Chapter Text
Stumbling footprints. Shouta can make out the unsteady, rolling gait from the way the bloody imprints of bare feet blend, incomplete and scattered, as if the person walking dragged their feet. And he can only imagine the scene that the person must have walked away from - no, the child , because those are the feet of a child - given the volume of the blood that makes the marks.
Behind him, he can hear the other heroes searching through the hideout. The raid was meant to uncover a stronghold of the League of Villains, but it seemed like they had been forewarned, because it had been empty when they arrived. Empty, with a singular trail of bloody footprints staggering out of the front door.
“Where do they go?” Tsukauchi’s voice crackles in his earpiece. “You’re following them, aren’t you, Eraserhead?”
“Yeah,” he replies, taking careful steps over the cracked floorboards of the dusty warehouse. “They’re leading to a room. Going in.”
He ignores the other sounds, focussed instead on the tracks that lead into an empty room, one with no windows, just a single lightbulb on a string that sways slightly in some unseen breeze. A quick sweep tells him that there is no secondary exit, but the footsteps stop at a corner. There is no returning track.
“They end in the room,” he reports, but before he can continue, his sharp ears pick up on a sound. A sniffle, or maybe an aborted sob. A shaky breath sucked in.
He pauses, forcing himself to listen carefully, beyond the distant sounds of the others in the rest of the warehouse.
Did I imagine it? Or is it a quirk?
Shouta is no stranger to camouflage quirks. One of his students literally has an invisibility quirk, for crying out loud. He wouldn’t be a good hero if he didn’t explore all the possibilities.
It barely takes a second - his quirk flares up, his eyes glow red, and his hair rises. And in that second, what he sees sends his stomach down to the ground.
A child is huddled in the corner, hands over his ears. He’s shaking, whether from fear or from the cold, he can’t tell, but it could just as well be from the sheer pain of the wounds that criss-cross the back that he can see through a torn shirt. The bottom of his feet are covered in blood, and Shouta has a sinking, horrible feeling that if he cleared the blood off, he would find more wounds. All he can make out from the trembling form is a thatch of hair that could be green, or maybe brown, if only he could see under the layers of blood and grime that cake it.
“Eraser,” Tsukauchi says, but Shouta reaches up wordlessly to press his speak button twice. The resulting squawk of feedback should tell them that he has a situation where he needs discretion.
Shouta takes a single step forward, and the child huddles closer into himself, and Shouta can make out tightly closed eyes, tears running down grimy cheeks. He stops, and then lowers himself to the floor.
“Hello,” he says gently, and the child flinches, a full-body movement that tears at Shouta’s heart. The reality of his job is that he often comes across scenes like this, with abused children cowering in fear, and each one never fails to send a pang of horror through him. But it also means that he knows how to talk to them, and how to help to the best of his abilities.
“My name is Eraserhead,” he says again, and watches the child freeze up. “I’m a Pro-Hero, and I’m here to save you.”
It seems like the words sink in, because the boy uncurls just slightly, lowering his hands from his ears.
“Do you -”
Shouta winces at the hoarseness of his voice, which sounds like it is shredding his throat on the way out. It speaks of screaming, maybe, or crying - emotion taking over.
“You see?”
Huh?
He turns, and finally, he can make out dull green eyes through a fringe that falls a bit too long over his forehead.
“C-can you see me?” he asks again.
“Of course,” Shouta replies, confused, and in that moment, drops his quirk. Instantly, the boy vanishes. “When I have my quirk on,” he clarifies. “When I’m erasing your quirk.”
“I - A quirk?” He sounds confused. “I - I was right?”
“What do you mean?” Shouta asks gently. “Right about what?”
In the course of the conversation, the boy has moved, slightly, his posture more open now. He slumps against the wall and Shouta has to bite back a curse at the sight of the raw, red scar that runs across the right side of his head, from the top of his ear to the back of his skull. It looks like it’s in the early stages of healing, but it seems inflamed and angry.
“I - I don’t - I don’t have a quirk,” the boy finally says. He looks up and meets Shouta’s eyes as if expecting him to recoil, move away, leave. Shouta simply settles more comfortably on the floor, and his heart breaks at the shock that flashes through those dull, listless eyes. The kid had been fully prepared to be abandoned, left behind.
“I’m not supposed to have a quirk,” he continues. “But- but I just wanted to hide and not be seen. And - and - no one noticed when I left.” He looks down at his hands. “They couldn’t see me walk right past them.”
That explained the footprints, and also the haste with which the hideout had been emptied. If the League thought that their prisoner had escaped, they would have made it a first priority to move all their important things away to a safe house, before leaving themselves. At least, that is what Shouta would have done.
“They didn’t see you,” Shouta repeats. “But I do. Will you let me help you?”
He holds out a hand, open and empty, palm facing up so that the boy can reach over when he is ready. He doesn’t move, simply keeps his expression neutral, and his hand steady. Inside, though, his heart is pounding in his chest, the wave of emotions threatening to spill over. He doesn’t know what it is about this boy who looks at him with the eyes of a seasoned pro, with the barely-there glimmer of hope, that makes him hurt so much. Maybe it is because he has gotten so close with his class, that he can’t help but see them in this kid.
But it doesn’t take long. Shouta only has to blink twice, before the kid comes to some decision.
Slowly, he moves forward, and Shouta is struck again, when he realises that the speed is less because he’s scared, and more because he physically cannot move faster, not with the cuts marring his back and the open wounds seeping blood on the soles of his feet. But he moves forward with some dogged determination that he would be hard-pressed to find in his own colleagues, until he can reach Shouta’s hand.
And he grabs on, clinging to it hard enough that his nails leave crescents of impressions on Shouta’s skin. He doesn’t mind, not when he can surge up and grab the child, stop him from having to carry his own aching body, cradling him in his arms.
“Th-thank you for coming,” the kid says faintly, laying his head against Shouta’s shoulder, his eyes going half-lidded. “Thank you for finding me.”
“Kid, you can’t sleep just yet,” Shouta admonishes him, rising to his feet with care so he’s not jostling the too-light body in his arms. The kid’s hands are clenched into the material of his hero suit, but even that strength is fading. “Tell me something about you, come on now.”
The kid’s eyes slide lower, but he pulls them open with sheer will and determination. There is a spark in those brilliant green eyes now, a spark that seemed almost manic.
“I-zu-ku,” he whispers. “My name is Izuku.”