriving on campus. He thinks about turning around and going back inside to try and catch the man before he leaves, but decides against it. Either way he's planning on having Hawks stay as far away from his students—and subsequently Dabi—as possible. He knows they'll be disappointed, but if he explains the reasoning he’s sure he can get them to see his side of things.

Besides, it’s not like he’s going to all-out ban them from interacting with the hero. It’d be suspicious considering Tokoyami is a former intern of Hawks' and several of his other students are on friendly terms with him. Just, maybe not let him inside the dorm or the classroom when there’s an A-ranked criminal napping in his chair.

So naturally he finds Hawks standing on the doorstep of the 2A dorm.

His hands are hidden inside the pockets of his flight jacket, head tipped back towards the sky. There’s a hazy, distant sort of look in his golden eyes, bared for once with his visor pushed up into his hair. Dabi is somewhere inside right now being watched after by Nemuri while Shouta was at his meeting.

He’s about to step forward and try to steer the hero away from the building when he hears voices coming around the bend. His gaze drifts to the side and there’s his students coming back from their afternoon training about to run right into the Number Two. 

Great. That’s just great.

They spot him before he can intercept either group. At Kaminari’s loud exclamation of, “Is that Hawks?"  it’s all over.

The hero in question blinks and turns to the kids already flashing that fake PR smile of his that never fails to get on Shouta’s nerves.

He gives the incoming students a wave. “What’s up guys? Long time no see.”

“Hawks? What are you doing here?” Tokoyami asks as he pushes his way through his classmates. 

“Why I just wanted to say hi to my favorite fledgling of course.” The hero laughs and ruffles the top of Tokoyami’s head. Tokoyami swats at the gloved hand but it’s half-hearted at best. “You been flying anymore lately?”

“It’s still a work in progress,” he answers grudgingly. Dark Shadow peeks up over the edge of Tokoyami’s collar and lets out a small trill when Hawks reaches over and pats the sentient shadow’s head.

Hawks grins, wings fluffing up behind him. “Don’t worry, we’ll have you up there again in no time.”

“Uh Mr. Hawks, what are you doing here anyways?” Midoriya asks, eyes wide and sparkling even as he stammers and blushes. Shouta had thought the kid would’ve gotten over all the hero worship after being here for almost two years—not to mention he's been around the winged hero plenty with all the shared patrols they had during his internship under Endeavor. Then again, Shouta has also had the unfortunate privilege of looking inside his dorm room.

He wonders if All Might is aware of the shrine the kid’s got going in there. It’d be pretty impressive, if it wasn’t so weird.

“Ah, I'm actually here because I accepted an offer to come talk about my experiences as one of the top search and rescue heroes.” Hawks rubs the back of his neck. “Your principal was cool enough to post me up here, but this place is a bit bigger than I was expecting and I sort of got lost wandering around and wound up here. But enough about me, what’s up with you guys?”

Hawks’ smile is warm and inviting, and he loves his students but Shouta watches as everyone outside of Shinsou goes skittish and uneasy and wants to hide his face in his capture weapon. Just this morning Intuition had them in one of the interrogation rooms set up in Theta working on their ability to both lie to their classmates and spot when someone else was lying to them depending on which side of the table they sat on. Some attempts had been better than others—Bakugou had been particularly adept at detecting lies while Shinsou had been the best liar of the class—but it's clear they all still need work.

Iida is visibly sweating and Midoriya has broken down into a stuttering mumble. A few of the students, particularly Kirishima and Uraraka, are trying too hard to play it cool and their smiles and laughter come out forced and half manic as they attempt to draw the conversation in a dozen new directions that wildly conflict with each other.

If Hawks didn’t know something was up before he definitely does now. 

Tokoyami looks torn as he glances between his mentor and classmates. And that more than anything gets Shouta’s feet moving.

“Hawks.”

“Ah, Eraser!” Hawks swings around to face him, wings tucking against his back to avoid hitting anyone behind him. “Been a while since I last saw you!”

“Yeah, I was still missing a leg,” Shouta says dryly. His eyes stray to the red feathers pressed in tight. For some reason his wings seem larger than what he remembers, but then again he only ever saw them in person once and that was almost a year ago. The next time he saw him Hawks’ wings had been burned away. Or almost burned apparently.

The corners of the hero’s eyes tighten. “Well, looks like you solved that problem.”

Well enough anyways. Powerloader and the UA support department worked around the clock to create a prosthetic that would allow him to remain in the field as a hero. Shouta is grateful to them, humbled that they’d go to such lengths, and though it can never make up for what he lost he’s learned over the past months to accept and live with it. The stump still aches from time to time despite Hizashi’s best attempts to massage the pain away, but at least Shouta will always know when it’s about to rain. 

“And you solved your’s.”

The hero’s wings puff up over his shoulders a little. Despite the easy tone there’s an unexpected hardness in his eyes. “Well, they don’t call quirks miracles for nothing.”

There’s something there, a barely healed scab, but Shouta refrains from picking at it. He can always do that later, right now he needs to get Hawks away from Dabi.

“I can show you the way to the teachers apartments where you’ll be staying,” he says, changing the subject. Hawks rolls with it easily.

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble?” 

“None at all.” He looks from the hero to his students and relents a little at the disappointed looks on their faces as they glance between the two of them. “I’m sure you’ll all have plenty of time to talk with Hawks later after he’s gotten settled in.”

“Maybe we could have him over for dinner one of these nights,” Kirishima proposes thoughtfully. “That could work right?”

Shouta could bang his head against the closest wall right now. The point is to keep him away from the dorm.

“Well, I don’t think—”

“I’d definitely be down for that,” Hawks interrupts. His grin turns sheepish as he scratches the back of his head. “As long as none of you expect me to do any of the cooking.”

“Nah, Bakubro would kill us if we tried to cook anything in the kitchen again,” Kaminari jokes, laughing and jumping behind Kirishima as Bakugou shouts and aims a small explosion at him. The redhead hardens reflexively even though the resulting blast barely singes his shirt.

“You idiots could burn water,” he growls. Kaminari looks like he’s going to try and egg the blond on some more but Sero comes over and tries to put a stop to it before it spins wildly out of control. Shouta takes the distraction it causes to steer Hawks away from the students and get them pointed in the right direction.

There’s a chorus of goodbyes behind them that the young hero turns around and waves at before facing forward again. Shouta doesn’t bother turning, preferring instead to give them a lazy salute over his shoulder. As they walk in silence he takes the moment to size up the hero beside him. Considering he never attended UA or stepped foot onto its campus until now it’s possible Hawks was actually lost, but he kind of doubts it.

Dabi is behind those walls and the hero just happens to find himself on the other side? No, he doesn’t buy that. The real question is if he was at the dorm because he knew in that moment Dabi was inside that specific building, or if he was there because he suspects Class 2A has a direct involvement and was snooping around. Either way is going to result in a headache for him he’s sure.

“Nezu tells me you’re here for the lecture series,” he leads in.

“Yep,” Hawks chirps, sounding just as annoyingly chipper as Hizashi at five in the morning when Shouta is just crawling into bed and he’s heading out the door to the radio station. "Trying to build up my good karma. Besides, search and rescue is kind of my jam, so it's cool to talk to the kids about it and show them the ropes."

Shouta cuts a sideways look at the hero. "And that's the only reason you're here?"

Hawks blinks at him for a moment before grinning slyly. "Blunt aren't we?"

"I'm not a fan of mind games," he replies evenly. He leaves those kinds of things to people like Intuition.

"Clearly." By the twitch of his lips it looks like he's trying not to laugh at him. "Man, you really are as protective of your students as they say."

Shouta shrugs. He's never really cared what other people have said or not said about him. "They're good kids." 

"Fair enough," Hawks says. They walk along in silence before he admits, "I'll be honest, I do have ulterior motives here."

Shouta raises an eyebrow. He wasn't expecting the younger hero to confess to a hidden agenda so easily. “Can you share the details?”

On the one hand confirmation that Hawks' mission is related to the League would definitely put him on edge. On the other it could have absolutely nothing to do with Dabi and his mind is spinning this way out of proportion.

“Some of it, yeah,” Hawks hedges. “The rest you’ll have to take up with the President.”

So that’s how it's going to be. Still, he’ll take what he can get, and piece together the rest on his own.

“Is it related to the last one?”

It had gotten buried under some big takedown Endeavor made in the news cycle, but Shouta remembers paying attention to the report on the trafficking ring Hawks’ agency had exposed last month. It’s not a headline most expect to see. Jobs like those are usually left to the underground heroes and occasionally lower ranked daytime heroes looking for their first break. It’s a lot of gritty behind the scenes work that most don’t want to bother with when they can more easily bump their rank by going after a more public villain and get themselves featured on prime-time television. To see the Number Two’s name attached to something like that is enough to get most people to do a double take, himself included. 

Yet, if Shouta really thinks about it, he probably shouldn’t be as surprised as he is. Hawks is known for his flashy wings and winning smile yes, but if he thinks on it the only times he’s talked about on the news lately are when he’s been paired up with other heroes on joint patrols and missions.

Even with the rescue operations he’s called in for he rarely takes the spotlight himself these days. His own patrols are quiet, not because there are no villains, but because he doesn’t wait for them to start causing a scene before diving in. He takes care of it, never allows it to grow into something that’ll have the news helicopters circling. 

Just because his public hero life is quieter than most in his position though, doesn’t mean he isn’t working just as hard as anyone else. Harder, even. Shouta did some digging after the Japanese Billboards last year when Hawks rose to number two, and there’s a reason why despite having the fewest villain arrests out of the top ten heroes he still managed to swoop in right behind Endeavor.

There are the big names of course, the ones befitting a hero of Hawks' reputation and status, but he bets some of the other villains would surprise people. Not because they recognize them—even Shouta hadn’t known all the names on the list he was able to find—but because of what those names are tied to. Gangs, criminal organizations, the kind of groups no one’s heard of by design that tend to be the most dangerous. And Hawks has brought them all toppling down one by one since his debut alongside his more public villain arrests. 

Shouta thinks it must be exhausting having one foot in the light and the other in the shadows. Of dealing with the expectations of the public and the long grind of infiltration and espionage missions that are needed to take down the kinds of villains listed in his arrest records.

He’s got a good poker face if it does bother him since his reputation is mostly secured not in his villain count but in the public’s opinion of him. Even when there’s no villain around he’s still there helping even if it’s only getting a pet cat out of a tree or carrying someone’s groceries for them. The average citizen loves Hawks because he takes care of them, and the ease in which he does so is admirable if it’s truly as genuine as he likes to have people believe.

Shouta wishes he had the same confidence in Hawks that the rest of the public had. He hates the idea of not trusting his fellow heroes, especially one that obviously cares about the people they serve, but he also knows the Commission and the type of people they employ. When he did that initial digging he had to sneak around the HPSC to gain access to those records. Which would be one thing if he was a civilian trying to look at classified documents, but as a hero with a high security clearance level it’s troubling to find files inaccessible even to him.

And they were, every single one of them.

Not just the arrest records, but every file attached to the hero name Hawks. If he’s as tangled up in their web as Shouta suspects then there’s more to the young hero than the wide smiles and warm eyes he displays to the world. 

Hawks loses his famed smile, lips pulling into something tighter as he sighs. He doesn’t look his way, instead tilting his head up and watching the clouds. “No, this is something I’ve been working on for a while. A pet project of sorts. Been at it for three months if you can believe it.”

Shouta is quick to put the timeline together with every major incident starting back three months. Three months ago is roughly the time League became active again after staying dormant for a period in the aftermath of the PLF raid. It’s also the time Hawks’ wings returned around.

“I can,” he says eventually. “Are you on clean up duty?”

That startles a laugh out of Hawks, his smile returning briefly. “Not the way I’d put it, but hey, someone’s gotta do it.”

The heroes’ battle against the Paranormal Liberation Front was all that the news cycle talks about for weeks. It was spun as a victory for the heroes despite the stark headlines the news stations ran, but the truth was that it ended in more of a bloody stalemate than anything else. 

Sure, the Front collapsed and they were able to capture most of its members, but in the face of the heavy casualties, both hero and civilian, and the fact that Shigaraki and the original League members escaped with no leads on where they’d gone the victory, if you could call it that, was a hollow one.

Things had been precarious for a while after the raid. A concurrent attack on the Hero Public Safety Commission's headquarters had killed several high-ranking officials and severely injured their president, and in the wake of the destruction Shigaraki had left behind thousands of convicted villains were broken out by All for One. Wave after wave of pros resigned under the onslaught and society's fraying faith in heroes and the system had nearly snapped. They've had to work hard this last year to restore that trust and stability, but he believes they're better for it.

Sometimes though Shouta wonders what might've happened if it had unraveled completely. It wouldn't have taken much. Just one well-aimed accusation or scandal and the whole industry might've collapsed. He can only be grateful that they managed to pull themselves back from that ledge.

Publicly the Commission had skirted around all those points while it recouped its losses and instead declared that the heroes had cut the head off the snake—that the League was all but finished, destined to collapse in on itself and fade into obscurity. Those of them who'd been on the front lines during the attack had known better though, just as they had known someone was going to be put in charge of mopping up the mess behind the scenes when the League inevitably reared its head again.

Shouta can’t say he was expecting the responsibility to fall to Hawks, but it makes sense considering his position. They need someone they can trust, someone that will ensure the results they’re looking for. Who better than the recently reinstated Number Two?

He doesn’t envy him, that’s for sure.

Before he can press for details Hawks is speaking again. “But no, this isn’t about the League, or at least not directly. You remember Overhaul, right?”

Shouta stiffens despite himself. That’s the last name he's expecting to hear out of the hero’s mouth. His thoughts drift immediately to Eri, safe and happy back at the apartment with Hizashi. Even two years after rescuing her from the yakuza she still has nightmares. Overhaul is lucky he was in Tartarus by the time he could do anything about it.

His jaw flexes as his teeth grind together. “Unfortunately.”

“Yeah well, he left quite the mess behind. And unfortunately the cleanup hasn’t been quite as effective as we were hoping it’d be.”

It takes him a moment to catch on to what he’s hinting at. It can't be about the quirk-killer bullets. Besides the one that pierced his leg the rest they'd found in the wreckage of the PLF raid were all but destroyed. It's been assumed that between his haste to leave and the destruction Shigaraki caused upon his awakening Dr. Ujiko either forgot about the bullets or presumed they'd been destroyed along with the rest of the hospital. From the notes they recovered it was clear he had been tinkering with them, trying to extract Eri’s DNA and replicate it for the League’s use, but there's no indication if any of his experiments had been successful. Just like the rest of them the doctor had gotten away after using his noumu to free himself and keep the squad of heroes sent to arrest him busy while he fled.

Still, that wasn’t the only thing Overhaul had been developing before the take down. His brow furrows. “Trigger?”

“Boom.” The younger hero makes a gun with his fingers, pointing it at him.

“I thought that was being left to Fatgum’s agency.”

Hawks shrugs. “Apparently they haven't done such a good job then if I’m getting called in.” Shouta wants to argue that—he knows Fatgum has made it something of a personal crusade of his to get the remnants of the illegal quirk drug off the street after what he and his interns went through during the yakuza raid—but the winged hero continues on. “Look, I’m not trying to knock the guy or anything, he's done a pretty good job overall. It’s just a lot more widespread than what was initially reported. There were at least a few weeks before the Nighteye Agency takedown when the streets were getting flooded with product. I picked up around a dozen dealers during that time on my own turf trying to peddle the stuff for way less than it’s actually worth, and Fukuoka isn’t exactly close to where the Hassakai were originally based.”

“I didn’t realize it had spread so far,” Shouta says, voice distracted as his mind whirls with this new information. It’s unsettling that he didn’t know about any of this considering his position as Eri’s guardian—not to mention his students' involvement in the original arrest. 

“You wouldn’t have,” Hawks assures him. “The guys who’ve supposedly taken over aren’t exactly the type to go around telling everyone about it. Besides,” he flaps his hand, “it’s all just rumors right now. I still have to follow everything down though, just to make sure they are just that.”

Shouta hates to admit it, but the blasé tone and easy confidence surrounding Hawks puts him at better ease. There’s the chance that he's still lying to him about his true motives for being here, and there's still a lingering doubt when considering the fact that the League had been involved with Overhaul to a point, but he could just be overanalyzing the situation and spinning things out of proportion. It's entirely possible the hero really is just taking Nezu up on his proposal and is simply taking advantage of their location as it coincides with a case he's working. 

“And there are rumors coming out of Musutafu?”

Hawks shrugs, wings mirroring the movement. “Possibly. There’ve been a few reports of heroes getting overwhelmed by villains they shouldn’t have had that much difficulty with. So I’m tracking it all down. Like I said, pet project.”

Shouta snorts despite himself. “Hell of a pet project.”

Hawks’ grin goes sharp, the setting sun hitting the gold in his eyes just right to make them look unsettling. “Oh, you have no idea.”

Chapter Text

Keigo wants to scream. 

He can feel one wrapped like a vice around his chest, perching right under his chin.

Dabi is right there, right in front of him, and he can’t do anything.

Eraserhead leads them further and further away from the dorm, from Dabi’s feather, subtly pressing for information on why he’s here, and Keigo forces himself to smile and give half-truths and ignore the instincts clawing at his chest. Forces himself to keep his hands in his pockets so the hero can’t see the way they flex, his wings pressed tight to his back so his sharpened feathers don’t give him away.

He knew going into that this wasn’t something he could overcome in a few days. That he’ll have to worm his way into their good graces so they let their guards down. He knows how to bide his time, how to wait for the right moment before making his move. He waited almost six months to take down the League. He can’t afford to be impatient here either. 

It doesn’t change the fact that all he wants to do is scoop Dabi up into his arms and fly away. It doesn’t stop the instincts chittering and screeching in the back of his head that tell him to just take and cut down anything in his path trying to stop him.

They also like to fixate on Dabi’s staples and Toga’s knives because they’re shiny, and at one memorable point had him dragging blankets and pillows from all over the hideout into the main space to create a massive nest that he then forced the League to lie down in while he spread his wings over everyone and cooed utter nonsense that Shigaraki recorded and now holds over him as blackmail, so Keigo tries to take them with a grain of salt and push them to the back of his head.

The apartment Eraserhead shows him to isn’t even a quarter of the size of his own back in Fukuoka, and god knows he’s going to have fun dealing with furniture clearly not intended for someone with two huge wings on their back, but he’s thankful for the fact that it’s on the top floor with a small balcony attached. It'll make it easier to sneak in and out without anyone noticing his absence.

“Let me know if you need any help getting around campus,” Eraserhead tells him, standing just outside his door. "You've been given guest access so you're free to come and go as you please as long as you keep your pass on you, but make sure this case of your's doesn't impact the students."

“Sounds good,” he hums, “I’m not sure how everything’s going to fall just yet, but I’ll text you when I’ve got it figured out. You on LINE?”

The older hero nods and Keigo is immediately reaching into his pocket for his phone with one hand while making a grabby motion towards him with the other. The man sighs reluctantly but unlocks his phone and passes it over. He quickly types his information into a new contact and gives him his phone back. With the exchange finished he offers Keigo a gruff goodbye and leaves him in his temporary housing. 

With the door closed and locked behind him he moves until he’s in the center of the space. Fanning his wings until the tips brush against the ceiling he closes his eyes and focuses on what vibrations he can sense. There’s the white-noise hum of the heater, the static buzz of electricity from the overhead light, the whistle of the breeze from where it presses against the window pane in the other room.

Nothing he’s getting suggests anything unusual. Assured that he isn’t being watched or monitored in any way he brings his wings down and tucks them back comfortably.

Then he begins to pace.

Getting in had been easier than he'd anticipated. Considering their situation he would've thought they'd be more wary of allowing outside heroes onto their campus. He had at least thought they'd control when he could enter and leave, or what parts of the school grounds he’s allowed on. It's not like he would've had a leg to stand on if they'd demanded he find lodging outside the school. He’s the Number Two after all, and even if he somehow couldn’t stay in one of the dozens of Commission-owned apartments and buildings geared towards housing their assets scattered throughout the city, money definitely isn’t an issue. Sure his accounts are technically tied to the Commission, so it isn’t really his money per say, but regardless the point is that he doesn’t need to stay at UA and everyone is likely well aware of that.

And yet here he is.

Normally he deletes the emails UA sends every year asking him if he'd like to participate in whatever lecture topic they've decided to focus on. He’s never been all that interested in bringing up the next generation of heroes, doesn’t even really know how he’d go about it other than doing the exact opposite of what the Commission had done for him, and frankly he had better things to do with his time. 

Taking on Tokoyami, while in the end being something he had ultimately enjoyed, as an intern hadn’t been Keigo’s idea. The Commission thought it would be good for his image, make him more relatable to the public and his fellow heroes, so they’d sat him down with a handful of files and a recording of that year’s UA Sports Festival and said pick one.

Thank god he forgot to delete this year's email.

He doesn't get to breathe easy yet though. Not with Eraserhead watching his every move. Keigo had watched him on the news following the training camp incident with the Wild Pussycats and has listened to Shigaraki complain about what a pain in the ass the underground hero is with a level of grudging respect rarely seen. He knew the kind of man he was going up against, yet the casual bluntness still threw him for a loop and the dozen carefully constructed lies he'd crafted scattered to the wind.

Instead he'd given a surprisingly honest answer to Eraserhead’s question before he could think better of it. It helps that the mission parameters he’d hinted at to the older hero did in fact mostly fall under the marching orders he’d received from the President three months ago when he was reinstated, and even the reports on those lower-ranked heroes are genuine. They haven’t made anything bigger than the local news, but Keigo has tasked his agency with keeping an eye out for certain keywords and phrases that pop up and filtering through the relevant media before forwarding it to him.

The truth is that he was always planning on coming to Musutafu sooner or later to track down those rumors he’d told the hero about. Despite the clusterfuck he’s landed himself in and the fact that his timeline has been moved up considerably, Keigo is nothing if not an opportunist. Two birds, one stone and all that. 

The mission isn’t quite as simple as cleaning up the streets like he’d told Eraserhead. Keigo likes to aim high after all, and the Commission higher still. Everywhere else he’s searched has been a bust so far, but he’s got a good feeling about this one. After all, it would be just like them to set up right under the heroes’ noses. 

And well, Keigo should know better than anyone about hiding in plain sight.

At the rate he’s going he’s going to wear a hole through the wooden floor. His eyes catch on the glass door to the balcony on his fifteenth rotation and he breaks for it. There’s a slight creak as the door slides open and Keigo shuffles through.

It’s cramped, barely able to fit himself and his wings, but the late winter breeze ruffles his feathers and he feels some of his anxiety ebb as he leans against the railing and looks out over the campus. He’s definitely flying by the seat of his pants on this one, but then again he’s always been drawn to reckless and dangerous things.

In regards to Dabi he’ll have to find a way to integrate himself into class 2A. Ideally he would prefer to take advantage of the very thing that got him through the front gate and teach a few of their classes. That'll definitely give him access to a wider array of targets to draw information from. If he can't, maybe he'll wait for Eraserhead to look the other way before coming to Tokoyami with an offer to help with his training and trick some information out of his former intern that way. The fact that he’d appeared so torn when he’d asked how the class was doing tells him that with just a little prodding Tokoyami would probably spill his guts at his feet.

Keigo hates the idea of doing that to the kid, especially considering his ulterior motives underlying their first internship. He sighs and leans a little more of his weight against the balcony railing.

At the end of the day though Keigo knows his choices, and knows in his bones which one he’ll make every time.

.

.

.

“Okay, so like not that I’m complaining about class being in the dorm today because I got to sleep in an extra half-hour, but why are we here?”

It’s a fair question. Shouta has never held a class inside the students’ dorm and he’s sure they're questioning why he had them stay in their rooms rather than gather together by the door and head to their classroom like normal. The answer to that was to convince Dabi that the students had left for classes already as he was herded off to go spend some quality time with Nemuri in the teacher’s lounge. Considering he hasn't been allowed to sit in on their morning classes now for some time it was pretty easy to pull off. With him gone Shouta has brought all the students down to the first floor and clustered them around the couches. 

“Also,” Kaminari adds, pointing an accusing finger over at Intuition, “Why’s she here?” 

Intuition grins. “I have money riding on this.”

“I never agreed to your bet,” Shouta says with a sigh. When it comes to her, it’s best not to bet against the house. Frankly, it’s best not to bet, period.

“That’s why I agreed for you,” she sing-songs back at him. He barely resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“Um,” Uraraka raises her hand slightly, “what was the bet?”

“We bet on if you’d be able to find all my little friends of course,” Intuition answers like it’s common sense. She smiles like she’s bringing them in on some inside joke. “You don’t think I actually removed them after our first little meeting did you?”

It takes a moment for the hero’s words to sink in but then there’s an eruption of protest from his students. Clearly they thought that the surveillance had been a one-time thing. Shouta would love nothing more than to kick Intuition and her cameras out the door, but the reality is that this is the best place for them. Moving Dabi outside the dorms is a high-risk operation that they’ve only managed so far by hustling him across campus during the early morning hours before anyone else is awake. The Class 2A dorm is secure and isolated, which makes it ideal for observing the villain. It’s only logical to take advantage of what they have at their disposal.

“While the initial introduction could have been better planned,” Shouta says, casting a pointed look Intuition’s way before turning his attention back to his students, “surveillance is one of the core concepts taught to underground heroes. So today your job is to try and find all of the equipment and bring it to us.”

At the very least this can be used as a valuable teaching lesson.

Beside him Intuition wiggles her fingers at the students. “There are ten cameras and five microphones on this floor. You have until the timer goes off to find all my little bugs. Good luck kiddies.”

The second he sets the timer down on the coffee table the students spring into action. Shouta supposes he’d be motivated too if he was the one under surveillance. He doubts they’ll find all of them—which is exactly why he’d refused to entertain Intuition when she’d asked him to put a wager on his kids—but that’s not the point.

Intuition is one of the top heroes in her field, and even if this isn’t a part of an official investigation every place she’d chosen for one of her devices had years of experience guiding that choice. Daytime heroes don’t play around with surveillance much, but it is important for them to be familiar with it—both how to use it and how to realize when it’s being used against them. 

Intuition sidles up beside him towards the end of the students’ allotted time as he watches them tear apart the first floor searching for the surveillance equipment. He’s pleasantly surprised to see that they’ve broken into smaller groups on their own accord and are coordinating complimentary quirks in order to better locate the cameras and microphones.

“I hear you’ve got a bit of a bird problem Eraser.”

Shouta sighs. He doesn’t bother asking how she knows about Hawks. He doubts there’s very little that goes on in this school that the hero doesn’t know about.

“I’m handling it.”

“You know, in Mongolia there was a group of hunters that used eagles to hunt.” There’s a soft whimsical lilt to her voice as she speaks. “They’d steal them from their nests when they were young and domesticate them. After that they would train them to hunt for them and then return to perch on their arms.”

He gives her a sideways glance. “Why the history lesson?”

“You see, the thing with the Mongols is that they’d only keep the birds for about ten years, and then release them back into the wild. I wonder,” she tilts her head so that her eyes are hidden beneath her bangs, but he can still see the mischievous twist in her smile, “if the Commission will ever release their eagle. Or if he’ll have to bite his own foot off first.”

He feels himself freeze with Intuition’s careless words. Then again, there’s very little about the hero that’s truly careless.

“What do you know about Hawks?” he demands, making sure to keep his voice down so as to not draw the students’ attention. 

Intuition giggles, high and childlike, spinning on her feet so she’s facing Shouta directly. Most of the students are across the room deconstructing the kitchen, but a few of the closer ones glance back at them at the commotion. A victorious shout pulls their attention away again easily enough. 

“Oh, this and that,” she says. “Make sure to bring him by sometime, won’t you?”

He narrows his eyes at the nonanswer and is about to argue to cut the bullshit and tell him what he needs to know when the timer he’d set earlier goes off. He barely holds back a flinch at the unexpected noise and Intuition gives a knowing smirk just before he turns away to deal with it and the students beginning to return to the couches with their spoils. 

Intuition’s words are troubling, but worse is Shouta not knowing if he can trust what she’s saying or if she’s just trying to get a rise out of him for the fun of it. He resolves at the very least to keep an eye on Hawks. Well, more of an eye than he already has on him. Right now he’s been mostly out of Shouta’s hair with his time being taken up by other teachers wanting the Number Two’s perspective and skills, and he’d been more than happy about that, but maybe he should try to draw him in closer to keep a better eye on him. There’s wisdom to be found in keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. 

And what better way to teach subtle manipulation and information gathering to the students than to have them test their skills on one of Japan’s top heroes? 

He crosses his arms over his chest and raises an expectant eyebrow as he faces his kids. 

“Well?”

They deposit their findings on the table before him. In all they only found four cameras and three microphones. It’s about what he expected given the circumstances. 

“Ooh not to bad kiddies,” Intuition teases. “You almost had it.” She turns to Shouta and presents her hand palm up. “I’ll take that thousand yen now Eraser.”

Bakugou looks ready to explode while the rest vary between frustration and dejection.

“You all did a very good job,” he tells them, ignoring the pouting hero beside him. And that is true. After all, how can they expect to be perfect when they’re still learning? He’s certain that even some of his fellow teachers wouldn’t have found as many bugs as these kids did. “Now the next step is to put them back.”

“But we just spent the last half-hour finding all of them,” Ashido complains, waving her arms. “What’s the point if we’re just going to put them back?”

“Besides, if we put them back then that means we’ll be under surveillance again,” Kirishima reasons, a slight frown tugging at his face.

“Yes, but this time you’ll be aware of that fact,” Shouta explains. He’s not a fan of the idea, but the benefits well outweigh any cons to the operation. “I understand that it can be unsettling to know there’s someone watching you live your lives, but consider the situation we find ourselves in. Unlike you, Dabi is still unaware that we’re surveilling him. He’ll likely suspect it given his background, but he doesn’t truly know. And we can use that to our advantage.”

“Oh,” Midoriya says, drawing one hand up to hold his chin between his fingers. “I see. If we put these back and draw Dabi in, we might be able to catch something on the video or audio that we could miss otherwise.”

Looks like the problem child is putting that big brain to use. The hero nods in agreement even though the kid doesn’t see it, green eyes drifting to the ground as he gets lost in thought. The teachers have already been taking advantage of Intuition's equipment whenever it's their turn to watch him. Trying to draw him into conversation has been difficult, but the captured footage of his mannerisms and how he spends his time are important in building a complete profile of the villain.

“Dabi doesn’t trust us, and for good reason. The only way he’ll let something slip is if he’s either thrown far enough off guard or feels comfortable enough to relax. While we’ll explore that first scenario later, we might be able to achieve the second one through the use of surveillance tools.”

“Which means we have to be careful about the places we choose,” Midoriya picks up, his voice soft but urgent. “We can’t risk him finding a bug and realizing he’s being watched.” His eyes flick up to Shouta. “Which is why you had us try and find all of Ms. Intuition’s equipment. So we could understand why she chose each location and then apply that knowledge going forward.”

The kid spends so much time breaking himself over and over again that sometimes Shouta forgets how terrifyingly quick his mind works. All Might really did choose one hell of a student.

“Exactly,” he agrees. “Now that you know what it feels like to be under surveillance yourselves, we’re giving you the opportunity to experience what it’s like to be the one placing those bugs. Remember the bigger picture. Remember what’s at stake. We aren’t just trying to uncover Dabi’s secrets, but the League’s too. If we crack Dabi, we may very well get to take the rest of them down too.”

There’s a moment of tense silence. If they absolutely refuse to continue with the surveillance then Shouta will drop it. He promised these kids that he wouldn’t force them into doing anything they didn’t want and that stands true now even with all the advantages it would bring them. He’s an underground hero yes, but he’s their teacher first.

The hush is broken as Bakugou stomps over to the coffee table. Jaw flexing and violence looming in his eyes he roughly seizes one of the mini cameras. 

“Fuck it,” he growls before stalking away.

Those seem to be the magic words. Whatever unease or frustration about being put back under surveillance is put on the back burner and everyone’s reaching for a bug.

Shouta blinks. Well, that’s one way to rally the troops he supposes.

These kids, honestly.

.

.

.

God he wants to go home.

Sure there’s a constant draft, the bedsheets are just a wash or two away from falling apart, and lord knows how many times he’s gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom only to find the handle has been disintegrated by their brat of a leader, but fuck if he wouldn’t take people out at the knees at this point just to get back there. Back to Toga’s shitty rom-com movie marathons and game nights that end up with the board either turned to dust or burnt to ashes while everyone’s screaming at each other. Listening to Twice's ridiculous monologues as he argues with himself and preening all the bent and broken feathers out of Keigo’s wings after a long patrol. 

Shit, they might be dysfunctional as fuck but they’re real in a way Dabi’s never really experienced. His childhood always feels fake when he looks back on it. Fake smiles, forced laughter. Fake fake fake. Fear in his mother’s eyes, anger in his father’s. Three children pushed off to the side to be forgotten while the fourth was declared a masterpiece.

The League isn’t like that though. And maybe he didn’t care for them at first, maybe he just saw them as stepping stones towards his ultimate goal, but that isn’t the case anymore.

So yeah, Dabi just wants to go back home.

Too bad he has to break out of the top hero school in the country to do so. He can’t say his stay in UA so far has been horrible. More annoying than anything as he’s bounced from hero to hero to be babysat while Eraserhead runs around doing whatever it is that Dabi isn’t allowed to know about.

He’s no longer allowed to attend class 2A’s morning lectures, and there’s been a definite change in the students since that decision. They always come back a little hollow, a spark of doubt in their eyes that both intrigues and unsettles him.

Dabi isn’t planning on sticking around to find out what that’s all about.

There is a buzz in the air though, the whole school caught up in the excitement of something. He’s not sure what’s got them walking with an extra hop in their step, and it’s hard to glean any sort of information with the teachers isolating him from the rest of the student body. If he had to guess he'd say some hot-shot hero is visiting. Just his fucking luck if it's Endeavor or that rabbit lady that nearly kicked his ass seven ways to Sunday.

“What are you reading?” Thirteen asks. 

Dabi can tell they regret the question before they even finish asking it. He lifts his eyes from the page and they wince at the deadpan stare he directs at them.

Ever since Midnight’s disastrous attempt at prying into Dabi’s past he’s made a point to stick his nose in the first book he can find whenever he’s been brought down to the common area to be babysat by a hero. Unlike the rest of them, he can’t afford to lose the little precious sanity he has left that survived Sekoto, and if he can’t reduce them to ash then he’ll just pretend they don’t exist until they get the message and fuck off.

It’s worked out pretty good so far, and Dabi still has entire bookshelves to make his way through before he runs out of new material.

“Sorry I just—you seem to like books since you’re always reading them and well…” They trail off awkwardly, staring down at their lap with an embarrassed blush crawling down their neck. 

On a scale of The sight of you makes me want to gouge my eyes out to Would consider lightly maiming rather than kill on sight Thirteen is the most tolerable hero Dabi has been forced to socialize with so far. Their soft edges remind him of Fuyumi, and oddly enough of Twice with their blunt and unapologetic attitude. Unlike everyone else in this damn school Dabi knows exactly where he stands with Thirteen, and while their disapproval of his everything feels a bit like what he imagines a parent’s well-intended scolding might be like, being on even ground again, even if only for a short while, is refreshing.  

They are also comically bad at prying for information, but that’s just what you get for telling a search and rescue hero to brush up on their nonexistent interrogation skills.

Dabi uses a finger to mark his spot as he closes his chosen book. Trying to keep everything straight in Catch-22 is giving him a headache, but he rather suspects that’s the author’s point. Either way, he’s happy to take a break and needle the hero instead. “You’re kinda bad at this.”

Thirteen looks like they’re heavily considering hiding their face in their hands. “Please don’t remind me.”

Dabi grins, “I can give you some pointers if you want.”

“Please don’t.”

“I mean, it’s definitely not the worst approach you could’ve taken,” Dabi continues, gleefully ignoring the defeated look on their face. “At least you didn’t lead in with something stupid like the weather’s been real nice lately, huh?"

Thirteen gives him the stink eye. “No one’s that bad.”

“You’d be surprised,” Dabi says as he thinks of some of the truly awful recruit pitches he’s been forced to listen to in the past. Honestly he was doing everyone a favor reducing them to ashes before they could lower the IQ of the entire country.

He’s just about to give the hero some of the highlights, minus the parts where Dabi set them on fire so he could get on with his night, when the front door opens and Class 2A comes spilling inside. Normally, Dabi keeps a better eye on the time and disappears back upstairs before the brats arrive, but he’d lost track between the book and the only decent conversation he’s had since being detained, which means neither group is prepared to see the other. The kids are all wrapped up in conversation so it takes them a few moments before they realize someone else is there. Dabi watches the whole thing play out like a car wreck in slow motion from the couch as the first wave of students come to a screeching stop, only for the ones bringing up the rear to crash into them and cause them to stumble forward an extra few steps. There’s a few confused exclamations from the back that shut up real fast when they peer around their classmates’ heads and catch sight of Dabi.

Despite being caught out in the open unprepared, as far as Dabi is concerned he was here first and goddammit he’s not going to go back to his room now when it’ll look like he’s ceding ground. He takes a moment to appreciate the tension hanging thick in the air as the two groups stare each other down before slowly blinking and then turning away from them completely as he buries his nose back into his book without a word. 

He reads the same sentence ten times without absorbing a single word before the first kid stutters forward a step. Dabi hears them start to shuffle around after that, murmuring to each other as they leave a ten foot berth between themselves and the couch Dabi has chosen for himself. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Thirteen get up and go to greet the students quietly when they realize he has no interest in starting anything. 

Dabi is prepared to ignore them until they all go away and give him the chance to slip away undetected. What he is not prepared for is his dumbass little brother to park himself on the coffee table facing the villain. He’s magicked up some noodles from who knows where and is slurping away, calm as you please as he stares fucking holes in Dabi’s head. 

It’s a classic younger sibling move. Dabi knows this. Natsuo couldn’t do it for long before he got fed up and physically shook Touya until he paid attention to him. Fuyumi had it down to an artform by the time she was eight. So Dabi knows. He knows what that little shit is doing, he’ll just ignore him like he’s been ignoring the rest of these fucking brats, but jesus fuck does he have to slurp his goddamn noodles so loud right in front of his face what the fuc—

“Fucking what?” Dabi snarls, slamming his book closed so he can glare daggers at this dumbass fucking child. Around him all the other baby heroes are holding themselves so still they might as well be chiseled from stone. Thirteen is very carefully positioning themself in between Dabi and Shouto in case they need to get involved.

Shouto, the little shit, just fucking blinks at him like he’s being the unreasonable one here. He finishes slurping his mouthful of soba noodles as obnoxiously as possible before saying, “I have a question.”

Dabi prays to every god he can remember the name of to keep himself from throttling his brother right then and there.

“And what,” Dabi says, enunciating slowly like it’ll drive it better through the kid’s thick skull, “makes you think I’d answer anything you’d ask?”

“But you haven’t heard my question yet.”

Ah yes. A brilliant counter. Dabi is left in awe of his baby brother’s conversational skills.

Dabi gives a long, long sigh before bringing his book back up to his face. “Don’t care.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t, now scram.”

“But you haven’t heard it yet.”

Dabi narrows his eyes at Shouto over the top of the book before remembering that he’s supposed to be ignoring him. “I don’t need to, now leave.”

“Shouto… is this what we were talking about on the way back from class?” one of the other students asks. Dabi glances up just enough to see Shouto nod at the green-headed one and watch his face twist into an uncertain frown. “I, ah, I don’t think Dabi probably has an answer to that question, and, well, he looks kind of busy so maybe…”

Dabi is pretty sure he's one of the kids that topped their to-kill list back when they infiltrated the heroes training camp, not to mention giving Shigaraki the beatdown of a lifetime during the PLF raid. Fuck, what’s his name? Shigs used to always be muttering about him and he knows Keigo has talked about him before after joint patrols with Endeavor. Something about finger-crushing.

It started with a D right? Or an I? Fuck if Dabi knows. Even after weeks spent around the little fuckers he still can’t bring himself to remember anyone’s name. 

If he manages to get Shouto to leave him alone though, he'll definitely put in a word to try and bump the kid down a spot or two on their leader’s little hit list.

Shouto either doesn’t care that Dabi clearly wants nothing to do with him, or doesn’t recognize the hint. Considering he’s related to Endeavor, Dabi isn’t expecting much mental acuity in the observation department. He continues to sit there, eating his soba as excruciatingly slow as possible, and Dabi continues in vain to try and ignore him even though he hasn’t flipped a page in his book for almost five minutes now.

Another few minutes pass before Dabi gives up.

How bad can one question be anyways?

Dabi snaps the book closed and without warning leans forward to whack it at his brother. Shouto is sitting too close to dodge as the spine nails his knee head on, causing the nerve hidden just beneath to make his entire leg jerk. The unexpected movement unbalances him just enough to send some of the sauce from his noodles flying onto his arm and shirt, leaving behind a splatter of stains that’ll be a bitch to get out in the laundry later.

Shouto glances down at his ruined shirt before slowly looking back up. Dabi bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to threaten blood in order to keep his face perfectly blank as he settles back against the couch. 

“That’s for being an annoying shit. Now spit it out before I decide to leave.”

Shouto twists around and carefully places his bowl behind him and out of Dabi’s sightlines. Dabi waits with an extraordinary amount of patience for him to turn back around and finally ask his stupid question.

And it is, indeed, an exceedingly stupid question. 

“Who’s your favorite hero?”

He waits for the rest of the punchline but the kid only blinks owlishly back at him. 

“You’re joking, right?” Dabi asks.

“A class of heroes is an acceptable answer too if you don’t have a specific hero,” Shouto adds. Dabi would be convinced that he’s being punked here, except his brother looks nothing but terrifyingly sincere as he waits for his answer.

He’s seriously considering aiming for the idiot’s head this time.

“I assume my father isn’t one of them,” he continues as the silence stretches, “since you publicly tried to murder Endeavor last year.”

Dabi doesn’t think of Touya’s room when he was little, plastered from head to toe in Endeavor posters, or the little plushie he’d been given when he was three that he’d carry around everywhere. Refuses to remember how he’d sneak into the dojo to watch his father train whenever he could, clumsily copying each move until he knew them by heart.

Dad, dad look at what I can do! I have a fire quirk too! I’m going to be a hero just like you when I grow up, just you watch!

Beneath the sleeve of his shirt Dabi’s thumb presses down against a staple until he can feel beads of blood welling up, sharp stings of pain zinging up his tattered nervous system.

“This is stupid,” Bakugou says from somewhere over Dabi’s shoulder. “He’s a villain, they want to kill heroes, not admire them.”

“Shigaraki’s favorite hero is Eraserhead,” Dabi says before he can think better. It’s truly one of the worst-kept secrets in the League, but if Shigaraki finds out Dabi blabbed about his man-crush on Eraserhead to a bunch of his students just to be contrary he’ll have to flee the country.

He twists around to watch as his words sink in and every face in the room falls into sweet, sweet despair as the psychic damage kicks in. The pikachu wannabe makes a sound like a dying whale while some of them hide their faces in their hands as if it’ll protect them from the mental image. Bakugou goes so red Dabi is half-convinced he’ll pass out on the spot.

“Oh my god please tell me that he’s lying,” Pikachu whines. He looks beseechingly at Dabi. “Please please please tell me you’re lying.”

“Pretty sure I threatened to set him on fire the next time he called Eraserhead so cool in the same room as me,” he says back, grinning like a shark.

“His heartbeat is steady,” one of the girls says. There’s what looks like an ear cord stretching from her earlobe down to a speaker strapped to her shins. They’re all still in their hero uniforms from their exercises earlier this afternoon so Dabi can only assume she must have a quirk that enhances her hearing. “He’s not lying.”

That sets off a flurry of protests and exclamations. Dabi leans back and basks in the chaos, giving himself a little mental pat on the back for redirecting their attention away from having him answer Shouto’s original question.

“Wait, wait wait wait,” the pink skinned one yells above the others, “does the rest of the League have a favorite hero too then?”

Dabi curses under his breath as everyone stops and looks at him expectantly.

“Fuck if I know about any of the others,” Dabi deflects. “Toga will whine my fucking ear off about half of you fuckers if I give her the chance and Spinner likes All Might because Stain told him to but that’s it.”

The green haired boy grimaces and the girl with the squirrel cheeks turns red at the mention of Toga and her numerous crushes on their class. This sets off another round of discussions and Dabi is just thinking that now is the time for a strategic exit when Shouto opens his fucking mouth.

“And what about you?”

“What the fuck about me?” Dabi snaps.

“Who’s your favorite hero?”

“I’m a villain, remember? I don’t have one.”

“Pretty sure you just established that villains can have a favorite hero.” Dabi’s eyes linger on the purple-haired kid hanging in the corner of the room, just slightly removed from the rest of the group, taking note of the familiar looking capture weapon wrapped around his neck. Looks like Eraserhead here has a little mini-me in the making. He’s even wearing a similarly styled jumpsuit to the one the hero practically lives in.

“Plus,” he adds, “you weren’t always a villain, right?”

I’m going to be a hero just like you when I grow up, just you watch!

Dabi presses down until he can feel the staple rip and tear through skin, embedding down into muscle tissue.

“That was a long time ago,” he replies flatly. 

 “Has there really never been anyone?” one of the girls asks. “Not one hero who ever reached out and helped you when you needed it?”

Dabi thinks of the feather nestled out of sight just below his chin. Of vigilantes he used to sometimes catch out of the corners of his eye shadowing the rooftops that made sure everyone working the street corners got home safe each night. Of the dirt smudged face of a search and rescue hero haloed in golden afternoon light offering a reassuring smile and a hand to help pull Touya out of the rubble that had been a library just a few hours before an earthquake villain decided they needed to distract the heroes on their tail. He remembers stopping in front of a store window displaying discounted TVs later that evening on his way to the shelter after he'd spent an hour restitching the peeling skin that had been ripped apart and watching the hero that had been in pursuit of the villain completely ignore the collapsed building he and countless others had been trapped in as he ran after them.

“What does it matter now?” he says instead. “I still ended up here, didn’t I?”

No one has an answer for him as he brings his book upstairs, a trail of blood left behind.

Chapter Text

Dabi fiddles with the edge of his collar closest to Keigo’s feather as he follows behind Eraserhead. Other than that first night he hasn’t tried contacting the hero again. Even if he was sure at the time there was nothing watching him, he’s positive they’ve corrected that mistake by now. Besides, he got his location out, that’s the only thing that matters. No need to expose his ace just because he wants to talk to the birdbrain.

Even though he’s been banned from their morning class, Dabi is still brought along to the majority of their heroics classes in the afternoon. Today, instead of the gym they’ve been going to, Eraserhead is bringing him into what looks like an engineering student’s worst nightmare. 

He’s familiar with the warehouse and industrial districts in most cities, particularly the ones that have been gutted and abandoned years ago—makes a better atmosphere for unsavory meetings and no witnesses for his flames—but this is on a whole different level. Dabi cranes his neck as he tries to follow the layers and layers of piping snaking above their heads. The narrow paths and cramped plant factories pressed impossibly close make him glad he’s not claustrophobic. A place like this would be hell for someone like Keigo. 

The path they’re walking down spills out into a slightly more open space where the rest of the class has already gathered. They’re all in their hero uniforms today rather than their usual gym clothes. Dabi rolls his eyes. He’s seen their outfits before but fuck, what was it with heroes and their inability to wear anything actually useful? You don’t see villains strutting around looking like overgrown peacocks. 

Well, Twice has his body suit, but that’s just to keep him from splitting, and Toga only cares if what she’s wearing is cute or not. Aside from his coat which is made out of a special flame-retardant material, courtesy of the now-defunct Detnerat, Dabi just goes around in his regular clothes.

Really there’s no good explanation for all of Shigaraki’s freaky ass hands or Spinner’s Stain cosplay. Compress could probably make an argument for his suit get-up, but they all know it’s because he likes the drama. Frankly, aside from himself, Keigo probably has the least flashy uniform despite being the Number Two, and he knows those pieces actually help the hero do his damn job. What purpose does the full suit of armor one of them is wearing do aside from making them noisy as fuck and unable to move quickly?

“Alright,” Eraserhead says with a clap of his hands. His students immediately stop talking and turn to look expectantly at their teacher. Heh, if only it was that easy to shut up the League. “As you can see, we’ve decided to move training today to Ground Beta.”

“Are we still working on our hand-to-hand combat?” the green-haired boy asks. It’s what they’ve been practicing since Dabi was first dragged here, so it makes sense. 

“No, we aren’t,” Eraserhead answers. “Today we’ll be switching things up and working on pursuit tactics. Many of you already have some level of practical experience from your internships and work studies, so this’ll be a good exercise to see where you rank compared to your classmates.” 

“Are the teachers going to be acting as villains again?” another student asks.

Dabi doesn’t miss Eraserhead’s quick glance his way before answering. “No, that won’t be necessary for today.”

Oh. Oh fuck that. As the students wait for further explanation of the exercise Dabi cuts Eraserhead with a withering side glance. “I’m not a goddamn monkey.”

“And yet you’ll dance for me all the same,” he retorts back blandly. Dabi doesn’t doubt his handcuffs are flickering red in his pockets as anger chokes at his throat. Stupid goddamn hero—

But Eraserhead has already turned his attention back to his students. “One of our top priorities when arresting a villain is to make sure to keep them from escaping the scene. If for some reason you aren’t able to properly apprehend them and they try to flee then it becomes your job to track that villain down. Today we have in our company a villain that’s evaded even the top heroes in our society.”

All the kids turn their heads to stare Dabi down. Fucking great. He bites back the urge to snarl at them and instead slings his hands in his pockets and directs his gaze somewhere above their heads like he couldn’t care less. 

Dabi never really could hide from Keigo, nor did he have any need to, but that wasn’t something for them to know. As for Endeavor, evaded isn’t the choice of words the villain would use. Ran away perhaps. Fled because he was too fucking weak, would be better.

“For this exercise, we’ll be running a simulation to work on your pursuit tactics. In pairs you’ll use what you’ve learned so far to track down Dabi somewhere within Ground Beta. Your goal is to successfully capture him without seriously injuring him.”

Bakugou scowls at that but otherwise the rest of the class is nodding along. Meanwhile Dabi is over here wishing Keigo would just drop out of the sky already and get him the fuck out of here. He’d been prepared for a cell when he first woke up, not to be playing mock villain for a bunch of hero students. Oh how far the mighty have fallen.

“Ah, sorry I’m late!” 

The new voice has Dabi turning his head around. He goes stiff when he catches sight of blond hair and blue eyes.

Beside him Eraserhead sighs. “Thank you for finally joining us All Might.”

Dabi’s eyes are bugging out of their sockets and he knows he’s probably getting some strange looks, but fuck. He doesn’t look at all like he remembers from his fight with All for One or any of the times he’s seen him on the television. This man is a shell of the former hero, more skeletal looking than even Dabi used to be with his thin frame and sunken eyes. He helped do that. He helped knock the Pillar of Peace off his lofted pedestal and watched his father claw his way atop the ruins. 

Despite all the time he’s spent here, Dabi hasn’t been handed off to All Might to be babysat yet. He never really thought much about it, too annoyed with the current situation to care, but he wonders now if that was intentional as the man shoots Eraserhead a sheepish look and stops next to him. 

“I promise to be on time next time.”

“It’s fine,” he says with a shake of his head. “I was just telling the students about today’s simulation.”

“And is Young Dabi okay with these conditions?” All Might asks, casting a curious look his way. Fuck that look. Fuck that pity he can see in his eyes. Dabi bristles like a wet cat. Like he cares. Like any of these heroes care about his thoughts or opinions.

Keigo is an exception, a fucking anomaly in the system. He’s not here because he wants to be. They just want to use him, pry his secrets from him and then string him out to dry.

Dabi lifts his chin, stares down at the diminished former hero with eyes cold enough to burn. “I’d worry more about your kids than me All Might,”

Around him the students all stiffen at the thinly veiled threat, but Dabi doesn’t care about them, his attention focused on the retired hero. Instead of getting angry like he’d hoped, All Might looks at him with this impossibly sad expression on his face that he wants to grind to dust under his boot. Thankfully or not, he’s not really sure, Eraserhead steps in. 

“All right, I want you to follow All Might to the control room where he’ll explain everyone’s pairing. Dabi will have a two minute head start before the first group enters.”

None of the kids look comfortable leaving Eraserhead with him when he’s clearly in a foul mood, but All Might manages to corral them all and herd them off into one of the nearby buildings. The hero waits until they’ve all disappeared before turning to Dabi.

“You really hate him, don’t you?” he asks, no judgment in his tone. 

All at once Dabi is slouching again, smothering the rage churning in his chest with a harsh exhale. God he could really use a smoke right now.

“Nah,” he says, staring down at the cracked concrete under him. His feelings on All Might are complicated, but he’s never really hated him.

Eraserhead gives a small hum but doesn’t press further. Instead he pulls a small metal device out of his pocket and tosses it at him. “That’s a tracking device,” he says as the villain catches it and turns it over his hands. “This place is already covered in cameras, just in case you were thinking about trying to escape, but it’s an added level of security so to speak.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith in me not to kill any of your kids.” He might not have his flames right now, but that doesn’t make Dabi any less dangerous.

“Maybe,” he admits. “But I trust that they can handle themselves, and I don’t think it’s in your nature to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

His eyes are sharp. “You’re assuming an awful lot there hero.”

“Your goal is to fill society with heroes that live up to Stain’s ideals isn’t it?” Eraserhead counters. Dabi’s lips thin to a hard line.

For a long time all Shigaraki wanted was destruction. It was pretty simple really: hero society hurt him, tossed him aside like a piece of trash just like the rest of them, and he wanted to hurt it back. He hadn't cared about making a point, hadn't cared if anyone understood. A lot has happened since Deika and Jaku though. These days the League is more focused on poking holes in this hypocritical hero society of theirs, on chipping away the golden gilding from its pillars to reveal the tarnished copper underneath. Overall the opinion on heroes is divided. Not enough has changed, but how much and how fast is still up for debate.  

“Wouldn’t it be counterproductive to kill them now before they have a chance to reach that goal?”

The two of them stare each other down for a long minute before he pockets the tracker with a sigh. “You’re a weird fucking guy, you know that?”

Eraserhead shrugs. “It’s been mentioned from time to time. Remember, All Might might be in the room with those students, but I’ll be out in the field with you. So play nice.”

“Tch.” Like he needs a damn babysitter. He’s been taking care of himself long before he was out on the streets. With his hands shoved deep in his pockets Dabi turns on his heels and starts walking in a random direction. When he turns to look back over his shoulder the underground hero is gone, but he doubts he’s far away.

As he stalks further into the industrial maze of pipes and buildings he comes to terms with the idea of being the rat in this particular maze. And, well, if he has to deal with all this, he can at least make things a little interesting.

Eraserhead said he couldn’t kill any of the students, but he didn’t say anything about hurting them.

A grin snakes its way across his face and he starts walking forward with purpose.

This might actually turn out to be fun.

.

.

.

Okay, Dabi lied.

Walking around in aimless circles while he waits for groups of children to try and track him down isn't fun at all. Has it been two minutes yet? Fuck if he knows. All he does know is that his legs are stiff as hell since he hasn’t been able to properly stretch anything in weeks and that he’s bored .

How are two kids going to find one guy in a place as large and complex as this? He could probably stay here for days and never come across another soul. Honestly he’s half tempted to try and escape despite Eraserhead’s warning. He wouldn’t put it past the underground hero to be playing mind games just to keep him in line.

But no, best not to chance it. Eraserhead might be bluffing, but he might also not. And Dabi can’t take that risk. Not yet.

So here he is, wandering in a random direction mostly lost in his thoughts since he has nothing better to do. It might have been smarter to stay in the same place where they’d been originally. No doubt all the kids will assume that he’s completely fled the scene and fan out. He could have just holed up in the upper window of one of the nearby buildings and watched them run off on a wild goose chase while he napped or something.

Wouldn’t be the first time he’s slipped away using a young hero’s over-eagerness against them. Still, he’s moving now so he might as well just keep going.

The first group comes up faster than he expects. He hears them from a mile away, well, one of the girls at least. He can’t properly make out anything she’s saying but either way she’s pretty chatty for someone in the middle of trying to track down a villain. Whatever, it works in Dabi’s favor. He ducks into a narrow alley as they get closer, chest and back nearly touching the two opposing buildings as he slides through to the other side. He keeps half an ear out for them as he considers his options. Right now getting off the streets and hiding out in one of the warehouses is probably his best bet.

He’s just about to duck inside a promising looking one when he hears voices again, much closer than he’s expecting. 

“Oh my god this is so stressful! Like I’m happy everyone’s so confident in us to be the first group but—”

A second voice gently cuts the girl off. “Maybe we should try and be a bit more quiet,” a boy says, much softer but still loud enough for the villain to hear. “These things Yaomomo made are pretty neat, but it doesn’t mean we still shouldn’t try finding him on our own.”

Dabi hides in the shadows of the building and watches as what looks like only one person rounds the corner onto the same road he’s on. It’s the one with the tail mutation. He narrows his eyes as he draws in tighter to the wall, trying to figure out where the girl he’d heard had disappeared to.

“Sorry Ojiro,” she replies, decidedly quieter and like she’s standing right next to the kid. “I’m just so nervous you know?”

“Yeah he freaks me out too,” Ojiro says. “But he’s basically quirkless with those cuffs on right? And besides you’ve got the perfect quirk for this Hagakure. He’ll never see you coming.”

For a second Dabi is completely lost because it looks like this kid is talking to a disembodied voice. Then he catches a flash of movement beside him—gloves his mind supplies as they wave up and down—and remembers that one of Eraserhead’s students has an invisibility quirk.

Too bad she’s too noisy for it to be effective. Still, it’s a quirk that could cause him some problems, so he decides to keep moving and slips inside. The building is full of all kinds of machinery and Dabi idly wonders if any of it is functional or if it’s all for show as he weaves around them.

He’s considering a few places he could hide when he hears the screech of a metal door being swung open. He cranes his head around and catches a glimpse of tail kid before he disappears behind metal piping. 

Shit, how the hell are these baby heroes following him when they haven’t even laid eyes on him yet?

Dabi is still trying to figure it out as he exits the building out another side door. He knows that this is all a simulation but he can’t help but move a little faster. He slows down again after he builds up some distance, confident that he’s lost the runts. 

“He should be around here right?”

He stops and whirls on his feet at the new voice, teeth grinding as a new set of heroes comes his way. Looks like it’s the girl with the frog mutation and the tape one. Shit, wasn’t he supposed to be dealing with just one pair at a time? Thank fuck he’s hidden behind some exposed piping.

Dabi’s eyes narrow at the girl as he watches her press her hand to her ear. “Ribbit, Toru and Ojiro say they’ve finished searching the area and that they’re on their way now,” she says.

Fucking—

Of course Eraserhead wouldn't just send one pair at a time. No he'll just keep sending out more and more of them until the whole place is overrun with snot-nosed brats. Dabi curses under his breath and waits for their attention to waver before darting across the road and into a new building. Guess that nap will have to wait.

Still, it doesn’t make sense how they’re narrowing in on him so quickly. Like they already know where he’s been—

Dabi digs into his pocket and pulls out the stupid tracker Eraserhead had thrown at him.

He thought that it was only for the teacher to keep an eye on him but maybe—

He drops the device on the ground and moves to the metal staircase bolted into the wall, climbing up onto the catwalk overlooking the floor space. He crouches on the wire, hidden away but still with a view of the tracker. Not even a minute later the hero students enter the building, going straight for the thing.

“Aw shit,” tape guy groans, running a hand through black hair. “Looks like the gig is up Tsuyu.”

“He might still be in the building,” Tsuyu says, and fuck is that a metal pipe she’s carrying around? Who is she taking notes from? The yakuza? “We should search it before reporting to the others.”

Dabi doesn’t need to hear any more. He makes it up onto the roof and uses the snaking metal pipes to get across to the next building. He hops a few rooftops before finding a fire escape that he can crawl down back to street level. He starts moving with purpose because you know what? Fuck this shit. He’s getting out of here.

Of course, once he decides on this it feels like all those damn students just start crawling out of the woodwork. He’s pulling shit out of his ass at this point as he dips and ducks around the roving groups of students. Now that they aren’t able to use his tracker to follow his movements they seem to have broken themselves into ever expanding search parties as more and more students enter the fray.

They’re fucking persistent, he’ll give them that.

There’s an especially close call with the ear-jack kid. He probably would have walked right in front of her if he hadn’t been unexpectedly wrapped in white bindings. Dabi is unfortunately familiar with the feeling of being restrained with a capture weapon, and without his flames to burn through the material he can do little but stumble with a muffled curse as he’s jerked backwards and forced into an empty room.

He’s expecting Eraserhead when the cloth wrappings fall away. Instead he turns and finds his mini-me.

“Sorry about that,” the kid says as he closes the door behind them, the rusted metal creaking slightly. “Didn’t know how else to get you alone.”

“You that confident?” Dabi taunts, feet spreading slightly and hands loose at his sides as he falls back on muscle memory and instinct. He reflexively pulls at his flames only to hiss when they fail to respond to him. Motherfuc—

“I’m not here to fight,” he says with a shake of his head. “Just repaying a debt.”

The villain’s head cocks to the side, curiosity starting to get the better of him. “You don’t owe me shit kid.”

“Actually I do, though you probably don’t remember.” He pauses for a moment, hand pressing against his ear lightly as he mutters something. When he refocuses on Dabi’s raised eyebrow he shrugs as his arm falls away. “Sorry, just my classmates checking in. Anyways, I doubt a brat like me made much of an impression on you, but you certainly made one on me.”

He watches the kid as he reaches into his pocket. With a flick of his wrist he tosses something over and Dabi grabs it before he can think better of it. He realizes it’s a lighter as he uncurls his fingers and examines the object in his hand. It’s old, battered and dented and light enough to tell him there’s no fuel left to ignite inside, but oddly familiar. He sweeps the pad of his finger over the scratched silver casing, and realizes why as he turns it over and finds the small faded letters etched into the metal. 

TT

Todoroki Touya.

Natsuo had given this to him on his twelfth birthday. He had claimed it was so Touya could create a flame that wouldn't hurt him. A clumsy attempt at trying to soothe the gaping hole their father left in his chest after he was cast aside. Still he had carried it around everywhere, constantly fiddling with the spark. He stared and stared at that small flame until it sputtered and died.

Touya went the same way shortly after.

His eyes flick up and take in the kid standing before him. If he gets rid of the hero get-up and throws him in ratty clothes, subtracts a few years, adds some baby-fat to his cheeks and a few bandages—

Oh.

“You’re that kid,” Dabi says. 

This ain’t your place kid. You don’t belong with people like them. Like us.

“As you can see,” the hero student gestures to himself, “I took your advice.”

Dabi snorts despite himself, the hazy memories starting to filter in now that he’s searching for them. “Don’t think this is what I had in mind when I was telling you that.”

“Probably not.” A lazy smirk curls at the corner of his mouth. “But it all worked out in the end.”

He’s probably around sixteen now, so the kid must have been seven or eight when they ran across each other. Those first few years on the street are usually hard for him to recall with any real clarity and he prefers it that way. He got enough reminders when Ujiko’s eyes used to drift from tinkering with his newest creation and linger long enough to make his scars itch.

Still, Dabi remembers him. Brat made quite the fucking impression when he tried to rob him. Not even half his height and there he’d been demanding he fork over all his valuables. Considering he didn’t even have a penny to his name at the time he’d been barking up the wrong tree, but once he’d realized that the little shit had used his quirk to force him into stealing some food from a local convenience store.

Not that it had been much of a hardship considering the kid was more skin and bones than anything and Dabi hadn’t been much better at the time. He’d have done it anyway even if he hadn’t been under the influence of a quirk. 

They’d sat in the same dirty alleyway he’d tried to rob him in afterwards and eaten their stolen food together.

You’re not scared of me? Even after I forced you?

I mean, I got a meal out of this, so nah kid, we’re cool. 

He had stuck around the neighborhood for a few weeks tracking down some backwater gang with delusions of grandeur that had stiffed Giran on the bill one to many times. That’s where the villain found him again, standing in the doorway of the gang’s dilapidated little hideout and watching as blue flames ate his friends alive. They’d reached for him, snarled and yelled at him to use his quirk and make Dabi stop. 

He remembers the way the kid cocked his head to the side, shadowed eyes taking in crooked staples and purpling scars hidden beneath threadbare clothes. The hellish blue fire dancing around them. Then like it was the most natural thing in the world he’d asked Dabi if they could get some ice cream after.

The kid apparently liked mint chocolate chip.

They promised to leave my family alone if I worked for them. Nobody likes me because of my quirk, but they did. Said I was useful.

He plays with the lighter in his hand and thinks back to that first day when Eraserhead was shuffling him around and that offhand comment.

Just my luck, another pyromaniac.

Dabi tosses the lighter back to him, watching him catch it with deft hands. “You like setting fires brat?”

“Only ones I know I can put out,” he answers smoothly as he pockets it once more. “And it’s Shinsou. I think I’ve upgraded from brat since the last time.”

He shrugs. “You’ll always be a brat to me.”

“Suppose I’ll just have to live with that one.” Shinsou runs a hand through his wild hair, a soft hint of a smile playing at his lips before it fades into something more serious. “You’re running out of time.”

“Yeah?” Of course he is. Ever since he woke up here he’s known he’s working on borrowed time. Each day spent locked up here is one day closer to his eventual downfall. Only a matter of time before the heroes make good on their promises and rip every last secret from his bones. “You ever tried breaking out of a super max?”

“Can’t say I’ve had the opportunity.” Snarky little shit. If he makes it out of this whole mess in one piece maybe he’ll send the kid a pint of ice cream or something. 

“Well, it ain’t as easy as the movies make it look.”

“But you do have something, right?” he asks.

Dabi raises an eyebrow. “You offering?”

Shinsou shakes his head. “Sorry. I might owe you, but I don’t owe you that much. I won’t try to stop you like the others, but I’m not going to actively help you either.”

So, a neutral party then. He supposes it could be worse. Neutral is something he can work with at least.

“I’m working on something,” he tells him. No need to have the kid connecting the dots to Keigo just yet. 

“Well work fast,” Shinsou says. “Intuition isn’t someone you want to stick around and meet.”

Huh, that’s not a name he’s familiar with. Not one of the daytime hero teachers then, but someone else. Someone new.

 “Another hero?” Dabi asks. He thinks about the hushed whispers and wary eyes. “She the one you guys go see in the morning?”

“She’s bad news,” he confirms. “For you, anyways. Her specialty is in interrogating villains.”

Well fuck. Now he really has to get out of here before things go sideways.

“I appreciate the heads up.”

“Don’t mention it. At all.” Shinsou’s eyes dart to the closed door beside him. They’ve been lucky no one’s come looking for their wayward classmate yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they arrive. He tips his head to the side, eyes going distant. There must be some chatter on whatever device they’re all using to keep in touch with each other. 

“Bakugou and some of the others are doing another sweep through here soon,” he tells him. “Pretty sure the coast is clear if you leave now.”

Sounds good to him. He’s already lingered here too long. 

A thought occurs to him though. “You got some way of dealing with the cameras?”

Just their shit luck if the heroes manage to get their hands on the tape of a villain and hero student getting all chummy with each other. 

Shinsou waves him off. “Got that covered.” He pulls out a small black device from the utility belt strapped around his waist and waves it at Dabi. “Had Support make this for me. It can match frequencies with other electronic devices and overpower the wireless signal. It’s been active since I grabbed you. As far as we’re concerned there might as well not be any cameras here at all.”

Snarky and sneaky little shit. No need to guess which direction he’s going in once he graduates.

Well with that concern out of the way there’s no reason to stick around. He’s not sure how much longer this stupid thing is supposed to last, but he’s sure he still has some time left on the clock. Before he can move towards the door Shinsou speaks up. 

“I found a place here. I’m not ready to give that up just yet.” He narrows his eyes at the villain. “So don’t do anything stupid.”

Dabi knows a thing or two about finding a place to call your own. About finding people you can lean on and not expect a knife in the back after. As he walks past Shinsou he reaches up and ruffles the kid’s hair.

“Neither am I brat.”

.

.

.

Of course, because Dabi really does have shit luck in just about everything, he runs into Bakugou almost immediately after leaving Shinsou. 

He barely even makes it out onto the road. All he hears is a roar of “You!” and the sound of explosions behind him before he’s fucking booking it. He doesn’t turn around to confirm, doesn’t need to, just knows he has to figure out a way to slip out of the aspiring hero’s reach and fast. He knows this whole thing is just some stupid simulation but no way is he losing to fucking Bakugou Katsuki. Over his dead body.

“Fucking face me you fucking chickenshit!”

Without his quirk he’s at too much of a disadvantage out in the open so he moves inside where he’ll have a fighting chance. He ducks to the right and throws himself through the nearest door.

Dabi has had years to perfect the art of skulking around in poorly lit buildings and he uses that to his advantage, shadows dripping over his shoulders as he hides amongst a mess of dilapidated electrical boxes and wires. Looks like he's found himself in some sort of run-down electrical plant. Bakugou blows the door open a minute or two later and barrels in after the villain. 

“Fucking coward,” he hears him mutter. He presses a hand to his ear as he stalks into the room. “Where the hell are you, Dunce Face? I tracked him to the electric place two streets down. Fucking tell the rest of them to hurry up and get here so we can flush him out.”

Dabi leans forward slightly, head barely dipping out of the shadows as he watches the hero student move further into the room. He’s closing in on him, but not so much that he feels the need to move just yet. He’s so focused on the kid that he flinches at the sudden jerk of his coat. It almost slams him back against the wall and the villain reaches for his collar, cursing under his breath as he feels the hardened edges of the feather through the leather. It starts to twitch and Dabi curses some more.

Fuck. Keigo doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t realize Dabi isn’t in any actual danger. He hunkers down, pulling his flipped collar close so no one can see his mouth moving.

“It’s fine,” he hisses, hoping the vibrations of his voice reach the birdbrain’s head. He tries to regulate his breathing, get his pulse back under control. “Don’t do something stupid.” 

This whole exercise is a bunch of bullshit, but if there really are cameras scattered around this place he can't afford to have this caught on film. Not to mention Eraserhead is probably lurking somewhere close by. The feather is still steel-sharp, but before Dabi can growl at Keigo to chill out Bakugou rounds the corner and he's being pulled to his feet and half-dragged up to the roof to avoid the explosion aimed his way.

Shit, that’s too strong for Keigo not to be close by. As he wrenches the door open and stumbles out the villain cranes his head up. There’s a rolling cloud cover today blanketing most of the sky in patchy gray, but he catches flashes of circling red where hints of blue still filter through.

“I’ll fucking fry you if you come down,” Dabi snarls even as relief washes through him. Keigo is here which means his message got out. Still, there's too many witnesses. He's not about to have that dumbass ruin his life just to get him out of some shitty simulation.

There’s a series of loud explosions from behind and it’s only the yank of Keigo’s feather that keeps him from being caught in one of Bakugou’s blasts. As the smoke clears he finds a few more students perched on the rooftop behind their classmate

“Back off extras!” he shouts, placing his arm between them and Dabi. “This one’s mine.”

“Guys, maybe we should wait for backup like Iida told us to,” the blond one with the electricity quirk says. The kid with the bird mutation—and fuck that’s Keigo’s baby intern isn’t it? He’ll lose his shit if Dabi hurts him—agrees as he shifts on his feet and looks at the villain uncertainly.

“Kick his ass Bakubro,” the pink-skinned one shouts over them, pumping her fist in the air.

“Fuck yeah,” Bakugou spits. His gloved hands crackle and pop ominously.

Dabi casts the skies one last warning glance before falling into stance. Running clearly isn’t an option anymore, so fuck it.

“Bring it Blasty.”

Bakugou roars and flies forward using his explosions. It’s a shame they let him watch the students work on their close combat all this time.

Even more a shame for this kid that he’s used to a much faster opponent.

He shifts his feet slightly and when the wannabe hero is within range he reaches out to grab his wrists. It catches him off guard, and Dabi uses the kid’s momentum to send him flying around him. A series of short blasts have Bakugou upright and skidding to a stop on his feet inches from the edge of the roof. His posture is still loose and confident, but there’s a new wariness in his eyes as he sizes up his opponent. 

“That all you got, hero?”  Dabi sneers. He spreads his arms wide. “Can’t even take down a quirkless villain.”

Bakugou snarls at the challenge and launches forward again. This time he dips below Dabi’s waiting arms, hands spring-boarding him off the ground as he twists his body. He has just enough time to cross his arms and block the heavy kick aimed at his chest, but the kid isn’t done. He contorts himself again, using precise explosions to spin himself upright and slam his forearm into his shoulder hard enough to have him stumbling back a few feet.

He doesn’t give the villain any time to recover, already throwing himself in his face again. Keigo’s feather snaps and tugs him so that he doesn’t receive the full blow, but it still hurts like hell.

Dabi is a patient man though. He lets Bakugou get comfortable, lets him get close, until it’s too late. 

Before the kid can so much as blink Dabi has him on the ground, one bony knee digging into the hero student’s back, hands latched around his wrists and keeping one palm pressed against his back while the other is pushed into the back of his head. If he tries to use his quirk the only thing he’ll be blowing up is himself.

It’s a move he’s been on the receiving end of more than once from Keigo, although unlike the hero he doesn’t let the kid go with a clever jibe and laugh. Instead he presses down harder, grinds his face against the concrete of the rooftop. 

“And here I thought you’d be more of a challenge,” he drawls. Beneath him Bakugou twitches and growls something muffled by the concrete. Dabi ignores him and looks up at the stunned faces of his fellow classmates. The blond one who’d initially suggested they wait for backup is whispering harshly into his earpiece. Too bad they didn’t listen to him earlier or attack the villain as a group. He would’ve been overwhelmed by their numbers, but by allowing Bakugou to go in on his own they gave him the opportunity to gain a hostage.

All rookie mistakes that would’ve gotten them killed out in the real world.

He glances around, trying to pick out Eraserhead. Clearly the game is up, so the pro should be coming in to collect him any moment. He’s actually a little surprised the man hadn’t stopped the fight himself, he must have meant it when he said he trusted these kids.

Or maybe it was because he was waiting for the giant wall of ice that erupts from the ground and encircles half the building. He barely feels the ominous rumble run up the side of the building before the earth ruptures and heaves, ice cracking and grinding against itself as it rises up. By the time it stops moving it's beginning to cave inward, sharp deadly spikes all pointed straight at him.

A thin haze of ice crystals hangs over them and standing at the crest staring him down is Shouto. 

“Shit,”  Blondie breathes. “Haven’t seen something like that since the Sport's Festival.”

If there’s one thing Dabi has learned over the years, it’s how to pick your fights. Of course, killing his father isn’t the most realistic goal out there, but fuck he’s got to have something to keep him going doesn’t he? But in other fights, he’s learned when to press the advantage and when it’s time to tuck tail and live another day.

This isn’t one he’s going to win.

And yet—

That’s supposed to be me.

“Let him go." Shouto sounds so much like Endeavor in that moment, looks just like him with his arms crossed over his chest, narrowed cold blue eye burning into him. The yawning void in Dabi’s chest howls, rips the breath from his lungs until he’s choking back gravesoil.

It’s not fair.

His grip on Bakugou tightens, his knee presses down a little harder. He grins up at Shouto, a sharp slant like broken glass. The scars beneath his eyes burn. 

Come down here little brother and make me.

“I think I’ve seen enough.”

Dabi barely has a chance to turn to see where the familiar drawl came from before he’s being encased in white. He thrashes against his bindings as he’s dragged off Bakugou and brought to heel at Eraserhead’s side. The blond immediately flips over to his back, coughing roughly as he’s swarmed by concerned classmates. 

The hero gives the villain a flat stare, unfazed by the forest-fire rage burning in his eyes. “Clearly I need to have you on a shorter leash.” He switches focus, looking away from Dabi and up to Shouto. “You can come down Todoroki. The exercise is over now.”

He gives Eraserhead a short nod and jumps down, ice groaning underneath as it restructures around him to create a small ramp he can slide down to the roof with the rest of them. Restrained and muffled, Dabi can only watch as he takes a few uncertain steps in Bakugou’s direction, face blank but his eyes strangely vulnerable as he looks down at the blond. Their eyes meet for a moment before Bakugou turns his head sharply with a grunt. Shouto seems to take it in stride, nodding to himself as he turns away from his classmate and gives his attention to his teacher instead.

The mountain of ice probably acted as a beacon for the other students because it isn’t long before they’re all crowding together up on the rooftop. 

“Kacchan!” Finger-crusher cries when he sees him on the ground.

“Fuck off Deku I’m fine,” Bakugou says, but accepts the hand-up anyways. He scowls at Dabi. “Fucker got the drop on me. Won’t happen again.”

“Yes, because in a real-life situation, you would be dead,” Eraserhead tacks on. He ignores the glare he gets in return and continues. “Yayorozu’s idea to clone the signal from the tracker I gave Dabi was creative, but realistically without it he would have gotten away long before any of you would have come across him.” His eyes sweep across his students. “Even when you did corner him he was able to take a hostage and create a dangerous situation. If his quirk wasn’t being actively suppressed at the moment, some of you could have been seriously hurt, or worse.” 

The harsh criticism clearly isn’t what the kids want to hear, looking properly chastised under the hero’s disapproving gaze.

“Despite all of that it was a good first attempt,” he tells them. “Reflect on what went wrong, and how you can improve going forward.”

As he continues to talk Dabi rolls his head back. The feather in his coat is still stiff, but there’s no sign of Keigo above. Good.

He thinks of Shinsou and what he told him.

Fucking pigeon, come get me soon.

Chapter Text

Well, it would seem like he’s on the right trail.

A fresh wave of pain rolls up his shoulder and down his battered wings. Keigo grits his teeth as the left one spasms and he drops ten feet in the air before he’s able to get it back under control and right himself. His wings are pathetically small and busted to hell after getting thrown around like a ragdoll, but somehow they’re able to carry his weight. Probably the adrenaline still at work. He’s definitely relying more on the air current right now than the strength of his wings to fly him back, and he’s sure when that finally fades he’ll be in for a world of hurt.

Dawn is just starting to creep over the horizon as he catches sight of UA rising up out of the forest. It’s not his apartment or the hideout, but there’s a bed there calling his name and Keigo fully intends to crawl under the covers and stay there for the next day or five. 

Which of course means when he’s just barely over the fence his wings give out again.

This time he isn’t able to catch himself and he hits the ground awkwardly with a strangled yelp, arms and legs protesting as they smack against paved stones, his wings crumpling against his back.

He hisses as he forces himself to his feet, body swaying dangerously for a moment before he’s able to steady himself, and starts limping the rest of the way in. Exhaustion weighs him down, makes his knees shake, but Keigo is stubborn. He’s had worse. He’s just thankful for the fact that he can do this little walk of shame back to his temporary housing in peace and quiet.

The Number Two grounded and forced to hobble his way back to safety? Oh, the tabloids would just eat that up.

“Hawks?”

Keigo lifts his head at the sound of his name and finds Bakugou, Midoriya, and Todoroki all standing together a little further down the path. Even though Keigo has seen them all working together on their patrols when he’d join up with Endeavor it’s an odd group to witness outside of that role.

By the casual workout gear they’re in they must have just left their dorm for some early morning training. Keigo squints a little. Aren’t teenagers supposed to be the ones that sleep in until two in the afternoon whenever they get the chance? Yet here they are, up with the sun. You'd think with the bird genes that Keigo would be an early riser as well, but as the League can attest that isn't the case. Granted he doesn’t usually get that much sleep as a hero, but when he does get the rare opportunity he’s out like a fucking light.

They've timed him more than once. The record so far is seventeen hours, but after this he thinks he’ll probably sleep for a whole goddamn week straight and still feel the exhaustion clinging to his bones. 

It was the littlest Todoroki’s hesitant call that snagged his attention but all three of them are looking at Keigo with wide worried eyes.

Fuck.

He musters up enough energy to plaster a smile on his face and lets go of the injured arm he was cradling to his chest to give them a small wave. He’s pretty sure he dislocated his shoulder after it was nearly torn out of its socket and isn't looking forward to popping it back in by himself.

“Hey guys, you’re up early.”

“Oh my god Hawks are you okay?” And, oh, now they’re rushing over to him. Keigo feels his smile curling into a grimace at the edges. The only thing he wants right now is to sleep this off, not deal with a bunch of nosy kids.

“I’m fine,” he says, trying to wave them off. “Just a rough patrol.”

“Those injuries look serious,” Todoroki tells him, like Keigo can’t feel every cell in his body ache. Midoriya makes a noise of agreement as he fiddles with his fingers and fidgets beside his classmate, clearly trying to hold himself back from frantically hovering over him. Bakugou stands to the side, arms crossed over his chest and scowling like the hero’s injuries are personally offensive to him.

Well, when he gets thrown through concrete and still has to fight he can get back to Keigo on that.

“You should really go see Recovery Girl,” Midoriya urges.

“You’re bleeding,” Todoroki adds, glancing up at his forehead. Keigo swipes the tip of his fingers along his hairline and his glove comes away slick. Oh, huh guess that head wound must have reopened at some point. That would explain the woozy feeling that’s been slowly growing in the past ten minutes or so.

“I’m fine,” he says, trying to put as much feeling behind it as he can muster. “Just need to sleep it off. I’ll be good as new.”

And, naturally, as soon as the words are out of his mouth the world blurs a little at the edges and he stumbles. He probably would have fallen flat on his ass if Bakugou wasn’t there with an arm wrapped around his back just below his wings. His hand twitches at the sudden contact and he curls it into a tight fist before he can lash out. Keigo's raptor brain may or may not have forgiven the kid for trying to blow Dabi up yet.

“Yeah, sure you’re fine,” Bakugou snorts. Shakes his head. “Go call Aizawa, IcyHot. Deku and I can take him to Recovery Girl.”

Keigo wants to protest, he can feel one perched on his tongue, but then his sluggish mind starts to work and… well actually maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea. They’d be stupid not to have Dabi on some sort of quirk suppressant after all, and unless they’re somehow hiding an IV bag underneath his coat or something they must have another way of administering it.

Not to mention he’s sure there’s a medical file started on the villain somewhere. If he can get his hands on that he’ll have a better idea of what the heroes have already pieced together.

“I guess it probably wouldn’t hurt to get checked out,” Keigo hedges and Midoriya immediately starts rambling on about all the times he’s wound up in the infirmary as they turn and begin walking.

He blinks at the word-vomit and all he can think is that this kid must have the self-preservation of a squirrel. Hell, the League always complains that he takes too many risks, spreads himself too thin, and Keigo is trying to work on that, but he’s got nothing on this guy. He’s seen the news reels. Kid basically shattered every bone in his body beating the shit out of Shigaraki. Not even Keigo is that suicidal, and he went up against Dabi back at Jaku. 

Bakugou just rolls his eyes and drags the hero along.

There’s nothing particularly interesting or note-worthy about the infirmary, but Keigo still takes in all the details available to him. It’s not an especially large room but there are partitions of white cloth to give the illusion of privacy for the two cots pressed against the wall along with a few doors leading off to what Keigo can only assume are either supply closets or private rooms used for more severe cases. They pass by a desk that is mostly tidy aside from the post-it notes littered with short-hand and medical acronyms Keigo is unfamiliar with hanging off the bottom edge of a computer along with a slew of academic texts lined up neatly to the side. The filing cabinet beside it looks the most promising. Sure, Recovery Girl has probably kept up with the modern age and moved her records online, but old habits die hard. If there’s any original report on Dabi’s medical history he’d bet it’s in there.

Now Keigo just has to find a way to get rid of these kids.

Despite the door being unlocked when they had knocked and entered there’s no one here. The hero must have stepped outside for something. Bakugou sets him down on the first bed, conveniently close to the cabinet. It takes some careful maneuvering, but he manages to lie back against the headrest just enough that his wings aren’t pressing against the wall behind and doesn’t put too much pressure on his bruised rib. Well, he hopes they’re just bruised anyway.

“Oh dear, what happened?”

Keigo cocks his head to the side and watches Recovery Girl walk in, cup of cafeteria coffee in hand. He’s never met her in person, only heard about her through word of mouth from graduated UA heroes, but everything just about matches the image he’d held in his mind’s eye. 

“A ‘rough’ patrol apparently,” Bakugou quotes dryly. Midoriya admonishes him quietly while Keigo tries not to roll his eyes. God, if they left Dabi and Bakugou alone in the same room the snark from those two would probably be enough to power the entire country for the next fifty years or so.

“Is that so?” she hums and comes over to his bedside. She deposits her coffee on the edge of her desk.

“Yes ma'am,” he replies dutifully.

“Alright then, sit up. Jacket and shirt off.” Fuck, and he’d just laid down. “I need to assess how much damage there is before I can begin to heal you.”

Well, can’t really argue with that logic. Keigo detaches what remaining feathers he has from his back and leaves them in a puddle of red at the end of the bed as he sits up gingerly and shuffles himself to the edge of the bed. He shrugs out of his flight jacket, careful of what’s left of his wings, before reaching up for the clasp at his neck that holds up his compression suit. There’s a muffled gasp that comes from the side after he’s rolled it down to his stomach and for a moment he’s confused because his injuries aren’t that bad are they? His pain tolerance is high, but not that high.

And then he remembers that at their angle the kids can see his back.

More specifically they can see what it looks like these days.

Oh.

Despite the way pain crackles down his nerves his wings still instinctively flare out across his back to protect him, even if it's a bit pointless since they’ve already seen it and he doesn't have enough feathers left to hide all the damage anyways. Keigo doesn’t look at the scars very often, doesn’t need to when he still has nightmares that leave the lingering smell of his own flesh burning in his nose afterward. He’s not ashamed of them, but well, the particular memories attached to their creation aren't something Keigo likes to dwell on.

Dabi has seen them—is both the one who seared them into his skin and the one he allows to rub lotion across the scars when the skin gets too dry—and he’s allowed Toga to gently trace the edges from time to time when they’re both pacing the hideout early in the morning with dark circles under their eyes, but that’s it. Not even Tokoyami has seen them despite being one of the only people allowed in his hospital room when he was recovering after the raid.

Regardless, it shouldn’t matter. He’s a hero, scars are just another part of the job—though between his back and face he’s forever ruined for the photoshoots and modeling gigs the Commission used to sign him up for. Personally, he’s not really complaining about that part.

So he forces himself to relax and draw his wings back into something more comfortable as Recovery Girl checks him over. She clicks her tongue every once and a while during her assessment. Keigo hopes that’s a good sign.

“You seemed to have had quite the lively patrol,” she tells him as she steps back.

Keigo shrugs. “Occupational hazard.”

“Indeed.” She eyes his back speculatively. “You have several serious lacerations and contusions along with five or so broken ribs that I can discern. I’m afraid I’m not familiar enough with the anatomy of your wings to know if something is wrong, but I don’t doubt there’s likely broken bones there too.”

“Probably,” he agrees. They’d need to do x-rays to confirm, but he’s broken his wings enough times to know the feeling. Although his bone density is greater than a normal human's, considering how he got thrown around he’s honestly surprised he's not in worse shape. 

“Alright you two, back to your dorm,” Recovery Girl tells the students hovering over his shoulder. She glances at the hero before turning her eyes back to the kids. “Hawks will be staying here for a while, at least the day. Please let your teachers know so they can plan accordingly.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Aizawa,” Midoriya replies dutifully. The green-haired boy pops into his vision a moment later as he and Bakugou head to the door and offers Keigo a smile. “I hope you feel better Hawks!”

You and me both kid, he thinks wryly. “I’ll try my best.”

The two of them are barely out the door before Recovery Girl is turning her attention back to the hero. “My quirk works by speeding up the body’s natural healing process, but it’ll leave you feeling drained after.” she explains. “Considering the state you're in right now I’ll work on your more serious injuries first and stabilize you. Knowing you young heroes I doubt you've been taking care of yourself like you should," by her tone and judging eyebrows she clearly disapproves, "so after you rest and regain more of your strength I'll look at fully healing you.”

“Sounds good to me.” After all, this means Keigo will be expected to stay here for a significant amount of time. At some point the hero will have to leave.

All he needs is five minutes.

.

.

.

Recovery Girl wasn’t kidding when she said using her quirk would take a lot out of him. It’s a weird sensation with Keigo’s cells buzzing while his head feels like it’s being weighed down by an anvil. It’s like he went on a bender without a scrap of food in his stomach.

Still, he feels leagues better than when he first got here. He barely puts up a fuss as she forces him out of the rest of his gear and into a pair of soft scrub bottoms afterwards. She offers him an accompanying shirt that's styled to accommodate for his wings and Keigo is quick to put it on and cover his back once again. The hero has already seen all of his scars but he still feels uncomfortable with them exposed around people he doesn't know. 

For a while he dozes as Recovery Girl settles down at her desk and works. He wishes he could take advantage of the quiet and get some real sleep, but even if he didn’t have an ulterior motive he’s never been comfortable letting his guard down around people he doesn’t know. Recovery Girl might be a seasoned hero but Keigo doesn’t know her, doesn’t trust her, not enough anyways, and that’s sufficient to keep him from drifting off completely.

A few people filter through during the morning: students coming in for a quick check up and a couple of heroes asking the heroine a question or for an update on something she’s been consulting on. With the curtain drawn he can only hear their voices and make out vague shapes beyond the white cotton, but nothing in particular catches his attention.

Finally she pokes her head in sometime past noon. “Oh good you’re awake. Are you feeling better?”

“I’m getting there.” He gives an experimental stretch of his wings and is pleased when he only gets a few twinges of discomfort rather than the sharp ache from earlier. That’s a hell of a quirk she’s got there.

“I’m going to head over to the cafeteria for some food. Do you want me to grab you anything?”

Keigo’s stomach doesn’t tolerate as much processed food these days as it used to, but if it’ll keep her out of her office longer he’ll order every meal on the menu. “Anything with chicken is fine by me.”

Recovery Girl nods. “Alright then, I’ll be back soon.”

He waits and listens until the vibrations of her feet fade to the point that he’s sure she won’t be coming back. 

It's time to get to work.

He slips out of the bed, bare feet hitting the tile with a soft thump, and makes his way to the filing cabinet. He detaches one feather and sends it to the door to listen for any incoming vibrations while another two fly into his waiting palms. They’re small, delicate, and just what he needs to pick a lock.

For an organization that places such a high priority on the safety of their student body, UA seems to have fixed all their attention on protecting them from outside threats. Then again, the only people here are heroes and aspiring hero-students. Who would expect a threat from the inside with a population make-up like that?

Keigo shakes his head as he starts on the first lock. All these heroes so sure of themselves and those around them. The idea of a traitor in their midst would probably never cross their mind. It’s an idealistic mentality, one that he’s never had the luxury to indulge in. He’s been under a microscope long before Skeptic ever attached micro bugs to his wings.

Not even a minute has passed before the lock clicks. Keigo pulls the drawer back, fingers quickly flicking through the files packed inside.

Now, if he had a file on a notorious villain that he didn’t want anyone to find, where would he hide it? Can’t just write his villain name on the folder after all. It could be under a pseudonym, some sort of John Doe or whatever. If they're smart they'll have hidden it in another student's file, or created a fake one that he wouldn't notice or have the time to sift through.

There’s nothing standing out to him here. He pushes the drawer back into place and gets started on the next one.

“Come on, where are you Dabs,” he murmurs. It’s possible the file he’s looking for isn’t here and that there’s a more secure location they’re keeping it. Maybe Recovery Girl gave it to someone else for safeguarding—Eraserhead perhaps, or possibly Nezu. If that’s the case he’ll have to look into breaking into their offices, their houses even if it comes to that. It’s risky, more than he’s comfortable with given the precarious circumstances, but he’ll do whatever’s necessary. He’s seduced and lied and murdered for his missions before. In comparison to that, breaking into a hero’s home is nothing.

He’s on the last drawer when he finally finds something promising. It’s a small thing, but it’s the only file he’s come across that doesn’t have a name written down. It might be nothing. 

It could be everything.

He slides it out and flips it open, still crouched beside the cabinet.

“There you are.” Keigo stares at the picture of Dabi paperclipped to the file. He’s clearly been injured, white bandages wrapped up his arms and peeking up above the neckline of the scrubs they’ve put him in. His eyes are closed, probably unconscious, but the hero can still see the pain lingering in his pinched face. The edge of his talon digs into the report, paper creasing, as something dark and ugly screeches in his chest. Geten better pick a god and start praying that Keigo doesn’t find him.

He better pray that if he does it’s the heroes that are holding his leash.

Keigo closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath and exhales harshly through his nose. Forces himself to loosen his grasp on the file before it becomes a stress grip.

He opens his eyes and reads through the rest of the file. 

For the most part it’s all clinical notes from Recovery Girl on what she has observed from monitoring Dabi’s recovery. Which makes sense since, you know, this is a medical file and all. There are basic descriptors of height and weight. A chart that maps the extent and severity of the villain’s burn scars. Speculation on the mechanics of his quirk.

What Keigo really cares about is the medication listed and their delivery instructions. The IV drip must have been used early on while the villain was still healing, but there’s also a medication listed further down called Symbitasol that's given as a needle injection. Keigo isn’t familiar with the names of the various quirk suppressants on the market, but he does know a guy who is.

Standing from his crouch he places the file on the desk before moving across the room to where Recovery Girl had stashed his gear. Fishing through the inner pocket of his flight jacket he finds his phone. Somehow it made it through the whole fight without even a crack in the screen and Keigo is going to have to send a fruit basket or something to his agency’s support team for their ability to make his phone nearly indestructible.  

There’s a notification for an unread text message on the lockscreen and he figures he has enough time to read it as he opens the app. 

bossman

it’s handled

Keigo’s fingers fly across the keyboard as he types back a response.

tweety bird

#bestbossever

bossman

and don’t forget it

fucking come back soon

himi almost stabbed jin yesterday

if she comes after my switch i’ll dust you

that shit’s limited edition

Keigo frowns. Fuck, he hadn’t thought about Toga when he called UA up. He hasn’t been gone all that long, but he knows she has issues about any of the League leaving for extended periods of time. They don’t talk about it, but he’s pretty sure it has something to do with their dealings with the Hassakai. He thought she’d be better off since Twice was still around but maybe he’d underestimated how thrown she’d be with both him and Dabi gone.

tweety bird

i’ll be home soon

With a shake of his head he minimizes the chat and gets back to the task at hand. He can worry about Toga and the rest of the League later. He snaps a picture of the medication list along with a few more of the file in general for him to analyze later before sending them off to his contact.

Just in time too. Barely a minute later his feather picks up incoming footsteps. Two sets. He recognizes Recovery Girl by the accompanying tap of a cane against the tile, but the other’s are whisper-soft even to his feathers. It’s similar to Toga, but not quite the same.

He slips his phone back into his jacket and is careful to put the file back exactly where he found it, a feather quietly closing the drawer as he crawls back into bed. He recalls the one at the door too, pausing only to have it close the curtain again before returning to his wing.

By the time the door slides open he’s sitting up with his wings tucked over the headboard and falling into the space between the bed and the wall, head cocked just so and a smile playing at his lips.

The curtain parts and Eraserhead pokes his head in. Ah, that’d be why he couldn’t identify the second set of footsteps. It’s annoyingly impressive how well he can mask his presence. 

“Hawks,” he greets evenly.

“Well, you’re not the yakitori I ordered,” Keigo jokes.

“I apologize for the wait.” Recovery Girl comes over now and hands him a small takeout container. “Aizawa was asking after you on behalf of his students.”

“Tokoyami was particularly worried when Midoriya explained how the three of them found you this morning.” Okay, ouch. Guess he’s not pulling any punches.

Keigo rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to freak everyone out like that.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Eraserhead agrees. “Still,” he eyes Keigo speculatively and he has to fight the urge to hide himself behind his feathers, “care to explain how you ended up like this?”

Hm. Well. That’s a good question.

“We had a disagreement.”

“A disagreement,” he repeats dryly. He raises an eyebrow. 

Keigo opens the take out. Meets Eraserhead’s gaze head on as he pops a piece of chicken into his mouth. “Yep.”

They stare each other down for a long minute. His feathers pick up the staccato vibration of his phone going off from his jacket. Not even ten seconds pass after the first call ends before it starts ringing again.

His phone goes silent and Eraserhead finally sighs as he folds his arms over his chest. “Did they get away?”

In a manner of speaking. Does it count if he let one of them go with its tail tucked between its legs to report back to its master while he called the most wanted man in Japan and asked him to play glorified janitor for the other? 

“Well, I wouldn’t say I let them, but yeah. For now anyways.” He’s sure they’ll be back. And he’ll be waiting when they do.

“Quirks?” the older hero asks.

“Strength types.” Keigo shrugs. “They’re hard for me to deal with.”

“So it would seem.” Despite the bored tone Eraserhead’s eyes are sharp, picking apart every answer the younger hero gives him. “This a part of your pet project? Looks likes it’s more than just rumors.”

“Well, I have been known from time to time to get it wrong." He can practically see the cogs turning in his head, can already imagine what conclusions he’s drawing. If the people he’s going after are strong enough to beat him up like this, well it’s only logical to—

“You shouldn’t be handling this on your own.” Yep, bingo.

Despite knowing it was coming Keigo still bristles. “I’ve got it under control Eraser.”

“Clearly that isn’t the case,” he shoots back, voice annoyingly calm. “Or else you wouldn’t be here.”

“You don’t trust me to conduct my own mission?”

Honestly, it’s laughable. Sure, he teams up from time to time with other heroes because it makes sense strategically, or it’ll make for good optics or whatever pro it is that Keigo is taking advantage of in the moment. Everyone knows though that he prefers to work alone. He moves too fast and doesn’t have the time or the patience to wait for everyone else to play catch up. It’s how he clawed his way to number two and how he’s held on to it since. And yet here Eraserhead is, questioning that judgment. 

The older hero is undeterred by the edge biting into Keigo’s tone. “All I’m suggesting is that you take advantage of the circumstances you’ve found yourself in. You’re far from your agency right now and there are plenty of capable heroes at UA.”

Maybe he would be more interested in Eraserhead’s proposal if his mission was as simple as getting an illicit drug off the streets. Really that’s more of an unintended but welcome by-product. His true objective here, well, that’s not something he exactly wants getting out there.

There’s the Commission’s stake in this to consider of course, the secrecy and hidden agendas they weave into every mission they give him. When it’s all boiled down though it’s personal. And he wants to keep any nosy heroes as far away from that as he can.

Still, Keigo tilts his head, flashes Eraserhead a closed-eyed smile to hide his irritation. “And who would your recommendation be?”

He flips through a mental list of all the heroes here that he knows of. None of them match the kind of firepower or quick-thinking he’d need to keep up. But then that would mean—

“How does Todoroki Shouto sound?”

Chapter Text

How does Todoroki Shouto sound?

Shouta knows that offering up one of his students isn’t something Hawks is probably expecting considering the circumstances leading to this particular conversation include one of the top heroes in the country being currently treated by Recovery Girl. He could have suggested any number of UA heroes, or even himself. Todoroki is one of his most capable students though, his potential exceeds that of many of his colleagues, and with his provisional license he technically has the authority to act under a hero’s supervision. 

Of course, even though all of that is true, Shouta doubts the kid will be in any danger remotely similar to what Hawks just experienced. It’s clear by the way he carefully hedges his words that he doesn’t want anyone prying into this mission of his. If Hawks agrees to it, anything he drags Todoroki on will likely be in the vein of helping little old ladies and saving cats from trees. Perfectly boring and more importantly perfectly safe.

Even if he did end up in some kind of trouble—and it’s always a possibility when he’s friends with trouble-magnets like Midoriya and Bakugou—Shouta doesn’t plan to let the kid go in alone. He fully intends to shadow whatever they do and take advantage of his student’s blunt personality to draw out Hawks’ true intentions here.

He’s convinced now that there’s something going on, something bigger than just coming for Dabi or as simple as getting Trigger off the streets that’s drawn the younger hero to UA. A Pro of his caliber returning with those kinds of injuries… Shouta doesn’t care how secret this mission is. This is his home, his family. If there’s that big of a threat right under their nose he’s going to root it out with his own two hands, Hawks and the Commission be damned. Still, that doesn’t mean he’s not here for the villain as well. You don’t get into a position like that by taking things one at a time after all. 

He’ll doubtlessly try to steer them away from his actual mission, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there still isn’t something to be gained or learned on either front. No matter the potential buried under youth and inexperience Todoroki is just a kid. Hawks won’t have to work as hard putting up a front around him as he does with Shouta, and that might just cause him to let something slip, whether it’s about his true operation or his overall objective.

He’s good, he’ll give him that. His intelligence and charisma are almost frightening when he thinks on it too hard, but he isn’t infallible. When it comes down to it, he’s just as human as the rest of them, and Shouta is a patient man.

Hawks tries to deflect, twist pretty words this way and that, just barely stopping short of flat out telling him no. Shouta is firm though, unyielding, and he finally relents on the condition that Todoroki agree to it first. Like he’s convinced the kid won’t want to work with him.

Shouta had seen the contemplative look on his face when Tokoyami first described his internship under Hawks, has heard the hesitant questions about how his agency is run and can only imagine what he’s comparing his classmate’s answers to in his head. Slightly more recently there are the patrols under Endeavor where the winged hero has joined them. Bakugou always came back complaining and Midoriya gushing about seeing his quirk in action, but Todoroki’s return was usually quiet and preoccupied. 

Shouta has no doubt he’ll jump at the chance.

He considers how to explain everything as he heads back to the dorms after being shooed away by Recovery Girl. If he even should. Would it be better to detail out the ulterior motives driving his decision or leave his student in the dark so as to not compromise anything? Todoroki’s brutal honesty is both refreshing and slightly off-putting, and the idea of lying and playing with his words might be too ill-fitting for him to successfully pull off. And he has no doubts about Hawks’ skills. Besides, Shouta hasn’t shared his suspicions about the hero yet and he’d hate to risk tarnishing the kid's view of him until he has a more concrete foundation to stand upon.

When he walks through the front door Shouta is greeted by the familiar sight of barely contained chaos. There’s a flurry of activity around him, students rushing in and out of the dining room even as Iida lectures them about the dorm rules with choppy hand signs. From the kitchen Shouta can hear Bakugou shouting orders and insults in the same breath. He grabs Kirishima as he runs by.

His shark-toothed smile is blinding as he whirls around. “Oh Mr. Aizawa, you’re back!”

Shouta raises an eyebrow. “What’s going on?”

“Well we heard about what happened and with how upset Tokoyami seemed about it we thought we could invite Hawks over and maybe all have dinner together?” He grows unsure of himself under Shouta’s blank gaze but steels himself and forges on a moment later. “That way Tokoyami can see that Hawks is okay. Plus, he’ll definitely feel better after having some of Bakugou’s cooking!”

Shouta is still wary about having the hero so close to Dabi, but then again he had decided on using Hawks as something of a guinea pig for his students to test their budding skills on. Plus, now instead of one he’ll have twenty of them poking and prodding at the hero in a space with over a dozen hidden recording devices stashed around. Who knows what they’ll be able to drag out of Hawks when they’re all together. 

Kirishima is looking at him hesitantly, obviously preparing himself to have their well-meaning intentions shut down. Shouta lays those fears to rest as he places a hand on his student’s shoulder.

“As long as Hawks agrees to it, I don’t see a problem.”

Kirishima beams, puffing up under his touch. “You’re the best Mr. Aizawa!”

“Kirishima get your ass in here!”

They both look in the direction of the shout as his hand falls back to his side. Bakugou is an absolute menace in the kitchen, but Shouta will easily admit that some of his best meals have come from the blond. Granted, the bar is just about on the ground between him and Hizashi, but that doesn’t mean he won’t take full advantage of the situation to smuggle out some of the leftovers once everyone has gone to bed.

“Oh shi-shoot. Shoot,” Kirishima catches himself and gives him a sheepish smile at the near slip. Considering some of the things that have come out of his own mouth, Shouta is in no position to judge. “I gotta go see what he wants, but I’ll make sure and tell everyone that everything’s cool. Oh! I think Shinsou was looking for you earlier too. Later Mr. Aizawa!”

With that he takes off to the kitchen and Shouta lingers a moment to text Hawks about the offer. Maybe it’s a little underhanded tacking on it’ll make everyone happy to see you but it doesn’t hurt to push a little. Not that he’s particularly worried. The winged hero has an image to maintain, so in truth he has very little choice in whether or not to accept. Barely a minute passes before his phone chimes.

Hawks

Save a seat for me.

He follows after his student at a much more reasonable pace and only goes far enough to poke his head inside the kitchen. Bakugou looms over everyone, chef’s knife in one hand and a spatula in another. Over his clothes he’s wearing an apron a size too big that probably belongs to Sato—the only other person allowed to cook alongside him. Shouta’s gaze sweeps out over the rest of the kids crammed in here and notes the usual suspects.

Bakugou jabs the spatula at Kirishima. “Make sure to get everything on that list to the letter Shitty Hair. I ain’t paying for anything extra, so no weird shit.” His last words are pointed directly at Kaminari and Ashido and he stabs the knife in their direction to drive it home.

“No fun at all,” Kaminari whines. 

Ashido pouts, dramatically draping herself over Kaminari’s shoulder. “Don’t be such a Karen Bakubro. Live a little!”

Bakugou glares at them. “Only. What’s. On. The. List.”

“You can count on us!” Kirishima declares, thumping his fist against his chest.

Shouta shakes his head as he withdraws. These kids. Honestly. Now, where to find his wayward student? 

Shouta decides to start with the dining room and begins moving in that direction A few seconds later most of Bakugou’s friend group tumbles out of the kitchen and towards the front door, Kaminari and Ashido whooping and hollering as Sero and Kirishima laugh and follow behind. The hero hides his fond smile in the folds of his capture weapon. Hopefully Shinsou will be in the dining room, and if not then someone in there might know where to find him. 

Inside he finds Yaoyorozu directing a handful of students. “Okay, just a little more to the right—Jirou raise your arm just a little, yes that’s it!”

Shouta blinks. Once. Twice. Tries to process the scene and finds himself coming up blank. Uraraka and Jirou are suspended in the air three-quarters of the way up the wall through the former's quirk and appear to be trying to hang a banner that reads Welcome home Izuku Hawks while Yayorozu directs from the head of the table.

He recognizes the banner of course, remembers shaking his head when the class insisted on it in order to help welcome Midoriya back after they finally managed to convince him to return to campus. Shouta can still recall the scathing tirade he went on after Midoriya, shaking and barely able to stay on his feet, had been bundled up to bed and he’d cornered All Might before he could slip away. Shouta hadn’t even known what he was angrier about at the time: sneaking the older man’s protege out of the hospital before his injuries even had a chance to fully heal, or allowing him to go on some lone wolf kamikaze mission to keep All for One away from his loved ones. Like isolating himself from everyone who’s ever cared for him was going to stop All for One from coming after them. As if UA wasn’t always going to be a target whether Midoriya was safe within its walls or not.

All Might hadn’t been able to meet his eyes for weeks afterward.

Shouta shakes his head, pushing down the residual anger that he doubts he’ll ever fully be able to let go of despite knowing how much All Might regretted it. He suspects that particular problem child will be giving him headaches for a long, long time.

Shouta clears his throat and only feels a little bad about interrupting his students. “Oh, Mr. Aizawa,” Yaoyorozu says as she turns and sees him. “Is something wrong?”

Uraraka and Jirou pause and look at him expectantly. He takes a deep breath, holds it a moment, before exhaling. The fact that their first instinct when they see him is to ask if something’s wrong—

“Have any of you seen Shinsou?”

Yaoyorozu tilts her head in thought. “I believe he’s still in the control room.”

Shouta sighs. “Thank you.” He lifts his gaze to the banner. “It looks nice. I’m sure Hawks will appreciate it.”

The girls all smile at him and he feels the tight ball in his chest unwind just a little. He’s reminded of just how young they all are. They might all be shooting to become heroes but at the end of the day they’re still children. Despite what he’s teaching them it’s on his shoulders to allow them to stay that way for as long as he can.

The control room, as it’s been dubbed by the students, is really just an empty bedroom on the fifth floor that they’ve converted into a base of operations for their surveillance of Dabi. Shouta pushes the door open and finds Shinsou just where Yayorozu said he’d be.

He’s hunched in a chair in front of the wall of screens that had been installed, each one connected to a direct feed from one of the cameras the students hid throughout the dorm. Bathed in the harsh blue light the kid’s face is thrown into sharp relief, highlighting the high arch of his cheekbone and the dark circles hanging under his eyes. Shinso’s posture is rigid, almost unnerving in the gloom of the rest of the room, and Shouta can’t help comparing him in his head to some tortured gothic statue.

The only sign of movement comes from the small silver lighter twisting between his fingers. It winks in the artificial light every once in a while, and from the rhythmic way he fiddles with it Shouta doesn’t think he’s consciously aware of what he’s doing. He doesn’t know the significance behind it, hasn’t asked because he values his student’s privacy, but he hasn’t seen him without it once. 

“Shinsou.”

Shinsou jerks at the sound of his name, fingers stilling and clenching around the lighter. There’s the sound of joints popping as he twists his back and cranes his neck. His voice cracks with rust. “Sup Aizawa.”

Shouta thinks about flipping the lights on, but Shinsou has always seemed to prefer the shadows in a way others shy away from. So instead he closes the door behind him and leans against the wall. His eyes will adjust.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah, it’s…” he trails off, gaze wandering back to the screens. His fingers start playing with the scratched silver casing again. He’s too far away to see, but he knows the top corner shows the feed from Dabi’s room. 

Shouta follows along easily enough. “What about Dabi?”

He watches the kid open his mouth, lips forming soundless words as he bites them back at the last minute. He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, abandoning the lighter to one hand while he drags the other roughly through his wild hair. “Did you know he talks in his sleep?”

Shouta raises an eyebrow though the darkness hides the expression. It’s not something he’s expecting to hear. “What does he say?”

“Not much,” he admits with a shrug. “Names, sometimes. The League mostly, but others too. He has nightmares about them.” He chuckles, a self-deprecating huff of air. “I can relate.”

“What does that tell you?” he asks, careful not to bring up the last part of that statement. The circles under his eyes look like they’ve been scoured into his skin, a permanent ring of bruised purple just like the villain in their care. They’ve been there as long as Shouta has known him, and he’s sure they’ll still be there long after he’s gone. All he can do is help ease them as best he can.

“That he’s human, just like the rest of us,” Shinsou answers. He glances down at the lighter for a moment before pocketing it. “That he has people he cares about and probably misses.”

It’s a dangerous line they walk between staying objective about the criminals they capture and the human lives buried underneath. They can sympathize, but they can’t empathize. The truth is that Shigaraki Tomura is just a boy, groomed and warped by the only hands that reached out when everyone else pulled away, traumatized by a quirk that destroys everything it touches. It is also true that he’s caused untold destruction, has killed heroes and civilians alike, and wishes to bring society toppling to the ground. Shouta can sympathize, but given the chance he'd arrest him and bring him to justice for his crimes every time.

The same can be applied to any of the League. At the end of the day they’re only human, lashing out at a world that has allowed them to slip between the cracks. It doesn’t change that they need to face the consequences of their actions. 

“Yes,” he finally answers, “he probably does.”

Silence falls over them, Shinsou’s gaze going distant. The hero lets him work through his thoughts, content to relax in the gloomy quiet of the room.

Finally he says, “I want to try talking to him. Without any teachers around.” 

It’s clear he’s been thinking about this for a while. Shouta considers him carefully.

Bakugou's defeat at Dabi's hand has been a chilling reminder to the students that even quirkless he can still be dangerous. The quirk cuffs around his wrists don’t make him any less of a threat then when he had blue flames at his beck and call, yet here Shinsou is asking for the chance to try and get close to the villain just days after.

He should reject the request, and yet Shouta finds himself thinking about it. Despite working Dabi from different angles and with different teachers he hasn't given them much to go on. The lack of response hasn't fazed Intuition—in fact it's made her even more impatient to get the villain in an interrogation room—but if his theory is at all accurate there's a chance he'd be less hostile towards a student compared to an established pro hero. Shinsou is good at reading people and teasing out the truth, and with his quirk he'd be able to stop Dabi in the event things go badly.

Going underground means that he'll be put in situations just like the one he's suggesting now, and more often than not he won't have backup to rely on. It's still risky considering who Dabi is, but Shouta had gone into this intending for any involvement of his students to be in a controlled environment where he or another teacher could be close by to diffuse any situation that arose, and this couldn’t be a more textbook situation. He can monitor Shinsou from this room and intercede if he doesn't like the way things are going, even if it'll give him gray hairs by the end of it. For Shinsou's sake it's an opportunity he can't outright dismiss.

“Do you understand what you’re asking?”

“I’ve watched all the available footage and audio, I know you and the other teachers have been trying to get him to talk.” Shinsou pauses, eyes flicking to Shouta, before elaborating. “I know you haven’t really gotten him to open up to anyone. Obviously you and Intuition are going to get around to interrogating him soon, but every little bit helps right?”

Shouta does have to concede the point there. Even though there are things going on behind the scenes that the students don’t know about as they gather their evidence so they have enough iron spikes to drive between the chinks in Dabi’s armor in order to pry the truth out, Shinsou is right that every little thing helps. Whether they know it or not through Dabi’s interactions his students have already loosened some of his scales and exposed a tender spot or two. It’s up to him and Intuition to deliver the killing blow.

“Are you prepared for this?” Shouta asks. This won't be like sitting in on lectures at Theta or the handful of crash course lessons Intuition has thrown at them so far.

He gets a decisive nod. “Yeah.”

“Alright then,” he relents. It won’t happen right away, but they’ll figure something out. “We can work out the details later. First we have to get through dinner first.”

Shinsou cocks his head to the side, no spark of recognition in his eyes, and he wonders just how long the kid’s been cooped up in here.

“Dinner?” he parrots.

Shouta will have to gather everyone together and tell them how he wants them to test their skills on Hawks first, will have to pick and choose his words so they don't see the ulterior motives and only the chance to improve upon the foundations he and Intuition have laid for them but after…

Shouta sighs. “Dinner.”

.

.

.

Standing on the doorstep of the 2A dorm, Keigo isn’t quite sure what to expect.

Eraserhead said that the students wanted to invite him over for dinner, which sounds harmless enough, but he knows just how deceiving looks can be. No doubt this is another test, another attempt by the older hero at poking holes.

He rolls his shoulders, wings shifting slightly behind him. Everything is just about fully healed up, or at least as healed as Recovery Girl was willing to grant him. He’s still feeling pretty sore and tired overall, but by the time his feathers grow back in he’ll be at full strength again. 

He could have refused Eraserhead’s offer, could have explained that the healing sessions left him more drained than he was expecting and he needed to rest. It’s a legitimate excuse and one that would be likely accepted with barely a passing glance. But this is also an opportunity to investigate the dorms that he can’t pass over. It’ll be a full house with him at the center of attention, but if plays his cards right he might just be able to slip away from the crowd with no one the wiser.

If he plays his cards right, he could see Dabi tonight.

So in the end, he doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

Keigo takes a moment to settle himself. There’s no room for self-doubt here. No room for mistakes. 

He reaches out and knocks on the door.

He doesn’t think ten seconds pass before it flies open and half the class spills out. They’re kind of like puppies as they bound around him, smiling and congratulating him on his recovery. It’s a bit overwhelming really.

Things like recovering from serious injuries are a hushed affair back at the League. Lots of quiet footsteps and soft hesitant touches. Rewrapping bandages and biting down on the remnants of a leather belt as broken bones are set so they don’t heal crooked. Overlapping thoughts of they’re okay and thank god and pressing close to hear a heartbeat or feel the rise and fall of a chest.

Then again, when you have someone like Recovery Girl at your beck and call, maybe you can afford to be a little more cavalier about things like that.

He’s more or less bullied through the front door and over to the couches. The whole floor smells like spices that tickle his nose and threaten to send him into a sneezing fit. Keigo is placed in the center and plays nice with the kids while they all find a spot to sit even as he has to fight to keep a grimace off his face. They’re just so loud . He can usually deal with things like that fine, but he’s exhausted, and being placed in an unfamiliar environment on top of that has all sorts of nerve ends firing in the back of his head from his feathers.

His wings flex a little and Keigo wishes desperately for a quiet room and a bed. There’s a hum in the air that shivers across the edges of his remaining feathers. Quieter than the voices and heartbeats of the children around him and pitched just higher than the whine of the lights above them. It’s unexpected enough that he likely would have missed it under different circumstances, but it's a frequency he was once intimately familiar with for months, and he glances back behind him as Eraserhead and one of his students come their way.

He’d be flattered if he thought he was the cause of such scrutiny, but they have no reason to suspect him. Not enough to throw Keigo under this kind of surveillance at least. No, this is all for Dabi. Keigo is just swapping places with him for tonight. 

That’s fine though. He’s used to having the spotlight on him, whether it’s the public’s eye or Skeptic’s bugs or the looming omnipresence of the Commission. Compared to all that this is nothing. Deception, manipulation—Keigo’s an old hand at that by this point. Gifts from his father that the Commission then elevated to art. These kids surrounding him with baby fat still lingering in their cheeks don’t stand a chance.

“I thought we were going to eat,” he says, turning his attention back to the students.

“Bakugou isn’t quite finished yet,” one of them tells him. “But you’ll know when he’s done.”

Keigo raises an eyebrow. “I will?”

“Oh yeah,” one of the blonds laughs. “You’ll definitely know. He’s extra like that.”

He nods along even though he doesn’t get it. He’ll just take his cue from the kids. Which speaking of, they’ve all gone eerily silent as they stare at him. Their eyes glitter with barely-repressed curiosity and he holds back a sigh. Of course they’re happy to see him in one piece, but there’s nothing better than good gossip.

So Keigo plasters a conspiratory grin on his face, leaning in just a little like he’s bringing them in on some juicy secret, and gives them the rundown of his night. He keeps it clean, simple, and just vague enough that they can make their own inferences.

He doesn’t tell them about the small-time heroes he tracked down and talked with beforehand, or the part where he shed his feathers and posed as a strung-out junkie in the same alleys they got jumped with a covert hidden up his sleeve waiting for a dealer to walk his way and take interest. He doesn’t tell them that he laid in wait in the rafters of that empty warehouse for hours after he got their names and had Giran put his nose to the ground to find the time and place of their next drop. 

Instead Keigo weaves a story of half-truths and lies of omission. Eraserhead is watching him through the whole performance, a slight crease on his forehead and a frown tugging at the corner of his lip as Keigo tells the students about how he was flying around and got that gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right. The kind of thing aspiring young heroes eat up with wide eyes and imaginations running wild. The kind of thing you realize is a bunch of shit when you finally graduate to the real world only to realize that there’s no such thing—just stupid luck and a touch of hard-pressed instinct.

“I can’t believe they got away,” the blond from earlier groans as Keigo’s story winds down to the present moment.

“You can’t win every fight kid,” he tells him, shrugging. Besides, it was less the dealers got away and more they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. More the other guy didn't care about making a mess of them to get to him. “They got away this time, but it won’t happen again. Especially with me on the case.” He says it with the conviction and assurance of a hero befitting the number two position and the students look up at him with equal parts admiration and reaffirmed faith.

“Though,” he admits, “I’m not a fan of having to grow back all these feathers.” His wings stretch a little before bedding back down, neatly drawing everyone’s attention to them. 

“How long does it normally take?” Midoriya asks. His fingers twitch like he wants to reach for a pencil and piece of paper.

Keigo shrugs, wings mirroring the movement. “Depends on how bad they are, but a week at most usually. This time though? I’ll be back in the sky in a few days tops.”

It's an unexpected but welcomed perk of Recovery Girl's quirk. Without her it probably would have taken the week for them to fill back in, but in just two short sessions that time has been cut in half. Already the pin feathers that'll become his primaries have sprouted up and once those fully come in it'll be much easier for the rest of them.

“So cool,” the redhead murmurs.

The conversation devolves into something along the line of twenty questions, but Keigo can't help noticing that there's something odd about it. The questions are just a bit too pointed, a little too invasive, and he can see the clumsy attempts for what they are a mile away. He's sure Eraserhead notices the unimpressed look in his eyes when he glances his way. Sending in kids to do the work for him, how classy. Still, Keigo supposes he can humor them. They're still learning after all.

He's just finishing the story of his debut—the whole thing's a lie of course, staged by the Commission every step of the way—when there’s a loud explosion from the other side of the floor and a shout of “Come and get it assholes!”  and Keigo nearly sighs with relief. Nearly, since the unexpected sound has him jumping to his feet, wings flared and mind already planning possible evacuation routes for the students while his eyes search for the source. There’s no cries of alarm from around him though, no fear or stunned looks. Instead they all appear vaguely amused as they start slowly getting up.

“Typical,” Tokoyami mutters, rolling his eyes as he stands. 

“Hey, at least he didn’t call up useless extras this time!” 

The pink-skinned girl swoons dramatically against the redhead. “Now that’s what I call character development, right Eiji?”

Keigo’s wings lower hesitantly as Eraserhead comes and stands beside him. They watch as the students all wander off in the same direction. “Come on, dinner’s ready.”

He knows he’s casting some serious side eye at the hero, knows he's only six years older than these students, but honestly. What the fuck.

“Dude. Your kids are fucking weird Eraser.”

He sighs like a man resigned to his fate. “Don’t remind me.”

Dinner goes smoothly. Well, as smoothly as he thinks it could ever go. Class 2A is certainly something else. He smiles fondly at the banner and thinks that it's something Toga or Twice would do if given the opportunity. Dabi and Shigaraki would probably have written dickhead or pigeon in place of his name though.

The thought makes him laugh and when Tokoyami cocks his head in a silent question Keigo just grins and ruffles his top feathers. 

“Are you okay Hawks?”

He’d been listening in on a lively conversation halfway down the table but he turns now at the sound of his name. Keigo recognizes the girl from the Sports Festival and recalls her having some sort of antigravity quirk. He flips through the volley of names that had been thrown at him as everyone properly introduced themselves around the table. Ah yes, Uraraka. 

He tips his head and offers a smile. “Just peachy. Why?”

“Well it’s just,” she fidgets in her seat. “You haven’t really eaten anything. Bakugou didn’t make it too spicy for you did he?” 

Ah. Keigo glances from her mostly-finished plate down at his own. To the untrained eye it looks like he’s been picking away at it, but anyone paying attention would realize the food has only been pushed around to give the appearance of being consumed.

Thankfully her question also provides him with an easy answer to give. “Yeah sorry, I’m not too big on spice. Doesn’t agree with my stomach.”

Frankly, not much agrees with his stomach these days. But these kids don’t need to know that. Still, this katsudon is excessively spicy. What little he’s forced himself to eat simmers uneasily in his stomach. It makes him wonder how anyone’s eating it without steam coming out of their ears. 

Uraraka turns an accusing eye towards Tokoyami.  “Why didn’t you tell us Hawks doesn't like spicy food? You were his intern.”

Poor Tokoyami sputters and Keigo silently apologizes for inadvertently throwing him under the bus. “I didn’t know. All we ever ate was take out.”

He points his fork at him. “Come on, that was the best yakitori you’ve ever had, don’t lie to me kid.”

He supposes the mumbled, “I guess it was good.” is acceptable. But just barely. Keigo thinks if he were physically capable of it he might’ve shed a tear when he realized he couldn’t eat there anymore. He’s pretty sure the owners did cry a little, he was their best customer after all before he ghosted them.

He engages a bit more with the students and casually learns they’ve all developed something of a spice-tolerance after having Bakugou cook for them so often, but mostly he thinks about how to carefully disentangle himself from the group and find Dabi. He’s here, somewhere, that much his feathers tell him.

His scars itch. 

Keigo considers his options. He wasn’t planning on Eraserhead bugging the dorm, doesn’t know if the students are in on it or not, but either way it presents a whole new set of challenges. He can only pretend to get lost so many times.

He could find a place to slip outside, fly up until he finds the room they’re keeping Dabi and pry the window open. It’ll be shaky but he technically has enough feathers to manage that much. That would negate the bugs at the very least, but it opens up more problems. Still, there has to be a place all the cameras and presumably microphones transmit their data to. Keigo doubts they have the same range and capacity as Skeptic’s bugs, so that would mean it’s collected somewhere close. If he could just find it, say he stumbled upon it and accuse them of harboring a villain… 

Hm. That’s an idea.

Still, the key is finding it in the first place. It might not even be in the dorm, could be in an adjacent building or somewhere else on campus that he’d have to find an excuse to get into. He glances around the table and resigns himself. No, he won’t be seeing Dabi tonight. But he can at least lay the groundwork.

He cuts back into Uraraka and Tokoyami’s conversation, which has now grown to include Midoriya, Todoroki, and the littlest Iida. 

“You know,” Keigo says, pitching his voice just high enough that the rest of the class can overhear him. “I’ve never lived in a dorm before.”

The dozen or so conversations around the table grind to a halt. The hero just barely holds back a grin. Hook, line, sinker. It’s too easy really. 

“Really?” Uraraka asks. “Don't the other hero schools have dorm systems though?”

“Uraraka please don’t be rude,” Iida begins but Keigo interrupts him smoothly.

“Nah it’s okay,” he says, waving him off. “I didn’t have to. I was sponsored by the Commission and they handled all my accommodations and training personally until I was old enough to debut.”

“That’s…” Uraraka trails off hesitantly. Like she knows there’s something wrong with what he just told them but can’t quite put her finger on what it is. Something sitting right on the tip of your tongue that you just can’t shape into the proper word.

“That’s very generous of the HPSC,” Iida declares in her silence. “They must have believed you would make an exceptional hero!”

Keigo thinks of the name ripped from his bones before he could realize what it meant, of an absent mother selling her child to the highest bidder. He thinks of the metal table they strapped him to, the resistance training, the blindfold he was forced to wear. The body modifications and quirk suppressants in order to make him more appealing to the public. How he was taught to tilt his head just so and hood his eyes and whisper sweet nothings into an unsuspecting ear while he toyed with the steel-sharp feather behind his back.

“Guess so,” he says. His smile never reaches his eyes.

“It’s been a lot of fun actually,” Midoriya tells him. “I was a bit overwhelmed at first, but living with all your friends is pretty great.”

“Personally, I think it’s too much drama,” Tokoyami mutters. “It’s like watching a reality tv show in real time.”

“Oh come on,” Yaoyorozu soothes. “It isn’t that bad.”

“Well,” Asui counters. “Bakugou did blast Kaminari through the front door on the first day.”

The blond in question glares at them near the end of the table. “Fucker damn well deserved it.”

“It was the best,” Ashido cackles. “There were scorch marks everywhere .”

Kaminari tilts his head, eyes cast to the side as he thinks. “Pretty sure I still have the shirt somewhere in my closet actually.”

Bakugou scowls. “Why the fuck would you keep that?”

“I’m sentimental.” He grins and throws his arm across his shoulders. “It was the start of a beautiful friendship after all.”

Kaminari’s arm is violently shrugged off but nobody can miss the telltale red tips of his ears. “You’re a fucking idiot Dunce Face.”

The blond dramatically clutches his heart. “Aw Kacchan, I knew you loved me.”

“Fuck off.”

“We had a competition later that night to see who had the best dorm room,” Midoriya continues. His smile turns sheepish. “My room was, ah, a bit much I guess.”

“It’s a fucking shrine is what it is,” Bakugou grumbles, arms crossed over his chest.

Ashido jabs his shoulder. “We all know you’re a closet fanboy Bakubro, you can’t act all high and mighty here when you literally chose your hero name—”

There’s an enraged roar and the two of them are rolling on the ground, Ashido gasping between her laughter as Bakugou tries to fit his hand over her mouth. Keigo chances a glance at Eraserhead and sees the tips of a grin hidden underneath his capture weapon even as he rolls his eyes at his students’ antics.

“You can see them if you want,” Shinsou offers. Keigo holds back a triumphant grin as the kid shrugs and casts his eyes towards his teacher. “Long as Aizawa says it’s fine.”

“Ooh ooh I want to show Hawks my room!” Ashido yells from the ground. A moment later a fluff of pink hair pops up over the table. “It’s super bitching.”

“Ce n'est tout simplement pas vrai,” Aoyama declares with flourish. “It is clearly I who has the most splendid dorm.”

Twenty heads swivel in their teacher’s direction. Eraserhead sighs. “Fine. I suppose if you’re all finished—”

He doesn’t even get the chance to finish before all the kids are clambering out of their seats. Keigo allows himself to get swept up in the crowd, echoes their excited grins and lets the chatter wash over him. If his smile is tinged with something darker, well, no one is paying enough attention to notice.

His wings spread as they reach the second floor. The constant hum of the surveillance bugs on the first floor is absent here. He imagines they’ll be absent just about everywhere aside from where they’re keeping Dabi.

His feathers begin to drop behind him.

It isn’t until they reach the fifth floor that something feels amiss. There’s an odd heat signature radiating out of a passing room as they head from Yaoyorozu’s cramped room to Sato’s across the hall. There’s too much output to be normal. He shakes his wings, feathers shuffling and resettling.

Keigo has a sneaking suspicion that he’s found his target.

He releases one of his feathers and sneaks it underneath the crack between the door and floor. It crackles with heat and static electricity, the hum of a dozen monitors. Bingo.

“So, do you like it?” 

Keigo blinks and realizes they’re all standing in Sato’s room. He drags his attention from his feather after hiding it away and offers a smile. “It’s a pretty sweet setup. Must be nice having only one neighbor.”

“Yeah, sometimes I stress bake late at night, so I was worried about accidentally waking anyone up,” he admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “But Todoroki hasn’t seemed to mind yet.”

“I had no idea,” Todoroki admits with a shrug. “I guess I’ve always slept through it.”

The rest of the rooms pass with little fanfare. Keigo thinks of his own room back at the Commission growing up, the stark sheets and white walls with no windows. The only spark of color had been his Endeavor plushie tucked safely under his pillow.

But that’s neither here nor there, so he pushes the thought back under the floorboards of his mind and focuses on the task at hand. He gives all the students rave reviews, sighs at how cool it must be going to a school like UA. They promise him he’s welcome any time. Keigo will hold them to it.

After that everything winds down. They go back to the first floor and most drift to the couches and TV while those assigned to dish duty move to the dining room to clean up the mess left in their wake.

Eraserhead chooses this moment to pull Keigo and Todoroki aside.

So, he’s really going ahead with trying to saddle him with a kid for the rest of his time here, huh?

This is going to completely railroad his investigation—which he’s not unconvinced is Eraserhead’s true objective in offering up his student—but Keigo doesn’t exactly have room to voice his objections. So he listens instead as the older hero breaks things down for his student and explains the situation as best he can with the limited details he’s been given. Todoroki takes it all with an impassive expression. Kid’s got one hell of a poker face. It must run in the family. 

“And Hawks is okay with this?” he asks once his teacher finishes his spiel.

Keigo flashes him a reassuring smile and lies through his teeth. “I’m good as long as you’re good kid.”

Todoroki dips his head, no doubt weighing the pros and cons of getting the chance to team up with the Number Two. Endeavor certainly won’t be happy. Hell, he’ll probably think Keigo is trying to poach his prized son out from under him. Not that he wouldn’t love to take the opportunity to watch the vein on Todoroki Enji’s forehead bulge, but right now he’d prefer it if his son stayed as far away from him as possible.

“In that case I'd like to come with you Hawks.”

Dammit.

Chapter Text

“You don’t trust him.”

Shouta blinks and takes in the question as he regards Bakugou leaning against the wall beside him. In front of them a scattered group of students are lounging around on the couches, reveling in the lazy Saturday morning stretching out before them while the rest are still asleep in their rooms. Really he should still be in bed catching up on what precious little sleep he’s able to get these days. He blames the lure of Bakugou’s breakfast cooking for coercing him downstairs.

“Hawks,” his student adds, in case Shouta isn’t already following his line of thought. He thinks about lying, about hedging his words, but Bakugou appreciates upfront honesty.

So in the end what he says is, “I don’t.”

Bakugou scowls, arms crossed over his chest. “Why?”

Shouta considers how best to answer. “Hawks has… close ties to the HPSC. I’m sure you recall him saying that he was sponsored by them.”

Bakugou raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, so? What do they have to do with anything? They just run the provisional license thing right?”

“Not quite.” God, if only it were that simple. “You’ll learn more about them in your third-year coursework but they’re considered to be a special branch of law enforcement. The provisional license exam is one of many things they’re responsible for.” 

Shouta pauses and thinks about his next words. The original purpose behind the Commission was to create a balance between heroes and the citizens they serve, but over the years that balance has shifted. It was slow, progress in inches rather than miles, but before they knew it they’d wormed their way into almost every facet of society. They were meant to be two sides of the same coin, connected yet equal. These days Shouta finds himself thinking more and more of that old story about David and Goliath. 

“They’re more behind the scenes than what you’re used to seeing,” he eventually continues. “They investigate the most dangerous villain cases and coordinate takedowns with hero agencies and local police. It’s very likely that they’re investigating the League and that they’ve asked Hawks to look into Dabi’s disappearance for them.”

“And we just happen to have him chilling in the attic,” Bakugou says. He waits for Shouta’s nod before following up with, “So why don’t we just give him to them? I know you didn’t want to hand him off to the police because they couldn’t handle it or whatever but these guys sound like the Big Leagues. Bet they have a better chance of making him talk then we do.”

“They probably do,” he admits. Who knows what kind of quirks they’ve amassed over the years. 

“But,” Bakugou prompts, sensing the unfinished thought. 

Shouta sighs and wishes for his sleeping bag. Right now might not be the best time to introduce a kid to the idea that their hero institutions aren’t as shiny and noble as they’d have everyone think, but how else is he supposed to explain why he doesn’t want to give the villain over to them?

“UA and the Commission have… different approaches to how we view and deal with villains,” he finally decides before his silence becomes telling. “Their intentions are sound, but as it stands we believe Dabi is in better hands here then at the HPSC.” 

Bakugou is quiet for a long moment, eyes narrowed. He’s smart enough to read between the lines, and Shouta trusts that he’s also smart enough to keep whatever revelations he discovers to himself. 

“So we’re keeping Hawks away from Dabi until we can figure out if he’s working for them or not.”

“Basically,” Shouta agrees. And since he’s curious he says, “You don’t seem to trust him either.”

The kid’s scowl deepens. “Never fucking have, even if no one else sees it.”

“Not everyone has the same instincts as you,” he counters softly. “What bothers you?”

“His smile,” he admits. Bakugou shifts his weight from one foot to the other, a pensive look washing over him. “It’s like looking at a doll. Creeped me the hell out whenever he joined up with us on patrols. And besides, the Number Two hero showing up out of the blue right after we get our hands on the villain the bigwigs are looking for?” He snorts and rolls his eyes. “How stupid does he think we are?”

“He underestimates you,” he tells him. “All of you.” And why wouldn’t he? Despite the closeness they share in age the gap between them spans the length of canyons that run deep. But Shouta has learned not to count these kids out. Knows that they’ll fly over that chasm if given half a chance when you’re looking the other way.

“You’re using IcyHot to keep an eye on him aren’t you?”

The hero raises an eyebrow. “What did he tell you?”

“Just a bunch of shit about backing Hawks up.” Bakugou gives a dismissive wave of his hand. “Dumbass doesn’t realize what’s up but I’m not as stupid as him.” He narrows his eyes at Shouta. “And I sure as hell ain’t letting you leave him alone with Hawks until I figure out what that shifty bastard’s doing here.”

“You want to join them?” Shouta considers it. Todoroki is a nice opening piece, but having Bakugou both there and in the know adds new angles that they can use to their advantage. “I’m not sure if I can get Hawks to agree. He barely tolerated Todoroki.”

“I ain’t asking for permission,” he says. It’s nearly impossible these days to tell Bakugou no when he puts his foot down and stares his opponent into submission. Being on the receiving end of that look now Shouta can understand why. He can see in moments like this how far his student has come since he first stepped foot in UA. When he was more concerned with victory and willing to step on anyone to achieve it, compared to now where he’s putting himself between a trusted comrade and a possible threat with no hesitation. 

Shouta hides his smile beneath his capture weapon.

He’s going to make an outstanding hero someday.

“Come on,” he pushes himself off the wall and gestures for Bakugou to follow, “we’ll need to make some alterations to your costume first.”

.

.

.

Keigo thinks he could strangle Eraserhead right now.

Because of course it’s not just Todoroki that he gets saddled with. He’s a package deal these days apparently, and at his sides are Midoriya and Bakugou, who are the last people Keigo wants around right now. It’s not what they agreed to, but annoyingly enough he doesn’t have any real valid excuse as to why they can’t all come along with him. Not yet anyways.

Still, if he has to babysit he should probably set some ground rules. Starting with appropriate times to meet up. Because six in the morning on a Sunday is not going to cut it.

He closes his eyes against the three students standing outside his apartment door and hopes they’ll miraculously disappear when he opens them again. But no, still there. How disappointing.

Keigo is currently in his pajamas and barely standing upright at the moment. Thanks to Eraserhead’s solution to micromanaging him he’s had to forgo allowing himself to recuperate while he lets the rest of his feathers come back in and instead sneak out in the middle of the night to continue his investigations without interference.

Which means that he quite literally crawled in through the window not even thirty minutes ago with no other thought in his head but burrowing underneath his bedsheets and sleeping the rest of the day away.

Apparently that’s a luxury he won’t be getting today.

“Not that I don’t love seeing all your faces at six in the morning on this fine Sunday,” he lies through his teeth, barely swallowing back his irritation, “but why are you here?” He focuses on Todoroki and ignores the way his pin feathers are itching. “Eraser sent you a copy of the patrol times I listed, right?”

“He did,” the kid confirms with a distracted nod, eyes just a little unfocused and clearly lost in thought.

“And?” He knows the kid isn’t dumb or illiterate, but it clearly outlines the evening and overnight patrols Keigo decided on in order to accommodate for any classes he helps out with during school hours.

Technically as far as UA is concerned what he does on his off-hours is his own business, but as for the Commission his time at the school is nothing more than an unimportant sideshow. While he's here they still fully expect him to keep up with his patrols. Any drop in productivity or performance will have him being yanked out of UA and relocated back to Fukuoka. So to keep the Commission happy and give himself an excuse to be off campus without anyone suspecting his absence he submitted a patrol schedule to the school and sent a copy to Eraserhead once it was approved.

Which means that there shouldn't be any reason for these three to be at his front door this early in the morning.

“We’re sorry to be bothering you so early,” Midoriya pipes in when it’s clear his classmate isn’t going to. Bakugou snorts, clearly thinking otherwise. “But considering that we’ll all be patrolling together soon, well, we thought it might be a good idea to practice together first.” He gestures between the three of them. “We’ve been working together for a while now so we know each other's strengths and drawbacks, but we thought it’d be good for you to see what we can do for yourself. Plus we can get an idea of how to better accommodate your quirk as well!” 

There’s a sparkle in the kid’s eyes as he finishes up, no doubt excited about getting to show off and learn more about a top hero’s quirk. Keigo can’t say the idea is horrible. He’s seen them in action before, but that was a while ago. They’re bound to have progressed since their initial internships under Endeavor. It’s smart, but did they have to start so damn early?

Coffee. God he needs some coffee first.

He doesn’t give explicit permission for them to follow him inside, but whatever. At this point Keigo is just about resigned to whatever bullshit this school decides to throw at him next. Scratching lightly at his chest he wanders over to the cramped little kitchen they’ve given him and starts working on fixing up a cup of coffee. He’ll think of something for breakfast. Eggs, maybe.

Sighing he leans against the counter after starting a pot and pitches forward as he brings a wing around, fingers searching out the most annoying pin feathers and attempting to remove some of the keratin coating the shafts so they’ll unfurl faster while he waits for the coffee to finish brewing.

It’s always so much better when Dabi does this. Keigo is never as gentle with the feathers as he should be and the way he’ll warm the tips of his fingers as they rub the coating off turns him more or less into putty for the rest of the day. But it’s not like Keigo can go knock on his window and ask for help so he’ll just have to deal with it himself.

“Where—” Keigo looks up at Todoroki. He’s staring right at him, well more accurately his chest, mouth open slightly. He swallows and attempts again. “Where did you get that shirt?”

His shirt? He glances down. Why would he be asking about his—

Oh.

Oh shit. This is one of Dabi’s shirts. One of the ones he’d stolen out of his closet and ripped out holes in the back for his wings because Dabi had oh so helpfully reduced the upper half of one of his compression suits to ash the night before. Impatient bastard. Keigo had decided to take one of his shirts for compensation, and so he didn’t have to walk around the hideout bare-chested in the morning.

The corner of his mouth quirks. He’d nearly gotten roasted when Dabi realized which shirt he’d stolen. Personally he didn’t think it was any different then the other dozen band shirts he had, but apparently this one had been a limited edition.

It’s become one of his favorite sleep shirts and Keigo hadn’t even thought twice about bringing it with him when he was packing up his things. Maybe he should have left it at home, but then again he hadn’t exactly been expecting this turn of events.

“Didn’t think you’d be into that kind of scene,” Bakugou says as he perches on one of the barstools next to the island.

“I’m not,” Keigo answers. One thing he and Dabi definitely do not share is music tastes. “I, uh, liberated it from a friend.” And oh god, that is a terrible pun. He’s been spending too much time with Twice. Good thing the wording will fly right over their heads.

“Oh.” Todoroki’s expression shutters, mouth pulling into a small frown. “Sorry it just—reminded me of someone.”

Of course it would. He nods along and thanks god for the coffee machine as it starts beeping away to let him know it’s done. The conversation dies away as he busies himself with that and by the time he focuses back on the kids they’ve already moved onto a new topic.

Keigo lets their chatter wash over him as he nurses his coffee and thinks he’s dodged all his bullets for the morning when Bakugou pipes up.

“The fuck is wrong with your nails?”

Keigo freezes.

“Kacchan!” Midoriya says sharply, swiveling in his chair to face his classmate. “Don’t be so rude.”

Bakugou throws his hands up. “What? Look at those nails and tell me they’re not fucked up.”

You always need to wear your gloves, Hawks. The public will be scared of you otherwise.

“Not helping ,” Midoriya hisses before turning back to the hero. His eyes linger on his hands even as apologies spew forth and Keigo has to force his wings not to fold protectively over his shoulders and hide them from sight. “I’m so sorry I promise he didn’t mean anything by it!”

His grip on his mug is bone-white, every feather on his back steel-sharp. Don’t stress grip don’t stress grip—

“It’s okay.” He forces his lips to twist into a strained smile, forces his voice to stay level. Fuck, he’s so off his game right now it’s ridiculous. Stupid, stupid should’ve thrown them on the moment they showed up at the door. “They’re talons actually.”

“Isn’t your quirk just your wings though?” Todoroki asks. There’s an innocent curiosity in his voice, none of the hostility or near-obsessive interest he’s gotten from the other two since he’s been here and Keigo clings to that and uses it to ground him. Toga is like that too, curious just for curiosity’s sake without an ulterior motive, and it’d been as much a breath of fresh air back when they first met as it is now with Endeavor’s son.

Just pretend you’re talking with her.

If he closes his eyes he can imagine himself back in the hideout, lying on the couch and half-dozing as nimble fingers card through his feathers while answering each giggling question volleyed his way, dust motes glittering in the late afternoon sunlight, the muted sounds of quiet conversations coming from another part of the room. He takes a breath and then another. Slowly the feathers on his back soften again. By the third he’s able to loosen his grip enough that the mug in his hand isn’t in danger of shattering. 

“No,” he eventually answers when he has control of himself again.

“But in the Registry—” Midoriya begins with a frown and puzzled look on his face.

“My wings are the primary aspect of my quirk,” Keigo says, neatly interrupting the kid. He really doesn’t want to explain all of this to them, but it’s better to get it out of the way now. Like ripping off a bandaid or something. “So it was decided to only list them in the Quirk Registry. As it stands I take suppressants to repress the secondary aspects of my quirk, so for all intents and purposes my wings are my quirk.”

The idea of a hero, particularly as high ranking as Keigo is, taking suppressants to restrain a part of their quirk is clearly a shock to these students. Midoriya looks particularly troubled by this.

“But why would you…”

“They’re unnecessary,” he explains. The same explanation his handlers gave before administering the first shot. “You might’ve not gotten there in your studies yet but heteromorphs like myself are further classified into subgroups depending on the severity of the mutation. For example your classmate Asui would be a limited heteromorph. Meanwhile someone like Spinner from the League of Villains would be considered a full heteromorph.” 

Midoriya has already started mumbling under his breath, a break-neck ramble he can’t make heads or tails of.

It’s Todoroki who asks, “And what about your quirk?”

Keigo sighs and puts his half-empty coffee on the counter behind him before crossing his arms over his chest. “I would be classified as a complex heteromorph, though the ability to telekinetically control my feathers is considered to be emitter-based. I'm a halfway marker of sorts. For the most part I pass as relatively human aside from a few physical mutations,” his wings flutter behind him, “but I also have instincts and drives that limited heteromorphs don’t experience. Those instincts could possibly interfere with my hero work so I take targeted suppressants to control them.”

Or at least, he used to take them. He hasn’t had a single dose since the aftermath of the PLF raid.

“So what? You’re telling us you’ve never fought at one hundred percent because you don’t want to get distracted by a shiny rock?” Bakugou scoffs but there’s a genuine anger smoldering in his eyes. Keigo recalls the clips his handlers had him watch from the Sports Festival during their first year, how he had to be pried off of an opponent that hadn’t fought at their full strength and forced onto the podium afterward. The idea of someone not giving a fight everything they've got, of not going one hundred percent all out, likely still infuriates him.

Keigo thinks of the bird noises the Commission tried to stamp out of him, the crown of feathers carefully hidden in his hair that he used to have plucked, the rough patches of scaling around his ankles as a kid that they’d had surgically removed. The permanently crooked fingers from repeatedly having a stress grip broken by force.

“Basically,” he says eventually. “As for physical mutations like my talons I wear gloves in order to prevent any kind of civilian injury while I’m out in the field.”

Todoroki dips his head even as Bakugou scowls. “That’s very considerate of you.”

Heroes make sacrifices for the greater good every day. You want to be a hero, don’t you Hawks? 

He offers the kid a humorless smile. “I like to think so.”

.

.

.

As much as he hates to admit it, Eraserhead’s kids are pretty impressive. 

They take him over to their quirk-gym after giving him a chance to change into most of his gear and spend the first half of the morning showing off their skills. Keigo watches from the sidelines as they spar with each other, feeding off each other’s quirks and moves with an ease that speaks to the level of familiarity they have with each other. Even at full strength he’d probably have trouble dealing with all three of them at once.

They have their drawbacks of course. The most obvious is the sheer raw power all three of them possess. Todoroki is the most glaring example with his massive walls of flames and ice filling the arena—clearly Endeavor’s influence at work. But the other two aren’t much better off.

Midoriya’s quirk is so powerful it breaks his own bones if he’s not careful, and even though it’s obvious Bakugou has done extensive training to increase the precision of his quirk, it doesn’t change the destructive nature of it. If anything it amplifies it even more since the explosions he releases are so concentrated. 

Also when did Midoriya learn to fly? Or more accurately float. There’s those black whips too, that’s definitely new. Keigo narrows his eyes. He knows the kid’s quirk is technically listed as undefined in the Registry, but all prior indications pointed towards it being a strengthening quirk. Almost a mini-me of All Might’s quirk except this one destroys the body of its owner when not properly regulated. Now all of a sudden it looks like he has three separate quirks.

It’s like Shigaraki after Jaku, and that thought leaves him more unsettled than he’d like when he thinks about his past obsession with UA and Midoriya in particular. His fingers itch to pull his phone but he holds himself back. Later, when he doesn’t have to worry about anyone seeing or hearing anything they shouldn’t.

Keigo sighs, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he refocuses on the students. They’d be ideal heroes to throw at a super-charged villain if there was no need to consider structural damage or civilian bystanders, but otherwise they become a liability.

Lots of agencies that hire those kinds of heroes try to counter with special teams that go out after a battle and mop up the aftermath, or partner them with heroes that can help contain the destruction or at least mitigate it somewhat—the Lurkers for example—but look at any of the top ten. Aside from Endeavor, none of them have especially devastating quirks. Not the kind that could level entire neighborhoods at least. Their quirks are powerful but it’s their precision and accuracy that they’re known for. And in the cities where most of the villain takedowns happen that matters more than raw strength.

Then again, considering the mark All Might left on heroics it makes sense. For all he was a shining beacon of light for everyone and society’s symbol of peace, he was a hero with an incredibly powerful quirk. An incredibly destructive quirk. Keigo knows the statistics, knows that before he retired that All Might had one of the highest hero insurance policies in the country. He used to spend millions on claims and lawsuits every year because the blowback from his quirk had either injured or killed innocent bystanders and victims. 

It’s hard remembering that despite all the people he’s saved that such a kind-hearted hero also inadvertently hurt a fair number as well. Keigo never worshipped him the same way everyone else did as a kid, and even if he had the Commission would have stamped it out in a heartbeat, but he also can’t judge these kids for looking past something like that though. Their current Number One isn’t much better and he was the one Kiego used to admire when he was younger.

He likes to think he’s learned a lot since he was a kid.

“Alright,” he says with a clap of his hands. Keigo walks forward into the center of the gym as the fight between the students fizzles out. “I’ll admit that was pretty cool to watch.”

“That was just a warm up,” Bakugou argues, arms crossed against his chest as much as the bulky grenadier on his arm will allow him. 

Keigo shrugs off the narrow-eyed glare with a practiced smile. “Even more impressive in that case.”

“Do you want to join us Hawks?” Midoriya asks.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have enough feathers to spare to give you guys a good fight.” He’s trying to grow them back, not lose them all over again. Against an explosion and fire quirk he’d end up back at square one, and he doubts Recovery Girl will be as accommodating a second time around. “But,” he continues upon seeing the disappointment on the kid’s face, “I do have another suggestion. A wager of sorts you might say.”

Keigo knows he has their attention with the way they straighten up. His wings stretch to their full height and even though they’re not completely filled in yet their eyes still go wide with awe as they take in the display.

“Now, I agreed to Todoroki accompanying me on my patrols. However, I did not agree to you two,” he says, casting his gaze towards Midoriya and Bakugou. Midoriya ducks his gaze in embarrassment while Bakugou bristles, mouth opening to start what is probably an expletive-filled argument, but Keigo forges on, “However, I’m willing to take you on as well if the two of you can catch me.”

“Seriously?” Bakugou asks.

Keigo nods. “Seriously.” With a few flaps he’s hovering above their heads. He cocks his head, hints of a lazy grin curling at his lips as his hands settle on his hips. “Fair warning though, I hold the title for fastest airspeed hero on record. Think the two of you can keep up?”

It’s not a fair fight, but then again he’s not trying to be fair. The two of them exchange a glance before looking up at him. Bakugou smacks his fists together, sparks flying. “Gonna make you eat those words.”

“Have to catch me first,” Keigo taunts. “I’ll be generous and give you five minutes to try.” And in a blink he’s gone. There’s an enraged roar behind him following a series of explosions and Keigo grins outright now. Not even Endeavor can keep up with him unless he lets him and this gym gives him more than enough room. 

These kids are fast though, he’ll give them that. Tenacious too. No easy coasting today unfortunately. It feels a bit like his simulated flight lessons back at the Commission and Keigo falls back on muscle-memory as he corkscrews and weaves through the air. There’s a few times one of them gets within range, but with a hard bank or aerial maneuver he’s in the clear again. He feels a bit bad, but not enough to let them win. Not with everything he stands to gain. 

Keigo is confident he’s got this one in the bag, and maybe that’s why he doesn’t expect the wall of ice that suddenly rises up in front of him. His wings flare and slow him down just enough for a hairpin turn that has his gloved hands skimming the edge of the ice as he shoots up and over. There’s an explosion out of the corner of his eye and Keigo jerks away from the blast only to nearly fly into a spiraling tower of ice that erupts from the ground. He catches sight of green sparks clinging to the side and brings his wings in tight against his back so he dives beneath Midoriya as he leaps off the ice.

Lungs heaving, he skims the floor and sees Todoroki’s eyes locked on him from the sideline before another wave of ice blocks his sight. Well fuck. That’s clearly cheating, but then again Keigo hadn’t exactly laid down any ground rules—not to mention this test was one Bakugou and Midoriya were meant to fail by design. Sneaky little shit, just like his brother.

In a matter of minutes the gym becomes a minefield cluttered with yawning ice chasms and stalactites that the hero has to dip and duck around to avoid. His back muscles strain with the effort, his feathers still ache from earlier, and he doubts even with all the coffee in the world he could stop his gaze from starting to swim at the edges considering how little sleep he's gotten in the past few weeks if not the whole month. Fuck, it’s been five minutes right? Shit, he should have made this easy on himself and only given them two.

More on auto-pilot than anything he flies around a thick stalactite of ice hanging from the ceiling and fully blames it on the sleep deprivation when he’s taken off guard by the explosion waiting for him.

He’s able to mostly dodge but he can feel the edges of some of his feathers get singed in the blast. They’re always more sensitive when they first come in and for a moment his senses are blinded as he shies away from the pain echoing back at him. It’s in that split second that a black whip wraps around him and binds his wings to his back. Keigo drops like a stone almost ten feet before the cord goes taut and he’s left to hang. He twists his neck and looks up to see the victorious grins aimed back down at him.

Keigo groans as he lets his head tip back and closes his eyes. Number two hero bested by a couple of students. 

God he should just turn his license in now.

.

.

.

They haven’t even been patrolling for two hours and Keigo already wants to just fly off and leave. 

When he’s by himself he usually takes to the skies or perches on the edge of a tall building for most of it, preferring the relative quiet and bird’s eye view they give him. He only ever patrols on the ground when he’s teaming up with a hero that doesn’t have a compatible quirk or needs to pose for a selfie or two.

Keigo’s official social media is mostly curated by his PR team aside from the promotional days where they let him take control of his accounts after a few dozen stern lectures about maintaining his public image, but to keep him trending they have him target certain social metrics each patrol: number of selfies and videos of him saving kittens from trees and whatnot. He’s sure the slew of inter-agency patrols he’s instigated lately have them pleasantly surprised and happy, but the big bucks come from team ups with any of the other top ten. His polling numbers went up almost ten points after his last joint patrol with Endeavor among all demographics.

Keigo can almost hear the numbers crunching in the back of his head as he smiles and waves at someone who shouts his name. He catches sight of an elderly woman struggling to get her groceries bag up a set of stairs and sends a few feathers her way with barely a passing thought while two others yank a couple of kids back onto the sidewalk before they can get sideswiped by oncoming traffic. 

“So efficient,” Midoriya murmurs beside him, bright-eyed as he follows the feathers zipping this way and that.

“All part of the job,” Keigo tells him with a smile and a wink. It’s getting on into the evening and the roads and sidewalks are truly starting to fill up as everyone makes their way home for dinner. Brushing up against so many unfamiliar people is uncomfortable, but he makes sure to keep his feathers soft. A few schoolgirls run over to them, middle-school by the uniforms, giggling and tripping over themselves as they ask for an autograph.

“Are you guys heroes too?” one of them asks, peering around Keigo’s side to look at the UA students awkwardly standing behind him.

Midoriya and Todoroki look like a pair of deer caught in headlights and Bakugou is scowling like it'll scare them off from asking him any questions. Keigo’s eye twitches.

He knows Endeavor isn't exactly someone most people feel comfortable approaching, but he's pretty sure these guys have interned with other heroes that have a much better relationship with the public. Keigo knows that Bakugou at least spent some time with Best Jeanist. This shouldn't be anything new to them, but if this little arrangement of theirs is going to continue he might have to give them all a crash course in public speaking if only to keep their careers from imploding before they even have a chance to see the light of day.

Keigo gives the girl a blithe smile as he signs her backpack and hands it back. “They’ve still got a little ways to go, but they’ll be out here keeping you safe real soon!”

Once they’ve got what they came over for they run off towards a group of adults that look to be their parents and the same girl turns around to wave at them. “Good luck! Can’t wait to see you guys debut!”

Midoriya at least has the good sense to smile and wave back. “Thank you!”

Keigo waits until they’ve walked another block down before he stops and turns around. “Alright then, come on. You three up front.”

“Is there any particular reason?” Todoroki asks.

“Oh there’s a reason,” he answers, “but I’ll let you figure that out yourselves. Now get a move on chickadees.” 

“I ain’t a damn bird,” Bakugou grouses as he shoulders his way past.

Keigo allows them to push in front of him and when all three begin walking forward he puts a little distance between them. Not enough that if they get into trouble he’d have a problem getting to them, but just enough so that they stand out as their own little unit rather than hidden in the shadow Winged Hero: Hawks casts. 

Keigo doesn’t think they had even realized it as they move forward through the crowds. People start to take notice of the hero uniforms and there’s a few times someone comes over to ask for a selfie or an autograph. Keigo stays back and watches as they flounder at the newfound attention. Bakugou and Todoroki are both clearly uncomfortable, but their responses are very different. There's Bakugou: loud and brash, quick to anger and try to scare off anyone who comes close, and then there's Todoroki: awkwardly quiet and withdrawn. When they're approached as a group Midoriya acts as a mediator between the public and his classmates and the interactions go fairly smoothly, but forced apart he inevitably drifts to Bakugou's side and leaves Todoroki to fend for himself.

When his classmates get caught up talking with an elderly couple that has stopped to coo over their outfits Keigo approaches Todoroki. He can see the frustration in his eyes despite the blank expression as he looks away from his friends and over at the hero.

"I don't understand what we're doing here," Todoroki says to him. "This part of Musutafu has a heavy hero presence because it's so close to UA. It isn't known for high rates of villain activity."

"I know," Keigo agrees. "That's why I decided to take the three of you out here."

His brow furrows slightly in confusion. "Why?"

Keigo can't exactly tell the kid that this is his way of getting Eraserhead off his back while shielding the students from his mission so instead he asks, "What kind of hero do you want to be?"

"What?"

"What do you want to be known for?" he continues. He considers how best to phrase this. "When you're out here patrolling, what do you want people to think when they see you?"

"I want... to be a kind hero," Todoroki says at length. "My father has always been considered a strong hero. For a long time I believed that was all that mattered." His eyes drift over to his classmates, lingering particularly on Midoriya. "However, I've begun to realize that I want to be someone others can depend on."

Damn, no wonder Eraserhead is so smitten with this class. 

"How are you going to show all these people that?" Keigo asks, though not unkindly. He sweeps his hand out towards the people around them. "How are they going to know you're a kind hero if they don't even know your name?"

"I'm not very good at... talking to people," Todoroki admits. "Endeavor always said that heroes should be focused on doing our jobs."

"You don't have to give speeches," Keigo tells him, “but being a hero isn't always about stopping the bad guy. Sometimes all someone needs is a helping hand and a smile."

Subtly he shifts them so they're looking towards the crosswalk. The street is snarled with traffic and the sidewalks are packed as people wait for the lights to change so they can go across. In the crowd is a woman with an infant strapped to her chest. She's clearly stressed, hair frazzled and dark circles under her eyes as she struggles to hold a grocery bag against her hip with one hand and corral the two unruly children by her side with the other.

Todoroki looks back at him and Keigo inclines his head with a raised eyebrow.

"Where's Shouto going?" Midoriya asks as he and Bakugou come over after having finally finished talking to the couple, green eyes following his friend as he wades through the crowd.

"Don't worry," the hero says as he starts to steer them after Todoroki. "We'll catch up with him in a second."

As they walk he watches Todoroki through the sea of people as he comes over to the woman's side. She's clearly startled by his appearance but when he gestures hesitantly towards the heavy bag she's carrying Keigo can see her grateful smile as she hands it to him. The light turns and she reaches for one child while Todoroki reaches for another. In the end they form a chain, each one grasping one child's hand as the children link their own hands together. Todoroki bends his head towards them and even if Keigo can't hear what they're saying the thoughtful look in the student's eye tells him enough.

By the time they cross themselves the woman and children are leaving and he turns to face them with a soft smile still lingering.

"I think I'm starting to understand," he says before he's swept up by his classmates and pulled on ahead again. Keigo hides the fond smile tugging at his mouth beneath the collar of his flight jacket. 

Not long after without prompting he breaks away to return a wallet that had fallen out of a business man's pocket. As he's thanked the man asks, “So what's your hero name?”

“Me? I’m—” Todoroki pauses for a moment, a small furrow forming on his forehead before being smoothed over. “I’m Shouto.”

“That’s a wonderful name,” he tells him. “I’ll make sure to tell my kid about you. Stay safe out there alright?”

The kid nods and says in the most serious voice Keigo has heard from him yet, "I will."

As he walks away Keigo comes up beside Todoroki and puts a hand on his shoulder. He glances over and sees the small stunned look in his eyes and returns it with a knowing smile and an ache in his chest. The circumstances aren't remotely similar but in that moment he reminds him of Dabi so much it hurts. “You get it now Shou?”

Todoroki nods and Keigo squeezes his shoulder before letting go. The hero starts to pull away when he feels him stiffen, and even with the crowds around them this close he can hear the stutter in his heartbeat a moment later. There’s a sinking feeling in his chest as Todoroki’s voice comes out hesitant and so very young.

“Wait why did you—”

There’s a commotion across the street that cuts him off before he can finish what Keigo already knows is a damning question. He doesn’t even know what’s happened but before he can think he’s in the air and zipping across to deal with it.

Looks like an alley brawl that’s spilled out onto the sidewalk. There’s six of them total, three of them with physical mutations and the rest without. He already has a sinking suspicion about what might’ve started this and it’s only confirmed when one of them yells out a slur targeted at the heteromorphs. 

Gloves clenched into tight fists Keigo lands right between the two groups. The gust of wind accompanying the entrance is enough to knock one of the non-heteromorphs flat on their ass and Keigo has to bite back a smirk as he addresses them.

“Alright now, I think that’s enough.” He flares his wings in case they haven’t already recognized him. “Or do I have to get involved here?”

“They’re the ones that started it!” one of them snarls. By the looks of it he’s got a tiger mutation. His companion on the right has some sort of reptilian mutation and all Keigo can think about is Spinner and the few times he’s shared pieces of his childhood with him. The bullying and name-calling that’s followed him all his life until the League took him in.

“Like I’m gonna take orders from a fucking animal ,” a man from the other group shouts, slurring and likely drunk based on the shiny look in his eyes and the empty bottle clutched in his hand. Looks like someone decided to get started early today. Without his wings he’d tower over Keigo and he’s got the muscle to go with the build. Personally though, he's seen scarier.

Keigo pushes his visor up into his hair and stares him down knowing just how unnerving it looks when he doesn't blink. He grins wider than he normally would so he can show off the pointed ends of his canines. “So that's a yes then?”

His companion, also very drunk, spits at his feet.

He’ll take that as a yes.

Two feathers break off from his wings. The man who’d initially fallen down is just starting to right himself when one of his feathers whips around behind him to stab at a pressure point in his neck. At the same time his other feather completes the same action with the man who’d spit at him. In five seconds the two of them drop like sacks of rice. The third one abandons his bottle and Keigo allows him to come stumbling towards him. He watches him raise his palms, a bright light beginning to emanate from them, and adds illegal quirk usage to the assault and battery and public intoxication charges he’s already compiling in his head. 

With a grin he brings his feathers back before pulling his wings in and darting forward. Before he can blink Keigo has him on the ground with his knee digging into the man’s back, hands latched around his wrists and keeping one palm pressed against his back while the other is pushed into the back of his head.

“Fucking disgusting piece of sh—” The tirade becomes muffled as Keigo presses the man’s face further into the concrete. Only Dabi’s allowed to give backtalk.

“Now, now,” he admonishes, “Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners?”

“Hawks are you okay?” 

Keigo glances up to see that the UA kids finally managed to make it across the street and push their way through the crowd that had gathered around them. The entire encounter had taken just under a minute to wrap up.

“Just fine guys.” He shifts so he can replace the hand on the guy's back with his knee and flash the cameras a peace sign. “Party’s already over.”

With the fight finished the crowd begins to disperse. Keigo slaps a pair of quirk cuffs on the guy he has pinned before using his feathers to drag the man over to his companions. He instructs Todoroki to freeze them together and for Midoriya to contact the police while he goes over to the other group to check them over for any serious injuries and tell the three of them to sit tight while they wait for law enforcement. They’ll probably have to spend the night at the station, but if the fight wasn’t their fault like they claim everything should get sorted out by the morning.

“That’s an interesting move.”

Keigo glances up from the cut he’s wrapping and sees Bakugou hovering over them. “It comes in pretty handy when I have to get up close and personal, especially with emitter quirks. I can teach it to you if you want.”

“Maybe later,” he says offhandedly. There's an odd look in his eyes and Keigo feels like he’s missing something, but the man in front of him grunts in pain and he focuses back on his original task.

When the police show up he gives them the highlights and uses a few feathers to help lift the group of offenders into the back of the police car. The kids stand off to the side to take it all in and when it’s all finally settled and done, the police gone, Keigo turns and grins at them.

“Alright then, next one is on you guys.”

“Seriously?” Midoriya stutters. It’s kind of adorable how freaked out he looks. Kind of like a bunny with the uniform and everything.

“Seriously,” he confirms with a nod. “You didn’t get those provisional licenses for nothing right?”

“R-Right!”

Keigo’s grin softens and even though he hadn't wanted to bring them along in the first place he puts a hand on the kid’s shoulder and gives him a gentle push towards where his classmates are standing a few feet away. Classmates that will very soon become fellow heroes. “Don’t overthink it,” he tells him. “Just go out there and do some good.”

He watches him take a deep breath and through his feathers hears the jack-rabbit pace of his heart slow a beat or two. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got this.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Keigo lingers at the mouth of the alley, content to continue doing what they were before the fight broke out and allow them to build up a bit of distance before following behind. Already the street is bustling again like the incident never occurred.

He finds himself suddenly grateful for the ten-second attention span society has these days as a body presses up behind him, slipping deftly into the space between his wings.

Slim arms wind around his stomach and for a moment his feathers almost go sharp. But Keigo knows that heartbeat, knows those footsteps. He can feel the gentle sway of a feather through the air, tickles of sensation along the vane from long strands of hair, and his wings curl around them on instinct.

A sharp chin perches on his shoulder. “Found you Hawksie.”

Chapter Text

Found you Hawksie.

Keigo glances down the street where he last saw Bakugou, Midoriya, and Todoroki. Despite their distinctive appearances it takes a moment to pick them out from the rush-hour traffic. They’ve gotten stopped again about a block away by a group of kids but it looks like they haven’t noticed his absence. Not yet anyways.

“How long have you been following me?” Keigo slides his hands into his jacket pockets, laying his arms over the ones wrapped around his stomach and mostly hiding them from view. This isn’t a patrol route Keigo has done before so he isn’t familiar with the locations of the street cameras in the area.

“Not long,” Toga answers. He can feel her arms tighten around him and turns his head just enough that he can see hints of dark circles under her eyes. “Missed you.”

Keigo pulls his wings in tighter, feathers softly brushing against her, and his next words are spoken gently. “Shigs told you I was following a lead down, right?”

Toga giggles, a small smile spreading across her face. “He’s still pissy at you dragging him out of bed so early.” Her lips flatten out into a thin line and she tilts her head so he can better take in the thoughtful look in her eyes. “Is it him?”

It’s spoken simply despite all the implications behind it. Keigo sighs and nods. “Yeah, it’s him. Definitely knows I’m onto him too. Now it’s just a waiting game.”

It’s half the reason he didn’t want Eraserhead’s students out with him on the streets in the first place. He wasn’t expecting a fight in that warehouse, just a chance to observe and catch any new leads that might lead to his target. He’d been fully prepared to do things quietly, but that idea flew the coop when he was caught red-handed and attacked. 

He feels partially responsible. Keigo has been snooping around for a while of course, dismantling his target’s drug network as he chased down each new lead, and he knows at some point that he painted a target on his back. He never advertised it, but there are ears everywhere, and his secret investigation suddenly wasn’t so secret anymore. So in a way this confrontation was only a matter of time. 

Keigo doubts those dealers knew what they were getting into when they showed up to their usual drop—had no idea their operation had been compromised and that their supplier knew it as well. A simple case of wrong place wrong time, and when he understood the situation in its entirety it was too late to save them. 

Letting his injured opponent run back to report to their master is a calculated risk as much as it is a warning and a chance to get under their skin. A nice little reminder of who they're contending with. Make them uneasy, back them into a corner, and they'll make a mistake. It only takes one.

They’ll be itching to get to him before he can whisper his secrets into a willing ear. Keigo doubts they'd be crazy enough to attack him at UA, which means that they'll try while he’s outside its walls. He can handle himself, but these kids shouldn’t be getting caught up in something like that, not when they don’t know the reason behind it.

Toga pouts and digs her chin into his shoulder. “I don’t like those kinds of games.”

Keigo grins and wishes he could reach up and ruffle her hair. “Neither do I.”

There’s a moment of quiet and the hero glances back out towards the street to make sure no one’s paying attention to the two of them. Toga is sufficiently hidden under his feathers and he’s far enough inside the alley that the shadows help to hide them, but he still feels too exposed with a busy sidewalk only a handful of feet ahead of them. 

There’s also the question of who’s here with Toga. As far as he’s aware Keigo’s little work vacation at UA is the only exception to Shigaraki’s buddy system and last he checked it was still in full effect. Feedback from his feathers tells him that they’re alone in the alley, and Spinner and Twice would have stuck out to him like sore thumbs in the crowd. Shigaraki or Compress then? But if that’s the case then why haven’t they come over?

Before he can inquire Toga speaks up. “Dabi’s at UA, isn’t he?”

Keigo stiffens. He told Shigaraki that he'd gotten roped into lecturing at UA and that while he was stuck there he'd investigate Musutafu, but he'd made no mention of Dabi. Toga should only know as much as the rest of the League does, which explains why she isn't asking about his patrol with UA students, but even though she frames it as a question they both know it's not. “Where’s your buddy Himiko?”  

Toga just hums and tips her head up. Keigo mirrors the movement and follows her gaze to a nearby rooftop. Despite the rapidly setting sun he can make out a silhouette standing near the edge. Taking his hands out of his pockets he brings them back and under Toga’s thighs. She slings her arms over his neck at the unvoiced request and hops up to cross her legs around his hips.

Usually he prefers to carry people by looping his arms under their armpits or letting them cling to his chest koala-style. Dabi used to make cracks about refusing to be bridal carried in order to get around flying with Keigo, but honestly it just isn't practical even though it looks more dashing and heroic. Carrying people on his back falls into a similar vein since having all that added weight pressed against the base of his wings makes it hard to maneuver, however, Toga is one of the few exceptions with how small and light she is.

Secured to his back he lets his wings unfurl until they’re nearly brushing up against the sides of the alley before shooting up into the air. He makes sure to fly up high enough that no one will be able to see the villain clinging to his back and darts across to the rooftop in question. He lands on silent feet and lets Toga slip off of him, watching her dance around to finally face him.

Looking at her head on he can better see the circles under her eyes, the muted color and sharp edges of her cheeks that speak of missed meals. Her hair has been left down rather than pulled into the messy buns she tends to favor and even that looks limp. 

Keigo’s chest tightens as he remembers Shigaraki’s texts. If he’d known it was this bad he would have come back sooner.   

Movement out of the corner of his eye drags his attention away from Toga, and without the sun backlit behind them anymore Keigo recognizes the broad build immediately.

“So you’re the one who figured out he was at UA.”

“Did you know Symbitasol is considered a controlled substance by the Ministry of Health?” Todoroki Natsuo asks as he turns away from the edge and walks over to the two of them. “Every purchase is tracked and monitored on a secure database. When you have a friend that owes you a favor though, it’s pretty easy to take a peek and find out who’s recently been purchasing small shipments for the last few weeks.”

“Oh? That’s interesting, but you really didn’t have to go that far,” Keigo says, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. 

"Clearly," Natsuo deadpans. He has to resist the urge to stick his tongue out at the medical student like he's a kid again. “I just did it so that you wouldn’t be able to weasel your way out of the truth once I had Toga track you down.”

Damn, he hadn’t thought with Natsuo’s university schedule, not to mention the sheer distance between the campus and the villains’ current hideout, that he would go straight to the League like that. At least Keigo thought that he’d have more time. Then again, with Dabi involved all bets were off as to what Natsuo was and wasn’t willing to do.

“Natsu says I can’t meet his friend,” Toga claims with a pout like she’s letting the hero in on some big conspiracy aimed against her.

Natsuo waves her off. “I keep telling you that you won’t like them. They’re anemic, so their blood wouldn’t taste very good to you.”

“Anemic?” she parrots, tipping her head to the side in confusion.

“They probably don’t have enough iron in their blood,” Keigo chimes in.

Her eyes light up in understanding right before her face puckers. “Your friend doesn’t sound cute at all Natsu.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know,” he says with a laugh. His eyes slide over to Keigo. “But how about we break Dabi out of UA first, yeah?”

There’s a lie already on the tip of his tongue when Toga turns her attention back to him, eyes wide and anxious now, but Keigo bites it back. He’s been lying so much lately that he’s nearly forgotten that he doesn’t need to, not with them.

“I’m working on it,” is what he says instead. He turns to Toga and can’t help the way his expression crumples. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t want to put you in any more danger than you already were.” 

“Dummy.” There’s a waver in her voice and he extends his wing in silent offering, curling it over her shoulders as she shuffles into the embrace. “We just want to help.”

“I know you do.” He grins weakly. “It’s just—I’m still not used to having people that are precious to me, y’know? I don’t want to lose any more of you.”

“Somehow I don’t think they’d let that happen,” Natsuo says. There’s a melancholic look in his eyes even as he smiles brightly at the two of them and Keigo wonders if he’s thinking of his own family. Of his divided loyalties and the lies and secrets he keeps these days to prevent them from fracturing even more.

Toga squirms out of his wing and bounces over to Natsuo’s side, wrapping her arms around his and staring up at him earnestly. “Don’t worry Natsu, you’re precious to us too! You’ve patched me ‘n Jin up a bunch of times and you helped Dabi when he overheated! Even Shiggy let you take care of him when he got sick!”

“Yeah, we’d be pretty screwed without our doctor around,” the hero adds, grinning as Natsuo rolls his eyes and the air between the three of them lightens again.

“You know I’m still just a student right? And that I'm going into medical welfare, not medicine?” he says even as he gently pats Toga’s head with his free hand. The smile he gives her is soft and genuine this time. “But thank you.”

“So,” Toga looks between the two of them expectantly, “how do we save Dabi?”

“Look it’s going to take some time—” Keigo begins, thinking about how to best temper her expectations of how everything will go, before he’s cut off.

“We don’t have time,” Natsuo says. “We have to get him out of there as soon as possible.” 

The hero takes in the grave look in his eyes, the tension etched into the lines of his body and finds himself mirroring the stance as alarm bells go off in his head. “What’s wrong?”

“If we don’t get Dabi out of UA he’s going to burn up.”

.

.

.

“You look like shit, you know that?”

Dabi rolls his eyes. “It was just a sneeze, not the plague.”

Shinsou is unconvinced if the raised eyebrow is anything to go by. “Uh-huh. You sure you don’t need to see Recovery Girl or something?”

“I’ll see the old lady in the morning,” he says as he waves the brat off. He has been feeling a bit crappy lately, but he figures it’s just his shitty body being it’s usual shitty self. The fact that he hasn’t had a bad pain day yet while he’s been here is something of a miracle. “Gotta go get my shot so all you heroes can rest easy knowing I can’t burn this piece of shit school to the ground. Anyways, why the fuck are we here?”

Dabi makes a wide sweeping gesture to the common room Shinsou has brought the two of them down to. They’re alone, or at least as far as Dabi can tell anyways. Not that he trusts it—he’s sure they’re all watching them from somewhere close by—but fuck if he’s complaining right now. There’s only so long a guy can stay locked up in a room without even a phone before they start going a little stir crazy. His eyes slide over to the TV in front of them, turned off for the moment with the remote sitting just a few feet in front of him on the coffee table.

“Oh, I’m going to get you to reveal all your deepest darkest secrets.”

Dabi takes in the dry tone and deadpan stare and snorts. “Not even going to try and hide it?”

At least the other heroes made an attempt to hide the fact that they were only talking to him to try and get him to reveal information about himself and the League. Honestly, it's been pretty boring listening to them. Keigo really spoiled him those months he was playing double agent for the Commission.

Shinsou shrugs as he reclines back against the couch cushion behind him, legs pulled up against his chest with an arm looped casually around them. “Too much effort. Besides, you'd probably never buy it.”

“Probably not,” he agrees mildly. He glances around the room. “Cameras?”

Shinsou nods absently, head tilted down as he types something out on his phone. “Oh yeah.”

“Microphones?”

“Nothing but the best for Class 2A’s resident villain.”

“I’m honored, truly.” He’s quiet for a moment, listening to the brat tap away before he glances at the phone. “How pissed is he?”

“Aizawa?” Shinsou looks over at him and grins before he sends another message. “Oh he’s super pissed. He’s watching all this right now. Honestly though, it’s not like I told you where the cameras are or anything. I don’t even know where half of them are.”

“So what’s the plan to make me spill all my secrets?”

“It’s pretty simple really,” he says as he puts his phone away and turns his full attention back to Dabi. “You answer my questions and I give you info on how the League is doing.”

His gaze goes back to the remote and then to Shinsou. “Sounds like a trap.”

“No trap,” he promises. If he is lying to him Dabi can’t tell. “Besides, you haven’t heard my questions yet.”

It’s tempting. So fucking tempting and it pisses him off. The heroes have been keeping him in the dark the entire time he’s been here and he’s refused to stoop low enough to ask after the League. He knows Keigo is around, or at least he was, but he has no idea what the rest of them are doing or if they're even aware that he's stuck here. Knowing the birdbrain he’s keeping them in the dark and shouldering everything by himself so that they stay safe. Tch, over protective idiot.

“Fine,” he says with a noisy sigh. He narrows his eyes at the student beside him and reminds himself that Shinsou is a neutral party. If he’s going to spill his least damaging secrets to someone, it might as well be him. Plus this way he actually gets something useful out of the arrangement. “What do you wanna know?”

Shinsou’s eyes widen. Just a fraction, enough that he can tell he wasn’t expecting Dabi to agree to this. “Uh, favorite color?”

“Red,” he answers tersely and leans forward to snatch the remote off the coffee table. He tosses it at the brat. “News. Now.”

“Huh, not what I was expecting.” Still he does as asked and turns the television on, skipping over to the news. They’re currently airing one of the last segments scheduled for the evening. 

“I’m full of surprises.” He used to hate the color red. Red like his father’s hair, like the flames he wields, like how his own hair used to be before it went white and his childhood went to shit.

Now red is the bright end of a cigarette as Dabi and Twice lounge on the warehouse roof and watch the sunset. Red is the glow of Toga’s cheeks as she smiles and chats his ear off about her day while she curls close and takes advantage of his quirk to warm herself up. Red is Compress’ eyes sometimes when the light hits them just right, mask stowed away and watching all of the League’s antics with a warmth that Dabi can feel in his bones.

Red is Keigo’s feathers blanketing them in soft down, hiding them away and creating a world where just the two of them exist.

“Where’d you come from before you joined up with the League?” 

Dabi casts a sideways glance at Shinsou. “I was on the streets for a while. Anything before that gets fuzzy.”

He drifted for a while after he came home only to realize his family had buried his ashes and moved on. At some point he came across Giran and in return for odd jobs here and there he got food and a roof over his head. And when he came to him after Stain’s capture with news about a group he might be interested in joining, well, the rest is history.

The part about his life before the streets though? That part is a lie.

Sometimes he wishes his flames ate away the memories of his childhood the same way they ate away his skin, but that would be too easy. For the most part he shoves them away, buries them under the floorboard, but it’s a shallow grave. And sometimes they seep back up through the cracks.

At first the League didn’t know what to do with him on bad days. In the early days they still didn't trust each other, so when Dabi got that particular look in his eye they gave him space. A smart decision really considering the way his quirk would roil beneath his skin. These days they know how to handle each other a little better, know now that while sometimes he still needs to get away and set something on fire that mostly what he needs is a warm body pressed against his side and some inane conversation floating above his head to ground him in the present.

“They haven’t caught the rest of the League yet,” Shinsou tells him. “Actually, they haven’t made as much as a peep since you got here.”

Dabi doesn’t exactly sigh in relief or anything, but he can feel the tension in his shoulders leaching away. He could be lying of course, but Dabi reminds himself that Shinsou is neutral. He doesn’t gain anything by hiding the truth. He probably has Compress and Keigo to thank for that. Without those two the rest of them would've hurtled headfirst into a trap.

"In other news Pro Hero Hawks was spotted this evening patrolling in Musutafu alongside several prominent UA students."  

Dabi thinks the kid asks him another question, but the words are in one ear and out the other as his attention gets snagged by the news. On the screen it shows Keigo smiling and waving to the crowds as he walks down the street, a rare sight since he prefers taking to the sky instead. Despite the plastic PR smile he can tell the hero is uncomfortable. Dabi recognizes the strain in his eyes and the ruffled feathers that he and the League have spent long evenings brushing back into place after rough days. 

He raises an eyebrow as the camera pans and shows the students patrolling with him. What the ever-loving fuck is that chicken doing out there with Shouto of all people? Is he using the students in order to gain access to the school, or has he already found a way past the gate and he's just using them in order to keep up appearances? Either way the birdbrain is playing a dangerous game here.

"At his trademark speed he had already handled an altercation between two groups of men well before our news cameras could capture it. Police report that both parties have been taken in for questioning, and cell phone footage of the incident has already spread widely across social media."

The screen switches feeds and Dabi snorts as he watches a video of Keigo effortlessly handling a couple of drunks who thought going after the number two was a smart course of action. What a bunch of fucking dumbasses. Still, he finds himself mirroring the grin on the hero's face as he watches him pin one of them to the ground. 

This wouldn’t even be considered a warm up to a guy like him. Dabi knows that if things were different and the cameras were gone he wouldn’t have even bothered treating it like a real fight, but Keigo has always been more indulgent than the rest of them. He's always been more willing to play the part that society has assigned to him. Even though the truth is that they’ll never be able to get on his level, can’t even see it from way down in the holes they’ve dug for themselves.

“Taking a trip down memory lane there?”

Dabi reluctantly tears his gaze away from the television as they switch to another story, some big takedown Edgeshot had earlier in the afternoon, and meets Shinsou’s raised eyebrow.

“What can I say,” he says with a knowing smile. “We’ve got a history.”

.

.

.

“Are you telling me,” Keigo says slowly, just to make sure he heard everything right, “that they’ve turned Dabi into a walking bomb?”

Natsuo runs a rough hand through his hair. “It’s a bit more technical than that,” he replies. “But yeah basically. UA wouldn't know without doing a full quirk evaluation, but Dabi’s quirk is broken, for a better lack of words. He can’t control it the same way other people with elemental quirks can so it’s always on in some way.”

“Oh oh! That’s why he’s like a space heater all the time!” Toga pipes up.

“It is,” he agrees. “And normally that’d be fine. The thing about Symbitasol though is that it doesn’t just stop him from producing a flame outside himself, it stops him from burning all together. And going cold turkey like that is going to wreak havoc on his body.”

Keigo narrows his eyes. “How bad?”

“He’s going to feel like shit, and soon enough someone’s going to bring him to Recovery Girl to get looked at,” Natsuo explains. “When she realizes he’s presenting with all the classic symptoms of suppressant poisoning she’ll order them to flush the Symbitasol out of his system.”

“That’s a good thing isn’t it?” Keigo crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m not seeing how that turns him into a bomb.”

“If he was just on suppressants alone it’d be one thing,” Natsuo agrees as he stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets, hunching a little against a gust of wind as he angles himself to keep it from cutting through Toga’s clothes. “If they take him off it though they’ll need another way of guaranteeing his quirk stays quiet.”

The hero thinks about the reputation Eraserhead has. He’s definitely the type of guy that likes to have contingency plan upon contingency plan, especially where his students are concerned. “They’ll probably use quirk cuffs if Eraser hasn’t slapped on a pair already.”

“And that’s exactly the problem.” Toga lets go of Natsuo and drifts to Keigo’s side to take his hand as he continues to talk. “Once he comes off the suppressants Dabi is going to be like a pressure cooker. His quirk will start burning again, but the cuffs will keep him from expelling any of that heat outside his body. Which means the second they come off he’s going to light up like a bonfire.”

“Shit,” Keigo breathes. Toga's grip goes tight.

“Yeah.” Natsuo gives a humorless laugh. “Shit.”

Chapter Text

“Well?”

Shouta waits patiently as Intuition stares at the screen in front of them. On it is the recording of Shinsou’s interaction with Dabi. He’s pretty sure he has a few new gray hairs after watching his student sit right next to an A-ranked villain all night, can still feel the ache in his fingers from clutching his capture weapon for so long while his eyes were glued to the screen, but what they got in return was more than anyone was expecting.

For a moment when Intuition turns to face him, her expression is hard in a way that has Shouta’s hackles rising. Then in a blink it’s gone and replaced with a sly grin and a mischievous look in her eye. 

“Eraser you sly dog, you’ve been holding out on me,” she accuses although her tone is teasing. “And here you said you already spilled all your secrets to me.”

Shouta sighs and pulls the edge of his capture weapon up to his nose. “I’m just as surprised as you are.”

Sure he had agreed to this little experiment, but he had never expected it to go so well. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s a prodigy, but Shinsou is definitely a natural. The way he was able to stay calm and relaxed around Dabi, and then to make the villain comfortable enough—or at least incentivize him enough—to open up is something most newcomers would have struggled with, and yet for Shinsou it seemed almost instinctive. He still needs some work on his approach—giving away so much information on the League was too high of a risk in this situation—but he has the potential to excel in infiltration missions.

Intuition groans dramatically. “Can’t believe I have to wait until he’s a third year before I can get my hands on him.” She pauses and Shouta can see the gears turning as she eyes him speculatively. “The kiddies haven’t decided on spring internships yet have they?”

“I thought you didn’t take interns,” he says, a careful redirection.

As a general rule of thumb UA encourages first year students to pick different heroes to intern under during the spring and fall as a way for them to decide what kind of hero work appeals to them and open their eyes to what their future careers could look like. For the second year students things operate a bit differently.

Depending on the impressions made in their first year some may be invited back for a more in-depth internship with a hero that’s taken a shine to them. Other hero agencies that have been scouting the field and waiting for the students to mature more or for them to earn their provisional license will come forward and offer internships that were previously unavailable to first-years. By that point the students have a better idea of their paths and what heroes or agencies they want to target, so it isn’t uncommon for them to intern again with the same heroes they were mentored by during the fall. Second year internships are critical for networking within the hero industry and securing contract offers that are extended during their third year.

The process for underground heroes is a bit more complicated however.

Underground heroes don’t bring in the kind of revenue and attention daytime heroes do so agencies tend not to hire them as permanent staff. They operate more or less as freelancers, which has certain benefits and disadvantages. Most will draw up contracts with police departments to patrol a given area or be brought onto cases requiring their skills. Others are recruited by the Commission or hired by individual agencies for one-time deals that expire once the mission is complete.

Considering all of that, finding internships for those kinds of students is difficult. Underground heroes are notoriously overworked and underpaid so most don’t have the time to take on an intern. Additionally the missions they take on can at times be more dangerous than what other students will face as daytime interns. Putting someone untrained into that kind of situation could have deadly consequences if things go south.

Since he was in general education his first year Shouta took Shinsou on as an intern this past fall in order to safely introduce him to what his future career will look like, and while they work well together he has been reaching out to his contacts to see if any of them would be interested in taking him on for the spring. Shouta’s contract is held by UA so he wants his student to experience something outside of that. As far as he knows, Intuition has never taken a single intern since she went pro.

“There’s a first time for everything.” She waves her hand towards the screen beside her. “Not everyday you find a kid like that.”

“I’ll speak to him about it,” Shouta says at length. Intuition is an excellent underground hero, but he knows that before she accepted Nezu’s offer to work at UA she was employed by the Commission. He has to assume that the principal is aware of the specifics in her case record, but the few times someone else has asked about her time there she always gives them a smile that never touches her eyes and says it’s above their pay grade.

Shinsou has the potential to be a great hero. The last thing he wants is for an internship with Intuition to put him on their radar and have the Commission sink their claws into him.

Shouta’s attention is drawn away from Intuition and back to the screen as the sound of Shinsou’s snickering filters through. With his classmates appearing on the news channel the two of them had been watching Shinsou had made a couple of lighthearted digs at Bakugou. Probably a tactic to keep Dabi relaxed, and by the slight tilt of his mouth as he had listened it worked.

And then in a surprise twist the villain had rattled off his own little anecdotes about the League. Shouta doesn’t know Shigaraki’s age or his goals beyond destroying hero society, but he does now have the unfortunate privilege of knowing how many times he has dusted the bathroom door knob without realizing it and been nearly impaled by one of Toga’s knives as a result. He also now knows that Toga gave Spinner a dead pigeon when he was sick in bed in a poorly thought out attempt to help him get better, and that when the group had tried to go out to the mall once Twice wore a paper bag over his head.

There’s nothing incriminating about any of the stories the villain tells his student, but it does shed light on the group dynamics that have kept the core League members together all this time. It’s also why Shouta was initially against having a student interacting with the villain by themselves.

Shinsou is more aware than most of the grays the world operates in compared to his classmates, but it also leaves him vulnerable to losing sight of his objective. Dabi might not have the frightening charisma of someone like Hawks, but he does have a way with words that can leave a person questioning the ground beneath their feet.

Shouta’s fingers twitch. Having the villain out of his sight leaves him anxious but Recovery Girl was adamant that Dabi stay with her for the day. If her diagnosis is accurate his body has started rejecting the suppressant they’ve been administering since he began shadowing Class 2A. From what he's been told if they don't begin flushing it out of his body immediately there could be lasting damage.

According to Recovery Girl while the process will be relatively quick Dabi will need to stay off of any kind of suppressant afterwards until she performs a full quirk examination. Once they have the results they can determine which drugs are compatible with his body, but in the meantime the hero’s quirk cuffs will function as the primary method of dampening the villain’s quirk. He’s not thrilled about it but he knows better than to argue with the heroine.

“You know,” Intuition begins, pulling his gaze back to her. “Recovery Girl said that it’ll take three or four days to wean Dabi off the Symbitasol.”

Usually it’d take one to two weeks to get it completely out of his system, but with Recovery Girl’s quirk factored in they can reduce that time considerably.

Shouta narrows his eyes. He already doesn’t like where she’s going with this. “I’m aware.”

She plays with the ends of her hair, wrapping her finger around and around. “Are you also aware of the side effects?”

“I am.” Because the body eventually adapts to the presence of suppressant in the bloodstream any sudden absence can cause them to experience withdrawal symptoms as it struggles to readjust. “That’s why she’s monitoring him in order to manage it.”

As long as it’s handled correctly Dabi will likely only experience the more minor symptoms. He’ll feel like shit coming off of it, but that’ll be it.

“And what would happen if, say, we don't manage it?” Intuition suggests it casually, however, the look in her eye is anything but.

“Depending on the severity, he could experience delirium and seizures,” Shouta answers. Of course she already knows this. Just like he knows what she’s really asking. 

“I’m not saying we let it get that bad,” she starts.

“Just bad enough that he’ll give you what you want,” he finishes dryly with a raised eyebrow.

“What can I say,” she says with a shrug. “I’m an opportunist at heart. Besides, we’ve waited long enough don’t you think?”

The ethics of it are gray at best. There’s no doubt they’d be taking advantage of Dabi in that state, but he would still be considered to be in his right mind—enough at least that his ability to consent wouldn’t be called into question. An interrogation performed under those conditions could still make it into a courtroom as evidence, but just barely.

She is right though. Shouta has taken his time with Dabi despite knowing that there’s a clock ticking over his head. At any moment the League could make a move. If it was any other villain, any other criminal organization, Shouta would have thrown them in an interrogation room as soon as Recovery Girl stabilized them. That’s certainly what Dabi was probably expecting when he first woke up here.

Which is exactly why he hadn’t.

Dabi didn’t just appear out of thin air. His hatred towards heroes isn’t a part of some rebellious phase. So despite years of training, despite the instincts howling at him, Shouta brought the villain in close. He brought his mark into his own circle—into his classroom, into his students’ home—rather than having Dabi bring him into his own. He talked philosophy and gave up little pieces of personal information to make himself look like just enough of a sympathetic ear that the villain might give him a chance to peek over the top of the barb-wire surrounding his thoughts.

He watched.

He listened.

What he’s learned is that Dabi doesn’t trust heroes that are embedded in the industry. He doesn’t trust pros that only toe the company line. Considering his likely background it’s not unreasonable. That means they’re only going to get one shot at this. One chance to get answers before Dabi shuts down on them. 

Shouta intends to make it count.

“We’re doing this above board,” he decides, tone final. “Even if he is a villain I’m not going to take advantage of him like that.”

“You won’t take advantage of him, or you just don’t want your little kiddies to see?” Intuition questions. Her tone is curious but her eyes are cold as she tilts her head and stares the other hero down. “As I recall you’ve never been fussy about this kind of thing before.”

“That was different,” Shouta argues. Morals and ethics are much easier to bend when it’s life or death after all. It’s easier to justify the actions when the end result is a life saved. He can’t say he’s proud of it, but he did what he had to. It’s in the past. Now it’s his job to set an example for his students so they don’t follow in his footsteps. “I don’t care how they did it in the Commission. At UA we do it by the book. We’ll interrogate him after he’s recovered.”

Intuition drums her fingers as she keeps her attention on Shouta. When she finally speaks, the hairs on the back of his neck stand on edge despite the fact that her tone is calm and measured. 

“Look Eraser, it's cute that you want to let your kids dip their toes in the deep end. It's been fun playing around with them, but I have to admit I’m not a patient person by nature.” She leans back in her chair, deftly crossing one leg over the other. “It’s not everyday I get the chance to question the League of Villains so I've been mostly behaving myself, but it's sink or swim time. I'll keep going along for now, but the second Recovery Girl says he’s stable I’m going to throw him in Theta with or without you and I’m not letting him out until I see his guts. Understand?”

Shouta hides his grimace under his capture weapon. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

.

.

.

Keigo wakes slowly to the sound of soft humming and deft fingers slipping through his feathers. He coos as more fingers run through his hair, skimming the top of his crest.

“Mornin’ sleepy head,” Toga teases. When he works up the energy to turn his head and crack open his eyes he finds her sitting up against the headboard with his wing resting partially in her lap. She looks softer in the morning light with her hair curling around her shoulders and her cheeks gently flushed.

“Mm, morning.” He spreads his wing further across her. “Did you sleep well?”

It had been late when they finally got to UA’s campus. He had told the students that there was an emergency at the agency he needed to deal with and that they were going to have to get back on their own. In reality after talking with Natsuo a little longer he flew himself and Toga back to the League. One look from her and he spilled his guts to the rest of them. 

They were angry at first, but once they calmed down and Keigo explained his reasoning for keeping Dabi’s location from them they begrudgingly admitted that it had probably been a smart move.

“Ah come on we could take ‘em! We’d get annihilated for sure!”

“Unfortunately my dear friend such a stunt would have our little troupe exiting stage left pursued by a bear,” Compress says with a pat of Twice’s head.

It had the tight coil that’s been wrapped around his chest since he made the decision to infiltrate UA on his own loosen just a little, just enough to breathe a bit easier. When Keigo told them about the plan he and Natsuo came up with and Shigaraki nodded and gave it his seal of approval it loosened even further.

The plan is this: with Compress’ help Natsuo will get his hands on a few vials of Symbitasol and hand one off to Keigo somewhere in the city where they won’t be noticed. Keigo will bring it back with him to UA and when the opportunity presents itself he’ll inject Dabi with the suppressant and disable Eraserhead’s quirk cuffs once it’s had enough time to circulate through his bloodstream.

Since the older hero will know the instant the handcuffs are taken off he’ll call the rest of the League just beforehand from where they’ll be staged outside UA to make a scene. With the school’s attention occupied Keigo can get Dabi out and secure him before returning to help the other heroes deal with the League, getting himself in the way just enough to let everyone escape. 

He’ll likely have to stay for a few extra days to give the dust a chance to settle before giving the school a believable excuse so they don’t suspect anything when he takes off, but once he’s in the clear he should be able to go back and check in on the League without any problems. After his initial role is done Natsuo will be on standby at the hideout to take care of any injuries and slowly work Dabi off the suppressant.

There’s still a lot of variables they can’t account for, still a lot of details up in the air, but it’s the most solid plan Keigo has had so far. 

“Mhm,” she hums as she cards through his feathers. Keigo sighs and stretches. Toga’s soft preening could put him right back to sleep at this rate. There’s a quiet silence between them before she asks, “How long do you think it’ll take them to get the drugs?”

He frees one of his arms from under the pillows to prop himself up a little. “Probably take a few days I’d guess.” 

Going through the black market would likely be a waste of time. High value drugs like Symbitasol are incredibly hard to come by, and this isn’t a situation where they can afford to sit on their hands and wait for it to pop up. They can’t risk giving Dabi a different suppressant either in case there's any left lingering in his system. If there is they could contraindicate each other and cause an adverse reaction.

Keigo would have volunteered to get it himself if it came down to it. He wouldn’t be able to go through official channels as it’d leave a record that Eraserhead could trace straight back to him, but there’s no way the Commission doesn’t have their own stockpile. Stealing from them is risky but he’s prepared for the punishment if it means keeping Dabi safe.

However, it’s considered standard practice these days for all hospitals to carry a range of suppressants for certain medical procedures and emergencies where they can’t afford to have a patient’s quirk activate. Being a high-grade suppressant not every medical center can afford to carry Symbitasol, but a place like Central that’s known for its medical advancements and cutting-edge research would have a steady supply on hand. Coincidentally it’s also where Natsuo has a clinical rotation in the hospital's villain wing. He’ll be able to provide access to the hospital, and as long as Compress does everything right no one will realize that the medical student had anything to do with the theft.

Natsuo said that it'll take a minimum of a week for Dabi to detox, maybe two depending on the dose they were originally prescribing him. Plenty of time to get the drugs and wait for an opening. For now all they can do is wait.

“Don’t worry, Compress will be there to keep an eye on Natsuo and make sure everything goes according to plan, so there’s nothing to worry about, right?”

Toga’s hand pauses for a moment before nudging a stray feather back into alignment. “Right.” 

There’s a rare pensive look on her face and one of his downy feathers slips free from his wing and pokes at her cheek. It easily dodges her light swat and pokes at her again until there’s a grin starting to form. Keigo smiles and recalls the feather before she can turn her head and snap at it. 

“So do you want the grand tour before or after breakfast?”

Toga’s eyes light up. “I want donuts!”

“Donuts? Hm, I don’t know if Lunch Rush makes those—”

He cuts himself off as she smacks his wing lightly. “No silly, donuts from our place!”

“Oh,” he says, eyes widening as it clicks into place.

'Their place' is a bakery Toga introduced him to back when the PLF was still around. It's a small hole in the wall on a corner street hemmed in by cracked concrete and weeds with a crumbling façade and old faded graffiti splashed across the walls—a commonality most alternative life-style eateries are forced to share. Despite its outer appearance it's cozy on the inside and well-cared for.

Back then he’d been hesitant to go in but unwilling to risk his place in the organization because he’d upset Toga. In the end he’d been cheerfully peer-pressured into trying one of their meat pies. They've been coming back ever since.

“I’ve missed them sooo much but you were gone so it wasn’t fun going there anymore.” For a moment her expression dims before brightening back up. “But now that Shiggy said we could be buddies we can go again!”

“How about a lunch date?” Keigo suggests. “I have to give a lecture to the students in Cementoss’ class in a few hours, but I’m all yours after okay?” At Toga’s pouting face he tacks on, “I’ll even get extras to bring back so we have something for dessert tonight.”

“Fine,” she finally relents. “But I want extra frosting and rainbow sprinkles.”

.

.

.

“Please?”

Keigo ignores the pointed look boring into the side of his head, raising his arms back to knit his fingers behind his head. “Nope.”

“Pretty pretty please?”

“Still a nope.” Keigo takes great delight in seeing her hand twitch out of the corner of his eye and fights back a grin. Can’t draw a knife when they’re out in public.

“Kei.”

He breaks out into a full grin as he tilts his head and meets Toga’s slitted gaze. “Himi.”

“Why are you being such a meanie right now?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Keigo says airly, shrunken wings fluttering behind him. Above them is a paper bag being held aloft by one of his smaller feathers just out of Toga’s reach. “These are for dessert, remember?”

“Yeah but I’m hungry now ,” she complains, just on the cusp of outright whining.

“Nope, dessert only.”

Toga is quiet for a moment. “I have glitter.”

Keigo falters a step, eyes narrowing as he side-eyes her. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Would I?” she asks, a cheshire grin that she learned from Dabi curling at her lips. Keigo contemplates his options.

On the one hand he can give in and let her take a donut. On the other he could continue to refuse her at the risk of waking up the next morning to find his feathers covered in glitter. The last time it happened the Commission almost skinned him alive before spinning it into a PR stunt, and even though he spent days cleaning each individual feather he still somehow kept finding little bits of glitter months later. In the end he had to have Dabi burn the entire set and regrow his wings from scratch. 

He’s saved from that particular dilemma as they come up on UA and find Eraserhead slouched against the entrance. There’s another person standing beside him talking with him, a brunette Keigo doesn’t recognize from any of the hero classes he’s interacted with or from the handful of lectures he’s given. Could be that she’s not affiliated with UA, or if she is then she teaches a class that he’s unfamiliar with. Maybe she’s with the business school or a part of the support course.

He’s tempted to turn them back around before they’re spotted and sneak the two of them over the wall to avoid any unnecessary conversations. Before he can do anything though the older hero’s companion stops talking and Eraserhead twists his head just enough to catch Keigo’s gaze. Damn.

“Hey-o.” He gives a lazy wave of his hand as they come closer. “Just follow my lead,” he murmurs to Toga.

“Hawks,” Eraserhead greets tiredly. His eyes slide from the hero to Toga beside him. “This the emergency guest you called Nezu about last night to request access for?”

“Sure is,” he says brightly as he slings an arm around her shoulders. “Sorry about not giving you guys a heads up, everything happened pretty fast. This is Echo, one of my sidekicks.”

Toga bows her head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

“Oh aren’t you a cutie,” the woman next to Eraserhead coos, leaning towards the two of them. Keigo’s nose crinkles at the saccharine words. “Look at those adorable little ears!”

The bat ears sticking out of Toga’s hair twitch as she straightens up, milky white eyes staring in her general direction. She grins and shows off a fang. “Thank you!”

Despite the bright and cheery tone she’s stiff under Keigo’s arm. It has his wings puffing up over his shoulders and the feathers in the guitar case slung across his back bristling.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,” he says, keeping his voice upbeat. “Do you teach at UA too?”

“This is Intuition.” Eraserhead jabs his thumb at her. “She teaches specialized courses in underground heroics at the school.”

Despite how much he wants to stiffen Keigo forces himself to remain calm and relaxed even as ice skitters down his spine. He’s never met her in person but he knows about that name through rumor and whispers. Through stories. They say she leaves only empty husks behind of the criminals she’s sent in to meet.

Growing up she had been the monster under the bed. Their handlers always threatened to send him and the other children down to meet her if they stepped out of line. It wasn't until after he debuted and was able to get out from under the Commission's roof that he figured it had been a scare tactic created to keep them obedient. Simple and effective, but ultimately fake.

That is until the President had mentioned that one of the villains he'd arrested was being uncooperative. It was a few weeks after his second Billboard event. He’d climbed three spots to fifth but he knew he still had to go higher. Knew that the Commission wouldn’t accept anything less than the top. He had offered to make him talk but she had waved him off. Don't worry, Intuition will teach him some manners I'm sure.

Even now he can remember the slight tilt of the corners of her mouth, the crinkle of amusement around her eyes.  

She has to be here for Dabi. There’s no way someone with her skills wouldn’t get called in for a case as high-profile as this.

Even though Keigo hasn't given anything away Intuition’s eyes light up in delight. “Aw, I promise I don’t bite birdie.” Her eyes flicker to Toga and back. The way she smirks makes it look like she’s about to bare her teeth. “Much, anyways.”

His wings twitch. Without conscious thought Keigo’s fingers tighten against Toga’s shoulder as he plasters on a blinding smile. “What can I say? Your reputation precedes you.”

“Anyways,” Eraserhead says. “Nezu said to give this to you.” He fishes around in his pocket before pulling out a card and offering it to Keigo. “It’s an official guest pass. This way you won’t have to call us every time Echo needs to get onto campus.”

Keigo doesn’t take his eyes off Intuition, doesn’t dare take a single step closer with the way his instincts are chittering in the back of his head. Instead he uses a feather to snatch the card out of the other hero’s hand and slide it into his own pocket. “Much appreciated.”

“I hear you were sponsored by the Commission,” Intuition says. Beside them Eraserhead shoots her a look that goes ignored. “Any experience in covert ops?”

Keigo’s grip on Toga’s shoulder is close to a stress-grip right now. He’d be afraid of really hurting her if she wasn’t holding onto the back of his jacket hard enough for the small claws on the tips of her fingers to cut through the leather and dig into his compression suit. If he took it off he’s sure he’d find five little cuts underneath.

“I have a little training, but it’s not really my thing.” He flexes his wings. “Little hard to go undercover with a quirk like this, you know?”

She nods along. “Of course, of course. How about interrogations? I’m sure you’ve had plenty of experience with that.”

“Sometimes I’ll watch from behind the glass but for the most part I leave that sort of thing to the police,” Keigo answers. He gives a fake little chuckle. “Why, need me to play good cop, bad cop with you?”

“Now there’s a thought,” Intuition purrs. Eraserhead’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline before he can properly school his expression. “Bet you’d get them to sing like a bird.”

Before he can formulate a response Eraserhead clears his throat. “Theoretics aside, on a more practical note I wanted to ask if you’d like to teach a search and rescue class with Class 2A.” He fiddles with the top of his capture weapon. “They’ve been preoccupied with a big project lately, but their schedule is clearing up so I figured I’d ask before bringing my request to the principal.”

Keigo can feel the strain on his jacket tighten. Does that mean they’ve already interrogated Dabi and they’re getting ready to ship him out to Tartarus? Or do they still need to tie up loose ends? He hasn’t heard anything through his feathers, but they could have discussed it outside of the dorms.

If they’re planning on moving him without waiting for him to come off the suppressant then that throws the whole plan into jeopardy. They might only have a short window of time to act now. There’s no way they’ll send him anywhere else but Tartarus, not with how dangerous he is, and if they don’t get to him in time the likelihood of breaking him out without exposing everything will be close to impossible.

The only way to figure out the truth is to get close to Eraserhead and his class. 

“You kidding? I’d love to show the rugrats the ropes.”

Chapter Text

Shouta stares up at the dark ceiling of his bedroom. Beside him he listens to the soft, even breathing of his husband and times his own breaths to them.

He knows he needs to sleep, tomorrow—today at this point probably if he were to turn his head and check the clock on the nightstand—is a big day, but even though his eyes are gritty and burning and exhaustion weighs down his bones he can’t get his brain to turn off.

Shouta is grateful for Nemuri agreeing to sleep in the dorms tonight so that he could spend the night here with his family. He missed putting Eri to bed, missed the quiet comfort of lying on the couch with Hizashi and their cats and watching the newest trashy reality show his husband has gotten hooked on until their eyelids grew heavy, missed the smell of their sheets and the tickle of blond hair against his nose as they held each other. 

After tonight he’ll wear Eri’s kind smile and Hizashi’s wild laughter like armor into the battle that he’s been building up to. He can only hope that it’ll be enough to weather the blows Dabi is sure to strike him with.

Hizashi rolls in his sleep and ends up pressed against Shouta’s side, one arm flinging itself over his chest and landing close to his collarbone. At their feet Sushi makes a sleepy mrph as she’s jostled a little in the shift before settling back down. Without thought Shouta adjusts the arm that had gotten wedged between them so that he can hold Hizashi better, snaking it underneath his husband and splaying his hand across his lower back. The weight is grounding, his body sinking into the familiar touch, but despite the jaw-cracking yawn that follows his thoughts still spin endlessly. A sea churning with possibilities and what-ifs that threaten to drag Shouta under.

“I can hear you thinking,” Hizashi mumbles into his shoulder.

Shouta scratches the fingers of his free hand through his husband's hair and sighs. “Sorry, I’ll take the couch.”

It certainly isn't the first time racing thoughts have kept one of them up all night and they abandoned the warmth of their bed for the couch so that at least their partner had the chance to sleep. It won't be the last either. When he tries to pull himself out from underneath Hizashi though he tightens his hold. 

“Mm, stay,” he orders, the words rough with sleep, but Shouta obeys nonetheless. He waits patiently as Hizashi tilts his head enough that they can look at each other properly.“You still worried about it?”

“Not worried,” Shouta corrects softly. “Resigned, maybe.”

“You think it’s gonna be bad.” It’s not phrased as a question.

He plays with the ends of Hizashi’s hair where it falls over his husband’s shoulder and spills onto Shouta’s chest. Hizashi patiently waits for Shouta to gather his thoughts. 

“Yeah,” he finally answers. “It’ll be bad.”

Even if Dabi doesn’t call out a fellow hero as an abuser, Shouta knows that whatever they get him to reveal will be damaging. Knows that the answers he and Intuition drag out of this villain will cause ripples across hero society. There’s a tragedy written in the warped skin of Dabi’s scars—one he can’t look away from no matter how much he wants to. 

Hizashi’s thumb starts rubbing small circles against his collarbone as his gaze drifts somewhere around Shouta’s jaw. “Are you sure they can’t sit this one out?”

Shouta closes his eyes and grimaces even as he melts under the soft touch. “I can’t.”

Not anymore. Not when he’s already dragged them along this far. A part of him wants to shield his students from this to protect them from the fallout. They’re just kids, but in the end he knows it would be a disservice to them as future heroes. The truth will come out eventually, whether they like it or not, but at least this way they can control the circumstances around it.

Hizashi sighs quietly. “Then we’ll just have to be there for them.”

Shouta turns his head and buries his face into his husband’s hair. “We will.”

.

.

.

Shouta blinks. Blinks again. Tries to process and finds himself coming up blank. In front of him his students hover and look at him expectantly, dark smudges under their eyes. He thinks they might have actually gotten less sleep than him.

“You made a board,” he states, though calling the monstrosity in front of him a simple board is a gross understatement. Shouta thinks it might actually be several free-standing cork boards all pressed up against each other, but it’s impossible to tell under the mass of yarn string and notes tacked on top of each other.

He had warned them about what was going to be happening today, but in no way had he prepared himself for this.

“Shouto is the one who started it actually,” Midoriya says, beaming brightly at the boy beside him. Todoroki mumbles something under his breath and ducks his head, but not before they all see a bashful little smile. “He’s been working on it for a while now, but eventually it got too full so we asked Yaoyorozu if she could make us another board.”

“I was the one that suggested we move it out of his room and downstairs,” Yaoyorozu picks up. “You brought us in to help pick up on anything about Dabi that you and the other teachers might have missed, so it made sense to have everyone contribute their findings.”

“It’s our murder board,” Kaminari claims with a sly grin. And now that Shouta is looking for it there are pictures of crime scenes attributed to Dabi along with newspaper clippings. He’s pretty sure some of the information on here has never been made available to the public. Shouta steps forward to get a closer look as the students start to explain how everything came to be on the board. Boards? There’s plenty on here that the heroes have already theorized on, though he can’t say they had anything dedicated to figuring out if Dabi is Endeavor’s secret love child.

There’s a fair amount concerning Endeavor on here. It makes sense since Dabi has targeted the hero before that he’d feature prominently. There was an intensity to that fight with the high end especially that’s been lacking in other recorded encounters with the villain, enough that it’s hard not to consider a personal vendetta of some kind at work. That’s clearly the angle the students are coming at, but with a career like Endeavor's it’d be easier picking a needle out of a haystack then the specific incident that sparked Dabi’s hatred towards the hero. 

He’s trying to follow the thought process connecting two pieces of yarn when something catches his attention out of the corner of his eye. Is that an official incident report from a hero agency? Shouta takes a closer look at it and can, unfortunately, confirm that it is indeed a very official document from a very real agency. It’s been pinned onto the board using a hot pink tack.

He freezes when he gets to the insignia at the bottom of the form before he slowly turns to face his students. “Please tell me you didn’t steal confidential files from Endeavor Agency.” 

The damning silence that follows has Shouta sighing deeply and praying for patience. Sure he’s always referred to them as his problem class, and has complained to Hizashi that he was in charge of a bunch of teenage hellions, but he didn’t think that they would actually break the law. Not with reasonable and responsible students like Yaoyorozu and Iida to keep the rest of them in check at least. 

He then remembers the aftermath of Hosu and thinks, more than a little hysterical, that it’s a miracle they waited this long actually.

Shouta wonders how long it’ll take before the number one hero notices the breach in his system and is breaking down his door demanding an explanation.

“I mean, not technically?” Kaminari tries, wincing as Shouta glares at him.

Todoroki steps forward. “I took them,” he says, meeting his teacher’s gaze evenly. “I still have intern-level access to the agency’s server from the internship with the old man, but the files I wanted required a higher clearance level so I told a sidekick at the agency that I needed to review one of my father’s cases for a school project and asked if I could use their access code.”

Great. That makes things… so much worse. Shouta pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to keep his blood pressure under control. “And since you’re the boss’ kid no one bothered to follow proper procedure since they probably thought they’d get in trouble if they didn’t help you.” Todoroki’s lips purse but he nods in agreement. “And what? Once they gave you access to the server you just downloaded the reports?”

Sensitive reports like that are usually protected behind an encrypted firewall even if someone gets access to the main server. To get them he either needed to break through the encryption or—

Todoroki shrugs lightly as if the entire situation is a nonissue to him.  “It wasn’t hard to guess the password. He uses the same one for everything.”

That is… minorly concerning.

“Boomer syndrome strikes again,” Kaminari stage whispers and Shouta forces himself not to attempt to strangle himself with his own capture weapon.

If he really considers it though it’s not like Shouta is in the position to judge them. Compared to some of the things he’s done in order to maintain a cover or bust a villain, stealing a few official documents from a hero agency isn’t much. It doesn’t look like they were able to connect any of the incidents reported in those papers to Dabi anyways so the exercise was more or less a wash. Still, if anyone asks as far as Shouta is concerned he never saw a thing.

After going over it a bit longer Shouta knows he can’t delay any longer and starts to herd his students in the direction of Theta. Todoroki and Midoriya follow up behind the group, taking advantage of the wheels Yaoyorozu created to bring the boards along. The interrogation probably won’t last more than an hour or so, especially since this is the first one, but just in case he had made sure they were excused from all their morning classes. Shouta is sure Intuition will press Dabi hard, but the initial interrogation is more or less to test the waters and set up a baseline for the following ones, laying the foundation to build their case on.

Still it’s crappy timing as far as Shouta is concerned. He had asked Intuition to hold off one more day so that he could cancel all of their classes rather than just the morning ones, but the other hero had been serious about not wasting anymore time getting her claws into Dabi. He’d barely been able to keep her from pouncing on the villain the second Recovery Girl gave them a tentative green light to conduct their interrogation. This afternoon Hawks will be handling the students' advanced heroics class though, and it’s not like Shouta has a viable excuse to cancel on the number two hero when he was the one who arranged the whole thing. 

He doesn’t know how the interrogation will affect the kids, if they’ll be left scraped raw and want to be left alone or in need of a distraction. What he does know is that they’ve all been looking forward to this exercise with Hawks, especially after Todoroki, Bakugou, and Midoriya all spent time patrolling with him. They’ve gone two more times since Shouta first saddled the winged hero with them, and while he still isn’t completely convinced of Hawks’ intentions nothing has turned up to validate any of his suspicions either.

One problem at a time. He’ll deal with Dabi first, and Hawks after.

He brings his class into the room next to where they’ll be holding the interrogation. Its official name is the Observation Room, a simulated environment meant to mimic what students will encounter out in the real world. From here they’ll be able to safely observe Dabi during the interrogation. Tsukauchi is already inside sitting at a table with their recording equipment. He looks up as they enter and nods in greeting to Shouta. 

“Everyone, this is Detective Tsukauchi,” Shouta introduces once his students have all filtered into the room.

Tsukauchi offers the kids a congenial smile. “It’s very nice to meet you all. Eraserhead speaks very highly of your class.” Shouta grumbles as he hides his face in capture weapon and blatantly tries to ignore his students all beaming at him. “I’m here to watch the interrogation and assist as necessary—”

Tsukauchi abruptly cuts off as Todoroki and Midoriya bring up the rear, mumbling out apologies as their fellow classmates are forced to shuffle out of the way to accommodate the boards.

Shouta has to hide his smirk beneath his capture weapon as the normally unflappable detective gapes, just slightly, as he tries to make sense of what they brought in. 

“Is that…”

“It’s our murder board,” Ashido declares proudly.

“Right…” Tsukauchi admirably pulls himself together. “Well, as I was saying I’m here to watch the interrogation alongside you all and assist Eraserhead as necessary through the use of my quirk…”

Shouta is glad Tsukauchi is here. He can already feel some of the nervous energy his students have been carrying this morning ease in his steady presence. He leaves the explanation of Tsukauchi’s lie detector quirk and his role in the investigation to the detective to answer and shuffles over to the table beside him. He texted Intuition on their way over to Theta so someone will have gone to grab Dabi by now. As his students direct their questions at Tsukauchi he prepares the earpiece he’ll be wearing inside.

“Your kids are really something,” Tsukauchi tells him quietly. “They’ll be good heroes.” Shouta glances over his shoulder at his class, who’ve exhausted their questions for the moment and have now gravitated towards the one-way mirror taking up the wall connecting the two rooms despite the other side being empty for the moment. 

“That’s the goal,” he replies, quiet pride welling up in his chest. He pushes it back down as he looks back at Tsukauchi. “Do you have anything yet?”

“Nothing,” Tsukauchi sighs, frowning slightly. “I have Sansa running the DNA results the lab sent us through what databases we can access without arousing suspicion. There’s only so much we can do before we get flagged by the HPSC though.”

“I figured as much,” Shouta says, mirroring Tsukauchi’s frown. If they run it through the hero database that’s sure to get the Commission’s attention, and Shouta doesn’t want that confrontation just yet. Not until he’s exhausted all his options. “Just do what you can.”

Tsukauchi nods and Shouta goes over to his students. Dabi should be arriving any minute now. “Remember the lessons Intuition and I have taught you,” he tells them as he inserts his earpiece, “and watch the three of us carefully. I’ll be wearing an earpiece that’s connected to this room while inside, so if you notice something or think we should press him on a particular subject just speak up.”

“How can you be so sure he’s going to talk though?” Kaminari asks. He looks away from the window and over at Shouta. “I mean if I was him I’d just shut up the whole time I was in there.”

Jirou shakes her head. “Uh, have you met you?” she asks, drawing a squawk of outrage from Kaminiari and a ripple of laughter from the rest of the students. Shouta hides the twitch of his lip under his capture weapon.

“It’s a valid strategy for someone in Dabi’s position,” Shouta agrees when the giggles have died down. “However, we have ways of working around that kind of situation.” That’s what they have Intuition for. Shouta is more the type to sit back and simply outlast his opponent until they start talking just to fill the silence, but that's not likely to be effective with someone like Dabi. Intuition on the other hand doesn't even need her target to speak to get what she needs out of them. With a quirk like her's all she has to do is provoke a physical reaction, and Intuition has honed her ability to get under anyone’s skin to something akin to an art form.

Shouta will be counting on that today.

.

.

.

“The fuck are you doing here?”

Dabi’s eyes narrow, teeth grinding as he clenches his jaw. Of all the fucking heroes… 

Despite the way All Might wrings his hands his gaze is steady as he stands at the end of Dabi’s bed. He’s been stuck under Recovery Girl’s watch for a few days now sweating out that stupid quirk suppressant they had been pumping him full of since he got here. He feels like complete shit and all he wants to do is try and sleep off the persistent migraine that’s been taking a rusty screwdriver to the back of his head for the last day or so. Instead he has the former Number One here for some reason. Dabi’s feelings regarding All Might might be complicated, but right now he doesn’t want anything to do with the man in front of him.

Frankly, he doesn’t want anything to do with anyone who doesn’t have painkillers to give him right now.

“I’m here to escort you to Ground Theta,” All Might tells him.

Dabi’s fingers bunch up the sheets under him as they curl into fists. Theta, huh? He still doesn’t know what that is, but from the cryptic way it’s been thrown around and the grim lines on All Might’s face he has a pretty good idea as to what’s waiting for him there. So, they’re finally pulling their shit together then. Nice of the heroes to wait long enough for him to finish puking his guts up before finally throwing him in a cell.

Other than his hands he doesn’t let his expression give anything away. He reclines back against the bed and arches an eyebrow. “Don’t suppose you’ll take no for an answer? I’d really like to catch up on my beauty sleep.” 

Dabi smirks at the stony expression on the former hero’s face, but it doesn’t last long as Recovery Girl comes barging in, already nagging Dabi about how he’s wasting time and that he’s taking up valuable space in her infirmary that she needs for people who are actually sick. All Might watches on from beside the door with a look of horrified awe on his face as she throws Dabi’s clothes at him and successfully kicks the villain out of bed. She gives him just enough time to change before using the butt end of her cane to shoo him right out the door even as Dabi hisses insults right back at the old hag.

Dabi is still muttering under his breath as he gingerly rubs his back while All Might leads him across the school campus. He slides his coat back over his shoulders where it belongs and feels a bit more settled even if adding on another layer is the last thing he wants right now. A nice perk of getting off the suppressant is that he’s no longer a human popsicle all the time, but now his body is overcompensating and swinging in the exact opposite direction. Recovery Girl has assured him the fever is temporary, but it doesn’t stop Dabi from feeling a little like death warmed over.

He tries to take his mind off the uncomfortable heat radiating under his skin and sizes up the man next to him. They’ve fallen into an uncomfortable silence and the retired hero has a preoccupied look on his face as he shuffles along. Now that Dabi has been forced here beside him he doesn’t know what to think of him. 

He looks at All Might’s shriveled husk of a body and is reminded once again, I did that.

It’s not a new thought by any means. Back when he was stuck in that industrial maze trying to outrun Eraserhead’s brats it had popped into his head at All Might’s arrival, and even further back then that when Dabi realized that with All Might out of the picture he could hurt his father so much worse now that he’d gotten everything he’d always dreamed of. Even then it had been more of a passing thought, a general observation. Right now with the man in question walking beside him the implications are impossible for him to ignore.

It wasn’t directly of course, but it was because of him and the rest of the League kidnapping Bakugou that there had been the showdown between All for One and All Might that caused him to retire in its aftermath. He, in a very roundabout way, had beaten All Might. Which would mean that he’d fulfilled the purpose his father had created Touya for. 

What a fucking joke.

The defective son, the one who his father had abandoned and left to rot behind in his search for a worthy heir, had done what even his vaunted golden child couldn’t. Touya might’ve not surpassed All Might in the hero charts like Endeavor had originally intended for him, but what was that in the face of being the one to end the Symbol of Peace’s reign permanently? Dabi had even graciously created the rubble his useless father used to drag himself up into the number one spot. 

A hand on his shoulder only partially rips Dabi from his spiraling thoughts. His head jerks back to see All Might staring at him in concern and realizes belatedly that they’ve stopped walking.

“Young Dabi are you okay?”

“Fucking peachy,” he wheezes. He runs a rough hand through his hair, a few hysteric giggles escaping despite himself. “Just realizing I beat you s’all, just like the old man always wanted.”

The hand on his shoulder tightens. “What?”

“The whole reason I was created in the first place,” Dabi can’t help but lean in, a glasgow smile on his face and hints of blood seeping out from the corners of his scars, “was to beat you.”

“The whole reason you were…” All Might trails off, mouth twisted in horror and consternation. Dabi doesn’t care though as he pulls away and looks up, thoughts already spinning again.

“Shit, the look on his face when he realizes it was me that did it though—” And Dabi can just imagine it: the horror, the revulsion as the realization smacks him in the face. Fuck, he should’ve leapt off Machia’s back and fought Endeavor during the raid. He’d been left reeling in the wake of Shigiraki’s rampage—it could’ve been the perfect moment to break what little hope he had left. Hell Dabi could’ve aired that tape he’d had Skeptic record too and guarantee that he’d have no one to turn to even once the fighting stopped.

Dabi had always known he’d go out fighting Endeavor anyways, a dying star finally going supernova and taking out everything in its path, and while he hadn’t explicitly told the League they’d picked up enough to know that he wasn’t planning his life out that far ahead. They were always meant to be a staging point, a means to accomplishing his end goal.

His fingers run over the upturned collar of his coat, and it’s Keigo’s feather quivering in its hiding place that pulls him back. Makes Dabi remember Toga’s hand fisting in the back of his coat as he’d prepared to jump, eyes full of unshed tears. A whispered please. In that moment he’d remembered Twice. The haunting silence that pervaded the League weeks after Magne’s death and the thought that Toga was going to lose someone else yet again.

Dabi had let her pull him back that day, and told himself that he’d get another chance. As long as Endeavor lived he’d get another shot at him.

He isn’t about to let UA ruin that.

Dabi brushes his thumb over the feather as he reigns himself back in, doing his best to soothe through touch alone, and feels it press back eagerly. 

“Young Dabi?”

All Might is giving him that fucking pity look again and Dabi bares his teeth against it. “Fuck it,” he says, squaring his shoulders. “Let’s get this over with.”

All Might looks like he wants to argue, but one look at the stony expression on his face has him closing his mouth and turning away. “This way then.”

The building Dabi is led into looks like any other academic building on campus. He quickly realizes it’s anything but as All Might opens the door to something he’d see in a police station. Eraserhead is already sitting in one of the three chairs in the room, the one beside him occupied by an unfamiliar woman. Dabi takes his cue and settles down in the lone chair across from them, ignoring the sound of the door locking behind him. He glances down at the steel table, bolted to the ground between them with an embedded ring that most people would be jumping to attach his handcuffs to, and back up at the heroes that haven’t moved since he came in.

Dabi smirks and leans back in his chair. “What, you don’t think I’m dangerous enough to chain up?”

“We can if you’d like,” Eraserhead drawls. “Most criminals usually appreciate it when we don’t.”

“Well,” Dabi flashes his teeth, “I’m not most villains.”

Eraserhead raises an eyebrow to let him know just how unimpressed he is by the display.

“So, how’s this supposed to go anyways?” Dabi asks, making a show of glancing around the room and back at the heroes. “You guys get me to give you dirt on the League, maybe try to pry out my tragic backstory, and then when you’re done with me you throw me into Tartarus never to see the light of day again?”

“You’ll be heading there one way or another,” Eraserhead promises, “but maybe if you cooperate we’ll try and get you a nice cellmate. Maybe a book or two.”

Dabi pretends to think about it. “Hm, can’t say that’s really sweetening the pot Eraser, but I do have some… unfinished business with Overhaul that I wouldn’t mind taking care of.”

The hero stiffens at the mention of the other villain and Dabi’s smile turns vicious as it grows and reveals a flash of teeth. The heroes aren’t the only ones here capable of getting under someone’s skin. 

Dabi isn’t worried about Eraserhead. Not really. He’s been around him long enough to get familiar with the underground hero’s methods. It’s the woman next to him that has him uneasy despite the fact she hasn’t said a word yet. At first glance there’s nothing about her appearance that should be putting him on edge, but there’s something… off about her. She’s still in a way that makes Dabi’s quirk itch under his skin.

Well work fast. Intuition isn’t someone you want to stick around and meet.

Dabi focuses on Eraserhead. If he gets him to lose his cool there’s a good chance they’ll cut this short and the villain gets to bide time for Keigo and the others. That’s his role right now—has been really since he first got here. Dabi has to trust that it’ll be enough.

“Speaking of Overhaul… his little brat ended up with you, didn’t she?” 

“We’re not here to talk about her,” Eraserhead says dismissively, but Dabi can hear the warning undertones as his jaw clenches.

“Does she know what happened to him?” Dabi continues, leaning forward. “Does she know how he cried like a baby when we took his arms, how he screamed—”

“No,” the hero snaps, “she doesn’t.”

Dabi keeps pressing. “I bet she’d be thrilled, I know I would be if someone beat the shit out of my father.” His smile has a manic tinge to it now. “I’d be happy to tell her if you wanted. Bet that’d be one less nightmare she’d wake up screaming from.”

Eraserhead looks ready to murder him at the mere suggestion of Dabi talking with his kid, the ends of his hair starting to twist and float in the air. Dabi opens his mouth to push the underground hero over the edge and punch his ticket out of here, but then the woman beside him speaks.

“Oh, I like you.” She grins slyly at him, eyes shining with amusement. “I can see why they put you in charge of recruiting.” Dabi jerks back reflexively as she tilts forward, turning her attention to Eraserhead as she tuts at him. “Losing your touch Eraser? Maybe I should’ve had you join your students’ lessons.”

Eraserhead grimaces but doesn’t quite meet her gaze. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“I think it is if you’re letting something like that get to you,” she replies, her grin only growing as the other hero glowers at her. She glances back Dabi’s way and her lips curve into something more conspiratorial. “He’s fun to rile up isn’t he? Gets all puffed up like a cat the moment you start poking at his kids, but you already knew that didn’t you?”

Dabi grits his teeth. Damn, she’d seen his angle from the start. Eraserhead has settled back down now and one look at his face tells Dabi that there’ll be no second chances at manipulating him.

“Sorry Firecracker,” the hero simpers, “you’re not getting out of this one so fast.”

Dabi leans back against his seat and crosses his arms over his chest despite the wisps of unease beginning to wind down his spine, giving her a deadpan look. “I’ve got nowhere else to be.”

She rests her elbows on the table and places her chin atop threaded fingers, completely undeterred. “That’s good to hear. I’ve been just dying to have a little chat with you.”

“Funny, I can’t say the same.”

“That’s okay,” she replies, “I promise I’m very interesting. Name’s Intuition, maybe you’ve heard of me?”

“Can’t say I have.” She pouts at him like she’s five and Dabi answers with a sneer. Just looking at her pisses him off. He already knows she’s going to try to get into his head and provoke him into giving her a reaction she can exploit. Which—good fucking luck to her. If she can see the warning signs and still wants to try and take a swing at that hornet’s nest he can’t be held responsible for the aftermath. 

Even Keigo knows when to back—

“You like stories, right?”

Dabi blinks, thrown by the bizarre non-sequitur. “Excuse me?”

“Stories!” Intuition repeats, like it doesn’t sound any less crazy than the first time she said it. She aims a blinding smile at him that makes even his scars crawl. “I mean, considering all the books you’ve gone through the last few weeks you must, right? And, I don’t want to brag or anything, but I’m something of a storyteller myself.” Dabi knows that this has to be some sort of tactic, but it doesn’t stop him from looking at her like she’s grown a second head. What the hell is the point she’s trying to get at?  

“In fact,” Intuition continues brightly, “I think I’ve come up with a pretty good one, but no one is willing to listen to me.” She wilts in her seat for a moment before perking right back up, “But you did just say that you don’t have anywhere to be and, really, it’d be a shame for you not to hear it first. You are the main character after all, you’ll have to tell me whether I’ve gotten it right or not.”

Dabi opens his mouth, though what he’s going to say he doesn’t even know, but is interrupted as she claps her hands together, smile still stuck in place. “Great! Let’s get started. So, a long time ago in a place far far away there was a man and woman who loved each other very very much.”

Dabi can’t help but scoff at that. Not only because the hero is ripping off Star Wars of all things, but because the thought of his parents ever truly loving each other is so ridiculous he wants to laugh. His father bought his mother for her quirk and used her like a broodmare while her family was quick to take the money he paid them and disappear. The only reason Touya even knew about his grandparents on Rei’s side of the family is the phone calls he’d sometimes overhear her making to her mother. They’d make meaningless small talk he didn’t care about, but at the end of every call she’d very quietly ask if she could come home. Just to visit, she’d claim. To let the children meet their grandparents, she’d say.

Every time Touya’s grandmother would gently chide her and hang up.

Intuition cocks her head at the noise. “Hm, maybe not a lot of love then. A marriage of convenience, perhaps.”

Dabi stiffens, narrowing his eyes. Intuition’s smile slides into more of a smirk as she continues. 

“Well, in either case one day they had a little boy. A smart, headstrong little boy who wanted nothing more than to make his parents happy. However, no matter what he does, how hard he tries, he’s never enough for them. I’m still working out some of the details, but since we’ve decided there wasn’t any real love in the marriage, maybe the mom grew so distant and resentful of her family that she refused to look at him. The dad, hm, let's say he’s a hero. One who wants his child to follow in his footsteps, but whatever the son does he can never measure up. Maybe he got smacked around a little—I haven’t decided if I’m going to make the father physically abusive or just neglectful, what do you think Dabi?”

All Dabi can hear is the sharp ring of skin slapping, the screams and shouts muffled only by the thin walls separating him and his siblings from their parents. All he can feel are the ugly finger-shaped bruises on his arms from Endeavor dragging him down the hall to see the family physician after burning himself again, the stretch of his shirt against his neck as Fuyumi twisted it tight in her attempt to hide her teary face in Touya’s shoulder while their parents argued. All he can see is the yellow-green bruises peeking above the collar of his mother’s shirt as she’d bend down to straighten his school uniform when he was still small and the sight of him didn’t yet make her recoil.

“A little of both I think,” Intuition says, ignoring Dabi’s silence. Her eyes haven’t left him once since she started her little narration. The weight of them has bugs crawling under his skin. He doesn’t think she’s blinked. “The little boy can’t accept it though. He decides that if he can’t be a hero like his dad, he’ll get his attention another way; and what better way to get the attention of a hero than a villain?”

That damned smile finally falls away as the hero gives a sad sigh, shaking her head as she leans back in her chair. “He spends all this time becoming this big bad villain, even going so far as to burn himself up in the process, but in the end he never gets the recognition from the one person he so desperately wants it from. Naturally, the heroes get the bad guy, like they always do, and all the villain has left is a lonely little prison cell.”

“You’re a shit storyteller,” Dabi says, the words scraping over his throat like gravel. That’s not him. That’s not ever going to be him.

“Hmm, I suppose that’s why my guidance counselor suggested I be a hero rather than an author,” Intuition concedes. “But I think there’s potential! Of course, villain sob stories like that are a dime a dozen, no real originality there. Maybe I’ll tweak a few things and run it by you again, you don’t mind being my little beta reader do you?”

Dabi’s jaw is clenched so tight the bones creak in warning. “Go die in a ditch.”

“Feisty,” Intuition laughs, her eyes glittering like she’s having the time of her life. “I think we’re going to get along famously.”

She opens her mouth, likely about to say something to push Dabi from pissed off to homicidal, and really with the way things are going he’s not going to need much encouragement, when the overhead light flickers. Suddenly an alarm shrieks to life, scaring the shit out of Dabi as a light he hadn’t noticed above the door begins flashing red.

“Well now,” Intuition says. “Looks like we have some uninvited guests.”